Will Economic Weakness Persuade China To Trade Favours With India?

Will Economic Weakness Persuade China To Trade Favours With India?

China is in economic trouble though not many analysts are willing to say so openly.

The 12% p.a. GDP growth engine, built over 30 years, is struggling to maintain 6%.

Its highly speculative stock market balloon refuses to stay up, despite repeated and desperate pump-priming.

China’s massive but second-rate military machine, low on original R&D, high on copied US and Russian designs, is becoming hard to finance.

The country’s massive debt overhang is threatening to engulf its economy.

The huge 1.5 billion population, held without any political freedoms, is not amused at the dwindling economic prospects and idle capacities.

China’s proactive overseas efforts at infrastructure building to substitute for its nearly gone exports, have bought it many hungry dependants in Asia, Africa and Latin America. These have generated stacks of IOUs, but hardly any paying partners.

And yet, tonally, modern China always likes to dictate terms.

It is probably an old affliction, coming down from the mandarins of the “Middle Kingdom”, who famously declared the rest of the world: barbarians.

Things did not end well for that imperial China. It was drugged, humiliated, and carved up into spheres of Influence by the European powers and Japan.

Then came the onset of Communism, and pride restored. And now, towards the end of the second  decade of the 21^st century, it is faltering once again.

It does have a massive economy at $12-14 trillion, second only to the US. But China is unable to make worthy friends to partner future growth. It only gets on with vassals. And this inability is ominous.

Its single party “Communist” political apparatus, builds an obtuse, predatory, attitude. This is consolidating great power opinion against China and its one-sided policies.

It won’t, for example, countenance anybody speaking of Taiwan’s nationhood, but asserts, despite international disapproval and legal indictment, its hegemony over the South China Sea.

It wants India to join the CPEC and use Gwadur, but glosses over its coercive policies in Baluchistan, ignores Chabahar, and the illegality of running the CPEC through India-owned PoK.

It runs a $52.7 billion trade deficit in China’s favour, not unlike a similarly askew position with the US and practically every other major trading partner.  

Its FDI in India, after a six-fold increase since 2014, still stood at under $ 1 billion ($870 million), even in 2016.

India’s exports, including IT and pharmaceuticals, account for just $9 billion, and hordes of other things like oil seeds, tobacco and rice suffer from lack of market access.

It claims Arunachal Pradesh and culturally and demographically alters Tibet, with a high altitude railway, mega infrastructure projects, airports, and floods of Han Chinese.

It warns India on the activities of the Dalai Lama with great regularity.

It finances and trains Maoists, ULFA, Burmese insurgents and other anti-national forces in order to blatantly subvert India.

It uses Pakistan to consolidate its hold on PoK, and harass India in Kashmir.

China won’t agree to India’s entry into the UNSC or the NSG using hypocritical arguments.

It backs Pakistani terrorists like Masood Azhar against UN censure.

It backs a megalomaniacal regime in North Korea into menacing South Korea, Japan, and threatening the world with a nuclear holocaust.

Chinese media mouthpieces instruct India to blindly accept capital from anyone that is offering it. This, to wrap around a plea suggesting China would be a right partner in the modernisation of the Indian Railways.

But what is China offering politically, let alone economically, in return?

As for capital, it is after all also on offer from others.  

But like Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Arab states coming to terms with their much reduced leverage in world affairs, China too will have to come to terms with its diminishing clout.

Like Libya under Muammar Gaddafi, all Chinese efforts at regional, let alone world domination, is doomed to fail.

China might be impressive to countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Pakistan, but these are essentially impoverished guests at the Chinese table.

In the larger world of real power politics, it can only persuade an economically needy but very advanced military power like Russia to ally with itself on a case-to-case basis.

India too cannot substantially partner with China unless it radically changes policy.

This however may be impossible. But, history may prove that China cannot, in the end, do much with its guns, tanks, and missiles, after all.

The US, and the Western global powers it seeks to displace, may force it to blink first. And this, not with its superior military might, but using relentless economic pressure.

Meanwhile, India, the fastest growing major economy in the world, is recognised far and wide as a wonderful and sustainable economic opportunity. It runs a stable ship and does not lack for suitors.

China should therefore get off its bully pulpit for its own sake. It should humble itself in order to persuade. It must trade favours to get ahead.

Because, strategically, the crude sabre-rattling is steadily turning India into the West’s regional bulwark in South Asia.

And nominally, it has forced India to prepare for simultaneous aggression from both China and Pakistan.

Now, where is the commerce in that for China and its think-tanks?

For: ABP Live

(829 words)

March 29^th, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee

The Biggest Digital Data & Connectivity Opportunity On Earth!

India Is Headed Towards The Biggest Digital Data & Connectivity Opportunity On Earth

The telecommunications market in India, now over 97% wireless, at 1.127 billion mobile subscribers (Dec -2016), is only 15 years old.

It had a total revenue of $ 33 billion (Rs.2.20 lakh crore) in 2014-15, and is already amongst the top five employers in the country, expected to employ 4 million people by 2022.  Revenue projections are at $37 billion in 2017 despite falling voice revenue, and increasing data usage.

The Government of India, and lesser adjuncts such as the semi-government and private sector, are all rapidly going 100% digital for all critical path activities.

The way of communicating is changing in everything: from global tendering, ordinary and 3D manufacturing, banking, administration, media, elections, law, defence, taxation, entertainment, putting satellites in space etc.

Both hardware and software is now being manufactured and developed  partially in-country. A number of prominent Chinese manufacturers, the dominant players in the space, of mobile phones, have set up shop. One or two have also sited their R&D here.

Meanwhile, the digital data appetite on the sub-continent is growing in Exabytes per month.

By 2021, Ericsson Mobility Report projects 810 million smart phone users, as prices for the devices keep falling, using over 50 Exabytes per annum - composed of visual, multi-media data, growing exponentially.

After the November 2016 demonetisation, and the push towards more digital transactions, Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, quickly hailed India as the world’s biggest instant digital marketplace.

This was his reaction to just the handling of more of the money differently, but when you put the entire operation of the 1.2 billion population country on the cart, it is not only a technological challenge but a massive business opportunity.

And to meet the exponential growth in demand the big players are largely in the private sector.

For what once took pen and paper,  and later, computers and data storage equipment, is now processed limitlessly and inexpensively, on the cloud/ internet and accessed on hand-held devices.

The Mobile Telecom market-leader for 15 years now, Bharti Airtel has just been pushed to second place by the mega merger of Idea with Vodafone.

This has created a combined entity, still ironing out the creases, at Rs. 1.55 lakh crores. It is a behemoth bigger than AT&T, and second only to China Mobile globally.

Idea-Vodafone has a combined revenue market share of 41%, with Bharti Airtel bringing up the second spot at 36.5% in revenues.

The public welcomed the advent of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Infocomm only a few months ago, (September 2016), with its offer of free voice and cheap data with a fast 4G service.

That was on the back of a Rs. 250,000 crore green-field investment from the cash-rich Reliance Group.

Jio Infocomm was created when Reliance Infocomm merged with Malaysian owned Aircel.  With this, it hit the ground running, instantly becoming the nation’s 4^th largest telecom player.

Ambani saw the potential principally in digital data sales delivered at a fast speed. Targeting the nationwide mobile telephony population, Jio Infocomm decided to design and offer “content” in 12 regional languages. It expects to meet all the dynamic and latent data demand in various Indian languages by 2018.

Jio’s business model, that has served to disrupt the market and force realignments amongst the competition, is based on billing for digital data. This is simultaneous with the consumer surfing on the internet, and speed, of course is of the essence for it to use more and more comfortably.

But in this, India lags behind many other countries despite its size and potential both in erstwhile spectrum allocations and physical infrastructure. But this lacuna will not stay long now.

Voice, on the other hand, by definition, only clocks revenue when two people or more have a conversation and is not growing at anywhere like the same rate.

But universal upgradation to 4G speed, and a much faster 5G is now on the anvil. New fibre-optic cables are being laid furiously in city and countryside alike.

Ambani, at the top of India’s list of 101 billionaires, and 33^rd on the Forbes global list, at $23.2 billion, is going to spare no expense or technical resource to capture pole position.

But then neither is Idea-Vodafone, struggling thus far with its Indian investment for a decade since 2007, when it bought out Hutchinson’s 67% stake.

Or for that matter, Bharti Airtel, the only non-merged entity next to the top, hoping to take market share from both Idea-Vodafone and Jio Infocomm.

