Why are 80% of US currency bills in $100 denomination

 (clue, look under the world's beds)

The share of greenbacks denominated in $100 bills has been consistently on the rise for decades and inflation doesn't explain the half of it

AP Photos / Andy Wong

Nearly 80% of all US currency in circulation is denominated in $100 bills. (As of June 30, 77%.)
Seems somewhat strange doesn't it? After all, we find remarkably few of our pockets jammed with those pesky C-notes.

And it's not just us. Economists acknowledge that at face value, the proliferation of hundreds doesn't seem to make sense. Writing about the growth of the cash supply as well as the preponderance of $100-dollar bills back in 2010, economist Edgar Feige wrote that the numbers:

"Imply that the average American's bulging wallet holds 91 pieces of U.S. paper currency, consisting of: 31 one dollar bills; 7 fives; 5 tens; 21 twenties; 4 fifties and 23 one hundred dollar bills. Few of us will recognize ourselves as 'average' citizens. Clearly, these amounts of currency are not normally necessary for those of us simply wishing to make payments when neither credit/debit cards nor checks are accepted or convenient to use."

The share of greenbacks denominated in $100 bills has been consistently on the rise for decades. Here's a look at data going back to 1990, from the Federal Reserve.

In fact, the trend really seemed to start rolling as far back as the 1970s, according to this chart published in an economics paper by Feige:

That ugly blue line shows the share of currency in $100 bills. The declining trendline in vivid fuchsia, is the share of currency in 10s and 20s | Edgar Feige.

So what the heck is going on here? Inflation may have something to do with it--there just weren't as many things to buy in 1970 that might require one to slap down a $100 bill--but that still wouldn't explain why their proportion today has nothing to do with what people see in their wallets.
The short answer is that a lot of money is spending a lot of time outside the United States.
The cognoscenti look at the share of $100 bills as something of a proxy for foreign demand for US currency. An overwhelming majority of the $100 bills come from the Federal Reserve Cash Office in New York City, which handles the bulk of foreign shipments of US currency. A typical shipment is a pallet containing 640,000 such bills, or $64 million, according to a recent Fed paper.
Somewhat surprisingly, it's unclear exactly how much American money is floating around outside the US. Estimates run the gamut. In the 1990s, one high-profile estimate pegged the number at as much as 70%. But more recent estimates hover around 25%-30%.
And while there are plenty of reasons folks outside the US might want to hold dollars, the thinking is that most people are not using these $100 bills to buy milk and bananas. No, most economists seem to believe $100 bills are most often used as stores of value--almost something like mini-Treasury bills that don't pay any interest. This is especially so in developing countries, where problems with unstable currencies and inflation often mean the purchasing power of local currency gradually--or not so gradually--erodes over time.
The bills might circulate as payments in more developed countries, however. Payments for what? Well, that touches on any number of elements of what has been elegantly named "the informal economy." That is, the markets that function without the costs (taxes) and benefits (legal protections) of the state. Feige writes:

US currency is a preferred medium of exchange for facilitating clandestine transactions, and for storing illicit and untaxed wealth. Knowledge of its location and usage is required to estimate the origins and volume of illicit transactions. These include the illegal trade in drugs, arms and human trafficking as well as the amount of 'unreported' income, that is, income not properly reported to the fiscal authorities due to noncompliance with the tax code.

Large bills in outside currencies are indeed known to be a problem. In 2010, UK exchange offices stopped selling €500 notes, after police officials said 90% of the notes sold in the UK ended up in the hands of organized crime. Doesn't this present something of an ethical quandary for the US, if its largest bills are the currency of choice for criminals outside the US? It would seem so.
Cynics might point out that on the other side of that ethical quandry is fact that printing and selling money abroad is a remarkably profitable little business for the US government. Yes, that's right. Like all governments, Uncle Sam earns a profit, known as seigniorage, on the printing of money. And that profit cuts--slightly--the amount the US has to borrow from the public to keep the lights on. Some economists describe foreign holdings of US money as effectively an interest-free loan to the US. Feige writes:

Domestic seigniorage earnings (based on the fraction of U.S. currency held at home) simply represent a redistribution of income from US currency holders to US taxpayers. On the other hand, seigniorage earnings on currency held abroad represent a net transfer of real resources from foreign currency holders to US taxpayers.

