A good slogan, but hard to act on.

Even as 2019 was about to be born, Senator Elizabeth Warren announced that she is running for president in 2020. Like the Clintons and the Obamas she is a lawyer by profession and has taught at Harvard, like Barack Obama did. By announcing first she hopes to raise a lot of money which may discourage other Democrats from challenging her in primaries. Warren is seen to be on the left of her party, supporting a rise in minimum wage, higher spending on infrastructure and holding banks and insurance companies to account. We do not know as yet whether Bernie Sanders, popular with young people because of his socialist policies, will support her or challenge her. Her claim to Native American ancestry has been confirmed or disproved by DNA tests, depending on whether a person is Republican or Democrat supporter. The test apparently showed that there is a strong probability that she had a Native American ancestor 6 to 10 generations ago. The conclusion becomes even more murky because her DNA was compared with indigenous people of Mexico, Peru and Colombia but not Native Americans who are suspicious of DNA tests. "Corruption is poisoning our democracy," she said. "Politicians look the other way while big insurance companies deny patients life-saving coverage, while big banks rip off consumers and while big oil companies destroy this planet." While November 2020 is far away, May is only 5 months from today when a general election must be held in India and every politician is dreaming of becoming the leader of the gang. Prime Minister Modi claims to be the 'chowkidar', which means a 'guard', and came to power promising to get rid of corruption. He claimed that the Congress looted Rs 12 trillion in the ten years of its rule, forgetting to mention that he has looted Rs 11 trillion in just 4.5 years by raising taxes on fuel. Since fiscal deficit is already 115% of the whole year's deficit we don't know what happened to the money. His party, the BJP, has the highest number of elected representatives with serious criminal charges against them. When the Supreme Court suggested barring criminals from standing for elections his "Attorney General KK Venugopal vehemently opposed the suggestion, saying the court cannot legislate when Parliament was seized of the issue". Since 34% of MPs have serious criminal charges against them, while there are others we still don't know about, they have very little incentive to take any serious action. The Parliament had no trouble passing a bill exempting foreign contributions from scrutiny, without debate. Opposition politicians accuse Modi of using investigative agencies against opponents and some states are refusing to cooperate with the Central Bureau of Investigation. Anti corruption has turned out to be a slogan with most institutions being weakened during Modi's tenure, wrote PB Mehta. Anti corruption is an attractive slogan, but how do you implement it against your own party? That is the nub. Happy New Year to everyone.

Objections of a clown.

A prize-winning international musical clown David Konyot wrote a letter to the editor of The Guardian newspaper in Britain objecting to the comparison between his profession and the workings of the British Parliament. Use of the word "circus" to describe chaotic scenes in the House of Commons was inappropriate because, "Unlike the comparison, the press constantly draws, a clown and indeed a circus must be orderly and efficient to work properly. And in the case of the circus, it takes teamwork -- which is the opposite of the impression the press gives." At least you can hear what MPs say in the British Parliament but in India no work is done for days on end because of slogan shouting by the opposition. The British parliament has Prime Minister's Questions where the Prime Minister (PM) has to answer questions asked by members but in India the PM is under no such obligation. Any attempt at comparing politicians with clowns or any other honorable profession, considered derogatory, will be swiftly punished as sedition under Section 124a of the Indian Penal Code, enacted by the British to subjugate Indians to their tyranny. British PM Theresa May has brokered a deal with the European Union which has been condemned both by those who want to remain and those who want to leave at any cost. "The withdrawal agreement is less a carefully crafted diplomatic compromise and more the result of incompetence of a high order," wrote former Governor of the Bank of England (BOE) Mervyn King. "it is time to think again, and the first step is to reject a deal that is the worst of all worlds." King thinks that a no deal Brexit would be better and rejects the assessment by the BOE that it would be disastrous for the British economy. "It (the BOE) warned that Britain would face the deepest economic slump since World War II if the country left without a deal. In the worst case scenario, GDP would contract by 8 percent within a year, the pound would drop by 25 percent, property prices would plunge, and unemployment would rise by 7.5 percent." Not just the BOE, but the government's own study predicted that the GDP would contract by as much as 10.7 percent over 15 years in the worst case scenario. A no-deal Brexit will mean a sudden end to the agreement which makes Britain a member of the European Union which means rules for travel of citizens, of trade and of security cooperation will have to be rewritten. Fearing a heavy defeat, May postponed a parliamentary vote on Brexit to the middle of January, insisting that her deal is the best that can be had, that the alternative is no-deal, which is too awful to contemplate, and that a second referendum will be a betrayal of democracy, but her critics say that she is trying to terrify opponents into accepting a bad deal. In India, there is no such debate. Our exalted PM suddenly withdrew high denomination currency on 8 November 2016, which badly hit the poor but there is no question of apologizing. Wish our government was a circus. It would be so much better.

Why clean if it does not earn votes?

Travelling through 3 international airports at Bengaluru, Goa and Chennai in India Prof K Bajpai discovered that standards are extremely poor compared to airports in other countries. Toilets were dirty and there was no toilet paper at everyone of these airports. This despite paying some of the highest taxes in the world. Unless we reduce taxes on air travel the industry will not be able to grow, said Director General of International Air Transport Association, A de Juniac. Although, passenger numbers have been growing by double digits for 50 months, which should increase profits, all our airlines are reporting losses because of competition and taxes on fuel at 35-40%. Even Indigo, which caries the largest number of passengers, reported a loss of Rs 6.52 billion in the last quarter, compared to a profit of Rs 5.516 billion in the same quarter last year, even though it increased its revenue by 17% due to larger number of passengers. Passenger services have been brought under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) which has reduced the amount of tax from Rs 154 to Rs 137.5 on a ticket costing Rs 2,000. At a GST rate of 5% the tax should amount to Rs 100. Rs 137.5 means that the tax has been levied on Rs 2750, which means that we are paying GST on fuel charge which includes tax on fuel. If aviation fuel is also brought under GST airlines will save Rs 11 billion every year but states are reluctant because they will lose revenue. The government has made it mandatory for petrol pumps and service stations along highways to offer clean toilets for women and men separately. The larger establishments employ cleaners who clean WCs and swab the floor throughout the day. Why airports cannot do the same is a mystery, especially when they are earning huge amounts from charges. Around 27 million passengers used Bengaluru Airport this year, 19 million used Chennai and 7 million used Goa Airport. Is it because cleaners at airports become government employees and hence do not need to work? "Our airports are symptomatic of public facilities throughout the country -- shoddy, dirty, unfriendly an frequently unsafe -- that mock ordinary citizens," wrote an angry Bajpai. Only 2-3% of Indians fly so these are no ordinary citizens. Just as taxpayers are regularly accused of evading taxes and new laws are devised to snare them. According the the Finance Minister 37 million Indians filed income tax returns in 2015-16, out of which 20 million traveled abroad and 12.5 million new cars were sold in the same financial year. If both husband and wife are working it is possible to buy a new car with bank financing. 85% of sales of one Maruti dealer was financed by bank loans. Traveling abroad maybe cheaper because of lower taxes in other countries and farmers do not pay taxes even if very rich. Perhaps, the minister should see how many of his colleagues list themselves as farmers so as not to pay taxes. Swacch Bharat is great photo op for the masses. Who cares about airports?

