Charles Moore The Japanese Mind
In ouyrsuit of perfection, a sort of perfection mounted through the pre-conceived idea of ...
The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness peter N. Dale
The Japanese have long puzzled outsiders but it is less well known that they are often puzzled themselves.
In Japan there exist a vast and intricate body of theory devoted to the analysis of Japanese identity.--> nihonjonron.
This books argues that the nihonjonron constitute a coherent ideology of nationalism and holds that they should be treated as a mythologizal system rather than as serious contributions to social science.
14
Over time the successive attempts of such works to define the Japaneseness of the Japanese have merely enhanced the mystery, adding glze on glaze to the over-lacquered idols of traditional forms of national deification.
21 The quest for identity
The nihonjinron not only entrap people with a contrived sicursive tradition to insultae the social structure from effective critique, but also militate against the emergence of an autonomous and individual search for identity.
20 When culture is seen as infrestruxtural, as determining all of the forms of social and economic life, history is made irrelevant, and social praxis is emptied of any element of libreating force and illuminative ower, since everything is seen as a symptom of the higher spirit, that enduring omnipresent yet ineffable entity with is called 'the japanese spirit.'
these slueths of autochtony, while anchoring th contemporary world to the bedrock of ancestral race consciosuness, profit from key deficiencies in the educational system, such as the lack of training in clear thinking and debate. It is as if an erudite immersion in tradition were an adequate substitute for analysis, wheras in fact such historical cultivation is often little more than a cultural placebo for a modern malaise.
When all social phenomena are riveted to the cast iron moulds of ahistorical identity, there can be no redress from crisis, personal or national, but only a perpetual recursion to cultural enewal as expressed in mindless sllidarity with the pristine virtues of the tribal past.
When Erikson has accustomed us to think of identity in terms of that complex process of inner struggle and growth through which the individual realises himself, the nihonjinron insist that in Japan identity is invariable 'group-orientated', and the term comes to imply the submergence of the individual within socierty, his coalescence with others, and the identity of subject and object, the inner and the outer world.
22
therefore, that complex fusion of felt estrangement of self and society leading towards a dialectical reequilibrium between the two, in which the individual relaises himself within society, is alien in the notion of identity as understoof by the nihonjinron. Every inch of autonomous self-assertion by the individual is contested as threatening the hegemonic reach and authority of the corporate, national ideal. While intent on prejecting an image of japan's very possibility of individual, uniquely personal identity within Japan itself.
44
West
Society Community
Individualism groupism
Horizontality Verticality
Egalitarianism herarchy
Contract Kintract
Private Public
Guilt Shame
urban-cosmopolitcan Rural-exclusive
Rights Duties
Independence Dependence
176
It should be roughly clear at this point that much of what passes for a 'Japanese kind of logic' in the nihonjinron arises from a severe, defemsively combative endeavor to overcome a diffuse sense of inferiority to the West,
Shame over a self-perceived backwardness was a major spur for 'catching up and overtaking' 9oitsuke, oikose!) the West which formed the external model of modernisation.
This shame towards one's traditional past produced a literature of reverse identity, which placed all things foreign on a pedestal and demeaned anything smacking of the Orient.
When a sense of parity with the West was achieved, then shame is displaced as motivating agent by the pride of honour, Westernisation by a resurgent nolstagia for the authentically indigenous patrimony of culture.
177
Ruth benedict's comparison between 'guil culture' and japanese 'shame culture'
shame as giverned by external sanction/ internal sanction
Guil cultures set a value upon internal norms for action, whereas shame cultures value external norms for action,
176
"if we honour others, We must dishonour ourselves' Goethe
The resltess habit of measuring oneself against some monolithic 'other', engaging as it does powerful internal forces of shame, honour, and sensitibity to status, leads to amode of consiousness in which, as Rousseau remarked, 'once the heart has taken on this habit of making comparisons, it becomes impossible not to feel aversion for anything that surpasses us, lowers us, restricts us, anything that simply by being there prevents us from being everything.'
To out this another way, when the ego-ideal was defined in terms of 'Westernisation', all discussion of Japan's 'cultural uniqueness' tended to engender feelings of shame and inferiority. But when the Japanese economy began to mount a challenge to the hegemony of the West, the sense of shame switched to focusing upon the lost, original tradition.
