1)Watch the changes in the list of top billionaires, learn how they made their billions, and note how many billions they made. This information provides a quick bellwether for balance of growth, across income class and industries. A country that produces too many billionaires, relative to its size, is in all likelihood off-balance.
2) Strong companies and stock markets should - but should not necessarily - make for strong economies, so don't confuse the two. The clearest examples are countries dominated by oligopolies, like Mexico, SA and to some extent Philippines.
3) Watch for steady momentum behind economic and political reform, particularly in good times. Nations typically implement reforms when their backs are against the wall.
4) Check the size and growth of the second city, compared to the first city. In any big country the second largest city usually has a population that is to 1/3rd to 1/2 of the biggest city.
5) Watch the locals , they are always first to know; they will be bringing money to a breakout nation and fleeing one in trouble.
6) The sight of local companies going global is often celebrated in headlines as a national success, but more accurate interpretation depends on the circumstances. Going global can be sign of corporate strength or of national weakness.
7) Don't get hung up on the rules.
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Key Learnings from Breakout Nations
All Thanks to Ruchir Sharma for his splendid book : Breakout Nations.
1) The old rule of forecasting was to make as many forecasts as possible and publicize the ones you got right. The new rule is to forecast so far into the future that no one will know that you got it wrong.
2) Goodhart's Law (Coined by former Bank of England, adviser Charles Goodhart) : Once an economic indicator get too popular, it loses its predictive value.
3) It is said that it takes money to make money, but for nations to grow rapidly it is much easier to be poor - the poorer, the better.
4) Typically it is difficult for any nation to expand the manufacturing share of its labor force much beyond 20 % , and China is already at around 23%.
5) "Low context", in contrast describes societies like United States and Germany in which people are individual oriented, care about privacy and more likely to stick to timelines and their word. Both India and Brazil are "high-context" societies, a term popularized by the anthropologist Edward Hall. It describes cultures in which people are colorful, noisy, quick to make promises that cannot always be relied on, and a bit too casual about meeting times and deadlines. These societies also tend to be particularly family-oriented, with tight relationships even beyond the immediate family, based on close ties that are built over long periods of time. In an environment this familiar, there is a lot that goes unsaid — or is said very briefly — because values are deeply shared. By the same token, much is implicitly understood from context. The spoken word is often flowery and vague. Apologies are long and formal. In that regard, Indians and Brazilians are a lot more like Italians than, say, Germans.
6) There are three layers of life in India : the increasingly cosmopolitan cities, the faceless towns and often the desperate villages.
7) Demographers traditionally expected customers to start asking for non essential "aspirational" goods like deodorant and hair conditioner only after they entered middle class.
8) The commodity windfall is fun while it lasts, but it also carries seeds of its own destruction
9) They say money talks and wealth whispers but in Moscow wealth dances on the bar.
10) A rich country need to make rich things to keep growing.
11) In the 1980s the late Vaclav Havel, at that time only dissident Czech writer, put the call to counter revolution well; he wrote that people living under Communism yearned for a normal life, free from communist call of 'permanent revolution', the unceasing efforts to turn themselves into model socialists.
12) Local authorities will start competing for growing pot of investment dollar by lowering prices of bribes and tips. Since the bribes collected locally are spent locally, the decentralization of corruption tilts the upside of even ill gotten gains away from Jakarta.
13) When everyone's a victim, its wonder anyone ever had the confidence to invest in the economy.
14) The basic idea that rich foreigners are always first to run in crisis is widely accepted. The truth is that the first to flee are most often the well positioned insiders.
15) To take the pulse of the global economy, look in Seoul. The numbers are fast, accurate and reliable.
16) At a certain point, when an apparently unconventional approach is working, you have to rethink the conventions, not the approach.
17) The Korean experience backs up the argument that the strongest corporate model is family owned but publicly traded and professionally managed. The family gives the company an inherent focus on the long run, while selling stock on the open market forces the family to keep the books clean, to put experts in charge of day to day operations , and to keep the loopy cousins out of the corner offices.
18) Some times it appear that South Korea has cultural blindness to the value of the services.
19) At zero on Gini scale everyone has same income, and and at 1, just one has all the income.
20) But moderation while preferable to chaos, is no longer in the post crisis global environment of less easy money and tougher competition.
21) Most workers in the informal sector have learned to live with what they have, and learned to live with quite little.
22) The arbitrary management of arbitrary rules is hardly the main risk in the fourth world frontier.
23) Markets are especially bad at foreseeing the financial implication of the war and hey are also weak at recognizing the benefits of peace.
24) The future must be decided based on what works, not on the ideological debates that retarded SriLanka's growth for so long.
25) Political systems don't impact growth for better or worse; political leaders do.
26) Even a small dose of market logic can produce dramatic results in a backward communist state.
27) A general rule for spotting credit bubbles is that if bank lending expands by more than 20 percent a year for five straight years.
28) Sometimes just modest reform or the arrival of a dynamic new leader can unleash growth, particularly in the frontier market.
29) The later a nation develops, the more opportunity it has to learn from nations that came before, and to leapfrog entire development steps in the process.
30 )Saying anything outrageous is considered a badge of merit among leaders on the frontier market.
31) The first rule for a successful oil state is :"Thou shalt not steal."
32) No bubble is a good bubble, all leave some level of misery in their wakes.
33) Cheap money policies also tend to fuel what the research firm GaveKal Dragonomics has aptly called "the worst kind of bubbles", because zero interest rates encourage investors to pile into assets that are priced on scarcity (gold, fine wines, collectibles, trophy properties), not on productivity (tech, machine tools, ships). When bubble pops the capital is simply destroyed and society is left with no more gold diamonds or fine wines than when it started. Atleast the tech bubble helped wire the world and left behind a whole new range of Internet tools and services, which have grown more valuable since.
34) The author George Goodman , best known by his pseudonym, Adam Smith, captured the closing moments of all manias perfectly in his book The Money Game, written at the height of a market boom in 1967 : "We are at a wonderful party, and by rules of game we know that at some point in time the Black Horsemen will burst through the great terrace doors to cut down the revelers; those who leave early may be saved , but the music and wines are so seductive that we do not want to leave, but we do ask, 'What time is it? What time is it?' Only none of the clocks have any hands.
35) George Orwell once observed, “Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”
1) The old rule of forecasting was to make as many forecasts as possible and publicize the ones you got right. The new rule is to forecast so far into the future that no one will know that you got it wrong.
2) Goodhart's Law (Coined by former Bank of England, adviser Charles Goodhart) : Once an economic indicator get too popular, it loses its predictive value.
3) It is said that it takes money to make money, but for nations to grow rapidly it is much easier to be poor - the poorer, the better.
4) Typically it is difficult for any nation to expand the manufacturing share of its labor force much beyond 20 % , and China is already at around 23%.
5) "Low context", in contrast describes societies like United States and Germany in which people are individual oriented, care about privacy and more likely to stick to timelines and their word. Both India and Brazil are "high-context" societies, a term popularized by the anthropologist Edward Hall. It describes cultures in which people are colorful, noisy, quick to make promises that cannot always be relied on, and a bit too casual about meeting times and deadlines. These societies also tend to be particularly family-oriented, with tight relationships even beyond the immediate family, based on close ties that are built over long periods of time. In an environment this familiar, there is a lot that goes unsaid — or is said very briefly — because values are deeply shared. By the same token, much is implicitly understood from context. The spoken word is often flowery and vague. Apologies are long and formal. In that regard, Indians and Brazilians are a lot more like Italians than, say, Germans.
6) There are three layers of life in India : the increasingly cosmopolitan cities, the faceless towns and often the desperate villages.
7) Demographers traditionally expected customers to start asking for non essential "aspirational" goods like deodorant and hair conditioner only after they entered middle class.
8) The commodity windfall is fun while it lasts, but it also carries seeds of its own destruction
9) They say money talks and wealth whispers but in Moscow wealth dances on the bar.
10) A rich country need to make rich things to keep growing.
11) In the 1980s the late Vaclav Havel, at that time only dissident Czech writer, put the call to counter revolution well; he wrote that people living under Communism yearned for a normal life, free from communist call of 'permanent revolution', the unceasing efforts to turn themselves into model socialists.
12) Local authorities will start competing for growing pot of investment dollar by lowering prices of bribes and tips. Since the bribes collected locally are spent locally, the decentralization of corruption tilts the upside of even ill gotten gains away from Jakarta.
13) When everyone's a victim, its wonder anyone ever had the confidence to invest in the economy.
14) The basic idea that rich foreigners are always first to run in crisis is widely accepted. The truth is that the first to flee are most often the well positioned insiders.
15) To take the pulse of the global economy, look in Seoul. The numbers are fast, accurate and reliable.
16) At a certain point, when an apparently unconventional approach is working, you have to rethink the conventions, not the approach.
17) The Korean experience backs up the argument that the strongest corporate model is family owned but publicly traded and professionally managed. The family gives the company an inherent focus on the long run, while selling stock on the open market forces the family to keep the books clean, to put experts in charge of day to day operations , and to keep the loopy cousins out of the corner offices.
18) Some times it appear that South Korea has cultural blindness to the value of the services.
19) At zero on Gini scale everyone has same income, and and at 1, just one has all the income.
20) But moderation while preferable to chaos, is no longer in the post crisis global environment of less easy money and tougher competition.
21) Most workers in the informal sector have learned to live with what they have, and learned to live with quite little.
22) The arbitrary management of arbitrary rules is hardly the main risk in the fourth world frontier.
23) Markets are especially bad at foreseeing the financial implication of the war and hey are also weak at recognizing the benefits of peace.
24) The future must be decided based on what works, not on the ideological debates that retarded SriLanka's growth for so long.
25) Political systems don't impact growth for better or worse; political leaders do.
26) Even a small dose of market logic can produce dramatic results in a backward communist state.
27) A general rule for spotting credit bubbles is that if bank lending expands by more than 20 percent a year for five straight years.
28) Sometimes just modest reform or the arrival of a dynamic new leader can unleash growth, particularly in the frontier market.
29) The later a nation develops, the more opportunity it has to learn from nations that came before, and to leapfrog entire development steps in the process.
30 )Saying anything outrageous is considered a badge of merit among leaders on the frontier market.
31) The first rule for a successful oil state is :"Thou shalt not steal."
32) No bubble is a good bubble, all leave some level of misery in their wakes.
33) Cheap money policies also tend to fuel what the research firm GaveKal Dragonomics has aptly called "the worst kind of bubbles", because zero interest rates encourage investors to pile into assets that are priced on scarcity (gold, fine wines, collectibles, trophy properties), not on productivity (tech, machine tools, ships). When bubble pops the capital is simply destroyed and society is left with no more gold diamonds or fine wines than when it started. Atleast the tech bubble helped wire the world and left behind a whole new range of Internet tools and services, which have grown more valuable since.
34) The author George Goodman , best known by his pseudonym, Adam Smith, captured the closing moments of all manias perfectly in his book The Money Game, written at the height of a market boom in 1967 : "We are at a wonderful party, and by rules of game we know that at some point in time the Black Horsemen will burst through the great terrace doors to cut down the revelers; those who leave early may be saved , but the music and wines are so seductive that we do not want to leave, but we do ask, 'What time is it? What time is it?' Only none of the clocks have any hands.
