Good and bad news on banks.

It is very rare to hear of sweet story in relation to public officials in India, but we have one now. Laila Indira Alva, a class V school student wrote to Mr Raghuram Rajan, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, in September last year, enclosing a $20 note. " I have heard about the crisis our economy is facing...I have also heard about the fall of the rupee with respect to the dollar," she wrote. " I have saved $20 on my last trip abroad with my parents. I thought that I could use it but the country needs it more than I do." Ahhh, so sweet and innocent. Mr Rajan returned the $20 dollar note with a letter," I am deeply touched by your kind gesture. I am aware that this is a challenging time for the country and I have no doubt that the economy will emerge stronger. I am returning the 20 ( note ) that you sent with the assurance that we have adequate foreign exchange reserves in RBI to manage the situation." This incident is remarkable for 2 reasons. First, the money was not stolen in the post and second, a very high ranking official actually answered a letter from a child seriously, politely and reassuringly. It gives us confidence that the Reserve Bank is at last in good hands. But sadly Mr Rajan is in a very small minority. Hence, the bad news. Seems that public sector banks need Rs 4 trillion for recapitalisation. With a budget of Rs 16.65 trillion this represents almost 25% our total annual budget. The reason is the soaring levels of bad loans in public sector banks which have risen to Rs 2.8 trillion in 5 years. This maybe an underestimate because banks hide bad loans by issuing new ones with which the borrower pays off the old loans and this is shown as fresh loans on the books. This process is called ' evergreening '. Banks officers being government employees cannot refuse pressure from politicians to extend loans to family and friends who feel that they have no obligation to return it. The International Monetary Fund has warned of very high debt levels of companies. As the US continues its tapering of Quantitative Easing interest rates are expected to rise in the west, putting pressure on India to raise rates. That will make it even tougher for these companies to repay their debts. However, the RBI has instructed public sector banks to get tough with wilful defaulters. " Promoters do not have a divine right to stay in charge regardless of how badly they mismanage an enterprise, nor do they have the right to use the banking system to recapitalise their failed ventures," said Mr Rajan. If banks sell off bad loans the promoters may lose control of the companies. Naturally, this does not go well with vested interests. Perhaps we should have children in our government.

We are not all corrupt, just trying to survive.

In the list of countries based on the ease of doing business in 2013 the World Bank puts India at 134 position, down from 131 in 2012. In an article one NK Singh, a former member of the Rajya Sabha has good advice for the new government which will be sworn in after 16 May on how to increase the ease of doing business in India. Although his advice is sound he completely ignores perhaps the most important problem faced by businesses in India. Which is corruption. Politicians and civil servants have no interest in changing the system which has been so lucrative for them over the years. They can never be held to account because they control the investigative agencies, such as the CBI, as was so beautifully demonstrated in the Bofors scam. According to Sten Lindstrom, former Head of Swedish Police Ottavio Quattrocchi definitely took bribes but no one in India was interested in convicting him because of his friendship with The Family. However, if you dare to protest against the criminal actions of the government false cases are slapped against you and you are accused of sedition. While the government wastes trillions of rupees on social schemes to win votes it is niggardly in appointing judges so more than 30 million cases are pending in our courts. A promise of juicy sinecures to senior judges can prolong a criminal case for decades giving the culprit every chance to die of old age. Why a case can be resolved in a ' fast track court ' and not in an ordinary one is a mystery. People mock the system as ' tareekh pe tareekh ' which translates to ' date after date ', reflecting how judges and lawyers agree to keep postponing hearings indefinitely. Politicians accused of crime can be protected by being appointed governor of some state. Apparently a governor cannot be arrested or tried in court. The people of India are tired of corruption. No official work can be done without having to pay bribes. But we are helpless. Politicians of all parties are similar and the poor vote for whichever party that promises the largest numbers of freebies. Then there are those who protect politicians by passing the guilt on to the people. Does that mean that there is something so rotten in our genes that we Indians are incapable of being honest and that we are an inferior species compared to the Danes or the Norwegians? Scary thought. Perhaps the system is so hostile that every Indian grows up to fight for her self interest whatever the cost to society. Like dogs in a garbage bin we fight to survive. After 66 years of independence.

Foreign trade is not a theory.

Indians are very happy that the European Union has banned Indian mangoes from 1 May because of fears about pests. The result will be a flood of mangoes in local markets, bringing down prices, and the growers of mangoes will suffer heavy losses. The US is threatening to label India as Priority Foreign Country along with Ukraine. Mind you Canada, Finland and Israel are on their Priority Watch List along with many other countries but for India there seems to be a special hostility. The FDA in the US cancelled imports from a factory owned by Sun Pharma in Gujarat. Earlier they did the same to Ranbaxy and Wockhardt. The FAA in the US downgraded India's air safety rating to category 2, equivalent with Bangladesh and Swaziland. This may reduce the number of people flying in our airlines and increase costs.There seems to be a coordinated effort by the US and Europe to hurt Indian businesses. Why? Is it because India did not pull out of the Siachen Glacier as demanded by the US? Was the Prime Minister promised a Nobel Peace Prize and a roving ambassador role, as Tony Blair has been given, in return for the betrayal? For some utterly stupid and incomprehensible reason the US wants India to surrender to Pakistan when it was the intelligence agency of Pakistan, the ISI which organised and financed the 9/11 attacks. And we tried, by God. Just 6 months after the Mumbai attacks of 2008 we went on bended knees to Sharm al Sheikh to give a diplomatic victory to Pakistan. Luckily for us Saeed Hafiz and his Lashkar-e-Taiba / Jamaat-ud-Dawa came to our rescue time and again by carrying out one atrocity or another, resulting in such rage that the government was stopped in its tracks every time. When exports fall the trade deficit rises. The trade deficit in March was $10.5 billion because exports fell by 3.14%, but imports also fell by 2.1%. The fall in imports was mainly due to a steep fall in imports of gold and silver because of the restrictions placed on them by the government but smuggling has increased which is not reflected in the figures. While restricting the import of precious metals the Congress encouraged imports of everything else by not spending on manufacturing, mining and exploration for oil and gas. To get rural votes the Congress subsidised imported fertiliser and paid a Minimum Support Price for grains which resulted in double digit inflation in food by underpinning a high price. The only way to neutralise a hostile Obama administration is to get US businesses on our side by increasing trade. If you become rich you become powerful. It is automatic.

Who protects us from drivel?

