India and the Global Attention Surplus Disorder!

Jan 17^th, 2023: BBC releases the first part of the documentary on Modi titled “India: The Modi Question”. Among other things, the documentary goes on to levy charges on Modi for his role during the Gujarat riots back in 2002 when he was the Chief Minister of the state. It is another matter that the courts and different committees have delved into the same matter for so many years and have exonerated Modi for his involvement in inciting the riots as claimed by the documentary.

Jan 24^th, 2023: Hindenburg, an American short seller, publishes a report on the Adani group in which it accuses Adani group of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades.” This was just three days before the opening of Adani’s FPO in the market. The ensuing brouhaha led eventually to the withdrawal of the FPO only after a massive evaporation of its market capitalisation.

Feb 6^th, 2023: In the US, the Deputy Secretary of State briefed that “The surveillance balloon effort, which has operated for several years partly out of Hainan province off China’s south coast, has collected information on military assets in countries and areas of emerging strategic interest to China including Japan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines,”

Feb 17^th, 2023: At the Munich security summit, an annual conference on global security issues, George Soros, an American business magnate and philanthropist launched a scathing tirade on the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In his speech, he also referred to the Hindenburg report and said that Modi and Adani were close allies and that their fate was intertwined.

If you look at all these stories, a few things are strikingly common – the stories are about India, they are damning in design and emanating from outside India.

Welcome to India’s “Global Attention Surplus Disorder” ^TM (GASD) era. At the outset, let me clarify that this has got nothing to do with Attention Deficit Disorder which is a mental condition. Global Attention Surplus Disorder is when a country is subjected to excessive attention globally because of which stories mostly of the critical type about the country keep coming out at regular intervals.

It is important to note that all countries are not automatically subjected to this syndrome. In the evolution of any country, there comes a time when the country becomes in a way eligible for excessive attention. Once eligible, it becomes a part of this privileged league of nations. I believe that for India, this started last year (2022), though we have often threatened to get into this league but slipped back in the last minute. Why did India become part of this league and is getting subjected to GASD?

When a sportsperson starts doing well in mega events, she starts becoming the cynosure of all eyes. She also comes under scrutiny not just for her sports feats but also for her conduct in her personal life (Think Sania Mirza). Among all the film stars, if you are a top star like one of the Khans, obviously you are at the centre of all attention and scrutiny. You will receive your regular dose of bouquets but when the brickbats come, they will be heavy and bitter. Ask Aamir Khan. If you are the among the richest and most famous you cannot escape the attention of the prying news reporters. Look at the Ambanis. A dominant and globally successful company is always under media scrutiny not just for its success but also for its omissions and commissions. Search Google. A very quick upstart, which was initially the darling of the one and all could face the bile of the same media and regulators worldwide when it becomes over-successful. What happened to Facebook (Meta)? Even when a politician becomes extremely popular with the public and becomes a darling of the masses, he becomes a victim of excessive and continuous scrutiny. Even if it’s a Modi.

This has what has changed for India in the past few months. For a populous country like India, it weathered the Covid storm pretty well. In the past few years, the fundamentals of the economy are getting stronger because of which the country’s resilience to external shocks has improved drastically. Despite global headwinds like Covid, the Ukraine war and now the global economic slowdown, India continues to grow at a faster clip than all major economies. For the future, the world is now predicting that this could be India’s decade. There is a visible transformation of infrastructure in the country. Highways, Railways, Airports, Metros, sea links are all finally moving toward completion in the next five years after being in a permanent Work In Progress phase. The adoption of digital solutions to solve the country’s public issues seem real and this holds a lot of “hard” promise for the future. In the past, our promises remained “soft”. As we saw in the recent mega order of the aircrafts, big powers are looking to India to help them.

In Marketing it is said that for a market leader apart from doing routine things to increase its share, and expand the market, the bigger challenge is to ring-fence itself from some “Public Relations (PR) storm” or other that it is subjected to now and then. For example, a successful brand and a leader in its category like McDonald’s has to spend extra marketing resources for challenging litigations and Class action suits by say, Vegans. A vigilante group will never waste time and resources on going after say a Biggies Burger or a Burger Singh (yes these are Burger brands and competitors to McDonald’s in India)

My point is, getting subjected to Global Attention Surplus Disorder is a sign of India’s success. It means that India has arrived. In my opinion, China started suffering from this around the mid-2000s when its economy started firing on all cylinders and China became the so-called factory of the world. But that’s when coverage of its record on Human rights, Freedom of expression, Public Data accuracy, Transparency Index, Corruption, etc. also started finding its way into the global media regularly. There is not a single day when there is no negative story on China these days in reputed publications like The Economist, The Washington Post, The New York Times and so on. China has been suffering from GASD for many years; India has just started.

In the coming days, weeks, months and years, you will see India being in the eye of the storm frequently and more often. We have to get used to this excessive attention from the world. As a country, and as a government we should put processes in place to handle PR storms of varied nature from here on that will ensure less Governmental time on such issues. At the same time, we should pick the right battles to fight. Otherwise, we could get into a vicious distractive cycle. India is at the cusp of making history. Focus on the job at hand is more important than getting waylaid by distractions.

As Cricket experts would say, in seaming conditions and turning tracks, a batsman should know which ball or bowler to attack and more importantly which to be “well left”!

Image courtesy: Hans India

Abki Baar Amrit Kaal!

In the political calendar of India, the Annual Budget presentation is a key event. So, last week was consumed by the budget event and by now we are also done with the surfeit of analyses and opinions on the same. However, this year the finance minister’s thunder was stolen by the Adani story thanks to the Hindenburg report culminating with the cancellation of the Adani FPO, the announcement of which came late at night on the budget day. What could have ended up as a great budget day for the FM and the government, turned out to be a fifty–fifty day. Even otherwise, I have been feeling that Finance Ministry in the Modi Sarkar has always been treated uncharitably by commentators.

