Tuesday is our Independence Day, the day in 1947 India rid itself of over a thousand years of slavery under Muslim and British invaders. On this day the Prime Minister lectures the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort, schools force students to sing patriotic songs and people treat it as just another holiday. The US also celebrates its Independence Day on 4 July, when it got rid of British rule, but their celebrations are the exact opposite of what happens in India. There the people celebrate with parades, barbeques and fireworks. Why the difference? Because, in the US, the people own their nation, their flag and their anthem, while here the politicians own us. The US has strict laws regarding its flag but the people make clothes in the same colors and draw it on the road because they love it, here we would get arrested. Ruchir Sharma analyses "Why politics has nothing to do with economics in India". People are voting against incumbents, even those who have improved the economies of their states. The Indian economy is not doing well under Modi but stock prices keep going up. A lot of that maybe because of huge foreign investment in Indian stocks and bonds because of excess money in richer countries. During the Congress government stocks of politically connected companies were very high but now "dubious companies are hard to find among the stocks with the best performance..." "Bad billionaires come from corruption-prone industries like oil and real estate, good ones come from industries like tech and healthcare that tend to be relatively free of political influence and make the most impact on productivity." Global oil prices are down and part of the reason why real estate has fallen maybe because the economy is weak. Modi's popularity depends on his ability to persuade the masses that the middle and upper classes are responsible for the malaise in the country because they are all corrupt and his policies, like demonetization and biometric identity cards, are hitting them. Only 28.2 million people filed tax returns this year, 48 million filed tax returns in 2014-15. The number of people in employment has fallen from 408.4 million to 405.4 million but the number of people looking for work has also fallen from 25.9 million to 13.7 million, which means people have given up looking for work. Rajmohan Gandhi wrote that the hyper-nationalism is different from the nationalism in 1947, the year we got independent. That is only natural. At that time our leaders understood the British tactic of divide and rule and united against it. But now the people are divided because they do not own the nation. They do not feel a part of it.
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