Hillary Clinton's plan to make college cheaper; Corruption; "good life" on debt; Leave rules in India
Here's an interesting article, "The Big, Bold Idea at the Heart of Hillary Clinton’s Plan to Make College Cheaper", http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/08/10/hillary_clinton_debt_free_college_plan_the_democrats_have_one_big_bold_idea.html, dated Aug. 10th 2015.
Ravi: A sensationalist type single sentence from it that, to be frank, I quite enjoyed: "To discourage schools from loading students with too much debt, for instance, she would fine institutions whose graduates can't pay back their loans, a currently bipartisan idea known as "skin-in-the-game" that would make much of the higher-ed world howl in protest. "
[Ravi: Most of Indian higher-ed world is a real mess with rampant inefficiency, fraud and corruption. Sure, there are great elite institutions but they make up for a small fraction of the total higher-ed institutions in India. The masses typically get a raw deal.
For more you may want to view my blog posts (year old or older) on "Academic Reform, Higher Education Bubble, Student Loan Problem & Private Universities", in India, USA and elsewhere: http://eklavyasai.blogspot.in/p/table-of-contents.html#AcademicRadical]
===============================
Here are the comments I made on a Facebook post related to the above, https://www.facebook.com/ravi.s.iyer.7/posts/1648532368696667. Only my comments are provided below; readers are requested to visit the earlier facebook link to see the full exchange including others' comments. Also note that the comments veer away from the subject of the article.
What I have learned over the past few years, in my readings of Indian history as well as some bits of world history, is that India is mainly a feudal society, rural society being very much so but cities having a mix of feudal and post-feudal democratic society.
This feudal nature is reflected in the ways Indian society, business and politics works. Fascinatingly as I read about some history of nineteenth and early twentieth century USA (and a little about Western Europe) I found a lot of parallel between corruption in India today and corruption in USA then. As an example, I was fascinated by some info. about Fiorello H. La Guardia, 99th Mayor of New York City.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiorello_H._La_Guardia:
La Guardia came to office in January 1934 with five main goals:
* Restore the financial health and break free from the bankers' control
* Expand the federally funded work-relief program for the unemployed
* End corruption in government and racketeering in key sectors of the economy
* Replace patronage with a merit-based civil service, with high prestige
* Modernize the infrastructure, especially transportation and parks
He achieved most of the first four goals in his first hundred days, as FDR gave him 20% of the entire national CWA budget for work relief. La Guardia then collaborated closely with Robert Moses, with support from the governor, Democrat Herbert Lehman, to upgrade the decaying infrastructure. The city was favored by the New Deal in terms of funding for public works projects.
--- end wiki extract ---
And then we all know about corrupt Chicago during the days of Al Capone. But his legacy seems to still continue in Chicago. From a 2012 article, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/15/us-usa-corruption-chicago-idUSTRE81E22O20120215:
The city where gangster Al Capone once kept the mayor on his payroll ranked first in public corruption convictions over the past three decades though the recent pace, perhaps because lessons have been learned or due to earnest prosecutors, researchers said on Wednesday.
"We here lead the country in corruption, just like in Al Capone's era of corrupting Mayor Big Bill Thompson" during the 1920s, said University of Illinois at Chicago political scientist and former city alderman Dick Simpson, who spoke to reporters before testifying to a city task force on ethics.
--- end extract ---
I think India is slowly improving in reducing corruption in some sectors. However, its population is so huge and problems so many, that in many sectors especially in rural India involving the poor, there is a lot of exploitation and corruption. ... especially in govt. offices.
Overall though I think India has improved significantly in reducing corruption and has even sentenced top ministers held guilty of corruption to jail, in recent years.
But the sophisticated hollowing out of the middle classes that happened in the USA (and perhaps other countries) in the past few decades is something that I think would not have happened so easily in India, as the people would have protested so forcefully (including violence) that the govt. would have had to listen to them. Somehow that hollowing out of the middle class did not get prevented in USA.
