http://chinese.wsj.com/gb/20081030/opn091840.asp?source=email
21世纪布雷顿会议 中国是否当年的美国
2008年10月30日08:37
Wall Street Journal
Sebastian Mallaby
1944年7月，当出席联合国货币和金融会议的44国代表入住华盛顿山饭店(Mount Washington Hotel)的时候，布雷顿森林实在是没什么可看的。坐落在新罕布什尔州的这家饭店被一片差不多有100万英亩的森林包围着，除了一些可口可乐自动售货机，就没什么可让代表们分神的了。
就在这处几乎与世隔绝的地方，168名政治家（和仅有的一位女政治家、来自Vassar学院的Mabel Newcomer）一起参与演出了这段在治理世界经济方面最着名的历史片断。这次会议为防范再次发生大萧条重塑了世界金融秩序，并创建了一家史无前例的国际银行来专注于战后重建与发展。
在最后的全体会议上，盛装的与会代表们全场起立向英国经济学家凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)鼓掌致意。他的思想渗透于为期三周的会议。凯恩斯爵士向富有远见的同僚们表示感谢，说他们完成了预言家或先知才能做到的事。
布雷顿森林会议此后便披上了一层神话色彩。对经济史爱好者来说，它堪比制宪会议上美国建国之父们的那次聚会。而对那些急切希望被世界铭记的政治家来说，它是一个让人无比艳羡的时刻。最近，在英国首相布朗(Gordon Brown)和法国总统萨科齐(Nicolas Sarkozy)呼吁举行新的布雷顿森林会议后，布什总统表示同意。电视媒体风闻此事纷纷出动，在当年的华盛顿山饭店旁驻扎守候，这里已完成了一次耗资5,000万美元的装修改建工程。不过，布雷顿森林会议实际上已经不是第一次闹“复活”了。事实上，历史上已有很多先例。
1982年的拉丁美洲债务危机爆发后，美国财政部长里甘(Donald Regan)就提出重新召开布雷顿会议以稳定西半球货币。第二年，因法郎发生三次贬值，当时的法国总统密特朗(Francois Mitterrand)宣称，“现在真的到了该考虑新的布雷顿森林会议的时候了。除此之外，别无他法。”接下来的两年时间里，密特朗一直大肆鼓吹这一主张，直到1985年撒切尔夫人(Margaret Thatcher)批评他的建议是“不切合实际的胡言乱语”，他才算偃旗息鼓。
1997-98年的新兴市场危机之后，布雷顿森林怀旧病再次爆发──这次是在后撒切尔时代的英国。时任英国首相的布莱尔(Tony Blair)认为：我们不应惧怕极端、颠覆传统的思想。为了新千年，我们今天需要致力于建立新的布雷顿森林体系。应该说，布莱尔的新千年构想的具体内容很模糊。但没有哪个国家的首脑会鲁莽地指出这一点。
在国际社会围绕治理经济采取的重大举措中，或许只有马歇尔计划被提及的频率超过布雷顿森林会议，比如，为冷战结束后的东欧制定马歇尔计划、针对非洲的马歇尔计划、针对内陆城市的马歇尔计划等多个版本。的确，每一个想让华盛顿花大钱的人都会发现，拿马歇尔计划说事是再便当不过的做法了。
但布雷顿会议具有更丰富的内涵和更罕见的声望。它关乎重新建立国际秩序，而不仅是为一项有意义的事业而稳定货币。并且，马歇尔计划是美国着名的单边主义的范例，布雷顿森林会议则是国际多边合作的胜利。当时参加布雷顿会议的甚至包括洪都拉斯、利比里亚和菲律宾等国的代表（凯恩斯曾就此不屑地说到，那是一次“最恐怖的耍猴馆般”的集会），但不包括韩国和日本这两个当今世界经济强国。
布雷顿会议这两方面的成就即使是今年看来似乎仍有相当的吸引力，不过，这两方面也都有不切实际的成份。会议创建的一项固定汇率体系重新确立了经济秩序。其目标是防止货币竞相贬值的局面重演。竞相贬值的典型范例是“黄油战争”。1930年，通过将本币贬值，新西兰出口的黄油在海外市场享受到价格优势，其出口黄油的主要竞争对手丹麦于是在1931年也采取了将货币贬值的做法。之后，这两个国家你追我赶，一路贬值，幅度越来越大。
这种损人利己的做法加剧了最终拖垮了整个世界的贸易保护主义，而布雷顿森林会议对这个问题的解决之道可谓简洁明了。二战后，美元钉住黄金、其他货币钉住美元。不再有浮动汇率机制，也就不再有贬值大战。为支撑这一系统，布雷顿森林体系的缔造者们还创立了国际货币基金组织(IMF)，相对同门师兄世界银行(World Bank)而言，IMF在实现其缔造者目标的过程中发挥的作用要大得多。如果固定汇率机制令一个国家陷入收支失衡的危机，那么IMF会出手相救，使其货币避免贬值。
如今成立新货币体制的理念在很大程度上仍可以借鉴这种观点。重创全球金融市场的信贷泡沫部分源于现行货币制度的双轨状态：一些国家允许货币自由浮动，另一些国家把本币与美元松散地挂钩在一起。在过去差不多五年的时间里，制度上的不统一制造了上世纪30年代的一个翻版：作为让本币钉住美元的最大经济体，中国将人民币汇率保持于低位，致使亚洲其他出口国也纷纷压低汇价。正是在这新一轮汇率操纵大战中，这些钉住美元的国家敛集了巨额贸易顺差。他们的收益不断回流至国际金融体系中，令信贷泡沫持续膨胀，在破灭后酿成今天的灾难。
说服中国改变其货币政策会是新布雷顿森林会议一个值得追求的目标。不过汇改问题在此次会议的议事日程上排名靠后（布什政府提议会议于11月15日举行，并将其定性为“20国集团会议”，对欧洲方面所谓的第二次布雷顿森林会议的说法置之不理）。力主召开此次会议的英、法领导人要求在会上讨论金融监管问题，例如何如完善评级机构、加强银行业透明度等等。很多相关议题对跨国合作的要求都很低。
如果欧洲闭嘴不提要求中国放松钉住美元政策的话，那或许是因为他们预见到了自己要为这一要求所做出的让步。中国是不会为了国际金融体系而放弃其出口拉动型经济增长政策的，除非这样能令它在该体系中获得更大利益──这意味着在IMF获得大得多的发言权，同时相应削弱欧洲原本过大的影响力。抛开有关银行业透明度的胡言乱语，这才是这次会议需要达成的核心协议。自然欧洲人不会提出这样的建议。
以何种形式将中国纳入多边机制核心的问题取决于中美这两个大国。这和第一次布雷顿森林会议时倒颇为相像──在多边谈判的表象下其实就是两个大国之间的讨价还价。二战之后，英国这个骄傲但负债累累的帝国需要美国人的存款来稳定货币体系，它付出的代价就是让美国人在IMF的设计及构架问题上拥有最终决定权。三十年河东，三十年河西，如今的美国必须扮演当年英国的角色，而今天的中国则必须扮演当年美国的角色。
然而，这里还有一个意想不到的转折。上世纪40年代时，衰落一方奉行的是帝国式贸易政策，崛起一方倡导的则是开放的全球经济模式。当罗斯福(Franklin Roosevelt)对邱吉尔(Churchill)说，实现自由贸易是英国获得战后援助的代价时，罗斯福是在要求终结殖民地政策、建立平等的商业竞争舞台；邱吉尔回答到：总统先生，我想你是想废除大英帝国，但尽管如此，我们知道美国是英国唯一的希望。
而今，崛起的一方一直在通过低汇率推行重商主义政策。坐拥2万亿美元巨额外汇储备的中国政府有可能答应为西方金融机构提供资金帮助，但条件是在IMF里扮演更重要的角色。但中国人也有可能对此兴趣全无。全球货币体系的未来取决于中国是否有心充当罗斯福──或者它宁愿做现代版的邱吉尔。
（编者按：本文作者Sebastian Mallaby是美国外交关系委员会(Council On Foreign Relations)地缘经济研究中心(Center for Geoeconomic Studies)主任。目前他正在撰写有关对冲基金历史的文章。）
****************************************
A 21st-Century Bretton Woods
汉 大 中 小2008年10月30日08:37
There wasn't much to see in Bretton Woods in July 1944, when delegates from 44 countries checked into the sprawling Mount Washington Hotel for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. Almost a million acres of New Hampshire forest surrounded the site; there were free Coca-Cola dispensers, but few other distractions.
In this scene of rustic isolation, 168 statesmen (and one lone stateswoman, Mabel Newcomer of Vassar College) joined in history's most celebrated episode of economic statecraft, remaking the world's monetary order to fend off another Great Depression and creating an unprecedented multinational bank, to be focused on postwar reconstruction and development.
At the Final Plenary, a sea of black-tied delegates gave a standing ovation to British economist John Maynard Keynes, whose intellect had permeated the three weeks of talks. Lord Keynes paid tribute to his far-seeing colleagues, who had performed a task appropriate 'to the prophet and to the soothsayer.'
The Bretton Woods conference has acquired mythical status. To economic-history buffs, it's akin to the gathering of the founding fathers at the constitutional convention. To politicians anxious to make their marks upon the world, it's a moment to be richly envied. The recent calls from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy for a new Bretton Woods conference, to which the Bush administration has acceded, have caused TV crews to descend upon the old hotel, which has undergone a $50 million facelift. But Bretton Woods revivalism is nothing new. Indeed, it's a long tradition.
After the onset of the Latin debt crisis in 1982, U.S. Treasury Secretary Donald Regan floated the idea of a new Bretton Woods to steady the hemisphere's currencies. The following year, reeling from three devaluations of the franc, French President Francois Mitterrand declared, 'The time has really come to think in terms of a new Bretton Woods. Outside this proposition, there will be no salvation.' Mitterrand persisted in this grandiloquence over the next two years. He finally quieted down in 1985, when Margaret Thatcher dismissed his proposal as 'generalized jabberwocky.'
In the wake of the emerging-market crises of 1997-98, Bretton Woods nostalgia broke out again -- this time in post-Thatcher Britain. 'We should not be afraid to think radically and fundamentally,' Tony Blair opined. 'We need to commit ourselves today to build a new Bretton Woods for the next millennium.' The precise content of Mr. Blair's millennial ambition was, shall we say, vague. But no fellow leader was rude enough to say so.
Among acts of international economic statesmanship, perhaps only the Marshall Plan has been invoked more frequently. There have been calls for a Marshall Plan for postcommunist eastern Europe, a Marshall Plan for Africa, a Marshall Plan for the inner cities. Indeed, anybody wanting Washington to splurge finds Marshall exceedingly convenient.
But Bretton Woods has a richer and more rarefied cachet. It was about reordering the international system, not just mobilizing money for an enlightened cause. And whereas the Marshall Plan was an example of the unilateralism for which the U.S. is known, the Bretton Woods conference was a triumph of multilateral coordination. It featured countries as diverse as Honduras, Liberia and the Philippines (Keynes spoke disdainfully of a 'most monstrous monkey-house'), though it did not include South Korea or Japan, important voices in today's economic summitry.
Both sides of the Bretton Woods achievement seem alluring today, yet both may be chimerical. The conference rebuilt the economic order by creating a system of fixed exchange rates. The aim was to prevent a return to the competitive devaluations best illustrated by the 'butter wars.' In 1930 New Zealand secured a cost advantage for its butter exports by devaluing its money; Denmark, its main butter rival, responded with its own devaluation in 1931; the two nations proceeded to chase each other down with progressively more drastic devaluations.
This beggar-thy-neighbor behavior added to the protectionism that brought the world to ruin, and the Bretton Woods answer was simple. In the postwar era, the dollar would be anchored to gold, and other currencies would be anchored to the dollar: No more fluctuating money, ergo no competitive devaluation. To undergird this system, the Bretton Woods architects created the International Monetary Fund, which was far more central to their ambitions than their other legacy, the World Bank. If a country's fixed exchange rate led it into a balance of payments crisis, the IMF would bail it out and so avert devaluation.
Today the idea of another monetary rebirth has much to recommend it. The credit bubble that has wreaked havoc on the world's financial markets has its origins in a two-headed monetary order: Some countries allow their currencies to float, while others peg loosely to the dollar. Over the past five years or so, this mixture created a variation on the 1930s: China, the largest dollar pegger, kept its currency cheap, driving rival exporters in Asia to hold their exchange rates down also. Thanks to this new version of competitive currency manipulation, the dollar-peggers racked up gargantuan trade surpluses. Their earnings were pumped back into the international financial system, inflating a credit bubble that now has popped disastrously.
Persuading China to change its currency policy would be a worthy goal for a new Bretton Woods conference. But currency reform is low on the agenda of the summit that the Bush administration plans to host on Nov. 15. (The administration styles this gathering a 'G-20 meeting,' ignoring the European talk of a Bretton Woods II.) The British and French leaders who pushed for the meeting want instead to talk about financial regulation -- how to fix rating agencies, how to boost transparency at banks and so on. But many of these tasks require minimal multilateral coordination.
If the Europeans shrink from demanding that China cease pegging to the dollar, it's perhaps because they anticipate the concession that would be asked of them. China isn't going to give up its export-led growth strategy for the sake of the international system unless it gets a bigger stake in that system -- meaning a much bigger voice within the International Monetary Fund and a corresponding reduction in Europe's exaggerated influence. When you strip out the blather about bank transparency and such, this is the core bargain that needs to be struck. Naturally, the Europeans aren't proposing it.
It will be up to the two great powers -- the U.S. and China -- to fashion the deal that brings China into the heart of the multilateral system. Here, too, is an echo of the first Bretton Woods, for underneath the camouflage of a multilateral process there was a bargain between two nations. Britain, the proud but indebted imperial power, needed American savings to underpin monetary stability in the postwar era; the quid pro quo was that the U.S. had the final say on the IMF's design and structure. Today the U.S. must play Britain's role, and China must play the American one.
There's a final twist, however. In the 1940s the declining power practiced imperial trade preferences; the rising power championed an open world economy. When Franklin Roosevelt told Winston Churchill that free trade would be the price of postwar assistance, he was demanding an end to the colonial order and the creation of a level playing field for commerce. 'Mr. President, I think you want to abolish the British empire,' Churchill protested. 'But in spite of that, we know you are our only hope.'
Today it is the rising power that pursues mercantilist policies via its exchange rate. China's leadership, which sits atop an astonishing $2 trillion in foreign-currency savings, could trade a promise to help recapitalize Western finance for an expanded role within the IMF. But China may simply not be interested. The future of the global monetary system depends on whether China aspires to play the role of Roosevelt -- or whether it prefers to be a modern Churchill.
Sebastian Mallaby
(Sebastian Mallaby directs the Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is writing a history of hedge funds.)
Friday, October 31, 2008
why it's tricky for developing countries to rely on raw materials to grow (III)
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY
Fortis/VM Group predict solar energy will boost silver demand
The Fortis/VM Group’s Silver Book says silver demand in solar energy is expected to almost triple by 2012. The solar industry is expected to be a major consumer of silver in ten years.
Author: Tessa Kruger
Posted: Wednesday , 08 Oct 2008
JOHANNESBURG -
The solar energy sector is expected to become a robust driver of the silver market in future as silver demand in solar energy is forecast to increase to about 1,270t by 2012.
The Fortis/VM Group's latest Silver Book says silver demand from the solar panel sector was only 432t in 2007 based on the assumptions of maximum silver loadings per installed wattage of 0.12g/W, 4GW production (2007) and a 10% market share of non-silver containing thin film PV units.
However, future projects appeared very promising for silver demand in solar energy and therefore silver demand in the solar sector was forecast to increase to almost 1,270tby 2012 at 22GW of production. This forecast was based on the assumption of an annual 5% decrease in silver loadings per watt as efficiencies improve and market share of thin film technology rising to 25%.
The Silver Book said its conservative estimate for photovoltaic (PV) growth to 2012 was 13GW, which brought its estimate of silver demand for that year down to 1,111t. But the most aggressive industry forecast was 52GW, which would imply 4,446t of silver.
Photovoltaic (PV) or solar cells are used to convert sunlight to electricity. PV cells are semiconductor devices that produce electricity as long as light shines on them.
"Like any high and low forecast, the truth would probably lie somewhere in between, but we can say that this industry is going to represent a robust and growing item in the future silver supply/demand balance," the VM Group said.
The group based its forecast on a number of assumptions and factors, such as bringing down higher PV costs per watt relative to the traditional energy sector, governments offering incentives to embrace the environmentally clean source of energy and the continued market dominance of silver-loaded crystalline silicon cells. Crystalline silicon cells currently account for 90% of the PV market.
"While we expect reduced silver loadings, due to improved efficiencies and the ramp up in market share of thin film modules, we also believe that within the next ten years the solar energy sector will be a major consumer of silver, over and above previous forecasts," said the book.
The Silver Book added it expected the recycling of PV systems to be insignificant over the next 10-15 years, due to the relative youth of the industry, the long life of PV units and the huge cost and logistical effort needed for collection of these panels.
"Of greater threat to the industry would be a collapse in fossil fuel prices and/or the appearance of superior non-silver conducting media, which would write silver's future out of this sector." The book noted that so far there was no sign of this happening but the solar energy sector was a fast-moving industry in a rapidly changing world.
The recent growth in the PV sector should be sustained on the back of high oil and gas prices and the knock-on effect on retail energy prices.
The Silver Book said the era of cheap electricity generated from fossil fuels was over; even though the world probably had at least 500 years of coal reserves, the climate cost of burning carbon was becoming "unsupportable". It said alternative energy sources will increasingly become a way of life.
Fortis/VM Group predict solar energy will boost silver demand
The Fortis/VM Group’s Silver Book says silver demand in solar energy is expected to almost triple by 2012. The solar industry is expected to be a major consumer of silver in ten years.
Author: Tessa Kruger
Posted: Wednesday , 08 Oct 2008
JOHANNESBURG -
The solar energy sector is expected to become a robust driver of the silver market in future as silver demand in solar energy is forecast to increase to about 1,270t by 2012.
The Fortis/VM Group's latest Silver Book says silver demand from the solar panel sector was only 432t in 2007 based on the assumptions of maximum silver loadings per installed wattage of 0.12g/W, 4GW production (2007) and a 10% market share of non-silver containing thin film PV units.
However, future projects appeared very promising for silver demand in solar energy and therefore silver demand in the solar sector was forecast to increase to almost 1,270tby 2012 at 22GW of production. This forecast was based on the assumption of an annual 5% decrease in silver loadings per watt as efficiencies improve and market share of thin film technology rising to 25%.
The Silver Book said its conservative estimate for photovoltaic (PV) growth to 2012 was 13GW, which brought its estimate of silver demand for that year down to 1,111t. But the most aggressive industry forecast was 52GW, which would imply 4,446t of silver.
Photovoltaic (PV) or solar cells are used to convert sunlight to electricity. PV cells are semiconductor devices that produce electricity as long as light shines on them.
"Like any high and low forecast, the truth would probably lie somewhere in between, but we can say that this industry is going to represent a robust and growing item in the future silver supply/demand balance," the VM Group said.
The group based its forecast on a number of assumptions and factors, such as bringing down higher PV costs per watt relative to the traditional energy sector, governments offering incentives to embrace the environmentally clean source of energy and the continued market dominance of silver-loaded crystalline silicon cells. Crystalline silicon cells currently account for 90% of the PV market.
"While we expect reduced silver loadings, due to improved efficiencies and the ramp up in market share of thin film modules, we also believe that within the next ten years the solar energy sector will be a major consumer of silver, over and above previous forecasts," said the book.
The Silver Book added it expected the recycling of PV systems to be insignificant over the next 10-15 years, due to the relative youth of the industry, the long life of PV units and the huge cost and logistical effort needed for collection of these panels.
"Of greater threat to the industry would be a collapse in fossil fuel prices and/or the appearance of superior non-silver conducting media, which would write silver's future out of this sector." The book noted that so far there was no sign of this happening but the solar energy sector was a fast-moving industry in a rapidly changing world.
The recent growth in the PV sector should be sustained on the back of high oil and gas prices and the knock-on effect on retail energy prices.
The Silver Book said the era of cheap electricity generated from fossil fuels was over; even though the world probably had at least 500 years of coal reserves, the climate cost of burning carbon was becoming "unsupportable". It said alternative energy sources will increasingly become a way of life.
why it's tricky for developing countries to rely on raw materials to grow (II)
MORE ENERGY CAPACITY NEEDED
4.2m tonnes of nickel reserves could transform Burundi's economy
Officials say nickel resources could transform Burundi's economy, which now relies mostly on coffee and tea exports.
Author: Patrick Nduwimana
Posted: Wednesday , 08 Oct 2008
BUJUMBURA (REUTERS) -
Burundi said on Wednesday its reserves of nickel were about 4.2 million tonnes, which should allow for exploitation over half a century.
But Mines and Energy Minister Samuel Ndayiragije told Reuters in an interview that mining of the metal could not start for five years due to insufficient energy.
