"The whole secret of
existence is to have no fear."
—Swami Vivekanand (Indian,
1863-1902))
Word for the day
Nonviolence (n)
The policy, practice, or
technique of refraining from the use of violence, especially when reacting to
or protesting against oppression, injustice, discrimination, or the like.
Malice towards none
Sophistry is a form of
violence, perhaps the worst kind.
All those who avow by
Gandhi, must avoid sophistry and chicanery of all sorts.
First random thought this morning
"A democracy can neither forbid propaganda nor allow it. It
cannot forbid propaganda without undermining freedom of speech and expression. But
it cannot allow propaganda without destroying any hope of cultivating an
enlightened citizenry whose political and economic decisions are based on
evidence rather than misinformation, on facts rather than partisan
descriptions, on reasoned analysis rather than emotional appeals. The first
paradox of propaganda is that democracy cannot afford not to tolerate
propaganda's open or concealed contempt for every democratic ideal."
(Ellul (1965) as quoted by Dennis A. Rohatyn in Philosophy History Sophistry
(1997).
Decolonialization of economic model
In past decade of so a number of institutional changes have taken
place in Indian economy. Many of these changes are important as these provide a
platform for higher economic growth in decades to come. Some of the most
important institutional changes, in my view are as follows:
Historically, various regions of India have witnessed an
undesirable skew in the growth trajectory. The coastal India has seen most of
the industrial development, mostly due to logistic infrastructure constraints
that made industrial development in hinterland economically unviable.
Besides coastal towns, the important cantonments of Mughals rulers
and British empire have seen higher development of trade and commerce due to
better infrastructure and significant government business.
The skew in industrial development got permeated to the social
constitution of these regions also. The commercially developed regions have
mostly seen better development in areas like higher education, financial
inclusion, water, sanitation and healthcare.
Due to better education facilities, these areas naturally got most
of the engineering and scientific talent and thus got lead in developing as important
center of modern technology and ITeS services.
For obvious reasons these are the centers that attracted most of
the foreign business interest also.
These industrially developed areas accounted for most of the tax
collections, and therefore development resource allocation. The skew therefore
kept worsening over the years. Even the historically superior agriculture
states like UP and Punjab lost to Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Andhra
etc. in terms of growth in agriculture GDP.
In past three decades an effort has been made to institute a shift
in the industrial base to industrially underdeveloped areas through a variety
of fiscal incentives. These efforts have yielded results to an extent. But
since most of these incentives were driven by political expediency without much
economic rationale, the results have not been up to the desired mark.
The states and areas that produced maximum raw material and labor
were exploited by industrially developed states, as the colonial economic model
of British continued even in independent India.
The changes in policy relating to exploitation of minerals, formula for
allocation to revenue to states, GST, land acquisition laws etc., seek to
diminish the skew by empowering the resource owning states. Some of the faster
growth in erstwhile backward states in recent past could be attributed to these
changes. Given that maximum youth population is located in these states only,
we shall see the economic changes translating into qualitative social changes
also in due course.....to continue tomorrow
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