So even if India has a lot more corruption across various levels than USA (and other Western countries) its democracy has worked better in recent decades, it seems, than that of some Western countries, in benefiting the people at large. Sometimes I even think that what is viewed as corruption in modern India may have been the norm in feudal India, and would have been considered quite fair! Like paying some commission to get the job done. You pay some money (bribe in modern India; not-bribe in feudal India) and get value for money in terms of getting your work done!
In India, this is also viewed as a parallel economy (black money economy; black money means unaccounted and untaxed money). .... Note that I am not condoning corruption or black money ... just making observations on the reality of life in India.
-----
Perhaps the worst invention of the banking system in the West was the credit card with its exploitative interest rates for credit card debt. I think that encouraged an attitude that living the "good life" on debt is OK; everybody does it. So it did not stay limited to credit card debt but got onto housing loans, car loans and all kinds of loans. ... The brutal reality is that such bubbles do burst even if the bubble lasts for a few decades. The terribly sad thing is that no bigshot and powerful financial analyst saw it coming and shouted from the rooftops about it. Or maybe some did (as some claim to have predicted the 2007-08 crisis) but they were brushed away as doomsayers. ...... In this connection, I must say that among the Republican contenders I do find Rand Paul keeping the focus on USA debt and say things like you cannot borrow from China to give aid to (name-skipped-country), and that you cannot project power from a (deeply indebted) economy. .... USA must get its debt under control. Really! Even a non-finance guy like me can see that it is really vital for the USA to do that, and do that fast.
-----
Well, somehow I think "irrational exuberance" to use Alan Greenspan's term for the financial markets, seemed to have infected the masses in the USA too. And so they fell for the credit card trap of the bankers.
In rural India (and feudal India over centuries, and perhaps millennia), and to some extent, in urban India too, the unorganized sector moneylender (so no proper regulations like banks) is the equivalent of the USA banking system credit card. Even today in Puttaparthi I hear about moneylenders loaning money at usurious rates (4 % per month i.e. 48 % per annum) to people desperately in need of money. It is easy to get the money from them. But if you don't pay back they send goons over to COLLECT. All that is supposedly illegal but is the norm in many parts of rural India.
The moneylender is a really hated kind of person but is an essential part of rural India life, as without the moneylender the poor and lower middle classes who usually do daily wage jobs, would not be able to meet big expense events of life (like marriage, health crisis etc.)
That a materially advanced country like the USA allowed its citizens to get into these credit card and sub-prime loan traps which are like the moneylender traps of rural feudal India even today, is very tragic. Really tragic.
------
In India, leave rules seem to vary a lot from govt. sector to private sector, and within private sector from top-tier Multi-national & Tech. companies to lower-tier small & medium family business companies. Govt. sector has more holidays, I think. I was an employee of small to medium sized software tech. companies in Bombay for nearly a decade (1984 to 1993), and I think these companies had to follow some minimum company leave related rules/laws in India. At that time, if I recall correctly, for a five and a half-day work week (2nd & 4th Saturday & all Sundays off) with some overtime (usually unpaid) expected on some workdays, there was earned annual leave of maybe 20 days (or could be 15 days), casual leave of maybe 7 days and sick leave of maybe 7 days. Company holidays (including public holidays) would be maybe 10 in a year.
So that adds up to 20+7+7+10 = 44 days (or 39 days) with 5.5 days work week.
Tried looking up the net for an authoritative source of info. on current Indian private sector leave rules. Here's one link but don't know how authoritative it is: http://www.hrindya.com/hr-managers-toolkit/leave-rules/. And here's the key info. for factories (medium to big, as small factories may not be covered by the relevant act) in Andhra Pradesh (state in which Puttaparthi falls in):
ANDHRA PRADESH SHOPS AND ESTABLISHMENTS ACT, 1988
Earned Leave: 15 days
Casual Leave: Not exceeding 12 days
Sick Leave: Not exceeding 12 days
[I am omitting Maternity leave info. You may look it up from the link given above.]
