View Details

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

If you interpret the term ‘management’ broadly, that is, to include not only the day to day running of companies, but also the bigger picture of governance, leadership, strategy, geoeconomics, and even civilizational survival, the clear answer is that there indeed is a unique Indian style of management.

Whether it has been uniquely successful in the past is an open question, and given the ravages of invasion, one may be tempted to say it hasn’t been; similarly whether, or how, it is appropriate for today’s and tomorrow’s needs is another good question.

But it is useful to identify what may in fact be the factors underlying such a style of management, and there are likely three reasons: civilizational, cultural, and practical.

Civilizational

The first is perhaps the idea of Bharatiya exceptionalism: that is to say that Bharat exemplifies a singular civilizational thread that goes back to the ancient four-fold Hindu idea of purusharthas: dharma, artha, kama, and moksha. It is a holistic approach, perhaps most evident in the Bhagavad Gita, with its emphasis on ethical leadership and nishkama karma.

It is certainly influenced by the topography and geography of the land, Jambudvipa, which has natural boundaries marking its extremities: Bharat, the land between the mountains and the sea.

The climate and the rivers and the vegetation reflect a reality of natural abundance: what Rajiv Malhotra referred to when he spoke of the ‘religions of the forest’ versus ‘the religions of the desert’. Bharat, in general, had a tropical cornucopia of food, and perhaps that was reflected early in a certain tolerance for not only for other humans, but also for all life.

It is notable that among all the lands that were populated early, Bharat was the one that retained its megafauna the best. All other human settlements saw the rapid extinction of large animals. Sustainability, a key mantra these days, was built into the Bharatiya outlook all along.

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/the-old-quad-is-dying-time-for-a-new-quad-14030966.html

The Quad, a 2007 partnership broadly intended to contain China’s hegemonistic ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, was a brainchild of then-Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. It makes sense: China is rampaging in its neighborhood, and gives every sign of wanting to either grab territory that belongs to others, or bully them into acquiescence and tributary status.

The belligerence that created the current Chinese empire, that is the forced absorption of Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria into the core Han coastal heartland, is part of a harking back to ancient Chinese empires. Xi Jinping, perhaps even more than Mao, embodies a hankering to be the almighty King-Emperor of the erstwhile Middle Kingdom

The US unwittingly allowed China to rapidly de-industrialize it post joining the WTO, and to come up with a business plan that calls for massive over-production and the resultant price collapse, which is a template they use to rape and pillage industry after industry. A recent casualty is Germany’s prized automobile industry: bellwether Volkswagen has been forced to lay off 100,000 workers, brutalized by a tsunami of Chinese electric vehicles.

However, as Utpal Kumar points out in an insightful essay, all is not well in Xi’s kingdom: e.g., the debt mountain, paranoia as seen in regular purges of military brass, and propaganda that conceals all bad news (did you hear of a small plane hitting a tower in central Beijing? Yes, a mini-9/11. But the information was blanked out). Continuing rural poverty is also censored, although Indians on x.com posted images of extreme filth and poverty, far from the glossy high-rise, bullet-train image that Chinese propaganda projects.

Paradoxically, that is precisely what makes China yet more dangerous: it will probably lash out in external adventurism to preserve legitimacy internally.

Thus the need for sober containment of China’s destructive power. The US, which has been the natural candidate for reining in this rogue power, has now demonstrated that it is retrenching. It has, for instance, demonstrated that it is no longer willing to indefinitely support its NATO allies. The “nuclear umbrella” that it has offered Japan may also be getting a little threadbare.

It is likely that President Trump invaded Iran with the good idea of denying China oil both Iranian and Venezuelan oil, as retaliation for China’s squeeze on rare earths. Alas, that has turned into a fiasco, creating collateral damage for innocent bystanders such as India. In game-theoretic terms, if an isolationist “Fortress America” mood has descended on the US, then a “G2 condominium” with China may be the simplest option, as I said several years ago.

If the US has indeed acquiesced to China being the hegemon in its sphere of influence, namely the Indo-Pacific, then there is good reason for the jilted Quad members (Japan, Australia and India) to enter into bilateral agreements amongst each other to look after their own national interests, including but not limited to Sinophobia. And in fact they have done so.

It is true that the Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting in May 2026 in Delhi produced some agreements on critical minerals (clearly a US priority) and surveillance collaboration, but I get the feeling that this is mostly a matter of keeping up appearances. Therefore it is worth pivoting to Japanese PM Takaichi’s recent visit to India, and PM Modi’s trips to Indonesia and Australia.

Japan and India are obvious partners, because their economies are complementary: one is resource- and technology-rich, and labor-poor, and the other is the opposite. There is also an old civilizational link between the two, going back to Bodhidharma from Kanchipuram who embarked from Muziris circa 500CE and established the Zen school of Buddhism in Japan.

There are also clear civilizational links between India and Indonesia. Hindu Bali is obvious; but Java, until the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit Empire was defeated circa 1500CE by Muslim kingdoms (encouraged by the Chinese empire of the time), was also heavily Indianized. As someone who has traveled in both Japan and Indonesia, I was delighted to see Devanagari inscriptions on the Great Bell at Hiroshima, and the Ramayana Ballet at Prambanan temple.

विपुलप्रभ अतुल्यनन्त नाथदिशि विदिशि स्फुरि सर्वबुद्धक्षेत्रा।राग प्रशमि सर्वदोषमोहांनरकगतिस्मि प्रशामि धूमकेतुम्॥१५॥"The lord of vast light, incomparable and infinite, has illuminated all Buddha countries in all the quarters; he has quieted passions, all sins and errors; he has quieted the fire in the walk of hell."This is the inscription on the Great Bell in Hiroshima.

Japan and India signed a series of agreements, including an investment target of Yen 10 trillion (about $66 billion) in areas such as critical minerals, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. They agreed upon a new focus on Artificial Intelligence and quantum technologies and in energy self-reliance, including hydrogen and biogas.

They also reaffirmed support for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (let us note that on June 16th the US renamed its Indo-Pacific Command to just “Pacific Command”, a telling admission of retreat. The US may well be abandoning the Indian Ocean just when it is becoming the focus of trade.)

The Indonesia-India agreements were significant: they included, for instance, Brahmos and Astra missile systems (which, in conjunction with other ASEAN purchases of Brahmos missiles, creates a potentially integrated sea-denial mechanism against persistent Chinese maritime aggression).

Pointedly, there will be joint development on Indonesia’s deep-water Sabang Port in Aceh, which is on the Malacca Straits just 90 nautical miles away from India’s upcoming Great Nicobar dual-use port.

The two ports can form a defensive shield that could deny transit in Malacca to hostile ships and submarines (read Chinese). Since two-thirds of China’s trade and energy imports pass through Malacca, this is a potent threat, especially as we have just seen what the siege of Hormuz did to global trade. Let us also remember that, exactly 1,001 years ago, Emperor Rajendra Chola sent a large fleet to open up Malacca when the SriVijaya Empire closed it.

There were also agreements on critical minerals (e.g. nickel for EV batteries, as Indonesia has the world’s largest reserves, cobalt, etc.), steel, maritime security, and technology cooperation.

Let us also remember the trilateral Japan-Indonesia-India naval exercises in the Andaman Sea in February 2026.

PM Modi’s visit to Australia is the most problematic. Earlier, under Kevin Rudd, a Sinophilic PM, Australia exited the Quad in 2008, effectively making it moribund. Besides, Australia for decades refused sniffily to sell India uranium, despite India being a committed non-proliferator. This may also have had something to do with the UK’s (Whitehall’s) deleterious influence on Australia.

But days ago, Australia committed to supplying uranium to India, in support of the latter’s quest for energy security. Oz has apparently learned that cozying up to China is not good for its own economic health.

Thus, the quadrilateral of US, Japan, Australia and India may well morph into a quadrilateral of Japan, Indonesia, Australia and India, all united in their concerns about China. The US has a choice: either continue to be the anchor of the Quad (Pentagon?), or be left behind if it insists on retreating into its shell. The former option would be better for all concerned.

1150 words, 11 July 2026

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/from-indo-pacific-to-pacific-delhi-must-prepare-for-strategic-loneliness-14024528.html

I refer, of course, to the (in)famous newspaper headline which said, “Ford to City: Drop Dead” in 1975 when then-POTUS Gerald Ford refused to bail out New York City during a financial crisis.

It appears to be the same sentiment now with POTUS Trump regarding India. The end of India’s fond hopes of a strategic alliance came not with a bang, but with a whimper: the Pentagon announcement, right in the middle of the G7 conclave in France, that the US has reverted its Indo-Pacific Command to the “Pacific Command”, which had been the name before Trump changed it in 2018.

What this means is clear: the US has turned its back on the Indian Ocean, on India, and on the vaunted “strategic partnership” that Indian policymakers had long assumed would be a corollary of that presumed bedrock of Indo-US relations: the mutual need to contain a rampaging China.

Coming on top of the remarkable cavalierness about the murders of three Indian merchant-navy sailors, and numerous other slights, we see a pattern of indifference at best, or disdain at worst. The US is signalling that they don’t need India. India, in other words, has no leverage.

I am not amazed, to be honest: I wrote in 2023 that in an era of relative decline, it made sense for the US to downgrade its aspirations from sole hyperpower to first among equals: that is, a “G2 condominium” with China. This is, in principle, the same as the Vatican-brokered Treaty of Torsedillas in 1494 that divided the world into Portuguese and a Spanish spheres of influence. Interestingly, that didn’t end up well for either party, but we shall let that pass.

Let us connect the dots: there is a ‘Donroe Doctrine’ whereby the US is asserting its hegemony in the Americas, its sphere of influence. Trump has ejected China from Venezuela, and is in the process of kicking them out of the Panama Canal zone; although the Pacific-to-Atlantic railway project in the Brazilian rainforest, and its terminus, the deep-water Port Chancay in Peru, remain.

The disastrous Trump foray into Iran was predicated on denying China easy access to that country’s hydrocarbons. But the MoU after 100+ days of war suggests that the US has received a bloody nose, and is withdrawing, retired hurt. The shrinking of ambitions away from the Indian Ocean as in the reversion to the ‘Pacific Command’ suggests that the US is ceding the continent, including West Asia, to China.

America-watchers have noticed this strange attitude to Asia before. Evan A. Feigenbaum, a former advisor to US Secretaries of State, wrote about this in 2011:

For Washington, the problem is at once intellectual, strategic, and bureaucratic. Intellectually, the United States still has three separate foreign policies in Asia—one for East Asia, another for South Asia, and a third for Central Asia (which it scarcely regards as a part of Asia at all). As Asia reintegrates, then, the United States is too often stuck in an outdated mode of thinking ...

Asia is being reborn, and remade. Yet, the United States is badly prepared for this momentous rebirth, which is at once stitching Asia back together and making the United States less relevant in each of Asia’s constituent parts. Asians are, in various ways, passing America by, restoring ancient ties and repairing long-broken strategic and economic links.

Well, this is also the end of the “pivot to Asia”, even though it was probably half-hearted at the best of times. Then-POTUS Obama started using the term in 2011, but was himself guilty of ‘awarding’ “South Asia” to Chinese overlordship on a visit to that country. Now that the US is dumping its European allies, it should not be surprising, in view of the ‘Fortress America’ tone of the National Security Strategy of 2025, that India is also being thrown under the bus.

A US official, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said this bluntly in Delhi at the Raisina Dialog 2026: India should understand that we’re not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago in terms of saying oh you know we’re going to let you develop all these markets and then the next thing we know you’re beating us in a lot of commercial things.

Landau is right from a short-term US perspective. The US blundered, presumably taken in by Chinese propaganda, and allowed itself to be stripped of its industrial prowess. They have learned a lesson: squash potential competitors when you can. This is a back-handed compliment: it suggests that the US is aware that India can be a challenger, and make the G2 a G3. India is literally the only power that’s large enough to make it to Great Power status: Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, etc. have too many problems.

No incumbent power wants an insurgent power to challenge its hegemony. The so-called “Thucydides Trap” predicts that chances are that they will go to war: a kinetic war or an economic war or both. India is simultaneously facing Thucydides Traps from both the US and China, those G2 buddies. I wrote about this as an “Abhimanyu Syndrome” for India: splendid isolation. I hasten to add that though Abhimanyu died, his side did win convincingly.

So it’s time for India to be pragmatic, and develop its own self-reliance, both in military power and economic/trade power. The existing G2 are looking for vassals, not allies. The equation between them is also interesting. It is clear that the US is in gentle relative decline; but it does have deep resources, and can survive as a continent sized economy, even if it turns its back on the rest of the world, as it has done several times in its 250-year history.

But Trump did kowtow to Xi on his May trip to China: he looked like a supplicant paying tribute to the emperor.

China, if you look at its 3000-year-long history, is volatile and unstable. A pattern repeats, again and again: there are periods of prosperity and power under a strong imperial center, followed by collapse and utter chaos. An unwinding of the Chinese empire, much like the implosion of the Soviet empire, is probably only a matter of time.

If you look at Indian history, the nation was mostly stable, though its prosperity invited invaders. As far back as 3000 years ago, India was the center of a lucrative Indian Ocean trade, based on Pax Indica in the region. With a deep water navy, a massive manufacturing push, and self-reliance, India can regain its past glory. Military power breeds respect from others. Economic power makes others want to trade.

1100 words, 18 Jun 2026

AI-generated slideshow courtesy notebookLM.google.com:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by Open Magazine at https://openthemagazine.com/world/india-will-collapse-without-digital-sovereignty-and-pax-indica-lessons-from-hormuz

By now it is clear that the Iran War (or West Asia War) has been a disaster to all concerned, including the principals as well as assorted passersby. The massive amounts spent by the US (at last count $25 billion) are at least articulated; the bill for the enormous infrastructural and human suffering inflicted on Gulf states, in the theater of war, must be greater, by definition.

The collateral damages suffered by the rest of the world from the cessation of trade through the Straits of Hormuz will presumably run into the trillions of dollars. As one of the worst affected, India, which imports 90% of its hydrocarbons from the Gulf, not to mention other essential items such as urea (for fertilizer), sulfuric acid, helium, etc., is on track to take a massive hit. As an article in The Economic Times said, “India must brace for broad-based economic shock”.

Indian exports of up to $50 billion are also affected, especially agricultural products including perishable foodstuffs, but also gems and jewellery, electronics, textiles and garments. Some of this can be diverted via Oman and the UAE’s Fujairah port, but much of it passes through the Straits of Hormuz and is potentially blocked and/or stranded at sea.

The Hormuz closure is a body blow to India’s economy. What can and will India do about it? The Indian State has a habit of rising to the challenge only when there is a crisis, while vegetating otherwise. The 1991 economic crisis is a case in point; the sanctions following “The Buddha is smiling”, and the denial of cryogenic rocket engines and supercomputers are other examples where the nation rallied. So were covid vaccines. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention.

Turning a threat into an opportunity

If I were to be an optimist, I could say that the current crisis is actually an opportunity. In fact, a major opportunity. My reading of the Iran War is that it is President Trump’s strategic tit-for-tat against China for denying him rare earths and cutting off soybean purchases. In return Trump decided to deny China access to oil by closing access to Venezuela and Iran. Whether this will work, or whether the G2 condominium (read ‘surrender’) will prevail, is unclear.

But that is, in a sense, background noise that needs to be managed. India needs to focus on its own issues, of which I see several as critical, and the solution in general is to become Atmanirbhar, self-reliant, and from that, to create an Anti-Fragile nation:

• National security/defense

• Food security

• Energy security

• Digital security/narrative control

• Trade security

The first three do not need an explanation: they are obvious. Internal and external security are pre-requisites for any successful society. If India’s hard-won food security can be threatened by external threats, then there needs to be some deep introspection. Energy security means diversification, both of hydrocarbon sources, and of types of energy, including renewables, nuclear, biomass, coal-based, and so on.

Malign narratives and digital sovereignty

Narrative control is something that the Indian State has failed at so far; it is laughably easy to create hate speech against Indians and India (as has been demonstrated freely by any number of players, starting from the MAGA crowd, to Audrey Truschke to a”Cockroach Janata Party” and some nitwit Norwegian journalist in just the last fortnight) and there are no consequences to the culprits. It’s enough to make me pine for Lee Kuan Yew’s aggressive legal battles against the media.

It’s one thing if it were only a problem with foreigners, but with the massive spread of social media, and in particular generativeAI, it is becoming a serious domestic issue. Since India is an avid consumer of social media, and because generativeAI is trained on things like Wikipedia, X, Whatsapp and Google content, biased and motivated material becomes ensconced as The Truth. I have written about narrative warfare and manufacturing consent.

This used to be a one-way tsunami of (mis)-information by legacy media, but now there is also the opposite: the wholesale and free vacuuming-up of Indian data (whatever happened to “data is the new oil”?). The “Great Firewall of China” both kept out foreign BIg Tech applications and prevented their plundering Chinese data: is that the way to go?

Manufactured narratives are intended for regime change: all the color revolutions today are hatched with massive bot-farms funded by some combination of Deep State, CCP, ISI, Qatar etc. (for example the alleged Gen-Z uprisings that rocked Nepal, drove Sheikh Hasina out of Bangladesh). Thus muzzling malign narratives, and ensuring data security, are imperative.

Even Singapore is not immune: it had to block anti-India narratives that likely originated from Chinese sources.

A particularly striking example of narrative warfare is the virtual hate speech inducted into Wikipedia by deeply prejudiced anonymous editors. Ashley Rindsberg, who exposed the mighty New York Times’ biases in his book The Gray Lady Winked, provides many examples of this.

Of note to Indians and Hindus is his recent substack titled “Wikipedia’s India War” where he identifies just four editors as having created most of the content condemning the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) in ‘Wikivoice’, i.e. the allegedly neutral perspective of Wikipedia. They are, on the contrary, shown to be highly one-sided.As Rindsberg mentions, Wikipedia being central to generativeAI, the damage is baked into the world-view of all AI applications. Truly Orwellian. Says Rindsberg: “four… anonymous accounts can have an enormous impact on what millions of people believe to be the truth.” “Over four years (2021-2025), editors systematically erased HAF’s identity as an American civil rights group, transforming its Wikipedia page into a heavily curated dossier of accusations.”

Trade, and how the Spice Route was far superior to the Silk Road

Finally, something that is becoming increasingly important: ensuring freedom of trade. This is more than just freedom of navigation, although I find it instructive that Emperor Rajendra Chola sent a huge fleet 1,001 years ago simply to open up the Straits of Malacca. India can make an active attempt to regain primacy in Indian Ocean trade, the whole Pax indica idea.

Here is another example of the power of narrative: we have been led to believe that the Silk Road to China was some major highway of commerce between ancient Rome and ancient China, but it was a term coined only in 1877 by the German Ferdinand von Richthofen. There was no highway. A large caravan might take six months, and with 500 camels traversing treacherous deserts and braving bandits, it might carry a maximum of 100 tons. That is puny.

In comparison, on the Spice Route, a single stitched ship from Muziris could carry 400 tons of ivory, pepper, silk, tigers and elephants; and the historian Strabo around 1 CE talks about fleets of 250 ships going from Alexandria to India on a six-week monsoon-powered journey. That is 100,000 tons of merchandise. No wonder Pliny the Elder complained that Rome’s treasuries were being emptied of gold by India.

Simple question: where are hoards of ancient Roman coins found in Asia? Answer: not along the Silk Road. The hoards are in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.

Today, it is possible for India to aspire to port-led development of trade, especially with the major ports at Trivandrum (Vizhinjam), Maharashtra (Vadhavan), and Great Nicobar (Galathea Bay). The underlying ‘software’ of India’s millennia-old trade competency was a ‘multi-protocol switch’ as I pointed out, and today’s India Stack can replicate that. Then there is the need for a blue-water navy: muscle to provide security on the Hormuz to Malacca sea-lanes.

So there is a vision. How can India get there? This is where policy matters, as I discussed with policy expert Anuj Gupta. Policy, especially industrial policy, has had a bad reputation in certain circles because it was deemed to violate the virginal purity of classical capitalism. However, in a recent U-turn, even the World Bank admitted that industrial policy may not be all that bad, after all: the success of Japan, the Asian Tigers, and China can’t be ignored.

That leads to the question of why policy in India has produced mediocre outcomes, what is different now, and where the best use of policy might be.

Industrial Policy: What went wrong in the past?

There are many problems here. To begin with, the Soviet model, which Nehruvians swore by, was, in hindsight, a dead end. Second, there is the problem of governance: post-Independence bureaucrats have awkwardly borne the legacy of imperial hauteur and the needs of a developing society. Third, until recently, the bare necessities (food, electricity, road access) were not available to many citizens, and GDP growth was not their priority.

There is also the culture of jugaad: of clever ways in which you overcome constraints through frugal improvisation and seat-of-the-pants making-do. This is fine for one-off things (e.g. converting a tractor trailer into a makeshift transport vehicle because your truck broke down), but it does not make for efficient and replicable industrial products. As The Economic Times said recently, it is time to junk jugaad. Quality has to become ingrained in people’s minds.

The issue of governance is significant: the bureaucracy and the judiciary have both under-performed, politicians, as everywhere, have been venal. It is said that China’s growth can be attributed to the fact that its babus are engineers, and therefore with engineering ruthlessness move in straight lines. The US’ babus are lawyers, and India’s are humanities graduates. Well, engineers are not very good at second-order effects (eg. China’s lurch from one-child policy to demographic collapse), but a little bit of ruthlessness is probably good.

What is going reasonably well?

There are a few modest success stories: for example, in electronics manufacturing or assembly. The PLIs (and DLIs) have produced the desired effort, with clusters of excellence where global suppliers have also set up shop (as they did earlier for the automobile industry in, say, Sriperumpudur). The fact that a lot of iPhones in the US are now imported from India is laudable, even though it may be derided as “screwdriver jobs”. That’s where one starts the move up the value chain.

The current semiconductor policy is a big hope, especially after the landmark agreement by the Dutch firm ASML with Tata Electronics in Dholera, Gujarat. Given that ASML has a near-monopoly position in Deep Ultraviolet Lithography (DUV) this is a major boost to India’s chip ambitions. My recent conversation with AMD CTO Suraj Rengarajan went into India’s chances to realize its ambitions.

A recent announcement from Trivandrum-based fabless startup NetraSemi (a recipient of DLI) of the commercial availability of its edge AI chips is a landmark.

Next is the newly announced plan for energy security revolving around both coal gasification and intensive offshore exploration. These fall squarely into the Atmanirbhar category: India simply cannot afford to have its energy held hostage by distant nations. It also needs distinctly Indian innovation.

The Samudra Manthan initiative is also showing some promise. At least one out of three deep-water wells in the Andaman Sea (SriVijaya Puram-3) are reported to be showing the availability of natural gas, although it will take 5-10 years for this to be commercially available.

What should the future look like for India’s Industrial Policies?

This of course is the hard question. Here is my personal perspective, and I accept that reasonable people may disagree. I think three areas need to be focused on, and will pay large dividends.

• Drones and swarming software

• Social media and AI stack

• Maritime Trade and Blue-Water Navy

I admit that these are not the only worthwhile industrial policies. Another is for copper, which would reverse the catastrophic effects of the closure of the Sterlite plant in Thoothukkudi, as the metal is an increasingly important component in electronics, data centers, etc., and far from being self-sufficient earlier, India now imports 50% of its needs. Another area of interest in quantum computing.

There are also failures from which the right lessons need to be learned. The policy for EV batteries has apparently failed: according to Swarajya magazine, India has not been able to escape from near-total dependence on imported Chinese batteries.

Drone swarms

I wrote recently that drones may well herald a step-change in warfare. For the moment, though, they are searching for their niche in offensive/defensive warfare. Drone hardware is already a well-trodden path with Chinese and other nations dominating it, although with IdeaForge, Paras, Garuda, IoTechworld Avigation etc., India is also making progress there. And India is indeed buying the hardware, $2 billion-worth, according to the Economic Times.

But I believe the real game is in drone swarms. AI-based control software (similar to HiveMind) that would allow an entire swarm to act autonomously, just like a murmuration of starlings, would be the gold standard to aim for. Such a self-managing swarm would be virtually impossible to defend against, and I think India should put in place a PLI to support it, leveraging software capability in the country.

Of course, drones are not just for military purposes, but also for commercial uses including things like logistics and agricultural use, such as precision delivery of fertilizer and pesticide to crops (as Garuda demonstrates). An Indian initiative that supports both drone hardware, and especially drone software, would be a potential winner.

Digital Sovereignty: Social media and AI stack

There is a raging battle over which part of the AI stack India needs to invest in. As an old Unix hand, I believe the foundational model is not where the differentiation is. In analogy with Linux (the open-source Unix variant that was popularized by Linus Torvalds and an army of volunteers), there is little value in re-writing the operating system, but one can differentiate by building on top of it, or by judiciously choosing certain modules of it.

Besides, the cost of building an entirely new foundational model would be astronomical and would consume the entire budget of IndiaAI Mission.

Thus, my personal opinion is that the foundational model (especially when, it is believed, there are more or less open-source models available for free, e.g. Llama, DeepSeek) is not where India should expend its precious R&D resources, but on the layers of the stack above it. It is the data that matters, as Larry Ellison apparently suggests too.

But there is the interesting counter-example of Sarvam AI which is producing its own sovereign model: multi-lingual and presumably otherwise tuned to Indian needs. The question is whether this can survive when hundreds of billions worth of capital investment are going to the US Big Tech companies and their Chinese rivals. The sad history of Koo, a Twitter rival, comes to mind. So does Arattai, a Whatsapp rival, whose popularity has waned. .

A well-thought-through industrial policy on generativeAI is therefore essential. The status quo ante is unsustainable; given the fact that Sarvam has also found it difficult to raise funds in the US, it is worth pondering whether a China-style massive subsidy is the answer. And where should it go, into foundational models or into the layers of the stack above it? The answer is “both”, but with priority to the latter.

Here is where I would prioritize investments, in order:

• Vertical applications in specific domains: e.g. defense, healthcare, agriculture, governance (particularly in the judiciary and in ease of doing business in the bureaucracy)

• Fine-tuning and customization: for the needs of the Indian context, e.g. multi-linguality under Bhashini

• Compute infrastructure: GPUs, sovereign and protected indian datasets

• Sovereign Small-Language Models such as Sarvam AI

As mentioned above, at the moment India’s data is being sucked up for free by US Big Tech. In addition, there is the real danger that Indic Knowledge Systems will be mined and digested, as has happened to yoga, pranayama, etc., which have been given Western analogs and nomenclature, as in Pilates, ‘coherent breathing’ etc.

These two problems are connected, and both need to be tackled in parallel. Social media is being weaponized against India, and this is magnified by the legacy media in a positive feedback loop. Three examples: one was the rage against Adani based on the dubious research of Hindenburg, which then went under; the second is Bloomberg’s reckless accusation about gold reserves being sold by the RBI, which they were forced to retract, but social media and Wikipedia will remember it; the third is the meteoric (media) rise of the Cockroach Janata Party.

Trade using major ports, Digital Public Infrastructure and a blue water navy

Using trade for competitive advantage is an age-old tactic. The trade tiffs between the US and China are examples of this: we are witnessing war by other means. Many nations are getting into this act, and India does have some advantages, partly based on geography. Maritime trade is likely to continue to be the key, which makes naval chokepoints the big story, but not the only story to watch out for.

The major aspects of maritime trade include infrastructure, the digital “multi-protocol switch”, and security. On the one hand, India is developing not only major container ports, and the road/rail links to get to them, and the industrial goods to ship out through them, but also a serious shipbuilding industry, which was one of India’s historical strengths. Then it used to be stitched wooden ships (teak beams lashed together with coconut rope). Now it’s modern steel ships.

There are the big, efficient new ports, which can now turn ships around with Singapore-like efficiency; the proposed third aircraft carrier group which will make it possible to patrol the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal at the time; the Air-Independent Propulsion diesel submarines and nuclear submarines that can monitor (and if necessary, deny) narrow straits; the sale of supersonic Brahmos cruise missiles to the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia (and Cyprus) that create ship-denial zones: all this is muscle.

And the final piece, the ‘software’ for trade, the “multi-protocol switch”. This last is complicated. Its value is underestimated by many. But this is what enables friction-less transactions between various unrelated parties. The India Stack and the Digital Public Infrastructure can be utilized to provide such a facility. But it is complex enough to need significant study as to what is possible, and how to roll it out.

Second-order effects

In closing, it is worth considering some of what the (unintended) consequences of these proposals may be. Let us note that the G2 has no interest in allowing India to grow and make it a G3. They will do everything in their power to kneecap India, by all means possible.

There is also a certain derision for India in some circles. Here is a generic western opinion on why China got rich, and India didn’t. Well, the author doesn’t consider the second-order effects of the wholesale destruction of Chinese civilization: that is a tradeoff Indians may not prefer for themselves. We all know how China’s well-intentioned One Child Policy turned into demographic collapse within a few years. Besides, as The Economist asks, “China is innovative. Its economy is a mess. Which will win out?”

This is why I think planning for these second-order effects is important. We tend to ignore them because they seem counterintuitive or unlikely, but Nassim Taleb has sensitized us to how low-probability Black Swan events can have grave consequences.

As an example, attempting digital sovereignty may have unwelcome side-effects: Big Tech have the first-mover advantage and network effects and there are increasing returns to scale. They will surely make it hard for a new player to break in. Besides, the large investments in data centers and GCCs that they are making in India would make it very difficult for them to be ejected with a “Great Indian Firewall”.

Even taxing their capture of Indian data will be complicated; not to mention that they have demonstrated that they can happily violate copyright laws with no consequence; therefore they will find ways to chew up and spit out Indian Knowledge Systems, and essentially re-colonize India. Digital colonialism is not a threat, it is a reality today, and it is a consequence of the relatively open Indian system.

In addition, there is a malign group, the “barbarians within” as Arnold Toynbee once put it, who are ready to sacrifice Indian sovereignty for a pittance.

Given all this, it will be very difficult to put in place serious measures to gain digital independence; and the narrative-peddling is likely to gain further momentum: just consider the caste allegations that have haunted BAPS in the US (despite the cases being dismissed by the US DoJ), the Cisco Systems case where, again, the case was dismissed, but the narrative continues, and the persistent efforts in various US states to turn caste into a weapon to bludgeon Indians.

Another sensitive issue is that of the multi-protocol switch for trade. While from an Indian point of view, it eases trade and harks back to a Golden Age of Indic maritime commerce, but that will be viewed elsewhere very differently, for instance by the US as an attempt to de-dollarize. The US has jealousy guarded – with very good reasons that we will not go into here – the dollar’s reserve currency status.

We have also seen what happened to those who attempt to hurt the dollar’s primacy: in 1985, the Plaza Accord devalued the dollar, and that was a body blow to Japan’s economy, which has not recovered its mojo to this day. Later, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi both had ideas about replacing the petro-dollar with, respectively, the Euro and a new pan-African gold-backed currency. We know what happened to them.

If the India Stack multi-protocol switch is perceived as an alternative to the US dollar, there may be grave consequences. Therefore, it should be conceived and deployed only as an adjunct to it and to the almighty SWIFT settlement system.

Conclusion

India is at a crossroads now. Even though the Hormuz closure is a serious problem, if it plays its cards right, adversity can be turned into opportunity across a variety of perspectives. The key is Atmanirbhar, self-reliance. If India can now implement a crash program of industrial policy, and at the same time overcome an ingrained Third-World tendency to cut corners, it can finally break free of the years of underperformance, what I called the Nehruvian Penalty in 2004.

It is possible, but there are caveats: unforeseen consequences. Hic sunt dracones. Here be dragons. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

3700 words, 7 June 2026

This is episode 192 of the Shadow Warrior podcast. Here is a companion AI-generated slideshow. (Note that the borders of India are not necessarily depicted correctly here, because it is generated by an AI, notebookLM.google.com)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Episode 5: May 17th, 2026: Shri Anuj Gupta, B Tech Mechanical 2003, Managing Director of Policy Consulting Firm BowerGroup Asia, former Govt of India policy expert, and former Chief of Staff to the Commerce Minister .

Policy expert Anuj Gupta on how India Governs and why it matters for Business

• The government has moved sharply toward outcome-orientation — targets, dashboards, PRAGATI reviews. What does that mean for how you sell to, partner with, or contract with the government?

• The government operates with a clear priority stack — Swachh Bharat, Ayushman Bharat, PLI, ONDC. Reading that stack correctly seems like the most underrated business intelligence exercise in India. How do you read it?

• if you knew exactly how a reform-oriented government thinks, decides, and executes, how would you run your business differently?

This is a fireside chat hosted by the IIT Madras Alumni Association featuring policy expert Anuj Gupta, who examines the evolving relationship between the Indian government and the private sector. The discussion highlights how the state has transitioned from a mere regulator to a primary shaper of market structures, utilizing industrial policy and digital public infrastructure to drive rapid economic change. Gupta emphasizes that modern governance in India prioritizes outcome-oriented execution and scale, as evidenced by massive initiatives in electrification, poverty reduction, and the India Stack. Business leaders are encouraged to move from a reactive compliance mindset to an anticipatory strategy that aligns with state-driven goals like competitive federalism and technological innovation. By understanding the structural logic of current reforms, entrepreneurs can better navigate emerging opportunities in sectors like green energy, space technology, and logistics. Ultimately, the sources advocate for a collaborative partnership where businesses leverage government-built foundations to foster national growth and wealth creation.

Brief Profile of Anuj Gupta

Anuj Gupta is the Managing Director of Policy Consulting firm BowerGroupAsia. BowerGroupAsia is present in 30+ countries in the World and helps Fortune 500 companies enter or expand in a country and operates at the intersection of policy and business.

Anuj previously was a Vice President at TataSons and spent a decade in the Indian and Abu Dhabi governments, where he shaped flagship policies across trade and industry, energy, finance, technology, infrastructure and startups. As chief of staff to Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, he was instrumental in India’s recent economic, trade and supply chain realignment.

He has worked in 10+ Ministries with experience ranging from energy, mining, transportation, industry, trade and food.

Anuj holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and a BTech (ME, 2003) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He is also an alumnus of Mays Business School, Texas A&M University. In his spare time, he enjoys reading more than 100 books an year and exploring ideas at the intersection of policy, innovation and global development.

Here’s the AI-generated audio podcast based on the conversation:

Here is also a brief AI-generated video summary:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/gulf-war-crisis-why-india-will-take-a-huge-hit/20260511.htm

In the heat and dust of elections, many of us have forgotten that there is a war going on. But the PM’s warning about sacrifices and conservation reminds us that this essentially unwinnable war, and the on-again, off-again negotiations to bring it to a closure, are going to hit every one of us in our wallets.

On 30th April, the Pentagon announced that the US had so far spent $25 billion on the West Asia war. This is a staggeringly huge number, and I was startled because I had casually thrown around this number as the ultimate cost of the war for all parties. Clearly I underestimated the damage, if this is the US’ cost alone. Add the other frontline states, and then the untold misery and cost imposed on all of us innocent bystanders. And it’s not over yet by any means.

Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of war (self-fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it, they changed the name from secretary of defense, and lo! they went to war immediately thereafter) bristled at the idea of a quagmire, according to The Economist. But I am old enough to remember Vietnam, and then Afghanistan. These forever wars are easy to get into, but hard to get out of.

Indeed, the war has become not only an impasse, but also a charade. Even considering how the narrative gets bizarre from all sides during every war, this one seems especially messed up. So much so that there literally is no point in paying attention to the day-to-day events, because they don’t seem to make much difference. Except of course, when the price of Brent crude hits $120, as it did on April 30th, twice what it was before the war. Ouch! And Hormuz is still closed.

India is reeling under a heatwave, and we live under the Damocles’ sword of power cuts. Kerala announced a half hour of rolling cuts (anodyne euphemism: “load shedding”) every night, but they will not tell you when or where the cuts will be. This is like the Malayalam proverb: “the guy who got hit by lightning was then bitten by a snake”. Incidentally, there’s been a number of deaths from snakebites in Kerala as the reptiles enter houses seeking cooler temperatures.

If this El Nino weather holds up, India’s assumptions about load (maximum 270 GW) will be challenged: we hit a record on April 25th of 256 GW peak demand, and the fact that the grid didn’t collapse is admirable, but being so close to the maximum is worrying. In Kerala, the grid cannot absorb the solar electricity produced by many households during the day because the Electricity Board did not purchase enough storage batteries: so much for on-grid.

I am also fairly confident that once the elections are over, the government will be forced to increase fuel prices. Petrol has held steady at pump prices of Rs. 107.45/liter for a few years, but as crude oil prices have doubled, I see an inevitable rise not of Rs. 28 or so as speculated, but Rs. 50-100 based on how much inflation the Reserve Bank is willing to tolerate. In passing, I remember seeing somewhere that petrol prices have reached Pak Rs. 500/liter in that country.

Therefore I have stopped paying much attention to the daily press releases and JUST IN, BREAKING NEWS types of ‘analysis’ (some of the most prominent of these are clear AI slop, possibly manufactured by Chinese troll farms). The big picture is that the Straits of Hormuz remain blocked, the amount of oil and gas coming from the Persian Gulf remains diminished dramatically, and recovery may take months, if not years, even if the strait is unblocked.

The chances are increasing that this will become a protracted war, as the principals are standing by their maximalist positions, where this is little reason to believe they will be able to arrive at a via media and a lasting ceasefire.

It is not business as usual. This is the biggest energy shock since 1973, and as always, it is developing countries that will be most seriously affected. India is going to take a large hit, with inflation rising by, say, 2%, and GDP growth falling from 7+% to 6%.

There are several things India needs to do urgently:

• Strive for self-reliance (“Atmanirbhar”) in a variety of areas

• Diversify its sources of hydrocarbons to other geographies eg. Africa, South America, Central Asia (through Chabahar), and accelerate exploration of its own (offshore and onshore) blocks as Mumbai High and Assam fields are aging rapidly

• Pursue other forms of energy:

• Renewables

• Coal, including carbon sequestration

• Biofuels

• Nuclear (both SMR and FBR)

• Shift households from LPG to LNG, including tapping Krishna Godavari wells, coal gasification, biomass

Especially at a time when electricity demand for new industries (eg. generativeAI data centers, semiconductors) is ramping up, it is important for India’s manufacturing rise to ensure that this does not become a constraint. From a consumer perspective, increased affluence brings increased electricity demand.

In addition, the Indian migrant worker population of about 10 million in West Asia, and their inward remittances of some $40-$50 billion per annum (total of $120 billion globally) may be increasingly under pressure if oil/gas production does not go back to pre-war levels.

There is one more factor: India needs military muscle. As I said about Pax Indica, the Indian Ocean needs a strong, impartial facilitator of trade in the Hormuz to Malacca sea-lanes, and India is best placed to do this, harking back to Rajendra Chola re-opening Malacca in 1025 CE. But this requires three things:

• Major container ports: Trivandrum (Vizhinjam), Vadhavan, Great Nicobar (Galathea Bay)

• The ‘switch’ to ease multiparty, multi-protocol trade: the India Stack

• Security: three aircraft carrier groups, two dozen SSBNs, SSNs, AIP diesel submarines

This is the time for India to plan forward fully, with the goal of Atmanirbharata, and energy security. The Persian Gulf is no longer a reliable source. The war is indeed a quagmire.

950 words

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-the-need-for-pax-indica-malacca-was-blocked-1001-years-ago-hormuz-is-choked-now-14005673.html

In 1025 CE, exactly 1,001 years ago, Emperor Rajendra Chola sent an armada (probably the largest fleet in history before the advent of steam) 4,000 kilometers clear across the Indian Ocean. It was on a mission strangely familiar to us in 2026: open up a critical strait that was being choked by a littoral state. The thalassocratic SriVijaya Empire of Sumatra was closing the strait and imposing tolls, as well as winking at a little piracy.

The strait in question then was Malacca. The Chola goal: to reopen Indian trade with Southeast Asia and China. Remarkably, the Cholas were not interested in territorial conquest, only in freedom of navigation.

It is ironic that today, it is again a question of free trade, that shibboleth that has been waved about for decades (although that was a euphemism for ‘managed trade that benefits the West’).

The difference between then and now? The salient fact is that Rajendra Chola was able to open Malacca with his wooden ships. With all his aircraft carriers and F-35s and missiles, President Trump is unable to open Hormuz. This must mean something, although reasonable people may differ on what that is. My claim is that it means India has the opportunity, in fact the need, to step into the breach.

Maritime trade is severely disturbed today, and it is increasingly a disaster for innocent bystanders bereft of oil and gas. And it is increasingly the Indian Ocean that matters: specifically the sea-lanes from Hormuz to Malacca, which handle a significant portion of both oil/gas trade and goods trade globally.

Geo-politics and geo-economics, Mahan’s and Spykman’s theories

It is a reasonable conjecture that the locus of power has shifted over the centuries: in the 19th century, the Atlantic was supreme; in the 20th century, the Pacific; and in the 21st century, the most important ocean is the Indian Ocean. Asia has returned to center stage. In support of this assertion, see how the economic center of gravity of the world has returned to the vicinity of India, after the European colonial interlude.

It is therefore appropriate to ask what it would take for India to regain its former keystone role in the Indian Ocean. Of course geography offers it to the country on a platter. From both Alfred Thayer Mahan’s theory of naval power, and from Nicholas Spykman’s Rimland theory, India could be, or should be, the dominant power in the region: it is almost literally India’s ocean.

