Alternative Perspective
 Issue 13, December 18, 2002
 Compiled by Madhukar Shukla

Introduction: Alternative Perspective is an attempt to widen our awareness about issues related to business, environment, role and influence of media, geo-politics, culture, etc. It aims to share, on a regular basis, some of those pieces of news and information, which do not find place in the highly monopolised mainstream media. Please feel free to share/ forward/ distribute this newsletter to others who may be interested.



Note: The URLs of sources used in the text are numbered and given at the end of the Newsletter.

In This Issue:
  • The Fuzzy Maths of GDP
     It is an irony of measuring progress that whether a country spends $50bn in building schools or in building prisons, its GDP goes up by $50bn in both cases - just as contribution of health sector to GDP makes no distinction between innoculating children and treating riot-victims. This articles highlights these inadequacies in using GDP as a parameter to measure the well-being of a society/ nation. Economist Jonathan Rowe calls the GDP as the biggest accounting scandal[1]. In fact, it is quite likely that when the GDP is up, the country may be down[2].
    http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?issue_ID=607

  • Creating Iraq's "WMDs": Bhasmasur Legend in Modern World
    In the Hindu Mythology, The Legend of Bhasmasur[3] narrates the story of the demon who aqcuired the power, by which he could burn anyone to ashes just by putting his hands over the person's head. So arrogant and careless did he become with the power he had, that one day trying to lure a damsel, he put his hands on his own head - and got burnt to ashes... The moral, perhaps, being that arrogant power has the seeds of self-destruction. As this article on historical links between Iraq and USA shows, Bhasmasur's legacy lives on. In fact, it was alive even earlier in the creation of Osama Bin Laden[4], and perhaps, even as recently as in the case of North Korea's Nuclear Program[5].
    http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/12/13_iraq.html

  • Memo to the CEOs
    As the business stands at a crossroad, this article by Robert Simon, Henry Mintzberg and Kunal Basu, serves as an appropriate reminder of the half-truths on which the edifice of modern business rests. A must read for its insights!
    http://www.fastcompany.com/online/59/ceo.html

  • Helping the Rich, Harming the Poor
    In an increasingly globalized world, where goods, ideas, money is supposed to move unimpeded, there are also barriers, which are selective in nature, and make the rich righer and poor poorer. As this article discusses, the global regulatory bodies devise rules - about subsidies, IPR, quota, etc. - which apply more on the poor countries than on the rich ones. For instance, in farming and agriculture, in "preserving the rural way of life"[6] the rich contries inevitably harm the small farmers of the poorer countries.
    http://www.jubilee2000uk.org/opinion/helping_rich_harming_poor.htm

  • The Troubling New Face of America
    This is a rare piece - a former American President ruminating on the recent directions of US policies and their implications. In this article, President Jimmy Carter is more than frank about the changing nature of US image and actions.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38441-2002Sep4?language=printer


    Other Sources Quoted in the Newsletter:
    [1]: http://www.newdream.org/newsletter/fuzzymath.html
    [2]: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ecbig/gdp.htm
    [3]: http://www.shivkhodi.com/legend.htm
    [4]: http://www.public-i.org/excerpts_01_091301.htm
    [5]: http://www.antenna.nl/wise/566/5390.html
    [6]: http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/ffd/2002/1211smallfarm.htm


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