Corpus - The Rupee Tumble and Financial Stability

Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash

"Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship." - Benjamin Franklin 

 

      A year back, I was pondering a good bank balance - a good corpus to maintain in case one wants to retire early or be financially free to make major career changes. This was indeed a personal growth quest.

    A tweet/post by a New York City based girl helped me set initial compass or say benchmark. She had set a target of $200,000 before leaving her regular job and building her own venture. I found it a reasonable and ambitious goal, especially considering I am earning in Rupee and at that time one USD equalled about INR 87. And therefore, the $200,000 target translated into about  ₹17,400,000 at the time of beginning. If I started saving amount equivalent to my entire monthly salary at that time it would mean regular investment for well over a decade and a half (actually some bit longer).

Beef Over Beef

Farmers at work in Myanmar

The politicians in India are debating diet of nation, some of them with quite loose tongues (Sangeet Som, Manohar Lal Khattar, Assasuddin Owaisi, Mohammad Azam to name a few). Meanwhile, the filth elected by popular mandate has forgot that alternative to beef is pulses, with regards to protein content and as a staple component of Indian diet and at Rs 200/kg those are now costlier than beef. So, while beef is a politically ill-advised diet, pulses are no longer pocket friendly.

This brings us to focus of government in last 1 year and 6 months. Mr. Modi has been on a world tour attracting investment in Indian manufacturing sector, the Make In India programme and his passion for providing Facebook to every Indian is world famous. The effort has attracted investments, albeit it seems directed wrongly. The country needs to focus on infrastructure, but politicians (including Mr.Arun Jaitley) have forgotten the infrastructure is not only railways and roadways (Mr. Gadkari might, dreamily, relay whole Indian highway network and go gung-ho about it). It also includes support and networks for an agrarian economy, alternative energy schemes, housing schemes which are affordable. Clean India campaign is very praise-worthy and some impact is visible now-a-days. Yoga politics is a personal choice with little or no implication outside RSS shakhas.

The current vision and policy seems to be short-sighted and should, probably, be revised to focus on modernizing the farms of India. And modernization is not to be confused with mechanization. The entrepreneurs in India today are well placed to help develop alternative crop collection, storage, sorting and distribution systems and also market them. Replacing red-tape ridden food programmes of governments. With large, educated workforce, a big part of which are engineers, doctors, managers, agriculturists the focus ought to be on incensing them to work in creative endeavours like rural economy and not jumping into urban rat-race or chasing an unreal American dream, loaned by corporations.

There have been reports and observations of a collapsed real-estate sector. The reason for which are misplaced focus on developing luxury housing, ignoring the sustained demands for low-cost housing. An unsold inventory of nearly a million apartments indicates stagnation in demand of such projects and a bad case of hollow urbanization of a truly rural nation, such 'development' is resulting in loss of prime agricultural lands in Doab regions of Ganga and Yamuna and pressurising resources in other parts of India.

Ideas in this post might sound socialist, but are truthfully capitalist and rightist on any economic parameter and if India's right wing fails to steer it forward in those directions, that would be the true failure of the Indian mandate and the Modi government. The beef would be then with the rightist hope and missed opportunity of a global scale.

Protocols

This republic day, 2 protocols were not followed for goodness. In the first case, the tradition of inviting ex-CMs of Delhi to republic day parades was broken by not extending invitation to Mr. Arvind Kejriwal. In the second, the prime minister of India himself received US President at airport. The latter is not unprecedented, Manmohan Singh has done it before. The publicity and mania surrounding the visit was unprecedented though.

I, for one, feel relished at Kejriwal being uninvited. The very person who last year was shouting against republic day parade, carrying out bazooka rallies; while being the CM of the state - 4 seats short of majority but never shy of enjoying the pleasures of office and using 49 days to do publicity (it didn't matter how much was mandated by public, only 40% of Delhi's seats were his) for his future ambitions to become PM of India. The goons he promoted as ministers in his cabinet were carrying out raids without warrants and the rallies to get full statehood were suspended with dismissal of 2 police officers. The protocol was 'broken', but that's still not unlawful as protocols are guidelines and are only moral obligations. The shunning of a protocol for it is being used by someone for propaganda is a positive step forward.

The latter protocol is that ministers and not the chief of state receives the guests, even premiers of other nations, at airports on arrival. This was overlooked in favour of an image building exercise, sending out a visual vibe to the world. The gesture could capture world media's attention towards growing stature of the nation is a positive development. Reciprocity shown by Mr. Barrack Obama is heartening and, if implemented word to word, shall bring about good of the two states.