This, not just based on competitive plans and tariffs, but as both iron out connectivity, regulatory, operational, and commercial glitches, arising from their respective mergers.

As a benefit of both the enhanced investment (over $18 billion in cumulative FDI so far), and the competition between these and other players, the Indian customer can look forward to better connectivity, service, pricing, and speed.

Already, special offers and enhanced voice and data deals are rife.

The government is definitely the biggest single existing and potential consumer, using mostly its own, wholly-owned, service provider.

Though individuals, and corporations aggregated, are nothing to sniff at either.

Very soon, the  advent of much faster speeds and data transmission, combined with automation, and the much greater use of various “apps and bots”  will transform  the way India communicates. On the back of this phenomenon India could well usher in an efficiency revolution.

Individuals and organisations, long used to bottlenecks and infrastructure problems, will be empowered. They will learn to access data and voice at their own pace 24x7, without henceforth being stymied by human error or lethargy.

For: ABP Live

(924 words)

March 21^st, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee

Vikas Is The Antidote To TMC In West Bengal

Vikas Is The Antidote To TMC In West Bengal

Can the BJP take away most of the 42 MPs and 295 MLAs in West Bengal come 2019 and 2021?

Turning it into an ally under TMC is fraught, when as a border state, it is aiding and abetting a crescendo of anti-national activity. Analysts looking at West Bengal are alarmed at the increasing Islamic terrorist infiltration routed via Bangladesh.

The belligerence of the state’s 27% indigenous Muslims with Wahabi-Salafist elements, has increased lately. This suggests the state’s Hindus, are deserting the TMC, forcing Mamata Banerjee to lean more heavily on the Muslims.

In Uttar Pradesh, the 80% plus wins, at 325 out of 403, has been made possible because of masterful electoral mapping, and the Prime Minister’s extensive campaigning  using his “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas” poll plank. 

The unprecedented win is inclusive of the votes from a significant number of young Muslim men and women.  A replication of this in West Bengal should be pursued, targeting the moderates not enamoured of the Salafists, Shia’s, the aspirational young, and Muslim women who want a uniform civil code and triple talaq gone.

Combined with a consolidation of the multi-caste Hindu vote, it could work very well.

In Manipur, the BJP, coming from nothing, in a largely Christian state, though Hindus are the most numerous, defeated the three-term Congress government with a 36% popular vote to Congress’ 35%.

In West Bengal meanwhile, some open Hindu-Muslim rioting in Dhulagarh recently, and in Malda before, is sought to be hushed up. Nevertheless, it suggests that the TMC has provoked a ready polarisation already.

The Shahi Imam of Kolkata’s Tipu Sultan Masjid, Maulana Nurur Rahman Barkati has been making himself ridiculous by offeringd Rs. 25 lakhs to anyone who shaves Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hair and beard.

He also issued a fatwa against Dilip Ghosh, the BJP state president, to be stoned and thrown out of Bengal.

The TMC also seems to be in a telling panic about the hard work being done by the RSS to increase the BJP vote share.

Other recent Muslim demands include seeking a ban against RSS run schools. This, shamefully, is currently being implemented by the TMC, even as the Salafist madrassas are left alone.

There are also demands for curbs against the popular Saraswati and Durga Pujas, renaming of Hindu customs and terms to remove their Hindu connotations ( e.g. Ramdhonu), and so on. Even the godless Communists never tried any of this in their 34 years in power.

Wads of counterfeit notes meanwhile are infiltrating the state’s borders at Malda, and bomb-making factories and stashes have been found several times in Burdwan.

The TMC government, already mired in chit fund scams, has been one of the most vocal critics of the recent demonetisation. This even as a very large number of shell companies used to channel black money have been outed. Huge stashes of demonetised notes are inexplicably being found.

History may well be repeating itself, because similar excesses saw the long serving Congress governments of West Bengal thrown out in 1977, never to return.

And 32-34 years later, exactly the same thing happened to a seemingly impregnable Left Front.

The people of West Bengal gave the TMC more than the Left Front in the general elections of 2009, at 19 seats to their 15. And in 2011, they removed the Left Front from power in the Assembly.

The voting public responded to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s calls for “Poriborton” for the first time in 2011 in the backdrop of Singur and the expulsion of the CPI(M) spawned Nano car project.

