WebSearch –Try: Management-Methods-Foresight-Prospective Studies-Roadmaps-Innovation.

Custom Search

My visitors whereabouts - tell me more via a comment or back link

New Scientist - Environment

Renewable energy : nature.com subject feeds

ScienceDirect Publication: Journal of CO2 Utilization

Shale Debate, UK

News - Steel Market Update - Steel Market Update

Monday 24 June 2013

Why India trails China by AMARTYA SEN, Nobel laureate Economics, Professor of Economics and Philosophy,Harvard Univ.

Failing to invest in the health and education of the poor is a drag on economic growth

Amartya Sen (India), professor of Economy and Philosophy at Harvard University. (Servindi/Flickr)
AMARTYA SEN,  Nobel laureate Economics, Professor of Economics and Philosophy,Harvard

REFERENCES :




Modern India is, in many ways, a success. Its claim to be the world’s largest democracy is not hollow. Its media is vibrant and free; Indians buy more newspapers every day than any other nation. Since independence in 1947, life expectancy at birth has more than doubled, to 66 years from 32, and per-capita income has grown fivefold. In recent decades, reforms pushed up the country’s once sluggish growth rate to around 8 percent per year, before it fell back a couple of percentage points over the last two years. For years, India’s economic growth rate ranked second among the world’s large economies, after China, which it has consistently trailed by at least one percentage point.

MSMDNYC
The hope that India might overtake China one day in economic growth now seems a distant one. But that comparison is not what should worry Indians most. The far greater gap between India and China is in the provision of essential public services — a failing that depresses living standards and is a persistent drag on growth.
Inequality is high in both countries, but China has done far more than India to raise life expectancy, expand general education and secure health care for its people. India has elite schools of varying degrees of excellence for the privileged, but among all Indians 7 or older, nearly one in every five males and one in every three females are illiterate. And most schools are of low quality; less than half the children can divide 20 by 5, even after four years of schooling.
India may be the world’s largest producer of generic medicine, but its health care system is an unregulated mess. The poor have to rely on low-quality — and sometimes exploitative — private medical care, because there isn’t enough decent public care. While China devotes 2.7 percent of its gross domestic product to government spending on health care, India allots 1.2 percent.
India’s underperformance can be traced to a failure to learn from the examples of so-called Asian economic development, in which rapid expansion of human capability is both a goal in itself and an integral element in achieving rapid growth. Japan pioneered that approach, starting after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, when it resolved to achieve a fully literate society within a few decades. As Kido Takayoshi, a leader of that reform, explained: ‘‘Our people are no different from the Americans or Europeans of today; it is all a matter of education or lack of education.’’ Through investments in education and health care, Japan enhanced living standards and labor productivity — the government collaborating with the market.
Despite the catastrophe of Japan’s war years, the lessons of its development experience remained and were followed, in the postwar period, by South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and other economies in East Asia. China, which during the Mao era made advances in land reform and basic education and health care, embarked on market reforms in the early 1980s; its huge success changed the shape of the world economy. India has paid inadequate attention to these lessons.
Is there a conundrum here that democratic India has done worse than China in educating its citizens and improving their health? Perhaps, but the puzzle need not be a brainteaser. Democratic participation, free expression and rule of law are largely realities in India, and still largely aspirations in China. India has not had a famine since independence, while China had the largest famine in recorded history, from 1958 to 1961, when Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward killed some 30 million people. Nevertheless, using democratic means to remedy endemic problems — chronic undernourishment, a disorganized medical system or dysfunctional school systems — demands sustained deliberation, political engagement, media coverage, popular pressure. In short, more democratic process, not less.
In China, decision making takes place at the top. The country’s leaders are skeptical, if not hostile, with regard to multiparty democracy, but they have been strongly committed to eliminating hunger, illiteracy and medical neglect, and that is enormously to their credit.
There are inevitable fragilities in a nondemocratic system because mistakes are hard to correct. Dissent is dangerous. There is little recourse for victims of injustice. Edicts like the onechild policy can be very harsh. Still, China’s present leaders have used the basic approach of accelerating development by expanding human capability with great decisiveness and skill.
The case for combating inequality in India is not only a matter of social justice. Unlike India, China did not miss the huge lesson of Asian economic development, about the economic returns that come from bettering human lives. India’s growth and its earnings from exports have tended to depend on a few sectors, like information technology, pharmaceuticals and specialized auto parts, many of which rely on the role of highly trained personnel from the welleducated classes. For India to match China in its range of manufacturing capacity, it needs a better-educated and healthier labor force at all levels of society. What it needs most is more knowledge and public discussion about the nature and the huge extent of inequality and its damaging consequences, including for economic growth.
AMARTYA SEN, a Nobel laureate, is a professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard. He is the author, with Jean Drèze, of ‘‘An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions.’’


