The strange problem of too much money.

"The liquidity bulge in the banking sector is keeping all stakeholders busy," wrote Ghosh and Samanta. After the sudden banning of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes on 8 November, known as demonetisation, people rushed to deposit all their old currencies into their bank accounts, leading to banks receiving near Rs 15 trillion in deposits. Surely this is good news for banks, especially public sector ones, which are struggling under massive bad loans, in excess of Rs 6 trillion. All this money belongs to the people and maybe withdrawn at a later date but till then banks will have plenty of capital to lend to businesses, to increase their earnings. But apparently too much money is also a problem for banks. Last year India received $56 billion, or Rs 3.64 trillion, in foreign direct investment. Foreign portfolio investment was Rs 228 billion in April, most of it in government debt, because of a hardening of yields. In March FPIs poured in Rs 569 billion for a total of Rs 914 billion, or $14 billion, this year. With so much money sloshing around yields should be coming down but they are rising. Why? Apparently, excess of money will cause inflation to rise, so the Reserve Bank has kept interest rate at 6.25% and signaled that it may raise rates later if necessary. With all the foreign exchange coming into India the rupee has become stronger. A strong rupee reduces the cost of imports, especially oil, and so reduces inflation, so it should be a good thing. But a strong rupee also makes exports more expensive and could be a drag on export growth just as the International Monetary Fund is predicting that the global economy will grow by 3.5%, compared to 3.1% in 2016. The rupee appreciated by 11% against the dollar in 2008 and has gone up by 4.5% in the last quarter, this year, wrote Aparna Iyer. Normally the RBI would buy up dollars from the market to prevent the rupee from becoming too strong but now its hands are tied because of the excess money already in the system. So what can it do? "To address the urgent need for sterilization of the abnormal surge of liquidity, the market stabilization scheme (MSS) limit was hiked to Rs 6 trillion. Under MSS, issuance of cash-management bills (CMBs) absorbed entire frictional liquidity, but elevated short-term rates. Besides putting pressure on government finances in the form of higher interest expense, this move substantially reduced demand for long-dated bonds thereby creating the effect of partially crowding out debt-burdened private sector," wrote Ghosh and Samanta. That means, what the RBI does to absorb the excess money in the banks will raise sort term interest rates and reduce lending to the private sector. Which means that banks will be sitting on massive piles of cash with nowhere to invest it. What a conundrum.

Tourists will come only if we are nice to them.

"The World Economic Forum's (WEF's) travel and tourism competitiveness index, released last week, showed that India had moved up 12 places and now ranks 40th among 136 nations globally. The report also notes that this was the largest leap made by any country in the top 50," wrote an editorial in Mint. Time to break out the bubbly? Not quite. While the number of tourists visiting India has indeed increased from 2.65 million in 2000 to 8.89 million last year, it is nothing compared to 84.5 million visitors to France, 77.5 million to the US, 68.2 million to Spain, 56.9 million to China and 50.7 million to Italy. Even developing countries like Turkey had 39.4 million visitors, Mexico 32.1 million, and Russia 31.3 million. Why do we have so few visitors? On average, a tourist spends $2,610 in India, $2,639 in the US $2,005 in China but only as little as $543 in France. Yet Paris has a reputation for being very expensive, and a small bottle of water can set you back 2 Euros, equivalent to Rs 140, in a restaurant. Trouble is that India has a poor reputation, such as "cumbersome visa regulations, bad travel infrastructure, poor sanitation, collapsing law enforcement systems and concerns about women's safety". So India gets a higher proportion of business tourists, who probably spend more, and fewer leisure tourists. Lurid headlines about rape of foreign women have become regular. Recently a German woman was raped in Tamil Nadu and a British woman was raped and murdered in Goa. 15 year old Scalett Keeling was raped and murdered in Goa in 2008. Two men were charged but found innocent, have been charged again. The case of Bitti Mohanty is a particularly ugly stain on our judicial system. How a rapist was allowed to go out on parole, went on the run for 7 years and has now been given bail, instead of a longer sentence to punish him for evading justice. On top of that we have an autocrat in power who suddenly banned all Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes on a whim, catching all the tourists, who had already exchanged their currencies, in a desperate situation. Apparently, a new rule is being considered by which we will need an Aadhar card for air travel. Since foreign countries do not subject their citizens to the indignity of fingerprinting and iris scans how tourists will travel around India is a mystery. India's heritage buildings are in a sorry state, wrote Amitabh Kant. He cites the example of Humayun's tomb in Delhi which has been restored with money from the Aga Khan Trust. Most of these heritage sites are of conquerors which may account form the lack of interest. Some of the palaces have been converted into hotels as the Taj Lake Palace Hotel and the Neemrana Fort Hotel in Rajasthan. To attract foreigners we have to be proud of our nation and that will only happen when we are treated with respect, not as criminals, by those in power. But that is how they stay in power. So it will not happen.

We should not be like the US in this.

Two days back police interrupted a robbery in west Delhi. One robber shot at the police who returned fire, hitting the man 5 times. The man was taken to hospital where 4 policemen donated blood for his operation but the man died. Last year a 19 year old boy was shot dead by the son of a politician in the state of Bihar. In December a 17 year old girl was shot dead in Delhi by a friend, who would probably also be a teenager. India apparently has some of the most stringent gun laws in the world. You need to have a licence, which can take years to get, for even an air gun. But, almost everyday somebody is shot to death in India. Every punk, every petty criminal seems to posses a gun. Politicians, their guards and their children are usually heavily armed. It is not enough to say that the US has many times more gun related deaths than we have, South Korea has a much lower rate. Why do so many die of gunshot injuries in the US? Over 30,000 people are killed by guns each year in the US. Can gun control reduce the number of deaths by guns? After a mass shooting in Port Arthur in 1996, the Australian government responded by banning automatic firearms, registered every gun in the country and made permits compulsory for purchases of new weapons. Gun related homicide fell by 42%, while gun related suicide fell by 57%. So why can't the US do the same? Because gun ownership is protected by the second amendment of the Constitution, the National Rifle Association is very strong and gun makers donate a lot of money to campaign funding of politicians. Gun enthusiasts insist that owning a gun is a fundamental right, that mental illness is the cause of shootings and that everyone should carry a gun for self defense, which would increase safety. Seems that the gun problem in the US is deeply cultural and craven politicians do not have the will or guts to take on the gun lobby. Indeed, so brazen is the National Rifle Association that it grades politicians according to their support of guns. The big movie hero, John Wayne was almost never without a gun, yet he did not serve one day during the War to carry on his affair with Marlene Dietrich. Guns do not a hero make. A two-year old boy shot his 9-year old brother when his mother allowed him to play with a gun. The mother was charged with child abuse. But who will the police charge when a two-year old boy shot his own mother dead in Idaho? It is hard to imagine growing up with the guilt of having killed own mother. Since they do not know who is carrying a weapon police shoot suspects dead instead of trying to apprehend them. India has not reached that stage yet but there are too many shootings. Illegal guns must be stopped.