Despite the activist-style populism, the people expected overall progress and prosperity from “Didi”. Mamata Banerjee’s no frills public persona, simplicity, a no make-up look, unkempt hair, trademark crumpled white cotton sari with minimal border, and Hawaii chappals, was reassuringly “one of us”, to the poor.

She had well established street activist credentials, came from the lower middle class herself, and had been put in hospital more than once by CPI(M) goons.

Coming to power in a coalition (184 seats to TMC) with the Congress (INC- 42 seats), atop a public, subjected to 34 years of Marxist indoctrination, she looked and seemed perfect for the part.

 But, if her first five years were hoped to be a gradual return of economic  liberalism, a nexus between a booming Marwari led Borobazaar, and the heyday of the mercantile/mercantilist BhadraLok, it just didn’t happen. Except for a mushrooming of real estate projects in Kolkata.

The public debt till 2016 stood at $ 45 billion tending towards50 billion in 2017. The GDP of the state is at $ 140.68 billion as of 2015-16. So, public debt is at more than a third of GDP!

For a population of 95.5 million, the per capita income is $1,473. West Bengal, however, thanks to its size, is, even now, the 6^th largest economy in the country.

But economic matters are not very important to Mamata Banerjee. Since 2011, the TMC supplanted iffy Hindu support with that of West Bengal’s Muslims. It then stitched together a rural bastion composed of Muslims, OBCs, and the Maoists in “Jungle Mahal”.

It ruthlessly uses strong-arm methods and the former CPI(M) enforcers, working now for the TMC. 

But, it confounded critics by winning a thumping  Assembly victory with 44.9% of the popular vote (24, 564, 523 votes), and 211 seats on its own in 2016.

At least 17% of the vote therefore must have come from Hindus. But how exactly was it extracted?

Can the BJP rework the electoral mathematics and mine the popular discontent against TMC for 2019?

The way to do this may consist of reviving West Bengal’s mercantile past DNA, and the nation-wide appeal of Prime Minister Modi’s clarion call of Vikas.

The alternative, after all, is a blatantly thuggish TMC, which delivers gains, not to the masses, but to their sinister organisers.

The BJP has indeed been growing in West Bengal.  It won just two seats in 2014, but was runner up in three more, with a 16.8% vote share.

The CPI(M), in a how-the-mighty-have-fallen mode, also managed only 2 seats in 2014, but with a scattered popular vote share of 29.71%.

 The TMC won 34 seats, with a vote share of 39.05% then. But will it lose to a BJP, almost certain to win at the centre in 2019, and again, in the state assembly election in 2021?

For: ABP LIVE

(1,064 words)

March 17^th, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee

Aspiration Now Craves Vikas In West Bengal After TMC Raw Deal

Aspiration Now Craves Vikas In West Bengal After TMC Raw Deal

The opportunities for the ruling BJP in the 42 MP and 295 MLA delivering   state of West Bengal need to be urgently re-evaluated.

This more so, because the deteriorating law and order and security  situation in West Bengal has been a case for national concern for some time.

It is a border state, aiding and abetting a crescendo of anti-national activity. Analysts looking at West Bengal are alarmed at the increasing Islamic terrorist infiltration, financed by Pakistan’s ISI, and routed via Bangladesh.

There is an opportunity for BJP to unseat the TMC; with the general elections in 2019, presaging the state assembly elections in 2021.

The belligerence of the state’s 27% Muslim population with Wahabi-Salafist agent provocateurs amongst them, has increased in direct proportion to the pandering from a hopelessly dependent TMC. This suggests the state’s Hindus, fed up with Mamata Banerjee’s antics, have deserted the TMC.

In Uttar Pradesh, the 80% plus showing, at 325 out of 403, has been made possible because of elaborate electoral engineering, and the Prime Minister’s extensive campaigning on the poll plank of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas”.  

This spectacular win included the votes of a significant number of young Muslim men and women. And this, for the second time after 2014, when also about 10% of the Muslim vote came to the BJP.

A similar breaching of the TMC’s Muslim vote bank in West Bengal can possibly be replicated. This, particularly targeting the moderates not enamoured of the Salafists, Shia’s, the aspirational young, and Muslim women who want a uniform civil code and triple talaq gone. Added to a consolidation of the multi-caste Hindu vote, it could work very well.

