If we are independent, why are we begging?

British Prime Minister Theresa May is in India to build trade ties, in anticipation of Britain leaving the European Union, after a referendum voted for Brexit. Although she was against leaving the European Union May has been keen to restrict immigration into Britain. As Home Secretary, she restricted work visa for non-British, non-EU students so Indians had to return home after finishing their studies. May became prime minister when David Cameron resigned, after Britain voted for Brexit. At the Conservative Party Conference a month ago she confirmed that she will be tough on immigration, because that is what the people had voted for. Soon after, Home Secretary, Amber Rudd announced new tougher measures to restrict immigration, which will affect Indian students. Study visas issued to Indian students fell from 68,238 in 2010 to 11,864 five years later, as May has pledged to cut immigration from 336,000 in June 2015 to below 100,000 per year. It is easy to understand Britain's reluctance to take in large numbers of immigrants. It is a small country, just 209,331 sq km, with over 60 million people. The state of Rajasthan is 342,239 sq km. It is not just a question of finding a job and paying your taxes. Britain has a supportive social security system which provides housing and benefits to unemployed people. The National Health Service provides free treatment to inpatients, at vast expense. Large numbers of migrants from the Middle East and Africa are trying to enter Britain any way they can. As part of the EU, British people could study and work in any of the 28 countries that make up the Union. India does not offer such facilities to British workers, our universities are not of the standard that students will want to study here and, thankfully, there is no civil war in India, as there is in Libya, Syria and Iraq. There is therefore no reason why Britain should welcome immigrants from India. Apart from our 'shared history', that is. And what is that history? It is a catalogue of some 100 million deaths from engineered famines in 200 years of British rule. India became independent on 15 August, 1947 and every year we celebrate the day with stirring speeches from politicians asking for ever more sacrifices from citizens to make the country richer, stronger. On 26 January, we celebrate Republic Day, when politicians are saluted by smartly uniformed soldiers and little children shiver in the bitter Delhi cold as forced actors in various tableaux. Why then do our students want to study and work in Britain? Why can we not provide quality education and jobs, with respectable salaries, after 69 years of boastful independence? If we want to be truly independent we should not beg Britain for more visas for our students. That is humiliating.

It is still survival of the fittest. Even in economics.

Prof Noah Smith writes how liberal economists are modifying their macroeconomic theories. Those to the left are gaining momentum with their stress on public housing, welfare and public education. That maybe because inflation is stuck at very low levels and government spending on public welfare will have the effect of increasing spending and may result in higher prices. Increasing minimum wage does not cause immediate disruption in the availability of labor. That maybe because a record 94.7 million people are out of the labor market in the US, because they cannot find jobs, so competition is keeping wages low. But it is not all gloom in the US. In 2015, after many years of no rise, median household income rose by 5.2%, the highest since 1960s, and poverty fell by 1.2%. But elsewhere the news is alarming. Just 1% of the world's population, that is 18.5 million households, holds 47% of the entire wealth of the world. Last month the International Monetary Fund warned of growing risks to financial stability, both in developed and in emerging economies. The total global debt has risen from less than 200% of global GDP to 225%, at $152 trillion, and two-thirds of the debt is held by the private sector, which is acting as a brake on global growth, said the IMF last month. The world's biggest hedge fund feels that China is preparing for its economy to go bust, but will manage because most of its debt is in local currency. However, what happens if China's economy goes into recession, the yuan drops, leading to a flight of capital out of the country, and it severely restricts purchase of commodities, is anyone's guess. Central banks have responded to low growth by flooding the markets with money, first by cutting interest rates to almost zero, 23 countries adopting negative interest rates, then by purchasing assets , known as quantitative easing, and finally actually discussing possibilities of doling out cash to every citizen, known as helicopter money. Helicopter money sounds frivolous so it has morphed to Universal Basic Income, which means giving a fixed sum to every citizen instead of targeting subsidies to the needy. Prof Yanis Varoufakis proposes that shares of every company should go into a central fund so people may be paid from dividends. Prof Debraj Ray recommends a fixed portion of the GDP to be distributed to citizens every year. Economists are now studying evolution in the belief that economies are immensely complex and evolve over time, because human beings are social animals and individual decision making does not explain all the intricacies. Liberals have been running the world since World War II so they are responsible for the current impasse. Yet Hillary Clinton has raised far more money than Donald Trump. Some must have gained at our expense. Haven't they? 

Is it because of isolation that the wealthy are less giving?

