Monday, November 03, 2008

CA M.R. Venkatesh

My friend saw this video and asked me to take a look at it. Its a whole one hour long video where Mr. M.R. Venkatesh (let me call him CA) talks about "Globalization/Globalisation" (shoot even Mozilla is recommending the American spelling).

His take on it is this: the US debt is huge (nowadays a known fact) but the US is a consuming economy and Asian economies are Saving economies. He mentions some really cool facts such as the fact that on a average every 1 unit of currency earned by an Asian and hence the Asian governments, they save about 20% of it. Whereas every $1 earned by the US, it spends $1.07.

He got almost everything right, and he totally convinced me with his agenda except for his last observation. With a Swadeshi movement background and a India bias that we as Indians always have to an extent, he mentions, that the Indian economy will save because of the Indian housewife.

Sir, times are-a-changing, the Indian wife exists, but in rural India, the cities portrait a different view. Independent woman, single moms, etc are all concepts that you can greatly see in the cities of India. But thats not my point. It is not the institution of family that will save an economy. It is the importance of the domestic market that relies on the domestic product at the same time exporting some product out.

That will save economies. The 20th century to an extent saw some biased economies of scale, but the truth was one commodity was produced in one nation and traded for a different commodity with another nation. But slowly that has changed. UK, is about 80 - 95 % reliant on imports for all needs and necessities. This is where you start going wrong. Service Industry in India, Manufacturing Unit in China, Sales unit in US, Banking Unit in UK. Do you see something wrong here? We are headed in a direction where if you want to do a particular type of job you may want to change the country you live in. So if China produces and US buys, what does US do to provide money to buy what China sells?

I feel that its complicated, yet, at the cost of sounding conservative, I feel, that each nation should have its balance of jobs. Each nation should have its riches and its poor. And the world will have Rich and Poor economies. Because that is the balance. If we dont have extremes and are all at par, there wont be any motivation, innovation, excellence, aspiration,determination and all such -ations. No nation is by choice a poor or a rich nation, each nation that understands the rules, plays the game, plays it smart and excels will be a rich nation. And boy I can start off bashing any Indian with an Indian-Pride to a point that he admits, we as a nation havent yet figured it out. Well, enough of this, I need to get to my sleep. But if you have time and want to listen to some facts, watch his video. Do keep an open mind and dont be biased in a total agreement/disagreement attitude.

I do get a lot of time over the weekends.

4 comments:

  1. I think he did mention that best thing for india is to have indian(domestic) market for our goods. And about single moms and nuclear family, they are the smaller but significant percentage( about 20% as M R Venkatesh mentions) who benefited from globalisation.

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  2. Yes Srinivas, if you read my post, i say that I totally agree with everything he said, but I feel he sidelined the topic when he mentions that the family and the Indian Woman will save the nation. That is not the case. He had the right answer with domestic market reliance. But I feel that given his background he will vouch for a 100% Swadeshi, self sufficient, self reliant market, the way India was in the 80's. Which we all know leads to the Ambassador being the car of the year for 10 straight years. I do not support an extremist point of view. "Extremism" has never worked.

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  3. 100% swadeshi doesn't mean state socialism. It means allowing for internal liberalization and removing/reducing all sorts of ridiculous Excise tax, VAT, etc. It also means decentralization and reduction of unneccessary permits, etc. Deen Dayal Research Institute's integrated village development project in Chitrakoot is a high potential model for village development. Also, Gujarat's growth is not so export dependant and nor is it dependant on IT and BPO's. So, all such examples should be considered. Of course there will be foreign trade, but a large country like India should not become export dependant.

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