Hey Teacher! Leave us Kids Alone!

It is with great consternation that over the past few days there are a series of disturbing news of events happening in schools, on the way to schools and also preparing for school. 

https://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&gl=in&tbm=nws&authuser=0&q=school+

A cursory search in google news throws up a series of articles related to the rape of a child in Bangalore, About 18 students dying in a horrific train crash in Telangana. Finally a 3 year old child being tortured in the name of tutoring.

These incidents that are happening hundreds of kilometers apart are linked in a  ugly and subterranean manner. The simple word is callousness. Utter callousness on the part of Schools, educational boards and Political authorities.

I named this article from a song from Pink Floyds The Wall, a song which I heard in my youth and liked a lot. The lyrics of this great song are awesome and is an utter rejection of the system of education. When the entire "SYSTEM" is focussed on output in the form of completed curriculum, student ranks in the examination, number of highest ranks, number of students in IIT, CA, Medical colleges and on and on, The students are put on a treadmill from day one. Start from home travelling on rickety buses or hanging on on Dad`s motorcycle or scooter. Go to school where teachers are particular on daily curriculum movements. regurgitate the stuff on the paper, pass exam and then enter a career and then live on the salary till retirement and then...... This is the dream a very Indian dream.

Callousness happens at every spot. It is said that today in the South African mines we cannot pick a Cullinan diamond- the reason? Mining in the olden days was done on hand and diamonds were literally picked off the tunnels. Today huge machines in the tunnels crush the mud and with it diamonds into small pieces. No Cullinan diamonds only solitaires for your engagement. This metaphor is not far from the truth in the education system. The political authority is focused on quantity and not on quality. Well why have ten IITs when  you can have twenty at twice the cost (this is a modified line from the movie Contact starring Jodie Foster). The number of licenses given to open educational institutions is stupendous. This is the callousness of poor quality

The schools are looking for fast gain in the shortest time. Though they are supposed to be non profits, their financial goals are very big. So the second type of callous - of viewing students as consumers. Consumers who cost money and so have to be made money from. The number of institutions charging heavy messing charges, Hostel fees that run in the lakhs of rupees. School fees per year that cost what an earlier generation would have spent for their entire educational life.

The recent incident from Kolkata where a supposed tutor trashed a student and traumatized her parents is another form of callousness- interruption. Of teachers who view their pupils as interruptions in their lives. Teachers these days are getting paid absolutely low salaries. They carry poor self esteem. The institute they teach at insists on retaining the teachers original educational certificates. Their pay is low and one can see boredom. One just has to look at government teachers to understand the boredom.

So a student of today is caught in the callousness of poor quality education, High costs and Carelessness. 

Who is going to change this?? Can a mindset change help?

As parents we have to change our mindset about education. When we stop viewing our children as unbranded goods who will take the brand of the school/ college/IIT etc, we give our children a breather.

When we know that education means to bring out the best of the children and not in stuffing them with information, we as parents cultivate our children.

Let us not have too many high hopes on the educational "SYSTEM" and let us focus on giving our children happiness and hope. 

The Demographic Dividend and Population Policy in India- Population Pyramid from an inverted triangle

Population Pyramid- Triangle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recent News articles are celebrating the development of the new Indian economy and more particularly the demographic dividend that India and China are enjoying. A number of leaders see this as an indication of a public policy success.

The demographic dividend is simply the historical fact that we are seeing in our life time. As the economies of the north are saddled with ageing populations, the big Asian economies are seeing their populations entering the job markets.

Can the public policy in India and the politicians take credit for this positive development? Does public policy have any contribution to make in this area? As we know the aggregate population in the nation is actually the reflection of family size decisions made a generation ago by each individual family. This provides the context to discuss the public policy angle of the demographic dividend.

A generation ago the emergency and the population policies of the then political class can be illustrated by the famous inverted triangle and the slogan that followed, We two ours one. This was the perfect strategy to reduce the population by half in a generations time. Why did this policy fail? Was this the lack of communication? The population policy of that time has been studied in depth and we can find studies on the diffusion of the means of population reduction. One of the earliest marketing PhDs from IIM Ahmadabad had done work on this.

The compelling view is that population policy in the 1980 and the 1990s has not succeeded to the extent that the government had wanted and by such failing has handed the demographic dividend.

