Experience

Experience helps you learn about the everyday realities of working life and most importantly equips you with the soft skills needed to succeed at any organization. In addition to having knowledge and experience in a trade or profession, expert implies extraordinary proficiency and connotes knowledge and technical skill. Popular belief is that the key to becoming an expert is to devote at least 10,000 hours to the study and practice of a subject. Expertise is defined as exceptional, elite, or peak performance on specific tasks in specific domains. Expertise is perceived as being the result of hard work and practice. Life experiences are the events and situations that shape our individual journeys and contribute to personal growth and development. The happiness provided by new material possessions is short-lived. Over time, people's satisfaction with the things they buy decreases, whereas their satisfaction with experiences over time increases. Experience is making mistakes and learning from them. The trouble with experience is that by the time you have it you are too old to take advantage of it. Experience is what you get when you did not get what you wanted. Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement. Fill your life with experiences. Not things. Have stories to tell, not stuff to show.         

Of all the things needed to do something right, experience counts the most. What counts most is the energy or enthusiasm to do it. Finding both of these together is rare, which explains why our world is less than perfect. The famous saying "If one could learn from watching alone, then even the dog would become a butcher" elegantly outlines why and how experience counts. Experience is better and there is a very thin line between experience and monotony. Several companies has seen a paradigm shift from the experienced candidates getting preference to freshers being hired in large numbers and now it is shifting back again to the experienced. How far this is correct remains a question of debate. For all that youth lacks, experience can compensate. For all that old age is incapable of achieving, youth could become the instrument. There has been growing acceptance of the need to make retirement a gradual process. This could be done by reducing working hours gradually till retirement or breaking the monotony as retirement approaches by setting more enjoyable roles for them. By recognizing the worth of the experienced and the potential of the youth and making them work together, youth would know much more and aged could do much more.   

 

Adultery

Adultery is a crime in many jurisdictions, although it is rarely prosecuted. The Pope Francis has declared on 9^th Dec'2021 that the sin of adultery is not the most serious of sins. Adultery is not be a criminal offence. It is only a ground for divorce. What two consenting adults do in their bedrooms is not something they should be sent to jail for. It is not the business of the state. Many couples overcome cheating. Affairs usually end in divorce and remarriage, or divorce and relationship loss, or the recommitment to the relationship that was betrayed. Living with another person during the existence of current relationship is a ground for seeking divorce. Dating is not adultery. If you have to question, ‘Is this cheating?’ it is probably cheating. Under most laws, the married participant is an adulterer and the single one merely a fornicator.

Accomplishments

Accomplishments do not matter. We are all going to pass by. In almost every probable scenario, over the long-term, the universe is going to continue on without any tangible sign that it has been disturbed by our existence. Ultimately, nothing we do matters. Alexander, Shakespeare, Newton, and Napoleon will be nothing more than lost whispers. Death will occur when it occurs. It is a problem as long as we make it a problem. The purpose of life is not to accomplish. It is to experience. Right now.

Adult life

Adult life involves taking full responsibility of life. As young adults grow older, relationships grow more serious. Relationships will only work till the end if you are fit, rich and everything. The girlfriend  or a boyfriend, you are hanging with, may leave you one day if you are out of shape. Adult life is all about priorities. Being an adult is not only about having choice, it is also about understanding the consequences your choices have and seeking help when you can not make good choices. We do not have to live our adult lives according to our parents' wishes. You are fully responsible and can do whatever you want to do, within your means. The behavior of friends, colleagues and competitors would neither be entirely right nor entirely wrong. Never judge a person too early. Getting smart about money is crucial. Learning to budget, save, and invest is key to hitting the financial goals. Life throws curveballs. No matter how well you plan, something unexpected can always come up. Adulting sucks. Everyone is struggling with something. Earning money is good and liberating. You can afford to do things and buy things that you never could before, your access and relationship to money changes totally as an adult. The problem comes if you are undisciplined with it. Being an adult with healthy life skills takes several years, a couple of kids, life changing relationships, a great career, lots of mistakes, and wonderful friends. Being a happy adult is rewarding and spiritually educational.    

Legality is not guidance to morality

There are a number of issues about the relationship between morality and law in any pluralistic, secular democracy. Among them are whether legislation should reflect moral principles, whether judges should interpret laws in light of moral values and principles, whether laws should enforce morality, whether laws are binding if they do not reflect moral principles, whether it is moral or not to disobey bad laws, and what gives law its authority. 

