Modern english literature Essay

The purpose of this course is to encourage students to gain an awareness of, and insight into, the evolution of modern English literature. Students will become acquainted with writers, poets and playwrights such as Thomas Hardy, William Somerset Maugham, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Henry Williamson, John Betjeman, Ted Hughes, Charles Causley, Samuel Beckett, Laurie Lee, Agatha Christie and John Le Carrà ©. Connexions with socio-political factors will also be explored. The course takes the form of lectures, to which students may contribute their research. Evaluation is by written unseen examination, in the form of short essays. The lectures form but the tip of the iceberg, providing you with a door to your own research and study. You are encouraged to share the results of your studies, helping not only your fellow students, but me. We are, after all, in the same boat, even if I am at the helm. I do not so much teach, as try to help you to learn. I shall provide some examples of examination questions at the end of this hopefully helpful guide. English literature is a huge field, and I can obviously only try to open a few windows for you, or at least loosen the locks, with apologies to the many superb writers who have been omitted. You will hopefully have had a grounding, by attending my other course. If you have not, talk to other students. So here we go! We kick off with two superb dramatists and writers, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950). Wilde was quintessentially Irish in wit, humour, verbal prowess, blood, and origin, yet, having studied at Trinity College Dublin and then Oxford, was very ‘English’ in a pleasantly louche, supercilious and upperclassish way. In contrast, Shaw was an Anglo-Irish Protestant, morally, socially and politically conscious, even being a founder member of the Fabian Society. He was also self-taught, having left school at the age of fourteen. Their differences are reflected  in their work, although their pithiness unites them. Wilde is perhaps best known for ‘Picture of Dorian Gray’. Grey leads a life of debauchery, while remaining handsome and in good shape. But his portrait becomes increasingly corrupt and horrid: it represents his soul. The ending is pretty horrific. There is of course more to the book than just that, and although it is a superb work, I wouldn’t recommend it to adolescents! In the preface Wilde writes; ‘There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.’ In other words, he seems to be saying that art is for art’s sake. Another of his well-known works is the play, ‘The Importance of being Earnest’, from which we have the gem: ‘Really, if the low orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?’ Shaw found the work hateful and sinister, exhibiting ’real degeneracy’. In this connexion, on the other hand, Wilde said of Shaw: ‘He hasn’t an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.’ Other witty Wilde sayings are: ‘Modern journalism justifies its own existence by the greatest Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.â€⠄¢; ‘A cynic: a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’; ‘I can resist anything except temptation.’; and ‘When good Americans die, they go to Paris.’. Wilde’s wild life seems to have led to a tragically early demise, not as early as Mozart, but still premature: he sued the father of a poet friend of his, Lord Alfred Douglas, for libel, for accusing him of performing sodomy with his son (the poet). Wilde lost the case, was arrested, and sent to Reading Gaol for two years, for sodomy. He then left for Paris, changing his name to Sebastian Melmoth, dying two years later. Was he Dorian Gray? Was he a homosexual? Having read ‘De Profundis’ (which he wrote in prison) I can find no forensic evidence of his admitting to having actually practiced pillow-biting and shirt-lifting, but then perhaps he was a teaser. Well, perhaps he had certain tendencies towards young men, but the question is whether it was right to send him to gaol. I leave this to your judgment. It is not an easy question, since one needs to look at the morality of the Victorian Age, which some say had an element of hypocrisy: sometimes, those who persecute people manically and morally for something, are trying to hide their own tendencies, even from themselves†¦. At any event, having run out of cash, and written ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, this former witty wordsmith par excellence said not long before he died: ‘I  shall have to die beyond my means.’ He left a wife and two children, for whom he had written a lovely, but slightly frightening book of tales. How great would he be today, had he lived to Shaw’s age? He is great enough, as it is. Shaw, perhaps somewhat more mature emotionally than Wilde, and surely a decent enough chap, was, like Wilde, healthily critical of people, but more as members of what we term ‘society’. Thus, in his plays, he criticized, inter alia, slum landlords and private doctors. In the preface to ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma’, he writes: ‘Thus everything is on the side of the doctor. When men die of disease, they are said to die from natural causes. When they recover (and they usually do), the doctor gets the credit of curing them.’ His play applies very much to today. Shaw was also an expert on class. If you wish to gain some insight into class and accent in England, you should red ‘Pygmalion’. If you wish to understand something about the England-Ireland problem, you can read ‘John Bull’s other Island.’ Some memorable sayings from Shaw are: ‘We have no right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without possessing it’; ‘He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That clearly points to a political career.’; and ‘ He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.’ I escape this definition, since I do not teach, but try to help students to learn. He comments on the English were cutting; for example: ‘A person who thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.’ Our course then rushes through John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad (not even British-born) and T.S. Eliot. This highly educated chap is known, inter alia, for ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’. He wrote the play ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, a very good theatrical adaptation of the dastardly murder of Archbishop Thomas à   Becket. One of my favourite quotes of his, from ‘The Rock’, is: ‘Where is the wisdom lost to knowledge, where is the knowledge lost to information and where is the word we lost in words?’ After a brief glimpse of the amazing American Ezra Pound, who found Europe and Italy in particular, more to his liking intellectually than the USA, we come to William Yeats (1865-1939). He is the quintessential Celtic Irishman,  a friend of Shaw and Wilde, and a good dramatist and poet. ‘The Celtic Twilight’, a collection of traditional Irish stories, is a good pointer to Yeats’ thinking. Jumping now to Henry James (1843-1916), an American who, unlike many, preferred to settle in London rather than Paris, we see a man who could pick up the apposite word with the point of his pen, in a meticulous fashion. I find his style too precise for my liking, the very antithesis of ‘stream of consciousness’ writing. Nevertheless, he was a competent writer. ‘The Turn of the Screw’ is a good ghost story. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), a giant in English literature, is worth chubby paragraph. A poet who wrote novels, he was born to a modest family (his father was a stonemason), trained as an architect, but returned to his beloved Wessex to write. Beautifully written, his novels can be quite pessimistic: ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ ends with the heroine’s execution for stabbing her husband to death, a husband whom she was emotionally pressurised into marrying, although she loved another. ‘Jude the Obscure’ ends with three children hanging dead behind a door, on clothes hooks. His stories often bring out what he saw as the injustice of the divorce laws, especially for women who had married the wrong man, and were then trapped in their marriage, and how they and their lovers were then ostracized by society. His writing was sensitive, and some of his descriptions of nature in his beloved Wessex are touching. We now look at three childrens’ writers, Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician, non-practising Anglican deacon, and photographer, 1832-1898), Kenneth Graham (1859-1932), and Beatrix Potter (1866-1943). Few have not heard of Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there’, both of which are intriguing fantasies, almost making imagination real. From the latter, we have the memorable quote: ‘The question is’, said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things.’ The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master, that’s all.’ It was rumoured that he had a not wholly healthy interest in young girls, although there is not a jot of evidence that he ever did anything untoward. From Alice’s fantasy world, the Scotsman Kenneth Graham takes us to the fantasy world of little animals,  with ‘The Wind in the Willows’, written to his son. We see the daily lives of the toad, the badger, rat and mole in a typical English country setting. Beatrix Potter also wrote short books about animals, illustrating them herself. Of note are ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’ and the ‘Tale of Mrs.Tittlemouse. She spent most of her later life in the Lake District, the most beautiful part of England. This had a kind effect on her writing. Moving now to more social and even sexual themes, we come to D.H. (David Herbert Richard) Lawrence (1885-1930). This man got through the bone to the marrow of passion, love and sex. His quintessential book is ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, a story of illicit love, passion and unadulterated sex between the upper-class wife of an impotent aristocrat and the gamekeeper. Lawrence left England, and the book was published in Florence, not appearing in England until 1961, following a sensational obscenity trial. Lawrence wrote other books, such as ‘Women in Love’ and ‘Sons and Lovers’. He is very perceptive, revealing the real, rather than the politically correct and sanitised nonsense of hypocrisy. We can connect this to the English people’s dislike of being obvious, particularly when it comes to sex, and their embarrassment of sexual matters, often expressed in crude jokes. Now back to the Irish: James Joyce (1882-1942) was another of those linguists who chose Paris. His most well-known work is ‘Ulyses’, an example of his so-called ‘stream of consciousness’ writing, which tries to catch one’s deepest thoughts and imagination on paper, a kind of interior monologue. As such, it is naturally unstructured. ‘Ulyses’ deals with a day in Dublin, and a whole gaggle of characters. ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ is another example, and has been linked to Giambattista Vico’s ‘New Science’, which contains a good deal about the origins of language. Joyce certainly pushes written language to its limits. In contrast, his ‘Dubliners’, a series of short stories about life in Dublin, is surprisingly prosaic in style. He influenced another Irishman, the playwright Samuel Becket (1906-1989), another linguist residing in Paris, best known for ‘ En attendant Godot’, written ori ginally in French. The gripping play ends without Godot arriving. Let us now spare some thought for the wonderful and tragic Virginia Woolf,  known in particular for ‘To the Lighthouse’, ‘The Waves’, ‘Orlando’ and ‘Mrs. Dalloway’. As with Joyce, we see a certain amount of internal dialogue. Woolf was a leading light of the ‘Bloomsbury Group’, named after the area of London in which it met. She has also been seen as a feminist, having written : ‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’. But does this not also apply to men? It is up to you to decide, by reading some of her work, whether or not she was a feminist. She is said to have had mental problems. At any rate, she drowned herself in the Thames. Back now to the men. Aldous Huxley (1894) is best known for ‘Brave New World’ (1934), a particularly negative critique of the future, where Britain is a wasteland of human ‘robots’ and scientific breeding (he virtually predicted test-tube babies), with subordination the ideal of happiness. He developed the theme in 1959, with ‘Brave New World Revisited’. At any rate, he is relevant today, as is the inimitable literary giant George Orwell (1903-50), whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair. His ‘1984’, published in 1948, predicts a future where the world is divided into huge power blocks, and where people are run on government propaganda. Wherever you live, ‘Big Brother’ watches you from a television screen, and so help you if you say anything against the government, or even try to have a loving relationship with someone. As for the Ministry of Truth, it is based on lying. ‘Animal Farm’ is an attack on communist totalitarianism. After Eton, Blair became a colonial policeman in Burma (he was born in Bengal), an experience which made him critical of the British Empire. ‘Burmese Days’ is a novel which brings out the hypocrisy of empire, and how social class mattered, in a story of unrequited love. Orwell was also a good short story writer. ‘Shooting an Elephant’ brings out the relationship between rulers and ruled, while ‘A Hanging’ is horrific in its detail. Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war, and wrote a very perceptive – if occasionally pedantic – book about the details of the conflict. He also spent several months living as a casual worker in London and Paris, working mainly as a dishwasher. He then produced a highly entertaining book, ‘Down and out in London and Paris’. Here is an example of his writing, from ‘E ngland, your England’: ‘As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are only â€Å"doing their duty†, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life.’ Like several writers, Orwell was also a journalist. We cannot end without mentioning his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, a highly entertaining but effective lambasting of the influence of political ideology on the English language, and very relevant today, with the erosion of clear English through computer language, sloppy education and political correctness. From Orwell, we turn now to two children’s writers, although their books are also appropriate for adults. The South African J.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, is most well known for ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’, adventure stories laden with fantasy and drawing on Tolkien’s knowledge of the Celts. If I compare Tolkien to Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter’, the latter catapults itself out of existence. Roald Dahl (1916-1990) is also a wonderful writer, primarily but not exclusively for children. Born in Wales of Norwegian parents, his daughter was once one of the girlfriends of a cousin of mine. He wrote a series of short stories, ‘Tales of the Unexpected’, so gripping that they were serialised on television. Each story ends with a twist. Although they are for adults and older children, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ is defi nitely for young people. ‘My Uncle Oswald’ is also an amusing book. So we come to a mammoth of English literature, William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). Born in Paris, where his father was a legal adviser, hiss mother died when he was eight years of age, and his father two years later. He was sent to live with an uncle, the Vicar of Whitstable, apparently a cold character, and then attended King’s School, Canterbury, left early, and studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg, ending up studying medicine at St.Thomas’ Hospital in Lambeth, London, where he qualified as a doctor. His second book, ‘Lisa of Lambeth’ (1897), a story about working-class adultery, sold so well that Maugham became a full-time writer, moving to the south of France in 1928, around the time of his divorce (it is said that he had rather special relationships with various  males). We cannot of course mention all his books (he even wrote some popular plays), but of note are: ‘Of Human Bondage’, autobiographical in nature, †˜Ashenden’, about a secret agent, and four volumes of very entertaining short stories, of which my favourite is ‘Salvatore’. Maugham was certainly a pretty rum character, and was good at irritating people, in particularly those whom he almost libeled in some of his books. For even if he did not mention real names, it was sometimes fairly obvious whom he meant. The following quote reveals some of Maugham’s sometimes bitter-sweet powers of describing people: ‘When she reddened, her pasty skin acquired a curiously mottled look, like strawberries and cream gone bad.’ Wending our way towards the writers of thrillers, I shall touch on only four, although there is a whole bevy of them. Graham Greene (1904-91), who converted to Rome in 1926, was educated at Oxford, and worked for British Intelligence for a while. His thrillers are gripping, and delve deep into morality. One of his best thrillers, the ‘Human Factor’, is based on espionage, as is ‘Our Man In Havanna’. Other superb books are books are ‘The End of the Affair’, ‘The Honorary Consul’ and ‘Ministry of Fear’. John Le Carrà © (1931- ), whose real name is David Cornwell, is still going strong. After Oxford, he taught at Eton for two years, and then worked for MI5 (which handles, along with the Police’s Special Branch, internal security, but often has rows with MI6 about responsibility for Northern Ireland, because of the connexions with the Republic of Ireland). His espionage thriller ‘The Spy who came in from the Cold’, won him worldwide fame, and was made into a very good film. It brought out the reality of intelligence work, the drudgery and the mutual suspicions that abound in the incestuous world of institutionalised spying. Some of his other books are ‘Smiley’s Circus’, ‘A Small town in Germany’, ‘A Perfect Spy’ and ‘The Constant Gardener’ which, despite the alleged end of the Cold War, is as thrilling as ever, questioning the morality of big business. To get a sense of his style, here is the beginning of ‘A Small Town in Germany’: ‘Ten minutes to midnight: a pious Friday in May and a fine river mist lying in the market square. Bonn was a Balkan city, stained and secret [†¦].’ In juxtaposition, Ian Fleming (1908-1964), author of the extremely well-known Bond novels, emphasises, perhaps a mite too much, the more glamorous aspects of the job,  but nevertheless remains plausible. He was in British Naval Intelligence for a while. Then we should mention Len Deighton (1929- ), who may have caught the writing bug when doing his National Service as a photographer attached to the Special Investigation Branch. ‘The Ipcress File’ made him an instant success, and was made into a good film, with Michael Caine as the hero. Some of his other books are ‘Horse under Water’, ‘Bomber’ and ‘Berlin Game’ (part of a series). We cannot leave these chaps without mention of a lady writer, who, although not an espionage expert, is one of the best crime novelists: Agatha Christie (1890-1978), wrote sixty six detective novels, using her experience as a hospital dispenser in the Great War to learn a good deal about poisons. Although her writing style is surprisingly simple, she manages to keep the reader hooked by misdirecting him. Who has not heard of Mrs. Marples and Hercule Poirot? ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’, ‘Murder on the Orient Express’, ‘Ten Little Niggers’ and ‘The Mousetrap’ are just a few of her works. P.D.James was also an extremely good crime writer. Before now moving to a small selection of British poets and their poetry, we shall look at Henry Williamson, since he connects well to our first poet, Ted Hughes, who knew him, and spoke at his funeral. Williamson was a writer, journalist and farmer, who was in love with nature. He fought in the Great War, becoming disgusted with the greed and bigotry that had caused it, and determined that Britain and Germany should never go to war again. Because he had supported Oswald Mosley and his Fascists, and had admired Hitler before the next world war, a few small-minded individuals tried to damage his reputation. It is silly that the ‘Norton Anthology of English Literature’ does not include him, while including many lesser writers. After all, Oscar Wilde believed that art is for art’s sake, and should not be polluted by politics. Writers should be able to express their views without being sent to Coventry. The greatness of his books, however, saw him through. His masterpiece is ‘Tarka the Otter’, essentially about an otter being hunted to death. The reader actually becomes an otter. Williamson spent many months studying and watching otters before and while he wrote the book. So good was it, that Walt Disney twice approached him for the film rights, and was  roundly rejected. It was eventually made into a proper film, and Williamson died on the same day that the filming of a dying Tarka was taking place. Uncanny or merely coincidental? ‘Salar the Salmon’ is another masterpiece, as is his series of books on the life of Willie Maddison. The ‘Beautiful Years’ and ‘Dandelion Days’, partly autobiographical, describe beautifully a boy growing into adolescence and adulthood. And so to our poetic interlude: Laurie Lee was the quintessential Englishman: ‘Far-fetched with tales of other worlds and ways, My skin well-oiled with wines of the Levant, I set my face into a filial smile To greet the pale, domestic kiss of Kent. [†¦] The hedges choke with roses fat as cream.’ (from ‘Home from Abroad’). John Betjeman (a poet laureate), and lover of old England, loved Victoriana, the smell of old churches and musty books. But he is also perceptive about people: the following are extracts about an English lady at a service in Westminster Abbey, during the world war: ‘Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans. Spare their women for Thy Sake, And if that is not too easy We will pardon Thy mistake. But gracious Lord, what’er shall be, Don’t let anyone bomb me. Keep our Empire undismembered Guide our forces by Thy hand, Gallant blacks from far Jamaica, Honduras and Togoland; Protect them Lord in all their fights, And, even more, protect the whites. [†¦] Now I feel a little better, What a treat to hear thy word, Where the bones of leading statesmen, Have so often been interr’d. And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait Because I have a luncheon date.’ (from ‘In Westminster Abbey’). Unlike Betjeman, Charles Causley tends to look more at individual people and events, and is not as nostalgic. As regards his views on poetry, he writes in his introduction to a selection of his poems: ‘What a poem â€Å"means† is something that the writer as well as the reader each must decide alone. Only one thing is certain: that, unlike arithmetic, the correct answers may all be right, yet all be different.’ His imagery grips you hard: ‘Bank holiday, a sky of guns, the river Slopping black silver on the level stair. A war-memorial that aims for ever Its stopped, stone barrel on the enormous air.’ (from ‘At Grantchester’) or ‘Oh mother my mouth is full of stars As cartridges in the tray My blood is a twin-branched scarlet tree And it runs all runs away.’ (From ‘Song of the Dying Gunner A.A.1’). or ‘Charlotte she was gentle But they found her in the flood Her Sunday beads among the reeds Beaming with her blood.’ (from ‘The Ballad of Charlotte Dymond’). From poor Charlotte Dymond, we move to Clifford Dyment’s ‘Fox’, which begins: ‘Exploiter of the shadows He moved among the fences, A strip of action coiling Around his farmyard fancies.’ And so we come to another mammoth, a poet laureate into the bargain, Ted Hughes, who (see above) admired Henry Williamson. Cambridge-educated Yorkshireman Hughes was fascinated by the natural violence of nature – in particular as regards the behaviour of animals – , in power and in death: ‘I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in a sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.’ (from ‘Hawk Roosting’). or ‘Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn, More coiled steel than living – a poised Dark deadly eye, those delicate legs Triggered to stirrings beyond sense – with a start, a bounce, a stab Overtake the instant and drag out some writhing thing. No indolent procrastinations and no yawning stares, No sighs or head-scrathings. Nothing but bounce and stab And a ravening second.’ (from ‘Thrushes’). or ‘The pig lay on a barrow dead. It weighed, they said, as much as three men. Its eyes closed, pink white eyelashes. Its trotters stuck straight out.’ (‘View of a Pig’). Hughes, who superbly described November as ‘the month of the drowned dog’, had a somewhat intense yet sad relationship with his wife, the American poetess, Silvia Plath, who committed suicide, allegedly because of Hughes relationship(s?) with another woman or more. Pity about the children: and Sylvia’s son committed suicide forty six years after his mother did. Nature, power and death. Our last two poems are by me, and I feel constrained to tell you that if a poem is to be unadulterated, and above the shackles of convention and/or self-interest, whether good or bad, it must come directly from the heart. The only question is how pure is your heart. ‘WILD RIVER TROUT Dark shadow lies beneath, no movement; Not even a twitch of the delicate tail While it seeks its food. More than hidden, it is part of the river. It darts, too quick for eye to follow, You see it in its new position. The upward stab, the plucking bite, The munching seconds, invisible to you. You see only spreading ripples, Then the golden glint, the creamy belly, In the evening sun. You cast, the sudden tug shocks you, Despite your expectation. It pulls and judders at your soul; Such beauty, as you take him out, Designed for hunting fly, To feed its perfect muscles. Body sculpted to living perfection; Colours glisten, yet as deep as the river. The hazel eye stares you out Long after the death. It hunts your soul. Thank God for procreation.’ or REMEMBER To your beauty-hunting body, Oh grant some time to feeling. To your love-thirsting heart, Oh grant some time to harmony. To your self-seeking soul, Please accord some time to thought. To your success-hungry ego, Just grant some time to others. To your power-seeking eyes, Oh grant some time to introspection. To your adventure-seeking feet, Oh grant some time to knowledge. To your God-seeking soul, Please give some time to prayer. Let us now talk quickly about John Fowles, who loved Greece. Indeed, one of his most famous novels, ‘The Magus’, is set on the island of Spetse, a story of intrigue, passion, obsession and sex, with an orchestrator, ‘Conchis’. ‘The Collector’ is also a rather frightening little story of a girl trapped by an obsessive collector, ending nastily. Returning to America, John Steinbeck is of considerable note for his novels about life during the Great Depression, in particular ‘Of Mice and Men’ and ‘The Grapes of Wrath’. Let us finish, as we began, with a couple of playwrights. Harold Pinter, famous for his skilful repartee, wrote, inter alia, ‘The Birthday Party’ and ‘The Caretaker’. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, and, although part-Jewish, led a group of Jews who campaigned for justice for the Palestinians, embarrassing fanatic Israeli Zionists. To obtain a flavour of his political views, you can look at his ‘A New world Order’, published in 1991. He was awarded an honorary professorship by the University of Thessaloniki. Another well-known playwright is Tom Stoppard, also a master of repartee, who escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1938, at the age of one. He wrote, inter alia, ‘Arcadia’. He also wrote and spoke on political matters. Now we really must stop, and move on to a few typical examination questions: ‘Compare George Bernard Shaw’s and Oscar Wilde’s works.’ ‘Do you think that Maugham was more imaginative in his writing than Orwell?’ ‘It is said that Ted Hughes was obsessed with nature, power and death. What do you think?’ ‘Compare the works of Agatha Christie to those of John Le Carrà ©.’ It goes without saying, almost, that merely learning the above few pages, parrot-fashion, will not be sufficient to pass the examination: they represent only a skeletal outline. Also, you need to be succinct. No linguistic bulimia or irrelevant sentences, please! I shall immediately see through any examination paper that appears to rely only on this brief guide. Most marks will be awarded for evidence of originality and thinking, as well  as of knowledge.