How to succeed with excellent customer service - 7 steps to excellence

How to succeed with excellent customer service - 7 steps to excellence The task of every business is to create a customer. Usually we in business end up creating a customer and then we start on the slippery slide with the customer to customer disservice. It is a repeated sight in organisations to see customers shouting in the hall ways and crowing employees facing off with the manager explaining the facts. At the root of such disservice is that organisations do not realise that customers usually require few answers and at the appropriate time. Usually once the customer has escalated the matter high up in the organisation, there is a deluge of information available.This deluge of information is shown as the resolution to the applause of all. Blaming systems and sometimes the customer is a poor way to handle customer service. The apt way is create excellant customer service by frontending the process and ensuring that customer is at the core of the entire process This article by michael kinsky delineates some of the findings in a Harvard business school finding. This seven path to customer service is a strategic tool.

http://blog.livehelpnow.net/2012/04/7-customer-service-strategies-to-help-you-beat-the-competition/

Winning with successful customer service is a powerful tool. Repeat customers and word of mouth are too powerful in this age of facebook and twitter. A single sentence can see the end of a behemoth

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http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-openpage/article2623210.ece

Wonderful article from The Hindu . Continuation from the earlier discussion

Could they buy salt and spices, fuel and milk, and pay rent... with Rs. 2.33 a day ?

PUSHPA M BHARGAVA

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My friend, Montek Singh Ahluwalia (MSA), Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission that has the responsibility of planning our future, is a very intelligent person. There is abundant evidence of his IQ being sky-high.

Unfortunately, an intelligent person is not necessarily well informed. For example, MSA does not seem to be aware that we have a scientific organisation called the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which also happens to be the oldest research body in India and one of the oldest in the world. It was set up as the Imperial Research Fund Association in 1911. The Director-General of ICMR is also the Secretary of the Department of Health Research in the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The flagship laboratory of ICMR is the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) located in Hyderabad. This institution has from time to time brought out tables of minimum nutritional requirements of Indians. The last publication in this series appeared in 2010 and was titled “National Requirements and Recommended Dietary Allowance for India.” It is used as a reference book all over the world.

According to this publication, the minimum requirements of a moderately active man are 400 gm of cereals, 300 gm of vegetables, 100 gm of fruits, 30 gm of oil, 80 gm of pulses and 40 gm of sugar. In Hyderabad, which is nowhere near the costliest city in the country, the above will cost, as of today, on average, Rs.12.88, 5.22, 2.50, 1.95, 5.60 and 1.52 totalling Rs. 29.67.

MSA has said, even in a submission to the Supreme Court, that if a person spends Rs.32 in an urban area (and Rs. 26 in a rural area) a day on all his requirements, he is not poor. What I have said in the preceding para means that if a person living in an urban area takes care just of his minimum nutritional requirements (with ice cream, cake, laddu and the like totally out of bounds), he would be left with Rs.32 minus Rs.29.67 = Rs.2.33 a day (Rs.69.90 per month or approximately Rs.839 per year) to take care of his requirements of salt and spices, fuel for cooking, house rent, milk, footwear, clothing, transport, education of children, and health care, leave aside any entertainment or even a cup of tea or coffee. Would any reader agree that even for the thriftiest, it is possible to meet the above expenditure with Rs.2.33 a day — Rs.69.90 per month — anywhere in the country? A bus pass for one person for one month in Hyderabad costs Rs.555 (Rs.18.50 a day).

As there is no questioning MSA's intelligence, there is only one conclusion that we can arrive at: that he is unaware of the existence of ICMR, NIN or its publication.

(The writer is a former Vice-Chairman, National Knowledge Commission and Founder-Director, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad. His email ID is bhargava.pm@gmail.com)

Wonderful article from todays the hindu
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-openpage/article2623211.ece

How employable are our graduates?

MURALI PASUPATHY

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We often hear two contrasting views on the employment scenario. On the one hand, employers cry hoarse about non-availability of talent in the market and, on the other, we hear about millions of youth who are unable to find a well-paid job several years after completing engineering or other professional degrees. A recent survey suggests that over 70 per cent of the engineering graduates in India are unemployable. What ails these graduates or the so-called degree holders? Why are they not suitable for employment?

Let us understand what is meant by suitability for employment. I was transitioning a business process of a large U.K. bank to our office in Chennai during my stint with a large IT company. The process was quite simple. The bank had developed a system for analysing the financial statements of borrowers. The numbers had to be extracted from the statements submitted based on some simple rules and input into the system. The system would process the data and generate the borrower's creditworthiness in the form of a business grade. This business grade was used by the bank's relationship managers to arrive at the credit limit for the borrower or to decide whether to lend him at all.

