Curious case of Delhi Assembaly Session.

Curious case of Delhi Assembly Session.
Call then cancel then wait and then call again for emergency session.

Scene 1:

(based on my memory, but the broad time line should be correct)
Lets begin the post Uri scenario. Everyone was criticising the Govt. There were calls for “War with Pakistan” to “War is no solution, we should start talks”, but all the “calls” were unanimous on criticizing the Govt.
Delhi Govt had an assembly session scheduled. It was obvious that they will pass a resolution criticizing the Union Govt.

Scene 2:

Then happened the “surgical Strike”. The public opinion changed totally into favourable to the union Govt. Though political parties kept on questioning the “legitimacy” of Govt claims, but no one had the “guts” to criticize it in direct words. The best they could do was to “ask for proof”, congratulate Army but chide the Govt, and suggest Govt not to gloat etc.
The assembly session scheduled was called of citing “scenario generated after the surgical strike” while all the Govts all over the country were having business as usual. apparently cause the plan to pass the resolution “offering” a lesson to union Govt could backfire now.

Scene 3:

The next thing was “peaking” of pollution in Delhi. No “even-odd” called up this time. Nearly zero progress on the suggestions from NGT, absolute disregard to reports from IITK about Delhi pollution. Things kept on going in Cabinet and no assembly consultation was considered needed here. Finally some of the NGT recommendations started implementing partially. Despite IITK report clearly describing what to do, asking people (not experts) about what should be done about this.
No one even suggested if an assembly session should be called to discuss things. Well this has nothing to do with Union govt as there was no “action item” on them about this.

Scene 4:

Then comes the demonetization. All hell broke loose in an instant. So many parties criticized it openly with total disregard to what the experts say about it as if suddenly everyone was an economist. Suddenly. The parties supporting the move were shouted out in media by the ones opposing. Suddenly putting money in banks became a crime (despite knowing that any money in bank account is tracked and can be questioned by IT). Some stray incidents (those are definitely true incidents and we must not reduce their gravity) became bigger than the overall public support for the move. The people supporting the move, stated being criticized for stupid and baseless reasons.
Delhi Govt calls up an emergency session of the assembly and passes negative resolution about the move.

Question:

Now do you understand why I am calling it “curious case”??

Religion != धर्म

Tags

Dharma, God, Religion

It is easy to write “Religion” in English without worrying about the pronunciation, but when you want to write “Dharma” in English you worry about if it will be pronounced correctly or not. First there is no sound of “dh” in English, most European and American people reach directly on to “d”. Second problem is if you write “dharm” people may pronounce it similar to “derm” not give appropriate “end” to the sound of “m”; while if you write it “dharma”, there is chance of it being pronounced with a “aa” sound. Those who understand “Devanagari” script and know how to pronounce it, should refer to the title of the blog for pronunciation of the word “Dharma”.

I agree that this is just a cosmetic issue caused by nothing but the “conditioning” of tongue, but the dissimilarities do not end here. Rather this basically an indication that the two words have a very very different origin. Phonetically as well as in their meaning.

Lets explore it a little more. This time in terms of the meaning of the words.

Dictionary.com gives the first reference of Religion as “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a super human agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Religion?s=t)

Oxford dictionary equates it to “The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or Gods”. (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/religion?searchDictCode=all)

Merriam-Webster Dictionary says It is “an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods”. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion)

Now lets see what do these sources say about “dharma“.

Dictionary.com gives the first reference of Dharma as “essential quality or character, as of the cosmos or one’s own nature.” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Dharma?s=t)

Oxford dictionary equates it to “the eternal law of the cosmos, inherent in the very nature of things.” (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/dharma?searchDictCode=all)

Merriam-Webster Dictionary says It is “an individual’s duty fulfilled by observance of custom or law”. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dharma)

And the origin is said to be in Sanskrit where it actually meant “custom, duty, akin to dhārayati holds, maintains“.

