Recession - An insight into

Pajja is the proprietor of a Siri-Paya and Nehari Shop in Lahore. Sales are low and, in order to increase them, he comes up with a plan to allow his customers to eat now and pay later. He keeps track of the meals consumed on a ledger.

Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flock to Pajja’s shop. Pajja’s suppliers are delighted and are very willing to sell more and more raw materials for the meals he prepares. Pajja shows them his ledger of receivables and they extend him credit.

A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and gives Pajja a credit line and then increases Pajja’s borrowing limit.

Taking advantage of his customers' freedom from immediate payment constraints, Pajja jacks up the prices of his Nehari and Siri-Paya. Customers don’t mind as they are not required to pay on the spot. Sales volume increases massively; Banks and suppliers lend more; Pajja opens more outlets. He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the customers as collateral.

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert bankers recognize Pajja's customer loans as assets and transform these customer assets into BONDS. These negotiable instruments are given exotic names such as SIRIBOND, PAYABOND, MAGHAZBOND and BONGBOND. These securities are then listed on the Stock Exchange and traded on markets worldwide. No one really understands what the names mean and how the securities are guaranteed but, nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items.

One day, although the prices are still climbing, a credit risk manager of the bank decides that the time has come to demand payment of one of the debts incurred by Pajja. Pajja in turn asks his clients to pay up. One by one they refuse; the clients cannot pay back the debts. Pajja refuses to serve them any more. The clients stop coming.

Pajja is really screwed now. He cannot fulfil his loan obligations and therefore claims bankruptcy. All Bonds drop in price by between 80 to 95%.

The suppliers of Pajja, having granted generous payment due dates and having invested in the securities are faced with similar problems. The meat supplier defaults on payment to the sheep and cattle supplier and claims bankruptcy. The atta supplier is taken over by a competitor; Pajja lays off the cook and staff. Bankruptcies soar, unemployment mushrooms.

The bank that lent the money in the first place is set to collapse. It is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock consultations by leaders from the governing political parties with Pajja commuting back and forth in his Executive jet and Mercedes 500SEL, brokering the deal.

The funds required to save the economic collapse are obtained by a tax levied on the citizens, most of whom do not eat Nehari or Siri-Paya.

As you sow, so you reap

An Emperor in the Far East was growing old and knew it was time to choose his successor. Instead of choosing one of his assistants or his children, he decided something different. He called young people in the kingdom together one day. He said, "It is time for me to step down and choose the next emperor. I have decided to choose one of you." 

 

The kids were shocked! But the emperor continued. "I am going to give each one of you a seed today. One very special seed. I want you to plant the seed, water it and come back here after one year from today with what you have grown from this one seed. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next emperor!" 

One boy named Ling was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly told his mother the story. She helped him get a pot and planting soil, and he planted the seed and watered it carefully. Every day he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other youths began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. 

Ling kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew. 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 5 weeks went by. Still nothing. By now, others were talking about their plants but Ling didn't have a plant, and he felt like a failure. Six months went by, still nothing in Ling's pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. 

Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Ling didn't say anything to his friends, however. He just kept waiting for his seed to grow. 

A year finally went by and all the youths of the kingdom brought their plants to the emperor for inspection. Ling told his mother that he wasn't going to take an empty pot. But honest about what happened, Ling felt sick to his stomach, but he knew his mother was right. He took his empty pot to the palace. When Ling arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other youths. They were beautiful in all shapes and sizes. Ling put his empty pot on the floor and many of the other kinds laughed at him. A few felt sorry for him and just said, "Hey nice try."

When the emperor arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted the young people. Ling just tried to hide in the back. "What great plants, trees and flowers you have grown," said the emperor. "Today, one of you will be appointed the next emperor!" All of a sudden, the emperor spotted Ling at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered his guards to bring him to the front. Ling was terrified. "The emperor knows I'm a failure! Maybe he will have me killed!" 

When Ling got to the front, the Emperor asked his name. "My name is Ling," he replied. All the kids were laughing and making fun of him. The emperor asked everyone to quiet down. He looked at Ling, and then announced to the crowd, "Behold your new emperor! His name is Ling!" Ling couldn't believe it. Ling couldn't even grow his seed. 

