To make in India we have to break the fakes.

Since his election the Prime Minister has laid great emphasis on improving the manufacturing sector in India under the slogan of ' Make in India '. Over the next 3 years our expenditure on defense is expected to be $247 billion and if a part of that can be made in India the saving will be huge, not to mention the millions of jobs created in ancillary industries. At present we import much more than we export, always running a Current Account Deficit, although this year we may show a tiny surplus because of the drop in the price of oil. The reason we cannot sell abroad is because we do not innovate so there is no reason why anyone should buy anything produced by our companies. Since independence the Congress Party's infatuation with socialism meant that our industries were protected from foreign competition, so there was no need to spend on research. We had a huge and growing population so there was a lucrative market right here. Why bother with exporting when you could make any rubbish and people would be forced to buy them because there was no alternative. The Ambassador car was the stereotypical example. It was a replica of the British made Morris Oxford, of 1950s vintage, and had a monopoly in India. Fifty years back an Ambassador cost Rs 30,000, which would have bought a spacious bungalow in Delhi, and there used to be a 3 year waiting list for a new car. As soon a Suzuki was allowed to manufacture in India, under the brand of Maruti, people stopped buying the Ambassador and it was surviving on government orders. Last year it died. Our fellows have been surviving on reverse engineering foreign products and then producing cheaper copies to sell. The sale of generic versions of drugs is a source of friction with the US but our fellows have been punished for impurities in drugs sold in the US. We cheat even while cheating. The government mandated portability of cell phone numbers in 2011 but our fellows twisted it to mean changing from one service provider to another in the same area. Since they are all equally bad not many people bothered. They do not care for long term customer satisfaction for short term price gouging through roaming charges. Last October during the festival season in India sales at stores in shopping malls fell by 30 to 40%. The shops blame online retailers for the drop in sales but do not ask consumers about their shopping experience. Shopping malls sell mainly branded products which are expensive but have limited choice. There is no where to sit when one person is in the changing room, trying on a garment. Restaurants have crammed as many tables as possible and play ear-splitting music to stop eavesdropping of conversations. So what have they done to increase footfalls. They have jacked up parking charges by over 80%. Wonderful. Crooks cannot make, they only crook.

Money begets money.

There are 2089 dollar billionaires ( one billion equals 100 crores ) in the world today, with 341 added in 2014. India has jumped to third position with 97 billionaires, an increase of 27, behind the US in first and China in second position. A survey in Britain looked at rich people with unusual surnames and found that wealth runs in families for at least 300 years, which should be reassuring for our bunch. The rich have many advantages. Children get better diet, the best education that money can buy, ability to build a lucrative career without the worry of having to earn a living and a network of friends who are similarly placed in high positions in industry or government. This networking is called an ' old school tie ' in Britain but is present in every country in the world, as an angry article from a woman in Australia shows. Although these advantages of rich children seem unfair one cannot blame parents for providing the best possible start in life for their children. It is their duty, after all. An altogether insidious way in which the rich protect their wealth is by influencing politicians so that policies are always in their favor. This is crony capitalism, in which rich people in poor countries take control of resources, such as land, minerals and spectrum for mobile phones, and in rich countries they employ a team of advisers to help them avoid paying taxes. A whistle-blower has exposed how HSBC Bank helped clients to hide their wealth and avoid paying taxes in their countries of residence. In this year's budget President Obama has proposed a one time tax at 14% on foreign earnings of multinational companies and 19% every year thereafter. Immediately one politician has labeled the proposal " envy economics " and has proposed lower rates of taxes instead. The massive rise in the number of billionaires has been helped by record low interest rates which has allowed the rich to borrow cheaply to increase their assets while the poor are denied loans because of they are deemed risky by banks. The European Central Bank has been trying to increase lending to small businesses by allowing banks to borrow at almost no interest but banks have shown little interest. In desperation the ECB has started buying bonds of $70 billion per month, known as quantitative easing, to release more money into the system but banks might take the cash and balance their books rather than lending it to customers. While savers lose out low interest rates help those with properties to buy more real estate so that the poor are priced out of the market and have to waste their earnings on rent. The world is in for enormous turbulence. Seems unstoppable.

George Bush not the only moron.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Francois Hollande of France met President Putin of Russia to find a peaceful resolution to the fighting in Ukraine. The talks failed because Putin apparently made new demands. There is rising pressure on Obama to supply lethal weapons, such as anti-tank and anti mortar systems, to the Ukraine government while Merkel warned that there can be no military solution to the Ukraine problem. In which case why didn't she stop the western backed armed coup by ultra nationalist, Svoboda and neo-Nazi Right Sector thugs which forced the elected President Victor Yanukovych to flee to Russia? She should never have agreed to the sanctions imposed by the US and definitely not taken part in them. Russia naturally sees this as bullying by western powers and reacted with its own sanctions against the EU and the US. With the US economy growing strongly Obama probably thinks that he can ignore these tit for tat sanctions but the EU is the largest trading partner of the US and the Eurozone economy is in dire straits with the risk of deflation hanging over it. The present Ukraine government was elected only by the western half of the country and the Russian speaking east elected its own Prime Minister in Alexander Zekharchenko. The government has been bombing civilians in the east with aircraft and helicopter gunships, justifying its attacks by saying that there are 9,000 Russian troops in the east of the country. If you are elected by only half the country and you bomb your own citizens, whose only crime is that their mother tongue is Russian, then surely you can never hope to represent those people and they have every right to fight for independence. So what is Obama, the gasbag, going to do? He cannot use drones to blow up Putin or Zekharchenko, as he has been doing in Pakistan. Will he supply lethal weapons to the government and give Russia the excuse to send in more troops and its air force to protect the people in the east? And if Russia does that will he send in NATO and US forces for a full scale war with Russia? US Senator Rand Paul thinks that US intervention in Libya was an " utter disaster " and calls it " Hillary's war ". Being a Republican he has selective amnesia about Bush's war in Iraq and Cheney's dirty obscenity in Guantanamo. But this is not the only confrontation. Greece has just elected a left wing government which wants to renegotiate the terms of its loans with the EU, but mainly Germany. However, Angela Merkel's father was a Lutheran pastor and she is totally against any sinful spending by Greece. And we have not even mentioned David Cameron of Britain. Want a bunch of jokers, with nuclear weapons to play with. Not reassuring, is it?

Redistribution does not lead to inclusive growth.

