Uninsured in America

Several provisions of the new healthcare law also called the Affordable Care Act went into effect yesterday. Yesterday also was the day when the GOP unveiled its Pledge for America. The document included proposals to cut spending and taxes, a staple. In addition it also included a proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act. In case you haven't noticed, we are in an election cycle and each side will spend the next few weeks touting or assailing the new healthcare law.

But politics aside, the reality is that number of uninsured has been on a steady rise for the last decade. For the first time last year it crossed the 50 million mark. Now there can be debate about whether all the 50 million are legal residents or not. But that's besides the point. The number of uninsured has risen in almost every age group (except the under 18), as the graph below shows, and the recession has made it worse.

Data Source: US Census Bureau

State of the US Economy

The 2010 budget depicted below reinforces the fiscal disaster that the US is facing. About 92% of all the estimated revenue in 2010 from taxes and other sources goes towards paying for mandatory services like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and Interest on debt. The remaining 8% of the revenue must pay for the cost of the wars and must fund the other departments.

No wonder the US national debt ballooning every second because the government is borrowing to cover the shortfall. The last I checked, the debt per US Citizen was $43,473. Compare this to the median household income of $49,777 for year 2009.

Data Source: Wikipedia

Whats in a Name?

We have gone from Bombay to Mumbai, Calcutta to Kolkata and Madras to Chennai. Now we have "Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj Nagar" to a growing list of name changes.

The honorable Chief Minister of UP Ms Mayawati has won a political victory when the Supreme Court of India decided to favor her in allowing Amethi to be renamed as Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj Nagar

Makes you wonder where our politicians and courts spend their time and valuable tax payer money.

Bees Attack the Queen - Have a Last Laugh

Looking at a garland, a swarm of honey bees thought they were going to have a field day. But the garland was made of worthless money: at-least to the bees. Realizing that they had been fooled and in a fit of rage, they decided to attack the Queen herself, when she was addressing her loyal subjects.

But little did the bees realize that the power of the Queen can stretch far beyond the human world. With the full force of an army of her cronies, the Queen is attacking back. And she will not rest until she finds out why the bees dared to attack her. As for the cost of this unnecessary war, it will be up-to the human subjects to bear the burden. When mutli crore's were spent on the garland that started the war, who cares about another few crore's.

The bees, which are such resourceful creatures, must be having a last laugh at the stupidity and dissipation of the human subjects.

Paying Zero for Public Services

Corruption is a huge problem in India. Whether be it a matter of joy like a birth in the family or a matter of great sadness with someone passing away, nothing becomes official unless you grease the palm of one of the babu's working in the government office.

To make a dent into this malice, and to raise awareness to the rights of an individual, an organization called Fifth Pillar has come up with a unique idea: Zero Rupee Note.



Read more about 5th Pillar at Paying Zero for Public Service

People Welfare Day - 1, Mayawati Welfare Day - 364

Mayawati, the future Prime Minister in waiting (at least that's what she thinks), wants to celebrate her birthday as "Peoples Welfare Day".

Wasn't she elected to do the welfare of the people throughout the year till the end of her elected term? Now that we know that she cares about the welfare of the people for one day in the year, we can count our good graces that the odds of people welfare in the Mayawati administration are 1 in 365.

So on that hopeful note, I wish the people of Uttar Pradesh a very happy new year.

Is There a Debate on Health Care Reform Anymore?

Recent reports of town hall meetings organized by US Congressman and Senators have witnessed unruly crowds shouting against the reform bill that is being discussed in the US Congress. The crowds have been so boisterous and unruly that the room for debate has been pretty much shut out.

Well some people may have legitimate concerns about the health care bill, a lot of people are just showing up with misinformation or no information at all that can add value to the debate at hand. The best example of the misinformation or no information out there was a man who recently showed up at Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) town hall meeting and told him:

“keep your government hands off my Medicare.”

