Monday 29 October 2012

तेलाची गोष्ट!

इंधन आपल्या आधुनिक जगाचा अविभाज्य भाग बनले आहे. खरंतर १५० वर्षांपूर्वी जेव्हा खनिज तेलाचा वापर सुरु झाला तेव्हापासून या तेलानेच आपण आज जे जग पाहतो आहोत ते घडवलं (किंवा बिघडवलं) आहे.

काही आठवड्यापूर्वी जेव्हा या खनिज तेलाच्या वाढत्या किंमतीमुळे भारतातील पेट्रोल आणि डिझेल जे भाव वाढवण्यात आले तेव्हा आपल्याकडे केवढा वादंग मजला होता. विरोधक सरकार पाडण्याच्या पवित्र्यात होते. या दरवाढीमुळे सर्वसामान्य नागरीकांच कंबरडं मोडेल असा विरोधकांचा दावा होता.
हो, आपल्याला प्रत्येक गोष्टीसाठी हे खनिज तेल लागतं. खनिज तेल आपली अर्थव्यवस्थेचा पाया आहे. हे आपल्याला उष्मा देतं, आपल्याला आवश्यक वस्तू आपल्यापर्यंत पोचवतं. आपल्याला आपल्या आप्तेष्टांच्या जवळ नेतं, यानेच आपलं जग आपल्या जवळ आणलं आहे. आपण ज्या प्रमाणात हे तेल वापरतो आहोत, ज्या प्रकारे हे मिळवतो आहोत, त्याच्या मुळाशी खूप मोठी आव्हाने आहेत कारण या तेलानेच खूप मोठी युद्धेही झाली आहेत.

जॉश टिकेल यांनी २००८ मध्ये प्रकाशित आपल्या ‘FUEL’ या लघुपटात या राजकीय आणि आर्थिकदृष्टया ज्वलंत अशा खनिज तेलाची गोष्ट आपल्याला सांगितली आहे.
जॉश यांनी या तेलामुळे निर्माण कोणकोणत्या समस्या निर्माण होतात आणि त्या आत्ताच पावले उचलली तर कशा टाळल्याही जाऊ शकतात यावर भाष्य केले आहे.

तेव्हा हा मनोरंजक आणि आपल्या रोजच्या जगण्यामध्ये काही सकारात्मक बदल करण्यासाठी, आपल्याला आपल्या वाढलेल्या, आपणच वाढवून ठेवलेल्या गरजांबद्दल पुनर्विचार करायला लावणारा हा लघुपट आजच पहा.
‘FUEL’ या लघुपट आपण YouTube वर पाहू शकता.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3CBOdgBlk8&feature=watch-now-button&wide=1

-प्रज्ञा शिदोरे


(दि. २६ ऑक्टोबर २०१२ च्या दै. लोकमत मध्ये प्रसिद्ध- http://onlinenews1.lokmat.com/staticpages/editions/today/main/DetailedNews-All.php?nid=OxygenEdition-57-1-25-10-2012-42336&ndate=2012-10-26&editionname=oxygen )

Friday 19 October 2012

ई-कचऱ्याचा यक्षप्रश्न


पुण्याजवळ उरुळी देवाची इथे कचरा डेपो आहे. काही महिन्यांपूर्वी तिथल्या ग्रामस्थांनी आंदोलन करून पुण्यातून जाणाऱ्या कचऱ्याच्या गाड्या अडवून ठेवल्या होत्या. त्यावेळी अख्ख्या शहरातला कचरा उचलला गेला नसल्याने पुणेकरांना कचरा प्रश्नाची झलक बघायला मिळाली होती. जगातल्या अनेक मोठमोठ्या शहरांमध्ये कचरा व्यवस्थापन हा प्रश्न गंभीर बनला आहे. त्याचप्रमाणे जगाला सध्या भेडसावणारी एक उग्र समस्या म्हणजे ई-कचरा आणि या समस्येची ओळख करून देणारा हा छोटेखानी माहितीपट!

