On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Vickram Crishna <
v1clist-/E1597aS9LT10XsdtD+oqA@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Atanu, Sanjay
> NPV is a term, as I am sure you know, but for those who may not use it
> regularly, that estimates the present value of a future resource, in terms
> of its productivity.
> If India did not have to cope with the cost of poverty (NREGS etc are the
> upfront cost, far more valuable is the loss of GNP due to non-productive
> human resources), then its GNP/GDP would be many times higher than the
> current numbers. There are two aspects to this productivity: that which
> contributes to the cash economy, and that which sustains a living, but
> without any direct impact on the cash economy (ie, it does not relate to the
> consumption of cash valued production).
> At the present time, much of India is poverty-stricken: the people subsist
> on non-cash items, typically gleanings from agriculture and forestry, as
> well as a significant amount of non-cash work (payment in kind, usually),
> some of which is the pernicious bonded labour. If all of that was
> mandatorily transformed in cash terms, we would have what I call
> hyper-productivity, all 1.2 bn of us producing and consuming in cash. Of
> course, this assumes that the 'transformation' is real and not inflationary,
> or else the poor would remain poor, with the rupee devaluing in real
> purchasing power.
> Since the telecom licenses are typically renewed after ten years, we must
> take a decade of such hyper-productivity and factor in the present value it
> represents, and judge it against the revenues received on account of the
> spectrum sale (what an oxymoron!), viz 100,000cr (I mistakenly wrote
> 100,000Kcr earlier, what I meant was 100Kcr). Actually, as I understand it,
> even the 100Kcr will actually flow in over ten years, so we need to NPV both
> figures for a meaningful comparison.
> My argument is that a nation of people with egalitarian access to
> communications is able to manage such a transformation in a manner that
> simply bypasses the ills of the 'industrial age' witnessed in Britain,
> Europe and the US. The early industrial age did not have such a tool at its
> disposal, and we can look back in history to see how punishingly unequal
> were the so-called economic benefits it (ie the EIA) conferred. This was
> countered in part by the creation of the welfare state, a patchwork or
> bandaid (ie not evolved, but imposed) First World solution that is in severe
> danger of vanishing forever in the next handful of years, as has the Second
> World.
> I do not think that 21st century humans can afford to see the early
> industrial age evolve across the so-called Third World, as
> telecommunications has an organic presence of its own, undoubtedly aided by
> the powerful growth of 'kitchen' technologies (FOSS and its hardware
> equivalents). The persistent folly of the spectrum shenanigans (first the
> risible 3G auction, now BWA) may end up being overcome by the refusal of the
> repressed to kowtow. The dangers we saw only a couple of years ago for
> China, with its vast non-conformist Western (non-Han) population forcibly
> kept from accessing middle class aspirations, but able to build their own
> versions of Twitter and FB and other less visible groupings, may well assail
> us.
>
> Vickram
>
http://communicall.wordpress.com
>
http://vvcrishna.wordpress.com>
> From: Sanjay Verma <
sanjaysverma-PkbjNfxxIARBDgjK7y7TUQ@public.gmane.org>
> To:
india-gii-exipcMZXGhH9nmKIgjYY/w@public.gmane.org
> Sent: Mon, 31 May, 2010 13:10:46
> Subject: RE: [india-gii] J Gopikrishnan's articles about wireless telecom
>
> Dear Vickram
>
> *The fact that the auctions are going to sweep in around 100,000Kcr over the
> next ten years only goes to show how poor money is as a measure of true
> value, when the net present value of an India from which poverty has been
> removed as a governing factor cannot compete (because no economist is
> willing or competent to compute it in money terms).
>> Vickram
>
> Kindly elaborate on the above where you are making a point about 'net
> present value' without the poverty indices factored into it!
> An explanation may be helpful to me to subscribe whole-heartedly to your
> stand.
>
> Thanks
>
> Sanjay Verma
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