Alternate assessment

The concept of assessment, in everybody’s mind is that of the score card generated by the student as a result of the examination. A certain portion of the student community, however, is not able to take part in such exams, (Massanari Carol B. )and get a score card as the rest of their community. Such students may be suffering from any cognitive disabilities, or has deficits in communication or language. They may need highly specialized education program or educational support systems, like, assistive technology and personal care systems (NYSAA).Such students cannot perform in the routine examinations, even after the accommodations are made. The alternative assessment system is designed by the Education Department, to benefit such students. The alternate assessment system the performance of a student based on : – Portfolio : consisting of samples of actual work/models done by him/her – Parental feedback: which accounts for his interests and activities beyond the s chool hours – Observing a child in a classroom – The performance of a child related to a specific activity (Massanari Carol B. )An interesting fact to be noted is that the standards for students eligible for alternate assessment are the same as those approved by the board of regents for all students. A student achieving a alternative assessment level 1 would indicate that he participates passively, in activities based on mandatory alternate performance indicator, for a single learning standard. Whereas, a level 4 would indicate that he can perform the skills independently and accurately, based on at least two learning standards and four alternate performance indicators. (NYSAA)The alternate assessment system is very authentic also, because it is designed and promoted by the Education Department of the Government of the United States. The Alternative assessment system is very useful and important as it is of great help to the students who could not take the general asse ssments. It gives them the advantage of not being left behind, because of their inability to take the general tests. Collection We live only one life. In this short time span there is so much to know, so many things to do. Engaging our mind constantly and continuously enriches our mind.It is this richness of mind which would make us live our life in a satisfactory way. I use all my extra time in collecting information on events that can be considered historic. They may be newspaper or magazine clippings, personal photographs or electronic data from the internet. Such a passion many times reveals many interesting facts, raises many questions or is simply amazing to our minds. I would like to share what some of my collections reveal. Till the devastation of New Orleans by a hurricane, the administration of the most powerfulcountry on this world was not aware of the fact that the land on which such a big human habitat has developed is much below the normal sea level. Science teaches us that there is no atmosphere on moon. The flag of the United States, which Neil Armstrong hoisted on the surface of moon, is fluttering. How? There was a gap of at least 50 minutes between the attack on the twin towers of WTC and on the Pentagon. What was the most sophisticated military and air force of the super power of this world doing during this 50 minutes? Was it impossible to trace the missing planes?The precision with which late President John F. Kennedy was hit by the bullet is evident from the fact that the X-ray plates, taken immediately after the shoot out, reveal that his skull had no brain. Pictures of natural beauty are simple refreshing to mind. I refer back to them whenever I feel monotonous. The colorful farms of Switzerland, the vast stretches of deserts, the snow clad mountains, or the deep ocean sea life,,, nature is always very refreshing. Enrichments of mind is should go on continuously throughout our lives, irrespective of age and profession.That is precisely what a habit of collection does. References : 1. NYSAA, New York State Alternate Assessment with Severe Disabilities, Retrieved on 17 August 2007 from : http://www. vesid. nysed. gov/specialed/publications/policy/broch.htm#What%20is%20the%20NYS%20Alternate%20Assessment?2. Massanari Carol B. , P. HD, Mountain Plains Regional Resource Centre, Alternate Assessment Q & A, retrieved on 17 August 2007 from: < http://72. 14. 253. 104/search? q=cache:ik3ImYzbTZUJ:www. usu. edu/mprrc/infoserv/pubs/q%26aaa. pdf+alternate+assessment+in+math+and+its+uses&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=in >

