UN Development index and the definition of developed countries

We have seen lot of debate on the issue that India is emerging as next World super power and we will challenge the mighty China. These arguments are sometime due to our emotional outburst of seeing the poor infrastructure in India for over decades. When we see anything doing good or better than what it used to be pre-liberalisation we become happy and delighted.

Economists including Dr. Arvind Panagariya and the politicians are arguing that the India has developed dramatically in the last two decades because we have more mobile phones in the country than the landlines in 40 years duration in pre-liberalisation and the telephone density is going to be at least one phone/mobile per family. It is a measure of development for a country. It does not matter if we have any facilities for the disposal of the mobile phones we are throwing away every year. What matters is the number of phones per family.

What the index care about is the per capita income of the country. It does not matter if that is increasing because a small section of the society is working in well-paid software or outsourcing companies. Most of the population in the country does not have proper and pure drinking water facilities. It is irrespective of the location. I have lived in some of the metros and small towns of India. I have not heard from anyone that they are happy with the water supply conditions in their residence. Of course there are some people who do not face any problem. These are the people living in government subsidies colonies or institutions such as IITs, IIMs, defence organisations.

I am not going to say that UN development index is not good at all but I feel that it does not cover the ground realities and it is difficult to measure development universally by having just one index. Of course there are some basic necessities that remains same through out the world. People need food, education, healthcare, clothes and shelter. And if the per capita income of a country is increasing by selling nuclear and other dangerous weapons and producing polluting cars then I do not agree that the country is actually developing. Yes in short term it might seems to develop but not in long term.

Today India is developing on the definitions of the so-called developed countries but by selling more cars and mobile to the population we can become developed. We need to create basic facilities for the masses even if we do not sell less materialistic things. We need to set our priorities. We need to build more hospitals and schools that deliver with quality. If we build these institution than the employment will be generated for more people and the nation will be built for future generations.

Small retailers like Primark are leading environment friendly initiatives

One of the most wizard and harmful innovation of the last century is PLASTICS. There is a generation has lived with and loved plastics in every sense. From food to clothes to entertainment, everyone is heavily using plastics. There has been awareness in recent times to avoid using plastics wherever it is possible.

The biggest consumers and distributors of the plastic bags and packaging have been the retailers. After public pressure they have started to sell reusable plastic bags and cotton bags as well. But it seems that these retailers are not getting involved in these initiatives whole-heartedly. For example if you go to buy flowers in a supermarket in UK, the person on the till will offer you a free plastic bag. Though the flowers are already packed in plastic but there is one more plastic bag to be used. Some of the retailers are selling bunch of daffodils flowers for 99p but they give you a quite big flower bag.

But two of the most criticised retailers of UK, Tesco and Primark, are leading the environment friendly initiatives and trying to minimised the use of plastic in their packaging and bags. For example Tesco has reduced the number of bags used by its customers by 40% in last couple of years. Primark has taken biggest leap and has stopped using plastic bags altogether. Initially customers were scaptic about the use of paper bags for shopping but now you can notice on the high street a lot of customers carrying Primark's paper bags.

Some people are raising the question about the paper used in manufacturing the bags. They are saying that the paper used is not recycled one so it might ultimately be burden on the forests. But I disagree with them. I will say that paper bag is not a problem for the disposal and very much environment friendly in comparision to the plastic bags. Though I do not know the source of the paper used in the bags but all of us know that it takes 2-3 years to grow a tree or forest if we have land and it is very natural processs. We can have forest very fast if there will be need for this but we can not dispose plastic.

Bigger and famous retailers need to take social concerns in consideration and take intiatives. Otherwise there will be very serious damaging impacts on the lives of all of us.

Does Google Street View give too much information?

Though Google was founded with good intention of searching information on the internet efficiently. But in recent times, some of the applications launched by the company have gone too far and seems to be doing more evil than good. Google street view is example of this.

