Himalayan Dichotomy

Thursday, November 12, 2009

It's been almost two decades since the western media (and investors) started taking a note of the two big emerging economies in Asia. China and India have now become the talking point at many global conferences and the western countries seem to slowly yield to these two countries more and more. The two giants of Asia are said to be marching on to new economic heights and on the way setting the "The New World Order". However, in the recent past the relations between these countries have worsened. Increased competition for global resources, a better share of the world power and increased economic capacity for military spending seems to have put China and India at loggerheads with each other. BBC even made a documentary which discussed the "race to the top of the world" between India and China. They even made it look like a race between the biggest "democracy" and the biggest "authoritarian regime" in the world.

It is quite clear that there is bound to be friction between India and China in the future as their economies demand a larger share of global resources. So far Chinese state-owned and sponsored companies have outdone the much smaller but for-profit, privately-owned Indian companies in the global energy sector.However, the bilateral trade between the two countries have blossomed. China became India's biggest trading partner in 2008 as it relegated the US to No.2 position. The Sino-Indian bilateral trade which stood at $1.9 bn in 1998, is now more than $50 bn in 2008. Impressive!

However, the border "dispute" between the two nations is the biggest obstacle to peace and co-operation between the two. Historically, there is no evidence of any border dispute between Tibet and British India or even the pre-British Hindustan. Also there is no evidence of a dispute between the (what Chinese call) Xinjiang (i.e. Uygur) province and India's northern state of Kashmir. However, after China occupied these provinces immediately after the "revolution" it has had laid claims to parts of India's territory. China has occupied an area 37,250 square kilometres which was part of the erstwhile Kingdom of Kashmir, which was subsequently acceded to India in 1948. The other dispute involves the Arunachal Pradesh of India which China claims as it own and it is called Southern Tibet by the Chinese. A brisk but bloody war was fought in 1962, after India discovered the National Highway built by the Chinese in Aksai Chin. The war resulted in a swift Chinese victory but ironically it did not alter the status quo. Their relations remained frosty and were worsened as China started siding with the "capitalist" countries starting in the Nixon era of the cold war.

Since 1980s, both these countries have seen each other as a threat to their dominance in Asia. India's "peaceful" atomic tests and the proliferation thereafter were primarily a response China's program (and NOT Pakistan's program, but Pakistanis are not convinced.) Although, China's foreign policy white papers do not regard India as a potential competitor, its continued help to shape Pakistan's nuclear program and delivery system (through N.Korea) are obviously targeting India by using Pakistan as a proxy.

What is even more interesting is that very recently, a "think-tank" in China came out with a report on how they can break-up India into 20-30 smaller states. China claims that this is NOT an OFFICIAL policy of the Chinese government but as we all know that there is no freedom of speech in China and that a think-tank could not have published such a report without prior approval of the officials. Also, the number of Chinese ncursions, as India calls it, along the ill-defined border in the Himalayas have increased significantly since 2006. Is it a result of just aggressive patrol? Right after the India- US civilian nuclear deal?

China and India both have several border disputes. India has border disputes with all of her neighbors except Bhutan - Pakistan (in Kashmir, need I say more), Sri Lanka (over an island), Bangladesh (over Boraibari, Meghalaya and Berubari, W. Bengal and several others), with Nepal (in Uttarakhand), with Maldives (over Minicoy Island; now resolved) .
China on the other hand has fought wars with India in 1962 over border dispute, with eartwhile Soviet Union in 1969. China also has disputes with South Korea (Baekdu Mountain and Socotra Rock) , with Bhutan ( over several enclaves which, China claims, are part of Tibet) with Phillipines ( Macclesfield Bank in South China Sea) , with Japan (over Okinotorishima.)
Interestingly the disputes with South Korea was started by the Chinese in 2006 and with Japan in 2004.

In light of these disputes involving India and China, the obvious question is whether the recent tensions between India and China, only a part of their quest for dominance in Asia? Consider the recently concluded deal between India and US, the turmoil in Pakistan which has put Pakistan on the back-foot, relieving India to address other security concerns and India's moon mission and other advancements, one wonders whether the China-India dispute is a real dispute or a "statement".