Nonetheless, the spread of plastic as a means of payment planetwide seems to be nibbling away at this handy source of revenue. In the 1980s, the US earned a net profit of around $14 billion a year (pdf, p. 35) on seigniorage; by 1999 it was up to $25 billion; by 2010, it was back down to $20 billion. Oh, well--it was never going to be enough to solve the US deficit anyway.

Should You Swear in Front Of A Baby in THE WOMB?

Can I stop swearing before my daughter is born?

By Jessica Grose

Illustration by Robert Neubecker.

I didn’t really think anything about about my frequent, enthusiastic swearing until I got pregnant. But then, something about seeing me unleash a rousing string of epithets from behind my huge belly started making my husband wince. Even my mother, who once laughed when she heard my wee self let slip a “shit,” was moved to comment after she heard me on a recent DoubleX Gabfest describe myself as “so fucking pregnant.” “You might want to tone it down,” she said, gently. I suppressed the urge to tell her to piss off.

But was my swearing affecting the baby? “Your curious baby is listening in to your conversations at 34 weeks,” one of my weekly pregnancy email newsletters informed me. “Some say that baby will recognize songs mom sings while he’s in the womb, and may even be more easily soothed by them if he’s used to them once he’s on the ‘outside.’ ”

Oh, man. What “song” is my baby hearing? Maybe my little girl will feel that first burst of antiseptic cold from the bright hospital room, open her eyes, and scream, “Fuuuuck!!!” Maybe she’ll start sassing the nurses cleaning her tiny bottom, like a two-bit movie gangster: “Goddammit, dames, could we move it along here?” All fantasies aside, learning that my baby was eavesdropping on me while still in utero also made me reflect on the influence I’m already having on my daughter, and whether my unfettered use of the F-word is something I want her to experience with her first consciousness.

Though cursing was not a big deal in my household growing up, my parents did not curse anywhere near as much as I do now. I wasn’t so F-word-friendly myself until college. Before that, I was always the straight-A captain of the field hockey team, innately understanding that a degree of wholesomeness was an important part of the package. Looking back, I wonder if I started cursing so heavily because I needed to move away from that earlier good-girl persona, which ultimately I found stifling.  I hope my daughter doesn’t need something as superficial and potentially off-putting as cursing to develop her sense of self.

More immediately—and selfishly—I’m concerned about how my daughter’s potty mouth might reflect on my husband and me. I really don’t want to be called into daycare two years from now because my daughter has been teaching all the other toddlers to complain about their shitty diapers. And I don’t want to be shunned at the playground while trying to meet new mom friends because I can’t keep my language PG.

Research on the effects of cursing on fetuses is inconclusive. I asked Annie Murphy Paul, the author of Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, about how much of an impact cursing has on babies in the womb. She backed up my pregnancy newsletter: Newborns can recognize their mother’s voices at birth, and they can even recognize stories and songs if they heard them repeatedly before they were born. But according to Paul, babies can’t “discriminate among curse words or other words.” What babies and fetuses do respond to, however, is extreme maternal stress. But we’re talking war-zone, Hurricane-Sandy-destroyed-my-house level stress, not my-boss-was-being-a-jerk-today stress. Cursing can certainly go along with intense personal upheaval, but it’s a symptom, not a cause.

As for older children, the research is similarly incomplete. One 2009 study published in the journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law pointed out that some of the extant research is based on a family verbal abuse measurement scale called the Conflict Tactics Scale—which does not separate conversational swearing from insulting swearing. There’s a big difference between cursing around your kid and cursing at your kid. The latter is verbal abuse; it’s unclear whether the former has a negative impact. Another study, from a 2011 issue of Pediatrics, showed that adolescents who consumed more profanity-laden media were more likely to be aggressive, both physically and relationally. Still, that study does not explore the context of the profanity, and it doesn’t really talk about how profanity used at home affects children.

