Sunday Posts

We are all watching Kyiv with horror.  Were we not supposed look forward a spring of openness, after two years of staying home and washing hands? Instead, we are peering into a new normal, of which we know nothing of and never expected. Not everyday one sees a country invade another. Further, not everyday one sees a big country being invaded, with no clear plans of an exit. This is where the war on Ukraine most crucially differ from all the other wars I have seen in my lifetime. What is Vladimir Putin is trying to do? Is it just regime change in Kyiv, as Americans tried to achieve, and miserably failed as a consequence, in Iraq and Libya? But warped as his vision may be, he sure knows the practical consequences of regime change: That a Russian-installed government will have no legitimacy and they will end as badly as they did before, in Kyiv!  Or, is he just trying to divide Ukraine along East-West lines and control the access to Black Sea? Whether that objective calls for a g...

Prediction is a perilous business but it pays to be ready. If 2016 was the start of a worldwide reconfiguration of ideas, institutions and alliances, 2020 is poised to be the year when the contours of the new future become visible. When Brexit finally happens and Trump betters Biden, the benign post-imperial configuration of the twentieth century would give way to a muscular reassertion of Anglo-American hegemony. The commercial and financial globalisation of the previous decades would now bring about a political one: The various regional entrepots melting into a politics of new spheres of influence. At the wake of Donald Trump's lovefest, many Indians - though not necessarily its government - want their country to belong to the Anglo-American camp. It's a country that loved the previous wave of globalisation and benefitted from it through the deployment of its English-speaking IT workers who brought home the Dollar. Its great hope for the future is, some argue, in be...

As much we would like to believe that there is no common global pattern, we love to indulge in grand theories when things go wrong. So, the world politics has changed since 2014, and we have come to see this 'challenge to the liberal order' as a 'populist revolt'. Books have appeared, lectures have been delivered and now pleas are being published - all on the premise that 'people', crying babies upset by globalisation and dislocation of life, are wrecking a carefully crafted global arrangement which prevented global war and brought prosperity. The anger and the disaffection, being created by fake news and manipulated by demagogues, would bring a global trade war, undermine the global institutions and create instabilities - that is the fear! While some of the fear is indeed justified, this diagnosis is wrong. It is fashionable to blame it on the people when things go wrong: When Nazis came to power, it was the rowdy SA rather than highly respected German Ju...

The world of politics is changing profoundly. It is not just about the rise of the strongmen rulers - President Xi of China, Prime Minister Abe of Japan, Prime Minister Modi of India or President Duterte of Philippines - or their perennially ubiquitous counterparts in Mr Putin, Mr Erdoğan , Mr Netanyahu and Mr Zuma. The shift that we are seeing is more than the shocks, such as Brexit or a Trump Presidency, or the ascendance of extreme nationalists like Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in Netherlands or Nobert Hoffer in Austria. The anti-Semitic rallies in Poland, the authoritarian Viktor Orbán in Hungary, the absurd Beppe Grillo in Italy and the abhorrent Golden Dawn in Greece are all part of a big shift, which is not just about the rise of nationalism and breakdown of the post-war institutions. There may be a more fundamental shift underway. Discussion about such a shift is not new. This has been discussed in the scholarly circles for some time. But, since the last year, ...

It now seems possible that Greece will exit the Euro, and it is worth talking about what this may mean. The Greek government is driving a hard bargain with its creditors, not giving in to their various demands, particularly on Pension and Benefits cuts for retirees, and higher tax on goods sold. While this seems unreasonable and everyone seems to be blaming the Greeks for the trouble, at the core, there is a fundamental difference of priorities. The austerity strategy that the Greek government is resisting is a failed one, and it has resulted in a contraction of the Greek economy and worsened the Debt crisis rather than improving the situation. So, the fundamental position of the Greek government, that the debts will be paid but not by crippling the economy for generations to come and not by causing deeper social unrest, is more reasonable than it seems. The creditors position, in line with the currently dominant worldview, is the one that dominates the media, but its time seems ...

