Contextual editorial illustration for the restored article.
It is disgusting to watch news and look at the way presstitutes are handling the suicide of a terrorist-sympathising anti-national college hooligan just because he belongs to a lower caste. Rohit Vemula and his fellow leftist hooligans had organised a protest inside the campus in support of the terrorist Yakub Menon, who was responsible for bombing more than 200 people in the Mumbai terrorist attacks. When some students in his college wrote on Facebook exposing these anti-national students, he and his fellow leftist hooligans beat up those students. The students who were the actual victims of the hooliganism of this guy and his fellow thugs complained to the college management about this misbehaviour. Taking strict action, the college management then suspended this group of thugs for goondaism inside college premises.
But for obvious reasons the media presstitutes have chosen to completely ignore the sequence of events that led to the suicide of this anti-national thug and are now painting a false picture of a poor Dalit student getting uneven treatment by an upper caste university management — because telling the truth would not help their anti-national agenda. What’s worse is that they are now trying to pin the blame of suicide on the Vice Chancellor of the university, who in all fairness was more than generous in handling this issue. This reasoning is ridiculous but then again did we ever expect sane arguments from the leftist anti-nationals?
Firstly, it is difficult to force anyone to commit suicide. Trying to push the narrative that this anti-national thug was forced into suicide by the VC is just ridiculous. The only people who could have vested interest in Rohit’s suicide are his other fellow suspended comrades or the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) — the organization behind the protest in support of Yakub Menon. They are the ones who are now getting cheap publicity by this episode. This sequence of events is similar to the suicide that was staged at Kejriwal’s rally a year ago. Secondly, the guy in question is not innocent by any means and his punishment was not out of proportion to what he did. In fact, the management was lenient when he was left with just expulsion from hostel instead of expelling him and his fellow hooligans from college outright.
Supporting terrorism and indulging in hooliganism is not innocence. Being a Dalit does not give leeway to engage in anti-national activities nor does it give anyone any right to indulge in rowdyism inside college. In fact what the VC did was actually very mild compared to what this anti-national deserved — he and his fellow anti-nationals should have been expelled from college instead of being expelled just from the hostel for beating up other students. But no, for some reason his Dalit identity is given as an excuse for his anti-national activities and the media presstitutes want us to overlook this misbehaviour.
This is unacceptable behaviour from the media as well as the students now engaged in protest. And as usual, all the anti-national politicians from Kejriwal to Rahul Gandhi are ganging up to visit this thug’s funeral and turn him into some sort of hero. As a society, how does it make sense to turn an anti-national rowdy into a hero post suicide? And where were these Dalit-saving brigades including Rahul Gandhi and Kejriwal when Dalit houses and shops were burnt in Malda and Dalit Hindus were forced out of their homes?
We will go further and say that the students who are currently protesting against the VC for his action against the anti-national Rohit Vemula are just supporting an anti-national unlawful rowdy masquerading as a student. Such students should be strictly punished — with suspension and expulsion if necessary — so that such anti-national politics are not condoned in the future. Our government should make it very clear that no one has any right to indulge in any anti-national activity and caste identity does not give a free pass for such behaviour.
Any leniency on the students protesting in favour of the anti-national rowdy will only set a bad precedent for such anti-national goondaist activities inside the universities and will lead to further worsening of law and order and the academic environment. The government needs to nip this nuisance in its bud. We don’t want all our universities to turn into anti-national factories like JNU. One JNU is more than enough to fulfil our suicidal tendency of supporting anti-national ideologies.
Originally published January 19, 2016 on Yuga Parivartan.
Contextual editorial illustration for the restored article.
In the backdrop of the Pathankot attack, it becomes important to think about Pakistan’s nuclear program because Pakistan’s nuclear bluff stops India from taking any concrete actions against it. Nukes have pretty little tactical benefit apart from killing civilians — which can also be contained once the nuclear threat is not a surprise. The pertinent question in the Indo-Pak equation is to find out how big Pakistan’s nuclear threat really is, or whether it is just a bluff under which the Pakistan military can avoid an overt Indian response.
In the first part of this article, we will summarize how the devastating effects of nuclear weapons are exaggerated in the regular media. In the second part, we will specifically talk about Pakistan’s nuclear program and show that Pakistan neither has the requisite delivery vehicles nor enough warheads to cause enough destruction to change the tide of a war.
The first and foremost important point to consider is that the nuclear bomb can neither deliver nor guarantee victory or stalemate in any war — and specifically in an Indo-Pak war. Just like in a battle not all fired bullets deliver the head of the enemy, similarly a nuclear strike will achieve very few of its intended target goals. One of the biggest misconceptions is related to the destructive power of modern bombs as compared to the smaller bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. William H. Hessler put this succinctly:
A more powerful bomb is now in production. It will release more energy and therefore work destruction over a larger area. But the area does not increase in proportion to the augmented power of the bomb. In military terms, which are not the same as scientific terms, the more powerful the bomb, the less efficient it is. For most military purposes ten bombs, each with one tenth of the power of the Nagasaki bomb, would be more effective than was the one Nagasaki bomb.
— William H. Hessler
[Image: Impact of Pak’s 45Kt warhead if detonated in Delhi] Impact of Pakistan’s 45Kt warhead in Delhi — restored contextual visual.
So a more powerful bomb will be more destructive but destruction will not increase linearly. The below picture shows the impact of the largest Pakistani warhead if detonated in New Delhi. No doubt, Delhi has a high population density and this will bring high civilian deaths. But we need to consider three very important points that would decrease civilian deaths in case of a nuclear exchange:
1) Pakistan would try to hit strategic military locations
Pakistan cannot expect to stop the war just by nuking Indian cities. It will in fact bring massive nuclear retaliation from India and nuclear escalation. In this MAD scenario, Pakistan can only hope to achieve some stalemate by targeting strategic military locations. This is the reason that Pakistan came up with the fancy name of tactical battlefield weapons to directly target the advancing Indian Army. While this might help achieve some military objectives, it reduces the number of warheads that Pakistan can launch towards high-density Indian cities.