कम्प्युटर-इंटरनेट पाठोपाठ माहिती तंत्रज्ञान जगात क्रांती झाली आणि अक्षरशः शेकडो काही ‘शे’ कोटी लोकांच्या हातात मोबाईल आले. जुने टीव्ही जाऊन नवीन टीव्ही आले. एलसीडी, एलईडी वगैरे प्रकार आले. काल आयफोन-४ असला तर आज आयफोन-५ आलासुद्धा! या सगळ्या प्रक्रियेत लोक भराभर जुन्या गोष्टी टाकून अधिक आधुनिक, सर्वात नव्या इलेक्ट्रोनिक गोष्टी विकत घेऊ लागले. जागतिकीकरण आणि बाजारीकरणाच्या या रेट्यात हा वेग प्रचंड वाढला. त्याच प्रमाणात वाढत गेला ई-कचरा. मोबाईल, टीव्ही, कम्प्युटर या सगळ्या गोष्टी टाकून दिल्यावर त्याचं होतं काय, हे या माहितीपटात साध्या सुटसुटीत पण प्रभावी ऐनिमेशनचा वापर करत सांगितले आहे.

इलेक्ट्रोनिक वस्तू बनतात कशा आणि त्याचे रुपांतर विषारी ई-कचऱ्यामध्ये कसे होते हे या माहितीपटात रंजक पद्धतीने दाखवले आहे. सोबतच ‘एनी लिओनार्ड’ हिचे प्रभावी सूत्रसंचालन प्रेक्षकाला खिळवून ठेवते.

दरवर्षी जगात तब्बल अडीच कोटी टन ई-कचरा तयार होतो. इतका हा प्रश्न भीषण बनला आहे. एक जागरूक नागरिक म्हणून या प्रश्नाची किमान माहिती करून घेण्यासाठी आपण ८ मिनिटे नक्कीच घालवू शकतो!


- तन्मय कानिटकर


(दि. १९ ऑक्टोबरच्या दै. लोकमतच्या ऑक्सिजन पुरवणीमध्ये प्रसिद्ध http://onlinenews1.lokmat.com/staticpages/editions/today/main/DetailedNews-All.php?nid=OxygenEdition-57-1-18-10-2012-3cadb&ndate=2012-10-19&editionname=oxygen)

Wednesday 10 October 2012

No free lunches


With the coming reforms, the Government is reforming itself. Doing away with activities, it is not good at. It is finally letting competitive individual entrepreneurs do the business.   
We the Indians have been used to subsidization. Subsidized bus transport, subsidized electricity, subsidized schools, subsidized cooking gas, and subsidized petrol – overall a subsidized kind of life for last 60 years!
Subsidy is a price of the product which is artificially kept lower than its price in the market.There are market prices and then there are government ‘administered prices’.
Price system is a wonderful system that works so well, so efficiently, that we are not aware of it most of the time. We never realize how well it functionsuntil it is prevented from functioning.
Markets decide the price of products and services, which are based on demand and supply of that product. A single product is sold, purchased and priced at different levels at different locations. A green leafy vegetable costs a person Rs 10/- in wholesale vegetable market (mandai), while the same costs Rs 25/- in a distant location in the same city, Pune.
Why?
‘Price’ is very subtle but a very powerful signal given by our markets. It tells us a lot about our products. How much they are being bought and sold, what is the pocket size of people who purchase it, and the speculation abilities of people who are selling it, how much of the product is available etc.  Small fluctuations in the price and people start reacting to it. A price enables people to prioritize and reprioritize their shopping baskets. Price is an indicator for both, the one who pays it, and the one who charges it.
Well, markets function very well when left to themselves, no doubt they go up and they go down. People gain and people lose. It’s all a game of profits and losses. Governments intervene in the markets, to hold the game, and to perform an impossible task of “stabilizing the prices”. Controlling prices in such a way either creates surplus, or shortages of the products in question. Government sets price cap on electricity, we have shortages; government sets price floor (farm support price) we have a surplus. With price control people consume more than what they need, other lose jobs and shut businesses.    
We have appointed the government system to collect taxes from rich people, and give us products and services on discount. We shut our eyes towards the fact that, ultimately the guy only becomes rich by charging higher prices, which then we consumers pay for it. In short, we pay twice, we face the higher prices in markets charged by allegedly rich guys and we pay administrators and misbelieve that we are getting cheaper bus, cheaper electricity, and cheaper food. Well, Government liked the job of winning hearts of voters by providing them cheaper commodities and services and playing a role of ‘robin hood’
Along with looting money from rich guys, Government also sometimes printed cheaper money, which further decreased purchasing power of money in our hands.
Generally,producers want the prices to go up and consumers want prices to go down. Besides, there are psychological effects of prices in the economy! An able (working) individual is both, sometimes a producer and sometimes a consumer. 
Sooner, or later the government comes to realize it has created a lot of mess and the hard fact that it has no business doing business, and so asks us to settle matters through mutual transactions –market place.
Government is reforming itself. Doing away with activities, it is not good at. It is finally letting competitive individual entrepreneurs do the business.   
Apparently so far, we have been living in a kind of environment where we know price of everything and the cost of nothing.When economic advisors tell us that we better pay the “true” market price for all that we buy;we need to understand the economics behind it and for once become economically correct!The current national economic reforms are thus a thing to celebrate and sharpen our entrepreneurial skills.
- Meenal Inamdar 
9/10/2012

