Baby Boom
As crazy as it may sound , I have finally found the cause behind the world's booming economy. In one word it is "babies" and in two words it is "still babies". If you were ever to lift the hood and peep under the economic cycle , you would it powered by nothing more than a bunch of bald headed, toothless, diaper clad individuals, pedalling furiously away to generate enough lift to make the economy behave like a weather balloon. The entire economic boom is being driven by babies.

I am sure you do not believe me and as is often the case I don't give a damn. Just think about your childhood. In the old days when we were kids, our infant accessories basically consisted of a plastic bottle and a comfort blanket of an indeterminate colour nicknamed "tushybabu" or "kushypapu" or whatever. That was all we needed to see us to adulthood. You would have wedding vows like "Before I declare you John to be Grace's lawfully wedded husband , is there any soul present in the congregation , who would like to relieve the couple of their kushykushies". We were pretty much free to pee and poo anywhere and indeed in some cases like Arjun Singh , that is still the norm de rigueur.

But these days thanks to overzealous parents and the internet baby websites, your ordinary yesteryear "langot" has been replaced by Diaper, nappy cream, nappy sanitiser, nappy steriliser, bottom cleaner, bottom smoothener, bottom calibrator, ph Monitor etc. With this kind of value locked up in baby accessories it is a question of time before Governments accept baby accessories as legal tender. You would have those 3 lettered business channel panel discussions going like " Today the babydiapers dropped vis a vis the US dollar on renewed fears that the US Fed has pulled them up. However with the introduction of the new softfeel coating interest rates are likely to remain high ".

Where once baby's bottoms could be cleaned by a glass of water and a 15 year old girl called Lakshmi , now it requires the resources of a central american nation to do the same job. Driven by armies of overzealous parents who are convinced that their Clark Kent is just 1 diaper change away from turning into Superboy, the economy soars.

A small organisation which plays no insignificant part in this value supply chain is the baby products mafia. Operating under the cover of infant care shops, they ruthlessly, using slave labour, work night after night furiously to come up with new inventions to send parents on guilt trips. (The virtual smorgasbord of baby food is a good example. DHA fortified, Closline enhanced, lactose calibrated, with iron, and the list goes on. You have no idea which one to choose)

Just picture this. You go into a shop to buy some apparently straight forward accessory for baby e.g a pacifier or dummy, which is basically a small plastic nipple which keeps the babies and the fellow movie watchers calm. The conversation starts off innocously before stealthily sucking you into the downward spiral of diaper death.

Me : "I want a dummy"

Salesman : "I will get you the manager"

Me : "I mean a pacifier"

Salesman : "Oh!.......We don't have one in your size but for your baby we do have one. Haa Haa. Which one would you like ?"

Before you feel like longing for the salesman to have a pacifier for himself , he would take out a plastic piece the size of a MP's brain and calmly tell you ,

"This one is for 35 dollars. But I would recommend you going in for a antiseptic , self cleaning pacifier with 3G connectivity and a built in GPS transponder which we have on offer for 750 dollars."

"Why does it need a GPS transponder ? (without having an idea , like most middle class family men, what the hell a transponder is and acting as though the price is no big deal)

"Oh yes you do need one because didn't you read the papers the other day where the baby went crawling on all fours out of the house and was only found 18 years later in Australia hanging on to a yellowed piece of plastic surviving on body lice and ear wax. You can never be too careful. You wouldn't want that to happen to your precious ones. Infact the next generation of pacifiers is going to come with a homing beacon and a radio gyrocsopic autopilot."

"OK I will take that"

"Oh take two as you need one spare while charging the first one"

"OK " reply I , in a reduced font size.

":....and surely you don't want to skimp on a back up generator to make sure that you can charge the pacifier"

and so on continues the sales spiel till I return home with the purchase of a generator, a platinum tipped non corrosive electrical cabling system and a small share of the Alaskan oil fields.

These salesmen have to be charter holders of the Chartered Baby Mafia program in order to work in these jobs. You really have to wonder where is our civilisation headed to. We had perfectly normal GPS disabled and non radio magnetic childhoods but the baby manufacturers mafia would have you believe that were it not for them , this world would have been full of messed up individuals who would not think twice before putting on their cotton nappies ,wash themselves with inorganic cleansers and hold the march of humanity hostage. But as is often the case , if you can't beat them, join them and on that note let me just give this investment tip to the fellow new parents out there , Go short on the langots. Without any market intervention, they are likely to head south.