Europe a sitting duck and sabotage in the US, the result next year.

A 24-year old Tunisian man, named Anis Amri, drove a truck at speed into a crowd of shoppers in a Berlin market on Monday night, killing 12 and injuring 49. In the early hours of yesterday he was shot dead by Italian police in Milan after pulling a gun during a routine stop, and hurting a policeman. What is known about Amri? Apparently he fled to the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2011 after stealing a truck in Tunisia for which he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, in his absence. He was jailed for 4 years in Palermo for burning down a school. Italy tried to deport him back to Tunisia twice but they refused to take him. Why? Normally, it takes years and costs a fortune to extradite a criminal from another country, as India has found to its cost, but on this occasion Tunisia refused to take back a convicted fugitive. Perhaps, the government of Tunisia can be sued by families of victims for compensation. What about Germany? Amri was under surveillance by police after he was heard making an offer of a suicide attack in a phone call with an extremist preacher but he was not arrested. Instead, his surveillance was stopped. They managed to lose sight of him even though the US warned of risks of a market attack during the Christmas shopping season. Political correctness gone mad? If that was ineptitude it is criminal neglect that Amri was able to get hold of a gun, exactly a year after the attack on Paris that killed at least 130 people, and cross over into France and then into Italy. At the very least they should be able to stop smuggling of guns across borders. Open borders seems to have been designed for terrorists. After shooting him the police tried to revive Amri, as shown by an endotracheal tube and an intravenous line in photographs. The British were wise to vote for Brexit weren't they? Meanwhile, instead of helping in a smooth transfer of office to Donald Trump, Obama is trying to make his start as difficult as possible. Using an obscure 1953 law Obama has permanently banned drilling in parts of the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. After all, Obama studied law at Harvard. He has scrapped the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System which was started after 9/11 to monitor people coming from countries with active terrorist groups. Yesterday the US abstained from a vote in the UN Security Council condemning settlement building by Israel on occupied Palestinian lands. Obama has been president for 8 long years. Why is he taking all these actions now when he could really have made a difference had he done them in his first term? Because then he may have lost a large chunk of oil and Jewish money for his reelection. Mean and vindictive. He is proving Trump was right to question the place of his birth. We wait to see how much more damage he will do before he leaves. 2017 is going to be interesting.

How can you be called rich if you don't even own a fridge?

A survey of 61,000 households, of which 36,000 were urban, carried out by a private organisation, headed by Rama Bijapurkar and Rajesh Shukla, showed how poor India still is 69 years after independence. Naturally, there is a very big difference in consumption patterns between the top 20% and the bottom 20%. But what of the middle 60% of households, that the survey calls Middle India? To their surprise they found that Middle India is not middle class. Middle class is classified as those with an income of $10-$20 per day. Pew Research found that only 3% of people in the world are in that bracket. "An overwhelming majority of the richest Indians consider themselves to be middle class and actually a third of those actually in the middle of India's income distribution pyramid consider themselves to be poor," the survey found. It is no surprise that only 6% of the middle 60% own cars, 31% of the rich 20% and 11% of the all Indian households own cars, compared to one car for every 1.3 people in the US, which means over 70% people. "Seventy-two per cent of breadwinners in Middle India are either unlettered or have received only primary schooling. Most of them are either self-employed or labourers, and very few (17%) have regular salaried jobs," they write. About 35% of the rich have salaried jobs which shows how high salaries are in India, probably as a result of continuously high retail inflation. The shocking thing is that only about 25% of Middle India, comprising 60% of households own a refrigerator, which should be absolutely essential in a hot country. Only 60% of the top 20% of households own refrigerators. About 65% of Middle India and 100% of the rich own televisions. Less than 10% of Middle India own a washing machine, which has revolutionised the lives of women and increased prosperity in western countries, by allowing many more women to work. Another shocking fact is that nearly 60% of breadwinners are either illiterate or have studied up to primary school. Which means that the vast majority of people cannot be retrained for a digital future. Not surprising that only 23% of households have some form of health insurance. 3% of households in the top 20% faced a health shock this year which wiped out more than 20% of their wealth. The figure for the bottom 20% was more than double at 6.8%. Figures do not reveal the nature of health shock. For the rich it could have been cancer which costs tens of millions of rupees but for a poor person it could be a simple dog bite which would cost a couple of thousand in doctor's fees and anti-rabies injections. Only politicians and civil servants are rich in India, with high salaries and every expense paid by the government. The rest of us are poor.

Whose muck will stink the most? Elections will show.

Congress Vice President, Rahul Gandhi has alleged that the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi received kickbacks 9 times as Chief Minister of Gujarat. A total of Rs 650 million was paid to Modi, he said. He received Rs 50 million 7 times and Rs 25 million twice, which comes to a total of Rs 400 million, from the Sahara group. Apparently, the income tax authorities are in possession of papers from the Birla group, one of which says,"Gujarat CM (to be paid) Rs 25 crore, Rs 12 crore paid, the rest?" Which means that, according to Gandhi, Modi has been paid Rs 520 million already and but he is not sure of the remaining Rs 130 million. These same documents, which appear show these payments, were produced by lawyer Prashant Bhushan in a Public Interest Litigation in front of the Supreme Court and were deemed as "fictitious", "not authentic" and "zero" by the court. How the court deemed the documents "fictitious" we do not know but surely providing fake documents to the Supreme Court amounts to perjury and Bhushan should have been punished. The Congress says that Gandhi will provide further proof in the New Year. If there is no proof why is Rahul Gandhi making wild allegations? Won't people laugh at him? At first, maybe, but if he keeps repeating the allegations some will say there must be some truth in it. After all, there can be no smoke without fire. This is great strategy. Just as the Congress party is nothing without the Nehru-Gandhi family so the BJP has now come to mean Narendra Modi, who came to power as a crusader against corruption. So, if Rahul manages to tarnish his image a tiny bit it may translate into enough votes to make a significant difference in the coming assembly elections in UP and Punjab. Naturally the BJP has rushed into Modi's defence saying that he is "pure as Ganga". People in India have a deep-rooted contempt for all politicians. Honesty is relative to others, so Modi has to be defended. "I condemn the irresponsible, shameful allegations of Rahul...the public will never believe this," said Ravi Shankar Prasad. "Congressmen and even the family has been named in AgustaWestand investigations. It is not surprising that they resorted to this baseless tactic given that they're feeling cornered." Who has done the naming? Was it our government, the CBI or the courts? No. The Italian courts have sentenced 2 officials to prison for bribery in the case and have held Indian officials guilty of taking bribes. Has anything happened in India? A big no. A commission implicated Gandhi's brother-in-law, Robert Vadra in a land deal. Has he been punished? Vadra has been taunting Modi about using banks to catch people with black money. Throw muck at each other and eventually everyone stinks. We watch in despair.