We are in the middle of elections in India and the stakes are very high, much higher in countries such as the US. In western countries politicians are usually rich, educated and with a successful career. But in India politics is the sole career of the vast majority of politicians and the opportunity for incredible wealth which they can pass on to their spawn. There is a certain amount of desperation which leads to idiotic statements. One fellow said that anyone who opposed Mr Modi of the BJP should go to Pakistan to which another fellow replied that anyone who voted for Mr Modi should jump into the sea. A third fellow threatened to chop Modi into pieces. When Mr Modi is called a ' maut ka saudagar ' he feels he is entitled to bring up the Union Carbide tragedy in Bhopal. Mr Arvind Kejriwal declares combined assets worth Rs 20 million while filing nomination as candidate and then says to the media," I am a fakir." To be fair any apartment in or around Delhi would be easily worth more than Rs 2 million today. Mr Rahul Gandhi talked about how Mr Modi has not acknowledged his estranged wife to which the BJP replied with a video about the wealth of Mr Robert Vadra. Politicians have been known to suffer from foot in mouth disease and with everyone carrying cell phones capable of taking videos every slip is immediately on the net. Mit Romney's famous quote about the 47% of Americans who were never going to vote for him because they lived on handouts probably caused him to lose the presidential election in 2012 and George Bush is still lampooned for saying," Mission accomplished " when the situation in Iraq was going to get significantly worse. But should journalists be allowed to write a load of drivel just because they are on the staff of a newspaper or have achieved name recognition. We agree that there should be freedom of speech but should there be no editorial oversight to see that the intelligence of readers is not insulted. One lady writes about listening to music played by Pakistanis and says that her bags are packed to move to Pakistan if need be. Perhaps she should meet the wife of Lance Naik Hmeraj Singh whose head was paraded in Pakistan. Or maybe she should talk to Hafez Saeed whose sole mission in life is to kill Indians. Then there is this fellow who is incensed because various companies messaged him to cast his ballot. Perhaps he does not know that there is a whole list of countries where voting is compulsory. Politicians we understand but journalists should be restrained from writing rubbish.

Death we can conquer, but not taxes.

They say that death and taxes are the only 2 certainties in life. There is no disagreement about death with billions of dollars being spent on how to postpone death and prolong life. However, when it comes to taxes there is extreme, even violent, debate. Those who have to pay taxes hate them and revere Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher who cut top rates of taxes. The rich use their money to support conservative politicians who will protect their wealth while the poor vote for socialists who increase taxes to pay for handouts to the poor. At times the debate gets so heated that people die. That is why a recent book by Prof Thomas Piketty of France, which looks at relation between capital and labor, is producing thousands of blogs by economists. For us in India there is no debate. Seems that Socialism is in the preamble of our Constitution which was written by the Congress in the years after independence and since the Congress has been in power for 56 out 66 years it has diligently followed a system of very high taxes with handouts to the poor even though we had to pawn our gold reserves with the IMF in 1991 to avert bankruptcy. Two ladies eating out seemed surprised that taxes came to nearly 25% of the bill. But they are wrong. The total bill for food and beverages came to Rs 800 on which they had to pay VAT and service tax. What they have ignored is that every item, such as oil, bottled water and beverages, had already been taxed very heavily when the restaurant bought them. But surely it is good to tax the rich and give handouts to the poor so that they can live decent lives? That presumes that the poor like to remain poor, dependent on handouts, and do not want to become wealthier. The problem is that people resent having to pay taxes in India just as they do in other countries. People are agitating for removal of all toll plazas surrounding Delhi. When we pay road tax, taxes on cars and on petrol why do we still have to pay toll every few km? Others decide to join the fun and take whatever handouts they can. Politicians use this excuse to game the system to win votes but at great damage to the economy. A study from the University of Michigan has shown how politicians steal electricity as a bribe to voters, especially before elections. Massive waste of public money results in fiscal deficit and high inflation which harms the poor. The rich have accountants who know how to exploit every loophole. So the rich in India get richer but others remain where they are. Maybe one day we will conquer death. But taxes will kill us.

It is a different world out there.

A rancher in Nevada, Cliven Bundy has been grazing his cattle on government land for free. A court ordered that his 500 head of cattle be seized but Bundy and his heavily armed supporters fought off government rangers when they arrived. Several Republicans have openly supported his actions. Speaking to reporters Bundy said," I want to tell you one more thing about the Negro." Saying that they were all on government subsidy he says," They didn't have nothing for their kids to do. And they didn't have nothing for their young girls to do. And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do. And I've wondered are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom." Perhaps, it explains why Obama cannot get anything past the Republican controlled House. Maybe, he should be out picking cotton and having a family life, doing things. In Minnesota, 65 year old Byron Smith shot dead a 18 year old girl and her cousin, a 17 year old boy and stashed their bodies in the basement on a tarpaulin, to prevent blood stains on his carpet. After shooting the boy he said," You're dead." As in the Hollywood film ' Rush Hour '. And to the girl he said," You're dying..... bitch." Why the teenagers broke into his house is a mystery but his reaction can be explained by another story, this time from Tennessee where police arrested a 19 year old girl for driving without a licence. When examined in police lock-up she was found to have hidden a  stolen 4-inch, 22-calibre, loaded mini revolver in her vagina. It explains why US police are so keen on cavity search, sometimes illegally. When they do not know who is packing heat they do not want to take any chances. Meanwhile in Britain Manchester United, owned by the American Glazer family, has sacked manager David Moyes. Moyes never really had any chance taking over from Sir Alex Ferguson, perhaps the most successful manager in soccer history. But it was not all his fault because some of the players were not performing for him. Which is not surprising considering that some had betrayed their national team during a world cup. Paying 300,000 pounds a week to Wayne Rooney was a mistake. He is good but not that good. Moyes has been temporarily replaced by Ryan Giggs who was having an affair with his brother's fiance who had to have an abortion 2 weeks before her marriage. Seems like a different world altogether. Maybe, that is why Indians are so keen to go abroad.

A lame duck in Asia.

So, Barack Obama is touring east Asia to revive his ' Asia pivot ', which he had completely forgotten after mentioning it. But then, when you are a gasbag you say so many things that you cannot be expected to remember all of them. Or even one. He called his Russia policy ' the reset ' when he first became president and in a photo op Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov with a plastic button. After Putin had helped the US in its attack on Afghanistan the US helped pro western governments to take power in Georgia and Ukraine and expanded NATO to include former Soviet bloc countries. Naturally, Putin saw this as a betrayal. When Obama came in Putin was Prime Minister and Dmitry Medvedev was the President of Russia. In 2008 Obama said," I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new." That is as stupid as it is insulting. The ongoing troubles in Ukraine were instigated by the US exactly as it did in 2004-05, the so called Orange Revolution. This time the Russian response has been more muscular, threatening to divide the country, having already annexed Crimea. The old Soviet Union had disappeared and the Soviet bloc countries were independent. There was no reason to encircle Russia in a policy of containment going back to the cold war days. Matthew Rojansky, a Russia expert said," Putin is a reflection of Russia. This weird notion that Putin will go away and there will suddenly be a pliant Russia is false." A massive propaganda campaign has been unleashed by the BBC, CNN and other news channels to try and justify US aggression. But everyone is not fooled. After stories of the National Security Agency snooping on leaders of other countries were exposed Chancellor Angela Merkel was furious with the US, comparing its actions with those of the hated East German secret police, the Stasi. Forcing the plane of Evo Morales, President of Bolivia to land in Vienna after France, Spain and Portugal refused permission to fly over their territory under US pressure was an act of air piracy. This was to look for Edward Snowden who is hiding in Russia. The middle-east talks between Israel and the Palestinians have broken down after the 2 factions, Fatah and Hamas announced a ' unity pact '. So what about India? After the initial embraces there is virtually no relation between Delhi and Washington. Can any president make his country the most hated in the world? Yes he can. The legacy of a gasbag.

Are we Bengalis all communists? Is it in our genes?

