Typing Exercises
Lesson-6
If some magic hand placed mysterious
currency notes worth one hundred rupees under the pillow of every head of an
Indian family every night, what would be the result? This question was put to a
class of college students and various answers were forth coming. There would be
no poor family in India, was one answer. Everybody would start living a life of
pleasure and luxury, was still another answer given. And there was yet another
answer received. And this was to the effect that it that case prices would
shoot up sky high and the result would be general and country-wide poverty. And
this was the only right answer given to the question. A magic find of currency
note worth one hundred rupees every morning by nearly fourteen crone heads of
Indian families would cause such an inflation of paper money as would make prices
rise many thousand times within days.
Paper currency is not real wealth. If
the government does mothave sufficient gold reserve, them the more the paper
currency, the less its value. And this is what inflation means. Another vital
and decisive factor is the ratio or proportion of consumer goods to the paper
money in circulation. More and more paper money does not necessarily mean more
and more goods. If there is no proportionate rise in the production of goods,
the price spiral will go on rising with every increase in paper currency. So
inflation also means an imbalance of disproportion between the total amount of
goods and the total amount of circulating money.
Higher pay or higher wages are no
remedy for soaring prices. Even from ration shops goods disappear into the
black-market. Instead of raising wages and salaries of dearness allowances, it
is far better to freeze prices and hold the price line. But this is not
practical unless the production of necessary goods is adequate to meet the
demand for them. Production of mass consumption's goods in necessary quantities
is our main problem. Inflation leads to a vicious circle. Higher prices, more
paper currency, still higher prices and so on ad infinitude.
Many factors are involved in
breaking the vicious circle of inflation and rising prices. Rise in production
is only one factor. Population control is another vital factor. Planning on
many fronts and the progressive employment of more and more men and women in
economically fruitful work so that per capita production may rise steadily, can
act as another check upon inflation.
the all
-round purchasing power of more and more families and individuals must steadily
increase. Economic self-sufficiency or near self-sufficiency should be the
goal. If paper currency, which is at
present in circulation, remains nearly the same in quantity and nominal value
or is only very slightly increased, and if the rise in production of consumer
goods steadily increases, inflation and its evil effects can be counteracted.
We should explore every avenue for the development of our exports. Economic
waste and haphazard production should be avoided. Our agriculture as well as
our industries must be developed in a planned manner. Our man-power is still
largely idle. If countries like Japan and England, far more thickly populated,
can keep all their citizens profitably employed and their economy healthy and
free from inflation, why can't we do likewise with our human and material
resources? Inflation is like a deadly disease affecting a nation's economic
life. Cure it or perish.
Lesson-7
Some kind of trade and commerce by barter
between individuals and tribes prevailed even while civilization was yet in its
infancy. Who can say when and where he first market made its appearance? As the
arts of life grew and multiplied, trade and commerce also developed in various forms
and directions. The barbarous and savage man entered the feudal age and the
feudal age, resulting in brisker and more varied trade and commerce.
The closing years of the seventeenth
and the opening years of the eighteenth century were marked by the Industrial
Revolution. This meant a simultaneous or a parallel revolution in trade and
commerce also. England was the first country to represent this great change.
Within a few decades, France, Germany and, on a smaller scale, some other
European countries, entered the field of world trade and commerce. The railway
and the steamship and power-driven mills and factories, incredibly increased
the speed, the volume and the variety of European trade and commerce. The
Capitalistic age had begun. Asia which was still in the feudal and mercantile
stage of its economics was left far behind. As a result of competition and
languishing years. Only in the opening years of the twentieth century America
and Japan entered the field of competition in the international trade and
commerce. It has been said that capital knows no country. Consequently India
which had become a subject country also stepped into the orbit of mechanized
trade and commerce. But here the pace was slow. All the same, industrial
centers like Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Ahmedabad, Kanpur and Tanager grew and
developed. And now China is developing very fast.
