Flush Out Pessimism.. India is changing for good!

I still see a lot of pessimism about the new projects of Government of India.
I want to write in more detail here.

Wake up Indians and NRIs.. Lots of self made leaders have come up. Nirmala Sitharaman arm twisted even the powerful American lobby at WTO meet by demanding that trade facilitation has to be simultaneous with other demands of India. Even Sonia Gandhi's trusted big name Anand Sharma had compromised last time, which this first time minister has set right. Uma Bharti is on the ground trying to clean up Ganga which is a project as tough as climbing Mount Everest on one leg. The Jan Dhan Yojna is pushed by younger team so successfully, that over 7 crore new bank accounts are opened in India in just 2 months. This speed of financial inclusiveness has never happened in India's history! C'mon.. we are talking about 7,00,00,000+ bank accounts in 8 weeks, with automatic life insurance coverage and debit card, in a country where it takes 3 visits for even KYC document for existing bank account in a city bank!

India's inflation is at 5 year low. Mumbai saw a more than 3 Rupees Diesel price cut for the first time in a long time (last time was 2 rupees cut in 2009 Jan!). Indian markets are euphoric and performing better than most world markets. Naxals are surrendering in record numbers. I read recently that there has been a 20 fold increase in maoist terrorists leaving the path of terrorism in the heart of India, and joining mainstream. I saw pictures of CRPF jawans actually carrying surrendered naxals over their shoulders, giving them a mainstream society welcome. The Nehruvian central planning commission which was the white elephant slowing Indian economy is being dismantled. IMF just issued a statement that India will be a $2 Trillion economy this year itself! And might overtake Italy, Brazil and Russian GDPs before Modi's first term ends..

Never before a 1 lakh crore fund for entrepreneurs was setup by the government. I attended a seminar on how young Indians can get into manufacturing entrepreneurship. I was shocked at the energy level.. They are talking about so many start up ideas, while 3 years back 60% was just about IT industry start ups. Smart City is another topic that every MP and MLA is trying to encash on for his or her popularity.

In 1999 when the cyclone hit Odisha, 10,000 Indians died within 48 hours. The land fall speed of that cyclone was nearly 250KM ph.
Just last week, Hudhud cyclone hit not far from there, at Visakhapatnam, AP. The preparation and coordination of both AP state govt and central govt was so good, that in spite of 175+ KM land fall of the cyclone, only 24 people died within the first 48 hours. Yes 24 is also bad, but look at the progress ISRO, meteorological scientists and overall disaster relief of India has come through in the past 15 years. From 10,000 deaths to 0.24% of that 15 years later, is no mean achievement. I don't care if NDA1, UPA1, UPA2 or NDA2 takes credit. But all I say is that, there is no need to feel pessimistic about India any more.

In 2003, when Vajpayee announced Chandrayaan and pushed the scientists, it was of tall order. Not only India has exceeded Chandrayaan expectation since then, it also created all sorts of records in Mangalyaan cost. You would have heard about the euphoria at Madison Square Garden on this.. The heart burn was so big that NY Times even resorted to a racist cartoon which it had to later pull out with apology. In European papers, jasmine flower clad Indian women in saree were prominently displayed as the new face of space scientists! This particular Modi style "dono mutthi band karke" pose was in dozens of country's news papers, bringing India a new recognition.

And regarding working hours - talk to anyone visiting government offices in Dilli. Officers are there on time. Even ministers are considering it as a punishment to work under Modi now as they have to be in office till late night. All the 4 PM booking for happy hours at trendy establishments are slowing from babus. And every project, and every detail is instantly put online so transparency is at it's best level that I have seen.

Regarding the pet project of Modi, the Swacch Bharat (Clean India), I am getting 3 to 5 Swacch Bharat pictures from youngsters across India who have taken it as a challenge to clean up India. I have seen 100s of people who come from a foreign visit to India, and they start about bad mouthing the Indian "filth". Modi is the first man I have seen, who actually came back from a foreign trip, and the very next morning, had a broom in his hand cleaning up a police station's compound!!

