Everyone's Gone To The Moon

Satire

Everyone’s Gone To The Moon

Thing is, nobody is making any money in Modi Raj. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have bagged almost 50% of the vote. It was achieved by social engineering- development for the plentiful dalit, going hand-in-hand with the rest of the poor, including Muslims. 

They have all been hoovered up and bagged, with orange lotuses embossed on them and the World Cup Indian team. And thereby went caste and religion in politics down the garbage chute.

The talkative, picky, middle class is now officially a lost cause with zero leverage. The traders used to be a constituency in the days when their subscriptions mattered, but now they are thought to be incessant nags.

None of these people are really needed for Modi to win elections, though one school of thought has it they have nowhere else to go. So, more’s the pity- votes for nothing and picks for free.

The infrastructure is indubitably improving dramatically- big national highways, state highways, city underpasses, flyovers, automatic, smart- phone delivered challans. Metros are burgeoning in every city worth the name.  

But the wallets of the BJP supporter who is not poor is getting thinner all the time. No pakoras or pani puri for all despite those vegetarian banquets. Even Patanjali, hit by demonetization and GST both, is complaining.

Does this Bhakt existential crisis even matter? Can the Bhakt talk about such unmentionables as money in his Modi jacket?  Are there any jobs or opportunities for these clowns unless their provincial credentials are impeccable with RSS blessings? Doesn’t look like it, except for chanting Modi-Modi and swearing they don’t want anything in return.

And it doesn’t hurt to bleat an occasional Jai Shri Ram. There will be no temple, one must understand, because the matter is sub judice. And no revocation  of 370 and 35A either, because there is no majority in the Rajya Sabha. But keep chanting. It is good for the soul.

If someone is stupid enough to not be a BJP supporter, he or she can use the longish interregnum to take up Vipassana – or drink long tall vodkas.

Property prices are dead, even as in a repetitive Orwellian way, Sarkari voices tell us there will be housing for all by 2022- and water( never mind Chennai), electricity, and connectivity too.

BSNL, VSNL and MTNL are dead – so it must be Jio that will provide the connectivity. Airtel and Vodafone don’t work anyway, and are reeling under heavy debt. Don’t even ask about Idea or about the no fly zone hit Air India. Flying and travelling too is connectivity.

Mumbai- the erstwhile bounce back experts cum commercial capital, is moaning and groaning. There is no money there except in Mukesh Ambani’s family.

It is pot-holed in the pocket too. This must seem funny to the bald and pot-bellied - particularly those running the BMC on behalf of Matoshree.

Right now, for the Mumbaikar, it is a struggle to just keep from falling into open manholes concealed under water, or drown in the downpour. It means being swept unceremoniously out to sea via the Matunga drain, black with sweeping out such bodies.

Life First, Money Later is the new slogan for all at the Chowpatty foot- overbridge.

Dalal Street is regretting having installed a bronze Bull in imitation of Wall Street. Nobody puts marigold malas on it anymore. Most stocks are at 2010 levels even as the government brokers talk of Sensex at 40,000 next. The Sensex  is going up and down like  a merry-go-round horse, but on the back of a dozen shares out of 30. Nifty on fifty is pulling on towards 12,000 on the same basis. Many of the 6,000 listed companies in the broader index are bankrupt and another one crumbles and disappears whenever someone tries to buy its shares.

SEBI, meanwhile, also made up of durable government appointed bureaucrats,  is working out new ways to torture all and sundry. Even TRAI is competing in torture- the-people stakes by putting up satellite TV subscriptions in the name of wider customer choice. SEBI does it by calling it customer protection. Lok Pals and Ombudsmen are busy taking notes.

The erstwhile Finance Minister has already put in five taxes, like circus wheel-of -death knives, into the side of all the brokers, investors and punters. Will there be more imaginative viciousness from the babus and the new FM in North Block on the 5^th of July?

Unsold properties are legion in Mumbai and Greater Mumbai, likewise in the NCR, in frothy-water, garbage infested, congested, Bengaluru. Maybe the situation is no better in Surat, Ahmedabad and Valsad – despite its made-over “European-style” railway station.

