Warrier's COLLAGE August 26, 2021 : Assets Monetization

Welcome to Warrier's COLLAGE On Thursday August 26, 2021 How the world works*...: Bo Burnham https://youtu.be/oDQXFNWuZj8 (*Lyrics : https://genius.com/amp/Bo-burnham-how-the-world-works-lyrics See H1 for more) Good Morning I'm getting some messages about same content getting repeated in multiple group mails and WhatsApp messages. I'm trying to help where I can, by not sending Collage by WhatsApp to those getting it by email. Any other possibilities can be suggested. This is a problem with all streams of Media which we have to get used to. Nice Day M G Warrier For cartoons by Bimbadhar Mishra, please log on to his website www.bimbadharmishra.in Thought* for the day : "Life taught me not to complain about others.. change yourself, if you want peace. Because it is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to Carpet the whole world." (*Received from V Rangarajan. Author anonymous) A Messages 1) Yeshavant Hedavakar A very good video* on Pancha Mahabhuta* and a very good speech on Bhagwad Geeta by Swami Sarvapriyananda from Warriors Collage dated 18th March 2021. *Pancha Mahabhutas https://youtu.be/9CxvZRHp2S0 2) R Jayakumar Mumbai After reading the two articles, Analysis can lead to Paralysis and Facing Challenges in Life, I have a feeling that there are broadly three categories of people living around us. The first category is those who see life as full of opportunities and so are positive in mind and can succeed in life. But they have no guts to face disappointments in life and can feel frustrated when opportunities don't work. The second category are those who see life as a stumbling block everywhere and so are always negative in thinking and never come up in life. They always have easy excuses to give for not being successful. The third category is those who consider life as full of surprises and hope for unexpected things to happen at every turning point. They are always excited and are balanced between being positive and negative. They live a contented life like little children who are happy to be surprised by gifts brought to them by parents. Great surprises are in store for those who expect constant surprise from God! R Jayakumar B Society Self Before Society : Vathsala Jayaraman Chennai Many psychologists with penetrating insight,those who have specialized in community Development, strongly advise that making and keeping promises to oneself should precede making and keeping promises to others. Naturally private victories precede public victories. We can't reverse that process any more than we can harvest a crop before we plant it. Though they have meant 'improve yourself before improving others'--this has been wantonly misunderstood by the politicians and other influential people. They are so much preoccupied with private victories that they have neither time nor inclination to bother about public victories. What a strict adherence to self-improvement techniques! Vathsala Jayaraman C Current Affairs 1) Assets Monetization : India https://www.livemint.com/news/india/government-eyes-rs88-000-crore-from-asset-monetization-in-fy22/amp-11629724364715.html Excerpts : "The government will raise ₹88,000 crore this year by leasing infrastructure assets of central government ministries and state-run companies under a ₹6 trillion National Monetization Pipeline (NMP) it unveiled on Monday. The funds will then be used to build new infrastructure assets, helping boost economic growth in Asia’s third-largest economy." 2) Resources Management : India : M G Warrier Resources Management Though our country has only one-third the geographical area as compared to the US with more than three times population, we are blessed with much more resources and a much better weather cycle. Also, we have not appro-priately accessed the potential of our workforce. (a) Land and buildings We should immediately take up a survey of usable land and buildings in cities and towns with a population of five lakhs and above. The survey should cover Rashtrapathi Bhavan to Temples/Mosques/Church premises with an objective of optimal use for public advantage. (Continued at H2) *Excerpted from "Agenda for Modi 2.0" By M G Warrier, published in The Global ANALYST, March 2019 issue. D Readers Write 1) Food Psychology : Vathsala Jayaraman Chennai It is understood from caterers and chefs that it is easier and cheaper to prepare varieties of dishes, each in lesser quantity than to prepare barrels of the same dish. There is a difference in how people enjoy and the enormous saving. When people are served around 50 dishes, their amazement increases and there is a great tendency to consume less. There is a saving of nearly 30 % more. This is more based on human psychology. That is child psychologists advise to feed varieties of food to children to avoid fat accumulation and to bring in more satisfaction. You would have seen caterers advertising the list of nearly 60 dishes during dinner. Vathsala Jayaraman 2) Parasurama Parasurama appears In Ramayana as well as Mahabharatha. Anchaneya is seen both in Ramayana and Mahabharatha. There appears to be no restraint that God should take only a single avatar on a particular period. Bhagavata Purana speaks of 22 avatars inclusive of Sanatkumaras, Narada, Vyasa, Kapila, Rishaba Deva and others. Some people include Balarama and don't consider Buddha as an Avatar. In addition, we have Avatars of Ganesa and Shakthi. As regards Parasurama 'revenge' is at the back of his mind for ever. He takes revenge on the entire Kshatriya race for the harm done by one person. It is also seen that Parasurama created Kerala, which already existed. It