மெர்ரில் லைஞ்ச்/கேப்ஜெமினியின் அறிக்கை ஒன்றின் படி இந்தியாவில் மில்லியன் அமெரிக்க டாலர்கள் (4 கோடி ரூபாய்கள்) சொத்து வைத்திருப்பவர்களின் எண்ணிக்கை ஒரு லட்சத்தைத் தாண்டி விட்டதாம்.
'இவர்கள் எல்லாம் வட்டி கட்டும் போது, வீடு கட்ட செலவழிக்கும் போது, வீட்டு வேலைக்கு ஆள் வைத்துக் கொள்ளும் போது மீதி நூற்றுப் பத்து கோடி பேருக்கும் சுபிட்சம் கிடைத்து விடும்'. அந்த நம்பிக்கையில்தான் நிதி அமைச்சரும், பிரதம மந்திரியும் 9% வளர்ச்சியைத் துரத்திக் கொண்டிருக்கிறார்கள்.
உண்மையில் என்ன நடக்கிறது?
(இந்தச் சுட்டி டெக்கான் குரோனிக்கிளின் செப்டம்பர் 23, 2007ன் பக்கத்தைச் சுட்டியது. நாள் மாற பக்கமும் மாறி விட்டது.)்).
யாஹூ
இந்தியன் எக்சுபிரசு
இந்து நாளிதழ்
இன்னொரு சுட்டி
83 கோடி இந்தியர்கள் ஒரு நாளைக்கு இருபது ரூபாய் வருமானத்தில் வாழ்க்கை நடத்துகிறார்களாம். முறை சாராத் தொழிலாளர்களில் நூற்றுக்கு 79 பேர், தாழ்த்தப்பட்ட/பழங்குடி வகுப்பினர்களில் நூற்றுக்கு 88 பேர், மிகவும் பிற்படுத்தப்பட்ட சாதியினரில் நூற்றுக்கு 80 பேர். நூற்றுக்கு 84 இசுலாமியர்கள் இவ்வளவு வருமானத்தில் தமது தேவைகளைப் பார்த்துக் கொள்ள வேண்டியது.
'அது எப்படிங்க இருக்க முடியும். இருபது ரூபாய் வருமானத்தில் யார் வேலை பார்க்கிறாங்க?' இது ஒரு நண்பரின் கேள்வி.
மாதம் இரண்டாயிரம் ரூபாய்கள் வருமானம் வரும் ஒரு குடும்பத்தில் கணவன், மனைவி, இரண்டு குழந்தைகள் என்று எடுத்துக் கொண்டால் ஒருவருக்கு ஒரு நாளைக்கு 20 ரூபாய்கள் கூடத் தேறாது. அப்படி பல குடும்பங்கள் சென்னை நகரிலேயே இருக்கின்றன. கிராமங்களிலும். சிறு நகரங்களிலும் இன்னும் குறைந்த வருமானம் இருக்கலாம்.
1990களில் ஆரம்பித்த பொருளாதாரச் சீர்திருத்தங்கள், பணக்காரர்களின் செல்வத்தைப் பெருக்கியிருக்கிறது. ஏழைகளை ஏழைகளாகவே வைத்திருக்கிறது. ஒழுகிப் போகும் வித்தை நடக்கவில்லை.
நம்மைச் சுற்றி நடப்பது மட்டும் உண்மை இல்லை. நகரங்களுக்கு வெளியேயும், மென்பொருள் துறைக்கு வெளியேயும் இந்தியா வாழ்கிறது. போக வேண்டிய தூரம் நிறைய இருக்கிறது.
35 கருத்துகள்:
மா.சி,
"rich gets richer poor gets poorer" இது தான் அந்த காலத்திலிருந்து இந்த காலம் வரை நடக்கிறது. தற்போது பணக்காரர்கள் மேலும் பணம் சேர்க்க அதிக வழிகள் கிடைக்கிறது என்பதே உண்மை.
//நகரங்களுக்கு வெளியேயும், மென்பொருள் துறைக்கு வெளியேயும் இந்தியா வாழ்கிறது. போக வேண்டிய தூரம் நிறைய இருக்கிறது.//
இதைத்தான் பெரும்பாலர் புரிந்து கொள்ளாமல் அது எப்படி திறமை இருக்கவன் சம்பாதிக்கிறான்னு சொல்லிக்கொள்கிறார்கள். ஒரு சாரருக்கு வழியே விடாமல் அப்படி பேசுவதனால் தான் இந்த வித்தியாசம் மேலும் மேலும் வளர்கிறது.
படிக்க வழிகள் , இட ஒதுக்கீடு எல்லாம் தந்து விட்டு வேலைக்கு வழிக்காட்டாமல் விட்டதால் , மாட்டை வண்டிக்கு முன்னால் கட்டாமல் பின்னால் கட்டிய நிலைமை தான் வந்து விட்டது.
எனவே தான் படித்தும் அதற்கான வேலை இல்லாமல் இருப்போர் எண்ணிக்கை அதிகரித்து விட்டது.
சிலர் தற்போதைய நிலையில் கிடைக்கும் வேலைகளை சொல்லலாம். ஆனால் கடந்த 10 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்னர் படித்தவர்களுக்கு எவரும் அதிக சம்பளம் தரும் வேலையை தருவதில்லை. புதிதாக படித்து வருபவர்களை தான் எடுத்துக்கொள்கிறார்கள். எனவே படித்த ஒரு பெரும் கூட்டமே கால வெள்ளத்தில் தனித்து விடப்பட்ட நிலை உருவாகியுள்ளது.
அவர்கள் நீங்கள் சொன்னது போல 2000,3000 ரூபாய்க்கு கிடைத்த வேலையை செய்துகொண்டு இருக்கிறார்கள்.
good article and very good point from BAT(vauval)
no maasi,
that data about 83 crores is not proved and the percentage is hazy.
the rich are getting richer and more number are getting rich, no doubt. but i dispute that poor are getting poorer or the rich are getting richer at the cost of poor.
the govt and the intermediaries in the name of govt steal or sqaunder billions of tax revenue, as you knew very well.
I can see betterment all around me when comapared to 1980s. it is subjective. but most data says more people have been pulled out of poverty than ever before in India. and the booming private sector has managed to create employment for millions more than ever before.
relative poverty is reducing no doubt. but absolute poverty is in large numbers. and unless the delivery mechanism is correted and plugged of all holes and loopholes, the majority of welfare spending will end up in the pockets of corrupt adminstrators and their crony contractors as evident today.
and if 83 crores and more getting poorer then naxals will have a easy struggle while there would have been bloodbath, mass starvation and revolution today...
pls ponder...
இந்த தேசத்துக் கோடானுகோடி மக்களின் "வாழும் சக்தி", மற்றும் "வாங்கும் சக்தி"யைப் பற்றி தெரிந்து கொள்ள நல்லதொரு பதிவு,நண்பரே!
சில ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன், நிதி அமைச்சர் சிதம்பரம், ரூ.10000/-க்கு
மேல், வங்கியில் கேஷாக ஒரு தடவையில் எடுத்தால், அதற்கு 1%
தொகை வரியாகக் கொடுக்க வேண்டுமென ஒரு திட்டம் கொண்டுவந்தாரே?..அதை அத்தனை
அரசியல் தலைவர்களும் ஏழைகளின்,
நடுத்தர மக்களின் பேரில் அதை
எதிர்த்தார்களே? இந்த புள்ளி விவரங்களைப் பார்த்தால்...
இதுதான் ஏழ்மையைப் போக்கும் விதமா?
ஏழைங்க இன்னும் ரொம்ப ஏழையாப் போய்க்கிட்டு இருக்காங்க(-:
குற்றங்கள் அதிகரிக்க இதுவும் ஒரு காரணம்தானே?
மா.சி. அவர்களே, தவறாமல் உங்கள் பதிவு படிக்கிறேன். எப்பவும் போல், பல விஷயங்களை அடக்கிய, கண் திறக்க வைக்கும் செய்தி. எனக்கு அவ்வளவாக நம்பிக்கை வராததால், கொஞ்சம் தேடிப் பார்த்தேன்.
நீங்கள் குறிப்பிடும் மெரில் லிஞ்சும், கேப் ஜெமினியும் வருடா வருடம் தொகுக்கும் உலக சொத்து அறிக்கை 2006 பக்கம் 8ல், வளர்ச்சி விகிதத்தில் உயர்சொத்துடையோர் எண்ணிக்கை இந்தியாவில் வளர்ந்தாலும், உயர்சொத்துடையோர் மக்கள் எண்ணிக்கையில் 0.01% மட்டுமே இந்தியாவில். பொதுவாக ஆசிய பசிஃபிக் பகுதியிலே இது 0.10% ஆக இருக்கிறது (இந்தியாவையும் சேர்த்து). இதைக் குறிப்பிட்டு சொல்லியிருக்கிறார்கள்.
"காலர்" செய்தி (எந்த வண்ணக் காலர் /காலரைத் தூக்கறாற் போல் என்று இரண்டுமே): பணிசார் (service), தொழில் (industrial) துறைகள் இரண்டும் இந்தியாவுக்கு அபாரமான வளர்ச்சி தந்திருக்கின்றன. மிகக் குறிப்பாக, மென்பொருள்!!! இவையும் அறிக்கையில் சொல்லப் பட்டிருக்கின்றன.
இந்தியாவின் வளர்ச்சி இன்னும் பல ஏழைகளுக்குப் போய்ச் சேரவில்லை என்பது உண்மை தான். ஆனால், 90களின் வளர்ச்சியால் தான், மாதம் 1000க்கும் கீழ் (80களில் மாதம் ரூ. 500ல்) பெற்றோர், 2 பள்ளி மாணாக்கர் என்று இளமை பழகிய என்னைப் போன்றவர்கள் (என்னுடன் படித்தவர்களையும் சேர்த்து) ஏதோ ஒரு வகையில் (Open the floodgates;) இன்று இந்தியாவுடன் வளர்ந்து இந்திய வளர்ச்சியில் பங்காற்றிக் கொண்டிருக்கிறோம். எனக்கென்னவோ, மத்தியதர குடும்பத்தினர் தான் எண்ணிக்கையில் அதிகரித்திருக்கிறோம் என்று தோன்றுகிறது.
////1990களில் ஆரம்பித்த பொருளாதாரச் சீர்திருத்தங்கள், பணக்காரர்களின் செல்வத்தைப் பெருக்கியிருக்கிறது. ஏழைகளை ஏழைகளாகவே வைத்திருக்கிறது. ஒழுகிப் போகும் வித்தை நடக்கவில்லை.///
shiva,
how do you prove this point ?
i am not saying tickle down is perfect and the best. but all capitalist nations like Japan, E.U, US, Canada, ANZ used this trickle down effect to reduce poverty to a very great extent in the last hundred years. it is a fact for all to see. when compared to Charles Dickensen England of 1870s, 1970 UK is far prosperous with very little relative poverty.
and tickle down is distorted in India due to govt interference and
plain theft of the govt welfare spending by intermediaries and crooks. otherwise, poverty reduction would have been much faster and deeper. and inlfation due to defict financing erodes purchasing power of the masses more rapidly than any wage rise.
hence more child labour now than
ever before in absoulte terms. and you were arguing that defict financing is good and inflation is ok,etc. contradictory objecitvs..
even after poring lacs of crores into agri, health and education, more than 75 % of the monies spent are sqaundered in admn costs and leakages and theft by govt staff, politicians, etc. it is not the fautlt of this trickle down theory as it has been proved well in the western nations, east asian 'tigers', aNZ, etc.
our corrosion of ethics has distorted this trickle ;
and i challenge you to prove that if there is liberalisation since 1991, things would have been much better and less poverty than it is otherwise. one basic data is the
'hindu rate of growth' of 60s and 70s and the total employment offered then.
and don't forget that the population explosion has strainned all efforts at poverty reduction.
if suppose our population is only 60 crores instead of 110 crores, then there would have been more demand for labour, less inflation and more welfare benefits for the needy, etc.
//and i challenge you to prove that if there is liberalisation since 1991, things would have been much better and less poverty than it is otherwise.//
i meant if there is NO liberalisation.... typing error..
மா.சி.அண்ணே கரெக்ட்டுதாண்ணே நீங்க சொல்றது..
நான் வீடு மாத்தணும்னு ஒரு வருஷமா முயற்சி செஞ்சிக்கிட்டிருக்கேன். முன்னாடியே ஒரு வீட்ல சொல்லி வைச்சிருந்தேன். 2500 ரூபாய்தான் வாடகை.. எனக்கே கிடைக்கும்னு ஆசையோடு காத்திருந்தேன். 'காத்திருந்தவன் பொண்டாட்டியை நேத்து வந்தவன் கடத்திட்டுப் போன' கதையா.. இப்ப 2500 ரூபாய் வாடகையாக வசூலிக்கத் தகுதியுள்ள அந்த வீட்டை ஒரு சாப்ட்வேர் இன்ஜீனியர் 5000 ரூபாய் கொடுத்து குடி வந்துவிட்டார்.
புரோக்கரிடம் சொன்னால், "எனக்கு ரெண்டு மாச வாடகை கமிஷனா கொடுத்திருக்கார் ஸார்.." என்கிறார்.
இப்படி பணம் வைத்திருப்பவர்களும், பணமே இல்லாதவர்களும் ஒரு இருப்பிடம் தேடி அலையும்போது பணம் இருப்பவர்களுக்கு அது கிடைக்கிறது. சரி.. பணம் இல்லாதவர்கள் பணம் இருப்பவர்களைப் போல ஆகுவதற்கு இந்தப் பொருளாதாரம் சார்ந்த சமூகத்தில் என்ன வழிமுறைகள் உள்ளன என்பது எனக்குப் புரியவில்லை.
