This list is from a manual prepared by Canadian Dept of Foreign Affairs for its diplomats to create "greater awareness among consular officials to the possibility of Canadians detained abroad being tortured."
"Sometimes, a nation's descent into moral depravity is marked by sudden events... a coup, for instance. Other times, the signposts are smaller, subtler increments...
Meanwhile, responding to the pressure and "unhappiness" expressed by its two "closest allies", Canada has agreed to delete these two countries from the list. The Canadian Foreign Minister has explained:
"The document is a training manual. It is not a policy document or a statement of policy. As such it does not convey the government's views or positions... It contains a list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies. I have directed that the manual be reviewed and rewritten."
"If you are an investor who depends on India’s largest-selling economic newspaper for unbiased news, then you must know and understand the concept of “private treaties” (PT). Since The Times of India (TOI) far outsells every other English newspaper and The Economic Times is by far the market leader in the economic news category, the concept is of universal interest."
What are these Private Treaties which Times Group - Bennett Coleman Co Ltd (BCCL - have?
""Private Treaties helps clients undergo a paradigm shift in their self - perception and their marketing plan. Using the Times Group's acclaimed ability to create brands, it transports the Treaty partner to a higher corporate plane. It achieves this by:
Risk Sharing: transforming client's 'commodities' into 'brands' by creating synergy between the client's business model & our dynamic & ever expanding reach
Innovating: imparting, and helping implement cutting-edge solutions which also create tremendous financial value
Value Enhancing: PT reinforces the wisdom that, within the next three decades, the success of any enterprise will depend on its ability to use its intangible assets, not its ability to amass and control physical ones. The Group is eminently places to help its partners make this leap into the future.
"
The mechanism of this partnership is innocently simple:
the Times Group/BCCL picks up equity in young fledgling companies (as a '05 article in Business World explains, "these companies are in their growth phase and have other working capital priorities."
"The “private treaties” can be defended in theory — on the basis of the claim that journalists in the publications concerned are free to write what they want about any company, and are not duty-bound to sing the praises of the companies whose shares the publisher holds. The bitter truth is that this is hogwash —the Chinese walls that used to separate editorial and business departments in most newspapers have become porous, and in some cases have been demolished without ceremony. Evidence that has surfaced supports the view that journalists in the affected publications are being asked to play the piper’s tune. So from a journalistic standpoint, there is nothing to be said in defence of space-for-shares barters."
In more concrete terms, as to what this means, Sucheta Dalal's article however quotes a mail (accessed by her magazine, MoneyLife) by the Economic Times Editor:
"At ET, we are carving out a separate team to look into the needs of Private Treaty clients. Every large centre will have a senior editorial person to interface with Treaty clients. In turn, the senior edit person will be responsible, along with the existing team, for edit delivery. This team will have regional champions along with one or two reporters for help -- but more importantly, they will liaise with REs (Resident Editors) and help in integrating the content into the different sections of the paper. In this way, we will be able to incorporate PT into the editorial mainstream, rather than it looking like a series of press releases appearing in vanilla form in the paper."
Times Group/BCCL, however is not alone in this race. In fact, the Indian media is catching up with this model, e.g., check this article:
"Though somewhat dissonant, I find this a more logical way of looking at the mainstream media, and the business model it follows.
The conventional way of looking at media is that it serves a valuable social purpose in the free society. It frees the content - news, views, entertainment - to reach it to common man. One assumes also that this information, provided by media, helps the common man to make more informed decisions.
But, often we tend to forget that media - specifically, the mainstream media - is also a business. It creates, packages and sells a service to its customers, and gets paid by them for the quality of service provided.
It is this perspective which turns the conventional view of media on its head...
... most of us tend to believe - somewhat naively - that when we buy a magazine or a newspaper, or watch a TV channel, we are the customers, because we pay for it (even if nominally).
We tend to ignore that the media revenues come, not from subscriptions paid by its readers/ audience, but from advertisements paid for by businesses.
So, perhaps, a more rational way of looking at media should be like this: Media sells its subscribers/ audience/ spectators/ readers to its primary customers - the businesses, and gets paid for that service!!!"
"In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this. But their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered to their people. Those dreams failed. And today, people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life. But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares."
here is a good example:
In a way, this is also an expression of the American belief in USA's "Manifest Destiny" - a moral idea which helped it annex of territories. Something to akin to the "manifest destiny" of Roman Empire, as described by Joseph Schumpeter in a 1919 essay:
"There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interestswere not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest - why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, it was manifestly Rome's duty to guard against their indubitably aggressivedesigns."