A Jobless Recovery and a Witless Society

Friday, November 6, 2009

The Dow Jones is now hovering close to the 10000 mark. However, the unemployment rate in the US has reached a high of 10.2% in October 2009. (Highest since April 1983.) Also, it was recently revealed that the US economy expanded at an annualized rate of 3.5% but the unemployment rate continues to rise. As one commentator puts it: "Jobless recovery is like Joyless orgasm"

What we have witnessed is increased outsourcing of jobs or as American corporations put it "diversifying their business in the emerging economies." Many corporations, which have outsourced hundreds of thousands of jobs, are using this recession as a pretext to do so. The economists have only focused on jobs lost in the US but nobody seems to be worried or at least concerned about hiring sprees of American corporations abroad. So are we to understand that the jobs lost in this recession are lost forever? or as long as India and China remain emerging economies with cheap unskilled (China) and cheap skilled (India) labor?

There are two arguments given by the corporations:

1. Competition: Of course, the Americans are competing with corporations world over and thus, they need to be "competitive" and all that. Here's an interesting example.

" At first, British Petroleum (BP) floated a contract worth $ 1.5 bn to outsource their IT business to India. A day after the BP formally awarded over $1.5-billion outsourcing contracts to TCS, Infosys and Wipro (all Indian companies) along with IBM and Accenture (which have more employees in India than in US) , top Indian offshore vendors including L&T Infotech and HCL Technologies (the Indian newbies) —along with other MNC vendors—have locked horns with each other for almost $1-billion outsourcing deal being fleshed out by ExxonMobil."

So as I understand it, BP first contracted Indian companies to cut their costs and ExxonMobil had to follow suit in order to be competitive?


2. Skills: The new American economy will create new job markets that do not exist today and thus, Americans are at an advantageous positions because they have the opportunity to be part of these "futuristic industries".

Here is an argument on these lines:
"Great inventions, like grand ideas, move the world forward. Railroads, television, airplanes, transistors, computers, satellites, space travel, microchips, cell phones. The reality is, a great many folks entering the workforce will work at jobs that don't yet exist in industries that have yet to be invented. Look what the Internet did for IT. Computers remain the central, indispensable element of modern life. That will not change any time soon."

Guess where I am coming to? ... H1B!

If the new economy is going to produce new job markets, I am certain that those job markets would require specific (and in most cases extreme) skills. That leads us to question whether Americans have those skills? Do they have the right education?

According to some estimates, 60% of the recipients of degree certificates in America, are foreigners. Even if one analyzes the current unemployment one would find that the unemployment is highest among people who do not hold a degree and least among people with graduate education. Interestingly, Prez. Obama is emphasizing on higher education, talking to school children about importance of education.

But till the Americans enroll themselves in the higher educational institutes, don't we need to import skilled labor?

Here's an example:

"America like most of the Western countries is faced with acute shortage of nurses and in recent years it has allowed medical personnel from India, China and Philippines to immigrate to work in hospitals."
"The notion that we would have to import nurses makes absolutely no sense," Obama told a gathering of health experts and lawmakers at a White House meeting on health care reforms. Instead, Prez. Obama argued that the best possible approach to meet this shortfall is to train people inside the country. And according to the Department of Labour, the current (March 2009) national nursing shortage exceeds 126,000. So Obama plans to train large number of nurses as it is expected that there will be a shortage of over 500,000 nurses in the next seven years (according to Democratic lawmaker Capps).

So are we to understand that in next seven years America will train 500,000 nurses?
It is interesting to note that in the US training of nurses and doctors is essentially the same. It takes about 2-4 years to finish a degree program in nursing (Associate program is 2 years and Bachelors program is 4 years)and some more time to become a registered nurse (by taking a test called NCLEX-RN). But what about experience? It will take years to gain experience in nursing (just like any other profession) and to specialize even further. Anyway, how is Prez. Obama going to induce Americans to take up nursing as a profession? Of course, he must raise the salaries of nurses all over the US. There are about 2.5 mn nurses in the US today and a salary hike of even $10,000 a year would mean $25 bn of additional costs every year.