An article by Prof Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard University defines differences between ' redistribution ' and ' inclusion ' in economic policies and the consequences thereof. His article has special relevance because he was Minister of Planning in Venezuela from 1992 to 1993, well before the disastrous socialism of Hugo Chavez that has bankrupted the country with the highest reserves of oil in the world. The country had to import crude from Algeria and Russia because the oil company, PDVSA has been looted for years by Chavez to pay for handouts. An earlier article by Prof Hausmann details how the government of Venezuela has defaulted on payments for import of food, pharmaceutical products and automobile parts so that there are shortages of every consumer product, leading to the highest inflation in the world. With falling oil prices the situation has become critical. At the level of companies there is a great difference in income distribution because productivity varies between firms so that there is great difference between income of individual companies. This is especially marked in developing countries because," Poor countries lack the means to connect all places to all inputs. They are faced with the choice of connecting a few places to most inputs and getting high productivity there, or putting some of the inputs in all places and getting very little productivity growth everywhere. That is why development tends to be unequal." These inputs include " raw materials and machines, which can be shipped around, but also specialized labour skills, infrastructure, and rules which cannot be moved easily and hence need to be specially collocated." Hence, he says," Given productivity constraints, redistribution is only palliative, not curative." To reduce inequality in income inclusion is much more effective. Inclusion is achieved through " endowing people with skills, and connecting them to the inputs and networks that can make them productive." This means good quality education for every child, vocation training to upgrade skills, superb infrastructure at low charges and equal access to resources. Unfortunately our politicians practice redistribution under the guise of inclusive growth. The Congress stayed in power for 10 years through such deception but lost when fiscal deficit zoomed, leading to double digit inflation, hurting the very poor who were supposed to benefit from the handouts. The Right to Education Act is responsible for the closure of private schools in slums where residents shun useless government teachers. Inclusive growth leads to equitable distribution of income but takes time whereas redistribution is immediate. That is why politicians conflate the two. 

Will a baby be cute to Artificial Intelligence?

Is Artificial Intelligence, or AI, a boon for the world or will it result in super intelligent robots who enslave or wipe out human beings? Depends on who you ask. On one side are Elon Musk, Bill Gates and the eminent scientist, Stephen Hawking who think that it " could spell the end of human race " and on the other side Prof Max Tegmark of MIT, Paul Allen of Microsoft and Jack Ma of Alibaba who are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in research on AI. There have been many movies in which computers or robots have been villains, either trying to wipe out or enslave human beings but usually one human proves too smart for the machines. " There had been a ridiculous amount of scaremongering," Said Prof Tegmark. " And understandably a lot of AI researchers feel threatened by this." But is it as ridiculous as the good professor thinks? A human being is not measured only by Intelligence Quotient but by many other parameters. Indeed, some believe that Emotional Quotient, which measures how we empathize with others, leads to greater success. The human brain is unique among all animals because we are the only ones with a speech center which gives us the ability to pass knowledge to the next generation so that succeeding generations have built on the past to come to the stage of building AI. Among humans Einstein's brain was unique, not because it had more cells, but because it had vastly more connections between the two halves. But what really distinguishes human from AI is that although we are intelligent we are also irrational and behave illogically. Partly it maybe because we have instincts like all animals. The fear of the dark is probably a leftover from the time when our ancestors were vulnerable to predators with night vision, such as leopards. We tend to laugh if we see a man slip and fall but we are consumed with anxiety if our child falls down and rush to find out if she is hurt. But even in activities, such as economic decisions, where you would expect cold logic, we make irrational decisions. Former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan complained of " irrational exuberance ", when talking about share prices, in a speech in 1996. This basic irrationality is now being recognised by economists who are beginning to understand why macro-economic predictions go spectacularly wrong. Like all computer programs AI is based on algorithms which means it has to be logical. Logic cannot appreciate the beauty of a sunset, the cuteness of a baby or the decision to donate a kidney to a partner. This restriction within the bounds of pure logic is what makes AI so dangerous. Since humans kill other humans it is logical to control all humans. Dangerous. 

What is their game?

The gruesome video of the Jordanian pilot being burnt alive in a cage has been condemned as the most barbaric act, even by the standards of the Islamic State, or ISIS. It is not. The mass extermination of the entire populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear weapons, mass incineration of Vietnamese villagers by napalm and the blowing up of entire wedding parties by using drones, by the US, are much more heinous and barbaric. However, all the experts are puzzled by what their motive can be. Jordan is a Sunni country, as are the IS, the pilot was an Arab, as most IS fighters are, and Jordan was ready to free any number of terrorists for his life. It has emerged that the pilot was killed on 3 January after a failed rescue attempt, most likely by Jordanian special forces, while US planes bombed another part of town in a diversionary tactic. Some experts think that the IS is trying to frighten Arab people so that they will pressure their governments not to help the coalition. They have released the names, addresses and photographs of other Jordanian pilots and offered a reward of about $20,000 for each one killed. Other experts think that they are trying to create a division in the coalition. Maybe that is why they played with the 2 Japanese hostages. First they demanded $200 million, which is exactly the amount the Japanese government is spending in the fight against IS, to free both hostages and when that was not forthcoming they beheaded Haruna Yukawa. After that they demanded the release of a failed suicide bomber, a woman named Sajida al-Rishawi, who has been on death row in Jordan since 2005, for the release of Kenji Goto. The Japanese government must have begged Jordan for the exchange but Jordan could not agree unless they were sure their pilot was still alive. Goto was then beheaded. Jordan has executed Sajida and another terrorist, Zaid al Karbouli but the IS does not care. These were pawns in their game. Some believe that broadcasting these videos increases recruitment for the IS. The IS apparently asked for suggestions on how to execute the pilot and the brutality of what some suggested is beyond imagination. It is as if they play games to draw ordinary people to their way of thinking. Much as the Nazis did with ordinary Germans. And it maybe working. Just a few days after the attack on Charlie Hebdo apologists were making outrageous excuses for the killings. Anti-Semitism is increasing all over Europe, with 15,000 Jews thinking of fleeing to Israel from France. In Britain 25% of people believe that Jews " chase money more than others " and talk about the Holocaust to get sympathy. Maybe the IS just wants to enrage everyone so that there is chaos. That is how it can survive. So it plays games.

The mystery of ' art '.

