Business to the Buddha

Tag: Greece

  • Bit of commitment, that’s it!







    For a month I was in a kind of self imposed exile from blogging. I had ideas to write yet as a couple of people earlier suggested, I wont be able to continue blogging with time. I think their ideas ‘kind-of-caught-up’. It is my 100th blog so I was thinking about writing something special and thus waited to write a necklace (blog) having different blogs (as its beads and thread) in the 100th blog.  I’m keeping my idea of connecting my previous blogs in a necklace for future and writing on commitment. It only require small commitment and consistency to do something e.g. blogging.

    Yesterday evening, I was travelling from Nasik to Mumbai. I took a bus and therefore I had a chance to see farm lands, small villages and small water ponds on either side of road. During rainy season we see – at times – naturally created water ponds. It is surprising that in the summers we see acute water shortage. I was wondering about it. Simultaneously, my sister was reading a blog post of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (Guruji) – Knowledge sheet. Here I am thinking about water-shed project concept and listening to my sister reading – austerity, what Guruji say – “…Austerity is often mistaken to be poverty, self-denial. It is neither. Austerity comes out of maturity. It is a sign of social health.

    Often people who practice austerity are resentful of richness. This is a very pitiable state. Such austerity is not born out of maturity but out of compulsion. The true austerity has tolerance for richness and is never resentful…”

    I see two connections here in my thoughts – commitment and austerity. The “austerity measures” being talked for a long time are not based on “social health” and therefore are opposed – because there would be a handful of people losing their “facilities” for doing service for the society. This austerity has come from compulsion. Isn’t it? There is lake of commitment in the actions of austerity.

    It was true in my not blogging too that I waited to write a very special blog on connecting all dots of my previous thoughts in the line of the concept of my blogging. We observe lack of commitment is the case in water-shed also. I remember my days as a kid in Dhar (MP). There I have faced water shortage problem and I personally used to travel long distance to bring water in summers. When we shifted to Indore I suggested few officials for rainwater harvesting, they did it. In the building where my parents live now, they have done rain water harvesting and that is not rocket science. I was wondering why we all are not doing it? We can fight and die for water but taking a small step is not possible. Why? because it requires “a-bit-of-commitment”.

    I have lost hopes from politicians and therefore not writing about that. Dhar where I used to live as a kid, had a king – King Bhoj – about 1000 years ago. He – unlike our politicians – knew the problem and worked to solve it. There used to be 12 lakes in Dhar, these lakes were connected, water overflow from one would end up collected in another and so on. We – as an Independent Indian – are fighting for “NOT CONNECTING RIVERS”, because it requires a bit of commitment. With Team Anna coming in the front I see a ray of hope that things would fall in place.

    What it requires is a commitment? Take one project complete it, whatever constraints are there resolve them. Next time I would write about commitment and theory of constraints.

  • Inner revolution







    Recently heard that UK has declared recession, Spain and Italy has done so earlier, Greece has once voted against the austerity measures and Sarkozy is no more French president – which is a dent on austerity measures of Eurozone. This is the story of Euro! USA employment numbers are not that encouraging, employment should be about 250,000/month however last time I noted it was 150,000 or so. China showed reduced production and Indian GDP is down.

    The picture looks gloomy, however have you seen importance of stars during full moon?  No! The importance and glitter of stars is prominent during darkest of nights. I believe this tough economic time is hinting of such nights when we would realize the importance of small things which impact us in big way. Take an example corruption! Take an example Greed! Though it seems a lesson on moral science but what else we are saying when we talk about the “Moral Hazard” as the biggest reason of recession and financial turmoil! In Indian context we need to work on reducing corruption (byproduct of greed) which is the biggest moral hazard here. In Europe and US Greed is the problem.

    I asked myself – are we going to see a revolution in the world? This revolution I believe would be on a tangent – it would not only happen in the society, not only by the society but also it would happen on the self! We have seen societies changing, cultures evolving  however these changes die down slowly and moral hazard starts again.

    Guruji

    I was attending an Art of Living (with Guruji :)) session today and the idea of ‘inner revolution’ stuck to me at that time. This makes a perfect sense – if everyone becomes righteous, we would not need to change the society, it would change itself.

