Reflections of self...

You are between 28 and 32 years of age. You have been working for more than 5 years now. You are single. You begin to notice that everything around you has changed, except you. You are still the same person. But you feel a big void within you. You just can not precisely answer why you feel so.

An accident or an incident or a bout of ill-health or a serious setback causes so much of grief that you realize life is too small. It changes your entire perspective towards life. When looked through this new perspective, you are no longer happy about those very same things you were happy until then.

You realize you are not going anywhere. And you begin to envy those 'super achievers' among your friends. Of course, you also know they might be envying some others. The career you were once very ambitious about is no longer your passion. It is just a means of earning some money. This change in attitude, most probably, would not have escaped the attention of your boss.

More kids call you 'uncle' or 'aunty' now. And you don't like it. Are you a boy/girl or a man/woman now? You tend to choose the word to suit the surroundings. All those 35+ men/women try to include you in their gang. You can not help but notice you are being included in the 'we' in phrases like "when we were in school".  You say to yourself 'not yet' and try to pull away. All those below 25's try to push you out of 'youngistan'. They don't want you to compete with them. You say to yourself 'not yet' and stick around. You wonder why there is so much of unspoken emphasis on age? 50 is young in politics. 40 is young in business. 35 is young in movies. You are not there yet and people around you don't see that. You cry it is not fair. But you know time is running out.

Your friends, one after the other, are getting married. Relatives, well wishers and friends start conversations with the pleasantry "when are you getting married" instead of the usual "how are you". It is a different thing that they never care for your answer. Almost all the married men/women tell you how good it is to get married. But their deeds don't always say the same thing. You don't believe what they say. You are afraid of the unknown. You postpone your entry into that unknown territory called marriage. But you can't articulate why.

You don't enjoy those very things you found enjoyable until not long ago. You realize you miss a lot of things in life. On top of the list is the company of a woman/man depending on your gender. How about girlfriends/boyfriends? You know they are rare specimens. Less than 10% of south Indian men of your age ever had a girlfriend. The percentage is even smaller for women. Rest of the men would have tried but failed. Rest of the women would have either expected too much or been too frightened by single men, not frightened by married men though. You know it is the truth, though everyone, including you, talks of a boyfriend or girlfriend being so common.

You are too ashamed to share this with your friends. Self-help books appear to be the only refuge in your attempt to live with the envy, the sense of mediocrity, the sense of worthlessness. But you know they are good only for reading and recommending to others. You know they don't help you. You are human after all.

High Food Inflation - cut the excuses

India is experiencing double digit food inflation. The government claims it is doing everything possible and the inflation should come down in a few weeks. Many weeks have passed, but inflation does not seem to be heeding the pleas of the government. Every time the food inflation figure comes down a bit, the government claims it is because of its policies. But every time the figure goes up, the government says it is because of factors beyond their control.

The government, its spokespersons and most of the media commentators cite many reasons for the high food inflation. The PM says he has no magic wand to control inflation. Of course, he is right. The minister for agriculture says they are doing everything possible to bring it down. The deputy chairman of planning commission, an eminent economist, says food prices are high because the incomes of the poor are rising and they are eating more. He is right. But it is not a crime for people to eat more. Is it not the duty of the government to lift the poor out of poverty?

Some policy makers, business heads and columnists regularly come forward and try to explain the reasons for high prices and  suggest remedial measures to be taken. Everything they say is a myth. Let me show you how.

• Myth 1: 'It is a random, one time phenomenon. Things should be normal next year.' - No, it is not. It is the price of onions this year, of pulses last year, of rice in the year before and of wheat in the before that. Food inflation has been consistently high for last 4 to 5 years.
• Myth 2: 'We don't have enough cold storage facilities in India. Building more of them should solve the problem.' May be true. But that does not explain the high prices of rice, wheat, pulses or even onions (onions have a higher shelf life).
• Myth 3: 'Speculative futures trading in agricultural produce is causing the prices to rise.' Futures trading in rice, wheat, pulses was banned long back. There is no futures trading in onions either. It can not be the cause.
• Myth 4: 'Middle men are hoarding the produce and artificially creating a shortage which is causing the prices to rise.' Do you believe some middle men can hoard enough stocks to jack up the prices, that too in a huge country like ours? This is simply not true.

