Rahul Gandhi: The Practice Of Selective Amnesia

The practice of selective amnesia is a time-tested technique used by Congress scion Rahul Gandhi and/or his speech writers.

He did it again with a series of outrageous allegations against the government of Narendra Modi from his middle-row-corner perch in the Lok Sabha during this Winter Session. Ostensibly, he was commenting on the presidential address.

The assumption from his handlers is probably that if the nationally televised speech is emotive, and delivered with a degree of verve, a section of the public sympathetic to the storied Congress Party, can be swayed.

This, irrespective of all the missing bits of the argument. Emphasis is all. Never mind the specious content. That can be left to the supporters of the ruling party to mull over and argue about. The shooting and the scooting would have been accomplished anyway. Some will ask if Rahul Gandhi is ready at last. At least he delivered a 44-minute speech with the bizarre arguments coherently put.

There is also the urgent necessity of yet another ‘coming of age’ claim to the leadership of the combined Opposition, should it manifest.  Open challenges from Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal, riding high on her victory against the BJP in a keenly fought assembly election, must be thwarted. And then there is the dark horse Arvind Kejriwal of Delhi, waiting to first take Punjab in the upcoming elections, before possibly casting his hat into the ring as well. Veteran warriors such as Sharad Pawar might possibly be content with playing king maker in 2024. Others, such as KCR and MK Stalin are also stirring.

As for the technique of the speech itself, it deserves marks for audacity. That it is impossible to start India’s recent political history only from May 2014, when his party was routed in the general elections by the BJP/RSS/NDA combine, is something Rahul Gandhi finds difficult to accept.

He repeatedly called Narendra Modi, a very successful elected politician with over 20 years in high office, risen from very humble beginnings and a small town in Gujarat - a king, by implication a dictatorial figure.

This coming from a political dynastic scion who has enormous if unexplained wealth, and has never worked for a living, unless you count being an MP. There was a preening for the cameras to rival a Lawrence Olivier soliloquy. The irony of it was he was doing so in a proudly republican parliament. And that it is comic to accuse this government for having no sense of history, coming from him.

 The fantasies are lurid. For Rahul Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, who started it all for Rahul Gandhi, if you refuse to count Subhas Chandra Bose, was probably a sterling democrat. One who never acted ruthlessly against his opponents. One who was fiercely antagonistic to Chinese ambitions in Tibet and the Akshai Chin. One who objected strenuously when Pakistan ceded part of the Akshai Chin to China so that it could build a road to Tibet through it. One who didn’t give up the seat offered to India in the UNSC, saying pehle aap in a wonderful demonstration of political magnanimity. One who tamely lost huge tracts of Indian territory to China in 1962.

But Nehru said, (or did he, according to Rahul Gandhi’s selective amnesia), it didn’t matter, because ‘not a blade of grass grows on it’.

The trouble is, seven years of uncovering the unvarnished truth about the Congress-UPA governments, their multiple blunders and deceptions, not to mention the massive corruption, has left little room for taking the moral high ground. To pose, again and again, as the saviour of the poor, is not in accordance with the facts.

Rahul Gandhi does not remember that it was the UPA government of Manmohan Singh, remote-controlled by his mother Sonia Gandhi as Chairperson of the Congress Party, that refused to retaliate militarily against 26/11. Was this so as not to upset Pakistan? If this is an example of how the Congress prevented China and Pakistan coming together, then heaven help us.

 The righteous dream continued. Nehru was followed shortly by a kindly, democratic, Indira Gandhi, who never invoked Article 356 of the Indian Constitution to topple elected state governments, in what Rahul Gandhi called ‘A Union of States’. She didn’t use the IAF to bomb Mizoram to quell dissidence. She never imposed the draconian Emergency. Nor did she invade the Golden Temple in Amritsar with tanks and soldiers.

 Indira Gandhi was followed by Rajiv Gandhi, who never condoned the massacre of thousands of ordinary Sikhs in retaliation for the assassination of his mother in 1984.

Then there was the Rahul Gandhi version of The Tale Of Two Cities, the Dickensian tale on the French Revolution. The oft applied characterisation of the Two Indias, a repeat of his earlier ‘suit-boot sarkar’ jibe, namely, one for the very rich, and one for the rest. The key angst was against the rich companies in the formal sector, Ambani & Adani in particular, versus the alleged neglect of the MSME Sector. Tata somehow was not mentioned. But even Bollywood has largely dropped this rich-girl-poor-boy trope in less Socialist times.

According to Rahul Gandhi, ‘Make in India’ cannot go forward without the MSMEs and the unorganised sector. It is doomed.This flies in the face of the considerable success of the aatmanirbhar defence manufacturing initiative of the Modi government. L&T, not one of his usual targets, is manufacturing thousands of crores worth of defence equipment.

Job creation is impossible without encouraging the MSME sector says Rahul Gandhi, completely ignoring all the financing efforts made by the Modi government in this regard. MSMEs have also attached themselves to the major industrial initiatives being taken by the large companies in concert with the Government of India.

Rahul Gandhi plumps for a consultative vision of the union of states which he alleges is missing. He ignored the strident non-cooperation of the Opposition allied to the Congress Party, both in parliament and outside it, on the streets. Other political parties, who do not adhere to the Congress line, can and have found common cause on a case-to-case basis multiple times over the last seven years.