There is a view that India and China are rivals. It indeed seems so, as the two countries compete for resources and influence. That is how the world systems work, countries, delineated spaces marked off by separate colours and thick lines on the map, compete against one another. It is a zero-sum game, one must lose in order for the other to win. Great theorists have laid out their wisdom regarding these strategies for winning and losing, and we know of different kinds of power too, as in Hard Power, which is about muscle and money, and Soft Power, which is about culture and commerce. International conferences, studies and lectures continually explore whether India is winning or China is winning, national leaders on both sides worry about their findings and seek ways to mend things if it is going bad for them. So, China sends help to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and India remembers its old friends in Mongolia, in order to encircle the other and limit their influence. Must it be that ...

English is fast becoming the world's language. While some Frenchmen are perturbed, and call the language penetrating even their universities 'American' rather than English, the Tower of Babel seems to be reaching a final solution.  Why does this matter? The apologists of English do not see this as an imperial project but a triumph of pragmatism, a natural corollary of globalisation and rise of an uniform consumer ethics. And, indeed, there is one view that it is the 'democratic' nature of English - the language can be molded and adapted to its host cultures infinitesimally - that makes it so popular. They claim this is not about English or American, but the story of many Englishes. So, you can speak any language as long as it is called English, which means an expansion of what some observers will call an Anglosphere. This is a sphere of influence of a certain kind of rhetoric, enabled by the unity of media and thinking. In one way, this is a function of te...

This is a bit of Washington-speak I picked up from watching the news: It basically means that the American strategy for world dominion, shall we say world peace, have changed its focus to Asia. The Cold War is well and truly over, and despite its vast nuclear arsenal and apparent ambitions, Russia is no longer considered a threat. The American military personnel and arsenal would now shift to Asia, particularly East Asia, where the Chinese presents the biggest threat to the current world order, one of American hegemony. Or, at least that's the plan.  Indeed, despite the professed Asian pivot, very little has actually happened on the ground. The United States has started withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Europe, but they have mostly gone home. The American military may have the biggest budget in the world, but they may have been over-reaching, not in terms of technology or military prowess, but in terms of willingness to engage all over the world and to b...

India is facing a crisis in credibility. Right at the time when the world economy turns south, the Indian leadership continues to fiddle and confuse, and is allowing the country to drift aimlessly. After years of abundant jobs, swelling salaries and cheap credit, suddenly the Indian middle class arrives in the age of redundancies, penny pinching and ever-rising rates of interest: The end of dream may have arrived, so it feels. This may be the time we all feared: This is like putting a car on reverse while zooming ahead at 100mph. Much of the prosperity in India was only the feel-good kind, only a few people did really well. The others read about them and had a feeling of progress. Suddenly, all of that disappointment may all surface, tearing the country apart. Unless, indeed, everyone's attention could be diverted with something compelling. Like a war, perhaps. This is a classic setting for jingoist, misanthropic leader who can find someone to blame. This is not a time for reas...

These days, most intelligent conversations tend to focus on two alternative possibilities. First, the more pessimistic ones, see the current recession going the same way as the Great Depression did, slowly altering political opinions and driving the world into protectionism and national chauvinism, finally leading to some kind of great war, which may lead to an end of civilisation. The proponents see a challenger power, like the 19th century Germany, in China, and the incumbent in the form of the massive global empire of the United States. Next, there is the optimistic view, which does not see a violent end of the civilisation but a re-balancing: This is more the doctrine of decline of the West and the rise of the rest. This view suggests a power-shift, to China and India, and possibly Brazil, and that they would emerge as the World's preeminent economic powers, in a replay of what happened during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth century Europe. To be clear, this is not the only vie...

Palestinians want to be recognized as a State, what's wrong with that? Israel was curved out of Palestine in one of the first acts of the rubber-stamp imperialism era. That was a different age. That was a time when the retreating British empire wanted to leave small pockets of direct influence and weaken the incumbent states. So, we had Pakistan, which was meant to be a client state of the Empire overlooking its oil interests in Persia; So was Israel, another protege, another victim, tasked with the job of holding Middle East on balance. But, Israel was being curved out of Palestine, a state which existed then, which the Palestinians objected to. They ended up being gobbled up, exactly as they would have feared, in the end. For someone watching the drama, this would have been amusing if not for all the bloodshed. Palestinians objected to Israel then not because they were nationally minded, but it made no sense curving out some land to a nation of immigrants. It ...