மாதச் சம்பளமாக 30000 தரக்கூடிய பணிகள் கம்ப்யூட்டர் தொடர்பானவை மட்டுமே. ஆனால் எனக்குத் தெரிந்து யாரும் கம்ப்யூட்டரை சாப்பிடுவதில்லை. உணவுப் பொருட்களைத்தான் சாப்பிடுகிறார்கள்.
வாழ்வதற்கு ஆதாரமான உணவுப் பொருட்கள் உற்பத்தித் துறையும், அதனைச் சார்ந்த விவசாயத் துறையில் ஒரு நாள் கூலி வேலை செய்பவர்களும் ஒரு படி நெல்லை கூலியாக வாங்கிக் கொண்டு போக.. இங்கே கம்ப்யூட்டர்கள் மொத்தத்தையும் அள்ளிக் கொண்டு செல்கின்றன.
எந்த இடத்தில் தவறு இருக்கிறது என்பது புரியவில்லை..?
வவ்வால்,
//படித்த ஒரு பெரும் கூட்டமே கால வெள்ளத்தில் தனித்து விடப்பட்ட நிலை உருவாகியுள்ளது.//
அது ஒரு பகுதி. இன்னும் பெரும்பகுதி கல்லூரிப் படிப்புக்கு வாய்ப்பில்லாமல் போனவர்களையும் சேர்த்துக் கொள்ள வேண்டும்.
//good article and very good point from BAT(vauval)//
நன்றி சதுக்கபூதம்.
//that data about 83 crores is not proved and the percentage is hazy.//
எப்படிச் சொல்கிறீர்கள்? நமக்கு வசதியான புள்ளி விபரங்களை மட்டும் எடுத்துக் கொள்ள வேண்டியதுதானா, என்ன?
//I can see betterment all around me when comapared to 1980s.//
அதைத்தான் நானும் சொல்கிறேன். நாம் பார்க்கும் நம்மைச் சுற்றிய உலகத்துக்கு வெளியேயும் பல கோடி மக்கள் வசிக்கிறார்கள். நம் சூழலைக் கூட கூர்ந்து அவதானித்தால் இன்னும் நிலவும் அவல நிலையை புரிந்து கொள்ளலாம்.
//and if 83 crores and more getting poorer then naxals will have a easy struggle while there would have been bloodbath, mass starvation and revolution today...//
அது நடக்காமல் இருப்பதற்கு அந்த 83 கோடிப் பேரின் பொறுமைக்கு நன்றி சொல்லுங்கள். அந்த தகவலையே மறுப்பது எப்படி நியாயமாகும்?
//இந்த தேசத்துக் கோடானுகோடி மக்களின் "வாழும் சக்தி", மற்றும் "வாங்கும் சக்தி"யைப் பற்றி தெரிந்து கொள்ள நல்லதொரு பதிவு,நண்பரே!//
ஆமாம் ஜீவி. கருத்துக் கணிப்பில் அழகிரி பெயர் பின்தங்குதல், ராமர் பாலம் உடைபடுதல் போன்றவைதான் நமக்குக் கவலை. நாடாளுமன்றத்தில் வறுமை பற்றி விவாதம் கடைசியாக எப்போது நடந்தது?
அன்புடன்,
மா சிவகுமார்
துளசி அக்கா,
//இதுதான் ஏழ்மையைப் போக்கும் விதமா?//
ஏழ்மையைப் போக்குதல் என்பது ஒரு தேர்தல் பய மருந்தாகத்தான் அரசுக்கு இருக்கிறதே தவிர உண்மையான அக்கறையுடன் ஏழ்மை ஒழிப்பு பற்றி திட்டங்கள் எதுவும் தென்படவில்லை.
//மத்தியதர குடும்பத்தினர் தான் எண்ணிக்கையில் அதிகரித்திருக்கிறோம் என்று தோன்றுகிறது.//
ஆமாம், கெக்குபிக்குணி. அப்படி நடுத்தர குடும்பத்தினரின் எண்ணிக்கை இருபது கோடியிலிருந்து இருபத்தைந்து கோடியாக உயர்ந்ததாக வைத்துக் கொண்டாலும், அவர்களது வருமானம் சராசரியாக மாதத்துக்கு பத்தாயிரத்திலிருந்து முப்பதாயிரமாக உயர்ந்து விட்டதாக வைத்துக் கொண்டாலும், மீதி இருக்கும் 80 கோடிக்கு என்ன கதி என்பதுதான் கேள்வி!
அதியமான்,
//tickle down is distorted in India due to govt interference and
plain theft of the govt welfare spending by intermediaries and crooks.//
சிறுபான்மையினர் பெருநகர பளபளக்கும் கடைத் தொடர்களில் புரள, பெரும்பான்மையினர் அவர்களிடமிருந்து பொசியும் வளத்துக்காகக் காத்திருக்க வேண்டும் என்பது எந்த ஊர் நியாயம்?
//i challenge you to prove that if there is liberalisation since 1991, things would have been much better and less poverty than it is otherwise.//
நான் இன்னொரு புள்ளிவிவரத் திரட்டுதல் செய்ய முடியாது. கொடுத்திருக்கும் சுட்டியில் ஒரு நிறுவனம் பல நாட்கள் உழைத்து திரட்டிய விபரங்கள் என்று குறிப்பிடுகிறார்கள். இது தவறு என்று எப்படி இவ்வளவு சாதாரணமாகச் சொல்லி விடுகிறீர்கள்?
உங்களைச் சுற்றிப் பாருங்கள். மாத வருமானம் 2000 ரூபாய்களில் யார் யார் வேலை பார்க்கிறார்கள் - அடுக்குமாடி குடியிருப்பு காவலர்கள், தனியார் ஊர்தி ஓட்டுனர்கள்..........
தினக் கூலி 100 ரூபாய்க்கு வேலை பார்ப்பவர்களை பார்த்ததில்லையா நீங்கள்? அரசு நிர்ணயித்துள்ள குறைந்த பட்ச ஊதியம் எவ்வளவு?
நம் வீடுகளில் குப்பை அள்ளிச் செல்லும் தொழிலாளிக்கு வருமானம் எவ்வளவு?
நாமும் நம் கண்ணில் படுவதும் மட்டுமே உலகம் என்று இல்லாமல் கொஞ்சம் யோசித்துப் பாருங்கள்.
//எந்த இடத்தில் தவறு இருக்கிறது என்பது புரியவில்லை..?//
அந்தக் கம்பியூட்டருக்காக உழைக்கும் முயற்சிகள் எல்லாம் வெளிநாடுகளுக்குப் போய்ச் சேர்ந்து விடுவதுதான் இந்த நிலைக்குக் காரணம். 25000 சம்பளம் வாங்கும் கணினித் தொழிலாளியின் உற்பத்தி நம் பொருளாதரத்திலேயே செலுத்தப்பட்டால் அதன் விளைவு 1,00,000 ரூபாய்களாக இருந்து மற்ற துறையினரின் வருமானமும் அதிகரிக்கும்.
அதே உழைப்பு வெளிநாட்டுக்கு அனுப்பப்பட்டு 50000 மட்டும் விலையாக வந்து சேர்ந்தால் நாம் பார்க்கும் இந்த வீக்கம்தான் மிஞ்சும்.
அன்புடன்,
மா சிவகுமார்
///25000 சம்பளம் வாங்கும் கணினித் தொழிலாளியின் உற்பத்தி நம் பொருளாதரத்திலேயே செலுத்தப்பட்டால் அதன் விளைவு 1,00,000 ரூபாய்களாக இருந்து மற்ற துறையினரின் வருமானமும் அதிகரிக்கும்.////
pls expain how ? if Indian orders can generate better revenue then the IT majors and employees would need no prompting to do as you suggest.
i do see effects of trickle down, not in metros or booming areas like Thirupur, but in backward areas like Dindugal or Thiruvannamaalai, when comapred to 70s. something is better than nothing and things would have been more worser but for this LPG. yes there is grinding poverty and child labour. i knew very well. but you don't seem to remember the relative poverty rates and unemployment that existed in 1980. i do. pls see the 1980 film varumayin niram sihaapu about acute unemployment in 1970s in metros and everywhere when there was no viable private sector and socialisim was at its worst peak.
all economic data says this growth has pulled more people (out of this huge base of 1.2 billion) than ever before. you haven't addressed the population exposion induced problems, corruption, etc.
so what you want the govt and others to do or follow ? return to the days of 'planning' or rise tax rates and defict spending. re-impose controls ?
and as you understood about the problems and distortions in bus transport sector, similar set up still exists in many areas of the economy like labour and exit policy, financial sectors, etc.
govt mini wage rate is on paper and unenforcable like the income tax rate, which is routinely violated by everyone except the hapless salaried class.
but your ideas are contradictory. you don't mind defict spending induced price rise which reduces the purchasing power of the worker's wages. yet demand more wages from the employer whose production costs and interset burden increase proportianally with rising inflation.
////ஒரு படி நெல்லை கூலியாக வாங்கிக் கொண்டு போக.. இங்கே கம்ப்யூட்டர்கள் மொத்தத்தையும் அள்ளிக் கொண்டு செல்கின்றன.
எந்த இடத்தில் தவறு இருக்கிறது என்பது புரியவில்லை..?///
Unamai thamizan,
prices rise everywhere in India, not just in IT areas like Chennai.
price rise and black money which is parked with real estate results in over pricing for housing and high rentals.
the real resons for price rise, year after year is :
விலைவாசி ஏன் உயர்கிறது ?
நமது ரூபாயின் வாங்கும் திறன், 1947 இருந்ததை விட இப்போது சுமார் 160 மடங்கு குறைந்துள்ளது. அதாவது 1947 இன் ஒரு ரூபாய் இன்று 160 ருபாய்க்கு சமம். இதற்கு முக்கிய காரணம், அரசு நோட்டடித்து செலவு செய்ய்வதே ஆகும்.
சாதரணமாக பொருட்க்களுக்கான தேவை அதிகரிக்கும் போது அல்லது உற்பத்தி குறையும் போது, விலை ஏறுகிறது. மாற்றாக, புழக்கத்தில் இருக்கும் பணத்தின் அளவு மிக அதிகமானால் பணவீக்கம் ஏற்படுகிறது ; அதாவது அரசாங்கம் ரூபாய் நோட்டுகளை அச்சடித்து செலவு செய்யும் போதும் விலைவாசி ஏறும்.
மத்திய பட்ஜட்டில் பல விதமான செலவுகளால், இப்போது ஆண்டுக்கு சுமார் 1.6 ல்ட்சம் கோடி துண்டு விழுகிறது. இதில், அரசாங்கம் ஒரு 70 ஆயிரம் கோடி கடன் வாங்குகிறது. மிச்ச்திற்க்கு (சுமார் 90,000 கோடி ரூபாய்) நோட்டடித்து செல்வு செய்கிறது. பணவீக்க்ம் உருவாகி விலைவாசி ஏறுகிறது. மிக அதிகமான ரூபாய் நோட்டுகள் மிக குறைவன எண்ணிக்கையில் உள்ள பொருட்க்களை துரத்தும் போது பொருட்க்களின் விலை ஏறுகிறது. புதிதாக உற்ப்பத்தி செய்ய முடியாத பண்டங்களான நிலம், ரியல் எஸ்டேட் போன்றவை மிக அதிகமாக விலை ஏறுகிறது.
வட்டி விகிதம், விலைவாசி உயர்வின் விகிததை ஒட்டியே மாறும். வட்டி என்பது, பணத்தின் வாடகையே. பணத்தின் மதிப்பு குறைய குறைய, வட்டி விகிதம் அதற்கேற்றாற் போல் உயரும். கந்து வட்டி விகிதம் பல மடங்கு அதிகரிக்க இதுவே காரணம்.
1930களில் காந்தியடிகள் கதர் இயக்கத்திற்காக வங்கியிலிருந்து 5 சதவித வட்டிக்கு கடன் வாங்க முடிந்தது. அன்றய பணவீக்கமும், விலைவாசி உயர்வும் அப்படி இருந்தன. பற்றாகுறை பட்ஜெட்களின் விலைவாக 1950 முதல் 1990கல் வரை பணவீக்கமும். விலைவாசியும், வட்டிவிகிதமும் தொடர்ந்து ஏறின.
ஊதியம் போதாதால், தொழிளாலர்கள் மற்றும் ஏழைகள் மிகவும் பாதிப்படைகிறார்கள். ஏழைகள், தங்கள் குழந்தைகளை தொழிலாளர்களாக அனுப்புகின்றனர். அதிக வட்டி விகிததில், கந்து வட்டிக்கு கடன் வாங்க வேண்டிய நிலை. கூலி / சம்பள் உய்ரவு கேட்டு போராட வேண்டிய நிலை. அதனால் உற்பத்தி செலவு அதிகரித்து, விலைவாசி மேலும் உயர்கிறது. சம்பளம் போதாமல் அரசாங்க ஊழியர்கள் லஞ்சம் வாங்க முற்படுகின்றனர்.
ஜெர்மனி போன்ற நாடுகள் பணவீக்கதை மிகவும் கட்டுபடுத்தி விலைவாசியை ஒரே அளவில் வைத்துள்ள்ன. அதனால் அங்கு சுபிட்சம் பொங்குகிறது. இங்கோ வறுமை வாட்டுகிறது. எவ்வளவு சம்பாதித்தாலும் போதவில்ல்லை.
