"The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always
have the noblest principles."
—Plato (Greek, 427-347BC)
Word
for the day
Cordate (adj)
Heart-shaped, e.g., a cordate shell.
Malice
towards none
Heard RaGa speech in Jaunpur
on Moday.
Not a grain of truth.
Wonder who is the King Liar
who writes his speeches.
First random
thought this morning
Flipkart, SnapDeal, PayTM, Ola
and sundries are poor versions of Amazon, PayPal, Uber etc. just the way KBC,
Indian Idol, Voice of India, Big Boss etc. are poor copies of the similar
American TV reality shows.
A large part of our whole
start-up ecosystem distressingly appears to be based on the business models and
ideas conceived, tested, and already commercially exploited in other parts of
the world.
Respect for IPR and innovation
is amongst the few things still missing from the picture.
In search of solutions - 12
In my view, just by focusing on
our intrinsic strengths, we can not only conveniently reverse the flow of trade
to pre British era but also be successful in achieving our secular goals of
sustainable and faster economic growth.
For example, the following
programs, if implemented earnestly, could improve the balance of payment and
employment conditions, substantially and structurally by 2025 by focusing on
our intrinsic strengths like abundant sun shine, large number of middle class
youth, amazing landscape, strong and rich tradition (food, religion, etc.)
& culture (music, dance, arts, festivals):
(a) Indians spend more than $25bn annually on education and related
overseas travel. Creating 5 Special Education Zones (SEZ) with liberal VISA,
forex, taxation and real estate ownership rules, and allowing foreign
institutions to freely set up campuses in these zones, could potentially
reverse this flow. Students from India, far-east, middle-east and Africa who
find it difficult to get VISA for US/UK etc., or find that unaffordable, could
also benefit from this. Our politicians have spoken about recreating Nalanda
and Takshila. This in my view is the easiest way to do that.
(b) India holds tremendous potential for tourism. However lack of
proper infrastructure has traditionally constricted the growth of this sector.
On the other hand Indian outbound tourists flow is rising fast. Developing some
world class self-contained international tourism centers, e.g., on lines of
Macau, Disney, Las Vegas, etc. with liberal VISA, Forex, taxation and real estate
ownership rules could potentially reverse these flows.
(c) Vindavan, Tirupati, Varanasi, Gaya, etc. all have potential to be
as desirable, venerable and popular destinations as Mecca, Vatican and
Jerusalem. Converting these centers of Indian religion and culture into self
contained special zones with international airport, adequate lodging facilities
and annual event calendar could get substantial forex revenue.
(d) Including sports, music & dance, arts in the main curriculums
upto secondary school level, with adequate focus, could annually produce 10x
more (self) employable students than 500 higher institution of learnings would
do in next two decades,
These projects also have the
potential to generate large scale productive employment opportunity for local
talent, besides contributing to economic growth and true globalization of
Indian economy.
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