M. K. Bhadrakumar — SCO summit: Inflection point for Indian diplomacy

When India applied for SCO membership or when observers like myself felt elated when India was finally admitted into the grouping in 2017, no one could have foreseen that the grouping held such potential in the very near term itself as a platform for the reset of regional politics — in particular, the India-Pakistan-China triangle.

New possibilities are opening up for Indian diplomacy at the two-day summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) at Bishkek on June 13-14....

India Punchline
SCO summit: Inflection point for Indian diplomacy
M. K. Bhadrakumar | retired diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service

Alexei Kupriyanov — Towards Strategic Autonomy of India: Narendra Modi Continues His Economic and Social Reforms

The national elections in India have brought victory to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The NDA has won a stable majority in the lower house of parliament. This means that the right-wing coalition will remain in power for at least another five years, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be able to continue his economic and social reforms, as well as be able to operate with a free hand in the international arena.

India takes a hyper-nationalist (Hindutva dominated), neoliberal (neo-fascist*) turn to catch up in the global race in order to assume its rightful place as one of the largest and most advanced countries. 

Absolute GDP as a measure of development in addition to growth is largely determined by population size and productivity. India, with a billion plus population, now aims to increase its productivity to rival China and eventually overtake the US, which has high productivity but a less numerous population than India and China. 

In fact, it is this dynamic that is driving the historical dialectic on the grand scale, with Europe desperately trying to unite as a social, political and economic bloc to prevent being eaten by larger predators.

I would look at this as late-stage capitalism economically as the emerging world seeks to mirror the success of the developed world using developed world ideas. This creates a dialectic as an oppositional interplay between traditionalism, which is country or region specific, and liberalism, which is Western, in an environment in which the West assumes that domination is its natural place in the order of things and that liberalism is the only way to progress. 

Getting interesting watching the internal oppositions/contradictions (Widersprüche for Marx) manifest, often as antagonisms.

Valdai Analytics
Towards Strategic Autonomy of India: Narendra Modi Continues His Economic and Social Reforms

Alexei Kupriyanov

*What do I mean by "neo-fascist"? 

Neoliberalism is a political theory that views government as an ally of capital with labor (people) and land (the environment, the commons) considered as means to that end, progress being measured by economic growth. 

Alexander Dugin has pointed out that there are four political theories that have been contending for the past century — liberalism, fascism, communism and traditionalism. He views fascism and communism as declining, and liberalism and traditionalism rising.  The only purely communist country left is North Korea, China and Cuba both having introduced liberal reforms if not liberalism itself. He believes that fascism died out as a result of WWII. 

I think it is premature to write of either fascism or communism. One can instead view China as modernizing Marxism-Leninism rather than giving it up. Neither Marx nor Lenin were static thinkers and they would probably agree that their ideas should not be treated as dogma but in terms of their being representative of "moments" in the historical dialectic. China is rising and its system in competing quick well in a hostile world, thank you.

I am increasingly convinced that neoliberalism is combination of liberalism and fascism, similar to the way China is combining communism and liberalism. Neoliberalism is a political theory that views economic liberalism ("capitalism") as the driver of social and political liberalism ("liberal democracy"). Social and political liberalism as liberal democracy follow from economic liberalism that delivers prosperity. Classical economic liberalism (laissez-faire) was about terminating the dominant role of government under feudalism. This was complete by the end of WWI and the displacement of monarchy and aristocracy as the dominant form of governance in Europe.

But then the ruling elites realized that since capitalism meant favoring capital (property ownership) over the other factors of production, labor (people) and land (the environment and the commons), "progress" could be fostered and promoted by allying capital with governance. 

Mussolini and Gentile viewed fascism as the merger of state and corporate power. This is what neoliberalism aims at, with the state captured by the ruling elite as the most qualified to govern, and under neoliberal globalization not only the nation but also the world. The reality is that neoliberal globalization has been advanced by international organizations and technocrats at the expense of liberal democracy nationally since there is no accountability.

