Ten world’s most outstanding politicians of 2012

The outgoing year will remain in people’s memory for quite a number of major world events. Elections were held, new leaders were elected in many countries. Syria was the most talked-about country in 2012, so Syrian President Bashar al-Assad can be named the politician of the year. Of course, many other significant events took place in different parts of the world. Pravda.Ru offers its own version of world’s ten most outstanding politicians of the year.

Bashar al-Assad

When Time magazine was choosing its Person of the Year, the editors of the respectable publication clearly underestimated Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Despite all efforts of the U.S., EU, Turkey and Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Assad has kept his post. He has turned into nearly the biggest thorn in the eye of Western countries. It seemed that the West sentenced him to resign, but Assad stayed. Rumor has it that Assad is about to receive political shelter in Russia, but he is not going anywhere. The Syrian leader can be considered as a politician of the year just because no other country in the world has received more media coverage than Syria did in 2012. The civil war in the country continues; the number of casualties runs into tens of thousands. The U.S. and the EU, on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other, continue to share different positions as to what to do next with Assad, whether he should resign or it is too early to disregard him. In any case, the Syrian president is not going to leave the scene soon, though the position he is in is extremely difficult.

Barack Obama

It was the U.S. president, whom Time named the Person of the Year. However, Obama has not done much in the international arena. Throughout the whole year, he was preoccupied with his own election campaign, and it was his words, rather than action that attracted attention to his persona. In the end, Obama won the presidential election, beating his rival Mitt Romney by about a million votes. He will continue to rule the country that still remains the most powerful country in the world, at least for the time being. Meanwhile, the United States has to deal with very serious problems. Right before the New Year, Obama was presented with an unpleasant gift – a possibility of the financial cliff. The public debt grows, unemployment does not reduce, social programs are stalled. Enormous defense spending and efforts to maintain dominance in the world affect the state of affairs in the United States. Obama needs to do something about it urgently.

Hu Jintao

For the Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, the year 2012 became the tenth and last year that he spent as the leader of the most populous and rapidly developing country in the world. The Congress of the Communist Party of China officially announced in the autumn of 2012 that Hu Jintao would be replaced by Xi Jinping. Hu Jintao has something to be proud of indeed. China has become the second largest economy of the world. The current global crisis has not stopped, but only slowed down the country’s development. As for China’s politics in 2012, one should mention the conflict with Japan over the disputed Senkaku Islands, or Diaoyu, as they are called in Chinese. A real naval battle occurred, when the Japanese guards shot water cannons at Chinese fishermen. China stood up for its people. China with Hu Jintao at the head showed that he was not going to give up.

Francois Hollande

Unlike the United States, the people of France preferred to change their president. In April 2012, Nicolas Sarkozy was replaced by Socialist Party representative, Francois Hollande. He won the election thanks to the votes of immigrants from Asia and Africa, as well as those who were unhappy with cuts in social spending. So far, Hollande had to face a challenge from the radical part of French Muslims after the notorious film “The Innocence of Muslims.” Hollande, like Sarkozy, had to talk about the stability of secular principles of the Republic. Hollande’s promise to legalize gay marriage turned out to be quite a problem for the new French president. It turned out that such a “triumph of democracy” is not really welcome in France. In addition, in European affairs, it is Germany, rather than France, that plays the first fiddle. Hollande has a whole bouquet of problems to deal with. As for economy, France does not seem to have serious problems with it, although it is far from being perfect still.

Hugo Chavez

The furious president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, gives something to remember almost every year. This year, it was his health that got most attention. During 2012, he visited Cuba several times to undergo the course of treatment for cancer. His opponents and some Western media outlets reported that Chavez had little time left. However, the “Furious Hugo” has not left politics in 2012. Quite on the contrary, he continues to struggle for his own life. Venezuela held presidential election in 2012, and Chavez defeated the US-backed rival by about nine percent. However, it seems that it is really hard for the Venezuelan leader to retain power. He has openly named his possible successor and even shared powers with him.

