Helping the POOR 2

It's been a trend recently; 'helping the poor'. People do start organizations, post or share videos on the same in social networks, thousands like them praise those 'god sent kind people', who help them. And both parties, who help and whom are being helped are happy; the spectators too!

Are we happy because we make the poor’s life a better one?

- It can't be! because food for a day or 10,000 rupee doesn't make their  life a better one.

Or if money was the only problem why don't we steal money making machine from reserve bank of India and just print as much as we want. Will it solve the problem?

-Nope! Because if everyone has enough money; they will try to achieve more and more facilities. This high demand can shift the price of those facilities a bit up, ultimately causing inflation and recession!

Apart from the mentioned two approaches we do have several charity organizations working for them providing shelters, economic and educational support and healthcare etc. The number of such organization never decline...

Still we have 295,873,856 individuals in absolute poverty (whereas China has 84,971,992 in number though it is populated than us).^[1]

If it was the problem of isolated individuals, it could’ve been solved by the initiation of a few people (say blood donation -which can be solved completely if we get a single individual to donate blood -), and we wouldn’t have had ~24% (~6% in china) absolute poor people!

If it is not a problem of individual and there are crores suffer from this particular condition –namely ‘poverty’- why don’t we -the citizen- call it as a social issue?

No individual or organization is responsible to look after them. Still we volunteer to help them and nothing changes in the end… Still we are happy!!!

Why are we happy on helping 'the poor’? May be it make us feel good, providing an impression ‘kind man!’ in the society.

(On the other hand it is a social issue, Govt are responsible to take policy for their betterment. For my wonder our Govt ask us to help them say via 'give it up'!)

Ref:
1. http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/world-poverty/ 

          http://thusharaav.blogspot.in/2015/06/helping-poor.html

Undercover marketing and Exposure

Recently I was talking to a ten year old child. We started with a game in which he was amused by the 'inertia of object'. But when I failed to repeat it (due to some technical reason) he laughed at me. Well, as he got bored we changed the topic. He became talkative; movies- that was the topic-. He was enthusiastic about several Malayalam,Tamil movies. He asked me if I have watched so and so movies... for most of them the answer was 'no'.

Then after a little pause he exclaimed -as if he forgot something that must have mentioned earlier- "Have you seen 'Premam' ?" -a Malayalam movie released in 2015-
I asked 'what's about it?'
'It's a fantastic one. You should see it if you haven't. I saw it 5 times.'
'Oh! really? I'll watch it. What is the story?'
'....mmm...mmm... First he will fall in love with Malar'
Then he jumped to some other topics -video games-.

Those who have seen the movie, you know what the story really is...

will a 10 years old child be able to understand the 'emotions' of the hero? The child doesn't even recall 'Mary'. Without understanding/feeling the mentioned facts/emotions how did he enjoy the film?

He said the movie was fantastic. What made him say so? what made him to watch the movie 5 times without understanding the story? (In fact children are excellent observers that they do explain the story-including pin point details- of a cartoon that they see!).

Have you heard of a term 'Undercover Marketing' ?
It's a strategy used to advertise products. In which the consumers do not realize that they are being marketed to. The campaign employ actors to interact with the public, who uses tricks that will convey the consumers how impressive and useful the product is.
For example Sony T68i.
In which around 60 actors were sent to major cities as tourists. They asked strangers (the learners) to help them take a photo. They handed them camera-phone (Sony Ericsson) and talked enthusiastically about it's features and taught those strangers how to use it. And it was one of the best selling phone of the year!

We must have been come across such situations... A labeling 'best seller' is more than enough to make the item a demanded one. ^{[1] [2]}

Several factors play role in it. The risk taking nature, following the mob, learning behavior etc.

But a wide exposure could alter the situation.

Assume what would've happen if the 'learners' were exposed not only to Sony T68i but to some other brands too, in the same manner. They get more options now... Probabilistically, Sony will not get as much consumer as in the experimented case.

A few lines on learning behavior;
It's an experiment by Cook and Mineka- 'whether the fear could be socially learned'.
They had lab-reared monkeys that weren't afraid of snakes . Then they were exposed to the response of wild-reared monkeys to snakes. After this exposure, they exhibited fear response. "The lab-reared monkey socially learned to be afraid of snakes"!!! ^[3]

Let us go back to the 10 years old child. A thought experiment, what would've been the response of the child to the same movie, if he wasn't exposed to the media/youth who celebrated the movie? What could've been the measures that he will use to evaluate the movie? Will he be saying the same dialogue 'It's a fantastic movie!'? What the word 'fantastic' would mean to the child?


Ref:
1.  http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1028069195715597440
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGMUs97VZV4
3. https://animalcogblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/the-monkey-and-the-snake/

Who is the villain - part 2

We do have romantic movies quite a lot. More precisely most of the movies contain a ‘love story’ as mainstream or as a parallel story (I have considered Indian movies), in which we have seen different features of love!

Sometime the story will be aggressive; the couple will always be threatened by their parents or some other society members or else the so called ‘villains’, and then he will argue with them expressing his ‘true love’ for her or despite every protest he will ‘forcefully’ take her with him.