We know its there, but what to do?

A paper in 2001 by G Imbens, B Sacerdote and D Rubin showed that "people tend to spend unexpected windfalls. Looking at lottery winners approximately 10 years after winning showed they saved just 16 cents of every dollar won," wrote JL Zagorsky. People receiving a large inheritance or a windfall "quickly lost half the money through spending or poor investments" and studies have found that "winning the lottery generally didn't help financially distressed people escape their troubles and only postponed the inevitable bankruptcy. One found that a third of lottery winners go bankrupt." A woman named Viv Nicholson is famous in Britain for saying that she would "spend,spend,spend" after her husband won 152,319 pounds in 1961 on football pools. She became an alcoholic, lost all her money and eventually died of dementia. Her life story inspired a play on television and a musical. This goes against teaching of the great Milton Friedman who wrote that people do not increase spending because of a windfall but on expectation of future earnings, called permanent income hypothesis (PIH). The mega-rich use concierge services who arrange any experience, for a fee. One Steve Sims "has arranged everything from a private dinner for six at the feet of Michelangelo's David at the Galleria dell'Academia in Florence, Italy -- with diners serenaded by famed Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli -- to the tours of Titanic via Mir submersibles. But when a potential client asked if he arrange for him to detonate a nuclear warhead, Sims refused." One Middle-Eastern buyer demanded a "24-carat gold and platinum bathtub with 250,000 crystals" at a cost of 10,000 pounds. "The wealthy would probably prefer we stay in the dark about how rich they are," wrote GB Manzon Junior, but it is not just about how much they earn. "Wealth, on the other hand, is an aggregation, affected not only by current income but earnings accumulated in previous years and by previous generations." "How much wealth someone has is also a better measure of their quality of life and opportunities." People have no idea how much money the super-rich really possess. People in Britain and France overestimate the amount of money owned by the rich, while India and Russia tend to underestimate their total wealth. While no one desires absolute equality people want inequality to be less. This may seem as envy, "But resentment of the super-rich is probably not simply envy. It likely has to do with notions of fairness," wrote N Smith. This desire for fairness was promised by communism, with disastrous results as millions died, wrote Prof S Rajagopalan. So many research papers mean that people have no idea as to how bring a dollar billionaire closer to a penniless menial laborer. Perhaps, it is best to let them spend it all. At least the money will circulate. 

An upside down country.

"The data, last published by the National Crime Records Bureau in 2015, actually shows that India's farmers and other agricultural workers are less likely to kill themselves compared to other sections of society. Also, the poorest agricultural workers in India are less likely to kill themselves compared to more fortunate farmers, challenging the correlation between poverty and suicide," wrote M Joseph. "A total of 12,602 persons involved in farming sector -- 8,007 farmers-cultivators and 4,595 agricultural labourers -- committed suicide during 2015, accounting for 9.4% of total suicide victims (133,623) in the country," the government informed the Supreme Court in 2017. Which means that less than 10% of all suicides are farming related, and is not related to poverty, even though agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for 58% of the population. Which makes farmers the most important vote bank. "'Farmer suicide' has the qualities of of stupendously successful fake news," says Joseph. Perhaps, it is a good thing because although a majority of people are surviving on farming it contributes only 15.4% of GDP, showing that the growth in our economy is bypassing them. Farmer suicides are higher in richer states like Maharashtra and Andhra than in poorer states like Bihar and UP, wrote S Ravi. "Overall too, India's farmers are doing far better than many realize." "They now account for 45 percent of the fast-moving consumer goods sector in India." Actually, four times as many housewives commit suicide in India every year, but there is no discussion about that, wrote S Biswas. While married people are less likely to commit suicide in western countries, in India, " Nearly 70% of people who took their lives in 2001, for example, were married -- 70.6% of the men and 67% of the women." But, just as among farmers, suicide rate is higher among economically better off women, while it was low among women who lived in traditional extended families. "We found that female literacy, the level of exposure to the media and smaller family size, all perhaps indicators of female empowerment, were correlated with higher suicide rates for women in these age groups." According to a study published in The Lancet, India accounts for 37% of all suicides among women. The Lancet paper claimed that there were 257,000 suicides in India in 2016, of which 94,380 were women, whereas according to the National Crime Records Bureau there were 133,000 suicides, of which 42,088 were women. Even if we take the lower rates, 1% of the population is committing suicide every year in India. A large number of Indians live and work abroad. Vast majority of them would be economically better off and would be living in nuclear families. It would be interesting to see the rate of suicide among them. That would indicate if life in India so wretched that middle class people do not think it is worth living? Such a study would enrage our politicians. Certainly worth it. 

We hope, even though things stay the same.

