Magic wand 2

Hello, I have the magic wand! (Part II)                                                                  written on 7.10.15

This is Part II of a series of articles on the present state of our economy and related topics 

I feel like laughing at the innocence (or is it ignorance) of some of the so called experts, but end up crying looking at the results of their action. The ruling elite often say they don’t have the magic wand to solve this problem or that, be it inflation, farmers’ suicide or insurgency. I guess I have the magic wand.

Bullish market Vs Inflation

There has been a steady decline in the industrial output in the past few months making our faces droop reading the statistics. But did anyone notice that there has not been much of complaint or noise about inflation during the same period? Inflation rate has come down significantly, not as a result of some serious action taken by the government to shield the people from high inflation, but due very much to the drop in industrial output. I have been observing this phenomenon for the past few decades, particularly since the introduction of LPG [Liberalization, Privatization, Globalization,] regime in 1991. Whenever the market is burgeoning the common man is crestfallen and when the market slumps the common man has a sigh of relief.

The economy of numbers has taught us to believe that when production goes up, prices will come down and vice versa. Does the aforesaid fact contradict this dictum? The theory of economy of numbers applies only to essential commodities and ‘can’t live without goods’. Does it not mean we are producing non essential goods [should we call them bads] and shoving them down the throat of consumers by overzealous marketing – publicities, creation of artificial market – leading to inflation shooting up when production goes up. In other words, we are producing and feeding the market a lot of junks.

In 1991 when, the then PM – Narasimha Rao – introduced the LPG, on seeing the banners announcing this as ‘shackles broken’, I commented ‘With this all small scale industries in India will be closed in 3 years, all medium scale industries will shut shop in 4 years and all large scale ones will call it quits in 5 years. Only MNCs will survive and thrive and what will they be producing – Lipsticks and nail polishes?’ Needless to say the prophecy has come true to the letter ‘e’. Indian industry has died a silent death. Just a walk through any industrial estate way back in 1993 – 94 within 2 years of introduction of LPG revealed this. Tens of thousands of small industries have closed down, thousands of medium ones have shut shops giving place to car show rooms/service centers and copying [Xerox etc] shops [non productive activities] and hundreds of large ones have transferred hands to MNCs.

What are the MNCs producing? Hundreds of varieties and brands of soaps, deodorants, hair dyes, mascara etc. etc. Do we really need a few hundred varieties/brands of soaps to choose from? Is there a market for all these brands? At the best, there will be only shifting of loyalties in a constant/frozen market. In the mad rush to sell their brand of cosmetics the manufacturers go for over kill and try to brain wash the consumers adding to the cost even more. Typical example is a tooth paste brand claiming there is salt in it. Do we really need to add salt in tooth paste after consuming so much of it with food. One brand claims their soap contains 24 additives/ingredients while another says their soap contains pure soap. The effort to create brand image – for not only cosmetics, but for every consumer product – inflates the prices artificially.

Not just making profit, maximizing profit is the tharaka mantra of market economics. You should sell your products at their inherent value. By advertising and packaging you try to enhance its apparent value and push the product down the throat of the consumer by creating artificial demand. This decease of advertising has reached such a crescendo now that we are wasting a substantial portion of every day hearing/viewing the same advts repeating a thousand times ad-nauseam in the TVs. Does this enhance its value in any way? And who will ultimately pay for all the publicities? The consumer off course! This is inflation of prices unduly. Apart from inflation the bombardment by the advertisers leads to people going crazy – neurotic.   

What about cell phones? The radiation from cell phones rendering them virtually a microwave oven, baking not only the tissues of the users but those of the non users, animals and even plants the world over – several fold more dangerously than passive smoking – is threatening to usher in a catastrophe – millions dyeing of cancers in the near future and annihilation of humanity, animal species and plants not too far in the future – is one thing. Even the very idea of the cell phone as a portable phone has been overrun by the additional features running to almost as many as the number of phones in use. I bought a simple cell in 2003. It is working still – in 2015. But the advertisements woo us to buy a new cell every year if not every few months. The higher cost due to features other than what a cell is meant for and the huge quantity of sale/replacement pushes prices up enormously. Same is the case with cars and two wheelers, TVs, pizzas, colas and what not.