Many organisations have already accused Google for privacy breach. One can understand the use of Google maps and Earth though both of these applications have been used by terrorists but why on earth we need to provide 360 degree pictures of every single street. Of course they take anyone pictures on the street and in some cases you can zoom into the pictures to see inside the windows of the shopping malls and houses.

When the terrorist had attacked on Mumbai they had heavily used in their training Google earth and maps to get familiar with their targets. Google street will make life of terrorists outfits more easy. Now they can see and feel how the streets and the targets look like in real even before landing there.

I personally believe that Google Street View should be banned. Your comments are welcomed.

Is BJP's stand on Varun Gandhi Right?

All of us has seen video showing Varun Gandhi in a hate speech. Though he says that it is not his voice and he has been framed by opposition parties. There might be doubts on the authenticity of the video but the Election commission has recommended his party not to give him party ticket. In its response, the party says that they will still allow him to contest from Pilibhit. Many of us wondering if this is the right action by a national party?

I think this is the right thing that the party has done. This does not mean to say that I am supporting any hate speech but I am supporting the right of the party to choose whichever candidate they want. Their are many deficiencies in the action and the behaviour of the Election Commiession (EC).

Firstly, there is no clear view on the legal authority EC has in such issues. The role of the EC seems to conduct the election in the country and try them to be as fair as possible. Possibily they can refer a case to the court but there are doubts if they can disallow someone on the basis of a speech.

Secondly, if we assume that the CD is right and it is his voice then big questions is SO WHAT? Is he the first or only person in the Indian politics to give such speech. Have we forgotten Raj Thackrey who was speaking against all the migrant workers into the Mumbai? And a majority of the sitting MPs have some serious charges against them. Many of them are even charged for rape, murders, and communal riots. In fact, our current President's husband has serious charges against him. If he was not husband of President he would have been convicted of murder to financial frogery in the community banks. And the Honorable President was head or the director of these banks or associated sugar mills or schools. If they can contest and will then why not Varun Gandhi?

Lastly, we are proud of our democratic system. If that system is really working then we should not be worried at all. people of the constituent should not elect him as their MP. But we should let him contest and the party is doing right thing in supporting him.

Innovation Trickle up from developing to developed countries

The process of developing some new products mainly for the developing world and then marketing it in the developed countries is called "trickle up". This is a new process as traditionally it has been US that led the innovation of products because of large consumer population. When the products were old and no more market in the USA, the companies used to market them in the Europe and Japan and then rest of the world.

But some companies are taking lead and changing this trend. For example, latest success in this process if GE healthcare's ECG machine, MAC 800. This is almost half in the weight of the lightest machine currently available in the USA and at just 20% of the price of the current models.

This is in line with the estimates from various agencies that the Asia and Africa have largest middle class populations and it is increasing day by day. These consumers might not pay the price the companies can demand in the developed countries but they are huge in numbers and can generate big revenues. This trend is particularly of interest when the consumers in the USA are turning to saving their money and consumerism is on decline.

In this scenario the companies need to focus where they can generate more revenues. This is not only GE that is turning to Asia for more revenue but also Philips, Nokia, Nestle and other companies as well. These companies will need to move their operation to developing countries in the light of new realities and perhaps their head offices one day. That will be very tough decision for the companies and it will put and question mark on the supremacy of the USA.

Impact of trickle up innovation can be far reaching. Lets wait and watch how it turns out.

How to choose Next Prime minister of India?

One of the beauty (or problem) of Indian democracy is that the people of the country can not directly choose their Prime Minister (or President). This system was perfectly fine after independence when there was only one major national political party, Indian National Congress. This system continued to work till 1990s when we saw emergence of regional parties. Regional parties started getting more seats than any national party. It seems that the regional parties can understand the regional demands and the psyche of the voters better than the national parties.

But this has created a fundamental problem for the system. How to choose the Prime minister of the country. Since the voters have no direct say in choosing the prime ministerial candidates, it is the parties who have to choose among many hopefuls. List is very long from Lalu yadav to Mayawati to Sharad Pawar to Narendra Modi to LK Advani to Man Mohan Singh to Devegoda. There are many more. But we can have only one Prime minister at a time in the end. As it is expected no single party will have majority in the Parliament and next government will be formed of some odd alliances as we have seen in last decade.