அரசின் வெட்டி செலவுகளுக்காக, பொது மக்கள் விலைவாசி உயர்வு என்ற மறைமுக வரியை சுமக்க வேண்டியுள்ளது. ஆனால் அடிப்படை பொருளாதார அறிவு இல்லாத இடதுசாரிகளோ தொழில் அதிபர்களையும், முதலாளிகளையும் காரணமாக சொல்கின்றனர்.
லார்டு கீய்யினஸ் சொன்னது : "..ஒரு நாட்டின் ஒழுக்கதையும், உயர்ந்த குணத்தைய்யும் அழிப்பதற்க்கு சிறந்த வழி என்ன்வென்றால், அந்நாட்டின் நாணய மதிப்பை வெகுவாக சீரழிப்பது மூலம்...." ; நாம் அதற்கு நல்ல எடுத்துக்காட்டு. இதை என்று உணர்வோம் ?
http://nellikkani.blogspot.com/
அதியமான்,
//pls expain how ? //
முயற்சிக்கிறேன்.
1. மென்பொருள் தொழிலாளரின் மாதச்சம்பளம் 30000 என்று வைத்துக் கொள்வோம். அதை சேவையாக மாற்றி வாடிக்கையாளருக்கு அளிக்கும் நிறுவனச் செலவுகளையும் சேர்த்து வாடிக்கையாளருக்கு மொத்த விலை 60000 என்று வைத்துக் கொள்வோம்.
2. இந்த விலை கொடுக்கும் வாடிக்கையாளருக்குக் கிடைக்கும் பலன் குறைந்தது 60,000, வழக்கமாக 1,00,000 ரூபாய்களுக்கு மேல் இருக்கும். சரிதானே?
3. இப்போது மென் பொருள் தொழிலாளி வசிக்கும் நம் சமூகத்துக்கு வந்து சேர்வது அவரது கையில் 30,000 ரூபாய்கள். அவரது முயற்சியின் விளைவான உற்பத்தித் திறன் அதிகரிப்பு அமெரிக்காவுக்குப் போய் விட்டது.
4. அதனால் நம்ம ஊரில், மற்ற துறைகளில் அவரது 30,000 ரூபாய்களுக்கு ஈடு கொடுக்கும் அளவுக்கு உற்பத்தி அதிகரிக்காமல் போக, அங்கு வேலை பார்ப்பவர்களுக்கு வருமானம் அதிகரிக்காமல் இருந்து விடுகிறது. அவர்கள் நிலைமை கீழிறங்கி விடுகிறது.
அதிக அளவு பணம் அதே அளவு பொருட்களை/சேவைகளைத் துரத்த விலைவாசியும் ஏறி விடுகிறது.
5. அதே மென்பொருள் தொழிலாளியின் முயற்சி அவர் வசிக்கும் சூழலுக்குள் பயன்படுத்தப்பட்டால் அந்தத் துறையில் வேலை பார்க்கும் தொழிலாளியின் உற்பத்தித் திறன் அதிகரித்து நாட்டில் கிடைக்கும் பொருட்களின் / சேவைகளின் அளவும் மதிப்பும் அதிகரித்து விடும்.
இப்போது அதிகப் பணத்தால் வாங்கக் கூடிய பொருட்களின் அளவு அதிகரித்து விடுகிறது. அந்த மதிப்பை உருவாக்கிய பிற துறையினரின் நிலைமையும் சேர்ந்து முன்னேறுகிறது.
6. உண்மையான திறந்த வர்த்தகம் உலகம் முழுவதும் நடைபெற்றால் அமெரிக்காவில் நிகழும் உற்பத்தி அதிகரிப்பு நம்ம ஊருக்கும் வந்து சேர வேண்டும். ஆனால், அவர்களது சட்ட திட்டங்கள் அவர்களது நலன்களை பாதுகாத்துக் கொள்ளும் படி அமைவதால் அந்தப் பலனில் பெரும்பகுதி அங்கேயே தங்கி விடும்.
இதில் எது சரி, தவறு என்று வாதிட வரவில்லை. இது நிலைமை என்று நான் புரிந்து கொண்டுள்ளேன். இதை மாற்ற என்ன செய்யலாம் என்றும் பார்க்க முயல்கிறேன். அவ்வளவுதான்.
//all economic data says this growth has pulled more people //
எந்த விபரம். கொஞ்சம் விளக்குங்களேன்.
//govt mini wage rate is on paper and unenforcable//
அது கூட நாளுக்கு 65 ரூபாய் என்று நினைக்கிறேன். குடும்பத்தில் நான்கு பேர் இருந்தால் தலைக்கு 15 ரூபாய்தான், அதுவும் 365 நாளும் வேலை பார்த்தால்தான்.
//yet demand more wages from the employer//
ஆமாம். நிறுவனத்தின் நிகர லாபம் 0 ஆகும் வரை சம்பளம் அதிகரிக்க வேண்டியதுதான்.
அன்புடன்,
மா சிவகுமார்
Shiva,
///4. அதனால் நம்ம ஊரில், மற்ற துறைகளில் அவரது 30,000 ரூபாய்களுக்கு ஈடு கொடுக்கும் அளவுக்கு உற்பத்தி அதிகரிக்காமல் போக, அங்கு வேலை பார்ப்பவர்களுக்கு வருமானம் அதிகரிக்காமல் இருந்து விடுகிறது. அவர்கள் நிலைமை கீழிறங்கி விடுகிறது.
அதிக அளவு பணம் அதே அளவு பொருட்களை/சேவைகளைத் துரத்த விலைவாசியும் ஏறி விடுகிறது.////
totally wrong argument. inlflation is an all india phenomenon and prices rise in athipatti and Salem as well, where there is no IT emloyees. deficit fiancining results in 22 % growth of money supply last year (RBI data). and the 9 % growth absorbs half of this excess maney supply while the remaining is translated into price rise.
and between 1956 to 70 price rise (inflation) was at an average rate of more than 20 %. there was no IT then nor oil crisis of OPEC. then how was that huge rate of inflation ? simply due to deficit spending which produces this bloodbath. read more about the past....
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9% GDP growth is widely inclusive
By Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar
The leftist critics are right when they say India's record GDP grow-th is bypassing rural millions. This tragedy arises from massive government failure to provide decent education and infrastructure to every village despite 60 years of gargantuan but wasteful spending. India's cities have been connected to the global economy and have taken off. The villages have not.
But does this justify criticism that 9% GDP growth benefits only a thin upper crust of the population? Not at all.
No economy can grow at 9% unless a wide swathe of people simultaneously increase their productivity and output. Caveat: in small economies, a single mineral deposit can raise GDP without widespread citizen involvement. These exceptions apart, 9% growth is rare across the world precisely because it is so difficult to rapidly improve the productivity of most of the population.
The plain fact is that 9% growth cannot be non-inclusive. It can be achieved only by aggregating the efforts of hundreds of millions. Now, widespread inclusion is not the same thing as complete inclusion. Significant sections are excluded in India, especially in badly-governed states. Still, 9% growth is widely inclusive, and could never have been achieved by a thin upper crust.
Mobile phone connections in India are growing at the rate of six million per month, or 72 million per year. With telecom towers coming up in rural areas, the number of mobile connections is expected to soon hit 500 million. Clearly, this represents wide inclusion, not a thin upper crust.
The number of households with TV sets was just one million in 1980, mostly black and white TVs. Today, 120 million households have TV sets, mostly colour TV. When close to two-thirds of all households have what was an elite privilege in the heyday of socialism, let us celebrate this as a success of inclusion.
Forbes magazine's list of dollar billionaires has two new Indian entrants, K P Singh of DLF and Ramesh Chandra of Unitech. Critics find it awful that Singh and Chandra have so much wealth when others have so little. But Singh and Chandra used to be non-entities, and have become billionaires only because the price of the few thousand acres they own has skyrocketed. The same price rise has benefited every home and farm owner. Urban land in Delhi goes for Rs 2 lakh/square yard, and rural land in Haryana sells for up to a crore per acre. So, rising real estate prices are actually very inclusive. They benefit all from the jhuggi owner to the small farmer. Even those recorded as landless in rural India have homesteads. A small minority with no house or land at all have missed the bonanza. But the vast majority of Indians have gained.
India's 9% growth is not, as some people think, due largely to the information technology (IT) exports. Indeed, India's National Accounts do not even list IT services as a separate category. These services are lumped into the category 'real estate, ownership of dwellings, business and legal services'. The real impact of IT is grossly underestimated by official data, since GDP is based on a historical composition of the economy, where IT had a tiny role. If you exclude IT altogether from GDP, the growth of the rest of the economy will probably be 9%.
Services account for most of the economy. The largest services sector is 'trade hotels and restaurants', which has been growing at 8-10% for many years. This is not run by the Ambanis or software giants.
Millions of urban and rural folk are employed in trade. Hotels and restaurants mean, overwhelmingly, dhabas, pavement vendors in cities and tea-shop owners in villages. Our formal statistics have no good way of measuring this unorganised sector, and so unfortunately miss large parts of it.
Activist Madhu Kishwar estimated some time ago that almost half the households in Delhi were engaged in street hawking and cycle rickshaws. Both these activities are largely illegal, and hence, poorly captured properly by official data.
The fastest-growing sector is communications (23.9% in 2005-06). The telecom revolution benefits a wide swathe of people, not an upper crust. Transport, another fast-growing sector, also benefits a wide swathe. Finance and insurance are booming. Millions of the uninsured now have cover. Consumer credit has spread the benefits of credit to millions of buyers of TV, white goods, vehicles and homes. Micro-credit has reached over 10 million poor women.
Official data show that almost 60% of Indians are engaged in agriculture. This is misleading. Agriculture is a seasonal occupation. Most rural workers do multiple casual jobs. A rural worker who spends 51% of his time in agriculture is classified as agricultural, even though 49% of his work may be in services, construction and rural processing. One study estimated that 70% of new rural jobs for women were in construction (which is growing by 14%, and employs millions).
If all Indians participated in today's boom, i imagine GDP growth would be 15%. Clearly, we need more inclusion of those left out today. But equally we must scotch the notion that only a thin upper crust of Indians is benefiting. India's growth is widely, though not fully, inclusive.
http://www.swaminomics.org/
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///ஆமாம். நிறுவனத்தின் நிகர லாபம் 0 ஆகும் வரை சம்பளம் அதிகரிக்க வேண்டியதுதான்////
you can try this in your own company. first of all your partners will not accept. secondly you will never grow as long as there is no accumulated profit. thirdly your incentive for hard work and expansion will be reduced greatly. fourthly this is all mere talk...
Athiyaman
Laloo Yadav beats Nehru hollow
By Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar
Annual average growth of gross state domestic product (%) for 14 major states.
1993-94 to 2004-05
1980-81 to 1990-91
Gujarat
7.46
5.08
W.Bengal
7.06
4.71
Rajasthan
6.39
6.60
Haryana
6.33
6.43
Karnataka
7.26
5.29
Kerala
6.18
3.57
A.P.
5.95
5.65
Maharashtra
5.59
6.02
Tamil Nadu
5.46
5.38
Madhya Pradesh
4.55
4.56
Orissa
4.86
4.29
Punjab
4.39
5.34
Uttar Pradesh
4.28
4.95
Bihar
4.89
4.66
ALL INDIA
6.32
5.47
Source: Calculated from CSO website by author; Ahluwalia (2000). Excludes minor and special category states (e.g. Delhi, Kashmir) and new states (Uttranchal, Jharkand, Chattisgarh) carved out of old states.
Many critics of globalization and economic reform complain that fast economic growth in the last two decades has been concentrated in a few fortunate states, and that the most backward ones have not benefited. Tears have been shed at the plight of the backward states, and at the supposedly pitiless logic of globalization which makes the poor poorer and rich richer.
The moaning and graining is not limited to leftist critics. A reformist critic like Lord Meghnad Desai said at a recent lecture that Bihar had stagnated and experienced virtually no development for 15 years under Laloo Yadav.
Really? Our table shows that Bihar is near the bottom of the growth league. Yet the state averaged 4.66 % growth per year in the decade 1980-91, and 4.89 % in the 12 years from 1993-94 to 2004-05, the latest period for which the CSO gives state-level data. This was the period when Laloo ruled.
Clearly, Bihar is a relatively poor performer. Yet 4.89 % growth under Laloo can hardly be called zero development. It is much faster than the 3.5% that India averaged under Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Nobody ever claimed that Nehru pushed India into stagnation, or that India suffered zero development under him. Indeed, leftists hark back with nostalgia to those golden days of socialism. Let’s face it: for all its many shortcomings, Bihar under Laloo grew faster than India under Nehru.
Indeed, Bihar has been growing faster than Punjab, which used to be India’s richest state. As our table shows, between 1993-94 and 2003-04, Punjab grew at only 4.39% annually. This was slower than in other backward states such as Orissa (4.86 %) and Madhya Pradesh (4.55 %). Clearly, globalization and economic reform have not simply made the rich grow richer. The states with the best connectivity have grown fastest. But even the weakest performers have grown rapidly by world standards, and by India’s own historical standards.
Bihar has the lowest literacy rate among major Indian states. Yet, while India’s overall literacy improved by roughly 23% in the decade 1991-2001, Bihar’s improved by 27%. That cannot be called a decade of lost development.
By some yardsticks, Bihar exceeds the national average. Bihar’s infant mortality rate of 61 per 1000 in 2002 was better than the national average of 63 per 10000, and better than the 62 per 1000 recorded by relatively developed states like Andhra Pradesh and Haryana. Bihar’s life expectancy for males, 65.66 years, is actually higher than the national average of 63.87 years. Now, the quality of Bihar’s data collection is suspect, so I would not read to much into these figures. Yet the data suggest that it is absurd to claim that Bihar had little or no development under Laloo.