My argument is that why not to import labour from the emerging countries? If the capital can flow from where it is in abundance to where there is dearth of capital and an opportunity to invest capital, why can't labour flow in the other direction?

There are many job categories where Americans do not want to work as they find those jobs beneath themselves. So far they have imported cheap labor from other countries (and now they are blaming those laborers for the unemployment in America.) Also there are many categories where one needs the right training (as I mentioned above.)

Note that American corporations invest billions of dollars abroad and thus, make profit from the labor provided by other countries. Would it be right if those countries banned American corporations from investing their capital and selling their products in their economies?

Globalization is going to work both ways. It will present many lucrative opportunities to the corporations and it will present many job opportunities to peoples world over.

On one hand, Americans can and do make money by investing in India and China because of the so-called liberalization of those economies and on the other hand they don't want Indians and Chinese to "arrogate" the opportunities created by globalization. Lo...you can't have your cake and eat it too!

By the way, this recession is America's own making, senators who de-regulated the markets were Americans, elected by Americans. Why blame foreign workers? Because they are a soft-target? Americans should first understand the nexus between the Wall Street and Capitol Hill. Isn't it obvious that politicians are looking for a scapegoat?

World of Fatwas

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

On November 2nd, 2009 Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind, one of the leading Islamic organizations, (you might remember the Khilafat Movement) issued a "fatwa" declaring the national song "Vande Mataram" unislamic, asking muslims not to sing the song. This was the story in the media but what actualy happened? What is Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind? What is a fatwa and why is Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind issuing one now? What is the argument behind declaring vande mataram unislamic?

Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind is a leading Islamic organization in India. There are several organizations of Muslims of different sects who have issued a truckload of fatwas ever since Muhammad (pbuh) died. Although, no "fatwa" was issued on 2nd November 2009 by Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind, it did pass several resolutions that day.
Some of these resolutions were quite controversial. Here are the excerpts of few of them:

1. Resolution on Terrorism:
"Islam is a religion of peace " and "a blessing for the entire humanity." (duh... recently a question was asked to Anjum Chaudhary, an Islamic "scholar" in "Britannia", asking him whether Islam is a religion of peace. His response - "Islam is a religion of submission", to Allah of course).

Jihad is being maligned by "propaganda machines" as terrorism and they condemn "suicide bombings and murderous attacks that are targetted at "innocent" persons, women, children and elderly". (When Muslims say innocent they mean Muslims; non-Muslims are "guilty" of not believing in Islam!) They condemned terrorism and also criticized the government for its prejudice against Muslims.

2. Resolution on the implementation of Sachar committee report: They demanded that the "UPA" government should implement it. (Note that its not Govt. of India but the "UPA" government. And the use of the term UPA government continues in the rest of resolutions.)

3. Resolution on reservations for Muslims: "Muslims should be declared the most backward community." Muslims should be at par with Dalits.

4. Resolution on laws to prevent riots: A new law to avert communal riots is demanded. (But there is no need for POTA.)

5. Resolution on Babri Mosque: Take action against Babri Musjid perpetrators.

6. Resolution on Homosexuality: Against sexual anarchy and debauchery

7. Resolution on Women reservation bill:
"33% reservation for women is uncalled for. Attempt to bring women into the mainstream will create various other social problems issues including their security."

8. Resolution on Unity: Unity of Muslims, Dalits and other minorities to have effective stake in power (against caste Hindus of course and please remember that Islam is a religion of peace and a blessing for the entire humanity.)

9. Resolution against US in Afghanistan and Iraq and Israel in Palestine etc.

10. Resolution against Vande Mataram.
"Vande Mataram violates our faith in monotheism that is the foundation of our faith." "The fatwa of Darul Uloom is correct."