An article by one Abhijit Banerjee lists so many reasons why the BJP will not succeed in improving the economy destroyed by the Congress. Who he? He is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics and Director, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, MIT. There he is, sitting in the home of capitalism, like Nobel Prize winner, Amartya Sen, writing against the BJP and supporting the Congress. " I must say that while I absolutely do not believe that we as a nation are doing too much for our poor...," he writes. Why do these experts not understand that you can never eradicate poverty by encouraging the poor to have more children by endless numbers of social schemes? Perhaps Prof Banerjee could read another article in the same paper which compares Gujarat with Kerala which, along with Bengal, has been the home of communism in India since independence and is apparently held up as an example by Prof Amartya Sen because of its social indicators. In Kerala, as in Bengal, industries have been scared off, their are no jobs or opportunities and the ambitious cannot wait to leave. Finally, referring to the protests against corruption, Prof Banerjee writes," ...I am not sure that even Modi's 56-inch chest will be able to withstand it." Almost all Bengalis are fiercely political, often without any knowledge, but the self-conceited ones, who consider themselves more intellectual because they work in the west, are virulently anti-Modi. They seem to have swallowed the western propaganda against Modi, not realising that for some unknown reason western countries, led by the US, do not want India to prosper. The US spouts sermons about democracy but supplies arms to Pakistan which is the epicenter of terrorism in the world. It is very hostile towards Russia, a democracy, but kowtows to China, which crushed demonstrators under tanks in Tiananmen Square and has strictly enforced a one-child policy for over 3 decades. That is one of the reasons why China is the second richest country in the world today. While the Communist Party brutally crushes any dissent it practices a primitive form of capitalism dependent on land grabbing and control of resources. Bengalis living abroad seem to have developed a unique form of tunnel vision through which they view India. While enjoying the benefits of rich capitalist states they recommend socialist policies which will keep us poor forever. If they are still Indian citizens then they are traitors and if they are no longer Indians they should shut up. We decide.

Common sense is not conspiracy.

Around 54 days back, on 8 March flight MH370 disappeared from radar and ostensibly from the face of the earth. At first the search was concentrated on the Gulf of Thailand but was called off after a few days when no debris was discovered. Then we were told that the plane climbed to a height of over 40,000 feet and then came down to 5,000 feet as it turned west across Malaysia towards the Straits of Malacca. Then a British company, Inmarsat announced that its satellite had received signals from the plane's engines for several hours after it had disappeared from radar but could not pinpoint its location. Engineers calculated that the plane had flown for 7 hours to the southern Indian Ocean, 2,000 km west of Perth in Australia, where it had either crashed into the sea because it ran out of fuel or had been deliberately crashed. By the second week planes from many countries converged on Perth and flew out to look for debris. This is where the whole thing became surreal. All this frenetic activity without any logic. First, it would have taken meticulous planning to evade security at Kuala Lumpur airport, take control of the aircraft and go through intricate maneuvers to fool radars of several countries. There had to be a motive and the persons who carried it out would surely want the whole world to know their grievances. Secondly, the insides of planes are made of plastic and passengers would also have stuff that would float on water. Debris from the Fukushima tsunami in 2011 has floated across the Pacific to reach the west coast of the US. Thirdly, what is the point in planes flying 1000 km to the suspected crash site to look for debris. They can only look for a short time because they will need fuel to get back. Why were ships not sent out to detect the distress signals from the 2 black boxes of the plane until 4 weeks had passed and the batteries were running out. The relatives of passengers suspect that the Chinese government shot the plane down, maybe over southern China, and the whole thing is a cover up. They dare not protest against their own government so they are protesting violently against the Malaysian government to force out the truth. Now some people are saying that the plane could have landed somewhere. What we said right at the beginning. We also said it might have landed in Aceh in Indonesia because that region is against the government in Jakarta. It could not have landed in any other country for fear of China. Only Islamists can defy the Chinese government. Not conspiracy theory. Just common sense.

Are governments just helpless observers?

A book by Prof Thomas Piketty, a French economist, is causing fierce debate, some pretty angry, among interested parties. In the book Prof Piketty seeks to demonstrate that the rich do not deserve the amount of money they make. Capital is inherited and the returns on capital are far higher than that on labor. The earnings of ' supermanagers ' are not deserved, the rich get richer and use their wealth to influence laws to their own advantage. Then there are millions of ' petits rentiers ' who live on their pensions, collected wealth and assets which they pass on to their children. There was a massive destruction of inherited wealth during World War II which led to a prolonged period of growth in which everyone benefited. Therefore, he recommends very high taxes on millionaires. Which is what is causing anger and which is what Francois Hollande has done, resulting in the flight of rich people to other countries. There are others who argue that global capital has imposed discipline on governments so that bad policies result in a flight of capital and a fall in growth. In a democracy such governments will lose elections. The growth in the Indian economy has been parallel to global growth. Hence, there is not much governments can do. This does not explain why foreign investors poured $24 billion into Indian stocks last year when our growth rate fell to 4.6%. Maybe because economists can precisely calculate inflation, interest rates and even effects of bad weather on agriculture but they cannot forecast what human beings will do. Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the US from 1987 to 2006 was an intelligent and erudite man but was influenced by Ayn Rand, who believed in individual freedom without government interference and in the pursuit of wealth, even if it resulted in the death of the poor. Greenspan was responsible for very low interest rates which built up the property price bubble leading to the subprime crisis. Part of this money came to India, stimulating growth. While the economy was growing the Congress gave away vast sums of money in social schemes so that when the growth rate fell there was no money to stimulate the economy. Bill Clinton left behind a budget surplus but as soon as George Bush became president in 2001 he cut taxes which benefited the rich and increased inequality. At the same time he started the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, leading to massive deficits. Perhaps, governments are not helpless but human beings are unpredictable. Greed and stupidity cannot be calculated.

The lament of Indian intellectuals.

These are testing times for the leftist ' intellectuals ' of India. They do not understand why the Congress is not taking credit for all the wonderful things it did. Infant Mortality Rate has dropped 28%, from 58 per 1000 live births in 2004 to 42 in 2012. Maternal Mortality Rate has dropped 36%, from 280 per 100,000 live births in 2005 to 178 in 2012. Rural teledensity increased from 1.4% to 40%. Why didn't the Prime Minister shout these achievements from the ramparts? Why didn't he deny the accusations of trillions of rupees stolen in the 2G and Coalgate scams? The Congress did rubbish all the figures and did accuse the Comptroller and Auditor General of bias but could not explain how telecom licenses were issued out of turn and why we are having to import expensive coal from abroad when India has 250 billion tonnes of coal reserves. Although statistics of mortality have improved the figures of childhood malnutrition are dismal even though the government is spending billions on daycare centers run by ' anganwadis '. To his opponents Mr Singh is a pretender who has taken credit for the economic liberalisation initiated by Mr Narasimha Rao and is the consummate civil servant, always ready to please his master. Therein lies the problem. Where leftists see a polite, soft spoken man who is scrupulously honest opponents see a weak man who obeys any order, never protests when humiliated in public and whose ' honesty ' is a cloak of invisibility, allowing others to loot trillions of taxpayer rupees. Leftists love the MGNREGA scheme, conceived by the National Advisory Council of Ms Sonia Gandhi, which pays the rural poor for 100 days of fictitious work every year but critics blame the waste of money on populist schemes for the lack of jobs. The slump in the sale of automobiles may have resulted in the loss of 200,000 jobs. The Rs 2.5 trillion spent on the MGNREGA scheme, Rs 750 billion on farmers' loans waiver, the Sixth Pay Commission and other schemes should have been spent on productive infrastructure. Despite sitting on vast mineral deposits we are having to import minerals from abroad at great cost. Although we have over 7000 miles of coast line we have been able to extract very little offshore oil or gas while the US has over 4000 oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico alone and is becoming self sufficient in gas through fracking. Today petrol costs $3.6 dollars for 3.8 liters of petrol in the US, which is Rs 60 per liter, while it costs over Rs 70 in India. So for every leftist intellectual who sees marvelous achievements of the Congress there are plenty who see economic disaster. Or maybe they are not intellectuals at all. Just a bunch of pseuds with loud voices.