Sometimes hero will fight against the ‘villain’, who chase and ‘disturb’ her for her love and will rescue her later will become her the one with open hands and mind just for her.

On the contrary

Sometimes our hero will be chasing ‘the heroine’ for days, years… and in the end heroine will fall for him.

Sometime there will be innumerable nights awaiting the beloved one.

Sometimes they will risk their life to death; suicidal attempt of either hero or heroine to force the other party to love him/her.

Sometimes hero and his friends will roam about ‘her’ house just to see ‘her’.

Sometimes hero exchanges different signs of love… may be a romantic glance, a letter, or a wink regardless of the fact that whether she likes him or not.

Sometimes hero will stand with his friends on the way heroine used to travel and will comment on her.

Sometimes just a flower or a confession would make her fall in love with him

We enjoy the movies; we always support the hero; we pray for them to get together lifelong. We never like the ‘villain’, who tries to split them apart standing against the couples or who try to annoy the heroine by chasing her for her love… When hero does tricks to please her laugh at it and say ‘that’s funny!’.

Now,

Why do we –the same ‘we’ who enjoyed all these movies- have laws to punish those people who do the same that our heroes do in movies? Is it because the Govt. doesn’t want us to be heroes?

Is it because ‘what one does’ doesn’t make him a hero but something else is being added to make him a hero??? What is that ‘something’? Why it influences us a lot such that the movies becomes ‘box office hits’?????

http://thusharaav.blogspot.in/2015/06/who-is-villain-part-1.html

Public transportation and Road network

It’s a story of a village.

A very beautiful village; no worries no sorrow… They didn’t have money; they didn’t have education, still everyone was happy with what they had; it was free from the so called urban evils… They were hard workers… They were very affectionate with each other such that they used to walk for kilometers, spending hours and days simply to meet their relatives or friends. They used to look after patients, in their home itself. They worked together in fields…

Oh, wait!

That was an old version of the story; let me tell you the new one.

That was an isolated place; in terms of development. Not even primary facilities like hospital, school or equipment that were necessary for a better farming. You won’t even find a well-established transport system in that place. And hence natives were forced to walk very long distance to meet their needs. The lack of hospitals forced them to take care of patients in their home itself. They don’t even get a primary education to increase the productivity in fields according to their population growth, especially when there is a collective attack by insects in fields. Because of this low efficiency they were forced to work together despite everything.

Everyone hopes for a better future (regardless of the worry that ‘will it happen?’ ;and we all know that is the reason for all kinds of change).

In our story, there was a young person who wanted to change things as possible. The plan was this; they need a connection between their village and the nearest city so that goods and other facilities can be transported to and fro. Everyone agreed to the idea.

They need money for the implementation! They found a solution; contribute whatever they had. After a few years they gathered enough money to build a road. The young person traveled to the nearest city with the money to implement their dream…

With not much delay the road was built.

As they expected goods were transported to and fro. Several varieties of products started arriving the village. Crops were transported to other places. The good carrying vehicle arrived at the field reducing their burden to carry the goods to distant place; the vehicle had to travel long distance for that. And hence they pay cheap for the crops. Though there were shops with fancy items none of the villagers buy a thing, because they didn’t have enough money to buy things. A bit of starvation too, since they exported crops… They continue to look after the patient in home itself, because they didn’t own a vehicle. Unfortunately they do not have enough money to buy such a thing.

They began to think…

Why didn’t the road ease the suffering?

Is it because all profit flow to the young person who took initiative?

Is it because they didn’t have money?

Is it because they didn’t own a vehicle to travel all the places and get the facilities?

Is development good if it makes life more miserable?

Or can it even be called as development?

We say something is development when we -the society- benefit from it… If it doesn’t benefit us, then how do we call it as development!!!

So, are you saying building road is not development?

Not at all! We are supposed to serve what they ‘need’. If it was a village of rich people who own vehicle, it would’ve been a best idea-to build a road-. So they can go anywhere they want and get any services… In our story we had a different situation!

Think about a scenario, the young person came up with an idea of public transportation instead of building road (well, it includes road, since it’s an ingredient of public transportation)…

Still the villagers are poor- in terms of money-.

Yes, but they won't remain poor as in the earlier case; they get means of transportation; goods’ or individual’s-without the presence of a dealers-. Hence by spending not much money they get a vehicle to travel. They can go to the city market and can sell their goods without getting deceived (you can find similar unscientific development examples in the book everybody loves a good drought by  P. Sainath ). It reduces wastage of working time -which can be converted into money after all; which in turn contribute a lot to their economy as well as the GDP of nation-. Say, we do not have to spend time on the maintenance of private vehicles, preparation of appropriate vehicle for goods or for individuals etc. Do you see the economic impacts of the idea public transportation on individual as well as on nation?^[1]

Why did the young person choose the development of road over development of public transportation? Is it because the young person wanted to open a crop market at low cost (that it will benefit him) or due to the ignorance -that 'what development is'- ?...

Ref:

[1] http://www.camsys.com/pubs/publictransp_nationseconomy.pdf