Charles Blow in his most recent column for the NY Times puts it best:"Belligerence is the currency of the intellectually bankrupt."

So is there some sort of debate left in the health care reform anymore, or has it been hijacked by fear mongers, the misinformed, and the ideologues?

The Health-Care Debate

The topic for the last few week across the country has been whether we can get a significant health care reform bill passed. Since there are so many stakeholders involved including physician groups, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and medical device companies, patients, politicians and of course lobbyists, any significant reform which will address the needs of all these stakeholders will be a tall order.

Every stakeholder has an interest to protect, and nobody is willing to coincide, as coinciding would mean significant loss in revenues and profits for them. In addition health care reform has to address a whole host of issues including, providing some sort of coverage for the 47 million uninsured, improving efficiency of care and slowing the growth of health care costs. All of this without adding to the burgeoning federal deficit.

So will there be any significant reform this year, only time will tell. But in the meanwhile, these two websites provide a basic understanding of what is at stake.

The first website is the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center, and the second website is Health Beat a blog dedicated specifically to health care.

Pocketless Pants - Think Again?

This video demonstrates that not all pockets in pants are bad. Nepal airport authority, are you listening

Why Indians are the Way They Are?

This topic comes timely. We were having this discussion just a few days ago. Why is it that we as Indians do not obey the rules be it in traffic, are averse to general cleanliness in the public place when we keep our houses clean, do not think twice before relieving oneself in a public place. When the same Indians go abroad, they follow the rules to the hilt. We are one of the most law abiding citizens when we go abroad even though we may not be so back home. Why is that?

In response to a column by Aakar Patel in the magazine Mint, Amit Varma writes:

It’s a human characteristic, not an Indian one. How much we follow rules depends on the incentives offered. Abroad, as in Singapore, the laws of littering may be strict; or your peers may frown upon loutish behaviour, which is disincentive enough. In India, laws, where they exist, aren’t implemented; and littering and jumping lanes in traffic is normal, not deviant, behaviour.

New Tool to Curb Corruption - Pocketless Pants

Take heed all you corrupt workers/officials at Nepals main airport. With pocketless pants, now there is no place to hide all your ill gotten wealth. According to one official:

We sent a team to observe the growing complaints about the behaviour of airport authorities and workers towards travellers and we discovered that the reports were true. So we decided that airport officials should be given trousers with no pockets. We have directed the ministry of civil aviation to implement our order as soon as possible. We believe this will help curb the irregularities

I can only imagine the thought process in the person designated to observe the officials.If the team observed that government officals were taking bribes and keeping them in their pant pockets, wouldnt catching the culprites red handed serve as a right deterrant. Why waste the taxpayers money with the new policy of supplying pantless pockets to all officials? What say you...

India - Success Story for a Communication Revolution

Having spent my childhood in India in an era when government controlled almost all aspects of communications, right from what you watched on television to getting a telephone connection, the current state of affairs in the Indian communication industry is heartening to watch.

I clearly remember Oct 31st 1984, the day Indira Gandhi, the then Prime minister of India, was assassinated. The government run television channel Doordarshan carried her funeral live 3 days later on Nov 3rd 1984. Back then having a television was a luxury. Our family was fortunate enough to have a black and white television set and the entire neighbourhood turned up at our place to watch the funeral procession live. Contrast that with today where every household has a television set, and the list of channels that you can get is almost endless.

The other aspect of the communication revolution is happening the telecom sector. 25 years back, very few households had a land line telephone connection. And the wait to get a new connection was anywhere from 6 to 8 years. Contrast that with the current state of affairs. Mobile phones have totally transformed the telecom market in India. They have become so ubiquitous that even the humble milkman or the vegetable vendor now carries a mobile phone.

