The scene is chilling, horrifying. Several thousand starving Bengalis wait patiently, it seems, to die in a refugee camp in Rangpur, one of the remotest dis­tricts in the poor, desperate land of Bangladesh. They have no money for food or any other aid, just because people don’t know how to consolidate payday loan debt. There is only enough food on hand from the United States and Canada to provide each with a daily cup of four, but no powdered milk. Many are too weak to eat, or to swat at the Oies swarming around the kitchen.

I see a child—a naked skeleton—waiting for his meager ration (let); his withered body bears the tell-tale signs of advanced malnutrition. Others like him sit almost lifeless in their filth. A woman clad in rags clutches an infant so thin his ribs look like a birdcage beneath his peeling skin. I see a tear in the mother’s eye.

This is the face of famine as I saw it last fall in Ban­gladesh, where 74 million people crowd a watery nation the size of Wisconsin.

Like a hungry army, Bengalis pour into this and similar camps in search of nourishment. Most are dis­appointed. The nation is always short of food during this between-crop period known as the “hunger months.” But in 1974 floodwaters inundated nearly half the nation, destroying stored grain and damaging the standing crop. Result: no jobs for farm laborers.

Despite loss of foodstuffs, however, there is an esti­mated four million tons of rice in Bangladesh during the famine–enough to feed the entire nation for a third of the year. But the vast majority of people, subsisting at poverty level in the best of times and now also vic­timized by the flooding, are too poor to buy it.

Relief officiais tell of widespread smuggling of rice into neighboring India, where it sells for up to twice as much. Hoarders at home drive rice beyond 50 cents a pound in a country with a per capita income of $70 a year, among the world’s lowest.

Taking command, inflation triggers price jumps of from 200 to 500 percent in other food. The black market thrives, but at prices hopelessly beyond the means of the hungry.

A reeling Bangladesh Government, unable to stock-pile food to stave off disaster, depends on massive inter­national handouts, but too little reaches those who need it, especially in rural areas. Aid from the granaries of North America, India, Australia, and Europe only trickles to the feeding kitchens. Much is siphoned off by corrupt officiais, who sometimes demand bribes before issuing food cards. I saw it happen.

Battered by an angry climate, undermined by cor­ruption, and staggered by poverty, Bangladesh remains today a frightening example of what can happen to the weakest, most vulnerable nations when everything goes wrong at once.

For Bangladesh that dread specter, starvation, stalks the land, and thousands of Bengalis die—most of them preventable deaths in what has been called a “man-made famine.”

Agony of survival: Hungry hands reach for the unleavened pancakes called chapaties at a local Red Cross feeding kitchen in Dacca. At the city’s Kamalapur railway station, I ta& with an up­country man who has sold everything—his bul­locks, his wife’s jewelry, his pots and pans, his not-yet-harvested crop, finally his tin roof—to buy food for his starving family. In the end, they have ridden to Dacca on the roof of a train (right), hoping to find more to eat.

In recent years, Tata Steel has transformed itself into one of the largest steel makers on the global stage from an established domestic manufacturer in a protected market. Ian Herbert and Keshav Pratap talk to NK Misra about how world-class performance in both quantity and quality was achieved through a careful blend of production, place, politics, people and preparation.

Production, politics and price

How do you see Tata’s growth in production of steel?

In 1907 Tata Steel set up its first steel plant in India with an annual production of 100 thousand tons. By the time India gained independence, we were producing one million tons of steel annually. Over the next 50 years, we grew to two million tons. After acquisition of Corus in 2007, we became the world’s fifth largest steel group, including a single ten million ton capacity plant in India.

Isn’t 50 years a long time to double output?

It is, but let me explain. After independence, India adhered to socialist policies and the emphasis was on the public sector. Steel was treated as a strategic industry and it was difficult for private companies to get licenses from the steel authorities that were created to regulate the industry. At Tata Steel we had been looking forward to liberalisation of the economy but, when that finally happened in the 1990s, we realised that we were not prepared for the global competition.