• Normally laws are desired to be crafted carefully and with regard for our moral notion of justice and fairness and with utilitarian regard to their fostering good, rather than harmful consequences. 
• Not all morality is enshrined in the law. Many unfair and wrong business practices are not anticipated and were not made illegal until someone invents and uses them in a way mistreating others. These practices are wrong and immoral from inception, but not illegal until law catches up to them. 
• In a sense morality is complete and applies to all acts, but the law typically is incomplete and only applies to behaviors legislation has already addressed. 
• Law has to be invented or manufactured but morality only has to be recognized. Laws do have loopholes but morality does not have loopholes. It is impossible to make a complete set of laws that anticipate, enumerate, fully describe, and forbid every possible specific wrong behavior. 
• Upholding morality is not the main purpose of most laws. Most laws are there to maintain order and safety or to promote efficiency. Laws are never meant for moral guidance.
• Traffic laws are not based on morality. They are moral because they are a way of promoting social benefits of a certain kind in an optimal way. 
• There are some government programs set up by law that simply harmed the people they were intended to help, such as aspects of the welfare rules that ended up trapping people in poverty rather than assisting them to escape it. 
• Not all morality should be enshrined in law, because enforcing some morality would be far worse than not enforcing it. 
• Society has a legitimate right to enforce morality in preventing great harm, it need not and should not make everyone do the right thing all the time. 
• What makes people voluntarily obey laws --  they believe the law is in conformity with what is morally right (or if it is a procedural law, it does not conflict with what is right) and is just and beneficial.
• It is always possible that people will obey the bad laws of any government out of fear or risk of punishment or reprisal. But that does not give law rightful authority. They have the power, but not the authority. 
• Many morally good people will disobey laws they think are very wrong, either in a form of civil disobedience, or in order to get away with it because they believe the law does not have moral authority then. And if the government passes sufficiently many bad laws it will lose obedience by rebellion or revolution, because citizens will believe that the laws and the government are too immoral to have any authority that deserves their obedience.

The law is something like a formal system of rules and procedures that is meant to invoke and instantiate our moral sense of justice. People have an expectation for law to try to do that in the best way it can, so that even with institutional and administrative limitations, the law gives the most morally optimal results that can be achieved. The law should always be trying to live up to that expectation, not acting as, nor trying to be, a substitute for it. 

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Protests & street agitations

Certain events of civil unrest in India — violent crowds, protests and riots — put a serious strain on the secular foundation of the society. Be it the Swadeshi Movement of 1905 or Satyagrah in 1930, movements have shaped the history of the nation. 

• A court has said people are out on the streets as what should have been said inside Parliament was “not said”. Additional sessions judge made the observation during a bail hearing case. While these observations are not legally binding but do carry certain heft, especially at a time the Modi government has been creating an impression that the Anti CAA protests are against the national interest.
• The judge asked: “What is the problem with going to Jama Masjid? What is wrong with dharna? It is one’s constitutional right to protest. Where is the violence? What is wrong with any of these posts? Have you read the Constitution? “You are behaving as if Jama Masjid was Pakistan and even if it was Pakistan, you can go there and protest. Pakistan was a part of undivided India,” the judge said.
• Expecting decisions without agitations is like expecting crops without ploughing the ground; rain without thunder and lightning. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Some famous quotations:

• Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation ... Eugene V. Debs
• Progress is dependent upon a productive and dynamic tension between institutionalism and insurrectionism. Insurrectionists keep our institutions honest ... Christopher Hayes
• Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth ... William Faulkner
• We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented ... Elie Wiesel 
• Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient are slaves ... Henry David Thoreau
• Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence ... Leonardo da Vinci
• One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws .. Martin Luther King Jr.
• Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable ... John F. Kennedy
• A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government ... Edward Abbey
• Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it ... Howard Zinn

Bargaining in flea markets

Bargaining is an art that can help you bring down the price of a product in direct proportion to your skills. Connecting well with people and having a psychological advantage over salespeople also result in a good negotiation and can fetch you a better price than you had bargained for.

• It's foolish not to bargain at a flea market. 
• Bargaining is the accepted and expected method of finding a compromise between the merchant and the customer.
• Prices can vary drastically among vendors at the same flea market. If prices aren't marked, assume there's a double price standard: one for locals and one for you. 
• Watch to see what others would be charged. 
• Usually traders raise the price to sometimes double the original cost. Ideally, one should bargain up to 20-30% of the quoted price.
• Marked prices can distort your idea of an item's true worth. Many people think that if they can cut the price by 50% they are doing great. So the merchant quadruples his prices and the customer happily pays double the fair value. The best way to deal with crazy price tags is to ignore them. 
• Before you even find out the price, determine the item's value to you, considering the hassles involved in packing it or shipping it home.
• Merchants hate to lose a sale. Work the cost down, but if it doesn't match with the price you have in mind, walk away. That last amount the merchant hollers out is often the best price you'll get. If that price is right, go back and buy. Prices often drop at the end of the day, when merchants are about to pack up.
• Keep a poker face and don't settle for the first counter-offer.
• Cash speaks volumes at a flea market. Offer to pay cash instead of credit cards. They're often more willing to strike a deal if you pay cash, since they save on credit-card fees. Often, vendors don’t even accept another form of payment.
• Look for defects. Inspect your item and point out the flaws prior to asking for a discount. If defects doesn't bother you much, you can bargain for additional discount too.
• Don't hurry. Bargaining is rarely rushed. Make sure you are dealing with someone who has the authority to bend a price downward. Bid respectfully. If a merchant accepts your price, you must buy the item.
• Don't show up in your designer duds and jewels and expect to get a discount. 
• Remember to ask respectfully. Don't be too petty by haggling over small amounts. If your item is priced at Rs.1000 then don’t be stingy and offer Rs.50. The vendor needs to make money too. But make your offer a little lower than you are willing to pay so there is room for negotiation. A few rupees is worth more to the shopkeeper than to you.
• Bargaining applies to goods, not to food sold at stands or outdoor produce markets. 
• As in all areas of life, kindness matters at the flea market too.
• Caution: If you buy an item (which you really don't need) at 40% discount, you haven't saved 40% but lost 60%. Buy only what you really need.

