We hoped for freedom for too long
then we hoped for a government for too long
we hoped for food clothing and shelter
we hoped for peace in the valley
we hope we never have to hope for anything again
and even now we hope,
we hope for VENDETTA!!
But i hope that this is one hope that is not misplaced. For there is no greater loss than the loss of innocence. When the innocent are engulfed in the flames within the world burns.
Its not the time to loose ourselves to the anger or the disgust or the apathy of those who think they rule us.
Lets use this to rise above. Vengence is sweet but not enough.
In mankind i trust!
Gopal Balakrishnan
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
To Budget: Another opportunity Lost
By definition a Budget means “a summary of intended expenditures along with proposals for how to meet them” someone please let our Government know this
Budget means the same or similar things to most people; just the treatment rendered is somewhat different. Well to our government it has to mean something totally different.
It’s not a limit on spending, it’s not control, it is in fact how the treasure chest can be plundered.
Think about it
Why are so many government services inefficient and their private counterparts doing so very well, take mtnl for example, the telecom boom has had virtually no effect on productivity or quality, in fact the incumbent in such a huge market has done nothing while the competition has gobbled up so much of the market. Why??
Well the budget has a lot to do with this inefficiency. A private enterprise is rewarded for saving money while a government enterprise if efficient and saves some money then it’s penalized by getting allotted a lot less money the next time. It’s the sheer mentality of people who don’t understand economics and people who think they understand people trying to make economically viable solutions for “the people”
Let us just make sense of one fascinating aspect of this budget. The Rs. 60,000 Crore farm loan waiver. Here is where bad governance takes the shape of populism and ends up hurting everyone and helping the incumbent government in the near term. I often thought to myself “what’s wrong with populism”; I mean the government is supposed to think of the public good that’s why they have been elected. The answer is there is nothing wrong with populism its bad economics along with cunning and wrong use of position that I have a problem with, and this government seems to have done both with “the waiver.”
With growth rates of the country tending towards a decline on the back of a US recession, foreign investors and the industry in India needed some confidence in the capital market system of the country. The waiver which flouts the banking regulations and asks the banks to give a ‘no dues certificate’ even without reimbursing the waived amount the banks. This just sucks out liquidity from the system. To cut it short, the govt says it will clear 60,000 crore worth of bad debt from the banks books and that this is good for the banks, but here’s the catch
They will only provide 10,000 crore this year as for the remaining they claim to clear that in the coming 4 years (giving the burden of the majority of the weight of the waiver to a possible “incompetent” NDA government). In the mean time the banks have no money to show for the ‘no dues certificates’ they have issued. This pushes the country’s organized banking system to a big slow down a 50,000 crore slow down.
There are other problems with the waiver too
• It sets a bad precedent. What about farmers who have paid their debt by selling
their belongings or land or both?
• What about the farmers in the Vidarbha and Telengana region who all have land holdings greater than the lower limit 4 acres set by the FM?
The worst thing about this waiver is that it still offers no solution to the farming community. The solution to the problems of the farming community is that it’s not productive or profitable for most. The reasons are clear ever since 5th standard for me and most other paanchvi pass students. The vagaries of the monsoon determine almost completely how the year is going to be. Good rainfall = excellent harvest and the family is happy for one year and too much or too little rainfall implies debt burden increasing.
The solution has to be irrigation development. Israel which is war torn and has virtually no big source of non brackish water. It requires 1.2 billion cu metres of water annually of which a staggering 900 million is portable. Imagine if that were true in India, 75% water requirement is portable, every farmer will be able to come out of the death trap and lead a sustainable life.
Drip irrigation has helped Israel export water intensive citrus fruits as well. The catch with irrigating Vidarbha and Telengana is not the cost involved because it is much less than 60,000 crore. It is purely a matter of political will. Drip irrigation for the entire Vidarbha and Telengana region together will ensure water usage up to 95% and increase productivity by 75%. Its initial setup cost would be close to 15000 crores.
India is still not a consumer driven economy, it’s driven predominantly by government spending. This is the opportunity for the govt to spend on infrastructure and pick up stake in the growth it promises. There are a lot of opportunities of public private partnerships in the waiting. If only the Government can ‘budget’ for the losses if these opportunities are lost.
Kya humari government paanchi pass se tez hai??
(wrote this for the college IEEE magazine immediately after the budget. found it now, and thot it'll make a good read.)
Budget means the same or similar things to most people; just the treatment rendered is somewhat different. Well to our government it has to mean something totally different.
It’s not a limit on spending, it’s not control, it is in fact how the treasure chest can be plundered.
Think about it
Why are so many government services inefficient and their private counterparts doing so very well, take mtnl for example, the telecom boom has had virtually no effect on productivity or quality, in fact the incumbent in such a huge market has done nothing while the competition has gobbled up so much of the market. Why??
