What more do you need to know?
"In India, ID project aims to help poor, end corruption" by Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post | April 4, 2010
Yeah, it is always under the guise of helping you.
NEW DELHI — In this country of 1.2 billion people, Inderjit Chaurasia could not prove his identity.
When the migrant worker tried to open his first bank account in New Delhi, he was turned away because he had only a driver’s license for identification. Then he applied for a government food-subsidy card but was rejected again.
“Everywhere I go, they ask me for proof of residence and income tax that I do not have,’’ said Chaurasia, 32, adding that he has never voted or paid taxes. “We are migrant workers. We go where the job takes us. Where do we find identity papers?’’
Millions of Indians like Chaurasia are unable to tap into government and financial services because they lack proper identification. And, many here say that corrupt officials routinely stuff welfare databases with fake names and steal money meant for the poor.
It is the SAME in EVERY SOCIETY! It's called GOVERNMENT!
But a mammoth project underway aims to address that problem by assigning all Indians a unique identity number backed by their biometric details and storing that information in a gigantic online database. The government says the new system — which its creator calls a “turbocharged version’’ of the Social Security number — will cut fraud and ensure that people who need assistance can get it.
By bringing more people into the banking system, Indian officials also hope to raise the number of people paying income taxes, which stands at 5 percent.
Well, LOOK AT THAT!
SELF-SERVING GOVERNMENT WORKING FOR BANKS!
You have been HANGING AROUND USRael TOO LONG, India!
“A large number of Indians do not have bank accounts. They have no identity papers to establish who they are,’’ said Nandan Nilekani, who was a successful software entrepreneur before joining the government to launch the identity project. “The unique identity will bring in financial inclusion and will also help national security in the long term.’’
India’s plunge into biometric identification comes as countries around the globe are making similar moves. In 2006, Britain approved a mandatory national ID system with fingerprints for its citizens before public opposition prompted the government to scale back plans to a voluntary pilot program beginning in Manchester. US senators have proposed requiring all citizens and immigrants who want to work in the country to carry a new high-tech Social Security card linked to fingerprints as part of an immigration overhaul.
Related: Illegal Amnesty Next On Obama's Agenda
If you Repuglicans don't want control of Congress just approve that.
Many countries are phasing in passports with computer chips linked to digital photographs or fingerprints, or both, and adopting the US practice of keeping a fingerprint database on all foreign visitors.
And now they want to do it to ALL OF US!!
But the effort in India might be notable for trying to move the furthest fastest....
The government also plans to use the database to monitor bank transactions, cellphone purchases, and the movements of individuals and groups suspected of fomenting terrorism.
Yeah, but DON'T WORRY about your FREEDOMS and the GLOBAL TYRANNY!
After all, it is to help you!!
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"The zero rupee note has attracted attention from the World Bank.... Admittedly, some of these low-tech, simple solutions have limits. None of them are likely to reduce large-scale corruption such as multimillion dollar kickbacks for road or defense contracts. Their success may also be fleeting"
I like the idea! Start giving the LOOTING LEGISLATORS ZERO NOTES!!
"Bribe Fighter; The strange but true tale of a phony currency, shame, and a grass-roots movement that could go global" by Jeremy Kahn | April 4, 2010
NEW DELHI — What good is a currency that is not even worth the paper it’s printed on?
That’s the intriguing question raised by the new “zero rupee note” now circulating in southern India. It looks just like the country’s 50 rupee bill but with some crucial differences: It is printed on just one side on plain paper, it bears a big fat “0” denomination, and it isn’t legal tender.
The notes do, however, have value to the people who carry them. They’re designed as a radical new response to the pervasive problem of petty corruption. Citizens are encouraged to hand the notes to public officials in response to the bribery demands that are almost inescapable when dealing with the government here. Bribes for access to services are so common they even have an accepted euphemism — asking for money “for tea.”
The notes, printed and distributed by a good-government organization called 5th Pillar, include the phrase that the bearer “promises to neither accept nor give a bribe.” The idea is that by handing one of these zero rupee bills to an official, a citizen can register a silent protest — and maybe even shame or scare a corrupt bureaucrat into doing his duty without demanding a bribe for it.
In one sense, the idea seems absurd — fighting a serious problem like entrenched corruption with something that looks like a prank.
But remarkably, the zero rupee note appears to work, as 5th Pillar says it has found in hundreds of cases
And in its success, the worthless bill is upending the conventional wisdom that cleaning up petty corruption is a monumental task requiring complicated and expensive solutions. Along with the success of some other simple anticorruption ideas being tried in other countries, the zero rupee note is reinforcing research widely considered to hold promise in a vexing global battle: Big improvements in ending corruption, it suggests, can come from small changes in the environment that allows it to happen.
To understand why this idea is so revolutionary, it helps to understand how pervasive corruption is in a country like India, and how helpless most people feel about fighting it.
As in many developing countries, Indian officials tend to regard little payouts as almost a prerogative of the job. Brazenly asking for “tea money” for processing a housing application or registering a business is standard operating procedure in many government offices. Those who have government jobs will often have had to pay large bribes to state politicians to get them, so these employees, in turn, feel they must earn that money back by soliciting bribes from average citizens. Transparency International, the global anticorruption organization, found that petty corruption in India is particularly rampant when citizens have to deal with the police, land registration, and housing authorities.
Since even small bribes can often be out of reach for those living on less than a dollar a day, that means many of the world’s poorest are denied basic services to which they’re legally entitled, such as a copy of a birth certificate, connection to a municipal water supply, or even access to medical care. “For the affluent, corruption is at worst a nuisance; for the salaried middle class, it can be an indignity and a burden; but for the poor, it is often a tragedy,” Shashi Tharoor, a former United Nations spokesman who is now a junior minister in India’s Cabinet, wrote on his popular blog last year.
