Postscript

Smart humble farmers

Although ex facie they are modest, humble souls, India’s rural politicians possess a native cunning and smarts difficult to emulate. True, in the early years after independence, lordly zamindars — beneficiaries of the Permanent Settlement negotiated with grandees of the British Raj under which in consideration for annuities the former were granted zamindaris, the right to levy and extract taxes from peasants toiling in large swathes of real estate — lost this privilege as land rights were transferred to tenants. Since then these very tenants mainly from OBCs (other backward castes/classes), have morphed into an equally exploitative peasants elite which has cornered all the gains of rural development. Despite a plethora of affirmative action (reservations) legislation the new rural elite has successfully prevented socio-economic upward mobility of SCs & STs (scheduled castes and scheduled tribes). One of the provisions of the Karnataka Land Reforms (Amendment) Act, 1974, which abolished tenancy farming and transferred land to the tiller, was that agricultural land could be sold only to bona fide agriculturists (s.79). The grassroots impact of this provision was that the rural elite increased its landholdings by purchasing farmland at below market price, particularly since discretionary power was vested in government to make exceptions to s.79 “in the public interest”. This exception enabled rural elites to buy cheap and sell dear to industrialists and businessmen. According to the Association for Democratic Reforms which tracks the wealth of politicians, the value of assets of H.D. Kumaraswamy, the humble farmer former chief minister of Karnataka, multiplied 10x between two general elections. In 2020, the BJP government of the state amended s.79 permitting non-agriculturists to purchase farmland enabling farmer politicians to sell their landholdings to industrialists and businessmen at true market price. Now the incumbent Congress government of the state has mooted a proposal to amend the Land Reforms Act to again restrict the sale of farmland to agriculturists, to protect poor farmers from exploitation. This will again facilitate the accumulation of farmland by the rural elite. That’s socialist smartness difficult to surpass.

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History agnostic LoP

Collective madness best describes successful opposition resulting in the withdrawal of a public advertisement issued by UPSC (Union Public Services Commission) on August 17, inviting applications for 45 professionals in industry, academia and other vocations to serve with the Central government on short three-five year contracts. Lateral entry of highly qualified and experienced professionals from industry and the professions to inject expertise into government, is not a novel idea. Several prominent lateral entrants include former PM Dr. Manmohan Singh, former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and chief economic advisor Dr. Kaushik Basu among others who invested their wisdom and expertise in government. Surprisingly, withdrawal of this ad was also advocated by Rahul Gandhi, de facto chief of the Congress party and LoP (leader of the opposition) in Parliament. RaGa has transformed into a champion of caste-based politics. The LoP seems unaware that public interest demands the elimination of divisive caste consciousness which will atomise Indian society, and adversely impact already low productivity in government, academia and industry. On economic issues as well RaGa advocates Nehruvian socialism and PSE (public sector enterprises)-led growth which transformed high-potential post-independence India into one of the world’s poorest countries. Moreover he regularly trashes India’s most successful businessmen (Ambani-Adani) and naively ascribes their success to Prime Minister Modi’s special support. In woke circles, criticism of RaGa’s wrecking-ball utterances and initiatives is interpreted as support for the BJP/PM Modi. This presumption is unwarranted and should not prevent outing the naive blathering of this history-agnostic, over-promoted LoP. Also read: Excellent advertisement

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Hindenburg’s media chorus

In its second offensive in India, the US-based Hindenburg, a self-confessed short-seller ‘research firm’ of no fixed address and five employees, has targeted Madhavi Buch, the first private sector and woman CEO of SEBI (Securities & Exchange Board of India). She is allegedly involved with an offshore investment fund connected with Vinod Adani, elder brother of Gautam Adani, India’s fast track infrastructure and development tycoon. In the first offensive in 2023 the target was Gautam Adani, one of India’s wealthiest individuals (assets value: Rs.11.61 lakh crore) and his several companies, for alleged listed shares price manipulation by offshore companies controlled by Vinod. It’s important to bear in mind that for six years (2011-17), Madhavi Buch, an IIM-Ahmedabad alumna who began her career with ICICI Bank, was employed in Greater Pacific Capital, Singapore where she invested in a global investment fund perhaps without knowledge that Vinod Adani was also an investor. To draw an inference from this tangential circumstance that after she was appointed to the SEBI board in 2017 and chairperson in 2022, she colluded with Vinod Adani’s alleged manipulation of the shares of Adani Group companies in India is far-fetched speculation as argued by legal luminary Harish Salve on NDTV (owned by Adani). The underlying problem of lefties and media pundits is that they have little understanding of the role and purpose of the stock market. Deep in their hearts they believe that stock exchanges are anti-social gambling casinos. They have little patience or understanding that the stock market is a forum on which entrepreneurs with big business ideas and management expertise can raise necessary capital to fund nation-building industrial and business projects. In the circumstances, it reflects very poorly on duffers in the media that despite being aware of Hindenburg’s dubious antecedents, they have given high credibility and credence to this shady entity’s second effort to destabilise the Indian stock market and make a second killing. Also read: Advice to Adani

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Steady decline

There’s much to admire about the western seaboard state of Gujarat (pop.72 million). For a start Mahatma Gandhi — the “greatest man in flesh and blood to have ever walked upon this earth” according to Albert Einstein’s memorable tribute — was born there. So was Sardar Patel, not far behind. The people are remarkably hardworking, blessed with an entrepreneurial culture and a puritan save-and-invest ethic. That’s why Gujarat has also nurtured extraordinarily successful businessmen and industry leaders starting with the Sarabhai, Mafatlal, Lalbhai clans of pre-independence years down to the Ambanis and Adanis who provide some hope of modernizing a nation given to priding itself for exotic poverty. However following Gandhiji’s assassination in 1948 and Sardar Patel’s death in 1950, this high-potential state has transformed into a sink-hole of corruption. For instance a recent investigation has revealed that Rajkot’s chief town planning officer has accumulated assets including gold and silver bullion, petrol station pumps and agricultural land valued at Rs.28 crore, a sum 1,128 percent more than his entire lifetime’s legal earnings. With the benefit of hindsight it’s now clear that the state’s descent into a cesspit of corruption began with the imposition of liquor prohibition in 1960. Since then while all other states of the country have lifted prohibition because the corruption it breeds substantially outweighs its benefits, prohibition is still official policy in Gujarat (where liquor is freely available at a price). In the interim this policy obstinacy has corrupted the police force and infected the entire administration. According to US immigration data, Gujaratis constitute a large percent of the annual tide of 725,000 illegal immigrants from India who climb every mountain, and ford every stream to enter the US illegally. Yet according to leaders of the ruling BJP government at the Centre — Prime Minister Narendra Modi served a long term (2002-2014) as chief minister of Gujarat — what the nation needs is the Gujarat model of development. No comment.

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Excellent advertisement

The media spotlight on pre and post wedding celebrations of Anant Ambani — the last and youngest son of industry tycoon Mukesh Ambani, listed among the world’s Top 20 wealthiest individuals by the authoritative Forbes magazine — has aroused varied and conflicting reaction among public intellectuals and commentators. The bash reportedly cost the amiable, self-effacing tycoon who presides over blue-chip megacorp Reliance Industries (annual revenue: Rs.1,000,122 crore) an estimated Rs.5,000 crore. Unrepentant socialists and left liberals have unanimously condemned the Ambani wedding extravaganza as a vulgar display of wealth and conspicuous consumption. Yet the plain truth which the lefties woke army (led by fifth generation Nehru scion Rahul Gandhi) will never acknowledge is that if India had taken the free markets (capitalist) road way back in 1947, we would have been enjoying an annual GDP of $20 trillion cf. $ 3.5 trillion today. They have a collective memory-loss about their full-throttle endorsement of Nehruvian socialism. Now they are unanimous in their condemnation of the few entrepreneurs — Tata, Birla, Ambani and Adani — who beat the beggar-thy-neighbour system designed by them. On the other hand there is a small minority that believes that citizens have the right to do as they please with their post-tax incomes and accumulated wealth. The unrestrained largesse of the Ambani clan hugely benefited armies of food and (non-alcoholic) beverages caterers, interior designers, digital equipment and sound providers and flower-sellers, not to omit the efficient event organisers. From a business perspective, the latest Ambani wedding bash was excellent advertisement for the Jio World Centre, surely the most well-furbished and equipped business convention centre worldwide which is likely to prove a money-spinner for the Ambanis. A brilliantly choreographed initiative for combining pleasure with business. Also read: Ambani-Adani 1000x wanted