Moon of Alabama — India's U-Turn Destroys Trump's Anti-Chinese 'Quad' Strategy

India give the finger to the US. Moon of Alabama provides the back story. As usual follow the money. Indian politics is notoriously corrupt. Prime Minister Modi get caught out and had to shift gears.

The other back story is that DJT is now onboard with the US military and deep state's global strategy for world domination by submitting Russia and China to US dominance. 

"America First" as taken on new meaning. The president has apparently decided now that Iraq was not the strategic blunder had had believed.

The game on the grand chessboard is about to get a lot more "interesting" in the many faceted reality show. More popcorn please.

Moon of Alabama
India's U-Turn Destroys Trump's Anti-Chinese 'Quad' Strategy

b

Also

Fort Russ Press
Why is India NOT Afraid of U.S Sanctions

Paul Antonopoulos

See also

Fear of defeat drives military men to folly. Early in 1968, General William Westmoreland, America’s commanding general in Vietnam, feared that communist forces might overrun U.S. military positions at Khe Sanh. His response, according to recently declassified cables as reported in the New York Times today, was to seek authorization to move nuclear weapons into Vietnam. He planned to use tactical nuclear weapons against concentrations of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops. President Lyndon Johnson cancelled Westmoreland’s plans and ordered that discussions about using nuclear weapons be kept secret (i.e. hidden from the American people), which for the last fifty years they have been.

Westmoreland and the U.S. military/government had already been lying to the American people about progress in the war. Khe Sanh as well as the Tet Offensive of 1968 were illustrations that there was no light in sight at the end of the tunnel — no victory loomed by force of arms. Thus the call for nuclear weapons to be deployed to Vietnam, a call that President Johnson wisely refused to countenance....

Recall that five-star Gen. Douglas MacArthur, winner of the war in Pacfic and one of the most popular people in the US at the time wanted to use nuclear weapons against China after they entered the Korean War. Truman fired him. MacArthur returned to a ticker tape in Manhattan and became chairman of the board of Remington Rand and later of the Sperry Rand.

Bracing Views
Fear of Defeat and the Vietnam War

William J. Astore | retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) who taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School and now teaches at the Pennsylvania College of Technology

Jerri-Lynn Scofield — What India Can Teach the US About a Federal Job Guarantee

India has for more than a decade had a rural jobs guarantee program in place, for unskilled workers. If India can succeed in designing and implementing such a policy, why can’t the US?

Economist Jayati Ghosh wrote this assessment of The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (MGNREGA) in The Guardian in 2015:

Naked Capitalism
What India Can Teach the US About a Federal Job Guarantee
Jerri-Lynn Scofield

Ross Chainey — Narendra Modi: These are the 3 greatest threats to civilization

Climate change, terrorism and the backlash against globalization are the three most significant challenges to civilization as we know it, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2018 in Davos, Switzerland.

These are all conditions either caused by or strongly influenced by neoliberalism, which entails neo-imperialism and neocolonialism, as well as "colonizing" the vast majority of the populations of the developed countries that heretofore had been more or less exempt. The results are environmental pillage, inequality of income and wealth to more an more wealth concentrating at the top, and the substitution of transnational corporatism for democracy. The reaction is becoming clear as the historical dialectical responds — social unrest, political divisiveness and increasing conflict.

Prime Minister Modi puts his finger on the problem and then offers neoliberal nostrums for addressing it.

World Economic Forum
Narendra Modi: These are the 3 greatest threats to civilization
Ross Chainey, Digital Media Specialist, World Economic Forum

Also

Branko Milanovic sums it up:

This return to the industrial relations and tax policies of the early 19th century is bizarrely spearheaded by people who speak the language of equality, respect, participation, and transparency. None of them is in favor of “Master and Servant Act” or forced labor. It just so happened that the language of equality has been harnessed in the pursuit of structurally most inegalitarian policies over the past fifty years, or more. And indeed, it is much more profitable to call journalists and tell them about the nebulous schemes whereby 90% of wealth will be, over an unknown number of years and under unknowable accounting practices, given away as charity than to pay suppliers and workers reasonable rates or stop selling information about the users of platforms. It is cheaper to place a sticker about the fair trade than to give up the use of zero-hour contracts.