203
Nolstalgia for the past.
205 uniqueness thus became a code word applied to exiric phenomena whose attractiveness lay precisely in the way they gace lively contemporary witness to a world and life style transcended by the march of time and progress in the West.
John Whittier Treat
1
Just as Japanese culture at the end of the twentieth century is hardly recognizable from the perspctive of traditional aesthetics, so too have the methods and aims of those who study Japan been damatically altered by the advent of new theories in the academy, on the one hand, and the dazzling speed of cultural change in Japan itself.
The World of Japanese Popular Culture
119
Women Magazine
i have argued elsewhere that in Japan indiduality is more about being fashionable and sophisticated than about ctually doing one's thing.
Hendry (1986) argues that bringing up Chidren in Japan emphasize the importance of showing them good examples and encouraging them to imitate good behaviour.
Japanese only know how to follow.. immitate. they don't know how to carry on without an example.
3
Monday, October 22, 2007
Saturday, October 20, 2007
japan
had always ... individuality. Freshness.
Japan should look within itself and not elsewhere or from outside forces.
Bottom up
Indivuduals.
Yound people.
Old people have to equip them.
78
i well known that Japan is an econpmic superpower.
But can it be assumed that, because Japan is economically resoundingly successful as a nation, its people are correspondingly happy, welathy and enjoying the fruits of that success? It is true that concumer income has risen, sothat it soars like a statisical Mount Fuji over the surrounding region. A kind o
Prosperity means that sixty million cars clog the highways; one-third of the world's tuna catch and two -fifths of its shrimp pass through Japanese stomachs; one-quarter of the world's tropical timber is imported; millions of ordinary people take ooverseas holidays every year. In terms of life expeectency, literacy years of schooling, and personal income, Japan ranked number one in the world from 1990 to 1993 and remained number three even after that.
These are impressive figures but they have to be put into perspective. In measuring standards of living, it would be foolish to ignore the availibility of gormet foods, the amount of overseas travel, he level of ownership of cars and elctronic gadgetry, but one would expect such things to follow general satisfaction of the more essential needs- for housing, urban infrastructure(transport, water, sewage, leisure and welfare facilities. quality of environment)
289
The faith in mdoernization began to weaken even as its promised land was being occupied. the disparity between human needs and human desires was becoming patent. The salaryman who had created the miracle of postwar japan was begining to see himself as a Sisyphean jogger on the treadmill of infinitely expanding and replicating desire.
The deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the workings of the supposedly tirumphant market in Japan, and the search for an alternative view in government, business, and the society generally, gathers strength as the end of the century looms, even if the direction it will eventually take is unclear.
This generation will have to face the same dilemma as that of their predecessors in yet another sense: how to define its own isentity without negating either Asia or the West, wh
The third, and perhaps greatest chellange- are the problems raised in their own government's White Paper, of how to transform their own lifestyles in a way even more profound, and literally revolutionary, than the transformation of their parents or grandparents. theors will be the task of meeting the challenge to human survivsl posed not by obviously
and essentially it will have to be done without the help of outside intervention.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) looked forward to the achivement of what he called the "stationary state," which might today be called the zero-growth state, as something to be welcomed. Writing in 1848, he referred to "the mere increase of production and accumulation: that excites the congratulations of 'ordinary" politicians with mind that require "coarse stimuli." his words will ring true and wise, and witha particular appropriateness to contemporary Japan, long after he penned them.
I know not why it should be matter of congratulation that persons who are already richer than anyone needs to be, should have doubled their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure except as representitive of wealth.... It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important subject; in those most advanced, what is economicall needed is better distribution/
I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling and crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existen
It is scarcely neccessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be so much scope as every for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much as for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood if its being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting onm.
Straitjacket Society
Holding Japanese Minds
Unmasking japan today
Contemporary japan and Popular Culture
The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness
Japan should look within itself and not elsewhere or from outside forces.
Bottom up
Indivuduals.
Yound people.
Old people have to equip them.
78
i well known that Japan is an econpmic superpower.