Will history repeat itself? We shall see.

There is a gush of good news in India. The Sensex, index of the Bombay Stock Exchange, rose above 30,000 for the first time ever. Brokers are jubilant. "Global growth outlook has improved, driving the risk appetite for investors. In India, cost of funds has dropped. India's risk premium has come down, because the reforms process may go on after the government won the Uttar Pradesh elections," said Gopal Agrawal. Foreign investors have poured $6 billion, or Rs 384 billion, into India. The rupee has strengthened against the dollar, falling below the 64 mark on one occasion. The GDP grew at a healthy 7% in the December quarter, despite the ban on high denomination notes on 8 November. The Asian Development Bank predicts a growth rate of 7.4% this year. Indian exports grew by 17.5% in March, a huge improvement over the 2.5% growth in the previous 11 months. Will the strong rupee be a drag on export growth by making our goods more expensive? No, said Manas Chakravarty, giving 10 reasons why it does not matter. All Asian currencies have appreciated against the dollar, the rupee has appreciated the most. Foreign investors are lured by fundamentals of our economy and by the increasing returns as the rupee gets stronger. The Reserve Bank is not worried because the current account deficit is low at 1.5% and there is plenty of liquidity in the market, so it does not want to add to that by buying dollars. The IMF expects global trade to grow by 3.8% this year so exports should grow. A Goldilocks economy? We have been here in 2007. That year the GDP was growing at around 9.5%, the rupee had fallen to around 40 to the dollar, and the Sensex had soared to over 20,000, an increase of almost 50% over the previous year. Congress ministers were strutting around at the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos in Switzerland. But a shadow was looming over the economy. It was consumer inflation, which was going to ignite to double digits in succeeding years and bury the Congress in 2014. Retail inflation increased to 3.81% in March, still way below the RBI comfort level of 4%, but growing since hitting a low of 3.17% in January. The Index of Industrial Production fell in February which is surprise if both GDP and exports are growing at a fast clip. The Congress waived bank loans to farmers, costing Rs 600 billion, in 2008. That probably helped the Congress to increase its seat tally in elections in 2009. The BJP just won election in UP by spending Rs 307 billion on farmers' loan waiver. Already farmers in Maharashtra are refusing to repay their loans, which is only fair. If this becomes a trend it could increase fiscal deficit by 2% of the GDP, said Arvind Subramanian. Budget deficit increased to 7.8% in 2009 when the Congress was re-elected. How to pay for it? By imposing a near 200% tax on petrol. We have seen it all before.

A Trojan Horse with Chinese characteristics.

"Conventional wisdom is that China possesses all the cards to bring the North Korean regime to its knees to US satisfaction," wrote Ranjit Singh Kalha. "Over the years, the Chinese government has tried desperately to head off a conflict situation from arising on the Korean peninsula." In 1994 Bill Clinton offered trade concessions to North Korea in return for a freeze on its nuclear program but George Bush spoilt it by including it in his 'axis of evil'. "Chinese diplomacy, once again, worked tirelessly to bring the two belligerents together again and initiated six party talks involving Japan and Russia along with China, the US and the Korean nations." "But, as before, the US treasury department had other ideas. They designated Macau's Banco Delta Asia as a 'money launderer', presumably knowing that the North Koreans used this bank to finance their trade." But what if China has no intention of stopping the North Korean regime and is using it as a pawn in its power game with the US? Where did North Korea get its knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons? From Pakistan. Abdul Kadeer Khan has admitted that he personally transferred $3 million from North Korea to senior officers of the Pakistani army. Where does Pakistan get its supply of parts to make nuclear weapons? China supplies super sensitive nuclear weapons systems to Pakistan and is pushing for Pakistan to become a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, while blocking India's membership. On its side, Pakistan is handing over sovereignty of large parts of its territory to China in return for investment of $56 billion on the economic corridor between Kashgar in Xinjiang Province of China and Gwadar Port in Balochistan in Pakistan. Pakistan sees no irony in sending terrorists into 'Hindu' India while kowtowing to China when China is cracking down on Muslims in Xinjiang Province where the corridor originates. It has banned beards for men and veils for women and recently banned certain names, such as Arafat, which is a site in Makkah visited during Hajj, Medina, which is a city containing a mosque where the Prophet used to pray, and even Mohammad, the Prophet himself. Just as terrorism in the world cannot be eliminated unless Pakistan is brought to its knees, so North Korea cannot be controlled as long as China remains intact. Had Donald Trump imposed a 45% tax on Chinese imports, as he promised to do during the election campaign, it would have slowed the Chinese economy and may have resulted in an implosion. But he chickened out in the face of Chinese bluster and warnings from US retailers, such as Walmart. China does not want a democratic North Korea next door, nor does it want a war on its border. It will do everything to stop the US while preserving the regime. It is using North Korea and Pakistan to create problems without taking blame. After all, it has no other friends.

Echo chambers for us, fantasy bubbles for the media.

"The media bubble is worse than you think," wrote Jack Shafer and Tucker Doherty. They have analysed why the media got the presidential election in November so wrong. "The overwhelming assumption was that the race was Hillary Clinton's for the taking, and the real question wasn't how sweeping her November victory would be, but how far out to sea her wave would send political parvenue Trump. Today, it's Trump who occupies the White House and Clinton who's drifting out to sea -- an outcome that arrived not just as an embarrassment for the press but an indictment." Previously, newspapers had to be printed close to their readers which meant that offices were spread out all over the country but with internet publishing media offices are concentrated along both coasts, which are extreme Democratic areas. "Nearly 90 per cent of all internet publishing employees work in a county where Clinton won, and 75 per cent of them work in a county that she won by more than 30 percentage points." But, is it so simple? Johannes Wahlstrom wrote of how The New York Times regularly manipulates, suppresses and fabricates news stories in its boardroom where journalists are not permitted. This was where the false story of Iraq's WMDs was created, Muammar Gaddafi was received and the story about NSA's illegal wiretapping was suppressed till 2 years after George Bush was re-elected. Whether deliberately or because of incompetence the mainstream media missed the complete shambles of the Clinton campaign. Having lost Michigan to Bernie Sanders in the primary the Clinton campaign concluded that it was better not to send Hillary Clinton to states where non-college-educated whites were an important part of the electorate, wrote Jon Allen and Arnie Parnes. In effect, they just wrote off certain states. But, it was not just a loss for Clinton, it was a rejection of the policies of Barack Obama. It maybe either because of extreme dislike for Trump or worship of Obama journalists were blind to his lies about the Iran deal. Not only did he release 7 men convicted of smuggling essential parts for building missiles and uranium centrifuges but he also got the Justice Department to drop serious charges against 14 others. Journalists have still not realised that just as non-college-educated whites were instrumental in handing victory to Trump, so African-Americans handed victory to Obama, when 95% voted for him in 2008, while 93% voted for him in 2012. Some people, such as Nate Silver and David Wasserman, worked out how a Trump victory was possible, but did not believe in their own calculations. The media accuses people of living in echo chambers when they are living in fantasy bubbles. We are all human, after all.

