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Monday, April 15, 2019

AOC's Path Ahead Is Primarily Digital

AOC's path forward might primarily be digital.



Nancy Pelosi just won't stop trolling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez





This comment from Steve Bannon is interesting. In that Bannon thinks it will be a Harris-Beto ticket on the Democratic side.

Harris is for Medicare For All, and for the Green New Deal, but she is very clear she is "not a Democratic Socialist." Beto has pretty much abandoned Medicare For All. Of the Dems that are doing well in the polls, these two are in rhetoric more to the center. In the US political system, the label socialist is still weight around the neck.





Democratic candidates may find it hard to 'change the channel' from Trump
Andrew Yang: We're undergoing the greatest economic transformation in our history For Americans who are still trying to figure out why Trump is President, the answer is simple -- we automated away millions of manufacturing jobs in the Midwest, and Trump spoke directly to the fear and anger of those voters. He promised them that he would restore those jobs -- a promise on which he has notably failed to deliver. Here's the reality, though: The financial crisis of 2008 brought our 14 million manufacturing jobs (itself a low plateau from the 17 million in 2000) down to 11.4 million, and 10 years of expansion has only brought us back up to 12.8 million...... But what happened to manufacturing workers will soon happen to retail workers, call center workers, fast food workers, truck drivers and others, as the next Industrial Revolution takes hold of our economy. ..... automation will disrupt jobs at about three times the rate of the Second Industrial Revolution, which sparked thousands of strikes and mass riots at the turn of the 20th century...... The challenge for the Democratic Party is to solve the problems that got Trump elected...... We are undergoing the greatest economic transformation in our history, and we are dealing with it by pretending nothing is happening..... it is not immigrants who are causing economic dislocations. It is technology and an evolving economy...... We must reformat our economy ..... It would be paid for by a new tax that falls most heavily on the big winners of artificial intelligence and robotics, such as Amazon, Google, Facebook and Uber...... We must separate access to quality health care from one's employment ...... a human-centered capitalism....... we need to build a trickle-up economy from our people, families and communities up. ..... a time of unprecedented technological change...... the path is not left or right, it's forward...... More than 90,000 of these individuals have donated an average of $18 to our vision, and we are set to make the debate stage in June....... Trump is the symptom, not the problem. His solutions are to turn the clock backward, build the wall and bring old jobs back. I'm suggesting we do the opposite -- accelerate our economy and society and move us forward to solve the problems that got him there in the first place.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez really thinks there’s still a way to impeach Trump
Pelosi rips AOC, says her posse in Congress is ‘like five people’ In a recent interview with USA Today, the House speaker pointed out that votes are more significant than Twitter followers — a remark that was also interpreted to be a dig at AOC. ....... “While there are people who have a large number of Twitter followers, what’s important is that we have a large number of votes on the floor of the House,” Pelosi said.