Well the budget has a lot to do with this inefficiency. A private enterprise is rewarded for saving money while a government enterprise if efficient and saves some money then it’s penalized by getting allotted a lot less money the next time. It’s the sheer mentality of people who don’t understand economics and people who think they understand people trying to make economically viable solutions for “the people”
Let us just make sense of one fascinating aspect of this budget. The Rs. 60,000 Crore farm loan waiver. Here is where bad governance takes the shape of populism and ends up hurting everyone and helping the incumbent government in the near term. I often thought to myself “what’s wrong with populism”; I mean the government is supposed to think of the public good that’s why they have been elected. The answer is there is nothing wrong with populism its bad economics along with cunning and wrong use of position that I have a problem with, and this government seems to have done both with “the waiver.”
With growth rates of the country tending towards a decline on the back of a US recession, foreign investors and the industry in India needed some confidence in the capital market system of the country. The waiver which flouts the banking regulations and asks the banks to give a ‘no dues certificate’ even without reimbursing the waived amount the banks. This just sucks out liquidity from the system. To cut it short, the govt says it will clear 60,000 crore worth of bad debt from the banks books and that this is good for the banks, but here’s the catch
They will only provide 10,000 crore this year as for the remaining they claim to clear that in the coming 4 years (giving the burden of the majority of the weight of the waiver to a possible “incompetent” NDA government). In the mean time the banks have no money to show for the ‘no dues certificates’ they have issued. This pushes the country’s organized banking system to a big slow down a 50,000 crore slow down.
There are other problems with the waiver too
• It sets a bad precedent. What about farmers who have paid their debt by selling
their belongings or land or both?
• What about the farmers in the Vidarbha and Telengana region who all have land holdings greater than the lower limit 4 acres set by the FM?
The worst thing about this waiver is that it still offers no solution to the farming community. The solution to the problems of the farming community is that it’s not productive or profitable for most. The reasons are clear ever since 5th standard for me and most other paanchvi pass students. The vagaries of the monsoon determine almost completely how the year is going to be. Good rainfall = excellent harvest and the family is happy for one year and too much or too little rainfall implies debt burden increasing.
The solution has to be irrigation development. Israel which is war torn and has virtually no big source of non brackish water. It requires 1.2 billion cu metres of water annually of which a staggering 900 million is portable. Imagine if that were true in India, 75% water requirement is portable, every farmer will be able to come out of the death trap and lead a sustainable life.
Drip irrigation has helped Israel export water intensive citrus fruits as well. The catch with irrigating Vidarbha and Telengana is not the cost involved because it is much less than 60,000 crore. It is purely a matter of political will. Drip irrigation for the entire Vidarbha and Telengana region together will ensure water usage up to 95% and increase productivity by 75%. Its initial setup cost would be close to 15000 crores.
India is still not a consumer driven economy, it’s driven predominantly by government spending. This is the opportunity for the govt to spend on infrastructure and pick up stake in the growth it promises. There are a lot of opportunities of public private partnerships in the waiting. If only the Government can ‘budget’ for the losses if these opportunities are lost.
Kya humari government paanchi pass se tez hai??
(wrote this for the college IEEE magazine immediately after the budget. found it now, and thot it'll make a good read.)
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Hockey Still Our National Game
Who says hockey is not played anymore with the same passion and doesn't deserve to be our national game?
India always wins because hockey is part and parcel of life as this ad beautifully shows...
Good Job Times of India :)
India always wins because hockey is part and parcel of life as this ad beautifully shows...
Good Job Times of India :)
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Un GODly...
(Dont worry about me, God and I have a set of rules we play by and this doesn't violate them)
Been pondering on this in my alone time, and avoiding my views to surface completely in public for lack of insight..then I came across something i wrote from the bottom of my heart and now its as clear as mud...
UNGODLY!!
Can't believe there can be a Supreme body out there that has a conscience which wants us to be afraid, which want us to praise it, and this is what i ask
why hasn't "God" made perfect people? wouldn't be much fun then would we,
so its all for HIS fun that we are here? for the first time I think I am, if at all HE exists, I really am afraid of HIM and I don't like the feeling, I'd much rather he doesn't exist for I think he actually doesn't otherwise what he is doing is kind of weird and unGODly if you may, but then again what do I know...
Been pondering on this in my alone time, and avoiding my views to surface completely in public for lack of insight..then I came across something i wrote from the bottom of my heart and now its as clear as mud...
UNGODLY!!