Saturday 15 June 2013

Sustainability Management Academics & Sage's Journal "Organization & Environment"

Getting to grips with Environmental Impact is by Nature, (with a capital N) a truely millenium challenge this is the place to post. (Note in passing the incredible foresight of the MacMillan brothers when they created in 1860 their now famous Science Journal Nature-Timeline)

As the 2nd issue in 2013 of Sage's Journal Organization & Environment has just arrived in my mail in box, I will share the freely available content with my regular management blog readers at "This-Above-All."

Here is the Editorial address of this years 2nd issue addressing Academics in these fields
Sustainability Management Academics


Wednesday 12 June 2013

The "Public Debt Issue_Who is in debt & to Whom? plus questions of probity concerning elected members of the French Assembly(Deputés) or Senate(Senateurs)

For my bilingual readers here is a video link to the enquiry reported by Elise Lucet of France's F2-Antenne 2  public television.

Subject: Tax Evasion or Tax Optimisation or more to be more specific MINIMISATION
NB. Of course the CFO's-Chief Financial Officer's job is to maximise financial leverage and ensure money is well spent within the company, but there is something called "good will", apparently long forgotten. The public must question what this entails and what the company owes the public (customers) and the country (reputation, renown..) eg. the private assets of Greece outlay the Greek public debt!)      

Summary: In 2008 a computer expert at HSBC bank in Geneva, Hervé Falciani, left the bank with a long  list of clients world wide notably those who are strongly suspected of Tax Fraud. The list was in the form of three hard discs, at current data storage performance, that's a lot of data.

Mr Falciani is accused of stealing this data by the Switzerland Justice Department, he apparently has been menaced by death and placed under police protection.

The TV enquiry is also looks at companies implanted in France which are seen to be pushing the limits between Tax Optimisation and Fraud.

Such an enquiry is particularly timely since all Europeans, and certainly in France, are under increasing pressure to "make efforts" to bring our Economies into Equilibrium.

As in all well managed affairs, private business or public affairs the example must come from the top, the "so called leaders".

LEADERSHIP IN QUESTION and I do not intend to do any French President Bashing

Today good leadership is more and more questionable. In spite of the encouraging start to french president F. Hollands reduction in salary -30% (NB. N.Sarkosy increased his presidential salary by something like 140% "I won the battle and take the spoils"? There are of course other factors to be looked into in order to determine the salaried and perks of all elected representatives in total transparence in order to have the clout to change what must be changed)

Even more flagrant is the still apparently excessive and shady treatment attributed-co-opted in the boardrooms of  directors of CAC 40 (40 top companies and their top brass, and collaborators, many of whom may hide behind their financial directors or quality assurance directors in the case of accusation of "fraudulent" behaviour.

This blog author wrote and published in particular:

TWO CASE STUDIES

Two examples of companies present in France were highlighted:
Amazon & BAT British & American Tobacco
Of course pillar of "EU ism" Luxembourg is a main player in this "fraud- tax minimisation"
Amazon have unfair advantage over the small librarian-bookseller.
Having seen this TV programme I shall take Amazon's publicity from my blogs.
BAT is another kettle of fish - Tobacco smoking is proven to be  responsible for a greatly  increased probability of lung cancer, arterial damage and heart failure risk. What motivated me to blog and add my voice to echo this TV enquiry was the present of 3 elected members wined and dinned by BAT
 (one cannot say at BAT's expense since we know where the bribe money comes from, ie the poor cigarette addict.)
while France is actively engaged in increasing tax on cigarettes in order to encourage people to stop smoking (my comment or help finance the cost of cancer care and if possible cure).
M. André Santini, longtime deputy and senator, with a very strong personality (some may say "grande geule" and certainly a fat tummy).and very out spoken in favour of freedom to smoke (even knowing that manufactures do all they can to increase addiction) M. Patrick Balkany, Maire of Levallois-Perret the commune the most  indebted in France and a third person whose name will most certainly figure in the video.
(Bribery if not openly discussed is possible just around the corner).

SUMMARY
Tax Evasion or Tax Optimisation or more to be more specific MINIMISATION
NB. Of course the CFO's job is to maximise financial leverage and ensure money is well spent within the company, but there is something called "good will", apparently long forgotten. The public must question what this entails and what the company owes the public (customers) and the country (reputation, renown..) eg. the private assets of Greece outlay the Greek public debt!)    

INTOLERABLE

PS. Now that I have echoed the deserved slating the national players there are other "Top Dogs" who cry for efforts to be made, the public is now asking our EU representatives and the Salaried EU. Commission what financial effort has or is being enforced as a signal that the EU is playing its leadership role properly, yes properly.
  

Le scandale de l'évasion fiscale : révélations sur les milliards qui nous manquent (in French)