Month: July 2019

Donald Trump, What Is There Not To Like?

By Jasdev Singh Rai
Contrary to what is projected, the US President has found a way to dismiss the US war machine with ease and creativity. In fact, Donald Trump has made the world safer from US hawks. Read the facts

It is probably verging on blasphemy in some circles to say anything positive about American President Donald Trump. Portrayed as narcissist, misogynist, racist, climate change denier and unpredictable on international relations, Trump continues to walk the tight rope on a possible impeachment by the Democratic led Congress.

Trump may not be to the liking of many liberals and social democrats but some facts cannot be ignored. He is an American president who has not started a war on hapless people somewhere around the world for American ‘machismo’. He has also used a tool of weapon that hits the decision makers and the rich more than the ordinary people.

And importantly, his actions have led to real debates on equality, immigration, climate change etc which have usually been camouflaged under a veneer of ‘liberal’ policies.

ALSO READ: The Rubicon Crossed, Emperor Trump Or Citizen Trump?

Most of the attacks on him are domestic to USA. They are of little relevance to people around the world. Whether he is a racist, misogynist or even nepotistic does not affect the average person in Syria, Iran, North Korea or anywhere around the world. In fact, it has stopped irrelevant moral lectures from US officials to the world. He has not drained the swamp but he has blocked its hypocrisy for now.

But even in these domestic matters, is Trump the demagogue – as he is presented to be – when compared to his predecessors? These are aspects of America that have always been covered under the gloss of liberalism and pretentious progressive policies.

Take immigration, for instance. If anything, it is Obama who holds the prize for ‘Deporter in Chief’.  In 2012, Obama administration kicked out a whopping 419,384 illegal immigrants in comparison to Trump’s 256,000, a record no one has beaten. Even the family units and the children’s detention centres were started under Obama. The policy of empowering ICE, immigration and Customs Enforcement, to snoop and arrest people without warrants, or even giving them time to get their clothes let alone lawyers or say goodbye to family, was started under Bush and reached an ugly peak under Obama.

It was President Obama who proudly boasted, ‘We have strengthened border security beyond what many believed was possible.’ And it was also during Obama that one of his chief immigration advisors callously declared, “At the end of the day, when you have a community of 10 million, 11 million people living and working in the United States illegally, some of these things are going to happen. Even if the law is executed with perfection, there will be parents separated from their children. They don’t have to like it, but it is a result of having a broken system of laws.” 

Racism too remained unchanged, if not increased, during Obama. Many a black American has been scathing of his approach. Paniel Joseph writing in Washingtonpost (2 April 2016) says, ‘Blacks have, critics suggested, traded away substantive policy demands for the largely symbolic psychological and emotional victory of having a Black president and first family in the White House for eight years’.

Obama has been accused of skirting around issues of racism during his presidency because he wanted to be seen as ‘one of them’.  Towards the end of his presidency when racism became uglier with blatant police killings of blacks, he could only bring himself to make a statement. The same white Middle America that voted him in probably abandoned Democrats for being impotent on realistic change.

Racism and anti-immigration are ugly facts of America no one wanted to talk about at the highest level, except in superlatives. What Trump has done is taken away the mirage and the pretence. He has spoken aloud what white America talks behind locked doors.

Now both issues are there in the public glare as they really are for America to debate in earnest on these camouflaged fissures. That Democratic hopeful, Joe Biden, was taken to task for his racial hypocrisy in a recent debate shows that America is ready to talk the untalked as an electoral issue.

As for misogyny, one would be forgiven to believe from the media attacks that Trump is the first philanderer at the Oval office. Wasn’t there someone called JFK and more recently Bill Clinton? In fact why not look at the difference!

The #metoo campaign that shook the male western world was not about ‘affairs’ or philandering. It was about abuse of power when powerful men exploited their office to force women (in some cases men) into sex or sexual abuse making the workplace uncomfortable.

