The Indian Economy In 2022 And What Can We Look Forward To In 2023

As the year 2022 draws to a close, the most notable achievement for the Indian economy was that it overtook that of the United Kingdom in GDP terms. And this, in the very first quarter of FY 2022-2023. This made it the 5^th largest economy in the world, on its way towards $ 4 trillion in GDP before long.

The feeling of continuum is a key feature of the Indian economy in 2022 and going forward. The days of abrupt changes in policy that were seen to be disruptive have ended with the departure of coalition governments, as of 2014, and are unlikely to return, even post the general elections of 2024. This is crucial for India’s economic outlook. Without continuity, all bets are off.

By 2028, India is expected, by a number of international lending and rating agencies, to reach the No.3 slot, having overtaken both Germany and Japan. It will then be behind only the US at No.1 and China at No.2. This is on nominal GDP terms, though India is very well placed already, at No.3 in purchase power parity (PPP) terms.

This PPP also helps India’s vast population of 1.40 billion and climbing, because the low per capita income of Rs. 1.5 lakhs in 2022, still buys quite a lot in comparison. Two earning members from a family at the bottom of the pyramid can still pull in Rs. 3 lakhs per annum.

A ‘developed’ country like Britain, in contrast, with per capita in the region of $ 46,510.30 in 2021, has its common people in difficulty to meet basic food and energy costs at present.

One of the reasons for 2022 doing so well for us, is India’s excellent and quick bounce back from the Covid pandemic.  Its handling of the Covid pandemic by inoculating over a billion people, mostly free-of-cost, and at a fast pace, with at least one highly effective home-grown vaccine, was nothing less than spectacular.

The other was the Astra Zeneca licensed vaccine, which has also performed very well. Both have demonstrated an efficacy of over 75%. No other country can claim such dramatic success with consequent low loss of life, even though most developed countries have vast budgets and very small populations. India has also shipped Covid vaccines free of cost to a number of countries that requested them along with other medicines.

This clear staking out of India’s position as ‘pharmacy to the world’ over the period 2020 to end 2021, gave it immense global stature, particularly amongst the ‘Global South’. This benign and beneficial stature, will not be forgotten as it goes into 2023 as the Chair of the G-20 Summit. Nearly 30 countries will participate including some 10 invitees. How 2024 turns out will have a lot to do with agreements arrived at with the G 20 participants.

However, India did not make much money from medicines, nor does         it intend to profiteer in future, because its largely generic drugs are not high-priced, even as they pose a long-term commercial threat to the Western pharmacological industry. Consequently, there is a fair amount of malicious misinformation against Indian efficacy and quality.  

The Indian economy is presently growing at between 6% and 7% per annum according to various independent estimates. It is adding $ 400 billion per annum to its tally according to Morgan Stanley.

The World Bank has revised its estimates upwards in October 2022, and expects India to grow at 6.9% in 2022-2023 and at 6.4% in 2023-2024.  It is also expected to maintain this momentum year-on-year for at least a decade going forward. 

By way of contrast, in 1990, just before a sharp balance of payments crisis and the urgent, sweeping reforms in 1991, the entire Indian economy was at less than $400 billion.

This sluggishness over four plus decades, was due to an over reliance on socialist policies and a highly regulated economy that failed to deliver.  Now, both the size of the Indian economy and the momentum of its growth have picked up considerably. India is acknowledged as the fastest growing economy globally.

 Exports, which were never India’s strong suit in the past, came to the rescue during the pandemic, when various other sectors of the economy were depressed or even inactive. They are expected to touch $ 1 trillion by 2030, according to the Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal.

In the nearly one year of the ongoing Ukraine war, India has exported rice, grain and other food items, as it is food surplus. Another feature that is now descriptive of the Indian economy, that was dependent on food aid in the 1950s and 1960s when the population was less than a third of what it is now.

The vast domestic market however is India’s mainstay, with consumption and investment accounting for 70% of the economy. This makes it an attractive destination for foreign investors as well.

India, on its part has been pumping up its capital expenditure in infrastructure, capacity building, connectivity, and modernisation at an unprecedented pace. This, in turn, is having a entirely positive knock-on effect on the economy by removing chronic bottlenecks and inefficiencies at a dynamic pace.

At a time when multiple Western countries are keen to reduce their dependence on a Chinese supply chain, India stepping up to the plate with the requisite infrastructure and the offering of incentives to relocate/manufacture here is very timely. Giants such as Apple Industries have already taken advantage of the opportunity. Several high-end semiconductor manufacturers from Taiwan and elsewhere are in the process of starting factories in India.

Electronics and automobiles including componentry are already growing fast and are big employers. Other unicorns and start-ups, valued at over 332 billion,  making India the unicorn/start-up capital of the world, offer exciting employment possibilities.  Development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications alone holds out the prospect of millions of new jobs.

India’s macro-economics are solid beyond just the growth statistics. Its current account deficit is well financed by foreign direct investment and dollar reserves that are hovering close to $ 600 billion, even after dipping to try and shore up the falling rupee against a surging US dollar.

India is working hard to enter into rupee trades with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka after establishing a rupee-ruble format for trade with Russia. This will, as it grows, reduce India’s dependence on the American dollar.

This even as clean energy initiatives, meaning non-fossil fuel, will cut 40% of India’s ever growing and costly petroleum import bill. With a current 80% dependency on imported fuel, this is the hardest inflationary item to manage and roils the strength of the rupee vis a vis the dollar.

 The purchase of most of India’s oil and gas needs from Russia and others at discounted rates over the last year has however contained domestic inflation to reasonable levels. India has also been exporting refined petroleum products at an elevated pace during the logistic difficulties posed by the war in Ukraine.  Prices have been aggravated by international sanctions, sharp cuts in production by OPEC and other oil and gas producing countries. This has kept oil prices high at a time when Europe and America are struggling with higher rates of inflation of between 6% and 11% never seen by these economies in the decades since WWII.  