The poor are more generous than the rich, writes Prof Dipankar Gupta, to the extent that they will risk their lives to save others. He narrates the story of how during a fire in Shahadara, Delhi several unrelated people rushed into burning buildings to rescue many trapped inside. This was also noticed in the US where the poor donated more to charities after the Great Recession, than the rich. The rich give more in absolute terms but as a percentage of income the poor are much more generous. The rich tend to donate to universities while the poor help those around them. Thus, Harvard has $37.6 billion in endowments, Yale has $25.5 billion and Princeton and Stanford tie on $22 billion. "There is this old sociological nugget that goes as follows: in the everyday presentation of self, the higher one rises socially, the fewer friends one has," writes Prof Gupta. A study in Britain found that those winning jackpots quickly lost their friends and became lonely. Prof Gupta thinks that "absolute kindness creates heroes from nowhere". "They are usually ordinary, unremarkable people, more often than not, strangers to those affected and, most significantly, rarely ever posh, not even from the confirmed middle class," he writes. Perhaps, such sacrifice is possible when there is no time to think. It is a regular experience in India that no one stops to help an accident victim, often with tragic results. In a recent incident, also in Delhi, a rickshaw-puller stole the mobile phone of an accident victim and fled the scene without helping him. The man died. After every such incident the media howl in indignation saying the we are,"Self-righteous insensitive quislings with a grossly exaggerated opinion of ourselves, with delusions and empty slogans of greatness." The rickshaw-puller who stole the mobile phone of a man bleeding to death and the men who raped Jyoti Singh Pandey on a Delhi bus were also poor. So are they heroes, as Prof Gupta thinks, or absolute scoundrels, as the evidence shows. Perhaps, the answer is not so easy. Human beings are capable of extreme valor and also extreme brutality. Strangely, studies show that altruism is apparently in our genes. If so, why is there so much brutality in Iraq and Syria, and not from ISIS only? Surely, some of these men will be loving fathers to their own children? So, is the gene present in only a few, or can we switch the gene on and off? A man presented a moral dilemma to his 2 year old child, in which a train would run over one person, if sent down one track, and 5 people if sent down another. The toddler's solution was illuminating. He moved the single person to the other track and ran the train over all 6. Perhaps, it is easy for poor people to be altruistic because they can help only a few but the rich can help a lot of people, so they freeze. Trouble is, you cannot arm-twist a man to be kind.

More politicians mean more crimes.

Following Ms Mayawati's claim that crime was low when she was chief minister of UP, Krishnamurthy Subramanian, Associate Professor of Finance at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, has compared rates of violent crimes between the so-called Bimaru states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, between 1999 and 2014. Violent crimes include, murders, attempted murders, kidnappings and abductions, dacoity and robbery, riots and arson, rapes, dowry deaths etc. Comparing with more developed states, like Gujarat and Tamil Nadu would be unfair, so he has compared like for like. He shows that violent crime fell dramatically in UP by 16% a year from 1999 to 2003, when the BJP was in power, and has been increasing at 7% per year since then. By contrast, in Bihar, whose crime graph matches that of UP , violent crime grew by 3% per year. UP politicians are able to claim they reduced crime because they ordered a reduction in the rate of crime, so police stopped registering violent crimes for fear of vengeance by politicians. Since Akhilesh Yadav became Chief Minister of UP the police were filled with Yadavs, as reward to his vote bank, so the police started colluding with criminals from among Yadavs. Which meant most crime was hushed up. Despite so much subterfuge the rate of recorded violent crime has surpassed the highest level, which means the real rate is beyond comprehension. In the most heinous crimes of murder, kidnappings and abductions and crimes against women UP saw the most rapid increase compared to the other 3 states. Local politicians claim that a lot of complaints are politically motivated, but that would apply to all other states. Even though she is a woman herself, Mamata Banerjee dismissed claims of rape by saying they were "cooked up conspiracy" by her opponents. Also, a lot of criminals are connected to politicians so people are afraid of registering cases against them, for fear of violent reprisal. We can conclude that rates of violent crimes have really shot up and that both SP and BSP are responsible. Why is all this important? Because UP will have to hold elections to its assembly by March of next year and power in India means pelf. Humongous amounts. It is hard to know precisely how much wealth politicians accumulate after elections but a from figures available they are eye watering. There are proposals of dividing UP into 4 states but that will only multiply crime by a factor of 4. The hill state of Uttarakhand was carved out of UP but is probably even more corrupt. Smaller states mean more assemblies which means more politicians and more crimes. Is there a solution? Perhaps, only if BJP wins outright. We shall see if the people of UP want to improve their state.

Will Hillary Clinton suffer the Donna Brazile hex?

CNN, the US news channel, has fired Donna Brazile. Donna who? She is a member of the Democratic Party and is the acting Democratic National Committee Chair and CNN contributor. Why has she been fired? Because she told Hillary Clinton a couple questions that would be asked in 2 of the debates. Clinton should beware. Donna Brazile has been involved with presidential campaigns before --- Al Gore in 2000 and Walter Mondale/Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and in primaries of Jesse Jackson and Dick Gephardt. All of them lost. How was she caught? A hacker group, Fancy Bears, thought to be Russian, hacked into emails of John Podesta, Chair of Hillary Clinton campaign staff and a former White House Chief of Staff, and handed them over to WikiLeaks, who leaked them. CNN boss, Jeff Zucker called her "unethical" and "disgusting". Within the last 24 hours WikiLeaks has released 1,100 more emails. These emails reveal that Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice, Peter Kadzik was passing inside information about the investigation into Hillary's emails to his friend John Podesta. It appears that Peter Kadzik will be in charge of investigation into Huma Abedin's emails. Podesta asked Hillary aide, Cheryl Mills to dump Hillary's emails 2 days before a House Select Committee sent her a letter asking her to retain all her emails. At the very least the emails expose a surreal world of liberal elites engaged in lies and cover-up, protected behind their shields of self-righteous hypocrisy. No wonder Donald Trump calls her "crooked Hillary" and says the election is fixed against him. Some are thinking ahead. They think that, if elected, Obama will pardon Hillary before he leaves office, like Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, but that will only enrage the Republicans who will start impeachment proceedings as soon as the new Congress meets. Even in December 2015, Ross Douthat of the New York Times was predicting that Trump will never be the Republican nominee, while mourning the crumbling of the liberal clique, which has ruled the world since World War II. They have presided over a world where the rich have got fabulously wealthy while the poor have not progressed. Since they control the large media houses they manipulate the news to suit their interests. Mr Clean, Obama has a team that manipulates how information is presented to the public. The intense contempt felt by the right wing shows up in the 'Dishonor's Awards' night. Another 5 days to go before we know the result of the election. Will the Brazile hex help Donald Trump? So exciting.