With 2018 winding down experts are turning into astrologers to try and predict what 2019 will bring.
"A recession in 2019 in the US will neither be surprising nor undesirable," wrote Prof VA Nageswaran. "it will slow down because, inevitably, excesses build up over a long expansion. They have to be eliminated." However, the dollar will remain strong because "the dollar is a countercyclical currency". Emerging markets will find it tough to cope with a strong dollar and a drop in US imports as it goes into recession. "In addition, emerging economies have to contend with economic and political turbulence in China," China is facing a pushback because "It wrongly believes that the decline of the West has begun and that the time has come for it to declare its arrival on the world stage as the true Middle Kingdom." "These forecasts are, for the most part, exercises in futility," sniffs B Ritholtz. He cites Bitcoin, gold and the stock market to show how wrong predictions were. David Stockman has predicted a stock market crash every year since 2012 and is predicting one for 2019 as well. Dow Jones dropped by 653 points on Christmas eve and the S&P 500 is in bear territory, so Stockman maybe right this time. Inequality is growing and the richest 1% is predicted to hold 64% of the total wealth of the world by 2030. As inequality keeps growing so the anger of those left behind will also grow. The US has a large middle class but 92% of women and 82% of men earn less than Rs 10,000 per month in India.  Hunger is rising in the world, including in India, even as food prices have been falling. If the US does go into recession and the rate of growth falls in China, prices of commodities will remain depressed. The poor who work in these sectors will be hit. There are 23 billion chickens in the world at any one time and 65.8 billion were slaughtered in 2014. But it is the way the birds are kept and transported before slaughter that is unbearably cruel. As the population multiplies in poor countries so the cruelty to animals will be justified as necessary to feed the poor. As poor people multiply there will be disputes about whether to use land for more housing or for growing food. We think that last year was the worst but next year will be no better, wrote J Tolentino in 2017. There is nothing special about 1st January, except hope for a better future, which we cannot control anyway. There can be a major conflict anywhere in the world, which will displace more people and increase poverty. Immortality is impossible, so human beings will get old and die. "In the long run we are all dead," wrote John Maynard Keynes. True, but who will care for us as we get old? We live on hope.

It has worked for 70 years, so why not continue?

KC Rao's overwhelming victory, winning 88 out of 119 seats, in the assembly elections in Telengana this month has been attributed to the large number of social schemes started by him. Accepting that "the state is responsible for maintaining market efficiency as well as equity", Prof S Mundle analyses "freebies, subsidies and, income supplements" distributed by Rao "eschewing emotional indignation about the selfishness of ambitious politicians". Apart from central schemes, like MGNREGA and 2-bedroom apartments for Rs 750,000 each, Rao presented Rs 100,000 as wedding gift to women, ordered ambulance service to transport pregnant women to hospital for delivery, and paid an income supplement of Rs 4,000 per acre per crop to farmers. Mundle finds, "None of these schemes distort the market or impair market efficiency." Some improve equity, others improve productive capacity, while "All of them contribute to the spending power of the disadvantaged with multiplier effects on local incomes in Telengana's rural sector." Handing money to the poor is nothing new. In 2003, President Lula da Silva started 'Bolsa Familia' which pays mothers for every child provided the children attend school and have regular health check ups. When Dilma Rousseff became president she increased minimum wage, reduced prices of food, fuel and bus fares and forced state-run banks to lend more. Brazil went into a deep recession and is beginning to limp out of it today. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela was even more extreme, combining handouts with price controls. Today inflation is at 83,000% and people are fleeing the country in search of food. Inflation will soon reach 1 million percent. Politicians of all parties are resorting to loan waivers to farmers in, what Prof A Gulati calls, "a race to the bottom". Total loans to the agricultural sector is Rs 12-13 trillion. Obviously, such a huge amount cannot the waived because of the disastrous effect on fiscal deficit. He recommends a program like Telengana but giving more money to farmers with smaller farms. Any child can understand that giving handouts to the poor helps them in many ways, but do they work long term? Why are 38.4% of children stunted and 21% wasted after 70 years of socialist charity? Do handouts increase the number of the poor by encouraging more childbirth? Even in the US, where unemployment is at the lowest rate of 3.7% in 50 years, about 76.4 million people, or 44.4% of workers, earn too little to pay federal income tax. In 2016 41 million people in the US were living in poverty. The biggest danger of handouts is that it allows politicians to throw taxpayer without any accountability, under the cover of helping the poor. It may lead to severe problems, as Brazil and Venezuela found out. They are great for winning elections. Like Rao did.

A convertible rupee is a bad idea, it needs protection.

India's foreign currency reserves have fallen to $393.12 billion after reaching a high of $426.028 billion in April of this year. The country's reserves with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also declined. Why when the rupee has become stronger in recent weeks, rising to 69.85 after dropping to near 75 to the dollar? Reasons why the rupee is stronger is that the price of crude oil has fallen to below $55 a barrel after hitting $85 a barrel and retail inflation dropped to 2.33% in November. Normally the Reserve Bank (RBI) sells dollars to support the rupee to stop it from falling precipitously but why did our reserves drop by $613.9 million in the week to December when the rupee was gaining strength? Even though India attracted inward remittances of $80 billion, the highest in the world, according to the World Bank.  Foreign funds have sold Indian securities to the tune of Rs 1 trillion in the first 10 months of this year despite our economy growing at 7.1% in the second quarter, after growing at a blistering 8.2% in the first. Some Indians believe in a strong rupee to bring down the cost of imports, especially oil, to control inflation and allow the RBI to reduce interest rate. S Bhatia recommends a fully convertible rupee, which would allow more foreign inflows into our bonds and stocks, and make the rupee stronger. China had a trade surplus of $442.4 billion in 2017 and had reserves of over $3 trillion in October 2018. India, on the other hand, doubled its trade deficit to $87.2 billion in the last financial year and our reserves are about 13% of those of China. China's yuan was included as the fifth reserve currency in the IMF's basket of Special Drawing Rights and yet China is restricting capital outflows to slow the fall in the value of the yuan. How the RBI will halt a run on the rupee, as happened in Iran when its currency fell from 39,000 to the dollar last year to 190,000, before strengthening to 135,000 in October 2018, is a mystery. At 14% of GDP, India's shadow banking sector is the main source of commercial lending, as public sector banks try to shrink their non-performing assets and the government grapples with a rising fiscal deficit, wrote A Mukherjee. Bank credit grew at 13% between October 2017 and October 2018, wrote A Krishnan, but services cornered most of it. "For instance, for every Rs 100 of new bank loans added, it was services which bagged Rs 50, while industry received just Rs 10. Out of the Rs 10 advanced to industry, large firms cornered Rs 8.30, while medium and small enterprises had to make do with just Rs 1.70." The government is to lend up to Rs 10 million in less than an hour to small and medium industries which have been starved of lending. The rupee is a national asset. It needs protection from the government. 

What if Trump is planning something?

