Thursday, January 26, 2006
PSYHCOLOGY & ITS CONCEPT TO THE WORLD
I had gone to Delhi as I longed to see my brother after 6 long months... the journey upwards was great... I had foreigners... love birds or what ever one might call them cuddling all the time, & one man who kept to his lower berth & me to my upper berth. I very presumably had nothing to do in a rocking train except to do my usual best pass time i.e. to observe people & how ridiculous they can get... but such observations are only as far as other people are concerned. i bet if i get down to having a third person view of myself I will go crazy looking at myself & instead of sitting & observing myself I will be running away from myself. The trip was for about three days & well soon enough I was on my way back. And it was unfortunate that I came across a person who has almost the same pass time as I did. That is so not a comfortable situation. So we did our own work, i tried to put up my most intellectual front & read about DNA which is actually a part of my next level in forensics. I shouldn’t have to say that I read it 5 times over & it still flew left right & center but didn’t go into my head. Anyways but I think I managed to prove my intellectual self & satisfied with that I decided to have a meal........ Now let’s see what the man beside me was up too Like I said he too was trying his best to look intellectual & was supposedly editing a book...which he claimed to be his...which i doubt. So he read and he read, & he didn’t look up even once. He read & he read & he wrote & he wrote till he too decided to have dinner. Him being a complete stranger I didn’t want to start a conversation since I was traveling alone but then again... Indians have to eat while they talk so he started off. "So you are learning genetics?" "No, not really, it’s a small part of an entire course" I said, happy he noticed that i was the studying variety.... "Which course is that?" "Forensics", i said "FOR-SEN-ICS???!!!" Aghast at the pronunciation.... I said "NO FO-REN-SICS, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS....." That was my favorite subject & he...he had made a complete mess of it..... i thought what a creep... "Aaaaaa the CID variety" he said "CID is quite a load of rubbish, but yes some thing like that" "So planning to catch murderers hmmm" "Not quite I am actually a psychology student",I said "Mind reader!!" he exclaimed By then I knew I had gotten myself into a never ending conversation with an industrialist who knew nothing about my field of study. As the conversation got on, he asked me question to which I too was a bit zonked at... "What do you do as psychologists?" So I thought of all the different fields & started reciting my psychology notes..... i remembered them. At the end of it he gave me a blank look & said “soo many field have come out is it...” He seemed determined to convince me that psychology is a big load of crap. I as usual went on with the flow... Well so after the mind reader stereotype & me explaining the existence of psychological tests was i guess useless... He went on to the productivity of a counselor. He asked me "so what do counselors do" I said "the talk to a person in need of some psychological help or guidance" "So basically all they do is talk & that’s what you are going to do....Talk" Well I had no words for him He thought psychology was all about talking & why not.... But the crucks are that psychology isn’t all about talking it is about understanding ourselves & how the human mind functions. But I obviously couldn’t get my point across to an engineer.. Then on I realized that the things people told me before I took up psychology & about it being a subject looked at with a queer view is very much true. The service guy came & feeling very good about himself he gave the guy a five hundred rupee note & said take some tip & gets me change & I thought... "dude use your brains" How can any one give some one 500 bucks on a train & say get me change at the end of the dinner. He then looked at me & said "so u see I am a very trusting person but there are some people who can be trusted & I can tell who is not going to cheat" About one hour later i felt him to be uneasy.... Haa What else The guy with the 500 bucks hadn’t turned up & no one knew where he was....... There his trust went down the drain..... So then he went out looking for the guy & I took the chance & covered myself with a blanket & slept. God knows what happened to the guy as he got off at a station earlier than mine...
Friday, January 06, 2006
Too much oil
It is surprising how excess of anything can be damaging to any economy...
Some thing every one treasure in today’s world can also have negative effects in a developing economy.
Oil also known as black gold today is one of the key ingredients if the industrial world, its absence means throwing a country back into Stone Age. Without it even the lives of common man would be in jeopardy. It is amazing how we have learnt to exploit black liquid to such an extent that our existence is dependant on it. Any economist or industrialist would be afraid to sit back & rationally think about the consequences of the exhaustion of this black liquid.
About 4 months back I read an article regarding Russia expanding its oil fields, there after about the environment & the lack of oil, now I came across an article reading it i was rather surprised, it was about the problem of excess oil in the developing countries & its harm to the developing economy
It is also called the curse of oil or the paradox of plenty according to economists. The usual explanation for this is “Dutch Disease”, named for the hardships that befell the Netherlands after it found North Sea gas. When a country strikes hydrocarbons, a sudden inflow of dollar-denominated revenues often leads to a sharp appreciation in the domestic currency. That tends to make non-oil sectors like agriculture and manufacturing less competitive on world markets, thus leaving oil to dominate the economy.