Why save more if we get less?

Total deposits in banks in India crossed Rs 100 trillion in September. Bank lending crossed Rs 75 trillion. The deposit to GDP ratio has grown from 45.43% in March 2001 to 71.21% in March 2016, which is higher than most countries and also the global average, according to the International Monetary Fund. Credit to GDP ratio has grown from 24.3% in March 2001 to 55.25% in March 2016. Why is lending lagging behind savings rate? Because banks have to hold 20.75% of deposits in government securities, which is known as Statutory Liquidity ratio. Banks also have to hold 4% of deposits in cash, known as the Cash Reserve Ratio. These are safeguards to protect depositors in case banks run into financial difficulties. The other reason why banks are afraid to lend is because they are sitting on a huge pile of potentially bad loans. Stressed loans at Indian banks amount to a humongous Rs 13 trillion and Non-Performing Assets, as bad loans are called, amount to Rs 4.8-5.3 trillion or  6.2-6.8% of assets. According to Credit Suisse, $29 billion worth of loans are chronically stressed, out of a total debt of $58 billion on the books of Indian Banks, but banks have recognised only $6 billion as bad debt. Public sector banks are mainly affected, with some declaring NPAs of over 17%. Indian banks have the lowest Tier 1 capital in Asia at 10%, the highest ratio of NPAs at 5.88% and returns on assets are second worst at 0.45%. The trouble is that people are saving less. Savings rate has fallen to 30.2% of GDP which means banks will have less money to lend after setting aside enough funds to write off their bad loans. People are unable to save because of high prices and the falling interest rate. The previous Governor of the Reserve Bank, Raghuram Rajan wanted a real interest rate of 1.5-2%, which means that savers should get at least 150-200 basis points above the rate of retail inflation, bu the present Governor has reduced that to 1.25%, so people get less interest on their savings. Which means that they are able to spend less and save less. Naturally, to hedge against inflation people resort to buying gold, which leads to increased smuggling. The government needs new investments to increase jobs and for that it needs banks to lend more. But banks cannot lend unless they have enough funds after covering their bad loans. They need more savings but people need more income so they are investing in riskier assets, such as stocks and mutual funds. It has to be a huge mess if even Rs 100 trillion is not enough. Scary.

Top rated entertainment. And it is free.

Do not understand why people are criticising the US elections. This is the most entertaining presidential elections ever, spiced with general dollops of sleaze, lies and criminal activities. First, Donald Trump produced 3 women who accused Bill Clinton, husband of Hillary, of inappropriate sexual behavior. What Bill did is not Hillary's fault except that she disparaged those women and allegedly threatened them to keep them quiet. She called Gennifer Flowers "trailer trash" and said,"I mean, I would crucify her." Monica Lewinsky was a "narcissistic loony toon" and all those who accused her husband were clubbed as "bimbo eruption". Following this the Democrats paraded a long line of women who accused Trump of sexual harassment more than a decade ago. No shred of evidence was offered for these accusations so it is impossible to know how many were lying and who, if any, had been paid, but such is the feverish atmosphere of political correctness in the west at present that any woman can destroy a man's reputation and career by accusing him of sexual transgressions in the distant past. This is the only crime where a man is presumed guilty unless he can prove his innocence. Thus, one in every 1,000 men is branded a sex offender in Britain. WikiLeaks had been threatening an 'October dump' of data on Hillary Clinton which could have been embarrassing, so Ecuador "temporarily restricted" access to the internet by Julian Assange, who has taken shelter in its embassy in London. Whether under pressure from the Obama administration we do not know. But, frustratingly for Hillary, and Obama perhaps, a dump did come, not from the opposition, but from her trusted aide Huma Abedin. Just before she became Secretary of State in 2009 Hillary set up a private server in her house in Chappaqua, New York, which she used for her emails, both private and official. As a trained lawyer Hillary would definitely understand that she was not allowed use a personal server for government work. When questioned by the FBI Hillary was unable to recall in response to 35 questions, but her memory was fine during the 3 debates with Trump. In July FBI Director, James Comey announced that he found no evidence of criminal conduct which appeared to put the matter to rest, but about a week ago the FBI reopened their investigation when they discovered Hillary's emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop when investigating his sexting a 15 year old girl. Democrats are livid at James Comey and accuse him breaking the law. Why did he do it? Because his wife was urging him. In July Michael Gove betrayed Boris Johnson and destroyed his chance of becoming prime minister because his wife told him. This may have permanently harmed Gove's own political career. Thank you, Trump and Clinton. For the free entertainment.

No place for communism in 'God's own country'.

