Sometimes i wonder why people still believe in ancient false belief systems like religion and astrology. One very apparent reason is the Uncertainty and difficulties we face in our daily lives. A businessman faces a lot of uncertain risk factors-entry of a strong competitor, change in government policy or regulation which adversely impacts his business. These risk factors are unpredictable and beyond one's control. In such situation, "praying" to a nonexistent entity provides some psychological cushion and comfort. The notion that one is under the protection and care of an omnipotent and omniscient god is very comforting in the times of uncertainties. Similarly a student studying for a tough course or preparing for a very tough entrance exam faces uncertainties like variations in examination content. Astrologers understand this fact very well that people flock to religion and astrology when faced with difficulties and uncertainties . A person who has gone through bad times ( eg poor performance in college or school ) is soothed by a clever astrologer who declares that the person was facing poor luck due to certain alignment of planets, but would soon see better days as the alignment changes.

( it has been my observation that businessmen tend to be more religious than salaried people. This can be simply because businessmen face a lot more uncertain risk factors in their daily lives )

How religion relies upon the brainwashing of young minds for its survival .

Some supporters of religion say that Religious beliefs are not imposed or forced on society; if it were so, then how come there are non-religious/ atheist people in society ?

The truth is , religion is propagated from generation to generation through the indoctrination of young minds. The religious indoctrination of small children by their religious parents is the worst form of imposition of religious beliefs on society. Children in the age group of 5 to 10 years do not have the mental capabilities to distinguish between the real and the imaginary. They see cartoon programmes on TV and believe in the existence of cartoon characters like Superman, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Similarly, their parents tell them mythological and religious tales , and they start believing in the existence of mythological characters as well. As they grow up, their parents and the society discourage their belief in Superman but encourage and reward their belief in Hanuman and Shiva. Parents and society convey the message to young minds that belief in flying monkey ( Hanuman ) or virgin mother ( virgin mary ) is virtuous and is held in high regard by society , but belief in superman or Cinderella is looked upon as childish and immature. Parents reward children's religious beliefs through affection and approval, and discourage any questioning of religious beliefs through scolding and expressing disapproval.

By the time the kids reach teenage years, religious ideas are already embedded permanently in their minds. By this time, youngsters have the capablity to distinguish between real and imnaginary; they do not believe any more in the existence of Superman , but their belief in Hanuman is intact . Why ? Simply because the belief in Hanuman was encouraged by society , while belief in Superman was discouraged and mocked as being childish.

If , children were not brainwashed about religious beliefs when they were small, but instead told about religion only when they had attained a degree of mental maturity ( say, teenage years ) , they would refuse to believe in religion.

If only parents stop the religious brainwashing of their small children and instead wait for adolescence to tell them about their religious beliefs, religion would die a natural death. Many hindu adults would find the story of a virgin mother as being absurd and weird , but would regard a story of a flying monkey as being worthy of respect. Thats because of the brainwashing when they were children.

Not only children, adults too are brainwashed with religious garbage. Nearby my house is a large park . People had bought homes facing the park , desiring to enjoy the greenery and open air of the park. Instead, a large hindu temple was built there by illegally grabbing the public land of the park. Not only religious people were audacious enough to grab public land illegally, they also play loud devotional music in the temple , thereby ensuring that all people who live near the temple are brainwashed . The people who had bought homes near the temple had done so to enjoy the green environment , but instead got religious garbage being played at loud volumes almost daily . Isn't this is the worst form of brainwashing ?

What do you call a job which pays you a handsome salary , but which makes you stay at places with long power cuts ( anywhere from 4-12 hours daily ), and the absence of proper basic infrastructure and market ? Money ( currency notes ) by themselves are useless , until they can be exchanged for attractive consumer goods . In a place with 8-hour long power cuts , consumer goods, even if available , are useless. Whats more, the poor living conditions, and general negative atmosphere ( lack of basic development or hope for the future of small towns in UP can be extremely depressing.) The absence of regular power supply would mean I would be cut off from the internet, including news ( would english newspapers be available in Sitapur ? )

Sounds like a perfect recipe for negative thoughts and depression.

The job of a bank officer in a public sector bank in UP can either be seen as a Punishment if the person is pessimistic , or as a Sacrifice if the person is of a optimistic and positive attitude.
Its always better to have a postitive attitude in life, so i guess I should look at the prospective job as a sacrifice. If i were a married man, I would see my job as a sacrifice for my family's well-being. But given the fact that as a non-believer , I would never get to marry, I wonder for whom I would be sacrificing if i join this job ?

Though India is growing at 8 % annually, only places like Delhi ( new roads, buildings, Metro rail, flyovers, malls, Mc Donalds, supermarkets) , Mumbai and Bangalore get to feel the effect of 8 % growth at ground level. The term " emerging economy " sounds relevant only if you live in a place with reliable power supply, new metro trains, flyovers and new shiny buildings with glass facades.

The term "emerging economy" is meaningless for someone wiping the sweat from his forehead amid 8-hour long powercuts. Many such people can be found in Sitapur and Faizabad.

Uttar Pradesh is one of the most hopeless of all indian states , in terms of its future prospects . Why ? Simply because the absence of political interest and will-power to bring about development and attract investors. With the electoral fortunes of political parties being decided by ethnic and caste considerations rather than developmental issues like Bijli, Sadak, Paani, its little wonder that large areas of the state lack even the basic amenities and infrastructure.

Needless to say, other states have had much better record in development .This can be evident from economic data of states- UP lags behind in almost all indicators of socio-economic development. Having seen the remarkable developmental levels in Mysore ( which is basically just a small town ) , I have confirmed the difference visually too.

I return to my original point - is the job of a bank officer in UP worth trying for , given the fact that posting in a small town is almost certain ? What are the alternatives ? Sometimes i feel i would be happier doing the unstable clerical job of medical transcriptionist in Hyderabad or Bangalore than the higly paid permanent job of Bank officer in Sitapur.

( My parents say they would be able to arrange for a decent place of posting for me ,through " sources "- But i wonder if that is purely wishful thinking ,given the fact that my father has worked in small towns/villages for the greater part of his career )

Meera Nanda in her book " The God Market " says that religiosity is increasing among India's youth. Excerpts from one of her articles :
""According to the 2007 State of the Nation survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies among Indians, the level of religiosity has gone up considerably in the past five years. A mere five per cent of respondents said that their religious belief had declined, while 30 per cent said they had become more religious. The same poll found that education and exposure to modern urban life seem to make Indians more, not less, religious: "Urban educated Indians are more religious than their rural and illiterate counterparts [...] religiosity has increased more in small towns and cities than in villages ""
""Another measurable indicator of rising religiosity is the tremendous rise in pilgrimages or religious tourism. According to a recent study by the National Council for Applied Economic Research, religious trips account for more than 50 per cent of all package tours, much higher than leisure tour packages at 28 per cent.""

But in my humble opinion, Religiosity is actually decreasing among today's youth. The old religious traditions are fading, the old norms of society based upon religion are giving way to more modern norms. For example, it has been my observation that inter-caste marriages are becoming more common ( though still a tiny minority ) , reflecting the fading importance of religious diktats among the youth. Moreover, people are becoming more flexible with their diets, shedding the old hindu taboos of compulsory vegetarianism. Many orthodox hindus in north india include eggs in their diet now, if not meat.

True, as revealed by the survey quoted by Meera Nanda, religious tours are increasing in popularity. But the rise in their popularity can also be explained by the general increase in prosperity and income levels.

It has been my observation that in Indian society, religion is something of a " fashion", with people performing religious rituals to conform to the social trend. Such tendencies, as per my observation, tend to be more pronounced among females, who , in general, are under more social pressure to conform to the norms of society, including religious norms.

it is my belief and hope, that with increasing economic growth and hence prosperity and better educational facilities, and more and better vocational opportunities, the mindset of Indians would become more flexible , open to new ideas. Better education and better jobs would make people more broad-minded and make them realise that there's much more in this world than gods and rituals. Whats more, globalization , both economic and cultural , would make the youth aware of global developments, and make them realize that their religious customs are by no means universal , and of course, make them aware of the fact that religion is coming under severe crticism in the west.

Economic growth is bringing better job opportunities , and many of these job opportunities are in a place far away from a person's hometown. For example, a person from UP going to Bangalore for a plum job in IT sector. ( Earlier, most people preferred to work in or near their home state/town). This would expose the youth to a new culture, and since the gods and rituals are quite different in Bangalore than in UP, this would make the person aware of the fact that his religiuos customs are not universal, and he is likely to realise that religious customs are merely arbitrary creations of human imagination, hence they differ from region to region. The person would now no longer attach a great importance to his religious customs, knowing that they are arbitrary.