He alleges that the institutions of India are being captured by the ruling government, and included the EC and the Judiciary in this. There are already some legalistic reactions to these comments.

His suggestions that the autocratic ways of the Modi government will reap the whirlwind do not jive at all with the iron-fisted High Command culture of the Gandhi family. That it has brought the Grand Old Party to the point of near extinction both as a Party and one in power, is the real truth that Rahul Gandhi can’t deal with. He thinks he can make it all better by somehow getting rid of Narendra Modi from power. But every attempt makes the BJP/RSS/NDA more successful.

The people, the voting public, even the Congress Party rank and file, and not a few of its leaders, don’t seem to be buying his arguments. But, in the world of Rahul Gandhi and his remaining sycophants, this was a dazzlingly brilliant speech.

His bizarre attack on the Home Minister Amit Shah wearing his house slippers while visiting Manipuri politicians were asked to leave their street-shoes outside, was a failed attempt to paint this government as imperial. The sanskari point made by Minister Piyush Goyal was all but lost on him.

Rahul Gandhi does not remember the way he himself treated Himanta Biswa Sarma, the present NDA Chief Minister of Assam. Rahul Gandhi cancelled several appointments urgently sought by Sarma when things were slipping in Assam, before finally seeing him as the then Congress President. Sarma said how in this final meeting, Rahul Gandhi concentrated on feeding his dog Pidi biscuits while largely ignoring Sarma. This occasioned Sarma to leave the Congress Party. And in due course, this resulted in the loss of Assam and the North East for the Congress.

The US has made it clear it does not agree with the fascistic innuendos and other allegations made by Rahul Gandhi in his speech of February 2^nd, 2022.

The attempt to loosen the bolts of national unity by suggesting ‘fissiparous tendencies’, a term much used in the seventies if not by Rahul Gandhi, are good for federalism, is probably the most pernicious of his comments.

 The praise of China’s clarity of vision also makes people wonder what the content of the agreement the Gandhi family signed with the Chinese on behalf of the Congress Party entails. We would, of course, have to apply to the Chinese Embassy in Chanakyapuri to find out.

 

(1,436 words)

February 4^th, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Year Of The Tiger Union Budget 2022-2023

The Finance Minister (FM), Nirmala Sitharaman framed this budget as a blueprint for the next 25 years, from the Republic of India’s 75^th year, to its 100^th. It was her shortest budget speech and she left out a lot of the detail in order to paint a futuristic picture like no budget before presented by any Indian government. It was seen and received as an investment and growth-oriented budget with no populist overtones.

The shibboleths of social upliftment and never-mind-how-I-will-pay-for-it give-aways, was missing. The fiscal discipline was maintained alongside a determination to promote the kind of growth a country headed to the No. 3 spot in the global economy must emphasise. This budget will gladden the hearts of international lending and rating agencies, provided the implementation lives up to the promise.

The Nehruvian order is predictably baffled, as there are none of the usual markers on welfarism, no mention of MNREGA (in fact a cut in MNREGA allocations), no ‘common man’ carrots, no freebies, though there is a focus on mental health for perhaps the first time, not even a new disinvestment target.

This, even as the morning papers announced the acquisition of a loss-making government steel  company that makes  ‘long products’ such as rods, rails, bars, used in the construction sector. The company , Neelachal was acquired by the Tata Group for Rs. 12,000 crores, with 2,500 acres of land to expand into. LIC is likely to shed some of its heft by selling shares to institutional and retail buyers in the stock market shortly. The storied Ashoka Hotel in New Delhi, a stone’s throw from where the prime minister presently lives, has also been put on the block, post the Air India sale.

The fiscal deficit is looking good, though ‘imported inflation’ from high oil prices  could be disruptive in future. This despite the travails of the pandemic, and the new budget target for 2022-2023 is 6.9 % of GDP.  But will India raise interest rates and possibly queer the pitch? It seems unlikely.

For the bigger $5 trillion dollar target for the economy as a whole by 2025, the aatmanirbhar manufacturing sector has to grow, the FM said, in double-digits. When you want big growth you don’t cut the money supply.

The FM may be pointing at defence manufacturing as a substantial part of it. Some 68% of the defence capital expenditure budget will go to domestic procurements.  This should mean substantially better bangs for our military equipment buying buck. Also, it will set up a lucrative export business as the recent sale of BrahMos missiles to the Philippines has already demonstrated. There will be no middle-men commission agents siphoning off millions of dollars.  The government is also unwilling to be held hostage to the tardiness and inefficiency of sarkari defence manufacturers. L&T already has orders running into thousands of crores on the back of their efficiency.

A full 25% of the R&D budget  of the defence ministry will go to private companies and defence oriented start-ups, to diversify away from the government owned defence manufacturing establishment, without abandoning it.

Infrastructure financing too is expecting a boost over the previous year. The budget will distribute some 7.5 lakh crore to these sectors, up from 5.4 lakh crores in 2021-22. This increase is just shy of 3% of GDP. There will be 400 new Vande Bharat trains over the next three years. Sitharaman listed roads, railways, airports, ports, mass transport, waterways, logistics infrastructure.

