Newton or
some other genius when praised profusely for his discoveries and
inventions is said to have humbly remarked that if I look so tall, it is
because I stand on the shoulders of giants. If a nation aspires to
become developed and wealthy, it first needs the tripod of education,
healthcare and infrastructure to elevate itself to a higher plane. There
are other elements like landmass, natural resources, innovators, which
help but the former three are the primary colors. Singapore, Japan,
Netherlands and Britain have a small landmass and few natural resources,
Switzerland is landlocked, but they are all developed wealthy nations
and the last one did not even have colonies to exploit. America, within
a few decades of its birth made basic school education compulsory and
free. An educated workforce is essential for manufacturing industries, a
necessary intermediate stage for development from an agriculture based
society.
Singapore, Malaysia and more recently China began their climbs with
universal literacy. India, as I emphasized in my article on its
path to
stunted growth has failed miserably in that goal with literacy rates of
60+ % even after 60 years of independence. Lack of education dooms a
large chunk of the population to menial jobs with pay so poor that 75%
of the population has to survive on less than two dollars a day. Amartya
Sen and other developmental economists have emphasized that female
literacy leads to tremendous progress by better childcare and child
survival with reduced birthrates and improved economic status of the
family. Urbanites in India often make heavy personal sacrifices to
provide private education to their children. Those in villages do not
have incomes or functioning public schools and are compelled to use
their children for economically productive labor. The failure of all
Indian state and central governments to provide basic education to all
its citizens shows the incompetence and shamelessness of its corrupt,
power hungry, dishonest and self-serving leaders from all political
parties.
The second leg of the tripod is healthcare. A nation needs educated
healthy workers. This is why all major developed nations with the single
exception of America (with the same caliber of leaders as India) has
failed miserably in this. Most intelligent compassionate persons would
consider basic healthcare a human right and not a privilege. The
demented rants of Republicans from Reagan to Bush and McCain, the false
propaganda of the insurance companies and the beholden status of
Democrats from Clinton to Obama ensure that there will not be a national
health plan for a decade, if at all. The gullible electorate, due to
ignorance and lies has been made allergic to government health plans and
addicted to the narcotic of free enterprise in healthcare, even while
the Congress and presidents give themselves gold plated plans paid
almost entirely by the government as do all seniors on Medicare and poor
people on Medicaid.
These plans cost 6 to 7% for administration overheads (leaving over 90%
for delivery of healthcare), while private plans consume nearly 30% for
administration, humongous CEO salaries and perks. Corporate and hospital
profits take their pounds of flesh leaving about half of the individual
premiums for actual delivery of healthcare. If hospitals and insurance
companies are converted to a non-profit status as is done in Germany and
other developed countries or a single payer government insurance as in
Britain, Canada and other developed countries, the US healthcare
expenditure would fall from the current 15% of GDP to a more reasonable
less than 10% with more uniform care as in most of Europe, Canada,
Australia, Japan, Taiwan and other civilized countries.
The high cost of healthcare is why many automobile manufacturers,
domestic and international, prefer to locate their plants in Canada
(with a national health service) rather than America even though the
Canadian operations are meant to provide products and services to the
US. That way the companies are relieved of the heavy burden of paying
their employees’ health costs. This is why US companies and employers
are dropping health coverage or increasing employee contributions and
deductibles and making it difficult for workers to change jobs. The
insurance companies desiring to skim the cream and avoid insuring the
sick use the punishing threat of not covering pre-existing conditions,
creating a nightmare for workers. Nearly 50 million Americans have no
health insurance and over 20,000 unnecessary deaths occur every year
because of people not seeing doctors due to lack of money.