After retirement, I realized that while shops in malls, prices and discounts are fixed where we end up paying huge amounts not only for the higher quality goods but also for the ambiance, packaging and services. Similar goods, usually little lower in quality, are significantly cheaper and at times taxes not loaded in smaller shops. Hence I decided to buy most items from small street shops (rather than in malls) and never to indulge in tough bargain in flea markets but to just leave if I suspect prices are exorbitant.

India’s ominous future: too little water, or far too much

The monsoon is central to Indian life and lore. It shapes the fortunes of millions of farmers who rely on the rains to nourish their fields. It governs what you eat. 

• Climate change is now messing with the monsoon, making seasonal rains more intense and less predictable. Decades of short-sighted government policies are leaving millions of Indians defenseless in the age of climate disruptions, especially the poor.
• The lakes that once held the rains in the bursting city of Bangalore are clogged with plastic and sewage. 
• The rains are more erratic today. Extreme rainfall is more common and more extreme. The number of days with very heavy rains has increased, with longer dry spells in between. Less common are the sure and steady rains that can reliably penetrate the soil. This is ruinous for a country that gets the vast share of its water from the clouds.
• Global warming has destroyed the concept of the monsoon. 
• India’s insurance policy against droughts, the Himalayas, is at risk, too. The majestic mountains are projected to lose a third of their ice by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at their current pace.
• Climate change isn’t the only culprit to blame for India’s water woes. Decades of greed and mismanagement are far more culpable. The lush forests that help to hold the rains continue to be cleared. Developers are given the green light to pave over creeks and lakes. Government subsidies encourage the over-extraction of groundwater. Groundwater is drawn faster than nature can replenish it.
• By 2050, the World Bank estimates, erratic rainfall, combined with rising temperatures, stand to “depress the living standards of nearly half the country’s population.”
• Since 1950, annual rainfall has declined by 15% in Marathwada. In that same period, cloudbursts have shot up threefold. But during that same period, Marathwada, along with the rest of India, has seen a boom in the production of one of thirstiest crops on earth: sugar cane.
• In India, one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, the government subsidizes electricity, encouraging farmers to pump groundwater for their fields, as well as fertilizers, which are used in vast quantities. State-owned banks offer cheap loans, which are sometimes written off.

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Ayodhya verdict - Reminiscences

Nearly 3 decades ago, on December 6, 1992, a long-running dispute between Hindus and Muslims over a religious site in the northern city of Ayodhya took a dramatic turn (Babri Masjid demolished) and changed the course of Indian politics forever. Religious riots erupted, and 900 people, both Muslims and Hindus, were killed in Mumbai. And on March 12, 1993, 13 blasts ripped through the Mumbai city in retaliation for the mosque’s demolition, killing 317. Now, a verdict from the Supreme Court (on Nov 9, 2019) has legally closed the most divisive religious conflict and paved the way for the construction of a Hindu temple at the site. The court has insisted that a mosque also be built, but on an alternative plot of land.  This SC decision will allow the BJP and Modi government to bolster its political fortunes further by construction of a grand Ram temple just ahead of elections in Uttar Pradesh due in March 2022.

• Real closure of the conflict will depend on how, going forward, India treats its more than 175 million Muslim citizens. Anything other than equitable justice will only leave deep scars and gaping wounds.
• Since there has been no violence and protests, we should not mistake this for indifference. But this doesn't entail Muslims accepting the construction of a Ram temple at the site. The court has said that the demolition of the mosque was “a serious violation of the rule of law” and that “it is necessary to provide restitution to the Muslim community for the unlawful destruction of their place of worship.”  Justice in the Babri masjid demolition case is critical to Indian democracy’s promise of fair play and equality.
• In the 2019 election, BJP fielded only seven Muslim candidates. In the 2017 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, where the temple will be built and has 19.3% Muslims (about 4.40 crores), the BJP did not field any Muslim candidates. India owes it to Muslim citizens to address this sense of political marginalization.
• It was the Muslims who suffered the razing of their place of worship; they were also the victims of the violence which followed. The community sought redressal and placed its faith in the institutions for justice. The Supreme Court ruling is riddled with contradictions but its biggest problem is the loss of faith it has triggered among Muslims about the possibility of justice. What can be worse for a democracy when its largest minority group does not hope for justice but fearfully settles for a verdict that they know is no less than injustice to them? -- Arfa Khanum Sherwani writes in thewire.in
• Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have to deal with this minority [India’s Muslims] in a civilized manner. If we fail to do so, we shall have a festering sore. -- Jawaharlal Nehru

If Babri Masjid was still standing, would SC have had it demolished? 

