Tuesday, February 20, 2007

India Not Shining?

There have been a lot of dissapointing news for the nation in the past month or so:

1. Farmer suicides -> Despite government interventions, farmers in Vidarbha and elsewhere continue to kill themselves. Reasons? Governments not doing enough to solve their problems. Aam admi's party no longer cares for the poor. Solutions? Eliminate private money lending. Do away with BT Cotton and similar sinister schemes. Waive farmer loans in a manner similar to that of waiving industrial loans.

2. Inflation -> Spiralling costs of essential commodities. Reasons? Might be out of the control of the government. Solutions? No short term remedy in sight. Medium and long term controls already in place. Effects? The poor keeps getting poorer. Who is responsible? Of course the government, they must have a vision to foresee such damaging scenarios and mitigation plans for quick fixes.

3. Energy Shortage -> Power cuts and load shedding hours increase to alarming levels - more so - in the rural areas. Effects? Unemployment, Lack of infrastructure leading to slowdown in the fast growing economy. Reasons? Lack of long term planning by past governments. Solutions? Continuous long term planning and immediate shift to re-usable energy resources wherever possible.

4. Terror attack on the most sensitive train the country. If this is the condition for the train which is supposed to be the most secure, then what is the status of all other trains? India continues to be the softest terror target in the world. Reasons? No control on infiltration. No effective anti terror central law. Minority appeasement policies of central and UP government with an eye towards cheap electoral gains in the coming elections.

Tough times...

1 comment:

Tushar Anand Jiwane said...

Dear Ashutosh,

Farmers suicide : This was due to deliberate neglect of farmers in Vidarbha.Farmers in Western Maharastra are crorepatis.

Inflation : Bound to happen with the kind of growth that we have.We have demand pull inflation which can be be reduced by reducing the liqidity in the system which RBI is doing now. Its right time to put brakes on the economy with higher interest rates.

Power : This is an old problem.People and farmers don't want to pay .The result is that govt was not willing to erect power plants and left it to private sector which did not deliver.Govt may loosed elections signle handedly due to this reason.

Terrorism : there is no straight solution to this problem. I think naxalism is a bigger threat .

Regards,
Tushar