Did PM Modi really do “nothing” for RW ecosystem in his first term?

Read any foreign newspaper or watch any foreign news channel report on India. Back in the day, no report on India used to be complete without a compulsory mention of snake charmers and lepers. About Hindus, the impression was arguably worse. Very often the only thing that people abroad had heard about Hindus was the caste system and the poor treatment of so called ‘untouchables’.

Of course, as  an free democratic society, we should be open to all nations of the world discussing our social problems. But what used to happen is that India was deliberately reduced to a single caricature and this was often the *only* thing people had been taught about India. This is the equivalent of reducing America’s history purely to that of slavery or that of reducing Germany’s history only to Nazism.

This was unfair. But this unfairness persisted because it suited everyone involved. Everyone who had money, I mean. The British who were raw (and surprisingly still are raw) about losing their colony loved to show India as a savage place where they had brought civilization. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasts and the small circle of socialist nobles around them loved this too. They were hailed all over the world as the worthy heirs of the Empire, bravely continuing the civilizing mission of the British and smiling through the pain of shouldering the white man’s burden. For Christian missionaries like ‘Mother’ Teresa and also for a host of other NGOs, India’s bad public image helped raise funds big time.

This image has changed. By which I mean the details of this image. These days the new thing is to call India a land of lynchings. Talk of “Hindu vigilantes” is all over the world.

In the aftermath of the massacre in New Zealand, one of the most popular internet memes claiming global Muslim victimhood said that “Hindus are killing Muslims in Kashmir”.

How did such lies about India become so pervasive? Kashmir is a land where an entire population of Hindus was chased out of their homes and sent into exile. How did it get to the point that popular discourse moved so far away from the truth?

It starts with Indian liberal journalists who have been left out of their corrupt and luxurious lives in Lutyens’ Delhi ever since Modi came to power. They were able to call in favors from friends in the West to organize a global defamation campaign against India. Some of them actually went abroad on “fellowships” at big universities and think tanks, offered by their US based academic contacts in liberal gibberish. Some secured a perch with a Western newspaper … waiting out Modi’s term in power, hoping to resume their lobbying activities after 2019.

All this resulted in a resounding chorus of global Hinduphobia that we now see. And the American East Coast liberal elite as well as the British elite were only too happy to let the impression gain ground.

This power that the left has is phenomenal and has to be taken seriously. Yes, India may be the place where Hindus took refuge after getting kicked out of the Islamic State of Pakistan. Yes, there may be reports everyday of Pakistani Hindu girl children being kidnapped and forcibly married off to Muslim men. But when you go overseas, be prepared to answer why Hindus treat Muslims in India so badly. In fact, even within India, liberals now openly demand a morally superior status for Muslims. Apparently, this is because Muslims gracefully “chose” to stay in India while we Hindus had no choice. This is how liberals actually see the discourse in India!

Liberals want us to be grateful to Indian Muslims for “choosing” to stay in India (in return for extra special privileges) and not choosing to move to the exclusive Muslim homeland created by tearing India up and kicking us Hindus out. Liberals see us Hindus as human garbage, because we didn’t have the privilege of choosing countries based on a comparative study of Constitutions. We simply took refuge wherever we were allowed to breathe. So, we have no rights. We are the ones who are supposed to be grateful. Welcome to modern liberalism.

So far I have gone on and on about global liberal discourse and how it is unfair to us Hindus. The question at the top of this post is : What has Modi done about it?

There is a perception and a popular one among the RW, that “nothing” has been done to nurture RW ecosystem in last five years. I freely admit that at times (not just one or two times, but many many times) I have expressed much the same emotions.

I understand where these emotions are coming from because I often express them myself. It comes from the feeling of helplessness that we get watching the international liberal complex malign India to extreme levels. Hindus killed Muslims in Kashmir? How much more fake could the historical narrative get?

What’s next? Will the global liberal embrace holocaust denial theories? Actually, they probably will. In America and Britain, anti-Semitism is growing exponentially among young liberals. Nazi style cartoons caricaturing Jews as conspirators with hooked noses secretly ruling the world are now making a big comeback. Jeremy Corbyn, the head of Britain’s Labour Party, likely the next PM of Britain, endorsed such caricatures himself. In the US, young liberal icons like Ilhan Omar openly talk of Israel “hypnotizing the world” and Jews having “dual loyalties”. Every single horrifying anti-Semitic trope from Nazi Germany is now a hit with global liberals. The “Women’s March” against Trump was led by one Rasmea Odeh, an actual convicted terrorist who bombed a supermarket and killed two Israeli boys in the 1970s.  No liberal saw anything wrong with that.

I keep getting carried away. Probably because there is so much emotion.

But if we think about the whole situation carefully, it’s not that Modi has done nothing. Let me give you concrete examples: English language TV news used to be a big hate magnet for RW Hindus. There can be no doubt that this has been solved. Because of the unique position that English occupies in India, English language news, despite its tiny viewership, plays a huge role in driving the narrative.

In the Hindi language arena, there has always been India TV which has been relatively sympathetic to the right. There’s Zee News, which is unabashedly right. And now there is Republic Bharat.

Of course you could say that TV media is the tip of the iceberg. Where is the right wing reach among newspapers? Deeper still, where is the reach in the intelligentsia, in textbooks that are taught to kids?