Child psychologist Alan Kazdin, director of Yale’s Parenting Center, says he isn’t aware of any studies that isolate swearing from other negative parental behaviors.  If you’re an otherwise supportive and loving parent who happens to curse, it’s probably not that big a deal. However, he does say that if you curse around your kid, it’s likely they will model that behavior. And once they’re cursing, it’s quite difficult to get them to stop. Telling your child, “I can do this because I’m grown up and you aren’t,” says Kazdin, is woefully ineffective. “It’s like when your boss takes off early all the time and you aren’t allowed to”—it breeds resentment.

The irreversibility of the effects of cursing around my kid was enough to give me pause. And even though I couldn’t find any hard-and-fast proof that my baby is going to emerge from the womb sounding like a pint-sized Sarah Silverman, once called to my attention, all those fucks emerging from my mouth started to sound unduly harsh. And worse, I started fearing that my gleeful use of profanity was really just verbal laziness. I curse because it’s fun, but also for extra emphasis. When every other word is unprintable, those words lose their significance.

I decided on an experiment: Could I cut down on my cursing for a month? My husband suggested that every time I used profanity, I had to buy him a Blu-ray DVD. I also briefly considered a good, old-fashioned swear jar.

But I started with a kind of mindfulness exercise. I tend to speak incredibly quickly, and so for four weeks, I tried to become my own network-TV style, time-delayed censor while talking aloud.  Considering I am so pregnant that I need a pulley system to sit in the upright position, I knew quitting cursing entirely would be an uphill battle. The mindfulness experiment would accomplish two things: It would help me distinguish between necessary and excessive cursing, and it would begin training my not to curse as such an automatic response—the better to curb it around the babe.

I started the experiment at a wedding of an old college friend.  It was easy not to curse there, not just because it was an entirely joyful occasion, but also because I was fully comfortable. I’ve known these people for over a decade, and I feel accepted by them fairly unconditionally—which made me realize, embarrassingly, that even though I’m 30, I still use cursing to sound badass. This is vaguely pathetic, and I’d like to stop this variety of expletive use.

Keeping it clean became much more difficult the day my husband and I got stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the West Side Highway because of a biker parade. Seriously. As we were shepherded into two lanes to watch the bikers ride by with a police escort, I felt entirely comfortable muttering to my husband, “What. The. Fuck.” I truly believe that even the most devout Mormon would permit himself a “flipping” when faced with traffic-related agita—even when babies are involved. This kind of frustration-related outburst can stay.

On my next DoubleX Gabfest appearance, I spoke more slowly and clearly than I usually do. I’m pretty sure it’s the first time that a Gabfest I’ve been on did not get an “explicit” tag on iTunes. But honestly I sounded a little constipated. Part of the fun of those appearances is the exuberance that goes along with a heated conversation. When you’re taking such pains to stifle yourself, something is lost along the way.  To punctuate a rousing debate—which I doubt I will be having with my nonverbal baby—cursing can be a useful tool.

Even though my month-long experiment in mindfulness is over, I am still doing my best not to curse. (All bets are off during labor, though.) I don’t think swearing is a scourge, but I really want my daughter to be able to understand the context of expletives before she starts using them. It took me three decades to figure it out for myself, and I hope she’s quicker than her mama is.

Though I don’t kid myself that I can control everything that her lil’ ears take in, not cursing around her is one small thing I can manage. Will I be able to prevent myself from laughing the first time she says something like, “Oh shit, I slipped”? I’m not a fucking saint.

How Surprises Make You Stronger

Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder. By Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Random House; 519 pages; $30. Allen Lane; £25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

WHAT is the opposite of fragility? Though not quite right, “resilience” and “robustness” are two words that come to mind. If fragility means something that breaks under stress, its exact opposite should mean something that grows stronger under pressure. There is no word that quite captures this, says Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an American essayist and scholar, so he has invented one: “antifragile”.