Mahan’s ideas, updated for today, suggest that a strong navy should protect a large merchant marine fleet, manage trade, and control choke-points. The preferred hardware may have changed from battleships to aircraft carriers and especially nuclear submarines these days, but the basic idea remains: speak softly but carry a big stick with a force-projection navy.

Spykman’s Rimland theory seems more appropriate in current circumstances than the Heartland theory popularized by Halford MacKinder. The Eurasian land mass may well be subject to control by a coastal hegemon or an alliance that controls the sea lanes and choke points. Despite pipelines and rail-borne containers, maritime trade still dominates.

Spice Route >> Silk Road

A stark reminder of this is the comparison between the fabled ‘Silk Road’ and the ancient ‘Spice Route’. Despite all the breathless propaganda about the Silk Road, it is abundantly clear that sea-borne trade was an order of magnitude greater, because a caravan of 500 camels, braving deserts, bandits and so on across central Asia couldn’t possibly carry more than 100 tons of goods; whereas an ocean-going stitched teak ship, like a single uru from Beypore, Kerala, could easily carry 400 tons. And the monsoon winds provided predictable, seasonal propulsion.

India’s prowess was built on the monsoons. By mastering the seasonal winds, Indian mariners turned the ocean into a highway. This made India the supreme trading power. Merchants from Rome and Egypt traded with Chinese and Southeast Asian counterparts on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, leaving behind troves of coins as evidence.

The Switch

The remarkable thing is that these merchants did not even need to meet each other physically, because India provided the “multi-protocol switch”: translating their diverse needs and offering the conveniences of an entrepot, while also itself producing coveted, high-value products such as black pepper. For example, a Greek buyer could buy something from a Chinese seller, and settle the transaction using Indian credit.

And how did India do it? By providing the “switching fabric”, such as the ports, the credit systems, and the security, that allowed these disparate worlds to exchange products and wealth without ever meeting.

This is much like what a network gateway such as TIBCO does for packets of different kinds of data (in passing, how appropriate that TIBCO was founded by an Indian-American, Vivek Ranadive!). Hardware switches, eg. from Cisco Systems, have been around for a while, but TIBCO abstracted that functionality in software to connect those with different protocols.

India already has many of the ingredients of the switching fabric in the India Stack. Using protocols like UPI, e-KYC, Account Aggregation, Central Bank Digital Currency, and ONDC, especially along with distributed-ledger blockchain-based Smart Contracts, it should be possible to provide end-to-end transparent and reliable multi-party trade support which complements the SWIFT payment system. Complement, not necessarily replace.

The same pattern held with India’s age-old trade system. The ports were on the Malabar Coast, such as Muziris; on the Coromandel coast, such as Arikkamedu; and on the Konkan Coast, such as Bharuchcha. The credit systems were run by temples which acted as both bankers and venture capitalists for the trading guilds. The security: well, that’s what Rajendra Chola demonstrated in 1025 CE.

Alas, medieval India lost its maritime focus. So did China. Both became insular, and were overwhelmed by invaders, including Turkics and Europeans. In India’s case, the Turkic invaders were land-focused powers, although there were isolated maritime attempts (e.g. the Maratha Navy, Travancore defeating the Dutch in an amphibious battle at Colachel in 1741, etc.)

Now, however, there are new ports. The most interesting is the Port of Trivandrum (Vizhinjam). This deep-water container transhipment port is only 10 nautical miles away from the Hormuz-Malacca sea lanes, and now when Dubai is closed, it reportedly has a backlog of a hundred container ships waiting to be berthed. Then there is the upcoming Vadhavan container port in Maharashtra, and the Galathea Bay container port in Great Nicobar, which overlooks the mouth of Malacca.

Pax Indica today

The modern idea of Pax Indica borrows from both perspectives: hard power and a switch. An Internet search brings up the fact that it was my friend Bapa Rao and I who first started talking about it in terms of India being the benevolent hegemon in the Indian Ocean, way back in the 1990s.

Later, Shashi Tharoor wrote in his 2011 book Pax Indica that it could be “a peace system based on cooperation, stability, and rule‑based order in Asia and beyond, in which rising India helps shape the rules of the road rather than impose its will through hegemony.” That is, along roughly the same lines as the “multi protocol switch” or entrepot concept.

Pax Indica is not an empire; it is an ecosystem. There are three aspects: military power, the full exploration of the multiprotocol switch, and the port-led development policy. Bapa Rao and I will consider these in a future article. Briefly, though, here is what these entail.

• Project Power: Use a 3-carrier, 18-24-submarine navy to ensure no single power can close the ocean’s gates.

• Enable Trade: Use the Digital India Stack to act as the “Multi-Protocol Switch” for a fragmented world, plus super-ports like Vizhinjam (Trivandrum).

• Secure the Choke Points: Be ready, like the Cholas, to act decisively when a “Srivijaya-style” blockade threatens the common good.

Hard power needs to come through the acquisition of a blue water navy: at least three aircraft carrier groups, one for the Arabian Sea (Hormuz), one for the Bay of Bengal (Malacca), and one in maintenance, refit and upgrades.

Even though drones and missiles have rendered them less dominant than in earlier times, carrier groups are still important for air superiority and power projection. But an ever-more critical factor is “area denial” by nuclear attack submarines (SSBN) that can launch second strike nuclear missiles as part of the “triad”, of which India should have at least three to four. In addition, there should be at least a dozen silent AIP-equipped diesel-electrics for securing straits, and at least 6-12 SSN (possibly leased) to enhance blue-water reach.

“The IOR must become an Indian lake,” said General Raj Shukla on X. I agree: Not as a territory of conquest, but as a sanctuary of trade, where India sits at the center, as the protocol provider that makes world trade work again, as in millennia past.

1500 words, 27 Apr, 2026

Here’s the notebookLM.google.com AI-generated video about this article:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

This is a fireside chat hosted by Rajeev Srinivasan of the IIT Madras Alumni Association, featuring Dr. Suraj Rengarajan, MD and Principal Technologist, Applied Materials India. The discussion centers on the current renaissance of India’s semiconductor industry, highlighting how favorable government policies and shifting global geopolitics have created a unique window for domestic manufacturing. They discuss how supportive government policies, shifts in global geopolitics, and a massive domestic consumer market are creating a unique opportunity for India to establish a manufacturing ecosystem. The dialogue emphasizes the necessity of developing specialized talent and hands-on training to move beyond semiconductor design into actual fabrication. Dr. Rengarajan highlights the potential of AI-driven manufacturing and predictive analytics to improve production efficiency and material discovery. He also explains the critical need to build a supporting ecosystem of suppliers, specialized power, and ultrapure water around newly announced fabrication plants. He emphasizes that while India possesses significant design talent, the country must now focus on hands-on technical training and leveraging AI for manufacturing efficiency. The conversation also addresses the challenges of competing with established global players and the importance of niche applications in the domestic market. Ultimately, the source portrays a hopeful yet realistic outlook on India’s journey toward becoming a global electronics manufacturing hub over the next decade.

Here’s a brief profile of Dr. Suraj Rengarajan:

Dr. Suraj Rengarajan is the Managing Director and Principal Technologist at Applied Materials India, Bangalore. In this role he drives strategic engagement between Applied Materials India and external technology ecosystems, including universities, research institutions, the start-up eco-system and industry forums. He serves as a key spokesperson for Applied Materials in technology-related events and manage programs that foster innovation, collaboration, and talent development.

Suraj started his career at Applied Materials, Santa Clara in 1997, where he held different roles ranging from process engineering, technology, program management, and product marketing for thin film deposition and metallization for interconnects silicides and novel memories.

He moved to India in 2007 to head the SunFab group for Applied Materials in India. Later he headed the engineering group for dielectric deposition. As the India CTO, he worked on materials engineering driven inflections to develop and commercialize new technologies. As Semiconductor Products Group India head he drove SPG strategic objectives in India, planning and growing a customer focused organization, building local leadership talent, enabling collaboration across India & Asia region, and strengthening university and ecosystem partnerships.

Suraj holds a B. Tech from IIT Madras in Metallurgical Engineering and earned his M.S and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in Materials Science. Suraj holds over 15 US patents and has more than 20 publications.

The following are courtesy Google notebook LM.

Audio podcast (a good summary of the conversation with some AI masala):

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-drones-are-the-new-tanks-time-for-india-to-catch-up-13998019.html

The most important lesson (of many) from Gulf War 3 may have been foreshadowed by the Ukraine War and other conflicts: that a combination of a step-change in warfare (military strategy) and disruptive innovation (business strategy) could rewrite the rules. If so, we may need to rethink the value of much expensive hardware. Moreover, nations such as India may need to seriously revamp their arms procurement: to small, cheap, local maybe?

The most disturbing aspect of this scenario is that it reduces the human factor, and human control, over warfare. It leads to the specter of robot warfare, of Skynet, of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where autonomous intelligences may take rational decisions that have grave consequences for humans, inflicting collateral damage on innocent bystanders in ways that nobody quite understands. We need a real-life version of Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics”. But then humans too inflict unthinking collateral damage..

Step-change in warfare, and disruptive innovation

There have been numerous instances where a settled and standardized war tactic was suddenly overturned by a new invention, rendering old military assets impotent. One or two examples will suffice: one was the eclipse of heavy cavalry after the invention of massed archers using longbow volleys to mow them down with thousands of synchronized arrows raining down, also inducing panic in their horses in mid-charge.

Another example is how battle tanks overwhelmed the previous model of trench warfare. (Ironically, in turn, tanks are now being rendered sitting ducks by drones.)

In both cases, long-held assumptions had to be rewritten practically overnight, and entirely new mechanisms had to be put in place. It is a good question (on which reasonable people may differ) as to whether the arrival of drone-and-missile-based warfare is rendering air power, including fighters, bombers and aircraft carriers, essentially obsolescent.

Clayton Christensen articulated the theory of disruptive innovation in business, where an entrenched incumbent can be overthrown in short order by an insurgent attacking them from an unexpected direction, often based on lower-cost options. One example is that of Kodak and the film-camera business. Cheap and convenient digital photography dislocated Kodak et al practically overnight.

I personally experienced this disruption in the 1990s when I had a key role in operating system strategy for Sun Microsystems, the runaway leader in engineering workstations and servers, which used the Unix operating system. Despite our best efforts, Microsoft+Intel coming in from the low end (as Windows systems became more capable) rapidly captured the key resource, which is third-party software vendors. This caused end users to desert in droves.

There were other reasons, too: internecine warfare among firms using Unix, such as IBM, HP, Sun, AT&T, Toshiba, et al. While they bickered, Windows systems became more powerful. Lesson: the ecosystem has to be managed carefully, including supply chains.

Putting these three together (step-change, disruptive innovation, and the ground realities of the Gulf War 3) one can speculate that future military doctrine will be vastly different. Here is Iran’s military doctrine, for reference, from the substack NotesonGeopolitics (Disclaimer: I am neither endorsing it or criticizing it, just offering it as an example).

The US is adjusting to this reality. There is a book titled “Project Maven”, based on 200+ interviews chronicling the US military’s shift to AI-driven warfare, starting with a 2017 Pentagon project to automate drone footage analysis amid overwhelming data volumes.

Project Maven evolved from error-prone early tools (such as misidentifying school buses as threats) to supporting autonomous systems like Goalkeeper drones and Whiplash naval units, now used in conflicts from Ukraine to the Caribbean by 25,000 personnel across 32 companies.

Speaking of disruptive innovation, it is ironic to see the US reverse-engineering Iranian Shahed drones, and the Russians doing the same to Ukrainian drones: incumbents learning from insurgents.

This is only the beginning, of course. There is a nightmare scenario: murmurating, autonomous drone swarms with a hive mind. A flock of starlings flying in perfect synchrony is a thing of beauty: they do not collide with each other, the entire swarm changes direction instantaneously, and there is emergent intelligence in the swarm, much greater than the intelligence of the individual bird. The same is true of beehives and ant colonies, too.

A company called ShieldAI in fact has a product named Hivemind that does precisely this.

Imagine a murmurating drone swarm of 1,000 or even 10,000: and since they cost so little make, this is not unrealistic. The enemy may shoot down 90% of them, but the 10% that gets through, especially if they are kamikaze drones fitted with explosives, can cause real damage. There is the old joke about quantity: “What do you do when you invade China? First day, you take 10,000 prisoners. Second day, you take 100,000 prisoners. Third day, you surrender!”

But we don’t have to go that far: just take two instances where inexpensive drones were able to penetrate the defenses of heavily secured military airports. The first was in Russia in June 2025. Using 117 low-cost drones, Ukrainians struck several airbases at once. There is video footage of FPV drones landing on Tu-95 bombers, destroying them. These are strategic long-range nuclear bombers from the Cold War era, and will be difficult to replace.

And then, just last month: at Barksdale Air Force Base in the US, where B-52 nuclear bombers are deployed, there were repeated drone swarm overflights (of 12-15 drones) between March 9th and March 15th, 2026. They couldn’t be jammed, and displayed “non-commercial signal characteristics”, although they did not actually attack the planes. Reconnaissance, it must be assumed. Superpower militaries are unable to contain them.

Electronic warfare like jamming may be ineffective anyway as swarms self-repair. But it is true that there are air defense weapons that can shoot down the majority of drones. There are interceptors (but they are much more expensive than the drones themselves). Then new Directed Energy Weapons (including both lasers and high-powered microwaves) are in development. Rail guns, I understand, are overkill for them.

Where is India in this arms race?

India finds itself left behind in this transition, and remains committed to legacy platforms such as tanks, fighters, and other imported systems. It is true that there were battlefield successes in Operation Sindoor, where X-25 drones (towed on a 100 meter optical cable) emitted the radar signatures of Rafale fighter jets, thus drawing enemy missiles to themselves, without harming the planes. But these were Israeli products; also British-origin Banshee drones were used for spoofing Su-31 and Mig-29 signatures..

Indigenous drone efforts lag China by 3-5 years in scale, AI integration, and mass production; reliance on Chinese components persists despite bans. It does not have to be this way: India should create Production Linked Incentives for drones and missiles, and harness Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at scale.

India needs to promote this as a cottage industry, so that many individuals will get involved, as in the following post by a Ukrainian drone-maker, with a hashtag #MadebyHousewives. That country produces as many as 4.5 million cheap drones a year, often using 3d printing.

While Ukraine and Iran improvise hive-mind swarms under fire, India’s northeast and border regions face asymmetric threats from low-cost systems. The recent mercenary scandal in the Northeast illustrates the peril.

Mercenaries, the Northeast and a new Christian enclave?

The March 2026 arrests by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) expose how this drone proliferation directly endangers the Seven Sisters. Six Ukrainians and American mercenary Matthew Aaron Van Dyke were detained across Indian airports. They had repeatedly crossed from restricted Mizoram into Myanmar since 2024, training ethnic insurgent groups in drone assembly, operation, jamming, and electronic warfare.

They smuggled European drone consignments through India for insurgent networks, some linked to proscribed Indian groups operating in the northeast. This is no abstract threat: drones enable precision strikes on security forces, surveillance of remote terrain, and supply drops. These capabilities could ignite or sustain insurgencies in India’s volatile borderlands.

In the background is former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s explosive 2024 warning. Hasina alleged a “white man’s” conspiracy to carve out a new “Christian nation” (akin to East Timor or South Sudan) from Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts, Myanmar’s Rakhine and Chin regions, and India’s Northeast. She cited foreign eyes on the Bay of Bengal and ethnic fault lines.

Hasina’s claim was dismissed as paranoia then; today, Ukrainian-American actors arming Myanmar’s rebel groups lend credence to a broader destabilization playbook. A hive-mind-enabled drone campaign could empower separatists and create a Christian-majority enclave, exploiting Christian tribal demographics and porous borders. This is hybrid warfare at its most insidious: mercenaries as force multipliers for great-power proxies.

If these insurgents can leverage drone swarms to close the Siliguri Corridor or target regional infrastructure, they can create a fait accompli on the ground for India.

Conclusion

The drone-missile age demands urgent adaptation. Nations must invest in AI swarm doctrine, resilient EW, decentralized deployment, and indigenous mass production ecosystems. For India, the wake-up call is clear: clinging to legacy investments while insurgents import hive-mind precursors risks not just military irrelevance but territorial integrity. The Tu-95 pyres and B-52 overflights are warnings. The northeast drone pipeline is a direct threat. Warfare has changed; those who fail to swarm will be overrun.

Here is the AI-generated audio podcast about this essay:

1570 words, Apr 3, 2026

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/iran-war-no-winners-oil-de-dollarisation-global-impact-13992276.html

War is hell, we all know, and it’s bad for everybody, but there is – usually – a winner. After more than three weeks of the Iran war, I am beginning to believe that there are no winners here, only losers. The principals are overextending themselves, and will suffer as a consequence. Innocent or not-so-innocent bystanders are suffering significant collateral damage.

Some are getting hurt more than others, so it’s mostly a question of degree: but the bottom line is that this is war that is just not good for anybody. As usual, Henry Kissinger had a useful aphorism: “It’s a pity both sides can’t lose”, quoth he. (Hat tip to reader Sudarshan M). Well, Henry, both sides arelosing this one, so take heart: your wish has come true.

Someone made the analogy of going to Family Court with a dispute: there are no winners, as the father, mother, and the children, will all suffer, whatever the outcome. It is best in that situation to listen to a counselor and solve your problems amicably. Similarly, it would be good to find a neutral intermediary to help iron out a ceasefire in this war, too.

In a way, this war is the classic idea of irresistible force meeting an immovable object, thus leading to a stalemate, as Walter Russel Mead suggested in the Wall Street Journal.

First, the toll on the belligerents, in alphabetical order:

• Iran. It is creditable that Iran has held out against the might of the US war machine for three weeks and more. My belief is that they can keep it up for a while longer, because they have been preparing for this eventuality for some decades, ever since the 1979 crisis in which they held Americans hostage for 444 days. They are taking, and will take, horrendous losses, but it will be difficult to completely overthrow the Islamist regime. Among other things, Iran is a large country, about half the size of peninsular India.

• The US attack on Kharg Island’s military targets (but not its oil terminals) has shown that Iran’s oil exports could be in jeopardy, pushing global prices up.

• Just like their proxy Hamas, it appears Iran has built extensive tunnel complexes, veritable underground labyrinths, where they are hiding all sorts of things, including fast patrol boats. Their military assets are doubtless ensconced in these tunnels which makes them hard to locate and possibly quite mobile.

• Israel. Iran’s consistent rhetoric that Israel doesn’t deserve to exist leads to fears that Iran’s nuclear arsenal (if and when built) will be primarily aimed at Israel. This, and troubles with Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas, have led to massive Israeli human intelligence penetration of Iran (as seen in the Stuxnet incident as well as the effective strikes on the Ayatollahs and Hamas, including the pager incident). But Israel is also believed to be taking heavy losses, which it can ill afford, although information has been tightly censored. There were apparently missile attacks near Israel’s nuclear sites at Dimona as well.

• The US. The original idea of a decapitation strike that would lead to a rapid regime change as the Iranian public rose up and anointed a new leadership (one more acceptable to the US), was questionable, as I pointed out fairly early. It appears that the CIA and US intelligence have just one playbook, which they used more or less successfully in Iraq, Libya, etc. But that was never going to work in Iran, and now the US is stuck with a tar-baby and may be quietly seeking de-escalation and an off-ramp.

• Talk of a Marine Expeditionary Unit of 2500 American soldiers re-deployed from Japan means “boots on the ground” followed inevitably by that dreaded word, “body bags”. The troops will be meant to keep Hormuz open, or perhaps to capture Kharg Island. Whether they can achieve these is unclear right now.

• However, overall it appears that the US’ capacity to coerce other countries through economic means is declining, as suggested by the FT in “The era of US dominance in economic warfare is over” on March 17th.

Now for the others in the firing line and in the periphery:

• The GCC, consisting of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. They have taken the brunt of the Iranian drone and missile attacks, and their oil and gas exports, and economies, are affected by the closure of the Straits of Hormuz. But more alarmingly, their food and water supplies may also be affected, and they are, being desert nations, highly dependent on imported items via the blockaded Hormuz, and critically dependent on their desalination plants. Keeping the Straits of Hormuz open may be critical for them. They have been with human casualties, infrastructure damage, and reputational damage as well. In particular, Dubai, which has been a magnet for high-net-worth individuals, is affected.

• Lebanon and Jordan. Lebanon was hit by Israeli fire, and Jordan by Iranian fire, although they are mostly bystanders. Israel has been responding to increased activity by Iranian proxy Hezbollah, and Iran has sent drones and missiles towards Jordan as part of general horizontal escalation.

• Pakistan and Turkey. These are wild card nations in the conflict. So far they have not (yet) been affected badly, but they have to walk a tightrope. On the one hand, it is very likely that Pakistan has offered logistical and intelligence support to the US in its air attacks on Iran. On the other, as a fellow-Islamic nation, Iran has, under both the Shah and the mullahs, consistently supported Pakistan (especially against India).

• Furthermore, if there is a ground assault on Iran, it will probably involve Balochis from Pakistan and Kurds from Turkey, both attempting to capture land in, respectively, the Sistan and Baluchistan Province, and the heavily Kurdish regions of Iran bordering Turkey.

• Turkey, as a NATO member, is obligated to support the US, despite its Islamist leadership which is duty-bound to side with the fellow-Islamic Iranian regime. The traditional Sunni-Shia split, which has been exacerbated by Shia Iran attacking Sunni Gulf nations, sharpens the dilemma for both nations. (Meanwhile, Pakistanis slaughtered 400 Afghans by bombing a hospital, but they get a free pass from, e.g. the BBC.)

• The United Nations. It has been rendered superfluous. Nobody even called for a Security Council meeting condemning the war. This is the latest in a long process wherein whatever the UN, or many other multilateral organizations do or say has become immaterial. The UN, hit by a budget crunch, might as well be shut down.

• Europe and Britain. The EU and NATO have been noticeably absent in the discussions about the war. Of course, they are likely to be affected by the increase in hydrocarbon prices. In fact, their folly in shuttering their nuclear power plants in pursuit of vague ‘green’ goals has put them at the mercy of Russian oil and gas. In particular, the virtual shutting out of Britain from the entire war is notable, considering that their Whitehall has long managed to treat the US Deep State as their vassals, ‘master-blaster’ style.

• Russia. Even though Russia has long been friendly with Iran, it has desisted from doing anything that could bring it into direct conflict with the US. Russia is probably supplying satellite and other reconnaissance data as well as spares for existing systems (such as the S-300 air defense batteries, Su-35 fighters) and possibly Iranian-designed Shahed drones as well. Interestingly enough, Russia may be the one possible winner in the war, considering its oil is now a coveted commodity, prices have soared, and there is less attention being paid to its Ukraine war. Europe, China and India are ever-more dependent on Russian oil, and the windfall profits may be sustainable. The US may even lift its sanctions and bring Russia back into the Western fold.

• China. There are wins and losses for China, but in sum it may also be a bit of a winner.

• The loss is in energy security: China has lost Venezuelan oil as well as access to Iranian oil, but they have overland pipelines from Russia, as well as access to Russian tankers at sea. Besides, they have a massive strategic petroleum reserve (1 billion barrels), so it should be manageable, for a while at least. Cuba, their reliable ally in the US’ backyard, is now back to the wall with the US enforcing a blockade.

• On the other hand, they have acquired a significant military edge: US munitions inventory has been getting depleted at a furious rate, so much so that if China were to attack Taiwan now, the US would be hard pressed to intervene. Even US THAAD (Theater High Altitude Air Defense) systems are being cannibalized: after four of their radars in the GCC were damaged, the US is forced to scavenge for them from their South Korean bases. Now comes news that China is massing both civilian ships and military aircraft near Taiwan, quite possibly a precursor to an actual invasion.

• Unfortunately for China, their weapons systems don’t seem to have performed very well in Iran, just as they didn’t in Operation Sindoor. There are sarcastic posts on X, especially about their radar that looks like a big grille and is supposed to detect stealth aircraft, but didn’t quite work.

• China has also been on the horns of a dilemma, as it were: what would Xi do when Trump visits in April while in the midst of a war with one of China’s principal allies? It would be “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. If China were to greet him warmly, it would send a negative message to Iran, as well as its other Belt and Road Initiative partners. If China were to treat Trump coldly, then trade wars will continue. Fortunately for Xi, Trump decided to delay his visit; perhaps he intends to continue the war well into April, or maybe he thought he’d be too much at physical risk. It’s interesting to speculate on why Trump did this, but of course it may have been just whimsy.

• India. This war is pretty much a disaster for India from every perspective. Being dependent on Persian Gulf oil and gas for everything from transportation to household cooking fuel to raw material for plastics to APIs for pharmaceuticals leaves India particularly exposed. There are other big vulnerabilities:

• The $50 billion in remittances sent back yearly by 10 million Indians toiling away (often in very difficult circumstances) in that area, in addition to the personal hardships these migrants will face, including life and death situations.

• Despite large increases in renewable energy, the major energy input, especially in transportation, continues to be imported oil and gas. Households have largely switched from wood-burning stoves to (admittedly much less polluting) bottled or piped gas. At the very time that electricity demand is peaking (e.g. AI data centers and railways), this disruption may have severe consequences.

• The feedstock for agriculture is increasingly petroleum-based, and disruptions in fertilizer availability may cause production costs to skyrocket. Increased transportation costs will make vegetables and grains more expensive for those states (such as Kerala) that depend on internal transfers from producing states. In the short run, some agricultural commodity prices have collapsed as their primary markets in the Persian Gulf are inaccessible due to the Hormuz blockade. Basmati rice prices are down by Rs 5-10/kg according to LiveMint.

• Trade through Chabahar Port (where India’s $120 million investment is at risk) to Central Asia bypassing Pakistan, will likely grind to a halt

• The dramatic increase in the price of oil (from around $60 per barrel to $100-$120, and threatening to go higher) is a huge ‘tax’ on India, and a transfer of wealth out of India, which may reduce GDP growth by as much as 1-2%, and push inflation up to 4-5% (according to the Economic Times).

• The ‘Goldilocks moment’ of low inflation and high growth is possibly over.

• The one positive for India will be the increasing importance of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), which is basically the old Spice Route,, e.g. containers from Mundra and Vizhinjam to Dammam in Saudi Arabia or Jebel Ali in the UAE, then by rail to Haifa in Israel, and onwards to Piraeus in Greece by sea.

• There is really no obvious benefit to India if the war continues, and therefore it is in India’s interest to try to be an ‘honest broker’ intermediary which has reasonably good relations with all the belligerents as well as the frontline GCC states. India could use its diplomatic goodwill to try to bring the war to a quick close, thus pursuing its own interests as well as something in the larger good of the global economy.

There are a couple of other notable points in this war. One is from systems theory, and the other is from 18th century colonial British machinations in India; and finally a speculation about the future of the US economy and even the US nation.

Distributed Systems

Systems theory suggests that distributed systems are far more resilient than centralized systems, because they may have redundant mechanisms that come into play when the primary mechanism is knocked out. Iran has anticipated decapitation strikes on its leadership, and the danger that signals intelligence from their foes may tap into all communications. Therefore, it appears they have created a system where 31 independent IRGC military commands have the autonomy to take local decisions without a go-ahead from a central authority.

This means it will be relatively hard to quell all resistance, as some commands may fight on even if large parts of the country are conquered. It makes their actions also more unpredictable and potentially more dangerous.

It is interesting to compare this to the sudden collapse of the Persian Sasanian Empire to invading Arab Muslim armies in the 7th century, when they were conquered in a space of no more than twenty years. Even though there were other factors like imperial exhaustion from constant wars and long supply chains for the Arab armies, the contrast with the Hindu resistance (of several hundred years in Sindh) suggests that the decentralized nature of the Hindu kingdoms played a significant role in their ability to fend off the Muslims for centuries.

The Tipu Syndrome

In the late 18th century, imperial Brits pulled off a particularly clever ploy in southern India. Tipu Sultan, Muslim king of Mysore, invaded Malabar in a combination of religious jihad and economic loot. He was intent on both forced conversion and on the loot of Hindu temples in Malabar, which had grown rich from millennia of the trade in spices, especially black pepper. As Sanjeev Sanyal suggests, temples were banks and venture capitalists to trading guilds.

Britain did conduct some desultory campaigns against Tipu, who was allied with the French, but did not accomplish much. In the end it was the desperate breaching of a natural dam on the Periyar by Travancore forces in 1790 that forced Tipu to retreat, as his artillery, munitions and supplies were flooded and swept away. Of course, then the British charged the entire cost of the 3rd Anglo-Mysore War to ‘ally’ Travancore, bankrupting it.

Next, the British attacked Tipu’s headquarters, Srirangapatnam, killed him, and took all the loot. In other words, Tipu did all the dirty work in collecting the booty from the temples, and the British got it all in one stroke. And looked good, at least in their own propaganda, for killing a tyrant.

A very similar thing happened in 1973. Arab oil states quadrupled oil prices (from $3/barrel to $12), imposing a massive strain on hapless developing countries such as India, leading to severe distress. Under the 1974 US-Saudi agreement, oil sales were to be only denominated in US dollars, thus leading to the ‘petrodollar’ accumulation with OPEC. They recycled this money via buying US Treasury bonds, and especially via buying US arms, to the delight of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Thus the net effect of the 1973 oil crisis was a large transfer of wealth from the developing countries to OPEC. The US economy did not suffer greatly (despite long lines at gas stations) and in fact US deficits were funded by petrodollars for the last several decades. This is why any move to de-dollarize oil sales is strongly resisted by the US.

Summary: Oil and the petrodollar

At the end of the day, American wars always seem to go back to simple ideas: control of oil, and the prevention of de-dollarization. It makes sense: why not use economic and military heft in pursuit of the national interest? Those who go against this learn a big lesson, to their discomfiture: Saddam Hussein in Iraq wanted to trade oil in Euros, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya wanted to create a new pan-African currency in which to trade oil, Nicolas Maduro was trading in yuan and stablecoin, Ayatollah Ali Khameini has been selling in yuan mostly, and not at all in dollars. That meant they all had a Damocles’ sword hanging over their heads.

Putin and Xi are undesirables too, but then they have nuclear arsenals, which everybody has to respect.

The dollar has been hegemonistic ever since Bretton Woods. Even allies learn to respect American sensitivity over the currency. The Japanese economy, once growing at a blistering pace, was ruined after the Plaza Accord of 1984, which set the yen-dollar exchange rate artificially high. Japan lost its mojo and is yet to recover, forty years later.

Tailpiece: The end of many eras?

Balaji Srinivasan, formerly a Silicon Valley VC, a thought leader and a supporter of ‘Network States’ and crypto, posted this intriguing tweet on March 17th. I don’t necessarily agree with his framework of (US) ups and downs (see diagram) or his assertions: he surely paints a grim picture for the US, including de-dollarization. He openly wonders if the US itself will survive in its present form.

The AI-generated podcast courtesy notebookLM.google.com is at

3000 words, 18 March 2026

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

War is hell, we all know, and it’s bad for everybody, but there is – usually – a winner. After more than two weeks of the Iran war, I am beginning to believe that there are no winners here, only losers. The principals are overextending themselves, and will suffer as a consequence. Innocent or not-so-innocent bystanders are suffering significant collateral damage.

Some are getting hurt more than others, so it’s mostly a question of degree: but the bottom line is that this is war that is just not good for anybody. As usual, Henry Kissinger had a useful aphorism: “It’s a pity both sides can’t lose”, quoth he. (Hat tip to reader Sudarshan M). Well, Henry, both sides arelosing this one, so take heart: your wish has come true.

Someone made the analogy of going to Family Court with a dispute: there are no winners, as the father, mother, and the children, will all suffer, whatever the outcome. It is best in that situation to listen to a counselor and solve your problems amicably. Similarly, it would be good to find a neutral intermediary to help iron out a ceasefire in this war, too.

In a way, this war is the classic idea of irresistible force meeting an immovable object, thus leading to a stalemate, as Walter Russel Mead suggested in the Wall Street Journal.

First, the toll on the belligerents, in alphabetical order:

• Iran. It is creditable that Iran has held out against the might of the US war machine for two weeks and more. My belief is that they can keep it up for a while longer, because they have been preparing for this eventuality for some decades, ever since the 1979 crisis in which they held Americans hostage for 444 days. They are taking, and will take, horrendous losses, but it will be difficult to completely overthrow the Islamist regime. Among other things, Iran is a large country, about half the size of peninsular India.

• The US attack on Kharg Island’s military targets (but not its oil terminals) has shown that Iran’s oil exports could be in jeopardy, pushing global prices up.

• Just like their proxy Hamas, it appears Iran has built extensive tunnel complexes, veritable underground labyrinths, where they are hiding all sorts of things, including fast patrol boats. Their military assets are doubtless ensconced in these tunnels which makes them hard to locate and possibly quite mobile.

• Israel. Iran’s consistent rhetoric that Israel doesn’t deserve to exist leads to fears that Iran’s nuclear arsenal (if and when built) will be primarily aimed at Israel. This, and troubles with Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas, have led to massive Israeli human intelligence penetration of Iran (as seen in the Stuxnet incident as well as the effective strikes on the Ayatollahs and Hamas, including the pager incident). But Israel is also believed to be taking heavy losses, which it can ill afford, although information has been tightly censored..

• The US. The original idea of a decapitation strike that would lead to a rapid regime change as the Iranian public rose up and anointed a new leadership (one more acceptable to the US), was questionable, as I pointed out fairly early. It appears that the CIA and US intelligence have just one playbook, which they used more or less successfully in Iraq, Libya, etc. But that was never going to work in Iran, and now the US is stuck with a tar-baby and may be quietly seeking de-escalation and an off-ramp.

• Talk of a Marine Expeditionary Unit of 2500 American soldiers re-deployed from Japan means “boots on the ground” followed inevitably by that dreaded word, “body bags”. The troops will be meant to keep Hormuz open, or perhaps to capture Kharg Island. Whether they can achieve these is unclear right now.

• However, overall it appears that the US’ capacity to coerce other countries through economic means is declining, as suggested by the FT in “The era of US dominance in economic warfare is over” on March 17th.

View Details

Just around the same time as the axe fell on Washington Post’s global staff, accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I got a message from my Rediff.com editor, Nikhil Lakshman, mentioning it was the 30th anniversary of its founding. An interesting contrast indeed: the old Western flagbearer waning, while the Indian pioneer holds on, despite a plethora of competitors and copycats, including many pushing specific agendas.

That also made me think of why there was a bloodbath at the Washington Post, where they gutted the foreign desks, sports, books, and some leading podcasts, and laid off a third of its staff. I suspect there are two reasons: one is the increasing insularity of the US, a retreat into Fortress America, and paradoxically a turning away from the rest of the world at the very moment the rest of the world should be looming more prominently in the rear-view mirror.

And two, the economics and the technology of the narrative business have turned. On the one hand, print media have been retreating and losing ad revenue for years, and on the other hand, the rise of generativeAI has made it possible to eliminate entire layers of (at least) entry-level journalists, just as it is decimating paralegals, code-jockeys, and apprentice accountants. Only junior doctors seem immune so far, but we shall see how that goes.

I must confess that there was a time when I consumed the Western narrative with gusto: reading Time, Newsweek, and so on, and listening to the BBC. In fact, I actually subscribed to the New York Times for years (ok, in my defense I was living in the New York area), and later The Economist for at least a dozen years. I still listen to some podcasts from the latter, but with considerable caution, as I am far more aware of their biases and proclivities.

That’s where my concern about big-name Western media comes from. They are all somehow associated with the Deep State, that amorphous entity, the hidden puppet-master behind pretty much everything that goes on in foreign and domestic policy. For instance, an outlet that I considered the voice of NATO, turns out to be the voice of Whitehall, Britain’s bureaucracy.

There has long been a truism that the Washington Post is the mouthpiece of Foggy Bottom, i.e. the US State Department, and the New York Times that of Langley, i.e. the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Noam Chomsky long ago made the insightful observation that they are both in the business of “manufacturing consent”, i.e. narrative-peddling to suit vested interests, specifically the Military-Industrial Complex, which likes, or needs, constant wars.

The eclipse of the WaPo is not only a statement about the decreasing influence of the State Department on foreign affairs (in the wake of the decline of the “liberal, rules-based international order”). But it is also because the print media business is no longer lucrative, as the bulk of advertising revenue has now moved online, to the likes of Alphabet, Meta, Amazon et al. Large numbers of smaller US newspapers have closed down over the past few decades.

I suspect also that gaslighting at scale is much easier now with the advent of outlets such as Wikipedia. Ashley Rindsberg, author of The Grey Lady Winked (an expose of the NYT), has been chronicling on Twitter how Wikipedia has become a handmaiden of the usual suspects. Editors are often paid agents provocateurs, and stories that do not serve their purpose are simply trashed. There is much that is subjective/motivated about the content.

However, since Wikipedia has become the encyclopaedia of record, and generativeAI uses it unabashedly as a genuine source, the level of force-multiplication is immense. Every AI chatbot uses it, and of course all of us are using these chatbots. If it’s not in Wikipedia, it ceases to exist, and I fear this is happening to India’s Traditional Knowledge Systems.

This level of groupthink, alas, is not unusual. That is where I applaud Rediff. When it appeared in the 1990s, the discourse in India was tremendously skewed to the Left. What was considered “Centrist” in India was, objectively speaking, “Left”, and what was considered “Left” was, in reality, “Lunatic-Fringe Left”. It was simply impossible to get a dissenting opinion published, especially because nobody would hire you if your views didn’t pass a test of fealty.

But Rediff offered that possibility. Nikhil Lakshman, the editor, and Ajit Balakrishnan, the publisher, were willing to take risks with other voices, and I personally am grateful. Here I was, a non-specialist, a technologist and product manager in Silicon Valley, and also an unapologetic Hindu nationalist, which would have made me “Lunatic-Fringe Right” in the scheme of things.

Rediff gave me a voice. Before me, it also gave a voice to my dear and late friend, Varsha Bhosle. We wrote stuff as we saw it, without self-censoring, and it turned out it resonated with a lot of people, especially in the diaspora, who at that time had much more Internet access than in India. I used to get hundreds of e-mails in response to my columns. Varsha got even more.

We had the great advantage that, as non-professionals, we didn’t care about employment or income from journalism. Sun Microsystems paid my way; Varsha was the daughter of the celebrated Asha Bhosle.

Conversely, that is a problem today for those JNU products who were planning to enter the field: USAID and Soros funds are down, and their proteges in the Indian online world (you know who they are) aren’t doing all that well. I have an old classmate, a journalist, whom I consider deranged and terminally anti-India, who makes a nice living off, I gather, funds from several countries inimical to India, but the outlook for his tribe is a little dim these days.

Rediff was the only game in town in 1996, and it thrived. It was India’s pioneering internet portal with web news, email, shopping, entertainment, and it rode the first dot-com wave and survived multiple cycles (including the 2000 crash). It adapted from a pure portal to an aggregated and news-focused site, outlasting many peers by staying lean, India-centric, unbiased, and low-cost.

Rediff represents a digital-native model that persisted through adaptation without the massive overhead of legacy print giants. More power to it! Thank you again, and best wishes!

Postscript

Those tests of fealty to the ‘cause’ continue. I personally have been ejected from two op-ed columns because my thoughts were apparently impure. One, a few years ago, was at a prominent national daily. After writing occasionally for some time on invitation, my contact ruefully told me that I was persona non grata, in his words, not because my stuff was not good, but because the opinion editor did not agree with my perspectives.

More recently, I had a regular monthly column in a well-known regional daily. After having my words over-edited repeatedly, I realized that their opinion editor, who had invited me on board, simply did not like my pro-Hindu stance. So I quit.

The remarkable thing is all of the dramatis personae, including me, these two opinion editors, and the Rediff folks, are originally from Kerala. I wonder if this reflects some deep psychosis in the make-believe world in this last bastion of extreme Leftism. Tellingly, the ‘all-India strike’ called by left trade unions on the 12th of February was ignored everywhere except Kerala, where it was total.

1075 words, 10 Feb 2026 updated 13 Feb 2026

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/india-us-trade-deal-trump-skepticism-13977047.html

I am beginning to feel quite like ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’, who was destined to be ignored. Or maybe I am the boy who cried ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’. For, I was skeptical last week about the India-EU FTA, which I called a triumph of hope over experience. Now I am equally skeptical about the so-called India-US trade ‘deal’, which in fact is not a deal at all, but a sort-of statement of direction about the way to an actual deal.

The AI-generated video about this essay Google NotebookLM:

I expressed my caution on a Malayalam TV program where the host was a retired Ambassador. He was less skeptical than me, but he understood where I was coming from: after all, a diplomat’s job is to put the best spin on the news (good or bad) from his country’s perspective. And I spent much of my professional career in marketing: I can tell spin when I see it.

Reason No. 1: Trump is famous for exaggeration and U-turns.

The very first reason for the scepticism about the Indo-US lovefest is that it was announced by President Trump, who, in the past six months, has, in his whimsical way, executed any number of U-turns, as well as Z-turns, and various other pretzel-logic twists, so much so that anything he says, and its opposite, can be equally true, in a quantum Schrodinger’s Cat sort of way. It is prudent not to take him at face value when he swears eternal allegiance to India. Again.

Quoth he: “It was an Honor to speak with Prime Minister Modi, of India, this morning. He is one of my greatest friends, and a Powerful and Respected Leader of his Country. We spoke about many things, including Trade, and ending the War with Russia and Ukraine. He agreed to stop buying Russian Oil, and to buy much more from the United States and, potentially, Venezuela. This will help END THE WAR in Ukraine, which is taking place right now, with thousands of people dying each and every week! Out of friendship and respect for Prime Minister Modi and, as per his request, effective immediately, we agreed to a Trade Deal between the United States and India, whereby the United States will charge a reduced Reciprocal Tariff, lowering it from 25% to 18%. They will likewise move forward to reduce their Tariffs and Non Tariff Barriers against the United States, to ZERO. The Prime Minister also committed to “BUY AMERICAN,” at a much higher level, in addition to over $500 BILLION DOLLARS of U.S. Energy, Technology, Agricultural, Coal, and many other products. Our amazing relationship with India will be even stronger going forward. Prime Minister Modi and I are two people that GET THINGS DONE, something that cannot be said for most. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Okay. Very interesting. There has been no Indian readout corroborating a number of these claims, especially on agriculture, which I imagine is a redline, a no-go, for India.

Besides, these are supposed to be ‘reciprocal’ tariffs. If Indian tariffs go to zero on US products, why is the US imposing 18% on Indian products?

Reason No. 2: Desperation of ‘jilted lovers’

The ‘shotgun wedding’ vibe was present in the India-EU FTA as well: a sort of desperation. There is not much choice: you simply have to do this. I am not the only one saying this. Here is a tweet from a senior EU leader, former PM of Sweden and co-chair of the EU Council for foreign relations. Of course you could say that he would say this, wouldn’t he? But it happens to be true. The number of suitors is declining rapidly, so you compromise.

But that is not a recipe for the longevity of the relationship, nor for faithfulness. You can expect er… adultery (early and often). The roving eye roveth.

Reason No. 3: Agriculture and dairy red-lines

We really don’t know much about the fine print. I am aware that sales and marketing people tend to promise anything (even things they are completely aware are impossible) just to get the sale. Thus, when India diversifies away from the US market, and its Q3 numbers are not badly affected by the Trump tariffs, it is incumbent upon Trump and Navarro, Bessent, Lutnick et al to reverse their previous abuse, and be all milk and honey.

The problem here, as always, is the agriculture and dairy product front. It is an absolute red line for India: no government can afford to piss off its farmers, nor to open up the country, home of much of the world’s genetic diversity, to Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) including Terminator Seeds (that would forever put farmers at the mercy of Cargill and friends).

Not only that, non-veg milk (that is, milk from cows that have been fed, among other things, ground-up animal bodies) is abhorrent to a large number of Indians. Not to mention the risk of things like Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease or mad-cow disease (transmitted via feed that includes the ground-up brains of diseased cattle: see also the fatal brain disease Kuru, transmitted between cannibals in Papua New Guinea).

The US rather urgently needs to get rid of its soybean and corn mountains and milk lakes (in contrast with the EU’s butter mountain and wine lakes) and in both, exporters salivate at the prospect of the proverbial billion-customer market. (The Chinese expertly used this rather illusory meme to attract foreign makers of consumer goods. That didn’t end well).

In the case of India, there is no demand for soybeans, and the one place where I can see demand for corn is in ethanol, especially for blending into petrol. That would be a win-win, because it would reduce the need for India to grow highly thirsty sugarcane, thus drawing down the already alarmingly depleted water-table.

Reason No. 4: Russian oil and energy in general

The unseemly pressure over Russian oil raises hackles on the Indian side. After all, this is not the only time India has been pushed to the wall by American sanctions: there was the post-’Buddha is smiling’ period, and the prevention of the sale of ex-Soviet cryogenic rocket technology, as immortalized in Nambi Narayanan’s story in “Rocketry: The Nambi Effect”. Earlier, there was the embargo on supercomputers.

In each of these cases, India rode out the sanctions and denials. But the question arises: why should India not use Russian oil if it makes commercial sense to India? Just because there is a conflict between Russia and Ukraine? That is really not India’s problem: India does not have a dog in that fight.

Now there is the allegedly impending US attack on Iran. India has been denied Iranian oil for some time, and now under US pressure, it is being forced to ramp down its involvement in Chabahar Port in Iran that India built, and views as a gateway to Central Asia. Notably, China continues to import Iranian crude. Is India getting some relief there?

It is not realistic to imagine that large amounts of Venezuelan crude will now flow to India if it abjures the Russian stuff. For one, even though Reliance’s Jamnagar refiner can process the heavy, sour Venezuelan oil, it is said that Venezuela will take some time and a lot of money to ramp up its output because of years of neglect, lack of naphtha to dilute and pump out the crude, and so on.

Reason No. 5: Non-tariff barriers and subsidies.

The US claims that India will drop all its non-tariff barriers, but what is the guarantee that the US will not raise an impenetrable wall on their side? It is a simple matter to impose difficult-to-comply-with rules that basically say “Your products are not welcome”. These may include environmental, carbon tax, quality, and various other demands.

For example, there is the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 that insists that only American owned/built/crewed ships can transport goods between US ports. Then there are Buy American Act procurement restrictions that handicap foreign-origin products. Furthermore, quality standards e.g. on hormone-treated meat products, and on certification that seafood is tuna-safe have been used to keep out imported products.

The US Farm Bill provides gigantic subsidies for five major crops – corn, soy, wheat, rice and cotton – amounting to $9.3 billion in 2024. Reports suggest that crop insurance and new benefits from the ‘bridge payments’ announced in 2025 may add another $10 billion+ to this sum. That is an enormous subsidy, pricing competitors out of the market.

Reason No. 6: Loss of trust

Finally, there is a sixth and critical reason: the loss of trust. For the longest time, India had convinced itself that it was an essential strategic partner to the US, if for nothing else to contain China. But that illusion is now gone, quite possibly because the US has decided to create a G2 condominium with China and retreat into Fortress America. The US administration now considers India, at best, a transactional vassal, and at worst, a potential rival to apply the Thucydides Trap to: and what better than to do war by economic means? India has to adjust.

On the other hand, there are indeed positives. In the interest of fairness, here are the immediate views of Citibank and Bank of America, who both considered it a net positive for India.

If you accept the tariff reductions by the US at face value, then India at 18% is doing marginally better than several other nations, including Vietnam, Thailand and Bangladesh. Ironically, Trump’s recent best-friend-forever Pakistan is hit with 19%. There was a video circulating showing Raghuram Rajan, the economist who wants to be to Rahul Gandhi who Manmohan Singh was to his mother, gloating earlier that India was suffering from 50% tariffs compared to Pakistan’s 19%.

That brings up one more observation: the Opposition in India is screaming bloody murder about this supposed India-US ‘deal’ not because they claim India is getting a bad deal, but apparently because they think India is getting a good deal. They should see Trump’s latest triumph.

Opposition, fear not: Trump is making even more entertaining claims about his ‘deal’ with Xi. The sum and substance: “Please buy my soybeans”. This, despite the fact that China is the biggest buyer of oil from both Russia (48% of exports) and Iran (80%). Clearly, there is a lot of marketing going on, and it’s too early to tell what the reality is. The devil is in the details.

1750 words, 5 Feb 2026

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-the-epstein-files-expose-elite-depravity-13975791.html

Here is the AI-generated video version of this podcast.

I am not going to get into the political aspects of the infamous Epstein Files, nor so much into the morality thereof, but what amazes me is the fact that everyone seems shocked at the kinds of things that apparently went on in Epstein Island and elsewhere in his empire.

I have long thought of the Epstein Files (and earlier Watergate, Wikileaks, Cablegate, even the silly Steele Dossier) as a mere sideshow, entertaining but hardly earth-shattering. To be candid, what they reveal is what we already knew: politicians and the rich are different from you and me, as Jay Gatsby might say. Yes, they can be vile monsters and get away with it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald describes how extreme wealth fosters a sense of superiority, cynicism, carelessness with consequences, and emotional insulation: all qualities that make the rich operate by different rules, often viewing themselves as exempt from ordinary accountability. Extreme wealth provides insurance, or insulation, against consequences.

We were warned with graphic images in cinema: “Eyes Wide Shut” by Stanley Kubrick was a revelation. It fits strikingly into the context of Fitzgerald’s “the rich are different” and the Epstein files, a cinematic bridge between literary critique and real-world revelations of predatory privilege.

In Kubrick’s world of orgies where masked super-elites play, the victims are from lower strata (they are treated as disposable), while the elite retreat into impunity. The film was prescient about how money, secrecy, and impunity create inevitable nexuses of abuse. There was a dramatic and possibly relevant video of a young Mexican model, distraught, screaming, “They are eating babies!”, after attending one of the Epstein parties. She was, it is said, arrested, and ‘disappeared’, and was never seen again.

Yet, it is “Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom” that I am most reminded of. This is quite possibly the most disturbing film ever made, at least among those that I have seen. Only “In the Realm of the Senses”, by Nagisa Oshima, a staggering tale of sexual obsession, comes close in shock value. A couple are caught up in a vortex or vicious cycle of increasingly dangerous sexual behavior. The unsimulated, explicit sex scenes in fact produce not prurience, but horror in the viewer.

The film’s intensity peaks with its violent conclusion, where the female protagonist strangles her lover to death during erotic asphyxiation and then castrates his corpse, carrying the severed penis with her, blending extreme eroticism with graphic mutilation and murder in a way that challenged societal taboos on sex, obsession, and violence. Tellingly, it is based on a real-life story, but then it is a private tale, not one that involved powerful, public, men.

“Salo”, by Pier Paolo Pasolini, is a loose adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s 1785 novel “The 120 Days of Sodom”, relocated to the final days of Mussolini’s fascist Republic of Salo (1943–1945) in northern Italy. Four powerful libertines: a Duke (nobility), Bishop (church), Magistrate (law/state), and President (finance/capital) are the protagonists.

They kidnap 18 young victims (mostly teenagers) and subject them to escalating cycles of sexual torture, degradation, humiliation, and murder in a remote villa. I remember the horrifying close-up of a young man’s eye being plucked out.

This isn’t mere shock exploitation; Pasolini uses de Sade’s framework as a scorching allegory for:

• Absolute power corrupting absolutely, where the elite treat bodies (especially vulnerable young ones) as disposable objects for consumption and control.

• Fascism as the ultimate expression of capitalist/consumerist nihilism. The libertines embody the “anarchy of power” in a permissive, totalitarian system where rules exist only to protect the perpetrators.

• Moral detachment and cynicism: the rich aren’t just wealthier; they’re philosophically and emotionally severed from humanity, viewing others as means to gratification without consequence.

Is this how powerful men are? Is this how those with absolute power, especially men, have always acted? Or is it culture-specific? That’s a good question. But are elites generally debauched, depraved, and dissolute?

There are several unconfirmed rumors that many of the rich and famous were associated with Epstein. But a certain royal was drummed out of the family and lost all his privileges for his (confirmed) participation in Epstein orgies. Others include captains of industry and political bigwigs, including US Presidents, a major leftist ideologue, and a film director.

So it was apparently the in-thing in the US, sort of like the most sought-after restaurant in New York City, where the hoi-polloi were strictly excluded. This, in a country that allegedly finds its moral compass in the Puritans, people who were so religious that even Britain couldn’t stand them. And has been accused of being into moralization, not into morals.

As of now, if you ignore the extreme claims (cannibalism) it is clear that the following happened:

• Recruitment and grooming of underage girls

• Sexual assault on minors

• Distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Material

• Trafficking across State and International Borders

Frankly, this is probably just business as usual in many elite circles. If you have immunity, you tend to be very naughty. I expect this, too, will blow over, and public attention will move on. The apparent fact that many in political power in the US are part of the Epstein network is neither here nor there. This may be the way all powerful men work. Sad, but true.

895 words, Feb 2, 2026

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

I’m sorry to be so cynical so early, on the very day it was signed, but let me be honest: the much-ballyhooed (“mother of all trade deals”, quoth Ursula von der Leyen, boss of the EU) signing of the Free Trade Agreement between India and the European Union leaves me cold. Or maybe just underwhelmed. Because the words that come to mind are “desperation”, “buyer power”, and maybe “shotgun wedding”, or perhaps, as Hari, a friend, said, “rebound chicks”.

Ok, so I am bad, but somehow, “revenge porn” also seems oddly appropriate. Are the Europeans now going to spill the beans about all their ahem… rendezvous with their erstwhile boyfriends?

Bottom line, since I am a pessimist, I think this isn’t going to end well. If I were an optimist, perhaps I’d have said the inflated expectations will come to nought.

The first clue is that India and the EU have been negotiating this trade deal for twenty, yes twenty, years. And now it’s a done deal in weeks. Did someone say, “shotgun wedding”?

The second is that the EU has huge agricultural surpluses from coddling their farmers, referred to memorably by my favorite Whitehall simps, The Economist magazine, as the “butter mountain” and “wine lakes”. I really don’t think Euro-farmers are going to grin and bear it when India refuses their stuff, and worse, Indian agri-products start showing up there.

The third is that it seems like it was only yesterday that the Europeans were, in their usual supercilious manner, scolding India for not following their edicts about cutting off all trade with, and in effect un-personing (or whatever the equivalent is for a country) Russia.

The fourth is that their media, especially Deutsche Welle, has kept up a steady stream of invective against India, allegedly the epicenter of colossal Hindutva crimes against sundry cuddly minorities such as Kashmiri separatists, Khalistani splittists, Rohingya illegal aliens, und so weiter. (Of course the BBC, The Economist, The Guardian et al are in a different, exalted league altogether, but I guess after Brexit, I can’t blame the EU for their sins).

I can sure I can think of several other reasons, which you, gentle reader, may or may not resonate with, but you get the drift.

The good reasons, of course, are there:

• Trump has basically abandoned the EU and hinted at winding down NATO. No more free lunch on defense. No more preferential treatment as good white countries.

• The Chinese market has essentially slammed shut for Europeans. The perigee of this is the fact that Volkswagen is now planning to sell what in effect are white-labelled Chinese-designed and -built cars in China. To me that spells total surrender especially because Chinese EVs produced cheaply, at scale, are now eating them for breakfast everywhere. So now they need a new market. Why, India has 1.4 billion people! Bring on the BMWs! Because otherwise the crown jewels of German engineering, both the entire automotive industry and the famed mittelstand, are going to bite the dust. Hint to India’s 180 IQ mandarins: bone up on “buyer power”.

• Europe needs a supply chain that is independent of both the US and China to the extent possible. India may well provide a good part of it. For instance, in computing, it needs to stop being so cruelly dependent on US Big Tech, as argued by a Lund University professor in Europe wants to end its dangerous reliance on US internet technology (https://theconversation.com/europe-wants-to-end-its-dangerous-reliance-on-us-internet-technology-274042). Amen, brother. Ditto India, and maybe a few EU GCCs in India will do the trick. Or maybe they could just phone Sridhar Vembu.

• Europe is falling off a demographic cliff at warp speed. They simply will not have the manpower, especially as any growth there will be primarily from immigrants. India will not reach zero population growth for some time, and therefore skilled Indian migrants on short term work visas will be positive

All of these are good for the EU, but what’s in it for India? As my friend Bapa asked, “So what is India getting? Are Europeans going to buy Indian shrimp?”

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-donald-trump-and-global-disorder-the-unravelling-of-the-old-world-order-has-begun-13970884.html

There is a general air of uncertainty in international relations right now, and there is the distinct feeling that the old order changeth. The upheaval is likely to bring difficult times to all of us. The long-predicted end of the “liberal, rules-based international order” seems to be upon us, with a definite fin-de-siecle feeling. The certainties that we have long held on to are no longer reliable.

Foremost, of course, is the role of the United States, which bestrode the world like a colossus in the aftermath of the Second World War, and again after the end of the Cold War. Those of us born in the post-war years looked up to America, the “City on the Hill”, the beacon, celebrated in song and film, a cultural anchor in addition to a military and economic superpower.

I remember the day my dad walked into the dining room with his newspaper and told us, “Marilyn Monroe is dead”. I was a small boy, and I had no idea who Marilyn Monroe was, but I remember that moment. I vaguely remember the Kennedy assassination. And every month, SPAN magazine brought images of the good life. My father did his PhD on John Steinbeck.

Thus, for me and for those of my generation, it was only natural to look up to the US as an exemplar. In college, we used to refer to it, only half-jokingly, as ‘God’s own country’. (This was before Amitabh Kant applied this moniker to Kerala, and it stuck). I remember us reading Time and Newsweek in the IIT Madras hostel common room. We read them cover to cover.

So it was but natural for us to write the GRE and apply to US universities; and many of us got in, with good scores and good grades. It was relatively easy in the late 1970s. And it was a revelation for us to go to a country that pretty much worked well; the standard of living was quite a bit higher than back at home, where you had to wait 6 years for a phone or a scooter.

But fifty years later, things are not the same. The gap in the standard of living between India and the US had narrowed considerably, although the rule of law, clean air and public spaces, and the lack of petty corruption, plus the tendency to stick to the letter of agreements (ok, I grant that Trump may be an exception) are all still much more prevalent in the US.

What has happened, though, is the relative decline of the US in almost every way. Take research. Or manufacturing. Or popular culture. Others are narrowing the gap steadily. Or take the streets of, say, San Francisco. The pristine, well kept streets I encountered when I first moved there are now in shambles, sometimes covered in human feces, with homeless people and needles all over the place.

The US, and it hurts me to say this, as I am an unabashed Americophile (if that’s a word), over-extended itself through unnecessary wars and unwise crusades which the Deep State promoted for self-preservation, but which in fact turned out to be counterproductive.

As I wrote recently in relation the Venezuela gamble, the US may well be following in the footsteps of other countries that once held the reserve currency, but fell into a trifecta of excessive debt, reduced core competence, complacency and overextension.

The resulting retreat into “Fortress America” as outlined in the National Security Strategy, as well as the unabashed pursuit of American interests at the expense of allies and friends, is causing everything to fall apart, as in W B Yeats’ warning.

The reaction of the US’s closest allies to various Trump diktats has been instructive. Europeans and the British applauded when Trump chose to peremptorily remove President Maduro from Venezuela and make a play for that nation’s massive oil reserves. But when he began in earnest to pursue Greenland, there were loud protests from some parts of NATO.

That alliance appears to be crumbling as Trump, not unreasonably, suggests that Europeans need to pay for their own security, instead of expecting the US to finance it forever. Also, despite the appearance of a land-grab, Greenland has a trade and security rationale: as the Arctic Sea becomes more ice-free due to climate change, the fabled Northwest Passage and other trade routes open up, China is already ready for its own land-grab with its “Polar Silk Road”.

Here’s a tweet from Ken Noriyasu of the Nikkei, highlighting future trade routes:

But the threat to Denmark’s territorial integrity, in case Greenland opts to join the US, has rattled NATO members. Threats of escalating tariffs (10–25%) on Denmark and other NATO allies have sparked outrage. Joint Nordic/European statements reaffirm sovereignty; U.S. rhetoric treats it as a strategic necessity (Arctic resources, China/Russia competition). This treats allies as transactional subordinates, eroding NATO cohesion.

The end of NATO would be a seismic shift, but I have long argued that Western Europe should bury its hatchet with Russia, because their real long-term foe is China, which has its eye on Siberia on the one hand, and Europe’s entire industrial might on the other.

There is more: Ongoing wars (Ukraine, Middle East), tariff wars, alliance strains, and rising “spheres of influence” logic. Davos 2026 panels describe it as the “last-chance saloon” for the old order. UN Secretary-General Guterres warns leaders are “running roughshod over international law.” Think tanks (Brookings, Stimson) call it an interregnum: the liberal order is dying, no coherent replacement has emerged, and “monsters” fill the vacuum. Is “some rough beast” slouching towards Bethlehem to be born, as in the apocalyptic prophecy?

What will rise from the ruins of the old world order? We can only wonder, as there are several possible answers:

• Transactionalist multipolarity. Great powers (U.S., China, India, EU/Russia bloc) negotiate deals based on leverage, not universal rules. Might means right, backed by economic coercion or force.

• Fragmented regional orders. Spheres where dominant powers set norms (U.S. in Americas/Arctic, China in Indo-Pacific, Russia near its borders, if there is a rapprochement with the EU). I have long predicted spheres of influence in the wake of what I see as a G2 condominium between the US and China.

• No-rules world (worst case). Rising impunity, more unilateral interventions, eroded deterrence, potential for cascading crises. We are already beginning to see this with China’s unilateral land- and sea-grabs (e.g. the “nine-dash” line).

2025 was an annus horribilis. 2026 is shaping up to be worse. None of the above scenarios is good for India, especially as it is beginning to get its manufacturing in order, at what appears to be exactly the wrong time, as tariff wars abound.

By the looks of it, 2026 will be worse for all concerned. Centrifugal forces are going to tear up globalism, and a narrow nationalism may not bode well for anybody.

The AI-generated podcast from notebookLM.google.com is at:

1650 words, 19th Jan 2026

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Part 1 of this essay was published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-trumps-huge-venezuela-gamble/20260114.htm

Part 2 of this essay was published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-was-maduros-capture-a-warning-shot-to-china/20260124.htm

It is hard to judge whether the US regime-change operation in Venezuela is a stroke of genius or an act of pure recklessness. This is completely orthogonal to the questions of morality and legality involved in such, well, coups, to put it bluntly. The real issue at hand is twofold: why did they do it? And what is the long-term fallout from it?

I consider several perspectives below: the moral/legal angle, the alleged oil bonanza, the alleged drug trafficking, geo-politics and geo-economics. In sum, I am inclined to believe that the Venezuela adventure may not be an indication of American strength, alas, but rather of American weakness. To someone like me who is deeply supportive of the US (especially in opposition to China, the G2 condominium notwithstanding), this is a disheartening conclusion.

The morality and legality angle

Let us summarily dispose of the entire morality-legality question. At the end of the day, international relations, despite flowery marketing language, is essentially Chanakyan matsya-nyaya, i.e. the big fish eat the little fish, the law of the jungle. Might is right, and that’s just the way realpolitik is, let us accept that and move on. The United Nations and the so-called ‘liberal rules-based international order’ are syntactic sugar hiding this bitter fact of life.

There are a few implications for the little or medium-sized fish: deter the big fish. 1. Bulk up, build up your military and economic strength, including your ability to produce lots of military hardware, 2. Build your economic leverage, so that you are an indispensable trading partner nobody can afford to alienate, 3. Build a nuclear arsenal.

This last is significant. Let us consider all the recent (and near-future) invasions by big fish. Iraq. Libya. Iran. Panama. Vietnam. Afghanistan. Ukraine. And soon, alas, Taiwan. Ok, I may have missed some here, but none of them have nukes. If you have working nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them (such as nuclear-capable missiles, submarines lurking in the ocean depths with nuclear warheads), then it is risky for the invading big fish. No big fish likes body bags, and they certainly don’t like mushroom clouds over their cities.

In addition, there was the stunning silence from the European Union and Britain, which have been moralizing to everybody about how wicked it was for Russia to invade Ukraine. No clutching pearls this time, eh, Eurocrats in Brussels? In fact, EU leaders were positively ecstatic about Trump’s intervention in Venezuela. It is indeed the end of the European century.

Ditto with the United Nations, which, by the way, is pretty much on its last legs so far as I can tell: on 7th January President Trump exited 31 UN agencies and a grand total of 66 multilateral entities.This of course hurts the UN’s budget, not to mention its relevance.

In January the US will formally exit the Paris Climate Agreement and the WHO, and it has already exited the UNHRC, UNESCO, and UNRWA. The newly announced exits include the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN Women’s Fund, the UN Population Fund, the International Solar Alliance, the International Renewable Energy Alliance, and so on.

All this fits in with the ‘Fortress America’ part of the National Security Strategy, which I wrote about at some length recently. In my opinion, it is not in the US’ long-term interests. The post-WW II “liberal, rules-based international order” with America as its center was good for the US, and its precipitous end will erode pre-eminence, Manifest Destiny notwithstanding. The problem is that the dollar, sanctions, SWIFT and US Treasury debt are losing their clout. Pax Americana too.

Summary: Nobody is bothered about morality or legality.

The oil colony: is it for real?

It could be argued that the unabashed Trump statements about Venezuela’s oil are exactly like the British and other European colonization of many lands in the 19th century. It can be summarized as: “we have the guns, we’re going to take your butter”. That may well be true, although it is not discussed in genteel circles, where they pretend the Euros were on an, um… civilizing mission.

Trump, to his credit, makes no bones about it: he says in so many words that he will henceforth consider Venezuela’s oil to be his, and that it will be used for the benefit of both Venezuelans and Americans. To be honest, there is some rationale behind this: the infamous Resource Curse, where resource-rich countries end up with the riches being grabbed by both foreigners and kleptocratic local elites, and miserable citizens get virtually nothing.

I am not quite sure how Arab OPEC countries managed to keep their money, and spend it on their own nationals: possibly because their populations were low, and they were used to authoritarian rulers anyway. The same with Norway. But the Resource Curse is a fairly universal phenomenon. I bet the global money managers are laughing all the way to the bank.

When I first went to the US in the late 1970s, I had a graduate student friend, a woman from Venezuela. She was there on a generous scholarship funded by oil revenues, just like the Iranians who had studied with me in India. At least some of the money was going to actual citizens, and wasn’t disappearing into tax havens. I guess socialism did Venezuela in over decades, as we have seen in West Bengal and Kerala.

The country’s finances are an absolute mess, through years of economic collapse, US sanctions, and a sovereign default in 2017. There are enormous debts owed by Venezuela to foreign investors, add up to more than $150 billion, or twice GDP; this includes interest, penalties for default, and arbitration awards for the expropriation (nationalization) of oil infrastructure. Venezuelan assets abroad (e.g. the CITGO oil retailer) are at risk.

So far as I can tell, the country owes the following:

• Bond default in 2017 (sovereign and state oil company PDVSA bonds): face value $60 billion, now up to $100 billion with accrued interest and penalties. Owed mostly to international asset managers such as Fidelity, Greylock, T Rowe Price (often US based)

• Oil-backed loans of about $15 billion, to be paid off in oil shipments (China and Russia)

• Arbitration awards often based on nationalization/expropriation of (especially oil-related) assets: around $30 billion (US and Canada based creditors such as ConocoPhillips and Crystallex owed around $8-10 billion)

This means there’s a lot of issues that needs to be settled before Venezuela becomes a normal and substantial player in the world oil market. Besides, despite the exertions of Chevron, an American oil major that still has operations in Venezuela, I don’t think it will be easy to ramp up production there, which has collapsed due to a variety of factors, including the non-availability of naphtha to make the very viscous, heavy crude from the Orinoco Belt more easily transportable.

It is said, however, that a number of US refineries can indeed handle this heavy crude (incidentally Indian refineries such as Reliance’s Jamnagar can as well) and so, over time, the oil will begin to flow, although it is going to cost quite a bit to get there. Their production was of the order of 3.5 million barrels per day in the 2010s, but it has fallen to about 1.1 million barrels now, as the result of infrastructure decay, mismanagement, corruption, and US sanctions.

I have read estimates that it might take as much as $180 billion in investments over the next 10-15 years to bring Venezuela back online at scale. This means that any dreams of the US tapping Venezuela’s vast oil reserves any time soon are unrealistic. Besides, that could lead to an oil glut, depressing global prices even below the current $50-60 levels, which has the side effect of making America’s own shale-based oil production unviable.

There is one good outcome, though: for neighboring Guyana. Venezuela had been threatening to go to war over Guyana’s oil fields. Given that Guyana has a large Indian origin population, I am glad that at least some diaspora people are becoming oil rich. But then again, Trump may feel free to claim their oil too, who knows?

All this suggests that, despite all the talk of seizing the largest oil reserves in the world, this is not the real reason behind the regime change.

Summary: The oil issue is overblown, and nothing dramatic will happen short-term.

What about the drug-running?

There was a lot of noise about how Venezuelan gangs pushing drugs in the US was a major threat, and how that needs to be taken care of. However, on closer scrutiny, Venezuela is not a major producer of cocaine (production is almost entirely in Colombia, with smaller amounts from Peru and Bolivia). It serves as a minor transit country for some cocaine, mostly headed to Europe or the Caribbean rather than directly to the streets of America.

Data from the UNODC (UN Office on Drugs and Crime) and the US DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) show no significant direct sea routes from Venezuela to the US; the only known direct route is limited air trafficking.

DEA reports (including the 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment) and UNODC (World Drug Report 2025) consistently show Colombia as the overwhelming source of cocaine entering the US (around 84%+ of samples). Venezuela ranks low in direct contributions, with most US-bound cocaine transiting through Mexico/Central America via Pacific routes.

Fentanyl trafficking into the United States follows a distinct supply chain, very different from plant-based drugs like cocaine. The overwhelming consensus from US authorities is that Mexico is the primary source of finished illicit fentanyl reaching the US, while China remains the main origin for the precursor chemicals needed to produce it.

The fentanyl crisis is overwhelmingly a China to Mexico to US southwest border pipeline not linked to Venezuela or South America in any substantial way, per DEA, State Department, and congressional reporting.

Summary: The talk about Venezuela’s drug-running is a smoke-screen.

Is it geopolitics then?

The most interesting thing about the extraction of former Venezuelan President Maduro was not the dramatic flair with which it was done, though that was indeed very Youtube-ready. The helicopter gunships, the silenced air defences, the Cuban bodyguard eliminated (by a sonic weapon?): all the elements of a pretty exciting Hollywood film. I’m sure one is coming up soon.

What was even more interesting, though, was that a delegation from the Chinese Communist Party had met him just a few hours before. China has been rather chummy with a fellow-socialist, and has been a good customer as an oil buyer. The fact that Maduro was extricated while the Chinese were still in Venezuela was a warning shot: besides, it suggests that they had no clue what was going to happen

In effect, it was a slap on the face of China, and it goes back to my belief that the US is investing in a G2 condominium with them. Stick and carrot, maybe? Collaborate in general in the spheres of influence concept, but hey, you better keep out of my sphere, ok? As I said earlier, China has made serious inroads into Latin America, which the US may now be hinting is simply not ok: stay in your lane, Xi! In simple terms, China will no longer have access to Venezuelan oil.

The prognosis is grim: Russia and the EU are mired in the Ukraine mess, China is rampant (certainly in Asia, with their declared intent of invading Taiwan by 2027), the QUAD is more or less defunct. Trump refused to support Japanese premier Takaichi Sanae when she was bullied by the Chinese over her remark that if Taiwan were to be attacked by China, this would create a survival-threatening situation for Japan, which is literally true as Taiwan is only 70 miles away.

Parenthetically, India has also realized the same about the US – that it is on its own – after what was quite likely a US-supported regime-change operation in Bangladesh has put the Hindu minority there in real danger of genocide and ethnic cleansing, with daily incidents of burning alive, murder, rape and abduction and threats of capturing Indian territory.

The emerging situation in Iran is also likely to be a blow to China: they would lose one more source of cheap oil. But then, they do have buyer power: in other words, major oil producers do have to sell their stuff to somebody, and as China demonstrated in the case of soybeans from the US, its refusal to buy the stuff has severe consequences for the seller.

So it is true that the US and China in general have to respect each other and trade with each other. This is perfectly feasible under the G2 condominium, the principal role of which is to give each of them a ‘playpen’ if you will, and prevent a new power, e.g. India, from forcing its way into a G3. It appears they both are applying the Thucydides Trap to India.

The US is still ahead of China in the geopolitical game, but if it continues to burn its bridges with its erstwhile allies and partners (such as the EU and Quad members) it will accelerate its relative decline. This is hardly the time to alienate potential partners, especially now that a belligerent NATO has pushed a reluctant Russia into the dhritarashtra-alinganam of China.

Unfortunately, in geo-politics America is becoming less exceptional, and Henry Kissinger’s quip that “it is dangerous to be America’s enemy, but fatal to be its friend” is taking on a new urgency. The action in Venezuela (and possibly in Cuba before long) does not encourage other nations to look to the US for partnerships.

Summary: The geopolitical fallout is not particularly good for America’s image as an ally.

It may well be economics, anda desperate fin-de-siecle lunge

The final issue is that of economics and economic history. Over the past several centuries, we have seen how those countries that hold the global reserve currency have prospered and have been financial hegemons to begin with, based on some substantial competitive advantage, but then a strange malady (“the Dutch disease”) sets in, and over time their financial clout diminishes, until at one point they become major debtors and then, they become irrelevant.

This has happened several times in the past 800 or so years, and the patterns are strikingly similar, so there is a fair chance that it is happening again. The countries in question are:

• Spain in the 16th century onwards

• The Netherlands in the 17th century onwards

• Britain in the 19th century onwards

• And alas, the US in the 20th century onwards

Now, I would dearly wish the US could avoid this vicious cycle, partly because it is a continent-sized nation with immense resources, but I believe that economic profligacy, wasting money on unnecessary things like wars, and complacency fostered by easy money is leading to a mountain of debt, which usually is a bad place to be in. In each of these European examples, initial success inevitably led to collapse. I hope the US can avoid this fate, especially as warnings have been sounded for some time by experts such as Ray Dalio.

Great economic powers, particularly those issuing the world’s primary reserve currency, tend to follow a recurring historical cycle of rise, peak dominance, gradual (or sometimes rapid) decline, loss of competitiveness, mounting debt burdens, and eventual marginalization on the global stage. This pattern has repeated over the last 500+ years.

The archetypal cycle often unfolds in phases:

• Rise and dominance: Because of strong education, innovation, productivity, trade dominance, military power, and financial innovation create a virtuous cycle (this is the model that I have in mind of the US. But there is a second model: colonial loot. Spain stole trillions from Latin America, Britain from India. This too leads to (unearned) privilege). This leads to the currency becoming the preferred global medium for trade, reserves, and debt denomination.

• Peak and overextension: Success breeds complacency, wealth inequality widens, debt accumulates (often to fund wars, welfare, or consumption), and costs rise relative to competitors. Besides, there is a form of the Resource Curse: the colonial loot or digging things out from a hole in a ground is so easy that all other industries wither away and die. We see this in Kerala today: remittances are easy money, so everybody wants to go to the Persian Gulf (skilled and unskilled labor) or Europe (nurses). Maybe the generativeAI bubble falls into the same category: the money is too easy.

• Decline in competitiveness: Education and innovation lag, unit labor costs rise, trade shares erode, and emerging rivals catch up or surpass in productivity and technology. Too much by way of wokeness, social justice and related illnesses means the smart ones leave, and the dumb ones keep congratulating each other. Ruchir Sharma just wrote in the Financial Times about how the continuing exodus of skilled Indians is a big negative.

• Debt buildup and financial strain: The “exorbitant privilege” of reserve status allows cheap borrowing, encouraging more debt. Deficits grow, and the currency is printed or devalued to manage burdens. Print, baby, print. But one day you have to pay the piper.

• Marginalization: Confidence erodes (via inflation, devaluations, defaults, or crises), foreigners reduce holdings, and a new power’s currency gains primacy. The reserve status lingers due to network effects and habit, but the issuing power loses geopolitical and economic centrality.

Spain had its colonies in the Americas from which it extracted enormous amounts of gold and silver; the Dutch started the Amsterdam stock exchange and stepped into the vacuum of finance when Spain faltered; the British outcompeted the Dutch in colonization and in industrialization and defeated them in wars; and the US took over when Britain lost its colonies and had nowhere to dump its goods, and was in debt for its spending in World Wars I and II.

Some of the symptoms of the “Dutch disease” are showing in the US: enormous debt, wars that have no clear benefit to the nation, loss of manufacturing, geopolitical challenges, loss of competitiveness and brand superiority in industry after industry.

US investors are quietly moving their funds to other countries, while foreigners are quietly moving their money out of US treasuries (e.g. China has reduced its holdings from a high of $1.3 trillion in 2013 to $688 billion now) and into gold, the BRICS group is creating an alternative currency and a non-SWIFT settlement mechanism, and many countries are trading with each other bilaterally in local currencies. De-dollarization is a little far off but no longer implausible.

Now, as a big supporter of the US, I do hope the dollar will continue to be supreme, but I am beginning to have my doubts. I have had faith in the US and its ability to re-invent itself on the brains of its immigrants, but I wonder if a post-MAGA US will be the beacon, the “City on the Hill”, “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. Maybe not any more. Perhaps cyclical decline, and the rot, are already too deep.

This, in my opinion, is the real reason for Trump’s little adventure in Venezuela: to be relevant in global finance for a little longer. The petrodollar has been the lifeline allowing the US to run substantial deficits for a long time. Because all transactions for oil have traditionally been mandated to be in dollars, there has been constant demand for the dollar, despite the loss of manufacturing (in other words, nobody needs dollars to buy US goods except a few like weapons, aircraft, and Big Tech software). But everybody needs it to buy oil.

Trump is ensuring that Venezuela’s giant oil reserves (the largest in the world) will now be sold in dollars, contrary to Maduro’s plans to trade in yuan. This is deja vu: when Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein planned to trade his oil in Euros in 2000, he found himself deposed. When Libya’s President Muammar Gaddafi planned to trade his oil in a new currency called the ‘gold dinar’ around 2009, he found himself deposed. Coincidence? Perhaps.

This is why I have had the feeling that the Venezuela adventure does not show American strength, but rather American weakness. The dollar is in trouble, and thus the US welfare state. This is an attempt to shore it up.

Summary: The real rationale behind the Venezuela regime-change is to ensure that de-dollarization is postponed at least for a while.

3450 words, Jan 12, 2026

.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/is-india-standing-alone-in-2025/20251222.htm

2025 has been a disastrous year for the US, surely in foreign affairs and economics. The trade war, far from strengthening the economy, has shown the limits of American power: the capitulation to Chinese supplier power on rare earths, and a strategic retreat in the face of Chinese buyer power on soybeans, for example.

The dramatic rise of Chinese generativeAI, which will undercut US Big Tech, is another problem. The US cannot afford to be the globocop any more, and the new National Security Strategy seeks a US withdrawal into ‘Fortress America’. It may mark the end of the vaunted ‘American exceptionalism’ as well as the ‘liberal rules-based international order’.

In an earlier time, this would have led to the famous Thucydides Trap, but in effect the US has gone into an ‘anti-Thucydides Trap’ because it unthinkingly paved the way for China’s rise, seduced by the short-term benefit of low-cost Chinese goods while ignoring the long-term strategic disaster. In the 20th century, Britain collapsed suddenly, but it is merely a tiny island off Eurasia. I never expected continent-sized America to follow suit in the 21st century.

Meanwhile, in a fine example of “manufacturing consent”, the discourse in the US is not focusing on the global problems facing the country, but on MAGA bullying of H1-B Indians and on the Epstein files, which, on the face of it, is a silly exercise in moralization. I believe it was Hermann Hesse who said something to the effect that Americans are not interested in morals, being content with moralization.

But the entire kowtowing to China has serious implications for India. One of the pillars of Indian foreign policy for decades has been the idea that it is a strategic counterweight to China in the US’s calculations. But if the US has really ceded Asia to China (I recall President Obama saying as long ago as 2009 that the US and China would “work together to promote peace, stability, and development in South Asia”) then the famous ‘pivot to Asia’ is null and void.

A couple of years ago, I wrote that the most obvious thing for the US’s Deep State to do would be to form a G2 condominium with China, divide up the world amongst themselves, and set up respective spheres of influence. This was predicated on America’s relative decline, and China’s economic and military rise to be, for all intents and purposes, a peer. I thought this would take a decade or more, but, lo and behold, the US is caving in furiously to China right now.

In addition, I wrote about the surprisingly large and malign influence exerted by Britain, whereby it plays a ‘master-blaster’ role, leading the US by the nose, usually to America’s detriment. Britain’s ‘imperial fortress’ Pakistan seems to be involved in every terror incident, yet President Trump’s new-found camaraderie with them (“here, some more F-16 goodies for you”) is yet another indictment of their twisted priorities.

And Britain seems to be “winning”, too: on the one hand, they have finally defeated Germany, which they couldn’t do via two World Wars: the latter’s economy, its electricity grid, and its vaunted mittelstand and its automobile industry are in shambles. On the other hand, Britain is the one major European power that has not been defeated by Russia, so they think they can, conversely, defeat them. France (Napoleon) and Germany (Hitler) learnt otherwise.

The pointless Ukraine War is bankrupting Europe; I wrote about how this is hastening the end of the European century and how ‘Europe’ is reverting to what it was through most of history: unimportant ‘Northwest Asia’. This could well also be Britain’s revenge against Europe, which it exited in a huff via Brexit: British elites have looked down upon Europeans all along.

I mention all these not to show that I was somehow prescient, but that things we have been observing for some time are coming to a head: the US National Security Strategy is the capstone of the New World Order. And it seems to codify these trends: hegemony to China with Asia as its sphere of influence, the abandonment of Europe to its own devices, a focus on the Americas in a new ‘Donroe Doctrine’ (so to speak).

In the background are continuing terror attacks such as the one in Sydney, murderous attacks on Alawites in Syria, the car bomb in Delhi, and the lynching and burning alive of a minority Hindu youth, Dipu Chandra Das, in Bangladesh by a frenzied mob. The world is not a safe place.

There was also a defining moment: the US seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker. Far from being a show of strength, this may well be an admission of weakness: Venezuela is no competitor, and this is like the US invasion of defenseless Panama some years ago. It is, however, a declaration that the Americas belong to the US sphere of influence (the ‘Donroe’ Doctrine).

Sadly, China may demur: it views the Americas are adjacent to them (just across the Pacific) and have made inroads into many countries, including Panama, and ironically are funding a proposed alternative to the Panama Canal through Nicaragua, as well as a major Brazil-Peru railroad project (all the better to ship in raw materials from both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and to ship out “rubber dogshit from HongKong” back to them). Their $3 billion Chancay deepwater port in Peru has already been inaugurated.

China is now a $500 billion trading partner for South America, overtaking the US, yes, overtaking the US. To top it all, the ports on both sides of the Panama Canal, i.e Cristobal (Atlantic side) and Balboa (Pacific side) are run by Hong Kong companies, which of course means the CCP does. In fact, it is blocking US firm Blackrock’s acquisition of these ports.

China therefore has serious assets in the Americas, and large commercial interests. The US can pretend it is supreme in the Americas, but the reality may be a little different.

Meanwhile, the US has more or less abandoned its Quad partners in Asia and acknowledged Chinese hegemony there: in other words, that half of the condominium is done. When the new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said something that was obvious and perfectly within her rights to worry about Japan’s security, the Chinese came down on her like a ton of bricks, wolf-warrior style. The normally voluble Trump said nothing at all in support of Japan.

Regarding India, there has been a persistent tilt towards Pakistan during and after Operation Sindoor; and the imposition of harsh tariffs. The increasingly volatile situation in Bangladesh which is the result of a likely US-backed ‘regime-change’ operation is a significant security threat to India because of the collusion of jihadi, Pakistani and Chinese-proxy elements there and the very real concern about the cutoff of India’s Northeast from the mainland, apart from the ongoing murders and ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Buddhists there.

Now comes the New York Times, which I generally despise as a propaganda arm of the Deep State. But they show some self-awareness in their editorial “America cannot win alone”. No man is an island, as John Donne wrote some years ago. And America is not a singular colossus any more either, and it needs alliances. It hurts me (as an Americophile) how rapidly the US is declining in relative terms, and perhaps even absolute terms.

The best indicator of this decline is in the crown jewels of the US: its technology sector. On the one hand, the entire US stock market has been propped up by the Magnificent Seven and the alleged promise of the generativeAI boom. On the other hand, China’s patented “over-invest, scale up, get to be lowest-cost producer, drive competitors out of business” is repeating in industry after industry: the latest is automobiles, where the famous German marques are history.

Trump’s surrender on Nvidia’s H200 chips is an indication that China is playing the trade-war game much better than the U.S. China has amassed a $1 trillion trade surplus in the first 11 months of 2025, an unprecedented feat that shows its trade power. Not only is this because of supply-chain dominance, but an analyst suggests it’s also because China is now on the verge of delivering a knockout blow to US/Western tech.

There are news reports that China has almost managed to replicate EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet) lithography from ASML, one of the key areas in chipmaking that was beyond China’s reach. They used former ASML employees of Chinese descent, as well as less advanced technologies from ASML itself, Canon and Nikon.

This is the context in which one has to critique Trump’s 2025 US National Security Strategy. In summary, it shows a narrowing of America’s expansive self-image, the beginnings of a ‘Fortress America’ mindset and an ‘America First’ doctrine. The ‘promotion of democracy’ is downplayed (aka ‘regime change’, as we have seen in Bangladesh. Thank goodness!) and fighting other people’s wars (think Ukraine) has been de-emphasized.

It fits in very well with the G2 condominium idea, as it focuses on national interests and explicitly rejects globalism, elevates economic matters while suggesting the use of military might as an element of dealmaking, and asks ‘allies’ to shoulder more responsibility.

Europe is downgraded, China is the prime focus with an emphasis on deterrence (e.g., Taiwan), supply-chain resilience and balanced trade, the Indo-Pacific gets short shrift, and the emphasis is on the Americas as, so to speak, the US’s private playpen, harking back to the 19th century.

India gets almost no attention: it is mentioned four times as compared to 21 times for China, with the tone shifting from ‘strategic partner’ or ‘leading global power’ to a more transactional expectation of burden-sharing and reciprocity. The Quad is downplayed too. India will need to maintain multi-alignment (e.g., with Russia via RELOS agreements), diversify dependencies, and accelerate self-reliance. India is on its own, as I said in “The Abhimanyu Syndrome”. At least twenty-five years of wooing the US has gone down the drain. Back to the drawing board.

At the beginning of 2025, I must admit I was optimistic about Indo-US relations under Trump’s presidency. I did not think the G2 condominium would arrive so soon, especially under Trump, or that the eclipse of the US would be so sudden and so dramatic. India had at least one bright spot in 2025: the rapidly-growing economy, despite US tariffs. I really can’t see much that went well for the US. Truly an annus horribilis. In 1999, I wrote that that year was terrible for India, but 2025 may have been worse for the US, in my opinion.

Malayalam podcast created by notebookLM.google.com:

1800 words, 20 Dec 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by news18.com at https://www.news18.com/opinion/opinion-what-the-bjp-win-in-thiruvananthapuram-may-mean-or-may-not-9774658.html

As a native son, I believe the BJP’s 50/101 seats in the Trivandrum Corporation in the recently concluded local body elections is an interesting outcome. But it must not be taken in isolation, and one must accept that this is neither a breakthrough for the BJP in the deep south, nor a mere footnote in the CPI(M)-Congress duopoly that has been the hallmark of Kerala politics. There are a lot of local factors, but yes, perhaps there is an underlying, nascent realignment.

There is anti-incumbency: there used to be, like clockwork, one term for the UDF, one term for the LDF. But now, the CPI-M has been ruling for ten years in a row, and the voters may be fed up with them. In Trivandrum, for instance, the outgoing mayor, Arya Rajendran, who is in her 20s, has a well-deserved reputation for arrogance. Tellingly, she did not campaign in 2025.

But there is more.

There are at least four extraordinary factors at play here: One is the vanity that Kerala politics is somehow superior to politics elsewhere in (southern) India, because, you know, it is the 100% literate state. This is far from the truth. Mere literacy, that is, knowing the syntax of written language, does not guarantee you understand the semantics, that is, the ability to think critically rather than be gaslighted. The average Kerala voter is as easily manipulated as any other.

Second, regional tensions. Kerala consists of three distinct regions: northern Malabar, which was under British rule, which meant it was plundered and underdeveloped. It also is Muslim-dominated. Central Kochi, which was a moderately dynamic dynasty, and is Christian-dominated. Southern Travancore, which was under a strong dynasty (but came under the sway of the British), and is Hindu majority.

Third, the erstwhile consensus around ‘secularism’ is fraying: it is now increasingly seen as merely a shibboleth meant to hypnotize the Hindu community into caste-based internecine conflict and keep it a permanent underclass, with fewer rights than those of other religions. Hindus are still fighting 19th century battles in the 21st century. The shocking neglect, occasional desecration of, and outright large-scale theft from, major temples such as Sabarimala may now be turning into a bit of an issue for the lay Hindu.

Fourth, after half a century of left-wing politics, it is becoming increasingly clear to the average Keralite that it is being left behind in development and prosperity. At independence, Travancore in particular was far ahead of the rest of India in key metrics like infant mortality, female literacy, and infrastructure. But anti-business socialism has led to de-industrialization, forced migration of Keralites in search of jobs, and high inflation, while other states are passing Kerala by.

On top of all this, there is the rampant politicization of everything (for example, government jobs do not go to those who have high ranks in the State Public Service Commission selection exams, but to party cadres). There is a truly bizarre situation where two parties, both in the INDI Alliance all over the country (CPI-M and Congress), pretend to be rivals in Kerala, and do charades and shadow-boxing, although they do tactical voting to prevent the BJP from winning.

It startles me to hear that there is a Left (CPI-M) and a Right (Congress) in Kerala, according to pundits. In reality, they are an Extreme-Left party and a Far-Left party, respectively. Indeed, even the BJP, which is spoken of as Far-Right is a Center-Left party, so severely distorted is the discourse – the median is Far-Left.

To an impartial observer, the only way the Congress in Kerala can be termed a Right-wing party is that it appeases its vote-bank, the Christians, although the FC Nairs also traditionally vote for them. The Communists, whose rank and file are mostly made up of the OBC Ezhavas, increasingly are dominated by the needs of their Malabar Muslim vote-bank. So in a twisted sort of way, both these Left parties pander to the Conservative sentiments of these religious groups.

This has real-life consequences, which Travancore voters are seeing increasingly clearly. The last major investment in Trivandrum was the ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Center, which was required to be on the magnetic equator. After that, the National Institute of Technology went to Kozhikode (in Malabar). The Indian Institute of Management went to Kozhikode (in Malabar). The Indian Institute of Technology went to Palakkad (in Malabar). The AIIMS is also likely to go to Malabar or Kochi.

A metro system was given to Kochi, even though Trivandrum has an equal or better claim in terms of population size and other metrics. Successive UDF and LDF governments have sat on the proposal for Trivandrum’s metro (incidentally Kozhikode is also in the same boat). Trivandrum airport saw zero development for 40 years from 1960.

Staggeringly, the Trivandrum port (Vizhinjam) was also delayed for 40 years, even though the deepwater container transhipment port there is now on track to handle a lot of India’s container cargo, which now goes to Colombo. Instead, 4400 crores were spent on a container port at Kochi, which has only 8 meters draft and cannot compete with Colombo.

Trivandrum/Vizhinjam has 24 meters in depth, which means literally the largest container ship in the world, MSC Irina, with 24,000 containers on board, can and in fact has called at this port.

The LDF government twisted Adani Ports’ arm and moved their logistics park for Vizhinjam, which Adani runs on contract, 200 km away to Kochi! In addition, the road and rail approaches to the port, which are necessary for ‘gateway’ or upcountry containers from/to say Bangalore or Hyderabad, have been delayed for a long time over trivial land acquisition issues.

These lapses are glaring, and add up to step-motherly treatment for Trivandrum. There must be a lot of resentment among the voters here about this, because their real estate values would go up quite a lot if Vizhinjam’s business improves, and there will be jobs related to logistics, bunkering, cruise lines, and so on. Under the Sagarmala initiative, this is something that Trivandrum voters hope the Union Government will push forward, along with a proposed Tri-Services Maritime Command: thus both military and civil infrastructure may bring benefits.

Finally, the excesses against Hindu temples, which are ruled by the Devaswom Board, packed with party cadres who may well be hostile atheists, are getting exposed broadly. There is a tradition prohibiting the entry of women between 10 and 60 years of age (ie. of childbearing age) into the shrine, which the women devotees in Kerala are broadly okay with, and don’t feel particularly discriminated against. The Kerala government made a huge fuss over it, and attempted to smuggle in both non-believing women and non-Hindu women into the temple.

This has troubled some of the CPI-M’s traditional voters, for example the hitherto blase Ezhavas. As the attacks on Hindus continue, there is a bit of a counter-consolidation as well.

There is no end: there is the huge current scandal of the theft of gold from the temple doors and dwarapalaka statues in Sabarimala (along with similar desecration in Guruvayur). There is an ongoing investigation, which ought to, if pursued properly, implicate highly connected political players. But recently, there have been instances of prosecutorial misconduct that mean likely criminals get away with, er, murder.

Sowmya’s alleged murderer Charlie Thomas aka Govindachamy was let off death row, because the prosecutor did not make a good enough case. An actor, Dileep, who allegedly took out a contract for a thug to rape an actress in a moving car, was let off. You guessed it, the prosecution did not make a good enough case.

Incidentally, Christian churches with vast landholdings (a good bit of which was 99-year leases given during British days which has now, magically, turned into freehold), or Muslim mosques and other Waqf claimants rarely face the wrath of the State. Yes, there is a case wending its way through the courts about the peninsula of Munambam which is home to 600 families, mostly Christian fisherman, but is claimed in its entirety as a Waqf property.

A net reflection of all this is that urban Hindus have begun to rethink their political views. There is a strong urban-rural divide as seen in the just-conducted local body polls. The urban, so to speak, constituencies have seen the vice-like grip of the LDF diminish a bit, but they remain strong in the rural areas. This is borne out by conversations with the rural poor, who talk about kshema pensions, NREGA, and so on as benefits they get from the State government.

What this suggests is that anti-incumbency is playing its part; but the likely outcome is a return to the Tweedledum-Tweedledee “throw the rascals out every five years” syndrome of years past. The BJP is unlikely to make any quick inroads into this; they may not get many Assembly seats in 2026, and they are unlikely to get more than a couple of Lok Sabha seats in 2029.

Yet, as for obvious reasons there is a Right-ward lurch in Europe, with the rise of AfD in Germany, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, and Nigel Farrage’s Reform UK, and these parties are no longer easily put behind a cordon sanitaire, the BJP in Kerala is not any longer completely unelectable. The voters are beginning to see that it is not completely er… untouchable.

It will be a long, painful journey, but maybe in a decade or two, the BJP can become a realistic opposition party in Kerala. To do this in the extreme South, in the very bastion of the Communists, as well as in a State with very large non-Hindu populations, would be quite an achievement for them. We shall have to wait and see if they have the stamina and the staying power for this grueling odyssey.

Malayalam podcast of this essay by notebookLM:

1650 words, 15 Dec 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Let me admit up front that I like Rishab Shetty. A lot. I’d probably go see anything he makes, and I wish him well, because he is an actor with terrific presence. To be honest, I was blown away by his performance in Kantara, both as protagonist and director/writer. I had no idea about the bhoota-kola of Tulunadu, although I have seen the similar theyyam of nearby Malabar, and was suitably impressed.

Therefore I was disappointed and underwhelmed by the prequel Kantara Chapter 1, for a variety of reasons. I understand this is not the universal reaction to the prequel: in particular, young people I spoke with liked the esthetics, the special effects, the big budget production, and the expansive canvas of the spice trade, a large kingdom, and good cast including veteran Jayaram as the weary king, and Rukmini Vasanth as a suitably gorgeous but sinister princess.

But to me it came across as an untidy mishmash of various genres, with the principal purpose of creating a franchise: surely we can expect Chapter 2, Chapter 3 and so on. I don’t begrudge Rishab Shetty and his producer their success, especially as the original Kantara was a sleeper success on a tiny budget.

Warning: spoilers ahead.

My problems were manifold. The first was that the original Kantara hit me with the force of a hurricane, when the coming-of-age tale of the wild-boar-hunting-and-carousing Shiva takes a sudden and unexpected turn and he becomes, reluctantly, the bhoota-kola oracle, taking on the role of his father who disappeared, and his cousin who was murdered.

It was a revelation: a moment when a man turns into the Divine, in a wholly believable and entirely autochthonous, Dharmic tradition, a celebration of the presence of benign powers all around, a manifestation of a pantheistic world-view. It was one of the few recent films that powerfully put across a wholly Hindu perspective, which unfortunately is unusual in India.

As a child, I remember devotional and patriotic films in Malayalam, which engendered a certain affection for the traditions of one’s forefathers. And often the story-lines, from well-known literary works, were rooted in the local milieu. Over time, this has been dissipated, and replaced by unremarkable films that are technically quite good, but for lack of a better word, lack ‘soul’.

In general, this has been true of the dominant Hindi/Urdu language films as well: the narrative is some kind of a global, ‘liberal’, westernized, ‘modernized’ and deracinated tale, where in particular Hindus get short shrift. For example, a recent, highly-rated Malayalam film mined Kottarathil Sankunny’s Aithihya-mala, but turned the protagonists into people of other religions. There was another named 19th Century in which the recently-invented (in the 2010s) fiction of a ‘breast-tax’ on lower-caste women was turned into ‘fact’.

This sort of digestion of, and worse, denigration of, native tradition has been true of Hindi/Urdu films for a long time as has been amply and devastatingly recorded by the efforts of ‘Gems of Bollywood’ on twitter. Therefore it is refreshing when a few films offer a Hindu point of view, eg. Kantara, Bahubali, or the shatteringly powerful Baramulla. This is one reason I am loath to criticize Rishab Shetty too much, but I do have my own complaints.

One is that the Kantara Chapter 1 seems like a mish-mash of various ideas, borrowed from various sources. The origin myth of the hero Berme, where he appears as an abandoned child on a bed of leaves (and the presence of the computer-generated white tiger) may be a nod to the Sabarimala legend: Lord Ayyappa is a foundling, and he is sent on an errand to fetch tiger’s milk by the evil queen who hopes that he will die in that quest.

Then there is the battle of the good vs bad, which reminded me of the battle scenes from Bahubali, and indeed the dark-skinned barbarians from that film got a reprise here with the black-cowled evil sorcerer Kadapa tribe. And I wondered in passing if the very name ‘Kadapa’ was a reference to the Telugu stronghold of the proselytizing Christian Reddys.

Then there is the untidy story of the port city that the Kantara folks want access to, so they can sell spices to white people with no middleman. They also dragged in a superfluous white trader. Yes, the West Coast has been trading with the Middle East and points west for millennia via the Spice Route, but that seems irrelevant to the deep-forest-dwelling Kantara villagers.

In addition, there were cliched memes about slavery (of tribals) and exploitation by the rich and powerful. These came across as nods to the prevailing dogma of woke victim narratives. The remarkable thing is that slavery was virtually unknown among Hindus: the first textual and/or epigraphic examples of slavery in India were by a Christian church in Kerala (the Tarisapalli copperplate, 849CE) and during the Muslim invasions.

The characters were also hit and miss. There were the picaresque companions from the original film, including a vidushaka type who was silly in the original, but annoying here; so was the prince’s kinkara. Neither of them added much to the film, and could easily have been written out. The prince was so typecast from the moment you laid eyes on him – clearly a dissolute, useless fellow – that you knew he was going to be dispatched summarily.

I did like the princess. She was apparently born with paralysis in her hands and legs, and she was handed over to the sorcerer Kadapas, who cured her, but also (it is implied) turned her into a wily seductress, whose efforts to distract the hero (Berme) from his quest were, fortunately, futile. The old king was rather good, too. Rishab Shetty impresses as always with his physical presence, as well as his signature primal roar.

I missed the glowing varaha and the superb Varaha-roopam song which was so electric in the original Kantara. (I hear there were some copyright claims from a band in Kerala, but it baffles me that an old traditional song or tune could be copyrighted by some upstart.) There was a little piglet in one scene, but that was not enough. The VFX of the Brahma-rakshas was unsatisfying, and should have been left to the viewer’s imagination.

All in all, the prequel was a disappointment after the original Kantara, which was refreshingly unpretentious: it did not preach, nor did it explain – it just was, and it forced you to accept the reality of the demigods Panjurli and Guliga. In effect, you went into an alternate reality, along with the bhoota-kola dancer. There was no such staggering insight in the prequel Kantara Chapter 1. If you were expecting a spiritual high, as I was, you’d be disappointed.

If on the other hand, you were looking for light entertainment on a big canvas, you’d be just fine.

Thus my dilemma about the prequel: yes, it does tell a Hindu tale, and I once again wish Rishabh Shetty the best, but I wish it had left me feeling spiritually moved as the original did.

1200 words, 16 Nov 2025

The AI-based Malayalam podcast on this by notebookLM from Google.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by the Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/adani-s-under-fire-we-ve-seen-this-before-3783432

The repeated, withering attacks on the Adani group are getting to be tiresome, partly because they usually have no merit per se; and partly because the Western habit of weaponizing the narrative is now so evident. It is basically propaganda, with the pliant media manufacturing consent to support foreign policy.

In a recent column in the Financial Times, Janan Ganesh wrote: “Politics, not tech, makes the world go around”. He may have a point, but at the moment, it is the opposite: the breakneck generativeAI race, and China’s near-monopoly in rare earths, are fueling both trade wars and capitulation: for example, Trump said before meeting Xi that “the G2 will be convening shortly”. TACO, anyone?

I said during Biden’s days in “A US-China condominium dividing up the world between themselves”, that for the Deep State, a G2 would be a convenient (short-term) thing to do. Trump apparently has accepted that a) Chinese leverage is insurmountable, b) a division into spheres of influence would work best. Sadly, it would be disastrous for the US (and the Quad) in the medium term to make China Asia’s hegemon.

But it is happening. As BNP Paribas puts it in a research note quoted by the Financial Times, “[Washington]... is now dealing with a peer rival capable of imposing material economic harm on it — a relatively new position for the US and a development which, at least to us, confirms China’s ascendancy to global economic superpower status.”

It would be entirely rational for a G2 to prevent a third great power from rising, and India is the only candidate: Brazil, Russia, South Africa, the EU are handicapped in one way or the other, e.g. geography, resources, demographics, politics. Therefore the G2 are imposing a Thucydides Trap on India: wage economic (if not kinetic) war, and balkanize it.

Everybody has learned lessons from the recent past (“Confessions of an economic hit-man”, anyone?): how Japan was ruined via the Plaza Accord, how Britain lost its pre-eminence by debasing its currency, and how the US allowed itself to be systematically de-industrialized by China over the last 30 years. They are not going to let India grow, certainly not easily.

Thus Adani is a proxy for India. Mark Mobius, a legendary investor, said, “Investing in Adani is like investing in India”. That is not an exaggeration, because Adani has demonstrated the capability to deliver in more than one domain, especially in ports and airports (Disclaimer: I have a small position in Adani Ports). They have operations in Colombo, Haifa (Israel) and Abbot Point (Australia), which makes them a potentially major player in global shipping, not to mention their container ports at Mundhra and Vizhinjam (Trivandrum).

There have been several waves of attacks on the Adani group, the first in June 2021 alleging improprieties in investments by Mauritius-based funds; the second in January 2023 with the ‘bombshell’ Hindenburg (a short-seller) report alleging stock manipulation and accounting fraud; the third in November 2024, a US Dept of Justice allegation about bribery; the fourth in October 2025 by the Washington Post alleging the Indian government induced LIC to invest $3.9 billion in Adani firms.

When the Hindenburg report was publicized as the “largest con in corporate history” by pliant media like Reuters, FT and WSJ, I wrote that “The Adani Group may not be derailed by Hindenburg”. I also did a video conversation with Professor Narayanan Komerath on the topic.

In fact, in a “dog it was that died” outcome, it was Hindenburg that closed shop; Adani has recovered even after a second Hindenburg report accusing the SEBI chief as well.

Adani has been successful in their ports and energy businesses; they are doing well in airports; their efforts in green energy and in data centers (the new Google AI data center in Vishakhapatnam) may yet prove to be winners. Thus Adani has shown it can compete well in difficult infrastructure sectors. It is true that these need to align with government policies.

Which brings whispers of ‘crony capitalism’, which is rich coming from the US, where ‘robber barons’ like John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J P Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt created enormous fortunes primarily through cronyism. Have you heard the dictum “What’s good for General Motors is good for America”? Boeing, the Koch Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Big Tech are current beneficiaries of State munificence.

India has had its share of crony capitalists who provided citizens with shoddy goods at high prices. I don’t dare name them, but you know who they are. Every country supports its national champions: Japan’s zaibatsu, Korea’s chaebol, China’s State Owned Companies.

And recently J P Morgan Chase announced it is investing $1.5 trillion in US industries such as critical minerals, pharma, semiconductors, energy, drones, cybersecurity, AI and so on. Surely this is after consultations with and a go-ahead from the US Government. Similarly, it is neither sinful nor unusual for the Indian State to support dominant, effective players. More power to Adani!

800 words, 31 October 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

The third episode in the IITM Alumni Association Trivandrum’s live monthly Fireside Chats. Host Rajeev Srinivasan speaks with senior executive and academic Dr. Rajasree, the CEO of Trest Research Park, earlier VC of APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University and an IIT Madras alumna speaks on India’s semiconductor and electronics ecosystem, particularly addressing the India Semiconductor Mission and its goal of achieving self-reliance in the sector, spanning everything from design to manufacturing. Key topics explored include the nation’s strategy to focus on mature nodes (like 28nm chips) rather than cutting-edge technology, the Design Linked Incentive (DLI) program to support startups, and the potential for the growing electronics industry to offset job losses in the IT services sector due to factors like H1B visa fees and generative AI. Dr. Rajasree also shares insights into major investments by groups like the Tatas and projected timelines for the initial domestic chip production and packaging in India, expected around late 2025 to 2026.

AI-generated podcast on this fireside chat from notebookLM.google.com:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/hindu-americans-political-vulnerability-violence-h1b-bias-13936122.html

Chandra Mouli Nagamalliah, a 50-year old motel manager in Dallas, Texas, was brutally hacked to death and beheaded by a Cuban criminal illegal alien, in front of his wife and son. The murderer kicked Chandra’s head around in the parking lot, before picking it up and dropping it in a garbage bin. All this because of an argument about a washing machine.

This extraordinary incident got no airplay in the US, partly because it coincided with the murder of a conservative broadcaster, Charlie Kirk. There have been other acts of extreme brutality in the US: Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, was stabbed to death by a psychotic killer in a train. In December, Debrina Kawam was burned alive in a New York subway.

Violence is not unusual, but it hits home when a ‘model minority’ Hindu is killed in such a dramatic manner. There was also the unexplained death of Suchir Balaji, a whistleblower who used to work for OpenAI, who may have been silenced. 633 Indian students have died abroad in 5 years, including 172 in Canada and 108 in the US, according to India Today.

I worry about what all this means for the 2-3 million Hindu-Americans. I specifically speak of Hindu-Americans for good reason. Non-Hindus from India have other networks: Muslims and Christians join existing mosque and church groups; some Sikhs project Khalistani memes, falsely alleging religious discrimination in India, seek asylum, and shun Indian connections. Zohran Mamdani, a PIO, has strong Islamist support in his run for NYC Mayor.

Second, anti-Hindu noise in the US has gone up substantially, especially the allegation that Hindus practise caste-based discrimination. There was the California Bill SB 403, sponsored by Afghan-American State Senator Aisha Wahab, which the Governor vetoed. Now there is a new Bill SB 509 that also targets Hindus, and which has also passed the California Senate and Assembly. It was co-authored by State Assembly Member Jasmeet Bains.

Then there are the lawsuits. There was the infamous suit against Cisco Systems alleging caste bias by two Hindu ‘upper-caste’ managers against a ‘lower-caste’ employee. After years of acrimonious hearings, the Federal Court penalized the California Civil Rights Department for faulty prosecution; CRD withdrew the case against the two managers; the case against Cisco continues in arbitration. But this has led to copy-cat suits and a malign narrative against Hindus.

Another major lawsuit was against the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Temple in Robbinsville, NJ, the largest Hindu temple in the Western Hemisphere, again with accusations of caste-based discrimination. After years of wrangling, and accusations that an immigration lawyer had coerced some complainants, the DOJ and the US Attorney’s Office for New Jersey closed the criminal case on September 19th, finding no violations of federal law or worker exploitation. The civil case continues; the narrative against Hindus has been strengthened

There are leftists with Hindu names aplenty who are actively campaigning against Hindus and supporting people like the academic Audrey Truschke, a known anti-Hindu activist. This is true even among some people in India: for instance, Annapurna Roy won Best Director at the Venice Film Festival, and dedicated her win to women and “the children of Gaza”, never mind the Hindu women, children and men being severely oppressed in Bangladesh right next door.

There has been a massive spike in the anti-Hindu narrative online in the recent past; paradoxically because of their ‘model-minority’ nature: they work hard, obey the law, pay taxes, and get ahead in life. Hindu-Americans likely have the highest per-capita income of any ethno-religious group in the US (Indian-Americans at large do). This leads to envy, especially as the economy struggles and you need scapegoats.

That is reflected in attacks on the H1-B visa program, of which Indians are the biggest beneficiaries. There is the sudden imposition of a $100,000 “tax” on H1-B visas by President Trump. The net result of this is going to be an exodus to India and third countries, an echo of Idi Amin expelling Indians from Uganda.

On the one hand, a good bit of America’s competency in technology is supported by Indian engineers on H1-B visas (of course, there are Indian doctors and nurses and so on also on H1-B). On the other hand, US engineers don’t have much bargaining power (compared to, say, US doctors), so they have been complaining about foreign-born engineers for decades.

In addition to being part of the Trump Administration’s pressure tactics on trade, the H1-B noise harks back to early 20th century anti-Hindu and anti-Indian prejudice, when racism and religious bigotry combined to oppress immigrants. A century later, same wine, different bottle. I wrote in January about the compelling cases of Bhagat Singh Thind and Vaishno Das Bagai. They were, like Chandra Nagamalliah, real human beings, not just some statistics.

The murdered Charlie Kirk himself had explicitly called for reducing visas for “people from India”.

But there is a bigger, more general problem: Hindus generally seek wealth, not political power, ie the old Guns vs. Butter debate. The problem is that if you don’t have guns, the folks with the guns will take your butter. Hindus focused historically on wealth creation, and then were left flabbergasted when wave after wave of invaders came over the Khyber Pass or across the oceans, and just took the wealth.

It is the same in the US now: Hindus seek material advancement, not political power. Even the Hindu elected representatives said very little about Chandra’s tragic death. Vivek Ramaswamy, who had earlier emphasized his Hindu roots, was silent until prodded by online critics. Other prominent politicians were also quiet.

But other immigrant groups have made substantial progress in capturing political power. As an example, the entire city council in Hamtramck, Michigan, is Muslim. In the UK, Pakistani-origin people are in positions of power. In Dearborn, Michigan, the Muslim mayor, on September 9th, told a Christian priest that he was an Islamophobe and effectively urged him to leave the city.

Without political power, Hindus will be vulnerable. There will be sorry exoduses from various countries, and India should become the “nation of last resort” for PIOs. India should treat this as a version of the ‘1000 Talents’ program that China used to attract its diaspora, and create ways to utilize their skills to support economic growth. That needs a lot of planning and can be a win for the country, however traumatic it is for individuals.

Here is the AI-generated Malayalam version of this podcast, from notebookLM.google.com:

1000 words, 20 Sept 2025, updated 23 Sept 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-us-farm-distress-real-reason-for-trumps-tariff-tantrums/20250916.htm

There is breaking news that the trade talks between the US and India are on again. This means I was probably right that the harrumphing by President Trump and company was an opening gambit meant to soften India up for a deal that was beneficial to the US.

The whole “India is funding Russia’s war effort by buying oil” meme sounded like a red herring right from the beginning, because of the very many reasons why it is not true. Now the real underlying reason behind the full-court press by Trump aides Navarro et al seems to have surfaced: it is to strong-arm India into rescuing the American farmer.

It was an off-hand comment by an aide that gave away the farm (so to speak): US Commerce Secretary Lutnick’s assertion that India does not buy any corn from the US, in a September 14th interview to a US TV channel called Axios. Now this puts a whole new spin on things, because there is a crisis in US farming.

No nation can afford to hurt its farmers, for both commercial, and perhaps more importantly, social and cultural reasons. We have seen how Japan subsidizes its uncompetitive rice farmers because rice is so central to its traditional culture. We have seen (at least in the days when I still used to read the magazine) the Economist commenting on “wine lakes” and “butter mountains”, that is, excessive production of agricultural products in Europe. Much the same in the US.

If you over-produce, you need to find a buyer. That is the crux of the matter right now: the US used to sell 24 million metric tons of soyabeans, for example, to China every year, but after the tariff threats against it, China entirely switched its purchases to Brazil. So there’s a “soy mountain” in the US, and bankruptcies are mounting.

This is serious. On the one hand, the US has lost its pre-eminence in industry to China through foolishly allowing the slipping away of its entire productive capacity to that country in the pursuit of the elusive “China price”. Now, it is on the brink of losing its pre-eminence in agriculture as well, and that can lead to the loss of food security, and a host of other, surprisingly large, side-effects. I summarized the whole problem in a tweet:

It is indeed a systemic problem with many unintended consequences. On farm distress, there are several indicators: increased bankruptcies and farm liquidations/auctions, reduced farm loan repayment rates, and lower values for farmland, although farm profits have gone up temporarily because of US Department of Agriculture ad-hoc aid, not higher prices.

There are several reasons for this collapse: but the biggest is buyer power. Because of over-production and global surpluses, prices have fallen for many crops; and as mentioned above, the wholesale move of Chinese demand away from the US has left overflowing silos with no prospect of sales in sight. Result: prices fall sharply.

I have often felt that buyer power (one of Michael Porter’s famed “Five Forces”) is underestimated by many. Here it is in action. India seems to not understand that it is a big buyer of many commodities, and that gives it market power; so exercise it. On the contrary, India seems to view itself as a supplicant to big sellers. Not quite.

What the US appears to be doing is to force India to be “the buyer of last resort”, on whom their products can be dumped: after all, I suspect the idea is, 1.4 billion people have to eat something, so why not eat American corn? There’s a certain perverse logic to this, especially if you remember the PL-480 days when American corn was indeed an emergency food supply to food-deficit India: cornflour is to this day called “American mav” in Kerala. But I am pretty sure Lutnick has no idea of all this.

What is exercising the Trump lot is the fact that most of the farms are in solidly-Republican midwestern states (Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin). I remember driving through many of them on a 4,000-mile Boston-San Francisco road trip: there’s nothing but cornfields for miles and miles. And they could be a disaster for Trump in the mid-term elections in 2026.

Conversely, it does not occur to Trump aides that no Indian politician can afford to alienate his small farmers by bringing in American farm products, not to mention the cultural sensitivity to dairy products from er… non-veg cows. In an India that is largely self-sufficient in foodgrains these days, there is very little benefit in buying large quantities of foreign products. As an example, imports of oilseeds from ASEAN has decimated coconut farmers in Kerala.

The Iowa governor has been in India twice, once in late 2024, and once just last weekend, trying to induce Indians to buy corn. Similarly, the governor of Nebraska was in Japan this month trying to sell them ethanol from corn. This is interesting: I wonder if the sudden enthusiasm in India for E20 ethanol blended petrol has something to do with US pressure.

I am not a fan of ethanol blended petrol, because I think hybrid electric-petrol vehicles are a safer, better-tested alternative. But if the GoI is intent on E20, it may be better to buy corn ethanol from the US than to over-exploit water resources in India to grow sugarcane for the same. And maybe, just maybe, it will get Trump to back off from the shrill tariff cacophony.

But to go back to my tweet above, there are a lot of other reasons for India to be wary of American farm products. The gigantic subsidies in the US Farm Bill (of the order of $20 billion a year) encourages farmers to over-produce (corn mountains for example). This ends up being converted to High-Fructose Corn Syrup, which is then added to virtually every food product: just read the labels in US supermarkets.

I personally have seen the obesity epidemic in the US from the 1970s: people have become grossly fat, and diabetes levels, especially in inner-city ghettos of black and brown people, have gone through the roof as a result of all this sugar. #BigFood, that is all the packaged-food companies and fast-food companies, have engendered this transition, partly because of grossly manipulated "scientific" studies that blamed saturated fat and cholesterol.

The culprit, it turns out, was always excessive sugar in the diet. But in the meantime #BigMedicine and #BigPharma took full advantage by selling statins as cholesterol-lowering drugs, and now the new panacea is Ozempic-class weight-loss drugs. However, objective studies show that despite the US spending enormous amounts on healthcare (about 20% of GDP), the health outcomes are mediocre, and often worse than other high-income countries.

None of this makes it a good idea to import US farm products wholesale. What is worse, though, is the agricultural ecosystem which includes Genetically Modified Organisms. It depends on large-scale use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The Terminator Seed is terrifying: a Monsanto can turn off next year’s crop by refusing to sell new seeds, which is literally the “kill switch”. What you harvested this year will not germinate! Fiendishly clever, indeed!

Given all this, and despite the critical importance of agri-products in both US politics and economics, it is a bad idea for India to be bullied into taking the stuff on board. India would be buying new problems, and its native intellectual property is what needs to be husbanded.

There has already been tremendous erosion or digestion without recompense of these valuable IPs. A lot of traditional Indian rice variants have been spirited away to the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines; similarly A2 zebu, humped Indian cattle, have been decimated in India by Amul and others importing A1 Jersey-type cattle. Ironically zebu breeds like Bramah are thriving in Texas, Brazil etc. No need to let IP loss happen again.

It remains my belief that agricultural and dairy products are a red line for India that no Indian politician can cross. Sorry, Secretary Lutnick.

Here is the AI-generated Malayalam podcast from notebookLM.google.com:

1375 words, 15 Sept 2025 updated 16 Sept 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/what-fuels-anti-india-hate-in-the-west-13932053.html

I am personally very pro-America, yet I too have been baffled by the noises emanating from the Trump administration regarding India, particularly from one aide. Peter Navarro, apparently some trade muckity-muck, has had a field day accusing India of various sins. Apart from the entertainment value, this leads to a serious question: Why? And why now?

There is reason to believe, by connecting the dots, that there is indeed a method behind this madness. It is not a pure random walk: there is a plan, and there are good reasons why the vicious attack on India has been launched at this time and in this manner. Of course, this is based on open source and circumstantial evidence: I have no inside information whatsoever.

In this context, consider what is arguably the greatest political thriller of all time: "Z" (1969) by Costa-Gavras. It is based on a real-life political murder in Greece, where a popular left-leaning candidate for President was covertly assassinated by the ruling military junta.

The way the plot unravels is when the investigating magistrate, masterfully played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, notices a curious phenomenon: the use of a single phrase "lithe and fierce like a tiger", used verbatim by several eye-witnesses. He realizes that there was a criminal conspiracy to get rid of the inconvenient candidate, with plausible deniability. Words and phrases have subtle meanings, and they reveal a great deal.

Thus, let me bring to your notice the following tweets:

• “India could end the Ukraine war tomorrow: Modi needs to pick a side” (August 5)

• “Europeans love to whinge about Trump and to claim he is soft on Russia. But after 3 years it is Donald J Trump who has finally made India pay a price for enabling Putin’s butchery.” (August 6)

• Speaker: “[the American taxpayer] gotta fund Modi’s war”. TV Anchor (confused): “You mean Putin’s war?”. Speaker: “No, I mean Modi’s war”. (August 28)

Do you, gentle reader, notice a pattern?

Now let me tell you who the authors of these posts are. The first quoted an article by an officer in the British Special Forces, which means their covert, cloak-and-dagger military people.

The second was by Boris Johnson, former British Prime Minister. Johnson, incidentally, has been accused of single-handedly spiking ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine in 2022, when there was a possibility that the whole sorry spectacle of the war could have been settled/brought to a close.

The third is by the aforementioned Peter Navarro on an American TV channel, Bloomberg Television.

I don't know about you, but it seems to me that these three statements are lineal descendants of each other, one leading seamlessly to the next.

This is how narratives are built, one brick in the wall after another. In reality, India has not contravened any sanctions in buying oil from Russia, and in fact has helped maintain a cap on oil prices, which were rising because of the Ukraine-Russia war. But then who needs truth if narrative will suffice?

My hypothesis is that the anti-India narrative – as seen above – has been created by the British Deep State, otherwise known as Whitehall. First from the spooks, then from the former Prime Minister, and then virally transmitted to the American Deep State. It is my general belief that the British are behind much mischief (sort of the last gasp of Empire) and have been leading the Americans by the nose, master-blaster style.

Britain has never tasted defeat at the hands of Russia; while France (Napoleon) and Germany (Hitler) have. Plus the US Military Industrial Complex makes a lot of money from war.

A malignant British meme, intended to hurt Russia, is now turned on to India, which is, for all intents and purposes, an innocent bystander. Britain has had a thing about both Russia (“The Great Game”) and now India, and it was precisely why it created ‘imperial fortress’ Pakistan, with which to trouble, and if possible, hurt both.

Then there was the second set of tweets that took things one step further. Navarro, all warmed up, blamed “Brahmins” for “profiteering by buying Russian oil at the cost of the Indian people” in a broadcast on September 1. Why he would be bothered about the “Indian people” is a good question. But what was far more interesting, indeed hilarious, was the near-simultaneous, and absurdly wrong, set of tweets by a whole group of INDI Alliance mavens.

They ‘explained’, in almost identical words, that what Navarro meant was not “Brahmins”, but “Boston Brahmins”, a term coined in 1860 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, a doctor/essayist, to refer to traditional US East Coast elites, generally WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) who dominate the corridors of power in the US. Many claim to be descended from the original Pilgrims, Puritan extremists from Britain, who arrived in Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620.

They go to private (‘prep’) schools like Philips Exeter Academy, then Harvard or Yale, then Goldman Sachs, then Harvard Business School, and generally end up running the country as a hereditary, endogamous caste. It is very difficult for outsiders to marry into or enter this circle, although money helps. For example the Irish Catholic Kennedy clan is part of this caste because they made big bucks (partly by smuggling liquor during the Prohibition era), even though the Irish are generally looked down upon.

I have long claimed that America is full of castes like this, which include the investment-banker caste, the lawyer caste, the doctor caste: all go to the same schools, the same colleges, marry each other, etc. In fact they do form the kind of exclusionary group that the western narrative imputes to India jati-varna. Anyway that’s a long story, and that’s not the point: it is the tweets by, for example, Karti Chidambaram, Sagarika Ghose, Saket Gokhale, et al.

They were so ‘spontaneous’, so near-identical, and so outright idiotic that it is impossible that they came from anything other than a ‘toolkit’ supplied by the usual suspects: the regime-change specialists. And their claim was not even accurate: Navarro was indeed targeting Hindus and Brahmins, as is evident from the following tweet. There is no earthly reason for him to choose this image of Modi, other than that he was coached into doing so.

So we go back to the original question: why? Who hates Hindus so much?

There are a number of other incidents where Indians (in particular Hindus) have been targeted in various countries: Ireland recently; Australia some time ago and again now, see below an anti-immigration (particularly anti-Indian) rally on August 31st; Canada with its Khalistanis running amok (lest we forget, 40 years ago, they downed Air India Kanishka).

Let us note the curious coincidence that these are all countries where the British have influence: Canada and Australia are in effect their vassals. Ireland is not, and I suspect the British are hated there, but somehow in the last few weeks, this British prejudice has spilled over with “Irish teenagers” physically attacking Indians (including women and children). I wonder if the “Irish teenagers” are really British agents provocateurs.