Shashi Tharoor paints this contrast in his book, The Elephant, The Tiger and The Cellphone. He writes:

Bureaucratic statism committed a long list of sins against the Indian people, but communication was high up on the list: tge woeful state of India's telephone right up to the 1990's, with only 8 million connections and a further 20 million on the waiting list, would have been a joke if it wasn't also a tragedy - and a man-made one at that. We had possibly the worst telephone penetration rates in the world. The government's indifferent attitude to the need to improve India's communication infrastructure was epitomized by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's communication minister, C.M. Stephen, who declared in parliment, in response to questions decrying the rampant telephone breakdowns in the country, that telephones were a luxury, not a right, and that any Indian who was not satisfied with his telephone service could return his phone - since there was a eight year waiting list of people seeking this supposedly inadequate product.

Much Ado About a Bed Bug

Ever heard the saying "Sleep Tight, dont let the bed bugs bite you". Well, its about to become official. A new bill being sponsored by some legislators in US Congress is titled "Dont Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2009". The bill would require:

public housing agencies to submit bedbug inspection plans to the federal government. It would add bedbugs to a rodent and cockroach program in the Department of Health and Human Services . It also would require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research bedbugs' impact on public mental health. The bill would also authorize $50 million to train health inspectors how to recognize signs of the insects

Bed bugs have so much mesmerizied the federal government that the EPA recently hosted the first ever National Bed Bug Summit. Talk of wasteful spending in the time of record budget deficits and economic turmoil.
President Obama had recently asked that there be $100mil spending cuts from the federal budget. If he and his team are paying attention, they can reach half their goal by not letting this bill become a law.

India Elections - Dead Heat

Elections in India are almost drawing to a close with one final phase of polling left. Earlier exit polls had predicted a slight advantage for the ruling UPA government. But todays Times of India had a projection in which there is virtually a tie between the UPA and the BJP coaliation.

If this projection holds true, then May 16th would prove to be the start of intense back door wrangling between the BJP, UPA and the Third Front. All the political pundits must be waiting in anticipation for what is about to unfold.



Image obtained from Times of India

Questions For Karunanidhi

M Karunanidhi, the honorable Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, began what was ultimately a fast of less then 24 hours to bring attention to the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils refugees.

I agree that the refugees that are caught in the crossfire between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE rebels need to be granted safe exit. And the ceasefire may be the step in the right direction.

But my question to the earstwhile CM is why play politics with this issue? Was this just a political stunt during the election season to draw Tamil voters towards the DMK by playing the sympathy card? Ultimately what goal is it going to serve? Now that there is a ceasefire in Sri-Lanka, what is Mr Karunanidhi's next move? What has the CM done to ease the plight of millions of people in India who live in poverty?

The Future of India

With Indians voting to elect the next government, the scene emerging from most exit polls and political analysts is that of another fractured mandate where no single party will have enough seats to form the government by itself. One of two major parties, Congress or the BJP will win the most number of seats. But what will happen after that is anybody's guess right now.

In this uncertain political times, Ramachandra Guha looks at the past of the Indian elections and wonders how long will the era of coalition politics and uncertinity last.

In recent decades, then, Indian democracy has been increasingly influenced by identity politics, by parties and interests representing (or claiming to represent) various castes, ethnicities, regions, and religions. It is likely that a majority of Outlook readers, themselves urban and cosmopolitan, are not in sympathy with this trend.

Rather than 18-or-20-party coalitions, they would like to see a single party dominating the central government, such that it might frame the rational, sustainable policies this country desperately needs. The question is: will they get such a government in their lifetime?

Some trends are promising. More Indians now live in cities, where the pressures of caste and locality matter less than in the countryside. More Indians now contract marriages outside their communities. With economic development, more Indians are abandoning traditional caste-based occupations. In factories and offices, they work and break bread with Indians of different social backgrounds. These secularising tendencies are reinforced by TV and the Internet, which alert the young to mentalities and lifestyles very different from those of their parents or grandparents.

Can these trends collectively produce an electorate that shall come to vote not on the basis of identity, but with regard to the policies on offer?