So far, as we know, Trump has not cornered any woman in the white house and lured her or forced her into a compromising situation or used his new power to sleep around with other men’s wives. We can’t tell, skeletons may come out later, but to date no one has gone public. He exploited his business and seems to have indulged in philandering and prostitutes rather than exploit staff.  He has not exploited the most powerful State office of trust to intimidate women into sexual favours as both Clinton and JFK did.  No #metoo campaigns against them?

However, it is the international sphere that concerns us lesser mortals around the world. It was considered almost a certainty that had Hilary Clinton become President, the USA would have gone to war with Syria, as Obama had already set the atmosphere. Another half a million people would have been killed in the madness that liberals call, maintaining ‘rule based world order’ a convenient term for hegemony or new evangelism.

Clinton’s victory would also have raised tensions in South China Sea and with North Korea. More importantly, the possibility of war with China as a result would have been high.

Trump has a unique approach to international relations, probably defying every international relations theory. Generally the State machinery or rather bureaucracy along with the political leadership, works as a unidirectional slow train with allegedly clear aims in international policy. Not with Trump. It works at tweet speed.

In US foreign policy, maintaining superpower status has been prominent in international relations and a sort of etiquette had developed on how US dealt with both challengers and friends. Commercial interests have also been instrumental as well as idealism of sustaining and promoting democracy around the world, sometimes used as a PR slogan to conceal commercial interests such as the Iraq war.

But asserting its might and a gung ho readiness to go to war when challenged or overthrow unfriendly governments has been key aspects of US foreign policy approach that can explain many of the US international actions in the last four decades if not more.

Here Trump has simply thrown the ‘instructions’ book out. Meeting North Korea in the middle, a piddling small poverty ridden country, and making it a major international event is something that would have been unheard of. Pride would not have allowed that. But pride is not something Trump bothers about. He has avoided war.

This single action has diffused tensions and there is the possibility that by wooing Kim Jong-Un, North Korea may start to reverse the nuclear programme. More importantly the shrill paranoia of US ‘pundit’ community has been silenced and they can put their pens to some other mythical danger facing US hegemony.

In Syria, Trump ignored close friends, the Sunni Gulf States, and allowed Russia to deal with the situation, albeit with some cosmetic help from US forces. Assad remains in power to the horror of many liberals who wanted to see his downfall, introduction of democracy and another country in the image of western democratic state regardless of the cost to human life. Crusades do not bother with headcounts.

Trump’s control of US foreign policy is extraordinary as shown in the recent U turn to possible attacks on Iran. Cleverly he has placed the hawks, like John Bolton, at the centre of foreign policy, letting them pump up the rhetoric, then frustrate them with his famous tweets.

Using a Fox news host to outwit Bolton and others, including ‘best friend’ Israel, was a move only Trump could have deployed. The war machine that is used to killing hundreds of thousands as necessary collateral damage must have been gob smacked when he said, ‘I don’t want to kill 150 innocent people’. It warrants a sketch. The comedians are focusing on the wrong bits of Trump’s world.

No other US president has had so much control over US wars and foreign policy than Trump. Almost every President became victim to the echoes and war drums that beat around him. George Bush was hopelessly pushed around by the hawks into needless, expensive and destructive wars. Obama, the one person who never deserved a Noble Prize for peace, went to more wars than even his predecessor. According to a LA times 2017 article, U.S. military forces had been at war for all eight years of Obama’s tenure, the first two-term president with that distinction. In fact he started a number of covert operations around the world including the Syria war where US financed the uprising along with its friends in the first place, which Russia had to clean up.

Trump has not been a push over at all. He has found a way of dismissing the US war machine with ease and creativity. Trump has made the world safer from US hawks, at least for now. People around the world, especially in vulnerable countries, can go to sleep without fear of US missiles blowing their children in the name of peace and democracy.

As for his trade wars, they hit the decisions makers and the middle classes more than ordinary people. The poor will not miss items they can hardly buy in the first place. The manufacturers, the businesses and Middle class luxury is hit by these sanctions. They are usually the ones berating for ‘thump them’ wars around the world. They might start thinking twice before bellowing for ‘conflicts’ as Trump instead starts ‘trade wars’.