So they did not issue a fatwa but only passed a resolution affirming the validity and correctness of a fatwa (against Vande Mataram) issued by another organization, called Darul Uloom (House of Knowledge) in Deoband.

So what is a fatwa?

A fatwa in Arabic is a "legal" opinion issued by an ulema, a doctor of Islam. A believer can approach an ulema with a question about human life and the ulema is supposed to save the ordinary believer from "the travails of inquiry" in regard to the Quran. Jamiat-e-ulema-e-hind (Organization of Indian Scholars) can issue a fatwa (or any ulema for that matter) if asked a question by any Muslim and of course it can take any question suo moto and issue the decree. Darul Uloom Deoband issued a fatwa in 2006 declaring "Vande Mataram" unislamic.

One would imagine that the fatwas are issued in regards with public affairs or religious matters and their Islamic interpretation and solutions. However, the "World of Fatwas" is quite comprehensive and it covers all walks of life. Following are some of the questions which were posed by ordinary Muslims to the ulemas and fatwas were issued by these Islamic institutes against these questions. These questions are not only quite lurid but it is also shocking to know that ordinary Muslims seek the blessings of religious leaders on these private matters.


"If both man and woman have clothes on during the act (intercourse), is a bath necessary?(after the intercourse)" "If semen is emitted while one is awake, is bath required?" "Why does a bath become necessary when one has intercourse with a thick cloth tied around one's organ?" "A minor girl is raped; is a bath necessary for her?"

Many querist came up to the Darul-Ulema Deoband with such questions and Darul-Ulema issued fatwas against these questions. Even more wicked questions were raised by the believers and they were summarily answered by the Ulemas. We continue:

A querist asks "What is the hukum about the animal with which a man has had sexual intercourse - what is the hukum about the animal and the man?." "Zaid has had intercourse with a goat. What is the law in respect of her? Can we eat her flesh or drink her milk? And what is the law for him who has had the intercourse?" "Zaid had intercourse with a cow and then sold it. How should the money be spent?" The ulema promptly issued a fatwa based on his great scholarship of Islam - "If there is no ejaculation (inside the animal) its meat and milk are halal (edible), without question. But if there is ejaculation, it is better to kill the animal and bury its flesh. No one should eat it, though it is not haram to eat it".

Here's another question:
"After how many days should one remove pubic hair etc.? What is the sunnah method and what is better?" asks the querist. Notice that these querists consider that even these private matters require a ruling from Ulema and note the use of the word sunnah (sunnah is the sayings and living habits of Muhammad (pbuh.)), and that the querist, in this case, would like to follow the practice of Muhammad (pbuh.) The answer from the Ulema , of course, becomes the Islamic way of cutting one's pubic hair : - " ... It is also reported in a tradition that the Holy Prophet (Sallallaho alaihe wa sallam) used to pare his nails and clip his mustache every Friday, shave off pubic hair after every twenty days and arm-pit hair every forty days (Al-Taliq al -Sabeeh Vol. IV, p. 405). Finis."

You can find many more fatwas here.

Here are some more interesting fatwas from the website of Darul Ulam Deoband. I have also provided the links to their website for those of you who are interested in the wicked "world of fatwas":

Pardon me but the language used here is really bad. However, I have only copy- pasted these from the website.

1. Question: 2624: Link

If a person did sex with feyancy's (sic) mother. Can he marry that girl or not? This situation was happened in our circumferences..... Shall we arrange marry for them or not?

Ans: If someone committed adultery with a woman then he cannot marry the daughter of the woman provided he confesses the adultery or it is proved by two fair witnesses.

2. Question: 6622 Link

IS Nikah break if someone have Anal Sex with his wife?

Ans: The nikah will not be broken but anal sex is haram, unlawful and sin. However, if one does intercourse into vagina from behind it is allowed.

3. Question: 6914 Link

Assaloalekum. On a very emotional night I had sexual intercourse with my sister in law( my saali) due to this she got pregnant.Can I marry with my sister in law.My wife is alive but she give us permission to marry.