A few days back US President Donald Trump stunned everyone by ordering a complete pullout of US troops from Syria. Trump claimed that ISIS has been defeated in Syria so there is no reason to stay any longer. One day later Secretary of Defence James Mattis resigned citing difference of opinion with Trump. "While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies," he wrote. He resigned, "Because you have a right to a secretary of defence whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position." Trump's withdrawal from Syria is the same sort of mistake that Obama made when he withdrew troops from Iraq. "Today Islamic State is much stronger than it was when Obama withdrew from Iraq in 2011," wrote MA Thiessen. The IS still has around 30,000 fighters and is more dangerous than Al Qaeda. The US is also to withdraw 7,000 troops from Afghanistan which will still leave behind another 7,000. The British who indulge in their delusion of being a world power, while being protected by US soldiers, are naturally dismayed. Trump's opponents say that Russia, Iran and Bashar al-Assad will be winners. Getting troops out of Syria is the right decision, wrote PR Pillar. "To keep US troops in Syria now implies a forever war, with no realistic ending imaginable." If Russia is an enemy and if ISIS has 30,000 fighters then it makes eminent sense to let them fight each other, weakening both. ISIS attacked two Russian bases in Syria with makeshift drones armed with explosives. The Russians tracked down and killed the terrorists behind the attack. The same logic applies to Iran and the Hezbollah. With the US gone they will have to face all the Sunni forces lined up against them. What Turkey does will be interesting, Will President Erdogan attack the Kurds in Northern Syria and allow ISIS to regroup, we do not know. Trump thinks that Turkey will easily mop up the last remnants of ISIS in Syria. That will give a clear victory to Assad and Russia. In the Middle East there are no friends. Relations depend on the degree of enmity. Trump wants to tighten sanctions on Iran's oil industry so that the regime collapses. So far he has allowed waivers to India and China to import oil from Iran but those waivers run out in 6 months. Iran has vowed to stop all oil movements through the Strait of Hormuz if sanctions are tightened. That may mean all out war with Arab nations, led by Saudi Arabia. Will the US support the Arabs by bombing Iranian positions? Iran will retaliate through its proxy, the Hezbollah. In any event it is better to get US troops out of harm's way. What if Trump has a plan in mind? Scary.

Murderer has a right to life, says Delhi High Court.

A few days back the Delhi High Court found Sajjan Kumar guilty of inciting mobs to kill Sikhs in 1984 after the murder of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi was assassinated on 31 October 1984 by her two Sikh bodyguards. A witness saw Sajjan Kumar telling a mob, "Sikhs killed our mother, kill them." Why has it taken 34 years to convict him? Because he was a member of the Congress Party which put him up as candidate for the Lok Sabha in 1991 and 2004, both of which he won with large majorities. After his conviction he resigned from the Congress Party. Having convicted and sentenced him to life imprisonment the Court gave him until 31 December to surrender. Why? Why has he not been arrested and taken to prison in handcuffs? To make a mockery of the judgement Kumar asked for an extension of 30 days to settle family affairs and to spend some time with his dear ones. 34 years were not enough time it seems, when you are a politician. It maybe because the Supreme Court is closed from 17 December to 1 January after which he can apply for a stay on the High Court order and be out on bail. Cases take decades to resolve, 34 years in Kumar's case, so he will probably die of old age by the time the final decision is handed down. HKL Bhagat, another accused, died in 2005, but Jagdish Tytler is still enjoying life. While Kumar is spending  quality time with his family, former Youth Congress leader Sushil Sharma was released from prison by the Delhi High Court after serving 23 years for murdering his wife, dismembering her body and trying to burn the pieces in a tandoor. Sharma did everything to disrupt his conviction by complaining of chest pain and pretending to faint in court. The Court had upheld a death sentence awarded to Sharma by a trial court in 2003 but this was commuted to life in prison by the Supreme Court in 2013. In commuting the death sentence the Supreme Court said that life sentence must mean life but the High Court used the same judgement to release Sharma. The court found that Sharma is now ready to rejoin society. The release of Sharma has set other killers salivating at the prospect of early release for everybody. Manu Sharma, murderer of Jessica Lal is son of Congress leader Venod Sharma. Santosh Kumar Singh raped and murdered Priyadarshini Mattoo. At his trial the judge found that his father, Inspector General JP Singh transferred himself over to Delhi to interfere with the investigation. At least public pressure forced our justice system to convict these murderers but Sunanda Pushkar's murder has not been solved, and probably never will be. All politicians in India are James Bond. They have license to kill.

What does it portend when women shave their heads?

In 2017 it seemed that China would dominate the world with "an irresponsible and ignorant American President" and the roll out of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) "looked set to cement Chinese ambitions globally", wrote K Raslan. But, 2018 turned out to be a bad year for China. Why? "First off, the Belt and Road has failed. It has become the object of relentless criticism, if not ridicule..." "Indeed, they are mired in corruption, incompetence and skewed to China's strategic interests. In short: Others pay, China benefits." "Meanwhile, cracks are emerging in China's economy and the superpower is looking less invincible." "At the same time dissent amongst China's policymakers is also growing." Perhaps to show its defiance of world opinion China has turned BRI into a military program in Pakistan. At the beginning of the year, "the Pakistani air force and Chinese officials were putting the final touches on a secret proposal to expand Pakistan's building of Chinese military jets, weaponry and other hardware". As wages rise and an aging population creates labor shortage China has set out a plan, known as 'Made in China 2025', to become a world leader in advanced technology, like robotics, Artificial Intelligence and biotechnology. Unfortunately, in its hurry for world hegemony, China is resorting to hacking to steal research data from other nations and to forced technology transfer from foreign companies working in China. The European Union has complained to the World Trade Organisation against China's practice. The US and the UK have accused China of a "sustained hacking campaign" across the world to steal commercial intellectual property. The US announced indictment of two Chinese nationals, it says are members of a hacking group known as APT10, which "acted in association with" Chinese state security. "China deserves its economic success," wrote Prof Zhang Jun. According to Jun, "China is not an enemy of the US" and its enormous trade surplus is "not intentionally through exchange-rate controls and distortionary policies". China is not yet an enemy of the US because the US is militarily stronger and because of Obama's supine response but it is definitely an enemy of its neighbors, grabbing the South China Sea by force, wrote Prof B Chellaney. It has a stranglehold on Tibet by brute force and ethnic cleansing. Jun thinks that "China seems unlikely to face anything like the Soviet Union's fate". That is because Xi Jinping will never allow 'glasnost and perestroika', as Gorbachev did, which allowed the Soviet Union to break up in peace. China is a pressure cooker where minorities are interned in camps and subjected to forced labor and women shave their heads to protest illegal detention of their husbands. China will most likely implode into civil war, and the sooner it happens the better for the rest of the world.

