Showing posts with label Narendra Modi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Narendra Modi. Show all posts

Monday, April 06, 2020

The Virus Asks For Out Of The Box Thinking

  1. The three week lockdown imposed upon India is the right thing to do, and every country will have to follow suit. It is the cheapest way. Testing is not available.
  2. But India executed it badly. You have to have a plan to feed everyone. Just stay home. We will feed you for three weeks. That means the demand and supply thing will have to break. This is an emergency. It is still demand and supply, but there is no money involved. You feed everyone who is hungry. You deliver food to homes.
  3. Three weeks are enough time for the infected to get symptomatic. You identify them and you isolate them. They basically stay in their homes, the mildly symptomatic do. One thing to try is you hover your head over boiling water in a bowl, and cover your head with a towel, and you inhale the steam for a few minutes. The dire cases go to the hospitals. The world's factories need to produce the basic equipment and medicine like FDR produced planes for World War II. Call a truce to the China-US trade war. It was always stupid. Now it is fatal. You don't want a Spanish Flu redux. You don't want a hundred million dead.
  4. The non-infected will have to go back to work otherwise on top of the pandemic we will have tremendous hunger. And if the hunger is widespread enough, societies will start to collapse. That is chaos. You will see uncontrollable riots. But too many jobs will have been destroyed in three weeks. Many people will not have the option to simply go back to work. You need Universal Basic Income. Every human being on earth should be given $100 a month immediately. No questions asked. It can not be a one-time thing. It could easily be a year. Done right, it can be indefinite.
  5. But $100 will not cut it in a place like the US. You will need $1,000.
  6. This UBI is the only thing that can resurrect the world economy.
  7. This virus can not be tackled in any one country. It will have to be tackled simultaneously in every country.
  8. We need a world government. And we need it at zip speed. I would not mind if someone like Barack Obama steps in to become the first President Of The World. Gordon Brown has broached the idea. Former heads of state are best positioned to rally around the idea and make it happen.
  9. When the vaccine shows up -- the best estimate is 18 months -- and hopefully it comes in the form of a band-aid, it needs to be taken to everybody. Only a world government can do it. A world government with real teeth.
  10. This is the dress rehearsal for climate change. The coronavirus is forcing the world to do what needs to be done to fight climate change.
Inequality And Climate Change Are Existential: A Blueprint For Survival
Towards A World Government





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Wednesday, April 01, 2020

Coronavirus News (24)

Doctors say it is only a matter of time before Covid sweeps India With its densely packed cities and under-funded medical system, India has little margin for error....... Cases of coronavirus in the world’s second-most populous country have ticked rapidly higher the past week, raising alarm over the ability of India, with its fragile health-care system and battered economy, to handle a virus crisis of the magnitude of China or Italy’s. While India has seen 27 deaths and just over 1,000 cases, experts fear the real tally could be much higher and say the disease is already spreading in the community.

Authorities say there’s no evidence for this and have not significantly ramped up testing.

....... a place where the poor live in close quarters and the social distancing measures being advocated in the west are almost impossible...... epidemiologists say the numbers could be staggering. A University of Michigan-run study predicts the country could have

915,000 coronavirus infections by mid-May, more than the case load for the whole world right now

...... India is not looking hard enough for new cases, with one of the lowest testing rates in the world....... The country had tested just 35,000 people for coronavirus as of Sunday.... That’s despite 113 local government laboratories and as many as 47 private labs now authorized to process tests....... “I can’t see why India will be any different.” ..... Mass testing would be an unnecessary strain on resources, they say, with each test costing Rs 4,500 . Officials also say a ramp up in testing risks sparking a panic....... he and colleagues are seeing an influx of cold and flu cases...... the virus spreading to as much as 10% of the population -- some 130 million people. John worries the lockdown came too late.

What 3 month moratorium on repayment of term loans means for borrowers
German minister commits suicide after 'virus crisis worries'
'It is like wartime': Arundhati Bhattarcharya backs strong, radical measures to save economy Former State Bank of IndiaNSE -5.23 % chief Arundhati Bhattacharya has called for very strong, radical reforms to deal with the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
G20 FMs, central bank governors decide on joint effort The ministers decided on delivering a joint G20 Action Plan, which will outline the individual and collective actions that G20 has taken and will be taking to respond to the pandemic, while also highlighting the medium-term measures needed to support the global economy during and after this phase.
View: India isn't US, it must get its people back to work as soon as possible Low income countries have a more fragile economic and social fabric than developed countries........ Just outside my home in Delhi, migrant workers flow by all day, their fates unclear. They are walking home to villages near Lucknow, Kanpur and points beyond, jammed together in packs. None knew when their next meal would come or how long it would take to get home. Almost all said they understand why the government locked down the country to contain a deadly disease. If they die of hunger on the road or when they get home jobless, they say, it doesn’t matter....... New Delhi imposed the strictest lockdown measures in the world, designed to keep1.3 billion people at home, on the logic that if the pandemic gets out of control, India’s frail healthcare system won’t be able to cope. It was hard to imagine the exact economic fallout. But harrowing images of migrant workers flooding out of the major cities by the tens of thousands have made the unintended consequences painfully clear...... In India, it is the normally probusiness upper class that wants to keep stringent containment measures in place for as long as it takes to control the virus. Left wing intellectuals call this approach a “socioeconomic purge”, which will save only those who can afford to isolate themselves.

The rest risk death by starvation if not the pandemic.

........ In the US and Europe laid off workers can file immediately for unemployment benefits, and some European governments are now funding companies to keep employees on the payroll through the pandemic......... social distancing is impractical in poor, crowded societies, most sub-Saharan nations have not imposed lockdown. ...... Even China’s authoritarian regime, which effectively sealed off Hubei province and its population of 60 million, would have been hard pressed to extend the lockdown nationwide. Now, it is rapidly lifting those restrictions, at the calculated risk of a second wave of infections arising from returning workers......

mass unemployment and poverty also raise mortality rates, and that a lockdown induced economic depression could conceivably prove more deadly than the virus.

...... It is fine to junk pre-crisis deficit targets but not basic economics...... The hope is that the measures the government has already taken and the notion that warm weather slows the spread of coronavirus will prevent the virus from spreading at an exponential rate. If that hope proves mistaken, it will be very difficult to change course. But for now the government should be thinking about ways to ease the nationwide lockdown when it expires on April 15.

View: GoI needs to collect & analyse patient dataset to generate policy insights
Asia's largest slum Dharavi reports first coronavirus casualty The 56-year-old victim with no travel history owned a garment shop in the area...... Over a million people live in the 5 square km maze of dirty lanes of Dharavi, in cramped huts and next to open sewers.



Trump urged to pause H1B visa programme after job loss amidst layoffs A body representing American tech workers has urged Trump to suspend for this year the H-1B visa program.
China starts to report asymptomatic coronavirus cases
Sino-India ties will emerge stronger, scale new heights after COVID-19 pandemic: China Both the counties have finalised an ambitious 70 celebratory activities, a host of cultural, religious and trade promotion activities round the year besides military exchanges to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of their diplomatic relations...... at their second informal meeting in the Indian city of Chennai to properly manage their differences on border issues and maintain peace and tranquility in the region..... "China and India are the only two countries in the world with more than 1 billion people each. As long as one third of the global population can join hands, they can yield more benefits for not only themselves but also the wider world. The ongoing (coronavirus) epidemic fight offers a chance to do exactly that"

25,000 NCC cadets, retired military health professionals, 8,500 army doctors on standby, while 9000 forces’ hospital beds provided for coronavirus pandemic
Six COVID-19 patients die in Maharashtra, toll rises to 16
God goes online as places of worship shut doors to save people All major religious institutions are opening up online channels to stay connected with their devotees........ The muezzin calls out the faithful to prayer five times a day. But nobody comes to the mosque. These days, devotees spread out janamaz in the confines of their homes to pray. This, perhaps, is happening

for the first time in 1391 years of Cheraman Juma Masjid

in Kerala, where an azaan has not beckoned believers to the mosque. ..... the oldest mosque in Indian sub-continent...... we’re live streaming the daily rituals on Facebook for our devotees… These bits are getting a lot of view these days – especially from devotees residing abroad .... The Our Lady of Good Health Basilica at Velankanni (Tamil Nadu) attracts over 2 crore visitors every year. The church, which remained open even in the aftermath of 2004 tsunami (which caused the death of over 500 pilgrims), is shut for the first time in 50 years. The authorities have decided to conduct the ‘Mass’ indoors, and stopped ‘baptism’ and ‘confirmation’ rituals. ..... “The priests are conducting Mass two times a day…

The morning Mass – at 6AM – is live telecast on the Church website and on Youtube.

We’re witnessing a lot of visitors on our Youtube channel these days,” affirms Fr. A. Anto Jesuraj of the Velankanni church..... “There are 600 hotels here, employing thousands of people; all are shut now… The flower and fruit-sellers are not open anymore; this putting pressure on farmers who are sitting on piles of perishable stock. There are roughly 1000 beggars who live on alms given by devotees who come here… Now they don’t even get food to eat,” says Yadav..... The lockdown to prevent the spread of Coronavirus is almost total in all towns that huddle around important religious centres. Poor locals who earn their livelihood selling flowers, fruits, chaadars and incense sticks are now a worried lot. With no devotees around, only prayers may help them tide over.

Ready to help India to procure ventilators, but scaling-up production a challenge: China A number of countries including the US and India, are trying to procure ventilators needed for hospitals to deal with the demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Chinese ventilator producers say it is not easy for them to ramp up production as they also needed imported components.
Five more test positive; COVID-19 count rises to 46 in Punjab
India's response to Covid-19 has been pre-emptive, pro-active: Roderico Ofrin, WHO India's response to Covid-19 has been pre-emptive, pro-active and graded with high-level political commitment. India has shown ‘whole of government’ approach and is adopting ‘whole-of society approach', said WHO regional emergencies director of South-East Asia, Roderico Ofrin

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The Virus And The Politicians



Something that is the Great Depression and World War II combined is going to be a tall task for anybody, let alone mediocre politicians elected to high office, but the scale and rapidity of the spread of this pandemic, now virtually gone to all countries and spreading fast still has particularly exposed deficiencies in leadership, both of individuals and political systems. This is no argument against democracy, for South Korea seems to have done pretty well so far. It is said the genius of the US constitution is that even an idiot can run the country. I never fully bought into that.

But those who doubted Trump's ability to deliver from the get-go now find themselves uncomfortably with front seats to the unfolding tragedy. And Trump is not alone. There is this guy in Brazil basically inciting riots. He is a Trump clone. Modi's three weeks closing down of the country was not a bad idea, but the implementation was so shoddy, there was no implementation, there was just an announcement; as if the demonetization disaster was not enough. India finds itself with crowds of people moving around reminding many of a similar phenomenon during partition. Instead of being inside homes, people are clogging the roads.

The NYC Mayor has been missing in action while he takes to the cameras like he were some opposition leader demanding action. NYC has become Italy and it still is not seeing lockdown.

It is always easier when you are not actually running a country. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown went on record asking to set up a world government from scratch. That is the most sense any politician has made during this pandemic so far. Gordon Brown should rally as many former heads of state as possible to the idea and make it happen.

Angela Merkel is a chemist by training. And it showed.

Both China and South Korea, and also Hong Kong and Singapore, all with diverse political systems, have done a pretty good job.

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Friday, February 28, 2020

The Pogrom In Delhi

The message from the BJP is clear: Elect whomever you like. We are still in power. Call the police; they work for us. Appeal to the courts; we’ll neutralize any judges who don’t toe our line. Continue to dissent, and we will set the mob on you.
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Monday, January 13, 2020

Modi's Bad Economic Performance





Indian Prime Minister Modi's Lawless Reign of Terror Narendra Modi relies on private militants allied with his party to crack down on dissent. ...... recent events suggest that the real Gujarat Model that Modi had in mind was something else entirely: a government that looks the other way as private militants violently attack disfavored groups. ...... the growing youth resistance against his "papers, please" citizenship law. ...... On Sunday evening, January 5, 40 to 50 hoodlums, mostly men but also a few women, faces partially wrapped in scarfs, armed with clubs, iron rods, and sledgehammers, stormed the campus. Eyewitness accounts and video footage suggest that several of these people were members of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a student union associated with Modi's party. They approached a group of students protesting a sudden, massive fee hike and began thrashing them. They bloodied the student president, Aishe Ghosh, and many others.......... Then, chanting that the students were traitors who deserve to be shot for opposing the administration, the attackers barged into dorm rooms and went on a rampage, taking care to spare rooms that sported ABVP posters. Muslim students were of course fair game. And so was a blind Hindu student, a Sanskrit scholar and a student of Hinduism no less, whose wall sported a picture of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, India's reformist founding father. (Ambedkar has fallen from grace in pro-Modi circles because he was a vigorous opponent of the caste system and other regressive Hindu practices and because his ideas are fueling the constitutional case against Modi's Hindu nationalism.) ....... JNU's vice-chancellor, who is appointed by the central government, failed to mobilize campus security to stop the mayhem. The Delhi police, which is under the command of the Modi government rather than local authorities, ignored the frantic calls of students for over an hour. A veritable battalion of cops was standing right outside the campus gates, but not a single one went in to stop the attack. The cops even stood by as ambulances were vandalized right in front of them. ......... law enforcement standing by as private militants allied with the ruling party go on a violent spree, criminalizing the victims, spreading disinformation to confuse the public—was Modi's modus operandi in Gujarat. .......... A few weeks ago, cops appeared to vandalize Jamia Millia University, a Muslim institution in New Delhi. Modi's comrade, Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, went even further. His police showed up at Aligarh Muslim University and roughed up students protesting Modi's faith-cleansing policies that would strip an untold number of Indian Muslims of citizenship. ........... no one outside of Modi's band of merry brothers is safe in India anymore. All of India is Gujarat now. Dissent is out. Violence is in........ As one poster at a protest noted: "First AMU. Then JNU. Next You."

PM Modi, Amit Shah misled people on CAA, NRC: Sonia Gandhi The nation has watched in horror at the "BJP-orchestrated assault" on JNU after what happened in Jamia, BHU, Allahabad university and AMU

'Challenge PM To Tell Students Why Economy A Basket Case': Rahul Gandhi Congress MP Rahul Gandhi today said he challenges Prime Minister Narendra Modi to go to universities and tell students what he will do to improve the economy. ....... in a blow to opposition unity, six key parties - including the Trinamool Congress, BSP, Shiv Sena, DMK and the Samajwadi Party - are skipping the meet. Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party said it was not even invited for the meeting.

What Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Said About Amended Citizenship Law Satya Nadella's comment was backed by noted historian Ramachandra Guha, who wished that big names in the Indian IT industry would summon the "courage" to make a similar statement. ....... "I think what is happening is sad... It's just bad....

I would love to see a Bangladeshi immigrant who comes to India and creates the next unicorn in India

or becomes the next CEO of Infosys" ....... A group of over 150 Indian-origin professionals employed with tech giants such as Google, Uber, Amazon and Facebook had earlier written an open letter against the Citizenship Amendment Act and a possible nationwide National Register of Citizens, dubbing both the initiatives as "fascist". ........ "The CAA 2019 combined with the NRC is a deeply anti-Muslim scheme that will create greater statelessness and global disparity for Muslims, growing worse with India's economic decline and climate change" ...... The United Nations Human Rights Office has also termed the amended law as "fundamentally discriminatory", saying that it "undermines" the commitment to equality enshrined in the Indian constitution....... BJP MP Tejasvi Surya has clamed that only "illiterates and puncture-wallahs" are opposed to the amended Citizenship Act.

The attacks on two Delhi universities reveal Modi’s targets: Muslims and their allies the police remained decorously outside the gates of

Jawaharlal Nehru University, India’s most well known, cordoning off the campus as masked goons armed with iron rods and improvised bludgeons ran riot inside.

They broke into a hostel reserved for women students, inflicted head injuries on the president of JNU’s student union, who is a woman, and attacked faculty members who tried to protect them. Some 20 students and teachers were hospitalised. After three hours of thuggery the police entered the university at the vice-chancellor’s belated invitation but made no arrests because the criminals had mysteriously slipped away despite the police cordon. ....... Jamia and JNU are centrally funded universities that have attracted the violent displeasure of Modi’s government for different but related reasons. Taken together, these reasons define the ruling Bharatiya Janata party’s majoritarian project – its reason for being. ......... The NRC is the citizenship act’s evil twin; those who aren’t able to document their claim to being Indian before the tribunals of the NRC will be cast into limbo – but non-Muslims among them can hope to be rescued by the CAA’s amnesty. ...... Jamia was brazenly attacked by the police of this would-be Hindu nation because the government was confident that making a violent example of a Muslim university would play well in public. ........ the assault galvanised Muslims all over the country into spontaneous and sustained resistance to the CAA and NRC ...... the police atrocities in Jamia led to huge demonstrations of solidarity in colleges and universities all over India and sparked a fire of resistance, against the furtive bigotry of the CAA, which continues to burn. .......... The BJP has long believed that its anti-Muslim project has two enemies: Muslims, and those non-Muslims who see Muslims as equal citizens under the constitution. The Delhi police made an example of Jamia as a warning to India’s Muslims. When that didn’t go according to plan, the same police travelled several miles across the city to help make an example of a university that the BJP sees as the institutional incarnation of the secularism that might yet thwart its dreams of a Hindu nation. Since majoritarian parties are constitutionally incapable of empathy, the BJP understands JNU’s brand of secular solidarity as a form of Hindu self-hatred. ......... the BJP’s loathing of the university is obsessive and wildly out of proportion to the threat that its students and teachers pose.



Is the Indian economy headed for a middle-income trap? Once promising economies like Mexico, Brazil, or Turkey could never attain the prosperity of western Europe or Japan, because they fell into what experts call the “middle-income trap.” ....... a sustained economic slowdown following a period of strong growth. ...... “We will be a Brazil, we will be a South Africa” but will never replicate the growth trajectories of China, or South Korea ....... “No country which has been in (a middle-income trap) has been able to come out of it.” ......

India’s economy is facing a structural slowdown.

....... India won’t even become an upper middle-income country (per capita income between $3,896-12,055) by the 2030s ......

Escaping the middle-income trap requires serious reforms such as flexible land and labour laws. The Narendra Modi government, on the other hand, is obsessed with furthering its political agenda

....... The economic reforms that India unleashed in 1991 led to a period of strong growth lifting millions out of poverty and increasing the size of the economy by almost nine times in about 30 years. ....... there was no mass shift from farm to factories. India failed to create a robust manufacturing sector, which today accounts for less than 17% of the economic output. ........ forcing a staggering 81% of the workforce to be employed in the informal sector. ....... The manufacturing sector, though, is most important because it is labour-intensive. ...... implementing

land and labour reforms

to bring capital costs down...... the primary fixes that would ensure India does not fall into the middle-income trap. ....... India’s declining investment rates, high levels of capital concentration in the corporate sector, and lack of good infrastructure access are deeply concerning indicators. ......... long-term structural reforms and provision of better social security to people ...... unequal income distribution is another key driver of the middle-income trap and suggests higher investments in human capital to escape it. ........ India at a lowly 115th out of 157 countries in its Global Human Capital Index rankings ..... “No country has moved to high-income category without taking care of these bottlenecks.”



After years of falling, poverty in India may have risen again since GST and demonetisation Poverty and malnutrition in India may have increased substantially in 2017-18, leading to a fall in consumer spending in the country for the first time in over four decades. ...... The fall in overall consumption (by 3.7%) in 2017-18 is the first since the 1972-73 global oil crisis ........ “In the last five decades at least, there has never been a period that consumption expenditure in real terms has declined. This data clearly shows that poverty levels would have gone up substantially. A back of the envelope calculation would suggest that the percentage of population in poverty would have gone up by at least 10 percentage points.” ........ In 2011-12, the share of India’s population living below the poverty line stood at 22%, much lower than the 30% recorded two years earlier, and 37% recorded in 2004-05 ...... NSO’s current findings suggest these gains may have been nearly offset by 2017-18. ........ consumers were penny-pinching on not only clothing, education, and rent but even food. ....... Rural consumers spent an average of Rs580 ($8) per month on food in 2017-18, down 10% from Rs643 in 2011-12. Urban consumers, on the other hand, spent Rs946 on average on food, nearly the same (Rs943) as in 2011-12. ........ The country’s GDP growth stood at a six-year low of 5% in April-June 2019. ......

these wounds may have been self-inflicted. The survey was conducted between July 2017 and June 2018, coinciding with the rollout of the goods and services tax (GST) and came a few months after demonetisation.

........ In 2017-18, India’s unemployment rate stood at a 45-year high of 6.1%

India’s economic slump is far too deep to be tackled with mere tinkering of interest rates
Modi inherits a troubled economy—all credit goes to him

India Has Worst Economy In 42 Years. Is Prime Minister Modi Watching?

The only real debate about India’s economy is exactly when things were as bad as they are in 2020.

...... Modi rose to power in 2014 promising to supersize the “Gujarat model” that brought him to national prominence. His 14 years running that western state morphed Modi into a folk hero. On his watch, Gujarat often produced growth faster than the national average, fewer regulations, better infrastructure and less corruption. Voters elected Modi to bring those policies to New Delhi. ....... The populist did put some wins on the scoreboard. Modi announced plans to cut bureaucracy and opened sectors like aviation, defense and insurance to increased foreign investment. Passing a national goods-and-services tax was no small feat. Then Modi largely rested on his laurels, shelving deeper reforms amid healthy global growth. ....... India would be growing faster if Modi had acted more boldly to upend vested interests. Modi, for example, punted on the truly epochal reforms India needs to compete and become more inclusive: changes to laws on labor, land and taxation. The government slow-walked efforts to clean up a banking system awash in bad loans. ....... Then there are the self-inflicted wounds. A poorly executed move to take all high-denomination banknotes from circulation to attack graft shoulder-checked the economy. A botched GST rollout confused corporate chieftains and actually depressed tax revenues. ........ Modi the populist rabble-rouser will dominate his second term, not the economic change agent most voters wanted. ....... Will that support be there, though, if Modi’s distraction delivers a “Hindu rate of growth” instead? The reference here is to the low annual growth rates India produced prior to a liberalization push in 1991. .......

India isn’t where Modi boosters thought it would be in 2020.

..... the political equivalent of human nature: it’s always easier to add liquidity than remove barriers to growth and efficiency. Look no further than the Philippines and South Korea these days. Yet all that largess takes the onus off India’s banks, particularly state-owned ones, to write down distressed assets.

Modi's Self-Destructive Behavior

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Thursday, January 09, 2020

Modi's Self-Destructive Behavior

Modi traveled the world. It felt like he was always on a plane to somewhere. When he landed in Delhi, it was for a few days of rest before he took off again. He held monstrous rallies of Indians around the world. Donald Trump never held a bigger rally inside the United States. And all that exposure added to India's soft power. Modi became the most popular politician in the world. After long decades India again had one party that could get a majority in the parliament on its own. Ideology aside, that means some stability. He even took action on Ease Of Doing Business, and India rose up in the ranks. FDI was on the uptick.

I have tried very hard to see the good in Modi. His rise from his humble background to the top office in India is noteworthy. I bought into what I thought was his laser focus on development issues when he ran in 2014. I do think he is personally incorruptible. But then that was also true of his predecessor, Dr. Manmohan Singh. Singh was never accused of having taken any bribes. Personally, he was not. His cabinet was another story. In Modi's case, he seems to have an iron grip on his cabinet, and the anti-corruption aura extends beyond him.

The jury is still out on demonetization. And the implementation of the GST (Goods and Services Tax) has seen much criticism. Done right, that was supposed to unify the Indian market. I don't have enough data on what actually happened.

Even before he made his Kashmir move, I am on record at this very blog saying the key to peace between India and Pakistan is to have two Kashmirs, just like there are two Punjabs. There is a Punjab in India. There is a Punjab in Pakistan. Turn the Line Of Control (LOC) into the permanent border and open up trade. So, obviously, I am not opposed to the idea of turning Kashmir into just another state in India. But I say, what a lost opportunity. If this move would have been made after summit meetings between Imran Khan and Narendra Modi, the region would have seen peace instead of the turmoil we are now seeing.

Article 370 I don't want to comment on too much. What did bother me a lot was that Kashmir was turned into an open-air prison in the aftermath. I was in disbelief.

And now this. India is convulsing. The country has been shaken to its roots. The citizenship amendment act is poorly worded, harshly implemented. And the entire world is watching. All the soft power Modi earned for India through his years of travels has evaporated, and it will show in the FDI numbers. And the tanking economy is not helping either. Modi has already had a very bad year politically. He has lost state after state. He lost Maharashtra where he lost his biggest and oldest ally, the Shiv Sena. I think that is what he is looking at in 2024. The non-BJP parties will come together to throw up a non-Congress prime minister.

Just like Kashmir done right would have given South Asia lasting peace and a major regional trade boost, granting citizenship to refugees is how a large, generous democracy enhances its soft power around the world. How about starting with the Rohingya! They just might be the most talked-about refugees in the world right now.

Modi and his team have been proving his critics right. Imran Khan has been shouting like a mad man accusing the BJP and the RSS of 1930s style fascism. And to Imran Modi gives the citizenship amendment act and the national registry of citizens. That is straight from the Nazi party book in the 1930s. The Nazis also sought to "protect" German minorities in neighboring countries. They also put together a "national registry of citizens."

Modi has squandered his impressive electoral mandate. It is all downhill from here for Modi, especially since there seems to be no hint of course correction.

I hope Prashant Kishor is the next Prime Minister of India.

The ABC (Anti BJP Coalition) already has 62% of the votes in the country, it just needs a proper organizational structure. By joining the coalition, a party agrees to one post one candidate at all levels, and it agrees to the decisions of a steering committee in which each party's strength is the number of MPs it has. There is no lack of money, there is no lack of votes, there is no lack of vision, there is no lack of strategy. Only this structure is missing. Sonia Gandhi can be Convenor.



India: Democracy Itself Is At Stake
India At A Turning Point
Arundhati Roy On India
Indian Citizenship Bill Protests: The Distrust Is Wide And Deep
India Citizenship Bill Debate (2)
India Citizenship Bill Debate
Biometric ID And Citizenship Solutions
India's Contentious Citizenship Amendment Bill
Has India Gone Crazy?
Step By Step To Solving The Big Problems
History In Fast Forward Motion Right Now
Kashmir Deserves Normalcy
News: Modi, Trump, Andrew Yang, Iran, Kamala Harris
Indian Democracy: Maharashtra Edition
India's Massive Unemployment Problem: China Actually Knows
Formula For Peace Between Israel And Palestine
The Stupidity Of The Ayodhya Dispute
Saudi-Iran: Imran Is The Only One Who Can
Can't Stop Water To Pakistan
New Capitalism Is Techno Capitalism, Hello Marc
The Nation State In Peril
Imran's Peace Gamble In Afghanistan
South Asians Working In The Gulf

I think something like this is possible for 2024.

2024: Possible Lok Sabha Composition

BJP: 150

Anti-BJP Coalition (ABC):
Congress: 60
JD (U): 50 (25 in Bihar, 25 outside Bihar)
Trianmool Congress: 40
Shiv Sena: 20
LJP (Paswan): 6
RJD: 10
AIADMK: 20
DMK: 15
YSR Congress: 20
BJD: 20
BSP: 30
SP: 30
NCP: 10
CPI (M): 10
TRS: 10
TDP: 5
AAP: 4
Total: 360
Others: 33

























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