GHAZIPUR, INDIA // In the blistering heat, thousands of voters queued up from early morning yesterday in this ramshackle town in eastern Uttar Pradesh to elect their representative in the Indian Parliament from among 15 candidates, marking the start of the world's biggest democratic poll.
The streets were festooned with election banners, bunting, and political flags. The first phase of India's 15th general election commenced across 17 Indian states - from Kashmir in the north to Kerala in the south - with millions voting to elect 124 members of parliament.
The entire country will vote in a five-stage process requiring nearly a month to complete, involving 714 million registered voters who will cast their ballot in over eight million polling stations. Since the previous election in 2004, more than 43m voters, the majority of them young, have been added to the electoral roll. This marathon election process demands formidable security measures.
In the aftermath of last year's Mumbai terrorist assault, security has been beefed up for these elections; 250,000 paramilitary forces are handling election security. The pressure on security forces is so intense that the avidly watched Indian Premier League, the popular Twenty20 cricket programme, was shifted out of India because it clashed with the poll dates.
But despite the stringent security, Maoist rebels, called Naxalites, attacked nearly a dozen polling stations across Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Orissa, all rebel-prone states in eastern India, killing 17 people, including five election officials and 10 security personnel.
They set afire some of the polling booths and snatched electronic voting machines and blocked roads leading to polling stations, thus disrupting the democratic process.
The rebel attacks are symptomatic of the difficulty in holding elections freely and fairly in this democracy of 1.2 billion.
This Maoist insurgency, active in 156 districts across 13 Indian states, is perceived as the most serious internal security threat in India.
In the first phase, voting took place in large swathes of northern and eastern India including areas beset by a range of violent insurgencies involving Maoist rebels.
More than 200 polling stations were set up in these areas, where polling was closed two hours early as a security precaution. The turnout was between 58 per cent to 60 per cent, according to India's Election Commission.
Indian elections are not dominated by a single personality, but several independent candidates and essentially three main groups of political parties: the United Progressive Alliance, dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty led the Congress Party; the National Democratic Alliance, which is a lose coalition of parties led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata; and the Third Front, centred on the Communists.
Analysts predict neither the ruling Congress Party nor the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party will win enough seats to rule alone and a coalition government is inevitable - a trend that has been the norm since 1989.
Sixteen per cent of 1,425 candidates contesting in the first phase have criminal charges against them, according to research by the Association for Democratic Reforms, a non-governmental organisation.
Bihar leads the list with 51 criminal-charged candidates out of 200 candidates, followed by Uttar Pradesh with 46 out of 268.
In Jaunpur, in the criminal heartland of eastern Uttar Pradesh, the body of Bahudar Sonkar, a candidate from the Indian Justice Party was found dangling from a tree near a Sufi shrine earlier this week.
Rival candidate Dhananjay Singh, from Kumari Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party, who faces at least 25 criminal charges, including murder, denies he had anything to do with it, but the incident has sparked concerns over the security of candidates contesting the elections.
The deteriorating economy, which threatens to relegate millions of Indians back to poverty, is also a key voting plank in these elections, political pundits say.
India's Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry estimates that Indian businesses could lay off nearly 25 per cent of their workforce in 2009 across such areas as information technology, real estate, construction, aviation and financial services.
Approximately 40m middle-class workers are employed by these sectors. India's labour ministry estimates that the small-business sector, which accounts for more than 60 per cent of economic activity. lost about half a million jobs in the December quarter.
In these elections, the spectre of job losses is worrying the Congress-led UPA government.
Lal Krishan Advani, the leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janta Party in India's Parliament, recently said job cuts due to the global recession were posing "more danger than terrorism". There is fear that mass layoffs could spark social turmoil this country.
"The deteriorating economy will certainly have an impact on the electorate," Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of India's planning commission, said in an interview. "There will be no surprises on that front."
In a pre-election nationwide poll conducted in January by CNN IBN, a private news channel, said 32 per cent of Indians cited the flailing economy and inflation as their top concerns. But, Yogendra Yadav, a senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, who helped conduct that poll, said he would not link that assertion to the global economic meltdown.
"If we had conducted the poll a year ago, when the economy was booming, we would have got the same response," he said.
Less than 10 per cent of Indians work in the organised sector, which is directly impacted by the global economic meltdown.
"India's economic boom bypasses the rest, and they are not impacted by the global slowdown," he said. "For them, livelihood, poverty and a lack of purchasing power were issues in all previous elections. And it's no different this time."
achopra@thenational.ae
EMIRATES'S%20REVISED%20A350%20DEPLOYMENT%20SCHEDULE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EEdinburgh%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20November%204%20%3Cem%3E(unchanged)%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EBahrain%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20November%2015%20%3Cem%3E(from%20September%2015)%3C%2Fem%3E%3B%20second%20daily%20service%20from%20January%201%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EKuwait%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20November%2015%20%3Cem%3E(from%20September%2016)%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EMumbai%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20January%201%20%3Cem%3E(from%20October%2027)%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EAhmedabad%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20January%201%20%3Cem%3E(from%20October%2027)%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EColombo%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20January%202%20%3Cem%3E(from%20January%201)%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EMuscat%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3Cem%3E%20%3C%2Fem%3EMarch%201%3Cem%3E%20(from%20December%201)%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ELyon%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20March%201%20%3Cem%3E(from%20December%201)%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EBologna%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20March%201%20%3Cem%3E(from%20December%201)%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cem%3ESource%3A%20Emirates%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989
Director: Goran Hugo Olsson
Rating: 5/5
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
TOURNAMENT INFO
Women’s World Twenty20 Qualifier
Jul 3- 14, in the Netherlands
The top two teams will qualify to play at the World T20 in the West Indies in November
UAE squad
Humaira Tasneem (captain), Chamani Seneviratne, Subha Srinivasan, Neha Sharma, Kavisha Kumari, Judit Cleetus, Chaya Mughal, Roopa Nagraj, Heena Hotchandani, Namita D’Souza, Ishani Senevirathne, Esha Oza, Nisha Ali, Udeni Kuruppuarachchi
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Five expert hiking tips
Always check the weather forecast before setting off
Make sure you have plenty of water
Set off early to avoid sudden weather changes in the afternoon
Wear appropriate clothing and footwear
Take your litter home with you
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
How to wear a kandura
Dos
- Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
- Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
- Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
- Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
- Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
- Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
Know before you go
- Jebel Akhdar is a two-hour drive from Muscat airport or a six-hour drive from Dubai. It’s impossible to visit by car unless you have a 4x4. Phone ahead to the hotel to arrange a transfer.
- If you’re driving, make sure your insurance covers Oman.
- By air: Budget airlines Air Arabia, Flydubai and SalamAir offer direct routes to Muscat from the UAE.
- Tourists from the Emirates (UAE nationals not included) must apply for an Omani visa online before arrival at evisa.rop.gov.om. The process typically takes several days.
- Flash floods are probable due to the terrain and a lack of drainage. Always check the weather before venturing into any canyons or other remote areas and identify a plan of escape that includes high ground, shelter and parking where your car won’t be overtaken by sudden downpours.