As part of the transition process, I wanted to know the qualifications and the skill sets of the resources. The bank's project manager told me that some of the resources had completed their tenth grade and most of them were fifth graders. In India, I knew for sure that we would hire very bright commerce and accounting graduates for this process.

This is the big difference. What was being done effortlessly by a fifth grader in the U.K. needed a commerce graduate in India. And, I can't imagine a resource that has passed standard V doing this work in India. It is definitely not the question of thousands of graduates being available in the job market for taking up this job. Corporates will be more than willing to have less qualified resources for doing the job if they can deliver because that would mean a lesser salary burden. We simply cannot train a fifth grader to perform these tasks. In fact, if truth be told, even after hiring some of the brightest minds we barely managed to survive the transition pressures measured by stringent performance criteria.

Does that mean a fifth grader in the U.K. is equivalent to a graduate in India? That is also not true. It is because the Indian education system is inherently flawed due to imperfect delivery of the curricula, an archaic examination system, shortage of skilled teachers, inadequate supplementary reading and the student's inability to correlate theory and practice. “Education does not consist of passing examinations or knowing English or mathematics. It is a mental state,” said Jawaharlal Nehru. In summary, we miserably fail to elevate the thinking capacity and increase the breadth of faculty of the students while imparting education. This failure is deep-rooted and starts right from primary schools and gets compounded at institutes of higher learning.

Residual talent

Of all these issues, I would pick the shortage of quality teachers as the wrecker-in-chief. The reason is quite simple. The teaching profession, barring a few passionate individuals in the IITs, IIMs and some private institutions, is a job for the residual talent in the employment market.

The best engineering talent goes to the U.S. for higher studies and the cream of what remains is hired by the large corporates. After the small and medium enterprises complete the trawling, the leftover is looking for alternative sources of employment. Some of these people park themselves temporarily in teaching professions in private colleges or software training institutes. Over the next few months, they equip themselves with the requisite skills and look for opportunities in the mainstream employment market unless there are compelling reasons to stick to their current job.

There is nothing wrong in this approach because it would be embarrassing for a person to see his students earning two or three times his monthly salary coupled with frequent trips to foreign lands. I may sound blasphemous here, but the reality is we are left with teachers who continue in the teaching profession just because they are not able to find a job elsewhere. It is well-nigh impossible for these resources to inspire the student community in a graduate / postgraduate course. This is a sad and bitter truth confronting the education sector today.

Reading habit

I would also like to touch upon the issue of supplementary reading with a specific example. Gandhiji, during his days in England for his bar-at-law course, meets a person called Fredrick Pincutt. This meeting is sought by Gandhiji himself to ascertain his readiness for practising law. In Pincutt's evaluation, Gandhiji's general reading was very meagre. He says every Indian should know Indian history in detail. He also tells Gandhiji that although this has no connection with the practice of law, he ought to know this because knowledge of the world is a sine qua non for a lawyer. This will help him read a man's character from his face. Pincutt was also surprised that Gandhiji had not read about the First War of Indian Independence. Gandhiji immediately realises the importance of what Pincutt said and humbly accepts that he has not had much supplementary reading.

The reason for highlighting this incident from the Mahatma's autobiography is to emphasise the importance of cultivating the reading habit at a very young age to be successful in life.

I have another anecdote from my U.K. transition experience. We were designing an IT infrastructure to move scanned documents offshore and enable the processing through a workflow system. It was a complex project and we were interacting with a senior software developer to put the design together. He was around 30 and, in my opinion, one of the best software designers that money could buy. Curiosity got the better of me one day and I wanted to know his educational background. He told me that he had completed eighth grade in South Africa and migrated to the U.K. in search of employment. He was working as a courier boy for a year when he underwent software training and built his design skills. I was startled, to say the least. My team of two engineering graduates with three to four years of experience between them was no match for him. There are several such examples I can quote. None of the project managers and senior people that I met during the next two years was a college graduate.

Even after completing the transition, we were struggling to train the floor resources on Management Information (MI) and state-of-the-nation reports. The West had moved forward rapidly in operations management practices and our skill sets were woefully inadequate even for the catch-up work. And we had the floor overflowing with cost and chartered accountants, engineers and management graduates.