In any case, the fast pace of life would leave little time for people to devote to religious customs and rituals. Whats more, since more and more women are taking up jobs, they would have little time for relgious worship and rituals , compared to their mothers and grandmothers. Also, many of the old superstitions are highly absurd and often impractical to follow : for example, its a taboo to get a haircut on thursdays, and buy iron/steel products on saturdays-- such absurd, impractical taboos would be rejected by well-educated youth.

Greater economic prosperity would make people quite geographically mobile , and as a result, people of different cultures and religions would meet more often. This would dilute the importance of religious customs in the people's minds, since they would realise that the other person performs different religious customs and rituals, yet is doing quite well. Ultimately, this would reduce the importance of religious customs in everyone's mind.

Achievement or Punishment ?

While evaluating the various career options available to me, I have examined the option of applying for the post of Probationary Officer in Nationalised banks. Selection is based on performance in a written test followed by an interview. While the only formal requirement is a graduation degree, I have also considered pursuing a diploma in banking from Indian Institute of Banking and Finance , to gain advantage for selection in the interview ( diploma-holders are given preference for recruitment by certain nationalised banks ). One can attempt the Bank PO selection exam upto the age of 30 years.

Sounds like a good plan. A systematic method of recruitment, no major investment required, and the possibility of gaining an upper hand in the interview because of my diploma qualification in banking . And of course , the peace of mind that comes with a lifelong permanent sarkari naukri with the benefit of perks like LTC, medical benefits etc.

But wait a minute : Where will i get posted ? No, not in the swanky neighbourhoods of South Delhi or amidst the splendour and glamour of Gurgaon or Bangalore. But , in all likelihood, I would have to render my services to the nation , posted in a dusty, sleepy town in Uttar Pradesh. Common, small towns have their own charms : Simple, rustic people, lush green fieds, open skies, relatively pollution and traffic free environments. Of course, well, regular power supply would be too much to ask for. I would get rewarded for my hard work with power cuts ranging anywhere from 4 hours to 10 hours in duration, possibily even more in peak summer season. And did you mention internet or Facebook ? Nah, these are luxury items for the humble servants of the nation , who relenquish the comforts of modern life for the benefit of the aam aadmi of rural and small town india.

My life would be enriched by the constant pleasant sounds made by the generator sets , their pleasant and rejuvenating exhaust fumes. ( That is, if there are generator sets where i live ) It would be a great privelege for me to taste the sweet sweat of my body , and to have the enjoyable experience of having my sweat drip from my arms , drop by drop. I might even be inspired to write a book " Tales of my experience with heavy-duty perspiration".

Common, not all things in life require electric power to work. You can read a newspaper , provided you have an "emergency lamp ". Wait a second, what did you say, newspaper ? haha.. do you really think english newspapers are published from Gorakhpur or Sitapur ?

Now wait a minute, don't other bank officers and clerks stay pretty much in the same environments and continue doing their job without complaining too much. After all, a bank officer gets a handsome salary. Is that not compenstion enough for the tough living conditions ? But then, there's a difference between me and other officers : The other officers have families back in their hometowns, and they have to " sacrifice " worldly comforts for their wives' and kids' welfare. ( thats what my father did all his life ). But whom would i "sacrifice" for ? Being a non-believer, I would never get to experience the bliss of married life . Hence , I would have no family to sacrifice for. My stay at Sitapur would seem futile : After all, what would i do with INR 25000 in a place without regular power, shopping malls, or good restaurants ? ( Money-currency notes have no intrinsic value, they are just pieces of paper. They have value only when they can be exchanged for attractive consumer goods or services )

I would wonder whether my job selection was an achievement or a punishment .

I have been very depressed since the past 2 days. At this hour, the depression seems to have subsided. I am taking this opportunity to write about the thoughts occuring in my mind since the announcements of the "results"
I have worked very hard for the past 7 years of my life. I have worked with good , if not exceptional , dedication and with ambition and planning. But I have got nothing in return, other than frustation, depression and mental illness. These 7 miserable years have destroyed my youth, my career , my life beyond repair. For the first 3 years, my hard work went waste because of B12 deficiency and the resultant memory and cognitive decline. Thereafter, it was mental illness which made my life hell and ruined any attempts to revive my career. And now this case of fraud has destroyed the effort i had put in since last year.
All these years of putting in hard work , but getting only frustation as result, have completely sapped me of morale. I wonder if i would ever be able to gather the motivation and dedication to re-start my career. Doing goal-oriented work requires motivation and dedication, where will i find them now ?
The most frustating thought is " Wish I hadn't worked hard, then i would have not been so depressed on getting a poor ( or no ) result ...... Its better to do nothing , and expect to get nothing , than working hard but getting no result "


one part of my mind says " manu, do not give up , try something new. work hard for a new goal and you will surely succeed " , while the other part of my mind says " .. haha, even after 7 years of continous failure, you still have dreams of success... what a fool you are "

How to make friends in india?

The past 7 years of my life have been dominated by two central themes- the first phase , from 2003 to 2006 being dominated by B12 deficiency and its disastrous effects on my memory, mood and of course, academics and career. Then the second phase , from 2006 onwards dominated by mental illness - something which has destroyed whatever i had in life.
Both these central themes have one thing in common- they are taboos in this country. B12 deficiency is extremely common in india, yet few know about it. There is little awareness ,either amongst the general public or the doctors, despite its alarming prevalence. Most probably, the absurd lack of awareness of such a common disease is due to the fact that this condition is linked to vegetarianism. In a country where many communities consider eating meat a ghastly sin, awareness about any medical condition related to this religious practice would be almost nil.

Due to cognitive and memory decline , my performance in academics during the most crucial phase of my career, declined greatly, and ultimately i fell prey to the stress and humiliation of watching one's career destroyed before my very eyes . I succumbed to full-blown mental illness- depression, anxiety, OCD . This destroyed attempts to revive my career, and has left me with no choice other than joining a substandard distance education course, which , has proved to be a simple case of fraud.

I have joined social networking sites like Facebook and DailyStrength, and i have made a great number of friends there with history of mental illness, but my greatest complain has that been that hardly any of those friends are from my own country, India. Understandable , since there is almost nil awareness of mental illness in india, so there its extremely difficult to find a mentally ill person , or someone who knows a mentally ill person. I have a strong suspicion that most mentally ill people in india simply commit suicide, as the society considers their problems to be symptoms of cowardice and weakness , instead of a severe illness. Unable to bear the double burden of severe suffering and the humiliation and condemnation, most of them commit suicide, and the Indian police force would register a criminal case under IPC.( Attempting suicide is considered illegal in india )

When i had gone to my distance education psychology class, i had told my classmates that i had joined this course due to my background in mental illness. Most of them just responded with puzzled faces . It was clear that even they did not know what mental illness is. I had thought that atleast students who have come to study psychology , would know something about mental illness, but it was clear that even they wondered what on earth was mental illness .
But i have noticed something else- that when i tell my facebook friends about the reality of B12 deficiency , most of my foreign friends seem to read and respond, but indian friends do not. It seems that they are too offended by the reality that their religious customs can make people severely ill.

It seems that Indian society is extremely immature and backward even today, and continues to have taboos ,superstitions, prejudices and lack of awareness about very important and basic issues. And i have been a victim of two of these taboos one after another.....

A Primitive tendency of Indian society- Exceptionally high Conformity

I have always been amazed at the many primitive tendencies prevailing in the indian society. One very absurd primitive tendency is the exceptional level of conformity. In western societies, the word " conformity " usually means "following the trend" in such inconsequential areas like fashion, music and movie preference. But in North India, exceptionally high levels of conformity are seen even in areas of grave importance , like career selection.

When I was in Std. 12th, I was left amazed at the level of mindless conformity among my classmates on the issue of career selection. All my classmates ( science students ) wanted to become either an engineer or a doctor. As if nothing else exists in the universe. India might be requiring talent and manpower in basic sciences,journalism, and countless other fields but sorry, these are not in fashion. Every Tom, Dick , and Harry with no exception wanted to go for either of these two careers; individual tastes, capabilities and interests be damned. A few females talked of a career in fashion designing and some males thought of a career in defence forces, but thats it. I wondered why India is called the " land of diversity " when everyone wants to do the same thing !!

Whats more, I learn that most of the engineering students just want to enter one field : Computer software. Again , as if engineering skills are not required anywhere else in this country. This rat-race is regardless of the specialistion of the student. When asked why , such people say " there is lot of scope and people get " good pay packages " in IT " --- This , I must say, is an extreme example of mindless conformity - how conveniently they have have forgotten that india's software industry is basically an offshoring/outsourcing industry, and hence , is bound to have an uncertain future -- in contrast to other industries, which cater to domestic demand and hence are likely to be more stable in the future.