People in the south of India often complain that the government in Delhi is biased towards the northern states. They have a case. They have low fertility rates, have higher education levels, better healthcare and pay higher taxes, but get less from the center than Hindi speaking states which have higher fertility rates, higher unemployment and lower education levels. To a certain extent the central government is helpless, in that it must allocate more resources for development of poorer areas. On the other hand, handouts could be encouraging excess birth rates and increased dependency in these states, as people become irresponsible about their personal conduct. However, all southern states are not so rosy. Kerala has branded itself the 'God's own country' but, "Go a little deeper and there is a miasma of extremism, sectarian killing, unemployment and general apathy," writes Banuchandar Nagarajan. "Last month, it was reported that 22 people that were missing had volunteered to join the Islamic State," and,"Left Democratic Front (LDF) activists have killed more than 250 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers so far in an attempt to make it 'bleed by a thousand cuts'. Kannur, the home district of the current chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan and the late Communist giant AK Gopalan, is the epicentre of violence. The sheer goriness of the violence is sickening---a teacher killed in front of a classroom of children and a son in front of his parents." Communism has destroyed the economy.  Last year an American artist, Waswo X Waswo was asked to pay Rs 10,000 to move 6 boxes of his artwork a distance of 10 feet. He destroyed some of his work rather than pay, what he considered, as extortion money. If you are moving home you have to pay a loaders' union even if you do all the work yourself. People are actually employed by unions to stand at street corners to see who is moving, a practice known as 'nokkukooli', which translates to 'wages for looking'. The economy receives about one-third of its GDP from remittances of 2.5 million expats, working mainly in the Middle East, but as the price of oil has dropped so thousands of these workers, mainly laborers, are returning back to the state and will be looking for jobs. The debt-to-state GDP is 30%, as compared to an average of 20% for all other states and Foreign Direct Investment was a paltry $1.2 billion from 2000 to 2015, compared to $18 billion for Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, over the same period. Thankfully, as the nation's economy grows so people are rejecting communism. If Kerala can get rid of communists, like China did, then it will improve. After all, it has God on its side. 

Why does God talk only to George Bush and Rodrigo Duterte?

Russia has unveiled its new RS-28 Sarmat missiles, capable of flying at 4.3 miles,or 7 km, per second, with a range of 6213 miles, or 10,000 km, and delivering 40 megatons of energy, which is equivalent to 2,000 times the Hiroshima bomb. Crucially, these missiles are apparently capable of avoiding anti-missile missiles. That is necessary because the US has set up anti-missile systems in Poland and Romania which upsets the balance of 'mutually assured destruction' of the cold war. Why would Barack Obama, hailed as an 'intellectual', follow the policy of George W Bush, the moron? At least Bush used to get regular instructions from God, but what excuse does Obama have? Actually, Obama is ahead in the race. He has already sanctioned $11 billion to make 400 super-nukes, called B61-12, with an output equivalent to 50,000 tons of TNT. At the same time he has sanctioned research into small nuclear warheads. How small is small? Would these bombs be carried on drones, Obama's favorite toys, which have made him a super hero. In a chilling reminder of the Orwellian world in 1984, the research is being carried out by the benignly named Department of Energy. Russia is so concerned about drones that it has created a 'microwave gun' that can destroy the control systems of a drone from 0.6 miles or 1 km away. However, the US is a $17 trillion economy, while Russia's economy has fallen to below $2 trillion, because of the fall in the prices of commodities and sanctions imposed by western countries. So, Russia is forced to resort to 'maskirovka' or masking, which involves making exact replicas of tanks, MIG fighters and missile launchers, which can be inflated in minutes to fool the enemy. While all this is going on between 'cold war' enemies, Chinese President, Xi Jinping has been coronated as 'Mighty Uncle Xi', which apparently is an old imperial term. He has also become a 'core leader' which makes him equal to Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. So, he is equal to Mao and Deng but he is also higher because he is partly an emperor, in a suit. Very subtle that. No wonder Chinese are called inscrutable. In July we thought that Obama has managed to control FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private server to handle classified information while she was Secretary of State. Much like the Congress Party in India controlled the investigation into Bofors. But it seems that her emails have been found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, who was being investigated for sexting a 15 year old. Maybe, if God speaks to Clinton, like He did to Rodrigo Duterte, President of Philippines, then all will be forgotten. It is possible that God realised that Duterte cannot call Hillary Clinton a "son of a bitch" as he did Obama, because verily she is a woman. If only God would use the old fire and brimstone on China and Pakistan we Indians could celebrate. Happy Diwali to everyone. 

If there is no one person to blame, then blame the entire system.

'Wutburger', in German, means 'angry 'citizen', writes Jochen Bittner, political editor for the weekly news magazine, Die Zeit. There are Wutburgers in every country. In Germany the Alternative fur Deutschland Party did not exist 4 years back. It is anti-establishment, anti-European and anti-globalization and yet 18% of Germans, Wutbergers, would consider voting for it. There was the Brexit in Britain, there is the National Front of Marine Le Pen in France and there is Donald Trump in the US. "Anger is like gasoline. If you use it intelligently and in a controlled manner, you can move the world. That's called progress. Or you just spill it about and ignite it, creating spectacular explosion. That's called arson," he writes. He compares Trump with Martin Luther King Jr. "Sadly, the leaders of today's Wutburgers never grasped the difference between anger driven by righteousness and anger driven by hate," he laments. Why is Trump so bad? Because some women have alleged, without any proof, that he groped them more than 11 years ago. The FBI has tapes which show that Martin Luther King Jr was a serial womaniser, who organised sex orgies. Lot of similarities between a saint and a sinner, isn't there? The French Revolution was an explosion, the Arab Spring was an explosion as was the fall of the Berlin wall, each event born of public anger and without any control. Karl Marx himself did nothing spectacular, like Edmund Hillary or Yuri Gagarin did. It was his idea,"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," which was so seductive that it has resonance to this day. Donald Trump is merely a man and, even if he wins the presidential election, will be remembered only by historians a decade after his death but ideas live on forever. Martin Luther King Jr's dream of equality was possible because of the Civil War, precipitated by Abraham Lincoln's idea of freedom for all. Slavery is now unthinkable but equality still remains a dream, despite the election of Barack Obama as president. "In Germany, a recent poll showed that only 14% of the citizens trusted politicians," he writes. "If this faith is rattled, democracy loses its basic promise." That has happened in every country. In the past people could blame all their troubles on one person, which led to the guillotine for Louis XVI and the firing squad for Tsar Nicholas and his family. Now responsibility has become diffuse. Politicians, civil servants, business people are all seen to be in cahoots, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. With no one person to guillotine they blame the entire system. Maybe they are right, maybe the entire system is rotten. 

