Letters

On India, offshore accounts, climate change, Japan, illegal booze, SWAT teams

In support of Modi

SIR – As a passionate reader of The Economist I have generally subscribed to your views as an accurate reflection of the facts. However, your leader on Narendra Modi, the favourite to become India’s prime minister after the election, drew upon unseemly logic (“Can anyone stop Narendra Modi?”, April 5th). To give just one example, you argued that Mr Modi helped organise a march on the holy site of Ayodhya in 1990 and inferred that this led, two years later, to the deaths of 2,000 people. Yet Mr Modi was barely a speck on the political horizon in the early 1990s and his role was, if anything, marginal. Moreover, the suggestion that the march led to riots two years later is irrational.

The facts are simple. Mr Modi’s administration in the state of Gujarat will be remembered more for growth and development than for riots. It accounts for 5% of India’s population, but for 26% of its exports and 18% of its investment. And unlike other states such as Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh that are ruled by supposedly secular politicians, Gujarat under Mr Modi has witnessed no Hindu-Muslim discord other than the unfortunate riots of 2002. On that count alone he became India’s most scrutinised politician and remains so, despite the fact that an independent judicial commission eventually exonerated him. His detractors privately admit that they simply have nothing else to pin on him.

Your recommendation that Rahul Gandhi would be the more acceptable prime minister is bizarre. What India so desperately needs is robust leadership, investment and growth. The Congress party’s populist agenda of entitlements and welfare has bankrupted the treasury and destroyed investor confidence.

Mr Modi is the best choice. Frankly, if the BJP does win this election it will be because the electorate voted for him, rather than for the party.

ADIT JAIN
Delhi

* SIR – Your briefing on India’s election was fascinating (“We are connected”, April 5th). If Mr Modi wins and can bring about a profound change in India’s Victorian-style bureaucracy he will be setting a good example and have done a great favour not only for India but also for its many neighbouring countries.

BUDDHA BASNYAT
Kathmandu, Nepal

Offshore finance and the BVIs

SIR – The governor of the British Virgin Islands should veto a piece of legislation on cybercrimes recently approved by the assembly (“Going overboard”, March 29th). The bill would impose stiff penalties—up to 20 years in prison and $1m in fines—on anyone, anywhere, who discloses or publishes leaked information about a BVI offshore company.

Although the rights of individuals to financial privacy should be respected, it is also necessary to safeguard the rights of those damaged by the criminal activities that such privacy can invite. The negative effects of offshore secrecy fall particularly heavily on developing countries. Offshore secrecy provides corrupt individuals and companies an easy way to stash illicit assets. Journalists and whistle-blowers should not be penalised for bringing such crimes and injustices to light.

The BVI legislation would do exactly that, by institutionalising a system in which protecting secrecy at all costs takes precedence over protecting principles of social justice and freedom of the press.

MICHAEL ELLIOTT
Chief executive
The ONE Campaign
Washington, DC

SIR - For a newspaper that extols the virtues of the democratic process, your suggestion that the British-appointed governor should veto a bill that is still only one-third of the way through the parliamentary process betrays a troubling lack of confidence in post-colonial legislatures.

COLIN RIEGELS
Partner
Harneys
Hong Kong

Our changing climate

SIR – “In the balance” (April 5th) presented a false dichotomy between being dispassionate and being alarmist about the impacts of climate change. There is nothing alarmist about the risk of extreme weather events leading to breakdowns in critical services and food systems. Such breakdowns have already accompanied, for example, the 2011 floods in Thailand and the 2010 drought in Russia. And there is nothing dispassionate about economic damage estimates that, in the words of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are “incomplete” and face “recognised limitations”.

Rather than suggesting that the risks assessed by the IPCC are scare stories and that the overall economic costs of climate change would be manageable, The Economist could explore the assumptions used by economic models and their developers to arrive at such estimates.

One assumption is that the occurrence of impacts will automatically lead to adaptation to those impacts. The IPCC chapter, “Adaptation opportunities, constraints and limits”, shows that such optimism is not justified. Not every farmer facing crop losses has the ability to choose a different crop variety, and not all urban dwellers can move to an area where they are not exposed to floods or landslides.