-- Justice A.K. Ganguly (Retd Judge of Supreme Court)

The PM Modi's appeal for harmony, on the eve of the Ayodhya verdict, and warning against seeing the outcome as a victory or defeat for either side casts doubts about his prior knowledge and influencing the judgement. Muslims may grudgingly and helplessly accept this verdict with a pinch of salt but in the reverse scenario, Hindu groups (RSS, VHP etc) would definitely have pressurized central government to promulgate ordinance allotting Babri Masjid plot for Ram Janmabhoomi temple construction.

Recusal

The Constitution vests a lot of power and certain amount of immunity in judges. Fairness and impartiality are the fundamental qualities to be possessed by a judge. Once it appears to the judge that he cannot deliver justice in an impartial manner, ethically he is expected to recuse. The right to recuse is given to the discretion of the judges. But the question that arises is whether such choices of significance be left to the prerogative of the individual judges. 

• Judges recuse themselves when they take no part in deciding cases that they would otherwise help decide. The judges to recuse themselves from cases where the judge has a financial interest in the case's outcome or where there is otherwise a strong possibility that the judge's decision will be biased. 
• Any party in a lawsuit may request that a judge recuse him or herself.
• This question is the pondering of circumstances where an act of recusal becomes a contravention to that judge’s legal responsibility and moral duty to hear a matter and deliver unprejudiced justice.
• Also, are the judges accountable for explaining the reasons for recusal to the concerned parties?
• The professional ethics behind recusal of a judge has to do with the opacity about the reasons as to which the recusal has happened. Since India is a liberal democracy, the citizens expect accountability from public servants. By not giving reasons to recusal the judge is putting herself under speculation by the public. 
• If a judge finds out that his brother/ sister judge recused for a specific reason, there could be an inclination from the new judge to give a favorable verdict for the party in whose favor the other judge recused.
• Recusal is not an instance where the judiciary is under threat as the aggrieved party would like to know why a judge has recused.
• Judges must give their reasons in writing for recusing themselves from specific cases.
• There has to be a requirement of statutory obligation on the judges to inform the litigants as to why there is a decision to recuse from hearing. Recusal should be used sparingly like the emergency provision in the Indian Constitution.

In a 1980 appeal against Shell and BP, in England, in which “the registrar of civil appeals was unable to assemble three judges who had no shares in either defendant.” Invariably, therefore, when a judge owns shares in one of the litigants what we expect is disclosure of the fact, and if neither party objects one might think it’s acceptable for the judge to hear the case. But in the absence of a well-defined rule that helps establish a basic standard, a decision of this kind can prove troubling somewhere down the line.

Independence and impartiality are the twin pillars without which justice cannot stand,
and the purpose of recusal is to underpin them - Sir Stephen Sedley

Indian economic recession

In the budget, the FM Nirmala Sitharaman claimed that India’s economy would hit $5 trillion by 2025. In the weeks that followed, GDP growth rater fell to a six-year low of 5%; the RBI made a surplus transfer of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the union government; and the government announced the merger of ten public-sector banks into four combinations. These announcements came against the backdrop of the precarious state of the Indian economy. The country is witnessing an economic slowdown that has spread from the auto sector to all other segments, the unemployment rate is at a 45-year high and the tax collections from the previous fiscal year presented an estimated shortfall of Rs 1.67 lakh crore from the revenue expected by the BJP government. The going seems difficult for both Sitharaman and the Indian economy.

• The RBI has lowered India's growth forecast for FY20 to 6.1% from 6.9% it projected earlier. The World Bank has cut India's GDP growth forecast from 7.5% to 6% this year.
• India is a consumption-driven economy. When consumers buy goods and services, the wheels of the economy turn. That has not been happening for several quarters and for various reasons.
• Fewer jobs (at 6.1% in 2017-18, unemployment was the highest in 45 years), a freeze in salary hikes and bonuses, layoffs and uncertainty in businesses are making people cut down on spending.
• Incomes and wages in rural India, where 67% of India's population lives, have been hit because of low food prices. Agriculture GDP grew just 2% in the first quarter of the current fiscal, compared to 5.1% in the same quarter of the previous fiscal.
• Consequently growth in private consumption expenditure is down to an 18-quarter low of 3.1% in June 2019. Savings declined to an all-time low because of static or falling incomes.
• Construction, which is a big employment generator, is decelerating because of the slump in real estate. Exports fell 6.57% in Sept 2019 compared to a year ago. Discoms are groaning under a combined debt of over Rs 2.4 lakh crore. Corporate sector revenue growth fell to an 11-quarter low and investments plunged to a 15-year low.
• The banking and financial services sector is in a mess. There is liquidity, but no loans are being given. Banks are tottering under a mountain of NPA's of close to 10% of their total assets. They are fearful of giving fresh loans in case they add to their woes. Non-banking financial companies, which are a major source of consumer loans, are in a mess of their own and unable to extend credit. And the string of collapsing financial institutions has further sapped consumer confidence in the system.
• The government's rescue acts like slashing corporate tax rates and unprecedented interest rate cuts by the RBI seem to be yielding no results in the short term.
• These are exceptional times and they call for exceptional measures. Indian government could take cue from the US Federal Reserve spent nearly 800 billion dollars to pre-empt an imminent economic meltdown in 2008.

