The PM Care China Goodwill Fund ?

For Every Rupee of India’s trade with China 35 paisa flows out of India. Lost for ever - to the India’s The PM’s Care China Goodwill Fund ? With China shamelessly occupying over 100kms of Indian territory in Ladakh region should India continue to bolster this fund by trade with that inimical country? 

The Chinese Locust

No Hocus-pocus 

 Abuzz with sinister wanderlust ,

 In the hills, the Confucian locust , 

In the plains, the desert locust. 

Only fools hope they self destruct, 

The wise rush to combust. 

Heed ye for it's no hocus focus 

The unprovoked killing of Indian soldiers in Galwan in Ladakh

Extremely saddened by the martyrdom of our brave Jawans. The first casualties on the Indo-Sino border since 1967, I understand. 

The ‘Ghost of Galwan’ gobbles up the ‘Spirit of Wuhan’ . The inchoate  ‘esprit de corps’ of quad (US, Aus,Jap) crumbles like a castle of sand - all mute spectators, ‘quarantined’ by the ‘spectre’ of China . Nepal too twirls its moustache. Playing out the truism- the strong get stronger by the weak jumping onto its bandwagon. 

Where does that leave us? A sobering thought ! If we buckle now, on the battle field or in diplomatic parleys , it only whets the appetite of the grasping neighbour. 

A consensus around the idea of not yielding , and to temper the iron in our national character into steel to bear its consequences needs to be evolved. We are into the historic Peloponnesian War scenario, where an ‘unruly’ democratic Athens is confronted by a superior and martial Sparta. Yet, Athens won for Athenians rose to a man. So we can ! 

We need to build a unitary national political theme. Not stand on the high pedestal of a ruling majority to silence pockets of dissonant, inquiring voices from below. Need to channel all voices into a high-pitched national crescendo of ‘Jo Bole So Nihal’. Coercing opposition to be children of Hamlin following the Pied Piper into the mountains of anonymity is not the way to go about it. For in politics there are no children, only the wise and the stupid according to the times. 

So, it is time to display sagacity. The burden of bringing the peoples behind the leadership lies with itself. The measure of success achieved in this direction will be the real litmus test of its political maturity - consensus without compelling, meeting of minds without guns at the heads. 

The past record of this regime in this sense has been less than enviable. It has relied almost exclusively on ‘my way or the highway’. But this is a national emergency with a hegemonic China speaking from behind the barrel of its guns. An all party meet is slated for Friday. Hope the engagement transcends partisan narrowness and evolves a genuine consensus rather than attempting to bring leaders round to the state point of view. The nation needs it to succeed. For only that will mobilise popular support for the state and enthuse its citizen. 

Boycott Chinese Goods

I am firmly in the grip of the sentiment and convinced of the righteousness of it that appeals to all Indians- Boycott Chinese Goods.

China feasted on Aksai Chin, but its ken for desserts remains unsated. It keeps nibbling at uninhabited, unpatrolled hilly  tracts and grasslands  around the LAC with impunity. Maps are cooked up to create a smokescreen of  'Differing Perceptions' to keep the borders unsettled and the door open for wilful incursions. Daring even to intrude at the very moment Messrs Xi and Modi shake hands in Brazil.

Past masters at the game of Patience they wait and wait hoping their illegitimate occupation to convert into 'concurring' or 'conceding' perceptions.  It has  'weaponized' perceptions. 

It negates our efforts for a permanent seat in UNSC ; it stymies our entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group ; it seeks to helmet us with OBOR and mount maritime surveillance of  coastlines from a string of pearls it is building in the neighbourhood ; it lends moral and military support to the terror exporter, Pakistan. 

And yet we do booming business with China, building up a huge Balance of Trade deficit. We import more than double of what we export to China, thereby hobbling our domestic industry especially the small and medium sector. Chinese brands have captured 73% of smartphone sales. And invested heavily in domestic companies raising the spectre of India going the USA way,  where ownership of many well known firms have passed into Chinese hands. That is one reason for the growing distaste for globalization.

Why should we allow a hegemonic, inimical,  gluttonous neighbour to build financial muscles and presumably use it against us ? The state may have niceties of international law and diplomacy to contend with in decision making. But as citizens , individual or corporate, isn't it our moral duty to  express our hurt and rage at this roguish behaviour that threatens our territorial integrity. Let the govt do its bit, and we our bit - Boycott Made in China. 

The state has already shown the way, imposing embargoes on countries that sided with Pakistan against us in the UN - ban on palm oil imports from Malaysia, for instance. While the state engages with China, we too must  raise a protesting crescendo and boycott directed at the Dragon. Make the Dragon aware of the roar of Bheema. Strike the enemy at its weakest is an old dictum. China is at the moment. 