The neologism is necessary because antifragility, he argues, is the secret to success in a world full of uncertainty. Mr Taleb’s earlier books were devoted to showing that no one can measure the likelihood of rare events—or “black swans”, in his now famous phrase. From the financial crisis to the tsunami that struck the Fukushima nuclear reactor in 2011, the worst-case scenario will never be quite bad enough. So instead of trying to predict the future and failing, the best thing to do is try to benefit from shocks when they occur.
That, after all, is what nature does. Evolution is a system for turning random mutations to lasting advantage. The body responds well to certain pressures; the bones in the racquet-holding arm of professional tennis players are stronger than those in the other arm, for example.
There are all sorts of ways in which bad events contain useful information. Pain teaches children what to avoid. The failures of past entrepreneurs steer the next lot of start-ups away from the same mistakes. Plane crashes yield data that make the next flight safer. (Bank failures have the opposite effect; because of the interconnectedness of the financial system, one blow-up makes another more likely, not less.)
Indeed, Mr Taleb thinks the big mistake is trying too hard to avoid shocks. Long periods of stability allow risks to accumulate until there is a major disaster; volatility means that things do not get too far out of kilter. In the economy cutting interest rates at the first sign of weakness stores up more trouble for later. In markets getting rid of speculators means prices are more stable in general but any fluctuations cause greater panic. In political systems the stability brought by regimes such as Hosni Mubarak’s in Egypt was artificial; without any effective way for people to express dissent, change leads to collapse.
The principle applies to career choices too. An apparently secure job within a large company disguises a dependency on a single employer and the risk that unemployment will cause a very sudden and steep loss of income. Professions that have more variable earnings, like taxi-driving or prostitution, are less vulnerable to really big shocks. They also use volatility as information: if a cabbie is in a part of town where there are no fares, he heads to a different area.
This is getting to the heart of antifragility: being in a position where the unexpected allows improvement, where the potential gains from a surprising event outweigh the potential losses. The obvious example from finance is the option, which gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to undertake a transaction at an agreed price. The first option on record was exercised by Thales of Miletus, an ancient Greek philosopher who bought the right to use every olive press in the area and was then able to specify his terms when a good olive harvest meant high demand for the presses. At worst, his losses were limited; at best, his gains were enormous.
The equivalent in investment terms is to hold mostly ultra-safe assets and have a sliver of wealth in something that offers a huge pay-off if there is a positive surprise. In business, inefficiency becomes a potential virtue; holding lots of inventory is a great strategy if there is a shortfall elsewhere in the market. As for countries, Switzerland takes the prize for being the “most antifragile place on the planet”. When bad things happen, the money flows in.
“Antifragile” is an interesting idea, but as a book it is not without flaws. Mr Taleb takes on everything from the mistakes of modern architecture to the dangers of meddlesome doctors and how overrated formal education is. He overstretches the argument and is not as iconoclastic as he likes to think. There is a lot of familiar-sounding praise for Steve Jobs and the warnings about the dangers of stability will be well known to followers of Hyman Minsky. The valid reasons why people become employees (pensions, say) or companies become bigger, such as economies of scale, are skated over. But this is an ambitious and thought-provoking read.
It is also a highly entertaining one, thanks to Mr Taleb’s in-your-face nature. “Antifragile” is as much about the author as it is about the world. He is a weightlifter and calls himself “an intellectual who has the appearance of a bodyguard”. He avoids fruit that does not have an ancient Greek or Hebrew name and drinks no liquid that has not been in existence for at least 1,000 years. He has little time for copy editors, even less for economists, bankers and those who cluster at Davos. He once spent two years in bed reading every book about probability he could lay his hands on. Whether you find Mr Taleb amusing or irritating, you want to read on.

Why Do American Singers Sound British?

Blame the Beatles.

By L.V. Anderson

From left, Beatles John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney in April 1964 Photo by AFP/GettyImages.

For the newest James Bond movie, Skyfall, English singer Adele recorded a song with the same name. Though Adele speaks with a strong London accent, her singing voice sounds more American than British. Why do British vocalists often sound American when they sing?

Because that’s the way everyone expects pop and rock musicians to sound. British pop singers have been imitating American pronunciations since Cliff Richard, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones began recording in the 1960s.* These musicians were largely influenced by the African-American Vernacular English of black American blues and rock and roll singers like Chuck Berry, but their faux-American dialects usually comprised aspects of several American dialects. Imitating an American accent involved both the adoption of American vowel sounds and rhoticity: the pronunciation of r’s wherever they appear in a word. (Nonrhoticity, by contrast, is the habit of dropping r’s at the end of a syllable, as most dialects of England do.) Sometimes Brits attempting to sing in an American style went overboard with the r’s, as did Paul McCartney in his cover of “Till There Was You,” pronouncing saw more like sawr.

