By air, bus, car, train and ferry, my latest trip covered a solid 4,700-odd kms (alright now, yes, bulk of that distance is through air). What follows is a spotlight on that part of the journey where I travelled alone; these are a peek into those experiences in chronological order, covering two Ps - People and Places.
This piece is a recollection of my first trip
with fresh faces all around. I booked it on a whim, not really knowing the organizers, the peer group or what to expect. Was not disappointed, to say
the least. Here goes:
This served as the circuit: A short straight, followed by a sharp swerve to the right opens the track to a broad hair pin bend, after which comes two right and left swerves in quick succession serving as a chicane and the final right turn to the pit entry.
There was a four-decade old one-story house right next to where I live. With a pale green paint and a matching pale green banana tree at the back, it was not your modern city home. It was built for a different time; in fact, the backdoor opened into a well. Where does one find city houses with wells these days?
Capitalism and socialism fought it out in the Cold War and after the fall of Soviet Russia, it might seem that capitalism emerged as the one ideology that is truly successful. It is successful, yes, but only to some and in wildly differing degrees- concentration of wealth by a select few is a shining example. The richest 1% own 43% of the world’s wealth, says a Credit Suisse report.
An exception to the capitalistic spread
is China, which follows what is called Chinese socialism, which is in some
sense a mix of calibrated capitalism and state control. Though ideologically
tagged as socialism, extremities of wealth and poverty are not unseen in China.
And this is exactly what the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) seemingly wants to target.
It advocates for an olive shaped societal income distribution, where lesser and
lesser people are at the fringes of poverty and wealth. In other words, this
means that the middle class outweigh the rich and the poor. Accordingly, Mr. Xi
Jinping has renewed the CPC’s focus on “common prosperity”, envisioned to
narrow the yawning gap between the different economic classes.
As the Tamil adage goes “Ore kallu la rendu maanga” or as does the
alternative in English “To kill two birds with one stone”, “common prosperity”
achieves more than one purpose. First, it provides a solution to the moderating
economic growth of China. The Chinese engine, thriving on investment and export,
is looking to shift towards consumption. A consumption based economy flourishes
only when a majority of the population has sufficient spending power. Common prosperity
might just hit the bulls eye here.
Second, it helps rein in larger than
life private enterprise which is seen to have amassed a little too much of clout
in the internet era. Xi has initiated a crackdown aimed at some of the most successful
companies in China like Alibaba, Tencent and Meituan. He has also indicated
that it is time for these mammoth companies to pay their share. Since then, Alibaba
and Tencent have made announcements of plowing $15B each to further the “common
prosperity” agenda.
It feels like a brilliant step in
the right direction. Though the true intentions behind the second line of
reasoning may be convoluted, no one wants all powerful tech companies.
They already control half our mind share and more of our time share. On the
other hand, if policies end up in wealth redistribution, yes, give me more!
The CPC does not run a democracy and has its share of controversy but some of its policies are worth noting. With income inequalities burgeoning
after the COVID waves and the brunt of climate change being disproportionately borne
by poorer countries, “common prosperity” should be a goal for the world, not
just China.
Right off the bat, does it sound awfully like the “My trip to the zoo” essay you wrote in 3rd grade (I honestly have no idea what grade that was, excuse me for growing up 😜 ) ? To answer the question, it is a bit like that but it is also a grown up version of that. So, here it goes:
I reached the parking lot of
Auroville where the guard was quite taken aback when I informed him that we had
reserved a spot online. Rolling in to the lot, I see almost all the shady (I
mean trees and shade, not crackheads) spots taken. I do a round, and another
until I find one with reasonable tree cover. Why, you ask? It was hot out
there, scorching hot.
But human life is paramount and F1
has seen numerous advances in driver safety over the years, regulations have
also been moulded and re-moulded to penalize drivers who overstep limits. The
modern monocoque is a true testament to advances on safety. Not just
technology, F1 culture itself has evolved to prioritize driver safety from the
Prost-Senna era.
Yesterday, Verstappen and
Hamilton collided in the British GP, sending Verstappen scurrying towards the
barriers. It was later known that Verstappen took a 51G impact as he hit the
barriers. A big, big hit. Verstappen was understandably winded. Thankfully,
Verstappen is alright now and hasn’t been injured, which is an immense relief.
Yes, the globe is warming up. No, don’t trust Trump on this.
Yes, there are multiple efforts
to counter climate change. No, they aren’t doing enough. But at least there is
widespread acknowledgement of the scale of disastrous effects of climate change
and remedial steps are being purported.
Global warming is already upon
us. News bulletins shout out “never before” droughts, rains and floods from
time to time. There is something that is still in a nascent stage, that might
have just as deleterious effects as global warming. Am talking about electronic
waste.
E-waste is piling up, quite literally, in dump yards. The Global E-waste Statistics Partnership (GESP), which counts the UN and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as founding members, predicts e-waste will reach 74 metric tonnes in ten years, double the number in 2014.
The backstory
About a week back, there was a
drone attack on an Indian Air Force base in Jammu. Two drones dropped
explosives and flew back. We do not yet know where the drones came from or if
they had a specific target, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is conducting
an enquiry. All we know so far is that the twin explosions did not damage any
defense equipment nor did they cause loss of lives.
So what?
While the direct impact of the
detonations does not seem to be high, there is cause to worry. Although the use
of drones for disaster relief, mapping and surveillance is becoming
commonplace, drone warfare is still new to India, especially on the contentious
Jammu & Kashmir border. Disturbances on the Line of Control (LoC) have been
either due to direct shelling from the Pakistani side or the disquiet created
by proxies in the region, that is to say disturbances did not have an aerial
angle to them.
Multinational corporations make a lot of money, a lot. A look at some of the revenue figures of top tech companies in 2020*:
Notwithstanding, they make use of an army of lawyers and ever
present loopholes (call them provisions? Concessions?) in countries’ tax
structures to take home as many dollars as possible, duly circumventing what is
owed to the governments. Alas, we cannot blame the corporates entirely either,
the demands of capitalism bear on their shoulders.
