Welcome to the Proposals Library of AltKuznets Advisors Pvt Ltd., Your Sustainability Nirvana !

Public Funding of the Election Dance? Try the ‘Rao Twist’ ! Ganga Prasad G. Rao http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar We may be between elections, but corruption is a perennial river - a river with many sources, one dirtier than the other, each seeking the rainbow, and, both the setting sun on the horizon and the rising moon as the serpentine merges in to the confluence of the sky and the sea. Elections, doubtless, are one of the largest of these corruption sources; the reason being that a change in government brings about changes in policy that affect large domestic business houses, VHNIs, and foreign industries, beyond impacting, in a fundamental way, the multitudes invested in stock markets and fixed assets. The consequent large shadow values attached to electoral results is the motivation behind many-a-backroom pre-election moves. Practically, every one of these moves is an underhand deal with payoffs arranged in one of the many discrete and not-so-discrete ways. So, what can we, as Anna...

A 2-Part Vehicle Insurance Proposal that Enhances Road Safety and saves you a Buck (or two)! Ganga Prasad G. Rao http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar Man (or, was it the ape?) invented the wheel eons ago. 4-wheeled powered transport is all of 2 centuries old. Road networks came in to existence a hundred years ago. Car insurance some 50 years back, GPS and interactive maps yesterday…..and yet, accidents continue to recur on our roads at a frequency that would shame those who conceived transport as a panacea - a means to foster equity across a large, spread out population. Every nation, whether advanced or developing, loses a not insignificant fraction of its well-heeled, even well-educated population in accidents; in fact, accidents have claimed some of our better known social personalities. No one seeks an accident so why does it happen? True, the improvement in automobile safety features and better road infrastructure have tended to cut down on fatalities if not on accident frequency, but ...

A Deposit-Refund Population Control Policy - Private or Public? Ganga Prasad Rao http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar It has turned in to a quaint political ritual of its own. Procrastinate on those environmental issues for weeks, even months at a time, but back down just a bit and just in time for the World Environment Day. Yes, it is politically astute to recognize that ‘green’ too is part of the ‘VIBGYOR’ we seek! Now, population isn’t exactly ‘environment’; it is a bigger, all-encompassing issue that straddles the environment, the economy, and all future generations – in fact the future of the nation. It is a lesson in history and socio-economics that almost every populous nation continues, to this day, to be a ‘developing’ third-world nation. Population growth is ‘numero-uno’ of the various problems that bedevil social scientists. So, when it is World Population Day, our democratically-elected leaders give pause and faithfully mouth policy statements meant to assuage the voting public ...

Do You Have an Idling Timer? Ganga Prasad Rao http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar I have been awaiting the UID enumerator to show up at my door if for nothing else but to wail my angst at the system that seems to have targeted, engulfed and victimized the ‘green-class’ in our society. But wait as I might, the enumerator gives the slip daily leaving me fuming from breathing diesel soot and benzene from vehicles passing by our dusty potholed street. Must I choke to death with ‘PAHcancer’ and turn a ‘statistic’ before I find a place in the Gobarnment database of Sheikh-subsidized citizens? Talking of Sheikh subsidies, the other day, my hired autorickshaw lined up at the gas station behind a SUV. And while we waited, I wondered at the incongruity of the SUV revving up and leaving us in a pall of subsidized diesel soot. Vehicles that gas the immediate neighbourhood with soot or the green orb with ‘excess’CO2 for the same mile on road in fact pay less than those other clean and efficient vehicle...

Choke out River Pollution – a la Robin Hood! Ganga Prasad G. Rao gprasadrao@hotmail.com http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar What does a 'Green Robin Hood' do for a living? Rob the rich-right to feed the poor on the left? Not exactly, but not far from the truth either! So, what will a 'Green Robin Hood' propose if he is handed charge of controlling pollution in the infamous Cooum river? We're all aware of how rivers run across jurisdictional boundaries and how upstream pollution affects downstream water quality. But what do we do about it – beyond giving a couple of billion rupees to a Singaporean firm to clean it up? What's the prescription? The Green Robin Hood, as it turns out, also has a modicum of economics. So, he proposes a property-rights solution to solve river pollution. Consider the river basin as the unit, and 'hack' it in to 5 or 10 kilometer cross-sections, or better yet, in to cross-sections each representing a twentieth of the river-length. (T...

Closed-Cycle Economy - Miracle or Myth? Ganga Prasad Rao http://myprofile.cos.com/gangar If the 9/11s of the world have taught us anything, it is that the human society, ultimately fails not for lack of technology or efficiency, but for equity and enviromental sustainability. Not that economists or sociologists did not anticipate it. Infact, and to the contrary, many have espoused such concepts as a 'closed cycle economy' or a 'technology-driven rama rajya'. So what stands between our egalitarian dreams and the wretched reality - the veritable 'closed-cycle cup and leap'? Greed-based economic systems coupled to 'beggar-thy-neighbor' competition? 'Subsidy-based satisfice-the-voter' economies coupled to 'feed-on-the-growth, forage on the recession' stock markets? or 'Foul the commons and pass the buck' syndrome? Ace, YES, and Sssshhh! Industrial economists have long espoused the 'closed-cycle economy' - an ideal system in wh...