2) Not all nuclear launches will be a surprise
One of the other reasons that lead to high civilian casualty is the simple arithmetic used to extrapolate destruction. Since Tokyo was four times more densely populated than Hiroshima, it would have resulted in four times the number of deaths if the bomb was dropped there. But this does not take into account that people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were caught unaware, while in Tokyo — due to frequent bombing raids — people were well prepared and could hide. If nuclear weapons lose their surprise value, it gives enough time for civilians and local government to move people out of high-density areas or hide in underground tunnels. The ill-effects of nuclear radiation will still be around for some time, but after a period of 72 hours people can move around and perform their jobs in the destroyed area. A single nuke in a city does not cause the end of civilization — as one can see if they visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki today.
3) India will retaliate and stop many of these weapons
This is the third most important aspect — whether the enemy is able to launch all its bombs and land them in your country. India does not have a fully developed BMD shield, but that does not mean we cannot intercept incoming Pakistani missiles or fighter jets. Also, a massive retaliation from India can completely cripple Pakistan’s delivery capability. On top of that, Pakistan has not yet achieved complete nuclear triad and so they do not have any submarines lurking in the Indian Ocean to take down Indian cities once Pakistan is completely annihilated.
The term MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) was coined in reference to the rivalry between US and USSR when both had more than 5,000 nuclear warheads and perfect delivery vehicles. This is not the case in the Indo-Pak rivalry. Pakistan’s arsenal is estimated at around 120 warheads according to current estimates. So we won’t face MAD in an Indo-Pak war but the annihilation of Pakistan if it resorts to nuclear exchange. Even in the worst case scenario, only a few Pakistani nukes will be able to breach Indian defence.
Now, regarding Pakistan’s nuclear program specifically: Pakistan uses yellowcake centrifuge method which takes around 3–5 years for building a 30 kiloton warhead. Since it has negligible to insignificant fissile material reserves, a sustained nuclear exchange is unlikely in case of war. Pakistan’s nuclear program is almost totally dependent on China and others for fuel and accessories, which hampers its capability to build a huge arsenal.
Unlike India, Pakistan has a first-use policy when forced into a conventional war. Pakistan’s two main delivery systems are Tapedong scud-type missiles from North Korean cruise missiles and the Nasr. But Pakistan does not have proven miniaturization of nuclear warheads to allow it to mate warheads on small cruise missiles. Also, the short range of missiles like Nasr restricts their use apart from being used as tactical battlefield nukes.
Looking forward, two things are going to happen: Pakistan’s arsenal will grow with help from China, and its delivery mechanism will improve as it tries to achieve nuclear triad. Point one does not matter as long as they do not have delivery systems and India has well-functioning BMD and air-superiority fighters. To counter the second, we will have to invest more in developing state-of-the-art BMD. But the threat will not be completely eliminated as Pakistan develops a bigger arsenal and poses a bigger security risk.
Based on these factors, it is better to de-nuclearize Pakistan now rather than wait for an opportune moment in the future. India missed a perfect opportunity to escalate the war in Kargil and call out Pakistan’s nuclear bluff — as it would have exposed Pakistan’s low arsenal and deficient delivery mechanism and possibly killed the program in its infancy. With Chinese support to Pakistan growing each day, the bluff will turn into a real nightmare at some point in the future unless India adopts a course-correcting measure now: use the next terrorist attack as a pretext for overt war on Pakistan and use it to de-nuclearize it.
Originally published January 15, 2016 on Yuga Parivartan.
Editorial illustration for “Why freedom of speech (FoS) is important for Hindus?”.
Although the last two Parliament sessions have been a washout for the most important bills, one bill got passed by stealth and did not get much media coverage as it should have. It was the SC/ST act, and it has significant consequences for Freedom of Speech in India. The new offences added to the act include garlanding with footwear, compelling to dispose or carry human or animal carcasses, abusing SCs or STs by caste name in public, attempting to promote feelings of ill-will against SCs or STs, disrespecting any deceased person held in high esteem, and imposing or threatening a social or economic boycott.
Although the law can be thought of as being in good spirit — i.e. preventing criticism of Ambedkar or Kanshi Ram — criticism by one person can be seen as disrespect by another. It’s all a slippery slope from here. Right now the government is throwing people behind bars for calling Mohammed gay due to the threat to social harmony, as shown in the arrest of Kamlesh Tiwari. We see this law would be used as a template to bring other similar laws to further stifle criticism of any form. India is a basket case when it comes to Freedom of Speech. Curbing of free speech is one of the only few times when all parties in India come together.
FoS for one might be hate speech for another. It is a very subjective issue and it leads to only two outcomes — either we have free speech or we don’t. Even in the case of free speech, people have the chance to go to court and file defamation cases if they feel their reputation has been falsely maligned. So in that sense the right is not absolute as character-assassination is not allowed and has an economic penalty. But it cannot and should not apply to historical figures — i.e. dead leaders or prophets. These guys should be open to ridicule as that allows free scrutiny of their actions and puts history in the right perspective.
Now coming to the question of why it is especially important for Hindus to demand absolute freedom of speech in India — and more so, for its interaction with Islam. It will allow people to engage in criticism of Islam which has only been done in closed quarters till now. We already have a hate speech law and we should not be surprised if it gets further modified in the future, putting anyone in jail for criticising the prophet. Those who have read history carefully will know that Islam has been critical of Freedom of Speech for a very long time. The genesis of current hate speech law lies in the riots that followed after the publishing of ‘Rangeela Rasool’ by Arya Samaj in 1927 and the subsequent killing of the book’s publisher. The colonial British government then obliged the Muslims by enacting Section 295(A) and putting further restrictions on free speech. The current demands for the death of Kamlesh Tiwari can be understood better in this historical backdrop.