Of course there have been many missed opportunities, but you can’t deny the real progress that has been made.

The fact remains that you simply cannot compare the power of 58 years of ‘secular’ rule to 11 years of BJP rule. The first 48 of those 58 years were near uninterrupted. The right meanwhile has had two brushes with power: 6 years of Vajpayee and 5 years of Modi, with 10 years of Sonia between them. Once the UPA came to power, it was a simple matter for them to wipe out the few seedlings planted between 1998 and 2004.

The problem with the Indian right is that it has always been in ‘survival mode’, always thinking about the next election. This is not surprising, because survival had been their topmost concern for 5-6 decades. Sometimes literally.

It’s like the brain of a deer on the Serengeti. Always running from predators, too preoccupied with surviving the next half hour to plan ahead.

With sustained power comes the confidence to do big things.  The Right Wing and its supporters need patience.

Rahul’s NYAY scheme adviser wants price rise and high taxes

Rahul Gandhi has announced that if the Congress comes to power, it will transfer a certain amount of money to poor families. The exact amount is not certain : sometimes he has said that it will be Rs 72000 a year and sometimes he has said it will be Rs 72000 a month. At times it has been said that the government will “top up” the income of the poorest by paying the difference as a “minimum income support”. At other times it has been called a flat transfer of a certain amount of money, which has again varied from Rs 72000 a month to Rs 72000 a year.

We don’t know. But now it seems increasingly clear why a deliberate cloud of misinformation has been created around this scheme. Possibly so that it becomes impossible to crunch the numbers and realize just how astronomical the cost of this scheme would be.

But yesterday, MIT economist Abhijit Banerjee who is advising Rahul Gandhi on his Minimum Income Scheme spilled the proverbial beans when he explained where the money would come from:

Nothing’s viable without raising taxes: Abhijit Banerjee, Economist (NYAY Advisor) while speaking to @RShivshankar | #NyayKaSach pic.twitter.com/AdZSGQFmVd

— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) March 29, 2019

The two clear statements made by Abhijit Banerjee in this chilling video:

— There will be a need to raise taxes

— There will be a need to cause price rise (what he calls the “inflation tax”)

Let’s dissect both. First the matter of price rise, which Abhijit Banerjee charmingly calls the “inflation tax”.

For example, in the year 2013, India’s inflation rate was a staggering 10.9% (click here for World Bank data on India’s inflation rates since 1960).

This searing inflation rate meant that stuff was getting costlier by 10.9% every year. The thing with inflation is that everyone, right from the poorest person was paying this extreme inflation tax. Everything from detergent to toothpaste to vegetables.

In fact, food inflation in India averaged a staggering 11% between 2007 and 2013. This is how Dr. Singh’s government squeezed India’s poorest to pulp, making their daily bread costlier by 11% every year!

At present India’s inflation is down to just 2-3% a year. Easy for Rahul’s US based adviser to go on Times Now and announce to India’s poor that they should be eating inflation rather than food.

Think about what double digit inflation did to people in 2013. Those at the margins of society were paying more for their food everyday. Those who had a little bit of savings kept them in banks which paid an interest rate of 4%. With the inflation at 11%, this meant their savings were actually decreasing by roughly 7% a year. Those with slightly higher savings could get 9% or so on their fixed deposits, which still meant a decrease of roughly 2% a year.

Think about how ironic that sounds: You put your hard earned money in the bank and every year around 7% of your money just vanishes into thin air. This means that if you put Rs 1000 for safekeeping in a bank account when Dr. Singh began his term in 2004, after 10 years, when Dr. Singh left office, you would have the equivalent of a little less than Rs 500. How would do you like that?

Think about what an 11% inflation rate does to senior citizens whose earning years are behind them and who have to subsist on their lifetime savings.

Now let’s talk about raising taxes.  A lot of people who watched the video yesterday thought he was simply talking about raising income taxes. But Rahul’s Adviser on Minimum Income never said anything about which taxes he would raise.

This means, first of all, that apart from Income Tax, raising the GST rates is very much on the table. This also ties up very nicely with what Rahul Gandhi has been saying all along.

A single rate for GST. This number is usually believed to be 18%.

Which means that items which are currently in 0%, 5% or 12% bracket would all be moved into the higher 18% bracket.

Keep in mind that it is the items of everyday use which are commonly in these low 0%, 5% and 12% brackets. The items that even the poorest of the poor would need, starting right from food. In fact, most staples like rice and wheat are in the 0% GST bracket, which means we are looking right away at an 18% rise in the cost of rice and wheat.

Ironically, the gainers here would be the super rich: luxury items which are taxed at 28% would go down to 18%. If Rahul wants to avoid the appearance of that, he will have to raise everything to the single slab of 28%. That’s a 28% rise in the cost of rice and rotis. As Abhijit Banerjee would probably say, let them eat inflation.

Now let us come to the Income Tax. Because India has been deliberately kept poor for decades, very few people earn enough to pay income tax. This makes it politically easier for politicians to announce income tax hikes. But remember, it is the spending of the middle class that ultimately drives the economy.

What happens to the economy if the price of everything goes up by 11% and then the spending power of the middle class is cut down even more with punishing tax increases?

Let’s talk numbers. How much income tax are we talking?

This is easy. All we need to do is go back to the time when Indira Gandhi promised Gareebi Hatao in 1971, a promise that Rahul has renewed after 48 years.