Gandhiji prescribed ‘Do not try to meet your wants. The target will keep on receding. Reduce your wants. Learn to live with less. That is the tharaka mantra for happiness’. Yes that is the tharaka mantra for inflation too. We should restrict/ban the production of unwanted goods [bads] and regulate the production of essential goods. Restrict advertisements and other forms of publicities. Regulate TV channels. You definitely don’t need a thousand channels running 24 x 7. Just a handful, say 2 or 3 national channels, 2 or 3 local ones and may be 2 or 3 international ones will be the healthy limit. Do not allow advertisements for more than say 5 mins in an hour. Do not allow repeat of an advt for a specific product or a trailer for a program within an hour and strict no to false/bogus claims etc – plots claimed to be located at 5 minutes distance, actually are 15 kms away, even helicopter cannot reach in 5 mins – are the step in the right direction.

The greed inherent in the system, call it ‘market economics’ if you don’t like the old world term ‘capitalism’, leads to all the above problems resulting in inflation. Our forefathers envisaged building a republic on the lines of socialistic economics. ‘To wipe out every tear from every eye’ was the guiding principle of Nehruvian economics – now infamous ‘Democratic Socialism’. ‘Wider distribution of wealth’ was the route and they succeeded to a substantial extent till around the early eighties. But the neo economists have ruined all that with their myopic vision. Market economy breads greed, fans greed and piles up wealth in the hands of few at the cost of others. ‘Socialism has failed in Russia and China’ is the excuse given by the neo economists. It is the manner in which socialism was tried in these countries that has failed. Not socialism per se. In fact even that has not failed but only their leaders like Gorbachev, getting lured by the US, betrayed the people by abdicating their duty to safeguard the interest of their people. It is no different in India. PVN and MMS have done a Gorbachev here. After getting elected on the then policies of the Congress in 1991, they betrayed the people of India and jumped on to Capitalism in the name of reforms. They had no mandate to change the basic economic policy established over the previous 44 years or about 70 years actually. They were promptly shown the doors at the earliest opportunity by the electorate in 1996. In fact Manmohanomics was voted out not once but twice. In 2004 elections also the BJP – NDA was routed for the same reason as Yashwanth Sinha’s Sinhanomics and Jaswanth Singh’s Singanomics were no different from Manmohanomics. But the UPA/Congress hijacked the verdict by anointing the author of the suicide of over 400,000 farmers, closure of thousands of Indian industries, sacking of millions of employees and workers, and the stagflation [staggering inflation] to the post of Prime Minister. Public sector was sick – the main problem was the loot and interference by politicians. But instead of curing the patient of the decease, they have tried to kill it. It is another story that they are not yet dead as the foundation laid by Nehru, for ‘The temples of modern India’ are so strong that the tremors have not been able to shake them up.

As for the FDI they do not come to India to lift the people of India out of poverty line, create job opportunities, develop infrastructure or create wealth for us, (in short, redeem India) but to siphon away our wealth to their homes. India is not lacking in capital. Instead of mobilizing the capital available locally (which was the case until 1991), trying to attract the FDI is like locking our money in the locker and borrowing from multans at debt trap rates of interest. In the pre reforms days, people were encouraged to spend only on essentials and save the surplus in banks, which was then invested in building infrastructure and in setting up industries etc. Now they are being wooed to buy all sorts of gadgets – essential or otherwise – borrowing money from foreign banks. Even for laying road and maintain (which is one of the basic functions of any government) we have to pay user charges now in addition to all the taxes and duties paid. Even water which was available for free at public fountains at railway stations and bus stands have vanished and we have to pay for the E coli water filled in sachets and bottles. They mine our water, add pesticides and E coli and sell it back to us at exorbitant rates.

24 years of LPG regime has undone all that were done in the 44 years of independence prior to that. The ‘Haves’ have become ‘have mores and have every things’ and the ‘have nots’ have become ‘have nothings’ and one more species has been added to the list of endangered – the ‘farmer’.

The farmer toiling in the field does not even get back the cost of cultivating the crop. Procurement items like paddy, wheat and sugarcane are procured at an MSP much lesser than the cost of cultivating and the other crops such as vegetables/ perishables are procured by private vendors at a price often less than the cost of even plucking the fruit. We will deal with this in more detail in a separate article. But what we find here is that the poor farmer is subsidizing the non farming public to the tune of some 80% of the value of the farm produce. This explains the suicide by farmers. And the numbers – more than 400,000 farmers have committed suicide since the introduction of LPG. It is genocide and not just suicide.

