you know how you always wished you came across a teacher who wasn't judgemental about you...never scoffed at you for not knowing enough...never mocked at you for asking stupid (and you thought that was a valid question) questions...simplified a concept using stories out of tinkle...and used those stories whether you were 13 or 30...no matter how difficult the concepts got...

and everytime people got very solemn about something...he knew exactly when to say something funny to crack everyone up...just like he always knew the exact part of the sentence to stop and wait for you to absorb what you were listening to...and

the teacher who didn't care how old you were...the teacher..whom the world didn't know much about...but was quite the world for his students...

well..now you know why most IGIDRiites respect the Big B!

attended a paper on a Comparative Study of Labour Markets of India and China yesterday..courtesy the Big B of course...

so he attributes China's success with reforms and the resultant double digit growth to their strategy..to begin with..Reforms were not imposed upon China..like it was in India after 91 forex crisis...so there was no consultant role to be played there...China's reforms were a bottom up approach...coz it was acute food crisis...essentially...it came from the people...coz peasants led the reforms process...they demanded that they be allowed to produce as much as they could and give a certain quota to the govt and retain the rest for themselves...

and the Chinese govt went on to spread reforms phase wise....not in one sweep by but by careful experimentation...i guess the fact that it was dictatorial govt also helped...Chinese growth is also fuelled by the manufacturing sector...China prioritized on the privatisation of the small enterprises...while the big enterprises are still in the govt domain..(i guess this fixation for retaining power over big industries has got to do with the whole Big is Better obsession of Communism...big industries seen as symbols of power..just like Nehru saw Big Dams as the temples of modern India)

another thing i learnt about China yesterday was that they do not have the right to migrate within the country in search of employment that best suits their needs...they get a card at the place where they are born and stay...and employment is given to them by the govt. no chance of rejecting it...( i was thinking...most of the people who hated my blog on the Mumbai Shanghai makeover would have loved to impose this on the Biharis...)

so houses are also given on the basis of that card...so you can't just migrate anywhere you like within your own country...and hence there are NO SLUMS in their cities! (i think i can now hear those who hated my mumbai shanghai blog saying 'thank you!')

but wait a minute that does not mean there is no poverty...that does not mean there is no unemployment...their unemployment rates are as high as ours...10 to 12 per cent...rural poverty is rampant...urban poverty is not visible...not non existent...

so anyways...at the end of the lecture..with loads of fundas about the need for labour reforms in order to boost growth and reach the enviable double digits...i still came out wondering..so what happens to all the people who don't have jobs and can't do a thing about it coz the law doesen't permit them to do so...so what really are the poverty figures for China?

and...is there any scope for ethics in economics?

well..as i stepped out...i heard someone quip, " The world only likes winners...doesen't matter how you got there."

only the double digits matter...how many people it reached out to doesen't.

well..all i can say for now is that the latter does matter in Planet Vibzoid!

and someday when i present a paper on that...hopefully two wide eyed kids will be sitting by the sea and arguing about it...and at the end of it decide to go back and read some more coz they want to outdo each other at arguing...