Read the complete article at Past and Future of Indian Election

A Manifesto Towards Backwardness

The entire world is pushing for better use of technology to improve the lives of people. In this tech savvy world, where information can be at your finger tips, the manifesto of the Samajwadi Party calls for lesser use of computers. The party's reasoning:

The use of computers in offices is creating unemployment problems. Our party feels that if work can be done by a person using hands there is no need to deploy machines. The party is also against compulsory use of English language in education, administration and judiciary and would favor the use of regional languages.

This is all well and good, but if you look at the parties website;yes the party against computers has a website, it provides options for reading the website in English and Hindi. I wonder why the party which is against the compulsory use of English language in education has its website in English. Also what purpose would a website serve if you do not know how to use a computer?

What will be next on the party's hitlist, a ban on emails because they are hurting the postal service, or a ban on cell phones because the use of land-line phones is declining and thus people manufacturing them are being laid off creating unemployment.

Read more at Manifesto Towards Backwardness

Greed Vs Stupidity

In a great op-ed piece for the NY Times, David Brooks tries to explore the reasons for the current financial crisis. He draws pieces from two different articles, one blaming greed in the financial sector and another blaming stupidity on the part of the financial industry because it forgot to do its own due diligence before investing heads over heels in stuff that it had little clue about.

In comparing the two schools of thought, David Brooks writes:

Both schools agree on one thing, however. Both believe that banks are too big. Both narratives suggest we should return to the day when banks were focused institutions — when savings banks, insurance companies, brokerages and investment banks lived separate lives.

We can agree on that reform. Still, one has to choose a guiding theory. To my mind, we didn’t get into this crisis because inbred oligarchs grabbed power. We got into it because arrogant traders around the world were playing a high-stakes game they didn’t understand.

Can Wikipedia Predict Who Will be the Next Indian PM?

Manmohan Singh, Mayawati, Sharad Pawar and LK Advani have all been in the news as potential candidates for the next Prime Minister of India.

Their popularity in the offline world may ebb and flow on a daily basis. What about their popularity in the online world? One way to compare the leading contenders online popularity is through Wikipedia. The graph below provides a thirty day snap shot of Wikipedia searches for the leading PM contenders. If you go by the wikipedia barometer, Manmohan Singh is leading the pack with Mayawati and Sharad Pawar closely following him. As for LK Advani, even though he has a pretty extensive website, his fortunes in the online world in terms of Wikipedia searches seems to be non existent.

So this begs the question:

"Will the popularity of the leading PM contenders judged by the number of wikipedia searches translate into any significant electoral gains for their respective coalitions?"

Manmohan Singh, Lal Krishna Advani, Sharad Pawar, and Mayawati on Wikirank

You Dont Need a Title to be a Leader

With Lok Sabha elections fast approaching, the political scene is India is heating up. Every party wants to projects its candidate as the next prime minister. First it was NCP turn, projecting Indian cricket chief and current agriculture minister, Sharad Pawar as its Prime Ministerial candidate. Now it is the turn of the BSP.

In the latest political developments in the ever changing world of Indian politics, Ms Mayawati wants to join the Third Front only if she is projected as the Prime Ministerial candidate of this hurriedly clobbered coalition of parties. Her reasoning behind the claim to the post of the Prime Minister is “based on the fact that she is the leader of the largest state in the country and more popular than any other leader in the state”.

Granted she is the leader of the largest state in the country. But India does not just comprise of Uttar Pradesh. There are other states in the union and Mayawati may have forgotten about that in her hunger for power.

The so called leaders can play all the shenanigans they want, but ultimately it is the citizens of India who will decide who they want to be Prime Minister, be it ManMohan Singh, LK Advani, Sharad Pawar, Mayawati or Deve Gowda.

Maybe Ms Mayawati should read You Don't Need a Title to be a Leader just to put things in prespective.