tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193554102024-03-29T02:38:25.794+04:00The Jag!Written to the beautiful people of MauritiusSanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-90280514973561170812024-03-24T17:04:00.004+04:002024-03-25T18:16:58.970+04:00Subron Statements That Don't Survive A Fact-Check<p>1. <b>We have reached the end of a cycle so we need a new constitution (2023 onwards).</b> Bérenger and Ramgoolam have reached an advanced age and are way past the date they should have retired from active politics. Ramgoolam hasn't been looking healthy for quite some time – and he's been an unmitigated disaster as PM when he was – while Bérenger is seeing at least one ghost in Parliament. Subron is now a pensioner. Our constitution has not aged one bit though. It's still a national treasure that will serve us well for the next 100,000 years albeit with a few overdue additions. Subron seems to be confusing the cycles that a typical human goes through with our awesome constitution that was built to last many centuries. It's like the Hindu numerals, they have not gone out of fashion for the past 2,000 years. I don't know of anybody who wants their smartphone to run on Roman numerals.</p><p>2. <b>Our FPTP system doesn't allow any new party to emerge (At least since 2010).</b> </p><p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PNr_yU9NYMk" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></p><p>Not only is this assertion not true but our FPTP system has also got rid of several parties over the past 65 or more years. And kept good-for-nothing loudmouths out of parliament forever.</p><p>3. <b>Our constitution is a big pile of rot (2023 onwards).</b> We have a constitution to die for. It is the result of decades-long struggle and deep study by several extraordinary people including Renganaden Seeneevassen and Kher Jagatsingh. The latter was also the one moving around the constitutional expert offered by India to help us to keep him under the radar. Our constitution has played an important role in proving Meade wrong and building our reputation as The Great Little Country. The rot we're seeing is not because of our excellent constitution which hasn't changed that much since 1968 but due to the unsustainable Sithanen flat tax implemented as from 2006. </p><p>4. <b>The BLS has institutionalised communalism (At least since 2011).</b> At one point in our political history we decided to settle for it, I have understood, for a few general elections along with specially-delineated ridings because of the unwarranted fear spewed by a bunch of racists and possibly because of the failure of some politicians in understanding what is a good electoral system. It has served its purpose well without preventing voters from becoming increasingly sophisticated election after election and changing governments several times. Any dose of PR would have been disastrous for Mauritius compared to the outcomes we've experienced with the BLS. And we don't need a dose of PR to remove the BLS as I've demonstrated since 2014.</p><p>5. <b>It is not because our constitution has worked that we should keep it (2023 onwards).</b> So what do we do, we get rid of things that have worked very well like our FPTP system and our constitution and keep those that have failed spectacularly like the flat tax and concreting agricultural land while Mauritians starve?</p><div>6.<b> Only 20 PR MPs are needed for an electoral reform (2014 onwards).</b> Our parliament is <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2019/01/how-big-should-our-parliament-be.html">already too big</a>. We have many MPs that don't have any track record. Why would we need 20 PR MPs after each general election when the results have varied significantly from 60-0 to 32-30. Elephant. It doesn't make any sense. Plus this would throw governance out of the window. <br /><p></p><p>7. <b>We should add the names of Anna van Bengale and Anjalay Coopen in our constitution (As from 2023).</b> Clearly Mr. Subron doesn't understand the difference between a constitution and history books. What's next, adding an old picture of his as a brand ambassador wannabe of a famous South-American doctor or holding a torch in Hendrik Fort?</p><p>8.<b> I'm against costing of electoral pledges (2023).</b> The Sithanen flat tax of 15% has ruined Mauritius and now Ramgoolam wants 18-28 year-olds not to pay any income tax. Is this why Subron wants to join the LP/MMM/PMSD alliance? Should we also remove speedometers from cars and planes?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE0idDUjr5V91t6Mq7Cr6k_keHEETSGwmt5KPCF_Ks-BfAUfHXXd0bqBRz95VmrP5SWTR2EMf9wxNFjm8GKPskx2OFB5eBxrVIMEqKbwaoAF7pwEfzYRRklG_xKvc6olOk35f_mR7ydAUrKJQVaCPBtUkCRxz5Fx2akJ0J7zkMGHyIvfPVpn2g/s1618/Rezilta%20politik%20pagla.001.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1055" data-original-width="1618" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE0idDUjr5V91t6Mq7Cr6k_keHEETSGwmt5KPCF_Ks-BfAUfHXXd0bqBRz95VmrP5SWTR2EMf9wxNFjm8GKPskx2OFB5eBxrVIMEqKbwaoAF7pwEfzYRRklG_xKvc6olOk35f_mR7ydAUrKJQVaCPBtUkCRxz5Fx2akJ0J7zkMGHyIvfPVpn2g/w400-h261/Rezilta%20politik%20pagla.001.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p>9.<b> So where's the problem if sugar represents only 1% of GDP? (2012). </b>That was his reply when I told him that it's way better for Mauritius to remove sugar cane, recycle workers from this industry and <a href="https://youtu.be/Zwu9pCapVS4">use the land for economic activities that are more commensurate with the cost of living here and aspirations of Mauritians</a>.</p><p>10.<b> A red line was crossed with the killing of Kistnen (2023).</b> There have been a number of unsolved murders during the past 25 years and it is urgent and important that everything is done so that the affected families get closure, justice is served and Mauritians find out the truth. But how is that exactly the fault of our excellent constitution and the best electoral system in the world that is embedded in it? </p><p>11.<b> It's not good that a party heads government for three consecutive terms (2024). </b>It's something for voters and not Subron to decide. SAJ did four consecutive terms as PM between 1982 and 1995 (the first one, only 436 days long, was marred by in-fighting almost from day 1).</p><p>12.<b> I'm against double candidacies (2012).</b> Have a look at what is in ReA's 2014 electoral manifesto.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix29zu-1r3AlgzPd3kxCATdsksmE-JWmq9jdUpK3tKmcWV_d5dxUn6S49NnuyZlj3XXPW2kJLNKYWkPKClLyBcvJEsA1_r_SZQB-OE1CCU5yO9gk753JcF6fud2rkKBehzg9SWi8VB1C8GzKXY5diTfEXSf1w4BjbbBALvqwEsvN7Lr6eL9UxE/s246/Pingwin%20manter.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="246" data-original-width="240" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix29zu-1r3AlgzPd3kxCATdsksmE-JWmq9jdUpK3tKmcWV_d5dxUn6S49NnuyZlj3XXPW2kJLNKYWkPKClLyBcvJEsA1_r_SZQB-OE1CCU5yO9gk753JcF6fud2rkKBehzg9SWi8VB1C8GzKXY5diTfEXSf1w4BjbbBALvqwEsvN7Lr6eL9UxE/w390-h400/Pingwin%20manter.jpg" width="390" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">13.<b> BLD (2020).</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ucdp3ZNxEoQ?si=-xjD8wOa06TY3tBo" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div>Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-11056634030865875852024-02-23T00:00:00.007+04:002024-02-24T16:46:19.566+04:00Sis Kolos Travayis Ki Pa Ti Pu Vot Pu Navin<p><b>Maurice Curé</b>. Listwar Parti Travayis (Ptr) kumans ar li. En lorea kin al apran medsin langleter, kin develop en bon klientel parmi ban nanti kan lin returne an 1913 me ki pa ti ditu kontan, Selvon ek Teelock rakont nu, kot so pei ti ete. Li ti ena osi ban klian dan vilaz e sa fer li trakase move kalite pu lasante travayer ler li truv zot leta. An 1934 li dan Konsey Guvernmantal kot pu so promie diskur li deman reprezantasion travayer dan sa konsey la e rekonesans muvman sindikal. Sitiasion telman dan dife ki sis mwa pa gayn letan pase e ala li pe fer ban nuvo revandikasion: pansion vieyes e ameliorasion kondision ban travayer lindistri sikriyer. </p><p>Lagazet tret li de kominist e li perdi dan eleksion Zanvie 1936. Me li pa dekuraze u perdi letan. Mwa swivan, 88 banane zordi, le 23 Fevriye 1936 li organiz en miting dan San de Mars ansam ek Moutou, Sahadeo ek ankor pu fond pli gran parti dan listwar Moris. Ban miting e rasanbleman Ptr se ban seans pu edik ban gro laful dimun vit lor ban zafer estra inportan pu zot byinet e pu kre en vag progresis. Curé viktim telman represion ki li fayit e demisione depi Ptr an 1941. En lot kolos lamem pu pran labar.</p><p><b>Emmanuel Anquetil</b>. En marin kin pas buku letan an Ostrali ek Langleter e kin konpran kuma sindikalism se en zarm pwisan ti en kolaborater Curé apre so retur Moris. Emmanuel usi ti truv ban kondision ban travayer telman dan bez ki lin servi so gran intelizans e so ban talan pu zot sor ameliore. Ban otorite kolonial ti pe per so ban kapasite organiz dimun alor zot fin deport li Rodrigues an 1938. Me lin revini ase vit e fin kontinie organiz dimun rapidman. Lin bril so lavi pu avansman so ban konpatriot. Mersi Emmanuel pu sa zoli fedartifis la. Anu dekuver kuma nu trwaziem kolos fin tini guvernay Ptr.</p><p><b>Guy Rozemont</b>. Nu rapel sa Lider Parti Travayis la pu so mosion fer Promie Me vin en konze piblik pu selebre dinite ban travayer e rekonet zot gran rol dan kreasion larises dan Moris. Me Guy fin fer plin lezot zafer osi sinon pli inportan. Lin konbat pu amelior kondision ban travayer inklian don zot drwa de vot e elir zot ban reprezantan dan konsey lezislatif. Pa difisil konpran kifer travayer ti pe anvi gayn ban dimun ki pu fer kiksoz de fondamantal laba e amen developman konstitisionel ki bon pu zot e sitwayin an zeneral – se pa selman akoz ban kondision ki ti dan dife e ki ti fer krim kont limanite lor later Moris me se osi prinsip de baz amelior ban zafer tan ki ena lavi. </p><p>Seski nu lir usi pli u mwin dan <i>Petals of Dust.</i> Bi mosion Guy an Desam 1953 se byinsir transfer inpe puvwar Guverner a ban reprezantan popilasion. Apre se en memorandum ki zot avoy Lord Munster. Ban diskision kontinie dan Lond ek Moris ziska ki Sekreter Deta pu ban Koloni Lennox-Boyd pibliye so ban propozision. Li rekoman PR (Proportional Representation) pu anpes en swadizan dominasion Indu me sa Ptr absoliman e avek rezon pa dakor. </p><p>Chit Dukhira dan so liv <i>Experiments in Democracy </i>rapel nu ki Komite Egzekitif Ptr preside par Guy ti ekspilse so frer Philippe Rozemont apre ki li ti vot an faver sa propozision PR la. En tigit letan apre Guy desede e ena en eleksion parsiel dan Porlwi kot ban minorite an mazorite. En zoli plas pu nu zwen nu katriem kolos.</p><p><b>Renganaden Seeneevassen</b>. Pa pran buku letan pu konpran ki li ti en dimun mari inportan pu Ptr e donk pu Moris. Pli tar mon lir <i><a href="http://petalsofdust.blogspot.com/2010/04/renga-is-no-more.html">Renga Is No More</a> </i>e sa fin fer mwa kon li plis. Sada Reddi rakont nu dan biografi Ringadoo ki Renga ek Edgar Millien ti ban prinsipal portparol dan muvman anti-PR ki Ptr ti lanse. E ki Renga ti kapitaliz lor so ban talan ansyin profeser pu explik en lodians dan Teat Porlwi <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2020/10/renga-at-blackboard.html">lor tablo ek lakre</a> ki ban implikasion PR. <i>Mauritius Times </i>li, ti lans so fame kanpayn <i>Down With PR</i>. Ptr fini par ranport sa parsiel Me 1956 la dan en landrwa, kot li bon rapel, minorite an mazorite e trwa mwa apre zot pran minisipalite Porlwi pu promie fwa. Sa ban viktwar la anter PR pur de bon e nu evantielman gayn FPTP (First-Past-The-Post) ki meyer system elektoral dan lemond. Zot fin pare pu sinkiem kolos?</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoHV5Gg9RoZJgp-tcgHPDPpJiQFLLT2GskUWeaRnGX_-c0XJUPVHoGyannOhvRTDspyEgF_GbOID9wi0n8Ph-ka4Q_iCPJwffUqsjUsuX4JW2nEDv-xa9f2LArWmdkCcwyvnBXdDRjB73SyXzdPz7tk0ngnDqR7aV__qXABE6cxeyQro3y0wf6/s4096/1B885C33-9803-41BB-B731-6B7A8117102E.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoHV5Gg9RoZJgp-tcgHPDPpJiQFLLT2GskUWeaRnGX_-c0XJUPVHoGyannOhvRTDspyEgF_GbOID9wi0n8Ph-ka4Q_iCPJwffUqsjUsuX4JW2nEDv-xa9f2LArWmdkCcwyvnBXdDRjB73SyXzdPz7tk0ngnDqR7aV__qXABE6cxeyQro3y0wf6/w400-h300/1B885C33-9803-41BB-B731-6B7A8117102E.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Anekdot Guy Forget dan so obitier pu Renga dan <i>Mauritius <br />Times</i> lor en dezene organize par Lennox-Boyd an 1955.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p><b>Seewoosagur Ramgoolam</b>. Pli gran PM ki Moris fin gayne. Malgre en lanfans byin difisil kot li ti perdi en lizie dan en fason dramatik. Lin persevere e lin transform li an en gran lider ki ti osi byin rize. En so ban pli gran realizasion se ban gran lekip dimun ki lin met dibut pu amen lindepandans, relev ban defi kaziman insirmontab ki pei ti pe fer fas an 1968 e develop Moris den fason estraordiner. Se en dimun ki ti konpran ki diob pli inportan en lider se rekritman talan. Anu zwen en so ban meyer rekritman e nu siziem kolos.</p><p><b>Kher Jagatsingh</b>. Idol SSR, en fonksyoner kin kit servis sivil pu al ko-fond <i>Mauritius Times </i>laz 23 an. Depite avan li gayn 28 an, Sekreter Zeneral Ptr a 30 pu 21 an e Minis Lasante a 36, Minis Planing Ekonomik e Developman a 40. Politisyin dan Moris kin probableman plis voyaze e ti kon plis dimun inportan dan lemond. Buku dimun dan diferan parti dir se en ban politisyin kin fer plis pu Moris. Sirman akoz li en ban prinsipal arsitek nu leta providans. An 1956 li ti osi partisip dan kanpayn anti-PR. </p><p><b>Kuma Ban Kolos Ti Pu Truv Performans Navin</b></p><p>Si zot ti la zordi le 23 Fevriye 2024 dan meyer form zot lavi pu manz en bon but gato laniverser zot parti zot ti pu kontan truve ki FPTP tuzur meyer system elektoral dan lemond kin servi buku pei i konpri Moris mari byin. Zot ti pu sirman dir sa tigit dimun ki pankor konvinki ki depi Zanvie 2015 nun al vote dan eleksion zeneral 1 sel fwa alor ki Israel kot ena PR in al vote 6 fwa akoz instabilite perpetiel ki PR suvan zenere eleksion apre eleksion u Belzik ki usi servi PR ti pran 541 zur pu form en guvernman an 2011. Renga ek Kher ti pu mari kontan ki elekter Morisyin ti rezet PR en deziem fwa an 2014. Me ena buku zafer ki pa ti pu fer zot plezir e en bon parti ladan fin arive akoz Navin.</p><p>Zot ti pu sirman vot Ptr an 1995 e kontan retruv en PM ruz. Me zot ti pu sirman ena rezerv lor sertin kandida ki Navin ti swazir e vit truv so performans mari mediok. Tro buku rise puse steril san nanye arive. Zot ti pu soke ek seki li ti pe rod fer ek CWA e zot probableman pa ti pu inpresionie par fason kanpayn elektoral ki zot parti ti fer an 2000. Sandut zot ti pu rod konsey li me se pa sir ki li ti pu ekute. Parksi zot aksion pase byin dokumante donk si li ti anvi kontinie ek direksion ek nivo zot travay li pa ti pu inposib. </p><p>Zot ti pu revot li an 2005 me zot pa ti pu dakor ek en flat tax 15% pu plizir rezon evidan ek ban katastrof ki ti pe arive en deryer lot. Takse lintere e elimin ban egzanpsion kin tuy nu kiltir epargn, don kado 5 milyar rupi en lindistri kin mor depi lontan, siyn ban kontra abizif, zwe rulet ris ek sibsid SC/HSC, tir sibsid lor diri/lafarin pu ban rezon konpletman debil, ras dipin dan labus zanfan lekol e fer pri later determine par milioner etranze. Zot ti pu truv sa propagand ki MBC ti pe fer la infekt. SSR pa ti pu dakor ki atribie li tu zafer ki Ptr in fer. Renga posibleman ti pu rant en kes pu tialenj flat tax 15% la parksi nu ti pe pas de demokrasi a plutokrasi. Emmanuel, Guy e Maurice ti pu bros latet Navin e si li pa ti konpran mem zot ti pu lev pei kont li sirtu pu so ban lalwa travay. Par kont zot ti pu siport Bheenick pu so ekselan travay labank Moris.</p><p>Pa sir zot ti pu vot Navin an 2010. Pa ti pu drol si zot ti pu organiz so depar depi Ptr. Zot ti pu definitivman pa vot pu li an 2014 e an 2019. Ferm parlman pandan 9 mwa pu pon en papier lor reform elektoral ki preske en frer zimo propozision toksik Sithanen pa ti pu fer zot kontan ditu. Azut en doz PR dan nu system elektoral 58 an apre ki zot ti anter li dan Porlwi? Tu lezo dan zot lekor ti pu kont sa. Desizion Navin redon Sithanen de tiket apre se ki lin fer ant 2005 ek 2010 ti pu fer zot mari araze e pa drol si zot ti pu fer kanpayn kont li.</p><p>Eski zot ti pu vot pu Navin an 2024? Pena sime. E sirtu pa kan zot ti pu konpran kot Moris pu ete lafin lane (get tiart) e analiz ban angazman Ptr/MMM/PMSD. Zot ti pu dakor ar li ler li dir ki li pena oken leritaz politik apre 3 manda kom PM. Sa zot ti pu fini warn li depi 2005 mem ki sa pu arive ler zot get sa direksion ki li ti pran la. Zot pa ti pu vot Pravind non pli parski lin pli u mwin kontinie anfons Moris dan presipis. U Paul ki ti bizin fini kit MMM depi byin lontan parski li penan nanye de bon pu ofer Moris. Zot ti pu sandut truv sertin ban propozision Reform Party kuma drwa revok en depite e zir en afidavit pu ban angazman interesan.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKNAr_ZV6qZ4D4KIlQJZIe8eXEOfpP4HYbBOf6Q0jrHdfbmUh0KJF7TA37ZsBKpvpuKpCKZ8-gZYt_0gC8lwbssqwgUf67NOQDmVcLlI0kcsq3rUWPVct8ty5EMKPt4yuIvcIBXt8fs2-AnrJC9QGqqPP0QEoGrlvAKxuedzVD_5IDm9S-KeUU/s1618/Rezilta%20politik%20pagla.001.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1055" data-original-width="1618" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKNAr_ZV6qZ4D4KIlQJZIe8eXEOfpP4HYbBOf6Q0jrHdfbmUh0KJF7TA37ZsBKpvpuKpCKZ8-gZYt_0gC8lwbssqwgUf67NOQDmVcLlI0kcsq3rUWPVct8ty5EMKPt4yuIvcIBXt8fs2-AnrJC9QGqqPP0QEoGrlvAKxuedzVD_5IDm9S-KeUU/w400-h261/Rezilta%20politik%20pagla.001.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rezon prinsipal kifer det fin depas 500 milyar rupi e sitiasion pe kontinie puri de manier <br />eksponansiel se en striktir taksasion insutenab kin kumanse ek flat tax 15% Sithanen.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Referans</b></div><p>Dukhira, C., (2002), <i>History of Mauritius. Experiments in Democracy.</i></p><p>Forget, G., (1958), <i>Ce que fut l'homme. </i>mauritiustimes.com. Aksede 15.2.24.</p><p>Jagatsingh, K., (1981), <i>Petals of Dust.</i></p><p>Reddi, S.J., (2000), Sir V. Ringadoo, <i>An Opportunity to Serve</i>, Mahatma Gandhi Institute.</p><p>Selvon, S., (2018), <i>A New Comprehensive History of Mauritius, </i>Editions de l'Ocean Indien.</p><p>Teelock, V., (2009) <i>Mauritian History.</i> <i>From its Beginnings to Modern Times.</i> Mahatma Gandhi Institute.</p>Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-81840820853533497912024-02-08T03:03:00.016+04:002024-02-10T23:09:36.293+04:00Analiz Sis Angazman Lalians Ptr/MMM/PMSD<p>1. Pu redon parlman so let dor. Phokeer se pa Vaghjee me lor sa 35 ekspilsion an 2023 la ena plizir ladan kot lopozision fin rod sikan (e komie ladan inplik en tekewe?). Anu pa bliye usi ki Navin ti ferm parlman pandan 9 mwa pu prodir <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2014/03/ramgoolam-publishes-his-white-paper.html">en dokiman lor reform elektoral</a> kot li ti fer ban rekomandasion konpletman debil. Bon sa pa eton nu ler nu kon nivo Ramgoolam.</p><p>2. Abolision FCC. Ranplase par ki zafer? Manier sitiasion pu kontinie deteriore akoz politik fiskal e ekonomik pagla ki Ramgoolam ti kumanse an 2006 ban guvernman ki pu vini pu met tu kalite lalwa libertisid ziska sa eklat dan zot figir evantielman.</p>
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3. Constitutional appointment authority. Depi lindepandans nun oper plito byin apart kelke ka ase toxik. Donk pa en bel zafer. Se sirtu akoz 2-3 politisyin ki nu retruv nu dan sa sitiasion la. Ramgoolam in poz 7 fwa ek en tiket zis akoz lin don limem sa ban tiket la. Ek eleksion rekorl zot pu tike avan fer kuyonad.</p>
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<p>4. Ogmantasion pansion lao Rs13,500. Nu nek ena get refleksion Ptr/MMM lor pansion an 2014 pu konpran ki se an angazman konpletman dezespere. Navin pu gayn 77 an e Paul 79 byinto. Navin dan karo kan depi 9 an e Bérenger pe perdi tu eleksion zeneral depi 2000.</p>
<p>5. Eliminasion income tax pu ban seki ena 18-28 an. Pei deza pena kas pu fonksion kuma bizin depi 2005 asterla pwal fer en parti dimun pa pey income tax? Se totalman iresponsab. Akoz lin met taksasion lor en trazektwar insutenab ki Ramgoolam so bilan mari katastrofik. Se en angazman toxik parski ek sa nu pu truv zot pe depresie rupi ubyin redwir leta providans e pa regle oken problem pei. Se en angazman ban inkapab.</p><p><b></b>
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</p><p>6. Zot pu bes pri prodwi petrolie de manier sibstansiel. Kav me selman pu en ti lepok. Lerla zot pu remont li buku plis ankor amwin rekumans ras dipin dan labus zanfan lekol, takse lintere, NRPT e bondie kone ki lezot politik vanpir ankor. Sitiasion telman pe puri depi 2006 ki ler pri petrol ti efondre an 2008 pri laponp pa ti bes kuma bizin. Asterla an 2024 zafer buku pli pa bon donk pri laponp pa pu rekonekte ek so nivo mondial. </p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r3U_8kP_GEc?si=Q0CEeeKQue8Vc8-c" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe><div><br /></div><div>Konklizion: Lalians Ptr/MMM/PMSD breyn-ded. </div>Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-72719980780412661402022-12-08T22:56:00.009+04:002022-12-10T16:03:49.693+04:00General Secretaries of the Labour Party<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">When Kalyanee Juggoo resigned as General Secretary (GS) of the Labour Party recently Arvin Boolell wondered whether with her 13 years in that post she hadn't been the longest-serving. I knew she did not. Indeed as Chart 1 shows, Kher Jagatsingh had been GS between 1961 and 1982 or for around 21 years. Furthermore, a quick Google search revealed that Kalyanee had served since 2013 so that she had been in that position for about 9 years. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOh7Smk3dtumozN8-Ba8UqDAUm_6U0QrH8OGPPhLC7vlYqUpypBj6nmdixPNYYk1IixaDnpvlvr7T2lr3du1Q9N1gE1O_5GJoG8H9NIu34er_EhQUIEWe0DxD62OWTHOQlLAmrT47u25-2QgtwByCqCJmiyB2u_fyRsCt1iHr7Lv5I8e8DQg/s1920/GS%20of%20LP.001.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOh7Smk3dtumozN8-Ba8UqDAUm_6U0QrH8OGPPhLC7vlYqUpypBj6nmdixPNYYk1IixaDnpvlvr7T2lr3du1Q9N1gE1O_5GJoG8H9NIu34er_EhQUIEWe0DxD62OWTHOQlLAmrT47u25-2QgtwByCqCJmiyB2u_fyRsCt1iHr7Lv5I8e8DQg/w400-h225/GS%20of%20LP.001.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chart 1. Kalyanee cannot be the longest-serving GS.</td></tr></tbody></table> <div>But given that the greatest party of the land is also at 86 years the oldest it is possible that there had been at least one GS that was there for a longer period than Kher in the two large red boxes with question marks. However some more search, see Chart 2, ruled out anybody serving longer than Kher – I cannot use KJ here for an obvious reason – after his stint because there have been quite a few between him and Kalyanee in that post for shorter a period than the latter except maybe Joseph Tsang Mang Kin whose Wikipedia entry gives contradictory information and explains the absence of his name in the charts. </div><div><div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXULernmN7XygpmExMKXrFbiHMTQa9mMihD2XRemz6ZiUUbPFtS79Ct11n12HnKiZb-8VGLM3dsDzYMNzdCtSl4V9871dxD-TrEJUcEtdI2YSb0wKWhhUdXT9vgbW56BGBQPMoAC-WaLrbpoatji_qTt8dSUBHPDwl8HD_ubSRnzwRD_rldA/s1920/GS%20of%20LP.002.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXULernmN7XygpmExMKXrFbiHMTQa9mMihD2XRemz6ZiUUbPFtS79Ct11n12HnKiZb-8VGLM3dsDzYMNzdCtSl4V9871dxD-TrEJUcEtdI2YSb0wKWhhUdXT9vgbW56BGBQPMoAC-WaLrbpoatji_qTt8dSUBHPDwl8HD_ubSRnzwRD_rldA/w400-h225/GS%20of%20LP.002.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chart 2. No one served longer than Kher after him.</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><br /></div><div>But Kher might still not be the longest-serving GS because although it was a wonderful blessing for the LP that he got the job for its Silver Jubilee there are still these 25 years. All it would take for him to keep the first spot would be for the second GS to have been appointed in the WWII year of 1941. This of course assumes that the post existed at that time. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn't. It shouldn't be too difficult to find out. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUKnCcXetycr3FIRerkPOJe_Aypp-aBsm_b02RSMUmv4djsY5QnNR8b8q5z555BjEETUGAwFCqk5PZ6KiftVrNlFPskfqGZbaNre2XCIhD8GmqHw-6pxvi-4Zs-q1ge71ttQgI4D9AHgiCnJdcrIjzy30chRLWsy2M-yZNEse9KDK_96h4uw/s1757/C1284063-3866-40C4-8C75-579146D57DF0.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1121" data-original-width="1757" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUKnCcXetycr3FIRerkPOJe_Aypp-aBsm_b02RSMUmv4djsY5QnNR8b8q5z555BjEETUGAwFCqk5PZ6KiftVrNlFPskfqGZbaNre2XCIhD8GmqHw-6pxvi-4Zs-q1ge71ttQgI4D9AHgiCnJdcrIjzy30chRLWsy2M-yZNEse9KDK_96h4uw/w400-h255/C1284063-3866-40C4-8C75-579146D57DF0.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kher Jagatsingh organised the Labour Party like clockwork.</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>Of course what matters most is not staying in a post for the longest time but having the greatest impact. And when it comes to impact we have to remember that it is widely acknowledged that Mr. Jagatsingh has <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2021/07/guy-who-left-behind-at-least-three.html">left oversized shoes in each one of the Ministries</a> that he was appointed to despite not having been there the longest in at least one of them. We should also note that Ms. Juggoo is the only woman so far in this tally and as of now the second longest-serving GS of the LP.<br /><p></p></div></div>Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-2506770692778150682022-08-14T22:30:00.290+04:002024-02-28T22:53:00.855+04:00Gentle Elephant Already Back On the Podium<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>One-fifth of </b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>Humanity Freed</b></div><div>It's Friday 15 August 1947 and a huge crowd is watching Nehru raise the national flag of independent India at the Red Fort in Delhi for the first time. The subcontinent had been freed only hours before and the chief architect of this mammoth task was greeted just minutes ago with the loudest of roars. Almost. Gandhi is not in the Indian capital. He's in Calcutta hundreds of kilometres away after having accepted to serve as human shield for an infinite number of Muslims. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Attenborough's </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>1982 Masterpiece</b></div><div>Gandhi is thrown off a first class train wagon in South Africa. He returns to India. Negotiates with the British. Organises peaceful strikes. I see Nehru. The massacre at Jallianwala Bagh. They snatch independence but the country is split into two nations as Jinnah wanted a separate and pure land for Muslims. A huge exchange of population follows as Hindustan Muslims leave India for Pakistan while Hindus do the opposite journey. They clash. Gandhi is shot by Godse. There's so much happening in this movie and I register only a tiny fraction. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Reading Freedom At </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Midnight </b><b>A First Time</b></div><div>Many years later I read Collins and Lapierre's extraordinary book and was surprised to learn that the population exchange was not complete. Tens of millions of Muslims did not leave India. Pakistan was initially a two-part country and that the second part was one I had known for many years under a different name from my school atlas. But perhaps the most shocking information is that Jinnah, its Quaid-i-Azam, ate pork. Skipped Friday prayers. Drank alcohol. Smoke and spoke so little Urdu that he had to speak in English when announcing to the Indian population that he had secured partition. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8MEC-mp0oIggnoOFaK1Ok1VrcPx2KV457UGrmIzn2jh3SBaWV3A5UlaSSQGeSmQ52lXcrcp98f5qlNJFec3qzCCryUzxZk2QWqQfa-jOiOj6YeytpjcJ22Oo_Ab2_psZpZLVyMBANhVpOnm_Hpe2zknsER415ZNwtbgnbxTCLMwLwGJli_Q/s4096/B8B49C7E-E981-4BF6-AB1F-0E779FD328E8.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8MEC-mp0oIggnoOFaK1Ok1VrcPx2KV457UGrmIzn2jh3SBaWV3A5UlaSSQGeSmQ52lXcrcp98f5qlNJFec3qzCCryUzxZk2QWqQfa-jOiOj6YeytpjcJ22Oo_Ab2_psZpZLVyMBANhVpOnm_Hpe2zknsER415ZNwtbgnbxTCLMwLwGJli_Q/w400-h300/B8B49C7E-E981-4BF6-AB1F-0E779FD328E8.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>So much for the guy who insisted that a 400-million-strong nation be amputated because according to him Hindus and Muslims were so different that they needed separate dominions. It's not the first time power is a bigger aphrodisiac than religion. The other thing that caught my attention were the details about the maharajahs. Including those of the Nizam of Hyderabad, the richest man in the world at the time. But just like with the movie I missed plenty of things because there's so much stuff in that great book. Not having yet gone to India did not help. How do you process all the places beyond let's say Bombay, Delhi, Amritsar, Calcutta, Kashmir and a few others? While there are informative maps and well captioned pictures in F@M it's still a huge challenge.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>What is This Country?</b></div><div>I eventually visited Hindustan. It didn't take very long to be knocked out by the sheer scale of this nation. If you thought Freedom At Midnight was tough to digest just imagine you are checking out Jama Masjid in Old Delhi and still sizing up the iconic mosque when you see a very familiar site between many of its pillars looking at you: the Red Fort. It's overwhelming to see so many impressive landmarks so close to one other. It's true we had sensed that proximity but the map in the brand new and already dog-eared <i>Lonely Planet</i> is not the territory. And you can never be prepared for this kind of dimensionality. No. So we don't go up the minaret and instead ask Scotty to beam us to the Lal Qila hoping to catch a glimpse of Gandhi. But not before smiling at the thought of one Mark Twain quote. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwtspIyKCTd6Ptcj8d-HfNBApObB5cRfWVusoR8XovYs_IyOHg7uEbBBNrebFbLBGgKhOKQWVTeVu83cCWhNQrdU1BDeEcYaxZQVSlS2FiJ41vWz7yewbU_7w56Y-bLP6XgqjHIrLmOezH15vhf6eI6JljQwDSk6N39e-Y08L6ftq3RSTfag/s4096/CB18BE57-136B-47CD-9C5A-CE1E65D4E364.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwtspIyKCTd6Ptcj8d-HfNBApObB5cRfWVusoR8XovYs_IyOHg7uEbBBNrebFbLBGgKhOKQWVTeVu83cCWhNQrdU1BDeEcYaxZQVSlS2FiJ41vWz7yewbU_7w56Y-bLP6XgqjHIrLmOezH15vhf6eI6JljQwDSk6N39e-Y08L6ftq3RSTfag/w400-h300/CB18BE57-136B-47CD-9C5A-CE1E65D4E364.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Summing Up India</b></div><div>Not an easy task because of its complexity and very long history. It's a slower process than for other countries. So it's a perpetual updating with new perspectives provided by fresh knowledge and impressions like when I was listening to a fellow citizen talk about his experience travelling around India during his fairly long studies there – we're probably looking at the mid-1970s here. His eyes lit up with fond memories remembering this city and that city, this experience and that experience. The nice feeling of just being there. I'm enjoying the listen. And then he summarised a trip to neighbouring Pakistan with one sentence: Not easy that country! Isn't that just another biased Indo-Mauritian being way too proud about the country of his ancestors? Actually that much-appreciated person is probably a Muslim. I didn't ask. It doesn't matter. He may well be a Zen master. He's just a kind person. And his ancestors are most likely from Bharat too.</div><div> </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlseKf0fXtFdgYyHki6SJA7yxgMU2iJNneuP1LrFWKxZIBNg3cUrK-t7WRWSSUioMIzFO_a1qiceU1WyZCTjeZz-06kNwU1NU0jc2WSQZyza4w8CesqWYP6mRw8HckWYR5bB92nVd6eu7HHO_HNVZ0KiPFGuHgEFZFj02FRQRs2viCjJkJkQ/s3648/Jama%20Masjid%20Durwaza.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="3648" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlseKf0fXtFdgYyHki6SJA7yxgMU2iJNneuP1LrFWKxZIBNg3cUrK-t7WRWSSUioMIzFO_a1qiceU1WyZCTjeZz-06kNwU1NU0jc2WSQZyza4w8CesqWYP6mRw8HckWYR5bB92nVd6eu7HHO_HNVZ0KiPFGuHgEFZFj02FRQRs2viCjJkJkQ/w400-h300/Jama%20Masjid%20Durwaza.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's not the Jama Masjid but only its largest darwaza.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Getting Answers </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>To Old Questions</b></div><div>I once came across a long list of the major accomplishments of India. You know the one that says she invented the number system we use, yoga, the zero, etc. I was familiar with most of them but there's one that I found very unlikely. It was attributed to Hu Shih, an academic from China, who mentioned some kind of cultural conquest and domination of the Middle Kingdom that lasted for a very long time. I obviously doubted its veracity because of Shaolin Kung Fu, Confucius, acupuncture, the invention of paper, printing press and so many others. But then I read the excellent <i>Tao of Physics</i> by Capra and eye-opening books on eastern thought that explained how Buddhism spread in China because it had answers to questions Confucius did not. Followed by landing on the absolutely delicious interaction between Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu and why the former taught modern martial arts to monks at the Shaolin Temple.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitr7wLdvSDvmdCkD-KmbtLXHR4NVlbqQ9BFSVxzVkEhlR8w7eJmqVghNPwphb0lOb6RFxU7QHqt0V-GlH_w-H9I-BwtRxRfiN5Wm-tPfFD0erk4Z8tXEtd4Rih0e5LGKnZd3i_Ywaswf7Tj671oAlLaBtNaMGYQDBiQQAT0HCiTt4FyhteBQ/s4096/E3E20C8D-C47E-448F-A0B2-87F9D2F402B0.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitr7wLdvSDvmdCkD-KmbtLXHR4NVlbqQ9BFSVxzVkEhlR8w7eJmqVghNPwphb0lOb6RFxU7QHqt0V-GlH_w-H9I-BwtRxRfiN5Wm-tPfFD0erk4Z8tXEtd4Rih0e5LGKnZd3i_Ywaswf7Tj671oAlLaBtNaMGYQDBiQQAT0HCiTt4FyhteBQ/w400-h300/E3E20C8D-C47E-448F-A0B2-87F9D2F402B0.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>1947 Partition of Bengal </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Not the First One</b></div><div>Watching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o74hLBY0-ZM">Satyajit Ray's documentary</a> on Rabindranath Tagore a few weeks back taught me how the Bengali poet responded to Lord Curzon's plan of dividing the province along religious lines to slow down the Indian independence movement. He wrote patriot songs against it and led the singing protests in the streets of Calcutta. When the plan was implemented in October 1905 he asked every Hindu to tie a rakhi to his Muslim brother's arm. Six years later the partition was undone. </div><div><br /></div><div>I knew next to nothing about Tagore until recently. Now that I'm a fan he's on my radar. Maybe I will start with that conversation he had with Einstein or the one with Heisenberg where what the latter thought were crazy ideas in physics turned out to be pretty ordinary in Indian thought. This is a lot like quantum scientists telling the Dalai Lama that their discipline had been practiced in India for more than 2,000 years.</div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWgMZO75UFKIt24tojEedXobMHo5D41TX29WSdws5m2dEi2-HlAsZkpdrWdeZRsZBwaFiuJIVDsmquWLZjGEsqk_5Zi9WJU7sGkWW1W9SOqjjnSz_bO8fn0el6eYJZFjFfLvDDTPrK222tWZqhrTBra5OGP532O88qMIHJ7O6X_Nf3kxjONg/s3648/Paharganj%20poster.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="3648" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWgMZO75UFKIt24tojEedXobMHo5D41TX29WSdws5m2dEi2-HlAsZkpdrWdeZRsZBwaFiuJIVDsmquWLZjGEsqk_5Zi9WJU7sGkWW1W9SOqjjnSz_bO8fn0el6eYJZFjFfLvDDTPrK222tWZqhrTBra5OGP532O88qMIHJ7O6X_Nf3kxjONg/w400-h300/Paharganj%20poster.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bustling India on its way to the top again.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Nehru's Discovery of India</b></div><div>Read two-thirds of the abridged version of this amazing book 7-8 years ago and read most of the remaining pages recently to understand India a bit better for the big day. I skipped "The Six Systems of Philosophy" section again for the same reason I didn't read it the first time. I'm not exactly into unifying strands of physics. Or adding to the Vedas on the banks of the Indus. But I should have read it for Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav #250. Doordarshan also made a great documentary series directed by Shyam Benegal, Bharat Ek Khoj, based on the book. Don't bother checking the cast – it's excellent, trust me. Just watch the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f6vdW91hLA&list=PL1EG23oYcaFu6SNAiofd0uco0sD0JeVji">53-episode drama</a> and be dazzled by 5,000 years of history.</div></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>No Tagore in 1947</b></div><div>He died in 1941. But there's Gandhi risking his life again to save an ocean of lives. India's partition has claimed between 200,000 and 2 million lives – some say the bloodiest fortnight in human history – but it would have been a lot more had Mountbatten's one-man boundary force in Bengal not produced a miracle. Unfortunately neither Gandhi or Tagore would be there when trouble would be brewing again in the region twenty-four years later in what appeared to be a new version of Jinnah's two-nation theory. Someone else perfect for the job would though.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div><b>Forget Iron Lady,</b></div><div><b>Meet Woman of Steel</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">When she was back from one of her trips to India in the last quarter of the twentieth century my mum told me there was something very different about that country that time. A lot more order. People getting onto trains in a more disciplined manner and not the usual chaos. And not only at train stations. It was the same kind of order that had given Tagore pause years earlier when he was visiting the girls' dormitory at Santiniketan and arrived at Indira Gandhi's spot. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In one of his books Lee Kuan Yew says that Ms. Gandhi was the toughest woman PM he had met in his life. She had a "steel in her that would match any Kremlin leader". This might explain part of the very warm rapport she had with USSR supremo Mr. Breznhev and the signing of the relevant treaty to see a friendly fleet from Vladivostok slide near the Bay of Bengal to help end the <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2021/03/50-years-ago-muslim-population-frees.html">Bangladesh Genocide in 1971</a> which claimed three million lives. Another interesting story in that conflict is how <a href="https://youtu.be/YjMSttRJrhA">Sehmat Khan</a>, an Indian spy from Kashmir, helped sink an enemy submarine that was on a very strategic mission in the same bay with the intelligence gathered from her embedded position in current-day Pakistan. We also need to salute Missile Man and People's President Abdul Kalam who made his motherland safer while he was around and also left good ideas behind which have been implemented after his death. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguk64QmCdiASox6ftRPK49RdsQpVRslBUk2C9CtNELMvWitOOlAykKIQhZ_yvglF4SNobhvJUAqD5j8m8DxqamZkvfPqInkaVtebmw6Hl8xpXJl6HDee5Nv7xTpCfzcLsL9UY1tpc0ABGqa0TufbBaw8erlbQtvIEAVJ_3GCzwdO5PVTZIGw/s3648/Tagore%20IG.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="3648" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguk64QmCdiASox6ftRPK49RdsQpVRslBUk2C9CtNELMvWitOOlAykKIQhZ_yvglF4SNobhvJUAqD5j8m8DxqamZkvfPqInkaVtebmw6Hl8xpXJl6HDee5Nv7xTpCfzcLsL9UY1tpc0ABGqa0TufbBaw8erlbQtvIEAVJ_3GCzwdO5PVTZIGw/w400-h300/Tagore%20IG.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steel partly made in Santiniketan: lines <br />from Gitanjali in the study of Indira Gandhi.</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCAvXP8iMtd2_6h2z4J6KhODzKvXuK_laZIMpHQgtuPEhyV3FQFJUYhbjkm6nbCq3D1jcM0A6pOWCoPFPyc0q2TDCZq78_vsEzgg8SPMjfwKlac-pyGArDv_cAIPPP0pqc1dC_uekpul-l313-zSM6POhtH5okfZhyFesUUOaDuIciTzWokA/s4096/D58872B0-7D40-493D-866E-C816520B183C.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCAvXP8iMtd2_6h2z4J6KhODzKvXuK_laZIMpHQgtuPEhyV3FQFJUYhbjkm6nbCq3D1jcM0A6pOWCoPFPyc0q2TDCZq78_vsEzgg8SPMjfwKlac-pyGArDv_cAIPPP0pqc1dC_uekpul-l313-zSM6POhtH5okfZhyFesUUOaDuIciTzWokA/w400-h300/D58872B0-7D40-493D-866E-C816520B183C.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YjMSttRJrhA" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>The Next 75</b></div><div>It's now Thursday 15 August 2097. India climbed the last step of the economic podium three decades earlier resuming the position she had held for so long. The Cheetahs are thriving, thank you for asking. The 15th Dalai Lama, a woman, is giving a lecture near Mount Kailash on a famous Shantideva chapter to a sea of people while the Tiranga floats in the background. As it does in Peshawar, Quetta and Gwadar.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Quote of Jinnah is from Freedom at Midnight, the book by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, the one of Hu Shih is from wikipedia and several other sources from the internet while that of Sehmat Khan is from the movie Raazi.</div>
Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-3498409889743385752022-08-12T12:38:00.014+04:002023-03-26T12:23:50.007+04:00Faith is A Hypothesis, That’s Why It’s Tested<p style="text-align: right;"><i>Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.</i></p><p style="text-align: right;">Mark Twain</p><p>It's the beginning of the pandemic and I land on a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFV-6zi2cgo">2016 video</a> where the great Indian actor Irrfan Khan is debating with some clerics a few statements that had sparked a little bit of controversy. I am watching this after founding out he had just died. It was public knowledge that he had cancer, had gone for treatment overseas but it was still a surprise to learn of his demise because I was under the impression that he had defeated it. </p><p>In the discussion, the <i>Paan Singh Tomar</i> actor was essentially saying that one should not accept any religion blindly but check which parts make sense, test them and that he didn't need anyone to explain the Koran to him. One of the clerics wouldn't have any of this while two others were not only more supportive of the leading man in <i>Maqbool </i>but appeared fairly mesmerised. And probably regretted that <i>Richard Parker </i>wasn't in the studio. At one point Irrfan quotes a dialogue from <i>Life of Pi, </i>the movie based on Yann Martel's award-winning book. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbjvRYLz-Td5sCgqvtgkaVcFFZp_TBAu5CcDDjUbU1ySy7nhHk5_WS963ER_bpddyyUAy5PcDUGn0DKQ3EgBugyX7kQ51cjt9fJ9GzDzZUS7LZrPBUYEFUeSF-JAYrbfIJSLVcAnKZceS6Xr6STKBmPX5O_40IT-FPziWD4j74O5RhNp6HQ/s4096/BD911FD1-2AAA-49A0-811A-BDBDB6E2F2C3.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbjvRYLz-Td5sCgqvtgkaVcFFZp_TBAu5CcDDjUbU1ySy7nhHk5_WS963ER_bpddyyUAy5PcDUGn0DKQ3EgBugyX7kQ51cjt9fJ9GzDzZUS7LZrPBUYEFUeSF-JAYrbfIJSLVcAnKZceS6Xr6STKBmPX5O_40IT-FPziWD4j74O5RhNp6HQ/w400-h300/BD911FD1-2AAA-49A0-811A-BDBDB6E2F2C3.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>I Doubt Therefore I Am</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Doubt is indeed very important but not only for testing your religion. It's useful in every field. And it's basically why you mange risk. You're not sure about everything so you hedge to an acceptable level and update your beliefs as time goes by. Through better analysis and new information. Think Bayes' rule. What Irrfan told us is not very different from the conclusion reached by one of his fellow citizens, Mahatma Gandhi, almost 90 years earlier. Namely that we need to understand that faiths are true but have errors. These mistakes could arise for example because specific parts have been designed for a particular time period and are not relevant anymore. Plus we humans have so many imperfections and are prone to interpretation errors.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3H4qUaFiVmAUuhCyjaT9XlSEvwFoWY1YgJaWSErQjU8hVqd2yYf7QTG0Wo2dTV_wL51TIz3Q_zNuIaxLPAQrvcgvOj0Q2HdePwhrIILwb-Z_2265nUlNWpKMmapenVP0mdyGQaaOqK2eaRASlW1z1GoI9OI4m9kxcBEu41xYzS82z0zFFZQ/s4096/50855D2C-3569-49A7-8861-DB13F6A11E30.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3H4qUaFiVmAUuhCyjaT9XlSEvwFoWY1YgJaWSErQjU8hVqd2yYf7QTG0Wo2dTV_wL51TIz3Q_zNuIaxLPAQrvcgvOj0Q2HdePwhrIILwb-Z_2265nUlNWpKMmapenVP0mdyGQaaOqK2eaRASlW1z1GoI9OI4m9kxcBEu41xYzS82z0zFFZQ/w400-h300/50855D2C-3569-49A7-8861-DB13F6A11E30.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>This is What I Found. </b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>What Do You Think?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This better way of thinking is itself consistent with what Buddha recommended more than 2,500 years ago after making the most of the substantial tectonic dividend India had been enjoying for eons. Indeed the enlightened one encouraged everyone to carefully examine what he found instead of accepting his statements like parrots. Parrots? I just googled up the IQ of parrots. Looks like they are far more intelligent than several politicians so let me rephrase the last part as "instead of accepting his statements at face value". Face value? Wonder what percentage of people understand these words. Let's make the sentence more accessible and settle for blindly.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6NE7I1i-kLJYIXcipnTBFxgi50GQcoMTFIyWu6I-LtZfaWB0R-TBBcRTSMRgGTLwfapTf3nRPTgJoZecCig3tAfQFAEweM2lWe1UwRzOdbiZws4YEwgWqT7K-A7kS53z9Q-tSiquPgRqoJBHGP3TH6LODuIIRXDH4Ia4EXmEJoFqHzsCzWg/s4096/C0658B63-BF7F-4219-8B1A-BFEBB2BF7F0E.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6NE7I1i-kLJYIXcipnTBFxgi50GQcoMTFIyWu6I-LtZfaWB0R-TBBcRTSMRgGTLwfapTf3nRPTgJoZecCig3tAfQFAEweM2lWe1UwRzOdbiZws4YEwgWqT7K-A7kS53z9Q-tSiquPgRqoJBHGP3TH6LODuIIRXDH4Ia4EXmEJoFqHzsCzWg/w400-h300/C0658B63-BF7F-4219-8B1A-BFEBB2BF7F0E.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>Advice Taken</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Which is exactly what plenty of his followers have done for centuries. Chief among them were the monks at Nalanda including one Nagarjuna, often considered as a second Buddha. They and those that have come after have analysed his observations for so long that they've come up with all kinds of useful criteria to examine every part of their teachings. Like impressive tools to avoid logical inconsistencies but more importantly to move towards compassion for all sentient beings. In the process they have confirmed parts of the insights received over the previous couple of millennia as true while not being so sure about others. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">25 centuries later and one Dalai Lama often reminds us that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROzWYRlMFDg">he starts his day</a> meditating on two things: emptiness and bodhicitta (awakening to be compassionate). He was also unambiguous as to what Buddhism must do with the parts that were disproved by science.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCZXx8VfxyxRiHHm8gPHn2JYY9WvENzQnybWD-SQpfSa3uuL-HUHbiPDnShmGlpr84cN8i02nIUf81F5jyRwV7A_kS4f5oYpSFV6Bw77wRIHBQkIn-edJa2-Crru08TjB4M_bTWYvSAAGcE-5Zxm4Xj_P3hBqkYuLAUPzoyt4g3u3DPuDzPg/s4096/DE9CED75-5A4A-4516-84CC-C435BEAB7072.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCZXx8VfxyxRiHHm8gPHn2JYY9WvENzQnybWD-SQpfSa3uuL-HUHbiPDnShmGlpr84cN8i02nIUf81F5jyRwV7A_kS4f5oYpSFV6Bw77wRIHBQkIn-edJa2-Crru08TjB4M_bTWYvSAAGcE-5Zxm4Xj_P3hBqkYuLAUPzoyt4g3u3DPuDzPg/w400-h300/DE9CED75-5A4A-4516-84CC-C435BEAB7072.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj22SavIyFdJDZNNFATZ_AJMLPrafJoylzjgO8Xb-vV_S0akFLtMAqmoCv_ObFnb_7YKfaL7z17t0SvD3VFWGe4_vHasjLpy3vRKCojipkRQGeYlYFj9KUYuQyu5VTC1SSI-NK3MmNkrimqr7pI59eLQdeXWf8JJYBcgzvft2uLrQIbyVWWfQ/s3648/Buddha%20Ayutthaya%20390.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2736" data-original-width="3648" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj22SavIyFdJDZNNFATZ_AJMLPrafJoylzjgO8Xb-vV_S0akFLtMAqmoCv_ObFnb_7YKfaL7z17t0SvD3VFWGe4_vHasjLpy3vRKCojipkRQGeYlYFj9KUYuQyu5VTC1SSI-NK3MmNkrimqr7pI59eLQdeXWf8JJYBcgzvft2uLrQIbyVWWfQ/w400-h300/Buddha%20Ayutthaya%20390.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not every collider has a big carbon footprint.</td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: center;"><b>More Than Just Errors</b></p><p style="text-align: left;">You also need to examine how much time you mindlessly spend on religion because across the ages beliefs have been used extensively to distract, subdue and control people and to harbour animosity if not hatred against others who have different viewpoints. These have been unsurprisingly pretty bad and bloody objectives. Add to this the many cases of paedophilia recorded in organised religions and you wonder what purpose these middlemen between you and God serve. Something Kabir had already warned us about more than five centuries ago. </p><p style="text-align: left;">And then last October we found through the <a href="https://www.ciase.fr/medias/Ciase-Rapport-5-octobre-2021-Resume.pdf">CIASE report</a> that these mental disorders among French clerics is at an entirely more massive scale than we had imagined. It's good that other countries are doing a similar exercise. After all we recently learned that Pope Francis had to implore forgiveness from the First Nations of Canada particularly for the evils perpetrated in the residential school system. So you don't want to spend too much time on religion otherwise you won’t have enough to understand what is happening around you, to your community and country which is far more important.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxQw4FRBRVpQccsS8WgSIHZcfxDTZzZJZxKfdHrxkR3XINvYIXWRa8ynbEHMqh2zT601QsktkikdOTcF-b3xIJ5-pKQmotB_baJ4pnNlwkqohDYI_xmVANHrkVN1Y3kwyyPPB99cIgf7xqy5H9R9ZcX1JeTuQK2-4erBoidxXaY9mjMUy3Vw/s4096/E0FF9896-E22C-4117-A75C-526562EC7580.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxQw4FRBRVpQccsS8WgSIHZcfxDTZzZJZxKfdHrxkR3XINvYIXWRa8ynbEHMqh2zT601QsktkikdOTcF-b3xIJ5-pKQmotB_baJ4pnNlwkqohDYI_xmVANHrkVN1Y3kwyyPPB99cIgf7xqy5H9R9ZcX1JeTuQK2-4erBoidxXaY9mjMUy3Vw/w400-h300/E0FF9896-E22C-4117-A75C-526562EC7580.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>Dalai Lama is Going </b></div><b><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Somewhere Else</b></div></b><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">The Dalai Lama liked to tease his buddy Desmond Tutu that they would be going to different places after they died. The Archbishop would be enjoying splendid weather for a very long time while #14 would never get bored. Tutu would typically respond that the unfriendly weather his counterpart would get would not last forever thanks to reincarnation. It is always refreshing to hear gems of people like them talk lightly about religion like that. And now thanks to technology we can hear that directly. We don't have to rely on a friend or move to a place of worship to find out. This gets us faster to the truth as far less misunderstandings are possible. Which explains why organised religions are currently under tremendous pressure. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTyx07xdhhMa0XrxugRPY5mYGcDjoJ-UQHzcvJREkNcrs5ZEx8WxJibxIsA7mhgeXcKhOOywo2rZh48pYl8xk8ySuHUs3AzMPXy5xYWDqqNuWtJPmHX5c6xzB_CIlxlHn1Eq75-2qtVrd241FCqQJP9AjWMZc9c3ZOQPwh9Zz-SauyR9O-oA/s4096/1193AE18-158D-4E89-BC0A-88A89476C4DB.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTyx07xdhhMa0XrxugRPY5mYGcDjoJ-UQHzcvJREkNcrs5ZEx8WxJibxIsA7mhgeXcKhOOywo2rZh48pYl8xk8ySuHUs3AzMPXy5xYWDqqNuWtJPmHX5c6xzB_CIlxlHn1Eq75-2qtVrd241FCqQJP9AjWMZc9c3ZOQPwh9Zz-SauyR9O-oA/w400-h300/1193AE18-158D-4E89-BC0A-88A89476C4DB.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>Meet Designer Religions</b></div><p>It's clear that after the death of distance we are in the middle of a substantial reduction in human ignorance through self-discovery. There's simply too much codified knowledge for this not to happen. People will keep on combining practices and religions. Zen with Islam. Sufism with Buddhism. With yoga and breathing à la Thich Nhat Hanh and what not. It will not necessarily have to be scripture-based but it will definitely be more fact-based. And this will lead us to practice something more important than religion and that too on a very large scale: kindness. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj12Tz2OBj4ACjh99eDIdZWz6CEUouMFCJmpF_CJpRhtrGCND1-QkW4VNLLhXlv2Pn9vdEYi2bV8AzVJp9OSCEmsMTO9uJsdRGY6B3UVsb7rQN9Jrq00fJ-TFkzsDrp2C5z89JaVMFLrdndIlTRb-kbONjjbmzQR1VyFTFEWp8OYlNc3aGIzw/s4096/716220AB-4B05-42F5-9364-47E43D731CF6.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj12Tz2OBj4ACjh99eDIdZWz6CEUouMFCJmpF_CJpRhtrGCND1-QkW4VNLLhXlv2Pn9vdEYi2bV8AzVJp9OSCEmsMTO9uJsdRGY6B3UVsb7rQN9Jrq00fJ-TFkzsDrp2C5z89JaVMFLrdndIlTRb-kbONjjbmzQR1VyFTFEWp8OYlNc3aGIzw/w400-h300/716220AB-4B05-42F5-9364-47E43D731CF6.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The quote of Mahatma Gandhi is from the Abridged version of Jawaharal Nehru's book, <i>The Discovery of India</i>, the quote of the Buddha is from a lecture of the Dalai Lama on his official YouTube channel, the one of the Dalai Lama is from dalailama.com, Jomo Kenyatta's is from the internet, the quote from Desmond Tutu is from bbc.com while the final quote from Irrfan is from the 2016 YouTube video.</div>Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-14644762923870099242022-04-22T00:18:00.007+04:002022-07-10T17:00:41.084+04:003 Sputnik Products Government Should Buy Right Away<p>Numero Uno. The brand new Sputnik Nasal Vaccine. Both as a booster and as a 2-dose regimen. We know for a fact that different vaccines not only don’t have the same effectiveness in keeping us away from hospitals and the morgue but they are also not terribly good at preventing infection and transmission. As Israel found out even after a fourth dose of Pfizer. That’s because we have no soldiers to prevent Covid-19 from living rent-free in our noses and spreading around. But as the diagram shows – pulled from Sputnik’s Twitter handle along with the pic of how it is administered – a nasal vaccine changes all that by building a wall of immunity at the top of our airways. It would also make our vaccination campaigns a lot more efficient and provide most Mauritians with a better immune response through heterologous boosting. Plus as it’s a spray no needles are involved.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7WZuQ2-8IOxe5abVmZzY3hPLy0nhnft5Q_PQ0XYxTwJb2aemojE2HxcYYayyErfSEjqbu-baRo2ECUCN2S4A1Dqm3AJR1Se6rX1ahURskqt9hZafjJC9YRaz1LRp49LYhB0X_cN8-m3mTOrIWfjU7hhdqJOKKyCTaGb_lSR9K_yGYQ5CpWw/s662/46D0D152-5BDA-4451-BA74-6025D7D42B69.