Mohammed Morsi

Egypt’s new president has every right to be on the list of ten most outstanding politicians in 2012. The state of affairs in the land of pharaohs remained quite intense throughout the year. They could not count the votes in the presidential election, before it became clear that Islamist Morsi had not beaten his opponent, who enjoyed the support of anti-clerical and pro-Western part of the Egyptian society. After he won the vote, radical Islamists demanded sphinxes and pyramids in the country should be demolished, because, they say, they did not come along with the precepts of Islam. Morsi could play a major role in Middle Eastern affairs, but his hands were tied. When it came to a referendum on a new constitution, which referred to strengthening the role of Islam, it became clear that many disagreed with the president. The expansion of his powers angered many Egyptians. The year 2013 should give an answer to the question of whether Egypt becomes an Islamist country, or maybe Islamist Morsi is not so black as he is painted.

Kim Jong Un

Objectively speaking, he has not done anything, except for the failed launch of the North Korean satellite. Still, Time named the new North Korean leader the Person of the Year in 2012 in reader voting. However, this 30-year-old politician is the head of the most closed country in the world. This fact already attracts attention to Kim Jong Un. People in different parts of the world wonder whether he begins reforms in the country or continues the traditions of the “communist monarchy.” Kim has not given a precise answer to that yet. Maybe the new year will change something?

Tomislav Nikolic

An important event took place in 2012 in Serbia. A representative of conservative, moderate nationalist forces has become the president on the third attempt. Prior to his victory, Nikolic was beaten by pro-Western Democrat Boris Tadic. The Serbs elected him because he was not ready to give up Kosovo for the EU membership. However, the problem that he has to deal with can hardly be solved. He needs to expand contacts with Russia, return Kosovo and stay friends with the EU. If Nikolic copes with it – he can be considered a wizard of politics.

Charles Taylor

Former Liberian President did nothing in 2012. He could not do anything, since he had spent many years in a cell of the Hague Tribunal. Judges did everything for himself, though. Taylor became the first head of state to be convicted by an international court to 50 years in prison for crimes against humanity. He was found guilty of mass murders, rapes, illegal diamond trade during the war in Liberia’s neighbor – Sierra Leone. Rumor has it that Taylor made his soldiers eat captured enemies during the war in Liberia in 1997-2003.

Viktor Yanukovych

The Ukrainian president takes the last position on our list. In 2012, Ukraine became an object of international attention on a number of occasions. There was heated debate about the law that allowed to grant the regional status to Russian and several other languages. The law was passed, despite desperate resistance from nationalist-oriented “orange” activists. The European Football Championship became an important event in the country. The controversy around Yulia Tymoshenko continued too. Finally, after the elections to the Verkhovna Rada, Yanukovych was able to secure a parliamentary, yet unstable, majority. As for the strategic goal of Ukraine, the president pointed out the signing of the agreement of association with the EU. However, the Europeans, being unhappy with Tymoshenko’s imprisonment, ruined the hope. European leaders gave Yanukovych to understand that Ukraine should not join the Customs Union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Russia asked Yanukovych to decide whose side he was on. Yanukovych had to balance. It remains unclear how long he will be able to continue the game with Russia and the European Union.

Author : Pavel Chernyshev

 

China attaches great importance in developing military ties with India

 

Chinese and Indian senior military officials met in Beijing and agreed to strengthen ties. Xu Qiliang, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, met with Indian Defense Secretary Shashi Kant Sharma, reports Xinhua.

Xu said China and India, being the biggest developing countries in the world, are important neighbors for each other.

He noted that the two countries have extensive common interests and developing friendly and mutually beneficial cooperation is in line with the common aspiration of the two peoples as well as global development. He said that he believes that the two countries have enough wisdom and ability to handle their relationship and are able to pave a healthy and stable development path for it.

