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

The Perils of Prosperity

"What goes up must come down", according to the old proverb. But it seems like this logic did not apply a couple of years back to housing prices. A key economic group, Homeownership Alliance said in the beginning of 2006,

"the possibility of falling home prices over the next ten years is extremely remote. In fact, mortgages are expected to rise a whopping 5 percent on average!".

Oh, how they were wrong! For most people, during the boom years, rising home prices offered a way to prosperity. The logic was, buy a house, wait for a year or so for home prices to rise and sell it at that higher price and pocket the difference. Lot of sophisticated investors as well as novices to real estate were drawn in by the easy money and the associated prosperity. But this drive for more money and prosperity that brought everything tumbling down like never before in history.

In his book The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence, Robert Samuelson writes that the drive to prosperity is a paradox. He writes:

Modern, advanced democracies strive to deliver as much prosperity as possible to as many people as possible for as long as possible. They are in the business of creating perpetual booms. The cruel contradiction is that this promise itself may become a source of instability because the more it is attained, the more people begin acting in ways that ultimately invite its destruction. Booms often have unintended and nasty side effects; even anticipated side effects that are ultimately unsustainable—stock-market bubbles, excessively tight labor markets—can be hard to police because they're initially popular and pleasurable.

The quest for ever-more and ever-better prosperity subverts itself. It might be better to tolerate more frequent, milder recessions and financial setbacks than to strive for a sustained prosperity that, though superficially more appealing, is unattainable and ends in a devastating bust. That's a central implication of the crisis, but it poses hard political and economic questions that haven't yet been asked, let alone answered.

Want to Drive a Cab in Mumbai - Language Skills a Must?

In one of the most ridiculous news of the day, the Maharashtra government has made it mandatory that cab drivers in Mumbai need to know how to read, write and speak Marathi. If you are rolling your eyes at where the priorities of the state government are, you are not alone.

Look at the bright side: a cab drive who is reading a Marathi newspaper or solving a Marathi crossword puzzle, while driving a cab. If he is involved in the accident, so be it. At-least he had the necessary language skills to be a cab driver.

What Does it Mean to be a Superpower?

The last few years has seen the talk of how the global balance of power is shifting from west to east. There is all this hoopla about how China and India will be the next superpowers. And the growing economic pains in the west have only added to more fuel to the fire. But what does it really mean to be a superpower in the world stage?

Having close to double digit economic growth make a country a super power? Or building new roads, bridges, super-fast trains make a country a super-power? Or flexing the new found muscles on the world stage, be it the UN, or the Climate Change talks make a country a super-power?

Sure all of these things can make a country get noticed. But it is how responsibly a country uses its new found recognition to further the greater good of human kind, is what will make a country a true superpower.

Case in point been the recent tragedy in Haiti. In response to an article by James Fallows, a readers writes:

"There are some moments in international affairs that put global power relations into perspective, however. The U.S. is committing $100 million to Haiti, plus probably untold amounts in private donations from aid organizations and religious groups. President Obama is deploying 5,000 troops including the 82nd Airborne and sending in a carrier task force. American companies are mobilizing humanitarian efforts, and there will likely be dozens of search and rescue teams from across the U.S. trying to land in Haiti. Miami Dade county alone is sending an 80-man search and rescue team.

"China is committing $1 million and sent 50 guys on an Air China plane.

"Yes, there is geographical proximity to consider [plus China being on average still very poor], but if this isn't the most obvious display of the massive combined military, economic, and soft power the U.S. can bring to bear if it chooses, then I don't know what is. To me, this shows the still enormous gulf in both power and the responsible use of power between China and the U.S. For all its faults and recent woes, the U.S. can and will step up and perform the duties demanded of the only indispensable nation. China, in spite of breakneck growth and a booming economy, cannot and will not."

Read the complete post at Unified field theory: Google, China, Haiti

Why do we need Health Care Reform in the US?

When we think of healthcare reform in the US, things that come to mind are the rising cost of healthcare, how the US spends 15% of its GDP on healthcare: the highest in the world, the growing number of uninsured, or how the doctors are burdened with unnecessary paperwork etc.

Everybody from politicians to laymen agree that something needs to be done about it. Everybody has a reason to make changes to the system be it political, economic or medical. And this last year has been spent talking about how to reform a broken system. But lost in all of this din is one essential question. Is there a moral responsibility on the part of any government to provide good and affordable healthcare to its citizens?

TR Reid, in his book, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, asks that question. He writes

Those Americans who die or go broke because they happened to get sick represent a fundamental moral decision our country has made. Despite all the rights and privileges and entitlements that Americans enjoy today, we have never decided to provide medical care for everybody who need it. In the world's richest nation, we tolerate a healthcare system that leads to a large number of avoidable deaths and bankruptcies among our fellow citizens. Efforts to change the system tend to be derailed by arguments about "big government" or "free enterprise" or "socialism" .... and the essential moral question gets lost in the shouting.

Job Losses

If you are in the job market looking for a job, then pretty much every state is a red state. The graph complied by Slate Magazine and based on Unemployment statistics from the US Department of Labor, reflects how the great economic crisis took such a heavy toll on the job.

Its scary to say the least. And today's numbers released that the US lost another 85000 jobs in Dec 2009, points to what many economists have been calling a Jobless Recovery

You can view the graph moving from blue to red at Job Losses

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.