Large scale land acquisitions in the name of SEZs will be the talk of the town in the near future. I guess the so-called 'Globalization' has started taking its toll on the rising prices of commodities. Indirectly, with the rising stock indices and the GDP race it's a temperament sold to everyone encouraging to spend more and keep earning more. It has seen percolating deep down at every level to commoners. I mean the commoners who are interacting daily with each other being a customer, being a trader, vegetable vendors, to the autowallas and so on.
Everyone seems to be in the rat race of increasing their margins through costs/prices for the simple reason that 'everything' is up. As I remember, milk is up by a rupee. Why? Because the petrol prices have gone up and transporters ask for a hike. Now despite petrol prices having come down, the cost of milk still has remained up. The transporter now reasons that his laborers have, meanwhile, hiked their wages. All in the name of hikes and securing their own margins to safe guard themselves from this calamity called Inflation.
The hike in the auto meters from Rs. 10 to 12 was on these similar lines a few months ago, due to the petrol price hike, but no one is lowering them even when the petrol hike is reversed. Even for those who run the vehicles on gas, the cost of operation remains less than the petrol variants, yet they continue to 'meter' the customers at par and strip them off. Is anyone monitoring this? Is there any way we can drill-down the benefits of lowering cost via subsidies and effective rollovers downwards? You bet I haven't seen any. Forget about them reaching the common man.
Despite industries growing at 11% we don't have adequate jobs, economies of scale, but we tend to keep the higher strata of the society happy. Another big thing which is coming to ruin the ruralite are the SEZs. The FII inflow, global competitiveness and opportunities add a few more brands and getting few high-end cars like Mercedes/Audis built on this soil, but they may not help the poor who will continue to be churned out as cheap labors and will be found under contracts with bigwigs and their share on the already stressed infrastructure resources like power, water and air will be taken away for global benefits.
Many cities have already experienced this crunch as we don't curb the development and try adjusting with unscientific approach over resource distribution and management with the elected wisdom of political parties hijacking the democracy.
Try and check the new retail funda of getting more employments for localites. Most of them will be hived off under the contracting firms who manage the security guards, house keeping and even front desk personnel via labor contracts and the strata gets paid peanuts for maintaining the so-called international standards and brands. The spirit on rising and shining India keeps shining the 'creamy' layers and foreign companies and the localites that lost their land come out on roads struggling to live. Yes, we created lot many jobs but kept them deprived of benefits and job security.
We never worked on performance based pay for Government staffers who continue to make money and are never held accountable for their wrong deeds. The job market is focusing on outsourcing the talent while our technical/business schools talk/walk only those who score more than 85 percentile. They don't see, recognize or provide for anyone lower than their cut-off percentile. This arrangement thus ensures that the nation will continue to have a large un-skill pool for contracting companies to offer cheap labor and keep filling the intellect with abstract perquisites eating our national reserves and funds.
The mantra of success always seems to revolve around land acquisition and land development, and no one bothers to know why do entities like the BDA exist when they can't afford to work on a nonprofit basis. They don't work towards making homes affordable, but all such development authorities acquire land in the context of development and develop their own revenue generations for self and the body.
The poor man who struggles for his handful of rice and dals (lentils) gets a breather from the FM saying to put off future trading immediately (Budget 2007) and seemingly doing a great favor to them. It seems government has not been able to see around the unorganized sector trading in these commodities and creating demand by suppressing the supply on large scales. The agricultural bodies which were floated to keep commodities at affordable levels are themselves busy generating profits which was never to be their purpose or the intention for which they were formed. The local political goons control such mundis and markets to decide the rate and charge both farmers and consumers with so called regulations once created to protect them.
I am no economist and know nothing about the Finance domain, but I must say have been doing rather good managing my expenses and limiting them as it starts becoming unaffordable these days. The electricity bills have multiplied and the hours of power coverage has lessened out of proportion. The water supply has become irregular for localities which are even 25 years old and are within the city, because the same water is diverted elsewhere making me prone to the tanker mafia. The entertainment has gone beyond the fingertips from cable to CAS and then to DTH / Sky.
All lobbying, wanting the share of their margins with multiple selections and their product marketing strategies which ensure my monthly bill would go northwards - besides this my telephone bills continue to remain the same despite rentals and tariffs going down. I have been pushed to have one mobile each for all of my family members and my bottomline gets adequately hit.