They are loath to pay a living wage, but they will fund a philharmonic orchestra. They will ban unions, but they will organize a workshop on transparency in government.So in a year, they will be back in Davos and perhaps a new record in dollar wealth per square foot will be achieved, but the topics, in the conference halls and on the margins, will be again the same. And it will go on like this…until it does not.Global Inequality

Dutiful dirges of Davos
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

See also

The following post is wonkish not mathematically but conceptually. But Alexander Dugin puts his finger on it in distinguishing between the person and the individual. The person is the total human being with all the unique of a personality and social relations, embedded in a historical, geographical and cultural contest. The individual is the person stripped of every sort of different that distinguishes human beings from each other. The individual is reduced to homo economicus, a black box that operates on stimulus response to maximize self-interest. The individual can serve as an atomistic "representative agent," while the person cannot owing to personal uniqueness and systemic relationships.

The Fourth Political Theory
The Economic Personality
Alexander Dugin

Vijay Chada — Modi on the right track as India jumps in World Bank ranking

It’s getting easier to do business in India. That’s not a boast by the Modi government, but something “confirmed” by the World Bank’s latest global survey on Doing Business.

Informal reports over recent weeks had suggested India would score a better grade than the 142nd ranking the country got in the DB report in 2015, the cut-off date for which was June 1, 2014 – just a week after Narendra Modi took over as prime minister.

In just three years India has jumped a massive 42 ranks higher, into the top 100 countries out of the 190 ranked by the World Bank. Modi has publicly stated that he would like to see India break into the top 50 countries in the rankings by 2020. And there’s a chance that could happen....

India breaking out?

Asia Times
Modi on the right track as India jumps in World Bank ranking
Vijay Chada

Jayati Ghosh — The Golden “Diwali Gift”

The Modi government made its supposed determination to end corruption in India its signature theme. The massive damage done by demonetisation as well as the continuing chaos produced by the flawed introduction of the Goods and Services Tax have all been justified on the grounds of reducing possibilities of corruption and tax avoidance. Similarly, the imposition of Aadhaar requirements on the population for access to all manner of publicly provided goods and services is regularly justified on the grounds of reducing “leakages” and misappropriation of benefits. The Prime Minister has sought to burnish his image of anti-corruption crusader through emotional appeals and dramatic public claims that he is willing to be sacrificed for the larger good of “cleaning up” the country.

Yet, like so many other policy initiatives of this government, the heavily publicised anti-corruption moves also were mostly about optics and hype rather than substantive change, since the quiet, careful and systematic measures that could have dented various types of corrupt practices at different levels were rarely undertaken....

Real-World Economics Review Blog
The Golden “Diwali Gift”

Jayati Ghosh | Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Jayati Ghosh — The De-Digitisation of India

Back to business as usual. Nothing accomplished other than a lot of hassle.

TripleCrisis
The De-Digitisation of India

Jayati Ghosh | Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi

Achin Vanaik — Hindutva’s Forward March

This March, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won regional elections in four out of five states, including Uttar Pradesh (UP). This huge prize represents a qualitative advance for the party and the Hindu nationalist Sangh Parivar it represents, giving greater legitimacy to their long-term goal of establishing a Hindu state in all but name.

Is India ceasing to be an outpost of liberal democracy and moving in the direction of theocratic nationalism? Something to keep an eye on.

But economics is fundamental, and here Prime Minister Modi is a neoliberal.