It is climate change where Trump is a problem. It is quite possible that sooner or later, Trump is going to become the greatest Climate campaigner. Wait for this space. For the world outside America, Trump is yet the first US president to let the world be in peace.

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Apocalypse Now In India’s Cities?

By Sanjoy Narayan
The current water crisis in Chennai could be a foretaste of things to come across India as an estimated 600 million citizens face acute shortage and the groundwater reserves are fast depleting

It’s official. And it is also shocking. By 2020, which is next year, as many as 21 major Indian cities are likely to run out of their groundwater reserves. This, incidentally, is a finding from a report by the Indian government’s think tank, NITI Aayog, which was established to replace the erstwhile Planning Commission. The 21 cities include India’s capital city of New Delhi, its satellite growth centre, Gurugram, and several others smaller cities in northern India. But it also includes important southern cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and the seaside city of Chennai, which has been in the news now because of the severe water crisis it is facing currently.

Chennai’s four reservoirs that supply water have gone dry leading to an unprecedented crisis in India’s sixth largest metropolis, home to more than 10 million people. Images, videos and news items of the scale of suffering on account of water scarcity in Chennai have rung alarm bells not only across India but also around the world.  Coupled with the fact that the monsoons this year are running at a 43% shortfall, Chennai’s water crisis has been unprecedented in a city that chronically suffers on account of lack of that vital resource. It has resulted in long lines for tanker supply of water—which are not only inadequate but also expensive and can be afforded only by the very rich—and violent protests that could quickly turn into water riots.

The situation in Chennai could be a foretaste of things to come across India as an estimated 600 million Indians face water shortage. More than 40% of India’s water requirements come from groundwater reserves and these are fast depleting in its cities but also in rural India. In Gurugram and Delhi, part of the heavily populated National Capital Region, daily dependence on water shipped by tankers to condominiums, buildings and well-off neighbourhoods has become a routine affair. However, the prices for water delivered via tankers is soaring and only the affluent can afford to pay for it. In Chennai, for instance, A government water tanker costs Rs 700-Rs 800 for 9,000 litres, but supplies are scanty and private operators are making merry. Private tanker water prices have soared to Rs 4,000-Rs 5,000 for 900 litres, prices that are way beyond what an average Indian household could afford to pay.

At the root of India’s water crisis are several key factors. First, the increase in population and, hence, the soaring demand for water. India’s population runs at over 1.3 billion and is likely to soon overtake China’s. This has created tremendous pressures on cities and smaller towns where people migrate in search of earning a livelihood. Cities have been growing because of relentless building of legal as well as illegal settlements. This leads to unabated pumping out of groundwater and the water tables across the country are being depleted. Second, there is a combination of factors such as drying up of tanks and lakes because of increased demand and successive years of rainfall shortages. Desalination efforts by which seawater in coastal areas can be converted to potable water have been hopelessly inadequate and ineffective. Third, the governments and local administration, particularly in highly populated areas, have been short-sighted and their plans to mitigate or be prepared for water crises of the kind that is afflicting India now do not match the growth in demand.

What could this mean? Besides widespread suffering (in some cases, life threatening ones) it could be just a matter of time before water riots break out on the streets of Indian cities and towns. Last Friday, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council cited reports and estimates to describe what it termed as a “climate apartheid” where only the wealthy would be able to afford to counter and survive the effects of drought, overheating, and hunger. And a World Bank estimate suggests that climate change could push at least 120 million more people into poverty globally by 2030. In India, the situation is already hurtling towards that.

India’s Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, recently called for greater measures for rainwater harvesting and more efficient ways of limiting water wastage. However, even if adopted, such measures could already be too late. A scenario where water becomes exorbitantly costly and leads to protests and violence is neither difficult to imagine nor unrealistic. And that could lead to civil strife of proportions that the authorities may not be equipped to handle.

