What Now for India?

I was dead wrong about the outcome of the elections, but not in my trepidation about what is happening in India.

A great flood of money has washed through our electoral system, empowering forces that are rooted in the divisive communal politics the British introduced during the colonial rule and have fostered through proxies since independence.

Where that money has come from and what it will require the new government to do should be of acute concern to Indians.

All indicators signal that we are headed for a period of undisguised crony capitalism that will see foreign interests in the driving seat, acting through major Indian corporations.

Those alliances are by no means secret, and some are notorious, especially RIL's hookup with BP that has given the most predatory of the energy majors a role in the pricing of our sovereign natural gas resources.

The association of the TATAs with British interests dates back to the opium trade era of colonial rule, and its diversification in recent decades seems to have included, most obviously in the controversy over the allocation of 2-G spectrum licenses, a shadowy role in launching the corruption scandals that tarred the UPA government in its final years.   

The Ruia Brothers of ESSAR and the Vedanta-Cairn India combine also have an earned notoriety.

Beyond the interests of these usual suspects, we can definitely expect the new government to push for foreign/private investment in the Defense Sector, and the forging of an Indian "military-industrial complex."

Such a combination of forces first emerged in the United States after WW-II, and during the Cold War it spread to all major industrial countries, including supposedly "Socialist" countries.

Once created, the arrangement has proved impervious to democratic control, for it thrives on creating and manipulating violent international confrontations, using intelligence agencies subverted from their legitimate roles. "National security" is used to trump all efforts at democratic control. 
 
On the social front, we can expect to see big business profit from an unprecedented alienation of land from small farmers and inattention to environmental concerns.

The outlook overall is thus grim indeed for India, unless by some miracle Narendra Modi in power jettisons those who financed his rise and implements a truly democratic and indigenous agenda. 

The Congress in Opposition

The prospect described above offers the decimated Indian National Congress a golden opportunity to rebuild itself as a broad-based representative of national interests.

If a BJP government follows the negative trajectory described above, it will have to step rough-shod over the interests of millions of Indians, especially small farmers and the economically powerless. It will have to misuse the intelligence and police services.

If the Congress sets out to give a voice to those injured by such policies, it can expect to reap a rich dividend at the next general elections.

To do that, it will have to organize a national network to report on what is happening, and perhaps start its own media organizations to provide fair coverage.

At the very least it should have a website to publicize what is happening in the country.

Intelligent use of social media -- which it seems to have not done at all this time around -- should help the rebuilding process.

The Long View

In the long view of history, the particulars of who, what and why of this election are likely to disappear in the face of one overwhelming fact: a single political party has once again become the representative of the nation as a whole. 

The fact that regional caste-based politics have been shown the door is a major positive development. 

The end of the myth about a "Muslim vote bank" is also something to applaud. 

Perhaps that will begin the process of bringing to an end the regressive idea that religion can be the basis for electoral politics, allowing organizations such as the RSS to reinvent themselves and become truly national in identity and purpose.

 

Short the Market!

As the Sensex and Nifty surge to all-time highs and giddy pundits predict that Narendra Modi’s projected rise to the Prime Ministerial gaddi will send the markets into the stratosphere, I would like to hand out an outsider tip: short the market!

Most of the money inflating the Indian indices has come from foreign institutional investors (FIIs), and if reality bites on the 16th, we can expect a torrid flow back and a radical correction in the markets and the value of the Rupee.

That will create a sense of panic and doom and lay the whammy on those trying to put together a non-Modi government.

Perhaps that, rather than the fabled “animal spirits” of foreign investors, is behind the ballooning markets.

Look at it from the point of view of the Powers that be, the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council.

The United States and China are engaged in a delicate pas de deux, the one pushing for a process that would bring in a multi-party democracy in Beijing and the other insisting that the existing Beagle Boys gang is best for the Chinese people.

(I think Michelle Obama and kids pushed the American message with great delicacy on their recent trip to China but had little success – even after the Pentagon tried to assuage Chinese fears of losing Tibet by flicking the kill switch on one of our B-15 troop transports. It also seems to me that Beijing’s mad dog behavior towards Japan and Vietnam is intended to signal its readiness to take off the gloves.)

At this suspenseful stage, neither Beijing nor Washington wants a regime in New Delhi capable of an assertive foreign policy.

Britain, France and the Russian Federation all have important arms supply relationships with India that would not be improved by having a strong and stable government in Delhi.