The budget presented by the finance minister last week was the Modi government’s 10^th and Nirmala Sitharaman’s 5^th in a row. If she presents the budget in 2024, which in most likelihood she would, Sitharaman will become the 1^st full-time woman Finance Minister to complete her full term. Truth be told, back in 2019, when Sitharaman was anointed as the FM, even among BJP supporters, there were raised eyebrows. That she was a political lightweight unlike her predecessors and came across as a haughty, headstrong lady, an image which she continues to live with even today, were some of the reasons attributed to the scepticism around her appointment.

I had opined then that making Sitharaman the FM was an inspired choice by Narendra Modi and that she may end up being a surprise pack. My take was based on the following reasons. She hailed from a middle-class background with a grounded upbringing and therefore would bring in a sense of earnestness and commitment to whatever she does. She had a squeaky-clean image which I thought is important for any minister, more so for an FM. For the same reason that she was a political lightweight, she didn’t carry any past baggage and was not seen close to industrial groups or lobbies in India Inc or abroad – a point that can’t be said of earlier FMs of India. As a spokesperson of the BJP when UPA was in power, she did a fantastic job of articulating the opposition’s point of view through logical and measured viewpoints for which she would come meticulously prepared. This aspect demonstrated her diligence and seriousness in the job given. And finally, she did have an educational background in Economics and therefore was not completely alien to grasping macroeconomics, which I think is an important requisite for an FM.

On the flip side, I did feel that Sitharaman may not be a very creative or out-of-the-box FM but may just be an FM who would execute BJP’s manifesto and Modi’s vision diligently. In this sense, her priorities will be driven by what is the ideological framework of the party and its manifesto. Five years since her appointment and five budgets hence, even her sharp critics admit that Sitharaman has done a fairly commendable job as the FM particularly navigating the country through a global crisis. This can be borne out of the fact that there was hardly any material criticism of the latest budget. By and large, the criticisms came out of people’s compulsive and competitive positions rather than constructive prognoses.

Nirmala Sitharaman took over from Arun Jaitley (though Piyush Goyal was an interim FM for a brief while stepping in due to Jaitley’s ill health in 2019), who had a huge political heft in the Modi Sarkar. Sitharaman herself considers Jaitley as her Guru and mentor in politics. Jaitley’s balance sheet as an FM has GST introduction, the Bankruptcy Code and Banking clean up on the credit side and Demonetisation on the debit side. Though to be fair, Demonetisation was a purely political decision that had economic ramifications and so it should feature more on Modi’s balance sheet than on the FM’s. But for Jaitley’s way with people of all fronts, consensus building on GST and its eventual introduction, GST would still be a Work In Progress now. But one of the major issues of Jaitley’s period was the slipping of India’s economic growth since 2017 which didn’t get the attention it deserved back then. I vividly remember that in 2017, it was taken for granted that India will grow at 8% come what may and the question was what the government will do to touch double-digit growth consistently for a long period. But in the last 2 years of Modi Sarkar’s first term, the economy slipped considerably.

It was in the background of this dull growth that Sitharaman took over as FM in 2019. To be fair to her, just within one year into her tenure, she had to contend with the Covid pandemic which brought the entire world to a grinding halt in 2020. Navigating the country’s economy fairly smoothly through the pandemic must count as Sitharaman’s biggest achievement of her tenure. Even during the last three years of the pandemic, as a country, we have managed to be fiscally prudent and come out relatively unscathed.

Back in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, most of the developed nations were doling out cash to their people to pump prime the demand. There were clarion calls from reputed economists on India too, to do the same. However, the Indian government decided on providing targeted support like free grains to the poor, MSME credit, etc rather than cash transfers to the people though the government through the now famed “India stack” could have done it easily and scored brownie points. Toeing the line of these economists, the opposition leaders too were clamouring for cash transfers. Looking back at the way the pandemic played out through uncertain crests and troughs, keeping the powder dry for the rainy day turned out to be a prudent strategy.

Identifying the issues in hand correctly which were a) No visibility on the endpoint of Covid with repeated waves, b) Supply-side problem due to lockdowns c) Less consumer confidence which means even if money was given, people were less prone to spending, the Indian government took a calibrated approach to handle Covid. If you remember, we used to have the FM announcing a slew of measures according to the developing situation almost every other month. While all this was happening, the government’s focus was also to provide monetary support to the vaccination program which in itself was a humungous task for a populous country like ours.

The result of this “drip” approach to handling Covid and its aftermath is that today we are in a far better situation to fiscally get back to the growth path even while being caught in the midst of another external crisis like the Ukraine war.

The 8% + growth which we were taking for granted in the last decade may be eluding us today and we may be in the 6-7 % range. Yet, in so many years, India has not been seen with the kind of optimism like it is being seen today. India has an uncanny knack of flattering to deceive as we have seen in the past many times. But the way the finance minister and her team handled the economy during Covid in a composed manner without taking a misstep and now re-wiring for growth with very high spending on infrastructure etc… is giving a sense of confidence that this time, India will live up to the hype.

There is still a lot to do and waving the victory sign too early is not a wise thing to do. But, for reaching up here, it is only fair that due credit is given to the FM and the teams in the Finance/related ministries and PM’s Economic Council.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi might have first used the term “Amrit Kaal” during his Independence Day speech in August 2021 in terms of a vision for New India for 25 years. But it is now I feel – Abki Baar Amrit Kaal.

BBC, Bollywood, Bans and Boycotts!

It’s pouring Bs in Bharat. In the news, I meant. BBC, a long-venerated medium in India is in the news these days for all the wrong reasons. A two-part documentary on India namely India: The Modi Question has put a question mark on BBC’s objectivity and has come under fire from the Government of India. The Government has used emergency powers to ban the documentary from being “viewed” in India.

