Wandering brain
Tuesday, 27 June 2006
I’m really grooving on having the Dictionary application open as I write (yeah! Macs!). It’s beyond helpful! I probably have confused these three since we did homonyms in Fifth Grade….
A trio of frequently confused words is eminent, imminent, and immanent. Eminent means ‘outstanding, famous’: the book was written by an eminent authority on folk art. Imminent means ‘about to happen’: people brushed aside the possibility that war was imminent. Immanent, often used in religious or philosophical contexts, means ‘inherent’: he believed in the immanent unity of nature taught by the Hindus.
Okay, if you want more content, here’s a story about India’s political economy. I see so many stories about about China, but stories about India tend to have a narrow scope, so I found this one thought-provoking.
India is poised at a key moment in its history. Rapid growth will likely continue — and even accelerate. But India cannot take this for granted. Public debt is high, which discourages investment in needed infrastructure. Overly strict labor laws, though they cover only 10 percent of the work force, have the perverse effect of discouraging employers from hiring new workers. The public sector, although much smaller than China’s, is still too large and inefficient — a major drag on growth and employment and a burden for consumers. And although India is successfully generating high-end, capital- and knowledge-intensive manufacturing, it has failed to create a broad-based, labor-intensive industrial revolution — meaning that gains in employment have not been commensurate with overall growth. Its rural population, meanwhile, suffers from the consequences of state-induced production and distribution distortions in agriculture that result in farmers’ getting only 20 to 30 percent of the retail price of fruits and vegetables (versus the 40 to 50 percent farmers in the United States get).
Apologies—too fried to write more….