What happened to the mighty Russia? - A very brief Ethmotican perspective

Statue of Mother Russia at Volgograd

Russia is one of the major economies of the world , overall sixth by GDP standards.  Russia is the land of heroes who showed the world that the uncontrollable forces of "Nazti" Hitler can be tamed.  The country of greats like Lenin and Stalin which stood with defiance to show that the powers can be controlled by strong solidarity.

During the cold war era, Russia formerly known as USSR, was representing the socialist ideology against mighty western powers.  The important events which changed the course of history can be enumerated as follows:

1. Change of 88 and introduction of Perestroika and Glasnost.

2. Disintegration of mighty USSR

3. Opening of economy and governance

4. Better trade pacts

Above all it fetched the Nobel Peace Prize for His Excellency Mikhail Gorbachev.

Now we will discuss briefly about the economy of Russia:

As per GDP - 6 th in world

Economy - $2.118 trillion

Central bank - Bank of Russia

Currency - Rouble

Major exports:

Petroleum and Petroleum products

Natural gas, Metals, Wood and wood products, and last but not the least, advanced military equipments.

Petroleum accounts for 70 % of exports for economy.

Major imports:

Consumer goods

Pharmaceuticals

Vehicles

Russia is divided into different economic zones.  These are different from federal districts\states.  Each economic zone is again sub-divided in micro zones.  This led to the development of economy by proper utilization of manpower and resources.  Zones can fix their taxation and custom laws.

Even though Russia is a socialist economy but distribution of wealth is unequal which results in high inflation.  Due to this high inflation, country has been hit badly during the recession of 2008-09.  Sarcasm on the face of country is that Moscow has been termed as the "Billionaire capital of the world" on Forbes list since 2008.

What went wrong?

Global meltdown has been troubling Russia like other leading economies of the world.  The Ukraine crisis was the last nail in the coffin. Due to the Crimean issue, Russia was snubbed by G-8\G-5 group.  The direct or indirect involvement of Russian military forces led to a great number of sanctions on the country.  Since the major export of country is petroleum and petroleum products, a major downturn in the prices of oil in the international market had a severe blow on the economy of the country. The mighty OPEC and western powers didn't do anything to stop the crisis. As the major source of revenue is not functioning properly, the economy is unable to revive itself due to which the country is struggling with high unemployment and inflation.

Vladmir Putin - the man of the moment

At the end of the article I would like to say "Are you happy superman (read Putin)? " pun intended. Readers might be thinking that the article is against Putin but no, its not . It is for the Russian people, the people with the nerves of steel . Team Etmos admires you and we know that the country will bounce back with a bang on the face of the world now that Shri. Vladmir Putin is back on track after his "did-not-tell-where-he-went" sojourn.

Stop war - make world a better place to live.

TEAM ETHMOS - "Be one in a billion"

Partnership of India Railway and financing of Indian Railway Projects at Border Areas - SUPPLEMENTARY ETHMOTICAN VIEW

After our previous article on the Indian Railways from one of the best Ethmotican, here is another supplementary view by another Ethmotican neuropath:

We should learn from China and Russia with respect to the development of rail and road connectivity.  Both of these countries have one of the roughest and the most inaccessible terrains in the world and to connect these geographical monsters to the mainland of the country is nothing short of an engineering marvel and work of sheer human genius and determination.  How they did this was through "cluster development."  As you would be knowing that development of one sector cannot take place in isolation, i.e. just building railway tracks is not possible and not advised when you do not have properly maintained railway stations, water and electricity connections to all the stations, proper accommodation facilities for workers/staffs/etc.  So, these countries used to take small patches of areas, say of the size of a small taluka or village and used to do the complete development of that area, i.e building of schools, hospitals, government offices, banks, service centers, and most importantly ROADS - all using the help of locals only which gave employment opportunity to the local people thus preventing any sort of revolts or accusations of snatching away the land by the government or private parties.  And this they used to do in a time period of 6 to 9 months and once the same was done, especially building up of roads, then the linking of railway tracks was more or less a cake walk.  And please note that this development was done simultaneously by government teams for 7 to 10 areas in a stretch so that at least 1000 km of line could be covered in 1 year's time.

If we also implement such strategies and use our District Collectors and local government machinery for this, then this can definitely be achieved.  But this will only happen when we bring to a halt the corrupt mechanisms of the government by which tenders are given to hopeless contractors who overbill the government by doing no work and eat away the tax payers money.  Concurrent audit should be made mandatory in all government departments and the audit should be done by both CAG as well as independent external agencies like Ethmos to generate transparency in the dealings of the government and to instill confidence in the public that the money from their sweat and blood is being utilized for their own development.

These are the views of a stupid idealist who can DIE for his ideas.

HAPPY ETHMOS TO ALL.