Recession for India, never happened! ! – An analysis
In my opinion, recession for people of India never actually happened as compared to many of us in the US.
India as a transitional economy, is very vibrant, resilient and to some extent, self sustaining. India enjoys the benefits of being a developing country with much-talked domestic growth, staggering internal consumption from its burgeoning 800 million strong middle class and the new spirit of entrepreneurship . So when the economic downturn started in the US two years ago, the India exports were still steady and imports increased marginally. However as the economic condition worsen over the months, it was only in December 2008, every other country felt the ripples as well.
Indian recession was primarily triggered by a mix of couple of factors. First, the global financial meltdown tailored by few at Wall Street brought the entire US credit market down. With Fanney and AIG going down, the two heavy hitters brought jitters to the people at Oval office. Beginning of the year and the unemployment rate grew upto 13%, highest in the history of United States in this modern era. Higher credit crunch, means more layoffs. With more and more people becoming unemployment, the number of expats going back home to India rose sharply. The not-so-much expected “changes” in the fields of money sent by expats to India as remittance exports diminished as the demand globally hit the bottom.
Thanks to the provisions of Stimulus bill and Tarp funds, bad assets were bought out and economic players were freed of the upcoming bankruptcy. In addition to the good work these funds did, they limited the ability to hire American companies foreign nationals. Indian software industry was the worst hit by this. For the ninth year in a row, India has been the top source of sending students to study in the US. Foreign nationals graduating from school, and also who were already here, heavily rely on H1 B visas and the provisions of the Stimulus limited this overflow. Slowly and slowly, as the credit crunch at the Wall street eases, US economy continues to recover from depression bruises.
Less people working in the US means less money sent back home as remittance to India. As a result, the Indian earnings dropped for fiscal year. The world must not forget that US is of course $13 trillion economy and whereas India is expected to reach $2 trillion by 2020. There is a whole lot of dollar gap even if that happens. So developing countries will continue to line up for US’s business. And as more and more companies recover from red lines in the balance sheets, the business will struggle back to come back to it’s “expected state.” This means more business for the countries like India, who depend heavily on imports and are in the process of becoming industrialized nations.
Another important dichotomy to be noted is that, many in the BRIC countries didn’t experience negative growth. Indian economy never went down to a negative number in the recession, however the world’s biggest economies did. Japan, UK, Germany and the US contracted by atleast one percent of their economic size during this recession. At worst, the Indian economy declined to a figure near 6.5 % and NOT negative. So I m very convinced that recession for India never happened.
I could have easily bought the argument that Indian economy slowed down in the midst of the economic meltdown, but recession never came to the people of South east transitional economy.
Are you like me?
Hoping, audacious, audacity to hope, everyday, changes, life is how you respond to your life events and not what life events do to you.
My god and Your God
I inherited a faith based belief system ( and not religion) from my family and as one of its tenets is to not question the existence of supreme being ( One might think that this is not true, however). As I moved farther and farther from “Home”, my limited accessibility to visit similar or exact faith worship institutions decreased and decreased. And slowly, I saw another method of salvation.
A nearby Sikh temple called as a Gurudwara in Rochester was it. I started going religiously to its prayer sessions every Sunday and sometimes more. If there was some special prayer session, I would take time and go. As an outsider in this new religion, I was a little nervous about fitting my own life long faith into this new found interpretation of religion.
It has been a little over a year now and I love how my own life long faith blended so quickly into the tenets of Sikhism. I think I know the reason, but that is not the motivation I am writing here.
My parents are visiting me this year for thanksgiving and seeing them after almost 20 months is a good development for me. During the time I moved out of home and out of country, my parents however were very comfortable in their own world and there is nothing wrong in that! J But I grew up into a different person and my faith is also blended and I m very proud of that!
But sticking upto a stereotype is not my idea of God. My family including my mother is very passionate about our faith based system and I would have ideally liked to keep it very close to myself and respect that, but the over all fantastic blend of my faith with new religion is just exhilarating.