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Tuesday, April 09, 2019

Huawei Founder Ren Zhengfei

Huawei Founder Ren Zhengfei



every Chinese person was allotted only one-third of a meter of cloth. That amount could be used only for patching. So I never wore clothes without patches when I was young. ........ Back then, China was in complete chaos ..... When we just arrived at the site, it was dozens of square kilometers, and there was no housing at all. So everyone slept on the grass. ..... shabby housing that provided little shelter from the rain and wind. It was minus 20-something degrees Celsius outside ..... This was the first time that I had learned what the world's most advanced technology looked like. ...... we learned to endure hardship. ..... Our housing was very shabby, so we constantly felt cold as it could not protect us from the wind. Just imagine, the temperature could drop to minus 28 degrees Celsius....... There was no supply of fresh vegetables at all, so we had to pickle some vegetables like cabbages and radishes we got in autumn in large concrete pots, and rely on pickled foods for six months at a time. Our staple food was sorghum. It was far from delicious....... But I was happy then, because if you read too many books in other parts of the country, you could get criticised. The factory was probably one of the few places that people could read. ....... My dream back then was to reach the military rank of Lieutenant-Colonel before China disbanded its military forces. Unfortunately, that did not happen. So I'm just a veteran without a military rank. ....... In the end, I invented that instrument.... the country was trying to find readily available examples to demonstrate that science and technology were valuable. My little invention was exaggerated into something really big and it was promoted in various media outlets, including newspapers, magazines, movies, etc. And because of such massive publicity, luckily I was chosen to be a member of the National Science Conference........ that is a time when you had to be a Communist Party member even to become the head of a cooking team in the military. I was selected to attend the National Science Conference, but I was not a Communist Party member. My supervisor felt that was really strange, so with the help of party organizations, I became a Communist Party member. The reason I was not a member was not because I did not do my job well enough. It was because of my family background....... My father was labelled as a “capitalist roader”....... for an educated person back then, an intellectual, his or her background or history would be much more complicated than that of a cadre among farmers and workers........ I was a complete technical geek back then. Today, I still love my country. I support the Communist Party of China. But I will never do anything to harm any other nation. ......... over the past 30 years, our products have been used in more than 170 countries and regions, serving more than 3 billion users in total. We have maintained a solid track record in security. Huawei is an independent business organisation. When it comes to cybersecurity and privacy protection, we are committed to siding with our customers. We will never harm any nation or any individual. Secondly, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has officially clarified that no law in China requires any company to install back doors. Neither Huawei, nor I personally, have ever received any requests from any government to provide improper information............. Customer-centricity has been at the very core of Huawei's business operations since our founding. We will never do anything to harm the interests of our customers. Apple is an example we look up to in terms of privacy protection. We will learn from Apple. ....... As Meng Wanzhou's father, I miss her very much....... We are a private company, so we are able to remain committed to our long-term ideals........ Over the next five years, we are going to invest a total of more than 100 billion US dollars into R&D. Public companies, however, are unlikely to do this ....... Our decision-making system is different from public companies. It is very simple, and we are working hard to make the information society a reality. ...... We have 96,768 shareholding employees. Just a few days ago on January 12, we completed the election of the new representatives of shareholding employees at 416 polling stations across over 170 countries and regions. ....... Eventually, we will come up with 115 representatives for all shareholding employees. The Representatives' Commission, consisting of these 115 employees, is the highest decision-making authority in Huawei, and the company is owned by our 96,768 shareholding employees. ......... There is no single individual that owns even one cent of Huawei's shares without working at Huawei. There is no external institution or government department that owns our shares, not even one cent's worth. ........ When I got demobilised from the military, my wife and I received a total of CNY3,000 as compensation from the military. At the time, a minimum of CNY20,000 was required as registered capital to start a company in Shenzhen. By pooling funds from different people, I managed to get CNY21,000 to register Huawei......... Today, the total number of shares that I personally have within Huawei is 1.14 per cent, and the stake that Steve Jobs had in Apple was 0.58 per cent. That means there is still potential for my stake to be further diluted. I should learn from Steve Jobs. ........ For Huawei employees, whether they are Chinese or non-Chinese, if they violate local laws, we'll always cooperate with the investigations. ...... Within Huawei, we have a very sound internal and external compliance management system. The idea is to prevent those wrongdoings or bad things from happening. ..... In the cloud era, our society is becoming more and more complex. If we do not govern our behaviour through discipline, we might get overwhelmed....... Some countries have decided not to buy equipment from Huawei. Therefore, we can shift our focus to better serve countries that welcome Huawei. We can build high-quality networks in those countries to prove that we are trustworthy. Therefore, it's like a peaceful race from a technical point of view, and I think that is fair. ......... we are not a public company – we aren't overly concerned about beautiful numbers, or a nice-looking balance sheet. If we are not allowed to sell our products in certain markets, we would rather scale down a bit. As long as we can feed our employees, I believe there will always be a future for Huawei. ......... right now our R&D investment averages 15–20 billion US dollars per year. That puts Huawei in the top 5 position across all industries in the world in terms of R&D intensity. In total, we have been granted 87,805 patents. In the United States, we have registered 11,152 core technology patents. We are actively involved in 360+ standards bodies, where we have made more than 54,000 proposals. ........ In terms of 5G, we have signed 30-plus commercial contracts today, and we have already shipped 25,000 5G base stations. We have 2,570 5G patents. I believe that, as long as we develop very compelling products, there will be customers who will buy them........ If your products are not good, no matter how strong you go for publicity, nobody will buy them. So what matters to Huawei more is working to streamline our internal management, improve our products, and improve our services........ Huawei is the only company in the world that can integrate 5G base stations with the most advanced microwave technology. With that capability, our 5G base stations don't even need fibre connections. ....... Those countries may voluntarily approach Huawei and ask Huawei to sell them 5G products rather than banning Huawei from selling 5G systems. We are a company that is customer-centric; therefore I think it is possible that we will sell our equipment to them ........ I think the 5G standard serves as a very good foundation for humanity to move toward an intelligent world. Arbitrarily dividing technology into two different camps will only harm the interests of the world. ...... Personally, I strongly support unified global standards....... I have one son and two daughters, and I do not think my relationship with them was very close. As a father, I feel indebted to them. I once talked to all of them, asking if they would prefer we spent more time together as a family. The alternative I gave them was that I would build a platform upon which they could grow. Their response was, alright, we would choose a platform for our professional development.......... Within Huawei, Huawei's management system is one based on processes. Processes are cold things, and I do not directly supervise Ms. Meng's responsibilities, so we don't have a strong connection in the workplace, either. ........ the message to the US that I want to communicate is collaboration and shared success. In our hi-tech world, it is increasingly impossible for any single company or even any single country to do the whole thing........ In an information society, interdependence between one another is very significant. And it is these inter-dependencies that drive human society to progress even faster. The information society we are going to see will be massive. And for any single market opportunity, it cannot be sustained or supported by any single company. Instead, it calls for the concerted efforts of thousands or even tens of thousands of companies working together......... If countries or companies are frightened, let's say, by the detention of certain individuals, then those potential investors might be scared away, and the favourable environment created by tax cuts will not perform to expectations......... We are like a small sesame seed, stuck in the middle of conflict between two great powers........ The trade conflict between China and the US has not had a major impact on our business. We are expected to continue our growth in 2019, but that growth will not be greater than 20 per cent........ some people in the West believe that Huawei's equipment is stamped with some sort of ideology. That is as silly as people smashing textile machines back during the industrial revolution, as they thought advanced textile machines would disrupt the world. ....... we have made it clear in our corporate policy and fundamental business principles that we must abide by all applicable laws and regulations in the countries where we operate, including all applicable export controls and sanction laws and regulations of the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union. ......... There was nuclear leakage in Fukushima. People were evacuated from the affected areas, but Huawei employees went to the affected areas to restore telecommunications equipment. Huawei employees risked their lives and restored 680 base stations within two weeks. ....... Meng Wanzhou also flew from Hong Kong to Japan during that time. There were only two passengers on that flight. ........ a tsunami that happened in Indonesia. 47 Huawei employees restored 668 base stations in affected areas within 13 hours, supporting the disaster relief efforts......... In a lot of African countries, there is not only war, but also very serious disease. A lot of Huawei employees have contracted malaria. A great number of Huawei employees often go to war- or disease-affected areas to do their job. ......... We're able to do these things partly because we are not a public company, so we can work truly for our ideals, and for the greater good of society. Public companies tend to focus more on their financial numbers. ......... I also visited a village near Mount Everest at an altitude of 5,200 meters, as well as the base stations nearby. I told everyone that, if I'm personally afraid of death, how could I motivate my people to charge forward?........... we shouldn't allow suspicion to confuse the facts ........ President Jiang Zemin once came to visit Huawei. That was a time when Huawei was very, very small, and the floor, made of cement, was still wet, not even dry yet. President Jiang did not give any specific instructions. ..But he did encourage us to work harder............ The only reason Huawei exists is to serve our customers. ...... If authority is not tempered by constraint, it will hinder or even destroy our shared values. .......... our Articles of Governance are designed with the idea of realising a division of authority, shared progress, and checks and balances. This will ensure that the authority flows in a closed loop, and renews itself with every circulation......... The company cannot place its future squarely on the shoulders of any single individual. ....... we must stick to collective leadership ........ we completed an election that was attended by 96,768 employees across 170 countries and regions. This whole governance structure is meant to form a new institution of authority. ........ our shared values, essentially customer centricity and customer value creation ....... We have several layers of different governance bodies. For each level of governance, the roles and responsibilities are focused and clear. There are divisions of authority, while at the same time checks are conducted and balance is maintained. That will help prevent authority from becoming too concentrated. ........ one governance body within Huawei is what we call the Core Elite Group. The members of the Core Elite Group used to be board members and members of the Supervisory Board. The Core Elite Group is intended to safeguard the long-term interests of Huawei, and also is entrusted with the authority to select governance leaders. We drew inspiration from a famous European management guru, Fredmund Malik, when we designed this governance structure. ....... Seniority does not matter when we select board members. Members of the Supervisory Board are selected based on integrity. They oversee the performance of the board members and other senior executives. ........ We currently have three rotating chairmen. Each of these takes turns to be in charge for six months. During those six months, that individual is the highest leader in Huawei. ......... The Executive Committee consists of seven executives. They will vote, and a majority must be achieved before any motion can be then presented to a plenary session of the Board of Directors. ........ I don't know exactly who my successor will be. Successors will naturally appear during this circulation, and this process of renewing authority. It's not someone that I appoint. I am not a king.......... In 2019, we might face challenges and difficulties in the international market. That is why I said earlier that our growth next year would be less than 20%, and I think our annual revenue for 2019 will probably be around 125 billion US dollars. We will not take advantage of the difficulties that our peers like Nokia and Ericsson are facing, in order to seize their market shares. I also think that the macro environment is in their favour, because there are restrictions on Huawei in some countries, but there are no restrictions on those companies. Therefore, I believe they may have more opportunities than Huawei......... Several years later at an airport meeting that I had with John Chambers, he told me that he was aware of Huawei's attitude towards Cisco at the time. ........ The country should not close its door simply because of one company, Huawei....... When unexpected huge incidents happened, like US companies that suddenly decided to stop buying Huawei phones, some people in China said we should do the same to Apple's iPhones in China. My opinion was that the Chinese government should not take similar measures against Apple in China. The national interests or policies around economic reform and opening up cannot be sacrificed for the benefit of Huawei. Even in light of the recent setbacks we encountered in some Western countries, we still support China, as a country, to become even more open. I think China can become more prosperous only when it becomes more open, and continues to press ahead with its reform agenda.



