India to Have 237 Million Web Surfers in 2015

he number of Internet users in India is expected to triple in the next five years, according to a report from the Boston Consulting Group Wednesday but making money from them isn’t going to be easy.

Although PC penetration in India is low, at less than 5% of the population, and so is Internet use, with the country’s approximately 80 million Internet users averaging just about half an hour online a day, the report points to China’s growth and its 384 million surfers as a sign of how quickly this could change.

“The unexpectedly rapid pace of China’s online migration is a sharp reminder of how quickly the other BRICI markets are likely to evolve in terms of Internet penetration rates, the number of hours spent online per day and e-commerce adoption,” said the report, which focused on the top emerging markets, Brazil, Russia, India, China and Indonesia.

“India is going to be different than what we’ve seen in mature markets but also in emerging markets. It’s going to be predominantly a mobile experience,” said Mr. Subramanian, who says the Internet will transform itself in the process.A lot of the growth in India will come from users who first surf the Internet from their mobile phones, said Arvind Subramanian, managing director BCG Mumbai and one of the authors of the report, even though right now only 1% of mobile phone users are using the Internet.

“The traditional Internet in its current form would be largely inaccessible even if it were to be available,” he said. “The language and literacy barriers in the country—those are formidable.”

Global sites that want to keep the edge they already have in India, compared to some other emerging markets, will have to Indianize more than they have so far.

“If you look at the Internet in Russia, China and Brazil, it is largely dominated by local sites, local content,” said Mr. Subramanian. “In India and Indonesia, it’s the Googles, Facebooks, Orkut.”

Going forward, “you will have language editions of all these global sites,” he said. The hardware might have to change too, to voice-based devices or other gadgets that are more intuitive to use, he added.

Mr. Subramanian says Indians are likely to take to services that enhance personal productivity, such as job alerts or continuing education. About 73% of people who go online in India spend time job hunting, the research showed, a finding backed up by Google search trends in India which show job-related terms in the top 10 most days.

“The other thing that’s big there is matrimonial which is a very unique Indian thing,” he said.

Most Chinese Internet users instead spend their time online instant messaging or listening to music and only 19% look for jobs. Russian and Brazilian web surfers use search engines a lot.

Making money from Indians on the Internet? That’s an even harder proposition.

“BRICI Internet users are much more likely to pay for online services than for content though Indian and Indonesian users are quite reluctant to pay at all, said the report.

Mr. Subramanian said that user fees, subscriptions or e-commerce aren’t going to be major sources of earnings for a while.

“A lot of it will come from other payers in the system using this as a way to reach a customer,” he said.

3G mobile service set for India launch

Decks were cleared today for launching 3G mobile and broadband services in the country, with the government allocating air waves to private operators after making certain amends to the licence terms.

The operators are authorised to use the spectrum for a period of 20 years from today, according to the amended licence conditions that allows companies to offer 3G services till the validity of the spectrum even if their telecom licences expire prior to that.

The government has imposed a roll-out obligation, under which the service providers would have to cover at least 90 per cent of the service areas in the metros within the next five years.

Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, RCom, Tatas, Idea Cellular, Aircel and S Tel were the operators who had bagged 3G spectrum in the auction in May that fetched the government over Rs 51,000 crore apart from about Rs 16,000 crore from the two telecom PSUs -- BSNL and MTNL.

BSNL and MTNL were awarded spectrum more than a year ago in view of their obligation to procure equipments through cumbersome process of inviting tenders. BSNL offers services throughout the country, except Delhi and Mumbai where MTNL is the operator. The operators have been awarded 5 Mhz of spectrum in each circle they won in the auction.

In the two metros of Delhi and Mumbai, three operators - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance Communication had emerged the winners while no operator could bag pan-India spectrum in the auction that was conducted between April 9 and May 18 this year.

The government had auctioned three 3G slots throughout the nation, while four slots were offered in five circles. 3G allows high-speed mobile broadband access enabling users to download full length movies, make video calls and watch live television programmes.