The Indian economy is in a vicious downward spiral and the Modi government needs to stop worrying about the fiscal deficit & inflation etc and start pouring money into the economy to stimulate growth. They need to put money in people's pockets in every way they can. This appears to be the only way to get the jammed wheels of the economy moving again.

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Rich gets richer

N.Ambika, DCP North, Mumbai - The real story

N.Ambika, DCP North, Mumbai

N Ambika was just 14 years old when she got married to one of the Police constable at Dindikal, Tamilnadu, even she was a victim of Child Marriage. But she didn’t blame the system for her marriage. At the age of 18 she blessed with a 2 daughters Aigan and Niharika.

Ambika’s husband works as a Police Constable in TN Government, one fine day he leaves his home early to attend a Parade program and the guest were followed by the IG and DG of the respective locality. Ambika was curious about the honouring and respect given for the DG and IG, and the same day when her husband arrives back home, she questions him about the DC and IG, when her husband says that he is the rank 1 officer for our department, a dream arises in the Ambika’s mind that even she wants to become that level of officer.

But Ambika was married at a very small age, she couldn’t even complete her SSLC, but her husband supports her dream, and advices her to take the external SSLC, later she even completes external PUC and Degree. She requests with her husband that she want to move to Chennai for the IPS coaching, can he make a arrangement of the PG facility, Ambika’s husband was very cooperative for all her works and he used to support her in all the ways. He makes a PG facility for her in Chennai and makes all other facility for her IPS Coaching.

Even after lot of efforts, Ambika fails to clear IPS in 3 attempts, her husband comes back to her and advise her that come back to his place and also says that government has given me know Accommodation facility and by the time I get retire even I will be having 2 stars on my shoulder.

Ambika listens patiently to her husband words and replies give me one-year time, if I wouldn’t pass, I will come back and after this much struggle at least i could work as a Teacher in some school. In the fourth Attempt, Ambika clears IPS prelims, Mains and Interview.

After clearing IPS in 2008, she gets into training provided by the Department, In training she was a Batchmet of Ravi D Chennanavar DCP Bangalore, he used to say about her in the camps, how attentive and brave she was in the training moment.

Ambika now works as a DCP North 4 division in Mumbai. If Ambika would blame her parents on that day for child marriage then she wouldn’t become DCP today. So instead of blaming the system or people, make an attempt to come outside of that system and try to change the system.

By this today Ambika has become a role model for many and there are many Ambika hidden who are reading this story, be brave and start the journey towards your destiny.

Climate action

You have stolen my dreams and my childhood. People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?
- Greta Thunberg at the UN on 23-Sep-2019. 

• This is her best speech.  It captures the anxiety of a generation and those living on the front lines of famines, heat waves, droughts, and sea level rise.
• They whispered to her, “you cannot withstand the storm”. She whispered back, “I am the storm”!  You go girl.
• Why is Trump there? He doesn't believe in Climate Change. 
• On 26-Nov-2018 asked about the findings in a report warning of devastating effects of climate change that unchecked global warming would wreak havoc on the US economy, US President Donald Trump said: "I don't believe it." 
• I feel no need to meet President Trump. My message to President Trump is just listen to science, and he obviously doesn't do that. - Greta Thunberg
• Pro-tip: Yielding to the demands of a catastrophizing 16 year-old who has no experience with unintended consequences is a bad idea. We are not beginning a mass extinction. Both mankind and nature can and will adapt to the modest increases in temps. Don't fall for the drama. - Doug Sheridan
• We have taken planet stability for granted and our stable, reliable planet no longer exists. What we do in the next few years, will determine the next few thousand years. - David Attenborough. 
• She is amazing. The only reason people can make fun of this statement is because they still feel safe and their bellies are full. In about 20 years nothing will be funny anymore. The older people will die but millennial's have the possibility of horror.

• Greta has done more in 16 years to raise climate awareness than you or I have in our lifetime.
• Rich people will be ok. Poor people will not.
• We have to look for a solution, because she is right - people are dying and ultimately the planet will die if we don’t do something fast.
• The earth will fix itself by killing off as many humans as it can. That’s the only way balance will be restored.
• Everyone, can fight, climate change every day,  just by making the right choice of food.
• No one is willing to live without modern luxury and necessities to deal with it.

Financially supporting adult children

It is not uncommon in India for adult children to live with parents. There is both convenience and complaint about this practice. In the west, independence at the age of 18 was the norm. But parental financial support to adult children even in these societies is common. Parents may pay off education loans of grown-up children; fund a holiday or a birthday party; take on payment of bills, EMIs and insurance; bail out credit card dues and defaulted loans; volunteer down payment for the house or car; offer a monthly allowance; or subsidize health costs. Growing up is about making choices and facing the consequences of those choices. What drives parents to continue to support adult children who should be responsible for their own lives? By offering to “help”, parents actively impede their adult children from being responsible for their own actions. There can be serious consequences.