As the word “Dharma” is agreed by everyone to be originated in Sanskrit, I would give preference to it’s Sanskrit meaning.

So what is the observation here?

Religion means “belief in or worship of some supernatural power“, while “Dharma” means “an individual’s duty”.

I am no expert in Latin so can’t comment much about Religion. But I was pretty good at Sanskrit. I used to get minimum 90% in that. Plus I have read some material related to “Dharma”. (and i am not including Shrimad Bhagvad Gita in it.). So I think i can understand the word a little better.

“Dharma” is associated with “set of duties” one with associate to his role. For example the set of duties of a son would be called “Putra-Dharma”, set of duties of a warrior would be called “Kshatriya-Dharma” (and yes, the word “Kshatriya” was originally associated with “role” and not “birth”.). So basically even if you worship Ram or Krishn or Allah or Jesus or you are an atheist; if you are a student you will have “Chhatra-Dharma” associated with you. In similar context we may put the worshipers of Ram and Krishn together in one religion, those have different religion than those who worship Allah or Jesus. And atheists are associated with no religion. In a broader perspective “Dharma” is set of duties associated with you which may include duties as a son, duties as an employee, duties as a resident of a building, duties as a citizen and duties as a Human. All the duties associated to all the roles that you perform constitute your “Dharma”. You may belong to Islam, Christianity or Hinduism (as we call it a religion. Will shed more light on how “Hinduism” is not a “religion” and was never supposed to be.” ), you may have similar “Dharma”.

The whole point of this write-up is to show that despite the fact that we use the words “Religion” and “Dharma” interchangeably, the two terms are inherently very different.

And the irony is despite knowing the differences we would still mention or fill “Religion/Dharma” in bilingual forms.

Revamp MNREGA

Tags

economy, industry, MNREGA, nation, policy

Problem:
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, better known as MNREGA, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi_National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act), though very much needed, in it’s current form is a big burden. It include mostly the labor intensive tasks, has no asset creation, no skill development, and nearly zero accountability. Majority of the tasks undertaken under the scheme have very short lived results and within a few year we will need to do the same task again. For example if we undertake a task to dig up a pond in a village, given that the creation of banks is not under MNREGA the pond will be filled up with mud and dirt in a couple of years and we will again need to do the similar task.
Along with this MNREGA had huge impact on other parts of Indian economy. Some regions in Andhra where under some self-employment scheme people were given loans for animal husbandry. As soon as MNRGA came to that region most of the people sold the animals and wanted to work under MNREGA. MNREGA is also reducing availability of labor for agriculture purpose increasing the input costs of it and making it less and less viable.

What can be done:
Even with all the drawback indicated above MNREGA should not be abandoned as it is providing, in many cases the only, source of income to the  hundreds of families. But a revamp should be considered at the earliest to make this scheme efficient and asset-creating. Here are some suggestions.

1. It should not be a “flagship” scheme. MNREGA should not remain a flagship scheme and must be made a supplementary scheme to various other schemes that need unskilled or semi-skilled labor. Schemes for constructing toilets in villages, wells, small stone and brick structures for water retention, ponds. MNREGA should be made the only way to supply labor for such activities in rural areas. and the contract should be amended for this. This will also make sure that the ponds created under it will have permanent banks, the well will have walls etc. to as to increase the life and utility of the created structures.

2. Timing of the “work”: In India agriculture forms the backbone of rural economy. We must time this 100 days of guaranteed work in such a way that the agriculture activities are not disturbed. There is a very brief period of time of the whole agriculture cycle when the activities go sharply labor intensive; basically at the time of sowing and harvesting. If MNREGA activities are planned in such a way that they do not collide with these timings for the region we will have ample labor for both the activities. labor availability will reduce the input cost for agriculture back to normal and more days of activity in villages will reduce the exodus of people to towns and cities.