But why should Hindus stand for Freedom of Speech? It has been part of our culture to debate and no individual — not even the Gods — has been free from our criticism. Also, it forms the core of any modern society and allows bad ideas to be debated and booted out. This same Freedom of Speech is the most important weapon in anyone’s arsenal to expose Islam. Islam is based on absolutes and thus any substantial criticism of the prophet or Quran will bring down the whole religion like a pack of cards. This is the reason that Islam fears Freedom of Speech more than anything else and has an inbuilt mechanism to deal with transgressions — e.g. death for apostasy and ridiculing Mohammed.
Moreover, Freedom of Speech provides Hindus with one more advantage in the context of the western onslaught — it challenges subversive claims. It has been an old Indian tradition to debate and discuss, keep the useful, weed out the useless. When we forcefully close the lid on something deemed offensive, though we may feel jubilant, we foolishly also give our ‘offender’ the upper hand — they then claim victimhood and thus attention, while we get labelled with those choicest of terms like ‘intolerant’, ‘fascists’, etc. The goal should be to challenge claims which are found preposterous, and demolish them with solid proofs and arguments, thereby also exposing the deviousness behind such attempts.
So, should Hindus take offence when Hussain draws naked paintings of Hindu Goddesses? Or take it as a passing rite under Freedom of Speech? We think that Hindus should let it pass as a random event as one painting is not going to define Hinduism nor will it undermine the whole society. In fact it only exposes the vile minds of people who engage in such acts. But this should only be allowed when there is absolute Freedom of Speech — not under a regime where all faux-pas against Hinduism are given a free pass while a single valid criticism against Islam is censored. Since Islam has more to lose from Freedom of Speech, you should not be surprised if you see a few Muslims supporting a ban on cow slaughter in exchange for a ban on discussions regarding regressive practices in Islam.
You would not find any Hindus today who would support Sati or quote Manu Smriti on how to run the society. This implies Hindus are not stuck in the past and are happy to correct their historical mistakes. So, Hindus are not bound to extend their support to people who are still clinging to a 7th century handbook and help suppress Freedom of Speech in this country.
To summarize, laws are not formed in a vacuum and set precedents for future laws. Hindus should be careful against all such small giveaways which will be used as a template to curb Freedom of Speech in the future. Also, since Freedom of Speech is the best weapon to expose the shallowness of Islam, it should be used as the first defence against fanatics.
Editorial illustration for “The Hypocritical West”.
After being crowned with the title of rape capital of the world, recently India also got the title of land of intolerance. Following the Dadri incident, there was widespread reporting on growing intolerance in India both in domestic and international media and how Hindus have become intolerant in a year since they elected BJP to power at the national level. Since Dadri — which was an isolated incident in a country of 1.2 billion people — was used to define Hindu society and India by the west, let us analyse what standard they follow in their own backyard. To summarize, western media and their leaders are just a bunch of hypocrites and hardly the role model to sermonize others. In the next few paragraphs we will list the scale of intolerance afflicting the west which has no parallels in India. First, we will look at beacon of morality i.e. western Europe and then look at current developments in the US.
Let’s first look at France, the country which banned Hijab a few years ago. Recently, there was a massive anti-Muslim rally in the French province of Corsica. Here, the “tolerant protesters” vandalised mosques and attacked Muslims. But western media ran this story for three days before forgetting that such an incident ever happened. There was no constant whining of intolerance and racism by far right wing etc. in the media, nor was there 24/7 news coverage for the victims (Corsican Muslims) for 3 months. There was no advice against Islamophobia nor any sermons on religious tolerance to the French by any major leader like Obama did to Indians when he visited India. The above attack should be seen in the broader context of the emergence of Front National — the conservative far right wing party in France — which won approximately one-third of the votes in the recent municipal elections.
The UK is not far behind and recently passed a law to officially monitor the Muslims and mosques of the UK. There was no call for an intolerance debate, no constant blitz on growing far right in UK or call from other countries to restrict the visa for the UK’s Prime Minister. The news ran for two days before the media there conveniently found other pressing issues to focus on rather than discuss this official spying of 5% of their own population.
In Cologne, following the sexual assaults on German women by immigrant Muslims on New Year’s eve, their mayor advised women to stay away from strangers and blamed the victims for the horrors they faced. But even here, their media was quick to categorize this as a bad opinion of just one woman — somehow, when one or two random Indian rapists think women ought to be blamed for rape, it becomes the opinion of the entire nation and feminists from the UK come to India to make documentaries on Indian women while they have a rape rate which is 20 times worse than India. Even more hypocritical is the negligence on the part of big media organizations in Europe as they took more than a week to report the Cologne attacks when it became impossible to suppress this news.
The developments from across the Atlantic are not less hypocritical either. Recently, Donald Trump, the leading Republican presidential nominee, called for a total ban on Muslims entering their country, even though Muslims form less than 1% of their population. Ever since he announced such a proposal he has been gaining popularity in the polls and has now built a huge momentum around his ban-Muslims statement. This rhetoric has been taken to the point where he chose this statement to lead his election ad campaign. He has been criticised by the media to a large extent, but again no one wants to blame American Christian society and instead try to blame it on the lone man Trump — even though it is pretty clear from the polls and surveys that more than 50% of Americans view Muslims unfavourably and an equal number want them banned. Yet Obama for some reason has more reason to sermonize India on tolerance than tend to the growing intolerance and racism in his own country as evidenced by the Black Lives Matter movement.