Xu said China attaches great importance in developing military ties with India and hopes to increase mutual strategic trust, enhance friendly communication and deepen pragmatic cooperation in order to promote the strategic partnership for peace and prosperity and make a positive contribution to world and regional peace and stability. Sharma said India attaches great importance to developing its relationship with China and he is confident in the future progress of military relations between the two countries.

China is a threat to global good

As the world watches without being able to bring about a ceasefire, a humanitarian crisis is underway in Sri Lanka with nearly 170,000 civilians displaced and 50,000 trapped in the war zone.

It has become common for rampaging armed forces and also those in cahoots with terrorists the world is battling with, despots and dictators to cock a snook at the UN. Much of the cockiness lies in the covert moral and logistic support lent by China, hungry for resources for widening its reach to get a major slice of business in the troubled regions and make its presence felt.

The Sri Lankan offensive against the LTTE is not faulted as the terrorist organization has used all possible means of violence over the years to foment terror in this beautiful island resembling a tear drop in the Indian Ocean. Lots of blood sweat and tears have flowed for the fight for a separate Tamil homeland in protest for the marginalization of the Sri Lankan Tamils. But the process of terror was always condemnable and has encouraged later day terror groups like the al Qaeda to emulate their suicide attack techniques.

But what happened so suddenly that the Sri Lankan armed forces finally managed to decimate the formidable LTTE?

It was China once again. Having supported despots with blood on their hands in Africa and Myanmar for the sake of resources to feed a surging Chinese economy, Sri Lanka was a natural choice to complete the string of pearls in the Indian Ocean.

Having set about building and ramping up ports in Burma, Bangladesh and Pakistan, which would in be used for docking and refuelling of its navy, China is now building a $1 billion port in the fishing village of Hambantota in Sri Lanka’s north east, very close to the fighting zone. It would also double up as the Chinese Navy’s stop-over point during patrols to guard against piracy of oil imports from the Middle East and establish a base in the Indian Ocean all along the arc.

No wonder the Sri Lankan armed forces are fighting perhaps their last battle to crush the LTTE for ever with an urgency never seen before. Shunned by governments the world over including India when Sri Lanka sought arms for the civil war, China chipped in during the last two decades with arms supplies. Chinese arms supplies increased further when the US suspended all military aid to Sri Lanka citing gross human rights violations. Chinese aid to Sri Lanka jumped to $1billion last year leaving other nations far behind.

Like wise, China beefed up the Myanmar armed forces and stood with them when they were accused of human rights violations last year when monks and civilians rose in protest against rampant corruption, price rise and food shortage. Pakistan can act in self denial of not harbouring terrorists and fuel terror acts in neighbouring countries on the strength of Chinese military aid and support while the US and western powers resign themselves to the reality and cannot do much about it.

According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, Sri Lanka shopped for $37.6 million worth of arms and supplies for its army and navy. China gave 6 F7 fighter jets for free in 2007 as per reports of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. According to media reports, the bulk of arm shipments fro China was handled by Lanka Logistics and Technologies where the Defence Secretary who is the Sri Lankan president’s brother, has a major stake.

And the arms went into killing 75 civilians in a makeshift hospital by the Sri Lankan armed forces which lay very close to the battle zone. It was the only one available for the trapped civilians.

UN reports peg civilian casualties at 6500 since January this year as the Sri Lankan government vehemently denies and keeps the war zone out of bounds for journalists and aid workers.

Sri Lanka is acting with the same nonchalance to global criticism and pressure as Myanmar’s armed forces did last year on the strength of a counter weight like China. Calls for evacuating the civilians have fallen on deaf years.

China’s desperate need for Hambantota had been cautioned by Pentagon’s Air Staff personnel Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher J. Pehrson in a 2006 paper and by the U.S. Joint Forces Command last November.

With a trail of blood from volatile Africa, Myanmar to Sri Lanka, China is a threat to global good and reticent about gross human rights violations and human catastrophes to preserve its own commercial interests.