Cruel to be kind. But is it a good thing?

There is a saying that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. The most obvious example that comes to mind is that of a surgeon who cuts up a person to remove a tumor. It causes a lot of pain but may save the person's life. However, when it comes to poverty it is impossible to say that starving people should not be helped with food, clothing, shelter and medical care. But how far should the government go? The High Court in Delhi has ordered the government to pay Rs 450,000 per month to treat a child with Gaucher's Disease, which is a hereditary metabolic disease common in the middle east. The father pleaded that he had already lost 4 children with this disease and the government was duty bound to treat this child. Why is the man going on producing children when he knows that he is carrying the gene? Does he not have any responsibility towards his own children? Why did he not get a diagnosis in the early stages of pregnancy? In India the most expensive disease is Chronic Renal Failure where a patient can be kept alive indefinitely at the cost of Rs 10,000 per week. A person can easily become bankrupt. So, if a middle class person develops Renal Failure should he not be treated free of charge by the government so that his family does not suffer? Where does it stop? However, this is not an emotional or moral problem as socialists make it out to be. It is simply about money. Even the US, the richest country in the world, is finding it difficult to balance its budget due to social security payments. Britain has been forced to cap social security payments to reduce its deficit. Giving handouts encourages people to depend on the state and stop working. Benefits cheats cost Britain, a country with just 60 million people, a colossal 2 billion pounds per year or $3.3 billion. France, with its high labor cost and high taxes, is the sick man of Europe, having an average growth rate of just 0.8% in the last 3 years.
It seems abundantly clear now that you can either become a rich nation by limiting government expenditure to productive investments, such as infrastructure, which will provide the poor with jobs or you can sympathise with them by giving them handouts which will make the entire country poor. The poor do not remain poor out of choice but because they cannot get jobs that pay living wages. And once they get accustomed to the handouts they demand more. That is why politicians are promising to create millions of jobs as well as increase handouts. Never worked and never will.

Real wealth is in properties.

In order to stimulate growth in the economy the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne has made loans cheaper for house buyers. Buyers will get this help for houses costing up to 600,000 pounds, which converts to Rs 60 million or 6 crores. House prices have been soaring in Britain, especially in London and the south, so that young people are unable to enter the housing market. They are forced to pay rent, which rises with rising property prices, so that they are unable to save enough to put down a deposit to buy their own properties. Apparently house prices will continue to rise till 2020 and even middle-income earners will be forced out of the market. Some are comparing the present situation to the time of Charles Dickens which is a great irony because the present Conservative government is undoing the work of Margaret Thatcher, the undisputed Tory heroine. What is happening in Britain is similar to what has happened in India in the last 10 years under the Congress. Properties have become so expensive that only the very rich with vast amounts of black money can afford them. In a repeat of feudal times the rich are becoming land owners while the poor are reduced to scratching a living with ever rising prices. In other asset classes, such as shares, people stop buying when prices reach a certain level and others book profit. But property prices in India do not go down even when ordinary people cannot afford such prices. When trillions of rupees are earned through corruption the money finds its way into properties so the only way to eliminate black money would be to bring down prices. Politicians will never allow that but it may happen anyway. A report in the Wall Street Journal shows how Mr Robert Vadra used his connections to the Gandhi family to buy land in Rajasthan which went up 6 times in value as the government announced a solar energy project. Bundles of cash were paid out from the back of a SUV to brokers to buy the land. As interest rates start to rise in the west the Reserve Bank will also have to raise rates in India. At some point loans will become prohibitive and prices will crash. To take black money out of property state governments have to reduce stamp duty and registration charges. In Britain stamp duty goes up from 1% on houses costing less than 500,000 pounds to 7% on those costing over 2 million. This has been labelled ' vindictive ' tax. In India stamp duty can reach 12%. No one wants to pay such high taxes so they will pay in black. Poverty will come down only when people own their own homes. Simple.

All of us have a stake in economics.

Every country in the world wants its economy to grow strongly with low inflation and low unemployment. Although the US economy is growing at around 2.5% the unemployment rate is stuck at 6.7%. This despite keeping borrowing costs at near 0% to encourage investments and injecting $85 billion into the economy every month through repurchase of bonds. At 7.5% China has the highest growth rate in the world but there are fears about its debt levels which have reached 244% of GDP. In the Eurozone March inflation level was the lowest since 2009 at 0.5%, raising fears of deflation. In India, where retail inflation was 8.31% in March, we would be glad to see a period of falling prices. That would mean very low interest rates which would reduce borrowing costs for people and allow a consumer boom. But apparently low interest rates are not such a good thing according to an article by Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics at University of California, Berkeley. Low interest rates indicate low inflation which in turn indicates an economy that is stagnating, with low demand, high unemployment and low investments. Macroeconomic theories are too complex for us to understand but we can see that slow growth reduces tax collections which limits government's ability to invest in education, in retraining long term unemployed and in infrastructure, which are vital for economic growth. High unemployment leads to competition in the labor market, keeping wages down and increasing inequality which is happening all over the world. The rich are getting richer not by productive investments but by financial wheeling dealing and by avoiding taxes by hiding their wealth in tax havens. Governments must tighten vigilance to prevent tax cheating but the trouble is that the higher the tax rates the more the incentive to cheat. The best way to get people to pay taxes is to have a low, fair and transparent tax system. In India tax rates are too high so everyone tries to avoid paying taxes, resulting in vast amounts of black money which has increased property prices to astronomical levels. Multinational companies have shifted production to developing countries like China, Bangladesh and Vietnam where people are willing to work in slave like conditions to survive. Ordinary people plan long term. We save for our children's future, to buy a house or for retirement. Politicians, on the other hand, design policies for the short term, to win the next election. That is why economic theories do not work. 

The fever returns.

