PUBLIC: Re: 5 factual pts

[prabhu.guptara@ny.ubs.com]

Dear Colleagues

<I am only asking for 3 easily measurable and comparable targets: money,
Nobel
prizes and Olympic medals.>

Any nation that meets only these three goals is of no interest to me as
a
contributor to IPI.  The nation must also provide the possibility of at
least
two square meals a day for its citizens if it is to be worth respecting
or
investing in, in terms of personal time and energy.


Professor Prabhu Guptara
Director, Executive and Organisational Development
Wolfsberg Executive Development Centre
(A subsidiary of UBS AG)
CH-8272 Ermatingen
Switzerland
Tel: +41.71.663.5605
Fax: +41.71.663.5594
e-mail: prabhu.guptara@ubs.com




______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: 5 factual pts
Author:  sabhlok (sabhlok@almaak.usc.edu) at nyuxuu
Date:    03.12.98 03:44


Dear friends,

>From a reading of some of the material posted recently on IPI, I had a
few pts to make (in clarification) to some of the comments received.

a) "There is no comparison between a US dollar and a rupee"

Partially true. At the following URL I had put up some relevant info. In

ordinary USD exchange rate terms, we are about 80 times poorer than the
USA today. In terms of PPP (purchasing power parity) we are about 20
times poorer.

        http://www.indiapolicy.org/debate/Notes/data1.html

If anyone has a better way to compare the two countries (or any set of
two countries), please come out with it. This fact of the same things
costing different is true only in the non-tradable sector. In the
tradable goods sector, the "law of one price" (LOOP) generally holds
(note the use of the word, generally).

b) "Who collects data? Is it reliable?"

There was some expression of doubt about 'statistics' as if there is
some cheating going on in the collection of data. I wish to assure that
there is not one individual collecting statistics but hundreds, or
thousands of independent organizations. You are welcome to open an
office to collect your own statistics. Make sure, though, that like any
other scientific organization, you do publish the statistics and leave
them open for open verification.

c) "Data is in black and white. Reality is gray."

If Kepler used the same argument to not collect data on the stars and
planets, we would be living in the jungle today. A lot of data is
'collectible,' such as the number of people, the amount of goods
produced, etc., and it is only some very complex data that is not
readily available. For that we use expensive surveys and random sampling

techniques to arrive at conclusions. One of the papers in my Ph.D.
research is based on extensive surveys administered to over 4000 people
in 160 villages of Thailand. The data increases in reliability as its
size increases and as the design of the questionnaire improves.

There is NOTHING in this world that is not measurable. Recently,
scientists have documented clearly the different patterns of the brain
while thinking of different things, and attempts are now on to make
computers work simply by tapping into one's brain, directly. Even
thought, ultimately, will be measurable.

Some measurements are costly. Others are cheap. I am interested in
simple data which is universally accepted, in order to draw very
important conclusions. If you have other data please present. Do not
just question the sources of data nor its credibility without any basis.


d) "The family is stong in India and weak in USA, hence we have to teach

USA."

Facts are different. There are no dowry deaths in USA. People divorce,
instead. The women in India are economically dependent and almost
always, completely at the mercy of domineering husbands. But that is not

the point. I have not advocated that we dissolve the family just to make

ourselves rich. We can show the world how to do both together. But given

a choice between having oppressively poor families and independent
individuals who are rich, I would rather have India become the latter
than the former.

e) "Why do we talk of crossover with USA?"

The fact is that the USA today is ENORMOUSLY more powerful and rich and
healthy than India. It is also the only nation in the same league as
India in terms of population which is worth overtaking. I could say,
let us overtake Switzerland and you would protest more loudly since that

nation is a tiny little piece of snow. In sheer might, in sheer size, in

sheer democratic splendour, in sheer challenges of managing a
heterogenous population, the only fair challenger to India is USA.

Second, the question of crossover is just illustrative, designed to show

us the HUGE gap and the HUGE distance we have to cover (230 times income

growth in 100 years) in order for the rest of the world to declare
India as the true world superpower (not in nuclear bombs, but in wealthy

and health people) of all times.

To me all talk of USA being a useless country is futile. I am an
economist and look purely at the demand and supply. The day when
hundreds of thousand of US citizens (and others) will line up outside
the Indian embassy in USA is the day when I will say that we can now
talk of our being the best nation in the world.

Not respecting the demand of individuals is the disease the plagues us.
We set ourselves some wierd and vague standards on which we appear to be

superior to the rest of the world.

I am only asking for 3 easily measurable and comparable targets: money,
Nobel prizes and Olympic medals. The day we are No.1 in each of these I
am willing to listen to all this needless carping and cribbing about the

USA or other nations on some flimsy and unsupportable pretext.

Till that time, this talk about USA being not worth overtaking, is
merely the case, it appears to me, of grapes being sour.

Let us stop wasting our time on these quibbles, and gear up ourselves
and our nation to start off on the race to gain the No.1 position in the

world in 2100 AD. That will involve building  a massive National
Consensus in terms of good policies. Let us do that.

If we are not even capable of that, i.e., of framing a best policies
manifesto, i.e., if we are so deficient in our thinking that we always
go about challenging data and statistics, challenging the rich nations
and the free nations, challenging the nations where the Police and the
bureaucracy is honest, then we should all go home and close down this
wasteful effort. I will then know why we are where we are, and I will
switch to painting and art, the only true passion of my life.

We have always supported - without any logic - nations that have
massacred their citizens in modern times. Why this constant US bashing?
Are we made richer or more honest or more healthy by that? Why not admit

that we are, today, a nation that cannot even keep its own best brains
inside the nation, a nation where no one wishes to invest, a nation
where our leaders are liars the moment they get elected?

Admitting one's weakenesses is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of
great strength. It is also the first thing necessary to be done in case
we wish to correct this constant and incessant plunge into deeper and
deeper poverty and misery, with respect to the rest of the world.

My diagnosis on IPI is that India is sick, very very sick. And it needs
a strong dose of good medicine. If you believe that India is healthy,
very very healthy, then show it to me.

Sanjeev


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