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Drastic remedy

Contemporary India hosts 3,500 engineering colleges that graduate 1.5 million engineers annually. Among them are the country’s 23 globally famous IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), the first of which was established in 1961. But all this investment has provided sparse harvest. On July 10, a bridge collapsed in Mahishi village in the Saharsa district of Bihar. Nothing exceptional in this news report. Except that it marked Bridge Collapse #13 in 21 days in Bihar (pop. 104 million). The response of the state government was to suspend at “least 15 engineers” for the series of recent bridge collapse incidents reported from various districts, including Siwan, Saran, Madhubani, Araria, East Champaran and Kishanganj. In an ingenious initiative Chief Minister Nitish Kumar instructed officials to conduct a survey of all old bridges in the state and identify those that require immediate repair. Breast-beating liberals and soft-state socialists advance numerous reasons: upper castes oppression of the poor; rotten education system; women’s rights; deprivation of tribal communities, and dozens more. But the root cause is collapse of rule of law and accountability. Your editor offers an embarrassingly simple solution. The Bihar government’s in-service engineers should be randomly tested through the year by a panel of respected academics. If they fail testing, not only they, but the vice-chancellors and professors who awarded them degrees should be fired. Ditto departmental engineers within the administration who promoted them to positions of authority. Admittedly, a drastic remedy. But desperate situations — 13 bridges collapsing within 21 days in the early stages of the monsoon qualifies as a desperate situation — call for drastic solutions. Even so, they are not as drastic as in neighbouring China where peremptory exile to hard labour on a state farm in the rural interiors — if not a bullet in the back of head — is normative. Time for this country’s soft establishment to develop spine. Also read: Bihar: Quality education still a challenge, says Nitish

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Palaces-schools conundrum

A blindspot of learned economists and pundits who discuss, debate and analyse the Union — and to a much lesser extent state government — budgets, is the substantial expense incurred by government under the head ‘establishment expenses’. In EducationWorld where thrift is venerated as a virtue, we have been repeatedly whistle-blowing about enormous amounts often exceeding 20 percent of total government revenue, being routinely expended under this amorphous head. With each passing day, evidence is emerging of unbridled spending buried under establishment expenses by government ministers and officials. Lavish expenditure by government leaders by way of fully furbished and protected airplanes and motor cars for the prime minster, a private airline for ministers who commute in motorized cavalcades and serve the people from imposing manors, are funded by unquestioned provision made for establishment expenses in the Union and state government budgets. Recently, a Rs.500 crore Xanadu-style seaside palace constructed by Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S.R Jagan Mohan Reddy in Visakapatnam has been hitting the headlines. A few months ago a competitively ornate palace of ousted Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao in Hyderabad, and a grand Sheesh Mahal built for Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal were in the media glare. Government balance sheets are subject to audit by the grandiosely titled Comptroller & Auditor General of India. Yet apart from the time when the CAG computed a humongous ‘notional loss’ of Rs.1.8 lakh crore in the coal auction scam of 2009, little is heard from his august office. Curiously governments encounter little difficulty in funding palaces, perks and extravagances of the neta-babu brotherhood. However, they experience severe financial constraints when it comes to funding modernization of the country’s dilapidated, dysfunctional government schools and primary health centres. On this glaring paradox, learned economists and telly talking heads are strangely silent.

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Schadenfreude & apprehension

General Election 2024 was marked by several extraordinary twists and turns and ups and downs. But surely the sweetest outcome is cutting to size Prime Minister Modi who had begun to believe that he had been divinely commissioned to rule the republic. For the first time since 2014 he has to depend upon hitherto neglected allied parties to remain in power. A second sweet outcome was the right royal defeat of Union minister of women and child development Smriti Irani, in Amethi where last time round (2019) she ousted Rahul Gandhi from his family’s pocket borough. And a third was the defeat of incumbent BJP MP from the Faizabad constituency in which the Ram Mandir was inaugurated with great fanfare on January 22. The calculus of the BJP top brass was that building the grand Ram Mandir on the ruins of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya would prove to be a trump card in General Election 2024. However a low-caste Dalit candidate of the Samajwadi Party who is unlikely to be granted entry into the grand new Ram Mandir by its powerful Brahmin priests who famously declined to permit President Murmu to participate in the inauguration ceremony starring PM Modi, trounced the two-term BJP candidate. Not that this is entirely good news. Nehruvian socialism which ruined the high-potential Indian economy for over half a century after independence, may bloom again. According to Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, wealth and job creators and highest tax papyers (Ambani and Adani) are enemies of the people. Taxes and national savings should be canalized into white elephant public sector enterprises to be squandered by business -illiterate babus. If this resurrected star of the Nehru-Indira dynasty throws a spanner in the works, India will be back to square one. Therefore your editor’s schadenfreude about the mighty being cut to size is tempered by déjà vu fear. Also read: General election 2024: Why BJP lost ground

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Exit poll duffers

One of the highlights of General Election 2024 is blanket of silence over the wide off the mark prediction of the media — especially telly talking heads — on the outcome. Every TV news channel had predicted that the BJP would cross its 2019 Lok Sabha tally of 303 seats and that the 40-party National Democratic Alliance (NDA) of which BJP is the standard bearer, would bag 390 (out of a total 543) seats with several channels endorsing Prime Minister Modi’s boast that the Modi Sarkar would cross 400. On June 4 when the votes were counted, BJP won 240 seats and the NDA 293, just crossing the majority 272 threshold. How could all TV channels many of whom had elaborately dressed up their studios and summoned expert psephologists to conduct exit polls, have got it so wrong? The cardinal error of their over-paid anchors and market research experts nurtured on rote learning and blind imitation of Western television news channels, is to assume that voters emerging from polling booths tell the truth about vote casting. Well aware of the huge powers and proclivity of government, i.e, the ruling party, to victimize those against it, most electors tend to choose discretion over valour and profess to have endorsed the ruling party candidate. Although upper middle class voters aware of their constitutional rights may be inclined to reveal political preferences, the vast majority of the citizenry is only too well-aware of the vindictiveness and insolence of office of government lackeys and local mafia dons who may well target voters who come on record about their voting preferences. In the circumstances, it would be advisable for pollsters and media personnel to pose indirect questions relating to burning issues such as inflation, unemployment, communalism etc, and draw inferences for and against the ruling party. Simultaneously, television anchors also need to curb their enthusiasm for reporting what their industrialist masters — for whom stability and continuity of government is high priority — wish to hear. Not without cause have screen news channels earned the description of godi media. Also read: Elections must reflect will of all people

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Tell it again, Sam

One of the many reasons why self-proclaimed Viswaguru India is ranked #134 on the UNDP’s Human Development Index and #126 on the World Happiness Report, 2024 of Oxford University, and way down in the bottom rung of every other index, is that it is a nation without heroes. There is no shortage of domestic critics of even Mahatma Gandhi who wrested India’s freedom from almost two centuries of humiliating foreign rule. Today the Mahatma is remembered twice a year — October 2 (birth date) and January 31 (date of assassination). In 1984, Satyen (‘Sam’) Pitroda kickstarted the process of revolutionising India’s dilapidated and obsolete telecom system by establishing C-DoT (Centre for Development of Telematics). C-DoT devised a nationwide automatic switching system which spared citizens the time, money and frustration of having to book inter-city trunk calls through hassled operators. That invention sparked the start of India’s telecom revolution which has culminated in the multiplication of telephones in India from 5 million in 2001 to 1 billion currently. After that, Pitroda chaired the country’s first National Knowledge Commission. However, after the rout of the Congress party in the general elections of 2014 and 2019, this octogenarian returned to the US and was appointed chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress. In early May, Pitroda was sacked from this position. His transgression? In a media interview to elaborate India’s unity-in-diversity boast, he observed that the country comprises citizens of several ethnicities. “People in the East look Chinese, people in the West look like Arabs, people in the North like, maybe, white and people in the South look like Africans.” This innocuous observation sparked outrage back home in India. Especially the African simile. After several centuries of Central Asian and later British rule, and thanks to Bollywood cinema and foreign multinationals hawking skin-lightening creams, the population has swallowed the ‘white is beautiful’ myth hook, line and sinker. As a result, no Indian is comfortable in her own skin, a national inferiority complex. Although forced to ride off into the sunset, there’s no gainsaying that Pitroda — a rags-to-riches millionaire who has made outsize contribution to the Indian economy — is a national hero. Don’t hesitate to tell it like it is again, Sam. Also read: Can Sam Pitroda spark India’s overdue knowledge revolution