Back to my own story - very few students in my undergraduate chemistry class wanted to take up careers in the subject of their study, and most of those who chose to do so , did out of compulsion rather than choice. Most general graduates , who are career minded, say that they want to go for management careers. Again as if , the country only requires MBAs ,and again, failing to realise that the high pay packages of MBAs come at the cost of peace of mind- in a capitalist economy , there are bound to be recessionary phases, with layoffs and "workforce reduction" . Teaching and administrative jobs may not give the fat pay packages of management, but they do give the person peace of mind and stability.

Whats more, there is a regional aspect to this phenomenon of conformity in career selection - Most students from Bihar and adjoining areas want to enter the civil services and even boast of the " high number of Biharis in the IAS " -- I am amazed at this level of conformity and collectivism. As if a person's individual interests, capablities and talents are of no importance and all that matters is what others of his ethnic/social/economic background are doing. The socioeconomic status of the student is also important, with most belonging to middle and upper class families preferring engineering, management careers while those in the economically weaker section preferring IAS and administrative vocations.

....And I thought, careers should be decided on the basis of an individual's personality, interests , intelligence and talents . What a fool , I am.

6. Memory performance boosted while walking
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Psychologists usually think of attention as a limited resource. The more of it you use on one task, they say, the less you have left over for others. Supporting this, countless studies have shown that performance deteriorates under dual-task versus single-task conditions. But what if, rather than having one pool of attention to share around, we have multiple pools for fueling different types of activity. By this account, if two tasks are different enough from each other, there should be no performance decrement under dual-task conditions. That's exactly what Sabine Schaefer has shown in a new study that looks at memory performance whilst walking. In fact Schaefer's research goes further, showing that memory performance is actually superior whilst walking compared with sitting down.

Schaefer's team had 32 nine-year-olds and 32 adults (average age 25) complete the N-back working memory task in three conditions: walking on a treadmill at their own chosen speed; walking on a treadmill at a set speed chosen by the researchers; or sitting down. The N-back task requires that participants listen to a stream of numbers and indicate, in the easiest version, whenever the current number was the same as the number one back. For more difficult versions, it's a repeat of a number further back in the stream that must be spotted.

The headline finding was that the working memory performance of both age groups improved when walking at their chosen speed compared with when sitting or walking at a fixed speed set by the researchers. This was especially the case for more difficult versions of the working memory task, and was more pronounced among the children than the adults. So, this would appear to be clear case of mental performance actually being superior in a dual-task situation.

Why should the secondary task of walking aid, rather impair, mental performance? The researchers aren't sure of the mechanism, but they think the attentional pool tapped by a sensori-motor task like walking is likely separate from the attentional pool tapped by working memory. Moreover, physical activity increases arousal and activation, 'which then can be invested into the cognitive task,' they said.

What about the fact that memory performance wasn't improved when participants walked on the treadmill at a speed set by the researchers? The set walking speed was actually substantially slower than the participants' preferred speed so one possibility is that it wasn't rigorous enough to provide the increased arousal that could be beneficial to memory. Alternatively, perhaps the challenge of walking at a set speed is cognitively demanding, tapping the same attentional pool needed for the memory task.

Schaefer's team speculated that a useful application of their finding could be in relation to childhood ADHD. '...[H]yperactive children might also be able to profit from some type of consistent movement that does not require much attention, even though it is often argued that those children have more problems than healthy controls when they have to divide their attention between two concurrent tasks.'
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competition increases cheating while not improving performance.

Does greater competition improve performance or increase cheating?
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What happens when you recruit dozens of students to perform a maze-based computer task and then you ratchet up the competitive pressure? Does their performance improve or do they just cheat more?

Christiane Schwieren and Doris Weichselbaumer found out by having 33 men and 32 women at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona spend 30 minutes completing on-screen mazes. Crucially, half the students were paid according to how many mazes they completed whereas the half in the 'highly competitive' condition were only paid per maze if they were the top performer in their group of six students.

The students in the highly competitive condition narrowed their eyes, rolled up their sleeves, focused their minds and cheated. That's right, the students playing under the more competitive prize rules didn't complete any more mazes than students in the control group, they just cheated more.

To be more specific, the female students in the highly competitive condition cheated more. That is, although across both conditions there was no overall difference between men and women in the amount they cheated, only women responded to the competition intensity by cheating more. Schwieren and Weichselbaumer dug deeper into their results and actually this wasn't a gender issue. Competition increased cheating specifically among poorer performers and it just happened that the poorer performers tended to be female.

How did the researchers measure cheating? After a brief practice, the students were told to continue completing mazes on level 2 difficulty, but they could choose to break the rules by switching to an easier level. The game also gave the option of clicking a button to be guided through the maze solutions. Finally, the students could lie at the end on a score sheet about how many mazes they'd completed. Earlier the researchers had loaded a spy programme on the computers. This took a screen shot on each mouse click, thus revealing the students' true actions.

'It turns out that individuals who are less able to fulfill the assigned task do not only have a higher probability to cheat, they also cheat in more different ways,' the researchers said. 'It appears that poor performers either feel entitled to cheat in a system that does not give them any legitimate opportunities to succeed, or they engage in "face saving" activity to avoid embarrassment for their poor performance."

The links between bloggers' personalities and their use of words
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You can tell a person's personality from the words they use. Neurotics have a penchant for negative words; agreeable types for words pertaining to socialising; and so on. We know this from recordings of people's speech and from brief writing tasks. Now Tal Yarkoni has extended this line of research to the blogosphere by analysing the content of 694 blogs - containing an average of 115,000 words written over an average period of about two years - and matching this with the bloggers' (predominantly female; average age 36) answers to online personality questionnaires.

Some commentators have suggested that the internet allows people to present idealised versions of themselves to the world. Contrary to that idea, Yarkoni found that bloggers' choice of words consistently related to their personality type just as has been found in past offline research.

More neurotic bloggers used more words associated with negative emotions; extravert bloggers used more words pertaining to positive emotions; high scorers on agreeableness avoided swear words and used more words related to communality; and conscientious bloggers mentioned more words with achievement connotations. These were all as expected. More of a surprise was the lack of a link between the Big Five personality factor of 'openness to experience' and word categories related to intellectual or sensory experience. Instead openness was associated with more use of prepositions, more formal language and longer words.

The sheer size of the data set at Yarkoni's disposal allowed him to look not only at links between personality factors and broad word categories (as past research has done) but to also zoom in on the usage of specific words. Among the most strong and intriguing correlations were: Neuroticism correlated with use of 'irony' and negatively correlated with 'invited'; Extraversion correlated with 'drinks' and negatively correlated with 'computer'; Openness correlated with 'ink'; Agreeableness with 'wonderful' and negatively correlated with 'porn'; and Conscientiousness correlated with 'completed' and negatively correlated with 'boring'.

'The results underscore the importance of studying the influence of personality on word use at multiple levels of analysis,' Yarkoni concluded, 'and provide a novel approach for refining existing categorical word taxonomies and identifying new and unexpected associations with personality.'
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Yarkoni, T. (2010). Personality in 100,000 Words: A large-scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers. Journal of Research in Personality, 44 (3), 363-373 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2010.04.001

Author weblink: http://talyarkoni.com/

In my last post, I had talked about the "informal contract" in traditional families ; the husband peforms the "paid work" ( work , for which there is monetary compensation, such as work done in a office, shop, or factory ) , while the wife does the "unpaid work"--work , for which there is no monetary compensation, yet, which is necessary for the paid work to be done properly. Such unpaid work includes the traditional "duties of the wife" such as cooking, looking after children, and household chores. If such work is not done properly, the husband's performance in the paid work is bound to suffer.

This system might sound very effective-this has been the almost-universal norm for centuries. Yet, this is a very INEFFICIENT and WASTEFUL system ; it "uses" its "intellectual resources" in a very inefficient and wasteful manner.

Why? Simply because, men and women do not differ on the average scores of intelligence. If men and women are endowed with equal ( although not identical ) intelligence, they also ought to utilize their intelligence equally or nearly equally. After all, the human brain is the masterpiece of evolution, and the "hard work and labour" done by nature in building the superior human brain ( in comparison to other species ) should not go waste, but should be effectively utilised.

Yet traditional societies do not utilise the woman's intellectual abilities effectively. For example, a woman , whether she has IQ of 90 or an IQ of 130 ("genius") , has to perform the same household chores of washing the dishes in the sink, cleaning the house, cooking etc. A woman of IQ 130 would not differ very substantially in her ability to wash dishes than a woman of IQ 90. Put another way, her "extra" 40 IQ points are simply being wasted.