A 97% top income tax rate! Phew!

And the inflation, how much would that be?

Brace for impact. Let me tell you the inflation rate in 1974: It was 28.6%

How would you like a 97% top income tax rate and a 28.6% inflation rate?

And how was the GDP growth doing? In 1974, it was a pathetic 1.2%.

Three years after Indira Gandhi’s ‘Gareebi Hatao’ began in 1971, India had a 97% tax rate, 28% inflation and 1.2% GDP growth rate.

How did Indira Gandhi get this under control? By bringing in the Emergency, of course, in 1975.

Four decades after Gareebi Hatao gave us 28% inflation and culminated in Emergency, the promise is being renewed.

One could say it is now “impossible” for India to slip back into the 1970s, but is it? Consider this chart of Congress Party fortunes before and after 1991 economic reforms:

If you are a Dynast of the Nehru-Gandhi clan, what is the optimal strategy? Which side of history would you like to push India into? The pre-1991 period or the post-1991 period?

Here is the report card of Gareebi Hatao 1971 from two different perspectives : that of the Congress Party and that of the people.

Remember this.

India’s electoral geography makes it hard for Cong to score with Minimum Income Promise

Right now BJP is ahead. Everybody knows that. The last desperate arrow in the Congress quiver is the Minimum Income Guarantee. As I wrote before, Rs 72000 is a lot of money for a lot of people. And can swing a lot of votes.

But here is something interesting. This desperate gamble could backfire — and backfire big time for the Congress. Looking carefully at India’s electoral geography makes it clear how.

In order to analyze this, I have divided the (big) states into the following categories. Let me show you how a positive vote swing for the Congress can actually hurt them.

Category A states : Gujarat, Bihar, North East

These are the states where BJP (or in case of Bihar : NDA) is very very far ahead. No vote swing at this stage can change the outcome any more. It’s 27-0 for BJP in Gujarat (including Diu) and 37-38 out of 40 in Bihar. With the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar showing even more signs of infighting, NDA is inching ever closer to a 40/40 perfect score in the state.

The same goes for the North East. The NDA is just too far ahead for anything else to matter at this point.

Net for Congress : Neutral

Category B states: Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Kerala, Tamil Nadu

These are the states where Congress/UPA is very far ahead. For example, Jharkhand is gone for BJP because of the arithmetic. In Chhattisgarh, there is hardly a chance for BJP to do well in the Lok Sabha, so soon after Congress swept to power with a 2/3 majority.

And luckily for BJP, it has minimal stakes in Punjab, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. These seats going to Congress/UPA was a foregone conclusion long before any minimum income promise.

Incidentally, the Congress might face a bit of reverse swing in some of these states like Punjab and Tamil Nadu regarding their minimum income promise. These are prosperous states where there would be few beneficiaries. On the other hand, these people might be unhappy about paying the bill for the rest of the country.

Net for Congress : Neutral

Category C states : Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Bengal, Odisha

This is where the *real fun* begins. Observe that:

3 of these 4 states are among the poorest in the country.

All these states are very ‘seat rich’ : Odisha has 21 seats, Bengal has 42 and of course UP has a humongous 80 seats!

Now observe that in each of these states, Congress is actually a vote cutter that hurts the main ‘secular force’. In these states, Congress is not big enough to win seats, but not small enough to be ignored.

Every voter that Congress lures in Uttar Pradesh is a voter broken away from BSP+SP+RLD. Congress barely has a 10% base in UP.  If they manage to lure away 5% of the vote, the Congress will get 15% and still end up with 0 seat gains. Instead, that 5% broken away from BSP+SP will simply sink the Mahagathbandhan in Uttar Pradesh.

A 5% positive swing for Congress in UP could add 20 seats to the BJP tally.

In Delhi as well, a vote for Congress cuts votes of AAP… and is essentially a vote for BJP.

Same in Bengal or Odisha. Every vote to Congress in Bengal is a vote that would probably have otherwise gone to TMC.

You can ask: how can you be so sure that Congress will only make a dent in ‘secular votes’? Well, first of all, it is notoriously difficult to break BJP votes anywhere … and it’s just a fact that the caste/vote bank ridden politics of India’s secular parties has a bigger base among the poor.

Another fact is that the M community is at the bottom of the economic ladder, therefore most susceptible to a free money promise. No prizes for guessing where these votes would have gone.

Net for Congress: Big negative

Category D states : Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka

These are direct BJP vs Cong states where both parties are in the hunt.

This is where Congress would hope to gain most from votes of the poorest switching directly from BJP to Cong.

Unfortunately for Congress, the electoral calendar has made this a very difficult task. It hasn’t even been 3 months since Congress failed to keep its farm loan waiver promise in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress promised Rs 10,000 a month for 3 years. After winning, they reduced it to Rs 4000 per month for just 3 months!

From 10,000 per month to Rs 4000 per month.

From 3 years to 3 months!

This happened less than 3 months ago. How can they convince voters to take them seriously on another big handout promise so soon?

Same goes in Rajasthan where the so called ‘loan waiver’ came with terms and conditions that reduced it to a joke. Only loans for the previous year were waived… not the ones for the current year. In other words, all loans that farmers had already paid back last year were “forgiven”.

Even for the handful of defaulters who received a benefit, only the principal and not the interest was forgiven.