Ravi: A sensationalist type single sentence from it that, to be frank, I quite enjoyed: "To discourage schools from loading students with too much debt, for instance, she would fine institutions whose graduates can't pay back their loans, a currently bipartisan idea known as "skin-in-the-game" that would make much of the higher-ed world howl in protest. "
[Ravi: Most of Indian higher-ed world is a real mess with rampant inefficiency, fraud and corruption. Sure, there are great elite institutions but they make up for a small fraction of the total higher-ed institutions in India. The masses typically get a raw deal.
For more you may want to view my blog posts (year old or older) on "Academic Reform, Higher Education Bubble, Student Loan Problem & Private Universities", in India, USA and elsewhere: http://eklavyasai.blogspot.in/p/table-of-contents.html#AcademicRadical]
===============================
Here are the comments I made on a Facebook post related to the above, https://www.facebook.com/ravi.s.iyer.7/posts/1648532368696667. Only my comments are provided below; readers are requested to visit the earlier facebook link to see the full exchange including others' comments. Also note that the comments veer away from the subject of the article.
What I have learned over the past few years, in my readings of Indian history as well as some bits of world history, is that India is mainly a feudal society, rural society being very much so but cities having a mix of feudal and post-feudal democratic society.
This feudal nature is reflected in the ways Indian society, business and politics works. Fascinatingly as I read about some history of nineteenth and early twentieth century USA (and a little about Western Europe) I found a lot of parallel between corruption in India today and corruption in USA then. As an example, I was fascinated by some info. about Fiorello H. La Guardia, 99th Mayor of New York City.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiorello_H._La_Guardia:
La Guardia came to office in January 1934 with five main goals:
* Restore the financial health and break free from the bankers' control
* Expand the federally funded work-relief program for the unemployed
* End corruption in government and racketeering in key sectors of the economy
* Replace patronage with a merit-based civil service, with high prestige
* Modernize the infrastructure, especially transportation and parks
He achieved most of the first four goals in his first hundred days, as FDR gave him 20% of the entire national CWA budget for work relief. La Guardia then collaborated closely with Robert Moses, with support from the governor, Democrat Herbert Lehman, to upgrade the decaying infrastructure. The city was favored by the New Deal in terms of funding for public works projects.
--- end wiki extract ---
And then we all know about corrupt Chicago during the days of Al Capone. But his legacy seems to still continue in Chicago. From a 2012 article, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/15/us-usa-corruption-chicago-idUSTRE81E22O20120215:
The city where gangster Al Capone once kept the mayor on his payroll ranked first in public corruption convictions over the past three decades though the recent pace, perhaps because lessons have been learned or due to earnest prosecutors, researchers said on Wednesday.
"We here lead the country in corruption, just like in Al Capone's era of corrupting Mayor Big Bill Thompson" during the 1920s, said University of Illinois at Chicago political scientist and former city alderman Dick Simpson, who spoke to reporters before testifying to a city task force on ethics.
--- end extract ---
I think India is slowly improving in reducing corruption in some sectors. However, its population is so huge and problems so many, that in many sectors especially in rural India involving the poor, there is a lot of exploitation and corruption. ... especially in govt. offices.
Overall though I think India has improved significantly in reducing corruption and has even sentenced top ministers held guilty of corruption to jail, in recent years.
But the sophisticated hollowing out of the middle classes that happened in the USA (and perhaps other countries) in the past few decades is something that I think would not have happened so easily in India, as the people would have protested so forcefully (including violence) that the govt. would have had to listen to them. Somehow that hollowing out of the middle class did not get prevented in USA.