Why does Laloo have such a terrible image? Partly because he likes it that way. For 15 years as Chief Minister he declared that his priority was not economic growth but social justice, especially caste justice. He did little to improve public investment. Instead he aimed to provide dignity and self-respect to the lower castes, and safety to Muslims. He succeeded well enough to win three elections in a row. Even the collapse of law and order and the rise of criminals linked to Laloo was seen, locally, as lower castes improving their market share of Bihar’s biggest business—crime. This was terrible for the investment climate, but not, apparently, for electoral outcomes.
I suspect that Bihar exceeded 4% growth under Laloo mainly because Biharis could migrate to other states for jobs, send remittances home and bring back new skills. Had Biharis been obliged to invest in Bihar itself, their savings would have fetched little return, given the poor investment climate. But since they could invest in the rest of India they enjoyed a substantial return. Education collapsed in the state, but Biharis went to Delhi and elsewhere for higher education.
Thus, Laloo succeeded for reasons beyond his control. Growth was not rapid, but was faster than during the neta-babu raj. The lower castes were able to grab a bigger slice of a growing economic pie, albeit one that grew a slower than the Indian average.
Apart from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh is often described as the Slough of Despond. Certainly its law and order and social indicators leave much to be desired. Yet it too has been growing at 4 to 5 % per year for 25 years, faster than the pace achieved by Nehru and Indira Gandhi. UP may be backward, yet it has become a major exporter of information technology, thanks to the flourishing software and BPO campuses in NOIDA, adjoining Delhi. Business-friendly sugar policy has attracted thousands of crores of investment in the last five years, and the subsequent rise in rural prosperity is reflected in a rush by businessmen to set up rural supermarkets. Once limited largely to western UP, sugar mills have now spread all over central and western UP. Cane is a very profitable crop, so every new sugar mill lifts incomes in the surrounding 200 sq. kms.
Historically, the most backward states have been Bihar, Madhya Pradesh , Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, sometimes known by the acronym BIMARU. Today, the BIMRU concept is obsolete. A remarkable growth performance has come from Rajasthan, which enjoyed the fastest rate of growth among major states in the 1980s (6.60 %) and the fourth highest (6.99%) between 1993-94 and 2003-04. Female literacy in Rajasthan rose by an astonishing 20 percentage points in the decade of the 1990s.
Literacy in Madhya Pradesh, another BIMARU state, skyrocketed by almost 20 percentage points in the 2001 census. At 63.74%, the state’s literacy rate was almost on par with the national 64.84%.
Now, some states have failed to create the infrastructure, education and connectivity needed to catch the globalization bus. So, they have grown less rapidly than the gung-ho globalisers. They need to do much better. But the notion that economic reform has left the poorer states in extremis is a myth. Even Bihar, which has terrible law and order, terrible roads and electricity, terrible education and telecom, has grown at close to 5% per year for over a decade. It is no longer crippled by something even more terrible called neta-babu socialism.
Misfortune at Bottom of Pyramid
By Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar
Management guru CK Prahlad is famous for his book “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits.” This shows that the poor, often neglected by corporations as having no purchasing power, can be converted into the fastest-growing market in the world through innovations that improve affordability and tailor products to the needs of poor.
Leftists accuse Prahlad of wanting to let corporations loot those at the bottom of the pyramid. Prahlad protests that cost-cutting innovations don’t just create profits, they provide the poor with affordable, quality products and connectivity to the world. He rejects the notion that only governments and NGOs can reduce poverty. The private sector can play a major role, by providing goods cheaply and harnessing the entrepreneurial talent of the poor.
I attended a recent lecture by Prahlad on “Democratising Commerce.” He identified five ways to improve affordability. First, easy payments in installments (which have revolutionised rural sales of TVs, cellphones, two-wheelers and houses). Second, dramatic cost-cutting (some goods and services in India cost just 2-10 % of the US cost). Third, goods in small rather than large packings (eg. shampoo in sachets instead of bottles). Fourth, pay-by-use (paying Rs 20 for internet use at an e-café instead of buying a computer). Fifth, direct distribution, cutting out intermediaries (eg. ITC buying directly from farmers at e-choupals, and selling to them directly through Choupal Sagar shops).
Supplying goods and services at 2-10% of the US prices may sound impossible. In fact it is happening already. Drugs for combating AIDS cost barely $ 200/year in India, against $ 15,000/year in the US. An artificial foot in the US costs $ 12,000, whereas Jaipur Foot, a world-famous Indian invention, costs just $ 10. A heart operation at Escorts Hospital or Narayan Hrudayala costs 5-10% of the US rate. A cataract eye operation at Aravind Eye Hospital costs less than 2% of the US rate.
Private educational and health services are expanding fast and filling the gap created by third-rate government facilities. In some places a majority of the poor send their children to private schools. Private providers supply over 80% of health services in India, the highest ratio in the world.
Amul’s model harnesses marginal farmers to supply milk more profitably than giant dairy corporations. Cellphones enable Kerala fishermen to auction their catch at sea and get the best prices. Soyabean farmers visit ITC’s e-choupals to look up Chicago market prices, since Chicago is the global hub for soyabeans.
Microfinance now reaches millions of poor women. Microfinance views the poor not as objects of charity but as budding capitalists lacking capital. The bank-SHG linkage promoted by NABARD now provides bank loans to a million SHGs. Some of these loans have been securitized and sold on debt markets, using the most sophisticated and profitable markets to serve the poor. Federations of SHGs in Andhra Pradesh have become grain traders, procuring over one million tones of maize.
I myself have written glowingly on many of these topics. But I am less gung-ho than Prahlad. Yes, corporations have indeed played a role in reducing poverty, but how big is the impact? The latest provisional poverty data for 2004-05 suggest that poverty reduction since 1993 has been just 0.7 percentage points per year, as against one percentage point per year in earlier times. So, at the very time when e-choupals, MFIs and cellphones have proliferated, the rate of poverty reduction appears to have declined.
The total number of people below the poverty line is 300 million, not much lower than India’s entire population at independence. This is best described as misfortune at the bottom of the pyramid.
It would be wrong to think that private initiatives are useless. Rather, they are insufficient to offset the massive impact of stagnating agricultural output in a country where 60% of the workforce is still in agriculture. I would also say that some of the examples given by Prahlad as bottom-of-pyramid strategies are rather misleading.
Japipur Foot is a great innovation, and by serving 16,000 people per year it is the world’s greatest provider of artificial legs. Yet that number is negligible compared with 300 million poor people. Besides, what percentage of Jaipur Foot beneficiaries are poor? The poor constitute less than 30% of India’s population. They are the least informed, and have the least money to travel to Jaipur. I would be surprised if they account for over 10% of beneficiaries.
Aravind Eye Hospital and Narayan Hrudalaya have made sterling efforts to reach the poor, yet their reach is limited to a few lakhs at most. By Indian standards these are boutiques, too small to tackle poverty wholesale.
Yes, AIDS drugs are cheap in India. But how many poor people can afford drugs at $ 200 (Rs 9,000) a year)? And how many blood testing clinics exist in poor tribal and hill areas to even identify those with AIDS?
Escorts Heart Hospital is a very bad example given by Prahlad. Yes, it is cheap by global standards. But it is used overwhelmingly by those at the top of the Indian pyramid. I myself had an angioplasty there, and I am not poor.
I am glad that farmers now use e-choupals to look up Chicago prices. But I am pretty sure that these farmers are at the top of the rural pyramid, not the bottom.
ITC found that state electricity and telecom services were so lousy and unreliable that e-choupals could not use them. Instead, it opted for solar power and VSAT, which hugely raised costs. To me, this drives home the point that the private sector cannot achieve much unless the government does it bit for the poor. Free power and subsidized fertilizer used mainly by the biggest farmers will not relieve poverty. We need world class roads, telecom and electricity in every village to democratize commerce. That will typically require public private partnership, harnessing government finance with private provision. That will then improve the ability of the private sector to contribute to poverty reduction.
How non-reform hits human development
By Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar
The UN Human Development Report 2006 paints a dismal picture of social development in India, which ranks just 126th out of 177 countries. We must be cautious about glowing predictions that India will soon become a global economic superpower. Without stronger social development, the current spurt in economic growth will falter.
India presents a paradox. On the one hand, it has become a miracle economy, averaging GDP growth of 8 % for four years in a row. On the hand India's social indicators remain pathetic. Forget miracles, we do not even have half-competent delivery of social services.
What explains the paradox? Liberalisation of the private sector has transformed economic growth. Indian companies have become world class, and are now able to take over multinationals in the US, Britain and Germany. By contrast, our social services are mainly unreformed and delivered by callous, unsackable government staff. The reformed industrial and IT sectors have yielded world-class performers. The unreformed social sectors have yielded a mess. Even Bangladesh has sailed far ahead of India in these unreformed sectors.
Yet, oddly enough, leftists claim that India's social failures show that economic reforms have been a failure, leaving the poor rural illiterates in the lurch while benefiting only the urban upper class. Let me quote a passage from one newspaper.
"The Human Development Report…provides the opponents of globalisation, particularly in India, with useful ammunition. What it shows is that in most countries including India, improvement in the human development index has slowed down in the period 1990 to 2004, compared to the pace in the previous 15 years. In India's case for instance, the period from 1975 to 1990 saw the Human Development Index score improve by close to 25%. In the next 14 years, that figure has come down to 18.6%. Given the fact that the latter period is more or less the post-reforms period in India, this is bound to be used as a strong argument by those opposed to reforms."
You might from above passage that India has enacted wide-ranging reforms in human development, which have failed. In fact hardly any reform has taken place in social services. Unreformed government services have gone from bad to worse. This is a spectacular case of non-reform leading to failure.
Some cities like Delhi are supplied plenty of drinking water, but up to two-thirds of this leaks into the ground. So consumers in Delhi get water for only 4 hours a day. Bangalore, which aspires to become the world leader in information technology, gets water for only 2.5 hours a day, and Chennai for just 1.5 hours per day. By contrast, Colombo, Jakarta and Dakar get water round the clock. India's government-managed water delivery is worse than in the depths of Africa.
The latest Development Policy Review of the World Bank reveals that the typical doctor at a primary health centre in Delhi is less competent than his Tanzanian counterpart, and the chances of his recommending harmful treatment is 50:50. Teacher absenteeism is rampant, and half the Standard V children in five states cannot read even at the Class II level.
The government's IITs and IIMs are world class, but produce only a few thousand graduates a year. Lakhs of graduates from ordinary government colleges have minimal skills, and are often regarded as unemployable. The demand for skills has led to skyrocketing private provision. A recent ICRIER working paper estimates that between 1999-00 and 2005, the number of private engineering institutions rose from 669 to 1,478, teacher-training institutions from 1,050 to 5,190, physiotherapy institutions from 52 to 205 and pharmacy institutions from 204 to 629. The quality of these is very spotty, yet they represent improved service delivery, though at a higher cost. In Delhi, 53 % of all children attend private schools despite the high cost: they know that "free" education in government schools means functional illiteracy.
Government health services are pathetic, with either employees or drugs missing from primary health centres on most days. Only one-fifth of all medical services are supplied by the government, the lowest proportion in the world.
What is the way out? First, some states should experiment with education and health vouchers given directly to households, who will have the option to use these in government or private schools and clinics. The ensuing competition will raise standards.
Second, we must end the licence-permit raj that strangles private school growth. Third, we should devolve budgetary powers to pancvhayats so that they can directly hire doctors and teachers, and not have to depend on unsackable staff from state capitals. Fourth, local governments should have the power to withhold the wages of staff that are absent on any day. Fifth, private universities must be encouraged rather than banned, and foreign universities should be allowed to open campuses here Such reforms will be just a starting point. We have a long way to go.
Microfranchsing: the next big thing
By Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar
After Mohammed Yunus of Banladesh’s Grameen Bank won the Nobel peace prize, microcredit has hogged the headlines. We now need to focus on the next big thing: microfranchising.
Microcredit has certainly empowered poor women and helped alleviate distress in South Asia, but has severe limitations. Borrowing Rs 5,000 at an interest rate of 30% cannot move millions out of poverty. It can be a good beginning, but something extra is needed to take people to the next level.
That something extra is microfranchising. Mohammed Yunus pioneered this too, using poor women to operate mobile phones as public call offices (PCOs) in rural areas. Grameen Telecom, Yunus’ non-profit outfit, took a 38% stake in GrameenPhones, a commercial provider with a national cellular licence. Grameen Bank members with the best track record of running small businesses and repaying loans were trained and financed to acquire cellphones. Today Bangladesh has over 260,000 village phones, and Grameen Telecom is replicating the experiment in Uganda and Rwanda.
What is not widely publicised is that 62% of the equity of GrameenPhones is held by Telenor, an Oslo-based multinational. This MNC has operations in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, and Central Asia.
So, the phone women of Bangladesh are not just products of Yunus’ generosity. They are microfranchisees of an MNC. Without the financial and technical clout of Telenor, GrameenPhones could not have gone far. Yunus demonstrated, unwittingly, that microfranchising could connect the poorest people in the world to the richest MNcs for mutual profit. NGOs, romantic pastoralists and leftists will hate to hear this. But it is a fact.