[Note: not entirely my own... customised/changed it from a mail which was going around]
Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Mr. Common Sense. Mr. Sense had been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in history, and the hype of a globalised free world.
He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as knowing when to come in out of the rain, why the early bird gets the worm and that life isn't always fair.
Common Sense lived by simple, sound and reliable life policies, e.g.,
don't spend more than you earn,
quality of life is more important than branded 'life-style',
"home" is more precious than the "address"
responsibility comes before rights,
sharing resources (ranging from ideas to car-pool) is the essence of sustainance of a society... etc.
His health began to rapidly deteriorate when well intentioned but grossly mis-interpreted ideologies started proliferating the media and minds. Mr. Sense declined even further when:
parents started becoming the "career managers" of their off-springs, instead of letting them find their own calling,
brand labels started started appearing outside - and not inside - the products,
the concept of "economic growth" started replacing - contradicting - the reality of "economic development",
people started believing that "greater common good" actually emanates from "self-interest", and
the "international commuinity" accepted 'extraordinary rendition' as a norm of life on the planet... etc.
Finally, Common Sense lost the will to live as the "rights" became contraband, religion became businesses/politics, and criminals received better treatment than their victims.
Common Sense was preceded in death
by his parents, Truth and Trust,
his wife, Discretion,
his daughter, Responsibility, and
his son, Reason.
He is survived by two stepbrothers: "My Rights", and "I'm a Whiner".
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone...
Pankaj Ghemawat's blog has some interesting - and revealing - statistics about Globalisation. (for those who are not in the know, Pankaj Ghemawat is a Prof at Harvard Business School, and currently on sabbatical with IESE, Barcelona)
"...most types of economic activity that could be carried out within or across national borders are actually still concentrated domestically... of all the capital being invested around the world, how much is foreign direct investment by companies outside of their home countries?... The fact is, the ratio is generally less than 10% and, while it may be pushed higher by merger waves, has never reached 20%."
He goes one to put some statistics on key parameters of cross-border activities - telephone calls, long-term migration, university enrollment, stock investment, and trade as a fraction of gross domestic product (GDP) - look at the blue bars in the diagram below. "they fall much closer to 10% than the levels close to 100% that one would expect if one took the gurus of globaloney at their word."
and what are the figure shown by the green bars?
"... 400 respondents to a poll about globalization levels on HBR.org came up with the responses summarized in green in the chart... Note the systematic tendency to overestimate globalization levels, and by a wide margin: the responses (the green bars) averaged 30% versus real values (the blue bars) that averaged 10%. And to aggravate matters, respondents with more than 10 years’ experience actually are farther off the mark than ones with less experience!
So perhaps, "Globalisation" is not so global, as the hype around it show.... Or as Pankaj Ghemawat puts it:
"...managers assume the world to be more globalized than it actually is..."
However,, there is one parameters, which Ghemawat seems to neglect in his analysis:
The movement of the most unregulated commodity - currency/Forex - across borders
the entire inter- and intra-regional annual merchandise trade in 2006 was $11.8 trillions (of this around $6.5 trillions was intra-regional trade - i.e., only $5.2 tillions of trade accounts for annual international merchandise trade)
add $2.8 trillions which is the value of world exports of commecial services
..and the value of entire annual world global trade in merchandise and commercial services turns out to be $9 trillion....
Or in other words, global trade of Forex in 3 days exceeeds the annual global trade of goods and services!!
A couple of years back, I had made a post on this global trade - Living in a Global Casino - and how it differs from other trade activities:
"The FX market also differs from investments in goods and services, in that speculators make money from money alone. No jobs are created and no services provided. The losers are often those least able to pay the price - the poor and marginalised who are the victims of financial crises triggered by (a) "capital account convertibility", normally a condition for loans by the international financial institutions, and (b) the rapid withdrawal of funds from emerging economies by speculators."
Maybe we should have a taxonomy of caste-discrimination... I realised this when exposed to two very different expressions of caste discrimination through the news-items during last few days.
One instance was the stray news items which occupied much media attention - and headlines - in the past week about the ban on the Hindi film Aaja Nachlein UP - and Punjab and Haryana.