Why should we invest all our pent up national fury only on the effete Pakistan. Why not red eyeball the more pesky,  belligerent China ? 

Boycott is a call gaining momentum, help it acquire critical mass.  CAIT claiming  to represent 7 crore traders has given the clarion call for boycott. Let big houses follow suit.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra has appealed on  social media to boycott ‘Made in China’. Wangchuk’s video from Ladakh drew over 20 lakh views. Mr Chopra  asserted 'that these should be converted into something concrete that would bite the Chinese government'. 

Did PM's address to the nation last month for  ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ hint as much ? 

The appeal isn't a Red vomit against Saffron brigade or one made in wilful default of  legal and business issues involved. It's made in realisation of a moment in passage of history when self respect and national pride supersedes all .

Even the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat feels so "We speak about self-dependence and standing up to China. The new government seems to be standing up to it. But where will the government draw strength from if we don't stop buying things from China?"

An open letter to Rahul Gandhi

Sadar Pranam, 

THEY call you a Dynast, a Pappu, a hybrid Bacchda, a failed, if not,  part time politician, a blabbering duffer, a pesky flea to be swatted at each buzz , an unwelcome, dissonant whisper in a sybaritic, sycophantic national symphony. 

But you don’t look it, that’s for sure. 

Else why would THEY howl ,growl, seethe with rage , gnash THEIR teeth and let loose THEIR ED/CBI/IT/GST bull terriers upon you ? 

Is it your patent sincerity, the dimpled smile, the incipience of an ambitious politician THEY see in you and one who obdurately refuses to wither away in THEIR forbidding presence, that ruffles THEIR feathers ? 

Is it your naivety that affords them opportunities to lampoon, trash, trivialise you ? Must you pepper your 57-minute media interaction with ‘strategy’, ‘strategic’, ‘strategically’  34 times when THEY are still learning the ropes of strategy ? Should you demand a roadmap when THEY are still learning to spell it out ?  

When the Chinese army intrudes to possess hitherto uninhabited areas within or near our borders you have this obnoxious habit of jolting THEIR amour propre. You ‘mindlessly’ point to dangers posed by Chinese pursuit of a  Chanakya neeti ( the eclectic Chinese draw on all sources of military strategy not just Sun Tzu ) that first nibbles at the periphery to gradually conquer the heart. Not too fanciful a thought considering that usurpation of Aksai Chin began as far back as 1949 to reach its culmination in a  ‘Chinese’ drawn McMohan line in 1959. Nothing of Aksai Chin was left by then for India to defend in 1962. 

You can redeem yourself by enacting a ‘Shatranj Ke Khilari’ and escape to the safety of ‘away’, away from the boom of Chinese kettledrums.  That’s what patriotic citizen do and that’s what THEY want you to do.

But how did you get into this imbroglio in the first place?  Aren’t you proscribed from talking about China, a disability foisted upon you by your Nana losing 40000 Sq Kms to them ! Being a Nehru, the sophistry of ‘Differing Perceptions’ that the architects of Shining India invoke today isn’t available to him even now. Nor the compulsion of having to accord primacy to rebuilding, modernising the moribund economy and inducing redistributive justice from severely limited resources ; or the extenuations of an underprepared, underarmed, vertically vivisected Indian army yet to reap the benefits of  defence production infrastructure in the making , and drained from its multifarious civilian duties in relief and rehabilitation and dousing the embers of communal fire oft rekindled by toxicity of Hindu-Muslim antipathies of any avail to a Nehru. 

You know all this. As a true ‘janewdhari’ nationalist you must boost , not mar, THEIR image. Between a 100 Sq Kms or so under disputed ‘perceptions’ now and 40000 Sq Kms perceived and lost earlier is a tremendous leeway. A few sq Kms of pasture land lost here and there isn’t tantamount to Differing Perceptions morphing into Conferring Perceptions. Rest assured, more than the guns THEIR ‘moohtod jawab’ will do the trick. 

Further, your empathies lie on the wrong side of the economic spectrum and never with the suit boot ki sarkar. Disowned by locals, unowned by THEM  the woebegone migrant labourers had only their karma to blame. THEY so believed. By seeking to give moral succour to the distraught, bedraggled men, women and children walking barefoot to destinations thousands of kilometres away and to a bleak, uncertain future on geysering, desolate roads, penniless, hungry, stoically enduring their fate for a better afterlife, you were again caught wrong-footed. The migrants were to stay put and survive or perish instead of making a public spectacle of their misery and sullying THEIR image and THEIR karma.

And bear in mind you only babelize THEM by interacting with academic eminences about Corona and Economy. What can they tell that THEY do not know ? If THEY were not consumed by wisdom would THEY have dared to interrupt the economy twice without due consultation with stakeholders ? THEY know everything about everything. THEIR’s is a limitless repertory, the Akshay Patra of wisdom. God has that way been very unfair. Is it then a wonder that so many fawn obsequiously and react obstreperously to you ? 

