Ananthamurthy on Prof Ramdas

Watch Ananthamoorthy speaking (surprisingly?) sensibly on Prof Ramdas, who died recently.His comment of linking the lokayata(hedonism) and the spiritual deserves a special applause. A rare display of non controversial brilliance by URA

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mZZwFmhz22Q

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Lokayata : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carvaka

Foreign investment

The new age newspapers of India and the pink papers have all brainwashed us with the inevitability and inexorability of foreign investment in every sphere of economic activity. There is no ultimate terminology in the dictionary of condemnation of public spending than its inability to attract foreign investment. Well, getting some capital for an economic activity from somewhere else may surely help something to be done better but is it as necessary as it is made out to be?

A thought came to my mind that the earth as a whole has no foreign investment. No corporates from mars or venus invested in our already developed countries..Alvaa?

On the Mysore-Bangalore road.

I was thinking about the disposition of modern technology over the weekend .One thing that struck me was that our technology is actually oriented against the poor man. This thought was begeted by the machine(which I saw for the first time yesterday) that is being used to paint dividers on the new Mysore-Blore road.This job was being done by people(labourers) until a few days back.

If there is one word that sums up new age technology, it must be 'Automation'.By automation, what is meant is the elimination of human intervention in everything. Labour(according to modern economics) is something that costs, like every other 'resource' (necessary for producing output in goods and services) and is something which must eliminated to increase PROFITS, the sole aim of all organisations.Human beings are prone to error and fatigue and they COST many times more than machines in the long run.So it makes sense to minimise human intervention.But sir,hold a moment!!It may constitute perfect 'business' sense to eliminate labour cost, but is it not sheer travesty against the poor man who has nothing else to sell except his labour? And ironically, it is this poor man who is in the greatest need of of this 'development'. One might argue that elimination of labour results in cheaper goods and services for the population.But, does this argument hold for a country like India is the moot question.Is it right to bypass a significant section of the population in the name of elimination of labour costs?

I cannot but somehow stop thinking that technology is aimed at making the rich even more (filthy)rich and impoverish the poor even more. Im not seeing the 'trickle down' effect, that the economists of pink coloured Indian newspapers keep howling about day in and day out happen, beyond a limited section of the population.Will another Marx arrive on the scene?Only time can tell.....BTW, paradoxically enough,its one of these automation industries that has currently employed me:-(.But again,Im only 'selling' my labour to rob a few others of theirs' in someother part of the globe.And the day may not be distant when some other monstrous 'cutting-edge' technological contraption leaves me in the same plight as that of today's road painter.