35) George Orwell once observed, “Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Ten Issues -24
1- Smokers’ Corner: Real revolutions by Nadeem F. Paracha.
2- The Night Shastri Died And Other Stories by Kuldip Nayar.
3- Why Elites Fail by Christopher Hayes.
4- The real wealth of nations - The Economist
5- Children of the Taliban - PBS Frontline
6- The wedges between productivity and median compensation growth By Lawrence Mishel
7- 'A Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence by Daniel C. Dennett.
8- Why so many communist philosophers? by Santiago Zabala
9- Destroying the commons by Noam Chomsky.
10 - Theories of Oppression and Another Dialogue of Cultures by Ashis Nandy Perspectives
Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.
2- The Night Shastri Died And Other Stories by Kuldip Nayar.
3- Why Elites Fail by Christopher Hayes.
4- The real wealth of nations - The Economist
5- Children of the Taliban - PBS Frontline
6- The wedges between productivity and median compensation growth By Lawrence Mishel
7- 'A Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence by Daniel C. Dennett.
8- Why so many communist philosophers? by Santiago Zabala
9- Destroying the commons by Noam Chomsky.
10 - Theories of Oppression and Another Dialogue of Cultures by Ashis Nandy Perspectives
Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Ten Issues - 23
1- Retuning Alha Udal : The lustrous versatility of film music, and change wrought by time. Gulzar knows our culture more than anybody in music industry.
2- Evaluating responses to India's macroeconomic crisis by Shubho Roy and Ajay Shah.
3- Not an April Fool: We are encouraged to over-share, for commercial reasons (just as we are encouraged to over-consume, but that's an issue for another time).
4- वक्त की छलनी में चेहरे गुम हो जाते हैं, गीत अमर रहता है ♦ जावेद अख्तर - पिछले दिनों जावेद अख्तर को राष्ट्रपति ने राज्यसभा की सदस्यता दी। 17 मई 2012 को जावेद साहब ने संसद में अपना पहला भाषण दिया।
5- Sheryl Sandberg’s Inspiring Speech At Harvard Business School. Sandberg urged the new graduates to think of their careers as a “jungle gym,” jumping around instead of following a preordained progression. She urged her listeners to take similar leaps, perhaps accepting a job that’s a step down from what one is currently doing if it offers the chance to learn something new. “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship,” she said, “don’t ask what seat—just get on.”
6- Graduate Student: To Be or Not To Be by Karthik Shekhar who is a graduate student at MIT. He earned a Dual Degree in Chemical Engineering in 2008 from IITB.
7- An Open Letter to India’s Graduating Classes - The author is a partner with KPMG.
8- We are now going to uncloak the anonymous man and tell the story of Stephen Ridley. Life is short - you're young, you're old, you're dead. React to that knowledge. You have nothing to lose.
9- Why People Should Not Be Poor by Neera Chandhoke - Can we reflect on the right not to be poor without taking on these background inequalities? Arguably, the right not to be poor is best articulated as a subset of the generic right to equality. The concept of equality is, however, not self-explanatory. In many circles, redistributive justice has replaced equality. It is therefore time to ask the question – equality for what? Unless we are careful about the way we approach the poverty debate, we will land up not with equality, but with “sufficientarianism”.
10- ARTICLE 17 is a campaign launched by Video Volunteers on April 14th, 2012, to urge the National Commission for Schedule Castes, (the government body that is constitutionally appointed to direct and implement the safeguards against untouchability), to prosecute cases of untouchability.
Thought of the Day : - “The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.” ― Bertolt Brecht
2- Evaluating responses to India's macroeconomic crisis by Shubho Roy and Ajay Shah.
3- Not an April Fool: We are encouraged to over-share, for commercial reasons (just as we are encouraged to over-consume, but that's an issue for another time).
4- वक्त की छलनी में चेहरे गुम हो जाते हैं, गीत अमर रहता है ♦ जावेद अख्तर - पिछले दिनों जावेद अख्तर को राष्ट्रपति ने राज्यसभा की सदस्यता दी। 17 मई 2012 को जावेद साहब ने संसद में अपना पहला भाषण दिया।
5- Sheryl Sandberg’s Inspiring Speech At Harvard Business School. Sandberg urged the new graduates to think of their careers as a “jungle gym,” jumping around instead of following a preordained progression. She urged her listeners to take similar leaps, perhaps accepting a job that’s a step down from what one is currently doing if it offers the chance to learn something new. “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship,” she said, “don’t ask what seat—just get on.”
6- Graduate Student: To Be or Not To Be by Karthik Shekhar who is a graduate student at MIT. He earned a Dual Degree in Chemical Engineering in 2008 from IITB.
7- An Open Letter to India’s Graduating Classes - The author is a partner with KPMG.
8- We are now going to uncloak the anonymous man and tell the story of Stephen Ridley. Life is short - you're young, you're old, you're dead. React to that knowledge. You have nothing to lose.
9- Why People Should Not Be Poor by Neera Chandhoke - Can we reflect on the right not to be poor without taking on these background inequalities? Arguably, the right not to be poor is best articulated as a subset of the generic right to equality. The concept of equality is, however, not self-explanatory. In many circles, redistributive justice has replaced equality. It is therefore time to ask the question – equality for what? Unless we are careful about the way we approach the poverty debate, we will land up not with equality, but with “sufficientarianism”.
10- ARTICLE 17 is a campaign launched by Video Volunteers on April 14th, 2012, to urge the National Commission for Schedule Castes, (the government body that is constitutionally appointed to direct and implement the safeguards against untouchability), to prosecute cases of untouchability.
Thought of the Day : - “The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.” ― Bertolt Brecht
Monday, May 28, 2012
Ten Issues - 22
1- Banning middlemen from oil trade could drive down price of crude by 40% : These middlemen add little value and lots of cost as they bid up the price of oil in pursuit of financial gain. They are "pure" speculators - investors who buy and sell oil futures but never take physical possession of actual barrels of oil.
2- Daron Acemoglu on Inequality - The US, the UK and many other countries have become far less equal over the past 30 years. The MIT economics professor says it's important we understand how and why this happened, and what it means for our societies. He also review Five Books.
3- The Emperor Uncrowned - A complete reportage on the rise of Narendra Modi.
4- The new think tank by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha:- Dry intellectual pursuits such as neuroscience and auction theory are solving problems on the ground. We met four people whose models prove how.
5- December 1984 By Sathyu Sarangi : Many of the battles begun 25 years ago, in the aftermath of catastrophe, continue today. A deep and moving saga of the struggle of Bhopal victims.
6- Of chick charts, hen charts and other such women’s stories: Saba Dewan - This could be termed as a pioneer of the Feminist movement in modern-day Delhi. It will be difficult to fathom that such sexist and misogynist behaviour existed in educational institution.
7- Plutonomy and the precariat: On the history of the US economy in decline - Prof. Chomsky explains that the current US economy is built on 'growing worker insecurity' - people who are too busy and poor to make demands.
8- The Importance of Not Being Earnest : The larger implications of a country that takes itself too seriously. - We as the Public India seems to have no sense of humour at all. And all attempt of sarcasm and other sharper kinds of humour.
9- Marx at 193 by John Lanchester - Writer review here importance of Marx and he really did have the most astonishing insight into the nature and trajectory and direction of capitalism.
10- Great biographic article on Prof. Amartya Sen who studies of social choice, welfare measurement, and poverty and do research on fundamental problems in welfare economics.
Quote of the day :- Personally, I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions of society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level - there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.” — Noam Chomsky
2- Daron Acemoglu on Inequality - The US, the UK and many other countries have become far less equal over the past 30 years. The MIT economics professor says it's important we understand how and why this happened, and what it means for our societies. He also review Five Books.
3- The Emperor Uncrowned - A complete reportage on the rise of Narendra Modi.
4- The new think tank by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha:- Dry intellectual pursuits such as neuroscience and auction theory are solving problems on the ground. We met four people whose models prove how.
5- December 1984 By Sathyu Sarangi : Many of the battles begun 25 years ago, in the aftermath of catastrophe, continue today. A deep and moving saga of the struggle of Bhopal victims.
6- Of chick charts, hen charts and other such women’s stories: Saba Dewan - This could be termed as a pioneer of the Feminist movement in modern-day Delhi. It will be difficult to fathom that such sexist and misogynist behaviour existed in educational institution.
7- Plutonomy and the precariat: On the history of the US economy in decline - Prof. Chomsky explains that the current US economy is built on 'growing worker insecurity' - people who are too busy and poor to make demands.
8- The Importance of Not Being Earnest : The larger implications of a country that takes itself too seriously. - We as the Public India seems to have no sense of humour at all. And all attempt of sarcasm and other sharper kinds of humour.
9- Marx at 193 by John Lanchester - Writer review here importance of Marx and he really did have the most astonishing insight into the nature and trajectory and direction of capitalism.
10- Great biographic article on Prof. Amartya Sen who studies of social choice, welfare measurement, and poverty and do research on fundamental problems in welfare economics.
Quote of the day :- Personally, I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions of society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level - there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy.” — Noam Chomsky
Sunday, February 19, 2012
EPW Readings
1- Accessing Institutional Finance: A Demand Side Story for Rural India
Under the Reserve Bank of India’s “financial inclusion” campaign, the provision of institutional finance has been progressing at differential rates across the country. However, when we pair administrative banking data on availability of bank branches in a state with the All India Debt and Investment Survey (2002-03) capturing both institutional and non-institutional borrowing by households, we find that states with the most access to institutional finance, or supply, are not necessarily the ones with the most demand for finance. Looking at household level data within each state we identify determinants of institutional borrowing, and some of the strongest predictors for accessing institutional finance. A number of empirical regularities emerge in terms of the importance of having assets like land for borrowing, which undermines the basic philosophy of financial inclusion.
2- Crop Insurance in India : Scope for Improvement
The National Agricultural Insurance Scheme is vital for providing insurance cover to farmers, across regions, across seasons and across crops. This paper comprehensively reviews the NAIS and suggests changes to make it more effective. The paper is based on a detailed analysis of exhaustive data for 11 crop seasons, covering the rabi season of 1999-2000 onwards up to the same in 2004-05. Field investigations were also conducted in Haryana, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat to assess the response of farmers, bankers and other stakeholders. The authors also rely on discussions with knowledgeable persons like government functionaries from the department of agriculture, bankers, academicians and farmer representatives in Nagpur, Jaipur and Hyderabad.
3- Case for Caste-based : Quotas in Higher Education
The roots of discrimination in India go so deep that social and economic disparities are deeply intertwined, although in increasingly complex ways. We still need reservations for different groups in higher education, not because they are the perfect instruments to rectify long-standing discrimination, but because they are the most workable method to move in this direction. The nature of Indian society ensures that without such measures, social discrimination and exclusion will only persist and be strengthened.
4- Can We De-Stigmatise Reservations in India?