I just watched the first couple of minutes of the documentary, so I am in no position to comment on the veracity of what’s being said in the same. However, from all reports, it seems that the documentary has tried to once again raise the question of Narendra Modi’s role during the Gujarat riots in 2002 when he was its Chief Minister. Notwithstanding what has been shown in the documentary, the banning of the same has invoked sharp reactions and has split opinions right in the middle.

On the one hand, you have the liberal group who have labeled the ban as undemocratic and unbecoming of a liberal society. But the fact is, this is not the first time that a ruling government in India has gone after BBC content. Mark Tully, the iconic representative of BBC in India for years has listed many instances in the past from the days of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi when a story was asked to be pulled down or was banned. So, it is not unique to this government to resort to such aggressive actions when faced with uncomfortable content. On the other hand, there is the group that supports the ban and claims that in “New India”, we will no longer tolerate a hit job on India that too coming from BBC, a foreign media with its colonial hangover.

From what I saw in the first few minutes, I could make out the intent and the purpose of the documentary which I feel is to tarnish the image of India and more so Modi who is riding a huge popularity wave in India and outside. Therefore, in a way, I feel that the anger and opposition to the documentary are fully justified. However, is banning the same the right reaction? I reckon not for the following reasons.

First, in today’s age of the internet and technology, is a ban practically implementable? Even now as we speak, it is possible to look up this “banned” documentary and watch it. Second, “Answer to a book is another book”. This was a quote by Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he was a tall opposition leader of course. So, the answer to a BBC documentary that is peddling a particular agenda is another documentary to counter it. Third, the banning of stuff fearing an adverse reaction within the country is all “Old India” stuff. As a country now confident of its status in the world, “New India” should not resort to banning that only gives an impression of having a soft underbelly. The 2002 subject has been flogged in Indian media for two decades now and frankly, I feel that the country has moved on from it. There is nothing new that this documentary is going to tell that is already not known in the public domain. So why fear a backlash now?

Fourth, the Streisand Effect. As per definition, this is a phenomenon in which an attempt to censor, hide, or otherwise draw attention away from something only serves to attract more attention to it. We are already seeing this in India where, in states that are not ruled by the BJP, the film is being shown on large screens on campuses with a vengeance. The curiosity to find out what is in it that resulted in banning it draws in more people who otherwise are least interested in the subject. By the way, the Streisand Effect is named after American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attempt to suppress the California Coastal Records Project’s photograph of her cliff-top residence in Malibu, California, clicked to document California’s coastal erosion, inadvertently drew greater attention to the photograph in 2003.

Now coming to the second B – Bollywood. Bollywood which actually means Hindi cinema made out of Bombay has been also in the news for all the wrong reasons of late. A string of flops even of big star films and more off-screen controversies kept Bollywood on its toes the whole of last year. This year has started with the release of the SRK starrer Pathaan on the big screen. Amidst social media calls for boycotting the same from right-wing groups, the film has managed to do well at the box office in the first four days, as per reports.

From this, it is clear that a film does not do well mostly because of poor content or reach and not necessarily due to boycott calls on social media. One of the purported victims of the boycott saga last year was Aamir Khan’s, Lal Singh Chaddha. I had watched the film and felt that film was a stretch. In my opinion, the film bombed due to bad reviews from critics and more importantly bad word-of-mouth feedback from those who watched it on the first weekend. Despite being made very well, the content failed to connect with the audience that watched it. Therefore, it failed, and not just because of boycott calls. The same holds good for other films like Shamshera, Ram Setu, Dhakkad, Samrat Prithviraj, Jersey, and so on.

I haven’t watched Pathaan and hence I have no views on the film. From what I hear, it is a commercial action entertainer that has been made well though, it is from the same spy thriller genre that is being flogged in Indian films of late. Concluding that “Bollywood is back” because of Pathaan being a hit is also a simplistic view. By and large Indians like films and the big stars and would love to watch them on the big screen provided the content manages to engage with their sensibilities. There is no rocket science beyond this, in my opinion. It is good to see the Prime Minister exhorting his party men not to waste their time going after films and calling for boycotts. He should extend the same logic to bans on documentaries and other content as well.

Next week, the country will move to discuss another B – the Budget and hopefully, it will set the tone for what is said as “Bharat’s Decade”!

India in 2023: Heads or Tails?

2022 just got over and as I sit to pen this blog on the 1^st day of 2023, I am trying to recall the mood that was prevailing at the same time last year. For all practical purposes, the stand-out sentiment at the beginning of 2022 was that of “Relief and Hope”. Covid was just receding. Right through the last quarter of 2021, lockdowns were relaxed in the country, festivals were celebrated with gusto and normalcy was returning by and large. Almost the entire country was covered by the vaccination program by December. There was relief and hope that things in the new year could only get better.

At that time, nobody thought that a war would actually break out and pour water on the collective hopes of the entire world. Russia invaded Ukraine and as we speak, the war is still on. What was expected as a swift and big recovery of the global economy post-Covid didn’t happen. In today’s situation, a war between two nations doesn’t affect only those two nations. It pilfers to other nations as well, with a result we had the after-effects of the war being felt by nations across the globe. Inflation has hit never seen high and with the US exporting inflation, the dollar has strengthened against most of the currencies worldwide. The result was there to be seen in the last three months. Economic growth has substantially slowed down and the expected post-Covid Uptick has evaporated into thin air. In summary, what was touted to be a year of recovery and swift growth, ended up being one of the worst years for the world. “Permacrisis” – meaning an extended period of instability and insecurity is the term being conferred upon the year 2022. Who would have expected this back then in January 2022?

