What India could buy with all the black money

And this was inspired by: http://www.visualeconomics.com/what-bp-could-have-bought-with-all-the-money-they-lost/

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Of Gods and Godmen

Religion, lets face it, is simply a means to control the people of this world. It was invented, yes invented and not discovered, in order to make humans feel a little less insecure about their place here on Earth. It was a convenient fiction, cooked up by over zealous raconteurs as they looked to the sky, and deduced the existence of god from nothing more than a few strands of lightning, and stars shaped like bears. What it meant however, and the people who invented this realised it soon, was POWER. Unbridled, untrammeled power. Because, humans, you see, are suckers for a good fiction, and like to feel warm and cozy in the belief that there's in fact an invisible man in the sky..watching over us and so on...

These rather deceptive people managed to rule over us, for a couple of millenia. But then something remarkable happened. God was replaced, just like that. He was replaced by what some have called the biggest force known to man, MONEY. And these people, who had hitherto had the utilitarian value of money, POWER, found their power to be a derivative of, rather than a function of money. And no matter how much they'd cry, no matter how they lambasted the apostacy of the common man, it wasn't coming back. No chance.

But they had hit upon a concept here. A large number of people equals a large number of money. This concept has been highlighted very recently by an enterprising young baba. This enterprising young baba owns half of the hearts and minds of this country, and also a considerably large Scottish island. This baba owns 8 companies registered through an intermediary which do not employ anyone or produce anything. But lets rewind, this baba controls a lot of people. Consequently he has a lot of money. Consequently he believed he had a lot of power. Until now of course.

Now he can just make threats about the number of people he can raise at short notice. Now he can just bandy about numbers like 11,000 and pretend like this rag tag militia can conquer the world. Baba Ramdev then, is acting like a typical teenager, who just got his ass kicked by the neighbourhood bully. Baba Ramdev, then, has suddenly received a culture shock, and a massive one.

You see, he got his concepts wrong, and massively. The reason why he has money is because of the power he exerts on people. Not the other way around. He doesn't have enough money to change the world. He has a shitload of money, but that just isn't enough, he can't go around throwing money at people, recruiting them to the army he is building. Most people who join his army would do so out of quasi nationalistic fervour, or as is more likely, out of coercion. They would be good for just one fight, and would disperse rather than destroy anything.

Most news channels have launched a propaganda war against him, which means now he would have to recruit from places which do not have televisions. This also means he could now brainwash people against popular media, and call it a conspiracy theory. He could now tell people he is going to be murdered, and end up being martyred, for the sake of the nation.

All for what? The issues that he has brought up, of black money and the like, were brought up as recently as a month ago. This has been resolved, and concrete steps have been taken. The public was swayed, and most people denounced the government as being weak and venal. Now, out of nowhere, comes this almighty preacher of yoga, and decides, all of a sudden to become the only means of salvation for Indian black money stored abroad. An issue which was suspiciously close to the pulse of the public two months back.

Why isn't he championing AIDS treatments, which he says can be cured through Yoga, or a cure for homosexuality, which he says is a mental disorder caused by that perfidious perpetrator of all evil, the WEST. Either of those would earn him the Nobel prize for sure. Why does he now insist on coming up with an equally ludicrous scheme for a problem which is already on its way to resolution?

Banning of 500 and 1000 rupee notes won't solve anything. And neither will rebellious civil wars involving 11000 armed men. There are no shortcuts to power, and this is what he has to realise. In order to gain any real power, he has to stand up and contest proper elections, just like every other thug, crook and vandal in this country.

Priapic Pastimes and Deceptive Deodorants

So, the government of India has now banned a sexy deodorant commercial. This, barely qualifies as news. And the fact that I read this on BBC's South Asia website is testament to the complete lack of earth shattering events occurring in Asia after Osama bin Laden's (rather accidental) death. So now, we are treated to the blazing rhetoric of (really sad) government employees, which is passed off as breaking (rather questionable) news. Parenthetical interruptions aside, they really have taken the Wild Stone commercials off air..and increased the popularity of WS deodorants, and sales, by a massive percentage.

Which is brilliant!! These defenders of morality,so called bastions of Indian culture, basically have no other work to do than sit down in front of the TV all day long, and surf through those salacious channels (MTv, FTv, Vtv, and other devilspawned entertainment) looking for the least trace of nudity or other objectionable sexual content. So these idiots, who happen to be highly paid government servants (no surprises there), can lay down the line.