Is there genuine art or is the whole thing a massive con trick? Art comes in various forms. We have no doubts about literature, music, theatre or cinema because they are widely reproduced and can be enjoyed by anyone in any corner of the world. A good story retains its interest however it is read, in hardcover, in paperback or electronically. Movies maybe more enjoyable on a big screen in a hall but a DVD played on a high definition television set is almost equally good. Music maybe more enjoyable live but a CD can be carried anywhere and gives the same quality every time it is played. Mousetrap, a play on a story by Agatha Christie, has been playing continuously for 63 years. The 25,000th show was on 8 November, 2012. During this time more than 400 actors have been used and directors have changed but the attraction still continues. However, when it comes to paintings and sculpture we are dependent on experts to tell us how good it is. You have to see the so called ' works of art ' that win the Turner Prize every year to see that much of it is rubbish. An unmade bed is dirty, a dead shark preserved in formaldehyde is a creation of nature and no credit to the artist and a bunch of soup cans, even if hand painted, is just plagiarism. Yet each of them is valued in millions of dollars. Because ' experts ' call them ' art '. The dubious nature of art has been vividly demonstrated by claims by researchers in Cambridge that 2 bronze statues, which have been lying in obscurity so far, were actually created by Michelangelo. They were sold for 1.82 million pounds at Sotheby's in 2002 but if accepted to be made by the master their value will be multiplied many times. Why? If they are that exquisite their value should be based on aesthetic appeal and not on a brand. It is like any fashion item. A handbag sold by a renowned fashion house may cost Rs 1 million but an identical bag made by a local company sells for Rs 500, even if you cannot tell the difference. The price of a piece of art maybe because it is unique. There is only one David by Michelangelo and one Guernica by Pablo Picasso but there are more than one painting claiming to be Mona Lisa. And then there are forgeries. Some of them are so good that they fool the so called experts. An American forger named Ken Perenyi has even written a book detailing how he fooled experts for decades. Surely, if the fakes were so good then they are the same as the originals and, since most of the old masters have no copyright protection, then the fakes maybe taken as original. Apparently even the great Michelangelo was guilty of forgery. So the whole ' art ' business is based on price which is based on what ' experts ' tell us. But since these ' experts ' cannot paint or sculpture how do they know? Pretty shady indeed.

Rural maybe but rustic no more.

Seems that rural folk are no longer satisfied with cheap local products but are increasingly buying brands. Not only are they buying fancy clothes but they are using expensive non-essential goods, such as liquid hand wash, green tea, noodles, breakfast cereals, coffee, hair conditioners and salty snacks. Cream biscuits, carbonated drinks and bread are the top 3 Fast Moving Consumer Goods purchased in rural areas. While the use of liquid hand wash and sanitary napkins is hygienic we may expect an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and dental caries from the use of white bread, soft drinks, cream biscuits and instant noodles. The survey proves what we have been writing for years - that the aspirations of people are the same the world over. No one wants to be poor, dependent on handouts thrown at them at election times for survival. Everyone wants a good standard of living, new gadgets, which enhance the quality of life, to travel in comfort and quality entertainment. It is common to see laborers, who are illiterate and do not know English, smartly using smart phones. India has just 15 cars per 1000 people, China has 60, Brazil has 200 while the US has 600 cars per 1000 people. Yet there are those who want to cars to become more expensive, apparently to reduce pollution. Why is it that when the US has 40 times as many cars as in India we do not hear of pollution due to car exhausts in US cities which have very high buildings, blocking free movement of air. This is because the cheap price of diesel in India encourages purchase of cars with diesel engines, which are highly polluting, whereas in the US diesel is more expensive than petrol and so is only used by trucks. Already taxes on cars and fuel are among the highest in the world but people would still prefer to travel by cars than by two-wheelers. In the last 3 financial years there was much sympathy for the Congress because it was having to subsidise fuel due to the high international price of crude. Turns out that the government was earning more from taxes than it was paying out in subsidies. Although the price of crude has fallen by 60% and oil companies have slashed the price of Aviation Turbine Fuel airlines are unable to reduce the price of tickets because of taxes by various state governments. Air Asia of Malaysia and Cebu Airlines of Philippine have abolished fuel surcharge but not airlines in India. So it is too expensive to fly. But there maybe some good in taxing gadgets out of reach of the poor. Apparently computers are making people dumb and Albert Einstein was afraid that technology would make us all idiots. Who cares!

Modi has been very lucrative for pundits.

The last one year has been especially lucrative for pundits. Before the general elections in May last year there were raging discussions on whether there would be a hung parliament or whether the Congress would put the upstart Modi in his place. When the results showed a jaw-dropping majority for the BJP there were raging discussions on whether there was a genuine Modi wave, an anti-incumbent wave, a collective BJP wave or a spurious Modi wave, due to gullible voters falling for Modi's rhetoric. There were pundits to advise the new Prime Minister on what to do, more pundits to advise on what not to do, pundits to advise the Congress on how to revive its fortunes, others to advise Ms Sonia Gandhi and Mr Rahul Gandhi to bring on Ms Priyanka Gandhi and others to oppose whatever everyone else said. There were bye-elections in some states in which the BJP did not do very well so the pundits denied any Modi wave but then there were elections to state assemblies in which the BJP did very well, so the Modi wave was back again. Finally, there were state visits by Tony Abbott, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and others and finally Barack Obama which allowed Modi haters to vent their bile in full. Delhi election is on 7 February followed by the annual theaters, the Railways and the national budgets. Business fellows want low taxes and lower interest rates. India has the highest rates of taxes in the world because only 35 million people, out of 1250 million, file tax returns. With so few paying direct taxes the government has to collect its revenues from indirect taxes, which make goods and services expensive, add to inflation and lower demand. The Congress started a large number of subsidies which have to be paid for so tax fellows are always looking for ways to snare individuals and companies. The government wants the middle class to give up subsidies but that is grossly unfair. The poor get all kinds of monetary benefits, such as free tuition in private schools, free healthcare in private hospitals, cheap food and subsidies on fuel while the rich know how to avoid paying taxes. The middle class has to pay for all the subsidies and gets nothing in return. The government wants to collect revenue by selling assets at high prices but that will only increase costs for us. As for interest rates that is in the hand of the Reserve Bank but the Bank will bring down rates only if it is certain that fiscal deficit will be contained. Unless rates come down real estate prices will not rise, which is where a lot of money is invested. Foreign investors have been buying Indian bonds so if rates fall too far they could sell out. On the other hand, the RBI does not want the rupee to become too strong because that makes exports expensive and reduces profits of IT companies which earn in dollars. Sounds complicated? There are pundits to explain it all. Very profitable.

The speed bumps and potholes in our progress.