How the Air Commerce Act of 1926 impacted airports designs Term Paper

How the Air Commerce Act of 1926 impacted airports designs - Term Paper Example Reshaping and improving the civilian air transportation has been one of the main focal points of all administrations and governments. Since the U.S. aviation was not properly developed in the early 19th century because there was no rule applying on who should fly the plane and who should guarantee the passengers’ safety, there was great need for the federal government to make such regulations that would best cater to the security requirements of the civilians in order to gain public’s trust. Thus, to build new safety standards and maintain them to the highest level, to reduce the risks of air accidents, and to bring the best out of the commercial aviation, there was need for some federal maneuver in this regard. Hence, an Act regarding aviation safety was passed on May 20, 1926. Signed by the then President of America, Calvin Coolidge, the Air Commerce Act of 1926 is regarded as the beginning of air aviation’s revolution and basically defines rules and regulations for the development of airmen, air craft, air traffic and navigational facilities. According to this Act, all aircraft should be properly checked and certified in order to be suitable for flight. Aircraft was required to be marked on the outside of their bodies so that they could be identified easily. It was the responsibility of the Department of Commerce’s Aeronautic Branch to have the airmen pass through formal physical tests and aeronautical knowledge tests so as to assess their skills. They were issued licenses. The Act emphasized that the federal government should take measures to build more airports according to the most modern designs. The federal government was also instructed through this Act to devise strategies regarding aircraft altitude separation. One main focal point o f this Act was to build and maintain new airways. Navigational facilities were also required to be improved which included, for example, the enhancement of aeronautical radio communication for improving air navigation. â€Å"Under this act, the government supplied money for air navigation facilities so that the routes would become safer to fly, day and night† (U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission, 2010). The Act put forward new and practical safety rules for passengers. Accidents were to be investigated properly and all evidences recorded. â€Å"The Civil Aeronautics Act of 1926, in both its content and enactment, was a triumph of Coolidge’s philosophy of government and his often-overlooked political skill†, says Charles Downs who is a career archivist with the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC (2001). The Act made great beneficial impacts upon the airport design, development, operations, and funding sources. Initially there were man y extremists who criticized the bill but most people regarded it as a great benefit to American commercial aviation. The development of airports is a true example of government caring for its people’s safety. One one hand, it provided the federal government with power of making regulations; and on the other, it was practical enough to be applied in the aviation industry. The results made the United States recognize how much potential the aviation had which was going unused before the implementation of such regulations. The improved aviation operations enabled the aircraft to go on extended flights which it did not before this Act because there were more accidents in the early nineteenth century and no detailed investigation was performed. But after 1926, passengers felt comfortable enough to fly and the aviation became a flourishing source of journey and income. This development made the Post Office to invest in the aviation because it wanted larger planes now to carry more a irmail. The Act itself, its implementation and the results, all are very important if we look at it from an aviation manager’

English - Cause and Effect Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

English - Cause and Effect - Essay Example The concepts of causes and effects have been applied in various disciplines such as philosophy and mathematics. The relationship between causes and effects can be of a reciprocating nature, where an event can lead to certain consequences, which can then lead to the previous event. On the other hand, same causes can lead to different effects, based on the environmental factors and the circumstances surrounding such occurrences. There are various rules that govern the relationships between causes and effects. For there to be a valid relationship between the two, causes must occur before the effects. This way, the effects must be a consequence of the occurrence of causes. The other rule governing this relationship is the fact that the causes must be bordering the effects, without any dividing factors in between them. Additionally, there must be a constant union existing in the causes and the effects, in a way that the causes can play to generate the effects (Gregory, 1992). Thus accordi ng to the rules of cause and effect relationship, any difference in the results must have been generated by a difference in the causative factors. This relationship can be based on what is the contributory factor to a certain problem. In this case, when an individual faces a serious problem, there is a need to seek what could be the real cause of that problem, just before embarking on seeking the solution to that problem. This is necessary because, if individuals do not seek the real cause of the problem they face, there is a likelihood of taking actions towards solving such problems, which in real sense might not help in eliminating the problems. Thus, in a life situation, the analysis of a cause effect relationship is necessary to help amicably solve the life challenges (David, 1975). The complete analysis of the causes of a problem ensures that an individual solves such a problem the first time. This is beneficial, other than tackling an issue when the actual relationship has not been well discovered, which may end up making an individual solve an issue halfway, only to revert to the same later, when the same problem re-occurs (Gregory, 1992). In understanding the relationship between cause and effect, then an individual needs to identify an issue at hand, consider all the factors that are involved or surrounding such an issue, which could have an impact on it, narrow down to the factors most related to that issue and finally pin point the actual factors involved. This way, the causative factors are indentified, which could have caused the situation at hand (Pearl, 2000). The cause-effect relationship has been widely applied in the religious front. This application has occurred in the form of religious doctrines upholding the viewpoint that for every action that, an individual commits, then there must be a corresponding effect. This way, in religion, any good deed will result to good results, while any bad one will give rise to bad implications on the part of the individual involved in the deeds (Pearl, 2000). Such doctrines upholds the viewpoint that the actions individuals do, either good or bad, will have an effect on such individuals, either in this life, or in the life after. More to this relationship, the religious doctrines provides for an explanation in the consideration of intent, rather than the actual act. Thus according to the religious doctrines, the intention of an individual, rather than the

FNB Lunch Evaluation Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

FNB Lunch Evaluation - Assignment Example I would say that the greeting of guests met expectations. I say this because the staff certainly did their job in making everyone feel welcome, but they did not go above and beyond that which was expected. In addition, I did feel as if much of the greeting activity was much too rehearsed. It seems to me that guests should feel truly valued and that the staff sincerely appreciates their presence. This can be accomplished by more individualized greetings, rather than memorized and rehearsed innuendos. The individual that greeting me certainly smiled and had a happy demeanor, but not much eye contact was maintained. That being said, I certainly cannot flaw their performance as I certainly felt welcome and well received, just not enough to warrant a score of ‘exceeding expectations’. When considering the seating of guests, I would certainly comment that this activity exuded expectations. While the process was also a bit rehearsed, that is exactly what it should have been like in this situation. Servers walked each guest to their table, pulled customer chairs out in a respectable manner, and allowed the guess to be comfortably seated before presenting them with a menu. Once each guest, myself certainly included, had the menu then the server informed everyone of what the next step in the process should be. Since all of the steps were expected of them according to the rubric, I would certainly comment that the seating of guests exceeded expectations. After getting settled and having had a moment to hear the process for ordering, a service person asked for our drink orders. For this category, I would have to give the rating of ‘approaching expectations’ as only 2 of the 4 suggested activities was completed during this stage of the ordering process. While there were no children at the table, the server did ask the ladies what drinks they wanted first. They also effectively utilized a pivot point.

Creating Tastier and Healthier Fruits and Veggies with a Modern Article

Creating Tastier and Healthier Fruits and Veggies with a Modern Alternative to GMOs - Article Example Furthermore, he highlights on the effects of repeated use of these chemicals, as weeds would have become resistant to this chemicals and thus hard to get rid of and as a result, this has served to decrease the yields and at times no yields at all. What is sowing change? It can be described as the process of improving vegetables and fruits for instance tomatoes through artificially breeding different plants to create a new species with new traits How has the use of technology fostered the improvement in quality of yields in fruits? Through the employment of modern techniques of agriculture for instance artificial breeding, there has been a development of new species of fruits for instance many chilly flavours which have improved quality of yields. How are the traditional modes of farming relevant to this day and age? They serve as a basis through which research can be carried out. For instance, in a bid to improve on seeds, one must first study the one in use before developing new one. In conclusion, genetically engineered organisms are harmful to the health of individuals and thus there is the need to incorporate and employ alternative ways of improving fruit and vegetables and consequently,

Immigration in the UK Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 8000 words

Immigration in the UK - Dissertation Example Immigration in the United Kingdom has been rising at an unprecedented rate offering benefits and challenges to the government of the United Kingdom. The UK recognized the immigration laws and act by introducing the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962. Prior to this, people were free to move in the country without prosecution. Immigration issues came into the limelight during the tenure of the Labour Government that did not focus much on immigration issues and problems. Immigration was not limited and was expanding mainly on the economic grounds. People move to another country mainly because of professional opportunities and based on this notion, skilled labors without any job offer were allowed to migrate in the country, this created the pressure on the economy along with affecting the social environment in the form of creating a gap between the demand and supply factor. Immigration laws and regulations are ever changing and at present have drawn great attention from every corner of the social, business, and political environment making it one of the most important acts having direct influence over the social and political environment. The scope of the research can be considered as quite broad considering the fact that it assesses and investigates the immigration policies of the UK in a logical and systematic manner. Moreover, the research also investigates the immigration policies of other countries in the literature review to form an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of immigration.

Use of Nature in The Immortalist and The Cherry Orchard Essay

Use of Nature in The Immortalist and The Cherry Orchard - Essay Example Tongues learnt to move after looking at those pre designed and meaningful metaphors (Oliver 1987). Nordquist and Whales (1998) expressed the importance of metaphors and similes in text writing and explained how they enrich the material and quality of text written. According to his point of view, the similes are used to express emotions and signs. The presence of similes makes reading material more clear and entertaining for the reader. And inculcating of new similes also shows that you have a greater command and insight of your subject. In the same way, metaphors are images and shapes of objects and contents of nature. A reader can find the meaning or the imagination of scenarios the writer had, in mind, while writing by looking at those shapes and images drawn. The Immoralist by Andre Paul Guide: By reading the novel Immoralist, the author’s passion towards nature can be recognized. The written material reflects not just the outer natural beauty of the world but also the inne r nature of human beings, their feelings, their desires to have what they want around and for them. The author represented these in the accounts of how Michel used nature to bear with his inner feelings and how he achieved peace. For instance, Guide included some symbols and figures into his texts that gave answers and solution to Michel’s dilemma, and to many other readers out there facing similar problem and feelings. The author gave a marvelous concept in his novel that if a person is lost in the valley of meaninglessness, if his life is gone for the fake uncontrollable desires, he can get his life back by the fruitful control of nature and by pursuing the beauty of nature in and around him. The metaphors that demonstrate this concept and reality can be seen and enjoyed in the part where Michel describe the irrigation system in Biskra and in the taming of the wild colt at â€Å"La Morinier†. The figure of the goat boy depicts the irrigation system. Now, this image i s a symbol of nature and refers to natural beauty of land and a natural process going on for a purpose. The inherent laws of nature do contain the excess of life going forces which may lead to destruction, depriving other trees of their existence as well. The incident written in part 2, in wild colt, illustrates the same truth with its related simile drawn. Where, the beautiful animal was declared useless and dangerous by servants and Michel asks another character named Charles to help him treat gently and quite by showing some respect for that animal. The image drawn at that situation was meant to be used in contrasting situations where absence of restraining and uncontrollable nature leads to corruption and destruction. In the case of metaphor of irrigation system in Biskra, described above, was a human effort that could assist in making the nature more productive. The palm tree images in part 1 related to Michel’s wife Marceline were depicting the concept that she was weak when she got ill after she came back from their honeymoon. She needed energy to live. She could not tolerate the excess of energy around her but also was in need of a moderate level of energy in her atmosphere. This is how the author Mr. Guide put life in his novels through metaphors and symbols and made his material famous among his readers. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov: The symbol of Cherry Orchard itself depicts the unstable political – socio environment and drastically changing traditions. Negative conditions usually

Leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 11

Leadership - Essay Example Reluctant leaders are normally endowed with leadership skills and with proper training and mentorship, reluctant leaders turn out to be very strong and competent leaders; as the author of this article states, reluctant leaders have skills to be excellent managers but can’t imagine themselves succeeding in a leadership role. Arrogant leaders refer to the category of people who, though they have insecurities just like the reluctant leaders, they however believe that they are strong and competent leaders. The arrogant leaders compensate for their insecurities through convincing themvelves that they are competent leaders; unlike the reluctant leaders who manifest low self-esteem, the arrogant leaders manifest strong self-confidence and self-conviction in their capabilities as leaders. The arrogant leaders are normally ambitious self-marketers; for this reason, arrogant leaders are mainly promoted to positions of leadership by many organisations, unlike the reluctant leaders who do not showcase their leadership skills. Unlike the reluctant leaders, the arrogant leaders lack natural leadership skills and for this reason, arrogant leaders can wreak havoc in the groups or the teams that they are leading. This is because arrogant leaders are not humble and they believe that they know all they need to know in le adership and in relating with the people they lead. For this reason, transforming arrogant leaders into competent leaders is a challenging task that requires the arrogant leaders to be helped to recognize their own weaknesses and limitations, so that they can be humble enough to learn more about leadership so as to be able to relate better with the people they lead. Unknown leaders refer to a category of leaders who are quite competent leaders and they are also ambitious, but they have a weakness in forming relationships with other people; unknown leaders are cautious and they form relationships with other people more slowly and tentatively than other

