Challanges to Progress

It seems when a country rises, it has to face many challenges. One of the challenges could be that other powers might like to slow down or even halt the progress of the rising nation. India could face situations where it will realise that poltical powers or even domestic vested interests are challenging its rise.

India’s rise has now begun to attract attention. It is now obvious that it is not only the investors and businessmen in Davos who are looking at India. It is also the people who do not find the progress of India palatable in the least. Case in point, the BBC documentary on Prime Minister Modi and the Hindenberg report on the Adani group.

The UK has harboured many criminals who fled there from India after committing financial and other crimes. The UK has not extradited them for decades, even after cases against them have been proven in British courts. This just shows that countries will do what they want as long it is convenient for them, and suits their purpose, and not because it is right. The case in point is that of Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi. There are many others who are given protection by the UK government. It also shows that the UK has scant respect for Indian laws and there was a hidden agenda to rake up human rights issues twenty years after the Indian courts had decided the matter.  A British MP, Bob Blackman has even condemned the BBC report as shoddy journalism.

This American company has announced they are short selling shares of Adani group. The report has put a damper on the Adani follow on issue currently on offer. The latest news is that the Adani issue is fully subscribed, however the company has decided to cancel the issue and return the investor money. Adani stocks have plummeted as result of which about $40 billions of investor wealth has been lost.

The report came out right after India declared itself as a voice of the Global South. It may be overreach if one says that there is a conspiracy against India. But the timing is opportune. Moreover, unconfirmed reports say that one of the employees of NDTV (bought by Adani) visited the New York offices of Hindenberg multiple times. So, there is ground for suspicion. It has been hinted by some in the UK that China funded the BBC report. This also sounds plausible at the outset. 

India’s rise may not be palatable to some nations, indivisuals and grpups around the world. They will never take a public position on this, but their actions will be an indicator of their real intent. Incidents like Shaheen Baug, the articles in New York Times and Washington Post regarding India's human rights and politics are all part of a narrative which is being propagated and funded by people who are running an agenda for a regime change in India. The Indian opposition parties have also joined this bandwagon as they are now out of power for ten years and see themselves becoming politically irrelevant. Being out of power, they are also losing their funding, hence the desperation. The foreigners are white supremacists and are jealous of India's success and do not want India to progress. So there is an element of racism in this as well. 

The so-called Global South has been exploited for their resources by the rich economies for a very long time. China is the latest country to do so. These countries have never had a voice of their own at the high table of elite countries. India’s presidency of the G20 may provide an opportunity to these countries to make themselves heard. Here, China and India are directly competing for influence.  

China has lost economic momentum. It is also facing demographic challenges. Even though it is opening up, the earlier buzz around business and supply chains, is just not there. Whether there is any truth in the funding report is beside the point. India will have to face many such challenges to its leadership role in the world.

The BBC film on Modi reeks of propaganda. It has come twenty years after the Indian courts have decided on the matter. 

Now George Soros the investor and businessman, has entered the fray and criticized Indian democracy. As said earlier India will have to face many such propaganda wars as it rises. The intensity of these attacks will increase as the 2024 general election draw near.  A S.Jaishankar said recently, the election season has not yet started in India, but it has already started in London ad Newyork.

This may not be to the liking of the west. It will mean sharing of resources and even technology which the west is reluctant to do as history will show. Leadership, however, always comes at a price. India will have its work cut out as it threads this geopolitical quagmire.

Luminosity data

A recent study by ISRO of the Nighttime Lights data which is published by NASA and ISRO’s own remote sensing satellites has noticed a 43% increase in luminosity at night in the last eight years. The surprising and encouraging part of the report is that the traditional backward states in the country like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Ladakh, have reported a higher increase in luminosity than the developed states. This data is considered important as it shows growth in infrastructure and increase in economic activity. It shows that the per capita increase in income is significant in the backward states. The conclusion is that the laggard states may be now catching up with the rest of the country.

The reliability of the data can be seen from the dip in luminosity around 2020 due to lockdowns. Thus, this data can be relied upon to judge the progress of countries or regions where data on the ground is not available or is unreliable. This data shows that India has seen significant change in the last 8 – 9 years on the economic front, and all that the government has been saying about development and progress and its schemes like the Ujala, the construction of roads and highways, the distribution of electricity seem to be delivering on their promises, which is a big positive.  

AI, ML The New Disruptors

 I am not using ChatGPT (the site is very busy) to write this article and therein lies a problem.

The Google search engine was hailed as the most revolutionary software. The search engine will give you links to any information you search for on the internet. ChatGPT goes a step further. It will write articles/description for you on the subject you choose which then can straight away go into your own write-ups with minor changes.

This is spoon feeding taken to the next level. Google also gives information on any subject you ask it. But you will have to visit different sites, sift through a lot of data and then use what is relevant to you. You give this software a subject and it will give you an article complete in itself. It is presentable and usable. And this is a problem.

You ask it to write an essay and it will produce one in no time at all. A student in school can present it to his teacher without doing any research on the topic. While a sharp teacher will immediately know if the written essay is written by the student as the teacher knows the student’s intellectual level, however, the temptation to do all your homework with the help of ChatGPT will always be there. Future versions may be able to solve math problems. We already have smart gadgets in our hands. With intelligent software loaded on them, humans will become dumb progressively as the gadgets become smarter.

Are we going to become a dumb race? We are certainly headed in that direction. With intelligent software, school children will just stop learning the fundamentals. The skill of thinking which is so fundamental to the survival and progress of the human race is now in danger. Why think and try to imagine when all that is being done for you by a smart software? But these skills are very basic and the foundation of human civilization. If the majority of people lose their power to think what will happen to human progress?

Machines will get smarter all the time and take away jobs from humans. This is what happened with assembly line workers. Clerical and repetitive tasks in offices are being taken over by smart software. Now programs like ChatGPT will take over some of the creative work from humans as well.

There are more programs like ChatGPT in the pipeline which will disrupt the employment market. Text to image software is being developed. DALL-E, GPT3, Picsart, are some of the new programs on the market. So the area of human endeavor in general is shrinking, as a result, even the field of art may undergo a paradigm shift.

New areas may open up where humans could be employed, but these fields will need highly skilled and qualified people. Those jobs may not absorb all the available labour.

Experts have been predicting this for some time now. Education systems the world over will have to take note of this. It will be challenging to design education systems which will prepare humans for this onslaught of computers. The tidal wave of technology may not provide time for adjustments.

Also, the potential to give fake information is huge. The makers of the software can set their own narrative by giving out specific information to users.

Humans will have to take this disruptive progress in their stride. The future generations will be smart enough (as they always are) to adjust to this AI/ML invasion. There is no escaping the disruption. As the Greek philosopher said ‘change is the only constant’.

Dictatorships are Dysfunctional

Consider this to be a sequel to my earlier article titled ‘Dictatorships are Bad’. The current scenario unfolding in China is proof if any was needed.  It is a prime example of how a well running economy can be ruined by dictatorial whims and fancies.

Chinese leadership had the impertinence to celebrate victory over covid as early as 2021 when the rest of the world was under lockdowns. Dictatorships are often seen to celebrate victories prematurely. This time around it has backfired viciously.

The irresponsible behavior by the CCP and the top Chinese leadership is now threatening to plunge the world into another pandemic, with new virus variants. When the original virus was detected in Wuhan, in China, the whistle blowers were silenced immediately by the CCP. The world does not yet know how humans came into contact with this virus which was found in bats.

The current wave sweeping China is even worse in that, there is no reliable data coming out which puts a figure on the infections. Nobody knows if there are any genome sequencing labs working in China which are giving out reliable data about the mutations the virus is undergoing.

While the economic consequences of this latest disaster are still sometime away, the countries around the world are now gearing up for new waves of the pandemic. The purely dictatorial behaviour was evident when the virus came out of Wuhan. The CCP did not allow any news of these infections to be disseminated to the world. The classical dictatorial logic is that a powerful government led by a cult personality like Xi Jinping cannot make mistakes.  So, news about the virus was quashed at the peril of causing a disease which later killed millions and brought the world’s economy to its knees.

The mistake is being repeated by the dictator. Xi was forced to relax his draconian zero covid policy due to protests by the people who saw a complete collapse of the economy. When people came out on the streets demanding Xi to step down, alarm bells started ringing in Beijing. The zero covid policy was relaxed in a knee jerk reaction. However, the policy had kept the virus from spreading among the population.

China’s vaccines were never effective despite getting WHO approval almost immediately. The Chinese people as a result, have no immunity, either natural, through infection, or through the vaccine. Thus, now the pigeons have come home to roost. The virus is back in China with a vengeance.

Things have gone south for China and the world since Xi Jinping came to power. The leaders like Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao were patient leaders. They believed in not overplaying their hand, prematurely. Xi inherited a fast-growing economy from his predecessor and changed the script altogether. He assumed China had arrived on the world stage and began an aggressive diplomatic campaign with China’s neighbours to claim their territories. China under Xi also claimed the entire South China Sea which is actually disputed.

Xi also initiated the Belt and Road project to increase connectivity and trade with the world.

China gave many loans to countries under this scheme which were at best economically unviable. The result is that the countries are now saddled with huge debts. Case in point, the Humbantota port in Sri Lanka.

Today one man in China controls everything. For such a huge and diverse country like China, a single dictator taking all the decisions is nothing short of a disaster. Xi has purged the political opposition within the CCP to, such an extent under the garb of corruption, that there are now only yes men left in his administration who report to him. It seems Xi does not get correct information on which to base his judgments, for whatever they are worth. The result is that administrative decisions have gone haywire in China. The zero covid policy has resulted in causing stress in almost all sectors in China. Real Estate, Railways, Manufacturing being the prominent ones.

China’s one child policy which was instituted to control the population in the 1970s has proven to be very effective, so much so that, the country’s workforce will reduce by more than 60 percent in the next decade.

It is now amply clear that democracies with all their inherent faults, function more efficiently than any dictatorship led by a single person or party.

Xi’s decision not to import more effective vaccines from other countries reeks of personal ego. His autocratic rule and the mismanagement of the covid situation has sparked protests throughout the country. People are demanding an end to one party rule and Xi’s dictatorship.

It could be said that Xi Jinping has come to power in China to preside over its downfall. By this logic, the sooner he goes the better for China and its people.

Political Evolution

 

The turmoil in China, the protests in Iran, the relatively speedy reforms that MBS (Mohammed Bin Salman) undertook in Saudi Arabia have something in common. There is an underlying current which points to freedom and democracy.

People living under single party dictatorships, or a dictator, or a Sultan of a royal family are revolting against their rulers.  Iran was a relatively free country when the Shah of Iran ruled in the 1950s. Then came the clerics who overthrew the liberal Shah and unleashed a brutal rule which followed the Shia dictates.

Many Arab countries were Sheikhdoms in the last century.  When the Europeans came, trading relations grew and these kingdoms acquired some semblance of political legitimacy as they provided protection to the traders and businesses, both domestic and foreign. The discovery of oil was a boon to the rulers, and increased their political power.

Iran is also witnessing unprecedented protests. Women in Iran are demanding freedom from religious oppression. The protests have spread and is now threatening the regime of the religious clerics.

The CCP power in China has been challenged. The Tiananmen Square massacre was an indication that all was not well with the communist party rule. China opened up its economy and grew rapidly in the last three decades. The current generation of Chinese people do not know what it is to be without a job, or even economic hardship. This economic affluence kept political pressure for freedom at bay. The people were getting what they were promised. But what goes up, generally comes down. The Chinese economy began to contract just before the covid pandemic set in.

Today the Chinese growth story is all but over. This has created huge problems for the CCP. They can no longer guarantee livelihoods to the Chinese people. Also, draconian anti-covid measures enforced for the last three years have tried the patience of the Chinese people. The Zero covid policy has brought down the Chinese economy due to frequent lockdowns.

There may be many reasons for the current spate of freedom movements across the globe. One can say that this is an evolutionary step taken by nature. We always talk of evolution being an improvement. The evolutionary process on which the human race has embarked, is now in the midst of a sociological evolutionary step. Freedom is being demanded from autocratic political systems in various parts of the world.

This movement is far bigger than anything that can be crushed by force of the military and guns. What we are witnessing is the process of evolution. This is not biological evolution, it is political / sociological. Just as humans evolve biologically, their social systems also need to evolve. This is precisely what we are witnessing.  The fact that many parts of the world are witnessing similar movements gives credence to the theory that as humans are evolving so are their social systems.

China Turmoil - Writing on the Wall for the CCP?

 

The turmoil in China has made headlines in all papers the world over. China today is the most controlled society in the world today. There is at least one camera for every seven citizens in public places which AI enabled. The CCP controls everything. There is no leeway for individual enterprise, not even in business as is sometimes wrongly assumed. This current unrest is for human dignity.  

The corona virus originated in Wuhan and till to date China has not shared any information as to its origins. After the pandemic set in, the world then produced vaccines and two years later most of the countries have removed strict covid restrictions, save for cautioning their people. However, Chinese vaccines proved to be ineffective against some of the strains of the corona virus. Thus, China even two years later has had to impose strict lockdowns on its people when most of the world is learning to live with it. Experts say the Chinese government fears the virus may cause a lot of fatalities as the vaccines have not worked.

The CCP is between a rock and a hard place on this. The Chinese vaccines have been quite ineffective. Only strict lockdowns have prevented the virus from spreading. If the authorities relent and lift the restrictions, the current protests become potential super spreader events. If the virus spreads, the Chinese authorities could have several waves of infections on their hands.  

The people however are now beginning to get restless as the lockdowns have affected their livelihoods. The Chinese economy has slowed down considerably since the lockdowns began about three years ago. People have lost jobs and businesses have suffered huge losses.

Experts on China say that the slowdown in the economy is one of the reasons why the people are kept in a lock down. Jobs have evaporated as Chinese economy slowed after three decades of steady growth. If the people come out of the lockdowns and go back to work, many are going to find they have no jobs. This is what the CCP fears the most. Political unrest. They tried to prevent it, but now it is staring them in the face.

People have been demanding a relaxation of the covid curbs, but there also have been demands for freedom and the resignation of the leader Xi Jinping.

Some Chinese people watched the football world cup in Qatar and observed that there were no masks in the stadiums. This prompted many to openly criticize the CCP on its zero-covid policy. People are out on the streets in at least nine cities. Many universities have also reported stirs by students, which shows the protests are more widespread.

A fire in a building in Urumqi in Xinjiang was the trigger for these protests. There, the rescue efforts were hampered by the restrictions imposed under the zero-covid policy, as a result of which ten people died. The people are blaming Xi and the CCP for these deaths, their failure to control covid, and demanding they step down. The simmering anger and frustration of the people has finally boiled over.

As is to be expected from any dictatorship, the military has been deployed in many cities to control the mobs. Whether this proves effective this time around is doubtful. It is rumored that this is a bigger political game. Xi has just won this record third term and may become the Chinese President for life. He has had to purge many senior leaders of the CCP to get to this peak of power. It is said the leaders who were sidelined by Xi have now caused this unprecedented revolt amongst the people. There is as yet no reliable news out of China on this. Some of the top leaders of the PLA could also revolt and switch sides.

Experts are saying that the inner turmoil in China might lead Xi Jinping to create an external issue related to Chinese security as a divergence. It could be with India, Taiwan or even in the South China Sea. 

Will Xi be able to quell the protests by using force? It looks rather difficult. This turmoil has the potential to overturn the rule of the CCP. It is a classic case of concentration of political power. Too much concentration usually brings a fallout, as history teaches us. The more powerful you become, the nearer to the gate you are. The CCP’s control over the social media is also being circumvented by the people by using ingenious ideas. People are using VPNs, dating apps and coded language to get past the CCP’s surveillance. The pot has started to boil.  

It now looks like a straight fight between the people’s will and the absolute power of a dictator. To quote Peter Zeihan ‘a one man state is getting overwhelmed by non-compliance’. This is a policy paralysis typical to dictatorships. If one looks at political history of the world, the answer as to the result need not be a guess.    

On a Newfound Solid Footing

The Ministry of External Affairs in India was always in the news as it dealt with the country’s foreign relations. But it was never in the news for strong and unequivocal promotion of Indian interests in the world.

But now there is a marked difference in the way foreign policy is being handled. There is a confidence borne out by the fact that whenever India speaks at world body meetings, countries take notice. The global south has perhaps found a new mentor as being a developing country, many of India’s interests coincide with their own.

This change has come about in the last two years, especially after the pandemic. However, the signs were visible during the pandemic as well.  India’s vaccine diplomacy was much appreciated during that time.  Many countries in South America and Africa had not received any vaccines even a year into the pandemic. India sent vaccines all over the world in response to requests from countries.

The new chapter in Indian diplomacy started when China entered Galwan in eastern Ladakh and tried to claim territory which is at best disputed. In doing so they backtracked on agreements which had enabled trust to be built up for over three decades. India decided to take active measures to deter China from its misadventures. India began a series of diplomatic initiatives to engage China. It also started measures to decouple its economy from China. This was a bold step as compared to the meek responses which India had taken earlier in repose to China’s incursions along the border.

The Russia Ukraine war was the incident which showed the world a new avatar of India. Confident and resilient. The war brought in its wake supply chain disruptions and skyrocketing oil prices. Russia was offering oil at discounted prices to circumvent sanctions imposed by the US and Europe. India bought oil from Russia despite the pressure from the west to adhere to the moral high ground and show solidarity with the west. Russia was an old, trusted friend who has genuinely helped India in the past, even at times using its veto power in the UN. India was not about to abandon Russia despite its aggression in Ukraine.

This rankled the west which had till now taken India’s foreign policy for granted. They assumed that India would toe the line of the west and abandon Russia which India refused to do.

The change in India’s foreign policy is mainly due to a strong government at the center. This government has shown the courage to back its convictions. National interest is now front and center. India was able to weather high oil prices in the world due to its buying of discounted oil from Russia.

India’s foreign policy today reflects sobriety, balance and above all dogged determination. As the EAM said India is in nobody’s camp. India is in India’s camp. This message has gone out loud and clear, so much so that the US has acknowledged that India can buy as much Russian oil as its wants.

Since independence, India has also been dragged in the dock on various issues like erosion of democracy and personal freedom. Many think tanks and academics across the world have been criticizing India for what they call its rising political autocracy. In answer, experts in India are questioning the methodologies and techniques adopted by these agencies, as well as demanding that Indian rating agencies should now counter the foreign ones. Earlier India used to meekly accept any ratings that the foreign agencies dished out.

India’s policy towards Pakistan has also been articulated most unequivocally. India will not enter into any talks with Pakistan unless it stops its funding for cross border terrorism. Also, it has dealt firmly with Chinese designs on claiming and forcefully occupying Indian Territory. The Chinese military buildup along the LAC has been matched by India to deter any misadventure. India is also building its own infrastructure along the border areas. The diplomatic heft that India is showing its neighbors has been matched by action on the ground. This is the solid footing on which India’s foreign policy is standing. India can now play to its strengths when it assumes the G20 Presidency in December.

After the G20 Summit in Bali a CNN report said that a new world power is emerging in Asia, and it is not China. 

Imdia is also hosting the meeting of the National Security Advisors of the Central Asian Republics (most of the CIS) with regard to its security interests in Afghanistan. It is significant that the meeting could have been held under the umbrella of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization but was not. India wants to keep its security interest paramount in the region and hence wants to lead these countries.

It is said there will be an economic recession in the world by next year. Several wars are being fought across the world. The next few years are going to be turbulent to say the least. The current Indian policy rooted in national interest and resting on a solid footing of commitment and confidence, stemming from rising economic clout, will stand India in good stead, to navigate the troubled times ahead.

Shifting Sands of Geopolitics

 

The Geo-political sand never stays in one place. Like the proverbial sand of the desert, it is forever shifting, creating new alignments and shifting old ones.

In geopolitics too, there have been subtle changes happening in the alignment of nations. Countries are changing their stance and positions as the situation on the ground changes.

A few weeks earlier the west was insisting that India reduce its purchase of oil from Russia in order to show solidarity with the free world.

India did not condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine but was consistent in its call for dialogue and diplomacy. However, the west wanted India to be categorical in its support for Ukraine. But in this war geo-economics has also played an important role. With war came the inevitable inflation. Oil prices increased and countries scrambled to look for deals which suited them.  The situation was exacerbated due to earlier sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, two big suppliers in the world.

India’s policy was consistent that it will buy oil from whatever source at affordable rates. And it stuck to its guns over a period of six months or so.

Recently, in a policy about - turn, the US is not objecting to India’s purchase of Russian oil. The shift has come because the US now realizes that it needs India more than India needs the US. Also, US policy makers are of the opinion that the US needs India to counter China if hostilities ever break out and even otherwise. Western sanctions on the other hand have not proved quite effective against Russia as Russia is a major producer of two important commodities which the world needs. Oil and wheat.

Also, the US needs India to back it up economically. The US is promoting what it calls the Indo Pacific Economic Forum. This is an alliance conceived by the US. It includes countries in the southern Pacific Ocean which will balance China on the economic front. Without India this alliance does not amount to much. With India it becomes an excellent counterweight to China. Thus, the US is keen to get India on board in this project.

The US is also talking about friend shoring. This term signifies the US will only source its imports from countries that it considers to be friendly and reliable. This also signifies that the US does not consider China as a reliable partner anymore.

This shifting of businesses will involve tradeoffs, some quid pro quo, as India is also dependent on the US for defense and other critical technology. However, the US giving a free hand to India regarding purchase of oil from Russia signifies the US views the relationship as a long term one. Incidentally India is the only country in Asia which has stood up to the Chinese bullying tactics.

The ongoing G20 Summit is being watched closely by experts as it might give an indication as to where the world may be headed. China, for all its bravado regarding Taiwan may not actually initiate hostilities. The Chinese leadership knows China cannot withstand western sanctions and neither can it counter the American military might. China may act against India, Japan and Vietnam keeping in view its territorial claims.

The Russia Ukraine war has drastically altered the energy and trade flows in the world. Many Indian private producers like Reliance and Nayara have benefitted by exporting refined oil products to Europe and the US.

The geopolitical chessboard is a busy place currently. Moves and counter moves are being played out between nations and world leaders. We are headed for some interesting times.