the rationality of man

Economics assumes that man is a rational being.
The rationality one assumes is based on theory of the intelligent promotion of one's interest.
I mean, we as rational human being would choose choices that serve us more than that which could hurt or impair us.
So, we as humans are of the tendency to self serve our self interest.

The note to consider is that in the matter of self-serve for reasons of self-interest; one can adversely affect ones relations with others.
I mean, why would anyone want to associate with one who plainly only sees his or her own interest and no other.
In such a case our own interest cannot serve our self-interest.

Which could mean that we are not as rational as we make ourselves out to be.
Perhaps true, we are irrational beings.
Or perhaps we define rationality erroneously.

rules of engagement

Individuals and their actions are just in so far as they conform to the demands of just social behaviour.
If society per se would not condemn such an action, the individual would be free to act out in the manner he/she deems fit till such time that society condemns that action. By society we mean, institutions set up by society. It is not society per se that corrects but we would have the law and specified people enforcing these laws and specified people challenging erroneous convictions.

So in so far as these institutions are capable to correct any such misdemeanour or apprehend such demeanour, the individual would refrain from doing so.
However as far as the societal institution is incapacitated or plain neglectful to correct the mis-demeanour, the individual would plainly flout the acceptable norms of social behaviour or interactions.

How such institutions are specified and integrated into a social system deeply affects people's characters, desires and plans and future prospects as well as the kind of persons they aspire to be. Because of the profound effect of these institutions on the kinds of persons we are; the basic structure of
institutions in society can be a moot driver of peoples actions.

Makes one wonder how Indians who have migrated are very different from the Indians who continue to dwell in the homeland.
It is not that the Indian overseas are given a course of societal behavior as soon as the cross into a foreign country, but the Indian overseas immediately recongnises that his behavior if in err can immediately call for correction given the institutions in the foreign nation.

Perhaps this is why, people overseas don't take a leak in public, honk the living daylights in traffic, break a queue but wait their turn, litter public places, .....

I have till about a few minutes ago, believed that where you are from has a lot to do with what you become, A recent reading shed some light on that subject,
for I had presumed that it is ones upbringing or societal background that can determine ones attitude or personality.
However it seems that the actual mould is not where we are from (in terms of born and brought up) but actually the mould of societal institutions that
inculcates or imbibes one with a personality or attitude to function in society.

the cause of 'just' behaviour is functional 'just' institutions.

justifications

Lord Mansfield, an English Judge of the 18the century is said to have advised a young governor in the following manner:

Consider what you think justice requires and decide accordingly. But never give reasons for your judgment/decision, for most certainly your judgment will be right but your reasons provided will be wrong.

What he was trying to convey was that one's judgment need not be reported with a reason, the reasons should be kept private or for that matter discrete.

People often tend to qualify their judgment with a reason perhaps we humans require to justify our actions. Well we as humans want to do right or be just.
Which is why post any war we humans justify all that massacre with humanitarian aid.

Any decision given our limitations of experience and knowledge would be one that is comparatively right and not one that is perfect or ideal. And this comparative perfection can be rendered imperfect.
Lord Mansfield here is advising his young patron against providing the reason of justification even if our judgment is right.

Err a justification & that judgment will tumult.

safety first

Well the city traffic police are taking strict measures to endorse safety while driving.

I got fined for not wearing the seatbelt.
The irony was my cousin in the passenger seat had strapped his seat belt while I thought it better to simply flout the tenet.
What about the folks in Rickshaws, are their lives less valuable?
They do not require seatbelts as they do not have seatbelts or is it that they do not have seatbelts as they do not require seatbelts.
Well in India seatbelts are a luxury, I remember Suzuki 800 in '84 used to charge additional for the seatbelt, they used to call it a luxury accessory.
Yes, a luxury accessory for those who consider their lives valuable!