Below I highlight a recent status update on my FB profile, the post was evoked by disenchantment towards rogue behaviour of a supposedly 'well-wishing' Mr. Kejriwal. The degree of intrusion these elements can bring to the state of Delhi by socialist mindset, uncaring of the concepts like feasibility, economics and several other factors...

That's exactly what you expect from AAP, intrusion in your life. They can call you, you never registered with them, and ask you to vote for them in "aane wale vidhansabha chunav". 

Your unwanted calls are reason enough to mark you SPAM. Last year you were entering houses without warrants, now you are calling without reason. A leaflet describing your aims could do better, but you believe in entering houses. 

And thy subsidy promises will be funded by our taxes. We surely don't want to spend our taxes on your publicity stunts. Enjoy, while you dream of taking oath on Feb 15. Rudeness is your culture, since systems you don't understand.

Saddening that the freebies are able to lure so many people that you actually might score big numbers. The city is already in shambles at many fronts, and your kind of politics is no help. Its very much being an Ostrich, "burying thy neck while the problems approach". 

Never call me again. I believe in humanism and your semi-leftist approaches have been of no use. Opportunism is first tenant of your policy. 

To Arvind Kejriwal, to persist is important. Because if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything. That's perfectly your case.

Happy Voting on February 07' 2015.

The Detroit Red

Malcolm X in March 1964

"There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time." — Malcolm X

While anger is something we are taught to contain, it certainly is one of the purest emotions. An angry person is a spontaneous person, the best he can be. What an angry person says is not fabricated, it is simply the truth from his perspective. But, historically very few have been able to articulate their anger creatively. Most have simply gone destructive. 

    To this end Malcolm X, the personification of anger, is a figure to look up to. One prime figure of American Black Rights Movement, he embodied a personality that was magnetic as well as one that could inspire fear. He was rightfully angry for the basics he was denied as a citizen of a nation, but more so as a human. His championship for rights of people, he considered brothers has been fierce and unabashed and essentially not concealed by garb of nonviolence.

Saffron Perspective of Green Terrorism

An Indian National Congress rally in Mumbai.
Courtesy: Al Jazeera English  on Flickr | License: CC BY-SA 2.0

Since, in India, the right wing political activism has been painted the colour Saffron, often without giving much thought and insight to its ideologue, I would like to term my views of ex-environment minister, Jayanthi Natrajan's criminal adventurism in office for as long as 3 years - Saffron Perspective of Green Terrorism.

This when Natrajan had no more than ludicrous reasons like "can't recall why final approval was delayed" in view of a project having clearances regarding Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) or "I wanted a holistic (probably doing a Manish Tewari) study of river basin" in case of a project cleared by Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) and hundreds of such projects.

Last month whenmuch dreaded Gujarat CM went ballistic over her policies by terming them a "Jayanthi Tax", little did populace know that his state alone suffered more than 1/3 of Rs. 3 lakh crore investment menace attributed to this one woman, who was at the helm of affairs in Pariyavaran Bhawan in New Delhi.

Her unilateral environmental vigilantism proved death-blow in an economic scenario where maverick troika of Manmohan Singh, P. Chidamabaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia toyed with policies to bring about an annual inflation of over 7 percent (in industrial parlance), resulting in candid slaps to the tune of Rs 2,100 crores under not-so-savvy tag of 'cost escalation' in major infrastructure projects entailing investments similar to Rs 30,000 crore. The gravity of these economic crimes is more evident and further manifests itself a social trouble when these resulted in holding back of power generation projects in a country which suffered a peak electricity shortage  of 4881 MW in September 2013 (it is another thing that Indian government is very active in pursuing electricity sales to neighbouring countries like Pakistan, failing in delivery at domestic front).

In her own admission, Jayanthi told Parliament that 330 projects were stuck in her ministry's office in August 2013. The whole disaster no longer surprises a disillusioned electorate which has suffered the, arguably, most corrupt government in independent India's history. This is no wonder under puppet leadership of a Sardar mired in  Coal Block allocation scam, while his 'high-command' goes on a bizarre dole drive with national treasury at her disposal.

Much to a self-respecting citizen's chagrin, it yet again took a rap, a thumb-up and probably tearing up of some 'confidential' under table deals by dynasty's scion, most probably in an image-building PR drive, to figure out Natrajan's maladies and force her resignation on the eve of prince/heir's FICCI adventure in late December 2013.

Reference: India Today - Jan 27'2014 edition, Special Report.