Exim policy 2001-2002

By K R Sudhaman

The Exim Policy, an annual fea- ture which is unveiled on March 31 every year was more or less on expected lines as it opened up the Indian Economy to foreign consumer goods including automobiles, white goods and fruits and vegetables with the total dismantling of the quantitative restrictions from April one this year.

Both Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha and Commerce and Industry Minister Murasoli Maran, have repeatedly said the fears of the Indian Industry that the phase-out of quantiative restrictions would open the floodgates to cheap imports is unfounded.

They often quoted statistics to say that ever-since the process of dismantling of QRs started in 1996, there has been no surge in imports and 2000-01 in particular the non-oil imports recorded a negative eight per cent growth despite withdrawal of QRs in 714 items in April last year. This year QRs were lifted in the remaining 715 items to adopt the system of tariffication.

If one goes by statistics, one would not be wrong in concluding that the industry's fear is grossly exaggerated and that crying horse is an attempt to cover up the inefficiency of the Indian Industry by denying consumers value for money by allowing cheap imports.

There is no denying the fact that Indian Industry should gear up to face competition especially with gloablisation, which is unstoppable. But at the same time it is also true that conducive atmosphere is yet to be created for the Indian Industry to take on global competition as realities on the ground are far from satisfactory.

For instance cost of borrowing is still very high as compared to international standards with interest rates hovering in the double digits despite Reserve Bank's efforts in the last few years to move on to lower rates. All thes show there are enough mechanisms available to protect domestic industries and farming community which is the backbone of the Indian economy. But the fact remains that domestic industry may be protected from the onslaught of imports but it could become competitive only if congenial environment is created for which government should act swiftly.

The Exim policy does contain some measure in this regard like giving a major role for the state governments for the first time in export promotion activities by making a provision of Rs 100 crore in the budget. Also it provides for a market access initiative to assist industry with produce and country specific focus.

The policy also streamlines and simplifies procedures to encourage exports, which have achieved 20 per cent growth in 2000-01 as against 11 per cent in the previous year. The 10-12 Special Economic Zone developers are to get infrastructure status besides allowing foreign Direct Investment in SEZ under automatic route for all manufacturing sectors.

All these measures are expected to take India's exports to 75 billion dollars annually in three years from the present level of 47 billion dollars. In the next five years Government proposes to take India's share in world trade to one per cent from the present level of 0.6 per cent.

One fear of the Indian automobile industry that allowing import of cars and two wheelers including second hand cars in the exim policy would lead to dumping is misplaced. They argue that Indian automobile industry, which has investment of Rs 50,000 crore will be in doldrums with the imports of cars and two wheelers. As one is aware Finance Minister has already raised duty on second hand cars to 180 per cent and basic duty on new cars and two wheelers to 60 per cent.

Besides there are other stipulations like Left-hand drive cars could not be imported and that second hand cars could not be more than three years old. Also imports of cars could be only through designated ports. All these would act as deterrent as imports of automobiles would become cost-prohibitive.

Sinha is right in saying that Indian automobile industry is uncompetitive even after 110 per cent total interest rate regime. Also there are any number of infrastructure bottlenecks like power shortage and high power tariffs for industrial use and high waiting period in ports. The waiting period in ports is 6 to 7 days as against six to seven hours in Singapore or Hong Kong. Besides Indian Ports' capacity and container han dling facility are so dismal that 60 per cent of revenue at Colombo Port are generated by handling of Indian Containers. This being the scenario one wonders how could Indian Industry become competitive to meet the global challenges when Government is not in a position to address the concerns of the Industry. So there is some validity in Industry's demand that the opening-up of the Indian Market to foreign goods should be accompanied by creation of necessary environment for Indian Industry to face the competition. Otherwise cheap imported consumer goods flooding the market would spell death-knell for the Indian Industry.

While Government argues that Indian Industry should become competitive, it also asserts that it would protect domestic industries and farming community at all costs by raising tariffs on certain commodities to the bound levels particularly agricultural products.

It is precisely for this reason that a standing group of secretaries of Commerce, Revenue, SSI and ARI, Animal Husbandry and Director General of Foreign Trade has been set up to function as a ''War-room'' for tracking, collating and analysing data on 300 sensitive items which are important to the public.

Every month the government will publish a monthly statement in the media about import-status of the 300 items. This will act as an early warning system. The monitoring of imports has already been streamlined and the statistics in respect of all the 10202 tariff lines are now available with a time lag of 2-3 months as against 10-12 months earlier. The gap is to be reduced further. Also other mechanisms are available like anti-dumping measures. Besides imports of items like wheat, rice, maize petrol, diesel, ATF and urea will be permitted only through the designated state trading enterprises. Duty on new vehicles and 180 per cent duty on second-hand cars, then there is something wrong and it was time they took corrective measures.