If these incidents are any indication, it is pretty clear that most of the westerners are rank hypocrites who have no morals other than their own best interests at heart. A good example is the way they treat themselves let alone outsiders like Indians. The UK — the same country which passed a legal resolution to officially spy on their Muslims — has no problem contemplating a ban on Donald Trump for his anti-Muslim comments. This is also the reason why Obama thinks that India needs lessons on intolerance when their own government has unofficially sanctioned racial profiling under the garb of security and when their own presidential election front-runner asks for a blanket ban on Muslim entry to the USA.
India recognised Christmas as an official holiday when the Christian population was less than 1%. Contrast it with the western world which has a Hindu population of more than 1% today and yet no country in the west has recognised Diwali as an official holiday. For these people, tolerance and freedom of religion are just excuses which they use for spreading their own religion and culture. Modi government and Hindus became “intolerant” after the Modi government banned foreign NGOs involved in subverting Hindus and converting them to Christianity and stalling development projects. They use freedom of religion and this fake tolerance debate as a tool to further their agenda — nothing more than cultural and ideological imperialism.
So it’s high time Indians stopped seeking western approval for their actions on what is best for them. It is time for India to pay them back in their own currency and make documentaries on intolerance in UK or Sweden, the rape capital of the world. But there is also a lesson to be learnt from these hypocritical standards of the west — protect national interest at all cost and subvert other nations through information war. Islam is seen as a problem in all these nations, which led to the current surveillance law in the UK. India should also actively seek to fight this Islamic menace and not shy away from hard questions and laws, instead of going soft on fanatics to polish its tolerant image in the eyes of the western ayatollahs — who, as shown above, perfectly fit the description of the emperor without clothes.
Contextual editorial illustration for the restored article.
There is a lot of buzz going on lately on why marital rape is evil and should be recognised on par with rape. But is there any merit to such a statement?
Why Marital rape is an oxymoron?
What is marriage? Marriage is the union of man and a woman in a society such that both pledge exclusivity of sexual relations to each other so that they can raise their kids in a stable environment. The exclusivity of sexual relationship is the reason why society views adultery as a crime and makes it punishable as a criminal offence, since it involves breaking of the exclusivity pledged in the marriage. So, marriage — by virtue of the exclusivity of sex it pledges to the marital partners — is implied consent for sex, since if such implied consent is not there, there is no meaning to the exclusivity of sexual relationship between husband and wife, as either one can deny sex to the other without any valid reason and deprive the other of a basic human need. So the very term marital rape is an oxymoron. Both cannot go hand in hand.
Legal implications of recognising marital rape
Marital rape law would be ripe for abuse just like the dowry law has been misused umpteen times without any significant reduction in demand for dowry. The current medical technologies cannot distinguish a rape and a rough sexual act reliably. Medical examination can only show that rough sex had taken place. So it is legally difficult to prove rape against rough sexual act. And in such cases, conviction of the accused (in this case husband) will depend only on the accounts of husband and wife on what happened. In such a case, any sexual act can be used by the wife to get revenge on her husband by falsely accusing him of rape, which could not be proven or disproven in court. So when evidence would be iffy at pinpointing rape or rough sex, there is high chance for the law to convict an innocent husband. While this is the problem now, if feminists and other women’s rights activists successfully manage to change the present “innocent until proven otherwise” law to “guilty until proven otherwise”, it will become a legal nightmare for India — with the husband needing to use a consent app or file written consent for every time the couple have sex, or risk losing his life over a false complaint. While such false complaints do exist now (to the tune of 53%), it won’t be as bad as the proposed law because unlike other cases of rape where the innocent man can prove his innocence by using medical tests, no such possibility is there for an accused of marital rape. In a country where 90% of the dowry cases are false and are used only for revenge and send families to ruin, it’s not really that hard to imagine the ruin this law will have on husbands and their families. And the usual argument made for recognising such a law is that women should be protected no matter how many men get destroyed in the process. It is a bit ironic and hypocritical that the ones who claim to be for equality of genders have no problem saying that a hundred innocent men can have their lives ruined so that a single woman can be saved from rape.
Societal implications of recognising marital rape
This is another issue which is often overlooked by the women’s rights campaigners and feminists who are pushing for recognising marital rape — the effect of such a law on family and society.
So what these people want us to believe is that recognising marital rape on par with other rapes is actually good for women and society as a whole. But is it really so? If marital rape is recognised, every husband has to be wary of being accused of rape by his wife and have to have written evidence of consent for sex. Not only will it reduce the bonding strength in the marriage, it will also make sure that neither of the couple will have enough trust which is needed for a marriage to work. So when such a law is recognised, it would result in the marital bond becoming loose and we will end up like western societies with 50% divorce rates and 50% fatherless children. Is it what our society should be aiming to achieve? A society of lonely kids and single mothers like in the west? And what exactly are the feminists hoping to achieve by this law, which is not possible under current laws? Do you think that if a wife accuses her husband of rape and sends him to prison for seven years, he will come back and live with her again? Seriously, which wife is going to accuse her husband of rape if she really wanted to live with him? Also, if there is such a complaint it will lead to dissolution of the marriage. So this law will only be useful for women getting divorce and then beating their husbands with another false complaint to extract revenge.
How effective will recognising marital rape be?
As per current law, forced sex with a spouse is a ground for divorce and so is withholding of sex. So a wife who does not want to have sex with her husband any more can file for divorce and after court-mandated separation cannot be forced into sex by her husband, as such an act would be considered rape under current law. So this law is not for wives who want to live with their husbands. This law can only help wives who are not going to live with their husbands — i.e. future divorcees. So this is a law for nobody as we already have divorce laws to achieve these goals.