• Parents could be jeopardizing their finances by enabling adult children. They may be putting their health and retirement at risk; liquidating their assets at unfair valuations; unevenly dividing their wealth or compromising on goals. Financially supporting a grown-up child while imperiling one’s future is not wise.
• Child centric family structures make parents believe they exist for the well-being of their children and therefore, have do what it takes. 
• The earlier primitive societies were driven by the basic instinct to reproduce and further the species.
• The modern society has made a child a completely emotion-driven cohesive family unit; the craving for being loved, needed and validated; the compulsions of succeeding and doing better than one’s cohorts; and the burden it places on parents to hold themselves responsible for their child’s success, happiness and progress in life.
• This obsession has triggered a generation of helicopter parents who have to know and solve every one of their children’s problems, shielding them from the adverse consequences all their lives. Even if these arose from conscious choices the adult child willingly made.
• Think about politicians and business people who accumulate wealth for many future generations. There are children who do not take their adult lives seriously, making careless choices, blaming everyone but themselves for their situation.
• It is tough to see merit in this system of extended subsidy. What can parents and children do to keep the financial transactions sane and sensible? It is important for both parents to agree that they need to limit their support to children. Financial support that is finite, measured and clearly defined is less burdensome on the provider. Do not get into arrangements that are tough to discontinue. 

Reinforce the power you wield on your assets and money that you have earned and you have the right to spend it in a manner you see fit. You may want to give it away in charity; create a fund for your grandchildren’s future rather than let your children spend it; you may need it for your own retirement and use. You have to express these needs clearly to prioritize how to use your money. Whenever an adult child asks for a favor the standard answer should be: “let me think about it and come back to you.” Do not force yourself to agree immediately. Buying time will reduce the burden and provide the space to say no if you have to. 

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Donate money to charities, not to beggars

We all want people to work, not beg. Working is productive; begging is at best neutral and often a burden and a nuisance. There is no guarantee that the beggar who receives the money will spend it in ways that increase the quality of his life. He might well spend the money on alcohol or drugs.

• Few coins that we give to a beggar, doesn't make begging a lucrative activity and promotes laziness.
• Giving money to beggars, you are helping the wrong people.
• Think in social context: if I don’t help the beggar, who will? 
• You are likely to give your money to the beggars who already get the most from other givers. Like everyone else, you are also likely to give the most money to the ones with the locations, looks, and tricks that prompt people to give.
• If you give money to beggars on impulse, chances are that you end up giving to wrong people but not to the poor men and women whose appearances have less power to elicit sympathy and guilt in passers by and who occupy less favorable spots in the city.
• The vast majority of beggars living in the developed world have a quality of life that millions in the developing world can only dream of. 
• If our aim is to benefit ourselves, then giving money to beggars is sub optimal. If our aim is to benefit others, then giving money to beggars is also sub optimal. Either way, giving money to beggars is wasteful.

In seeking to help others, we should not merely give to those who are geographically close to us and whose appearance elicits our sympathy. Rather, we should give to those who are the worst off, who can be helped the most, and who are the least responsible for the situation that they’re in. To achieve this, we should (i) consciously decide how much of our money we are willing to spend on helping others, (ii) find the most efficient charity, (iii) donate money to that charity, and (iv) say no the next time a beggar asks if we can spare a dime.

Aid should go where it will help most.

Beggars are very unfortunate lot deprived of wealth, health, nutritious food, shelter, clothes, education and almost everything we are blessed with. Expecting from the beggars things which we and our friends doesn't follow in day to day living is height of hypocrisy and speaks poorly about our empathetic abilities. Dropping coin into the beggar's bowl and expecting divine results is stupidity. Dropping few coins in beggars bowl neither makes receiver rich nor impoverishes the giver. Hence dropping coin in beggars bowl must not be analysed too much. Just give and forget. By dropping few coins, we are not doing any great thing or any reason for the beggar to be grateful. Beggars have no right to create any kind of public nuisance.

Public sector banks merger is not a reform

On 30-8-2019 Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a mega plan to merge 10 public sector banks into four as part of plans to create fewer and stronger global-sized lenders as it looks to boost economic growth from a six-year low. After the mergers, the country will have 12 public sector banks, including State Bank of India and Bank of Baroda.