I am now trying to recall what the mood was at the beginning of the year 2021. Coming at the back of a full year ravaged by Covid and lockdowns, it was expected that with the rollout of vaccination, the ebbing of the virus and countries attaining herd immunity we will soon see the back of the Corona Virus and get back to an Off line living from a completely Online living. However, that was not to be. We soon started facing the virus in its different variants, the effect of which was more lethal. 2021 also continued to be a year of woes except for some improvement in the last quarter of the year. Again, what started as a year where the dark clouds were seen to be disappearing ended up being an extremely challenging year for the world.

With these beginning-of-the-year scenarios of 2021 and 2022 in perspective, I am trying to look around what’s the mood like as we start 2023. The Economist in its 2023 outlook article says that a recession in 2023 is inevitable with the world reeling from shocks in geopolitics, energy and economy. There seems to be no end to the Russia – Ukraine war at this point in time. While other countries have seemingly shrugged off Covid, China is going through one of its biggest Covid waves now. This has once again put global supply chains in a dizzy which is expected to have a telling impact on Manufacturing worldwide. Now, will this wave from China trigger a similar wave in other countries that have all opened up, is the big elephant in the 2023 room! The lingering war and the lingering Covid with their aftereffects are what are keeping global leaders and policymakers anxious and awake as we ring in 2023.

GDP growth projections for most countries, in particular, the developed ones are muted for this year. Among all this bad news, there are bright spots on the horizon. India is expected to be one such. Even in 2022, though we didn’t do as projected at the beginning of the year thanks to the war-induced uncertainties, India came off much better than most other countries. As per World Bank, the Indian economy has shown higher resilience to global shocks of late. Therefore, for India, as per experts, the outlook for 2023 is a mixed bag. It is expected to grow faster than most countries of significance, yet slower than what is expected of it if there are no external headwinds.

2023, therefore, is being ushered in with cautious pessimism, unlike the previous few years. If the previous years proved the pundits wrong about their positive outlooks, can we have the pundits wrong again in 2023? Can the headwinds as we see now, become tailwinds when we close the year? If the reality tends to be different than what the pundits have forecasted at the beginning of the year, there are reasons for us to be hopeful as far as 2023 is concerned.

For India though, we seem to be in an interesting place. If the trend of pundits getting wrong continues i.e., the global economy gets over its problems and does well, we in India too stand to gain. If the pundits actually get it right, India is expected to be a lone bright star anyway.

We seem to be in a “Heads we win, Tails we win” situation. On that positive note, here’s wishing all my readers a new year filled with happiness and peace.

Postscript: If you are looking at forecast for investing in the stock market, here’s one from Mark Twain.

“October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.”

Pic courtesy: avepoint.com

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2022 State elections – Takeaways from Takeaways!

Another round of state elections just got over last week in India and though it was a mini-round with just two states, we are already neck-deep into many analyses and takeaways from the results from commentators and experts of all hues. I don’t want to add to the clutter. However, in this post, I would like to talk about a few points that are flawed in my opinion, or totally skipped the attention of experts. Here we go:

Anti-Incumbency is not a given: More often than not, the starting point for most experts in India when they forecast a party’s performance if in power is “Anti-Incumbency”. In India now, in the past so many years, many elections have shown that people just don’t vote out governments just because they are incumbent. People reward governments too by voting them again. BJD in Orissa, AAP in Delhi, TMC in West Bengal, and BJP in UP, Uttarakhand and Gujarat are all examples. However, it is only in the case of the Congress that Anti-Incumbency becomes a starting point. Recent history has shown that Congress has not been able to retain states based on their performance. (Punjab, Karnataka…)
Picking the right previous vote share as a starting point: The starting point for any assessment of a party’s chances is its vote share in the previous election. Considering the fact India now votes differently for Lok Sabha and State elections (Read my post here), an apple-to-apple comparison for the 2022 Gujarat state polls must be the 2017 state polls. However, for Gujarat and in the present circumstances, I would like to make a logical exception. In Gujarat, whether it is the Lok Sabha polls or the State polls, it is Narendra Modi who is on the ticket. So, the starting point should be the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In that election, BJP got 62.21% vote share and won 26 out of 26 seats. Specifically for Gujarat, my point is, BJP started with a very high vote share of 62% in the 2019 polls. With that background, considering the situation presently in the state concerning governance issues and so on, a drop of 10% vote share as we saw in the state polls is explainable.
From the last elections to now, the situation is not static: For Gujarat, almost all experts predicted that BJP will return to power. But most “varisht partrakaar” I heard said that in the peak of the Modi wave in Gujarat in 2002, BJP could win only a maximum of 127 seats and in each election from thereon, this has come down. So even in this election, they kept saying that BJP will get more seats than in 2017 but cannot go beyond 127. And as per them, this was because in Gujarat there is a core Congress voter base that does not get diminished. However, what is being forgotten conveniently here is that between 2017 and now, Congress almost neglected Gujarat, 12 of their MLAs shifted to BJP, and many more leaders moved out thereby shrinking the party’s base. And other parties do work to expand their base like what AAP or BJP did in the tribal areas.
Berozgari and Mahangayee are not election issues: I have said this before also. This time, it gets reinforced. Commentators and experts who visit the state and talk to people before elections keep saying that there is anger among people due to Berozgari (Unemployment) and Mahangayee (Price rise) and hence the government will be thrown out. Well, from the time I started following elections in India in the 80s, these have always been issues that bother people. However, the question is, are these the issues based on which they vote? I doubt it very much. I feel that people now know that Unemployment and Price rise are issues all the time and the governments of the day cannot do much about them. Just like investors in the stock market, voters nowadays vote based on what the future holds for them with a party. Therefore, it becomes important for any challenger to not just highlight the flaws of the ruling government but present an alternate governance vision.
AAP beats Congress easily and not BJP: If you look at AAP’s successes so far which are Delhi and Punjab, it beat the Congress and came to power. Where they challenged the BJP like in Goa or now in Gujarat, AAP has not been successful.
PK may be desirable, but not essential for winning an election: In recent times based on the last few polls, a narrative was built that parties win elections because of PK and his services. This round demonstrated that it may not be true.
Municipality polls are not of National relevance: Just because TV channels and media whip up a mad frenzy, a Delhi MCD poll day or a Mumbai BMC poll tomorrow are not of National relevance.