If only she had listened to her husband?

Donald Trump's victory was confirmed by the Electoral College but immediately there are calls for impeaching him. Even some Republicans hate him so much that they reject him as a president. Texas Republican elector, Chris Suprun, who voted for Ohio Gov John Kasich, said,"As a person who has played fast and loose with the law, Trump will likely be impeached within the first year of his Presidency by responsible Republicans in Congress." The anger is all the more because Hillary Clinton has received 2.7 million popular votes more than Trump, about 2% of the total votes cast, as predicted by opinion polls. Only the USC/Los Angeles Times was right by consistently predicting a Trump victory, by consistently getting it wrong in giving a lead to Trump in opinion polls. Clinton won the heavily populated states of California, New York and Illinois, with large immigrant populations, while Trump won most of the swing states. Clinton got a majority of 4.3 million votes in California alone, without which Trump has a majority of 1.4 million popular votes. Seems that it was Clinton's election to lose and she did. How? Apparently, because of a single typo. Clinton campaign Chairman, John Podesta received an email claiming to be from Google, advising him to change his Gmail password immediately. This email was shown to a computer technician, Charles Delavan who replied,"This is a legitimate email. John needs to change his password immediately." Delavan maintains that he meant to type 'illegitimate'. Whatever the truth, WikiLeaks got hold of 60,000 emails which they started dumping one hour after a tape surfaced, showing Trump boasting about groping women. But the Clinton campaign team got things wrong by not paying attention to people on the ground. When local organisers in Michigan began to get anxious they were overruled. Clinton campaign manager, Robbie Mook says he never heard of the complaints. Trump won the state despite getting 30,000 fewer votes than George Bush did in 2004 when he lost the state. "They believed they were more experienced, which they were," said Donnie Fowler. "They believed they were smarter, which they weren't." Not just the presidential campaign, the Democrats lost the Senate as well. There were 24 Republican Senators up for reelection compared to 10 for the Democrats so the Democrats were certain of winning enough seats to get a majority. Surprisingly, it was Trump who pulled many of the Republicans, who were almost certain to lose, to victory. But perhaps, Hillary's biggest mistake was not listening to the arch-campaigner, her husband, Bill, who blamed Podesta and Mook for her flagging campaign. A few days before the election the two had a furious fight, with Bill throwing his phone towards the Arkansas River in rage. An old campaigner can smell a defeat.

If it's a government cat who will dare to bell it?

Anantha Nageswaran, a financial consultant, analyses the "Costs and benefits of the currency swap..." presently taking place in India. The sudden withdrawal of high denomination notes by Prime Minister Modi was a replay of the old socialist mindset of 'Naked poor man very good, rich man very bad' which has been exploited by politicians to win votes since independence in 1947 and by a succession of Bollywood movies. While the people are castigated for not paying taxes political parties are exempt from declaring the sources of their wealth. Any donation to a political party less than Rs 20,000 remains anonymous so parties have been able to sanitise all their money by showing donations of Rs 19,000 each. So every party runs on black money. The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has never held a productive job in his entire life, so presumably never paid any tax. He has probably lived on payments by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a political organisation, so he has lived his entire life on black money.  The Election Commission said that there are over 1,900 political parties in India and over 400 have never fought any election. Which means they are conduits for money laundering. So our fearless crime fighting PM is going to throw all criminal politicians in jail, right? Er, no. "The legal and taxation regime with regard to political parties remains absolutely what it has been in the last 15-20 years. There is not a single change that has been brought about nor is any change at the moment contemplated," said our esteemed Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley. Which means,'Carry on as before chaps. Enjoy.' Talking about not paying taxes he thundered,"This had become an acceptable way of life and stealing money from the government was considered smart." An eminent lawyer like him has not heard the phrase 'We the people'. People are dying of frustration, trying to change old notes for new. Almost daily stories of people committing suicide for not being able to pay medical bills or for not being able to meet ordinary commitments. Is it the fault of the government that these fools cannot get access to their own money? Of course, not. Everyday they keep discovering millions of new notes in unexpected places, such as banks or from a law firm or even from a bathroom in Karnataka. The last one seems most appropriate, seeing that the Prime Minister has converted our currency into toilet paper anyway. Trouble is that all cash money is not black money. "The informal economy too, whether we like it or not, is a subset of black money," writes Nageswaran. Today plumbers and masons are earning enough to be paying income tax at the highest rates. Will they arrest the 'vote bank'? The Bombay High Court was surprised that no one is ever convicted of corruption. Who can convict politicians and civil servants?  

Why is Obama poisoning relations with Russia just before he goes?

Barack Obama is to leave office on 20 January, when the next president, presumably Donald Trump, will be sworn in, but he is doing his best to make sure to poison relations with Russia to such an extent that Trump will find it impossible to solve problems, such as the civil wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. The CIA and the FBI are accusing the Russian government of hacking into and releasing Democratic National Committee emails which helped Trump win the election. WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange flatly denied receiving the emails from Russia and former UK Ambassador, Craig Murray has said that he met the man who leaked the emails in Washington DC and he was an American. However, Obama is continuing with his hate campaign against Russia saying that he ordered Vladimir Putin to "cut it out". Putin must have been trembling with fear. "Whatever they do to us, we can potentially do to them," said Obama. Like what exactly? Precipitate World War III? Hillary Clinton said that Putin has a "personal beef" against her. "He is determined not only to score a point against me but also undermine our democracy," she said. There are 3 points here: 1. The DNC should have protected its servers against hacking, 2. The hacking was only effective because the Chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was found to be actively undermining Bernie Sanders, who was fighting Clinton in the primaries and 3. Clinton should have treated Putin with more respect when she was Secretary of State. Instead she is supposed to have said that since he had been in the KGB then "by definition he doesn't have a soul". We cannot comment about anyone's soul but a trained KGB officer would certainly know how to play the underhand game. She alleged vote-rigging by Putin to win the elections in 2011. A weak government like ours would smile and carry on sucking up to the Americans but not Putin who harbors a grudge because of the humiliation of former president, Boris Yeltsin. At the time the Soviet Union had fallen apart, the Russian economy was in dire straits and criminal oligarchs were looting the state. Yeltsin's drunken antics were a source of amusement to the US press. But, perhaps the worst humiliation was the expansions of Nato to former Comecon countries. An article on the days just before the US election by David Remnick, a total Obama supporter, for the left wing New Yorker, shows how arrogant and egotistical Obama is. When asked if he could imagine Trump delivering a State of the Union address he said," Well, I can imagine it in a 'Saturday Night' skit." Faced with a President Trump in exactly one month he is going all out to destroy Trump's credibility, even if that damages the interests of the nation. The electoral college is to meet today to decide on the next president and there are threats against the electors. We will know tomorrow.