Santander's decision to bring back its call centres to UK should not come as a surprise: The bank had a bad record for complaints handling and something had to happen. However, this is part of a wider trend which should worry Service Outsourcing and Contract Manufacturing companies everywhere. It is interesting to note that the global economic meltdown led to shortening of supply chain by European and American companies, rather than rushing to find lowest costs elsewhere. What is happening is indeed globalization in reverse, a far cry from the go-go days early in the millennium. In fact, Mckinsey is now talking about 'Globalization Penalty' after noticing that companies that stayed home are continuously outperforming the big multinationals who are struggling to pull together their global subsidiaries. If we thought the world is flattening, surely it is going round all over again. Add to this the protectionist thinking in Europe and America, and increasingly right-wing a...

1. Your business must have a purpose; and fulfilling this purpose would lead to ‘making money’. 2. Your business must have a positive impact on the society; its long term profits would equal the positive impact created, and negative impact will result in losses. 3. The key to business success will NOT be who you know, but what you know. 4. Your business will be as strong as the relationships between its people. 5. Your business will be global, with a significant portion of either its supplies or its sales or its employees, or all of these three, coming from outside its immediate geographic region. 6. No matter what you do, your business will be an Internet business: The pathway from Google will be the passage you will need to decorate, and keep clean, every morning. 7. The words ‘tenure’ or ‘permanence’ will be as popular as ‘my lord’ and ‘Your Highness’ in the world of business. 8. Innovation and Marketing will be the only two income generating functions of your business; everything e...

When I was writing about the economic recession in October 2008 [ Memoirs of A Recession , for a local literary journal], I expected a short, painful recession, which will be ended by splurges of public spending. I also thought this would be an unfinished recession, which will come back in a few years with sovereign bankruptcies. President Bush was still at the helm, and I thought about the mother of all bankruptcies, that of America, and how that will mean the end of economics as we know it. I likened it to the First World War, which was an unfinished war, only to culminate in the mother of all wars, in 1939. I fancied telling the story as if sitting in 2040, old and wise, reflecting on lessons learnt and not learnt. It seems now that I was optimistic. The world has been on a downward spiral since then. We failed to learn the lessons. We tried failed and discredited remedies to new diseases, not recognizing the limitations of our thinking nor the complexities of our situation. Mostly,...

Alan Greenspan has recently written a 48 page paper for the Brookings Institution explaining why the Asset Bubble and subsequent collapse happened, reports The Economist. Greenspan's argument rests on one central point - that with the end of Cold War and reforms in China [and in India], hundreds of millions of workers were absorbed in the global economy; 'as the GDP growth in emerging economies soared, their consumption could not keep up with income, and savings rose. The rise in desired global savings relative to desired investment caused a global decline in long term rates, which became delinked from the short term rates that the central banks control.' [A draft of the paper, The Crisis , can be found here ] As The Economist article points out, this is broadly similar to the theory of Global Savings Glut, as espoused by Ben Bernanke . There seems to be a consensus among American Central bankers that the global decline of long term rates resulted in a speculative bubble...

I came across this short article by Jo Owen, which is full of facts and insights about China. Written from an uniquely British perspective, this adds interesting historical perspective and points to the world that is to come. I quote the article in full here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 14 th marks the Chinese New Year – the year of the Tiger. It is now clear that it is also the century of China. Here are six statistics to make the point: China became the world’s largest exporter in 2009 , with 10 per cent of world trade, compared to 9 per cent each for the US and Germany. China beat the USA to become the world’s largest auto maker , producing 13.8m cars in 2009. The UK produced under one million cars in 2009. Two Chinese companies, SAIC and Nanjing Motor bought the rump of Rover . China is the largest foreign holder of US government debt: Uncle Sam owes the Dragon over $800bn. This creates an uneasy balance of mutua...