And down south in Karnataka, only 800 or so farmers actually got the loan waiver! Hasn’t even been 9 months since that happened. Hard to make them fall for something new again. Add to that the fact that the easily winnable seats for Congress in Karnataka have been allocated to JDS in Old Mysore Region, whereas Congress will be fighting BJP directly in the difficult North Karnataka seats.

Net for Congress : Neutral

Category E states: Maharashtra

This state is so unique that I had to put it in a category all its own. A true NDA vs UPA state with no sweeping advantage for anybody. So far NDA has had a pretty big advantage, but not a Gujarat kind of sweeping advantage.

Undoubtedly, free money can make a difference here. But, remember that Maharashtra is a rather prosperous state, with lots of urban seats, where hardly anyone would qualify for free money. Also susceptible to the fear of having to pay for the poor in other states.

A few votes pulled back to Congress could add 3-4 seats at best to their tally. That’s about all.

Net for Congress : Small positive

Category F states: Telangana, Andhra Pradesh

No Congress here. Doesn’t matter.

Net for Congress : Neutral

I am not sure where to put Haryana. The BJP has a big advantage overall there. In some seats, Congress is principal contender and in some other places it is a vote cutter for local caste based parties. So a Minimimum income may help BJP in some places and hurt them in others. Also Haryana is a prosperous state where few would qualify for free money.

Adding up all six categories, you can see that Congress is more likely to lose seats than gain seats from their Rs 72000 gamble. In fact, the best they can hope for is to retain their tally before making this promise.

Why India’s ASAT weapon is such a big deal

In 2007, there were shivers around the world as the Chinese military shot down one of their old weather satellites in space.

And yesterday, India has joined the list of countries with this proven capability, a club that now consists of the United States, Russia, China and India.

The three big superpowers that will dominate the world by 2030 are in that list (Sorry Russia).

Let me draw a picture of what next generation warfare would look like. Imagine if every Indian woke up to find that all of their money sitting in Indian banks had been digitally wiped out. There would be riots in the streets immediately and the country would become uncontrollable in a matter of hours.

The news of this banking catastrophe would spread across the globe. All over the world, from New York to Tokyo, confidence in the security of the banking system would immediately collapse. There would be a run on the banks by desperate people demanding their money in cash. The world would plunge into a chaos which no government would be able to control.

Scary. But that is probably what the next war is going to be like. The Cold War generation grew up worried that the world would be destroyed by nuclear bombs. But now the concept of ‘mass destruction’ has moved to the sphere of communications, to servers that store our data, to undersea cables through which the internet flows and to space.

We Indians would never want to militarize space, but when others have already done so, it leaves us with no choice.

So what was the hurry? Why test this ASAT weapon now? Here’s why:

Because 25 countries are meeting right now in Geneva to create a legally binding international treaty to regulate the militarization of space.

We know exactly how these things work. It means that the treaty will create two classes of countries : the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Countries that already have this ability will never give it up. So the legally binding international treaties will allow them to keep their weapons, and any new country seeking to acquire this capability will be accused of ‘proliferation’, of war mongering and be inflicted with economic sanctions.

This is the underlying hypocrisy of international treaties. Perhaps there is no better model, but I would rather have India join the global space regulatory regime as a ‘have’ rather than a ‘have-not’. Wouldn’t you?

Remember that once these international treaties are written in stone, it is nearly impossible to change them. And the effects could last one hundred years.

Think about the UN Security Council. If Nehru had not turned down the offer of a permanent seat for India, things would have been radically different for India over the last 70 years. Only the other day, we complained rather helplessly about China supporting Masood Azhar at the UN. China knows they can do this with impunity and without consequences, because India cannot retaliate by blocking their interests at the Security Council.

Everyone knows that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council no longer represent the five most powerful nations in the world, that the Security Council no longer makes sense without Germany or India or Brazil, but nobody has come up with a way to change it. India probably has the best case of all, but why would the existing powers want to share? And so the world power system of 1945 endures to this day at the Security Council. And although it is hopelessly unfair, it is here to stay. That’s just reality.

Think about the global nuclear regime.

The Non Proliferation Treaty was signed in the late 1960s and it also created “nuclear haves” and “nuclear have-nots” among nations. The existing powers could keep their weapons and no new country could add itself to the list! How unfair is that?

Maybe unfair, but that’s how it went down.

And because India stayed out of the NPT, we became subject to a global boycott. Think of the crushing sanctions that were inflicted on us after the 1998 Pokhran test. Think of all the pain and effort that it took for Atalji’s Government (the Jaswant Singh – Strobe Talbot talks) and later Manmohan Singh’s government (the ‘waiver’ from Nuclear Suppliers Group) to slowly lift the sanctions and create a backdoor for India to “legalize” its nuclear program. The work is still not fully complete. But if only India had a chance to become a nuclear power before 1968, a half century of victimization would have been avoided.

There’s no way India, as an aspiring superpower, should let this happen with space. We’re not going to get locked out of military technology in space. We are going to sit at the high table this time.

History would not have waited around for the General Election 2019 to be over.

As we came to know yesterday, India could have achieved this feat a long time ago. Both ex-ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair and ex-DRDO chief  V K Saraswat confirmed this yesterday.

We always knew that we had the ability but were lacking in political will. We just didn’t know how badly the lack of political will was hurting us.