There was no fresh mention of the high-end semiconductor JV manufacturing industry though it is known several Indian companies plus the government are in talks with Taiwanese companies. But 5G is all set to take off with its multiple spin-off technology and economic benefits.

The union budget has a vastly digital and technological feel to it. Drones in agriculture to spray nutrients and fertilizer, a fresh boost to SEZs to revive interest in it for Information Technology initiatives, merged with Customs Duty reform. There will be optical fibre countrywide, 5G roll-out, spectrum allocation, e-passports, a digital rupee using blockchain technology that will leach out some of the millions of paper notes in circulation.  This is a brand new Indian idea, though China does have its digital currency already.

Green Bonds will finance environment friendly moves. Blended fuel (ethanol blend from sugar/molasses), and flexi-fuel enabled vehicles are coming up, with an additional tax per litre on those which must continue with unblended diesel, petrol, aviation fuel.

There is a new emphasis on solar power to take more load off thermal energy, and agri-forestry enhancements.

The government has bitten the bullet with a pathbreaking 30% tax on profits from ‘virtual digital assets’, that is  cryptocurrency - with no set-off for losses.

There are useful duty concessions on electronic industry parts and gems and jewellery for the precious, high-value end, rather than costume jewellery.

No concessions to speak of in direct and corporate taxes. This is a bold departure on the eve of five important state assembly elections. The government is signalling a fast-forward future and an attitude shift too.

The stock market backed the FM’s 9.2 % GDP growth projection and the futuristic feel to the budget with a near 1,000 point rise in the Sensex and 200 points on the Nifty. Other sectoral indices were all handsomely in the green. However, Post-budget speech, the indexes began to  wobble and fluctuate before rising up again as the Opposition expressed its disappointment with no sops at all.

GST is now totally IT enabled, working better than ever before, and as an aside the FM announced a collection of 1.41 lakh crore in January 2022, the highest ever so far.

The Chinese New Year, a lunar calendar event and massive cultural celebration , coincided this time with our union budget day. It is the Year of the Water Tiger. Like Indians, China considers the Tiger (The Royal Bengal Tiger), a symbol of strength, exorcising of evils, and bravery. It makes for an interesting motif, even though there is no mention of it in the excitement of scores of economic commentators and politicians on TV and the digital media this day. We will wait till tomorrow to see what print has to say.

 

(1,033 words)

February 1^st, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Buddhadev Bhattacharya Is Symptomatic Of A Toxic West Bengal

Buddhadev Bhattacharya’s arrogant and rude refusal to accept the Padma Bhushan the nation bestowed on him in the Padma Awards 2022, is typical of the West Bengal political class. That he hesitated for a day before making his less than honest statement that he had not been sounded in advance, is telling, but in context, probably irrelevant.

Bhattacharya, 1944 born, Presidency College educated, ailing, side-lined, was squarely blamed for the Left Front’s more or less permanent exit from power in West Bengal after more than three decades.

In 2022, he was probably bestowed the honour he spurned so petulantly for trying to revive the industrialisation of West Bengal during his tenure as chief minister from 2000 to 2011. That there is no love lost between the Communists and the BJP/RSS is clear. So, this honour was not an attempt to revise the narrative, only to acknowledge his failed but laudable efforts.

Bhattacharya has not been treated very well by his own side, despite his misplaced loyalty to the convoluted thinking of the present remnants of the Marxists in India. He was once a respected member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, and an MLA from the Jadavpur constituency for 24 years, till his calamitous year, 2011.

In addition, Bhattacharya was expelled from the Politburo and the Central Committee at the CPM 21^st party congress at Vishakapatnam in 2015.

But, as the saying goes, once a communist, always a communist. Bhattacharya, even in his twilight years, was forced to signal that he wants no truck with the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi that wanted to honour him on behalf of the nation.

This form of bitter toxicity has been bred into the Indian communists over decades. This time too, the party leadership worked the phones to insist he decline the honour.

Such communist obtuseness can work in the nation’s favour too. A long time ago, then Chief Minister of West Bengal Jyoti Basu was prevented from moving to the Centre as Prime Minister by the Politburo and Central Committee of the CPM. Some called it a ‘historical blunder’, but the nation was spared the imposition of a notoriously anti-business chief executive. 

In the 1990s, late CPM veteran and the first chief minister of Kerala EMS Namboodripad had also turned down the PV Narasimha Rao government’s  award of the Padma Vibhushan. Again, at the behest of his party men.

This has become the political culture of West Bengal beyond the Left. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sat tight on her front row chair instead of receiving the West Bengal Governor Dhankar as he alighted from his car when he arrived at the Republic Day celebrations in Kolkata yesterday.

There are many other instances of TMC supremo and CM Mamata Banerjee’s crass behaviour verging on the unconstitutional. But she is only carrying on a Left Front tradition, street-smart fashion, obviously without the finesse of the inner temple barrister Jyoti Basu.

Jyoti Basu also had to contend with the imperial Indira Gandhi for a lengthy time as the West Bengal CM. That his support and that of the Communists in the Lok Sabha was crucial to the stability of the Indira Gandhi government and subsequent UPA governments, was a historical lubricant to keep things from turning unduly adversarial.