Thats Life in the Big City Essay Example for Free

Thats Life in the Big City Essay An implied warranty of habitability is a warranty set forth by law in respect to all residential leases in a way to ensure that the premises are fit and conducive for human habitation. In addition the warranty is aimed at ensuring that the condition of the premise remains fit and habitable throughout the duration of the lease. The landlord- tenant law in regard to warranty of habitability is very useful because it imposes certain duties that are supposed to be adhered to by the two parties. Such obligations on the part of the landlord include maintenance of the premises in habitable conditions such as providing adequate weather proofing, available heat, water, electricity, and clean sanitary condition (Bright Gilbert, 1995). If these conditions are not met the tenant can seek for legal intervention justification as defined by the tenant defensive act. Even though there are no definite rules regarding to how the landlord was supposed to carry out the maintenance, the landlord should have been responsible for repair of any defects in the rental unit and comply with state and local building health regulations. Being a residential lease between a landlord and a tenant the landlord should have ensured that the he leased property is fit to live in. This means that the leased property should be safe and sanitary for other human being and also to the people who are leaving in that premise. The conditions that violate the implied warranty of habitability vary depending on the nature of the violation and the cause of the violation. In this case, the landlord had violated the implied warranty of habitability by failing to provide timely repair on faulty air conditioning and heating system. As required by the law, when a tenant identifies existence of uninhabitable conditions he is supposed to notify the landlord in time an act which Bill and Ted did. However, the problem comes in the part failure of the landlord to carry out these repairs in time. Therefore it was unreasonable for the landlord to take more than one month to repair the defect. In this case, the landlord did not put into consideration the uninhabitable conditions a factor which could have necessitated for specific actions to be taken by the tenants. For example the tenants can decide to move out and terminate the lease or repair and deduct the cost incurred in the process of repairing the inhabitable conditions from their rent (Koster, 2006). The tenant can also decide to sue for the damages or either sues to force the landlord make the repairs. Therefore landlords should consider the importance of the warranty of habitability and its application to its property. Since Bill and Ted have rented an apartment and they have paid the landlord a security deposit, the landlord should take up any issues responding to the property management and ensure that Bill and Ted are living well under his property. Any issue that arises as a result of the property management should be regarded considered with urgency and possible measures be carried out. In this case, the landlord does not play his role in property management and he fails to take any meaningful measures or either look upon complains of these tenants in time. Since Bill and Ted had notified the landlord and the superintendent had assured them of a timely repair, they had every reason to believe his word. However, the repair took more than necessary time. The landlord should have compensated them for the disturbances the incurred when they moved out yet they had paid for the apartment. The landlord portrays neglect on his part since he knew that the weather was worsening yet he failed to provide fans for them. In essence the landlord never responded to their request. This is seen when the temperatures fell and the water boiler broke down as well as the pipes froze and the two were left without water. Therefore, according to the warranty of habitability, the rental property is supposed to be safe on the dwelling for human beings. In such a case Bill and Ted should file for a breach of implied warranty of habitability. In case of the uninhabitable conditions such as the one that Bill and Ted faced, after the landlord has been notified immediately about the uninhabitable condition, it is the responsibility of the landlord to respond by making changes within the next thirty days or within a reasonable time given to him depending on the nature of defect. As for Ted and Bill, if the landlord does not respond to the changes of the uninhabitable conditions then they are allowed to move out and terminate the lease. This is because the landlord is unable to make the repairs within a reasonable time. They have a liberty of deciding to move out and terminate the lease. They are also allowed to repair and deduct there repair cost from the next months rent but they should consider on the amount it would cost (Nandorf Nassif, 2008). This is possible especially when the damaged property would not cost much to repair compared to the house rent. Therefore, before the tenant repairs the damages considering the value and the cost of repairing s very important, the tents might also decide to move out the house and terminate the lease. In either case the tenants may also decide to sue the landlord for the damages from the date of the landlord’s acknowledged of the poor condition. They can also decide to sue and force the landlord to make repairs through a court order which would force the landlord to make the repairs. Even though the court is capable of utilizing this option, it is an expensive task because it requires court supervision to ensure the repairs are carried out. The implied warranty of habitability cannot be waived and since the landlord was notified about the extent of the uninhabitable condition on the rented house and no action were taken immediately. Therefore, Bill and Ted should take immediate actions on the landlord’s inactivity. A legal action against the landlord is one of the remedial actions that the tenants should which would see him compelled by the court to repair the damages that have occurred. In summary, Bill and Ted may decide to sue for the damages incurred since the day that the landlord was notified about the breach of warranty of habitability. This is on the basis that the inhabitable condition reduces the value and comfort of the rented premises on fair market rental values. Since the landlord has not responded to the issues regarding the damages from the tenants, the tenants may also consider repairing and deducting the cost from the next month’s rent.This is one of the easiest methods because the landlord had overlooked the duty of repairing the damaged property. References Bright, S and Gilbert, G. (1995). Landlord and Tenant Law: The nature of Tenancies. Oxford: Clarendron press Koster, K. (2006). The Landlord- Tenant Law: General obligations of Landlords and Tenants. Retrieved on 9 July 2010 from http://ago. mo. gov/publications/landlordtenant. htm Nondorf, K and Nassif, T (2008). Tenant Remedies. Retrieved on 9 July 2010 from http://images. jw. com/com/publications/963. pdf

Social Construction of Female Gangs

Social Construction of Female Gangs Introduction In the UK, there has been very little research on female gang problem which has led to the vast amount of research from the USA being applied to the UK situation. Female gangs have been in existence throughout history although very little has been said about its members beyond their role as sexual objects. Hallsworth and Young (2008):176) following a home office report in 2008 state that the gang was for the first time explicitly linked to the problem of urban violence and rising weapon use in the UK (2008:176) and according to Campbell (1990) girls have been a part of gangs since the earliest accounts from New York in the early 1800s (1990:166). Female gang activity has been on the increase in the latter half of the twentieth century and as such, these activities have increasingly become violent. In this essay, I will elaborate on the meaning of gangs and female gangs using various definitions given by key authors. My main interest in this paper will be to discuss the historical bac kground of female gangs and the key debates surrounding these gangs in relation to the literature written by authors of different calibers and also the myths as portrayed by the society. I will also be interested in discussing the media construction of female gangs giving examples which will lead me to explore the disconnection between what the media says about female gangs and what the reality is. The term gang according to Schneider and Tilley (2004) does not have a single definition even though it is used universally by researchers, police, social workers, media and the general public (2004: xviii). The US National Criminal Justice Reference Service have defined the term gang as a group of three or more people who have a common name or sign and have an aim of engaging in criminal activity. In the UK context, experts have found it difficult to reach a consensus on whether or not gangs exist and how they can be defined (Aldridge and Medina, 2008; Alexander, 2008; Broadhurst et al., 2009; Hallsworth and Silverstone, 2009; Her Majestys Inspectorate of Prisons, 2010; Pickles, 2009; Pitts, 2008). Websters Dictionary (1961) gives us another definition stating that a gang is a band or group of persons who involve themselves in criminal or socially unacceptable behavior (1961:74). Female gang is simply a girl group or individuals who are involved in criminal activities and share the same names, symbols and signs as their identity. Female gangs do not have a visible leader and according to research that they tend to be fairly informal and they do not often have a visible leader. Campbell for example in the Huffs book on Gangs in America (1990) observes that in Los Angeles some gangs have veterinas or godmothers but she goes on to say that typically the members insist there is no leader and that decisions are made democratically. Campbells observation suggests that some girls clearly have more clout than others, but that this usually is not formalized as a leadership role. (1990: 178). In this review, I will discuss about female gangs drawing upon American research but with more emphasis on the rising phenomenon of female gangs in Britain. In order to accomplish my aim for this literature review, I will use primary sources, some secondary sources and other policy documents or government publications to enable me make conclusions and recommendations, identifying gaps in knowledge which may inspire other researchers into ideas for further research and also enable me to give my general opinion of how I feel about the social construction of female gangs by the media much of which I tend to disagree with. Literature Review Historical Background Many researchers and journalists have for a long time assumed that girls and women did not take part in criminal behaviors and therefore the issue of female gang has often been ignored. Campbells (1990) review on girl gangs states that, girls were defined solely in terms of their relations to male gang members (1990:166). Men have always been the point of concentration in investigating gang crimes and until recently, female gang members were seen as sex objects or tomboys. Literature has shown that researchers describe female gangs as weapon carriers for the male counterparts in addition, Moore and Hagedorn (2001) argue that even when describing female gang members as tomboys, researchers emphasized that the females motivations were focused on males (2001: 2). Looking at the UK context of female gangs, literature on girls and gangs has not been well developed because researchers in Britain have not seen the need to concentrate on female gangs (Campbell and Muncer, 1989; Sanders, 2002 ). According to Downes (1966); Parker (1974) and Scott (1956), the UK tried to apply American gang theories to address the problem of street gangs but these attempts failed over time leading to lack of data on gangs. This explains why there is no sound evidence as in the case of USA, for the proliferation of violent street gangs (Hallsworth and Young, 2008: 177). Female Involvement is not a new occurrence universally. In fact, there has been a lot of concern on the rise of female involvement in gang business over the years. Early studies found that there was a 50 percent increase in serious crimes by teenage gins between 1968 and 1974, compared to a 10 percent increase for boys and arrests of girls under 18 for violent crimes rose 393 percent between 1960 and 1978, compared to 82 percent for boys (CASA Website) . Miller (2001) compared youth gang involvement in 1950, and found out that youth gangs of the 1980s and 1990s are more numerous, more prevalent, and more violent than in the 1950s, probably more than at any time in the countrys history (2001: 263). In the early 1980s, Anne Campbell (1981) became interested and had concerns about female offenders which led her to conduct an investigation about the occurrences of violence amongst girls in Britain. Campbell, (1984) also did an investigation on female gangs in America and this led to her conclusions that the problem of female gangs was socially constructed. She criticized Britain for only concentrating on male gangs and ignoring female gangs and illustrated that in New York, women were very unlikely to organize in to gangs in big numbers because the female groups were only known to follow male groups (Campbell, 1995). Recent studies on girls and violence also shows that there has been an increase in violent and aggressive behaviour by girls and this has been catalyzed by media attention. Earlier on, people knew very little about girls violence because there was a belief that violence was solely committed by men. The study findings show very little evidence suggesting that girls are physically violent. Membership Academic research on gang membership in the UK is very sparse as mentioned earlier on and there is little evidence showing that young women have existential experience in committing violence. It has been difficult to ascertain the numbers of female gangs although there is a significant existence of the members. On the other hand, in the US, feminist researchers have tried to provide a more nuanced portrayal of the complex gender experiences of girls in gangs (Miller, 2001: 16). They have demonstrated that girls involvement in female gangs meets their gender expectations and experience heightened risks for physical and sexual victimization and also ascertains that gang membership provides them with a sense of belonging, giving them confidence and refuge from their abusive families (Campbell, 1990; Joe and Chesney-Lind, 1995; Joe Laidler and Hunt, 2001; Miller, 2001, 2008; Moore, 1991; Nurge, 2003). Many gangs appear to be more highly structured than delinquent groups but that does not disqualify the fact that they may still be seen as loosely organized. Several factors such as age, neighborhoods and so on are considered as the basis of gaining entry to these gangs or becoming a member. The gang sizes range from a member group of four or five and can go beyond a thousand. There have been different classification of gang groups such as the leaders, associates of the regulars then there are the peripheral members and finally the recruits. Most studies have shown that the reasons why females join gangs are because of friendship influence, it is seen as a form of solidarity and self affirmation. Research has indicated that those kids who grow up in dysfunctional families and whose parents are in prison may find it appropriate to join gang groups. Many youth gang formation is as a result of the present deteriorating economic conditions which are characterized by poor housing, lack of school structures and facilities and lack of laws that regulate violation of youth gangs. Being in a female gang may be a refuge from physical and sexual abuse at home. Young et al.s (2007) was involved in a research which directly involved girls and young women who had association with female gang and this gave him a different picture of their involvement. UK studies of female gangs have indicated that girls and young women are just portrayed as girlfriends to their male gang members but Young et als involvement in interviewing some of the females indicated that their groups were mainly composed of peers whose main reason for being together was plain friendship and denied that their groups were gangs. However in the US, Miller (2001) states that young womens group formation was through friendships from school, their house neighborhoods and not through any initiation rites to join these groups. Evidence uncovered by Young et al. (2007) stated that all the female groups interviewed referred to each other as their mates. Seven young women belonged to all-female groups and although they would periodically hang about with the local young men, this was not because these relationships with males were considered to be important or necessary. Indeed, from their testimonies it was evident that these women did not consider the males around them as friends or even friendly, nor did this group enter into intimate relationships with the young men they associated with. These young women determined when they associated with the males in their social circle and were not significantly influenced by the actions of males or male-dominated groups (Young et al., 2007: 143). A study conducted by Pitts in 2007 considers female membership in gangs as Reluctant Gangsters: Youth Gangs in Waltham Forest (Pitts, 2007). According to Pitts (2007), young women in gangs are often sexually exploited, sometimes in exchange for drugs and the relationships (they have with male members) tend to be abusive; one of dominance and submission and also some senior gang members pass their girlfriends around to lower ranking members and sometimes to the whole group at the same time (2007: 39). Pitts (2007) study states that the reason why young women, or girlfriends, are attracted to the gangs is mainly because they believe they can be glamorous or become celebrities within the group. It is unclear how members of female gangs are able to maintain long term roles and specific position given that the core members decide on the primary roles of the gang groups. Some members join the groups for a short period and others may move on to other gang groups after a certain period of ti me but in all these groups, the core members still remain in charge of the criminal activities. Statistics The most widely used data on female gangs has been from the nationwide surveys of law enforcement agencies. Miller (1975) stated that a survey conducted in the mid-1970s indicated that 10 percent of all gang members were estimated to be female and according to Spergel (1995), a national survey found that in 1992 only 3.7 percent of all gang members were female. This was due to the fact that 32 percent of the surveyed jurisdictions did not, as a matter of policy, identify females as gang members (Curry and Decker, 1998: 98). Four years later in 1996 there was an estimate that 11 percent and then 1998, 8 percent of all gangs were female (Moore and Terrett, 1998; National Youth Gang Center, 2000). It is noted that it is in small cities and rural areas where female gangs are more likely to be found and their ethnicities vary by regions (National Youth Gang Center, 2000). In 2003 the Channel 4 documentary Dispatches emphasized that the gang problem was increasingly spreading in the UK and as many as 30,000 gangs were functional and 57 percent included female members (Thompson, 2003). The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS, 2005) released the most recent figures with findings that there were 174 street gangs in London. In 2006 the MPS figures showed that there was a 66.6 per cent increase in gang membership raising the number of UK gangs to 50,000 of which 2500 of the total number were young women (MPS, 2006). The United States gang numbers according to recent police estimates indicate that there are 27,000 gangs with approximately 788,000 members (National Youth Gang Survey, 2007). According to these reports, there was a 25% increase in the reported numbers of gang and gang problems since the year 2001 where there was a low report on gang problems (National Gang Center, 2009). Curry, Fox, Ball, Stone (1992) and National Gang Center (2009) reported that in 2007 there were gang problems in large cities, 86% more than what was reported in 1983 which was at 50% when the gang problem was just beginning to grow. Media construction of female gangs Media representations on gangs and more specifically female gangs have played a very big role in informing the social reality by a social constructionist perspective. In the past two decades, gang crime activities have dominated the crime news and the quality of life among rural and urban dwellers has been eroded also, violent young females have been presented as a new and growing social problem(Batchelor, 2009:408). According to Batchelor (2009) girls have been perceived to be the same as boys especially in fighting to defend themselves (2009:400). Batchelor continues to argue that young women who involve themselves in male gangs have been used as carriers of weapons and drugs and in some cases the girls have been exploited sexually. News in the media has claimed that young women have acted as the heads of anti-social youth groups who commit crimes like rape, murder and violent robbery (Young, 2009). Many newspapers produce stories with an aim of attracting peoples attention and informing them on what they think the public want to read about thus making a lot of sales on the papers. The medias main interest had been to enhance its economic aspect by manipulating the public way of thinking about crime and its social context (Potter and Kappeler 1998). The main contribution of the media has been according to Best (1993:119), a contextual constructionism of gangs where the media makes certain choices of what to cover in the news which contributes to the social construction of the reality. Crime narratives and representations are, and have always been, a prominent part of the content of all mass media( Reiner, 2007:305), with sources such as newspapers and television documentaries playing a central role in creating public perceptions of crime and therefore influencing their perceptions about the extent of crime and the risk of suffering it (Treadwell, 2006:77). Media reports especially in the UK have not been backed up by concrete evidence on the wider female gang problems. The Centre for Social Justice (2009) states that media coverage has, at times, been suggestive of an epidemic in gang-related youth violence (2009:19). In the UK, television headlines and documentaries relating to gang violence and the coming up of girl gangs has been dominant and that has not been different in the case of USA where it has been reported that gang groups are armed, dangerous and prepared to kill (Hallsworth and Young, 2008:176). Despite the fact that gangs and gang activity has been seen as a social problem to society and despite the regular convictions from the news that has shaped such problems, a comprehensive and systematic analysis of newspaper coverage of gangs and societys war on gangs has not been undertaken. There have been extraordinary cases of female violence reported. For example the reported case of a frenzied attack of eight strangers which was enacted by Chelsea OMahoney, who was the only female member of Sergeant Crew, in conjunction with her male friends (Laville, 2005). This case signifies that there are existing modern girl gang members who offend the law. The press gave an impression that made the public perceive the girl involved as aggressive and one capable of extreme behaviour, a trouble maker who causes havoc in and out of her group and catalyses others to be involved in aggressive behaviour (Thompson ,2003). In the next section, I will analyze the literature review and the medias perception towards female gangs. I will explore the information given in order to see if there is a disconnect between what the media says and what the reality is about female gangs. This will aid me in making proper conclusion about the media construction of female gangs. Analysis It has been argued that reports on female gangs offending the law is very low compared to male offenders and noted that female violence is a relatively rare occurrence according to crime statistics. Various authors like Campbell (1995) have stated that Britain for many years had not developed any research on female gangs whereas in New York, female groups were only seen as followers of their male counterparts and could not possibly form gang groups to organize crimes. On the other hand, the press has had much to write on the papers and commentate in news about girl gangsters especially in the last ten years. According to Tara (2009) there have been news reports contending that young women are traditionally engaged in violent crimes. Reports have in excess claimed that many anti-social youth groups are now headed by young women and they commit crime such us rape, murder and robbery. Honigsbaum (2006) states that young women in the UK are cited to be amongst the most violent and aggres sive in the world. It is clear that there have been a few empirical studies on female gang membership especially in the UK although the media coverage of violent offences committed by young women has created a certain perception towards the girl gangsters. This construction of female gangs has also been through the statistical evidence that has been provided by officials from the law enforcement department. Comparing the literature on female gangs and what the media has had to say about this topic, it is evident that there have been gaps in research on female participation in gangs in the UK which is the same case as the American gang literature where else, the media has been successful in socially constructing the girl gangs even though its evidence is very scant. Over the years, most researchers have concentrated on investigating the male gangs, studying the criminal behaviour of men and ignoring the female counterparts. According to Pitts (2007), the female gangs have not been recognized or in some cases, research has been conducted in reference to the experience of men. In reality, female gangs have been in existence for decades but it has been difficult to come up with the true picture of the problem. In the case of UK, there have been claims that currently young women are more likely to engage in street gangs and these women are more likely to engage in serious violent crime. This information is not substantial because the media seems to exaggerate this kind of violent crime thus shaping the public perceptions of gangs. There is a problem of statistic as well. It has been noted that female gangs exist in larger cities but there is no evidence to suggest that female crime is a national problem, therefore the true problem cannot be identified. Unrealistic public attitudes towards girls gangs have been the order of the day because there has been misrepresentation of girls lives and this according to Batchelor (2001) has created a misdirected public policy. The media has been fond of relying on simple statistics and typical gang cases that have no evidence and this has complicated the discussions of complex socio-specific contexts of violence in girls lives (Batchelor, 2001). Young womens genuine problems continue to be marginalized and ignored as the media continues to give wrong information to the public thus making the girls become a problem. Batchelor (2005); Coy (2008) suggest that it is important that any steps taken to address problems of gang involvement by young women should be from the reality and should be able to acknowledge the yo ung women are active agents and victims. As I have discussed above ,most of the violence that is experienced by girls and young women, as both perpetrators and victims, takes place within either the family or their friendship group. This means that social work and probation practitioners need to give careful attention to the familial and peer contexts of young womens offending, putting in mind that both groups can be concurrently harmful and protective. (Batchelor, 2005) argues that if we are to working towards effecting change in young women offenders lives, we need to maximize on their involvement and participation in various positive activities. These activities should enable them relate well with their families and friends and also the social work teams in order to have positive relations. There is need for accessible and affordable leisure activities which can be effective in occupying the girls and young womens minds and address some specific needs like bullying and victimization. It could be argued that research in to the phenomena of the girl gang especially in the UK is barely adequate thus making it difficult to make quantifying conclusion of the girl gang problem. Much of this essay clearly states that crime statistics show that compared to male offending female violence is a relatively rare occurrence (Young, 2009:224), and any rise in female violence may not always be gang related. I will conclude this essay by indicating that a lot of information represented by the media is just assumptions with no evidence to back it and researchers can do more towards looking more into the problem. Conclusion There seems to be no concrete theory as to why girls of women get involved in violent crimes but there have been various factors that have been cited to have played a major role in influencing them to join gang activities. Parental negligence, poverty, teenage pregnancies, lack of education, ill health, early involvement in sexual activities and peer group influence are some of the factors that drive these girls and women into gangs. Researchers, the law enforcement system, school, community based programmes and families have ignored the fact that female gangs exist and have confined young female to victimization and this has resulted to the rise of female violence. This essay has considered the background information of female gangs, the definition of gang and female gang, the key debates surrounding these gangs in relation to literature written, also the media construction of female gangs and the myths as portrayed by the society. It is argued that many researchers have ignored females as gangs and the notion seems to be that female gangs and their members are pale imitations of male gangs (Spergel, 1995: 90). Due to lack of research, facts that have been written and reproduced in books about female gangs are based on journalists and probation officers reports and also the statements given by the male gang members. Looking at the past and current research on female gangs, it is clear that they do exist in the UK and the USA although the statistics given are socially constructed due to the fact that the gang related cases are underreported. Reliable statistics may show that the problem of female gangs is not as large as the media portrays it to be and with the media catalyzing the problem, it may have negative consequences such as labeling to girls and young women. Media reports fuelling a moral panic can also have an impact on how the community and the government responds to female gangs thus failing to tackle the needs of these female groups. I will conclude by saying that it would be important for researchers to further explore the problem of female gangs because I completely agree that they exist and need attention otherwise the problem will get out of hand if ignored. The media should stop exaggerating facts on female gangs and concentrate on finding out the true picture of these gangs.