India’s thrust towards aatmanirbhar manufacturing have borne fruit in 2022 with several beginnings in the defence manufacturing industry. With 68% of items proscribed from the imports list, Indian industry, both public and private sector are reaping the benefits. In addition, because of the quality of armaments made in India, a new defence export market is growing. Brahmos missiles were exported to the Philippines in 2022. Other countries, such as Vietnam, UAE and Egypt have lined up for these and other Made in India missiles. Armenia has bought Indian rocket launchers and radars. The Tejas fighter aircraft are not only filling shortfalls in the Indian Air Force, but are also being looked at with interest by other countries. Indian drone manufacture is growing fast. So are the manufacture of automatic machine guns, cold    weather gear, bullet-proof vests, boots, ammunition, rifles, armoured cars, transport aircraft in a joint venture between Airbus and Tata, light tanks, heavy tanks, howitzers, rocket-launchers that are mobile, and superior to the Russian ones they are replacing, with a longer range. There are frigates, submarines both nuclear and conventional, aircraft carriers. The Indian Defence Industry has not only been growing significantly in 2022, but has the potential to become a percentage player in the global arms markets at a fraction of the price of its Western competitors.

Certain things, like fighter engines, and naval gas turbine engines, are yet to be developed, but vigorous joint venture talks are on with France, the US and Britain. This, even as we scale up Indian R&D on an urgent basis to take care of the threats posed by a two-front war with both China and Pakistan. Making our own aircraft and naval engines will go a long way towards essential security.

ISRO has made great strides, not only by launching heavy rockets and multiple satellites into orbit itself but by also hosting private players to do likewise. But there was a            time, decades ago, when it was denied cryogenic engine technology by the West and Russia, and had to develop it on its own. Now, like NASA, it is also working on a reusable space vehicle for multiple visits to space.

A sector that now rivals agriculture both in share of the GDP and the numbers it employs is the real estate sector. This activity has been and will continue to be a magnet for surplus rural labour. After a number of years with oversupply, it  picked up in 2022 and is expected to continue surging in 2023. The demand for housing and commercial properties is almost insatiable in a country like India. People see it as security only next to gold and refuse to let naysayers and economists dissuade them from buying either.

And yes, India’s contribution from agriculture to the GDP is now at 20.19%. It is services that account for 53.89%, and manufacturing is slowly growing to claim 25.92%. Will the share of the service sector shrink going forward, as manufacturing, exports, real estate etc grow? It is likely, but it will only be a slightly smaller percentage of a bigger pie.

In future, the leading factor that will distinguish the Indian economy is the degree of its digitisation that is already advanced when compared with the West. 5 G and 6 G, both developed domestically, will play their part to deliver goods and services and blow-out the financial economy.

The number of Indian companies that will attain scale of being billion and multi-billion-dollar companies will be significant in 2023 and beyond. You cannot compete internationally without this scale. This even as the  Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector, often touted by Communists as the neglected Hoi Polloi, will rapidly convert itself to supply this giant series of corporations. There will be greater integration, better quality, less overlapping wastage.

In a sense, India is simultaneously moving on all fronts. This, of course, is essential to a well-rounded economy. That the Indian economy is not over burdened with debt, particularly external debt, puts it in a good position to realise its ambitions in 2023 and beyond. This is what pleases the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the most, because they can count on less volatility, something they can’t say too often in today’s troubled world.

 

 (1,922 words)

December 29^th, 2022

For: News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Size Of Economy & Military Matters

A Last Chance to Malign And Disrupt India’s Progress, Because By 2028 It will Be Too Late

When an economy is No.5 in the world, having surpassed its former colonial masters, the United Kingdom, and despite its 1.40 billion population; it is time to recalibrate perceptions of its place in the world.

Multilateral agencies like the World Bank, the IMF, already have. So have a number of leading international rating agencies.

India has begun chairing the G-20 along with nine invited guests including Egypt that is mulling an extensive defence manufacturing cooperation with India, including its Tejas fighters, its helicopters, howitzers, armoured vehicles, light tanks, drones, missiles.

But, in due course, perhaps a decade from now, when India becomes a percentage player in defence exports, it will challenge the vastly more expensive military industrial complexes of the West. A prospect they do not welcome. Unlike copycat Chinese armaments that nobody wants, India’s military demands and gets a quality product that can consequently be exported. A long list of countries want to follow the Philippines to import the Brahmos missiles already.

China chose December 9^th 2022 to attack, yet again, with clubs and stones, in a carefully planned operation at Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh. Perhaps it is time for India to authorise the use of artillery and other weapons at these intrusions.

The Chinese came with as many as 300 troops, but were promptly repulsed by just 50 to 70 Indian soldiers with over two dozen Chinese injured in intense hand-to-hand fighting. India suffered six soldiers injured. The timing suggests that Xi Jinping was trying to embarrass Narendra Modi just before India takes over the G 20 from January 1^st 2023.

But sovereign Western nations being overtaken economically, all members of the G7 and NATO, also find the rise of India hard to digest.

Even Japan, otherwise warm and cooperative towards India, a QUAD member, has decided to develop a new generation of fighter plane, for the first time since WWII, along with Britain and Italy, as it diversifies away from the US, its erstwhile sole defence partner.

An article by Somnath Mukherjee, Managing Partner at ASK Wealth Advisors, suggests that Warren Buffet’s investment dictum of ‘Never bet against America’ is beginning to apply to India too.

He writes ‘The biggest variable in India’s favour is in our numbers-a population of 1.4 billion works the probabilities in its favour. Even if 10% of the population approach Korea-level productivity, that is a market the size of Russia at Korean levels of income. This small cohort itself would generate an income pool of nearly $ 5 trillion’.

To illustrate this point in a razmataz manner, today’s news says India’s well-heeled will purchase 450 super cars this fiscal, up from 300 last year, each at over a couple of crores in price.

In Dubai five-star hotels, only super-cars like Maserati, Ferrari, Bentley and their ilk get to park in the portico and front parking lot nowadays. Apparently, staff valet-park BMWs, Mercedes Benzes and Audis in the back lot, as they are now regarded as taxi worthy, if not taxis. In Dubai, with its tiny population, this sort of thing, excessive as it is, still makes a point, but in India it could be the beginning of a tsunami.   

Nevertheless, in 2022, India is still an emerging economy, albeit with the fastest growth rate of a major economy in the world at between 6-7 per cent per annum. It is headed to become the No.3 economy behind the United States and China by 2028. It will then be a $10 trillion plus economy, up from nearly $ 4 trillion in GDP presently.

Morgan Stanley says India is adding $ 400 billion to its GDP annually now, a figure bigger than its entire economy till even 1990, when it was at $ 320 .98 billion.

China, at No.2 presently, at $18.32 trillion in 2022, is still growing at 3.2 %, and some reports say it may overtake the American economy by 2028.