Another example of microfranchsing has been highlighted in a recent issue of The Economist. Scojo Vision, an American company, is using microfranchsing to sell spectacles to poor people in developing countries. Scojo provides a “business in a box” along with training for rural vendors, who learn to use simple testing charts for vision and then make appropriate spectacles. The vendors’ cost of production is $ 2 per pair of spectacles, and they sell these at $ 3 each. This is affordable for Indian villagers, yet yields a decent profit for both Scojo, intermediaries, and rural vendors. Hence the scheme is viable, and can be scaled up to cover thousands, possibly millions of vendors across developing countries. Scojo has sold 50,00 pairs of spectacles so far, and hopes to sell one million by 2016.
Just as Telenor needed a local partner to reach phone women in Bangladesh, so too does Scojo. In Bangladesh, its partner is BRAC. In India, one of its partners is Drishtee, the company that initially designed the Gyandoot programme in Madhya Pradesh, and now operates commercial rural intenet kiosks in several states. Other prospective partners are ITC and Hindustan Lever, who also run rural electronic kiosks through their e-choupal and i-shakti initiatives.
Hewlett Packard has a different microfranchising scheme for rural camera women. Wedding photos are a growing business in rural areas. Hewlett Packard has trained rural women in Andhra Pradesh to use digital cameras to cover weddings and other celebrations. The photos are printed out on HP colour printers. This is a logical extension of the phone women experiment in Bangladesh, and will help HP promote use of its photo-printers. But rivals like Sony or Panasonic should consider training women to use digital video-cameras to produce video-films of marriages, and then burn these onto a CD. That will produce an affordable but prized momento.
There could be hundreds of other forms of microfranchsing. As CH Prahlad says, companies can tap a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid if only they devise ways to slash costs dramatically, organise logistics, and thus create millions of customers who never existed earlier.
Telenor, ITC, Hindustan lever and HP are all examples of multinationals becoming partners with a new breed of rural businesswomen and businessmen. But Indian businessmen need to take to microfranchising too. The big opportunity at hand is rural telecom. Till recently, BSNL had monopoly access to the USO fund available to subsidise rural telecom. But now private sector cellular providers are also going to have access to the USO fund. So, an explosive growth of rural cellular telephones is coming.
This will be an opportunity to create millions of Indian telephone women, a la Bangladesh. Rural towns in India already have PCOs using landlines. But many parts of rural India will reachable only or mainly by cellphones. In these places, a million phone women can bloom.
As in Bangladesh, microfinance institutions can finance the phones and identify women with a track record of running businesses repaying loans. Commercial banks like ICICI Bank may also finance phone women at low interest rates.
The prospect should excite all cellular providers—Reliance, Essar, Idea, Airtel, the lot. It should also excite handset producers like Ericsson and Nokia, who can hope to sell lakhs of additional phones to phone women. And it should excite those who can think out of the box, and envisage an entirely new way of gaining fame and fortune.
Anil Ambani, are you listening? Ever since the split between you and you brother, Mukesh has tended to get the bigger headlines. Here is your chance to go one up. Instead of simply aiming to raise billions for takeovers of Hutch or whatever, why not aim to empower one million phone women in rural India? Why not aim to convert them into internet providers and new knowledge centres of the 21st century? The mobile phone is rapidly evolving into a mini-computer that could soon make ITC’s e-choupals obsolete. So, strike while the iron is hot. Instead of just aiming to make millions, why not aim to make a million millionaires out of poor rural women? At the end of it all, Mukesh may still have bigger chemical plants than you, but you might just win the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Government Failure, Private Sector Rescue
By Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar
When economic reforms began 15 years ago, I expected a new division of labour, with the public sector and private sector each focusing on what it did best. The government, I believed, would focus on law and justice, a second green revolution, and better infrastructure. The private sector, I thought, would boost manufacturing and services. That is what happened in Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
But not in India. The private sector has done more than expected. India’s software industry is world class. Indian manufacturing has finally become competitive: exports have grown by over 30% annually for three years. Indian companies are making foreign acquisitions galore and becoming MNCs—Tata Steel, Bharat Forge, Tata Motors and Ranbaxy are a few examples.
However, the government has failed miserably in the new division of labour. Corruption and callousness have worsened. Criminals have flocked in hundreds into central and state legislatures, and into Cabinets. The courts are unable to convict any resourceful person beyond appeals. Harshad Mehta and Narasimha Rao died of old age before their cases ended.
Agricultural stagnation is a serious problem. India has started importing wheat rather than exporting it. And infrastructure, despite significant improvement, lags well behind that in comparable countries.
How, then, has India managed record economic growth in the recent years? Because the private sector has taken on many traditional government roles, and saved the situation.
Power was long a state monopoly, and State Electricity Boards were bankrupt when reforms began in 1991. They sought refuge in Independent Power Producers like Enron, but these degenerated into a fiasco. How then did India produce enough power for record economic growth?
Well, old power stations improved their load factor. But the main reason is that corporations decided they could not rely on government supplies, and set up 20,000 MW of captive power. By taking on a role originally performed by the government, industry flourished.
Consider ports. Traditionally, cargo was handled inefficiently at government-owned major ports. The loading time was ten times longer than in Singapore, and ships waited up to 25 days to unload. Today, loading and waiting time has been slashed because corporations, Indian and foreign, have been allowed to set up container terminals in major ports, transforming efficiency. Meanwhile Gujarat has facilitated the development of 40 minor ports, mainly privately owned, and other states are following suit. Captive ports of large corporations have revolutionised the cargo scene. Reliance’s port handles more cargo than any major port save Vishakapatnam.
Telecom is the biggest and best example of the private sector taking on the traditional government role with success. In the 1980s, you had to wait for up to seven years for a government-supplied phone. Private competition today gets you a connection instantly. India is adding five million cellphone subscribers per month, and its telecom rates are the lowest in the world.
Corporations are now modernising Mumbai and Delhi airports, and will spread to other airports. Private companies are now building several toll roads. The government developed the idea deficiency payments for roads, with the contract going to the bidder requiring the lowest toll subsidy. But now some bidders are willing to pay a fee rather than demand subsidies.
The second green revolution is being energized by the private sector, not the public sector. Reliance has led the charge into rural areas in Punjab with a farm-to-fork operation---managing the chain from seeds and crops to processing and hypermarket sales. ITC is rapidly expanding its e-choupals, computerised kiosks for farm information and for buying produce. The Mahindras, Tatas and Shrirams are setting up rural supermarkets. Triveni, a sugar group, pays cane dues directly in farm bank accounts, and issues debit cards so that farmers can travel without cash to markets, a boon in gangster-ridden Uttar Pradesh. These companies provide quality seeds and saplings to farmers, with guaranteed buy-back at an assured price. Thus the companies perform a price guarantee function that the government once pioneered through grain mandis.
These initiatives cover only a small part of the country. But they are producing islands of dynamism in an otherwise stagnant lake.
In this manner, corporations have plugged the gap created by the public sector’s failure in its traditional role. But in the key area of law and justice, this does not seem possible. I suspect that competitive bidding for policing, tied to performance indicators, would actually improve outcomes. But the entire power of politicians flows from their control of the police and administration, typically for illegitimate ends, and they oppose any reform of a corrupt, moribund system.
The only quick justice in India comes from Maoist groups, who in many districts hold their own courts, pronounce verdicts and impose penalties on the spot. That is not the privatisation I favor. But it seems to be the only one we will get.
http://www.swaminomics.org/
Towards egalitarianism of opportunity
By Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar
Rank Name Age Net worth $bl
5 Lakshmi Mittal 56 32
14 Mukesh Ambani 49 20.1
18 Anil Ambani 47 18.2
21 Azim Premji 61 17.1
62 Kushal Pal Singh 75 10
69 Sunil Mittal & family 49 9.5
86 Kumar Birla 39 8
86 Shashi & Ravi Ruia NA 8
114 Ramesh Chandra 67 6.4
137 Pallonji Mistry 77 5.6
210 Adi Godrej & family 64 4.1
214 Shiv Nadar 61 4
279 Dilip Shanghvi 51 3.1
287 Cyrus Poonawalla 65 3
287 Indu Jain* 70 3
349 Kalanithi Maran 41 2.6
349 Grandhi Rao 57 2.6
390 Savitri Jindal & family 57 2.4
390 Tulsi Tanti 49 2.4
407 Subhash Chandra 56 2.3
432 Uday Kotak 48 2.2
458 Baba Kalyani 58 2.1
488 Malvinder & Shivinder Singh NA 2
557 NR Narayana Murthy 60 1.8
618 Anurag Dikshit 35 1.6
618 Venugopal Dhoot 55 1.6
664 Vijay Mallya 51 1.5
664 Jaiprakash Gaur 76 1.5
717 Vikas Oberoi 36 1.4
754 Nandan Nilekani 51 1.3
799 Senapathy Gopalakrishnan 51 1.2
840 Pradeep Jain 41 1.1
840 Keshub Mahindra 83 1.1
840 Rahul Bajaj 68 1.1
The rise of ever more billionaires causes much anguish at growing inequalities. Forbes magazine says that India has produced 14 additional billionaires in the last year, taking its total to 36. This is more than the 24 billionaires in Japan, Asia’s richest country. The Left Front will gleefully declare that globalisation has made the rich richer and the poor poorer.
I too find it depressing that a billion people round the world remain mired in poverty. But I cheer those self-made men and women, from families of modest means, who have nevertheless clawed their way to the top of the wealth ladder through sheer talent, perseverance and guts. Forbes reports that no less than 60% of the world’s billionaires are self-made. This is not a sign of the rich getting richer. It is egalitarianism by other means. This is not socialist egalitarianism which seeks equality of outcome for all. But it is a step toward liberal egalitarianism, which seeks equality of opportunity.
We are seeing an explosion of billionaires in countries that traditionally had none, and from families of modest means. No longer is wealth limited to a handful of ultra-rich white families. The talented are now overtaking old wealth, both within their own countries and in the world.
Forbes lists a record 946 billionaires in 2006. The list has 178 newcomers, including 19 Russians, 14 Indians, 13 Chinese and 10 Spaniards, as well as the first billionaires from Cyprus, Oman, Romania and Serbia. Forbes says that of its listed billionaires, 17% became poorer and 32 dropped below the billion-dollar mark. The rich don't always get richer.
The new billionaires have made money in everything from media to computer software, from real estate to coffee. They have converted their excellent human capital into financial capital. That represents progress towards a world of merit.
Sadly, one billion people remain poor. They lack the access to education, capital, networks and infrastructure that are vital to convert talent into riches. In too many countries, the state has failed to provide the basic framework that will help talented people rise fast. No serious attempt has been made in India to reform the face of government that the villager sees—the school teacher, the primary health worker, the PWD engineer, the thanedar, the patwari. Reform all these areas, and we should see many more billionaires.
Of the self-made people in the list, Lakshmi Mittal does not really qualify. He was born in a business family. Yet by global standards he is self-made, since his family lacked the means to build or buy large steel plants. Instead he used his manegerial talent to take over sick steel mills for a song across the world, and turn them round. Once he gained critical mass, he went for big takeovers.
Computer software has yielded a spate of Indian billionaires. Azim Premji of Wipro inherited a vegetable oil business but converted it into a software major. Three middle-class founders of Infosys have become billionaires—NR Narayanmurthy, Nandan Nilekani and Senapathy Gopalakrishnan. Ditto for Shiv Nadar of HCL.
The Left Front regards stock markets as casino capitalism. In fact the stock market boom has been crucial in converting human capital into financial capital. The world's money is flooding into India to share in the wealth created by Indian entrepreneurs.
The price of real estate (and realty shares) has gone through the roof. In consequence, many builders unknown to the general public five ars ago now rank among the richest in the world. KP Singh of DLF has long been well known. But many readers may not have heard five years ago of the new billionaires---Ramesh Chandra of Unitech, Grandhi Rao of GMK, Jaiprakah Gaur of JP Associates, Vikas Oberoi of Oberoi Construction, Pradeep Jain of Parsvanath developers.
Most striking is the weak showing of old wealth among the Indian billionaires. Of the big business families in 1947, the only ones in the latest Forbes list are Kumar Birla, Indu Jain (of Bennet Coleman and Co) and Pallonji Mistry. Of the business houses that became big names by the 1970s, the Forbes list includes Adi Godrej, Vijay Mallya, Rahul Bajaj and Keshub Mahindra. The 1980s saw the rise of the Ambanis, Ruias, Venugopal Dhoot and Baba Kalyani of Bharat Forge. Others in the Forbes list blossomed only after economic liberalization in the 1990s.
These include not only the software giants but Subhash Chandra of Zee, Sunil Mittal of Bharti Telephones, Sajjan Jindal of Jindal Steel, Dilip Shangvi of Sun Pharmaceuticals, Tulsi Tanti of Suzlon, Uday Kotak of Kotak Mahindra, and Kalanidhi Maran of the Sun media group. Many came from small business families. But their talent enabled them to leap-frog traditional old wealth in India, and find a place on the world stage.
Socialists will deplore the rise of so many billionaires in the midst of widespread poverty. But amiri hatao does not lead to garibi hatao, as Indira Gandhi demonstrated in the 1970s. I say that 14 new billionaires is not enough. I would like to see a million new billionaires, based entirely on talent. That will be egalitarianism of opportunity.
http://www.unsiap.or.jp/participants_work/cos03_homepages/group4/boon-india-present.htm
Information Regarding Poverty in India
· In India, it is estimated that about 350-400 million are below the poverty line, 75 per cent of them in the rural areas.
· More than 40 per cent of the population is illiterate, with women, tribal and scheduled castes particularly affected.
· It would be incorrect to say that all poverty reduction programmes have failed. The growth of the middle class (which was virtually non-existent when India became a free nation in August 1947) indicates that economic prosperity has indeed been very impressive in India, but the DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH has been very uneven.