After that, "research studies showed that our nickel could be exploited in a period of 50 years", he said.
The minister said the central African nation needed between $300 and $400 million to build a 60 megawatt-capacity hydroelectric dam to power nickel exploitation. That is nearly double national capacity of 32.5 MW.
The government has already presented the energy project to World Bank and African Development Bank.
"Nickel research and exploitation is not an easy task and it takes a long time. This is the reason why we need support from donors," the minister said.
Burundi has three nickel deposits in the southeast and central parts of the country. The authorities have so far issued six research permits to multinational miners.
Officials say nickel resources could transform Burundi's economy, which now relies mostly on coffee and tea exports. (Editing by Christopher Johnson)
4.2m tonnes of nickel reserves could transform Burundi's economy
Officials say nickel resources could transform Burundi's economy, which now relies mostly on coffee and tea exports.
Author: Patrick Nduwimana
Posted: Wednesday , 08 Oct 2008
BUJUMBURA (REUTERS) -
Burundi said on Wednesday its reserves of nickel were about 4.2 million tonnes, which should allow for exploitation over half a century.
But Mines and Energy Minister Samuel Ndayiragije told Reuters in an interview that mining of the metal could not start for five years due to insufficient energy.
After that, "research studies showed that our nickel could be exploited in a period of 50 years", he said.
The minister said the central African nation needed between $300 and $400 million to build a 60 megawatt-capacity hydroelectric dam to power nickel exploitation. That is nearly double national capacity of 32.5 MW.
The government has already presented the energy project to World Bank and African Development Bank.
"Nickel research and exploitation is not an easy task and it takes a long time. This is the reason why we need support from donors," the minister said.
Burundi has three nickel deposits in the southeast and central parts of the country. The authorities have so far issued six research permits to multinational miners.
Officials say nickel resources could transform Burundi's economy, which now relies mostly on coffee and tea exports. (Editing by Christopher Johnson)
why it's tricky for developing countries to rely on raw materials to grow (I)
Automakers turn to 'nanotechnology' as precious metal prices soar
The world’s automotive manufacturers have gone well beyond the basic concept of PGM substitution, and are now looking to nanotechnology to reduce the use of precious metals.
Author: Chang-Ran Kim, Asia Autos Correspondent
Posted: Thursday , 26 Jun 2008
TOKYO (REUTERS) -
Reeling from a relentless rise in precious metal prices, Japanese automakers are banking on new know-how, including nanotechnology, to clean up car exhausts in place of platinum and related metals.
Automakers use platinum, palladium and rhodium in varying amounts in autocatalysts to filter out carbon monoxide and particulate emissions.
While only a few grams go into every car -- compared with more than 2,000 pounds (900kg) of steel -- the high prices result in a cost of roughly $200 per vehicle on average for the platinum group metals (PGMs).
With about 55 million cars sold globally last year, that equates to roughly $10 billion of PGMs, and demand is growing.
Driven by tighter emissions laws, auto industry use of platinum rose more than 8 percent last year and now accounts for some 60 percent of total demand for the metal, which is also used for jewellery.
Platinum prices have doubled in the past two years, jumping by 50 percent from the start of 2008 alone to a record $2,290 an ounce in early March, due mainly to supply shortages from major producer South Africa.
Other precious metals such as palladium and rhodium have also shot up in value.
Japanese automakers have tried to minimise the impact of soaring prices by substituting cheaper palladium for platinum and rhodium and locking in long-term supply contracts.
But with limited financial hedging available to counter rising prices, most work is going into developing methods to use less or none of the expensive materials.
NANOTECHNOLOGY TO THE RESCUE
The fruits of those efforts are due to appear soon.
Nissan Motor Co, Japan's No.3 automaker, has developed a catalyst for gasoline cars that halves the use of precious metals components by employing nanotechnology.
Using particles as small as a few billionths of a metre, nanotechnology prevents fine metal particles from clustering in catalysts, enabling engineers to use less precious metals to clean exhaust emissions.
Nissan, which plans to share the technology with European partner Renault, will start employing it early next year on all new gasoline models.
Joji Tagawa, corporate vice president in charge of the automaker's treasury department, said Nissan held back from applying a forward rate contract for platinum this year.
"The reason we were a bit hesitant is that we knew that this technological breakthrough would lead to a significant reduction of platinum usage," he told Reuters.
Mazda Motor Corp, owned one-third by Ford Motor Co, has achieved a similar feat using single-nanotechnology, which will allow it to slash platinum and palladium use by up to 90 percent. Mazda has not said when the technology would be put to use.
Honda Motor Co Chief Executive Takeo Fukui said technology, though not yet perfect, also existed to replace precious metals altogether. Honda used a class of minerals called perovskites in an earlier version of the Step Wgn, a minivan sold mainly in Japan, but ditched it due to problems with durability.
"It was infinitely cheaper than precious metals, but difficult from a durability standpoint," he said. "But we're engaging in all kinds of trials to test technology like that."
Other promising alternatives are on the horizon.
Japan's Mitsui Mining and Smelting Co told Reuters last month it aimed to start commercial production in three years' time of a new catalyst that applies silver rather than platinum in diesel vehicles, at almost $2,000 an ounce cheaper.
Further ahead, Daihatsu Motor Co, Toyota's minivehicle unit, could develop a platinum-free fuel-cell vehicle after it said last year it had found a way to use less costly metals such as cobalt or nickel. Hydrogen fuel-cell cars in development today use an estimated 100 grams of platinum, costing thousands of dollars, to separate protons from electrons in hydrogen atoms.
TUG-OF-WAR
The spread of hybrid cars could also reduce usage of PGMs.
Takeshi Uchiyamada, an executive vice president at Toyota and father of the Prius hybrid, said such gasoline-electric cars use less platinum than vehicles that run solely on gasoline because they give off fewer emissions to begin with. Harmful exhaust gases are emitted most during acceleration in gasoline cars, while hybrids use or get assistance from an electric motor during the process.
Toyota and Honda both expect about a tenth of their vehicles to be hybridised by the mid-2010s.
Still, Uchiyamada noted the reduction of platinum use in hybrids was somewhat offset by the use of neodymium, a rare-earth magnet mainly sourced in China, in the motor for the hybrid system, again raising the need to find a comprehensive and drastic solution to the use of scarce materials.
"The issue of rare metals and rare earth materials is going to be a huge concern for the manufacturing sector," he told Reuters in a recent interview.
"When you consider (the) growth in demand, the solution in the end-game has to be to go precious-metals-free." (Editing by Lincoln Feast)
The world’s automotive manufacturers have gone well beyond the basic concept of PGM substitution, and are now looking to nanotechnology to reduce the use of precious metals.
Author: Chang-Ran Kim, Asia Autos Correspondent
Posted: Thursday , 26 Jun 2008
TOKYO (REUTERS) -
Reeling from a relentless rise in precious metal prices, Japanese automakers are banking on new know-how, including nanotechnology, to clean up car exhausts in place of platinum and related metals.
Automakers use platinum, palladium and rhodium in varying amounts in autocatalysts to filter out carbon monoxide and particulate emissions.
While only a few grams go into every car -- compared with more than 2,000 pounds (900kg) of steel -- the high prices result in a cost of roughly $200 per vehicle on average for the platinum group metals (PGMs).
With about 55 million cars sold globally last year, that equates to roughly $10 billion of PGMs, and demand is growing.
Driven by tighter emissions laws, auto industry use of platinum rose more than 8 percent last year and now accounts for some 60 percent of total demand for the metal, which is also used for jewellery.
Platinum prices have doubled in the past two years, jumping by 50 percent from the start of 2008 alone to a record $2,290 an ounce in early March, due mainly to supply shortages from major producer South Africa.
Other precious metals such as palladium and rhodium have also shot up in value.
Japanese automakers have tried to minimise the impact of soaring prices by substituting cheaper palladium for platinum and rhodium and locking in long-term supply contracts.
But with limited financial hedging available to counter rising prices, most work is going into developing methods to use less or none of the expensive materials.
NANOTECHNOLOGY TO THE RESCUE
The fruits of those efforts are due to appear soon.
Nissan Motor Co, Japan's No.3 automaker, has developed a catalyst for gasoline cars that halves the use of precious metals components by employing nanotechnology.
Using particles as small as a few billionths of a metre, nanotechnology prevents fine metal particles from clustering in catalysts, enabling engineers to use less precious metals to clean exhaust emissions.
Nissan, which plans to share the technology with European partner Renault, will start employing it early next year on all new gasoline models.
Joji Tagawa, corporate vice president in charge of the automaker's treasury department, said Nissan held back from applying a forward rate contract for platinum this year.
"The reason we were a bit hesitant is that we knew that this technological breakthrough would lead to a significant reduction of platinum usage," he told Reuters.
Mazda Motor Corp, owned one-third by Ford Motor Co, has achieved a similar feat using single-nanotechnology, which will allow it to slash platinum and palladium use by up to 90 percent. Mazda has not said when the technology would be put to use.
Honda Motor Co Chief Executive Takeo Fukui said technology, though not yet perfect, also existed to replace precious metals altogether. Honda used a class of minerals called perovskites in an earlier version of the Step Wgn, a minivan sold mainly in Japan, but ditched it due to problems with durability.
"It was infinitely cheaper than precious metals, but difficult from a durability standpoint," he said. "But we're engaging in all kinds of trials to test technology like that."
Other promising alternatives are on the horizon.
Japan's Mitsui Mining and Smelting Co told Reuters last month it aimed to start commercial production in three years' time of a new catalyst that applies silver rather than platinum in diesel vehicles, at almost $2,000 an ounce cheaper.
Further ahead, Daihatsu Motor Co, Toyota's minivehicle unit, could develop a platinum-free fuel-cell vehicle after it said last year it had found a way to use less costly metals such as cobalt or nickel. Hydrogen fuel-cell cars in development today use an estimated 100 grams of platinum, costing thousands of dollars, to separate protons from electrons in hydrogen atoms.
TUG-OF-WAR
The spread of hybrid cars could also reduce usage of PGMs.
Takeshi Uchiyamada, an executive vice president at Toyota and father of the Prius hybrid, said such gasoline-electric cars use less platinum than vehicles that run solely on gasoline because they give off fewer emissions to begin with. Harmful exhaust gases are emitted most during acceleration in gasoline cars, while hybrids use or get assistance from an electric motor during the process.
Toyota and Honda both expect about a tenth of their vehicles to be hybridised by the mid-2010s.
Still, Uchiyamada noted the reduction of platinum use in hybrids was somewhat offset by the use of neodymium, a rare-earth magnet mainly sourced in China, in the motor for the hybrid system, again raising the need to find a comprehensive and drastic solution to the use of scarce materials.
"The issue of rare metals and rare earth materials is going to be a huge concern for the manufacturing sector," he told Reuters in a recent interview.
"When you consider (the) growth in demand, the solution in the end-game has to be to go precious-metals-free." (Editing by Lincoln Feast)
A new home for the Nano
India's car industry
A new home for the Nano
Oct 9th 2008 DELHI
From The Economist print edition
Protesters force Tata Motors to abandon a car factory in West Bengal
AP
West Bengal’s first and last NanoEACH year India’s Bengalis celebrate the goddess Durga, offering prayers before dazzling religious tableaux called pandals. This year Santosh Mitra square in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) hosted an unusual example: a yellow replica of the Nano, the small car touted by Tata Motors as the world’s cheapest. It stood in front of a forlorn factory (pictured), made of plywood, fibreglass and plaster, and girdled by a huge padlock and chain. Alas, the Nano will not be built in West Bengal. On October 3rd Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, said his firm would abandon its factory in the state, which has been pinned down for months in “political crossfire”.
The Nano is an icon of Indian ingenuity and entrepreneurialism. Selling for just 100,000 rupees ($2,100), it seeks to reach a new class of customers through frugal engineering. But India’s politicians also have a keen eye for a gap in the market. Mamata Banerjee, leader of the main opposition party in West Bengal, drummed up a campaign on behalf of farmers who opposed the project. Many had refused the compensation the state government offered when it hurriedly expropriated their land to make room for the Tata Motors plant. Whatever the justice of its cause, the campaign became shrill and intimidating. It has undone West Bengal’s efforts to court industrial investment, and may have done wider damage to India’s reputation. If the Tatas, one of India’s most venerable business houses, cannot build a factory without political grief, why should foreign investors take the risk?
Farming accounts for less than 18% of India’s output, but carries far greater political weight. The difficulty of acquiring land, which is often either treasured by farmers or hoarded by the state, has become a constraint on India’s growth. Industrialists are converting over 466,000 acres into business-friendly “special economic zones”. But not without fuss. In Maharashtra the government should soon release the results of a farmers’ referendum on a project outside Mumbai championed by Mukesh Ambani, head of Reliance Industries, India’s biggest company by market capitalisation. In Goa the government renounced all such zones amid popular concerns about the changing character of the state.
In fact, only the setbacks grab the headlines. India has enjoyed an astonishing boom in manufacturing investment, despite all these obstacles. The acrimony that dogged the Tatas in West Bengal did not stop at least four other states from rushing to offer alternative sites. The company chose a location in Gujarat, one of India’s most industrialised states, which instantly granted more land (1,100 acres) than was on offer in West Bengal. Not for long were the Tatas “orphans looking for a home”, as Mr Tata put it to the Times of India.
Gujarat’s chief minister, Narendra Modi, is an unapologetic Hindu nationalist who sits at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum from Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the Marxist intellectual who governs West Bengal. And yet both chief ministers are equally dedicated to the cause of industrialisation.
The Nano’s exit may even give Ms Banerjee and her sympathisers pause for thought. For as long as the Tatas endured her rallies and blockades, she could have her cake and eat it. She could champion the cause of farmers without damaging the prospects of the thousands of Bengalis who hoped to gain employment as a result of the project. But the Tatas’ departure will force Ms Banerjee to count the cost of her political venture. The replica sitting in Santosh Mitra square is, sadly, the only Nano the Bengalis will now get to build.
A new home for the Nano
Oct 9th 2008 DELHI
From The Economist print edition
Protesters force Tata Motors to abandon a car factory in West Bengal
AP
West Bengal’s first and last NanoEACH year India’s Bengalis celebrate the goddess Durga, offering prayers before dazzling religious tableaux called pandals. This year Santosh Mitra square in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) hosted an unusual example: a yellow replica of the Nano, the small car touted by Tata Motors as the world’s cheapest. It stood in front of a forlorn factory (pictured), made of plywood, fibreglass and plaster, and girdled by a huge padlock and chain. Alas, the Nano will not be built in West Bengal. On October 3rd Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group, said his firm would abandon its factory in the state, which has been pinned down for months in “political crossfire”.
The Nano is an icon of Indian ingenuity and entrepreneurialism. Selling for just 100,000 rupees ($2,100), it seeks to reach a new class of customers through frugal engineering. But India’s politicians also have a keen eye for a gap in the market. Mamata Banerjee, leader of the main opposition party in West Bengal, drummed up a campaign on behalf of farmers who opposed the project. Many had refused the compensation the state government offered when it hurriedly expropriated their land to make room for the Tata Motors plant. Whatever the justice of its cause, the campaign became shrill and intimidating. It has undone West Bengal’s efforts to court industrial investment, and may have done wider damage to India’s reputation. If the Tatas, one of India’s most venerable business houses, cannot build a factory without political grief, why should foreign investors take the risk?
Farming accounts for less than 18% of India’s output, but carries far greater political weight. The difficulty of acquiring land, which is often either treasured by farmers or hoarded by the state, has become a constraint on India’s growth. Industrialists are converting over 466,000 acres into business-friendly “special economic zones”. But not without fuss. In Maharashtra the government should soon release the results of a farmers’ referendum on a project outside Mumbai championed by Mukesh Ambani, head of Reliance Industries, India’s biggest company by market capitalisation. In Goa the government renounced all such zones amid popular concerns about the changing character of the state.
In fact, only the setbacks grab the headlines. India has enjoyed an astonishing boom in manufacturing investment, despite all these obstacles. The acrimony that dogged the Tatas in West Bengal did not stop at least four other states from rushing to offer alternative sites. The company chose a location in Gujarat, one of India’s most industrialised states, which instantly granted more land (1,100 acres) than was on offer in West Bengal. Not for long were the Tatas “orphans looking for a home”, as Mr Tata put it to the Times of India.
Gujarat’s chief minister, Narendra Modi, is an unapologetic Hindu nationalist who sits at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum from Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the Marxist intellectual who governs West Bengal. And yet both chief ministers are equally dedicated to the cause of industrialisation.
The Nano’s exit may even give Ms Banerjee and her sympathisers pause for thought. For as long as the Tatas endured her rallies and blockades, she could have her cake and eat it. She could champion the cause of farmers without damaging the prospects of the thousands of Bengalis who hoped to gain employment as a result of the project. But the Tatas’ departure will force Ms Banerjee to count the cost of her political venture. The replica sitting in Santosh Mitra square is, sadly, the only Nano the Bengalis will now get to build.
Book Review: Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life
Mark Francis, _Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life_.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. xiv + 434 pp. $45 (cloth),
ISBN: 978-0-8014-4590-3.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Sandra J. Peart, Jepson School of Leadership
Studies, University of Richmond.
This is a wonderful book, filled with detail, substance and purpose.
Mark Francis, professor of political science at the University of
Canterbury, rightly informs us that Spencer has been misinterpreted over
the years. Francis acknowledges that Spencer himself is partly
responsible for those misinterpretations, having been careless about how
his arguments might be used by others (p. 285). Consequently, the
biographer of Spencer faces “an intriguing task” (p. 330) -- how to
correct the misconceptions while preserving what is worth preserving in
the enormous amount of Spencer scholarship that followed upon Spencer’s
work.
Francis correctly re-orients our interpretation of Spencer on a number
of important fronts, emphasizing that Spencer was first and foremost a
philosopher as opposed to a biologist or psychologist. Though the
literature has stressed Spencer’s role in the development of
professional science, Francis emphasizes Spencer’s major contributions
to the philosophy of science (p. 233). Spencer was the “most consistent
evolutionary theorist among the founding fathers of modern social
science” (p. 78). But he “was not pursuing the same goals as Darwin,”
Francis writes, and so “It was therefore painless for him to admit that
he and Darwin had used evolution in different ways” (p. 189). Spencer
introduced evolutionary theory “to prop up the intuitionist part of his
common-sense philosophy” (p. 175).
In this account Spencer’s defense of liberalism rested neither on
libertarianism nor socialism. Instead it is a unique doctrine
intertwined with ethics: “His doctrine was an ethical and humane
approach to future social development, which prohibited dominance and
aggression towards dependent persons or groups, even if it could be
demonstrated that the long-term result would be beneficial” (p. 337).
Economists will find Spencer’s ideas on progress most interesting.
Throughout his life he insisted that the goal of human progress was an
altruistic one. But his views on progress changed over time; in
Francis’ telling, “from the late 1850’s he began to cast aside his
philistine faith in the dreams of progress through hard work and the
renunciation of pleasure” (p. 48). Was progress a biological notion of
improvement for Spencer? The common misconception has Spencer defending
“progress” where some perish in the name of overall human flourishing.
Francis rightly presents a contrary argument that reconciles
evolutionary change with flourishing for all. His solution to this
quandary, Francis argues, “was to say that with progress drawing them
forwards, future human beings would remain part of the natural world
(and thus experience evolutionary change); yet, at the same time, they
would be above it and thus able to avoid its perils. His vision had
humanity ultimately evolving to the point where individuals avoided the
cruelty and destruction that the demands of hunger and reproduction had
imposed on other organisms” (p. 243).
Spencer’s writings on politics fit with some difficulty into his
philosophical system. Francis opposes the commonly-held view that
Spencer’s liberalism was fundamentally concerned with limiting social or
political control over the individual. In Francis’ view, Spencer was no
classical liberal (p. 250). More than this, he has been ill-served by
ethicists who take his later ideas as conservative or individualistic.
Instead, Francis emphasizes the originality of Spencer’s evolutionary
theory in which progress was determined by the planning of individuals
who increasingly moved into correspondence with each other (pp. 291-92). In this telling, justice rightly limits the sphere of the individual
for Spencer (p. 251).
Francis’ re-orientation of our thinking on Spencer raises the question
of whether we have correctly characterized classical liberalism at all. Our misconceptions about Spencer may simply be a severe example of our
misconception of classical political economists one and all.[1]
Political economists from Adam Smith through John Stuart Mill held that
individuals were connected to each other through sympathy. More than
this, they held that people are morally constrained by these
connections, in addition to the constraints imposed by the legal system.
Indeed, Smith characterized humans as unique among animals because they
connect with others through trade and discussion. From this
characterization of humans as sympathetically connected, he developed
his system of natural liberty in which individuals come to do the right
thing, to care for others as a result of the imaginative process of
changing position with each other. Sympathy was a staple of eighteenth
and nineteenth century theory of mind as developed by Scottish
philosophers, including Smith’s colleague, Dugald Stewart, and two
generations of Stewart’s students, James and John Stuart Mill. These
philosophers foresaw an extension of the range of sympathy to all
mankind (Mill, 1829, 2:278) and, as such, they became identified with
philanthropy.