Not, of course, if America can help it, but the intertwining of the economies has been built over more than 30 years, and disengagement where in many case both the raw materials and the manufacturing is Chinese, is not easy.

China has long been suggesting that it shares hegemony over the world with the US - the Atlantic for America, the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean for China. Of course, this is errant nonsense, and unacceptable to the present world order. But China is still pushing this envelope in the absence of an outright domination of America.

India is about to attain these dizzy economic and strategic heights soon, provided it can keep building its military deterrence and using it to good effect when challenged. But getting there will buffet the power structure of the dominant West no matter how diplomatic India may choose to be. Still, size and heft has its compensations.

India is quietly building its second indigenous aircraft carrier, other nuclear powered submarines, stealth frigates, fighters and other aircraft, armoured cars, light tanks, missiles in a great variety, and is proceeding as quickly as it can on a wide range of military aatmanirbharta.

Why is it that China, despite being a repressive, autocratic, imperialistic, near dictatorship under President Xi Jinping, does not receive much criticism from the Western media?

Democratic India, on the other hand, receives daily brickbats from the West. Is it because the West realises that if India’s progress is to be slowed, now is probably the last window of opportunity to make it happen. It is not easy though, because even today, India is a nuclear weapons power with a large market and considerable technological prowess, and a new determination to not be pushed around by China.

There are a multiplicity of weapons manufacturing countries willing to collaborate with India if the terms are right. But India is making more and more of its military equipment indigenously and more often than not, shops only for componentry, engines, radars and the like.

India, it has become something of a cliché, is seen as a possible bulwark against Chinese hegemony in the Asia Pacific, the Indian Ocean and farther afield. The leading Western powers are officially keen on cultivating India. But, another, more hawkish school of thought from the West is not averse to seeing China knock some spots off India to make it more amenable to negotiations that favour the West, as always.

The West is uncomfortable dealing with a sovereign independent-minded India with a freshly declared intent to pursue policies and alliances that best suit its national interest.

So, at a low-cost minimum, the West and even radical regimes like Qatar in West Asia, uses its media. It encourages pressure groups such as diverse often ISI backed resident Pakistani organisations, Khalistanis abroad in Britain and Canada, Kashmiri radicals likewise, who want to see J&K severed from India. Then there are China supported academics, celebrities, Leftists, Communists, Islamists, terrorist organisations, drug cartels, parts of the OIC, who are given free play to constantly snipe at India.

This affords plausible deniability to Western governments, and the detractors of India are positioned as people exercising democratic rights to dissent, criticise and influence. Ideas that India says it professes.

So Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is portrayed as fascist and communal, its freedoms of expression curtailed, its minorities targeted, practicing a narrow chauvinistic Hindu nationalism that is out to destroy its erstwhile pluralism and so on.

Rounds of little-known NGOs issue reports from European countries putting India near the bottom of the pile on many such parameters with great regularity.

That none of this bears any resemblance to the truth, and actual circumstances on the ground do not bother this spreading of calumny. Fortunately, India has grown thick-skinned and Western approval from its fringe operators that trash journalistic and professional ethics every day, is not very high on its list of priorities.

One has to actually pity groups like the Khalistanis and their supporters. They gave it their best shot backed by Pakistan in the 1980s, and were squarely routed. Today, it makes no real sense, as neither they, nor any of their backers stand a chance of actually creating a Khalistan out of Punjab. So why does the West pamper such no hoper third-rate terrorists, drug-dealers, smugglers, and murderers?

What good, this hypocritical policy does in a time when India is not likely to be deterred by any amount of Western propaganda, is anybody’s guess. Perhaps it is designed to put off those who would invest in India, but if so, these would be only the ones who do not do their research properly.

The Apples and semi-conductor manufacturers, the aircraft joint ventures, are not the least bit put off.

The counter narrative sees Narendra Modi as a visionary world leader and India as a terrific business destination. But of course, there is much controversy and tumult even as the rag-tag opposition tries to latch on and get a grip and traction.

China, on the other hand, is handled with kid gloves because of massive supply chain dependencies and billions of dollars in bilateral trade. This despite efforts to get away from it post the Covid pandemic that originated in Wuhan.

It is not as if the atrocities against Uigurs in Xingiang do not receive censure and bad press internationally. But it all seems quite muted and largely  cosmetic in comparison to the magnitude and audacity of the systematic repression of an ethnic minority. Similarly, China’s treatment of Tibetans, and indeed its own Han Chinese in Hong Kong is seen more or less as an internal matter. Even its acute sabre-rattling against Taiwan is largely glossed over. Likewise its attempts to project sovereignty over all of the South China Sea, ignoring other countries in the littoral, and even international laws on the freedom of the seas, is not accepted by the West, but it tries not to provoke the dragon beyond aggressively patrolling the important waterway.

While India’s problems with China along the long LaC as well as via the Pakistani proxies are acknowledged by the West, the defence of the border is regarded as a largely Indian matter.

Similarly, when China menaces the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, the region said to be rich with unexploited oil deposits, it is mainly up to Japan to defend its sovereignty over the islands.

America has retreated from playing universal globocop, and having to foot the bill as a consequence. But this too has encouraged China’s ambitions.

In a sense the West, particularly America, was the architect of China’s meteoric rise to prominence. So much so, that China now wants the No. 1 spot in naked terms. This is the stuff of pride before the fall because a vastly superior American military will simply not allow it.

It has happened over and over in history, and caused both the world wars of the 20^th century, but China under Xi Jinping, seems impervious to the warnings of such history. Instead, the strategy is to keep chipping away at the Western room to manoeuvre. And yet, the West treats China like a foregone conclusion, like a bad habit perhaps, and objects, out of pique, jealousy, nascent racism, against a resurgent India.

It is more than likely that both China and the West will fail in their interwoven machinations, and India will prosper regardless, passing between the chinks in their armour. One major reason is the vibrancy of its domestic economy dependent on none, and its ability to feed itself. The other is that it will remain the most populous but young country in the world for the rest of the 21^st century.

(1,930 words)

December 13^th, 2022

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

 

Speech

 

The Indo-Japanese relationship towards 2047 and Beyond

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It is my honour and pleasure to address  you on this very special occasion of 70 years of diplomatic relations between India and Japan.

My topic is to describe how the relationship will progress for the next 30 years.

The changed security environment world-wide occasioned by an expansionist and aggressively commercial China has thrown up an urgent need to recast priorities.

