Economy and Health Care Costs

Writing about American process of recovery from the Great "Recession", we can see the effort of US government to increase its debt amount to finance its economic development. The Government is trying to increase the spending and invest money in banks and other institutions to increase confidence and hence keep the economy going. In this process the Govt has incurred an amount equal to 60-70 trillion deficit in its budget, which on the surface seems scary. The US GDP stands at around 1.3 trillion. Still it is not scary enough as the debt to GDP ratio is much less than other economies which have less stable government and inspite of these they have coped well with the debt. So if we subtract the inflation from this projected debt then it'll be manageable. Also there are other areas to reduce the costs by cutting down them from the HealthCare, which unfortunately has been subjected to the petty campaigns like "pulling the plug from grandma". What is required in this situation is the collective political will to fight against such problems.

Future of Auto-makers!!!

Auto makers in India and through out world are facing changes in their business models, thanks primarily to the global recession causing the auto makers to go bankrupt rather than people stopping the use of fossil fuel based autos.

Thinking about the change that faces the automakers in the current scenario, the major drive seems to be political and may be change in perception of "change" as is evident in everywhere. The first point made here can be attributed Barack Obama leading the innovation and "turning adversity into an opportunity" dream of American people to drive the point of cost-efficient and greener technologies. Talking on the cost-effectiveness of the alternative seems worthwhile. If we compare the price for a running a vehicle in petrol, gas and electric battery, then we can see that electric one is the most cost-efficient one(3Rs/litre, 2Rs/litre, 0.8Rs/litre). Electric vehicles have the advantage of running on the batteries and not hydrocarbon engines, which will lead to better engine life time and also maintainable vehicles in long run.

Talking about the requirement of greener fuels is also significant in current scenarios. The situation of global warming causing the dangerous situation of earth is more precarious than ever. The nations have been slowly accepting this cold fact and started to take policies to counter such dangers. In this regard electric vehicles also help, since they are carbon free which is the principal contributor in global warming.

So as pointed out electric vehicles seems to be the thing of near future. The advantages are so compelling that it is hard to ignore it for too long. Realizing this Obama has launched a campaign to implement the idea in his nations ailing auto makers, which not only gives them a great chance to survive but also revive the national economy. This has also caused a chain reaction and lead Chinese leaders to vowing to become the leader in the supply of the electric cars. All this points to a better and cleaner future, albeit the technology needs to be developed and put into commercial use. But non the less the future seems promising !!

Affordable House & Realty

Affordable houses are the buzz word in the Real Estate Industry. In the current recessionary scenario it has become the rescue boat for the big Real Estate companies. They have always been focused on the luxurious real estate market for so long and had thought that the 10% luxury sector is more profitable than the low budget sector.

But what happened now? Why is everybody is talking about the affordable housing industry? The reason is recession and the discovery of the market which has been long ignored and has lot of potential. The price of these houses are not only twice or thrice of those in luxury housing sector attracting the lower income families but also promise faster delivery time and development. Though there are a lot of other impediments like the higher interest rate by banks given the risk of such loans, hence reducing the afford-ability of such people.

Looking the opportunity of this market, the major players are opting for tactical switch. The tata and other companies are now aggressively promoting their brands. There are some bargaining the people who have to bear. Like the location is generally a low-prices areas which are outskirts of the city and sometimes have only basic amenities to survive.

Anyway the customer will be the winner. Not only will he be able to move out of the rented flats to the owned flats but also can easily afford a house for the family. The only thing we have to worry is that this bubble don't burst !!!

Justice and emotions

Justice and emotions appear to be on the opposite end of spectrum, since much of us think that good judgments can be made only without any emotion, is not quite true. In fact it can be the opposite. Since justice originates from social justness which in turn requires mature emotional judgment and not lack of emotions. Those believing that lack of emotions is the way to make right judgment will find it hard to prove answers to the breadth of questions arising in our social interactions.

Consider the case of strip search of a school girl for possible carriage of illegal substances, can be just from one person's point of view while it can be wrong from others. Here the moral standards will make people differ in their opinions. But the ones who can transcend beyond the obvious or standard context to look into different point of views will be able to give a reasonable decision. Justice and morality go hand in hand and can't be separated, and hence requires the moral considerations of all sects of society and not just catering to a particular point of view. Otherwise society would lead to apartheids, repressions of some sects.