On the whole the exim policy does contain far-reaching measures to boost exports and help industry to gear itself to the challenges of globalisation. But what is important is that both the Government and Industry should take steps on a war-footing to remove infrastructure bottlenecks and upgrade technology to face competition as otherwise India would be left behind in the world trade. PTI Feature

Media and literature - Roles & relationship

By G S Rajamani

According to the Webster's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, ''Media - also called as Mass Media-- refers to the means of communication as radio and television, newspapers, magazines etc. that reach very large number of population''. It may be seen that the crux of the definition of media refers to its reach to the large audience.

By this definition, in a modern day, perhaps we may have to include the internet services around the world where the websites offer various kinds of literature and information to the global audience. Now we may turn to the meaning of literature itself. Webster's Dictionary covers a wide range of writings which would fall within the generic term called literature. According to Webster's Dictionary, literature means :

''Writings in which expression and form in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest are characteristic or essential features as poetry, history, biography, essays etc.''

A further embellishment of literature deals with ''belleslettres'. Letters refer to artistic writing worthy of being remembered. In the broadest sense, literature includes any type of writings on any subject, for example, the literature of medicine. Usually, however, the term means the body of artistic writing of a country or period which are characterised by beauty of expression and form and by universality of intellectual and emotional appeal.

The basic definitions of media and literature as brought out above would indicate a variety of angles in which a literature could be handled by any kind of media and it also indicates the variety of literature handled by a particular medium.

The subject of the relationship between the two becomes, therefore, complex in itself. In view of the vastness of the subject, it would be useful to review the media and literature in the contemporary world with a view to identifying specific issues which need to be consciously looked into for improving the handling of the literature by the media so that the vast audience that the media commands would be in a position to have a proper kind of appreciation of literature which would also have a didactic angle in the matter.

Literature incorporates two essential ingredients in its structure-ideas, or substance or content on the one hand and the Scientists by virtue of the training, give importance to the substance and very often they look for brevity of expression. However, a man of literature which not ignoring ideas, would pay considerable attention to the language in which the ideas are expressed. While the substance of a subject satisfies the intellectual appetite, the language has an appeal on emotional side. Ideas, in a sense, are matters of head, whereas the language is more often a matter of the heart. A good literature is one which strikes a balance between the two, i.e. the language on the one hand and the ideas on the other. Media should pay attention to the need for balanced literature and should consciously propogate the value of a balance in literature. This could be done by analysing the contemporary literature including the new books which indicates this balance would also be a message for the authors that they should aim at balancing between the language and ideas in writing books.

A criticism which is very often heard about the media is that they allocate more time or space to subjects of temporary interests. It is true that the press or the television allocates more of space and time respectively for the subject which have a sensational angle.

The American Spacecraft landing on the Mars was not given the wide publicity because of its limited appeal. It also lacked the sensational because Mars lander failed to send signals back to NASA. One would have expected a detailed discussion on the efforts to land on the Mars and reasons as to why the machine failed. That would have had an educational value.

Should there not be the responsibility for the media to balance the time between items of temporary interests and those of lasting values. Media has a task to build responsible public opinion and build interests of people in areas of abiding value to the people in the long run by disseminating information in an impartial and objective manner.

If we recognise the fact that the media has the responsibility in building public opinion on the right lines, then we should also recognise the need for shifting the literature and bring out the best out of the available literature. There is an area which needs a special handling. This pertains to the category called the young writers or first timers. Media has to be sensitive to the emerging literature. There is a need to give publicity to the positive aspects of literature which would motivate others to proceed on right lines.

Indian media has unfortunately been characterised by conspicuous absence of internal recognition of Indian literature. History has shown that if the Indians have become great in certain fields, it is not because of the recognition by the Indian media. In most cases, the people have been recognised as great because of the external recognition, that is, from outside the country.

Rabindranath Tagore might not have been remembered but for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Dr S Radhakrishnan, who was President of India, is remembered as a great Philosopher because the West recognised him. Dr C V Raman is known for the ''Raman Effect'' but he became famous only after he received Nobel Prize for Physics. The great Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujam would have died as an unknown clerk of the Port Trust, Madras but for the fact that his Mathematical abilities were recognised by Professor Hardy of UK Dr Chandra Shekhar is known as eminent Astrophysicist because of the recognition by the Nobel Committee and by American Government. A Space Research Centre in the USA has recently been named after him.

More recently, we have a number of Indian authors such as Vikram Seth, Arundati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri etc, who have become famous because of the recognition abroad. Even the eminent novelist R K Narayan became famous only after another eminent western novelist Graham Greene praised him.

The media, will have to be a trend setter of modern norms in the society. At the same time, the media have also a responsibility for revival of the ancient values which have a relevance in the modern day. In fact, the credit for bringing out the Mathematical content in the Vedas goes to the western institutions which have introduced Vedic Mathematics as a curriculum. Many of the logarithms used in the computer programming had, in a sense, been anticipated in the Vedic mathematics itself. Of late, cardiologists throughout the world have been streesing the values of mediation and yoga as form of medicine for treating heart conditions and to handle problems of hypertension.

May be the media will have to highlight such values from our own legacy so that modern youngsters understands these values and get influenced by them. This would call for a shift of the media from the position of a pure profit seeker to that a responsible change agent of the society. This would call for a considerable introspection on the part of the media. PTI Feature