Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.Robert Louis Stevenson

March 2013

  • India And Poverty

    The very thing that made China a success story is inviting criticism of India—how their prosperity has, or in the case of India has not, lifted people out of poverty. In China about 13% of the population subsists on $1.25 a day or less. In India a third of the population lives on that amount. The prosperity has gone to the rich and to some extent the middle class. The level of poverty in certain regions such as that of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is equivalent to that of the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the poorest countries in the world (if rich in resources) and one plagued by many years of civil way. For most people in India social mobility is only a dream. But Oxford University’s poverty and human development initiative which is using a new approach to measuring human deprivation found that some of the most impoverished countries in the world have seen a decrease in the number of the extremely poor in several nations and thinks that such extreme poverty could be eradicated within 20 years. Rwanda, Nepal and Bangladesh head that list. Close behind are reduction in extreme poverty in Ghana, Tanzania, Cambodia and Bolivia. In between the example of China and the findings of the Oxford’s study, those of us who hate poverty hope that India can take heed and work harder on reducing its poverty.

  • Something Scary

    When JPMorgan lost $6.2 billion in what is now called the “ London Whale” it was in the context of world news, a beep, mentioned but not much talked about. Now that the report from the Senate inquiry into the trading loss has been released, the beep is a bit louder but so far doesn’t seem it will be given the weight it ought to have. Here is a “too big to fail” institution being able to engage in an operation that to an outsider like me seems bizarre. According to the Senate report, high placed executives went along with what Floyd Norris of the NYT called gibberish, possibly an explanation no one wanted to pull the curtain on, evoking in a reader the sense that the tale of the emperor’s new clothes had come to life. What is even more distressing is that if the Senate committee refers the matter for criminal prosecution, not much is likely to happen. Justice Department officials have suggested that big banks are too big to prosecute, apparently meaning that a prosecution of such a huge institution would harm the financial system. That does and ought to scare us—Criminality being sheltered because of size!

  • Population Growth And The Environment

    The result of a survey conducted on behalf of The Center for Biological Diversity, a non-profit environmental group, shows that 59% of those polled believe that population growth is important to environmental issues. Since population growth is often not a popular subject, other environmental groups have shied away from linking it to environmental concerns, but the Center for Biological Diversity wanted to show among other things that the connection wasn’t as problematic as many thought. As a result of the survey’s findings the organization has swelled both its membership and its donations. Other results: 50% of those polled think the world population is growing too fast, 68% expressed concern about disappearing wildlife, and depending on how the question was put to them, 57% to 64% said it was because population growth was having an adverse effect. Another interesting finding is that 48% think the average American consumes too much. It may be one organization and one survey but it does seem to show that given the opportunity the public is more savvy than we often realize.

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