Post Script: In this election in Gujarat, BJP beat the record of the Congress for the highest number of seats which was 149. It is said that this was due to Madhav Singh Solanki’s KHAM ((Kshatriya-Harijan-Adivasis-Muslim) strategy. If it was KHAM for Congress, BJP beat this record this time with the MOM (Modi-Only-Matters) strategy!

Image credit: The Tribune

The Maahaul of India Shining!

If you are an avid watcher or reader of global commentary, you cannot miss the ongoing spotlight on India and mostly for good reasons. India seems to be the shining star in what otherwise seems to be a global economy that is still coming to terms with post-Covid recovery and the spiralling effects of the Russia – Ukraine war. The past few weeks have seen a downpour of bad news on the economic front globally. And it is not just from the US which is a prime mover in the global economy but other developed nations as well.

India though seems to be a lonely planet in the universe. The stock markets are on a historic high as we approach the end of this calendar year and despite the global demand situation, the Q2 GDP numbers at 6.3% demonstrate that India is tiding over the global headwinds reasonably well. Therefore, on cue, we have been seeing many opinion pieces, commentaries, and encomiums of late not just within India but globally, saying that this could be India’s decade and so on. I am calling this the “India Shining” sentiment for easy understanding! The point to note is the maahaul of India Shining keeps visiting us every 5-6 years and ebbs off after a while.

The phrase “India Shining” was of course used for the first time by the Vajpayee-led NDA government to project a positive outlook of the country to foreign investors back in 2003-04. The campaign was envisaged by Jaswant Singh as the finance minister. Later on, it took shape of a political campaign for NDA in the 2004 polls. Many expert commentators till today opine that the India Shining campaign was the main reason for its defeat in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. If one does a fine toothcomb analysis of the results, it will be clear as daylight that NDA was defeated due to other issues. We will keep that for another day, another blog.

The campaign did help to improve the image of India worldwide in that period. India was part of the BRICS coinage, a commentary that would have done countries like India, China, Russia, etc more good than any global PR campaign ever did. I remember in that period wherever I went, the BRICS story dominated discussions in board rooms and what followed was a long period of India Shining till the Global Financial Crisis in the form of Lehman shock struck in 2008. If you recall, the period 2003 – 2008 saw huge investments in real estate and retail with the free flow of “Hot money” to India, all thanks to the positive India Shining sentiment.

The next brief and passive wave of India Shining started in 2014 after Narendra Modi took over as the Prime Minister of a full majority government after 1989. India was the flavour of the world then and this lasted for a few years till 2017. The stock markets saw new highs with a heavy inflow of FII in this period.

What we are seeing now is the return of the BRICS type hype. The difference is, three of the constituents of BRICS namely Brazil, Russia, and China are no longer in the good books of the world while India continues to be. There are a few things that are going well for India overall now. A politically stable government that is confident in itself and no longer suffering from coalition compulsions. A government led by a leader whose popularity and credibility among the masses is unprecedented in a long while which helps take decisions without looking over one’s shoulders. Introduction of structural financial reforms like the GST and IBC that have stabilized and yielding results. India coming out of Covid relatively better off with life and business back to normal. The swift post-pandemic recovery in the economy despite the global headwinds due to the ongoing war. A nuanced management of the economy in the past few years and in a sense better than what the minders of the economy are being credited for, in my opinion.

Countries and Corporations who had conceived the China+1 strategy back in 2013 to de-risk from China are actually getting serious about executing the strategy now by shifting part of production elsewhere. The Covid pandemic and the way China has been handling the pandemic has now morphed the China +1 strategy into ABC (Anything but China) strategy. These have certainly helped the cause of manufacturing in India as we can see in the exports of Mobile phones out of India now. We are still scratching the surface here and still miles to go before we become a credible +1 in manufacturing.

There is a visible infrastructural transformation that is happening in India as we speak. Highways, Railways, Airports, and seaports are all getting upgraded or added at a speed not seen before. Again, the pandemic derailed the progress for two years otherwise, many would have seen completion by now.

There is credence therefore to the India Shining sentiment that we are witnessing at the moment. Here is where I would like to add a caveat. Developed countries like the US, Western Europe, Japan, and so on look at other countries when their internal situations are not good. That is how China got the benefit of a huge benevolence from the US in the 90’s when the US outsourced almost its entire manufacturing to China. Similarly, the US Economy is going through a trough presently with the spectre of a recession looming large. The economy is indeed resilient but there are lots of ifs and buts. Commentators call this the “Yes and But” situation.

If you look at India, I would say we are in a “No and But” situation. Living in India, one cannot resonate easily with the India Shining maahaul. Our cities are in a state of perennial under-construction. Projects, whether they are flyovers or Metros just don’t seem to finish. Interest rates have become so high that have pushed EMIs over the roof. IBC has not helped to resolve quickly the issue of bankrupt companies. In Mumbai, bankrupt builders have ditched projects midway spoiling the aspirations of so many middle-class families and filling the skyline with incomplete towers. Jobs and Unemployment data point to a very grim situation for the youth.

But the economy is indeed growing. GST collections have been on a healthy trend. People are travelling and holidaying like there is no tomorrow. Just look at the long queues for check-in and security checks in big airports like Mumbai and Delhi in the early morning hours. Festival and marriage shopping crowds have been unprecedented of late in shopping areas in all cities. Cheap data and bandwidth have transformed our day-to-day lives in more ways than one. The “India stack” is a global case study. Amidst all the negative sentiments globally, there is an air of positivity in India. We have to move to a “Yes and no But” scenario that too as early as possible.