Good policies may not win, but bad ones do not lose either.

Abbott Laboratories is withdrawing two types of stents from India because of government diktat to reduce their prices. Following Abbott's decision Medtronic also decided to withdraw its latest stents from India and Boston Scientific said it is studying the order and will not sell its latest stents. "It is Economics 101 and supply shortage or withdrawal is the most natural, immediate and lasting consequence of price controls. We thought we had settled those issues. Private-sector bashing is back in fashion. We are back in the 1970s," wrote Anantha Nageswaran. The center is not the only one playing these games. "Gujarat has imposed caps on school fees and the West Bengal government has capped the fees that hospitals charge." These are designed to cover deficiencies in providing essential services to the people by transferring the blame on to private service providers. "...in the name of implementation of the right to education, state governments across the country are forcing many private schools to shut down. New ones set up by minorities are taking their place, as they are exempt from the provisions of The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Act." We can expect more communal riots in the future. The RTE Act was passed by the Congress, which proves that all politicians are the same in India. If more proof is required, goons belonging to Hindu organisations are indulging in random acts of violence and attacking the police when culprits are arrested. Exactly the same as the violence of Trinamul goons against political opponents in West Bengal or the violence against voters by the previous government of the Samajwadi Party in UP. At the time the BJP said that the SP is a party of goons and mafia. Not much different from the BJP is it? With the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax, service tax will go up to 18%. To cover that the government is blaming restaurants for including a service charge in their bills. Restaurants say that taxes are responsible for high bills, which is true. We can choose a restaurant with low service charge but we cannot avoid taxes. Why do all politicians behave the same? Because, good economic policies do not translate into victories at elections. Studies cannot prove that BJP's loss in 2004 was because the poor were left behind or the victory of the Congress in 2009 was because of handouts, like MGNREGA, wrote Vivek Dahejia. "...if it is difficult to prove that good economics is good politics, it is equally difficult to prove that bad economics is good politics," he wrote. Maybe, but bad economics is not bad politics either. That is why politicians revert to the same old policies of handouts coupled with violence. The output gap is close to 6%. "If recent short-term policy decisions continue, India will find itself revisiting the stagflation it experienced in the final years of the United Progressive Alliance government." That will be when the BJP will be booted out. But not in 2019.

Someone has to pay, as long as some do not.

For a government which is such a passionate believer in digital India that it wants to get rid of cash completely, the Goods and Services Tax law aims to multiply paperwork of every business many times over. "Detailed records are required to be kept not only by suppliers of goods or services (manufacturers or service providers), but also by intermediaries such as warehouse owners, transporters and agents. In addition to the goods sold, they have to also track stocks given as free samples and gifts." How does it operate? Very complicated, but, as the price escalates at each point in the production chain, the previous business claims back the tax it has already paid, the customer paying the entire amount at the final sale. "Even as concepts of manufacture or trading are no longer relevant under GST, the record-keeping requirements continue to be based on these lines." "Therefore, the classification of these activities will continue even in the new regime though not relevant for the concept of supply which underlines GST," said Badri Narayanan. In order to prevent any leakage the law is draconian. "No deletion or overwriting of entries are allowed in registers, accounts and documents maintained for GST purpose. Incorrect entries, whether made erroneously or otherwise need to be sorted out under attestation and the correct entry recorded." Clearly, the law is not aimed at helping people but to squeeze as much tax as possible and to keep everyone obedient under threat of stringent punishment. Tax returns will have to be filed every month and in every state that the business operates, which will multiply accounting costs and increase prices. There will be 4 rates, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%, on top of which the government has a free hand to impose additional cess, according to its whim, taking the top rate to 40%. Alcohol, petrol and air travel are outside GST so the tax on them will be eye-watering. The government made Rs 1.99 trillion on extra taxes on fuel in just one year. Politicians get government cars and free air travel and will surely be getting there drinks duty free so taxes are irrelevant for them. Realising that a service tax of 18% will raise the cost of eating out the government is blaming restaurants for including service charge, or tips, in their bills. Which is a lie because taxes amount to over 20% of any bill, while service charge rarely exceeds 10%. For a government which is so obsessive about any corruption that it banned all high denomination notes to force every citizen to prove her innocence it is completely oblivious about corruption among politicians and civil servants, so that it has not found time to pass the Lokpal bill in 3 years. The biggest source of corruption is political funding. The budget changed the rules so that anyone can donate any amount anonymously. So, now we need to provide fingerprints to file tax returns while they get oodles of cash in complete privacy. We must be so stupid.

How do we protect living entities?

The government wants to clean River Ganga which is holy to all Hindus and provides drinking and irrigation to hundreds of millions of people. To that end it has constituted a National Ganga River Basin Authority and empowered it to authorise projects costing up to Rs 10 billion. In March, the Uttarakhand High Court declared both Ganga and Yamuna living entities and appointed the Chief Secretary and Advocate General of the state to represent the rivers. Everyday millions of gallons of untreated industrial waste is discharged into the Ganga. The Yamuna passes through Delhi which discharges 850 million gallons of raw sewage into the river everyday. The river is practically dead. India is not the only country with a problem of how to dispose of vast amounts of sewage. The US also has a similar problem. In St Louis, 13 billion gallons of sewage contaminated rain water flows into the Mississippi River after every rain storm. This happens 50 times a year. St Louis is to spend $4.7 billion over 23 years to build a system of huge sewers to collect rain water which will then be treated. $4.7 billion converts to about Rs 305 billion at today's exchange rate but since labor costs in India are low a similar system in Delhi should cost much less. There is no patent on sewers so we can easily copy what St Louis is doing. In St Louis authorities are demolishing deserted houses and converting the vacant land into rain gardens, which will soak up water and prevent a run off. That would be impossible in Delhi because of population pressure on land. How many men are employed to build the tunnels in St Louis? Just 30. In India there would be thousands with picks and shovels, resulting in poor construction. Paris started building sewers in the 13th century and today has over 1,300 miles of sewers, which have become a tourist attraction. London built its sewers in the 19th century. In the 1944 Warsaw uprising against invading Nazi troops sewers were used extensively by Jews and Polish resistance fighters. Apart from cleaning up our rivers treating raw sewage can give huge economic returns because the effluent can be used for agriculture. This is already happening in other parts of the world. Every year everyone in India prays for adequate monsoon rains and predictions of a normal monsoon lifts the stock market. Moving from sewers to roads, London roads have subtle messages for people with weak vision. The UK government also publishes a Highway Code which lays down guidelines for road users and is mandatory for passing driving tests. Banning sale of alcohol within 500 meters of highways will hardly save lives if no one knows how to drive. Its all out there. All we have to do is copy.