Yesterday a High Court Judge in Karnataka criticised the government for collecting extra taxes on cars when there are 156 speed bumps on the road between Bengaluru and Mysuru and people are breaking their backbones because of potholes. Karnataka has a Congress government. Roads are a reflection of India's progress in the 67 years after independence. The letter of resignation from the Congress Party, written by Ms Jayanthi Natarajan, Minister of Forests and Environment from July 2011 to December 2013, to Sonia Gandhi, President of the Congress, vividly illustrates why our progress has been so poor. The letter is long, full of self-justification and constantly repeats her loyalty to the party. Not a word about loyalty to the nation or the people of India. Two sentences are particularly revealing and shocking. When she was sacked as minister the then Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh told her," Jayanthi, I have been told by Congress President, that your services are required for party work." Surely, the Prime Minister chooses his cabinet and only he decides who will serve as minister but Mr Singh was merely a messenger for Ms Gandhi, meekly obeying any order to hang on to his post. Ms Natarajan writes," I received specific requests [which used to be directives for us] from Shree Rahul Gandhi and his office forwarding environmental concerns in some important areas and I took care to honour those ' requests '." She held back 350 files which had already been cleared. Why did she take orders from Mr Rahul Gandhi, and what about her oath to bear ' true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India '? Another woman, Foreign Secretary, Sujatha Singh has been asked to take early retirement because she ran her own foreign policy, repeatedly embarrassing the Prime Minister. Over the last 67 years we have been repeatedly humiliated by China and Pakistan who are occupying large tracts of our land because of our policy of submission. That is because there are people who support Chinese power over us while others point to the advantages of kowtowing to China, forgetting to mention that the cockroach-eaters despise those they consider weak. Why was it alright for Indira Gandhi to add socialism and secularism to the preamble of the constitution during the dark days of the Emergency and why is it wrong to remove them now? As for the Italian marines they dare not be jailed because they are Italian and they cannot be freed because the Congress maybe blamed. Perhaps we should allow them to escape and then let the CBI fellows travel to all the fleshpots of the world, looking for evidence, as they did with Quattracchi. At least they will have a good time.

The inscrutable economy.

We do not know what is happening inside China. Not many people do or understand. China has sacked 200 officers, including 21 generals in the People's Liberation Army. Since 2013, 4024 officers, including 82 generals have been under investigation for corruption related to infrastructure construction, property development, equipment purchase as well as personnel and fund management. We do not know if this is a genuine cleanup of corruption, an attempt to reduce waste of public funds for economic reasons or giving friends of the new administration a chance to accumulate wealth. A few days back Prime Minster Li Keqiang was in Davos promising that China will " continue to pursue a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy " because the economy was facing problems. Which is extraordinary because last year the economy grew by 7.4%, among the highest in the world. But what if the growth falls to much lower levels? Except for the US, growth in the world has come to almost standstill, but here too the recovery has enriched the top 1% while income of the rest 99%, after adjusting for inflation, has actually fallen a little. The Eurozone shrank by 0.6% in January, Japan is battling to get out of recession, precipitated by the increase in sales tax from 5 to 8% in April, while Singapore has cut its interest rate, prompting its currency to fall. The Swiss National Bank  has set a negative interest rate of -0.75%, which means that savers will have to pay to keep money in the bank, to stop the Franc from appreciating against other currencies after the Bank abandoned the currency peg with the Euro. Denmark has also set a negative interest rate of -0.5% to protect its currency peg. China's economy is reliant on exports which cannot grow if the rest of the world is slowing down. The top 1% is hardly going to shop at discount stores for cheap, poor quality Chinese goods. It could stimulate the economy by increasing spending but that will only increase the levels of debt, and result in asset price bubbles. Along with growth fiscal revenue is also growing more slowly. The local governments are borrowing to service older loans. Capital is flowing out of the country. The People's Bank of China is having to support the Yuan to prevent it falling very fast. If the Bank reduces interest rate to stimulate growth more capital may flow out and the Yuan could fall further. The government had to ask people to buy stocks to support falling share prices. China wants the Yuan to replace the dollar as reserve currency so it cannot risk competitive currency depreciation with other countries. Will the Chinese economy crash with severe social unrest. Would be great for India if that happens.

Laws of economics do not apply to us.

In an article Kaushik Basu, Chief Economist at the World Bank, and Avinash Dixit, Professor at Princeton University, point out that the government has no interest in controlling corruption. " Most agents who comprise government - politicians, bureaucrats, law enforcement officers - benefit from corruption," they write. Indeed the previous government even proposed to punish bribe givers as severely as bribe takers. There are two types of bribe givers, ordinary people are forced to pay bribes to obtain services to which they are entitled. These are harassment bribes. Business people pay non-harassment bribes to commit illegal acts, such as obtaining licenses cheaply, cheating on taxes or getting control of precious national resources. Basu and Dixit point out that when a business bribes officials," The winning firm profits, but the efforts and expenses of all the losers more than offset this gain. Worse, to the extent that corruption acts like a tax and therefore deters future investment, it hurts profits and growth for all business." Thus in a corrupt environment everyone loses. They propose that businessmen in India should set up an informal institution which everyone will be invited to join by promising not to indulge in corruption. This will investigate all allegations of corruption in business and punish the guilty. Perhaps Basu and Dixit are overlooking the fact that almost all businesses in India, except new ones, such Infosys and Flipcart, are family owned and were set up during the time described as the ' license-permit raj ' when foreign competition was strictly restricted, allowing Indian companies monopoly control of the Indian market. Children of the original founders are steeped in the same tradition of rent seeking and entitlement. That is why there is no research, no innovation and no international success. We have no companies like Apple, Google or SpaceX. Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones in the last quarter, its revenue was $74.6 billion, more than the GDP of Denmark, and its profit was $18 billion, more than the GDP of Costa Rica. A team of Indians has won a prize of $1 million from Google for building a moon rover and hopes to win the full prize of $30 million for designing a rocket. A US company contributed the prize money and the Wall Street Journal reported it. Will any of our 103 dollar billionaires dream of spending any of their money on such research? Did any of them support Sarita Devi by filing a criminal case for cheating against AIBA in Switzerland? Perish the thought. They will build huge mansions in India, buy luxury apartments in London or New York and buy luxury aircraft with which to travel from the luxury mansions to their luxury apartments. Since they have no ideas they must bribe to stay in control. Sell companies that default on debt and allow companies to fail. The crooks will disappear.

Are we independent of the British?

