Dessert at Bollywood Veggies , lychees (top), coconut and some tapioca-type thing at the bottom
Monday, February 22, 2016
Foodpics
Dessert at Bollywood Veggies , lychees (top), coconut and some tapioca-type thing at the bottom
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Vocational Education in Singapore
I did a term paper (in two installments) on vocational education in India for my course on Social Policy Design last semester. Didn't get a great grade :-( but found it fascinating, and was considering working in that area after graduation. The link below should show you the papers on Dropbox (let me know if it doesn't). There is a lot of dividends for the country and its people if we get vocational education right. PM Modi is doing the right thing by placing a lot of emphasis on Skilling India.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/07mha1qkofjmy15/AADQKHcjBXg5S8BJayx7sU8ha?dl=0
In India we have a huge problem with this perception of vocational education as infra-dig so we end up churning out huge quantities of unemployable B.As and B.Scs and B.Coms, while we suffer from a dearth of good technicians, plumbers etc. As as aside,
Singapore has an excellent vocational education system, one of the best in the world. They have an institution called the ITE (Institute of Technical Education), that serves people after 10th grade. They have several polytechnics (Temasek Poly, Ngee Ann Poly, Singapore Poly) that serve people after high school. One of the things that Singapore consciously did was to combat, quite successfully, the feeling that vocational education is a 2nd class or infra-dig option. Rather, it is portrayed as an option for people with different inclinations and different talents that the traditional intellect-based classroom education. They've 'signalled' this, by, among other things, funding their vocational education institutions very well and giving them a lot of facilities.
When Chandrababu Naidu visited Singapore recently, he checked out the ITE. These from the ITE website, ite.edu.sg :
His Excellency Mr Nara Chandrababu Naidu (centre in cream shirt), Honourable Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, India, at the Precision Engineering Hub at ITE College Central, where Laser and Tooling Technology training and development for staff and students are carried out. Students gain hands-on experience by working on CNC Laser Cutting Machine, Bending Machine and Turret Punching Machine with the aid of specialised CAD/CAM software, to create a wide array of metallic products ranging from name cards, pens and serviette holders to pendants, lamp shades and wall décor
I visited the ITE too, photos below:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/07mha1qkofjmy15/AADQKHcjBXg5S8BJayx7sU8ha?dl=0
In India we have a huge problem with this perception of vocational education as infra-dig so we end up churning out huge quantities of unemployable B.As and B.Scs and B.Coms, while we suffer from a dearth of good technicians, plumbers etc. As as aside,
Singapore has an excellent vocational education system, one of the best in the world. They have an institution called the ITE (Institute of Technical Education), that serves people after 10th grade. They have several polytechnics (Temasek Poly, Ngee Ann Poly, Singapore Poly) that serve people after high school. One of the things that Singapore consciously did was to combat, quite successfully, the feeling that vocational education is a 2nd class or infra-dig option. Rather, it is portrayed as an option for people with different inclinations and different talents that the traditional intellect-based classroom education. They've 'signalled' this, by, among other things, funding their vocational education institutions very well and giving them a lot of facilities.
When Chandrababu Naidu visited Singapore recently, he checked out the ITE. These from the ITE website, ite.edu.sg :
His Excellency Mr Nara Chandrababu Naidu (centre in cream shirt), Honourable Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, India, at the Precision Engineering Hub at ITE College Central, where Laser and Tooling Technology training and development for staff and students are carried out. Students gain hands-on experience by working on CNC Laser Cutting Machine, Bending Machine and Turret Punching Machine with the aid of specialised CAD/CAM software, to create a wide array of metallic products ranging from name cards, pens and serviette holders to pendants, lamp shades and wall décor
I visited the ITE too, photos below:
Saturday, February 20, 2016
This is public policy ..
Attempting to do a 'teaching' piece here.
In the conversation about what is wrong with India, some things stand out more than others and are worth paying more attention to. I would say these are things that everybody should understand.
I am referring to some of the subsidies given by the Indian government.
Governments may want to give subsidies to people for various reasons. In general, its better not to give subsidies. If you don’t give the subsidy, you can use the money for something else. For example, you can reduce taxes so everybody keeps more of their money and they are happy. Or you can use the money to set up an industry, which would employ people on a continuing basis and give them wages, and produce useful goods. That’s much better than giving a one-time subsidy. The other important thing with subsidies, is that they don’t encourage people to conserve whatever it is you're subsidising. If you subsidise petrol, people are paying less than they actually would for petrol. If they were paying the ‘real’ price of petrol, then they would try to use as less of it as possible, so as to save money. Subsidies, then, reduce that incentive to reduce usage of the thing subsidised, by hiding from you its ‘true’ price. That’s pretty unfortunate. Not only is the government paying for your consumption of that thing and every rupee is a sacrifice from other possible use, you’re actually using more of it than you otherwise would - precisely because its subsidised. Its like adding insult to injury. And in the case of goods like petrol, it keeps us hooked to fossil fuels, instead of getting us to move to renewable sources of energy.
