BRIC
BRIC
Fair Observer provides analysis of important issues, events and trends in the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.
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An insider’s opinion on Brazil’s apathy to the Occupy movement. Brazilians seem to have had either little interest, or have greatly misunderstood the purpose of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. With the exception of a small number of fools like me, excited and involved in the process, who thought it possible to play Don Quixote and win, most people sat idly by their televisions, grappling lazily to understand the frequently incoherent news on TV – a shallow picture of young people camping out in the financial heart of the world’s “capital of cool,” New York City. Having lived in “the city” for almost a decade, I felt inspired to bring a...
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360° Analysis / Politics / BRIC / AsiaBy Vikram SoodAn Indian veteran’s perspectives on the India-Pakistan relationship. Old shibboleths and half-truths take a long time to wither away. Pakistan still likes to believe, or at least its leadership does, that India is determined to undo the partition and grab Pakistan. It is essential that Pakistan be convinced through force of logic and reality, and not by hopeful pacification bordering on appeasement, that India is simply not interested no matter what state Pakistan is in. This is more so, when it is in the present state of economic destitution and political isolation, because of its own international misdemeanours. As soon as Pakistani leaders understand this, as soon as its military...
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By Rakesh Krishnan Simha The Russian President has one last chance to reform a creaky economy and a sulking society. Vladimir Putin is facing an unfamiliar problem. After 13 years at the helm, he no longer has the job of saving the largest country on the planet. That file is closed. Because of Putin’s astute diplomacy and America’s Middle East misadventures, Western attempts to put Russia in a box have fizzled out. Emergent Russia is, therefore, no longer threatened by a terminally declining West. On May 7 when Putin walks into his Kremlin office to serve a third term as President, the pomp and pageantry of the ceremonies will not conceal the fact that the Russian leader is...
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By Mark N. KatzDespite the sweeping changes taking place across the Middle East and Asia, Putin is unlikely to change Russia’s foreign policy. What will Russian foreign policy be like now that Vladimir Putin has resumed the Russian presidency? There are two general observations that can be made about this question. First, Putin’s return to the presidency is unlikely to lead to dramatic change in Russian foreign policy since he appears to have been the principal architect of it while serving as prime minister. Second, and more importantly, an unchanging Russian foreign policy is likely to mean that the most important priority for it under President Putin is likely to be—just as it has...
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The fruits of Putinism and the Putin-Medvedev tandem. As the Russian winter turns to spring, the country has seen a return to opposition politics, political competition, and dissent within the corridors of power, and the election of a more opposition-minded parliament and an all-too-familiar president. Regardless of what US mainstream media and academia have told you, the liberalization and re-democratization of the winter-spring transition from the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev to that of Vladimir Putin are nothing new. December’s watershed events were the logical outcome of a four-year-long process that marks Russia’s return to democratization and market reforms and perhaps...
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Politics / 360° Context / BRICBackground Vladimir Putin won the Russian presidential elections held on March 4, 2012. Securing 63.6% of the votes, Putin will serve his third term as President and control the Kremlin for the next six years. Veteran politician Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation came a distant second with 17.18% of the votes and the independent Mikhail Prokhorov got 7.98% of the votes. According to the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, the total counted votes were 71,519,975of the 108 million eligible voters in Russia. This makes the national turnout over 65%, a high figure seemingly giving Putin greater legitimacy. However, accusations of carousel voting...
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Brazil is potentially an agricultural giant but its farmers are challenged by low competitiveness. Ask anybody at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the IMF or even the CIA, and you will get the same answer: Brazil is the country with the highest agricultural potential in the world. At present, however, this potential is compromised by the sector’s high costs and low profitability. Several factors explain this conundrum. First, Brazil’s largest agricultural areas, especially the areas with the highest growth potential, are more than 1,000kms away from existing ports. Railways transport a very small part of agricultural output, with most production reaching the...
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By Jennifer Bussell Could the computerization of public service transactions help curb petty corruption in India? Over the last two years, the corruption pervading India’s government has received remarkable media attention, thanks, in part, to scandals surrounding the Commonwealth Games, 2G telecom licenses, and the Adarsh housing society. This has shaken the complacency of many citizens who heretofore saw bribes and kickbacks as an inevitable part of daily life, and has provided fodder for the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare. Yet the attention to high-level scandals has overshadowed the corruption in basic public services faced by citizens across the country on a daily...
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By Atul SinghBackground Brazil began life as a Portuguese colony and was consequently subjected to an imperial mercantile policy. This made it an economy that produced sugar, gold and, later, coffee. African enslaved labor and then mass European immigration provided Brazil with its labor force. Until the 1930s, the Brazilian economy relied on the production of primary products that were exported to the rest of the world. The 1930 revolution led to a dictatorship that had to face the Great Depression. As coffee prices plummeted, Brazil had to diversify its economy. From 1945, Brazil, adopted a policy of import-substitution industrialization in the same way as many other Asian and African economies...