So, too, Spencer held that as sympathy flourishes “natural selection” is
superseded by another, human law of social development (Peart and Levy,
2005, 220-22). For Spencer, the extension of sympathy to encompass
universal concern for others is evidence of a fully developed race.
Humans become civilized through the development of language and
sympathy. Spencer explicitly rejected social Darwinism entailing racial
development through misery induced by competition for resources and
argued to the contrary that individuals who have developed sympathetic
tendencies toward one another will come to reduce misery by reducing
births (Peart and Levy, 2005, 222).
But as we know, Spencer has been interpreted quite differently. As
Francis points out, when W. G. Sumner taught sociology using Spencer’s
_The Study of Sociology_, he omitted an analysis of Spencer’s final
chapter, on altruism (p. 189). And the device of sympathy was
successfully attacked by social commentators, such as the co-founder of
eugenics, W. R. Greg, who wished to see natural selection in humans
unimpeded by concern for others, the “unfit” (Peart and Levy 2005,
63-64). With the demise of sympathy as an analytical device late in the
century, the phrase “survival of the fittest” came to mean fittest
_absent concern_ for others. As Francis has demonstrated so
convincingly, this was a re-orienting of our interpretation of Spencer.
When sympathy disappeared from the toolkit of economics, we also began
to misremember classical political economy.
Note:
1. This of course is not to say that political economists spoke with one
and the same voice throughout the nineteenth century. It is, instead,
meant to suggest that from Smith through J. S. Mill, the dimension of
sympathy is important in their analyses.
References:
Mill, James. [1829] 1869. _Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human
Mind_ (edited by John Stuart Mill). London: Longmans, Green, Reader and
Dyer.
Peart, Sandra J. and David M. Levy. 2005. _The “Vanity of the
Philosopher”: From Equality to Hierarchy in Post-Classical Economics_.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Sandra J. Peart is dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at
the University of Richmond. Previously, she was on the economics faculty
at the College of William and Mary, and Baldwin-Wallace College. She is
the past President of the History of Economics Society and, with David
Levy, co-directs the Summer Institute for the History of Economic
Thought. With David Levy, Peart has written on classical political
economy and the rise of eugenics in the nineteenth century. Her most
recent book, edited with David Levy, is _The Street Porter and the
Philosopher: Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism_.
Copyright (c) 2008 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the
author and the list. For other permission, please contact the EH.Net
Administrator (administrator@eh.net; Telephone: 513-529-2229). Published
by EH.Net (October 2008). All EH.Net reviews are archived at
http://www.eh.net/BookReview.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007. xiv + 434 pp. $45 (cloth),
ISBN: 978-0-8014-4590-3.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Sandra J. Peart, Jepson School of Leadership
Studies, University of Richmond.
This is a wonderful book, filled with detail, substance and purpose.
Mark Francis, professor of political science at the University of
Canterbury, rightly informs us that Spencer has been misinterpreted over
the years. Francis acknowledges that Spencer himself is partly
responsible for those misinterpretations, having been careless about how
his arguments might be used by others (p. 285). Consequently, the
biographer of Spencer faces “an intriguing task” (p. 330) -- how to
correct the misconceptions while preserving what is worth preserving in
the enormous amount of Spencer scholarship that followed upon Spencer’s
work.
Francis correctly re-orients our interpretation of Spencer on a number
of important fronts, emphasizing that Spencer was first and foremost a
philosopher as opposed to a biologist or psychologist. Though the
literature has stressed Spencer’s role in the development of
professional science, Francis emphasizes Spencer’s major contributions
to the philosophy of science (p. 233). Spencer was the “most consistent
evolutionary theorist among the founding fathers of modern social
science” (p. 78). But he “was not pursuing the same goals as Darwin,”
Francis writes, and so “It was therefore painless for him to admit that
he and Darwin had used evolution in different ways” (p. 189). Spencer
introduced evolutionary theory “to prop up the intuitionist part of his
common-sense philosophy” (p. 175).
In this account Spencer’s defense of liberalism rested neither on
libertarianism nor socialism. Instead it is a unique doctrine
intertwined with ethics: “His doctrine was an ethical and humane
approach to future social development, which prohibited dominance and
aggression towards dependent persons or groups, even if it could be
demonstrated that the long-term result would be beneficial” (p. 337).
Economists will find Spencer’s ideas on progress most interesting.
Throughout his life he insisted that the goal of human progress was an
altruistic one. But his views on progress changed over time; in
Francis’ telling, “from the late 1850’s he began to cast aside his
philistine faith in the dreams of progress through hard work and the
renunciation of pleasure” (p. 48). Was progress a biological notion of
improvement for Spencer? The common misconception has Spencer defending
“progress” where some perish in the name of overall human flourishing.
Francis rightly presents a contrary argument that reconciles
evolutionary change with flourishing for all. His solution to this
quandary, Francis argues, “was to say that with progress drawing them
forwards, future human beings would remain part of the natural world
(and thus experience evolutionary change); yet, at the same time, they
would be above it and thus able to avoid its perils. His vision had
humanity ultimately evolving to the point where individuals avoided the
cruelty and destruction that the demands of hunger and reproduction had
imposed on other organisms” (p. 243).
Spencer’s writings on politics fit with some difficulty into his
philosophical system. Francis opposes the commonly-held view that
Spencer’s liberalism was fundamentally concerned with limiting social or
political control over the individual. In Francis’ view, Spencer was no
classical liberal (p. 250). More than this, he has been ill-served by
ethicists who take his later ideas as conservative or individualistic.
Instead, Francis emphasizes the originality of Spencer’s evolutionary
theory in which progress was determined by the planning of individuals
who increasingly moved into correspondence with each other (pp. 291-92). In this telling, justice rightly limits the sphere of the individual
for Spencer (p. 251).
Francis’ re-orientation of our thinking on Spencer raises the question
of whether we have correctly characterized classical liberalism at all. Our misconceptions about Spencer may simply be a severe example of our
misconception of classical political economists one and all.[1]
Political economists from Adam Smith through John Stuart Mill held that
individuals were connected to each other through sympathy. More than
this, they held that people are morally constrained by these
connections, in addition to the constraints imposed by the legal system.
Indeed, Smith characterized humans as unique among animals because they
connect with others through trade and discussion. From this
characterization of humans as sympathetically connected, he developed
his system of natural liberty in which individuals come to do the right
thing, to care for others as a result of the imaginative process of
changing position with each other. Sympathy was a staple of eighteenth
and nineteenth century theory of mind as developed by Scottish
philosophers, including Smith’s colleague, Dugald Stewart, and two
generations of Stewart’s students, James and John Stuart Mill. These
philosophers foresaw an extension of the range of sympathy to all
mankind (Mill, 1829, 2:278) and, as such, they became identified with
philanthropy.
So, too, Spencer held that as sympathy flourishes “natural selection” is
superseded by another, human law of social development (Peart and Levy,
2005, 220-22). For Spencer, the extension of sympathy to encompass
universal concern for others is evidence of a fully developed race.
Humans become civilized through the development of language and
sympathy. Spencer explicitly rejected social Darwinism entailing racial
development through misery induced by competition for resources and
argued to the contrary that individuals who have developed sympathetic
tendencies toward one another will come to reduce misery by reducing
births (Peart and Levy, 2005, 222).
But as we know, Spencer has been interpreted quite differently. As
Francis points out, when W. G. Sumner taught sociology using Spencer’s
_The Study of Sociology_, he omitted an analysis of Spencer’s final
chapter, on altruism (p. 189). And the device of sympathy was
successfully attacked by social commentators, such as the co-founder of
eugenics, W. R. Greg, who wished to see natural selection in humans
unimpeded by concern for others, the “unfit” (Peart and Levy 2005,
63-64). With the demise of sympathy as an analytical device late in the
century, the phrase “survival of the fittest” came to mean fittest
_absent concern_ for others. As Francis has demonstrated so
convincingly, this was a re-orienting of our interpretation of Spencer.
When sympathy disappeared from the toolkit of economics, we also began
to misremember classical political economy.
Note:
1. This of course is not to say that political economists spoke with one
and the same voice throughout the nineteenth century. It is, instead,
meant to suggest that from Smith through J. S. Mill, the dimension of
sympathy is important in their analyses.
References:
Mill, James. [1829] 1869. _Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human
Mind_ (edited by John Stuart Mill). London: Longmans, Green, Reader and
Dyer.
Peart, Sandra J. and David M. Levy. 2005. _The “Vanity of the
Philosopher”: From Equality to Hierarchy in Post-Classical Economics_.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Sandra J. Peart is dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at
the University of Richmond. Previously, she was on the economics faculty
at the College of William and Mary, and Baldwin-Wallace College. She is
the past President of the History of Economics Society and, with David
Levy, co-directs the Summer Institute for the History of Economic
Thought. With David Levy, Peart has written on classical political
economy and the rise of eugenics in the nineteenth century. Her most
recent book, edited with David Levy, is _The Street Porter and the
Philosopher: Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism_.
Copyright (c) 2008 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the
author and the list. For other permission, please contact the EH.Net
Administrator (administrator@eh.net; Telephone: 513-529-2229). Published
by EH.Net (October 2008). All EH.Net reviews are archived at
http://www.eh.net/BookReview.
Book Review--Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption and Civil
Frank Trentmann, _Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption and Civil
Society in Modern Britain_. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xiv +
450 pp. £25/$50 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-19-920920-0.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Peter J. Cain, Department of History, Sheffield
Hallam University.
In discussions and analyses of trade regimes in Britain from the late
nineteenth century through to the 1930s, protectionist campaigns have
hogged most of the attention of historians and free trade -- the ruling
regime before the 1930s -- has been relatively neglected. For that
reason alone, Frank Trentmann’s account of free trade and its supporters
would be a welcome addition to the literature: the bonus is that author,
Professor of History at Birkbeck College in London University, has not
only added a great deal to our knowledge through painstaking research
but has written about it with verve and energy and produced a most
readable volume on a subject that can be very dull indeed.
Trentmann’s case is that support for free trade in Edwardian Britain did
not mainly rely on calculations of interest, though he does not totally
ignore that, but was driven by a highly emotional, even passionate,
commitment akin to nationalist or religious fervor, and was seen by its
advocates as a crucial element in defining what they thought of as
Britishness. He admits that around 1900 the free trade movement was in
poor shape as foreign manufactured imports mounted and foreign tariffs
rose, and that some form of protectionism was being discussed even at
government level. Chamberlain’s tariff campaign starting in 1903 changed
all that. Faced with a clear and open challenge, the free trade cause
gathered an astonishing momentum which swept the previously ailing
Liberal party into office in 1906 and helped to keep them there through
two further elections. Masterminded by the Free Trade Union (which,
ironically, learned much from its rival the Tariff Reform League) the
electorate was aroused by a campaign of propaganda that successfully
associated protection with poverty by reminding the nation of the
“Hungry Forties” when protection had last held sway. The free traders
also succeeded in accusing protectionists of attempting to revive an
oppressive state; of undermining free trade’s natural tendency to bring
peace through economic interdependence; and of serving the interests of
a minority of landed and business elites whom they branded as selfish
vested interests, intent on creating monopolies and cartels that would
exploit the majority of the nation. As Trentmann acutely notes, the
campaign had a great effect in politicizing women as key consumers and,
more widely, in putting consumers’ interests at the center of policy,
something that anticipates many modern political movements. All this
made for a very lively politics that sometimes erupted into violence and
which led to extraordinary organizational developments, such as the
great series of lectures and entertainments that the FTU took to the
seaside towns of Britain.
After 1914, that momentum proved increasing hard to sustain. The war
shook faith in laisser-faire and made state control and big business
seem much more natural. Under state auspices, some protection was
introduced to regulate imports and ensure that they served the cause of
winning the war: free trade thus began to appear as a policy that
ministered to individual needs rather than to the national interest.
That encouraged the idea of “safeguarding” key industries after the war
in case conflict should erupt again; and the much higher unemployment
rates in the 1920s also undermined the long-held idea that free trade
naturally meant prosperity. Again, the rise of nutritional science meant
that more stress was placed on health and the need for the state to
improve it, rather than on the “cheapness” lauded by free traders that
now began to seem synonymous with undernourishment and poverty.
Moreover, free trade had clearly failed to keep the peace
internationally and radicals who had once been fervent Cobdenites were
thinking, by the 1920s, much more of the need for international
organizations like the League of Nations to regulate international
intercourse rather than relying on the invisible hand of the market. As
visions of world peace and prosperity under free trade were challenged,
empire increased in appeal and, naturally enough, greater stress was
placed on the need to bind the empire to Britain through tariffs. All
this served to undermine the great cultural movement that had
transformed the Edwardian political scene and by the time the world
economy began to collapse in the early 1930s, free trade was viewed not
as the cement binding the nation together but as the belief of a
relatively few staunch individualists who were out of touch with the
times.
There is far more in this fine book than can be represented here and
Trentmann makes a powerful case for his interpretation of the evidence.
It may be, however, that he underestimates the fragility of the
commitment to free trade before 1914, thus making its decline in the
1920s seem more precipitous than it was. Trentmann recognizes that
Chamberlain was a godsend to free traders but he does not say enough
about how easy he made it for them. Firstly, he split the Conservative
party thus making it impossible for them at the 1906 election; secondly,
in highlighting imperial preference he failed to garner the level of
support that a more wholehearted commitment to domestic protection would
have given. It may be true, as Trentmann contends, that effective
organization by free traders was crucial to victory in the 1910
elections: but it is still the case that the Liberals only won the two
elections of that year by a whisker, despite the fact that protectionism
was still hobbled by disunity. Protectionists were also unlucky in their
timing: Chamberlain launched his campaign just at the beginning of the
long Edwardian boom. Support for protection increased sharply in the
brief downturn of 1908-09, and if economic times had been harder free
trade might have disappeared sooner. If this is so, it may put in
question the depth of the moral commitment to free trade that Trentmann
lays such stress upon. It may also suggest the need for a
counterbalancing reinvestigation of the importance of interest in
maintaining free trade before 1914 and in undermining it after that date.
Peter J. Cain is Professor of History at Sheffield Hallam University,
UK. E-mail: p.j.cain@shu.ac.uk He is the author of _Hobson and
Imperialism: Radicalism, New Liberalism and Finance, 1887-1938_ (Oxford,
2002).
Copyright (c) 2008 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the
author and the list. For other permission, please contact the EH.Net
Administrator (administrator@eh.net; Telephone: 513-529-2229). Published
by EH.Net (October 2008). All EH.Net reviews are archived at
http://www.eh.net/BookReview.
Society in Modern Britain_. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xiv +
450 pp. £25/$50 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-19-920920-0.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Peter J. Cain, Department of History, Sheffield
Hallam University.
In discussions and analyses of trade regimes in Britain from the late
nineteenth century through to the 1930s, protectionist campaigns have
hogged most of the attention of historians and free trade -- the ruling
regime before the 1930s -- has been relatively neglected. For that
reason alone, Frank Trentmann’s account of free trade and its supporters
would be a welcome addition to the literature: the bonus is that author,
Professor of History at Birkbeck College in London University, has not
only added a great deal to our knowledge through painstaking research
but has written about it with verve and energy and produced a most
readable volume on a subject that can be very dull indeed.
Trentmann’s case is that support for free trade in Edwardian Britain did
not mainly rely on calculations of interest, though he does not totally
ignore that, but was driven by a highly emotional, even passionate,
commitment akin to nationalist or religious fervor, and was seen by its
advocates as a crucial element in defining what they thought of as
Britishness. He admits that around 1900 the free trade movement was in
poor shape as foreign manufactured imports mounted and foreign tariffs
rose, and that some form of protectionism was being discussed even at
government level. Chamberlain’s tariff campaign starting in 1903 changed
all that. Faced with a clear and open challenge, the free trade cause
gathered an astonishing momentum which swept the previously ailing
Liberal party into office in 1906 and helped to keep them there through
two further elections. Masterminded by the Free Trade Union (which,
ironically, learned much from its rival the Tariff Reform League) the
electorate was aroused by a campaign of propaganda that successfully
associated protection with poverty by reminding the nation of the
“Hungry Forties” when protection had last held sway. The free traders
also succeeded in accusing protectionists of attempting to revive an
oppressive state; of undermining free trade’s natural tendency to bring
peace through economic interdependence; and of serving the interests of
a minority of landed and business elites whom they branded as selfish
vested interests, intent on creating monopolies and cartels that would
exploit the majority of the nation. As Trentmann acutely notes, the
campaign had a great effect in politicizing women as key consumers and,
more widely, in putting consumers’ interests at the center of policy,
something that anticipates many modern political movements. All this
made for a very lively politics that sometimes erupted into violence and
which led to extraordinary organizational developments, such as the
great series of lectures and entertainments that the FTU took to the
seaside towns of Britain.
After 1914, that momentum proved increasing hard to sustain. The war
shook faith in laisser-faire and made state control and big business
seem much more natural. Under state auspices, some protection was
introduced to regulate imports and ensure that they served the cause of
winning the war: free trade thus began to appear as a policy that
ministered to individual needs rather than to the national interest.
That encouraged the idea of “safeguarding” key industries after the war
in case conflict should erupt again; and the much higher unemployment
rates in the 1920s also undermined the long-held idea that free trade
naturally meant prosperity. Again, the rise of nutritional science meant
that more stress was placed on health and the need for the state to
improve it, rather than on the “cheapness” lauded by free traders that
now began to seem synonymous with undernourishment and poverty.
Moreover, free trade had clearly failed to keep the peace
internationally and radicals who had once been fervent Cobdenites were
thinking, by the 1920s, much more of the need for international
organizations like the League of Nations to regulate international
intercourse rather than relying on the invisible hand of the market. As
visions of world peace and prosperity under free trade were challenged,
empire increased in appeal and, naturally enough, greater stress was
placed on the need to bind the empire to Britain through tariffs. All
this served to undermine the great cultural movement that had
transformed the Edwardian political scene and by the time the world
economy began to collapse in the early 1930s, free trade was viewed not
as the cement binding the nation together but as the belief of a
relatively few staunch individualists who were out of touch with the
times.
There is far more in this fine book than can be represented here and
Trentmann makes a powerful case for his interpretation of the evidence.
It may be, however, that he underestimates the fragility of the
commitment to free trade before 1914, thus making its decline in the
1920s seem more precipitous than it was. Trentmann recognizes that
Chamberlain was a godsend to free traders but he does not say enough
about how easy he made it for them. Firstly, he split the Conservative
party thus making it impossible for them at the 1906 election; secondly,
in highlighting imperial preference he failed to garner the level of
support that a more wholehearted commitment to domestic protection would
have given. It may be true, as Trentmann contends, that effective
organization by free traders was crucial to victory in the 1910
elections: but it is still the case that the Liberals only won the two
elections of that year by a whisker, despite the fact that protectionism
was still hobbled by disunity. Protectionists were also unlucky in their
timing: Chamberlain launched his campaign just at the beginning of the
long Edwardian boom. Support for protection increased sharply in the
brief downturn of 1908-09, and if economic times had been harder free
trade might have disappeared sooner. If this is so, it may put in
question the depth of the moral commitment to free trade that Trentmann
lays such stress upon. It may also suggest the need for a
counterbalancing reinvestigation of the importance of interest in
maintaining free trade before 1914 and in undermining it after that date.
Peter J. Cain is Professor of History at Sheffield Hallam University,
UK. E-mail: p.j.cain@shu.ac.uk He is the author of _Hobson and
Imperialism: Radicalism, New Liberalism and Finance, 1887-1938_ (Oxford,
2002).
Copyright (c) 2008 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the
author and the list. For other permission, please contact the EH.Net
Administrator (administrator@eh.net; Telephone: 513-529-2229). Published
by EH.Net (October 2008). All EH.Net reviews are archived at
http://www.eh.net/BookReview.
Buffett Buys Stake in Chinese Battery Manufacturer
Question from my prof: "How did BYD get its battery know-how?"
New York Times
September 30, 2008
Buffett Buys Stake in Chinese Battery Manufacturer
By KEITH BRADSHER
HONG KONG — The investor Warren E. Buffett announced on Monday that he had agreed to buy a 9.89 percent stake in a Chinese battery manufacturer that plans to sell electric cars in the United States by 2010.
The MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, will pay 1.8 billion Hong Kong dollars — about $230 million — for the stake in the battery maker, the BYD Company. Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns 87.4 percent of MidAmerican.
Based in Shenzhen, a mainland Chinese city adjacent to Hong Kong, BYD is one of the world’s largest makers of rechargeable batteries for cellphones and other uses. The company also has a fast-growing auto-making unit that accounts for nearly a third of its revenue and makes fuel-efficient compact and subcompact cars for the Chinese market.
The president of BYD, Wang Chuanfu, said that the alliance with Mr. Buffett was not just about raising capital for the manufacturer, which relies heavily on short-term debt.
“If BYD were to enter the North American market, Mr. Buffett’s investment would enhance the BYD brand name,” Mr. Wang said at a news conference in Hong Kong late Monday.