    We need to get ready for inner revolution and help change the world for better today and tomorrow! Remember this would start from each one of us.

  • Euro! is it dead?







    For some time I did not write. I was considering writing either on “Utopia – the Dream world” (in Hindi – Ram Rajya) a type of communism in my opinion or on economics. A news item of yesterday made me select economics the later one. This news read “Deutsche Mark set for comeback instead of Euro in Germany”. I thought that Euro may die soon, so first thing I wrote to Prof Mankad (he is an expert of Macroeconomics) for his opinions on my fear of disintegration of European Union or dilution of the currency Euro.

    I believe that the concept of EU is very interesting and appreciating. However the question to ask is – who would tame the monkeys, those who are more interested in personal gains rather than collective wisdom? I read a book on similar concept of being individually wise and collectively dumb – “Games Indians Play“. The same is happening with different economies. Austerity measures – why there is so much of hue and cry? Because as per my understanding of austerity measures – “maximum of expenses to be controlled by austerity measures are on usage of tax payers money”.

    Earlier, when I read the Financial Times often I used to wonder about the crisis in EU. And I wrote about Germany as probable next super power. I had few reasons to think that way. However, later and now when I see economic crisis in EU (Greece, Spain, Iceland, Ireland and Portugal the list may become bigger in future) I changed my mind. Even further, when I read the news yesterday about ‘Deutsche Mark’ I felt more compelled to think of bigger consequences – could EU disintegrate? Is Euro dead?

    The other reason to dwell on my fear was another discussion with Prof Mankad some time back. He said UK has foreign debt in multiples of its GDP, what could happen to UK? UK has 400% of external debt to its GDP. So, are we seeing Euro as dead in future or Germany would have two currencies running in parallel – Euro and Mark? only time will tell us.

  • Next super power?







    Germany? Is that… few days back President Obama was in India, he supported India’s candidature for permanent seat in UN. Germany and Japan the other contenders raised their voices on that. Germany is one of the two elected countries to serve as member of Security Council for two-year terms that begin Jan 1. Germany is also the protagonist for Unified Europe e.g. European Union (EU). Germany is the strongest economy of EU. And the trouble starts here – Germany being the protagonist and the strongest economy faces challenge of saving the EU and the cost could be cases against Government of Germany. Reason? German people were promised two things –
    1. Euro would be as strong as Deutschemark
    2. There would be a “no bail out clause”

    These clauses seem to fail. Euro is struggling because of exposure to stupidity of investment banks and naivety of European countries for example Iceland. Next to show domino effect was Greece in first half of the year, Ireland now and perhaps –Spain, Portugal next to face economic doldrums. “With Great power comes great responsibility” said Uncle Parker [to Peter Parker – Spiderman]. Germany needs to understand it, they need to change their promises or the spiral of over exposure and unified economy [not only of EU but also the whole world] would eat half of our generation.

    Balancing this would make Germany either very strong worldwide or make it pauper.

    China, is that? According to the recent FT news by 2014 China would roughly touch 20% of world manufacturing production and has already equaled US. As I earlier wrote [reference Macroeconomics class of Prof Mankad] China is replicating Japan on many fronts and is doing it phenomenally well. China hold Treasury bonds of US in effect it can twist arms of USA any time. Yet it faces a few challenges –
    1. for a strong economy of China, US and other nations importing Chinese products should be economically strong or China needs to increase consumption of its produce in China itself
    2. growing % of population in old age e.g. less working population.

    There could be many ways to tackle this issue –
    1. Work Visas to people of different nationalities
    2. Automation
    3. A least unlikely one is mildness on communism to attract foreign nationals

    India, is it? Perhaps, yes! I may be biased yet the economic, demographic and intellectual capital it posses, this country seems the contender for coming 10-20 years. The secret lies in the leadership, current duo of Dr Singh and Mr Chidambaram is a good combination. However, India needs to be cautious building next leadership line is the need of the hour.

    Coming back to the troubles in EU, I strongly see a solution in applying TRIZ (the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) for the situation. As far as the super power is concerned, only time will tell us who the super power is, I would bet on India and China, more on India ten years from now. Cast your vote…