Population, the resource from problem

Here is my piece on "Population in the 21st Century — TheUltimate Resource, If only they are skilled". I did not posted this piece earlier as it was not available in online.

As the reader will note that this piece is entirely different from my deep interested area of history of Indian economic thoughts.

This piece is essentially to remind the population wallas in India who keep telling us that the population is a problem rather than resource for the wealth creation. By telling population is a problem they stubbornly ignores what needs to be done to improve the skills of people by using their own common senses!

Hope you will find the piece useful.

Dividendnomics

From Nitin’s new fortnightly column in DNA: 

• Dilip Rao, a blogger at Law and Other Things, found a Freakonomics-like correlation between birth rates and terrorism in some states. He notes that a spurt in birth rates in the early 1970s in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir meant that there was a youth bulge available in the 1980s to answer the separatists’ call. We can trace back the rise of terrorist violence in these states to Operation Blue Star or the rigged 1987 state election, we can prove that Pakistan used these conflicts to conduct proxy war, but Heinsohn goes to the extreme to argue that the cause itself is immaterial - if there is a youth bulge, it will be accompanied by violence. 

• While these studies do not indicate or claim a definitive causal link, the data are sufficient for us to regard youth bulge violence as a long-term risk to national security. Going by the National Commission on Population’s projections to the year 2026, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi will experience a net increase in young people. The 15-24 cohort will grow in Bihar, Assam, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Gujarat. States that cannot both reduce grievances and create enough opportunities are likely to get into trouble. 

• The best way to minimise grievances is not by pandering to them individually, but by delivering overall good governance. The politics of entitlement that the UPA government seeks to make respectable under the veneer of “inclusive growth” breeds more grievances for every entitlement. These are already expressed through the idiom of competitive intolerance and coercive violence. While they must be rolled back, those politically opposed to the Congress must do so without themselves creating and appealing to grievances.

Old man with old mind

Rather even polluted mind!! Isn’t it?

I mean Mr. Narayana Murthy says:

"He (Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose) would have continued and perhaps would have accelerated our efforts to control population through fair and transparent method".

However, Mr.Murthy is very right in saying that:

"India would have embraced modern methods of scientific agriculture and made us food surplus year on year. India would have embraced industrialisation better and become more export oriented than relying on import substitution which has led to all kinds of problems,"

Glimpse of reading

National Skill Development Corporation's CEO says “.....vouchers for trainees may become the big government innovation of this decade.”

The chairman of Teamlease Services Mr.Manish Sabharwal says “Unfortunately, 2010 saw the activation of the poisonous Right to Education Act that will lower school capacity, increase corruption, raise costs, lower competition and increase confusion. It represents a license raj of the 1980s, while education needs a deregulation of the 1991 kind. A bad school is better than no school. The most expensive school is no school. The good is not the enemy of great. An education and training system that does not produce employable children amplifies to low productivity informal employment because it produces low productivity people.”

Bihar Chief Minister Mr.Nitish Kumar says “I believe that direct cash transfers are the way forward. Give money to the people and give them the choice to buy what they want from the market…. My policy will be to provide mostly cash transfers in state schemes in the future as well.”

Mr.Soli J. Sorabjee writes Chinese sex education: The Chinese have hit upon an innovative way of sex education which allows boys and girls to peep into each other’s bathroom in order to understand gender roles and observe what behavioural differences there are between the two sexes. According to Zhang Meimei, a sex education expert, the bathroom of the opposite sex can be a mysterious place. “I have known a lot of third and fourth grade boys who would sneak into the lady’s room just to see what it is like. Therefore, visiting the bathroom can be a good technique in teaching gender codes to students.” One wonders what is the take of our dynamic Education Minister Kapil Sibal on the Chinese method.

Prof Mehta writes “R-squared variances will replace the close reading of the Mahabharata and Montaigne as the only way to understand human psychology and it is not clear this will be for the better. The kids will be smarter, but perhaps none the wiser.”

