Friday, December 4, 2009
In light of disasters
While reading reports on Bhopal tragedy on its 25th anniversary - the world's worst ever industrial disaster which took the lives of nearly 20,000 people and left an approximate no of 5 lakhs people suffering - i felt very disturbed and had an urge to do something. I searched options, narrowed down to some suggestions, but the very next day, I lost interest in the whole tragedy and carried on with my own personnel life. I feel I am no different from any news reporter who eventually loss interest in any serious matter after a short while and start digging for other interesting exclusives. I guess almost everyone around are with similar ideas and that maybe one of the reason even after 25 years of the tragedy, the affected people still suffering, deprived of enough compensation, depending on the same polluted ground water ( as per reports there is no pipe water supply in these areas) and living in the midst of pollutants which are still not removed. Can we as fellow human beings, do something to reduce their pain? There will be many NGOs working to sort out their problems and give solutions but can we add on something? Maybe someone from another part of the world might have experimented something in a similar situation and reaped success. If he speaks up, someone from somewhere else might be ready to take up the challenge. These 'if', 'maybe', 'might be' are all probabilities but still I feel that there is a possibiliy in these probabilities. I dont have solutions, but if you have, why not speak up?
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Watching the city without glasses....
My pen is suffering a lot to pen down something. It got exhausted... before, i approached it only when i was tired, and when in need of some imagination, some dreams and it was happy to help me relax. And now, since relieved from the tight work schedule, it too finds difficult to extract words from imagination... and it underlines the fact that only experiences can result in strong words. I thought of this mental exertion again when heard the 'oru chembaneer pooviruthu njanomale' song from the ground floor.. some happy guys enjoying their off from work down the floor... I say them happy because only in that state we could enjoy the songs and poetry and still remain logical. And only those dreamers can bring vitality into their lives.
The beautiful song stirred an emotional escape from my boring, lonely existence here in bangalore. With a higher education plan in mind I landed in this multicultural city few months back. Within days, I realized that me too was confused a lot like the others around. I had a lot of plans and realizing them all at the same time was quite impossible and I started shifting my focus from one to another quite frequently. It took time for me to get accustomed to the varieties and variances around and painfully realized how people act themselves out. I owe this city a lot. Every time it brings the memory of broken friendships, first career experience, vision of free and happy people roaming around, and while leaving everyone fondly giving a share in their memory space for this great city. I came to this then beautiful city around 8 years back and was fascinated by the disciplined traffic, cool weather, orchards of banyan trees, well dressed professionals and was surprised by my teacher wearing lipstick while coming for exam inspection and yes ofcourse- I flunked the test! Years later, when I came again, the banyan trees were cleared away in order to make room for we foreigners, pavements turned dirty and dusty from year's excreta, vehicles rammed the roads and even the walkways, multilingual film posters covering the entire banglore city walls ( thanks to BBMP for coming up with the novel idea of mural paintings on public walls and was a little surprised on how the artists managed to do them on the busy flyovers on the majestic-malleswaram road), parties filling up nights, everyone too busy with their own chores and I got an instant reluctance to the city and fled from here under the pretext of a transfer.
Back again to fill the blanks, I got the feeling that the city is changing shape in every instant, and we in the midst of unrealities. Just like the way Syamaprasd portrays in 'RITU' there are many who blames that ' Banglore is an entirely new world and so reaping its benefits' and little realize the fact that they themselves turned it that way. I am getting surprised at how drastically people changes, becoming part of late night parties and pub culture in an attempt to be renowned as 'established', wondering how they were not able to get such 'nice' friends ever before, money being the underlying factor for all friend circles, splitting families in order to make space for themselves, and pathetically falling into a whole life drama - becoming too proud to smile and cry in the simplicities of life.
I recollect my communication class, where our wonderful teacher told the story of a poor man who bought some electronic gadget. While unwrapping it, he saw it was marked 'hi-fi' and even lost his appetite at the thought of owning a 'hi-fi' product. The same happens to many here, thinking part of 'hi-fi society' they fail to recheck its 'high fidelity' or even forget that hi-fi meant hi-fidelity!
The inevitable evil of this mixing up is that everything will be right here. The not so good or even wrong things in one's context is the supreme right in another one's case. So questioning wont help and only thing we could do is to clear out ourselves if something doesn't suit you. I still remember a sickening incident when in the midnight we got terrified by the earsplitting cry of a woman, and another woman trying to calm and soothen her out, bolting her up in their room, bottles breaking, guys scolding, talks of infection, blood and stuff like that, all from our neighbourhood, which went on for nearly two hours!!! Luckily, that house owner managed to push those people out the very next day and it got forgotten as a 'simple' incident of over drinking. And if you get the feeling that it may be some very local areas, its one of the best locations in the real estate business where 3BHKs are having dream price of nearly 1.75 crores!!!