What will Modi do now that Gandhi has claimed loan waivers?

"Take 27-year-old Pushpendra Singh, who completed his master's degree in commerce in 2016, but was unable to find a decent job. Singh now toils on the family farm so that his younger brother can finish his studies and find a teaching job. His family has a debt of Rs 6 lakh, but that has not stopped them from spending about Rs 12,000 each month to educate the younger son," wrote S Bera. About 1,400 km away in Rampura, 19-year-old Sharad Markad has built a shed to care for 80 cows and buffaloes because they are having to sell pomegranates at Rs 10 per kg despite a poor harvest. In Nashik, farmers are selling onions at Rs 1-2 per kg while it is retailing for Rs 30 in cities. Mathurabai Barade spent 36 hours getting from Sangamner in Maharashtra to Parliament Street in Delhi, wrote R Mohan. In March, she walked 200 km barefoot with over 35,000 adivasis (tribal people) from Nashik to Mumbai, demanding titles to land they had cultivated for generations." Farmers in India are marching because they are hurting, desperate and angry. Normally, waiving farm loans is a very productive election gimmick. In 2017, Prime Minister Modi's party the BJP promised loan waiver to win assembly elections in UP, after the Congress won general elections in 2009 by announcing loan waiver in 2008. In the recent assembly elections in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh the Congress won all 3 states by announcing loan waiver before the BJP could. Following the results there were fears that Modi will announce waiver for the whole of India, at a cost of Rs 4 trillion, before general elections next May. But, Congress President Rahul Gandhi pre-empted Modi by promising not to let Modi "sleep" unless he implements farm loan waiver for the whole country. Competitive populism will not help farmers or the government budget say experts but farmers are pleased that suddenly politicians have woken up to their strength. Subsidies may actually be responsible for the suffering of farmers because they have prevented investment in infrastructure, suggests a study by Prof A Gulati and colleagues. When production is plentiful prices drop so low that they are unable to realise their costs. While deflation in food prices is decimating incomes, core inflation remains high in rural areas. That is why nominal income is more important to farmers than real income, wrote R Kishore. Since Gandhi will claim victory if Modi announces loan waiver he is having to think of other ways to buy farmers' votes. Throwing taxpayer money is so much easier. Instead, government employees like managers of public sector banks have expressed worries at the adverse effects of loan waivers and vice chairman of NITI Aayog Rajiv Kumar advised agro processing rather than loan waiver. "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" as Mandy Rice-Davies famously said.

The middle class isn't rich, it seems rich to the poor.

The big fat Indian wedding maybe vulgar to the middle class, but for the poor it is the upper middle class which is most vulgar, wrote M Joseph. This year has seen many weddings of the super rich, culminating in the wedding of Isha Ambani, daughter of Mukesh Ambani, 12th with $44.4 billion in Bloomberg's list of billionaires of the world. Anil Ambani, brother of Mukesh, is relatively very poor with a personal wealth of only $1.5 billion. In the eyes of the poor "it is the upper middle-class that is the most visible section of the rich, because the ionosphere of the super-rich is beyond what their eyes can see". Even the middle-class cannot dream of seeing the inside of a hotel costing $60,000 per night, so it is irrelevant to the poor. "This is what commentators missed in the aftermath of 'demonetisation' when they did not see its political popularity -- in the public misery of the middle class, the average voter saw the rare fall of the rich." This outpouring of schadenfreude resulted in a landslide victory for the Prime Minister's party, the BJP, in the assembly elections in UP, but the rural poor are beginning to realise how much worse the effect has been on them. This anger against the middle class is not confined to India. "The rise of strongmen and of the right across the world, and the Brexit vote too, is a demonstration of the fact that the average voter despises the articulate global intellectual -- so much, that even when the intellectual talks sense, the voter hates sense itself." The top 10% of Indians own 77.4% of the wealth of the nation, while the poorest 60% own just 4.7%. Such enormous inequality naturally gives rise to anger. Inequality is entrenched in India because of the different levels of education between the rich and the poor. While the poorest 5% of people spend a paltry Rs 16.32 per month on educating a child the richest 5% spend Rs 908.12 per month. "While the sons and daughters of the top 10% are able to get good jobs and compete with the best in the world, the vast majority of poor kids will eke out a precarious living in the informal sector," wrote M Chakravarty. The status of women is even more dire. "Nearly 75% of surveyed teenage girls said they wanted to work after they finished their studies," wrote Rukmini S, but the truth is that "over 60% of women in India -- even young women currently in their twenties -- are already married by age 20". No wonder that 92% of women earn less than Rs 10,000 per month, less than half of Rs 21,000 per month, which will qualify them to pay income tax. And if the majority of the poor are employed in our 63 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), that sector is hamstrung by over 60,000 possible compliances and over 3,300 possible filings. The poor may envy the middle class but the middle class is also angry because it pays taxes but gets nothing in return "because of state 'appeasement' for the poor", wrote S Srivastava. Only the politicians residing in Lutyens' Delhi are tranquil.

We must not relax our vigil.

