Word: socials
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...literacy rate lags far behind that of its neighbor China and bodes ill for its long-term development. New Delhi plans to pump $38 billion into the education sector over the next five years, but the government has much to deliver as it tries to reconcile India's vast social inequities. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, of modest origins himself, knows the struggle is worth it: "I am what I am because of education...
...Hatoyama has thrown those policies in reverse. Critical of what he has called U.S.-led "market fundamentalism," Hatoyama has rejected Koizumi's now unpopular market reforms and is steering the economy toward something akin to a European-style welfare state with a wider government-funded social safety net. Though Hatoyama has continued to stress the crucial nature of the U.S.-Japan alliance and his friendly relationship with President Barack Obama - "We have come to call each other Barack and Yukio," he said during Obama's November visit to Tokyo - he has also backed away from policies that Washington views...
...initiatives aimed at building a more extensive welfare system. That, Hatoyama believes, will bolster consumer confidence and get Japanese, usually big-time savers, to spend more and revive economic growth. In the most recent budget, he has moved spending priorities away from the usual pork-barrel stimulus and toward social services like education. As he puts it, "We will be spending not on concrete but on people." In March, the Diet, Japan's parliament, passed legislation promised by Hatoyama to provide a $140 monthly subsidy to parents for each child of junior high school age or younger. With such measures...
...Matters won't get any easier. Economists worry that Hatoyama's social-welfare programs will only increase the government debt ratio, which is already more than twice that of the U.S. His reforms are also likely to face stiff resistance from the still powerful elements of the establishment, especially the government bureaucracy, which won't readily surrender its influence. Just like so many other Japanese politicians, Hatoyama has already been tarred by an alleged scandal, this one concerning campaign finance. (Hatoyama has publicly apologized for the scandal, though he has said he had no knowledge of any wrongdoing.) His Cabinet...
...Sudan scholars like Alex de Waal, program director at the Social Science Research Council in New York City, and author of several books on Sudan, have argued the indictment was cathartic but counterproductive. It offered Bashir no chance to compromise, they said, while making him a champion of anti-Western defiance. Those views may have found traction inside the White House of Obama, who has favored mixing carrots with sticks and made a preference for engagement over confrontation a cornerstone of his foreign policy. On Oct. 19, Obama outlined a Sudan strategy that encapsulated this new U.S. approach to world...