· The main causes of poverty are illiteracy, a population growth rate by far exceeding the economic growth rate for the better part of the past 50 years, protectionist policies pursued since 1947 to 1991 which prevented large amounts of foreign investment in the country.
· Poverty alleviation is expected to make better progress in the next 50 years than in the past, as a trickle-down effect of the growing middle class. Increasing stress on education, reservation of seats in government jobs and the increasing empowerment of women and the economically weaker sections of society, are also expected to contribute to the alleviation of poverty.
· Poverty in India has been reduced by 10 percent over the last few years.
India Country Profile
Click on the indicator to view a definition
1990
1995
2001
2002
1 Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2015 target = halve 1990 $1 a day poverty and malnutrition rates
Population below $1 a day (%)
..
..
34.7
..
Poverty gap at $1 a day (%)
..
..
8.2
..
Percentage share of income or consumption held by poorest 20%
..
8.1
..
..
Prevalence of child malnutrition (% of children under 5)
63.9
53.2
..
..
Population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption (%)
25.0
..
24.0
..
2 Achieve universal primary education
2015 target = net enrollment to 100
Net primary enrollment ratio (% of relevant age group)
..
..
..
..
Percentage of cohort reaching grade 5 (%)
..
58.6
..
..
Youth literacy rate (% ages 15-24)
64.3
68.5
73.3
74.1
3 Promote gender equality
2005 target = education ratio to 100
Ratio of girls to boys in primary and secondary education (%)
67.8
69.5
78.0
..
Ratio of young literate females to males (% ages 15-24)
73.9
77.7
82.0
82.7
Share of women employed in the nonagricultural sector (%)
..
..
..
..
Proportion of seats held by women in national parliament (%)
5.0
7.0
9.0
9.0
4 Reduce child mortality
2015 target = reduce 1990 under 5 mortality by two-thirds
Under 5 mortality rate (per 1,000)
123.0
104.0
93.0
..
Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births)
80.0
74.0
67.0
67.6
Immunization, measles (% of children under 12 months)
56.0
72.0
56.0
..
5 Improve maternal health
2015 target = reduce 1990 maternal mortality by three-fourths
Maternal mortality ratio (modeled estimate, per 100,000 live births)
..
440.0
..
..
Births attended by skilled health staff (% of total)
..
34.2
42.3
..
General indicators
Population
849.5 million
932.2 million
1.0 billion
1.0 billion
Gross national income ($)
330.6 billion
349.6 billion
480.8 billion
501.5 billion
GNI per capita ($)
390.0
380.0
470.0
480.0
Adult literacy rate (% of people ages 15 and over)
49.3
53.3
58.0
58.8
Total fertility rate (births per woman)
3.8
3.4
3.0
2.9
Life expectancy at birth (years)
59.1
61.4
63.0
63.2
Aid (% of GNI)
0.4
0.5
0.4
..
External debt (% of GNI)
26.7
26.9
20.3
..
Investment (% of GDP)
24.1
26.5
22.4
22.1
Trade (% of GDP)
15.7
23.2
27.2
31.3
Source: World Development Indicators database, April 2002
The Indian Economy BlogAugust 1, 2006
The World Bank’s Doing Business report drives home the need for labour reforms
According to World Bank’s new Ease of Doing Business league table (linkthanks Debashish), it was easier to do business in Maldives (#31), Nepal (#55), Pakistan (#60), Sri Lanka (#65), Russia (#79), China (#91), Bhutan (#104) and even Iran (#108), than in India. In fact at number 116, it was slightly more difficult to do business in India, than in war-torn Iraq.
The international ranking reveals how India is doing in comparison to other countries. But how has India own performance changed? There are 23 parameters that are common between the latest report, released in 2006, and the previous one released in 2005 (both are based on data compiled two years before publication). Of these, India has improved its score in 10 and slipped in 5 areas. None more so than in the area of hiring and firing workers.
It became more difficult to hire and maintain workers in 2004 as compared to the previous year. There was no change in the difficulty to fire, but at 90 out of 100, India is already one of the hardest countries in the world to fire workers.
Starting a business continues to involve 11 separate procedures; but in 2004, it took 71 days to do so, as compared to 89 days the previous year. That didn’t come without an increase in the cost of starting a business which rose to 62% of per capita in income in 2004 from 49.5% the previous year.
It also takes 10 years to close a business.
The upshot of all this? Exit barriers are also entry barriers. Making it hard to fire workers only ends up making employers unwilling to hire them and investors unwilling to invest in manufacturing (read job creating) industries. Miss the simple truth and you can have endless academic and political debates about why India’s decade and half of economic growth has been a jobless one.
25 Comments »
We should not assume the politicians do not know this. We then have to understand why they do not act on this if they already know this.
The answer is that there has to be a period where the unemployment would actually increase. Starting a firm is not an instantaneous process, and additionally there are many other regulations which make starting and operating a firm in India difficult.
Essentially, the microeconomics — which drives the political cart — militates against long-term macroeconomics.
I lay the fault not on the politicians but on the economists who refuse to acknowledge this and suggest suitable solutions.
One of which is of course graduated labor reforms, another is to identify a package of relaxing other job creation bottlenecks so that a relaxation in labor laws does not increase unemployment in the short term.
Comment by seven_times_six — August 1, 2006 @ 6:11 pm
As this is a World bank publication, i wouldnt be too interested.
But economists need to uphold the welfare of the labouresrs and it is important that
labourers have security.
India inc has been showing good returns and investors confidence has increased.
Its absurd to believe that it would be better to start a business in iraq than in India.
Comment by Alex — August 1, 2006 @ 10:52 pm
“As this is a World bank publication, i wouldnt be too interested.”
Why? You are free to do what you want but this attitude is odd.
“But economists need to uphold the welfare of the labouresrs and it is important that
labourers have security.”
Economists don’t need to do any such thing. You misunderstand the job of an economist and confuse it with that of a politician. Also: Why is it important that labourers have security?
You seem to ignore the fact that the consequences of making workers hard to fire are borne by *other* members of the working class. Faced with the fact that it is difficult to fire workers, firms typically optimize by minimizing the number of workers they hire. This tilt towards capital-intensive technologies only hurts other workers who remain unemployed or find it more diffcult finding work.
“Its absurd to believe that it would be better to start a business in iraq than in India.”
The issue is about the *ease* of doing business, not the adivisability or the profitability of doing business. Its is perfectly possible that doing business is easier in Iraq than India but its more advisable to do business in India than Iraq.
Comment by economist — August 2, 2006 @ 12:14 am
seven_times_six, you write:
“The answer is that there has to be a period where the unemployment would actually increase. Starting a firm is not an instantaneous process, additionally there are many other regulations which make starting and operating a firm in India difficult.”
Your assertion that there is an initial period where unemployment would increase is just that - an assertion. Do you have anything to back this up?
Even if this were true - and I don’t think it is - to attribute this as a reason for our stupid policy is to give too much credit to our politicians who typically have not displayed any such skills at such subtle economic reasoning.
Comment by economist — August 2, 2006 @ 12:55 am
Economist, the burden of proof is on those who say that it won’t cause unemployment.
Also, note that what’s on the books is to allow firms to fire employees more easily. This suggests a very high plausibility that at least initially, the upshot would be for firms to fire deadweight more than new hirings.
This is because new hirings necessarily follow from expansions, and expansions do not occur instantaneously.
Also, your belief that politicians are stupid and economists are brilliant does not help matters at all. As I said in the previous post, the economists have to adapt their policies to make sure that microeconomic fallouts are minimized.
Otherwise, the labor reforms are never going to take off.
The economist can then say, hey, it is the fault of the politician, who is doing his job of responding to political pulls arising from potential microeconomic fallouts.
It is the economist who refuses to do his job of formulating an economic policy given the constraints.
Comment by seven_times_six — August 2, 2006 @ 5:22 am
Seven_times_six, *you* asserted that it will cause unemployment in the immediate run and the burden of proof is on me?
I suspect that this is not going to get anywhere. You seem to have a penchant for reading into statements things that were not not even remotely implied. I said the current labour policy is stupid; does this imply that politicians are stupid? Where did you get that from? Also, the statement that economists are “brilliant”? I do think that our politicians implement policies which make little economic sense, but this is not the same as saying that politicians are “stupid.” Politicians have their own objectives to pursue, after all.
Economic policies do have fallouts - it is the job of the economist to lay out all the possible consequences of a given policy, to the extent possible. It is then the job of the politician to implement the best policy given the political and other institutional constraints. That is what the politician has been elected to do.
The proposed labour market reforms - if implemented - will only affect the “organized” sector of the economy. Given that this sector employs a fairly small - but vocal - part of the labour force, it is not at all clear that these labour reforms will lead to anything like significant increase in the unemployment rate. This does not mean that *some* workers will not be negatively affected. Things can be done to ease the burden of such workers, but these come into play only if there is political willingness to implement the proposed reforms.
I look forward to your reading things into what I’ve written which I did not mean, but I will not respond. Feel free to have the last word.
Comment by economist — August 2, 2006 @ 10:28 am
Dear Economist,
As far as the World bank report is concerned, what is the need for ranking countries where ease of starting a
business is more, without including variables such as profitability or security? This ranking should not be
considered for serious academic discussion.
For economists, at least for concerned individuals who have a responisbility towards the nation and to other
fellow citizens, it would be laudable if the labourers’ interests are considered. The duty of an economist can be infinitely argued upon without reaching a conclusion because of differences in ideologies.
So you are of the opinion that is legal and ethical to hire and fire workers easily so that the unemployed will get jobs.
There is a glitch there, firms which have the potential of using capital intensive techniques would have long back
invested in them if they had the necessary resources. Moreover labour is cheap here, so i dont think that, they
would trade off the cheap labour for costly capital.
Comment by Alex — August 2, 2006 @ 12:03 pm
Dear Alex:
We all adopt various hats at various times: sometimes I speak as an economist, sometimes as a concerned citizen and so on. Of course, it is not possible to disentangle the various roles but the point nonetheless remains that I do not think that it is the duty of an economist to “stand up for labour” whatever that might mean.
I am somewhat puzzled about you. You claim to be studying economics in your blog, yet your arguments are anything but economic. For instance, you seem to think that “labour” means solely those who have jobs. What about the unemployed? Any enlightened labour policy must take into account that the interests of the unemployed also matter. If you make it difficult to fire workers, then any sensible entreprenuer will minimize on the number of workers he hires. This ultimately hurts “labour” because it becomes more difficult for workers to find jobs.
You come from Kerala: don’t you think that the large expatriate Malayali community in places like Mumbai, the Gulf states etc. has at least something to do with the fact that labour regulations are quite stringent in Kerala as compared to other states?
We all want to protect workers - certainly I do - and it is not my contention that Indian entrepreneurs are noble-minded, fair etc. They are not. But protecting “labour” means protecting not only the rights of those who have jobs, but it must also encourage entrepreneurs to start new enterprises because these create new jobs. It is in this context that the World Bank report is relevant because it documents that starting new businesses is quite tedious in India.
Finally, the fact that labour regulation actually hurts economic performance is well documented. See for instance, the paper by Tim Besley and Robin Burgess “Can labour regulation hinder economic performance?: evidence from India” The paper is quite technical, but I append the abstract below:
“This paper investigates whether the industrial relations climate in
Indian states has affected the pattern of manufacturing growth in the period 1958-92. We show that states which ammended the Industrial Disputes Act in a pro-worker direction experienced lowered output, employment, investment and productivity in registered or formal manufacturing. In contrast, output in unregistered or informal manufacturing increased. Regulating in a pro-worker direction was also associated with increases in urban poverty. This suggests that attempts to redress the balance of power between capital and labor can end up hurting the poor.”
The paper is avalaible from Robin Burgess’s homepage at the London School of Economics:
http://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/rburgess/wp/
Comment by economist — August 2, 2006 @ 1:45 pm
Hi all,
A very interesting debate indeed. The politicians vs economists debate, though exciting, is beside the point though.
\”Economist\” makes a very valid point. In fact, I wanted to write it in the post, but decided not to do so in order not to digress. That point is that investors have a wider set of considerations before they invest in a market. China, for example, ranks quite low too, but is sucks in a lion\’s share of FDI. So the World Bank numbers are not so important for India\’s attractiveness as an investment destination, but rather, its ability to get its economic policies right, labour reform being one of them.
Economist—According to Ajay Shah, the labour market itself (informal plus formal) clears. Notwithstanding this, don\’t you think the distinction between formal and informal sectors distorts the labour market?
Alex — The report uses methodology compiled by reputed economists. So instinctively dismissing it would not be a smart thing to do. Many disagree (eg Atanu Dey, a co-blogger here) that economics is a science in a strict sense, nevertheless, it is just as well that economists approach the subject with a scientific temper.
As for your point about cheap labour; the cheapness of labour itself won\’t bring in job-creating industries. For that you need efficient labour markets. But you are right that companies may not use capital intensive techniques. Instead they\’ll just set up factories in countries where labour is cheap. In future, even Indian companies will do that just to stay competitive.
Comment by Nitin — August 2, 2006 @ 3:16 pm
Dear Nitin,
Re: “Economist—According to Ajay Shah, the labour market itself (informal plus formal) clears. Notwithstanding this, don’t you think the distinction between formal and informal sectors distorts the labour market?”