I am not trying to build a case for discontinuing our education methodology. Our method of teaching has the highest success percentage in the world in building literacy among people. The West has paid a heavy price for not paying attention to the delivery of education in society. My worry is we are bringing in a kind of under-employment where people do work that is much below the skill sets they are supposed to have. These resources will not be able to go up the corporate ladder and it will be very difficult to give them a career path. Ideally, we would want these graduates to upskill themselves and move up the value chain so that they don't become redundant. The government and society at large have to wake up to the reality that one day an African country might become the world's back office and IT hub and do to us what Bangalore or Chennai did to the western world. Before that, we have to make sure that our education system gets upgraded suitably and can mass produce well-rounded personalities who can take India on the path of glory.

(The writer's email is murali.pasupathy

@naethra.com)

Rs 33 and you are rich --Doctor wrong diagnosis and worse wrong medicine

Is it possible that we can ever find the easy way to define poverty? Is poverty about lack of ability or is it of lack of opportunities? Can we quantify poverty and is there a magic number that encapsulates the poverty debate?


Well the planning commission of India is of the opinion that poverty is the lack of cash to be exact of Rs 32/-. Well the planning commission can be so exact because they use a measure that is erroneously based on a price index set up in the 1970s which they interpreted wrongly. In essence the commission is perpetuating an error and even worse believing it. Ever heard of the doctor who made an error in diagnosis and even after knowing that it was an error ended up giving the wrong medicine because he was not ready to check his assumptions . Well the same is the case here.

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Open letter against Rs 32 as artificial poverty barrier

New Delhi: An open letter from the Right to food Campaigners to Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairperson of the Planning Commission.

September 29th, 2011

Dear Mr Ahluwalia,

While you were abroad deliberating on global matters, the Planning Commission filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court claiming that the "poverty line of Rs 25 and Rs 32 (rural and urban areas respectively) ensures the adequacy of private expenditure on food, health and education". The affidavit could not have come at a worse time when food inflation was pushing poor households to the wall even as 60 million tonnes of grain are piling in FCI godowns implying that the government itself is hoarding grain to increase food prices.

The affidavit filed by the Planning Commission in the Supreme Court skirted the two major issues that were raised by the highest court in the country: why there should be a poverty line that determines the BPL "caps" and, a request by the Bench to the Planning Commission to re-consider the poverty line. That the affidavit chose to skirt these two major issues, and chose instead to repeat the stand taken by the Planning Commission in its last affidavit in May 2011 is, we believe, an affront to the poor of this country and also the Supreme Court.

Subsequently, you have gone on defensively to say that the poverty line has no relationship to food subsidy. Yet, all central government allocations for programmes such as PDS, pensions etc are made based on these poverty ratios. Further, after drawing a ridiculously low poverty line you suggest caps on the BPL category as well as a 41 per cent cap on food subsidy which is a contradiction in terms. Perhaps you may explain to the lay public that is spending astronomical amounts on food and health care, what this poverty line is then relevant for, if not subsidies for basic needs.

Your public defense of the affidavit being "factually correct" needs to be examined against some other facts such as India being home to the largest number of hungry people, people without the advantage of education, and the highest maternal and infant mortality deaths in the world. It is also "factually correct" that India is ranked 67th out of 88 countries ranked by IFPRI in the Global Hunger Index and that nearly half of India's children remain under-nourished, twice as many as in sub-Saharan Africa. It also needs to be checked against the fact that the Planning Commission itself has admitted that households at this poverty line are getting 20 per cent less food than they require as per the government's own norms. After years of terming the IMF and the World Bank as the sources of all knowledge for how this country's economy is to be run, you have, we believe misinterpreted the FAO to suggest that the poor need less food than what the Indian government norms state.

Mr Ahluwalia, perhaps you need to reflect more on the fact that during your stewardship of the Planning Commission, India has fallen further behind neighboring and poorer (in terms of per capita income) Bangladesh, in terms of most of the human development indicators.

If Rs 25 for rural areas and 32 for urban areas per capita expenditure was "adequate" then it is not clear to us that why Planning Commission members are paid up to one hundred and fifteen times the amount (not counting the perks of free housing and health care and numerous other benefits that is enjoyed by you and members of the Planning Commission).

We believe that this affidavit is a document, no less historically significant than the "India Shining" campaign that brought the downfall of a previous regime, because it reflected arrogance and contempt for the poor comparable to the views held by the Planning Commission.