The “politics of recognition” that Other Backward Classes have set into motion has its own set of terms and dynamics that contrast well with that of the dalits’ political discourse. The politics of obcs have now brought into the public domain issues that are likely to change the very terms of discourse in which the debate on reservations was pursued for the last three decades. The obc discourse on reservations has de-stigmatised policy; obcs have also articulated their demands beyond community concerns by bringing up issues related to regionalism and linguistic assertion. These can influence the very grounds on which public institutions, policy and political processes have, so far, been perceived and pursued in Indian politics.
5- Caste, Politics and Public Good Distribution in India: Evidence from NREGS in Andhra Pradesh
This paper attempts to measure the effect of castereservation policies on the provision of public goods and services in gram panchayats in Andhra Pradesh using data from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The investigation finds that the effect of reservation varies tremendously in different social, political, and institutional contexts, shedding light on the conflicting results of similar studies. It provides important lessons for future research and policy about the caste-political conditions in which reservation can produce positive or perverse results.
6- Understanding the Andhra : Crop Holiday Movement
Why would farmers keep their own land fallow as part of a voluntary “crop holiday protest movement” in a part of Andhra Pradesh is a question that has puzzled many. A field visit to the Konaseema region reveals that the dynamics of class contradictions in the area are also responsible for the nature of the movement that goes beyond the issue of remunerative prices.
7- Developmental Crisis and Dialectics of Protest Politics : Presenting the Absent and Absenting the Present
There is not just a crisis of development today, but also a crisis of ideas for emancipatory forms of development. What is needed from progressives is a rigorous theory that must acknowledge what is present (class exploitation, imperialism, national and social oppression, profit-driven ecological destruction, gross commercialisation of all spheres of human life including culture and social relations) but also what is absent (collective democratic control over our lives, our planet, our bodies, our destiny, our culture). That should be the start of the process of bringing about fundamental changes in the status quo.
8- Building a Creative Freedom : J C Kumarappa and His Economic Philosophy
Joseph Cornelius Kumarappa (1892-1960) was a pioneering economic philosopher and architect of the Gandhian rural economics programme. Largely forgotten today, Kumarappa’s life-work constitutes a large body of writings and a rich record of public service, both of profound significance. A critical intellectual engagement with his life-work can shed new light on some of the most fundamental constituents of the human economic predicament, and also contribute to a more nuanced understanding of one of the most fecund periods in modern Indian history.
9- Diary of a Moneylender
Debates about the role of the moneylender in the rural credit scenario tackle two conflicting images. One sees the moneylender as a resilient entity calling for his future involvement in the process of rural development, and the other sees him as an exploiter to be slowly weeded out. To get a more nuanced account of his role, a diary kept by a moneylender operating in a village in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh is analysed here. Even a cursory reading of this diary gives rich details on the scale and importance of the transactions carried out by the moneylender. Through this diary, formal lending agencies, be they banks or microfinance institutions, which have plans to supplant the moneylender will gain rich insights into the role played by this ubiquitous entity.
10- Critique of the Common Service Centre Scheme
The Common Service Centre scheme aims to establish nearly three lakh rural internet kiosks across India. A recent evaluation study, however, found poor demand among users and delayed roll-out of government-to consumer services, causing losses and attrition among private operators of the scheme. There is space, therefore, for greater engineering of public good outcomes by tying financial incentives to computer education goals.
Under the Reserve Bank of India’s “financial inclusion” campaign, the provision of institutional finance has been progressing at differential rates across the country. However, when we pair administrative banking data on availability of bank branches in a state with the All India Debt and Investment Survey (2002-03) capturing both institutional and non-institutional borrowing by households, we find that states with the most access to institutional finance, or supply, are not necessarily the ones with the most demand for finance. Looking at household level data within each state we identify determinants of institutional borrowing, and some of the strongest predictors for accessing institutional finance. A number of empirical regularities emerge in terms of the importance of having assets like land for borrowing, which undermines the basic philosophy of financial inclusion.
2- Crop Insurance in India : Scope for Improvement
The National Agricultural Insurance Scheme is vital for providing insurance cover to farmers, across regions, across seasons and across crops. This paper comprehensively reviews the NAIS and suggests changes to make it more effective. The paper is based on a detailed analysis of exhaustive data for 11 crop seasons, covering the rabi season of 1999-2000 onwards up to the same in 2004-05. Field investigations were also conducted in Haryana, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat to assess the response of farmers, bankers and other stakeholders. The authors also rely on discussions with knowledgeable persons like government functionaries from the department of agriculture, bankers, academicians and farmer representatives in Nagpur, Jaipur and Hyderabad.
3- Case for Caste-based : Quotas in Higher Education
The roots of discrimination in India go so deep that social and economic disparities are deeply intertwined, although in increasingly complex ways. We still need reservations for different groups in higher education, not because they are the perfect instruments to rectify long-standing discrimination, but because they are the most workable method to move in this direction. The nature of Indian society ensures that without such measures, social discrimination and exclusion will only persist and be strengthened.
4- Can We De-Stigmatise Reservations in India?
The “politics of recognition” that Other Backward Classes have set into motion has its own set of terms and dynamics that contrast well with that of the dalits’ political discourse. The politics of obcs have now brought into the public domain issues that are likely to change the very terms of discourse in which the debate on reservations was pursued for the last three decades. The obc discourse on reservations has de-stigmatised policy; obcs have also articulated their demands beyond community concerns by bringing up issues related to regionalism and linguistic assertion. These can influence the very grounds on which public institutions, policy and political processes have, so far, been perceived and pursued in Indian politics.
5- Caste, Politics and Public Good Distribution in India: Evidence from NREGS in Andhra Pradesh
This paper attempts to measure the effect of castereservation policies on the provision of public goods and services in gram panchayats in Andhra Pradesh using data from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The investigation finds that the effect of reservation varies tremendously in different social, political, and institutional contexts, shedding light on the conflicting results of similar studies. It provides important lessons for future research and policy about the caste-political conditions in which reservation can produce positive or perverse results.
6- Understanding the Andhra : Crop Holiday Movement
Why would farmers keep their own land fallow as part of a voluntary “crop holiday protest movement” in a part of Andhra Pradesh is a question that has puzzled many. A field visit to the Konaseema region reveals that the dynamics of class contradictions in the area are also responsible for the nature of the movement that goes beyond the issue of remunerative prices.
7- Developmental Crisis and Dialectics of Protest Politics : Presenting the Absent and Absenting the Present
There is not just a crisis of development today, but also a crisis of ideas for emancipatory forms of development. What is needed from progressives is a rigorous theory that must acknowledge what is present (class exploitation, imperialism, national and social oppression, profit-driven ecological destruction, gross commercialisation of all spheres of human life including culture and social relations) but also what is absent (collective democratic control over our lives, our planet, our bodies, our destiny, our culture). That should be the start of the process of bringing about fundamental changes in the status quo.
8- Building a Creative Freedom : J C Kumarappa and His Economic Philosophy
Joseph Cornelius Kumarappa (1892-1960) was a pioneering economic philosopher and architect of the Gandhian rural economics programme. Largely forgotten today, Kumarappa’s life-work constitutes a large body of writings and a rich record of public service, both of profound significance. A critical intellectual engagement with his life-work can shed new light on some of the most fundamental constituents of the human economic predicament, and also contribute to a more nuanced understanding of one of the most fecund periods in modern Indian history.
9- Diary of a Moneylender
Debates about the role of the moneylender in the rural credit scenario tackle two conflicting images. One sees the moneylender as a resilient entity calling for his future involvement in the process of rural development, and the other sees him as an exploiter to be slowly weeded out. To get a more nuanced account of his role, a diary kept by a moneylender operating in a village in the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh is analysed here. Even a cursory reading of this diary gives rich details on the scale and importance of the transactions carried out by the moneylender. Through this diary, formal lending agencies, be they banks or microfinance institutions, which have plans to supplant the moneylender will gain rich insights into the role played by this ubiquitous entity.
10- Critique of the Common Service Centre Scheme
The Common Service Centre scheme aims to establish nearly three lakh rural internet kiosks across India. A recent evaluation study, however, found poor demand among users and delayed roll-out of government-to consumer services, causing losses and attrition among private operators of the scheme. There is space, therefore, for greater engineering of public good outcomes by tying financial incentives to computer education goals.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Ten Issues - 18
Harvard professor Larry Lessig is one of our foremost authorities on copyright issues, with a vision for reconciling creative freedom with marketplace competition.
1- The Indian state of Bihar has long been a byword for bad governance. It was however governed particularly badly between 1990 and 2005, and has since experienced something of a ‘governance miracle’. How can we account for the 1990–2005 deterioration? Through this working paper - State Incapacity by Design: Understanding the Bihar Story, we will understand that the low state capacity is often a political choice.
2- La Grande Revolution, Encore? A comparison between France of 1787 with present USA as both had financed an overseas war with borrowed money.
3- The War Dogma: This article appears in the July issue of Agenda/Infochange for the theme on the ‘Limits of Freedom’. An insight on Dantewada and Operation Green Hunt.
4- Playing fast and loose by Pratap Bhanu Mehta : A overview of tussle on Janlokpal Bill - A morally insidious vacuum in government. A self-proclaimed civil society displaying its own will to power. A media age where being off-balance gets you visibility. A public whose mood is punitive. An intellectual climate that peddles the politics of illusion.
5- A weakness born of bad intent by Siddharth Varadarajan: - The UPA government's unwillingness to act against the abuse of political and corporate power has created a vacuum which others are rushing to fill.
6- Do you want to be watched? - The new rules under the IT Act are an assault on our freedom. A report by Sunil Abraham who is the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society.
7- "Tragedies darken when their victims refuse to understand the causes. Intellectual failure has thus been the principle deficit; which means the so-called men of intellect are to blame". Interview with Dr. Mobarak Haider, A political activist, scholar and renowned writer of English and Urdu.
8- Demystification of myths by Nadeem F. Paracha - In the last thirty years the number of people in Pakistan who pray regularly and attend collective prayers in mosques has risen three-fold. So have the number of mosques, madressas, Islamic evangelical organizations and religious programming on TV - and yet the rates of rape (including child rape), drug addiction, public humiliation of women has steadily maintained an upward trend.
9- Why dream borrowed dreams? - One of the most seductive myths that the Indian middle class and its elite believes in is that the 21st century is the Indian Century. A deep analysis of this myth by Shiv Visvanathan.
10- Disgust, Magical Thinking, and Morality : A short article on Morality and feeling of disgust.
1- The Indian state of Bihar has long been a byword for bad governance. It was however governed particularly badly between 1990 and 2005, and has since experienced something of a ‘governance miracle’. How can we account for the 1990–2005 deterioration? Through this working paper - State Incapacity by Design: Understanding the Bihar Story, we will understand that the low state capacity is often a political choice.
2- La Grande Revolution, Encore? A comparison between France of 1787 with present USA as both had financed an overseas war with borrowed money.
3- The War Dogma: This article appears in the July issue of Agenda/Infochange for the theme on the ‘Limits of Freedom’. An insight on Dantewada and Operation Green Hunt.
