Save the bill

As one would have expected the Lokpal bill has hit the dead end owing to dissonance between the ‘Anna team’ as they like to call it and the government, the biggest area of dissension being the proposal to bring Prime Minister & higher judiciary under the purview of the bill along with other demands. But let us not discuss the ‘delay’ part as it had to happen considering the consequences of implementation! What I want to highlight here is one of the USPs of the bill i.e. crowdsourcing: the fact that the bill is open to people’s opinion and that the suggestions of people are being incorporated in the bill ‘to the extent possible’. One may argue here that it is not crowdsourcing in real sense as it is drafted by a committee not people and that point is well taken but I am only referring to the 'editing part' for which the common people are being invited.
Something similar is happening in Iceland as well after the banking fiasco. The council is drafting clauses of the constitution and it is being uploaded on their website/Facebook for people’s opinion. This whole idea of taking vox populi into account while forming legislation has a downside to it I feel i.e. popular opinion tends to be loaded in favour of emotions rather than rationale and emotions can’t be the basis for any law. And also what I feel is most important when we talk about public opinion is ‘majority’. So it made me do some research on situation prevailing in Iceland which is experiencing something similar though it is the constitution that is being referred to people there compared to Lokpal bill in India. What I read on fastcompany.com was terribly disappointing. Of two thirds of Iceland's population (3.2 lacs) which is on Facebook an average post elicited 4 to 5 comments. I, then, checked on indiaagainstcorruption.org and found a total of 1817 comments on Lokpal bill, not a big number considering India’s population. You would find more comments when any wannabe celebrity changes his/her status on any networking site! At the same time I also admit to have not taken the pains to go to the site and comment on it like most of the others. This is because most of the people think their opinion will not have any impact and in the process we lose out, something that happens during election as well (though I must say that I have never missed out an opportunity to exercise my right to vote). So unless the situation improves in terms of more people contributing to the cause we will end up having a legislation by the committee members for the people instead of by the people for the people which is actually the objective behind it. It is practically impossible to reach out to everyone personally for their opinion; closest we can go is to have a national debate on it if possible (even that will only lead to chaos). So please go out or should I say please log on to the site and have your say for a better India.

Going gaga over Gaga

Though I have heard and experienced that time changes everything, change of definition over a period of time is something that I had never expected. So it was nothing less than a shock to me when the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) awards were announced and Lady Gaga was chosen as the Fashion Icon! If one goes deep into deciphering the meaning of the word ‘icon’ one would realize that it refers to a person who embodies certain qualities that others would like to imbibe. It just beats my imagination as to how can Lady Gaga who dresses the way only she can, be adjudged as a fashion icon? Nobody can disagree that she is a crowd puller, can attract attention like nobody can and that the number of awards she has won for her music is more than the number of songs she has sung! She is one of the most successful celebrities around. But considering her outrageous dressing sense; I just fail to understand the logic behind this (though personally I am a big fan of her and believe she carries herself better than most of the celebrities). Not long ago she was selected as the winner of both the best dressed and worst dressed awards at the Shockwaves NME Awards. She was also declared Hollywood's biggest fashion victim in a poll conducted by WENN.com. And now she is in the same league as Kate Moss & Nicole Kidman who have won the same award earlier.
CFDA is a respected body and has been operating for a long time so there must be some reason why it went gaga over Lady Gaga! The arguments in her favour included her global popularity and the fact that everyone wants to see her no matter what see wears. In fact the reason why people wants see her all the time is, I guess, because they want to see what she is wearing! She has always been known for doing things in unconventional manner, here again we see her winning the award due to some unconventional reasons! How many girls would actually want to dress like her is another debate altogether (as an icon is someone people would like to imitate). But she is a winner all the way for changing the way we define fashion.

Consumption versus saving

I always thought of writing something about it but never did. But when I read this news yesterday I could not help but write this. According to The Telegraph, inflation destroyed savings worth $58 billion in UK in just one year! Why it happened? Average rate of interest earned by people on their savings account was about 1.6% and inflation was about 5.2%. Now compare that to what is happening in India: savings account rate is around 3.5% and the wholesale inflation rate hovers around 8.5-9%. And the extent to which WPI underestimates the actual inflation is a foregone conclusion now. Assuming the savings rate of 3.5% and inflation rate of 9% (on a conservative note as the actual rate is much higher than this considering the limitations of WPI), we see that Rs.100 deposited in a bank account become Rs.94.5 (Rs.100+3.5-9) by the end of the year.
This is not nuclear science and we all know it. Now if this situation persists for a longer period of time people start forming an opinion about the situation which basically leads to two kinds of actions. Some (those who like to live for the moment) may be inclined to think that despite savings if their money is getting eroded, they might as well spend it now which leads to even more inflation! So this not only leads to problems for economy as a whole but it creates more problems especially for those who decided to save as they have postponed their purchases, they are missing out on an opportunity to buy at current rates, and also they will see their savings account shrink for deciding to save! There are some who think the other way: they believe if anyways their money has to erode by the end of the year they might as well save some more money for future requirements. This in turn will lead to control the inflation to the extent they save which will benefit those who are buying at this stage (the live for the moment type)! Whichever way you consider, in such a situation those who decide to spend now benefit and those who decide to save lose. But those who save are immunizing themselves against any future emergency which is not possible if you decide to spend all that you have. So eventually it is a fight between those who live for the moment and those who live for the future.
Let us see what an overdose of either of these situations can lead to. If most of the people start spending their money like there is no tomorrow just to beat erosion in savings, we will be encountering even more inflationary situation in the future. Secondly, if all of them decide to save their money for the future it will lead to lesser demand, decrease in production accompanied by loss of jobs etc. So what is the solution? The answer is to strike the balance between present and future needs by doing some financial planning! If you have observed when we say ‘spending’ money we are talking about spending it on food, clothes etc. So the idea is to make sure that the ‘spending’ part has ‘planned investment’ as one of its components. What this will do is that it will take the money out from the savings account so you will not lose money due to inflation and also it will provide for your future needs so it takes care of future emergency as well. I admit, this is what all of us do and that this does not warrant a torture in the form of such a long and boring post but as we see there are lot of issues in the economy so I am sure there are some who are not doing what is mentioned and messing things up. This is post is dedicated to all of them! I also confess that this post could have been a one-liner but since I had some free time I thought of stretching that one-liner!