Even as we write to you, over the next twenty four hours, close to 3,000 Indian children will die of malnutrition related illness. The current 'revolution' in agriculture has led to nation-wide agrarian distress, and will see 47 farmers committing suicide in India in the next 24 hours. Further, despite your repeated prediction over the last two years on inflation (particularly food inflation) going down, the expertise of the Planning Commission even on that front has been proved wrong. Despite the indisputable intellectual resources at its command the Planning Commission seems to require a reality check; perhaps spending more time in the villages and slums of this country would have achieved that.

The right to food campaign challenges you and all the members of the Planning Commission to live on Rs 25 / Rs 32, a day till such time that you are able to explain to the public in simple words the basis of the statement that this amount is normatively "adequate". If it cannot be explained then the affidavit should be withdrawn or else you should resign.

The Steering group of the Right to Food Campaign:

Anjali Bhardwaj, Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey (National Campaign for People's Right to Information), Annie Raja (National Federation for Indian Women), Anuradha Talwar, Gautam Modi and Madhuri Krishnaswamy (New Trade Union Initiative), Arun Gupta and Radha Holla (Breast Feeding Promotion Network of India), Arundhati Dhuru and Ulka Mahajan (National Alliance of People’s Movements), Asha Mishra and Vinod Raina (Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti), Ashok Bharti (National Conference of Dalit Organizations), Colin Gonsalves (Human Rights Law Network), G V Ramanjaneyulu (Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture), Kavita Srivastava and Binayak Sen (People’s Union for Civil Liberties), Lali Dhakar, Sarawasti Singh, Shilpa Dey and Radha Raghwal (National Forum for Single Women’s Rights), Mira Shiva and Vandana Prasad (Jan Swasthya Abhiyan), Paul Divakar and Asha Kowtal (National Campaign for

Dalit Human Rights), Prahlad Ray and Anand Malakar (Rashtriya Viklang Manch), Subhash Bhatnagar (National Campaign Committee for Unorganized Sector workers), Jean Drèze and VB Rawat (Former Support group to the Campaign), Harsh Mander.

Representatives of Right to Food (State campaigns):

Veena Shatrugna, M Kodandram and Rama Melkote(Andhra Pradesh), Saito Basumaatary and Sunil Kaul (Assam), Rupesh (Bihar), Gangabhai and Sameer Garg (Chhattisgarh), Sejal Dand and Sumitra Thakkar (Gujarat), Abhay Kumar and Clifton (Karnataka), Balram, Gurjeet Singh and James Herenj (Jharkhand), Sachin Jain (Madhya Pradesh), Mukta Srivastava and Suresh Sawant (Maharashtra), Tarun Bharatiya (Meghalaya), Chingmak Chang (Nagaland) Bidyut Mohanty and Raj Kishore Mishra, Vidhya Das (Orissa), Ashok Khandelwal, Bhanwar Singh and Vijay Lakshmi (Rajasthan), V Suresh (Tamil Nadu), Arundhati Dhuru and Bindu Singh (Uttar Pradesh)

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Big Science or Navel Gazing Nanoscience

I am writing this price in the beginning of the second decade of the 21st Century AD. This piece has been in my mind for some time and I decided to give it a structure before writing . The immediate provocation is the fact that a planet made of crystalline carbon also called Diamond planet has been found near a neutron star in a far away galaxy by our space scientists. My fried asked me if we could take a dumpster and an JCB to it. The other friend remarked if dragging it away with a rocket would do fine.

Well this got me thinking on the following lines. We do not have supersonic aircraft in the civilian sector.The Concorde project scrapped long ago and all the planes just wreckage. NASA has let go of it Shuttle programme and there are no projects to go to moon or mars. Big science with its Saturn rockets, advanced Shuttles seem to be in the line for the breaking ball. What is the attitude that makes Big science seem unnecessary while the latest app in your phone is just too good to be true. It even trims your nose hair.Wow.

The root of this poor attitude seems to lie among policy makers who are not having cold war era contests of bigger and longer, farther and stronger. No Soviets just a bunch of mid income countries struck among declining infrastructure. The outsourced programme of NASA to depend on the workhorse Soyuz and the recent report of a Soyuz falling from the sky are contrasting enough-- efficient budgeting against effective way to reach space.

Beyond the ideas of policy makers, we as individuals are becoming more and more insular and more apt to gaze at our navels in a hypnotic glance. Newer technology is making us insulated from each other not just from society. A whole generation fitted into the tiny and tinier screens of portable music, portable telephones and portable computers. People showing off at the Mall cafes but forgetting that the other person has his own screen. A large gargantuan argus headed monster following friends on the screen but ignoring the immediate surroundings. The friends and people on the internet seem more closer than those next to us, furthering the isolation.

