HUMANITY GOES MAD

A  WIDE  CANVAS

HUMANITY GOES MAD

Violent leaders and mass killings

We know that people get mad. But can  whole societies turn insane? And the whole humanity? This may sound illogical, for does such a proposition exclude the person who makes it? How can a mad person recognise that others are mad?

Let us leave such profound questions  to philosophers and psychologists. Let us consider just a few facts recorded in recent twentieth century history- a century advanced in hard science, and other social sciences. Let us take just one facet of it.

- Nazis under Hitler killed 6 million Jews and 11 million others between 1937 and 1945.

Hungarian Jews on the ramp at the death camp at Auschwitz-II, 1944.
Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

- Stalin and his commie cadres killed 23 million Russians of different ethnicities. This is apart from the 20 million killed in the world war.

Starved peasants lying on the street in Kharkhiv-1933
Public domain. via wikimedia Commons.

Mass graves of people killed in the Ukraine 1937-38 opened up subsequently to exhume the body for identification .
Public domain via Wikimedia commons.



-Mao Zedong killed an estimated 49 to 78 million people in China during the Great Leap and Cultural Revolution years. China under Mao occupied Tibet too, which was acquiesced in  by Nehru.

- Japan killed between 3 and 10 million Asians between 1937 and 1945, in what is known as the 'War Crimes'. 

Chinese killed by the Japanese in 1938 filled in a ditch.
Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.


Two World Wars

This is apart from the millions killed in the two World Wars, which took place essentially among Christian nations, sharing the same civilisation, and enjoying similar standards!

First World War: Killed: 10 million military + 7 million civilians.
Wounded:    20 million.
Second World  War:  Military personnel Killed: 60 million direct+ 20 million indirect 
 Civilians:  50-55 million killed.                         

How do we call this phenomenon which connected such disparate people in different parts of the world during the same period  in such acts of uncontrolled  violent frenzy?? Does it not  appear that humanity was seized by some madness? How do we account for the fact that the people of Germany, quite  educated and civilised, allowed the Holocaust to happen?  Was the whole thing merely a human act?  What were the Christian leaders doing then? Well, what did God himself do, permitting all this violence? No wonder, many people lost faith in God and religion.

Wars after the World War

If we take time to pause and think, violence has not stopped with the end of the world wars. We have had other wars as in Korea, Vietnam, in the Middle East. Then we  had dictators like Pol Pot killing their own people, all civilians. It may surprise many to know that there has not been a single year since 1945 which has been free from war ! Wars, insurgencies, civil wars,etc have been occurring in some part of the world or the other, almost non-stop! 

Just look at some of them:

1.Yakubu Gowon.  Christian-Communist. He killed I million civilians and 1,00,000 soldiers in Nigeria, in a civil war with a different faction. This was known as war with the Republic of Biafra. (A product of Sandhurst, he settled in the UK after his overthrow in 1976, obtained a Phd from some university, became a Church leader and is today considered an elder statesman!)

2. Mengistu Haile Mariam. Communist. Ethiopia. In the 'Red Terror' between 1974 and 1991, he got between 4,00,000 and 1.5 million Ethiopians killed.

3. Kim II Sung, Communist, North Korea.
He caused 1.6 million deaths.

4.Pol Pot. Communist, Cambodia.
His death tally is between 1.7 to 2.5 million, all Cambodians.

5. Ismail Enver Pasha, Turkey. 
Between 1915 and 1922, he killed 2.5 million people, mostly Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians.

6. Leopold II of Belgium. In establishing his colony in the Congo ( to which the US extended its support) he killed  between 2 and 15 million people there.

Full details are available at various sites on the Web. On the basis of absolute numbers alone, Mao Zedong emerges as the king of the cut-throats, by a large margin. 

And now, the Muslims seem to have taken over the relay race. I do not know whether anyone has kept account of the killings, which various  groups have indulged in so far, and it is still continuing on a daily basis. It is mostly among the Muslims themselves.

 While we have a useless UN watching, most western countries, which are supposed to be 'liberal democracies' are extremely cautious and muted in their their opposition and criticism. On the US campuses, such groups have even their apologists. Those who ask what the Germans were doing when the Nazis rose, should ask what the West is doing now in the light of the current violence. And the lights have not yet gone out!

Does not all of this appear to be madness?

Poverty in the world

Then there is another kind of madness reigning  in the world.

In this age of science and technology, fully 20% of the world population is in officially defined poverty. That is one in every five persons living on earth.. Economic 'science' is supposed to be very advanced, with even a Nobel memorial prize to reward the economists. Yet, they are not even agreed on a proper definition of poverty, on proper ways to identify and measure it. How can we expect them to come up with solutions? They may be 'doctors of philosophy' but these doctors get paid to only define  the problem and refine the theories, and possibly to contribute something  to the problems themselves as advisers, and not for solving them. 