A major cause of the crisis that Indians face with regard to basic infrastructure and resources such as water, electricity, and proper housing stems from the runaway surge in population. But it also has to do with the government’s lack of long-horizon planning. In most growing urban agglomerates in India, growth has been lop-sided and haphazard. Take the case of Gurugram. Touted as the “Millennium City”, it is the base for several Fortune 500 companies and has emerged as a go-to destination for wealthy Indians who can afford the sky-rocketing property prices and rents. However, in terms of basic infrastructure such as electricity, water, policing, and roads, it lags far behind what is required. When builders and real estate developers zeroed in on Gurugram, it was not matched by urban planning that would have to be commensurate with the growth that would come.

Today, Gurugram and several other Indian cities are in the throes of a crisis, teetering on the brink of a manmade disaster. The problem is so acute that solutions at this stage could be difficult to envisage. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that 65% of India’s population is below the age of 35, and 50% below the age of 25. Millions of them are workforce eligible people with aspirations, longevity, and demands that need to be met. For any government, it is a Herculean challenge to face.

One solution could be to involve the private sector in collaborative strategies to fight the crisis. In areas such as water supply where the government’s wherewithal is limited and often inadequate, partnering with private enterprises and local communities could be one route towards solving the problem. If companies are provided incentives to partner the government in areas such as large-scale rainwater harvesting; distribution network for tanker water supplies; and limiting the surge in migration to cities (by making available livelihood opportunities in rural areas), things could take a turn for the better, or, at least, it could stem the spiralling fall towards disaster.

But even if such initiatives are adopted, they would be slow-burn processes that could take years, if not decades, before their effects are perceived. Meanwhile, in the short run, India’s cities—the situation in Chennai is a rude awakening—could be facing a doomsday-like situation.

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Wipro Founder Chairman Retires

An IT Father Figure Hangs Up His Boots

By Mahendra Ved
In India, where people don’t easily give up office and power, Azim Premji, an all-powerful head of a global conglomerate, the country’s second-richest man to boot, will retire end-July on turning 75.

Where families rule, be they in power or out of it, he has nominated his son as his successor, but has divided the latter’s clout and responsibilities into five entities among those outside the family. He will continue as non-executive director and founder chairman.

Where people chase wealth by means fair and foul, he has followed self-imposed work and business ethics for 53 years. He drove his Toyota Corolla till recently and travels Economy. He gets upset if an associate fudges travel bills, irrespective of the amount involved, to uphold work ethics. He once berated his staff for having him upgraded to Business Class till he was convinced that it was the airline that had made that unilateral gesture.

What makes Azim Hasham Premji stand apart is his philanthropic activities. India Inc. is not particularly famous for charity, nor are the rich in general. They engage in token charity to placate their conscience and earn public plaudits. Actually, billions remain frozen in religious endowments in the form of currency, gold and jewellery. That idle wealth is beyond the reach of the society.

Roughly, 34 per cent of shares held by companies controlled by Premji are earmarked to the Azim Premji Foundation (APF), taking the total donations to over Rs 1.4 trillion (USD 21 billion). The donation includes a 67 percent stake in his IT outsourcer, Wipro, worth $15 billion, plus assets including his stakes in consumer business Wipro Enterprises and PremjiInvest, his family office.

The APF works towards improving education in over 350,000 schools in seven Indian states. It also provides financial grants to other not-for-profit organisations. In March this year, he gifted an additional Rs 52.7 billion of the company’s shares –the most generous donation in the nation’s history. This will help the foundation scale up its activities several-fold, according to Forbes.

To give an idea of the scale of Premji’s charity, suffice it to say that India’s super wealthy households, or those with a net worth of over $50 million, are expected to double in both volume and wealth from 160,600 households with a total net worth of Rs. 1.53 trillion in 2017, to 330,400 households with a combined net worth of Rs.3.52 trillion in 2022. But a vast majority of them inherit their wealth and prefer to leave their money to family.