Inflation is after all a number derived using a formula. The formula roughly is
                                           (present price - year ago price)
                           inflation = ----------------------------------------- * 100
                                             year ago price

It is always relative to the prices a year ago. If the prices a year ago were high, inflation will remain low because of base effect. It does not necessarily mean current prices are low. So the inflation figure will eventually come down after a few months because of base effect, as we will see a full year of high prices. I would not be surprised if the government comes out and trumpets it as their achievement.

The real reason behind inflation is that the demand for food is exceeding supply in our country, with the growth in demand outpacing the growth in food production. We have seen 5 years of consistently high food inflation since 2006 though all the 5 years were blessed with a reasonably good monsoon. Imagine what will happen in the year of a bad monsoon? Even worse, can we stand successive years of drought as we had seen from 2001 to 2003? We are in a precarious situation. Imports from other nations also can not help as we are too big a nation to support.

It is time our government recognizes the real cause and initiates serious long term measures to increase food production.

There are again many myths published on increasing agricultural productivity. Let me shatter those myths in another post.

Is cricket in a decline?

The pink newspapers claim that there is not as much demand as anticipated for television ad time during the ongoing cricket world cup matches. Some columnists went one step ahead to declare that cricket is in a decline. Is it really?

I think it is not cricket which is in a decline but the economy built around cricket. Last 20 years have seen this economy growing by leaps and bounds. The game was made literally more colorful. 'All white' dresses of the past gave way to more colorful ones. New formats were invented. 20-20 is the new rage. Cheer leaders upped the glamor quotient of the game. New tournaments were invented. T20 world cup is played every 2 years. 4 years is too long a gap, isn't it? New leagues were given birth to. IPL, isn't it like EPL?, has emerged as the biggest rival to bollywood. Cricket is spreading to more and more nations in the world. Every new team means 11 new players, more matches, more telecast time on TV and more ad revenues. And we have an ever expanding army of commentators. Every retired player is a commentator these days. It looks like becoming a commentator is the new retirement, more lucrative than playing in some cases. BTW, is Ganguly still playing? Some pretty faces also metamorphosed into commentators. Do you remember Mandira Bedi and her noodle straps? And who can ignore the poster boys of this economy? Every cricketer is a super model. Not just Indian cricketers, but foreign players too. They tell you what brand of alcohol to drink, what brand of watch to wear, what brand of drink quenches your thirst, what brand of  food supplement gives you energy, what automobile you should ride, what brand of clothes you should wear.. and there is no end to this list. All of us know who are laughing all their way to the bank.

But the party cannot go on forever. I think the cricket economy had seen its peak. It is in for some moderation now. You may ask what makes me think so. History. All the commercial elements of the cricket economy are designed with only one type of consumer in mind. That is the Indian cricket fan. Every cricket playing nation would want to play a series against India, so as to make some money for its cricket board. The schedules of any cricket tournament across the world are planned to suit the Indian TV viewer. In a way, all cricket related businesses are living off the Indian consumer. Isn't like like the world economy living off the American consumer until not long ago? A re-balancing will eventually follow as it did in the form of a recession for the global economy. The Indian consumer can not forever support every new player, every new commentator, every new marketer.....History also proved that monopolies don't last forever. Cricket as a game has monopoly over the Indian sports space for more than 20 years now.  There has been too much of cricket on TV in recent years, to the extent that some fans are fed up with it. In the fast globalizing Indian society, cricket is not the only 'fashionable thing' for the younger generation. With the advent of more sports channels now, Indians can watch many other sports from across the world live on TV. I would say this is the beginning of the end of cricket's monopoly.