Progeria - Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome Essay -- genetic childhood dis

Progeria, otherwise known as Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome is an extremely rare, genetic childhood disorder with a reported incidence of about one in a million. Hutchinson reported the syndrome in 1886 when he found the first patient with Progeria. In 1904 Gilford described a second case of Progeria, thus creating the term to reflect the syndrome’s senile features. There are only about a hundred reported cases since the disorder has been discovered over a century ago. Currently, there are about thirty to forty known cases worldwide of Progeria. Affected children age up to seven times faster, have â€Å"plucked bird† appearance, many health problems and their lifespan is about thirteen years. There is neither known cause nor cure for this disease. It is usually first diagnosed based only on appearance and treatment is given for other conditions associated with the aging process rather the disease it self.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Effected children usually appear normal at birth. But within the first year of life severe changes come into accordance. These include: baldness and bodily hair loss, including eyebrows and eyelashes; â€Å"skin wrinkling accompanied by pigmented age spots; [†¦] unusually high pitched voice; undeveloped or underdeveloped sexual maturation; bone lesions, often resulting in fractures and hip dislocation† (Livneh, Antonak and Maron, 1995, p.434). Death usually occurs between the age of twelve and thirteen and it is due to â€Å"cardiovascular deterioration and generally includes arthrosclerosis, myocardial infraction and congestive heart failure (Livneh, Antonak and Maron, 1995, p.434).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The cause of Progeria is unknown as of yet. Because of its very rare nature, no definite cause can be pinpointed. However it is determined to be generic. In other words, it is thought that it is due to single mutated gene and each case might represent a single sporadic new mutation, which happens at conception. Therefore, as mentioned above, the diagnosis must be made solely on the appearance.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  During my Internet research on this subject, I have found a real story of a thirteen-year-old girl, named Ashley. Her story captured my heart and I would like to use Ashley as an example in helping to understand the disease, its progress and how it affects people involved. Ashley was born on May 23, 1991 as what it seemed a normal and healthy baby girl. In July 1991 doctors disco... ...f the disease and death to help cope and adapt properly. General intervention recommendations can focus on; the child’s needs, other family members and the parents. Other intervention can address social issues such as spirituality, emotionality, coping modes and adaptation techniques. It is very hard to say to a parent of a dying child that any of the above might help a broken heart, however, professional help, understanding and loving environment and family might ease the hardships of loosing one’s child, sibling or a friend. Bibliography DeBusk, F.L. (1972). The Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome. Jurnal of Pediatrics, 80, 697-724.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Livneh, Hanoch; Antonak, Richard F.; Maron, Sheldon. (1995). Progeria: Medical aspects, psycholosocial perspectives, and intervention guidelines. Death Studies, Vol .19(5), Sep-Oct 1995. pp. 433-452. Lori and Ashley’s Website. http://www.geocities.com/lori_and_ashley/. Visited on April 23, 2003. Mac Michael, R.A. (1996-2003) Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome Network. http://www.hgps.net/about/. Visited on April 23, 2003. Progeria Research Foundation Inc. (1999) http://www.progeriaresearch.org/. Visited on May 2, 2002.

Quiet Revolution Essay -- Canadian History

In 1960, a series of swift and sweeping reforms, were in processing in Quebec, and the reforms carried out by Jean Lesage, who is the leader of Quebec Liberal Party. This term was commonly believed for six years from 1960 to 1966 (Cuccioletta & Lubin, 2003). Before the Quiet Revolution, Quebec was under control of its leader Maurice Duplessis, who is an ideologically conservative traditional politician. He insisted on preserving the traditional role of Quebec from 1944 to 1959. It is believed that some policies of Duplessis’s regime were regarded as the factors that resulted in the Quiet Revolution. In the first place, Duplessis has dominated Quebec’s economy in his term as the leader of government, and he almost expropriated the autonomy of his ministers and place Quebec’s economy in the hand of foreign companies. The profile of Quebec before the Quiet Revolution is a church-ridden and agricultural society while some other North American countries were industrialized ones in the same time period (Behiels, 1985, P. xi). Duplessis encouraged and entrusted the development of Quebec economy to the English-speaking Canadians and some foreign companies. At the meantime, he set barriers, and even block the development to French-Canadians’ economic groups. Therefore, foreign companies and English-Canadians owned much more power and rights than the French-Canadians; francophones have no choice but to work for Anglophone and foreign companies. Nevertheless, French-Canadians still obtained much lower wages compared to English-speaking workers. These unfair treatments to francophones led to unsatisfied of the contemporary government. Besides supporting the English-speaking and foreign economy, in Duplessis era, positive interference of unio... ...identity regarded themselves as Quebecers but French-Canadians no longer. Works Cited Behiels, M.D (1985). Prelude to Quebec's Quiet Revolution: Liberalism versus Neo-nationalism 1945-1960. Kinston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. Gagnon, A.G & Montcalm, M.B (1990). Quebec: Beyond The Quiet Revolution . Scarborough: Nelson Canada. Cuccioletta, D. & Lubin, M. (2003, September 22). Article: The Quebec quiet revolution: a noisy evolution. Retrieved February 14, 2011 http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-118986705.html Gauvreau, M. (2005). The Catholic origins of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, 1931-1970. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press Clibbon, J. (2010, June 21). Re-examining the roots of Quebec’s ‘Quiet Revolution’. Retrieved 2 24, 2o11, from CBCNews. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/06/18/f-quebec-conradblack-interview.html

COP 3530, Discrete Data Structures and Algorithms, Summer 1999, Homework 4 :: UFL Florida Computer Programming Homework

Class Notes: Data Structures and Algorithms Summer-C Semester 1999 - M WRF 2nd Period CSE/E119, Section 7344 Homework #4 -- Due Wed 16 June 1999 : 09.30am -- Answer Key Answers are in blue typeface. * Question 1. Write pseudocode and a diagram that shows how to implement the merge part of the merge-sort algorithm using two stacks (one for each subsequence), and be sure to use the correct ADT operations for stacks. Do not write Java code, or pseudocode for merge-sort. Answer: 1. Put the two sorted subsequences to be merged, denoted by S1 and S2 on stacks of the same name. Assume that the sorting is in ascending order; hence, each stack has its minimum values at the top of the stack. 2. The merge algorithm proceeds as follows: { repeat until S1 or S2 is empty { v1 = pop(S1) v2 = pop(S2) output(min(v1,v2)) if (max(v1,v2) = v1) then push v1 onto S1 else push v2 onto S2 endif }