Wholesale Price Index has jumped from 4.68% in February to 5.7% in March while the Consumer Price Index has increased from 8.1% in February to 8.31% in March. Meanwhile Index of Industrial Production fell by 1.9% in February while exports fell by 3.15% in March to $29.6 billion. The fall in the value of the rupee should increase exports by making our goods cheaper abroad but inflation cancels that out by increasing prices. Export of gems and jewellery fell by 22.1%. You need gold to make jewellery but the government has severely reduced import of gold to control the Current Account Deficit. Gold imports fell by 17.3% in March and by 40% in the last financial year. The government is hoping to keep CAD to less than $40 billion which would be 2% of GDP. In the last fiscal CAD had soared to 4.8% of GDP at $87.8 billion, bringing with it a threat of downgrade of India's credit rating to junk status. In blind panic the Congress increased the excise duty on gold from 2% to 10% and severely curtailed its import. Fast rising prices forced people to cut expenditure, resulting in a fall of demand, and the Reserve Bank to raise interest rates, which increased borrowing costs, resulting in a fall in investments. The government was forced to reduce expenditure to bring down the fiscal deficit but the Congress could not and would not reduce spending on social programs for fear of losing votes so it cut investment in infrastructure. Thus, productive spending was cut but useless waste continued unchecked, further reducing growth. In fact, the handouts to the poor ended up harming the poor instead of helping them as rising prices took an ever bigger chunk out of their earnings, forcing them to return to their villages to eke out a living from land. The credit rating agency S&P said," If slow growth continues revenue growth could also decelerate. And as developed economies' growth regain traction, both interest rates and commodity prices are likely to rebound. The resulting increases on interest payments ( a major government expenditure for the heavily indebted Indian government ) and subsidies could further squeeze the country's already-limited budgetary space." Which means that increased borrowing to finance handouts will increase interest costs which will reduce the ability of the government to spend. This will restrict growth and reduce tax collections. As rich countries recover so the price of commodities will rise, adding to inflation. India is locked in a vicious cycle. Can we get out?

In God we trust but the devil we support.

' In God We Trust ' is the official motto of the US since 1956 and is on the official seal of the US, under the bald eagle. However, having reposed their trust in God the Americans have chosen to sup with the devil, that is Pakistan, for the last 60 years. Now Pulitzer Prize winning journalist of the New York Times, Carlotta Gall has written a book called ' The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan 2001 to 2014 ' in which she says that rather than being a friend Pakistan has been helping the Taliban to kill US and NATO soldiers all along. She also says that Osama Bin Laden was hidden by the Pakistani government and now Ayman al Zawahiri is also hiding in Pakistan. Wow, how blind can the Americans be? In 2004 Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan said that Bin Laden would be found in the then President Musharraf's basement. She may have been joking but you do not make such jokes about the president of your own country unless there is some truth in that. Jesus said," Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears do you not hear?" No one is more blind than those who have eyes but choose not to see. Not just the Taliban, the ISI in Pakistan organised and financed the 9/11 attacks. The financing may have been done through the Bank of Credit and Commerce which was functioning till 2002 in spite of being under investigation for fraud and money laundering. The CIA had numerous accounts in the bank through which they financed the Iran-Contra affair and the Afghan Mujahideen, to fight Soviet forces. That maybe why Islamists have always maintained that the US was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. While supplying Pakistan with unending amounts of money and arms, with which to kill Indians, the US wants to apply trade sanctions on India for various perceived infractions. The US political establishment has always been hostile to India despite holy words about supporting democracy. That we know. What is impossible to understand is why our politicians repeatedly allow Pakistan to get away with murderous crimes under US pressure. Just 6 months after the attacks on Mumbai our Prime Minister was in Sharm al Sheikh shaking the bloody hands of the Pakistanis. In fact Dr Manmohan Singh wanted our army to give up its advantage on the Siachen Glacier with the ' blessing ' of Ms Sonia Gandhi.
Thankfully he was so weak that no one obeyed his orders. The Americans my trust in God but someone up there is definitely protecting India from the devil.

It's all in the timing.

First " The Accidental Prime Minister " by Sanjay Baru, former Media Adviser to the Prime Minister and then, within a few days, " Crusader or Conspirator? Coalgate and Other Truths " by PC Parakh, former Coal Secretary has set the chattering classes in a frenzy. Why were the books published just when general elections are underway? First, of course, is money. By causing a furious controversy at this time the authors have ensured the sale of their books. The second reason is revenge for perceived injustice. The Congress claims that Mr Baru apparently wanted his job back. We do not know the circumstances of why he lost his job in the first place. Being Coal Secretary at the time when coal mines were given away to family and friends Mr Parakh may have been blamed for the scam. He writes," Money is openly asked for appointment of directors and CEOs. I saw MPs becoming blackmailers and extortionists. They blackmailed officers and CEOs of government companies. I saw how ministers reversed the decision of the PM, who had agreed to put coal blocks in Internet-based auctions." These are very grave charges. He should be made to reveal who these MPs were and they should be investigated. And further," You had a Prime Minister who has finally taken the decision. So, if I am a part of conspiracy he ( PM ) has to be a part of the conspiracy." He is clearly looking to right a wrong. Finally, the reason why the books have been published now is for safety. Had they been published earlier the Congress would have viciously persecuted the 2 authors. The CBI would have been unleashed on them. False cases would have been filed in courts. Tax fellows would have raided there residences. Their families would have been terrorised. But now with government suspended, the Congress busy with elections and the probability of a completely new government for the next 5 years they feel safe to publish their books. Both books have portrayed Dr Manmohan Singh as a puppet who was the public face while Ms Sonia Gandhi ran the government. Congress supporters are blaming the 2 authors for breaking secrecy laws but by allowing sensitive files to go to Ms Gandhi was the Prime Minister himself guilty of breaking secrecy? Dr Singh maybe forgiven for failures in foreign policy, defense or education but he cannot be forgiven for allowing Ms Gandhi to destroy the economy. Which begs the question - did he keep quiet on purpose? Is the Congress paying for 1984? Interesting.

Gandhi would have recognised this India.

Mr Ramachandra Guha is a famous historian with a masters in Economics, a management degree and a long history of teaching in prestigious universities in India and abroad. He studied in Doon School, which is also the school where Rajiv, Sanjay and Rahul Gandhi studied, and at St Stephens College in Delhi. But has Mr Guha ever met really poor people at first hand and talked to them about their lives? Has he ever treated a patient who had no money for simple blood tests and could not afford the best medicines because of the cost? He cites an incident in 1916 when MK Gandhi ( no relation of The Family ) speaking at the opening of the Benaras Hindu University in Varanasi derided what was " certainly a most gorgeous show " and the assembled " richly bedecked noblemen " because " millions of the poor " could not be there. Gandhi said," There can be no spirit of self government about us if we take away or allow others to take away from the peasants almost the whole of the results of their labour. Our salvation can only come through the farmer. Neither the lawyer, nor the doctor, or the rich landlords are going to secure it." That was the time when Marxism was reaching its zenith with the October revolution just one year away. India was under the brutal tyranny of the British who were different with their white skins and red faces. Today, one hundred years on, Marxism has been a proven failure, the British have been replaced by the Congress Party and we allow Pakistanis to kill our citizens on orders of the United States. But the biggest calamity for this country is that the population in 1916 was 254 million while today it is 1200 million, four times as much. It is impossible for any country, no matter how rich, to distribute handouts to so many people. Many countries have tried but the results have been uniformly disastrous. Venezuela, with the largest oil reserves in the world, is facing shortages of basic essentials like meat, toothpaste and toilet paper, all because of the socialist policies of Hugo Chavez. The society has been divided into those who want the economy to revive and those who want the handouts to continue. Armed ' Chavista ' thugs on motor bikes go around killing people who protest. Things are not as bad in India but could be unless the colossal waste of money is stopped. As people have got poorer the rich have got richer as they have cornered land and resources. The only way to reduce poverty is to increase the value of people by cutting off supply. Reduce population.