And another time I got fined for speeding.
Where are speed limits posted on the damn road. I have no idea I am yet to see one in the stretch I drive. I was told, I was doing 72km/hr in a 70km/hr zone.
At one time I saw a speed limit post of 40km/hr.
No point bringing that up, who drives at 40km/hr or who can drive at 40km/hr on the highway.

Yet another time, I was halted for not putting on the Hazard while crossing a junction.
The cop who stood me, said that when I intend to go straight at a crossing, I need to switch my hazards on. Yup, this cop had it that left indicator is to go left, right indicator to go right, and both indicators to go straight.

I finally came across the news that the city traffic police coffers are empty.
That explains at lot!

that is life...

had a cousin who passed away in a road accident.
He was 24.

either.....you die at a very young age, or you live long enough to watch your friends and family die. sometimes life is just like that.

Maybe it isn't about living or dying.
maybe we are just too focused on our lives or too focused on who died.

maybe it is not about us living till 94 or dying at 24, perhaps it is all about how you finally go!

it's about what we were able to do till then.....

'So do I,' said Gandalf, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
-- Gandalf,
J.R.R. Tolkien,
Fellowship of the Ring, Second chapter,
"The Shadow of the Past",

getting to the summit

Reaching the summit of a mountain doesn't mean jack if you don't make it back down to base camp.

employer and employee

the biggest similarity between an employee and an employer:

'It doesn't matter what school you went to or to whom you are related. It matters what you do'.

which is in itself odd, we are recruited on the basis of an education or experience but once we are in, those parameters don't have any importance whatsoever.

education and work

In our days of education we pay to be educated.
Which is, we pay fees and we work to educate ourselves.
I can't see why this can be encouraging but somehow most of us get by doing this.
It is a cost to be educated.
The way it is rationalised is 'it pays to be educated'.

Which is right in a sense, for when we look at gainful employment, we are offered a pay to work. Which seems bizarre given all those years where we had paid to get educated and now for some strange reason given our education; employers seem willing to pay us to work.

For most of us who do begin employment, we yearn those years, when we were at school and are willing to get back to school and pay to get educated.
We seem to weigh the cost lighter than the pay.

That could be bcoz we as humans are plain lazy.
But I can bet that this is the only time, we choose a cost to be lighter than a pay.

heroes and idols

most folks idolize film stars for the films they have done.
Actually there is a charm in that, I mean you go watch a film and you don't know anything about the film star's personal lives, and all that you know is what the film tells you about the actor and what he or she makes real for you.

Mysteries can be great!
The experience of watching and living the film can be exhilarating.
That experience you live can make a film iconic for you.

You don't know how the film stars live their personal lives, what they eat, and whom they are dating. You watch them for the experience the film renders.
You watch the film because it is real as long as you have no more information about that stars than what the film provides.
I think that is one reason why Star Wars was such a success!

It is very liberating for film watchers.
Especially when you are young, I mean I would believe most of what I watched.
It all true, it is.....till you begin to know more about the film stars and the concept depicted in the film is all a lie.

As it is often reported: Ignorance is Bliss, at least for as long at it lasts.

mouthshut.com

My egregious cousin thinks I am shy.
Actually he is right!, I can't deny him that, however he derives the attribute on the fact that I usually speak little.
Somehow my sombre silence seems to communicate that I am a shy guy.

Well, what can I say, I don't like a lot of attention, and I find being invisible very entertaining. More often than not, I like to know how people think, and the only way I am going to know that is if I keep quiet.

Besides, I don't fancy my own voice.
You may find this unbelievable, but if you chance upon an opportunity to just hear yourself speak, I mean an actual playback of your voice, you are in for a surprise!
Trust me, that could sober you up pretty quick.

My sombre silence is on account of a private policy I have embraced.

I think in part this is from empirical experience and part from a film of Marlon Brando, who plays a mob boss in The Freshman:
His quote:
“Every word I say, by definition, is a promise.”