On the other hand , there would be a stark contrast in the vocational destinies of a man with IQ 130 and another man with IQ 90. While the man with IQ 130 would go on to land a plum professional job ( a scientist, IIT engineer or IAS officer ) , the man with IQ 90 would have to be content with the job of a junior clerk or a petty shopkeeper.

In contrast, a modern egalatarian society/family , which distributes the paid work and the unpaid work among the husband and wife far more equally and fairly, is FAR MORE EFFICIENT in utilising the intellectual capabilities of the two genders. In an egalatarian family, work is assigned to the husband and wife on the basis of interests and capabilities , not on the rigid basis of traditional gender roles. Hence, both husband and wife would work outside home , and both would cook and contribute to childcare.

Years ago, when I was in college, I was extremely impressed with the superior mental abilities of one of my female friends. She probably belonged to the category psychologists refer to as "gifted"- she could emerge first ranker in an exam after having studied for only a few days- I was left spellbound on seeing her ability to acquire massive quantities of complicated information in a very short span of time, and then retain and reproduce it. She would top in the college exam after having studied for only a few nights before the exam, leaving behind ordinary mortals who spent countless hours on the study table for the entire year. I bet her IQ was no lesser than 130.

But she belonged to a very traditional ( and perhaps backward ) family background , and I often feared that all her superior mental abilities would simply go waste one day, in washing the dishes in the sink. All the "labour" and "hard work" nature had done in making her superior neurons and "grey matter" would be simply go waste.

Thankfully , those fears have long been proved wrong. Appropriate to her level of intelligence , she is now a research scholar in Cambridge University.

The issue of " unpaid work by women " which has no " dollar value" or rupee value has been a topic of study for years. Such work, including taking care of the home , looking after children and elders has no immediate dollar/rupee value but is necessary to ensure that the " paid work " ( work for which there is remuneration, such as office or factory work ) is done properly.

Historically, it has been a informal contract between husbands and wives that husbands would do the paid work while wives would do the unpaid work, which is necessary to ensure that the paid work is done properly.

"Having accepted the notion of marriage as her meal ticket, a women's domestic labour clearly reflected its economic imperative. The wife's primary responsibility was to ensure her husband was able to work in order to earn the wages for her own, as well as his, survival."
-Mary Kinnear

Today , of course the situation has changed considerably . because of greater flexibility in gender roles. Both men and women do paid work as well as unpaid work. but even in developed countries, women do more unpaid work than men.

"Women and men in Canada have similar total workloads but men spend most of their time, 4.5 hours a day, in paid work and 2.7 hours in unpaid work. For women, the statistics are reversed with 2.8 hours in paid work and 4.4 hours in unpaid work. Women perform 2/3 of the 25 billion hours of unpaid work Canadians perform every year and on average women spend twice as much time (2/3) on unpaid work as on paid work (1/3). "

Though working women are more likely to face stress and as a result, be at a higher risk for stress-related disorders like hypertension, working women also benefit from a higher self-esteem and greater self efficacy and confidence, which can increase immunity to mental disorders and stress.

Its also necessary to understand that , historically , almost all socieities have attached greater prestige to paid work ( mostly men's work ) than unpaid work (mostly women's ). this is one reason why manhood has been considerd more " prestigious " than womanhood. Of course, such concepts are no longer valid in many modern families.

Finally, its necessary to understand that money is not always the best measurement of reward for work. " For many women, unpaid caregiving work gives them an opportunity to directly experience the results of their labour; the love of their family is more satisfying than money."

One of my theories is that by the year 2100, many Indian languages,particularly hindi would be in danger of becoming extinct, like sanskrit, particularly in the cities. And this would be unavoidable.

Reason for this ? --the debate of hindi vs regional languages is a useless one. In reality, it was always English that was the real official language of India. The only reason it has not gained the prominence deserving of an official language is that till now , very few people had access to good education.

But as India's economy develops rapidly, the number of people who can afford good ( read english medium ) education would increase rapidly. infact ,thats already happening. As more people become affluent and join the ranks of the middle class, they would dump regional langauge-medium education for english medium. ( I have seen many upper middle class mothers talking to their kids in english ).

for a live demonstration of this effect, just travel aboard any train. You would see almost all people in the AC compartments reading english magazines and newspapers, and people in non-ac compartments reading hindi/local language newspapers. As the economy grows ,and people's income grows, more people would travel by AC compartment. Already we have new trains that have only AC coaches .

With the passage of time, more people would join the ranks of the AC-compartment " class " . they would be carrying English, not tamil, telegu or hindi magazines.

I went to a school where a student could be punished if found speaking in " any language other than English " . ( although this rule was rarely enforced ) . In the 1990s, attending such schools was the privelege of few, the creamy layer of urban indian society. But as India's economy grows at a rapid rate , more and more parents would send their kids to such schools. ( India's Real per capita income grew by 50 % from 2000-01 to 2007-08 ) http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Indias-per-capita-income-doubled-in-last-7-years/articleshow/4053216.cms

A Salute to the Liberalized India.

INDIA'S GREAT ESCAPE FROM THE SOCIALIST ZOO.

The following is the original version of the article " India's Great Escape from the Socialist Zoo " by the eminent economist Swaminathan Aiyar.



Escape from the Benevolent Zookeepers

How can one best sum up the new India that has emerged since economic liberalization in 1991? Gurcharan Das' recent book calls it “India Unbound”.The Economist, the British weekly, had in 1990 run a cover story on India titled "The Caged Tiger", and so some people would call today's India "The Tiger Uncaged”.



Yet the most accurate description, which I have used as the title of this book,
is "Escape from the Benevolent Zookeepers". This drives home the point that the socialist politicians who led our Independence movement, and then shackled us for decades through the licence-permit Raj, were not evil folk. On the contrary, they were golden-hearted, benevolent leaders determined to banish the poverty they associated with British colonialism.



However, 200 years of colonial subjugation had given them a serious inferiority complex. When the British left, Nehru wanted economic independence to buttress political independence. Lacking confidence in India's ability to export its way to prosperity, he sought economic independence by retreating from international trade into a cocoon of self- sufficiency, forgetting completely that international trade had made India a world power for centuries before the British Raj. India's share of world exports was 2.2% at independence in 1947. Thanks to policies emphasizing self-sufficiency, this fell steadily to 0.45% by the mid-1980s. This elicited not dismay but cheers from golden-hearted socialists who felt they had saved India from the predatory world economy.



Critics like me pointed out at the time that other developing countries like
Korea and Taiwan had opted for export-oriented growth rather than self- sufficiency, and been rewarded with 10% GDP growth, thrice as fast as in India achieved in its first three decades after independence. The socialists smiled condescendingly and said that these countries were neo-colonial puppets falling into an imperialist trap, and had no future. In fact, of course,the supposed puppets soon became richer in per capita income than their colonial master, Britain. India, alas, remained mired in poverty.


Apart from self-sufficiency, golden-hearted socialism sought to protect Indians from the rapacity of businessmen, and promote prosperity as in the USSR through planning and government domination of the economy.


So, they made India the land of a million controls. Everything was forbidden
unless specifically allowed. Government bureaucrats with no business experience were supposed to know better than any businessmen what should be produced, where, and how. They were supposed to know better than consumers what was good for the consumers themselves. No citizen had free choice in buying anything: the government chose on his behalf the list of goods that could be produced or imported .



Entrepreneurs were forbidden to start a business without a licence, forbidden to import raw materials or machinery without a licence, and forbidden to close a business if it was unprofitable. If any businessman was innovative enough to produce more than the listed capacity of his machinery, he faced a jail sentence for the terrible sin of having dared be productive. Narayanmurthy of Infosys recalls that it took him almost two years to get a licence to import a computer and another two years to get a telephone when he was setting up Infosys in the 1980s. All in the public interest, you understand.



Insane though it sounds today, golden-hearted socialism held that prosperity would be best achieved when nobody had the freedom to do anything other than what they were told. Citizens were told that the world was a dangerous place full of predators. So, said the leaders, the licence-permit Raj does not really put you in cages, it puts you in protected enclosures for your own security. In these enclosures we will ensure your daily ration of water and food.



The leaders themselves were not caged, of course. As Orwell foretold in Animal Farm, all in this socialist paradise were equal, but some were more equal than others. Indeed, many of the zookeepers became incredibly wealthy by using controls imposed in the holy name of socialism to line their pockets and create patronage networks. Some not-so-benevolent but pragmatic politicians opposed the lifting of controls simply because it would mean the disappearance of their ability to extort.