As I read these big words like 'Inflation, GDP and National Reserves', I wonder how it will translate into making the fellow Indians just above poverty line to build this nation to be financially and socially secure and duly protect its countrymen from this epidemic of 'fiscal fronts' and 'budgetary wisdoms'. I don't know and damn sure most of our vote banks would ever!
Everyone seems to be in the rat race of increasing their margins through costs/prices for the simple reason that 'everything' is up. As I remember, milk is up by a rupee. Why? Because the petrol prices have gone up and transporters ask for a hike. Now despite petrol prices having come down, the cost of milk still has remained up. The transporter now reasons that his laborers have, meanwhile, hiked their wages. All in the name of hikes and securing their own margins to safe guard themselves from this calamity called Inflation.
The hike in the auto meters from Rs. 10 to 12 was on these similar lines a few months ago, due to the petrol price hike, but no one is lowering them even when the petrol hike is reversed. Even for those who run the vehicles on gas, the cost of operation remains less than the petrol variants, yet they continue to 'meter' the customers at par and strip them off. Is anyone monitoring this? Is there any way we can drill-down the benefits of lowering cost via subsidies and effective rollovers downwards? You bet I haven't seen any. Forget about them reaching the common man.
Despite industries growing at 11% we don't have adequate jobs, economies of scale, but we tend to keep the higher strata of the society happy. Another big thing which is coming to ruin the ruralite are the SEZs. The FII inflow, global competitiveness and opportunities add a few more brands and getting few high-end cars like Mercedes/Audis built on this soil, but they may not help the poor who will continue to be churned out as cheap labors and will be found under contracts with bigwigs and their share on the already stressed infrastructure resources like power, water and air will be taken away for global benefits.
Many cities have already experienced this crunch as we don't curb the development and try adjusting with unscientific approach over resource distribution and management with the elected wisdom of political parties hijacking the democracy.
Try and check the new retail funda of getting more employments for localites. Most of them will be hived off under the contracting firms who manage the security guards, house keeping and even front desk personnel via labor contracts and the strata gets paid peanuts for maintaining the so-called international standards and brands. The spirit on rising and shining India keeps shining the 'creamy' layers and foreign companies and the localites that lost their land come out on roads struggling to live. Yes, we created lot many jobs but kept them deprived of benefits and job security.
We never worked on performance based pay for Government staffers who continue to make money and are never held accountable for their wrong deeds. The job market is focusing on outsourcing the talent while our technical/business schools talk/walk only those who score more than 85 percentile. They don't see, recognize or provide for anyone lower than their cut-off percentile. This arrangement thus ensures that the nation will continue to have a large un-skill pool for contracting companies to offer cheap labor and keep filling the intellect with abstract perquisites eating our national reserves and funds.
The mantra of success always seems to revolve around land acquisition and land development, and no one bothers to know why do entities like the BDA exist when they can't afford to work on a nonprofit basis. They don't work towards making homes affordable, but all such development authorities acquire land in the context of development and develop their own revenue generations for self and the body.
The poor man who struggles for his handful of rice and dals (lentils) gets a breather from the FM saying to put off future trading immediately (Budget 2007) and seemingly doing a great favor to them. It seems government has not been able to see around the unorganized sector trading in these commodities and creating demand by suppressing the supply on large scales. The agricultural bodies which were floated to keep commodities at affordable levels are themselves busy generating profits which was never to be their purpose or the intention for which they were formed. The local political goons control such mundis and markets to decide the rate and charge both farmers and consumers with so called regulations once created to protect them.
I am no economist and know nothing about the Finance domain, but I must say have been doing rather good managing my expenses and limiting them as it starts becoming unaffordable these days. The electricity bills have multiplied and the hours of power coverage has lessened out of proportion. The water supply has become irregular for localities which are even 25 years old and are within the city, because the same water is diverted elsewhere making me prone to the tanker mafia. The entertainment has gone beyond the fingertips from cable to CAS and then to DTH / Sky.
All lobbying, wanting the share of their margins with multiple selections and their product marketing strategies which ensure my monthly bill would go northwards - besides this my telephone bills continue to remain the same despite rentals and tariffs going down. I have been pushed to have one mobile each for all of my family members and my bottomline gets adequately hit.
As I read these big words like 'Inflation, GDP and National Reserves', I wonder how it will translate into making the fellow Indians just above poverty line to build this nation to be financially and socially secure and duly protect its countrymen from this epidemic of 'fiscal fronts' and 'budgetary wisdoms'. I don't know and damn sure most of our vote banks would ever!
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