The best way to avoid breaking promises is not to make any, and that's as good a reason to speak less and ergo commit less.

development vs education

Most politicians in China are engineers.
The profession also precludes their manner of thinking on development.
In China, their infrastructure are engineering feats - highways, buildings, malls, dams, cities, etc

These kind of infrastructural feats require a long term focus.
Infrastructure projects require large investments with a ROI over a long period of time. Given the nature of the scale of investments and time period required to recoup these investments, governments more than private entities look at infrastructural projects.
And a governments ability to do such projects on development are pretty much dependent on the polity of the country.

As these kind of projects take a long time to reap a return the projects are planned
with a long term focus in terms of their use, utility and application.

If you look at most of the roads, railways and bridges in India we should be
thankful to British Engineers.

We in India, have been using these networks even today that the British constructed about 100 years ago. That is what long term thinking yields - projects that can be used over long period of time.

The China we see today is about engineering. Their engineering feats have paved the way to a structured development of towns and cities. So in China, we have on one hand the polity from an engineering background and their social development and planing employing engineering.

The moot point is did this change begin with a polity being educated as engineers or a development that required engineers.
The query is that of development vis a vis education.

In India, the emphasis has been on education rather than on development. Since independence, India has focused primarily on Education. Ironically Education levels seems to have stagnated at some threshold level of 60%-70% across states.

On the other hand, I can't say the emphasis has not been on development, as ironically we still face infrastructural bottlenecks, improper planing and shoddy execution. Development in India, very particularly lacks the kind of feats that China has accomplished. Our Infrastructure seems to lack long term planing, and so our cities are clogged and suffers from an influx of immigrants from town and villages.

The question is, China has been able to use education (engineering) to fuel
their development. While we have not been able to use education to fuel our development as compared to similar development in China.

It could be that our polity lacks Engineers. And so the polity does not have a government that can make serious steps in development. The profession of lawyers comes second to the profession that most politicians in our country seem to have.
The profession that most politicians in our Cabinet have is 'Others'.(So states the Economist). My guess is the profession termed 'Others' is used to make up for the lack of a serious one. I guess since we have our country run by non-professionals, or the ones who have no profession, the results in our infrastructure and development are evident.

Mature economies like UK and USA have politicians who are lawyers. But then they being mature democracies have plateaued on development needs. In addition, these economies have systems that perhaps need to be maintained or continued and lawyers are rightly suited for this role. So in a sense at their scale, lawyers in the polity would still serve their needs.

A young country like ours which is 60 years old needs a polity that can bring about development and we need a polity that is professionally educated to bring about such development. A polity with no profession serves a severe impediment to our country.

the rise of politics as a profession

China favours engineers as political leaders, Egypt likes people from the academia; South Korea - civil servants; Brazil - doctors — and the United States, of course, lawyers; so reports the Economist.

The report is not very descriptive about India.
But of the chart provided in The Economist, 38% of Indian politicians arise from a professional background termed 'Others'.
This profession termed 'Others' excludes professions such as Academia, Business, Civil Service, Diplomacy, Economics, Engineering, Law, Medicine, Military and Teaching. If it does exclude the common known professions it makes one wonder what would this profession 'Others' include.

I am thinking Tailors, Cobblers, Blacksmiths, or even plain crooks and criminals.
One such minister, that I am aware about is a humble Tailor and perhaps the others I am unaware of are or could be crooks and criminals.

Perhaps a bunch of them just can't be classified under any profession simply because they have none.

But if they have no professional qualifications than that what is termed 'Others' what gets these politicians elected, I mean why would anyone vote for any one such imbecile who can't wager a profession or skill that he has gained or learned.

The study implies it is lineage. Familial relations gets the next of kin in line into politics and so starts politics as a career option.
What begins as a career option gets seriously to be a profession.
The lack of a profession outside that of politics keeps these individuals out of all other activities but that of politics.

