You are living in debt, Dear Reader

You might be very well off having a comfortable life with no financial liability, Dear Reader. You might even be one of the richest in this country. But you are carrying a handsome amount as debt on your shoulders. And you are NOT alone. Every living indian is bound to be at least as indebted as you are in this regard.

I'm not an economist, Dear Reader. Nor am I a statistician. I do not understand the fancy words relating to economy and bugdet. Being from a middle class family, I understand one basic undocumented rule though and as per the rule - "you should never spend more than what you earn". And I got to know that this rule happens to be violated every year since the birth of independent India. Every year the expenditure by the government turns out to be more than all the earnings put together. And each passing year the gap between the earnings and spendings becomes wider. So the question is - who is supposed to pay this ever increasing amount of debts and associated interests? The government. Right? But then how can the government make this extra money? Since whatever they are making, it can't even match the total spedings, how can one imagine goverment earnings to outnumber the total spendings?

You look scared, Dear Reader. Don't you? You are right in guessing whose head this burden lands on to. It is you who will have to pay out this burden. And if you happen to complete your life without having to pay out, don't be glad - your descendants will have to shell out their earlings to meet the demand.

OK. Let's do some interseting stuff before you loose interest. Let's do some quick mathematical calculations to put things in perspective.

Total external debt on indian goverment as of September 2009 = USD 242.8 billion
Total population of India as of 1st January 2010 = 1.15 billion

Let's for the sake of simplicty, ignore interests on the debt for now. And let's also ignore the increase in the external debt from sept 2009 to december 2009.

If uniformly distributed across the population, then the total external debt on an indian = USD 242.8 / 1.15 = USD 211. Considering current rate of exchange (46 Rs/USD), this amounts to 9706 Rs. And remember that the gap beween the earnings and spendings is becomming bigger with each passing year. And this increase in difference is so big that it beats the increament in indian population to shoulder the total debt each year. And thus in effect, the debt/indian is ever increasing. So to summarise the calculations, let me conlude by saying

Debt on you = N * (9706 + X)
Where N is the number of dependents you have
X is an ever increasing number with respect to time. X ~ 0 for 1st Jan 2010.

What did you say? Did I hear you saying "the amount is manageable"?
May be it is for you. May be it is small enough for you to even bother about. But it certainly is not at all manageable for the 80% of working indian population, the population which struggles hard to make both ends meet. This fraction of the population, even if they want to, can not make any contribution in shouldering the burden. So it again came down to people who are earning enough to be able to contribute - it again came down to you.

I see you doing some mental calculations (probably to figure the lump sum amount you might have to pay out). Does the amount still seem manageable, Dear Reader?