Mr.Subroto Bagchi writes “What are the chances that you are an 11-year-old reading this article right now? I would give it one in a billion. And if you are not an 11-year-old, you would not know what it would mean to be 20 in, 2020. As you try and decipher the many strands of thought I have presented in this article, the 11-year-old is stalking the enemy on his device. What he is using will vary from a Nokia cellphone to the X-Box,

Karan’s Kani on population

Neither he is a jani (intelligence):

• I will not go into the unhappy history of the population and family planning programme since I introduced the National Population Policy in Parliament in 1976. One of the great tragedies of the Emergency was the fact that the family planning programme got totally derailed. As a result of the debacle of 1977 the whole issue became politically radioactive, the name of the ministry itself was changed from “Family Planning” to “Family Welfare”, and “population” seems to have disappeared from the lexicon of political leaders across party lines. The word was not even mentioned in the last President’s Address, or by the prime minister when he replied to the debate. It is as if we have buried this factor so deep in our subconscious that we are unable to bring it out into the open and deal with it purposefully and effectively.
• I was astounded some months ago when I mentioned this to a senior political leader and he replied that I should not bring this matter up as it would upset women’s organisations. In fact, it is women who have to bear the major brunt of unplanned population growth, including physically during childbirth where maternal and post-natal mortality is still unacceptably high — in rural areas particularly, where proper maternal facilities are few and far between. Indeed I would expect women’s organisations to be in the forefront of demanding a clear-cut population policy to ensure that contraceptive facilities become available to every woman in India and her reproductive rights safeguarded.
• A theory that is fashionable in some academic circles is what is known as the “demographic dividend”. The argument is that with the population in the West declining, and India and China growing rapidly, one day through sheer demography we will dominate the world. I do not accept this; we are still producing children who are malnourished, ill-educated and, therefore, unable to really contribute towards building a strong and vibrant nation. Certainly our young people are our hope for the future, but unless we are able to ensure at least the minimum inputs necessary during pregnancy and early childhood for the full development of body and mind, we are doing them a great injustice. A vast army of unemployed and unemployable young people will hardly be an asset for the nation.

Population cause prosperity

Bibek Debroy writes:

• Here is the horror story according to Ghulam Nabi Azad. Between 2005 and 2010, China’s annual rate of population growth has been 0.6 per cent, against India’s 1.4 per cent. Around 2030, India will become the most populous country on earth — with a population of 1.6 billion by 2050. Gujarat and Haryana will reach replacement levels of fertility in 2012, Assam in 2019, Rajasthan and Bihar in 2021, Chhattisgarh in 2022, Madhya Pradesh in 2025 and Uttar Pradesh in 2027. I wonder if the health minister has read Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. If not, he should. And he should recommend it as mandatory reading for all MPs. In 1968, Ehrlich wrote: “India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.” And: “I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971.”

The motto of the Climate Olympics,

• Surjit S Bhalla on Cold War attitudes of Oh Marx, I am so poor and they are out to get me
• Kiran Karnik on Incubating innovation in India
• Kirit Parikh on How India can cut its energy needs by 20%!

AICTE bribery and arrests

When I read this article I remember myself and my true friend Jayakamal went to Aravali Institute of Management in 2004 to attend an international convention. Jai had presented a great paper on population we also met Prof Varun Arya. The rest is history!

There needs to be careful observation- No more socialist nest please

The world has changed and the India has changed through the free market ideas.

No more blind faith in statesim and socialism these poverty stricken ‘isms’ have gone though, not completely.

Time and again the socialist economists give wrong signal which is not at all sure in their mind, in way it is bogus. And its not surprise when Mr Abhijit Banerjee says that:

• “…there aren't many other possibilities of tailor-made goods for the poor…
• i haven't really come across compelling examples of products designed for the poor.”

Now, take the second line it is completely nonsense and he forget to observe carefully.

Today, the poor gets cheaper products from shampoo to school education (private) much better than a decade ago. Let’s take in detail some of them:

• The 50 paisa shampoo is an example,
• The one rupee washing powder is an example,
• The 500 rupees Mobile phone is an example,
• The one rupee water packet is an example,
• The 10 rupee chota recharge is an example,
• The poor people sent their children near to their home for education and pay 50-100 rupee per month is an example,

Now, you count…………..

He should change the centre (which he heads at MIT) into Prosperity Action Lab instead Poverty Action Lab. In way these groups are collectivist.

An abettor of the free market and not a usurper of the market

A 12th grade student argues that “The Indian population remains one that needs to be taken care of. It is simply not ready to be left alone in the wild yet”

But there is no way to agree his point in this generation and in future. But having recent experience we all have to agree some or other what the other student says.

“Government is no substitute to free markets. All the same, free markets, as recent events demonstrate, can't do without government (which corrects market failures). So the big question is not of government versus free markets. Nor is it about "how much" state intervention but of "what kind." This is as true for the Indian economy as any other!”

See here for full article debate in WSJ