quinta-feira, 19 de março de 2015

Eurovision 2015: Vienna is comming (II)

Here are my cooments: this time I will do like before - comment two countries in each message.

THE NETHERLANDS - Trijntje Oosterhuis with "The Walk Alone"


In 2013 The Netherlands surprised us with the artist and the song they had chosen to represent their country in Malmo. And for the first time since there are semi-finals, The Netherlands took part in the Grand Final, finishing in the TOP10 (9th place), something that never happened before since 1999. But the surprises from this country that was "lost" in the competition with very bad results between 2005 and 2012 didn't stop here. Last year, with another internal selection by the dutch broadcast (AVROTROS) The Netherlands reached the final again finishing in 2nd place and winning its semifinal, achieving the best result for the country since 1975.
With this wave of good luck the AVROTROS used the same method to select its representative for this year contest. The artist chosen is Trijntje Oosterhuis a very famous dutch singer with a solid career and a great voice. The Netherlands was one of the first countries to present its artist and song. After the good reaction by the selection of Trijntje, there were many expectations around the song. One month after the annoucment of the artist the broadcaster presented the song, already considered by the artist an uptempo song.
This year The Netherlands tries to achieve the final and a place in the podium with a style a little different from the previous two years. However, considering the big number of ballads present this year and the quality of Trijntje's voice the qualification is almost sure. The song doesn't bring anything new in terms of musical quality and it will be very hard to amaze the audience with an amazing performance but the jury will definitely support the dutch song and with the help of Belgium and France - the countries that usually give more points to The Netherlands - voting in this semi-final we will see this country in the Final.


FINLAND - Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät with "Aina mun pitää"

I don't know exactly how to start. If we make some research on the internet (foruns, youtube, social networks) it's practically impossible to see somebody making good comments about this song. It wasn't the favourite of antbody: in fact, it's almost always in the last place. But the true is this - They win the 'Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu 2015'.
Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät is a finish punk-rock song created in 2009 consisting on adults with developmental disabilities. The participation in the finish documentary "The Punk syndrome" and the concert with Mr. Lordi made this band very famous in Finland.
But despite that, the victory of this band was very unexpected. Like always, the finish festival is very different in style of what its neighbours present and rarely has the quality to win or even finish in a good place in the Grand Final. This year wasn't different. Howerver there were a few songs with the capacity to bring a good result to Finland, including the 2nd ranked, "Satin Circus" with the song "Crossroads", which was the favourite of the jury and many people on the social networks (including me).
Surprisingly the victory was to Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät. Honestly I can't find anything good on the song, even because it has only 1:30 minutes (something possible in the Eurovision according to the rules). It's impossible for me to understand the quality's voice of the singer and even the melody.
But if it's true that the people can be mean about the song, it'a not also true that they can be mean about the artists. Calling them bad names just because they have mental disabilities is being rude and prejudiced.
Maybe the people will vote on this song for pitty, but one thing is voting for pitty in the babushkas in 2012 for example, with a song that we could easily listen without having a headache and another thing is this music. And unfortunately from the countries that give more points to Finland only Denmark will vote in that semi-final.
I can predict a very bad result for Finland this year.

sexta-feira, 13 de março de 2015

The singular growth process of India (I)

Generally, the economic growth process is a sequence that starts with the loss of importance of the agricultural sector (either the percentage of GDP or in percentage of the workforce employed) and an increase of the importance of industry first, and services next.

As the economic growth nears maturity, the dominant sector is the services, followed generally by the industry and then by agriculture.
However, the economic growth process of India was deviated from this common process, going straight from agriculture to the leadership of the service sector.
The lack of industrial development was due in very of the presence of a stifling regulation, especially in the legislation about the work and the policies about the small size industries.
Another unusual aspect is the permanence of the same distribution of the employed population among the diverse sectors: the majority of the employed population still remain in the agriculture.

The IT related activities still represent a small parcel of the service sector. The sub-sectors that had increase considerably due to economic liberalization were the business services, comunications and banks.
However, due to high qualifications, and technic capacity of human resources in IT field, we expect that this will the sub-sector with the higher increase in the next years.
And could India have a sustained economic growth in the future, without the industrial sector? The most likely scenario is no.
The manufactured production will be a way to India have a sustentable growth, and will contribute to the poverty reduction.
One of the fundamental variables to the manufactury development will be the increase in qualifications and skills of the rural population.
A more qualificated population together with a liberalization of agriculture, would allow an exit of workforce to the more procutive areas.
This process will fortify the pruduction level of the rural areas and generate a bigger work suplly to the manufactury activity.
Through this process, India will have a economic path similar to its asiatic neighbors, and could also have a biggest urbanization of its territory.

In the last 50 years, India has change its isolation policy (namely, domestic view policy): the increasly economic liberalization and gradual opening to the world economy, boosted the economic growth rate and lifted millions out of poverty.
If these reforms are maintained and move forward at the same rytm and intensity in the next 10-15 years, then the economy could increase in an average of 6%/year.
However, if the reforms will be deeper , the GDP coul increase an average of 7-8% per year in the same period.
In 2020 India would be the economy with thw higher annual economic growth, and the 3rd biggest economy in the world (behind China and USA). Its GDP per capita also could duplicate in the same period of time.
This projection will only be possible if the demographic conditions remain the same. And these conditions will be discussed in the next message.

Eurovision 2015: Vienna is comming (I)

Yes I'm back with my comments about the Eurovision's entries. This year we are going to Vienna, and I'll start to comment the choice from my own country.

PORTUGAL AND LEONOR ANDRADE


Like in some many years in the past, the portuguese public broadcast (RTP) held the 'Festival da Canção' in March to select its representative for the Eurovision Song Contest. In the last years we have watched some changes in the selection process. The same happened this year, with the (re)introduction of two semifinals, one final and a super-final. In the semifinals and in the final three songs were chosen - two by the public and the other but the composers - to advance for the next round.
Despite the differences the Fetsival received the same criticisms by some people about the repetition of the same music style and the weakness of the songs. Also this new method of asking to all the composers to  select a music from the 'competition' to advance to the next round was very criticized. However, the public agreed with almost all the qualifiers from the semi-finals. The same we cannot say about the qualifiers for the super-final with many people expecting to see Yola in this last round. After all, the public with 100% of decision power, chose Leonor Andrade to represent Portugal in Vienna in May.

This year we had the return of one of the symbols of the portuguese participation in the Eurovision: Simone de Oliveira, the portuguese representative in  1965 and 1969. Simone de Oliveira was qualified for the final but missed the qualification for the super-final. As for the other participants, most of them were known from their participation in some portuguese talent shows (like the winner) and/or from previous participations in the Festival, like Filipa Baptista in 2009 (that failed to qualify from the semi-final) and Teresa Radamanto in 2007 (that was in the super-final). Like in the previous years, we could see that there are really good voices in Portugaal. Unfortunately the voices are underused and their potential are not fully availed.

This song has definetly many aspects to be improved and Leonor and her team have a long and hard work to do before May. However, even with better and strongest voices in the final, as Yola and Teresa, it's amazing to see Portugal choosing a different style to represent it in the Eurovision.

This year the semifinal where Portugal was allocated is not very hard, but it will not have the political voting from Spain and France, the two countries that usuallt give more points to Portugal. However, improving the performance a qualification is really possible.