Viswanathan K's Thoughts

As Brazil gets richer, inevitably the expansion into the rainforest rises. Unlike environmental damage in other countries, this one is guaranteed to affect the world since the Amazon rainforest absorbs 25% of global carbon dioxide. From a moral side, it is hardly fair for the rest of the world to tell Brazilians to stay poor because the environment is important. Any forced solution in such a situation is sure to fail. And yet Brazil has framed the CAR , its rural environmental registry, to “promote sustainable land use and encourage environmental preservation”, writes Rahul Matthan. How did that happen? More importantly, does it work as intended? The EU framed regulations that restrict the sale of unsustainably cultivated produce from other countries. This made it necessary for Brazilian farmers to demonstrate compliance to sell to the EU. Hence the establishment of CAR: “(It is) a digital framework designed to map, monitor and regulate rural properties around the country to est...

Michelangelo did not like to paint; he considered sculptures the superior art form. So how did he end up painting the famous Sistine Chapel? Short answer: Michelangelo was forced to paint, since Pope Julius II insisted he do it, explained our guide.   There were other reasons why Michelangelo wasn’t keen to paint the Sistine Chapel. What was asked for sounded impossible: (1) paint all the major themes of Christianity on a single painting; (2) not on a canvas, but on a huge room (ceiling + walls). Plus, he feared that if he failed to do justice to it, it would be a very public failure that would tar his reputation.   Plus, the work was literally backbreaking. So much so Michelangelo even wrote a poem on how he suffered (“hunched up here like a cat”, “ My brush, above me all the time, dribbles paint so my face makes a fine floor for droppings” and ends by saying “ My painting is dead. Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor. I am not in the right place—I am not a...

Apurva Kumar wrote a series on Tamil Nadu’s economic growth. It is informative in bits and pieces. I’ll try and collate them here.   First , TN has, over decades, moved a good number of people away from agriculture to higher income (and growth) sectors like industry, construction and services. Even within agriculture, there is greater diversity than most other states (e.g. diary, poultry and egg processing apart from regular crops).   Second , industrialization has been cluster-based, i.e: “ A group of enterprises located within an identifiable and as far as practicable, contiguous area.” Examples include Tirupur (cotton knitware) and Coimbatore (spinning mills and engineering goods). Such cluster-based setups work best if infrastructure to link these enterprises is in good shape. Even among the more industrialized states, TN has done better on such infrastructure projects. Such clusters also provide an alternative to farm workers – they can move to industria...