Market rises and crashes

Today is 22nd of January 2008. Front-page news hedlines are on sensex crash, how much Mukesh or Anil or Mittal or how much PSUs lost during the last few weeks.

Markets or for that matter GDP do not necessariry indicate the health of a nation’s economy.


“Even as Mukesh Ambani is reported (probably inaccurately) to have become the richest man in the world, the World Hunger Index of IFPRI has ranked India 94th out of 118 countries, just above Ethiopia and worse than any country in the subcontinent save Bangladesh. The contrast between rich and poor is stark”.
(4 Nov 2007, Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar)
Now that Mukesh has become poorer by Rs 47476 crores ( front-page report of TOI) , has it made any difference to the Hunger Index? I thought his loss is merely notional unlike his gain.

"The Reagan-Bush years," Bill Clinton when he began his presidential campaign declared, "have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The Eighties ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect."

I am of the view that successive Governments Narrsimha Rao onwards have done what Clinton said of Reagan.

A Unicef report says India has the highest number of malnourished children in the world: One in three of the world's malnourished children is Indian. Of the world's 146 million malnourished children, 57 million are in India; they are 47 per cent of under-fives in the country—a TNN report.

A recently released report by the UN and Asian Development Bank points out that India is a laggard in meeting some of the millennium development goals (MDGs) identified in 2000. The MDGs include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. For a country that is growing at 9 per cent, there is no reason why India's social indicators should be embarrassingly poor even when compared to other middle-income countries. ( TOI- Disturbing diagnosis).
since Mr Aiyar used the following para in two separate articles of his own, I do not hesitate to repeat.
Even as Mukesh Ambani is reported (probably inaccurately) to have become the richest man in the world, the World Hunger Index of IFPRI has ranked India 94th out of 118 countries, just above Ethiopia and worse than any country in the subcontinent save Bangladesh. The contrast between rich and poor is stark.
(TOI- Bad marks yet first division)

“So when you talk of a nine point two per cent growth rate, it becomes a statistical abstraction: 0.2 per cent of our people are growing at 9.92 per cent per annum. But there is a very large number, I don’t know how many, whose growth rate is perhaps down to 0.2 per cent. But certainly, the number of those who are at the lower end of the growth sector is very much larger than those who are at the higher end”.