At the heart of this situation is a change in our attitude from Big Social goals to narrow individual achievements. We do not want the Big science that created modern day civilization. Science is an accretive process and we have developed by using old theories and it was a slow process to modern day miracles. The miracles of Chloroform seem tired in todays days of local and specific anaesthesia. The miracle of innoculation seems outdated in the modern day of class 5 antibiotics. But in the movement of science there is accretion leading to todays advancements. We just cannot stop building rockets if we intend to get to Mars or Jupiter in  the next 100 or 200 years. We cannot dump technology and expect to build a next generation Saturn Rocket to take us to Mars or even worse face a situation like the movie Armageddon showed of a rogue meteor out to get to earth.

  

The computing device has changed a lot from the Charles Babbage mechanical calculator to modern day tablet handhelds. With such advancement we should invest more in science that produces the concepts called computers. However we are more concerned with apps that show the nearest movie hall,reminder pads, free audio,free ebooks which are taking us away from the idea of science as a tool of betterment and to the view that technology that relates to our emotions is better.

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MIndfulness-- The only way to sustainability

Image via WikipediaToday was a wonderful summer day in India.Lots of heat, lots of traffic and even more hotheads fighting in the sun. I rode on a bend of the road. I was surprised to see an rickshaw parked on the side and disturbance on the road. The traffic had stopped and there was a hurry as buses and cars were parked. In the middle of the road there was the driver of the rickshaw and another man picking up utensils of steel from the hot road.

The traffic moved on and coming close to the spot we saw a lot of food spilled on the road from  large containers - basically large Dabbas. The container of food would have been sufficient to feed a full meal for about 30-35 people.

Crossing the place where the food had fallen off, I thought about whose mistake it was all about. The maker of the food did not do any mistake in the quantity or the quality. The one who packed must have packed it the way he must have done it everyday. Packed it properly so that the food would be edible after an hour.

The one who was taking the food to the waiting people drove the rickshaw mindlessly and the food fell on the street for no one to eat. This was waste created by sheer mindlessness.

My thought strayed to the challenges facing our generation. Particularly the one of having ever dwindling resources that are not sufficient. We are ever the mindless driver carrying useful food and spilling the road with the resources and this is food that is not useful for the present or the future generations.

This is the warning. Mindless waste is not the path to sustainability

Sustainable Business

Image via WikipediaWe are living in the 21st century with dwindling resources and rapid rise in costs of the inputs to business. How are we to work on these resources and how are we to deal with rising costs? 


The answers lie in the problem itself and as with all answers, we have to reword the question to get to the answer. First we begin with a question. What got us here? We came to the current place in the world due to the workings of the economic model of industry and rapid growth. We have to be thankful to this model for having gotten us thus far. But it wont take us to a great place in the future as this model is not based on sustainability.


What is the definition of sustainability? This answer can be best provided by the example of an agricultural farm. If we identify our Farm as a Industry, we provide all the inputs needed from outside, be it the seed, the fertilizer or the pesticide. So we assume that the farm as in itself is dependent on the outside to provide returns.


When we see it as a sustainable farm. A farm in which nature also plays its role. That there are natural fertilizers in the form of the earthworms, natural pesticides in the form of  birds and certain bacteria. Then the farm is an interdependent resource.This is sustainability.


All this talk of sustainable is fine but how in the living hell does it make a difference in business. It makes a lot of money sense. Assuming the first farm needs an investment of Rs 200000/- to make a profit ( reminder after outgo on the input costs) of about Rs 20,000/-. This profit is about 10% of the outgo.


Then what about the second farm, it will make a profit of 20,000/- but by only spending Rs50,000/-.This is because the farm is a sustainable model.


What this means is that less of the gross is needed to make more of the Net.


Makes a lot of money sense.


A business linked to this model will be highly successful. Particularly if it puts in a cash buffer to tide over the tough times. 

Copenhagen Revisited

ust as the Copenhagen Interpretation of the New physics lead to the quantum mechanics and its derivatives, let us hope that the copenhagen meeting on the environment is successful and that the climate change meeting changes the world population views on their old and wasteful practises that are creating a poisonous world.

With a prayer,let us hope that good sense prevails on all the leaders.

Also we need to move our lives towards voluntary simplicity and creating an economy based on thrift, repeat use of goods, non wastefulness of resources and pious life.