A career entry into politics in itself calls for development and training into the vagaries of politics. Its the only profession which involves an on-the-job training.

The flip side is that with no professional qualification or external experience but that accruing from experience as a politician, makes one heck of an infirm politicians with an impediment to cultivating social development or meeting aspirational needs of the constituency.

Besides, political lineage being a requirement to foray into politics creates a barrier to people from the industry to join the political stream. Goodwill as an Economist or Businessman alone would not count. It necessitates a political career that one needs to establish from scratch or inherit by being of a political family.
Very unlike Mayor Bloomberg of NYC who is Businessman.

As the kin of a politician ergo does foray into politics; does a political office earn an income or a political career? Emoluments from a political office are meagre and seldom does such a novice gain a political office in his initial years. One can infer that earnings in a political career are in kind and in terms of favours.

It would be interesting to find out whether this percentage of 'Others' is increasing or decreasing.

If this % is increasing then indeed new entrants will find it difficult to enter politics as it would depend all the more on lineage. Political links and connections are either garnered over a period of time or by the fact of political lineage. As political goodwill cannot be garnered on the basis of what was proven outside politics as an Academician, Economist or Business person.

If the % is decreasing then it could mean that we are heading towards a senate that can represents the people and is open to those who can represent the needs and demands of a constituency, unlike at present where the senate is one that represents its own interests by lineage or cliques.

voter apathy

bomb blasts had rocked Mumbai in December 2008 and on April 2009, the city cast its vote to elect a PM for the next 5 year term.

I would have thought that the bombing incident would have somehow led to a big voter turnout to cast their ballots. The bomb incident should have polarised people to voice their concerns about insecurity, infrastructure and general social well being in the city.
As a matter of fact these concerns would have been no different in any other city or state in India.

But what is surprising is the last time around, the voter turnout was greater than it has been this time around. Last election the city had a voter turnout of 47%, this time around the voter turnout has been 43%.

4% lower than the erstwhile term of polls.

Though there has been a decrease in voter turnout, there has been an increase in the number of independents standing this time around for elections in their constituency.

I think the voters including me are apathetic to the present clan of politicians, though one could exercise a vote favouring an alternate political leadership this time around, I think the people (including moi) have smartened up to the fact that a change in political leadership alone will not yield an efficacious and efficient system for the city of Mumbai.

The existing political leadership whether outgoing leadership or the one vying to come to power have no vested interest to clean up their act, the only vested interest that they harbour is to come to power. Besides once in power, these leaders seem to have some inertia to act on the need of the city, as though there is some nexus between the chaos that ensues in the city and inability to eradicate the infirmity of the city.

It is logical and plainly clear to most of us common folk in the city where we need to clean up and what we need, we are a pretty aware and conscious lot of people, albeit though much is desired and known, seldom little or nothing gets transformed from desire to reality.

Given that diktat, little can be expected in terms of change or much less can be expected interms of a makeover for the city.

So we have a lower voter turnout despite the Mumbai bomb blasts in tandem we have a rise in the number of independents trying to do their bit or at least to profess that can achieve something where the politicians have failed.

It would be interesting to note if will can transform this city or is this an endemic and congenital problem with us Indians that gets us running around everywhere (ironically getting nowhere) as though our hair is on fire.
We have a terrible inertia to change.
That seems to be our legacy....one that we was handed over to us 1947.
Since then we have been stuck.

predicting the past

would one take a person who can predict the past seriously?
It sounds silly, but why would anyone be inclined to take someone who can
predict the past seriously.
One would be surprised to find out this is generally what we do.

A seer, usually engages the interest of a potential patron by
providing information about ones past with no details from the patron.

A seer when he has established sufficient credibility to be believed upon,
would profess to predict your future.

Herein lies the blind spot.
We do not live our future based on yesterday or that of the day before.
A converse would be we have not lived the yesterday based on our tomorrow.