Claims by some scholars of old Indian texts, such as the Vedas, that Indians had invented airplanes, plastic surgery and in vitro fertilisation thousands of years ago but had forgotten that knowledge, at the 102nd Indian Science Congress, were greeted with extreme ridicule and contempt by our usual pseudo-secular pseudo-intellectuals. Sadly, these are the same people who think that anything broadcast by the propaganda channels, BBC and CNN, is gospel truth and President Obama is some kind of latter day prophet whose homily on religious freedom was instantly construed as a vindication of their hatred for Hindus. To commemorate 70 years of liberation from Auschwitz some 300 survivors returned there for a service. Six million Jews were killed by Hitler and the world has not forgotten it but the 3 million starved to death in Bengal by Winston Churchill, the Butcher of Bengal, have been quietly buried by these same sanctimonious frauds. " I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits," was Churchill's contemptuous dismissal of the genocide. And what religion was he talking about? Hinduism, of course. The British constantly abuse Hitler but we have allowed the British to write our history that colonialism was good for us. Hey, they built the railways didn't they. So what if they killed 3, 10 or even a 100 million Indians. Over the years the British have very successfully managed to portray this villain as some kind of a colossus even secretly paying dock workers to lower cranes as his body floated down the Thames. Occasionally someone may acknowledge that Churchill was a " ruthless egotist, a chancer, and a charlatan" but only " at times " and we should forgive his little quirks. He was human after all. No he was not. He was a cruel, ruthless and inhuman moster, just as evil as Hitler, maybe even more evil because he defeated Hitler. Alexander Litvinenko worked for the Russian secret service, who defected to Britain after speaking out against his seniors. Secret service officers are bound by an oath of secrecy in every country as demonstrated by the conviction of a former CIA official in the US, 2 days back, for talking to the Washington Post. Litvinenko broke his oath and by defecting to the UK became a traitor. Traitors deserve capital punishment. He was poisoned with polonium in 2006, for which the British blame President Putin of Russia. Without any evidence. 9/11 was an attack on the US, which had nothing to do with Iraq. Yet British troops joined the US in an illegal war, torturing and mutilating innocent Iraqis, and then destroyed all evidence. We Indians owe it the world to research and reveal the true history about the British. It may save innocent lives in the future.

Afghanistan could become a backdoor entry for China.

President Obama has left India. Safely, thank God. There is a cacophony of analysis from our intellectuals. Most attention is focused on a joint declaration in which both India and the US seem to have expressed reservations about Chinese intentions in its neighborhood. " Regional prosperity depends on security. We affirm the importance of safeguarding maritime security and ensuring freedom of navigation and flight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea," reads a paragraph in the declaration. This has been taken as an attempt to contain Chinese hegemony. China is too rich and powerful to be contained like the Soviet Union was. The Soviet Union was economically isolated and most of its trade was with Comecon countries while about 14% of US trade is with China and China has $4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, of which about 70% is in US dollars. With its wealth China could have inspired the whole of Asia towards economic prosperity and ensured peace by maintaining military balance but, sadly, Chinese leaders were children during Mao's Cultural Revolution and brutality is all they know. President Xi Jinping was 15 years old when his father was jailed. If this brutality is contained within China it will destroy itself from within. It has to be done in regular increments, small enough not to provoke a muscular response from China but significant enough to be noticed by the cockroach-eaters. Japan has amended its constitution so that its Self Defence Forces can now cooperate with armed forces of other nations for ' collective self-defence '. India is to sell weapons and patrol boats to Vietnam. As usual China reacted savagely to the joint declaration calling the trip symbolic and advising India not to fall into a trap set by the US. But while our Prime Minister is right to try and build strategic relationships with the US, Japan, Vietnam and Australia he should not forget a near neighbor, Afghanistan. After the withdrawal of foreign forces economic growth has fallen from 14% to 1.4% and the central bank is spending $40-50 million twice a week to support the Afghani. Afghanistan is a treasure trove of minerals worth between $1 and $3 trillion. And this is where China comes in. The China Metallurgical Group, a state owned company, has already signed an agreement with the Afghan government and could ask for permission to send  the People's Liberation Army to guard the mines. China is already a friend of Pakistan so the ISI would be defanged. When the Soviet forces withdrew in 1989 it eventually led to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, leading to 9/11. China is infinitely more dangerous.

To clean India clean out the dross in government.

The Republic Day celebrations in the rain are over. The POTUS chewed gum and the FLOTUS looked bored. They will shortly fly out with the Beast and 1,600 security gorillas to offer condolences to the new Saudi King, who has dementia, over the passing of the old Saudi King, who was ailing for sometime. While Mr Modi looked tense and fully concentrated on his guest Mr Obama looked relaxed and in control. After all, India has a lot to gain from nuclear and defense collaboration with the US but what the US is looking to gain we do not know. Still, if Obama took time out to come all this way for a full state visit immediately after the State of the Union address it must mean that he expects some good to come out of his visit. India has no hope of becoming an equal partner of the US within a lifetime so the only way to exert influence over Washington will be to become very rich so that American companies can make lots of money over here. That is why China is so strong. Will any US prosecutor dare to humiliate a Chinese diplomat as they did with Devyani Khobragade or torture a Chinese schoolgirl the way they did Krittika Biswas? The Chinese scoundrel, Shang Ming who actually sent those obscene emails went unpunished. To produce wealth we need the best infrastructure, which will cost a minimum of $1 trillion to finance. Some of the money will come from loans from international lenders, some from the private sector and some from our taxes. The trouble is that a lot of the money we pay in taxes is wasted by our politicians and civil servants on themselves. Last year the central government spent Rs 2.54 trillion on wages on its employees. The central government employs 3.45 million civil servants while states and municipalities employ countless more. Despite being billionaires politicians keep increasing their own allowances and perks. It is in the interest of politicians and civil servants, therefore, to keep increasing taxes with which to finance their extravagant expenses. The Comptroller and Auditor General has discovered how civil servants were looting millions by false billing. Our tax fellows cook up new ways to increase taxes on individuals and businesses. They are demanding that companies pay taxes on advertisements and promotions. Why? Companies must be paying service and other taxes on advertisements while television and newspapers are paying corporate taxes. Software companies are being forced to pay both service and sales taxes. So they are shifting offices overseas and are paying taxes there. Including the Vice President the US has 16 cabinet posts and 7 others of cabinet rank while we have God knows how many. To really have a Swachh Bharat take the broom to the dross in government.

We must be strong to be respected.