Teachers only teach, real education is at home.

CEO of Azim Premji Foundation, Anurag Behari, is a regular writer on education in India. In an article, he highlights 3 false beliefs commonly held by teachers. Presumably, he is talking about teachers of government schools because he talks about students from poor families. School fees have risen so high that poor people cannot afford private schools. So what are the 3 false beliefs held by a vast majority of teachers? The most serious is corporal punishment which was described as 'empathetic hitting' by the teachers. "They talked about their principles of empathetic hitting, for example, no injury must be caused, make an example of a few and don't hit everyone, don't use a stick," he writes. Hitting children is absolutely unacceptable. But what if they are being hit by parents at home and have become disruptive for the whole class? Activists will cause an uproar if poor students are expelled. If the expelled student is from Dalit or Minority community the teacher and the principal of the school will lose their jobs. Go to any construction site and you will see little children, including toddlers, playing in the dirt, unsupervised, while their mothers work. You see older children bullying little ones, kicking each other and using abusive language. If things tend to get out of hand they get a few juicy slaps, cry for a while and then get back to what they were doing. In the UK teachers are forbidden from punishing children in any form so many schools have banned children from playing, in case they get hurt. The other false beliefs are that some children are 'stupid' and that children from 'poor' families are incapable of learning. The 'bad seed' theory, which says that some children are born bad, is no longer accepted but scientists have found 2 genes linked to an excess of violent and criminal behavior. There is no doubt that a significant part of intelligence is inherited but any research into that is considered politically incorrect. However, genes can perhaps predict those who will have learning difficulties. Given the same intelligence environmental factors become extremely important. It has been known for many years that a low folate level in a pregnant woman's diet leads to neural tube defects, such as spina bifida. It is therefore entirely plausible that poor nutrition of the mother can permanently affect a child's brain. If poor children in the US have brains 6% smaller than their affluent peers then the effect in India will be much more, because poverty in India is abject. Finally, spending time on weaker students is not possible because teachers in government schools spend a lot of their time cooking midday meals. If there are fewer children classes will be smaller, teachers will have more time to teach and the education budget will be more productive. Perhaps Mr Behari would be better employed teaching the value of not having children.

What if the 'New Normal' is the actual normal?

The US economy may have grown by 3% in the third quarter and has the best growth rate of all the developed economies in the world. But that is not the whole picture. From 1947 to 2000 the US economy grew by an average of 2.2% but from 2001 it has grown at an average rate of only 0.9%. Financier, Mahamed El Erian coined the term "The New Normal" to describe the continuing slow rate of growth following the financial crisis of 2008. Slow growth means that wages are not rising, so that 81% of people in the US are stuck with the same or falling wages, 97% in Italy, 70% in Britain and 63% in France. This has been labeled as "secular stagnation". Productivity growth is not rising as predicted despite enormous changes in technology, prompting some economists to argue that digital technology is not a 'game changer' like indoor plumbing, air travel and electricity were. A lot of the digital economy is given away free to consumers which, says Ricardo Hausmann, makes it difficult to calculate productivity. Nouriel Roubini lists 4 reasons as to why economic growth is stuck in a rut. It maybe difficult to measure productivity of technological changes, there is usually a lag between advances in technology and improvement in productivity or the aging populations in richer countries means that productivity will never improve. The danger is that people will get fed up and demand greater protection against free trade. So which is it? If stagnation is due to low demand, because people are paying off their accumulated debt, or deleveraging, then governments can stimulate demand by increasing fiscal expenditure. If improvement in technology is making little change in the way we live then its supply stagnation and there is not much anyone can do and we had better get used to permanent low growth. There is another danger. As we get increasingly connected to an internet of things, or IoT, we are also open to cyber attacks of the sort we saw on Netflix, Twitter and Paypal a few days back. This kind of attack will get more common as more gadgets get connected because it will be impossible for people to upgrade security constantly. Apparently, technology did not make much change in prosperity until 1800 when growth took off almost vertically in Europe and the US. This would also coincide with a period of colonisation of the world by European countries, which allowed them to plunder resources, and the use of slave labor in the US. That kind of bullying is not going to work in today's world, as the US and Europe discovered recently. What about India? Perhaps 7% growth is the 'New Normal' for us. But is it enough?

What use is GST if we cannot buy?

There was great rejoicing when the Goods and Services Bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling BJP is in minority. GST is supposed to unify all indirect taxes into one figure, which will combine India into one common market, remove distortions between states and provide a huge boost to business by removing bottlenecks. India is a poor country, where 96.7% of people earn less than $10 per day, which amounts to about Rs 21,000 per month. At that income one would be liable to pay income tax at 10% on any amount above Rs 250,000 per year. Not surprising, Indians are very sensitive to prices, so a higher rate of GST could cut consumption by increasing prices. Now that GST is law a council, comprising of the central and state governments has been set up to decide the rate at which goods and services will be taxed in the country. And here is where things start to get murky. The latest council meeting could not decide on a rate because the states want a higher rate of tax than recommended by economists. Why? Because our politicians care too much for the poor, for whom they want lots of handouts. If that helps them win elections, that cannot be helped. Also politicians have to travel abroad first class, with family, to learn how to serve our people. Thus, Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi had to travel all the way to Finland, a small Scandinavian country with free education for every child, to learn how to teach slum children in Delhi. So the council has discussed multiple rates of taxes, low rates on essential goods and higher rates on, what they consider as, luxury. They even want a cess on certain goods. Until rates of taxes are finalised we will not know what we will have to pay for essential goods and services, such as healthcare and travel. Experts believe that a rate of 18-20% will be revenue neutral, which means that neither central nor state governments will lose out on revenue collection. Goods will become cheaper but services will become more expensive. Even at 18% healthcare costs will rise. The vast majority of people cannot avail of healthcare at current costs so if costs rise further we can expect more suffering. At higher rates prices will rise. The Reserve Bank conducts a survey every quarter to see what people think about the level of inflation and although retail inflation fell to 4.31% in September the vast majority of people think that annual inflation rate is in excess of 9%. Experts may think that people are stupid but if people expect prices to rise they will demand higher salaries. Salaries are expected to rise by an average of 10.3% this year, which will be passed on to customers in higher prices. A high GST rate will confirm what people expect and higher salaries will be demanded. This will reduce growth. Which will reduce tax collection. The golden goose needs to be protected.

