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Mexico Framework

 

June 12, 1999

                By framework I mean a comprehensive set of norms, with reference to which the problems can be diagnosed and easily solved. The phenomenon growth of medical science is made possible because they developed standards for every identifiable function of the body such as temperature, sugar, blood pressure, heartbeat, pulse, etc. It is this steel frame of reference that is mainly responsible for the efficacy of the modern medicine. Economics has not given sufficient thought to such an approach. Hence the significance of economic indicators. The discussion on welfare leaves an undefined area of what welfare is. In this respect the science of economics is in its infancy.

                The need for such precise definition of standards and development of tools of measurement are important. Beyond that lies the zone where these aspects interact. Now we are in the very first stage that describes the successive stages of development. That is what I call a framework. I shall think aloud as my own thoughts are not yet crystallised.

                Development starts with physical needs and comforts, goes to vital enjoyment and expansion, extends to mental comprehension and decision making. Beyond that, values that are spiritual are developed. This can be called ascent. The spiritual values, mental knowledge, vital energy begin to descend on the physical and create what can be thought of as intermixture. In fact, every level of ascension is immediately accompanied by a descent by way of integration. Rising to the vital, society changes the physical with vital energy thus making the physical more flexible. Going to the level of mind, mind also descends on vital making the vital more conscious and further reaches the physical creating the skill through physical mind. The spirit descends on the mind as mental values, on the vital as vital values and on the physical as physical values.

                Keeping our enquiry simple - physical, vital, mental - let us consider some ideas. The house is physical, a festival is vital, a book is mental, justice is spiritual.

  • The first duty development can do is to meet the unfilled needs.
  • The priority is physical first, vital next, mental third and spiritual last.
  • India, thus, met its first requirement of self-sufficiency in food.
  • One main reason for Green Revolution's success is food is the first priority.
  • On the same token shelter is becoming a great success in India, as it comes next. Housing is physical, but is naturally next to food.
  • The FRAMEWORK must put these priorities in order.
  • It is worthwhile noting that housing in India began in a way only after the success of Green Revolution.
  • Suppose government had started housing prior to 1965, it would have been a failure like schools in Tamil Nadu.
  • Roads are in the physical plane, but transport can be in the vital.
  • Roads are in place after life in the village is astir. But it is the roads that activate rural life. Hence the priority will be for dirt roads to activate rural life and paved roads to sustain an awakened village life.
  • If funds are allotted for road formation this principle must guide the allocation.
  • One can argue whether the truck traffic or passenger buses claim priority. It is easily seen that unless both are simultaneously developed the purpose of transporting village produce will not be served as the man who went in the lorry to the town should return to village.
  • Wherever roads have been already laid, one can observe that clamour for schools are heard.
  • It is the first appearance of prosperity that awakens the need for education.
  • As development is a process of Mind moving Body, education is the most powerful determinant of that awakening.
  • When government funds are limited, say for borewells, the government may choose to restrict its area of operation which is a common sense.
  • A government that has valued the role of information or demonstration can be guided by the principle of using the funds to disseminate information. Suppose the limited funds can cover one state, the Center can think of choosing one state after another, year after year. Instead, these funds can be enough to create examples and information all over the country. This way, funds act as catalysts and serve a wider area.
  • The theoretical knowledge says that mental information and vital example can awaken the entire nation with the same funds that are sufficient to physically assist the farmers in one state a year. Hence the importance of the theory.
  • Thus the framework initially creates the scales of physical, vital, mental, spiritual.
  • At each of these levels, we see the horizontal expansion or dimension must be taken into account. Thus, if house is physical, along with that goes land, roads, and water sources.
  • If book is considered mental, along with that come school, pen, pencil, and paper.
  • Initially our scale will be skeletal, but later more and more items can be added to make the scale fuller and richer.
  • The creation of a comprehensive scale will not just be vertical but may be of more than one dimension. Maybe a pyramid or spherical. It needs to be seen as we start constructing it. Especially on the way we will meet with inter relations or interdependence.
  • For a moment we can move to the other end of the spectrum viz; mental education or physical infrastructure that is national like ports or airports.
  • There are no norms in any country as to how many ports are needed or how many universities can be started. At each such point, we see ports activate commerce and commerce compels the creation of ports. The former is a conscious development, the latter an unconscious process.
  • Is there a norm as to how much one can be conscious? Here the potential for commerce should lead the planner to assess the need for ports. Again is there a norm to assess the potential? Here we see the need for creation of standards, norms, indicators, scales almost in all walks of life.
  • Now we see a phenomenon in software training. The field is really proliferating. Why? As it is a global trend, it is spreading in India too is the answer. But we also know that India has responded more than other Asian nations. Why? We may say because of too many educated unemployed here. Unless we compare figures - figures are needed - no meaningful statement can be made.