Those affected in real estate are private, RERA compliant, aspirational people. But their votes are not numerous enough to swing seats. And their cheque books and thailas are not weighty enough to fill BJP coffers. Meanwhile the Centre has tweaked land-use laws to add two acres to the ramparts of the BJP HQ.

Elsewhere, the government-owned ISRO is doing really well. Its brilliant if underpaid scientists are about to make a moon landing. Perhaps we should all line up and see if we can go to the moon. There may be better pickings there, unless the Chinese have stolen a march, working around from its dark side.

Private companies are not growing, hiring, or investing. Dead PSU companies are being declared dead by the government alongside. Nothing is growing but the government.

Media can hardly pay its staff unless it is owned by Mukesh Ambani, India Today or Times of India. And the latter two are showing signs of fatigue and weakness.

The automobile sector, albeit an internal combustion universe except for the failed CNG experiments, is shrinking. This, even as the government is busy talking up electric cars and trains as the future. The millions invested in vehicle factories, the lakhs employed there, can go the way of real estate and its cement using pollution, all in the quest for clean energy, and new talking points.

So what is left to be distracted from in this World Cup cricket season? TV is alright though growing ever more expensive.

The much distributed LeD lights from Modi 1.0 have been found to be dangerous to eyesight. They also cause cancer, joining a different queue for cancer-causing agents that is much longer than the one for people going to the moon. There is no wisdom left. It is of no pecuniary use.

This lack of corruption at the top is proving to be a heavy burden. Nobody is making money. Business and enterprise is at a standstill from lack of incentive for the powers that be. There was a cheerful news item of the revival of corruption at the bottom though. It is in fodder distribution in Maharashtra. People are claiming 20 cows to a rural household and government inspectors are certifying this @ Rs. 15,000/- per inspection. It cheered up Lalu Prasad no end in Sirsa jail. Vicariousness is also a pleasure after all.

But his benami properties had to go. Robert Vadra is waiting to see what happens. He hasn’t lost very much yet. Chidambaram sneers at all this inept work as only a good Chettiar robber-baron can.

Modi says he is not running an Emergency, looking at his manicured fingernails. He suggests the criminally prosecuted but out on bail should continue  to enjoy themselves.

I come back to it though- there is no hope for the middle-class, union budget or no budget. There is a new invisibility. Nationalism will have to substitute for sustenance. The plainest of living and the highest of thinking is the way to go. Jai Hind, Vande Mataram, Allah Hu Akbar, and the Lord have mercy!

(1, 281 words)

For: Sirfnews

June 30^th, 2019

Gautam Mukherjee

The Great Glide Path To Prosperity: India's GDP At $5 Trillion In 2024, $10 Trillion In 2029

The Great Glide Path To Prosperity: India’s GDP At $ 5 Trillion In 2024, $10 Trillion In 2029

The pit-stop described, is in 2024, at the end of Modi 2.0. And the chequered-flag finish-line of this Maserati race to the top, is in 2029. That is, just 10 years from now.

Quite a lot of the underlying calculations, for 2024, let alone 2029, are to do with the relative strength of the Indian Rupee vis a vis the US dollar. The Rupee has moved up and down as much as 20% against the dollar of late. Would this volatility cease if it were to become fully convertible?

And, of course, all the projections assume inflation stays range-bound in and about 3% to 7%, most happily at no more than 4%.

We have already come a long way economically from 1947. The pace has picked up since the 1980s, and particularly since 1991.  But, looking at 2019, a full 28 years on, some of the potential has certainly been realized, but we have still got a long way to go.

India will have gone from the 5^th largest big economy in 2019, to the 3^rd in “nominal” or absolute dollar terms by 2029, if the projections come true. On a Purchase Power Parity (PPP) basis, often used to describe things in the emerging economies, we could be reckoned as at No.1, ahead of both America and China.

But a lot of this kind of speculative economic gaming is of little practical value. It may entertain seminarists when dressed up in appropriate jargon, but it won’t get us one jot closer to our stretch targets.

It will take a sustained 12% compounded growth in the economy year-on- year from now, when we are at $ 2.8 trillion GDP. The economy grew at 5.8% in the last quarter. This fiscal’s whole year statistic will probably pan out at 7%, though a range is forecast between 6.9% and 7.2%.