 

Minimum Income Guarantee could kill all other subsidies and be the mother of all scams

Rahul Gandhi has announced that the government will provide a minimum income support to the poorest 20% of Indian families. Here are some simple, common sense thoughts on where this 3.6 lakh crore disaster would lead.

(1) Common people are going to lose every other subsidy on gas, fertilizer, electricity, crop prices, MNREGA and health

Suffice to say that India doesn’t have 3.6 lakh crores just sitting around. The money will have to come from somewhere. From where? Obviously, they are going to have to remove every other subsidy. That could mean no more subsidy on gas cylinders, no more subsidy on electric connections and the government won’t be able to pay for health or education.

Worse, the government will probably have to end MNREGA, end the minimum support price for crops and end all fertilizer subsidies. Where does that leave the Indian farmer and the rural poor? This would also mean an end to government programs that provide cheap foodgrains to the poor. And also an end to cash transfer schemes such as pensions for the elderly in many states.

Think about all farmers who receive cheap or subsidized electricity. That’s coming to an end for sure.

The hope for Rs 12,000 per month will probably end up costing the poor their gas subsidy, their electricity subsidy, the minimum support price, the fertilizer subsidy and access to cheap foodgrain.

‘Pie in the sky’ is always the most expensive of all.

(2) Implementing the scheme in any form will lead to babus creating the greatest scam in history.

Here’s how. Remember that Rahul is not promising a specific amount of money, merely the DIFFERENCE between Rs 12000 per month and your household income.

In other words, a household which already earns Rs 11500 a month will be entitled to just Rs 500 per month.

The question is : how do you make the poorest of the poor in our society provide documented proof of income?

It is not hard to see where this is leading. This will have to be done on a “declaration basis” : the income of a poor person will be whatever the sarkari babu allows him or her to put down on the form.

Imagine this:

A poor person earns just Rs 5000 a month. As per the scheme, he is supposed to receive Rs 12000 minus Rs 5000 or Rs 7000 a month. He arrives at the government office to ask for Rs 7000 of “income support”.  The sarkari babu in charge has two options: he could just accept the person’s claim at face value and hand the person Rs 7000. Or he could say that the claim “needs verification” and keep it pending forever. 

Anybody who has lived in India knows what will happen next. The poor person will be asked for a bribe in order to “pass” the claim. There goes at least 2000 of the 7000 the person was supposed to receive.

Multiply this number with the crores of supposed “beneficiaries”. This could be a scam the likes of which the world has never seen.

Remember that these are supposed to be the poorest and weakest in our society. Leaving them at the mercy of the sarkari babu is almost horrifying. Stripping these people of their gas, electricity, fertilizer, crop support, health and education subsidies and making them stand in line to pay bribes … it’s just cruel.

(3) The scheme will actually cost at least WAY more than 3.6 lakh crore and will likely bankrupt the country

This happens in at least 4 different ways:

(a) Think about it. If you declare an income of Rs 11000 a month, you get just Rs 1000. If you declare income of Rs 1000 a month, you get Rs 11000. There is no proof needed to establish your income and you will have to pay a hefty bribe to the officers anyway for them to pass your claim.

So what happens? Crores of people will end up declaring tiniest possible amounts of income in order to get maximum benefits. The calculation of 3.6 lakh crore goes for a toss because crores of people will declare an income of ZERO in order to claim the full Rs 12000.

So here’s the *real* calculation (at least):

5 crore families

12000 per month

12 months per year

Comes to 7.2 lakh crores per year. And we are just getting started.

(b) Remember that the amount is paid per family. Rahul says the scheme will benefit 25 crore people living in 5 crore families. So the assumption is 5 people per family. Let’s assume that means 3 adults and 2 kids.

But who decides what is a family?

If the 3 adults in the family are together making Rs 6000 a month, their family gets just Rs 6000 per month as income support.

It isn’t hard for the 3 adults to figure this much out : if each of them decides to declare themselves a “family” with an income of Rs 2000 each, each adult will now get Rs 10,000 per month as income support. Each adult! That means the three adults can now make Rs 30,000 per month from this income support scheme.

Yeah, so remember that 7.2 crore outlay needed for “5 crore families”? Each adults in each of the 5 crore families will declare themselves a separate family.

Overnight, therefore, the “5 crore families” will swell to “15 crore families”.

So take that 7.2 lakh crore outlay calculated above and multiply it by 3 : comes to 21.6 lakh crores!!

We are still not done.

(c) This number of 21.6 lakh crores will zoom even further, for obvious reasons. People who are just above the Rs 12000 threshold will have an incentive to claim to they are also below the threshold. Remember that again these are among the poorest in society and have no real documented proof of income.

So take that “5 crore families” and make it “10 crore families”. Now split each family into three “families” as explained above.

The new figure : 43.2 lakh crores.

(d) And we are still not done! I leave it to your imagination the number of fake bank accounts that will be created in order to access this scheme several times over. Remember that as per SC judgement, Aadhar number is no longer needed for bank accounts.

So we end up with a simple estimate for Rahul Gandhi’s promise : 45 lakh crores.

In 1971, Indira Gandhi coined the slogan “Gareebi Hatao”. But poverty was not removed. It was made deeper than ever.

In 2014, half of Indians still didn’t have toilets. Half of Indians still didn’t have cooking gas. There were 3 crore households without electricity.