Ans: You can not marry your sister-in-law as long as your wife is in your nikah. It is haram for a person to marry two sisters in a time; it has been prohibited in the Holy Quran. It is not allowed for you to do the Nikah even if your wife allows, while she is in your Nikah, to marry her sister unless your wife gets separation from you completely. Both of you (you yourself and your sister-in-law) should repent sincerely from this grave sin (adultery), seek forgiveness from Allah, get separated form each other immediately and have no further relation with each other.

4. Question: 3136 Link

Askm i want to know about folowing dreams 1. i saw this dream before subah sadiq .i saw two dead person ,a male and a female and their faces were so bad tht i didnt wanted to look at them then sumone replied that they wr kafirs an on that day only i got news of death of 1 hindu woman and 1 shia man. 2.During last -last ramzan .generally i din used to sleep at night.and it happened few times tht i slept after doing sehri n i didnt prayed fajr salah ..n on 2 or 3 occasions i saw somewhat similar dream----- riots ,muslims r being killed n tortored and m among one of them.. 3.Nowadays ALHAMDULILLAH i hv started reading Quran (n tafseer of Abdul Majid daryabadi) daily .i saw in my dream tht the Quran fell from the shelf because it was not properly kept by me .I was very sad in the dream. 4.I saw that my mother and sister are wearing unislamic dress (although my mother wears naqab) and i ws very angry on them.. ALLAH aap sab ko jannatul firdous ata kare.

Ans:

The meaning of the dream is that you are awestruck by the glamour and pomp of batil (falsehood). The dream is warning too that you should learn a lesson by their consequences.

(2) The dream presents a slight flash of the severe punishment for missing Fajr salah and especially in Ramazan. May Allah protect us!

(3) You are lazy in making use of the tafseers written by authentic Ulama of Ahl-us-Sunnah. This is meaning of the dream.

(4) The dream reflects the common condition and feeling of Muslim woman in general. Your anger is a sign of your religious and Islamic feeling. May Allah protect all of us from things detestable and grant us the pleasure of both the worlds.

5. Question: 4906 Link

Aasalamualaykum, My wife want to stay with Hindu man to whome she loves it is question of iman and also of ezat. Want to ask is there any kind of dua or wazifa to bring wife back home without giving her to eat or drink anything? and keep her in control?

Ans:
After the Isha Salah, take 11 grains of black pepper and recite یا لطیف یا ودود 1100 times with durood 11 times before and after while thinking your wife to love you. Having it done, blow on the black peppers and put them in burning fire and pray to Allah. Do this at least for forty days.

6. Question: 19991 Link

All our teachers are Hindu and many of their festivals and religious ceremonies come up on which all the students greet and congratulate them. We find it embarrassing not to greet them, so what should we do? Should we greet them or not? Would you please help us, may Allah grant you all goodness.

Ans:
It is not permissible for Muslims to take part with the Hindu disbelievers in celebrating their festivals and religious occasions. One should neither show happiness and approval, nor congratulate them on such occasions. This is imitation of the enemies of Allah in their forbidden acts which are not in line with Islamic tenets. It also constitutes a sort of assisting them in sin and transgression, bringing them joy, flattering them, adding numbers to their gatherings [thus giving them significance], and giving them prestige. Allah, the Exalted states,Surah Al-Ma'idah, 5: 2 Help you one another in Al-Birr and At-Taqwâ (virtue, righteousness and piety); but do not help one another in sin and transgression. And fear Allâh. Verily, Allâh is Severe in punishment. It is authentically narrated that the Prophet (peace be upon him) stated, Anyone who imitates a people becomes one of them.

__________________________________________________________
Alright, now let us turn our attention to the national song "vande mataram".What's "wrong" with vande mataram? Why is it unislamic?

Apparently, it hails Mother India as a goddess. The original song has several "objectionable" verses such as:

"Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen"
"Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned"
" And thy glorious smile divine"

And not so surprisingly, these verses were omitted before the Muslim organizations "allowed" the song to be the national song of India.

So what is the motive of the Jamat to declare the song unislamic right before P Chidambaram speaks at their conference in Deoband?