So how do we nearly double it, and then hold steady as she goes? While it is true that unleashing the power of the MSME/ “unorganized” sector that employs 80% of those who have jobs, is much talked about by leftist economists; this is a task strictly for the big boys.

The Task Force working on ideas - economists, the industrialists they consulted, and  Commerce Ministry bureaucrats , (Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion-DIPP), has laid out a mass of incremental measures and hopes. These include tired clichés on how to get the Agriculture ( Cold  Chain), and Manufacturing sectors to deliver $ 1 trillion each.

The Services sector, a vague catch-all for everything else from “arbitration and mediation services”, “audio-visual” services, auditing, visas etc. to provide the other $3 trillion.

There is no accounting for bureaucratic lag-time which usually spoils any government created time-line.

The one realistic thing is the emphasis they have put on Defence-related Make in India, though it totals - the Technology Transfer, the Offsets, the incentivized lures - along with electronics, auto parts  and the like towards the same Manufacturing $1 trillion.

Growing at a compound 7% might just be possible, despite a slowing economy, by providing facilities to the small scale entrepreneurs, and all things suggested by the DIPP, but then it would take 10 years just to get to $ 5 trillion.

To do it in half the time, can only come about using the biggest Indian enterprises in collaboration with foreign “Greenfield” investment on a scale involving trillions of dollars.

Quite a lot of the foreign investment may have to be let in with 100% foreign ownership as well.

This is mainly possible in the high unit-cost defence manufacturing sector and the nuclear power sector.

These two alone could absorb the trillions needed. Huge facilities would have to be set up, and yes, employment for some millions would result. These would be for all the 28 or 30 nuclear power plants needed currently to supplant some of the power generated using fossil fuels. These would have to start being put together not in ones and twos over decades, as at present, but simultaneously, to be finished and commissioned in 24 months.  

Facilities for major armaments and componentry/spares, such as missile shields, AWACS, fighter, bomber and transport planes, helicopters of all kinds, battle-tanks, howitzers and field guns of different ranges,  machine guns and rifles,  armoured carriers, submarines, aircraft carriers, navy frigates, ammunition and missile production facilities to service all this modern hardware  would have to be put in all together.

Much of this would come to Make in India quite readily, as long as we guarantee offtake. If we diversify sourcing between America, Israel, Russia, China, North Korea, and Europe - including Britain, France, Sweden, Spain, for example, we will have considerable strategic depth.  

Besides, most developed countries earn their highest revenues and profits from the sale and export of their defence equipment, and India must do likewise in due course. In fact, quite a lot of this defence industry capacity and R&D, in collaboration with the world’s leading manufacturers, would also have to be for export to be viable.

And nuclear power in abundance will not only assure investors of the electricity they need, but put paid to high power prices from the extensive use of fossil fuel for its generation.

At the same time, our new manufacturing in 2019 and beyond, not hamstrung by legacy issues, can take on as much high technology as possible. This, in order to be relevant, price-competitive, cutting-edge, efficient, attractive, and in demand.

India should also press ahead with as many mega projects as possible calling, once again, on foreign capital and expertise to do so. This is because only the investment on a huge scale can get us to $ 5 trillion in the record time stipulated.

These must include speeding up all work related to the multiple railway-freight corridors and bullet trains. We must build all the tunnels and bridges we need, both for road and rail. 

The new Water Ministry too is very timely. It should undertake, quite apart from water conservation measures and reviving of water bodies in dry states, the massive dam work and other channeling programmes on utilizing the waters of the Indus Water Treaty.

This must begin with what portion of the water is currently India’s share as announced some time back. But later, it should extend to other portions of the water as necessary by abrogating the treaty.

India must do likewise on the Brahmaputra to prevent the periodic floods, even after China has diverted a good quantity of this water by building dams up-river on its own territory. China has nothing like the Indus Water Treaty with any country!

The linking of rivers, and making ready of inland waterways by dredging them to suit, is another massive undertaking under the Transport Ministry that needs to be rapidly advanced with the resources  to get it done.

