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Stories of children in New York City overcoming adversity to go to college with the help of the New York Times College Scholarship Fund. Children with poor or sick parents in the city, from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Ecuador, and other countries.

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This NHK documentary looks at the idea of "Cheap Japan" as wages and prices have stagnated for over three decades. Where the US has grown by 58% for wages over that period Japan has declined by 12%. Japanese companies wages offered even in Thailand and Malaysia, and for low wage products in factories of Vietnam and Bangladesh are cheap and uncompetitive. A Japanese apparel brand is shown looking for factories in Bangladesh that can make shirts at $1.65 to be sold in Japan at $6. Japan's wages and prices are now falling behind developing countries and a Japanese economist calls it "declining Japan." Foreign investment is key to reviving growth by attracting new talent, changing business thinking and style of managing that is more open to new ideas and expansion. It may be of interest to note that Chinese companies in Japan may be focused on electronics and advanced technologies than American private equity in Japan focused on hotels and health care simply to boost profits. ...

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Young microworkers in Britain have doubled since 2016. They earn less than 4 pounds an hour says this editorial in The Guardian. Many of them are stressed and burnt out by the constant hunt for tasks. This is not just in Britain. More than half are in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and this kind of work has boomed since the pandemic. 

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India to export 1 million tons of wheat to Egypt. India now supplies wheat to Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, UAE, and other countries in the Asian region. This meets a growing need after the Ukraine war cutoff supplies on which much of the Middle East depends for wheat.

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Pictures of the damage done by cyclone Fani as it moves eastward from the coast line near Vishakapatnam, to Odisha state and further to West Bengal and Bangladesh. The Indian government has announced a relief fund of Rs 1000 crores ($150 million) to help repair damage from the cyclone. About 1 million people were evacuated.

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A Bangladeshi looks back at partition and the movement for independence under Mujibur Rahman, and shows why the Bangladeshi experience in partition was not like that of Indians and Pakistanis- a smaller number of Bangladeshis leaving Calcutta and West Bengal and mainly for new opportunity and a sense of Bengali identity. This has survived to this today as these Bengalis play an important role in the new country and have a different memory and shared history.

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Broughton, Williams and Maurer, WSJ, talk to companies that sell to the average American Skechers for shoes and Lee, Wrangler for jeans. Lee and Wrangler executives say price increases are an option, it all depends on the size of the DJT tariffs.  In general companies will take the following actions in sequence of priorities. Move as much of the manufacturing away from high tariff targeted China to other countries. Wrangler and Lee are not faced with this problem as only 2% of products are sourced from China. Most of the jeans are made in Bangladesh and Mexico. Wrangler Lee brands will increase savings from efficiencies in supply chain by $100 million. This could put a squeeze on margins of local makers in Bangladesh, but also come from other savings. For Skechers it makes 40% of products in china, 40% in Vietnam, and the rest in other countries. It will continue to shift away from China, into other countries. And price increases are a "high likelihood" say Skecher's executives. Most companies will try to reduce impact on margins, look for concessions from vendors, then weigh price increases. How will Apple with its high margins respond is a question. It will accelerate the shift of making mobile phones and laptops to its operations in India.  ...

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NYT provides an extraordinary display of working age population demographic data in graphics for the world and individual countries to 2050. India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and African countries are given the opportunity to make progress similar to South Korea, Japan and China over the next 25 years. India with 1.4 billion people and a determined federal government can set the stage for the type of progress that can modernize the country and build a level of infrastructure that compares with the best in Europe, the US and Japan.

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The U.S. perception that the shadows from the period of non-alignment in the Nehru era still linger in Indian policy, a sort of ambivalence that has denied India's true potential as an alliance partner for the free world. A perception in the U.S. that has not seen the true potential of the largest population in the world of 1.5 billion people in India and Bangladesh has also colored perception of the relationship. This population is now at a point at which a broad based development is not only possible (sab ka vikas sab ke sath) but also moving at an accelerated pace. With a combination of cumulatively increasing inputs of technology, capital, land and educated labor force this is now at the potential of becoming a very doable world changing event by 2035- a $20 trillion economy by doubling every 5 years based on renewable energy and dedicated to health, education and development. What makes this a world changing event is the opportunity to meet the aspirations of about 2 billion people in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and surrounding nations, offering new hope for Africa and Latin America. For this the U.S. commitment cannot have any traces of ambivalence, and the Indian commitment cannot have any traces of ambivalence. India needs one more change in its perceptions - to realize that for the first time in its history that this is within its reach. ...

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The British Energy Institute shows how countries are doing in fighting climate change by reducing fossil fuel use. 

Poland is poor at 88% fossil fuels in energy mix. Algeria, Singapore, Bangladesh, Oman at 98%.

In Europe Norway leads at 72% for renewqble energy in the mix. Brazil at 50% keads SOuth America, Nw Zealand 43% and Vietnam at 23% in Asia Pacific. 