The remarkable thing is that it is Premji’s own money, not company funds. As the company’s executive chairman and MD, he has consistently given himself salary rises to keep control over his earnings so that he can divert it to charity without being subjected to any pressures. Nobody is saying this, but speaking generally, pressures from family and associates can be overbearing when one wants to engage in charity.

In India, philanthropy is done with caste/community considerations. Premji’s charity is not meant only for his largely impoverished community alone. In 2012, the Wall Street Journal called him the world’s richest Muslim entrepreneur outside of the Gulf region.

The newspaper titled its report: “How a Muslim Billionaire Thrives in Hindu India”. It quoted Premji as saying that such success shows globalization is turning into “two-way traffic” that can bring tangible benefits to developing countries.

“We have always seen ourselves as Indian. We’ve never seen ourselves as Hindus, or Muslims, or Christians or Buddhists,” Premji told the financial daily.

This is no empty rhetoric. On India’s Partition of India, the story goes, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a fellow-Khoja, invited Azim’s father Hasham Premji to move to Pakistan. Hasham turned down the request and chose to remain in India.   

Behind all this is the business acumen of a Gujarati and ethics of a Khoja Shia Muslim family. Hasham owned a vegetable oil product company. Azim cut short his study at Stanford and returned home following his father’s sudden death. Taking charge in 1966, at age 21, he retained Wipro, the acronym of the Western India Vegetable Products Limited founded in 1945, but transformed that small company to a $8.5 billion global tech firm. Wipro Enterprises also grew to a global FMCG, infrastructure engineering and medical devices producer with revenues of about $2 billion. It employs over 171,000 people. 

The college dropout eventually graduated in the year 2000. He completed his bachelors of Science degree in electrical engineering from the same Stanford University 34 years later.

Premji’s famous quotes include one exhorting “play to win” and another, “failure is the biggest step to success.” He has combined them when and where required.  Unlike what it should probably have done, Wipro has held off on firing all cylinders in the past few years and lost its third largest IT services firm position to HCL Technologies. Its revenues now stand at $8.12 billion as opposed to HCL Technologies’ $8.6 billion, $21 billion for TCS and $11.8 billion for Infosys.

Yet, an analysis by Mint newspaper noted that Premji was “…resolutely defiant of the Western market wisdom of sticking to a field of “core competence.” As an Indian business leader, he has always punted against the current. He was one of the first, if not the pioneering, leaders of the country s IT revolution. The opportunity was grabbed after IBM was ousted from India for selling reconditioned computers.

Steering Wipro away from business where margins were relatively secure to what was, in the 1970s and 1980s, still uncharted territory surely requires more than just gumption and a taste for risk a gift of vision.

Indeed, the story of India’s IT revolution is as much Wipro’s as it is of others. Premji rejected Narayan Murthy for a big job and the latter advanced his plans to turn an entrepreneur and launched Infosys.

Premji has been bothered about the fact that the IT business’ top managements haven’t been entirely stable and that growth has tended to plateau. Hence, he sought to consolidate Wipro’s achievements by ensuring a smooth succession. He sought out views from global management experts like late C K Prahalad and helped build the next level leadership, a younger one that can grow and think differently.

Although Wipro is not the biggest, Premji is certainly the father figure of the IT industry. Suresh Vasawani, Wipro’s former CEO, went on to lead Dell and IBM before starting his own venture capital and private equity fund.

According to a Bloomberg analysis, many industry leaders see in him the leadership style and business ethics that they want to emulate. Among them are Mindtree founders Krishnakumar Natarajan, Rostow Ravanan and Subroto Bagchi. 

With his corporate mission achieved, Azim, as announced, can plan more philanthropy.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

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Paltu Kumar: The Flip-Flop Man of Indian Politics Strikes Again

The Leader Who Fell Out Of Favour

By Anita Katyal
Once the poster boy of good governance, Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal (U) president Nitish Kumar is today struggling to protect his image

Already defeated politically by a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party and left behind by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popular appeal, questions are now being raised about Nitish Kumar’s purported firm grip on state administration.