How could he be the new emperor? Then the emperor said, "One year ago today, I gave everyone here a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. 

But I gave you all boiled seeds, which would not grow. All of you, except Ling, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Ling was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new emperor!"

If you plant honesty, you will reap trust.

If you plant goodness, you will reap friends.

If you plant humility, you will reap greatness.

If you plant perseverance, you will reap victory. 

If you plant consideration, you will reap harmony.

If you plant hard work, you will reap success.

If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation.

If you plant openness, you will reap intimacy.

If you plant patience, you will reap improvements.

If you plant faith, you will reap miracles.

But 

If you plant dishonesty, you will reap distrust.

If you plant selfishness, you will reap loneliness.

If you plant pride, you will reap destruction.

If you plant envy, you will reap trouble. 

If you plant laziness, you will reap stagnation.

If you plant bitterness, you will reap isolation.

If you plant greed, you will reap loss.

If you plant gossip, you will reap enemies.

If you plant worries, you will reap wrinkles. 

If you plant sin, you will reap guilt.

  

So be careful what you plant now, It will determine what you will reap tomorrow, The seeds you now scatter, Will make life worse or better, your life or the ones who will come after. Yes, someday, you will enjoy the fruits, or you will pay for the choices you plant today

The disaster of 'me,me'

This happened in Mangalore as February 14 — now marketed as Valentine’s Day by traders to sell their wares — was approaching.

S Gurumurthy

Upset with public drinking by boys and girls, a freak by name Pramod Muthalik got mad. He got some of them in a pub beaten up like their parents would do, but unlike them. He had informed the media about his show so that the news cameras were in place to telecast the Muthalik action everywhere. Thus the Muthalik show was a joint venture between him and the media to keep away the state police, which could spoil the show. Predictably, the whole world pounced on poor Yeddyurappa who heads the BJP government in Karnataka for allowing Muthalik to take the law into his hands. The BJP, ever torn between its love of Hindu culture and its desire for a modern image, was greatly embarrassed. With the BJP in power in Karnataka, Muthalik knew the publicity value of his show. Had he enacted his theatre elsewhere, like when the Shiv Sena raided pubs years ago in Mumbai and Pune under the ‘secular’ Congress rule, it would have been far less noisy.

More. By just one mad act, Muthalik turned many, including a minister, into full-scale lunatics. Renuka Chowdhury, a minister of state, supported a “pub bharo andolan” to take on Muthalik, thus openly encouraging young boys and girls to take to mass drinking in public. And believe it or not, her portfolio is Women and Child Development. Came an even more mad response to Muthalik’s take on Valentine’s Day. “I support every kind of love, heterosexual, transgender, marital, extramarital”.

This is Arundhati Roy sermonising to youths. Why she left out incest from her catalogue of love is not clear. Now, take the secular media. It quickly equated pubgoing with individual rights, and held Muthalik as an offender against human rights. Evidently, the mad act of a freak Hindu in a distant corner of India is sufficient to turn the whole of secular India into lunatics. Now move away from this trivia to the danger to which Renukas and Arundhatis expose the nation’s economy.

The current Indian discourse on individual and human rights, which tends to smuggle in even gay and lesbian rights, apes the West. As India attempts to copy the West, it clearly misses the serious economic issues that confront West, thanks to its obsession with unfettered individual and human rights. Many in the West now seem to realise that continuously undermining the moral and social order has led to the present economic crisis. The West did not slide overnight. Beginning from the late 19th century, the Anglo-American West gradually moved away from a relation- based lifestyle to a contract-based lifestyle.

While culture and tradition govern relation, law and rights inhere in contracts.

And this move from relation to contracts became almost complete in the second half of the 20th century. With law overriding relations, even parents could not curb the rights of their wards once they legally matured.