The world is facing impacts of climate change precisely because it is difficult to take effective action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. To assume that adaptation to these impacts will take place with little extra effort, at low or no cost and with immediate pay-off, is quite silly, and not a reflection of reality.

RICHARD KLEIN
IPCC author
Stockholm Environment Institute

* SIR - Your piece on the WG2 IPCC report overlooked the fact that warm temperatures usually reduce the growth cycle of crops not extend them. For example, crops in warmer areas of southern Europe mature earlier with lower yields compared with northern Europe. In addition the negative effects of short term exposure to high temperatures extends to all three major cereals and not just maize. These threshold effects are not included in most impact models and so the impacts of warming are likely underestimated.

The balanced approach to food security is to increase supply but also focus on the demand side. Food systems should be improved as a whole and waste reduced.

PROFESSOR JOHN PORTER
Climate and food security
University of Copenhagen

The office

SIR – In 1951 I started my business career at a prestigious company in Japan with great hopes and aspirations. What I found were rigid but unwritten rules of work (or pretending to work), such as not leaving the office before your boss does, joining the nominication drinking sessions, and so on. In this environment no innovative ideas were welcome. The all-important relationship was of the subordinate pledging total obedience to the boss, who in turn protects him.

In this working culture there was little room for talented women to survive, much less succeed. Even for a man like me, I saw no future. Your article, “Holding back half the nation” (March 29th), showed that working customs have not changed in Japan.

Fortunately, after enduring years of suffocation, I was recruited to join the Japanese branch of an American firm, and eventually retired happily in America.

MUNEYUKI NAKANO
Seattle

SIR – I found it notable that you did not mention the young Japanese woman who married the emperor’s son, following her American education and employment as a lawyer on Wall Street. There was hope at the time that she would influence the position of women in Japan, even in a very modest way. Her apparent disappearance from public life following her marriage is a disappointment to many.

MARGOT CHAMPAGNE
Phoenix

* SIR - Your interesting briefing on women in the Japanese workforce was marred by a tendency to view women as a single group with common interests. This is misleading and seriously distorts some of your arguments.

Prime Minister Abe is quite correct to believe that if his most highly educated professionals are going to combine work and parenthood then an increase in the supply of nannies and carers is needed. Most likely in the form of poorly paid women from other countries to work as servants for professional women and professional men.

Life in the developed world increasingly demands and assumes two incomes and the poor are disproportionately from single-income households. This explains why fewer Japanese men than women aspire to life with a stay-at-home wife. Your writers recognise that men are not all alike and that what is good for male bankers is not necessarily good for male workers in a fast-food restaurant. Isn’t it time you recognised this for women too?

ALISON WOLF
Professor of public-sector management
King’s College London

Illegal booze

* SIR - Your article on food crime briefly mentioned the revival of bootlegging ("À la cartel", March 15th). Moon shining and alcoholic contraband are more alive than ever in Latin America, with dangerous consequences for public health, crime and loss of income. According to Euromonitor, one out of every four bottles of alcohol is illegal on average in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama and El Salvador. Peru has the highest level of illegal alcohol, accounting for 31% of the total alcohol market. On average, the retail price of illegal alcohol is one third lower than the legal equivalent. The annual loss for these six countries has been estimated at $736m, with counterfeit and contraband as the main categories responsible for the loss.

Maybe food is starting to suffer from the same ills, but illegal alcohol remains a much bigger problem.

ANDRES PEÑATE
Vice-president of corporate affairs for Latin America
SABMiller Latin America
Miami

SWAT teams at county fairs

* SIR – The article about the militarisation of America’s police (“Cops or soldiers”, March 22nd) reminded me of an episode of “The Wire”, where Major Colvin says, “You call something a war, and pretty soon everybody gonna be running around acting like warriors.” I found your article particularly interesting as a resident of sleepy Santa Barbara. Our local police have procured a BearCat armoured personnel carrier, just like the town of Keene in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, we have no pumpkin festival to protect.

JIM ANDREWS
Santa Barbara, California

* Letter appears online only

This article appeared in the Letters section of the print edition under the headline "On India, offshore accounts, climate change, Japan, illegal booze, SWAT teams"

Insatiable

From the April 19th 2014 edition

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Letters to the editor

A selection of correspondence

Letters to the editor

A selection of correspondence


Letters to the editor

A selection of correspondence