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Corruption folklore

Despite political party leaders expressing loud intent from every rooftop to eliminate it, government corruption in the southern state of Karnataka is acquiring the momentum of a runaway train with the state set to emerge as the most venal countrywide. This gloomy prediction is prompted by the experience of a dedicated housekeeper with over three decades of faithful service in your correspondent’s family home. Her good fortune of having inherited a small land parcel in a village on the outskirts of Bengaluru — the country’s premier hub of new ICT (information communications technology) industry — has been substantially vitiated by the necessity of having to pay Rs.20,000 as bribes to several government officials to transfer the title to her name. Leftists and socialists who architectured post-independence India’s Kafkaesque bureaucracy and administrative system invariably dismiss such reports of fence consuming crop as anecdotal. Yet despite the previous BJP state government having suffered severe electoral damage after it was branded a ‘40 percent commission’ administration following an open revolt of the Karnataka Contractors’ Association (KCA), it’s business as usual under the new year-old Congress government. In a recent media release, KCA claimed that every payment clearance file has to “travel” across 40 government “tables”. Forced to pay large and small bribes, civic contractors are obliged to cut corners in project execution. Over half a century ago in his monumental three-volume Asian Drama, economics Nobel laureate Gunnar Myrdal warned government and society against ignoring the “folklore of corruption”. Left-liberals paid little heed while like the old man who refused to get off Sindbad the Sailor’s back after the latter helped him cross a swollen stream, India’s 20 million-strong neta-babu brotherhood is also unlikely to get off the country’s back, even as governments come and go. Also read: Karnataka: Mess & messier

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Socialism warning

Here’s an amazing story of socialist central planning with which the Congress party’s de facto chief Rahul Gandhi continues to be enamoured. West Bengal’s Ghatal constituency sited 120 km from Kolkata in the rain-fed catchment area between the Shilabati and Jhumi rivers has been suffering severe annual flooding for centuries. In 1959, a Ghatal Master Plan was presented to the Central government in Delhi to address this problem. In Delhi, the then all-powerful Soviet-style Planning Commission took 20 years to approve the plan. In 1982, the foundation stone of the project was laid with Rs.50 crore sanctioned for it by the commission on condition that 60 percent of the cost would be borne by the Centre and remainder by the state government. This project, whose cost has since risen to Rs.1,250 crore, is yet to get off the ground and remains the prime election issue in Ghatal. According to a report in Times of India (May 23), 64 years on since this project was first mooted, 1.7 million citizens in 12 blocks of the West and East Midnapore districts of the state are bracing for another round of flooding and home collapses as the south-west monsoon advances towards West Bengal. Coincidentally, the very same edition of ToI features a disturbing op-ed essay on the impact of half a century of central planning on rural India where 65 percent of the population suffers severe neglect. All right thinking citizens should ensure that socialism and its handmaiden central planning don’t make a backdoor re-entry into governance and administration. Also read: Rahul Gandhi accuses Modi government of crushing students’ dreams through recent paper leaks

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Entertainment excess

There’s something not quite right about the endless rounds of cricket matches, sports, games and entertainment being served up to the Indian public. Currently, IPL T20 cricket matches are attracting crowds upward of 50,000-60,000 every evening in specially constructed stadia across the country, with matches ending near midnight. Moreover, several multiples of the huge in-stadia crowds, including young children, follow T20 matches on television. Five days after the IPL tournament ends on May 26, the World Cup T20 tournament being staged in the Caribbean and for the first time in the US to be played out over 29 days, will begin. And shortly after, the Paris Olympic Games which will serve up 15 days of globally televised international track and field competitive events, will start. At a time when India aspires to transform into a $30 trillion economy by 2047 (from the current $4 trillion), the population is being distracted, if not debilitated, by ceaseless rounds of entertainment on 226 million television sets installed in 217 of the country’s 280 million households. Add to this smartphone addiction suffused with audio-visual entertainment reels. Every day, entertainment weary managers, workers and students are staggering into offices, factories and classrooms, minds buzzing with entertainment. In his classic 19th century treatise Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, historian Edward Gibbon attributed addiction to ‘circuses’, i.e, entertainment of the general populace, as a major cause of the fall of mighty Roman Empire overrun by Goths, Vandals and barbarians in 476 century AD. “The most lively and splendid amusement of the idle multitude depended on the frequent exhibition of public games and spectacles… From the morning to the evening, careless of the sun or of the rain, the spectators, who sometimes amounted to the number of 400,000, remained in eager attention; their eyes fixed on the horses and charioteers, their minds agitated with hope and fear for the success of the colours which they espoused; and the happiness of Rome appeared to hang on the event of a race.” All this while a greedy ruling elite indulged itself even as barbarians were at the gates. It’s important to learn lessons from history.

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Protect media freedom

Love of luxury and ostentation in a country where nearly a billion citizens struggle for two square meals per day eking out nasty, brutish and too long lives, often — perhaps not often enough — leads to downfall. The precipitate fall of KC Chandrasekar Rao, who successfully carved Telangana out from the composite state of Andhra Pradesh and gifted it and the prized city of Hyderabad to the people of that region as recently as 2014, is a latter day morality tale. After serving two terms as chief minister, KCR was roundly trounced in the legislative election of November 2023. During his second term, KCR began to entertain delusions of grandeur. He believed his service to the people entitled him to build a Xanadu-style palace at public expense. In 2016, Pragati Bhavan, a vastu-compliant home with bullet proof windows and toilets was constructed in Hyderabad at a cost of Rs.50 crore on a nine-acre plot with a built-up area of 100,000 sq.ft. The budgeted cost of Rs.35 crore spiralled because no expense was spared on fixtures, fittings and frills. A year earlier, four Toyota Prado SUVs and a Mercedes-Benz Bus were purchased for inclusion in his convoy that transported him everywhere. Moreover, his son KT Rama Rao and daughter K. Kavitha were appointed cabinet ministers. All this lavish expenditure was funded by the people of Telangana (pop.35 million). Little wonder this megalomaniac was ousted from office by the state’s electorate last year. Such effete epicureanism is common within Indian politicians. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal elected on an anti-corruption platform, also constructed a Rs.50 crore super deluxe Sheesh Mahal to rest his weary head. Now he is cooling his heels in a tiny cell in Tihar jail after every tribunal, including the Supreme Court, denied him bail. Yet unlike the situation in communist and third world dictatorships, thanks to a free press and media, the excesses of India’s venal politicians luxuriating at public expense are outed. Citizens! Speak up to protect freedom of the press. It’s under threat. Also read: Telangana: BJP vows to enact UCC, offer free laptops to college-going girls

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History apathy

A crass remark or provocative statement can change the outcome of a general election. In 2014, Congress worthy Mani Shankar Aiyar’s too clever by half witticism that Narendra Modi, the son of an OBC tea vendor at a railway station who had worked his way up the social and political ladder and served three successful terms as BJP chief minister of Gujarat state should be serving tea in Congress Bhavan, Delhi, instead of aspiring to become India’s prime minister, cost the Congress party millions of votes and contributed heavily to BJP sweeping General Election 2014. But two-term prime minister Modi doesn’t seem to have learned the lesson of Aiyar’s monumental faux pas. Delivering an election speech in Rajasthan on April 21, Modi warned the audience that if Congress is voted to power, it will confiscate the wealth of the Hindu majority and distribute it to “people who have many children” and to Muslim refugees from neighbouring countries. Such crass demonisation of the minority Muslim community by an incumbent prime minister has dismayed not a few Modi supporters as conduct unbecoming of an incumbent prime minister with global acceptability aspirations. Certainly, Modi’s intemperate remarks are likely to cost the BJP votes in substantial numbers. However, whatever electoral mileage the Congress may have derived from the PM’s shockingly divisive remarks, may well be cancelled by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s promise to revert to arid neta-babu socialism of post-independence India, and to conduct a national caste census.This irremovable Congress party leader also seems to have learned little from recent history. Alas, in India’s cancel politics culture, the voter invariably has to choose the lesser evil. Also read: Elections must reflect will of all people

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Don’t blame capitalism

Ex facie it is shocking and a severe indictment of free market capitalism. A thin upper crust of 1 percent wealthiest Indians cornered 22.6 percent of national income in 2022. Income inequality was never so great in the good ole days. In 1951, the top 1 percent bagged 11.5; in 1980, the heyday of neta-babu socialism, the top 1 percent appropriated only 6 percent of national income. This is the research finding of the Data Team of The Hindu, the much lauded daily (estb.1878) published from Chennai and presided over by Cadillac communist N. Ram, whose intent is to show the pivotal liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991 and thereafter in bad light. But while the Hindu Data Team’s report (March 21) drawn (without attribution) from a report of the Paris-based World Inequality Lab headed by Thomas Picketty, which also highlights that India’s top 10 percent not only corners 57 percent of national income, but also 40 percent of national wealth, is a damning indictment of its richest citizens, actually it is proof that India’s steel frame bureaucracy is alive and kicking. The post-liberalisation neta-babu brotherhood hasn’t substantially facilitated ease of doing business for millions of aspirational entrepreneurs who continue to be bound in red tape and complex procedures and denied upward mobility. Rising income and wealth inequality is not because the rich and wealthy are wicked monopolists, but that the neta-babu brotherhood with its socialist era mindset continues to stymie the growth of millions of MSME (micro small and medium enterprises) entrepreneurs by refusing to bin thousands of useless rules, regulations and complex procedures of the socialist era. India’s rich and wealthy have made it to the top by enduring the insolence of office, law’s delay, extortion and patient endurance of the humiliations heaped upon them or their progenitors. Therefore, they perhaps deserve to enjoy their wealth. To prosper, India needs 10,000 Ambanis and Adanis. Cribbing commies who can’t lead or follow should get out of the way. Also read: Saving capitalism from Indian capitalists

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Inglish hypocrisy

The dawn of the Internet Age and spread of OTT cinema is one of the positive outcomes of the digital revolution. It has radically transformed Indian cinema and movies, and freed the intelligentsia interested in this story-telling medium from having to compulsorily watch Hollywood and esoteric European cinema, depicting narratives of alien societies and contexts. OTT corporations such as Netflix and Amazon are commissioning intelligent Indian producers for feature films and serials, which are getting better with the passage of time. Alternative cinema funded by Netflix and Amazon among others has succeeded in narrating tight stories that capture the grim lives of the majority in the country’s ill-planned cities and neglected rural outbacks. Recently, one had the good luck to stumble across an evocative and impactful alt cinema production titled 12th Fail which narrates the trials and tribulations of a village boy with his heart set on qualifying as an IPS (Indian Police Service) officer. The utter backwardness of rural India where he grows up, the grim conditions of a coaching school and his repeated failure in the UPSC exam are realistically portrayed, as is his grit to clear this all-important exam while working in a flour mill to keep body and soul together. A point forcefully made in the film is the huge advantage that middle and upper class candidates enjoy because of English language fluency, for which the hero is totally unprepared because of his rural education. Although the Supreme Court has decisively ruled that the choice of medium of instruction is of parents and not government, there’s no shortage of grey eminences who parrot that children’s early years and primary education should be in their vernacular mother tongue. Even the otherwise enlightened NEP 2020 reiterates this. Politicians and pundits who wax eloquent on mother tongue primacy readily enroll their progeny in English-medium schools and foreign universities. One of the virtues of 12th Fail — which has a schmaltzy happy ending — is that it exposes the hypocrisy of the Indian establishment which has gamed the system to keep the under-class down by denying them Inglish education.

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Public sector oppression

There’s something rotten in India’s public sector enterprises (PSEs). Although by definition they are owned by the public and all citizens are shareholders, in reality they are the private sector of commissions-hungry politicians and bureaucrats, and those who work in the 256 Central PSEs and an equivalent number owned by state governments. Failure to deliver promised surpluses for investment in rural development and social welfare (public education and health) apart, PSEs have earned a notorious reputation for contracts-rigging, bribery and short-changing ancillaries, intermediates suppliers and bottom-of-pyramid citizens who are their shareholders. This latter proclivity of PSE babus was recently highlighted in a case filed by one Shakraji Thakor against the public sector crude oil quasi-monopoly Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) for “forcible occupation” of his farmland on the outskirts of Ahmedabad for 23 years. Thakor (no relation, note the spelling) contended that ONGC has been paying him “meagre rent” for over 20 years and refusing to vacate the land or acquire it at market price. An irate bench of the Gujarat high court has directed the chairman of ONGC (annual income: Rs.6.39 lakh crore) to file an affidavit to explain the corporation’s failure and negligence. This high-handedness doesn’t surprise your correspondent. Some five years ago when a main road in Bangalore was under repair, LIC shut its gates to ensure that the public — its shareholders — didn’t use its forecourt as an alternative route. Your correspondent was roundly abused for claiming shareholder’s right. My rule to never subscribe to PSE equity shares or do business with them has paid off. Given their business practices, it’s a rule that’s served me well. Also read: Jobs opportunities in the Public Relations industry

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Resurgent ethnicity confidence

Green shoots indicate that Indians, who had to endure the rule of pale-skinned foreigners for 500 years, are recovering their self-confidence and ethnic pride. According to a Nielsen IQ 2023 market research study, volume sales of ‘fairness’ creams have declined for the first year ever. Brainwashed for centuries by light-complexioned invaders including unprepossessing Brits that their skin tones were ideals of pulchritude, most Indians ignored the reality that in the harsh sunlight of the subcontinent, Brits resembled scary ‘Red Devils’. Most susceptible to this historical brainwash are north Indians who dominate the films and cinema industry. Punjabi badshahs of Bollywood decreed that pale imitations of Hollywood movie stars were a precondition of beautiful actresses. Ethnic beauties seldom made it to the top. Unquestioningly ready to cash in on colour prejudice, cosmetics and beauty care product manufacturers flooded the Indian market with skin-tone lightening products, many of which are dangerous to health and in most cases, didn’t deliver their promise. In the vanguard of these companies was Hindustan Lever (since christened Hindustan Unilever) which widely promoted its skin-lightening brand Fair & Lovely. For over half a century, Unilever UK/Holland hyper-marketed this slyly christened cosmetic cream which not only inflicted dermatological damage on millions of women nationwide, but also damaged their self-esteem and ethnic pride. When EducationWorld protested this cynical exploitation of the insecurities of Indian women (and men) and criticised market leader Fair & Lovely, HLL’s reaction was to cut off all advertising. But later when it became politically incorrect to promote colour prejudice, in 2020 HLL rebranded F&L as Glow & Lovely. This product which has penetrated hinterland India — and millions of minds — is too profitable to discontinue. Also read: Tragic history: The Arabs: A History

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Self-destruct government

The Congress government of Karnataka which was unexpectedly elected to power in the state legislative assembly election of 2023, is destroying the future of this high-potential state (pop. 67 million) by populist pandering. As soon as it was sworn into power last summer, it set about fulfilling five promises it had somewhat recklessly announced in its election manifesto, viz, Rs.2,000 monthly assistance to women heads of all families, 200 units of free electricity to all households, Rs.3,000 every month for unemployed graduates and Rs.1,500 for diploma holders, 10 kg rice per person per month and free travel for women in state public transport buses. The total outlay for these freebies is likely to exceed Rs.50,000 crore per year, a substantial sum for the government whose annual budget expenditure in 2023-24 aggregated Rs.3 lakh crore. This explains reduced capital expenditure in the state’s Budget presented to the legislative assembly and the public on February 16. The state government’s latest manifestation of runaway populism was its indulgent tolerance of several mobs that rampaged through Bangalore on December 27, breaking doors, windows, and damaging shops, pubs and restaurants. Business establishments were targeted for failure to inscribe their institutional names in Kannada — the dominant language of the state — on their display signboards. Instead of prosecuting the vandals for damaging private property, the state government has caved in to the demand of the state’s language chauvinists. On February 20, a Bill to this effect was passed in the legislative assembly. Evidently, populist chief minister Siddaramaiah is unaware that such vandalism and interference with private property is likely to scare away domestic and foreign investors in a state which is the most favoured destination for foreign investment. The hapless people of Karnataka have voted in a populist government expert at harakiri. Also read: Former Karnataka CM urges Siddaramaiah to reconsider decision to scrap NEP

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Remembering Palkhivala

The passing of senior Supreme Court lawyer Fali Nariman on February 21 provoked fulsome tributes paid to him by the Chief Justice of India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several eminent commentators in the media and society. This also brings to mind another extraordinary now forgotten counsel of the Bombay Bar — Nani Palkhivala — who left perhaps a greater stamp and impress upon Indian polity and society. Prior to the mid-1960s, it was received wisdom that under Article 368, Parliament with a two-thirds majority could enact legislation to alter or amend any provision of the Constitution. Accordingly in the 1950s, the Congress party enacted several laws, especially legislation imposing land-holding ceilings and transference of ownership rights to tenants. However in Golak Nath’s Case (1967), Palkhivala persuaded the Supreme Court to rule that it was beyond the power of ephemeral Parliaments to alter or abridge fundamental rights — the ‘seven freedoms’ — conferred upon citizens by Part III of the Constitution. Moreover in the landmark Keshavnanda’s Case (1973) he persuaded the Supreme Court to rule that Parliament — no matter how great the majority of the ruling party — cannot alter the basic structure of the Constitution. Palkhivala was born into modest circumstances and worked his way up in the legal profession and industry the hard way. He also served as a director of the Tata Group for several decades. This perhaps proved his Achilles heel. In 1977 when the post-Emergency Janata Party government was formed in Delhi, the party’s nomination as MP from the prestigious Bombay South constituency — and post of Union finance minister — was his for taking. But perhaps because he had too much to risk — he declined. Ditto in 1981. Had he entered politics, the economy liberalisation and deregulation reforms of 1991 would have been enacted a decade earlier. After a prolonged illness, Nani Palkhivala passed away in 2002. Nariman’s demise is a good occasion to remember Palkhivala whose brilliant advocacy secured the fundamental rights and basic structure of the Constitution for the citizenry in perpetuity. Also read: India’s top government law & humanities universities 2023-24

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Advice to Adani

Seems like billionaire infrastructure to consumer products tycoon Gautam Adani heeded repeated EW advice to mount a counter-offensive to the Hindenburg Research report of January 24, 2023 which plunged the market cap of Adani Group companies listed on the National Stock Exchange from Rs.192 lakh crore on January 24 to Rs.68 lakh crore on February 7 last year. With the result that from being the richest man in Asia, Adani’s rank in the Forbes list of Asia’s HNI (high net worth individuals) slipped from #1 to #19. For several months during which Adani Group equity shares were hitting new lows in the stock market, Adani cowered in his Ahmedabad den, prompting your editor to wonder what’s the point of being Asia’s richest man without having the resources to defend one’s reputation (see https://www.educationworld.in/simpleton-leader/). We contended that far from being heavily in debt as alleged by Hindenburg Research, Adani Group has solid, on-the ground, tangible assets — ports, airports, power plants, edible oils refining capacity and agri-produce warehouses — generating substantial profits to easily pay off the allegedly huge bank debts of group companies. Perhaps our advice to Adani to strike back was accepted and on October 23, 2023 the group mounted a highly effective front page ad campaign in major dailies countrywide detailing how Adani Ports and SEZ Ltd had transformed a mud flat in the seaside town of Mundra (Gujarat) into India’s sole deep water port which facilitates 11 percent of India’s foreign trade and supports a thriving hinterland economy. Evidently, the Supreme Court agrees. On January 3, 2024, it rejected a writ petition calling for a SIT (special investigation tribunal) to investigate the Hindenburg charges. As a result the market cap of Adani Group companies rose to Rs.143 lakh crore on January 24, 2024 and is well on its way to crossing the Rs.192 lakh crore high point. Inevitably, media pundits are likely to scoff at our claim of Adani having read this under-appreciated, education-focused publication. However in the vain hope that Adani, who has promoted several education institutions, may put some business our way, the billionaire has been on your editor’s complimentary list for a while and may well have availed our free-of-charge advice.

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Bad ad for Raymond Man

Although the media has adopted a neutral position on the issue of the widely reported divorce drama between Gautam Singhania, big boss of the Mumbai-based Raymond Ltd — billed as the world’s largest men’s suiting manufacturer — and his wife of 32 years Nawaz Mody, there’s undoubtedly a nasty streak in this textiles tycoon who is being taken to the cleaners by Mody who is demanding 75 percent of his shareholding in the company valued at Rs.8,701 crore. For past few months, Mumbai’s cocktail circuit has been abuzz with tales of the Raymond Man who reportedly has serious anger management issues, berating and beating up his wife, and often their two daughters. The scales of opinion within the Maximum City’s glitterati seem to tilt towards Mody, a beauteous former fashion model who tied the knot with the Raymonds heir despite the latter being afflicted with a rare dermatological problem — vitiligo, aka leucoderma. However, he must have possessed a modicum of charm because in 2016 he persuaded his father Vijaypat Singhania, the founder-chairman and MD of Raymond, to transfer his 37 percent equity in the publicly listed Raymond Ltd (sales: Rs.8,300 crore in 2023-24) when the octogenarian pere decided to hang up his customised suits and step down as chairman of the company. Again, instead of genuflecting with gratitude, the perfidious Gautam turfed him out of the company flat in Mumbai’s tony Breach Candy. And mind you Vijaypat is a man of no mean achievements. After dutifully developing Raymond into a multi-million dollar enterprise with his father Lala Kailashpat, in 1988 Vijaypat piloted a single seater airplane all the way from the UK to India, a feat which attracted banner headlines in the media. Unsurprisingly, the elder Singhania is squarely on the side of his daughter-in-law and grand-daughters. The latest news is that the fractious couple is about to reach a “more reasonable” settlement. That would be a disappointment to many waiting to see this bad advertisement for the Raymond Man getting his comeuppance.

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Ram Rajya Paradox

Undoubtedly after consecration of the resplendent new Ram Temple in Ayodhya preceded by inauguration of the new Parliament building in Delhi and several high-profile infrastructure projects all over the country, 21st century India is experiencing a long overdue renaissance. Prime Minister Narendra Modi believes that with the Ram Temple constructed in Ayodhya the nation has been liberated from “500 years of mental slavery” which began when invaders from Central Asia and later Britain ruled over India, i.e, Bharat. Yet there seems to be a conspiracy of silence within government and the establishment about the rising tide of Indians rich and poor, desperate to flee the promising new Ram Rajya of newly liberated India. During 2021-23, a record 3.61 lakh HNWI (high net worth individuals) emigrated to countries eager to welcome can-do entrepreneurs and professionals. This emigration stampede is not restricted to HNWIs. According to US Customs and Border Protection authority data, between October 2022 and September 2023, a record number of 96,917 Indians were arrested while attempting to enter the US unlawfully mainly along the Canada-Mexico borders — a five-fold increase over the 19,883 apprehended in 2019-20. Curiously the majority of these illegal immigrants are from Gujarat, the bailiwick of PM Modi, who served there as chief minister from 2002-2014 before he was elected prime minister of the country. Moreover on January 29, over 10,000 construction workers flocked to a government-run ITI in Lucknow to be tested for employment in Israel, dangers of the Israel-Hamas war and political considerations be damned. Seems like the public, rich and poor, is not buying official propaganda that a new Ram Rajya age based on justice, equity and inclusivity is set to dawn nationwide. Also read: From mosque to temple: An Indian tragedy

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Dynasty fatigue

Some people never learn. Despite the Congress party — and certainly the economy, if not country — having been destroyed by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which on and off ruled over post-independence India for half a century before being sentenced to the doghouse of Indian politics, there is no shortage of politicians intent upon thrusting greatness upon their progeny and kith and kin to build political dynasties. Although slow to learn, people across the country are making it clear they are fed up with an Amurath succeeding Amurath. The latest politician who didn’t learn the lesson of practicing in-your-face nepotism is K. Chandrashekar Rao, hitherto chief minister of Telangana, India’s youngest state over which he strode like a colossus after having led it out of united Andhra Pradesh into autonomous statehood in 2014. After sweeping Telangana state’s first and second assembly elections in 2014 and 2018 and wresting the prized city of Hyderabad, KCR began entertaining delusions of grandeur. First, he built himself a pleasure dome of Xanadu proportions from public money. Next, he appointed his son K.T. Rama Rao de facto CM and his daughter Kavitha and two nephews to high offices in the state government. In addition, with his dominance over Telangana (pop.39 million) established, he changed the name of the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti to Bharatiya Rashtriya Samiti (BRS) with great expectation of emerging as kingmaker within the INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) coalition of opposition parties readying to take on the BJP juggernaut in General Election 2024 scheduled for next summer. Now all these grand plans of KCR have come to naught following the resounding defeat of BRS in the recently concluded state assembly election. The number of seats that BRS won plunged from 88 in 2018 to 39 in 2023. There is a writing on the wall in this story for West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati — and a host of regional satraps — grooming kith and kin for party leadership. Doubtful if they will read it. Also read: Student groups, some tied to Indian parties, unite against NEP

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Trojan horse

There’s something rotten about Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar who under one stratagem or another has ruled India’s poorest and most illiterate state for 17 years. Even as the coalition of opposition parties grouped under the INDIA alliance are engineering an electoral strategy to field a common candidate in every constituency to ensure that the BJP doesn’t win General Election 2024 because of split opposition votes — a plausibly winning strategy — this worthy is throwing all sorts of spanners in the works. On December 19, at an inaugural meeting of the 28-party INDIA alliance, he “lost his cool” when an MP from Tamil Nadu requested an English translation of his rambling speech in Hindi. According to him, translation was unnecessary as Hindi is the national language. Quite obviously, this aspiring prime minister is history agnostic. If acquainted with the basics of the Constitution, he would have known that English is the associate national language, link language of the country and also the language of the courts, business and industry. If he had the most elementary knowledge of post-independence history, he would have known that in the 1960s when Hindi was declared the sole official language of India, there was real possibility of Tamil Nadu seceding from the Indian Union. Moreover this duffer also imposed liquor prohibition in Bihar despite its disastrous history worldover which has unleashed a new crime and corruption wave in the state. Also, at this very INDIA meeting when Mallikarjun Kharge, the unassuming Congress president, was proposed as the face of the INDIA alliance for General Election 2024, he walked out of the assembly. With leaders like these who have led the deliberately under-educated people of Bihar into prolonged and ruinous caste conflicts inside the INDIA alliance, its chances of uniting to halt the BJP juggernaut in General Election 2024 are dim.

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Rising contempt

The quick suspension of 143 opposition Members of Parliament for the last four days of the Winter session of Parliament — including 45 from the Rajya Sabha, the upper House of Elders — doesn’t bode well for Indian democracy. During the four days when the opposition benches were depleted to a mere 38 MPs, the government legislated several important Bills including a revised Indian Penal Code, 1860 and the Evidence Act, 1872, given jaw-breaking titles in Hindi. When opposition benches are depleted, poorly drafted Bills are enacted into ill-framed laws which in turn adds to the humongous mountain of pending litigation. Although opposition MPs have been suspended for unruly conduct — storming the well of the House and the Speaker’s podium — such contentious behaviour is alas, quite common and was often practiced when the ruling BJP was in opposition. Therefore, the action of the Speakers of both houses to suspend almost 20 percent of MPs when their concerted demand was that Union home minister Amit Shah make a statement in either house on the security breach on December 13 when four youth smuggled themselves into the Lok Sabha, created a ruckus and hurled smoke canisters while the house was in session, is harsh by any standards. The smoke canisters hurled about the house could have contained lethal gas or have been grenades. In the circumstances, asking the home — or prime — minister to explain how this security breach had occurred and what steps are being taken by government to plug the loopholes was not an unreasonable request. The adamantine refusal of the highest ministers of the government to be answerable to Parliament is an indicator of the minimal regard that the BJP government has for the country’s highest laws-making body. All MPs have worked hard to win the mandate of the people of large constituencies across the country. Whether in government or in opposition, their viewpoint has to be given due consideration by government. Care needs to be taken that pride and prejudice does not transform into contempt of Parliament.

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Prophecy foretold

A glaring blindspot of the much-heralded National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is the large number of supervisory and regulation committees it prescribes. Based on the recommendations of the nine-member Dr. K. Kasturirangan Committee which submitted a 484-page report to the BJP government at the Centre in 2019, the report was distilled into the 66-page NEP 2020 approved by the Union Cabinet on July 29, 2020. While the K’Rangan Report is visionary and forward looking, its downside as highlighted by EducationWorld in a lead feature titled ‘More government, more governance’ (https://www.educationworld.in/national-education-policy-2020-visionary-charter-educracy-shadow/) was recommending a spate of committees to supervise quality standards, curriculums, fees regulation, teacher education and academic autonomy in schools and higher education institutions. We warned of the danger of governments at the Centre and in the states packing important committees with ideologically aligned comrades and party faithfuls. And so it has come to pass. For instance the recently appointed chairman of the National Council of Educational Research & Training (NCERT), the country’s largest school textbooks publisher and syllabus formulation body, is Dinesh Kumar Saklani, hitherto professor of history at the obscure H.N. Bahuguna University, Garhwal. Last month NCERT was in the news for purportedly recommending the inclusion of mythical epics Ramayana and Mahabharata in the history textbooks of high school children. Although when a row broke out over the issue, NCERT issued a denial, this recommendation was traced to Prof. C. Isaac, a Kochi-based academic appointed chairman of a focus group by NCERT to write model social science textbooks under the National Curriculum Framework (NCF). Moreover in history textbooks published by NCERT and mandatory in 28,900 high ranked CBSE schools, the entire Mughal period (1526-1757) has been eliminated “to reduce students academic load”. The tea leaves don’t read well for Indian education, especially the study of history.

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Belated response

Ever since January when the damning report of the US-based Hindenberg Research — a self-confessed short-seller firm in stock markets around the world — was published, prices of the equity shares of Adani Group companies listed in the National and Bombay Stock exchanges, have plummeted and continue to search new lows. The Hindenberg Report alleged that mysterious shell companies registered offshore were purchasing and pumping up prices of Adani Group companies in India against which founder-chairman Gautam Adani was borrowing heavily from banks and financial institutions to fund the growth of his fast-track business empire. When this exposé was published — and not strongly refuted — almost overnight, Adani’s reputation as a latter day Midas took a big hit even as his shareholders suffered huge losses. Now even if belatedly, Adani has struck back. On October 23 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Adani-promoted Mundra Port, Gujarat, Adani set out the record of the country’s first true deep water port constructed by the company in expensive front page ads in major newpapers (ToI, The Hindu, Economic Times) among others. The first page features a photograph of Mundra as the total mud flat it was 25 years ago. The second page depicts the busy port and its impressive record of development. Total taxes paid: Rs.2.25 lakh crore; total investment: Rs.70,000 crore; employment generated: 75 million man-days; neighbouring villages benefited: 61; mangrove afforestation: 6,000 hectares, 17 million trees planted. Yet according to aspirant prime minister Rahul Gandhi, a millionaire with no visible sources of income, Adani is an anti-national wrecking the Indian economy. Also according to Mahua Mitra, MP, she of thousand dollar scarves and diamond wrist watches. Res ipsa loquitur.

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Nationalisation fallout

One of the biggest disappointments of the purportedly pro-business and private sector BJP which is set to complete its second term in office, is its failure to privatise India’s 28 public sector banks, foolishly nationalised by then prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1969. Since then over the past half century, nationalised banks managed by risk-averse business illiterate bureaucrats and over-promoted clerks have destroyed the country’s banking system developed over centuries by globally powerful Jagat Seths, who inter alia, funded the East India Company. After nationalisation, lending to private business and industry was driven more by control-and-command orders from the neta-babu brotherhood in Delhi, than on balance sheets and business potential of desperate borrowers. As a result, with a disproportionately large share of bank credit hogged by failing PSEs (public sector enterprises) and large corporates with good political connections in Delhi, the credit needs of the vitally important MSME (micro small and medium enterprises) sector, which employ over 60 percent of workers in industry and accounts for 40 percent of the country’s annual industrial output, were almost totally neglected. The extent to which MSMEs and the common man were denied credit by PSBs (public sector banks), which were nationalised in the first place to make credit available to them, was brilliantly exposed recently by veteran journalist T. K. Arun in the Times of India (November 16). According to Arun, the actual quantum of bank credit that risk-averse PSB managers dole out to India’s private sector aggregates 50 percent of GDP against the global average of 97 percent — and wait for it — 180 percent in the People’s Republic of China. In the circumstances, it’s no surprise that when as recently as 1978, the GDP of China and India were on a par, now their GDP is $19 trillion cf. India’s piffling $3.7 trillion. And as everyone knows — or should know — PRC’s spectacular growth has been driven by easy credit availability to its TVEs (town and village enterprises). Cry, beloved country!

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EWISRA blues

Staged in grand style on October 13-14 in New Delhi’s J.W. Marriott Hotel, the EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) 2023-24 Awards Nite — proclaimed as the greatest education felicitation and celebrations show on earth — has come and gone. The two-day event attracted over 2,000 leaders (and their uninvited guests who blew the budget) from 1,200 schools across the country. It required unprecedented logistics, hotel bookings, trophy design and certificates printing, provision of free-of-charge meals and beverages on an enormous scale. And although the great majority of award winners complimented your editors for the conduct of a smooth and time-bound event, along with the bouquets there were some brickbats. For one, given the logistics of transporting and arranging an estimated 1,400 trophies, certificates and other encomiums from Mumbai to Delhi, and lining up trophies backstage to align with the order in which they were announced on stage, required high order event management skills. This delicate synchronization was often disturbed by several awardees whose nears and dears suddenly suffered near-fatal heart-attacks and other illnesses which necessitated out-of-turn awards presentation causing disruption. As a result some school leaders were not awarded their trophies in time and went away sorrowful, although they were presented interim facsimile/dummy trophies and certificates for all-important photo-ops. To those who went away sorrowful, mea culpa. Moreover for your editors the pain of being on-stage to present over 1400 awards was compounded by a lecture delivered by a autocrat grey eminence who chose the occasion to sermonise at length that one of our several associates is not PLU (people like us) and this pioneer publication is insufficiently “transformative”. He was backed up by a shrill chorister who opined that EW had become “too commercial”. Such are the crosses that one has to bear even when we felicitate, celebrate and award the country’s best school leaders. Also read: EW India School Rankings 2022-23 Awards

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Unrepentant baba log

Some people never learn. Instead of being repentant that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which led post-independence India down the socialist road that bankrupted the country destroying the modest material aspirations of one — perhaps two — generations, Rahul Gandhi, the latest scion of the dynasty, seems determined to use the wrecking ball to destroy Gautam Adani, one of the few industrialists to survive socialism and the devilish licence-permit-quota regimen designed to strangle private enterprises at birth. According to a Times of India report (November 1), Rahul, who God forbid could become yet another Nehru-Gandhi prime minister should the opposition INDIA alliance of myriad parties win General Election 2024, has been targeting Adani, who within the short span of two decades has established massive nation-building infrastructure projects — ports, power and cement plants, airports, green energy, edible oils, warehousing — to emerge as one of the few billionaire businessmen of the 21st century with real assets on the ground. According to RaGa Adani’s success is due to the full backing of prime minister Modi and that he is the front man of the prime minister. Steeped in the mindset of licence-permit raj of his ancestors, this latest scion of the dynasty evidently believes that business success is still impossible without political backing. Nor despite his top job aspirations does he understand that it is the PM’s job to encourage and back the country’s enterprising entrepreneurs. Years ago, the late public intellectual Romesh Thapar described the Nehru clan as baba log — overindulged rich brats — playing government. RaGa is the latest of this lot who have never got a college degree or held a job, and plays high politics without care or concern of who or what he knocks down. Adani’s fault is that like Dhirubhai Ambani before him, he has skirted the thousands of irrational laws, rules and regulations designed to cabin, crib and confine the entrepreneurial genius of India’s businessmen. Creation of employment and payment of taxes is the high crime Adani has committed against this would-be prime minister steeped in the socialism mindset. Also read: The Importance of being Gautam Adani

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Beyond Bridgerton

The appointment of Rishi Sunak as prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and his durability in office for over a year, is a reality way beyond the imagination of the most inventive writers of the fantasy television serial, Bridgerton. This popular sitcom set in the 19th century which was a big hit in Blighty and Anglosphere countries, featured lords, ladies and nobility — and even a queen — of colour. At the time of its airing the TV serial served as catharsis for Brits who practiced rigid apartheid in India and the colonies they ruled until the mid-20th century, when their hypocrisy and sanctimonious humbug relating to the white man’s burden was punctured by “naked fakir” Mahatma Gandhi, prompting the global British empire to collapse like a house of cards. But nobody in their wildest imagination could ever have forecast that the day would come when a brown-hued practicing Hindu would rise to the position of prime minister and rule imperial Great Britain from No.10 Downing Street. And stay put there for over a year. Certainly not your editor who read law in London and was active in British politics. Although Sunak is unlikely to remain in office after next summer when a general election is scheduled because the Conservative party is trailing in all opinion polls, the fact that he survived in office at No.10 for so long vindicates your correspondent’s belief that native Brits — the flotsam and jetsam that ruled the colonies were sui generis — are less race, than class prejudiced. Sunak with his Winchester, Oxford and Stanford education — and most important RP (received pronunciation) accent — passes the class test, the prerequisite of rising to the top in class-obsessed Britain. It also vindicates your editor’s opinion that of all colonial imperialists of the 18th-20th centuries — French, Dutch, Germans and Belgians — the Brits were the best of a bad lot.

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Sea of troubles

One can’t help feeling sorry for the trustees of Ashoka University (AU), Sonipat (Haryana) India’s first crowd-funded university established at vast expense (estimated at Rs.2,000 crore) with successful members of the Indian diaspora mainly in the US chipping in Rs.5-25 crore each. Ashoka U generated great excitement within the country’s expanding middle class when it was launched in 2016. But ab initio overt and closet commies who dominate the academy and media were disparaging of this private varsity which spared no expense on architecture, infrastructure and on recruiting best faculty from around the world. They were — and remain — outraged that the fully residential AU levies the actual cost of education provision to pay for its globally benchmarked campus and faculty. Trendy lefties have a blindspot about calculating the actual cost of education of mainly middle class students in public institutions. Moreover, faculty and students are hell-bent on voicing opinions on sensitive political matters, even though they are no doubt aware that governments at the Centre and in Haryana are bulldozer raj administrations which have little time or respect for the niceties of democratic governance. Or for fine universities. Some two years ago, Harvard and Princeton alum Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a trenchant critic of the BJP government, resigned his office as vice chancellor of AU in high dudgeon, when advised to tread gingerly in his widely admired weekly column in the Indian Express. Angry student protests resulted in the trustees appointing an unprecedented ombudsman as barrier between the trustees and management. However, this didn’t prevent Sabyasachi Das, assistant professor of economics at AU from putting in his papers when questioned about a research paper positing that the ruling BJP had “manipulated” General Election 2019. And when Sunil Bhikchanadani, the billionaire (Naukri.com, InfoEdge) founder-trustee of AU opined that parents didn’t send their children to AU to indulge in andolan (agitation), he was roundly trolled on social media by the woke brigade. Alas, India’s finest university, innovatively funded with great expectations, is floundering in a sea of troubles.

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Respect MSMEs

The loud forecasts of prime minister Modi that India is all set to become a major 21st century superpower are likely to prove illusionary unless the country beefs up — sorry, politically incorrect — improves its manufacturing sector. Currently, manufacturing contributes a mere 15 percent of annual GDP with services contributing over 55 percent and agriculture a mere 16 percent. And the reason why industrial manufacturing is in the doldrums is because the country’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are caught between a rock and hard place. On the one hand their credit needs are being ignored by banks, and on the other, instead of being nurtured by large customer companies, they are bullied by them. The plain truth is that Indian industry cannot prosper unless MSMEs prosper. For a start, the country’s 63 million MSMEs account for 40 percent of India’s industrial output and employ 40 percent of India’s 493 million workforce. Therefore their health and well-being is critical not only to keep the wheels of industry turning, but also to keep people off the street by generating employment. Yet banks, including public sector banks which are awash with liquidity, are averse to lend to them — too many small accounts to service and a tardy legal system which makes loans recovery very difficult. Moreover, government and large well-established companies are slack about making payments for goods and services supplied by MSMEs. The average number of days of payments outstanding to supplier MSMEs is 75-90 days, with some of the biggest companies in India routinely delaying outstanding payments for months on end. In his excellent under-sold book India’s China Challenge (2020) Ananth Krishnan, the Beijing-based correspondent of The Hindu, attributes the rise of China into the world’s manufacturing powerhouse to the rise and prosperity of its many million town and village enterprises (TVEs). The average interest on easily availed accessible credit is 8 percent and as supply chain enterprises of the People’s Republic large world-beating corporations, they are assured of prompt payment and utmost respect. There’s a moral in this story for government and industry leaders making announcements about India’s inevitable great leap forward into a $30 trillion (from the current $3.7 trillion) economy by 2047.