If the seer indeed was so proficient in predicting ones future, he
should have done better of his own future.
I mean why would he care to remain a seer rendering his quant services
when he could be a nuclear physicist or stock broker or a punter or a bookie placing all the right bets.

To predict the future of at least inanimate objects, one needs to know of precisely the position of every element in the universe and how it does play a role in affecting our position in the present and in the future.

This can be explained by the Berry experiment who illustrated the assumptions required to predict the positions of the billiard balls on a table.
By the ninth impact of the ball, you would have to
include the gravitational pull of a person standing near the table. By the 56th impact to calculate the position of the ball, one would have include every particle in the universe.

A parallel to the Berry experiment was Lorenzo discovery of the Butterfly effect.
He was working on a computer simulation of a weather system that predicted the weather a few days head. On re-running the experiment he found that he got completely different results.
He found that on rounding off just a single input parameter changed the results from his first simulation run.

Despite the limitation in predicting the future of the weather or the 56th impact of a billiard ball, common folk would read horoscopes and meander with astrology...

the pay offs

most of us try and choose professional careers on account of the pay off's from such a profession.
We choose to be Doctors and Engineers and MBA's, because the payoffs that get us employment from such a qualification is better than we would earn with a Basic Arts and Sciences degree.

We hope that our above incomes on account of being a Doctor or an Engineer or an MBA can help us live better lives or for that matter gives us a slightly better leeway in being hedonistic.

A rise in income also raises the sceptre of expenses.
We usually raise our expenses to our incomes.
We usually adjust our lifestyle that suit our incomes.

If we calculate the percentage on an income per month to that of the year as a whole, the percentage of income per month would be equal for the entire period of the year, if our profession qualifies a bonus at the end of the year, such a bonus would raise the percentage for that month, but would still be of little consequence for the entire year.

We would not look as a the bonus as a payoff, such that the bonus affects the percentage yield to a large extent.
In such a case, the bonus would be absorbed in our expenses or lifestyle.

However there are pay-offs that can alter one's life than lifestyle.
The pay-off that is scalable.

As an employee for a firm, the pay-offs are not scalable.
What I mean is an employee can only be employed at a single firm, his emoluments would be derived on his time spent working at the firm. Firms do not pay employee for absence but their presence and since the employee is limited to working for a single firm and thus deriving his income, the limits to scale this income model is limited.

However there are employments, where in the pay-offs are scalable.
As in the case of successful actors - their one film can be watched by multiple people, thus allowing them to earn supernatural payoffs.
A successful restaurant chain - McDonald's, Burger King, etc
Various business enterprise - from MNC to SME.

The key to the payoffs is that they can looked as a fund to free the mind from daily paraphernalia to some quality thinking.

The payoffs thus are not in terms of a constant emolument as we see in salary earned from the profession of an Engineer or Doctor or an MBA (as rise in income will usually be met by a rise in expenses), but payoffs that results in a windfall gain that raises the percentage of income over the whole by a significant extent.

news

news is as insipid as it can get.
there are a barrage of news channels, also seeming to report the same information - a tad serendipitously.

an analysis of events or study has long been left behind, news as it is today is just presentation of information. the viewer can come to his own conclusion.
at times if there is an analysis the results all seem to cluster around the same framework.

and news gets so repetitious, the same tit-bit of information, presented over and over again, .....what can I say, friend I heard you and saw you the first time....
move on.....

news channels seem to assign reasons of an event to a common set of circumstances.
the dollar appreciated today because of inflation........after about 2 months, the same broadcaster would present the very same reason for the opposite effect.
the dollar depreciated today because of inflation....

where does it leave the common man.....

I guess he is left to derive his own conclusions.

I guess he is also left to find his own information and do his own research.

experts and specialists

our mind usually tends to focus on well defined forms and facts.
What we have been able to define by these forms and ideas is what we grasp, and what we grasp creates the context of our environment.