Only the West had James Bond.

Ian Fleming created only one James Bond with a double O number which licensed him to kill. Now we have a surfeit of Bonds who think they have a right to kill whoever they please. But only in western countries. There is the gasbag Obama, who has killed hundreds of civilians using drones, there is the ladyboy David Cameron who, with his midget friend Nicolas Sarkozy, killed 30,000 Libyans and now the European Union is supporting right wing, anti-Semitic groups in Ukraine in an armed coup. Since the beginning there have been reports of Blackwater thugs, a bunch of psychopathic killers from the US responsible for many massacres in Iraq, have been active in Ukraine. On 24 March heavily armed police shot dead the leader of Right Sector, Oleksandr Muzychko, the man heavily involved in bringing down Viktor Yanukovych, the elected President of Ukraine. The Ministry of Interior claims that he shot himself after a firefight with the police. Yeah, right. The majority of people in the eastern half of Ukraine are Russian speakers who do not want to be slaves of the west so they are now demanding that the government in Kiev hold referendums to decide their right to independence. Pro Russian gunmen have seized the police headquarters in Krametorsk and Slaviansk in the Donetsk region. The US blames Russia for inciting protest against Kiev and have already imposed sanctions against certain Russian officials. Secretary of State, John Kerry rang Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov to warn him of ' consequences '. US and Europe want a ' united ' Ukraine, forgetting their aggressive role in the division of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Not everyone is buying their lies, however. Meanwhile, citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg has claimed that the National Security Agency in the US has been aware of the Heartbleed virus for a year and has been using it to break into personal computers for spying. The White House has denied the charges. But as Mandy Rice-Davies famously said," They would, wouldn't they." Western countries have used their power to enslave, exploit and extort the world but are now finding that other nations are refusing to be pushovers any longer. China is flexing its muscles, South America is hostile, Africa is refusing to be exploited through the WTO and now India, which was kept supine by a white foreign woman, may elect a nationalist in Modi. People hate being pushed around. They retaliate. They west should learn fast or there will be huge bloodshed.

Rulers or representatives?

On 10 April people of Delhi voted in the general elections. The arrangements were fantastic. The atmosphere was relaxed. An awning protected voters from the sun as they walked into the center. Bouquets of flowers were tied to the poles supporting the awning. Sealed mineral water bottles were there for anyone thirsty. The staff were courteous. An old man was brought in to vote on a wheelchair. Red carpets lined the floors to the booths which were clearly numbered. You presented your identification, your left index finger was marked and you went behind a screen to press a button against the person you wished to vote for. It was over in a couple of minutes. But what does this whole exercise, costing hundreds of billions of rupees and interfering with ongoing Board examinations, really mean? For us it is simply electing a person to represent our wishes in parliament and to pass laws which will fulfil those wishes. For politicians becoming a member of parliament is about becoming a VIP, living in expensive bungalows in Lutyens Delhi, roaming around with gun-toting guards, travelling free of cost in trains and planes, and if one can worm one's way into a minister's post then it is a path to untold riches. For criminals it means being absolved of all crimes because winning an election is taken as a mandate to continue. ' Democracy ' comes from 2 Greek words - ' demos ' which means ' common people ' and ' kratos ' which means ' rule '. So democracy is supposed to be rule by common people but for Indian politicians democracy ends with elections after which they will do as they please and any protest will be met with extreme violence. That is why China's GDP was less than ours in 1990 but is now 4 times our GDP. While in China " delivery of basic public goods like roads, electricity, drains, water supplies, and schools where teachers actually show up " is the norm " The legitimacy of democracy in many ways absolved Indian governments from the necessity of performing." Rewards being infinite Indian politicians will resort to any trick, no matter how dirty, to win. Facing a rout in the elections because of the destruction of the economy the Congress is now trying portray Mr Modi's marriage as some sort of sleaze when everyone knew about it all along. Mr Modi was married in 1968 at the age of 17 years but never lived with his wife. It seems that she is still married to him and is devoted to him so that she prays for him to become prime minister. The present Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh was merely a puppet while Ms Sonia Gandhi ruled. Do we really want these scum to represent us?

Whose legacy is it?

When historians look back at the woeful economic mismanagement of the last 10 years will they blame ' dynastic politics ', which means the handouts of trillions of rupees initiated by Ms Sonia Gandhi, or will they blame the Prime Minister who has a PhD in Economics and long experience in government? The Congress shrugs off all criticism by blaming foreign forces and points to an average growth rate of 7.6% in the 10 years of its rule as opposed to an average of 5.9% under the previous BJP government. The IMF does not agree, blaming lack of investment in infrastructure and inflation, leading to the high cost of borrowing, as responsible for the slowdown. Besides, benefits of economic reforms are apparent after a lag period and the growth in the first 5 years was the result of the efforts of the previous BJP government along with an explosion of debt because of low interest rates. The results will be with the next government for years to come as gross Non Performing Assets of banks have climbed to 12.3% from 7.8%. The scary thing is that gross lending of Public Sector banks has risen from Rs 2.85 trillion in 1998 to Rs 35 trillion in March 2012, which is 75% of the total lending of Rs 46.7 trillion by public and private sector banks. The reason why public sector banks are nearly bankrupt is because of the waiver of Rs 760 billion of loans given to farmers in 2008. Not only were the banks forced to bear this amount but farmers were encouraged to default on their loans in the expectation of being forgiven again before elections the next time. Pratip Chaudhuri, Chairman of the State Bank of India said recently," Agriculture is a bit of an issue. That is because of the moral hazard that was created in 2008 when there was a write off of large agricultural loans." A study by researchers of the World Bank, Xavier Gine and Martin Kranz found that loan delinquencies rose after the waivers, not because banks were lending more aggressively but because the program " gave rise to to severe ex-post moral hazard problems, concentrated among borrowers that had previously been in good standing, and who did not benefit from the bailout." After a freak hailstorm recently 73 farmers in Maharashtra committed suicide when their crops were destroyed. Instead of giving handouts to win elections the Congress could have used the money to set up a fund for crop insurance to which farmers would contribute in good times and would receive compensation when times are bad. With El Nino expected this year expect more suicides. Handouts kill.

Who will protect our money?