‘Hail Manmohanomics’!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

On the part of the common man/consumers, what can we do? Take a vow not to buy any product being advertised too much. Buy only essentials, say one simple cell phone and retain it for its life time. For a camera or computer or any other requirement, use the specific gadget and not cell phone. Use minimum cosmetics. Let us look natural. No branded cloth, goggles, shoes etc. I leave the rest to your own imagination. 

The story goes on (This is not the end).

Lurking Danger

The article below appeared in the Indian Express dt. 14.03.2011

‘N – energy is not green; it’s blood red’                                        by  K.Raja Rajan

 

The massive Earthquake in Japan and the risk of nuclear power plant melt down – once again brings to focus the debate on desirability of nuclear power generation.

 

Nuclear energy is not green as is being portrayed. It is blood red.

 

The nuclear power plant is a veritable time bomb, that too a nuclear one, only a few million times more powerful than ‘little boy’ – bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

Even when an N power plant does not explode, the ‘supposed to be permissible level of radiation’ itself is dangerously high. The number of people killed and maimed by the radiation from the nuclear power plants and near the test sites in the US alone, for instance, is reported to be more than the number killed and maimed by the two bombs ever used.

 

The environmental impact of nuclear power plants is much worse than that of the coal/oil fired thermal power plants or even chemicals and pesticides plant like Bhopal Carbide plant.  

 

Earthquakes or terrorist triggered nuclear plant blast are waiting to happen anytime with the potential to wipe out major part of humanity, animal kingdom and even vegetation.

 

The only solution is to stop building new N plants and decommission existing ones at once. Humanity has to ‘learn to live with nature and not on nature’ to barrow Gandhiji’s words.

 

We have to learn to live with less material, power and comforts there from.

 

Not just N power, modern scientific and technological developments are all turning against mankind fanned by commercial greed.

 

Cell phones for instance are just pocket microwave ovens baking the tissues and causing cancer even when you don’t use one, like passive smoking, threatening to wipe out a major part of humanity and biodiversity.

 

The impact of plastics is well chronicled and needs no repetition here.

 

‘Computer and Internet technology has driven the world to the brink. The indiscriminate dissemination of knowledge due to computer and internet has led to the danger of the possibility of a fugitive sitting in some remote cave in Afghan or elsewhere triggering the release of umpteen ballistic missiles, with nuclear war heads stored underground below meters thick concrete, to break out and drop back on earth causing a near total annihilation of bio matter’. [This prophecy was made by me a few years before Twin tower air raid by Osama Bin Laden]   

 

There is ‘Dead end ahead – Take a U turn to proceed’.

(The author is a technologist by qualification, a farmer by option and a Gandhian by conviction)

Land Grab Act

'Land Grab Act’ and the Endangered Species called ‘Farmers’                     written on 23.4.2015

Let industries stand by. They can take care of themselves.

Save the ‘Anna Dhaathaa’ from extinction first.

Yes, ‘Land Grab Act’ is more like it. May be the Congress party can lend a name in line with many programs named after leaders – national or otherwise. After the sons and daughters of the dynasty, it is turn of the son in law to lend his name to the ‘Land Grab Act’. The whole spectrum of opposition is on the streets pretending to protest the act after leading the way – all the way – for such an act in the past half century and more. Not to be left out is the Aam Admi Party turned Aam party [just like any other party] after jettisoning some adhmi’s recently. The political animals grab every issue, event and opportunity only to twist it to their own political advantage. One wonders if any of these animals even have the basic understanding of the actual problems confronting the stake holders – the farmers. Listening to them, only reminds us of the ‘Elephant and Six Blind Men’.

Farmers have been dying all around like worms and moths, sprayed with the pesticide of anti farmer policies since 1991, triggered by PVN and MMS. The scheme appears to be to drive the farmer to dire straits and grab his land too and build memorials [call them industries] on them for the farmer. Their standard refrain is ‘we don’t have a magic wand’ to solve this problem or that. ‘Dear Nethaji! You don’t need a magic wand, but just a heart that beats in resonance with the victims to understand any problem and solve it. You should only remember you cannot annihilate the farmers and live eating sand and stone or even meat alone without masala’.

