Category Archives: Economics

Why the world is so complicated?
We seem to be living in a civilised and yet a contradictory world!

Everywhere, from USA to China. Rulers are doing things that don’t seem to make s sense!

Why China is antagonising large parts of the world? In Hong Kong, Taiwan and South China sea?

As these lines are being typed there is tension and flare-up on the India-China border in the Ladakh area. And the minds of Indians and, even in the outside world must be disturbed. Are we living in a civilised world? Are we living in the 21st century or in some primitive times?

Only we have read in the histories of the Greek and Roman World we have read about the invasions. Of “Barbarians”, the term applied by the Greeks for all foreigners and only these later barbarians finally succeeded and the Roman Empire got weakened. And fell apart in the 7th century and the world went through a dark age. But today, the world is very civilised, yes, we live in a civilised world and we see a new type of barbarians seems to have still occupied with the minds of some regimes and some parts of the world.

Luckily, we live in a globalising world, the economies and communications and much else seem to have integrated the world and the large extent of the territories breathing easy in a fairly democratising socio-political and cultural International world.

In this time and historic point it is really galling to see some dictators. Are still indulging this luxury of indulging in territorial aggression!

Territorial aggression today’s world is perhaps the most uncivilised conduct. Yet you see what is happening in Ukraine and Belarus and in the middle eastern countries.

There is no other way in which we can find out how still some parts of the world suffers from such uncivilised conduct. And every day, we see in the news channels, TV screens are bloodied by violence and much tragedies and civilised people are forced to the streets and in spite of the knowledge and awareness people have to shed tears and cry to live in a more open world and open societies. India, next to China, ironically or otherwise carry the world’s largest populations, China with 1.44 billions and India 1.36 billions and yet the Chinese regime known for its finicky sensitivities don’t care for dialogue and exchange of views and learn to resolve disputes in a civilised manner. To come to underhand deals is not diplomacy and it is this underhand deals seem to have led to the latest flare-up.

Now, turning to the domestic scene there are issues and issues arising out of our day to day events. One the economy seems to be caught in a bind. The finances are in shambles and the Finance Minister is not seen in public and the banks are also in a difficult position. The industrial scenario is mixed. Auto sales seem to be picking up somewhat.

But it seems a long journey. As for agriculture, there is good news. The agri scene is upbeat, the extent of the Kharif sowing is picking up, thanks to improved rains. There is the very positive sales of tractors, the three major tractor making firms have reported almost doubling of units sold compared to last year and this must boost the spirits of the policy makers. However, that we like to draw attention is that the spirits at the grassroots are still confused, jobs are not coming along too soon and we need definite policy articulations that must enthuse the general public.

Yes, there has been good rains and much farming activity. But what about the generation of employment beyond the one scheme, the 100 days employment guarantee scheme?

The future of the cities in terms of governance and expansion are still vague. The Covid has proven that the urban density in the absence of real estate moving towards the suburbs is going to create more problems that solve future urban issues.

May be the need to get the mayors of the bigger cities must be elected directly by the city dwellers instead of the present day councillors methods so that the mayors might have more powers to spend the resources and also become more accountable to the urban citizens.

Also the future cities must be more widely disbursed with the current expansion of urban transport, with more and longer metro services so that there is enough space for people in the cities and the inevitable growth of slums are not going to disfigure our future cities. Much more important is the sort of society, we visualise in the future growth of cities.

Also the quality of governance is very much tied to the larger question of civil society participation in urban governance. We have seen recently many videos of European cities, the urban scene there is very different, very opitimistic and very open and we see a happy urban population going through their daily routines. There are so vast pedestrian spaces, all urban lines, both trains and trams seem to have been taken underground so that there is lot of space over ground and the parks are vast and green.

May be our planners must have toured the Western cities and have seen the very fantastic new architecture that makes some of these cities a delight and so much fulfilling !

The contrast between these cities and ours here is so striking. Where are our enlightened, public spirited citizens? Where is our new generation educated enlightened public spirited elite?

Here the sort of people who enter politics is anything but enlightened. You have to see some of the more well-governed States that have fallen into a rut.

How to expect the villages, the small communities, the minorities to fell secure and self-reliant.Self reliance country would emerge only where there is an air of freedom and democratic governing institutions. So, what we are advocating is a honest self-introspection and not feeling complacent and defending blindly all our mistakes in governance. Let us do many new radical changes in our rural governance.

Our plea is that the Indian elite must learn to live in this contradictory world!
We, the people, must become more committed and learn to live more courageously and Independent mindedly!

Timely bold economic stimulus no doubt
But when will the lockdown be lifted and what happens next?
The Rs.20 lakh crore package timely
But how to implement? What happens next?
Economic recovery calls for robust common sense approach!