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Curious reluctance

With assembly elections looming in several states including Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana, the minute one switches on the idiot box these days or flees to a magazine, one is assaulted with blaring state government ads and splashes of Prime Minister Modi inaugurating mega projects in Uttar Pradesh or another BJP ruled state. And in the latest India Today, Rajasthan’s Congress government has highlighted the wonders it has performed in the public interest over 15 pages of text and evocative photographs, much no doubt, to the joy of publisher Aroon Purie. While all this is highly beneficial for TV channel moguls and print media tycoons, one wonders who is paying for these ads with their riveting copy and arresting graphics. In the unlikely event of it being the party, it might be worthwhile for the Income Tax department to examine their books to ascertain its sources of income. Most likely these expenses are lumped under the head of ‘establishment expenditure’ which hides all manner of sins of the Central and state governments. For instance, the establishment expenditure of the Central government at Rs.7.44 crore accounts for almost 15 percent of its budget revenue. Moreover, within the media (EW excepted), there’s a curious reluctance to call for slashing establishment expenditure of the Centre and the states, all of whom report large inflation-fanning fiscal deficits. Curious indeed. Also read: 26 recruitment exam paper leaks occurred during BJP, Congress rule in Rajasthan: Beniwal

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History agnostic leadership

Evidently the top leadership of the BJP/NDA government at the Centre doesn’t comprise students of history. If it did the BJP would cease and desist from brazen attempts to ram Hindi — the lingua franca of the most economically backward and lawless states of India — down the reluctant throats of hundreds of millions of citizens, especially of the southern states of the country. If they were well read in the history of Asia they would be aware that attempts to impose the majority language on unwilling minorities, usually provokes violent reaction, often culminating in civil war. A major cause of the prolonged civil war (1983-2009) that devastated neighbouring Sri Lanka was imposition of Sinhala as the country’s official national language. The strife bled Sri Lanka dry, and left it in the dire economic straits that the serendipitous island nation is in today. It’s also useful to remember that dismemberment of Pakistan into two countries in 1971 when Bangladesh declared itself independent, was the fallout of imposition of Urdu as the national language in post-independence Pakistan. But why look that far? In 1965 when Hindi was declared the sole national and official language of India, riots erupted in several southern states and there was real possibility of Tamil Nadu seceding from the Indian Union. Unmindful of all this, BJP leaders including the prime minister, deliver lengthy speeches in Hindi to blank-faced audiences in southern states without line-by-line translators and television subtitles. Moreover timorous English language television channels permit long diatribes by Hindi speakers on their talk shows and panel discussions. The other day your correspondent was blown away by a prolonged interview between a Hindi-speaking interlocutor and Harish Salve — who is making quite a mark as a top-rank English fluent King’s Counsel in the UK — conducted entirely in Hindi. This coup, repeated several times on NDTV, has the finger prints of business tycoon Gautam Adani who recently acquired the channel. It’s hardly a secret that Adani is enamoured with the BJP leadership. Creeping Hindi imperialism is being imposed with aplomb. Meanwhile Down South, anger and resentment is ballooning.

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Short-changed spectators

Financially, Indian cricket — and cricketers — have never had it so good. In the past quinquennium, BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) has earned a revenue of Rs.27,400 crore, transforming into one of the richest sports governance bodies worldwide, rivalling NBA, USA and the English and European Football leagues. Last year, it clocked up a record profit of Rs.4,400 crore, on which after paying for the luxurious expenses of paunchy officials and Test and budding cricketers, it proudly paid income tax aggregating Rs.1,159 crore. But although everyone has benefitted, the huge audiences that attend T-20, ODIs (one-day internationals) and even five-day test matches in India and contribute heavily to BCCI’s bulging coffers, continue to be massively short-changed. Indeed, one wonders why enthusiastic viewers line up for hours to buy tickets to watch live cricket matches when they are treated like dirt by the men — yes it’s always men — who constitute the top management of BCCI. Large notices on the gates of cricket stadiums prohibit ticket purchasers who fork out substantial sums (Rs.4,000-80,000) from taking their own snacks, water, cushions into stadiums. Inside, spectators are at the mercy of authorised vendors who sell these wares at five multiples of street prices. Moreover, public toilets in India’s cricket stadia — as in all public places — are invariably an odiferous mess. Perhaps BCCI bosses don’t care about stadium spectators because the largest audience is in homes worldwide, watching matches on increasingly bigger and better idiot boxes. But BCCI moguls should bear in mind that large crowds watching live matches contribute to the overall experience of television audiences. Empty stands will drive down all-important ad revenue. Therefore, it would be advisable for the plutocrat-bureaucrats of BCCI to cut the world’s largest live cricket audiences a better deal.

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Gift horse examination

That the left hand of the gargantuan 18 million strong neta-babu brotherhood that micro-manages the country through thousands of superfluous laws, rules and regulations, doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, is hardly a national secret. A case in point is schizophrenia about foreign investment in the Indian economy required to increase the number of tax-paying businesses and generate employment. The right hand is begging for incremental FPI (foreign portfolio investment) in the stock market to mobilise capital for domestic companies to expand and grow. Conversely the left hand is hell-bent on subjecting foreign investors to minute scrutiny to which domestic businessmen and investors have become accustomed. Indian bureaucrats seem unaware of the basic principle of company law that corporations are juristic personalities in their own right, and that lifting the corporate veil should be the exception than the rule. According to a front page report in the Economic Times (August 21), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is all set to issue a mandate making it compulsory for FPIs which deploy more than 50 percent of investment in a single corporate group, to reveal their ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs). According to the ET report, this requirement has been prompted by the recent driving down of the prices of equity shares of the Adani Group by the US-based Hindenburg Research. Although because of four decades of socialism native investors in the stock markets have learnt to endure routine lifting of the corporate veil, the premise behind this proposed rule — that all FPIs are crooks out to make a quick buck — is likely to prove offensive. Government and SEBI need to determine whether the economy requires foreign investment. If it does, as it’s plain, it shouldn’t look a gift horse — because clearly investing in India is a high-risk enterprise — so closely in the mouth.

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High-flying gougers

Although they are an unmitigated blessing which have reduced long-winded train journeys to a sepia memory, there’s something wrong about the hyper-commercialism of the men (in the words of a learned judge, the word embraces women) who run India’s airlines. The pejorative “price gouging” doesn’t seem to be part of their vocabularies. Recently when the domestic airline GoAir faced headwinds and was obliged to cease operations because of mismanagement which lumbered it with heavy debt, other airlines promptly seized the opportunity to charge sky-high air fares on domestic routes because of a sudden shortage of capacity, especially on the routes also serviced by Go Air (mis) managed by a scion of the Mumbai-based Wadia family of Bombay Dyeing fame. In mid-May your editor, stricken by a stress-related illness which according to expert medical opinion was the consequence of unwarranted fastidiousness in presenting a world-class publication to an “ADHD target market accustomed to reading headlines, if that,” booked a ticket to sunny Goa for an R&R break. For a 40-minute flight from Bangalore to Goa which is ordinarily priced at Rs.4,000, the asking rate had shot up to Rs.13,000. And another gent who was under compulsion to fly from Delhi to Dehradun, a 30 minute flight, was obliged to pay Rs.45,000 for the last remaining seat. On the other hand, according to a statement issued by the Bangalore police on July 19, 722 auto-rickshaw drivers were fined for over-charging commuters beyond meters issued by the state government’s transport ministry and/or refusal to ply. Likewise, Uber and Ola taxi-drivers who practice surge pricing also suffer punishment by the withered arm of the law. However, for mysterious reasons a cap on airfares was lifted last August. Since then their managements have been routinely price gouging whenever opportunity presents itself. Undoubtedly, the Indian economy needs to be freed from the iron grip of licence-permit-quota raj from which the neta-babu brotherhood has profited mightily, but what’s a crime for an auto-rickshaw/taxi driver can’t be allowed to be passed off as routine ‘free markets’ business by dressed up civil aviation managers. They are giving free markets ideology a bad reputation.

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