"States are as the men, they grow out of human characters."
—Plato (Greek, 427-347BC)
Word
for the day
Vainglory (n)
Excessive elation or pride over one's own achievements, abilities, etc.;
boastful vanity.
Malice
towards none
As per Expedia's 2016 global
vacation survey - "India is the fourth most vacation deprived country in
the world."
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The joke ended up there.
First random
thought this morning
As a deeply religious community, we strongly believe that our Gods
are always there to help us out of any trouble. Gods on their part have not
disappointed us. Indeed, Lord Krishna (Gita), Mother Durga (Durga Saptshati)
et. al. assured us that they will incarnate themselves in human form, whenever
there is any threat to our survival.
The problem that has arisen out of this assurance is that we are
always searching for God's incarnations, even during normal times. We want all
our leaders to be God like. Be it Indira, Rajiv, Modi, Dhoni, Tendulkar, or
Bachchan - we cannot tolerate their failing in any test.
In search of solutions - 8
As indicated yesterday (see here), in my view, the root of the economic problems of
India could be easily traced to the continuation of the exploitive colonial
economic model post independence. We have consistently failed in exploiting our
strengths and allowed outflow of precious resources both natural and human.
Even after 69years of independence
from British rule, India continues to be mostly an exporter of raw material and
cheap labor and importer of technology and end products. Though in recent past
we have excelled in a few areas like automobile, pharma and space research,
still most of our industry is built around arbitrage opportunities available in
terms of natural resources and abundance of cheap labor.
Consequently, a strong structural
base for the Indian economy is yet to evolve. We have not been particularly
successful in the areas such as technological advancement, productivity gains,
innovation and localization and mostly continue to be an economy largely
dependent on labor & resource arbitrage and trading.
In my view, we have focused too
much on our weaknesses and tried hard to overcome these weaknesses by importing
technology, energy, intellectual property, capital and consumption patterns. As
noted Swadeshi economic thinker S. Gurumrthy highlighted in one of his
writings, the primary cause of structural imbalance in trade account appears to
be humongous capital goods import in past decade or so rather than gold or oil
import as widely believed.
In particular the following five
“mistakes” have created many structural problems for Indian economy, in my
view:
(a) “Feudal ownership” of resources in the garb of “public ownership”
has led to criminal waste, misuse and misappropriation of scarce resources.
(b) Neglect of sustainability concerns in developing industry has led
to concentration of economic power and therefore political power. Besides, the
accelerated environmental degradation has caused serious damage to the ecology
and livelihood of millions.
(c) Lack of a holistic education and training policy has created
serious demographic distortions. On one hand we have a huge pool of unemployed
youth, while on the other hand entire industry is facing shortage of skilled
workers.
(d) The colonial mindset has destroyed the traditional knowledge and
skills. Lord McCauley still successfully rules the education system, making
India a perennial importer of technology and other intellectual property.
(e) A faulty approach to urbanization has created immense
inequalities. The famous India and Bharat divide is now part of folklore in
international studies. Instead of providing civic amenities to the
quintessential Indian village that was center of traditional industry, the
industrial policy has caused destruction of rural economies causing large scale
migration.....to continue tomorrow
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