Tiger cubs
Deepti

THE figurative use of tiger and elephant has been a part of the jargon of economists for quite some time now. The publication of Gurcharan Das’s The Elephant Paradigm has made this restricted figurative use more user-friendly, vis-`E0-vis the non-technical user. India and other developing countries are compared to an elephant due to their plodding pace, slow and steady. While more successful, faster-growing smaller economies of East Asia, especially those of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea are the tigers. Originally, this was a colloquial nickname given to convey the idea of ferocity and energy traditionally associated with tiger. Today, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Japan have become a part of the tiger group. Seeing the domination of world markets by the tigers, the term tigerism came to be coined. Tigerism is a term encapsulating the view that the tiger economies are likely to prove formidable economic competitors for the West in coming years.

Japan, in particular, has dominated the economy of the world extensively, a fact that is proved by the number of neologisms contributed to English by Japanese. Zaitech is one such contribution made up of the Japanese zai, meaning wealth, and teku, from the English tech or technology. Zaitech refers to complex financial management, particularly that involving investment in financial markets by a company as a means of supplementing the earnings that it receives from its principal operations. In the mid 1980s, as the expanding Japanese economy led to increasing involvement by Japanese businesses in western money markets, zaitech came to be adopted by the media.

Known as they are for their extreme devotion to work, it comes as no surprise that the Japanese have coined a word for death due to overwork and the word is karoshi. Made up of the elements ka ‘excess,’ ro ‘labour’ and shi ‘death’; karoshi means death due to overwork or job-related exhaustion. In recent times, the country has been alarmed over this phenomenon as karoshi has been recognised as the second leading cause of death after cancer in Japan.

Kaizen is the concept that has made the economy of Japan unique. The other economies, in an effort to duplicate Japan’s success, have borrowed this word. In the world of language, ‘borrowing’ means never having to return the loanword. In Japanese, kaizen means ‘a change for the better; an improvement’, made up of kai, ‘revision, change’ and zen, ‘the good’. The term refers to the business philosophy of continuous improvement in working practices and personal efficiency; hence, an improvement in performance and productivity. The use of the term in English has been recorded since the mid 1980s, when the philosophy was brought to the West by the expanding Japanese motor manufacturing industry, an industry respected for its discipline and hard work.

(To be continued)

The Hindi sambhrant means respected and well known for some positive traits. It is used as an adjective, usually for a family. This word comes from Bengali, where it is used in sambhrant sabha or House of Lords and sambhrant tantra or aristocracy. In Sanskrit, sambhrant developed more figuratively. Sambhram, the Sanskrit root, meant agitation, confusion, and nervousness before developing into respect or reverence. This can be understood in the light of a person receiving or welcoming a respected personality. Feelings of nervousness would be a part of the regard shown. Hence, in Sanskrit, sambhrant is the person who shows regard, has the feeling of sambhram.