War among the economists

But the fun does not end there. We have two broad groups of economists- the Conservatives- the Neoclassical, or simply the Right; and the liberal, leftists.  Each group considers the other idiotic, if not lunatic. If you read their literature, the Right shows how the so called liberal policies- which focus on the expansion of the  public sector, bureaucracy, and govt spending will not work, but lead to inflation, unemployment, corruption, unbalanced budgets , debt accumulation and national bankruptcy, and shrinking of our freedoms. If you read the literature of the liberal-left group, you will be convinced that the so called market economy is the foulest, vilest arrangement human selfishness has invented for human misery, deceit and degradation, and it should not be working. The result is that both groups agree that the economy is not in good shape! And in a country like the US and the UK, both groups get their chance to form the govt and run the economy, so that they both get rather equal opportunities to ruin it too. Any way, most of us experience the economic distress to varying degree, so we need no certificate from any economist! If one reads a serious economic journal like The Economist for ten weeks, one would know, without any doubt, that the economies of the world are all rotten, no matter  whether the ruling establishment is right, left  or anything else. Thus, the overall conclusion of the serious economic literature is that economics does not work!

Madness of Growth

Then both the left and the right share a madness with equal passion: Growth. This is probably the only thing on earth on which they are agreed, apart from money.( No leftist economist has so far voluntarily agreed to forgo or reduce his emoluments, and work for the honour of it. All work for the money,no less than the 'capitalists'. And the Indian left-oriented liberal economists only wait for a chance to go to that citadel of capitalism- the US-, in preference to the Indian universities! And the big- mouthed critics of capitalism  and liberal icons like Noam Chomsky, the Clintons, Ralph Nader,Michael Moore , Edward Kennedy,etc are all big time investors and beneficiaries of capitalist crime, which is the stock market.See the book: "Do As I Say ( Not As I Do) by Peter Schweizer. Doubleday, 2005.

Mad fascination with GDP

 Growth is measured by GDP. But what does the GDP measure? GDP measures the money value of domestic production- all production that passes through the market. 

Now, look at this. When a factory works, when raw materials are used up, it results in pollution.When minerals are dug up, the area is despoiled. When a huge dam is constructed, people are displaced, the local ecology changes. When a car runs, it causes pollution. Where and how does all  this pollution enter the GDP?

 Take a recent case. In constructing a new 4-lane highway between two towns in Tamil Nadu- Krishnagiri and Tiruvannamalai, a distance of 130 km - they felled 19,000 fully grown, nearly 100 year old giant trees. (This is the official figure- we know how contractors work and count!) All the expenditure incurred in the construction of the highway has entered the GDP. But what about the felled trees? Did they add to the GDP? Where is it accounted and how? Most of the felled trees were full blown tamarind trees. Tamarind is a staple item of consumption in South Indian households, being an essential food ingredient. Who will count the continuing loss of this source? What about the permanent environmental loss caused by the felling of 19000 trees?

Or take another instance. When a state like Tamil Nadu or Gujarat facilitates setting up of automobile plants by foreign or Indian companies, and allots thousands of acres of fertile agricultural lands, economists talk of investment, employment, GDP etc. Who takes into to account the loss of a permanent non-renewable resource like agricultural land, the resulting loss of agricultural output, the loss of independent livelihood of thousands of farmers? Or, who bothers about the pollution caused by the plant's manufacturing processes? Where do they enter the GDP and how?

And despite the claims of the economists about the growth in GDP, most people report in most countries that they are not happy! In many countries, the average worker has to work more to maintain his income. In sectors like IT, the working hours have increased. As the Skidelskys have shown, to day the more qualified people have to work more, to be able to afford their standards! Considering all this, thinkers have been saying that GDP should not be considered the sole measure of total 'welfare'. In 2010, British PM  David Cameron suggested that we must have a new "well being index" to supplement the GDP. In fact it is only the fanatics among the economists who still swear by the GDP.

 Simon  Kuznets, who first developed the comprehensive measures of national income accounting in 1934, warned that the numbers should not be taken as precise measurements, and indicators of absolute certainty, and said in 1962:

Distinction must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between costs and returns,and between short and long run. Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what  and for what.

From: www.cu.uoc.edu/web/-mcooperacion/aulas/economics/Images/GDP3-jpg.
Copyright status not stated. Used here purely for educational, non-commercial purposes.

GDP is the problem!


