On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 6:10 AM, Deepak Shenoy <deepakshe...@gmail.com> wrote: [snip - too many topics to quote]
In order to focus on things that most urgently need correction, I am going to limit my answer to your following claims. Please cite data to make your case in case you reply: a) NREGS is not helping and is leading to inflation: FALSE b) Farmer suicides are not important, Sainath hypes it up, other suicides are more important: FALSE c) Real wage decreases are always going to happen for some, this 25% is that: FALSE ============================================================ a) NREGS is not helping and is leading to inflation: FALSE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- a) NREGS is at the outer end a spend of $2.7 billion annually (assuming everyone was paid $2 per day) - on India's annual GDP of $1.8 trillion is < 0.15% and this causes inflation how? It's not clear to me how a farmer with a hundred rupees in his pocket will add to inflation, but Ambani's billion dollar mansion won't. Source: http://d.pr/xHjL - columns 12 x column 3 (via http://nrega.nic.in/) NREGA is not a failure, in fact it's one of the best things to happen to India of late: "Once dismissed as a reckless fiscal sop, the scheme is now lauded as a timely fiscal stimulus." - Economist, Nov 2009 The Economist is as conservative an establishment source as you can get, and even from the money supply point of view the economists then agreed that NREGS is a good thing. Now it's another thing that Economists of one season cannot agree with the economists of the next. { NREGA: Rural India sees a silent revolution Farm Truths | Himanshu Posted: Tue, Aug 26 2008. 7:58 AM IST http://www.livemint.com/2008/08/25233800/NREGA-Rural-India-sees-a-sile.html } { >From a Naxal bastion, an NREGA success story Vivek Deshpande : ETAPALLI (GADCHIROLI), Tue Feb 02 2010, 03:31 hrs http://www.indianexpress.com/news/from-a-naxal-bastion-an-nrega-success-story/574384/0 } { Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: The Success of NREGA http://sepiamutiny.com/blog/2010/06/29/jobs_jobs_jobs/ } ============================================================ b) Farmer suicides are not important, Sainath hypes it up, other suicides are more important: FALSE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If bankers and stock brokers were jumping out of their tall office buildings in Mumbai, I wonder if you will still make the case that as a fraction of annual national suicides they are statistically insignificant and therefore don't need to be paid attention to. I can quote sources aplenty to attest to the fact that it isn't merely Sainath who talks about farm suicides: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers'_suicides_in_India in its references section has a good collection to begin with. Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av6dx9yNiCA (<5 mins) These are preventable deaths - rather easily in fact. Stop the companies that deceive farmers, create alternative sources of employment in the villages and allow farmers to defer debt repayments in case of dire economic peril. Suicide rates in India are on the rise - up by 2-3% points just in the last decade. If you think other suicides are more important please make your case about preventing thoose deaths citing data - however that still doesn't diminish the importance of tragic economic performance in certain industries that are leading to direct deaths. ============================================================ c) Real wage decreases are always going to happen, this 25% is that: FALSE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In your earlier email you said "Real wages aren't falling in India at all, no matter how you look?" I've pointed out reports that indicate that's wrong, there's 25% at least of the economy that is doing badly. You claim this is going to happen always. Not true - this is not a case of some poor performers in the lowest quartile. You make it sound as if it is the lazy and the ineffective who are making less money - it isn't. The fall in wages is happening in certain well defined sectors - rural industries and farming to be precise. This is a failure of the State, it's economic policies and not of the individuals. You are attempting to ignore realities by using sweeping generalizations. Please cite facts to make your case. I'm sorry to be so direct - but please show me facts. Thanks, Cheeni