• Except PNB, all anchor banks had exposures of over 10% of their loan book to NBFCs.
• Merging of two weak banks into another weak bank is a decent  idea, under normal economic conditions. But to pass it off as a major reform on a day when the economy hit a six-year-low in growth (~5%) rings hollow.
• Given the limited flexibility on restructuring and rationalization, meaningful cost synergies from PSU bank mergers are unlikely. Core profitability for these banks is likely to remain weak and hence they will continue to depend on external infusions.
• Until the year 1995, the best candidates from IITs and the best universities wrote IAS exams, State Bank entrance exams and the national recruitment exams of the PSBs. But after the liberalization of the Indian economy in 1991, private sector companies grew aggressively and  attracted away the cream of the talent. 
• In the face of this competition, the PSBs with their moribund processes and stagnant salaries have attracted mediocre talent. Any bright spark, despite these service conditions was usually poached by private banks and NBFCs.
• In 1992,  the government realized it doesn’t have the money to capitalize them and started listing them so that they may raise funds from the capital market. But the design of the Act is still intended to serve government goals and not compete on commercial lines.
• True reform will require what financial sector giants like YV Reddy and PJ Nayak have long recommended: Abolish the Banking Companies Act, bring PSBs under the Companies Act, so that clauses like section 49 (ensuring truly independent directors) apply to PSBs as well. This will fix governance somewhat. Then as soon as the capital markets permit, government stake in these PSBs needs to be brought below 50%. This will enable them to recruit competitively and run on market-based principles.  That’s what you call reform.
• For now the PSBs are going to be completely immersed in their integration issues. Past experience showed deep gashes in the merged banks for few quarters after merger. The merging banks have barely recognized the bad loans created before 2013, when a new wave of bad loans created after 2014 started emerging. Instead of tackling  this continued onslaught, every senior banker in the merging PSB will be more worried about what will be his or her place in the new hierarchy. Each branch manager will worry about how to tackle customers of the erstwhile competing bank. They will worry about  repainting their billboards and printing new stationary. 
• And all this chaos with no change at all in governance standards. And at a time when the best PSBs have a net NPA of 6% and capital that just makes it to Basel grade. And at a time when the economy is giving you that sinking feeling.

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Recession

The inequality generated by decades of neoliberalism and the resentment it has caused across the world have in recent times led to uncertainties that only intensify the fear of recession.

• Growth is decelerating worldwide, including United States which is experiencing 50-year low unemployment rate. China lost momentum with industrial growth at a 17-year low. Prospects for the third quarter are gloomy as well.
• The performance of major economies affects the rest of the world economy. For example, depressed Chinese demand caused the fall in Thailand’s second quarter growth rate to the lowest since 2014. 
• Scattered talk has given way to widely expressed fears of an impending recession affecting financial investment behavior, with investors dumping stocks and shifting to government bonds, resulting in a slump in stock markets.
• The deeper malaise is the depressed demand due to extreme inequality in assets and incomes that has resulted from decades of neoliberal growth across the developed world. Globalization moved productive activities to cheap labor locations had depressed wages across countries with large profits for a few and tax concessions for the rich have accentuated inequality.
• Incomes in the top percentile have exploded, those in the middle and lower ranges have  stagnated sapping consumption demand. Growth came by finding ways of stimulating demand not depending on current income, but driven by credit. That, beyond a point, is not sustainable and the fear of another recession is likely.
• The USA-China trade war and other countries responding with similar measures, the world is faced with a proliferation of beggar-thy-neighbor policies that makes a bad situation worse. The unknown consequences of Brexit cannot be anything but adverse. These uncertainties intensifies the fear of recession.
• The challenge for capitalism was finding an alternative way of reviving demand depressed by underlying inequality. In the past the states used to step in to lift economies out of recession with their spending for a short a time. With neoliberalism that has shrunk the revenues of the state and public spending being is mostly debt-financed, this option was shunned. The only way to drive private demand is with credit in the form of near zero interest rates and getting central banks to hugely increase liquidity in the economy.
• Capitalism’s current predicament arises because this policy has not worked, though it has been experimented with very low interest rates and in some countries even have turned negative. While this policy has not delivered growth, it has encouraged speculation financed with cheap credit. This has led to accumulation of corporate debt as firms borrowed mainly to speculate in financial markets and pay off their rich shareholders with costly share buybacks resulting in asset price inflation and financial fragility. But with low growth central banks were compelled to continue this policy regime.
• But as the threat of recession looms, erstwhile advocates of fiscal prudence and austerity such as the IMF are calling for adding fiscal stimuli to the policy mix. Infrastructure upgrades, expanding public housing stocks and targeted tax cuts should all be considered. This is the recipe for a return to more robust growth and inflation.

The recession threat is immediate and policy is likely to respond too slowly. If the recession does set in, it can be devastating. In 2008 China, Germany and India were affected less and this time they are among the countries whose performance could drive the recession. Corporate debt often denominated in foreign currencies at high levels, a recession would find many debtors defaulting on payments and forced to sell assets. That could result in asset price deflation and will have reverberations in an over-committed financial sector. Only a set of freak occurrences can prevent another recession.

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Corrupt anti-corruption campaigns - Kaushik Basu

The Amazon rainforest has been burning for weeks. Yet Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, mobilized the armed forces to help contain the fires only in the last few days – in the face of European leaders’ threat to suspend a major trade deal and the possibility of a far-reaching boycott of Brazilian products. 