He added that BYD would sell cars in the United States and might even move up its plans for entering the market in 2010, by using Berkshire’s money to accelerate research.
David Sokol, the chairman of MidAmerican, said at the news conference with Mr. Wang that Berkshire Hathaway wanted to address climate change and considered electric cars as a way to do so. “This is a technology that can really be a game changer if we’re serious about reducing” emissions of carbon dioxide, the main gas associated with manmade global warming, Mr. Sokol said.
MidAmerican, a collection of electric utilities in the Midwest and West, sees plug-in electric cars as the best approach because the United States already has the infrastructure to supply electricity for recharging almost anywhere, Mr. Sokol said. By contrast, plans for hydrogen-fueled vehicles would require the installation of many hydrogen-fueling centers.
MidAmerican also sees promise in BYD’s battery technologies for storing wind energy and solar energy, Mr. Sokol said. Difficulties in storing energy for when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining have limited the deployment of these renewable energy technologies.
More broadly, Berkshire Hathaway wants to tap into China’s engineering talent and is doing so through BYD, which has 11,000 engineers and technicians among its 130,000 employees.
Mr. Buffett did not attend the news conference, but said in a statement that he was impressed with Mr. Wang’s record as a manager.
BYD cars on display at auto shows in China have tended to buttress the notion that the company’s expertise lies more in batteries than automotive design.
Gasoline-powered BYD models already sold in China are unmemorable economy cars with little of the styling flair on which Western automakers pride themselves. The uneven purple paint on one BYD car displayed at a recent Chinese car show drew a gaggle of amused American auto executives who made derisive remarks.
But expertise in automotive design and manufacturing is easy to acquire. Other Chinese automakers have hired Italian designers, while layoffs at Western automakers mean that many talented engineers are available.
Battery expertise is much harder to find. Mastering battery technology is regarded in the auto industry as the linchpin to the production of electric cars with the range, horsepower and torque needed to compete with gasoline-powered cars.
Mr. Sokol said that MidAmerican was impressed by BYD’s ability to produce electric cars that have a range of almost 190 miles on a single charge, and can be 80 percent recharged in 15 minutes. BYD plans to start selling electric cars in China at the end of this year.
BYD is working on all-electric cars, in which all of the power to move the vehicle comes from a series of batteries attached to an electric motor. That distinguishes them from hybrids like the Toyota Prius, which use an electric motor and battery to supplement the power from a gasoline engine.
General Motors plans to introduce in 2010 its electric car, the Chevrolet Volt, which is designed to be plugged in for recharging like the forthcoming BYD car. The Volt will also carry a 1.4-liter engine fueled by gasoline or a blend of ethanol and gasoline to recharge the battery when it starts to run low, a feature that BYD has not yet accepted as necessary.
BYD is using lithium-ion batteries. Japanese automakers have struggled to make sure that such batteries do not overheat and cause fires, an extremely rare occurrence but one with potentially deadly implications.
Mr. Wang said that his company’s batteries had a singular design that would not cause problems. “Even after a collision, it will not explode,” he said.
While Mr. Wang did not mention it, BYD may also have an advantage by starting with sales of electric cars in China. Unlike in the United States, automakers have very little financial liability for defective products in China, although the government does require recalls when products are demonstrably unsafe.
Mr. Sokol said that Berkshire Hathaway first became interested in BYD on a suggestion from Charles T. Munger, a longtime adviser to Mr. Buffett who is also the chairman of the Wesco Financial Corporation, another Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary.
Mr. Munger has invested his own money in a diversified fund, which he does not manage, that has owned shares in BYD for years. He was impressed by BYD and suggested to Mr. Buffett and Mr. Sokol that Berkshire Hathaway should take a stake, but then Mr. Munger recused himself from any further consideration of the possible investment, Mr. Sokol said.
New York Times
September 30, 2008
Buffett Buys Stake in Chinese Battery Manufacturer
By KEITH BRADSHER
HONG KONG — The investor Warren E. Buffett announced on Monday that he had agreed to buy a 9.89 percent stake in a Chinese battery manufacturer that plans to sell electric cars in the United States by 2010.
The MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, will pay 1.8 billion Hong Kong dollars — about $230 million — for the stake in the battery maker, the BYD Company. Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns 87.4 percent of MidAmerican.
Based in Shenzhen, a mainland Chinese city adjacent to Hong Kong, BYD is one of the world’s largest makers of rechargeable batteries for cellphones and other uses. The company also has a fast-growing auto-making unit that accounts for nearly a third of its revenue and makes fuel-efficient compact and subcompact cars for the Chinese market.
The president of BYD, Wang Chuanfu, said that the alliance with Mr. Buffett was not just about raising capital for the manufacturer, which relies heavily on short-term debt.
“If BYD were to enter the North American market, Mr. Buffett’s investment would enhance the BYD brand name,” Mr. Wang said at a news conference in Hong Kong late Monday.
He added that BYD would sell cars in the United States and might even move up its plans for entering the market in 2010, by using Berkshire’s money to accelerate research.
David Sokol, the chairman of MidAmerican, said at the news conference with Mr. Wang that Berkshire Hathaway wanted to address climate change and considered electric cars as a way to do so. “This is a technology that can really be a game changer if we’re serious about reducing” emissions of carbon dioxide, the main gas associated with manmade global warming, Mr. Sokol said.
MidAmerican, a collection of electric utilities in the Midwest and West, sees plug-in electric cars as the best approach because the United States already has the infrastructure to supply electricity for recharging almost anywhere, Mr. Sokol said. By contrast, plans for hydrogen-fueled vehicles would require the installation of many hydrogen-fueling centers.
MidAmerican also sees promise in BYD’s battery technologies for storing wind energy and solar energy, Mr. Sokol said. Difficulties in storing energy for when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining have limited the deployment of these renewable energy technologies.
More broadly, Berkshire Hathaway wants to tap into China’s engineering talent and is doing so through BYD, which has 11,000 engineers and technicians among its 130,000 employees.
Mr. Buffett did not attend the news conference, but said in a statement that he was impressed with Mr. Wang’s record as a manager.
BYD cars on display at auto shows in China have tended to buttress the notion that the company’s expertise lies more in batteries than automotive design.
Gasoline-powered BYD models already sold in China are unmemorable economy cars with little of the styling flair on which Western automakers pride themselves. The uneven purple paint on one BYD car displayed at a recent Chinese car show drew a gaggle of amused American auto executives who made derisive remarks.
But expertise in automotive design and manufacturing is easy to acquire. Other Chinese automakers have hired Italian designers, while layoffs at Western automakers mean that many talented engineers are available.
Battery expertise is much harder to find. Mastering battery technology is regarded in the auto industry as the linchpin to the production of electric cars with the range, horsepower and torque needed to compete with gasoline-powered cars.
Mr. Sokol said that MidAmerican was impressed by BYD’s ability to produce electric cars that have a range of almost 190 miles on a single charge, and can be 80 percent recharged in 15 minutes. BYD plans to start selling electric cars in China at the end of this year.
BYD is working on all-electric cars, in which all of the power to move the vehicle comes from a series of batteries attached to an electric motor. That distinguishes them from hybrids like the Toyota Prius, which use an electric motor and battery to supplement the power from a gasoline engine.
General Motors plans to introduce in 2010 its electric car, the Chevrolet Volt, which is designed to be plugged in for recharging like the forthcoming BYD car. The Volt will also carry a 1.4-liter engine fueled by gasoline or a blend of ethanol and gasoline to recharge the battery when it starts to run low, a feature that BYD has not yet accepted as necessary.
BYD is using lithium-ion batteries. Japanese automakers have struggled to make sure that such batteries do not overheat and cause fires, an extremely rare occurrence but one with potentially deadly implications.
Mr. Wang said that his company’s batteries had a singular design that would not cause problems. “Even after a collision, it will not explode,” he said.
While Mr. Wang did not mention it, BYD may also have an advantage by starting with sales of electric cars in China. Unlike in the United States, automakers have very little financial liability for defective products in China, although the government does require recalls when products are demonstrably unsafe.
Mr. Sokol said that Berkshire Hathaway first became interested in BYD on a suggestion from Charles T. Munger, a longtime adviser to Mr. Buffett who is also the chairman of the Wesco Financial Corporation, another Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary.
Mr. Munger has invested his own money in a diversified fund, which he does not manage, that has owned shares in BYD for years. He was impressed by BYD and suggested to Mr. Buffett and Mr. Sokol that Berkshire Hathaway should take a stake, but then Mr. Munger recused himself from any further consideration of the possible investment, Mr. Sokol said.
Tata Motors Abandons Controversial Site
Wall Street Journal - October 4, 2008
Tata Motors Abandons Controversial Site
MUMBAI -- Tata Motors Ltd. said it will abandon a controversial plant site where it planned to build the world's cheapest car -- the Nano -- after sometimes violent protests made it too difficult and dangerous to proceed.
The move followed weeks of demonstrations by dispossessed farmers and political activists against the plant in India's impoverished West Bengal state. The protests forced a halt in construction at the site last month.
Tata's decision underlines a thorny issue for manufacturing investors in India: poor local communities -- sometimes backed by political or environmental activists -- are often suspicious of industrial projects planned for their regions, despite the promise of job creation and stimulation of local economies.
Although it has invested more than $300 million in its West Bengal factory, about an hour's drive from Kolkata, Tata said it had decided to relocate production of its $2,500 Nano minicar to another locale. The company said several Indian states expressed interest, but added that it hadn't yet selected an alternative site. The West Bengal site was expected to eventually generate almost 20,000 jobs.
While Tata Motors' plant in West Bengal was just months away from rolling out its first Nano, the protests by local farmers and politicians convinced Tata to cut its losses and move production, according to Ratan Tata, Tata Motors' chairman.
Protesters were demanding that more than 300 acres of the 1,000 acre site be returned to farmers who were forced by the state government to give up land.
"We don't see any change" to the opposition, Mr. Tata said. The relocation "was done for the well-being of our employees, safety of our contractors and vendors."
Negotiations between the state and farmers were going on for months, but few farmers were willing to accept more money or different tracts of land as compensation for their property. Meanwhile, Tata Motors said its project would lose money if it had to give back any land.
Tata Motor's inability to save its project -- despite the government's backing as well as its own reputation as one of the most powerful and socially responsible companies in India -- shows how set some rural dwellers and politicians are against the changes being triggered by India's rapid growth.
As India's economy has expanded more than 8% a year recently, local governments and businesses are increasingly asking rural dwellers to make way for new industrial complexes.
---
Santanu Choudhury contributed to this articl
Tata Motors Abandons Controversial Site
MUMBAI -- Tata Motors Ltd. said it will abandon a controversial plant site where it planned to build the world's cheapest car -- the Nano -- after sometimes violent protests made it too difficult and dangerous to proceed.
The move followed weeks of demonstrations by dispossessed farmers and political activists against the plant in India's impoverished West Bengal state. The protests forced a halt in construction at the site last month.
Tata's decision underlines a thorny issue for manufacturing investors in India: poor local communities -- sometimes backed by political or environmental activists -- are often suspicious of industrial projects planned for their regions, despite the promise of job creation and stimulation of local economies.
Although it has invested more than $300 million in its West Bengal factory, about an hour's drive from Kolkata, Tata said it had decided to relocate production of its $2,500 Nano minicar to another locale. The company said several Indian states expressed interest, but added that it hadn't yet selected an alternative site. The West Bengal site was expected to eventually generate almost 20,000 jobs.
While Tata Motors' plant in West Bengal was just months away from rolling out its first Nano, the protests by local farmers and politicians convinced Tata to cut its losses and move production, according to Ratan Tata, Tata Motors' chairman.
Protesters were demanding that more than 300 acres of the 1,000 acre site be returned to farmers who were forced by the state government to give up land.
"We don't see any change" to the opposition, Mr. Tata said. The relocation "was done for the well-being of our employees, safety of our contractors and vendors."
Negotiations between the state and farmers were going on for months, but few farmers were willing to accept more money or different tracts of land as compensation for their property. Meanwhile, Tata Motors said its project would lose money if it had to give back any land.
Tata Motor's inability to save its project -- despite the government's backing as well as its own reputation as one of the most powerful and socially responsible companies in India -- shows how set some rural dwellers and politicians are against the changes being triggered by India's rapid growth.
As India's economy has expanded more than 8% a year recently, local governments and businesses are increasingly asking rural dwellers to make way for new industrial complexes.
---
Santanu Choudhury contributed to this articl
Y. C. Wang, Billionaire Who Led Formosa Plastics, Is Dead at 91
New York Times - October 17, 2008
Y. C. Wang, Billionaire Who Led Formosa Plastics, Is Dead at 91
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Wang Yung-ching, who built his Formosa Plastics Group into Taiwan’s biggest and most profitable manufacturing conglomerate, died Wednesday in New Jersey while on a business trip. He was 91.
His death was announced in a statement by Formosa Plastics.
A farmer’s son with only an elementary school education, Mr. Wang set up a rice store with his two brothers in his early 20s. He then established the Formosa Plastics Corporation in 1954 with a loan from a United States aid program.
Forbes listed Mr. Wang as the island’s second-wealthiest person this year, with a personal fortune estimated at $6.8 billion.
Known widely as the God of Management, Mr. Wang expanded his plastics and petrochemicals empire and diversified into electronics, cosmetics, hospitals and car manufacturing.
A strong proponent of closer economic ties with rival China, Mr. Wang invested in power plants and plastics factories on the Chinese mainland. Formosa Plastics also set up chemical companies in the United States and owns several oil wells and properties rich in natural gas in Texas.
Mr. Wang is said to have lived an austere life, staying in an apartment inside his group’s headquarters in downtown Taipei. The group’s immense success is partly attributed to a corporate culture emphasizing thrift and hard work.
Formosa Plastics was accused in 1998 of dumping 3,000 tons of waste contaminated with high levels of mercury near the Cambodian port city of Sihanoukville, causing a local panic. The company later agreed to ship the waste back to Taiwan.
Formosa Plastics said Mr. Wang assigned seven senior managers to run the group in 2006 and they will continue to oversee operations collectively after his death.
Mr. Wang is survived by his wife, Lee Pao-chu; two sons; seven daughters; four sisters; and one brother. His son, Winston Wang, runs Grace T.H.W., a group active in petrochemicals and electronics in China. His daughter Cher Wang and her husband, Chen Wen-chi, run the chip developer VIA Technologies.
Y. C. Wang, Billionaire Who Led Formosa Plastics, Is Dead at 91
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Wang Yung-ching, who built his Formosa Plastics Group into Taiwan’s biggest and most profitable manufacturing conglomerate, died Wednesday in New Jersey while on a business trip. He was 91.
His death was announced in a statement by Formosa Plastics.
A farmer’s son with only an elementary school education, Mr. Wang set up a rice store with his two brothers in his early 20s. He then established the Formosa Plastics Corporation in 1954 with a loan from a United States aid program.
Forbes listed Mr. Wang as the island’s second-wealthiest person this year, with a personal fortune estimated at $6.8 billion.
Known widely as the God of Management, Mr. Wang expanded his plastics and petrochemicals empire and diversified into electronics, cosmetics, hospitals and car manufacturing.
A strong proponent of closer economic ties with rival China, Mr. Wang invested in power plants and plastics factories on the Chinese mainland. Formosa Plastics also set up chemical companies in the United States and owns several oil wells and properties rich in natural gas in Texas.
Mr. Wang is said to have lived an austere life, staying in an apartment inside his group’s headquarters in downtown Taipei. The group’s immense success is partly attributed to a corporate culture emphasizing thrift and hard work.
Formosa Plastics was accused in 1998 of dumping 3,000 tons of waste contaminated with high levels of mercury near the Cambodian port city of Sihanoukville, causing a local panic. The company later agreed to ship the waste back to Taiwan.
Formosa Plastics said Mr. Wang assigned seven senior managers to run the group in 2006 and they will continue to oversee operations collectively after his death.
Mr. Wang is survived by his wife, Lee Pao-chu; two sons; seven daughters; four sisters; and one brother. His son, Winston Wang, runs Grace T.H.W., a group active in petrochemicals and electronics in China. His daughter Cher Wang and her husband, Chen Wen-chi, run the chip developer VIA Technologies.
Scandal Hinders I.M.F.’s Role in Global Lending
New York Times - October 22, 2008
Scandal Hinders I.M.F.’s Role in Global Lending
By MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund, onetime firefighter for the global economy, is suddenly being called back into action, even as its chief stumbles on his way to the rescue.
The fund is nearing agreements to make emergency loans to Iceland and Ukraine, and discussing aid packages with Pakistan and Hungary — moves that would thrust it into the thick of a global crisis after a frustrating period in which it was a bystander.
It is a welcome return to form for the fund, which lent billions of dollars to crisis-torn economies in Indonesia, Mexico and Argentina — and was later shunned by countries for the strict condition that it attached to bailouts.
Yet at the fund’s headquarters here, the water-cooler talk is all about a crisis in the life of its managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is being investigated after accusations that he abused his power in an affair with a female co-worker, who resigned in August.
“It’s coming at an extremely inconvenient time for the fund,” said Michael Mussa, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former chief economist of the fund. “If there is a groundswell against him, it would affect the institution’s ability to do business.”
Given the fund’s rapidly expanding obligations around the world, Mr. Mussa and other experts said it needed to resolve Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s case quickly. They point to Paul D. Wolfowitz, who bitterly fought a campaign to oust him as president of the World Bank because of his personal conduct — dividing the staff and depleting the institution before he resigned.
This scandal, they say, is also undermining the fund’s credibility at a time when world leaders are embarking on an ambitious effort to write new rules for the international financial marketplace — a discussion in which the fund should, by all accounts, play a major role.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn has issued an apology to staff members and to the woman with whom he carried on the brief relationship. The fund’s executive board has hired a law firm to investigate the charges against him, and hopes to make a decision after it receives the firm’s report by the end of the month.
By then, officials at the fund say, it could be lending emergency funds to at least two countries, and perhaps three. As the financial crisis hop-scotches around the world, it is infecting emerging-market economies from Central Europe to Latin America. For several countries, struggling with a sudden flight of foreign capital, the fund is emerging as a necessary last resort to stabilize their banks and prevent a wholesale economic collapse.
“The bank bailouts in Europe and the United States have, if anything, put more pressure on emerging markets, making them look even riskier,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard. “It’s happening faster than I would have thought, even two weeks ago.”
As the roster of troubled countries grows, the list of places they can go for help has not. The United States and Western Europe are in the middle of their own costly financial bailouts. While huge sovereign wealth funds have sprung up in the Middle East and Asia, economists say borrowing from them could prove more painful than borrowing from the fund.
Iceland, for example, turned to Russia after the crisis set off a collapse in its currency, overwhelming its three main banks, which had borrowed heavily in foreign currencies. After sending a delegation to Moscow to negotiate a loan of up to 4 billion euros ($5.2 billion), it came up empty-handed.
Now, the Icelandic government says it is close to a deal with the fund, which fund officials said could be supplemented by money from Russia, Norway and Japan. The package would be worth $6 billion, these officials said, of which about $1 billion would come from the fund itself.
“Iceland must have faced the cold reality that however distasteful they found borrowing from the I.M.F., it was preferable to borrowing from Russia,” said Mr. Rogoff, also a former chief economist at the fund.
If Iceland borrows money from the fund, it would be the first Western country to do so since Britain in 1976, which was then suffering from a combination of soaring inflation and a swooning currency.
The fund, officials say, is in advanced talks for a loan of up to $15 billion to Ukraine, which suffers some of the same ailments as Iceland, with an added measure of political turmoil from a split in its governing coalition. Its inflation rate, at 24.6 percent, is the highest in Europe.
Agreements with Pakistan and Hungary appear farther away, according to fund officials. Pakistani officials met with the fund on Tuesday in Dubai. The country’s economy has deteriorated, along with the political and security situation, as the Pakistani military skirmishes with Taliban and Al Qaeda militants in the frontier region near the Afghan border.
Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari traveled to Beijing last week to ask for aid, but was rebuffed. With the United States unlikely to pitch in, analysts said, Pakistan had little choice but to turn to the fund — a politically unpopular step that the government has characterized as a last resort.
Hungary has said much the same thing, and last week it obtained a 5.6 billion euro ($7.2 billion) loan from the European Central Bank to help meet debt obligations denominated in foreign currencies. But with its currency, the forint, badly damaged by spillover effects from the crisis, Hungary will need additional assistance from the fund, some analysts predicted.
All these countries are suffering some form of a balance-of-payments crisis — an affliction the fund knows well from its experience in crises in Southeast Asia and Latin America in the 1990s.
Officials said the fund had about $200 billion available for loans — a modest sum compared with the cost of the banking bailouts being rushed through by the United States, Britain and other European countries, but enough to stabilize the likes of Iceland or Ukraine.
Publicly, Mr. Strauss-Kahn has maintained a confident stance, issuing statements that the fund stands ready to help countries and giving what staff members described as a rousing speech during its recent annual meeting. He also pledged to cooperate with the fund’s investigation of his sexual relationship with Piroska Nagy, a former senior official in the Africa department.
