OMG; Where did Friday go ?

How would you feel if you fell asleep on Thursday night and woke up on Saturday morning. No No; you didn't oversleep like crazy. Somebody moved the clocks. This is exactly what happened on 30th December if you were a Samoan - actually there was no 30th December. The world magically went from 29th to 31st. The reality behind the magic is quite prosaic. Samoa simply decided to come "this" side of the International Date line from "that".

The international date line is an arbitrary line that dictates where the easternmost and westernmost part of the world is. As you can see from the picture below it is not a straight line at all - quite arbitrary. If you fancy  such things, you could have celebrated New Year's day in Tonga ; hopped across on a short plane ride to Samoa on the west of the line and celebrated New Year's day again. Alas, no longer.

Samoa does such things. Sometime ago they moved from driving on the right of the road to the left of the road - chronicled in this post. Now they have made everybody older by a day by just a wave of the wand. Such are the serious issues that the government of Samoa tackles.

The official explanation is that Samoa is on the side of the time zone which makes it one of the last countries to finish the day. That way they are on the same date as Hawaii and the rest of the US. But their biggest trading partners are now New Zealand and Australia - Kiwibloke, a regular commentator here has helpfully pointed out that there are more Samoans in Australia than there are in Samoa itself. But the time zones are such that Samoa is never on the same day as Australia - so when the Samoans are working (presumably) on a Friday, it is already the weekend in Australia (every sensible Aussie is on the beach ogling at Sheilas) and when the Samoans are "resting" on a Sunday, the Kiwis are already working on their Monday. This mismatch is apparently hurting the Samoans economically - hence this move !! Its amazing what you can justify on the grounds of economics these days.

We can hereby grant Samoa the title of the most entertaining and quixotic country in the world.

Eyes left : Look towards Nigeria

There is endemic corruption that beggars belief. There is a highly educated, superb English speaking elite and large masses of illiterate poor. There is insurgency and terrorism around the edges. There is organised loot of the country's finances with a few getting extremely rich and the lot remaining dirt poor. Misguided subsidies are ruining the state finances. There is a thriving film industry that churns our the second largest number of movies in the world and provides opium to the masses. No this is not India. Welcome to Nigeria.

Nigeria is an oil producing country. You would expect that to be a huge blessing, right ? Wrong. It has proved to be a curse. Nigeria is suffering from an unsustainable petroleum subsidy burden. So unsustainable that this week it announced abolition of the subsidy. Predictably there will be chaos on the streets as large scale protests have commenced.

The petroleum subsidy case in Nigeria is a textbook case of how pathetic government policies can ruin a country. Nigeria is an oil producing nation. However it has not set up refining capacity. It therefore exports crude and imports refined products. It then massively subsidises petroleum prices. A litre of petrol costs Rs 20 (US$ 0.40). The government spends some $1bn a month in subsidies. This is simply unsustainable. 

Subsidies like this distorts every economic activity. There is, of course, large scale smuggling into neighbouring countries where the prices are four times higher. The largest per capita incidence of petrol pumps in the world is in the border towns like Idiroko - organised smuggling designed to fill the coffers of the masters in Lagos.

From the perspective of the poor, the subsidy is the only thing the government does for them. It is otherwise almost a failed state. The government says the money wasted on the subsidy will be used to build infrastructure, schools, hospitals, etc - things that the government ought to be doing. The trouble is that nobody believes them. Given the highly sophisticated levels of organised corruption, few doubt where the money will land up.

Replace petroleum subsidy with colour TVs or colossal statues or free power and you'll look at a country, readers of this blog are more familiar with.

India often likes to compare itself with China. It should instead look up to Nigeria. That is the true role model - of how bad things can become if the deterioration in governance and the state continues in its present trajectory.

Yes, we can

To many, the year gone by was a bad year. Natural disasters took their toll - the earthquakes in Japan & New Zealand, the floods in Thailand, Brazil and the Philippines,  Irene slapped the US earlier in the year, and just as the year was slipping by, Thane kicked Tamil Nadu. Unemployment remained rampant in the developed world ; there is nothing more demoralising than losing your job and not having a hope of getting another one. Large parts of Europe are in crisis. Austerity measures are hurting badly, especially in Greece, and now Italy. Inflation has hurt people in China and India and growth slowing down in both countries is ominous. The Arab world had a new spring, but winter seems to have set in somewhat prematurely.  You could be forgiven for ushering in the new year in a somewhat sombre mood.

But there is every reason to look forward with hope. Adversity often brings the best in man. We can find strength that we did not even know we possessed. The Euro zone will hold together and the crisis will pass. Belt tightening will be required, but with courage and fortitude, there will be less suffering. Joblessness in the developed world will start to reduce as a slow recovery happens . There is no better a mood lifter than getting and holding a job. Inflation will ease in India and China - signs are there already and more and more people can lift themselves out of poverty. An encouraging part of the world is Africa. Long abandoned as a basket case, many countries are showing good growth and the Asian achievement of lifting people out of poverty is slowly, but surely, being replicated in Africa.


The year ahead is going to see significant elections in France and the US and a generation change in leadership in China. Each one of these is going to be momentous - none more so than the change looming in China where for the first time, such a change is going to happen without a strongman like Mao or Deng lording over it. Perhaps a leadership change might happen in India too.

We can look forward to 2012 with hope. I am surmising that the worst is over economically. The upturn might be slow, but upturn it is going to be. We can do much better this year and when the time comes to ring out the year, we can be in a much more cherful mood than we are today. Yes , we can.