The Modi regime’s greatest weakness comes from its economic failures. For example, the demonetization scheme represented a massive failure. Modi designed his program to attack the black economy’s cash flow, but the most important component of the informal economy is the stock of wealth held in immovable assets or stashed abroad. The government promised that the program’s success would make up for the short-term disruption to the most vulnerable people, but most of the old notes have returned to the formal banking sector. This means that the elites, who hoarded wads of cash, have converted their wealth into legitimate bank holdings that they can now earn interest on. The scheme’s mismanagement has helped lower average growth rates over the last two years. Modi’s promise of greater prosperity for the vast majority has not and will not be fulfilled. 

His greatest failure, however, is a structural one, embedded in his economic policies of neoliberalism: neither he nor his government can ever provide enough good-paying jobs for the nation. The already poor and precarious will face increasing deprivation, and lower middle-class youth will watch their opportunities fade away. 

How these economic frustrations will crystallize politically between now and the next general elections — and what forces will take advantage of them — remains the most important unknown.

India is in considerable turmoil as it deals with its relationship with the modern world and how to fit in without losing its "Indian soul."

Jacobin
Hindutva’s Forward March
Achin Vanaik

Anusha Venkat — Twitter users mock ‘clueless American’ after Modi interview

According to reports, NBC posted a teaser on Twitter on Friday in which Modi praised a picture of Kelly posing with an umbrella. Clearly surprised by his use of the microblogging site, she asked the prime minister, “Are you on Twitter?” Modi laughed off her question.

With over 30.3 million followers, Modi is the third most followed politician on Twitter.

Asia Times
Twitter users mock ‘clueless American’ after Modi interview
Anusha Venkat

Norbert Häring — How India became Bill Gates’ guinea pig: A conspiracy as recounted by the main actors

Microsoft’s Bill Gates is one of the richest and most influential people on earth. He announced in 2015 that his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was aiming at achieving full digitalization of the payment systems of India and other populous developing countries by 2018. This “financial inclusion” program for India dates back to well before Narendra Modi came to power. It was elevated to official US policy by Executive Order in 2012, because the President saw vital US security interests are at stake....

Real-World Economics Review Blog
How India became Bill Gates’ guinea pig: A conspiracy as recounted by the main actors

Norbert Häring, Handelsblatt

See also

The Indian ‘no more cash’ experiment

Merijn Knibbe

Ian Hall — Modi’s vision for India as a normative power

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s energetic conduct of India’s foreign policy has attracted much public and academic attention. Yet his desire to see India become what he calls a vishwa guru— which loosely translates as ‘world guru’ — has received relatively little attention. This is in spite of its prominence in high profile speeches like the one he gave in Sydney in November 2014. 

For Modi, India as a vishwa guru is an India that draws deeply from its extraordinary cultural, religious and philosophical inheritance to tackle pressing transnational challenges. These include issues like climate change, sustainable development, terrorism and helping to rewrite the now fraying rules of the international order. It implies an India that introduces people to the wisdom found in aspects of Hindu thought, and brings about lasting social and political change.…

India is vishwa guru or world teacher as the seat of sanatana dharma or the eternal teaching, also known as the perennial teaching, and perennial wisdom. But this is manifestly not true as matter of fact in the present context.

Above all, Modi faces a problem that Nehru also struggled to overcome: the gap between rhetorical commitments and practical realities at home, particularly between laudable ideas like religious tolerance and the everyday challenges posed to religious freedom in India by social discrimination and communal violence.

This is owing to religious Hinduism being a vessel for the eternal teaching, just like other religions and wisdom traditions, whereas the eternal teaching is different from its manifestation and expression in history, as must be as a matter of logic if the teaching is actually timeless and non-local. This is especially the case when the level of collective consciousness is not advanced enough to support it other than on a limited scale.

When the vessel is confused or conflated with the contents of the vessel, then misconceptions pervade the teaching. This is mistaking the chaff for the kernel, the husk with the fruit.

Without leading by example, a teaching remains merely intellectual and is ineffectual.