A Pakistani minister promised to protect terrorist Hafiz Saeed and his party, the Jama'at-ud-Da'wah, in a leaked video. When told that the Election Commission (ECP) was prepared to declare it a terrorist organization he said, "We will not let this happen." "As long as we (the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf) are in the government all those, including Hafiz Saeed who are raising voice for Pakistan and righteousness, we are with them," said Minister of State for Interior Sheryar Afridi. Earlier, reacting to a cut off in US economic help to Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan declared, "I would never want to have a relationship where Pakistan is treated like a hired gun -- given money to fight someone else's war." Deploring the lack of trust in Pakistan, when the US killed Osama bin Laden without informing the Pakistanis, he said, "It was humiliating that we were losing our soldiers and civilians and (suffering terrorist) bomb attacks because we were participating in the US war, and then our ally did not trust us to kill Bin Laden." Khan has not been briefed that the Pakistani army actively helped the US in killing Bin Laden. Locals had been told to switch off their lights and stay indoors. "The army personnel cordoned off the entire area long before we heard the sounds of helicopters hovering over the area," said a local resident Zulfikar Ahmed. Pakistan's economy is in great difficulty with foreign exchange reserves down to $7.3 billion at the end of November. The Pakistani rupee has been devalued six times in one year and has lost 35% of its value since the first devaluation last December. The country is seeking to borrow $8 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to tide over a severe balance of payments crisis, but the US will  not allow any part of IMF loan to be used to pay off debt to China. Saudi Arabia and the Asian Development Bank have agreed to help but the US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said that the US should not give even one dollar as long as "Pakistan continues to harbor terrorists that turn around and kill American soldiers". As a desperate Khan looks to stop money being siphoned off by massive corruption, the poor are terrified to find their accounts being used to launder money. "He is a penniless billionaire," Mohammad Qadir was mocked by his friends. However, all is not gloom. The KSE100 index of Pakistan has gained 2% this year, while the BSE100 index of India has dropped 1.2%. Shares are cheap while dividends are high and Pakistani companies have low level of debt so growth will take off if the balance of payments crisis is resolved. Should India help its neighbor? Successive governments have been terrified of Pakistan's government collapsing and terrorists gaining control of nuclear weapons. If that happens the whole world will fight it, so we should tighten our restrictions. If we have the guts.

We are not the US. We are always carefree.

Stock markets always want a low interest rate and Wall Street is no exception. In its last meeting in November the US Federal Reserve left its Funds Rate unchanged at 2-2.25%. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell had alarmed markets in October, saying, "Interest rates are still accommodative, but we're gradually moving to a place where they will be neutral. We may go past neutral, but we are long way from neutral at this point, probably." "The market has been under incredible pressure, concerned that the Fed is just going to go charging ahead," said S Massocca, senior vice president at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco. "The Fed understand that and from their latest commentary they're starting to walk it back a little bit." "It will not be easy to raise interest rates once central bankers have got investors addicted to low rates," wrote VA Nageswaran. But they should remember that, "Recessions are healthy in the sense that they clear excess inventory, stop the production of wrong goods and expose malinvestment." "Further, they temper excessive risk taking by investors and businesses such that systemic risk never reaches dangerous levels in the upswing that follows." Worried about a recession before he starts campaigning for re-election in 2020 US President Donald Trump said, "I'd like to see the Fed with a lower interest rate. I think the rate's too high." Is he right to worry? "The U.S. Treasury yield curve just inverted in more than a decade," wrote B Chappatta. The normal yield curve is where yields on long term bonds are higher than yields on short term ones because risks multiply on longer maturity. When the yields on long term bonds are lower than on short term ones the yield curve is said to have inverted, which predicts a recession. "The yield curve from three to five years dipped below zero during the last cycle for the first time in August 2005, some 28 months before the recession began." Traders analyze the yield curve to see how the economy is faring. If yields on short term Treasuries are higher it means that the price is lower, because they are inversely related, so the government is able to raise less by selling its bonds. "The risk of a US recession in the next two years has risen to 40%, according to a Reuters poll of economists..." wrote S Sarkar. According to L Wang, signs of recession are already apparent if we take the stock markets indices. "There's the $3 trillion in value erased, the bloodbath in banks and the trouncing in transports." "A relatively calm week in the Dow Jones Industrial Average just ended with a 495-point thud." India is different. Here the markets are cheering a possibility of government robbing the Reserve Bank reserves, banks being allowed to return to crony lending and more liquidity to postpone clearing up bad loans. The US may worry, but we Indians are happy.

To wrest the Golden Fleece any which way.

Although Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a "naturally gifted communicator", Modi's party the BJP lost recent assembly elections because the party lost the battle of getting its message across, wrote S Dhume. The Congress routed the BJP in Chhattisgarh, and was short of absolute majority in Rajasthan by one seat and in Madhya Pradesh by two seats. This was shocking because the BJP was ruling all three states with absolute majority, because these are Hindi states with large numbers of seats in parliament and because these are said to be part of the 'cow belt', a pejorative term to describe Hindus who support the BJP. Modi has not held even one press conference since he was elected. "Modi reached perhaps the nadir of this cossetted approach at an event in London earlier this year where he answered questions so obviously canned that they would have made a Soviet dictator blush. Sample: 'I have only this question for you -- from where do you get so much energy'." Modi has not hesitated to spend $920 million, Rs 65.9 billion, on foreign trips and advertisements, wrote I Marlow for Bloomberg. "The globe-trotting prime minister's 84 trips around the world cost roughly $280 million, while the government spent $640 million on promoting Modi's flagship projects and achievements, according to new government data." Foreign trips provide fantastic photo ops, even if the result is signing vague agreements to cooperate in the field of health or in exploration of outer space for peaceful purposes. "The less said about BJP's presence on social media the better: Over the past few years, the party's information technology cell has evolved into an instrument of intimidation and a conveyor belt of falsehoods," wrote Dhume. BJP supporters dismiss such charges with, "These are elite concerns. Real voters do not care about press conferences, spokespersons or Twitter trolls." Only "28 million Indians read an English newspaper in 2017" and 7.8 million use Twitter. Maybe, but "A tweet written in Paris could end up translated and published in a Hindi newspaper in Patna." The BJP has a core base which gives it a higher number of seats compared to its share of votes, wrote R Kishore. It may suit Modi to avoid being questioned by suppressing the mainstream media through threats and actual violence so that he can preach to the nation over the radio every month. His personal popularity may have dropped a tad but he is still favorite to hang on to power in the 2019 general elections. That, after all, is the Golden Fleece. 

Reforms cause pain for the people. Not for the elite.

