In January of 2018, taxi drivers in Goa went on strike against plans to introduce ride-hailing services, such as Uber and Ola, in the state, wrote Prasanna Karthik. After 2 days the government of then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar gave in to the taxi drivers despite having widespread public support for the move. Because taxi drivers could influence election results in 4 of the 40 seats in Goa assembly. Populism prevents reforms in a democracy but there is no need for populism in China because "performance is evaluated by higher ups". "Countries went the communist route and failed. Countries went the capitalist route and are now busy self-destructing with their addiction to free money. But there exists a third route. Use capitalism to create prosperity and then switch to socialism to share the spoils," wrote Prof VA Nageswaran. "President Xi Jinping has called for China to achieve 'common prosperity', seeking to narrow a yawning wealth gap that threatens the country's economic ascent and the legitimacy of Communist Party rule," Indian Express (TIE). "Chinese leaders have pledged to use taxation and other redistribution levers to expand the proportion of middle-income citizens, boost incomes of the poor, 'rationally adjust excessive incomes', and ban illegal incomes." China's phenomenal growth came from rampant intellectual property theft and growth may slow down drastically as "The US Justice Department is aggressively forging ahead with a clampdown on Chinese economic espionage" voanews. In July, "The US Department of Commerce added 23 Chinese entities to its blacklist", of which it "accused 14 of direct involvement in human right abuses in Xinjiang, five of 'directly supporting' the Chinese military's 'modernization programs', and four of violating previous US sanctions by doing business with blacklisted companies," Quartz. "The Chinese ambassador to Britain has been banned from attending an event in the British parliament because Beijing imposed sanctions on lawmakers who highlighted alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang," Reuters. "English is almost synonymous with China's reform and opening-up policies, which transformed an impoverished and hermetic nation into the world's second biggest economy," TIE. Now China is restricting the teaching of English in schools. "Many call the phenomenon 'reversing gears', or China's Great Leap Backward, an allusion to the disastrous industrialization campaign of the late 1950s, which resulted in the worst man-made famine in human history." "As the academic year gets underway, students from primary schools through colleges and universities are immersed in lessons from 'Grandpa Xi'," Economic Times (ET). "Many China experts believe that Xi is laying the groundwork for a bid to remain in office indefinitely." Like Mao Zedong. On the other hand, "Populist leaders aren't those who address the needs of the numerical majority" as shown by "A handful of farmers who don't represent the country's farming community have forced the government to defer the implementation of farm reforms, which benefit every citizen in general and other farmers in particular," Karthik. Not true. The new farm laws, which Karthik is so enamoured with, will abolish state wholesale markets, known as Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) or 'mandis', Josh, where farmers are guaranteed a Minimum Support Price (MSP) on 23 crops, wikipedia, though the government buys mainly wheat and rice at MSP. In Bihar, "which abolished state regulated mandis back in 2006" "Farmers cannot bargain" and are so poor that they migrate to Punjab, which still has mandis, to work as agricultural laborers, wrote Sayantan Bera. President Ronald Reagan deregulated farms in the US, resulting in, "The US farmer's share of the retail price has declined from 50% in the 1950s to less than 15% today," wrote Bedabrata Pain. China has thoughts of Grandpa Xi, while we in India are invited to sit the Gau Vigyan exam by the Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog, pib.gov.in. Who can generate more "common prosperity': Xi or cows?
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