Impact of Global Recession/Meltdown or 'Economic Tsunami' on savings of Individuals.

A very close person, recently asked for my views on how this ‘recession’ would impact on savings of individuals.
This person is close to me in many ways. Just to cite an instance, it is the ‘galaxy’ of close people around him (relatives & true well wishers) that I could see at one place when I too was invited for a religious function in his family. Never had I seen some 150 brilliant people assemble at one place to participate with this much intensity and thorough knowledge of what they were expected to really do, when they were invited to ‘bless’ a child during a religious ceremony! Half of them were leading & renowned chartered accountants and the other half were eminent lawyers. There were some 5 to six Judges, the retired judges remained un-noticed, while two of them were accompanied by ‘security’ personnel, its vehicles, which made their eminence quite ‘visible’. Otherwise, the persons by themselves, had been able to easily keep aside their ‘name-tags’ so effortlessly and mingled with the purpose and people around! I consider myself very fortunate to be able to even ‘witness’ live, such an occasion! I could mentally feel grateful to the practices that I was fortunate to be initiated into, to be able to feel the ‘charge’ of energy these people had created conducive enough to enhance the possibility of the happening of ‘initiation’ of that child at its best!

Needless to add, this person also happens to be a chartered accountant. But, unlike other professionals, who get stuck in the commercial aspect of even relationships, its emotional values etc, he effortlessly is able to apply ‘balancing’ of accounts & review the spiritual aspect of life, beyond the commercial values!
To hasten with the topic, I simply love to quote the ‘audited’ balance-sheet he gave me.

Balance sheet of Past generation:

Assets
1.Joint family-Each having 7-8 children.
2.Intangible Assets
-Goodwill
-Patent/copy rights(Knowledge & Creativity)

3.Real Assets(Appreciating)-Acres of Land, Gold etc(Next 2 generation can survive)

Liabilities
'Black sheeps' within the family-Head aches only

Net Assets - '+'ve

Balance sheet of the Present generation:

Assets
1.Nucleal family-Each having max.2 children.(no external connection, diff. community)
2.Intangible Assets-NIL
3.Real Assets(Depreciating)-Consumer Goods

Liabilities
Diseases requiring Major surgery

Net Assets - '-'ve

Unquote:

When we see individuals bearing the brunt of ‘global’ effect of recession, we look for its reasons, etc.
Why this ‘joint’ family came into focus, when looking at effects of recession on individuals is that, we seldom find such ‘joint-families’ struggle or get affected to dire situations like poverty-death etc like small family.
Why this joint-family system fail/break-down is also a question.
But how did we get into this joint-family system would be a better option to look at first, especially if we are keen to now re-discover the ‘hidden’/ latent / intangible benefits!
Primitive human beings would have life by themselves, and unto themselves obviously, so tells us our common sense.
The evolved ones got themselves clustered for better ‘insulation’ from unforeseen situations like vagaries of nature. Here is the clue. Individual strength does not sustain during massive-effect-situations. In a storm, a group of people holding themselves together would survive better, from being swept away. But, this grouping is not feasible after the storm has ‘commenced’ its business operations!
Please see, when people evolve, their perceptions, judgments, actions etc get deeper and subtler. It takes either similar capabilities to understand, or some TRUST(without bothering about ‘capabilities) to benefit from their knowledge!
We had an ‘evolved’ lot, of generations, who held on to that joint-family concept.
Benefits:
When I attempt to briefly put forth the ‘benefits’ , I am painfully aware of the constraints of limiting myself to only those benefits which would ‘appeal’ to present day ‘logical’ minds, and that too commercially-oriented(if that word ‘commercially’ hurts too much, let us say ‘practical’!).
a) Strength of that sheer number (man-power) for any situation that requires effort.
b) Each individual can focus on ‘specializing’ in fewer aspects and very intensely to derive the productivity at peak levels.
c) Cost effectiveness at basic needs being fulfilled.
d) Okay, the list can go on thus…. Suffice it to give a demonstrable example. A small branch of a Bank can handle only a small crowd of customers, and when it grows into a large branch, the diversified aggregate business that it can handle is not just directly proportional, but many more times over, because of single focused repetitive tasks that specialized individual perform, and their productivity getting enhanced over a period of time.
e) We know, as in a computerized networked environment, a system administrator is better equipped to maintain the network at a ‘proximity’ than when the network is sprawled at distant locations. When an only son of a couple is re-located far away, and needs some help for medical nature, it is impractical for either father or mother to give the physical care and attention, leaving the other spouse alone at that advanced age. Simple kitchen remedies for small ailments go beyond reach(physical and memory resources too) and invariably aggravate over a period of time end up as a chronic-acute & costlier-to-treat-ailments.
f) The list seems endless….