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="662" data-original-width="597" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7WZuQ2-8IOxe5abVmZzY3hPLy0nhnft5Q_PQ0XYxTwJb2aemojE2HxcYYayyErfSEjqbu-baRo2ECUCN2S4A1Dqm3AJR1Se6rX1ahURskqt9hZafjJC9YRaz1LRp49LYhB0X_cN8-m3mTOrIWfjU7hhdqJOKKyCTaGb_lSR9K_yGYQ5CpWw/w361-h400/46D0D152-5BDA-4451-BA74-6025D7D42B69.jpeg" width="361" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The Sputnik nasal spray offers a higher level of protection against Covid-19 by building a wall of immunity at the entry point of the virus.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLAkw8FZJdULmv37pSHMXHf3Un5Gc90Lnq2PUc1l08gnwRgD1SCVdiM-PYLBYW6qlGXN99LbyB1sraKbWY8HVUaX5ocLlE4BxRoms_tghqFY0fjzzLpi7Z_uYRKEqu35LMNWa3swyEs1tFy0QRPNX0Nv8oafF-cXOH7S0EzjapxxcERs3Qxw/s872/45C1459F-FC66-4D03-BE6C-2076040A213A.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="872" data-original-width="578" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLAkw8FZJdULmv37pSHMXHf3Un5Gc90Lnq2PUc1l08gnwRgD1SCVdiM-PYLBYW6qlGXN99LbyB1sraKbWY8HVUaX5ocLlE4BxRoms_tghqFY0fjzzLpi7Z_uYRKEqu35LMNWa3swyEs1tFy0QRPNX0Nv8oafF-cXOH7S0EzjapxxcERs3Qxw/w265-h400/45C1459F-FC66-4D03-BE6C-2076040A213A.jpeg" width="265" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Administration of the Sputnik nasal vaccine </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">is straightforward. No needles are used.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Dezyem. The Sputnik Light vaccine. As a booster or a standalone jab. As 36,956 Mauritians have already had at least the first dose of Sputnik V (which in fact is the Sputnik Light shot) it makes a lot of sense to offer them the option of continuing with the same excellent vaccine. According to Gamaleya, its maker, the Sputnik booster is supposed to last 12 months. This compares favourably with the 3 to 6 months the Pfizer booster will offer protection. Surely the authorities are not planning to jab the population with a 6th dose of a vaccine designed for the Wuhan strain that’s not exactly dominant now by this December?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Third. Sputnik-M jab for adolescents (12-17). It’s a 2-dose vaccine just like Sputnik V except that its concentration is 5X lower. Buying the Sputnik-M vaccine would be consistent with the recent decision of government to add a non-mRNA vaccine like Novavax to its list of approved vaccines. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7k355lI-qQPfFloE8UzEg3Y64CRLkNfAgS7zz2BwCur94_HC5OLOHN4ZWHH6tynT2w48KbX9Edmx5VgBWsT9BNwOZPVflqhbxR_-2Iz_ryhwNuNXhpMv2Xsm5qaJ44P1FdfNygErofyNAQJgbeZpBA4u-CMa_IxHSmZndU9bmL4WRXOhTLA/s4096/08515A16-0953-42C6-913B-49A089FDFC59.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7k355lI-qQPfFloE8UzEg3Y64CRLkNfAgS7zz2BwCur94_HC5OLOHN4ZWHH6tynT2w48KbX9Edmx5VgBWsT9BNwOZPVflqhbxR_-2Iz_ryhwNuNXhpMv2Xsm5qaJ44P1FdfNygErofyNAQJgbeZpBA4u-CMa_IxHSmZndU9bmL4WRXOhTLA/w400-h300/08515A16-0953-42C6-913B-49A089FDFC59.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">There are issues with mRNA </div><div style="text-align: center;">vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>Government Should Update Its Vaccine </b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>Strategy </b><b>With Official Data It Has Published</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It appears that government hasn’t been buying vaccines for quite some time relying totally on shipments that are <i>mufta</i> instead. This has caused a 100% dependence on mRNA vaccines. A very risky decision while it kept collecting Rs2 on each litre of petroleum products and as the Covid-19 death toll approaches 2,500. It is way better off checking our local experience with vaccines so far and adjusting the vaccine strategy accordingly. Especially two facts. One is that unlike the other jabs (see chart) nobody who had done the Sputnik vaccine had died from Covid as of November 7, 2021 – these numbers need to be updated via a parliamentary question ASAP. Two, as we learned last week from our National Assembly, Sputnik had the lowest rate of side effects of four vaccines used in Mauritius. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">If government doesn’t want to buy these Sputnik products – the best vaccine against death and side effects according to its own data and confirmed elsewhere – because it has spent too many billions of our national reserves uselessly or hasn’t heard of long Covid yet then maybe it should give citizens who have already been vaccinated with or view the Russian jabs as among the best in the world the option of paying for it. And make it widely available. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Finally, given that Pfizer has now made several billions of dollars of profit there’s no need for a consent form as if its vaccine is faulty it should be held accountable. Incidentally that’s the reason why Moderna and Pfizer were not approved by Indian authorities. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYfhMfryITQXPVUx9fowVfeKmx7qAVMMJcACgYLeev_T1bXvQWccO3ZGwocu1E3oFFXdnCExTlDNqekqxVGUZdkYLbfbkekrFY-6rSqUN7f9jz5FwXRcqbv4paUSr6RlD-wxYFeshtRyOhAzz3qovmMKUZ3W2wzmbBWYyTygTW74FWHhUJKw/s2568/E9E5E8B4-BC91-4791-BA3C-4A58C2960AAF.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="2568" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYfhMfryITQXPVUx9fowVfeKmx7qAVMMJcACgYLeev_T1bXvQWccO3ZGwocu1E3oFFXdnCExTlDNqekqxVGUZdkYLbfbkekrFY-6rSqUN7f9jz5FwXRcqbv4paUSr6RlD-wxYFeshtRyOhAzz3qovmMKUZ3W2wzmbBWYyTygTW74FWHhUJKw/w400-h224/E9E5E8B4-BC91-4791-BA3C-4A58C2960AAF.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>Nobody had died from Covid-19 after being jabbed by the Sputnik vaccine as of beginning of last November. This is consistent with what several other countries have found: Sputnik offers the best protection against death from Covid-19. <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIZR98S1JacsYzObFkhIYwnxCsVL_ZKRx2iN0EADgYowIkfRcoluV1N2vobGWZSGCryCINTHc7TZ7LGP5MCPD25PGaPZi61ZzL5uoAe5M09ugV_JD_Jb9lwCDgCP8jQHVuQen3cEc_mKQbr_2pVIghDWOKbygcJvlglhpzJeklylXMAX9J6A/s1739/F0319DEC-AFCB-49F0-A6A7-0CC6455B5B89.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="916" data-original-width="1739" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIZR98S1JacsYzObFkhIYwnxCsVL_ZKRx2iN0EADgYowIkfRcoluV1N2vobGWZSGCryCINTHc7TZ7LGP5MCPD25PGaPZi61ZzL5uoAe5M09ugV_JD_Jb9lwCDgCP8jQHVuQen3cEc_mKQbr_2pVIghDWOKbygcJvlglhpzJeklylXMAX9J6A/w400-h211/F0319DEC-AFCB-49F0-A6A7-0CC6455B5B89.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Sputnik had the lowest rate of side effects </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">in Mauritius confirming what has been </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">observed in a number of countries.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhtrAw201HFsv-yuobS3lQ52gTMW2AqYLDPiremIhSqQygcna8ra8_JKpY7MWvvGlBGWNkAAuL6noJT8Yxdy39jmeINDwqiKRAESblxD3yGignZJtU2caJ2LWYQgobBeeSL1ixBrqJdjgOuP_xcvfKQZHp8BglKPKPt3ax1vV3AXmJygPRRQ/s4096/1637CCFE-B930-4BF7-865C-745D8A0FAFBB.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhtrAw201HFsv-yuobS3lQ52gTMW2AqYLDPiremIhSqQygcna8ra8_JKpY7MWvvGlBGWNkAAuL6noJT8Yxdy39jmeINDwqiKRAESblxD3yGignZJtU2caJ2LWYQgobBeeSL1ixBrqJdjgOuP_xcvfKQZHp8BglKPKPt3ax1vV3AXmJygPRRQ/w400-h300/1637CCFE-B930-4BF7-865C-745D8A0FAFBB.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">This is a lot higher than the official figure that government doesn’t publish in Mauritius </div></div><div style="text-align: center;">but sends to the WHO.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_NH84ut2lYIgqENHKMFi8d5hydjEtkPd_gauN9LQtd6Da8PUh-iR_vC0yUhvW3P1PNpP1P6FakXR-TOh4yLyz11Mb4EdH2Pmitl6C9PaSOfGppfNVLdUp_X_mhrsKhNXyegzqKP0VdVkXg0hw4tDcJ_VFNMrA7VbwJVGVQ8JMhQhKcCWB0g/s4096/AB5F9CA8-FC45-40BF-934D-717C04F344A5.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_NH84ut2lYIgqENHKMFi8d5hydjEtkPd_gauN9LQtd6Da8PUh-iR_vC0yUhvW3P1PNpP1P6FakXR-TOh4yLyz11Mb4EdH2Pmitl6C9PaSOfGppfNVLdUp_X_mhrsKhNXyegzqKP0VdVkXg0hw4tDcJ_VFNMrA7VbwJVGVQ8JMhQhKcCWB0g/w400-h300/AB5F9CA8-FC45-40BF-934D-717C04F344A5.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">The Sputnik nasal spray should help us keep long Covid and hospitalisation to a minimum accelerating a return to normality. </div>Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-50300953411490385452022-04-07T11:13:00.004+04:002022-04-28T22:40:09.763+04:00Meet the WUT<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOW8YcLTGQRmM380Qb8jkpLiUBHilcFwbfDgXo78wELaQx3Cmqb_97xUcC7JyjPoZADMDL61w3Fpjnmp5UqvieXxxxn1VbjjYfQsJIjl7qaL_uRhEhjG40mqN6nBzevQms_2GfyUvHoRaAIC6uxTR6g1QuBnKRKxTbLANCMARhKTbC8p-O3w/s2041/FF03CD1E-9531-4875-B3E6-5CBF8EBC47F4.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1217" data-original-width="2041" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOW8YcLTGQRmM380Qb8jkpLiUBHilcFwbfDgXo78wELaQx3Cmqb_97xUcC7JyjPoZADMDL61w3Fpjnmp5UqvieXxxxn1VbjjYfQsJIjl7qaL_uRhEhjG40mqN6nBzevQms_2GfyUvHoRaAIC6uxTR6g1QuBnKRKxTbLANCMARhKTbC8p-O3w/w400-h239/FF03CD1E-9531-4875-B3E6-5CBF8EBC47F4.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p>That’s how people will call the Sir Harold Walter Urban Terminal if the VUT is renamed to honour the memory of one of our land’s finest but completely forgotten sons – SHW built our first and some say still our best motorway which also makes him associated with our transportation network. It’s true he was a pillar of the Labour Party (pictured above with a famous colleague) and we don’t have a Labour PM right now. But we know what happened when we last had one. He actively tried to rewrite the history of the LP and of Mauritius, placing a sycophant at the head of the MBC with a contract that had even a “clause de conscience”. And two of the three Presidents he nominated were not personalities from the oldest political party of Mauritius.</p><p>Pravind Jugnauth has everything to gain in making this move. He would rise in stature as a head of government and reap quite a bit of sympathy from hundreds of floating and not-so-floating voters. These are always handy in any election. Besides if I’m not mistaken SHW was the lawyer of SAJ at one time. </p><p>We definitely don’t want to have Victoria in the name of that terminal. That too for several reasons. We’ve been an independent country since 1968 and a Republic for 30 years. Plus Queen Victoria was the monarch on who’s watch at least two famines occurred in India. One such famine is the Great Famine of 1876-1878 during which between 5.6 million and 9.6 million Indians lost their lives – shipping a record amount of wheat to England during that famine didn’t exactly help (Wikipedia). That’s a lot of people. Without blue eyes.</p><p>Most of that range exceeds the 6 million of Jews who are assumed to have died in the hands of Nazis of Germany in WWII. Add the one million who died during the Indian Famine of 1896-97 and we’re definitely talking of someone who was the head of state of a colonial power with more blood on her hands than the little guy with a famous moustache. By this yardstick calling it HUT would be a big improvement. </p><p>Furthermore just imagine how embarrassed we’ll look when movies on these famines à la Kashmir Files come out as they inevitably will in a few years. Speaking of embarrassment isn’t it wonderful that we now have a national bird which is alive? Which means we can now think of redesigning our <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2017/10/redesign-of-coat-of-arms-seriously.html">totally irrelevant Coat of Arms</a>.</p><p>Finally, we don’t want a statue for the victims of Covid-19 in Souillac. We want it in one of our busiest spots. We’ll be spoilt for choice once we pull down those associated with slavery.</p>Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-21909142107238296162022-01-21T13:44:00.006+04:002022-01-21T15:28:54.076+04:00Vaccination Status Can’t Ignore Jab Longevity and Performance<p>While it was good strategy to have several vaccines in Mauritius last year there’s quite a bit of local data available now to narrow down our choices until better and in some cases more classic ones become available or Covid morphs into an endemic. More information is also coming from the jab manufacturers themselves. </p><div>For example, Gamaleya, which makes the mix-and-match 2-dose Sputnik V vaccine has recommended its booster jab (Sputnik Light) 6 months after the first vaccine regimen and an annual dose thereafter. This compares very favourably with the 3-month cycle that seems to be the destination with mRNA shots like Pfizer. </div><div><br /></div><div>With the Sputnik solution we’d be doing at most two more doses over the 18 months following the time we’d stopped being fully vaccinated. Stick with Pfizer and we could be looking at six or more extra doses before parliament is dissolved. We certainly don’t want that many additional boosters. And this for at least two reasons. We’ve all read the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/eu-drug-regulator-says-more-data-needed-impact-omicron-vaccines-2022-01-11/">warning of the European drug regulator on how a fourth dose</a> could overload our immune system. Do we even want to wonder about the very serious public health problems that could be waiting for us with an eighth dose from a technology that’s relatively new? Plus imagine the current mess at vaccination centres being multiplied by six over the next year-and-a-half.</div><div><br /></div><div>There has also been the logical recommendation that the level of antibodies irrespective of how they ended up in the body – through infection or vaccination – is a much better yardstick to determine freedom of movement than settling for a uniform but unfortunately discriminatory vaccine-only-based metric. This has become all the more easier for a middle-income country like us to do after the WHO signed a non-exclusive licence agreement with the Spanish National Research Council <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/23-11-2021-who-and-mpp-announce-the-first-transparent-global-non-exclusive-licence-for-a-covid-19-technology">for a Covid-19 serological tool last November.</a> </div><div><br /></div><div>So yes, our jab portfolio should be trimmed but in mindful ways. That definitely does not include putting all of our vaccine strategy in the mRNA basket which would also be a pity given that Modern Portfolio Theory turns 70 in a few weeks. The more so that no cases of Mauritians who took these Russian shots and died because of Covid have been reported so far – which is consistent with the <a href="https://www.rt.com/russia/541351-sputnik-mortality-hungary-study/">mammoth Hungarian study that concluded that Sputnik V was the best of 5 vaccines</a> (Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Sinopharm were the other four) when it came to preventing deaths and the second best to avoid infections. The political risks of screwing up this too are not non-negligible for Pravind Jugnauth either and pretty untimely as he completes his fifth year as PM on January 22.</div><div><br /></div><div>P.S. There’s also a brand new study done at the Spallanzani Institute (Italy) which was published on Thursday that shows that Sputnik does a much better job in dealing with Omicron than Pfizer. Here’s a screenshot from Gamaleya’s Twitter handle. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhnundTghhXP6bBnCrNuerxMRUePMZkz8Xciys4sXaBOK9l9hXsAcQfK6_rBj4Gf60Yw-rVThkvEeveyvcTbUa8Pxf59VodfX74yOt2AAxvt2q_8VdGt9RS1MKxwXx5_AUiLdBZHQ8U9IyiD5KsNRreyXNiCdvn5jD8aUFmRFrOWywVSfr8rA=s750" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="750" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhnundTghhXP6bBnCrNuerxMRUePMZkz8Xciys4sXaBOK9l9hXsAcQfK6_rBj4Gf60Yw-rVThkvEeveyvcTbUa8Pxf59VodfX74yOt2AAxvt2q_8VdGt9RS1MKxwXx5_AUiLdBZHQ8U9IyiD5KsNRreyXNiCdvn5jD8aUFmRFrOWywVSfr8rA=w400-h278" width="400" /></a></div>Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-48290974131154855542021-07-23T00:00:00.033+04:002023-07-20T02:34:16.741+04:00Guy Who Left Behind At Least Three Pairs of Oversized Shoes is 90<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">Kher Jagatsingh who was born nine decades ago today left a massive legacy. We look rather briefly at some of his accomplishments and offer clues as to how he managed to do so much so fast. </span></span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXJD0ZUBpItieUWt0Two_PJ8kAR-6XwNPVCWnvmjuGsGElM_G4hBthSR1qjq8I5sZSG43wc4ODeBSa5sbbPV9PbuRoUhEuFMtnOuyOxzw7m2RUOXvsmCeC6tIlxt1g6zC9EoFW/s2477/1C88BA25-C737-4985-AA71-9741BEB102BC.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1023" data-original-width="2477" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXJD0ZUBpItieUWt0Two_PJ8kAR-6XwNPVCWnvmjuGsGElM_G4hBthSR1qjq8I5sZSG43wc4ODeBSa5sbbPV9PbuRoUhEuFMtnOuyOxzw7m2RUOXvsmCeC6tIlxt1g6zC9EoFW/w400-h165/1C88BA25-C737-4985-AA71-9741BEB102BC.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">He left a job in the colonial civil service to co-found <i>The Mauritius Times</i> at 23 (see timeline). That’s a pretty daring move if done today. Just imagine in those days. But the voracious and curious reader that he was obviously had other plans and a big part of these was to serve his country to the best of his abilities.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0LiJl4ohHb7hc1eXMh0ZzNTka_KVOeOgn_8F1GtuNX_D8v0j8vEiflxikjlq_y51pECKT-mBJEF-R8_CZmY9-2YZ6gx_0272K_gjd7oFO1GeWleJgsBWF08_eXRsPCi8b538pQfb1oAPBYobqGB90FS7JAF_DN8WgMWb8U2J-a4CmxwONd9C3/s4096/734F9AC2-2603-47D0-AC16-8BE3F054D5FB.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0LiJl4ohHb7hc1eXMh0ZzNTka_KVOeOgn_8F1GtuNX_D8v0j8vEiflxikjlq_y51pECKT-mBJEF-R8_CZmY9-2YZ6gx_0272K_gjd7oFO1GeWleJgsBWF08_eXRsPCi8b538pQfb1oAPBYobqGB90FS7JAF_DN8WgMWb8U2J-a4CmxwONd9C3/w400-h300/734F9AC2-2603-47D0-AC16-8BE3F054D5FB.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">These initially took the form of a series of battles in his weekly to retaliate against all forms of injustice and to steer national debates in a direction that was good for Mauritius. One such battle was the “Down With PR” campaign so that Mauritius ended up with a far superior electoral system, the FPTP system. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm_dOAQtmgVLQs5TyB2CJK7AEU9-mX3Sl22kh2-5zf5sZ5qYzewQbpiVKZecM5ElQiUXihQmLo72ZNPW7u12RvCtGf3NcUwrfXGCJiNUQ4_0dep3gj_MYYYImDM1PxYA1Ag-GLvo6DlSjU8UzPnu8qyE4VYKTwpGZlwtXrTuq9Nggi0q-s2Rz_/s4096/C35EFB24-DC48-4E52-94B9-FF1C6049BF0F.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm_dOAQtmgVLQs5TyB2CJK7AEU9-mX3Sl22kh2-5zf5sZ5qYzewQbpiVKZecM5ElQiUXihQmLo72ZNPW7u12RvCtGf3NcUwrfXGCJiNUQ4_0dep3gj_MYYYImDM1PxYA1Ag-GLvo6DlSjU8UzPnu8qyE4VYKTwpGZlwtXrTuq9Nggi0q-s2Rz_/w400-h300/C35EFB24-DC48-4E52-94B9-FF1C6049BF0F.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">KJ was quickly noticed by that team-builder extraordinaire, one SSR, and he was soon standing as an LP candidate in the general elections of 1959 to taste his first electoral victory. SSR must have been quite impressed by his protégé to have the 28-year old as Secretary-General in such defining times two years later.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRuLsHgnrKWE9i8e1iqESZ26EhqV6FErITBPYpE46i5fdAMGUiPdqj3DA2otK8LQ9mzScheAh629oobPu6-LWm9ZanwkHpe5Z15kMBrKy_IT-iVc-WY-3AVOt1FHKU3s4nMAEPkzN6Q46tokM8R4oyln_F-JQ4k_JizvNNF9tQKrayYdxElx_4/s4096/7DD255FD-741B-4CD8-A73D-F4B1DF7097B3.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRuLsHgnrKWE9i8e1iqESZ26EhqV6FErITBPYpE46i5fdAMGUiPdqj3DA2otK8LQ9mzScheAh629oobPu6-LWm9ZanwkHpe5Z15kMBrKy_IT-iVc-WY-3AVOt1FHKU3s4nMAEPkzN6Q46tokM8R4oyln_F-JQ4k_JizvNNF9tQKrayYdxElx_4/w400-h300/7DD255FD-741B-4CD8-A73D-F4B1DF7097B3.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">After an electoral setback in 1963 he returned to parliament after the oh-so important 1967 independence elections and was sworn in as Minister of Health. That was a crucial time to be in charge of that Ministry. The demographic bomb – a topic he wrote extensively on – was being defused. And going through his speeches in that period – a good example is when the SSRNH was inaugurated in August 1969 – leaves us with the unmistaken impression of someone who thought very deeply about public health.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfSSqsHWN5n6afh4TdLjUxk-Cd6-jUgMnUvknF4BIQ31fIKoqLZfb1uNGBK_dRLpy_521EJWeClo6ESiIubJoQcLvjJeOeRCNU2mIEvw6IUPT7ZHIaZvwSeZn36nn1ninLbhsH2uFSjC4RPummDYqHS7yDnTNHE97hyVt_yD9URa9U186imEpI/s4096/0A558A78-5ABE-4508-A4DE-6D1A75D6D5F2.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfSSqsHWN5n6afh4TdLjUxk-Cd6-jUgMnUvknF4BIQ31fIKoqLZfb1uNGBK_dRLpy_521EJWeClo6ESiIubJoQcLvjJeOeRCNU2mIEvw6IUPT7ZHIaZvwSeZn36nn1ninLbhsH2uFSjC4RPummDYqHS7yDnTNHE97hyVt_yD9URa9U186imEpI/w400-h300/0A558A78-5ABE-4508-A4DE-6D1A75D6D5F2.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;">His next stop was a five-year stint at the Ministry of Economic Planning & Development ending in 1976. KJ again used his beginner’s mind to look at economic development and pioneered a new approach, launched the much talked about RDP and in the process, we learnt from Manou Bheenick’s excellent 1999 Memorial Lecture, transformed the ministry into a superministry.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE7D8-WLMI-Rv087d0d6esmwTAVLffMVYrlhm4nf9v8qnw1BqrCWMqA2YUjd418iwD8L8m7xi8AqeQO7emfNNG4OZXeqXfLK4k0-EN0xNdsCg7KIU3UsN6IWOdSE7SMpLQxlMR/s2048/38DB366D-0545-4340-82C0-DC975C49AC61.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1313" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE7D8-WLMI-Rv087d0d6esmwTAVLffMVYrlhm4nf9v8qnw1BqrCWMqA2YUjd418iwD8L8m7xi8AqeQO7emfNNG4OZXeqXfLK4k0-EN0xNdsCg7KIU3UsN6IWOdSE7SMpLQxlMR/w256-h400/38DB366D-0545-4340-82C0-DC975C49AC61.jpeg" width="256" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">World Bank President Robert McNamara <br />and KJ shared the view that bean-counting<br /> has little to do with development.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: left;">The Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs was KJ’s final cabinet position. Everybody knows who implemented LP’s 1976 electoral pledge for Free Secondary Education. What may be lesser known is who put it in the manifesto.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg522l-cZXG5GlZ0RFqKrMSJdPcIV1RuUbLFMALfWfDskiO0uu1YF4R7K_iikT2U1TByIrhA1hOAuKBstxO_e4ew2yG_XzaYhjvQ7hmCpY5PCUMuBj_E7rCq8AS9uVVmKbZyw9IiUCXX6N2MMl4tbFgcI1p_8wSXTuXOPjjlyxm3mXvQHi5Km4/s4096/06C5A08B-EF71-462F-B7AC-14AE130F0D8D.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg522l-cZXG5GlZ0RFqKrMSJdPcIV1RuUbLFMALfWfDskiO0uu1YF4R7K_iikT2U1TByIrhA1hOAuKBstxO_e4ew2yG_XzaYhjvQ7hmCpY5PCUMuBj_E7rCq8AS9uVVmKbZyw9IiUCXX6N2MMl4tbFgcI1p_8wSXTuXOPjjlyxm3mXvQHi5Km4/w400-h300/06C5A08B-EF71-462F-B7AC-14AE130F0D8D.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">The then 45-year old considered it his biggest challenge yet. Many schools were built, the MIE produced schoolbooks that were more suitable for the 10-year old nation and several components of the education sector were integrated into a coherent whole to help push Mauritius to greater heights.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRqKw3svwwnDLq3Ibd0ptIfTEzgZMfp9N7uVK7zAD8HIJZD8zmreuQZMnutcnZ2VLDcZLuSk_uAeZuzhqofUYHy5m07-GYjYbYcVwdFpr0QwbHB4rPJxgeLhnBjl7LuS8KZVJ4qiF8uKP6N6nLhXLmN2oqONOge-VLLV9nXgUHc3P1UNL1dFmg/s4096/619E8DC7-91DC-45B8-919E-65B9223FDF79.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRqKw3svwwnDLq3Ibd0ptIfTEzgZMfp9N7uVK7zAD8HIJZD8zmreuQZMnutcnZ2VLDcZLuSk_uAeZuzhqofUYHy5m07-GYjYbYcVwdFpr0QwbHB4rPJxgeLhnBjl7LuS8KZVJ4qiF8uKP6N6nLhXLmN2oqONOge-VLLV9nXgUHc3P1UNL1dFmg/w400-h300/619E8DC7-91DC-45B8-919E-65B9223FDF79.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>Widely considered as the best Education Minister Mauritius has had, his hard work in that capacity has been acknowledged by many players in the sector and his interesting ideas are still being looked at.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ZSGsj9xvoo7_lu53zICr-p2oasBfpxOJ6-asPBxg_goYW1Rdd50L5u7larlj7qB69DfsD7WIZxAn8hpqIWzSo25lBA9_mbTSXuajpe8zNhFcZFqfgku1lIm2Aea9_ygW4ECd/s1705/04108EC8-EF74-4C27-A439-CF961D267B81.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1705" data-original-width="1499" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ZSGsj9xvoo7_lu53zICr-p2oasBfpxOJ6-asPBxg_goYW1Rdd50L5u7larlj7qB69DfsD7WIZxAn8hpqIWzSo25lBA9_mbTSXuajpe8zNhFcZFqfgku1lIm2Aea9_ygW4ECd/w351-h400/04108EC8-EF74-4C27-A439-CF961D267B81.jpeg" width="351" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">His excellent work has been recognised by many.<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj1ai3DozjoWCUCI5SxdqG3ttVKLS7B5TcMOXLGWowKGGhnlMndwWDzbdQW3CphbgEmTKfB4hjcPA2nKgV_PVIxX4zxw9_GbzfIWF0ej81bs5RlrjzJX_K3M9TvcLMPyIhJWrM7pSpYhKGADkCWMe_y1FgB6RYIYUhbvctpYaq8QjAssFnFWVk/s4096/57D39F99-B930-4251-A29D-33BCD41086CA.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj1ai3DozjoWCUCI5SxdqG3ttVKLS7B5TcMOXLGWowKGGhnlMndwWDzbdQW3CphbgEmTKfB4hjcPA2nKgV_PVIxX4zxw9_GbzfIWF0ej81bs5RlrjzJX_K3M9TvcLMPyIhJWrM7pSpYhKGADkCWMe_y1FgB6RYIYUhbvctpYaq8QjAssFnFWVk/w400-h300/57D39F99-B930-4251-A29D-33BCD41086CA.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">Kher Jagatsingh has lived a very meaningful life. He took on the mighty, educated the masses and strengthened the Labour Party with his off the charts organisational skills, charm and intelligence before delivering solid performances in three different ministries at junctions that were crucial in the history of a young nation. A non-negligible part of this impressive track record can be traced back to the fact that he and his biggest fan, the great leader of the LP, happened to be on the same wavelength on most national issues. These included progressive and sustainable taxation, the FPTP system, the importance of a good welfare state and the necessity of building great teams so as to be in the best possible position to handle difficult problems.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFUcvibH9r5JwEfZm2R_M7Z_UnpBRsVL15Q4nD3p_LxS-pDz0Brg7f5f03VwhBUZywJoAAOsQqK1wZJoDTdhItUgdpfr0_nIO_f7N-1ytWoUutiyOLe63azWLkWoSFW4_nbKfs71IFsHWtNY5139lFQjCQcrA1yEfvldv81tKRK_-1oNKdn1PS/s4096/8EE1A602-8FC3-4C42-92EE-C119F979F99E.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFUcvibH9r5JwEfZm2R_M7Z_UnpBRsVL15Q4nD3p_LxS-pDz0Brg7f5f03VwhBUZywJoAAOsQqK1wZJoDTdhItUgdpfr0_nIO_f7N-1ytWoUutiyOLe63azWLkWoSFW4_nbKfs71IFsHWtNY5139lFQjCQcrA1yEfvldv81tKRK_-1oNKdn1PS/w400-h300/8EE1A602-8FC3-4C42-92EE-C119F979F99E.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">But a lot of his success came from working on himself, travelling extensively, meeting the great men and women of his time (Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Chou-En Lai and l’Abbé Pierre during a 17-month 1950s trip), not letting too much schooling get in the way of a first-rate education (a precious perspective in these times of disrupted schooling), putting in long hours and staying very humble and empty. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1GaHtTd-tdmFYotq4pvJivrNSFqaMUar5of5hX1HlVIq6GuHLdn9VwkaeI8C-JRMP_J1ghjB2tNWtgewjye9jlpGPuIdqSBBdy4KlMb1ANJzC528F3XrQA5GPpe_S79GGTF6sZZL0vqcdFNMkCAI6f-uIbIOgNo7N5O2uDHnH8k0ck1YfUcxz/s4096/7B198CBA-BA5C-46A1-A532-2E11945B24FC.