The Chinese save because? .... Read this!

I don't think the following explains it all; yet, an interesting point that the NY Times' Floyd Norris brings to our attenion:

In a working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research today, two economists, Shang-Jin Wei of Columbia University and Xiaobo Zhang of the International Food Policy Research Institute, note that “By 2005, men outnumbered women at age 25 or below by about 30 million.” In 2007 there were about five boys born for every four girls.

“Families with sons compete with each other to raise their savings rate in response to ever-rising pressure in the marriage market. Competitive saving by these families spills over to greater savings by other families, possibly through raising the prices of nontradable goods such as housing.”

“Across Chinese provinces, there is clear evidence that local savings rates tend to be higher in regions with more unbalanced sex ratios.”

In other words, parents want their sons to marry, and they figure that girls are more likely to want to marry rich boys.

The authors note that while they looked only at China, “other economies known to have a strong sex ratio imbalance include Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and India. These countries also happen to have high savings rates.”

Maybe in the new academic year, I can bug a few Chinese students about this :-) and, BTW, ever wonder what happens to the money saved? Click here.

More on the college hype

To a casual reader, and perhaps to any colleague who might wander into this blog, it might be quite a surprise to read my posts on how all over the world we are hyping up the college degree--and this criticism coming from an academic whose job security depends on the hype! When two graduating students asked me to recommend a book for them to read in the transition to their next phase, I suggested Shop Class as Soulcraft.

In a review of this book in the Chronicle, the reviewer writes:

Skilled manual labor is far more cognitive than people realize, Crawford argues, and deserves more respect. That is especially true during tough economic times, when an independent tradesperson can make a decent and dignified living, and — this is important — can't be outsourced. (You can't get your car fixed in China.) "The question of what a good job looks like — of what sort of work is both secure and worthy of being honored — is more open now than it has been for a long time," he writes.

Crawford believes that Americans, in their frenzy to send every kid to college in pursuit of information-age job skills, have lost something valuable. "My sense is that some kids are getting hustled off to college when they'd rather be learning to build things or fix things, and that includes kids who are very smart," he says in an interview.

Crawford's phone has been ringing, and the blogosphere abuzz with lively discussions about working with one's hands, since an excerpt of Shop Class ran in The New York Times Magazine last month.

I made it to a book :-)

Bored stiff, I test drove "bing" by searching for, yes, you guessed it: my name :-) Somehow I "binged myself" does not have the same appeal as I "googled myself" ....

Anyway, thanks to binging myself, I found out that I am there in the collection that The Atlantic's Barbara Walraff has put together:

“I wonder if there is a word for what happens when teachers, like me, grade papers at the end of terms: the incorrect information in students’ papers makes me begin to question my own knowledge. For instance, after grading quite a few papers I begin to ask myself if it is effect or affect; does Switzerland really border a sea? Is there a word to describe this acute sense of ‘unlearning’?”
—Sriram Khe, Eugene, Ore.

Temporary inanity is what college English teacher Laura Zlogar, of River Falls, Wis., calls the malady. Deborah Carter, of Walkersville, Md., wrote, “I’m a teacher too, and I’ve always thought of this phenomenon as wisdumb.”
Various people suggested factigue, examnesia, and misleducation— also amissgivings (Anutosh Moitra, of Sammamish, Wash.), bogmindling (Eunice Van Loon, of Biloxi, Miss.), contaminotion (Jim Lemon, of Gladesville, of New South Wales, Australia), errattled (Lisa Bergtraum, of New York City), nonsensery overload (C. Bernard Bar-foot, of Alexandria, Va.), numbleminded (Doug and Kay Overbey, of Maryville, Tenn.), and righter’s block (Carol DeMoranville, of Steward, Ill.).
Tom Dorman, of Sedro-Woolley, Wash., had yet another idea, and he knows whereof he speaks. He wrote: “As a high school teacher, I can sympathize. My ninth-graders have recently convinced me that the Norman Conquest took place in 1951, that Samson and Goliath had a torrid affair (don’t tell the school board), and that car pedium means ‘seize your movement.’ Correct tests like this late into the night to meet your grade deadline and you, too, will feel doubt-witted by your students.”