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In response to this article, Vishwajeet Kadam takes a theoretical review of subsidies and also talks about changing economic policies.  

When we are talking about subsidies, let's start some historical inquiry of the theoretical framework behind the phenomenon 'subsidies' or what we call on a very general level, 'Government intervention'. The history of economic thinking (right from Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo to some modern economists like Fredrich Hayek and Milton Friedman) shows that the economic thinking has always favored minimal or no role of the government in the economy. Classical economists had assumed 'Wage-Price Flexibly  and 'Say's Law'. In 1930s, during The Great Depression, the belief in free market economy, Say's law (Supply creates its own demand) and wage-price flexibility was shattered. It was realized that when markets are left to themselves, they fail. It was John Maynard Keynes who understood the inherent instability of the capitalistic system (Karl Marx had already talked about it but in terms of 'inherent contradiction of capitalism'). According to Keynes, capitalistic system is an inherently unstable system for three reasons. First, the people who save are not the same ones who invest. Second, there exists wage-price rigidity in the short run for various reasons. Third, investments take place not on the basis of some rational calculations of future returns but profit expectations which depends on what he called 'animal spirit'. What he wanted to say was that the investment decisions taken on the basis of profit expectations generally do not have any rational basis and investors behave in a very impulsive and therefore 'animalistic' manner. The whole and sole determinant of the investment in the economy in the short run is Marginal Efficiency of Capital, 'Profit Expectations' being the most important part of it which depends upon the 'animal spirit' as there is no rational way of deciding it.

Now, in a capitalistic system, according to Keynes, the factors determining the savings and the factors determining the investments are different. So, there always exists a strong possibility of capitalistic system being in equilibrium state at under full employment level. There exists a strong possibility of overproduction as there is a strong possibility of saving gap. The implication of this phenomenon is that government has to play an active role in the economy. It has to fill the saving gap by increasing investment demand (an element of effective aggregate demand) for which the government will have to borrow. Therefore, fiscal deficit is considered as an important aspect to keep the capitalistic economy at full employment level. Despite the supply shocks occurred in 1970s, the rise of supply side economics and monetarism, the developments in the understanding of the operations of business cycles (Samuelson and Hicks business cycle theories), this Keynesian analysis of the working of capitalism is considered as the fundamental one in the understanding of capitalism. This is how the whole economic thinking changed with the advent of Keynesian analysis and economists started supporting active government intervention.


Meenal, you have talked about the markets and price system working efficiently. What you have said is true but it is a half truth. What you are talking about is not the actual market that exists in reality but some ideal form of market, known as 'Perfect Competition' or what is also called 'Pareto Optimal Condition . The idea of perfect competition has its own set of assumptions. Homogeneous product, large number of buyers and sellers, perfect information and information symmetry, free entry and exist are some of them which do not at all exist in reality. In reality, there is product differentiation, only few sellers (in most of the industries), barriers for the new entrants, large costs, some control over the price (few sellers being the most important reason of it) which result in imperfect forms of competition, namely monopolistic competition and oligopoly. Therefore markets fail. Markets fail because they are never 'perfect'. Another most important reasons for market failures are incomplete markets, natural monopoly and imperfect as well as asymmetric information (some have more information of the market than others for various reasons). Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has worked on 'market failures' extensively. He got nobel for his work on 'information asymmetry'.