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1GaHtTd-tdmFYotq4pvJivrNSFqaMUar5of5hX1HlVIq6GuHLdn9VwkaeI8C-JRMP_J1ghjB2tNWtgewjye9jlpGPuIdqSBBdy4KlMb1ANJzC528F3XrQA5GPpe_S79GGTF6sZZL0vqcdFNMkCAI6f-uIbIOgNo7N5O2uDHnH8k0ck1YfUcxz/w400-h300/7B198CBA-BA5C-46A1-A532-2E11945B24FC.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHW9UsoamLgjhyphenhyphenH0lgCJk0-d64Cu4PE9O94nF7j5ZJur9Q5nJjMSlLHhwkSD02i8uJfZ8y4eMCLhjENtedgcvVkiwbhIpFjs2zfD3e9rumQNs7VG6NjvzuziamEMtxiglK08cB/s1712/BB68413F-051F-41D1-9200-3FA4ADBEB077.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1214" data-original-width="1712" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHW9UsoamLgjhyphenhyphenH0lgCJk0-d64Cu4PE9O94nF7j5ZJur9Q5nJjMSlLHhwkSD02i8uJfZ8y4eMCLhjENtedgcvVkiwbhIpFjs2zfD3e9rumQNs7VG6NjvzuziamEMtxiglK08cB/w400-h284/BB68413F-051F-41D1-9200-3FA4ADBEB077.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Keeping the fan base happy.<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwSfsjRPKag-N_FpjJtO_Bl9Gcfj5p-NvofkrIWGEEnwwlA29IkYKoOCBJOV7LDBu_4AORQVX8S4lj1eD3zkxr5-CjlCi1M41Ej0mRtuzBCwUZHmiGUAoDBo-OtxO7KuwXnxYGWx9UXU54lpOfTuh94TvxpSaJIxQJLAw7cudt6XoPA6XUA9m9/s4096/AA8EF045-049C-4DA1-B25C-B4E527EEFA76.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwSfsjRPKag-N_FpjJtO_Bl9Gcfj5p-NvofkrIWGEEnwwlA29IkYKoOCBJOV7LDBu_4AORQVX8S4lj1eD3zkxr5-CjlCi1M41Ej0mRtuzBCwUZHmiGUAoDBo-OtxO7KuwXnxYGWx9UXU54lpOfTuh94TvxpSaJIxQJLAw7cudt6XoPA6XUA9m9/w400-h300/AA8EF045-049C-4DA1-B25C-B4E527EEFA76.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHM-Bzehn-camwPehWzrgy10UUnfX9P0p2exEmA1aIobIOh2gBiin1AhHmXub_lpNa1JZfVLg-BjQS6e4MKSlRvEviGn1b4Lzzmu48K_vgn-qc8GBlMA2ib1RcBJQ-y-QqnK1v/s2041/FF03CD1E-9531-4875-B3E6-5CBF8EBC47F4.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1217" data-original-width="2041" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHM-Bzehn-camwPehWzrgy10UUnfX9P0p2exEmA1aIobIOh2gBiin1AhHmXub_lpNa1JZfVLg-BjQS6e4MKSlRvEviGn1b4Lzzmu48K_vgn-qc8GBlMA2ib1RcBJQ-y-QqnK1v/w400-h239/FF03CD1E-9531-4875-B3E6-5CBF8EBC47F4.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">SKJ with his comrade-in-arms and fellow pillar of <br />the Labour Party, Sir Harold Walter (on the right), <br />in the VIP Lounge at Plaisance Airport.</td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAjUgd7GiqqL4-99z4KzET9C-3GoKlRvln7_TxuM4r75cvRx8hAHUO1cgs7j9bTt0nKuyVbDSo5PMUNwq9C9OC5BVO7yahhhhfzcVXrnI7mFqiXzT9_y913xEHD-7qP01c_fHU/s2048/701DD442-7CCD-40C1-804B-20BB826007B6.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><br /><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1323" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAjUgd7GiqqL4-99z4KzET9C-3GoKlRvln7_TxuM4r75cvRx8hAHUO1cgs7j9bTt0nKuyVbDSo5PMUNwq9C9OC5BVO7yahhhhfzcVXrnI7mFqiXzT9_y913xEHD-7qP01c_fHU/w259-h400/701DD442-7CCD-40C1-804B-20BB826007B6.jpeg" width="259" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Petals of Dust which gives us a good<br />idea of how much KJ loved his fellow<br />compatriots was published in 1981.</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglvNgHAGQJB13Mw8Zzk7SIASIzsncn2TkZ7yXr_aSRqFJ1xzF0mOvVSbqiX9q4niqUDkk3K18T2PtdLYT35pR_dDts58C2Wo9qKkDPtBRFjjbJON7FhXZif_axhcFVN8FP5Hn27roPvgQZOtH1Mq-Ndk4AnTTQTtwtHiSBod_wG5UTUKqEZxyu/s4096/900CFA9E-BF94-45BE-B725-C227195B21E0.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4096" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglvNgHAGQJB13Mw8Zzk7SIASIzsncn2TkZ7yXr_aSRqFJ1xzF0mOvVSbqiX9q4niqUDkk3K18T2PtdLYT35pR_dDts58C2Wo9qKkDPtBRFjjbJON7FhXZif_axhcFVN8FP5Hn27roPvgQZOtH1Mq-Ndk4AnTTQTtwtHiSBod_wG5UTUKqEZxyu/w400-h300/900CFA9E-BF94-45BE-B725-C227195B21E0.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-66965406269205027552021-07-04T08:41:00.014+04:002021-10-26T22:14:55.562+04:00Dis Plas Kot Bizin Komisyon Danket<p>Byin bizin komisyon danket dan sa ban plas swivan la parski sa fin kut nu estra ser kom pei ek ena ladan fin mem fer nu koste ek fayit. Bizin komisyon danket pu nu sosyete konpran kin arive ek ki nu met ban zafer an plas pu ki zame sa pa arive ankor. Dayer Ptr ti propoz en Economic Offenders Act dan so manifest electoral pu eleksyon zeneral 2019.</p><p>1. <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2020/05/mauritius-should-showcase-sithanen-flat.html">Linpak flat tax 15% Sithanen</a> lor sitiasyon mari katastrofik dan ki Moris retruv li. Dapre se ki ti pe dir dan kanpayn elektoral 2005 ek apre (li pu zener en krwasans 8%) GDP Moris pu 2020 ti bizin 914 milyar rupi. Tiena COVID-19 an 2020 non? Pena problem anu pran prozeksyon GDP pu 2019, 837 milyar rupi, pu kav tir COVID dan diskisyon. GDP aktyel pu 2019 ti 498 milyar rupi. Donk zis pu 2019 mank 339 milyar prodiksyon domestik (pu gayn en lide, pandemi fin kut nu 100 milyar rupi GDP an 2020). Ant 2006 ek 2019 ti mank 1,780 milyar rupi GDP u 312 fwa sa 5.7 milyar ki fek pey Betamax la. U preske 18 fwa seki pandemi fin kut nu an 2020. Ava bon osi kone kisana in profit plis sa striktir taksasyon insutenab la ek ban lezot desizyon insanse.</p><p>2. Kifer sevings fin ekrule dan Moris kumsa ek an plis zame li fin refer? Zame fin ariv sa dernye swasant an malgre ki plizir gro siklon in deza kraz nu lekonomi ek nun travers dan de sok petrolye. Sevings se meyer indikasyon rezilians en lekonomi ek en ingredian esansyel kreasyon larises. Ala en perspektiv istorik <a href="https://youtu.be/YrGd0kKcOZI">https://youtu.be/YrGd0kKcOZI</a>.</p><p>3. <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2010/01/ceb-should-have-produced-all-our.html">Linpak ban kontra IPP lor Moris</a> (kalite ler, lanvironman, konpetitivite, stratezi, etc). Navin Ramgoolam ti truv zot abizif ek an Novam 2007 li ti dir ban morisyin ki sa pa kav kontinye ek ki li ti pu sanz so non si li ti pu les sa ban kontra la kontinye abiz lepep. Mem lepok Paul Berenger usi ti truv ban randman ki ban IPP ti pe fer ek sa ban kontra la tro elve ek ti propoz en randman 10%. Kav sa si ti tro elve. Resaman Ramgoolam fin kalifye kontra Betamax de ‘an bon e di form’. Li a kav vin fer nu konpran kuma tu sa ban kontra IPP la diferan ek parey. Berenger usi kav vin eksplike.</p><p>4. <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2009/02/stupid-before-event.html">Pert ejing Air Mauritius</a>. Zame nun kone kin vreman pase. Purtan MK in perdi buku kas. Par milyar. Par kont ti tan buku deklarasyon sirprenan. Komisyon danket ava ekler nu. Li kav usi dir nu kifer nu konpayni aviasyon otan dan difikilte zordi ek egzamin ban dezisyon kuma Air Corridor ek asa avion.</p><p>5. <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2010/11/stc-hedging-mess-is-rs17-billion-bigger.html">Pert ejing STC</a>. Byin drol sa parski STC ti ena en Automatic Pricing Mechanism a lepok e donk li pa ti ena pu fer ejing. Bizin kon tu ban detay lor la i konpri ki kalite kontra finansye ti servi. 4.7 milyar rupi ti perdi ladan.</p><p>6. <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2021/06/world-bank-not-shutting-down-yet.html">Leta nu system sante piblik</a>. Avan Covid-19 pasyan dializ ti pe pas buku mizer. Apre plizir fin desede resaman. Ena en komisyon danket lor la me ena plizir lot problem ki revin a la sirfas konstaman. Li pu bon konpran byin parski nun truv rol mari inportan ki nu system sante piblik fin zwe pu gard nu vivan dan pandemi ek pu konpran kifer otan pasyan ankor bizin al swiv tretman deor. Ti bizin osi kone ki ban politisyin u zot fami ki ena kik lintere dan ban system sante prive pu evalye ban konfli dintere reel u potansyel.</p><p>7. <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-low-taxes-has-degraded-our.html">Leta nu lanvironman</a> (i konpri kalite ler nu respire). Bizin konpran ki fin ariv nu lanvironman depi lindepandans. Pe kup montayn, tuy sovsuri par milye, kup en ta estra zoli pye, prodir tro buku dese ek nu fin vin mari vilnerab sak fwa gayn de gut lapli.</p><p>8. <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2017/05/lepep-not-mandated-to-sell-any-part-of.html">Tentativ privatizasyon CWA ek CHC</a>. Bizin rant an detay ladan. Bizin ran piblik rapor labank mondyal lor sekter dilo pu lepep konpran kifer ti pe rod don kontra afermaz en konpayni prive. Bizin kone komye kas konpayni la ti pu gayne sak fwa lapli tonbe. Ek kone kifer in les sa zafer la dren nu ban lenerzi nasyonal pandan otan letan. Mem zafer pu CHCL.</p><p>9. <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2017/02/lev-pake-reste-turns-10.html">Lev pake reste</a>. Bizin kone ki egzateman ti arive an fevriye 2007 ler minis finans ti pe rod fer santaz ar promye minis akoz nominasyon guverner labank Moris. Eski nu pei ti rul san minis finans pandan plizir zur ki en zafer ki pa sipoze arive?</p><p>10. Inplikasyon <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2014/12/mauritius-says-no-to-wicked-plan-of.html">proze politik lalyans Ptr/MMM</a> an 2014. Ek sirtu ki bizin fer pu elimin/redwir sa kalite risk la.</p>Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-71310918495359422882021-06-04T17:16:00.005+04:002022-10-24T11:10:00.789+04:00World Bank Not Shutting Down Yet, Publishes Another Sloppy Report InsteadThe Country Economic Memorandum (CEM) for Mauritius that came out recently is typical of the dumb reports that the World Bank (WB) dishes out non-stop. Skimming through it immediately brings back to mind Lee Kuan Yew’s famous observation:<div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>What Harry Said </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>About the WB</b></div><div>“The World Bank report’s conclusion are part of the culture of America and, by extension, of international institutions. It had to present its findings in a bland and universalizable way, which I find unsatisfying because it doesn’t grapple with the real problems. It makes the hopeful assumption that all men are equal, that people all over the world are the same. They are not.”</div><div><br /></div><div>The WB is a controversial institution that should be closed for the good of humanity as it has messed up several countries. Or at least converted into a food court where falafel can become a reality with a good enough circular migration programme. Take Indonesia for instance. Sebastian Mallaby reports on page 190 of his excellent <i><a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2009/03/dodolands-banker.html">The World’s Banker</a></i> – trade unionists and other progressive voices in Mauritius should definitely grab a copy – that the first thing that James Wolfensohn, the WB President at the time of a 1998 trip to Indonesia, told Dennis de Tray, its country director, was “You’ve really [expletive deleted] this country up”. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>What the World Bank </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>is Particularly Good At</b></div><div>Definitely creating famine. Like in Malawi. Google up one 2007 New York Times article (<a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-malawi-ended-extreme-poverty.html">Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts</a>) and you’ll find out about another big poop nicely summed up by Jeffrey Sachs as “the donors took away the role of government and the disasters mounted”. The CEM wants to do that too. It has “priority actions that could be launched immediately under the FY21/22 budget to kickstart the process”. That’s interfering with our sovereignty if you ask me and it’s serious enough to get the local WB office closed down. It’s a lot worse than the episode with the WHO representative at the beginning of the year. The other thing is that we’ve been told that the CEM has been crafted by 20 experts. Experts in what? Massive Economic Poop? Thanks, but no thanks. Been there, done that with Bretton-Woods Ali (Mansoor) who told Mauritius back in 2006 after getting the job of Financial Secretary from his university buddy and toxic bean-counter that he would be adapting the practices of the WB that have worked elsewhere to our country. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Driving Public Finances </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Over a Cliff is Another Core WB Skill</b></div><div>This essentially took the form of an extreme version of trickle-down economics that was supposed to generate GDP growth rates that would oscillate around 8% by slashing already-low corporate and top income tax rates to 15% flat. As expected we never got 8% growth in any of the last 14 years ending in 2019 which is <a href="https://youtu.be/H-4941mkU58">before COVID-19</a> started creating trouble. In fact and as the chart shows we didn’t even get 7% or 6% in that period (the average being barely above 4%). No wonder then that 67-year-old Sithanen has been out of parliament for 11 of these 14 years (79%) and that too because we didn’t have <a href="https://youtu.be/_yhIPgka144">recall elections</a> back in 2006 (we unfortunately still don’t and PJ would make his first serious bit of history by adding them to our constitution). </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEuETtQ7yWHz13nYs4b48zPl4-8nD-vVX22E-kJ6wJnsxBy437gaTvwdQAmElVM-aJppG6qDvGWlNRtoFQ-5d-tQi-NhxS9K-HZEqhDVbQYepa209s3csqcHKiS-sEf1F1rxyK/s1617/C3DBF1EB-6F8F-4888-84B3-9565FB031038.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1240" data-original-width="1617" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEuETtQ7yWHz13nYs4b48zPl4-8nD-vVX22E-kJ6wJnsxBy437gaTvwdQAmElVM-aJppG6qDvGWlNRtoFQ-5d-tQi-NhxS9K-HZEqhDVbQYepa209s3csqcHKiS-sEf1F1rxyK/w400-h306/C3DBF1EB-6F8F-4888-84B3-9565FB031038.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b>Good At Killing Savings Too</b></div><div>We know <a href="https://youtu.be/YrGd0kKcOZI">what happened to our savings</a> after bank interest was taxed, double-digit inflation was created and our rupee was rapidly depreciated in the first few years of Paglanomics. According to recent and conservative calculations the savings missing between 2006 and 2019 exceed 1 trillion rupees.* That’s a million million rupees. Speaking about a trillion rupees did you know that according to Sithanen/Mansoor trickle-down policy our <a href="https://youtu.be/YrGd0kKcOZI">GDP was supposed to cross that threshold</a> by the end of this year? Without COVID-19 national output would have been around Rs557 billion. In other words there would have been a GDP shortfall of nearly half-a-trillion rupees for one year. And it would have got worse every year as long as we stood on the wrong side of compounding. All of this obviously makes the job of our Finance Minister really simple. </div><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Padayachy’s Easy Decisions</b></div><div>Bring back corporate taxes to at least 30% which is roughly where they were before bean-counters started messing up Mauritius really badly with their economic snake-oil (aka WB best practices). So that we defuse the debt bomb and government doesn’t sit on its hands (while keeping busy with unnecessary distractions like the annoyance law and the ICTA proposal) and ruin the country along with its world-famous environment. Introduce a wealth tax. Very large dividends of several hundreds of millions of rupees should be taxed at 95%. End the wealth-destroying depreciation of our national currency and the corresponding bean-counting with the SRF. Solve real problems. There are quite a few of them. Don’t confuse wastage with GDP/revenue shortfall. By the way, there’s wastage in the private sector too. Or screw-ups with reforms. And...</div></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Solidarity Never a </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Substitute For Sustainability</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">When tax rates were 70% public finances were sustainable and we built a decent welfare state. Still there was plenty of social work that was going on because we were a left-for-dead country and the economic seas of the 1970s were quite choppy. These were done in an era with no social media. Plenty is still being done away from spotlights. But the current tax structure is simply not sustainable. <a href="https://youtu.be/LqQ4T770_qk">No amount of solidarity can make up for that.</a> Unless an expensive villa, a bundle of hard currencies, an optional dialysis machine, cleaner air, upward social mobility, a respect for nature plus a million of other things is delivered along with each food pack. <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2020/05/mauritius-should-showcase-sithanen-flat.html">There was already Rs1.8 trillion of GDP missing between 2006 and 2019.</a> It’s way better for the 10% richest households (and for everybody else) to get 27.8% of a larger cake like in 1991/2 than 31.2% of the smallest of cakes that’s incompatible with nature like in 2012. Which is why in 2011 wealthy French saw their dreams come true: pay more taxes. Wealthy Germans had asked for the same thing two years earlier. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Jagatsingh, S., Budget 2021/22, Republic of Mauritius, Analyst Report, forthcoming. </div><div><br /></div>Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-21578098367081720892020-03-29T15:55:00.000+04:002020-03-30T14:30:11.819+04:00Padayachy is Two Budgets Late<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
He should have presented one early in January to put back corporate and personal tax rates on a sustainable and progressive path – raise maximum personal rates to 40% or more and the corresponding numbers for corporates not below 30% – because fourteen years of trickle-down economics were about to send our economy crashing into a wall. As chart 1 shows GDP for 2020 was expected to reach Rs530 billion before Covid-19 appeared on the scene instead of the Rs918 billion needed to keep the regressive tax code. That’s a shortfall of Rs388 billion. 2021 was supposed to be the year our GDP crosses the Rs1 trillion mark. That was not going to happen and our economic output would have still fell short of that milestone by a lot even in 2024. In fact the gaps between the two variables would have kept on increasing with GDP in 2024 less than half where the Sithanen flat tax had promised to bring it.<br />
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<b>Rs78bn of Government Revenue </b></div>
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<b>Missing in 2020, Rs89bn in 2021</b></div>
These shortfalls can be translated into missing government revenue once we pick a reasonable number for the latter expressed as a percentage of GDP. Let’s be conservative and pick 20% - the actual budget estimate for 2020 is 23%. As chart 2 shows there was going to be Rs78bn of revenue missing in the government coffers this year if tax rates were not brought back to sustainable levels (the figure for 2019 is Rs67bn). This amount which is roughly 15% of our pre-Covid-19 2020 GDP could have been used to take our public health system to a whole new level. After it was seriously patched up. Weren’t we recently reminded by the President of the Renal Disease Patients Association that there are on average three dialysis machines in each dialysis centre that’s not operational?<br />
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<b>A Second Budget in March</b></div>
Then this month he would have presented a massive supplementary one to deal with the Covid-19 problem. A bit like what Singapore did. Instead Padayachy wasted precious time by putting the dumb and controversial Doing Business rankings (DB) on a higher pedestal. For sure he cannot talk about average growth rates of the past five years – the sole purpose of bringing tax rates to 15% was to get 8% growth rates but which we never did in any of these years – as they have been the lowest of the past thirty-five years. The snag is that as chart 3 shows changes in our DB are uncorrelated with our economic growth. And do we need to even bother calculating its correlation with the conditions in which several of our public medical staff are working to keep us safe from the pandemic?<br />
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Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-29186380679079693662019-12-30T17:38:00.000+04:002019-12-30T17:58:26.769+04:00How to Make Saying No to Drugs Easier<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>I’ve never abused alcohol. I’ve never done drugs. </i></div>
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Halle Berry revealing her biggest beauty secret </div>
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on Entertainment Tonight, 2010. </div>
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<i>The best policy on drugs for yourself is no first-use. </i></div>
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Mark Rutte, Dutch Prime Minister, </div>
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to high-school students in Ottawa, Canada, 2018</div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Looking at the experience of one famous scientist with mind-altering substances will provide important clues. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>Meet Richard Alpert, </b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>Anxious Harvard Professor</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A psychologist born in 1931 who considered himself to be very mediocre but was driven enough to land an assistant-professorship at Harvard in 1958, be very successful by any objective measure and who started collecting things which included antiques, a sailboat and a Cessna 172 plane. But Alpert (RA) feels his life is too empty because it lacks enough meaning and the concepts he had learned and was now teaching didn't free him from his neurosis. Trying </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">marijuana a few years earlier thanks to his first patient and in an irregular fashion after that didn't help either. Neither did spending $26,000 and five years in psychoanalysis. Or drinking heavily. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>Enter Timothy Leary, Disruptor</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">RA</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"> bumps into Leary (TL) at a nearby research centre where the latter had been hired after making quite an impression on the centre's director in Italy. They become drinking buddies and a couple of years later decide to travel south with the first stop in Mexico. Tim gets there first and eventually tries nine Tionanactyl, the Magic Mushrooms of Mexico, and tells his friend that the six-hour experience is a bigger eye-opener than his fifteen years as a shrink. Their plan is scrapped after TL realises that traveling inside his mind would be far more interesting.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>Flesh of the Gods Synthesised</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">A few months later RA is invited by Leary to try 10mg of psilocybin, a synthetic of the Magic Mushroom crafted by Sandoz, and soon enough he sees the different layers of his ego flash in front of him one after the other not unlike what people who've had near-death experiences have reported. His body then disappears bit by bit. He starts to panic as he thinks he's dying because nothing in his upbringing has prepared him for this. But he notices that his awareness is still there witnessing everything with eerie calmness even though the body is gone. They take some psilocybin again weekly a few more times and also give it to a wide range of healthy people asking them to fill a survey at the end. Patterns start emerging highlighting the importance of set and setting (expectation and environment) in conditioning the reactions to the drug. But the main problem is that these new states of consciousness don’t last for more than a few hours. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Shifting to LSD </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>And Taking it More Often</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">RA then tried LSD, a more powerful hallucinogen, after TL had sampled it. He even took doses every four hours – about 2,400 micrograms every day – for three weeks with five other people. This allowed them to plateau at a very high level but they were frustrated to come down </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">a few days after they stopped taking the drug. At around the same time they were introduced to relevant eastern spiritual literature. A 2,500-year old book, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, stood out. It had been </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">used for centuries by Lamas to help go through the 49 days between death and reincarnation by describing them and surprisingly these turned out to be extremely accurate accounts of their drug trips. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">This prompted RA to think about going to India to find out one of the guys who knew what these other forms of awareness were. Even though </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">TL and a few other people who were experimenting with psychedelics had done that but hadn’t returned with all the crucial answers</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">. </span></div>
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<b>Not As Good</b></div>
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<b>As Meditation </b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Alpert eventually tags along with a guy he had walked through some LSD trips and who was off finding holy men in the east. Their journey began by looking for Sufis in Teheran, found one but didn't feel anything. They then headed to Afghanistan, that Graveyard of Empires, then to India visiting Benares and Kashmir but they were still searching although one holy man they had given LSD told them that it was 'good, but not as good as meditation'. The despair had become huge – RD had even stopped taking LSD so as not to make it any worse – </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">and they were now in a restaurant in Kathmandu on their way to Japan when a guy, Bhagwan Dass (BD), walks in and sits at their table. As he feels that guy 'knows' he follows him back to India and eventually meets BD's Guru, Maharaji Neem Karoli Baba (NKB). </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>Where's the Medicine?</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">NKB is somewhere between a devotee of Hanuman and the deity himself. The American quickly understands that the Guru basically has a copy of his life and thoughts in his head. So for example when RA thinks of asking him about LSD, some hours later a messenger brings him to Maharaji. The saint eventually gets Alpert to open his bottle of LSD and put three 305-microgram pills – a very big dose – into his palm before swallowing them. But RA is stunned that NKB has no reaction whatsoever for the whole day. That's because the guy has no ego so there are no layers to decompose. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>The Training Can Start</b></span></div>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Our psychologist then gets a solid training in different strands of yoga, goes back to the United States, returns to India and soon becomes Ram Dass (RD) or servant of God. A few years later, in 1971, he publishes Be Here Now (BHN), an iconic book which chronicles his personal transformation, contains a guide to yoga and meditation as well as an interesting list of references. We're now in 1972 and a teenager who had started smoking marijuana regularly two years earlier will soon be heading to the expensive Reed College, a private university that was on Leary's college tour to popularise the use of LSD in spiritual discovery succinctly captured by the famous mantra "turn on, tune in, drop out". </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVe_SWhjsrYcBn8mN6bRz23YPSHSg55OmAga68vk7TXgTzJITm2XpWwD5nu_7U1R_-M9n0iKPn1-pkMSjDv2Y1M_T_e623_GJ2EElANBgB2NrKHX2zHRVe4JpgJ6wulHraKgbq/s1600/F9F187D4-79FA-4FBF-8407-9DBF9F85FDC8.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1585" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVe_SWhjsrYcBn8mN6bRz23YPSHSg55OmAga68vk7TXgTzJITm2XpWwD5nu_7U1R_-M9n0iKPn1-pkMSjDv2Y1M_T_e623_GJ2EElANBgB2NrKHX2zHRVe4JpgJ6wulHraKgbq/s400/F9F187D4-79FA-4FBF-8407-9DBF9F85FDC8.jpeg" width="395" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Steve Jobs said this profound book transformed him.</td></tr>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>More Meditation Than Acid</b> </span></div>