From generalities we have been able to grasp specifics and these specifics have developed into a specialisation over a period of time. Our environment is composed of such specifics and specialisations.
Doctors, Lawyers, Equity Investors, Bankers, Sociologists, are specialists in their field or profession.

These professions were formed partly by our recognition of such a need in our environment and today we choose these forms and ideas to represent ourselves by way of a profession in the environment.

Each of these professions are composed of definite forms and ideas, each have their uniqueness, ideas and specialisations. And people who take up one of these professions get molded to a form of thinking that is requisite of that profession.

When the well defined ideas and notions inhabit our thinking we usually are unaware or ignorant about the specialisations and uniqueness of other professions. In time, we usually begin to infer that we understand more than we usually do.

We tend to extrapolate our experiences from one profession and make decisions on presumptions about the other.
If a person is a Doctor by profession, she could also be a financial investor in stock or an real estate investor or ascribing to legal codes in trading.
As a Doctor specialised in medicine one does make general decisions about various other specialisations be it stocks, real estate or the law.

How good these financial decisions are vis a vis a Financial Expert or vis a vis a Lawyer would be circumspect, but such kind of decisions are made in our lives.

Though being specialists in one field we do delve into other fields with no specialisation, though our profession is one, we do bank, we do make investments in stocks, we conform to legal codes, though our knowledge is limited in these peripheral fields given the specifics of our profession, we tend to interpret or infer our understanding in these peripheral fields.

Our lives does interplay with these other specialities.
But given our profession or speciality, there is a knowledge gap between what we know of these other specialities and what we think we know of these specialities which introduces an improbability or uncertainty in our functioning and thinking.

The point is not that this is wrong, but the danger lies between what you know and what you think you know for those ideas/forms that do not form our speciality.

In the old days, the specialists were few and far between, most people were concerned with their farms, live stock and house. Our great grand fathers were specialists in cultivating food, providing shelter and defending their own.
The disconnect even if there was any would not lead to a great uncertainty in their farms, live stock and house such that it would impact their existence and lives dearly.
They were in essence generalists and being generalists they risked less.

Today given our environment and the need to be specialists, we risk more albeit unknowingly.

The crux is that if we risk so much being specialists on account of our profession, and this is the realm of what we know, imagine what we risk on account of being unaware or uninformed.

How many of us would have predicted the rise of fuel costs, the fall of banks where we keep half our savings, the fall of insurance firms where we have the other half of our savings, the loss of homes or investments with the sub-prime fall out.....

Specialisations comes at a cost...and a risk....
But then pay offs from specialisations can be great too.....

the science of discovery

happen to finish reading a book titled 'The Innovators' Dilemma'.
The book is a good read, is replete and descriptive of examples and life cycle curves of the computer hard drive industry - laying emphasis to the fact that the innovations that are the norm or part of the computer industry today, came from smaller firms.
It goes on to explain what favoured the smaller firms compared to the bigger established players at that time.

The book also clearly points out that the established firms were not ignorant or unaware about the technologies that the smaller firms were promoting.

Not that these technologies were not apparent to the bigger firms but the bigger firms having ploughed investments in their scope of business failed to push the novel technologies in their own company to the fore letting other competing smaller firms to push these novel solutions.
The bigger firms were not betting on these nouvelle solution.
Their market research was telling them that such a market for the nouvelle does not exist.

So what actually favoured the rise of these novel technologies and small firms to make it big in the market place.

The smaller firms had a serious lack of distribution networks, clients and a marketing plan, probably even few believers in their product, but the factor that did help some smaller firms to succeed was the event of a black swan.

Such events lie outside the realm of normal expectations and they end up having an extreme impact on the environment.

Today after the occurrence of the event or the sure place that such firms have in the market place, making it all explainable and predictable, these events happened by an element of chance and also the fact that they were in the right place at the right time with some thing right.

But since none of us knew any of these right things before the event these events are pure chance or black swans.

