You have to.
First, it takes two hours to read this, and at least six hours to recover from this shock with some scars for ever.
http://subalternstudies.com/?p=153#comment-888
And here we are living in an Indian metro buying Tomato @ 38/kg.
My mom came home from the nearby annachi store, shocked with the information that tomato is being sold for Rs. 40 per kg. Onion costs Rs. 38 per kg. In all probability, tomato should’ve been sold for Rs. 20 six months back. In percentage terms, that is a hundred percent price rice. Its likely that tomato would get a weightage of some 3% in some Inflation index based on some market price somewhere in India, and that inflation index would’ve gone up from 11.15% to 11.25% 
- As far from accurate as we are from Uganda.
I don’t think any small Annachi store owner in his right mind will file Income Tax returns. As far as I am acquainted with their scheme of things, they should be filing a largely fictional sales tax returns, the degree of imagination depends on the degree of corruptness of the assessing sales tax officer. Let’s ignore the legality part for the moment. If this is the state of affairs, how relevant are these GDP numbers and inflation numbers to us?
Agreed, every country including the US has an underground economy. But I read elsewhere that only 10% of India’s population come under the organized sector. The rest 90% are more or less underground I think. Please correct me if I am wrong. It goes without saying that India is a much much bigger economy than our numbers suggest. Given this ground realities, all this number based analysis about Indian economic scenario seem as odd as a Raymond coat suit guy carrying gunny bag in his back.
I now think there are many little Indias within a greater India, and each has its own economic cycle, not necessarily in synch with the ‘official’ Indian economy.
‘Pana puzhakkam illai’ was told as the main reason why the DMK lost power in 2001. Those days I thought the theory was largely unfounded. Not so sure any more. This, if true either means low inflation or low black money. Maybe we need to dig deeper into those years and see if there were any local, underground, unofficial economic reason for that.
I have lot of questions but no answers. But the more I see this, the less convinced I am about the barometers we use for measuring our economic health.
Times change and yet it doesn’t.
Nineteen years, hundreds of crores wealth, and all sorts of records later, the entire world is still waiting for that one big scandal which can fill your face with cow dung, one big dissent on the cricket field which can be broadcasted the world over to embarrass, one wrong statement to the press in anger. You keep them waiting as always. Don’t let them win.
In all these years, your arms has seen more tennis elbows than you might want, you are not the tormentor you were, but your legs and your running between the wickets is still intact. You still score almost just as quickly.
Prime Ministers have come and gone but your batting average and strike rate has been the same. How I wish we had such constant GDP numbers. India has seen many a hard hitters, many a technically correct folks. You were the only one who can consistently hit hard while being technically correct. Two decades and that has not changed an iota.
Pontings may come and go, but if I were to choose between watching a gorgeous woman in nude or your trademark straight drive in full flow, I will choose your straight drive. That won’t change any soon.
During your early twenties they said you are throwing away your wicket, then in your late twenties they said you are not attacking enough, then you were discovered as selfish, now you are seen as that old guy. Indians wanted you and India win every single match. But all along the problem was always with you. You made such expectations look realistic. In the nineties, you made us forget that the game is played by eleven folks, with bat and ball. The entire country switched off the TV and went back to work once you got out.
First it was the Pakistanis, nowadays your own countrymen want you to go. Yet Shane Warne sings your praise as always. He should know since you had given him more sleepless nights than his own wife.
Retire you will one day. Your records will be broken as all records will be. You will die like all humans one day. But the master class you have given us on how a young middle-class guy should handle fame, wealth, adulation, media pressure, world class opposition, and the hopes and anger of one billion people will remain etched in our memories for ever.
My only request to you. All is well that ends well. If push comes to shove, veto them by hanging up your boots. Your greatness is more important than a few thousand runs. Don’t let them win. I know you won’t.
Amazing!
I guess it takes real genius to give a ‘Sell’ target of Rs.394 when the stock is trading at Rs.250 levels.
All of us have our own pet peeves about India. Its easy to crib. What if we can make a random list of TO DO items for the nation?