3. Different areas with different targets: As far as possible the areas of the “self-employment” schemes and MNREGA should not collide. The areas should be defined in such a way that near to the cities there should be more focus on self-employment schemes and thus  on micro and small industries, while in remote areas the focus should be on MNREGA like activities. So that the infrastructure at those places will start to improve.

4. Skills: At least some of the activities under MNREGA, like construction activities of various types, need semi-skilled labor along with the unskilled ones. In such cases a percentage of the budget should be allotted to train some unskilled labor to make them semi-skilled and then employ them in the activities.

These are just some of my suggestions that, i believe, will make MNREGA much more feasible, co-existent, and long reaching.

Please voice your opinion.

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“Apna Shivraj”

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politics

Recently I have been to Bhopal…

While going from the Airport to my relative’s place i started chat with the auto driver. His name was Shariq. We exchanged some info about each other. He was from bhopal itself and seldom travelled outside. While passing by the masjid-side road, I showed my willingness to see the “Taj-ul-Masajid”, he was more than willing to take me in with him.

Then as per my habit (i have intentionally made this habit in last about an year), I inquired if he exercises his voting right. I was happy to find he was happily sharing that not just he but his whole family and friends are regular voters. MP elections have recently finished and we had elected (I am also a voter of MP) Shivraj Singh Chouhan as our CM again.

Shariq was all praises for the CM. And the term he used to address the CM was “Apna Shivraj”… every time and without any mistake or any hint of it being “made up”. I had never seen anyone address the CM with such intimacy.

During the course of praises to the CM he told me one incident. I’ll try to put it in his words…

“Abhi dashre pe apne XYZ area me bot problem ho gaya tha. Hindu an musalman dono tayyar the dange ko. Lekin apne shivraj ne waha pe kuchh hone se pehle hi aadmi se jyada police laga di. bole ab danaga karke dikhao… 2-3 din me sab thande ho gaye. fir baad me police bhi hata li. bole danga chhodo sada jhagda bhi nahi hone diya.”

State of the Nation….

Tags

defense, nation

I fully agree to the thought that the defense matters should not be open for public debate. And that’s the reason i support that those should not be part of regular discussion in parliament. And this s how it works currently. In such case now, where does the decision making part is handled then? Decision making remains with the defense minister and we have a standing parliamentary committee on defense to keep track of the things and provide suggestions to defense ministry and the government.

Now lets just have a look at some of the prominent members of the committee from Loksabha.

the current chairman of the committee is Mr Raj Babbar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Babbar) and no one can dare to talk about his credentials to be the chairman of such committee. The last chairman was Mr Satpal Maharaj (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satpal_Maharaj). Some other members include Kamal Kishore “commando” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamal_Kishor). I assure its not me who gave him this nickname, but this is a person with some real work in defense but on decision making i don’t know. And, I serious doubt his appointment to the committee was for his his work with Army after reading this article (http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/commando-who-guarded-rajiv-among-up-firsttimers/463062/). We have Mr Varun Gandhi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varun_Gandhi) on it and he has some serious experience in defense (defending his own earlier speeches and comments). Another person is Ramesh Jigajinagi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesh_Chandappa_Jigajinagi).

I understand that Loksabha is for people directly elected so they may be more on popularity than the “serious” work they did before joining politics. Lets move to Rajyasabha which is supposed to have some experts in it.

We have people like Prakash Javadekar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prakash_Javadekar), Mukut Mithi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukut_Mithi), Naresh Gujral (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naresh_Gujral), P J Kourien (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._Kurien) etc…

I bet you have got bored with the info till now and still wondering what is the point? the point is why do we have so many of non-experts chaired by a person like Raj Babbar in a committee that is supposed to work on our national defense. Cant we find a few good experts to man these committees, or at least one person be the chairman. The reason is that, the member selection is limited to the Parliament only. My take on it is we should allow some non-parliament experts in such committees and make it mandatory that such committees should be headed only by an expert whose credentials are beyond doubt.

Imagine a committee on economics headed by Sharad Pawar (do i need to give wiki link for him also?), and then the same headed by D Subbarao (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duvvuri_Subbarao).