The strategy for the entrepreneur or the innovator is to rely less on top down planing and focus on maximum tinkering with opportunities as they present themselves.

your last suit

A Danish adage:

Your last suit doesn't have any pockets.' You can't take it with you. You can make all the money you want, but who cares?

product and era

every product comes of a certain age.
They have an indelible stamp of their beginnings.

cars have had a beginning in the 1900's.
guns in the 1800's.
Rail in the 1850's.
telephones in the 1900's.

they would have taken a modest investments in the beginning.
But as they scale upwards to supply to the masses the investments in capital is huge.

In 1903, Ford in setting up his initial assembly plant for the Model T was able to do so with USD 100,000.
In the 1960, Ford required USD 60 million of investments in its assembly line for the Mustang.
At that time its total investments was USD 6 billion.

Most products in their life cycle require more investments as the product begins to get sophisticated or specialized as in the case of cars.

Today a re jig on its assembly line for a new line of vehicles would require an humongous source of capital. The big 3 Detroit car makers Chrysler, Ford and GM are looking to the government for funds so as to sustain their product lines in a recessionary market.

What this could imply is that products can become sophisticated or specialised such that they can be rendered uneconomical in market downturns.
What one can also infer is that the product lines are outmoded in the current era.

Just as we find running an old car less fuel efficient or uneconomical, maybe products that require such kind of uneconomic investments should be laid to rest.
The fault lies with the car companies itself, to not have invested adequately to come up alternate or superior products to reduce investments in capital machinery.

Technology generally renders the traditional to be uneconomic or inefficient.
Locomotives outmoded the camel and horse.
Airlines outmoded Ocean Liners.

Markets generally align to newer cost effective alternatives.
In such a case, should companies that are outmoded be baled out.

Since there isn't as on date an alternative to the personal car, it looks unlikely.
And as long as cars are dependent on fossil fuels, a newer novel invention from them is highly unlikely.

in all likelihood the big 3 would be baled out by the government.

oxymoron

China is a socialist state with a capitalist economic system (a product of democracy however China is not a democratic state).

We are a democratic state with a socialist economic system. We should have a capitalist economic system and free trade, no barriers but strangely we have a protectionist socialist economic system.

Our free democratic system should have created universities, laboratories, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, inventors, innovators, multinationals and free markets, we seem to have these but they are still lacking vis a vis a USA or W.Europe.

The one thing China does have that we don't is: they have a vision for the future and they know when and how to achieve it.

We have a vision for the future too, but we get lost in the politics, bureaucracy, voters backlash, special interest groups, lobbyists, minorities, backward classes,
etc.

Despite all that paraphernalia, we seem to have got somewhere but the paraphernalia is making our progress much slower, it is holding us back and at the pace we are going I don't know if this pace will mean anything for us for the future.
We may not be someone to reckon with for the future.

We seem to have chosen democracy and not yet savoured its fruits in a capitalist economy.
China seems to have chosen socialism but has enabled a capitalist institution to function that is reaping them dividends.

Dividends that should accrue to us on choosing democracy.

walk the talk

On a recent visit to China, I happen to see that there is a great disparity in our walk.
I hear a lot of talk about India being the powerhouse of services and China the powerhouse of manufacturing, but this recent visit kind of made it clear that we can claim to be a powerhouse of sorts but we may not be any powerhouse in the future, though at present we seem to have go something going that has given us some lead over our Asian counterparts.

If you look at our walk and ignore a lot of our talk, I would have to conclude that we have no sense of urgency when it comes to infrastructure, civic planing, resource efficiency and research.
It is as if the the Asian world is doing a lot more on these fronts and we just get up everyday, have a shower and go to work. There is no innovation or
inventions or even for that matter solutions addressing these needs; we just hope and expect that the problems we face with our billion plus people the urbanisation of towns and villages are going to sort themselves out by itself.