The cleaning of the Ganga by undertaking thousands of sewage and effluent treatment projects along its long course is another huge magnet for investment.

 We cannot afford to be worried about taking on massive debt to achieve all this, even as we are indebted to the tune of 70% of current GDP, or about $2 trillion presently.

We can afford to double this debt if we are going to hit $ 5 trillion in GDP by 2024. But instead of domestic debt, most of the new debt will have to be external.

(1,225 words)

For: SirfNews

June 23^rd, 2019

Gautam Mukherjee

Land Of A Thousand Winks

Land Of A Thousand Winks

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact/Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth- Marcus Aurelius

What is the name of the winning political game? Is it a mass of sincere sounding promises that get the votes, many of which have no hope of seeing the light of day? Or silly winks for no apparent reason?  

But then, allegedly possessing the riches of the ages from graft, probably helps to see the humour. Money, and living well, is the best revenge.

On the very public winks though-is there an ancient Hindu concept at play here?  Nonplussed, are we being reminded about Maya? Is that rictus a tragi-comic smile at fate? Are we being told that if we listen very carefully we will be able to hear the Gods laughing at us?  Is the portentous train of life and living verily an illusion?

Hinduism appears, at times, to say so. Probably, because death is inevitable. And because it puts paid to all our aspirations, sorrows, energy, beauty, enjoyments -  all the razzle-dazzle, the pomp and splendour.

Is this the true intent behind the “Clown Prince”, India’s own Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Parsi Pierrot who will never be prime minister, choosing to wink at climactic moments?

If so, however disastrous the public perception - 49 year old Rahul Gandhi is no Pappu.  Someone with the detachment to wink at the make-believe is a weighty philosopher. Alas, coming into his fourth generation inheritance, he may not be that much of a politician. But perhaps we can let this craftsman blame his tools just a little.

Great success, let us note, does not necessarily kill the philosopher within. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, albeit the last of the five emperors that maintained the unbroken Pax Romana, was certainly one. He was a stoic, because he could look into the future. Most of his own reign was spent freezing in the cold, standing on ramparts, but marked by successful military conflict.  

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah could see an Aurelius parallel here if they wanted to. Conquest, consolidation, and perpetual election mode are similar.

But are they too busy establishing Bharat everywhere that counts in the political firmament? Nobody made it easy for them. And now, having won a second consecutive term, can it all be sustained into another and another ad infinitum?

Can the great victor of Uttar Pradesh, newly appointed working president JP Nadda, pull out just as many rabbits out of that proverbial hat? Will NDA rule for the next 50 years as Shah once prophesied?

Is Rahul Gandhi, the butt of a thousand, perhaps unfair jokes, a stoic?  After all, his brief time at the top has been marked by some success too. He won Punjab convincingly, snatched Karnataka from the jaws of defeat, and swept three Hindi heartland states simultaneously. Of the latter, two were taken narrowly, but one by storming the citadel.  

It looked like tranquil bath-time, with all the ducks in a row, just a few months ago- with the general elections promising more to come.

So why the pointed winks at fate, both before and after triumph and tragedy?

He hugged the prime minister in a security breaching gesture, after railing at him with a spurious set-piece on Rafale. And then, he winked at Scindia, who has now also lost his seat of Guna.

Was Gandhi saying : enjoy it while you can prime minister? He has, after all, spent his whole life in the proximity of power.

Ironically, on his 49^th birthday,  19^th June, the Supreme Court dismissed the  review petitions on Rafale according to a fake news snippet on Republic. Gandhi had pinned his hopes on it and how long before the SC really throws it out? Too bad then that the curtain has almost fallen on all that manufactured, Cambridge Analytica calumny; as well as on the supporting cast of jackals.  

After a bizarre campaign marked by little besides insulting slogans, light-weight advisers, and dashing about the country promising the moon and stars - Rahul Gandhi lost big.  But then, the fractious Mahagatbandhan lost even bigger.

In retrospect, Gandhi trusted too much in the crunching of self-serving big data and the illusions it threw up. The results shocked him. He was expecting between 160 and upwards of 180 seats for Congress. He resigned. He closeted himself in his house. He flew off to London to lick his wounds. Then he returned just in time, a 4^th time parliamentarian, to take his oath as the MP from Wayanad.