Ironically, the same socialists who forbade free choice for citizens in the marketplace sang the virtues of free choice in politics, with no sense of incongruity. By contrast, Lenin in the USSR did not suffer from such
inconsistency. He opposed freedom of choice for citizens in both politics and markets. He held that the people had not yet developed revolutionary consciousness, and so the golden-hearted politburo knew better than the masses themselves what was good for them. And so he held that the politburo should decide both political and economic matters on behalf of the masses.



This system was, predictably, better for the politburo than the masses. Let me
relate a story I heard from a Polish journalist when Poland was still Communist. A citizen in Poland asked a politician why members of the politburo had access to French champagne when the masses did not. Pat came the answer, "The people of Poland drink champagne through the lips of the politburo."



Indian socialism never quite attained such dizzy heights of hypocrisy. But it
conquered some lower ones. RK Laxman once sketched a brilliant cartoon showing a journalist interviewing a Congress Minister living in a palatial mansion full of expensive artworks. The politician says, "Of course,socialism is applicable to us also. But we have promised it to the people and so must give it to them first."



The fact that for three decades this system gave India only 3.5% economic
growth when others in Asia grew twice as fast was frequently justified by
saying that, unlike the free-market countries of East Asia, Indian socialism
provided social welfare to all. This assertion was simply false. India ranks at a lowly 126 out of 177 countries in the UN Human Development Report. Socialist benevolence failed dismally in social indicators, so literacy, infant mortality, life expectancy poverty and every other social indicator was always far worse in India than in of the Asian miracle economies — Korea, Taiwan,Thailand or Malaysia. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has shown that some poor countries in Africa have better social indicators than India.



Vast sums were spent by socialist India on education and health. But these mainly provided salaries to teachers and health staff with an absenteeism rate of 18% to 58% in different states. They were protected from disciplinary action by powerful trade unions. So, the benevolent socialist cage gave Indians neither economic growth nor social justice. This remains an area ofgrave concern, because opening the cages will not solve the problem of illiteracy and high infant mortality. We need a state that is capable and committed enough to do what the state alone can do —finance the provision of basic social services and rural infrastructure. Alas, the state is so venal and incompetent that it seems incapable of doing this.



All Indians agree that the quality of governance has deteriorated dramatically.
At independence, Indians were proud of their politicians, whom they viewed
as self-sacrificing heroes who had struggled and suffered jail for decades to
get India independence. But today, Indians view politicians as rogues and
thieves. In theory, India has an administration, police and courts to ensure rule
of law, deliver justice and redress grievances. Alas, these organs of government are moribund. What really work are money, muscle and influence. These have ensured that nobody with resources can ever be convicted beyond all appeals. People like Harshad Mehta and Narasimha Rao died of old age before they could be convicted beyond all appeals.



The result, predictably, is that criminals have joined politics in large numbers.
A former Election Commissioner estimated in 1997 that 40 Members of Parliament and 700 members of State legislatures had criminal records. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chose a Cabinet in 2004 which included sixministers facing criminal charges. German sociologist Max Weber once defined the state as the only entity entitled to use violence with impunity. But if criminals can use violence with impunity, they become, in effect, the state.Law-breakers have become law-makers. So, India has become a land without justice. This is reflected not only in criminal politics but in a thousand clashes based on caste, religion and region. Moreover, 160 of India’s 600 districts have experienced attacks from Maoist revolutionaries, and the situation is serious in almost 70 of these districts.



So, while Indians have escaped from the benevolent zookeepers and achieved record GDP growth of 9% for two years running, they are still in search of a state that provides basic social services, basic administration and justice. By concentrating for decades on building public sector giants, socialist politicians neglected the most basic functions of the state, which are now in a sorry shape. This remains the main risk to economic prosperity.





Let me return to the question, why did well-meaning socialists like Jawaharlal
Nehru oppose freedom of choice in the marketplace? Because, they said, free choice is an illusion in a world dominated by banias, Indian and foreigners. Businessmen are liars who trap you with false promises. They sell you dud goods backed by misleading advertising campaigns. They use money to bribe their way to success. They use goons to threaten rivals and prevent real competition. They use influence to get all sorts of favours. They constantly manipulate policies and procedures to maximize their private interest rather than the public interest.



Much of this is true, but do politicians in a democracy behave very
differently? Do not politicians tell lies and break promises? Do not politicians
advertise great policies in glowing manifestos and then deliver something completely different? Do not politicians use money to fix outcomes? Do they not use goons to capture polling booths, threaten or bribe rivals, and so disrupt fair competition? Do they not use political influence to get all sorts of favours
for themselves, their cronies and their favourite lobbies? Do they not manipulate policies and controls constantly to get kickbacks and expand their patronage networks? Do they not further their private interest while claiming to represent the public interest?



Of course they do. And yet we nevertheless opt for democracy, for free choice
in the political marketplace. Why? Because democracy empowers citizens with the freedom to choose, and this remains invaluable even if it is constantly sought to be eroded or manipulated away by politicians. Democracy, warts and all, is far better than a system where supposedly benevolent dictators decide everything with no manipulation.



For the very same reason, we need freedom of choice in the economic marketplace. The case for democracy and the case for liberal economic policies are the same: both are flawed systems that are nevertheless better than the alternatives. Both empower citizens through the freedom to choose. No matter how tattered at the edges, freedom to choose is nevertheless better than being put in cages by benevolent zookeepers.

After 15 years of economic reform, the cages have been opened and the enclosures have been destroyed one by one. Have Indians been swallowed up by predators, as predicted by the socialists? Have Indian companies been killed by foreign multinationals? Have Indians become neo-colonial slaves?



On the contrary, Indians have flourished as never before. Consider just a few
examples.

• Lakshmi Mittal, a small businessman forbidden by Indian policy to
build a steel plant in India, went to Indonesia to set up a mini-steel
plant. He had no funds to acquire big companies. But his skills and
confidence were so formidable that he acquired for peanuts one sick
steel plant after another across the globe — Trinidad, Mexico,
Germany, Canada, Germany, Kazakhstan. Once established, he then
took over the American giant ISG group, followed by Europe’s
Arcelor, to become No. 1 in steel manufacturing in the world. Far from
being eaten alive by imperial predators, Mittal swallowed up the
biggest steel multinationals.
• Tata Steel has acquired the Anglo-Dutch company Corus to become
the fifth biggest steel business in the world. Corus includes the whole
of what used to be called British Steel. Thus, an Indian company has
acquired the entire British steel industry as well as other plants in
Europe. Some call this the East India Company in reverse. Others say
this is the real neo-colonialism. Still others say that Tata-colonialism is
now beating Coca-colonialism.

• India's software companies have become world-beaters, and American
politicians are terrified that they are going to lose millions of jobs to
Indians. Cynics once predicted that Indian software companies like
Infosys, Wipro and TCS would be swallowed up by Western giants in
due course. But today all the Western giants — IBM, Oracle, EDS,
Accenture, Capgemini etc. — have rushed to India to open subsidiaries
for sheer survival: they desperately need India's skilled manpower.
Accenture now has 35,000 workers in India, more than in the USA.
IBM has 55,000 workers in India, and news reports suggest that this
may in a few years rise to a whopping 128,000. The operating profit
margins of the top Indian companies are far higher than those of the
top MNCs. This is reflected in much higher valuations for the Indian
majors than global ones in the stock market. The underlying message
from the markets is that, if this trend continues, the Indian software
companies will in due course take over the foreign ones, not the other
way round.
• Even small and medium Indian companies have become
multinationals, acquiring plants galore across the world. Essel
Propack, which started as a humble producer of laminated tubes for
Indian toothpaste manufacturers, has now acquired plants across the globe to become world No. 1 in laminated tubes. Bharat Forge has
acquired five plants abroad to become the second largest producer of
automotive forgings in the world, and aims to be number one very
soon. All of India’s top pharmaceutical companies have become
multinationals with acquisitions in several countries. Ranbaxy now
sells more abroad than in India.
• Forbes magazine comes out with an annual list of billionaires. In the
latest list, India has 36 billionaires, compared to Japan's 24. The list
includes people with middle class origins like NR Narayanmurthy,
Nandan Nilekani and Senapathy Gopalakrishnan, founders of Infosys.
It includes Azim Premji, who inherited a small edible oil business but
then built Wipro into a global software major. Shiv Nadar of HCL was
once a business executive in DCM, but has become a hundred times
richer than his esrtwhile employer. India's real estate builders have
emerged as among the biggest in the world — KP Singh of DLF,
Ramesh Chandra of Unitech, Jaiprakash Gaur of JP Associates, Vivek
Oberoi of Oberoi Construction and Pradeep Jain of Parasvanath
Developers are among the billionaires listed by Forbes. They have
risen from obscurity to the stratosphere.