It doesn't take a lot to amuse myself ..... ha ha ha

Quote of the day

For all its diplomatic bluster, Russia is little more than a cantankerous geopolitical gas station, and China is sparing no effort to take direct control of Siberian oil and gas through aggressive corporate buy-ins. Only if Russia wakes up to this reality and turns to the west will the real Nato—and therefore the west—have access to central Asia, let alone the capability to compete with China.

Read the entire essay by Parag Khanna

Iran's revolution: 1999 anyone?

The Economist magazine had an interesting piece a year ago, which I blogged about. I have copied/pasted here; history repeats!

Tortured Iranian escapes to America

From the Economist:

NINE years ago, Ahmad Batebi appeared on the cover of The Economist. He was a 21-year-old student, one of thousands who protested against Iran’s government that summer. He was photographed holding aloft a T-shirt bespattered with the blood of a fellow protester. Soon afterwards, he was arrested and shown our issue of July 17th 1999. “With this”, he was told, “you have signed your death warrant.”

During his interrogation he was blindfolded and beaten with cables until he passed out. His captors rubbed salt into his wounds to wake him up, so they could torture him more. They held his head in a drain full of sewage until he inhaled it. He recalls yearning for a swift death to end the pain. He was played recordings of what he was told was his mother being tortured. His captors wanted him to betray his fellow students, to implicate them in various crimes and to say on television that the blood on that T-shirt was only red paint. He says he refused.

He was sentenced to death for “creating street unrest”. But after a global outcry, the sentence was commuted to 15 years in jail. He speculates that his high profile made it hard to kill him without attracting negative publicity. For two years, he was kept in solitary confinement, in a cell that was little more than a toilet hole with a wooden board on top. He was tortured constantly. Only when he was allowed to mingle with other prisoners again did he begin to overcome his despair.

He suffered a partial stroke that left the right side of his body without feeling. He needed medical attention. The regime did not want to be blamed for him dying behind bars, he says, so he was allowed out for treatment. Three months ago, on the day of the Persian new year, he escaped into Iraq. On June 24th he arrived in America.

He spoke to The Economist on July 7th. Looking at the picture that sparked his ordeal, he says that another man in his place might be angry, but he is not. Mr Batebi is a photographer himself. He says he understands what journalism involves. Had we not published the picture, he says, another paper might have. Looking at the same picture, his lawyer, interpreter and friend Lily Mazahery says she is close to tears: in it, the young Mr Batebi’s pale arms are as yet unscarred by torture.

The protests Mr Batebi took part in nine years ago frightened Iran’s rulers. The students were angry about censorship, the persecution of intellectuals and the thugs who beat up any student overheard disparaging the regime. Mr Batebi thinks Iran could well turn solidly democratic some day. In neighbouring states, religious extremism is popular. In Iran, he says, the government is religiously extreme, but the people are not.

He is cagey about how exactly he escaped. But he says he used a cellphone camera to record virtually every step of his journey, and will soon go public with the pictures and his commentary. Meanwhile, he seems to be enjoying America. He praises the way “people have the opportunity to become who they want to be”. Shortly after he arrived, he posted a picture of himself in front of the Capitol on his Farsi-language blog, with the caption: “Your hands will never touch me again.”

Bumrungrad. Apollo. Healthcare. America?

“We needed a visa to go to India, but not to come here. So, we came to Thailand for medical treatment” said a couple from Dubai, with whom I shared a table while on a cruise-boat down the Chao Phraya River to Bangkok from the historic ruins of Ayutthaya.

After completing the medical procedures, the young husband and wife from Dubai had been vacationing in and around Bangkok for a week, which is when I met them. They very well represent the rapidly growing medical tourism market, into which India has jumped in as well.