The reasons were these two lines in a song:
"mohalle mein kaisa maramar hai, Bole mochi bhi khud ko sonar hai" [roughly translated: what turmoil is happening in the community; even the cobbler claims to be a goldsmith]
Following a furore and the ban, these lines were removed from the song, and the Mayavati govt in UP lifted the ban... So did Punjab and Haryana (subsequently lifted). Depending where one is sociologically located, the furore was natural or exaggerated... But the indignation that some some/many felt was the implications hidden in these lyrics: that, if the mochi/cobbler (a Dalit/ untouchable occupation) tries to become like a sonar/goldsmith (who can be a schedule caste, a Devednya brahmin, or from the merchant class, sarraf, etc., but "above" the mochi in the caste hierarchy), this is a cause of social turmoil...
In any case, the director of the film, Anil Mehta, clarified:
"... We never meant any offense to anyone... When we were readying the lyrics, we had nothing derogatory in mind. If the idea had struck us, we would never have kept the line in the first place...If you look at the spirit of the film, it isn't about discrimination. It's about the participation of people from all walks of life."
Most likely - at least, I am sure - he was being genuinely honest. These lines were not intended to hurt anyone's sensibilites and sentiments... They did!
This is not the first time, I have experienced this subliminal force which blurs the boundaries between a conscious cultural expression and the unconscious discriminatory motif.
I recall that Kolkata airport used to have an open "smoking zone/area" in the arrival lounge. Some months back they shifted it to en enclosed "smoking section" (even that does not exist now). Needless to say, the enclosure for smokers was like a gas chamber - claustrophobic, with an exhaust fan that would not work, and hot and humid. I overheard one of the smokers grumbling:
"...we have no choice now. We have become schedule castes."
!!!
...which is both instructive and worth introspecting: about the innocuously subliminal nature of discrimination, about the innocent pervasiveness of caste-hierarchy (and barriers) in our popular imagery and language... about how it is so very easy for our conscious acts/words to get influenced by our historical-cultural programming... (which may go back to embedded childhood memories of being by friends and called a "bhangi" or a "chamaar", etc...
The other instance reflected the other end of continuum - conscious, blatent, and one which sublimated caste-discrimination into a socially acceptable "spiritual" value.
"Scavenging must have been a spiritual experience for the Valmiki caste... At some point in time somebody must have got enlightenment in scavenging. They must have thought that it is their duty to work for the happiness of the entire society and the Gods."
Or watch this video:
To a somewhat lesser extent, one finds similar motif of sublimation in this TV ad:
Behind such imageries and descriptions, however, lurks the living reality of the "Life Inside a Black Hole" (Tehelka Magazine, Issue 47(4), Dec 08, 2007), which can be too stark and unsettling for common human consciousness to live with - And thus, the attempts to mask it, discount it, trivialise it...
"What is the weather really like inside a manhole? What happens to the shit, piss and other waste flushed down by 18.02 percent of the billion- plus population?... At least 22,327 Dalits of a sub-community die doing sanitation work every year. Safai Kamgar Vikas Sangh, a body representing sanitation workers of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), sought data under the Right to Information Act in 2006, and found that 288 workers had died in 2004-05, 316 in 2003-04, and 320 in 2002-03, in just 14 of the 24 wards of the BMC. About 25 deaths every month. These figures do not include civic hospital workers, gutter cleaners or sanitation workers on contract....
...In Delhi, it is a humongous many-mouthed subterranean creature — a network of 5,600 km of sewers with about 1.5 lakh manholes,... which consumes 2,781 million litres of the sewage Delhi generates daily... It is indiscriminately fed a wide range of objects that causes clogs — condoms, sanitary pads, nondegradable thermocol, a variety of plastics, industrial sludge, kitchen waste, toilet cleaning acids, medical waste (syringes, blades, even placenta), glass shards, household gadgets, construction debris....
...Entering the narrow, dark drain, the worker pushes his only weapon, the khapchi — a spliced bamboo stick — to dislodge the block... It is then that a sudden blast of putrid sludge — besides methane, hydrogen sulphide, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide — assaults the person. “Even if we manage not to swallow the toxic muck, it manages to enter our bodies.” Odourless and colourless, the carbon gases can cause suffocation. If the worker survives the initial ordeal, he crouches inside and loads the sludge into leaky metal buckets or wicker baskets for his team to haul out. Depending on the clog, the entire operation could take up to 48 hours. “We often work after midnight. When people sleep, the flow in the sew- ers is lesser, and our work does not disturb road-users,”...