So even if India has a lot more corruption across various levels than USA (and other Western countries) its democracy has worked better in recent decades, it seems, than that of some Western countries, in benefiting the people at large. Sometimes I even think that what is viewed as corruption in modern India may have been the norm in feudal India, and would have been considered quite fair! Like paying some commission to get the job done. You pay some money (bribe in modern India; not-bribe in feudal India) and get value for money in terms of getting your work done!
In India, this is also viewed as a parallel economy (black money economy; black money means unaccounted and untaxed money). .... Note that I am not condoning corruption or black money ... just making observations on the reality of life in India.
-----
Perhaps the worst invention of the banking system in the West was the credit card with its exploitative interest rates for credit card debt. I think that encouraged an attitude that living the "good life" on debt is OK; everybody does it. So it did not stay limited to credit card debt but got onto housing loans, car loans and all kinds of loans. ... The brutal reality is that such bubbles do burst even if the bubble lasts for a few decades. The terribly sad thing is that no bigshot and powerful financial analyst saw it coming and shouted from the rooftops about it. Or maybe some did (as some claim to have predicted the 2007-08 crisis) but they were brushed away as doomsayers. ...... In this connection, I must say that among the Republican contenders I do find Rand Paul keeping the focus on USA debt and say things like you cannot borrow from China to give aid to (name-skipped-country), and that you cannot project power from a (deeply indebted) economy. .... USA must get its debt under control. Really! Even a non-finance guy like me can see that it is really vital for the USA to do that, and do that fast.
-----
Well, somehow I think "irrational exuberance" to use Alan Greenspan's term for the financial markets, seemed to have infected the masses in the USA too. And so they fell for the credit card trap of the bankers.
In rural India (and feudal India over centuries, and perhaps millennia), and to some extent, in urban India too, the unorganized sector moneylender (so no proper regulations like banks) is the equivalent of the USA banking system credit card. Even today in Puttaparthi I hear about moneylenders loaning money at usurious rates (4 % per month i.e. 48 % per annum) to people desperately in need of money. It is easy to get the money from them. But if you don't pay back they send goons over to COLLECT. All that is supposedly illegal but is the norm in many parts of rural India.
The moneylender is a really hated kind of person but is an essential part of rural India life, as without the moneylender the poor and lower middle classes who usually do daily wage jobs, would not be able to meet big expense events of life (like marriage, health crisis etc.)
That a materially advanced country like the USA allowed its citizens to get into these credit card and sub-prime loan traps which are like the moneylender traps of rural feudal India even today, is very tragic. Really tragic.
------
In India, leave rules seem to vary a lot from govt. sector to private sector, and within private sector from top-tier Multi-national & Tech. companies to lower-tier small & medium family business companies. Govt. sector has more holidays, I think. I was an employee of small to medium sized software tech. companies in Bombay for nearly a decade (1984 to 1993), and I think these companies had to follow some minimum company leave related rules/laws in India. At that time, if I recall correctly, for a five and a half-day work week (2nd & 4th Saturday & all Sundays off) with some overtime (usually unpaid) expected on some workdays, there was earned annual leave of maybe 20 days (or could be 15 days), casual leave of maybe 7 days and sick leave of maybe 7 days. Company holidays (including public holidays) would be maybe 10 in a year.
So that adds up to 20+7+7+10 = 44 days (or 39 days) with 5.5 days work week.
Tried looking up the net for an authoritative source of info. on current Indian private sector leave rules. Here's one link but don't know how authoritative it is: http://www.hrindya.com/hr-managers-toolkit/leave-rules/. And here's the key info. for factories (medium to big, as small factories may not be covered by the relevant act) in Andhra Pradesh (state in which Puttaparthi falls in):
ANDHRA PRADESH SHOPS AND ESTABLISHMENTS ACT, 1988
Earned Leave: 15 days
Casual Leave: Not exceeding 12 days
Sick Leave: Not exceeding 12 days
[I am omitting Maternity leave info. You may look it up from the link given above.]
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