Linguist Peter Trudgill tracked rhoticity in British rock music over the years and found that the Beatles’ pronunciation of r’s decreased over the course of the 1960s, settling into a trans-Atlantic sound that incorporated aspects of both British and American dialects. The trend also went in the opposite direction as new genres developed: American pop-punk vocalists like Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day took on a British-tinged accent to sound more like seminal artists such as Joe Strummer of the Clash. Contemporary singers continue to adopt various accents according to their genre; Keith Urban, who is Australian, sings country music with a marked American Southern accent. A recent study suggests that the default singing accent for New Zealand pop singers utilizes American vowel sounds, even when the singers aren’t trying to sound American, perhaps because today’s singers were brought up listening to American (and imitation-American) pop vocals.

Even when singers aren’t trying to imitate a particular vocal style associated with a genre, regional dialects tend to get lost in song: Intonation is superseded by melody, vowel length by the duration of each note, and vocal cadences by a song’s rhythm. This makes vowel sounds and rhoticity all the more important in conveying accent in song.

Why Do All The Syrian Rebels Have Beards?

LATAKIA PROVINCE

ABU AZZAM is a Santa Claus of a man: rotund and stocky, with fat, smiling lips, a twinkle in his eye and a jolly manner. Since the former student became a rebel commander with the Farouq Brigade, one of the rebels' most effective, he has sported a fluffy black beard. He strokes it thoughtfully from top to bottom as he speaks, sometimes running a comb through it.

Almost all the rebel fighters sport similar facial hair. This has tagged them as “-ists” of one kind or another: Islamists, Salafists, jihadists, terrorists. It is an image Abu Azzam's fighters joke about. “We're on our way to making an emirate!” says one. “All terrorists!” says another, gesturing at fighters milling around the school serving as a base in a village in Raqqa province.

Some beards do indeed signify religiosity, especially the bushy Salafist type with only the shadow of a moustache, a style believed by followers to have been favoured by the Prophet Muhammad. When the uprising started, the regime sought to portray the protesters as Sunni extremists. They weren't, but as the bloodshed spread, religiosity among the fighters has indeed grown and extremists have proliferated.

In Atmeh, a town on the border with Turkey where rebel groups like to consort, a Salafist group called Suqur al-Sham, an Idleb-based brigade, parades itself. “Kill kufar [non-believers]” is scrawled on the wall of another school that has been turned into a base. Three men from the unit greet a man with a beard but refuse to look at me or to shake the hand of my clean-shaven male companion.
Yet many fighters, like Abu Azzam, have beards for other reasons: to seem more devout so as to attract cash from rich conservative donors; to appear more authoritative; to satisfy a personal taste; or simply because their wives like it. “We have no time to shave!” laughs a skinny fighter, bringing up the topic spontaneously.

Despite such jokes, moderate fighters worry that beards may give Westerners a bad impression. Abu Adnan, who leads a small band of fighters in the hills above Latakia, the Assads' homeland, refuses to be interviewed until he has shaved. Abu Samer, who runs a local revolutionary police station, agrees to meet only after checking that I work for a newspaper rather than a television station. “I know people will interpret my beard the wrong way,” he says. “It's a bad image to give the revolution.”
I suggested to Abu Azzam that he and his brigade go clean-shaven for a month to see if it gets them better Western coverage from those watching their videos on YouTube. Raising an eyebrow, Abu Azzam puts a protective hand on his beard, as if to stop it being touched. “I can't shave it off,” he says, taking out a photograph of himself as a smooth-skinned student. “The main reason is that I look handsome with a beard.

Correction: This post originally refered to a slogan in Atmeh as saying "Kill kufr" [non-believers]. That was a mis-transliteration (as pointed out by one of our commenters). It should be "Kill kufar"; this has been corrected in the text.

