Some food for thought
"Our insignificance is often the cause of our safety."
—Aesop (Greek Author, 620BC-564BC)
Word for the day
Circumvent (v)
To manage to get around especially by ingenuity or stratagem
First thought this morning
The latest round of elections in India is coming to close. For
some reasons, the elections with electronic machines are much longer than these
used to be with paper ballot. May be it has something to do with the rise in number
of voters due to demographic changes. The other reason could be the rise in
threat perception that requires much more security forces to be deployed.
Anyways, like any other elections, these elections have been
watched keenly and discussed intensively in media, drawing rooms, offices and
clubs. Also like always there are speculations about the results and
expectations of a reformative change post elections.
I feel nothing shall change due to election results on Tuesday,
the 11th December 2018.
After few hours of celebrations (and remorse on the losing side)
everybody will get focused on the next elections, which incidentally happens to
be the larger general election in March-May 2019.
All parties will campaign aggressively. The political discourse
that has been climbing down for past many years, shall take one more step down.
The narrative will remain mostly the same - porridge of caste, religion,
region, unemployment, farmer distress, my shirt whiter than thou, cow, etc, garnished with Mandir, Masjid,
Pakistan, Italy, Fasist, served hot 24X7 on social and electronic media. Anyone
expecting anything more is bound to get disappointed, like always.
Chart of the day
Taking a wrong turn
As I stared at the recent data on sector wise deployment of bank
credit (see
here) for couple of hours, some images from my last UP road trip kept
coming before my eyes.
These images are a persuasive reminder of what a story India
consumption is from business as well as financial investment perspective.
However, these images are also a stark reminder of the wrong turn that Indian
economy might be taking (if not already taken).
I am worried about two things:
(a) The consumption
boom that India is witnessing since past couple of decades might fizzle out
sooner and at lower levels, than many analysts are expecting.
(b) The premature
westernization of the consumer behavior and consumption patterns might weaken
the foundations of the Indian economy, keeping it from becoming a middle income
economy any time soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment