Sanjoy Narayan, Author at Lokmarg - News Views Blogs

Five Things That Happened Last Week (And What to Make of Them)

By Sanjoy Narayan 11th December 2022

What BJP’s victory in Gujarat means for Modi and his party

For many observers the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s sweeping victory in this month’s assembly elections in Gujarat was perhaps a foregone conclusion. The party won a record 156 of the182 seats in the state. It is the highest number of seats that any party has won in Gujarat’s electoral history ever since the state was created in 1960. The previous record for the highest tally was the 149 seats that the Congress won in the state in 1985.

By all reckoning, for the Congress that is ancient history. Since then, and more so since 1995, it has been a steady downhill journey for the Congress. In the latest elections, the Congress managed to win just 17 seats, down from 77 that it had won in 2017. As for the newest contender in Gujarat’s electoral politics, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), whose leader, Arvind Kejriwal, drove an energetic campaign in the state, managed to win just five seats.

What does this mean for the BJP? More importantly, what does it mean for Prime Minister Narendra Modi whose home state is Gujarat and who has been chief minister there for more than a dozen years?

A lot, it would appear. Winning in Gujarat for Modi and his party was non-negotiable. It had to happen and it did. Years of being in power in the state may have built up a fairly strong anti-incumbency sentiment among voters. It didn’t. A major disaster such as the collapse of the Morbi bridge that killed at least 135 people could have swung the sentiment among voters. It didn’t. The state has had an indifferent track record on administration and the fact that it has had chief ministers replaced at least twice during the previous term of the government could have affected voters’ decisions. They didn’t.

So what were the factors that led to the BJP’s impressive sweep in the 2022 elections in the state? First, it was the towering influence that Modi enjoys in the state. For Gujarat’s voters, it is Modi whom they see as their leader, their homegrown leader who now leads the country. Neither incumbent chief minister Bhupendra Patel nor any other BJP leader in the state really matters. In Gujarat, Modi appears to be the supreme leader who makes the difference for voters there.

Then, of course, it is the near-collapse of the electoral machinery of the Congress party in the state. The Congress is still coming to grips with its newly elected party leadership after Mallikarjun Kharge assumed charge as president of the party. Its local leaders in the state have not been consequential and, in general, at least in the run up to the recent elections, its eye has not been on the ball. Obviously, the collapse of its strongest political rival has helped the BJP.

The third factor, surprising as it may seem, which has helped the BJP is AAP’s entry into the fray. AAP’s vigorous (if less financially endowed) campaign focused on issues that affect the common man–education, free supply of electricity and water and so on–but it failed to wean voters away from the BJP. What it did, instead, was to cut into the vote shares of the Congress, hobbling the latter’s status as BJP’s prime challenger even further. So Kejriwal and his party really helped the BJP pull off its impressive victory. Ironic, isn’t it?

There was some consolation for the Congress, however. In Himachal Pradesh, where elections were held around the same time, the party won 40 of the 68 seats, ousting the incumbent BJP government. In the previous elections, the BJP had won 44 seats in the state.

What does the Congress’s victory in Himachal mean? For one, in that northern state since the early 1990s, the government has alternated between the BJP and the Congress–each ruling for a term till the other displaces it. In fact, since 1985, the state has usually voted out an incumbent government. So, the Congress’ victory could be seen as a continuation of the oscillating pattern.

Yet, it is also a morale booster for the Congress, which badly needs uppers and mood-lifters. It has seen a series of electoral debacles, exodus of leaders, and a general lack of cohesive direction in its political strategy.

Oh, and just in case you thought that the Congress had finally managed to sever its tether to the Nehru-Gandhi family, please note that last week after the Himachal Pradesh victory, its party leaders vied with each other to credit Priyanka Gandhi, the daughter of former president of the party Sonia Gandhi and the sibling of another former president of the party Rahul, for the victory in Himachal Pradesh. Amen!

China’s mysterious ‘Bridge Man’

The recent protests in China against draconian restrictions on civil rights and movement by individuals across several cities has been compared to the Tiananmen Square massacre of the late 1980s when the state’s military and security forces cracked down against pro-democracy protests. This time around the protests were against the government’s action and stipulations after a fresh wave of Covid infections took hold of many populous cities in the country.

Many of those restrictions have now been rolled back after popular protests locally and outrage that was sparked globally. But behind the protests was an individual who remains shrouded in mystery. In mid-October, a man known as Peng Lifa hung two banners over a busy highway crossing in Beijing that attacked China’s regime headed by president Xi Jingping. The banners variously had slogans such as “We want food, not Covid tests”; “We want reform, not Cultural Revolution”; “We want freedom, not lockdowns”; “We want votes, not a ruler”; “We want dignity, not lies”; and “We are citizens, not slaves.” One of the slogans also attacked Xi directly: “Remove the despotic traitor Xi Jinping!”

Predictably, the Chinese government reacted immediately. The banners were removed and Peng is believed to have been apprehended. But two months later when the first protests started spreading across China’s cities, it was these very slogans that Peng had hoisted that were adopted by the protestors. And Peng is considered by many Chinese citizens as the real hero of the protests.

But here is the sad part of the story. Peng, who is believed to be a techie with interests in physics and philosophy, has disappeared from public life and is likely in custody. His fate is unknown and most fear that the authorities may have taken severe action against him. In the hugely regulated media environment in China, however, he is celebrated and lauded as the “lone warrior”.

Germany busts a domestic terror group

Last week Germany busted a domestic terror group that is believed to have had plans to overthrow the government. The group, headed by a 71-year-old German aristocrat and including retired military personnel, and a former MP for the far-Right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), was apparently planning a coup aimed at overthrowing the government and re-negotiating the terms of the post-second World War settlement.

The far-Right group had links to the QAnon, a conspiracy theory and cult that has emanated in the US and which believes that a cabal of Satanic and cannibalistic paedophiles conspired against the former US President Donald Trump during his term in office. In Germany, the QAnon has had an influence among the far-Right movement and among the Reichsbürger (or Citizens of the Reich) whose members deny the existence of Germany’s post-World War II federal republic. They believe that the current administration is still occupied and influenced by the Western powers that made up the allies–the US, UK, and France.

The busted group members are believed to belong to these and other groups and the authorities believe that they had plans for an alternative government and a strategy to infiltrate the defence forces. Many members of these groups have their own “passports” and “driver’s licences” and distribute and display other propaganda material. German intelligence agencies estimate that there could be around 21,000 members of the Reichsbürger in the country. The recent crackdown is proof that the government takes the threat seriously in an environment where across Europe there is a marked upsurge in ultra-Right wing movements.

A hint of good news for the Indian economy

Last week the World Bank had some good tidings for India’s economy. It revised upwards the estimate for its growth forecast of GDP growth for 2022-23. According to the revision, the GDP growth rate for the year now stands at 6.9% compared with October’s forecast of 6.5%. According to the Bank, India is well-positioned to fight off any global headwinds that might occur because of recessionary trends elsewhere in the world.

In particular, the Bank has upgraded its growth prediction for India on account of what it sees as strong private consumption and investment in the quarter-ending September performance.

The World Bank’s India Development Update report — Navigating the Storm — upgraded the country’s growth prediction on the basis of its September quarter performance “driven by strong private consumption and investment” that saw 6.3% growth in its GDP. This is significant because it comes at a time when the forecasts for most other economies in the world,especially in the west, have been quite dismal.

Warnings of the world’s worst recession

The encouraging forecast for India comes at a time when the world’s biggest asset management firm, Blackrock, has warned of a recession that could be worse than any that the world has seen before. According to a Blackrock forecast, a worldwide recession is imminent soon as central banks boost borrowing costs aggressively to tame inflation and this time, the firm feels it could lead to more intensive and widespread market turbulence across the globe.

According to the Blackrock report titled 2023 Global Outlook, the global economy has already come out of a 40-year period of stable growth and inflation and is now on the verge of entering a period of instability. This regime, marked by unpredictability, is expected to stay, according to Blackrock.

Moreover, the report has highlighted that policymakers will find it difficult to support markets the way they might have done in past recessions. BlackRock, founded in 1988, is the world’s largest asset manager, with US$10 trillion in assets under management as of January 2022.

Five Things That Happened Last Week (And What To Make Of Them)

By Sanjoy Narayan 4th December 2022

As India helms the G20, what has the forum achieved?

Last week when India formally took over the presidency of the G20 (or Group of Twenty) one of the first symbolic things that were done was the lighting up of 100 government-protected heritage sites, including UNESCO-designated world heritage sites, across India. And India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, tweeted to his nearly 85 million followers: “India’s G-20 Presidency will work to further promote oneness, inspired by the theme of ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future.’”

The G20 is an inter-governmental forum comprising 19 countries from every continent and the European Union and its objective is to address global issues of critical importance such as climate change and its impact, financial stability, and sustainable development. The forum is convened at least once a year and its presidency revolves annually among its members. During the year that India will preside over the G20, it is expected that a series of as many as 200 meetings will be held at different locations, involving different levels of representatives from member-countries and other invited nations. This will culminate next year with a marquee summit in Delhi.

Yet, the G20 has come under strong criticism for not achieving meaningful objectives. Indeed, in its 23-year history, there is little to show in terms of accomplishments. For instance, the recently concluded summit last month, which was hosted by Indonesia in Bali, came under severe criticism that it had failed to achieve anything of significance on climate change; that it had not provided the leadership for a global economic recovery after the Covid pandemic; and that its members were hopelessly divided in their opinion and stance on most major issues.

In 1999, when the G20 came into existence (evolving out of the erstwhile G7), its main objective was to achieve global financial stability at a time when the world was in the process of recovering from a financial crisis. The crisis originated in the late 1990s in Asian markets and spread all over the world. G7 members then realised that the crisis of that magnitude could not be tackled without expanding the forum to include a much wider range of nations and the G20 was formed.

Initially the forum comprised finance ministers and central bank governors of the 20-member countries. But later, the heads of state were included as the prime representatives. That happened 10 years later when a bigger financial crisis hit the world.

Theoretically, the G20 has a massive heft: collectively, the G20 members account for 80% of the global domestic product (GDP); and account for an estimated 75% of global trade. Besides, the members together represent 60% of the world’s population. That makes for a huge collective force but has that force played out in terms of the impact that the G20 has had?

The G20 works on two track every year in the run-up to the summit: a finance track where mainly finance-related issues are handled by finance mińisters and central bank governors of member countries, and a sherpa track where representatives of the heads of state tackle a wider range of issues that go beyond finance and economics. Meetings involving these two tracks are held throughout the year and, although the summit may be the gala meeting of the forum, it is these meetings where the real work often happens.

“Real work” should probably be viewed as an euphemism for “consensus” on critical issues among the forum’s members. But unfortunately, it is not an easy task to achieve such consensus. Lack of consensus has made the G20 not as effective as it had been conceived to be. The US, for instance, has been according less priority to the G20. Then there is the question of not including as many as 170 other countries in the world, including populous ones such as several African countries.

With the world facing another wave of post-Covid economic slump; and burning issues of climate change-related crises, the importance of the G20 cannot be overemphasised. However, even as India takes over its presidency, questions remain about whether the workings of the forum, which is in reality an informal collective, can be of any real consequence to the world as we grapple with growing problems.

Protests in China lead to easing of restrictions

The waves of protests and clashes that marked cities across China over the past weeks were a reaction to the Chinese government’s stentorian action against people’s freedom of movement and rights after another wave of the Covid virus spread across the large country. Lockdowns were imposed across many cities, including measures such as restricting workers from leaving factories or going home. People rose up in protests and videos that came out of the country showed clashes, beatings and violence as police and security forces clashed with protestors.

The events led to worldwide protests in solidarity with the Chinese people and there was significant pressure on Xi Jingping’s government to ease up on the restrictions.

Last week after days of protests, the Chinese government suddenly announced a lifting of the restrictions in some cities, including Guangzhou and Chongqing. People were allowed to move more freely and inter-personal contact was allowed.

The Chinese government’s hard crackdown on citizens and their rights evoked memories of Tiananmen Square where in 1989 violent massacres took place when the government tried to quell a popular national movement for democracy. This time, though, the provocation was the resurgence of the Covid virus, which in a populous country such as China can spread quickly and have major consequences for people and the economy. However, the Chinese action to prevent its spread and contain the virus was quite clearly disproportionate and, clearly, anti-people.

NDTV takeover: the end of an era of independent journalism

NDTV, founded by Prannoy and Radhika Roy in 1984, has always been considered an Indian media company of iconic stature. It has always promoted free, fearless, and objective journalism in a scenario where other major news organisations have failed to adhere to such principles and values.

NDTV has stood out even more since 2014 after the BJP-led Modi regime came to power and resulted in a rapid deterioration in the quality of mainstream journalism in India. Almost universally mainstream media groups in India have sought to toe the government’s line and, with the exception of a handful of organisations, few have pursued objective criticism of the government’s policies or investigative journalism to unearth the truth relating to authorities. The press and media are expected to hold a mirror to authority; in reality, in recent years, mainstream media hold a mirror to themselves in order to ensure that they conform to what the authorities expect them to be.

In such an environment, NDTV was an outlier. It earned a reputation of resisting pressure from the authorities and blazing an independent trail. That trail will probably now sputter and peter out. This is because India’s (and Asia’s) richest man, who is also the world’s third richest with a net worth of US$138.1 billion, Gautam Adani, is buying NDTV. That could well be the end of the last bastion of genuinely free mainstream media in India.

Adani’s group has interests in port management, electric power generation and transmission, renewable energy, mining, airport operations, natural gas, food processing and infrastructure with estimated revenues in 2022-23 of $90 billion. Adani is also perceived to be close to the Modi government and, in particular, to the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.

Last week, NDTV founders, the Roys, resigned and withdrew from the company and media watchers speculated that the company, its TV news channels and digital publications could face restrictions on what they could publish in future after the ownership changed.

In the past, the Roys have been under severe pressure from the government–including investigations into allegations of money laundering and tax avoidance– that has been viewed as intimidating tactics by those in power because of the company’s independent and, often critical, views.

With Adani taking over, NDTV’s stance is expected to change. Indian mainstream media’s last man standing will probably sadly have to bite the dust.

Israeli filmmaker creates a flutter in India

When Nadav Lapid, an Israeli filmmaker who headed the jury at a film festival in the Indian state of Goa, criticised film, The Kashmir Files, which depicts Hindu exodus from Kashmir in the late 1980s, it led to an uproar in India. Lapid had accused the film of being a propaganda film that should not have been shown at the festival.

This touched a raw nerve. The film has been controversial but the ruling regime and its supporters have praised it ever since it was released. Even Prime Minister Modi has lauded the film although many feel that, given its inter-communal focus, Kashmir Files could be divisive.

Meanwhile, even as the Israeli filmmaker has been criticised for his comments, his country’s ambassador to India, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka, Naor Gilon, apologised for it by tweeting: “As a human being I feel ashamed and want to apologise to our hosts for the bad manner in which we repaid them for their generosity and friendship.”

Modern-day Robinson Crusoe

Several years ago, a British citizen, Bernard Grimshaw bought a tiny unexplored island in the Seychelles for $13,000 where he lived as a modern-day Robinson Crusoe. Grimshaw was under 40 when he quit his job as a journalist and bought the island where he lived in near isolation.

Grimshaw also found a companion, René Lafortin, who came to the island sometimes and helped Grimshaw.

He and his companion built the island from scratch: planting saplings from neighbouring islands, encouraging birds and other species of fauna to inhabit it, and so on. Today, there are 2000 different bird species as also a rare breed of turtles. In fact, the island, named Moyenne, follows all the tenets of conservation and ecological balance.

Grimshaw was, on a couple of occasions, also offered millions of dollars by a Saudi prince who wanted to buy the island, but he didn’t agree. Today, Moyenne is a tiny eco-friendly, well-preserved natural sanctuary. Grimshaw died in 2012. But his island is now a national park that is protected by law.

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Five Things That Happened Last Week (And What to Make of Them)

By Sanjoy Narayan 27th November 2022

Modi tops approval ratings of global leaders

Indiaäs Prime Minister Narendra Modi has topped a survey by Morning Consult Political Intelligence, a global decision intelligence company headquartered in the US, which tracks approval ratings of leaders in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. With a 77% approval rating, Modi topped the latest list of ratings based on a survey conducted during November 16-22, 2022.

Modi was followed in the second spot by the Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and in the third spot by Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese.

The Bharatiya JanataParty (BJP) is predictably chuffed about Modi topping Morning Consult’s list. The survey also reiterates what could be called the TINA (There Is No Alternative) factor that serves to benefit Modi. There is no leader with a national stature that could be considered as an alternative to Modi really. The Congress, which is the only other national party, is in shambles and needs a complete overhaul under the newly elected party boss, Mallikarjun Kharge; the other national parties are too small to matter; and although regional leaders such as Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party and Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress may have emerged as BJP’s challengers in some state elections, neither has the heft yet to challenge Modi on the national arena.

Surveys such as Morning Consult’s come accompanied by the usual caveats. It is a moving average of a continuous survey and the sample size is typically small. The company’s website does not specify what the sample size for India is but states that it could range between 500 to 5,000, which is pretty vague, and that for India, the sample is representative of the literate population. For a country with a population of nearly 1.4 billion and an estimated literate population of over a billion (if we assume the literacy rate is more than 77%), a sample size of even 5000 would seem minuscule.

Yet there is another aspect of the Morning Consult survey. Since it is a dynamic survey, it is interesting to note that Modi’s approval rating has remained consistently high. In early May 2021, it was 63% but since then it has been climbing steadily and now stands at 77%.

Morning Consult also tracks what it calls “Country Trajectories” where it asks respondents whether they would say that things in their country are going in the right direction or have gone off on the wrong track. In that survey, India scores well with the latest results showing that 75% of respondents saying that things are going well.

Kejriwal plays the “good guy” card in Gujarat campaign

He may not have the national stature required to challenge Narendra Modi or the BJP at the national level but Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who heads AAP and is helming his party’s campaign in the forthcoming Gujarat state assembly elections, has always pitched development and policies aimed at bettering the lives of common citizens in his electoral strategies.

Even as he faced an attack by the BJP’s star campaigner in Gujarat, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath, who labelled Kejriwal as a “sympathiser of terrorism”, the Delhi chief minister chose to go high when others went low. He emphasised that he and his party stood for development against the BJP’s “politics of abuses and hooliganism”.

Kejriwal, whose party won a stunning victory over the BJP, the Congress and the Akali Dal in Punjab recently and runs the government there as well as in Delhi, used social media to state in Hindi: “If you want dirty abuses, hooliganism, corruption, or dirty politics, then vote for them. If you want schools, hospitals, electricity, water, roads, then vote for me.”

The Gujarat elections are scheduled for December 1-5. The BJP, which has been in power in the state for decades, has pulled out all stops in its campaign aimed at retaining power in the state where Prime Minister Modi was the chief minister for more than 12 years. But political analysts are watching how it will all pan out, especially with the gutsy, development-focused campaigning of AAP.

Protests at Apple’s biggest iPhone factory in China

The Covid virus’ resurgence in China has led to many instances of protests across the country. The protests are ostensibly against the strict lockdown measures that various cities are adopting. But one of the biggest protests has erupted in Zhengzhou, a city in central China with a population of 12.6 million. The protests are at the world’s biggest iPhone factory there.

The factory is run by Foxconn, which makes the iPhones for Apple Inc. and the protests broke out when the company locked down its factories preventing workers from leaving the premises. Videos circulating show hundreds of workers demonstrating and being confronted by guards and riot police in hazmat suits. It is alleged that workers were beaten by the police. Allegations have been flying about Foxconn not honouring the terms of its contract with workers after the outbreak of a fresh wave of Covid casesand that many new recruits were being forced to share dormitories with workers who were tested positive.

Foxconn has denied the allegations and said that it has taken all the necessary precautions to protect workers. Last month when Covid cases in the factory rose,the company locked down the facilities and that led to many workers breaking out and returning home. Foxconn is then believed to have recruited new workers offering them lucrative bonuses. Butworkers allege that Foxconn has not honoured terms of its contracts such as provision of food and other facilities.

Whatever the facts, it is a terrible PR disaster for Apple and the tech giant’s next moves in response will be watched closely.

Ire over Indian Islamic preacher in Qatar

Qatar, which is hosting the FIFA World Cup, has been in the eye of a storm after LGBTQ+ protests across the world broke out because of the country’s strict laws against homosexuality. Other controversies surrounding Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup included a global corruption scandal, the massive cost of building the necessary facilities, and serious human rights concerns about the country’s treatment of migrant workers.

But there is another controversy that dogs the country. Apparently, the controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik has been invited by Qatar to preach in the country. Naik is an Indian Islamic televangelist and public orator. In 2018, Naik was outlawed by India and accused of money laundering and hate speech that incited communal violence. Naik fled India and is based in Malaysia.

The Qatari government has denied that it had invited Naik but the Indian government is quite peeved that he is in Qatar to preach during the World Cup games.

Football follies in Kerala

The southern state of Kerala is probably one of the few states in India where football (and not cricket) rules. Kerala is football crazy and people there take the sport very seriously. So even as World Cup fever grips the world, there was a kerfuffle in Kerala when a man, Deepak Elangode, tore down a Portuguese flag that had been hoisted by fans of Cristiano Ronaldo, superstar footballer and captain of Portugal’s football team.

Elangode apparently mistook the flag for the emblem of a controversial Islamic group. He was arrested after enraged fans confronted him.

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Five Things That Happened Last Week (And What To Make Of Them)

By Sanjoy Narayan 20th November 2022

Is Big Tech melting down or is it just an opportunity to downsize?

Big Tech made the headlines last week but not for the usual reasons. No, tech giants such as Twitter, Meta (which owns Facebook), Snap, Amazon, and Microsoft, weren’t on a buying spree. Nor were they announcing sensational new breakthroughs in high technology. Instead, they were sacking employees in heaps. It all started after Elon Musk’s rather noisy takeover of Twitter, the social media platform.

Almost immediately after Musk paid some US$44 billion for Twitter and accompanied it with some juvenile antics (he carried a bathroom sink to the company’s headquarters ostensibly to drive home the message: “Let it sink in”) and publicised his dismissal of the company’s four top honchos, Musk sacked half of the 7500 employees that Twitter had worldwide. Then, in a company-wide email, titled A Fork In the Road, he announced that to survive, Twitter employees had to be “hard-core” and keep intensely long hours. Many employees decided to quit, raising apprehensions about Twitter losing the expertise and skills essential to its functioning.

While Musk was creating drama at Twitter (the sackings plus his own histrionics tweeted on the platform itself), elsewhere in the realm of Big Tech, at Meta, which owns Facebook, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to sack 11,000 (or 13%) of Facebook’s employees. The reason cited was operating losses owing to the collapse of its advertising revenues. Both Twitter and Facebook are platforms that depend on advertising for revenues and both have been hit hard by the slowdown, inflation, and depressed consumer demand.

Wait, what? Aren’t those typically travails of brick-and-mortar players, which get hit when inflation rises, demand declines, and the economy turns sluggish. Weren’t digital companies supposed to be resilient and not be affected by that stuff. As it happens, no. Across BIt Tech, companies have been hit hard by economic downtrends.

At Twitter, the sackings may have been motivated by a new owner (one who might well have overpaid for his acquisitions) and his hurry to shore up the bottom line at the company, but at Meta, it was the sort of thing that afflicts old economy companies. Zuckerberg’s company had overinvested in Facebook before the pandemic and the growth that it had expected simply did not materialise. Also, Meta has invested US$36 billion in Metaverse, a networked virtual world where people can live, work, shop, and interact with others, all from the comfort of their homes. Although it sounds awfully like a celebration of sedentary lifestyles, Meta has hugely ambitious plans for it. All of this, however, has meant that Meta’s financial performance has been under pressure. Hence the layoffs.

There is an old economy thing but it seems to hold good for players in the new digital economy equally. When top players in an industry are seen taking measures to cut costs by, for example, downsizing their workforce, often it becomes a cue for others in the same sector to follow suit. It may seem like lemming-like behaviour but it is actually an opportunistic phase when other players can also take the opportunity of cutting costs even if it is not a critical need yet.

The downsizing we are seeing at Big Tech (besides Twitter and Meta, Amazon and Microsoft have also begun firing large numbers of employees) may be caused by the global recession and sluggish consumer demand but part of it is likely the outcome of companies deciding to use the travails of Twitter and Facebook to do their own downsizing at a convenient juncture when the chances of eyebrows being raised could be low.

Donald Trump hopes to bounce back

In the US, the number of former Presidents who contest presidential elections after being defeated in one is small–four to be precise. Now, Donald Trump is set to add to that list. Last week, Trump announced that he was throwing his hat in the ring in the 2024 elections. Trump lost the last election to Joe Biden by a margin of seven million votes but he has till recently held that the elections were not fair and that victory was “stolen” from him.

Now, as he kicks off his campaign, he has stopped talking about the unfairness of the elections but has vowed that he wants to make America “great and glorious” again. Trump’s announcement comes after the Republicans failed to register a convincing victory in the

midterm elections recently. The Democrats managed to control a majority in the Senate, while the Republicans have a slender majority in the House.

Still, Trump appears to be the frontrunner among Republican nominees. In the recent past, Trump has outpolled most of his rivals in the party for the primaries. But that might be changing. Among Republican primary voters, support for Trump’s bid for the presidential polls has fallen by 9% in the past three months and at least one poll has found that Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ popularity has grown.

It is early days though, and the sentiment can change in the coming months. In his speech announcing his candidacy, Trump reiterated his earlier policy of clamping down on immigration, lowering taxes and free trade deals to lift the economy, and of election reforms that include reverting to paper ballots from voting machines. In the coming months, he will likely amp up the rhetoric. How Americans will respond will be interesting to watch.

A most cruel blow to cryptocurrencies

November 2022 will go down as a nightmarish month for investors in cryptocurrencies. It was when FTX, a multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency exchange founded and run by an erstwhile poster boy of the crypto world, Sam Bankman-Fried, collapsed.

FTX was founded in 2019 and, at its peak in 2021, had over one million users and was the third-largest crypto exchange by volume. In a short period of time, FTX and Bankman-Fried built up a credible reputation and commanded respect. But things began to turn when the founder used funds from the exchange to trade via his own crypto trading company.

Once investors got a whiff of what was happening, a run on the FTX exchange began, it got bankrupted, and overnight, Bankman-Fried turned from hero to villain.

The bigger implication of this is that for the cryptocurrency scene, which is often misunderstood, FTX’s collapse could be a body blow.

Cryptocurrency is a digital currency in which transactions are verified and records maintained by a decentralised system using cryptography, rather than by a centralised authority. Trust and counter-checks are at the heart of the system if it has to work. A fraud, of the sort that FTX and its founder were involved in, can become a setback from which the crypto market could find it difficult to rebound.

India’s population bomb

The estimated population of India is at present 1.39 billion–Europe has less than 750 million; USA 330 million; and UK 68 million. While China is still the most populous country with 1.41 billion, India is expected to beat China in 2023 and by 2060, India’s population is forecast to soar to 1.65 billion.

But, like everything else in India, there is a great divide built into the demography of the country. As with development, societal norms, gender equality, and income inequality, which vary between regions of a vast country with wide diversity, India’s population is not growing homogeneously. In the northern states, particularly Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the population is growing at a rate much higher than in the southern states.

While many of the factors that determine the rate of growth of the population depend on literacy, economic progress, and income, what this disparity has meant is that in parts of India the population growth is akin to a baby boom and the average age in those regions is low. But in areas (for instance, in the south) where population growth is slower or even stagnant, the problem could be different–that of an aging population.

For India’s policymakers who already face tasks of diverse complexity because of the vastly different parts of the country, this could pose yet another tough challenge.

Upside downs of abstract art

Piet Mondrian was a Dutch master who was one of the pioneers of 20th-century abstract art. Mondrian died in 1944 at the age of 71 but many of his paintings are prized possessions of galleries and collectors around the world.

Recently it emerged that a painting by Mondrian may have been hanging upside down for 77 years at various galleries that it has been exhibited in. The painting, New York City 1, is rendered in Mondrian’s characteristic style of geometric vertical and horizontal lines and a German curator only recently realised that it might have been hanging upside down.

Incidentally, it will continue to hang upside down because the 80-year-old work of art is fragile and may be damaged if it is put the right way up.

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Five Things That Happened This Week (And what to make of them)

By Sanjoy Narayan 13th November 2022

Is the Biden administration in a gridlock?

When it comes to elections, pollsters often get it all wrong. Before the US midterm elections that were held earlier this month, pre-poll surveys had predicted that there would be a huge wave in favour of the Republicans both in the Senate(upper house) and the House of Representatives (the lower house), which together make up the bicameral legislative body of the US government. On the basis of those predictions political analysts even began forecasting scenarios where the Biden administration could fall into an existential crisis that could prove to be fatal.

As it happened, the outcome of the elections was not as dramatic. In the Senate, the Republicans and Democrats are now head-to-head each with 49 seats in the 100-seat chamber; and in the House of Reps, the Republicans have 211 seats to the Democrats’ 202 of the 435 seats, which means neither party has a majority. The US is largely a bipartisan democracy so unlike in other democracies such as in India or in several European countries, coalitions and electoral alliances are not meaningful options: the Republicans and the Democrats are always rivals.

But what exactly does it mean for President Joe Biden if the country’s lawmaking body is so evenly balanced? After the results started getting announced, Biden expressed a sigh of relief that the pro-Make America Great Again (read: Donald Trump and his supporters) were not bouncing back to stymie his government. But that could have been a response that was too hasty. Because America’s government could find itself in an unenviable gridlock.

Let’s look at the scenario that has emerged. The Republicans have a majority with a slender margin over the Democrats in the House, while in the Senate, neither of the two parties has a majority. What does this imply? For one, it makes President Biden’s task of making major new policy changes through law more difficult because his Democratic party has no clout in the House. Unless the Republicans are on board, it could be difficult for him to enact laws that have major implications. At a time when the shadow of recession looms large over the global economy; and Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to spiral, hurdles to lawmaking in the US could prove to be costly.

There could also be other implications for Biden. Some analysts believe in a sort of eye-for-an-eye move, if the Republicans have an edge in the House they could call for impeachment of Biden–in a kind of retaliation for the impeachments that the Democrats initiated against Trump during his term.

Meanwhile, Trump has said that he will make a big announcement later this month and that could mean he may throw his hat in the ring for the 2024 presidential elections. Trump continues to have considerable support among Republicans and many in the party, including some who have been elected in the midterms, think the 2020 elections results were not credible and that actually it was Trump who should have been declared the winner.

Divisiveness has sharpened in the US political scene and the midterms, even if they haven’t resulted in a clear verdict, have served to sharpen them. We can expect tensions to grow between the two parties and their supporters as 2024 approaches.

How many have died in the Russian attack against Ukraine?

As the war in Ukraine continues, and details of what is happening on the ground remains shrouded in ambiguity, a US military estimate suggests that around 100,000 Russian and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured in the nearly 10-month-old war. These figures, however, are a “western” estimate because both Moscow and Kyiv are extremely cagey about releasing official figures for casualties on their respective sides. Instead, ever since the war began last February, both sides have been contradicting each other–in terms of casualties, terrain recovered or captured, and other war-related statistics.

One slightly hopeful sign appeared last week. There were some reports that Ukraine was willing to consider negotiations with Russia for an end to the conflict. However, it is not known whether or how Russia would react to these overtures. Both countries would have to first agree that the 10-month-old war would perhaps not be resolved militarily but through diplomacy.

Speculation about the talks between the two sides grew after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky withdrew his demand that Russian President VladimirPutin should step down before any negotiations could happen.

Despite the contrary propaganda, both sides have suffered in the war but whether Putin responds to Zelensky’s overtures for talks is something that remains uncertain.

In Gujarat, it’s an AAP shadow that looms

Bombastic declarations are a part of India’s electoral politics. Before Gujarat goes to the polls in less than a month from now, such declarations are flying fast, especially from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has 109 of the 182 seats in the state. Releasing the first list of the party’s candidates last week, BJP leader and Union minister Bhupendra Yadav said his party would break all records and win 150 seats in the assembly.

The facts could be quite different. In allocating seats, the BJP, which has ruled the state for practically 27 years (with a short break in between), has denied tickets to as many as 38 sitting MLAs, an indication that it fears that voters in many constituencies might be swayed by anti-incumbency sentiments. In its first list of candidates, it has included only 69 of the sitting party legislators as contenders for the coming elections.

This could be a sign that the party is fearing stiff competition from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which won Punjab’s last elections and has been running Delhi for the past seven years.

Gujarat is a prestigious state for the BJP. Not only has it been ruling it for nearly three decades, it is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state and one that he has been chief minister for more than a dozen years. Losing Gujarat and that too to AAP would be humiliating for the party. For now, all eyes are on AAP, which is clearly one of the most prominent rivals to older and bigger parties at the national level such as the BJP and the Congress.

Musk on the warpath in Twitter

After buying Twitter, sacking its top executives and as many as 3,700 employees worldwide, billionaire Elon Musk is continuing to unleash controversial decisions at the popular social media messaging platform. Twitter recently announced a subscription model for anyone who wanted a verified account (which comes with a blue tick).

More recently, Musk scrapped the platform’s work-from-home policy and declared that all employees have to come to work and do a minimum work week of 40 hours. Coming on the heels of a mass sacking, this has created further uncertainty in the company.

Meanwhile, even as Musk reached out to major advertisers in a video chat last week to assure them of his sound business plans, many big spenders have abandoned or put on hold their ad spends on the platform. These include General Motors, General Mills, and United Airlines. Many of these companies are apprehensive about the direction a Musk-owned Twitter will go with regard to hate speech and divisive content. Many of them are waiting and watching how things pan out before resuming spending on the platform.

Facebook employees face the sack

Elsewhere on the social media scene, things are not very different. Faced with declining revenues and increasing losses, Facebook has been on a firing spree. Last week, on a single day, Facebook fired 11,000 employees comprising 13% of the company’s workforce.

Many of those fired were Indians, including some who had just joined the company. In one instance, a woman employee on maternity leave till February received an email that said her job had been terminated.

Facebook’s bossMark Zuckerberg has taken responsibility for the decision to fire employees and for the company’s revenue collapse.

Meanwhile, he is betting big on Metaverse, a virtual world in which people live, work, shop and interact with others all from the comfort of their homes. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is working to launch this. But although Zuckerberg has invested nearly $36 billion thus far on Metaverse till now, there is little to show for it yet in results.

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Five things that happened last week (And what to make of them)

By Sanjoy Narayan 6th November 2022

How healthy is Vladimir Putin? What happens if he dies suddenly?

As Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine enters the ninth month and shows no sign of an early end, there is speculation about whether the West (read: the US and its allies) can set the stage for negotiated settlement to the war. Given the relentless attacks by Russia that can seem far-fetched as of now but many observers feel that it could be the only logically plausible solution. But, equally, there is huge speculation about another matter: Vladimir Putin’s health.

The Russian president, who turned 70 last year, has always been portrayed as a macho strong man. Photos of him bare-chested on horses, hunting with rifles, or swimming in icy seas have conjured up an image of a physically rugged man. The fact, however, is that he may not be that.

At 5’7”, Putin is actually quite diminutive–not the big man that he is portrayed in larger than life photographs. Moreover, he may be suffering from serious health issues. According to emails purportedly leaked to the media about the Russian supreme leader’s health, Putin may be suffering from pancreatic cancer that has been spreading to other organs in his body and which could prove to be fatal. Besides, according to the emails, Putin may also be suffering from early stages of Parkinson’s disease, a brain disorder that causes unintended or uncontrollable movements, such as shaking, stiffness, and difficulty with balance and coordination. In recent photographs Putin’s hands seemed discoloured and black, further fuelling speculation about his health.

If these leaked emails are correct and if indeed Putin is suffering from health issues that can turn fatal, what could happen if he suddenly dies? Geopolitical experts are debating this question and the answer is not so obvious.

First, according to Russian law, if Putin dies or is unable to continue in office, the Federation Council or Senate will have to call for fresh presidential elections within 14 days. In the meantime, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin would become interim president. However, Mishustin is not close to Putin nor is he likely to be a candidate in case there is a fresh election for the president’s post.

Instead, many believe that Putin’s exit could see the emergence of a power struggle. Putin has been president since 2012 (and before that he was also president between 2000 and 2008). So his vice-like grip over Russia’s governance, foreign policy, and virtually everything else has been a long-lasting one. That means opposition against him is totally hobbled. And that also means there is no obvious successor to him. However, many speculate that defence minister Sergei Shoigu, 67, could be one of the most likely contenders for president in a post-Putin scenario.

Some others predict that if Putin departs, Russia’s conservative elite–including business leaders–could regroup. Many of them, at least initially, were not so happy about Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine. And many of them feel the sanctions against Russia have debilitated the economy seriously–a fact that they think Putin has not accorded enough attention to.

Although all of this is in the realm of speculation, if Putin departs, many think that with him his “historical mission” that fuelled the attack against Ukraine could also peter out.

Netanyahu’s return and what it means for Israel and the world

Benjamin “Bibi” Netyanahu has been Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having served from 1996 to 1999 and again from 2009 to 2021. Now he has won another term by winning an absolute majority in Israel’s general elections last week. This time Netanyahu, 73, has won on the wings of a right-wing bloc, a coalition of parties whose ideologies range from Netanyahu’s own conservative Likud party, which won 32 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, to the extremist party Religious Zionists.

The significant thing is that the Religious Zionists managed to garner double the support it got in the previous elections. The Religious Zionists comprise a cocktail of extreme right-wing ideologues with their hallmarks being Jewish supremacists, anti-Arab sentiment and homophobia. Three parties make up the Religious Zionists platform: the supremacist Jewish Power (in Hebrew, Otzma Yehudit), the National Union, an alliance of smaller right-wing parties, and the anti-LGBTQ party, Noam. The Religious Zionists increased the number of seats they won from six to 14 this time and that was what gave Netanyahu victory.

Even as Netanyahu began his talks over the weekend to form a coalition government, there is no doubt that the extreme right will play a critical role in whatever configuration emerges in power. Western observers, particularly in the US, are still unsure about what this could mean. For one, it is unlikely that they would take easily to talks with ministers representing the far right with whom even Netanyahu does not share common objectives except the opposition to the creation of a separate Palestinian state.

Cut to India. Netanyahu and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi have enjoyed a rapport for years. During his previous stint as prime minister of Israel, India forged deeper bilateral ties with Israel. It is expected that the two countries will continue to build stronger ties. For India, it means trade and know-how benefits but also strategic advantages in a world where its own diplomacy has been led more by pragmatism than ideological concerns.

Kejriwal and the politics of pollution

’Tis the time of smog in Delhi. Last weekend as the Air Quality Index rose to cross 250 in Delhi, it was a sense of unwelcome deja vu for the megacity’s residents. As the weather cools down, Delhi’s air pollution levels soar. For many years now, it has also led to a blame game. The Delhi state blames the Centre for not finding a solution and vice versa.

The smog that envelops Delhi’s atmosphere is often blamed on stubble burning by Punjab farmers. Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has in the past blamed that and not Delhi’s own industrial emissions from factories, burgeoning traffic, and so on, for the high levels of air pollution.

Ironically, this time the shoe is on the other foot. Punjab is a state that is governed by Kejriwal’s party, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and if it is stubble-burning by that state’s farmers that is a prime cause of pollution in Delhi, is it not the responsibility of the government of that state, which is run by the AAP, to think of ways to stop that? That was the sentiment expressed by the government of Haryana, another northern state that is beleaguered by air pollution. It would be interesting to see how Kejriwal and his government in Punjab react.

Elon Musk and his ongoing saga at Twitter

Even if you’re not a big Twitter aficionado, the ongoing events at the social media platform could provide fodder for entertainment. It began recently when the billionaire considered the richest man in the world, Elon Musk (net worth: est. $203 billion) bought the platform for $44 billion.

Immediately after buying the company, Musk walked into Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco carrying a bathroom sink and declared: “Let it sink in.” He then sacked the top four honchos at Twitter and paid them each $120 million.

That is the kind of drama that we have come to associate with the rich tycoon. Besides Twitter, Musk owns Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company, which do everything from building electric cars, building rockets and brain chips to digging tunnels.

At Twitter, Musk recently changed the descriptor of his handle (@elonmusk with 114 million followers) to Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator shortly after he faced widespread criticism of some of his announcements, chief among them was his plan to charge a fee of $8 a month for users to retain the “blue tick” that one can get for a company-verified account. The proposal has led to uproarious protests from many who feel this can enable people or organisations who use social media for trolling or propaganda to be able to “buy” credibility. Others are of the opinion that Twitter being a for-profit enterprise should be free to choose whatever business model suits it.

Meanwhile in India, Twitter fired most of its employees. Reports suggested that Twitter fired 180 of the 230 employees that it had in the country.

Is Mastodon the new Twitter?

Heard of Mastodon? No? Well, it has been around since 2016 and is a small social media network with limited success… till recently. Media reports suggest that Mastodon is seeing a rise in the number of people ditching Twitter to join the platform.

Mastodon has similar looks to Twitter’s and has gained 230,000 users since Musk bought Twitter. And although it is tiny still–with just 655,000 active users each month compared to Twitter’s daily active monetizable users numbering 238 million–social media analysts expect it to grow into a sizable niche player. Will Musk’s loss be Mastodon’s gain? We have to wait and watch.

Five things that happened last week (And what to make of them)

By Sanjoy Narayan 30th October 2022

The formidable rise and rise of China’s Xi

The West is often flummoxed by the goings on in China. This has been particularly true since 2013 when Xi Jinping became president (or rather, the supreme leader) of China. Last week, after China’s Communist party congress, which is held twice every 10 years, Xi emerged even stronger than he has been in his tenure. First, deviating from the norm, he got for himself a third term as head of China’s Communist party as well as president of the country. In addition, he reconstituted the seven-member all-powerful top decision-making body of the party, the Politburo Standing Committee, appointing his closest allies for six members besides himself.

Besides recognising that Xi, 69, is now formidably powerful as China’s leader, the western media and some of the west’s political observers seem not to have comprehended the full impact of Xi’s latest move–to empower himself to a degree that rivals the status of the late Mao Zedong, who was the founder of the People’s Republic of China, which he led as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the of the republic in 1949 until his death in 1976. Last week, on a major US TV news channel that shall remain unnamed, a correspondent from Beijing and the anchor of the show were together wondering why Xi had appointed his hardcore loyalists to his core team and had not sought to include some members with more diverse views. Seriously?

The problem is that many observers do not understand the mind of Xi Jinping. Unlike his predecessors–and, most importantly, unlike the late Deng Xiaoping, widely regarded as the leader who took China towards free-market economics through a series of far-reaching market-economy reforms and away from strictly ideology-driven policies–Xi is a hardliner when it comes to ideology. Under him, ideology dictates policy and not the other way round. This has several consequences for the rest of the world–the west, as well as China’s Asian neighbours such as India.

Here’s a peek at what Xi’s all-powerful clout means on several fronts. First, in Xi’s regime, there is a new form of nationalism that China has embraced–one in which China plays a dominant role in shaping the world order. It is a nationalism that derives from Marxism and in which the face-off is between the Communist party and its ideology versus free-market tycoons and western ideas of economics and politics. These could sound alien to western ears but as Xi pursues that approach, the impact on the rest of the world could be huge.

Second, already under Xi’s regime the role of the Communist party and the state in economics and business has been growing–either through regulation or policies. The crackdown on China’s tech tycoons and other private sector enterprises is an example of how China believes enterprises should strive towards higher socio-economic objectives than just financial returns. It is believed that involvement of the party and the state could get ramped up in the coming years. Already there are reports that many wealthy Chinese are attempting to leave the country as they anticipate possible crackdowns.

It is not that economic reforms are stopping in China. Instead, as reforms continue, unlike in the past when they were market driven, under Xi, the state and the party has been increasing its role in economic policy. The objective of that regulation is believed to be to make China become more self-sufficient while the world becomes more dependent on China.

The common thread in the ‘super-empowered’ Xi regime is “dominance”. China would likely try to be more dominant–in global economics, global politics, and the world’s social and environmental issues. China has been expanding its military and commercial access in the Indian Ocean region–by building ports, airports, and other infrastructure projects in countries such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka. You could expect more of that. Likewise, China has been pushing its Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure development strategy, which calls for China to assume a greater leadership role in global matters by investing in the infrastructure of 150 countries in Asia, Africa and Eurasia.

The bottomline is that China’s ambitions to play a dominant role in the world, driven hugely by ideology (where the objective is for China to play the main role in the emerging world order), will be accelerated in the new extra powerful status that Xi has carved for himself.

Congress’ new prez makes predictable moves

(Caveat: You could skip this item in the column and not miss anything; or, read it for pure distraction)

The Congress party in India has for some time now been resembling more of an amusing, black humour laced distraction than anything of consequence for serious politics. When it makes news these days it is usually for avoidable reasons. Earlier this month, it held an election for the post of the president of the party for which there were two contenders, with one of them alleging that, at least in some parts of the country, the polling was rigged. This was an internal election of the party, mind you. Also, in an instance that smacked of farce, one of the party’s leaders and descendant of the dynastic family that has ruled the party for the longest time, Rahul Gandhi, alluded to Mallikarjun Kharge as the new president even before the results of the election were declared.

Now, Kharge, an octogenarian and a life-long loyalist of the family, has made his first move by replacing the party’s working committee with a 47-member steering committee. And guess what? It has on it all the members of the Gandhi family: former president Somia Gandhi, her son Rahul, and her daughter Priyanka. The steering committee also includes former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and several other seasoned veterans (all of them staunch loyalists of the Gandhis).

What next? Not much except to wait and watch for Kharge’s attempts to revamp and resuscitate a dying party. If you’re an incorrigible optimist, you could think he’ll do it with an independent unforced hand. But we’ll see. As mentioned in the caveat, you could have skipped this section!

Musk kicks off with firings at Twitter

After he took over Twitter, the ubiquitous social media platform that has some 330 million active monthly users, Elon Musk who paid an eye-popping $44 billion for it has kicked off his inning with firings.

He began by sacking Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, all of whom he had accused of misleading him and other investors about the number of fake accounts on the platform.

Earlier, Musk, 51, after concluding his deal, had walked into Twitter’s headquarters with a bathroom sink and declared (via a tweet): “Let that sink in.” He had also changed his Twitter profile to ‘Chief Twit’.

Social media trackers are keenly watching Musk’s moves at the popular but divisive platform. Earlier, in an interview Musk had said he has plans to eliminate nearly 75% of the workforce at Twitter. He has also promised to preserve free speech but was also inclined to side with world leaders who are concerned about BIg Tech’s dominance and ability to facilitate activists. This has worried many who feel his commitment to preserving free speech might eventually be compromised.

Are Meta’s financials in free-fall?

One year after Facebook was rechristened as Meta, the company’s finances and valuations have tumbled. Last Thursday, Meta’s shares crashed 24% to $97.94, the lowest in four years. In one year the company’s market value has been reduced by an eye-popping $650 billion. Meta market capitalisation now stands at $263 billion. It is out of the ranks of the top 20 companies (by market cap) and its value is now lower than that of Home Depot.

Meta’s spiralling decline in valuation has also pushed down Facebook founder and CEO’s personal net worth: he lost $11 billion after the stock plummeted and is now down to being the 29th richest person in the world (he was the 25th before last week’s crash of Meta’s stock).

The more important aspect of Meta’s decline is that both its main property–Facebook–has been losing users consistently for the past few years. Although Facebook has 2.93 billion users, it is not a huge draw among younger netizens who prefer newer platforms such as TikTok. And Meta’s other property, the messaging platform WhatsApp, has been losing sheen because of privacy concerns with many users opting for other services such as Telegram and Signal, which are considered by many to have more privacy protection.

Life on the high streets of social media can be ephemeral.

Meet Arvind, the latest proponent of mystical mumbo jumbo

Just when we thought the engineer-turned-successful politician and Delhi’s intrepid chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, had honed his political acumen to a degree where he could plant his clout at the national level, he gave us reason to not take him too seriously. Last week, Kejriwal urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to have Indian rupee currency notes emblazoned with images of religious deities such as Lakshmi and Ganesha. If newspaper reports are to be believed, Kejriwal said he believed the Hindu religious symbols of prosperity will help the economy get back on track.

There could be two ways, though, to look at his motives. First, could it be that Kejriwal who has been a staunch critic of the pro-Hindutva rightwing BJP regime has experienced some sort of epiphany and become deeply religious? Or could it be that by proposing that gods be depicted on currency notes he is merely being canny and pragmatic in a national zeitgeist that is increasingly becoming Hindutva tinged? If you remember that his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has national ambitions and is eyeing to make big gains in the forthcoming elections in Gujarat (it won handsomely in Punjab recently), then it is probably the second motive that is triggering in him such pious thoughts.

Five things that happened last week (And what to make of them)

By Sanjoy Narayan 23rd October 2022

Who will run the Congress: The family or the ‘family man’?

“Historic” is the word that has popped up frequently in the Indian mainstream media to describe the election of veteran Congress party leader, Mallikarjun Kharge, 80, as the party’s new president because he is the first non-Gandhi to head the party in 24 years. Newspapers have “analysed” the tasks that lie ahead for Kharge at a time when the Congress party’s state has reached rock bottom, a nadir in its political timeline that is better described by the word historic than Kharge’s ascent to the party’s helm.

“Sham” would probably be a better word to describe the long-awaited elections for the office of the party’s president, which was held by Sonia Gandhi for the past 24 years (except for a short break during 2017-19 when her son, Rahul, was the president). It was a vice-like grip that she and her family had over the party–dissent was not tolerated; and deep loyalty, bordering on subservience, was rewarded.

If the use of the word “sham” to describe the elections that Kharge won by a landslide vote (he got 7,897 of the 9,385 votes, while his rival Shashi Tharoor, 66, got 1,072 votes) seems harsh, consider this. When counting was underway across all of the Indian states, Tharoor, who was considered a pro-change candidate, in an internal letter, alleged rigging in the largest state, Uttar Pradesh. Although Tharoor later clarified that his complaint was an internal one that should not have been leaked, does not the suspected rigging of a party’s organisational election for a top post smack of shame and scandal?

Wait, there’s more. On October 20, hours before the results of the “secret ballot” were to be revealed, while at a press conference, Rahul Gandhi was asked what his role in the party would be once the new president was elected. He said words to the effect that it would be for “Khargeji” to decide that. Many in the Indian media, a strangely forgiving lot when it comes to some things, dismissed it as a “slip of the tongue” but it was perhaps more a Freudian slip, an unintentional error that reveals subconscious knowledge or feeling. As far as the Gandhis were concerned, “Khargeji’s” election was a foregone conclusion. It had been preordained.

Now, let’s turn to Khargeji. The Congress party is in dire need of a complete revamp. It has witnessed large-scale exodus of leaders; it has suffered humiliating drubbing in elections both at the national and at the state levels; and the morale of its cadres, workers and supporters has never been lower. At the root of all this is the widespread disenchantment with the family that has been at the helm of the party for nearly a quarter of a century. Many party leaders–in private and public–have alluded to the Gandhi family’s autocratic grip over the Congress. And, although it has been only a few days since he was elected, there is speculation about whether Kharge will be a leader who leads with his own mind or one that continues to be subservient to 10 Janpath, the residence of Sonia Gandhi that has been the omnipotent centre of the party.

Kharge, a Congressman from Karnataka, was till recently, the leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, and he has, in the past been minister of railways and minister of labour and employment in Congress-led UPA governments. He is also considered to be a loyalist in the family. In the election for president of the party that he won, he was pitted against Tharoor who was considered to be a pro-change sort of Congressman. You could look at it (if you go by the somewhat stretched definition of youth in Indian politics) as a Young vs. Old election. A 66-year-old with a mind of his own (well, sort of) pitted against an 80-year-old with a mind heavily influenced by a powerful family.

Now, however, after the contest has been won, Kharge will have an onerous task. One that not only involves rehabilitating a decrepit party but also dealing with the Gandhi family: the matriarch, her son, Rahul, and her daughter, Priyanka Gandhi. Watching him, if not anything else, will be entertaining.

The UK provides a bit of distraction

In 1996, India had a government at the Centre that was gone in a blink. It was the year when in the general election, the Bharatiya Janata Party emerged as the single-largest party in Lok Sabha and the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee was invited by the then President of India, Shankar Dayal Sharma to form a government. But 13 days later, Vajpayee was unable to prove a majority in the House and had to resign.

The circumstances of Liz Truss’ resignation are somewhat different. Basically, she lost the trust of her Conservative Party colleagues after first announcing a series of untenable tax measures designed to pull Britain out of its economic crisis; then sacking her finance minister; and trying to salvage the situation.

Britain’s economic woes now are any political leader’s nightmare. The pound sterling has plummeted, inflation has soared (to levels higher than 10%), driving energy and food prices to levels that have pushed the cost of living so high that thousands are skipping meals or trying to deal with life without electricity.

Truss’ own party, the Conservatives, which have had a majority in Parliament since 2019, is wrecked with dissent and the future looks uncertain. The three leaders who are now in the fray to succeed Truss are Rishi Sunak, former chancellor of the exchequer (who had lost out to Truss in the race for premiership), Boris Johnosn, the controversial former prime minister (who had to resign after losing the confidence of his party members in parliament), and Penny Mourdant, the leader of the House of Commons, who announced her candidacy for the Conservative party leadership.

Many Britons, including several in the opposition parties are in favour of a general election rather than finding another Conservative candidate as a new occupant of 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the British prime minister. The coming weeks will be worth watching to see which way British politics heads.

Brace up for high prices

Okay, so what, according to leading economists worldwide, is the global average expected inflation in 2022? The answer is a depressing 9.5%. According to a survey of economists by Ifo Institute for Economic Research, a Munich-based research institution, “This [9.5%] is the median of the average expected inflation rates at the country level. The median is used because expected inflation rates vary widely by region and are dramatically higher in individual countries and regions such as Africa than in the rest of the world.”

Ifo is an acronym from Information and Forschung, one of Germany’s largest economic think tanks. The organisation’s survey has forecast the 9.5% average rate of inflation for the third quarter of 2022. This is up from an expected rate of 7.7% in the second quarter of the year. According to Ifo, “If the experts are correct, the inflation rate for 2022 will be 6.7 percentage points higher than the World Bank’s average inflation rate over the past decade (2010 to 2019). The experts also expect high inflation rates worldwide in the coming years. Thus, expectations for future price increases remain high.”

What about India? What are inflation expectations in India? If we shift from Ifo’s survey to the Indian central bank, Reserve Bank of India’s own prognosis, the inflation rate remained consistently higher than the bank’s targeted range. According to data compiled by Trading Economics, the annual inflation rate in India increased to a five-month high of 7.41% in September of 2022 from 7% in August, above market forecasts of 7.3%.

More importantly, prices increased faster for food–8.6% in September compared to 7.62% in August and the main reasons for this were an erratic monsoon and supply side constrictions as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

A setback for Imran Khan in Pakistan

In April 2022, Imran Khan, the Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician, was ousted as the country’s prime minister by a no-confidence vote after occupying that office for less than four years. Last week he was disqualified from running from any political office by Pakistan’s election commission for a period of five years. This is a setback for Khan whose party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) won seats in recent bye-elections.

Khan’s disqualification comes after the election commission found him guilty of not disclosing details of toshakhana gifts and proceeds from their sale when he was prime minister. Toshakhana is a government owned department that keeps gifts which are received by members of parliament, ministers, foreign secretaries, the president and prime minister.

In Pakistan, as in other countries, cases such as these are often used politically to hobble rivals and the latest that Khan, 70, faces can be viewed similarly. Pakistan’s current prime minister is Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, 71, of the Pakistan Muslim League (N). He is also the brother of Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s longest serving prime minister (nine years over three terms) and currently an absconder who is on an expired bail in London after being convicted in Pakistan on corruption charges.

Will YouTube die?

Remember MTV? In the 1980s, MTV’s impact was huge. Musicians and bands such as Madonna and Guns N’ Roses owed their success to MTV and the channel’s music videos were an intrinsic part of marketing for music labels, bands and artists. Then, the internet came and everything went south for MTV. It tried to turn into a reality show channel but that didn’t really work.

Now there are predictions that YouTube may go a similar way. The Google-owned video website is still popular: according to the latest official figures, YouTube has 2.6 billion users. But trend spotters say that can change.

The reason could be ads. The free version of YouTube requires a viewer to watch two ads before the video he actually wants to watch (sometimes you can skip ads too) but, according to media reports, YouTube could be testing five ads before you can play a video.

Intrusiveness of ads is one factor that could dislodge YouTube’s prime position as a video site. Low quality content, censorship and restrictions on sharing could be other factors. Then there is competition. Twitter, in which billionaire Elon Musk has the biggest shareholding, is believed to be planning video sharing and video uploading. Among the younger generations of internet users, other video services such as Tik Tok are gaining in popularity.

It may be too early to predict YouTube’s demise. But in tech, you never know!

Five Things That Happened Last Week (And what to make of them)

By Sanjoy Narayan 16th October 2022

Is AAP the dark horse in Gujarat?

The last time a Congress chief headed the Gujarat government was in 1994. The chief minister was Chhabidas Mehta. His government lasted a year and 24 months. Since then, that is for the past 27 years, it has practically been under Bharatiya Janata Party rule. Practically, because for a short period of one year and 192 days, the Rashtriya Janata Party, a breakaway faction of the BJP, was briefly in power. That was in 1996-97. Otherwise, since 1995, Gujarat has been under BJP rule. For nearly 13 of those 27 years, the chief minister of the state was Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India.

Elections in Gujarat fall due this year and last week it was anticipated that the Election Commission would announce the dates for polls in both Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. It did for the former but not yet for the latter. Some speculation has been doing the rounds about why elections remain unannounced for Gujarat, with a few observers of the view that the state’s ruling regime (the BJP) needed more time to prepare for the elections, the fact is that this year’s elections in the state (where the BJP has 99 of the 182 seats and the Congress 77) could throw up a new challenge for the ruling party.

The main reason for that is the emergence of a new player in the fray: the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), led by Arvind Kejriwal, who is the chief minister of Delhi and whose party recently won the mandate to govern Punjab in what was quite a historic victory. In Punjab, for decades, the fight for power has been between the Akali Dal and the Congress. In fact, for a long while the power alternated between the two parties–the Akalis would win one term and the Congress the next; and that pattern would be repeated. Kejriwal waded into the battle this year and changed it all.

In Gujarat, in the last elections in 2017, although the Congress didn’t win, it did rather well, improving its tally from 61 in the previous elections to 77. Also significant was the fact the BJP’s tally went down from 115 to 99 seats. With the BJP being in power in Gujarat, practically uninterrupted, for nearly three decades, there could be the beginnings of an anti-incumbency sentiment among voters. But would the Congress gain from it?

The Congress has been in disarray at the national level. There is a controversial election underway for a new party president and in many states there have been mass exodus of leaders from the party. And unlike during the campaigning for the 2017 elections when a powerful leader such as the late Ahmed Patel helmed the Congress campaign in Gujarat, there is evidently no one from the party’s national leadership who can do it this time. And in the state, the party’s local leadership is not equipped to challenge the BJP campaigning might.

For the BJP, retaining Gujarat is a matter of prestige, for obvious reasons. And it has not refrained from pulling out all the stops to make it happen. The Prime Minister has already made many visits to his home state and his party’s leaders such as home minister Amit Shah have already stated that the BJP will get a two-thirds majority in the elections.

But there is a dark horse and that one is called AAP. Emboldened by the victory in Punjab, Kejriwal and his party began campaigning in Gujarat in April. He has already announced guarantees such as employment benefits to unemployed youth, free healthcare, special allowances for women, free electricity up to 300 units a month, and so on–all measures that have served his party well in other states, including Delhi and Punjab.

Of course, the BJP’s electioneering potential in the state is formidable. It has deep roots in Gujarat and its cadre is well-motivated. But it would be interesting to see how the AAP challenge plays out in one of the BJP’s strongest fiefdoms.

What Britain’s crisis is all about

Last week, barely six weeks into her term as prime minister of Britain, Liz Truss sacked her chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister) Kwasi Kwarteng and did away with some of the economic package that he had announced. Amid all this there is now high speculation about how long her government would last.

Just what is the crisis in Britain all about? It all began in September when Kwarteng announced a mini-budget that envisaged significant tax reductions that covered a swathe of taxes, including top income tax rates. Prompted by soaring inflation rates (of nearly 10%) and a slowdown of the economy, the budget was intended to spur growth and ease the cost of living that has been rising in the country.

But the effect of the announcements was adverse. Traders reacted unfavourably and the sovereign bond rates rose and the pound sterling touched a record low as the market perceived the tax cuts to be unfunded.

Truss’s U-turn on the tax cuts, especially the reversing of the top income tax reductions has been viewed as an embarrassing humiliation. But Britain’s crisis continues. Energy costs have been spiralling upwards and prices of everyday necessities have been rising uncontrollably.

The flip-flop on the economic policy (particularly, the hasty announcement of the mini budget followed by the U-turn on it), has raised questions about the Truss government’s credibility and triggered speculation about how long she can remain as prime minister. It’s an ongoing crisis and the world is waiting and watching to see how it pans out.

Are Indo-Russian relations cooling down?

At the September 2022 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin disapproved Russia’s continuing attack against Ukraine and stressed the need for diplomatic solutions and winding up of the war that had led to sharp increases in energy and food costs around the world. Is this the beginning of a change in the way the two countries have been co-operating since the era of the Cold War?

India and Russia have economic and strategic bonds that go back several decades. India has been buying arms from Russia since the Soviet era. India’s heavy engineering and core public sector enterprises have depended on Soviet models of planning and aid from that country. For decades it has been an alignment that has faced off against another: India and the Soviet Union against Pakistan backed by China and the US.

While the collapse of the Soviet Union may have changed some of the geopolitical ties between the two countries, recently India’s foreign minister S. Jaishankar defended India’s dependence on Russian arms by saying that it was because for years the western world did not supply arms to India, instead choosing to help a military dictatorship in the region. The reference is obviously to Pakistan.

In fact, of all the ties that India has had with the erstwhile Soviet Union, with Russia it is the arms agreements that continues. Russia is still one of the major suppliers of weapons to India. It is estimated that as much as 90% of the Indian Army’s equipment comes from Russia. But on an ongoing basis, India has been reducing its defence dependence on Russia by diversifying and buying from other countries as well as indigenising defence production domestically.

More recently, Russia has further alienated itself from the west after the war against Ukraine. This has pushed it towards China. This has implications for India because of continuing tensions that it has with China. If Russia strengthens its ties with China as is evident (both countries could be creating a front against the west), India could be shifting down its links and alignments with Russia.

India has evolved and grown to have more of its own capabilities and has reached out to other countries in the world for cooperation and alignments. This can reduce its erstwhile dependence on Putin’s Russia. But the dependence is still significant–both for arms purchases as well as for oil supplies from Russia. It is to be seen, however, what stronger links with China will bring to bear on that. For example, as Russia grows closer to China could the latter influence the former to reduce or restrict arms sales to India?