"The sorry truth is that both progressives and neoliberals still don't get it and that seems to be true in France most of all," wrote Prof T Cowen. President Emmanuel Macron "increasingly seems to be a well-meaning guy who has been elected in the wrong historical era". What is the problem in France? "The rising prominence of terror, migration and security issues have boosted some of the less salubrious sides of the right wing. Add to that mix wage stagnation and the increasingly common view -- held by 91% in France -- that today's children will not have better lives than parents." France has a structural unemployment level of around 9% with 3 million without the skills that companies want. "We have 2 million unemployed who lack the qualifications to fill jobs," said Macron. "That's what is worrying." Prof Cowen was referring to the protests against a rise in taxes on fuel in France, which would raise the price of a gallon of petrol by 30 cents to $7.36. The cost of a gallon of petrol in the US on 26 November was $2.5-3 per gallon. A French gallon would be 4.54 liters, while a US gallon is 3.785 liters, still the cost of petrol in France is almost double that in the US. Protests turned into riots as people burnt cars, looted shops and fought with the police. At first the government thought about imposing a state of emergency. "It is out of the question that each weekend becomes a meeting or ritual for violence," said a spokesman B Griveaux. "I will always respect differences. I will always listen to opposition, but I will never accept violence," said Macron. "The people are in revolt," said S Lemoussu. "The anger is rising more and more, and the president despises the French. We aren't here to smash things, but the people have had enough." "I thought Macron was asking for trouble when just after his 2017 election victory he staged a victory celebration in which he walked, alone and floodlit, across the courtyard of the Louvre, the old royal palace," wrote Prof R Tombs. "Who does he think he is, I thought, the King of France? Since the Bastille fortress was stormed by the people of Paris on July 14, 1789, the country has got rid of three kings, two emperors and several presidents, and has worked its way, often violently, through 15 constitutions." Macron caved in. He promised to increase minimum wage by 100 euros per month, removed taxes on overtime and cancelled charges on pensions. People are rejecting mainstream parties in favor of populist candidates, wrote Prof B Eichengreen. The solution is to address "the basic grievances responsible for voters' rejection of mainstream politicians and parties in the first place". Which means reforms, which can be painful. Not easy.

Why are Indian markets so euphoric?

There is a sense of euphoria in the Bombay stock market index, the Sensex. On Monday, 10 December, the index collapsed by 2%, or over 700 points probably due to falls in Asian markets and the lower close of the Dow Jones the previous Friday. Indian investors were also nervous about results of assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, all of which had BJP governments, but exit polls predicted a strong Congress performance. That same evening the Governor of the Reserve Bank (RBI) Urjit Patel resigned, citing personal reasons. The government had been in a nasty fight with the RBI over its insistence on banks to clear up their books, not infusing enough liquidity into banks to increase lending and to hand over its contingency fund of about Rs 10 trillion which the RBI has collected over many decades. With general elections in May next year Prime Minister Modi is desperate to get hold of the reserves so that he can distribute it as largesse. He even threatened to force the RBI to obey his orders according to powers enshrined in Section 7 of the RBI Act. It is advisable not to weaken the RBI because markets would react badly to a weak central bank, wrote R Singhal. Tensions between governments and central banks are common but that is not the reason to take away the independence of the RBI, wrote A Mukherjee. Experts were completely wrong. The Sensex rose by 250 points on 11 December, as if to celebrate Patel's resignation. The election results were declared late the same day and showed that the Prime Minister's party, the BJP lost all three states. The next day the Sensex surged by 629 points or a hefty 1.79%. Why the euphoria? Because the government grabbed the opportunity and instantly appointed a retired IAS officer Shaktikanta Das, with no training in economics, as the new Governor of the RBI. Macroeconomics is not an easy subject to understand. Economists were unable to predict the crisis of 2008 because all their models based on mathematics cannot account for human behavior, wrote A Sheel, a retired civil servant. Central banks should develop macroprudential policies to deal with markets, wrote Prof B Eichengreen. India has many economic problems which politicians find too difficult to deal with. So why is the market cheering the appointment of Das? Because chiefs of public sector banks hope that he will not force banks to clear up their books so that they can start lending to their cronies as before, wrote A Mukerjee. And they hope that Modi will use RBI reserves to pay off bad loans of banks so that they can show profits again, wrote M Sharma. Proves that robbery remains the biggest business in India.

Communist capitalism has beaten democratic socialism so far.

"China and India make up for two contrasting -- but fascinating -- case studies of economic management in emerging economies," wrote R Malik. The two economies are completely different. "China, which is demand-constrained, is trying to cushion its structural deceleration, whereas India, which is supply-constrained, is struggling to unlock its potential for higher trend growth." Reforms started in 1978 in China, along with a one-child policy which reduced the number of births by 400 million, improved health of women, reduced demand on environment for food production and decreased poverty, at the cost of erosion of human rights in forcing women to have abortions. Chinese leaders believe that growth is possible only by exercising total control on the people."They believe that they have their ears sufficiently to the ground, that they can remain responsive to any brewing discontent. They hope they can exercise social control through facial recognition and other technologies that they have taken the lead in deploying," wrote Prof D Rodrik. While communist China embraced capitalism, Indira Gandhi inserted the word 'socialism' into the preamble of the Constitution in 1976, during the Emergency. But the socialist rot had started much earlier in 1973-74 when the top rate of income tax was raised to 97.75%. When the balance of payment crisis hit in 1991 India had to pawn 67 tons of gold to borrow enough foreign exchange to fund imports. China undervalued the exchange rate of its currency to increase exports. "The disinflationary impact of its stepped-up supply-side and the ballooning of its current account surplus also facilitated a sustained downshift in the structure of local interest rates." "India's semi-functional 'do what you can, when you can' approach also has to make up for its relatively more progressive exchange rate policy that has shunned outright undervaluation of the currency." India always runs a current account deficit which could rise to 2.9% in this financial year. We have a trade deficit with our trading partners because we import more than we export. That is because our manufacturing as a share of the GDP has fallen to 16.2% in 2015-16 from 16.41% in 1989-90, which was just before the crisis. We have to rely on a stronger rupee to control the cost of imports to keep inflation down and keep the current account deficit from jumping. China has insurance schemes for social welfare, where employers and employees contribute, whereas India has a long list of schemes which are pure handouts. This necessitates a hunger for higher tax collections resulting in extortionate demand on businesses. That is why India's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is $2,135, while that of China is $10,000. Will India go up or will China fall down? Remains to be seen.

Will the RBI go from autonomy to supine?

The Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Urjit Patel resigned a couple of days apparently for "personal reasons". It was his "privilege and honour" to serve in the RBI, he said, and thanked his colleagues for their "support and hard work". Pointedly he did not thank the Prime Minister, who appointed him as governor, or the Finance Minister with whom he must have interacted regularly in carrying out his duties. Patel took a strict view of bad loans at banks, he refused any instructions on monetary policy and refused to hand over at least Rs 3.6 trillion, over one-third, from RBI's contingency reserves. Bankers and finance companies are cheering Patel's exit as they hope to go back to old ways of evergreening and hiding bad loans from becoming public. Patel's predecessor Prof Raghuram Rajan started the process of cleaning up public sector banks for which he was treated so discourteously by the government that he quietly left India. Patel had a rough time at the RBI, starting with demonetisation of 86% of all currencies in circulation in India which was thought to be a bad idea by Rajan. There were questions about why Patel did not voice his doubts about the exercise but one man who was intimately involved in the planning was the Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das. A retired IAS officer, Das has been quickly appointed the new Governor maybe because he can be relied upon to help the government. The last civil servant to be appointed Governor of the RBI was Duvvuri Subbarao who was highly qualified. He was appointed in 2008 when average consumer price inflation was over 8% but progressively reduced interest rate from a high of 9% in July 2008 to a low of 4.75% in April 2009. Congress won re-election in May and average inflation rose to over 12% in 2010. Subbarao slowly raised rate to 8% in 2012 but lowered it to 7.25% in 2013 even as inflation rose to nearly 11%. Congress was trounced in the 2014 elections, managing to win only 44 seats, not enough to nominate anyone for the post of Leader of the Opposition. What are the problems confronting Prime Minister Modi? His party, the BJP lost in assembly elections in 3 Hindi states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. Hindi states have high population with high fertility rates so they have larger representation in the parliament. To win these states Modi has to alleviate genuine suffering of farmers. However, indirect tax collections from the Goods and Services Tax will be short by Rs 1 trillion. Having once looted the people through demonetisation Das is eminently suited to looting the RBI of its reserves. With its power to print money can the RBI go broke? We will know soon. 

Contempt for the bitter truth.

"Can a commoner allege political bias by sitting SC judge and escape contempt ire?" asked D Mahapatra. That would be worse than suicide. As businessman Subrata Roy found to his cost when he was sent to prison for contempt for an indefinite period for ignoring an order to pay Rs 100 billion as demanded by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), in what reeked of political persecution. Or when Times Now was fined Rs 1 billion for accidentally defaming a retired Supreme Court judge, even after it apologized repeatedly for its mistake. Recently, retired Justice Joseph Kurien explained why he, with three of his colleagues, held a press conference in January in which they accused the then Chief Justice of allocating cases to junior judges. "He said all four shared a perception that then CJI Deepak Mishra was being influenced by someone from outside and was allotting sensitive cases to benches headed by select junior SC judges perceived to have political bias." Refusing to initiate contempt proceedings against an article in the Punch, British Judge Lord Denning said, "All that we ask is those who criticise us should remember that, from the nature of our duties, we cannot reply to their criticism. We cannot enter into public controversy." Not so in India. Time and again judges have reacted with ferocity when criticised, although when a politician is the accused the reaction is very diffident. Perhaps suspicion of bias would not arise if judges concluded cases promptly, instead of dragging them forever. Last year the Supreme Court apologized to a woman for not concluding her case in 13 years, during which the woman had passed away. What use was this judgement? It took 20 years for a judgement in the Uphaar Cinema tragedy in which 59, mostly young people, died. Having waited for 20 years parents and relatives of the dead were further humiliated when one accused was freed because of his age and another got a derisive 1 year in prison. It is in the interest of the guilty and of lawyers, who are paid eye-watering sums of money per appearance, to prolong a case till such time as witnesses have either died or have been coerced to turn hostile. But, why do judges go along with this sham? Mystery. In the same way not one politician has been convicted of the killing of thousands of Sikhs following Indira Gandhi's murder in 1984. Naturally, cheats take advantage of judicial inertia to file appeal after appeal costing the nation many trillions of rupees, wrote S Pathak. Since civil servants are never punished for wasting court time by filing ridiculous appeals to deny citizens of their basic rights the government is the biggest litigant. Justice Kurien is right. Judges are biased. Against citizens.

Competition is good for business, except in India.

"Only a renegade economist will betray his brethren with such blasphemy that too much competition can be harmful," wrote A Ranade. "This goes against the most basic axioms of economics." Provided there is no cheating and there is a level playing field, competition is essential to provide best quality at lowest prices. This has been accepted since, "Adam Smith's 'The Wealth Of Nations', the Bible of capitalism and free markets, was written almost a century before Charles Darwin's 'The Origin Of Species'". The adverse effect of excessive competition is best exemplified by app-based taxi services which enticed drivers with high commissions, that have now been reduced. "Most drivers have taken car loans and their current earnings are just not enough to pay the monthly installment." If the government interferes it will kill the business model. Until about a decade ago weaker companies were kept alive by soft loans from public sector banks and price fixing, wrote S Mukherjea. "For reasons which don't fully understand, this paradigm was disrupted a decade ago and we entered a more competitive era in Indian business wherein weaker firms were either bankrupted or forced to sell out." Pre-tax return on capital employed (ROCE) has fallen leading to a fall in growth of earnings per share (EPS). As weaker firms are swallowed up by stronger ones jobs will be lost and wage growth will be suppressed. "Given the spate of consolidations over the last two years, there could be job losses in the range of 7-20%, depending on how identical businesses are. It could impact compensation levels if supply exceeds demand and this is driven by marker forces," said S Reddy. Private investment has fallen since 2014 when this government was elected, wrote Prof P Balakrishnan. The private sector is comprised of corporate and unincorporated, also known as the household sector. "Since 2014, after initially declining private corporate investment has shown a mild rise while household investment has fallen sharply." Resulting in a decline in total investment. which means fewer jobs. Recent demand for traffic brigade jobs in the Prime Minister's home state of Gujarat shows how desperate young people are. These are not traffic police but daily wage laborers. Fear of lack of jobs means that people are spending less, wrote A Nag. Which will impact EPS, discourage private investment and lead to fewer jobs. In all this gloom there is some good news. Indians working abroad are to send $80 billion in remittances, according to the World Bank. Since we always run a huge trade deficit, importing far more than we export, perhaps we should export our brains. There is no competition for brains.