I don’t know Ajay Shah’s work in this regard, but the distinction between formal and informal sectors does add distortions to the economy. For instance, some entrepreneuers deliberately choose technologies that enable them to escape coming in to the organized sector. The Besley-Burgess paper referred to above documents such behaviour. (A long time back, I was told that the producer of Nirma had deliberately adopted this strategy; can anyone confirm?)
From an economic efficiency point of view, such shifts are not desirable because it prevents the firms from exploiting economies of scale. However, these shifts are not desirable even from the point of view of labour because labour norms are much less enforced in the unorganized sector. One would have thought that concern for labour would translate into policies which encourage entrepreneurs to come into the organized sector. The actual policy has had precisely the opposite effect. So much for the “pro-labour” policies.
Of course, life is much better than it would otherwise have been for those fortunate to find employment in the organized sector, especially our public sector enterprises. The price for this is paid by those who slog it out in the unorganized sector in places like Bhiwadi and so on.
Comment by economist — August 2, 2006 @ 4:26 pm
Dear economist
Regarding the ’standing up for labour’, i meant considering the labour force, both employed and unemployed.
I agree that the labour policy in India is not conducive for high rates of industrial growth. But i believe
that the currently employed must be secured of their jobs, otherwise the unemployed would not have any incentive
to get employed.(In an easy hire and fire policy)The labour problem is a complex issue because people are directly
involved and a solution cannot be arrived at easily.
It is easier to start a business in India than Iraq but it is difficult to do business in india than Iraq. I find this amusing. Difficulty in doing business in India:reasons are many-higher costs, uninonised labour,etc. Businesses that are competitive and efficient can easily thrive in the Indian market.
An article about ’standing up for labour’ was published in the Economic and political weekly by Martha Chen et all
titled Informality, gender and poverty.
Dear Nitin,
On the issue of reputed economists making the study: I agree. In economics like the demand and price relationship, where other variables are assumed as constant, we cannot conclude that it is difficult to start a business in india.
The variables they included in the ranking are procedures,time,cost and minimum capital to open a business.
(I do know know what a business refers to in the context. Could somebody enlighten me?) In india, as the
corruption is high, it is difficult for small investors to start a business but not so for high investors.
To all,
About rankings, I have become averse to them. A magazine, few years earlier reanked a collge as no 1 when it wasnt evn supposed to come in the top 10.
Comment by Alex — August 2, 2006 @ 5:50 pm
*Sigh* Alex, I have a feeling that this is going to be a futile effort but I will have one shot and then let it go. You can have the last word. You say:
“But i believe that the currently employed must be secured of their jobs, otherwise the unemployed would not have any incentive
to get employed.(In an easy hire and fire policy)”
Really? What are the unemployed going to do? It is not as if India has a great social security scheme which will enable people to get along without employment.
If you are from a middle-class family (as seems likely), then I think you must have a “servant.” (Note: After moving abroad, I became aware that this term is used only in India!) Does your servant (or those of your acquaintances) have protection against hire-and-fire? Or medical leave? Or any of those perks enjoyed by those of us fortunate to find employment in the organized sector? Then why does he/she work? According to your thinking, it must be terribly difficult finding suitable “servants.” Does anyone in the middle class really have problems finding “servants”?
Ponder this also: do you think that the majority of the workers in India are in positions similar to our “servants”? Or are the majority in positions similar to those in public sector enterprises or in the organized part of the private sector? You have a strange idea about the composition of our labour force.
I have great respect for Martha Chen and though I have not read her article, I think given her record that she was writing about conditions in the “informal” sector which are indeed bad, as I’ve noted above. The proposed reforms are targeted at the “organized” sector. The reforms therefore are not in contradiction to what Martha Chen says.
I am constrained to say this: for someone who claims to be studying to be an economist, I’ve rarely come across less economic arguments than those you make. I am at a loss to account for this.
Comment by economist — August 2, 2006 @ 6:47 pm
“But i believe
that the currently employed must be secured of their jobs, otherwise the unemployed would not have any incentive
to get employed.(In an easy hire and fire policy)The labour problem is a complex issue because people are directly
involved and a solution cannot be arrived at easily.”
Really? Is job security in your top three questions when taking a job? If the job were absolutely not secure, would you reject well paying job? If people are involved, it must be complex and difficult.
“An article about ’standing up for labour’ was published in the Economic and political weekly”
Ah…the Bhagavad Gita of economics and sensible policy. At least we know where your ideas are coming from.
“ In economics like the demand and price relationship, where other variables are assumed as constant, we cannot conclude that it is difficult to start a business in india.
The variables they included in the ranking are procedures,time,cost and minimum capital to open a business.
(I do know know what a business refers to in the context. Could somebody enlighten me?) In india, as the
corruption is high, it is difficult for small investors to start a business but not so for high investors.”
That does this mean? Now we need define what a business is?
Comment by Chandra — August 2, 2006 @ 9:11 pm
Dear economist,
I am just a student of Economics and i am prone to mistakes. But i agree to what you have said about our servants
and i realise that i was mistaken in talking about the incentives.
Well i am not exactly sure about the composition of our labour force, but i do believe that the unorganised sector
and organised sector have nearly equal employment opportunities. But the data for informal sector is lacking.
Comment by Alex — August 2, 2006 @ 9:58 pm
“Well i am not exactly sure about the composition of our labour force, but i do believe that the unorganised sector and organised sector have nearly equal employment opportunities.”
About 60% of our labour force is still employed in agriculture. The “organized” sector employs only 7-8% of the total workforce. Check out
http://indiabudget.nic.in/es2004-05/chapt2005/chap105.pdf
Comment by economist — August 2, 2006 @ 10:45 pm
Dear economist
Thank for the link. That sure is interesting.
Could i ask you a personal question? What is your profession?
Comment by Alex — August 2, 2006 @ 11:50 pm
Sudeep Banerjee is right!
Comment by sun — August 3, 2006 @ 3:09 am
I would like to clarify on my earlier comment.According to 2001 census,India had as many as 12666377 children(belonging to age group 5 to 14 )
working in the informal sector.This group is supposed to benefit most by the labor law reforms.Any ways Give them OLPC device and there will be millions
of tiny bloggers!I apologise for posting off the topic comment.Feel free to delete it
Comment by sun — August 3, 2006 @ 4:46 am
Economist:
you state very clearly that politicians are incapable of nuanced economic reasoning and tell me I’m putting words into your mouth about your low reckoning of politicians?
And what’s with the dramatic “you can have the last word” and all that?
You must understand that I’m not debating or antagonizing you: I actually want smart free market economists like you to formulate smart solutions that can actually take off the ground.
Nitin:
I actually think the argument of politician vs economist is relevant in the sense that I think drawing vanilla policy suggestions from just such studies is unadvisable. No investor worth his salt thinks it is better to do business in Nepal and Bhutan rather than India.
The study is merely a ranking of labor restrictions, but from which passionate economists from the Milton-Friedmanian school make their naive policy inferences; without taking into account the current microeconomic situation in countries like India: but which have to be taken into account to make any solution politically feasible.
I detailed some possible solutions in the previous comment (e.g. try to identify other regulation relaxations which would cause expansions and increase job growth and THEN relax labor restrictions. This would ensure the unemployment increase would be kept to a minimum and perhaps it would not increase at all)
I’m not an economist and I really do not have much info. about the microeconomic situation either, but it has to be possible for our smart economists to hasten our transition to a market economy by doing it intelligently by taking into account microeconomic political feasibility.
I apologize for the seeming pedanticity, but this is something I’m starting to feel strongly about.
Comment by seven_times_six — August 3, 2006 @ 10:32 am
Nitin: To clarify what I’m saying in my prev. comment, the danger from such studies is not that investors draw bad conclusions; which you rightly point out in your prev. comment; but that Friedmanian economists draw bad conclusions.
(Look at even the tagline of your post :)
As such it is not a politican vs investor but a politican vs economist argument.
Comment by seven_times_six — August 3, 2006 @ 10:43 am
Alex,
I am an economist, of course.
Apologies in case my comments offended you but I was expecting better economic reasoning from you. It’s good that you are passionate about the subject; good luck with your studies.
seven_times_six, subtle economic reasoning is a skill that does not come naturally to everyone but of course, it can be learned. This is not peculiar to economics - not all have natural skills at maths or physics or any other branch of study. In all honesty, most (not all) of our politicians have not displayed that they are skilled in the type of economic reasoning that you put forward as an explanation of why our politicians have stuck to our current labour policy. This does not imply they are stupid. I would not make the mistake of underestimating any of our politicians; many of them are very smart. I think many of their economic policies are wrong-headed but as I have said, that is a different matter.
You inferred something that I did not imply but I do not expect you to acknowledge that, given that your opinion of economists is not high. Presumably, the economists are not smart enough to see what you have seen - that economic policies need to be politically viable as well. You have been repeating this point throughout this thread. Yes, of course, people like Montek Singh Ahluwalia and others in charge of implementing policies are blissfully unaware of this fact, not to mention lesser mortals like myself.
For the record, the fact that a suboptimal policy is being followed because of political considerations does not change the fact that it *is* suboptimal. As an economist, I have to say that the policy is suboptimal: what else can I say? That does not mean that I am unaware of the practical problems in changing the current policy. And that is all I have to say on this topic.
Comment by economist — August 3, 2006 @ 2:21 pm
Dear economist,
Thank you for the wishes. Hope to engage in further academic debates with you.
Comment by Alex — August 3, 2006 @ 6:43 pm
I just saw this post, after 22 comments! A related conversation I had with Gautam Bastian over at his blog might be of interest to you all. Sorry for the hit and run comment, but my laptop juice is running out and I am late for a meeting:-(
Comment by Crazyfinger — August 3, 2006 @ 11:44 pm
Economist, honestly I think the reasoning was not subtle at all, and I think any smart person, not least our politicians
who have to think daily about such problems, is quite capable of it.
And don’t try to whitewash the political viability issue as if it is something top economists in India consider the first thing in the morning. Sure, the buereaucrats and the politicians have to consider it; it’s their job; but what I want is for mainstream economists to consider it.
For it is from them that the truly good solutions can arise.
Indeed, I’m not saying the question is non-obvious; I’m saying that it is the answer which is non-obvious; and that it’s being clouded by Friedmanian ideologues, it’s not being pursued. Not least because it is extremely difficult.
For one, I could not find good politico-economic analyses on Indian labor policy.
I might be wrong, perhaps teh top Indian economists do have the sort of vibrant tab on the political pulse that teh top American economists have; if so I would be one of the happiest persons to know that.
Comment by seven_times_six — August 4, 2006 @ 8:26 pm
How many Indian economists work do you know? Could you give me a reference to one who is representative of the caricature that you have of Indian economists?
There is a much simpler explanation as to why politicians are not willing to touch the labour reform issue. Many of them have trade unions of their own and they are obviously reluctant to do anything to offend their support base. This is true of the BJP, the Left, Congress the DMK, AIADMK, Shiv Sena etc. As further evidence, note that many of them are willing to make exceptions in the sectors where there is no trade union. Witness the curious fact that the left front in Bengal has banned strikes in the IT sector where of course, there is no trade union.
I have to clarify one thing: I do not think that your assertion that labour reforms will cause large unemployment in the short run is correct. I only said that the reasoning is somewhat subtle. But I don’t think it is right and here’s why. The organized sector employs only 7-8% of the total labour force. Sure, some workers will get unemployed but there is no reason to believe that there will be large scale unemployment. Much of the overemployment is in the public sector and I don’t see those firms laying off anyone. The private sector have already optimized their behaviour (in terms of the number of workers they hire) and I don’t see them laying off large number of workers either. Do you have any reason to believe the contrary? I have asked you this before and you ducked it claiming the onus is on me. I am confident you will continue to duck the issue.
Finally, I am struck by your arrogance. You claim you are not an economist and don’t know much about the microeconomic situation, but for sure, you know that Indian economists are not doing something right. Yes, of course…as I said, I await the name of one Indian economist who meets your caricature.
And of course, you will not acknowledge that you made an incorrect inference about me.
Comment by economist — August 5, 2006 @ 1:15 am
Do you believe there are real Political Parties / Politicians in India?
=======================================================================
http://indianeconomy.org/2006/08/01/hard-to-fire-is-hard-to-hire/
There are no real political parties or politicians in India after emergency period, all political parties and politicians(chumchas) are funded by big business houses, they do what they are asked to do.
Need proof?
===========
Last time I saw political parties collecting election fund “house to house” from ordinary citizens is during 1971 general elections. Think about it, if you are an ordinary citizen, has any political party in India contacted you to join them or asked for election contribution in last 30 years? why not? think…..
Comment by GeneralPublic — August 5, 2006 @ 8:02 pm
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
http://indianeconomy.org/2006/08/01/hard-to-fire-is-hard-to-hire/
//நகரங்களுக்கு வெளியேயும், மென்பொருள் துறைக்கு வெளியேயும் இந்தியா வாழ்கிறது. போக வேண்டிய தூரம் நிறைய இருக்கிறது.//
நகரங்களுக்கு வெளியேதான்், மென்பொருள் துறைக்கு வெளியேதான்்் இந்தியா வாழ்கிறது. போக வேண்டிய தூரம் நிறைய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய இருக்கிறது
-vibin
\\கடந்த 10 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்னர் படித்தவர்களுக்கு எவரும் அதிக சம்பளம் தரும் வேலையை தருவதில்லை. புதிதாக படித்து வருபவர்களை தான் எடுத்துக்கொள்கிறார்கள். எனவே படித்த ஒரு பெரும் கூட்டமே கால வெள்ளத்தில் தனித்து விடப்பட்ட நிலை உருவாகியுள்ளது.