How the relations between Moscow and Beijing pan out will have huge implications on which way the one between New Delhi and Moscow goes.

Artificial Intelligence and cancer treatment

The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare has been a trend that has been there for a while but its progressive use in cancer treatment is perhaps the most significant. Recently, an article in The Advocate reported that scientists at the Louisiana State University found further proof how AI can benefit cancer treatment. Cancer kills nearly 10 million people a year and afflicts more than double that number.

According to The Advocate, the “LSU researchers used algorithms originally designed to map complex social networks, like those utilised by Facebook, to generate three-dimensional graphs of molecular datasets that include cancer cell lines, drug compounds and interactions among proteins inside the human body.”

AI can help in many ways to aid in cancer treatments. One, of course, is robotics that can assist in surgery. But laser imaging and virtual inference of cancerous tumours that the human eye cannot detect is also another major way in which AI is being put to use.

But probably the most important one is data based algorithms that process huge amounts of data from thousands of patients and figure out patterns that can help physicians and oncologists to decide on treatment. Machine learning systems can process and find patterns that are nearly impossible for humans to do without AI. Increasingly, as the LSU researchers have found, AI could play a growing role in cancer research and treatment.

A tribute to Zoom, Indian Army’s canine hero

In the ongoing fight against terrorism in the Kashmir Valley, the Chinar Corps is a key division of the Indian Army. The XV Corps, or 15 Corps, also known as Chinar Corps, is responsible for all the military operations in the area. It has had many heroes and many martyrs who have laid down their lives in the service of the nation in a region that is rife with terrorist activities. One hero, however, has been singular. Zoom, a canine warrior, was an integral part of the corps.

The two-year-old dog, a Malinois or Belgian shepherd breed, had played a key role in multiple counter-terrorist attacks by not only sniffing out locations of insurgents but also on occasion disabling them. Last week Zoom died of gunshot injuries during an encounter.

The army paid rich tributes to their canine colleague with a solemn ceremony for their gallant colleague. RIP, Zoom.

Five Things That Happened Last Week (And what to make of them)

By Sanjoy Narayan 9th October 2022

How serious is Putin’s not-so-veiled threat of a nuke strike?

As Russia’s offensive against Ukraine enters the eighth month, speculation is growing over whether Russian president Vladimir Putin will follow through on his repeated threats about using nuclear weapons in the ongoing war. Most recently, after a counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces, which led to significant gains for Ukraine, Putin said Russia would “defend its land with all the forces and resources” that it has. Clearly, that is a reference to nuclear weapons but how real is the threat of Russia using them and thereby triggering a worldwide catastrophe of unprecedented proportions?

To help answer that question it would be meaningful to look at the most recent developments in the ongoing Russian offensive against Ukraine and the latter’s response. Over the past month, Ukraine launched high-powered offensives against Russian forces in the southern and eastern fronts, liberating dozens of towns and other settlements in regions that Putin had declared were part of Russia and had to be “recovered” by his country.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky last month claimed that his forces had recovered more than 6000 square km of land, more than the area that Russia had invaded in the past few months. As of last week, Ukraine was believed to be continuing to gain ground. The problem is the ambiguity of the “facts” that have been trickling down from the area–much of it coloured by propaganda and counter-propaganda with either side making conflicting claims.

What is less ambiguous, however, is the fact that winter is fast approaching and that can make things more difficult on the ground in the region. First, Ukraine has far less than the number of armed forces personnel than Russia does. In 2021, Ukraine had 246,445 (195,626 military personnel and the rest reserves) armed personnel. Compare that to Russia’s active personnel of 10,00,000 and reserves of 20,00,000. Also to be noted is Putin’s widespread mobilisation through conscription of able-bodied males, which will further add to Russia’s number on the battlefield.

Against that background, how serious is Putin’s threat of a nuclear offensive in the region? The threat has predictably set off fears across the world. US president Joe Biden said that a nuclear offensive by Putin could lead to “Armageddon” for the world, implying an apocalyptic final and conclusive battle between the forces of good and evil. Elsewhere, there has been much speculation on what could happen if Putin does initiate a nuclear strike.

But will he? Last week, Euronews, a European television news network, headquartered in Lyon, France, spoke with Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at the Vienna Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation who used to work at Russia’s foreign ministry who said the chances of a Russian N-attack against Ukraine were “very, very low”. That was because much of Putin’s nuclear threats so far have been against the West and NATO and not against Ukraine. The more likely scenario that could emerge according to him was that of Russian nuclear tests at the regular Russian test sites such as Novaya Zemlya in the north of Russia in the Arctic. These would be to further signal to the world about a potential nuclear strike.

Euronews quoted Sokov as saying: “Nuclear weapons have more utility when they’re not used and when you threaten their use. But once you cross the threshold the situation changes. Even though we’ve seen a lot of nuclear blustering on Moscow’s side. We have not seen any practical steps that might suggest that Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons.”

Reassuring as that might sound, the fact is that the situation is fluid in the Ukraine conflict and nothing really can be predicted or ruled out.

As BJP pushes its campaigning, is Kashmir finally peaceful?

While addressing a public rally in Baramulla in north Kashmir, home minister Amit Shah last week said the assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir will be conducted once the Election Commission completes the exercise of publishing the revised electoral rolls. Shah’s rally was notable for the fact that it has been more than three decades since a Union cabinet minister had addressed a public gathering there as the state was torn by violence insurgency.

In fact, the BJP has been seeing bright prospects for the party in the forthcoming elections, which are expected to be held in 2023. On Shah’s trip to the state last week, he met representatives of the Dogra, Sikh, and Pahari communities and said he was committed to considering granting Scheduled Tribe status to Paharis. He also announced development projects worth Rs 2000 crore in the state.

There have been attempts to normalise life in the violence-scarred state in recent times such as the reopening of cinema theatres. But things are not yet fully normal. During Shah’s visit, a director-general of police who was the head of prisons in the state was killed in mysterious circumstances. While the number of major incidents of violence have been far fewer in recent months, Kashmir is still not fully normal.

How medieval is our society?

Last week, in Gujarat’s Kheda district, during a garba dance performance, a few men, allegedly Muslim, were arrested when they threw stones at the dancers. Garba is a form of dance common in Gujarat and many traditional garbas are performed around a centrally lit lamp or a picture or statue of the Goddess Shakti. The men attacking the dancers were rightfully detained. But what happened next was shocking.

Videos that went viral showed policemen in plainclothes flogging the men in public in front of a cheering crowd. The men were then made to apologise with folded hands to the cheering public that had gathered to watch the garba event.

Such kind of vigilante justice is not uncommon in India, where society exists on various primitive levels, including the absolutely barbaric. While vigilantism of the kind that happened in Kheda is commonplace when it comes to majoritarian communities such as Hindus targeting Muslims (remember the lynchings that took place related to allegations of cow slaughter?), it is common even in incidents that are unrelated to inter-communal conflicts. Take road rage-related violence on streets of big cities. Or even minor scuffles in crowded public transport. More often than not they end up with members of the public taking the law into their own hands and dispensing “justice” that is usually marked by egregious use of violence.

What makes the incident in Kheda especially abhorrent is the fact that the proponents of vigilantism were cops who flogged the men in public and in doing so may have set an example for ordinary citizens to follow.

An appropriate Nobel Peace Prize

There is a common thread that is shared by this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winners. Last week the prestigious prize was awarded to human rights organisations and advocates in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. These activists, including an imprisoned human rights activist, Ales Bialiatski, are all campaigners against abuses and civil rights violations by Russia or its Soviet past or, in the case of Belarus, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s ally, president Aleksandr Lukashenko.

Bialiatski, 60, is the founder of the country’s Viasna (Spring) Human Rights Centre, which was set up in 1996 in response to a brutal crackdown of street protests by Belarus’s authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko.

The second joint winner is the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties (CCL). CCL is one of Ukraine’s leading human rights organisations and was founded when leaders of human rights groups from nine post-Soviet countries decided to create a cross-border resource support centre in Kyiv.

The third winner is Russian human rights organisation Memorial, which the Putin regime shut down earlier this year. For more than three decades, Memorial worked to compile and highlight the focus on the millions of people who were killed, imprisoned or persecuted during the Soviet regime.

Malta’s golden passport

The picturesque small island of Malta in the Mediterranean has something that the unspeakably rich could vie for: a golden passport. It is also known as investment citizenship. Many countries have the scheme where when an individual or a family brings in large sums of money as investment they get a citizenship but Malta’s is particularly seductive. For amounts starting at US$680,000 or so, Malta offers the right to a golden passport (that is, citizenship). But that is not all. Malta being a member of the European Union, it is essentially a passport that enables individuals free movement and visa-free travel to most of Europe and, basically, the right to live anywhere there.

The problem is that the EU is not taking kindly to it and has taken Malta to court. One of the problems is that although Malta has raised over $1 billion from the scheme, it is feared that many applicants could have criminal records and the passport offers them refuge from prosecution or possible incarceration in their home countries. It is also felt that citizenship should be a right and not a commodity that can be bought. For now, however, it is over to the courts.