Amitav Acharya, Professor at American University at Washington DC, argues in an article that we do not live in a unipolar or multipolar world but in a multiplex world, much like a cinema complex where different halls show different movies with entirely different stories, set in different locales. Today the world is not controlled by Great Powers but " is also shaped by newer and regional powers, global and regional organizations, corporations, social movements and shape-shifting terrorist networks." Then he says that there is " a shared vulnerability to transnational challenges like climate change, terrorism, pandemics etc." Precisely. Therefore, it is not really a multiplex world, wherein each story is complete and unconnected with others, but more a multidimensional world, rather like the universe, where space-time is continuous but curved by the gravity of objects within it. Prof Acharya opines that India's attitude to trade and non-proliferation is " marked by a an exaggerated sense of its needs and priorities, a refusal to make concessions and a tendency to accept only those agreements that are highly favourable to India " and that we should show a " greater willingness to make concessions and compromises." That is not true. Every nation does the same, especially the US and Europe who gang up against developing countries in the WTO. The US wants India to stop subsidies on agriculture while it pays over $14 billion to its own farmers. The conference on climate change at Copenhagen ended in disaster because the US, which has the highest greenhouse gas emission per head of population, refused any reduction unless countries like India, with very low emission rate, made equal sacrifices. The US grants extensions on drugs, whose patents have expired, based on cosmetic changes by pharmaceutical companies and aggressively defends its position, even if the rest of the world relies on cheap generic medicines from India to treat poor patients. The far left party Syriza won general elections in Greece after 5 years of crushing austerity humiliated the nation. In this period the hypocrisy of the Germans has been breathtaking. Germany sells 58.2% of its exports within the EU because its goods are priced at the same rate everywhere. The Euro being a common currency other countries cannot take advantage of currency devaluation to make German goods more expensive. Even though it objected strenuously Germany has the most to gain from the Quantitative Easing just announced by the ECB. The fall in the value of the Euro will make German exports cheaper to countries outside the EU, Germany is getting paid for borrowing money and the Greeks see their savings losing value. Only the strong are respected, the weak have little hope.

Everyone should be equal. But how?

Following a report by Oxfam, which says that by 2016 the richest 1% of the world will have greater wealth than the combined wealth of rest of the 99%, inequality has become the main topic of discussion at the annual jamboree of the rich at the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland. An article in The Economist explores the similarities between the ' robber barons ' in the early 20th century, who became fabulously wealthy by controlling transport and minerals, with the ' silicon sultans ' of today, who have also become similarly wealthy by controlling technology. These men became so wealthy by building huge monopolies. At one time John D Rockefeller controlled 80% of the world's oil supply while Google controls 90% of the search market in Europe and 67% of it in the US. When Rockefeller retired his wealth equaled one thirtieth of the entire GNP of the US while Bill Gates has managed to reach only 1/130th of it. So, these men were and are genuine oligarchs. Is it bad to become so rich and were these men selfish villains? The US is the richest and the most powerful country in the world because these men have made it so. Henry Ford did not invent the motor car, he produced them so cheap that every American could afford one. Cars used to cost $4,000, which was twice the average annual income, but the first car he produced cost $850 which came down to $360 in 1916 and just $290 in 1924. He did this by mass production along an ' assembly line ' so that every car was the same, illustrated by his famous quote when he said," Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black." Today, the poorest person carries a mobile phone, Skype allows you to talk to a person in the US for free while you can search for any topic on Google, also for free. Extreme inequality leads to resentment and may lead to violence. Thousands lost their heads during the French Revolution which coined the slogan liberte', egalite' and fraternite' which meant liberty, equality and fraternity. But can human beings be truly equal? After all, nothing is equal in nature. The elephant is huge while the ant is tiny, the cheetah runs at 70 miles an hour while the tortoise crawls along and the deer eats grass while the lion eats the deer. Communism was supposed to create an equal society by distributing wealth but created poverty instead. The Soviet Union collapsed, North Korea is on an edge while China is aggressively capitalist. Unemployment is rising in France and Europe, forcing the ECB to start quantitative easing to stimulate growth. But only those who can repay will be able to borrow cheap and multiply their assets. The unemployed cannot borrow. So inequality will grow.  At least the robber barons created jobs. Technology needs fewer workers. Will there be more revolutions? Who knows.

Parade and Taj Mahal maybe, but symbolism very important.

Obama is coming, and for the next 4 days the center of Delhi will be a no-go zone for the residents. All 430 rooms at the Sheraton have been booked for him. A no-fly zone has been declared over Raj Path, a 7 layer security zone has been set up and 71 high rise buildings will be completely taken over by the police. Every nook and cranny will be sanitised, said an anonymous but senior police officer. That will certainly be good for health. Hope all the paan stains will also be removed. His car, known affectionately as The Beast, has been airlifted over from the US of A. It weighs 20,000 lbs, which is 10 tons, has tyres that do not puncture and has grenade launchers in the trunk. Around 1,600 US security agents will be lurking with intent. No doubt they will be carrying an assortment of weapons on our streets. Hope there are no Raymond Davis types among them. Long term bosom friend, Pakistan has been warned not to stage any terror attack during the visit, which will make it difficult to portray the ISI as a club for jolly good fellows in dark shades. There are many firsts certainly. No President has visited India twice, the date of the State of the Union address had to be adjusted, no President has been part of the national day of another country and the visit is only to India, although a few stopovers on the way cannot be ruled out. Absolute security is a must. Our Prime Minister is a target for Islamic terrorists because he openly flouts his Hindu identity as opposed to all the pseudo-secular politicians who would happily wipe out Hindus to get ' minority ' votes. Obama is famous as the ' Drone Master ', having killed hundreds of terrorists and civilians in drone attacks in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, in Yemen, in Somalia and now in Iraq. No one is expecting very much to come out of this visit but the symbolism will be enormous. " He's going to India basically for a parade and a visit to the Taj Mahal," said Julie Pace, a journalist, snarkily. Maybe. He is also firmly in the lame duck period of his presidency, but he still has 2 full years left. Our previous Prime Minister visited the US 11 times but achieved little. He was tied down by his meek acceptance of the supremacy of Ms Sonia Gandhi, to hang on to his chair for a full 10 years, his acceptance of the destructive socialist policies of the National Advisory Council and his inability to modify the Nuclear Liability Act, to make it acceptable to US companies. Modi is a lot more friendly to Israel, a staunch US ally. Upgrading relations with Japan, Vietnam, Israel, the US and possibly Philippines could make China and Pakistan pause before thinking of attacking India again. That will be the real gain.

If India is the cheapest, we should be the richest.