But can it be assumed that, because Japan is economically resoundingly successful as a nation, its people are correspondingly happy, welathy and enjoying the fruits of that success? It is true that concumer income has risen, sothat it soars like a statisical Mount Fuji over the surrounding region. A kind o
Prosperity means that sixty million cars clog the highways; one-third of the world's tuna catch and two -fifths of its shrimp pass through Japanese stomachs; one-quarter of the world's tropical timber is imported; millions of ordinary people take ooverseas holidays every year. In terms of life expeectency, literacy years of schooling, and personal income, Japan ranked number one in the world from 1990 to 1993 and remained number three even after that.
These are impressive figures but they have to be put into perspective. In measuring standards of living, it would be foolish to ignore the availibility of gormet foods, the amount of overseas travel, he level of ownership of cars and elctronic gadgetry, but one would expect such things to follow general satisfaction of the more essential needs- for housing, urban infrastructure(transport, water, sewage, leisure and welfare facilities. quality of environment)
289
The faith in mdoernization began to weaken even as its promised land was being occupied. the disparity between human needs and human desires was becoming patent. The salaryman who had created the miracle of postwar japan was begining to see himself as a Sisyphean jogger on the treadmill of infinitely expanding and replicating desire.
The deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the workings of the supposedly tirumphant market in Japan, and the search for an alternative view in government, business, and the society generally, gathers strength as the end of the century looms, even if the direction it will eventually take is unclear.
This generation will have to face the same dilemma as that of their predecessors in yet another sense: how to define its own isentity without negating either Asia or the West, wh
The third, and perhaps greatest chellange- are the problems raised in their own government's White Paper, of how to transform their own lifestyles in a way even more profound, and literally revolutionary, than the transformation of their parents or grandparents. theors will be the task of meeting the challenge to human survivsl posed not by obviously
and essentially it will have to be done without the help of outside intervention.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) looked forward to the achivement of what he called the "stationary state," which might today be called the zero-growth state, as something to be welcomed. Writing in 1848, he referred to "the mere increase of production and accumulation: that excites the congratulations of 'ordinary" politicians with mind that require "coarse stimuli." his words will ring true and wise, and witha particular appropriateness to contemporary Japan, long after he penned them.
I know not why it should be matter of congratulation that persons who are already richer than anyone needs to be, should have doubled their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure except as representitive of wealth.... It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important subject; in those most advanced, what is economicall needed is better distribution/
I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling and crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existen
It is scarcely neccessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. There would be so much scope as every for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much as for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood if its being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting onm.
Straitjacket Society
Holding Japanese Minds
Unmasking japan today
Contemporary japan and Popular Culture
The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness
The only way is to reduce inequality in all sense and in all dimensions.
Perhaps the climate of perecption has changed this this time, as is reflected through the last State of the States conclave held in September 2007 organised by IndiaToday. Perhaps, today, ministers are not as ... as what they were descibed to be. Judging by the debate, ministers are aware of what needs to be done. That the only way for the economy to propel even further is for all sorts of inequality to be reduced.
In essence, to propel even further in development, India needs to take a conscious step to elminate inequality in all sense. As Gandhi says,
Only then can India really soar high and shine.
Politics of Inclusive Growth India Today October 1 2007 6-12
6
State of the States conclave organised by India Today. As close as one could get to a national Development Council. ten chief ministers, onedeputy chief inister and ministers from three states dbated the causes of rising inequality and the need to push inclusive growth
India today editor-in-chief Aroon Purie set the tone for the debate when he said 'the good news is that there is growth but the bad news is hat, far from being inclusibe, it has increased inequality".
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, in his inaugural address, pointe dout that "every squeare inch on Infia is ruled by states" and that the laws of economics would work in India, but all stakeholders must work together to find the country its place in the wrld.
agriculture, education and infrastructure the focus.
Lack of attention to agriculture and education the primary focus.
Parkash Singh Badal, chief miister, punjab: Our finance minister has painted a rosy picture of the country. But in reality, the position is the opposite. We have to plan for the lower, not the upper strata. i would request mr. Purie and mr. Chawla (editor of India today) to hold this meeting next time in a village, under a tree. We talk about these things in air-conditioned halls and even at the Planning Commission meetings. I have requested the members of the commission to stay for one day and one night in a village and then they will realise what is to be done. Our farmers do hard work. Yet they are under heavy debt. Why is it so? because the policies of the Central givernment are against the farmers. Agriculture is in full control of the Centre. What can we do in the states, say about fertilisers or diesel?