So let’s put two and two together: who hates Indians, Hindus and Brahmins? Why, Pakistanis, of course. And they have been burned a little by Operation Sindoor. Pahalgam didn’t quite turn out the way they thought it would, considering it was scheduled during the India visit of J D Vance accompanied by his Indian/Hindu-origin wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance. That might explain why there’s a sudden explosion of social-media hatred by ISI and CCP bots against Indians.

Pahalgam was Phase 2 of the regime-change operation. By so visibly targeting and murdering Hindus in Pahalgam, the Pakistanis calculated they could induce massive rioting by Hindus against Muslims, which would be an excuse for “the rules-based liberal international order” to step in, exile Modi, and um… restore order, as in Bangladesh. The usual playbook.

Alas, “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley”, and Pakistan got a whipping instead, and some of their (US or China-supplied?) nuclear assets apparently went up in smoke. But make no mistake, the regime-change gang will redouble its efforts.

Phase 1 had been the 2024 elections where there were surprising losses by the BJP. Phase 3 is the ‘vote-chori’ wailing by the INDI Alliance: odd, considering nobody knows which passport(s) Rahul Gandhi holds. Phase 4 is the ongoing ‘Project 37’ in which renegade BJP MPs are supposed to bring down the central government.

Pakistan, and its various arms, including the Khalistan project, participate with great enthusiasm in these various phases. And for all intents and purposes, the UK has now become a Pakistani colony. Recursive master-blaster, as I conjectured: Pakistani-Britons control Whitehall, Whitehall controls the US Deep State. Here’s Britain’s new Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, in the words of a suddenly-awake Briton on September 6th.

An Emirati strategist, Amjad Taha, asked a valid question: why is there more terrorism in the UK than in the Middle East?

Wait, there’s more. Here’s a loudmouth Austrian who wants to dismantle India, long a Pakistani dream. And the map is by some Jafri, which sounds like a Pakistani surname. The Austrian also wants Rahul Gandhi to be the next Prime Minister.

Pakistan is itself unraveling, as can be seen in Balochistan which is in open rebellion. Their Khalistani dream is new, but Kerala and the Northeast as Islamist entities were standard memes even from Chaudhury Rehmat Ali who dreamt up Pakistan in the first place in the 1930s.

Pakistan just got a boost, however, with OSINT identifying a US C-17 (a giant military cargo plane) arriving to resupply Nur Khan Airbase. This raises the question again: were US personnel and assets decimated there by Indian missiles during Operation Sindoor? Is that why the US got so upset? Did Trump read the riot act to Modi, which led to the ‘ceasefire’?

Now did they replenish the F-16s etc that were blown up? See, no Pakistani losses!

I imagine this goes well with the newly announced “US Department of War”. I only hope the war target here is China, not India.

Speaking of US internal politics, it was utterly laughable to see Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s NSA, coming to the defense of India in Foreign Affairs. He directly engineered the vicious regime change in Bangladesh, but now he’s full of solicitous concern! Nice little U-turn!

From a global perspective, I believe that both China and the US are intent on knee-capping India. That is the logical response from an incumbent power when there is a rising insurgent power: the Thucydides Trap idea. It is a back-handed compliment to India that it is in splendid isolation, and has to pretend to rush into the arms of China because of Trump’s withering assault.

India will survive the hate; but Indian-Americans may find themselves in some jeopardy as the MAGA types are now focusing their ire on them.

It is, as I said, the Abhimanyu Syndrome: India is completely alone (the RIC lovefest is just marketing). That is the bad news, and also the good news. If everyone (the US Deep State, Whitehall, CCP, ISI, Soros) is against India, it means India matters. Someone said India is the ultimate swing state. No: India is the incipient superpower, the only one that can make it a G3 rather than a G2. Naturally, the G2 is not very happy to let one more into their cozy club.

1910 words, 7 Sept 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

The second episode in the IITM Alumni Association Trivandrum's live monthly Fireside Chats. Senior executive Sri CMA, formerly VP at Alstom T&D France and Board Member, Alstom India and Areva India, has been in charge of setting up factories in several countries, and has first-hand knowledge of geo-economics and manufacturing. He is also actively involved in analyzing international relations and geo-politics. In this live conversation, he provides insights into the (unintended) consequences of President Trump's tariffs, and answers specific questions from the audience. He considers the repercussions on India both tactically and strategically, and how the nation might respond, with diversification of markets, case-by-case analysis of sectors, and creating leverage with its own core competencies.

Here is the AI-generated podcast about this live chat:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

An edited version of this essay was published by Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/decoding-trump-s-tariff-tantrums-3694626, as the editor downplayed the ‘vote chori’ INDI alliance story and the atrocities by Tipu on Hindu Kerala.

Last month, I wrote here about India’s splendid diplomatic isolation, but my prediction became fact sooner than I expected, with President Trump’s withering attacks on India. Biden drove Russia into China’s arms over Ukraine; Trump seems intent on driving India into China’s arms; and Ukraine isn’t even Asia’s problem, but a likely Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be

There are at least four different ways in which one could rationalize the Trump position:

• A negotiating opening gambit to soften up India

• Frustration from the lack of leverage against Presidents Putin and Xi

• Part of a regime-change operation planned by the Deep State

• A desire to force manufacturing and investment to move back to the US

I hope it is a combination of 1 and 2, and that better sense will prevail before a mutually-beneficial Indo-US relationship is damaged beyond repair. However, there is a non-trivial chance that, with prompting by Britain’s Whitehall (which created Pakistan in the first place to keep India in check), the US Deep State has decided to target India.

I wrote a couple of years ago that the Deep State, intimidated by China’s rise, might accept a condominium with it, giving each a sphere of influence. China gets Asia and the Indian Ocean; the US gets the Americas, Europe and the Atlantic; and they share the Pacific. India, Japan, Australia (i.e. the Quad), and ASEAN become Chinese vassals. So like the Vatican-brokered Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 that divided the world between Spain and Portugal!

There is also the anti-Thucydides Trap, wherein the incumbent power (the US), instead of resisting the rise of the challenger (China), helped it grow, deluding themselves that China would be benign. However, both are now employing all possible means against new challenger India’s rise, including trying to balkanize the latter.

That is Scenario 3, the Deep State playbook of ‘color revolutions’ against governments they don’t like for whatever reason. The continuous INDI Alliance efforts to stir up linguistic or caste-based divisions in India, along with the recent ‘Vote Chori’ fuss to delegitimize India’s democracy, are part of the toolkit: declare a regime undesirable, then topple it. In 2024 they almost succeeded, but not quite. They will keep trying.

Scenario 4 makes a strange sort of sense. Trump realizes the US erred badly in relinquishing manufacturing to China, and wants to pull it back; also he has no interest in India becoming a new manufacturing power. Similarly, the ‘deals’ forcing Japan, the EU, Korea et al to invest billions of dollars in the US (and Ukraine, which lives on charity, has promised to spend $100 billion in the US!) are extortionate: a sort of neo-imperialism.

The effort to browbeat India into buying more US weapons is part of this: Trump aide Peter Navarro grumbled that India buys 36% of its armaments from Russia. He omitted to mention that this is down from 70+% a decade ago. Sadly, US armaments and aerospace products (e.g. the F-35 and Boeing 787s) are now seen as not so reliable.

The moral posturing about India’s purchases of Russian oil leading to deaths of Ukrainians is downright bizarre. It’s just business, Trump aide Scott Bessent, why repeat INDI’s Ambani-Adani mantra? Remember your own ‘robber barons’ and “What’s good for General Motors is good for America”? There are many examples of profit above morals.

One is the 1973 oil price crisis, when OPEC suddenly quadrupled crude oil prices, forcing a massive transfer of wealth from developing countries, quite likely causing starvation deaths. The US could have persuaded (or bullied) OPEC into preventing the price rise. But it didn’t. Why? Because those petro-dollars were recycled into buying American weapons. The Military Industrial Complex prospered. No morality there.

There is an earlier parallel. Tipu Sultan invaded Kerala in the 1780s with a reign of terror, massacres, loot of Hindu temples, pillage, forced conversions and so on. The British did nothing, despite a treaty with Travancore. After Tipu had amassed all the looted treasure in one place, the British killed him, and stole all of it themselves. The British came out smelling of roses because they killed a tyrant, and they had the loot. Two birds, one stone. No morality there, either.

Given all this, there’s one thing India needs to do urgently: gain leverage, a bargaining chip. China has rare earths, OPEC has oil. India should use the 100,000 H1-B folks who are likely to be forced out from the US to gain leverage through first-class software products.

760 words, 20 Aug 2025, updated 21 Aug 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-from-crisis-to-advantage-how-india-can-outplay-the-trump-tariff-gambit-13923031.html

A simple summary of the recent brouhaha about President Trump’s imposition of 25% tariffs on India as well as his comment on India’s ‘dead economy’ is the following from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Trump further imposed punitive tariffs totalling 50% on August 6th allegedly for India funding Russia’s war machine via buying oil.

As any negotiator knows, a good opening gambit is intended to set the stage for further parleys, so that you could arrive at a negotiated settlement that is acceptable to both parties. The opening gambit could well be a maximalist statement, or one’s ‘dream outcome’, the opposite of which is ‘the walkway point’ beyond which you are simply not willing to make concessions. The usual outcome is somewhere in between these two positions or postures.

Trump is both a tough negotiator, and prone to making broad statements from which he has no problem retreating later. It’s down-and-dirty boardroom tactics that he’s bringing to international trade. Therefore I think Indians don’t need to get rattled. It’s not the end of the world, and there will be climbdowns and adjustments. Think hard about the long term.

I was on a panel discussion on this topic on TV just hours after Trump made his initial 25% announcement, and I mentioned an interplay between geo-politics and geo-economics. Trump is annoyed that his Ukraine-Russia play is not making much headway, and also that BRICS is making progress towards de-dollarization. India is caught in this crossfire (‘collateral damage’) but the geo-economic facts on the ground are not favorable to Trump.

I am in general agreement with Trump on his objectives of bringing manufacturing and investment back to the US, but I am not sure that he will succeed, and anyway his strong-arm tactics may backfire. I consider below what India should be prepared to do to turn adversity into opportunity.

The anti-Thucydides Trap and the baleful influence of Whitehall on Deep State

What is remarkable, though, is that Trump 2.0 seems to be indistinguishable from the Deep State: I wondered last month if the Deep State had ‘turned’ Trump. The main reason many people supported Trump in the first place was the damage the Deep State was wreaking on the US under the Obama-Biden regime. But it appears that the resourceful Deep State has now co-opted Trump for its agenda, and I can only speculate how.

The net result is that there is the anti-Thucydides Trap: here is the incumbent power, the US, actively supporting the insurgent power, China, instead of suppressing it, as Graham Allison suggested as the historical pattern. It, in all fairness, did not start with Trump, but with Nixon in China in 1971. In 1985, the US trade deficit with China was $6 million. In 1986, $1.78 billion. In 1995, $35 billion.

But it ballooned after China entered the WTO in 2001. $202 billion in 2005; $386 billion in 2022.

In 2025, after threatening China with 150% tariffs, Trump retreated by postponing them; besides he has caved in to Chinese demands for Nvidia chips and for exemptions from Iran oil sanctions if I am not mistaken.

All this can be explained by one word: leverage. China lured the US with the siren-song of the cost-leader ‘China price’, tempting CEOs and Wall Street, who sleepwalked into surrender to the heft of the Chinese supply chain.

Now China has cornered Trump via its monopoly over various things, the most obvious of which is rare earths. Trump really has no option but to give in to Chinese blackmail. That must make him furious: in addition to his inability to get Putin to listen to him, Xi is also ignoring him. Therefore, he will take out his frustrations on others, such as India, the EU, Japan, etc. Never mind that he’s burning bridges with them.

There’s a Malayalam proverb that’s relevant here: “angadiyil thottathinu ammayodu”. Meaning, you were humiliated in the marketplace, so you come home and take it out on your mother. This is quite likely what Trump is doing, because he believes India et al will not retaliate. In fact Japan and the EU did not retaliate, but gave in, also promising to invest large sums in the US. India could consider a different path: not active conflict, but not giving in either, because its equations with the US are different from those of the EU or Japan.

Even the normally docile Japanese are beginning to notice.

Beyond that, I suggested a couple of years ago that Deep State has a plan to enter into a condominium agreement with China, so that China gets Asia, and the US gets the Americas and the Pacific/Atlantic. This is exactly like the Vatican-brokered medieval division of the world between Spain and Portugal, and it probably will be equally bad for everyone else. And incidentally it makes the Quad infructuous, and deepens distrust of American motives.

The Chinese are sure that they have achieved the condominium, or rather forced the Americans into it. Here is a headline from the Financial Express about their reaction to the tariffs: they are delighted that the principal obstacle in their quest for hegemony, a US-India military and economic alliance, is being blown up by Trump, and they lose no opportunity to deride India as not quite up to the mark, whereas they and the US have achieved a G2 detente.

Two birds with one stone: gloat about the breakdown in the US-India relationship, and exhibit their racist disdain for India yet again.

They laugh, but I bet India can do an end-run around them. As noted above, the G2 is a lot like the division of the world into Spanish and Portuguese spheres of influence in 1494. Well, that didn’t end too well for either of them. They had their empires, which they looted for gold and slaves, but it made them fat, dumb and happy. The Dutch, English, and French capitalized on more dynamic economies, flexible colonial systems, and aggressive competition, overtaking the Iberian powers in global influence by the 17th century. This is a salutary historical parallel.

I have long suspected that the US Deep State is being led by the nose by the malign Whitehall (the British Deep State): I call it the ‘master-blaster’ syndrome. On August 6th, there was indirect confirmation of this in ex-British PM Boris Johnson’s tweet about India. Let us remember he single-handedly ruined the chances of a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine War in 2022. Whitehall’s mischief and meddling all over, if you read between the lines.

Did I mention the British Special Force’s views? Ah, Whitehall is getting a bit sloppy in its propaganda.

Wait, so is India important (according to Whitehall) or unimportant (according to Trump)?

Since I am very pro-American, I have a word of warning to Trump: you trust perfidious Albion at your peril. Their country is ruined, and they will not rest until they ruin yours too.

I also wonder if there are British paw-prints in a recent and sudden spate of racist attacks on Indians in Ireland. A 6-year old girl was assaulted and kicked in the private parts. A nurse was gang-raped by a bunch of teenagers. Ireland has never been so racist against Indians (yes, I do remember the sad case of Savita Halappanavar, but that was religious bigotry more than racism). And I remember sudden spikes in anti-Indian attacks in Australia and Canada, both British vassals.

There is no point in Indians whining about how the EU and America itself are buying more oil, palladium, rare earths, uranium etc. from Russia than India is. I am sorry to say this, but Western nations are known for hypocrisy. For example, exactly 80 years ago they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, but not on Germany or Italy. Why? The answer is uncomfortable. Lovely post-facto rationalization, isn’t it?

Remember the late lamented British East India Company that raped and pillaged India?

Applying the three winning strategies to geo-economics

As a professor of business strategy and innovation, I emphasize to my students that there are three broad ways of gaining an advantage over others: 1. Be the cost leader, 2. Be the most customer-intimate player, 3. Innovate. The US as a nation is patently not playing the cost leader; it does have some customer intimacy, but it is shrinking; its strength is in innovation.

If you look at comparative advantage, the US at one time had strengths in all three of the above. Because it had the scale of a large market (and its most obvious competitors in Europe were decimated by world wars) America did enjoy an ability to be cost-competitive, especially as the dollar is the global default reserve currency. It demonstrated this by pushing through the Plaza Accords, forcing the Japanese yen to appreciate, destroying their cost advantage.

In terms of customer intimacy, the US is losing its edge. Take cars for example: Americans practically invented them, and dominated the business, but they are in headlong retreat now because they simply don’t make cars that people want outside the US: Japanese, Koreans, Germans and now Chinese do. Why were Ford and GM forced to leave the India market? Their “world cars” are no good in value-conscious India and other emerging markets.

Innovation, yes, has been an American strength. Iconic Americans like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Steve Jobs led the way in product and process innovation. US universities have produced idea after idea, and startups have ignited Silicon Valley. In fact Big Tech and aerospace/armaments are the biggest areas where the US leads these days.

The armaments and aerospace trade

That is pertinent because of two reasons: one is Trump’s peevishness at India’s purchase of weapons from Russia (even though that has come down from 70+% of imports to 36% according to SIPRI); two is the fact that there are significant services and intangible imports by India from the US, of for instance Big Tech services, even some routed through third countries like Ireland.

Armaments and aerospace purchases from the US by India have gone up a lot: for example the Apache helicopters that arrived recently, the GE 404 engines ordered for India’s indigenous fighter aircraft, Predator drones and P8-i Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft. I suspect Trump is intent on pushing India to buy F-35s, the $110-million dollar 5th generation fighters.

Unfortunately, the F-35 has a spotty track record. There were two crashes recently, one in Albuquerque in May, and the other on July 31 in Fresno, and that’s $220 million dollars gone. Besides, the spectacle of a hapless British-owned F-35B sitting, forlorn, in the rain, in Trivandrum airport for weeks, lent itself to trolls, who made it the butt of jokes. I suspect India has firmly rebuffed Trump on this front, which has led to his focus on Russian arms.

There might be other pushbacks too. Personally, I think India does need more P-8i submarine hunter-killer aircraft to patrol the Bay of Bengal, but India is exerting its buyer power. There are rumors of pauses in orders for Javelin and Stryker missiles as well.

On the civilian aerospace front, I am astonished that all the media stories about Air India 171 and the suspicion that Boeing and/or General Electric are at fault have disappeared without a trace. Why? There had been the big narrative push to blame the poor pilots, and now that there is more than reasonable doubt that these US MNCs are to blame, there is a media blackout?

Allegations about poor manufacturing practices by Boeing in North Charleston, South Carolina by whistleblowers have been damaging for the company’s brand: this is where the 787 Dreamliners are put together. It would not be surprising if there is a slew of cancellations of orders for Boeing aircraft, with customers moving to Airbus. Let us note Air India and Indigo have placed some very large, multi-billion dollar orders with Boeing that may be in jeopardy.

India as a consuming economy, and the services trade is hugely in the US’ favor

Many observers have pointed out the obvious fact that India is not an export-oriented economy, unlike, say, Japan or China. It is more of a consuming economy with a large, growing and increasingly less frugal population, and therefore it is a target for exporters rather than a competitor for exporting countries. As such, the impact of these US tariffs on India will be somewhat muted, and there are alternative destinations for India’s exports, if need be.

While Trump has focused on merchandise trade and India’s modest surplus there, it is likely that there is a massive services trade, which is in the US’ favor. All those Big Tech firms, such as Microsoft, Meta, Google and so on run a surplus in the US’ favor, which may not be immediately evident because they route their sales through third countries, e.g. Ireland.

These are the figures from the US Trade Representative, and quite frankly I don’t believe them: there are a lot of invisible services being sold to India, and the value of Indian data is ignored.

In addition to the financial implications, there are national security concerns. Take the case of Microsoft’s cloud offering, Azure, which arbitrarily turned off services to Indian oil retailer Nayara on the flimsy grounds that the latter had substantial investment from Russia’s Rosneft. This is an example of jurisdictional over-reach by US companies, which has dire consequences. India has been lax about controlling Big Tech, and this has to change.

India is Meta’s largest customer base. Whatsapp is used for practically everything. Which means that Meta has access to enormous amounts of Indian customer data, for which India is not even enforcing local storage. This is true of all other Big Tech (see OpenAI’s Sam Altman below): they are playing fast and loose with Indian data, which is not in India’s interest at all.

Data is the new oil, says The Economist magazine. So how much should Meta, OpenAI et al be paying for Indian data? Meta is worth trillions of dollars, OpenAI half a trillion. How much of that can be attributed to Indian data?

There is at least one example of how India too can play the digital game: UPI. Despite ham-handed efforts to now handicap UPI with a fee (thank you, brilliant government bureaucrats, yes, go ahead and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs), it has become a contender in a field that has long been dominated by the American duopoly of Visa and Mastercard. In other words, India can scale up and compete.

It is unfortunate that India has not built up its own Big Tech behind a firewall as has been done behind the Great Firewall of China. But it is not too late. Is it possible for India-based cloud service providers to replace US Big Tech like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure? Yes, there is at least one player in that market: Zoho.

Second, what are the tariffs on Big Tech exports to India these days? What if India were to decide to impose a 50% tax on revenue generated in India through advertisement or through sales of services, mirroring the US’s punitive taxes on Indian goods exports? Let me hasten to add that I am not suggesting this, it is merely a hypothetical argument.

There could also be non-tariff barriers as China has implemented, but not India: data locality laws, forced use of local partners, data privacy laws like the EU’s GDPR, anti-monopoly laws like the EU’s Digital Markets Act, strict application of IPR laws like 3(k) that absolutely prohibits the patenting of software, and so on. India too can play legalistic games. This is a reason US agri-products do not pass muster: genetically modified seeds, and milk from cows fed with cattle feed from blood, offal and ground-up body parts.

Similarly, in the ‘information’ industry, India is likely to become the largest English-reading country in the world. I keep getting come-hither emails from the New York Times offering me $1 a month deals on their product: they want Indian customers. There are all these American media companies present in India, untrammelled by content controls or taxes. What if India were to give a choice to Bloomberg, Reuters, NYTimes, WaPo, NPR et al: 50% tax, or exit?

This attack on peddlers of fake information and manufacturing consent I do suggest, and I have been suggesting for years. It would make no difference whatsoever to India if these media outlets were ejected, and they surely could cover India (well, basically what they do is to demean India) just as well from abroad. Out with them: good riddance to bad rubbish.

What India needs to do

I believe India needs to play the long game. It has to use its shatrubodha to realize that the US is not its enemy: in Chanakyan terms, the US is the Far Emperor. The enemy is China, or more precisely the Chinese Empire. Han China is just a rump on their south-eastern coast, but it is their conquered (and restive) colonies such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, that give them their current heft.

But the historical trends are against China. It has in the past had stable governments for long periods, based on strong (and brutal) imperial power. Then comes the inevitable collapse, when the center falls apart, and there is absolute chaos. It is quite possible, given various trends, including demographic changes, that this may happen to China by 2050.

On the other hand, (mostly thanks, I acknowledge, to China’s manufacturing growth), the center of gravity of the world economy has been steadily shifting towards Asia. The momentum might swing towards India if China stumbles, but in any case the era of Atlantic dominance is probably gone for good. That was, of course, only a historical anomaly. Asia has always dominated: see Angus Maddison’s magisterial history of the world economy, referred to below as well.

I am reminded of the old story of the king berating his court poet for calling him “the new moon” and the emperor “the full moon”. The poet escaped being punished by pointing out that the new moon is waxing and the full moon is waning.

This is the long game India has to keep in mind. Things are coming together for India to a great extent: in particular the demographic dividend, improved infrastructure, fiscal prudence, and the increasing centrality of the Indian Ocean as the locus of trade and commerce.

India can attempt to gain competitive advantage in all three ways outlined above:

• Cost-leadership. With a large market (assuming companies are willing to invest at scale), a low-cost labor force, and with a proven track-record of frugal innovation, India could well aim to be a cost-leader in selected areas of manufacturing. But this requires government intervention in loosening monetary policy and in reducing barriers to ease of doing business

• Customer-intimacy. What works in highly value-conscious India could well work in other developing countries. For instance, the economic environment in ASEAN is largely similar to India’s, and so Indian products should appeal to their residents; similarly with East Africa. Thus the Indian Ocean Rim with its huge (and in Africa’s case, rapidly growing) population should be a natural fit for Indian products

• Innovation. This is the hardest part, and it requires a new mindset in education and industry, to take risks and work at the bleeding edge of technology. In general, Indians have been content to replicate others’ innovations at lower cost or do jugaad (which cannot scale up). To do real, disruptive innovation, first of all the services mindset should transition to a product mindset (sorry, Raghuram Rajan). Second, the quality of human capital must be improved. Third, there should be patient risk capital. Fourth, there should be entrepreneurs willing to try risky things. All of these are difficult, but doable.

And what is the end point of this game? Leverage. The ability to compel others to buy from you.

China has demonstrated this through its skill at being a cost-leader in industry after industry, often hollowing out entire nations through means both fair and foul. These means include far-sighted industrial policy including the acquisition of skills, technology, and raw materials, as well as hidden subsidies that support massive scaling, which ends up driving competing firms elsewhere out of business. India can learn a few lessons from them.

One possible lesson is building capabilities, as David Teece of UC Berkeley suggested in 1997, that can span multiple products, sectors and even industries: the classic example is that of Nikon, whose optics strength helps it span industries such as photography, printing, and photolithography for chip manufacturing. Here is an interesting snapshot of China’s capabilities today.

2025 is, in a sense, a point of inflection for India just as the crisis in 1991 was. India had been content to plod along at the Nehruvian Rate of Growth of 2-3%, believing this was all it could achieve, as a ‘wounded civilization’. From that to a 6-7% growth rate is a leap, but it is not enough, nor is it testing the boundaries of what India can accomplish.

1991 was the crisis that turned into an opportunity by accident. 2025 is a crisis that can be carefully and thoughtfully turned into an opportunity.

The Idi Amin syndrome and the 1000 Talents program with AI

There is a key area where an American error may well be a windfall for India. This is based on the currently fashionable H1-B bashing which is really a race-bashing of Indians, and which has been taken up with gusto by certain MAGA folks. Once again, I suspect the baleful influence of Whitehall behind it, but whatever the reason, it looks like Indians are going to have a hard time settling down in the US.

There are over a million Indians on H1-Bs, a large number of them software engineers, let us assume for convenience there are 250,000 of them. Given country caps of exactly 9800 a year, they have no realistic chance of getting a Green Card in the near future, and given the increasingly fraught nature of life there for brown people, they may leave the US, and possibly return to India..

I call this the Idi Amin syndrome. In 1972, the dictator of Uganda went on a rampage against Indian-origin people in his country, and forcibly expelled 80,000 of them, because they were dominating the economy. There were unintended consequences: those who were ejected mostly went to the US and UK, and they have in many cases done well. But Uganda’s economy virtually collapsed.

That’s a salutary experience. I am by no means saying that the US economy would collapse, but am pointing to the resilience of the Indians who were expelled. If, similarly, Trump forces a large number of Indians to return to India, that might well be a case of short-term pain and long-term gain: urvashi-shapam upakaram, as in the Malayalam phrase.

Their return would be akin to what happened in China and Taiwan with their successful effort to attract their diaspora back. The Chinese program was called 1000 Talents, and they scoured the globe for academics and researchers of Chinese origin, and brought them back with attractive incentives and large budgets. They had a major role in energizing the Chinese economy.

Similarly, Taiwan with Hsinchu University attracted high-quality talent, among which was the founder of TSMC, the globally dominant chip giant.

And here is Trump offering to India on a platter at least 100,000 software engineers, especially at a time when generativeAI is decimating low-end jobs everywhere. They can work on some very compelling projects that could revolutionize Indian education, up-skilling and so on, and I am not at liberty to discuss them. Suffice to say that these could turbo-charge the Indian software industry and get it away from mundane, routine body-shopping type jobs.

Conclusion

The Trump tariff tantrum is definitely a short-term problem for India, but it can be turned around, and turned into an opportunity, if only the country plays its cards right and focuses on building long-term comparative advantages and accepting the gift of a mis-step by Trump in geo-economics.

In geo-politics, India and the US need each other to contain China, and so that part, being so obvious, will be taken care of more or less by default.

Thus, overall, the old SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. On balance, I am of the opinion that the threats contain in them the germs of opportunities. It is up to Indians to figure out how to take advantage of them. This is your game to win or lose, India!

4150 words, 9 Aug 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/the-abhimanyu-syndrome-india-and-its-isolation-3650402

Recent events have made it increasingly clear that India is utterly alone. I call this the Abhimanyu Syndrome, in honor of the teenaged Abhimanyu, who only knew how to enter the impregnable Chakravyuha, and who was then murdered, alone, against all Dharmic principles, by several powerful Maharathis.

India's possible rise as an economic and military power is being resisted tooth and nail by the incumbent major powers. This is natural: all 'insurgent' powers face this problem. India's rise will need some paradigm shifts, which may or may not happen.

China's rise was helped by two things: an industrial policy and inadvertent help by the US's managers and Wall Street who were seduced by the short-term appeal of the lower-cost 'China price'.

The ruthless industrial policy is a result of China's civil services being full of engineers who understand the near term. In the long run, it may or may not succeed because of second-order effects such as population implosion, environmental ruin and skewed investment decisions.

The US is now facing decline (and the EU has already begun a steep decline) for a variety of reasons, including natural cycles and the loss of comparative advantage in weaponry.

In this context, I wish I knew what paradigm shift, if any, will propel India to a G3 slot, but the general global churn, new technologies, etc might create an opportunity. In the meantime, India has to struggle alone, against a mass of hostile powers.

I read an article in a Sri Lankan newspaper that painted India as a tyrant, but China as a benevolent friend dispensing largesse. Yes, the same China that has grabbed Hambantota! And it called for a new SAARC, one minus India. This is the kind of propaganda that China and Pakistan are rolling out in the Indian subcontinent.

China has every reason to want to kneecap India, the only Asian power that can (and hopefully will) challenge its hegemonistic pretensions. Even the US doesn't: Obama anointed China as the guardian/manager, if not owner, of 'South Asia'. Spheres of influence, you see.

The US, in general, has been a disappointment. Many Indians expected, after Biden's antics with Yunus in Bangladesh, that Trump would be more in tune with Indian interests, partly because the US and India both need to keep China in check, and Trump wants to move more manufacturing out of China.

But that has clearly not happened. Instead, India has been in Trump's gunsights over trade (although India's surplus is small, and agricultural items that the US wants to sell are a serious no-no for India). Their embrace of Pakistan during and after Operation Sindoor has been inexplicable unless Trump has adopted pure Deepstate policy.

India cannot be a Chinese vassal (although it is in BRICS) and it doesn't want to be an American vassal though it’s in the Quad (its ties with Russia and strategic autonomy are too important). Thus India is squeezed; for instance, the recent threat by some NATO muckity-muck to impose Russia-related sanctions was sinister.

This could be both good and bad. Let’s face it, nobody likes a rising power (see Thucydides Trap). While the Sri Lankan paper glorifies China, let us remember that China has territorial disputes with literally every one of its neighbors, and most of ASEAN is deathly scared of them. That comes from hard power. If SAARC or G20 or somebody is worried about India, that is a good sign that home-grown military power is noticeable.

Everyone complains that India is not loyal to them. BRICS boosters grumble that India is a Western ‘mole’ that is preventing them from toppling the dollar and making the US irrelevant. Conversely, the Anglosphere complains that India is not sufficiently committed to them, as in not toeing their Ukraine line. This is as it should be: multi-alignment means India is not beholden to anybody, but will pursue its selfish interests first and foremost.

This is qualitatively different from the late lamented ‘non-alignment’ of Nehruvian days, which meant everybody disliked India for its moral posturing. Multi-alignment means India will engage with everybody, on its own terms. With the US, for technology and trade. With Russia, for weapons and oil. Even with China, despite China being India’s staunchest enemy, for electronic components. And even with perfidious Britain, as in the just-concluded FTA, which I personally consider pointless.

Thus the splendid isolation is a back-handed compliment: the rest of the world is anticipating the rise of India as a superpower; and superpowers have no friends, only interests. And remember, Abhimanyu died, yes, but his side won overwhelmingly.

780 words, 22 Jul 2025 updated 25 Jul 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-air-india-crash-how-to-spin-doctor-and-peddle-narratives-the-western-way-13912025.html

There has been a virtual masterclass lately in the creation and dissemination of biased narratives. Not only in the case of the ill-fated Air India 171 (Boeing 787, June 12, 2025) that crashed, but also in some other, unrelated instances. The age-old practices of "truth by repeated assertion" and "dubious circular references" as well as "strategic silence" have all been deployed in full force.

The bottom line with the Air India flight: there is reasonable doubt about whether there was mechanical/software failure and/or sabotage or possible pilot error. Any or all these caused both engines to turn off in flight. But the way the spin-doctors have spun it, it is now "official" that the commanding pilot was suicidal and turned off the fuel switch. Boeing, the plane maker, and General Electric, the engine maker, are blameless.

This is, alas, not surprising. It is in the interests of western MNCs to limit reputational damage and monetary loss related to their products. They do massive marketing by unleashing their PR agencies. We also saw how they protect themselves in other instances. A leaked Pfizer contract for their Covid vaccine insisted that if anything happened, it was the user's problem, not Pfizer's: there was no indemnity.

Incidentally, a report on July 19th said that the Pfizer COVID vaccine can lead to severe vision problems. Oh, sorry, no indemnity.

What is deplorable in the Air India case is that the AAIB, the Indian entity investigating the disaster, chose to release a half-baked preliminary report with enough ambiguity that a case could be (and definitely was) built up against the poor dead pilots. Any marketing person could have read the report and told them that it would be used to blame the pilots and absolve the manufacturers.

Besides, the AAIB report was released late night on a Friday India time, which meant that the western media had all of one working day to do the spin-doctoring, which they did with remarkable gusto. Meanwhile the Indian media slept. Whose decision was this? Clearly, Indian babus need a remedial course in public relations if this was mere incompetence. Of course, if it was intentional, that would be even worse.

There is a pattern. In earlier air accidents, such as the Jeju Air crash involving a Boeing 737-800 in South Korea in December, the pilots were blamed. In accidents involving Lion Air (Boeing 737 Max 8, 2018), China Airlines (737 200, 1989), Flydubai (737 800, 2016), ditto. I am beginning to believe that a lot of Asian pilots are poorly trained and/or suicidal. Ditto with the F-35 that fell into the ocean off Japan.

Truth by repeated assertion is a powerful force for gaslighting the gullible

I wonder what excuses we’ll hear about the Delta Airlines Boeing 767 whose engine caught fire in the air after take-off from LAX on July 20th. The pilots didn't die so they will speak up. Besides, they were westerners. I am eagerly awaiting the spin on this.

I also noticed with grim amusement how the BBC, WSJ, Bloomberg and Reuters and so on were busy quoting each other to validate their assertions. This is a standard tactic that India's distorians (see Utpal Kumar's powerful book 'Eminent Distorians') have perfected: B will quote third-hand hearsay from A, then C will quote B, D will quote C, and before you know it, the hearsay has become The TRUTH. But if you wind it back from D to C to B to A it becomes, "I hear someone told someone that xyz happened". Out of thin air, then.

There is also the lovely tactic of strategic silence. It has been used to un-person people who ask inconvenient questions. It has also been used to defenestrate inconvenient news. Just days ago, under the Deepstate-installed new regime in Syria, hundreds of minority Druze were brutally massacred. There was video on X of armed men in uniform forcing Druze men to jump off tall buildings, and desecrating their shrines.

Similary, there is a brutal reign of terror, rape, murder and thuggery against Hindus, Buddhists and others under the Deepstate-blessed regime of Mohammed Yunus in Bangladesh: a clear genocide. Neither Syria nor Bangladesh gets any headlines. There are no loud human-rights protests as in the case of Gaza. This is not news. It is un-news.

"Manufacturing Consent" all the way.

India is particularly vulnerable to this gaslighting because Indians consume a lot of English-language 'news'. Scholars have long noted how the US public has been maintained in a state of ignorance so they could be easily manipulated. The same is true of the Indian middle class. So there is yet another reason to do less in English. Fooling, say, the Chinese or Japanese public is a lot more difficult.

The fact is that even though Indians may be literate in English, they do not understand the context and the subtext of what is fed to them by the likes of The Economist, NPR, The Financial Times, the New York Times, etc. The best way I can explain this is the 100+5 analogy in the Mahabharata: they may fight with each other on domestic matters, but Anglosphere and Deepstate are in cahoots when it comes to international matters.

Things are both getting better and getting worse. On the one hand, social media and its imprint on generative AI mean that it is ever easier to propagate fake news (in addition to deepfake audio and video, of course). On the other hand, despite the problem of charlatans and paid agents provocateurs getting lots of eyeballs, the large number of Indians on social media may push back against the worst kinds of blood libel against India and Indians, of which there's plenty these days often created by bots from 'friendly' neighbors.

This is a serious matter indeed. One solution is to do a version of the Great Chinese Firewall and ban wholesale the worst offenders. Indeed, a few of the vilest handles have been ejected from X. However, the pusillanimity with which notorious Pakistani handles were unbanned, then re-banned after outrage, shows there's something rotten in the Information Ministry. Almost exactly the same as the unbanning of Pakistani cricketers, then rebanning after outrage. Is there anybody in charge?

Information warfare is insidious. Going back to the Air India case, I think the families of the maligned pilots should sue for gigantic sums for libel and defamation. The sad state of the Indian judiciary may mean that, unfortunately, this will not go far. However, there is precedent: Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore used to terrorize villainous western media by suing them in his courts. They learned to toe the line.

If this tactic does not work, India should eject the hostile media. The Indian market is increasingly important to western media (not vice versa) because soon there will be more English-reading consumers in India than in the Five Eyes Anglosphere. I should say that in quotes because as I said above, most Indians are blissfully unaware of the hidden agendas, and naively believe them. But "Judeo-Christian" culture is very different from Dharmic.

I keep getting emails from the New York Times with tempting offers to subscribe to them for something really cheap like Rs. 25 a month. They need Indian readers. I have been shouting from the rooftops for years that one of these charlatan media houses needs to be kicked out, harshly, with 24 hours notice to wind up and leave. As in the Asian proverb, "kill the chicken to scare the monkeys". The monkeys will notice, and behave. Otherwise the information warfare is just going to get worse.

1290 words, Jul 22, 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-zohran-mamdani-and-the-coming-crisis-for-hindus-in-america-13908482.html

I have long felt the Deep State works on a single playbook in its foreign policy: regime-change, or what is colloquially called ‘Color Revolutions’. It is a simple routine: in some remote country, declare the ruling dispensation to be mad dogs, and shoot them, metaphorically if not in reality. Anoint a ‘friend’ as the new chief. All hail to him/her! The pliant media goes along.

There have been innumerable such plays all over the world, and most of the time, the results have been bad to disastrous for the country in question. Just look at Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, and Syria for recent examples. Iran, too, when Mossadegh was toppled because of, what else, oil: BP was annoyed at him for nationalizing Iranian oil.

As an aside, I have wondered why Deep State did not orchestrate a color revolution against the Nehru Dynasty. On the face of it, there were plenty of reasons to do so: Jawaharlal’s embrace of the Soviet Union, Indira’s defiance regarding East Pakistan, and so on. So why didn’t they topple the Dynasty and install a puppet, as they did with Mohammed Yunus in Bangladesh?

Maybe India was just too unimportant. Or maybe, just maybe, the Nehru Dynasty was in fact the Deep State puppet already in place. Was Jawaharlal hand-picked, and didn’t even know?

So is Zohran Mamdani’s rise the first Color Revolution in the US? A friend claimed that it wasn’t, and that Barack Obama was the first. That is a debatable point, but one could argue that Obama 1 & 2, and Obama 3 (Biden’s term) were the worst presidencies in US history.

While there have been many good opinion pieces written about Mamdani’s rise and rise, for instance by Jaggi and Avatans Kumar, I would like to focus on the broader implications of what Deep State might achieve by rolling out a Color Revolution in its own backyard. It’s one thing to mess up a far-off country, and entirely a different thing to screw up your own premier city. This is a high-risk (and presumably high-return) strategy for Deep State.

Of course, the UK Deep State (aka Whitehall) may well be leading the US Deep State by the nose. I called it a “master-blaster” relationship, hat tip to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

This color revolution possibility is not something I invented out of thin air, I give due credit to, among others, San for noting this possibility, along with many other unusual things about the Mamdani campaign, including its connection to Soros, as well as the uncompromising religious bigotry and use of dog-whistles against, for instance, Jews and Hindus.

So Zohran Mamdani is worth watching, and so is his father, Columbia Professor Mamdani, who wrote something alarming in his 2004 book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror: see an excerpt below that seems to justify suicide bombing as a tactic. Of course, he may just have been doing an academic analysis, and surely, what the father said cannot be attributed to the son, but we can wonder about early influences on Zohran.

Beyond the personal proclivities of the man and family, there is a mixture of Islamist radicalism and extreme-left radicalism in Zohran Mamdani’s background. Some have called his rise a victory for the Red-Green Alliance, which is of significance to India, because here too we have often seen such a combination in play.

Besides, it’s notable that Mamdani has never said a word about atrocities committed on Hindus in Pakistan/Bangladesh or even in India, though he’s quick to make up atrocity literature alleging “Gujarati Muslims have been wiped out” in India. About 10 million Gujarati Muslims may like to differ.

Amazingly, the very people whom Mamdani is supposed to be emancipating, the underclass blacks and other low-income residents of NYC, did not vote for him. His victory in the Democratic primary came from young, well-off whites and “Asians” (the same Asians as in the UK?), and unions. That itself is telling.

The bigger question, though, is how this relates to the eclipse of the West. I take the UK as Exhibit A. There was a recent article in the Economist magazine about how Britain is now a cheap country. In other words, the per capita income has fallen, and British assets are valued low, because there is a general perception of malaise, partly because manufacturing has collapsed.

The headline is precious. It reminds me of the subtitle to Stanley Kubrik’s “Dr Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”. Right on, cheers, tally-ho!

It was hugely entertaining to also listen to an Economist podcast which suggested that a “services-led economy” would be the UK’s savior. Raghuram Rajan, take a bow. Necessity being the mother of invention, I suppose. There is not a single product of British manufacturing that anybody wants (with the possible exception of Rolls-Royce aircraft engines). They were able to dump their inferior goods on defenseless colonies (read: India) but those days are over.

They are now apparently depending on services (e.g., their journalism, which, with its clipped accents, impresses Americans, but is available to the highest bidder. The word “Presstitutes” leaps to mind). In addition, IT services, it seems, given their convenient time zone. And cheap IT labor. Yes, direct threat to India. Wipro, Infosys, TCS, I am sure are paralyzed with fear.

The UK is, in many ways, the canary in the coalmine. Its precipitous decline is related to the fact that it is a small island off northwest Asia, whereas of course the US is a continent-sized country with massive resources. But the other factors: the previous holder of the global reserve currency, the previous dominant superpower, etc., are relevant to the US.

To be honest, I have no idea what the UK’s elites are thinking, because their current trajectory is going to end in disaster. As I have said before, they have fancied themselves as dealmakers extraordinaire, with Whitehall leading the world in mischief. But they were too clever by half: their homeland is collapsing. I don’t mind, it’s schadenfreude time, but I wonder what 3-d chess they are playing. I wonder if the US Deep State has a clue that the US could end up like the UK.

The one thing that has sustained the UK in the last few decades is their financial services. But with the LIBOR scandal and Brexit, that game is also moving on: to Frankfurt, Singapore, Dubai (and eventually I guess GIFT City, India). The City of London, the name of the financial district, has been decimated. This is a warning to Wall Street in New York City.

Another warning comes from California in general, and San Francisco in particular. Once the most appealing of American cities, it has been turned into a fetid, dangerous place full of yes, “street-shitters” and fentanyl addicts. The main culprit has been rule by left-wing extremists who put in place the ingredients for terminal decline: for instance, a moratorium on prosecuting any property crimes worth less than $950, which led to the hollowing out of retail downtown.

I am not saying New York City is a pleasant place especially compared to what San Francisco was (I lived for a long time in the suburbs of both, so I have personal experience) but there is surely a lot that can go wrong with socialism of the Mamdani variety. Exhibits A, B, C: Venezuela, Cuba, etc.

What is of more immediate concern to Hindus is that the US will become more dangerous for them. As it is, the amount of racial hatred and animosity towards brown Hindus has grown perceptibly, aided by social media ‘influencers’ who are likely paid by ISI/CCP/Deep State. There is also the element of envy, as Hindus have risen to high positions, mostly by way of hard work and smarts. In analogy with Jews, this envy can turn into poisonous bigotry. We have seen how Kristallnachts develop. And then Final Solutions.

The UK has seen, along with the growth of its Muslim population (“demography is destiny”) a concomitant level of animosity and violence against Hindus: see Leicester; and the British establishment is so afraid of Muslims that they will not take any steps to curb their acts. This is leading to clear and present danger for Hindus. We have seen this movie before.

In addition to the increasing animosity towards H1-B holding Indians, who are predominantly Hindus, a victory for Zohran Mamdani will basically make it clear to US Hindus that their days are numbered, and that the US may rapidly follow the UK into societal and economic collapse. It’s a sobering thought. Do we have a Plan B?

1330 words, 15 Jul 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by first post on Jul 14 at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-whats-driving-trumps-u-turns-13906527.html

There were two good reasons to support Donald Trump for President of the US: one, that he did not go to war in his first term, and two, that he was the very antithesis of the Deep State-controlled former President Biden.

Alas, just less than six months into his re-incarnation as the 47th President, there is reason to wonder if the first claim is no longer accurate: the Ukraine war is dragging on, and so is the Gaza war; Trump’s role in the India-Pak skirmish was murky; and he got the US into the Iran-Israel war as a belligerent; so it’s hard to portray him as anti-war any more.

On the other hand, almost all the initiatives Trump came up with (although in characteristic bull-in-the-china-shop fashion) that could have potentially damaged the Deep State are now being rolled back. It appears the Deep State is back in charge.

Consider the much-ballyhooed trade war with China. Personally, I thought the goal of bringing manufacturing back to the US was laudable, although difficult. We saw a whole lot of saber-rattling. But after all the smoke settled, it appears that China, the purported target of the tariff wars, is now sitting pretty with a trade deal that sets 55% tariffs (including a universal 10%, 20% because of fentanyl, and 25% left over from Trump’s first term, according to grok).

In other words, Trump folded because the Chinese were holding his feet to the fire over rare-earths etc, where they have a quasi-monopoly. The rude meme TACO (I will not spell it out here, but you can look it up) was current for a while.

There has been a series of little things that together show that Trump, despite all the bluster, is not that much in control. It is likely that the Deep State has co-opted him, on what grounds we will have to wait and see. The Deep State is nothing if not resourceful. It may be blackmailing him, or it may be dangling crypto profits, or a Nobel Peace Prize in front of Trump. Who knows what other carrots and sticks it wields.

The abrupt departure of Elon Musk, and the equally abrupt demise of DOGE was a clue that something was going on. What started with a lot of public support has been quietly trashed. It is obvious to anyone that the Deep State has entrenched itself through sweetheart deals and indirection (eg. USAID as a mechanism for distributing goodies to pals) to the extent that official US foreign policy is merely an inconvenience for the Deep State’s actual policies.

So now the Deep State is rampaging again, and it has defeated Musk. We saw disturbing signs over the last few weeks, pretty much ever since Musk was defenestrated. There was the tilt towards Pakistan during the 4-day skirmish, followed by the embrace of Field Marshall Munir. Yes, it is true that this can be explained away with the idea that American nuclear material is being held by US troops on Pakistani soil.

Those who are worried about India’s long-term interests were naturally shocked by this volte-face, but it just goes to show that everybody pursues their national interest, friendships be damned. India is beginning to learn that truism, and not getting involved in everybody’s problems, as it were clutching its pearls, clucking and lecturing as in the old Nehruvian days. This is definite progress. India no longer looks like a laughing stock (despite the “pajeet” “smelly” type propaganda unleashed against it, presumably by the CCP and Deep State.)

Then came the humiliation of Tulsi Gabbard, the handpicked Director of National Intelligence, whom Trump contradicted directly in regards to intelligence about the Iranian nukes. After that, there was the Iran-Israel 12-day war; India consoled itself that the Trump embrace of Munir was because the US needed to have Pakistan available for US sorties into Iran.

After the Iran Israel war, there has been the curious spectacle of the Epstein Files that disappeared. Attorney General Pam Bondi who had earlier said she had the files on her desk is now forced to eat her words. FBI Director Kash Patel is made to look silly. Exactly why would that be? There are dark rumors about who’s on the Epstein list, but, ok, they’re just rumors.

This reminds me of the incredible circus over Hunter Biden’s laptop. Everybody knew it was highly compromised, but the FBI stonewalled all investigations. Instead, it peddled the prurient fiction of the Steele dossier. Diversionary tactics, I suppose.

And oh, by the way, how come the FBI has not breathed a word about Thomas Matthew Crooks who shot Trump on the campaign trail exactly a year ago on July 13th, and whose assassin bullet missed Trump’s cranium by millimeters? It’s hard to believe that he was an innocent lone wolf. Who was funding him? I contend it was the Deep State. John Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby all come to mind. So do Robert Kennedy and Sirhan Sirhan.

The sad fact of the matter is that, despite a promising start, Trump now appears to be bogged down in distractions like the Nobel Peace Prize (dear Norwegians, just give it to him and let’s just move on. After all, you gave it to warmongers Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, Theodore Roosevelt, Barack Obama. Trump is almost in the same illustrious club.)

The U-turns on tariffs and trade show that Trump is beginning to see the reality that he cannot wish away de-industrialization, as King Canute memorably learned when he ordered the waves to cease and desist. His goal of bringing back manufacturing to the US is laudable, but it is not clear if that will happen in more than a token manner. The reality of being held hostage by China’s supply chain is also dawning on him. 30 years of fecklessness in allowing China to run riot are now coming home to roost.

Dedollarization is happening as well. While I don’t believe certain doomsday scenarios about precipitate American decline, recession and collapse, it is possible the US will become less of a solitary colossus throwing its weight around. It is this prospect of multi polarity, and the determined pursuit of national interests that India should focus on. The Deep State is inscrutable, and it apparently now has Donald Trump in thrall to itself.

1050 words, 8 Jul 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-west-asia-hostilities-will-resume-again-only-question-is-when-13903341.html

West Asia is again on the boil. Well, to be precise, it has been on the boil for a very long time, but we have the additional spectacle of the Iran-Israel war. Despite the ceasefire, which I hope does hold, there is a lot here that should concern all of us based on the geopolitical and geo-economic fallout.

There are at least three issues of interest: the geopolitics, the war tactics, and the impact on the rest of the world.

Geopolitics

It would be fair to say that much of the turmoil in the region dates back to British (and to a lesser extent French) meddling in the 20th century, for instance the Sykes-Picot Act, or the antics of TE Lawrence. Britain’s broader actions—contradictory promises (Balfour), repressive mandates, oil-driven interference, and botched withdrawals—sowed division, resentment, and conflict that shaped the region’s 20th-century chaos. Many of these issues, like sectarianism in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, persist today.

The nations Britain created with arbitrary lines marked on a map made no sense because they ignored ethnic, tribal, and religious realities, sowing seeds for future conflicts. Indians know all about this: the same sort of random map-making in the Indian subcontinent led to extraordinary misery (the Radcliffe Line, created in just five weeks, created East and West Pakistan with little attention paid to ground realities, using outdated maps and census data).

The British Deep State (let us call it Whitehall for short) has lost much of its clout, but it has been leading the American Deep State by the nose in what I referred to as a “master-blaster” relationship. And the latter has a rather clear SoP: there needs to be constant wars to feed the Military Industrial Complex, and so they will arrange for wars, which will lead to a complex money-laundering operation, with petrodollars being whitewashed through the IMF etc and ending up in the coffers of Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Palantir, and friends.

It is notable that one of President Trump’s main claims to fame in his first Presidency was that he scrupulously avoided going to war, in sharp contrast with his predecessors over the last several decades, all of whom had started or indulged in one war or the other. It appears that this time, though, the US Deep State has managed to co-opt Trump into its warmaking agenda, which, incidentally does not disqualify him for a Nobel Peace Prize: see Kissinger or Obama.

What has happened in this 12-day war is that it became a stalemate, for all practical purposes. Neither Israel nor Iran can fully defeat the other, as neither has the resources to continue. A good metaphor is a boxing match, where evenly matched pugilists are both exhausted, covered and blinded with blood, and can hardly stand on their feet. The referee calling a halt is a blessing for both of them.

Iran has, for years, shouted hair-raising slogans about obliterating Israel, although it is not clear how much of this was rhetoric, considering Uncle Sam’s support for the latter makes the latter quite powerful. This sloganeering was supplemented by proxy allies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, all of whom have been capable of mischief. Plus there is the nuclear bomb.

Israel set out to tame Iran on all these fronts. Their goals were to deprecate, if not destroy, Iran’s nuclear capability, defang the proxies, and impose a regime-change on the country. Let us remember the Stuxnet incident of 2010 when a computer virus was introduced into the Iranian centrifuges that are used for uranium enrichment, causing many of them to disintegrate. The assaults on Nataz, Fordow and Ispahan (much like Israel’s raid on Iraq’s Osiraq reactor long ago) were intended to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program altogether.

With the US’ help, it appears as though there has been serious damage to Iran’s weapons capabilities, although there are rumors that 400 kg of highly enriched uranium was smuggled out just before the bunker-buster strikes via B-2 bombers on the fortified, underground sites.

Among Iranian proxies or force-multipliers, its so-called Axis of Resistance, Hamas has been severely degraded, with top commanders eliminated (notably Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh) and its tunnel network in Gaza largely inoperable. Hezbollah leader Hasan Nazrallah and several key aides have been targeted and killed. The Houthis have escaped relatively unscathed, although the Americans were bombing them.

On the other hand, it may not be possible to effect regime change in Iran. There seems to be a standard playbook of so-called ‘Color Revolutions’, wherein a ruler is replaced by someone close to the West through what is portrayed as a “popular uprising”. The Ukraine Maidan Revolution that placed Zelenksy in power, the Bangladeshi coup that brought Yunus to power, and the “Velvet Revolution” are examples.

But one of the earliest examples was the CIA/MI6 coup in Iran that overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and brought Shah Reza Pahlavi back to monarchical power. And the reason: Mossadegh had nationalized the Iranian oil industry, and freed it from the clutches of British Petroleum. The 1979 coup by the mullahs succeeded because the Shah was unpopular by then. Iranians, despite widespread opposition to Khameini, probably don’t want the Shah dynasty back, or for that matter someone else chosen to rule them by outsiders.

There was also a fairly strange set of events: just as it is said the Iranians were allowed to spirit their uranium away, the Iranians seem to have given notice of their attacks on US bases in Qatar etc. (allowing the US to move their aircraft and personnel), and, strangest of all, a social media post by Trump that appeared to approve sanctions-free Iranian supply of oil to China!

Thus there are some pantomime/shadow-boxing elements to the war as well, and some choreography that is baffling to the impartial observer. Geopolitics is a complex dance.

War tactics

The Israeli assault on Iran started with shock and awe. In the first phase, There was a massive aerial bombing campaign, including on Natanz. But more interestingly, there was a Mossad operation that had smuggled kamikaze drones into a covert base near Teheran, and they, as well as anti-tank missiles degraded Iranian air defenses. Mossad also enabled successful decapitation strikes, with several top commanders and nuclear scientists assassinated.

This phase was a big win for Israel, and reminded one of the continuing importance of human intelligence in a technological age. Patiently locating and mapping enemy commanders’ movements, managing supply chains and using psychological tactics were reminiscent of how Mossad was able to introduce the Stuxnet worm, and use pagers as remote explosive devices.

In the second phase, the two were more evenly matched. Israel’s Iron Dome was unable to deal with sustained barrages of Iranian missiles, as no anti-missile system can be more than 90% effective. Both began to suffer from depleted stocks of arms and ammunition. Thus the metaphor of two grievously wounded boxers struggling to stay on their feet in the ring. It took the bunker-busting US B-2 bombers in the third phase to penetrate deep underground to the centrifuges, but there is still the possibility that Iran managed to ship out its fissile material.

We are now in a fourth phase: both parties are preparing for the next round of kinetic warfare.

The lessons here were once again the remarkable rise of UCAVs or drones as weapons of war, and the continued usage of high-quality human intelligence. It is rumored that Israeli agents had penetrated to high levels in the Iranian military hierarchy, and there was allegedly a high-level mole who was spirited away safely out of Iran.

Both of these are important takeaways for India. The success of India’s decoy drones in the suppression of Pakistani air defenses will be hard to repeat; the Ukrainian drone strike against Russia’s strategic TU-44 and other strategic bombers, which were sitting ducks on the ground, shows us what drones can do: India has to substantially advance its drone capability.

India’s counterintelligence and human intelligence suffered grievous blows when various personalities, including a Prime Minister, a Vice President, and the head of RA&W all turned hostile, with the result that India’s covert presence in Pakistan will have to painfully recreated again. Perhaps India also does not have a policy of decapitation strikes. Should it?

Impact on the rest of the world, especially India

In general terms, it’s hard to declare an outright non-loser in this war, except possibly China, because it is the one player that seems to be quite unaffected: its saber-rattling on Taiwan continues unabated. Russia lost, because it had been viewed as being an ally of Iran; it was unable to do much, enmeshed as it is in the Ukraine mess. Israel and Iran both came out, in the end, looking weakened, as neither could deliver a fatal blow.

The US got kudos for the B-2 bombers and the bunker-busters, but it is not entirely clear if there was some kind of ‘understanding’ which meant that Iran is still not that far away from being able to build its nuclear bomb. Indians will remember how President Reagan winked at Pakistan’s efforts to nuclearize with Chinese help, and issued certificates of innocence.

Pakistan in particular, and the Islamic Ummah in general, took a beating. Instead of expressing Islamic solidarity with Iran, it turns out Pakistan was quite likely opening up its air bases for possible US strikes on Iran. That would explain why Indian strikes on Pakistan’s Nur Khan air base alarmed the Americans, who may have been bulking up their presence there partly as a way of opening a new front against Iran.

None of the other Islamic powers, with the possible exception of Turkey, paid more than lip service to Iran’s troubles, which was interesting to note. The Sunni-Shia schism holds.

The worst outcomes were averted: the nightmare scenarios, in order of seriousness, would have been a) World War 3, b) nuclear bombs being dropped on one or more of the belligerents, c) a broad war in West Asia, c) the closing of the Straits of Hormuz and a serious spike in energy prices.

From the point of view of a nation like India, it demonstrated, yet again, that superpowers have their own rationale of amoral transactional relationships with other countries. India, as an aspiring superpower needs to internalize the fact that foreign policy is the pursuit of war by other means, and there are only permanent interests, not permanent friends. Instead of the highfalutin’ moralizing of the Krishna Menon and Jawaharlal Nehru days, what India needs is the pursuit of its own national interests all the time.

In this context, both Israel and Iran are useful to India. There is a billion-dollar arms trade between Israel and India (and Israel long ago offered to destroy Pakistan’s Kahuta nuclear reactor with India’s help, but shrinking-violet India refused). Today India is Israel’s biggest arms buyer, with products ranging from Phalcon AWACS to Barak missiles to Harop and other drones, with Hermes 900 drones co-produced in India and exported to Israel.

As for Iran, India’s investment in Chabahar port is a strategic counter to China’s CPEC and Gwadar port in Pakistan. It enables India to avoid Pakistan in its trade to Afghanistan and Central Asia. It is also a node on the International North South Transport Corridor, using which India can connect to Russia and Europe. It cuts time and cost of shipping to Europe by 30% as compared to the Suez Canal. India has invested more than a billion dollars in Chabahar.

Besides, India used to be a big customer for Iranian oil, but that has been cut to near-zero from 20+ million tons a year because of US sanctions on Iran. If and when sanctions are lifted, India will have an interest in buying Iranian oil again. India has interests in both Israel and Iran, and it should continue to maintain its good relations with both.

Nevertheless, West Asia remains a tinderbox. Hostilities will resume again, the only question is when. Iran will not give up on its nuclear ambitions, and as with Pakistan, some nuclear power will proliferate to it sooner or later, quite possibly China. The grand ambition to topple Iran’s mullahs is not likely to come to fruition. Israel will continue to be beleaguered. Status quo ante, after the current round of noise dies down.

2075 words, 1 Jul 2025

The AI-generated podcast in Malayalam from notebookLM.google.com

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/let-s-make-our-own-planes-3607351

June 23rd was a very sad anniversary: it was exactly 40 years ago that Air India Kanishka, Flight AI 182 (Montreal-London-Delhi), a Boeing 747, was blown up in the sky off Ireland, killing all 329 on board. There has never been closure, because the Canadian government stonewalled the investigation into how alleged Khalistani terrorists on their soil perpetrated one of the worst airline disasters in history.

The black box and cockpit voice recorder were recovered, and confirmed a loud explosion and sudden loss of communications and an explosive decompression, consistent with a bomb in baggage. Separately, two baggage handlers at Narita were killed when another bomb linked to the same terror group exploded on the ground on flight AI 301 on the Toronto-Tokyo-Bangkok-Delhi route.

On June 12th, 2025, the as-yet unsolved crash-landing of AI 171 (Ahmedabad-London) killed all but one of 242 on board, and at least 35 people on the ground, as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner failed just after take-off. The black box has been recovered, and India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau was able to decode it. The detailed results will take another couple of weeks. Fortunately, the black box didn’t have to be sent to the US because they would have an incentive to exonerate Boeing.

Indeed there is already a media narrative of a) incompetence of the Indian pilots, b) poor maintenance by Air India. While there have been previous complaints about broken seats and entertainment systems, there was a clear objective to limit reputational damage to already beleaguered Boeing. Whistleblower reports have long suggested shoddy manufacturing practices especially on jets earmarked for delivery overseas.

Boeing appears to be an engineering-driven company that was ruined as the focus shifted to bean-counting and finance, ever since they took over McDonnell Douglas in 1997, but paradoxically allowed the latter’s cost-cutting managers to dominate. Instead of innovating, they now tend to recycle old designs. A 2022 Netflix documentary, “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing”, is scathing in its accusations.

India is building the infrastructure for significant growth in air travel, to the extent that the hostile Financial Times mocked it with a story titled “Air India crash tests Narendra Modi’s ambition to get his country flying”, blaming Air India and the airline regulator (but not Boeing).

All this has implications for India, considering that Air India ordered 220 Boeing aircraft and another 350 from Airbus, while Indigo ordered 500 Airbus planes. That’s many billions of dollars. The obvious question is: why isn’t India making these commercial aircraft? Surely aerospace is a growth sector for India? Yes, there will be offset-based sub-assembly manufacturing, and maintenance operations, but why not India’s own passenger aircraft?

Brazil’s Embraer, Russia’s UAC and China’s COMAC are eyeing the cosy Airbus-Boeing duopoly. Strategic autonomy suggests India should also strive for its own design.

There are military reasons too. Warfare is changing, and drones and missiles are becoming more important, though fighter aircraft remain critical. India is developing the Tejas and the newly-approved AMCA, but there is the salutary tale of the indigenous HF-24 Marut, phased out because of underpowered engines, inadequate infrastructure, and poor coordination between HAL, the IAF, and the government; also no private sector involvement and the lure of imports.

India has to build its own fighter jets, and especially jet engines like Kaveri: India is last in line for foreign engine-makers, and anyway, they keep the kill switches. India may be able to sell fighter jets to many countries, along with the battle-tested BrahMos, Lakshya and Akashteer, so spending on them is an investment with likely returns.

There is still the siren-song of the US F-35, the Russian Su-57, and so on. There is, ironically, a British-owned F-35B sitting, forlorn, in the rain, on the tarmac at Trivandrum airport since June 15th. It has a) fuel issues, b) hydraulic problems with STOL, c) other problems. This $100+-million jet may end up having to be hauled back in a big transport plane, unable to take off on its own. Local trolls advertised it on OLX for a mere $4 million for scrap.

British specialists were flown in, but couldn’t fix it. They await Americans now. Obviously, even the closest allies do not get full technology transfer.

Let us also remember that the first F-35 built under license by Mitsubishi in Japan ended up in the Pacific Ocean. The pilot, who died, was blamed for ‘spatial disorientation’, not Lockheed Martin. The black box was damaged, so the story ends there.

Suffice to say that in both civil and military aircraft it is time for India to get its act together.

775 words, 29 June 2025

The AI-generated podcast based on this essay is here.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

The massive attack by Ukrainian forces on very far off Russian airbases using lots of stealth and amazing subterfuge is destined to be a classic military operation. There are good reasons to believe this was not done by Ukraine on its own, and possibly not even by major European powers such as France (via Napoleon) and Germany (via Hitler), both of which have been humbled by Russia in the past, or even Sweden. The needle of suspicion falls on Britain, as well as the US Deep State (as distinct from President Trump, who has been trying to get this war over and done with). Cui bono? It’s only NATO and the MIC that need war and permanent war.

A wounded Russia will react and harshly. What might they use? Surely their hypersonic Oreshnik missiles that basically cannot be defended against. And given this is a Pearl Harbor moment for Russia, they could well argue that Hiroshima and Nagasaki set a precedent. We might be in for World War III, just like the previous two were both European wars as well, which entangled the rest of the world

As for India, it is double jeopardy, as World War III is not in India’s interests, nor is the chance that China is the entity that might benefit from an American focus shifting from the Indo-Pacific to the European theater. Besides, it is deeply worrying that an operation of this scale was pulled off in Russia, which has its own internal fifth columns. India has this is spades: those who are in India, and who have a declared attitude of animosity towards the Indian nation. Human intelligence needs to be tightened (remember the large number of spies, honey-trapped soldiers, social media influencers etc. that came out of the woodwork in the wake of Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor).

These are scary questions. Among them is how one can deal with drone swarms, possibly using Electro Magnetic Pulses (though that has secondary problems).

Overall, these are frightening times.

4 June 2025

AI-generated podcast based on this podcast, from notebookLM.google.com:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by the Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/op-sindoor-how-we-won-and-lost-3566189

There are no clear wins in wars these days, especially when terrorizing populations, or nuclear blackmail, is the goal. Pakistan’s war manual may well be The Quranic Concept of War (1979) by Brigadier S K Malik,with its pithy statement: “Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end itself… Terror is not a means of imposing a decision on the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose on him.” Notably, this book has a forward from General Zia-ul-Haq, their then President.

In War From the Ground Up (2012), Emile Simpson, a former British Army officer, argues that modern wars often lack binary outcomes due to their political and informational complexity. Thus you could both win and lose a war, and that’s what Operation Sindoor’s outcome is.

On the plus side, India won a clear military victory. India leveraged its integrated air defense, long-range missiles, global positioning satellites and drone decoy technology to achieve aerial dominance. This enabled India to make pinpoint strikes, unchallenged, first on terrorist enclaves, and then on Pakistani military sites, including, it is said, nuclear storage silos.

India surprised most observers, because it was not only through expensive imported fighter jets that it deprecated Pakistan’s offensive capabilities, but also indigenous drones, loitering munitions and cruise missiles. India needs strategic autonomy, because foreign suppliers, and supply chains, are not dependable. They keep the kill switches, and can turn off the spigot.

India may well have ushered in a step-change in modern warfare itself, an age where drones and missiles tilt the balance rather than fighter jets, although the latter continue to remain key. Maybe it is sufficient to have slightly less advanced jets like the Tejas and the upcoming AMCA rather than procuring top-end F-35s, Su-57s etc. But there is a caveat: fighter jet engines. India must get its Kaveri engine working, for self-reliance.

India also established strategic red lines: terrorist attacks will henceforth invite disproportionate and military retaliation because there is a military-terrorist nexus, with Pakistani soldiers cosplaying as terrorists, exchanging uniforms for long shirts, loose pants and beards, as a way of sub-critical harassment with plausible deniability.

Furthermore, Pakistan’s nuclear threat has been defanged. India’s ability to hit their nuclear command center and two of the entrances to their storage facility in the Kirana Hills, suggest that their nuclear assets, if any, are disabled. Besides, there are rumors that warheads are not in Pakistani hands, but American or Chinese. That stands to reason, because otherwise Pakistan would likely have proliferated them to Iran, Turkey and non-state actors such as Hamas.

So what are the negatives? The biggest is that this skirmish has not put even a dent in Pakistan’s use of terrorism as state policy. Indeed, the next encounter with terrorists has already taken place in Kishtwar on May 22nd, exactly one month after Pahalgam, with one Indian soldier killed. Terrorism and war with India continue to be the raison d’etre of the Pakistani state.

India comprehensively lost the narrative war. Operation Sindoor is portrayed in the Western media on Pakistan’s terms (including the usual bogey of ‘nuclear war’), and their claims of shooting down 5-6 Indian jets are accepted as the truth. Many Pakistanis are embedded in Western media outlets, and that is not accidental. As they say, you can wake up a sleeping person, but not someone who is pretending to be asleep.

In that sense, the all-party delegation visiting various capitals is an exercise in futility, because the West is not interested in India becoming a peer-level competitor: the G2 with China is bad enough, who wants a G3 with India as well? Also, just as the EAM told Europe that their (Ukraine) problem is a European problem, the West sees India’s problems as not theirs.

Pakistan’s ability to internationalize the issue is a failure for India’s stance that Kashmir is a bilateral issue. Fortunately, nobody actually cares, including the UN or its Security Council.

A major failure for India was that it could have, but did not, capture any territory, which would have been a devastating blow to Pakistan’s amour propre, and would have made “Field Marshal” Munir a laughing stock. India errs on the side of caution, and a large-scale intrusion does have problems with hostile civilians and stretched supply lines.

But surely the Haji Pir Pass could have been recaptured: it was needlessly given away in Tashkent in 1966. It is a major route of infiltration for terrorists, its commanding heights dominate Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and it cuts the Uri-Poonch distance from 282km to 56km.

Alas, a resounding military victory has been morphed into a stalemate.

795 words, May 27, 2025

AI-generated podcast from notebookLM.google.com:

Now AI-generated podcast in Malayalam from the same:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-india-fights-alone-narrative-wars-western-gaslighting-and-a-missed-opportunity-13891339.html

From the 1st of May until the 20th I was traveling in the US, and thus had to depend on western media (mostly Twitter/X) for news about Operation Sindoor and the aftermath. It was self-evident that there was no point in reading things like the NYTimes, Wapo, the Economist, etc. because one look at their headlines confirmed that they were “manufacturing consent”.

Soft Power

Given the difference in X posts that I read in the US and those in India, I think the algorithms were deprecating posts for me in ways that are hard to detect. In other words, there is a narrative war where India has no say, but lots at stake. India’s soft power is seriously wanting. Joseph Nye, the academic who popularized that phrase, passed away this week: following in his footsteps, it behooves India to make a concerted attempt to improve its story-telling.

It faces an uphill battle, because Western, especially American, media has shown an ability to gaslight at scale in three major stories in the recent past: the COVID panic, the “Trump-is-a-Russian-stooge” meme, and the “Biden is mentally sharp as a tack” story. They are good at it, have no love lost for India, and so India needs a long-term plan to get its own propaganda story out, for instance developing an Al-Jazeera-style global footprint or an X-style social medium.

The entire Western narrative, for self-serving purposes, continues to be against India, for good reason: they do not wish to see India grow into a peer-level competitor at the G3 level. In this, both China and the West are of one mind, and it shows. Besides, the West has every incentive to try to block India from becoming a major arms exporter: they would prefer India to continue to be one of the biggest importers, preferably from them.

Narrative warfare is a Western specialty, as I said in Information Warfare, Narrative-Building: That Kind of Warfare. In addition to kinetic warfare, India needs to up its game here too. Narratives have real-life consequences.

The Pakistanis have been quite successful in their own narratives, riding on Western media: here is an example from the Nikkei (which owns the Financial Times) from a Pakistani journalist. This is typical of the stories created by Pakistanis and amplified by western media: basically that India took a major hit, with five or six high-end aircraft downed by Pakistani/Chinese weaponry. The story was repeated so many times that it essentially became the Truth.

A step change in aerial warfare

My personal belief is that India won a victory on the ground and in the air, humiliating Pakistan, attacking it at will and exposing its Chinese armaments as below-par. Some thoughtful neutral experts support this view: See Calibrated Force and the Future of Indian Deterrence. India also demonstrated surprising competence in the new age of electronics-based warfare. It may no longer be expensive fighter jets (and by extension, aircraft carriers) that tilt the balance, but missiles, drones and integrated air defense.

This must be emphasized. There are periodic step-functions in warfare that render earlier, victorious technologies/processes less valuable: this is similar to disruptive innovation, where the ‘insurgent’ firm nullifies the apparent advantages of the ‘incumbent’ firm. Often that means a point of inflection. An example is the arrival of the longbow in medieval times that made hitherto unstoppable heavy cavalry stumble. Another is the arrival of air power itself.

Today there may be another point of inflection. Experts have suggested that warfare going forward will be software-driven, including drone swarms that can autonomously reshape their formations (reminiscent of the murmurations of flocks of starlings). Presumably, there will be plenty of predictive AI built in as well. Given India’s poor track record in software products, it was generally assumed that India would not do so well in such a new environment.

In reality, there appears to have been a clever integration of indigenous and imported technology to create an “iron dome” of sorts against Pakistan’s Chinese missiles, of which an advanced variant, PL-15, was apparently shot down intact.

More interestingly, it appears that Lakshya and Banshee drones were programmed to masquerade as Rafales, Sukhois, etc. by emitting their radar signals, thus attracting enemy fire towards themselves. This might explain the claims of five or six Indian aircraft shot down by Pakistan, whereas in reality they may have simply shot down the phantom, mimic drones

The implications are large: in effect, India was able to attack Pakistan at will: video evidence shows significant damage to terrorist sites in the first round, and to military sites in the second round, including to key Pakistani air bases, as well as, it is said, the entrance tunnel to the nuclear storage facilities in the Kirana Hills. Indian air dominance appears to have forced the Pakistanis to beg for US support to suggest a cessation of hostilities.

This skirmish was proof in the heat of battle for India’s indigenous weapons, especially the BrahMos (although of course that is a joint venture with Russia). It may result in a number of serious queries from prospective customers especially in Southeast Asia, who will be interested in battlefield performance against Chinese missiles and aircraft. This would be a win for India’s arms industry.

Conversely, there is a singular sore spot: fighter jets. For a variety of reasons, most especially the fact that the Kaveri engine has not been allowed to complete its testing and development phase, India is still dependent on others for advanced fighters. And this is just fine as far as they are concerned, because the Americans want to sell F-35s, the French want to sell more Rafales, and the Russians want to sell Su-57s.

Here’s a twitter comment by a military historian who suggests that India’s fighter jets are inadequate. He deleted his further comment that indigenization is fine as industrial policy, but it doesn’t work for advanced weaponry. This is a typically sniffy attitude towards India, which is grist to the mill for the Chandigarh Lobby’s successful efforts to trash local weapons and gain lucrative middleman deals for foreign weapons.

Strategic Dilemma: To push on or not

There is also a strategic dilemma. India has an unfortunate habit of wasting its soldiers’ hard-won victories at the negotiating table due to bad political calculations. The epitome of this is of course, Indira Gandhi’s 1971 give-away of 93,000 Pakistani PoWs in exchange for essentially… nothing. There is some reason to wonder if something similar happened in 2025 as well. A tactical victory was possibly converted into a stalemate, and the old era of hyphenation and the nuclear bogey has returned.

What we saw in 2025 was that the Pakistanis were taken by surprise, and India had a massive advantage. But now that cat is out of the bag, Pakistanis and Chinese will regroup and figure out corrective tactics. Thus India has, to use an American expression, “shot its wad”, and the element of surprise is gone forever.

The end game for India is the dissolution of Pakistan into four or five statelets, which, one hopes, will then concentrate on Pakistani Punjab as the root of all their troubles. In that case, they will keep each other occupied, and India can live in peace without regular terrorist attacks. Of course, that may be a pipe-dream, given the Ghazwa-e-Hind formula many entertain, but the collapse of the Pakistani state is anyway desirable for India.

Should India have continued its offensive? Forget the murky issue of the nuclear assets in Sargodha. Should India have moved the Line of Control forward into some areas, perhaps into Gilgit-Baltistan (with Sharda Peeth and the Kishenganga) and up to the Jhelum River in Pak-occupied Jammu and Kashmir? The problem though, is that once you start moving past the border posts, you have hostile civilians to contend with, and your supply lines start getting stretched.

Even though it is tragic to let go of an opportunity to thrash an enemy that’s on the back foot, and Pakistan will inevitably use the truce to rearm itself and come back ever stronger (the Treaty of Hudaybiyah is not a meme in the Islamic world for nothing), it is not clear to me what India could have done to militarily make the LOC irrelevant and make Pakistan implode, especially in the context of American pushback.

The role of the US

Why was there pressure from President Trump? One of the things I observed during my US stay is the total absence of DOGE and Elon Musk from the headlines after Trump’s 100 days, very contrary to their ubiquity early on. Similarly, the security implications of Trump’s recent embrace of Syria’s President Al-Sharaa contradicts Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s views on Syria as evidenced by her tweets. Further, there are U-turns on tariffs.

This means Trump is being mercurial as ever. Furthermore, there might be something to the idea that his family’s embrace of crypto may have endeared Pakistan – which is making noises about supporting crypto at scale – to him. All this is red-pilling many about Trump. Indeed, he may be allowing short-term, commercial considerations to drive policy, which may return to haunt the US: that is exactly what Clinton, Bush, Obama et al did with respect to China.

On the other hand, there are longer-term considerations, too. Pakistan is essentially a Potemkin nation, which has no particular reason to exist, other than it is being propped up. Initially, it was a British project for the Russian Great Game; then it was taken over by the US Deep State in order to fend off the Soviet Union. Pakistan was a “major non-NATO ally” (MNNA) according to Obama if I remember right, and earlier it was a member of CENTO and SEATO.

The IMF loan to Pakistan, approved in the middle of the hostilities, is not surprising, either: this has happened before. In a way, it is a complicated money-laundering activity. Funds from somewhere (possibly Qatar) are channeled to Pakistan, which then buys American arms. Thus the Deep State Military Industrial Complex is the winner.

With the end of the Afghanistan wars, Pakistan offers no obvious geographic and strategic value to the US. Unless, of course, the target is no longer Russia, but India. Perhaps in anticipation of its being a check on India, the US had helped Pakistan nuclearize, according to this archived article from the NYTimes: US and China Helped Pakistan Build Its Bomb, from a time when it was possibly more truthful. I am indebted to Brahma Chellaney for this link.

This may suggest that Pakistan’s nuclear ‘assets’ are not theirs, but are managed by American crew. On the other hand, though, the greater possibility is that such assets are loaned by China. Pakistan is a fantastic force multiplier for China.

Abhimanyu Syndrome

The bottom line, then, is that India is on its own: sort of an Abhimanyu Syndrome, with nobody to help. The most obvious ‘friend’ is Japan (because of the China threat), but it is severely constrained by American red lines: see how there was not a murmur from the Quad after Pahalgam. India’s very possible rise is in fact encouraging other powers to put it down: grow so much, but no farther.

There really is no alternative for India but to industrialize, manufacture everything possible for its large internal market, and increase the level of strategic autonomy in everything it makes: no more dependence on third parties, which may feel free to use kill switches, or deny spares or components at will. In this round, India did surprisingly well with indigenous technology, and it has articulated a strategy of escalating deterrence. To put teeth into this, innovation at home must continue.

Here’s the AI-generated podcast about this episode from notebookLM.google.com:

1975 words, 22 May 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Please note: I wrote this on April 28th, and then was traveling abroad for the last few weeks, so I had no opportunity to post this until now, sorry about that: but nothing I have said here has been rendered wrong by Operation Sindoor and the near-war that happened after I wrote this.

Deccan Herald ran a slightly edited version as my regular column on May 4th at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/on-pahalgam-imperial-fortresses-and-kashmir-s-settler-colonialism-3523731

With good reason, India has focused on Pakistan as the culprit behind the Pahalgam atrocity. It is telling that their army chief declared to Pakistanis that Hindus and Muslims are two different nations and that Kashmir is Pakistan’s jugular vein. He implied that Pakistan is the ideal Islamic state as in Venkat Dhulipala’s “Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India”. This could have been a signal to the terrorists to create maximum offence while massacring Hindus.

Given Kargil, IC 814, Bombay 26/11, Uri, Pulwama, and now Pahalgam, India is justified in cutting ties to Pakistan, including trade, sports, the cringe Attari circus, even diplomatic relations. India did once mass its forces at the Line of Control in Operation Parakram, but honoring the Shimla Agreement, did not cross. Now that Pakistan has canceled the Agreement, there is no legal reason for restraint, especially since the nuclear bogey is no longer credible.

But there is more. The Pakistani defense minister said that his country had been doing the dirty work for the US and the West for decades. Maybe he meant the Afghan war against the Soviets and post-9/11 somersaults by Pakistan. But that’s only scratching the surface.

Britain explicitly created Pakistan as a Great Game weapon against Russia/Soviet Union, and when that collapsed, against india. Britain has been using Pakistan as an “imperial fortress”, as I pointed out in “Britain’s outsized, malign role in global chaos”. Whitehall tilts strongly towards Pakistani interests, even in the case of widespread gang-rapes of minor white girls, not to mention their antics against Hindus in Leicester.

Official mouthpiece BBC never speaks of Pakistani terrorists, only ‘gunmen’; it’s always “Indian-controlled Kashmir”; and an extraordinary headline recently said: “Pakistan suspends visas for Indians after deadly Kashmir attack on tourists”. These are not accidents.

Britain and the US Deep State (eg. Madeleine Albright and other Atlanticists) worry about the waning influence of Europe (or “northwest Asia” as I wrote in “The End of the European Century”). Naturally, incumbent powers go to war with a rising power (Thucydides Trap: Graham Allison's thesis). This has been the rationale for containing Russia, now it is being turned to Asia. China is rather inscrutable and impregnable, so they attack India, which is easier prey.

Then there is the Otherization of Hindus and thus Indians. Even as staunch an atheist as Richard Dawkins (“The Blind Watchmaker”) admits Judeo-Christian cultural biases. Only Christopher Hitchens among modern atheists was self-reflective enough to avoid this. Abrahamics would like to make us disappear, and so engendered great famines in India (“Late Victorian Holocausts”). Now this is reprising through climatism (at an Alexandra Ocasio Cortez rally there was a woman earnestly saying “we have to eat babies” to reduce emissions). Covid was possibly another attempt at depopulating ‘deplorables’, that is black and brown people.

Let’s not forget China, also unhappy about India’s possible economic rise; so it dutifully regurgitated “all-weather” support for Pakistan. They have used Pakistan to keep India down, as a force multiplier for violence and trouble. Then China can market itself as a safe investment destination compared to a dangerous India where FDI may be risky. I suspect this is part of their siren-song to big firms (eg. Apple) now.

Finally, and most importantly, there is the settler-colonial complex of Muslim Kashmiris. They trot out South Africa, other European conquests and Gaza as examples of colonialists violating natives’ rights and imply the same in Kashmir. The bitter irony of course is that it is the Muslims who are the colonialists wiping out Kashmir’s indigenous Hindus who have a 5000 year history there. They have turned the logic on its head: see the Harvard Law Review paper “From Domicile to Dominion, India’s Settler Colonial Agenda in Kashmir”.