Supporting Raj Thackeray

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Raj Thackeray, the fiery marathi politician, has long been condemned as parochial and anti-national. Raj Thackeray took the marathi manoos cause as his primary agenda in the general elections and assembly elections in 2009. His people ran riot in Mumbai (or Bombay as some call it) , beating "bhaiyyas" from North India(Read UP and Bihar) and vandalizing taxis, buses and businesses ran by these "bhaiyyas". Mr. Thackeray was immediately condemned by the national media especially the Hindi media. (Note that hindi and english media is called national media.)

So that led me to think about problem of migrant workers from UP and Bihar and other states.
As we all that Mumbai if flooded with these people and the question is how many of them are here. In a recent report released by Municipal

Corporation of Greater Mumbai, the picture is pretty clear.

The report says that between 1991-2001, Mumbai's population increased by 43.7%, all because of migration from all over India. Most of the migrants came from UP - Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka.

The situation has obviously gotten worse in this decade. So is Raj Thackeray right? Should we have work permit for people coming from outside of Maharashtra?

Migration, although a natural phenomenon, has caused a lot of social tensions between local and migrant communities world over. We have witnessed the rise of British National (Nazi) Party, National Democratic Party (German Nazis) and National Front( France). So the argument is that this extreme right politics is not just restricted to Mumbai ( or Bombay). The migration of cheap labor from eastern Europe and the tremendous increase in Muslim population has been the reason in the Western Europe. In Mumbai, we have seen similar migration (cheap labor) undercutting the locals in a big way. So I think Raj Thackeray's politics is a natural reaction to this influx of migrants.

Worst part of all this is that, Marathi people have been dubbed parochial and xenophobic by the elitist media in New Delhi. The people have been misguided to believe that there is problem in Maharashtra and Raj Thackeray is playing dirty politics over it. In reality the problem is in UP and Bihar. These two are completely failed states along with Jharkhand and West Bengal. (Yes West Bengal too...Bangal is Kangal).

Maharashtra definitely has problems of its own but they are aggrevated because of migrants. Many people have talked about infrastructure issues and such but the real problem is that of equity of income. The wealth created by the upper-classes is not percolated to the lower rungs of economic ladder. Marathi workers are in a state of perpetual unemployment where as migrants are undercutting them and getting paid.

Next point is about Marathi language and culture. People (i.e. outsiders) have opposed "marathification" of Mumbai claiming that Mumbai (or Bombay) is a city of migrants built by the British where migrants have mainly contributed to the economy of the city. This is basically an attempt, successful to an extent, to discredit marathis. Marathis' contribution to this city is much more that any other community. On the other hand, Madras (now Chennai) and Calcutta (now Kolkata) were also cities of migrants and were built by the British. However, the media never critised bengalification and tamilification of these cities. Why is Mumbai an exception? Why are Marathis being forced to be "cosmopolitin" when every other community is selfishly regional?

Raj Thackeray definitely has an agenda which has found popular support in the urban Maharashtra(there 130 urban constituencies in MH). However, the media and the establishment are continually denieing the fact there are legitimate griviences of the locals. Political parties like the Congress and BJP are unwilling to do any thing to address these grievances because they have much larger votebank in the North to look after. Thus, they can not act against the migrants and i dare say that they can not act in the interest of Maharashtra.

The latest report published by BMC only goes to corroborate the agenda of the MNS and it is only going to start a race between Shivsena and MANASE to cater to the needs of Marathi people in urban maharashtra.


UPDATE 1:

Here is another example of violence against migrants. This time its in Russia:

Part 1:


Part 2:


UPDATE 2:

This was the news on November 6, 2009 on the website of Indian Express.

"Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan did a Raj Thackeray when he said jobs in the state would not be allowed to be taken away by Biharis but backtracked after leaders from Bihar roundly condemned the controversial remark."

So does that now mean that the problem of UP and Bihar's exploding population is affecting many parts of India? Assam, Bengal, Delhi, Punjab, Maharashtra, Karnataka?

