My Travels to China

In the last one year, I would have travelled to China times more than a couple and never did I return home more enamored than this time, by the manifestation of the Keynesian model that China has like a religion co-opted for its growth.

Ill-liberal governments, indefatiguably long for legitimacy that liberal ones take for granted and often resort to a top down model of growth to compensate for the smoldering resentment and discontent in their hoi-polloi. Build and build more is one, spend and lend more are the most usual ways of doing so, the former spurring state investment and the latter putting money in the hands of the people to invest.

Massive construction driven by a state that is invested in business, imposing structures and architecture borrowed from the west, is a phenomenon that now pervades even the tier III cities in China. Their equivalent of our Sitapur looks like Manhattan. 

While my travel was restricted to the 3 pharma zones on the east coast of China, I am sure, other parts of the country are no different. The government is now specifically incentivizing the de-localization of the pharma industry from the East Coast to Central China and even if new companies do not emerge in that area, significant investment will come from the existing ones in form of additional capacity or distribution channels.

Of course, something that Keynes did not see or predict was the inflationary impact of such policies and also the drain they may have on the resources of the state. And the state in all cases, has only two ways to fund the yawning resource gap, one by way of taxation and other by deficit financing.

Had India done something comparable in magnitude, it could have fueled chronic asset price inflation and significant consumers price inflation. With money in the hands of the millions of workers consumer price inflation would be sure to occur. And land being in short supply due to a state continuously acquiring it for newer and newer projects, asset price inflation would have fueled even a more recalcitrant parallel economy. 

But India is unique in many ways. Hard labor and working with hands is looked down upon. Hence hard labor is done by lower castes or by immigrants, who remit outside and don’t spend where they work. Secondly, demonetization sucked out the high denomination currency that is the main means for most murky deals.  The governments’ assiduously changing narrative about black money, fear of the taxman on trail and transparency brought in by digitalisation, all worked to prevent such asset price stagflation.

Bajpeyi, the Indian PM who, who like none other before or after him, had the ability to carry contradictions and deal with dissent alike was also a builder and apparently a believer in the Keynesian model. His launching the NHDP with the objective of giving India 85,000 kms of roads had hints of Keynesianism. But the full impact and benefit of such a model could never accrue to India as it would have in any other  for basically two reasons - 1. a vibrant parallel economy and 2. the massive delays and time overruns in implementation. 

You can hold me guilty of editorializing in the paragraph above, as Bajpeyi may have just felt that road connectivity of India was so poor that it needed a massive uplift, and creating jobs and spurring an economy which was the bedrock of the Keynesianism may not have been Bajpeyi’s intended purpose , but an author’s outreach cannot be denied to me if it is not denied to others.

Trump Derangement Syndrone and the "Towering Lies"

This hip shooting and pugilistic president of the United States has not much to lose, but for the assurance of a second term. That he would win the first time was itself something that he himself was surprised at, but playing the contrarian party spoiler has been his penchant from the start and perhaps that is what he had set out to do by standing for the post.

Today, in politics or any public position - with social media granted freedom of speech sans all accountability, with novices making expert comments on subjects they do not know a whit about, with rumors running the round robin at the speed of light - being thick skinned is an essential pre-requisite. And Trump has it in abundance.

Trump recently was in Scotland accompanied by his wife as well as his constant consort - controversy - which this time was about a date. Trump claims he predicted the Brexit one day in advance of the vote that the Englanders cast in favor of it. But dates don’t lie. The Guardian chose to call it Trump’s “towering lie”. But the English are still grateful to American Presidents for standing by them in their times of need, but they are even more grateful to Trump for not affectionately whacking the queen on her butt or brushing dandruff off her shoulder. While the cowboyishness is fine, the English take the queen as a relic of their colonial past and wish to preserve the aura of that institution. 

I have, in my personal travels to US not met a single person who admits having voted for Trump, but some sure did, and foisted Trump to the presidency. But one thing is clear. With a dyed in the wool Red State Alabama glossing over a Republican to elect a democrat is not an aberration but a presage of what holds in the times to come. While one could argue that it was not Doug Jones the Democrat winning, but the teen sex scandal stigmatized Roy Moore, a Republican losing. Yet, undeniably, Alabama the most Red state voted for a democrat against Moore who had Trump’s support and backing does not augur well for the Trump.

The summit at Helsinki has triggered a spate of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) victims. The twitterati have admonished Trump as a “traitor”. That is harsh, unless proven otherwise. But surely, right from his accession, there has existed a constituency that nurses a consistent and smoldering desire for his impeachment. The growing factionalism in the Republicans not withstanding, I think, impeachment, due to the sheer Republican numbers is a foregone conclusion, at least till the party is willing to throw its lot behind Trump, yet a censure for sure seems more likely. How the party fairs in the mid-terms in November will also decide how the party treats Trump going forward. 

But regardless, the one thing that can be undeniably said is that Trump is the most   unpresidential president that United States has so far had.

Gender Bias

Gender equality is such a hot topic for the modern liberatarians that sometimes the hyprocracy of it hits you. Impassioned about the cause not because it is hip to uphold, but because, it is insane to not believe in it, particularly as an Indian, since Indians celebrate and even worship female power.

The western world obviously believes that its record is significantly better than the eastern one on this parameter, but I guess, nothing would be farther from the truth than this.

The very fact that we notice and highlight such behavioral patterns is an indirect admission of guilt and cause for triggering a defense mechanism.

Interestingly, in one of the recent Times Magazine edition, a female doctor criticizes the world for celebrating Madam Curie more as the “first female” scientist to win the Nobel, far more than for her work in radio-activity that led cures for cancer.

Ironically, the same article that exhorts us to cast away such gender bias extols her for being the excellent mother and wife that she was, as though that added to her scientific temper and achievements. While the writer had perhaps set out to challenge a cliched stereotype, she actually contributed in reinforcing it by such superfluous qualification. Never would the scientific genius of Mr Curie - husband - be contingent upon or be reinforced by the good father or husband that he would be.

The foot note that identified the author was even more ironic as that said “first female” African American doctor to receive a medical patent. Some habits die hard, and those embedded in the DNA never die.