Why? Why did this happen despite 50 years of Dynasty rule?

For the Dynasty, 2014 was the darkest moment ever. India was kept frozen in poverty for use at just this very moment. So that a promise like this could be made to mobilize voters and help the dynasty recover from its darkest hour.

So what if it costs 45 lakh crores?

What’s the worst that could happen to India?

India would go bankrupt and starving? All the gains since 1991 would be wiped out?

Who does that help? Who does it help if India returns to the depths of pre 1991 poverty?

Didn’t the Dynasty enjoy near uninterrupted power from 1947 to 1991?

Remember that India’s worst case scenario is also the Dynasty’s best case scenario.

BJP should watch out on minimum income promise

Rs 72000 a year is a lot of money for most people in this country.

This could be big. The BJP better watch out.

Of course the Congress launched it with some “Pappu math” : They promised Rs 12000 per month and claimed that it translates to Rs 72000 per year for poorest 20% of the country.

It is hard to determine whether this was a genuine mistake or a deliberate mistake. A deliberate mistake to keep people talking about the whole thing, to give it even more publicity.

This of course is Congress’ last card to try and change the narrative of the election. But Rs 6000 a month is a pretty serious carrot the Congress is dangling.

The BJP, which so far is clearly ahead of the Congress, needs to play very safe on this. Hard to see how this is possible, honestly. Surprisingly, this news cycle has been very quiet … even though this is the last phase in the run up to the election. The media needed exactly something like this to pick up its spirits before the election.

The BJP’s safest play is to focus on failed loan waiver promises of the Congress Party. To react, but do its best to stay calm. Promises made so late in the game, even the most juicy ones, have a very poor record of cutting ice with the electorate.

But remember that this is probably the most juicy campaign promise that India has ever seen.

One good thing for the BJP in all of this is that the alarm bells will keep ringing at the very top until the last vote on the last day of the election. Of late, there was a genuine worry about the BJP slipping into complacency, because it seemed like the election was all but over.

With Rahul running away to Wayanad and leaving Amethi behind, the absolute panic and total disarray in Congress camp was palpable. As a result, you could see the beginnings of complacency in BJP camp.

All that will now be history. The BJP needs to dig in its heels, focus on the flop farm waivers from the recent past : in Punjab, in Karnataka and in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. They also need to keep reminding people of the miserable failure of Congress governments in years past towards healing India’s crushing poverty.

And finally, the BJP needs a comeback to this : and fast. Something perhaps on the lines of the Ryuthu bandhu scheme in Telangana: a certain amount to be paid to each farmer, whether in terms of a basic income support or as a function of the amount of land that he/she has under cultivation.

The real loser in all of this is of course, India and its future. As the two biggest political parties try to win the race for bad ideas. We in India have never cultivated a real constituency of people who are opposed to socialism or government handouts. We might just continue to pay the price.

Watch this space…

Chaiwallah in Patna today, with Operation Johar

Friends, I am so proud to announce that I will be having an event for my book in Patna today, thanks to Indic Academy.

Here is the poster : Yay!

Thanks a lot to Vivek Agnihotri for coming. And also to Acharya Kunal and Prof. Sunaina Singh.

Friends in Patna, I am hoping to see you all!

And for friends everywhere else, please buy on Amazon and let me know your thoughts.

One more little thing : I finally reached 10,000 followers on Twitter, sometime early this morning. Thanks to everyone for their support.

Just in case you don’t know, my Twitter handle is @AbhishBanerj

A huge thanks once again 🙂

Pulwama vs Christchurch : The Hinduphobia of the Indian liberal

This:

These are newsanchors in New Zealand, wearing the Islamic Hijab on air as a show of solidarity with Muslims in their country and worldwide, after the horrific massacre in Christchurch.

It is also supposed to be a show of defiance against the lone wolf terrorist and his White Supremacist, Christian supremacist, whatever ideology and whatever other losers/scumbags who may or may not sympathize with him.

Leading the way of course was New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden, who dressed up in an Islamic Hijab when she went to meet the families of the victims. Obviously, she did not mean to say she was converting to Islam, nor advocating that anyone else convert to Islam. Just that after a violent expression of Islamophobia such as in Christchurch, she thought it was important to send a strong message.

A few weeks ago, India witnessed a horrific terrorist attack as well: one in Pulwama where 44 of our best young men were killed.

And when you dissect every element of the Indian liberal reaction to Pulwama and compare it to Christchurch, a picture begins to emerge. The picture of an Indian elite that has normalized a shocking level of Hinduphobia, a class that practices a form of bigotry so extreme against Hindus that they would have been called out and shamed by the whole world were their hatred directed against any other group.

Remember that terrorist Adil Dar said that he wanted to punish the cow p*ss drinkers. Tell me who uses this language?

First, let us look at the elements of the radical fringe of Indian liberalism. We had a Deputy News editor of a major English language news channel who erupted in joy over the Pulwama attack, asking #HowsTheJaish ? Yes, even cheerleading a known terrorist outfit after a deadly suicide bombing can be acceptable among the Indian elite. When there was outrage over this, her employer sent her on two weeks of vacation suspension.

This was far from being an isolated case. Over the next few days, dozens of Facebook and Twitter posts were exposed which showed Indian liberals celebrating the Pulwama attack. Many of them were well educated – students of top tier educational institutions, recipients of national scholarships, executives for reputed national and multi-national firms, employees of well known media organizations. People from different walks of life – all bound together by the common thread of Hinduphobia that holds Indian liberalism together.

