Television, Weight Loss and Heart Disease

Dr Sanjay Gupta on CNN revealed a great idea today. What do you do when you are in the middle of an interesting program on TV when a mindless advertisement comes on! Dr Gupta was talking about something very interesting, when his own program came to a commercial break. So, he told the person he was interviewing that he was going to do a few push ups by himself when the channel had the commercial break. In fact, he started off with his exercises a few seconds before the channel switched to the advt!

I took a pledge there and then! I will follow Sanjay, with a modification. Any time a commercial comes on, I will get up and do a few walks around the apartment, and add a few sit ups if the advts last longer. I figure that this will help not only me lose some weight, but help my friends in the advertising industry as well!

While I am on this topic, I have some advice for Mr Chidambaram, our beloved finance minister! Sir, please consider a cess on all income derived from television advertisement! The cess can be used to set up a string of cardiac clinics around the country, to cure a problem TV watching  contributes to! I know the budget has been typeset already and has to be presented in a few days. Don’t worry. Your chaps can do a bit more of word processing and insert another cess! Imagine Rs 5,000 Crores more, all to be spent on gaining weighty votes!

Srinivasan Ramani

Defence Budget and Defence Production in India

India’s Defence Minister, Mr AK Antony, was reported today as saying at a seminar that we should speed up indigenization of defence production to root out corruption in defence purchases.
Visit http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/india-must-speed-up-indigenisation-of-defence-products-ak-antony-333216

India had decided in 1954 to keep out the (Indian) private sector from defence production. It was expected that units under the govt would produce a lot and the rest could be imported. What is the reality today? A govt webpage
http://mod.nic.in/product&supp/welcome.html

gives some indication of India’s defence production. The latest available figures on this page are the targets for 2002-2003: Rs 15,767.27 Crores. Compare this with the defence budget as reported in

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/Budget-2012-Military-plays-catch-up-but-China-a-long-march-ahead/articleshow/12300524.cms

That site reports that day-to-day costs and salaries were budgeted at Rs 1,13,829 crore for the year 2012-2013.  Compare this with the provision for new weapons, sensors and platforms at Rs 79,579 crore, again for 2012-2013.  So, Indian production covers approximately 20% of the needs for defence equipment! Even if there has been a dramatic increase in defence production since 2002-2003, India’s current need for huge imports of advanced defence equipment is well-known. 

Now, let us come to Mr Antony’s solution to corruption in defence purchases. Given the past performance of govt units and public sector units, it is clear that the Indian private sector would have to play a role in future defence production. Given that, does Mr Antony believe that there would be much less corruption in defence purchases? He should perhaps consult the Minister for Telecom about it! Indian companies may need foreign know-how for producing some types of advanced defence equipment. However, they would surely not require any foreign know-how to oil the wheels of govt purchases with the right lubricant!

Am I arguing against Mr Antony’s support for indigenization of Indian defence production? No! This is important for another reason: jobs!  Unless we trust that Indians can design, develop, build and maintain a good fraction of defence equipment we need, we would continue to export millions of economically significant jobs! Not indigenizing defence production in a big way would be disastrous economic policy!

Now, let us come back to the issue of corruption in defence deals. Fighting this is no less important than creating millions of jobs. But I believe that this has to be handled differently. Our soft state does not treat corruption in defence purchases as treason, as far as I know. Such treason is no less of a grave offence than betrayal on the battle field. There is only one punishment appropriate to this offence! Sure punishment for such treason will quickly reduce corruption in defence purchases.

There is another issue: how does the govt select top military leaders? Does it give due weight to those offices who have shown their ability to manage defence production, to promote R & D, and support innovation? A technological world calls for leaders who can deal with technical issues.  

Srinivasan Ramani
February 21. 2013