My god is omnipresent, can’t be defined in size, shape, or matter, He is neither He or She, or both who knows. I don’t know what he looks like, I don’t know what he likes of me, I don’t know why people would create stereotypes of him- you either see a 16 hands deities or you see mother Mary with Jesus! But I do know is that he loves me irrespective of his color, my color, my shape and my language. God loves me, he has promised me!
Where is the Change ?
As I ponder more and more about what I can do for this world that I inhabit in this time reality, I see who needs my help more – People who have access to state funded medicare or people who die because of malnutrition and droughts? Fairly easy to judge.
Being at such a position where I can sit back and actually think of helping someone out in the 6 billion population of the world, I want to help. The opportunity is huge and can’ t be ignored at any cost. The future generation is at stake and it is essential for us to act on what needs to be done in order to create a world full of opportunities and a world which was given to us.
Kangaroo and Elephant!
Elephant aka India is a energy starved nation among others of it’s problems. after signed the historic deal with US for nuclear fuel supply in July of 2007, has been working tirelessly for resourcing nuclear supplies to its reactors
Good… Is not good enough!
It seems as if whatever we attempt to do or actually do, is usually measured by some standard or another. But what is good? Define good.
Good for me might not just be fair for you and vice versa! 
These are my thoughts -> As human beings, we have a moral duty to make the best of what we have and what we were given. In the process, we must/should try to become the best of human beings, and sometimes in the process, we must stop for a moment and ask ourselves “What is good enough? What is the best for me? ” Good enough is sometimes not just enough.
I had this epiphany “Good…. Is not enough?” With all of my good intentions, trying to pull off my “normal” lifestyle, it appeared that even though I was putting my best foot forward, it is just not worth it and the task that lies ahead is herculean and our efforts are futile. May someday when it comes to you will understand what I mean!
It doesn’t make me nervous, but makes me realize that someone is bigger than us and that someone expects more out of me.
10/19/2009 update!
I received the email from one of my daily alerts – AstheManThinketh.net, and it said something like this
“Doing good is not enough when you are trying to become GREAT !” Now I know, why good is not good enough.
Calorie Count – Day 3, 4, and all of the days till now!
Okay, I am guilty. Guilty of not writing regularly, but I am certainly not guilty of over eating. I kept track of what I was eating and how much I was eating. The portion size is important right? Yes I thought so. !
The gone day i.e. 10/04/09, I ate just 5 strawberries and one banana till 8 pm in the night! And then I fell into the trap of HUNGER. I went to White Castle and order two jalapeno burgers and medium fries. So my calorie count on Sunday was around 1000 Cal. Kill me!
I remembered the fact that each of us should fast one day each week. This process helps you be clean from the inside and helps strengthen the metabolism! So when are you fasting next? I chose Sundays J
For the most of the week and weekend I ate moderately, except on Friday lunch and dinner and Saturday dinner. Now you will ask me that is pretty much everything 
That is not all I had fasting for the entire Sunday and Saturday morning to even out excess food! So the reason is that I was really hungry and didn’t bring my lunch to work on Friday, so that eventually leaves me with the option of Subway. Understandably, my colleagues disobeyed my standing orders to go to Subway and instead we lan
ded at a Chinese, Japanese buffet kind of restaurant. The food was delicious ! Yummm !
But the bad part is, like every other student, I ate a little over what I eat normally. So I assumed that this huge meal killed my appetite for dinner and I planned to have only salad!
The sad part is that I forgot that I have to go to the Sikh Temple at Bridgewater, NJ ( I try to go every Friday evening and Sunday morning). So I landed up there, and it is customary to have dinner after prayers as a pious offering. But I ate modestly again. So say Friday wasn’t that bad, I was a little above 2200 cal (Calories breakdown not provided, because I don’t remember what I ate). Intense I know
For Saturday I think I had a little intense dinner with around 1400 calories at once but be assured that I ate nothing all day. Except milk and cereals in the morning and water melon; PS: I love water melon.
I love watermelons
Till my next rambling then! Chao! Leave comments!