In the North-Eastern state of Manipur, the third of the “seven sisters” to   recently choose BJP, the party came from nothing. In a largely Christian state (2^nd place after Hindus, according to the 2011 census),BJP unseated the three-term Congress government with a 36% popular vote to Congress’ 35%.

In West Bengal, the number of confrontations and clashes between the Hindus  and Muslims has been increasing exponentially. Some open rioting in Dhulagarh recently, and in Malda before, is sought to be hushed up by the TMC. 

Nevertheless, it all suggests that a natural polarisation has taken place and can be exploited.

 This even as the Shahi Imam of Kolkata’s Tipu Sultan Masjid, Maulana Nurur Rahman Barkati has promised Rs. 25 lakhs to anyone who shaves the Prime Minister’s hair and beard.

He also wants Dilip Ghosh, the BJP state president,  a political critic of both the Imam, his Salafist henchmen, and the Chief Minister, to be stoned and thrown out of Bengal.

Meanwhile the RSS is steadily working on the ground to increase the BJP vote share, much to the TMC’s chagrin.

The radicalised Muslim organisations, not to be outdone, have asked for bans against RSS run schools. This is currently being implemented meekly by the TMC.

Other Muslims have asked for curbs against the popular Saraswati and Durga Pujas, renaming of customs and terms to remove their Hindu connotations ( e.g. Ramdhonu), and so on.

Wads of counterfeit notes are infiltrating the state’s borders at Malda, and bomb-making factories and stashes have been found several times in Burdwan.

The TMC government, already mired in chit fund scams, has been one of the most vocal critics of the recent demonetisation. This even as the  state has been discovered to harbour a very large number of shell companies used to channel black money. Huge stashes of demonetised notes are being unearthed even to this day.

With all this, let us remember that excesses of similar magnitude saw the Congress governments of West Bengal thrown out in 1977, never to return.

And 32-34 years later, exactly the same thing happened to a seemingly impregnable Left Front too.

The people of West Bengal finally voted against the Left Front in the 2009 general elections, giving 19 seats to TMC to their 15. This presaged their ouster from power altogether in 2011.

The voting public responded to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s calls for “Poriborton” for the first time in 2011, alongside her alliterative Maa Maati Maanush sloganeering.

It was in the backdrop of the debacle of Singur and the expulsion of the CPI(M) spawned Nano car project.

Despite the activist-style populism, the people expected overall progress and prosperity from “Didi”. Mamata Banerjee’s no frills public persona, simplicity, a no make-up look, unkempt hair, trademark crumpled white cotton sari with minimal border, and Hawaii chappals, was reassuringly “one of us”, to the poor.

She had also well established street activist credentials, came from the lower middle class herself, and had been put in hospital more than once by CPI(M) goons for her troubles.

Coming to power in a coalition (184 seats to TMC) with the Congress (INC- 42 seats), as she did, atop a public, subjected to 34 years of Marxist indoctrination, she looked and seemed perfect for the part.

But, if her first five years were hoped to be a gradual return of economic  liberalism, a nexus between a booming Marwari led Borobazaar, and the heyday of the mercantile/mercantilist BhadraLok, it certainly didn’t turn out that way. 

Except, perhaps, for a mushrooming of real estate projects in Kolkata.

The public debt till 2016 was at $ 45 billion tending towards50 billion in 2017. The GDP of the state is at $ 140.68 billion as of 2015-16. So, public debt is at more than a third of GDP!

For a population of 95.5 million, the per capita income is $1,473. West Bengal, however, thanks to its size, has great potential. It is, even now, the 6^th largest economy in the country overall.

Nevertheless, the TMC, a near dictatorship of one, is clearly even further Left than the Left Front, with a far worse attitude to law and order.

Since 2011, the majority community has watched in dismay as the TMC supplanted their less than reliable electoral faith with the support of West Bengal’s Muslim population. It then stitched together a rural bastion composed of Muslims, OBCs, and the Maoists in “Jungle Mahal”.

It ruthlessly uses strong-arm methods and the former CPI(M) enforcers, working now for the TMC. 

But, it confounded critics by winning a thumping  Assembly victory with 44.9% of the popular vote (24, 564, 523 votes), and 211 seats on its own in 2016. At least 17% of the vote must have come from Hindus, but how exactly was it extracted?