Assume you had the backing of the Union cabinet, State cabinet and the Kitchen cabinet, what can you do to make India better? Try to keep it economically feasible and realistic as much as possible. Its a good exercise 
- Triple the number of courts, recruit more judges to finish of the backlog of cases. Justice delayed is justice denied. A case MUST be settled within five years. The lawyer and the judge will be kicked out of their jobs otherwise. The money spent is worth the cause.
- Provide free compulsory school education to all at any cost. Bring reservation for rural candidates. Remove reservation for those in urban areas. Another way to tackle reservation is to build more schools and colleges. Triple the number of agricultural, arts and science, engineering and medical colleges. Money spent on education is well spent too. We have a clear ROI on education. Ask any middle class person on the importance of education. Allow foreign universities in India so that the rich and the wealthy can go and learn there.
- Restrict the proliferation of organized religious schools and outfits of all religion.
- Let Railways complete the double track and electrification of routes where people pay for their tickets, not where the Railway Mminister comes from. Have a target for expanding the rail network across the country to all towns above 50,000 in population. It is bad to see towns like Dharapuram go without rail network even after 61 years of independence. I do not mind paying a hundred rupees extra on my tickets to achieve this.
- Make all our national highway and state highways multi-lane highways. We can pay more tolls.
- We lose more people in accidents than to major diseases. Habitual traffic rules offenders should not be allowed to vote. Their passports should be revoked.
- Allow corporates to run public transport, not necessarily buses, but definitely mini buses, vans etc. We need more efficient public transport.
- Begin inter-linking of rivers and lakes at district level and state levels. Why expect to connect Krishna and Cauvery if we cannot connect Thamiraparani and Cauvery? Maybe we should enable water to be pushed To and Fro.
- Encourage people to have an authorized ’side business’ except the government employees. The income from second job/business can be declared tax free. Hopefully this reduces the time spent before TV watching ‘Maanada mayilaada’ and ‘Arasi’.
- Make it compulsory to have master plans for all towns with a population of fifty thousand reviewable every five years. The same should be available to the locals on demand.
- Bring a ceiling to the number of people who can live in a metro. There is no perumai in having a metro with crores of people. Bar new developments within a defined area in the cities. For e.g No new building/development should be allowed within Chennai / Mumbai city limits. We take care to reign in inflation, but have no such concern to reign in people aggregating in a small place all through the year for centuries.
- Make elections more frequent - once in three years.
- Ensure inflation adjusted wages for labourers. A blue collar worker should be able to sustain a decent standard of living. The middle class Indian wants his software engineer son get a hike every year but insists on paying the same amount to his servant maid, auto guy etc.
- Bring a common coordinated network among the intelligence agencies. Acts of terror occurs in this country just because RAW was too busy to inform the local police and vice versa.
- Pay as much salary for a police man as we do for a trainee software engineer.
- Remove subsidies for petrol and gas for those in the cities. Make it available to only those who live in tier 2-3 towns and villages. People in the cities - either they can afford to pay seventy five bucks per litre or they can opt to move to smaller towns where fuel consumption will also be less. It takes lot of oil subsidy to drive from Maraimalai Nagar to Navalur in a car everyday.
- I think there are few ways to reduce corruption in government offices
a) automate, computerize the process as much as possible, which would reduce human discretion
b) increase the number and salaries of the officers and decentralize their powers.
So long as the CMDA, with a handful of officers is the only authority to grant approval to buildings in the whole of Chennai, we are bound to have corruption.
- Only about 10% of India’s work force are employed in the organized sector. While the rest 90% eke out a living on their own. How do we make their lives better? Maybe microcredit will really help these people escape the clutches of money lenders. I don’t know much on this.
- Encourage doctors to build more clinics, but discourage corporatization of hospitals. Hospitals should not be allowed to operate as a company and declare profits and dividends to share holders.
- Restrict our current active sports persons from appearing in Ads. If they do, let 50% of what they earn trough commericals go for sports development fund. Let the fund be administered by a non political, non bureaucratic body of ex athetes who have won medals for the country in Asian games and Olympics.
