Celebrating Four Months of The Ethmag with the launch of our new logo - The All-Seeing Eye

The All-Seeing Eye - The new logo for The Ethmag - Ethmos Magazine

So, we lived and completed our first four months in the big bad but beautiful world.  By now, many of our readers might have got an idea regarding what Ethmos is and on what ethos and ideas it stands for.  The Ethmag - The Ethmos Magazine, is our mouthpiece and we just put forward our frank and unbiased views in front of our readers - views which the traditional media thinks "unimportant" but which nonetheless affect the lives of the aam aadmi of our Bharat varsh.  So on the anniversary of completing four months of existence we decided to do something more stupid and released our logo.

The logo is a simple visualization of a hexagonal triangle, which represents the thought processes moving in all directions and an eye inside the same which represents the nature of Ethmos - i.e. nearly nothing misses our view.  It may seem very primitive and stupid to some, but that's that and that's what we are - whether you like it or not!

Now taking a peep into the past four months and summarizing what Ethmos has given to our Bharat - there is only one conclusion that we can come with - we have given some radical, mind-boggling, country and world reforming, weird but unique ideas that if implemented even in partiality can lead to significant changes in the quality of the life for the common man on the streets.  When the whole media was busy following some socialite's murder case, going about "society babas" and "political babas" (and giving stupid acronym names like "RaGa"), we were busy looking into the problems faced by an average middle-class person (who includes nearly 70% to 80% of any country's population), thinking about possible solutions day and night, discussing them for hours with brainstorming sessions that stretched our brain's capacity to handle stress as well as mobile radiations, and then finally coming to conclusions that were and are not only unique but practical and applicable and the only thing required to implement them is the political will to do - nothing more and nothing less - that's what we did and that's what we gave you.  In case you have missed anything, here is a small gift of the Ethmotican ideas to our world:-

Problem	Solutions that we offered
1.        Corruption and black money	1.  Financial Trail Reports. 2.  The M2 Machine 3.  CETRAD, OPOF, and EUL 4.  PAS and RMS 5.  Video recording of public offices
2.       Food security and agrarian crisis	Unified Agricultural Policy – Part I and Part II
3.       Defence issues	Solution for our Vayu Sena
4.       The Rail conundrums	1.  Partnership of the Indian Railways. 2.  One more view
5.       Finance and Economy	1.  The Pradhan Mantri Bima Yojanas 2.  The Golden Investments 3.  The Economic Cost Concepts 4.  Mergers in the Banking industry

We also sometimes got so frustrated from our bloody systems that we wrote real stupid and satirical jibes at our present systems and institutions, some of which even offended many high-profile babus sitting on the top!  Some of our famous satirical jibes were on the Indian Railways, banking industry transfer policies, farmer suicides, and the Bharatiya R&D sector.

We also stumbled sometimes in our path and did seem to get one of our predictions wrong regarding the downfall in the prices of the gold metal by November-December 2015.  But even that was a very big learning experience and we learnt never to underestimate the power of stupidity of the general junta who will grab anything (regardless of its use or utility) if they are given at a discount.

But for one wrong prediction, we were vindicated in one correct prediction regarding the glut of sugarcane in the Bharatiya agricultural industry with the government now urging the sector to export the extra produce in order to get some price and pay the poor farmers.  Our Unified Agricultural Policy idea provides the solution for the myriad of problems affecting our agrarian sector as well as bring in food security for the billions of us.

In the meantime, we introduced one more hopeless of our characters - The Mr. Nobody, a la common man of the Ethmos, which was nothing but a way of mortifying our own views into a common point of vision for the public.

So, at the end of four months of existence, what did we do?  We can only say what we DID, but you can JUDGE what we did and did not; and only time will tell, that we were indeed right.  Now that's the height of obnoxious attitude - but then again, that's what we are!

Thank you and Happy Ethmos to All!

An open letter to our beloved PM and FM - Part II

Dear Sirs,

We hope you did read our previous letter.  Even if you have not, then also we want you to know that we are the most shameless organisms ever produced on mother earth and we would continue to push our views down everybody's throats (just joking, please don't put treason charges against us!).  Anyways, here is the second installment of our open letter to you.  Here we would like to discuss about three of the most "legal corruptions" in our Bharat, namely, housing, schooling, and medicine.

