Make in India

Modi is making all the right moves. But whether they have the desired impact in the long run is something that only time will tell.

While, many in the media may accuse him of tokenisms or frivolous symbolisms, the fact is, in a large and diverse country like ours, with a lose federal structure, a hide bound caste structure and a labyrinthine bureaucracy, it is indeed difficult to cause change by merely legislating.

To bring in an element of permanence and sustainability to change, and to guarantee stability, it is imperative that attitudes also change, and the fastest way to change them is by example from the top, than wait for momentum to build from the bottom. And when you attempt to ensure change from the top, tokenism and demagoguery are few of the tools that transitional leaders resort to, to affect it.  And that is exactly what Modi probably aiming to do.

When tokenism is deployed at the international stage, it is called diplomacy, and that is a far more acceptable term than tokenism, with far lesser negative connotation also than the latter.

The invite to Sharif, a democratically elected head of a perennially hostile neighbor, much to dismay of the Pakistani army, or his leaning toward Japan, or his invitation to Obama for the Republic Day 2015, are clearly all moves, which are symptomatic of a nitijya none less than Kautilya himself.

I am also particularly enamored by his focus on “make in India”. If someone had raised this slogal 30 years ago, India would not have missed the first phase of growth that so many of her smaller east Asian neighbors witnessed.

It was just 300 years ago, when the Bird of Gold, as India was metaphorically referred to for several centuries before the Ganges was sponged to be squeezed on Thames, under the English Yoke, it was a hub of manufacturing and also of trading. It was also the seat of learning for centuries and anyone desiring higher education would come to the Indian learning centers for seeking it. What was India’s stated prowess in manufacturing then is what is today called handicrafts now. Which makes it clear, while India continued to manufacture what it did, the machines took over, produced more, cheaper and faster, and about better only the connoisseurs could care. And India lost to Europe in the Industrial or machine revolution. This revolution also included mechanization of warfare. Other than Tipu Sultan, who inherited the zeal to mordernize his army from his father Haider, I don’t think, any ruler looked at modernizing the army.

CONTRIBUTION TO GLOBAL GDP IN PCT TERMS

	1700	1993	2003	2013
USA	NIL	26.5	25.6	23.9
CHINA	23	2.3	6.8	8.5
GERMANUY,UK, FRANCE, ITALY	6	21.6	17.7	16.7
JAPAN	6	12.2	8.5	8.2
INDIA	26	1.2	2.2	2.5

Till the mid 60s, India was ahead of China in most growth parameters.

Over the last 60 years of Congress rule, the Chinese progress has numbed the world, while Indian growth rates wallowed at the Hindu Rate of Growth and India chose to look askance, obsessing about the Nehruvian dynastic democracy than

Till the mid nineties, the global manufacturing contribution of the world was split quite uniformly between some regional blocks like USA constituting 25 pct, EU top 4 (Germany, France, UK and Italy) 25 pct and Japan, China and India also contributing 25 pct.

From the mid nineties to 2013, while the contribution of India to global manufacturing increased two fold from 0.9 pct to 2.0 pct; that of China grew 8 fold from 3 pct to 24 pct. China became the factory to the world, and India bystander and was not even an also ran.

Contribution to Global Manufacturing in Pct Terms

	1700	1993	2003	2013
USA	NIL	24.4		23.9
CHINA	23	3.1	17.6	24
GERMANUY,UK, FRANCE, ITALY	6	24.1	17.9	14.9
JAPAN	6	20.2	9.6	7.3
INDIA	26	0.9	2.2	2.0

India actually leaped to the services phase without passing through the manufacturing phase. Just like India leapt to the mobile telephony phase without passing through the fixed telephony phase.

141 Killed in Peshawar - TTP did it

Till the gruesome Peshawar killings, I always believed, that Pashtoons and the Rajputs valued valor far more than victory. And that being vicious in war was never a value that they espoused or a virtue that they lived by.

The Peshawar massacre willy-nilly in dubbed voices has once again kindled the debate of terror being Islamic. Whether Islam promotes and propagates terror is clearly a question only its arch exponents can answer, and any effort that I may make in that direction, would be only half-baked.

But I did read just a few chapters of the Koran in an attempt to understand its ethos. And in the chapter that I read, after every second verse was a threat of punishment that Allah holds out to his followers for non-complying with the tenets as touted by the Quran, and threat of eternal perdition to those who did not believe in the Quran.