US have also been accused of partying with despots and affecting civilian casualties, but democracy allows a groundswell of dissent as was evident in the last presidential elections. China has stifled a moral counterweight which makes it more dangerous.

Susenjit Guha

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Chinese daily flays India over rapes

India‘s “inefficient and unequal democracy” cannot provide answers to social evils and that is why angry citizens are taking to the streets, an influential Chinese newspaper has said.

“The Indian democratic system seemingly can’t solve these problems but provides legitimacy for them,” the Global Times said in a commentary after the death of a 23-year-old who had been gang-raped and tortured in Delhi.

“India’s democracy is now manipulated by a small number of elite and interest groups. This easily ignites massive grass-roots protests like the current ones and the anti-corruption rallies in August.”

The street protests in New Delhi offered a lesson to China, said the Global Times write-up by Lin Xu.

“Six decades ago, China and India maintained a similar development level, but there has been a widening gap after China explored reform and opening-up,” it said.

“Analysts hold that India is about a decade behind China in economic development and three decades behind in social development.”

But the Times noted that as the world’s biggest democratic country, India was seen in the West as having great potential due to its superior system.

“But an inefficient and unequal democracy is unlikely to be able to mobilise this potential.

“The Indian government is criticized for having reacted slowly and India’s law enforcement system is considered sloppy.

“Rape cases in India have a conviction rate of as low as 26% even when they reach court. Moreover, the traditional social culture that devalues women should be condemned.

“Democracy should ensure effective public participation in national politics and supervision of the government. Efficient democracy means more than electoral politics,” it said.

Global Times, which represents hardline thinking in China, went on to say that the abuse of women in India was shocking.

It quoted statistics to say that 572 rapes were recorded in New Delhi in 2011, and rape cases went up seven times in the past 40 years.

“Over the past few weeks, violence against women in India received prominent attention worldwide, most of which dwelt on the root causes of the problem.”

Former Chinese official sentenced to death for bribery

The former vice secretary-general of China’s Jiangxi provincial government, Wu Zhiming, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for bribery, a court ruled on Wednesday.

Prosecutors found that Wu took the bribes while he successively served as district head and city official in the provincial capital of Nanchang as well as vice secretary-general of the Jiangxi provincial government between 2002 and 2011.

Will Wal-Mart do the job we don’t want to do ourselves?

The debate over foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail is getting surreal. Witness the statements made by Sushma Swaraj, and the equally doubtful replies of Kapil Sibal in yesterday’s debate

Neither the opposition, nor the government is speaking the truth for the simple reason that nobody can really predict whether the entry of Wal-Mart and other such global retailers will be beneficial or harmful.

The government says it will benefit farmers and create jobs, the opposition says it will destroy kiranas, and both of them could be right in a small way, but wrong in a big way. Nobody can really say how Indian farmers and kirana stores will adapt to competition, and how Wal-Mart will adapt to India. We will know only after a few years.

FDI in retail is thus really a shot in the dark, and even though there is ample evidence that Wal-Mart has indeed destroyed mom-and-pop shops in the west, the situation is so different here that it is impossible to presume that it will do the same damage here.

So it’s worth debunking the specious arguments put forth both by those who want Wal-Mart and those who don’t. At the very least, they should junk bogus arguments and start discussing how to help our kiranas to compete, and how to help our farmers to gain from Wal-Mart.

The first argument for allowing FDI in multi-brand retailing is that it will help farmers obtain a better price. Plus, it will create jobs. The truth is jobs can be created even by Indian big retailers, and not particularly by Wal-Mart. Jobs depend on local labour and employment creating policies, not foreign investment.

The second argument is that Wal-Mart will help improve the supply chain from farm to fork. This is true, but the fact is 100 percent FDI is already allowed in food processing, cold chains and logistics. Wholesale cash-and-carry trading is already open to Wal-Mart. What the government is not telling us is this: Wal-Mart won’t make these investments till it is allowed to set up its own shopfront – which is where the real margins are.

