Some food for thought
When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.
—Swami Vivekanand (Indian preacher, 1863-1902)
Word for the day
Exoteric (adj)
Popular; simple; commonplace.
First random thought this morning
I truly believe that the role of language goes much further than
mere communication. Language we use for communication, defines our personality,
thought process, and confidence level. The language gives wings to our
imagination. If we use a language, we are not comfortable communicating in, our
personality might diminish, thought process may be frequently interrupted,
confidence may get shaken, and imagination curtailed.
Choosing the language for education, working, thinking and
communicating is no less important than the knowledge, thought, skill,
processes and the methods themselves, in my view.
The first President of independent India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad,
who was also a key member of the Constituent Assembly, which was given the
responsibility to draft the Constitution of India, famously said, "A
country that does not take pride in its language and literature can never
progress". Strongly emphasizing on the universality of Hindi language he
reminded the nation that "Hindi has always been such a language that it
never boycotted any word just because it's of foreign origin".
Hindi, in that sense, truly reflects the quintessential
Indianness - Openness, adaptability, progressiveness, tolerance, modesty, simplicity
and brilliance. Inherent ability to adapt to the continuously evolving
socio-economic & cultural conditions, and embrace all the foreign
developments with brilliant ease, makes it one of the most dynamic languages in
the world.
Despite having the constitutional status of India's national
language, Hindi has not been accorded the prestige, it deserves. As a resident
of Metro city, I can vouch that it is not uncommon to find instances where Hindi
Speaking people are subjected to derision and face discrimination. To the
contrary, English speaking people are held in high esteem in most of
hinterlands.
I fully accept that in India it is totally undesirable to impose
Hindi, or any other language, on people whose mother tongue is entirely
different, like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, etc. But by making it a
political contention, our leaders have ensured that North Indians and South
Indians would never love to learn each others' languages and hence be devoid of
extremely rich literature, culture and knowledge base of each other. The apathy
to each others' language has reached a level, where most non-community
affiliated private schools in North India offer French, German, Mandarin etc.
as an elective, but few no offers Indian languages as elective. I guess the
same is true for the schools in other parts of the country also.
In my opinion, the general lack ingenuity in modern Indian may
be stemming from the limitation of not thinking in our own language. A causality
could also be find in comparative degeneration in contemporary literature and
other art forms.
Fortunately, a silver lining is that in recent times a wider
awareness about the issue is developing. The youth is breaking the stereotypes.
They are ignoring the commands of so called language purists, and devising a
new form of language that is primarily based on their respective mother tongues
and borrows from other languages. The expression thus created is free, innovative
and attractive.
Many congratulations to all on the occasion of Hindi Divas!
Notes from my Diary
In recent years, the financial literacy has in India has shown
marked improvement. One collateral of this phenomenon is evident in greater finalization
of the household savings. Diminishing incremental demand growth for gold could
be seen as another indication.
Regardless, it is common to see many regular market participants
in the equity markets driven by superstitions and magical charms. Incidentally,
many of these superstitions do actually work. This is especially true in cases
where the superstitions are formed on the basis of some empirical evidence or
experience.
One such superstition that prevails in the market is that when
many fund houses and asset managers start floating schemes specific to one
particular sector, that sector is doomed to underperform the market for next
few years at least. In other words, the top of a sector outperformance is
believed to be formed when it becomes the most popular theme.
For example, in 2007-2008, the most popular themes amongst fund
managers were infrastructure and natural resources. Both sectors underperformed
the benchmark indices in next 10years.
In past one year or so, there have been many new fund offers
(NFOs) and PMS schemes launched based on "consumption" and
"emerging business" (basically mid and small cap companies) themes.
PSU ETF has also been a popular theme.
These themes have underperformed the benchmark indices
significantly, particularly after the previous Nifty bottom formed in March
2018.
Many people ask
me whether they should be buying into these underperformance.
I do not have a
definite answer for all these queries. But what I would like to highlight to
the inquisitors is the performance of various sectors since the post DeMo Nifty
bottom recorded in November 2016.
This can give
them a broad idea about how much the pendulum can swing to the other extreme.
IT and
Consumption are two sectors that are distinct outperformers since November 2018
bottom. While Pharma is still in negative zone.
The sectors that
have started to underperform in past 5months, might have a long way to go,
before they attain a state of equilibrium, in my view.
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