Source: economist

How Wifi On Planes Works

By Rosie Tomkins

The rise of in-flight Wi-Fi

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• More airlines providing Wi-Fi on their flights
• Norwegian Air first airline in Europe to offer free Wi-Fi
• Gogo system installed on 1,600 U.S. jets, according to CEO
• Row 44 provides satellite-based system that can access internet even over the ocean

As the globe has become increasingly outfitted with wi-fi hotspots and cell phone towers, the skies have long been the last refuge from constant connectivity. That's changing, however, as more airlines are realizing wi-fi's earning potential.

By its own estimate, one of the fastest-growing companies in America is Gogo, which was the first to successfully hook up planes with internet. It has since installed systems on several U.S. carriers, including Delta, American and US Airways.

According to its CEO, Michael Small, Gogo's profits grew from $37 million in 2009 to $112 million in the first six months of 2012.

"We're now on over 1,600 commercial aviation jets, which is nearly half the U.S. fleet. We've done that in four years, which is extraordinarily fast," says Small. "In just a few more years, it will be done in America."

Though airlines pay to install the equipment, they also reap the rewards; Gogo charges the customers for internet usage -- between $5 and $20, depending on flight duration -- and shares its revenue with the carriers.

"More travelers are aware of our service, and many of them want it," says Small. "One in five say they will switch a flight to get our service."

The drawback with Gogo's system is that it uses an air-to-ground network of cell phone towers it built across the United States -- each with a 250-mile radius of coverage -- meaning its wi-fi isn't available when flying over water. Internet on Gogo-outfitted planes is therefore limited to domestic flights. This is where California-based firm Row 44 swoops in.

Row 44 also installs wi-fi on airplanes, though unlike Gogo, it relies on a satellite system, meaning passengers can access internet even when flying over the ocean.

"This is a distinct advantage, given that two-thirds of the planet is covered in water," notes John LaValle, Row 44's CEO. Also, satellite systems give passengers more options, due to better bandwidth.

"Air-to-ground has certain inherent limitations in terms of the amount of data that can be processed through the network of cell towers on the ground -- for example, live TV really is an impossibility," says LaValle, whose company also offers that service as part of its package. "In a satellite environment, you're able to get much more data through the pipe."

But the satellite system is substantially more expensive than using cell-phone towers, and has the added drawback of taking longer to install. As airlines lose money for every day a plane is out of commission, this can make the process rather costly. Some carriers, however, find it's worth the price.

Mango Airlines and Southwest are among the airlines using Row 44's service, with Icelandair soon to follow. What's more, Norwegian Air Shuttle, which has also joined the fray, has just this month started offering wi-fi to passengers free-of-charge -- the first airline in Europe to do so.

"We had a trial period where we offered it free to passengers, and we saw increases on those routes; it went up volumes," notes Boris Bubresko, head of business development for Norwegian Air Shuttle. "After that, we decided to keep it free."

At the moment, connectivity is a perk; airlines that provide wi-fi or mobile services on board stand out. This will change, though, as customers increasingly start to expect the amenity, rather than merely appreciate it. LaValle feels that era has already dawned.

He says: "I was on a plane recently that wasn't wi-fi equipped, and this guy sitting across the aisle opened up his laptop and he couldn't find the hotspot. He slammed it down and said, 'I can't believe this, I really needed to get a lot of work done on this flight!'

"I think we're already at that point where everyone fully expects connectivity."

Source: CNN

6500 High Security Number Plates Issued in Mizoram

Aizawl, Nov 26 : Around 6500 High Security Number Plates (HSNP) have been made so far, and if goes by the plan, by April 26, 2014 which is the time stipulated by the Government, all the vehicles in Mizoram will have the new number plates, according to a source from Transport department, Mizoram.

Workers at the Transport office at Chaltlang informed that with the good internet facility and power supply they could complete around 55 plates per day.

Besides, the only one embossing machine with which they used to work is now supplemented by another machine.

Therefore, their work becomes more faster than before.

Moreover, another machine has also been placed in Lunglei with which they workers also started using it from November 19.The two machines in Aizawl will manufacture number plates for the vehicles of Serchhip, Champhai, Mamit and Kolasib district, besides Aizawl district.

The machine in Lunglei will manufacture for Saiha and Lawngtlai district besides Lunglei district.

As of now, there are 11 workers in Aizawl and 5 workers in Lunglei.

