So, What do I remember of what I read in the papers today?
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) advancing eastwards, vs. Putin aggregating Russian troops near the Ukraine border. Both stated causes for concern. The US has been getting alarmed by Russia’s slow garnering of troops near Ukraine, while Putin states his concern about missiles being deployed. He mentioned the need to keep Zircon hypersonic missiles ready to combat any such missile deployed by the NATO. As usual, we will fall for the trope of Russians being thugs and be impressed by the sheer decisiveness and humanitarian concern of the meddlesome west. Though I have no idea what is happening there. Ukraine under “imminent threat”, the Polish and Belarussians at loggerheads, Austria in lockdown, Netherlands in riots, France and England experiencing migrant woes with people dying across the channel, Germany with some weird post-Merkel new three party alliance likened to a traffic signal, that’s what I know about Europe.
Sri Lankan Finance Minister, Basil Rajapaksa stressed on the need for financial assistance from India, given the state of the Sri Lankan economy (unsure about the details, but the currency seems to have devalued, COVID-19, unsurprisingly, disrupted their supply chain, caused production issues. They decided to go all knee-jerk with becoming fully organic on the agricultural produce front, earlier this year. Their now repealed law on banning non-organic, chemical pesticides was expected to affect agricultural yields for farmers, across various crops. Farmers were suffering, politicians were being typically callous, quite commonplace now-a-days across different countries. I think their tea/coffee industry/whichever they are famous for, has been heavily hit and their economy is crying about that too. A bunch of Rajapaksas everywhere. Gotabaya, Mahinda, Basil.
So, the State Bank of India (SBI) went ahead and released some report saying that the informal sector in India now constitutes only 15-20% of the population, as opposed to 52.4% some years ago. Even without a basic understanding of the labour market, I have no idea how they arrived at that figure. Informal labour comprises those people without social security, or whose income and work, is not documented in any form. It appears that the SBI has confused registrations on digitized platforms for formalization of labour. The authors, two members from different labour research organizations, cited the example of the construction industry. While the revenues generated in the construction industry are formalized (as it is ultimately a formal sector), most of the labour is informal, daily wage, based on contracts. So how does one classify a worker as belonging to the formal or informal sector?
Chess: Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi (hope I've spelled that right) drew again! This was the fourth game, as part of some world series in Dubai. It was Carlsen’s birthday on November 30th, fyi. Someone needs to help me understand chess better. They keep using the words “peace,” “peacefully,” etc. in chess reportage. I understand chess is heavy duty intellectual battle tactics, but there isn’t any actual violence, unless you consider the bloodbaths of knocking pieces off as violent. Let’s hope the term peace isn’t politicised in chess, next.
Tennis: Italy got beaten by Czech Republic I think, in the Davis Cup. I don’t even know who plays for both countries anymore. No idea why that pinhead Djokovic isn’t vaccinating. I don’t know much more in Tennis, at the moment.
I categorically do not understand the percentages and random numbers thrown at me in the paper with respect to GDP growth in India. Actually, financial news generally has become a bit challenging but let me try to recall what I read today. It’s all very easy for me to say the economy is doomed, unemployment rates are high, inflation is high, supply is unable to keep with domestic demand, what else, industry production has been affected by the pandemic, people’s discretionary income has heavily reduced since the onset of the lockdown, the lockdown basically screwed everyone over, mentally, physically, and financially. So, you find depressed, burnt out, stressed out, and anxious people everywhere. You find bodily wrecks after COVID battered people, and financially, lots have lost jobs and livelihoods. The informal sector was horribly affected. Hospitality almost died. Airlines sunk as deep as the Mariana Trench. IT and EdTech boomed. Sorry, I digressed. Where was I? Numbers and percentages. No idea. I just know all this happened. I have no idea by how much, and its number-ly implication.
What else? Oh yeah, the Crypto bill; May the heavens help me. If I understand crypto, or the write ups about it, or what the media reports, I'm self-proclaimed new Queen of Timbuktu! So, they plan to introduce this bill, apparently cryptocurrency will be banned. Hence the furore. But fun fact, income gained through cryptoexchanges etc. are taxed under Income from Business and Profession.
We have a new Chief of Naval Staff. Admiral Hari Kumar. He takes over from Admiral Karambir Singh, whose name I almost confused with Param Bir Singh, ex Police Commissioner of Mumbai and an IPS officer, who is in the news for accusing ex Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh of bribery and corruption. From what it appears Deshmukh was already in jail for money laundering. So back to the CNS, Karambir Singh was in the Navy for what, 41 years, new person has been there for 39 years. Fascinating. They should tell us more about what our Army, Navy, Airforce, and Intelligence do at school. I don’t know the hierarchy or what they do (sans the politics that we read about).
Omicron! Every time I want to exclaim “Oh my God!” (OMG!) these days, I say Omicron instead. Should suitably stir things up in polite company if I sneeze and yell, OMICRON. But all right, this variant, from what I understand has been around for a while. Madhya Pradesh was in a tizzy because some poor soul from Botswana was untraceable and all of us live in dreaded fear of the dratted virus. Thanks to the advanced genome testing methodology in place in South Africa, we realised that there is a new variant prowling around. Yesterday, I watched an Al Jazeera report on the potential for this variant to wreak havoc. There were three members on the panel. A senior lecturer at London, Dr. Gurdasani, a British policy maker, some Mr. Jacobs, and an official from the African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Ouma. The view is that we all need to get back to masking up and distancing, and sanitising and all that good stuff. Also, pass on the correct information. NOT panic-inciting conjecture. The variant didn’t originate in SA, like most of the western world would like the rest of the world to believe. They had good systems in place to detect this variant. But they are “being punished” for it because we’re discriminating as usual.
One big peril that struck people on the face during the pandemic is the way misinformation flies like wildfire on messengers and social media networks. Did it really take a pandemic for a lot of people to acknowledge this? I mean, we all knew the perils of entitled and injudicious freedom of speech and expression. But till the pandemic, we couldn’t gauge how far and deep the effects of modern media ran. This is an entire conversation in itself. It is essential that we read and disseminate the correct information, from veritable sources. Sounds so preachy, given that our notions of what comes under the ambit of a veritable source is itself in question. How did things become so confused? “There is no single truth.” Factual reportage and news dissemination, whither goest thou?
I was planning to go for a stand-up comic gig on Sunday, November 28. Munawar Faruqui’s show was cancelled. His 12th nixed show in a span of a few months. He had been thrown into jail for 37 days earlier in May for a joke he never cracked at a show he never got to perform at. Apparently right-wing groups can’t handle a few laughs. His jokes are a threat to peace and public sentiment. What is the future of comedy and freedom of speech and expression in India? Maybe I should check all instances of stand-up comics being ganged up against because of a few jokes (Vir Das’ recent monologue on Two Indias also made the usual sour faced creatures want to burst a blood vessel).
My memory and recollection have begun to fail me. The phenomenon is called being closer to 30 than I'd like to admit. I have now publicly acknowledged the extent of my ignorance about worldly matters. In any case, another day. Another cup of tea. Another rant.
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