The world is changing. How do we manage without money?

Economists are sounding the death knell of neoliberalism, with free immigration, globalization of trade and wealth shifting to financiers from manufacturing. Apparently started by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, neoliberalism is now being questioned by those who supported it in the past. Economists sound confused. They recognise that although globalisation has increased wealth generally, the distribution has been grossly unequal, while others say that economic growth has to be rapid to benefit those left behind. For rapid growth we need increased trade but free trade is creating inequality. Professor Dani Rodrik sees trade deals, that open up economies to free trade, as a means of strong nations, like the US, imposing unequal treaties on weaker countries. "Newer trade agreements incorporate rules on "intellectual property", capital flows,and investment protections that are mainly designed to generate and preserve profits for financial institutions and multinational enterprises at the expense of other legitimate policy goals," he writes. In other words, governments work as agents of the rich, rather than all their own citizens. In another article he wrote that one economic model cannot fit all countries. "The social world differs from the physical world because it is man-made and hence almost infinitely malleable," he wrote. Thus economists have been largely supportive of Prime Minister Modi's decision to suddenly withdraw the 1000 and 500 rupee notes. They note all the bad effects it is and might have but argue that all inconvenience it is causing is temporary and the final result will be great. Professor Gita Gopinath thinks that it is a good move but will not work in the long run because black money and counterfeit currency will return. Economists point to the rise of high denomination notes in circulation. The number of 500 rupee notes rose from 11.41 billion on 31 March, 2014 to 15.71 billion on 31 March, 2016, an increase of 38%, while the number of 1000 rupee notes increased from 5.08 billion to 6.33 billion over the same period. However, the 500 rupee note constituted only 17.4% and the 1000 rupee note constituted 7% of total notes used. Not very large. The reason is the love for low interest rates among our politicians, regardless of the level of inflation. Rising prices mean that Rs 100 buys nothing these days so we need to use higher denomination notes. The Reserve Bank is not supplying enough replacement notes, whether through inefficiency or design we do not know. Retail inflation has fallen 3.63% in November because of the severe contraction in demand. Farmers are unable to buy seeds because of lack of cash and because they cannot borrow as moneylenders have no cash either. Food prices should rise in April and if the rupee falls sharply against the dollar, because of Trump effect, the economy will tank. Modi can control cash but he cannot control human behavior. Despite huge ego. 

Our banks are open, just hack in.

We are in good company. Last year it was Zimbabwe, this year it is India and now Venezuela who have demonetised their currencies. We should have Robert Mugabe, Narendra Modi and Nicolas Maduro on our banknotes. Australia is thinking of withdrawing the Aussie $100 note but 66.75% of people are against the move. At first Modi said that demonetisation of 1000 and 500 rupee notes was essential to root out black money and counterfeit notes printed in Pakistan. Guess what? Out of a total of Rs 15.44 trillion around Rs 13 trillion is already back into banks. And an ATM machine in Bihar spat out the first counterfeit note. Every year Pakistan prints Rs 700 million worth of Indian currency in its official mint, to organise terrorist acts in India. Pakistan also buys the special paper from the same sources as we do. Apparently, the new 2000 and 500 rupee notes are impossible to counterfeit. But they do not have to be perfect. Ordinary people do not have the expertise to recognise fake notes where faults are tiny so will accept them in good faith, only to lose money when banks refuse to accept them. Seeing the original purpose of eradicating black money was going to fail Modi has changed his tune to cashless economy. If there is no cash there can never be black money, there can be no counterfeit notes and people will be forced to pay tax as their earnings will be exposed. Modi is used to changing his stand. The biometric identity card, Aadhar was proposed by the Congress to transfer handouts to the poor. BJP was opposed to it when in opposition but now Modi has seized it and is forcing every savings account, which means every citizen, to be linked to Aadhar. In the last few days a hacker group, calling itself Legion, said in an interview with the Washington Post,"Let me tell you....the banking system of India is deeply flawed and has been hacked several times." So, now Pakistan does not have to spend money printing fake currency. Just hack into any bank account and transfer the money to the bomb-makers mobile payment system. Welcome to India. "The government's practiced apathy in the wake of cyber attacks has only encouraged their repetition," writes Arun Mohan Sukumar. "The Reserve Bank of India's recent decision to waive 2FA for transactions less than Rs 2,000 treats each individual transaction as a self contained unit, without acknowledging that devices once infected will also compromise higher-value payments." So why is Modi ramming all this down our throats? Digital transactions means total financial surveillance on citizens. "This might gladden an authoritarian heart, but it would strip citizens of any rightful anonymity," writes Amulya Gopalakrishnan. "Add biometric tracking to that, and we are all just insects in the state's laboratory." This is worse than China. 

Is it despair or is it guilt?