Apart from any philosophical considerations,  there are solid economic objections to GDP as a measure of economic performance. Some of them:

• it does not take into account the damage caused to the environment. It does not even take into account that most non-renewable resources are used up. This restricts the economic freedom and choice available to future generations. 
• money value of any activity - even if it is unproductive or wasteful- which is reported to the market is included in GDP.
• GDP is not the measure of annual income.For instance, the per capita GDP reported is not the average income of individuals.
• GDP does not include the value of work done outside the market place ie in the informal sector.
• money value measured does not distinguish between wealth generating and capital-consumption activities.

(For detailed criticisms, see the Web. eg. rationalwiki.org/wiki/GDP)

Prof. E.J.Mishan (1917-2014) of the London School of Economics was one of the pioneering economists to point out the fallacies of the idea of continuous growth, saying 'continuous discontent' was 'the precondition of continuous growth'. He also warned the developing countries that blindly following industrialisation was a "thorny path"  to "the wasteland of Subtopia." Such was the hold of the establishment economists, the running dogs of growth, that no publisher came forward to publish his book for two years. This work must now be regarded as the forerunner of all environment-conscious economics, and in a way of the Green movement, even. (on par with Rachel Carson's  'Silent Spring.' )

Such is the state of this dismal science of economics that two of his early books, "The Costs of Economic Growth" and "Twenty One Popular Economic Fallacies" , which are the cornerstone of a reasoned critique of the orthodoxy of both left and right, which I read in  inexpensive Pelican editions in the 60s is now available at an outrageous price ( of more than Rs.7000  and 9000 respectively!)[In spite of my desire to include a picture , I could not get one free of copyright hassles]

But the economists of all tribes have drummed up the GDP as not only the sole index of economic performance, but also as the standard of comparison between countries.

By Aeroid (Own Work)  CC BY-SA 4.0 Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons.

Do such comparisons make any sense?

 And following them the politicians of all hues have embraced growth as the only ideal worth striving for. So belief in growth has now assumed the status of  a new universal  religion that has taken hold of the modern psyche everywhere. 

This is another madness humanity shares now. It has led to race among nations, and commerce has now become a weapon  of war among them.

Conventional wars kill people. Economic growth kills the very environment which makes life possible. In that sense, it promises to be the war that will end all wars! In the calculus invented by the economists, every single step that affects the environment adds  to growth!

People are destroying  the very planet which houses them and call it Growth and Development. Ghar jhalake Diwali manate rahe hain!

Does anything else on earth equal this madness?

OUR CREDULITY AND THEIR CREDIBILITY

A  WIDE  CANVAS

OUR CREDULITY  AND  THEIR CREDIBILITY!

Dependence on Institutions

The common man has to depend on some public institutions and arrangements in day to day life. The govt and its administrative machinery, the educational system, the judiciary, the medical set-up (can we really call it health care?) are some of these. We can add others, like the newspapers, the religious arrangements and organisations etc. But these latter are not indispensable, nor are they without alternatives. But the former categories are indispensable, and we have simply no alternatives, in the normal course. 

In regard to the govt and its direct machinery, we know and experience how inefficient, indifferent and corrupt they are; we have not only no alternative,but there is an element of compulsion or force in them- indeed, a large element of hidden violence. For instance, the Income Tax dispensation now insists on on line filing of returns and providing your mobile phone number. Is it their job to collect taxes or tell us how we must file our returns or what kind of phone we must have? What is the logical connection between income tax and mobile phone? What if someone doesn't choose to have a mobile phone or on line connection? But the Income Tax dept is sarkar within sarkar and few people will dare to take them on. 

Banking - is it bunkum?

Banking is one such modern arrangement  for which most of us have no alternative. We put our savings (if any) in the banks. Yet, how safe are the banks? How safe is our money there?

There is one easy way in which the banks cheat us. The banks give us interest on our deposits. But this interest is lower than the rate of inflation. So that while we get a nominal interest, our principal is losing its value. This can be easily corrected by indexation- directly relating both the value of our deposits and the rate of interest to the rate of inflation, so that the depositor may always get his whole real deposit, and  a 'positive' rate of return ie something above the inflation, as an incentive for saving which is a sacrifice- voluntarily foregoing present consumption and material satisfaction. But our finance ministers and their babu advisers are no more than clerks- petty or glorified - and they do not think of benefiting the savers. And they are ready to slap tax on the nominal interest income too! Are not our finance ministers the biggest robbers in the country? They neatly cut your pocket- the best pickpockets ever! One former Chancellor of the Exchequer said in England that his job in taxation was to 'pluck the quills of the goose making it squeal the least'. But the modern finance ministers know better- they are smarter. They keep smiling and let the inflation do the job! As our poet Majrooh Sultanpuri sang somewhere:

Khud kaate gale subke 
Isse kehtein  business.

We may add;

In maha choron ka hain
Vittha mantri yahan naam!

This is one way our money in banks is not safe.

Taken from: www.caac-iitd/blog/wp.

