Word: states
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...PURI, INDIA Bring Your Own Film Festival A beach in India's Orissa state is hardly the French Riviera, but this alternative gathering of barefoot filmmakers has managed to stagger through to its ninth year. While the Pink House Hotel is the official venue, screenings and happenings are also held in outdoor tents. As the name implies, BYOFF is an all-embracing affair: for a small registration fee, anyone can submit a movie, in any format and about pretty much anything, and there are no juries or awards. At the time of writing we were unable to confirm dates...
...this year's national elections, urban voter turnout remained well below that of the villages, and none of the reform-minded independents who ran for Parliament won more than 2% of the vote - including the outspoken, idealistic banker Meera Sanyal, who ran in south Mumbai. R.R. Patil, a Maharashtra state politician who resigned when his remark that Mumbai's death toll could have been worse sparked public outrage, is back in office - once again in charge of security. The state has claimed $100 million in urban-renewal funds for Mumbai, but watered down the governance reforms to make them almost...
...with the grandly named Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, which has so far allocated more than $11 billion in long-overdue funds to fix India's cities. The money - for roads, sewer lines and mass-transit systems - comes with some very important strings attached. To get the money, state governments have to devolve more power to cities; and city governance would go hyper-local, giving some control over the spending to new, elected neighborhood councils. (See pictures of the tempestuous Nehru-Gandhi dynasty of India...
...Private consumption's role in the economy has actually been declining, to a mere 35% of GDP in 2008 from 46% in 2000. Economists say policymakers need to speed up the development of a better social safety network, encourage small-scale finance and liberalize service industries dominated by big state firms to further raise incomes and encourage Chinese to spend more and save less...
...There is also concern that growth will slip backward once China's recession-fighting stimulus is scaled back. One reason Xu's minivan sales have accelerated is government tax breaks and rebates offered on certain car purchases - incentives that won't last forever. State subsidies have also been given to rural residents to spur sales of refrigerators and washing machines. Though the government is implementing longer-lasting plans to convince citizens to spend more money (including a $125 billion program to improve national health care, especially in less developed regions), those efforts will take years to reach their full impact...