The figures for India are probably hundred times higher. India provides
free healthcare in government hospitals by using Parkinson’s third law
-Delay is the deadliest form of denial. These hospitals are
understaffed, often with less competent doctors with many a times less
compassion, honesty and willingness to work and are rarely monitored or
suffer any disciplinary action for failure to do their duty. Their
facilities, drugs and equipment are often dismal, substandard and
non-functioning. Thus the poor spend inordinate time to obtain
inadequate care with dismal outcomes. Indian public hospitals are even
worse than the scandals of the American VA system and bureaucrats of
both countries are oblivious to suffering of others. Indian politicians
mouth high sounding slogans while American politicians blame the
government and wish to reduce it to such a small size that it could then
be strangled in a bathtub (words of Republican pundit Grover Norquist).
Infrastructure accounts for the recent growth and development of Hong
Kong, Singapore and China. America had first class infrastructure. It
first learned from the Nazi autobahns and developed the highway system
beginning with Eisenhower. Now McCain and Clinton want to gut the system
by removing federal gas taxes for the summer so that they can win
elections. That will make more bridges fall down like in Minnesota, more
sinkholes in Texas and make the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and the road
to JFK airport just as safe and rocky as the road to the Baghdad
airport. The present US administration wants to rule the world with
space weapons and air-bombing, so no need to spend on roads and
infrastructure. We can get our kicks out of bombing Afghanistan, Iraq,
Somalia or Iran. We don’t need to make anything to use by us or to sell
abroad. We will just trade stocks, bonds, commodities and credit default
swaps on our way to prosperity according to our Rubins and Paulsons. At
a G8 meeting, the soft spoken German Chancellor Angela Merkel reminded
our idiot president when he was offering gratuitous financial advice,
“We, in Germany still make things the world wants to buy”.
India’s dictionary has yet to list a word called infrastructure. It
still lives in past glories of the Silk Route. Road, rail and air
transportation are slightly better in 60 years of independence but still
marginal and primitive. Large swaths of the rural population are
isolated in the monsoons and in the north in winter snows. Huge numbers
have no paved roads, electricity, potable piped water or a sewage
system. Even major urban areas receive a few hours of electricity daily
(like American management of Baghdad) and piped water (often unsafe to
drink) for four hours a day. Even a hole in the ground latrine is absent
in many rural areas. In the meantime members of the Indian parliament
and state legislatures just like the American Congress members make
frequent expensive unnecessary trips abroad to improve their governance.
Both governments practice socialism for the rich and jungle capitalism
for the poor. Bandwidths, broadcast frequencies and licenses are given
to friendly campaign contributors for a song or free. Billions are spent
to bail out Lockheed, Chrysler, LTCM hedge fund, Bear Stearns, while
homeowners, credit card holders (all common people) are legally cheated
by fraudulent loans and usurious interest rates (18 to 30% on credit
card balances; Hillary Clinton as a New York Senator voted for the new
bankruptcy bill and bank charges).
None of these inequities promulgated by the crooked and corrupt leaders
of India and America would persist if the electorates were not devoid of
a thinking brain. Indians and Americans seek refuge in religion. Indians
worry about being reborn in even worse conditions next time and
Americans are bamboozled by their churches and politicians by inflaming
their passions and hatred towards abortion, gay marriage and African
Americans on public assistance, aid to dependent children or earned
income assistance. The truth is there are more whites than blacks
collecting on those aid programs, just as there are more whites than
blacks attending elite colleges on affirmative action programs. The
difference is that white affirmative action program is called alumni
preference.
In India, the quotas for different castes in elite educational
institutions will decrease the previous high standard of Indian
professionals that is so noticeable even to Americans today. Affirmative
action entraps us in a bush full of lice (forgive my spelling errors and
oriental pronunciation) to the detriment of the nation and the world. If
India and America want to genuinely redress past wrongs, let them grant
free college and professional education to the previously oppressed
castes or African Americans or free special education to mentally
handicapped persons like Bush Jr., but they must be admitted to colleges
and get academic promotion on merit only. By our mistake the genie has
been let out of the bottle and does Cheney’s bidding whenever he rubs
his magic lamp and the price of Rice is in a bubble. India’s tripod to
ascend is yet to be built while America is dismantling its tripod to use
as fuel to keep warm and drive SUVs.
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