Instead of being truthful on the real issue, the government is telling us how Wal-Mart will help farmers when our policies already allow foreign retailers to do so. This help is not forthcoming without the rider of being allowed to open their own shops.

Third, the government fails to tell us that its own policies are not helpful to farmers. Farmers can get higher prices if they are allowed to develop export markets. But we place curbs on free trade in order to keep domestic prices down. We allow exports only when prices crash in the home market due to temporary over-production, whether it is in rice or vegetables.

Fourth, farmers can get better prices even in domestic markets. But we don’t have a free domestic market. The problem with “middlemen” is a self-created problem, with state governments forcing farmers to sell their produce at mandis – where middlemen dominate. Chandrabhan Prasad and Milind Kamble, writing in The Times of India today, point out that middlemen, called adhatiyas, preside over mandis and the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee markets.

“Adhatiyas preside over mandis (marts) and regulate trading in foodgrains, vegetables and fruits. From farms to kirana stores, they call the shots. The Mandi Parishad rules make it mandatory for farmers to bring their products to adhatiyas. Kisans who bring their trucks full of apples from Shimla or vegetables from Meerut don’t have the freedom to sell their produce to whosoever they want. It is some adhatiya who sells their produce for a commission.”

If this is the case, it is obviously our domestic anti-market policies that prevent farmers from getting a better price. Wal-Mart is merely an additional battering ram to break this nexus between politicians and middlemen. Apparently, we need a Wal-Mart to fix our own problems. We can’t honestly battle our own vested interests unless we give it a more esoteric justification.

Fifth, those opposed to FDI always trot out the China argument. If Wal-Mart comes here, Chinese good will overrun the Indian markets. Quite apart from the fact that Chinese goods are already taking over the world due to their extremely low prices, the truth is everybody – from Apple to Nike to our own makers of white and brown goods – uses Chinese costs to expand the market.

Many Indian small manufacturers have given up manufacturing and have taken to imports to improve their turnover and profits. In short, Indian manufacturing – which began from trading – is now going back to trading because we are simply not competitive.

The only way to become competitive is by removing regulations, lowering corruption and creating enabling conditions for people to produce at low costs. But our policies are headed in the other direction.

Land, an important element of overhead costs, will become more and more expensive once the Land Acquisition Bill – which wants farmers to be compensated at four times the market price, not to speak of rehabilitation costs – is passed by the UPA government. Our manufacturing will thus become even more uncompetitive once this happens.

Labour laws do not allow our manufacturers to hire and reduce jobs depending on demand conditions. As a result, Indian manufacturing is becoming more and more capital-intensive, and organised labour is becoming more expensive. Thanks to make-work schemes like NREGA, labour costs are rising faster than capital costs.

Carmakers Hyundai, Honda and Maruti are at the forefront of the drive to use more robots for many operations in their Indian plants, reports The Economic Times. After its recent factory violence, Maruti has decided to accelerate automation of many more of its operations in Manesar, and this trend is evident in other factory floors as well.

Clearly, the China argument is important, but the real reason for India losing it competitive advantage in manufacturing vis-à-vis China is our land, capital and labour policies, and not FDI in retail.

If the UPA needs to be attacked, it should be for failing to reform our land, labour and agricultural produce markets, which are killing the India growth story.

Our businessmen know this, and this is one reason why they use crony links to get favourable deals on land and related policies to make money.

FDI in retail will succeed or fail in India the same way Indian business succeeds or fails – by making compromises with the political system and through corruption.

And that’s the real tragedy about FDI in retail, not the mere fact of Wal-Mart’s threat to kiranas.

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The Indian Navy is practicing to operate in the South China Sea to protect the country’s economic assets.

Speaking to reporters in New Delhi, Admiral D.K. Joshi said, “Where our country’s interests are involved, we will protect them and we will intervene.”

The Eastern Naval Command – which looks at India’s eastern sea board and is likely to play a key role when the Navy is deployed in South China Sea – is also being strengthened.