2016 was probably not the worst year in history, but a lot of people think so, writes Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker, a leftist liberal publication. She enumerates the Zika epidemic, which resulted in babies born with small heads, terrorist attacks in Europe and the US and the killing of blacks by the police in the US. "And then, of course -- not that you've forgotten!-- there was the election. The weeks since November 8th have resembled, in terms of collective psychology, the aftermath of a natural disaster -- a demented, abhorrent catastrophe that remains invisible to some and for others prompts nothing but glee," she laments. No wonder the left is described as 'loony'. "What hurts so badly right now, I think, is this sense of unexplained retrenchment -- the fear that decades of incremental progress will be rapidly eradicated by an empty-headed demagogue who appears to be doing everything on a whim," she snarls in hate. And what is this "incremental progress" that decades of liberals have given us? "The North Pole, a week after the election, was thirty-six degrees hotter than normal. Venezuela has fallen; Turkey is a vortex of human rights abuses; Aleppo is experiencing 'a complete meltdown of humanity'. Power is accruing everywhere to the hard and heartless right." Liberals everywhere are furious in their arrogance. They fail to understand that they had decades to improve the world but they failed and people hold them responsible. Syriza in Greece is extreme left wing and the Five Star Movement in Italy is almost libertarian in its beliefs. Obama, the darling of the liberals, has allowed fracking on the California coast, his administration in the arctic and in the Gulf of Mexico. Although hydraulic fracturing began in the US in 1949 it has grown by 45% a year between 2005 and 2010 and shale gas has increased from 4% in 2005 to 24% in 2012. Obama was elected in 2008. US support of a coup against him prompted Hugo Chavez into extreme socialist policies which is why Venezuela's economy has collapsed. For us living far away from the US, it is incomprehensible why Turkey is a vital ally and a member of Nato, while Bashar al-Assad is a vile tyrant. The Syrian war has dragged along so long because of US support of terrorist groups. Only imbeciles make a distinction between good terrorists and bad terrorists, good Taliban and bad Taliban. We Indians suffer regular attacks because of this criminal stupidity. The armed coup in Ukraine was totally unnecessary. Even now Obama is needling Russia when he should be facilitating the handover to Donald Trump. Does he think that Europe will survive a war with Russia? Meanwhile, China, a rogue nation, is arming the disputed artificial reefs in the South China Sea. People feel the world is deteriorating. They blame the liberals.

India is facing a 'dollar winter' almost naked.

Ajit Ranade, Chief Economist at Aditya Birla group, thinks that "A dollar winter is coming". Yesterday, the Federal Reserve in the US raised interest rate by 25 basis points, to between 0.5 and 0.75%. The last time the Fed raised interest rate was in December 2015, which was 7 years after it raised rates in 2008. The bond market had priced in the increase as yields of benchmark 10 year treasuries have risen to 2.57%, after dropping to around 1.3% in July. The Federal Reserve has indicated that it may raise rates another 3 times next year. This is because it sees inflation rising due to a tight labor market, rising oil prices and increased spending by the new government of Donald Trump. The price of crude oil has risen to $56 per barrel, from below $40 per barrel around June 2016, after oil producers, such as OPEC and Russia, agreed to cut output. Some are predicting a price of $75 per barrel by New Year, as winter increases demand for heating oil in the US and Europe. However, there is an upside restraint on the price of oil and that is shale oil production in the US, which will become profitable at prices above $60 a barrel. If US interest rates rise investors will move back into the US which will make the dollar stronger. "So, 2017 promises to be a year of dollar strengthening, and US yields hardening," writes Ranade. That is confusing. Because if investors pile into US Treasuries their prices will rise and yields should fall. A strong dollar should help emerging economies by making their exports cheaper, but apparently that is not the case. A strong dollar in 1979 resulted in the Latin American debt crisis and in 1985 a dollar bought 250 Japanese yen. (It is at 117 today). That resulted in the Plaza accord, which ended Japan's asset price bubble, resulting in a prolonged deflation in Japan. The 1997 East Asian crisis was the result of a sharp devaluation in the Chinese yuan, starting in 1994. China's foreign currency reserve declined by almost $1 trillion this year, to around $3.12 trillion. Trump has promised to levy higher taxes on Chinese imports which could hit China's economy. China is sitting on mountain of credit and a slowdown in the economy could precipitate a crisis. That could precipitate severe social unrest, even a civil war, in China, very satisfactory for us in India. But what happens to India? Although retail inflation has fallen to 3.63% in November core inflation, which strips out food and fuel, was steady at 4.9%. If foreign investors sell out of Indian bonds and equity the rupee will fall which will add to the cost of fuel, increasing retail inflation. Spending will be severely restricted due to the sudden banning of high denomination notes. There is a real danger of stagflation. Ranade does not say so because he does not want vindictive politicians on his back. We cannot control what Trump does and there is no way of going back on demonetisation. We are sitting ducks.

A post-truth world because truth died?

Writing for Politico, Susan B Glasser laments the fact that truth does not seem to matter to people in the US any more. "I have a different and more existential fear today about the future of independent journalism and its role in our democracy," she writes. "Stories that would have killed any other politician -- truly worrisome revelations about everything from federal taxes Trump dodged to the charitable donations he lied about, the women he insulted and allegedly assaulted, and mob ties that have long dogged him -- did not stop Trump from thriving in this election year." Liberals call this a post-truth world, in which people vote for the side which is lying, and has been chosen as the word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. Liberals cite Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as examples of post-truth. The shocking truth is that liberals, who pride themselves on their intellect and knowledge, do not realise that truth cannot be politically correct. Oxford University has banned the use of 'he' and 'she' to denote gender and advised the use of the word 'ze' for both men and women. But gender is not for Oxford University to decide. It has been decided by Mother Nature over 3 billion years of evolution. It is not just that our bodies and hormones are different we think differently, which is not surprising when we see that our brains are wired differently. It does not mean that one gender is superior to the other, rather that we are different. Nature does not do generics, each animal is highly specialised. Thus, a male lion is more powerful than a female and can kill her but a male hyena is smaller and nowhere in hierarchy. Ms Glasser does not realise that the media in the US were guilty of severe bias in news reporting and in opinion polls. Skewing opinion polls to generate a victory for Hillary Clinton is lying. Accusing Trump of avoiding taxes is not the truth because all wealthy Americans use the rules to pay as little tax as they can, which prompted Warren Buffet to say that he pays a lesser tax rate than his secretary. Trump was not the only one lying. Hillary Clinton "could not recall" answers to 35 questions put to her by the FBI. As a trained lawyer she must have known that it is a criminal offence to lie to the FBI, but how can anyone be punished for forgetting. The BBC thinks that it is the internet which is making us small-minded, conveniently forgetting its intense coverage of the fight in Aleppo while completely ignoring the killings in Mosul. "We've achieved a lot more transparency in today's Washington -- without the accountability that was supposed to come with it," mourns Ms Glasser. Because you have lost trust. 

You can force taxes, but can you force love?