What I find especially notable is that the vast majority of new billionaires are
self-made men. They have beaten hollow the scions of old industrial families.
As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once said, these are not the children of the wealthy; they are the children of economic liberalisation. Having escaped from the socialist zoo, they have proven that Indians can roam the jungle proud and fearless. For, they are as strong and capable as any others in the jungle.


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My salute to Liberalization, and the spirit of Modern India.

R.I.P. Socialism R.I.P Licence Raj R.I.P. USSR.
and i am waiting for the day when it would be R.I.P Power cuts , R.I.P train delays , R.I.P waitlisting in indian trains. ( indian railways is still a socialist organization, and the legacies of socialism: corruption, inefficiency , waitlisting and shortages still prevail in IR )

How are religion and socialism similar ?

Answer : Both are blind, rigid beliefs. They might have been comprehensively disproved, but their followers stick to their beliefs tenaciously, conveniently ignoring the fact that the world has now changed; socialists ignore the fact that socialism has been tried for decades in N number of countries , stretching from Vietnam in one corner of the world to East Germany in the other. The supporters of socialism fail to realise why did these N number of countries eventually abandoned socialism. The supporters of socialism keep citing the promises of socialism , forgetting that socialism might have had made wonderful promises, but has consistently delivered poor performance, whether in Moscow or in Mumbai. They keep citing the statements of Karl Marx ,especially " from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs ". This habit of theirs ( focussing on the promises , not the performance of socialism ) reminds one of religious people, who have a rigid belief that there religion would bring a wonderful era, forgetting completely that in practice, religion has only brought about hatred, communal riots and social evils like misogyny, dowry practice etc. The supporters of socialism have difficulty accepting the fact that things in the real world differ substantially from what is predicted by a theory. They forget the fact that the socialist system, which promised its citizens free education, free healthcare, and guaranteed employment was brought down not by American warplanes or tanks, but by the strong protests of the people themselves . They fail to understand how such a benevolent system could have been outrightly rejected by the overwhelming majority of people. For understanding the reasons why, one need not book a flight to Moscow or Budapest, our own Great Indian Socialist Republic is a typical example of a socialist mess.

Today, because of the fact that India is still a semi-socialist country, Power and Railways are still in the hands of government monopolies. Because sarkari socialist enterprises have no incentive for satisfying the customer, no incentive either for profit or for efficiency, and have no competition to worry about, they can happily afford to provide inferior, inefficient and obsolete services to the customer. Nothing exemplifies this fact better than the grim power situation in India's cities. The posh locality where i live, continues to suffer from long power cuts, frequent low voltage and voltage fluctuations ; all because Power continues to be supplied by a monopoly.
These problems render the products of capitalism ( the electrical appliances people buy ) useless . And effectively, they serve as a potentially strong disincentive for people to work hard. ( " Why work hard to earn more money if all you can buy with that money are appliances which are rendered useless by india's socialist power enterprises " ?) Have you ever wondered why is there is always a shortage of electric power and train seats, but never a shortage of consumer goods like detergents or shampoos ? Answer : both power as well as railways are run by benevolent golden-hearted socialist enterprises, not by the hungry and greedy capitalist conspirators, who work for profit , not for social service.

But no facts , whether of the poor performance of state-run power corporations , or the impunctuality of Indian Railways, would deter the supporters of socialism from their cause. Their beliefs and commitment to socialism would remain as strong as ever ( one wonders what the supporters of socialism would say if the train they had to board was 6 hours late ). For the supporters of socialism , the words of socialist leaders like Karl Marx are good enough, and they can conveniently forget that the world has changed a lot since the early 19th century. They consider the teachings of Karl Marx and other socialist leaders as beyond questioning or criticism. Not very different from the attitude of religious people , who continue to stick to their delusions , simply because they were revealed the Great Creator in Quran/Bible/Geeta. The fact that almost all of religion's claims, including that of the existence of god, have been comprehensively disproved by science, need not matter to them. For them , the holy words of the Allah/God/Bhagwan are unquestionably true, and any questioning or criticism of them constitutes sacrilege or blasphemy.

Some supporters of socialism , who partially concede the fact that socialism has failed to live up to its promises, say that the poor performance of socialism till now is because of the fact that " Nobody has ever tried pure socialism till now " . May I ask them , what has been preventing the N number of countries, from India to Romania, to implement " pure socialism " ? . Whats more, this stance of theirs seems to be similar to the stance adopted by some Islamic apologists , who say Islam is not being followed in its true spirit , and under " true Islam ", there would be no terrorism or misogyny.

I strongly recommend that the Indian Railways and UP Power Corporation should install a statue of Lenin in its office. Lenin's ideas might have been rejected in his homeland, but they continue to be followed faithfully in this far-off land. I am sure the Russian Government can send some old discarded Lenin statues to the Sarkari Socialist Republic of India.

Though i am staunchly anti-socialist, i have to concede i found the soviet national anthem to be a superb creation. I noticed how the inspiring song served as an effective propaganda tool : the soviet space glory and picture of Yuri Gagarin were shown along the words " triumph to communism " . This can easily fool a person into believing that communism indeed has very remarkable successes and victories. But ofcourse, you can't keep fooling people for ever : people were clever enough to realise that communism did little to improve things on ground level; despite all the space glory , there were shortages of consumer goods , which were generally of poor quality--communism did nothing to improve people's standard of life.

The Soviet leaders thought that by forcing people sing " Unbreakable Union of Freeborn Republics " , they would actually make Soviet Union unbreakable .They thought that by making people repeatedly sing " mighty and united soviet land " , soviet union would actually become immortal. But alas , that was not to happen. Despite repeatedly singing the lie of " unbreakable union of freeborn republics " , people were not fools, they knew very well that most soviet republics were forcibly annexed by military conquest ( rather than " freeborn ") , and would break apart eventually.

Overall, the song is indeed an excellent creation-- it was very successful in doing what it was designed to do : brainwash people. The inspiring and motivating tune might have provided some rare motivation in an economy characterised by lack of incentives. The song helped to keep the Soviet Union alive .. a concept otherwise doomed for failure.



And in case , you too have been brainwashed by listening repeatedly to this captivating song , please watch this video for a reality-check :



ultimately, the statemtent " the soviet economy doesn't work , becuase the workers don't work " might seem to be too simplistic, but it effectively sums up the great tragedy of communism- the lack of incentives.

I found this valuable document while surfing Wikipedia : This is the Economic Survey of India published by OECD ( organisation comprising of developed countries ) http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/52/39452196.pdf .. .this contains many valuable recommendations for reform in the indian economy, but I am sure few of the recommendations for reform would be acted upon by the Indian government. Indian lawmakers get elected by promising populist schemes of loan waivers and free electricity to farmers.. its very unlikely they would threaten their political careers by pursuing bold reforms. Their primary motivation is electoral success ; economic growth of the nation matters little to their careers.

A critical evaluation of UPA's performance.

Tavleen Singh,columnist with the Indian Express.

As someone whose usual reaction to our politicians is disdain, let me begin by confessing that one of the few for whom I have real respect is the Prime Minister. I have been a fan since the nineties, when he became the finance minister who shook India out of its socialist coma by abolishing the license-quota-permit raj. With socialism enshrined in our Constitution and embedded in our DNA, it was a brave thing to do even if he did it because we were flat broke. So my disappointment in the performance of his second government runs deep. As the only Prime Minister to have been given a second consecutive term in more than forty years, there was so much he could have done to rectify the things that prevent India from becoming a fully developed country.


As an economist, he knows better than you or I that the things that need drastic, revolutionary change lie mostly in what economists call the social sector. Our state schools are among the worst in the world, our public hospitals are horrific, we have more mobile phones than public toilets and this absence of basic sanitation along with unclean water is the cause of most of our diseases. No matter how fast the economy grows, no matter how much money we pour into NREGA, no matter how many airports and roads we build, if we fail on the education and public health front, there is no chance of India becoming a developed country in this century.



Sadly, all that Dr Manmohan Singh’s social sector ministers have done is tiptoe around these problems and pass the buck to the state governments. It is true that primary education and healthcare are state subjects but it is also true that when the Government of India lights up a new path, state governments happily walk down it. Did a single chief minister sneer when Rajiv Gandhi came up with the idea of Navodaya Vidyalayas? And, nobody would sneer now if Kapil Sibal formulates a policy to radically improve state schools. Nor would anyone protest if he did something about the mess in higher education, which comes directly under him. India used to have the best universities in Asia in the sixties and the seventies. We no longer do and the reason is mostly too much government intervention.