Cheap and quick locomotion, and
national and international banking system and exchange have immensely
multiplied the pace and the volume of national and international trading and
commercial activities. Even agriculture and cottage industries have undergone a
revolution as a result of scientific an technological progress. The world of
trade and commerce is moving today with lightning speed.
And herein lies the main and
decisive difference between ancient and modern trade and commerce. The
difference is evident in cheap, quick and plentiful production, and in quick
worldwide means of transport. Of course there are checks and balances
introduced from time to time by various countries and governments in national interest.
In ancient trade and commerce, time was not such a decisive and determining
factor as it is now. Ancient trade and commerce moved in a leisurely fashion.
Now the speed and mobility of commercial and trading enterprises are so great
that time is of the very essence of the whole things. Goods and money in modern
trade and industry move and circulate with the rapidity of a last going railway
train. Foresight efficiency, imagination, constant all-round vigilance, bold
but careful planning, commercial integrity, trade pacts and agreements, both on
private and government levels-all these mark modern trade and commerce. If
modern trade an commerce had the speed of the trade and commerce of the earlier
centuries, the whole fabric of modern business would collapse. The average man
of today needs hundreds of more things than even the wealthy man of bygone
ages. But we should see to it that civilization does not get out of breath as a
result of the high pressure at which work is being carried on in the present-day
sphere of commerce and trade.
Lesson-8
Democracy is not something ready made and
finished. It grows, evolves and passes through stages of failures and un-successes.
Anti-democratic and un-democratic forces are never absent from any human
society. Man is not a perfectly rational animal. Reason and un-reason are in
constant conflict.
All writers on the subject of democracy
have dwelt on the difficulty against which the aims and ideals of democracy
have to contest. Socrates and Jesus Christ were victims of a mob-minded
majority. In India such monstrous and atrocious customs as the Sati System,
untouchability, the caste system, enjoyed popular support for centuries. Rule
by a brute majority is not democracy. Sedgwick speaks of a democratic minimum,
namely those irreducible and inviolable natural rights which majority rule cannot
touch. Democracy is an all-embracing comprehensive system, very carefully an
understandingly built-up and modified or liberalized from time to time. England
was a democracy pretty old in the 19th century, an yet Macaulay failed to get a
Bill passed against child-labor which he wished to be limited to ten hours a
day. Monstrous and cruel practices even in England, the mother of Parliaments,
were legally permitted for decades and centuries. The novel of Dickens are an
eloquent testimony to the cruelties, to the legalized hardship and injustice
under which poor men an women and their children suffered in Victorian England.
Let us consider some of the
conditions requisite for the success of democracy. Our Indian democracy is
among the youngest democracies of the world. Since 1947-48 and the first
general Elections in India, some crying and glaring facts have come to light.
Our soldiers in the land, the naval and air forces are generally very low-paid
and not quite well-treated. Our police force is discontented, poorly-paid and
highly inadequate in number. Our teachers, except in a few cases, are neither
properly trained nor adequately paid. Men appointed as anti-corruption officers
are so ill-paid that a small bribe makes them connive at food and medicine
adulteration. Our authorities have woefully failed to hold the price-line which
is the life-line of the nation and the encourager of bribery and corruption.
The major part of the money allegedly spent in the name of our five-year plans
and other public services goes to line the pockets of supervisors and other
authorities. None is free from and in a position to resist temptation. Hegel
says,"Wars are the outcome of latent warden". The world is passing
through a period of imminent explosion. Every one lives under the fear of
danger and insecurity. The abiding values of life have been allowed to die or
almost die. Idealism, novel impulses, sense and sanity have been given the
go-by. Home-life, the cradle of civilization, is breaking up. Inspiring
literature and art have been replaced by he literature and art of cynicism and
denial. The generation is hungry generation and therefore an angry generation
with a bleak future. The healthy restraints of life, the necessary checks and
balances of life have all but gone.
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