appears superficially that the aim of Parasurama Avatar is to teach people 'what not to be' or how not to be also. Whenever we think about an Avatar or incarnation we remember the words of Lord Krishna : "Paritraanaaya saadhoonaam Vinaashaaya cha dushkritaam Dharma Samsthaapanaarthaaya Sambhavaami yuge Yuge'" If the aim of Avatar is 'Dushta nigraha and Shishta paripalana' we should be able to define in clear terms who is a Dushta and what are the activities that deserve Nigraha. Parasurama's mother was killed for just seeing the reflection of a deva within a pot of water. Was she a Dushta? Perhaps as too much importance was given to Pathivratya Dharma, ladies like Renuka and Ahalya met with severe punishments. But the action of even great sages who were overpowered with kaama, on rare occasions though, was taken lightly. All these things point out to customs and practices, named as Dharma prevailing at a particular point of time in the society. Unless one has implicit faith that whatever is done by the Avatar is for a good purpose taking into account the tradition and culture of that particular period, it is unquestionable, any amount of discussion with logic and reasoning about Avatars will lead us nowhere. Confusion will get confounded. Vathsala Jayaraman E Hierarchical issues : https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-in-daily-life/202108/who-pays-attention-whom The attention structure of our pre-human primate ancestors was based on dominance hierarchies. Everyone looked up. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors did away with dominance hierarchies; people looked around. With the advent of agriculture dominance, hierarchies returned to human groups. Today we are constrained to look up, but we also look around. F Leisure* One day a Colonel Sa'ab from the Army, fell into a well. The soldiers threw a rope into the well and pulled the Colonel Sa'ab out. The moment the Colonel came up, the soldiers left the rope, snapped to attention and saluted. The Colonel Sa'ab fell back into the well. This happened many times. Someone suggested that a Brigadier be asked to help-because HE wouldn't have to salute the Colonel. So a Brigadier Sa'ab arrived. He threw the rope into the well and the Colonel Sa'ab grabbed it. The Brigadier Sa'ab began pulling the rope. As soon as the Colonel Sa'ab reached the top of the well, he spotted the Brigadier Sa'ab. He immediately left the rope and saluted. And he fell back once more, into the well. There was total silence. Then everyone heard the desperate Colonel Sa'ab's voice from down below *"You idiots - get hold of a batch mate !!"* MORAL OF THE STORY: Batchmates ARE important ! They can save your life! (Dedicated to all contemporary batchmates friends at school and college and at office) *Forward received from Dr T V Surendran Mananthavady 2) Live Dreams* I woke up today , having dreamt early morning at 4 AM . I was in the biggest Mall of India looking to buy a pair of socks and a neck tie . As I walked in, I noticed a sweater with a price tag of RS 9000 .Next to the sweater were a pair of Jeans for Rs.10000 .The socks were Rs.8000 ! And Tie for astonishing 16,000 /- I went looking for a salesperson and found one in the watch Dept (Continued at H3) *Received from S R Badrinarayanan Cheñnai G Quotes about Assets https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/assets-quotes Like : "I would say don't take advice from people like me who have gotten very lucky. We're very biased. You know, like Taylor Swift* telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner telling you, 'Liquidize your assets; buy Powerball tickets - it works!'" Bo Burnham (Robert Pickering "Bo" Burnham is an American comedian, musician, writer, actor, and filmmaker. He began his career on YouTube in March 2006, with his videos gaining over 450 million views as of August 2021.) And *Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. Her narrative songwriting, which is often inspired by her personal experiences, has received widespread media coverage and critical praise. H 1) How the world works : Lyrics Excerpts : [Intro: Bo Burnham] Hey, kids Today, we're gonna learn about the world [Verse 1: Bo Burnham] The world that's around us is pretty amazing But how does it work? It must be comp-l-icated The secret is: The world can only work When everything works together A bee drinks from a flower and leaves with its pollen A squirrel in a tree spreads the seeds that have fallen Everything works together [Pre-Chorus: Bo Burnham] The biggest elephant, the littlest fly The gophers underground, the birds in the sky And every single cricket, every fish in the sea Gives what they can and gets what they need [Chorus: Bo Burnham] That is how the world works That is how the world works From "A" to "zebra" to the worms in the dirt That's how it works [Interlude 1: Bo Burnham & Socko] Hey, everyone, look who stopped by to say hello! It's Socko! Hey! Where you been, Socko? I've been where I always am when you're not wearing me on your hand: in a frightening, liminal space between states of being! Not quite dead, not quite alive! It's similar to a constant state of sleep paralysis Socko, we were just talking about the world and how it works Boy, that sounds complicated! Do you have anything you'd want to teach us about the world? I wouldn't say anything that you probably haven't already said yourself I don't know about that, Socko. How about you give it a try? All right! 