• Bolsonaro government’s weak enforcement of laws protecting the Amazon are root causes of the crisis, encouraging ranchers to set fires to clear land for agriculture.
• The crisis in the Amazon is a stark example of the damage that can be done when governments bow unequivocally to business interests. It also highlights the cynical manipulation of anti-corruption efforts to undermine democracy and advance an authoritarian political agenda.
• Some conservative economists argue that corruption can be beneficial, as it enables economic actors to bypass regulations, thereby enabling markets to function more effectively. The truth is that corruption corrodes markets, protects incumbents from competitive challenges by impeding the entry of new actors, destroys the moral fabric of society, and stunts economic development. There is a strong inverse correlation between development and corruption.
• The world’s least corrupt countries are Denmark and New Zealand. Both have achieved high standards of living. The world’s most corrupt countries are Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria – all poor and mired in conflict. Ranked from least to most corrupt, the United States is 22 of 180 and, India is 78th, China is 87th and Brazil is 105th.
• The connection between corruption management and democratic compromise is complex. This is the reason why many leaders who have come to power with a genuine interest in controlling corruption have ended up nurturing cronyism and damaging democracy instead.
• Some political leaders launch a corruption “purge” that targets rivals or critics for prosecution. In countries that are rife with high-level corruption, leaders can simply begin by taking aim at those who challenge their authority. What starts as an anti-corruption drive ends up as an instrument of cronyism and media control. And by creating a safe zone for loyalists, it often ends up exacerbating corruption.
• Corruption can implicate even those who would prefer to operate according to the law.

Kaushik Basu, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, is Professor of Economics at Cornell University and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

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Like unicorns, the 'free market' doesn't exist

What we have is not capitalism, it’s corporatism. Under real capitalism, the free market would prevent the destruction of our environment. All our problems would be solved if we just returned to the good competitive capitalism. There never has been, is not and never will be a capitalist free market economy. 

• Capitalism is meant to pivot around the free market. If the market were rid of government regulation then true competition would reign, with corporations battling it out to provide their goods and services to rational, all knowing consumers. This would provide stable and accurate prices and quality for goods and services as competition would aggregate supply, demand and pricing.
• The success or failure of a company would be directly proportional to its ability to meet the needs of its consumer.
• The recent failures – the bankers bailout, the corporatisation of government, the decline in social mobility – are because we do not have real capitalism. We are in fact in a post capitalist, state capitalist of fascist state. Whatever state we are in, it is as a direct and inevitable result of capitalism. 
• Corporations themselves are rabidly anti-competition.
• In Britain today, 97% of food purchased, is bought in supermarkets, with only four corporations making up 76% of those sales. In the US, 72% of food is purchased in supermarkets. As these figures continue an upward trend, we can see that monopolies are being created in food production.
• If we take a look and test the theory that the consumer would benefit from this process of corporate battles. Since the 1950's, the percentage of the US household budget spent on food dropped from 32% to 7%. In the UK the proportion spent on food has dropped from 33% to 15%. With supermarkets making record profits, and household food budgets down, who is paying the price for our food? The answer is the farmer and the environment. 
• Seventy years ago, there were nearly seven million American farmers, today there are two million. Now 75% of US produce comes from just 50,000 farming operations.
• The free market has seen a few corporations rise to dominate the market, set their own prices and lead to negative social impacts. While some consumers might see a fall in the price of the food they are buying, they cannot be sure that they are comparing apples with apples and while perhaps benefiting as consumers, they are losing out as producers.
• As seen above, it is not in the interest of the corporation to maintain a free market. The corporation has no reason to apply any kind of ethics whatsoever. Adidas employs child and sweatshop labor in the far east because it is cheaper than employing people on a living wage, with decent terms and condition.
• Historically the government, the purported servant of the people has been the enforcer of rules necessary to restrain the ‘market’ from behaviors which from point of view of the corporation would lead to undesirable social outcomes.
• In the US, by 2011 the largest thirty corporations spent more that year on lobbying government than they spent on taxes. 
• In the UK, corporations with outstanding tax issues are currently in working groups with the to redraft the very tax rules they are doing their best to avoid. 
• When corporations break the law, they are either not tried or given a fine which comes nowhere near the profits reaped by breaking the law.
• Recently banks have instituted fraud on a global scale by simply making up the LIBOR rate, the base interest rate, at the cost of savers and pensioners and to the benefit of their traders who specialize in debt, not capital.
• In 1950, corporate taxes made up 30% of federal revenues in the US. By 2012, this had fallen to just 7%. In the UK, Corporation Tax rates were cut from 52% to 35% over just two years between 1984-86 and has continued to be cut until it stands at just 21% today.
• Corporations do not want any rules which stand in the way of making profit. Left unregulated, they would simply operate in ways which maximized their profits regardless of social outcomes. When we introduce a regulator, corporations seek to and succeed in compromising them. The issue is not to blame one or other of the players, but the game of capitalism itself.
• The free market myth is nothing but a nonsense. It is a self serving nonsense propagandized by its beneficiaries.

In conclusion, not only is the market not free, but it never can be. It requires legislation to prevent rational corporate behavior which would undermine it, and any regulator (state or otherwise) will be corrupted by corporations seeking to influence them. The sooner we abandon this madness, the sooner we can answer the bigger question: how do we create a means of economic organisation which has the highest chance of meeting our social goals? We must abandon the myth of the free market, just as we gave up on Santa Claus and Unicorns – it is time to put away childish things so we can become grown up caretakers of ourselves, each other and the planet.

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