When orthodoxy or fundamentalism prevails in interpretation, the letter dominates the spirit.

But Modi has the right idea anyway. Manifesting this is a matter of raising collective consciousness to a more universal level.

East Asia Forum
Modi’s vision for India as a normative power
Ian Hall | Acting Director of the Griffith Asia Institute and Professor at the School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University

Sergey Fedotov — India considers Russia its "abiding" friend - Narendra Modi

So much for the US prying India out of the embrace of Russia.

Russia & India Report
India considers Russia its "abiding" friend - Narendra Modi
Sergey Fedotov

Zero Hedge — Foxconn Fires 25% Of India Workers As Demonetization Destroys Sales

While piecemeal anecdotes and surveys have already exposed the devastation that PM Modi's demonetization plan has had on the Indian economy, tonight we see the first hard evidence as Foxconn has asked 25% of its workforce to leave after the cash ban caused sales to collapse by 50% forcing the company to slash production by half.

Unintended consequences of doing stupid stuff.

Zero Hedge
Foxconn Fires 25% Of India Workers As Demonetization Destroys Sales

Tyler Durden

Sashi Sivramkrishna — What Does Modern Money Theory Tell us About Demonetisation?

Introducing India to MMT.

The Wire
What Does Modern Money Theory Tell us About Demonetisation?

Sashi Sivramkrishna | Professor of Economics at Narsee Monjee Institute for Managment Studies, Bengaluru, and author of In Search of Stability: Economics of Money, History of the Rupee, Manohar, New Delhi, 2015

Anandi Sharan — Modern Money Theory And The Demonetisation Catastrophe In India

The argument of this paper is thus that a government can never run out of money. It can rather, by definition, afford to provide full employment and all the other things mandated by the constitution in the directive principles of public poli….

Basically Modern Money Theory shows that there is no solvency risk for a government that issues its own currency. It can’t go bankrupt. It’s not possible for it to run out. You cannot spend more than tax revenue and go bust, because you can always issue more currency. But you can put your own constraints: so in (the US there is debt limit, no other country has this, the US has had it since 1913. But the debt limit has always been raised as needed, so it was a constraint that was never constraining. But sometimes there is a pressure like a political pressure recently by Republicans to try to enforce policy change. You can impose a debt limit constraint and force the government to default on its promise to pay on bonds, or social security, that is a self imposed constraint. In fact Congress can just get rid of the debt limit all together, because it is stupid.) (In India the Fiscal Reserve and Budgetary Management Act is a similar constraint that should be abolished) . There is no reason why the government cannot continue to spend simply by issuing more currency. The government debt is nothing other than private sector savings. If you have your own currency, you can always afford to spend more, so you can always afford full employment. The policy implication of modern money theory is thus that you can afford full employment and all the other things mentioned in the directive policies. There may be inflation but you cannot run out of money….

In other words the government does not understand that it can issue credit to millions of household and state government and other accounts to create demand and create work and create the money that will later come back in tax, to replace the failed global corporations, but it is in any case not the tax that is financing government spending but the money that the government has created in order for the households and small firms to be able to pay tax.

CounterCurrents
Modern Money Theory And The Demonetisation Catastrophe In India
Anandi Sharan, environmental historian and Board member of the global environmental platform CBD Alliance

Ramanan — Remonetisation

On 8th November 2016, at around 8pm, the Prime Minister of India, in a shock announcement, announced that 86% of currency notes in circulation—notes denominated ₹500 and ₹1,000—are no longer legal tender from midnight. Instead new notes with denominations ₹500 and ₹2,000 will be issued. The press is calling this “demonetisation”, although “remonetisation” seems to be a better word.…

Ramanan explains.

