Well-read is well-fed

With apologies for a corny title (couldn't resist it) ....

After reading a columnist's article some days back, I pored over an IQ test I had taken recently. With mixture of reasoning and dumb luck, I got all the answers right in a reasonable time limit and my IQ turned out be a decent score. This placed me in the top 2%, though I'm unsure of the population size. An interesting insight (and what lent the quiz a bit more credibility) was that the final question in the quiz was related to my educational background. Interestingly, I took the same starting point as the columnist (IQ test), but found his reasoning very flawed, but conclusions highly valid.

Unaware of accurate statistics, let me assume that the 'population' is close to 200 million and that I am at the bottom of the 2% league. That should mean that there are close to 4 million people who are smarter than I am. If I am the "break-even" guy working in a "break-even" job, that should mean there are 4 million people enjoying levels of education and prosperity more than me.

However, if I look at my consumption levels -includes white wine, air-travel, electronic gadgets etc.- and my tax bracket, I end up being in a more exclusive league. This indicates that there are inadequate opportunities for the truly talented to rise. The question is, where is the inadequacy arising?

With recruitment levels in all major schools on the rise, corporate pay-levels increasing, it seems that those who complete education are enjoying a better life. Therefore, logically, one should complete education. Yet, this is not always the case. One area which I have heard noone talk about is the 'school drop-out' levels. The 'drop-out' levels drops as one progresses with education, and really drops falls after one moves beyond the 10th standard. Therefore, the problems to tackle are at the lower levels of education. Higher standards of education (through higher supply of qualified teachers, textbooks, schools etc) alongwith incentives for parents to retain their children in schools would help ensure a larger base of educated people.

Eventually, this would place pressure on expansion of infrastructure at the higher education levels. However, trying to solve the problem in reverse would be like tying a knot in a garden hose, turning the tap on full-blast, and then wondering why there is no water coming out. The results can be seen in the 'Tom and Jerry' cartoon where this sort of thing happens all the time. (And I wonder why my IQ is not higher!).

Expanding the base very often works like a charm: like the mystery of reducing our fiscal deficits can be solved through having more tax-payers!!! But then, that's another story.

Land Ahoy!

As a landlord, the first thing I would lobby for is to reduce land available for development. That way, the bidding for rents would increase and I would profit by it. The surest way to ensure a reduction in land is to lobby for more gardens, religious places etc. in prime properties, especially after ensuring that I had a stake in a nearby property.

The bidding could technically reach ridiculous levels, and underhanded tactics of acquiring property would surface and re-surface. Standard vote-bank politics of pitting 'rich versus poor', 'upmarket versus downmarket', 'gardens versus roads' would emerge.

Thus, higher the scarcity levels, greater the price. Scarcity can be the result of lack of resources or a manufactured result. Either way, competition gets bad. The only way out is to enforce availabillity of housing at acceptable levels of living. That would mean larger land banks being developed, with greater emphasis on budget housing and improving standards of the poorest, as the rich should be able to afford their standard of living. (One would need to challenge the assumptions that land has a fixed yield and a fixed availability.)

I can hear detractors say,"All this is Old Hat!"

Now lets imagine that property development is like education development.....

Success

In an 'arm-chair' mood, I pause and reflect on observations related to how people define personal successes and what causes angst. Correlating the answer to my own experiences, I (over?)-simplify the conclusions. There are two factors that determine a person's success: contribution and reward. An imbalance between the two is insufficient to drive one to despair - a perceived lack of either factor will drive one to despair.

Therefore, there are two ways of coping with failure - either burn the midnight oil correcting the balance, or change your perception.

Lajpat Nagar

The power of an image is that it freezes a moment in time and makes it last forever