Out in the hot summer sun, beside one of the Lok Sabha’s solid red stone portals, he grinned and winked again, directly into the camera of an Indian Express photographer.

Gandhi won’t be leading the Congress in the Lok Sabha. It probably bores him.  But it looks like he’s gone back to reshuffling and reorganizing his disintegrating deck as president still.  All the states in the Congress fold currently are on the slippery slope.

Joining the NDA is very tempting for all those who want to defect. It has a near two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha. It has swept the North East and decisively breached the East. It is strong in the North and beginning to compromise parts of the South.

Punjab state could be lost to Congress once the elderly Capt. Amarinder Singh exits. Karnataka is barely hanging in by the skin of its teeth. The BJP is actively trying to prise away Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and perhaps Chhattisgarh too. Congress MLAs are deserting the party in Goa. J&K is being reengineered.

There are no future wins in prospect for the opposition. Not in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana. Chandrababu Naidu has lost in Andhra Pradesh and his successor Jagan Mohan Reddy is cosying up to the BJP. Mamata Banerjee is under immense pressure. Stalin’s DMK in Tamil Nadu is a holdout for the moment. The question is, for how long?

TRS in Telangana has slipped quite badly in the Lok Sabha elections. As has Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, and Navin Patnaik in Orissa. SP and BSP are in no position to pose a challenge.

The new initiatives of the NDA, such as piped water to all villages, will consolidate its hold on the poor. Particularly if more is done for health and education. But there is a growing worry that the Modi government, like Indira Gandhi’s before it, is forming a path to win elections, irrespective of the parlous state of the economy.

There is no political pressure. None that can contain the NDA from a majority in the Rajya Sabha and a legislative flight path , that too by 2021.

The danger is to the broader economy, concerned with jobs and decent GDP growth. Big business and its money is at Modi’s feet, and the rest, even if unhappy, cannot hurt the voting. The middle-class, as usual, is piggy-in-the- middle.

 This new populism, inclusive of a higher profile in foreign affairs, defence purchases, infrastructure development, farming sops, might well stretch the country’s finances. India is borrowing hand over fist to fuel this, and bad debts are still burgeoning.

Will India grow its economy to $ 5 trillion by 2024? It will need 12% growth between now and then for the $ 2.8 trillion present economy. And the ambition is to go on to $10 trillion by 2030!  Are these aspirations those famous jumlas, just more winks at fate from the other side of the aisle?

A great increase like this can indeed change everything. It had better, because we will soon be the most populous country on earth.

A double-digit growth is more urgent for a poorer and underserviced country like India when compared to a heavily built and stacked China in 2019. Such growth can come quickly only from immense foreign direct investment. There are many countries willing to invest. But they will do so, only on terms that are highly beneficial to them.

When China opened up under Deng Xiaoping, it did so by unfettering domestic controls. America used it to tear down the USSR’s Iron Curtain and create an economic boom for both countries. It gave China double-digit growth for thirty years.

India must overrule the shibboleths of the past. We must give the world access without compromising our security. Give it also the benefits of modernizing, manufacturing and exporting from a relatively low-cost country.

A dominant political presence affords a historic opportunity. Winning elections is an enabler, but growing the economy is a solemn duty to the future.

(1,401 words)

June 20^th, 2019

For: The Sunday Guardian

Gautam Mukherjee

The Moby Dick Syndrome: A Government In Perpetual Election Mode

The Moby Dick Syndrome: A Government in Perpetual Election Mode

As grand obsessions go, there is little in American literature to top that of Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab. The slow burner of an 1851 classic has Ahab living out his all consuming desire. He wants to personally harpoon Moby Dick in his eye and through to his brain, a great white whale, as big as his ship.

What is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Moby Dick? He calmly says it is the progress of India on all fronts. And Prime Minister Narendra Modi works night and day without taking any holidays.

But which of those fronts are especially prioritized, because all five fingers cannot be the same size? To the naked eye, it looks like his singular grand obsession is with winning elections. And this is good, because there is no opportunity for anything else if one is ousted.