I was so happy to see 16 and 17 year old students from a Bengaluru PU college, cleaning up a 500 year old temple pond in straight 7 hours, with no specialized tools or help. Modi's mantra of swacch Bharat has caught the imagination of India and things are going really well.

Here's another example from Rajahmundry, AP.

India is changing from bottom up as well as top down. And it's being led in most cases by young India - those in 15 to 35 age group. Their energy is mind blowing!

I heard in a recent seminar a very cautious words: India's greatest asset between 2015 and 2050 is its demographic dividend. If this is not managed well, or if anarchists and anti-India violent guys are allowed to brain wash them, it will turn into a demographic disaster. The choice is yours. Particularly the well informed, globe-trotting, rich Indians should be in the fore front of guiding young India to realize it's potential and reclaim the 25% share of world GDP that India had for 1700 out of the past 2000 years.

Flush out pessimism, irrespective of your political ideology. We are at the beginning of a very long and steep climb into prominence!

Picture credit: Hindu, NIE and Social media

Dr. Narendra Jadhav Educates On Indian Economy

Today, got a chance to hear the very well informed Dr. Narendra Jadhav. He's an expert on Babasaheb Ambedkar's letters and policies. He's also an expert in Indian economics. He has written 30 books in multiple languages. You can browse more about his illustrious career or visit his website that has plenty of information.

I gathered some very nice points from his talk. They are as follows:

a) Dr. Ambedkar was fluent in Gujarati too, apart from Marathi, Hindi and English. Most people will recognize BR Ambedkar as the constitution formulator and a strong voice against untouchability in India. But very few know that the real forte of this multi faceted man was economics. Dr. Jadhav is a great resource on Dr. Ambedkar and his economics lectures.
b) BR Ambedkar has given a total of 537 speeches in his life in 4 languages. And Dr. Jadhav has compiled all of them in his English series of books. Now planning on releasing a Hindi version by December 6th, after the Marathi versions were done.
c) After independence, PM Nehru announced that India would double it's per capita income every 10 years to double the standard of living levels. But in reality, between 1951 and 1986, India's per capita income grew only at 1.2% (growth 3.3% and population growth 2.1%). At that rate it would have taken 59 years to double India's per capita income. In comparison, China doubled in 10, Korea in 13, Malaysia and Indonesia within 2 decades!
d) LPG stood for Liquified Petroleum Gas till 1991. But soon, PV Narasimha Rao's policies made LPG stand for Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization.
e) India in spite of 16 to 17% of the world's population, only had less than 1% of the world's trade in 1991. So the fear mongering against liberalization was silly. 99.5% of the world's trading economies would not "gang up" to harm an economy that formed just 0.5% of the world's trade.
f) When Deng Xiaoping was asked how come you are liberalizing the economy being a communist, he said, I don't care if the cat is black or white.. as long as it catches mice, I will take it!
g) Post liberalization, Indian economy grew at over 6% between 1992 for over a decade. It peaked at nearly 9% in 2007-08. Without liberalization it would not have grown anywhere near it.
h) Europe is facing severe economic crunch. The larger economies have exploited the smaller ones. PIIGS = Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain, are disasters. Now all packages to save them.
g) India is at once in a very long time (centuries may be) kind of Demographic dividend advantage right now. India's average age now is 24. It will be 29 by 2020. By then, China would be 37, USA 38, Western Europe 42 and Japan at a disastrous level of 49. All these regions did very well economically when their demographic dividend was suitable. That means, more hands to work and less dependents to feed. Automatically, the savings would be highest during such situations. India has that opportunity of favourable demographic dividend for the next 15 years. If India messes during these 15 years, this would become Demographic Disaster.
h) The one important factor that Narendra Modi government must focus on during this Demographic Dividend window is the Social Sector - Education, Health and Social Amity. Unless these are taken care of, high growth can not be sustained.
i) In India, the education sector needs to be streamlined in order to realize Modi's dream of better skills for all youth. Right now, the ITI (technical training) is under one department while the general education (non technical, but engineering included) is under another department. This friction between the department of Labour and Department of HRD needs to be resolved.
j) Modi has announced a new department called Ministry for Skills development. This is a great step and a first time ever in India's history. However, this is having a Minister of State leading it, which might make it less efficient when cabinet level Labour and HRD ministries are at friction already.
k) There's a priority Schedule Caste and Tribe funds allocation per department as mandated by government policies. If the state has more SC/ST population than national average of around 18%, they must allocate more by department. But neither the center, nor the states have implemented this till date, in spite of demands for decades. Out of the 68 departments in the prior UPA government, only one had even a line item for SC/ST separate fund account.
j) Regarding black economy, India needs to think of the root causes and solve them. For instance the gold rate differential was 65% more in Mumbai 10 years ago. The 500 gram per head gold import reform of Manmohan Singh made it go to 15% making it unprofitable for smugglers. Similarly, we need strong laws in drugs and other areas to stop the hawala network. Just adding more police will only increase more corruption, and won't solve the problem.
h) Lastly, a very little known fact is that while Ambedkar was the man who initiated skill development in public sector, it was Tagore who initiated the skill development on the private sector via Sri Niketan after his Shanti Niketan project.