Unlike agriculture, the oil sector employs few unskilled people. The inherent volatility of commodity prices hurts the poor the most, as they are least able to hedge their risks. And because the resource is concentrated, the resulting wealth passes through only a few hands—and so is more susceptible to misdirection.
This misdirection points to another explanation for the oil curse that is gaining favour: politics. Because oil money often flows directly from Big Oil to the Big Man, as Africa's dictators are known, governments have little need to raise revenues through taxes. Arvind Subramanian of the IMF argues that such rulers have no incentive to develop non-oil sources of wealth, and the ruled (but untaxed) consequently have little incentive to hold their rulers accountable.
As a result the agricultural industry suffers considering that oil dominates the boosted market in the developing nation, this causes a set back in the agro-based industry.
The people in the agricultural sector suffer due to the oil monopolization. In developing countries, raids are the rule rather than the exception. Zambia set up a stabilization scheme to manage mineral exports; but as prices soared in the 1970s, the government dropped it—and years of pain followed when prices fell again. Venezuela set up a fund for the future, “El Fondo de Inversiónes”, in 1974, but was soon raiding the kitty. An orgy of domestic spending left the country with a herd of white-elephant projects, huge foreign debt and declining social spending.
There are how ever exceptions countries like Persia have escaped the oil curse, by trying to diversify their economies.
An analysis by Paul Collier of Oxford University suggests that for any given five-year period, the chance of a civil war in an African country varies from less than 1% in countries without resource wealth to nearly 25% in those with such riches. Mr. Subramanian concludes that economic factors like the Dutch Disease and corruption alone do not explain the oil curse. He maintains that the problem is weak institutions.
Some thing every one treasure in today’s world can also have negative effects in a developing economy.
Oil also known as black gold today is one of the key ingredients if the industrial world, its absence means throwing a country back into Stone Age. Without it even the lives of common man would be in jeopardy. It is amazing how we have learnt to exploit black liquid to such an extent that our existence is dependant on it. Any economist or industrialist would be afraid to sit back & rationally think about the consequences of the exhaustion of this black liquid.
About 4 months back I read an article regarding Russia expanding its oil fields, there after about the environment & the lack of oil, now I came across an article reading it i was rather surprised, it was about the problem of excess oil in the developing countries & its harm to the developing economy
It is also called the curse of oil or the paradox of plenty according to economists. The usual explanation for this is “Dutch Disease”, named for the hardships that befell the Netherlands after it found North Sea gas. When a country strikes hydrocarbons, a sudden inflow of dollar-denominated revenues often leads to a sharp appreciation in the domestic currency. That tends to make non-oil sectors like agriculture and manufacturing less competitive on world markets, thus leaving oil to dominate the economy.
Unlike agriculture, the oil sector employs few unskilled people. The inherent volatility of commodity prices hurts the poor the most, as they are least able to hedge their risks. And because the resource is concentrated, the resulting wealth passes through only a few hands—and so is more susceptible to misdirection.
This misdirection points to another explanation for the oil curse that is gaining favour: politics. Because oil money often flows directly from Big Oil to the Big Man, as Africa's dictators are known, governments have little need to raise revenues through taxes. Arvind Subramanian of the IMF argues that such rulers have no incentive to develop non-oil sources of wealth, and the ruled (but untaxed) consequently have little incentive to hold their rulers accountable.
As a result the agricultural industry suffers considering that oil dominates the boosted market in the developing nation, this causes a set back in the agro-based industry.
The people in the agricultural sector suffer due to the oil monopolization. In developing countries, raids are the rule rather than the exception. Zambia set up a stabilization scheme to manage mineral exports; but as prices soared in the 1970s, the government dropped it—and years of pain followed when prices fell again. Venezuela set up a fund for the future, “El Fondo de Inversiónes”, in 1974, but was soon raiding the kitty. An orgy of domestic spending left the country with a herd of white-elephant projects, huge foreign debt and declining social spending.
There are how ever exceptions countries like Persia have escaped the oil curse, by trying to diversify their economies.
An analysis by Paul Collier of Oxford University suggests that for any given five-year period, the chance of a civil war in an African country varies from less than 1% in countries without resource wealth to nearly 25% in those with such riches. Mr. Subramanian concludes that economic factors like the Dutch Disease and corruption alone do not explain the oil curse. He maintains that the problem is weak institutions.
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