Of 6525 coal fired power plants China has 3168, India 845 plants and US 408. Older plants are being retired.

Planned construction of new coal power plants 707 in China, 165 in India, 2 in the US, 23 in eastern Europe, 0 in Northern Europe and 4 in Southern Europe, 0 in Western Europe, Latin America is 6.

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US Naval Blockade Day 10- US stock markets up 4.1% for 4 months, oil price $95 a barrel, prices at pump $4.02 down from $3.94 a month back. If all the US seeks out of an agreement is getting nuclear material out of Iran to keep nuclear weapons out of the Middle East based on 5 decades of war in the Middle East- Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and now Iraq/ Lebanon- this is to protect the people of the world from nuclear weapons, including China, India, Brazil, Russia, EU and other nations. This was the goal of Democratic administrations also, only the Republican approach is to err on the side of safe and take zero chances on future nuclear escalation while the Democratic administrations were based on trust, trust which is not a sure thing in the Middle East political and cultural environment. Some of DJT comments were bluster, but the basic position is the same- against nuclear proliferation for a safer planet. In this light the Naval Blockade only seeks not to block Iran's path to a prosperous economy and a bright future for its people. Iran's economy is affected in the same way that India's and China's, Africa's is affected, for upwards of 4 billion people compared to 100 million for Iran. Africa, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Indonesia, among the poorest in the world, poorer by far than Iran. The economic impact on this part of the world is not part of Iranian perceptions. The economic impact on Gulf kingdoms an adversary of Iran is by comparison only a small fraction of the impact on the poorest countries. In this situation US is working to support the poorest segments of the Chinese people ( the part of China in the hinterland that is the one third not urbanized) and the Indian people through its cooperation and direct or indirect support. In this perspective the US economy stands as a steadfast support for US policy of fairness and respect for all nations since 1900- US is not one of the colonial powers such as Britain and France who created some of the artificial states Syria, Iraq, out of the remains of the collapsed Ottoman Empire in the interest of their Empires by 1921, and setup regimes in Iran for its oil, that are the source of today's problems and wars. No Empire of Britain and France promised Iran $28 billion as this Nation does today if Iran ships nuclear material out of Iran for a 100 percent shift to a peaceful Middle East that works for the modernization and industrial development of its economies in the interests of the people. ...

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Kristof compares Pakistan to Bangladesh. Bangladesh he says has more girls in high school than boys, and compares this with only 3% of women in the Pakistan tribal areas who are literate. He points out that this may well be why Al Quaeda is in Pakistan and not Bangladesh. He asks if its so hard to build schools, then how is it that Greg Mortenson has built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan- and not one has been burned or closed down. The Afghan Institute for Learning he adds has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with noen closed by the Taliban. Afghnistan needs nutritional support, irrigation, schools, education, healtcare just as badly as the rest of South Asia where one report says about 48% of the children under age of 48 are malnourished, just more desperately so.

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The Bangladesh election resulting in a clean election from the comments of independent observers, and the election of the secular party Awami League run by the daughter of Mujibur Rehman, who led the movement that founded Bangladesh. The Awami League won a sweeping majority of 230 seats in an election with a 70% turnout with a lot of younger voters voting for the first or the second time. For one third of the voters this was their first election, and for another 23% this was their second election after the one in 2001. And that they swept aside the opposition BNP which had allied with Islamist parties and with the main Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami able to win only 2 seats, is a sign that there is a shift in opinion in Bangladesh among the younger voters. THe main concern of voters is the price of food, as 45% of the 150 million Bangladeshis live on less than a dollar a day. The lower prices of fuel and commodities and lower inflation as a result of the global economic crisis and the good rice harvest in Bangladesh improves things for these people even as the global crisis reduces growth rate from 6.2% in 2008....

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Indian finance minister Sitharaman announces Rs. 60 billion ($857 million) in equity for the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund to provide Rs. 1000 billion  ($14.2 billion) debt financing for infrastructure to 2025. This is part of a wide ranging stimulus 3.0 package for creating jobs, providing aid to borrowers during the pandemic, aid to farmers, and aid for the informal economy including street vendors and small retail. With the largest population in the world the Indian Ocean region of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burma, and Indonesia from the former British and Dutch empires, requires a resilient response to the coronavirus pandemic. This is crucial for the future revival of the world economy. 

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This report in The Guardian says what India urgently needs is for the US to lift export restrictions on supplies for India's vaccine factories, and tools such as genome sequencing to identify and control emerging variants of the coronavirus.

The report also points out that of the 1 billion vaccine jabs about half are in the US and Europe and the low income countries have only a tiny fraction of vaccinations. India which sent 64 million vaccine doses to countries including Brazil and Morocco, Bangladesh, in 3 months prior is reported to have sent only 1.2 million doses this month.

The crisis in India also shows the need says The Guardian for an international approach to the crisis no a country by country approach. It says the Bush plan for Aids and the the 2014 plan for Ebola in West Africa are models of an international approach that is needed now.