...The CEC’s 2005 survey of 200 DJB manhole workers found that... 91.5 percent of them (were)from suffering injuries and 80 percent suffering eye infections. The survey found that diseases like leptospirosis, viral hepatitis and typhoid were common....
...Not surprisingly, most of the workers die before retirement. Owing to loss of appetite and inevitable alcoholism, many men shrink to half their size if they work 20 years. The average lifespan of a manhole worker is about 45. And if a worker does not die inside a manhole, the civic body does not offer any monetary compensation for illnesses/deaths owing to occupational hazards. In Delhi, permanent workers get a monthly “risk allowance” of Rs 50..."
Hardly the life-conditions for "spiritual enlightenment" or experiencing the "yeh suhana mausam" (this lovely weather)!.... And if one wants to move out/up to the metaphorical state of a sonar, wouldn't that be natural?
Maybe that is why we need to map caste-based discrimination on a contunuum of Subliminal to Sublimated...
"Extraordinary rendition and irregular rendition are terms used to describe the kidnapping and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one state to another, and the term torture by proxy is used by some critics to describe extraordinary rendition by the United States, with regard to the alleged transfer of suspected terrorists to countries known to employ harsh interrogation techniques that may rise to the level of torture."
"...refer to a variety of practices by the US authorities involving transfers of individuals from one country to another, without any form of judicial or administrative process such as extradition. These practices, usually carried out in secret, include transferring "war on terror" detainees into the custody of other states, assuming custody of individuals from foreign authorities and abducting suspects on foreign soil...
...Some victims of "rendition" have later turned up in official US detention centres, such as Guantánamo Bay. Others have simply "disappeared" after being arrested by US agents or turned over to US custody.
It has been reported that the CIA, often using covert aircraft leased by front companies, has flown individuals to countries including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Most of the states to which the USA transfers these individuals are known to use torture and other ill-treatment in interrogations. It is alleged that states which are known to practise torture have been specifically selected to receive detainees for interrogation and that detainees have been threatened by US interrogators that they will be sent to such states.
It has also been reported that victims of "rendition" transferred to US custody from other countries have been held in US-run secret detention centres outside US territory..."
In fact, this June, BBC Channel 4 telecasted the documentary "Kidnapped to Order" made by Stephen Grey - among those kidnapped were also women and children (often from the family of a suspected terrorist). According to an interview with a CIA official in the documentary, of the 35,000-40,000 people who were kidnapped, at least 85% were innocent!!! (Click here to watch/download the film)
All such "extraordinary measures" were/ are justified in the context of the "extraordinary time" in the post-911 era and "War on Terror"...
But apparently, in the scheme of things, the "extraordinary measures" are actually ordinary acts of an Empire... And so last month:
A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.
The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.
Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the "extraordinary rendition" of terrorist suspects.
The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington..."
This admission was made by Alun Jones QC, representing the US government in a British court:
"The United States does have a view about procuring people to its own shores which is not shared... If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse — it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.” (click here to know about bounty hunting
Of course, anyone following the global financial news will know that the 50-year old global romance with US$ is coming to an end... The signs were there since quite some time...
What has changed is that what could be earlier explained as a geo-political or high-end financial investor pheonomenon, is now trickling down to mundane affairs.
The snap-shots of this worn-out/wearing-out romance look like this:
1. Earlier, it was the Communists/"Axis of Terror" countries, who started terminating the relationship E.g.,
2. Then, the financially-savvy investors started moving away E.g.,
Two years back, in the World Economic Forum, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates publicly dumped the US$: "I'm short the dollar... The ol' dollar, its gonna go down."
Warren Buffet echoed Bill Gates sentiments then, and again noted this year: "We still are negative on the dollar relative to most major currencies, so we bought stocks in companies that earn their money in other currencies".
Investor Jim Rogers, a former partner of George Soros, of Rogers Holdings (formerly Beeland Interests Inc.) advised people to get out of dollar: "If you have dollars, I urge you to get out... That's not a currency to own." In fact, he is following his own advise by selling his property in dollars to buy Yuan, and expects that he will be able to get rid of all his dollar assets by next summer etc. etc...
3. The friendly countries/allies start bidding farewells One can dismiss the above since countries like Cuba, Iran or Venezuela have a political point to make against US. And investors, at best, would be following their self-interest - they would move away from a weak dollar and come back once the dollar picks up.