Whatever happened to rights here. The right to free speech, free broadcasting, most importantly, free FUCK. I mean for God's sake, people in India fuck. Like crazy bunnies on steroids. WE did not attain a population of 1.3 billion by sitting on our haunches and waiting for storks. And yes, deodorants are meant to attract women. NOT cows/ pigs/ rodents. So yes, if a deo company implies that using their product would help a man get lucky then, it is a sensible , albeit lascivious ad.

And while the people who enforce such bans think pheromone is a species of mountain gorilla, and are busy trying to find which finger is lodged up their ass, most members of the (semi)knowledgeable public also support the enforcement of such bans. After all, they have kids at home, and kids are at an impressionable age, and of course they really shouldn't be taught about how they got made in the first place. And that really bad (really really embarrassing) SEX talk, that most families avoid. Not that it has anything to do with the sort of deodorant their father might have used anyway.

To face facts, Body Odour is a big turn off anyway...and deodorants have every right to be sexy. And there will always be government employees, with fancy sounding titles and designations, and characteristically, if not eponymously little work to be done.

Other than staring at overtly sexual ads for personal grooming products. And shaking their heads at a pair of boobs or legs, and going tch tch. And deciding that deodorants truly are the work of the devil.

And wondering about why they never got any, back in their time...

Mess-o-nomics

Now this thread was started off by an extremely friendly mess server at lunch today. While his friendliness was only surpassed by his garrulity, he did raise some very interesting points, on the economics of that lifeblood of engineering colleges everywhere, the mess. See, running a mess, on a day to day basis, is now fast becoming, economically unfeasible.

Now it may come as a surprise to you, but most mess workers are poor. Not in the BPL, <2200 kcal a day poor, but seriously, money wise, destitute. This is because the scope of earning any real money as a mess worker is severely limited. But, what is even more interesting is how the government now, is making a mess The calculation is a simple one. Now, the average mess charge for each student comes out to be around 1700 a month, for my mess. Which means, for an average of 100 people eating in that mess daily, the folks running the mess would be able to earn 170000 rupees a month. Now I think around 30% of that would be overhead and salary, and 2% profit, with the remaining 68% going into sourcing food, dishes, taxes(maybe), etc. So it's the 30% that we are concerned with anyhow.

30% works out to be around 51000 a month. And while mess workers are paid differently, according to a very complex hierarchy, we can assume two salary bands, one for the people who actually cook the food, and the other for the servers/cleaners etc. Lets assume that the people in the lower band earn 40% less than those in the higher band. That would leave 31,875 rupees for the higher paid workers, and 19,125 for the lower paid workers. Now there are about 5 workers responsible for cooking the food, and around 6 responsible for the cleaning and serving.

And this means, that while the maharajs or those cooking the food earn a fairly decent salary of 6,500 rupees a month, those responsible for the cleaning and menial chores, earn only 3,175. This would have been okay, except for the MNREGA, which gurantees employment to every individual, at Rs 120 a day, for 100 days. This works out to be 12000 for the entire period, or 3600 a month. Following this, many states have decided to increase their minimum salary requirements, and in those states the price of manual labour may reach 200 for a day's work. Which is an astronomical 6000 a month.

This means, that although the effort required is much less, there is a significant decrease in interest in mess labour. Most workers look at the money first, and work later, and as such, feel there is much more reward to be had in hard core manual labour. This results in a considerable shortage in mess labour, which, paradoxically reduces the profits of the mess, as it results in an increase in the diet charge, which in turn results in a reduction in consumers.

Another factor which has a direct impact on the mess is inflation. And while the diet charge cannot be increased beyond a particular limit, there is no such boundary for the price of vegetables. And although potatoes are the staple for all such messes, the ravages of untrammeled inflation have not left this vegetable untouched either.

This in turn results in the messes of our hostels turning unprofitable, which means there is now a real danger of a famine ripping across academia, which also means that students might suffer from debilitating hunger soon, with no solution in sight.

Not from a lack of food, food is still being produced, stored improperly in silos, and rotting away. Not from lack of food.

But from the lack of people to cook it for us.