It also allowed Basu and the Left Front to get away with multiple bloody atrocities in the hinterland, while the centre turned a blind eye. There was also a deadly quid pro quo in place with profound consequences.

Over decades, Leftist indoctrination and propaganda reigned, including the infiltration of all educational, cultural and academic institutions, course material for students, the historical narrative, the promotion of darbari and sarkari Leftist intellectuals all over the country.

The Marxists were entrenched in, and ran the states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura then. In all of these places, there were communal massacres and ruthless suppression of dissent. Land was redistributed to the landless using exemplary force.

But in West Bengal, and in the other Communist states, the top man posed as a gentleman. All through his political career, Basu maintained a bhadralok cum Brown Sahib demeanour. It worked just fine with the Bengali intelligentsia in then Calcutta. None were too keen to probe at the seamier truth.

Not only were cadres created in the rural areas by means of forced land redistribution and money grants, but under Basu’s stewardship, the trade unions were so blatantly indulged that almost all industry and commerce fled West Bengal. Only geographically anchored tea, some jute, cigarettes and a few other enterprises survive as going concerns to this day.

The rise of the Left in West Bengal, ironically, has its roots in brutal suppression as well. It came to power after the slaughter inflicted on the Naxalites by the last Congress chief minister of West Bengal, Siddhartha Shankar Ray. Ray was so good at wiping out insurgents that he got another turn in Punjab during the Khalistan movement under Indira Gandhi.

In West Bengal, Ray’s brutality in the 1970s in putting down the urban and rural Naxalites saw to it that the Congress never won another election in the state ever since. The beginning of the ‘insider-outsider’ narrative also began then, with Congress continuing at the Centre.

In Punjab, the Congress has alternated with the Akali Dal for decades, both before the Khalistani carnage and after. Not even the pogrom against Sikhs after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wrecked the Congress electorally in Punjab, till, perhaps, now.

Temperamentally, West Bengal is different because of Communist indoctrination, largely missing in Punjab. It is so deep, that when you change the party at the hustings, as long as it is home-grown in the state, unlike the ‘outsider’ BJP, you do no more than change the label.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharya  lost the state finally in 2011 after deep setbacks in the Lok Sabha elections held in 2009, and was the prelude to the rise of Mamata Banerjee.  Revival of industry did not make sense with the people of the state long indoctrinated against it.

He tried to place the Tata Nano project near Calcutta, but Mamata Banerjee turned the peasants against it and rode to power on the back of this accomplishment.

Culturally, the communists continue to be loyal followers of Red China even under Xi Jinping, rather than Mao. Let us also understand the West Bengal communists never raised the national flag at their headquarters in Alimuddin Street, Kolkata, either for Republic Day or Independence Day, till last year 2021.

Perhaps the fact that they have lost power in Tripura and West Bengal humbled them somewhat. And besides, the successor TMC government apparently respects the national flag. It is perhaps a small concession to the times. 

(1,126 words)

January 27^th, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

 

Push Back Western Abetted ‘Religiophobia’ Against Hindus

The Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, T.S. Tirumurti, speaking at the International Counter Terrorism Conference by the Global Counter Terrorism Council on January 18^th 2022, spoke against what he called ‘Religiophobia’ against non-Abrahamic religions. Of these, Hinduism is the biggest, with over a billion adherents in the sub-continent alone. The statement has come not a moment too soon.

That it is a renewed attempt at a formal push-back of the routine vilification in noted sections of the left-leaning formal Western media and motivated sections of the social media, is a sign of the times. Every other kind of religious prejudice, against Christians, Jews, Islam, the LGBT community, ethnic racism has been long recognised.

But a non-Abrahamic religion such as Hinduism seems to have had no defenders till now in international fora such as the UN. This is perhaps because India is not a declared Hindu Rashtra as yet, while there are many Christian and Islamic nations, as well as the Jewish State of Israel.

In addition to distortions and uncomprehending prejudice against Hindu religious and cultural practices, there a serious effort afoot to label Hinduism and Hindutva as a form of terrorism against other religions. Where there is no terrorism angle at all to Hinduism, there is a sustained campaign to raise the bogey in order to achieve an equivalence with the nearly 90% incidence of Islamic terrorism globally.

 Ambassador Tirumurti’s opening salvo was followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi echoing similar sentiments at an address to the Hindu sect of Brahma Kumaris. He said, to paraphrase, that the maligning of Hindus and Hindutva was no longer a case of ‘just politics’. And that it should be resisted by civil society, as well as religious organisations like the Brahma Kumaris, in order to set the record straight. The various Indian TV news channels, its print and digital publications as well as the social media have also taken up the entire subject matter for further elucidation and debate since.

It was pointed out, by several academics and scholars who gave their views, that Hinduphobia has deep roots.  It perhaps began with the arrival of the Mughals and other Islamic dynasties who destroyed temples and forced conversions to Islam wherever possible. The subsequent period of British rule also saw simultaneous evangelical efforts to promote Anglican or other Protestant forms of Christianity. Likewise, in Goa, the Portuguese did their best, including use of the infamous Inquisition to establish Roman Catholicism there. But all of this, no doubt infuriating to the conquerors, met with only limited success. Many Hindus, in fact a majority of them, survived all the depredations to continue with their ancient religion. This is historically unlike many countries overrun by both Christianity and Islam, where the vast majority were duly converted.