The misadventures of economic reforms have driven the rural populace to penury and agriculture has become a quagmire. The suicide by over 400,000 farmers in the past 25 years, since the introduction of the so-called reforms and as a consequence of it, is testimony to the great knowledge of economics of our netha’s. No amount of development of the 400 million middle and upper class can justify the suicide by 4 lakh farmers. We cannot develop a section of the population on the dead bodies of our anna dhaathaa. The paradigm shift in the attitude to agriculture has resulted in the disaster of farmers committing suicide in such huge numbers that we may as well call it ‘genocide’. Even the terrorists and insurgents killing a few hundred innocents a year in sporadic strikes look benign in comparison to the insensitive rulers killing some 16000 farmers a year, year after year, for the past 25 years and still sitting pretty without any tangible action. The ‘Liberalisation, Privatisation, Globalisation’ – LPG for short – regime has widened the rural – urban divide in to a ‘Gash’ and in these 24 odd years it has deepened further in to a ‘Gorge’. It has added another name to the list of endangered species, ‘The farmers’. Now we need to ‘re-farm’ to correct the blunder of the ‘reform’.

The basic problem is that the farmer does not get for his produce, even a price that can recover his expenses and costs, leave alone a remunerative price. The MSP for paddy, wheat etc. is much below the cost of production – cultivation. The price he gets for vegetables is less than the cost of even plucking the fruits. While, the farmer does not get a return to justify his continuing in the farm business (in fact, he does not find justification to even continue living), the middlemen, the wholesale dealers, retail dealer and often the black marketers, make merry of every situation – a bumper crop or a failed crop. 

The farmer must get his due. Farm produce – rice, wheat, maize, pulses, oil seeds, sugar cane, cotton, vegetables etc. should be awarded a Fair Remunerative Price (FRP) and not just a Minimum Support Price (MSP). Is there any industry in the world selling its produce for minimum support price? Then, why MSP for farm produce? Why not FRP?

If alone the farmer gets a meaning full return, he will come out of the debt trap and he will not only re invest in the next crop, he will also invest the surplus funds to expand his farming activities as well as diversify in to food processing and other related activities. Food production will multiply manifold and we can literally feed the world. This will immediately vastly improve the rural employment potential, utilization of wasteland and the rural economy, obviate the rural employment guarantee scheme and erase the poverty line, leading further to an all round development of the rural areas. The improved rural economy will boost the market for the industrial products too. The market for industrial products will explode, not just expand, leading to the urban and national economy improving in leaps and bounds. The improvement in the urban employment potential will be a by-product. Thus there will be a chain reaction leading to elimination of unemployment and under nourishment. The vastly improved rural and urban employment potential will even obviate a major headache in governance – caste/community based reservations. Further the improved economic condition of the villages will lead to their demanding and getting better roads, water supply, power, schools, hospitals and what not? The farmer will willingly pay for all these developments and the government will find their demand justifiable.

Where to get from the additional resources for increasing the farm output? Use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is anyway getting reduced with the growing awareness of their harmful effects. Farmyard manure and compost do not need any inputs from outside the farm. With the improvement in the awareness level of the farmers and willingness to adopt scientific methods they will automatically adopt less water intensive farming practices as well as take more responsibility in collecting and storing rainwater.

The Genesis and the Solution

Every industrial product is ‘cost’, taking in to account, apart from the cost of materials and labour, the rental values, interests on investments (not only loans), overheads, stocking cost, marketing cost, provision to cover rejections, wastages and loss in transit, after sales service liabilities, warranty provisions, publicity and creation of brand image. The industrial product is then priced adding a profit margin over the cost. Thus unless the industrial unit is mismanaged, the industrial activity is assured of profitable operation even for a mediocre performer.

Where as in agriculture, rent for the land, return (interest) on investment, labour put in by the owner of the farm and his family members – for cultivation, supervision, guarding the crop from men and animals, reaping the yield, packaging, shipping and selling the produce, go unaccounted. The cost of using own cattle for ploughing (the cost of feeding, washing and maintaining the cattle, as well as the replacement cost) the cost (value) of the farmyard manure prepared from the cattle waste and other farm wastes are not accounted. The water used from his well or the village tank goes unaccounted too. Further not every crop yields a bumper harvest. Draughts, floods, pest infestations and non-availability of inputs (seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, labour and water) at the right time, make a good yield a rarity and bumper crops only a jackpot. Even in a bumper harvest year, the prices fall and the net yield to the farmer is only paltry.

In fact, even a farm worker gets a decent wage in most of the places. His main problem is only that he does not get anywhere near 250 days of work in a year as an industrial worker does. On the other hand, the owner of a small holding, is not able to recover even his own labour cost and not to speak of his family members’. He actually works harder and for a longer duration in his own farm, than when he goes out to another farm to work for wages. In effect, it appears to be more rewarding to work as a farm worker than to cultivate his own land.