It is the other way. If they acted against their wards, the law would punish the parents for child abuse. So contracts replaced relations, and rule of law substituted for moral order. To what effect? The rise of unfettered individualism and undefined feminism have led to the erosion of families and a rise in divorces, singleparent families, unwed mothers, lesbians, gays and almost the collapse of traditional families. Over 50 per cent of the first marriages, 67 per cent of the second marriages, and 74 per cent of the third marriages end in divorce in the US. Over 40 per cent of births are outside wedlock. Almost half of the families are headed by a single parent.

The number is more in most of Europe. It was seen as cultural erosion first. But slowly it has turned into an economic disaster.

The contract-based model undermined families and led to low or no household savings, high personal debt, credit card based living, outsourcing of household functions including kitchen work. The erosion in relation-based lifestyle soon imposed a huge social security burden on the state because the family mechanism that supported the unemployed, infirm, aged and the rest and the state had to step in to aid them. Thus the family functions were taken over by the state. The families were nationalised. The overburdened state consequently had to shed its traditional functions, like public works, and privatise itself.

The socialisation of family functions obviated the need to save for a rainy day and led to even lower savings. With the growth of individualism to the exclusion of kinship and relations, corporates and the state alike promoted unrestrained consumerism.

Result, some 110 millions US households have some 1.2 billion credit cards, almost a dozen cards per household.

As the people saved less and spent more, they got into trillions of dollars of private debt; and as the government spent more, it also ran into tens of trillions of dollars of public debt. The result is that the government is bankrupt and so households are insolvent. More, the US, the largest creditor nation of the world three decades ago, is today the number one debtor of the world, with $12.5 trillion of debt.

A quick survey shows this: all individual- centric economies are deep in debt; but nations more family-oriented and less individual- centric, like Japan, China, India, and generally Asian nations, account for over three-fourths of global savings; the individualist West lives off the savings of family-centric Asia. Today the West says that, in the present crisis only Asia, which has huge savings thanks to family orientation, can save the West, which has almost lost its traditional family lifestyle.

So the idea of unbridled human rights and unrestrained personal freedom that have led to social and cultural degeneration are increasingly seen as the cause of the present economic crisis. Weeks ago, Thomas L Friedman, a leading economic journalist, wrote in the New York Times that he had told those eating in a restaurant that they could no more afford to eat out and they had better cook and eat at home. But how will they cook and eat at home unless families are re-created? If they do, how would the US compensate for loss of employment if restaurants, which exist because households have closed their kitchens, shut down? There seems to be no solution within economic laws to the present crisis of the West. Amoral economics once yielded higher returns. It now yields negative returns.

Here Renukas and Arundhatis advocate unbridled individualism that has undermined families and morals and dynamited the economies of the West. Renuka questions the idea public morals. Arundhati advocates amoral living. Both seem unaware that an economy built at the cost of family and social morals, too collapses on the ruins of the morals it has brought down. QED: morality supports economics; lack of it ruins economies

comment@gurumurthy.net

About the author:

S Gurumurthy is a well-known commentator on political and economic issues

It is called mindset

As my friend was passing the elephants, he suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from the ropes they were tied to but for some reason, they did not. My friend saw a trainer nearby and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away.

"Well," he said, "when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it's enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free." My friend was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn't, they were stuck right where they were.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before? So make an attempt to grow further.... Why shouldn't we try it again?

"YOUR ATTEMPT MAY FAIL, BUT NEVER FAIL TO MAKE AN ATTEMPT."

Save Petrol, Save Money, Contain Inflation

Nice Logic - It May work!! Save petrol, Save money!!



A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the Kirana store he pays Rs. 12 a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won't last a week he normally buys two dozens at a time. One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to Rs. 16. The next time he buys groceries, eggs are Rs. 22 a dozen.

When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, "The price has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly". This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. He checked around for a better price and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of business. The huge egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on.

As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there. He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000 dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of eggs.

Then week before Diwali the price of eggs shot up to Rs. 40 a dozen. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, "Cakes and baking for the holiday". The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up. Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking, baking, etc. happen. This pattern continues until the price of eggs is Rs. 60 a dozen. The man says, " There must be something we can do about the price of eggs".

He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop buying eggs. This didn't work because everyone needed eggs.

Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need. He ate 2 eggs a day. On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.

The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn't need any eggs.
Maybe wouldn't need any all week.