Understanding the Media

Since the media has now become the centre of today`s life controlling every aspect of it, it is therefore very important to understand and to critically observe how the media operates . It is however questionable to understand how the media balances between meeting its goals and targets as a business and fulfilling its role of acting as the peoples voice as expected by the society it serves without compromising on each of the two. BODY It is only through the understanding of the media that the people get to know that the media plays an important role in educating the society.Francois Nell notes that `the media contribute to social development`. (Writing For The Media In Southern Africa:3rd Edition). Through the media, education has moved from indirect teaching to direct teaching whereby the minors and students get to learn through different T. V programs like the Tekalani Sesami(SABC 3) and Matrics Uploaded(SABC 2). Though this development in Media production learning has become so c onvenient thus contributing to the educational growth of the community. It is also vital to understand the media production so as to know when and when not to blame the media when scandals take place .Stony Brooke notes that, `the effects of media seem necessary to depend on the patterns of audience use. ` It is however unfair to blame the media on the abuse of the media forms by the public it tend to benefit. It is therefore important to take note of the fact that the audience has a major role to play as far as media content is pertained. Understanding media production is vital too so as to know the truth behind some nasty news said of the media by the public. a good understanding of the media enables us to know how to relate and deal with some of these accusations.Gilmore p37 notes that `news is more of a conversation and the lines have blurred between producers and consumers. The once passive audience has become an active participant in the creation and dissemination of news, and the flow of information is no longer controlled by journalists Haddow & Kim S. Haddow) . It is therefore important to note that the media is not solely to blame for some scandals in media content but also the audience has a role to play for media abuse. It is only through media literacy that he audience know how to utilise different forms of media and to know when to draw the line as far as their engagement with the media is concerned. Although the media development `encourages individual change and mobility`(Francois Nel ),it is however important for one to know how for example the internet operates so as to protect oneself from cannibals that has flooded this media form, many peoples` lives. Through this awareness one is able to know when to draw the line as far as his/her engagement with different characters on this blog is concerned.However it is also important to critically observe how the media conveys its messages to the people so that one will not fall a victim to some of t he media content that tend to `induce political apathy, alienation, cynicism and a loss of social capital`( Kenneth Newton) thus brainwashing the public into making wrong political choices. Peter Phillips argues that `democracy does not work within last minute sound bites, taking the place of important public debate and compromising the bulk information that could be available to the people`(Censored 2007).This however shows that in their bid to meet targets, the media tend to compromise on their expectations from the society and also on their role of informing the public. Through a critical engagement with the media, one is made to observe that the media has a `mass effect on societal behaviour`( Jatto et tal). During the Family Planning Campaign in Tanzania, the media had an incremental effect on contraceptive use. The more media sources a woman was exposed to, the more she was to adopt a contraception (Jatto et tal, 1999:65-67). The media campaign in the Philippines had clearly p ositive effects .Nancy Morris notes that `the mass media information campaign was largely responsible for the improvement in vaccination coverage`(McDivitt, Zimicki and Hornik, 1997:111). This clearly shows that the media has the power to control peoples` behaviour so a critic understanding of it is vital to prevent possible brainwash. Since the media has become the `backbone of the marketing , advertising and public relations industries`(Peter J Jourie) notes that `a sound knowledge of how the media work, think and disseminate meaning is fundamental to these industries`.It is however important to critically engage with the media so as to know how to relate with the information given by the media so as to know how to act on their `education` as far as their information about these industries is pertained since they will be advertising. It is very important to note that the media is only after sensational stories so that the people will know that behind the information dished out by the media, lies more helpful and important information.This will enable the audience to be on the lookout of more helpful stories that do not make it into the newspapers that might be of great importance to their livelihood. It can be concluded that although the media is there to serve the people and to meet their expectations, the media itself ends up on a very compromising position with only one way out, that is to do anything possible to meet its goals as a business even though it means compromising on their role within the society .This means that the public should be well informed as on how to utilise useful media content and at the same time on how to screen some of the media content in order to protect themselves from the harm that comes with it. The complication only now lies on how the public can get informed when the only means to inform the public is only through the media.