Can't believe there can be a Supreme body out there that has a conscience which wants us to be afraid, which want us to praise it, and this is what i ask
why hasn't "God" made perfect people? wouldn't be much fun then would we,
so its all for HIS fun that we are here? for the first time I think I am, if at all HE exists, I really am afraid of HIM and I don't like the feeling, I'd much rather he doesn't exist for I think he actually doesn't otherwise what he is doing is kind of weird and unGODly if you may, but then again what do I know...
Saturday, October 13, 2007
experts and their expertise
An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less till he knows everthing about nothing.
Experts remove the holistic approach to any topic and view it as a control in an experiment rather than a situation which has to be dealt with..
its in the best interest of the expert to keep you in darkness...its a place that we've got to as a civilization when we need to be dogmatic to be heard and heralded as leaders/experts . The experts/leaders whose thoughts move to accommodate more opinions and views are not considered powerful or followable...in the words of the brilliant economist or should I say freakonomist Steven Levitt
"The typical expert...is prone to sound exceedingly sure of himself. An expert doesn’t so much argue the various sides of an issue.... That’s because an expert whose argument reeks of restraint or nuance often doesn’t get much attention. An expert must be bold if he hopes to alchemize his homespun theory into conventional wisdom."
And the above is what we want our experts to be....
In the end all I can say is...with the current expectation of experts that we have now...
Experts, we can't live with them we can't live without...oh wait a minute, we CAN live without them :)
Image source: www.doglegs.net
Thursday, September 27, 2007
The Sweetest thing!!
a beautiful beautiful song....Sweetest Thing By Bono and the video is also kind of funny.
The word just are absolutely to the highest degree of superlativeness amazing.
Expresses the feelings of a romantic who is absolutely confident on everything else but just can't seem to understand and give his love all that she needs...In a valiant attempt he writes this song and the words are just beautiful...
"(My) Baby`s got blue skies up ahead
But in this I'm a rain cloud
You know she wants a dry kind of love"
(I'm almost exactly what she doesn't need right now)
"I know I got black eyes
But they burn so brightly for her
Guess it's a blind kind of love"
If only she could see how much she means to me...but its a blind kind of love
"Baby's got blue skies up ahead
But in this I'm a rain cloud
Ours is a stormy kind of love"
And though I'm not what she needs now and tho she cant see what she means to me we'll make it work and its our special kind of live and love:)
(After thought: a rather mushy one..but worth it)
The video
The word just are absolutely to the highest degree of superlativeness amazing.
Expresses the feelings of a romantic who is absolutely confident on everything else but just can't seem to understand and give his love all that she needs...In a valiant attempt he writes this song and the words are just beautiful...
"(My) Baby`s got blue skies up ahead
But in this I'm a rain cloud
You know she wants a dry kind of love"
(I'm almost exactly what she doesn't need right now)
"I know I got black eyes
But they burn so brightly for her
Guess it's a blind kind of love"
If only she could see how much she means to me...but its a blind kind of love
"Baby's got blue skies up ahead
But in this I'm a rain cloud
Ours is a stormy kind of love"
And though I'm not what she needs now and tho she cant see what she means to me we'll make it work and its our special kind of live and love:)
(After thought: a rather mushy one..but worth it)
The video
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Revolutions for change!!
Revolution...Change...Radical...
There is almost a undeniable and irresistible character that these words have. They seem to possess me even before the thoughts are crystallized. There are just too many things that are wrong...Justice as blind as it is supposed to be does nothing but turn a blind eye and the anger and the discontent grows. There are just too many things to change and Revolution it seems is inevitable. On the verge of this impending revolution (even if its a revolution of ideas) I'm reminded of these words which should make people think before moving ahead....
"They don't talk about the glory of killing for the revolution. What's the glory in taking a man from his bed and gunning him down in front of his wife and his children? Where's the glory in that? Where's the glory in bombing a Remembrance Day parade of old age pensioners, their medals taken out and polished up for the day. Where's the glory in that? To leave them dying or crippled for life or dead under the rubble of the revolution.." as spoken by Bono during a live performance of Sunday Bloody Sunday
Words to remind us that passion and aggression must back revolutions that change without destruction...Destruction and a new beginning is something we have tried over and over again and it always fails. We need to adopt a policy of change. Its possible and it shall be done.
A Revolution for change...the word revolution inspires passion and a promise of a land free of the dogmas of the present. A revolutionary's role doesn't end with the end of the wrong and the unjust. The dawn of a new age with new ideas and mechanism for change is the culmination of a revolution otherwise like most if not all revolutions of the past we shall remain unsuccessful.
As adrenalizing as a revolution may seem the ultimate aim of the revolution should be to ensure no further need of a revolution..
Its just a matter of time...The intellectual revolution is inevitable and the will to change will bring it to effect..
Image Source: www1.istockphoto.com
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