Painted a rosy picture? Elites like to paint. Indiastreet--> No mention on poverty and inequality.
7
'We disperse industries to rural areas, invest in education and promote tourism. All this enables job creation." N. Rangasamy Chief minister, Puducherry
8
"Mere spending does not mean development. A good delivery system and governance are imperative for any region." Virbhadra Singh. Chief minister, Minachal Pradesh.
8
"We all talk about high griwth but it is like a train where only the engine is running without bogies and the people." Sushil Kumar Modi Deputy Chief Minister, Bihar
7
"The biggest problem we should worry about is unemployement in rural areas. If this is not solved, there will be a revolution." Parkash Singh Badal.
9
"Only 5 per cent of our population is vocationally trained. We need to make people employable to promote growth." ravi Parthasarathy, Chairman & MD, IL&FS
10
... :Our theme this year is skill set upgradation for inclusive growth..... The oriblem is at the lower-end. We have a very large workforce. But 93 per cent of it is in the informal sector. We are working on pilot projects with the Rural Development Ministry for skill development of people below the poverty line and also with the textiles industry. We need to do more. We need to fill this gap through public-private partnerships.
11
"Inclusive growth must be the sub-text of our developmental efforts." Mohammad Hamid Ansari Vice-President.
10
"because of the special status given to some states, investment has fled some states. We should be compensated for this." Digambar kamat, chief minister, Goa.
11
Mohammad Hamid Ansari
It was at the ninth session of the Indian National Congress at Lohore in 1893 that Dadabhai Naoroji commented : "the gratest quetion before you, the question of all questions, is the poverty of India. This will be, I am much afraid, the great future trouble both for the Indian people and of the British rulers. It is the rock ahead. " The situation was no different five decades later on the eve of Independence, as evident from Palme Dutt's observation 1946 "India is a country of poor people; but it is not a poor country. Between these two lies the problem of the existing social and political order in India.
Thus, a century after Dadabhai Naoroji's comment, the cock continues to exist and protends the great future trouble. the poverty of India is still the question of all questions. The successes of the Indian economy are good. We have had a real GDP growth of 9.4 per cent for 2006-2007 and an exchange rate per capita of &880. In purchasing power parity terms, the per capita GDP has climbed to around $4000. Our savings and investment rateds have increased. there was a gross FDI inflow of $19.5 billion in 2006-2007 and good reasons exist to believe that there have been productivity and efficiency.
The evident contradition perplexes obsevers and leads to two questions. One is-what does this mean for a large segment of our population? And two- what is the true wealth of our nation? Is it the national income and material wealth or are the people of India enabled and empowered- our true wealth? if it is the latter, the only mearue of national progress should be the quality of life of our people.
the sense of satisfaction at the maro-economic situation stand diminished with the realisation that 77 per cent of our population has an income of around Rs 20, half a dollar in exchange rate terms and $2 in purchasing power parity terms. This poor and vulnerable segments of the India population represents the broad caegory within which the dynamics of povery alleviation plays out.
We have a situation where the richest 10% of the the population account for slightly less than 30 per cent of the share of expenditure and the poorest 10 per cent of the populaion account for less than 5 per cent.
More than income inequalities, what are particularly worrisome are stark human development inequalities that adversely impact life chances and capabilities of our people.
We have many examples from around the world, and within the country, where public policy choices have ensured better human development outcome than warranted by the level of economic development. This was done through a cnbscious focus on income distribution patterns and ensuring that public spending on basic halth and education remained high. How does India rank according to these parameters? Public expenditure on education is around 3 per cent of the GDP and on health is around 1.2 per cent of GDP. This is low by any standards, and specially for the extent of poverty in India. Much more nerds to be done.
Mahatma Gandhi accepted that his idea; of equal distribution is not relisable. But he advocated equitable distribution as an achievable goal.
***India has to give its people the basic thing it needs. Health and education.
P. Chidambaram. Finance Minister.
I am a passionate advocate of the well-being of all states because if all the states are doing well, India will do well. Unfortunately, growth is not even among the states and within a state too, growth is not even.