So what exactly is marital rape law recognition going to do for the society? The benefits of such a law will be negligible compared to the massive downsides of such a law in society. Finally, almost everyone who is in this debate thinks that these laws are an issue of men vs women along the lines of Marxist class warfare. This is a hugely flawed reasoning. Men and women are not separate classes. Any law which punishes men for no reason will end up punishing women too. Today’s women who are pushing for marital rape to be recognised will not only bear sons or grandsons, but are also related to their fathers and brothers. Be careful what you wish for is a very apt description of this problem. The way current dowry laws punish not only innocent men but also an equal number of innocent women, a similar marital rape law would also be open for abuse. Under current laws, when a couple runs away from their families who are against their marriage, rape is the first charge brought against the boy by the girl under pressure from her family. Now imagine the hardships of this couple under marital rape law when the boy would not only be slapped with forced marriage but also forced rape by the girl’s family.
So it is not good enough to claim a false moral high ground and study everything from a class warfare perspective while ignoring the residual ill-effects on society. Also, such laws will hurt the sanctity of marriage as seen in Dharmic traditions and force men to completely opt out of marriage as an institution. We would then have to contend with our daughters and granddaughters being single moms and lonely crazy cat ladies as in the west. We should try to preserve our superior social and cultural fabric instead of blindly aping the broken marriages model of the west which has only led to misery and a crime-infested cesspool that is western society today.
Originally published January 13, 2016 on Yuga Parivartan.
Contextual editorial illustration for the restored article.
[Book Cover: House of Debt — Atif Mian & Amir Sufi] — restored contextual visual.
It would be music to the ears of many people who jump out of their beds and lose all their sleep after hearing the word debt. The basic idea that this book promotes is that debt is bad in every context — individual or country — and should be replaced with other financial instruments like stocks. But don’t be surprised if people come up tomorrow and game the stocks!
Coming back to the discussion about this book. It is a fine account of what happened in the last Great Recession and who caused it and how. The reason I am writing this review is because I think it is a good work by mainstream economists who got their hands dirty with real data in trying to understand how the whole episode unfolded.
Although I am going to write about the main hypothesis proposed in the book, that does not take away the joy from reading it because the message lies in the finer details and explanations given by the authors. The authors claim that too much debt was accumulated by low credit score individuals who defaulted in large numbers and kick-started the crisis. Now you would say that there is nothing new with this idea and it has been presented countless times before. But that is the reason you need to get to the details.
The low credit score allowed large numbers of people to accumulate debt in the belief that real estate prices would continue to rise. Everyone was riding on this bubble and making money before large-scale defaults turned everything upside down and sent the system spiralling downhill. But how does default on home loans start this cycle of fall in GDP and large-scale unemployment? The authors argue that the people who borrowed money belonged to the poorest section of society. A fall in house prices and the associated income loss forced these low-income households to cut down on their spending. Once they cut down spending it led to large-scale layoffs, further fuelling this vicious cycle. Now, job losses or mild recessions are nothing new for the economy — but why in this particular case did the normal equilibrium balancing forces not kick in? To know this and understand how the puzzle fits together, it’s better to lay your hands on the book.
Another important dimension that the book covers is about our response to the crisis. Given the huge bailouts to the banks, it makes sense to know whether taxpayers’ money was put to the best possible use. Both households and bankers played their role in fuelling the bubble, but banks being the central pillar of the economy received most of the support both during and after the crisis. There is no doubt that banks should have been saved, but households were almost completely left out. Since household spending fall was one of the primary reasons for prolonged recession and unemployment, could the government have done better by showing some leniency to households? Could the government have done more to alleviate the housing problem?
This brings you to the last part of the book — when after understanding the mechanism, one can argue whether debt is a good instrument or can be replaced by other means. The authors argue that debt puts the entire risk on the borrower instead of spreading it through the economy, unlike other financial instruments like insurance. I think here they take a very extreme step by advocating a completely new system, but this comes from the fact that they understood the problem through the lens of the last recession. Ignoring debt during normal periods can have a large negative impact on the overall economy — something the authors have completely ignored. My takeaway from the last section and this book would be to not relax the credit norms too much and start another bubbly episode. But given that this is just a book, the authors are allowed to voice such opinions!
Verdict: Good, but take some time to read it because it can be a bit technical in some parts.
Originally published January 13, 2016 on Yuga Parivartan.
Editorial illustration for “Urbanization: the only solution for a modern India”.
One of the first chapters in ancient history that are taught to everyone begins with the discussion of ancient civilizations. But what made us call these societies — be it Harappan or Mesopotamian — as civilizations and distinguish them from the earlier agricultural societies? It was the presence of large urban populations and consequently the breakthroughs that these societies achieved, ranging from handicraft, sewage to metallurgy. The point is that large aggregation of people in one place — urbanization — is essential for innovation, which in turn drives the development and progress of any society.
If we look at the data, urbanization and growth have a high correlation. Now, it is difficult to tell which factor feeds into the growth of the other but it can be safely stated that when people come together, they bring their ideas together and hence increase the probability of new innovation. It is very much like popping popcorn — we do not know which popcorn will pop out first from the pan, but if there are fewer kernels, we know for sure that there is a very small chance for any of them to pop. A cursory look at the urbanization map below is enough to explain that the most developed countries in the world today are also the ones that are highly urbanized.
Now let’s look at the performance of India, China and USA for the past 50 years and this trend comes out in a much stronger fashion. Till the 1980s, India was ahead of China both in terms of per capita GDP as well as urbanization. But post Xiaoping’s reforms, China grew rapidly on both indicators, which is reflected from the almost vertical graphs of both Chinese GDP and urban population.