1.  Can I purchase a house without becoming "Man in Black" (any person having black money)?

A owned house is every Bharatiya's dream - roti, kapda, aur makaan.  Luckily nowadays we don't have to worry about roti but the "dal chawal" because the dal is not being produced in our country since every kisaan is busy making sugarcane and we have to import the dal for feeding our millions!  (Sorry for the distraction - more about that later).  So coming to our makaan aspect.  Briefly speaking, virtually no builder in our country registers the sale of the land, flat, house, or any sort of real estate property at the actual price of sale.  Say if the property is for Rs. 100/-, it will be registered for Rs. 50/- or even below that price, if the poor man purchasing it had done brutal unpardonable crimes in his previous birth.  This actually results in the government losing on the tax, creation and concentration of black money in the hands of few resulting in huge inflationary pressure, lack of development of banking industry since the banks generally finance on the "registered sale price", and the scourge of private lending which every aam aadmi has to bear in order to get his dream makaan.  We have already given the solutions to these problems and if you can spare some time, kindly check the following:-

Solution 1 - Mobile Money Machine (M3)

There are other solutions too, which we will discuss later since this is a very complex issue.

2.  Can my child study in a good school without paying the donation?

Yeah ...yeah....you will say that you have banned donation/capitation fees/whatever name it has been called long back.  But even you know that all these bans are on the paper only.  Because even after nearly 70 years of azaadi and after the implementation of the famed Right to Education, a lot of children are still working as labourers (unofficially of course!) and many cannot even see what a school looks like!  Now coming to the aam junta (i.e. "the middle class salaried labourers" like me), we are the victims of the "legal corruption" of our present schooling system.  Just take a look at the fee receipt of any common man.  He will be paying say Rs. 30,000/- to 50,000/- per annum for studying his children in a decent enough school (and we are not talking about the likes of Don Bosco and DPS....just the normal ones like XYZ Vidhyabhavan, ABC International Academy although I never could fathom what was international in those desi schools except the spelling in their names!).  So, even though the fees charged is around Rs. 30,000/- to Rs. 50,000/- (let's take a comfortable average of say Rs. 40,000/-), the fee receipt shows the breakup of the fees as follows:-
Tuition Fees: 15,000/-
Administration Fees:  5000/-
Building Fees:  5000/-
Electricity Expenses:  5000/-
Laboratory/Activity Fees:  5000/-
Miscellaneous Fees: 5000/-
Total:  Rs. 40,000/-
Now a middle-class salaried labourer like me who gets his salary after deduction of the mandatory hafta (called TDS) do pays his taxes on his time and has to claim his refund on the taxes since our "chavanni salary" sometimes do not qualify for your tax brackets and during that time, I can claim no rebate for the entire Rs. 40,000/- that I have expended on my child's education.  Just a small suggestion - instead of giving interest subsidy of 1% for higher education loans, kindly give 100% rebate in income tax for educational expenses (everything given in the fees receipt), and we will keep your idols in our home and offer it coconut twice a day. 

Another important point is - for gaining admission, we have to near about mandatorily pay some or the other donation to the trusts that actually run the schools and which is never accounted in the fees.
And without that donation, forget about the admission and look for some other school, which will of course charge a lesser donation but nonetheless charge the same.  Can you please stop this corruption?

2.  Can I and my family get quality medical treatment without going to costly 5-star hospital-cum-hotels?
We are your desi public and would happily eat the dal-chawal and roti-sabzi combo that you offer in the hospital canteens and will never crib for the Italian Forno Campo De Fiori Pizza (never knew what it was - just taken from a 5-star hotel menu...he he he) that our new-generation 5-star hospitals offer in the name of quality healthcare.  We do not have millions in our pockets and many of us are not even medically insured so as to undergo such costly treatments.  Hence, we request you to kindly put some investment in our hospital infrastructure and open some good hospitals in every nook and corner of our country, at least one good hospital at each taluka places so that quality and affordable medical treatment can be given to the millions of us.  Believe me, you will never regret having made this investment.  And as far as the quantum of investment required, please go through the following rough calculation that we have made:
Cost of construction of a hospital per sq. ft:  Rs. 3,800/- (as per this report).
Average carpet area of a good hospital:  Say 20,000 Sq. Ft.
Hence, average cost of construction:  Rs. 3,800/- X 20,000 Sq. Ft = Rs. 7.60 Crores.
Average land acquisition cost:  Say Rs. 1 Crore (Please note that all these figures have been taken at a bit higher end and the actual cost may vary in various places and will be considerably lesser in rural and semi-urban areas including taluka headquarters)
So, the total cost of setting up a hospital will be around Rs. 8.6 Crores and if we include the salary and other annual administrative expenses including electricity, water, etc. the total cost will be around Rs. 10 Crore.
Now there are around 676 Districts in our country and if you can provide at least one good multispeciality hospital in each district, the total cost would be around Rs. 6,760 Crores.

My...my...is that a huge figure ........... please look at these figures and judge for your self:-
Education Loan waived (for students who are working and earning well!) for 2014-15:  Rs. 4000 Crores.
Farm loans waived......................he he he....don't want to faint you with the figures!