China, which put its first aircraft carrier into service in September, has been locked in a series of disputes over strategic islands in the region, including with Vietnam and the Philippines over territory in the South China Sea.

The decision to use the Indian Navy in the region comes days after Chinese state media announced that the southern Hainan province, which administers the South China Sea, approved laws giving its police the right to search vessels that pass through the waters.

Also Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan and India protested a map on a new Chinese passport that depicts disputed areas as belonging to China. The Philippines also issued a statement saying it wants Beijing to “clarify its reported plans to interdict ships that enter what it considers its territory in the South China Sea,” the Associated Press reported over the weekend.

India signed a pact with Vietnam in October last year to expand oil exploration in the South China Sea.

Although Beijing has urged New Delhi not to push ahead with the project for the sake of “peace and stability”, the Admiral said that the Indian Navy was ready to support state energy firm ONGC and had carried out exercises in preparation.

“In certain sectors ONGC Videsh has certain interests. It has energy exploration blocks, three in number, and since it is an area of Indian interests, the Indian Navy, should there be a need, would stand by,” Admiral Joshi said referring to the firm’s international subsidiary.

“If required we will intervene to protect (them),” he said and added that it is the navy’s duty to protect India’s sovereign assets.

Acknowledging the rapid modernisation of the Chinese navy, the navy chief said “It is actually a major cause of concern for us, which we continuously evaluate and work out our options and our strategies.”

According to a report issued by the Pentagon in May, Beijing is pouring money into advanced air defences, submarines, anti-satellite weapons and anti-ship missiles that could all be used to deny an adversary access to strategic areas, such as the South China Sea.

NDTV

Neighbors Connection :Sri Lanka launches its first ever Satellite on Chinese Rocket

Sri Lanka launched its first communications satellite on Tuesday in partnership with a Chinese state-owned space technology firm, the Sri Lanka partner said, adding to unease in neighboring India about Beijing’s growing ties with the island nation.

The Sri Lankan government has emphasized the launch was a private effort, carried out by SupremeSAT (Pvt) Ltd and the China Great Wall Industry Corp. But Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa‘s youngest son, Rohitha, has been credited in domestic media as the creator of the satellite.

Vijith Peiris, chief executive of SupremeSAT, told Reuters in Colombo that the launch from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in western China was successful.

The joint launch marked the latest in a series of economic and military ties between the two countries, a relationship that is being closely watched by India.

“It reinforces the impression that Sri Lanka is getting slowly but surely closer to China,” said Brahma Chellaney, an analyst at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

“From a larger geopolitical perspective, it sends a message to India that a country in its own backyard is cozying up with China.”

Economic and strategic rivals China and India fought a brief, high-altitude border war in 1962 and still have contested regions, though the defense relationship has improved.

Rhetoric flared anew recently after China issued a new passport with a map that shows two disputed border areas as Chinese territory. India responded by stamping its own map on visas it issues to holders of the Chinese passports.

China has been the largest lender to Sri Lanka, a $59 billion economy, since the end of a three-decade civil war ended in May 2009. China had provided military equipment to the Sri Lankan government to defeat ethnic Tamil rebels.

Since then, Sri Lanka has sought stronger defense ties with China, a fact that has irked India and the United States.

“NOT A CONCERN”

Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie visited Sri Lanka in September, offering grants to modernize Sri Lanka’s military training. Liang said the ties were aimed at maintaining regional stability and were not targeted at any third party.

During a visit to China early this month, Sri Lanka Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, younger brother of the president, met Liang and agreed to consolidate bilateral cooperation.

China has also become involved in construction of a strategic sea and air port in Sri Lanka’s southern district of Hambantota, also Rajapaksa’s constituency.

It is also involved in a coal-fired power plant, expressways, railways and irrigation works.

India has not officially protested the increasing Chinese influence in Sri Lanka and has even said the latest corporation on space technology was not a concern.