There have been seven tragic exoduses of Hindus from Kashmir: 1. 1389–1413 (Sultan Sikandar Shah), 2. 1505–1514 (Fateh Shah II), 3. 16th–17th Century (Timurid Period), 4. 1752–1819 (Durrani Rule), 5. 1931 (Anti-Dogra Riots), 6. 1986 (Anantnag Riots), 7. 1989–1990 (Militancy-Driven Exodus). Most Hindu Kashmiris now rot in refugee camps.

I wrote long ago in “India, the Kashmiri colony” about Muslim Kashmiris extracting tribute from the Indian/Hindu taxpayer. Worse, there is evidence emerging that local overground workers (eg. mule handlers) arranged the logistics for the Pahalgam massacre. Acts of terror need local support, possibly including from local politicians (a former CM referred to terrorists as “the boys with guns from the mountains”).

Yes, it’s good to punish Pakistan (eg. Indus Water Treaty), but terror will persist until Muslim Kashmiris realize their future lies with rising, multi-religious India, not jihadi failed-state Pakistan; and the Deep State desists from further mischief.

798 words, Apr 28, 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/movies/column/what-made-shaji-n-karun-a-master-film-maker/20250429.htm

Just last week, I read in the local Trivandrum papers about Shaji N Karun receiving an award in the name of J C Daniel, an early pioneer in Malayalam films. That’s when I realized that the master film-maker had named his house ‘Piravi’ in memory of his extraordinary directorial debut in 1988. It brought back a flood of memories of that film, whose title means ‘birth’, but whose theme was death and loss.

Now comes the news of his own death, aged 73, from cancer. Om shanti, Godspeed, Shaji, as you join the Great White Whirligig in the Sky!

I met the director twice: once, about fifty years ago, when we both were volunteers for a local science fair, and he was a student at the Film and Television Institute in Pune; and then in 1988 or 1989, when he spoke at the San Francisco International Film Festival, where ‘Piravi’ was featured. The film had won the Cannes Camera d’Or-Mention d’Honneur, among many other prizes, including at Locarno, Edinburgh and so on: possibly more than any other Indian film.

What impressed me about his talk was his humility and reticence: even though he was an acclaimed cinematographer and ‘Piravi’ was received very well, he was quiet, even shy. He explained his use of the blue tints in the film: it is the color of apasmaram, he said, using the Malayalam/Sanskrit word for madness, which the father of the ‘disappeared’ youth in the film falls into.

Even though he made several other films, and he was the cinematographer who shot most of the works of legendary Malayalam film-maker G Aravindan, it is ‘Piravi’ that marked the zenith of his career. I can say without hesitation that it is stunningly powerful; as an art-film fan, I have seen hundreds of superb, even outstanding films, but this one, alone, spoke to me. I wept seeing it, tears streaming down my cheeks. No other film has ever affected me so much.

For a Malayalam speaker and one who had seen the Emergency, it was a viscerally powerful experience, especially because it was based on the real-life story of Rajan, a ‘disappeared’ engineering student. As I wrote some years ago in https://www.rediff.com/news/column/emergency-why-rajans-story-resonates-with-me/20150625.htm I could easily have been another Rajan, another number.

Rajan’s character is never seen in the film, except as a child; his father, played by octogenarian Premji, fills the screen with his presence, his anguish, at the loss of his only son born late in his life. And in real life, the father, Professor Eachara Warrier, who was one of my heroes, https://www.rediff.com/news/2006/apr/24rajeev.htm spent the rest of his life demanding justice from the uncaring State.

The film’s minimalist dialogue and focus on human despair, grief, and the struggle against systemic injustice resonate universally, transcending cultural boundaries. Its subtle yet poignant exploration of loss makes it relatable to global audiences.

Apart from the universal message of grief, there is also the story of the father-son relationship. I was strongly affected by passages from the film where you realize how much the predatory State took from the father, as per the Hindu tradition. I remembered my father 10,000 miles away in India, who too had no son to help him.

The film begins with an invocation from the Kaushitaki Upanishad; a dying man bequeaths his life to his son. The son accepts each of his gifts.

"My speech in you I would place". "Your speech in me I take.""My sight in you I would place." "Your sight in me I take.""My mind in you I would place." "Your mind in me I take.""My deeds in you I would place." "Your deeds in me I take.""My vital breath in you I would place". "Your vital breath in me I take.""May glory, luster and fame delight in you." "Heaven and desires may you obtain."

And from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, "Whatever wrong has been done by him, his son frees him from it all... By his son, a father stands firm in this world."

Personally for me, I think the film was a catalyst in my decision to return to India, specifically back to Kerala. Another Indian friend (I think he was a Telugu) who saw it with me in San Francisco said, “I’m so tempted to chuck it all and go live in a Kerala village”.

Apart from the overwhelming sense of loss, the film is remarkable from two points of view: visual storytelling and innovative techniques.

The muted lighting, traditional architecture, and atmospheric elements like rain mirror the characters’ emotional turmoil. The film’s stillness and sparse dialogue amplifies the actors’ expressive performances, particularly their eyes, conveying deep emotion.

The monsoon rain is a palpable presence with the sense of anticipation as we wait for its arrival, as the father waits for his son every day at the bus-stop till the last bus; heart-breakingly, we in the audience know he will never return. And then later, when the father falls in the rain, the ferryman’s dilemma: if he helps him up, his boat will drift away. The ferryman’s compassion prevails and he rushes to help.

The film’s use of weather, sound (e.g., the bubbling of water evoking anxiety), the simple everyday beauty of Kerala village life, and deliberate pacing created a meditative yet intense atmosphere. The use of color to invoke emotion (as in traditional ragas) is another technical innovation.

With ‘Piravi’, Shaji N Karun joined the select group of great masters of film: film as witness, sakshi, film as literature. Malayalam once upon a time used to produce such films. Today it is only mindless violence, politics, and grotesque humor: the films have no soul, although they are technically quite good. With Shaji’s passing, and earlier with his mentor Aravindan’s untimely death, an era is coming to an end.

976 words, Apr 29, 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

• Sectors negatively affected. Pharma with $12.72 billion will be affected, textiles $4.3 billion, agri products $2.58 billion, jewelry $11.88 billion, autocomponents $2 billon may face 26%+auto specific 25%, chemicals $5.7 billion. Steel $475 million, with 26%+steel specific 25%, footwear $456 million

• Sectors positively affected (supply chain attraction): electronics and telecom $14.39 billion will benefit for 54% on china, engineering goods like turbines $7.1 billion because of china and vietnam, petroleum and minerals $3.33 billion, already negative tariffs

• Pharma has a specific carve out, and both apparel and footwear companies are struggling.

Here’s the notebookLM.google.com AI-generated podcast based on this audio.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Tulsi Gabbard’s visit comes at a time when things are quite fluid not only in the Indo-Pacific but also in the North Atlantic. The Five Eyes are beginning to fray a bit, too. What does all this mean for the future of Indo-US relations?

notebookLM-generated AI podcast based on this podcast:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-britains-outsized-malign-role-in-global-chaos-13872084.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Being a keen observer of the United Kingdom, I have lately noticed a few apparently unconnected events with dismay. If I were to connect the dots, it begins to appear that Britain has had an outsize influence on international affairs. Maybe the James Bond meme isn’t the total fantasy I had assumed it was: a juvenile wet dream about nubile maidens and irresistible heroes bumping off sundry villains.

The reality appears to be quite impressive. This tiny, rainy island off Northwest Asia has been running quite a number of worldwide schemes. Its administrative center, Whitehall, manages a global web of intrigue and narrative-building, and has created a number of ‘imperial fortresses’, thus punching above its weight-class

One of their principal assets in gaslighting others is the BBC (not to mention their plummy accents that, for example, make Americans just melt). The BBC has a sterling reputation which does not seem well-deserved. There have been many instances of motivated bias (eg. in their Brexit or India coverage), lack of integrity (eg. sexual transgressions by senior staff) and so on. In reality, it is about as unabashed at pushing its agenda as Al Jazeera is about its own.

Admittedly, Britain has made one major blunder along the way, though: Brexit, which left them in trisanku mode, sort of adrift mid-Atlantic. They were distancing themselves from the European Union, counting on their so-called ‘special relationship’ with the US to sustain them, away from what they perceived, correctly, as a declining and disunited Europe. They also thought they could dominate their former colonies again (see the frantic pursuit of a Free Trade Agreement with India?) without onerous EU rules. Sadly, none of this quite worked out.

The reason is a fundamental problem: there is not much of a market for British goods any more. Indians once coveted British products as status symbols, but today, with the possible exceptions of Rolls Royce cars and single-malt whiskey, there’s very little anybody wants from them. They still do good R&D, make aircraft engines (India could use that technology), and their apparently for-hire journalism is well-known, but that’s about it.

On the other hand, they have managed to stay entrenched in the international financial system, starting with colonial loot, especially the $45 trillion they are believed to have taken from India. It is rumored that they used stolen Indian gold to buy distressed assets in the US after the Civil War. It is possible they had the same game plan for Ukraine: acquire rich agricultural land and mineral deposits at distressed prices. Some point to the port of Odessa as another target

Ukraine: bad faith actor?

It is remarkable how Boris Johnson, then PM of UK, is alleged to have single-handedly ruined the chance of a ceasefire in April 2022 during his visit to Kiev in the early days of the Ukraine war, when there was a chance of a negotiated cessation of hostilities with all parties adhering to the Minsk 1 and 2 agreements.

In January, just before President Trump took office, UK PM Starmer signed a minerals agreement with Ukraine as part of a “100-Year Partnership” that appears to pre-emptively undercut Trump’s proposed $500-billion US deal. That lends credence to allegations about the UK’s coveting minerals, as well as its not being interested in ending the tragic war.

Gold: is it all there?

The UK does have a thing for tangible assets, including gold. A lot of the world’s gold (5000 metric tons) is supposedly held in secure custody in London. But there are fears that this may not physically be there in the vaults of the Bank of England any more. They may have indulged in ‘gold leasing’, where the actual gold ends up being replaced by paper promises after it is lent out to bullion banks, from where it may be moved around and be inaccessible

Extraordinary delays in gold deliveries in 2025 (on withdrawals to New York triggered by tariff fears) increase this concern. There is a lack of transparency in transactions in the metal in the UK. Spooked, many countries are taking their gold back. India repatriated 200+ tons of its own gold from London in 2024. Venezuela is fighting a court battle to get its gold back.

Then there are concerns raised by the arguably unfair freezing of Russian assets held abroad as part of Ukraine-war sanctions: Starmer recently promised to give Ukraine $2 billion, basically the interest generated by those assets. This doesn’t sound quite right, and has dented the image of London as a reliable financial hub. Brexit was a blow; the rise of Dubai, Singapore, Shanghai and Zurich all threaten the City of London, but it is second only to New York, still.

Imperial Fortresses galore

Another win for the British was the selection of Mark Carney, a former Bank of England governor, as the Prime Minister of Canada. The Anglosphere continues to be dominated by the UK, although the Commonwealth is a club that serves no particular purpose any more, except as a curious relic of the British empire.

This highlights the concept of ‘imperial fortresses’: far-flung outposts that have helped sustain British military power and diplomatic clout despite the loss of empire. Traditionally, these were naval bases/garrisons such as those in Malta, Gibraltar, Bermuda, etc. that allowed Britain to keep an eye on the ‘restless natives’. However, I contend that the entire Anglosphere has been treated as imperial fortresses by them.

Canada, Australia and New Zealand still continue to have the British King as their Head of State, which is astonishing for supposedly sovereign nations. But it’s far more interesting that, in effect, the US has been treated as another vassal by the Brits, pillow-talked into doing things that are generally only in the interests of Britain. All that pomp and circumstance has beguiled poor Americans. Whitehall, I assert, have been Svengalis to Foggy Bottom.

Master Blaster blowback?

The other metaphor is from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), where "Master Blaster" is a literal duo: Master, a cunning dwarf, and Blaster, his brawny, enforcer bodyguard. The Americans unwittingly have provided the muscle to the calculating dwarf’s machinations, which generally end up mostly benefiting the latter

But there is yet another imperial fortress that we should consider: Pakistan. It was created expressly to be a geographically well-placed client state for the Brits to continue their 19th century Great Game from afar to checkmate Russia, and incidentally to contain India. From that point of view, Pakistan has been a successful imperial outpost, notwithstanding the fact that it, despite decades of US largesse, is a failing state (see the Baloch train hijack recently).

This is part of the reason why Americans have a hard time explaining why they get involved in Pakistan and Afghanistan again and again to their ultimate regret, with painful exits. They have been induced to do this by the clever Brits, who, quite evidently, sided with Muslims against Hindus in the sub-continent, for instance in the British-led merger of Gilgit-Baltistan into Pakistan, contrary to the Instrument of Accession.

There is considerable irony in all this, because one could argue that Pakistani-origin Brits have now done a ‘reverse master-blaster’ to the Brits. That sounds eerily like the ‘reverse-Kissinger’ that Trump is supposed to be doing. Or maybe it is a ‘recursive master-blaster’, although the mind boggles at that.

Consider the facts: UK rape-gangs are almost entirely of Pakistani origin; several current mayors (including Sadiq Khan in London) and past mayors are of that ethnicity, indicating a powerful vote-bank; they have at least 15 MPs and a large number of councillors.

There’s Pakistani-origin Sir Mufti Hamid Patel, the chair of the Office of Standards in Education; Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary; Humza Yusuf, the former First Minister of Scotland. This imperial fortress is fighting back, indeed, and winning. The UK may not have quite anticipated this outcome.

The American vassal-state is also beginning to rebel. Trump was personally incensed by the fact that Starmer sent 50 Labor operatives to work against him in the 2024 US elections: their interactions have been a little frosty.

Khalil, an embedded asset?

Then there is the case of a current cause celebre in the US, Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent. He has been accused of leading violent anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, and detained on that count. Interestingly, he had a security clearance from the UK, and was part of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, living in Beirut and leading a scholarship program for Syrians. Yes, Syria.

And then Khalil suddenly showed up with a green card (not a student visa), got married to a US citizen named Noor Abdalla, finished his program at Columbia, and so on. To me, all this sounds like it was facilitated, and that he has certain powerful foreign friends. No prizes for guessing who they were.

Iraq, Libya and Syria: Humanitarian crises

Speaking of Syria, Whitehall spent at least 350 million pounds sterling between 2011 and 2024 in regime-change activities targeting the Assad government, according to Declassified UK.

The UK’s meddling in the Middle East, going back to the Sykes-Picot carving up of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, and mandates in Palestine and Iraq, and even earlier to the antics of T E Lawrence, was clearly intended to advance and sustain British interests in, and influence on, the region. Which is not unreasonable.

The sad fact, though, is that it appears the British have actively fomented, or been deeply involved in, a lot of the military misadventures that have turned the region into a mess of human misery. To take relatively recent history, the invasions of Iraq, Libya, and now of Syria were arguably dreamt up or at least actively supported by Britain.

The invasion of Iraq was certainly endorsed by Tony Blair’s infamous September 2002 dossier about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which turned out to be imaginary, but then, lo! Saddam Hussein was overthrown and killed.

The invasion of Libya saw Britain take on an even more active role. David Cameron and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy in effect prodded a somewhat reluctant Barack Obama to invade, even co-drafting the UN Security Council Resolution 1973 in 2011 that was the formal permission for the war. The net result was the killing of Muammar Gaddafi.

In the case of Syria, Britain began covert operations in 2012, with MI6 allegedly organizing arms shipments, training and coordination of groups opposed to the Assad regime. The sudden fall of Assad in December 2024, driven by groups like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that Britain indirectly supported, underscores the successful outcomes of this policy.

In all three cases, a secular dictatorship was overthrown and religious extremists took over. Earlier, civilians had reasonably prosperous lives; women were generally educated and present in the workforce. After the regime changes, all three are bombed-out hellholes, with no rights for women or religious minorities. In particular, the latter have been consistently subjected to massacres, as in the recent large-scale executions of Alawites in Syria.

Even though Americans were the principal players in all these cases, the impression is that British Whitehall’s gaslighting of their US counterparts in Foggy Bottom could well have tipped the scales and turned skirmishes into outright war and disaster.

Thus it is clear that Britain is still a formidable player in the world of international relations, despite the loss of empire and relative decline. It is unfortunate, however, that the net result of its actions is to add to entropy and chaos and the loss of human lives and rights. Perfidious Albion it still is.

1950 words, Mar 16, 2025

AI-generated podcast from NotebookLM.google.com:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by the Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/the-end-of-the-european-century-3438618

The frenetic activity recently around the Ukraine war has brought into sharp focus several things. One is the irrelevance of the United Nations. Two, the fact that Europe has in effect reverted to being a backwater in the scheme of things. Three, the US may have finally escaped from being a British “Imperial Fortress”. Four, it would be generally a good idea for Europe to bury the hatchet with Russia, as they usually lose wars with Russia.

The United Nations, which is to say the “liberal rules-based international order” [sic] set up by the winners in World War II, may have reached the end of its useful life. The UN is going the way of its feckless predecessor, the League of Nations. There were resolutions and counter-resolutions at the UN and its Security Council, but none of it mattered. It signals the end of globalization, and the end of Europe’s brief dominance.

After Vladimir Zelensky made a spectacle of himself in Donald Trump’s Oval Office (which may have been instigated by Keir Starmer and others encouraging Zelensky to, as it were, stand up to Trump), there was the remarkable, hastily organized summit in London to drum up support for Ukraine. Alas, it showed instead the relative impotence of western Europe: despite their brave words, they cannot defend Ukraine without US support.

The participants were: Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Turkey, etc and Euro-grandees such as Ursula von der Leyen. It is unclear whether this motley crew can raise more than a few infantry brigades/squadrons of aircraft, and some munitions. Enough perhaps for a peace-keeping force after a standstill/ceasefire, but not for a defensive force if war were to continue.

A major problem with Europe is that they are living off of old glory. There was no reason to include both Britain and France in the UN Security Council with veto power after WWII, except for misguided American generosity. But there is a much bigger problem: after a brief ‘European Century’ (or to be precise, three or four centuries) of global importance, they are reverting to their natural, diminished state.

The economic center of gravity of the world, according to McKinsey and The Economist, has moved decisively to Asia from where it was in the post-war era (somewhere in the Arctic Sea near Iceland around 1950 and 1960). The Industrial Revolution enabled European conquest, and this caused a break in the pattern of Asian prominence.

The magisterial “Economic History of the World” by Angus Maddison for the EU showed how India was the biggest economic power in the world from 1 CE (where they started their study) up until the 1500s or 1600s. India and China dominated the world economy until European colonialism hollowed out both, especially India. Now the pendulum is swinging back. And with economic power comes military power, as well as influence.

My contention is that Europe isn’t really a separate ‘continent’, but only an appendage to Asia, and it should be called “Northwest Asia” henceforth.

A major reason for British power, apart from their guns, steel and ruthlessness, was their cunning use of far-flung ‘imperial fortresses’ such as in Malta, Gibraltar, Bermuda, Halifax, St Helena, Mauritius, Singapore, etc from which they could project power around the world. Interestingly, they were able to gaslight the United States into being another such fortress despite formal independence. Whitehall has led Foggy Bottom by the nose. In effect, NATO has been the instrument for this

The US now seems to have woken up, and is pushing back. Starmer was told by Trump that the best outcome is for the war to end and the misery to stop for Ukraine, despite loss of territory. In any case, territory in Europe has been very fluid, and they have been fighting interminable wars there such as the 30 Years’ War, 100 Years’ War, etc. Notably, the Crimean peninsula was ‘donated’ to Ukraine by Khruschev, himself a Russian-speaking Ukrainian.

There are age-old blood feuds in Europe. I realised this in the Soviet days when I had a study partner in grad school, a Ukrainian-American woman. By mistake I referred to her as a ‘Russian’ and she was most offended. I think this is because western Europe has been fighting with Russia forever, based partly on race (Russians are seen as ‘tainted’ by Asian blood) and religion (Russian Orthodox Church vs Catholics and other Protestants).

Unfortunately for them, western Europeans have continually lost their wars to Russia: most notably, Napoleon and Hitler were decimated. It would be best for all concerned if the EU/NATO and Russia were to make peace; otherwise they will both end up dominated and turned into vassals by China.

The AI-generated podcast from NotebookLM.google.com is here:

792 words, 4 Mar 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-what-zelenskys-debacle-says-about-us-newfound-clarity-13867967.html

The tongue-lashing received by Vladimir Zelensky in the Oval Office, in full view of the media, was a point of inflection. It highlighted something that we had suspected: the end of the ‘European Century’ (or two or three), wherein they had risen to be the Masters of the Universe. Trump is emphasizing that the Atlantic was a 19th century story; with the rise of the US, the Pacific was the story of the 20th century; and the 21st finds the Indian Ocean rising.

Zelensky’s debacle was not the only pointer: Keir Starmer of the UK, despite some polite talk about the mythical ‘special relationship’, was told sharply by Vance that there is no more free speech in the UK, and that it affects American technology companies and citizens. Let us remember also how Elon Musk lambasted the UK for its Pakistani rape gangs, and the limp-wristed reaction of its authorities. Trump also told Starmer “That’s enough!”

JD Vance, again, spoke some home truths to the Europeans at the Munich Security Conference, telling them their problems are home-grown: excessive migration, lack of democratic values, and censorship.

All this is shocking to the supercilious elites of Europe, who are now seeing their cozy world collapse in front of their eyes: no more free-loading, no more Uncle Sam to the rescue. Suddenly, NATO is meaningless, and decades of Greta Thunberg and V-dem style lecturing, virtue-mongering and pontification are coming back to bite them on the backside.

They must be recalling William Blake’s apocalyptic vision in The Second Coming. Their world is indeed falling apart.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

It’s hard to blame the Europeans. They have forgotten how it was only yesterday, as it were, that they were being hounded by the Barbary pirates, enslaved and turned into janissaries by the Turks. I read how the author of Don Quixote had been himself captured, enslaved for five years, and ransomed in 1580 for 300 gold coins, worth some $40,000 today.

The European Century has made Europeans, and us, Fourth Worlders or those formerly colonized by them (as V S Naipaul put it), forget that Europe is just a backwater, a mere peninsula, an appendage, to Asia. It is now reverting to just “Northwest Asia”. For most of recorded history, Europe was an uncivilized land of savages; it was only the lucky accident of the Industrial Revolution that gave it the wherewithal to dominate the world.

But that is in the past: the economic center of gravity of the world has indeed moved from the Atlantic to Asia.

Source: The Economist.com

The illusion that America is obligated to support Europe, and also to fight Russia to the bitter end as part of the Cold War, was nurtured by Atlanticist Eastern Europeans exercised by an age-old blood feud: that between the Russian Orthodox Church on the one hand, and Catholics and other Protestant churches on the other hand.

Those certainties are now falling by the wayside, as Trump pivots to the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as well as back to isolationist Fortress America. As Zelensky did mention in his tirade, America has the good fortune to have two oceans around it, a serious moat.

The US has been gaslighted for a long time by nose-in-the-air Europeans, most especially the mischief-makers at the UK’s Whitehall (who are the real Deep State). But that’s wearing off, and the blinkers are falling from their eyes. Sadly for Zelensky, he will be the first one affected by this new-found clarity.

Zelensky also made several rookie mistakes. First, you don’t go to your benefactor’s lair (ie. the US Oval Office) dressed in a sweatshirt. Second, you don’t talk over Trump. Third, you don’t get into a shouting match in English with native speakers when English is your second language: you might miss the nuances of “you don’t hold any cards”, for instance. Fourth, and most importantly, you don’t trust Starmer, Macron, etc. and take up cudgels with Trump.

The near-simultaneous “toolkit” tweets from a lot of EU grandees suggests they gaslighted Zelensky into his suicidal bit of bravado against Trump in the Oval Office. They used the exact same words! And Trump doesn’t take slights lightly.

The implications are dire. The Ukraine War is as good as over, because the Europeans alone cannot (or will not) supply Zelensky with enough weaponry to hold off Russia indefinitely. The most likely outcome is a ceasefire followed by a standstill agreement: what Ukrainian territory Russia currently holds it will continue to hold; Ukraine will be de jure partitioned. The rest is negotiable.

If the Europeans had any sense, they would patch up with Russia. NATO as we know it will come to an end, and EU+Russia is a pretty powerful force, and neither will have to kowtow to China. With the US out of the picture, divided EU and Russia will both fall into the dhritarashtra alinganam of sweet-talking China. To their ultimate detriment, of course.

It is good to contrast Trump’s treatment of all these Europeans with his much gentler treatment of the Japanese PM Shigeru Ishiba, and the Indian PM Narendra Modi, both Quad partners. He was polite and businesslike with them. Also, when a reporter asked about AUKUS, the brain-dead partnership with the UK that Biden dragged another Quad partner, Australia, into, his response was: “What’s that?”

There were early glimpses of a Trump foreign policy taking shape, as I mentioned in two prior columns: Chronicles of a Foreign Policy Foretold and Trump’s America and Modi’s India. Now things are clearer: there’s a new Sheriff in town, and things are going to be different. But, William Blake notwithstanding, it’s not the end of the world. We will all carry on.

1000 words, 1 Mar 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Exactly a month into his new term, President Donald Trump’s latest major pick, Kash Patel, has been appointed as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation after a grueling confirmation in the US Senate. Tulsi Gabbard had earlier been confirmed as the Director of National Intelligence. Both these are positive from India’s point of view: they signal that the sinister Deep State may well be reined in, after decades of anti-India activism on its part.

Over the last week or two, there have been revelations after revelations of bad faith on the part of the disgraced US establishment, most notably in the shadowy USAID agency, which, it appears, was the absolute “Heart of Darkness” of the Deep State, neck-deep in covert operations, election interference, and general mayhem all over the world, and certainly in India.

Trump himself emphasized that $21 million in covert funds had gone towards affecting election outcomes in India. Presumably the reduced majority Modi got in 2024 could be traced back to this.

Fortress America

The general contours of Trump’s foreign policy are beginning to emerge. I predicted a month ago, before Trump had taken over, in ‘Greenland, Canada, Panama: Chronicles of a Foreign Policy Foretold’, that Western Europe, and the United Kingdom in particular, would find themselves treated as irrelevant to the new order to come. That has happened.

In fact, things have gone beyond what I anticipated. In a nutshell, Trump is downgrading the Atlantic, and his focus will be on the Americas, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. Which, from a historical perspective, makes sense: the world’s economic center of gravity is moving towards Asia; trade flows in the Pacific and the Indian Oceans are increasingly more important than in the Atlantic; and a few centuries of European domination are pretty much over.

Sorry Europe, Atlanticism is at an end

To put it bluntly, the vanity that Europe is a ‘continent’ is now being exposed as hollow: to be precise, it is merely an appendage, an outpost, to vast Asia. Europe is at best a subcontinent, like India is; it should probably be renamed as ‘Northwest Asia’. The saga of ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ post the Industrial Revolution is winding down rapidly. There is some schadenfreude in that the UK becomes even more irrelevant: just a small, rainy island off NW Asia.

The Putin-Trump dialog suggests that Ukraine, and even NATO, are now superfluous. Atlanticism has been a constant in US foreign policy, mostly pushed by two forces:

• Eastern European-origin State Department officials who have inherited a blood-feud with Russia from their ancestors, eg. Brzezinski, Albright, Nuland, Blinken, Vindman

• an ancient intra-Christian schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and (for a change) an alliance of Roman Catholics and Western Protestants like Lutherans, Anglicans and Calvinists.

It is time that the Americans realized they’ve been turned into cats’-paws by these forces, and turned their backs on these ancient animosities, which have almost no relevance today. In fact one could argue that a NATO-Russian alliance is the right solution in the medium term, because otherwise both could become puppets of China. Bringing the Ukraine war to an end is a start.

The general tone of the Trump White House implies a Fortress America. In practice, this seems to mean that instead of being Globocop, the US focuses on a) the Americas, North and South, b) the Pacific Ocean, d) the Indian Ocean, in that order.

A new Monroe Doctrine in the Americas

The attention being paid to Canada and Mexico over and above the tariffs issues suggests that there is a plan to create a stronger and more unified North American entity; the noises about “Canada the 51st state” and “Gulf of America” suggest that maybe a new NAFTA-style agreement could be inked, especially now that the warming Arctic Ocean makes the thawing tundra of Canada more appealing.

It is true that there is no immediate thrust for a Monroe Doctrine-style exclusive US ‘sphere of influence’ in South America, but I suspect it is coming. Already, there have been positive vibes between Trump and Argentina’s Milei, and Salvador’s Bukele: the former for his DOGE-style chainsaw-wielding that’s showing results, and the latter for his strong law enforcement.

The Island Chains and other red lines in the Pacific

In the Pacific, there has been pushback against China’s moves on the Panama Canal: there are two Hong-Kong-based entities (read proxies of the Chinese government) controlling ports around it: Balboa on the Pacific side, and Cristobal on the Atlantic side.

On the other hand, there is increasing global support (with the judicious use of Chinese carrots such as BRI) for the annexation of Taiwan by China, including, if necessary, by force. A Lowy Institute study (“Five One Chinas: The Contest to Define Taiwan”) suggests that some 119 UN member states accept the official Chinese position on ‘reunification’. Only 40 countries are not on board with China’s claim of sovereignty over Taiwan.

It is very likely that there will be a showdown between the US and China over Taiwan, within the next two years. It is said that Xi Jinping has given a timeframe of 2027 for all this. It will be interesting to see how many states that condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will condemn China’s future attack on Taiwan. Chances are that many will be strategically silent.

Japan, Australia, South Korea and other friends of the US will have a hard time keeping the peace in the Pacific. The “Three Island Chains” act as increasingly critical red lines to contain an aggressive China. In fact, the Asia Maritime Initiative is speaking of five island chains (“China’s Reach Has Grown, So Should the Island Chains”), including those in the Indian Ocean (remember the “String of Pearls” intended to tighten around India’s throat).

The three island chains: 1. Taiwan, Japan, Philippines; 2. Guam, Marianas; 3. Hawaii

(Source: China is making waves in the Pacific, Alexandra Tirziu, Jan 2024 https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/china-pacific-conflict/)

Meanwhile, in a show of aggression far from its shores, three Chinese warships indulged in “live firing” in international waters between Australia and New Zealand, and commercial aircraft were warned to keep away. This is a warning to Australia, which, thanks to AUKUS foolishness, cancelled French submarines and now await British submarines… in the 2040s.

The increasing relevance of the Indian Ocean and the Middle East

Much of the world’s trade, including 75% of global maritime trade and 50% of its daily oil shipments, go through the Indian Ocean.

The main issues will be the control of the Straits of Malacca and Hormuz, and the alternative routes being explored by China via the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand, possible use of Coco Islands and other Myanmarese ports including Sittwe and (a bit of a stretch for China) access to Chittagong. There are also troublesome pirates, including Houthis, that make for perilous journeys leading to the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Aden, and the Red Sea.

Interestingly, the US is making moves in the Indian Ocean that will support both the IMEC (India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor) and I2U2, the India-Israel-UAE-US economic partnership. IMEC is the old Spice Route, revivified.

There is also the proposed Ben-Gurion Canal through the Negev Desert in Israel that would benefit Saudi Arabia as well (its futuristic NEOM city is nearby), and this would be made feasible by Trump’s proposed transformation of Gaza. It would be an alternative to Suez.

Following up on the Abraham Accords, Trump 2.0 would like to bring the Gaza war to an end, and create an environment in the Middle East where Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE et al will form a counter and a buffer to the machinations of Iran and Turkey.

The Indo-US joint communique is a statement of intent

It is in this global context that we need to analyze the joint communique between the US and India after the Trump-Modi summit. Both nations will be attempting to advance their own strategic doctrines. The US would like India to become a non-treaty ally. India would like to keep its multi-alignment policy going, along with Atmanirbharatha. These may make any bilateral progress a little rough but some give and take will work.

There are a few specific areas of interest:

• Defense

• There is an effort by the US to wean India away from its dependency on Russia for weapons. The most evident carrot here is the F-35 advanced fighter jet, which has now been offered to India for the first time, along with other conventional weapons such as Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stryker infantry combat vehicles, as well as the P8i Poseidon anti-submarine patrol aircraft, and various drones

• The P8i is already in service in India, and it would help keep an eye on the southern Bay of Bengal with its proximity to China’s submarine pen on Hainan Island

• The F-35 raises some questions. In the Bangalore Air Show it was pitted against the Russian Su-57, which is a lot less expensive. Also, the F-35 needs extraordinary levels of maintenance for its ‘stealth’ coating. Finally, should India invest in building its own AMCA 5th-generation fighter jet rather than buying?

• Even though there will be co-production agreements, the US is a whimsical supplier (remember Tarapur), and there will be little transfer of technology, so military procurement and cooperation must be carefully thought through by India

• Trade and Investment

• The goal is to reach $500 billion in bilateral trade by 2030, which would involve a doubling from current levels ($200 billion in 2023). Besides, the Trump doctrine of reciprocal tariffs and zero trade imbalance may make some of this difficult

• Indian firms are planning to invest $7.35 billion in the US

• Energy

• India will now get access to US civil nuclear technology, but there’s a small twist: the clauses invoking civil liability for nuclear damage will be deleted. This is reminiscent of Pfizer’s covid-era contract with developing countries: Pfizer was assured of indemnity (with the local governments being liable) in case of injury or death caused by its vaccine. This sounds like a bad idea

• India will increase its purchases of US oil and natural gas. This is a win-win: it will increase US imports to India, thus reducing the trade deficit, and India will be assured of additional supplies

• Technology and Innovation

• A whole raft of actions have been proposed, including a tie-up between the US National Science Foundation and the Anusandhan National Research Foundation in India, a program called TRUST, another called INDUS innovation, and one in the area of space collaboration, titled NISAR

• Multilateral Cooperation

• The Quad, IMEC and I2U2 figured in communique, but also something called the Indian Ocean Strategic Venture. I note this nomenclature progress with approval: there used to be the Asia-Pacific, then it was the Indo-Pacific, and now the Indian Ocean is being singled out

• In the area of counter-terrorism, the communique explicitly named Pakistani entities such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba, among others. This is a welcome change from the shadow-boxing indulged in by the Biden administration and others, whereby Pakistani terrorists were treated as ‘assets’

• The extradition of Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-Canadian now in a Los Angeles jail, to India for investigation into his role supporting David Headley, in the 26/11/2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, is a welcome sign, after the curious Biden exertions in the Pannun case

• People to people links

• Indian parents are spending $8 billion a year to support 300,000 Indian students in the US. This amounts to a sort of ‘foreign aid’, and also incidentally supplies a lot of especially STEM graduates to the US economy

• Facilitating visas, which have become frustratingly difficult for Indian business and leisure travelers to the US. Last year, the wait for just a visa interview was 452 days in Chennai (as compared to 15 days in Beijing), which probably was the result ot the Biden State Department ‘punishing’ India for refusing to toe their Ukraine sanctions line

• The legal movement of students and professionals between the two countries is to be eased.

Overall, this is a statement of intent: both Modi and Trump are laying their cards on the table, and they will both (as they should) bargain hard to benefit their own nations. But India is no longer being treated as a pariah as it was since the Pokhran blasts, the denial of cryogenic rocket engines (via, yes, the Biden Amendment), and so on.

As Trump moves towards the inevitable multipolar world, he does not wish to leave Asia to eager hegemon China; as he wishes to move the US out of military entanglements in far-off places (for which he expects Europe and others to bear the burden of their own defense), it is natural for him to want India to punch its weight in Asia.

A mutually beneficial relationship free of the supercilious lectures by previous Democratic administrations (eg Daleep Singh on Ukraine sanctions, and he was, ironically enough, the great-grand-nephew of Dalip Singh Saund) would be welcome from the Indian point of view. Having a counterweight to China, and a G3 instead of a G2, would likewise be useful from the US point of view. Thus, there are glimpses of a possible win-win situation.

2222 words, 22-02-2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by the Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/the-state-of-the-stateless-in-new-america-3396948

There are dramatic developments regarding immigration under the new Trump Administration in the US, and the long-term consequences for Indian-Americans are unclear. The harsh experiences of demographic change in Europe may be influencing lawmakers’ plans.

On the one hand, there is what appears to have been deliberately done under the Biden Administration: the ‘carte blanche’ to millions of illegal aliens to walk into the US and melt away into the general population. This has included hard-core criminal gangs as well as ordinary people who simply want a better life. As in the film ‘El Norte’, it is a dream for many from impoverished developing countries to somehow get to the fabled riches of the US.

As in some parts of India, local politicians may have encouraged illegal migrants expecting loyalty from them. With notoriously lax local laws in the US (no need to prove citizenship to vote), they may have calculated that they could permanently lock in a vote bank for themselves.

It is said that some number (70,000 to 700,000, the reported number varies) of illegal Indians have used ‘coyotes’ to get them into the US via the southern or northern borders (some may have overstayed their visas). The simple answer is that they will be extradited (if caught): some have melted away into ethnic enclaves, living in fear of the ‘migra’, like East Asian and Latino illegals.

There are allegations that the first batch of 104 illegal Indian citizens was sent back in chains, handcuffed, on a military plane, with limited access to toilets. This is inhumane, if true, and cannot be countenanced

There are also practical difficulties: many illegals have destroyed their papers, and have no incentive to prove their actual citizenship. They are, in effect, stateless. I am reminded of poor San Francisco businessman Vaishno Das Bagai, rendered a man without a country after the US canceled his citizenship in 1928, who committed suicide.

What do you do with stateless people? The facile answer is to imprison them, and Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay and Guantanamo have both been suggested as incarceration centers. But then what? It would be inhuman to simply jail them forever if they are not violent criminals.

There is also the fact that some sectors depend on foreign labor, for example agriculture (that needs fruit and vegetable pickers) and industry (some factories depend on low-wage illegal migrants), as well as the IT industry.

Talented and well-educated immigrants are giving the US an advantage in innovation and entrepreneurship. On the other hand, if they are forced to return, say to India, that might be good for the Indian economy.

Then there is the question of birthright citizenship. The 1868-vintage 14th Amendment grants citizenship to every child born in the US. It was done for freed blacks after the Civil War: before manumittance, slaves had been treated as chattel. This provision has been misused by ‘birth tourism’, wherein pregnant women show up just to deliver in the US.

Trump’s executive order canceling birthright citizenship was opposed by 17 states; and a Federal judge has stayed the order. It will end up in the Supreme Court, and the conservative majority will probably be unwilling to override something that is spelt out in the US Constitution. It would be virtually impossible to bring a new Amendment to overturn the 14th, because the legislature is finely balanced between Republicans and Democrats.

Thus, after a few months of wrangling, it is likely that birthright citizenship will stay on the books.

There is also a curious sideshow, with US citizen activist Kshama Samant of Seattle, and friends, invading the Indian consulate there demanding that she be given a visa to visit her ailing mother. No country is obligated to give anybody a visa or a reason for denying it.

Of course, there is a more immediate concern from the points of view of the million-strong Indian origin H1-B visa holders, mostly engineers, who are stuck with the 9,800 per-country annual limit of employment-based Green Cards. This means they are generally at the mercy of their employers. It is not clear that the US government will do anything to change this status quo.

Japan, China etc are facing a demographic crisis because of low fertility rates. So is most of Europe. The US has had the advantage of attracting immigrants. With the current confusion, the net result may well be that the US will cease to attract immigrants, which would in the long run be a net loss for the country especially if smart young people prefer to stay at home.

770 words, Feb 3, 2025 updated Feb 8

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/greenland-canada-panama-how-trump-2-0-is-going-to-be-a-wild-ride-13852423.html

In a week when a staggeringly large wildfire laid Los Angeles low, for which the ‘progressive’ mayor and the governor could be partly to blame, it was also intriguing to see president-to-be Trump’s statements about purchasing Canada and Greenland, and laying claim to the Panama Canal.

There was also the withering attack on Britain – including direct accusations against their Prime Minister Keir Starmer – over the horrific gang-rapes of young girls there for decades. Presidential Buddy #1 Elon Musk used X (Twitter) to exhume this story of 250,000 girls (according to Musk) being turned into sex-slaves. It had been swept under the carpet.

My first reaction to these – how shall I put in politely – “imperial” assertions was that Trump is being himself, mercurial, and that he was merely making flippant comments with no intention of following through. But on thinking about it, there is a certain logic to it, as outrageous as it might appear.

On the one hand, there is precedent: the US did buy Alaska from Russia, and Louisiana from France. There is also precedent for invasions: it invaded Mexico and annexed, if I remember correctly, California, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and bits of several other states. Furthermore, the province of Panama itself was separated from Columbia by the US in 1903.

On the other hand, there are fairly good reasons for all this. I have been of the opinion that the recent H1-B narrative was astroturfed by the British Deep State (“Whitehall”); the Musk counter-narrative on rape affects both Whitehall and its Parliament (“Westminster”) as Starmer appeared unnerved in debate with his opposition; who knows if it might lead to his downfall.

Apart from any personal reasons Musk may have (he himself went through the H-1B system and may be sensitive about it), it is yet another indication that the alleged ‘Special Relationship’ between the US and the UK may now be mostly a pious myth. Trump, rightly, focused on the Quad, and it was Biden, an Atlanticist, who cooked up the AUKUS submarine alliance, which seems to have achieved very little so far, although The Economist magazine talks it up.

Britain, to nobody’s surprise after Brexit, is spiralling down into irrelevance.

Besides, the UK Labour Party allegedly indulged in election interference, with 100+ ‘volunteers’ sent to swing states during the US Presidential election campaign to support Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate. This, one could argue, is casus belli.