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That teenager is Steve Jobs (SJ) and soon after arriving at Reed, as Issacson tells us in the iBio, he befriends Daniel Kottke after discovering that Be Here Now had had a profound effect on both of them and that they dropped acid (take LSD). Jobs and Kottke share more books on eastern spirituality – these will later play a large role in informing the sleek design of Apple products – and set up a meditation room where they appear to be implementing recommendations from BHN. They ingest LSD there but not as often as they meditate.<br />
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<b>Copying Ram Dass</b></div>
A couple of years later when SJ is at Atari he organises a trip to India to find his guru and get enlightened essentially repeating the journey of Ram Dass. He goes to several interesting spots including Manali and Nainatal where NKB used to hang out. Unfortunately for Jobs the saint had left his body a few months before his arrival but he gets the opportunity to visit Haridwar right in the middle of the Kumbh Mela. In all SJ spent seven months in India. That's long enough for her to figure out what to do with him. In 2015 Kottke was asked if Jobs took psychedelics after Apple was launched. He replied in the negative saying SJ focused all of his energy on making his company successful.<br />
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<b>Iceland Rolls Back </b></div>
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<b>Substance Abuse</b></div>
An interesting article in The Atlantic informs us that in 1998 42% of teenagers in Iceland aged 15 and 16 had been drunk the month before, 23% lit up cigarettes every day and 17% had tried cannabis. That was besides being among the heaviest teen drinkers in Europe. Thanks to adapting ground-breaking research by Harvey Milkman from Denver, Colorado the island nation was able within two decades to cut these numbers to 5%, 3% and 7%. How did they achieve so much so fast? By drilling good and frequently-updated data from questionnaires put to their teenagers that led the authorities to design after-school classes of music, art, hip hop and martial arts. This provided healthy stress-coping mechanisms to the surveyed to prove that life was fun. Parents were brought into the loop via some ingenious ways as time spent with them was along with frequency of organised activities participated per week two crucial factors that determined whether a teenager had one or more unhealthy habits. </div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>Mauritius Can Too</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">We should note that marijuana served as a gateway drug for both Ram Dass and Steve Jobs. LSD and other drugs amplify your senses which means highs are higher than in a normal and drug-free life but lows are lower as sketched in the chart. Lows can be fatal for substance abusers – Whitney Houston (WH), Chester Bennington (CB) and Robin Williams (RW) to name just three. Meditation and yoga can provide interesting highs without the dangerous lows at very little or no cost. Introducing them in schools as early as possible will solve problems now and later especially if they are accompanied by a drastic toning down of rote-learning – a fuel for substance abuse – and interesting after-class activities that hook our teens on healthy journeys.</span></div>
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<b>References</b></div>
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1. Be<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"> Here Now, Ram Dass, 1971. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);">2. Steve Jobs, Walter Issacson, 2011.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);">3. Dying To Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary, documentary, 2014. </span><br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">4. How Iceland Got Teens to Say No to Drugs, The Atlantic, January 19, 2017. </span></div>
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Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-57222384807952081302019-11-05T23:01:00.001+04:002020-03-08T14:30:16.835+04:00Sithanen Statements That Don't Survive A Fact-Check<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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1. <b>No country invests more than 50% of their reserves in gold.</b> <b>Saying otherwise is pure folly (2009).</b> Really?<br />
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2. <b>We’ve been hit by triple external shocks – sugar, textile and oil (end of 2005 or early 2006).</b> Sugar was already a sunset industry in 2005 representing <a href="http://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2017/09/rip-sugar.html">a mere 4% of the economy</a> or half of what it accounted for twelve years earlier. The contraction in the textile industry was reaching its end in 2005 after 22,660 jobs had been lost between 2001 and 2004. The rise in the price of oil was different from those of the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 in that it was demand-driven while those of the seventies were supply-driven. Furthermore by 2005 the efficiency with which we use oil had increased by quite a bit. The rise in the price of that commodity was in fact a big plus in the sense that it brought in a lot more revenue through VAT and the automatic pricing mechanism (APM).<br />
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3. <b>We shouldn’t put someone who doesn’t know how to calculate debt and the link between growth and tax rates in charge of the Ministry of Finance (2009).</b> He made this statement when it was looking increasingly likely that he might be replaced as Finance Minister (FM) – perfectly understandable after doing so much damage to the economy. There is definitely a link between taxes and growth but the link is mostly that taxes don't hurt growth if they are below 70% but above 25%. There's no advantages to be had from lowering taxes from like 25% to 15% flat like he did in the mid-2000s.<br />
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4. <b>We should be able to clip growth rates of 7/8% by 2008 (2005).</b> As chart 2 shows we never got these kinds of growth rates. In fact average growth rates have been about half the 8% growth rate promised by the bean-counter with growth rates of the past eight consecutive years below 4%.<br />
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5. <b>I am worried about inequality</b> <b>(Ongoing worry).</b> Let's look at how the share of GDP for groups of households changed after each of his stint. The household budget survey, done every five years, which ended in 1997 or year and a half after the end of his first term shows – see chart 3 – that all households except the richest saw their share fall with the poorest being hit the hardest. That too after pensions were doubled by Ramgoolam after his landslide victory in 1995. <br />
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The picture for five years of his flat tax that ended in 2012 shows more or less the same kind of pattern. The more vulnerable of the household groups got clobbered the strongest. Talk is cheap. <a href="https://youtu.be/uOsB54OMCc8">He's worried about inequality.</a> </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKoU-FWLqc3c_RwvsDgCaduTxowNoHb843-KIVMazWe5L3eWGPEPVFFUkERLJbynNg_6nKeq_lHIp8Q6ZYT6rP57DhoXUNhX436fS4m1VAbQy1KQMlzmQuPQBeavtd_ALvawCz/s1600/554990EA-3633-42F9-A13F-3889A6D60151.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKoU-FWLqc3c_RwvsDgCaduTxowNoHb843-KIVMazWe5L3eWGPEPVFFUkERLJbynNg_6nKeq_lHIp8Q6ZYT6rP57DhoXUNhX436fS4m1VAbQy1KQMlzmQuPQBeavtd_ALvawCz/s400/554990EA-3633-42F9-A13F-3889A6D60151.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
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6. <b>We created an average of 10,000 jobs thanks to the reforms between 2005 and 2010 (2010 and after).</b> We need to wonder what kind of jobs were created for <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2019/09/what-did-trees-in-beau-vallon-and-our.html">savings to maintain its freefall</a> and for growth to stay so low for so long. Have another look at chart 2.<br />
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7. <b>The stimulus package saved 4,700 jobs (2009). </b>Why do you need a stimulus package after you say that your reforms are creating 10,000 jobs every year or about 5,000 in each six-month interval? You just have to sit on your hands and let the economy work for you. We know how controversial this stimulus package has been. </div>
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8. <b>We’ll get the high growth rates after the recession ends (2009).</b> The recession has ended ten years ago and still no trace of 8% growth to maintain the ruinous 15% flat tax with <a href="https://youtu.be/H-4941mkU58">eight of the last years below 4%</a>. </div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">9. <b>We reduced oil prices as far as we could (2008).</b> That was after the collapse in oil prices. Given that there was an automatic pricing mechanism in place pump prices should have fallen a lot lower reflecting the sharp drop on the world market. <a href="http://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2010/05/pump-prices-remain-at-unreal-levels.html">They did not.</a></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">10. <b>I have removed subsidies on rice and flour because I don’t want tourists to eat subsidised dalpuris (2006).</b> How many dalpuris were sold to 788,276 tourists who stayed on average for like 10 days compared to what 1,200,000 Mauritians that are here for 350 days bought? Besides how many pairs can the typical tourist stomach once she gets rid of her jet lag? Was he thinking about locals when floodgates for speculative FDI were opened so tens of thousands of Mauritians are priced out of the real estate market for good?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">11. <b>There was a hedging loss of about Rs5 billion at the State Trading Corporation (STC) (2008). </b>How can there be a hedging loss when the STC doesn’t even have a risk exposure to oil given that it passes all oil price changes to us through the automatic pricing mechanism? No details about which financial instrument was used and who was involved so that at least it serves us as a five-billion rupee lesson was ever given. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">12. <b>I'm worried about savings (Ongoing)</b>. He is? What did he think removing exemptions that we had used for a long time to build our long term financial plans <a href="https://youtu.be/YrGd0kKcOZI">would do?</a> Along with taxing bank interest, implementing a flat tax and tampering with our basic welfare state that keep 20% of us out of poverty? Savings are now at a 55-year low. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">13. <b>We're facing a food crisis (2006).</b> And his response was to remove subsidies on rice and flour and have tons of concrete poured on hectare after hectare of agricultural lands?</span><br />
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14. <b>Reforms worked because they increased government revenue by 20% in the first year (2019).</b> Revenue of government can increase if at least one of four things are increasing: tax rate, GDP, price of goods and number of people/things being taxed. Tax rate went down so it must be the last three factors. As GDP didn't increase by 20% the price and the number of things being taxed must have increased. A good chunk of the increase must have come from skyrocketing oil prices which even hit USD147 per barrel at one point in time. There were also new taxes on bank interest. But the most intriguing part of this statement is why he stopped at the revenue for first year. He should tell us what happened in each of the fourteen years since the tax cuts were introduced. So should Renganaden Padayachy. As chart 5 shows there has been a government revenue shortfall in each of these years because growth rates never reached 8%. The <a href="https://youtu.be/H-4941mkU58">shortfall for 2019 alone was Rs68 billion while the corresponding number for 2020 will be Rs78 billion.</a></div>
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14. <b>I expect the LP/MMM alliance to win by 60-0 (2014).</b> That alliance won only 13 seats. That’s an error of <a href="http://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2019/08/nation-split-over-which-is-worse.html">more than 500,000 votes.</a> </div>
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15. <b>Ethnicity is by far the biggest factor in general elections (2014).</b> Guess if he left no.18 for no.13 in 2014 the ethnicity was more favorable for him there. And he returned to no.18 in 2019 because the ethnicity was now better in BR/QB again. But it wasn't as favorable in 2017 for the by-election. Of course he had already ‘left politics’ at that time. Boolell though has been heard in 2017 saying that Sithanen was campaigning for him since day 1. There’s also 2010 when he was not given a ticket. </div>
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16. <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>I’m lucky to know how the economy works (2017).</b> Reread the first fifteen points or go through <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2019/09/bean-counter-who-broke-economy-says-he.html">Bean-Counter Who Broke the Economy Says He Understands How it Works.</a></span></div>
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Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-79520786628013051732019-11-04T18:08:00.001+04:002019-11-05T15:38:21.719+04:00Who Do We Send To Parliament Now?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><strike>Houston</strike> Mauritius,</b></div>
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<b>We Have a Problem</b></div>
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Because we're in a huge mess and three other parties/alliances are brain dead. It's good to remember that proper political projects are essentially about baking a cake and sharing it – see chart 1 – while not considering nature as an afterthought but as a priority at every stage when solving pressing problems. The cakes we’ve been baking since 2006 have been the smallest of the last thirty years and their sharing the worst. That's before using the value of our currency to further check their quality. In fact the cake baked by the Lepep government is the same size as the one cooked by Ramgoolam in his third mandate after adjusting for term length but while the distribution is slightly better our rupee has lost 16% against the USD over the past five years. Overall the situation has become a lot worse because the idolatrous economy initiated by Navin has metastised. </div>
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<b>Making Nature </b></div>
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<b>Our Slave?</b></div>
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We haven't shown nature the kind of respect she deserves either. Maybe too many policy-makers think that driving a car in their Havaianas through sugar cane fields to a casino on Mars while smoking a cigar is the ultimate goal (<a href="https://youtu.be/79XP5ksqK7M">https://youtu.be/79XP5ksqK7M</a>)? Fortunately the majority of us disagree. </div>
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<b>The Current Situation</b></div>
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The flat tax has basically been driving us towards bankruptcy since it was implemented (<a href="https://youtu.be/H-4941mkU58">https://youtu.be/H-4941mkU58</a>). Public debt has increased tremendously, procrastination and creative accounting have become national pillars while urgent problems have either not been solved or the horizon for their resolution extended substantially – the replacement of 1,600km of leaking water pipes will now not be completed by 2023 as initially targeted but more likely in 2032.<br />
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And I'm not even talking of issues that have not been recognized as matters requiring our immediate attention. By one conservative estimate, at the end of this year there will be close to Rs1.8 trillion of GDP missing – the infamous Sithanen toohrooh (ST) – and a shortfall of Rs360 billion of government revenue with respect to what these irresponsible tax cuts were supposed to generate since 2006. </div>
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<b>Reforms Have </b></div>
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<b>Failed Spectacularly</b></div>
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If making the rich pay the tax rate of the poor had worked <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">we wouldn't have seen government go after Bank of Mauritius funds, extend the retirement age to 65, take on a lot more debt and disconnect local pump prices from their international levels. We would certainly not find it trying to sell national assets. On the contrary it would have announced that it's buying more assets, reduced our national debt and upgraded our basic welfare state. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>What You Can Do </b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>To Make Matters Worse</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That's easy. Just vote indiscriminately for one of the parties/alliances that have given us our Prime Ministers so far. They will not do what needs to be done and the ST will technically more than double to Rs4.4 trillion in 2024 bringing the cumulative government revenue shortfall to Rs880 billion. If there's Rs68 billion of government revenue missing for this year alone by 2022 the corresponding figure would have crossed the Rs100 billion mark. Getting to 2024 might not be the smoothest of rides. </span></div>
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<b><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There's Nothing </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">in </span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>Their Manifestoes</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The MMM wants to save the sugar industry because it's been with us for ages and because it believes it's a growth industry. It plans to save it with some really potent measures – read injecting public funds, depreciating our already very weak rupee and probably grant tax waivers to fuel more land speculation. The MMM has obviously not looked at a chart of the weight of sugar in our economy for a long time. It's true that in the past few years this right-wing party has been busy establishing itself as another political dynasty.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Contributing currently only 0.5% to GDP (twenty times less than in 1990) sugar is a sector that cannot be saved. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Militants should ask themselves a few simple questions. Since when do we save a growth industry? How many good jobs can that industry create? How will it do if our currency reverts to a very reasonable 25 rupees to a dollar? They might also want to watch <i>The Future of Sugar</i>, </span><a href="https://youtu.be/Zwu9pCapVS4">https://youtu.be/Zwu9pCapVS4</a>. </div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So Ramgoolam wants to perform 'Riptir' with Sithanen? Thanks, but no thanks. He also wants to eliminate municipal tax because it brings ‘only Rs300 million’ per year – that's after promising to cut the flat tax for women to 13%. There's no idea more irresponsible than this given that Mauritius hasn't been able to pay for her own basic things for years now because of other massive tax cuts that occurred on his Rolex. See it's only after the deadly floods of 2013 that we discovered that the weather radar had been broken for years. The PM at the time then went to Japan to ask for a Rs400 million radar or roughly what the municipal tax brings in these days. </span><br />
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<b>Saving 180 Lives</b></div>
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We shouldn't forget that he has the worst road safety of all of our PMs – Pravind Jugnauth would have about 753 fatalities or three less than him over a five-year period. Every cent is needed to bring down these numbers to as close as possible to zero. A reasonable target over the past five years would have been to lower the fatalities by the fifth year by a third. This would have saved 180 lives. Nothing of the sort happened with fatalities in each year higher than the 137 we clocked in 2014. No progress will be recorded with more tax cuts. Far from the contrary. But it's perfectly fine for Ramgoolam to work hard to leave a legacy that will be sneezed at but nobody is forcing us to have any of it. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>Where's the Second </b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>'Economic Miracle'?</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Lepep won the 2014 elections because of the devastating effects of the flat tax, the other regressive policies and the wicked plan to turn Mauritius into a banana republic (BR). It has maintained them, added more tax cuts and offered more indecent incentives to fuel further real estate speculation. It has also tried to pass its own version of a BR but thank God it didn't have the supermajority to do that. Giving the outgoing PM his first mandate would not get us out of the woods because the status quo is not an option – the ST will grow to levels that see people take to the streets like in France and Chile a lot more often – and because he also plans of selling public assets. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b>So, Who Do</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Definitely not for politicians who have switched sides because their only concern seemed to have been which alliance that will bankrupt Mauritius, install a Big Brother and screw up our democracy was more likely to win the elections this time. Shouldn't we consider instead, as Emmanuel Blackburn has asked in his "Elections 'Koupe-Transe': Lalit porte seul les valeurs de la gauche..." on October 29 in Forum, giving our first vote to Lalit on 7.11.19? In fact the <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r_MWYf3ZuzCFZ6y1BvJO1zBQtW1lGOSz/view?usp=drivesdk">list of 62 candidates</a> that would make sense to vote for I had just built</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> before reading his article was, interestingly enough, created by first selecting the 24 candidates of Lalit, then picking a number from Les Verts Fraternels (10), independent candidates (9), Forum des Citoyens Libres (7), Party Malin (4 and congratulations to Malin for pulling that giant crowd in Plaine Verte) and a few more from other parties. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It seems like the obvious choice when we look at how they stack up against the three parties – see chart 2 – on a number of crucially important issues (</span><a href="https://youtu.be/Z-UHV_rUQ-U">https://youtu.be/Z-UHV_rUQ-U</a>). <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For example they're the only party that suggests we don't save the dead sugar industry but instead grow food. This should produce a bigger national cake, a better land use, improve our balance of payments problems and our resilience at the same time. In turn ensuring we all become richer through a stronger currency and making it obvious which industry is strategic. It also scores big points for being for sustainable taxation which would reduce inequality (</span><a href="https://youtu.be/L10wALtIoUs">https://youtu.be/L10wALtIoUs</a>)<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> and the risk that we go bankrupt. </span><br />
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<b>No to </b><b>Car/Bus </b></div>
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<b>Ratio of 100</b></div>
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Lalit also wants a Ministry of Plan back. Another good position given that we've become a planning disaster – the current horrific car/bus ratio of 77 will rise to 97 in 2024 if we do what we did in the past four and a half years adding tremendous pressure on the environment. Bet you Sophia the robot didn't tell you that. Mind you not all is perfect with Lalit. Just like the other three parties they are for a dose of proportional representation which would create two forms of political uncertainty. How big a risk is it voting for them? Probably a million times less risky than voting for the other three. Plus they are strongly for recall elections which will allow us to throw them out of parliament well before 2024 if they do anything stupid like an affermage contract for the CWA or not raising back taxes for the rich. </span></div>
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<b>Who Should</b></div>
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<b>Vote For Them?</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Many people won't find it difficult voting for them. People who like Soldat Lalit Militant given that their positions will reduce social injustices unlike those of the MMM. People who are fans of SSR as they are against stupid privatisation, for a top public health system and for solving problems. People who feel that the three parties have betrayed the values that had initially attracted them. People who don’t want their neighbourhood to morph into a favela. That’s a lot of people. And Malin is likely to bring much-needed dissent to our National Assembly. </span></div>