But more recently, even the friendly countries are getting disenchanted with US$ E.g.,
In August, US Treasury showed outflows of $163bn from all forms of US investments. This was the first time since 1998 that on balance the foreigners sold the US Treasuries. Japan and China led a record withdrawl of foreign funds - followed by Taiwan.
In the recently concluded meeting of OPEC heads, a closed door meeting "accidentally" got telecasted to journalists. In response to pressure by Venezuela and Iran to replace US$ by a basket of currency for oil trade, Saud al-Faisal, foreign minister of U.S. ally Saudi Arabia said: "...the mere mention that the OPEC countries are studying the issue of the dollar is itself going to have an impact that endangers the interests of the countries..."... That's why, while the issue was discussed and debated, it did not find mention on the draft declaration.
More recently, last week, People's Bank of China vice-director Xu Jian declared the dollar was "losing its status as the world currency." With a dollar-denominted forex of more than a $trillion, this statement may have wider implications.
4. And now these minor reverberations! Nearer home in India, two developments took place during last couple of months.
Indian automobile industry is buzzing with the low-cost (read Rs.100,000/-) car. The Tatas announced this Rs.1lac car for the aspiring Indian middle-class. Other automobile makers (M&M, Maruti, TVS, etc.) have also hinted but are keeping their plans secret.
So how low-cost is the low-cost car?
Except for the small car project in Singur, the other ventures are still in the offing, and the details are not available in public space. So perhaps the Singur small car project provides the indication of the economics involved in the other small-car projects yet to come up.
"At the recent Geneva Motor Show, Mr Ratan Tata admitted that the price of Rs 100,000 would be ex-factory, excluding taxes and that models with air-conditioning and other features would cost more."
So how much are these "excluded" taxes - and who gets it?
The same article informs that the additional taxes will be:
16% in terms of excise duty
40% in terms of MODVAT
12% in terms of local sales tax levied by the states
In real terms, this means that the much hyped Rs.1lac (Rs.100,000) car will actually cost Rs.1.68lac (Rs.168,000/-) car to the consumer (unless you want it "with air-conditioning and other features" - which will cost more).
If I were a "Socialist" (as I am often categorised by some... even though personally, between/beyond the socialist/capitalist continuum, I prefer to remain a non-ideoligical realist/pragmatist), I would say that that this 68% tax + rent (more than Rs.1000 crores) would help the govt. to do all the good things it is supposed to do for the common citizen, e.g., invest in public infrastructure and provide basic services (healthcare, education, sanitation, land-rights, etc.).
Unfortunately, that is not the case...
So who gets the benfits of these taxes?
Somehow in this economic paradigm of growth, the benefits do not "trickle down".
There is no requirement for upfront payment for the land by the promoters
The Singur plant promoters get a soft loan of Rs200 crores (at 1% interest) from the state govt. Rationale (as explained by the industry minister: "“Unless we give these concessions to the Tatas, other states will wean them away and that would be a big jolt to our efforts to effect a turnaround for Bengal."
VAT to be refunded as loan at 0.1% interest to the promoters
"To persuade this fabulously rich group to start a modest-sized car factory here, the state government has already spent something around Rs 150 crore to acquire close to 1,000 acres of land... this entire tract of land on a ninety-year lease without any down payment at all. For the first five years of the lease, they will pay only one crore rupees; for the next twenty-five years, the payment will increase by 25 per cent at five-year intervals; for the next thirty years payment will be raised at five-year intervals by 33 per cent; for the final twenty years, the rent will be only Rs 20 crore per year.
The discounted present value of what the Tatas have agreed to pay, any respectable accountant will vouchsafe, will hardly exceed Rs 50 crore. Equally necessary to take into account here are the historical trends in the rate of inflation and the likely explosion of real estate values through the decades...
... The state government is, in addition, offering... a loan worth Rs 200 crore carrying a nominal interest of only 1 per cent (as against the rate currently charged by the banks of at least 10 per cent); the principal, one suspects, is never intended to be returned. Finally, in terms of the lease agreement, the entire proceeds for the first ten years of the value-added tax on the sale of this precious car in West Bengal are proposed to be handed back to the Tatas, again at a nominal interest of only 1 per cent. If 40,000 cars are sold every year in West Bengal — not an unreconcilable assumption — with a value-added tax at 12.5 cent, this particular act of magnanimity on the part of the state would ensure an extra bonanza of more than Rs 500 core for the Tatas.