A former French finance minister, Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 59, had been popular with the executive board, despite ousting some respected fund officials and pushing through a painful cost-cutting program.
But the details of his affair — and questions about the handling of Ms. Nagy’s departure last summer — have left staff members slack-jawed, according to several officials. Mr. Strauss-Kahn tried to address those concerns with a lengthy apology e-mail message to the staff on Monday.
The fund, officials noted, is a highly centralized institution, where power flows from the managing director. Mr. Strauss-Kahn will have to sign off on the conditions and details of each of its emergency loans.
If Mr. Strauss-Kahn is consumed defending his job over the next few weeks or months, these officials said, it would hamper the fund’s ability to move as quickly as it needs to in responding to the crisis.
Scandal Hinders I.M.F.’s Role in Global Lending
By MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund, onetime firefighter for the global economy, is suddenly being called back into action, even as its chief stumbles on his way to the rescue.
The fund is nearing agreements to make emergency loans to Iceland and Ukraine, and discussing aid packages with Pakistan and Hungary — moves that would thrust it into the thick of a global crisis after a frustrating period in which it was a bystander.
It is a welcome return to form for the fund, which lent billions of dollars to crisis-torn economies in Indonesia, Mexico and Argentina — and was later shunned by countries for the strict condition that it attached to bailouts.
Yet at the fund’s headquarters here, the water-cooler talk is all about a crisis in the life of its managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is being investigated after accusations that he abused his power in an affair with a female co-worker, who resigned in August.
“It’s coming at an extremely inconvenient time for the fund,” said Michael Mussa, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former chief economist of the fund. “If there is a groundswell against him, it would affect the institution’s ability to do business.”
Given the fund’s rapidly expanding obligations around the world, Mr. Mussa and other experts said it needed to resolve Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s case quickly. They point to Paul D. Wolfowitz, who bitterly fought a campaign to oust him as president of the World Bank because of his personal conduct — dividing the staff and depleting the institution before he resigned.
This scandal, they say, is also undermining the fund’s credibility at a time when world leaders are embarking on an ambitious effort to write new rules for the international financial marketplace — a discussion in which the fund should, by all accounts, play a major role.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn has issued an apology to staff members and to the woman with whom he carried on the brief relationship. The fund’s executive board has hired a law firm to investigate the charges against him, and hopes to make a decision after it receives the firm’s report by the end of the month.
By then, officials at the fund say, it could be lending emergency funds to at least two countries, and perhaps three. As the financial crisis hop-scotches around the world, it is infecting emerging-market economies from Central Europe to Latin America. For several countries, struggling with a sudden flight of foreign capital, the fund is emerging as a necessary last resort to stabilize their banks and prevent a wholesale economic collapse.
“The bank bailouts in Europe and the United States have, if anything, put more pressure on emerging markets, making them look even riskier,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard. “It’s happening faster than I would have thought, even two weeks ago.”
As the roster of troubled countries grows, the list of places they can go for help has not. The United States and Western Europe are in the middle of their own costly financial bailouts. While huge sovereign wealth funds have sprung up in the Middle East and Asia, economists say borrowing from them could prove more painful than borrowing from the fund.
Iceland, for example, turned to Russia after the crisis set off a collapse in its currency, overwhelming its three main banks, which had borrowed heavily in foreign currencies. After sending a delegation to Moscow to negotiate a loan of up to 4 billion euros ($5.2 billion), it came up empty-handed.
Now, the Icelandic government says it is close to a deal with the fund, which fund officials said could be supplemented by money from Russia, Norway and Japan. The package would be worth $6 billion, these officials said, of which about $1 billion would come from the fund itself.
“Iceland must have faced the cold reality that however distasteful they found borrowing from the I.M.F., it was preferable to borrowing from Russia,” said Mr. Rogoff, also a former chief economist at the fund.
If Iceland borrows money from the fund, it would be the first Western country to do so since Britain in 1976, which was then suffering from a combination of soaring inflation and a swooning currency.
The fund, officials say, is in advanced talks for a loan of up to $15 billion to Ukraine, which suffers some of the same ailments as Iceland, with an added measure of political turmoil from a split in its governing coalition. Its inflation rate, at 24.6 percent, is the highest in Europe.
Agreements with Pakistan and Hungary appear farther away, according to fund officials. Pakistani officials met with the fund on Tuesday in Dubai. The country’s economy has deteriorated, along with the political and security situation, as the Pakistani military skirmishes with Taliban and Al Qaeda militants in the frontier region near the Afghan border.
Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari traveled to Beijing last week to ask for aid, but was rebuffed. With the United States unlikely to pitch in, analysts said, Pakistan had little choice but to turn to the fund — a politically unpopular step that the government has characterized as a last resort.
Hungary has said much the same thing, and last week it obtained a 5.6 billion euro ($7.2 billion) loan from the European Central Bank to help meet debt obligations denominated in foreign currencies. But with its currency, the forint, badly damaged by spillover effects from the crisis, Hungary will need additional assistance from the fund, some analysts predicted.
All these countries are suffering some form of a balance-of-payments crisis — an affliction the fund knows well from its experience in crises in Southeast Asia and Latin America in the 1990s.
Officials said the fund had about $200 billion available for loans — a modest sum compared with the cost of the banking bailouts being rushed through by the United States, Britain and other European countries, but enough to stabilize the likes of Iceland or Ukraine.
Publicly, Mr. Strauss-Kahn has maintained a confident stance, issuing statements that the fund stands ready to help countries and giving what staff members described as a rousing speech during its recent annual meeting. He also pledged to cooperate with the fund’s investigation of his sexual relationship with Piroska Nagy, a former senior official in the Africa department.
A former French finance minister, Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 59, had been popular with the executive board, despite ousting some respected fund officials and pushing through a painful cost-cutting program.
But the details of his affair — and questions about the handling of Ms. Nagy’s departure last summer — have left staff members slack-jawed, according to several officials. Mr. Strauss-Kahn tried to address those concerns with a lengthy apology e-mail message to the staff on Monday.
The fund, officials noted, is a highly centralized institution, where power flows from the managing director. Mr. Strauss-Kahn will have to sign off on the conditions and details of each of its emergency loans.
If Mr. Strauss-Kahn is consumed defending his job over the next few weeks or months, these officials said, it would hamper the fund’s ability to move as quickly as it needs to in responding to the crisis.
Argentina Nationalizes $30 Billion in Private Pensions
New York Times - October 22, 2008
Argentina Nationalizes $30 Billion in Private Pensions
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
BRASÍLIA — Argentina’s government said Tuesday that it would seek to nationalize nearly $30 billion in private pension funds to protect retirees from falling stock and bond prices as the global financial crisis continues.
The measure, confirmed in a speech in Buenos Aires late Tuesday by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s president, was criticized by political opponents and analysts as a move to shore up government coffers to try to head off a fiscal crisis in 2009, when Argentina might be struggling to make billions of dollars in debt payments.
The announcement sent the Buenos Aires stock market, the Merval, down nearly 11 percent, and led analysts to question whether the nationalization, which is subject to approval by the Argentine legislature, puts property rights at risk and threatens the rule of law in the country.
It may be the first time a Latin American government has expropriated cash. The move is expected to give the government breathing room as falling commodity prices drive down tax revenue from agriculture by as much as $6 billion next year, according to some estimates. Commodity prices have fallen as fears of a global slowdown have grown.
Argentina’s precarious fiscal situation predated the global financial crisis.
Argentina is one of the world’s top five exporters of beef, soy, corn and wheat, and falling prices for those commodities have diminished the government’s main sources of revenue. The country spent much of its windfall during this decade’s commodity boom paying off debts and subsidizing fuel and other consumer items to stimulate rapid growth.
Now it may face a struggle to pay some $22.4 billion in debt obligations and other payments due next year, Daniel Kerner, an analyst with Eurasia Group, a risk consulting firm, said.
So far, other governments in South America, including Brazil’s and Chile’s, have said they will tap Central Bank reserves or stabilization funds amassed during the commodity boom to help important export industries withstand the global credit crisis.
Mrs. Kirchner characterized Argentina’s move as government protectionism in line with bank bailouts in Europe and the United States. “We are making this decision in an international context in which the leading countries in and out of the G-8 are protecting their banks, while we are protecting our retirees and workers,” she said in a televised speech.
She dismissed criticism that the move was simply a grab for cash, noting that the private pension plan put in place 14 years ago had produced a low rate of return for holders this year.
But analysts said the move could hurt Argentina. “This will be a major blow to the country’s isolated capital markets, and will probably dampen consumer and investor confidence further,” Mr. Kerner said.
The opposition leader Elisa Carrió, who ran against Mrs. Kirchner for president, told Radio Mitre on Tuesday that the government was trying to “loot the funds of retirees.”
According to the plan, all the assets in individual accounts would be transferred to the state’s “pay as you go” system, and affiliation to the state system would be mandatory, effectively putting an end to the current dual system.
Regional elections are scheduled for October 2009. By taking over the pension funds the government can continue to spend on programs that help it retain political support, which Mrs. Kirchner lacks after a debilitating four-month strike by farmers over export taxes that ultimately ended in defeat for the government.
If the move is approved, her government may have secured an important electoral asset, which could help guarantee Mrs. Kirchner’s political survival.
Vinod Sreeharsha contributed reporting from Buenos Aires.
Argentina Nationalizes $30 Billion in Private Pensions
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
BRASÍLIA — Argentina’s government said Tuesday that it would seek to nationalize nearly $30 billion in private pension funds to protect retirees from falling stock and bond prices as the global financial crisis continues.
The measure, confirmed in a speech in Buenos Aires late Tuesday by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s president, was criticized by political opponents and analysts as a move to shore up government coffers to try to head off a fiscal crisis in 2009, when Argentina might be struggling to make billions of dollars in debt payments.
The announcement sent the Buenos Aires stock market, the Merval, down nearly 11 percent, and led analysts to question whether the nationalization, which is subject to approval by the Argentine legislature, puts property rights at risk and threatens the rule of law in the country.
It may be the first time a Latin American government has expropriated cash. The move is expected to give the government breathing room as falling commodity prices drive down tax revenue from agriculture by as much as $6 billion next year, according to some estimates. Commodity prices have fallen as fears of a global slowdown have grown.
Argentina’s precarious fiscal situation predated the global financial crisis.
Argentina is one of the world’s top five exporters of beef, soy, corn and wheat, and falling prices for those commodities have diminished the government’s main sources of revenue. The country spent much of its windfall during this decade’s commodity boom paying off debts and subsidizing fuel and other consumer items to stimulate rapid growth.
Now it may face a struggle to pay some $22.4 billion in debt obligations and other payments due next year, Daniel Kerner, an analyst with Eurasia Group, a risk consulting firm, said.
So far, other governments in South America, including Brazil’s and Chile’s, have said they will tap Central Bank reserves or stabilization funds amassed during the commodity boom to help important export industries withstand the global credit crisis.
Mrs. Kirchner characterized Argentina’s move as government protectionism in line with bank bailouts in Europe and the United States. “We are making this decision in an international context in which the leading countries in and out of the G-8 are protecting their banks, while we are protecting our retirees and workers,” she said in a televised speech.
She dismissed criticism that the move was simply a grab for cash, noting that the private pension plan put in place 14 years ago had produced a low rate of return for holders this year.
But analysts said the move could hurt Argentina. “This will be a major blow to the country’s isolated capital markets, and will probably dampen consumer and investor confidence further,” Mr. Kerner said.
The opposition leader Elisa Carrió, who ran against Mrs. Kirchner for president, told Radio Mitre on Tuesday that the government was trying to “loot the funds of retirees.”
According to the plan, all the assets in individual accounts would be transferred to the state’s “pay as you go” system, and affiliation to the state system would be mandatory, effectively putting an end to the current dual system.
Regional elections are scheduled for October 2009. By taking over the pension funds the government can continue to spend on programs that help it retain political support, which Mrs. Kirchner lacks after a debilitating four-month strike by farmers over export taxes that ultimately ended in defeat for the government.
If the move is approved, her government may have secured an important electoral asset, which could help guarantee Mrs. Kirchner’s political survival.
Vinod Sreeharsha contributed reporting from Buenos Aires.
Why People Still Starve
New York Times - July 13, 2003
Why People Still Starve
By BARRY BEARAK
Late one afternoon, during the long melancholia of the hungry months, there was a burst of joyous delirium in Mkulumimba. Children began shouting the word ngumbi, announcing that winged termites were fluttering through the fields. These were not the bigger species of the insect, which can be fried in oil and sold as a delicacy for a good price. Instead, these were the smaller ones, far more wing than torso, which are eaten right away. Suddenly, most everyone was giddily chasing about; villagers were catching ngumbi with their fingers and tossing them onto their tongues, grateful for the unexpected gift of food afloat in the air.
Adilesi Faisoni was able to share in that happiness but not in the cavorting. For several years, old age had been catching up with her, until it had finally pulled even and then ahead. Her walk was unsteady now, her posture stooped, her eyesight dimmed. As the others ran about, she remained seated on the wet ground near the doorstep of her mud-brick hovel. It was the same place I always found her during my weeks in the villages of Malawi, weeks when I was examining the mechanisms of famine. ''There is no way to get used to hunger,'' Adilesi told me once. ''All the time something is moving in your stomach. You feel the emptiness. You feel your intestines moving. They are too empty, and they are searching for something to fill up on.''
Hunger was the main topic of our talks. Most every year, Malawi suffers a food shortage during the so-called hungry months, December through March, the single growing season in a predominantly rural nation. Corn is this country's mainstay, what people mainly grow and what people mainly eat, usually as nsima, a thick porridge. Ideally, the yield from one harvest lasts until the next. But even in good times the food supply is nearing its end while the next crop is still rising from the ground. Families often endure this hungry period on a single meal a day, sometimes nothing more than a foraged handful of greens. Last year's food crisis was the worst in living memory. Hundreds, and probably thousands, of Malawians succumbed to the scythe of a hunger-related death.
Among those who perished were Adilesi's husband, Robert Mkulumimba, and their grown daughter Mdati Robert, herself the mother of four young sons. The two died within a month of each other, unable to subsist on the pumpkin leaves and wild vegetables that had become the family's only nourishment. ''The first symptom was the swollen feet, and then the swelling started to move up his body,'' Adilesi said of her husband's illness.
It was strange the way Robert seemed to fade. Before the start of the hungry months, it had been he who had kept the family going, leaving before dawn each day to sell firewood or tend someone's fields. But then work became impossibly scarce, and Robert seemed to be using himself up in the search for it. ''At the peak of the crisis, there was nothing to do but beg, and you were begging from others who needed to beg.''
As most people visualize it, famine is a doleful spectacle, the aftershock of some calamity that has left thousands of the starving flocked together, emergency food kept from their mouths by the perils of war or the callousness of despots or the impassibility of washed-away roads. But more often, in the nether regions of the developing world, famine is both less obvious and more complicated. Even small jolts to the regular food supply can jar open the trapdoor between what is normal, which is chronic malnutrition, and what is exceptional, which is outright starvation. Hunger and disease then malignly feed off each other, leaving the invisible poor to die in invisible numbers.
Nowhere is this truer than in sub-Saharan Africa, where President Bush was recently scheduled to travel. Each year, most nations in the region grow poorer, hungrier and sicker. Their share of global trade and investment has been collapsing. Average per capita income is lower now than in the 1960's, with half the population surviving on less than 65 cents a day. It is a situation seldom noticed, as wars on poverty are neglected for wars more animate. African countries now hold the 27 lowest places on the human-development index -- a combined measure of health, literacy and income calculated by the United Nations. They occupy 38 spots in the bottom 50.
During the past decade or so, the poorest of Africa's poor have suffered as rarely before. Merely to survive, they have sold off their meager assets -- household goods and farm animals and the tin roofs of their homes. Just now, the most urgent need is in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Zimbabwe. But hunger has become a chronic problem throughout the region, often occurring even under the best of weather conditions. The World Food Program warns that nearly 40 million Africans are struggling against starvation, a ''scale of suffering'' that is ''unprecedented.'' Coincident with the hunger is H.I.V./AIDS, which has beset sub-Saharan Africa in a disproportionate way, cursing it with 29.4 million infections, nearly three-quarters of the world's caseload. Very few of the stricken can afford the drugs that forestall the virus's death work, and family after family is being purged of its breadwinning generations, leaving the very young and the very old to cope.
With survival so precarious, life is lived at the edge of nothingness, easily pushed over the side. Take Malawi, I was told again and again -- for this land-locked, overpopulated nation in southeastern Africa seems to be a favored specimen of researchers. There is a relative innocence to Malawi's impoverishment: no tyrannical dictator currently in power, no army of goons marauding in civil war, no disastrous weather wiping out the harvest. And yet last year, the nation was nudged into starvation. It happened while there was grain in the stores, if only the poor had the money to buy it. It happened while well-meaning people were arguing about whether it was happening at all.
To track the origins of the crisis, my plan was this: to find a family that had lost someone to last year's hunger and then work my way back through the hows and whys. Though I mostly shuttled over the narrow and soggy mud roads between Mkulumimba, Adilesi's village, and Lilongwe, the capital, the actual route of causality reaches beyond Malawi's borders. It extends toward wealthier nations and their shared institutions -- the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It travels the uncertain ups and downs of global commodity prices and currency valuations -- and of course passes into the limited access roads of humanity's conscience.
''The new generation are the unfortunates, because now there is a food shortage every year,'' Adilesi said. ''Things began getting bad when I was done with my childbearing years. If they had been this bad before, all my children would have died.''
In a Malawian village, guests are customarily greeted outside and offered a mat as a seat. Adilesi's front door faced a broad clearing that slanted down, allowing a splendid view of cornfields and acacias and the Dzalanyama Mountains in the distance. About 20 yards to the left was a banana tree and the ruins of an outhouse, its mud walls half-collapsed by a recent storm. The main house itself was a single room, about 9 feet by 12 feet, with a roof of bundled grass. In one corner were the ashy remnants of a small fire. Otherwise, the room was empty but for a tin pail, two pots, a few baskets and plastic bowls and some empty grain sacks that could be used as blankets. Adilesi lived in this hut with her daughter Lufinenti and 10 grandchildren. It was hard to imagine the geometry that would allow them all to sleep in so spare a space.
''We squeeze like worms,'' Adilesi said, explaining rather than complaining.
Thin-faced and withered, the old woman owned only one set of clothes, a colorful wrap that went around her waist and a faded T-shirt that showed a San Francisco street scene and advertised Levi's 501 jeans. The lettering proclaimed, ''Quality Never Goes Out of Style.'' She had no idea what the words meant. ''Is this something offensive?'' she asked in Chichewa, Malawi's main language, bending her head down so she could examine the thinned cloth. The villagers all bought such used clothing, the discards of people from richer nations. Children who had never seen television unwittingly sported apparel that allied them with Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers. Often, holes in these shirts rivaled the size of the remaining garment. This shamed the children, and some refused to go to school. ''I have no idea what San Francisco is,'' Adilesi said with a smile, repeating the words she had just been told. ''I couldn't tell you whether it's an animal or a man.''
She did not know her age, either, but she could remember the historic famine of 1949. She was a youngster then, that year when the skies cruelly withheld the rains. The undisturbed sun not only parched the cornstalks; it seemed to melt the glue that held the village together. Neighbors, once generous, hid away what food they had, afraid of theft. Women sang prayers of apology to their ancestors for any conceivable wrongdoing and begged them to reopen the clouds. Men wandered far from their homes, disappearing for weeks in a desperate search for work. ''We refer to it simply as '49,'' Adilesi said.
She married Robert soon after. She can't recall exactly when. Robert was a nephew of the village chief, and their wedding was preceded by an evening of dancing, with the entire village sharing in a feast of two goats, several chickens and homemade beer. Vows were recited at the African Abraham Church nearby. Adilesi would later bear 12 children, including 8 who lived to be adults -- an average rate of survival in a country where half the children suffer stunted growth and one in four die before age 5.
Robert, tall and stout, was a good provider. As a young man, he went to South Africa and toiled in the mines. Then, back in Malawi, he worked for the forestry department, slashing away underbrush with his panga knife. In a village of farmers, he was one of the few men who carried home monthly paychecks. But that job ended four years ago, when the government, under pressure from foreign lenders, drastically reduced its payroll. Robert then spent more time farming and doing ganyu, day labor.
Toward the end of 2001, after an overabundance of rain and a disappointing harvest, corn prices leapt as high as 40 kwacha per kilo, about 50 cents, a forbidding sum for people used to paying a tenth as much. Foraging became necessary, as it had been in '49, as it was last year, as it is even now. The toil was not unproductive. In the openness of the plain, with the daily rain slapping hard at the mud, edible leaves reached out for the taking from small stems. They held vitamin C, some iron, some beta carotene. Occasionally there were tubers. People could eat, just not a balanced diet, just not enough.
Hunger, like many diseases, is often an abettor of death rather than an absolute cause. Who really knew: was it the tuberculosis or the malnutrition that came first, and which of them delivered the fatal blow? But symptomatically, starvation usually arrives with anemia and extreme wasting and swelling from fluid in the tissue. There can be loss of appetite, and there can be diarrhea. Robert suffered all these symptoms. That a grown man would be among those to succumb to the hunger was not so uncommon. Men, it was explained to me, used up more of themselves in the unceasing search for ganyu.