The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg farms that he didn't have any room for eggs would not need any for at least two weeks.

At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs. To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy the eggs at a lower price.

The distributor said, " I don't have the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free". The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying
again.

The grocery store owner said, "I don't have room for more eggs. The customers are only buying 2 or 3 eggs at a time. Now if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers
would start buying by the dozen again".

The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers but the egg farmers liked the price they were getting for their eggs but, those chickens just kept on laying. Finally, the egg farmers lowered the
price of their eggs. But only a few paisa.

The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, "when the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by the dozen."

Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers.

The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn't buy at a higher price than they were selling eggs for. Anyway, they had full warehouses and wouldn't need eggs for quite a while. And those chickens kept on laying. Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing away eggs they couldn't sell.

The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price. And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.

Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry.

What if everyone only bought Rs 200.00 worth of Petrol each time they pulled to the pump? The dealer's tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the huge tanks. The tank farms wouldn't have room for the petrol coming from the refining plants. And the refining plants wouldn't have room for the oil being off loaded from the huge tankers coming from the oil fiends.

Just Rs 200.00 each time you buy gas. Don't fill up the tank of your car. You may have to stop for gas twice a week, but the price should come down.

Think about it.


Also, don't buy anything else at the fuel station; don't give them any more of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices come down..."

..just think of this concept for a while.

.................please pass this concept around....reaching out to
the masses ...the world .....

Society - A Mirage?

Gender wars have been at the core of the societal imbalance since ages immemorial. And these wars have been largely instrumental in the design and state of the society. All major societal structures like relationships, obligations, social and moral responsibilities revolve around this concept of gender wars. Various behavioral patterns and social norms are also laid down in and around this concept of Gender wars.
By and large the society is what we see today a result of these conflicts arising out of daily life. But now we have a million dollar question, as to what exactly is the society and who actually comprise of it? How has the so called ‘contractors of the society’ been given the authority to rule the lives and decision of so many other people and in reality who actually are the ‘contractors of the society’? What laid to the installation of the fear of social ostracization amongst folks so that a certain set of activities are doomed as ‘unacceptable’ in the society and the people of the clan always take care to see that the banned set of activities is not encouraged in the society? And a plethora of such questions do certainly irk the rationale as one analyzes the evolution of the society.
As a general observation and a rule of thumb, every person in the society defines “The Society” to be comprising of the people around oneself excluding oneself. Thus, the society actually becomes a very convenient scapegoat for wrongful decisions or the need for strict adherence to certain practices without understanding its essentialities or consequences.
If a girl runs away with the neighborhood boy, the family is more concerned about its position in the society rather than the girl’s emotions and feelings and even if she returns, the family is more happy about restoring the ‘apparently lost’ position. If the girl asks the question about her feelings and emotions or expects them to be reciprocated by the family, the family is actually at a loss of answers and thus conveniently passes the blame to the society, saying ‘It is not acceptable in our society’.
If a boy does not perform so well in his studies or his career, then also the family is more concerned about its repercussions on the societal position rather than trying to understand the reasons of his non – performance. Or to make an attempt to understand his actual area of interest and give him a chance to perform in that area. On the other hand, the family pressurizes him to get results as they are ‘losing position’ in the society. And if the boy asks the question about his own interests, then also the blame is very conveniently passed to the society, saying, ‘If you want to stay in this society, you have to stay according to it’.
The whole concept of society has been so deceptively conceived to pass on certain ubiquitously stereotypic histrionics generation over generation, that now the very basic question, the one raised above is very difficult to answer. It is not hard to find people talking ill of the society, cribbing about the wrongs happening in the society, the rising crime, the growing apathy, the dwindling commitment in relationships, the increasing commercialization leading to severe breach of trusts and so on and so forth. But at the same time, it is equally hard to find a dedicated team of committed people ready to take the responsibility to set at least one of them correctly. Again, in the process of cribbing and complaining, people pass the blame to the society thinking that everyone else other than themselves forms the society and being responsible for the mess, should clear it.
With everyone thinking themselves not to be a part of the society this whole concept of society, which actually finds its seeds in the dire need to establish civilization, remains present in a very inconspicuous form. Like a mirage in a desert, visible from a distance, and disappearing fast as one approaches it. Similarly for the problems faced by the civil society at present, a superficial glance will always depict that the society itself is responsible for the mess. But if analyzed closely, it boils down to the question, whether everyone actually does consider oneself as part of the society and ready to take one’s responsibility in setting right things right. And had everyone actually done it, the society as it stands today, would have been in a much better shape and form, if the society actually existed outside us. It does not. It exists within us. Each one of us is the society and each one needs to put in efforts to stabilize the swinging pendulum of societal chaos.
It is still not late. We can do it now. We will do it now. For its now or never.