India After 20 Years

Draft January, 2007 INDIA’s GROWTH: PAST AND FUTURE by Shankar Acharya* * Honorary Professor and Member Board of Governors, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) Paper for presentation at the Eighth Annual Global Development Conference of the Global Development Network, January 14-16, Beijing. 0 India’s Growth: Past and Future By Shankar Acharya1 This paper is divided into five sections. Section I briefly reviews India’s growth performance since 1950 and indicates a few salient features and turning points.Section II discusses some of the major drivers of India’s current growth momentum (which has averaged 8 percent in the last 3 years) and raised widespread expectations (at least, in India) that 8 percent plus growth has become the new norm for the Indian economy. Section III points to some of the risks and vulnerabilities that could stall the current dynamism if corrective action is not taken. Section IV appraises the co untry’s medium term growth prospects. The final section assesses some implications of India’s rise for the world economy. I Review of Growth Performance, (1950-2006)Table 1 summarizes India’s growth experience since the middle of the twentieth century. For the first thirty years, economic growth averaged a modest 3. 6 percent, with per capita growth of a meager 1. 4 percent per year. Those were the heydays of state-led, import-substituting industrialization, especially after the 1957 foreign exchange crisis and the heavy industrialization bias of the Second Five Year Plan (1956-61). While the strategy achieved some success in raising the level of resource mobilization and investment in the economy, it turned out to be hugely costly in terms of economic efficiency.The inefficiencies stemmed not just from the adoption of a statist, inward1 The author is Member, Board of Governors and Honorary Professor at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relat ions (ICRIER). He was Chief Economic Adviser to Government of India (1993-2000). This paper draws liberally on his recent paper, â€Å"India’s Growth: Past Performance and Future Prospects†, presented at the Tokyo Club Macro Economy Conference on â€Å"India and China Rising†, December 6-7, 2006, Tokyo. 1 ooking policy stance (at a time when world trade was expanding rapidly) but also from the extremely detailed, dysfunctional and corruption-breeding controls that were imposed on industry and trade (see, for example, the classic study by Bhagwati and Desai (1970)). Table 1: Growth of GDP and Major Sectors (% per year) Year 1951/521980/81 (1) 1981/821990/91 (2) 1992/931996/97 (3) 1997/982001/02 (4) 2002/032005/06 (5) 1992/932005/06 (6) 1981/822005/06 (7) Agriculture and Allied Industry 2. 5 3. 5 4. 7 2. 0 1. 9 3. 0 3. 0 5. 3 7. 1 7. 6 4. 4 8. 0 6. 6 6. 5 Services 4. 5 6. 7 7. 6 8. 2 8. 9 . 2 7. 4 GDP 3. 6 5. 6 6. 7 5. 5 7. 0 6. 4 5. 9 GDP per capita 1. 4 3. 4 4. 6 3. 6 5. 3 4. 4 3. 8 Source: CSO . Note: Industry includes Construction. At the same time, one should not forget that the GDP growth rate of 3. 6 percent was four times greater than the 0. 9 percent growth estimated for the previous half century of British colonial rule (Table 2). Moreover the growth was reasonably sustained, with no extended periods of decline. Nor were there inflationary bouts of the kind which racked many countries in Latin America. However, growth was far below potential and much less than he 7-8 percent rates being achieved in some countries of East Asia and Latin America. Worst of all, the proportion of the Indian population below a (minimalist) poverty line actually increased from 45 to 51 percent (Table 3). Table 2: Economic Growth: Pre -independence (% per year) Year 1900-46 1900-29 1930-46 GDP 0. 9 0. 9 0. 8 Population 0. 8 0. 5 1. 3 Per Capita GDP 0. 1 0. 4 -0. 5 Source: Sivasubramonian (2000) 2 Table 3: Percentage of People Below Poverty Line, 1951-52 t o 1999-00: Official Estimates Year Rural Urban All India 1951-52 47. 4 35. 5 45. 3 1977-78 3. 1 45. 2 51. 3 1983 45. 7 40. 8 44. 5 1993-94 37. 3 32. 4 36. 0 1999-2000 26. 8 24. 1 26. 1 Source: Planning Commission, Government of India G rowth accelerated significantly in the 1980s to 5. 6 percent, entailing a more than doubling of per capita growth to 3. 4 percent a year. This acceleration was due to a number of factors, including: the early efforts at industrial and trade liberalization and tax reform dur ing the 1980s, a step- up in public investment, better agricultural performance and an increasingly expansionist (almost profligate! ) fiscal policy.Fiscal controls weakened and deficits mounted and spilled over to the external sector, requiring growing recourse to external borrowing on commercial terms. Against a background of a low export/GDP ratio, rising trade and current account deficits and a deteriorating external debt profile, the 1990 Gulf War and consequent oil price spik e tipped India’s balance of payments into crisis in 1990/91. Although the policy reforms of the 1980s were modest in comparison to those undertaken in the ensuing decade, their productivity â€Å"bang for the buck† seems to have been high (see Table 4) 2 .Perhaps this 2 Several different factor productivity studies support this conclusion, including: Acharya-Ahluwalia Krishna-Patnaik (2003), Bosworth and Collins (2003) and Virmani (2004). 3 w as a case of modest improvements in a highly distorted policy environment yielding significant gains. Table 4: Growth of GDP, Total Factor Input and Total Factor Productivity (% per year) 1950/511966/67 3. 8 GDP 1967/68 – 1981/82– 1980/81 1990/91 3. 4 5. 3 1991/92 – 1999/2000 6. 5 Total Factor Input (TFI) 2. 4 2. 7 3. 3 3. 9 Total Factor Productivity (TFP) . 4 0. 7 2. 0 2. 6 Proportion of Growth Explained by TFP (%) 37. 6 20. 8 37. 7 39. 7 Source: Acharya, Ahluwalia, Krishna and Patnaik (2003). Note: For each sub-period, GDP, TFI and TFP are trend growth rates. The new Congress government of June 1991, with Manmohan Singh as finance minister, undertook emergency measures to restore external and domestic confidence in the economy and its management. 3 The rupee was devalued, the fiscal deficit was cut and special balance of payments financing mobilized from the IMF and the World Bank.Even more importantly, the government seized the opportunity offered by the crisis to launch an array of long overdue and wide-ranging economic reforms. They encompassed external sector liberalization, deregulation of industry, reforms of taxation and the financial sector and a more commercial approach to the public sector (see Table 5 for a summary of key reforms in 1991-93). 4 3 There has been a great deal written on India’s economic reforms and the consequent performance of the economy, including Acharya (2002a and 2004), Ahluwa lia (2002), Kelkar (2004), Kochhar et. l (2006), Panagariya ( 2004a and 2006) and Virmani (2004). There is a tendency to view the post-1991 economic performance as a single unified experience. I prefer the more nuanced and disaggregated view outlined here. 4 As I have pointed out elsewhere (Acharya, 2006a), these reforms are better characterized as â€Å"medium bang† than â€Å"gradualist† (as by Ahluwalia, 2002). 4 Table 5: Main Economic Reforms of 1991-93 Fiscal †¢ Reduction of the fiscal deficit. †¢ Launching of reform of major tax reforms. External Sector †¢ Devaluation and transition to a Market-determined Exchange Rate. Phased reduction of import licensing (qua ntitative restrictions). †¢ Phased reduction of peak custom duties. †¢ Policies to encourage direct and portfolio foreign investment. †¢ Monitoring and controls over external borrowing, especially short term. †¢ Build-up of foreign exchange reserves. †¢ Amendment of FERA to reduce restrictions on firms. Industry †¢ Virtual abolitio n of industrial licensing. †¢ Abolition of separate permission needed by â€Å"MRTP houses†. †¢ Sharp reduction of industries â€Å"reserved† for the public sector. †¢ Freer access to foreign technology.Agriculture †¢ More remunerative procurement prices for cereals. †¢ Reduction in protection to the manufacturing sector. Financial Sector †¢ Phasing in of Basle prudential norms. †¢ Reduction of reserve requirements for banks (CRR and SLR). †¢ Gradual freeing up of interest rates. †¢ Legislative empowerment of SEBI. †¢ Establishment of the National Stock Exchange. †¢ Abolition of government control over capital issues. Public Sector †¢ Disinvestment programme begun. †¢ Greater autonomy / accountability for public enterprises. 5The economy responded swiftly and positively to these reforms. After virtual stagnation in 1991/92, GDP growth surged in the next five years to clock a record 5-year average of 6. 7 percent. It is noteworthy that in this high growth Eighth Plan period all major sectors (agriculture, industry, services) grew noticeably faster than in the pre-crisis decade. The acceleration in the growth of agricultural value added is particularly interesting in the light of oft-repeated criticism that the economic reforms of the early nineties neglected the agricultural sector.The factors which explain this remarkable and broad-based growth surge in the period 1992-97 appear to include: †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ †¢ Productivity gains resulting from the deregulation of trade, industry and finance, especially in the sectors of industry and some services; The surge in export growth at about 20 percent per year (in dollar terms) for three successive years beginning 1993-94, attributable to the substantial devaluation in real effective terms in the early nineties and a freer policy regime for industry, foreign trade and payments;The investment boom of 1993- 96 which exerted expansionary effects on both supply and demand, especially in industry. The investment boom itself was probably driven by a combination of factors including the unleashing of ‘animal spirits’ by economic reforms, the swift loosening of the foreign exchange bottleneck, confidence in broadly consistent governmental policy signals and easier availability of investible funds (both through borrowing and new equity issues);The partial success in fiscal consolidation, which kept a check on government borrowings and facilitated expansion of aggregate savings and investments; Improvement in the terms of trade for agriculture resulting from a combination of higher procurement prices for important crops and reduction in trade protection for manufactures; Availability of capacity in key infrastructure sectors, notably power; A buoyant world economy which supported expansion of foreign trade and private capital inflows.The momentum of growth slowed noticeably in the Ninth Plan period, 1997-2002, to an average of 5. 5 percent, compared to the 6. 7 percent achieved in the previous five years. Among the factors which contributed to this deceleration were: the significant worsening of the fiscal deficits (mainly due to large public pay increases following the Fifth Pay Commission) and the associated decline in public savings, the slackening of economic reforms after 1995 as coalition governance became the norm, a significant slowdown in 6 gricultural growth for a variety of reasons, a marked downswing in the industrial cycle and an increasingly unsupportive international economic environment (including the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, rising energy prices and the global recession of 2001). Indeed, India’s economic growth in 1997-2002 might have been even weaker but for the unexpected and somewhat inexplicable strength of services sector growth, which clocked an average of 8. 2 percent, despite industrial growth of only 4. 4 percent. T he services sector accounted for almost 70 percent of all growth in this period. Economic reforms picked up pace in 2000-04, fiscal deficits trended down after 2002 and the world economy rebounded strongly in 2002-06. These factors supported a broadbased upswing in Indian industrial output and investment from the second half of 2002. Growth of industrial valued added surged to 8 percent in 2002-06. With continued strong growth of services (at nearly 9 percent), GDP growth climbed to average 7 percent, despite continued sluggishness of agriculture.In the three years, 2003-06 overall economic growth has averaged over 8 percent and the outlook for 2006/7 is equally bright. This latest economic surge has raised the interesting issue of whether India’s trend growth rate has accelerated to 8 percent (or higher) from its previous level of around 6 percent. The ensuing sections of this paper explore this question. II. Main drivers of Recent Economic Growth What are some of the main i ngredients of the recent surge in economic growth? I would suggest the following seven major elements: ) The momentum of a quarter of a century of strong economic growth; 2) A much more open economy (to external trade and investment); 3) A growing â€Å"middle class† fuelling domestic consumption; 4) The â€Å"demographic dividends† of a young population; 5 Acharya (2002a and 2003) noted this unusual phenomenon and raised questions about both the quality of the data and the durability of such sharply divergent growth rates of industry and services. More recently, similar doubts have been expressed by Bosworth-Collins -Virmani (2006). 7 5) Strong companies in a modernized capital market; 6) Some recent economic reforms. ) A supportive international economic environment. Let me elaborate briefly on each of these factors. The Momentum of Growth The last thirty years’ experience suggests that very few developing countries have sustained decent per capita growth for two decades or more (Acharya, 2006b). Specifically, out of 117 developing countries with population over half a million, only 12 countries achieved per capita growth of more than 3 percent per year in 1980-2002, with at least 2 percent growth in each decade of the eighties and nineties. These twelve countries were: China (8. 2), Vietnam (4. 6), South Korea (6. 1), Chile (3. ), Mauritius (4. 4), Malaysia (3. 4), India (3. 6), Thailand (4. 6), Bhutan (4. 3), Sri Lanka (3. 1), Botswana (4. 7) and Indonesia (3. 5). (The number falls to 9 if we specify a minimum population of 3 million). Nine of these 12 countries are in Asia and, fortunately, they include the three most populous: China, India and Indonesia. (See Table 6). If we take the full 25 years (1981-2006), India’s per capita growth has averaged 3. 8 percent or almost 4 percent per year. 8 Table 6: Good Growth Performers of Recent Decades Average Annual Per Capita Growth (%) Country 1980-2002 1990s 1980s Population in 2000 (Millions) 1. China . 2 8. 6 7. 7 1262 2. Vietnam 4. 6 5. 7 1. 9 78 3. South Korea 6. 1 5. 0 7. 4 47 4. Chile 3. 3 4. 3 2. 1 15 5. Mauritius 4. 4 4. 1 4. 9 1 6. Malaysia 3. 4 3. 7 3. 1 23 7. India 3. 6 3. 6 3. 6 1016 8. Thailand 4. 6 3. 4 6. 0 61 9. Bhutan 4. 3 3. 4 5. 4 1 10. Sri Lanka 3. 1 3. 1 3. 1 18 11. Botswana 4. 7 2. 7 7. 2 2 12. Indonesia 3. 5 2. 6 4. 4 206 Source: World Bank (2005) Sustained improvements in standards of living of this order embody their own growthreinforcing elements. People come to think more positively about the future and base their savings, investment and production decisions on an expectation of continued growth.Electorates in India’s democracy come to expect development and hold government performance to higher standards, despite disappointments. Companies think big when they invest. And so on. A More Open Economy The Indian economy in 2006 is far more open to external trade, investment and technology than it was fifteen years ago. 6 Table 7 p resents some key comparative 6 The story of India’s external liberalization may be found in several places, including Acharya (2002b) and Panagariya ( 2004b). 9 indicators. Peak import duties on manufactures have come down from over 200% to 12. 5%, a remarkable reduction by any standards.The regime of tight, detailed and discretionary import controls has been almost completely dismantled. The exchange rate was devalued and made market-responsive (1991-3). The policies towards foreign portfolio and direct investment have been greatly liberalized. As a result, the ratio of traded goods to GDP has more than doubled from less than 15 percent to nearly 33 percent. Because of the sustained boom in software exports and worker remittances, the ratio of current receipts (goods exports plus gross invisibles) has more than tripled from 8 percent to over 24 percent of GDP.Foreign investment has risen from negligible levels to US $ 20 billion in 2005/6. Table 7: Towards A More Open Econom y 1990/91 2005/06 200% plus 12. 5% Tight, detailed Almost gone Trade (goods) / GDP Ratio (%) 14. 6 32. 7 Current Receipts / GDP (%) 8. 0 24. 5 Software Exports ($ billion) Nil 23. 6 Worker Remittances ($ billion) 2. 1 24. 6 Foreign Investment ($ billion) Negligible 20. 2 2. 2 145. 1 35. 3 10. 2 Peak Import Duties (manufacturers) I mport Controls Foreign Currency Reserves ($ billion, March 31) Debt Service Ratio (%) Source: RBI, Annual Report, 2005 /06, except for first two rows.After initial periods of sometimes painful adjustment in the 1990s, Indian industry has thrived in the more open and competitive environment. The explosion in software ITenabled service exports is well-known, having risen from nil in 1991 to $ 24 billion in 2005/6. Anecdotal evidence suggests that small-scale units have benefited greatly from 10 the much freer access to traded raw materials, components and designs. Perhaps most important, the old mindset of â€Å"foreign exchange scarcity† (and the wel ter of bad economic policies it spawned) has been effectively banished.Interestingly, the â€Å"opening up† has also strengthened the prudential yardsticks of foreign exchange reserves and debt service ratios. Rise of strong companies in a modernized capital market The 1990s ushered in far-reaching reforms in India’s capital markets. The Securities and Exchange Board of India was statutorily empowered in 1992 and quickly moved to improve standards of disclosure and transparency. The new electronic-tradebased National Stock Exchange was established in 1993 and set high technical and governance standards, which soon had to be emulated by the much older (and, sometimes scam-hit) Bombay Stock Exchange.Depositories legislation was enacted and soon paperless trading became the norm. Brokers were encouraged to corporatize. Futures markets were nurtured. These and other reforms transformed Indian capital markets into one of the best in the developing world. The combination of a modernizing capital market, an increasingly liberal and competitive environment for investment, trade and production, a wealth of entrepreneurial talent and sustained economic growth has helped the rise of strong new companies and supported the expansion of the more agile and aggressive among the established firms.By way of example, Airtel, the leading private telecom, went from nothing to a multi-billion dollar company in a decade. The same was true for the leading domestic airline, Jet and the IT icons like Infosys, Wipro, TCSand HCL. Old pharma companies, like Ranbaxy, transformed themselves. New media companies like Zee and NDTV bloomed. Established corporates houses restructured and flourished (such as some Tata companies, Reliance, Bajaj, Mahindra and Hero Honda) or saw their market shares decline.In recent years quite a few Indian companies have expanded through overseas investments and acquisitions, facilitated by direct investments abroad averaging $1. 5 to $ 2 billion in the past five years. The recent bid for Corus by Tata Steel is a well-publicized example. 11 Aggregate financial data also point to the strength and expansion of India’s corporate sector in recent years. The market capitalization of companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange rose nearly 14-fold from $ 50 billion in 1990/91 to $ 680 billion in 2005/6 (Table 8).In the last five years, the growth of profits has outpaced the growth of sales of private corporates, indicating rising profit margins. With falling interest rates and growing recourse to internal funding, the share of interest outgo in gross profits dropped sharply from above 50 percent in the late 1990s to 15 percent in 2005/6 (Reserve Bank, 2006, Box 1. 7). Unsurprisingly, data for the top 1000 listed companies showed net profits as percent of net sales rising from 4. 5 % in 2001/2 to 8. 9 % in 2004/5 (Business Standard, 2006). Table 8: Rising Middle Class 1990/91 Cars + UVs sold # Two Wheelers sold #Telephone [em ail  protected] (million) 15 million 100 million $50 billion $680 billion 205 thousand People in households with income (Rs. 2,00,000 – 10,00,000 OR PPP $20,000- $1,00,000 approximately)a Bombay Stock Exchange Market Capitalisation* 2005/06 1319 thousand 1800 thousand 7570 thousand 5 125$ a Based on data from NCAER (2005) * RBI, Handbook of Statistics on the Indian Economy, 2005-06 # Business Beacon, CMIE and Monthly Review of the Indian Economy, CMIE, October 2006 @ Business Beacon CMIE and Economic Survey, 2005-06 $ December 2005 A Growing Middle Class In the mid-1990s, shortly after the major economic reforms of 1991-4, there as premature exuberance about India’s rising middle class and their acquisitive aspirations. Today there is a much firmer basis for emphasizing the importance of the growing middle class in transforming consumption, production and investment in the Indian economy. Table 8 provides a few indicators. Based on surveys by the NCAER, about 100 mil lion people now live in households with annual incomes between Rs. 200,000 and Rs 1 12 million (approximately PPP$ 20,000 to 100,000), compared to about 15 million in 1990/91. With a lower defining threshold, the size of the middle class would be greater.For example, if the middle class cut-off is defined as the â€Å"non-poor† by standards of developed economies, then Bhalla (2007) estimates that 34 percent of India ’s population was â€Å"middle class† in 2005 compared to about 10 percent in 1990. Purchases of iconic middle class consumption items have certainly soared in the last 15 years (Table 8). Annual sales of cars (including multi- utility vehicles) have risen more than six times to 1. 