However, Hinduism was insulted, deliberately maligned and decried to the maximum extent possible over 600 years. The idea was to traumatise those who still decided to stay Hindu as practioners of a mumbo-jumbo religion.

Independent India was not a declared secular republic in 1950 when its constitution was adopted. The term was only surreptitiously inserted in the Preamble in the Seventies during the Emergency. ‘Secular’ along with ‘Socialist’ was added, in fact, after more than two decades since independence.

However, policies favoured the minorities over the majority of 80% right from the start, as India wanted perhaps to distinguish itself from the blatantly Islamic Republic of Pakistan, born out of the self-serving ‘Two-Nation Theory’ that led to enormous suffering, animosity, and bloodshed. The enormous influence of Mahatma Gandhi also cannot be discounted.

This nevertheless pernicious practice of favouring the minorities is now being evened out since 2014, after the first majority BJP/ NDA government.  This, so that the Hindus of India are given a chance to thrive in turn. While this has been a source of satisfaction and pride to those who voted for the BJP through two successive terms, it has angered those who enjoyed out-of-turn privileges under earlier dispensations.

These disgruntled elements, the minorities themselves, along with the political parties that fostered their pre-eminence, have joined hands with forces abroad who do not want to see a Hindu Nationalist government survive over the next term due in 2024, and beyond. Not only is this stretch in the saddle strengthening India as an economic and military power, making it less amenable to manipulation by China and Pakistan, but it is changing the supposedly long-established ground rules.

In the process, the defeated Opposition and its support groups sought and obtained large funds from Chinese, Pakistani, Evangelical Christian and Islamic sources abroad, other secret service funds, Khalistanis, to foment discord and effect destabilisation within the country. These methods include disruption, arson, lynchings, rapes, riots, demonstrations, road blockages, and a massive propaganda outreach.

National and international celebrities have been brought into it to endorse Opposition views via allegedly paid social media insertions. Strong lobbying efforts are on in sympathetic countries such as Great Britain. A strong India, a bigger economy than Britain, is hard to digest for the British even if they don’t say so plainly. But their publications and media outfits do- The Economist, BBC, The Guardian.

Collaborations across the Atlantic include newswires such as Reuters, Bloomberg. In America, the Leftist Islamic-Chinese infiltrated media such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, are ever-ready to put out twisted reports on Modi’s India.

What is plain is that the BJP and its supportive diaspora abroad must mount a professional Public Relations and Lobbying campaign to counter the forces ranged against it. To not have paid attention professionally to this battle of perceptions till now, means that it will have to be that much more dynamic.

Political PR and strategizing, outside of that practiced by politicians themselves, is fairly new to India. Prashant Kishor is a notable home-grown example of this breed but he is, currently in terms of his influence, streets ahead of any other pretenders to the mantle. The BJP gave him his start but cast him adrift after the spectacular win in 2014. It did not replace him with anybody suitable, perhaps unable to grasp the utility.

The various BJP spokespersons, uneven in terms of their communication skills,  but thrust into the ecosphere of the television debates, are preoccupied with countering spokespersons of other political parties, mostly in a cacophony of allegations and counter allegations. There is no bandwidth left for the practice of image-building, now crying out for help.

The government’s own Doordarshan and Press Information Bureau (PIB) are clunky anomalies in today’s thrust and parry, good for issuing advertisements and covering the doings of the prime minister on an exclusive feed basis.

Prime Minister Modi has even done away with a Media Advisor from the word go. But now perhaps he is feeling the effect of the well-oiled and funded juggernaut of the Opposition that makes trouble for him and his government at every turn.

It may be better than nothing to call on the public, its ambassador in the UN, and Hindu religious organisations with foreign reach to push back, but is this enough? Are they trained in the idiom of how to influence perception? 

Where is the sophisticated PR called for in a country that will inexorably become a Hindu Rashtra without quite spelling it out, and one headed towards becoming one of the top economies of the world?

International PR and Lobbying firms must be roped in, as they evidently were in the first campaign of 2013-14. When Narendra Modi became prime minister he did not even qualify for a visa to the US because of the international bad press when he was CM Gujarat. And the efforts of the then ruling Congress/UPA. But his new PR teams pre-election, changed perceptions, as did his big win. But afterwards, all the PR was done away with.

Pakistan, for all its shortcomings, has always employed professional PR to influence opinion in  the West, particularly America. China uses it extensively, more so post-pandemic, and spends billions on it, either buying out media outlets, or its professionals, or both. It even has significant stakes in Hollywood and the various American TV/OTT entertainment producers.

India may feel it can’t afford all this, given its many priorities and limited budget.  Fair enough, but then it must live with unfair coverage, untruth based attacks on its sovereignty, dignity, image, and possibilities.

 (1,393 words)

January 21^st 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee 

 

The World Of 5 G Cometh Fast

Air India had cancelled several flights to major airports in the US as America’s telecom companies roll out its 5G commercial service. This is because the C Band frequencies allocated there can interfere with altimeter readings on the Air India aircraft which use a frequency very close to the C Band. Rectification processes involving improved altimeters that won’t misread are being put in place before the flights resume.