This same 30 years will probably see the end of CCP led communism in China and the emergence of independent nations in Xinkiang, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet, as well as a democratic Han China contained within the Great Wall. It is perhaps difficult to imagine at this time. But let us remember the fate of the USSR once its economy no longer worked.

But right now, the Chinese threat is very real. This, particularly in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, in the countries of South Asia and the Asia-Pacific.

It is this scenario that has placed both Japan and India in the relatively new QUAD formation, alongside the US and Australia.

In the short term, it is America that is facing the biggest geo-political challenge as China is quite serious in its attempts to dislodge it as the number one power in the world. This will not succeed, it is clear now, at the end of 2022, because the building blocks that China was using have fallen apart.

These were close commercial relationships and supply chain arrangements with America and Europe that drove its economy at double digit growth in GDP for three decades. So much so, that disentanglement is very difficult now because China is a manufacturing hub for many products with a wide array of raw materials and parts.

But gradually China turned unacceptably militarist and imperialist. It bankrupted several small countries around it, such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Laos with expensive loans and 19^th century style collaterals of land and assets. It has seized natural resources in Africa and is suffering a backlash there. China has established military bases in the Indian Ocean, attempted a belt and road campaign that is incomplete, another half done project named ‘string of pearls’ designed to encircle countries like India in the oceans, and so on.

China is widely believed to have originated the Covid 19 pandemic out of a bioweapon laboratory in Wuhan that has severely damaged the world economy and killed millions of people around the world. China itself continues to suffer outbreaks, most recently in its capital Beijing. Post-Covid, most of the world has decided to reduce its dependence on and trade with China.

 None of its globe-girdling ambitions can come to fruition now with badly impacted economies all around, including its own. China is now growing at less than 3% per annum and has gargantuan debt from its boom years past. Its people in the interior are literally hungry, and outbreaks of protest are appearing even at its manufacturing plants.

America is also determined to check Chinese ambition, a process started under President Trump, and carried forward by the Biden administration. Most recently America has refused access to its semiconductor technology and machines that make machines, without which Chinese industry and its military cannot function.

China’s copycat industrial base is not good at innovation. It wanted therefore to capture Taiwan for its semiconductor industry. But these too are run on designs by American FABS from the US mainland, and use American personnel in Taiwan, as in China, to  operate them.

Besides, capturing Taiwan will not let China at the designs of present and future chips ever finer in their composition and complexity of manufacture.

Australia, a member of both QUAD and AUKUS, the military alliance with the US and Britain, was for long a substantial trading partner of China.

Today, it is increasingly a Western and NATO Alliance base in the Pacific for US nuclear submarines, fighters, bombers, and military personnel with an eye on China.

America is building nuclear submarines in joint venture with Australia as well. Australia is already protected under the US nuclear weapons umbrella, as is Japan. But can Japan do without its own nuclear weapons in the face of hostility from China, North Korea though not really from Russia despite its shifting alliances.

Nuclear weaponised China, in retaliation to this independent policy, has imposed punitive and some say self-defeating sanctions on Australian exports of raw materials, food, coal etc.. to China.

It seeks to control access to the South China Sea which it claims in its entirety, and through which 80% of Australian trade passes. China has not recognised the International Court of Justice ruling at the Hague to treat the South China Sea as an international waterway.

Similarly, China claims the Japanese Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea as there are indications of rich oil resources in the area. It routinely menaces Japanese civilian shipping and fishing boats in the region with its Navy and has its ally North Korea fire missiles into Japanese waters.

Australia, as part of its new commercial and security reorientation, is well on its way towards a Free Trade Agreement with nuclear weaponised India as a replacement market in Asia. This even as China has attempted a walk back after government changes in Australia.

This FTA with Australia comes years after the one India signed with Japan in 2011, since vastly enhanced in scope by the Strategic and Global Partnership agreement of 2015, which has brought about a paradigm shift.

Nevertheless, the FTA with Japan in 2011 eliminated tariffs on 90% of Japanese exports to India such as electrical appliances, and 97% of imports into Japan from India.

The agreement also allowed Japanese companies to control stakes in Indian companies and set up franchises.

However, because of protection afforded to vulnerable sectors in both countries, the FTA of 2011 has not done any wonders.

In 2010 trade between Japan and India was limited to a modest $15 billion and represented just 1% of Japan’s global trade. By FY22 things were not much better. Indian exports to Japan stood at a paltry $6.2 billion and its imports were a very modest $14.4 billion.

The Indo-Japanese FTA is therefore overdue for a review, though Japanese investment in India’s infrastructure has dwarfed the  bilateral trade figures.

In contrast, even with strained relations with China and several operational bans on Chinese investment, the  Indo-Chinese bilateral trade stands at $ 100 billion per annum now, but  mostly in China’s favour.

India’s largest exports at present are to the US at $ 76 billion in FY22 representing 18% of its total exports.

Perhaps the big change in terms of Indo-Japan trade volumes will come as Japan relocates a substantial portion of its manufacturing from China to India and the domestic and export markets it will open up. India is working fast to remove logistical and infrastructure bottle-necks and is offering incentives in order to facilitate this.

The Japanese government too is offering incentives to Japanese firms who might consider relocating to India or Bangladesh from China. But, it is a lot easier said than done.

Japan has ‘hot’ economic ties with China despite the ever cooling politics, some of the frostiness as a consequence of American persuasion. Japan normalised its diplomatic relations with China in 1972, again at American prompting in the Nixon years, and marks 50 years of business with China this year as well.

Currently the world’s 2^nd and 3^rd largest economies, China is Japan’s biggest trading partner with total volume of trade grown 113 times since 1972, to Yen 38.4 trillion as of 2021.

According to a survey conducted by the Japan External Trade Organisation in 2021 covering 679 Japanese firms with heavy investments in China, only 3.8% plan to shrink their operations in China, or relocate, in the next few years.

Most are more interested in mitigating fallout of US -China trade wars on their own operations.

 Meanwhile, under the Indo-Japanese Special Strategic and Global Partnership 2015, and its vision statement till 2025, the key development has been generous Japanese financing for all sorts of infrastructure projects and joint venture manufacturing. Some of these have come up along specially designated corridors, such as the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), alongside the NH-8 .