Banks are inherently unsound!


But there is an even more serious problem, which few people realise- even the educated ones.

Banking activity in India starts with deposits. Deposits are a liability for the banks, on which there is interest burden. They have to be repaid on a definite date or on demand. Banks can pay interest and repay the deposit only if they earn. They earn by lending or investing- ie by creating assets. But these assets are always unsafe and uncertain! The loans cannot be recalled at will, or are not repaid on time,always, sometimes not fully,or not at all. The investments cannot be encashed at will, or at full value, sometimes not at all. The banks publish their balance sheets once a year in audited form. But that is a picture, like a still photograph as on a particular day, and is subject to heavy manipulation. One simple way is this: if on that accounting day, a big loan is not repaid,  the bank will 'reschedule' the loan, or give a new loan to enable the borrower to repay an instalment of the old loan, so that it escapes the label of 'default'. If strict standards are applied, the assets of no bank will fully match its deposit liabilities on any day, leave alone the day of the balance sheet.  If a bank is assessed as a 'gone concern', no balance sheet will stand scrutiny! The balance sheet is really no more than bull shit.

We should understand that banking is inherently unsound.

There are some good, simple souls who ask: will it not be better for the govts to own all the banks, so that there is no possibility of failure? The point is: ownership by govt. will not change the nature of banking! The tiger will be a tiger, in a private circus or a govt zoo! Govt,ownership will not change its stripes.The private circus can at least be held accountable, but no one can force accountability on the govt.

Please understand: I am not blaming any particular finance Minister or govt. I am pointing out some basic features of the system, which are normally obscured by jargon and not understood.  On paper, govt ownership of banks may appear to make the system safer, but it renders the problem worse. And it makes even more victims. The very fact of govt ownership dilutes professional standards and sound management, and leaves the field open for political interference and misdirection. There is lot of back-seat driving, The big govt is always the unseen "boss". No finance minister, or his bureaucratic minions, has been sensible enough to distance ownership from management. Those who extract honey cannot help licking their own hands! No chief executive of a public sector bank in India has had the courage to stand up to even a deputy secretary in the govt.( But they do wait upon  him, ready to please him, for their very appointment is dependent upon the minion's pleasure!)

Just consider what happens in the Indian public sector banking. These banks incur loss. Periodically, govt rescues them by infusing more money. But this is not the money of the Finance Minister or his grandfather. This is money from the tax payers! That is, the govt is using innocent tax payers' money to rescue loss-making banks and their inefficient managements!

Banking- any  banking- is inherently unsound, totally unbalanced ab initio. Let an expert speak:

.....banks, as presently set up, are always technically insolvent. They are technically insolvent from the day they open.Why? Because they accept deposits many of which must be paid back on demand, but then lend money without usually having a comparable right to get it back on demand. The result: on any given day, depositors can "break" the bank by demanding all their money back at once.

This is one of the reasons why "mark-to-market" accounting for banks makes little sense. A literal and rigorous application of it would bankrupt any bank even in normal times. When times are tough, it guarantees that the entire banking system will fail.

From: Hunter Lewis, 'Where Keynes Went Wrong', chapter 15, Axios Press, 2009.

Photo: By Hunter Lewis. CC BY-SA 3.0 creative commons via wikimedia commons.









Central Banks are the problem!


Some knowledgeable persons may honestly ask: do we not have the central banks- the Federal Reserve in the US, the Bank of England, the Reserve Bank of India? Are they not supposed to regulate and supervise the banking system? Yes on paper, no in practice. What the central banks are supposed to do is to act as 'the lender of the last resort'. They provide funds to the banks to enable them to tide over temporary difficulty.

Sealing of the Charter of the Bank of England, 1694.
Public domain via wikimedia commons.

But this should be understood carefully. The 'difficulty' may arise due to ''liquidity" or "solvency" problems. A liquidity problem may be temporary, but the solvency problem is systemic and structural.  It usually is indicative of unsound professional judgement and unsound, even dishonest management. If for instance a bank has lent money against unsound assets, or the assets have deteriorated in quality or turned unrealisable, no central bank can rescue them. No money can rescue a bank from unsound  management or professional policies or decisions or practices. What the central banks are now expected to do is to open up a tap of resources to unsound and failing banks. Because the authorities fear that a banking crisis and failure will spill over to the entire economy or society.

  This reminds us of what we see in Hindi movies. The hero at last has the villain at gun-point. The villain laughs, and coolly points out " Look". When the hero turns to look, he beholds his entire family- mother, wife or beloved, children - kidnapped and held captive by the villain's henchmen. The gun drops automatically from the hero's hands! This is what exactly happens to the banking system. The unsound banks are saved, villains in the banking system are saved, because the authorities fear that the society at large may suffer if the banks are booked. So where does the buck stop?