India seems to be the exact opposite of Germany.

"How Germany became the world's best economy", was analysed in an article by Prof Noah Smith. "In the late 2000s, even as the US economy boomed, Germany's unemployment rate exceeded 10%. But almost a decade after the global financial crisis, the country has found its legs. Unemployment is down. Labour force participation has risen steadily. Wages have gone up as well, outpacing the US since the 1990s and looking healthy in recent years." On top of that "Its fertility rate is low -- just 1.38 children per woman, even lower than Japan.""That means that a smaller base of German workers has to support a growing number of retirees." So why is the economy growing? One reason is that its exports are booming. Exports climbed 1.2% last year to 1.2 trillion Euros, generating a trade surplus of 253 billion Euros. The reason for that is that its currency, the Euro, is very weak which was pointed out by the previous Chair of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke in 2015. But Germany is not responsible for a weak Euro and cannot be labeled a 'currency manipulator' because the Euro is used by 19 countries and the European Central Bank sets interest rates. But Germany exports a lot to European countries as well, which also use the Euro. How? The reason is that the Euro operates as a handcuff preventing other countries from devaluing their currencies. Which means that German goods are the same price in Greece as they are in Germany whereas the Greek economy has been in recession for 8 years. The rupee, on the other hand, is getting stronger decimating whatever little exports we have. But it keeps inflation under control by reducing the price of imports, especially oil, so politicians love it. Bernanke also pointed out that Germany maintains a tight control on fiscal spending which reduces its imports and contributes to the trade surplus. Trade unions are another big factor in Germany's success. "The country has a very large state sector, generous welfare payments and a trade unionization rate almost twice that of the US." Besides robots are a big threat to jobs, but unemployment is low and wages are rising fast. Strangely, it is because German unions agree to keep wage increases down. This was negotiated by the previous Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroder as Agenda 2010, to reduce unemployment, and has been very successful. Compare that to India where wages rise by an average of around 10% every year even though retail inflation is below 5%. Rising wage costs will naturally cause a rise in prices. Germany has low fertility, low wage inflation, very high exports and a trade surplus, while we have high fertility, high wage inflation, low exports and very high trade deficit. Germany is rich, we are poor. What a surprise!

The same policies with different names will not give different results.

Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi's promise to make India Congress-mukt Bharat, or an India free of the Congress, the Congress party "has succeeded in making the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a mirror image of itself", wrote Anantha Nageswaran. How? To win the state election in UP the BJP promised to forgive all loans to farmers, just what the Congress did in 2008, to win parliamentary elections in 2009. Banks in UP will take a hit of over Rs 274 billion. Does it help farmers? In the short term, yes, but in the long term a study by a World Bank Group concluded,"The waiver had sent a wrong message to prudent and diligent borrowers who repaid on time. Further, the study found that after the loan burden was relieved farmers did not really invest in productivity or technology, and their yield did not necessarily improve. Their conditions remained the same and they were as vulnerable to the next farming failure as before." The danger of a loan waiver in UP is that farmers in every state are demanding the same. The BJP led government in Maharashtra is refusing to waive loans for its farmers, focusing on other schemes to increase income and reduce costs. To get round the difficulty the central government proposes to lend Rs 100,000 to 85 million rural households, which means farmers and farm laborers. This is apparently to protect rural folk from local moneylenders with their extortionate rates of interest. Laudable intentions. Politicians know that, since there is no collateral, people will not repay, so it is basically a straightforward handout of Rs 8.5 trillion of taxpayer money. Also people borrow from moneylenders in an emergency, for an illness, a wedding or a death, for which this money will be totally inadequate. Indians are adept at changing classifications to get around rules, wrote Jessica Seddon. Thus, when the Supreme Court banned sale of alcohol within 500 meters of national highways, thousands of kilometers of highways were changed to "local, municipal or district roads" by state governments. Why do politicians want to forgive loans when banks are struggling with bad loans of around Rs 7 trillion? Because, to solve the problem of bad loans the banks maybe forced to write off loans of large companies, some which owe in excess of Rs 1 trillion. That would be political suicide unless the government makes it look as if it is to help the poor. The Finance Minister has cleverly tried to pass the responsibility of loan waivers to the state governments but transferring debt from the central government books to state governments is just financial jugglery. If fiscal deficits of states were to increase it will add to the national debt burden and states will curtail investment spending, which will decrease growth rate. In its eagerness to control the entire nation the BJP is imitating the Congress in other ways as well. We know it ended very badly for the Congress, so we shall see what happens to the BJP. Newton's third law comes to mind.

Like Beauty, Truth depends on the eye of the beholder.

"We are told that we are living in a new and frightening era of post-truth," wrote Yuval Noah Harari. "Ever since the Stone Age, self-reinforcing myths have served to unite human collectives." "We are the only mammals that can cooperate with numerous strangers because only we can invent fictional stories, spread them around and convince millions of others to believe in them. Just try cramming 50,000 chimps into Yankee Stadium, Wall Street or the Vatican. Yet if you put 50,000 humans in Yankee Stadium, Wall Street or the Vatican, you will get extremely sophisticated networks of cooperation, provided all these humans happen to believe in the same stories about baseball, stock markets or Christianity." Truth can have many shades, depending on who you are, explains Devdutt Pattanaik, a mythologist. Recently, Mike Pompeo, Chief of the CIA called WikiLeaks a "hostile intelligence service" and said that Julian Assange is a "fraud" and "coward". Why such strong language? Because WikiLeaks revealed how the CIA is able to hack into ordinary appliances, such as smart television sets and smartphones, to spy on people all over the world. Their malware makes it seem as though Russians are doing the hacking. So it could have been the CIA hacking into Democratic Party emails that cost Hillary Clinton the election. The US also hacked into the Swift global banking system. Naturally, Assange feels he is thoroughly justified because,"...the CIA is only in the business of collecting information, kidnapping people, and assassinating people." So whose truth is the truth? Is Assange a hero or a villain, asks G Sampath. Vladimir Putin is a scheming villain plotting to destabilise the West, according to James Kirchik. "As Europe's political stability, social cohesion, economic prosperity and security are more threatened today than at any point since the Cold War, Russia is destabilizing the Continent on every front," he wrote. Europe has 50 countries, of which Russia is but one. Do the leaders of the other 49 bear no responsibility? Russians, on the other hand, see Putin as a saviour who has restored the country's prestige. Not one Western leader has an 82% popularity rating, like Putin. Barack Obama was a great president, according to Charlie Burton. He improved the economy, brought healthcare to millions of poor people through his Affordable Care Act and created a society more tolerant of minorities. But Piers Morgan sees Obama as a pretender who deported 3 million migrants, he dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone, killing thousands, and he did not close Guantanamo prison as he promised. How can there be post-truth if everything is a myth? It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Exciting people is a good way to win elections.