A good learning experience, from a very learned man!

Bharat Nirman Ads - Bogus Claims Of Jobs And Growth

It has been almost 9 months since India's tax payers money is misused to a wide extent to bombard Indians that a massive "Bharat Nirman" (India building) is happening. Every print or visual advertisement will surely have Sonia Gandhi (no one is sure what is her active and constitutionally sanctioned role in the government) and PM Manmohan Singh. More or less all these ads are hypes and I have spent time debunking many of them earlier.

Over 100 crores are clearly burnt in various Bharat Nirman ads. The one ad that always catches my attention is the Jobs related ad. The "revolution" in job creation as claimed via MNREGA has burnt crores of valuable tax money, in just the print and digital ads.

Bharat Nirman ad on jobs - source: vifindia

Keep in mind, there are three kinds of major jobs in India.

1. The regular jobs - salaried either in government or in private sector.
2. The casual jobs - like the one being advertised. These are seasonal either in private or public sectors.
3. The self employment jobs - Majority of Indians make their living in self employment or casual jobs.

"Earlier we used to search for work.. now jobs come to us" claims the young man, in that UPA ad.

Are you really sure Mrs. Sonia Gandhi?
Have you really created the crores of jobs that you claim using our tax money?

Let's explore.

Devinder Sharma, an expert in food and agriculture policy, has written a very important, fact filled article in DNA on 17th February 2014. The title of the article is Migration back to villages. If we don't understand the plight of the 60,00,00,000 farmers in India who are actively into agriculture, we just can't comment on the economy in any sensible manner. This article paints the most current picture of Indian agriculture. It not only exposes the jobs creation myth of UPA, and also exposes the hollowness of their claims on food security and land acquisition bills.

Some key excerpts from that tell us an entirely different picture.


Farmers are leaving the cities and moving back to the villages. Why? The economy has tanked in urban areas.

In the coming months, about 1.5 crore farmers who quit agriculture in the past seven years, are likely to trudge back into the villages. In normal circumstances such a massive reverse migration — from the cities back to the villages — would have been a sign of inclusive growth. But economists are taking this U-turn as a sign of economic slowdown.

When UPA talked of employment generation, it did not tell that 50,00,000 farmers of India left their farming jobs each year, to take up menial and highly unstable jobs. Who calculated these lost jobs?