4- Playing fast and loose by Pratap Bhanu Mehta : A overview of tussle on Janlokpal Bill - A morally insidious vacuum in government. A self-proclaimed civil society displaying its own will to power. A media age where being off-balance gets you visibility. A public whose mood is punitive. An intellectual climate that peddles the politics of illusion.
5- A weakness born of bad intent by Siddharth Varadarajan: - The UPA government's unwillingness to act against the abuse of political and corporate power has created a vacuum which others are rushing to fill.
6- Do you want to be watched? - The new rules under the IT Act are an assault on our freedom. A report by Sunil Abraham who is the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society.
7- "Tragedies darken when their victims refuse to understand the causes. Intellectual failure has thus been the principle deficit; which means the so-called men of intellect are to blame". Interview with Dr. Mobarak Haider, A political activist, scholar and renowned writer of English and Urdu.
8- Demystification of myths by Nadeem F. Paracha - In the last thirty years the number of people in Pakistan who pray regularly and attend collective prayers in mosques has risen three-fold. So have the number of mosques, madressas, Islamic evangelical organizations and religious programming on TV - and yet the rates of rape (including child rape), drug addiction, public humiliation of women has steadily maintained an upward trend.
9- Why dream borrowed dreams? - One of the most seductive myths that the Indian middle class and its elite believes in is that the 21st century is the Indian Century. A deep analysis of this myth by Shiv Visvanathan.
10- Disgust, Magical Thinking, and Morality : A short article on Morality and feeling of disgust.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Ten Issues - 17
1- Why Zappos Offers New Hires $2,000 to Quit : The policy of providing a let-out after one week has gained worldwide attention. Columnist Keith McFarland explains why it makes sense.
2- Who Was Milton Friedman?: Keynesianism was a great reformation of economic thought. It was followed, inevitably, by a counter-reformation. A number of economists played important roles in the great revival of classical economics between 1950 and 2000, but none was as influential as Milton Friedman.
3- End Financial Control of European Governance : In developing countries and now in Europe, government debt allows creditors to exercise undue power over decision making. The Euro crisis is clear evidence that we need to break out of the economic straitjacket imposed by an over-powerful financial sector, says Susan George in an interview with Nick Buxton.
4- Who needs a bank? : Should we make banks better, or just make them redundant? Peer-to-peer currency schemes like bitcoin.org offer the possibility of networked money without banks. Should democrats embrace the possibilities?
5- Free Enterprise Vs. Regulation : Raghuram Rajan had seen the impact of over-regulation in an underachieving economy. Years later, he also saw the perils of under-regulation as championed during the Alan Greenspan era. The Eric J. Gleacher, Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business discusses the question of achieving the right mix of free enterprise and sensible regulation
6- Too much information : How to cope with data overload
7- Good Ideas and Great Ideas : A worthy idea needs to be nurtured and developed, rethought and reworked, often thrown away and picked back up again. There’s a substantive difference between a passing fancy and groundbreaking concept. It is our approach to ideas that makes that difference.
8- Johann Hari: How to survive the age of distraction - As in the book The Lost Art of Reading – Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, the critic David Ulin puts it: "Reading is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction.... It requires us to pace ourselves. It returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise."
9- 5 Principles of Creativity : So to compete in today’s marketplace, you have to be able to create. That’s much different than just working faster or harder or longer. The good news is that, while we can’t all be a Picasso or a Mozart, there are some simple principles we can follow that will enhance our ability originate ideas that are truly new and important.
10 - The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap : Too many things to choose from, more every day. No efficient way to alert the world about your service, your music, your book. How about giving it away to help the idea spread?
2- Who Was Milton Friedman?: Keynesianism was a great reformation of economic thought. It was followed, inevitably, by a counter-reformation. A number of economists played important roles in the great revival of classical economics between 1950 and 2000, but none was as influential as Milton Friedman.
3- End Financial Control of European Governance : In developing countries and now in Europe, government debt allows creditors to exercise undue power over decision making. The Euro crisis is clear evidence that we need to break out of the economic straitjacket imposed by an over-powerful financial sector, says Susan George in an interview with Nick Buxton.
4- Who needs a bank? : Should we make banks better, or just make them redundant? Peer-to-peer currency schemes like bitcoin.org offer the possibility of networked money without banks. Should democrats embrace the possibilities?
5- Free Enterprise Vs. Regulation : Raghuram Rajan had seen the impact of over-regulation in an underachieving economy. Years later, he also saw the perils of under-regulation as championed during the Alan Greenspan era. The Eric J. Gleacher, Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business discusses the question of achieving the right mix of free enterprise and sensible regulation
6- Too much information : How to cope with data overload
7- Good Ideas and Great Ideas : A worthy idea needs to be nurtured and developed, rethought and reworked, often thrown away and picked back up again. There’s a substantive difference between a passing fancy and groundbreaking concept. It is our approach to ideas that makes that difference.
8- Johann Hari: How to survive the age of distraction - As in the book The Lost Art of Reading – Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, the critic David Ulin puts it: "Reading is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction.... It requires us to pace ourselves. It returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise."
9- 5 Principles of Creativity : So to compete in today’s marketplace, you have to be able to create. That’s much different than just working faster or harder or longer. The good news is that, while we can’t all be a Picasso or a Mozart, there are some simple principles we can follow that will enhance our ability originate ideas that are truly new and important.
10 - The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap : Too many things to choose from, more every day. No efficient way to alert the world about your service, your music, your book. How about giving it away to help the idea spread?
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Ten Issues - 14
1- How China reports the Arab world :- In a post made to his Chinese-language weblog on April 15, Ezzat Shahrour, chief correspondent for al-Jazeera Arabic in Beijing, voiced his frustration with Chinese state media reporting on the upheaval in the Arab world this year.
2- The rules of entrapment :- The noise against Tehelka after last week’s cover story was to be expected. Much more surprising was the confusion over the ethics of political baiting.
3- Haaretz prides itself on being the conscience of Israel. Does it have a future? :- by David Remnick
4- James Gosling joins Google, what can startups learn? :- Cultivating talent is not about hiring only those people who will work on assignments or wait on benches for projects that are in the sales pipeline. You also require people who are not in the thick of daily grind; those who can think up new paradigms and new ways to doing things without the pressure of how it will impact the company's next quarter's bottom-line.
5- Should you drop out to become an entrepreneur? Posted by Nikhil Kulkarni
6- What’s Left of the Left: Paul Krugman’s lonely crusade. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
7- Top 10 Reasons Ayn Rand was Dead Wrong By Geoffrey James
8- Ambedkar, the forgotten free-market economist in Perspective by B Chandrasekaran
9- P. R. Brahmananda Memorial Lecture by Stanley Fischer Governor, Bank of Israel :- Central Bank Lessons from the Global Crisis
10- Kaushik Basu has suggested a radical solution: Paying bribes should be legal [PDF] and opposition of Jean Drèze to this idea in The bribing game.
Quote of the Day : “When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions; that is the heart of science.” - Carl Sagan
2- The rules of entrapment :- The noise against Tehelka after last week’s cover story was to be expected. Much more surprising was the confusion over the ethics of political baiting.
3- Haaretz prides itself on being the conscience of Israel. Does it have a future? :- by David Remnick
4- James Gosling joins Google, what can startups learn? :- Cultivating talent is not about hiring only those people who will work on assignments or wait on benches for projects that are in the sales pipeline. You also require people who are not in the thick of daily grind; those who can think up new paradigms and new ways to doing things without the pressure of how it will impact the company's next quarter's bottom-line.
5- Should you drop out to become an entrepreneur? Posted by Nikhil Kulkarni
6- What’s Left of the Left: Paul Krugman’s lonely crusade. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
7- Top 10 Reasons Ayn Rand was Dead Wrong By Geoffrey James
8- Ambedkar, the forgotten free-market economist in Perspective by B Chandrasekaran
9- P. R. Brahmananda Memorial Lecture by Stanley Fischer Governor, Bank of Israel :- Central Bank Lessons from the Global Crisis
10- Kaushik Basu has suggested a radical solution: Paying bribes should be legal [PDF] and opposition of Jean Drèze to this idea in The bribing game.
Quote of the Day : “When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions; that is the heart of science.” - Carl Sagan
Monday, May 9, 2011
Creating Wealth
History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them. ---B. R. Ambedkar
1% has been hoovering up an ever greater share of the nation's wealth. Why ?
The “seeds of decay” lay in the “disparity between rich and poor” that is growing fast in the country until middle class redefine it's role. Which is much what Chomsky states : Modern "democratic" governments exist to protect their sponsors not their people.
Is it really true that media has become the agency of politicians and burglars ? News channel works as ferocious disinformation machine aimed at convincing people to vote against their financial interests. James, Dresden has quoted : When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.
There seems to be a disconnect between our professed love of democracy. There is no outrage or even movement to oppose a dictatorship at work place. Until things get so bad that people can do nothing but protest, and then those are called revolutions. Democracy? Freedom? What the hell are you talking about? You can't have either when you have fractional economics in a society run on debt!
People have to fight for the most basic things in the life. When intelligent people cheat the masses by complex arrangements and shady deals, the masses will move towards a propaganda and slogan politician.
Redistribution is a stupid way to reduce inequality. Robbing A to pay B makes inequality persist. The correct way to reduce inequality is to create jobs that allow B to earn his income. Do easy consumer credit and a belief in social mobility have reduced the clamor for wealth redistribution ?
Currently, there is no visible alternative economic system that beats capitalism for delivering the most wealth, happiness and fulfillment to the most people. The mechanisms whereby power is thwarted from a centralized system and redistributed, is a necessary component of a fair and representative political system.
Globalization – essentially embracing the opening of all frontiers to the free movement of capital and merchandise, but not labour. The moral undesirability of state interference in any way, and the political incapacity of the states to interfere in business will led to the free market where big players will dominate the scene. The road to free market will fail this country. Capitalism has failed just as spectacularly as Communism. There is a genuine need for a real Third Way.
“Men are born entrepreneurs not job seekers. By seeking job he is giving chance to a system to make him poor.” -Muhammad Yunus
1% has been hoovering up an ever greater share of the nation's wealth. Why ?
The “seeds of decay” lay in the “disparity between rich and poor” that is growing fast in the country until middle class redefine it's role. Which is much what Chomsky states : Modern "democratic" governments exist to protect their sponsors not their people.
Is it really true that media has become the agency of politicians and burglars ? News channel works as ferocious disinformation machine aimed at convincing people to vote against their financial interests. James, Dresden has quoted : When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.
There seems to be a disconnect between our professed love of democracy. There is no outrage or even movement to oppose a dictatorship at work place. Until things get so bad that people can do nothing but protest, and then those are called revolutions. Democracy? Freedom? What the hell are you talking about? You can't have either when you have fractional economics in a society run on debt!
People have to fight for the most basic things in the life. When intelligent people cheat the masses by complex arrangements and shady deals, the masses will move towards a propaganda and slogan politician.