But why do people migrate from villages to cities? It is because of the better opportunities that cities provide for individual development and the very few other occupational choices available in villages. This is also reflected from the fact that poverty incidence rates are generally less in urban areas compared to rural areas (Source: UNDESA). So cities are better equipped to provide livelihood opportunities — in general, people will tend to migrate to cities as long as cities provide better lifestyle and employment opportunities.
Country
GDP per capita (constant 2000 US$)
Agriculture (% of GDP)
Industry (% of GDP)
Services (% of GDP)
Japan
39,972
1%
27%
71%
USA
37,330
1%
20%
79%
UK
28,244
1%
22%
78%
Brazil
4,717
5%
28%
67%
China
2,426
10%
47%
43%
India
795
18%
27%
55%
If we look at the table comparing sectoral GDP composition of different economies, we find that agriculture has an almost insignificant share in the economies of rich countries like the USA, UK and Japan. Since the other two sectors — services and industries — usually flourish only in cities and have higher productivity growth than agriculture, this explains the close association between growth and urbanization. So, is there some way to accelerate urbanization? Yes — if we can design policies that incentivise more people to migrate towards cities.
Having looked at the role played by cities in wealth generation, now arises the question of comparing it against the policy paradigm that is currently famous in India. Consider one of the statements made by Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar: “Big farmers and entrepreneurs in Punjab are complaining of labour shortage because of a decrease in the arrival of labourers from Bihar who are getting employment in their native villages itself.” Nitish Kumar is one of the more progress-minded politicians in India — and when he makes this statement, it reflects that he thinks it is a positive contribution when the fact is quite the opposite. Nitish was just an example to show that many of our politicians and intellectuals favour policies that provide incentive for poor people to stay in the villages — even though most of these people themselves live in cities.
These policies suppress the natural tendency of people to migrate to cities and also introduce labour market imperfections. Apart from the efficiency argument where labour is not allocated in the most efficient sector, the biggest problem with such policies is that they are not sustainable in the long run. Growth is driven by industry and services and not by agriculture. With the spread of knowledge about medical and modern amenities, villagers expect similar facilities as city people — but it is not possible for any rural society to self-sustain these facilities. It would always require a transfer of wealth from urban to rural centres, and it is difficult to justify any such permanent transfer over a long period of time.
The average land holding size is extremely small — equal to 1.33 hectares in India — and this is one of the biggest hurdles for agricultural modernisation. It not only impedes agricultural growth but is also insufficient for meeting basic human requirements. No surprise that India has such a large number of poor in the villages. Even if we achieve maximum possible agricultural efficiency, it would still be a small relief in the face of a growing population.
Such policies also invert the social security pyramid — more beneficiaries than contributors. Given the reasons above, a rural society would always be dependent on the transfer of wealth from the cities. Since output fluctuations are an integral part of market economies, a large beneficiary population puts high pressure on economic resources in normal times and reduces the elbowroom that could otherwise be leveraged during recessions.
Now that we know policies that portray a rosy village are unsustainable, we should look at other fruits of growth that are actually denied to rural people through such policies. Education and medical facilities require huge investment in infrastructure and personnel. Urban areas — due to their high population densities — can provide access to large populations over these public goods. It is not possible to sustain big hospitals with state-of-the-art technology if there are too few people to access the benefits. This is the reason that for basic treatments, people have to travel long distances and many times the geographical barriers and time delays cost lives. Cities are also such huge aggregations where everyone cares about their own work and not caste — which will provide a final blow to this problem that no amount of affirmative action can help if people continue to reside in the same segregated areas of villages as their forefathers.
If we leave the people to make their own decisions, India would transition to an urban economy sooner or later. But there is a scope for government intervention — not through policies that delay this migration, but by playing a constructive role in the development of cities, helping remove the coordination problems that arise due to large numbers of players involved in building new cities. It is this coordination failure that usually leads to the sewer department digging the road immediately after the PWD finishes building a new one. At the same time, government can help optimise investment across cities and closely monitor real estate bubbles.
To realise the dream of a modern India we need to first clear our minds and accept the reality that a strong and developed India requires urbanization. Any policy which thwarts this progress needs to be reassessed from a long-term perspective. This will require serious effort to change our beliefs — we need to revisit the story of “Do Bigha Zameen” where the protagonist was almost able to earn enough in three months in Calcutta to prevent the auction of his village land. So next time you watch it, you should not feel sad about the tragic end but think about the earning opportunity that Calcutta provided to Shambhu.
Contextual editorial illustration for the restored article.
We hear so much propaganda from government and media that India is over populated. But is it really overpopulated? A country being overpopulated or not — and its degree of overpopulation — can be measured by seeing its physiological population density.
What is Physiological Density of population?
Definition
The physiological density or real population density is the number of people per unit area of arable land. A higher physiological density suggests that the available agricultural land is being used by more people and may reach its output limit sooner than a country that has a lower physiological density.
So the countries in the list which have a worse physiological density than India but have a better standard of living (excluding oil-exporting countries) are:
Singapore (this can be excluded as a small trade-oriented country)
Iceland – 4,229/sq.km of arable land
South Korea – 2,998/sq.km of arable land
Taiwan – 2,932/sq.km of arable land
Japan – 2,924/sq.km of arable land
Netherlands – 2,205/sq.km of arable land
Israel – 2,147/sq.km of arable land
Colombia – 2,064/sq.km of arable land
Switzerland – 1,900/sq.km of arable land
Costa Rica – 1,803/sq.km of arable land
Malaysia – 1,336/sq.km of arable land
Belgium – 1,248/sq.km of arable land
Slovenia – 1,170/sq.km of arable land
United Kingdom – 1,077/sq.km of arable land
China – 943/sq.km of arable land
Liechtenstein – 843/sq.km of arable land
Luxembourg – ~750/sq.km of arable land
Italy – ~750/sq.km of arable land
Note: Oil exporters like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Venezuela are excluded to avoid the confounding variable of oil wealth. Countries only marginally better than India like Indonesia and Sri Lanka (which is better than India despite fighting a civil war) are also not included.