Modi is dazzlingly good at it, being an indefatigable campaigner and masterful orator with tremendous connect with the public. It is the electioneering that binds him to  his alter ego, Party President and Home Minister Amit Shah. And Amit Shah is already working on the assemblies coming up in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana.

As an extension, work on finding a lasting solution in J&K is probably underway. The anarchy and bloodshed in West Bengal is being carefully monitored for opportunity. Other narrowly lost states such as Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka may well be clawed back at the first opportunity.

Modi is also tremendous at foreign policy, dwarfing the role of the Foreign Minister. India’s stature in the world community has gone up in leaps and bounds due to his tireless efforts. It promises to climb new heights of success in Modi 2.0. What will we see next? Membership of the NSG? A permanent seat with veto powers at the UNSC? A border settlement with China? Sales of Made in India armaments, missiles, satellites?

Defence and security is also a strong point. Modi has dared to transform our security paradigm vis a vis both China and Pakistan. And this achieved with not very good military tools to work with. The country is rapidly upgrading and modernizing its armaments and related scientific capability now, realizing it may not be so fortunate the next time around.

The economy, which is crying out for help, seems to be only fourth in Modi’s set of priorities. He does not seem to have quite the same feel for it, and the whole country is definitely not as mercantile or industrious as the Gujarati.

However, there are hints of major reform in the offing, involving both labour and land. But can the government take the political buffeting to come? Easier actions such as punitive measures against fraudsters and cheats seem to be on the upswing. A bankruptcy code is in motion. But huge bad debts at banks and NBFCs continue due to a criminal nexus between borrowers and lenders.  Private sector investment is at a near standstill. Nothing has been done to unleash “animal spirits”.

Leaving aside job and GDP statistics, which are being challenged, perhaps unfairly, and improvements in the ease of doing business rankings, there is not enough feel- good. This despite the fact that FDI has risen to its highest levels ever. Foreign exchange levels too are at their highest at nearly $ 425 billion.

But exports of all kinds are languishing. As is manufacturing, trade, agriculture, services – almost every aspect of the economy, except infrastructure development, funded largely by the government itself.

Where are the urgent moves designed to rescue the economy from a sharp slow-down? This could, of course, be shrouded in secrecy around the budget making process. All will be revealed in July, but will it overwhelm on the upside or continue with the tinkering of all those Arun Jaitley budgets?

That Nirmala Sitharaman is an Arun Jaitley protégé, does not suggest that there will be any great leap forward. More’s the pity, because the nation deserves to be surprised.

The Modi administration, very statist in its ways, has stayed away from corruption. But it does tend towards the puritanical. An example of this is the utter neglect of the Real Estate sector that rivals agriculture in terms of contribution to GDP. Real Estate is shunned because of its large use of unaccounted-for cash. But this could be mitigated to a substantial extent if the capital gains taxes on profits from sales, mostly dodged, are abolished. There is also an unrealistic desire to reduce property prices by deflating demand, without recognizing that the key reason for high property prices are the underlying, inelastic, land costs.

Elsewhere, the emphasis on efficient taxation via GST is commendable, but it is not balanced by growth incentivisation.

On the plus side, the NDA, from Vajpayee’s NDA 1.0 and now, into the second Modi term, has always been first class at building and improving infrastructure. Some of this, investment intensive as it is, is in successful collaboration with the private sector and foreign investors.

The efficacy of the Modi government’s low-cost housing in “Smart City” configurations   remains mostly a question mark. The ambition is towards housing for all by 2022, looming close. It is India’s 75^th year since independence.

Why does a government keen on infrastructure and low cost housing refuse to help private residential development and office building?

Modi has asked the bureaucracy in every ministry to come up with ideas and plans to grow the economy to $ 5 trillion. But is the bureaucracy, trained to command and control, capable of thinking in an entrepreneurial manner? Modi relied on the bureaucracy in Gujarat, and does so now, possibly for its biddability. It may be pliant, but cannot even devise marketable methods to divest PSUs.

The Air India  terms of reference were the usual hodge-podge of unrealistic valuations and trying to foist years of losses on the prospective buyer. Indian bureaucrats have to understand  that they may be clever but others are not completely stupid either.  