Whatever the undertow, Robert grew too weak to work. He and Adilesi went to the government hospital, where he was treated for malnutrition, then later treated for malaria, then sent home. When they released him, the doctors said he needed to eat better or he would die. Inevitably, there was little food, so he began his capitulation, imparting final goodbyes. ''He told me we needed to remain united as a family,'' said Kiniel, 16, the youngest of his children.
Robert's daughter Mdati fell ill soon after he went into his decline. She was about 30. Her husband had been a philanderer to whom she had said good riddance, and now she was suddenly incapable of caring for their four sons herself. The entire family had always depended on her. Mdati was the only one who could read and write. ''She went to school up to the second grade,'' said her sister Lufinenti. ''She was very smart.''
Unlike her father, Mdati couldn't keep food down when she found something to eat. This raised a suspicion that she had somehow been bewitched.
The family regularly attended the African Abraham Church, a tiny red-brick building with pews and an altar molded out of mud. As with most Christians in the area, they found ways to blend witchcraft into their beliefs. ''Some people protect their fields with charms, but we can't afford such things,'' Adilesi told me. This safeguard against thievery required the intercession of someone with magical powers, a sing'anga. (My interpreter -- the daily intermediary between my English and the villagers' Chichewa -- used the word ''witch doctor,'' though a more respectful term would be ''traditional healer.'') The family had great hopes that a sing'anga could break the spell that gripped Mdati. They took her to two of them.
The first, Bomba Kamchewere, is a tall, bony man with a missing front tooth. When I visited him, he spread out a mat of tightly stitched reeds so we could sit together beneath his favorite tree. He had been tutored, in dreams, by Jesus himself, he said. But even with divine insight into the curative uses of roots and herbs, his powers had limits. While he claimed to cure stomachaches, venereal disease and tuberculosis, he confessed that other sicknesses baffled him. AIDS was particularly confounding, as was njala, or hunger, which had been Mdati's problem. ''With her case, the spirits told me I could not do anything,'' he said. Then, somewhat shamefully, he confessed that around that time he himself had endured njala, quite frighteningly so. ''I went three weeks without any solid food, and I developed some strange swelling.'' At a hospital, the doctors recommended that he eat more, which was advice that struck the sing'anga as less than a revelation.
Mose Chinkhombe, a young, self-confident man with a spacious smile, was the second healer. His home was hours away in the village of Chiseka. To get there, the starving Mdati, limp as a rag doll, had to be placed on a borrowed bicycle and guided over the roads by five companions, who took turns keeping both her and the wheels steady.
A year later, the healer still remembered her. ''My diagnosis was anemia,'' he said as he sat in a dark room on a half-sack of dried lime, all the while shooing flies with an oxtail. He was in his vocational attire, a spotless white frock and floppy hat. ''She was so weak from lack of food,'' the healer said. ''I could treat her for this anemia. But I told her she needed to eat enough food to recharge her body. When she left, she had improved slightly. But then I heard she died.'' He nodded rather forcefully as he said this. Then, perhaps in defense of his medical craft, he apparently felt he needed to tell me the obvious, that the ''big hunger'' had taken a great many lives during those dismal months.
There is a belief that when a stray black dog crosses your path, terrible times will come, he said. ''Last year,'' he explained, ''a black dog walked across the entire country.''
Some 11 million people live in Malawi, though far too few live especially long. Average life expectancy from birth has fallen to 36, one of the lowest figures anywhere, according to the World Health Organization. Tuberculosis cases have doubled in the past 10 years, and an estimated 16 percent of people ages 15 to 49 have H.I.V./AIDS, though with little testing going on, few of them know it. Nearly 500,000 children have lost one or both parents to the virus, according to the United Nations. In the villages, where AIDS is seldom discussed, people call it ''government disease,'' because it seems to spring from the city.
For the poor, conditions began rapidly deteriorating in the early 90's, during the last days of the ''Lion of Malawi,'' Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the Western-trained physician who was the nation's dictator for 40 years. Tobacco is Malawi's only major cash crop, and the doctor amassed a fortune by granting himself valuable licenses to grow it. At the same time, his government benefited from the foreign aid of prosperous friends. The West applauded his steadfast anti-Communism; South Africa admired his tolerance of apartheid. Banda ruled -- ruthlessly and myopically -- until 1994, long enough to take himself well into his 90's and senility.
By then, geopolitical necessities had changed, as had theories on how to develop the third world. Benefactors began attaching tighter strings to their money, first during the final decade of the Banda regime, then with the subsequent elected government. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had entered their ''structural adjustment'' period. Austerity in government spending was preached, the overriding principle being that the poor were best served through the efficiency of free markets. The fine print in most loan agreements committed governments to reduce subsidies, curtail spending and sell off monopolies.
Whatever eventual benefit there might be in such reforms, the immediate impact on Malawian farmers -- paupers during the best of times -- was distress. Corn prices, no longer set by the government, became unpredictable. Given the risk caused by instability, the private sector did not mature as expected. Worse yet, the kwacha was repeatedly devalued. Falling prices in the world tobacco market had strained already thin foreign-currency reserves. At the urging of the I.M.F., the government instituted small devaluations in 1990 and 1991 and two larger ones in 1992. Finally, in 1994, Malawi moved from a fixed exchange rate for the kwacha to one that floated. For farmers, that meant the cost of fertilizer, an imported good, ballooned as the kwacha shriveled.
Before, fertilizer had been subsidized. Loans had been, too. Farmers now found themselves adrift ''in the worst of both worlds, a Bermuda Triangle,'' deprived of the benefits of a regulated economy while yet to gain the benefits of a free market, said Lawrence Rubey, the United States Agency for International Development's chief of agriculture in Malawi. He gave an example with some dismal arithmetic: in dollar terms, the price of a bag of fertilizer had actually gone down. But in devalued kwachas, the cost had risen fivefold. This was devastating to farmers with badly leached soil. ''The past arrangement of high state control of the economy was inefficient, but at least it was stable,'' Rubey said.
A yearning for the stability of the Banda days -- though rarely for the doctor himself -- is a commonly expressed sentiment throughout the nation. Malawi's youthful democracy has lacked equilibrium, even though Bakili Muluzi, a onetime Banda protégé who fell out of favor, has been its only president. The unsteadiness results in large part from the pull-and-tug of two parallel sources of power, the elected government and the international patrons who finance it. Like many poor, heavily indebted countries, Malawi operates something like a business in receivership. Lenders and donors -- among them the World Bank, the I.M.F., the British, the Americans and the European Union -- carefully monitor fiscal policy and budget expenditures. Their approvals are necessary, or their generosity is withdrawn. The spigot of aid goes on, off, on, off.
Understandably, this has made for a peevish relationship. The Malawians quite correctly contend that the donors are hypocrites: while opposing state subsidies elsewhere, wealthy nations hand out $1 billion a day to their own farmers, about six times what they give in development aid to the globe's poor. (Nicholas Stern, the World Bank's chief economist, once pointed out that each day, the average European cow receives $2.50 in subsidies while 75 percent of the people in Africa are scrimping by on less than $2.) These subsidies also depress commodity prices, undercutting the ability of developing nations to compete in world markets and get their nations off the dole.
The benefactors, on the other hand, quite correctly contend that the government is persistently wasteful and inconsistently honest, prone to overspending on frivolous travel and lax in underwriting programs for the poor. So they give their aid with a chiding finger and chastening attitude: Malawi needs better government!
And yet good government, like good deeds, is most often a complicated matter.
With fertilizer so unaffordable, the government in 1998 cooperated with the British, the World Bank and others to furnish beleaguered farmers with a ''starter pack,'' enough free seed and fertilizer to grow a healthy quarter-acre, about 15 percent of a typical family plot. Soon, the cornfields of Malawi took on the look of a bad haircut, with one cluster of stalks as high as an elephant's eye and the rest barely above the knee.
The starter-pack program combined with favorable weather to produce a bumper crop in the 1998-99 season. In fact, the surplus was so great that a newly established government safeguard, the National Food Reserve Agency, was able to purchase huge amounts, fattening its grain stockpile to about 190,000 tons. For Malawi, so often hungry, this cache was a comforting buffer against famine. But it was also costly. The reserve agency, without capital of its own, bought the corn with loans at a staggering domestic interest rate, above 50 percent. Storage itself was expensive, and after a second bumper crop in 1999-2000, there were concerns that the untapped grain reserves would rot.
The donors felt adjustments were necessary. The starter-pack program now seemed too benevolent. Were farmers to be given fertilizer forever? they asked. If so, that would create a dependency that in the jargon of development economics was ''unsustainable.'' So the program was reconstructed as ''targeted inputs,'' cut in half to reach only the ''neediest'' of the destitute. As for the grain reserve, the donors, like the government, fretted over those gargantuan interest payments. To satisfy the debt, they suggested that the corn be sold, with future stocks kept to a modest 35,000 to 65,000 tons, considered enough to meet most emergencies until more grain could be imported.
Malawi has stunning skies, with a blue so bright and clouds so shapely that they seem to be the work of a cartoonist. Those skies are also fickle, suddenly exchanging a sunny disposition for an angry pout and unleashing thunderstorms that seem to hurl water rather than drop it. In February and March of 2001, as the harvest approached, the skies were angrier than usual, causing regional flooding. That brought the first clue of the trouble to come. This accumulating water kept the fields a hearty green, but the cornstalks, standing uncomfortably in shallow pools, failed to mature fully. Many a farmer was fooled by the deepness of color. They had thought they were going to have a good harvest and did not face the disappointing truth until it came time to pick.
Farmers were not the only ones fooled. Crop forecasters from the Agriculture Ministry underestimated the impact of the flooding on the corn harvest. These errors were compounded by a grossly wayward overestimation of the cassava and sweet potato yield, a false optimism perhaps bred from a false pride. The Agriculture Ministry was involved in a multimillion-dollar United States aid program for crop diversification. Field agents who reported high expectations for these roots and tubers were the same people whose job it was to encourage their planting. The net effect was to delay concern about the total food supply. Indeed, a surplus was predicted: if people ran out of corn, let them eat cassava.
By late summer, when the final estimates came in, the corn harvest was put at 1.9 million tons, about a third lower than the excellent crop of the year before. This was considered a bad though not a terrible yield. And yet to those attentive enough, something ominous was happening. In some areas, corn prices had increased more than fivefold, a sign that stocks were perilously low. Though neither the nation's preoccupied president, Bakili Muluzi, nor the donors were yet alarmed, the Agriculture Ministry was fretful enough to advocate a grain purchase. In September, a decision was announced to import corn from South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.
As usual, the government asked the donors to foot the bill. The donors, in reply, inquired about the national grain reserves -- and were shocked to learn that they were entirely gone. Yes, the donors acknowledged, they had recommended the selling of most of it. But if the entire storehouse was empty, who bought it? And where was the money?
Answers were not forthcoming. That infuriated the always suspicious donors, so much so that the mystery of the missing grain overshadowed the unfolding fate of the fragile poor for several crucial months. This delay was tragic. By year's end, people were lining up at clinics to plead for food. Jos Kuppens, an activist Dutch priest, said he saw starving people resorting to meals of fodder, with one woman even thickening her gruel with sawdust. He recalled a hopelessly thin little girl he had seen at a Catholic hospital. He asked her where she was from. ''I had to bend close to hear her,'' he said. ''She could barely speak, and she said, 'Njala,' which is the word for hunger. The sister told me: 'There's nothing we can do for a child like this. It's too late.'''
Despite the donors' unwillingness to pay the bill, the government tried to proceed with its plans to import 220,000 tons of corn. But a freak coincidence of disasters stalled deliveries: washed-out bridges, a derailed train, a port on fire. It also became clear that Malawi's neighbors faced a similar shortage. They began to vie to buy the same food.
A British agronomist named Harry Potter, dean of the foreign agricultural experts among the donors in Lilongwe, is a man far less inclined toward wizardry than his fictional namesake. Nevertheless, he saw a supernatural hand dispensing punishment.
''It was almost as if somebody up there had decided, Malawi, you have to be taught a lesson,'' he said. But cosmic reprimand or not, the consequences were of course grave only to the very poor and not to their nefarious officials.
Little grain would arrive in time for the start of the hungry months in December.
Famine is variously defined by scholars, though its common usage most often implies a large surge in hunger-related mortality. Some would even designate a minimum body count. Malawians, at least linguistically, make little distinction between ''hunger'' and ''famine'' except to say that famine is ''the hunger that kills.'' Perspective, of course, changes depending on whether you are studying the situation or starving within it. Stephen Devereux of the University of Sussex -- an expert on African food security -- talks about ''outsider'' and ''insider'' views of such crises. Outsiders presume famine to be an extraordinary event, while insiders see it as an intensification of what they already suffer.
The Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is the world's best-known authority on famine. He argues that such catastrophes do not occur in a ''functioning democracy,'' where a free press is a roving sentinel and elected governments have strong incentives to take preventive measures. If so, it is hard to say whether Malawi would be an exception. First, there is the matter of how well the nation's nine-year-old democracy qualifies as functioning. Then there is the question of whether the hunger that killed Robert Mkulumimba and Mdati Robert qualifies as famine.
By the beginning of the hungry months, starvation deaths were already being recorded within miles of the capital. Lilongwe seems a very un-Malawian city, with a scattering of big office buildings and fancy shopping malls. Notable on some thoroughfares are dozens of roadside ''coffin workshops,'' their carpenters steadily at work in the open air, taking morbid advantage of a rare growth industry. Capital Hill -- home to the government ministries -- is an isolated slope of manicured land, best reachable by car, far away from the masses.
For weeks, I tried to interview President Muluzi. Finally, I was informed that he saw no reason to see me since I had already spoken with his friend Friday Jumbe, the finance minister.
That conversation had seemed cordial enough, though on reflection, perhaps I was considered impertinent for asking about the missing grain reserves. At the time of the sale, Jumbe headed a quasi-governmental corporation that had physical control of the stored corn. A parliamentary committee had investigated the deals, and while the probe turned up little solid evidence, its report concluded that the reserves were ''mainly sold to politicians and individuals politically connected.'' Jumbe was faulted for failing to explain his recent financing of a luxury hotel in the city of Blantyre.
''It is true that some people bought the maize at a price of 4 or 5 kwacha, and then one day maize became scarce,'' the finance minister told me one morning in his office. ''That's business!'' Elegantly dressed in a three-piece suit, he was dismissive, and occasionally sarcastic, about the allegations. He said it was ''foolish'' to assume that he was a thief just because he owned a hotel and pointed out that the author of the damning report had been fired and that a revised investigation of the facts was in the works. ''If there was any theft of money, maybe, I don't know what, 100 or 200 or 300 kwacha -- but not big money. But the donors, that's where the bone of contention is. They are assuming that certain politicians bought this grain at a small price and made a killing.''
Indeed, that is -- and was -- the assumption. To this day -- after two years and five investigations -- the donors know little more than that some traders bought corn for very little and sold it for quite a lot, yet another scandalous story about people in the right place at the right time with the right friends, a Malawian Enron. Unfortunately, the donors' righteous pique played a part in the tardy recognition of the deadly hunger, as did Muluzi's willful ignorance. In February of last year, the president was still refuting any reports of a food crisis. ''Nobody has died of hunger,'' he insisted.
But by then, firm statistical proof had begun to appear in repeated health surveys. Also, hospital admissions for severe malnutrition were swiftly escalating far beyond the normal. At month's end, even Muluzi did a turnabout. On Feb. 27, he declared a state of emergency in a national broadcast -- 11 days after the death of Robert Mkulumimba.
Mkulumimba is one in a cluster of five villages, each with 35 to 60 households. Their boundaries reach deeply into one another, and it was sometimes possible to move between them simply by walking from hut to hut. Any visit required the permission of the village headman -- the chief -- who customarily then assumed the role of official escort. I was fortunate to be befriended by Elias Mitengo, a 50-year-old headman widely held in high regard. A poor farmer, he combined the gravitas of a diplomat with the easy humor of a kibitzer. He was chief of the village of Mdauma. And he was also Adilesi's son-in-law.
Elias said he had always tried to help his in-laws whenever he could. But last year, he often did not have enough food for even his own children. ''It was an impossible time,'' he said.
Being headman, an inherited job, included sensitive duties. The chief allocated land and mediated disputes and sometimes judged criminals. He was also the village marriage counselor and arbiter of property settlements in the event of divorce. Elias prided himself on absolute fairness. When I wanted to observe church on Sunday mornings, he went along and even addressed the congregations. But generally, he said, he no longer attended services. With five churches in the area, he worried about favoritism.
One morning, Elias invited me to a meeting under a stand of trees. Several chiefs were discussing a proper punishment for stealing food. Instant justice was being applied in some places, with the hungry crook forfeiting a hand. This, the headmen agreed, was too harsh. Yet when thieves were simply turned over to the police, they were released after a few days, and that seemed too lenient. A better penalty, the chiefs agreed, would be stiff fines -- perhaps three goats or chickens. But this was impractical. Thieves usually belonged to the poorest of families. The discussion went on and on without resolution.
For Elias, hungry thieves seemed less a problem than organized crime. In recent years, it was not uncommon for a truckload of men to descend during the night. Usually, they rustled livestock. But sometimes they emptied entire cornfields of ripe cobs. Elias decided to levy a 5 kwacha tax on each household, enough to pay vigilantes to guard the roads, waiting with axes and pangas and bows and arrows.
''These are not the best of days,'' he told me, laughing at his own understatement.
Actually, Elias had plunged into deep pessimism, something he was more likely to express after a few liters of chibuku, a cheap beer made from corn and millet. He said the njala, the hunger, was prying apart families, turning husbands and wives against each other. ''These women carry their vegetables to the trading center, and if they can't sell them, they sell themselves,'' he said. ''It's the poverty.'' Sometimes, he told me, he would call village meetings to speak out against prostitution, particularly addressing the young women. ''I tell them: 'You see your elders. They got to live this long because they kept themselves clean of promiscuity.''' He would invoke the threat of ''government disease.''
Men were hardly blameless, Elias said. Some were lazy. And of those who were not, some occasionally found work in other districts and then returned home triumphantly with a second wife. Fear of AIDS was also making men do crazy things. Some thought sex with a virgin cured the virus. In parts of Malawi, this superstition had led to rapes.
''Things were never like this before,'' Elias said.
While I had done no scientific sampling, it seemed that more than half the adults I met were not living with spouses. Women usually said they had thrown their husbands out. Adilesi's daughter Lufinenti was typical. Her husband, the father of her three children, had been gone from the village for three years. ''He used to be a hard worker, but when he made a lot of money, he wanted to marry more women, and I didn't want to be in a two-wife marriage,'' she said. At any rate, there was now no chance of his return. He had moved to the south and then died after a long illness, one of his friends had told her. Maybe it was AIDS, maybe tuberculosis, maybe both. ''They said he was always coughing,'' she said.
In the case of Mdati, Adilesi's deceased daughter, her husband was also described as a good worker, a man who could get construction jobs. But his ''sleeping around'' had become intolerable. ''He'd even take other women into their house,'' Lufinenti said. While she described these dalliances, at one point she mentioned parenthetically that the ''last'' of Mdati's sons was now living with his father in a different village. This unexpected detail confused me. For weeks, I had assumed that all four of Mdati's sons were among the many small boys I always saw nearby, playing with tops and homemade pull toys.
It was only then that I learned that the three youngest had died during these past months, a tragedy so within the parameters of the commonplace that it had not merited any special mention. The first boy died of malaria, the second of a rash and high fever.
The third, Legina Robert, perished only in December. He was 3 years old and very tiny, just another Malawian youngster with growth so stunted that he had yet to walk. Children warming themselves by a fire dropped him as they carelessly passed his body across the flames. The adults were in the fields when they heard frenzied calls for help. The little boy needed to be rushed to the hospital -- a three-hour journey by foot but only half that if they had been able to borrow one of the village's few bicycles. ''We looked, but we didn't find one,'' Lufinenti recalled. ''He died while I was carrying him on my back.''
Paradoxically, food was growing everywhere, the slender cornstalks nudging up against the roads, leaning along the hillsides, creeping down to the river's edge. Crops were wedged into the spare emptiness of the cities, spreading in half-ovals around office buildings, stores and saloons, reaching even the back entrances of the government ministries. To be in Malawi during the hot and wet growing season was to be embraced by a landscape of tantalizing abundance -- a perplexing sight in view of all the hunger.
But in Malawi, a visitor soon realizes that the lush color is a cruel tease. All those planted fields, all that greenness, are merely symbols of desperation. Crops appear in unlikely places because farmers feel a need to stretch their holdings. Those inescapable cornstalks are telltale of a nation growing food to fill its belly rather than to compete in world markets. Little economic development is taking place.