How to implement the big Schemes and revive the economy?
No easy answers and no clear vision!

The two month long economic lockdown ran out its course and the economy is now open. It is only right to call this opening as hopefully opening!

One can’t say at this point whether this hope is fulfilled or other obstacles come in.
No people or country can live without hope and a confidence in the future. So, we can say with some confidence that India would pass through this Covid 19. Challenges and new medicines would come along, given the latest information that at least about one hundred company’s are engaged in finding out the new cure for this deadly disease that had taken a heavy toll on people from all the countries.

This is not the time to talk anything else except that the whole world looks for resourceful countries to invest in discovering new cures.

At least one current change in the Indian authorities’ mindset is that the Indian arm of the medical rise which otherwise has been criticised by the reputed medical journal Lancet of the UK. Now, of course. The WHO has called for a pause. As the drug is not proven by the WHO. But the US President is reportedly taking the drug and hence the outside world must confuse. However, the UK government’s handling of the. Covid 19 is far from satisfactory.

Indian TV channels, one channel prominently has shown how the elderly care in the UK is very poor.

This is the first time. We see such sobbing and even crying scenes are shown to the outside world. Anyway, we have to wait for some new vaccine.

And that seems some time away.

It has been the Indian mindset so far that whatever Indians do must get some foreign approval, specially the UK or the US official approval.

Thanks to the current leadership there in the USA Mr.Donald Trump, in the UK, that of the British establishment to wait for such approvals.

Now, thanks to events and personality. Both the leaders had lost. Such of their credibility by not acting out their roles due to their countries’ power and reputation.

One of the sad developments. There in those two great countries are their own leadership roles. As well as their own countries’ media.

For all these days of very high costs in human lives lost there. Their own media both print and TV media didn’t share with the peoples of the world what is happening inside their countries.

It comes as a great shock and surprise that for days together the British media, specially the otherwise much admired BBC TV channels, there was almost total black out of the COIVD 19 causalities. What sort of media freedom, open society and presenting last data and information on this deadly virus?

So much human lives lost and yet we, inside India least, were so anxious to know their own countrymen and families, with so much high causality happening there was no way to know the exact loss of lives.

So, at least this time, after so many years of Indians’ own misconceptions about the strengths and weaknesses their health. Service, social security issues.

Why we write so much on the British failings at this point of time is that at least from now onwards there must be a new awareness about living in Britain and the USA.

One other major awareness even inside India, in our opinion is that, that till now, until the exodus of the vast scale of inside Indian. Rural and agricultural labour population that almost set out as a new wave of human explosion.

Are there so much vast scale of rural unemployment in the Indian states, more so in the north Indian states like Bihar and UP?

This is a highly emotional and economic issue that from now on at least our planners and policy makers must think in terms of new rural development strategy.

Now, the Finance Minister, Nirmala. Seetharaman has announced the government’s new economic stimulus package ,the dimensions of which might unfold in the coming days and months.

Economics, for those who had not studied it from highly reputed academies, in the UK and USA, must look like one more degree earning and job hunting exercise. May be that is one more reason why most of our highly competent economists are all employed abroad in the US university departments.

Sitting in such remote rooms and also travelling occasionally to India and giving some lectures. Or still easier, participating in some TV quiz like questions and answers, you can’t give solid advice how to spend the economic package announced. One aspect is how to help small and marginal farmers, or how to revive the agricultural economy.

Since our area is agriculture here are some points. One experts say: put the money in the hands of farmers, without any security and interest. Is this politics or economics?

Only those who are familiar with living in the rural areas know well that. The average landholding being what is less than one hectare. And also agriculture being unviable at that scale, the money put into the hands of this section would go directly in consumption!
So, please, we ask the government, the FM in particular to think of some institutional reforms like panchayat raj and ask rural co-operatives, wherever they are funding well, strengthening them and make in one word activity of group functioning.

There are so many complex issues that must be discussed before putting the raw cash in the hands of the farmers.

We are of the firm view that any farmer in India is a debtor or a litigants. So much complex is rural land ownership issues.

Agriculture and panchayat raj, rural co-ops and of course the usual agenda of corruption and electoral reforms and a transparent and efficient administration only can revive the economy in the genuine sense.

How the wielding of power and public morality evolved over the centuries?

Ever since the time of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, then in Rome  under Cicero(106-43 BC) the Roman Republic and its institutions evolved up to the French Revolution and  to the  modern day Constitutions, in democracies and authoritarian regimes, the abuse of power and the curtailment of citizen freedoms, we live through uncertain times. Some thoughts and reflections.

We, Indians, inherit what political Legacy?
Or, public morals and conduct?