It is on account of too much government intervention that we are nowhere near building the 600 more universities that we desperately need. Instead of getting on with the job, the Government of India spends its time banging on about the Right to Education Bill. What use is the right to education if there are not enough schools and colleges?

Indian citizens already have the right to free healthcare but so horrendous is the state of our public hospitals that more than 80 per cent of Indians use private services. Nothing has been done to make things better. Nothing at all. What makes things worse is that, for those who can afford it, private hospitals in India are today among the best in the world. Not only do our political leaders no longer rush to foreign hospitals when they get sick, we receive increasing numbers of medical tourists every year.


If public hospitals are to improve, we need hundreds of thousands more doctors and nurses but government makes it almost impossible to set up new medical colleges. Now that they have caught the criminal who was running the Medical Council of India like a mafia operation, can something not be done to facilitate the setting up of new medical and nursing colleges?


On the sanitation front, it is something of an achievement that the Ministry of Urban Development did a survey of our cities and found that not one of them meets standards of hygiene and sanitation. Now that the Minister has discovered this, could he please come up with solutions? It’s true that every city must deal with its own unique problems but can the Ministry of Urban Development not act as a consultant?


There are other areas in which Dr Manmohan Singh’s second government is not showing dynamism but in my humble opinion, often expressed in this space, there is nothing more important than education, healthcare and sanitation. Everything else will fall into place once we have healthy, educated citizens who live in sanitary towns, cities and villages. Why is India one of the only countries left in the world that has not been able to deal with problems that are so fundamentally important? Why is the Prime Minister unable to make the sort of dramatic changes here that he made with the economy in the nineties? So, in the week of the first anniversary of his second government, I give him no more than four out of ten

Courtesy : The Indian Express.

How Religion and Socialism create disincentives for people to become wealthy.

One of the most important principles of psychological science is that for a person to be motivated to achieve a particular goal, s/he has to be assured that the achievement of that particular goal would bring in rewards that the individual desires. However, in the Indian society, shaped by the two great evils - religion and socialism, many of the desirable rewards are either in short supply or simply not available.

After liberalisation , Indian markets are flooded with all sorts of desirable , superior-quality consumer goods- air conditioners, LCD Televisions, computers , internet connections, and what not. But being wealthy doesn't necessarily mean that you will be able to enjoy these comforts and entertainment-- these devices run on electric power , whose distribution , in India of circa 2010, is still controlled by state-run companies ( for example , the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation , UPPCL, run by the state government in UP ) . These " discoms " are the relics of india's socialist past, and enjoy complete monopoly with little accountability -- they have little to lose if they are not able to supply uninterrupted power-- there is no competition, so the consumer has no freedom to switch to a better alternative, simply because there is none. They need not fear heavy transmission and distribution losses ( including thefts ) , because they know even if they incur heavy loss, they will still be bailed out by the benevolent socialist indian state.

The ultimate result of this semi-socialist setup is that an ambitious person can work hard to become wealthy , but earning huge amounts of money would still not be able to provide him with the desirable comforts of life. You can buy Japanese and Korean air-conditioners and refrigerators , would would still have to rely on power supplied by state-run indian companies to run them . Another similar example is that you can buy Japanese and Korean cars, but still would have to drive them on potholed indian roads and mismanaged traffic conditions. Such a situation can lower a person's motivation to work hard and become wealthy ( why work hard if all you can buy with money are devices that don't work during Indian power failures? )

You can work hard and earn a lot of money , but huge wealth would still not set you free from the archaic norms of indian society . No matter how wealthy you are, you still would have to tolerate the outdated traditions of a religious society. Hinduism seeks to impose restrictions on perhaps all aspects of a person's life-- what a person eats, whom does s/he marry . Even if you are a billionaire , you would still not be able to eat anything containing beef , and sometimes even other kinds of meat... Most international cuisine is simply not commonly available in india, due to all sorts of archaic food taboos imposed by hinduism. even hamburgers and steaks , common foods in the west , are not available for the indian middle class. Sausages sold in india are almost often made of chicken , unlike in the west, where they are made of beef or pork.

You can buy a computer and internet connection , but when you log on to www.shaadi.com ( online matrimonial service ), most of the marriage or dating proposals would be restricted on the basis of caste and even subcaste . Indeed , the caste system of hinduism has elaborate and complicated rules for determining whom a person is permitted to marry-- I once overheard a conversation in an internet cafe in which a marriage candidate was rejected because " Tamil Nadu Brahmins are permitted to marry Kerala Brahmins, but not the other way round " . Indeed , almost all the entries in the " caste no bar " category of matrimonial services is from westernized indians settled abroad. You can earn a lot of money and become wealthy, but still not marry or date the person you like , if you are not of his/her caste. And if you are an atheist like me, you can't marry anyone.

So why work hard to earn a lot of money ? Neither will you be able to buy useful devices and appliances , neither would you be able to eat as per your wishes, neither marry or date as per your wishes .

Indeed , most individual choices and freedoms have been restricted in the holy name of Hinduism and Socialism .

This article was composed in an internet cafe as neither the electric power not the broadband internet connection- both provided by state-run companies - were available at my home at that time.

This article was written by an eminent economist ; it highlights the human tragedy caused by socialist policies followed by India till the early 1990s.

Delayed economic reform killed 14.5 mn children

S A Aiyar,
15 November 2009

The 20th anniversary of Communism’s fall is a good time to estimate the costs borne by countries like India that did not become Communist but drew heavily on the Soviet model. For three decades after Independence, India levied sky-high taxes, strove for self-sufficiency, and gave the state an ever-increasing role in controlling the means of production. These socialist policies yielded economic growth averaging 3.5% per year, just half of that in export-oriented Asian countries, and yielded poor social indicators too.


Growth accelerated with tentative reforms in 1980, and shot up to 9% after reforms deepened in the current decade. How much lower would infant mortality, illiteracy and poverty have been had India commenced reform a decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster growth and human development? I have published estimates in a paper for the Cato Institute (see http://www.cato.org/pubs/dbp/dbp4.pdf). This shows that the delay in reforms led to an additional 14.5 million infant deaths, an additional 261 million illiterates, and an additional 109 million poor people. Indian socialism delivered a monumental tragedy, lacking both growth and social justice.


Economists frequently estimate what would have happened had policies been different. The assumptions on which such estimates are based can always be questioned.


For instance, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has popularized the notion of 100 million missing women on account of gender discrimination in China, South Asia, West Asia and North Africa. These regions have 94 females per 100 males, against 105 females per 100 males in other countries with equal gender treatment. Sen assumed that without gender discrimination, the female:male ratio in the four developing regions would also have been 105:100. On this basis, he estimated that gender discrimination had caused a shortfall of over 100 million females — what he called ‘‘missing women’’.


Sen’s model was so simplistic that he did not send his paper to an economic journal: he published these estimates in the New York Review of Books. Various economists complained that he had neglected other causes of gender differences, and some came out with alternative estimates.


Despite these objections, Sen’s estimate of 100 million became world famous, and his phrase, ‘‘missing women’’, became standard lexicon in gender debates. What mattered was not the precision of his estimates, but the magnitude of the social disaster he was able to highlight.


In the same spirit (but without implicating Sen), i have sought to estimate the number of missing children, missing literates, and missing non-poor arising from the delay in economic reforms. Had reforms started in 1970 rather than 1980, India would have grown faster. In this fast-growth scenario, i assume that per capita income growth in the 1970s would have been what was actually achieved in the 1980s: growth in the 1980s would have been what was actually achieved in the 1990s: and growth in the 1990s would have been what was achieved in 2001-08.


I calculate the rate of change of infant mortality, literacy and poverty with GDP since 1971. I then apply this rate of change to the fast-growth scenario. This reveals what infant mortality, literacy and poverty would have been with faster growth.


In a fast-growth scenario, infant mortality would have been less every year, and in 2008 would have been 27 deaths per thousand births, against the actual 54 per thousand. The cumulative number of ‘‘missing children’’ turns out to be a massive 14.5 million. This is two-and-a-half times the number of Jews killed by Hitler.


I use trends from the latest surveys to calculate actual literacy and poverty levels in 2008, and compare these with literacy and poverty levels in a fast-growth scenario. With faster growth, literacy would have been virtually 100% by 2008, and 261 million more people would have been literate. Again, faster growth would have reduced the number of poor people in 2008 from 282 million to 174 million. This means we have 109 million ‘‘missing non-poor’’ on account of delayed reform.