A map, just published, shows the most expensive and the cheapest places in the world to live in. Switzerland came out as the most expensive and could have got a whole lot more expensive earlier this month after the Swiss National Bank abandoned the currency peg against the Euro which saw the Franc soar by 30%. What is surprising is that Venezuela came in at number 3 after Norway at 2. It maybe because the government of Venezuela has no money to import essential goods and the currency is trading in the black market at 150 to the dollar, when the official rate is 6.8 to the dollar. The collapse in the price of oil has produced such a crisis that people selling their places in queues are earning more than doctors. But, perhaps the biggest surprise is that India has been found to be the cheapest country in the world. The survey looked at the costs of Groceries, including meat, bread, rice, eggs, fruits, vegetables and alcohol, Transportation, including one-way tickets, monthly passes, taxi fares,petrol price and the cost of running a Volkswagen Golf car, Meal prices at expensive, mid-range and inexpensive restaurants and Utilities, including electricity, heating, water and internet prices. To put it another way, if the cost of living is the lowest it means our money buys the most amount of goods and services in the world. So we should have the highest standard of living in the world? Unfortunately, in the quality of life index India is down at 51 position, below Panama, Mexico and Turkmenistan. It is possible that with the fall of the rupee against the dollar since last year India looks cheap to foreigners but for us, who earn in rupees, life is very tough because of soaring inflation in the last 5 years. And what we earn is a pittance compared to what others get. In the US, which is the 24th most expensive country in the world, the median monthly salary is $5,000 per month,or $60,000 per year, whereas in India the median income was a tiny $616 per year, coming in at 99 among 131 countries and the lowest among the BRICS countries. Despite such low income levels India has probably the highest taxes in the world which take goods and services beyond our purchasing power and why we come a lowly 135 in human development index. It is shameful when the US has to tell us to reduce taxes on generic medicines which have been off-patent for 100 years. The government sets targets for tax officers who then use gestapo tactics to extort money from individuals and businesses. No wonder more than 300,000 direct tax disputes, involving Rs 4.36 trillion, are held up in litigation. And for all the taxes we pay we get no services from the government. Cases of Swine Flu are mounting but we have no information as where the virus is coming from and how to avoid it. Cheap country with cheap life. 

Idiots excel amidst confusion.

Houthi rebels from the northwest of Yemen have captured the whole of its capital, Sana'a, including the presidential palace. Houthis, not to be confused with Hutus who are far away in Ruanda and Burundi, belong to the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam which should not be confused with Yazidis who are partly Christian. Yemen is now effectively divided between Shia Houthis in the northwest and Sunni Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, also known as AQAP, in the southeast, who hate each other but are united in their hatred of the US. The attack on the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo in Paris, earlier this month, was claimed by AQAP commander, Nasr Ibn Ali Al-Ansi as revenge for French attacks against Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM. Apparently the attack was planned by Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen by birth, who was supposed to have inspired the Fort Hood shootings, before he was killed by a drone strike in 2011. A few days later another drone strike killed his 16 year old son while having dinner at a restaurant with a cousin. The third killer in Paris, Amedy Coulibaly, who shot a policewoman and then killed 4 people in a kosher supermarket, claimed to belong to ISIS, which is the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham, and not the Goddess Isis, who was a beautiful Egyptian lady who brought her brother, Osiris back to life and then married him. Also this month 2 Saudi guards were killed by a suicide attack in the north where Saudi Arabia shares a long border with Iraq. The Saudis have decided to build a 1000 km ' wall ' on the border with Iraq, consisting of 5 layers of fencing, watchtowers and ditches. Saudi Arabia follows Wahhabism which is a strict Sunni brand of Islam and finances terrorism all over the world but hates and fears Sunni terrorist groups such as the ISIS and Al Qaeda. These groups would love to capture Saudi Arabia, which would give them control over the 2 holy mosques at Makkah and Medina and control over all the Muslims in the world. But so would the Shias. The area of Iraq bordering Saudi Arabia is Shia and also shares a border with Shia Iran. Ironically, it is they who are preventing the ISIS from advancing towards Saudi, so as to protect their holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. According to the friends of the US in Pakistan, the ISI, Ronald Reagan invited Jalaluddin Haqqani to the White House. The Haqqani network was declared a terrorist organisation by Obama in 2012. George Bush named Iran in the " axis of evil " and then made it immensely stronger by removing Saddam. Obama was determined to remove Bashar al-Assad, of the Alawi branch of Shia, but is now helping him by bombing Sunnis. The middle east is a cauldron of confusion constantly stirred by stupid Americans. Idiots all.

Will deflation bring peace to the world?

Last week the Swiss National Bank discontinued the Swiss Franc's currency peg with the Euro without any warning. When the crisis in Greece became evident in 2009 the Euro became weak and fund managers started buying the Swiss Franc as a safe haven. This pushed up the value of the Franc and made exports too expensive so in 2011 the SNB determined to maintain the value of the Franc at 1.20 to the Euro by buying Euros from the market. So far they have spent $199 billion in suppressing the rate of the Franc. However, accumulating loads of Euros meant mounting losses as the Euro kept getting weaker. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank has almost finalised a plan of Quantitative Easing by buying European government bonds worth $635 billion in an effort to release more funds into banks to force them to lend more to businesses, which is what the Federal Reserve did in the US. Inflation in Europe is down to 0.2% and while we in India are cheering the fall in the price of oil the same fall is adding to the risk of deflation in Europe. Bond buying will release a flood of Euros and drive down its price even further making it too expensive for the Swiss to defend the currency peg. So they gave up. Those who have borrowed in Swiss Francs suffered big losses while Indians, who have black money in Swiss banks, will be celebrating. Will QE work? No one knows. Japan started its own QE in 2013 when the new Governor of the Bank of Japan promised to double money supply by buying government bonds worth $1.4 trillion. But instead of lending more to businesses banks just sit on their cash or invest in shares, which is one reason why stock markets all over the world are booming. Japan seems to be stuck in a liquidity trap. Last year China grew by 7.4% which is the slowest in 24 years. China may be forced to devalue the Yuan this year to and try to stimulate growth by making exports cheaper. So what of India? The IMF is predicting that India will grow faster than China in 2016. As China slows its demand for commodities will fall, resulting in a fall in commodity prices, which will help our Prime Minister's efforts to increase our manufacturing. The Reserve Bank reduced interest rate by 0.25% a few days back, which should increase consumer spending and encourage businesses to invest more. Foreign investors are buying Indian stocks and debt, bringing in large amounts of foreign exchange into India. Not much point in increasing manufacturing if our goods become too expensive because of a stronger rupee. So what will the RBI do? What if the US resorts to another bout of QE, bringing down the value of the dollar? Hyperinflation in Germany resulted in Hitler coming to power, what happens if the entire world falls into deflation? In a deflation people stop consuming as they wait for prices to fall even further so we may all turn into monks and there will be peace. We hope.

Rabbits can never be predators.