I could still perceive the good, friendly warmth of the city but also got the feeling that this 'home for all' city has reached its maximum capacity and is struggling hard to accommodate all those who flowing in with a bright future in mind.
The beautiful song stirred an emotional escape from my boring, lonely existence here in bangalore. With a higher education plan in mind I landed in this multicultural city few months back. Within days, I realized that me too was confused a lot like the others around. I had a lot of plans and realizing them all at the same time was quite impossible and I started shifting my focus from one to another quite frequently. It took time for me to get accustomed to the varieties and variances around and painfully realized how people act themselves out. I owe this city a lot. Every time it brings the memory of broken friendships, first career experience, vision of free and happy people roaming around, and while leaving everyone fondly giving a share in their memory space for this great city. I came to this then beautiful city around 8 years back and was fascinated by the disciplined traffic, cool weather, orchards of banyan trees, well dressed professionals and was surprised by my teacher wearing lipstick while coming for exam inspection and yes ofcourse- I flunked the test! Years later, when I came again, the banyan trees were cleared away in order to make room for we foreigners, pavements turned dirty and dusty from year's excreta, vehicles rammed the roads and even the walkways, multilingual film posters covering the entire banglore city walls ( thanks to BBMP for coming up with the novel idea of mural paintings on public walls and was a little surprised on how the artists managed to do them on the busy flyovers on the majestic-malleswaram road), parties filling up nights, everyone too busy with their own chores and I got an instant reluctance to the city and fled from here under the pretext of a transfer.
Back again to fill the blanks, I got the feeling that the city is changing shape in every instant, and we in the midst of unrealities. Just like the way Syamaprasd portrays in 'RITU' there are many who blames that ' Banglore is an entirely new world and so reaping its benefits' and little realize the fact that they themselves turned it that way. I am getting surprised at how drastically people changes, becoming part of late night parties and pub culture in an attempt to be renowned as 'established', wondering how they were not able to get such 'nice' friends ever before, money being the underlying factor for all friend circles, splitting families in order to make space for themselves, and pathetically falling into a whole life drama - becoming too proud to smile and cry in the simplicities of life.
I recollect my communication class, where our wonderful teacher told the story of a poor man who bought some electronic gadget. While unwrapping it, he saw it was marked 'hi-fi' and even lost his appetite at the thought of owning a 'hi-fi' product. The same happens to many here, thinking part of 'hi-fi society' they fail to recheck its 'high fidelity' or even forget that hi-fi meant hi-fidelity!
The inevitable evil of this mixing up is that everything will be right here. The not so good or even wrong things in one's context is the supreme right in another one's case. So questioning wont help and only thing we could do is to clear out ourselves if something doesn't suit you. I still remember a sickening incident when in the midnight we got terrified by the earsplitting cry of a woman, and another woman trying to calm and soothen her out, bolting her up in their room, bottles breaking, guys scolding, talks of infection, blood and stuff like that, all from our neighbourhood, which went on for nearly two hours!!! Luckily, that house owner managed to push those people out the very next day and it got forgotten as a 'simple' incident of over drinking. And if you get the feeling that it may be some very local areas, its one of the best locations in the real estate business where 3BHKs are having dream price of nearly 1.75 crores!!!
I could still perceive the good, friendly warmth of the city but also got the feeling that this 'home for all' city has reached its maximum capacity and is struggling hard to accommodate all those who flowing in with a bright future in mind.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Recession – the hard reality to live upon
A year back, the industry was blooming like anything unaware of the sleeping giant. Market was up and individuals living happy and luxurious lives. With the reminisce of a recession just seven years back, no one was expecting or prepared for yet another turmoil in near future. And adding to the induced price hikes in the market, banks started lending more and more money with very little guaranty and many times at floating interests. Mortgaging appeared like an easy options for banks and they go on to lend as much as personnel loans just looking at the jobs in hand alone. With a chunk of money flowing into individuals’ hand, they never bothered to indulge in safe investments. Instead they believed in speculative market and borrowed short term, lump amounts on very high interest rates and deposited in the market. As the land prices started shooting up, instead of speculating the sudden price hike, a majority population started investing in real estate, and finance companies were making their profit of the life time. Unnoticed, a lot of black money was also under transaction which added to reducing the money value. The chain spending went on till the liquid cash with the financing agencies reduced to bare minimum.