3 million in 2005/6. Two wheeler sales have increased mo re than four times to 7. 6 million in 2005/6. In 1990/91 India had just 5 million telephone connections (all fixed).By the end of 2005 the number was 125 million (about two-thirds were mobile connections). Indeed, i n October 2006 the new mobile connections were close to 7 million, more than the total of phone connections fifteen years ago! The Demographic Dividend It has become commonplace to emphasize the growth potential of India’s young population and declining dependency ratio. According to most population projections the share of working age population in total population will continue to rise for the next 30 years or so, long after the decline has set in other major countries like China, USA, Western Europe and Japan (Table 9).These demographics point to a large potential for higher growth through augmented supply of labour and savings. Indeed, these trends have already been at work over the 15 years or so, helping to raise India’s household savings from around 15-16 percent of GDP in the late 1980s to 22-24 percent in recent years. 7 7 This could be an important part of the explanation to the puzzle: How does India sustain high growth despite aggregate fiscal deficits abov e 7 percent of GDP over the last twenty years? 13 Table 9: Share of Working Population (15-59 yrs) Country 1950 1975 2000 2025 2050 India 55. 5 54. 0 58. 9 64. 3 59. 7 China 59. 53. 6 65. 0 62. 1 53. 8 Japan 56. 9 64. 0 62. 1 52. 8 45. 2 US 60. 5 60. 0 62. 1 56. 6 54. 6 Western Europe 61. 7 58. 1 61. 3 54. 8 50. 4 Source: http://www. un. org/esa/population/publications/worldageing19502050/countriesorareas. htm Some Recent Policies As noted above economic reforms slowed after 1995 and then revived to some extent in the period 2000-04. Also, real interest rates declined worldwide and in India too. In India this may have been helped by renewed efforts to reduce burgeoning fiscal deficits, including through enactment of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (2003) at the central level.The fiscal position of the States also improved from the dire straits plumbed following the Fifth Pay Commission. The states too adopted fiscal responsibility laws following the recommendatio ns (and conditional debt write-offs) of the Twelfth Finance Commission (Government of India, 2004). Furthermore, tax revenues at both levels of government were buoyed by resurgent economic (especially industrial) growth after 2002/3. The net result was a decline in the gross fiscal deficit from almost 10 percent of GDP in 2001/2 to 7. percent in 2004/5 and an even larger decline in the revenue deficit from 7 to 3. 7 percent of GDP (Table 10). This was the single most important factor explaining the increase in aggregate savings from around 24 percent of GDP in 2001/2 to 29 percent in 2004/5, which, in turn, helped finance the current investment boom. 14 Table 10: Deficits, Savings and Investment (as % of GDP) Year 1995-96 Gross Fiscal Deficit 2001-02 2004-05 6. 5 9. 9 7. 5 3. 2 7. 0 3. 7 25. 1 (-2. 0) 26. 9 23. 6 (-6. 0) 23. 0 29. 1 (-2. 7) 30. 1 (Centre and States) Revenue Deficit (Centre and States)Gross Domestic Savings (of which Government) Gross Domestic Investment Source: RBI, Handbook of Statistics on the Indian Economy, 2005-06 and CSO website †¢ †¢ (http://mospi. nic. in/mospi_cso_rept_pubn. htm ) (http://mospi. nic. in/mospi_press_releases. htm ) International Economic Environment Despite the war in Iraq and the high oil prices of recent years the world economy has grown at almost 5 percent over the last four years, propelled by strong growth in US and China and some recovery in Japan and Europe. World trade in goods and services has expanded rapidly.This favorable environment has helped rapid growth of exports (of goods and services) from India, which, in turn, has been a significant driver of economic growth in this recent period. 8 III Risks to Future Strong Growth There are some well-known risks or constraints to the sustenance of the 8 percent growth enjoyed by India since 2003. These include: 1) Renewed fiscal stress from populist policies; 8 Panagariya (2006) emphasizes this point. 15 2) Infrastructure bottlenecks; 3) Labour market r igidities; 4) Weak performance of agriculture; 5) Pace of economic reforms; ) Weaknesses in human resource development programmes; 7) The international economic environment. Each of these merit brief elaboration. Populism and Renewed Fiscal Stress The recent progress in fiscal consolidation, noted above, is real but modest. The overall fiscal deficit remains high at 7. 5 percent of GDP in 2005/6, as does the government debt to GDP ratio at 80 percent (compared to about 60 percent in 1995/6). While the fiscal responsibility laws enacted by central and state governments (22 out of 28 states have passed such laws so far) are promising, they are not immune to populist pressures.Especially since the advent of the UPA government in 2004, populist expenditure programmes, such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, have gained fresh momentum. The Sixth Pay Commission has been constituted and is expected to submit its report by mid-2008, with governmental action likely before the next general election. The possibility of significant public pay increases is obviously high. On the revenue side, the state level VATs have contributed to revenue buoyancy. But the recent scheme for Special Economic Zones is fraught with unduly generous tax concessions.So the prospects for fiscal consolidation are mixed, at best. Infrastructure Bottlenecks India’s infrastructure problems are legendary and also reflect failures in public sector performance and governance. A recent appraisal (World Bank, 2006) points out that â€Å"the average manufacturer loses 8. 4 percent in sales annua lly on account of power 16 outages†, over 60 percent of Indian manufacturing firms own generator sets (compared to 27 percent in China and 17 percent in Brazil) and India’s combined real cost of power is almost 40 percent higher than China’s. The quantity and quality of roads is also a serious bottleneck.While there has been some progress in recent years with national h ighway development, the state and rural road networks are woefully inadequate, especially in poorer states (Figure 1). Urban infrastructure (especially water and sewerage) is another major constraint for rapid industrial development and urbanization (Figure 2). The successful example of rapid telecom development is very promising. But unlike telecom, the sectors of power, roads and urban infrastructure are burdened by long histories of a subsidy culture and dual (centre and states) constitutional responsibilities.Unless the various infrastructure constraints are addressed swiftly and effectively, it is difficult to see how 8 percent (or higher) economic growth can be sustained. Fig 1:Percentage of habitations not connected by roads, by Indian state Haryana Kerala Andhra Pradesh Punjab 0% 3% 4% 7% Karnataka 8% Tamil Nadu 8% Maharashtra Gujarat Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan 12% 23% 43% 51% Bihar 58% Orissa 58% Jharkhand Madhya Pradesh West Bengal 59% 62% 69% Chattisgarh 82% Source: Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, as cited in World Bank (2006). 17 Fig 2: Percentage of the population with access to sewerage facilities, by Indian stateRajasthan 8 Orissa 9 Chattisgarh 10 Madhya Pradesh 10 Andhra Pradesh 15 West Bengal 17 Tamil Nadu 29 Karnataka 33 Uttar Pradesh 37 Uttaranchal 37 Maharashtra 49 Gujarat 63 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Source: Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organization, 2000, as cited in World Bank (2006). Labour Market Rigidities According to official data, India’s non-agricultural employment in the private organized (units employing more than 10 workers) sector has stagnated below 9 million for over 20 years, although the labour force has grown to exceed 400 million!A major cause has been India’s complex and rigid labour laws, which hugely discourage fresh employment while protecting those with organized sector jobs. 9 Investment climate surveys by the World Bank indicate that India has some of the most res trictive labour laws in the world, which, in effect convert labour (in organized units) into a fixed factor of production (lay-offs are extremely difficult) and thereby discourage fresh employment in the organized sector while promoting more â€Å"casualization† and insecurity among the 9The skill and capital-intensive pattern of development of India’s modern industrial and services sectors (despite the endowment of abundant unskilled labour) has been noted by many analysts, including Kochhar et. al. (2006), Panagariya (2006) and World Bank (2006). All of them point to restrictive labour laws as a major culprit. 18 93 percent of workers in the unorganized sector. The laws are not just rigid but also numerous (â€Å"a typical firm in Maharashtra has to deal with 28 different acts pertaining to labor†, World Bank, 2006).Without significant reform of existing labour laws, India’s cheap labour advantages remain hugely underutilized. Looking to the future, the challenge will increase as the â€Å"demographic dividend† brings further large increases in the labour force. In fact, as I have pointed out elsewhere (Acharya, 2004), the economic and political challenge is far greater than normally appreciated because the bulk of the demographic bulge will occur (in the next few decades) in the poor, slow-growing and populous states of central and eastern India (notably, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh).Weak Agricultural Performance Since 1996/97 the growth of agriculture has dropped to barely 2 percent, compared to earlier trend rate ranging between 2. 5- 3. 0 percent. The reasons are many and include declining public investment by cash-strapped states, grossly inadequate maintenance of irrigation assets, f lling water tables, inadequate rural road networks, a unresponsive research and extension services, soil damage from excessive urea use (encouraged by high subsidies), weak credit delivery and a distorted incentive str ucture which impedes diversification away from food grains.Tackling these problems and revitalising agriculture will take time, money, understanding and political will. It will also require much greater investments in (and maintenance of) rural infrastructure of irrigation, roads, soil conservation, etc. and reinvigoration of the present systems of agricultural research and extension. While the central government can play a significant role in revamping systems, the main responsibility for strengthening rural infrastructure lies with the states. However, their financial and administrative capabilities have weakened over time. The share of agriculture in GDP has declined to hardly 20 percent.But agriculture is still the principal occupation of nearly 60 percent of the labour force. Thus better performance of this sector is essential for poverty alleviation and containment of rising regional and income inequalities. 19 Pace of Economic Reforms There is little doubt that economic refor ms have slowed since the UPA government assumed office in May 2004 10 . The privatization programme has been halted, although Government remains the dominant owner in banking, energy and transport and the usual ills of public ownership afflict the performance of many enterprises in these key sectors.The legislative proposals of the previous government to reduce government ownership in public sector banks to 33 percent have lapsed and not been renewed. There has been some revival of interest rate controls and directed credit. Follow-up action on the reformist new Electricity Act (2003) passed by the NDA government has been slow. The pricing of petroleum products has become more politically administered than before. Education policy has focused on introducing caste-based reservations in institutions of higher education. Introduction of such reservations in private sector employment are also being considered.Reform of labour laws remains stalled. There has been little forward progress in reform of agriculture policies. Indeed, the wonder is that the economy’s growth momentum has remained so strong despite the stalling of economic reforms. If the growth dividends of econo mic reforms occur with a lag, then the paucity of reforms in the period 2004-06 may take their toll in the years ahead. Weak Human Resource Policies The long-run performance of the Indian economy must surely depend on successful policies and programmes f r education, skill-development and health service o rovision. Yet the government- led programmes in these sectors suffer from very serious weaknesses and lack of reform impetus. For example, World Bank (2006) cites a number of surveys which show that less than half of government teachers and health workers are actually to be found in schools and clinics they are serving (the situation is typically worse in poorer states) . Even though school enrolment rates have climbed over time, the actual cognitive skill acquired in schools (even simple reading and arithmetic) is still very 10 For a recent review see Acharya (2006c). 0 low (Pratham, 2006). In health, a survey shows that medics in primary health clinics in Delhi had a greater than 50 percent chance of prescribing a harmful therapy for specified, common ailments (Das and Hammer, 2004a and 2004b). The competence of these medics was found to be less than comparably situated counterparts in Tanzania and substantially worse than counterparts in Indonesia. Even in higher education, an area of supposed competence, studies point to enormous problems of quality, quantity and relevance (see, for example, Aggarwal, 2006).Quite clearly, the current portfolio of policies and programmes in these critical sectors need urgent improvement if India is to retain her competitive edge in an increasingly globalized, knowledge-based, world economy. International Economic Environment The latter half of 2006 has witnessed a distinct slowing in the growth of the US economy, still the single most potent locomotive of global growth. The Doha Round of multilateral trade liberalization remains mired in limbo. Oil prices, though off their peaks, remain high with little prospect of falling below $50 a barrel.The chances of some slackening in the growth of world output and trade are clearly rising. Just as the Indian economy has benefited from strong global expansion in the last four years, so it may expect to bear some downside risks from slower world growth in the years ahead. IV Medium Term Growth Prospects Since 2003/4 there have been quite a few studies projecting sustained, high growth of the Indian economy in the long-run, including the Goldman Sachs â€Å"BRICs† report (Wilson-Purushothaman, 2003), Rodrik-Subramanian (2004) and Kelkar (2004).Their specific projections and time-periods differ: Goldman Sachs foresaw near 6 percent growth for 50 years; Rodrik-Subramanian projected a minimum of 7 percent for the next 20 years and Kelkar was even more optimistic wi th his growth expectation of 10 percent. 11 More recently, with a three-year 8 percent average already achieved and the 11 See Acharya (2004) for a critical assessment of these bullish growth expectations. 21 current year likely to register a similar rate, the Government’s Planning Commission (2006) has outlined GDP growth projections for 2007/8-2011/12 of 8 to 9 percent.Bhalla (2007, forthcoming) goes further and foresees 10 percent growth as almost inevitable. Most probably, the majority of serious economists in India would today expect economic growth in the medium term (say, 2007-12) to average at least 8 percent. Such optimism is not wholly misplaced. It is based on the continuing strength of the positive factors outlined in section II above, especially globalization and â€Å"catch-up†, the demographic dividends, the rising middle class, a vibrant entrepreneurial culture, positive expectations of future economic reforms and a generally benign international econom ic environment.The optimists are not blind to the risks and threats outlined in section III. They simply expect the growth-enhancing tendencies to prevail or, more subtly, for the dynamics of growth to generate solutions to constraints such as infrastructure and education. Figure 3 provides encouragement to the bullish outlook. 22 Figure 3: India's GDP Growth 8 7 Percentage 6 5 4 3 2 1 2006-07 2003-04 2000-01 1997-98 1994-95 1991-92 1988-89 1985-86 1982-83 1979-80 1976-77 1973-74 1970-71 1967-68 1964-65 1961-62 1958-59 1955-56 0 Year Rolling Average (5 year)In my view, the downside factors outlined in section III, should carry more weight in assessing India’s medium term growth prospects. There is a good chance that the currently bullish view of growth expectations is overly influenced by the recent past (2003 onwards), a period of strong cyclical upswing in both the global economy and Indian industry. The strength of the cycle could abate in the next couple of years and Indi a’s growth could revert to a trend rate in the range of 6 to 7 percent, perhaps closer to the higher figure.Even then, under this â€Å"pessimistic† scenario, annual per capita growth would be at a historical peak for India (Table 11). If this is â€Å"pessimism†, then I plead guilty to the charge (though it does place me among a small minority of Indian economists today)! 23 Table 11: Medium Term Growth Expectations 1992/3 –2005/6 2002/3 -2006/7 2007/8 – 2011 /12 â€Å"Optimist† â€Å"Pessimist† GDP % 6. 4 7. 2 * 8 – 10 6. 5 – 7. 0 GDP per capita (%) 4. 4 5. 5 6. 5 – 8. 5 5 – 5. 5 * Assuming Reserve Bank projection of 8. percent GDP growth for 2006/7 Perhaps the most noteworthy point is that medium- term growth expectations for India are so buoyant that the range between optimists and pessimists is placed so high, within a fairly narrow band of about 7 to 9 percent. Only time will tell who is closer to bei ng right. V Some Implications of India’s Rise India’s growth at an average rate of almost 6 percent a year over the past quarter of a century (with per capita growth of nearly 4 percent a year) is both remarkable and commendable.Certainly, back in 1980, there was almost no respectable scholar or institution predicting such sustained development of this poverty-ridden, populous country. At the same time, the prevailing fashion of bracketing India’s rise with China’s exceptionally dynamic development under rubrics like â€Å"China and India Rising† may mask more than it reveals. If India’s development in the last 25 years has been good, China’s has been extraordinary. Furthermore, while India has been a gradual â€Å"globalizer†, China’s surging development has been far more intensively based on global trade and capital flows.As a consequence, the global economic impact of China’s rise has been much more dramatic in terms of the usual metrics of international economic relations: trade, capital flows and energy. A glance at Table 12 illustrates this obvious point. The comparison of columns 5 and 6 of the table is especially instructive. It highlights both the 24 dramatic increase in China’s engagement with the world economy over the five years 2000 to 2005, as well as the much milder rise in Ind ia’s international economic integration. For example, China’s goods exports increased by an amount which was five times the level of India’s total goods exports in 2005.Similarly, the increase in oil consumption in China was almost equal to India’s total oil consumption in 2005. Table12: China and India: Global Impact China India Increment (2000-05) 2000 (1) 2005 (2) 2000 (3) 2005 (4) China (5) India (6) 249. 1 762. 4 45. 5* 104. 7* 513. 3 59. 2 Share of World Exports (%)e 3. 9 7. 3 0. 7 0. 9 3. 4 0. 2 Service Exports ($ billion) a,b 30. 4 74. 4 16. 2* 60. 6* 44 44. 4 Current Account Balance ($ billion) a,b 20. 5 160. 8 -2. 7* -10. 6* 140. 3 -7. 6 Foreign Exchange Reserves ($ billion) a 165. 6 818. 9 37. 2 131. 0 653. 3 93. 8FDI inflow ($ billion)c 30. 1# 72. 4 1. 7# 6. 6 42. 3 4. 9 FDI stock (Inward, $ billion) c 193. 3 317. 9 17. 5 45. 3 124. 6 27. 8 Oil Consumption (million tonnes)d 223. 6 327. 3 106. 1 115. 7 103. 7 9. 6 Primary Energy Consumption (million tonnes oil equivalent) d 966. 7 1554. 0 320. 4 387. 3 587. 3 66. 9 Merchandise Exports ($ billion) a,b Note: * Data for India refer to fiscal year 2000-01 and 2005-06 # 1990-2000 (Annual Average) Sources: a International Financial Statistics, December 2006 (http://ifs. apdi. net/imf/) b RBI, Handbook of Statistics on the Indian