Organic Cotton--Benefits Other Than Yield?

 Here's an assessment of the impact of growing organic cotton in India. It seems the  result is not higher yields (no surprise) but the benefits which are less tangible. I note the support from a number of NGO's and the psychic rewards of being involved in something of a crusade, or at least a good cause, rather than just grubbing for the added dollar.  

A cynic would believe that those who chase the monetary rewards will, in the long run, win out. 

 

Surprising Fact About India

This blog post claims IT is the biggest industry. It does it by excluding farming as an industry, which is reasonable, I guess.

India and Estonia

 Marginal Revolution notes a twitter thread about progress in India, one man's experience with no indication of whether it applies across the very complicated country. 

1a. India is beyond advanced now as a cashless society! From street vendors to shops in the mall, everyone, everywhere is using Google Pay (or something similar).

A sugarcane juice vendor on the Dandi beach gave me a look when the QR code scan failed as I didn't have it set up!

— Dr. Karan Jani (@AstroKPJ) March 9, 2022

He doesn't describe a cause, but I assume the BJP/PM Modi would claim credit.  I'd be curious as to how Estonia compares, being a country which plunged into the e-world years before Modi became PM. 

The Logistics of Checks to Everyone

As a bureaucrat when I see proposals to send checks to "everyone" I immediately jump to the logistics.

I know we've done this in the past--I think in the GWBush administration.  Google that and I find this:

In 2009, the Economic Stimulus Act sent out $14.2 billion in stimulus checks.1 2 The one-time payment went to recipients of Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, veterans, and railroad retirees.

Note that's far from "everyone".  Others, the employed, got a tax credit. This was part of Obama's stimulus.  As for GWB:

The year before ARRA, the George W. Bush administration sent out stimulus checks to battle the 2008 recession. It spent $120 billion in fiscal years 2008 and 2009.1 It rebated taxes on the first $6,000 of income for individuals or the first $12,000 of income for couples. Stimulus checks were mailed out as follows:

Individual taxpayers received up to $600.4

Married couples were eligible for up to $1,200.
Households with children received $300 per dependent child.
Rebates were reduced for higher incomes at $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for couples.\

Around 20 million retirees on Social Security and disabled veterans also received checks for $300 if they earned at least $3,000 in benefits in 2007.4 Couples received $600.

Everything from this site including a discussion of impacts.

The problems with "everyone" is the government doesn't have a database with everyone in it, unlike say Estonia or India.  So to issue checks Congress has to cobble together databases from across the government.

Slavery and Caste Systems

Having read Ants Among Elephants (see yesterday's post) I'm musing about the similarities and differences between the caste system and slavery.

Did a google search, with limited results--I don't see a solid academic study, just some student work or summaries that can go off track. This might be the best one, throwing in "class system" and "meritocracy" as well as slavery and caste. One big problem is comparing different times and different countries.

What's striking to me from Ants is the use of force to enforce caste boundaries.  As it happens, a front page article in the Post today is an account of an honor killing, a Dalit married a woman of a trading caste, her father hired men to kill him.  Force obviously was used in slavery.  Which one was/is more violent.

In both cases (chattel slavery and caste system), the position is inherited by child from parent. In chattel slavery the law backs the social norms; apparently in the caste system social norms were  sufficient. And in India these days the law doesn't support the system.

It seems some social mobility is possible in both systems.  Certainly the family described in Ants is mobile, though their upward progress seems a function of the changing laws.  Their progress seems more problematic than some mobility under slavery.  The key difference might be the ownership: if your owner was your father and/or enlightened, he could boost you.  Since Dalits have no owner, that doesn't work.

On the other hand, there might be more unity among the caste (considering Dalits as a caste) than there was in slavery.  Perhaps, perhaps not.

[Added:  Other important differences:

• there seems to be no boss, no slave driver in the caste system. That might mean more "freedom" in one's daily routine, more akin to the "task" system in rice culture than the "driver" in cotton system.
• mobility within the caste is restrcted--no house slaves versus field slaves, no chance to become a skilled artisan]

Ants Among the Elephants

Just finished the book, which I'd recommend.  It's very much narrative driven, very little description or fine writing, and not much analysis.  It's obvious that the author isn't writing in her first language, a fact which some reviewers on Amazon found objectionable. Essentially it's the story of the author's grandfather, uncle, and mother.  They were Dalits, or "untouchables", striving to get educated and escape the life to which they were born.  The uncle becomes a leader in the Naxalite/Communist rebellion, while the parents become college instructors.

It got good reviews (Wall Street Journal list of 10 best nonfiction books of 2017) for the description of a different world.

What strikes me is, although the family struggles to rise, they also accept the norms of the society. 

Deja Vu All Over: India vs Pakistan

It was 40+* years ago that India and Pakistan last fought a war,, but in my youth such conflicts, and the rumors and threats of conflicts, were a constant in international affairs. 