With more money in market, value of money gradually decreased, and inflation started griping the pace. As the inflation rate was expected to touch 13.2%, government undertook various measures to bring it under control.
Inflation
If we consider the food inflation, it will be unnoticed by the upper class people since they can easily afford double, triple prices on edible goods. On the other hand, the increased food price severely affects the daily waged, low earning people. My first memory with inflation was sometimes back in my school days, when the onion price shoot up so high that it disappeared almost completely from our household for sometime. It was an example for demand driven/reduced product volume inflation. If the price of a single commodity shoots up we can easily adapt to live without that item. Even then the supply chain is somewhat balanced since the low volume production was still giving same income to the producers owing to price hikes. So it can be easily seen that food inflation is reaching up to each and every individual, sometimes noticed and sometimes unnoticed.
And some of the best ways government could adopt to help those below poverty line is to provide essential commodities at reduced prices. And this can also be done up to some extent only.
If we take inflation as a general term, it is not only food inflation, but, the price hike present in all sectors - food, oil, wages, land, essential commodities etc. And it takes up the cyclic steps. As food price shoots up, food import will become a major burden for countries those import food and food products. On the other hand, it will earn more revenue to countries those export food items. On the contrary, the food importing countries may be the major oil exporters and they will compensate for food import losses on oil export profits. Also there will be a lot of dependent business models in these countries like construction, infrastructure development, tourism etc. With an idea of earning some increased profits, some industries gradually induced price hikes, and so their related industries also. As a result, the prices went beyond the base values manifolds. As the wages was also shooting up, people neglected the hikes and thereby promoting them. A recent survey noted out that the average income with the middle class people in India was pretty high compared with many other developing countries. This was not prevalent in India alone, but observed in many others, and the average expenditure went above safe limits also. Share market and short term investments were hitting gold for a long time. Companies listed higher margins counting the total assets rather than liquid money in hand and go on lending till the liquid cash necessary for daily business reduced to nothing so that they were forced file bankruptcy even though they could saved the situation with proper planning.
With more money in market, value of money gradually decreased, and inflation started griping the pace. As the inflation rate was expected to touch 13.2%, government undertook various measures to bring it under control.
Inflation
If we consider the food inflation, it will be unnoticed by the upper class people since they can easily afford double, triple prices on edible goods. On the other hand, the increased food price severely affects the daily waged, low earning people. My first memory with inflation was sometimes back in my school days, when the onion price shoot up so high that it disappeared almost completely from our household for sometime. It was an example for demand driven/reduced product volume inflation. If the price of a single commodity shoots up we can easily adapt to live without that item. Even then the supply chain is somewhat balanced since the low volume production was still giving same income to the producers owing to price hikes. So it can be easily seen that food inflation is reaching up to each and every individual, sometimes noticed and sometimes unnoticed.
And some of the best ways government could adopt to help those below poverty line is to provide essential commodities at reduced prices. And this can also be done up to some extent only.
If we take inflation as a general term, it is not only food inflation, but, the price hike present in all sectors - food, oil, wages, land, essential commodities etc. And it takes up the cyclic steps. As food price shoots up, food import will become a major burden for countries those import food and food products. On the other hand, it will earn more revenue to countries those export food items. On the contrary, the food importing countries may be the major oil exporters and they will compensate for food import losses on oil export profits. Also there will be a lot of dependent business models in these countries like construction, infrastructure development, tourism etc. With an idea of earning some increased profits, some industries gradually induced price hikes, and so their related industries also. As a result, the prices went beyond the base values manifolds. As the wages was also shooting up, people neglected the hikes and thereby promoting them. A recent survey noted out that the average income with the middle class people in India was pretty high compared with many other developing countries. This was not prevalent in India alone, but observed in many others, and the average expenditure went above safe limits also. Share market and short term investments were hitting gold for a long time. Companies listed higher margins counting the total assets rather than liquid money in hand and go on lending till the liquid cash necessary for daily business reduced to nothing so that they were forced file bankruptcy even though they could saved the situation with proper planning.
Impacts of black money
Tax that we pay can be broadly classified into direct and indirect taxes. Indirect taxes like VAT are introduced to limit/reduce consumption within acceptable limits. For example by imposing taxes on health injurious products, it enables to discourage their consumption too. These indirect taxes have nothing to do with the consumers’ earnings/assets. All are liable to pay the indirect taxes on the goods and services that they use. Where as direct taxes are imposed to introduce accountability to one’s earnings. Also the money gathered from tax collection can be used for various social developments like education, security, health programs etc. This in turn is inevitable for the smooth functioning of the government.