Alibaba and  the Forty!

 The old story's very title is instructive: "Alibaba and  Forty Thieves" - not 'Alibaba against Forty Thieves'. Alibaba is somehow part of the system.

 So, the central banks are part of the system- in fact they are part of the problem, not the solution! The central bank does not prevent a bank from lurching, especially if it is a govt. owned bank; it ensures that all banks shall lurch equally, so that everyone is in good company and no one is singled out and punished or booked! If one student misbehaves in a class, he can be booked for misbehaviour; but if the whole class misbehaves, it is not called misbehaviour at all! And it won't be surprising if the teacher is blamed for being 'too strict' and precipitating the problem!


Too big to fail? 

In the US, there is a notion- "Too big to fail". If a small bank fails, they can merge it or even let it close.But if a big one fails, it impacts so many others, so there is a blind belief that the bigger banks will not be allowed to fail. And it has happened: big American banks like the Citicorp, Bank of America,  Fannie Mae. Freddie Mac,or even Goldman Sachs have received federal funding- ie tax payers' money , in spite of all their atrocious practices.

Day 40 of Occupy Wall Street campaign, New York, 25 October,2011.
By David Shankbone (Own Work) CC BY-SA 3.0 creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.

This is typical of modern thinking; they cannot apprehend and deal with the extremists but they suspect every citizen (the potential victims) and impose restrictions on them! What must be the level of audacity and arrogance of the American authorities when an Indian Defence Minister or even a former President is subject to body search? ( Leave alone the diplomats)

In practice,it is extremely difficult, almost impossible, for a bank to recover the value of its assets, especially from the big borrowers. The legal system is such that it will take years for the case to be decided. Almost every big loan, and so called consortium loans have been problematic.

Every big bank is a rogue!

 The deposits are a definite, concrete liability. The assets are notional, their value affected by every market development, and their realisation subject to many practical difficulties.It is totally beyond any one's control or decree. The depositors' interest is secured by the quality of the assets, but this is just notional and impossible to guarantee.The so called reserve requirements are a minor safeguard but these are progressively lowered. Contrary to popular opinion, the bigger the bank, the greater the violations and misdeeds, greater their power to hide truth and defy authorities, and less the force of supervision and control over them. If strict accounting norms are applied honestly without compromise, almost every single bank will go bust! ALMOST EVERY  BIG BANK -PUBLIC OR PRIVATE- IS A ROGUE ESTABLISHMENT.

And just glance at the newspapers to see all the controversies and misdeeds about our educational set-up, the judiciary, the police dept, the Lok Ayukta, the sports bodies, the dysfunctional parliament, the big hospitals and their nexus with the drug companies, etc. Is anything clean any more in this country, including the Ganga?

Thus in the end, all the systems on which we depend prove to be undependable. It is our helplessness which sustains them. It is our credulity which lends them credibility!

NOTE:

A fair deal for the saver?

Sukhamoy Chakravarty.
Picture from The Telegraph. July 1, 2013

In the  mid-eighties, before the reforms were initiated, the Sukhamoy Chakravarty Committee (appointed by Reserve Bank) on Monetary System noted the importance of linking interest rates with inflation, and ensuring that savers got a 'positive' rate of return on their savings. Throughout the 60s and 70s Indian savers were hit both by savage rates of taxation, and rates of interest consistently below the rates of inflation. The Reserve Bank too made appropriate noises. But it is a toothless tiger even on paper, and a mere vassal of the finance ministry. The govt only manipulates the figures of inflation and does not approach the issue of interest rates openly, honestly , fairly or even intelligently. The savers are in the lurch, as ever, helped neither by the Reserve Bank, nor by its boss, the finance ministry. What does the finance ministry and its bureaucrats know about how people suffer due to inflation? Their salaries and perks are insulated against inflation. 

Goody-goody fellows are good for nothing!

There is some further irony here. The Sukhamoy Chakravarty committee was appointed when Man Mohan Singh was the Governor of the Reserve Bank. The committee appointed by the RBI cut no ice with the govt or its bureaucrats, who are a law unto themselves. Later, Man Mohan Singh became the Finance Minister. Still later, he became the Prime Minister. But he did nothing- absolutely nothing! This is the regard these people have for the public.

Malum kya kisiko, dard e nihal hamara?- Sahir Ludhianvi.


POSTSCRIPT: 1 August, 2015.

Please read the section above, on 'Banks are inherently unsound'.

The above was posted on 25 July. We have the news today 1 August, that the govt is planning to infuse Rs. 70,000 cr. to recapitalise the public sector banks over the next four years. (Times of India, Bangalore edition, p.21) The Finance Minister says that the govt in the past  were "talking" and that he is now implementing! The previous govt  had a different disposition, but  this FM  from a different political outfit merely continues those old policies. So, whichever party comes to power, some old habits will continue! Because, it is the same old bureaucrats who rule!