In 2013, the Congress government of the time passed the Corporate Social Responsibility Act, which made it mandatory for large companies to spend 2% of their profits on social service, to help the poor. Prof Aneel Karnani, of the University of Michigan, writes that the law has not been a success. After studying it he has concluded that, "....the CSR law is only apparently successful, and in reality is harmful." "There is some evidence that firms that were initially spending less than 2% increased their CSR spending, but those that were initially spending more than 2% reduced their CSR expenditure," writes Prof Karnani. Why? Because, "A required expenditure that does not lead to higher to higher profits is essentially a tax. This is a back-door way to increase corporate taxes without a transparent political debate. The corporate tax rate in India is 34.61% -- already one of the highest, compared to the global average of 24.09%, according to KPMG, and audit and consulting company." Indian politicians are adept at increasing taxes on us in the guise of social welfare for the poor, while they lead lives of extreme luxury on taxpayer money. Another such tax was the Right to Education Act which forced private fee paying schools to reserve 25% of seats for poor students. The result was that school fees soared as schools tried to recover their losses from students who paid fees. Did it result in a dramatic increase in standards? No, standards have actually fallen as Class 8 students are unable to read or do maths up to Class 5 standard. Last year was worse than the year before. Why? Because, majority of students, especially in rural areas, attend government schools and here there is no teaching. Traveling across India Mar Tully discovered that even in rural areas about 30% of parents are sending their children to private schools, though they could not afford the fees. In this way private schools draw away children of middle class parents and thus reduce pressure on government schools to perform. Why, when salaries of government school teachers have soared in recent years? Because teachers are forced to undertake many tasks other than teaching, such as "...conducting housing and economic surveys, census duty, election duty, voter identity card duty, opening bank accounts, Aadhar card registration, and managing mid-day meals," writes Omar Rashid. One solution would be to privatise education, wherein the government will give vouchers to poor people who will choose the school that their children will attend. Schools will compete for students, thereby keeping standards high. You can force taxes but you cannot force equality. Poorer children feel the difference in standards of living between themselves and the children of the rich. Punishing the middle class earns votes from the poor. Our politicians love the poor. The more the better.

Sweden is experimenting. Why not wait to see the results?

Srinath Raghavan of the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, writes that the sudden banning of high denomination notes in India, known as demonetisation, is an example of the "worst forms of central planning". Economists in India are lauding this move by the government when they "for years railed against the planned economy and had called for cutting back the state's role in the management of the economy". Why? Because, "Part of the explanation is that most pro-market economists would not recognize monetary policy as a form of central planning." At the very least it is an attack on the independence of the Reserve Bank which is trying to play catch up. Having realised that it is not going to get much black money the government has changed the narrative to 'cashless' transactions. With no cash no one will be able to take bribes because every transaction will be recorded. It will also allow the worst form of 'planned economy' as the RBI maybe coerced to set negative interest rate, where you have to pay to keep money in a bank. Sweden has become virtually cashless, where even some banks refuse to accept cash. Sweden also has a negative interest rate of minus 0.5%, but so far there are doubts as to its efficacy and it maybe encouraging excessive borrowing by people. We should wait to see what effect a cashless system, along with a negative interest rate, has on the economy. India is not Sweden. Sweden has a total population of just 10 million people, a Gini coefficient of 25.4 and a per capita GDP of $51,603, while we have a population of 1,300 million people, our Gini coefficient has worsened to 51 and our per capita GDP is a paltry $1805. Sweden's comprehensive social welfare schemes provide free healthcare, free education and social security from cradle to grave. In India social schemes are bribes to get votes. To force cashless on people the government is trying to arm-twist banks into lowering charges for using cards. The RBI and some banks are resisting the idea. In a wild country like India, where security is a matter of luck and hacking difficult to explain to the vast numbers of illiterate people, expect large numbers to lose their savings. Apparently, a credit or debit card can be hacked in 6 seconds and 70% of ATM machines use an old Microsoft software for which the company has stopped providing support. "Eminent commentators would do better to deride such extreme, rash policy decisions and call out this entire 'cashless' narrative for what it is -- a laughable afterthought -- rather than encouraging it and creating a perverse incentive for other such extreme policy measures in the future," writes Praveen Chakravarty. We agree.

The poorest people own the most housing. Strange.

An economic survey conducted this year looked at income and living standards of Indian society. The survey included 61,000 households which were divided into 5 equal segments. It found that the richest 20% earned 45% of income while the poorest 20% earned just 7%. The richest 20% spent Rs 15,882 per person per month while the poorest 20% spent Rs 6,980 per person per month. Thus, the poorest 20% is earning considerably higher than Rs 47 per person per day, less than Rs 1,500 per month, which has been fixed as the level of poverty in urban India. The biggest surprise from the survey is that 97% of the bottom 20% own their homes. Of the total population surveyed 89% of households live in their own homes. It is the relatively well off who live in rented accommodation. Anecdotal evidence suggests that almost everyone lives in own home in rural areas while most rented accommodation is in metro cities. But here there is an enormous difference in standards. Officers who have transferable jobs, as in banks, live in decent apartments because their rents are paid by their employers, while migrant labor lives in wretched conditions in slums or tiny rooms with shared bathrooms. Migration to cities is lower in India than China, Indonesia and Nigeria but even so, 5% of 1.3 billion people is a huge number. This probably explains how Indians are managing to survive on low incomes, with 19.8% of people earning less than $2 per day and 76.9% of people earning less than $10 per day, most of them closer to $2 than 10. With nearly 97% earning less than $10 per day it is not surprising that only about 3% of people file tax returns and 1% pays income tax. One big surprise thrown up by the survey is the cost of houses. The median price, which is middle of the range, paid by the top 20% was just Rs 1 million, while the median price paid by the top 1% was a paltry 1.8 million. A quick glance at real estate prices in Delhi shows that any 2 bedroom apartment in a good locality will cost well in excess of Rs 1.8 million. These are probably official rates. To buy an apartment one would have to pay at least an equal amount in cash, which means black money. With demonetisation cash has virtually disappeared so the real estate market is frozen until such time that people are able to collect enough cash. The average dwelling size in rural India is 431 sq feet while those in urban area are an average of 422 sq feet, while apartments in the US have fallen to an average of 934 sq feet. When it came to consumer spending rural areas spent 57% of the total Rs 42.2 trillion last year, but rural household spending was an average of Rs 9,423 per month compared to Rs 20,227 in urban areas. People cannot move because they do not earn enough and they cannot earn unless they move to where jobs are. The only solution is to bring down the number of people. Everyone will gain.

A conspiracy theory or a dangerous conspiracy?

An article by Shelley Kasli in Great Game India says that Pakistan prints counterfeit Indian notes on paper supplied by a British firm known as De la Rue. Apparently, sometime in 2009-10 the CBI discovered counterfeit currency notes in banks along the India-Nepal border, which were said to have been supplied by the Reserve Bank of India. Following this the CBI raided vaults of the RBI. "What the CBI found in the vaults of RBI were huge cache of counterfeit Indian currency lying in the denomination of 500 and 1000, the same counterfeit currency smuggled by the Pakistan intelligence agency ISI into India," writes Ms Shelley. Asking why our banknotes were being printed abroad a parliamentary committee noted,"The Committee expresses its strong resentment over such an unprecedented, unconventional and uncalled for measure."   De la Rue and a German company, Louisenthal were blacklisted after this episode. This is unbelievable stuff. 1. India has a huge paper industry so why are we unable to manufacture our own paper 2. There should have been a binding contract with the companies not to supply similar paper to any other country and India should have bought the entire production and 3. It would have been much better to have gone through the respective governments who would make sure that the companies stuck to the contract. That De la Rue used be one of the Crown Agents during the British empire is not relevant. The owner of De la Rue, Roberto Giori was on Flight 814 which was hijacked by Islamic terrorists in 1999. As we know the response to the hijacking by the  BJP government of the time was shamefully shambolic. Former Chief of the Research and Analysis Wing, which passes for India's intelligence agency, AS Dulat, has written about the hijacking in his book but fails to explain the presence of RAW agent, SBS Tomar on board the hijacked plane. It is known that the plane could have been stopped at Amritsar Airport where commandos could have stormed the aircraft if negotiations failed. Was Tomar on the flight only to protect Roberto Giori, was that the reason why the plane was not stormed and did India pay a ransom for his release? We do not know. But we remember Warren Andersen and Union Carbide. De la Rue apparently supplied passports and currency to Chechen terrorists. Without giving any reason the ban on the company has been lifted. We could have dismissed the whole article as conspiracy theory but yesterday a Delhi politician, Dilip Pandey asked why De la Rue is supplying banknote paper again. When Union Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley labeled it a "false campaign" Pandey tweeted,"Please check your facts and go through RBI's BRBNMPL website first. Del la Rue is working with Mysore printing press" We are suffering note-ban while the government is printing banned notes. Charming.

The RBI should not tell the truth, should it?

Against widespread expectation the Reserve Bank stunned markets by keeping interest rate unchanged at 6.25% at the Monetary Policy Committee meeting, couple of days back. Why? Because the RBI expects inflation to be at 5% at the end of this financial year, with a tendency to rise thereafter. Retail inflation was at 4.2% in October. The RBI blamed the rise in the price of crude oil which has risen to over $50 per barrel after the OPEC agreed a cut in output by 1.2 million barrels per day last week. India enjoyed an oil bonanza when the price of crude fell to $30 a barrel last year. The government increased excise duty on fuel by 140%, which increased revenues and allowed it to increase spending without increasing fiscal deficit. However, no one expects the price to go up very high because production of shale oil in the US will surge as prices rise. Though the price of fuel is a definite worry the rate of inflation should fall because demand has collapsed due to lack of currency. Sales of durables, like washing machines and refrigerators, are down 54% in November. Dining out is down 42% and even FMCG, which are essential items of daily use, like toothpaste, is down 22.7%. Overall consumption for October to December quarter is down 30%. We understand that no one buys a toothpaste with a credit card but why has the sale of cars come to a halt? To register any vehicle you have to show your PAN card so no one will be so foolish as to buy a car with black money. Moreover, with so much cash on their books banks are keen to give loans for buying cars at lower rates of interest. Large number of jobs may be lost, which will further depress demand. Some poor people are having to borrow at 20% interest, just to survive. Human behavior can never be predicted. In further proof that these brilliant people do not understand us the RBI has appealed to people not to hoard cash. They say that there is enough cash and people should withdraw only as much as they need. Very funny. People do not trust anything that the government or the RBI says. They know that shortage of banknotes is not going to go away in a hurry and no one wants to waste her life standing in queues. What if one of the machines breaks down? The government wants to convert the economy to a cashless one. This will increase tax collections and allow more help to the poor. But the poor do not want digital payments because if they are found to earn more than Rs 27,000 in one year they will not be entitled to benefits under the Below the Poverty Line scheme. So, demand is going to remain very low. Why is the RBI worried about inflation? Because it fears that the rupee is going to drop and that will increase the price of imports, especially oil. Trouble is that the RBI cannot say that. They will have to act surprised when it happens. Fun.

Be fair, morality will surely follow.

The Revenue Secretary announced yesterday that the government expects all banned notes to return back into the system. On 8 November, in a surprise announcement, the Prime Minister converted all 1,000 and 500 rupee notes into trash. The total amount of money in high denomination notes was Rs 15.4 trillion, of which about 30%, or Rs 4.5 trillion, was expected to be black. Since those holding large amounts of black money would not be able to deposit them in banks they would necessarily destroy the old notes. Since the Reserve Bank guarantees the value of every note it will be able to write off the money destroyed and pay that as dividend to the government. Rubbing his hands in pleasure, at the expected bonanza, the Prime Minister grandly announced a handout of Rs 10,000 to every zero-deposit, or Jan Dhan, account, nicely timed to be just before the UP and Punjab assembly elections. Even Ms Jayalalithaa, God rest her soul, who knew how to win elections with freebies, would nod in appreciation. As we had expected, an exercise in bad faith results in bad outcome. The government is expected to gain around Rs 800 billion while losing Rs 2 trillion. Of our money. Biju Dominic writes that some problems are normal, while others are wicked. Corruption is an example of a wicked problem. "There is probably no institution in India that can claim to be beyond the grip of corruption. Hardly any individual citizen in this country can say that he has not been affected by corruption," he writes. So, how to reduce corruption? "It is not the quantum of fines collected or, the large-ticket tax declarations, but the emotion of fear of the long arm of the law that will drive behaviour change," he suggests. Will it? In 2008, there was a huge scandal in China when melamine was discovered in baby milk. In China criminals are routinely executed with a bullet to the back of the head and then organs are harvested for transplant. That has not stopped corruption in China. Russians used to smuggle western music into Soviet Union by recording them on X Ray plates. This when Joseph Stalin was in power. Perhaps it is because human beings have a strong sense of fairness. Scientists have demonstrated such sense in Capuchin monkeys. When the Prime Minister is happy with selecting criminals to be candidates for the BJP then he is not qualified to lecture us about not paying taxes. At present he has the support of the poor because he has tapped into jealousy of the rich but when the poor learn that there was no black money they will question why they had to suffer so much. India will become a moral country when we see politicians going to prison for the crimes they commit. Not before. No matter what the torture.

Values or muscle, what made the US great?

Professor Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard writes that every year a video of John Kennedy's inaugural address is played during the commencement ceremony at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In his speech Kennedy said,"To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required -- not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right." Kennedy was president only for a short period, a little less than 3 years, less than one full term in office, so we will never know what he would have done had he served for 2 full terms. But in that short period he organised the Bay of Pigs fiasco, to try to assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba, allowed the assassination of Rafael Trujillo of Dominican Republic and set the stage for the Vietnam War, which was to kill over 3 million people. For us in India, the most dangerous part of Kennedy's speech was,"And so my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." This philosophy has been most enthusiastically adopted by our politicians, who constantly demand sacrifices from the people, as in suddenly withdrawing high denomination notes from circulation, so as to win coming elections in UP and Punjab. So, one politician has been in a private hospital for around 2 months, most of the time in ICU, while another will get a kidney transplant from an unrelated donor, while we get nothing for the taxes we pay. "The basis of America's greatness and ability to lead the world stems from universal values that underpin a set of rules that uphold the others' rights, not an America that tries to base its greatness on a set of deals aimed at getting the better of others," writes Prof Hausmann. We disagree. America's greatness comes from wealth and its armed forces. Wealth came from grabbing land from the Indians who had lived there for over 10,000 years, the use of slave labor and later from unequal trade deals with emerging economies. Its supremacy is guaranteed by its superiority in weapons, as shown by the hydrogen bomb on Nagasaki, napalm and dioxin over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and depleted uranium and white phosphorus on Afghanistan and Iraq. Now weaker nations are not succumbing to US pressure. The Doha round of talks at the WTO has died. Recently African nations walked out of talks on digital trade rules. Instead imports from abroad have killed jobs in manufacturing, which is why Donald Trump was elected to be president. The reason of America's greatness is summed up by former Foreign Minister of Germany, Joschka Fischer who writes that Donald Trump's victory is "Goodbye to the West" whose power was derived from Nato. Facts versus rhetoric.

Kindness helps politicians more than the poor.

A country like India, with sleazy politicians, slimy civil servants and brutal police, survives because there are kind people who care for others. The question is: are these people helping to perpetuate a parasitic state by covering up its deficiencies? The Mint carried a short story by Shashi Shekhar about a poor lady, Dorris Francis, who lost a daughter in a traffic accident on the outskirts of Delhi in 2008. Since then she has been directing traffic at the same busy crossing for 4 hours everyday, starting at 7 AM. At first people ignored her but gradually came to respect what she was doing. She developed liver problems, high blood pressure and ovarian cancer. She was admitted at AIIMS in Delhi but her family could not afford the expenses, Rs 2,000 per day, so they took her home. At present she is receiving treatment in a private hospital with donations from the public and Rs 300,000 grant from the Prime Minister's Office. "The question is, why can't institutions such as AIIMS treat the economically underprivileged," asks Shekhar. Dangerous question. AIIMS is not a charitable institution. It was set up as a center for excellence in medical sciences, to conduct research and to teach. When it was set up in 1956 no one could foresee that the population of India would reach 1.3 billion and it would have to handle 10,000 patients everyday, over 300,000 a year. Cancer treatment can cost in excess of Rs 2 million. Clearly no government can provide free treatment to everyone with cancer. Politicians can get treated abroad on taxpayer money, as well as civil servants. Now soldiers are asking why they are denied treatment abroad when they are risking their lives for the nation. A video has emerged on social media showing a Nigerian woman praying that all politicians who sought treatment outside the country should die. Politicians seek to justify their extravagance by making a show of helping the poor. It costs them nothing, being poorly educated the poor are easy to con and they constitute the 'vote bank'. What about the middle class who pay taxes and may get bankrupted by the cost of cancer treatment? Medical insurance is usually too little to cover such expensive treatment and you must know someone to get a bed in a government hospital. If India does not help "the downtrodden" then "how can India live up to its reputation as a welfare state," asks Shekhar. Welfare is only for politicians and civil servants and we are all downtrodden. He cites examples of an acid attack victim and transgender activist as "downtrodden". Acid attack is a heinous crime and the victim deserves any help we can provide. Transgender is voluntary and the person is definitely not a victim. Kindness is good but confusion only helps the villains. Logical thinking is vital if we are to help the vulnerable. Else, we suffer.

Who will protect us from so much good?

Money or no money life must go on, which is not easy in India at the best of times. India Ratings says that Rs 4 trillion in bank loans are at risk of default and may have to be written off. After assessing assets against debts of 500 companies the rating agency found that 240, with loans of Rs 12.4 trillion, are vulnerable. Struggling companies are mainly in real estate and telecoms, precisely the companies hardest hit by the banning of high denomination notes, called demonetisation. Information Technology, India's main exports, are under threat because of Donald Trump's promise to reduce H1B visas. The price of oil jumped after OPEC decided to cut production by 1.2 million barrels a day, with Russia agreeing to reduce production by 300,000 barrels per day. US job figures show that 178,000 jobs were created in November, bringing the unemployment rate down to 4.6%, the lowest in 9 years. This makes it almost certain that the Federal Reserve will increase interest rate at its next meeting. The flood of currency into banks has resulted in 10 year bond yields falling to 6.241% which could see foreign investors sell Indian bonds as yields harden in the US. If foreign investors pull money out of India it will result in a fall in the value of the rupee which will mean they will get fewer dollars in exchange. That could see further sell offs, resulting in a precipitous fall in the value of the rupee. If the rupee loses value the cost of oil goes up which will raise prices of all goods, including food. So, to prevent yields falling further, the Reserve Bank increased the Cash Reserve Ratio of banks to 100% on collections above a certain level. Banks do not get interest on CRR but will have to pay interest on all the money being deposited in savings accounts across the country, which will result in losses, in addition to the bad loans they may have to write off. To ease pressure on banks the RBI has increased the Market Stabilisation Scheme, on which the RBI pays interest to banks, from Rs 300 billion to Rs 6 trillion. This is like prescribing strong antibiotic for a common cold, from which the patient gets an allergy, for which the doctor prescribes steroids, which causes severe sepsis, resulting in the death of the patient. Wholesale prices of vegetables have crashed, so that farmers are getting less for their produce. So much for the promise of increasing farmers' profits by 50%. Of course, the government cares for citizens and wants to increase earnings. So, it is building roads and railway lines through forests which cause more accidental deaths of animals, increase in poaching and a reduction in habitat. Thankfully, it is all for our good.

It's a lot of fun, but will it be painful?