No more 'chicken jokes' about Punjab.

The National Sample Survey conducts surveys of households in India every few years. According to a survey of 100,000 households, with one month recall, the proportion of non-vegetarians has risen from 56.7% of the population in 1993-94 to 58.2% in 2004-05 to 62.3% in 2011-12. Non-vegetarian is defined as those consuming meat, fish or eggs. The biggest rise has been in the consumption of chicken, which has risen from just 8% in 1993-94 to 38% in 2011-12, while fish consumption has increased marginally from 30% to 32%. Consumption of goat meat/mutton, red meat, has fallen from 30% to 15%, which maybe because of its high price, and also health consciousness among the well off. Consumption of beef/buffalo meat remains constant at 6%. The highest consumption is in the Northeastern states at 97%, followed by West Bengal at 95% and Kerala at 92%. There are some surprises. Notwithstanding the chicken jokes of Punjab, consumption in the state is low at 23%, below that of Gujarat, which is reputed to be vegetarian, at 28%. Haryana is the lowest at 19%. It is no surprise that all the states on the east coast have a high rate of non-vegetarian diet, maybe because of fishing, but the states on the west coast, north of Kerala, have low rates. Strange. As a nation, our meat consumption is almost negligible at 2.9 kg per capita per year, while the US has the highest consumption at 95.43 kg per capita per year. What these figures show that even so-called non-vegetarians eat very little animal products. Our diet is mainly cereals, pulses and vegetables, with some meat or fish added for taste. Is it good? Environmentalists say that eating animal products is bad. Around 300 species of mammals are being driven to extinction because of the practice of eating bushmeat. But we in India do not eat bushmeat. Overfishing is depleting fish stocks in our oceans, at an alarming rate. On the other hand we are the largest milk producer in the world at 146 mmt in 2014-15 but our per capita consumption of milk is low at 322 gm per day. One cow produces about 20 tons of wet manure per year and 100 liters of gas per day, which consist of 400 powerful greenhouse gases, including methane. So should we get rid of all cows and stop all milk products? 15.2% of Indians are undernourished, which results in more illnesses. Malnutrition even affects brains of growing children, who will benefit from more animal products. A cow's intestines are 20 times its length, approximately 150 ft, but our intestines are merely 30 ft in length. So a purely vegetarian diet may not provide all the nutrition we need. Pollution in Delhi is because of burning stubble in Punjab, which is from rice. Finally you can breed chicken in an orchard but you cannot grow wheat without cutting trees. The only solution is to reduce the number of people. Else we are doomed.

Wars will continue long after ISIS.

Is it stupidity, is it hypocrisy or is it complete disregard for human death and misery that is the reason for the slaughter in the Middle East? The propaganda channel, BBC shows graphic pictures of children injured in alleged Russian bombing in Aleppo but there is not a peep on children being knee-capped with hammers and hit on the head with rifle butts, as the Iraqi army makes progress against ISIS in Mosul. Saddam Hussein was vanquished in 2003, following which the US was involved in the setting up the government in Baghdad with Nouri al-Maliki as Prime Minister. Instead of uniting the country he antagonized the Sunnis who might have seen the Al Qaeda and ISIS as liberators. He weakened the army in fear of being overthrown in a coup so that they ran in panic when ISIS thugs approached, leaving their arms and tanks behind. Not only did Obama withdraw all US troops from Iraq he made no effort to pressure al-Maliki to change. Instead the US helped his attacks on troops of Muqtada al-Sadr in Basra and in Baghdad, which made him more powerful. ISIS was the result of US ignorance of the Middle East, of the release of old hatreds following the sudden removal of Saddam Hussein and aerial assassinations of leaders of various groups. US stupidity was most evident in Syria where it backed a group of rebels, who were not affiliated with the Al Qaeda, to help them remove Bashar al-Assad but refrained from all out attack on the President. This was not because of any scruples about killing a human being, because at this time Nato forces were bombing Gaddafi to his death, in Libya. The stupidity of Obama's concept of 'good terrorists' and 'bad terrorists' was exposed when different groups started fighting against each other. Despite warning by the Iraq government Turkey has joined the battle in Mosul. Turkey's Erdogan would like to crown himself a Caliph of a modern Ottoman empire. In the confused landscape of the Middle East it would be no surprise if the Shia governments of Iraq and Syria join forces to fight Turkey, which is a member of Nato. Will the US and its allies join Turkey in an all out fight against Syria and Iraq, as Nato rules demand? Turkey is said to be supporting Peshmerga fighters, who are Kurds, in Mosul while it is bombing Kurdish YPG forces fighting in Syria. Does Turkey want to create a division between different Kurdish forces to prevent an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq? Kurds have destroyed millions of Arab homes in revenge for crimes by ISIS. Yezidis, who were especially brutally treated by ISIS, have also been killing Sunni Arabs in revenge. Add the refugee crisis in Europe, the low intensity war in Ukraine and the constant abuse of Russia by western governments and it is an almighty mess. Obama will be gone in January. Will he be held responsible for the bloodshed that is coming?