 Previously, the dog barked; now it is biting- but it is biting the wrong people! He is taking tax-payers' money to rescue habitually loss-making govt owned banks! Throwing good money after bad money, and on bad managements! No one in this country is questioning the ethics of this arrangement.

The reason given by the FM shows how silly reasoning can get! He says that the banks are grappling with mounting bad debt and so are going slow on sanctioning loans. He is helping them out. This is the classic  liquidity- solvency problem and what can one say about the wisdom of the ministers and bureaucrats who cannot handle this, except by doling out the tax-payers' money!

 The more honest and sensible arrangement to rescue the banks would be to let the banks seek funds through the market, from the public direct. That will show how "public" these govt banks are! And if the public do not come forward to rescue the 'public' sector banks, why should the govt pour tax-payers' money into this bottomless pit? For whose sake is the govt continuing to own these loss-making banks?

The report also says that Governor of the Reserve Bank told reporters that "it is a good beginning". I said above that Central Banks are part of the problem! It seems that we now have two Ali Babas to rescue the Forty. There is none to take care of the interests of the lakhs of tax payers.

KARMA OF ECONOMICS OR KARMANOMICS !

A  WIDE  CANVAS

KARMA OF ECONOMICS or KARMANOMICS!

Karma- three types

Theory of Karma is basic to all Indian religions which share the idea of Dharma too- Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism. At one level it simply means that what we sow, we reap: as they say in Hindi, 'jo hai karta, wohi bharta'. So we create our own destiny. And karma here includes thoughts, words and actions.

Birth is due to Karma. It is Karma which accounts for all the differences  we observe in the world. That one is born in a particular place, time, society and culture, religion and language, and to particular parents, is no accident. 

Karma is classified into three types. Over many births- indeed countless births- we have accumulated lot of karma, good and bad. They are like the mountain. This is called "Sanchita" karma.

 The good and the bad do not cancel each other out, but have to be faced separately!  No one can exhaust all of it in one or even in a few births. So, God  kindly assigns a small portion of both the good and the bad ones  to each birth, such that it can be borne in a lifetime. So, we have a mix of pleasure and pain, joys and sorrows, highs and lows. As the celluloid poet Rajendra Krishan wrote: " Wah re Malik, sukh aur dukh ki khub banayi  jodi". What we bring in each lifetime, what we work out in each lifetime, what causes each birth is termed "Prarabdha". It is likened to a released arrow- once released, its direction cannot be changed!

But in the course of life, in the very process of living, we are performing and creating more karma! The situations we face are due to karma,but how we face and meet them, how we react to them determine our future karma!  When we return violence for violence, we are creating karma! That is why the great Buddha said: hatred ceases only by love, not by hatred! This is the eternal law! So the karma we are creating now is called "Aagaami".

So the eternal wheel of karma runs! And there is no respite from  the cycles of birth and death, till the  stock of karma is exhausted.

Karmanomics!

A little thought will show that the same principle applies to economics! Each country, and  geographic region within each is endowed with some natural features, which can be taken as both its strengths and weaknesses or limitations. An island, a mountainous region, a country with large arid or desert regions- each faces a sort of limitation. But over millennia, people have learned to live with and overcome all sorts of limitations. And some converted the limitations into opportunities - as when England, a small island became a naval power and created the largest world empire, or when Japan, another group of volcanic islands became a world economic power. Compared to these, the US is nothing but a big joke!  As an economic power, It is a product of two world wars and the Cold War.

Perhaps, the greatest example of a people creating history overcoming their natural limitations is ancient Greece.Greece was not one nation in the modern sense of the term- it was a group of islands and cities  on the coast spread out over a vast area- there was never a big kingdom or empire for long, as in the case of Rome. As a modern scholar writes in a recent book:

the ancient Greeks spanning two thousand years from about 1600 BC to AD 400. They lived in thousands of different villages, towns, and cities, from Spain to India, from the freezing river Don in the northern corner of the Black Sea to remote upland tributaries of the Nile. They were culturally elastic, for they  often freely intermarried with other people; they had no sense of an ethnic inequality that was biologically determined, since the concept of distinct "races" had not been invented. They tolerated and even imported foreign gods. What united them was never geopolitics,either. With the arguable exception of the short-lived  Macedonian Empire in the later fourth century BC, there never was a recognizable state run by independent Greek speakers, centered in and including what we now know as Greece, until after the Greek War of Independence in the early nineteenth century. What the ancient Greeks shared was their polysyllabic and flexible language, which still survives today, in similar form, despite centuries of serial occupations of Greek-speaking regions by Romans, Ottomans, Venetians, and others. The stamina of this language, by the mid-eighth century BC, was underpinned by the universal Greek familiarity with certain poems composed in it, especially those of Homer and Hesiod. The major gods celebrated in these poems were taken by the ancient Greeks wherever they settled, and worshipped in sanctuaries with sacrifices.