Redistribution is a stupid way to reduce inequality. Robbing A to pay B makes inequality persist. The correct way to reduce inequality is to create jobs that allow B to earn his income. Do easy consumer credit and a belief in social mobility have reduced the clamor for wealth redistribution ?
Currently, there is no visible alternative economic system that beats capitalism for delivering the most wealth, happiness and fulfillment to the most people. The mechanisms whereby power is thwarted from a centralized system and redistributed, is a necessary component of a fair and representative political system.
Globalization – essentially embracing the opening of all frontiers to the free movement of capital and merchandise, but not labour. The moral undesirability of state interference in any way, and the political incapacity of the states to interfere in business will led to the free market where big players will dominate the scene. The road to free market will fail this country. Capitalism has failed just as spectacularly as Communism. There is a genuine need for a real Third Way.
“Men are born entrepreneurs not job seekers. By seeking job he is giving chance to a system to make him poor.” -Muhammad Yunus
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Background of the Arab Revolution
When the Rebels become the tyrants, Revolution takes on a new meaning. We can consider Libya a perfect example of that. Still, US government is backing Libyan rebels to achieve democracy and liberty in their nation while supporting Arab league authoritarian rule in Saudi, Bahrain or Yemen. Why ? Only vested interests in Saudi and hidden agenda in Libya !
As pointed by a journalist : Libyan assets are mainly in the US and Europe, and they amount to hundreds of billions of dollars: the US Treasury froze $30bn of liquid assets, and US banks $18bn. What is to happen to interest on these assets? The absence of any specific arrangement assets are turned into a booty, an interest-free loan, in this instance, to US Treasury and US banks. And the logic of western policy is permanent support for the Saudi elite and its guarantee of “stability” and "oil"in the region.
Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at Oxford University, coined the term refolution to describe the hybrid form of change that had taken place. These transformations were non-violent and pointed to the emergence of a new approach to transformation that involves reform and revolution.
We will go through Ten articles to understand the change happening in the Arab region deeply :
1- The Student Movement in 1968 : To examine the Arab student movement in 1968, Egypt and Lebanon provide the best insight because both countries saw the most sustained student activities of the era while also proving influential throughout the region because their universities enrolled students from all over the Arab world. Betty S. Anderson gives an excellent piece which helps put current movements in a longer time perspective.
2- Egyptian transformations: Mohammed Bamyeh is a professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. Sociologist Mohammed Bamyeh was present at Tahrir Square throughout the Egyptian Revolution and was able to see the popular political will unfolding. Here he singles out key elements in the uprising and describes the social transformations they have brought about.
3- The West's 'double standards' in Middle East : Support for Bahraini government's crackdown on protests is a paradox as West supports Libyan rebels, activist argues.
4 - Don't Steal Our Revolution! : The Arab democracy movement sets great store by its independence and now fears that the intervention in Libya will come with a high price tag: it could rob their protest of its legitimacy. Layla Al-Zubaidi comments on the Arabs and the Libyan Intervention.
5- The Orientalist blindness and The Arab revolution and Western decline : Haaretz, A newspaper from Israel look in the matter with a new angle for most of the readers.
6- The Turkish Chimera : Turkey's historical experience and political evolution differ in important ways from Arab countries'. As a result, the collapse of the old power structures in many Middle East countries is likely to be accompanied by considerable political turmoil and violence, writes F. Stephen Larrabee on Turkey and the ''Arab Spring'.
7- Imperial feminism, Islamophobia and the Egyptian revolution : An article by Nadine Naber who is an Assistant Professor in the Program in American Culture, Arab American Studies, and the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
8- A revolution against neoliberalism? : If rebellion results in a retrenchment of neoliberalism, millions will feel cheated. Walter Armbrust gives a detailed report. Dr. Walter Armbrust is Hourani Fellow and University Lecturer in Modern Middle East Studies at Oxford University.
9- Paradoxes of Arab Refo-lutions : A detail study on the possibility of various changes : ‘reformist change’, ‘insurrectionary model’ and ‘regime implosion’ by Asef Bayat. Dr. Asef Bayat is Professor of Sociology and Middle Eastern studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
10- Can “Leaderless Revolutions” Stay Leaderless: Preferential Attachment, Iron Laws and Networks : by Zeynep Tufekci.
"The one thing freedom lovers need is real community. Not just the community of Web yakking. Not just the community of common ideas and ideals. But a web of institutions that serve freedom's goals." — Would You Move to the State of the Free? (2001) Claire Wolfe
As pointed by a journalist : Libyan assets are mainly in the US and Europe, and they amount to hundreds of billions of dollars: the US Treasury froze $30bn of liquid assets, and US banks $18bn. What is to happen to interest on these assets? The absence of any specific arrangement assets are turned into a booty, an interest-free loan, in this instance, to US Treasury and US banks. And the logic of western policy is permanent support for the Saudi elite and its guarantee of “stability” and "oil"in the region.
Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at Oxford University, coined the term refolution to describe the hybrid form of change that had taken place. These transformations were non-violent and pointed to the emergence of a new approach to transformation that involves reform and revolution.
We will go through Ten articles to understand the change happening in the Arab region deeply :
1- The Student Movement in 1968 : To examine the Arab student movement in 1968, Egypt and Lebanon provide the best insight because both countries saw the most sustained student activities of the era while also proving influential throughout the region because their universities enrolled students from all over the Arab world. Betty S. Anderson gives an excellent piece which helps put current movements in a longer time perspective.
2- Egyptian transformations: Mohammed Bamyeh is a professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. Sociologist Mohammed Bamyeh was present at Tahrir Square throughout the Egyptian Revolution and was able to see the popular political will unfolding. Here he singles out key elements in the uprising and describes the social transformations they have brought about.
3- The West's 'double standards' in Middle East : Support for Bahraini government's crackdown on protests is a paradox as West supports Libyan rebels, activist argues.
4 - Don't Steal Our Revolution! : The Arab democracy movement sets great store by its independence and now fears that the intervention in Libya will come with a high price tag: it could rob their protest of its legitimacy. Layla Al-Zubaidi comments on the Arabs and the Libyan Intervention.
5- The Orientalist blindness and The Arab revolution and Western decline : Haaretz, A newspaper from Israel look in the matter with a new angle for most of the readers.
6- The Turkish Chimera : Turkey's historical experience and political evolution differ in important ways from Arab countries'. As a result, the collapse of the old power structures in many Middle East countries is likely to be accompanied by considerable political turmoil and violence, writes F. Stephen Larrabee on Turkey and the ''Arab Spring'.
7- Imperial feminism, Islamophobia and the Egyptian revolution : An article by Nadine Naber who is an Assistant Professor in the Program in American Culture, Arab American Studies, and the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
8- A revolution against neoliberalism? : If rebellion results in a retrenchment of neoliberalism, millions will feel cheated. Walter Armbrust gives a detailed report. Dr. Walter Armbrust is Hourani Fellow and University Lecturer in Modern Middle East Studies at Oxford University.
9- Paradoxes of Arab Refo-lutions : A detail study on the possibility of various changes : ‘reformist change’, ‘insurrectionary model’ and ‘regime implosion’ by Asef Bayat. Dr. Asef Bayat is Professor of Sociology and Middle Eastern studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
10- Can “Leaderless Revolutions” Stay Leaderless: Preferential Attachment, Iron Laws and Networks : by Zeynep Tufekci.
"The one thing freedom lovers need is real community. Not just the community of Web yakking. Not just the community of common ideas and ideals. But a web of institutions that serve freedom's goals." — Would You Move to the State of the Free? (2001) Claire Wolfe
Monday, April 11, 2011
Corruption, Agitation and Wealth Creation
George F Will was referring to the US government but his words apply with greater force to India when he wrote, “The administration’s central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.” [Tincture of Lawlessness. The Washington Post, May 2009.]
Corruption: Mostly poor and partially middle class in India are victims of state indifference and corruption; The money released for subsidy and loan waiver schemes is stolen by corrupt government officials. And yet if one asks us what jobs they would like to have the number one answer is to job for the government.
The very base of your very social order – and this lie includes the need for you to be clever, jugaad, and constantly try to hinder others growth. Literacy was supposed to create a level playing field for all. However, investments in education have actually widened the gap between the English-speaking classes and the vernacular masses. The same people when complaining about corruption will vote for the most corrupt politicians because those are the politicians with the resources to protect them. Now these are the structural problems to TACKLE for the development.
As Atanu dey pointed out in Anna Hazare Goes to New Delhi that this bill is more a palliative and not curative rule change. He is is giving valid reasons on the changes necessary to the structure of government, not just adding another law in the rule book.
Agitation: The delay in implementing is definitely meaningless. Do we educated Indian are full of apathy and nihilism? Recent uproar for support of Anna Hazare proves me wrong.
A petition and peaceful protest has always been ignored. And the government gives in to demands — reasonable or not — when sufficient violence is employed. One wonder whether the government responds only to threats of indefinite fast and violent retreat.
While people suspecting on the motives of Anna Hazare protest, they have to know that a certain level, any act of protest is a form of blackmail. And no protest can succeed without the will of the people. The will of the people don't need impotent and parasitic government slowing down their movement. The vibrant democracy don't need to wait five years for even a small change. If the public has full fledged support, then government should listen and act on the raised concerns. Indian democracy needs volunteer like Hazare to raise their points in public.
Corruption cannot be tackled just through a non-partisan anti-corruption body though that is important but rather through transparency at all transactional levels. Every person with an opinion now has an opportunity to be heard and redesign of system will be a better start.
Wealth Creation: Does wealth have a social value? Corruption, crooked capitalism and lack of transparency has piled up to an uneven development of few. When millionaire is becoming billionaire and so on... while poor are suffering from proper transportation, rehabilitation, medical facilities, education, food security & public distribution system, there is need for a change.
Corruption is the manifestation of a systemic problem. Government power and control forms the foundation on which the massive structure of corruption is built. Visible mechanism and adequate punishment are the standards of system design, not the structure itself.
So there is a much more fundamental question is why do some elites make their money by destroying their economies and others make their money by growing their economies. It is due to having illiterate & unconscious politicians who don't think about state or nation.
Corruption: Mostly poor and partially middle class in India are victims of state indifference and corruption; The money released for subsidy and loan waiver schemes is stolen by corrupt government officials. And yet if one asks us what jobs they would like to have the number one answer is to job for the government.
The very base of your very social order – and this lie includes the need for you to be clever, jugaad, and constantly try to hinder others growth. Literacy was supposed to create a level playing field for all. However, investments in education have actually widened the gap between the English-speaking classes and the vernacular masses. The same people when complaining about corruption will vote for the most corrupt politicians because those are the politicians with the resources to protect them. Now these are the structural problems to TACKLE for the development.
As Atanu dey pointed out in Anna Hazare Goes to New Delhi that this bill is more a palliative and not curative rule change. He is is giving valid reasons on the changes necessary to the structure of government, not just adding another law in the rule book.