Natural is best, including intelligence.

India's biggest public and private sector banks have admitted that hackers have gained access to 3.2 million debit/ATM cards. Fraudulent transactions were carried out in the US and China on Indian cards. We have not been told whether all those who have lost money will be automatically recompensed or, as is usual in India, banks will try to minimise losses by bullying customers by making them try to prove that they were not responsible for the loss of confidentiality. The breach occurred in the Hitachi Payment Services, used by banks, in May but customers were not informed till now. The Reserve Bank has granted licenses to new payments banks which will offer services through mobile phones. If physical cards, which need individual pin numbers to work, are so easy to hack how stupid would it be to entrust our money to mobile phones? For even more convenience banks in the west have done away with pin numbers and have introduced contactless cards. But whose convenience? If people are forced to stop using cash then every transaction will go through banks which means we will have to pay for everything we do, which will increase their profits several fold. Worse, police will be able to find out every detail of what we have bought, where we have been and whose services we have used. A most terrifying outcome. Naturally, thieves are one step ahead. They have developed machines which can read cards inside pockets or handbags. Not just that, these cards can be used by thieves months after they are reported as lost or stolen. Banks refund full amount on money lost on contactless cards, which then raises the question as to how much profits they must be making on these cards. Yesterday, hackers interrupted services of popular internet services Netflix, Twitter, Paypal and Spotify, used by billions of people. How did they do it? Apparently, by using webcams, baby monitors and digital recorders to send billions of messages which overwhelmed the system. As politicians and their henchmen go full speed to convert the economy to digital, to increase their own power and wealth, they do not care for our safety or dangers to our children. Instead of creating wealth Artificial Intelligence will result in the loss of millions of jobs. Noted scientist, Steven Hawking, recently warned that AI could go rogue and wipe out life on earth. However, scientists and economists seem to miss a much simpler point. Which is that AI has to be logical at all times while human beings are illogical. Thus, a robot doctor may refuse to transplant a kidney from a healthy parent to a sick child because it may find it illogical. Why are journalists supporting politicians when it is so dangerous? Are they paid, or just stupid?

The white man's burden is becoming heavier by the day.

Kipling apparently wrote the White Man's Burden on the US colonization of the Philippines. That burden has just got heavier. Couple of days back President Duterte of Philippines announced "separation" from the US, in Beijing, after being snubbed by Obama in Laos recently. As Mayor of Davao he stopped American forces exercising in the city. "I don't want American soldiers in my city," he told Davao City Council. "Because of their arrogance and pretended superiority, the Americans invaded Iraq to kill Saddam Hussein but ended up destroying the country. We don't want that to happen to us." In a survey by Pew Research last year, the US enjoyed the highest popularity rating in the Philippines, at 92%, closely followed by its popularity in African countries. The Africans are also not playing ball. On 18 October Africa nations blocked WTO negotiations on digital trade tabled by the US, Europe, Canada and others. The list of US demands included "enabling cross-border data flows", promoting a free and open internet" and "barring forced technology transfers". Technology transfer to China is fine because it is huge market but not to African countries, because they are poor. By "prohibiting digital customs duties" the US is demanding that its companies be allowed to earn money in Africa without paying taxes, which will presumably be paid in the US. This is the old colonial mindset of looting resources from Africa at dirt cheap rates and selling finished products at exorbitant prices. By "preventing localization barriers" the US means, in its own words, "companies and digital entrepreneurs relying on cloud computing and delivering internet-based products and services should not need to build physical infrastructure and expensive data centres in every country they seek to serve". Which means no new jobs will be created in African countries. Finally, "protecting critical source codes" would allow the US to spy on African leaders, as it has been spying on world leaders for years, without them being able to do anything about it. South Africa has just announced that it is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, an archetypal 'kangaroo court', which only condemns Africans, while mass murderers and war criminals, like Tony Blair, David Cameron and Barack Obama walk around free. Apparently, the court is trying to save poor Africans from their leaders. But who is to save them from the depredations of the white man? Not just leaders, even ordinary US citizens may not be prosecuted for killings abroad. Human beings have a tendency to rebel. The US better adjust.

Doing the right things is not easy, is it?