The Case for Concerted Action
Remonetisation
V. Ramanan

Major Singh — 180 million Workers Strike Back in India

On Friday the 2nd of September 2016 the biggest single strike action in world history took place in India. As many as between 150 and 180 million workers took part in the All India Strike around a 12 point charter of demands put forward by the Central Trade Unions. These included a raise to the minimum wage and pension for all workers, an end to privatization of state owned enterprises and contractorisation of the workforce, a halt to price hikes, the enforcement of labour rights and the scrapping of pro-employer labour law amendments.…

The strike was met with more organized governmental resistance than Occupy Wall Street across the US coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security, but it came off anyway in spite of the intense repression.

Unlike Occupy, the strikers put forward a 12 point list of demands.

Defend Democracy
180 million Workers Strike Back in India
Major Singh

Zaid Jilani — Indians Staged One of the Largest Strikes in History, But No One on U.S. Cable News Covered It

Ten Indian trade unions staged one of the largest strikes in human history on Friday, with tens of millions of public sector workers participating in a shutdown of parts of the Indian economy to protest Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic plans.

But if you’re an American relying on cable news, it would be hard to know it ever happened.

Not a single American cable news network ran a segment focused on India’s massive strike, even on Labor Day, the U.S.’s annual holiday dedicated to workers.
The strike came after Modi began a push for increased foreign investment and privatization of some state-run industries. Unions fear these policies will undermine both wages and employment.

The size of the strike alone forced the government to offer concessions prior to Friday in an attempt to avert it, offering a boost in the minimum wage for some non-skilled workers and the unfreezing of some public employee bonuses.

The unions were not persuaded by this offer. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his fight is with poverty, but it seems his fight is with the poor in this country,” Indian National Trade Union Congress Vice President Ashok Singh said prior to the strike.

Indian labor is not buying neoliberalism.

The Intercept
Indians Staged One of the Largest Strikes in History, But No One on U.S. Cable News Covered It

Zaid Jilani

M K Bhadrakumar — Modi creates a legacy in China ties

The Indian policymakers are barking up the wrong tree. Such tantrums as Delhi is displaying can only make India look foolish — not only in Beijing but in the world capitals too, which take China’s rise as the most consequential event in modern history. Chinese writings increasingly have an air of condescension toward the Modi government’s policies. Worse still, a window of opportunity is closing on a potentially productive relationship that could help advance India’s development meaningfully, which ought to have been Modi’s top priority today — not geopolitics.

China is developing rapidly while India remains a basket case relatively with little hope on the horizon without major changes that will be difficult to implement without enormous restructuring across the board. The development that is taking place is under the aegis of US firms with the aim of extracting economic rent rather than assisting Indians.

Development will be very difficult for India even under the best of circumstances owing to demographics. For example the average IQ of the population of China is 105; of the US, 98, and of India 82 (source). This reflects a dismal educational system as well as the persistence of the caste system. The average IQ of the Brahmin caste is 120. (Right, I know that IQ has issues, but it is indicative of cultural type, educational level, and human resources.)

India needs a cultural revolution in addition to a political one, but the basis is not there yet.  India and China are both still "poor countries" based on per capita GDP, but China's (14,239 in 2015) is greatly exceeds India's (6,020). Compare with US  at 55,805.  (Oil -rich Qatar led the world with 132,099, so per capita GDP is not necessarily reflective of level of economic development.)

Expectations regarding the potential of Modi's success in forming India were inordinately high, and the reality is falling short of them. The former finance minister Manmohan Singh was much more capable economically than Modi is and he did not live up to expectation either. Too much drag to overcome easily and quickly. So India continues to slog along.

Geopolitically and geostrategically, India continues to play opposing forces against each other under Modi, who has recently increased rapprochement with the US while maintaining good relations with Russia. In doing this, Modi is playing the US and Russia against Pakistan and China. India is also interested in drawing in US investment, management and technology, which is a mixed blessing. This US has shown itself to be a shark in this respect. The cost will be high, again because India believes that it does not have the money itself.

India Punchline
Modi creates a legacy in China ties
M K Bhadrakumar