The Niti Aayog has not exactly covered itself in glory so far. It too has been tasked to be a catalyst for the economy. Again, are the people manning it practical and imaginative enough to come up with the goods?

A lateral entry programme  is inducting experts into the bureaucracy  at senior level. Will the IAS culture allow these entrants from the private sector to function effectively? 

All the Modi initiatives for the economy, apart from some aimed at streamlining processes, cutting red tape and speeding things up, lack a grand vision to stimulate domestic investment, demand, and consumption, the foundation and driver of the Indian economy.

To do this, Modi must become an Ataturk. He must overcome his incrementalist instincts, and boldly carry out radical reforms. Too get rid of a drain on public resources he must enable a surgical strike on loss-making PSUs.

On the other side of the coin, the need of the hour is to make the rupee, half in and half out for years for fear of a run on its value and capital flight, fully convertible. It can’t do much worse than it is now, and Hawala, as before, is alive and well.

And then, on the principle that an economy is valued by the embedded investment it attracts, let in, not millions, but trillions of dollars in foreign investment. This can only happen based on realistic, concomitant and globally competitive terms, and not the ifs and buts that Indian babudom is fond of imposing.  

Modi has to break the mould.Foreign investment bankers need to write up the tenders with the PMO approving them directly. Let us remember we have not been able to buy a couple of hundred badly needed fighters for the IAF, Army and Navy for a decade, through our usual  routes via the byzantine Ministry of Defence.  And when Modi made bold to buy 36 Rafale fighters in a government-to-government deal, he was subjected to undeserved calumny on the grand scale.

However, a nearly two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha does provide a thick skin if Modi wants one.

Without reviving the collaborative private sector, encouraging floods of foreign investment, and providing land, labour, infrastructure, utilities - in the desired configurations, the Indian economy cannot grow into double digits or thereabouts.

And we have no time to lose. For a long time, the presumption and raison d etre was that pent up demand, left over from the shortages of the socialist years, would sustain. This no longer appears to be true. A period of low growth has set in, and could lead to recession, a middle income trap, or worse.  

Demand for private cars in the automobile sector, as a barometer of changing preferences from ownership to using Uber, Ola and the like, has shrunk by a fifth. The number of people flying has reduced, even as airlines go belly-up. Housing is not selling, even at depressed prices. Disposable income in the hands of people has shrunk. Malls are struggling to survive. Inefficient and slow government owned services such as the post offices, MTNL, BSNL - are making massive losses.  

Priority number four may be difficult on the face of it. It is not as glamorous as  the power buzz of winning elections, the pomp foreign policy, or the adrenaline of national security. But it can, if tackled squarely, make the difference between dashed hopes and mere survival, or glorious success bathed in prosperity.

(1,564 words)

For: SirfNews

June 14^th, 2019

Gautam Mukherjee

Jab Bharat Met India: Time For Three Big Moves

Jab Bharat Met India: Time For Three Big Moves

The continuity of Modi 2.0 belies the profound changes to come. The wisdom of the electorate has caused every second person out of over 660 million  who went to the hustings, to vote this government into power for a second term.

But now, what is needed, while the Opposition is in disarray after the thumping, almost two-thirds victory in the Lok Sabha, is a flurry of major initiatives.

The traditional political honeymoon period does not last more than a 100 days. In 2014, the early days were squandered. Bold moves were kept waiting till half way through the term, when the Opposition, such as it was, was in full flow.

And it was noisy enough to derail most of the parliamentary sessions, and  part of the legislative agenda too. Not having enough strength in the Rajya Sabha was also a  major handicap.

With a dominant Bharat flavoured team ensconced in the political leadership now, many of the erstwhile nods across the aisle and pulling of punches is expected to be done away with. Will this government soon put corrupt but high profile Congress politicians in jail as promised?

All the short term political calculations ought to be confident now. They should be based on an expected long stretch of NDA governments. The electorate has demonstrably changed. It has accepted the priorities of nationalism, security and development an d given Narendra Modi a mandate for  action. It wants to see substantial growth, and is ready for radical change to achieve it.

But this groundswell of support can only be guaranteed by a series of bold and decisive moves that puts paid to the hesitations and accommodations of the past.