Sorry, I have taken much of your time. But it helped me to feel light, so crave your indulgence  in    writing to you again, if need be. 

A well wisher. 

 

Faded underpants means bad economy

The other day my wife chided me , ‘ look, your banian has a hole.’

 ‘Where ?’ 

 ‘Behind the neckline.’ 

 I mineswept my back as far as my arms could go. Lo behold ! there at a particular spot I touched a weebit of bare skin.

 ‘Ah ,its too small to really matter’, I protested.

 ‘ Is it written in your communist manifesto that you must wear it till all the strands fall apart ? ‘, she shot back , at her caustic best. 

 

I conceded, Karl Marx never said so. But little did she know that a modern economist, a hundred years after Marx, did distil a great economic truth from men’s underwear worn well past their shelf life. 

 Alan Greenspan. “If you think about all the garments in the household, the garment that is most private is the male underpants. You need clothes on the outside. But the last purchase that you don’t have to make is underpants.” Nobody sees it , why splurge on it ! Only when there’s money still left after all conceivable purchases and all the pizzas and tandoori chickens the tummy could possibly load does one think of replacing underwear. 

 So Alanspan cooked up a Men’s Underwear Index - booming underwear sales meant economy jingalala, drooping sales economy boo-hoo ! So wasn’t my holy (pun intended) baniyan only mirroring the depressed sentiments in our present economy ? TT , the leading hosiery manufacturer, bemoans sales were down 20% in 2019, this year it could only be worse. I too have slipped from my upper middle class status to middle middle class with falling income occasioned by dropping interest rates. No wonder the holes.

 Lest feminists accuse me of being a cheeky male chauvinist, long before Greenspan ‘exposed’ men with Men’s Undearwear Index, MUI , hemlines of women’s skirt too were used to gauge the health of economy. Rising hemlines indicated prosperity, a mini skirt boom ; in times of economic distress hems tended to drop almost overnight. Said the Hemline Index (HI). Not of much relevance today as hemlines move only one way -UP

Book : ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN by Bernstein&Woodward

A classic in the non-fiction genre of investigative journalism. One , right on top. 

Some books uplift the reader's mood to the pinnacle of literary bliss , some , do more. They compel change. This was one such. 

Carson's expose of DDT's carcinogenic effect, its contamination of entire food chains , genetic mutilation and wholesale wiping out of biological species in her seminal work, 'Silent Spring' compelled US to ban it and made environmental impact an integral concern in policy making. Seymour Hersh's unwrapping of the gruesome manslaughter of innocent Vietnamese by US army in Son Mai cluster of villages in 'My Lai 4' hastened American troop withdrawal from Vietnam. 

In the even more impactful, 'All The President's Men' Woodstein peeled layers after layers of lies , subversion of processes of law, perjury, and obstruction of justice by Nixon administration. Enough for a discredited, some said crooked, President, Richard Nixon to make an ignominious exit within nine months of its publication. The only incumbent President to step down in American history.

To refresh, it all started with a simple  at an office of the Democratic Party in the Watergate complex in Washington. That the burglars wore business suits and carried bugging equipments seemed queer to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein( the couple got referred to as Woodstein). They kept digging and the scope of the investigation kept bafflingly widening till it enveloped the White House itself. 

This journey, the first hand account of Woodstein as it happened in real time is wonderfully scripted, keeping the reader riveted and even more thrilled than any fictional detective story. As official disclaimers get busted and truths gradually unravel adrenalin levels soar.

 Elderly bibliophiles would have read this book. For the young - the millennials and GenZ , the Nixonian era , fifty years past, may seem too remote to affect the present. Nothing could be farther from truth. 

This book is an all-time lighthouse for safe navigation of democracy. It flashes red under an unscrupulous, vindictive and crooked elected executive head. Richard Nixon created a private 'deep state' fiercely loyal to him to do his dirty tricks. Institutions including FBI , CIA , Grand Juries, Prosecutors were compromised to subvert due and just processes of law in order to insulate himself and protect his croonies. 

That he failed is a tribute to the robustness of checks and balances on exercise of power by the executive head embedded in the polity. When these institutions buckled under executive heat, one watchdog stood firm, unyielding - the fourth estate, the last sentinel of democracy. Woodstein exposed the ugly criminal underbelly of Nixon 'owned deep state' and buried a sick presidency in the political graveyard. Once again emphasizing that a vigilant press is a sine qua non for a functioning democracy. 

 A gripping adventure of two young, intrepid journos tenaciously pursuing truth against cross winds of vicious cover- up directed from the fountainhead of power. 

 Truely, a masterpiece of journalistic investigation.