At a broader level, corruption can make a significant dent in a developing country’s economy. The World Bank has estimated that corruption can shave a full percentage point from a country’s GDP growth in a given year, a difference that can amount to tens of billions of dollars for a nation like India.
The usual tools used to fight corruption operate from the top down, and tend to be expensive and time-consuming to implement. One common approach is to use technology, such as computerized systems to process things like railway ticket sales or requests for copies of land deed records, taking corrupt humans out of the bureaucratic machinery altogether. Another is enacting good governance reforms, such as independent corruption investigators, higher public sector salaries to decrease the incentives for bribery, and streamlined regulations to eliminate unnecessary licenses or permissions.
The zero rupee note is different: It is a low-cost, low-tech solution that works from the bottom up, not the top down. The note was first conceived in 2001 by Satindar Mohan Bhagat, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, who was dismayed by the constant bribe demands he had to contend with on trips back to his native India. He began distributing the zero rupee note to other Indian expats in the Washington, D.C., area, encouraging them to use the bills to resist paying bribes whenever they traveled back home....
The zero rupee note has attracted attention from the World Bank, which recently highlighted 5th Pillar’s work on a widely read blog that focuses on corruption....
Admittedly, some of these low-tech, simple solutions have limits. None of them are likely to reduce large-scale corruption such as multimillion dollar kickbacks for road or defense contracts. Their success may also be fleeting. Fumiko Nagano, who writes the World Bank’s anticorruption blog, has called ideas such as pocketless uniforms and anticorruption slogans “a band-aid covering up an infection,” likely to stop working as soon as enforcement slips.
Then the REAL BS STARTS!!
The zero rupee note and the other simple solutions to corruption, however, have social science on their side. Much recent research has found that people’s perceptions of social norms — the basic unwritten rules that govern behavior within a society — are the biggest determinants of unethical behavior. If a person believes corruption is the norm, and thinks that everyone else is doing it, then he is far more likely to seize the opportunity to solicit a bribe. But the same research shows that it can be surprisingly easy to alter these norms.
Newspapers!
They GINNED YOU UP for WARS BASED on LIES, America, and they have MORE COMING!
Experiments have shown that simply reminding someone of what is ethical before presenting her with a corruption opportunity greatly decreases unethical behavior.
Has someone tried that on Israel, because if they did it hasn't taken.
The zero rupee note does this explicitly, with a printed reminder of what’s right. It also may trigger a “fear factor” — experiments suggest that reminding people they might actually be caught has an even more powerful effect on reducing corrupt behavior....
Oh, I BELIEVE THAT!
That is how FALSE FLAGS were BORN!
Nagano, the World Bank anticorruption blogger, praised the zero rupee note because it depends less on deterring corrupt officials than it does on convincing citizens to stand together and resist.
So it is GOOD ENOUGH for India but NOT Amurkns?
“For people to speak up against corruption that has become institutionalized within society, they must know that there are others who are just as fed up and frustrated with the system,” she wrote in praise of the zero rupee project.
Ah, the EMPIRE of USrael!
“Once they realize that they are not alone, they also realize that this battle is not unbeatable.”
Yes, there are FORCES BIGGER than MANS at work here!!
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Yeah, just LOOK PAST all that CORRUPTION!
This ain't Afghanistan!
"Geithner seeking stronger economic ties with India; Time looks right for cooperation" by Heather Timmons and Vikas Bajaj, New York Times | April 6, 2010
NEW DELHI — Timothy F. Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, will arrive in New Delhi today for a two-day trip to inaugurate a new economic and financial partnership between two of the world’s largest and oldest democracies.
Geithner has his work cut out for him, economists and policy analysts in both India and the United States say. Reaching economic agreements between the two countries has traditionally been an arduous task.
“On principle, they both agree on everything,’’ said Jahangir Aziz, chief India economist at J.P. Morgan in Mumbai. “It always comes down to the nitty-gritty, and that’s where things get stuck. Part of the problem is neither of them wants to give the other side an inch.’’
It took nearly 20 years for the United States to lift a ban on imports of Indian mangoes, for example, and a deal to allow energy-strapped India access to American nuclear technology, agreed to in principal four years ago, still has not cleared all the legal hurdles that would let US companies sign contracts here.
Then put it back on: Pier One Imports From India
And the Indians ain't the Iranians!!
(French and Russian companies, by contrast, have signed contracts and are expected to begin work soon.)
NO U.N. SANCTIONS?
The two countries remain far apart on US farm subsidies and India’s unwillingness to open its markets to foreign farmers, because they both want to protect their agricultural sectors. The countries’ disagreements there helped to scuttle global trade negotiations in 2008. Indian officials expressed cautious optimism about Geithner’s visit....
This should, in theory, be a fertile time for India and the United States to forge a new economic relationship. American companies, facing moribund sales at home, continue to flock to India, where the economy is projected to grow 8.5 percent this year.
And you wonder why you can't find work, American?
US businesses also remain the largest customers for India’s marquee information technology industry. India, for its part, needs billions of dollars in infrastructure and could benefit from US technology.
And you come out the LOSER, 'murkn!
The ties have grown significantly since India began to open its economy in the early 1990s. Bilateral trade has tripled in the past 10 years, to $37.6 billion. American private investment in India is worth $16.1 billion, about 10 times what it was in the late 1990s. But India still lags far behind the United States’ most important economic partnerships.
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