The holy book is like a book on conduct and holds a constant threat of punishment - should there be deviation from the code of conduct as enshrined - a metrics for calibrating such retribution is also provided by the book. Undeniably, it is not a religion of love, but more of threat punishment and retribution.

While I am quite a slave of the egalitarianism that is propagated by Islam - something that is grievously lacking in Hinduism - one problem that I clearly see in Islam is its being paranoid and phobic to any reform. Any talk of reform seems to insinuate some deficiency, and like other Abrahamic religion pointing out of a deficiency tantamounts to blasphemy. Something that is again punishable and the measure of such punishment clearly defined.

Christianity addressed this inwardness to an extent by bringing out the New Testament, and may be Islam will have to figure out a similar way too to bring in long pending reform in the religion and also to bring in some softening of the radical message that is spread by that religion.

It was 10 supposedly chastened viridescent draped TTP Jihadists who scaled the wall of a army school and slayed 140 innocent children and teachers. The TTP was a state sponsored terror outfit helping the Pakistan army in wrecking terror on the Afghan neighbouring autonomous tribal areas of the North.

Apparently, the dance of death in the school was a tit for tat aimed at the army, which, after the ascendency of Sharif to the post of PM, has been liquidating terrorists through air strikes, precisely the TTP and its members that it once supported and sponsored.

The TTP wanted the army to feel the pain of losing women and children they lose in Pakistani army air strikes as collateral damage.

While we must with all the sincerity sympathize with Pakistan, the galling truth is, that no action is being taken against the Hafiz Sayeed's LET Jihadists harbored in Punjab area of Pakistan, as they help the Pak army in the proxy war with India, bleeding India by keeping her embroiled and engaged in a frivolous war, sponsored but not waged not by the army itself.

I only hope that the Sharif government realizes that the once friendly TTP turned against it, so can the LET that it is nurturing to foment trouble in Kashmir could turn against it.

But sanity is something that eludes you most when you are intoxicated by power and Sharif and Pak army may be most prone to it today.

My First Tryst with Mist

I don’t believe that it was a matter of traditional rivalry between the English and the Scotts, when my English friend discouraged me from planning a vacation to Scotland for the sporadicity of rain in that verdant country was far worse than it was in his country - England, and so were the mosquitoes – in his candid opinion.

To Indians, whose image of Scotland is pretty much borrowed from what they watch on TV or movies, Scotland is a verdant country that would mesmerize you no end with its natural beauty and abundance of water bodies. But on the contrary my English friend recommended that a vacation in Cotswold would be far more enjoyable than one in a mosquito-ridden Scotland.

Had it not been the referendum that went against the separation of Scotland from the UK, vacationing in Scotland would have meant needing a new currency in your wallet. Good that it did not happen, as at least now, you can spend pounds in Scotland just like you would in London.

MANSFIELD MANOR

When I am in London, for sheer logistical convenience, I prefer to stay at the Cumberland, which straddles the Marble Arch tube station. I have been patronizing this hotel I would imagine now for close to 15 years, and have seen it transition from a dilapidated property to a swanky one today, with majority of its patrons being from the Arab World. Hence, the colorful Hijab and black Burka is indeed the commonest attire that you see in the hotel.

In fact, I feel that Oxford Street, which this hotel on one side skirts, the language that is most spoken is Arabic and not English. The commonest site is of obese Arabs awkwardly ambling on the Oxford street with wads of cash in their pockets for their shopaholic wives’, and of the latter many of them do have more than one.

While, due to compelling schedules, I could not go to Cotswold, I did manage to take a reprieve to Surianelli Munnar. We stayed in the guesthouse of Harrisons Malayalam in the midst of a 2000-acre tea estate. Though technically the monsoons were supposed to have retreated, yet it did not prevent the rain gods from smiling, and I did witness mild drizzle off and on, despite the seasonality cycle proclaiming otherwise.

It was also my first tryst with mist. Having trekked at heights far more than the 1600 mts what Surianelli is at, and explored ranges loftier than this part of the Western Ghats, I had never had the opportunity to walk with my head in the clouds and my hearing impaired with the mist condensate trickling into my ear lobes.

Till I explored this part of my country, I too belonged to the tribe that obsessively marveled the scenic beauty of Switzerland, but the Medupatty masonry-lake cratered in the heart of Idukki district, ensconced in the midst of the Western Ghats is so pristine that it belittles all paeons sung in praise of Switzerland.