Governments may want to give subsidies to people for various reasons. In general, its better not to give subsidies. If you don’t give the subsidy, you can use the money for something else. For example, you can reduce taxes so everybody keeps more of their money and they are happy. Or you can use the money to set up an industry, which would employ people on a continuing basis and give them wages, and produce useful goods. That’s much better than giving a one-time subsidy. The other important thing with subsidies, is that they don’t encourage people to conserve whatever it is you're subsidising. If you subsidise petrol, people are paying less than they actually would for petrol. If they were paying the ‘real’ price of petrol, then they would try to use as less of it as possible, so as to save money. Subsidies, then, reduce that incentive to reduce usage of the thing subsidised, by hiding from you its ‘true’ price. That’s pretty unfortunate. Not only is the government paying for your consumption of that thing and every rupee is a sacrifice from other possible use, you’re actually using more of it than you otherwise would - precisely because its subsidised. Its like adding insult to injury. And in the case of goods like petrol, it keeps us hooked to fossil fuels, instead of getting us to move to renewable sources of energy.
Another problem with subsidies is that they are self-perpetuating. Once given, governments find it very hard to take subsidies away as people don’t like that. Instead subsidies tend to grow bigger and bigger.
Nevertheless subsidies are required. For example, if we didn’t subsidise education, people who couldn’t afford education wouldn’t get it and families would be stuck in the cycle of low skills and poverty.
Here are two simple rules about subsidies:
-Target them. Make sure they go only to people who really need them or whose behaviour you want to change. In India, the system of identifying poor people is so messed up that governments have given up and gives subsidies to everyone. This is a big waste of money. Why should Ambani (and I!) get a subsidy on our cooking gas ?!
-Give subsidies for things that you want people to have a lot of. These are things like education - you want everyone to get as much education as they can (within limits). On the other hand, you *don’t* want people to use larger and larger amounts of petrol. This follows from the earlier discussion that subsidies don’t encourage people to conserve.
2.27 Lakh crore Rupees was allocated to food, petroleum and fertiliser subsidies in the 2015-15 Union budget presented in Parliament. This is in comparison to 18 Lakh crore, the estimated income of the Union government that same year. Therefore these subsides are more than 10% of the Union budget. You can therefore make a big impact on government money by dismantling the more pernicious of these subsidies. There is almost nothing else you can do that can have the same kind of impact. Hence my claim at the top of this essay, that it's important that everyone understand subsidies.
The topic of this little sermon is a few particularly bad subsidies:
Petrol/Diesel subsidies: The logic given is that these are essential goods (for transportation) that need to be subsidised. However as said above the government has given up on trying to target subsidies so it gives *everyone* this subsidy. The results are just crazy:
- First, of the total petrol consumed not much is consumed by the poor. Which makes sense. They’re too poor to consume a lot of it. On the other hand a lot of others consume a lot of it. For example: rich people. Large industries. So with every liter of petrol, you give a little subsidy to a whole lot of people who you don't really want to give it to.
- As the nation consumed more and more of these goods and and as the price of these kept rising (until recently when they’ve dropped precipitously), the subsidy bill kept rising. Its now thousands of crores.The nation simply can’t keep paying more and more to people for their fuel consumption.
- We ought to be weaning ourselves off fossil fuels and getting onto renewable energy. There is that much less incentive to conserve petrol, when people pay less than the market price for it. What might be possible if we invested that subsidy money into creating and furthering renewable energy sources?
The logic for diesel subsidies is even more inscrutable. As far as I understand, it is some idea that transporters (railways, lorries) use diesel and moving things like grains around the country is an important thing, so we subside diesel. This doesn’t make sense to me. Anyway, this subsidy goes to move all kinds of things (and people) around the country, including things rather undeserving of subsidy like luxury goods (cars,air conditioners).
Much to its credit, the UPA government finally started dismantling these subsidies. The sooner they’re stripped down to the minimum that make sense to support weaker sections of society, the better.
There are two other subsidies that are at the same level of importance. One is LPG subsidy. Again many of the same trends above. Subsidy going to everyone, not just poor people. In this case the government tries to separate things out so that commercial establishments don’t get a subsidy. However, as said above, we are really not good at targeting subsidies. What happens is that commercial entities cheat and get a false household connection and get LPG at subsidised rates. Fortunately, the government is in the process of reforming this too. That reform including the use of the Aadhar card, has been a fascinating process, but I won’t go into it here.
Fertiliser subsidy: This is more complex than the above two. The case for fertiliser subsidies is stronger: we do want farmers to use a lot more fertiliser, so it satisfies one of the conditions for subsidies above. But its now proving to be more than a little expensive. There are years when this subsidy reached nearly 1 Lakh crore rupees. Its around 70,000 crore rupees now. Further, it only works when the right amount of fertiliser is used in the right amounts. That’s not happening now , so a lot of the subsidy is proving counterproductive and a waste.
Some artlcles to find out more:
Friday, February 19, 2016
More art from the National Gallery
And one more: The National Gallery lets you pick a few pieces of art which they combine into a 'poster' and send to you on email. Here are my picks:
Tuesday, February 02, 2016
Sculpture at the National Gallery
Four very different pieces of sculpture by the same artist at the National Gallery:
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