End of Poverty

I am placing the End of poverty End of poverty . A beautiful book by Jeffrey Sachs whom I rate to get the Nobel prize for this current year

The Future of Mankind- The stars and Beyond Part 1

Image via Wikipedia

There is a brilliant future for mankind and it lies in the development of
technology at large and the creation of a society of humans who embrace the
new and coming technology and the reorientation of our priorities as well as
the creation of a massive civilization the size of our solar system.

Kardashev scale and its implication

The Kardashev scale of which I have already discussed earlier in my blog has
tremendous implications for mankind. simply put as technology and the energythat drive it increase, there will be an impetus for our civilization to
seek resources from beyond the planet. It could be from our star the Sun and
finally to a level where we take resources from across the galaxy

Current technological trends
The current development of technology and the creation of smaller and minute
and even nano machines will continue to the future and we will see machines
that are a singular molecular size. So there is great potential in this
field for development of machines that can solve a number of problems- even
atomic level adjustments in the human body

The development of these machines will be challenged only by the development
of smarter and intelligent code and software to run these machines. Also
computing will enter into the quantum era where the spin of electrons canbe used to create machines that are infinite in capacity and as these
machines will use the logic of the universe, they will use the computing
power of the entire universe. So this will be the ultimate computer of the
future

Parallel to this will be the creation of bionic machines that can be used
a la the droids in star wars to explore other planets. The development of
stme cell medicine and the implications of this technology for the possible
creation of cyborgs is tremendous who can do a lot of difficult tasks
replacing humans
The development of new enery sources is still not exhausted so we humans
will still stay on earth for the next 500 years till we have discoverd and
perfected fusion technology as well as the other technologies like quantum
computing, space travel at close to the speed of light and other such
discoveries
Current economic trends and their implications for the future
The current economic slowdown is a miniscule when seen from the vastness of
the universe and its potential for resources. We would add a trillion times
more for every resource on the earth if we were only to travel to all the
planets and asteroids in the solar system and access them
The development of the globalised earth will be replaced with the creation
of a system of universalisation of economies in the world where there would
be no forex market but a uniform currency that circulates.
Present focus of economics is on sustainable development, an issue that has
been highlighted by the current economic failures created by some rogue
elements

The creation of an universal economy depends great on the empowerment of the individual in the civilization as well as the creation of a massive scale of infrastructure for delivery of the economic goods to all parts of the human kind. The creation of communities that are sustainable will go a great length in establishing a trans global economy that is robust and one that will deliver the goods

Economists like Jeffrey sachs will create a new framework that will change
the way we see the distribution of wealth

Changes in the Polity
For the universalitation of the economies of the world, which will be a
bulwark of the civilization, the present differences of the nations, races
to disappear, there will be a lot of effort needed to eliminate differences
which I believe will be caused only by creating sustainable communities on
the model of Jeffrey sachs, E.F Shumacher and other economists before them.

We will need another Gandhi to create the circumstances for the development of a Universal Earth that is free of opression and shortsight

Small is Beautiful

Image by oneblackbird via Flickr

There is a good book that I would like to recommend. It is a book called Small is Beautiful by E.F Shumacher. More on him here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._F._Schumacher
and
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/
I have been reading this book and it gives a concrete solution to the problems of the day. The main thesis is that small is a better solution than big. That small technical empowerment, small economic solutions are better placed to solve the issues facing the world than massive soultions.
It is a good point but It is also true that small developments should happen in a larger canvas of better infrastructure .
I will add some of the quotations from this book later. But for Now I would suggest that you catch the book.
It has a lot of impact on the small world of our pocket book and also on the larger country and world. Small incremental improvements rightly targetted at key individuals will go a long way

End of Poverty Mind Map

Mind Map PDF file of the End of Poverty book by Jeffrey Sachs. Useful for those who need to understand sachs and with very little time on your hand or for those who need to impress an audience with a quick flow of ideas on Sachs and the End of Poverty challenge for which he offers specific solutions

The coming Green Revolution

Image by kimberlyfaye via Flickr

The time for Green technology has come and It is going to be the next big growth story. Green technology includes Solar,Wind,Biomass, Certain forms of Nuclear technology ,Hydrogen, geothermal and other sources including Tide and Wave based power generation plants.