- The spiritual background of Indian Brahmins has degenerated to an educational capacity.

- The native capacity for computing readily responds to it, are two possible explanations. Suppose these are true, what do we infer from that fact?

      Money spent on education by the Government, or the family in India can yield greater results.

  • An engineering graduate's market rate is 1200/-. A computer science graduate  readily gets 3000/- start and in 2 years she is getting 7000/-.  What does this show?

Market for B.E is saturated, but the value of the computer graduate is recognised in the market and India is taking to computerisation. Market has recognised this fact, not like the government. Computer companies are spreading fast.

In a predominantly agriculture country, the spiritual basis, even at a degenerated state, provides for the population an avenue for cashing in its native intelligence. Then arises the question what the government can do with this fact.

  • One possibility can be indicated. Government and industry in any country gains much by computerisation. Here India has an edge. Suppose India recognises the fact and takes to computerisation, it will be competitive with any other country of the same level or can be equal to a country which is today better off.
  • Suppose CII does a research as to how much an investment of Rs.10 crores will yield in a traditional industry and in computer industry, the results will be an incentive to computer graduates.
  • It is possible to study the response to housing schemes in Mexico, particularly the response of those in the scheme to attitudes to national issues that involve emotions. I am sure their response will be more constructive than those who are outside the housing scheme.
  • Now that there are 40 or 50 developed countries and another 20 or 30 middle income countries it is possible for an institution like World Bank to study the role of development inputs such as roads, schools, phones etc. That becomes a guide to others. Incidentally, it helps to create a MODEL Framework for each type of nation. This will be a practical model, not theoretically precise.
  • A theoretically exact model also has to depend on a practical model.
  • Such a model will serve to correct errors, eliminate wild goose chases, help abridge time, economise expenditure.
  • One way of creating such a model is to write an imaginary model and compare it with what obtains in the country.
  • Govt. is spending on poverty elimination schemes. Let us take 1000 crores of such an expenditure. Its impact is already assured. Midday meal scheme areas have improved educational response. After 5 years of introducing the meal scheme, study an area where 1000 crores is spent to assess the social awakening and the consequent elimination of poverty. Govt. will know where to spend its money.
  • The 3 levels can always be further split into 6 or 9 levels and national activities fitted into them. E.g. Tamil Nadu Government advertises it has attracted direct investment of 1,51,000 crores over what period they don't say. Maybe over in 5 or 10 years. Still, it is a big achievement. How was it possible? To what in Tamil Nadu this money responded? Where do we fix this investment? May be it is because of the efficient administration. Here Tamil Nadu is level with Maharashtra each securing 12% of what came to the whole of India. If 5% of the population can attract 12% of foreign money, here there is a clue for other states to benefit from that experience. Some things are not easy to develop but several other things can be easily imitated. That helps. The nation as a whole can benefit by the experience of Maharashtra even as it can try to rise to the world average. In Prosperity 2000 it is the world average that helped us to calculate the goals and from there employment generation. That is the kind of framework I am thinking of. These 150,000 crores of money - vital - came in because the administration - Mind - is more organised. Those who want to attract money must streamline their administration.
  • So one rule of the framework -- if it is true - is: to attract activities in the vital, one has to organise the mind.
  • Green Revolution can be extended for food production, increased purchasing power, employment generation or industrialisation. States like Madhya Pradesh trying to industrialise the place are trying in vain to attract capital. They should improve agriculture and make their administration more efficient. Agriculture is the lower physical level which needs to be saturated before industrialisation is born and administration is of the mental level which needs to be strengthened for industrialisation which is of the higher vital level to be organised and established.
  • Foreign investors say they come to India because they can still rely on the judiciary. We can call judiciary mental or spiritual. For the industrialisation of a state (higher vital) they should strengthen their spiritual values (judiciary) .Later this becomes a fairly stable rule that can be extended to a general MODEL.
  • In India year after year in the 70's text books won't be available for one or two months, even till the end of the year. Schools have expanded so much that paper supply could not cope up with it. Later it was adjusted.
  • When the Govt. woke up it offered every paper plant full cost as loan for expansion. What Govt. has done after the crisis, can be done before the crisis by planning, if not in all sectors, at least in many places.
  • Once the Central Govt. sanctioned 53 additional sugar mills. The Hindu in an editorial wrote that more sugar means more dental patients. It takes 4 years to train a dentist and therefore, Hindu said, it was time to plan for more dental colleges.
  • Supply adjusts after demand arises. Planners anticipate it. The FRAMEWORK is to advance one more step. I can't think of a better example than Peter Drucker's demographic recommendations to the universities.
  • That advance is possible only on past experience. That is not a theory. THEORY anticipates not on known facts, but based on a theoretical understanding of social movements. That anticipated scheme of things is the FRAMEWORK.
  • Malthus during the days of 900 millions of world population warned us. That warning helps us when India alone has 900 millions. This is factual anticipation called alertness.
  • Industrialisation follows agriculture surplus; excess energy created by greater prosperity leads to parochialism, ethnic conflicts; rise in literacy increases urban migration; education reaching a certain level leads to rising expectations; technological advancement leads to immediate loss of jobs and creation of more jobs later; absence of military budget will bring greater prosperity, surplus savings, trade surplus; faster economic growth attracts greater foreign capital; greater influx of that money generates speculation and crisis. These are all our experience which is not fully appreciated.