Rajiv Kumar, Senior Fellow at Centre for Policy Research in Delhi, thinks that India should not get carried away by the growth figures of our GDP. Our economy grew at 7.1% in the first quarter, from April to June, which was sharply lower than the 7.9% of the previous quarter of January to March. We need to grow at 8% plus to create enough jobs to lift the hundreds of millions stuck in poverty. To relieve some of the gloom, Gross Value Added grew at 7.3% compared to 7.4% of the previous quarter. Manufacturing grew by 9.1% and services grew by 9.6%. According to Citi this year's good monsoon will add $80 billion to rural spending, which should add 0.7-1% to GDP growth. However, things are never quite as logical in India. Bumper harvest results in a fall in prices because we do not have adequate storage facilities. Farmers are forced to sell their produce at below cost price which means that they cannot pay off their loans and end up committing suicide. The government pays a Minimum Support Price for 25 crops to encourage farmers to grow them. The debate is about whether paying a guaranteed lower price for agricultural commodities raises the price of food, causing inflation, or whether encouraging farmers to increase cultivation of essential products decreases prices by increasing supply. Rajiv Kumar highlights 2 figures which should cause alarm. Gross Fixed Capital Formation, or GFCF, which is a broad indicator of investment in plant and machinery, fell by 3.1% in the April-June quarter. GFCF increased by 24.5% in 2011-12 when the GDP grew by 7%. Commercial bank lending to non-food sector grew by just 8.3% in August this year, compared to a peak of 38.4% in 2005-06. These two figures imply lack of investment due to a deep distress in banks and industry, which is ominous because job creation is vital to avoid social conflict. He has given a few suggestions to remedy the situation. Public housing for urban and landless laborers. This will create jobs in construction and improve demand. But where? Laborers are itinerant, moving from one place to another in search of employment. Houses can be made with cheap technology but land is too expensive to build everywhere. Increasing tourism in India. For that we need world class infrastructure, cleanliness and safety for tourists. The Prime Minister has launched a Swacch Bharat, or Clean India, Abhiyan but a walk through any neighborhood in the capital city, Delhi, will show broken roads, with filth strewn around. Exports must increase. For all our chest thumping we cannot grow with exports a paltry 1.6% of global exports. For that we need a weaker rupee but that will increase the price of imports and cause inflation, forcing the RBI to increase interest rate, which is anathema to our politicians. The RBI is busy supporting the rupee even now. Not so easy is it?

Why the drama? Set interest rate automatically.

There is passionate, almost religious, belief among politicians, civil servants and economists in India that interest rate should be extremely low, regardless of inflation, because low borrowing cost will encourage new investment, creating new jobs and resulting in growth of the economy. The government has committed to a target inflation rate of 4%, plus/minus 2%, giving a ridiculously wide band of 2-6% for the new Monetary Policy Committee to play with. Previously, calculation of inflation was based on wholesale prices but since 2014 the RBI decided to base its policy on the new Consumer Price Index, or CPI. Since then, there has been a heated debate about whether CPI should be the guide for prices in India since food and fuel are major constituents in its calculation or whether we should use core inflation which discounts these 2 volatile elements. Karthik Shashidhar has analysed the various components of the CPI basket and has cast doubts on its accuracy because real estate prices, which have a linear relationship with CPI, are not included in its calculation. Rent has the highest weight of 10.07% in calculating CPI. It is misleading because rent constitutes 21.7% of urban CPI but is not a part of rural CPI, because people do not rent in villages. Shashidhar writes that a higher interest rate deters people from buying real estate for investment purposes which reduces the supply of housing for rent and people, who are looking to buy a property for personal use, postpone their purchase. These 2 factors should cause a rise of rents and result in higher CPI. Raising interest rate increases spending on goods purchased through borrowing, which reduces spending on other goods as services, and so brings down prices generally. Shashidhar has compared the rise in prices of real estate with the rise in CPI since August 2011 and has shown a linear relationship between the two. He concludes that the present CPI is suspect because it incorporates rent but not the rise in sale price rise of real estate. But, his study actually supports the way CPI is calculated. If the price of real estate is directly related to CPI then a fall in its value by raising interest rate will control inflation. Secondly, those who can afford to buy properties at these prices are not bothered by a rise in the price of food or fuel but those who have to pay rent are very sensitive to rising prices. The previous governor of the RBI, Raghuram Rajan was treated with disrespect because he argued for a real interest rate of 150-200 basis points. Instead of maligning the RBI politicians should get rid of the MPC and take direct responsibility. Declare the real interest rate they want to maintain and adjust interest rate automatically every 2 months to the corrected CPI. That way we will know who to blame.

The good old days were not so good, were they?

Professor Lucy P Marcus laments the disregard for the 'Golden Rule' - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". "Politicians, even in the world's supposedly enlightened democracies, are refusing to provide refuge to desperate people fleeing brutal war; making little, if any, effort to address high and rising economic inequality; and are all but ignoring the factors driving civil-rights movements like America's Black Lives Matter," she writes. Altruism maybe in our genes but at what time does self-preservation take over? We pine for the 'good old days' but those days never really existed. All human beings may belong to one species but we are not defined by our genetic similarity. We are defined by culture which depends on language, self awareness and an appreciation of beauty. France has a border with Germany on one side and Spain on the other but, although people must have been travelling, trading and marrying between the different regions, their languages, culture and traditions are totally different. Instead of criticising the British for voting to leave the European Union. Prof Marcus should study why the people are still so different when the Treaty of Rome, creating free trade between France and Germany, was signed in 1957 and Spain joined the European Common Market in 1986. As for religions, they did recommend doing good to others but only for the believers. People of other religions were often killed or forcibly converted. No wonder a lot of today's young people are atheists. The difference is enormous. While fertility is falling precipitously in western countries women in Aleppo are still giving birth to babies even though the city has been at war for over 4 years. There are 30 births everyday at Al-Zahra Hospital in Aleppo. Why are people still breeding? Why are they immune to the suffering of their own children? We see hungry, pot-bellied children, cripples, old women begging on the streets of Delhi. It is heartbreaking and fills us with rage at the inequity but we are told not to give money to children because it encourages child-trafficking. Why do parents give birth to children to send them out to beg? The world has too many people and as they cut down forests to grow food so global warming will cause a fall in agricultural output. Western countries became rich by looting resources of their colonies to feed their industries but that kind of exploitation is becoming difficult. Countries in Asia took advantage of their poverty by manufacturing cheap goods to be sold in the west. This transferred well paying manufacturing jobs out of western countries. Import of cheap goods kept a check on inflation, allowing interest rates to be kept low, and resulting asset price bubbles, creating massive inequality. That is why there is so much conflict. It will only get worse.