Doubtless critics will object, as they did after Sen’s exercise, that i have used a simple model that neglects other factors affecting infant mortality, literacy and poverty. Demographer Ansley Coale reworked Sen’s calculations to show that the number of missing women was probably 60 million, not 100 million. That did not dent public horror at the social tragedy that Sen unveiled.


I invite critics to produce more sophisticated models on the impact of delayed reform, as Coale did in the case of missing women. If these more sophisticated models conclude that Indian socialism killed only 10 million children and not 14.5 million, i will shrug. My point about the magnitude of the social tragedy will stand.

Courtesy Times Of India.


another informative article by the same author..


India's great escape from the socialist zoo

S A Aiyar, 18 April 2010, 01:12 AM IST

I view myself as a freedom fighter, who for 45 years has sought to promote every kind of freedom — economic, political and social. "Escape from the Benevolent Zookeepers", a 2008 collection of Swaminomics columns, emphasized that the socialists who led our Independence movement, and then shackled us for decades through the licence-permit Raj, were not evil. Rather, they were golden-hearted leaders determined to banish the poverty they associated with British colonialism.


However, 200 years of colonial subjugation gave them a serious inferiority complex. Lacking confidence in India's ability to export its way to prosperity, Jawaharlal Nehru sought economic independence by retreating from international trade into a cocoon of self-sufficiency, forgetting completely that international trade had made India a world power for centuries before the British Raj.


Critics pointed out that other developing countries like Korea and Taiwan had opted for export-oriented growth rather than self-sufficiency, and been rewarded with 10% GDP growth, thrice as fast as the Hindu rate of growth in India. The socialists smiled condescendingly and said that these countries were neo-colonial puppets falling into an imperialist trap, and had no future. In fact, the supposed puppets soon became richer in per capita income than their colonial master, Britain. India, alas, remained mired in poverty.


Apart from self-sufficiency, golden-hearted socialism sought to protect Indians from the rapacity of businessmen, and promote prosperity as in the Soviet Union through planning and government domination of the economy. So, they made India the land of a million controls. Everything was forbidden unless specifically allowed. Government bureaucrats with no business experience were supposed to know better than any businessmen what should be produced, where, and how. They were supposed to know better than consumers what was good for the consumers themselves. No citizen had free choice in buying anything; the government chose on his behalf the list of goods that could be produced or imported.


Entrepreneurs were forbidden to start a business without a licence, forbidden to import raw materials or machinery without a licence, and forbidden to close a business if it was unprofitable. If any businessman was innovative enough to produce more than the listed capacity of his machinery, he faced a jail sentence for the terrible sin of having dared to be productive. (Narayana) Murthy of Infosys recalls that it took him almost two years to get a licence to import a computer and another two years to get a telephone when he was setting up Infosys in the 1980s.


All in the public interest, you understand.


Insane though it sounds today, golden-hearted socialism held that prosperity would be best achieved when nobody had the freedom to do anything other than what they were told. Citizens were told that the world was a dangerous place, full of predators. So, said the leaders, the licence-permit Raj does not really put you in cages; it puts you in protected enclosures for your own security. In these enclosures we will ensure your basic needs.


They failed even in this. Literacy, infant mortality, life expectancy, poverty and every other social indicator was always far worse in socialist India than in Asian miracle economies (and even in some poor African countries). Vast sums spent on health and education were wasted; teachers and health staff had an absenteeism rate of 18% to 58%, but were protected from disciplinary action by strong trade unions (supposedly the vanguard of socialism). So, the socialist cage gave Indians neither economic growth nor social justice. This remains an area of grave concern: opening the cages will not solve problems of basic education and health, so public-private partnerships may be needed.


The leaders themselves were not caged, of course. Indeed, many zookeepers became incredibly wealthy by using controls imposed in the holy name of socialism to line their pockets and create patronage networks.


R K Laxman had a brilliant cartoon about a journalist interviewing a minister in a palatial mansion. The politician says, "Of course, socialism is applicable to us also. But we have promised it to the people and so must give it to them first."


Everybody agrees we need democracy. Why? Because democracy empowers citizens with the freedom to choose, and this remains invaluable even if it is constantly eroded or manipulated away by politicians. Democracy, warts and all, is far better than a system where supposedly benevolent dictators decide everything.


For the same reason, we need freedom of choice in the economic marketplace. The case for democracy and the case for liberal economic policies is the same: both are flawed systems that are nevertheless better than the alternatives. Both empower citizens through the freedom to choose. No matter how tattered at the edges, freedom to choose is nevertheless better than being put in cages by benevolent zookeepers.


After 20 years of economic reform, the cages have been opened and the enclosures have been destroyed one by one. Have Indians been swallowed by predators, as predicted by the socialists? Have our companies been killed by foreign multinationals or become neo-colonial slaves? Not at all. Indian companies have become multinationals in their own right.


Indian liberalization has created more billionaires than exist in Japan or China. These are mainly people of middle class origins like Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani of Infosys. Shiv Nadar of HCL was once an employee of DCM, but is now a hundred times bigger than DCM.


These self-made men have beaten hollow Indian business families and multinationals. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once said these newcomers are not the children of the wealthy; they are the children of economic liberalization. Having escaped from the socialist zoo, they have proved that Indians can roam the global jungle proud and fearless. Let us celebrate that escape, that new freedom.

Courtesy TOI.

Was communism equally irrational and silly as religion ?

I was often fascinated by the ( erstwhile ) communist regimes ( like the former Soviet Union )for many reasons, among which was the fact that they were among the very few in human history that have dared to defy religion, and also the fact that they provided an " alternative " setup to the now ubiqutous free-market system. But when i decide to read more about this system, i was amazed how such a ridiculous, weird and irrational belief system had influenced or even dominated the policy-making of so many countries. I was forced to draw parallels with religion, an equally irrational and ridiculous belief system, that , unfortunately, continues to brainwash people's minds even today..

As far as i could understand , communism is just brainwashing.. there is no sound rational or logical basis for its claims, most of which seem outlandish.. consider the communist dictum " from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs " .This eliminates the incentive for people to work hard , since they will continue to get the same reward , no matter how hard they work. Without a profit motive, firms had no incentive or need to provide quality services, and no need to innovate and adapt new technology to satisfy the customer, as they were monopolies , and the customer was forced to buy whatever crap they had produced.. Neither there was any incentive for individuals to work hard -- there was similar pay for both specialized and unspecialized jobs ; and in any case there was guaranteed employment,free housing and medical care ( ..and there was hardly any desirabe consumer product available to buy )* ,Neither there was any incentive for firms to produce quality goods . And there was no market mechanism of knowing which goods are in demand and hence need to be produced.. the managers had no idea of public demand , and the result was both surpluses and shortages ( the latter mostly of consumer goods and food ). And since the State decided what goods to be produced on its own whims and fancies rather than public demand, it diverted a lion's share of the economy to military expenditure.**

This belief system ignores the basic tenets of psychology-- to motivate a person to work hard, it is necessary to provide some incentive -people cannot be forced to work hard for " collective good ". People work hard for their own material prosperity, and performance-based pay serves as an incentive for putting in more effort. And since wokers pooled in their effort for a collective goal, there was no way to identify individual effort ,and hence workers did not bother with productivity as individual contribution could not be measured anyways.

And since there was hardly any attractive consumer products to lure the people, they had few aspirations in life ( compare that to the present day situation ,where one thinks " i will work harder, get a pay raise and buy that new laptop/cellphone/car/dress " )--Consequently , the only collective aspiration of the nation's people was military glorification of the country - hostility toward USA and other western countries. The communist nation avoided trade with foreign countries, since they emphasized " self-sufficiency "--this lack of trade only accentuated Cold War hostilities, and resulted in lots of money being spent in nuclear bombs and missiles.

One can easliy see similarities between religion and communism- both are irrational, unfounded beliefs -- Both promise an ideal state- religion promises " heaven " to the religious and communism promises an utopian world of " guaranteed employment, housing and free healthcare " . In reality , both heaven and the socialist utopia are nonexistent . Both recruit new members to their beliefs by luring them with false promises of heaven or socialist utopia. And they both deride other irrational belief systems ( the different religions deride each other ,claiming themselves to be the "true relgion" of the " true god " , similarly communism was intolerant of any religion -irrational belief systems just like itself )



* " They pretend to pay us , and we pretend to work " -- an ex-soviet citizen succintly sums up the situation.

* " The reason why the Soviet System doesn't work is that the workers dont work " - was the finding of an economist.

** One KGB spy who defected to Britain revealed that 50 % of the economy was devoted to the military . A huge amount of government's money was spent in providing subsidies ( free healthcare, education etc ), leaving nothing for innovation.