The reasons for ‘how we broke up’ are not too difficult to seek.
It perhaps started with that lure for ‘social-status’ (a concept brought in during British rule… They were liberal in giving attractive titles to individuals, who got tempted to enjoy being looked upon as something ‘better’ than simple looking commoners! Even now it WORKS! Fancy titles are given to lure youngsters for doing simple jobs, like “sales executive” for salesman, health-environment-coordinator for sweepers etc.) Once we take fancy for being looked upon as unique, distinct, class-apart etc, we tend to break away from ordinary-looking-group. It is safer to stay alone, than staying with a brother who is doing ‘nothing’ at home! It takes a lot, to extend the idea beyond our own body to our blood relations, the idea that, when our left hand does nothing much, and our right hand does most of the work, we continue to love both our arms ‘equally’ and that they belong to us! May be, we try to recover faster from any injury to right hand. But we also do not mind ‘taxing’ the right hand more even when it is yet to fully recover from an injury, while, the left hand would have been ‘pampered’ to recover at its ‘leisure’! (I cannot resist the temptation to at least make a mention here that India is the only country where we have a very long history of having given ‘free’ meals to unproductive-LOOKING people, who just sit & meditate , namely the sadhus, Bhikshukas, sanyasis etc! Again it takes a lot, for the present day mind, to really understand & accept that when elderly people are just present physically, there is a ‘dynamic’ but latent/hidden effect of their presence, though they seem dull, idle & unproductive. That is why the present day elders are shunted away to old-age-homes!).

When that commercial ‘concerns’ collapse (due to recession), the lack of ‘insulation’ becomes glaringly evident. A ‘live’ child’s face (so easily seen in a joint-family, because there is always a young couple ), is much more re-assuring, refreshing, promising during gloomy moods. But in isolated small family, even that grown up child is too far way. TV, video-phone, etc do not provide that emotional comfort beyond a point! I need not elaborate the benefits of ‘pooling’ of resources, to survive longer during a crisis. But when it is DISTRUST that has separated us, how do we re-build the mutual trust, to benefit from ‘joint-effort’ ? Creating a deep trust is itself an arduous task. But once it is lost, re-building a trust is much more difficult. Essentially, it is LOSS of trust that has triggered this recession. And the effect is baffling! A whole of country, that ‘Iceland’ is said to have become ‘bankrupt’! The bulk of savings of small individuals there was with three or more major banks in USA, which collapsed. So, for no apparent fault of theirs, the entire nation, all the ‘individual’ citizens, collectively became bankrupt. Can we not at least learn something from it? Individuals amongst us too, found it convenient to TRUST the western modern culture, fashion, ideals, materialistic outlook, social lifestyles etc, and invest our very lifestyle, forsaking our traditional values etc. There is nothing wrong in using modern technologies, but only after careful consideration. Take a look at the lifestyle we had about 8 decades ago. We cannot make out whether a person is rich, brilliant, etc by merely looking at their physical attire. All were similarly simple-dressed. It was a need-based attire. That dress style can survive any type of recession. And thus we can compare endlessly. I can use a simple instance out of one of my own day-dreaming sessions. I was wondering how this world would look like, when archeological experts excavate the earth surface after some 200 years. The present day surface would show lots of ‘junk’ and non-biodegradable garbage pile, to ‘show’ how we lived, and what we considered as wealth! And, we know from our present archeological experts, that they discovered ONLY biodegradable materials plus mineral WEALTH like gold coins etc of eternal value. Perhaps, Mother Nature had decided to “charge-sheet” us! And industrial-labour-law insists that a charge-sheet should be in “a language understood by the employee”! So, since we the present generation, speak only ‘commercial’ language, “economic/financial/materialistic” recession is the only way, a charge sheet can be served on us! If this seems acceptable, then who would volunteer to be the first fool to begin being simple? Maybe, the economic meltdown gives some ‘socially-valid’ excuse to adopt simple lifestyle at least for some time. Let all others around us reform themselves first. We would ‘wisely’ wait, to first see if really works, and then very safely, join the queue in the last, to adopt a simple lifestyle. Less of gadgets, less of consumer use-and-litter goods means more savings(see, already some people are wise, and prices of gold, the only TANGIBLE-TRUSTWORTHY thing left, is soaring so fast) , and safer future. Perhaps a paradigm shift in our basic attitude could help. If we try to ‘act’ as ‘Trustees’ to what we possess, instead of that ‘ownership’ oriented possessive outlook, the rest would happen a bit more effortlessly. All the needed things to minimize the impact of recession on individuals, reducing that ‘burdensome’ feeling, would take shape by itself. We would perform better as responsible ‘trustees’ to hand over what we possessed and improved upon, to the next generation.
There is a ‘silver-lining’ to this crisis. We are forced to now contemplate, about what we did with our lives, and then what we propose to do (of course, in the given situation). There are several instances where dreaded terrorists, get reformed in confinement when isolated in single cell prisons, where they re-look at their past, without that brain-washing-influence of politically oriented fundamentalist-mentors of theirs. We are fortunate that we do not have to carry that negative-tag when we decide to reform. Any reformation from within would culminate into a ‘transformation’ for Good.
We can begin our journey ONLY from where we are at present, and not from where we would like to have been.

Psn (17th April, 2009)