WEEKEND LIGHTER: THE MIRACLE OF THE HUMAN BEING!
WEEKEND LIGHTER: THE MIRACLE OF THE HUMAN BEING!
(May 14/15, 2016, No. 20/2016)*
Weekend
Lighter is posted every Saturday @mgwarrier.blogspot.in
*Posted
on May 14, 2016 from Thiruvananthapuram.
I
Opening
Remarks
Malayalee
Came
to Kerala on May 4 and reached Thiruvananthapuram on May 9 after spending 4
days in Wayanad and Kozhikode districts and traveling by road and rail. Hot
weather, occasional rains and political noise in the context of Assembly
elections scheduled for May 16 gave enough opportunity to get a feel of the
mood of average Malayalee staying in Kerala. Having stayed outside Kerala for
almost 30 years and having been lucky to stay in this state for long spells
sometimes extending up to six months I have a fair sense of the thinking of
average Resident Malayalee and the Malayalee who has settled permanently
outside Kerala. Both ‘judge’ each other using diametrically opposite
parameters.
Growth prospects*: Dr C Rangarajan
“Gazing into the
future
The rise in
investment rate must be supported by a rise in the domestic saving rate. An
increase in investment rate supported by a widening current account deficit is
not sustainable and is fraught with serious consequences. Only a current
account deficit in the region of 1 to 1.5 per cent is sustainable. Incremental
capital output ratio is a catch-all variable which is influenced by a host of
factors. Obviously, it depends on technology. It also depends upon the skill of
the labour force which in turn depends on the quality of the education system.
Another catch-all expression “ease of doing business” is also relevant.
Bureaucratic hurdles which impede speedy execution of projects need to be
removed. Thus improving the productivity of capital needs action on several
fronts.
Making a prediction
about the future is always hazardous. Many things can go wrong. The Indian
economy in the recent past has shown that it has the resilience to grow at 8 to
9 per cent. Therefore achieving the required investment rate to support such a
high growth is very much in the realm of possibility. However, we need to
overcome the current phase of declining investment rate. Investment sentiment
is influenced by non-economic factors as well. An environment of political and
social cohesion is imperative. Equally, we can get the ICOR back to a lower
level. Raising the productivity of capital will require policy reforms
including administrative reforms as well as firm-level improvements. The
“potential” to grow at 8 to 9 per cent at least for a decade exists. We have to
make it happen.”
*Excerpts from the Hindu lead article (May 14,
2016)
II
Recent responses
May 12, 2016
Resources management
This
refers to Puja Mehra’s well-researched article “It is disinvestment, not
privatisation” (The Hindu, Policy, May 12). Modi government is yet to receive
the kind of support from different stakeholders including political leadership,
bureaucracy and corporates, for effectively converting the Planning Commission
(In his maiden Independence Day address on August 15, 2014, PM had lamented
that the Planning Commission was a house in disrepair which he intended to
rebuild as NITI Aayog), into the
transformation agent that was heralded by the rechristening of the Commission
as NITI Aayog.
It
is time we start moving towards more transparency in the working of
organisations dependent on public funds (When I refer to ‘public funds’, I have
in mind resources belonging to the public including funds/capital mobilised by
private sector organisations including corporates and religious/charitable
bodies). NITI Aayog can play a
proactive role by providing guidance for better Asset-Liability-Management
approach in managing nation’s resources.
Besides
policy guidance down to village level, this will need legislative changes and a
total revamp of planning apparatus and an effective regulatory and audit system
for overseeing the funds management by all agencies which have access to public
funds.
M G Warrier,
Thiruvananthapuram
May 10, 2016
The new normal?
Apropos
Shiv Visvanathan’s article “The ‘everydayness’ of our violence, (The Hindu, May
10), one, as a citizen, is indebted to The Hindu for publishing it, as normally
the mainstream media, though enthusiastic about sensationalising isolated
incidents(I am told they have an eye on increased readership/viewership data),
generally avoid uncomfortable analyses of comparable events.
Though
India might be still not under threat of the kind of tyranny referred to in the
article quoting Hobbes’s hypothesis, the signals are far from comforting. One’s
thought process gets paralysed when a peep into the past few decades gives
evidence for support received by the agencies responsible for carrying out the
acts of violence against the weak, from the ruling party or alliances across
political denominations. It is in this context that the fear of suppression of
uncomfortable facts by the establishment running through the article becomes
real.
In
the Indian context, citizen’s concern about violence does not get focussed for
multiple reasons. The low level of literacy, multi-layer system of governance
in which responsibility for national security, internal policing, education and
civil rights is in different hands, contribute to this blurring of focus. That the enforcement of several laws concerning these
aspects gets distributed among different authorities at different levels, make
the task of even social activists working to help out victims, in various ways.
Judiciary
with crores of cases pending before courts at different levels remain a
helpless spectator making occasional observations about legalised violence
escaping punishment.
M G Warrier,
Thiruvananthapuram
III
LEISURE
“Looking
back, then, over the patchwork of my life’s labours, I can say that I have made
many beginnings and thrown out many suggestions. Something will come of them in
the future, though I cannot myself whether it will be much or little. I can,
however, express a hope that I have opened up a pathway for an important
advance in our knowledge.”
-Last paragraph of Freud’s autobiography
written in 1925
“All
the things which we have been describing and discussing are in themselves only
fragments, the products of observation, examination, analysis and theory. Taken
together they go into what we conceive of as the make-up of a man, a woman and
a child as we experience them. In the end we come face to face with the miracle of the human being-with
the body of an animal, the mind of a dreamer, the ability to communicate beyond
imagining, and a capacity for goodness, for evil, for greatness and for
suffering, which no other being on earth can ever share. It is this human
being, the creator and the destroyer, that we must be able to watch with great
objectivity and understand with great compassion.
-Concluding paragraph of the 792
pages, 1963 book “Personality Development and Psychopathology” by Norman
Cameron, Yale University.
Comments