Bio-Data

Trusha Desai grew up in Mumbai, India. She landed multitudinous awards in Public Speaking while she studied for her Bachelor's degree. After marriage in Tanzania, she took on the challenge of a high profile primate behavioural research project. Her degree in Math, along with Statistics and Economics was the reason she embarked on intricate statistical analyses. After eight years spent primarily on the shores of the Indian Ocean, amidst swaying palms and casuarina trees, she immigrated to Canada with her family. They selected Vancouver as their destination of choice after the Consul convinced them that the benign climate would suit their spicy palate. Having lived and assimilated in Vancouver for nineteen years, Trusha is not trapped within the dichotomy of cultural opposites. She is an accountant, where her forays with the Certified General Accountant's Program assist her. The divorced mother of two children has not lost her focus amidst all that she does.

Trusha has four blogs to her credit, to announce her causes and passionate beliefs to the world: focussing on peace, creativity, education and career. She has penned a memoir of sorts awaiting publication ~ A Convoluted Life: around the world, zooming in on the three countries that she has called home at different points of time in her life, India, Tanzania and Canada. A novel, Family Affairs, is in the wings. The multi-lingual, multi-faceted woman is a closet poet too, composing Life-isms. Meanwhile, she is compiling Swaying Palms by the Indian Ocean, a collection of short stories.

Using the right side of her brain to the penultimate, she has dabbled in art for the past nine years. She tries her hand at acrylics (on canvas and paper), oil pastels, water colours and multi-media.

People paint

As a counterpoint to my earlier post, I would like to add:

If it is not art that will save the world ~ the antiphony will be science. And one can only say that considering the incidences where science has put our lives in jeopardy, we need also remember that science has vaccinated us and raised us up a notch. Perhaps a conjunction of art and science will save us and take our lives to another dimension.

People evolve

We are still in the aftermath of Charles Darwin's two hundredth birth anniversary. Is this an opportune moment to ask ourselves if we have evolved over the past two centuries? If evolution means war ~ we have succumbed to two great wars. If evolution means hunger, AIDS and genocide, we are the victims of our own scientific progress.

As Seth Godin reminds us,

(we are in) the notion of failing fast, of exposing ideas to the real world with perpetual beta. ~ February 12, 2009

Perhaps a few centuries hence, we may plead mercy as an ice age descends on us. Perhaps we may occupy Mars. Perhaps we may have a permanent space station on the moon. Perhaps our ideas may evolve so that our creativity is digitalized for umpteen generations. Perhaps our genetic material will ensure that cancerous need not multiply.

People understand

... we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned.

~ 44th US President Barack Obama's inaugural speech,

January 20, 2009.

Perhaps

four score and seven years

~ President Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address,

November 19, 1863

hence, people will still remember this affirmation and the circumstances that surround it. This is not an issue of race, religion or color. This is the case of marching forth together into a millennium where we leave behind hatred and injustice.

People chime

The meeting of two past Democratic Presidents, two Republican Presidents linked by a family relationship, and President-Elect Obama indicates that there is a spirit of rapprochement on the horizon. Banks cut lending rates to historic lows, such as the Bank of England’s 1.5 % in the hope that this will spur spending and investment, thus boosting the economy. Bank of Canada’s rate has dropped from a high of 4.75 % in November 2007 to a recent low of 1.75 % in December 2008.

Monetary policy of the Federal Reserve System of the United States has focused over the past couple of years on adapting to the sub-prime phobia. Historical data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, USA, indicates that in 1929, the prime rate ranged from 5.5 to 6.0 %. The year of the Great Depression (1930) saw it plunge to a low of 3.5 %. In 1974, the rate ranged from 8.75 to a peak of 12.0 % in July ~ a month prior to the ascension of Gerald Ford as President. In 1976, while the United States celebrated its two hundredth bicentennial anniversary and Mao Tse Tung died of cancer, the prime rate plunged to a low of 6.25 %. From then onwards, it gradually increased till it hit 20.0 % in 1981. In mid 1985, prime finally inched into single digit percentage points. For a brief spell of seventeen months between 1988 and 1990, the rate hovered around the 10.0 % mark. The end of 2008 has seen it droop to 3.25 %. As we attempt to correlate historic and economic events with fluctuations in monetary policy, we realize that perhaps we are too close to events in the past couple of years to successfully pinpoint those that have had a dramatic effect on the world.

There are many obvious factors at play here, and monetary policy cannot be the sole determinant of a marching economy. Stocks, oil prices, war in strategic locations, climate crises, employment and inflation, mortgage, construction and manufacturing ~ all these factors are at play. Above all, a tad of optimism that we have indeed rung out the old would help.

People depict concern

The focus of media and governments (predominantly USA and G20) tells us to a certain degree the nature of the economic bubble(s). I don't think that we are heading for the Great Depression of 1930.

• As long as we remain level-headed and do not make a run onto the banks,
  
• as long as there are bail-outs of a sub-optimal level (we need to remember that the billion-dollar bail-outs should be used for creation of jobs and not for doling out hefty million-dollar severance packages),
  
• provided there is deficit financing that will build infrastructure,
  
• if the big three automakers in the USA realize that consumers are opting out of big pick up trucks and the SUV market ~ not only out of environmental concerns but due to fluctuating global oil prices

~ there is random hope for the future. I do not mean to be a predictor of doom and gloom, but we must remember that as financial results of two successive quarters emerge from different countries in the world, we will infer how global the recession is.

GHARIB: Do you see that US dominance continuing or is it nearing an end?

FREELAND: Well, I think already just as a matter of mathematics, we have seen that dominance slowly declining. I think it's been less the decline of America and more the rise of the rest -- one billion Chinese people, one billion people in India, moving out of poverty and into the middle class. That's great, but inevitably, it means we're in a much more multi-polar world economy.

NORRIS: One of the big issues of this coming recession is going to be how well the Chinese and the Indians handle the downturn. I hope you're right, that emergence from poverty will continue, but I don't think that's a sure thing ~ Nightly Business Report, November 27 2008

People vote (yet) again

It seems as though we are in election overload. Barring the USA where the new voter turnout was tremendous, and the line-ups could even rival ticket purchase for the Stanley Cup play-offs, in Canada, voter turnout has been negligible. The actual percentages would make us cringe with shame. Why is it that a healthy functional democracy is unable to enable and empower its electorate to cast their ballot?

Do people truly believe that one vote, one person cannot have a significant impact on the economy, on the political scene and the environment? If that was the concerted opinion of all individuals, the democracy would dwindle into nothingness. It is vital that whether it is a municipal or provincial or federal election, all eligible voters select those candidates who show leadership potential. Look askance at those who live in dictatorships. We are fortunate ~ we have access to human rights, we have a free press and we can raise our voice for actions that promote equality and social justice.