 

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Worldwide coronavirus vaccine development and distribution is covered in the The guardian. There are surprising results in a 2019 Lancet study about how strongly people in each country think vaccines are safe. Only 17% of people in Japan and Lithuania think vaccines are safe. Most of Eastern Europe, some western European countries, Russia and China are shown as countries where about half of the people have doubts about the safety compared to 87% in Bangladesh and Uganda. In India and most of Africa people think vaccines are safe says this report showing the Lancet study results in a graphic.

Vaccines once developed will require cold storage for distribution and adminstering the vaccine. Some vaccines may require ultra cold storage of -60 degrees  or -80 degrees centigrade which may be hard to find in many countries. Most of the cold storage containers available have already been acquired by countries.

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India plans to vaccinate 300 million people in the first drive of the vaccination campaign. The two vaccines approved are the Covishield from Astra Zeneca partnership with Serum Institute of India, and the Bharat Biotech vaccine. India is the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world, and its vaccination production and campaign is being watched closely.  The largest maker of vaccines is Serum Institute of India based in Pune. Countries that are seeking India's help in vaccines are Brazil, South Africa, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh. Brazil has ordered 1.5 million vaccine doses. The Indian government has approved sending vaccines to other governments. Price of 100 million doses to be supplied by Serum Institute to the Indian government is 200 rupees a dose or about $2.73 a dose. Vaccine sold in private markets will be priced at 2000 rupees a dose. Serum Institute and Bharat Biotech have stockpiled 70 million doses. ...

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This editorial in the Hindu and the related article in the NYT point out the impressive record of the Awami League party government of prime minister Sheikh Hasina in growth- tripling electricity in a decade, and in social indicators, such as gender parity and education, improvements in infrastructure. A related report from Germany also showed the positive sense of the changes in Bangladesh including the first long bridge over the Ganges river near Dhaka connecting different parts of the country.

This sense of progress is marred by what is seen as increasing authoritarianism of the government. 

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Christina Passariello's exceptional report from Richard Toll in Senegal on Danone's 10 cent Dolima drinkable yogurt, which is a popular snack for Senegalese. This is part of an effort to reach customers in emerging markets such as Indonesia, Mexico and other countries who live on food budgets of 1-2 dollars a day. Sales of Dolima are growing by 10% each month. The first emerging market yogurt product was a 10 cent plastic 70 gram bottle introduced in Indonesia, which took off quickly with 10 million bottles sold in the first 3 months at the end of 2004. It is popular with low income Indonesians and especially with children. In 2006 Danone introduced a 7 cent yogurt product called Shakti Doi "gives strength" in Bangladesh, with sales initially planned for rural villages but later placed in urban stores. In 2008 the concept was taken to Sengal. To do this Danone's CEO, Franck Riboud, sent a senior product manager Isabelle Sultan who had worked on the Bangladesh project to Senegal. She came up with several new ideas to improve an existing product by improving the flavor and making it creamier, using the Senegalese flag colors of red, yellow and green on the package to help illiterate customers recognize the packaging, and priced it at the 50 CFA coin or 10 cents, a common coin used in Senegal. The name "dolima" means "give me more" in the local Wolof language. In 2009 42% of Danone's sales were from emerging markets, increasing from 6% 10 years earlier. Danone now reaches 700 million people and is aiming at reaching one billion customers by 2013. Other products include water at 15 cents in Mexico- where the alternative for many rural Mexicans is soft drinks that increase obesity. P&G is promoting hygiene for women in Mexico with its low price shampoos and feminine hygiene products and helping improve the quality of life for ordinary Mexicans. ...

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Bharat Biotech and Biological E. are two companies developing vaccines in India. Bharat Biotech has asked for emergency authorization for use of its vaccine. Other Indian companies that have asked for emergency authorization are Pfizer India and Serum Institute of India. The foreign envoys will be flown to Hyderabad to be briefed on the vaccine readiness at Bharat Biotech and Biological E. In all 30 of 100 vaccines under development are being developed in India. India is a pioneer in vaccine development and manufacturing. Because of its huge population of 1.5 billion for India and Bangladesh, India has from the early years after independence in 1947 pursued a course of developing its own R&D and manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and vaccines, so that the large population can have access to medicine at a low price.

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Jaishankar  of India and Blinken of the US join to say the world should not be divided into political blocs and that there is room for working together in different groupings such as the Quad, in the Indo-Pacific economic cooperation, as two largest democracies, and for the rule of law, open navigation in the Indian Ocean and Indo-Pacific. Both agree that polical complexity should not be reduced into black and white and simplified. For India Jaishankar says it means we are in a certain location in the world, there is history, our experience is different, all this shapes how we see the world. India gives voice to the aspirations of over 2 billion people in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and other countries. It created the G20 out of the G7 nations.

Baerbock of Germany adds that Europe has to accept that in the past it when it backed colonialism based on attitudes at the time, when it supported Apartheid in Africa, it had made mistakes.