At least three big moves in the first 100 days of Modi 2.0 are called for. They will also go a long way to win the important Assembly elections coming up thereafter in October.

These could be a pathbreaking  set of additions to the interim budget involving a   slashing of low yielding taxes such as the capital gains provisions, come July. 

The full budget must kickstart a faltering economy  by stimulating investment. It must put the fear of ruin into financial defaulters.

Article 35A must be revoked by presidential decree, making it possible for all Indians to live in, own land and property, invest, and vote in J&K.

This will not go down well with Nitish Kumar, who has issued his warnings against the move. But in the first 100 days, a new government walks on water and he can probably be mollified.

The third big move could be the commencement of the Ram Mandir construction in Ayodhya, using adjacent land outside the 2.77 acres that is strictly sub-judice. This would cut through the clutter, and prevent the judiciary holding the aspirations of millions to ransom any longer.

Article 370, mostly moth-eaten already, can be held over for further dilution. It can also be abrogated at a future date, when the government secures sufficient strength in the Rajya Sabha.  

The futurescape presumes not only a win in Maharashtra and Haryana, but the clawing back of Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh at a minimum. The resultant controversies generated, can be outweighed in the first flush, by the overwhelming public approval.

Let us remember, despite relentless propaganda over several decades to the contrary, that Bharat  is congenitally Saffron. It is comfortable with old myths and new aspirations. Bharat, unlike the British construct called India, does not suffer from self-conscious embarrassment. It has no emotional linkage with colonially induced shame for all things Hindu.

The BJP/NDA has found Bharat under layers of imported ideologies and the dislocations of foreign conquest. It has fine-tuned it into success, twice in a row. Bharat’s true DNA is self-assured. It has successfully integrated, assimilated and amalgamated imported influences over the centuries.

Those who point to the Green and White in the Indian flag, must see the modified writing on the wall. These advocates don’t like being told that converted Muslims and Christians are also, congenitally, Hindu.  

But, constitutionally, the Greens and Whites are indeed deserving of space and an even playing field. But this, under Modi 2.0 means parity, not privilege. Can they, in turn, work up the “Viswas”?

On the other hand, which simple arithmetic can continue to equate 80 with 12 or 2 and proceed to show bias for the lesser numbers?

But then it wasn’t arithmetic, but a species of vote bank politics that tilted the board for much of the decades since independence . Now this may no longer be feasible. Nor is the sporadic violence being resorted to in frustration.  

But what happened to the erstwhile saviours of the minorities? How did they collapse like a house of cards? Is orthodox Marxism that glossed over caste and religion, and its Fabian Socialist Nehruvian derivative, the Libleft, truly obsolete now? Or is it just hibernating through a bitter winter?

Are those family owned regional political parties that abuse socialist tenets to bamboozle their adherents finally on the slippery slope to oblivion?  They will have their enormous ill-gotten wealth stolen from their followers to console themselves in retirement. But what becomes of their flock?

The voting public, including 12.2% of the Muslims, more aware now than ever before, have shifted away, this time probably for good. Only a massive dislocation, unimaginable at present, could turn the tables.

The electorate is now responding, not to the grievances of poverty, or the call of ideology, but simple new promises more to their liking.

These are about the benefits, not of freebies and handouts, but lasting economic progress. The voter knows there is a long road ahead to accomplishment. Still, given the honesty of purpose of a rare leader like Narendra Modi, they are willing to be supportive and patient.  

A reduction in corruption all around, and its non-existence at the top where the maximum power resides, is a brand new feeling. It has never been experienced before in India. Indeed, corruption was seen as a universal way of life.

Today, when Modi talks of the Indian economy overtaking that of Britain this year to make India No. 5 in the world, and a $5 trillion economy by 2023, the young voter knows that the whole country is going to gain from this. And that is not all- India will become the 3^rd biggest economy globally by 2030, only behind America and China.

This exalted vision beats the povertarianism and the corrupt growth for a few favoured people under previous regimes.  There is surety of purpose even as lives have not changed substantially yet. But there is no hesitation. No looking back  in anger.

(1, 104 words)

June 11, 2019

Gautam Mukherjee