As Shekhar Gupta says in one of his columns, we have a habit of flashing victory signs early. India as we speak is still a WIP and a lot of work is yet to be done. From here, what we need is an uninterrupted home run where the economy keeps clocking 7-8% if not more on a year-on-year basis for 20 years. If that happens, we will not be talking of just a maahaul but an actual India shining!

Pic credits: Alex Fine in The Economist dated 13th May, 2022.

NDTV – A Nostalgic Drive!

In the last few days, social media has been buzzing with the news of the Adani group buying a large stake in New Delhi Television or NDTV as we all know it. A corporate house getting involved in the ownership of a news organization is no longer a strange thing in any part of the world. So, why is there such an interest in this news of the Adani group buying a large stake or moving to acquire a controlling stake of NDTV? It is because the news company involved here is NDTV, an entity that has been a nostalgic part of the growing up of an entire generation in India. As more and more details of the transaction and what it entails are unfolding, I couldn’t help jog my memory back to the time when NDTV was all that we watched as far as current affairs on TV was concerned.

In its growing years, the generation I am referring to witnessed the evolution of News broadcasting in India from a staid, single-source sarkari Doordarshan to the opening up of the News broadcasting domain to private, professional and independent options in the mid-80s. As this evolution happened, the credit for being a pioneer in the private news broadcasting space at each step goes to NDTV.

My own tryst with NDTV as with many others in my age group started with “The World This Week” a packaged show on the world outside that was telecast on Doordarshan. So 10 PM on Fridays saw the recreation room with just a single TV in our B-School hostel, being house full with inmates even sitting on the floor and occupying every inch of the room to watch this program. Such crowds in our hostel TV room were reserved for Cricket matches or the Mahabharat serial usually.

The World This Week anchored by Dr. Prannoy Roy and another gentleman by the name of Appan Menon was the first and only source to catch a glimpse of what was happening outside of India back then. With its slickly edited visuals, carefully curated content from across the globe and more importantly accompanied by the clear, concise and measured commentary of Roy, The World This Week became extremely popular and soon Friday evenings meant Chitrahaar/Oliyum Oliyum and The World This Week. I vividly remember the visuals of the “Tank Man” at Tiananmen Square in China back in 1989 shown as part of an episode.

Even before The World This Week, as an anchor Prannoy had already endeared himself to a large section of the English-speaking TV-watching audience in India. That was as the anchor of the first election coverage program on DD along with Vinod Dua (who used to handle the Hindi part) for the 1989 Lok Sabha elections. The Jodi of Prannoy and Dua speaking alternately in English and Hindi while presenting the trends of the leads and results trends is afresh in my memory. We in fact used the concept of Roy-Dua pair for a college skit and remember getting the second prize! In that pre-EVM, paper ballot box era, counting used to go on 3 days for a Lok Sabha election and the Roy-Dua pair would be on it for hours and hours together analyzing the election results.

As far as I can remember, Prannoy is the pioneer of Opinion polls, exit polls and all kinds of election analysis that we see today. To Prannoy and his team goes the credit for introducing many a few election-related terms that are part of our vocabulary now. Personally, for me, psephology as a subject interested me after I started watching Prannoy’s programs on TV. Stuff like Anti-Incumbency, TINA factor, Index of Opposition Unity, First past the poll system, Winner’s bump and so on became familiar thanks to Prannoy’s usage of these in his election shows.

The early ’90s was a phase in which India was opening up on many fronts. The News broadcast domain was not an exception. So, when Rupert Murdoch’s Star network started its news channel – Star News, it was NDTV that was contracted to be the content producer. What we saw as Star News was essentially NDTV news with the editorial control totally with NDTV while Star TV was running the channel. While Prannoy has always been the visible face of NDTV, it was only known much later that his wife Radhika Roy played an active role in running the channel.

The NDTV English and Hindi channels which we see today I guess, came into existence after the arrangement between Star TV and NDTV broke up in 2003. The one fact that we cannot ignore is that NDTV as an organization has been a factory of talent in the Indian News broadcast industry. You name any anchor or reporter of heft in India and he or she would have schooled in NDTV sometime in the past. Whether it is star anchors/editors like Rajdeep Sardesai or Barkha Dutt or Arnab Goswami who are all brand names in their own right today or some of the finest reporters in the country, they are all from the NDTV school. It is to the credit of the Roys that they were able to spot and nurture talent across the country in the News broadcast domain. There is no doubt that in the news media space, NDTV has always been seen as a brand of trust, credibility and professionalism.

It will be interesting to watch, therefore, what the future holds for NDTV with the recent developments. It is a fact that NDTV today is a pale shadow of its past. Blame it on the flight of talent or the financial woes of the Roys or the degeneration of the News broadcast industry overall, NDTV has not been able to maintain its leadership position which it held perhaps in the mid-noughties. Irrespective of what the future entails, I am certain that the legacy of NDTV as a pioneer on many fronts in the news broadcasting space in India will remain and hopefully it will spring back to a fresh beginning in a New Dashing TV avatar!

India @ 75 – Seven and a Half reasons for being proud of!