According to the amendment, if the operators fail to achieve the roll-out obligations, they would be given extension for one more year after paying 2.5 per cent of the spectrum acquisition charge per quarter.

Also, in case of two companies merging, only one slot of spectrum can be retained, according to the amended rules. The operators will have to pay the upward revised spectrum usage charges ranging between 3-8 per cent depending upon the quantum of spectrum held by them.

Indian Auto Boom Gets Bubbly

The chronic disease of the biggest auto markets in the world–overcapacity–could spread to India sooner than most people think.

As everyone from Hyundai to Honda spends billions to rapidly ramp up their production here, sooner or later they will be making more cars than they can sell, say some experts.

“I see overcapacity even in the BRICs countries,” Dieter Becker, global chair of automotive coverage at KPMG consulting told India Real Time. “The number of players (in India) has increased dramatically.” The BRICs countries are Brazil, Russia, India and China.

That might seem hard to believe with car and commercial vehicle sales climbing to a record highof around 2.5 million in the year ended March 31, and in a country where just 12 people in 1,000 own a car or utility vehicle.

But it’s an opinion that even some car manufacturers hold—around one-third of the 200 auto executives who responded to a KPMG survey out earlier this year predicted India would be struggling with overcapacity in the auto sector within the next five years.

It’s still a minority view—and hardly the 20% to 35% overcapacity companies are already dealing with in the U.S., Japan and Europe–but it’s something Indian auto executives (as well as investors and car buyers) should think about as they tune-up their plans in India.

“Now there are 50 players [in India] and they are still building capacity,” said Mr. Becker.

But auto executives and analysts said that if the prices and products are right, India will have no trouble boosting passenger car and commercial vehicle sales. The KPMG survey showed that 40% of respondents expect sales to climb to more than four million by 2014.

The real problem for auto companies in the not-too-distant future could be the lack of roads and parking spaces and possible rising fuel prices said, Paul Blokland, director of auto research company Segment Y.

“If you look five years from now then it may be impossible for people to use their cars or park their cars,” he said. “That will be more of an issue than capacity.”

Monsoon Session: Much Ado About Nothing

The Monsoon Session of Parliament concluded yesterday. This session was all about numbers, and percentages: 33 per cent reservation for women, 300 per cent salary hike for MPs across the board, and so on. Considering the hue and cry they made when this bill was under discussion, one does expect better performance from them in the Parliament. A look at these numbers proves the fact that our MPs are hardly bothered about discussing issues that affect us.

As the session comes to an end, we share some more numbers that might be equally relevant, as a yardstick to measure the performance of the “servants of the people”:

1.  55 per cent of the question hour in Lok Sabha and 44 per cent in the Rajya Sabha were lost due to disruptions. What this really means is that the majority of time when our MPs are supposed to raise issues of local and national concern was spent behaving like spoilt children, throwing tantrums, and walking out of the house. Relevant to note in context is the cost of this misbehavior: Rs 20,000 per minute, according to this story.

2.  The Question Hour was a major disaster. Only 10 per cent of starred questions were answered. This is a direct corollary of point one — since the MPs were so busy misbehaving, 90 out of every hundred questions asked during the time allotted to question-and-answer exercises went unanswered. Keep this in mind next time you are confronted by an issue of concern to you, and wonder what your MP is doing about it. Either he is not asking the question, or if he is, then no one is answering it.

3.  64 MPs did not even bother to show up for a single hour of a single day of the monsoon session — with an attendance record like that, you wouldn’t be allowed to write your school exam. Also, your company would have handed over the pink slip by now.

4.  The Indian National Congress, the party leading the government, saw 34 per cent of its MPs participating in the debates relating to the laws they were trying to pass — in other words, 66 per cent of Congress MPs did not bother to attend. The main opposition party, the BJP, did even worse — only 24 percent, that is, one in four BJP MPs, bothered to debate the laws the government sought to pass.