Last year, Nitish Kumar found himself in the eye of a storm after reports by independent researchers revealed the deplorable conditions in Bihar’s shelter homes for girls and young boys. The report provided details about how the inmates lived in deplorable conditions, were denied basics like clothing and medicines and were routinely tortured and made to work in the homes of their caregivers. The report also revealed how young girls were raped and kept locked up in inhuman conditions. The shelter homes are funded by the state administration and run by influential people who are well connected with the police, officials, and politicians.

Predictably, Nitish Kumar’s image took a beating when this scandal erupted last year. And, more recently, the Bihar chief minister was once again in the firing line after an encephalitis epidemic claimed the lives of at least 160 children in Bihar, putting the spotlight on the poor conditions in government-run hospitals. Having enjoyed a popular run as a development man, the Bihar chief minister had to face irate crowds, shouting “Nitish Kumar go back” when he visited a hospital to get a first-hand account of the encephalitis epidemic.

These developments have undoubtedly come as a rude shock for Nitish Kumar who has been widely credited with streamlining the administration and focusing on development. The Bihar chief minister was hailed for restoring the law and order situation in Bihar, improving the roads in the state and ensuring better availability of electricity and water. This was in addition to the special efforts he made to push up the enrolment level of girls in schools by providing them free bicycles, books, and uniforms. 

However, it is a different story today. Not only are people looking at Nitish Kumar in a fresh and not-so flattering light but the JD (U) leader is also feeling the heat politically from the BJP and, personally from Modi. The equations between the two allies have changed dramatically since the 2010 Bihar assembly polls when Nitish Kumar called the shots while the BJP was clearly the junior partner.

Today, it is the BJP which is the dominant political force in Bihar and, as the recent Lok Sabha election showed, Nitish Kumar now plays second fiddle to Modi as the Bihar chief minister clearly depends on the BJP leader’s charisma to woo the electorate. If the JD (U) managed to win 16 of the 17 Lok Sabha seats, it contested in alliance with the BJP, it is primarily because of Modi’s popularity.

This is a far cry from the past when Nitish Kumar shunned Modi and would even refuse to share a platform with him for fear of alienating the minorities. Unhappy with Modi’s projection as the BJP’s Prime Ministerial face in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Nitish Kumar snapped ties with the BJP and contested on his own. However, he managed to win only two of the 40 Lok Sabha seats while the BJP’s score was 22.

The JD (U) chief subsequently joined hands with his bête noire Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Congress to form a mahagathbandhan for the 2015 Bihar assembly polls. The alliance proved to be a resounding success as the BJP was trounced while the mahagathbandhan formed the state government. But, above all, Nitish Kumar’s personal stock shot up once again. He was feted and fawned upon by the opposition camp and was being positioned as its Prime Ministerial candidate.

However, differences between Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav cropped up soon and the Bihar chief minister did another somersault. He walked out of the grand alliance and, once again, teamed up with the BJP which allowed him to retain his government and improve his vote share from 16 to 22 percent.

But this is should be of little comfort to Nitish Kumar who finds himself shackled to the BJP as never before. For instance, a miffed Nitish Kumar did not join the Modi government as he was unhappy that his party was offered only one ministerial berth. But he is in no position to walk out of the alliance as he needs the BJP as a partner in next year’s Bihar assembly polls.

Nitish Kumar is attempting to chart an independent path despite his constant public declarations that he remains a member of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. For instance, the JD (U) leader has publicly disagreed with the BJP on the triple talaq Bill and its Kashmir policy. At the same time, Nitish Kumar is trying to expand his party’s footprint and play a larger national role in the future by emerging as a leader of the non-Congress, non-BJP parties.

But it may too late for Nitish Kumar to reclaim his lost position. He had an excellent opportunity to lead the opposition bloc in the run-up to the recent Lok Sabha election but he squandered it away by jumping ship. The Bihar chief minister’s tendency to change allies at his convenience has shown him up as an unreliable partner. His best bet now is to continue his alliance with the BJP even as a junior partner.

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