Any party who will get their leader, or a loyal man to the leader, will have to make many compromises in the cabinet structure and in the decision making in next five years assuming the government will complete its 5 years term. But this system is jeopardising the power of the government to implement policies that we might need for the development of the country in favour of more polpulist policies. And since no one is full command, everyone wants to earn as much as possible from every source. It can be giving contract to their relatives to taking bribes for selecting tenders to anything. But the PM does not have much power to stop them because they need to run the government with their support. This has happened with the Mayawati and Mulayam Singh in 5 years. Well, Both of them do not have any proper source of income but they have Crores in their bank accounts and investments.

I want to ask you the reader of this post whether you want change in the system? Would you like to choose your Prime minister directly and give more power to the PM? I personally believe that this is the way forward. And this will help more efficient and charismatics people to come into the politics because the current corrupt and muddy party based systems stops many people to enter the politics.

A Review of Slumdog Millionaire Controversy

Well, it late to write anything about this movie because it has bagged all the major and powerful awards through out the western world. Still I feel compelling reasons to write my views now when all the controversies have virtually settled down. I am not writing about the movie itself but attitude of others so I believe this post still makes some sense.

First I would like to make this clear that I am not against the movie, nor I have any problem about the slums and poverty shown in the movie. This is one of the fact of India today that we, particularly so-called middle class, always on internet, believe that India does not face extreme poverty any more. But the ground realities are different. There are still millions of people living in slums and without basic amenities like drinking water, toilets, forget about education and healthcare. So there is nothing wrong if the movie shows this or try to make poverty as the background.

I will tend to say that it was a good attempt from a foreigner director to show slums in India. But I am unable to understand the hype about the movie. Some of the logics I have heard about the hype are

1- It shows the deep poverty in the slums that we seems to have forgotten.
2- It shows that there is still hope and anything can happen to anyones life.
3- Movie or the movie director has taken initiative to help the child actors by setting up some education fund etc.

My problem with the hype is that none of these is a compelling reason for such a hype. If child poverty, child prostituion and religious divide in the India is a reason than I differ from the critics that this was the best movie. I can name a few of movies made by other directors that have shown everything of these in a better way and more realistcially. watch Saalam Bombay by Mira Nair. It was made 20 year back but it had everything we saw in Slumdog. Probably it was too realistic. It showed that foriegners go to India to consume drugs. I do not mean to say every tourist goes for this purpose but a large number of tourist go to India for this purpose. It did not show that the American tourist gives tips in dollars even when their car is broken by some slumdogs.

The only merit I see is that it was made in English and a wider western community could watch the movie. That is good and perhaps it will increase the interest of the western viewers and the production houses to invest in Indian (to be precise Bollywood) movie industry.

But assuming that the lives of the child actors will change is beyond imagination. Yes, they will have good time for 1-2 years till they are in media. But after that they will be back to slums and no one even remember them. Their parents will have good time. They have cash cows for sometime and they do not need to work till their children get money from media or somewhere. These children will be exploited more by their parents for money. If changing life was so easy, people would have changed themselves. Anyway, in real life it does not happen.

My biggest problem is with the India media. Why they were appreciating this movie so much is beyond my senses. There was nothing new or really great to appreciate in the movie. Even the story and the questions of the contest were childish if not stupid. Most of the people on this earth have not seen US $100 in their lives, how come a blind in India new the answer. Just to let you know that $ is not official currency of India.

But I belive they appreciated because the people who go to watch this movie in the multiplexes these days have no clue about the real india that still lives in slums or villages. These few thousands Indians are not much different in their thinking and life style than their western counterparts. So I think it makes sense to them. perhaps we are becoming a country of only a few elite and rich english and convent educated people. What British rule of over 100 years could not do India, we seems to be doing ourselves in less than 100 years, To become western elite class.

Shame on us.