While the situation is such in the farming sector, we have an example of what is right at the other end – Milk. At the dawn of independence, we were importing Milk products. But now we are No. 1 in milk production in the world. How did the transformation take place? White revolution – the ‘Amul’ experiment of establishing cooperative milk production and marketing society in Gujarat became such a smashing success, that it got replicated in all other states too. Today the producer gets a fair price for his produce, while the consumer gets quality milk at a fair price too. The producers get well bread cattle, guidance to rear the cattle and even financial assistance for buying the cattle and run the dairy, from the federation. The federation then collects the milk from various points at remunerative price (to the dairy farmer), processes it to improve shelf life and convert it in to other dairy products, packages and supplies to consumers through its own outlets at affordable prices. It is a win-win situation. The rural economy as well as the nation’s economy has got a big boost due to this, apart from the producer and the consumer benefiting immensely.

This success story of milk should be replicated for farm produce-cereals, pulses, vegetables, oil seed, cane, spices etc. by forming a ‘Cooperative, Farm Development, Produce Procurement and Marketing Federation’. As for the logistics, we have in place a very well established network for agricultural support. The ‘Departments of agriculture & horticulture’ along with the ‘Agricultural universities’ can take up the costing activity and establish the remunerative prices as above, also advice the farmers on selection of more suitable and profitable crop in each block and for each season. While the federation can sanction loans, supply quality seeds, fertiliser etc., guide the farmers to get best yield, collect the yield paying a remunerative support price, process it for better shelf life and value addition, package it and sell it through the federation’s own out lets as well as export whatever is exportable.

This will inevitably lead to the traders – wholesale and retail dealers – of agri/ horticultural products losing their business. That includes the FCI. But the revitalized economy will easily absorb these people and their infrastructure. The warehouses of the Food Corporation of India can be transferred or leased to the federation and Civil Supplies Departments can procure from the federation and meet the requirements of the BPL sections of the population. In fact the implementation of the above scheme will automatically lead to shrinking of the BPL population and the need to subsidise, as the rural economy will grow in leaps and bounds. We may have to only maintain some level of subsidy for the farm inputs keeping in mind the world market for our farm produce.

A Government statistic said sometime back ‘as a result of the introduction of reforms the GNP has been growing at about 9%, in-spite of the contribution of the rural economy – farm economy – being very low at about 1.5 to 2% only and that while the contribution of service sectors to GNP is 55% that of agriculture is only 17%’. ‘What an absurdity?’ The contribution of farm products to the GNP is many times higher than what is reported. The unjust low valuation of farm produce relative to industrial products and other services only makes it appear so low. If the farm produce, rural industrial produce and rural services are given their due value taking the unsubsidised value of the agricultural inputs and calculating the cost of cultivation the way industrial products are cost and the dollar value is corrected to reflect its true purchasing power (the Purchasing Power Parity – PPP – value of 1 USD is only Rs 10 and not Rs 50 or 60), you may find a total reversal of the values of contribution to GNP with the farm sector showing a much higher figure (may be 50 to 60%) while the services and export sector a much lower figure (say 10% only). In fact if the above exercise is done, the result will drive the government to correct the blunder of 1991 (reforms or deforms?) reverse the disastrous course and look at economy in the right perspective.

K. Raja Rajan,

(A technologist by qualification, farmer by option and Gandhian by conviction)

Email: rajarajank53@gmail.com  &  letsbelldcat@gmail.com

Cell;   94441 60839

Blog: Prithvi-mithra.blogspot.in

N.B: Pls contact me for more details and further action

Magic Wand

Hello, I have the magic wand! (Part I)

This is Part I of a series of articles on the present state of our economy and related topics. 

The ruling elite often say they don’t have the magic wand to solve this problem or that, be it inflation, farmers’ suicide or insurgency. I guess I have the magic wand.