This also provides outlets and a market for Japanese know-how, manufacturing, and technology applied to the establishment and modernisation of Indian railways including rolling stock, metro-rail systems, high-speed trains, roads, ports, dedicated railway freight corridors, and so on.

There is a mechanism for an annual summit between the two prime ministers to review progress, add new dimensions, and maintain momentum. There is a provision for Indo-Japanese participation in the annual Malabar naval military exercises with a view to keeping international shipping sea lanes free and clear.

There are provisions for military-to-military talks, coast guard-to-coast guard cooperation including both security and commercial exploitation of Indian waters in peninsular India, the so called Blue Economy. There are also airforce-to-airforce talks, and scope for comprehensive discussions on defence policy.

There is a provision for joint development of military equipment including amphibian planes. There is a roadmap for cooperation in the development of nuclear power plants.

Japan is, and will continue to participate in Indian initiatives for ‘Make in India’, ‘Digital India’, ‘Skill India’, ‘Clean India’ and the development of ‘Smart Cities’.

India is one of the largest receivers of loans from Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) in addition to other banks and institutional financing over the Shinzo Abe years. This, as the Japanese economy tries to shake off years of domestic recession via its overseas manufacturing, investments and projects.

India is also implementing an FTA with the UAE and is negotiating one with Britain.

The Australian parliament passed its Indo-Australian FTA only this week. It is going to be a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The IT sector in India will be the biggest gainer said Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal as the service sector benefits hugely from such FTAs. Indian pharmaceuticals will receive fast track approvals through the Australian regulatory system.

The agreement will provide duty free access to the high per capita income Australian market for over 6,000 broad sectors including textiles, leather, furniture, jewellery and machinery.

India will be able to import cheaper raw materials and intermediate goods. Industrial cooperation will help provide new job opportunities in both countries. Food, beverage, and consumer items from Australia will offer wider choice at attractive prices to the Indian consumer, and give Australia access to India’s massive domestic market.

There are good pointers here on how Japan can revamp aspects of its  domestic economy, in addition to its security policies going forward.

For many years after 1952, when India established diplomatic relations with Japan, there was little going on between the two countries, even though the relationship was always cordial. Indians remember fondly the help extended by Japan to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and the INA during WWII.

Japan set course to become one of the fastest growing post-war economies closely allied to the United States. India chose a socialist path post-independence in 1947, and found itself rather closer to the Soviet Union and many countries in the third world coming out from under colonialism.

India tried, in the Nehru- Mao-Chou En Lai era, to forge a close relationship with China, including tamely agreeing to the Chinese annexation of Tibet and pushing China’s claim to become one of the five permanent members with veto powers at the UNSC, but it was not to be. Appeasement of China did not work then, and it does not work now.

Today, India refuses to normalise commercial ties as long as China menaces it along the long LaC.And it stands resolute on the borders determined to defend Indian territory.

The ongoing Russo-Ukranian war in Europe, the first with such wide involvement since WWII, will change many positions and alliances, the longer it goes on.

India is however, like Japan, largely insulated from its effects.

Today, as we speak, India is advancing towards becoming the 3^rd largest economy in the world by 2028 or 2030. This is a massive achievement fuelled by the fastest growth rate amongst major economies at around 7% per annum.

India is adding $400 billion to its GDP every year now according to Morgan Stanley with the best post Covid recovery amongst major economies.

This is happening despite its vast population of nearly 1.5 billion that will grow to 1.7 billion before it begins to decline post 2070. Japan, by way of contrast, has a declining and ageing population. It has therefore somewhat loosened its immigration, visa and citizenship laws recently.

Japan has proved itself adept at developing its gaming industry, and here again it could think of joint venturing with Indian IT professionals.

Today, India is food surplus, and is rapidly developing its industrial base via in-house innovation and joint ventures with many countries such as Japan, France, Israel, the United States, Taiwan and Russia.

Now, every bilateral and multilateral fora wants India and sees it as a reasonable and benign influence. 

India has achieved this stature and growth without threatening any other country or breaking international protocols, even though it is a nuclear triad weapons power. It has not aided illegal nuclear proliferation like Pakistan, North Korea, and China.

In just a few years, the Indian economy which is at 5^th position right now will overtake that of Japan making it a worthy JV partner.

Joint venturing with India for military development and manufacture in India could very well provide the multi-billion dollar answer to consumption in both countries and export. 

India credits Japan for its metro rail systems all over Indian cities, the bullet trains, extensive collaboration in the automotive and auto-components field, starting with India’s first modern car in the 1980s. The Maruti 800 from Maruti-Suzuki came before the arrival of Honda, Toyota and Suzuki on its own.

The Indian Appliances and Consumer Electronic industry (ACE) has already become one of the fastest growing markets in the world. It is slated to double to about $ 20 billion by 2025. It already has a strong Japanese presence which can grow further.

Future engineering collaboration has immense promise in robotics, drones, automation, alternate energy developments including nuclear power generation. India is Thorium rich, but could probably use Japanese help to develop state-of-the-art Thorium reactors.

Today, India offers a vast domestic market, multiple opportunities for joint ventures, research and development, supply chain relocation, great innovation via start-ups and unicorns.

Many other countries besides Australia like South Korea, New Zealand and all the Asia Pacific countries in the littoral need to be protected and cooperate under a QUAD Plus arrangement. Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Bangladesh, Nepal are all likely candidates. China has border and territorial disputes with 19 countries.

It seems certain that economic cooperation between Japan and India will prosper, as India grows into a $ 12 trillion economy or more within a decade. With the economic decline of China there is little alternative.

Now Britain and the EU are ranged against China too. The last bastion of Chinese German trade is also wiggling out of Chinese grasp.

There is no way forward for the Chinese economy to strengthen unless the CCP Communist leadership becomes history.

What does India have in common with the Japanese that goes back centuries? Buddhism. There are many Buddhist sects in Japan, as there in Tibet. Bodh Gaya, where Gautama the Buddha attained enlightenment, owes its betterment as a place of pilgrimage, largely contributed to by the Japanese people. It is revered by monks and laity alike.

The Buddhist sect former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe belonged to was not pacifist, and he was an outspoken advocate of rearmament and a repeal of Japan’s pacifist constitution.

However, the bulk of Japanese people in 2022 do not want to see the country take a militarist turn. This is a challenge for Prime Minister Kishida and his successors given the ground realities. 

With India no longer an economic laggard, the time to prove that India and Japan can become an economic powerhouse together has arrived at last.