As I write this blog on the eve of yet another Independence Day, the whole country is in a festive and cheerful mood. This being the 75^th Anniversary of our Independence, it is all the more special. The entire nation seems to be swamped by the Tricolour with the people embracing the Prime Minister’s “Har Ghar Tiranga” call with great rigour. As is for every milestone event, there are Op-eds and articles galore on how India has fared after 75 years of Independence. And everyone’s outlook is based on if the glass is 50% full or 50% empty. At 75 years, to me, it seems like it is 75% full and there are seven and a half reasons, we can be proud of as a nation in terms of what we have accomplished. Here we go:

Armed Forces: Throughout these 75 years, our Armed forces have shown exemplary character and have stood for the country in times of need. Whenever there is no other option, the armed forces are called in and they have always done the job. More importantly, they have always stuck to their boundaries and have not ventured to diminish the civilian authority in a democracy like ours, even when situations have been ripe. The Armed forces have functioned as a disciplined force and have discharged their responsibilities ably all the time.
Cricket: One would easily mistake Cricket to be the National sport of India. It is not even a sport that is native to our country. It is a sport that was bequeathed to us by the British. Yet, it is a game that we lord today. India dominates the game of Cricket both on and off the field. Period.
Democracy: When you think of it, that India is a chaotic but functioning democracy may surprise even many of us. But the fact is, it is. It’s really amazing how in the past 70 years since the first election, power has smoothly segued from the loser to the winner without a single instance of any hiccup. Across the country, there are many examples of leaders who have risen to the top as Chief Ministers, Prime Ministers and Presidents who all started as common men and women, all thanks to a vibrant democracy.
Diversity: This is a thing about which we within India do not attach much significance. Ask any foreigner and she would always be overwhelmed by the diversity India as a country offers whether it is religion, culture, ethnicity, food, language, landscapes, weather, customs and even clothes. After Independence, many naysayers felt that this diversity will do India in. Yet, here we are, alive and kicking as a democratic nation. We are so diverse that for everything that we say of India, the opposite is also true!
Election Commission: Among all the bodies of the Government, easily the Election commission comes on top as the most professional, efficient and dependable body. One should give credit to T.N. Seshan for this who as the Chief Election Commissioner brought in reforms that changed the way the EC functioned. The good thing is even after Seshan, the EC has continued to maintain or rather better its efficiency.
IT Industry: If you have to choose one brand ambassador for India which helped in elevating the image of India outside, it has to be the Indian IT Industry. Today, there is no part of the world where we don’t have IT professionals who spread some message about India on a day-to-day basis. But more importantly, within India, the IT Industry helped to create a self-confident Middle class that flaunts its purchasing power and drives consumption. Also, most of the path-breaking governance initiatives like the India stack are all a by-product of the IT power of India.
IRCTC: Ease of railway booking must count as the earliest visible and tangible improvement in the delivery of a government service in India. Today we are used to other efficient services like the UPI, GEM and so on. But in my opinion, IRCTC continues to be the trailblazer.
- Yoga: This is the last half reason for us to be proud as a nation. I am saying “half reason” because we seem to have woken up late in claiming our true legacy in this field. When the whole world is moving from health to wellness, Yoga as a practice has the potential to fill this gap. And being the birthplace of Yoga, India has all the credentials to do what it did with IT.

There are other reasons for us to be proud of India, but these come as top of the mind for me as I pen this post to commemorate India @ 75!

Wishing all the readers a Happy and proud Independence Day! 7.5 stars for India @ 75. Now showing everywhere in world!

LOC for FOE!

Freedom of Expression is in the news these days. Not just in the news, but also in social chatter. Young followers of this chatter may begin to wonder if in India there is Freedom of Expression at all. Of course, there is. Article 19 of the constitution provides for it clearly. Well, almost. Article 19 of the constitution says “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression, this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” This is very clear. The devil as they say is in the details. Here it is in Clause (2) of the same article. Clause (2) of Article 19 of the Indian constitution enables the legislature to impose certain restrictions on free speech under following heads:

security of the State,
friendly relations with foreign States,
public order,
decency and morality,
contempt of court,
defamation,
incitement to an offence, and
sovereignty and integrity of India.

Therefore, I really wonder where is the confusion. The law and its provisos are very clear. Freedom of Expression does exist. But comes with its own riders. Why is it so difficult to understand this even for the liberal intelligentsia?

What is missed out in the above which is what is the grey area in the whole thing is the Right to offend in the garb of Freedom of Expression. Does Freedom of Expression come with the Right to Offend? Certainly not.

Let us look at the most recent case in India involving this Freedom of Expression which was the release of a poster for a documentary film that depicted a smoking Kali, a goddess revered by the Hindus in India. As a film maker, Leena Manimekalai has the freedom to say what she wants in her films. As some people now try to say – the poster very well could be depicting a character in the film playing the Kali role in a play and smoking during breaks. Many of us have seen actors in their make ups smoking at the back stage. Now the question is, what is the need to put up this one scene in the marketing collaterals for the film?

As we have seen the director’s further reactions to the uproar, it is obvious that the choice of the poster was not by chance. It was by intent. An intent to exercise her Right to offend – in this case, a section of the Hindu faith. Therefore, no one should complain if there is an uproar and start questioning the existence of Freedom of Expression in India.

At the same time, is there a need to arrest her and put her in the jail for this? I don’t think so. Right to outrage cannot be a response to Right to offend. By calling for her arrest, one is falling into the trap of fuelling the promotion of the film.

This was followed by TMC MP Mahua Moitra’s comment which again sparked condemnation and call for her arrest. This is stretching it too far. While condemnation is also exercising the Freedom of Expression, calling for her arrest is not. Her comment certainly does not fall under any of the reasons mentioned in Clause (2) of Section 19 that warrants a legal action.

One can see the pattern. Before the Kali poster controversy, it all started with the comment made by BJP’s Nupur Sharma on TV on the Prophet. As a spokesperson of the ruling party, she did cross the line by dragging the Prophet in the TV discussion. Not surprising that it invited condemnation from the Muslim countries and India had to handle the diplomatic fallout. Again, the call for her arrest and killing is totally not acceptable and condemnable. In the same lines, the daylight killing of Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur for a Facebook post in Udaipur is deplorable. This Action – Reaction cycle is going to be endless.