India is also on the brink of launching its own commercial 5 G services. Trials in several cities have been completed. These include cities and their satellites  such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata,Chennai, Gurugram, Chandigarh, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Jamnagar, Hyderabad, Pune, Lucknow and Gandhinagar.

It could well find prominent mention in the Union Budget on February 1^st, 2022.  More so, because traditional budgeting with yester-year possibilities is not going to give us the quantum leaps necessary to catch up to the $ 5 trillion in GDP target by 2025. Particularly after the expensive vaccination programmes and the pandemic caused multiple stops and starts to the economy since early 2020.

As a force multiplier in the modernisation of India, 5G is crucial. It is a $30 billion opportunity for Indian IT firms, the biggest after Cloud Computing. So the sooner we get started the better. In India, aspiring towards high-technology defence manufacturing, EVs, semiconductors, advanced robotics, drones, 5G cannot wait.

We may have to import the necessary hardware at first, after banning Chinese product, but will no doubt be able to make it indigenously soon enough, perhaps in joint venture, so as to avoid greenfield delays.

Organisations such as IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IISC Bangalore, Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research (SAMEER) and Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWIT), have been working on 5G launch oriented research and testing since 2018. 

The 5 G auctions are likely to be a significant addition to government revenue now that the scams of the UPA era are behind us.  The government’s TRAI is working hard on the pricing. The DoT helmed auctions could take place in July-August 2022, and then the roll out in the 13 cities already scouted out should happen by December 2022, after the street architecture is put in place. Network expansion countrywide could however take till 2024.

Despite expectedly higher initial pricing, its adoption by the public is likely to be much faster than the six years it took 3G and the four years in the case of 4 G.

If 4G has made phone calls, messaging, surfing and streaming nation-wide ubiquitous, the expected super-speeds of 5G, with a data speed a hundred times faster than 4 G, is quite hard to imagine.

And yet, in a little while, not just India, but the whole world will take it and the things it enables for granted. Some estimates say the full impact of 5G globally will take till 2035, but others expect further developments on 5G and then 6 G and more to have come in much before that. But 5G is likely, in the interim, to support over $ 13 trillion in global economic output. It will lead to millions of new jobs, some 23 million globally. 

5G will be offered in three bands, with low, medium and high frequency spectrum. The lowest band spectrum has the advantage of the greatest coverage area, while at 100 Mbps, it is not bad for speed and data exchange either. The mid and high band spectrum have reduced coverage area but much higher speeds. At the high end, its internet speed will be as high as 20 Gpbs. Contrast this with just 1 Gbps  in the 4G networks.

Telecom providers such as Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and even the till recently financially troubled Vodafone Idea, (in which the government is going to buy a one third share), have been working on the India trials along with Nokia and Ericsson. MTNL has also been allocated a testing spectrum, but little is known on their progress.

Reliance Jio has developed a 100% home grown and comprehensive 5G system which is fully cloud native and digitally managed. In trials it connected drones on its indigenous network. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to enable quick changes in the 5G networks. Movie-makers and creative people can create 4K/8 K videos, click high resolution 108 MP+ photos.

5G has already been rolled out in over 60 countries.

Apart from consumer usage via new 5G enabled smartphones, 5G is designed to connect machines, objects, and devices. It will deliver a vastly enhanced mobile broadband, great video-conferencing, plus a massive Internet of Things, (IoT), via embedded sensors with lesser data rates, power and mobility concerns. It will enable mission critical services useful for defence related equipment and armaments, for the space-age work being done by ISRO. It will be spectacular for remote healthcare, education, precision agriculture, digitized logistics, safer transportation in civil aviation, railways, ships, land -based transport and the automotive industry. It is reliable, and has ultra-low latency. It will support future services not known presently with its forward compatibility features, and the aforementioned AI.

By 2025, 5G networks will cover a third of the world’s population with South Korea, China, and the US, leading in terms of both deployment and further R&D based development. India’s 1.40 billion people cannot afford to be left behind.

TRAI is expected to submit its pricing proposals for spectrum by March 2022 to DoT.

Though an Ericsson report only expects a 39% penetration or 500 million subscriptions by 2027 in India, the rush to access the latest in 5G may improve on this both in terms of users and affordability. Technology such as this has the ability to change how Indians operate and live their lives. Expect 1.5 billion 5G smartphones to be sold by 2027, as every adult and child gets on board. Who’s going to make and offer them? How much money, profit and manufacturing is involved? Time to scramble.

  (995 words)

January 20^th, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

 

What Do We Want From The Union Budget 2022?

In a season troubled by the third wave of the pandemic, with new variant Omicron. And excited by the forthcoming Assembly Elections in five states. Can we expect anything dramatic and path-breaking in the Union Budget 2022?  Perhaps not, in order to not disrupt a fragile recovery, though the underlying pent up animal energies are straining at the leash. But if India is going to break into the next generation of economic reform, there is a dire need for bold steps both on the expenditure and revenue sides.

Amongst many things being asked for, mostly unlikely pleas for further concessions on the existing tax structure, two things stand out. One, growth-oriented announcements that exceed our expectations. An example is the handsome effort to attract semi-conductor manufacturers to India.