The more ‘official’ response from liberal establishment media outlets emerged a few days later – and not surprisingly, they discovered that the so called ‘Bhakts’ were the real problem. They wanted the online RW to stop the ‘witch hunting’ and stop messing with the careers and social lives of those who had done nothing more than have a bit of fun celebrating a deadly terror attack!

This is how the liberal establishment came to the defense of its most radical elements. But the malaise was much deeper.

Did the Indian liberal stop even for a moment to show solidarity with Indian Hindus, to show respect to our customs?

No, instead the liberals kept the gaumutra jokes coming, further normalizing the deadly Hinduphobia of suicide bomber Adil Dar. If anything, the frequency with which the gaumutra references were made went up and the humor grew more fierce — and savage.

Not one liberal thought it was the decent thing to do to stop the jokes for a while, pay tribute to the victims in Pulwama and reflect on the prevalence of Hinduphobia.

Compare to what the well meaning New Zealanders did after Christchurch. They decided to come together and send a message against Islamophobia.

Our liberals made a few more Gaumutra jokes, demanded a Nobel Peace Prize for Pakistan PM Imran Khan and called on the online RW to stop complaining about Indians who were found celebrating the Pulwama attack on social media!

What a difference!

In other words, liberals think that Hindus don’t count. I have said this before : Hindus are being met with a form of apartheid.

There are two more observations that must be made : The first is that while there have been several Islamic terror attacks, I cannot recall any occasion when an Islamic political leader made it a point to wear a Christian, Jewish or Hindu religious symbol as a statement against terrorism. Why that never happened is something that people should think about. Of course, if I am wrong, I would be glad to be corrected.

The second is that it seems only women in New Zealand have put on visible public symbols to show solidarity after the attack in Christchurch. What about the men? How many of them are wearing skull caps? So is it that liberals want to show acceptance of Islam or acceptance of Islamic patriarchy? Something more to think about…

Saffron tigress Smriti Irani to contest from Amethi & Advaniji brings his illustrious career to an end

An image to remember:

The baton always passes : from one generation to the other.

There are essentially two ways to do this. The first is to let the baton pass to a deserving junior who has worked their way up the ranks.

The second is to just hand the baton to some entitled Shehzada.

The second way SUCKS.

That’s what I will say to all the secular peeps (read secular creeps) who have come out with expressions of “sympathy” for Advaniji today.

I know what seculars are thinking. How could Advaniji build a party as big as the BJP and then retire? What a loser! Isn’t he supposed to take this political empire and hand it over to his children?

No, he is not. A political party, like our democracy, is not owned by any one person. It is an ideological umbrella under which every generation of workers chooses its own leader.

These are probably the same people who think Modi is a big loser too. Just look at people who have been CMs for even a single term, even of some poor state. Look at the property they built for themselves and how much wealth they accumulated for every member of their extended family. And look at Modi, CM for 12 years in a rich, industrialized state like Gujarat and still his family lives in a humble middle class home in Gandhinagar. And Modi’s personal fortune is about as much as the average upper middle class person in any major Indian city.

But let’s stop talking about those people. This is a somber moment for the RSS/BJP, a formal end to the political career of the illustrious Lal Kishenchand Advani.

I have written before about how Advaniji is truly the tallest of all the BJP leaders. And possibly the tallest leader in post independence India. For tell me, who has ever built a truly national political party since 1947? Many big forces emerged at regional levels, but never another truly national force. Sometimes you could say this is by choice : a party like “Telugu Desam” or “Jharkhan Mukti Morcha”, by its very name, claims that it chooses to restrict itself to one part of the country.  But there are many other examples, most prominent among them Bahujan Samaj Party, which theoretically could have a base anywhere in the country, but failed to go national. In fact, other than BJP and Congress, hardly any other party functions in more than one state. The CPM will be down to just Kerala within 5 years or less.

Seen against this backdrop, Advaniji’s achievement is quite extraordinary. It might be fifty more years before this country has another like him. At the ripe age of 91, he goes with glory, the only man in the history of independent India to break the Congress monopoly. The fact that it took him his entire life to accomplish this task… and that he was too old by the time his labor came to fruition … does not diminish him. It adds to the halo around his head. It shows the magnitude of the task that he accomplished. It showed that one lifetime was not enough to break the stranglehold of the Congress dynasty.

The biggest sacrifice ever made in Indian politics is Advani stepping aside for his lifelong friend Atalji. There was no question of a master-servant relationship between the two like the one that existed between Sonia and Manmohan. It came from deep trust and a noble act of putting party above self, something that only an RSS worker could have done.

And today Amit Shah takes charge of Gandhinagar, relieving the BJP’s venerable father figure.

In 2013, when he was anointed PM candidate, Narendra Modi began by thanking Atalji and Advaniji for making the party into a strong banyan tree. This is a continuation of that moment.

Of course there has been friction between Modi and Advani. How could there not be? And what’s wrong with this? They are two different people, both driven, ambitious and committed. When the previous generation is able to impose its view upon the next, it’s a sign of decay and not a sign of life. Ask the Communists who have not been able to come up with a single new thought in one hundred years. They are still serving Stalin with slavish loyalty.