*  It turns out it's just 20 years, at least according to Wikipedia--there was a 1999 conflict in Kargil.  They count 4 wars, and innumerable confrontations and conflicts of a lesser nature.

It seems there are fewer such conflicts since the end of the Cold War--not sure there's any causal relationship but 1989 is a convenient date.  Obviously there's Iraq I and Iraq II and Agfhanistan forever but I buy Steven Pinker's thesis of a gradual decrease in violence over the ages.

The Tradeoffs: Estonia

I've blogged several times about the advantages of the Estonian e-government.  I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the downsides.  Estonia may well have great security, but India, which has its own similar innovative e-government initiative going, has run into problems with its Aadhaar database, according to this report from Marginal Revolution.

The bottom line is that by using a centralized data system you increase the incentives for hackers to try to access it and the potential damage from such access. 

There's no free lunch.

Bureaucrats and Civil Servants

Other English-speaking countries seem not to have the prejudice against bureaucrats we have in the US.  Based on Google alert, in the US it's a pejorative term, while in other countries it's more descriptive.

In India, there's even a horoscope for bureaucrats (hat tip Marginal Revolution).

Tradeoffs in India

"Open wifi networks are banned in India, because they make life difficult for policemen. This is a bad tradeoff : we have sacrificed the immense gains from ubiquitous open wifi networks, in return for reducing the work of policemen."

from Ajay Shah's blog.

India Sets a Record

This article reports India has set a new record for production of wheat, rice, and cotton.

India will have a all-time high foodgrain production of over 252 million tonne in FY12 with a record output of wheat, rice and cotton, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said today.
Replying to supplementaries during Question Hour in Rajya Sabha, he said the record foodgrain production of 252.56 million tonne would be higher than the 235.88 million tonne output in FY11.

Food Trouble in India

When I was young, my title would have meant famines or food shortages.  This year, it turns out, the food trouble is too much grain for India to transport and store.

Indian Education

Ajay Shah has a discussion on the quality of Indian education.  Makes an interesting contrast to the usual discussions in the US

Farmer Suicides in India

Treehugger has a post publicizing the terrible toll of suicides among farmers in India: one dies every thirty minutes.

Let's see, that's 48 every day, or 17520 a year.  An amazing rate.

How many suicides occur in the US in 2007? 34,598 or a rate of 11.5 per 100,000

According to the CIA factbook on India, the labor force is 478 million, of which 52 percent are in agriculture, meaning there are about 250 million Indian agricultural workers.    17520 divided by 2500 (i.e., 100,000's) gives a suicide rate for agricultural workers of 7 per 100,000

I'm sure the stresses of the agricultural economy account for many of the suicides in India, but they need to be considered in some context. (Note: I've seen an earlier piece challenging the farmer suicide meme along these same lines, so this isn't original with me.)

US and India on Food

Ajay Shah's blog has a post discussing a new CPI (consumer price index) for India.  What's interesting is the weighting

Sub Group		New CPI
	Rural	Urban	All India	CPI IW
Food, beverages and tobacco	59.31	37.15	49.71	50.20
Fuel and Light	10.42	8.40	9.49	6.25
Clothing, bedding and footwear	5.36	3.91	4.73	13.28
Housing	0.00	22.53	9.77	5.33
Miscellaneous	24.91	28.00	26.31	24.94

Don't know what the weights are for the U.S. but wikipedia gives this: They are weighted this way: Housing: 41.4%, Food and Beverage: 17.4%, Transport: 17.0%, Medical Care: 6.9%, Other: 6.9%, Apparel: 6.0%, Entertainment: 4.4%

India Isn't Really So Populous

Look at the map in this Roving Bandit post, showing the population of the various Indian states, but don't scroll below the map.  You'll conclude, if you're like me, Indian states aren't really populous.  Then scroll.

ID Numbers in India

The Economist has an interesting piece on India's attempt to give each person a biometric ID.  I've always liked the idea, because I'm a bureaucrat and it's a bureaucrat's dream.  India, with its British civil service heritage, has a much better chance of carrying the project through than we have in this country, even though it's also a federal republic and its central government seems to be weaker than the UK's.

Indian-Americans

Are they going Republican?

And How Do We Explain Rich Indians?

And all the other business operators, from a study:

In the United States, the typical Indian entrepreneur has an average business income that is substantially higher than the national average and is higher than any other immigrant group. Net annual income in the United States is 60 percent higher than the overall average. Meanwhile, in Canada and the UK, Indian entrepreneurs make similar incomes as other immigrants, but employ more employees than almost any other ethnic group.

Indian Agriculture

The greens love to cite India as a place where traditional farmers are under siege, where the green revolution has failed, and where unrest is common. For those with time I recommend some of the articles at this site, which give a somewhat different perspective on the state of Indian agriculture. This lead from February is noteworthy:

Mounting stockpiles may prompt the govt to lift a 3-year ban on exports of wheat, likely weighing on prices that have declined 52% the past year in Chicago