The license-permit-control-quota raj is at the root of the criminalization of Indian politics. The less scruples one has, the greater the loot; the greater the loot, the more intense the competition to win the position; the more intense the competition, the greater the cost of fighting elections; the greater the cost, the greater the need to recover them; the more greedy and unprincipled people in government, the greater their desire to increase the government’s choke-hold on the economy.Even awareness of systematic injustices is not enough. Here is the need of new policymakers and participation of the people in politics. The people has to evolve from typical "Operational conservative and theoretical liberal" to "Active Liberal Participant" for a solution.That is my conclusion.
The root cause of corruption and the related issue of absolutely abysmal governance is our set of bad rules. India’s persistent deep-rooted poverty is due to that. Douglass C. North noted that “economic history is overwhelmingly a story of economies that failed to produce a set of economic rules of the game (with enforcement) that induce sustained economic growth.” The road out of poverty starts off with people deciding on a different set of rules.
A petition and peaceful protest has always been ignored. And the government gives in to demands — reasonable or not — when sufficient violence is employed. One wonder whether the government responds only to threats of indefinite fast and violent retreat.
While people suspecting on the motives of Anna Hazare protest, they have to know that a certain level, any act of protest is a form of blackmail. And no protest can succeed without the will of the people. The will of the people don't need impotent and parasitic government slowing down their movement. The vibrant democracy don't need to wait five years for even a small change. If the public has full fledged support, then government should listen and act on the raised concerns. Indian democracy needs volunteer like Hazare to raise their points in public.
Corruption cannot be tackled just through a non-partisan anti-corruption body though that is important but rather through transparency at all transactional levels. Every person with an opinion now has an opportunity to be heard and redesign of system will be a better start.
Wealth Creation: Does wealth have a social value? Corruption, crooked capitalism and lack of transparency has piled up to an uneven development of few. When millionaire is becoming billionaire and so on... while poor are suffering from proper transportation, rehabilitation, medical facilities, education, food security & public distribution system, there is need for a change.
Corruption is the manifestation of a systemic problem. Government power and control forms the foundation on which the massive structure of corruption is built. Visible mechanism and adequate punishment are the standards of system design, not the structure itself.
So there is a much more fundamental question is why do some elites make their money by destroying their economies and others make their money by growing their economies. It is due to having illiterate & unconscious politicians who don't think about state or nation.
Ten Issues - 13
1- Dark side of giving: The rise of philanthro-capitalism --- Large philanthropic resources are being utilised to further the interests of business.
2-Noam Chomsky interviewed by Ajaz Ashraf and Anuradha Raman in Outlook magazine, November 1, 2010. The man NYT called “arguably the most important intellectual alive” finds the media in Pakistan more vibrant than it is in India.
3- Elections come and go. But the immigrant issue goes on forever [PDF]: A quarter century post the Assam Accord, political parties in the state still seek votes on the issue of illegal Bangladeshi immigration, reports Tehelka Reporter Kunal Majumdar.
4- Stan Ovshinsky’s Solar Revolution : His inventions from 50 years ago enabled cell phones, laptops, and flat-screen TVs. Now, at age 88, he’s aiming to make solar power cheaper than coal.
5- Why Do Some Countries Win More Olympic Medals? Lessons for Social Mobility and Poverty Reduction :- Not everyone in our country has equal access to competitive sports. Many are not effective participants on account of ignorance or disinterest, disability or deterrence. This analysis considers two separate arenas for enlarging the pool of effective participants, one related to sports and other to social mobility. A paper by Anirudh Krishna and Eric Haglund.
6- Scorched Earth Tactics Return To Chhattisgarh : Eric Randolph question whether the security forces really understand the basic tenets of counter-insurgency theory.
7-10 ways the government plans to keep peace in Kashmir is a mix of stern and soft measures to keep the stones away by Tehelka Reporter Iftikhar Gilani.
8- Experiments with facts by Ramachandra Guha on Joseph Lelyveld’s Great Soul ;
9- Reading and Race: On Slavery in Fiction By Edan Lepucki. A runner up of 3QD prize.
10- The price of prosperity By C. K Lal : Limits to freedom in any imperial domain are drawn where the sovereignty of the political and judicial systems begins – in highly institutionalised societies, sovereignty lies in the system rather than in the people.
Quote of the Daya : Here’s a brief passage from Hayek 1976 essay “Socialism and Science” posted a few days ago in the comments by Richard Ebeling: “A society in which everyone is organized as a member of some group to force government to help him get what he wants is self-destructive. There is no way from preventing some from feeling that they have been treated unjustly — that feeling is bound to be wide spread in any social order — but arrangements which enable groups of disgruntled people to extort satisfaction of their claims — or in the recognition of an ‘entitlement’, to use the new-fangled phrase — make any society unmanageable.”
2-Noam Chomsky interviewed by Ajaz Ashraf and Anuradha Raman in Outlook magazine, November 1, 2010. The man NYT called “arguably the most important intellectual alive” finds the media in Pakistan more vibrant than it is in India.
3- Elections come and go. But the immigrant issue goes on forever [PDF]: A quarter century post the Assam Accord, political parties in the state still seek votes on the issue of illegal Bangladeshi immigration, reports Tehelka Reporter Kunal Majumdar.
4- Stan Ovshinsky’s Solar Revolution : His inventions from 50 years ago enabled cell phones, laptops, and flat-screen TVs. Now, at age 88, he’s aiming to make solar power cheaper than coal.
5- Why Do Some Countries Win More Olympic Medals? Lessons for Social Mobility and Poverty Reduction :- Not everyone in our country has equal access to competitive sports. Many are not effective participants on account of ignorance or disinterest, disability or deterrence. This analysis considers two separate arenas for enlarging the pool of effective participants, one related to sports and other to social mobility. A paper by Anirudh Krishna and Eric Haglund.
6- Scorched Earth Tactics Return To Chhattisgarh : Eric Randolph question whether the security forces really understand the basic tenets of counter-insurgency theory.
7-10 ways the government plans to keep peace in Kashmir is a mix of stern and soft measures to keep the stones away by Tehelka Reporter Iftikhar Gilani.
8- Experiments with facts by Ramachandra Guha on Joseph Lelyveld’s Great Soul ;
9- Reading and Race: On Slavery in Fiction By Edan Lepucki. A runner up of 3QD prize.
10- The price of prosperity By C. K Lal : Limits to freedom in any imperial domain are drawn where the sovereignty of the political and judicial systems begins – in highly institutionalised societies, sovereignty lies in the system rather than in the people.
Quote of the Daya : Here’s a brief passage from Hayek 1976 essay “Socialism and Science” posted a few days ago in the comments by Richard Ebeling: “A society in which everyone is organized as a member of some group to force government to help him get what he wants is self-destructive. There is no way from preventing some from feeling that they have been treated unjustly — that feeling is bound to be wide spread in any social order — but arrangements which enable groups of disgruntled people to extort satisfaction of their claims — or in the recognition of an ‘entitlement’, to use the new-fangled phrase — make any society unmanageable.”
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Ten Issues - 10
1- Let a thousand heretics bloom : Liberal education is a sustained and controlled matter, where practicality is directly related to searching analyses and the fecundity of thought processes. Sadly, the flag-bearers of a new India have no clue about such a pedigree of liberalism.
2- A Case of Conscience: Shiv Viswanathan writes to Manmohan Singh on the conviction of Binayak Sen.
3- Our phony economy By Jonathan Rowe : From testimony delivered March 12 before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce. Rowe is codirector of West Marin Commons, a community-organizing group, in California.
4- Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 11, 1974 by Friedrich August von Hayek. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1974 was awarded jointly to Gunnar Myrdal and Friedrich August von Hayek "for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena"
5- K. Sudarshan, RSS Ideology and Scandalous Statements By Ram Puniyani.
6- NEW POVERTY LINE: A CRITIQUE By Prof. H.S.Shylendra, Institute of Rural Management, Anand.
7- IRMA may expand focus to include small-town economy – Prof Vivek Bhandari, Director of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand tells Pagalguy.com that the institute is planning to expand in a big way this year – this includes new centers and schools as well as large-scale expansions along the country.
8- A Physicist Solves the City : Geoffrey West, has worked for decades as a physicist at Stanford University and Los Alamos National Laboratory. And so West set out to solve the City. As he points out, this is an intellectual problem with immense practical implications.
9- PESA, Left-Wing Extremism and Governance: Concerns and Challenges in India’s Tribal Districts. [pdf]
10- Rural India :Different Meaning to Different People. A discussion paper (pdf)
2- A Case of Conscience: Shiv Viswanathan writes to Manmohan Singh on the conviction of Binayak Sen.
3- Our phony economy By Jonathan Rowe : From testimony delivered March 12 before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce. Rowe is codirector of West Marin Commons, a community-organizing group, in California.
4- Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 11, 1974 by Friedrich August von Hayek. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1974 was awarded jointly to Gunnar Myrdal and Friedrich August von Hayek "for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena"
5- K. Sudarshan, RSS Ideology and Scandalous Statements By Ram Puniyani.
6- NEW POVERTY LINE: A CRITIQUE By Prof. H.S.Shylendra, Institute of Rural Management, Anand.
7- IRMA may expand focus to include small-town economy – Prof Vivek Bhandari, Director of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand tells Pagalguy.com that the institute is planning to expand in a big way this year – this includes new centers and schools as well as large-scale expansions along the country.
8- A Physicist Solves the City : Geoffrey West, has worked for decades as a physicist at Stanford University and Los Alamos National Laboratory. And so West set out to solve the City. As he points out, this is an intellectual problem with immense practical implications.
9- PESA, Left-Wing Extremism and Governance: Concerns and Challenges in India’s Tribal Districts. [pdf]
10- Rural India :Different Meaning to Different People. A discussion paper (pdf)
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Development Management -1
The present economic model is premised on the centrality and openness of markets. But the market forces themselves are a function of economic power and control. In cases in which economic resources and opportunities are widely distributed, economic activity may best be left to individual, private initiative, and market forces, but in societies with a skewed distribution of natural resources and opportunities, a free play of market forces could marginalize an increasing proportion of people, without state intervention through reforms.
Development projects are being initiated and implemented in order to fight against poverty and economic stagnation. It brings to us ethical questions of an inequitable distribution of development's benefits and losses. The principle of the "greater good for the larger numbers," routinely invoked to rationalize social disruptions like forced displacements, is, in fact, abused and turned into an unwarranted justification for tolerating ills that are avoidable. Compulsory displacements that occur for development reasons embody a perverse and intrinsic contradiction in the context of development. The outcome is an unjustifiable repartition of development's costs and benefits: Elite enjoy the gains of development, while majority bear its pains. This raises major issues of social justice and equity.
People believe in aid as a form to get rid of poverty. Aid has empowered only authorities, not necessarily citizens. The Nobel Peace Prize 2006 was given to Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank because contradictory to popular economic axiom, he believes that credit is a fundamental human right despite of one's financial position. His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves.
Muhammad Yunus delivered his Nobel Lecture on 10 December 2006 at the Oslo City Hall, Norway. Read the full Nobel Lecture and watch a 15 minutes interview.