2) Continued from C2 For example, the possibility of ministerial bungalows spread over the whole city getting substituted by residential complexes in the vicinity of Parliament House, Secretariats or Legislative Houses can be considered. The excess land and buildings that will get released will be worth billions which can be rede- ployed for economic development. The city traffic also will become smooth. (b) Domestic gold stocks Gold management needs a makeover. Domestic gold stock with individuals and institutions (including religious bodies) needs to be accounted and mainstreamed for the nation’s benefit. Through an amendment to its ear- lier instructions, the Resrve Bank of In- dia (RBI) expanded the ambit of gold- monetization scheme on January 9, 2019 to enable charitable institutions and temples/religious bodies, among others, to invest their gold stock under the scheme. The revised instructions give a new avenue for productive deploy- ment of idle domestic gold stock. This is a welcome move from the RBI. The new entities which have become eligible to invest their gold stock under the scheme need to be educated about the advan- tages of mainstreaming their gold stock. Issues of trust, faith, emotion and sheer laziness to take responsibil- ity on the part of voluntary social work- ers who generally manage the affairs of trusts and boards of management of re- ligious bodies need to be addressed with care and deftness. Past experience shows, organizations do not spontane- ously volunteer to part with gold, even if the investment fetches substantial re- turns. Perhaps, Tirupati and Siddhivi- nayak (Mumbai) are the only temples which have already availed of the facility to deposit gold in banks and earn income from such deposits. Some of the other temples/religious bodies are sometimes secretive about even the quantity of gold in their vaults. Governments’ eye on every asset as an income source (read: tax) also is behind such fears. According to media reports, during 2017, Tirupathi temple had gold deposits of over 4,000 kg with two banks, fetching the equivalent of the value of around 80 kg gold as inter- est per annum. If the center is serious about mainstreaming domestic stock of investible gold, massive efforts will have to be made to create awareness among the people about the benefits that will accrue to the country’s economy by deploying part of the sur- face gold stock productively. The avail- ability of sovereign guarantee for the gold invested, professional handling of conversion of gold and timely payment of interest and return of gold or value of gold will have to be ensured by central/ state governments. The existence of such protection and facilities should also be publicized in a business-like manner to attract investment. Perhaps, India may be alone in the world to sus- tain the dubious distinction of grossly mismanaging domestic gold stock the country has been holding for centuries in huge quantities, in multiple forms and in various places. When the popula- tion starved and died as a consequence of bad governance or as victims of nature’s wrath, Indian rulers allowed use of huge quantities of gold (a) to be wasted for gold-plating of roofs, flag- masts, and statues and (b) to be held in underground vaults, hidden and unac- counted, as unproductive ‘assets’. A positive change in approach to gold is perceivable from the second half of the current decade. Errol D’Souza, Director, IIM, Ahmedabad in his note recorded in the 3rd Annual Report (2017-18) of the India Gold Policy Centre had this to say about gold management in India: “As a macroeconomist, I uphold the view that integrating gold with India’s broader economic vision is the touch- stone for India’s gold policy and gold markets. The foremost is adopting ‘Make in India’ policy which should ad- dress unexplored gold stocks below the ground, optimal use of gold stocks in cir- culation, and mobilize gold holdings held by individuals in lockers and temples.” At this late hour, GoI needs to un- derstand the significance of the trea- sure in the form of gold stock with insti- tutions and individuals lying idle in the country. As a short-term plan, concrete measures should be initiated for put- ting a substantial portion of the domes- tic gold stock to productive use in the next five years. This will reduce the country’s gold import bill considerably. This can be achieved by: • Making a realistic assessment of gold stock remaining idle in the country; • Providing incentives to holders of gold stock to properly account for the stock with them; • Making gold deposits with banks re- munerative; • Introducing gold-backed financial instruments which are not depen- dent on imported gold (the tiny in- struments now available in the form of Gold ETFs, gold coins and Sovereign Gold Bonds are indirectly dependent on import and have not attracted significant investor inter- est); and • Quickly arrange for infrastructure, technology support and linkages for gold refining and certification facili- ties of international standard. RBI also needs to convert the entire gold stock with it to purer variety con- forming to internationally acceptable standard. If this happens, a new chap- ter in the country’s gold management will unfold. It is distressing to remember the 1991 ‘gold pledge’ episode to save the country from a payment de- fault when the forex reserves of the country had touched its nadir. Think of the agony of a central bank governor be- ing forced to ‘ship’ a small portion of gold in the central bank vault for pledg- ing to draw a small amount of dollars. Even though the gold lying with Bank of England has long been freed of pledge, it was not considered necessary to physi- cally ship the bullion back to India. It should have been for valid reasons that options like selling a portion of gold stock or borrowing