Some food for thought
"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.
It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should
all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."
—Albert Schweitzer (German Theologian, 1875-1965)
Word for the day
Phatic (adj)
Denoting speech used to express or create an atmosphere of
shared feelings, goodwill, or sociability rather than to impart information.
First thought this morning
Very few political analysts and observer might want to dispute
the fact that the Indian National Congress acquired a mostly feudal character
during Mrs. Gandhi's regime, and since then it has never attempted to change
its approach to Indian politics.
"We did this for you" and "We gave you this"
has been the common refrain for all their leaders in past five decades.
In their feudal spirit, the Congress leaders have been rather
impudent in undermining the authority of constitutional, judicial and social
institutions. In their unabashed sense of entitlement, they have been rejecting
with impunity anything and everything that appeared challenging their feudal
lordship.
Such overwhelming has been the influence of the Congress
leadership on socio-political system of India that political forces which
sought to challenge the Congress hegemony by putting forward an alternative
agenda of social justice and inclusion, have all turned more feudal than
Congress, in their pursuit of political power.
Performance of the incumbent BJP led government must be
evaluated in this context, in my view. We the People of India must enquire
"what has the incumbent government done to make the structure of our
constitutional democracy, democratic?"
At the risk of being labeled seditious and unpatriotic, I would
like to ask the Home and HRD Ministers of the country, whether they made any
attempt to meet JNU students & others to understand their viewpoint and
reasons for seeking disintegration of India.
They took the convenient road of silencing the voices of dissent
by putting them in jail. That is what the imperial British and Feudal Congress
would do. What is the difference then? If the establishment cannot bring around
the university students in New Delhi, how does it propose to deal with armed
extremists in North, North East and Central India. Eliminating them all is
certainly one solution. But is it the best solution of all?
Chart of the day
Private consumption trends and investment strategy
The latest available data of the consumption profile of Indian
consumers highlights a number of interesting aspects. (All data in current
prices)
The following are some of the points that I found interesting in
this data:
(a) Basic necessities
(Food, Shelter and Clothing) accounts for more than 50% of the private
consumption. However, in five year period from FY12 to FY17, the spending on
basic necessities has come down from 56.3% in FY12 to 53.4% in FY17. Almost all
of this reduction has come from housing and related spending. This is little
counterintuitive given the strong growth reported in availability of housing,
electricity, gas and water connections, rent & energy inflation etc.
(b) There is
significant reduction in expenditure on consumption of alcohol, tobacco and
other narcotic substances.
(c) There is 20%
rise in spending on health. It would be interesting to further examine this
trend. Is this rise due to better affordability and awareness of household; or
is it due to higher inflation in cost of healthcare; or is it due to
deterioration in public health services; or is it due to rise in incidence of
diseases; or a combination of all these and other factors.
(d) Expenditure on
Education has grown by 10%. Given the changes in demography in favor of younger
people, this sounds inadequate. Intuitively, we know that the quality of public
institutions has deteriorated over past many years. The education inflation has
also been significantly higher. Like health, this also needs deeper inquiry.
(e) Transport
continues to almost one sixth of private consumption. This indicates that the
public transport is seriously lacking, both in inefficiency and reach.
(f) Spending on
recreation, culture (festivals etc.) and eating out has gone down by 20%. This
should ring alarm bells in ears of public policy makers. In a society where the
individual stress is rising, people cutting budget for recreation and cultural
occasions, cannot be good.
(g) The spending on
communication is almost stagnant. This is also counterintuitive to the massive
expansion of telecom network and rise in number of subscribers. I find it hard
to believe that the cost of communication has fallen so much that offsets the
entire expansion.
(h) The asset
creation at household level continues to be non-priority. People are spending
more than 90% of their consumption budget on services and non-durable goods.
Expenditure on buying durable goods has fallen further by 10%, from a low of
3.1% in FY12.
In terms of investment strategy, one would need to evaluate
the following:
(1) Are we building a
higher than nominal GDP growth in consumer durables, alcohol and tobacco?
(2) Should we
allocate more to health sector?
(3) Are utilities
like telecom, gas and power truly growth stories in Indian context.
(4) Should continue
to be overweight on already expensive staples, FMCG and dairy products?
(5) Should we
rationalize "festival demand" in our forecasts?
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