Can the BJP rework the electoral mathematics and mine the popular discontent, intensifying its efforts now, for 2019?

The way to do this may consist of reviving West Bengal’s mercantile past DNA, and the nation-wide appeal of Prime Minister Modi’s clarion call of Vikas.

The alternative, after all, is a blatantly thuggish TMC, which delivers gains, not to the masses, but to their sinister organisers.

The BJP has indeed been growing in West Bengal. It overtook the Congress in the popular vote share in 2014, even as the latter bagged 4 seats with a concentrated popular vote of just 9.58%.

BJP drew even with the CPI(M), with just 2 seats won each, but it was runner-up in 3 more, with a 16.8% vote share.

The CPI(M), in a how-the-mighty-have-fallen mode, managed only 2 seats in 2014, but with a scattered popular vote share of 29.71%.

 The TMC won 34 seats, with a vote share of 39.05% then. But will it lose to a resurgent BJP, almost certain to get another five years at the centre,  once in 2019, and once again, in the state assembly election in 2021?

For: The Sunday Guardian

(1,260 words)

March 17^th, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee

On A Clear Day You Can See The Horizon In 2024

On A Clear Day You Can See The Horizon In 2024

India has just undergone a new clarity in its political arena. It has emerged from the murkiness of the political rhetoric that keenly contested what Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP, and the Sangh Parivar stood for.

The Opposition has tried hard, but failed, to stop the BJP’s ascendancy at its three-year mark.

It has been soundly defeated in the main battleground state of Uttar Pradesh, the results coming to saffronise the imminent festival of Holi.

Former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah of J&K and its opposition National Conference, has been the first politico to declare that there can be no credible challenger to the BJP’s Narendra Modi/Amit Shah juggernaut till at least 2024.  

Indeed, by high noon on counting day March 11^th, Uttar Pradesh leads showed an unprecedented 300 out of 403 seats trending for the BJP.

Hill-state Uttarakhand, after several recent tussles with the Congress, is now also decisively won by the BJP.

There may be a narrow and account-opening victory in Manipur, in the end for the BJP. This, to add to its growing tally of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh in the North East.

In Goa, something of a BJP lucky mascot in the past, there may well be a hung assembly this time as the “see-saw” continues, but BJP might yet scrape a win along with its ally, the MGP, and others.

Punjab has voted firmly and strongly in favour of Congress, relegating high profile challenger AAP, with allegedly questionable links to anti-national forces here and abroad, to a much weaker principal opposition. This is very significant in this crucial border state, and comes as a relief to most observers.

The national significance of these two, if not three, or even four legislative assembly wins for the BJP, is most pronounced in Uttar Pradesh.

Based on this win in UP, by the middle of 2018, the NDA will enjoy a majority in both houses of parliament, for the first time in over three decades.

The maturity displayed by the great Indian electorate, soaring above micro calculations of caste, creed and religion, able to deliver strong verdicts through the heat and dust of tumultuous campaigning, is indeed remarkable.

The coming majority in the Rajya Sabha will enable passage of important, even contentious, legislation, prior to the 2019 general elections.

The new strength could possibly include a reattempt to reform the process of appointments to the higher judiciary.

This was shot down by the Supreme Court, despite a new law passed by both houses of parliament, and two-thirds of the state assemblies, that too, in the recent past.

Taking their cue from these results, business and industry, the foreign investor, including the make-in-India initiative, the chambers of commerce, plus the domestic retail and institutional investor, will all now build upon it.  

The results of this spectacular “semi-final” win bode well also for the implementation of various ongoing initiatives of the Modi government.

The coming rise and continued bull-run in the Indian stock market, will tend to be not just based on immediate “good news”, but structural in nature, based on an upward re-rating of India’s prospects.

It tellingly provides, in early 2017, political clarity on the balance of power likely to sustain through general election year 2019, all the way to the end of the next term in 2024.  

It must be noted that the GST, with its potential to add 1-2% to GDP, will become operative in July 2017. A slew of other laws including the benami property law, and the bankruptcy law, both equipped with teeth will show results.

These will now be vigorously implemented to the expected delight of the poor and numerous voter.

Other landmark actions such as electricity for all, housing for all and rural infrastructure and farm produce marketing reforms, will add to prosperity, well-being and the support for the Modi government.

The BJP has, it is now clear, after the demonetisation initiative, expanded its base to the rural and urban poor. They, in turn, have strongly backed the prime minister’s initiative borne out by most panchayat, municipal, and legislative assembly elections held since November 8^th  2016.  

The basic shift in perception is that BJP is now truly seen as a champion of the poor. That it is in power also at the centre and in the largest number of other states is another strong factor in its favour when it comes to expected deliveries.

Facile threats of a mahagatbandhan challenge in 2019, composed as it is by a  possible aggregation of regional parties and a very weak Congress, is now much diminished. It will, likely, not hold water, or even hang together going forward.

On the contrary, Bihar may well come back to the NDA with the possible desertion of its winning mahagatbandhan.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the JD(U) could return to the NDA fold in preparation for 2019.

The BJP seems to have forged something of a rainbow coalition in the political “laboratory” of UP, including, reportedly, young Muslims drawn to the BJP message of “Vikas”, and Muslim women drawn to the BJP’s stance against triple talaq.

This incipient Muslim migration towards “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikaas”, once thought impossible, could pick up speed, and become a mass trend.

This will not only strengthen the “truly secular” BJP as the party for today and the future, but bodes well for the future of India’s 20 crore Muslims, particularly in the absence of a credible opposition.

That the opposition Congress, SP, BSP, RLD, TMC, the Left, and others, have done little over decades besides pay lip-service to minority interests, and exploit the Muslim vote bank, should now only hasten the process of this migration.

For: ABP Live

 (942 words)

March 11^th, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee

Poverty Is The Enemy No.1

Poverty Is The Enemy No.1

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao/You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow-  from Revolution No.1, (Lennon/McCartney), The Beatles, (1968)

1968, when the Beatles released their exasperated, rocking, mocking, song, Revolution No.1, was a really big year for student protests.

The Beatles were at the height of their popularity then, and so could afford to say “you can count me out”, flying in the face of the mood of the times, right there in the lyrics of the song.

Young people were in a ferment all over Europe and America. This part of the world did not really figure in the global narrative except for independence era stalwarts like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the non-violence movement.

But for young people, the underground papers and songs featured the VW bus driven overland hippie trail from Istanbul, and the promise of sun, sea, mountain and marijuana. 

There was the celebrated visit of Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg, and travel-writer Paul Theroux describing his train journeys on the sub-continent too.

However, India did not properly feature in the society columns of Tatler and the long-form essays in The New Yorker till the self-same Beatles visited Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Ashram in Rishikesh, in 1969.  

But in Paris meanwhile, they drank cheap wine, sang the Marseillaise, and ate baguettes on the police barricades. Revolution as free-love-in, as it were.

The protestors were joyously against, almost everything: the authorities, their military machines, their governments.

It was against militarism, particularly the American war in Vietnam. Authoritarianism in general. Capitalism, its adherents sneered at as “piggies” in yet another Beatles song from the White Album (1969). Racism- in the post Martin Luther King/JFK era, was approached with the aggression of the Black Panthers. Sexism - now that the birth control pill was here, and so on.  

While most of the protest narrative then survives intact even today with minor updating, one thing that has taken a real-life beating is the anti-capitalism.

You might not know this sitting here in India, with the cacophony, mayhem and murder produced by the frustrated libleft, the radical Maoist, and main-stream socialism that animates most political discourse clashing with the saffron forces; but the rest of the world has indeed moved on.

The USSR is gone. Some of its erstwhile constituents are “making nice” in the EU. Russia is a land of billionaire oligarchs and vodka swilling masses. The  Soviet Central Asian states are now following their mineral and oil rich destinies. China is working to take over the world. North Korea is more of a menacing dictatorship than anything remotely Communist.

The Arab pretenders to paternal, benevolent dictatorship, in republican, islamised socialist garb- Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, have been induced to bite the dust.

Not sure what Iran is politically, but it looks most like an Islamic, Shia, theocratic state.

Capitalism, Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark-like individualism, may have had its ups and downs, but Communism undiluted, as in Engels, Marx, Mao, Stalin etc. has completely lost the plot in the nearly 50 year interim.

