Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Bandh losses estimates : nothing but Amusing!

I really find it amusing reading the news about estimates of losses to economy of more than Rs. 13,000 crores. Well, I think there are some real morons out there in media who make such calculations and poor ignorant readers and viewers also believe in them. (Click here for related news)
Lets do a simple calculation. India's annual GDP is around 50 trillion rupees. So, when we divide that by 365 days, i.e to calculate the GDP per day, it comes out to a touch more than 13 thousand crores rupees.
Do you really think that one day (rather, 12 hours) of Bandh will actually mean that GDP of that much amount will be lost, totally!
The figure of 13000 Crores sounds really stupid to me.

If this theory has to be true, then
  • Everyone who was gonna buy food items on the day of Bandh will not buy those items and observe fast for one day. (or are they gonna buy more food items on previous day / later days?)
  • People who were planning to buy clothes and accessories will drop their plans of buying them altogether just because Monday was declared Bandh and they had planned to buy the items on Monday and only on that Monday!
  • Some IT companies claiming that they had a loss of 50 crores rupees in a day. Well, it means that they are not gonna compensate for all the man-hours lost by making their employees work on a weekend?!
  • and so on...

I think its really absurd to estimate the losses for one day of Bandh that was observed. People are just gonna delay their purchases or compensate for their production by working more hours later on. However, I dont mean to say that Bandh had no effect on commerce and economy. There is a loss to economy but I think its negligible compared to the amounts being mentioned in news channel and newspaper. The figures and estimates about loss to the economy are simply absurd according to me.

(Well, the people who really suffer because of Bandh are the ones who work on daily wages. Their one day of wage was wasted. Many others did make loss, but nothing hurts as much as it does to daily wage laborers)

Any comments or argument?! you are most welcome! :)

6 comments:

Hitesh said...

I can't agree more with you. I was trying to figure out how did they arrive at this figure of 13k crore and there you explained it.
I was kinda thinking that they would have considered various parameters and all they did was GDP/365. Sometimes I think that I think too much. :-P lol. Now that's getting into recursive loop.

Anyways simple and nice piece of information this is. And tell me who could be more bugged than an Employer. Most of my friends (e.g. Patta, you can refer is FB comment) were happy that it was off on Monday, but I am sure that the employers were not, jaise ki Tu and my Dad. (Just spoke to him and he said workers ko majaa aa gaya. Apne idhar Tuesday off hota hai and opposition ne Monday band karva diya. 2 din chutti. Though life was normal that day, but all they need was a reason and they found one.)


Anyways, now that you have ample time, keep these posts coming regularly. Btw, I would love a post which actually calculates the loss if any to the economy due to bandh.

malaylakhani said...

@Hitesh: Bandh did not affect my factory much. I am sure contract labor will work extra hours to achieve their target ;).
and abt actually calculating the loss, I think its impossible.
All employees will be happy, and that is why they will always be employees with that mindset.

Unknown said...

guys, why are we talking on estimates of losses. Infact it is good that media writes such figures. This figures will make the poor readers think about it and will start acting against goverment rather than just reading a newspaper.
Also in turn the gov will have to improve else the agitated crowd will ask for change in gov.

malaylakhani said...

@vaibhav: if they read these figures, they will be against opposition, not the government!!! ..
I am talking abt figures regarding the losses due to bandh and not the inflation..

Unknown said...

All said and done what we really need to understand is that a public revolt is voluntary by the public and not a forced one as we saw. It seemed more like people wanted to work that day but were asked to. And also how long will we indians work on the bandh system to revolt which i believe like in this case too, that itll not have any effect at all. Congress has just got too usd to these tactics and they know itll not have any effect on the govt and ppl will forget about it in times to come. The opposition had a valid reason for common man to agree with them but made a mess of the opportunity by the means with which they executed the entire bandh. I believe our country really needs to look at thins in a larger light than havin a BANDH.

malaylakhani said...

@Zahed: Agreed!