You really start to notice it when you lose an hour’s sleep because of it – yes, I am referring to the Daylight Saving Time that kicked in at 2:00 AM local time today for those living in the North American continent. This article isn’t about how it works, but rather why it’s done and where it’s done, and for probably the first time looking at how it’s related to the priorities of the local land. I came across an excellent article in the Washington Post today that spoke of why the day light saving, which is at 1-hour adjustments in its present form, should be doubled.

Essentially, in terms of the impact (I put it as if it’s a big thing, which it seems so – for today anyway), what happens is that the second Sunday of March sees the clocks turned forward by an hour in the wee hours of the morning. So, if you were accustomed to waking up at 6:00 in the morning every day, you would wake up with the auto-corrected clocks (one of Microsoft’s less-frustrating and positive influences on our lives!) showing 7:00 in the morning.

The reverse happens when winter starts to set in towards the end of the year, and day-light saving is turned off, so to speak. The reasons why this was originally started was to enable people to get an extra hour of day light in the evenings during the summer. With the American lifestyle of the summer revolving mainly around visiting ballparks for a game of baseball, or visiting friends and family for a barbecue, or even hanging out by the beach, this hour of sun light and natural warmth after a long day at work is relished upon. More so, when you have nearly 6 months of winter wherein you really get to see little or no day light, this is indeed a welcome and much anticipated opportunity to bask in the sun!

If it isn’t clear already, I am heading towards the intangible aspects of the day light savings change – the improvement in the quality of life is what dictated this effort in adjusting clocks. To get an hour of quality time in the evenings, where one could spend his / her time outdoors, there has been a significant effort put in to alter anything under the sun (pun intended). Such is the value and emphasis on quality of life that certain societies seem to place. I did a quick search online to see which developing nations have adopted day light saving vis-a-vis the developed nations. It didn’t surprise me one bit when my short and quick research this morning indicated that most of the countries that adopted day-light saving in the summer were further along the economic prosperity curve. I have not been able to find any research that links the GDP of a nation to whether it adopted day-light saving (maybe I should be enlisted by United Nations or some research funded group to do this!).

Inherently, this points to a very basic human trait that derives from the local culture – are we willing to do something purely to improve the quality of life? Or, is quality of life a secondary goal (at this specific instance) of a country’s other numerous high-priority issues that call for more attention? The geographic specifics and local climes also dictate day-light saving as I have indicated. But looking beyond, can we look at the demographics? Does the selfless nature ingrained in some cultures play, at least some part, a role in not considering improving quality of life, a sole priority? I am sure no one would say quality of life isn’t important – whether we are willing to do some thing exclusively for it is the question.

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Popularity: 12%

A Recession is a prolonged period of time when the nation’s economy is slowing or it is the reduction of the Gross Domestic Product(GDP) for at least six months. The producers and consumers are the two basic people upon whom the whole economy revolves. The value of goods and services is determined by supply and demand. In case the price is too high there will be less demand and the producer reduces the price to increase supply.

Increasing demand leads to an increase in the production thereby increased supply which in turn results in increased labour ,materials and overall increase in price.Now the general feeling is good. You want to make investments and consequently the stock markets go up.

Consequently this leads to overproduction and the supply exceeds consumption.Now the attitude of the people changes to saving mentality and this can lead to a contracting economy.People spotting a negative trend on one area fears the same to happen in other areas and suddenly RECESSION is on.

In a market economy the market is determined by demand and competition putting it beyond any control.A government has the fiscal and monetary policies in controlling the recession.While the former is on collecting and spending money and latter on manipulating the available money. Both can either improve the situation or worsen it.

According to the Halfway Rule past recessions lasted only for 13 months. So continuing with the trends the present recession is predicted to last till 2010.

A recession in US should worry India as it has major outsourcing deals.The strengthening rupee is another cause of concern.Oil prices coming down is at present keeping inflation down.The way out of the present crisis is only through a massive fiscal stimulus either by monetizing or by tax cuts.Indian Government is relying on private investments and resurrection in agriculture.

But the stress should be on public spending as advocated by Keynes who argued that the solution to recession is through reduced interest rates and increased public spending.

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Popularity: 35%

As the year 2008, the year of the frog, is drawing to a close many people are sighing with relief. It has been an eventful year, with a few positives like the gold medal at the Olympics and The Man Booker prize. However, The Global financial crisis and the most recent acts of terrorism have cast a gloomy shadow and are threatening to evolve to diabolic levels.

Global Financial Crisis

When the year 2007 was drawing to a close most of the Indian investors who had invested in India were very happy. Our Bombay’s stock index was hovering around 21000 giving more than 40% return in a span of just 6 months. This attributed to many theories like the ‘De-copulation theory’ according to which Indian markets are independent from the US market.

But then things took an ugly turn in 2008. The Global Financial Crisis which had spilled over from the previous year, started to wreak havoc in the global markets. Many prominent organizations like the Bears & Sterns, the Lehmann Brothers etc. had to shut shop because of the losses faced by them.

Closer to home, our banks did not face a huge impact because of stronger banking regulations and lesser exposure in the US and European Markets. But our industries are now facing a major slowdown as our economy is highly dependant on the Global markets especially the US and the Europe. There has been a significant decline in the industrial production numbers, our export figures and also in the profitability of many Indian Companies leading to a slower than usual growth of our GDP.

Repercussions of this global turmoil had a major impact on our stock market. The FIIs had removed nearly $12 Billion from our stock market this year to reduce their exposure. This has lead to more than 50% reduction of value on the Bombay stock index, which is now hovering around the 9000 mark.

To add on to the woes, at the start of this year the oil prices started climbing steadily to dizzy levels. At one time i.e., around mid of this year oil prices were around $ 150 per barrel. This led to an increase in the fuel pricing, pushing our inflation numbers to around 13% for sometime.

Though now the oil prices have gone below $50 a barrel and the inflation cooling down to below 8%, the short-term outlook looks very bleak.  The RBI has been taking a series of steps so that recession doesn’t hit Indian shores by its monetary and fiscal policies. It has been trying to reduce various rates to stimulate domestic demand and there are reasons to believe that this will continue doing so for the next fiscal.

Terrorism

The year 2008 has been one of the bloodiest years in the recent times even though we have not waged a formal war. For the past 2 decades we have been battling militants waging a proxy war in many parts of our country for many reasons, be it Kashmir, northeast or naxals. According to estimates done by various organisations, more than 2500 people have been killed because of terrorist attacks, which is next only to Iraq in this region.

These militants have become very tech savvy in executing their attack using many everyday tools like the google maps, VOIP phones etc.

Despite all this, our governments have failed to act or address the fundamental problems that lead to terrorism. We can just hope that in the coming years they would take some steps to contain these before they hinder our growing economy.

2008 is drawing to an end and one hopes that this New Year brings about some kind of positive cheer and hope, though the above problems are threatening to become graver by each passing day.

Popularity: 12%