dollars against ‘stock’ of gold would have been dropped. Let us forget all that. But, let us re- member, if the stock of gold was of inter- nationally acceptable standard, things would have been different. (c) Long coastal areas India’s long coastal areas remain underexploited. More mini-ports, fishing harbors, tourism development, use of sea-belt for transportation of people and goods are all areas needing attention. (d) Forests Forest mapping, planned re-foresta- tion, development of medicinal plant gardens in and around existing forests and commercial exploitation of forest produce without destroying environ- ment need to be prioritized. (e) Workforce Workforce in India is in disarray for vari- ous historic reasons. Privatization of public services and outsourcing of work by organizations, reducing the number of regular employees have affected job se- curity in the short term and social secu- rity in the long term. Remuneration for every day’s work should factor in the con- cept of fair wage comprising living wage and post-job survival costs. Some more issues which need prioritization There is something glaringly missing in management of resources and finance by GoI and that is planning. This is affect- ing smooth implementation of schemes and in some situations, effective func- tioning of institutions. Illustratively: HR issues in financial sector and Indian financial sector service The RBI can be a case to understand how interlinked HR issues are with the func- tional efficiency of public sector organiza- tions. Presently, the RBI is merging some departments concerned with supervision and regulation of different categories of institutions in the financial sector and is in the process of inducting expertise by making direct recruitments at higher lev- els. The dilution of expertise in depart- ments other than the monetary policy and statistics departments has a historic background. Till the early 1970s, the RBI had specialized departments for func- tions needing specialization. In 1972, combined seniority was introduced for some of the large departments and inter- mobility reduced the chances for develop- ment of expertise by remaining in the same work areas. The present effort is to induct experts from outside to compen- sate for this. A better option would be to have an All India Financial Sector Ser- vice similar to Indian Civil Services or Tata Administrative Service with inter- mobility among finance ministries (cen- tral and states), statutory bodies like RBI, NABARD and IRDA, as also banks and financial institutions in public and private sectors. Indian Pension System With the introduction of NPS effective January 1, 2004, all is not well on the Indian pension front. Review for an overhaul is overdue. Cost of post-retire- ment life needs to be factored in, in the wage structure of employees in govern- ment, PSUs and in private sector. Agricultural Income Tax A consensus has to be reached to tax agricultural income above a reasonably high threshold level. Kisan Samman Doling out the paltry amount of 17 or 18 per day to farmers below the poverty line is an insult to the Indian farming commu- nity. What is needed is to plug the leak- ages in pricing of farm produce between the farm gate and the consumer. Once a reasonable farm gate price for the pro- duce is assured, the present generation of workers know how to extract their share as wages. This can be achieved by promot- ing cooperatives for production, process- ing and marketing. Funding government expenditure GoI, of late, has been dipping too deep into the pockets of PSUs and GoI-owned bodies like RBI to meet shortfalls in revenue. This approach will definitely get sympathy from taxpayers and corporates. Taxpayers’ burden will be less to the extent GoI mobilizes re- sources from elsewhere and corporates can delay or deny repayments, if GoI makes good the losses suffered by their creditors. But these are temporary re- liefs and the country cannot delay map- ping of domestic resources and ensuring distributive justice beyond a point. Works in progress on the economic front I think, we should listen first to experts’ views on what they think are the imme- diate possible measures to put the Indian economy on a high growth trajec- tory. A beginner’s guide, which gives il- lustrative notes on works in progress on the economic front, is available in book form authored by experts who were and are associated with policy formulation/ implementation in their work areas. I am referring to the book, What The Economy Needs Now (April 2019), ed- ited by Abhijit Banerjee, Gita Gopinath, Raghuram Rajan and Mihir Sharma, which lists out the issues that confront the economy today and which need immediate attention. These in- clude rising unemployment, banking crisis, falling GDP, farmers’ unrest, etc. It also discusses solutions to the vexing problems such as labor reforms, healthcare, education and environment. It is expected the second term of Modi government would start from where they left and make sure they work to- wards reaching those goals in the true spirit of what the Prime Minister said in his first interaction with NDA’s newly elected MPs: ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas and Sabka Vishwas’. Let us hope inclusive growth becomes a re- ality now that would help realize the dream called, new India, where no one is illiterate, where everyone is skilled, en- gaged in gainful employment, where ev- eryone contributes to the development and also benefits as the country progresses. And that would surely pave the way for making India one of the most progressive and prosperous econo- mies in the world. ****. ****. ****