The other big news from yesterday is that saffron tigress Smriti Irani is ready to take on Rahul Gandhi again. She has waited a long time to win a Lok Sabha seat. And what an entry it is finally going to be.

Somehow I get the feeling that Amethi has made up its mind. The people of Amethi almost feel they have been singled out and kept backward by the Gandhis for 50 years. And there is a lot of bitterness about that – along with a desire for redemption by voting the Gandhis out.

Smriti Irani is winning this time.

The one disappointing feature of the BJP list is that I did notice quite a few “surnames” among them. I mean the folks with political lineage … son/daughter of XYZ … so these are not “names” but “surnames”. This may be slightly unfair to the individuals concerned, but BJP needs to avoid them if they want to be a party with a difference.

 

 

‘Waterless Holi’ brigade silent : what’s cooking?

Holi Hai!

Here’s wishing all friends here a Happy Holi!

Amid the festive cheer, something is missing. It is almost as if an integral part of our Holi traditions is no more. Why do we feel empty? What could it possibly be?

Oh, I know : the sour party poopers have all packed up and gone home. Say what you will, but the snooty liberal elite making snide comments on Hindu festivals has become as much part of the festival as the general cheer.  They are part of the buildup towards any major festival. They begin the chatter weeks in advance… and as the big day approaches, their criticism rises to a crescendo.

Sometimes, the daily grind of life becomes too much for us. We lose track of when big festivals are coming. We depend on these liberal elites to sift through the calendar at the beginning of the year and circle the date of every major Hindu festival. More like a bullseye. And then start running their tailor made hate campaigns for every single occasion … pollution on Diwali, water waste on Holi, patriarchy on Rakshabandhan.

Liberals had almost made hating on Hindu festivals into an art form. Kumbh Mela is all about Hindus deliberately abandoning their elderly parents? That one was creative, I must admit.  Evil genius is still genius.

But this Holi, hey snooty elites, where are you? We miss you. Come back 🙂

Apart from one solitary Parle ad which failed to make any waves, the run up to Holi has been so quiet this year that the festival managed to sneak up upon us without us realizing.

Holi has always been in their crosshairs. I remind you of the “semen filled balloons” thing. That was the lowest point. Claiming that Holi was all about mass sexual harassment and molestation.

Where did the liberals go this year? The real question is why did they go away.

There are two obvious conclusions one can draw from this:

(1) There is a memo from HQ this time to appear pro-Hindu, at least until the election.

(2) The sudden disappearance of liberal attacks on Holi itself proves that the attacks were part of a planned, coordinated campaign.

Let me remind you of the words of Andrew Breitbart, the late founder of Breitbart.com, a leading American right wing news website. Andrew Breitbart used to say that “Politics is downstream from culture”.

In other words, what the culture labels as “cool” today will shape what’s “cool” in politics tomorrow.

There are those who say we should not “overreact” to celebrities and movies and while they do make valid points on many occasions, I don’t think they fully appreciate the power of “culture”. When everything around you promotes an attitude of dislike and condescension towards Hindu festivals, it promotes an anti-Hindu outlook among all sections of society. That is why they make such an effort to smear Holi by promoting associations with molestation of women. Nobody thinks that one ad on Kumbh Mela will make millions of Hindus turn against their holy gathering. The makers of such campaigns realize that just as well. Their aim is to plant a seed … to get something bad such as elder abandonment and Kumbh Mela into the same sentence. Then, slowly the negativity surrounding one topic begins to rub off on the other.

Coca Cola with its bright red wanted to make itself a part of the festive cheer of Christmas. The campaign worked … both ways … Christmas shaped Coca Cola and Coca Cola shaped Christmas too! This is Marketing 101!

But times have changed sharply. Hindus have real power now. More like they have realized their power now. Those who couldn’t stop talking about how those who go to temples also molest women, now want to be seen in as many temples as possible.

Campaigns against Holi or other Hindu festivals have begun to garner too much negative attention. And HQ is feeling the backlash, now struggling to wash off the taint of being called “anti-Hindu”.

These days it is hard to find a Congress leader who is not wearing tilak and sandal paste and/or performing puja at some temple.

The memo must have gone out to the ecosystem. Don’t say anything that might get you perceived as “anti-Hindu”. Nice to see this.

The sudden end to these anti-Holi campaigns also proves for the most part that these were manufactured campaigns with some sort of central planning behind them. We always accused the liberal elite of defaming Hindu festivals at the behest of HQ, but by suddenly disbanding their anti-Holi campaign 30 days before the election, liberals have given us real evidence that it was always a coordinated offensive against Hindus.

Of course, there is one more, less optimistic view of what happened.

Some say that liberals have declared victory over Hindu festivals, achieved their objectives and moved on to the next thing. The proponents of this theory point to the fact that the “anti-Holi campaign” is still working on the micro level, with schools, localities and apartment complexes pushing this line.

They could be right, but I highly doubt this. At least I doubt its long term viability. Micro-culture is also downstream from mainstream culture. But, the smalltime do-gooders in schools and apartment buildings are peeps trying to follow what’s cool, whatever is trending. They are not ideologically committed to anti-Hindu causes. Some are promoting anti-Hindu causes because they still think it’s cool. But when the mainstream dries up from the top, these distributaries will disappear on their own.

And left to themselves, Hindus will always gravitate back to their core culture. That much is certain.