So what Raj is saying is right? There is definitely a problem in many states now, Maharashtra, Karnatak, Assam, Delhi (remember Sheila Dixit's comments) and now Madhya Pradesh. I know that people might talk about violence, taking law into your own hands and all that. But if we strip Raj Thackeray of his violence, then does he represent a legitimate grievance faced by Marathi people?

Just to give you an idea of the population explosion in the "cow belt" here is more information on the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of various Indian states:
Its taken from wikipedia.

Rank State Fertility rate
1 Andhra Pradesh 1.8
1 Goa 1.8
1 Tamil Nadu 1.8
4 Himachal Pradesh 1.9
4 Kerala 1.9
6 Punjab 2
6 Sikkim 2
8 Karnataka 2.1
8 Maharashtra 2.1
10 West Bengal 2.3
11 Assam 2.4
11 Gujarat 2.4
11 Jammu and Kashmir 2.4
11 Orissa 2.4
11 Tripura 2.4
16 Chattisgarh 2.6
16 Uttarakhand 2.6
18 Haryana 2.7
- Whole INDIA 2.7
19 Manipur 2.8
20 Mizoram 2.9
21 Arunachal Pradesh 3
22 Madhya Pradesh 3.1
23 Rajasthan 3.2
24 Jharkhand 3.3
25 Nagaland 3.7
26 Meghalaya 3.8
27 Uttar Pradesh 3.8
28 Bihar 4

Okay so now we know that UP and Bihar are last on the list. But what is Total fertility rate (TFR)?

TFR is actually the average number of children bore by a woman over her entire reproductive life. So now if on average, a couple has 2 children, that is two people reproduce 2 children the population remains stable. (This is theoretical. Empirically it is found that the TFR should be 2.1 if we take into account the unnatural deaths i.e. accidents, diseases, homicides etc.) If there are less that 2 children per family then population declines over time and obviously if there are more than 2 children, population grows. India's average TFR is 2.7 (as given in the list above) so the Indian population is increasing. (Remember the "Hum do hamare do" campaign.)

However, Following states have their TFRs above the national average:

19 Manipur 2.8
20 Mizoram 2.9
21 Arunachal Pradesh 3
22 Madhya Pradesh 3.1
23 Rajasthan 3.2
24 Jharkhand 3.3
25 Nagaland 3.7
26 Meghalaya 3.8
27 Uttar Pradesh 3.8
28 Bihar 4

The population growth is highest in Jharkhand, UP and Bihar. Not so surprisingly, these states are the most backward states in India. Note that India gives every citizen an equal right to vote. Today these three states have about 30 % of India's population. (UP alone has 17%) Plus if you add people who have migrated to Punjab, Hariyana, Delhi, Maharashtra, Bengal, MP and other states, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand population is close to 40%. This population is most likely to continue in the next decade and more than half of Indian population would be from this so-called "cow belt". And soon we will have the biggest population in the world and we have the biggest democracy in the world dominated by these "hindiwallas".

So the question remains is Raj Thackeray right?

Update 3:



Four MNS members manhandled Mr. Abu Azmi in the Maharashtra assembly on November 11, 2009. After Abu Azmi took his oath in Hindi, he was bashed by four of the 13 MLAs of the MNS.

Abu Azmi has been insisting on taking oath in Hindi and Raj Thackeray had issued a "diktat" against doing so.

My question is why does Abu Azmi insist on hindi?

I think it is rightful to insist on Marathi as it is the language of the state. If people want to live in Maharashtra then should jolly-well learn Marathi. You don't hear Marathi anymore in Mumbai which is capital of Maharashtra. That piques the Marathi population. We always think of Mumbai as the financial capital of India but forget that it is also a capital of Maharashtra... just like any other state we have a capital which now-a-days almost alien land for any Marathi coming from other Maharashtra. Dramatic changes in demographics of any land is going to create tensions.

As far as a new low in the state assemblies is concerned, watch this:

This is the great UP assembly and their NATIONALISTIC MLAs...





This is Andhra Pradesh: