Good policies may not win, but bad ones do not lose either.

Abbott Laboratories is withdrawing two types of stents from India because of government diktat to reduce their prices. Following Abbott's decision Medtronic also decided to withdraw its latest stents from India and Boston Scientific said it is studying the order and will not sell its latest stents. "It is Economics 101 and supply shortage or withdrawal is the most natural, immediate and lasting consequence of price controls. We thought we had settled those issues. Private-sector bashing is back in fashion. We are back in the 1970s," wrote Anantha Nageswaran. The center is not the only one playing these games. "Gujarat has imposed caps on school fees and the West Bengal government has capped the fees that hospitals charge." These are designed to cover deficiencies in providing essential services to the people by transferring the blame on to private service providers. "...in the name of implementation of the right to education, state governments across the country are forcing many private schools to shut down. New ones set up by minorities are taking their place, as they are exempt from the provisions of The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Act." We can expect more communal riots in the future. The RTE Act was passed by the Congress, which proves that all politicians are the same in India. If more proof is required, goons belonging to Hindu organisations are indulging in random acts of violence and attacking the police when culprits are arrested. Exactly the same as the violence of Trinamul goons against political opponents in West Bengal or the violence against voters by the previous government of the Samajwadi Party in UP. At the time the BJP said that the SP is a party of goons and mafia. Not much different from the BJP is it? With the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax, service tax will go up to 18%. To cover that the government is blaming restaurants for including a service charge in their bills. Restaurants say that taxes are responsible for high bills, which is true. We can choose a restaurant with low service charge but we cannot avoid taxes. Why do all politicians behave the same? Because, good economic policies do not translate into victories at elections. Studies cannot prove that BJP's loss in 2004 was because the poor were left behind or the victory of the Congress in 2009 was because of handouts, like MGNREGA, wrote Vivek Dahejia. "...if it is difficult to prove that good economics is good politics, it is equally difficult to prove that bad economics is good politics," he wrote. Maybe, but bad economics is not bad politics either. That is why politicians revert to the same old policies of handouts coupled with violence. The output gap is close to 6%. "If recent short-term policy decisions continue, India will find itself revisiting the stagflation it experienced in the final years of the United Progressive Alliance government." That will be when the BJP will be booted out. But not in 2019.

Someone has to pay, as long as some do not.

For a government which is such a passionate believer in digital India that it wants to get rid of cash completely, the Goods and Services Tax law aims to multiply paperwork of every business many times over. "Detailed records are required to be kept not only by suppliers of goods or services (manufacturers or service providers), but also by intermediaries such as warehouse owners, transporters and agents. In addition to the goods sold, they have to also track stocks given as free samples and gifts." How does it operate? Very complicated, but, as the price escalates at each point in the production chain, the previous business claims back the tax it has already paid, the customer paying the entire amount at the final sale. "Even as concepts of manufacture or trading are no longer relevant under GST, the record-keeping requirements continue to be based on these lines." "Therefore, the classification of these activities will continue even in the new regime though not relevant for the concept of supply which underlines GST," said Badri Narayanan. In order to prevent any leakage the law is draconian. "No deletion or overwriting of entries are allowed in registers, accounts and documents maintained for GST purpose. Incorrect entries, whether made erroneously or otherwise need to be sorted out under attestation and the correct entry recorded." Clearly, the law is not aimed at helping people but to squeeze as much tax as possible and to keep everyone obedient under threat of stringent punishment. Tax returns will have to be filed every month and in every state that the business operates, which will multiply accounting costs and increase prices. There will be 4 rates, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%, on top of which the government has a free hand to impose additional cess, according to its whim, taking the top rate to 40%. Alcohol, petrol and air travel are outside GST so the tax on them will be eye-watering. The government made Rs 1.99 trillion on extra taxes on fuel in just one year. Politicians get government cars and free air travel and will surely be getting there drinks duty free so taxes are irrelevant for them. Realising that a service tax of 18% will raise the cost of eating out the government is blaming restaurants for including service charge, or tips, in their bills. Which is a lie because taxes amount to over 20% of any bill, while service charge rarely exceeds 10%. For a government which is so obsessive about any corruption that it banned all high denomination notes to force every citizen to prove her innocence it is completely oblivious about corruption among politicians and civil servants, so that it has not found time to pass the Lokpal bill in 3 years. The biggest source of corruption is political funding. The budget changed the rules so that anyone can donate any amount anonymously. So, now we need to provide fingerprints to file tax returns while they get oodles of cash in complete privacy. We must be so stupid.

How do we protect living entities?

The government wants to clean River Ganga which is holy to all Hindus and provides drinking and irrigation to hundreds of millions of people. To that end it has constituted a National Ganga River Basin Authority and empowered it to authorise projects costing up to Rs 10 billion. In March, the Uttarakhand High Court declared both Ganga and Yamuna living entities and appointed the Chief Secretary and Advocate General of the state to represent the rivers. Everyday millions of gallons of untreated industrial waste is discharged into the Ganga. The Yamuna passes through Delhi which discharges 850 million gallons of raw sewage into the river everyday. The river is practically dead. India is not the only country with a problem of how to dispose of vast amounts of sewage. The US also has a similar problem. In St Louis, 13 billion gallons of sewage contaminated rain water flows into the Mississippi River after every rain storm. This happens 50 times a year. St Louis is to spend $4.7 billion over 23 years to build a system of huge sewers to collect rain water which will then be treated. $4.7 billion converts to about Rs 305 billion at today's exchange rate but since labor costs in India are low a similar system in Delhi should cost much less. There is no patent on sewers so we can easily copy what St Louis is doing. In St Louis authorities are demolishing deserted houses and converting the vacant land into rain gardens, which will soak up water and prevent a run off. That would be impossible in Delhi because of population pressure on land. How many men are employed to build the tunnels in St Louis? Just 30. In India there would be thousands with picks and shovels, resulting in poor construction. Paris started building sewers in the 13th century and today has over 1,300 miles of sewers, which have become a tourist attraction. London built its sewers in the 19th century. In the 1944 Warsaw uprising against invading Nazi troops sewers were used extensively by Jews and Polish resistance fighters. Apart from cleaning up our rivers treating raw sewage can give huge economic returns because the effluent can be used for agriculture. This is already happening in other parts of the world. Every year everyone in India prays for adequate monsoon rains and predictions of a normal monsoon lifts the stock market. Moving from sewers to roads, London roads have subtle messages for people with weak vision. The UK government also publishes a Highway Code which lays down guidelines for road users and is mandatory for passing driving tests. Banning sale of alcohol within 500 meters of highways will hardly save lives if no one knows how to drive. Its all out there. All we have to do is copy.

India seems to be the exact opposite of Germany.

"How Germany became the world's best economy", was analysed in an article by Prof Noah Smith. "In the late 2000s, even as the US economy boomed, Germany's unemployment rate exceeded 10%. But almost a decade after the global financial crisis, the country has found its legs. Unemployment is down. Labour force participation has risen steadily. Wages have gone up as well, outpacing the US since the 1990s and looking healthy in recent years." On top of that "Its fertility rate is low -- just 1.38 children per woman, even lower than Japan.""That means that a smaller base of German workers has to support a growing number of retirees." So why is the economy growing? One reason is that its exports are booming. Exports climbed 1.2% last year to 1.2 trillion Euros, generating a trade surplus of 253 billion Euros. The reason for that is that its currency, the Euro, is very weak which was pointed out by the previous Chair of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke in 2015. But Germany is not responsible for a weak Euro and cannot be labeled a 'currency manipulator' because the Euro is used by 19 countries and the European Central Bank sets interest rates. But Germany exports a lot to European countries as well, which also use the Euro. How? The reason is that the Euro operates as a handcuff preventing other countries from devaluing their currencies. Which means that German goods are the same price in Greece as they are in Germany whereas the Greek economy has been in recession for 8 years. The rupee, on the other hand, is getting stronger decimating whatever little exports we have. But it keeps inflation under control by reducing the price of imports, especially oil, so politicians love it. Bernanke also pointed out that Germany maintains a tight control on fiscal spending which reduces its imports and contributes to the trade surplus. Trade unions are another big factor in Germany's success. "The country has a very large state sector, generous welfare payments and a trade unionization rate almost twice that of the US." Besides robots are a big threat to jobs, but unemployment is low and wages are rising fast. Strangely, it is because German unions agree to keep wage increases down. This was negotiated by the previous Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroder as Agenda 2010, to reduce unemployment, and has been very successful. Compare that to India where wages rise by an average of around 10% every year even though retail inflation is below 5%. Rising wage costs will naturally cause a rise in prices. Germany has low fertility, low wage inflation, very high exports and a trade surplus, while we have high fertility, high wage inflation, low exports and very high trade deficit. Germany is rich, we are poor. What a surprise!

The same policies with different names will not give different results.

Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi's promise to make India Congress-mukt Bharat, or an India free of the Congress, the Congress party "has succeeded in making the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a mirror image of itself", wrote Anantha Nageswaran. How? To win the state election in UP the BJP promised to forgive all loans to farmers, just what the Congress did in 2008, to win parliamentary elections in 2009. Banks in UP will take a hit of over Rs 274 billion. Does it help farmers? In the short term, yes, but in the long term a study by a World Bank Group concluded,"The waiver had sent a wrong message to prudent and diligent borrowers who repaid on time. Further, the study found that after the loan burden was relieved farmers did not really invest in productivity or technology, and their yield did not necessarily improve. Their conditions remained the same and they were as vulnerable to the next farming failure as before." The danger of a loan waiver in UP is that farmers in every state are demanding the same. The BJP led government in Maharashtra is refusing to waive loans for its farmers, focusing on other schemes to increase income and reduce costs. To get round the difficulty the central government proposes to lend Rs 100,000 to 85 million rural households, which means farmers and farm laborers. This is apparently to protect rural folk from local moneylenders with their extortionate rates of interest. Laudable intentions. Politicians know that, since there is no collateral, people will not repay, so it is basically a straightforward handout of Rs 8.5 trillion of taxpayer money. Also people borrow from moneylenders in an emergency, for an illness, a wedding or a death, for which this money will be totally inadequate. Indians are adept at changing classifications to get around rules, wrote Jessica Seddon. Thus, when the Supreme Court banned sale of alcohol within 500 meters of national highways, thousands of kilometers of highways were changed to "local, municipal or district roads" by state governments. Why do politicians want to forgive loans when banks are struggling with bad loans of around Rs 7 trillion? Because, to solve the problem of bad loans the banks maybe forced to write off loans of large companies, some which owe in excess of Rs 1 trillion. That would be political suicide unless the government makes it look as if it is to help the poor. The Finance Minister has cleverly tried to pass the responsibility of loan waivers to the state governments but transferring debt from the central government books to state governments is just financial jugglery. If fiscal deficits of states were to increase it will add to the national debt burden and states will curtail investment spending, which will decrease growth rate. In its eagerness to control the entire nation the BJP is imitating the Congress in other ways as well. We know it ended very badly for the Congress, so we shall see what happens to the BJP. Newton's third law comes to mind.

Like Beauty, Truth depends on the eye of the beholder.

"We are told that we are living in a new and frightening era of post-truth," wrote Yuval Noah Harari. "Ever since the Stone Age, self-reinforcing myths have served to unite human collectives." "We are the only mammals that can cooperate with numerous strangers because only we can invent fictional stories, spread them around and convince millions of others to believe in them. Just try cramming 50,000 chimps into Yankee Stadium, Wall Street or the Vatican. Yet if you put 50,000 humans in Yankee Stadium, Wall Street or the Vatican, you will get extremely sophisticated networks of cooperation, provided all these humans happen to believe in the same stories about baseball, stock markets or Christianity." Truth can have many shades, depending on who you are, explains Devdutt Pattanaik, a mythologist. Recently, Mike Pompeo, Chief of the CIA called WikiLeaks a "hostile intelligence service" and said that Julian Assange is a "fraud" and "coward". Why such strong language? Because WikiLeaks revealed how the CIA is able to hack into ordinary appliances, such as smart television sets and smartphones, to spy on people all over the world. Their malware makes it seem as though Russians are doing the hacking. So it could have been the CIA hacking into Democratic Party emails that cost Hillary Clinton the election. The US also hacked into the Swift global banking system. Naturally, Assange feels he is thoroughly justified because,"...the CIA is only in the business of collecting information, kidnapping people, and assassinating people." So whose truth is the truth? Is Assange a hero or a villain, asks G Sampath. Vladimir Putin is a scheming villain plotting to destabilise the West, according to James Kirchik. "As Europe's political stability, social cohesion, economic prosperity and security are more threatened today than at any point since the Cold War, Russia is destabilizing the Continent on every front," he wrote. Europe has 50 countries, of which Russia is but one. Do the leaders of the other 49 bear no responsibility? Russians, on the other hand, see Putin as a saviour who has restored the country's prestige. Not one Western leader has an 82% popularity rating, like Putin. Barack Obama was a great president, according to Charlie Burton. He improved the economy, brought healthcare to millions of poor people through his Affordable Care Act and created a society more tolerant of minorities. But Piers Morgan sees Obama as a pretender who deported 3 million migrants, he dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016 alone, killing thousands, and he did not close Guantanamo prison as he promised. How can there be post-truth if everything is a myth? It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Exciting people is a good way to win elections.

Manas Chakravarty wrote a tongue in cheek article on the amount of meat, fish and eggs consumed in India. The National Sample Survey Office figures for 2011-12 show that only 4% of rural and 5% of urban household eat cow or buffalo meat. How they are getting any such meat is a mystery because slaughter of cows is banned in most states of India, except in Kerala and some northeast states, including West Bengal. "The NSSO data says 6.4% of rural Indians eat mutton, 21.7% eat chicken, 26.5% consume fish, while 29.2% eat eggs. In urban India, it is much worse, with 10% indulging in goat meat/mutton, 21% tucking enthusiastically into fish, 27% succumbing to the charms of chicken and a huge 37.6%, more than a third of the urban population, eating eggs." The survey found that the number of people eating non-vegetarian food has risen from 56.7% in 1993-94 to 62.3% in 2011-12 but the amounts consumed are small. Why do Indians eat so little meat? Maybe due to religious restrictions because Haryana has lowest number of non-vegetarians at 19%, followed by Rajasthan at 20% and Punjab at 23%. Apparently Bangladesh has the lowest consumption of meat in the world, at 4 kg per person per year, followed by India at 4.4 kg. The US consumes the most at 120 kg per person per year. There is a crusade against slaughter of cows, inspired by politicians. Anyone transporting cattle, even if they are doing so legally, is attacked by vigilante cow protectors. One man was killed in Rajasthan recently. Cattle farmers sell off bulls and cows that have stopped giving milk, to reduce the cost of feeding unproductive cattle. If they are stopped from doing so they will stop keeping cows, and just keep buffaloes, and cows will disappear from India. Slaughterhouses have been shut in UP throwing millions out of work. India exported 1.314 metric tonnes of buffalo meat in 2015-16 earning Rs 267 billion and Rs 391 billion, or $5.8 billion, worth of leather goods. Along with attacks on eating meat there are relentless attacks on doctors. The government cannot provide healthcare for 1.3 billion people so it blames doctors for rising costs. The Prime Minister proposes to pass a law to force doctors to prescribe generic medicines. Apparently, doctors prescribe expensive brands because they get gifts from pharma companies. Most gifts are from dubious companies, multinationals rarely give gifts. A survey showed that margins on generics are much higher than on brands so chemists will sell only those that have the highest margins. But the reason doctors prescribe brands is because quality is guaranteed which maybe the difference between life and death. Such details do not matter to Indian politicians. As a result of political propaganda doctors are being assaulted everyday. Maybe, like cows, doctors will also disappear. Politicians and civil servants can get treated abroad at taxpayer expense. With companion.

How can we receive justice if courts have no time for serious cases?

Indian judges are increasingly stepping into the domain of the executive, says Anil Dharker. Some cases are serious while others are frivolous. In 2016 the Supreme Court 'revoked' President's rule in Uttarakhand for a couple of hours so that voting could take place about the legitimacy of the government. Since it was President's rule only the President had the right to suspend it and since judges are appointed by the President they should not overturn his decision. The frivolous cases are far too many. The Supreme Court now runs cricket in India by controlling the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Some more examples of frivolous verdicts: 'SC bars firecrackers in NCR', 'HC allows schools to hike fees' and 'HC to hear plan on penguin viewing'. One result of wasting time on frivolous cases is that there is little time for really serious cases. In 1997 a fire broke out in a cinema hall in Delhi, killing 59 people. Gross building violations and neglect of safety were discovered. The case dragged on for 20 years. The High Court awarded Rs 250 million as compensation and punitive fines of Rs 25 million on the Ansal brothers, who owned the hall. At first the Supreme Court halved the compensation and reduced punitive fines from Rs 25 million to 2.5 million. There was a public outcry, so in 2015 it increased the fine to Rs 300 million. Finally, this year one brother was sentenced to one year in prison, while the other brother was let off because he is 76 years of age. A clear signal to the rich that if they can drag a case for as long as possible they will escape the consequences of their crime. No wonder lawyers can charge ridiculous amount of fees. Ram Jethmalani presented a bill of Rs 38 million to defend Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, in a defamation case. Jethmalani claimed that he has given a discount to Kejriwal. The Supreme Court ruled that the national anthem should be played in all cinema halls and everyone should stand to show 'constitutional patriotism'. Since then people, including a man in a wheelchair, have been attacked for not standing during the anthem. Recently, the Supreme Court banned all sale of alcohol within 500 meters of national highways in the entire country. The judgement said that all establishments selling alcohol must move to beyond 500 meters, which is impossible because you cannot just shift hotels. Following the verdict many states have renamed highways as local streets. Shops and restaurants have changed their entrances so that customers have to travel more than 500 meters to enter. While the Supreme Court has time to adjudicate on trivial matters it has not bothered to establish a constitutional court for over 2 years to decide on the legitimacy of Aadhar, the biggest assault on privacy and personal freedom the world has ever seen. By interfering with executive matters the Supreme Court is allowing the rich and the powerful to do whatever they like. We are victims.

They do this work because of circumstances.

Why do Indians keep servants and what does it do to us, asks Aakar Patel. By doing our household chores domestic servants allow us more time for leisure, to pursue hobbies and to earn more. But Patel writes that the evidence does not support economic reasons for keeping servants because,"Even Indians with modest incomes keep them because physical work, specifically cleaning, is looked down upon in our culture." Maybe, but why are people doing such menial work and what would they do to earn a living if such work is not available? Working as a domestic help does not require any education or training because all women (most domestic help are women) do the same work at home. Patel writes that what it does is to "perpetuate, extend, solidify and validate our caste hierarchy". That is not true because a lot of upper caste people also do this work because of poverty. Why do women work as maids abroad when there are horrific stories of torture? Prof Dipankar Gupta wrote how thousands of upper caste people, some with postgraduate degrees, applied for posts of 'safai karmacharis', or sweepers, in UP. Not just Indians. The Queen advertised for someone to wash dishes at Buckingham Palace at a salary of 17,000 pounds. The average annual salary in Britain is 26,500 pounds, at minimum wage it would be 13,124 pounds per year. Perhaps, the reason why people employ domestic help is because they are available. Picks an shovels are still used to dig roads and humans are still cleaning filthy sewers, often dying in the process, even though it has been banned. These people are doing government work so why does the government employ them? Because if all work is shifted to machines millions of people would be out of work and starving. That is the tragedy of India -- that people are cheap. The only way to stop people from doing domestic work is to educate them but millions of children are learning nothing at school. There has actually been a fall in standards of reading and arithmetic. About 15% of children, especially girls, drop out of school. A lot of them cannot cope with lessons and lose interest. There is not much they can do to earn a living other than domestic work. Without any skills they lack bargaining power. Yet the number of women in the labor force is falling. Is it because men are earning more or because there are no jobs? What is unconscionable is ill treatment of our domestic workers. In 1870, 52% of women worked as domestic help in the US but now the number has fallen and wages have increased substantially because the country has got rich. Our economy has to grow, education has to improve and more jobs have to be created. Sadly, the World Bank predicts that 69% of jobs will be lost to automation. Hopefully new types of jobs will be created. Else domestic help are here to stay.

Everyone sending messages, but what do they mean?

The US dropped a MOAB, which stands for Massive Ordnance Air Blast, bomb on hill in Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan, killing over 90 ISIS fighters, who were hiding inside fortified caves. The MOAB, also known as GBU-43/B, is so huge that it has to be carried on a cargo plane, which are easy to shoot down, and its blast radius is around 1 mile, so the risk of collateral damage is enormous. That is why it has never been used in combat. Apparently, this was designed to send a message. But what message and to whom? According to some it was a message to North Korea and Iran not to mess around with nuclear weapons. To reinforce its message to North Korea the US started a surprise exercise at its airbase in Japan. Not to be outdone North Korea started to send a series of strange messages over short wave radio, such as 'No.69 on page 823, No.92 on page 467 and No.100 on page 957'. "If your opponent is of choleric temper, irritate him," Sun Tzu. North Korea held a massive parade to celebrate the 105th anniversary of Kim Il-Sung, the grandfather of present leader, Kim Jong-Un, showing its missiles, and followed it up with a missile test, which exploded within seconds of the launch. Was it deliberate? We can also create a big bang but we will not show you our real capability. In February, North Korea sent another message by assassinating Kim Jong Nam, the half brother of Kim Jong-Un, in Kuala Lumpur airport, using the banned nerve agent, VX. This may have been to show the world that it had the capability of producing deadly chemicals and anyone thinking of attacking the country should think twice. Or it could be a message to China that its support was welcome but it should not try to decide policy. Earlier this month the US fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at an airbase in Syria which was blamed for an alleged sarin attack on a village in the north. Although why Assad would use a chemical weapon when he is winning the war has not been explained. Russia and Iran were not amused and promised reprisals if there are any further attacks. There was no ambiguity about this message. In response to MOAB Russia boasts of having a thermobaric weapon, which it calls the 'father of all bombs'. It is one thing to bomb ISIS, which has no air force, but quite another to bomb North Korea or Iran, which is probably busy making its own nuclear warhead at its fortified underground facility in Fordow. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner, has declared that he will run again for president. This maybe a message that he would like to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago, just like Xi Jinping had or it maybe a message to liberals that he is still there. So many messages are terribly confusing. As Donald Trump said,"I don't know if it this sends a message; it doesn't make any difference if it does or does not." Scary. 

We have capitalism, socialism and communism. Mixed.

"Global inequality today is at a level last seen in the late 19th century -- and it is continuing to rise," wrote Prof Kaushik Basu. We have heard the figures. According to Oxfam, 8 richest people in the world own as much wealth as 3.6 billion people, or half the population of the world. "A US Senator, Bernie Sanders recently pointed out, the Walton family, which owns Walmart, now owns more wealth than bottom 42% of the US population." Extreme poverty, "defined as consumption of less than $1.90 per day" has declined from 42% in 1981 to below 11% in 2013. On the other hand,"Several million Americans -- black, white and Hispanic -- now live in households with per capita income of less than $2 per day," said Angus Deaton. The wealthy not only earn more but they pay less for services than the poor. "Thanks to frequent flyer programmes, wealthy travellers pay less for each mile they fly." "A study of Indian villages showed that the poor face systematic price discrimination, exacerbating inequality." At one time Rockefeller controlled 80% of the global oil market, today Google controls 90% of search market in Europe and 67% in the US. In the past they were known as 'Robber Barons', today they are the Silicon Sultans. They try to control markets by creating virtual monopolies. But, Henry Ford brought down the cost of a car from $950 in 1908 to $490 in 1914, thereby enabling working class Americans to own cars. He also increased wages to $5 per day so that more workers could afford to buy his cars. With 250,000 km of tracks the US has the largest rail network in the world. Google, Facebook and Twitter are free for the users, including the poor. "Wealthy citizens not only vote; they can influence elections through donations and other means," wrote Basu but then contradicted himself by writing,"As people struggle to hold on to their shrinking share of the pie, their anxiety has created a political opening for opportunistic populists, shaking the world order in the process." He is clearly referring to Donald Trump who wants to force companies to manufacture in the US by imposing a border tax on imports. So, the power of the poor lies in their numbers, to elect anyone who promises more handouts. This is what happened in Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves in the world, when people elected Hugo Chavez, but is unable to feed the people today. Communism expired with the end of the Soviet Union, socialism failed in Venezuela, and capitalism is under attack for concentration of wealth in a few hands. We in India are lucky. We have socialism, in that the government controls Air India, we have communism, in that it redistributes taxpayer money and crony capitalism, in that we have the best scams in the world. The rich concentrate capital, the poor divide capital by being too many. Reduce population.

Donald Trump: The fake Obama?

"Those who use sarin, can't escape justice," wrote Bobby Ghosh, seething with righteous indignation about the use of sarin on rebel troops in Khan Shaykhun. Russia and the Syrian government have said that a bomb hit a warehouse where rebels were storing chemical weapons. That has been dismissed as ludicrous by the Western disinformation 'news channels'. Yesterday, the Syrian government claimed that a US bomb hit an ISIS chemical dump in Deir al-Zor province releasing a toxic gas that killed hundreds of civilians. One US colonel called it 'misinformation'. Exactly. So what is sarin? It is an organophosphorus compound which inhibits the enzyme acetylcholinesterase and leads to the body being flooded with acetylcholine, which transmits signals between nerves and muscles. Are all such compounds banned from production? No. These are used commonly as insecticides and one is available in India as Tik 20. The symptoms of suicides by our farmers sound suspiciously similar. It is not impossible that a bomb struck a warehouse storing pesticides which then poisoned anyone in the vicinity. Children would be particularly susceptible. Not everyone is buying the story of Assad's use of chemical weapons. At least one British journalist is highly sceptical. The UK and US pushed for more sanctions against Russia but this was rejected by other G7 nations, including Europe and Canada. British scientists in Turkey have suddenly found traces of sarin from blood and urine samples taken from victims. In 2015 Turkey shot down a Russian plane returning from a bombing mission against ISIS, because it had apparently strayed into Turkish airspace for 17 seconds. Turkeys' President Erdogan gambled on Nato's commitment to defend an attack on any member but Russia did not seek revenge. Instead Putin imposed economic sanctions on Turkey, forcing Erdogan to go crawling to Moscow. But why does Britain want a war between Russia and the US? Because Britain has still not adjusted to the loss of its empire. Today it is just a tiny island of some 60 million people which would be completely irrelevant without US support. On 5 December 1962, then Secretary of State, Dean Acheson said in a speech,"Great Britain lost an empire and has not found a role.""Great Britain, attempting to be a broker between the United States and Russia, has seemed to conduct policy as weak as its military power."  Is it? The British Prime Minister is always the first to rush to Washington as soon as a new president in elected as Theresa May did in January, holding hands and repeating Churchill's bluff of a 'Special Relationship'. Britain started the canard about Trump's friendship with Putin. Why? Because if the US is friends with Russia it will be invincible and will discard Britain. Has Britain succeeded? Brilliantly. Trump and Putin are now almost enemies. Trump also gave his support for Nato. The US is not really independent, is it? Like India.

Emerging markets may never emerge.

A report from the International Monetary Fund warns that the the golden age is over for emerging markets, wrote Manas Chakravarty. "Together with a risk of protectionism in advanced economies and tighter financial conditions as US monetary policy normalizes, these changes make for a more challenging external environment for emerging market and developing economies going forward," said the report. The IMF gives two charts which show "how the contribution of emerging markets (EMs) to world growth increased from 18.2% during 1976-79 to 69.82% during 2010-15. The contribution of developing countries to world consumption rose even more markedly -- from 13.9% during 1976-79 to 72% in 2010-15." However, the share of EMs to both growth and consumption is going to fall slightly by 2021. Western people have been predicting an 'Asian Century' for years but that will probably never come, wrote A Gary Shilling. The benefits of globalization have reached maximum, export-led growth is no longer possible, population is contracting in Japan, while increasing in other countries, governance is poor and there is a risk of armed conflict. So what about India? Growth in India is mainly dependent on domestic demand but, following liberalization, exports of goods and services have risen from 6.8% of GDP in 1990-91 to 25% of GDP in 2013-14. In addition to problems similar to other emerging market countries the factor markets is distorted in India, wrote Ejaz Ghani. Factor market refers to goods and services bought and sold for production. "Firms in India differ enormously in performance compared to the US. The productivity of a US firm in the top decile is usually twice as high as that of a firm in the bottom decile in a typical manufacturing industry. This increase is five times more so in India. This suggests considerable factor market misallocation within India." The biggest problem is land. Land is not only essential to set up factories but also acts as collateral for borrowing capital. India has benefited enormously from globalization. Our share of the global GDP has doubled from 3.65% in 1990 to 7.32% in 2016. So, we have to take the IMF warning seriously. Private investment was falling, which meant a shortage of new jobs. On being elected prime minister, Narendra Modi decided to increase government spending in the hope that it would stimulate private investment, but that was not working, wrote Mihir Sharma. The Reserve Bank warned that increased government spending might increase fiscal deficit, in effect borrowing from future generations. Government spending, fiscal deficit and government debt are high compared to our peers. There seems to be a glimmer of hope that private investment may pick up, wrote Niranjan Rajadhyaksha. Any glimmer is welcome.

Easy to give in, but how do you stop?

The newly elected BJP government of UP has waived loans incurred by farmers at a cost of Rs 363 billion. "It is well-known that the rural economy and the agricultural sector in particular have been in distress for quite some time now," wrote Prof Himanshu. "The distress which started three years back worsened with two back-to-back droughts in 2014 and 2015. But the distress was also due to declining farm gate prices of a majority of crops since 2014." "According to the Situation Assessment Survey(SAS) of 2012-13, 52% of all farmers in the country have debts outstanding, with an average debt of Rs 47,000." That is a lot in India. "At all India level, 60% of these loans were from institutional sources while the remaining were accounted for by local money lenders and other sources. The data also shows that the dependence on non-institutional sources was much higher for small and marginal farmers with more than 50% of loans of this group coming from non-institutional sources." This explains a rise of 42% in suicides by farmers. Although loan waivers do help some farmers in the short term it is not the answer to long standing rural distress, wrote Roshan Kishore. Why was a loan waiver necessary when the government's data showed an increase in the area under cultivation following the good monsoon last year? The import duty on wheat was lowered from 25% to 10%, which shows that claims of increased production of wheat was wrong, wrote Himanshu. Also fertilizer sales have been dropping since 2013 which is at odds with claims of increased production. Importing wheat lowers its price in India, leading to decrease in income of farmers who are unable to meet their costs. Loan waiver rewards defaulters and punishes those who repay their loans, leading to an increase in defaults, with the expectation of more waivers in the future. Besides loan waiver in UP will only increase the pressure on chief ministers of other states to do the same for their farmers as well. Indian banks are already burdened by trillions of rupees in bad loans and this will only add to the pain, although the government has promised to pay the banks in three stages. So why do it? Because,"Unhappy farmers worry politicians," wrote R Sukumar. The Vajpayee government lost in 2004, despite a growing economy, because of lingering effects of a drought in 2002. Modi is not going to take any chances, never mind the cost. No one had heard of Naxalbari, a small village in West Bengal, until 1967 when farmers rose up in revolt. Policemen are still being killed by Maoists inspired by that event. India is a 'do something' nation where politicians want to show that they are doing something, to win elections, wrote R Jagannathan. Even if that something has been shown not to work. Besides it costs nothing to waste taxpayer money.

People want designer babies, armies want cyborgs.

In Vitro Gametogenesis, or IVG, is a new technique that allows "not only infertile couples but post-menopausal women, gay couples, single people and groups of more than two individuals (whether male, female, or a mix of the two) to have their own children", writes Shruti Sharma. Along with gene editing technology, such as CRISPR, "This will not only help parents select the best set of genes, thus creating their version of a perfect 'child' with 'vanity' traits such as height, enhanced muscular strength, fair skin tone or eye colour and even intelligence." There are dangers because "This leaves the embryo vulnerable to genetic diseases, leaving future generations to suffer from the error." Three-parent babies are already a reality, in which diseased mitochondrial DNA is removed from the mother's egg and replaced with healthy DNA from a donor's egg. Britain has passed a law approving three parent babies. Adults have right to produce as many babies as they want and the UN charter advises governments to assist people to plan the size of their families. That means pedophiles, drug dealers and murderers can have babies if they are out of prison. Babies cannot choose their parents and have no right not to be born. Gender discrimination is a special concern in India. "Instead of having to determine gender once the embryo is conceived, parents could choose to engineer the same prior to conception and evade the law." The cost of the procedure will restrict its availability to very few in a poor country like India and those who have the money can easily go to a specialist abroad. India is planning to ban commercial surrogacy and portable ultrasound machines are banned in several states to prevent gender selection of babies. Any procedure misused for selecting the sex of babies will probably be banned in the future. However, the debate on gender selection has become highly emotional in India, based on wrong interpretation of figures. Sex ratios are calculated as the number of boys to the number of girls at birth, which goes up to 107 boys to 100 girls. According to the World Health Organization the normal ratio is 105 boys for every 100 girls. This is natural because mortality is higher among boys, so that the ratio becomes 1:1 by the time they become adults. In India, on the other hand, the government calculates the number of girls per 1000 boys and naturally the number is lower. This is cited as proof of gender selection. But, that is wrong. According to the normal ratio globally the number of girls should be between 934 to 952 girls per 1000 boys. A census in 2011 showed that the ratio girls to boys is indeed very bad in northern and western states but is good in eastern and southern states, some states having ratios much higher than expected. Designer babies are not the danger, cyborgs are and they are coming. Humans like to play god. We have nuclear weapons, don't we?

Why use nerve gas in a war he is winning? Who gains from US-Russia war?

More than 80 people were killed in a suspected chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, a town in Syria. Local people, who are rebels fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad, and Western nations immediately blamed bombing by government warplanes. The Syrian government, backed by Russia, said that its planes had hit a rebel ammunition dump where the rebels were storing chemical weapons. In situations of this sort what the US says is accepted as gospel truth while it blithely continues to use white phosphorus in Iraq. After lying strenuously the US was forced to admit a massacre of civilians using white phosphorus in Fallujah. Depleted uranium will cause birth defects in Iraq for centuries to come. That is not to condone using sarin against civilians but the US punished Assad by launching 59 Tomahawk Cruise missiles at Shayrat airbase near Homs, from where the planes were supposed to have taken off. At $1 million per missile this was a pretty expensive fireworks display. Replacing them will surely cost more because prices must have gone up. Did the strikes work? Apparently government planes were bombing the same town, taking off from the airport the next day. Russia condemned the attack as an act of aggression against a sovereign state. So what is going on in Syria? It started in 2011 with protests against the Assad government, inspired by protests in Tunisia and Egypt, which were known as Arab Spring. Hosni Mubarak was deposed in Egypt, Gaddafi was killed in Libya and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia sought refuge in Saudi Arabia. Assad was having none of it and responded ferociously against the protesters. He was advised by Iran which crushed its own protests brutally in 2009 when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was alleged to have stolen the election for president. The opposition leaders, who supposedly won the election, are still under house arrest. Nobody would dare to meddle directly with Iran but in Syria Gulf states, Turkey and the US provided money and arms to the rebels while Iran helped Assad by sending in Hezbollah, a Shia militia, from adjoining Lebanon and Russia helped by bombing the rebels. The mystery is why the Western nations did not kill Assad as they killed Muammar Gaddafi in Libya? It maybe because they needed Iran's help and Shia militia to fight ISIS in Iraq. In 2014, 30,000 Iraqi soldiers guarding Mosul ran away from 1,500 ISIS fighters, complaining of lack of air cover. They seem to have made a habit of running away even though they are heavily armed. Why would Assad use chemical weapons in a war he is winning, when it is sure to invite reprisals? The glib Western answer is that he feels he is invincible, which is rubbish because Assad is not an imbecile. Did some other country release nerve gas under cover of bombing? Who gains from a war between the US and Russia? Interesting.

If money makes people happy what about black money?

Is happiness directly linked with accumulation of wealth, asks Prof Sumit Mishra. India was ranked a lowly 122 out of 155 countries in the World Happiness Index, below Pakistan and China. 'Pursuit of happiness' is written into the Declaration of Independence of the US but we Indians have no such promise from our leaders. Yet when ranked for optimism India came second with a score of 73%, just behind China with 74%. USA came 13th with just 6%, Finland and Denmark, which were near the top in happiness, were 9 and 10 in optimism. Why? Is it because when you are happy you are afraid of unexpected tragedies in the future while if you have nothing you have nothing to lose and so can dream of better things to come? One paper from Harvard showed that "reported happiness monotonically increases with income, and decreases during economic shocks such as a recession". Which means the richer you are the happier you will be. The paper also showed that "happiness is strongly correlated to GDP across countries, and that these effects are persistent over time". Rich countries are happier than poor ones. Stevenson and Wolfers found,"The relationship between well-being and income is roughly linear-log and does not diminish as incomes rise. If there is a satiation point, we are yet to reach it." A billionaire is happier than a millionaire. However, Easterlin makes the point that China is less happy than it was in 1990. Uma Shashikant wrote that money cannot buy you happiness, but lack of money makes you miserable. She recommends charity to give a sense of fulfillment. In India, the poor are much more generous than the rich, wrote Prof Dipankar Gupta. The poor have friends, while the rich have sycophants. A survey in Britain found that religious people are much more contented but other factors, such as age, were also important. On the other hand, the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, causing untold misery, are between two branches of the same religion. "I'll keep saving people as long as I'm alive.....saving lives has become my religion," said Rajendra Sahni after pulling people out of the Ganga in darkness after a boat capsized. He is happy indeed. However, economics still matters. There are nearly half a million illegal immigrants from India in the US, attracted by its wealth, and Indians obtain visas to Schengen countries to enter the UK illegally, called "donkey flights". At least one million men from Tamil Nadu are working abroad, leaving their wives to bring up their children alone. There must be millions more from other states. In conclusion, many things combine to make us happy but "at least for the developing world, lies in the pursuit of wealth and material well being..." That explains why Indians love black money. Makes them happy.

Are Indians humans or animals? The Supreme Court should decide quickly.

Last month, people in the town of Lumding in Assam found two snakes entwined in a mating ritual. Photos show men covering the snakes with saris and sheets to give them privacy. Animals have no concept of privacy. Nature channels on television regularly show animals or birds mating, scent marking or, in the case of hippos, scattering their dung with their tails. Only humans desire privacy. We are born within walls, in hospitals, we grow up within walls, in our houses, and we travel within walls, in cars or trains or planes. We have doors to prevent anyone entering without permission. Outsiders are entertained in sitting rooms, only family members are allowed into bedrooms and we are alone in bathrooms. Privacy is what makes us human and distinguishes us from other creatures so when the Attorney General told the Supreme Court that citizens of India have no fundamental right to privacy he was saying that we are all animals. This is a crime against humanity. This was in relation to the Aadhar bill which the government sneaked through by attaching it to the Money Bill, which is the government spending program in the Budget. Aadhar is a biometric identity card. The Supreme Court reacted by saying that there is no liberty without privacy but took no action, referring the case to a constitution bench. Aadhar was introduced by the Congress but Narendra Modi took it up with great enthusiasm after becoming prime minister, saying that it was only to assure that benefits were reaching the poor and not being pilfered by officials. Shockingly, the Supreme Court said recently that Aadhar must not be compulsory for handouts but can be forced on citizens to file tax returns and for bank accounts. In other countries criminals are photographed and fingerprinted, and in Canada those records are destroyed if found innocent, but here we are being treated as criminals for paying taxes, when we get nothing from the government. If we have no right to privacy what is to prevent the state from installing CCTV cameras in our homes to see what we are doing? The biggest danger is that terrorists will access to this information and use it to create fake identities. The government says that the information is completely safe and secure. Is it? Professor Ernest Davis says that big data is a gross violation of privacy, can be misused by those in authority and there is no way of appealing it. There have been 4.8 billion cases of data breach since 2013 and Aadhar data will be easily stolen when used by banks to establish identity of an account holder or for a driving licence. This same government had no shame in telling the Supreme Court that Facebook and WhatsApp will be regulated to protect the privacy of users. While deciding on the legality of attaching the Aadhar Bill to the Money Bill the Constitution Bench should decide a more basic question: Are Indians humans or animals? We have a right to know.

Fairness instead of ideology, is it possible?

People voted for Donald Trump because,"They responded to Trump's promise of jobs more than to Hillary Clinton's promise of government benefits because in addition to money, people also need dignity, a sense of self -reliance and respect within their community," wrote Prof Noah Smith. Long term unemployment makes people lose their skills and employers are suspicious of long gaps in anyone's resume. "Falling employment has been linked to declining marriage rates, reduced happiness and opiate abuse. Some economists even blame disappearing jobs for the recent rise in mortality rates afflicting white Americans." Economists recommend job creation by government spending on infrastructure and services, like old age care. Leftists say that automation will decimate jobs anyway so some form of universal basic income is essential. Prof Yanis Varoufakis has written many times on this.  Wolfgang Streeck, a German sociologist thinks that 'the capitalist wealth machine is spinning out of control'. "Streeck writes that the three main symptoms of a crisis of capitalism are slowing economic growth, rising indebtedness, and increasing inequality in the leading capitalist nations," wrote Justin Fox. To protect American jobs Trump has proposed a Border Tax on imports. This is a form of neo-protectionism, which is dangerous, wrote Prof Kaushik Basu. He recommends some form of basic income, or handouts, but this has already been rejected by the people. Ajit Ranade finds it ironic that China is now the most ardent supporter of free trade. China is ruled by a ruthless Communist Party and communism is all about state control. So what about India? India has been a socialist, almost communist, nation since independence. The 1951 movie, Awaara, became a sensation in the communist world. Socialism was at its height during the Indira Gandhi era when banks were nationalized and the top rate of income tax rose to 98.75%. Agricultural growth and credit to agriculture rose but India became poorer than other Asian nations which had become independent at around the same time. It is strange that Americans voted against increased welfare but in India where there are innumerable welfare schemes for the poor Maoist rebels killed 11 police officers in Chhattisgarh last month. It started in a village called Naxalbari in West Bengal in 1967, when a coalition government led by Communists had just been elected. Why is it still continuing when we are a $2 trillion economy, growing in excess of 7%, the fastest in the world? During a recent election campaign people ran away with the cots provided for them to sit on during lectures. That is how unequal our society is. What is the answer? Capitalism, which is fair for everybody, is required, wrote Sundeep Khanna. But, can it be forced?

India's economy is likely to remain pear shaped.

"The 'Asian century' might never come," writes A Gary Shilling for Bloomberg. Western nations have a fascination for Asia. The rapid recovery of Japan after the WWII was followed by the rise of the Asian Tigers, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, then by Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and China and so on. With sluggish economic growth in the West many still believe that emerging nations in Asia will take up the slack but that is unlikely to happen. Globalization is nearly complete, export-led growth is not going to work anymore, as exports to developed nations have reached a peak, China's shift to a consumption led economy is progressing too slowly, populations in some countries are aging, but growing in Indonesia and India, and there is a threat of armed conflict. So what about India? Despite demonetization our economy grew at 7% in the last quarter, from December to March, the fastest in the world. So, are we about to become very wealthy? India is a socialist country where everything from mines, to banks to railways are controlled by the government. The recent incident in which a politician hit an Air India, which is controlled by the government, manager with his slipper is a vivid example of the power of politicians. His party, Shiv Sena, said that Air India is behaving like a mafia for blacklisting the politician from flying.  India has the largest population of poor people in the world, so naturally the government pours resources and money for their welfare. To help farmers the new government in UP is to spend in excess of Rs 363 billion in forgiving bank loans of farmers. The farmers in Maharashtra, who have suffered badly from drought, are also demanding waiver of their loans, supported by opposition parties. Meanwhile, the High Court in Madras has ordered the Tamil Nadu government to waive loans of all farmers, including those with farms larger than 2.5 acres. By 2022 the population of India will reach 1.4 billion people, the highest in the world, and most of the increase will be in the poor. Loan waivers do not work and reduce the credit quality of banks, wrote Tamal Bandopadhyay, but the poor constitute a huge 'vote bank' so politicians try to please them. To please the poor the government has given them various rights, such as right to education, right to food and right to employment. Now the talk is of right to internet. Right to Education increased school fees of the middle class by three times. The zero balance accounts for the poor, known as Jan Dhan accounts, have increased our bank charges enormously. To finance its schemes the government raises money from all kinds of taxes. The number of wealthy people maybe increasing elsewhere but is decreasing in India. There will be a small number of billionaires and vast numbers of poor, but no middle class. India will remain pear shaped.

Back to the British Raj.

The poor are not counted in India's GDP because they consume so little, writes Manas Chakravarty. The average assets for a household in the poorest 10% is Rs 291, while that of a household in the richest 10% is Rs 150 million. The total assets of the bottom 90% of households is Rs 82,90,418, less than that of a household in the top 10%. Which means that returns from assets is also highly skewed. The monthly per capita expenditure of the richest 5% is 4.7 times the bottom 60% of the population, which includes India's middle class. The total medical expenditure of the top 5% is Rs 658 while for the bottom 60% it is Rs 119. For education it is even worse. The spending on education per month of the top 5% is Rs 908, while that for the bottom 60% it is a paltry Rs 125. According to an ASER report the levels of learning in poor children are dropping. The share of income of the top 0.1% in India was 5.1% in 2012, that of the top 0.5% was 9.6%, while that of the top 1% was 12.6%, almost similar to that in 1922-23, which was at the height of the British Raj. Inequality was much less in 1992-93, when liberalization started. Another survey showed the effect of education on income and expenditure levels across different segments of Indian society. Although the top 1% is really wealthy, the average annual income of the top 20% is merely Rs 95,000, well below the taxable limit of Rs 250,000. No wonder, only about 3% of Indians pay income tax, wrote Praveen Chakravarty. He recommended decreasing the tax threshold so that more Indians are forced to pay income tax. About 90% of people earn less than the income tax threshold, so forcing them to pay tax will hit consumption.  A Credit Suisse report said that the total number of people in the middle class in India, defined as those with annual wealth above $13,662, or Rs 737,748, is 24 million. Less than 30% of households in India own a refrigerator, which should be essential in such a hot country. Partly it is because of poor electricity supply and partly due to allocation of scarce resources.  Not just between households and not just between rural and urban areas, inequality is increasing between rich and poor states, despite free trade between states and free movement of people, wrote Arvind Subramanian et al. At 28.5, India ranks lower than Nepal, Mali and Rwanda in the Global Hunger Index. No wonder that 15.2% of our fellow citizens are undernourished and 38.7% of children are stunted. Why when the government has a multitude of social schemes providing help for food, education and even cattle insurance? Since the official economy is not working maybe black money is keeping the poor alive. That must be embarrassing.

Does the US realise that it holds most of the aces?

"China benefits from nuclear disorders," wrote Prof WPS Sidhu. China actively, if surreptitiously, helps Pakistan and North Korea to make nuclear weapons. Although India also has nuclear weapons we have signed agreements separating our civilian from military nuclear programs and agreed to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why does China support 2 rogue nations? "China's active and tacit support of the nuclear programmes of Pakistan and North Korea respectively might be considered a form of deterrence (as the US has done by ensuring that its nuclear arsenal also covers its allies)." North Korea recently tested a new "high-thrust engine" so that its missiles are capable of reaching the US. Japan has a security treaty with the US under which the US is committed to defending Japan against external aggression and an exactly similar treaty exists with South Korea. The US is therefore keen to reduce North Korea's strike capabilities so that it is not tempted to attack either of its 2 allies. China has a border with North Korea and is its chief trading partner so the US wants China to pressure Pyongyang to stop both its nuclear and missiles programs. Despite Donald Trump's tough talk the US is following the same policy as Barack Obama did, wrote Prof Brahma Chellaney. During Secretary of State. Rex Tillerson's visit to Beijing recently he "echoed several Chinese bromides about the US Chinese relationship including 'win-win' cooperation", which the Chinese understand as a double win for themselves. But the Chinese may not be as clever as these professors think? Unlike his father and grandfather, Kim Jong-Un has never visited Beijing to pay his respects and Xi Jinping has visited South Korea but not the North. Donald Trump has said that the US is ready to act alone to stop North Korean proliferation if China is unwilling, or unable, to help. The US has deployed THAAD missiles in South Korea which worries Beijing. "In his first interview as secretary of state, Tillerson raised the possibility of both Japan and South Korea eventually obtaining nuclear weapons, something President Trump too has alluded to in the past," wrote Prof Harsh V Pant. This must be a nightmare scenario for Beijing. Missiles can go off course. What if a North Korean missile hits the South or Japan and they, along with the US, retaliate by bombing North Korean missile and nuclear sites? Will China defend the North or allow the regime to collapse and the two Koreas to unite? China has quarreled with all its neighbors by illegally enforcing a fictitious 'nine-dash line' to claim the resources of the South China Sea as its own. These are small countries and will not actively join the fight but will not do anything to help China. Donald Trump holds 3 of the 4 aces when he meets Xi Jinping later this weeks. Hope he knows that.

In the government we trust.

A survey in 2016 showed that less than 30% of households in India own a refrigerator, wrote Prof Vidya Mahambare. By 1950 nearly all families in the US owned a refrigerator and over 90% of families in China own one today. Refrigerators save money by preserving food and, along with other labor saving devices, such as washing machines, save time, allowing women to go out to work. In 2014 only 27% of women were working, compared to 37% in 2005. If more women worked GDP growth would jump. So, why do so few people own refrigerators? The main reason is that 43% of rural and 13% of urban households receive electricity for less than 8 hours per day, or not at all. Yet, India exported 5,798 million units of electricity to neighboring countries in 2016-17. Since a refrigerator helps women men are reluctant to waste money on them, feels Mahambare, probably because twice the number of households in rural India own a two-wheeler. But, 780 million people watch television and more than 1 billion people now own mobile phones, which must include millions of women. Supposing all these unemployed women were to seek work would they find suitable jobs? Experts predict that 4 out of 10 jobs will be lost to automation and 60% of engineering graduates, most of whom will be men, cannot find jobs. Manufacturing has been contracting recently and restructuring in many sectors is leading to job losses. Prior to 2007, 1% of economic growth produced 0.3% new jobs but that has come down to 0.15%. Spending of $25 billion by Reliance Jio to start its telecom services has not added any new jobs because other companies have restructured their workforce to reduce costs. Mergers between telecom companies will lead to more job losses. The US National Intelligence Council forecasts that the next 5 years are going to be fraught. The US and Europe will become more protectionist, terrorism and cyber warfare will rise and Pakistan will engineer more terror attacks in India as it falls behind in economic growth. India will continue to grow but it needs to create 10 million new jobs every year or there will be social tensions. As salaries rise in China low cost manufacturing is moving elsewhere. This could be a great opportunity for India to increase its manufacturing growth but instead Indian companies are shifting to Vietnam, Myanmar, and even Ethiopia. The reasons are restrictive labor laws and lack of roads and electricity. Perhaps the main reason is the enormous cost of land. Curiously, 69% of Indians trust the government, compared with just 35% in the US. Why, when it is so much richer than us? Maybe, because Americans trust in God and our Gods have gone deaf. Bad luck.