Having said that this requires extraordinary skills and discerning power of judges to make a call on a certain situations. The appointment of Mrs Sotomayer as chief justice of American supreme court can be viewed as positive light. She is famous for her meticulous examinations and considerations of finer points to arrive at a verdict which not only takes care of the finer point of views but also the toeing the line of the right wings.

So there will expectations of her about the dubious but crucial issues of abortions, gay marriage, detention standards of persons who are tried for terrorisms, which will require not only refraining from the right wing views of her predecessors but also sound emotional quotient. The actions needs to be seen.

Indian election and outcome

The Indian election saga has come to an end. The elections are significant for many sects of people, farmers, students, businesses and not to forget the politicians.

Talking about the Indian elections this time, crores and crores of Indian Rupees have been sent for election campaigning by the politicians which amounted to 50,000 crore this time. Not only the big spenders this time are the major national parties like BJP and Congress but also the smaller ones like RJD, SP which were ambitious enough to dream of alternate governments. There have been instances of parties giving away tickets to the opulent solely for campaigning money collections. The expenditure of the parties per candidates would be approximately 5-10 crores which happens to be much beyond the expenditure specified by the Election Commission of 15-20 lacks.

This is certainly unacceptable fact about the grand Indian elections. Thinking of what can be achieved in the 50,000 crores for the countries would bring relief to much needed poor people of this country. This is also a way for some people to channelize the black-money in order to gain bargain some favorable position for themselves. We are hearing about the politicians speaking of bringing the black-money stacked in swiss banks which will boost the country's cash reserves. But no body is talking about the money spent on the elections ( which would be much more than the money stacked in swiss banks ). I think Indian politicians have a long way to go before they can earn public respect for their agendas.

Anyway last week has seen stock markets and India Inc getting euphoric about the coming to power of Congress, which not only can give stable governance but also has credible leaders which have some agendas. Anyway whatever improvements are done this year by congress in other sectors, it is bound to be good for economics, which is essential right now in order to guide the country from economic recession.

IPL-II(2009)

IPL-II was fun, exciting and definitely better than IPL-I. The points table noticed a complete turn around, barring a few teams who still remained competitive there were major turnarounds. Most notable of the turn arounds are Royal Challengers and Deccan Chargers.

Decaan chargers started the tourney with a mood of vengeance and determined to make amends to their IPL-I performance. The mood in which their top players played was commendable. Take the batting of Gilchrist and Symonds, who joined in the 2nd half of the tourney but contributed significantly towards the winning of IPL, it was really exciting and played in the spirit of IPL. I would like to clarify the meaning of the spirit of IPL meaning full of power hitting and good bowling. Gilchrist, Gibbs, Symonds, Rohit Sharma, Venu played their part. In bowling too the emergence of RP Singh from wilderness with a bang was worth noticing. RP claimed the purple cap and hence in the process earned a spot in Inidan T20 world cup team.

The other IPL-II finalist, Royal Challengers, also had a memorable journey this year. They had seen change of team and captainship from the reticent Rahul Dravid to the glamouros but controvorsial Peterson. Peterson was hired at a top price for Challengers purely for his big hitting prowess which was aimed at complementing the vetern players of Bangalore. But alas! he did more damage to RC than the previous captain unlike the DC where the change of captain gave a change in result of their campaign. RC looked out of sorts and lacking team spirit much like but a trifle better than Kolkatta. But after Peterson left and Kumble was appointed as the captain, their fortune changed remarkably, which resulted in a successive winning streak of 6 IPL matched beating all the semifinalists. Considering that most of bangaloreans like myself became fan of the team. But the campaign ended in disappointment. The loss of final would be memorable for Bangalore as they were one stage poised to win it convincingly but they made a mess of their run chase. Bangalore would though find their moving into the finals by beating the big teams is it self a big achievement.

Anyway the best team has won, we should admit it openly. All in all IPL has lived upto its hype and expectations this year and delivered an amazingingly lengthy show with less hassle. I would expect it would be even better when it comes to India next year though there are doubts on it.