\\
i accept Vavval's statement. But i am unable to follow the long discussions. After the discussions are over pl. give abstract. Thank you MAA SI
A Stinking Place Called India
-MSK
//நகரங்களுக்கு வெளியேதான்், மென்பொருள் துறைக்கு வெளியேதான்்் இந்தியா வாழ்கிறது. போக வேண்டிய தூரம் நிறைய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய இருக்கிறது
//
நன்றி விபின்.
//But i am unable to follow the long discussions. After the discussions are over pl. give abstract.//
விபினின் பின்னூட்டத்துக்கு முந்தைய 9 பின்னூட்டங்கள், ஆங்கிலத்தில் நீளமாக இருப்பவை, அதியமான் பல இடங்களில் அவர் படித்ததை எழுதியதை ஒற்றி ஒட்டியது என்று நினைக்கிறேன். நானும் அப்புறம் படித்துக் கொள்ளலாம் என்று வைத்திருக்கிறேன்.
அதியமான், எங்களைப் போன்றவர்களுக்காகவாவது நீங்கள் உணர்ந்தவற்றை தமிழில் சுருக்கி சின்னச் சின்னப்
பத்திகளாகத் தாருங்களேன். இவ்வளவு நீள ஆங்கில கட்டுரைகப் படிக்கப் பொறுமை இருப்பதில்லை.
சுட்டிக்கு நன்றி MSK
அன்புடன்,
மா சிவகுமார்
//நகரங்களுக்கு வெளியேதான்், மென்பொருள் துறைக்கு வெளியேதான்்் இந்தியா வாழ்கிறது. போக வேண்டிய தூரம் நிறைய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய்ய இருக்கிறது
//
each IT job creates seven jobs downsream like drivers, admin workers, logistics, caterers, electricians, maintainance workers, etc. and the IT cos and its employees pay taxes which is used by govt for welfare. and IT boomed on its own and govt excepted them from income tax (as it did for all fereign exchange earning, exporting industries) until recently. that is the help from govt. so why are IT cos boom compared with the rural poverty ?
if anything rural poverty would have been much worse without IT cos, with less employment, taxes and foreign exchange than otherwise. and lacs are emloyed in IT and ITes and support services (like transport, housing, catering, laundry,etc) who are mostly from uncountry side...
and Shiva,
i request you all to spend some 15 minitues to go thru the english comments pasted from many sources.
it is very relevent and useful in understanding the full picture and the true causes for the visible effects of poverty and corruption..
i too will try to write breifly in tamil..
We The People வழியாக இந்த சுட்டி
http://poarmurasu.blogspot.com/2007/07/30-150.html
http://icarusprakash.wordpress.com/2007/09/26/a-stinking-place-called-india/
இதற்குப் பிறகு வல்லரசு என்று என்ன கிழிக்கப்போகிறோம்???
ஒற்றை இலக்க சதவீதத்தில் இருக்கும் IT/ITES ல் காட்டும் அக்கறையில் கொஞ்சமாவது பெரும்பான்மையோர் இருக்கும் விவசாயத்தின் மீது இல்லையே.
-vibin
can any one explain the relation between depreciation of goods/sevices and price raise?
//can any one explain the relation between depreciation of goods/sevices and price raise?//
அனானி,
இரண்டுக்கும் நேரடித் தொடர்பு இருப்பதாகத் தெரியவில்லை.
depreciation என்பது ஒரு கணக்கியல் கோட்பாடு. ஒரு தொழில் நிறுவனம் முதலீட்டில் பணம் செலவழிக்கும் போது அந்தச் செலவை செலவழிந்த ஆண்டில் முழுதாகக் கழிக்காமல் பல ஆண்டுகளுக்குப் பகிர்ந்து செலவுக் கணக்கில் சேர்ப்பதற்கு depreciation என்று பெயர்.
எடுத்துக் காட்டாக ஒரு கார் வாங்குகிறோம் என்று வைத்துக் கொள்வோம். விலை 5 லட்சம்.
அந்த ஆண்டு விற்பனை 1 கோடி ரூபாய், மற்ற செலவுகள் 90 லட்சம் என்று இருந்தால் லாபம் லாபம் பத்து லட்சம் (கார் வாங்காமல் இருந்தால்). கார் வாங்கியதால் லாபம் 5 லட்சம் என்று குறையக் கூடாது என்று முதல் ஆண்டில் 1 லட்சம் மட்டும் depreciation ஆக கழித்துக் கொள்வார்கள். ஏனென்றால் காரை அடுத்த 5 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு வியாபாரத்துக்காகப் பயன்படுத்துவோமே. இந்த ஆண்டிலேயே முழுச் செலவையும் கணக்கில் சேர்த்து விட்டால் இந்த ஆண்டு லாபம் குறைந்து போய், வரும் ஆண்டுகளில் லாபம் அதிகரித்து விடும்.
5 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு ஆண்டுக்கு ஒரு லட்சமாகக் depreciation கணக்கில் எடுத்துக் கொள்வார்கள்.
எத்தனை ஆண்டுகளில் செலவைக் கணக்கு காட்ட வேண்டும், எந்த வீதத்தில் குறைய வேண்டும் என்று பல முறைகள் இருக்கின்றன.
இதற்கும் விலை உயர்வுக்கும் நேரடித் தொடர்பு இருக்கக் கூடாது.
அன்புடன்,
மா சிவகுமார்
வறுமைக்கு காரணமும், விளைவுகளும்
செல்வசெழிபிற்க்கு அருகமையில், கடுமையான வறுமையய் காணும் பெரும்பாலான, மனிதநேயங்கொண்டவர்கள் இந்த முரண்பாட்டிற்க்கு காரணம் முதலாளித்துவ பொருளாதார கொள்கைகளே என்ற தவறான முடிவுக்கு வருகின்றனர்.
இரண்டாம் உலக்ப்போரில் முற்றிலும் அழிந்த ஜெர்மனியில், 1945ல் வறுமை, பசி, வேலையில்லா திண்டடம் மிக அதிகமாக இருந்தது. சந்தை பொருளாராத கொள்கைகளை, கடும் எதிர்பிற்கிடையில் அமல் படுதிய பின் பத்தே ஆண்டுகளில் ஜெர்மனி மீண்டும் தலை நிமிர்ந்தது. “ஜெர்மன் மிராக்கில்” என்று இன்றும் போற்றப்படுகிரது.
1947இல், நம்மைவிட மிகவும் கீழ் நிலையில் இருந்த மலேசயா, சிங்கப்பூர், தைவான், தென் கொரியா, ஜப்பான் போன்ற நாடுகளும் சுதந்திர சந்தை பொருளாதார கொள்கைகளை பின்பற்றி இன்று நம் நாட்டை விட பல மடங்கு சுபிட்சமாக உள்ளன. சைனாவும் முதலாளித்துவ பாதைக்கு வந்து வேகமாக வளம் பெற்று வருகிரது.
1991ல், நாம் திவால் நிலையில் இருந்தோம். அரசு, தங்கத்தை அடமானம் வைத்து இறக்குமதிக்கான் டாலர்களை பெற வேண்டிய நிலை உருவானது. அதன் பிறகு, சுதந்திர சந்தை பொருளாதார கொள்கைகளை அமல் படுத்தியதன் விளைவாக, இன்று மீண்டு வருகிரோம். அந்நிய செலவாணிக்காக் ஐ.எம்.எfஇடம் கை ஏந்த வேண்டிய நிலை இன்று இல்லை. பல கோடி மக்கள் வறுமை கோட்டிற்கு மேல் எழும்ப முடிந்தது. தொழில் துறையின் வளர்சியால் புதிய வேலை வாய்ப்புகளும், அரசுக்கு பெரிய அளவில் வரி வசுலும் உருவாகிரது. அதை வைத்து அரசு, பல நலத்திட்டங்களை செயல்படுத்த முடிகிறது. ராணுவதிற்க்காக வருடம் சுமார் 93,000 கோடி ரூபாய் செலவிடுவது நமக்கு மிக அதிகமான சுமை. இது போன்ற பல சுமைகளை விலைவாசி உயர்வு என்ற மறைமுக வரியாக நாம் அனைவரும், குறிப்பாக ஏழைகளும் சுமக்க வேண்டியுள்ளது.
இன்னும் வெகு தூரம் போக வேண்டியதுள்ளது. எழ்மை ஒழிப்பு, விவசாயம், கல்வி, சுகாதாரம் போன்ற அடிபடை வசதிகாளுக்காக அரசு பல லச்சம் கோடி ரூபாய்கள் செலவிட்டாலும், அதில் பெரும்பாண்மையான தொகை அரசு எந்திரத்தாலும், அரசியல்வாதிகளாளும் திருடப் படுகிரது. அரசு மான்ய தொகை, பணக்கார விவசாயிகளுக்கே பெரும்பாலும் சேர்கிரது. உண்மையான ஏழைகளுக்கு இவை கிடைக்கும்படி செய்ய, ஊழல்மயமான நம் அரசு எந்திரத்தை சீர் படுத்த வேண்டும். அதுவே நமக்கு முதல் வேலையாகும். அதை செய்யாமல், வறுமைக்கு காரணமாக முதலாளித்துவ பொருளாராதார் கொள்கைகளை காரணமாக காட்டுதல் தவறு.
அதியமான்,
//ஊழல்மயமான நம் அரசு எந்திரத்தை சீர் படுத்த வேண்டும். அதுவே நமக்கு முதல் வேலையாகும். அதை செய்யாமல், வறுமைக்கு காரணமாக முதலாளித்துவ பொருளாராதார் கொள்கைகளை காரணமாக காட்டுதல் தவறு.//
'வறுமையை போக்க முதலாளித்துவக் கொள்கைகளை பின்பற்றினால் மட்டும் போதும்' என்பதைத்தான் நான் தவறு என்று நினைக்கிறேன். சந்தைப் பொருளாதார அமைப்புடன் அரசாங்கமும் தீவிரமாகத் திட்டங்கள் தீட்டி செயல்பட வேண்டும். எல்லாவற்றையும் சந்தைகள் கவனித்துக் கொள்ளும் என்பது நடக்காது.
அன்புடன்,
மா சிவகுமார்
///'வறுமையை போக்க முதலாளித்துவக் கொள்கைகளை பின்பற்றினால் மட்டும் போதும்' என்பதைத்தான் நான் தவறு என்று நினைக்கிறேன். சந்தைப் பொருளாதார அமைப்புடன் அரசாங்கமும் தீவிரமாகத் திட்டங்கள் தீட்டி செயல்பட வேண்டும். எல்லாவற்றையும் சந்தைகள் கவனித்துக் கொள்ளும் என்பது நடக்காது.///
but govt intervetnion in the past has proved costly and counter productive. it is corrupt and leaking and the cost is borne by the tax payers yet again. and you know about govt control of bus transport which resulted in the present abuse and shortages.
govt should get out of business and industry and should have concentrated only in welfare ,etc ; as in many welfare states like Norway.
and for e.g :ration shops can be privatised to plug the leakages. the beneficiaries may be given food vouchers or even money directly and asked to buy from private shops. now the bulk of the ration rice is stolen or divered using bogus ration cards or false accounts. and the admnin cost of civil supplies are colossal. all these waste and leaks can be avoided the money saved can be spent directly on the needy.
more later
Date:04/10/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/10/04/stories/2007100459280300.htm
Tamil Nadu - Chennai
“Energy subsidy has not reached target group”
T. Ramakrishnan
It also led to over-extraction of groundwater
Early adopters with a better resource base have benefited
Small farmers unable to keep up with competitive well-deepening
CHENNAI: The energy subsidy provided in Tamil Nadu has helped wealthy farmers and not reached the poor and the needy, the Union Planning Commission’s expert group on groundwater management and ownership has concluded.
In its report released last month on the groundwater scenario in the country, the group, headed by Member Kirit S. Parikh, said while subsidised power stimulated irrigation, it also led to over-extraction of groundwater.
Referring to the free power supply scheme, the report said the energy consumed for agriculture was 6,910 million units in 1996-97 for around 15.67 lakh pumpsets. [According to the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board’s document, Statistics at a Glance 2006-2007, the agricultural consumption was 10,358 million units in 2006-2007 (revised estimates) for 18.01 lakh pumpsets.]
Tracing the history of the free power scheme, the report referred to a study by the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) on the characteristics of groundwater usage for irrigation in Vaigai, Noyyal and Palar river basins.
The MIDS study revealed that early adopters with a better resource base (land, education and access to capital) had benefited, but latecomers with a lower resource base faced difficulties.
Once individuals had access to groundwater irrigation, the incentive they had to contribute to community water systems eroded, concomitantly disturbing the safety net for the poor, who were dependent on such systems. Small farmers were unable to keep up with the competitive well-deepening, which led to heavy indebtedness.
The price paid for water was often dictated by the nature of the water supplier, the experts’ report said, citing the MIDS study.
Noting that groundwater development in the State was showing mixed results, the report said though the groundwater development helped the agriculture sector in the beginning, “it is showing a lot of strain” due to a number of factors. Poor groundwater yields and thriving informal groundwater markets that had put financial strain on farmers were among the factors.
Overexploitation of groundwater led to lowering of water quality, making water unfit for irrigation due to pollution from industries in basins such as Palar and Noyyal.
To improve the groundwater scenario, the Planning Commission’s expert group called for targeted subsidies, early notification and strict implementation of Groundwater Act 2003 and tightening the pollution control mechanism under the existing laws. Charging electrical energy reasonably and resorting to the Andhra Pradesh model of demand side management (installing capacitors and friction-free foot valves) would reduce the energy subsidy burden and discourage overexploitation.
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