“It’s a commercial communication satellite. It’s going to be in a Chinese (orbit) slot and not in a Sri Lankan slot. At that far, you can’t do anything and it’s not a concern for us,” said an Indian diplomat based in Sri Lanka, speaking on condition of anonymity.

China, like other nations with the technical capability, has launched numerous satellites on a commercial basis for other countries.

(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal and Shihar Aneez in COLOMBO, Arup Roychoudhury in NEW DELHI, and Michael Martina in BEIJING; Editing by Ken Wills)

Mao ordered 1962 war with India to regain CPC control: Chinese strategist

China‘s late strongman Mao Zedong had launched the 1962 war with India to regain control of the ruling Communist Party after the debacle of his ‘Great Leap Forward‘ movement in which millions had perished.

This was stated by top Chinese strategist Wang Jisi, adding a new dimension to the conflict ahead of the 50th anniversary of the war on Saturday.

“The war was a tragedy. It was not necessary,” Wang, Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University and member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told PTI here.

Wang said he differed with the perception of many Chinese political and strategic analysts that the Chinese victory ended India’s claims on the border and brought about long-term peace.

“I think we need to do some research. One anecdotal story I heard was because of Mao’s own fear of his position in China in 1962 that he launched a war,” said Wang, who according to senior Indian diplomats was often consulted by the Chinese leadership.

“In 1962, three years after the Great Leap Forward (GLF), Mao lost power and authority. He was no longer the head of the state and he went back to the so-called second line. The explanation given to us at that time was that he was more interested in…revolution and so on,” he said ahead of the 50th anniversary of the Sino-India conflict on October 20.

GLF was a mass campaign launched by Mao to use China’s vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy to a modern Communist society.

The movement turned out to be a catastrophe for China as millions of people perished in violent purges weakening Mao’s position as supreme leader of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) and he was sidelined

- PTI

Indian Women Outdo Men in Smoking

An average Indian female smoker smokes more cigarettes a day than male, 7 as compared with 6.1. Further, an average Indian woman is taking up smoking at 17.5 years as against 18.8 years among men, as reported by Kounteya Sinha for TOI.  However, 21 percent Indian male tobacco users smoke daily as against only 3 percent of women. And almost half of Indian men (47.9 percent) aged 15 years and above consume tobacco.

Smokeless tobacco use is high among Indian men at 32.9 percent. Further, nearly 206 million Indians use smokeless form of tobacco (loose-leaf chewing tobacco and snuff). One in every five female tobacco users in India uses the smokeless form of tobacco as against one in 10 who smoke. These are the new numbers on global tobacco use, as published by the medical journal, Lancet.

It is noted that an average Indian smoker smokes two cigarettes a day. At 16.1 percent, men smoking bidis was common. The percentage of men who used both smoked and smokeless products was second highest in India at 9.3 percent.

China has the highest number of tobacco users (300.8 million), followed by India (274.9 million).

India has the most smokeless tobacco users at 205.9 million. The quit rate was noted to be low in India with less than 20 percent of adults who had ever smoked saying they had given up. China, Egypt, Russia and Bangladesh also have poor quit rates. Quit ratios were found to be highest in the UK, the U.S., Brazil and Uruguay, with over 35 percent of smokers saying they had stopped.

Dr K Srinath Reddy, president of Public Health Foundation of India told TOI “While tobacco use among men has dipped from 51 percent to 48 percent, it has actually doubled among women from 10 percent to 20 percent. Women and girls are the new target of tobacco companies. Increase of tobacco use among women is alarming. “

The study also revealed that manufactured cigarettes were favoured by most smokers (82 percent) overall, but smokeless tobacco and bidis were commonly used in India and Bangladesh. India recorded for 23 percent of men who were smokers during 2008-2010.

Further, with 6.1 mean cigarettes a day smoked, India showed the lowest figure among the 16 countries. At almost 33 percent, the country has the highest male smokeless tobacco users, just above Bangladesh (26.4 percent).

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