In all this, it is clear that one can exercise his or her Freedom of Expression openly while in private or in the known circle. But when you are in the public space, there is a need to exercise restraint and control. Because as some wise counsel said, “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins”. This can be stretched quite well to the issue of Freedom of Expression as well. While expressing in public, one should clearly be aware as to where the other man’s sensibilities lie.

Therefore, there is a need for drawing one’s own LOC (Line of Control) on FOE (Freedom Of Expression) while in public domain. In my opinion, one knows very well, when the Line of Control is being crossed. So, it is not that difficult to exercise control along the LOC. This is not just applicable to individuals but to politicians and creative people as well.

Image Credit: Indianprinterpublisher.com

Agnipath and not Agnipast!

“Change is the only thing that is constant” is an oft repeated phrase that has now become a cliché! In a real world that is not Utopia, the only thing that is constant is resistance to change. “Where are the big bang reforms?” This was a familiar question from the commentariat in the first few years of the Modi Sarkar. Then when the Sarkar started implementing reforms of the big bang variety, the question changed to “Why is this needed now?”. We saw this when the much-needed reforms in the agriculture sector were introduced. Finally, the government had to roll back the same. In my blog (read here) when the farm bills were repealed after protracted agitations, I had written on the lessons for the Modi Government in bringing in reforms. There are more lessons coming up!

Here we are, again in the same boat. The Government announced Agnipath, a scheme that brings about radical changes or reforms in the recruitment of jawans for the armed forces. And post the announcement, we have been seeing the same scenes playing out in terms of agitations and approach of the government. Literally speaking Agnipath has set parts of the country on fire, and this is extremely unfortunate.

Most commentators and domain experts acknowledge the need for these reforms. Yet, the section of the population which is supposed to benefit from these have an angst towards these. The result is what we see playing out on our respective screens.

From whatever I have seen and heard on this issue, the biggest issue around the proposed Agnipath program is the timing. For the past 2 years, due to Covid, recruitment to Armed forces through recruitment rallies have not happened. The process is at different stages and the candidates are going through an agonising period of prolonged suspense, frustration and at the end of the day some hope. Aspiring candidates are at different stages in the process – some awaiting their medical, some awaiting the final letter, some at different rounds and so on. So, all the while they have been forced to keep themselves fit and ready for the process to come to an end now that things are getting back to normal post Covid. All along the candidates have been given the reason of Covid for the delay in the process.

Now comes the announcement of Agnipath which totally puts paid to their hopes of not just joining the services that will ensure a settled life but, a 3/4^th probability of getting out of the services and start all over again in 4 years. What we see as raucous demonstrations are a result of the pent-up frustration in the first place due to last two years of agonising wait and second now finding that the game has changed.

If one must look at the causes therefore for this unrest, they can be summarised as follows:

First the timing. As I have mentioned before, the proposed changes have come at a time when recruitment has not happened for two years.
Second, the proposed changes have made some of the candidates ineligible due to the age limits. They feel slighted.
Third, there is an element of uncertainty because of the 25% absorption clause even for those who get selected. Therefore, this is seen as a harbinger of struggle in life if one misses the bus!
Fourth, the probability of getting selected even if this is a short tour of duty has reduced since the overall recruitment numbers has been reduced. In general, around 60,000 get selected in a year. Now that has come down to 40,000 of which only 10,000 will get absorbed after four years. This is my understanding. So, the reduction in intake is drastic and therefore the probability of getting into a settled job with the forces has also reduced for the aspirants drastically.
And finally, the sudden drastic communication of the rolling out of the program.

Having said all this, since the proposed reform packaged as the Agnipath scheme is much needed for reducing the average age, reducing the pension budget, shifting the allocation from boots on the ground to weaponry, technology and sophistication, the government must stay the course but probably with a few course corrections. Here’s what the government could have done in rolling out this program and probably it could still do:

Over to Overlap: In businesses, when we try to bring in some changes that tend to disrupt long standing processes, we deploy a tactic called “Overlap”. I strongly feel that in this case also, the government could have brought in this new program with an overlap clause. This means, the existing recruitment program will continue as it is for 2 or 3 years while the new program will be introduced in phases. This of course increases the overall intake for two years but that is a smaller cost for bringing in a reform that has benefits in the long run. The candidates who are part of the ongoing process would not have felt slighted. The new candidates would come in knowing fully the contours of the new program. This would have taken care of the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th issues mentioned above.
Float the trial balloon: Now coming to communication and therefore getting feedback before implementing the same, the government could have used a time-tested technique of leaking parts of the program to select journalists. When key elements of the program appear in the media quoting “as per sources”, it gives a window for the government to own/disown parts or the program in full depending upon the feedback. In this case, the government could have easily got an idea of the ground level feedback and therefore timed it better. Also, aspects of the program which the government is now making changes like the one-time extension of age limit and other ministries bringing in notifications for absorbing Agniveers could have been built into the program itself by floating this trial balloon.

Though some of the commentators particularly from the services feel that this should not be seen as an employment generation program, the fact of the matter is, in India there are districts in states like Bihar, Eastern UP, Bundelkhand, Haryana to name a few, where getting into the forces at the sepoy level is a primary source for employment for the youth. This explains the reason for the skewed nature of the protests and outbursts as far as geographic spread is concerned. The irony is, what probably started as spontaneous outbursts which resulted in destruction of public property at will has now turned into a more orchestrated campaign to create unrest in the country. Nupur Sharma issue is now history!

By going full fledged with the announcement, the government has put itself in a quandary and the program in jeopardy. Now coming out of the hole and still roll out Agnipath even with some changes will be a real Agnipariksha for the government! Hope this doesn’t go down as “Agnipast”!

anandkumarrs

Random expressions of a Wannabe

Indian Politics