  Edith Hall,  Introducing the Ancient Greeks (preface) . The Bodley Head, London, 2015. 

So, nations create their karma in the ways they organise their economy, though initially it might be a "given".

Live within means, and exchange sensibly

Most countries of the world lived within their means, with all given limitations but used trade and exchange to buy their essentials with  their surpluses. But when greed overcame strict need, and countries started trading for profit, all trouble arose.  Countries could reap profits in the short term, but over long periods, this is bound to result in disaster.

Japan is an example of a country without much of natural endowments by way of minerals, yet Japan advanced industrially by importing its requirements and developing its technology. But since the domestic market was not adequate to sustain these operations for long, they had to seek foreign markets for exports. Fortunately, the development of their consumer electronic  industry resulted in some innovations like the 2-in 1 radio-tape recorder, or the CD and they enjoyed a virtual monopoly for a time. But further technology has rendered them obsolete. The oil-price shock of the 70s gave them the chance to develop  the 'fuel-efficient' automobile and again they enjoyed a lead. But here too other nations have caught up. But the cost of such prosperity has been very high: high incomes have pushed up the cost of living, and even rented accommodation is unaffordable for many Japanese youngsters, who have to delay their marriages because accommodation is not available! And what can Japan do with all their current income, which they cannot invest at home? So, their industries seek to locate outside Japan. Korea, Vietnam and others are more or less similarly placed- with rather small domestic populations (ie limited local markets) and their industries can be sustained only by exports!  China is huge, but modern technology is such that it cannot employ all the available labour if it is to meet only its domestic requirements, and  China too survives by exports. But now,both Japan and China are slowing down.The lesson is, most economic advantages derived out of international trade conducted for the sake of mere profit are transitory. The only basis and true justification for enduring international trade is genuine need. We have to obtain what we lack by exchanging what we have or can make in excess of our own requirements. All else will end up hurting some one, including ourselves. And it certainly damages the environment.

When a country alters its basic economic structure, it is creating a future which is unpredictable. The US was a huge agricultural economy till about the first decade of the 20th Century. The two world wars changed its complexion; it became an industrial economy; the Cold War propelled it further into a  military power. Just one piece of statistics is revealing: In 1870, 70-80% of the population was employed in agriculture. In 2008, less than 2% of the people were directly employed in agriculture! But due to fast changing developments  in technology , employment in industry is falling! Look at these figures:

(Two largest sources of employment in the US are wholesale and retail trade).

For a contrast , look at India:

By Tracy Hunter (Own Work) CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons via wikimedia commons.
 But if you look at the figures of contribution to GDP, this is what it is:

Source: www,slideshare.net/ammardalvi

The percentage of population employed in agriculture is not even mentioned in the case of US, in the statistics provided by the Bureau of Labour Statistics! It is because, it employs less than 2%, even though agricultural produce is a major US export! American agriculture is almost totally mechanised. And the farms are huge in size- the  mean size is about 400 acres. Contrast this with India, where 53% of the people depend on agriculture for employment, and most of them are small and marginal. What would happen here if our agriculture too is mechanised, as many modernisers want!

Countries are different

To go merely by the figures of contribution to GDP is totally misleading, when we have to deal with the big issue of employment, in a country with a seething population of 120 crores, and still growing. 

A  random selection of 10 countries on the basis of GDP-PPP
By Aeroid (Own work) CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons via wikimediacommons.

Economic comparisons between different countries  are not sensible.Each country is differently situated and does not lend to easy or meaningful comparison. The US employs less than 2% of the population in agriculture, compared to 53% in India. Does that mean the US is more efficient or better? Most Indians have a feeling that industry is superior to agriculture, just as they feel engineering is better than studying humanities or social sciences. This is a form of popular superstition, as agriculture too is an industry!

 But what is the logic adopted? Indian education is job-oriented and the prospect of immediate employment and good remuneration prompts the selection of the subject. For ten years, there was a mad rush for IT,but in the last two years the market has cooled, and in many colleges seats have remained unfilled. Lakhs of teachers' posts remained unfilled in the country and if that is taken up in earnest, humanities and social sciences will get immediate boost, because most teachers require those skills, not engineering. How the economy shapes depends on how  and how well it is managed, not only on what it is to begin with.

Our solutions to problems create more problems!