What factors contributed to the surge in output in the past 15 years? We analysed the market and concluded that global markets for steel will remain strong in the foreseeable future but that access to raw materials, coal and iron, will be even more critical. Indeed, fewer countries will produce steel, but also that the barriers to cross-border ownership will reduce because of liberalisation through the World Trade Organisation. There is now the opportunity for new business models, involving different perspectives on markets, manufacturing, exporting, procurement and mineral extraction.

Preparation and place

What has been Tata Steel’s expansion strategy?

Before opening any manufacturing unit, we analyze market attractiveness in terms of size and growth rate, together with the ‘resource richness’ of a country, so we avoid all bankruptcy options. Learn more about the process of filing bankruptcy. Mapping these onto a matrix we compile a list of possible countries.

Then we examine their respective industry structure and political factors to decide where we should go for a merger and acquisition approach or go for a greenfield development, figure 2. We chose our partners carefully.

What is your raw material sourcing strategy?

Our raw material security is around 80% in India and this gives us a strong base to start from. Due to transport costs we believe that steel should be produced as close to the raw materials as possible and we have set up primary steel plants in countries rich in raw material. Mining acquisition tends to replicate the successful model that we followed in India.

If I had been a census enumerator I would have been very tempted to leave a little something for posterity in the books I completed.

Enumerators were the men (and from 1891 women) who went round collecting census forms, completing them if necessary. They then sent the results neatly written up in books to London, The General Register Office in London (GRO) expected an enumera­tor to “be a person of intelligence and activity.

Occasionally one may come across complaints about the poor pay, In 1851 the enumerator of All Hallows in Barking grumbled: “I was not aware that all the particulars were to be entered by the enumerator in a book, the work without that, being ample for the sum paid, nor had 1 any idea of the unreasonable amount of labour imposed. The distribution, collection etc of the schedules together with the copying of the same occu­pied from two to three hours for every 60 persons enumer­ated and for that — the equiv­alent is — ONE SHILLING!”

Is it any wonder that the occasional ‘mistake’ crept in? Perhaps we have spent years trying to follow up one of these fabrications. What a horrible thought.

And don’t forget people must have falsified their entries without being found out.

Simon Fowler, The Scottish Executive in Edinburgh has announced plans for a new £1.6m genealogical centre in the heart of Scotland’s capital. Due to open in 2006, it will bring together services pro­vided separately by the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS), the National Archives for Scotland and the Court of Lord Lyon. It will phys­ically link the adjacent General Register House and New Register House at the eastern end of Princes Street to create a fully integrated com­plex, with two new public search rooms.

At present the GROS is located in New Register House. The listed building dates from the early 1860s and is famous for its fireproof central repository, the dome, with 6.5km of shelves housing 400,000 statutory registers of births, marriages and deaths. Neighbouring.

One of the highlights of the Family History Monthly tour to the Western Front will undoubt­edly be attending the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ypres. With the exception of the years of German occupation during the Second World War buglers from the town’s voluntary fire brigade have sounded the last post at 8pm every.

General Register House is the home of the National Archives of Scotland. Itis one of the oldest archives in the world, designed by Robert Adams in the 1780s.

Deputy Justice Minister Hugh Henry says: “The buildings contain a treasure trove of infor­mation reflecting the personal histories of Scots people over many centuries. The creation of a single complex will unite the efforts of the three departments providing genealogical services. It will produce a first-class facility — a visitor attrac­tion in its own right — and encourage ancestor hunters from around the world to visit Edinburgh.”

Building work will start next year and should take about a year to complete. It will be run by the new Scottish Family History Research Service.

Western Front Tour

For a few moments a stillness descends over the memorial as visitors and townspeople remem­ber the fallen. The tour takes place between 10th and 13th September 2004. For details contact FHM Western Front Tour, Grosvenor Travel, 167 Station Rd, Deganwy LL31 9EX, tel (01492) 593674, www.grosvenortravel.co.uk.