Always on arrival at Adilesi's house, my first question was ''What are you going to eat today?'' And each time I listened to the family's contingencies, that day's single meal dependent on some relative being lucky enough to get ganyu or Lufinenti being able to sell her foraged greens in the city. When a little money was earned, the family spent it frugally, never splurging on cornmeal but instead cooking gaga, a dish made from only the outer husks of the corn kernels, a sifted residue more commonly employed as fodder.
Adilesi's field is only a short walk from the house. The family's corn plants were puny for that late in the growing season, and many of the leaves were yellowish and droopy. Children broke off the least promising stalks and chewed them like sugar cane.
On one visit, I was accompanied by Ellard Malindi, the country's chief technical adviser for agriculture. He was a big-hearted man who talked easily with the farmers. A few months later, tragically, he would come down with cerebral malaria and die. But on that sunny day, he was at his vigorous best, and during a stroll through Adilesi's field, he moved from row to row, examining the sorry plants and shaking his head in frustration. ''We're standing on the richest soils in the entire country, maybe in southern Africa,'' he said as his arm cut an arc through the air. ''We're in the medium-altitude plateau. But the soil has become depleted by continuous planting, and it has lost its organic nutrients.''
Goliati Faisoni, Adilesi's oldest son, was with us. A skinny, sickly man with bloodshot eyes, he agreed with Malindi. The family would not be reaping much this year. And however much there was, they intended to eat it early, when the cobs were still new and green. The family was often too hungry to allow their crops to ripen fully. Last year, in fact, they used their green corn to feed the mourners at Mdati's funeral.
''Didn't you get a starter pack?'' Malindi asked Goliati.
The family had. But in their desperation they used the fertilizer incorrectly. They were supposed to apply the bag of mixed nutrients -- nitrogen, phosphate, potash and sulfur -- when they planted, then a second bag with urea when the stalks were knee high. Instead, the family combined the bags. Then, rather than concentrating on one quarter-acre, they spread it thinly over their entire field, hoping to outsmart science.
''There were also beans in the pack,'' Malindi said. ''Did you plant a bean crop?''
No, he confessed. The family had been unable to resist. They had eaten the beans.
Families starve because families lack money. In most cases, it is that simple.
But last year, while most of Mkulumimba went hungry, its chief, Daniel Mkulumimba, was getting by all right. I had often wondered about him. He was the one man in all five villages whom others considered wealthy. His tobacco field was only a 10-minute walk from Adilesi's door. ''He could easily help people, and sometimes he does,'' Elias, the headman, told me. ''But it's not his nature. He mostly takes care of his own.''
By American standards, Daniel was hardly rich. He, too, lived in a one-room house, though it was a bigger room, and it was covered with a roof that did not leak. He owned an ox cart, a bicycle, six donkeys and four goats. Besides corn and tobacco, he grew cabbage, lettuce, turnips and sugar cane on his 15 acres of land. He fertilized his fields, and the healthy cornstalks towered above him. He had two wives and a pot belly.
I wanted to understand why Daniel had not done more to help. When I posed the question, he considered it for a few seconds before saying, ''When the food situation is very serious, the rich and the poor are the same, and it's everyone for himself.'' I reminded him that his cousin Robert had actually died of starvation. ''As the chief, I'm not supposed to help one particular family,'' he replied. ''I'm chief of the whole village.''
For me, Daniel came to represent the ''haves'' of the world. They do assist Africa, though not with a strenuous effort, certainly not in proportion to the hunger and the disease and the benumbing poverty. Indeed, in relation to their gross domestic product, donor nations are now spending considerably less on foreign assistance than they were a decade ago. Among wealthy countries, the United States spends the lowest percentage of all, something President Bush is understandably reluctant to mention when he talks about Africa.
Many experts debate whether aid does more harm than good. Certainly Africa's problems are immense and confounding: paralyzing debt, sorry infrastructure, depleted soil, meager exports, bad government and ethnic and tribal warfare. The majority of Africa's poorest countries have average incomes below the level of Western Europe at the start of the 17th century, according to the distinguished economic historian Angus Maddison.
Unlike the days when structural adjustments were seen as direct routes to poverty reduction, now there seems to be little consensus on what to try next. Proposals tend to be modest. In Lilongwe, I heard one idea after another: soil renourishment, manufacturing schemes, public-service jobs, small-scale irrigation. Lawrence Rubey, the American booster of free enterprise, showed me a bag of chilies grown for export to Germany. ''Niche marketing,'' he said, in much the same way ''plastics'' was advised in ''The Graduate.''
Maybe chili peppers can be one of the answers, maybe not. But in the meantime, even if poverty and hunger seem unconquerable, famine surely can be overcome. Only our indifference -- only our neglect -- allows it to persevere. In Malawi, the timely distribution of fertilizer ought to be preferable to the inevitability of emergency food. That is what every farmer in the villages asked for: if you give us fertilizer, or a reasonable way to buy it, we'll manage for ourselves from one hungry season to the next.
As I heard these sentiments, I would always nod sympathetically, writing the anguished words in my notebook. The people I met were invariably gracious, even though I knew an unspoken tension existed between us. After all, they were hungry, and I had the means to change that in my wallet, as easily as I handed my kids lunch money back in America. But I wanted to understand how people coped with hunger, and handouts would have made that impossible. So I had made a decision in advance: if I met people who seemed gravely ill, I would take them to the hospital and pay their expenses. (That happened twice.) Otherwise, I'd give no one money until the reporting was done.
And that day gave me as much relief as it gave them -- perhaps more. It is awful to be with the hungry, to watch them ebb and falter and scrounge.
''You ask so many questions about death!'' Adilesi said to me during one of my final visits. ''It is hard on us. We believe that when you talk about the dead, you get visits by their spirits at night. When are the questions about the dead going to stop?''
I apologized but said that I had come to learn about hunger and that I had learned a lot.
I thanked her for that. And that is when she and her daughter thought to share with me their ''ingenious'' trick, something she thought every human being ought to know.
If I were ever so hungry I could no longer work, they advised me, there was a way for a determined mind to outfox a hollow stomach. ''Tie some cloth tightly around your waist right at the navel,'' Lufinenti said. ''Make it as tight as you can.''
For a few hours, you can fool your belly into thinking that it's full.
Barry Bearak is a staff writer for the magazine. His last article was about the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
Why People Still Starve
By BARRY BEARAK
Late one afternoon, during the long melancholia of the hungry months, there was a burst of joyous delirium in Mkulumimba. Children began shouting the word ngumbi, announcing that winged termites were fluttering through the fields. These were not the bigger species of the insect, which can be fried in oil and sold as a delicacy for a good price. Instead, these were the smaller ones, far more wing than torso, which are eaten right away. Suddenly, most everyone was giddily chasing about; villagers were catching ngumbi with their fingers and tossing them onto their tongues, grateful for the unexpected gift of food afloat in the air.
Adilesi Faisoni was able to share in that happiness but not in the cavorting. For several years, old age had been catching up with her, until it had finally pulled even and then ahead. Her walk was unsteady now, her posture stooped, her eyesight dimmed. As the others ran about, she remained seated on the wet ground near the doorstep of her mud-brick hovel. It was the same place I always found her during my weeks in the villages of Malawi, weeks when I was examining the mechanisms of famine. ''There is no way to get used to hunger,'' Adilesi told me once. ''All the time something is moving in your stomach. You feel the emptiness. You feel your intestines moving. They are too empty, and they are searching for something to fill up on.''
Hunger was the main topic of our talks. Most every year, Malawi suffers a food shortage during the so-called hungry months, December through March, the single growing season in a predominantly rural nation. Corn is this country's mainstay, what people mainly grow and what people mainly eat, usually as nsima, a thick porridge. Ideally, the yield from one harvest lasts until the next. But even in good times the food supply is nearing its end while the next crop is still rising from the ground. Families often endure this hungry period on a single meal a day, sometimes nothing more than a foraged handful of greens. Last year's food crisis was the worst in living memory. Hundreds, and probably thousands, of Malawians succumbed to the scythe of a hunger-related death.
Among those who perished were Adilesi's husband, Robert Mkulumimba, and their grown daughter Mdati Robert, herself the mother of four young sons. The two died within a month of each other, unable to subsist on the pumpkin leaves and wild vegetables that had become the family's only nourishment. ''The first symptom was the swollen feet, and then the swelling started to move up his body,'' Adilesi said of her husband's illness.
It was strange the way Robert seemed to fade. Before the start of the hungry months, it had been he who had kept the family going, leaving before dawn each day to sell firewood or tend someone's fields. But then work became impossibly scarce, and Robert seemed to be using himself up in the search for it. ''At the peak of the crisis, there was nothing to do but beg, and you were begging from others who needed to beg.''
As most people visualize it, famine is a doleful spectacle, the aftershock of some calamity that has left thousands of the starving flocked together, emergency food kept from their mouths by the perils of war or the callousness of despots or the impassibility of washed-away roads. But more often, in the nether regions of the developing world, famine is both less obvious and more complicated. Even small jolts to the regular food supply can jar open the trapdoor between what is normal, which is chronic malnutrition, and what is exceptional, which is outright starvation. Hunger and disease then malignly feed off each other, leaving the invisible poor to die in invisible numbers.
Nowhere is this truer than in sub-Saharan Africa, where President Bush was recently scheduled to travel. Each year, most nations in the region grow poorer, hungrier and sicker. Their share of global trade and investment has been collapsing. Average per capita income is lower now than in the 1960's, with half the population surviving on less than 65 cents a day. It is a situation seldom noticed, as wars on poverty are neglected for wars more animate. African countries now hold the 27 lowest places on the human-development index -- a combined measure of health, literacy and income calculated by the United Nations. They occupy 38 spots in the bottom 50.
During the past decade or so, the poorest of Africa's poor have suffered as rarely before. Merely to survive, they have sold off their meager assets -- household goods and farm animals and the tin roofs of their homes. Just now, the most urgent need is in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Zimbabwe. But hunger has become a chronic problem throughout the region, often occurring even under the best of weather conditions. The World Food Program warns that nearly 40 million Africans are struggling against starvation, a ''scale of suffering'' that is ''unprecedented.'' Coincident with the hunger is H.I.V./AIDS, which has beset sub-Saharan Africa in a disproportionate way, cursing it with 29.4 million infections, nearly three-quarters of the world's caseload. Very few of the stricken can afford the drugs that forestall the virus's death work, and family after family is being purged of its breadwinning generations, leaving the very young and the very old to cope.
With survival so precarious, life is lived at the edge of nothingness, easily pushed over the side. Take Malawi, I was told again and again -- for this land-locked, overpopulated nation in southeastern Africa seems to be a favored specimen of researchers. There is a relative innocence to Malawi's impoverishment: no tyrannical dictator currently in power, no army of goons marauding in civil war, no disastrous weather wiping out the harvest. And yet last year, the nation was nudged into starvation. It happened while there was grain in the stores, if only the poor had the money to buy it. It happened while well-meaning people were arguing about whether it was happening at all.
To track the origins of the crisis, my plan was this: to find a family that had lost someone to last year's hunger and then work my way back through the hows and whys. Though I mostly shuttled over the narrow and soggy mud roads between Mkulumimba, Adilesi's village, and Lilongwe, the capital, the actual route of causality reaches beyond Malawi's borders. It extends toward wealthier nations and their shared institutions -- the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It travels the uncertain ups and downs of global commodity prices and currency valuations -- and of course passes into the limited access roads of humanity's conscience.
''The new generation are the unfortunates, because now there is a food shortage every year,'' Adilesi said. ''Things began getting bad when I was done with my childbearing years. If they had been this bad before, all my children would have died.''
In a Malawian village, guests are customarily greeted outside and offered a mat as a seat. Adilesi's front door faced a broad clearing that slanted down, allowing a splendid view of cornfields and acacias and the Dzalanyama Mountains in the distance. About 20 yards to the left was a banana tree and the ruins of an outhouse, its mud walls half-collapsed by a recent storm. The main house itself was a single room, about 9 feet by 12 feet, with a roof of bundled grass. In one corner were the ashy remnants of a small fire. Otherwise, the room was empty but for a tin pail, two pots, a few baskets and plastic bowls and some empty grain sacks that could be used as blankets. Adilesi lived in this hut with her daughter Lufinenti and 10 grandchildren. It was hard to imagine the geometry that would allow them all to sleep in so spare a space.
''We squeeze like worms,'' Adilesi said, explaining rather than complaining.
Thin-faced and withered, the old woman owned only one set of clothes, a colorful wrap that went around her waist and a faded T-shirt that showed a San Francisco street scene and advertised Levi's 501 jeans. The lettering proclaimed, ''Quality Never Goes Out of Style.'' She had no idea what the words meant. ''Is this something offensive?'' she asked in Chichewa, Malawi's main language, bending her head down so she could examine the thinned cloth. The villagers all bought such used clothing, the discards of people from richer nations. Children who had never seen television unwittingly sported apparel that allied them with Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers. Often, holes in these shirts rivaled the size of the remaining garment. This shamed the children, and some refused to go to school. ''I have no idea what San Francisco is,'' Adilesi said with a smile, repeating the words she had just been told. ''I couldn't tell you whether it's an animal or a man.''
She did not know her age, either, but she could remember the historic famine of 1949. She was a youngster then, that year when the skies cruelly withheld the rains. The undisturbed sun not only parched the cornstalks; it seemed to melt the glue that held the village together. Neighbors, once generous, hid away what food they had, afraid of theft. Women sang prayers of apology to their ancestors for any conceivable wrongdoing and begged them to reopen the clouds. Men wandered far from their homes, disappearing for weeks in a desperate search for work. ''We refer to it simply as '49,'' Adilesi said.
She married Robert soon after. She can't recall exactly when. Robert was a nephew of the village chief, and their wedding was preceded by an evening of dancing, with the entire village sharing in a feast of two goats, several chickens and homemade beer. Vows were recited at the African Abraham Church nearby. Adilesi would later bear 12 children, including 8 who lived to be adults -- an average rate of survival in a country where half the children suffer stunted growth and one in four die before age 5.
Robert, tall and stout, was a good provider. As a young man, he went to South Africa and toiled in the mines. Then, back in Malawi, he worked for the forestry department, slashing away underbrush with his panga knife. In a village of farmers, he was one of the few men who carried home monthly paychecks. But that job ended four years ago, when the government, under pressure from foreign lenders, drastically reduced its payroll. Robert then spent more time farming and doing ganyu, day labor.
Toward the end of 2001, after an overabundance of rain and a disappointing harvest, corn prices leapt as high as 40 kwacha per kilo, about 50 cents, a forbidding sum for people used to paying a tenth as much. Foraging became necessary, as it had been in '49, as it was last year, as it is even now. The toil was not unproductive. In the openness of the plain, with the daily rain slapping hard at the mud, edible leaves reached out for the taking from small stems. They held vitamin C, some iron, some beta carotene. Occasionally there were tubers. People could eat, just not a balanced diet, just not enough.
Hunger, like many diseases, is often an abettor of death rather than an absolute cause. Who really knew: was it the tuberculosis or the malnutrition that came first, and which of them delivered the fatal blow? But symptomatically, starvation usually arrives with anemia and extreme wasting and swelling from fluid in the tissue. There can be loss of appetite, and there can be diarrhea. Robert suffered all these symptoms. That a grown man would be among those to succumb to the hunger was not so uncommon. Men, it was explained to me, used up more of themselves in the unceasing search for ganyu.
Whatever the undertow, Robert grew too weak to work. He and Adilesi went to the government hospital, where he was treated for malnutrition, then later treated for malaria, then sent home. When they released him, the doctors said he needed to eat better or he would die. Inevitably, there was little food, so he began his capitulation, imparting final goodbyes. ''He told me we needed to remain united as a family,'' said Kiniel, 16, the youngest of his children.
Robert's daughter Mdati fell ill soon after he went into his decline. She was about 30. Her husband had been a philanderer to whom she had said good riddance, and now she was suddenly incapable of caring for their four sons herself. The entire family had always depended on her. Mdati was the only one who could read and write. ''She went to school up to the second grade,'' said her sister Lufinenti. ''She was very smart.''
Unlike her father, Mdati couldn't keep food down when she found something to eat. This raised a suspicion that she had somehow been bewitched.
The family regularly attended the African Abraham Church, a tiny red-brick building with pews and an altar molded out of mud. As with most Christians in the area, they found ways to blend witchcraft into their beliefs. ''Some people protect their fields with charms, but we can't afford such things,'' Adilesi told me. This safeguard against thievery required the intercession of someone with magical powers, a sing'anga. (My interpreter -- the daily intermediary between my English and the villagers' Chichewa -- used the word ''witch doctor,'' though a more respectful term would be ''traditional healer.'') The family had great hopes that a sing'anga could break the spell that gripped Mdati. They took her to two of them.
The first, Bomba Kamchewere, is a tall, bony man with a missing front tooth. When I visited him, he spread out a mat of tightly stitched reeds so we could sit together beneath his favorite tree. He had been tutored, in dreams, by Jesus himself, he said. But even with divine insight into the curative uses of roots and herbs, his powers had limits. While he claimed to cure stomachaches, venereal disease and tuberculosis, he confessed that other sicknesses baffled him. AIDS was particularly confounding, as was njala, or hunger, which had been Mdati's problem. ''With her case, the spirits told me I could not do anything,'' he said. Then, somewhat shamefully, he confessed that around that time he himself had endured njala, quite frighteningly so. ''I went three weeks without any solid food, and I developed some strange swelling.'' At a hospital, the doctors recommended that he eat more, which was advice that struck the sing'anga as less than a revelation.
Mose Chinkhombe, a young, self-confident man with a spacious smile, was the second healer. His home was hours away in the village of Chiseka. To get there, the starving Mdati, limp as a rag doll, had to be placed on a borrowed bicycle and guided over the roads by five companions, who took turns keeping both her and the wheels steady.
A year later, the healer still remembered her. ''My diagnosis was anemia,'' he said as he sat in a dark room on a half-sack of dried lime, all the while shooing flies with an oxtail. He was in his vocational attire, a spotless white frock and floppy hat. ''She was so weak from lack of food,'' the healer said. ''I could treat her for this anemia. But I told her she needed to eat enough food to recharge her body. When she left, she had improved slightly. But then I heard she died.'' He nodded rather forcefully as he said this. Then, perhaps in defense of his medical craft, he apparently felt he needed to tell me the obvious, that the ''big hunger'' had taken a great many lives during those dismal months.
There is a belief that when a stray black dog crosses your path, terrible times will come, he said. ''Last year,'' he explained, ''a black dog walked across the entire country.''
Some 11 million people live in Malawi, though far too few live especially long. Average life expectancy from birth has fallen to 36, one of the lowest figures anywhere, according to the World Health Organization. Tuberculosis cases have doubled in the past 10 years, and an estimated 16 percent of people ages 15 to 49 have H.I.V./AIDS, though with little testing going on, few of them know it. Nearly 500,000 children have lost one or both parents to the virus, according to the United Nations. In the villages, where AIDS is seldom discussed, people call it ''government disease,'' because it seems to spring from the city.
For the poor, conditions began rapidly deteriorating in the early 90's, during the last days of the ''Lion of Malawi,'' Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the Western-trained physician who was the nation's dictator for 40 years. Tobacco is Malawi's only major cash crop, and the doctor amassed a fortune by granting himself valuable licenses to grow it. At the same time, his government benefited from the foreign aid of prosperous friends. The West applauded his steadfast anti-Communism; South Africa admired his tolerance of apartheid. Banda ruled -- ruthlessly and myopically -- until 1994, long enough to take himself well into his 90's and senility.
By then, geopolitical necessities had changed, as had theories on how to develop the third world. Benefactors began attaching tighter strings to their money, first during the final decade of the Banda regime, then with the subsequent elected government. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had entered their ''structural adjustment'' period. Austerity in government spending was preached, the overriding principle being that the poor were best served through the efficiency of free markets. The fine print in most loan agreements committed governments to reduce subsidies, curtail spending and sell off monopolies.
Whatever eventual benefit there might be in such reforms, the immediate impact on Malawian farmers -- paupers during the best of times -- was distress. Corn prices, no longer set by the government, became unpredictable. Given the risk caused by instability, the private sector did not mature as expected. Worse yet, the kwacha was repeatedly devalued. Falling prices in the world tobacco market had strained already thin foreign-currency reserves. At the urging of the I.M.F., the government instituted small devaluations in 1990 and 1991 and two larger ones in 1992. Finally, in 1994, Malawi moved from a fixed exchange rate for the kwacha to one that floated. For farmers, that meant the cost of fertilizer, an imported good, ballooned as the kwacha shriveled.
Before, fertilizer had been subsidized. Loans had been, too. Farmers now found themselves adrift ''in the worst of both worlds, a Bermuda Triangle,'' deprived of the benefits of a regulated economy while yet to gain the benefits of a free market, said Lawrence Rubey, the United States Agency for International Development's chief of agriculture in Malawi. He gave an example with some dismal arithmetic: in dollar terms, the price of a bag of fertilizer had actually gone down. But in devalued kwachas, the cost had risen fivefold. This was devastating to farmers with badly leached soil. ''The past arrangement of high state control of the economy was inefficient, but at least it was stable,'' Rubey said.