Controlling Inflation

Let us take the case of inflation first. You have say Rs 1000/- in your pocket. You don’t need it now. You would like to keep it in Fixed Deposit so that you may get about Rs 1080/- or more after one year. If you have some object say gold or even a piece of land worth say Rs 1000/-, you would like it to be valued more than Rs 1000/- or for that matter more than Rs 1080/- after one year. Your money, gold or land does not undergo any value addition to deserve being valued higher after a time period. Even after a thousand years a sovereign of gold remains that much only and not a milligram more, an acre of land does not grow by a square foot or for that matter a hundred rupee note does not grow by a square millimeter. But you want it valued more. This is the very cause for inflation. Inflation is inherent in the economic system where money attracts interest. The inflation rate is practically the same as the weighted average of interest rate [lending] of banks, lenders, multans etc. put together. Whenever inflation appears to go out of control, the reserve bank barges in with an increase in lending rate, claiming tighter money supply will result in reduction in inflation, only to find that the inflation rate actually goes up further. My economic sense tells me to cut the lending rate if you want to cut the inflation rate. In fact abolish interest on deposits. Let the money be only kept safe by the banks free of cost. Let the bank in turn lend money to industries etc at a very nominal cost to cover the expenses in conducting the business. Nationalised banks do not have to make profit either. Inflation rate will crash to close to zero. This is no new theory. Karl Marx realized it more than a century back. History says the prices in China were stable for nearly 50 years during the communist rule – before they capitulated to capitalism in the name of introducing reforms. I am not advocating Communism or Marxism. I am just speaking plain logic.

In fact the ideal solution would be to have the artificial currencies abolished and declare gold as the standard currency. Thus we will deal in grams, milligrams and kilo grams of gold. There will be ‘zero inflation’ then. For the value of gold, paper currencies can be issued suitably named for easy handling. But the price of gold in this scheme will remain constant. A gm of gold will cost only a gm of gold ever. There will be no trading in gold. This also is no new idea. The idea of currency started like this only centuries back. Land price will increase if there is development in the area, but the increase will be reasonable as the artificial demand for land due to steep appreciation will disappear due to abolition of interest. The idea of investing in land will vanish. Land will be traded only to meet necessity.   

The government wants to fill the coffers with dollars. The purchasing power parity – PPP – value of a dollar is only about Rs 10/-. But you get about Rs 60/- currently, when you exchange your dollar in a bank. Say you have a product worth Rs 1000/. You should be able to sell it at $ 100 going by the PPP value in the international market. But you are happy to sell for even $ 50 to be competitive, as you can get about Rs 3000/- or more from reserve bank. You under sell your product. The country gets much needed [?] dollars and you make a wind fall. You [the dollar earning firms] in turn pay your employees handsomely, read much more than they deserve in comparison with people of other fields. It looks like everybody is happy. But they (dollar earners) spend lavishly and this leads to inflation. I call IT as ‘Inflationary technologies’. Not just that. When you go to international market to buy something with your dollar you get only Rs 10/- worth products [less shipping and handling costs] per dollar. The dollar is a double edged weapon. It is left to anybodies imagination how many trillions of rupees have been lost this way in the past 21 years since the introduction of the so called economic reforms, the LPG [liberalization, privatization and globalization] regime. I call it ‘deforms’ or ‘uneconomic reforms’. You have to just multiply the cumulative inflow of dollars in the 21 years period by Rs 50/- per dollar to get a feel. 2G scam will look trivial in comparison to this scam of fixing poor exchange rate for Rs Vs USD. Off course the PM and FM will argue they don’t fix the exchange rate. But their policies have led to this situation. They have created the environment of excessive dollar dependency forcing high demand for dollars [imports] with the supply [exports] not matching leading to the excessive exchange rate. Where does the difference between the real value of dollar and the exchange value [say Rs 60 – 10 = Rs 50] come from? You, me and the beggar on the street, or to be more charitable to the economists, it all comes from the non dollar earning public. The masses are in effect subsidizing the dollar earners to the extent of 500 percent!! A fat dollar reserve is being touted as an indicator of the strength of our economy. I am sorry, it actually indicates the weakness, to what extent we have impoverished ourselves or sold ourselves out. Off course dollar is needed to import essentials like crude. But we can definitely pull the fuse out of the inflating dollar by learning to live on less petrol and other import based items which was the case until LPG was introduced in 1991. We were encouraged to save till then. We are wooed to spend now putting undue pressure on the supply leading to inflation. We were advised to talk less and work more. We are wooed to keep on talking now so that the Rajahs – cell phone companies – may build castles.  

Whenever the value of dollar vis a vis rupee decreases [meaning rupee appreciates], instead of celebrating, the PM and FM lament and do everything possible to hold the dollar up [not rupee up]. Same is the case with the sensex. Raising sensex means money is flowing from the aam adhmi to the rich share holders. But when the sensex drops the PM and FM lament and do everything to push the sensex up instead of safeguarding the interest of the common man when the sensex shoots up. This proves that this government does not represent ‘us’ but only represents ‘US’.  

The story goes on (This is not the end).

K.Raja Rajan