In the seven-year period between 2005 and 2012, according to CRISIL an estimated 3.7 crore farmers quit agriculture. Economists view this trend as a sign of economic growth. In other words, while 50 lakh farmers are forced out of agriculture every year, growing farm unemployment is being considered as a sign of economic growth. How can pushing farmers out of agriculture sector and then finding an alternative employment for these millions displaced from agriculture constitute economic growth?

India saw mostly temporary and casual jobs that were counted as "Bharat Nirman". Here's the reality.

we are told that an estimated 70 lakh jobs are created in the non-farm sector. Considering that most of the non-farm jobs are in construction, what is not being told is that these menial jobs are temporary and do not carry any social security.

Except agriculture, everything else is collapsing during "Bharat Nirman" phase of Manmohan Singh.

At a time when there is an all round doom and gloom — industrial output failing to keep pace, manufacturing sector declining, joblessness growing, fiscal deficit mounting and the current account deficit growing to a worrisome level — it is only agriculture that provides a glimmer of hope.  

Here is a very worrying part. India emerged as the biggest exporter of rice during the years immediately after NDA government. But the so-called Bharat Nirman is almost making India an importer of rice in 3 years.

India emerged as the world’s biggest exporter of rice, and farm exports zoomed exponentially. And yet the fact remains that agriculture is the most neglected sector. Even the Prime Minister acknowledges that India is faced with terrible agrarian distress.

Already there are indications that India will turn into an importer of rice in the next three years.

UPA government is killing even the only sector that has some decent future, the agriculture.

In fact, at a time when government employees have been promised a further pay rise from the 7th Pay Commission, farmers remain at the bottom of the pile, neglected and forgotten. On an average, 2,500 farmers quit farming every day to join the army of landless workers.

UPA is not reducing the poverty, but infact making it worse. All the "garibi hatao" slogans are just eye washes, by reducing the scale with which poverty is measured.

With joblessness growing and the policy thrust on reducing subsidies for the poor and needy, the number of poor in absolute terms has been increasing. By reducing the poverty line to Rs28 in urban areas, and Rs24 in rural areas, the government can play around with figures, but the fact remains that poverty is on an upswing.

 UPA government burns public money to claim that the National Food Security Bill (FSB) is a great thing.

Food Security Bill ad - source: castingnb

But the reality exposed by Devinder Sharma is that UPA's failed policies have deliberately displaced farmers and now this FSB is just to reduce the chances of food riots when people have neither jobs nor food.

The enactment of the Food Security Act ensuring a monthly entitlement of 5 kg of rice/wheat/millet  to 67 per cent of the population or 830 million people is not only aimed at offsetting the additional burden of the unprecedented price rise, but more importantly, it is aimed at minimising the possibility of food riots that can erupt when a large section of the population is being deliberately displaced from an assured livelihood.

UPA 2 has killed India's economy. Proof.

From a high of 9.3 per cent two years ago, the GDP has fallen to less than 5 per cent in 2013.  

As opposed to UPA's Bharat Nirman claim, jobs are disappearing in India.  All the growth we saw on paper was jobless growth in totality. This is not going to help India that has 18% of the world's population.

At a time when GDP was galloping at 8-9 per cent between 2005 and 2010, the report shows 140 lakh people were displaced from agriculture. Generally it is believed that those who quit agriculture would be joining the workforce in the manufacturing sector. But the report showed that even in the manufacturing sector 57 lakh jobs were lost. A clear pointer to the jobless growth the country is witnessing.

 And lastly,  Rahul Gandhi keeps harping about the Land Acquisition bill as a great achievement of UPA government, even though he has no official role in the government (meaning, will take credit for all positive thigns, but escapes all blame for negative things like scams).

But Devinder exposes the hollowness of Rahul Gandhi's claim:

With the new land acquisition law coming into force, more people would be driven out of their meagre land holdings and forced to migrate to the cities looking for menial jobs.

Wake up India.. It's not Bharat Nirman. It's Bharat Nirnaam (ruin) that UPA government is doing.
India needs a leader with a growth track record. Not tape records. Think and vote in 2014.