We knew a Trump presidency was going to be entertaining but we did not know how much. The Indian government must have been elated when Shalabh Kumar, who is part of his team, claimed that Trump will declare Pakistan a terrorist state. That would mean sanctions on certain people and institutions in Pakistan, no arms exports and arrest warrants for terrorist leaders. Of course, China will step in, as strengthening Pakistan means weakening India. China is already engaged in building an economic corridor into Pakistan. However, having the US on our side would be a big plus. And then 3 days back Trump talked to Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif and said,"You have a very good reputation. You are a terrific guy." He said he would like to visit Pakistan. "Pakistanis are one of the most intelligent people," he said."Your country is amazing with tremendous opportunities." That would have given heebie jeebies to our lot. Then he had the Chinese frothing at the mouth, which they frequently do, by talking directly to the President of Taiwan, Tsi Ing-wen, on the phone. Naturally, Taiwan is elated and called it "a historic conversation". China immediately protested to US, but state-run Global Times wrote,"We believe this is not something a shrewd Trump wants to do," while Xinhua said,"China and the United States are not destined rivals." Especially since the new Defense Secretary is affectionately known as 'Mad Dog'.  This is Marine Gen. James N Mattis who is reputed to have said,"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." About the Taliban he is reputed have said,"Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people." People all over the world will be wondering where he will be looking for fun next and who he will be hooting at. Previous presidents have been so scared of upsetting China that they would not meet the Dalai Lama, or would make a pretense of just 'dropping by'. Not the Donald. "Interesting how the US sells Taiwan billion of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call," he tweeted. Even more scary for Asian countries, Trump has appointed the former head of right wing Breitbart News, Steve Bannon as his chief strategist. "Darkness is good: Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power," Bannon told the Hollywood Reporter. "The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f***ed over," he said. The severe contraction in money supply, due to demonetisation, foreign investors selling out, and the dollar getting stronger, could lead to a precipitous fall in the rupee, leading to a jump in the price of fuel, which will cause a severe recession. Politicians better watch out. There is no going back.

Lots of figures, no one to make sense of them.

The trade paper, Mint has published a new survey on income distribution, spending, assets and the effect of education in India. The population has been divided into urban, which is divided according to size of cities, and rural and into 5 categories, based on income. "The per capita income of the top quintile, at Rs 7,974 per month, is nearly 6.5 times that of the bottom quintile. Given the lower income and the bigger household size, poorer households end up spending most of what they earn. The poorest quintile is able to save just 10% of household earning. In contrast, the top quintile is able to save 47% of household earning, the survey shows." Which means that not only do the poor earn less in total but because they have larger families the income per head is less than that of the rich. Which naturally reduces their ability to spend and save. The rich, on the other hand, are able to invest more, which adds to their total income. Education makes a big difference, but surprisingly 9% of the top 1% and 9% of the top 10% are illiterates while 46% of the top 1% and only 27% of the top 10% are graduates or above. An earlier survey in 2011 showed that an overwhelming 96.7% of Indians earn less than $10 per day, which would be about Rs 20,000 per month, below the income tax threshold of Rs 250,000 per year. By taking a much higher income level of $13,662, or about Rs 740,000, per year Credit Suisse calculated that only 23.6 million people in India, out of a total population of 1300 million, can be classified as middle class. Not surprising when 65.4 million between the ages of 5 and 19 years have never attended school. On the other hand, 21% of 372,000 beggars in India have passed school, with some post graduates among them. Why? Because there are no jobs. 68,992 people become 25 years old everyday, which is 2.1 million every month. There were 2.3 million applications for 368 jobs of peons in UP last year. If only 46% of the richest 1% of people are graduates or above then it is not surprising that they cannot seek employment in higher posts. The survey says,"The average income of households living in metros, at Rs 26,690, is two-and-a-half times the average income of households living in underdeveloped rural areas." This is completely misleading. They should have compared slums or rag-picker colonies with undeveloped rural areas. Even the average earning or spending figures are misleading because they do not take cost of living into account. Prices of food will be much higher in cities. A vast chunk of income in cities goes in paying rents, which are a complete waste of money and leads to a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. Politicians are happy to promise handouts based on such surveys. Sadly, we do not have good economists to advise on policies and the few that are present are on government payroll. No wonder we remain poor.

A Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution at the same time.

In 1958 Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward in China, as part of his second 5 year plan, in which ploughs were melted down to be made into steel. Agricultural output collapsed and tens of millions of people died. Mao was replaced as President of China by Liu Shaoqi. But Mao would have his revenge. In 1966, he unleashed his Cultural Revolution in which Red Guards were encouraged to destroy the older culture. Millions more died. Liu Shaoqi was arrested and virtually beaten to death. Something like that is going on in India right now, but in a more disguised manner. Prime Minister Narendra Modi unleashed his own version of the Great Leap Forward by suddenly banning Rs 1000 and Rs 500 on 8 November. This was apparently to root out black money, which is money accumulated by not paying taxes or by taking bribes. But the actual reason was the upcoming elections in Punjab, at the end of January 2017, and then in UP, in February and March 2017. Modi wants to win these elections, so as not to lose his home state of Gujarat later in the year. Elections are expensive and political parties spend huge amounts of cash in campaigning and in bribing voters. But years of persecution by politicians have made Indians experts in 'jugaad', known as 'Heath Robinson' in Britain. Poor people were paid to exchange Rs 4,500 in old notes from banks. Others were paid to deposit Rs 200,000 in Jan Dhan accounts, which are no-balance accounts for the poor. Over Rs 700 billion have been deposited, which means 3.5 million accounts. Add another 2 million housewives and you have over 5 million people guilty of money laundering. Modi was hoping that about Rs 4 trillion will not be returned which will be paid as dividend to the government by the Reserve Bank, to be distributed as bribes to poor. Apparently, that may not happen as the amount of money deposited far exceeds expectations. Maddened with rage Modi has unleashed his own version of the Cultural Revolution on us. He is going to force a cashless society on us. Modi is a master of lying. Despite repeated assurances, and despite a Supreme Court injunction, the biometric card, Aadhar has been made mandatory by stealth. Modi wants to make all payments based on Aadhar. This will mean that the government will have complete knowledge of where we are and what we are buying at every second. But Modi may have made a miscalculation. It is possible that he was convinced of Hillary Clinton's victory, as predicted by almost every opinion poll, except USC/LA Times. Trump won. Already the rupee is dropping against the dollar. If the rupee tanks oil prices will zoom, inflation will jump and the economy will go into recession. Maybe, then we will get rid of Modi. A short term pain to get rid of a megalomaniac. Worth it.