Thank you.

(2,694 words)

November 24^th, 2022

Gautam Mukherjee

 

The Left Book Of Who Can You Kiss Hug Genuflect To That Has Ensnared Sudha Murthy In Its Silken Web

Both affection and reverence have a politically correct aspect in the shifting sands of Indian political etiquette. They also have a tendency to be blown out of proportion. When prominent citizens of great national, and now international, influence indicate a symbolic shift in their political orientation, it gets the twitter birds in a tizz.

When astute people claim they didn’t know whom they were showing respect to, or indeed what they stood for, it does seem a little precious. Respecting age does not mean one goes down the road touching every old person’s feet.

The message as understood, is therefore that the left leaning socialism oriented parties are done for in India, except in Kerala and West Bengal, of course. Its top down munificent welfarism now for New India, and modernise, modernise, modernise. The booming economy can raise all boats. Yes, and daub everything with a bracing slather of saffron for one’s soul.

In Britain, Sudha Murthy’s son-in-law is at the head of the Tory Party and government. If he can repair the economy and win for the Conservatives in 2024, he will be the great rescuer on par with his distant predecessor, one Winston Churchill.

It is therefore a good time to turn the tiller slightly, if not full right, for the Murthys. However, at present, if the idea is to put a lid on controversy, then vagueness of this order from sharp cookies making I-did-not-know statements, is not out of place.

The Bharatiya Nari has it tough, be it bedecked in bindi, hijab, leotard, swimsuit, pantsuit, sari, or indeed not very much. Long have we lived simultaneously in several centuries, let alone decades of changing manners and mores. Kissing, hugging, genuflecting, has both the innocence of a gesture, and immense meaning. We are nothing if not both ancient and profound with a little tarka of crassness.

Touching of feet, (or knees, for the arthritic), in reverence, is a big deal. Hindus have traditionally done it for ages to take the blessings of their elders, holy men, gurus, mentors, benefactors, teachers, all objects of respect and worship.

Of course, saying something by way of the famous sound-byte can really set the cat amongst the pigeons. But quite often the communication does not need to be verbal.

Remember popular actor Sanjay Dutt touching the feet of Balasaheb Thackeray for getting him out of jail when the Congress party ruled at the centre? It even had father Sunil Dutt as one of its prominent leaders in Mumbai. But try as Senior Dutt did, he could not help his son. It was Thackeray who used his influence on Sanjay Dutt’s behalf, and not Sonia Gandhi. Why? Perhaps it was because the Bombay riots of 1993 had wheels within wheels, and some of them had Congress Party markings. Still, we now know that Sanjay Dutt was no terrorist, as he was absolved by the TADA courts, but served inordinate amounts of jail time for violation of the Arms Act.

Years ago, actress Padmini Kolhapure got into a controversy for pecking the then Prince Charles on the cheek in a Mumbai movie-set as the flash bulbs popped. The flash bulbs didn’t actually pop in 1980, because they acquired reasonable new technology for photographic flashes in the 1960s even before the digital era.

Likewise, Richard Gere, a Hollywood biggie of the time, outraged the sense of Indian public modesty for planting one on actress Shilpa Shetty accompanied by a virile hug. She, poor thing, was slapped with obscenity charges fifteen years ago, and recently was absolved of them, because, presumably, Gere wasn’t so near to hand.  But then the lissome[Gautam Mu1]  Shetty may have a karmic connection to this sort of thing, given her husband’s more recent brush with the law on pornographic productions allegedly conducted by him.   

But now it is the turn of the British prime minister’s mother-in-law to land in the proverbial hot water. This new description has overtaken her own status as an author/millionaire philanthropist, and that of the Murthy duos immense pelf, stature and success as founders of IT giant Infosys.

No, grandmother Sudha Murthy did not kiss the venerable Sambhaji Rao Bhide, activist leader of the Shiv Pratishthan and erstwhile of the RSS. Bhide apparently wanted Murthy to fund a golden throne for Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s Raigad Fort and demanded a meeting with her in Sangli. It is not known if Bhide secured any such commitment from Murthy.

Murthy was actually visiting to promote some of her books translated into Marathi, and also to pray for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the famed Sindhudurg temple in the district.

Murthy was persuaded to interrupt her commentary and come out of her lecture venue and meet Bhide who had turned up to her promotional event uninvited, accompanied by a large number of followers. The police in attendance also thought it best that Sudha Murthy meet Bhide to avert any untoward situation from bruised egos.

Murthy went one up on the occasion, and mollified the crowd by allegedly bowing and touching the feet of the sparely built but  white-whiskered and bearded leader.

This apparently set off the powder keg of leftist intolerance. A video or two of the incident soon went viral. They, meaning the liberal-left cabal, feared the worst, because she also did it once before recently, when she touched the feet of Mysuru royalty in the person of Promada Devi Wadeyar.

Bhide is gleefully described by the Left as a ‘bigot’. The leftist media never fails to record his latest ‘outrage’ when Bhide refused to meet a female journalist who was not wearing a bindi. This also earned him a charge from the Maharashtra Women’s Commission. Bhide said Bharat Mata is not a widow and every woman who represents her shakti should wear a bindi. It is not known if this was also the gist of his explanation to the Commission.

There is further controversy about Bhide. That he instigated a stone pelting riot at the Bhima-Koregaon clashes, and was booked for it by the police. However, nothing much came of his so-called controversies. Somehow, that the allegations against Bhide do not stick, doesn’t stop his leftish detractors from maligning his image. What is true however, that even as a fairly obscure  Hindutva activist, Bhide  does have access to Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

The truth is that Sambhaji Rao Bhide is fairly common or garden. Nothing terribly sinister attaches to his persona.

For the Murthys, who have dined out for decades as intellectual lefties, even as the millions in profits piled up, to be found cosying up to a mustachioed Hindutva ideologue is a dagger to the heart for some. People already on the  skids, ( except in Kerala and West Bengal), and on the political ropes all over the country.

(1,131 words)

November 11^th, 2022

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

---

 [Gautam Mu1]

 

The Democrat Showing At Mid Term Gives President Biden Strength

President Joe Biden, who turns 80 this month, will host the wedding of his granddaughter, son Hunter Biden’s daughter, on the South Lawns of the White House. He has little to worry about as he has been gifted a better showing at the mid-term elections than any Democrat president in the last forty years.