One of the reasons wht the remarkable economic growth rate accross the country is critiseized in some quarters is because of the unevnenness of the process and the unevenness of the product. It is, the
There are states that are small and therefore,.... But each one of these problems can be attacked by applying logic, reason and good economics.
***It seems to me as if the answers are blatant. If it seems blatant enough in a Level 2 university development course, surely it must be for politicians and ministers who have far more training, ... and insight. What then is holding them back? Surely not this logic, reason and good economics that was mentioned about. Then it must be something more than logic.
I have no doubt inn my minds,,that in my lifetime we can abolish abject povert in India. It will take us 20 more years of splendid growth rates- growth rates of over 8 per cent, near 9 oer cent. If we can sustain it for 20 years, you will find that this country is a very different country from what it is today and what it was 15 years ago.
** However, can this growth rate be sustained... Look a other countries.
September 24
State of the states
8
Shankkar Aiyar
history, you could argue, is the best teacher of political economy. the basic lesson political parties and leaders could imbibe from this is that getting it right does not require a post doctorae in rocket science. Development may elude he masses but the difinition of economic development is not elusive or mysterious. It is, as the textbook says, about getting the basic foundation right. very simply, promote agriculture by ensuring credit to farers and developing irrigation facilities, invest in infrastructure for cennectibity between fields and markets, spend on education and health to enable people to benefit from the opportunities and derive rebune from the resultant investments that will boost consumer cmarkerts.
**performance not perception
Inclusive inequality.
20
India is expected to notch 9-plus per cent growth for the thrid successibe year. But a large section is not on the gravy train.
Money is nothing: character, conduct and capacity are everything George bernard Shaw in 1900s.
301 million, a fourth of the population (of 111 million) is living less than a dollar a day, below the low tide of poverty otherwide jargonised as BPL. Within SOuth Asia, India has 77 per cent of the poor. Contasrt this with another nugget. India is also home to 36 dollar-billionaires. At the height of the stock market boom, the wealth of just five individuals in the country exceeded $100 billion or 10 per cent of the GDP.
Our study (based on data from National Sample Surver Organisation- 1993-1994 and 2004-2005 reports on expenditiure and income) shows that jammu and Kashmir, inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient has gone up across the country.
The top 20 per cent of the population in urban India earns 56 per cent of the income while th bottom 20 per cent earns barely 3.4 per cent of the income. Indded, the top 20 per cent earns more than all the others put together..
22
Simple assymetry- of education, skills, opportunity and physical infrastructure- is currently driving income and this expenditure inequality. As several studies have validated, lack of education creates an assymetry both in ability and skills leading to people being less employable or more employable. This enables those better skilled to earn better. But there is hardly any move to institutionalise skills training. India has only 12 000 vocational training institutes against China's 5 00 000.
Physical infrasturcture.
India has struggled to add 45 000 MW in ficve years while China adds nearly 70 000 MW every year.
States like Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have barelt 15 % road connectivity. This leads to income disparity between those living in ruban areas and those in rural areas. Lack of connectivity from, say fields to markets prevents farmers from getting better returns. lack of farm-to-fork chain systems results in produce being wasted.
This widens the distance between incomes earned from the real potential.
Juxtapose
pg 23 !!!! What the state has failed in.
A case for India Whining Bibek Debroy & laveesh Bhandari
Roughly one-third of all children in India are underweight. A survey in a private school in Delhi has found that roughly one-third of the children there are obese. Of course there is inequality in th country.
Perhaps the climate of perecption has changed this this time, as is reflected through the last State of the States conclave held in September 2007 organised by IndiaToday. Perhaps, today, ministers are not as ... as what they were descibed to be. Judging by the debate, ministers are aware of what needs to be done. That the only way for the economy to propel even further is for all sorts of inequality to be reduced.
In essence, to propel even further in development, India needs to take a conscious step to elminate inequality in all sense. As Gandhi says,
Only then can India really soar high and shine.
Politics of Inclusive Growth India Today October 1 2007 6-12
6
State of the States conclave organised by India Today. As close as one could get to a national Development Council. ten chief ministers, onedeputy chief inister and ministers from three states dbated the causes of rising inequality and the need to push inclusive growth
India today editor-in-chief Aroon Purie set the tone for the debate when he said 'the good news is that there is growth but the bad news is hat, far from being inclusibe, it has increased inequality".
