* Labour federation anxious about foreign ownership
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's powerful trade union federation COSATU said it was unlikely to try to block a possible multi-billion dollar merger involving MTN (MTNJ.J) and India's Bharti Airtel (BRTI.BO).
COSATU spokesman Patrick Craven said on Wednesday the MTN deal was fundamentally different from the recent deal involving state telecoms operator Telkom which handed control of South African mobile provider Vodacom to Britain's Vodafone (VOD.L).
The labour grouping, which says it has 1.8 million paid-up members, came close to scuppering that deal.
"Telkom has always been 50 percent owned by the public and the move was part of our policy agenda against privatisation. MTN has always been a private company," said Craven.
"We remain concerned that another foreign company may take control of another key South African telecoms company (but) we haven't taken a decision on blocking the deal," Craven said.
Bharti and MTN Group have revived merger talks to create a $61 billion telecoms giant spanning Africa, Asia and the Middle East a year after their previous attempt foundered over who would control the combined entity. [ID:nLP34850]
In the Vodacom deal, the trade union body said it feared job losses.
The deal enriched businessmen close to the former government of Thabo Mbeki, angering leftists, and intensified investor fears of resurgent union clout under new president Jacob Zuma. (Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by David Cowell) News courtesy Reuters
Johannesburg - South Africa's leading researchers, scientists, conservationists and wildlife pathologists have united to save crocodiles after a massive die-off in the Kruger National Park's Olifants gorge, SANParks said on Monday.
Head of the department for scientific services at the Kruger National Park Danie Pienaar said that the initiative, known as the Consortium for the Restoration of the Olifants Catchment, was dedicated to answering questions surrounding the deaths of over 160 crocodiles and the growing environmental problem in the Olifants River system.
"The river has been used and abused for the past five decades, and pollution is getting progressively worse," said aquatic ecologist Peter Ashton of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.
The river had been subjected to prolonged and cumulative ecosystem stress as a result of human activities in the catchment.
"We suspected that the ongoing pollution of the Olifants River system would eventually result in some kind of ecological disaster. The large number of crocodile mortalities, however, caught us by surprise," said Pienaar.
While clues were increasingly pointing to pollution from industrial, mining and agricultural sources, the exact trigger that started the process of crocodile deaths remained elusive.
Post-mortem results showed that the crocodiles died of pansteatitis, a disease which results in the general hardening of the body fat, mostly as a result of inadequate antioxidant levels.
"One of the important outcomes of this programme will be to put in place a rapid response management mechanism should something of this nature ever happen again," said Pienaar.
This week I have chosen South Africa as my "country of the week". After the hectic election week spent in India, I needed some place to relax. And which place would serve better in this cause than RSA. The sheer nature power must take over to prove that all the human invented politics are immaterial. Specially when the country is cooling down after stunningly and surprisingly successful IPL heat wave. The tourist flow has gone low and its the best time to enjoy the wild nature to the fullest lying in her lap. The vacant beaches have become more sensuas, the jungles have become more fierce, the mountains have become more alluring, the rivers are flowing with more thurst than ever....... Welcome to South Africa.....where nature writes her poetry...
Results are out... laughter and tears are floating in the air side by side.. as expected..is'n it? But like all other Indians I too could not escape this heat., and to be honest I'm not really happy with the result overall. Please don't consider me a jealous NDA or third front supporter who faced a complete white wash, but rather I'm a bit disappointed with some individual results that were really very shocking to me. Specially some of the results from West bengal really surprised me to my wits end. Lefts not just faced their worst defeat in last 32 years, but the abusuement they recieved from the opposition was just a bit too much for many. It was almost a complete white wash. Many MPs won their first stint. But I have more than enough doubt how will they perform in their service tenure. I think the whole West Bengal will be looking toward their perfomance.
Braving summer heat, an estimated 15 to 20 per cent of the voters turned up during the first four hours of polling on Wednesday for the fifth and final phase of Lok Sabha elections which was by and large peaceful.
Two scribes of private TV channels were injured when they were allegedly attacked by activists of ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) at Duneke village on the outskirts of Moga town when they recorded footage of party workers carrying weapons in vehicles, police sources said.
One person was killed early this morning in a clash between Trinamool Congress activists and CPM cadre at Baliguri on the outskirts of kolkata before the polling began.
While Tamil Nadu recorded 22 per cent of voting till 11:00 am, Uttar Pradesh registered 21 per cent, Puducherry 25 per cent, Punjab, West Bengal and Uttarakhand 15-20 per cent each, Himachal Pradesh 12 -15 per cent, Chandigarh 18 per cent and Jammu and Kashmir six per cent.
Prominent candidates in the fray include Home Minister P Chidambaram, DMK's T R Baalu, Dayanidhi Maran and M K Azhagiri, Congress' Md Azharuddin, BJP's Maneka and Varun Gandhi and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, MDMK's Vaiko and SP's Jayaprada.
Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, CPM leader Brinda Karat, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa were some of the early voters.
Squinting against the glare of the merciless mid-morning sun, Babasaheb Mane (35) raises a wireless microphone to his lips.
“A government that cannot provide jobs or food is useless,” he bellows in Hindi, standing in the middle of Wadarwadi slum in Pune, Maharashtra. “So you must vote for the Bahujan Samaj Party.”
The residents of Wadarwadi, about 160 kilometres south-east of state capital Mumbai, are mostly Dalits such as the wadars (a caste of stonecutters), nomadic tribes and Muslims.
Mane, an ayurvedic doctor, belongs to the Kaikadi community, a nomadic tribe whose traditional occupations include rearing donkeys and weaving baskets.
He grew up in an impoverished village in Satara district, 120 kilometres away, and climbed the social ladder by dint of his fine mind and grit, with help from government scholarships.
Today, he runs a clinic in the slum, is a prominent social activist in the area, and is a member and former state general secretary of the Bahujan Samaj Party.
Ahead of the general election, he is campaigning for an unlikely candidate: A Brahmin construction magnate with no political experience.
DS Kulkarni, whose Pune-based company DSK Developers posts an annual revenue of more than Rs 14 crore and is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, entered the fray barely a month ago as a candidate for the party headed by Mayawati, Uttar Pradesh’s Dalit chief minister.
A small-built, balding man who speaks only haltingly in English, the 60-year-old Kulkarni took the plunge after four months of talks with the Bahujan Samaj Party.
“It was the only party that asked me, with great respect, whether I wanted to be a candidate,” he says candidly of his choice of party, as he climbs out of his multi-utility vehicle to walk through the slum. “As a businessman, I was very frustrated with the government. This might give me a chance to clean things up.”
Kulkarni doesn't stand much of a chance in Pune, where the fight is essentially between sitting Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi, a powerful businessman, and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Anil Shirole.
But his campaign highlights both the immense importance that many educated Dalits give to electoral politics and the ambitions of the BSP in Maharashtra, where the only other party that exclusively represents Dalits is the highly fractious Republican Party of India, which has over the years splintered into about a dozen factions.
The BSP is fielding candidates in all 48 constituencies of Maharashtra this election.
“If I need to get to the station and someone drops me off there, what’s wrong with that?” asks Mane, using a metaphor for the ultimate goal of attaining political power. “For us, it is not that important who the candidate is. We are a cadre-based party. We vote for the party’s symbol.”
Dalit leaders’ active engagement with the electoral process has a long history.
BR Ambedkar, the pioneering Dalit activist, lawyer and chief author of India’s Constitution, attacked the Congress for leading a superficial political struggle without an agenda for social change.
But he also emphasised the need for Dalits to attain political power to complement their social struggle.
“Political power,” Ambedkar said, “is the master key that can open any lock.”
Mane epitomises that twinning of social activism with party politics.
“We still have not been given our constitutional rights as delineated by Ambedkar in the constitution,” he says, seated in his clinic. And he knows he does not have the funds to stand for elections himself.
So here he is, urging Wadarwadi’s residents to vote for a man who lives in an opulent walled estate in Pune, guarded by security guards and several vicious-looking dogs.
Stepping gingerly over rivulets of gutter water flowing through Wadarwadi’s dense alleys, Kulkarni looks ill at ease in his new environs as he smiles wanly at women who come out to garland him.
Mane strides ahead of him and greets men who come out their houses with warm handshakes. In the lanes of Wadarwadi, Mane is clearly the one in command.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday shared the stage for the first time with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a poll rally in Amritsar, describing him as the "pride of Punjab and the country" who had taken India forward in all spheres.
"Manmohan Singh is pride of Punjab and India," Rahul, who is on his third visit to the state during the current Lok Sabha elections, said.
He said the UPA government will always stand for the "aam admi" unlike the NDA, which during its tenure, ignored various sections of society, including the poor, the farmers and the Dalits.
"When the Congress government came to power in 2004, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and we all made just one promise that we will work for the 'aam admi,' farmers of Punjab, mazdoor (labourers), Dalit and it will be there government. We functioned as per our promise," he said, slamming the NDA for "thinking" about the rich and upper classes.
He said the opposition parties made a new promise daily and ridiculed NDA's slogan of 'India shining' during the Lok Sabha elections in 2004, saying the slogan in English was only meant for the privileged.
Gandhi said the BJP leaders told the entire country that India is shining. "But they did not go to the houses of the poor, the farmers, the Dalit and other weaker sections. They just went to the houses of the rich. You (voters) then showed them the door," he said. as posted in http://indiatoday.intoday.in photo courtesy http://stan.uio.no
This week we will travel around my home land India, this is a land of many colors. And since the worlds largest democracy is voting this week, we will try to get the true color out of it.
The main idea behind Starting this news blog was to introduce a blog that will travel around the world and collect news, so that you get the regional touch in all the reports. Your active participation is my utmost requirement.
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