A theoretical understanding fully appreciates all of them.

  • A fuller theoretical understanding will enable us to know in advance that

- Increasing education now demands greater freedom later.

- Children born in a free soil (in India after 1947) when they are adults cannot be treated as the previous generation as they knew no fear.

- Higher food production demands more of transport, consumes more raising prices, asks for more electricity, more schools and greater paper production.

- A good rainfall is capable of sparking all the above through higher agriculture production.

- Shifting to democracy will bring to the national leadership more and more of unsophisticated persons and even criminals.

- Increasing national wealth in one decade will initiate corruption in the next decade.

- Rate of change increasing, resistance of the establishment will take the forms of politics, religion, caste and community, parochialism.

- Inflation is an instrument of development.

- Budget deficit cannot be paid off, but has to be passed on to people which are a means of compelling the rich to pay for the development of the poor.

- Aid will retard national progress.

- Demand for quality products will indirectly raise the standards of education.

- Prosperity will, by raising consciousness, make the society more vocal and all inhibitive social laws must be ready to quit.

- Spread of information today will give birth to innumerable ideas later.

- Computerisation of banking because it moves money faster, use value of money will become greater - more money will be around.

      Banks advancing to priority sector puts more money in circulation among sections that are using money for the first time. Therefore the rates of usury will rise to 150% - the annual rate becomes monthly rate.

If we take a look at each one the 374 points, it is possible for us to know what the economist will miss and what problems the society now faces and for what reasons and what future problems will arise in which field.

 To look at the existing affairs of a nation with this background, the background becomes the framework. It suggests to us at once several remedies which would not have occurred to us without this theoretical knowledge.

A first round of discussion of Mexico or India will not be wanting in facts but it will be an imprecise beginning. Till we perfect our model we have to work gathering facts, interpreting them in terms of theory. It is best done for a corporation like MSI. The real value of this framework will be seen by the world only when such a framework is created for the individual. Once it is created the Human choice the society has to make will gain clarity. Taking it to the second phase where the Individual reciprocates the social value of his own personality, by discovering his own VALUE for himself we arrive at a psychological landmark not in the air anywhere, East or West, today.

                Nor has it been indicated as a social force in the past. In the East the mature individual seeks spiritual liberation. In USA and the continent their aims were peace, practical organisation, technology and now environment. When the whole world is grappling with the threat to the environment, society is seeking for technological solutions, government action. At best they expect the social individual to cooperate with the public effort.

 The perception that social life is compelling the society and the individual to wake up to the supreme importance of recognising THE INDIVIDUAL as the centre of earthly life, is not yet there.

Broken families, violence, drugs, terrorism, etc. are negatively pressing the unconscious society to become CONSCIOUS of the central importance of the HUMAN BEING is yet to be seen.

                The framework I speak of will ultimately be refashioned for the individual and that will take the social evolution of today to the possibilities of 3000 A.D.



story | by Dr. Radut