Manas Chakravarty wrote a tongue in cheek article on the amount of meat, fish and eggs consumed in India. The National Sample Survey Office figures for 2011-12 show that only 4% of rural and 5% of urban household eat cow or buffalo meat. How they are getting any such meat is a mystery because slaughter of cows is banned in most states of India, except in Kerala and some northeast states, including West Bengal. "The NSSO data says 6.4% of rural Indians eat mutton, 21.7% eat chicken, 26.5% consume fish, while 29.2% eat eggs. In urban India, it is much worse, with 10% indulging in goat meat/mutton, 21% tucking enthusiastically into fish, 27% succumbing to the charms of chicken and a huge 37.6%, more than a third of the urban population, eating eggs." The survey found that the number of people eating non-vegetarian food has risen from 56.7% in 1993-94 to 62.3% in 2011-12 but the amounts consumed are small. Why do Indians eat so little meat? Maybe due to religious restrictions because Haryana has lowest number of non-vegetarians at 19%, followed by Rajasthan at 20% and Punjab at 23%. Apparently Bangladesh has the lowest consumption of meat in the world, at 4 kg per person per year, followed by India at 4.4 kg. The US consumes the most at 120 kg per person per year. There is a crusade against slaughter of cows, inspired by politicians. Anyone transporting cattle, even if they are doing so legally, is attacked by vigilante cow protectors. One man was killed in Rajasthan recently. Cattle farmers sell off bulls and cows that have stopped giving milk, to reduce the cost of feeding unproductive cattle. If they are stopped from doing so they will stop keeping cows, and just keep buffaloes, and cows will disappear from India. Slaughterhouses have been shut in UP throwing millions out of work. India exported 1.314 metric tonnes of buffalo meat in 2015-16 earning Rs 267 billion and Rs 391 billion, or $5.8 billion, worth of leather goods. Along with attacks on eating meat there are relentless attacks on doctors. The government cannot provide healthcare for 1.3 billion people so it blames doctors for rising costs. The Prime Minister proposes to pass a law to force doctors to prescribe generic medicines. Apparently, doctors prescribe expensive brands because they get gifts from pharma companies. Most gifts are from dubious companies, multinationals rarely give gifts. A survey showed that margins on generics are much higher than on brands so chemists will sell only those that have the highest margins. But the reason doctors prescribe brands is because quality is guaranteed which maybe the difference between life and death. Such details do not matter to Indian politicians. As a result of political propaganda doctors are being assaulted everyday. Maybe, like cows, doctors will also disappear. Politicians and civil servants can get treated abroad at taxpayer expense. With companion.

How can we receive justice if courts have no time for serious cases?

Indian judges are increasingly stepping into the domain of the executive, says Anil Dharker. Some cases are serious while others are frivolous. In 2016 the Supreme Court 'revoked' President's rule in Uttarakhand for a couple of hours so that voting could take place about the legitimacy of the government. Since it was President's rule only the President had the right to suspend it and since judges are appointed by the President they should not overturn his decision. The frivolous cases are far too many. The Supreme Court now runs cricket in India by controlling the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Some more examples of frivolous verdicts: 'SC bars firecrackers in NCR', 'HC allows schools to hike fees' and 'HC to hear plan on penguin viewing'. One result of wasting time on frivolous cases is that there is little time for really serious cases. In 1997 a fire broke out in a cinema hall in Delhi, killing 59 people. Gross building violations and neglect of safety were discovered. The case dragged on for 20 years. The High Court awarded Rs 250 million as compensation and punitive fines of Rs 25 million on the Ansal brothers, who owned the hall. At first the Supreme Court halved the compensation and reduced punitive fines from Rs 25 million to 2.5 million. There was a public outcry, so in 2015 it increased the fine to Rs 300 million. Finally, this year one brother was sentenced to one year in prison, while the other brother was let off because he is 76 years of age. A clear signal to the rich that if they can drag a case for as long as possible they will escape the consequences of their crime. No wonder lawyers can charge ridiculous amount of fees. Ram Jethmalani presented a bill of Rs 38 million to defend Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, in a defamation case. Jethmalani claimed that he has given a discount to Kejriwal. The Supreme Court ruled that the national anthem should be played in all cinema halls and everyone should stand to show 'constitutional patriotism'. Since then people, including a man in a wheelchair, have been attacked for not standing during the anthem. Recently, the Supreme Court banned all sale of alcohol within 500 meters of national highways in the entire country. The judgement said that all establishments selling alcohol must move to beyond 500 meters, which is impossible because you cannot just shift hotels. Following the verdict many states have renamed highways as local streets. Shops and restaurants have changed their entrances so that customers have to travel more than 500 meters to enter. While the Supreme Court has time to adjudicate on trivial matters it has not bothered to establish a constitutional court for over 2 years to decide on the legitimacy of Aadhar, the biggest assault on privacy and personal freedom the world has ever seen. By interfering with executive matters the Supreme Court is allowing the rich and the powerful to do whatever they like. We are victims.

They do this work because of circumstances.