The way we tackle a problem often creates more serious problems in the future. The govt planned for the orderly growth of Bangalore in the 40s and 50s through the creation of statutory bodies. They formed new layouts, with necessary   infrastructure, water supply, sewage disposal etc. before sites were allotted. But in the late 70s, due to political greed, the system broke down. Layouts were formed in a hurry, even roads were not provided, and there was no official water supply, but sites were allotted and people were forced to take up construction. Private lay outs also proliferated, which did not get official water supply. Bore wells became the main source of water.  The whole water table has gone down, and in many areas the bore wells do not yield water or the water is polluted.  The problem is compounded by allowing high rise buildings everywhere. This is the case in almost all urban areas in India. We have only managed to intensify the problem. This is just one example. 

Both these pictures from MailOnline India.
5 March, 2013.
This is the state of India's Capital!

The urbanised, English educated Indian has his scale of values. He would rank the services, industries and agriculture as his order of importance. Today, both in his opinion and in the view of the general public, IT sector occupies the top position, always except the higher ranks of the bureaucracy. They consider the literate urban worker to be superior to the farm hand, just as they rate an English educated person as superior to one merely knowing the native languages. However, this is based on a narrow view. Writing in 1776, Adam Smith compared the urban industrial worker and the farm hand and the found the latter superior:

....branches of country labour require much more skill and experience than the greater part of mechanick trades. The man who works upon brass and iron, works with instruments and upon materials of which the temper is always the same, or very nearly the same. But the man who ploughs the ground with a team of horses or oxen works with instruments of which the health, strength, and temper are very different  upon different occasions. The condition of the materials which he works upon too is as variable as that of the instruments he works with, and both require to be managed  with much judgment and discretion. The common ploughman, though generally regarded as the pattern of stupidity and ignorance, is seldom defective in this judgment and discretion. He is less accustomed, indeed, to social intercourse than the mechanick who lives in a town. His voice and language are more uncouth and more difficult to be understood  by those who are not used to them. His understanding, however, being used to consider a greater variety of objects, is generally much superior to that of the other, whose whole attention from morning till night is commonly occupied in performing one or two very simple operations. How much the lower ranks of people in the country are really superior to those of the town, is well known to every man whom either business or curiosity has led to converse with both. In  China and Indostan  accordingly  both the rank and wages of the country labourer are said to be superior to those of the greater part of the artificers and manufacturers. They would probably be so every where, if corporation laws and the corporation spirit did not prevent it.

The Wealth of Nations, Book I,x.

The Ploughman! from: https://endlesslightandlove.files.wordpress.com

We only have to think of the modern 'techie' , instead of the old mechanick that Smith spoke of in his day! How limited is his bundle of knowledge, confined to standard packages on a standardised system of standardised equipment, procedures, products and practices! Yet the urban culture considers him to be superior! Smith says here that this superiority is due not to merit but urban manipulation (corporation laws and spirit!).  And it is revealing to know that in Smith's day- in the 18th century- the agricultural worker in India (Indostan) was ranked superior to the town worker! Yet, in the 21st century, the agriculturist is led to commit suicide by the atrocious policies of the urban dominated, urban oriented politician and bureaucracy.

Indian ploughing-as it used to be! Now, it is getting mechanised!
Picture credit: www.thevillage.website.



The above view of Smith was no isolated thought. Ten years earlier, in 1766, he had said:

There are some inconveniences, however, arsing from a commercial spirit. The first we shall mention is that it confines the views of man. Where the division of labour is brought to perfection, every man has only a simple operation to perform. To this his whole attention is confined, and few ideas pass in his mind but what have an immediate connection with it. When the mind is employed about a variety of objects it is some how expanded and enlarged, and on this account a country artist is generally acknowledged to have a range of thoughts much above a city one."

(Lectures on Jurisprudence, 328)

Nor was this an unusual view. It was shared  by the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers. Adam Ferguson wrote in his 'History of Civil Society' :

Many mechanical arts, indeed require no capacity; they succeed best under a total suppression of sentiment and reason; and ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of superstition.

Prof.Adam Ferguson, 1723-1816  Wikimedia commons.

Adam Ferguson also said:

Manufactures accordingly prosper most where the mind is least consulted, and where the workshop may, without any great effort of imagination, be considered as an engine, the parts of which are men.

Well, did this inspire Charlie Chaplin?

This is indeed very well said. 'Educated' Indians share many superstitions. One is that English  education somehow makes one more intelligent.  Another is that industry is superior to agriculture. A third is that GDP really measures economic well being. A fourth is that  countries can be compared on the basis of their GDP.And perhaps, the top superstition is that our economic problems can be solved by economists, or politicians  or bureaucrats, or by a combination of all of them, even with the addition of scientists. Every modern country if full of all these categories of idlers, and yet no country is free from economic problems. It is Karmanomics which prevails!