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, in his inaugural address, pointe dout that "every squeare inch on Infia is ruled by states" and that the laws of economics would work in India, but all stakeholders must work together to find the country its place in the wrld.
agriculture, education and infrastructure the focus.
Lack of attention to agriculture and education the primary focus.
Parkash Singh Badal, chief miister, punjab: Our finance minister has painted a rosy picture of the country. But in reality, the position is the opposite. We have to plan for the lower, not the upper strata. i would request mr. Purie and mr. Chawla (editor of India today) to hold this meeting next time in a village, under a tree. We talk about these things in air-conditioned halls and even at the Planning Commission meetings. I have requested the members of the commission to stay for one day and one night in a village and then they will realise what is to be done. Our farmers do hard work. Yet they are under heavy debt. Why is it so? because the policies of the Central givernment are against the farmers. Agriculture is in full control of the Centre. What can we do in the states, say about fertilisers or diesel?
Painted a rosy picture? Elites like to paint. Indiastreet--> No mention on poverty and inequality.
7
'We disperse industries to rural areas, invest in education and promote tourism. All this enables job creation." N. Rangasamy Chief minister, Puducherry
8
"Mere spending does not mean development. A good delivery system and governance are imperative for any region." Virbhadra Singh. Chief minister, Minachal Pradesh.
8
"We all talk about high griwth but it is like a train where only the engine is running without bogies and the people." Sushil Kumar Modi Deputy Chief Minister, Bihar
7
"The biggest problem we should worry about is unemployement in rural areas. If this is not solved, there will be a revolution." Parkash Singh Badal.
9
"Only 5 per cent of our population is vocationally trained. We need to make people employable to promote growth." ravi Parthasarathy, Chairman & MD, IL&FS
10
... :Our theme this year is skill set upgradation for inclusive growth..... The oriblem is at the lower-end. We have a very large workforce. But 93 per cent of it is in the informal sector. We are working on pilot projects with the Rural Development Ministry for skill development of people below the poverty line and also with the textiles industry. We need to do more. We need to fill this gap through public-private partnerships.
11
"Inclusive growth must be the sub-text of our developmental efforts." Mohammad Hamid Ansari Vice-President.
10
"because of the special status given to some states, investment has fled some states. We should be compensated for this." Digambar kamat, chief minister, Goa.
11
Mohammad Hamid Ansari
It was at the ninth session of the Indian National Congress at Lohore in 1893 that Dadabhai Naoroji commented : "the gratest quetion before you, the question of all questions, is the poverty of India. This will be, I am much afraid, the great future trouble both for the Indian people and of the British rulers. It is the rock ahead. " The situation was no different five decades later on the eve of Independence, as evident from Palme Dutt's observation 1946 "India is a country of poor people; but it is not a poor country. Between these two lies the problem of the existing social and political order in India.
Thus, a century after Dadabhai Naoroji's comment, the cock continues to exist and protends the great future trouble. the poverty of India is still the question of all questions. The successes of the Indian economy are good. We have had a real GDP growth of 9.4 per cent for 2006-2007 and an exchange rate per capita of &880. In purchasing power parity terms, the per capita GDP has climbed to around $4000. Our savings and investment rateds have increased. there was a gross FDI inflow of $19.5 billion in 2006-2007 and good reasons exist to believe that there have been productivity and efficiency.
The evident contradition perplexes obsevers and leads to two questions. One is-what does this mean for a large segment of our population? And two- what is the true wealth of our nation? Is it the national income and material wealth or are the people of India enabled and empowered- our true wealth? if it is the latter, the only mearue of national progress should be the quality of life of our people.
the sense of satisfaction at the maro-economic situation stand diminished with the realisation that 77 per cent of our population has an income of around Rs 20, half a dollar in exchange rate terms and $2 in purchasing power parity terms. This poor and vulnerable segments of the India population represents the broad caegory within which the dynamics of povery alleviation plays out.
We have a situation where the richest 10% of the the population account for slightly less than 30 per cent of the share of expenditure and the poorest 10 per cent of the populaion account for less than 5 per cent.
More than income inequalities, what are particularly worrisome are stark human development inequalities that adversely impact life chances and capabilities of our people.