Why do Indians keep servants and what does it do to us, asks Aakar Patel. By doing our household chores domestic servants allow us more time for leisure, to pursue hobbies and to earn more. But Patel writes that the evidence does not support economic reasons for keeping servants because,"Even Indians with modest incomes keep them because physical work, specifically cleaning, is looked down upon in our culture." Maybe, but why are people doing such menial work and what would they do to earn a living if such work is not available? Working as a domestic help does not require any education or training because all women (most domestic help are women) do the same work at home. Patel writes that what it does is to "perpetuate, extend, solidify and validate our caste hierarchy". That is not true because a lot of upper caste people also do this work because of poverty. Why do women work as maids abroad when there are horrific stories of torture? Prof Dipankar Gupta wrote how thousands of upper caste people, some with postgraduate degrees, applied for posts of 'safai karmacharis', or sweepers, in UP. Not just Indians. The Queen advertised for someone to wash dishes at Buckingham Palace at a salary of 17,000 pounds. The average annual salary in Britain is 26,500 pounds, at minimum wage it would be 13,124 pounds per year. Perhaps, the reason why people employ domestic help is because they are available. Picks an shovels are still used to dig roads and humans are still cleaning filthy sewers, often dying in the process, even though it has been banned. These people are doing government work so why does the government employ them? Because if all work is shifted to machines millions of people would be out of work and starving. That is the tragedy of India -- that people are cheap. The only way to stop people from doing domestic work is to educate them but millions of children are learning nothing at school. There has actually been a fall in standards of reading and arithmetic. About 15% of children, especially girls, drop out of school. A lot of them cannot cope with lessons and lose interest. There is not much they can do to earn a living other than domestic work. Without any skills they lack bargaining power. Yet the number of women in the labor force is falling. Is it because men are earning more or because there are no jobs? What is unconscionable is ill treatment of our domestic workers. In 1870, 52% of women worked as domestic help in the US but now the number has fallen and wages have increased substantially because the country has got rich. Our economy has to grow, education has to improve and more jobs have to be created. Sadly, the World Bank predicts that 69% of jobs will be lost to automation. Hopefully new types of jobs will be created. Else domestic help are here to stay.

Everyone sending messages, but what do they mean?

The US dropped a MOAB, which stands for Massive Ordnance Air Blast, bomb on hill in Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan, killing over 90 ISIS fighters, who were hiding inside fortified caves. The MOAB, also known as GBU-43/B, is so huge that it has to be carried on a cargo plane, which are easy to shoot down, and its blast radius is around 1 mile, so the risk of collateral damage is enormous. That is why it has never been used in combat. Apparently, this was designed to send a message. But what message and to whom? According to some it was a message to North Korea and Iran not to mess around with nuclear weapons. To reinforce its message to North Korea the US started a surprise exercise at its airbase in Japan. Not to be outdone North Korea started to send a series of strange messages over short wave radio, such as 'No.69 on page 823, No.92 on page 467 and No.100 on page 957'. "If your opponent is of choleric temper, irritate him," Sun Tzu. North Korea held a massive parade to celebrate the 105th anniversary of Kim Il-Sung, the grandfather of present leader, Kim Jong-Un, showing its missiles, and followed it up with a missile test, which exploded within seconds of the launch. Was it deliberate? We can also create a big bang but we will not show you our real capability. In February, North Korea sent another message by assassinating Kim Jong Nam, the half brother of Kim Jong-Un, in Kuala Lumpur airport, using the banned nerve agent, VX. This may have been to show the world that it had the capability of producing deadly chemicals and anyone thinking of attacking the country should think twice. Or it could be a message to China that its support was welcome but it should not try to decide policy. Earlier this month the US fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at an airbase in Syria which was blamed for an alleged sarin attack on a village in the north. Although why Assad would use a chemical weapon when he is winning the war has not been explained. Russia and Iran were not amused and promised reprisals if there are any further attacks. There was no ambiguity about this message. In response to MOAB Russia boasts of having a thermobaric weapon, which it calls the 'father of all bombs'. It is one thing to bomb ISIS, which has no air force, but quite another to bomb North Korea or Iran, which is probably busy making its own nuclear warhead at its fortified underground facility in Fordow. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner, has declared that he will run again for president. This maybe a message that he would like to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago, just like Xi Jinping had or it maybe a message to liberals that he is still there. So many messages are terribly confusing. As Donald Trump said,"I don't know if it this sends a message; it doesn't make any difference if it does or does not." Scary. 

We have capitalism, socialism and communism. Mixed.

"Global inequality today is at a level last seen in the late 19th century -- and it is continuing to rise," wrote Prof Kaushik Basu. We have heard the figures. According to Oxfam, 8 richest people in the world own as much wealth as 3.6 billion people, or half the population of the world. "A US Senator, Bernie Sanders recently pointed out, the Walton family, which owns Walmart, now owns more wealth than bottom 42% of the US population." Extreme poverty, "defined as consumption of less than $1.90 per day" has declined from 42% in 1981 to below 11% in 2013. On the other hand,"Several million Americans -- black, white and Hispanic -- now live in households with per capita income of less than $2 per day," said Angus Deaton. The wealthy not only earn more but they pay less for services than the poor. "Thanks to frequent flyer programmes, wealthy travellers pay less for each mile they fly." "A study of Indian villages showed that the poor face systematic price discrimination, exacerbating inequality." At one time Rockefeller controlled 80% of the global oil market, today Google controls 90% of search market in Europe and 67% in the US. In the past they were known as 'Robber Barons', today they are the Silicon Sultans. They try to control markets by creating virtual monopolies. But, Henry Ford brought down the cost of a car from $950 in 1908 to $490 in 1914, thereby enabling working class Americans to own cars. He also increased wages to $5 per day so that more workers could afford to buy his cars. With 250,000 km of tracks the US has the largest rail network in the world. Google, Facebook and Twitter are free for the users, including the poor. "Wealthy citizens not only vote; they can influence elections through donations and other means," wrote Basu but then contradicted himself by writing,"As people struggle to hold on to their shrinking share of the pie, their anxiety has created a political opening for opportunistic populists, shaking the world order in the process." He is clearly referring to Donald Trump who wants to force companies to manufacture in the US by imposing a border tax on imports. So, the power of the poor lies in their numbers, to elect anyone who promises more handouts. This is what happened in Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves in the world, when people elected Hugo Chavez, but is unable to feed the people today. Communism expired with the end of the Soviet Union, socialism failed in Venezuela, and capitalism is under attack for concentration of wealth in a few hands. We in India are lucky. We have socialism, in that the government controls Air India, we have communism, in that it redistributes taxpayer money and crony capitalism, in that we have the best scams in the world. The rich concentrate capital, the poor divide capital by being too many. Reduce population.

Donald Trump: The fake Obama?