Additionally, Britain’s hopes of investing in India its ill-gotten trillions from organized crime, especially the “illicit drugs” trade out of Afghanistan, depend on weakness in Delhi.

Going by recent developments, I think the main conduit for those investments is going to be the TATA group. Its Chairman emeritus has just been given a knighthood of “the order of the British Empire” – yes, the same one that killed about 500 million Indians in less than 200 years – and his successor’s background is in infrastructure (the sector into which most FII money will probably go). Also,Voltas, a TATA company, continues to signal that the Brits will not want for toadies when they come, again.

In combination then, my tip to savvy investors is to short the market for the aftermath of the 16th, and go long on TATA Infra.

Fateful Scenarios for 16 May

In 2008 I posted on this blog an item recalling some of the epochal markers of Indian history in the month of May, including:

1. The birth of the Buddha
2. Vasco da Gama's 1498 arrival off the coast of Malabar; 
3. The beginning of the great uprising against the British in 1857; 
4. Gandhi's settling in Satyagraha Ashram, his first home in India after returning from South Africa in 1915; and
5. India's first nuclear test (just as the US Congress began hearings to impeach Richard Nixon).

Will the 16th see yet another fateful addition to that list? And if so, what might happen? Among the possible scenarios:

1. An outright BJP sweep and a government led by Narendra Modi. If the atmospherics of coverage by our bought-and-paid-for "elite media" are any indication, this is a consummation devoutly to be desired. I do not think it likely.
2. An outright sweep by the Congress. This would surprise everyone, including the Congress High Command.
3. A hung parliament, with a substantial force of "secular Third Front" parties. Most likely in my view. 
4. Narendra Modi loses badly to Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and the RSS unleashes its muscle in a bid to question the fairness and legitimacy of the polling. The India Today "pre-poll" in Varanasi indicating that Modi would win overwhelmingly and all others lose their deposits seems to be a preparatory step in that direction. So does the whining about the unfairness of the Election Commission.

However, the wild card in any of those scenarios could be international developments that create chaos in India and more broadly, Asia. This could include:

1. The reappearance of the missing Malaysian Boeing 777 in a 9/11 type attack intended to spark an India-Pakistan war. 
2. A large-scale labor revolt in China and the return of deposed-imprisoned Central Committee member Bo Xi Lai at the head of a rebel faction of the People's Liberation Army. This could spell the effective end of the current power structure in Beijing.
3. Either 1 or 2 above would set off a global economic collapse.
4. Manipulation of the jet stream to cause a complete failure of the monsoon over India. Environmental activists have been sounding the alarm for many years about the nature of the experimentation under Western military aegis to change global climate. Altering the path of the jet stream has been high on their list of concerns. The weird and extreme weather this winter in the United States and Europe (including sand from the Sahara blowing across Britain), would support speculation that trials have been under way.

Awaiting the 16th with bated breath, we should remember T. S. Eliots dark take on history in Gerontion:

History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors

And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,

Guides us by vanities. Think now

She gives when our attention is distracted

And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions

That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late

What’s not believed in, or if still believed,

In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon

Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with

Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices

Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues

Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. 

These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

 

A Conspiracy Theory About Modi, Ramdev and Gen. V. K. Singh

In March 2012, I equated General V. K. Singh with the infamous Mir Qasim, whose hunger for power made him an ally of the British as they maneuvered to take control of Bengal in the 18th Century.

It seemed to me that Singh's dash to London immediately after losing a graceless bid to stay a year longer in office pointed, at the very least, to involvement in helping Britain land a major arms contract. His subsequent letter to the Prime Minister declaring India scandalously deficient in military preparedness tended to confirm that reading.

It now turns out that Singh was engaged in something much more treasonous.

A military panel that looked into his activities as Chief of Army Staff (2010 to 2012), has reported that he set up an unauthorized surveillance unit in Delhi to spy on the Defence Minister, and that he misused official funds to try and unseat Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in Kashmir. It has recommended a full-blown criminal investigation.

More must be done, for there are clear signs that the matter is not one of individual malfeasance but of high-level and dangerous political conspiracy. Items:

• The BJP's sudden rush to declare Narendra Modi its Prime Ministerial candidate was patently irrational in the face of serious opposition within the party and concerns about his involvement in the Gujarat killings of 2002. It makes sense only if someone promised an enormous amount of money to buy the 2014 elections and soothe inflated/bruised egos within the BJP.