This even in the world’s backward nations, some tucked away in Africa with their currency reduced to less value than the paper it is printed on, Myanmar-run to a standstill, and new found democracy, by a set of army uniformed generals, and the like.

Some are indeed fierce, with a blood-soaked radical Islam for example, but that is quite another matter.

These places pay absolutely no mind to economics and its theories just as long as the money for its depredations is wrested from somewhere. They may be doomed in the long run, but intend to do as much as possible to make their presence felt in the meantime. They think, no believe, that they can kill their enemies first.

Amongst much change, China is the prime example of a throw over transformation. After the destroyed lives and paroxysm of the Cultural Revolution under Mao, it brought back Deng Xiaoping from obscurity, and unleashed a capitalist juggernaut that has taken it to a $14 trillion plus economy today.

It did this, from a cold start, from an economy in a few million, just like India’s was, at the dawn of the eighties. It took just 30 odd years.

China is now the second biggest in the world in absolute terms, not the new-fangled purchase-power-parity (PPP).

But, it is still single party-ruled, with ostensibly, some form of opaque, internal election system.

There is still no “will of the people” universal franchise, and next to no political freedom.

Not a thing has changed since the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 and perhaps it never will, now that the state has infinitely more military power to suppress than it did in 1980.

Militarily, China is now getting to the point where it is itching to challenge the might of America. This, of course, playing to the middle kingdom’s innate and natural arrogance, could unravel the whole ball of twine.

Socialist, Secular, Republican India, a thriving democracy, is counted in the top ten too, but only as the fastest growing one in percentage terms. But this is predicated on a still modest $3 trillion in GDP.

And it remains snail-paced slow, an effect of its tumultuous democratic processes and the hung over Socialist ambivalence about its future path. But, at least it does have a mixed economy and fair to goodness institutions.

Others like recently oil-rich Venezuela, that embraced an antique, Cuban-style “Castro socialism” are, in effect, quite ruined. It took hardly a decade to bankrupt itself.

India has itself realised whatever prosperity it now has, only since the reforms of 1991, when the orthodoxies of the Licence Permit Raj were dismantled.

Before that, GDP growth never exceeded 3%, and the GDP itself was a paltry $250 million, or less.

It is just as well we moved up, because even though we have over 200 million Indians below the poverty line today, the population has more than trebled since independence at 1.2 billion or so.

If we didn’t produce surplus food today, and if the growth rate was not between 7-8% per annum, we would be in dire straits.

So while a casual observer might deduce that this country is in chaos, the truth is that we are an evolving democracy with every chance of doubling our GDP every four or five years for decades to come.

The growth rate will be maintained at near double digits because of the enormous domestic demand pent up for the decades of socialist want and shortage.

This economic growth, and only this, will calm the very many injuries and divides amongst the Indian population that we seem to be constantly fighting over.

So secure do we seem to be in our multi-faceted petulance, that we do not hesitate to compromise on national security by openly aiding and abetting our enemies in Pakistan and China!

So if there is something worth protesting today in 2017- it is this: why are we still poor after seven decades? Why are so many people denied the basic necessities, let alone the better things of life?

If this is the basis of our struggles, and we translate the urge into productive policies inspired by the capitalistic aspiration towards growth, we will certainly prosper. We have a foundation already. We can build quite fast upon it if we pull together.

For too long, inequalities have persuaded our political masters to attempt to redistribute poverty by taxing and bringing down the pitifully few rich.

In the last 25 odd years, from the mid-1980s onwards, we have adopted a new tack, and this has created thousands of millionaires and hundreds of billionaires amongst Indians. The middle class today is the size of the entire population in 1947.

We have gone abroad and excelled in various fields such as IT. We have purchased iconic companies across the globe, and proved that we can manage them better than their previous owners.

The need therefore is for much more of this. We must dump socialism for its low yield and flawed understanding.

In its place, we must unleash the potential of this country to become, given its intelligent people and abundant natural resources, a developed country to reckon with.

Let us not waste our protests by reducing them to petty bickering. We have to eject poverty. It is our enemy No.1.

In the process, many of us will grow rich, and have the wherewithal to pursue our passions. What can be the quarrel with that?

 (1,413 words)

March 1^st, 2017

Gautam Mukherjee

(Gautam Mukherjee is a columnist and commentator from the right-of-centre)