From the narrow one side view of an employee or any earning man, giving taxes looks like just taking a huge amount from his earnings unnecessarily rather than the amount required for the social security and benefits he enjoys. As one’s earnings shoots up, the direct taxes he supposed to file also increases proportionally. Here he starts thinking of forging some of his assets so that he will have to pay less tax to the government. As the people with this same mentality are not few in number, taxes misdirected will grow exponentially.
All those unreported and thereby untaxed earnings contribute to the black money. As we all know, there are hawala channels through which large chunks of money been transferred across nations, hand carried, to hide from governments’ notice. There has been reports of huge deposits in many banks and been withdrawn the same amount soon after. As banks fail to trace the source of such large wealth, they will soon enter markets washed clean or transferred into safe deposits like jewelry, real estate, stock markets etc.
Even when I was a small child, I used to hear that there are ‘so many’ jewelry shops in Koduvally, a rather small market in Calicut district. On a trip back home, as part of our games we counted the jewelry shops in Koduvally and to my surprise it came around 48. I used to wonder why the need for that much shops there or will it bring business to jewelers considering the competition. Later on, as hawala channels revealed there were strong links to this small town which was playing a major role in handling the black money.
Also a lot of safe havens are present across the world where anyone can happily deposit their black money. According to Swiss banking report, the total deposits by Indians in Swiss banks is around $1.4 trillion and tops the list. Contributors of this black money are our politicians, businessmen, criminals etc. Black money in India is around 20% of the GDP. So by shutting out the possible tax revenue of the government, this in short is developing a parallel/illegal economy, which hinders the economic growth of the country.
From a rather interesting analysis report, it has been seen that this parallel economy turned as a partial savior to India in the real estate sector, during recession. I.e. majority of the black money is flowing into the real estate, where, mostly half of the total investments will be declared by the consumers while taking full loan from banks. So even when banks started crumpling down in other countries owing to improbable mortgage options, customers in India hadn’t restrained from repaying the loans in order to cover up their tax frauds. This in turn helped the banks in their testing time.
This black money is not having the single impact of cutting out a major portion of the government’s possible revenue. Instead recently it’s been noted that this amount is been wired into individuals for terror strikes in India. So they have been used for buying arms and ammunition for anti social groups and thereby posing a serious security threat to the country. So this will have to be treated with required intensity so as not to hamper the growth of our mother India.
From the narrow one side view of an employee or any earning man, giving taxes looks like just taking a huge amount from his earnings unnecessarily rather than the amount required for the social security and benefits he enjoys. As one’s earnings shoots up, the direct taxes he supposed to file also increases proportionally. Here he starts thinking of forging some of his assets so that he will have to pay less tax to the government. As the people with this same mentality are not few in number, taxes misdirected will grow exponentially.
All those unreported and thereby untaxed earnings contribute to the black money. As we all know, there are hawala channels through which large chunks of money been transferred across nations, hand carried, to hide from governments’ notice. There has been reports of huge deposits in many banks and been withdrawn the same amount soon after. As banks fail to trace the source of such large wealth, they will soon enter markets washed clean or transferred into safe deposits like jewelry, real estate, stock markets etc.
Even when I was a small child, I used to hear that there are ‘so many’ jewelry shops in Koduvally, a rather small market in Calicut district. On a trip back home, as part of our games we counted the jewelry shops in Koduvally and to my surprise it came around 48. I used to wonder why the need for that much shops there or will it bring business to jewelers considering the competition. Later on, as hawala channels revealed there were strong links to this small town which was playing a major role in handling the black money.
Also a lot of safe havens are present across the world where anyone can happily deposit their black money. According to Swiss banking report, the total deposits by Indians in Swiss banks is around $1.4 trillion and tops the list. Contributors of this black money are our politicians, businessmen, criminals etc. Black money in India is around 20% of the GDP. So by shutting out the possible tax revenue of the government, this in short is developing a parallel/illegal economy, which hinders the economic growth of the country.
From a rather interesting analysis report, it has been seen that this parallel economy turned as a partial savior to India in the real estate sector, during recession. I.e. majority of the black money is flowing into the real estate, where, mostly half of the total investments will be declared by the consumers while taking full loan from banks. So even when banks started crumpling down in other countries owing to improbable mortgage options, customers in India hadn’t restrained from repaying the loans in order to cover up their tax frauds. This in turn helped the banks in their testing time.
This black money is not having the single impact of cutting out a major portion of the government’s possible revenue. Instead recently it’s been noted that this amount is been wired into individuals for terror strikes in India. So they have been used for buying arms and ammunition for anti social groups and thereby posing a serious security threat to the country. So this will have to be treated with required intensity so as not to hamper the growth of our mother India.
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