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Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-37240918935670787812019-10-24T23:20:00.001+04:002022-04-24T11:06:37.092+04:00How Did You Like Ramgoolam's Fourth Term?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The one that’s about to end. But he hasn't been Prime Minister since December 2014 I hear you think. So he has completed three terms. Not four. True. But it would not have been a lot different for a majority of voters in several ways. Given that the 2014 'gros piège à cons' of the Bérenger-Ramgoolam-Sithanen trio was complex enough to generate several dangerous outcomes we'll make a few assumptions to narrow the analysis before looking at how it would have been different and similar.<br />
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The first one is that the LP/MMM alliance won the elections but fell short of the supermajority needed to transform our political setup into a totally useless semi-Presidential system. The second one is that Ramgoolam, Bérenger, Sithanen and the two Jugnauths are elected. The final assumption is that the LP had more MPs than MMM so that Bérenger is sworn in as Ramgoolam's deputy. After the toss of a coin the Sun Trust decided that SAJ would be the Leader of the Opposition as long as he's healthy enough. </div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">BAI would probably have been dealt with differently. If the relevant authorities had given a deadline to the management and shareholders of the conglomerate they would have respected it. Party leaders fondly remembering large political contributions might have helped to avoid causing premature distress to thousands of policyholders. There's no guarantee that the group's situation would have improved but that's an entirely different matter.</span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">No Minimum Wage Or</b></div>
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<b style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Negative Income Tax</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I don't think Sithanen would have implemented a minimum wage. Instead he would probably have worked hard to remove the little life that was left in the economy by again ripping off the poor and giving to the rich. But he would not have done two of the most stupid things given that he had already made those decisions almost as soon as he got elected in 2005 (<a href="https://youtu.be/YrGd0kKcOZI">killing our savings culture</a></span> <span face=""helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">and flattening the tax structure). </span></div>
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<span face=""helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Not a lot of voters would have been surprised to see him try to cancel the school-feeding program anew – which would have been hailed as courageous by some in the mainstream media a bit like when abusive hire/fire labour laws were passed – and shrink our basic welfare state that keeps about a third of Mauritians out of poverty. Interestingly Navin Ramgoolam has said recently that the minimum wage has been set too high and was partly responsible for a few factory closures. I think he should tell voters right away by how much it should be lowered. For riptir's sake. </span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Siphoning Off Money </b><b style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">From </b></div>
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<b style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">the Bank of Mauritius Likely</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is very likely that Sithanen would have forced funds from the Bank of Mauritius to be transferred to the treasury to prop up his giant Ponzi-like scheme: the 15% flat tax. This would have been just another bean-counting moment similar to when he cancelled the rice/flour subsidies before they reappeared at the STC or when he created a galaxy of funds with pompous names that he claimed were funded by an early harvest and a bumper crop but which his successor at the Ministry of Finance told us were in fact created with borrowed funds. In any case what stupid move is not too stupid for a guy who killed our savings culture (missing savings between 2006 and 2018 are Rs753bn while we received only Rs189bn of mostly unproductive FDI) and who cancelled the tiny school-feeding program? There's also the 5-6 billion rupees mysteriously lost at the STC in an hedging. </span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Safe City, Ramgoolam–Style</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Ramgoolam would no doubt have implemented a 'Safe City' project as it is the second step in setting up a hi-tech and totally unnecessary surveillance state, the first step being the biometric card that happened on his watch. Furthermore we've seen until very recently that about the only problem he had with the Lepep version of Big Brother was its massive cost.</span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Cake Size Would Have </b></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Been About the Same</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Growth would have been similar if not a bit lower because of some of the really stupid stuff Sithanen would have done like reducing flat taxes to 13% almost immediately and the smart stuff he would have avoided to do (freeze the horrific real estate speculation). In any case it would have stayed around 3-4% for the entirety of the term which is half the required 8% growth to keep the current regressive and ruinous structure. In effect we would have had five more years of proof that making the rich pay the tax rate of the poor is Paglanomics. Incidentally Charts 1 and 2 plots the growth rates of the past ten 10 years. Can you tell which one is the performance of the Lepep government? Keep on reading to find the answer.</span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Cake-sharing Stays </b><b style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Very Unfair</b></div>
The absence of a minimum wage would have caused inequality to persist at the record levels registered in 2012 and might have worsened. Stale stories of <i>gato-pima</i> and <i>savat leponz</i> would have made a big comeback but as everyone except the bean-counter is aware these don't reduce inequality. Indeed a<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">fter Sithanen's first stint the share of GDP for the bottom 90% of Mauritian households – that's over a million citizens – fell in 1996/7 and that too after pensions were doubled by Ramgoolam while 70% of households (about 880,000 Mauritians) saw their share of the national cake shrink <a href="https://youtu.be/uOsB54OMCc8">in the first five years</a> of his regressive policies in 2012 </span>with the bottom 60% hitting their smallest share in two decades. This conveys a lot more information than the bland Gini coefficient as does the <a href="https://youtu.be/L10wALtIoUs">distribution of incremental GDP</a>.</div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Public Debt Would </b></span><b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: "Helvetica Neue Light", HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Have </b></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: "Helvetica Neue Light", HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Kept on Increasing </b></div>
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Reaching levels similar to the current situation with Pravind Jugnauth instead of Navin Ramgoolam clamouring that every baby born now has Rs300,000 of debt on her head. Servicing the flat-tax-induced borrowings would have made less money available to maintain let alone enhance service delivery of our welfare infrastructure. This would have, for example, meant that dialysis and cancer-treatment equipment that broke down are not replaced.</div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Privatise National Assets</b></span></div>
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Given that we would not have seen any growth rates close to the 8% target for fourteen years and the fact that our politicians don't work in our interest, government during the fourth mandate of NR would have given many of our public corporations a bad name, floated the idea of privatising several of them – using bizarre terms like affermage, strategic parnership and other rubbish – with <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">the very controversial World Bank standing by with a </span><span face=""helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif">noose in the form of dodgy reports. Citizens would of course have taken to the streets and Ministers would have had their Billie Jean moment.</span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Sliding Rupee</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Given that Bheenick would have been sacrificed in the name of the 'gros piège à cons' it's likely that a spineless governor would have been appointed. And this would have meant a rapidly-depreciating currency. Probably as much as we've seen during the past five years that is the dollar gaining 6-7 rupees or more if that governor wanted to send an unambiguous signal that when it came to being a doormat he's second to none. Which would have made 99% of us poorer and Sithanen very happy. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We had some pretty acute water problems between 2005 and 2014. They would have lingered on because the flat tax has caused our government to run out cash by not putting us on the right side of compounding. Otherwise we would have paid for our own ENT- and eye-hospitals. And so many more things. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>A Traffic Frankenstein As Mean</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">As was shown a few weeks ago a crucially-important ratio to gauge the quality of our transport policy is the car/bus ratio. It almost doubled from 31 to 56 in the 2005-14 period and made driving a lot less pleasant. There's no reason to believe that it wouldn't have reached its current catastrophic level of 77. Definitely not after hearing Sithanen put both of his feet in his mouth on this dossier a couple of years ago. This sorry state of affairs would have been accompanied by a multi-billion-rupee road congestion program (building new roads) and a tram on stilts that would not have solved anything but on the contrary deface Mauritius on a big scale. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The first chart shows the growth performance of the Lepep government. </span></div>
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The point system would not have been scrapped and we might have made some progress as far as road deaths go. Or we might not have. Simply because just having a point system doesn't make our roads less lethal in a sustained manner. There are other boxes we need to check before we solve this problem such as having enough money thrown after this problem. Ask Sweden. </div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Still Hostage To </b></span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: "Helvetica Neue Light", HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">A Few Centimetres of Rain</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Because of a lack of deep-enough drains, too much single-use plastic, haphazard construction and an unchecked car pool. We might not have been so lucky after enough rain poured while a street festival was held after the sun had set. Our friends in Fond du Sac would have lost all their possessions each time rain exceeded a certain threshold. These would have been immediately followed by harsh water cuts.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Reducing taxes to 13% might have led us to move from like 3 casinos per town/village to 3 casinos per capita. That's how the mind of the bean-counter works. Not good given the drug-gambling nexus. </span></div>
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Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-40611991008006236972019-09-25T12:26:00.000+04:002019-12-17T19:59:34.477+04:00Bean-Counter Who Broke the Economy Says He Understands How it Works<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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That was on a radio program in the second quarter of 2017 when Sithanen argued against the Lepep tram while Chung defended it. Chung, a senior advisor at the PMO at the time, predicted that the introduction of the tram would slow down the growth of the car pool and reduce road fatalities by 10%-20% every year (save 20-30 lives) which he claimed happened everywhere in the world. Flyovers and a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) were not options for him.</div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Didn't </b></span><b>Happen in Sweden</b></div>
It was kind of surreal to hear a forecast of a big drop in road fatalities in a year when they ended up increasing by 20 compared to 2014 after rising for the previous two years partly because of the scrapping of the point system. Besides we know that rail transportation doesn't automatically reduce road deaths. We can look at Sweden, a road-safety champ, which saw its rate of road fatalities double in the two decades following the 1950 launch of its heavy metro system.</div>
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<b>Or in Singapore</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">In Singapore road deaths increased by 21 or 10.2% in 1988 or one year after the start of its metro and kept going up the following three years. The situation was not a lot different after it rolled out its LRT twelve years later, which we call Metro Express here. Indeed fatalities rose in 6 of the first 10 years of its operations. It's also important to note that the car pool there more than doubled in size between 1987 and 2007 which is the period in which the two rail systems were added. That's about a 20% faster percentage rise compared to the 1967-1987 period. </span></div>
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For Sithanen, traffic congestion was essentially about getting into the capital. That was a bad start as traffic had become a major headache almost everywhere. He proposed the same three solutions that he says Bodha advocated before June 2016 namely accelerating the road decongestion program (RDP), flexitime and decentralisation. And if these didn't work he suggested going for the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). </div>
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<b>You Can't Build Your Way</b></div>
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<b>Out of Congestion</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">More roads are not really a solution because they go against the fundamental truth that "you can't build your way out of congestion". We've experienced this several times. Build new roads, flyovers, other gimmicks and all you get is a little reprieve before the traffic Frankenstein returns with a vengeance. Plus they exact far too heavy a cost on the environment, our national heritage and us. Flexitime should definitely be part of any solution we implement as must decentralisation. He was against the tram because it would be a financial disaster which would saddle future generations with debt – a funny thing for him to say when we know that his flat tax has caused a government revenue shortfall that would have fully paid for at least one tram every year for the past seven years. </span></div>
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But this immediately begs the question of why he didn't implement flexitime or decentralisation when he was the Finance Minister (FM) on two different occasions fourteen years apart for a total of almost ten years. Especially between 2005 and 2010 when traffic had become a top problem. It's true he was very busy during his last stint pushing public finances over a cliff and killing a savings culture that had survived at least three intense cyclones. It's also true that his three solutions would collectively not have solved the traffic problem while a simple analysis should have made a strong case for the adoption of the BRT. </div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>For a Long Time</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The first BRT was implemented around the first oil shock and the second a year later in the Brazilian city of Curitiba, the name that springs to mind when you think of this mass transit system (see 1 which doubles up as a legend for 2). Lagos and Jo'burg got theirs a decade ago while as of March of last year 166 cities had one. Even if he hadn't introduced the BRT one well-known fact – the number of people traveling alone in their cars – and keeping an eye on the number of cars and buses would have pointed to a path that's natural for us. Especially if the last two numbers are combined into a ratio that's as important as our fertility ratio used to be sixty years ago. </span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; text-align: start;">Our New Malthusian Nightmare</b></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">The first thing to note in Chart 2 is that the car/bus ratio stayed within a narrow range for three decades. Worthy of note are the drops in the ratio in response to two oil shocks (OS) – the increase in the number of buses on our roads between 1973 and 1974 was larger than the one over the preceding six years. In fact, we had to wait for 1999 for this ratio to cross 20. Ironically it underwent a significant deterioration during the big contraction in the textile industry in an environment of skyrocketing oil prices — these include the years when Bérenger dubbed our republic the best managed country in the world. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Triple External Shocks. </b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Yeah Right</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Even funnier is what happened after July 2005. See, the bean-counter told us we were facing Triple External Shocks (TES) with one of them being high oil prices. The least you would have expected him to do then for consistency sake was to tweak policies so we end up with a ratio that didn't deteriorate. That didn't happen. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The same nonsense occured during the 18-month Great Recession shown in grey. Overall, f</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">or every bus added to our transportation network during his second stint as FM there were 128 more cars (up from roughly 21 during his first term) causing that ratio to hit 40 by 2009.</span></div>
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<b>Nightmare Gets a Lot Scarier</b></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); text-align: center;">The ratio has kept rising over the following eight years reaching 74 at the end of 2018 – in effect doubling over one decade and quadrupling over roughly two – and indirectly contributing to the loss of lives in the 2013 floods and directly causing many road fatalities. The deteriorating ratio is not simply the effect of higher incomes. It is mostly a sign of ferocious stupidity because cars stay idle on average about <a href="https://www.reinventingparking.org/2013/02/cars-are-parked-95-of-time-lets-check.html">95% of the time</a>, eats up about 12% of the space of cities, damages our competitiveness and causes a host of other problems. Its growth has been left unchecked for way too long causing a lot of things to go out of sync. Is it a surprise when we didn't have a Ministry of Plan for at least as long as we've mistaken the economy for a golden calf?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>What Now?</b></span></div>
We'll enjoy the free rides on the Urbos for a month but traffic congestion doesn't really improve everywhere else. The free rides stop and the traffic Frankenstein experiences another growth spurt. We then realise the tram doesn't solve anything – putting it on stilts is no better. Then a harrowing conclusion. Promenade Roland Armand and so many other landmarks were destroyed for absolutely no good reason at all. </div>
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Government will then do something it should have done a long time <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">before the groundbreaking ceremony for this new mode of transport: get r</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">adical with the growth of the car pool so as to be more gentle towards the environment. The earlier cars are declared public enemy No. 1 the sooner we'll collectively get to work to bring down the car/bus ratio to a healthier 35 – like by adding 1,000 buses and taking 94,000 cars off the road – and proclaim a first city car-free. This should take us about a decade. To help us avoid concrete "min-Apolo" and other eyesores. And regain our status as an overcrowded barracoon.</span></div>
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Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-1148983444766403392019-09-18T15:16:00.000+04:002019-09-18T23:56:42.676+04:00What Did Trees in Beau-Vallon and Our Saving Culture Have in Common?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>Another bleak reality is the decline in national savings rate. It has fallen from an average of 26 percent of GDP in the period 1996-2000 to 24.6 percent in the period 2001-2005. CSO is forecasting a very low savings rate of 19.5 percent for 2005. Here again, we must be utterly concerned. </i></div>
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Rama Sithanen, 2005</div>
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<i>... il a fait beaucoup de tort à la culture d'épargne des Mauriciens en enlevant les exemptions fiscales sur les prêts immobiliers ainsi que les études supérieures de leurs enfants, </i></div>
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<i>tout en taxant les intérêts bancaires.</i></div>
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Dan Bundhoo, 2014</div>
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Simple. They had gone through plenty but survived. There's a word for this and it is resilience. Granted it's a term that has been abused in Mauritius over the past decade. But it's easy to show what it really means. As RAFAL wrote about the resilience of trees recently I will focus on our savings culture. </div>
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<b>Tigers Have High Savings</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">The first thing to note about our savings (see 1) is that over the past 58 years they were quite volatile until 1981 essentially because of cyclones and our monocrop status. They were quite high and stable between 1985 and 2004. Mind you the average for the whole period covered in chart 1 is a little less than 20%, although a decent number was lower than the 24.8% of that stable 20-year span. What's particularly interesting is what happened to this fundamental determinant of long-term economic growth when we were hit by three intense cyclones.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Meet Danielle, Intense Cyclone</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Although in 1964 Danielle drove savings to an absolute low of 9% after GDP fell by 17.6% – in contrast, according to Wikipedia, it took three years for world GDP to reach its maximum contraction of 15% in the Great Depression – savings jumped back to 15% the following year and was already 20% in 1969. So, we were devastated – it probably felt like the end of the world – and then we used our savings to get back on our feet which in turn boosted savings. This is a textbook example of resilience.</span></div>
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<b>And Her Two Sisters</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">The second big dip in savings occurred in 1980 after another cutie visited us at the end of 1979. Indeed Claudette plunged the economy into a recession and savings collapsed by 47% but we recouped almost half of that drop the following year. Gervaise, a terrifying cyclone in 1975, did not affect savings for that year that much although it checked us out in February. That's probably because it visited us after three consecutive years of double-digit growth – clipped under a system of progressive taxation – that had allowed us to significantly improve our resilience. GDP growth for that year was flat.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Something A Lot Worse</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Than An Intense Cyclone</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">The recent collapse in savings is different. It was caused by the completely dumb decision of one toxic bean-counter in 2006 to tax bank interest and compromise financial plans of literally a whole nation by wiping out the battery of exemptions that they had used to build up their resilience over many years of sacrifice. This was done to partly finance the flattening of tax rates to 15% to build a facade of low-tax jurisdiction and to get average growth rates of 8%. Which technically should have made our public sector debt-free by now but as expected it never did. Even the Pope knows trickle-down economics is snake oil. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Savings Were Bouncing Back</b></span></div>
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As shown in chart 1 savings were in the process of bouncing back after the big consolidation in the textile industry when Sithanen implemented that string of regressive measures – in the name of TINA (There Is No Alternative) – which caused savings to go south. He's going to say that his reforms worked because we got record amounts of FDI and these have made up for the savings shortfall. Is that so? Let's find out. </div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; text-align: start;">Estimating the Savings Shortfall</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">We can estimate how much savings is missing by picking a rate we would consider as normal for the period since the worship of an idolatrous economy began in 2006. We do not want to take the average for the whole 58 years as our economy was a lot more volatile in the 60s and 70s. A much better estimate is 24.8% which is the average between 1985 and 2004. We then compute a normal level of savings by multiplying actual GDP by this estimate. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>Checking the Estimate</b></span></div>
