some Food For Thought from January 2014 lecture series [Nirmala Sitharaman , V K Bhanumurthy , Bibek Debroy]

[Sujay Choubey]

Nirmala Sitharaman (20th Jan , Monday)

1. The ambitious and much hailed MNREGA program of the central government eponymously espouses the Gandhian philosophy of keeping Gram Swaraj in high esteem but is turning out to be a dole program that had rather been a last resort . One of the apparent disadvantages is the distortion in the labor market as even the semi-skilled labor instead of being provided proper opportunity for the trades of their expertise flock to jobs of inferior skill requirement ultimately affecting agricultural value addition markets .

2.On how agriculture began to bear the brunt of globalization in the first place , in the 60s and 70s , there were local extension workers who evaluated a specific region , interacting with the locals and hence there was a back-and-forth trickling of information based on which  the government provided fertilizers and pesticides etc. After the 90s the status quo has been such that any international producer can approach the locals with lucrative (in short term) offers .Input costs kept rising , output kept declining , lands were damaged . Consequence is the sate of agriculture as it is today!

3.Model implemented in Chattisgarh - Hoarding is a necessary evil as far as current situation goes. Farmers don't have sufficient storage infrastructure of their own . Government programs do not always assure instant cash disimbursement , so they flock to the private individuals- with the infrastructure to store the produce- to get immediate cash for his produce.

In Chattisgarh , to deal with corruption . the control of rationing systems has been handed over to the women self-help-groups and aptly informing them . Enabling the locals to access their rations at any of the shops has helped to preserve labour mobility .

4. Problem with AADHAR - Without parliamentary acceptance , the project has been executed to such deep levels in spite of the existence such loopholes as the easy availability of the AADHAR even when there are major citizenship issues in border regions . 

V K Bhanumurthy (21st Jan , Tuesday)

1. The clues leading to the fiasco of later 2000s had been right there in front of us in form of the unprecedented hike in housing prices . The consumpton function ws so skewed that some mismanagement could be clearly read from the surface.

2.The inception of the intermediate instrument comprising of Real Estate agents , Mortgage lenders , Rating agencies that came into being in the first place to eliminate the element of risk in the act of lending by gthe baks by mediating between the banks and the borrowers ended up forming a secret syndicate manipulating the system over time extracting immense profits from the fraudulent system.

3. The importance of information in market is unparallel to its completeness. Over the course of time complete information became obscured even from the banks from where it all started in the first place .

4. There was a universalisation of risk i.e. all had to bear the brunt of it . What is needed is that only the deserving should pay the cost (Democratisation of risk)

5. Where did the trillions of money go?? Money flows from one bubble to another . After the subsidence of the housing bubble , Bhanumurthy voiced his concern over the abnormal behavior of rice prices in Thailand .

Bibek Debroy(27 Jan , Monday)

1. Ask the Right Questions. That's the key to reaching to the solution to the problems.

2. The government should not confuse its goal of ensuring universal education with building schools - i.e. not to confuse ends with means . Such realisation has often led to excellent ingenuous collaboration between the government facilities and private sector enterprises with desirable results . Cases in point - Chiranjeevi program (Gujarat) in health , Pratham NGO (Mumbai) in education , work of Jishnu Das.

3. The urge of devolution of finance from centre to state that implies the irrelevance of the Planning Commission. Case in point - The PMGSY that enables state to construct roads only from centre - given funds but not bridges. So a fiscally starved state like Jharkhand finds itself paralysed while making roads in excluded regions while state like Gujarat can leverage its fiscal latitude to build its bridges on its own.

4. The importance of competition as the only check against corruption . A simple example of telecom sector then and now suffices to corroborate the point . This is the need in several other fields as well. "Anything you do in the name of the poor benefits me and you , not the poor " Thats what he said! and reasonably so . Citing the amount of corruption in the welfare programs run by the public sector alone , he suggested the infusion of competition in these fields too.