We have many examples from around the world, and within the country, where public policy choices have ensured better human development outcome than warranted by the level of economic development. This was done through a cnbscious focus on income distribution patterns and ensuring that public spending on basic halth and education remained high. How does India rank according to these parameters? Public expenditure on education is around 3 per cent of the GDP and on health is around 1.2 per cent of GDP. This is low by any standards, and specially for the extent of poverty in India. Much more nerds to be done.
Mahatma Gandhi accepted that his idea; of equal distribution is not relisable. But he advocated equitable distribution as an achievable goal.
***India has to give its people the basic thing it needs. Health and education.
P. Chidambaram. Finance Minister.
I am a passionate advocate of the well-being of all states because if all the states are doing well, India will do well. Unfortunately, growth is not even among the states and within a state too, growth is not even.
One of the reasons wht the remarkable economic growth rate accross the country is critiseized in some quarters is because of the unevnenness of the process and the unevenness of the product. It is, the
There are states that are small and therefore,.... But each one of these problems can be attacked by applying logic, reason and good economics.
***It seems to me as if the answers are blatant. If it seems blatant enough in a Level 2 university development course, surely it must be for politicians and ministers who have far more training, ... and insight. What then is holding them back? Surely not this logic, reason and good economics that was mentioned about. Then it must be something more than logic.
I have no doubt inn my minds,,that in my lifetime we can abolish abject povert in India. It will take us 20 more years of splendid growth rates- growth rates of over 8 per cent, near 9 oer cent. If we can sustain it for 20 years, you will find that this country is a very different country from what it is today and what it was 15 years ago.
** However, can this growth rate be sustained... Look a other countries.
September 24
State of the states
8
Shankkar Aiyar
history, you could argue, is the best teacher of political economy. the basic lesson political parties and leaders could imbibe from this is that getting it right does not require a post doctorae in rocket science. Development may elude he masses but the difinition of economic development is not elusive or mysterious. It is, as the textbook says, about getting the basic foundation right. very simply, promote agriculture by ensuring credit to farers and developing irrigation facilities, invest in infrastructure for cennectibity between fields and markets, spend on education and health to enable people to benefit from the opportunities and derive rebune from the resultant investments that will boost consumer cmarkerts.
**performance not perception
Inclusive inequality.
20
India is expected to notch 9-plus per cent growth for the thrid successibe year. But a large section is not on the gravy train.
Money is nothing: character, conduct and capacity are everything George bernard Shaw in 1900s.
301 million, a fourth of the population (of 111 million) is living less than a dollar a day, below the low tide of poverty otherwide jargonised as BPL. Within SOuth Asia, India has 77 per cent of the poor. Contasrt this with another nugget. India is also home to 36 dollar-billionaires. At the height of the stock market boom, the wealth of just five individuals in the country exceeded $100 billion or 10 per cent of the GDP.
Our study (based on data from National Sample Surver Organisation- 1993-1994 and 2004-2005 reports on expenditiure and income) shows that jammu and Kashmir, inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient has gone up across the country.
The top 20 per cent of the population in urban India earns 56 per cent of the income while th bottom 20 per cent earns barely 3.4 per cent of the income. Indded, the top 20 per cent earns more than all the others put together..
22
Simple assymetry- of education, skills, opportunity and physical infrastructure- is currently driving income and this expenditure inequality. As several studies have validated, lack of education creates an assymetry both in ability and skills leading to people being less employable or more employable. This enables those better skilled to earn better. But there is hardly any move to institutionalise skills training. India has only 12 000 vocational training institutes against China's 5 00 000.
Physical infrasturcture.
India has struggled to add 45 000 MW in ficve years while China adds nearly 70 000 MW every year.
States like Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have barelt 15 % road connectivity. This leads to income disparity between those living in ruban areas and those in rural areas. Lack of connectivity from, say fields to markets prevents farmers from getting better returns. lack of farm-to-fork chain systems results in produce being wasted.
This widens the distance between incomes earned from the real potential.
Juxtapose
pg 23 !!!! What the state has failed in.
A case for India Whining Bibek Debroy & laveesh Bhandari
Roughly one-third of all children in India are underweight. A survey in a private school in Delhi has found that roughly one-third of the children there are obese. Of course there is inequality in th country.
Identity was in their entity.
Example: When economy burst, then so did their sense of identity. because the economy, their entity, was central to it.