The War on Huawei
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Monday, April 08, 2019

Kamala Pete 2020


Right now I am thinking in terms of a Kamala Pete ticket.

Warren, Bernie and Gillibrand should continue in the Senate. Tulsi Gabbard would be a great UN Ambassador. Beto should run for Texas Governor. Andrew Yang would be a great Secretary Of Labor who implements the Universal Basic Income.

AOC should campaign in the Fall of 2020, crisscross the country.

A Truly Global Universal Basic Income
New Political And Economic Paradigms For The Age Of Abundance
The Inequality, The Climate Change


Kamala Harris Takes Her Shot
Kamala Harris’s Trump-Size Tax Plan
Kamala Harris’s Political Memoir Is an Uneasy Fit for the Digital Era

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A Truly Global Universal Basic Income

The global GDP stands at around 90 trillion dollars. The total wealth in the world stands at 280 trillion. There are eight billion people in the world.


If you were to install a Universal Basic Income for every person on earth of $100 per month, the cost comes to 800 billion dollars per month or almost 10 trillion per year. That is not a small sum. A 3% wealth tax would pay for it. Considering much of that 10 trillion would be spent, that would lead to a rise in GDP, wealth and income. The rich might harvest it all back. So the 3% tax would be a great investment.

But this would require a world government, a biometric ID for everyone on earth, fast broadband everywhere on earth, and universal access to digital money.

The US should also follow Modi's lead and announce demonetization. That would bankrupt numerous illicit organizations.

This 3% wealth tax is of existential importance. Too much inequality is like climate change. It will lead to collapse.