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Chart 2 confirms that 24.8% appears reasonable. <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Clearly the Sithanen flat tax, his other massive blunders and the maintaining of these toxic policies till now have caused a huge disconnect – there has also been one between international oil prices and what we pay at the local plumps – the like of which we've never seen before</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">. Again, those in favour of the unsustainable tax structure will say that we've received a lot of FDI so trickle-down does work. And it's all good. While we did receive plenty of FDI we know we didn't get enough of the proper variety as otherwise it would have moved the growth clock in a more decent manner – 2019 will be the ninth consecutive year that growth will be under 4% or half the 8% needed. We also know that the poor growth didn't trickle down. We just have to look at better measures of inequality – the Gini coefficient is not one of them. Or hear accounts of visits to public hospitals. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Chart 3 plots the missing savings for each of the thirteen years of trickle-down against the FDI received. We note that the shortfall in savings has been a lot bigger than the FDI we got for all but one year (2007). For example the FDI for 2016, 2017 and 2018 were 18.2, 21.2 and 17.4 billion rupees while the corresponding saving shortfall were 59.8, 67.5 and 75.6 billion rupees.</span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: start;">The Cumulative Effect</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If we add the missing savings from 2006 to 2018 we get Rs569.7bn whereas the total FDI for the same period is Rs188.9bn. That's Rs381bn of net savings missing which could have been used to put Mauritius on higher levels of development by building new fields of activities that are more respectful of the environment and our national heritage. Which is essentially what we did till 2006.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b>The Mess is Actually Bigger</b></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The shortfall is larger because we used actual GDP growth and not the 8% growth target. But that's easy to adjust. We just need to add 24.8% of the GDP shortfall – the infamous Sithanen toohrooh – at the end of 2018 (Rs1,500bn) which brings the net shortfall in savings to a whopping Rs753bn. It's important to note that this mess happened in global economic conditions that were relatively mundane. Things will get worse even if the world economy doesn't hit a rough patch. Unless we wisen up fast and bring exemptions back. </span></div></div>
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Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-43628720017208180172019-09-04T15:27:00.000+04:002020-01-04T00:09:54.860+04:00Pope to Spend Day With Victim of Unbridled Capitalism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">He will find a Mauritius that's a lot more vulnerable than when John Paul II visited us thirty years ago. The damage done by an extreme version of trickle-down economics — 'dung of the devil' as Francis quoted a fourth century bishop to his Santa Cruz, Bolivia audience back in 2015 (as reported by The Guardian) and which has been dubbed Shaitanomics here since 2010 — is extensive and captured in chart 1. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Average GDP growth over the four years preceding the second papal visit is 3.8% which is less than half the 8.5% of the first one or the growth promised for implementing the economy-destroying 15% flat tax. This has resulted in a national cake growing (cake increase) by about a sixth compared to nearly two-fifths for the four years ending in 1989. Something which we can relate to everyday. The value of our rupee, an overall measure of the quality of our policies, has also lost 57% against the USD over the past thirty years. So much for the myth of 'roupie forte'. Savings have collapsed from a healthy 24% to single-digits, an alarming level after bank interest was taxed to build a shaky facade of a low-tax jurisdiction. </span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">The only two positives are a weight of sugar in our economy that's now twenty-one times smaller and a lower inflation. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><b>Progress Stunted</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Unemployment is a lot higher that too after eyebrows have been raised several times for the past decade-and-a-half that suggest it's underestimated. Road fatalities for the last four years are up by 23% compared to the corresponding number thirty years ago. No progress has been made in the share of electricity produced by nonrenewables (NR) contrary to what several countries have achieved. In fact we're using more than six times the amount of coal we used to. Another big negative is the proportion of the electricity generated by the CEB, our public utility, which has gone down by more than thirty percentage points. Plus not only have the price we've been paying for electrical power been higher than it should have been because of abusive and unnecessary contracts with private producers there are now plans to privatise the CEB. This has already been met with healthy street protests a few days ago that look to intensify as voters keep getting wiser and understand that trickle-down is also another form of colonialism. </span></div>
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<b>An Extra Big Heap</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">One rough estimate of the 'dung of the devil' is the GDP shortfall compared to the average 8% growth we were supposed to get with the flat tax. This reached Rs1,500bn (Sithanen toohrooh) at the end of last year and that's before we add the loss of parts of our national heritage including Promenade Roland Armand, trees at Beau-Vallon and beautiful views to name just a few. In other words trickle-down economics should basically have made our government debt-free by now. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Not only it has not but a lot of creative accounting has been going on and government has been incapable of functioning normally like achieving reasonable progress in its basic promise of ensuring a 24/7 water supply to all. Wicked plans to privatise our water utility because the very controversial World Bank had recommended it have been thwarted by the population forcing a minister to moonwalk from this destructive path. At least for now. So the Pope will find a messy Mauritius in large part because of the stupid move</span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"> from a tax structure which was progressive and sustainable (P&S) to one which is flat and unsustainable (F&U). </span></div>
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<b>Smaller Cake, Worse Distribution</b></div>
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The flat tax was supposed to generate a much higher growth and apparently eliminate poverty. It's not a big surprise that it has failed on both counts. Growth is not only at its lowest in nearly four decades but as chart 2 shows the distribution of the national output has been the most unfair since the regressive policies were implemented thirteen years ago —the two form an essential part in the evaluation of any political project aka 'projet de société’.<br />
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Indeed the bottom 60% have had their worst share of the national cake in the last two surveys of Statmu (Statistics Mauritius) while the top 30% their best after the flat tax was introduced. The bottom one-fifth of the population had their best share at least seventeen years ago while the adjacent half around the year of the Tiananmen tragedy.<br />
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So what has been happening is that the flat tax has created record inequality — a topic addressed by the Pope in his November 2013 exhortation or eight months after assuming his current post and which reflects his firsthand experience of misguided austerity policies that reduce the sovereignty of nations — and this has stunted growth and along with a string of stupid decisions have seriously dimmed the future of a sustainable and fair Mauritius. Staying the toxic course any longer is not an option. </div>
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Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-84465516010764989192019-06-04T23:15:00.001+04:002021-12-07T11:21:42.695+04:00Why Tax Policy Should Be Detailed in Affidavits<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>Charity is a cold grey loveless thing. </i></div>
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<i>If a rich man wants to help the poor, </i></div>
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<i>he should pay his taxes gladly, </i></div>
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Clement Atlee, Former British Prime Minister
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Which affidavits? The ones candidates and political parties in the forthcoming general election will swear before we shortlist them as worthy of our votes. We’ve seen how irresponsible income and corporate tax cuts implemented since 2006 have extensively damaged the economy and the social fabric under three different PMs. While Navin Ramgoolam’s position on taxes during the past five years has oscillated between lowering them further to 13% for women and not raising them should he return to power. This is kind of worrying because it is the most urgent and important thing to do to avoid a significant degradation of an atmosphere that’s already pretty bad. So until we have recall elections and statute referendums we need affidavits and debates on their contents. Because politicians put something in their manifestos and then do the exact opposite.<br />
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Let’s fact-check some of the things that have been thrown at us to justify the implementation and the maintenance of such regressive policies and look at some related issues.<br />
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<b>1. We experienced triple external shocks (TES) in 2005 and Sithanen’s response was to lower top tax rates for corporations and individuals.</b> This was supposed to generate 8% growth rates (growth rates are an important component of social contracts aka projet de societe along with how the baked cakes are distributed). But as chart 1 shows we never got close to this target in any of the last 13 years (the distribution not shown here has also been the most unfair we’ve seen in at least 27 years). So it has failed completely. It should be scrapped and tax brackets should be added back at least to 35% next week because the cost of maintaining this losing policy has been enormous and will only worsen.<br />
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We could have avoided this disaster if we had looked at how the Reagan and Bush Sr. tax cuts in the 1980s had not generated the higher growth rates Laffer had promised but ended up increasing US public debt by 2.6X and 4X over eight and twelve years. In fact the only three times in the last 42 years that we’ve clipped rates of 8% or higher happened under a regime of progressive taxation. Plus as was demonstrated back in June 2006 before Sithanen started screwing up the economy really badly the TES are fallacious arguments. Ramgoolam was briefed end of April of that year that the guy was misreading the situation but either the then PM didn’t understand or he didn’t give two hoots which is as bad.<br />
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<b>2. The flat tax has made us resilient which is why we were not hit hard by the 18-month Great Recession (GR).</b> Untrue. We didn’t suffer that much from the GR because our banks didn’t have the kind of exposure to toxic assets as their American, British and Icelandic counterparts. Besides in 2008 the Rs5.8bn combined profit that MCB and SBM bagged were at the time record profits. Not exactly what you would call a financial crisis or a collapsing banking system.<br />
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Speaking of resilience, it is interesting to consider three episodes after which our economy did rebound (see chart 2). The first one is Claudette which smashed us into a depression (a deep recession) as from the last week of 1979 and wiped out two years of economic progress. Although real GDP collapsed by more than 10% we rebounded the following year with a 5.3% growth. The second is how a lack of planning caused a ‘drought’ to halve growth to 2.6% in 1999 before the economy surged ahead the following year with a growth rate exceeding 8% for the last time - now we don’t even have a ministry of plan and it shows. The third and final episode is when the textile industry rebounded after shedding about twenty thousand jobs in two short years. It is important to note that all three cases happened under a regime of progressive taxation. This is kind of obvious as we know that our welfare state keeps about one-third of us out of poverty and is therefore a very important source of resilience that our progressive taxation system used to make sustainable. Passionately tamper with progressive taxation like Sithanen did and you can kiss resilience goodbye.<br />
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<b>3. We’ll get the promised 8% growth rates once the Great Recession ends.</b> This didn’t happen either. As chart 3 illustrates it’s been 10 years since the GR ended and still no trace of average 8% growth. In fact we’ve had eight consecutive years of growth below 4% or half the target. That’s basically an L-shaped growth recession by our standards and at our stage of development. But this was expected after Sithanen killed savings (he’s now worried about low savings), broke the economy, created serious structural problems (he’s been worried about that for ages), hatched double-digit inflation, depreciated our rupee, crafted a controversial stimulus package and created massive inequality (guess what? that’s another of his worries). And because his successors sticked with these trickle-down policies. Please note that we haven’t even spoken about the controversial hire-fire laws and the elimination of the TCSB.<br />
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<b>4. Increasing income and corporate taxes will reduce growth.</b> It won’t. On the contrary this will help put the right dynamics back in place especially if they are accompanied by adding progressiveness in the VAT structure. They will for example help prevent Fond du Sac from getting flooded for a fourth consecutive year and hopefully get rid of the rodents in one school there. It’s good to note that in January the suggestion of newly-minted US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) to tax annual incomes higher than USD10 million in America at 70% was raised in Davos - they are currently at 37% - and Michael Dell of Dell Technologies responded that he’s more comfortable giving money to his foundation than giving it to government through taxes and that higher tax rates would not help growth. Prompted to explain his point he challenged the moderator to name just one country where taxes this high had ever helped growth. The answer came instantly from fellow panelist MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson: the United States! He mentioned that between about the 1930s to the 1960s the average tax rate was 70% with a peak of 95% and that these were good years for American economic growth. He could have used Mauritius and Scandinavia too.
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Similar fears were raised in 1992 when Bill Clinton campaigned to increase taxes on the rich to reduce the deficit and get out of the growth slump that trickle-down economics had dumped the US economy in. Clinton raised taxes and ended up presiding over the longest economic expansion in US history with a 3.8% average growth - same as us for last ten years but theirs is in US$. You don’t want to compute ours in USD especially not in the first quarter of 2015. Unless you want to feel depressed. What you want check instead is the tax rates in OECD countries. It’s also quite an irony for Ramgoolam to have borrowed the ‘Putting People First’ slogan from the Clinton 1992 campaign playbook in 2005 and then to sponsor very regressive tax cuts which have thrown us into a growth recession.
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<b>5. The new normal for us is 4% growth and 3.8% growth is better than what countries like France are getting.</b> People who are now saying that 4% is the new normal should have screamed at the top of their lungs in 2006 that Sithanen’s plan to flatten the tax structure to get 8% growth was completely cuckoo. Do you remember hearing anything like this? Anyway if 4% is the new normal, top tax rates can’t stay at 15% — because these are apparently compatible with 8% growth — and need to go up to at least 35% if we don’t want a major social crisis on our hands soon.
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<b>6. We can keep the flat tax if we cut wastage.</b> Cutting wastage whether it’s in the private sector or the public sector is good. For instance back in 2005 a figure of Rs5bn of government wastage was floated after the publication of the government audit report. That was equivalent to 2.6% of GDP. If it has not risen to more than Rs12.8bn in 2018 then its share of GDP has fallen. We can find out by going through the audit report and come up with an aggregate number or as has been suggested to the National Audit Office for them to come up with these kinds of basic and handy totals. But the GDP and government revenue shortfalls are of a different order of magnitude. For instance there was about Rs58bn of government revenue missing in 2018 compared to what the flat tax was supposed to bring in. The corresponding shortfall for the private sector was Rs232bn. These will increase by Rs68bn and Rs271bn this year if PJ doesn’t do what’s right in a few days. By the way, we’ve never seen Sithanen’s estimates of the toohrooh he has hatched eh?
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<b>7. We can keep the flat tax if we implement enough targeting.</b> Taxes were slashed by Sithanen to get 8% growth. This 8% growth would have generated an extra Rs115bn of government revenue by 2015 - roughly the size of the NPF at the time - even if we reduce the growth target in the Great Recession and assume that the additional government revenue generated by the higher growth rate had merely kept up with inflation which are very conservative assumptions. This would have allowed more generous pension payments or a game-changing sovereign wealth fund to be established and move us on a more intelligent growth trajectory. 95% or more of the population would also have felt tangible results of the tax cuts. But nothing of the sort happened because the 15% flat tax is economic snake oil. So the joke should end now and top tax rates should increase to 35% or more. We should also consider a 70% tax rate for dividends of Rs200m or more to catch up.
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<b>8. Restoring progressiveness in the tax structure is enough.</b> Keeping the maximum tax rate at 15% and adding brackets of 5% and 10% will do the trick. Nope. Just adding progressiveness at a lower level will make matters worse because it would mean even lower government revenue. Instead we need to add more tax brackets all the way to 35% for starters because as chart 4 shows we’re in a deep deep hole aka the Sithanen toohrooh - GDP for 2024 is expected to be only 49% of the level promised by the flat tax.
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<b>9. We’re a sovereign country and we’ve decided to set tax rates at 15% flat.</b> We’ve never voted on this. Such an important matter like proportional representation requires a referendum. Sovereignty, what sovereignty? Because the flat tax has broken the economy we don’t even have money to pay for an eye-hospital, the full cost of a weather radar, save at least 75 lives on our roads every year within five years, no 24/7 water for all yet, plenty of national issues remain outstanding while central government budgetary debt has increased by over Rs170bn over the last thirteen years (see chart 5). Public debt would have increased even more if governments did what governments are formed for: solve national problems one after the other.
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<b>10. PJ would be crazy to increase taxes in an election year.</b> Not really when we consider two things. First a scan of the relevant comments on social media reveal that a fairly large majority of them are favourable to higher corporate and personal tax rates and the return of tax brackets. It’s no different from the situation of wealthy French citizens and American billionaires asking to be taxed more because they don’t want to live like depressed idiots in gated communities or watch their back each time they go buy milk. The second is that counting on a toohrooh which would have increased by 2.5X to Rs4.4tn (see chart 6) to return to power in 2024 because the next government will have the option to maintain the destructive tax cuts in place is dangerously naive. It’s good to remember that a Rs541 billion Sithanen toohrooh was enough to end impressive electoral winning streaks by Ramgoolam and Boolell in 2014 - Ramgoolam deserved a 60-0 in 2010 for his ultra liberal policies but clever manoeuvering and the presence of the on/off specialist on the political chessboard allowed him to keep his job but nothing could save him from something worse than a 60-0 four years later. PJ will face a toohrooh that’s more than three times bigger this year but he can present a budget a la Clinton on Monday and spell out his tax plans in an affidavit later this year.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Time to Get Rid of<br />
The<i></i> Economic Snake Oil </b></div>
As expected nothing good has trickle down in the last 13 years. Savings are in single-digits and at a 54-year low, Lepep avoided the last by-election and didn’t organise one in January 2017 when power was transferred from father to son. Besides we know after the Parmalat scandal that the use of special purpose vehicles has to raise eyebrows especially when the definition of public debt has been altered, its ceiling has been raised and the horizon to meet it extended. The 15% flat tax was to make available another fund the size of our NPF by 2015 or government debt-free by the end of last year. No trace of such a fund and central government budgetary debt is approaching Rs300bn. For all these reasons PJ should increase top rates for income and corporate taxes with enough brackets to at least 35% if he wants to help avoid political mayhem in a few months as this will be good for pretty much everybody now and absolutely everybody soon enough. It will help prepare our exit from the middle-income trap we’ve been stuck in for almost three decades. Another priority is to come up with measures to drastically slow down the growth of the car pool and send unambiguous signals that the punch bowl fueling real estate speculation will be taken away.
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Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-33062191026432257052019-04-29T22:19:00.002+04:002020-07-28T17:49:56.580+04:00PJ Says No to More Women in Parliament<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
MPs from the PMSD and the Labour Party told the PM in parliament recently that if he presents a separate bill for an increased presence of women in our National Assembly (NA) they will vote for it. This is a very positive development given that we do pretty badly on this yardstick. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union at the start of 2019 four african countries ranked 12th or better as far as the proportion of female ministers in a cabinet go. Mauritius is 150th out of 178 spots while Rwanda takes position number six. We do slightly worse in terms of the percentage of women in parliament (156th out of 191 while Rwanda is first). But sadly the PM would have none of it replying that he can't see why he should do something these MPs failed to do when they were in power. A pretty lame excuse but no surprise here as female representation is part of the wrapping of a poisonous electoral reform that will make throwing MPs out of parliament a lot more difficult.<br />
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<b>After Saying No</b></div>
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<b>to a Referendum</b></div>
He took a similar stand last December when he rejected the idea of organising a referendum for voters to validate the substantial changes he was proposing to our electoral setup — these would have turned Mauritius into an unstable autocracy — although Lepep had pledged to organise several of them in the electoral campaign of 2014. The reasons put forward for not fulfilling that pledge were not any better: it might not be practical; we’ve already talked about electoral reform for a long time; it is costly and we don’t do referendums for important decisions like the budget either. On the issue of practicality we should remember that the first time SAJ was elected in a general election was in 1963 and that by 2014 he had already been PM for 16 years. PJ himself had been Minister of Finance on two different occasions when the pledge was made. Not exactly what you would call newcomers who wouldn’t know that a basic thing like a referendum would be impractical but still include it in their manifesto. Besides law is not totally foreign to Collendavelloo.<br />
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<b>Even Though Electoral Reform </b></div>
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<b>Got Sidetracked For Many Years</b> </div>
There has indeed been a lot of talk about electoral reform but much of it has been irrelevant. We got sidetracked for way too long because politicians have been trying to solve a non-PR setup, our FPTP system, with PR fixes while totally ignoring non-PR solutions which turn out to be way better. In any case some problems can linger for several years if the way we approach them is clumsy. A good example is road fatalities. As chart 1 illustrates we have not made any progress for three whole decades — for about half of that period we’ve been under the odious Sithanen 15% flat tax. Doesn’t mean we should sweep road fatalities under the rug, does it?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8oKqlijCp8MWqtSDyQl-psIu5On8eAUttv1JX5Ipv-lwSJJMARVOgFDjBY15ifRUdepAgIUj4iwxmbwzwTNRhDvgHs7NAVYkpcVbC1NQt0GPnTRGTOQjsLpHUgEZ4HJLuXc20/s1600/E965C478-D2A9-42C8-AF45-991AF46F1EF3.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1560" data-original-width="1600" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8oKqlijCp8MWqtSDyQl-psIu5On8eAUttv1JX5Ipv-lwSJJMARVOgFDjBY15ifRUdepAgIUj4iwxmbwzwTNRhDvgHs7NAVYkpcVbC1NQt0GPnTRGTOQjsLpHUgEZ4HJLuXc20/s400/E965C478-D2A9-42C8-AF45-991AF46F1EF3.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Referendums Are Way Cheaper</b></div>
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<b>Than Chronic Political Uncertainty</b> </div>
Referendums don’t come for free but they are a lot cheaper than the cost of the political uncertainty the Lepep proposal on electoral reform would create — proposals from the MMM and the Labour Party are as bad. As a matter of fact we may end up voting a lot more often than once every five years and our governments might not last more than a year. And given that the cost of a referendum is roughly equivalent to that of a general election (Rs300m) organizing a referendum on electoral reform would actually make us save a lot of money. And trouble. Plus we can ask 6-7 crucial questions in one referendum or about Rs50m a pop. Pretty cheap.