Two, a widening of the tax base to encompass every bank account and digital payment platform user. The time has come to put all citizens on the same basis with no one outside the tax net. We have long been doing it in our indirect taxes, that skim everyone without fear or favour, so why not? Our indirect taxes are, in fact, pretty heavy.

Growth, estimated at 9.2% in GDP for FY22, can indeed come from multiple sectors both traditional and frontier. Newbies include Start-Ups and Unicorns, Pharmaceuticals where India has an edge, Software and increasingly, electronic hardware. The export of Brahmos missiles, and other made in India high-value defence items. This, to other countries, in addition to the Philippines, such as Vietnam and the UAE. The grand start of a high-end semi-conductor manufacturing industry in collaboration with Taiwan, and possibly South Korea and the US.

The already extensive services sector that accounts for over 54% of the economy (Rs. 101.47 trillion – US $1,439.48 billion in FY20), will chug along, perhaps to become 75% of an enlarged pie, like in the US. Economically speaking, agriculture will assume a smaller percentage of the whole, despite its high-profile farmers, their political clout, their woes, and their agitations.

Infrastructure development, including roads, tunnels, bridges, city metros, the railways and freight corridors, already in high gear, will boost medium to long term gains. Even as the large expenditures on infrastructure shores up the present GDP rates. Real Estate too is likely to revive now and pull itself out of a several year slump. It is the second biggest employer after inefficient agriculture, and cannot be sniffed at forever for its cash-loving ways.

Personal income taxes involve barely 6.32 crore people out of a population of 1.40 billion. Even with an increase in collections of 60% from a pandemic hit low base in FY22, direct taxes account for Rs. 5,15, 870.5 crore in net corporate tax, and Rs. 4,29,406.10 crore from net personal income tax. This is a total of Rs. 10,80,370.2 crores. Contrast this with the total of indirect taxes, that involve most of the public at an estimated Rs. 11,02,000 crore in 2021-22. Of this, Rs. 6,30,000 crore is expected to come from GST.

The gross tax revenue for FY 22 is expected to be fed by 28.4% from corporate tax, 16.3% from income tax, 14.7% from GST, 14.2% from customs duty, 22.4 % from excise and other heads for another 3.9%.

But if an expenditure tax could raise 50% of the gross annual tax revenue, expected to be 25.1 lakh crore in FY22, after the abolition of corporate and income tax, how would that be?

A back calculation exercise will determine what the quantum of the miniscule expenditure tax should be spread over all users of banks and digital pay platforms. But one could begin with just 0.001%, with a view to increase it if necessary.

Every year there is a clamour for increases in income tax slabs and reduction of corporate tax from the chartered accountant fraternity. There is a demand for increase in standard deduction, to be doubled to Rs. 1,00,000 from the present Rs. 50,000 this year too. The taxes applied to dividends and capital gains in the stock market are also not liked by the investors.  

But the government is constrained by its funding requirements, and forever looking at new means to extend its tax net. The fiscal deficit of around 6.6% of GDP exerts its own pressures. Even taxes on fuel, a major irritant for consumers, are largely inelastic, especially in a pricey crude scenario.

 But at the top level the maximum effective income tax rate is a prohibitive 42.774% including all the surcharges. This is driving many businessmen and HNIs out of India to gentler tax regimes.

And the bulk of the people who yield any personal income tax are the salaried class working mostly in the formal sectors. It is mainly they who have TDS deducted at source. This is not adequate in terms of numbers, as a tax-paying ‘captive’ class. Given that most businessmen and self-employed professionals avail of multiple tax reduction and legitimate avoidance measures. These are not readily available to the salaried class, beyond ELSS and allied provisions. Besides, all those earning below Rs. 5 lakhs are effectively tax free now, a sizeable number. Corporate taxes too have been reduced to 25% and even 15% in certain cases.

The so-called unorganised sector, working below the government radar, account for over 80% of all the companies operating. The proposal of a universal but miniscule expenditure tax has been mooted several years ago and has once again been mentioned by some analysts this year.  Will the government embrace it this time? It could say it will work on it, come February 1^st.

If it does, it could dismantle direct taxes, including those on corporations and individuals, HUFs alike. And all the costly administration involved from the CBDT as well. The concept of tax avoidance would now apply to only those who refuse to use either the bank or any digital means. This is difficult in practice.

With an Expenditure Tax applied to every bank transaction/ digital use instead, the tax net would stretch to practically everybody now that the bulk of the unbanked have also been drawn into the net. If the expenditure tax is miniscule, say at the 0.001% mentioned, it cuts through the argument, long carried forward by leftist economists, that the rich should be taxed and not the poor. Taxation that even a poor man does not mind can still add up to a tidy sum.

(1,063 words)

January 18^th, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Kejriwal And AAP To Emerge On The National Scene

The latest credible opinion poll on the forthcoming assembly elections almost gives Punjab to AAP outright. At 53-57 seats expected to be won by it, it is just short of a majority in the 117 seat Punjab Assembly.  This is up from the 20 it opened its account with in the 2017 elections. These present indications are higher than another poll conducted a few weeks ago.