5.  Considering the fuss about reservations for women in Parliament, the performance of women members tells a story. While women currently constitute 11 per cent of the total strength of the Lok Sabha, only 8 per cent of women MPs bothered to attend debates. Incidentally, in a government that is essentially a gerontocracy [average age of Cabinet -= 64] our hope is supposed to lie in the “younger” MPs — defined as age 40 or less. In this category, which comprises 13 per cent of the Lok Sabha, only 8 per cent participated in the various debates, thus matching the performance of the largely non-performing women. On the good side, young MPs did ask a lot of questions — 13 per cent of the total questions asked came from them. Of course, considering point 2 above, all of their activity was of little use anyway, since not too many questions were answered during this session.

6.  What is really startling is 47% of the bills that were introduced in the parliament were passed in just 2 hours. And the most debated N-bill saw participation from only 20 MPs.

Apart from this, the Nuclear Liability Bill and the Direct Code Tax bill that were introduced are yet to be cleared. The Direct Tax Code will replace the Income Tax Act, and will ring in many changes in personal and corporate taxation. It will come into effect starting April 1, 2012.

Global Youth Unemployment Reaches Record Levels

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has issued a report documenting the severe impact of the global economic crisis on employment prospects for the world’s youth. The report, “Global Employment Trends for Youth”, presents detailed statistics on the growing number of 15-to-24-year-olds who find themselves out of work.

The most striking findings are those showing the rapid rise of youth unemployment from the eruption of the financial crisis in 2008 onwards. At the end of 2009, according to the report’s introduction, global youth unemployment stood at 81 million. This was an increase of 7.8 million, or nearly 10 percent, from the end of 2007.

In percentage terms, global youth unemployment rose from 11.9 percent to 13 percent during this period, an increase described as “sharper than ever before”.

In 2009 alone, the number of young people out of work globally rose by a staggering 6.6 million. As the report noted, “To put this in perspective, over the course of the ten-year period prior to the current crisis (1996-1997 to 2006-2007), the number of unemployed youth increased, on average, by 192,000 per year”.

The report projected that this rate of increase would slow, but that by the end of 2010 global youth unemployment would stand at 13.1 percent. Most significantly, it stated that although the unemployment rate would drop slightly from 2011, there would be no return to the lower jobless levels of the pre-crisis period.

The report warns of the danger of young people becoming alienated from the labour market and today’s youth becoming a “lost generation”. It states, “Numerous studies show how entering labour markets during recession can leave permanent scars on the generation of youth affected, and recently fears have been expressed regarding a possible crisis legacy of a ‘lost generation’ made up of young people who detach themselves from the labour market altogether”.

The report hints at the issue that should concern the ruling elite in such a scenario: “Finding and motivating young people who have given up hope for a productive future is an expensive venture. Nonetheless, the alternative of doing nothing is even more expensive when the social, economic and possibly even political costs are added together”.

ILO Director-General Juan Somavia spoke along similar lines, saying, “Young people are the drivers of economic development. Foregoing this potential is an economic waste and can undermine social stability”.

It should be noted that the ILO report deals only with the beginning of the economic downturn, when stimulus measures were adopted by governments internationally. Now, with the focus shifting to austerity as the bourgeoisie seeks to claw back from the working class the money used to bail out the banks, unemployment is projected to increase in every country.

As the report makes clear, the youth are the most vulnerable section of the working class and will bear the brunt of this rise in joblessness. In 2008, young people were 2.8 times more likely to be out of work than adults, with the youth unemployment rate standing at 12.1 percent whilst joblessness amongst the adult population was 4.3 percent. Even during the last period of economic growth prior to the crisis, the percentage of young people active in the labour market dropped from 54.7 to 50.8 percent between 1998 and 2008.

Having outlined the global trends, the study details how young people across different regions of the world have been impacted. Some of the poorest areas have been hit worst of all.

In South Asia, one million young people are expected to seek employment every year between now and 2015, while the figure for sub-Saharan Africa is 2.2 million. In the Middle East and North Africa, 20 percent of the youth population was unable to find work in 2008.

