Merry Christmas 2006

Merry Christmas to you all! The year end is always a great time and it is nice to reflect on God's many graces. Thank God for all the blessings that he has bestowed on you and your family. I thank God for the blessings he has bestowed on me during a great 2006.

The new year promises new things. Auriel will be going to a new school after PSLE, and Joshua, Andrea and Emerson will rejoin your friends. Joshua, I know that you are doing great in rugby, and Andrea in netball. Keep a good balance in your lives. Enter the year with a resolution to develop yourself in one area - preferably something not related to school work. Something that will make you a nicer person and connect with the people that really matter to you.

Me? As I am not in school, I get to do one academic thing. I will strive to further improve my Chinese. On the connection side, I will learn to rock with my kids. I intend to learn to play the guitar properly. Hopefully they will prefer jamming with me than with their drum teacher.

I will also be starting a new blog. You can find it at economicsmadesimple.blogspot.com. It is really for adults. For the younger lot of you, this will remain the place to be. For the older more adventurous lot (Andrea and Joshua), you may want to occasionally go there :).

Merry Christmas!

The Problem with India

During my previous four trips to India, I always returned more optimistic about India's future.

On my recent trip, I returned less sanguine.

Don't get me wrong. India is doing exceptionally well. India's economic growth rates for 2006 will be about 9% - one of the fastest in the world. The market believes that this rapid growth is sustainable. The Bombay Stock Exchange index, the SENSEX, was 6000 in 2004. This month, it crossed the 13000 mark. Manmohan Singh has set the goal for India to achieve a growth of 9.5% next year. Credit Suisse estimates that the Indian economy will outdo this and achieve 10% next year, and 10.5% in 2008.

So why do I have reservations?

My fear is that the success over the last few years has made many Indian leaders lose sense of reality. They are beginning to see positive things in negative things. They are beginning to believe in their own propaganda.

Kamal Nath, India's Minister for Commerce, argued that India's demographic profile was a plus for India. He said that India was a "young country" [35% of India is under 15] and was getting younger. India of tomorrow will be an India of "savers and spenders". This young cohort will also provide India with a large pool of skilled workers. This will help the economy grow. This was a plus for India over China. India's demographic profile therefore "holds the key to India's future."

Will simply producing more young people lead to a future of economic growth? This is a dubious conclusion to say the least. Otherwise, India would have enjoyed phenomenal growth in the past two decades. In the last 15 years, India added something like 200 million people to its population.

Population growth has and will always be a huge challenge for developing countries. Not least India. India's total fertility rate is about 3.3. [Singapore is at something like 1.6]. India's population is projected to reach 1.4 billion by 2026. At 1.1 billion people, India already has about 15% of the world's population living on 2.4% of the world's land mass, many of them in dire poverty.

Let's go back to the simple basics. To improves his lot in life, the average Indian must earn more than he does today. With a growing population, India needs to a) provide millions of new jobs for all the young folks entering the job market and b) provide these millions of young poeple with better skills so that they can make more money doing higher valued work. This will not happen without economic planning, investments and better schools. A better future will not happen simply because Indians produce more babies.

Searching for the Solution to Running a Marathon

I ran the Standard Chartered Marathon on the 3rd of December, three days after my birthday. The marathon started as a challenge. It has evolved into something to motivate myself to keep fit.

Now it is a little of an addiction.

Completing the marathon is no longer an issue for me. [This race was my fourth completed marathon. ] I now want to figure out how people condition their bodies to keep them moving at pace for about 3-5 hours. And since everyone is different, you need to figure out what your body needs to do.

I have now run the marathon in many different styles. Last year, I ran slow, but non-stop, from start to finish - absolutely no walking. 4 hrs :59 min. This year, I decided to run fast at the start and see if I could sustain this. I broke a personal achievement record for the fastest 30km I have ever run in my life. I crossed the 30km mark at 3 hrs and 1 min.

But this year, at the 32 km mark, things started to fall apart. My muscles tightened and gripped; and I simply could not run, even though I wanted so badly to. So I limped home in a run walk manner. In spite of this, I crossed the line in 4 hrs 44 min and 19 sec. I need more mileage I figure.

Thank to those that ran with me, Daniel, Ben and Kok Cheong.

I need another marathon soon to break 4 hrs 30 mins!

And remember about leaning forward? Well my son did the 700m dash and he was so proud. Enjoy!