Since 2009 soaring inflation has eroded personal wealth of Indians as the rupee buys almost nothing these days. You would need Rs 39 to buy one dollar in 2007 whereas now you need around Rs 60. This is especially hard on the poor and retired people with private pensions. If a person worked hard the whole life to retire with savings of Rs 10 million in 2007 it is now worth Rs 6 million and, since the real rate of interest has been consistently negative, this money earns less in interest than it loses in inflation. The difference in rates of growth between China and India remained relatively constant between 2.1 in 2004 and 2.6 in 2013, with China growing faster. But inflation in India, which was fractionally less than that of China in 2004, jumped above 12% in 2009 and was 8.2% in 2013, much higher than that of China. The same results are seen when compared to other emerging markets. For some reason pundits blame Mr Pranab Mukerjee, now President, who was Finance Minister from 24 January 2009 to 26 June 2012, for the inflation. " One, India chose to stimulate consumer demand through higher revenue deficits rather than increase public investment to address growing supply constraints. Two, the stimulus was not withdrawn even after domestic demand revived in 2010." It is completely false to say that the stimulus was started in 2009 in response to the global slowdown. The MGNREGA scheme was started in 2006, at a cost of Rs 2.5 trillion since then, and the Sixth Pay Commission, which increased civil service salaries by 25% and the farmers' loan waiver, costing Rs 750 billion, were in the 2008 budget. The man responsible for these economic crimes was Mr Chidambaram, Finance Minister from 22 May 2004 - 30 November 2008 and again from 31 July 2012, who refuses to take any responsibility for his actions. Once handouts are started they cannot be reversed because people get used to them. The only way to increase revenue was to increase taxes which Mr Mukherjee did. He tried retroactive tax on foreign businesses, called GAAR, which led to a precipitous fall in foreign investment. He levied taxes on every kind of service he could think of which increased prices and led to a fall in demand. The HSBC Purchasing Managers Index for Services for the month of March was 47.5, down from 48.9 in February, which is ninth month of contraction. Any figure below 50 denotes contraction. With elections going on we need a government which will protect the humble rupee. Trouble is vast numbers of people have an interest in the handouts.

The mysteries of India?

For the last 10 years the Congress has been ruling India and Ms Sonia Gandhi rules the Congress, ergo Ms Gandhi has been ruling India. In September, 2013 a judge, Brian M Cogan of some piddling court in Brooklyn in the US issued summons for Ms Gandhi to attend his court to answer charges of protecting perpetrators of genocide on Sikhs after the murder of Mrs Indira Gandhi in 1984. Sikhs for Justice, who have filed the case against her in the US, claim that they served the summons on staff at Sloan Kettering Cancer Hospital on 9 September last year where she was undergoing treatment. On 10 January Ms Gandhi submitted that she was not in the US between 2 and 9 September last year but the judge does not believe her. On 20 March he issued an order for her to " provide a copy of her passport, showing her most recent entry and exit stamps into and out of the United States." Why did he not ask the Immigration department to provide details of Ms Gandhi's visits to the US? It should not take more than a few minutes for them to search their database. Ms Gandhi has declined to provide copies of her passport claiming that the government would not allow her on grounds of security. " However, as I have nothing to hide, I voluntarily relinquish the plea of lack of personal jurisdiction," she wrote. Why so humble? If she is an Indian citizen then why should she be answerable to a US court for events that took place inside our country? Why does she not tell the fellow to take a running jump into the nearest canal? If her illness is such that it needs foreign expertise it would be much cheaper to pay for these specialists to come to India and treat her at AIIMS or any top hospital. The previous president of the US, George Bush was forced to cancel a trip to Europe for fear of being sued for encouraging torture. Surely as a sovereign country we cannot allow any two penny judge of the US to serve summons on our citizens. Mystery. The other mystery was when our captain Dhoni sent Yuvraj Singh to bat at number 4 against Sri Lanka when he had struggled in the semifinal against South Africa, scoring 18 runs off 17 balls in 24 minutes. In that match Suresh Raina came in and completely altered the situation by scoring 21 off 10 balls, hitting three 4s and one 6. Surely against Sri Lanka, Raina should have come in at number four, followed by Dhoni and then Yuvraj Singh if necessary. Raina did not play at all and Dhoni scored a leisurely 4 runs off 7 balls. Seems that he planned the defeat. Strange how we allow others to walk over us.

Should communism be banned in India.

Joseph McCarthy, Republican Senator from Wisconsin from 1947-1957, was a rabid anti-communist who was discredited in later life and McCarthyism is now synonymous with paranoid fanaticism. While the US has been staunchly anti-communist since then communism disappeared from Europe since December 1991 when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Today many of the countries of the former Soviet block are members of NATO, making the US the only super power in the world. Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, all Communists, will long be remembered for the deaths of tens of millions of people of their own country. Today it goes around as Socialism. However, Adolf Hitler was from the National Socialist German Workers Party. IN the past 10 years of Socialism in India many people had a great time with taxpayer money and they are enraged at the prospect of Mr Modi winning the current elections. One Mr Harsh Mander, member of the National Advisory Council whose advice has nearly bankrupted India, writes a ferocious indictment of Mr Modi. After giving figures which seem to prove that Gujarat is one of the poorest states in India where industrialists are given tax breaks he writes," Economists such as Indira Hirway question whether this is good governance or crony capitalism." How innocent is that? He has not heard of the 2G scam, the Coalgate scam, the Adarsh scam, the CWG scam among many others during his time as adviser. Is it crony capitalism to encourage business so as to create jobs or to divide trillions of rupees among friends and family. Opining that people should be able to vote on clear knowledge of policies Mr Tarun Kumar, a self confessed bureaucrat, writes," The rational choice of the electorate should be based on programmes, policies and performance rather than personalities." Stirring words indeed. Sadly he has forgotten that it is the rotten bureaucracy in India which strenuously fights any reforms, seeking to maintain its stranglehold on power and indecent perks. Civil servants are responsible for the ' policy paralysis ', which has frozen all official work, because of the protests against corruption. Then there is Mr Aakar Patel, from Gujarat no less, who has seen no improvement in the state in all the years that he grew up there. He has not noticed the wide roads, constant electricity and prompt service at government departments in the last 10 years. Poor chap. Blindness must be terrible. Time to ban communism in India?

What do they mean by ' jobs '?

Election manifestos are out, promising the sun, the moon and stardust. The Congress was first off the mark, promising to to train and provide jobs to 100 million youth, a 10% growth in manufacturing and to bring two-thirds of the population into the middle class through welfare means. The BJP released its manifesto this morning, on the first day of the elections. It also promises jobs but not Foreign Direct Investment in multi-brand retail. With 60% of the population under the age of 27 years job creation is vital. Between 2000 and 2012 jobs grew by just 2% per year. Most of these jobs were casual labor in the construction industry or low paid work in hotels, road side vending or as servants in households. The National Sample Survey Organisation reports unemployment rate at between 3 and 5% at 11 to 25 million but in 2010 the World Bank found that 69% were earning less than Rs 37 per day. The most shocking figures are for those earning regular wages. A respectable 62.9% in Delhi are earning regular wages but that maybe because of vast numbers of government employees, most of whom are unproductive and at the root of extreme corruption in the country. After that the numbers of gainfully employed falls off pretty sharply with Punjab at 27.5%, UP and Odisha at 10.6%, Chhattisgarh at 9.7% and Bihar at a dismal 5.8%. For India as a whole 17.9% get regular wages, 29.9% are casual labor while 52.2% are self-employed. Road side chaiwallah, coolies at railway stations and the raddiwallah on his bicycle are probably counted as self-employed and MGNREGA which pays the rural poor for 100 days a year for doing nothing is also counted as employment. To create genuine jobs which are productive, provide job satisfaction and pay a living wage it is critical to create world class infrastructure, which means electricity and roads, as China has done. Sadly electricity has become very expensive because we are having to import coal when India has over 250 billion tonnes of coal and companies building roads are making huge losses because they paid a premium to be awarded contracts. The recent Land Acquisition Act will make it even harder to get land for building roads. Labor laws in India are so restrictive that manufacturers shy away from employing full time workers and depend instead on contract workers. Unless labor laws are completely changed enough good jobs cannot be created and there will be unrest as in Venezuela. Politicians should not be allowed to go abroad on taxpayer money unless they say what they have learnt and how they will implement it. Time to get tough.