Even those with a job in these regions saw their living standards decline. The report calculated that roughly 28 percent of all young workers were part of the working poor, seeking to maintain themselves on less than $1.25 per day.

In a press release published to coincide with the issuing of the report, Director-General Somavia commented, “In developing countries, crisis pervades the daily life of the poor. The effects of the economic and financial crisis threaten to exacerbate the pre-existing decent work deficits among youth. The result is that the number of young people stuck in working poverty grows, and the cycle of working poverty persists through at least another generation”.

Developed economies have also suffered. The report shows a 4.6 percent rise in youth unemployment in the Developed Economies and European Union region, while in Central and Eastern Europe (non-European Union) and the Commonwealth of Independent States the rate of increase was 3.5 percent. These are the largest yearly increases ever recorded.

The overall youth unemployment rate in the Developed Economies and European Union of 17.7 percent in 2009 is the highest level since records began in 1991.

While only 10 percent of global youth live in the “developed economies”, 45 percent of the increase in unemployment came from these states. In the United States, for example, youth unemployment was up 8 percent, reaching 18 percent in 2009. In Britain, the Daily Telegraph recently reported a 42 percent increase in long-term unemployment amongst young people.

New seminar hall inaugurated at AMU

A seminar hall at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Business Management of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) by AMU Vice Chancellor P.K. Abdul Azis.

The Seminar Hall was constructed with a cost of around Rs.10 lakhs under the Eleventh Five-Year Plan by the Building Department of the University. 

On the occasion the Vice Chancellor also released four books, all edited by Dr. Rais Ahmed, who is the Chairman of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Business Management at AMU.

The books that were released are titled "Micro Finance and Women Empowerment", "WTO and Indian Agriculture", "Globalization and Economic Development" and "Cooperative Management and Development".

Appreciating the efforts of the then OSD (Development) Pervez Mustajab and University Engineer Firoz Khan, Dr. Rais Ahmad said, "The construction work of this project has been completed well in time."

Congratulating the building department for completing the construction on time, AMU Registrar V. K. Abdul Jaleel informed that the building of the department was donated by Brigadier Iqbal Shafi before he migrated to Pakistan. 

In his presidential address, Prof. Azis appreciated the efforts of Dr. Rais Ahmad for editing four books on important themes and said, "Agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy and this institution needs a new generation of agricultural scientists. The state of Uttar Pradesh is producing the highest amount of grains. Also, the water distribution system in UP is excellent compared to South Indian states."

Prof. Azis informed that the university is planning to establish a Cooperative Society to provide all households items on cheaper rates to the staff and students

Livelihoods And Environment: The Pnar Conflict

Lad Phawa's Fields - now a water storage area

What mining has done to ‘these hills which we call home’ is unimaginable. The prodigious alterations caused by the extraction of coal and limestone have changed the very environmental, social and cultural precincts of the place. It has engulfed the land and slowly and stealthily whelmed in the people of Jaintia hills, a mineral rich district in the North Eastern state of Meghalaya.

On one of my visits to this coal and limestone rich region, I met Lad Phawa. In 2002, he began what he calls a “thriving business” that of sourcing out water and selling it in this water deficit region, caused by the excessive mining and its associated activities. As we stood overlooking his barren fields he had stopped cultivating in for the past eight years, Lad said “I don’t think I will farm again, I make a much better living by selling water”.

What he said left me thinking – is this what is engulfing the entire region, is mining going to overtake this agrarian society, what will be the outcome of such a mass shift in livelihood and why are people making the shift, will this not lead to further destruction of the environment of this ecologically diverse land.

In Jaintia hills many men and women are turning to the mining industry, if not directly then indirectly associating themselves with this fastidiously growing economically viable industry. Many from the well- off local Pnar population have either started mining in their own land or have leased their land to other private coal mine owners, this in the absence of any regulation and the existence of a complex land ownership system that grants direct control of the land to the tribal people, qualifying Meghalaya as the only state in the country where mining is done privately. While many working the coal mines are migrant labourers, a number of the local folk work as supervisors of the coal dumps or as daily wage labourers loading trucks. There are those like Lad who utilise sources at hand and market water, while others work in making and selling the small tools needed for mining.