The day when the mountains move is coming
I tell you, yet people refuse to believe it
The mountains have been sleeping for a long time
Long ago they moved it passionately blazing with fire
You need not belive it
But ah! believe only this:
Women who have been sleeping
begin to wake and move
patricia Moreley the Mountain is Moving: Japanese Women's Lives UBC Press Vancouver 1999
Akiko Yosano, "The day When the Mountain Move," composite translation.
Karen Kelsky women on the verge Japanese Women, Western Dreams Duke University Press London 2001
1
The 1980s and 1990s saw a series of profound and far-reaching transformations in Japanese gender relations.
It was during this time that the birthrate first began its preciptous slide downward, reaching 1.57 births per woman in 1989, well below the minimum 2.2. births required to sustain the present population. This development so stunned the public that it earned the name "the 1.57 shock" and inspired impassioned media debate as well as government directives to women to bear more children (these were ineffective and by 1997, the rate had plummeted to 1.39; koseisho 2000a). Meanwhile, it was during his time that Japanese began marrying considerably later in life: By the late 1990s the average age of first marriage had risen to almost twenty-nine form men and almost twenty-seven for women, the highest in the industrialised world (Koseisho 2000b). Single japanese men now began to suffer seriously drom the effects of kekkon-nan (marriage difficulty), as a large proportion of young single marriage-age women first deserted rural areas and farmimh life for the large cities and then, even within the large cities, spurned men employed in the blue-collar sector for the urban middle-class ideal of the white-collar sarariman (salaryman). At the same time, backed by the high yen and the overvalued economy, yound women began travelling abroad in ever-increading numbers, eventually surpassing, by 1990, the number of young men engaging in foreign travel by a margin of 2 to 1. As one offshoot of this overseas crazy, ryugaku(study abroad) for periods ranging from one month to several years became an accepted and even common career move for middle-class single women in their twenties and thirties. By the early 1990s, almost 80 persent of Japanese study-abroad students were female.
2
I argue that the turn to the foreign has become prhaps the most important means currently at women's disposal to resist gendered expectations of the fema;e life course.
Example: When economy burst, then so did their sense of identity. because the economy, their entity, was central to it.
The day when the mountains move is coming
I tell you, yet people refuse to believe it
The mountains have been sleeping for a long time
Long ago they moved it passionately blazing with fire
You need not belive it
But ah! believe only this:
Women who have been sleeping
begin to wake and move
patricia Moreley the Mountain is Moving: Japanese Women's Lives UBC Press Vancouver 1999
Akiko Yosano, "The day When the Mountain Move," composite translation.
Karen Kelsky women on the verge Japanese Women, Western Dreams Duke University Press London 2001
1
The 1980s and 1990s saw a series of profound and far-reaching transformations in Japanese gender relations.
It was during this time that the birthrate first began its preciptous slide downward, reaching 1.57 births per woman in 1989, well below the minimum 2.2. births required to sustain the present population. This development so stunned the public that it earned the name "the 1.57 shock" and inspired impassioned media debate as well as government directives to women to bear more children (these were ineffective and by 1997, the rate had plummeted to 1.39; koseisho 2000a). Meanwhile, it was during his time that Japanese began marrying considerably later in life: By the late 1990s the average age of first marriage had risen to almost twenty-nine form men and almost twenty-seven for women, the highest in the industrialised world (Koseisho 2000b). Single japanese men now began to suffer seriously drom the effects of kekkon-nan (marriage difficulty), as a large proportion of young single marriage-age women first deserted rural areas and farmimh life for the large cities and then, even within the large cities, spurned men employed in the blue-collar sector for the urban middle-class ideal of the white-collar sarariman (salaryman). At the same time, backed by the high yen and the overvalued economy, yound women began travelling abroad in ever-increading numbers, eventually surpassing, by 1990, the number of young men engaging in foreign travel by a margin of 2 to 1. As one offshoot of this overseas crazy, ryugaku(study abroad) for periods ranging from one month to several years became an accepted and even common career move for middle-class single women in their twenties and thirties. By the early 1990s, almost 80 persent of Japanese study-abroad students were female.
2
I argue that the turn to the foreign has become prhaps the most important means currently at women's disposal to resist gendered expectations of the fema;e life course.
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