The revenge of silence?

The BJP has published a chargesheet against the Congress led government of Dr Manmohan Singh. The list of charges on what it calls a " dark decade in governance " is pretty devastating. It charges Dr Singh with " compromising the dignity and integrity of the office of the prime minister " by acting as " the CEO of a company " where the board was headed by Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and not as the " final authority ". Coalition partners were allowed to get away with massive scams. Of these the largest were the ISRO- Devas scam at Rs 2 trillion, the 2G spectrum scam at Rs 1.76 trillion, the Coalgate scam at Rs 1.86 trillion and the Commonwealth Games scam at Rs 700 billion. The rest range from Rs 100-500 billion. National security has been compromised. " The soft faces of Maoist-Leftist violence have a pride of place in Sonia Gandhi's National Advisory Council," said BJP's Chief Coordinator, Ravi Shankar Prasad. Strong stuff. But figures say otherwise. In 2003, 1109 civilians and security personnel were killed in Jammu and Kashmir in 3401 incidents while in 2013 only 30 were killed in 170 incidents. In Maoist affected states 515 were killed in 2003 in 1597 incidents while in 2013, 397 were killed in 1136 incidents. In the hinterland 67 were killed in 2003 in 3 incidents while in 2013, 23 were killed in 4 incidents. Why is Dr Singh silent on the achievements of his government? Is it because of the debacle at Sharm el-Sheikh, the constant intrusions by Chinese troops inside our borders, the beheading of an Indian soldier inside our borders, the constant humiliation of India by the gasbag Obama administration or the killing of Congress party workers in Chhattisgarh in May 2013, including Mahendra Karma, the author of Salwas Judum. However, considering that Dr Singh has a PhD in Economics the figures on the economy are particularly devastating. The growth rate has dropped, both fiscal and current account deficits are barely controlled, inflation is very high, industrial production fell 2% last year and the rupee has fallen. The worst figures are in employment. Between 1999 and 2004, 60.7 million jobs were created at the rate of 12.1 million per year but between 2004 and 2012 only 15.4 million jobs were created at a rate of 2.2 million jobs per year. The Prime Minister has been silent against these charges so that Mr Rahul Gandhi's team hold him responsible for the poor opinion polls for the Congress. By allowing Ms Gandhi to destroy the economy with massive handouts and by allowing coalition politicians to loot at will he has made the Congress and The Family enormously unpopular. Was silence a revenge for the killing of Sikhs in 1984? Cute.

Always turn the other cheek.

A court in UK has rejected an application by the CBI for the extradition of Ravi Shankaran, a key accused in the Naval War Room leak case. To add insult to injury the court ordered the CBI to pay Rs 10 million to cover legal costs. Shankaran had appealed against an earlier decision to extradite him to India saying that the long time taken to resolve any case in India would violate his human rights. The judges seem to have bought his argument. They have reason. S Nambi Narayanan, a senior officer at the Indian Space Research Organisation, was falsely accused of spying in 1994. In 1996 the CBI found the charges were without substance and the Supreme Court dismissed the case in 1998. But till date the state of Kerala has refused to punish the police official who brought the false charges and has refused to pay any compensation. Meanwhile a grand jury in Chicago in the US indicted Congress Rajya Sabha MP, KVP Ramachandra Rao of accepting bribes to sell titanium products from mines in Andhra Pradesh to an unnamed company based in Chicago. Mr Rao was close to the late Congress Chief Minister of Andhra, YSR Rajasekhara Reddy whose son, Jaganmohan Reddy is now being investigated for being involved in illegal iron ore mining. No smoke without fire, what? We Indians are so sweet that we are always turning the other cheek. While Americans and the British charge our citizens from far away we allow them to get away with serious crimes committed on our soil. Two days before our diplomat, Devyani Khobragade was sexually assaulted by New York Police on 12 December 2012 the husband of the maid and her 2 children were flown out of Delhi to the US. On an Air India flight no less. They had been provided US visas surreptitiously by an official of the US embassy in Delhi in a clear conspiracy to embarrass India. This official has now quietly left India without having been strip searched or having her cavities explored. However, this pales into insignificance at the decision of the Congress to give a ticket to a hijacker to stand for parliamentary elections from Salempur in UP. Seems that one Bholanath Pandey hijacked an Indian Airlines plane in 1978 demanding release of Ms Indira Gandhi from jail. Naturally, Dal Khalsa is demanding that Gajinder Singh, who hijacked an Indian Airlines fight to Lahore in 1981, should also be pardoned. So, when an Indian Airlines flight was hijacked to Kandahar in 1999 the then BJP government surrendered meekly. Always turn the other cheek. No matter how much others slap us around.

Are ordinary Indians masters in economics?

Some experts believe that this Congress led government is following a scorched earth policy on the economy so that the new government that comes in on 16 May will be unable to function. The Land Acquisition Act will make any project impossibly expensive while the Seventh Pay Commission will massively increase expenditure. The people do not seem to agree with this view. A survey by Pew Research Center of over 2400 people conducted over December and January showed that 57% think that the economy is good. However, 90% think that rising prices are " a very big problem " and 85% are worried by the lack of jobs but 80% approve of the welfare schemes, including the MGNREGA scheme, which have been blamed for rising deficit and inflation. People are angry with endemic corruption, support women's rights and 63% think that India does not get respect internationally. An article by 2 economics professors would seem to support the survey. They compare the average annual economic indicators for this Congress led government over the 10 years it has been in power with the 6 years of the previous BJP led government. Real GDP grew by an average of 5.9% per year under the BJP and 7.6% per year under Congress. The Sensex grew by 5.9% per year under BJP and 14.5% under Congress. Foreign Direct Investment was $2.9 billion per year under the BJP and $20.2 billion under Congress. Average Fiscal Deficit was 5.5% under the BJP and 4.6% under Congress. However, average general inflation was 5.45% and food inflation just 4.2% under the BJP while under the Congress they were 8.1% and 9% respectively. The 2 professors do not comment on the view that the high growth rate was achieved by a frenzy of debt based on very low interest rates, by a huge fiscal stimulus provided by the MGNREGA at Rs 2.5 trillion, farmers loan waiver at Rs 700 billion and the Sixth Pay Commission which increased civil service pay by over 25% and the strong rupee which kept import costs low. Non-Performing Assets at banks have risen to Rs 2.8 trillion in the last 5 years. This is excluding the amount restructured under the Corporate Debt Restructuring mechanism. Car sales have fallen for 2 years in a row showing how purchasing power of people has been eroded by the inflation. Under Congress subsidies increased from 1.4% of GDP to 2.3%. Convinced of the winning power of subsidies the Congress manifesto promises more handouts to win the coming elections. Will the people agree?