“Why should I even consider stopping mining” says Kong Rit (name changed) from Sohkynphor village who overlooks the loading of trucks at Kongong, a coal dumping ground adjacent to national highway 44. “I can now feed my family properly, send my children to school and even have enough money for medicines” she adds trying hard to explain to me why mining should not be stopped in these hills. This may not be a unified voice of the Pnars/Jaintias but it is a powerful dominant opinion, which many are fearful to contradict. It is this opinion that has allowed the rampant spread of mining and overlooked the harm and destruction caused by unchecked, unscientific mining to the land and the environment.

Many paddy fields have been left barren; the Jhum (Shifting) cultivation has reduced. Even though 70% of the state is dependent on agriculture, in Jaintia hills personal stories of people tell us of a shift in livelihood. According to a study by Dr K Sarma with the help of the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, the cropped area in the coal region of Jaintia hills has reduced from 2.65% in 1975 to 1.62% in2001 while the mining area has increased from 3.26% in 1975 to 10.75% in 2001. The dense forest cover in Jaintia hills has also dramatically reduced from 22.5% of the total area in 1975 to a mere 12.34% in 2001

Coal dumped and extraxted next to what once paddy fields

Jaintia hills is undergoing major environmental changes due to private coal mining and the extensive limestone quarrying and the many cement plants that have mushroomed in the past couple of years. The water bodies in the area are polluted, the water table is declining, there have been changes in land forms, and the numbers of forests have decreased. In fact according to the Meghalaya Pollution Control Board air pollution levels have increased leading to warmer temperatures in the coal belt region of the state. The report states that the average concentration of suspended particulate matter is 200 micro gram per cubic metre while sulphur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen is 6.5 and 25.5 micro gram per cubic meter respectively. Shortage of rainfall over the years in a region famous for heavy rains is another indicator of the changing climatic conditions in the region.

The situation is worsening by the day and the effects on the environment and the people deleterious. “Every year we used to collect rain water for our daily use” says Puson Gympad, a resident and the secretary of Lumchnong village. “...but this year things are different, ever since the year’s first shower till now the rain water is so dirty we do not even dare use it for anything” he adds while showing me the water collected from the rain that poured as we were sitting and having tea. This is the plight of people residing in Lumchnong village which is situated along the national highway 44, whose two main sources of water – the kotsati cave and the Wah(river)Larung were polluted ever since a staggering 9 cement plants and a few captive power plants were set up within a five kilometre radius around the elaka (area) within the span of 10 years.

Unfortunately despite that most of the problems the elaka is facing is because of the setting up of the many cement plants in the region, most people still opt to work in the factories. “None of the youngsters know how to go and cultivate, they all lie by idle or even if they work they go to the factories” says Thrin Lamare, Lumchnong’s oldest woman and the last generations of farmers in the village. Puson looks at this as people “being short sighted” as one day the resources will be exhausted, the factories will close and nothing will remain, but the situation is far more complex.

Nearly 60% of the village land has already been leased to the different cement plants and this is not the situation only in Lumchnong. Vast areas of the limestone rich Narpoh elaka as well have been leased off for a mere RS 30 - 40/kmsq. While walking around some of the villages, numbered rocks and cut trees and untended orange orchards are witness to the transactions that have already been made, transactions where benefactors will always remain a handful. For the rest, earning a livelihood is of key importance, even if it means working in those very places that are causing harm to the land and environment they live in, even it means to move away from a practise integral to their way of life.

“Our land will be stripped naked” Puson’s indignant words resonate in my head. They tell me of a Jaintia hills that is being destroyed and desecrated, they tell me of the infinite woes that the people are confronting and they tell me of the irresponsible extensive mining that is killing the people and the environment