The previous day, I spent almost three hours in Bumrungrad Hospital, which is located in one of the busiest areas of Bangkok—not as a patient, but as an observer curious about the globalized healthcare market. The multistoried building is impressive right from the outside. Even the healthy options in the food-court for visitors and families of patients, reflected the multinational customer base with varieties from Lebanese to American foods. And, yes, there is a Starbucks, too!

Bumrungrad is a hospital that offers as much as, or sometimes even more than, what some of the best hospitals in the US have to offer, for much lower fees. Its certification from the Joint Commission International speaks for the quality of medical professionals, technology, and care. In fact, it was the first hospital in Asia to have met the American standards for hospital accreditation.

The success of Bumrungrad, and the potential for an ever expanding international healthcare market, has catalyzed the growth of a similar industry in India also. According to one estimate, India treated about 450,000 foreign patients in 2007 alone. However, reliable data on precise numbers of medical tourists are hard to obtain for a number of reasons; for one, it is quite likely that a foreigner might not want to explicitly state medical treatment as the reason for the visit, because of worries that the visa application will be denied.

Wockhardt Hospital and Apollo Hospitals, with highly qualified staff and some of the latest technologies, are such examples in India. Wockhardt has partnered with Harvard Medical International, while Apollo operates hospitals not only in India but even in Africa. With six of its 43 hospitals having been accredited by JCI, Apollo has the largest number of accredited facilities outside the US. The male half of the Dubai couple remarked that his father prefers going to India because of better service and, interestingly enough, for the tastier foods.

An important aspect of medical tourism is not discussed much here in America—the US was the true pioneer for medical tourism. It used to attract patients from all over the world because of its dominance with the latest and sophisticated healthcare. But now, patients from Asia and Africa can choose from facilities like Bumrungrad or Apollo, which compete to provide American-quality healthcare at lower prices—sometimes even as low as a third of American prices. As with many other products and services, the rest of the world is racing to catch up with America. I am, therefore, less worried about a potential outflow of American patients to Thailand or India, but more concerned that America might have lost her groove.

Finally, medical tourism highlights a profound contradiction—quality healthcare is available for those who are able to afford it, irrespective of where they live, even as many millions lack access to basic healthcare. India’s “Planning Commission” notes that public expenditures are a very small fraction of the total healthcare expenditures. In other words, healthcare is a highly privatized economic activity in India where the number of poor exceeds the entire population of the US. This highly privatized nature immediately implies the poor, who cannot afford to spare a rupee, have practically no healthcare at all.

I suppose to a large extent, the healthcare problems in Thailand or India are no different from what we are struggling with in the US—how to guarantee a minimum level of health coverage to citizens, while making sure that any such framework does not take away the incentives for further progress in the research, development, and provision of advanced healthcare. I hope that we in the US can set a successful example for the rest of the world.

The hype about a college degree

In the Great Recession, even new nursing grads are not having an easy time to find a job--because the more experienced ones are coming back or working longer hours because of family financial crises. If this is the situation for grads who used to pick and choose from the multiple offers, I am not sure how well a liberal arts grad is faring. For some time now I have been wondering whether we are hyping the college degree way too much--to the effect that we are screwing the very young who need help. This NY Times report adds more:

The pressure to earn a bachelor’s degree draws young people away from occupational training, particularly occupations that do not require college, Mr. Sennett said, and he cited two other factors. Outsourcing interrupts employment before a skill is fully developed, and layoffs undermine dedication to a single occupation. “People are told they can’t get back to work unless they retrain for a new skill,” he said.

None of this deterred Keelan Prados from pursuing a career as a welder, one among roughly 200,000 across the nation. At 28, he has more than a decade of experience, beginning when he was a teenager, building and repairing oil field equipment in his father’s shop in Louisiana. Marriage to a Canadian brought the Pradoses to Maine, near her family. And before Mr. Prados joined Cianbro, an industrial contractor, he ran his own business, repairing logging equipment out of a welding and machine shop on the grounds of his home in Brewer.