These questions arise when we look at the way us, as a nation and people, live and thrive.

Just yesterday, the Supreme Court asked the government agencies, CBI and ED, in the open court:
Is there a hidden hand that is ‘manipulating’ the agencies to delay for so long in some of the sensitive cases, legal cases involving big money and also big people, that is, the high and mighty?

This was in reference to some high profile alleged corruption cases that involve the top politicians and their kinds.
It is a scenario that gives rise to some of the most troubling questions for the public life in India.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the world today is also witnessing some of the most challenging issues in world peace and political instabilities.

In the USA we see Donald Trump taking some steps that are almost all against the conventions of governance.USA is taken by the rest of the world as a model democracy, a republican government with Senate and Congress and the parties and the whole exercise of power on almost on the lines of ancient Rome.

But the America today is also faced with some of the most uncivilised outcomes. The rising gun violence fails our imagination of a modern and prosperous society. Such heartless brutalities against innocence children?

The President, given his peculiarities of character etc. is also proving helpless. Given the credit where it is due, Trump also shows enormous surprises, he is, for example willing to meet and speak with the North Korean dictator! The world is suddenly relieved. There is a heaving sigh of relief. At the same time, there is also the phenomenon of the opposite trend in the other two bigger democracies, or regimes that are both authoritarian and almost dictatorships.

In Russia we see Vladimir Putin seeking office after being in power for 17 years. What sort of political regime it is. Also, in China, Presdient Xi votes, himself casts his vote ,also the 3,000 member of the National Congress, Parliament, that  legitimatise XI continuing in power after the expiry of his two -term convention dran by Deng.

What is the sort of politics we, as people at large in India and outside, practice after the world learnt to practise democracy as established in Athens?

It was Plato, later Aristotle, who gave us the idea of a Constitution for political governance. Plato was present at the trial of Socrates and soon after Socrates was put to death in BC 399, Plato left Athens and he travelled to Syracuse where, we know, he drew a Constitution for the “Tyrant”, Dinosius.

We in India live by a political Constitution drawn by eminent brains since 1951. How do we live up to the our Constitution that had withstood the past 70 odd years?

The present regime seems to be doing not badly. But when it comes to some niceties, we seem to be lacking in some vision. We operate a democratic constitution. The basic aim of the Constitution is to ensure the freedoms of the citizens, equality of everyone before the law and we, for all practical purposes run a government by rule of law.

Our laws are derived from the principles of Roman Law. Our democracy is a Greek inspiration and also what we have learnt from the British Constitution and the British Constitutional conventions. These we derive again from what we learn from the British rule.

Is our freedom of the press real and alive? Yes and no!
There is freedom but there is widespread fear in the minds of citizens. The press is not throwing up uncomfortable questions. There is lot of blackout, right?

Our Prasar Bharati and DD and Radio are a sham, right? Our judiciary independent or handicapped. Just today I read something like 400 and odd vacancies in the High Courts!

What does this fact convey?
Why so many are languishing in jails without bail? Why still the delays in appointment of judges?

Here comes the pertinent question asked by the SC on the ‘hidden hand manipulating the delays in such cases like 2G scam?
So, we need eminent jurists to ask questions and worry about the state of affairs in sensitive areas>
Are there not enough talent in the judiciary and the bar?

It is here I thought of other histories, the life and works of the ancient Greek thinkers, the Romans. Figures like Cicero (106-43 BC) who was and remains to this day, the greatest jury, the greatest orator in the Roman Forum courts and also the Senate in the same premises.

You can see the monuments, the earth on which Cicero walked if you walk through the Roman Forum (as we did some time ago).
Cicero, whose writing, speeches, letters and other pieces are the greatest monuments of Latin literature and forms the foundations of education in the Western tradition. Others wrote in Latin, Cicero writes Roman, observed Cardinal Newman.

Fredrick the Great, that incomparable king in that un enlighted age called or claimed infatuation ‘for Cicero! Edward Gibbon, Macaulay and Samuel Johnson…there are no limit to great men and great mind who were not infatuated by Cicero’s wise thoughts. Others on the continent, in France, Diderot and Voltaire! Voltaire declared, ‘Cicero taught us to think’. Between 1465 and the end of the century 200 editions were printed of Cicero writings, the first Greek works in Greek type , other very many firsts in Cicero’s writings in the later fifteenth century.
Cicero became the founder of the Western classical education tradition.

Let us at least become aware of this history.
We have to learn and learn to adhere to the basic tenets of good governance.

No individual, however great or powerful can last for long.
It is wisdom to become aware of this reality, both the ground reality and also historic flow of events that unless men learn to conduct themselves with self-restraint, mass upsurges, revolutions, why even violence and terrorism becomes our day to day reality.