Mohammad Yunus gives emphasis in his noble lecture : There is a conceptual restrictions imposed on the players in the market. This originates from the assumption that entrepreneurs are one-dimensional human beings, who are dedicated to one mission in their business lives - to maximize profit. This interpretation of capitalism insulates the entrepreneurs from all political, emotional, social, spiritual, environmental dimensions of their lives. This was done perhaps as a reasonable simplification, but it stripped away the very essentials of human life.
Human beings are a wonderful creation embodied with limitless human qualities and capabilities. Our theoretical constructs should make room for the blossoming of those qualities, not assume them away.
Interview with Muhammad Yunus - Media Player at Nobelprize.org
Development projects are being initiated and implemented in order to fight against poverty and economic stagnation. It brings to us ethical questions of an inequitable distribution of development's benefits and losses. The principle of the "greater good for the larger numbers," routinely invoked to rationalize social disruptions like forced displacements, is, in fact, abused and turned into an unwarranted justification for tolerating ills that are avoidable. Compulsory displacements that occur for development reasons embody a perverse and intrinsic contradiction in the context of development. The outcome is an unjustifiable repartition of development's costs and benefits: Elite enjoy the gains of development, while majority bear its pains. This raises major issues of social justice and equity.
People believe in aid as a form to get rid of poverty. Aid has empowered only authorities, not necessarily citizens. The Nobel Peace Prize 2006 was given to Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank because contradictory to popular economic axiom, he believes that credit is a fundamental human right despite of one's financial position. His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves.
Muhammad Yunus delivered his Nobel Lecture on 10 December 2006 at the Oslo City Hall, Norway. Read the full Nobel Lecture and watch a 15 minutes interview.
Mohammad Yunus gives emphasis in his noble lecture : There is a conceptual restrictions imposed on the players in the market. This originates from the assumption that entrepreneurs are one-dimensional human beings, who are dedicated to one mission in their business lives - to maximize profit. This interpretation of capitalism insulates the entrepreneurs from all political, emotional, social, spiritual, environmental dimensions of their lives. This was done perhaps as a reasonable simplification, but it stripped away the very essentials of human life.
Human beings are a wonderful creation embodied with limitless human qualities and capabilities. Our theoretical constructs should make room for the blossoming of those qualities, not assume them away.
Interview with Muhammad Yunus - Media Player at Nobelprize.org
Monday, December 27, 2010
Understanding Economics - 2
Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef: US Is Becoming an "Underdeveloping Nation"
Never in human history has there been such an accumulation of knowledge like in the last 100 years. What was that knowledge for? What did we do with it? And the point is that knowledge alone is not enough, that we understand very little. When you’re separated, you can accumulate knowledge. And that is—that’s been the function of science. Now, science is divided into parts, but understanding is holistic.
And that happens with poverty. One understood poverty only by experience. And then you begin to learn that in that environment there are different values, different principles from—compared to those from where one is coming. Economists look at the poverty from the outside, instead of living it from the inside.
And you learn extraordinary things. The first thing you learn, that people who want to work in order to overcome poverty and don’t know, is that in poverty there is an enormous creativity. You cannot be an idiot if you want to survive.
The whole language as an economist is not coherent with those situations and conditions. The principles, you know, of an economics which should be are based in one fundamental value and principle five postulates.
The fundamental AXIOM to sustain a new economy should be that no economic interest, under no circumstance, can be above the reverence of life.
1- The economy is to serve the people and not the people to serve the economy.
2- Development is about people and not about objects.
3- Growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily require growth.
4- No economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services.
5- The economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible.
The Threshold Hypothesis :
Growth is a quantitative accumulation. Development is the liberation of creative possibilities. Every living system in nature grows up to a certain point and stops growing. But we continue developing ourselves. So development has no limits. Growth has limits. And that is a very big thing, you know, that economists and politicians don’t understand. They are obsessed with the fetish of economic growth.
Economist Ha-Joon Chang on the G20 Summit, Currency Wars and Why the Free Market is a Myth
Never in human history has there been such an accumulation of knowledge like in the last 100 years. What was that knowledge for? What did we do with it? And the point is that knowledge alone is not enough, that we understand very little. When you’re separated, you can accumulate knowledge. And that is—that’s been the function of science. Now, science is divided into parts, but understanding is holistic.
And that happens with poverty. One understood poverty only by experience. And then you begin to learn that in that environment there are different values, different principles from—compared to those from where one is coming. Economists look at the poverty from the outside, instead of living it from the inside.
And you learn extraordinary things. The first thing you learn, that people who want to work in order to overcome poverty and don’t know, is that in poverty there is an enormous creativity. You cannot be an idiot if you want to survive.
The whole language as an economist is not coherent with those situations and conditions. The principles, you know, of an economics which should be are based in one fundamental value and principle five postulates.
The fundamental AXIOM to sustain a new economy should be that no economic interest, under no circumstance, can be above the reverence of life.
1- The economy is to serve the people and not the people to serve the economy.
2- Development is about people and not about objects.
3- Growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily require growth.
4- No economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services.
5- The economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible.
The Threshold Hypothesis :
In every society there is a period in which economic growth, conventionally understood or no, brings about an improvement of the quality of life. But only up to a point, the threshold point, beyond which, if there is more growth, quality of life begins to decline.
Growth is a quantitative accumulation. Development is the liberation of creative possibilities. Every living system in nature grows up to a certain point and stops growing. But we continue developing ourselves. So development has no limits. Growth has limits. And that is a very big thing, you know, that economists and politicians don’t understand. They are obsessed with the fetish of economic growth.
Economist Ha-Joon Chang on the G20 Summit, Currency Wars and Why the Free Market is a Myth
Sunday, December 26, 2010
The Max-Neef Model of Human-Scale Development
Manfred Max-Neef is a Chilean economist who has worked for many years with the problem of development in the Third World, articulating the inappropriateness of conventional models of development, that have lead to increasing poverty, massive debt and ecological disaster for many Third World communities. He works for the Centre for Development Alternatives in Chile, an organisation dedicated to the reorientation of development which stimulates local needs. It researches new tools, strategies and evaluative techniques to support such development, and Max-Neef's publication Human Scale Development: an Option for the Future (1987) outlines the results of the Centre’s researches and experiences
Max-Neef and his colleagues have developed a taxonomy of human needs and a process by which communities can identify their "wealths" and "poverties" according to how these needs are satisfied.
Human Scale Development is defined as "focused and based on the satisfaction of fundamental human needs, on the generation of growing levels of self-reliance, and on the construction of organic articulations of people with nature and technology, of global processes with local activity, of the personal with the social, of planning with autonomy, and of civil society with the state." (Max-Neef et al, 1987:12)
The main contribution that Max-Neef makes to the understanding of needs is the distinction made between needs and satisfiers. Human needs are seen as few, finite and classifiable (as distinct from the conventional notion that "wants" are infinite and insatiable). Not only this, they are constant through all human cultures and across historical time periods. What changes over time and between cultures is the way these needs are satisfied. It is important that human needs are understood as a system - i.e. they are interrelated and interactive. There is no hierarchy of needs (apart from the basic need for subsistence or survival) as postulated by Western psychologists such as Maslow, rather, simultaneity, complementarity and trade-offs are features of the process of needs satisfaction.
Max-Neef classifies the fundamental human needs as: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation(in the sense of leisure, time to reflect, or idleness), creation, identity and freedom. Needs are also defined according to the existential categories of being, having, doing and interacting, and from these dimensions, a 36 cell matrix is developed which can be filled with examples of satisfiers for those needs.
Satisfiers also have different characteristics: they can be violators or destroyers, pseudosatisfiers, inhibiting satisfiers, singular satisfiers, or synergic satisfiers. Max-Neef shows that certain satisfiers, promoted as satisfying a particular need, in fact inhibit or destroy the possibility of satisfying other needs: eg, the arms race, while ostensibly satisfying the need for protection, in fact then destroys subsistence, participation, affection and freedom; formal democracy, which is supposed to meet the need for participation often disempowers and alienates; commercial television, while used to satisfy the need for recreation, interferes with understanding, creativity and identity - the examples are everywhere.
Synergic satisfiers, on the other hand, not only satisfy one particular need, but also lead to satisfaction in other areas: some examples are breast-feeding; self-managed production; popular education; democratic community organisations; preventative medicine; meditation; educational games.
This model forms the basis of an explanation of many of the problems arising from a dependence on mechanistic economics, and contributes to understandings that are necessary for a paradigrn shift that incorporates systemic principles. Max-Neef and his colleagues have found that this methodology "allows for the achievement of in-depth insight into the key problems that impede the actualisation of fundamental human needs in the society, community or institution being studied" (Max-Neef et al, 1987:40)
This model provides a useful approach that meets the requirements of small group, community-based processes that have the effect of allowing deep reflection about one's individual and community situation, leading to critical awareness and, possibly, action al the local economic level.
Max-Neef and his colleagues have developed a taxonomy of human needs and a process by which communities can identify their "wealths" and "poverties" according to how these needs are satisfied.
Human Scale Development is defined as "focused and based on the satisfaction of fundamental human needs, on the generation of growing levels of self-reliance, and on the construction of organic articulations of people with nature and technology, of global processes with local activity, of the personal with the social, of planning with autonomy, and of civil society with the state." (Max-Neef et al, 1987:12)
The main contribution that Max-Neef makes to the understanding of needs is the distinction made between needs and satisfiers. Human needs are seen as few, finite and classifiable (as distinct from the conventional notion that "wants" are infinite and insatiable). Not only this, they are constant through all human cultures and across historical time periods. What changes over time and between cultures is the way these needs are satisfied. It is important that human needs are understood as a system - i.e. they are interrelated and interactive. There is no hierarchy of needs (apart from the basic need for subsistence or survival) as postulated by Western psychologists such as Maslow, rather, simultaneity, complementarity and trade-offs are features of the process of needs satisfaction.
Max-Neef classifies the fundamental human needs as: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, recreation(in the sense of leisure, time to reflect, or idleness), creation, identity and freedom. Needs are also defined according to the existential categories of being, having, doing and interacting, and from these dimensions, a 36 cell matrix is developed which can be filled with examples of satisfiers for those needs.
Satisfiers also have different characteristics: they can be violators or destroyers, pseudosatisfiers, inhibiting satisfiers, singular satisfiers, or synergic satisfiers. Max-Neef shows that certain satisfiers, promoted as satisfying a particular need, in fact inhibit or destroy the possibility of satisfying other needs: eg, the arms race, while ostensibly satisfying the need for protection, in fact then destroys subsistence, participation, affection and freedom; formal democracy, which is supposed to meet the need for participation often disempowers and alienates; commercial television, while used to satisfy the need for recreation, interferes with understanding, creativity and identity - the examples are everywhere.
Synergic satisfiers, on the other hand, not only satisfy one particular need, but also lead to satisfaction in other areas: some examples are breast-feeding; self-managed production; popular education; democratic community organisations; preventative medicine; meditation; educational games.