"Those who use sarin, can't escape justice," wrote Bobby Ghosh, seething with righteous indignation about the use of sarin on rebel troops in Khan Shaykhun. Russia and the Syrian government have said that a bomb hit a warehouse where rebels were storing chemical weapons. That has been dismissed as ludicrous by the Western disinformation 'news channels'. Yesterday, the Syrian government claimed that a US bomb hit an ISIS chemical dump in Deir al-Zor province releasing a toxic gas that killed hundreds of civilians. One US colonel called it 'misinformation'. Exactly. So what is sarin? It is an organophosphorus compound which inhibits the enzyme acetylcholinesterase and leads to the body being flooded with acetylcholine, which transmits signals between nerves and muscles. Are all such compounds banned from production? No. These are used commonly as insecticides and one is available in India as Tik 20. The symptoms of suicides by our farmers sound suspiciously similar. It is not impossible that a bomb struck a warehouse storing pesticides which then poisoned anyone in the vicinity. Children would be particularly susceptible. Not everyone is buying the story of Assad's use of chemical weapons. At least one British journalist is highly sceptical. The UK and US pushed for more sanctions against Russia but this was rejected by other G7 nations, including Europe and Canada. British scientists in Turkey have suddenly found traces of sarin from blood and urine samples taken from victims. In 2015 Turkey shot down a Russian plane returning from a bombing mission against ISIS, because it had apparently strayed into Turkish airspace for 17 seconds. Turkeys' President Erdogan gambled on Nato's commitment to defend an attack on any member but Russia did not seek revenge. Instead Putin imposed economic sanctions on Turkey, forcing Erdogan to go crawling to Moscow. But why does Britain want a war between Russia and the US? Because Britain has still not adjusted to the loss of its empire. Today it is just a tiny island of some 60 million people which would be completely irrelevant without US support. On 5 December 1962, then Secretary of State, Dean Acheson said in a speech,"Great Britain lost an empire and has not found a role.""Great Britain, attempting to be a broker between the United States and Russia, has seemed to conduct policy as weak as its military power."  Is it? The British Prime Minister is always the first to rush to Washington as soon as a new president in elected as Theresa May did in January, holding hands and repeating Churchill's bluff of a 'Special Relationship'. Britain started the canard about Trump's friendship with Putin. Why? Because if the US is friends with Russia it will be invincible and will discard Britain. Has Britain succeeded? Brilliantly. Trump and Putin are now almost enemies. Trump also gave his support for Nato. The US is not really independent, is it? Like India.

Emerging markets may never emerge.

A report from the International Monetary Fund warns that the the golden age is over for emerging markets, wrote Manas Chakravarty. "Together with a risk of protectionism in advanced economies and tighter financial conditions as US monetary policy normalizes, these changes make for a more challenging external environment for emerging market and developing economies going forward," said the report. The IMF gives two charts which show "how the contribution of emerging markets (EMs) to world growth increased from 18.2% during 1976-79 to 69.82% during 2010-15. The contribution of developing countries to world consumption rose even more markedly -- from 13.9% during 1976-79 to 72% in 2010-15." However, the share of EMs to both growth and consumption is going to fall slightly by 2021. Western people have been predicting an 'Asian Century' for years but that will probably never come, wrote A Gary Shilling. The benefits of globalization have reached maximum, export-led growth is no longer possible, population is contracting in Japan, while increasing in other countries, governance is poor and there is a risk of armed conflict. So what about India? Growth in India is mainly dependent on domestic demand but, following liberalization, exports of goods and services have risen from 6.8% of GDP in 1990-91 to 25% of GDP in 2013-14. In addition to problems similar to other emerging market countries the factor markets is distorted in India, wrote Ejaz Ghani. Factor market refers to goods and services bought and sold for production. "Firms in India differ enormously in performance compared to the US. The productivity of a US firm in the top decile is usually twice as high as that of a firm in the bottom decile in a typical manufacturing industry. This increase is five times more so in India. This suggests considerable factor market misallocation within India." The biggest problem is land. Land is not only essential to set up factories but also acts as collateral for borrowing capital. India has benefited enormously from globalization. Our share of the global GDP has doubled from 3.65% in 1990 to 7.32% in 2016. So, we have to take the IMF warning seriously. Private investment was falling, which meant a shortage of new jobs. On being elected prime minister, Narendra Modi decided to increase government spending in the hope that it would stimulate private investment, but that was not working, wrote Mihir Sharma. The Reserve Bank warned that increased government spending might increase fiscal deficit, in effect borrowing from future generations. Government spending, fiscal deficit and government debt are high compared to our peers. There seems to be a glimmer of hope that private investment may pick up, wrote Niranjan Rajadhyaksha. Any glimmer is welcome.

Easy to give in, but how do you stop?

The newly elected BJP government of UP has waived loans incurred by farmers at a cost of Rs 363 billion. "It is well-known that the rural economy and the agricultural sector in particular have been in distress for quite some time now," wrote Prof Himanshu. "The distress which started three years back worsened with two back-to-back droughts in 2014 and 2015. But the distress was also due to declining farm gate prices of a majority of crops since 2014." "According to the Situation Assessment Survey(SAS) of 2012-13, 52% of all farmers in the country have debts outstanding, with an average debt of Rs 47,000." That is a lot in India. "At all India level, 60% of these loans were from institutional sources while the remaining were accounted for by local money lenders and other sources. The data also shows that the dependence on non-institutional sources was much higher for small and marginal farmers with more than 50% of loans of this group coming from non-institutional sources." This explains a rise of 42% in suicides by farmers. Although loan waivers do help some farmers in the short term it is not the answer to long standing rural distress, wrote Roshan Kishore. Why was a loan waiver necessary when the government's data showed an increase in the area under cultivation following the good monsoon last year? The import duty on wheat was lowered from 25% to 10%, which shows that claims of increased production of wheat was wrong, wrote Himanshu. Also fertilizer sales have been dropping since 2013 which is at odds with claims of increased production. Importing wheat lowers its price in India, leading to decrease in income of farmers who are unable to meet their costs. Loan waiver rewards defaulters and punishes those who repay their loans, leading to an increase in defaults, with the expectation of more waivers in the future. Besides loan waiver in UP will only increase the pressure on chief ministers of other states to do the same for their farmers as well. Indian banks are already burdened by trillions of rupees in bad loans and this will only add to the pain, although the government has promised to pay the banks in three stages. So why do it? Because,"Unhappy farmers worry politicians," wrote R Sukumar. The Vajpayee government lost in 2004, despite a growing economy, because of lingering effects of a drought in 2002. Modi is not going to take any chances, never mind the cost. No one had heard of Naxalbari, a small village in West Bengal, until 1967 when farmers rose up in revolt. Policemen are still being killed by Maoists inspired by that event. India is a 'do something' nation where politicians want to show that they are doing something, to win elections, wrote R Jagannathan. Even if that something has been shown not to work. Besides it costs nothing to waste taxpayer money.

People want designer babies, armies want cyborgs.

