Boiling kitchen

By Manish Anand

A Delhi minister's wife recently picked up fight with her servant. The minister watched the spectacle with all amusement. The wife when given the monthly ration bill by the servant found out the previous month's bill and compared and lost her temper. The bill had just doubled up.

The tigress at home just could not understand the doubling up of the bill, and put all the blames on the servant with all the expletives challenging his honesty. Why the bill shot twice of the previous month's, the wife kept repeating.

The poor servant had hard time explaining the price rise with prices of vegetables and pulses simply touching the sky.

The minister at last intervened and explained the market economics. The servant was at no fault. Blame it on thickening of middle class and spurt in the export without matching supply in the market. Simple!

Hey, is it that simple?

Not at all as the India is a welfare state and the electorate choose a government to take care of their concerns and protect them from all market fluctuations. So, why the government is not intervening?

That too is simple as the governments post new economic era do not want to interfere in the dynamics of the market. The market would take care of all ups and downs itself, is the mantra of the government.

But what about the poor and the lower middle class? They can not bear the market abandoning them to the curse of the "want". They have to feed their children and have to ensure the minimum level of nutrition. What should they do as their income did not rise as the prices of their basic necessities leaped?

Very simple; just wait for the election and throw away the government which did not protect your interests!

That of course will not solve the problem except for satiating the need to express the collective mass anger. More efforts will be needed and that would be when people in real terms start governing themselves. Probably, solutions as put forward by the World Social Forum may be looked into.

It's time people start strengthening their communities and begin developing a self-sufficient community. Grow most of the basic necessities that you require and become immune to the market dynamics as the government always listen to the poor only when they need votes, which unfortunately is not that too frequent.

But what about those who live in big cities? They can not grow their needs themselves as they do not have land.

Are they helpless? Probably yes!

GDP at 9.2 per cent–reason for euphoria?

By Manish Anand

Headlines beamed this week that India’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has been pegged at 9.2 per cent, which called for celebrations by the newspapers. Is it really so euphoric? A doctored way of development has been the GDP linked growth, which India remains obsessed with.

GDP is the aggregate of a nation’s produces, that is, all the services and goods originating from the nation and selling domestic or internationally.

Post new economic policy, the economic policy makers have been dreaming to touch a 10 per cent GDP growth on a sustained basis, which in their view would lift the lower strata of the society by the spin-off effect. We have been very near that dream, but that spin-off has not had the intended effect so far.

The spin-offs have been in the form of more millionaires and billionaires with few of the giant Indian companies buying out big ticket companies abroad, and yes thickening of the middle class with more people sneaking into this because of the creation of more and more jobs in the services sector, which account for more than 50 per cent of GDP, which again has always been taken as a cause of concern.

Simple economics says that a country of large population like Indian and China should be stronger on the manufacturing sector, which alone has the potential to create huge employment along with unleashing innumerable entrepreneurial potential in the nation.

India just missed the bus of being the manufacturing base of the world. The reasons are aplenty.

With more than 30 per cent of the people always at the threat of starvation, being below the poverty line, which is nothing but statistical maneuvering of the pampered babus, there is reason to question the GDP driven growth of the country.

With millions of people being shelter less despite shelter being the fundamental right of the citizen as mandated by the Constitution, there is reason to ask why the babus in the cool confines of the Lutyens’ Delhi do not step into the interiors of the country to gauge the effect of their policies.

With the law and order along with judiciary still functioning in the British mould it becomes necessary to ask if the policy makers are not single mindedly focused on GDP growth rate then to deliver services as promised in the Constitution in an undiluted manner.

With thousands of children going missing each year in this country, which takes pride in calling itself a welfare state, it becomes important whether the government really cares for the people or not or is it too busy to raise a toast for the Tatas and the Mittals.

Why have not we developed happiness index or well being index so far to really gauge the impact of the policies in the real terms? The suicides of farmers along with a whole lot of farmers not able to rid themselves of the debt trap are shame that the policy makers must take on them.

Why does it take Sonia Gandhi to dash off a letter, asking to look into the issues of FDI in retail sector, which can potentially make crores of people jobless and leave people at the mercy of the oligarchs, for the government to really start looking into the issue?

Do the people need Sonia Gandhi as an ambassador within their own country?