A study by Oxfam has suggested that the top 1% of the world's population owned 48% of all the wealth of the world in 2014 and by 2020 this will rise to 54%, which means that the combined wealth of 99% will be less than that. Of the remaining 52% of wealth, not owned by the rich in 2014, 46% was owned by 19% of the rest, leaving just 5.5% of wealth to be shared by 80% of the people in the world.  The combined wealth of the top 1% was $1.9 trillion last year, which is equal to the GDP of India, a country of 1.2 billion people. While a rich person delays a flight and throws out the chief steward from the plane because of daring to serve macadamia nuts in a bag instead of on a plate, discount stores have to hold sales to entice the poor to spend their money. But is it wrong for rich people to be rich? A study has suggested that really wealthy people are ' scary smart ' and are more likely to have attended elite colleges, such as Harvard. Liberals argue that only the children of the rich are able to afford expensive private schools which gives them an advantage when it comes to finding places at elite institutions. Those who go to elite colleges build up an ' old boys network ' of friends which helps them become richer, so it is not what you know but who you know that maybe more important. Prof Thomas Piketty wrote a book in which he suggested that much of the wealth of the rich is inherited, is due to controlling assets, such as real estate, is generated from non-productive financial manipulations and by getting politicians to pass laws favorable to them. Critics snarl that Piketty's book is nothing but ' legal plunder ' where money is looted from those who have worked hard and doled out to lazy scroungers. But there maybe something in what Piketty suggests because one of the first orders of business in the new Republican-controlled House, in the US, has been to try and dilute the Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed in 2010 to control renegade bankers. Prof Nouriel Roubini wrote that technology, such as robots, will replace humans not only in manufacturing but also in services, such as education and healthcare, which will leave vast numbers of people redundant. His solution is a continuous system of education and re-skilling so that workers are abreast of advances in technology. Prof Dani Rodrik writes that Europe responded to the first industrial revolution by creating a welfare state providing a safety net for those who were left behind by new inventions. His solution is that governments should create venture funds which will invest in new research and thus create new wealth with which to help the poor. But the Pope has said what these gentlemen dare not when he said that you do not have to breed like ' rabbits ' to be good Catholics. Reduce supply to increase your value. Sound economics.

Democracy comes from ideas.

Counting the present incumbent India has had 15 Prime Ministers since independence in 1947, out of which 7 have been from the Congress and 8 from other parties. Of the 67 years since independence the 7 Prime Ministers of the Congress ruled India for a combined total of about 55 years while the other 8 were in power for a combined total of just 12 years, of which Mr AV Vajpayee of the BJP was Prime Minister for 6 years, from 1998 to 2004. So the 6, who were neither from the Congress or the BJP, held office for a total of 6 years. Only Mr Vajpayee and Mr Modi have never been associated with the Congress while all the others started life in the Congress Party but left it for personal ambition. Of the 7 Congress Prime Ministers, Mr Narasimha Rao was in office for a full 5 years, Mr Lal Bahadur Shastri held the post for 2 years, until his mysterious death in Tashkent in 1966, and Mr Gulzari Lal Nanda was twice Prime Minister for a shameful total of just 26 days. All these numbers indicate that the Nehru-Gandhi family has ruled India for 48 years. You may argue that Mr Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister for the last 10 years from 2004 to 2014 but he kept his seat at the pleasure of Ms Sonia Gandhi who ruled the country as an extra-constitutional authority, with full power but no accountability, with the advice of a bunch of communists in the National Advisory Council. So ineffective was Mr Singh, who boasts a DPhil in Economics from Oxford no less, that he left the country bankrupt, with eye-watering fiscal and current account deficits and a sizzling double digit inflation. Our credit rating was reduced to BBB-, which is one notch above junk status. In the north Chinese soldiers crossed into India at will, Pakistan in the west sent in terrorists and Mr Singh was in Sharm al-Sheikh 6 months later to beg for peace, to the south Sri Lanka arrested Indian fishermen from international waters and invited Chinese submarines to dock in its port and troops from Myanmar in the east crossed our border to harass local citizens. Yet there are journalists who hate Mr Modi and want the Gandhis to come back power. One of these poison pens writes," The fact is that the very issues on which the Congress lost the election are still there. They are the fanciful notion that one man has arrived and saved a nation of 1.2 billion. That honesty and integrity are in the possession of only a single politician. That India has successfully used force to impose its will on Pakistan at the border," and so on. Yes, one man has always made the difference. Through ideas, eg Karl Marx, Buddha and Louis Pasteur. Sarcasm does not need facts. But the writer is right to compare the Gandhis to the Mughals. Both came from abroad to rule us with the help of traitors. Like the writer.

Bicycles and goats work, but laptops are dicey.

In response to a request by the Electoral Commission of India the Ministry of Home Affairs has prepared a note for the cabinet suggesting that bribing voters during elections will be made a cognizable offence. Currently bribing voters is a non-cognizable offence under sections 171B/171E, which attracts a prison term of one year and/or a fine. But if it is made cognizable then the police will be allowed to start an investigation or make an arrest without a warrant. Very pious indeed, but what constitutes bribery of voters? The ministry wants to outlaw distribution of bundles of cash, or alcohol to men and saris to women, a few days before an election in an effort to buy their votes. But this is a very narrow definition. Mr Nitish Kumar promised bicycles to all girl students in Bihar which increased female attendance in schools and made him very popular. Trouble is that elections come round every 5 years and, having raised people's expectations, you have to go one better. So Mr Kumar is now thinking of promising tablets and laptops, as his buddy Mr Akilesh Yadav did in UP. Problem with that is that Mr Yadav's father, Mulayam Singh now blames the laptop scheme for the thrashing received by his party in the parliamentary elections last May at the hands of the BJP who took 71 out of 80 seats in UP. These laptops, ironically called ' Mulayam wala laptop ' in UP, are being sold online for Rs 14,000. The original cost was Rs 19,000. Ms Jayalalithaa was even more generous. She promised mixies, grinders, fans, milch cows, goats, solar powered greenhouses and marriage assistance for women, which included Rs 25,000 in cash, 4 gram gold coin and household items. She won an absolute majority in assembly elections and then promised the same for the Lok Sabha elections in May last year. Here her party won 37 seats. But nothing comes for free. The Tamil Nadu government has run up a debt of over Rs 800 billion which will rise to over Rs 1 trillion by 2016, when the next assembly elections are due. To increase its revenues the government sells alcohol, including local hooch in plastic pouches, through the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation or TASMAC. However, all this is loose change compared to the massive bribery by the Congress in 2008 to increase the number of its MPs from 145 in 2004 to 206 in 2009. The NREGA scheme, the waiver of loans to farmers and the Sixth Pay Commission cost trillions of rupees, caused double digit inflation and resulted in a soaring fiscal deficit. The Congress crashed from 206 to a meager 44 seats in last May's elections. Poor fellows. People are so fickle.