PS: It was kinda difficult to jot down a twenty point agenda. Its easier to crib than to write something like this. And I bet its easier to write than to implement. But I still encourage people to try this as a tag and see what they can come up with.
Now they are talking!. I hope the markets will respond to this treatment. Let us see.
A lay off in US was on the cards for about a month now. It was featured and gossiped in the area portals.
So the announcement as such was not shocking. But what was indeed shocking was that some of the folks I had personally interacted with and who are the best have been asked to go.
It’s all fine to calculate like 1 resource in US = X resources in India. But there are some good resources who are invaluable. They can hire ten resources like me in India and yet we cannot compensate for that one critical guy who knows the product in and out for the past 5 years. I do not understand this logic of 1 guy with normal vision = 5 blind guys. Forget sentiments, this does not make business sense.
I cannot talk about this to the folks here since these are sensitive topics and NOT to be discussed. I cannot talk to the victims since they think they got fired because of us.
All this is done ostensibly to reduce costs. But some of the folks have been given benefits which are two years their annual salary ON HAND. So how does this reduce costs? My hunch is, and I may be wrong, its a mere accounting gimmick. A one time settlement, even if its a huge one will be written off from the company’s reserves, a Balance sheet item, while salaries which is a recurring item will be charged to P/L books periodically. These guys are going to show the analysts that we are reducing the salaries, and hence will increase profits in the P/L books in future while doling out two years pay from the balance sheet. They should have huge reserves in the balance sheet so it should not matter.
I think we are taking the adage, ‘Numbers don’t lie’ a bit too far. While numbers don’t lie, they only speak half the truth.
They weave a story of cost cutting which is stupid in the first place, and then spend a lot at one go as a result of such cost cutting! If the last sentence do not make sense, you are not alone.
கேள்வி: உங்க கட்சி ஆட்சிக்கு வந்தா உங்களோட முதல் கையெழுத்து எந்த திட்டத்துக்கு இருக்கும்?
பதில்: இங்கே காட்டாட்சி நடக்கிறது. தேவை இல்லாமல் என்னோட கல்யாண மண்டபத்தை இடிச்சாங்க. எல்லாத்துக்கும் கலைஞர் தான் காரணம்.
கேள்வி: ஆமா அது புரியுது. அதான் நீங்க ஆட்சிக்கு வந்துடறீங்க வெச்சுப்போம்… ஆட்சிக்கு வந்தா உங்களோட முதல் கையெழுத்து எந்த திட்டத்துக்கு இருக்கும்?
பதில்: மக்கள் எல்லாத்தையும் பார்த்துகிட்டு தான் இருக்காங்க… கேள்வி கேப்பாங்க ஒரு நாள்…. எல்லாரையும் சுட்டுக் கொல்லனும்.
கேள்வி: யாரை?
பதில்: நான் சொல்லாத விஷயத்தை எழுதறீங்க.. உங்க மேல வழக்கு போடுவேன்..
கேள்வி: ( …என்னால முடில….. ) சேது சமுத்திர திட்டம் பத்தி உங்க கருத்து என்ன?
பதில்: கருணாநிதி யோட கருத்து என்னவோ அதோட எதிர் கருத்துத் தான் என்னோட கருத்து.
கேள்வி: (ஆகா அபாரம் புல்லரிக்குது… ) நாடே உங்களை தாங்க ஆவலோட எதிர்பார்த்துகிட்டு இருக்கு.. பின்றீங்க!
பதில்: எல்லாம் கருணாநிதி பண்ற சதி.
ஆண்டவா……எல்லாம் நேரக் கொடுமை…. இதுக்கு தாத்தா, அம்மாவே தேவலாம் போல!……
இந்த பதிவினைப் படியுங்கள். மேல இருப்பவை எனக்கு மொக்கையாகப் பட்டது. ஆனால் ‘அவதாரங்களின் பின்னால்..’ ஆஸ்கார் ரவிச்சந்திரன் பற்றி பதிவு சுவாரசியம்
நெருடல்:
டைரக்டர் சசி ‘சொல்லாமலே’ வில் தானே அறிமுகம்?