Democrat President Obama lost 63 seats in the House of Representatives at mid-term, but went on to win a second term handily after eliminating Osama Bin Laden hiding in Pakistan.

The Americans love to elect a militarily inclined president.  Republican George W Bush who scraped a win using his Republican family contacts in the Supreme Court won his second term convincingly after attacking Afghanistan and Iraq post 9/11. He was in trouble the first time around for the infamous hanging chads controversy, against Democrat Al Gore (who was President Bill Clinton’s vice president),

Did President Biden, who still has low approval ratings, win the mid-term elections because of his bold if proxy prosecution of the Ukraine War? And because Russia has been faltering?

The Democrats still retain a slim majority in Congress (The House of Representatives), and a slimmer majority in the Senate, with 50 Democrat seats to 49 Republican ones. The Vice President Kamala Harris holds a casting vote if it turns 50-50. Elections to 30 Governors, effectively the CEO of those states across the country are ongoing. How many will stay with the Democrats?

So, while greater consultations with Republicans may take place as indicated by the US president, he does not have to concede any legislative space to his rivals except in consensus areas. By popular perception and narrow fact, the Democrats won the mid-term elections.

The Republicans on their part are not in a strong position to block legislation. The votes might be narrow going forward, but the Democrats have retained their advantage in both houses.

One of the things that have hurt the Republican Party is its revanchist support to the anti-abortion judgements that are resented by pro-choicer young women all over America. The Democrat Party is well regarded for its stance on the matter, and Biden has threatened that he will use his presidential veto should any country-wide legislative abortion ban be attempted by the Republicans. 

Is the war in Ukraine, which is putting strains on the American economy by way of gas prices and inflation one of the other pressure points? If so, how did the Democrats pass unhurt? Is it because the polity has become so polarised that Democrats will support a Democrat administration wrong or right?

Is it significant that President Putin waited till after the election results of November 8^th, before announcing the Russian withdrawal from Kherson? Could it be that Biden’s war strategy in Ukraine is working, expensive as it is in men and materials? Is Biden saying so at the G20 Summit in Bali? Could Russia end up pushed out of the Donbas region after claiming it as part of Russia after a hastily conducted referendum? 

An incumbent president of America does not usually suffer a lack of support when he is prosecuting a war abroad, even a proxy war, like the one in Ukraine.

In the case of President Biden, the enormously powerful military-industrial complex, is four-square behind him.  It is selling armaments worth billions to the Europeans and  Zelenskyy’s much destroyed Ukraine, and does not want the war to end anytime soon.

In President Biden’s recent face-to-face talks with President Xi Jinping at Bali on the side-lines of the G-20 Summit, both leaders came to the table with important domestic political wins under their belt. President Biden has made it clear before undertaking his overseas trip that he did not plan to offer any concessions to China. This includes, most tellingly, the ban of semiconductor machinery and know-how sales to China.

Biden is likely to tell Xi that America, EU, Britain, the NATO complex and the Western Alliance is winning the war in Ukraine against Chinese ally Russia. He might suggest that Xi Jinping might reconsider his options. He will continue to be ambiguous on what the US will do in the event China attacks Taiwan.

President Xi Jinping could, of course, maintain that the Russia’s retreats are tactical, and the war in Ukraine far from finished in Ukraine’s favour. But Russia is running out of conventional arms and ammunition, and is buying in from both North Korea and Iran. It has also lost a lot of soldiers and is pushing in replacements, as many as 80,000 recently.

The same message on Russia weakening, in veiled terms, could be delivered by the US to India. But India has moved from its studied neutrality to advocating a negotiated settlement and cessation of hostilities as early as possible for some time. Prime Minister Modi will reiterate his stance that this is not an era for war.

India’s own gains from cheaper Russian oil purchased in a Rupee-Ruble trade is acknowledged as non-negotiable by the US. It has made Russia India’s biggest oil importation partner, replacing all the countries in West Asia including Saudi Arabia.

The ongoing relationship with Russian arms manufacturers and joint venture military cooperation with Russia must also continue. However, greater overtures and ongoing cooperation with the US, France, Britain, Israel, Japan and other nations such as Brazil are proceeding alongside. It is clear, in the long run, with aatmanirbhar military manufacturing and diversification, India’s over 50% dependence on the Russian military connection will reduce a great deal. This is necessary also because of the spare parts difficulties and delayed deliveries that are beginning to occur as a consequence of the Russo-Ukranian war.

The elevation to the G 7 big table for India, that could become G8 or G9 soon, owing to its growing economic heft, the scale of its operations, may come soon. This will be inclusion, not as a guest, but as a full-fledged member. It is likely to occur rather sooner than India’s inclusion in the UNSC, given the vetoes of the five permanent members.

This, even as India assumes the presidency of the G20 from December 1^st, 2022 from Indonesia. It will be handing over the baton in 2024 to Brazil. All the three, for the moment, are developing countries, but India is clearly pulling ahead into a league of the rich countries club. This despite its very modest per capita income. It is in a unique position to leverage its population size to offer digital highways to the world, the biggest, thanks to the universal use of Aadhar. Prime Minister Modi has been clear, stump speech style, in pointing out the large list of achievements that puts India at the top of the global rankings. There are many avenues for worthwhile bilateral cooperation with the G20 countries and beyond, and India has not been shy about publicising its credentials this time.

India is also at the helm of the SCO for the next year, a forum that was earlier dominated by China almost exclusively.

In both cases, India is proceeding without signalling business as usual with China while it menaces India on its borders. China has long wanted the border situation compartmentalised, though India has said no.

Yet, as is the case with many other countries unable to shake of the Chinese tentacles in their supply chains, India’s trade with China, despite bans in several areas, has grown to $ 100 billion, largely in China’s favour. But India is now projecting itself as an alternative to China.

Many developments are expected, while India hosts over 50 separate  meetings and conclaves all over India over the next year. Most notably, it will be the year when India will interact substantially by way of trade, collaboration and commerce with the G7 countries with the exception of China. Germany, till lately very close to China, is saying Asia is no longer just China.

In addition, India will also, in bilateral pacts and FTAs, cooperate with the other 13 members of G 20 and many other guest entities.

However, India will not lead the so-called Global South in a guild of the like-minded to extract concessions from the rich countries. This sort of neo-non-alignment no longer works for a country that itself is likely to grow its economy to $ 5 trillion by 2025, and become the 3^rd largest major economy by 2028 or 2030. India will then have a GDP in the region of $ 8 to 10 trillion.