In Vitro Gametogenesis, or IVG, is a new technique that allows "not only infertile couples but post-menopausal women, gay couples, single people and groups of more than two individuals (whether male, female, or a mix of the two) to have their own children", writes Shruti Sharma. Along with gene editing technology, such as CRISPR, "This will not only help parents select the best set of genes, thus creating their version of a perfect 'child' with 'vanity' traits such as height, enhanced muscular strength, fair skin tone or eye colour and even intelligence." There are dangers because "This leaves the embryo vulnerable to genetic diseases, leaving future generations to suffer from the error." Three-parent babies are already a reality, in which diseased mitochondrial DNA is removed from the mother's egg and replaced with healthy DNA from a donor's egg. Britain has passed a law approving three parent babies. Adults have right to produce as many babies as they want and the UN charter advises governments to assist people to plan the size of their families. That means pedophiles, drug dealers and murderers can have babies if they are out of prison. Babies cannot choose their parents and have no right not to be born. Gender discrimination is a special concern in India. "Instead of having to determine gender once the embryo is conceived, parents could choose to engineer the same prior to conception and evade the law." The cost of the procedure will restrict its availability to very few in a poor country like India and those who have the money can easily go to a specialist abroad. India is planning to ban commercial surrogacy and portable ultrasound machines are banned in several states to prevent gender selection of babies. Any procedure misused for selecting the sex of babies will probably be banned in the future. However, the debate on gender selection has become highly emotional in India, based on wrong interpretation of figures. Sex ratios are calculated as the number of boys to the number of girls at birth, which goes up to 107 boys to 100 girls. According to the World Health Organization the normal ratio is 105 boys for every 100 girls. This is natural because mortality is higher among boys, so that the ratio becomes 1:1 by the time they become adults. In India, on the other hand, the government calculates the number of girls per 1000 boys and naturally the number is lower. This is cited as proof of gender selection. But, that is wrong. According to the normal ratio globally the number of girls should be between 934 to 952 girls per 1000 boys. A census in 2011 showed that the ratio girls to boys is indeed very bad in northern and western states but is good in eastern and southern states, some states having ratios much higher than expected. Designer babies are not the danger, cyborgs are and they are coming. Humans like to play god. We have nuclear weapons, don't we?

Why use nerve gas in a war he is winning? Who gains from US-Russia war?

More than 80 people were killed in a suspected chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, a town in Syria. Local people, who are rebels fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad, and Western nations immediately blamed bombing by government warplanes. The Syrian government, backed by Russia, said that its planes had hit a rebel ammunition dump where the rebels were storing chemical weapons. In situations of this sort what the US says is accepted as gospel truth while it blithely continues to use white phosphorus in Iraq. After lying strenuously the US was forced to admit a massacre of civilians using white phosphorus in Fallujah. Depleted uranium will cause birth defects in Iraq for centuries to come. That is not to condone using sarin against civilians but the US punished Assad by launching 59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles at Shayrat airbase near Homs, from where the planes were supposed to have taken off. At $1 million per missile this was a pretty expensive fireworks display. Replacing them will surely cost more because prices must have gone up. Did the strikes work? Apparently government planes were bombing the same town, taking off from the airport the next day. Russia condemned the attack as an act of aggression against a sovereign state. So what is going on in Syria? It started in 2011 with protests against the Assad government, inspired by protests in Tunisia and Egypt, which were known as Arab Spring. Hosni Mubarak was deposed in Egypt, Gaddafi was killed in Libya and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia sought refuge in Saudi Arabia. Assad was having none of it and responded ferociously against the protesters. He was advised by Iran which crushed its own protests brutally in 2009 when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was alleged to have stolen the election for president. The opposition leaders, who supposedly won the election, are still under house arrest. Nobody would dare to meddle directly with Iran but in Syria Gulf states, Turkey and the US provided money and arms to the rebels while Iran helped Assad by sending in Hezbollah, a Shia militia, from adjoining Lebanon and Russia helped by bombing the rebels. The mystery is why the Western nations did not kill Assad as they killed Muammar Gaddafi in Libya? It maybe because they needed Iran's help and Shia militia to fight ISIS in Iraq. In 2014, 30,000 Iraqi soldiers guarding Mosul ran away from 1,500 ISIS fighters, complaining of lack of air cover. They seem to have made a habit of running away even though they are heavily armed. Why would Assad use chemical weapons in a war he is winning, when it is sure to invite reprisals? The glib Western answer is that he feels he is invincible, which is rubbish because Assad is not an imbecile. Did some other country release nerve gas under cover of bombing? Who gains from a war between the US and Russia? Interesting.

If money makes people happy what about black money?

Is happiness directly linked with accumulation of wealth, asks Prof Sumit Mishra. India was ranked a lowly 122 out of 155 countries in the World Happiness Index, below Pakistan and China. 'Pursuit of happiness' is written into the Declaration of Independence of the US but we Indians have no such promise from our leaders. Yet when ranked for optimism India came second with a score of 73%, just behind China with 74%. USA came 13th with just 6%, Finland and Denmark, which were near the top in happiness, were 9 and 10 in optimism. Why? Is it because when you are happy you are afraid of unexpected tragedies in the future while if you have nothing you have nothing to lose and so can dream of better things to come? One paper from Harvard showed that "reported happiness monotonically increases with income, and decreases during economic shocks such as a recession". Which means the richer you are the happier you will be. The paper also showed that "happiness is strongly correlated to GDP across countries, and that these effects are persistent over time". Rich countries are happier than poor ones. Stevenson and Wolfers found,"The relationship between well-being and income is roughly linear-log and does not diminish as incomes rise. If there is a satiation point, we are yet to reach it." A billionaire is happier than a millionaire. However, Easterlin makes the point that China is less happy than it was in 1990. Uma Shashikant wrote that money cannot buy you happiness, but lack of money makes you miserable. She recommends charity to give a sense of fulfillment. In India, the poor are much more generous than the rich, wrote Prof Dipankar Gupta. The poor have friends, while the rich have sycophants. A survey in Britain found that religious people are much more contented but other factors, such as age, were also important. On the other hand, the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, causing untold misery, are between two branches of the same religion. "I'll keep saving people as long as I'm alive.....saving lives has become my religion," said Rajendra Sahni after pulling people out of the Ganga in darkness after a boat capsized. He is happy indeed. However, economics still matters. There are nearly half a million illegal immigrants from India in the US, attracted by its wealth, and Indians obtain visas to Schengen countries to enter the UK illegally, called "donkey flights". At least one million men from Tamil Nadu are working abroad, leaving their wives to bring up their children alone. There must be millions more from other states. In conclusion, many things combine to make us happy but "at least for the developing world, lies in the pursuit of wealth and material well being..." That explains why Indians love black money. Makes them happy.