The High Security Plate is proposed to prevent loss of vehicles, as it will have laser code containing owner's name, address, chasis number, engine number and other important informations.

The vehicle owners after obtaining smart card from Transport department have to take application form and after submission of it, will be given the High Security Number Plates.

Manufacturing of the High Security Number Plates is being undertaken by Shimnit Utsch India Private Limited, a joint venture of India and German Company, and their centre at Mumbai.

When the three machines work in a regular manner, it is expected that around 200 plates will be manufactured per day.

The manufacture of High Security Number Plates was inaugurated on April 27, 2012 by Transport Secretary H.Darzika, on which day High Security Plates for Chief Minister of Mizoram and other important officials were manufactured.

It is estimated that there are around 1, 50,000 vehicles in Mizoram.

The cost of manufacture of High Security Number Plate is: scooter Rs 669; motor cycle Rs 668; three wheelers Rs 940; and light, medium, heavyRs 945 .

Manipur Permit Call Echoes in Delhi

Demonstration at Jantar Mantar to push for ILP system in Manipur












Activists stage a protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Sunday. Picture by Ramakant Kuswaha

Imphal, Nov 26 : The joint committee on inner line permit system in Manipur took its demand right to the central government’s doorstep today by organising a demonstration at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.

Women vendors of Imphal also staged a simultaneous sit-in here. Both demonstrations were held between 10am and 3pm.

The committee decided to shift the battle to New Delhi after the Centre stayed silent on a resolution adopted by the Manipur Assembly on July 13 to enforce the inner line permit in the state and the subsequent remark by Union home minister Sushil Kumar Sindhe: “Any sensible person will not pass such a bill.”

The joint committee, a conglomerate of citizens’ groups, had planned to issue stay permits to non-Manipuris living in the state from December 19 next but dropped the idea after deputy chief minister Gaikhangam persuaded them not to do so.

Gaikhangam appealed to the joint committee leaders to join hands with the state government and mount pressure on the Centre as the matter was not under the purview of the state government.

Somorendro Thokchom, media coordinator of the joint committee, said volunteers of various student and citizens’ groups of Manipur, Delhi Sinlung Indigenous Peoples Human Rights Organisation and Manipuri students staying in Delhi took part in the Jantar Mantar demonstration, which also saw participation by Manipur State Congress Party MLA K. Thamarjit and Manipur People’s Party organisation secretary Mutum Maniton along with Imphal businessman Amrik Singh Pahwa, who represented the state’s Sikh populace.

A delegation of the joint committee, headed by its convener, Sapamcha Jadumani, had met the Union home minister on Friday and submitted a representation stressing the necessity of enforcing the system to safeguard and protect the indigenous people of Manipur.

The delegation told Shinde that according to the 2001 census, there were 7,04,488 non-Manipuris in Manipur against a tribal population of 6,70,782, Meitei population of 7,51,822 and Meitei Pangal (Muslims) population of 1,67,204.

Jadumani said Shinde was convinced that the demand of the people of Manipur was genuine but added that as the home minister had not give any written assurance regarding implementation of the system, the joint committee would continue to press for its enforcement.

The campaign for enforcement of the inner line permit system in Manipur started after it came to light that the number of non-Manipuri voters were increasing in almost all constituencies of the state.

Out of 28,000 voters in Jiribam constituency of Imphal East non-Manipuris account for 20,000.

Citizen’s organisations in the state are apprehensive that Manipur could meet the fate of Tripura, where outsiders outnumbered the indigenous people.

Manipur Peoples Party is also campaigning for implementation of the system in Manipur through a poster campaign.

The CPI, which was a partner in the earlier two terms of the Okram Ibobi Singh government, is also fully supporting the demand.

“If the Ibobi Singh government is supportive and can put enough pressure on the Centre, there is no reason why the UPA government should not implement the system in Manipur,” CPI state secretary M. Nara Singh said.

“What is the Ibobi Singh government doing? His cabinet took the decision and the next day the state Assembly took the decision to enforce it. It is the responsibility of the government to pursue the decision and have the Centre honour the decision taken by the state Assembly. We will continue to fight until the Centre acts,” said Manitombi Devi, a women vendor here.