Imagine a committee on environment headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav (again… is the link needed??) and then the same headed by Dr R K Pachauri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri)

At the least the quota of nominating 12 members into Rajyasabha by the President should be used purely to induct eminent people from such fields into the decision making and then those eminent people should be sent to the relevant committees to chair them.

* the names include some current and some ex-members.

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The Queen’s “Gambit”

Tags

AAP, BJP, Congress, Delhi, gambit, nation, politics

In the Delhi elections concluded in Dec 2013 the results were surprising, if not shocking. Congress that was having a comfortable majority with 43 seats in 2008 was reduced to a single digit number (8 to be precise), but this was on the expected lines and absolutely no one was surprised by it. BJP+ that got 23 seats in 2008 was up by 9 scoring a total of 32 (4 short of a majority). One seat went to JDU and one to an independent candidate. The surprise was a new political party Aam Aadmi Party, that came in the arena very recently, got the second highest umber of seats (28). AAP’s rise was definitely unprecedented. The assembly was hung as none of the 3 big groups, namely congress, BJP and APP, were not ready to support any other. The media, and many people also, were very much overwhelmed by the success of AAP and they started getting much airtime. Interestingly, after some initial discussions ,which were tripartite, the discussions were going more and more bipartite. Congress was falling back and the discussions were going BJP v/s AAP. I am not trying to create some sense out of those 99% nonsense discussions, but someone saw a definite opportunity in this.

The Queen (Sonia Gandhi) who must be noticing all the development and was definitely upset not just by the disaster in Delhi (and 3 other states namely Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan), but also by the prospective, or should I say eminent, disaster in the 2014 general elections. She noticed an opportunity. If somehow AAP and BJP could be made to fight each other more, the anti-congress sentiments that are “omnipresent” in the country right now, will be divided in 2 parts; and that division will offer a better chance of victory for Congress. But as AAP was fighting majorly against Congress in Delhi, it was not easy to turn the fight AAP v/s BJP. So, Congress decided to support AAP’s claim to for government formation in Delhi. Now if the AAP govt in Delhi achieves some success, Congress will claim some goodwill from it. And if they fail and government reaches a fall, Congress will still have some goodwill as they tried to avoid the re-elections. Moreover it was quite understandable that AAP, riding on the success of Delhi assembly polls, will go national. So even for general elections, it was very much important to be seen on AAP’s side for some cause. Now if you analyse the national media and social media it will very much evident that the fight is going on between AAP and BJP, and Congress is basically playing a no profit-no loss position. Thanks to media and social network trolls, the Congress’s plan to somehow get AAP and BJP to fight each other has worked for now. By sacrificing a pawn (Delhi state) congress has achieved a position where it is now expecting to gain in the general elections.

The Delhi events remind me on the dialogue in the Prakash Jha movie Raajneeti, appropriated very well by Nana Patekar. “Rajneeti me faisle sahi ya galat nahi hote… unka mol to bas maqsad pura karne ke liye hota hai. Chahe jaise bhi ho.”

gambit

ˈgambɪt/

noun

noun: gambit; plural noun: gambits

1. 1.

   an act or remark that is calculated to gain an advantage, especially at the outset of a situation.

   “his resignation was a tactical gambit”

   synonyms:

   stratagem, machination, scheme, plan, tactic, manoeuvre, move,course of action, line of action, device, operation; More

2. 2.

   (in chess) an opening move in which a player makes a sacrifice, typically of a pawn, for the sake of a compensating advantage.

   “he tried the dubious Budapest gambit”

Origin

mid 17th cent.: originally gambett, from Italian gambetto, literally ‘tripping up’, fromgamba ‘leg’.

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Using simple technology to fight corruption and black money

Tags

black money, corruption, currency, technology

Many of the people have suggested to stop the usage of high denomination currency in order to arrest the growth in black money, and corruption. How would it help the cause?

