As inequalities rise and resentment of official corruption, corporate oligarchy and economic and environmental depredations heats up in India, pressure for short-term populist palliative measures — subsidies, handouts, loan waivers and underpricing of energy and water — will also rise, at the expense of long-term investments in infrastructure, education and public health.
According to the American carriers, which released the supporting documents for their allegations this week, airlines in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar have enjoyed a host of benefits, including handouts, "loans" without interest or any schedule for repayment, free land and below-cost charges at state-owned airports.
It had been desperate for investment after disastrous postindependence economic policies reduced the nation to a beggar for foreign handouts and loans.
Following the independence movements of the 1960's and 70's, many African nations had barely functioning economies and subsisted largely on handouts and loans from Europe, the United States and Japan.
One lecturer said the institution he worked at was dubbed the "ATM" for the ease with which students could get "free" money in grant handouts and loans that they believed no one would make them repay.
Many bankers agree, noting that IFIs often tie other handouts to loans and undercut commercial lenders by up to 3%.The problem is acute, because only around 300-400 of the world's 10,000 microfinanciers are as yet "investable", argues ACCION International, a microlender.
Loans, handouts and social-housing programmes, however corrupt and ineptly run, showered billions of oil dollars on the poor.
But a subset of parents, many quite wealthy, is responding not with handouts but with loans that children apply for and that require approval by parents, relatives, or even people outside the family, as they would at a bank.
A further, fuller report will follow next year.This week, the Millennium Commission, the Dome's chief funding body, approved yet another handout, supposedly a loan, this time of £29m ($43m), from National Lottery funds to the New Millennium Experience Company (NMEC), which runs the Dome.
Over the next 20 years, the couple moved from place to place, setting up short-lived households where the rent was cheap -- a cottage near London for six shillings a week, a Hampstead flat for £36 a year, an Italian villa for £14 for six months; the economics of the enterprise were based on loans, handouts and Lawrence's tiny literary earnings.
They reversed gears when they realized that they would have to give up their own U.S. government handouts (mainly subsidized loans for making military vessels, which must be made in the U.S).