The recession dried up that work, and last December, he answered one of Mr. McGrary’s ads. “I welded a couple of pieces of plate together for them and two pipes, and they were impressed,” Mr. Prados said. In less than two weeks, he was at work on Cianbro’s oil refinery project, earning $22 an hour and among the youngest of Mr. McGrary’s hires, most of whom are in their mid-30s to early 40s.

Ayodhya, Ayutthaya, and Babri Masjid

My grandmothers would have been ecstatic if I had visited Ayodhya—but, visiting Ayutthaya may have been good enough for them.

Ayodhya is one of the holiest places in Hinduism. It is located in northern India, not far from the Nepal border, and is believed to be the birth place of the Hindu god Rama—to whom I owe my name!

Like most religious Hindus, my grandmothers immensely valued making a pilgrimage to Ayodhya. Though they were born in small towns—villages back then—my grandmothers made it, unlike their previous generations who could only dream of going there in their lifetimes, but never did because of resource and transport constraints. After all, it is almost a three-thousand mile round trip between their towns and Ayodhya, and travel before the advent of modern transportation would have been extremely challenging.

Ayutthaya is in Thailand and, yes, it was named after Ayodhya. Ayutthaya was founded in 1350, and served as the capital for more than 400 years before it fell to the invading Burmese forces. It is a cruel irony that many a devastating wars have featured in the history of these two neighbors, which are home to millions of followers of Buddha, who preached non-violence!

After the fall of Ayutthaya, Bangkok has been the capital since 1782. The king assumed the official title of “Rama I,” thereby further cementing the symbolic association with Ayodhya. The current king, a jazz aficionado, is Rama IX.

Ayutthaya is about 85 kilometers—about 50 miles for the metric-challenged—from Bangkok. The contrasts are profound. Bangkok is modern, bustling, congested, noisy, dusty, and crowded. Ayutthaya, on the other hand, is everything that Bangkok is not—calm, and with lots of ambulatory space, and feels a tad cooler too. After spending a few hours walking through the ruins, I found it quite easy to imagine the life that once flourished in Ayutthaya during its years of glory.

At least Ayutthaya’s days of battles are over. Ayodhya, however, continues to be a flashpoint because extremist Hindus claim that there ought not to be a mosque—the Babri Masjid—in the piece of land where, it is believed, a temple for Rama once stood.

The spread of Islam, and the arrival of Central Asian Muslim warriors, who founded the successful Moghul Dynasty, resulted in the destruction of more than a few Hindu temples in India, and some that did not face destruction were converted as mosques. The Babri Masjid is from that era, and its name is in honor of Babur, the first of the Moghuls.

The destruction and alteration of property was not anything unusual—historically, it is something that humans have done pretty much in every culture across the planet. Rare would have been the case when the invading forces did everything possible to preserve the “enemy’s” life and property.

However, and unfortunately centuries later, Hindu extremists launched a holy war to restore the temple of Rama. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), through which the extremist Hindu concerns are politically represented, decided to make the converted mosque a big part of their politics. Thus, despite India’s Supreme Court warning against any vandalism and destruction of Babri Masjid, the fanatics from the BJP ended up destroying the mosque in 1992—a horrific act, that severely escalated religious tensions in the country.

I am confident that my grandmothers would have never have supported the destruction of a mosque, despite their devotion to Rama and, therefore, to Ayodhya. It is a tragedy that throughout history we humans have intentionally destroyed our fellow beings and their settlements and, along with that, traditions and cultures. While we might be vaguely familiar with the adage that “Rome was not built in a day”, we do not seem to truly understand that it takes only a short time to destroy that which took years, perhaps even centuries to build.

I am, therefore, delighted that the ruins of Ayutthaya are now one of the five sites in Thailand, among others around the globe, that are listed by UNESCO in the World Heritage List for having “outstanding universal value.” This list is a fantastic way in which we can ensure—to the best of our abilities—the continued existence of priceless and irreplaceable historical treasures that, by themselves, speak volumes of our collective past.