All told, therefore, the group is being offered the allure of around Rs 850 crore by the state government, apart from their being spared the bother of acquiring the land through their own efforts."
What this comment does not elucidate is that even though it the state government who is paying this Rs.850 crore, in reality this money ultimately comes from the taxes paid by the citizens.
"An event occurred unnoticed on January 31, 2006.... It is the change in the base year of national income estimates from the financial year 1993-94 to 1999-2000... (till) 1999-2000, our national income did not include the value of goat’s milk or camel milk, betel leaves produced in West Bengal and Assam, duck eggs, or salt made by evaporating seawater. Furthermore, it ignored the fact that like animals, trees also grow, and became more valuable as they grow.
Gold and jewellery have been amongst our prize possessions for millennia; but it was only in 1999-2000 that their purchases were included... a special new rubric was created for them; they will be found under capital formation...
If an enterprise made a loss, I would have thought that this was negative value added and should be subtracted from national income. But then,... the CSO now treats all losses of public enterprises as imputed subsidies. Would it equally treat losses of private companies as subsidies? I doubt it...
We have developed a large industry to make software. It is of such recent origin that it was ignored in previous compilations. But by 1999-2000 its output was significant, and it had to be taken into account. Is software a consumer good or an investment good?... After due deliberation, the CSO classified it as investment... The CSO’s practice of treating all software as equipment leads to an overestimate of national income; but the alternative is perhaps too complex for a government organization.
...Foreign companies have subsidiaries in India. If they save their profits and reinvest them in the business, that increases the value of the business and adds to the foreign companies’ assets — which are, so to say, India’s liabilities to foreign investors. Those reinvested profits somehow went unnoticed all these years; now they are included in foreign inward investment.
...On the insistence of the Assam DES, the CSO included Rs 13.55 billion’s worth of betel leaves. The Andhra DES insisted on the inclusion of toddy, but had no clue about its value. So the CSO studied consumption data from the National Sample Survey and came to the figure of Rs 5.44 billion...
...The Socio-economic Research Centre had said that a camel gave 700 grams of hair a year if it had one hump, and 3 kilograms if it had two... However, the NRCC (National Research Centre on Camel in Bikaner) disowned these figures, and said that a single-humped camel gave 800 grams of hair. Just why a double-humped camel gives almost four times as much hair as one with a single hump is not known; but then, the NRCC is the expert on camels, and must be trusted. There is no National Research Centre on Pigs... So the CSO went to the Bhongaon Pig Fair in Mainpuri district and gave a haircut to a number of pigs. The average pig yielded 155 grams. Camels and pigs together accounted for Rs 180 million of hair.
... kutcha houses; the resources that go into their construction should be included in investment. This category has turned out to be very convenient for the CSO. It found that as tea shrubs, coffee creepers and rubber trees grew, they became more valuable. Not knowing where to put this value added, the CSO classified it as kutcha construction. This habit of treating trees as kutcha houses became an addiction; the CSO went on to define as kutcha value added by growing plants of seven kinds — mango, grape, coconut, arecanut, cashewnut, sapota, and citrus fruit. Then recently it found that many tall, sophisticated windmills had gone up in the country. Not knowing what to do with them, the CSO classified them too as kutcha houses...
Even after including everything possible in kutcha houses, a number of services remained. These include sewage and refuse disposal, social work, unorganized hairdressing and beauty treatment, and funeral services. One could question whether the output of extraterritorial organizations such as embassies is a part of a country’s income at all. The CSO thinks it is; they too are dumped into other services together with rubbish dumps and cemeteries.
If an animal gives milk, is hitched to a cart or plough or gives babies, it is treated as a capital asset. The change in the number of animals is termed investment, and the capital stock is depreciated. But pigs and chicken are not considered durable assets; change in their numbers is treated as a change in stocks, not as investment."
Desai concludes:
"...While the CSO has included the value of camels’ hair and pigs’ bristles, I am not sure it has included the value of the services of the artists who cut their hair. That exclusion leaves the figures for beauty treatment severely underestimated...."
Alternative Perspective started in Sept '02 (as a Newsletter), as an attempt to widen our awareness about issues related to business, environment, role and influence of media, geo-politics, culture, etc. It aims to share, on a regular basis, some of those pieces of news and information, which do not find place in the highly monopolised mainstream media.