Freedom of Expression

This article has been influenced by the movie Taare Zameen Par.

Is expressiveness a necessary mandate in the language of communication? Ishaan Awasthi is just like any other child, but sadly enough suffers from dyslexia, a neurological disorder which disables his normal brain processing to judge and discriminate shapes of alphabets, memorize and cognize them when confronted again. This abnormality does not allow him to perform daily task with the ease that other children of his age can.

His parents are not able to reciprocate to his needs of support, love and understanding and constantly pressurize him to perform in studies, a pressure that he is not at all able to take, nor talk about it. He has developed a fear to express himself to his parents and starts resenting all their efforts, to make him understand the need for his performance in order to survive in this over – competitive world, go for a toss. Exasperated and not able to comprehend his behavior, his parents send him to a boarding school much to his dislike.

Ishaan had an uncanny ability of painting and through his painting he used to express himself, but it needed a sensitive eye to notice the pain expressed in his paintings. His elder brother being a scholar – performer, his parents wanted him to follow his elder brother’s footsteps but in this process, all of them got alienated from him. His inability to perform and stand up to the expectations of his parents brutally murdered his self – confidence and this further drove him away from his family. To depict this pain he painted a series of paintings of his parents, his brothers and himself and in each painting he used to move himself away a little bit. When the paintings were dropped in a sequence, it depicted his slow alienation from his family, his support system and his recession into the oblivion of loneliness and silence.

The pain which small, innocent and fragile Ishaan could not express through words took the form of brush strokes. The messages he used to convey through his paintings at a tender age of 9 had the potential to rattle the hearts of grown-ups as well. The mode of communication that Ishaan developed was certainly off – track but the compulsion underlying the foundation of its development was nurtured and nourished by this inability of the society to understand pain and its various forms of expression. The view that words are the only form of efficient communication and other form of arts like painting, literature and music are just modes of recreation is what fuels the sad reality of unfortunately different souls like Ishaan finding it difficult to survive in this world.

Such sad reception of other forms of art has also led to euphoria in the society that until and unless a child performs in studies and gets topper marks; he has no stay and say in this ultra – competitive world. Even if the child has some serious problem, continuing in his studies and has some other talents that he wants to develop, he is forbidden to do so till he does not rebel against it and ensure that he has his own way. This could be easy for a normal child but for a visibly compromised child like Ishaan who craves for understanding to convey his inabilities, resentment and resorting to rebellious techniques to nurture his talent cannot be an easy task.

If the liveliness of such a child is killed in the initial foundation days then the society stands the risk of losing invaluable talents. In today’s world everyone wants their child to be a topper, a doctor, an engineer or an MBA and parents put a lot of pressure on their kids to perform. This puts the kid in a spot and makes him feel guilty if he fails. Such thoughts act as poisons to creative talent and do not allow it to flourish and blossom.

Communication is a powerful tool and nature has its own beautiful methods of doing so which are devoid of any words. Birds chirping, winds blowing, flowers blossoming, all convey some message to us. A message that just doing a humdrum and slumber job and arranging finances is not life. It is just one of the ways to live life and should not replace the actual beauty life is. Ishaan did this in a wonderful manner through his paintings and showed it to the world that an unfortunate child like who is still struggling to identify alphabets, a task his contemporaries do without an iota of unease, can perform wonders even without support. Wonder what his capabilities could have been, had his parents understood him and not put a pressure on him to perform the way other kids perform and not put the constraint of verbal communication of expressiveness on him.