Coming back to the issue of subsidies, one has to understand the various implications of neoliberal economic policies. With the implementation of neoliberal economic policies, what is called 'international finance' becomes a very dominant factor. Once you accept the neoliberal strategy, you have to follow all the rules of the game. The growth and development depends on where this 'international finance' ultimately goes. The state has to keep this international finance happy. This international finance ultimately takes away the sovereignty of the state in economic sphere. International finance does not like the meddling government and therefore, to attract international finance, the government has to withdraw the interventionist policies. (Therefore the withdrawal of the subsidies and FDI in retail). But with this withdrawal, the crisis of capitalism (crisis of overproduction with minimal role of government in the economy as explained by Keynes) gets restored in the economy again. This is the contemporary crisis of capitalism. The government is withdrawing its role not for some more efficient system but because it does not have other choice. Some New Keynesians like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman are proposing a new system, i.e. current capitalism - international finance = new capitalism. What they do not understand is that this 'new capitalism' will be fundamentally different from the idea of capitalism itself. This makes it very important to devise an alternative development strategy (especially for third world countries) that get us out of the trap of the neoliberal policies.

Enough of the economic and positivist argument. There are larger political, social, normative and philosophical aspects involved in the issue of withdrawal of subsidies and understanding of capitalism which overpower the economic and optimizational aspects of it. But about them, sometime later!


- Vishwajeet Kadam 
(He is pursuing education in Politics and Economics)

Tuesday 9 October 2012

भला मोठ्ठा मी!


अमेरिका जशी स्वत:ला आर्थिक दृष्टीने अग्रगण्य म्हणवते तशीच ती टाळल्या जाऊ शकणाऱ्या आजारांतही सर्वात पुढे आहे. आणि त्यात सर्वात पहिला नंबर लागतो तो म्हणजे लठ्ठपणाचा. अमेरिकेला आज याचमुळे आर्थिक संकटाबरोबरच या आरोग्य संकटाने ग्रासले आहे. अमेरिका त्यामुळे जगात सर्वात ‘लट्ठ’ राष्ट्र बनले आहे. या लठ्ठपणाचं मुख्य करण म्हणजे तेथील मकडॉनल्डस् सारख्या ‘फास्ट-फूड चेन्स’.
याच ‘नव्या अमेरिकन खाद्यसंस्कृती’चा अभ्यास केला मोर्गन स्परलॉक या लघुपट निर्मात्याने. त्याने स्वत:वरच एक प्रयोग केला. त्याने ३० दिवस फक्त आणि फक्त मकडॉनल्डस् मधलं अन्न खाल्लं आणि स्व:च्या शरीरावर होणाऱ्या परिणामांचा अभ्यास केला. त्यात असं लक्षात आलं की वजनात, चरबीत वाढ, यकृत खराब होणे अशा शारीरिक परिणामांबरोबरच डिप्रेशन-उत्साह न वाटणे इत्यादी मानसिक आजारही झाले. या ‘फास्ट-फूडस्’मध्ये पोषक अन्नाचं प्रमाण अत्यल्प आणि शरीराला घातक अशा चरबीयुक्त पदार्थाचं प्रमाणाच जास्त आहे. सर्वात महत्वाची गोष्ट म्हणजे या ‘फास्ट-फूड चेन्स’ लहान मुलांना कधी खेळणं देऊन तर कधी विदूषकाबरोबर छायाचित्र काढून देऊन भुलवत आहेत. आणि त्याना कमी पोषण देणाऱ्या अन्नाची सवय लावून त्यांचं आरोग्य कायमसाठी खराब करत आहे.
भारतामध्येही आता अशा ‘फास्ट-फूड चेन्स’ उघडत आहेत. म्हणून आपण ग्राहक म्हणून योग्य निवड केली पाहिजे!
या अन्नाने नक्की शरीरावर नक्की कसा फरक पडतो, यावर आधारित आर्थिक हितसंबंध समजून घेण्यासाठी नक्की पहा ‘Super Size me’ ह लघुपट.
You Tube वर ‘Super Size me’ असं search करा 

प्रज्ञा शिदोरे

(दि. ५ ऑक्टोबर २०१२ च्या दै.लोकमत मध्ये प्रसिद्ध http://onlinenews1.lokmat.com/staticpages/editions/today/main/DetailedNews-All.php?nid=OxygenEdition-57-1-04-10-2012-e85e0&ndate=2012-10-05&editionname=oxygen)