So is it right to blame our under-development on our population when clearly, countries much more overpopulated than us have succeeded much better economically and socially?
All our ills are caused by the misgovernance of five decades of Congress rule and their misplaced socialistic economic policies. Population was just a bogey to hide the incompetence of the Nehru clan and its bad socialist policies. To be frank, we would have remained underdeveloped even if we had only a population of 2 crore instead of the present 125 crore — while we can thrive even with 300 crore population if we utilise our potential to the maximum through capitalism, just like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Belgium and others with similar population density are thriving. It is about time we stopped blaming population for our ills and looked at our economic policies — which was the actual reason we are poor.
Originally published January 10, 2016 on Yuga Parivartan. Source: List of countries by real population density based on food growing capacity — Wikipedia.
Editorial illustration for “Thug Left vs Apologetic Right”.
A picture says a thousand words. Before reading further, look at the picture above once again and guess what story does this picture want to tell you. This picture gives the best way to explain the difference in modus operandi of the right vs the left. And this modus operandi is so perfected that it is used from the west to the east with outright impunity.
So lets take a deeper look at this picture. On the left, we have Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhusan, who were mercilessly beaten and thrown out of AAP by the new anarcho-fascist sensation in town i.e. Arvind Kejriwal. While on the right we have the two leaders from BJP, L.K. Advani and Narendra Modi, who shared bitterness before the last Lok Sabha elections, but still decided to embrace each other gracefully, with the younger Modi seen doing “Charan Sparsh”, a traditional Hindu ritual to seek blessings.
Both the parties had an internal feud and were resolved in very different ways. The BJP leaders decided to stick with traditional symbolism of harmony and respect in their worldly conduct and although some below the belt punches were delivered, specially by Advani, who should have retired gracefully, but they were always restrained. On the other hand, Kejriwal came with all guns glazing and used brute force of bouncers and his party members to manhandle his two old colleagues and achieve what he could not amicably. One should underline the unrestrained conduct of Kejriwal, who achieved his objectives without paying any attention to potential future fallout in the form of his sullied political image usually associated with using brute force in politics. He came unscathed out of this political misadventure and solidified his image as the supremo of AAP as well as the tallest political leader in Delhi. Not so surprisingly, Kejriwal remained unapologetic during this whole episode and went on a break while letting his subordinates finish the political rivals, a key quality of any left demagogue.
Looking at these two separate events one should ask the question- how did Kejriwal manage this coup d’etat without any repercussions while Modi had a difficult time in pulling off a natural inter-generational power transfer which was made to look like an act of fascism? Modi’s takeover of BJP was played over and over again in the media for more than a year, but Kejriwal’s impunity has completely disappeared from public scrutiny, although both Bhushan and Yadav were (are) darlings of MSM. It is easier to jump to the conclusion that MSM hates Modi and BJP and hence gives them only negative coverage. But if one looks around the world, most right wing leaders get negative media publicity- whether it is Bush in the US or Harper in Canada. So the story will remain incomplete without talking about how the left controls the current social narrative and the MSM wilfully acts as its extension in generating cultural memes.
Modus operandi of the left
1) The left is not a reactionary force but has a proactive plan of action
Since the left controls the cultural memes, it has enough foot-soldiers who build a new victimhood (left ideology thrives on it) story every minute. While the left keeps on generating new victimhood stories, the right usually has no choice but to engage in fire fighting mode and do some damage control. Sadly, the right is so busy in this damage control that it hardly ever gets to the root of the problem.
To understand it better, let’s look at the fire fighting exercises that Modi govt. was forced to engage in, in the recent past. The intolerance debate started even before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections when the top leftist academics came together and published open letters in the newspapers and exhorted the common citizens to vote against Modi because his election as PM of the country might lead to death of the Indian democracy. This was a well calculated game plan which unfortunately did not work in the 2014 elections but worked very well in the recent Bihar elections. The left raised the bogey of intolerance in the country and challenged credibility of Modi government on the issue of religious harmony. To generate enough momentum for this story, a large number of leftist intellectuals came forward and returned their National Awards as part of a well played out script in front of the nation.
The Modi govt. is trying hard to push its reform agenda like Swachh Bharat and Smart Cities in a top down fashion. Sadly, it hardly gets the kind of traction in national discourse which is generated by the leftists operating in a decentralized environment. And it is not difficult to understand why this is the case. While victimhood narrative has a ready-made perfect template which makes it easy to rally a mob around it, it is difficult to generate similar interest for initiatives that require self-improvement and confidence. The only take away from all these incidents is that the left strikes first and the left strikes often. The self-generation capacity of leftist memes make it easier to mount decentralized attacks. This brings us to the second and more important point.
2. The left is unabashed in use of brute force and strikes hard on its opponents
And this maxim applies both to its opponents as well as small deviants. What did Kejriwal do with his fellow leftist travellers? He used them and booted them out with iron fist once they had served their purpose. If he was so ruthless with the people who helped him establish AAP, one can easily imagine how he will deal with his real opponents. He banned BJP MLAs from the Delhi Assembly, while Modi has struggled to throw out the unruly Congress MPs from Lok Sabha.
But the leftist goondaism goes much back and is a universal quality. The number of people killed in purges by Stalin and Mao, outshine the brutality of every other dictator who has walked in the 20th century.