In India the best way to accumulate unaccounted wealth is to do transactions in cash, because there is no tracking in it. If we stop the usage of high denomination paper currency then slowly everyone would be forced to do high value transaction electronically which ensures tracking. Also as transactions are being tracked tax evasion would at the least be very difficult. (A by product could be lower taxation as the tax net will be wider). This will arrest the accumulation of unaccounted money. And as the higher denomination currency will be phased out from the market, the already accumulated money will either have to run a risk of identification, or will turn useless.

Now there are some practical problems with this suggestion. What if you want to make a high value transaction? Simple, use card payment or electronic payment systems. But many of the people do not have cards, card reader machines and electronic payment facility. For them, we have multiple SMS based payment systems available, the government just needs to certify them. We have a mobile subscriber base of 10 million and growing rapidly. Well i don’t want to say this, but soon a mobile connection would be more affordable than a square meal.

Now lets come to the second part that how this suggestion will help the cause of fighting corruption. Consider a case that one has to “pay”(?) 1,00,000 Rs to someone. Currently its just one bundle of 1000 Rs bills. Now if we don’t have 1000 Rs bill in the market, you’ll have to pay 10 bundles of 100 Rs bills.So it will be harder to transfer the money, harder to hide,and harder to continue this practice. Yes, this suggestion’s help in fighting corruption will be limited as the big people and corporate groups have many different ways. e.g. interest free loans, share transfer, donations and all. But mind it, these things are already traceable, we just need a will in the system to monitor it’s ill usages.

I do not say that this is a foolproof solution, but i still say that this is worth giving a thought. What do you say?

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The illusion of loss and the reality of under-recovery.

Tags

crude oil, under recovery

Ever since i started hearing the term “under recovery” in recent economics and politics related debates and all, the term always caught my attention. And i looked for explanation for the term. I found many articles on it, most of them included the words like “congress” and “UPA” in a bad sense so i wont take it from there. Instead i’d  try to put an understandable version of the definition of the term.

We (India) do not import petrol and other fuels directly. We import crude oil and refine it into useful petroleum product like petrol, diesel, kerosene etc. in Indian refineries. Import of crude oil incurs cost, refining incurs cost, transportation incurs cost, and then there has to be an operating cost of all the entities involved. All these factors should contribute to cost of the final products. after working out these costs lets associate a value “A” with per unit of the final product as its “production cost“. I’ll take example of Petrol as our government claims it to be free-floating. Now consider the case in which we would have imported Petrol directly from the international market. For that we would have to pay as per the International Market Price. Lets say it is “B” per unit. And lets say the market price of Petrol in India is “C”. As per current conditions in India “A” < “C” < “B”. Please note that “C” is before taxation. After taxation price is even more than “B”. Here the gap between International Market price “B” and the market price in India “C” is called “under recovery“.

I have some basic question regarding the recent usage of this term and the scenarios related to it, e.g. Why we have to calibrate prices of home refined Petrol against the International price?  Why “C” is based on “B” and not on “A”? Why we try to equate “under recovery” and loss?

Now, as we have reached the topic of “loss”, i’ll start on it. IOC reported gross profit of 13,642 Cr in 2011, HPCL reported 3,768 Cr gross profit in the same financial year, BPCL reported 4,068 Cr gross profit in the same year. That the figures i pulled out from rediff money site. Now I agree that “gross profit” is not the indication of actual health of the companies, but share dividends definitely are. These 3 companies are consistently giving out dividends to its shareholders while government claims about “loss” to the petroleum companies.

Since now our government equates the “under recovery” to loss, hence we get the illusion of loss. While the truth is that the biggest beneficiary of the price hike is the government itself, through various taxes.

I tried to put the things simple in this blog. For the people interested more in figures i can suggest a link http://www.indiandefence.com/forums/social-political-issues/10989-why-petrol-prices-high-india.html

Coming back.

Hi All,

After a long time of creating this profile, now i decided to put it to some use. Hope you’d like it.

-Amol.