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<b>Fundamental Budgetary Policies</b></div>
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<b>Should Require Voter Permission</b></div>
Finally, we don’t have to organise referendums — recall elections which would probably cost around Rs30m have become unavoidable — for budgets as long as there’s nothing blatantly stupid or detrimental to most of us in them. See taxing interest income that killed our savings culture was one such budgetary policy. This has set us back tremendously and by a lot more than the cost of a referendum. That was done to finance the economy-breaking 15% flat tax — another budgetary decision that should have needed the permission of voters — which was supposed to generate average growth rates of 8%. It didn’t and the government revenue shortfall has obviously been increasing since then. At this point it is useful to put things into perspective. Chart 2 does precisely that.<br />
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<b>15% Flat-tax Promised</b></div>
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<b>A Debt-Free Mauritius</b></div>
As you can see the government revenue shortfall at the end of last year had ballooned to Rs300bn. That’s one thousand times the cost of a referendum. And 10,000 times that of a recall election. Incidentally Rs300bn is larger than central government debt which means that lowering the corporate tax rate from twenty-something percent to 15% flat should have made us a debt-free country. Not only it didn’t, but public debt more than doubled since it was introduced and plenty of national problems have remained unsolved. Plus we’ve seen what happened in Curepipe, Fond du Sac and St. Paul. The only way to get better growth rates now, to put government finances on a sustainable track — we would regain our ability to pay for really really basic stuff like an eye-hospital and a radar — and to avoid increasingly frequent street protests is to increase corporate tax rates to at least 30%, raise top individual tax brackets to 35% or more and reduce VAT by a couple of percentage points.
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<b>A Good Roadmap</b></div>
PJ should bring a separate bill so every party must have at least 1/3 of female candidates (bill should allow parties to have 100% female candidates for at least the next fifty years to compensate for the historical patriarchal bias) and collect some electoral dividends for it — something the tram will not allow him to do. A referendum should be organised on dose of PR and bigger parliament. Recall elections and two types of referendums should be added to our constitutional setup. The first type is for government to ask our permission or opinion on matters of national interest (like “do you want a dose of PR that will create chronic political instability and cause governments to take forever to form?”) and the other (statute referendums) for voters to reverse toxic policies like taxing interest income and totally pagla tax policies like a 15% flat tax. The PM should also jack up top corporate and individual tax rates.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">This is part 9 of Thoughts on Electoral Reform. Read <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2014/04/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-i.html">part 1</a>, <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2014/06/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-2.html">part 2</a>, <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2014/07/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-3.html">part 3</a>, <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2016/09/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-4.html">part 4</a> <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2016/12/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-5.html">part 5</a>, <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2018/05/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-6.html">part 6</a>, <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2018/10/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-7.html">part 7</a> and <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2018/12/pm-presses-ahead-with-own-version-of.html">part 8</a> of this series.<br />
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Sanjay Jagatsingh
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Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-54971354342335344542018-12-06T18:31:00.005+04:002021-11-30T11:45:58.646+04:00PM Presses Ahead With Own Version of Banana Republic<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The bill on electoral reform in the National Assembly (NA) is effectively as dangerous and crappy as the one we massively rejected in December 2014. It doesn't solve anything and shrinks our democracy. Given that we don't have recall elections and statute referendums yet it is important that enough MPs abstain and vote against the introduction of proportional representation (PR). It is even better that a few MPs resign from parliament to send another clear signal that we will not allow Lepep to break yet another of its pledges and put MPs at the centre of a conflict of interest. Let's focus on the parts of this bill that are most dangerous and deal with three misconceptions.<br />
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<b>Proposal </b><b>Puts MPs </b><br />
<b>in Conflict of Interest</b></div>
A dose of PR and best loser seats combined with our first-past-the-post (FPTP) system – which will create two forms of double-candidacies – will make it a lot more difficult for us to keep politicians out of our NA and this is the main reason the bill has been introduced as we know that our current BLS is not subsumable. This is totally unacceptable and incompatible with our political traditions. See all of our five post-independence PMs have lost their seat at one point or another with three losing it as incumbent. Such a massive change in our electoral traditions requires validation by voters in a referendum.<br />
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The proposal will also complicate government formation. It could take 171 days like it did for Germany in 2018 or 541 days for Belgium in 2011. Nobody wants that. There are 17,292 days between the general election of 1967 and the last one. If we spent 171 days on average instead of let's say the 7 days we did then we would have spent an extra 1,804 days without an elected government. That's 5 years. And we know how important the start of each term is. Nothing says it's going to be 171 days. It could be less. But it could also be a lot more. Hey, we're dealing with political bonubos here. If it took 300 days on average to form government then we would have been without an elected one for nine whole years.<br />
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And we know PR systems are highly unstable. <i>The Economist</i> noted that between 1946 and 2013 Italy had a government on average <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/04/economist-explains-8">every 13 months</a> while we've had 11 governments over 47 years. Just imagine a new minister in several ministries every year. What kind of mastery would a minister develop in a year? Like Bodha <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2015/02/why-scrapping-of-point-system-looks.html">removes the demerit point system</a> in 2015 and then he is replaced by two or three neophytes in the following years. Or there's a new minister of health right in the middle of an outbreak of H1N1 or fresh elections need to be organised during an entirely new type of crisis. We would also vote more often either because government formation cannot go on forever or governments that managed to get formed would break more frequently. Anti-defection legislation for non-FPTP MPs might prevent a collapse of government in some cases but it would create problems of its own. Plus we don't want to increase the size of a parliament that's already too big.<br />
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<b>Why Mauritians Don't Want </b><br />
<b>A La</b><b>rger Parliament</b></div>
A few politicians want a parliament of 100 or more seats because apparently our population has doubled since independence. But who says that our NA was of the right size in 1968 or that its size should increase with population? Using Google numbers of 798,413 and 1,265,000 people in Mauritius in 1968 and 2018 the increase is in fact 58% and not 100%. This would translate into a NA of 111 seats for 2018. But we know what happened after 1963. A parliament of 40 MPs increased to 70 in 1967. That's a 75% rise over four years although the population hadn't grown by that much. Indeed Google confirms that the population rose by only 9% – interpolating the census figures gives a similar increase. So if we use 1963 as base year the population has increased by 76% in 2018 which would call for a NA of (surprise!) ... 70 members today. But parliament size definitely doesn't have to grow with population.<br />
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A much better yardstick is to use the population/MP ratio. We don't look good on this benchmark as 148 out of 195 parliaments rank better than us. We can also turn this stat on its head and look at how big our NA would be if our population to MP ratio was like that of a selected number of countries (see 1). Danemark is in blue because 40 is a very interesting number for us. It's the number of MPs that we elected in 1959 and 1963 through single-member constituencies before fear-mongers scared too many decent Mauritians. Reverting to 40-odd seats would be a natural thing for us and quite easy.<br />
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Also, using the three-fold increase in the number of electors between 1967 and 2018 to justify adding another 11-15 MPs to our NA doesn't make any sense as the number of electors can change after a policy decision like when the legal age was brought down from 21 to 18 in 1975. Besides it's good to be reminded that between 1977 and 2014 the <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2014/04/815-million-voters-to-elect-indian.html">voting population of India</a> increased by 500,000,000 – no typo here, 500 million – but the parliament size there stayed at five hundred and forty something.<br />
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<b>Anti-defection Legislation </b></div>
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<b>Would Shrink Our Democracy</b></div>
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The MSM is right to stress the utmost importance of preventing the majority generated by our FPTP system to collapse <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2018/08/meet-one-more-gigantic-flaw-of-seg.html">with any reform</a> – something which NR and PB haven't understood yet – but subjecting the PR and best loser seats to anti-defection legislation is a pretty clumsy way of doing this. That's because dissent is an essential ingredient of any democracy. Who can blame Fowdar for threatening to resign after a minister wanted to give a strategic partner an opportunity to cash in on our clouds? Who can blame Rughoobur for hugging a tree? Who can blame Yvon St. Guillaume (YSG) – the beautiful defector – for seconding the motion that made us an independent country?</div>
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It's also very ironic for the MSM to bring such a legislation for two reasons. One is that they have themselves already defected several times since 2014. They were against the tram but for referendums – yep, not one but several! – on matters of crucial national interest. They've defected on the tram and so far no referendum on a über-important matter like electoral reform. The other is that they gained power partly because Ramgoolam, Boolell and other politicians defected on at least two parts of <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2017/12/arvin-fares-very-poorly-on-labour-dna.html">Labour DNA</a>: progressive taxation and the FPTP system. So it is quite funny to see PJ being annoyed about the lack of support for an electoral reform that's as dangerous as the one voters treated with a tasty <i>siro zanana</i> four years ago. Incidentally, the anti-defection bill is a good reason for MPs to defect. Now!</div>
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<b>Constitution Not Tailor-Made For SSR</b></div>
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Wasn't it nice to <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2018/09/serbi-kalifye-deportasyon-sagosyen-kuma.html">hear country after country</a> at the ICJ a couple of months ago confirm that SSR or the Labour Party didn't sell Diego Garcia? Another piece of rubbish that needs some further debunking is that our constitution was tailor-made for SSR. The electoral campaign of 1967 was very tough and winning that election was not a given. If our constitution was built for him a dose of PR would have no doubt been added to our electoral system to allow SSR and more than a dozen and half of his colleagues to go back into parliament after the first 60-0. Still, I don't remember SSR having any regrets about PR. In fact he stayed consistent on this issue for a very long time because he knew that PR would be harmful to Mauritius. He was aware like Justin Trudeau that "PR would exacerbate small differences within the electorate." Just like it doesn't make a lot of sense for someone to be for recall elections and double-candidacies as a general election is like 62 recall elections happening at the same time.<br />
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Furthermore it is fair to say that Mauritius would probably <a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2018/02/two-nobels-were-not-mistaken-about.html">not have proved Meade wrong</a> without our FPTP system. We can also look at what happened in the eight general elections after SSR left politics: our FPTP system has blessed us with clear winners and stable governments one after the other. Put differently out of the last 36 years SSR was not our PM that rapid government formation and wonderful stability was enjoyed 60% of the time by an MSM Prime Minister. That too after one or more partners had left the governing alliance.</div>
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<b>Have We Been Talking About </b><br />
<b>Electoral Reform </b><b>for Too Long?</b></div>
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Hell no! What in fact occurred is that we got sidetracked for at least a couple of decades. Why did that happen? One reason are terms of reference (TOR) that were too narrow. Take Sachs for instance. That commission was tasked to recommend the best ways to add a dose of PR – the Collendavelloo report had similar TOR. So it didn't consider non-PR solutions – some of which can be quite elegant as <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2018/10/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-7.html">I've shown already</a> – which is a huge mistake. Actually it is worse than that as there was a brief prepared by the MMM which was attached to the TOR. This was followed by the Carcassone report which found that our NA was already too big but again proposed a PR-based solution and the Sithanen PR galimatia. Ramgoolam then took an eternity to come up with what looked like a half-baked term paper but which in fact was the Sithanen report <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2014/06/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-2.html" style="font-style: normal;">less four PR seats</a>. And finally in December 2014 voters sent a very clear message that they didn't want the PR <i>komeraz </i>and the other rubbish.<br />
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Get in touch with your MP to tell him two things. One is that you're watching him. The other is that we have an even more potent version of that fantastic <i>siro zanana </i><a href="https://kozelidir.blogspot.com/2014/12/mauritius-says-no-to-wicked-plan-of.html">we administered to the LP/MMM alliance</a> four years ago in stock. And in greater quantities too.</div><div style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-weight: normal;">This is part 8 of Thoughts on Electoral Reform. Read <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2014/04/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-i.html">part 1</a>, <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2014/06/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-2.html">part 2</a>, <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2014/07/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-3.html">part 3</a>, <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2016/09/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-4.html">part 4</a> <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2016/12/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-5.html">part 5</a>, <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2018/05/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-6.html">part 6</a>, <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2018/10/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-7.html">part 7</a> and <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2019/04/pj-says-no-to-more-women-in-parliament.html">part 9</a> of this series.</div>
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Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-38801115464582246062018-11-20T10:32:00.000+04:002018-11-23T19:13:38.666+04:00Not a Lot of Business Done<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Since the moronic World Bank's Doing Business rankings were put on a pedestal by a couple of bean-counters and our taxation structure flattened starting in 2006. See the promised 8% growth over the last 13 years should have produced a little over six trillion rupees of national output. But as chart 1 shows Mauritius generated only about four and half trillion rupees of GDP. The difference – the Sithanen toohrooh – should cross the trillion-and-a-half-rupee mark by the time you play a famous U2 song a couple of minutes after 23h58 on the last day of 2018. Breaking down this shortfall yields important political insights.<br />
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<b>Toohrooh Will Vote Again Soon</b></div>
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As chart 2 indicates Navin Ramgoolam's share of 533 billion rupees was enough to help him lose power and his seat in 2014. Less money means less get done. The trouble for PJ is that his total has already exceeded that amount but instead of taking nine years like NR he did it in two. This is not an indication that PJ is a worse PM than NR. It simply reminds us of the stark fact that a bomb is more likely to explode the longer you take to defuse it – in this case by adding enough top tax brackets. That doesn't mean that it's going to be easy for Ramgoolam to get elected in the next general election let alone form the next government. A careful analysis indicates that voters have never been smarter and more fed up with the traditional parties – so don't act too surprised if you see some Lalit candidates getting through within about twelve months. Which is kind of bad news for the seventy-one-year-old NR who seems to be in a hurry to sink Mauritius further with more tax cuts and bore us again with fake and endless stories about his father.</div>
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<b>Are the DB Rankings Worth Anything?</b></div>
Very little. An index that puts Mauritius at the 20th spot while Germany and Japan are ranked 24th and 39th should be a good reason to take everything in it with the biggest grain of salt you can lay your hands on. Plus it's kind of a misnomer. Which would explain why a tagline – measuring regulations – was added at one point in time to prevent it from being marketed for something it isn't. Even a review by the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank had found serious problems with the index. These included too few informants, lack of transparency and high volatility of the ranking. While there now seems to be more informants for Mauritius it's still too volatile to be taken seriously. For example we were at position 49 in 2017 but had decreased to 25 in 2018. What could explain such a progress? Shooting thousands of bats or one VPM almost shooting the leader of the opposition? All of this of course was before the apologies of their chief economist, Paul Romer, to Chile in the Wall Street Journal at the beginning of the year as he suspected political motivations might have crept in. Mr. Romer stepped down less than two weeks later. And won a Nobel prize a couple of weeks ago.<br />
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Besides if the DB rankings were that important and <i>tout va </i>according to Bodha, it would be stupid for the PM not to call a snap election. But before he dissolves the Parliament in a hurry he might want to consider a final fact. Sithanen announced our best ranking ever of 17th in the last budget he presented in November 2009. Six months later he not only was the first outgoing Finance Minister not to be granted a ticket but he had messed the economy so badly that he couldn't switch parties in 24 hours or stand as an independent candidate.</div>
Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19355410.post-45684126575512180362018-10-06T19:12:00.001+04:002020-07-28T17:33:11.466+04:00Thoughts on Electoral Reform (7)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>I came to very clearly believe that </i><br />
<i>a form of PR would be harmful to Canada.</i><br />
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Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada,<br />
Feb 1, 2018 on why he's sticking with FPTP<br />
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<i>You can have any colour </i></div>
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<i>as long as it is black.</i></div>
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Henry Ford, about the Model T, 1909</div>
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<b>Pravind Al Lapes Rekin </b></div>
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<b>Ek Enn Lapipi Danzere</b></div>
It's clear to everyone who doesn't want to get distracted by its wrapping – the jargon, the apparent concern for increased female representation and other gimmicks – that the electoral reform the PM presented on behalf of the Lepep government about ten days ago will turn our country into an autocracy with leaders appointing MPs, suppress dissent which is the lifeblood of democracies and make it a lot more difficult for voters to keep politicians out of our National Assembly (NA).<br />
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See we collectively decided in 2014 not to elect many politicians for reasons that included proportional representation (PR), second republic and having the guy who killed our savings culture, broke the economy and start something which has caused an economic shortfall which is now measured in years of national output missing as Finance Minister again. That's a big weapon we have as voters and which we've used before against two other outgoing PMs. Not only we shouldn't let anyone take it away from us but it is necessary that we make it even more potent as we show below.<br />
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<b>Essential Facts and Selection Criteria</b></div>
At this point in the debate it is necessary to step back and have a look at some essential facts and criteria to pick the changes in our electoral setup which are right for us and compatible with the UNHRC ruling. We know for a fact that the BLS cannot be absorbed (subsumed) into a party list because leaders are under no legal obligation whatsoever to line up candidates from more than one community and that our NA is way too big – in 2014 there were 148 parliaments with better population/MPs ratios than ours. Another fact is that leaders of major political parties don't need dangerous party lists to start having a diverse list of candidates. They've been doing that for the past 11 general elections.<br />
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It is also crucial to acknowledge that <i>bato languti </i>never docked in Port-Louis. Instead the First Past The Post (FPTP) system, progressive taxation and good decisions we took have provided impressive opportunities for rapid upward mobility to all communities and we've come a long long way. We should take a moment to note that the first female President and the first female VPM to give just two examples don't appear to be Hindu women. We're not a rainbow nation. We're more of a masala nation. And boy is that tasty!<br />
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<b>More Criteria to Evaluate </b></div>
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<b>Electoral Reform Proposals</b></div>
Government formation and stability are two other criteria. We want our electoral system to generate clear winners fast and produce governments with a comfortable majority. Election after election. Government stability should also be evaluated at the time some of the winning alliances collapsed. We are aware that the FPTP produced a few extreme imbalances but we shouldn't get so academic about this that we design something which is vote wise outcome stupid. This has very serious implications with respect to the size of any correction contemplated. Accountability is a fundamental yardstick too. We want our MPs to be accountable to us and not to their leaders or party list managers.<br />
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<b>So, How Do the Major Proposals Stack Up?</b></div>
It's obvious that our current system has done a fantastic job (see 1). It scores great on government formation and on the two stability criteria. Our FPTP system has also blessed us with 11 general elections over 47 years and 11 governments of an average length of 4.3 years. This has enabled us to do very well at least till 2006. After that the flat tax has pushed us into a plutocracy which has reversed the march of progress for an overwhelming majority of us.<br />
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The second proposal is the one by Sithanen (2012) which is almost identical to those of Ramgoolam and Berenger (RS/NR/PB). It's a proposal which is deeply flawed as I showed <a href="https://youtu.be/QGz5KoAsKz4">within 48 hours of its presentation</a> and one which voters massively rejected in 2014. It calls for a larger parliament, would create serious problems at the stage of government formation – it could take us several months like in Belgium, Italy and The Netherlands for an election result to morph into a government – and would have melted the big majorities produced by our FPTP system to dangerous levels. Dangerous enough for several Mauritian governments in the past 47 years to not survive a vote of confidence after a partner left the winning alliance.<br />
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In fact the simulations he used to conclude that his model does a fine job have been done only at the time the vote counting is completed which makes his analysis seriously detached from reality. Another flaw of his dangerous electoral <i>galimatia</i> is that 20 MPs are added to parliament irrespective of the election results. This extreme carelessness would have generated 220 additional MPs over the past five decades or three times more than our FPTP system. His proposal would also significantly blunt the weapon we have to keep massively incompetent politicians like himself out of Parliament and literally institutionalise political dynasties – which is why many politicians are for PR. PJ's proposal is as dangerous as Sithanen's. And there has already been widespread rejection of his option.<br />
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<b>A Proposal So We Can Have </b><br />
<b>a Colour Other Than Black</b><br />
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It's disinterested as I am not desperate to try to exhume a deeply-buried political career with a wicked electoral proposal to please a couple of party leaders so I get another opportunity of sinking Mauritius as my name will be very high on a LP/MMM party list. My approach instead takes our excellent FPTP setup as starting point and makes a small and very careful tweak. It transforms the 8 ethnic best losers into 6 non-ethnic and conditional best losers. That is the Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC) would allocate up to 6 additional seats to the unsuccessful candidates with the largest vote shares that were not candidates of the winning alliance or party so that we end up with an opposition of at least 6 MPs.* Each time.<br />
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This change keeps all the advantages of our current system plus it would have given oppositions that are 50% larger and better when we needed them the most (<a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2016/09/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-4.html">SSR and SAJ</a> would have been the first to get additional seats in their 60-0), would not put us in a perpetual political crisis like the proposals of RS and PJ and would have generated only 15 additional seats over the past 11 elections. Seriously, who would not be happy with a result of 38-22, 41-19 or 39-21 and try to screw it up with mathematical skills that are quite poor? Someone who was not happy with our high savings rate and then decided to kill it with his reverse Midas touch maybe?</div>
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<b>Back On the Edge of A </b></div>
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<b>Political Precipice Too Quickly</b></div>
We thrashed a wicked plan of a scheming trio in 2014. And less than four years later we're way too close to another catastrophe. It would take only for PB to say yes to PJ's proposal or to something as evil for us to veer into an autocracy. Plus we have to accept that politicians can do a lot of damage during a term. How do we fix this? Essentially with three tools. One is recall elections. We've <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2018/04/recall-elections-is-key-to-better.html">talked about that before.</a> It's a tool for us to potentially dump a lousy MP within months instead of waiting for a general election. With recall elections as an option we would have been spared a lot of the affermage rubbish from Collendavelloo. With recall elections his attitude would have been a lot better.<br />
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<b>We Need More Democracy, </b><b>Not Less</b></div>
The second one is statute referendums (SR). This is something that allows voters to have a bill or policy withheld and even reversed. With a SR we the people would have been able to cancel the tax on interest income that killed our savings culture, reversed the Sithanen flat tax that has caused several years of GDP to go missing, saved Promenade Roland Armand, roll back the billion-rupee gifts to a dead industry, prevented our rupee from being mistaken for a Christmas pudding, reverse a controversial beach deproclamation, cancel the identity card project, reinstate the demerit point system and more. The final tool is the initiated constitutional amendment (ICA). This is something voters can use to bring changes to our constitution like chopping off the BLS and adding kreol as an official language.<br />
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<b>The Best Course of Action</b></div>
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Ask voters for their permission and opinion about these and other surprising challenges to basic common sense in a referendum (see 2). This would enable Lepep to fulfill the 9th of 12 commandments of its social contract which includes (see page 7 of their electoral manifesto) "Il y aura des referendums obligatoires pour des questions cruciales concernant l'Etat". Then use the results to fine tune any proposal that doesn't assume we are morons.</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">Read <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2014/04/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-i.html">part 1</a>, <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2014/06/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-2.html">part 2</a>, <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2014/07/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-3.html">part 3</a>, <a href="http://morisk.blogspot.com/2016/09/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-4.html">part 4</a> <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2016/12/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-5.html">part 5</a>, <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2018/05/thoughts-on-electoral-reform-6.html">part 6</a>, <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2018/12/pm-presses-ahead-with-own-version-of.html">part 8</a></div><div style="text-align: left;">and <a href="https://morisk.blogspot.com/2019/04/pj-says-no-to-more-women-in-parliament.html">part 9</a> of this series.</div>
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*My preferred setup of 42 single-member constituencies which would improve the quality of debates and pave the way for same-day results would work with a maximum of four additional seats.</div>
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Sanjay Jagatsinghhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13386926374110998199noreply@blogger.com0