Prosperity!

I really think I should stop writing these posts about the world and things that they and their wives throw at us often. I hence, do not buy the newspaper (though there are several reasons why that is a stupid thing to do) and rarely, if ever, watch the TV for channels dealing with news and gossip (Discovery T&L and Cartoon Network win!!).

Last evening due to some inter-galactic conspiracy, I lingered too long on BBC. I was saddened by the forest fires in Southern California and was reminded of Pico Iyer (hope he is fine) and watched an advt. about some rugged man use his amphibian to pelican a lot of water to put out some fire in the woods - and this proves that the watch he wears is damn good!! While watching all this, a rather bald man came up on screen to inform me about the result of the latest survey and study about prosperous nations and their ranking. That got me interested. He elaborated on how prosperity is not merely an economic measure but also a measure of well-being and the environs and facilities to nurture and further prosperity. Hence, Australia which was on top was economically good and also supported the furthering of prosperity of her citizens and residents. The whole list was not read out and hence I decided to check the details.

If you want the entire list of the 2008 Legatum Prosperity Index, go here: http://www.prosperity.com/downloads/2008LegatumPItable.pdf

This whole intention of creating such a list seems fine. It helps some people feel proud, some people feel motivated and some people write blogposts. But the latter guys are the best!! ;-) They aren't lost in the result but the truth therein. I am just plain lost!! :-D

I can understand a lot of the countries being over and above India, but Slovenia? Slovakia? Costa Rica? Tunisia? Kazakhstan? Peru? Belize (ever heard of it)? SRI LANKA? Hence, I started my search about these countries.

Well, I just read about Costa Rica and now my question is, how did Japan go above Costa Rica? India deserves to be levels below Costa Rica! Seems like a really wonderful and intelligent place. It gets all my votes for not having a military.

But Belize hardly seems to be a place that deserves to be above India. Tunisia appears to be a small developing country but has done a very good job of growing into an intelligent country. In summary, I agreed with some but found no data to agree with the verdict on the rest. Most of these countries are smaller than a state in India (and hence, I feel, it is easier to manage such places which are geographically well contained and sparsely populated).

Whatever be the disagreements, I realised that India has a long way to go. Stinking politics, religious quarrels, sickening corruption, dismal state of basic human amenities and blindness form the roots of what keeps India way down on that list.

There also was a personal prosperity questionnaire which I decided to take in order to better understand the reasoning behind this survey. Here is how the results looked (you might have to click on the image for some details):

Well, I am not sure how my being male automatically is a dampner on my prosperity, unless the survey thinks that being a man you are most liable to be spending a lot (because girls/wives/mothers/sisters need not pamper you) and maybe losing a lot (hair included)!!! Similarly, how does my living few kilometers near a main road make me automatically eligible for loss!? The fact that I commute to work is bad too (tchee tchee! Whole of Bangalore is non-prosperous). That I consider work important is bad!! What takes the cake, baker and all is the fact that I am young (< 34 years. I can't help it if they consider me young without even meeting me!!) and that is detrimental to my prosperity!! What's the point talking about prosperity when I am 80!?
Suddenly, I am not too sure I should take the results of the survey seriously!