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Sunday, April 07, 2019

विपक्ष की अहं भुमिका कन्हैया कुमार अकेले अदा कर रहे हैं

लोकतंत्र में विपक्ष की अहं भुमिका होती है और इस चुनाव में वो रोल कन्हैया कुमार अकेले अदा कर रहे हैं। बेगुसराय तो वो जित जाएंगे। और चुँकि वो अकेले हैं तो इसका मतलब निकलता है कि मोदी फिर से सत्ता में आएंगे। लेकिन चुनाव के बाद कन्हैया देशव्यापी दौड़ाहे पर जाते है कि नहीं, संगठन विस्तार करते हैं कि नहीं, इससे बहुत फर्क पड़ सकता है। भारत में कन्हैया का चुनाव जितना अमरिका में पिछले साल अलेक्सांद्रिया ओकाजिओ कोर्टेज का चुनाव जितने जैसा हो सकता है। चुनाव मोदी जित जाएँ लेकिन मीडिया कन्हैया के वाहवाही में लग जाए, ऐसी नौबत आ सकती है।


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New Political And Economic Paradigms For The Age Of Abundance

Right now I am thinking Kamala Harris for President, Beto for Vice President, Tulsi Gabbard for UN Ambassador, and Andrew Yang for Secretary of Labor with the mandate to implement the Universal Basic Income. And AOC as the campaigner to reach the 18-28 crowd in the Fall of 2020, with Pete accompanying.

The young Florida Republican who is championing a Green Real Deal is an ally. He is emphasizing the tech entrepreneurship aspects of the Green Deal, which will be at least 70% of the Green Deal, if you think about it. Perhaps the Green New Deal and the Green Real Deal need to be fused to create a Green Deal.

But people who are really, truly falling behind are academics. Politicians go shopping. It is academics who are to theorize new ideas. Politicians shop among those ideas.

The bad news is not that robots and AI will be capable of numerous jobs. That ought to be good news. But that abundance absent new political and economic paradigms will give rise to mass slavery like in The Hunger Games.

The inequality in America has to be talked in the same vein as climate change. Both are existential threats.

Andrew Yang is blowing Silicon Valley-style fresh air into the political discourse. But he is too apologetic. The Universal Basic Income money does not have to be a fiscal move. It needs to be a monetary move, a quantitative easing for the people. Pass a new law that says the Fed is now also responsible for administering the UBI.

If all educational material can be online and free, why is the cost of education not dropping dramatically?

True, you can not bring all eight billion people to America. But who needs to? What is America but an idea? Once there is fast broadband every spot on earth, land or ocean, that opens up a new paradigm. Biometric ID is more powerful than a US social security number. Digital money is more convenient than $100 bills.

The UBI should truly be universal. Give every human being on earth a biometric ID, and give everyone a UBI of $100 a month to start with, paid for by their data wells. All data any company gathers on any individual is owned by the individual. Commercialization of that data pays for the UBI, to start at $100 a month and then to go upwards.

It is obvious you need a world government. America does not want immigrants. But America will also stand in the way of a true world government. You can not have it both ways.

I am for taxing the rich. I am for a wealth tax.

But the bigger problem is how money gets parked in tax havens. Trillions of dollars are idling in the tax havens of the world. And the tax havens exist for the simple reason that a world government does not exist.

Digital money is very different from physical money. It is as different as steam is from water. Digital money asks for a rethink on the fundamentals of finance. Couple digital money with the Blockchain and now finance asks for physics like thorough thinking.

But then the spiritual is supreme. Enormous rises in productivity will simply lead to enormous rises in chaos if the spiritual is not at the center. The 40,000 Christian denominations need to talk to one another and put out the scriptural fires and become one conglomeration in terms of organization and reach out to the other faiths. If you dig deep enough you will realize that all major faiths are pointing towards the same ladder to paradise.

The Democrats running for president are a formidable bunch.


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Friday, April 05, 2019

The Inequality, The Climate Change

The inequality is as existential a threat as Climate Change. Taken far enough both will lead to a sudden collapse of the country, and civilization. There is ongoing denial on both fronts. Radical solutions are needed for both.

Why and How Capitalism Needs to Be Reformed (Part 1)
Over these many years I have also seen capitalism evolve in a way that it is not working well for the majority of Americans because it's producing self-reinforcing spirals up for the haves and down for the have-nots. This is creating widening income/wealth/opportunity gaps that pose existential threats to the United States because these gaps are bringing about damaging domestic and international conflicts and weakening America’s condition. ....... I think that most capitalists don’t know how to divide the economic pie well and most socialists don’t know how to grow it well, yet we are now at a juncture in which either a) people of different ideological inclinations will work together to skillfully re-engineer the system so that the pie is both divided and grown well or b) we will have great conflict and some form of revolution that will hurt most everyone and will shrink the pie.


The Next Recession Might Force The US To Do Universal Basic Income

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Tuesday, April 02, 2019

A Tale Of Two Cities



'Unhinged': President Trump and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz trade insults over Puerto Rico relief "Pres Trump continues to embarrass himself & the Office he holds," she tweeted. "He is unhinged & thus lies about the $ received by PR.".... Resuming the argument Tuesday morning, Trump again claimed that "Puerto Rico got 91 Billion Dollars for the hurricane," but it is not clear where he got that figure, and actual spending is not close to that. A FEMA report said it passed the $3 billion mark in public assistance to Puerto Rico in August........Ricardo Rossello, the governor of Puerto Rico, admonished Trump over his false claim of $91 billion......."Mr. President: STOP spreading misinformation!" he tweeted. "#PuertoRico has not received $91b (only 300M in permanent work). It's not 'us' vs 'them'. It's about Americans in need."
Trump claims Puerto Ricans ‘take from USA,’ criticizes hurricane relief funding President Donald Trump claimed Puerto Ricans “take from USA” in a series of tweets Tuesday, despite Puerto Rico being a U.S. territory and its more than 3 million residents are American citizens..... By comparison, $120 billion has been spent on damages from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

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Monday, March 25, 2019

क्या प्रशांत किशोर नरेन्द्र मोदी के उत्तराधिकारी हैं?





मान लो मोदी वाकइ में चीन के डेंग सिआओपिंग के भारतीय रूप हैं और वो लगातार १५-२० साल शासन करते हैं। भारत के अर्थतंत्र को सही नेतृत्व देते रह जाते हैं। जो कि आसान काम नहीं है। भारत लोकतंत्र है। मोदी चुनाव के बाद चुनाव जितते रहेंगे ऐसा कोइ गारंटी तो है नहीं।

लेकिन मान लो वैसा हुवा। वो डेलिवर करते गए। चुनाव जितते गए।

तो उसके बाद उनका उत्तराधिकारी कौन? स्वाभाविक है मोदी के ही जेनेरशन का कोइ नहीं। तो अगले जनरेशन का कौन? अखिलेश, राहुल, आदि हैं। लेकिन उस अगले जेनेरशन के सबसे प्रतिभाशाली व्यक्ति हैं प्रशांत किशोर। राजनीतिक कुशलता के हिसाब से वही दिख रहे हैं।

तो उनके लिए रास्ता क्या है? क्या हो सकता है? जिस तरह अमरिका में अलेक्सांद्रिया ओकाजिओ कोर्टेज राष्ट्रपति बनेगी वैसे ही कहा जा सकता है प्रशांत किशोर भारत के प्रधान मंत्री बनने के लायक हैं।

रास्ता ये हो सकता है कि वो अगले चुनाव में पटना पहुँचते हैं और नीतिश के नम्बर दो बनते हैं। उसके बाद के चुनाव में नीतिश स्वेच्छा से रिटायर हो जाते हैं और प्रशांत को अपना उत्तराधिकारी घोषित करते हैं। और अभी से तभी तक प्रशांत अपनी पार्टी जदयु को लगातार बिहार से बाहर विस्तार करते हैं।

तो एक बार बिहार में मंत्री, उसके बाद मुख्य मंत्री। तब तक मोदी रिटायर होने के कागार पर रहेंगे शायद।

तो NDA की नम्बर दो पार्टी के नेता होते हुवे भी वो उस गठबंधन के तरफ से देश के प्रधान मंत्री बन सकते हैं। लेकिन कमसेकम ५० सांसद तो अपनी चाहिए।

अर्नब की इतनी शालीन इंटरव्यू आपने कभी देखी है? मैंने तो नहीं देखी। फिदा हैं प्रशांत पर।

बिहार २०२५
बिहार 
बिहार २०२५

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Thursday, March 21, 2019

Who Will Win India 2019?



A national election in the world's largest democracy is quite an event. It goes on for weeks for one. The campaign itself lasts only a few weeks. It is not a year-long lurch like in the US. But then, at some level, the campaign is never over. There is always a major election right around the corner somewhere in India. Only a few months back the Congress elbowed the BJP out of power in three major states. But then the Pakistan-India ruckus happened, and that was advantage BJP, politically speaking.

Polls are notoriously off in India. Poll numbers have missed the mark consistently over the last several elections. It might be because the majority of Indian voters are out of reach for pollsters. In the 2014 election, the BJP performed much better than any poll had forecast. It ended up with a comfortable majority. It was a replay of the Rajiv Gandhi victory for Congress in 1984.

What will happen this time? It is hard to tell. Has Modi delivered? Yes and no. The land reform and the labor market reform that might have upped job creation were both opposed and successfully, despite Modi throwing his weight behind them. Major work has been done on the infrastructure front. India has climbed up in the ease of doing business index. The jump is huge. Through his relentless travels, Modi has put India on the global map.

But then Atal Bihari Vajpayee lost in 2004. It looked like he might win.

Right now looks like the BJP led alliance, the NDA, will win, and Modi will come back as Prime Minister. But should that not happen do not expect Rahul Gandhi to become Prime Minister. The non-Congress, non-BJP parties will want someone like Mamata Banerjee or Chandrababu Naidu to take the lead. But Modi is still the most popular politician in India by a wide margin. He does not seem to have competition.


NDA to win majority with 283 seats in 2019 Lok Sabha Polls: Times Now-VMR survey
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is likely to come to power with a majority on its own, an opinion poll by Times Now-VMR completed after the Balakot air strikes has predicted. The survey predicted the NDA to get as much as 282 seats - 10 over the halfway mark - leaving the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance ( UPA) way behind with 136 seats. Other parties which include the SP-BSP-RLD and non aligned parties like the BJD, Telangana Rashtriya party and YSR Congress could end up with 136. The predicted tally for the NDA is 54 seats less than what it got in 2014.























Math Over Popularity In UP, Edge For Gathbandhan: Prannoy Roy's Analysis
the Mayawati-Akhilesh Yadav combo alone could bring down the NDA score in the state from 73 to 37, even if Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity is at the level of the 2014 national election....... The addition of Congress to the mix could have deducted another 14 seats from the NDA tally, reducing it to 23 seats, data shows.
Lok Sabha polls: Modi-BJP show all the way, no chance for Rahul Gandhi as PM, predicts satta bazaar
The satta bazaar predicts 55 seats for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh
The Man Who Predicted 2014 Indian Election Reveals Who Will Take The Throne In 2019
The last election was not about the party but the leader. Similarly, the 2019 election will also be about the leader. The seasoned people are talking about party politics while the youth is focused on the leader ..... the world will be ruled by four nationalist Narendra Modi, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Benjamin Netanyahu. ....... I am picking data from rural India. How many families have benefited from the cooking gas and electricity? How many have got access to toilets and how many kids are going to school now? When I study this I am getting a figure of fifty crore. Even in forty-fifty crore, being a conservative I divide it by two, it is twenty crore. You know in 2014, the elections were won by a small margin of 1.4 crore and here you have a larger swing. So my calculation says 2019 belongs to Modi.
Why India's Pollsters Will Have A Tough Time Predicting Election 2019 In the last three elections, opinion polls have been significantly off the mark.
in the last three elections, polls have been significantly off the mark. In 2004 and 2009 the victorious Congress alliance was completely underestimated, while in 2014 only Bajaj’s firm predicted the BJP would win an outright majority. ..... if two regional parties already in alliance joined forces with the main opposition Congress, the BJP would be wiped out in the state, almost certainly losing power nationally.
BJP will lose seats but win 2019 Lok Sabha polls, says survey August 21, 2018
According to the India Today’s Mood of the Nation (MOTN) July 2018 poll, the NDA will be back in power with 281 seats, nine seats ahead of the half-way mark in the 543-member Lok Sabha. However, but the BJP will lose its majority and slide down to 245 seats. The UPA will be far behind with 122 seats and the Congress will increase its tally to 83 seats. ..... The BJP, according to the poll, will come down from the 282 seats it had won in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections but will increase its vote share from 31.34 per cent to 36 per cent. ..... The Congress, on the other hand, will increase its seat tally from the 44 it won in 2014 to 83 seats, while its vote share will go up from 19.52 to 31 per cent...... The ‘Others’, who are basically fence-sitters, are predicted to get a whopping 140 seats with a 33 per cent of the vote share in the Lok Sabha. ...... Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to be the favourite for the top job with 49 per cent of the respondents rooting for him while 27 per cent of the respondents favoured Congress President Rahul Gandhi for the post.
Prashant Kishor's PM Prediction for 2019 Polls Will Have BJP Cheering
Prashant Kishor said on Monday that Narendra Modi would return as the Prime Minister after Lok Sabha polls ..... A resident of Buxar district in the state, Kishor shot to fame in 2014 when he managed the poll campaign for Narendra Modi, then the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP, which went on to put up its best-ever electoral performance....... A year later, he collaborated with Kumar who returned to power for his third consecutive term after registering a handsome victory in the assembly polls...... Among NDA constituents, the JD(U) is the third largest after the BJP and the Shiv Sena.
2019 Elections in India: Modi Won't Have It Easy January 3, 2019
Contrary to the traditional political punditry that the 2019 elections would be a ritual to re-elect the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the miraculous return of the opposition Indian National Congress (INC) under Rahul Gandhi in state elections has thrown a major spanner in Modi’s works. ...... The INC has thrashed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh (114 of 230 seats), Rajasthan (99 of the 200 seats) and Chhattisgarh (68 of the 90 seats), which account for 65 seats in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of India’s bicameral parliament). In the 2014 general elections, the BJP had won 62 of these 65 seats. ........ When the BJP swept to power in 2014, winning 282 of the 543 seats, it became the first political party in thirty years to win an outright majority in India. ...... The regional and sub-national parties will the x-factor in India’s 2019 election. They would be the kingmakers who will be critical in determining who forms the next government.
Inside India's Colossal, Colorful, Tough-to-Predict Election
India’s elections have been notoriously difficult to predict because of the endless possibilities of coalitions. ...... In 2014, the Election Commission of India deployed 3.7 million polling staff, 550,000 security personnel, 56 helicopters and 570 special trains to conduct a five-week-long exercise in close to a million polling stations. ...... The commission sets up a polling booth for a lone voter in the Gir forest in western state of Gujarat, where lions roam. It also protected a polling station in Chhattisgarh by deploying a medical team to prevent a swarm of honeybees attacking voters....... now 430 million Indians own a smartphone, half a billion use the Internet, 300 million use Facebook, 200 million send messages on WhatsApp and 30 million are on Twitter. It means political parties and candidates will aggressively use new technology and social media to win the hearts and minds of young voters.
Why opinion poll predictions are drifting away from reality
View: Nobody knows anything about India's huge elections
The last elections, in 2014, threw up a result that had been unthinkable for three decades: a clear majority for one party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. While repeating that mandate isn’t impossible, it will be extremely difficult. The BJP doesn’t have much of a presence outside the north and west of India and, for its majority in 2014, it had to win almost all the seats in which it was competitive. In the end, Modi himself only won a little more than 30 per cent of the vote. ...... This time around, Modi faces a more difficult task. Memories of the Congress years have faded. And his own performance as prime minister has been, at best, underwhelming. Government officials may claim that India is growing faster now than it ever has, but few people believe that. What everyone knows is that jobs are hard to come by and that farmers in particular are suffering. ....... He has never stopped campaigning. In 2014, he was an exciting novelty; in 2019 he is an institution. His face is everywhere, on walls and in newspapers, above reminders of one government welfare program or another. He has a radio show, his government can count on support from tame television channels and, of course, he still has Twitter. ..... voters aren’t pleased with the state of the economy or with the BJP’s administrative skills. ..... Few outside Modi’s own circle believed that he would win a majority in 2014. In 1999, the BJP won fewer seats -- after a border skirmish with Pakistan -- than predicted. In 2004, the BJP government was unexpectedly voted out. And, in 2009, the Congress increase in seat strength startled pretty much every observer. ..... Nobody ever knows quite what the Indian electorate will produce on counting day.
Will BJP win Lok Sabha polls 2019? Here's what top pollsters predict
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Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Hasan Minhaj: Patriot Act: Indian Elections Edition

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