Compare the number of those killed under Communism to world totals for major sources of death for the 20th century
Even in India, other than Jihadis the only other potent national threat are Naxals, again inspired by the leftist ideology. The left ruled West Bengal for more than 35 years with brute force and West Bengal still tops the chart in number of political murders every year. The student organizations from left are not saints either and engage in open bullying and even resort to violence. Just look at the latest clips where left organized protests against the death of Rohit Vemula. Where violence is not possible, the left organizes itself as a mob and goes on soft rampage in the form of character assassination or social boycott. For eg. Trump has nothing to do with UK politics, but the left still went into action and pushed forward with a signature campaign to ban his entry. It is similar to signature campaign by Indian MPs, who wrote to US to ban Modi’s entry.
But how does the left manage to voice concern and act as an arbiter in matters related to freedom of speech and tolerance, although it kills every meaningful opposition when in power? What allows left to maintain this holier than thou attitude? The answer lies in the power of left to generate victimhood narrative. If Naxals kill poor fellow tribals, they become disenchanted tribals whose land is usurped by the fascist state, while in case Muslims turn Jihadi, it is blamed on intolerance of Hindus or other local conditions but never the Muslims.
The takeaway from this analysis is that the left is not shy in using violence if it helps to forward their agenda and use it in an unabashed fashion. This violence is then covered under the thick veneer of deniability by generating victimhood stories or other times by just lying low and not talking about it. The right on the other hand tries to win left’s approval when in power and never mounts a frontal assault, one can forget about any violence.
The way forward
The right needs to change the rules of the game if it wants to stay relevant in the future. This implies taking back the baton of cultural memes from the current generation of leftist intellectuals and instead enforce its own agenda with iron fist. The RSS can no longer take pride in being the grassroots organization and openly needs to support the right intellectuals who can change this narrative. An effective counter will need to attack the entire modus operandi of the left i.e. challenge the cultural agenda with intellectual output and use state power to crush the opponents if needed. If it shows weakness on any of these fronts, any advance made by the current Modi govt. will be washed away in less than a year, the way it happened after departure of Vajpayee’s government. The right also needs to get more proactive in its attacks against the current or future opponents. Some policy examples to illustrate this point:
1. Putting the entire state machinery behind Subramaniam Swamy in the National Herald Case
Take the case to its logical conclusion i.e. putting the Gandhis in jail. If needed come up with other cases against the whole family and erode their credibility. No half-hearted measures will help here as BJP realized in the previous Parliament sessions because Congress is the master of disruption. Use “Saam-daam-dand-bhed” to weaken the unity of 44 Congress MPs and dig up old dirt if needed to silence them so that they retract their support to the family.
2. Dealing with Kejriwal and AAP
Kejriwal is a small fish in the left’s pond right now, but he is a master strategist and is backed by very powerful forces in the world. BJP committed the mistake once and let him win Delhi elections again. Any future leeway will only make him more powerful. BJP needs to launch a vicious agenda of eroding away his credibility. For eg- use the intellectuals on the right and publish an open letter to denounce everyday theatrics of Kejriwal. AAP launched a frontal attack on Jaitley after CBI raided against a serving IAS officer in the Delhi government. The deflection was perfect and the controversy against AAP appointed officer died down quickly while Jaitley is still embroiled in the intricacies. BJP needs to generate fresh controversies against AAP and use state power if needed to give it a quick death otherwise it will become a force in north India by next elections. Since, AAP is Kejriwal and Kejriwal is AAP, the attacks should be directed against him rather than just taking down his puny lieutenants.
3. Dealing with violence unleashed by the left
The violence unleashed by the left should be dealt in kind if needed while ensuring perfect deniability. Changing the names of “Bajrang Dal” and “Hindu Samhiti” to some other neutral names might be of some help here. The Congress lost the last elections but the brutality with which it handled Ramdev’s protest is a perfect example on how to deal with non-friendly actors using state power.
4. Purging leftist individuals from top institutes
Purging of leftist individuals from top institutes should be done without any hesitation. JNU being the single biggest factory for generating leftist folklore should be the first target and neutralized. The cases against Tejpal and other similar offenders should be concluded at a fast pace to send a clear message. Since Congress has given many more National Awards than Modi can give in five years, there is no way for Modi to curry the favours and win as much sympathy as Congress has generated by nurturing pet intellectuals. So, these awards should be abolished at once which will help in destroying the credibility of past winners. The choice of brand ambassadors for govt. schemes should be restricted to individuals, who had been sympathetic to the Hindu cause in the past. There is no benefit in showing generosity and trying to win over those who have opposing viewpoints. This should be extended to all activities of govt. ranging from appointing university Vice Chancellors to giving away financial contracts.
5. Countering victimhood with counter victimhood
The victimhood should be dealt with by generating counter victimhood. For eg. – the leftist agenda to use feminism to destroy Sabrimala traditions or use animal rights for enforcing Jallikattu ban, should be countered by generating counter narrative on how local communities or tribals are being targeted. Before the feminist storm troopers are unleashed on the Sabrimala premises, the right should get proactive and unleash its own protesters in front of Supreme Court and house of Chief Minister to build a strong case of hurt local sentiments against onslaught of western imperialism. Every attack on church should be drowned in the noise of a bigger attack on Hindu temples. The only way to counter victimhood is counter victimhood, as logic is inferior in front of raw passions of a mob.
Conclusion
To summarize this discussion, one can say that left has perfected this game of using intellectual dishonesty to score brownie points while using its muscle whenever needed. They do not engage in winning over the right intellectuals but use them as useful idiots and crush them if needed by using state power. Although the right is a slow learner, the recent SM campaign that forced Snapdeal to oust Aamir Khan as its brand ambassador is a good example and should be replicated in other spheres to drive home the message. This is a high stakes game and unless the right ups its ante, they are bound to lose this game on all fronts. They will hardly get a chance to use the raw mob power of Bajrang Dal but will still be forced to walk around with the fascist tag without achieving any objectives.
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