A yearning for the stability of the Banda days -- though rarely for the doctor himself -- is a commonly expressed sentiment throughout the nation. Malawi's youthful democracy has lacked equilibrium, even though Bakili Muluzi, a onetime Banda protégé who fell out of favor, has been its only president. The unsteadiness results in large part from the pull-and-tug of two parallel sources of power, the elected government and the international patrons who finance it. Like many poor, heavily indebted countries, Malawi operates something like a business in receivership. Lenders and donors -- among them the World Bank, the I.M.F., the British, the Americans and the European Union -- carefully monitor fiscal policy and budget expenditures. Their approvals are necessary, or their generosity is withdrawn. The spigot of aid goes on, off, on, off.
Understandably, this has made for a peevish relationship. The Malawians quite correctly contend that the donors are hypocrites: while opposing state subsidies elsewhere, wealthy nations hand out $1 billion a day to their own farmers, about six times what they give in development aid to the globe's poor. (Nicholas Stern, the World Bank's chief economist, once pointed out that each day, the average European cow receives $2.50 in subsidies while 75 percent of the people in Africa are scrimping by on less than $2.) These subsidies also depress commodity prices, undercutting the ability of developing nations to compete in world markets and get their nations off the dole.
The benefactors, on the other hand, quite correctly contend that the government is persistently wasteful and inconsistently honest, prone to overspending on frivolous travel and lax in underwriting programs for the poor. So they give their aid with a chiding finger and chastening attitude: Malawi needs better government!
And yet good government, like good deeds, is most often a complicated matter.
With fertilizer so unaffordable, the government in 1998 cooperated with the British, the World Bank and others to furnish beleaguered farmers with a ''starter pack,'' enough free seed and fertilizer to grow a healthy quarter-acre, about 15 percent of a typical family plot. Soon, the cornfields of Malawi took on the look of a bad haircut, with one cluster of stalks as high as an elephant's eye and the rest barely above the knee.
The starter-pack program combined with favorable weather to produce a bumper crop in the 1998-99 season. In fact, the surplus was so great that a newly established government safeguard, the National Food Reserve Agency, was able to purchase huge amounts, fattening its grain stockpile to about 190,000 tons. For Malawi, so often hungry, this cache was a comforting buffer against famine. But it was also costly. The reserve agency, without capital of its own, bought the corn with loans at a staggering domestic interest rate, above 50 percent. Storage itself was expensive, and after a second bumper crop in 1999-2000, there were concerns that the untapped grain reserves would rot.
The donors felt adjustments were necessary. The starter-pack program now seemed too benevolent. Were farmers to be given fertilizer forever? they asked. If so, that would create a dependency that in the jargon of development economics was ''unsustainable.'' So the program was reconstructed as ''targeted inputs,'' cut in half to reach only the ''neediest'' of the destitute. As for the grain reserve, the donors, like the government, fretted over those gargantuan interest payments. To satisfy the debt, they suggested that the corn be sold, with future stocks kept to a modest 35,000 to 65,000 tons, considered enough to meet most emergencies until more grain could be imported.
Malawi has stunning skies, with a blue so bright and clouds so shapely that they seem to be the work of a cartoonist. Those skies are also fickle, suddenly exchanging a sunny disposition for an angry pout and unleashing thunderstorms that seem to hurl water rather than drop it. In February and March of 2001, as the harvest approached, the skies were angrier than usual, causing regional flooding. That brought the first clue of the trouble to come. This accumulating water kept the fields a hearty green, but the cornstalks, standing uncomfortably in shallow pools, failed to mature fully. Many a farmer was fooled by the deepness of color. They had thought they were going to have a good harvest and did not face the disappointing truth until it came time to pick.
Farmers were not the only ones fooled. Crop forecasters from the Agriculture Ministry underestimated the impact of the flooding on the corn harvest. These errors were compounded by a grossly wayward overestimation of the cassava and sweet potato yield, a false optimism perhaps bred from a false pride. The Agriculture Ministry was involved in a multimillion-dollar United States aid program for crop diversification. Field agents who reported high expectations for these roots and tubers were the same people whose job it was to encourage their planting. The net effect was to delay concern about the total food supply. Indeed, a surplus was predicted: if people ran out of corn, let them eat cassava.
By late summer, when the final estimates came in, the corn harvest was put at 1.9 million tons, about a third lower than the excellent crop of the year before. This was considered a bad though not a terrible yield. And yet to those attentive enough, something ominous was happening. In some areas, corn prices had increased more than fivefold, a sign that stocks were perilously low. Though neither the nation's preoccupied president, Bakili Muluzi, nor the donors were yet alarmed, the Agriculture Ministry was fretful enough to advocate a grain purchase. In September, a decision was announced to import corn from South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.
As usual, the government asked the donors to foot the bill. The donors, in reply, inquired about the national grain reserves -- and were shocked to learn that they were entirely gone. Yes, the donors acknowledged, they had recommended the selling of most of it. But if the entire storehouse was empty, who bought it? And where was the money?
Answers were not forthcoming. That infuriated the always suspicious donors, so much so that the mystery of the missing grain overshadowed the unfolding fate of the fragile poor for several crucial months. This delay was tragic. By year's end, people were lining up at clinics to plead for food. Jos Kuppens, an activist Dutch priest, said he saw starving people resorting to meals of fodder, with one woman even thickening her gruel with sawdust. He recalled a hopelessly thin little girl he had seen at a Catholic hospital. He asked her where she was from. ''I had to bend close to hear her,'' he said. ''She could barely speak, and she said, 'Njala,' which is the word for hunger. The sister told me: 'There's nothing we can do for a child like this. It's too late.'''
Despite the donors' unwillingness to pay the bill, the government tried to proceed with its plans to import 220,000 tons of corn. But a freak coincidence of disasters stalled deliveries: washed-out bridges, a derailed train, a port on fire. It also became clear that Malawi's neighbors faced a similar shortage. They began to vie to buy the same food.
A British agronomist named Harry Potter, dean of the foreign agricultural experts among the donors in Lilongwe, is a man far less inclined toward wizardry than his fictional namesake. Nevertheless, he saw a supernatural hand dispensing punishment.
''It was almost as if somebody up there had decided, Malawi, you have to be taught a lesson,'' he said. But cosmic reprimand or not, the consequences were of course grave only to the very poor and not to their nefarious officials.
Little grain would arrive in time for the start of the hungry months in December.
Famine is variously defined by scholars, though its common usage most often implies a large surge in hunger-related mortality. Some would even designate a minimum body count. Malawians, at least linguistically, make little distinction between ''hunger'' and ''famine'' except to say that famine is ''the hunger that kills.'' Perspective, of course, changes depending on whether you are studying the situation or starving within it. Stephen Devereux of the University of Sussex -- an expert on African food security -- talks about ''outsider'' and ''insider'' views of such crises. Outsiders presume famine to be an extraordinary event, while insiders see it as an intensification of what they already suffer.
The Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is the world's best-known authority on famine. He argues that such catastrophes do not occur in a ''functioning democracy,'' where a free press is a roving sentinel and elected governments have strong incentives to take preventive measures. If so, it is hard to say whether Malawi would be an exception. First, there is the matter of how well the nation's nine-year-old democracy qualifies as functioning. Then there is the question of whether the hunger that killed Robert Mkulumimba and Mdati Robert qualifies as famine.
By the beginning of the hungry months, starvation deaths were already being recorded within miles of the capital. Lilongwe seems a very un-Malawian city, with a scattering of big office buildings and fancy shopping malls. Notable on some thoroughfares are dozens of roadside ''coffin workshops,'' their carpenters steadily at work in the open air, taking morbid advantage of a rare growth industry. Capital Hill -- home to the government ministries -- is an isolated slope of manicured land, best reachable by car, far away from the masses.
For weeks, I tried to interview President Muluzi. Finally, I was informed that he saw no reason to see me since I had already spoken with his friend Friday Jumbe, the finance minister.
That conversation had seemed cordial enough, though on reflection, perhaps I was considered impertinent for asking about the missing grain reserves. At the time of the sale, Jumbe headed a quasi-governmental corporation that had physical control of the stored corn. A parliamentary committee had investigated the deals, and while the probe turned up little solid evidence, its report concluded that the reserves were ''mainly sold to politicians and individuals politically connected.'' Jumbe was faulted for failing to explain his recent financing of a luxury hotel in the city of Blantyre.
''It is true that some people bought the maize at a price of 4 or 5 kwacha, and then one day maize became scarce,'' the finance minister told me one morning in his office. ''That's business!'' Elegantly dressed in a three-piece suit, he was dismissive, and occasionally sarcastic, about the allegations. He said it was ''foolish'' to assume that he was a thief just because he owned a hotel and pointed out that the author of the damning report had been fired and that a revised investigation of the facts was in the works. ''If there was any theft of money, maybe, I don't know what, 100 or 200 or 300 kwacha -- but not big money. But the donors, that's where the bone of contention is. They are assuming that certain politicians bought this grain at a small price and made a killing.''
Indeed, that is -- and was -- the assumption. To this day -- after two years and five investigations -- the donors know little more than that some traders bought corn for very little and sold it for quite a lot, yet another scandalous story about people in the right place at the right time with the right friends, a Malawian Enron. Unfortunately, the donors' righteous pique played a part in the tardy recognition of the deadly hunger, as did Muluzi's willful ignorance. In February of last year, the president was still refuting any reports of a food crisis. ''Nobody has died of hunger,'' he insisted.
But by then, firm statistical proof had begun to appear in repeated health surveys. Also, hospital admissions for severe malnutrition were swiftly escalating far beyond the normal. At month's end, even Muluzi did a turnabout. On Feb. 27, he declared a state of emergency in a national broadcast -- 11 days after the death of Robert Mkulumimba.
Mkulumimba is one in a cluster of five villages, each with 35 to 60 households. Their boundaries reach deeply into one another, and it was sometimes possible to move between them simply by walking from hut to hut. Any visit required the permission of the village headman -- the chief -- who customarily then assumed the role of official escort. I was fortunate to be befriended by Elias Mitengo, a 50-year-old headman widely held in high regard. A poor farmer, he combined the gravitas of a diplomat with the easy humor of a kibitzer. He was chief of the village of Mdauma. And he was also Adilesi's son-in-law.
Elias said he had always tried to help his in-laws whenever he could. But last year, he often did not have enough food for even his own children. ''It was an impossible time,'' he said.
Being headman, an inherited job, included sensitive duties. The chief allocated land and mediated disputes and sometimes judged criminals. He was also the village marriage counselor and arbiter of property settlements in the event of divorce. Elias prided himself on absolute fairness. When I wanted to observe church on Sunday mornings, he went along and even addressed the congregations. But generally, he said, he no longer attended services. With five churches in the area, he worried about favoritism.
One morning, Elias invited me to a meeting under a stand of trees. Several chiefs were discussing a proper punishment for stealing food. Instant justice was being applied in some places, with the hungry crook forfeiting a hand. This, the headmen agreed, was too harsh. Yet when thieves were simply turned over to the police, they were released after a few days, and that seemed too lenient. A better penalty, the chiefs agreed, would be stiff fines -- perhaps three goats or chickens. But this was impractical. Thieves usually belonged to the poorest of families. The discussion went on and on without resolution.
For Elias, hungry thieves seemed less a problem than organized crime. In recent years, it was not uncommon for a truckload of men to descend during the night. Usually, they rustled livestock. But sometimes they emptied entire cornfields of ripe cobs. Elias decided to levy a 5 kwacha tax on each household, enough to pay vigilantes to guard the roads, waiting with axes and pangas and bows and arrows.
''These are not the best of days,'' he told me, laughing at his own understatement.
Actually, Elias had plunged into deep pessimism, something he was more likely to express after a few liters of chibuku, a cheap beer made from corn and millet. He said the njala, the hunger, was prying apart families, turning husbands and wives against each other. ''These women carry their vegetables to the trading center, and if they can't sell them, they sell themselves,'' he said. ''It's the poverty.'' Sometimes, he told me, he would call village meetings to speak out against prostitution, particularly addressing the young women. ''I tell them: 'You see your elders. They got to live this long because they kept themselves clean of promiscuity.''' He would invoke the threat of ''government disease.''
Men were hardly blameless, Elias said. Some were lazy. And of those who were not, some occasionally found work in other districts and then returned home triumphantly with a second wife. Fear of AIDS was also making men do crazy things. Some thought sex with a virgin cured the virus. In parts of Malawi, this superstition had led to rapes.
''Things were never like this before,'' Elias said.
While I had done no scientific sampling, it seemed that more than half the adults I met were not living with spouses. Women usually said they had thrown their husbands out. Adilesi's daughter Lufinenti was typical. Her husband, the father of her three children, had been gone from the village for three years. ''He used to be a hard worker, but when he made a lot of money, he wanted to marry more women, and I didn't want to be in a two-wife marriage,'' she said. At any rate, there was now no chance of his return. He had moved to the south and then died after a long illness, one of his friends had told her. Maybe it was AIDS, maybe tuberculosis, maybe both. ''They said he was always coughing,'' she said.
In the case of Mdati, Adilesi's deceased daughter, her husband was also described as a good worker, a man who could get construction jobs. But his ''sleeping around'' had become intolerable. ''He'd even take other women into their house,'' Lufinenti said. While she described these dalliances, at one point she mentioned parenthetically that the ''last'' of Mdati's sons was now living with his father in a different village. This unexpected detail confused me. For weeks, I had assumed that all four of Mdati's sons were among the many small boys I always saw nearby, playing with tops and homemade pull toys.
It was only then that I learned that the three youngest had died during these past months, a tragedy so within the parameters of the commonplace that it had not merited any special mention. The first boy died of malaria, the second of a rash and high fever.
The third, Legina Robert, perished only in December. He was 3 years old and very tiny, just another Malawian youngster with growth so stunted that he had yet to walk. Children warming themselves by a fire dropped him as they carelessly passed his body across the flames. The adults were in the fields when they heard frenzied calls for help. The little boy needed to be rushed to the hospital -- a three-hour journey by foot but only half that if they had been able to borrow one of the village's few bicycles. ''We looked, but we didn't find one,'' Lufinenti recalled. ''He died while I was carrying him on my back.''
Paradoxically, food was growing everywhere, the slender cornstalks nudging up against the roads, leaning along the hillsides, creeping down to the river's edge. Crops were wedged into the spare emptiness of the cities, spreading in half-ovals around office buildings, stores and saloons, reaching even the back entrances of the government ministries. To be in Malawi during the hot and wet growing season was to be embraced by a landscape of tantalizing abundance -- a perplexing sight in view of all the hunger.
But in Malawi, a visitor soon realizes that the lush color is a cruel tease. All those planted fields, all that greenness, are merely symbols of desperation. Crops appear in unlikely places because farmers feel a need to stretch their holdings. Those inescapable cornstalks are telltale of a nation growing food to fill its belly rather than to compete in world markets. Little economic development is taking place.
Always on arrival at Adilesi's house, my first question was ''What are you going to eat today?'' And each time I listened to the family's contingencies, that day's single meal dependent on some relative being lucky enough to get ganyu or Lufinenti being able to sell her foraged greens in the city. When a little money was earned, the family spent it frugally, never splurging on cornmeal but instead cooking gaga, a dish made from only the outer husks of the corn kernels, a sifted residue more commonly employed as fodder.
Adilesi's field is only a short walk from the house. The family's corn plants were puny for that late in the growing season, and many of the leaves were yellowish and droopy. Children broke off the least promising stalks and chewed them like sugar cane.
On one visit, I was accompanied by Ellard Malindi, the country's chief technical adviser for agriculture. He was a big-hearted man who talked easily with the farmers. A few months later, tragically, he would come down with cerebral malaria and die. But on that sunny day, he was at his vigorous best, and during a stroll through Adilesi's field, he moved from row to row, examining the sorry plants and shaking his head in frustration. ''We're standing on the richest soils in the entire country, maybe in southern Africa,'' he said as his arm cut an arc through the air. ''We're in the medium-altitude plateau. But the soil has become depleted by continuous planting, and it has lost its organic nutrients.''
Goliati Faisoni, Adilesi's oldest son, was with us. A skinny, sickly man with bloodshot eyes, he agreed with Malindi. The family would not be reaping much this year. And however much there was, they intended to eat it early, when the cobs were still new and green. The family was often too hungry to allow their crops to ripen fully. Last year, in fact, they used their green corn to feed the mourners at Mdati's funeral.
''Didn't you get a starter pack?'' Malindi asked Goliati.
The family had. But in their desperation they used the fertilizer incorrectly. They were supposed to apply the bag of mixed nutrients -- nitrogen, phosphate, potash and sulfur -- when they planted, then a second bag with urea when the stalks were knee high. Instead, the family combined the bags. Then, rather than concentrating on one quarter-acre, they spread it thinly over their entire field, hoping to outsmart science.
''There were also beans in the pack,'' Malindi said. ''Did you plant a bean crop?''
No, he confessed. The family had been unable to resist. They had eaten the beans.
Families starve because families lack money. In most cases, it is that simple.
But last year, while most of Mkulumimba went hungry, its chief, Daniel Mkulumimba, was getting by all right. I had often wondered about him. He was the one man in all five villages whom others considered wealthy. His tobacco field was only a 10-minute walk from Adilesi's door. ''He could easily help people, and sometimes he does,'' Elias, the headman, told me. ''But it's not his nature. He mostly takes care of his own.''
By American standards, Daniel was hardly rich. He, too, lived in a one-room house, though it was a bigger room, and it was covered with a roof that did not leak. He owned an ox cart, a bicycle, six donkeys and four goats. Besides corn and tobacco, he grew cabbage, lettuce, turnips and sugar cane on his 15 acres of land. He fertilized his fields, and the healthy cornstalks towered above him. He had two wives and a pot belly.
I wanted to understand why Daniel had not done more to help. When I posed the question, he considered it for a few seconds before saying, ''When the food situation is very serious, the rich and the poor are the same, and it's everyone for himself.'' I reminded him that his cousin Robert had actually died of starvation. ''As the chief, I'm not supposed to help one particular family,'' he replied. ''I'm chief of the whole village.''
For me, Daniel came to represent the ''haves'' of the world. They do assist Africa, though not with a strenuous effort, certainly not in proportion to the hunger and the disease and the benumbing poverty. Indeed, in relation to their gross domestic product, donor nations are now spending considerably less on foreign assistance than they were a decade ago. Among wealthy countries, the United States spends the lowest percentage of all, something President Bush is understandably reluctant to mention when he talks about Africa.
Many experts debate whether aid does more harm than good. Certainly Africa's problems are immense and confounding: paralyzing debt, sorry infrastructure, depleted soil, meager exports, bad government and ethnic and tribal warfare. The majority of Africa's poorest countries have average incomes below the level of Western Europe at the start of the 17th century, according to the distinguished economic historian Angus Maddison.
Unlike the days when structural adjustments were seen as direct routes to poverty reduction, now there seems to be little consensus on what to try next. Proposals tend to be modest. In Lilongwe, I heard one idea after another: soil renourishment, manufacturing schemes, public-service jobs, small-scale irrigation. Lawrence Rubey, the American booster of free enterprise, showed me a bag of chilies grown for export to Germany. ''Niche marketing,'' he said, in much the same way ''plastics'' was advised in ''The Graduate.''
Maybe chili peppers can be one of the answers, maybe not. But in the meantime, even if poverty and hunger seem unconquerable, famine surely can be overcome. Only our indifference -- only our neglect -- allows it to persevere. In Malawi, the timely distribution of fertilizer ought to be preferable to the inevitability of emergency food. That is what every farmer in the villages asked for: if you give us fertilizer, or a reasonable way to buy it, we'll manage for ourselves from one hungry season to the next.
As I heard these sentiments, I would always nod sympathetically, writing the anguished words in my notebook. The people I met were invariably gracious, even though I knew an unspoken tension existed between us. After all, they were hungry, and I had the means to change that in my wallet, as easily as I handed my kids lunch money back in America. But I wanted to understand how people coped with hunger, and handouts would have made that impossible. So I had made a decision in advance: if I met people who seemed gravely ill, I would take them to the hospital and pay their expenses. (That happened twice.) Otherwise, I'd give no one money until the reporting was done.
And that day gave me as much relief as it gave them -- perhaps more. It is awful to be with the hungry, to watch them ebb and falter and scrounge.
''You ask so many questions about death!'' Adilesi said to me during one of my final visits. ''It is hard on us. We believe that when you talk about the dead, you get visits by their spirits at night. When are the questions about the dead going to stop?''
I apologized but said that I had come to learn about hunger and that I had learned a lot.
I thanked her for that. And that is when she and her daughter thought to share with me their ''ingenious'' trick, something she thought every human being ought to know.
If I were ever so hungry I could no longer work, they advised me, there was a way for a determined mind to outfox a hollow stomach. ''Tie some cloth tightly around your waist right at the navel,'' Lufinenti said. ''Make it as tight as you can.''
For a few hours, you can fool your belly into thinking that it's full.
Barry Bearak is a staff writer for the magazine. His last article was about the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)