In China, however I see a definite plan and action.
I can see them walking the talk.
For us in India it is all talk.

the pack

The truth of a proposition is independent of how many believe it to be true.
The merits of such a proposition is likewise not enhanced by the number of people supporting it or making similar propositions.

Never the less, we as humans, rather stick with propositions that are more commonly ascribed than true.

swiss banks,

the swiss banking tradition is one of being discreet about its customers.
the point being they cater to customers who have wealth to hide or rather one that needn't want the rest of the lesser folks to know about their wealth, its all about being discreet...

swiss banks cater to that market of keeping ones wealth secret.

however the swiss banking tradition is completely lost out on Generation X, especially those who have become rich with a change in market dynamics especially so from the dot com boom, real estate, IT, retail, etc. The nouveau rich GEN-X have nothing to hide, I mean it is fairly common knowledge who got rich on the bourses, or who is the new CEO of these new market firms, or who sold his/her stock options, or who came up with yahoo or google or hotmail, or who is the world richest folks from the Forbes 500, such folks have really nothing to hide.

Their names are featured in books, newspapers, magazines and even if they do intend to be discreet, these folks all made money on stock, the stock exchanges hold information about who sold what and who bought what...there is no place to be secretive in such a market mechanism.

So why do the Swiss banks still do business or rather where are the customers that still needs their identity and wealth information to be kept discreet.

I mean the point of wealth is you've got it, flaunt it.
But then again you want to be discreet when wealth is garnered by unscrupulous means.

any sane person would dread banking with Swiss banks whose affiliations and customers are unscrupulous folks. Folks who their identity disclosed, as their income is from unscrupulous means.

But let's face it, most of us really just want to be able to say, "Oh, I'll wire the money from my Swiss bank account."

It is as though we would want to imply that we have income from unscrupulous means!

the next....

I happen to take the mumbai city train after quiet awhile.
It was packed with people and I think it was more crowded than I last remember.

looking at all these people who use the train to commute everyday to work and back, you wonder if ever some soul paused to consider.....

every morning they would get up and they would be on the train, today and the tomorrow and the day after....seldom if ever pausing to re-consider that commute.
I doubt if they would consider not taking the commute...too much depended on them to decide against the commute.

...the commute, that was their world.
I doubt if ever they could leave that world behind.....

for someone new here, all these people at the station, travelling to where they have to be every morning, the way they literally hang out of the trains at peak hours desperately wanting to get to where ever they have to, all that jazz everyday is pretty scary.

what I think is scarier is

once you get to the place and wonder:
What's the point of getting here?

this appears as a reasonable question, but this scares the daylight out of me.
I mean all those years you thought you were doing something and it finally comes down to a question of: What's the point of getting here?

most people would be scared the way people commute back and forth.
what scares me is if your commute is getting you anywhere....

the tic

a causal conversation with teenagers today gives you a pretty good idea on which words he/she uses more often than you would consider appropriate in a conversation, which makes you wonder, is this how I was when I was a teenager.

One such teenage cousin of mine, has the banal use of the word 'so'; perhaps he felt it necessary to begin his sentences with 'so' or interject them with a 'so'.

So, you I see I studying this subject.
So, I am from here....
So, I scored pretty well in this exam

perhaps maybe teens feel the use of a 'so' cuts boundaries and barriers between a 30 something (yours truly) and a teen.

come to think of it, you hear some of these young teens speak and there seems to be some sort of a verbal tic that's got a hold of them....,

so...
like...
obviously....
generally....
basically....

could be the teen years or some kind of an infection that makes you mutter the 'tic' every now and then, maybe some kind of reassurance with the constant verbal chant of the 'tic' now and then...

now, I wonder what was mine....and if I sounded this silly with the verbal tic...

the year

One year has gone by and another has begun.

Well if we didn't get things right the last year around....
it gives us an opportunity to get it right this time around....

Hope makes it worthwhile....I guess