This model forms the basis of an explanation of many of the problems arising from a dependence on mechanistic economics, and contributes to understandings that are necessary for a paradigrn shift that incorporates systemic principles. Max-Neef and his colleagues have found that this methodology "allows for the achievement of in-depth insight into the key problems that impede the actualisation of fundamental human needs in the society, community or institution being studied" (Max-Neef et al, 1987:40)
This model provides a useful approach that meets the requirements of small group, community-based processes that have the effect of allowing deep reflection about one's individual and community situation, leading to critical awareness and, possibly, action al the local economic level.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Development is Uneven, Get Over It
Adapted from the blog post of William Easterly
This a 20 minute extemporaneous talk at UNICEF headquarters in New York on the topic of “Inclusive Growth”. After the talk, there is a question, comment, and response session with the audience. The full video is an hour, if you are really a masochist. (Try this link if the video player above doesn’t work.)
To summarize the talk: success is intrinsically uneven, so development and growth is intrinsically uneven, not “inclusive”. (See the earlier post about the fractal stubborness of uneven geographic wealth.) In this talk, I also mention how remarkably uneven success shows up in just about every field of endeavor. One way this shows up is in a “power law”: there is such a strong negative relationship between the frequency of success and the scale of success that we have to use a logarithmic scale (i.e. a scale where every unit increase means multiplying by 10) for both to be able to fit the extremes onto the graph, like the one below:
There is no evidence that large-scale redistribution programs can succeed without killing off growth, but targeting things like health and education to the poor has worked and could work even more. Lastly, the best thing of all you can do for “inclusive growth” is asserting the individual human rights of all, including women, gays, and religious, racial, and ethnic minorities. For more detail to fill out these ideas, please watch the video.
UPDATE: Answer to how many Beatles hits out of 188 recorded songs on their 14 albums are hits today: 15. Even the most successful band in rock history could only produce a lasting hit about 8% of the time (please draw your own profound insights into the intrinsic unevenness of success and non-inclusive growth).
This a 20 minute extemporaneous talk at UNICEF headquarters in New York on the topic of “Inclusive Growth”. After the talk, there is a question, comment, and response session with the audience. The full video is an hour, if you are really a masochist. (Try this link if the video player above doesn’t work.)
To summarize the talk: success is intrinsically uneven, so development and growth is intrinsically uneven, not “inclusive”. (See the earlier post about the fractal stubborness of uneven geographic wealth.) In this talk, I also mention how remarkably uneven success shows up in just about every field of endeavor. One way this shows up is in a “power law”: there is such a strong negative relationship between the frequency of success and the scale of success that we have to use a logarithmic scale (i.e. a scale where every unit increase means multiplying by 10) for both to be able to fit the extremes onto the graph, like the one below:
There is no evidence that large-scale redistribution programs can succeed without killing off growth, but targeting things like health and education to the poor has worked and could work even more. Lastly, the best thing of all you can do for “inclusive growth” is asserting the individual human rights of all, including women, gays, and religious, racial, and ethnic minorities. For more detail to fill out these ideas, please watch the video.
UPDATE: Answer to how many Beatles hits out of 188 recorded songs on their 14 albums are hits today: 15. Even the most successful band in rock history could only produce a lasting hit about 8% of the time (please draw your own profound insights into the intrinsic unevenness of success and non-inclusive growth).
Monday, October 25, 2010
The Bigger Picture
We need role models who can bravely give voice to what people had been wishing- but not daring to say for many a year. My intention Is not so much to ‘assess' the society and civilization in few words, but to understand what the our traditions might mean concretely to its protagonists. If you don’t know the why, you can forget about figuring out the how.
A true questioning spirit is usually introspective in nature, not accusatory. Verified doubt is scientific and it lays the foundation for merit-based trust. The advantage of a questioning spirit is that it is the opposite of an inquisition. Huge majority of society have internalized the myth that the authority is capable — and willing — to solve to problem of poverty. This is one of the greatest binding assumptions that imprisons the development. To become free from this notion is hard because it is in the interest of those in authority and few in power to perpetuate these false beliefs. People, an individual changes the world for better, not the other way round.
Bigger Picture By Sharmista Chaudhury: Inclusive growth is the new buzzword in B-School curricula.
"Bad Management Theories are destroying good management practices". by Sumantra Ghosal.
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment by Sushil Yadav
India should accept climate change flow obligations, ask for superfund: Jagdish Bhagwati
The Management Myth : Most of management theory is inane, writes our correspondent, the founder of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead
RISC — Rural Infrastructure & Services Commons : RISC proposes the establishment of rural hubs with established infrastructure and fee-based user services that would be sustained by patronage from many surrounding villages, accessible by bicycle. Each hub would provide economic opportunities for India's rural population and the potential to seed a larger urban center.
The Logic Behind RISC and RISC at XIMB
Special Parliament Session to Debate Poverty (Must Read Article)
It is useful to remember Finagle’s Law, a corollary to Murphy’s Law. It says that when a job is fouled up by someone, anything they do to make it better only makes things worse. The government is the last agency to figure out what went wrong and why. And in the end, when they try to fix the problem, even if well-intentioned, they just make it a great deal worse. (Via Atanu dey)
A true questioning spirit is usually introspective in nature, not accusatory. Verified doubt is scientific and it lays the foundation for merit-based trust. The advantage of a questioning spirit is that it is the opposite of an inquisition. Huge majority of society have internalized the myth that the authority is capable — and willing — to solve to problem of poverty. This is one of the greatest binding assumptions that imprisons the development. To become free from this notion is hard because it is in the interest of those in authority and few in power to perpetuate these false beliefs. People, an individual changes the world for better, not the other way round.
Bigger Picture By Sharmista Chaudhury: Inclusive growth is the new buzzword in B-School curricula.
"Bad Management Theories are destroying good management practices". by Sumantra Ghosal.
Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment by Sushil Yadav
India should accept climate change flow obligations, ask for superfund: Jagdish Bhagwati
The Management Myth : Most of management theory is inane, writes our correspondent, the founder of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead
RISC — Rural Infrastructure & Services Commons : RISC proposes the establishment of rural hubs with established infrastructure and fee-based user services that would be sustained by patronage from many surrounding villages, accessible by bicycle. Each hub would provide economic opportunities for India's rural population and the potential to seed a larger urban center.
The Logic Behind RISC and RISC at XIMB
Special Parliament Session to Debate Poverty (Must Read Article)
It is useful to remember Finagle’s Law, a corollary to Murphy’s Law. It says that when a job is fouled up by someone, anything they do to make it better only makes things worse. The government is the last agency to figure out what went wrong and why. And in the end, when they try to fix the problem, even if well-intentioned, they just make it a great deal worse. (Via Atanu dey)
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Governing India
Atanu Dey holds nerve of this country and analyze correctly about hurdles in the path of development of this country. In his article : The Perverse “Right to Information” , he pointed that information should be routinely available rather than being exceptionally provided.
All information of public interest should be available to the public as the default. No special effort should be necessary for a citizen to know what the government is doing with his or her money.
It is time we stopped congratulating ourselves about how wonderful the RTI is and started realizing that we have degraded ourselves to the point where we are actually grateful for the few scraps of information that is thrown our way in response to considerable groveling in front of those whose salaries we pay.
Atanu Dey continue further his roar in the article: "What Holds India Back " , that the Indian government is the greatest barrier to India’s development.
To summarize: Control of the economy does two things. First, it reduces economic activity and consequently growth. Second, it gives rise to rent, which then attracts the most criminally corrupt to gain control of the government. Rent-seeking rather than good governance becomes the sole aim of those in government. The criminally corrupt are not competent to make good policy given that it was not their public policy brilliance that brought them to power. Besides, good policy generally entails a reduction in government power and control of the economy. So why would they do it even if they were advised by others who know better.
I agreed with him. There is a huge rhetoric implementation gap while following grow first build later model that is widely followed in India. Looking back at the history , we observe that there were labour reforms with industrial revolution; 16 hour workdays, unsafe food, little education for the poor, and working conditions has brought communism today in the world. Also, capitalism came to Europe before democracy and in India its reverse.
As the economist Pranab Bardhab pointed out, the left in India while taking aim at the dictatorship of proletariat has given us the dictatorship of salariat. Protections and job safeguards of the worst sort - the kind without accountability are looting government offices. Take example of our schools only. Government policies have funded schools, not schooling. The child issues are neglected as they can't vote or raise their problem. The biggest barrier in decentralizing the power over to local bodies has been teachers union.
I am not opposed to the free economy in India. We have a first wave of pro business reforms in 1991 rather than pro market ones. Indian citizens has not got economic rights only few rare opportunities. Still, the micro and macro economics of a nation converge via its culture; this cultural convergence within nations causes economic divergence among them.
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong but not quite agreeable methods are adapted in confronting bad habits by government. Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means only a superficial transformation, one that cannot be permanent or bring real betterment. It is a change of form only, not of substance, as so tragically proven by Russia. We have to develop mentality that pitches reason and debate rather than organized hooliganism to challenge those ideas with minimum violence.
All information of public interest should be available to the public as the default. No special effort should be necessary for a citizen to know what the government is doing with his or her money.
It is time we stopped congratulating ourselves about how wonderful the RTI is and started realizing that we have degraded ourselves to the point where we are actually grateful for the few scraps of information that is thrown our way in response to considerable groveling in front of those whose salaries we pay.
Atanu Dey continue further his roar in the article: "What Holds India Back " , that the Indian government is the greatest barrier to India’s development.
To summarize: Control of the economy does two things. First, it reduces economic activity and consequently growth. Second, it gives rise to rent, which then attracts the most criminally corrupt to gain control of the government. Rent-seeking rather than good governance becomes the sole aim of those in government. The criminally corrupt are not competent to make good policy given that it was not their public policy brilliance that brought them to power. Besides, good policy generally entails a reduction in government power and control of the economy. So why would they do it even if they were advised by others who know better.
I agreed with him. There is a huge rhetoric implementation gap while following grow first build later model that is widely followed in India. Looking back at the history , we observe that there were labour reforms with industrial revolution; 16 hour workdays, unsafe food, little education for the poor, and working conditions has brought communism today in the world. Also, capitalism came to Europe before democracy and in India its reverse.
As the economist Pranab Bardhab pointed out, the left in India while taking aim at the dictatorship of proletariat has given us the dictatorship of salariat. Protections and job safeguards of the worst sort - the kind without accountability are looting government offices. Take example of our schools only. Government policies have funded schools, not schooling. The child issues are neglected as they can't vote or raise their problem. The biggest barrier in decentralizing the power over to local bodies has been teachers union.
I am not opposed to the free economy in India. We have a first wave of pro business reforms in 1991 rather than pro market ones. Indian citizens has not got economic rights only few rare opportunities. Still, the micro and macro economics of a nation converge via its culture; this cultural convergence within nations causes economic divergence among them.
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong but not quite agreeable methods are adapted in confronting bad habits by government. Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means only a superficial transformation, one that cannot be permanent or bring real betterment. It is a change of form only, not of substance, as so tragically proven by Russia. We have to develop mentality that pitches reason and debate rather than organized hooliganism to challenge those ideas with minimum violence.
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