This is the type of sources of energy that will revolutionize the economy, but most importantly will create a lot of changes at the planetary level in politics as well. This is in line with the kardashev scale
for more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-kardashev-scale.htm
This form of technology will create the basis for a large scale change in the world, in its outlook as well as perceptions. The world will prepare to utilise the resources of the Star ( The Sun in our case) and this will go a long way in creating a civilization which will unify in its objectives in the quest for resources as well as the utilization of the same.

In the meanwhile, go out and buy a few of the stock in the Solar, Nanotech ( has implications for Solar and bio mass based plants) and wind energy companies, you will see benefits by the third quarter of 2009.
This revolution will change a lot of things. Lets welcome the same

The Present Credit Crisis and the Poor Nations

Image via Wikipedia

Credit Crisis and the Poor
The monetary crisis has hit us all badly and it can only get bad before coming back for all of us.Saying greed is to blame is taking an emotional stance about it. The rose petals have to become mulch before the flower starts to bloom - Basic law of transformation. However realise that this crisis is even worse for some of us than to the others.
How will the crisis affect the less developed and what will happen to the millenium goals for development. Resource rich underdeveloped countries are likely to see a contraction in their economies as the commodity prices are becoming rapidly underpriced. This could affect the amount of money available after corruption in these countries to pursue social development Agenda. Corruption is a big thing in these economies and it could only get much worse as everybody tries to grab their share of a reducing pie.
It is also more likely that the debt forgiveness program from the first world countries would also take a hit as these nations are looking to outspend the recession through radical fiscal programs. So it is likely that debt forgiveness for poor nations could take a drastic hit.

The main suggestion for underdeveloped countries is to strengthen the existing programmes under the millennium development goals and make them self sufficient. This is a real time lesson in the reality that these programmes will face once the aid nations leave. So the prescription is to strengthen the programmes. Also one should ensure that wasteful expenses are taken out. A system of frugality should be institutionalised to prevent waste of much needed money.
Also Strengthening the traditional system of commerce unique to each culture must be given a boost so that the effects of the meltdown of the Modern commerce system will be compensated by the traditional system of commerce. The traditional systems of commerce have a lot more trust and also compensate well. so the traditional system of commerce should be given a boost.
Conclusion:-
1. Strengthen the programmes under the millennium development goals
2. Ensure Frugality in the program management
3. Give a boost to traditional commerce channels

Ghandian Economics for Todays Credit crisis

Image via Wikipedia

Quote from Gandhi writing in Hindu Swaraj " As the self is , so is the Universe"
The current generation has forgotten the value of Gandhi and the only knowledge we have is skewed. We have forgotten his economics and this is very unskilled of a lot of us because he has a lot to teach in both the areas of Personal Finance and National Economics
Personal Finance:- The Main value that this great man taught is one called frugality. In todays world, frugality is seen as something akin to poverty and that is most unfortunate as this is the only value that can prevent largescale poverty.Please understand that frugality is not about living in poverty and enjoying it without gritting the teeth. It is about spending less and keeping more for the rainy day/retirement/emergencies. Seems like advice from the moral science class.
Frugality also means that we consume less of the earth and that we give a legacy to our future generation.
The Advice is to spend less and to save more for the future. Also understand that todays savings become the Investments of tomorow which benefit our next generation as jobs.
National Finance :- The main lesson here is that as a nation we must invest more in the development of assets inthe hinterland as much as in the cities. The NREGA is a good step in that directions. BUt it is small interventionism. The need of the hour is building national assets like river interlinking. In a country the size of India,this idea is one whose time has come and that time is Now. Building national assets like River interlinking will provide massive irrigatin potential especially in semi arid tracts of the Deccan and also flood relief for a number of states in the North. This is the only oppurtunity after Balarama to alter the course of rivers and it is possibel to realise this
Jai Hind

Time to revive River interlinking

The need of the time for the economy of the country is a massive fiscal impetus. Though the NREGA is a good success in states like Andhra pradesh, The economy needs a much larger fiscal boost and it is the Task of Prof Manmohan Singh to Initiate a massive fiscal boost.
The American New Deal Program was successful because of its large scale investments in developing the Infrastructure of the country particulary the development of the TVA- Tennesse valley and the Hoover dam.
The development of similar infrastructure in the country have been waiting for someone to take the task since the late Jawaharlal Nehru to initiate.
I believe that the dream of Bishop Cotton of interlinking the river is and ideal infrasructure that can pay itself in Irrigation and transport cess that can be levied on the users. Time the government thought of the larger national good. Time for this very useful investment