If these poll predictions turn out to be true, and the AAP’s good showing in the recently held Municipal Elections in Chandigarh suggest that they are, it is a momentous shift in Punjab politics.

It means the people there are fed up with the binary of the Akali Dal and Congress that has dominated its politics for decades, ever since the state was formed. It wants to give the AAP a chance to tackle its many woes. It does not want the elderly, do-nothing, Amarinder Singh in another configuration. It rejects the noisy, Pakistan/Khalistan loving Sidhu, and the sudden emergence of Christian-Sikh Channi. It won’t countenance the corrupt Badals yet again.

AAP, according to the same poll, is expected to open its account in Uttarakhand and Goa as well. This stands in contrast with the efforts of Mamata Banerjee, a wannabe leader of the Opposition gathbandhan, with or without Congress. The TMC, mighty electorally in West Bengal, where it defeated BJP in a straight contest, making it an apparent giant killer, was trounced in neighbouring, largely Bengali-speaking Tripura. From all accounts, it is likely to do badly in Goa too. If the TMC remains confined to West Bengal electorally, can it properly aspire to a national role?

So will these results, if they are borne out on election day, position Arvind Kejriwal as a dark horse prime ministerial candidate at the head of the opposition alliance under formation?

The problem with Congress is that its leadership is unacceptable to many in the opposition, despite its position in power, with its own chief minister in Rajasthan, Punjab and Chhattisgarh.  This looks like it will be reduced to two. Congress also supports the state governments in Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, but with small potatoes.

Still, no opposition alliance, as of now, can do without the Congress numbers if it keeps over 40 MPs after the general election of 2024.  Even if it reduced further, the arithmetic demands its inclusion. But Rahul Gandhi is not acceptable to many, even as the mother-son duo in Congress are unwilling to cede the leadership of both the Party and the Opposition to anyone else.

Arvind Kejriwal is relatively young, IIT educated, an excellent orator in both Hindi and English. He has held a government job in the Income Tax’s CBDT. And done considerable social work in his early activist career. He has won the Magsaysay Award. He has worked with Mother Teresa. He is already a two -term chief minister of Delhi with a thumping, almost absolute majority on both occasions.

Kejriwal has worked hard with his fellow party strategists to widen the AAP footprint, and now looks on the verge of succeeding, with a big-prize border state. Kejriwal’s desire to have control of a full-state under the Indian Constitution is about to be realised.

His politics is decidedly leftist and populist, but it resonates with a large section of the poor voting public, migrant labour, the largely powerless, the ‘shirtless’ in a Eva Peronesque way. He also has quite a few adherents amongst the elite. Even if Kejriwal cannot break into leading the opposition in 2024, he could be very well positioned by 2029.

India is largely in love with Socialism. It does nothing for the economy, as Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal well know, but it keeps their cadres happy to receive regular handouts. Years of 2% GDP growth or less, plus double-digit inflation have not cured the Indian public of it.

Both West Bengal and the half-state of Delhi have precarious financials. Punjab is equally bad, but it is likely to wreck its finances further if the AAP takes over. It is a style of government that wilfully keeps the voter happy on borrowed money and by diverting funds from any other heads of account. A fair amount of corruption and slush money is also par for the course. Development is reduced to future promises and IOUs.

 The Congress, in power for decades earlier, has bred this corruption, subsidy, freebie, loan-waiver culture into the political DNA of India, by always positioning this nation as a poor country. Foundation stones may be laid in profusion but projects were rarely completed.

The GDP growth and modernisation that the BJP has pushed is largely incomprehensible to India’s teeming millions. The IMF and World Bank might like our fiscal responsibility, as do foreign investors, but the vast public finds all this remote from its reality. And this includes quite a few in the middle class.

What it does understand is Hindutva and Hindu pride. It is this that has taken the BJP to the pole position and is likely to keep it there through 2024 and 2029.  That is, as long as it remembers what works with its voting public fed up with minority appeasement. It wants a Hindu Rashtra as soon as possible.

But the rise of the AAP cannot be ignored. The public loves its style of appa rent concern for the poorest. The BJP, like the Congress before it, must give away even larger tranches of money to please the electorate. And yes, have a two-tier system aimed at the have-nots and the haves.

The public at the bottom of the pyramid does not think it has the capacity to self-propel itself out of its poverty, even with government help.  It has too many bullying local bosses. It possibly does not aspire to a better life that involves much hard work and uncertainty at the end of it.

The ‘teach a man to fish’ logic that Prime Minister Narendra Modi believes in, has its counterpart in getting something just for existing. A significant section of the Indian public is not convinced about the concept of being given opportunities under various government programmes supported by government incentives and infrastructure. This model may have worked in Gujarat, but does not stand a chance in West Bengal and those who want to copy its electoral success and mass popularity.

The Indian way is to assimilate all influences into itself to strengthen its core. The best way to beat AAP which has a long march ahead before it attains central power, is to outdo it at its own game. The BJP that rules in most of the states and at the centre has immense resources to work with. If it puts a lot of it to work for Hindus, the AAP and TMC model of minority appeasement cum populism can be stemmed and confined.

(1,143 words)

January 3^rd, 2022

For: Firstpost

Gautam Mukherjee