Compassion

Travelling in trains can be an excellent opportunity to study the human behaviour. The compartment offers you a cross-sectional, cross-regional, cross-religion et al, you name a category and you may find someone who fits that criteria. At times, i feel that it is a miniature representation of our country not only in terms of its compostion but also in terms of size. Of course, my conclusions can be wrong as my observations are based on a small sample size. What astonishes me most, is that, though we say that we are becoming global but i find that we are still very much local in our approcah. If someone gets in at say Diva, she may not get a seat but if someone gets in at Thane and you have your people in the train, then your seat is assured. Given the huge crowd in the compartment, its a sure receipe for germination of big fights. The height is when someone gets in at Dadar and reserve a seat for her friend who is to alight the train at Ghatkopar. Interestingly, when other people do this to them, then they will fight tooth and nail but when they themselves do it, then its a different matter.

social security

The developed world is worried about its aging population primarily because there is a mismatch between the size of people growing old and those that are newly born. In a typical economic terminology, the death rate has fallen sharply and the birth rate is stagnating. The aging population exceeds those that are entering the job market. This development has serious implications; one of the most damaging among them is that, this seriously jeopardizes the social security mechanism. As a result, those governments are worried about the sustainability of those schemes. This means that in some years to come, they will have to find alternatives to support themselves in old age. This problem becomes chronic with the increased life expectancy. We in India are yet to enjoy the benefits of social security mechanism (wherein the state takes care of all your needs in old age). We to a large extent still depend on our family to take care of us. Interestingly, most of the soaps shown on the TV display joint family structure wherein they show three or perhaps four generations staying together.

Economics

It is all grey. We were taught that monopoly (one seller and many buyers) is bad for the economy and consumers, while perfect competition (many buyers and many sellers) is good for the economy and consumers. Recently, as I was reviewing the literature on how inflation was controlled during the war years when there is shortage of every possible commodity. I hit upon a book by J.K. Galbrith, a noted economist, where in he has very convincingly proved that monopoly not only allows you to control the prices with least possible cost but also keeps the growth of black market under check. He further says that under perfect competition it is almost impossible to control the greed of the sellers and purchasing power of the buyers who are successful in cornering the goods. Interesting, isn’t it, that monopoly turns to be good for consumers.

Elections

Speculation, be it in financial markets or in political spheres, will always keep you hooked. Since morning am trying to read an article, but with the Lok sabha results out, the speculation regarding who will form the government and who will be prime minister has heightened and i have not even finished one page. With congress bagging close to 200 seats, the financial markets have stabilized and are slowly rising. Anyways, today and tommorrow promise to be exciting, i think i'll defer reading for couple of days.

My First Post

Finally, the wandering mind has got a place to put down its vibrations, thanks to Big V.