America and the Biden administration will facilitate India’s glide path even as it realises there is great bipartisan consensus and support within America for this course of action.

(1,437 words)

November 15^th, 2022

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee

 

 

 Witness The Results Of 7 Recent Assembly Byelections - BJP Is Holding Its Own

Assembly byepolls conducted in the closing months of 2022 are meant to show which way the electoral winds are blowing. This, not only for the various assembly elections due to take place in 2022 and 2023, but also the general election in 2024.

The BJP is not, it seems, showing signs of anti-incumbency as the conventional political punditry would have it. It is entirely possible it will win handsomely in most of the assemblies coming up, and garner a third consecutive term for itself with a majority in parliament in 2024. This, of course, could substantially alter the ground realities as well as the outdated and partisan ideology that has long animated Indian politics to its detriment. It will be seen as conclusive proof that the country and its voters are committed to the BJP vision of a New India and a level playing field for all its people.

The popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a pan India vote-getter remains unparalleled after eight completed years at the helm. The Opposition is unable to find the enthusiasm to submerge its differences as yet and come together. This cannot pose a serious challenge to the ruling party despite its exclusion in regional pockets of the country, and as yet much of the South. Will this change at all in the remaining two years to 2024?

Not unless there are dramatic and highly damaging Black Swan developments that impact the scene either internationally or domestically. The Ukraine war is  indeed very expensive, and is putting enormous strain on the Western European economies and the NATO alliance. It is no doubt putting considerable pressure on Russia too, both in terms of the conduct of the war, and the sanctions it is facing. But Russia has coped rather better than the West so far. Its relationship with India remains very good.

It is, no doubt a very uncertain world, occasioned by the Covid pandemic and the shifting alignments caused by the Russo-Ukranian war. More and more countries are beginning to act out of national self-interest, rather than the dictates of formal alliances. This even as the war drags on, with no end in sight, after almost a year.

Netherlands has removed all sanctions on Russia on a unilateral basis. Germany is reiterating its commitment to China, even as the United States and others in the EU are trying to get away from over dependence on Chinese supply chains, and its tendency to aggressively leverage its position globally. 

India has been adroit in navigating these choppy waters, and has managed to keep its dependence on foreign fuel from overly impacting its domestic economy. It has swiftly replaced all other sources of more expensive oil with  that from Russia. It has also been steadfast in its neutrality with regard to Russia in the ongoing war.

 The Indian economy has revived quite quickly after Covid, and despite headwinds of imported inflation, is the fastest growing major economy in the world.

Here at home, even as the Prime Minister has been busy campaigning in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, BJP has won four out of the seven multi-state assembly byelections in November 2022. It has retained all three BJP seats previously held and added a new one.

It also gave a reasonably close contest in the three seats it lost to three separate parties, in three different states. This probably bodes well for the forthcoming Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat assemblies, coming up before the close of the year. Both states have incumbent BJP governments that are looking for a new term in office.

In Gujarat, BJP has been in power continuously for 27 years, no mean feat, and Himachal Pradesh, known for switching horses in each five-year contest, may well retain the BJP government this time around.

Uddhav Thackeray’s rump Shiv Sena has managed to win the Andheri (East) assembly seat, and claimed, on the strength of it, the people’s support is still with it. TRS in Telangana won the ‘high-stakes’ Munugode seat by over 10,000 votes, despite feeling the pressure from an advancing BJP in the state. In Bihar, the RJD led to all intents and purposes by Tejaswi Yadav, with party supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav ailing and mired in legal confinement, hung on to the Mokama seat. However, the RJD could not unseat the BJP in Gopalganj.

Significantly, notwithstanding the religion and caste-sensitive Bihar election scenario, Gopalganj was won by a Vaishya candidate fielded by the BJP, in what is largely seen as a Muslim-Yadav landscape.

The hotly contested Odisha win in Dhamnagar by the BJP shows the road ahead after the Navin Patnaik era draws to a close. 

In UP, the BJP handily won the Gola Gokarnath seat defeating its SP rival by over 34,000 votes.

In Haryana, it won the Adampur seat, long held by members of the Bhajan Lal family, since 1968. This, particularly after Kuldip Bishnoi defected from the Congress to the BJP. It has been won by his son, but this time on a BJP ticket.

The fact that these assembly byepolls were held in a number of geographically dispersed states, without the BJP losing ground, must be a source of frustration to the opposition.

Anti-incumbency is based generally on disenchantment with the work done or lack of it by the incumbent and his party, accusations of corruption, high-handedness, and other such factors. When they fail to operate to unseat the sitting MLA, meritorious as he may be, it points to a new phenomenon in Indian politics. It is the vision of the prime minister and the overall development of the country under BJP rule since 2014 that is playing a part, even in assembly byepolls. This is a departure from mostly emphasis on local issues typically, and the effect of money in political campaigns.

Another aspect is BJP’s skill in terms of ‘social engineering’, and its formidable booth level management, evident in both the Gopalganj and Adampur seat wins.

The TINA factor is also playing a part. The effect of KCR from the TRS projecting national ambitions has failed to take off. The political dividend from Rahul Gandhi’s container-supported padayatra is unclear. Mamata Banerjee remains boxed into West Bengal, and MK Stalin is confined to Tamil Nadu. Maharashtra shifting to the Shinde led Shiv Sena and the Fadnavis anchored BJP, has delivered a vital blow to Sharad Pawar as the elder statesman of opposition unity. The image of the AAP has suffered from multiple corruption charges and bad governance in Delhi and Punjab, despite immense propaganda campaigns via advertisements in print and the electronic media.

A recent India TV-Matrize opinion poll predicted a nearly two-third  victory for BJP (119 out of 182 seats), in Gujarat.  It is an improvement in its grip since 2017. It is also slated to win comfortably in Himachal Pradesh, bagging 41 seats out of 68, to its 44 in 2017.

This is what happens when the flaws and shortfalls in BJP administration are overlooked in favour of the overarching good it has done. So even as high food prices, unemployment, and other factors plague the Indian people, there has been much progress that has already brought India into 5^th place as a global economy. There is every credible possibility for it to gain the 3^rd slot by 2028 or 2030. This is a massive projected achievement, and the people of India wish to support it.

 

 

(1,230 words)

November 8^th, 2022

For: Firstpost/News18.com

Gautam Mukherjee