Trump has also in the past made noises about Europeans not bearing their fair share of the cost of the NATO military alliance: he prodded them to increase their spending to 2% of respective GDP, and now may want more. He does not seem to think it’s America’s duty to spend blood and treasure protecting wealthy Europeans from the alleged Russian threat.

But the Canada/Greenland offer is not so much about Europe as it is about China. It is about the fabled Northwest Passage, the alternative polar route for trade, which becomes viable as a result of global warming. This can become a new seaborne trade route between the Atlantic and the Pacific, much of which is now through the Panama Canal.

In an engaging conversation on pgurus.com, retired General and geo-strategist Rajiv Narayanan laid out the case for fending off the Chinese. He said they have been talking up the ‘Arctic Silk Route’, which alarmed the Russians, who immediately upgraded the military capability of some of their Arctic Ocean outposts.

China does have a problem. They are concerned about their dependence on the Straits of Malacca, which India (and possibly other Quad members) could blockade. They have been talking to the Thais about a canal through the Isthmus of Kra, and it is possible they may have grand plans of getting access to Chittagong (after surgically removing India’s control of the Northeast by invading through the Chicken’s Neck).

The Chinese are also active in the Panama Canal. A Hong Kong firm now runs two major ports, Balboa and Cristobal, at either end of the canal. Chinese firms also run the Panama-Colon container port under the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative). They also have a railway project that is a direct competitor to the Panama Canal, the 3000 kilometer Bi-Oceanic Corridor, from Brazil’s port of Santos to Peru’s port of Ilo, connecting the Pacific to the Atlantic.

Thus, it is not purely idle talk on the part of Trump to pinpoint Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. There is method to this apparent madness. There are also immense mineral resources in both Canada and Greenland, which will become accessible as the tundra thaws.

Canadians may well accept such an offer from the US, considering the mess their politicians, especially Trudeau, have made. The Canadian dollar is now at 0.69 US dollars, down from a peak of 1.06 US dollars in 2011. In addition, the Trump threat of 25% tariffs on Canada, if put in place, could squeeze that nation’s exports.

As for Greenland, its sparse population of only about 57,000 people may not feel particularly Danish, since they were actually colonized by the Danes around 1721. They may well be willing to join the US. Incidentally, we are all used to thinking Greenland is a gigantic landmass, but that is an illusion from the Mercator Projection. In reality, it is about 2/3rds the size of India, and about the same as Saudi Arabia.

Be that as it may, what is most relevant to India in these musings by Trump is whether it gives any clues as to how he may affect India’s interests. If he is intensely focused on China, then that is good for India. If he wants to cut Europe down to size, and to exit the disastrous Ukraine war, India would benefit. If he can end the Gaza war, great.

Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, visited India recently. It is likely that the intent was to bully India into unilateral concessions before Trump takes over. I saw a new AI roadmap on Twitter that shows a) allies with whom the US will share technology (basically the Anglosphere + Japan + some of Western Europe), b) friends with which it will be arms-length (most of the world, including India), and then c) foes that will be sanctioned (eg. China).

Then there is the Damocles Sword of tariffs hanging over India (Trump claims India has the highest tariffs in the world and he threatens to retaliate in kind), and these will hurt.

At the moment, trying to divine Trump’s foreign policy is a tall order. We have to read the tea leaves or chicken entrails, or extrapolate from whatever crumbs of information we get. This is going to be a wild ride.

The AI-generated podcast on this essay courtesy NotebookLM from Google:

1100 words, 11 Jan 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by deccanherald.com at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/h-1b-rape-gangs-and-fact-checks-when-narratives-boomerang-3351471

For students of media, the last week of December and the first week of January have been a treat: a rare occasion to watch narrative wars in real time.

The first manufactured narrative was the all-out attack on H1-B Indians. An impartial Martian, on observing this, would have concluded that if only the million Indians (mostly engineers) were sent back pronto to India, all of a sudden world peace would break out, or whatever heralds the Millennium for those who believe in all that.

Au contraire, it was a mountain being made out of a molehill, an astroturfed story that didn’t have legs. It is true that there is resentment in the US about illegal aliens, as the 10 million or so that Biden allowed in are going to be a burden on the country both socially and economically. Illegal immigrants are committing horrific crimes, for example setting a woman on fire in the New York subway.

The subway story got visibility for a day or two (according to Google Trends), but then all of a sudden the narrative switched to H1-B Indians taking jobs away from natives. With a heady cocktail of xenophobia, racism and religious bigotry, the story turned into a tirade against Hindus in particular, and how primitive India is, according to extreme right-wing MAGA Trumpies.

‘Manufacturing consent’ usually has somebody instigating it, and normally it is the US left wing: remember the ‘critical caste theory’ circus and accusations of casteism against two engineering managers at Cisco in California, that fell apart in court? Tablet magazine had a long read titled Rapid Onset Political Enlightenment on the ‘permission structure’ created by Democrats like Obama to manipulate public opinion: a proverbial Deep State operation

But this time the US right wing was also in the fray. So you have to look further for possible puppeteers. The usual suspects would be China and Pakistan, as those most keen to put India down. But it may be Britain, based on anecdotal evidence: the Economist magazine’s choice of Bangladesh as the “country of the year” while Hindus are being genocided there; and the Financial Times’ decidedly sour take on D Gukesh’s staggering chess world championship win.

Brits continue to be severely prejudiced against India; they left a divided subcontinent with lots of fault lines; and they cannot come to terms with their fall and India’s simultaneous rise. Whitehall also has disproportionate influence on the Anglosphere.

But the H1-B controversy boomeranged on them, as it embroiled Elon Musk, who had been on such a visa, as he stoutly defended the idea that the US needed to attract talented immigrants.

It is a bad idea to fight Elon Musk, because he has Trump’s ear, and more importantly, he has the megaphone of X (earlier Twitter). He demonstrated that by bringing up what the entire British establishment had swept under the carpet: the long-running industrial-scale ‘grooming’ and rape of young white girls by Pakistani gangs. The cases in towns like Rotherham and Rochdale and many others got some publicity earlier, but that has long receded in the public memory.

But Musk turned the tables by highlighting the appalling allegation that as many as 250,000 underage (some as young as 11), mostly working-class white girls, often residents of foster homes (where they were because of problems with their families), were systematically targeted mostly by Pakistani-origin Britons. The girls were gaslighted, raped, gang-raped, tortured, forced into prostitution, trafficked, mutilated, and, in some cases, killed. It is horrendous sexual exploitation.

Even more appallingly it appears that UK authorities (including police and politicians) and the media deliberately suppressed all this in the interests of “preserving communal harmony”, a euphemism for political correctness and fear of violence. And instead of calling the perpetrators “Pakistani Muslims”, the term used was “Asian”, which is misleading. It wasn’t Chinese, Japanese, or Indians doing it, it was almost 100% Pakistani Muslims.

It is even alleged that Keir Starmer of the Labor Party, the UK Prime Minister, may be implicated because he was Director of Public Prosecution (2008-2013). This is a major crisis. The Anglosphere was falling apart already with Trump’s obvious contempt for Trudeau, which may have been partly why the latter quit

On top of this, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was dispensing with ‘fact-checkers’ and going with community notes, a la X. This is an implicit admission that much of the narrative on Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram etc. has been fake.

2025 is off to a good start. Manufactured narratives are in headlong retreat.

Here’s the AI-generated podcast about this essay, by NotebookLM by Google:

770 words, 8 Jan 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

On November 14th every year, I mourn my old friend Varsha Bhosle on her birth anniversary. This year she would have turned 69. Unfortunately she passed away in 2012, and she had ceased being her fiery public self a few years before that when she went into self-imposed exile from her column-writing.

When she and I used to write together on rediff.com we used to dream of an India that would “be somebody” (credit Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront). Today India is beginning to matter, “not in full measure” (there, obligatory nod to Nehru, because Varsha shared a birthday with him), but there are “green shoots”.

In Malayalam, we say vyazhavattom, or a revolution of Jupiter (which is twelve years), to denote a significant period of time in which epochal things may well have taken place. What has happened in the dozen years since Varsha left us? Let me take a general inventory.

Despite misgivings about the lack of movement on serious Hindu issues (such as the freeing of temples from the grip of bureaucrats and hostile politicians) it must be granted that Narendra Modi’s 10+ years have substantiated what Varsha and I honestly thought: that the only thing missing in India is leadership. (I said that in my homage to her in 2012.) Maybe, just maybe, Modi is India’s Lee Kwan Yew.

India is finally moving away from its dirigiste Nehruvian stupor, which was exacerbated, and extolled, by the Anglo-Mughalai hangers-on of Lutyens and Khan Market and JNU, and which resulted in an increasingly depressing relative decline compared to the rest of Asia and the rest of the world.

That India is beginning to matter, especially economically, and consequently in the military and diplomatic domains, should be seen as the result of bhageeratha prayatnam, especially since the Swamp in India (not the Military Industrial Complex per se but babudom) is so powerful. Not to mention the Media, and the Judiciary.

But there is so much more to be done. And Varsha would have pointed this out with her signature directness and humor: she could get away with that because she was She Who Must Be Obeyed, and imperious. She used to say things that I wouldn’t dare say: for instance, she called Antonia Maino “The Shroud of Turin”.

Varsha would have had a field day with the silly viswaguru meme, for instance. For, it is much better to learn from others, rather than have everybody mine our traditional knowledge systems and then go and patent them and sell the result back to us (eg. basmati, turmeric, yoga). India should be vishwa-vidyarthi. Learn, and, if possible, steal from everyone. (Ask China how to).

Similarly, sabka sath sabka vikas sounds like a good slogan, but let me give you Exhibit A: Lebanon. I will not elaborate, but you can go look it up for yourself.

On the other hand, as a warlike Maratha, she would have been happy to see an assertive India, one that upholds its national interests and does not bend to threats or blandishments (Exhibit B: Dalip Singh of the US trying to bully India into a sanctions regime against Russia re Ukraine).

I am not quite sure what she’d have made of the Covid fuss, but I’m pretty certain she’d have gone hammer and tongs against the imperialism of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and the propagandists for the same (Exhibit C: I guess I can’t name names, but there’s a famous and prize-winning doctor who was on every TV channel at the time deriding Indian vaccines).

I write this on 18th November, another painful anniversary, that of 13 Kumaon’s last stand, and here too India has made progress, standing up to China in Galwan, going eyeball-to-eyeball on the Indo-Tibetan frontier. But India has made only very slow progress in catching up on manufacturing, and for the wrong reasons (Exhibit D: a famous Indian-American economist).

Yet, there is good news. Indians as a whole are more optimistic about their country’s future. This may be because the economic center of gravity is shifting towards us, and because it appears the Anglosphere, China, Europe, and Wokeness are all declining at the same time, and India may well benefit from being the swing state between the West and China, both hegemons.

I wonder what Varsha would have had to say about this bitter-sweet stage in India’s trajectory. Alas, I can only conjecture.

Varsha left us at a point when, as in the Malayalam saying, swaram nallappozhe pattu nirthuka, that is, as a singer you should stop singing when your voice is still good. People will ask you why you stopped singing, not why you haven’t stopped singing. She lives on in our collective memory, fierce, powerful, a compelling voice. I miss her. May she live on, forever young.

800 words, Nov 18, 2024, posted 7 Jan, 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by Open Magazine at https://openthemagazine.com/columns/shadow-warrior/

I have been thinking about the ongoing vilification of Hindus in the media/social media for some time, e.g. the Economist magazine’s bizarre choice of Bangladesh as its country of the year while Bangladeshis are genociding Hindus. The simplest way I could account for it is as the very opposite of Milan Kundera’s acclaimed novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. There is some karma at play here, and it is very heavy.

The nation of immigrants, or to be more precise, its Deep State, is apparently turning against some of its most successful immigrants: law-abiding, tax-paying, docile ones. Irony, while others go on murderous sprees. In an insightful article in Open magazine, Amit Majmudar explains Why They Hate Us.

There has been an astonishing outpouring of pure hatred against Indians in general, and Hindus in particular, on the Internet in the wake of Sriram Krishnan’s seemingly accurate statement that country caps on H1-B visas are counterproductive. But this was merely a spike: for at least a year, Hindus have been vilified and name-called as “pajeets” and “street-shi**ers” on the net.

It is intriguing that in 2024, both Jews and Hindus have been targeted: Jews by the extreme left on Gaza, and Hindus by both the extreme left and the extreme right, on what is, basically, a non-issue. H1-B is a very minor issue compared to, say, the wars and the US national debt.

In fact, the H1-B brouhaha may well turn out to be a medium-term plus for India if it compels young Indians to seek employment at home. It will of course be a minus for the million-plus Indian-origin individuals who are in line for Green Cards, given the per-country cap of 9800 per year: mathematically, it will take them over a century to gain permanent residence.

From the host country’s point of view too, it is necessary to distinguish between generally desirable immigrants who contribute to the national wealth, as opposed to others who are a net burden on the exchequer, as I wrote recently.

On reflection I attribute the withering assault on Hindus to four things: racism, religious bigotry, economics and geo-economics, and narrative-building.

Presumably, all this had something to do with British colonial propaganda, which painted India as an utterly horrifying and pestilential country. Motivated and prejudiced imperialists ranging from James Mill to Winston Churchill were considered truthful historians. And it continues. I mentioned above the Economist magazine’s baffling decision to certify Bangladesh’s Islamist reign of terror.

In another instance, in the Financial Times, a British chess correspondent (a nonagenarian named Leonard Barden), was underwhelmed by D Gukesh’s staggering feat of becoming world champion at a teenager, and seemed to suggest that a) Gukesh won because his opponent Ding Liren of China was ill, b) Gukesh would have lost to either of two Americans, Caruana and Nakamura (both immigrants to the US, incidentally) if they had been in the fray. Barden, who probably remembers imperial times, also seemed to think poorly of the emerging Indian challenge in chess. These Anglosphere prejudices affect Americans.

I also have some personal experience of American racism, as someone who went to the US on a student visa, got his Green Card and stayed on for twenty years before returning to India. A factor in my return was alienation, and the feeling of being an unwanted outsider, engendered by casual racism, even though on the face of it, I had a great life: good job in Silicon Valley, nice house, dream car. Obama’s and Biden’s regimes did nothing to change that feeling. Trump’s second coming may not either.

Racism

In general, I find Americans to be very nice people, gregarious, friendly and thoughtful: I had a number of good friends when I lived there. But I also think that racism is inbuilt into the culture (after all, it has not been that long since Brown v. Board of Education, Bull Connor, Jim Crow, George Wallace; and earlier the Asian Exclusion Act).

There have been many acts of discrimination and racism against Hindus (although the term “Hindoo” [sic] included Sikhs and Muslims as well). See, e.g., the serious anti-Indian riots in Bellingham, WA in 1907 when “500 working class white men violently expelled Hindoo migrants from the city”. (both images courtesy @Hindoohistory on Twitter).

Another remarkable story was the saga of Bhagat Singh Dhind, a Sikh, who was granted US citizenship three times, only to have it be taken away twice. The first time, in 1913, it was because, although ‘Hindoos’ are Caucasians, they are not white. The second time, because the Supreme Court ruled in 1923 (US v Bhagat Singh Thind) that it would retrospectively cancel the citizenship of some 77 naturalized ‘Hindoos’ based on the 1917 Immigration Act.

The “Barred Zone” provision in that 1917 Act denied citizenship to Indians and Southeast Asians by making a large swathe of territory in Asia verboten. Curiously, Japanese, Koreans and some Chinese were exempt. Iranians, some Afghans (and some Baloch, if you look at the map closely) were deemed white. So far as I know, that is still the working definition of “white” in the US. (source: qz.com)

There were real human costs: there is the sad story of Vaishno Das Bagai, a San Francisco businessman, who was rendered stateless after denaturalization, and seeing no way out (he was a Ghadar Party activist against British rule in India) committed suicide.

Anyway, Dhind, evidently a persistent fellow, got his citizenship a third time because he had served in the US Army in World War I. Third time lucky: his citizenship was not revoked again.

After the Luce-Celler Act of 1946, 100 Indians and 100 Filipinos a year were allowed to immigrate to the US, with the prospect of future naturalization as US citizens. Race based limitations were replaced with a quota system by the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (aka McCarran-Walter Act), but it still retained significant caps based on national origin; that Act also introduced the H-1 category for skilled immigrants.

As a result of all this, the number of Indian immigrants to the US (e.g. nurses) started going up. The general euphoria surrounding the Civil Rights Movement also conferred a certain respect upon Gandhi, because Martin Luther King reportedly was inspired by his non-violent techniques of protest.

But that did not mean US blacks made common cause with Indians, because often unofficial ‘minority quotas’ were achieved by bringing in Indians and Chinese, which in effect meant blacks did not get the jobs they legitimately spilled their blood for.

I was one of those who went through the ‘labor certification’ process in the 1980s, when it was relatively easy to get a Green Card because there were very few Indians applying. The trickle became a flood after the Y2K issue when a lot of Indians arrived on H1-Bs.

I personally experienced mild forms of public racism, for instance from Latinos in New Jersey calling me a ‘dot-head’, to an unseen voice shouting “No Indians wanted here” when I was being shown apartments in NJ. This was around the time Navroze Mody was beaten to death in Hoboken, NJ by ‘Dotbusters’.

Later, there were whites asking if I were leaving the country when I walked out of a mall with a suitcase in Fremont, California. When I said yes, they expressed their approval.

Religious bigotry

The death of former US President Jimmy Carter at the age of 100 is a reminder of the power of fundamentalist Christians in the US. He was a faithful member of the Baptist Church, and in his eulogies, he was praised as a simple and decent man who upheld his Christian beliefs.

But the impression of Baptists, and American evangelists in general, in India is vastly different. They were implicated in the story of the fervid young American man who attempted to evangelize the famously hostile tribals of North Sentinel Island. They promptly shot him dead with arrows for his pains.

The result of Christian conversion in India has often been negative, contrary to pious platitudes. It has created severe fissures in society, turning family members against each other. The net result of conversion has been to create separatism.

Verrier Elwin, a missionary, converted large numbers of people in the Northeast of India, and the result has been calls for a separate Christian nation in that area. Sheikh Hasina, before being deposed, claimed that there were plans afoot for a Christian “Zo” nation, for Zo/Kuki/Mizo/Naga converted tribals, to be carved out of India and Bangladesh.

There are precedents, of course: the Christian nations of South Sudan (from Sudan) and East Timor (from Indonesia).

The Indian state of Manipur which has seen a lot of conversion recently, is also troubled, with armed Kuki Christian terrorists killing Hindu Meiteis. .

The bottom line is that the very precepts of Abrahamisms, of an exclusive god (or god-equivalent), an in-group out-group dichotomy, and the demonization of non-believers as the Other, are antithetical to the Hindu spirit of inclusivity and tolerance.

Hindumisia or Hindu hatred is rampant in the West, and increasingly on the Internet. The evolution of this hostility can be seen in a taxonomy of monotheistic religions:

• paleo-Abrahamisms: Zoroastrianism, Judaism

• meso-Abrahamisms: Christian, Islamic religions

• neo-Abrahamisms: Communism, Fascism, Nazism, DMK-ism, Ambedkarism, and so on

The arrival of Christians in India was far from peaceful; the historical record shows that the Jesuit Francis Xavier was proud of his idol-breaking. Claude Buchanan made up lurid tales about his alleged encounters with Hindu practices; William Bentinck and his alleged abolition of sati were lionized far beyond reason, because sati was a very isolated practice.

The continued deprecation of Hindus by Christians can be seen vividly in Kerala, where Christians are considerably more prosperous than Hindus (data from C I Issac, himself a Christian and a historian). Here’s an American of Kerala Christian descent hating on Hindus, perhaps unaware that “Thomas in India” is pure fiction, and that Francis Xavier, the patron saint of Christians in India, was a fanatic and a bigot. ‘Syrian’ Christians of Kerala who claim (without proof) to be ‘upper caste’ converts discriminate harshly against ‘lower-caste’ converts to this day. Hardly all ‘children of god’.

Incidentally, there may be other, political, considerations here. This woman is apparently married into the family of Sydney Blumenthal, which is part of the Clinton entourage, i.e. Democrat royalty. Tablet magazine discussed the ‘permission structure’ used by Democrats, especially Obama, to manufacture consent. Hindus may be getting ‘punished’ for supporting Trump.

I personally experienced Christian bigotry against Hindus at age 10 in Kerala. My classmate Philip (a local Malayali) told me casually: “All your gods are our devils”. Reflexively, I told him, “Your gods are our devils, too”, although no Hindu had ever told me Christian gods were devils.

Others have told me identical stories from places like Hyderabad. This meme likely came from Francis Xavier himself. It may well be taught to impressionable children as an article of faith in church catechism.

Francis Xavier invited the Inquisition to Goa, and many, if not most, of the victims were Hindus. Here’s an account from Empire of the Soul by Paul William Roberts:

“The palace in which these holy terrorists ensconced themselves was known locally as Vadlem Gor – the Big House. It became a symbol of fear… People in the street often heard screams of agony piercing the night… Children were flogged and slowly dismembered in front of their parents, whose eyelids had been sliced off to make sure they missed nothing. Extremities were amputated carefully, so that a person would remain conscious even when all that remained was a torso and head. Male genitalia were removed and burned in front of wives, breasts hacked off and vaginas penetrated by swords while husbands were forced to watch”.

Below is a tweet by another American presumably suffused with Christian compassion. I am reminded of a Kerala Christian woman repeatedly trying to convert a Scheduled Caste friend, using similar memes denigrating Kali. Finally, my friend got fed up and asked her: “You worship the mutilated corpse of a dead Arab stuck on a stick. And that’s better?”. Her jaw dropped, and she blubbered: “But… but, that’s a metaphor”. My friend retorted: “Then realize that Kali is a metaphor too”. Not much self-awareness on the part of the would-be converter.

Therefore, the religion factor, of Hindus being the ultimate Other, cannot be overstated. There is basically no way to reconcile the Hindu world view with the Christian. Dharma is incompatible with Abrahamisms/Semitisms. And no, it’s not Jimmy Carter who’s relevant, it’s Francis Xavier.

Economics and Geo-economics

There is a serious issue with the engineering community in the US, which has nothing to do with the H1-B program. Engineers have been unable to unite, create a cartel, keep their numbers low and value to the consumer high, and bargain to keep salaries high. This is a signal failure on the part of the US engineers, and blaming others isn’t going to solve the problem.

Consider, in contrast, doctors (and to a lesser extent, nurses). They keep their numbers very low, successfully portray their contribution to society as very high, and keep out foreign doctors as much as possible: the result is that their salaries are astronomical (a recent Medscape survey suggests that the top-earning specialty, Orthopedics, earns an average of $568,000 a year. And that’s the average).

In contrast, according to Forbes in 2023 the highest-paid engineering specialty, Petroleum Engineering, earned only $145,000, and in fact wages had actually declined. Even much-ballyhooed software engineers ($103,000 ) and AI engineers ($128,000) make very little. And lest you think H1-B depresses wages, there are almost no H1-B petroleum engineers. The bottom line is that engineering is not a high-income occupation in the US. Why? No syndicate.

How about nurses? According to a report, Nurse Anesthetists make an average of $214,000.

And there are plenty of Indian-origin doctors and nurses in the US. Why does this not create a hue-and-cry? The answer is two-fold: one, the scarcity value, and two, those in medicine have created a narrative, and the public has bought it, that their services are so valuable that the nation must spend 20% of its GDP on what is, by objective measures, pretty poor outcomes in health: ranking tenth out of 10 in high-income countries, at very high cost.

There have been grumbles about the helplessness of American engineers for years: I remember forty years ago some guy whose name I forget constantly complaining in the IEEE’s email groups about immigrant engineers enabling employers to lower the salaries they pay.

In addition, engineers regularly go through boom-and-bust cycles. They have no leverage. I remember after a boom period in the 1970s, unemployed aerospace engineers were driving taxis. If there is another ‘AI winter’, then we’ll find unemployed AI engineers on the street as well, despite massive demand right now.

It is true that there may be subtle intricacies, too. The US companies that contract out their positions to H1-B engineers may well be paying prevailing wages, say $60 an hour. But there are middlemen: big IT services companies who take on the contracts, and provide ‘body-shopping’ services. They may well be severely underpaying the actual engineers at only, say, $35 an hour, in a bizarre revivification of ‘indentured labor’, i.e. wage slavery. It is difficult for those on H1–Bs to change employers, so they are stuck.

There is a larger geo-economic angle as well. The US likes being the top dog in GDP, as it has been since 1945. Unfortunately, through the fecklessness of all Presidents from Nixon onwards, they have somehow allowed China to ascend to a strong #2 position. At this point, I suspect the Deep State has concluded that it would be impossible to dislodge China, given its manufacturing clout.

I wrote a year ago that a condominium with China may well be the best Plan B for the US. Let us consider what has happened to the other countries that were at the top of the economic pyramid: Germany and Japan.

The 1985 Plaza Accord whereby the US dollar was depreciated led to a Lost Decade for Japan, which has turned into a Lost Four Decades; that country which was booming in the 1980s lost, and never regained its momentum.

Germany was doing pretty well until the Ukraine War and the arrival of the Electric Vehicle boom. But at this point, it has more or less lost its machine tools business, its automobile business; add its social and political views, and its future looks grim.

If this is what has happened to #3 and #4, we can expect that an aspiring #3, namely India, will face a concerted effort to ruin it. It is in the interests of both the US and China to suppress a potential competitor, especially when there is the tiresome mantra of “India is the fastest growing large economy in the world”.

The Bangladesh coup, which benefits both the US and China by creating a massive new war front on India’s East, is therefore possibly the result of a tacit collusion between the Deep State and the CCP. Similarly, the sudden spike in anti-Hindu rhetoric and this H1-B hoo-haa may well be financed by Xinhua, and it clearly benefits the Democrats, as it has driven a wedge between Christian fundamentalist MAGA types and other Trump supporters. It also puts the Indian-origin and/or Hindu members of Trump’s team on notice: they better self-censor.

Even immigrant Elon Musk, not to mention Vivek Ramaswamy, Kash Patel, Jay Bhattacharyya, and the non-Indian Hindu Tulsi Gabbard, are all in the firing line of the Deep State. Even though the IEEE has been moaning about depressed engineering salaries for half a century, it is curious that this became a cause celebre just days before Trump’s accession to the Presidency.

Narrative-building

There was a sobering incident in New York’s subways on December 22nd, when a woman, now identified as 61 year old Debrina Kawam, was set on fire by an illegal immigrant, Sebastian Zapeta, from Guatemala, who had been deported earlier but came back to the US. I saw a video purportedly of her burning to death, shockingly without screaming, rolling on the ground to douse the flames, or anything else. She just stood and burned, as Zapeta fanned the flames.

A New York City subway policeman walked by. The people who were busy capturing the footage on their smartphones did not intervene or help. It reminded me of Kitty Genovese, a 28 year old woman who was raped and stabbed to death on March 13, 1964, in full view of onlookers in the apartment block where she lived in Queens, New York. Nobody bothered to intervene as she died, screaming.

It is really odd when people refuse to get involved in helping a dying person. There’s something morally wrong here, and it should have been worth exploring in the very articulate media.

Yes, Debrina Kawam’s baffling story got widespread airplay immediately after it happened, but it died surprisingly quickly. Here’s the Google Trends index of interest in that story.

The big new story was H1-B, which shot up and displaced the subway murder story. Note the respective timelines: the Google Trends below is about H1-B. It is hard to believe this was an organic shift. It was “manufacturing consent” with placement aforethought.

I wrote recently about how narratives are created out of thin air with the intent of manufacturing consent. The abrupt U-turn on Sheikh Hasina was one of the examples. Now the neat and abrupt switch from the NYC subway burning-alive also points to something that is deliberately planted to divert attention away from inconvenient questions.

Let us now see how the H1-B narrative survives the New Orleans story of the son of immigrants, ex-soldier, and ISIS member driving a truck and ploughing into a New Year crowd, killing many. Of course, the narrative will carefully not say anything rude about the religion of the alleged perpetrator, because there will be… consequences.

Conclusion

The furious drama and narrative about H1-B will subside soon; ironically, it may well be to the benefit of the Indian nation if this kind of propaganda reduces the attractiveness of the US for talented would-be Indian immigrants, who might stay on at home and build innovative companies. Canada and Britain have already ceased to be desired destinations.

However, the underlying issues of racism, religious bigotry, economic warfare and astroturfed narrative are real and will not go away. These are danger signals about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for Indian migrants to the US, and that’s a sad start to 2025.

3450 words, Jan 2, 2025

Here’s the AI-generated podcast from NotebookLM by Google:

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-comrade-kirillov-and-the-art-of-whistleblowing-13846569.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

One of the great Raja Rao’s slighter works is called Comrade Kirillov: it is what Graham Greene would have called an ‘entertainment’, as opposed to the ‘novels’ he wrote on themes of some gravity. I was reminded of the title in an altogether inappropriate way when I read of the assassination of General Kirillov in Moscow, allegedly by Ukrainian secret agents.

Then I read of the tragic suicide of Suchir Balaji, a whistleblower and former employee at OpenAI, surely the most glamorous company in Silicon Valley these days.

There is a thread here: it is not good for your health if you expose certain people or certain companies. You will pay a price.

You may just be minding your own business, but you happen to be in the way. This is what happened to Indian nuclear and space scientists over the last few decades. Homi Bhabha’s plane crashed in the Swiss Alps. Vikram Sarabhai died mysteriously at Halcyon Castle, Trivandrum, close to the space center that now bears his name.

Dozens of lesser-known Indian space and nuclear scientists and engineers died too, inexplicably. The same thing happened to Iranian nuclear scientists. Nambi Narayanan was lucky to escape with his life (“Who killed the ISRO’s cryogenic engine?”), though his career and reputation were ruined.

My friend Dewang Mehta of NASSCOM died quite suddenly too. I wrote a tribute to him years ago, “The man who knew marketing”. In hindsight, I think he was a friend, not just an acquaintance. I remember some very human details about him: eg. he asked a mutual friend to introduce eligible women to him, just as I did. But I digress: I believe Dewang was as important to the Indian IT story as Bhabha and Sarabhai to nuclear and space: they made us believe, and we rose to the occasion.

Then there was Lal Bahadur Shastri. The circumstances of his sudden death remain murky.

And Sunanda Pushkar, Shashi Tharoor’s wife, whom I was following on Twitter in real time. One night, she promised to make some startling revelations the next morning, presumably about dubious dealings in Dubai by the D Company. And lo! she was dead the next morning.

It is hard not to think that there is a pattern. Not only here, but in the trail of dead bodies that follows the Clinton dynasty around. The Obama chef who drowned. The whistleblowing CIA and FBI agents who… just died. The list is long. People who are inconvenient end up in body bags. I remember reading that when Sarabhai died, his family did not even ask for a post-mortem.

There are two broad patterns: geo-political assassinations and those for commercial reasons.

In Kirillov’s case, it was probably both.

General Kirillov claimed that there were bio-labs in Ukraine, etc. where the Deep State was cooking up banned biological weapons, in an eerie echo of Peter Daszcak’s Ecohealth Alliance and Anthony Fauci’s NIAID allegedly aiding and abetting prohibited gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He claimed biological crises were manufactured on demand to generate profits and increase government control. Presumably he opened a can of worms that the Deep State and Big Pharma didn’t want opened. Off with his head!

There is the ‘conspiracy theory’ that the entire COVID-19 circus was a bioweapons project that went awry. It was intended to depopulate the world, especially of black and brown people, to which the IITD paper (that was forcibly withdrawn) alludes: the genes that seemed to have been inserted into the original virus were from India, Southeast Asia, and Kenya, if I remember right. Of course, the powers that be do not want shocking stuff like this to come out.

It is straightforward to make it a false-flag operation with the Ukrainian SBU secret service to provide plausible deniability: much like the bombing of the NordStream pipeline. So exit, stage left, for Kirillov. As Sherlock Holmes might have said, “Follow the money”, or words to that effect. Cui bono?

I really don’t mean to trivialize human suffering, but to focus on the shadowy forces that organize and execute targeted assassinations. In particular, decapitation strikes can be devastating. In our own history, the loss of Hemachandra Vikramaditya in the Second Battle of Panipat, in 1526, to a stray arrow that hit him in the eye, was a point of inflexion.

Similarly, at the Battle of Talikota in 1565, the capture and beheading of the aged Ramaraya by his own troops that had gone rogue turned the winning position of the Vijayanagar Empire into a headlong rout and obliteration for the city-state.

The assassination of Ahmed Shah Masoud, the Commander of the Northern Alliance, with a bomb hidden in a news camera, turned the tide in Afghanistan in 2001. The American assassination of Qasem Soleimani of Iran in 2020 led to a significant erosion of Iran’s position, for example in Syria.

The silencing of whistle-blowers has, alas, become all too common. There were the allegations about Karen Silkwood in 1974, who died in a mysterious car crash as she was driving to meet a NYTimes reporter regarding problems at a plutonium processing plant run by Kerr-McGhee in Oklahoma.

In 2003, David Kelly, a British weapons inspector who claimed there were indeed no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, was found dead. The verdict was suicide.

In 2015, Alberto Nisman, an Argentine prosecutor known for his work on terrorism cases, was found dead days after he accused Iran of involvement in a car-bombing on a Jewish center.

In March 2024, John Barnett, a former Boeing employee, was found dead from a gunshot wound in his truck, just before he was scheduled to testify in a whistleblower lawsuit. There was also Joshua Dean, who died of a strange infection in May 2024, shortly after Barnett’s death. He worked for a company supplying parts to Boeing.

In November 2024, Suchir Balaji, all of 26 years old, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. In October, he had made allegations about OpenAI violating copyright laws.

The bottom line: if you know something, just keep quiet about it. If you are a person of substance, take no risks, and be paranoid about your security. It’s a pretty nasty world out there.

The AI-generated podcast about this essay courtesy Google NotebookLM:

1050 words, 19 Dec 2024

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by the Deccan Herald at https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/the-depressing-regularity-of-regime-change-operations-3318109

This podcast is AI generated by Google NotebookLM:

Imagine this scenario: In a certain country, there is someone in power who is not liked by one section of the population. Some global powers support this person; others support the opposition. One fine day there is a coup d’etat, and this person is overthrown and exiled. The opposition takes over amidst scenes of jubilation.

Pliant media condemns the former ruler and welcomes the new regime. “Democracy”, they chant.

But then shortly thereafter, darker things come to the fore. There are atrocities against certain sections of the population. These may be in violation of the norms of civilized society, and may include rapes, abductions, looting, murders, destruction, ethnic cleansing, and so on. In general, chaos reigns and human suffering is widespread.

Bangladesh, did you say? Yes, but I was also thinking of Syria. And then this is a scenario that plays out with depressing, even metronomic, regularity in many other parts of the world. To name a few examples, there were Iraq, Libya, Iran, Afghanistan; and to look outside West Asia, there were Chile, Congo, Guatemala, South Vietnam, Brazil, Ethiopia, Yemen, Cambodia, Laos, Tibet, to name just a few.

Yes, it’s not just the Americans, but also the Soviets/Russians and the Chinese that have indulged in overthrowing regimes they didn’t like. And usually with similar after-effects.

It appears that there is a simple playbook. Arm and support particular groups friendly to you or your ideology, get them to overthrow the person you don’t like, and then provide covering propaganda fire for the people you installed. This is despite the inevitable mayhem and revenge that the latter inflict on their erstwhile foes as well as the collateral damage on innocent bystanders.

It is safe to say that Ukraine’s regime-change, infamously attributed to an American diplomat, also did not turn out well for that nation’s civilians.

It’s not clear if these are unintended consequences, or whether the instigators truly don’t care about the damage inflicted on civilian populations. Suffice to say that there are losers at the end of the day, especially religious and ethnic minorities.

The reports coming out of Bangladesh about the atrocities being committed on Hindus there are horrendous. In effect, the Hindu population looks like it is on the way to being entirely wiped out, which was also the experience in Afghanistan after the latest Taliban takeover. The tragedy is that the rest of the world – including India – does not seem to care. Nor do such entities as the United Nations, nor the grandly-named US Council on International Religious Freedom.

In Syria, if there are any Syrian Orthodox Christians left (they are a community that predates the Vatican, has its liturgy in Aramaic, and owes its allegiance to the Patriarch of Antioch, not the Pope) they are surely bearing the brunt of the takeover by radical Islamists. Their forebears are said to have arrived in India around 345 CE, and some people in Kerala still call themselves “Syrian Christians”.

In addition, there are populations such as the Alawite sect of Islam, and other ancient groups such as Kurds and Druze either in Syria or in surrounding areas. The Kurds have been fighting for an independent homeland for a long time; the Druze inhabit border areas in Lebanon and have been generally neutral in the many wars there. Given the experiences of another ancient group, the Yazidi, when radicals attacked them ten years ago, things may not look so good for these groups either.

The net take-away is that regime-change induced from outside is generally a bad idea for any nation, and can lead to significant human misery. India would be wise to take this lesson to heart, because there is reason to believe there are regime-change operations mounted by, among others, an infamous financier. There is large-scale online propaganda against India, and against Hindus, as well as continuous unrest, large and small (see Manipur).

These efforts are supported by certain embedded assets inside the country: the “barbarians within” as in historian Will Durant’s words: “...civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.” (The Story of Civilization: Part 1, Our Oriental Heritage, pp 452, Simon and Shuster, New York, 1952)

If there is one strategic position India urgently needs to adopt, that would be to anticipate, forestall and thwart these attempts at regime change. They reflect not the will of the people, but malign interests.

760 words, 12 Dec 2024

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by deccanherald.com at https://www.deccanherald.com//opinion/border-closing-the-trumpian-shift-is-here-3279841

I am starting, by invitation, a new monthly column ‘Abroad at Home’ in print at the Deccan Herald newspaper.

The podcast above is AI-generated by Google NotebookLM.

Illegal immigration is now a core concern in many western countries, and was one of the factors that propelled Donald Trump to his thumping victory in the US Presidential election. True to form, Trump announced on Monday that he would appoint Tom Homan, a strong proponent of leak-proof borders, as his ‘border czar’.

Then there’s Stephen Miller, designated deputy Chief of Staff, a known hawk about both legal and illegal immigration. The two of them defended things like family separation, including in a Congressional hearing.

Trump has vowed to deport illegal aliens on an unprecedented scale, hire thousands of border agents, and even invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 against drug cartels and criminal gangs to expel them without a court hearing.

Especially after recurring episodes of rioting, arson and loot in European capitals, and pro-Palestine protests in the recent past, this may be popular among the US public considering that some 11 million illegal migrants simply walked into the US under Biden.

There is another group, though: legal immigrants who have been in limbo for years, sometimes decades, in the bowels of the immigration system. As is well known, a lot of them are Indian-origin people, especially engineers, who went to the US on H1-B work visas.

In earlier times (before the 1999 Y2k scare, that is), there were fewer Indians in the US: most of them, like me, had come on student visas, and opted to stay on to work. Within a year or two, we went through a process called Labor Certification which in effect said that we were not displacing a US citizen of equivalent qualifications, and then we got a Green Card.

The catch is that there is a limit to the number of Green Cards (675,000 a year) of which 140,000 are for the employment-related category. In 1990, with a new Immigration Act, a per-country cap of 7% was imposed, which means that just 9,800 work-related Green Cards are available per year per country, including India.

There are also sub-categories, such as ‘persons of extraordinary merit’, those with advanced degrees and abilities, ‘skilled workers’, ‘professional workers’, and religious workers, so it does get quite complicated.

The net result is that post-1990 Indian immigrants now face very long waits, some say as much as 100 years. Meanwhile, applicants from other countries with shorter waiting lists are able to become permanent residents much quicker.

This leads to, I am sorry to say, a sort of indentured labor for Indians on H-1B visas. In a modern twist on the old system where the British took hundreds of thousands of Indians to places like the West Indies and East Africa, today they are in trisanku mode where they have no clarity when, and if, they will get permanent residency. The conditions on their visas sometimes prevent them from changing employers so that they are, in effect, stuck.

A friend’s son in Silicon Valley exemplifies this problem. He has been awaiting his Green Card for thirteen years, and he is now wondering if he will have to go for Plan B: which is to have his 10 year-old US-born, and thus citizen, son sponsor him when he becomes an adult!

Alas, that avenue may close, because there is speculation that the Trump administration wants to do away with the ‘birthright-citizenship’ clause, because, among other things, it is leading to ‘birth-tourism’ with heavily pregnant foreigners coming to the US just to deliver their babies.

The 14th Amendment, 1868, makes any child born in the US eligible for citizenship. There is the possibility that a rider will be attached to this: that only the children of citizens, or of Green Card holders, will be thus eligible.

On the other hand, Trump might make a distinction between two types of immigrants – let us call them ‘desirable' and ‘undesirable’ – and make exceptions for the former. They are net contributors to the US economy (an Economist study suggests that certain nationalities of immigrants are such); others are a net burden on the State.

Indian-Americans, who are the best-educated and highest-earning of all ethnic communities in the US, could fairly claim to be in the former category. Indians are also founders of the largest number of unicorns in the US.

On the other hand, if life becomes difficult for them, they may start a ‘reverse brain-drain’ back to India. That would not be, all things considered, such a bad thing either. India should make them welcome, as Taiwan did with astonishing results, such as pre-eminence in chipmaking.

775 words, 12 Nov 2024

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/opinion-what-makes-trump-a-better-candidate-for-india-and-world-13831800.html

An AI-generated (courtesy notebookLM.google.com) podcast based on this essay is here:

In all humility, I accept that my endorsement of Donald Trump for the office of POTUS doesn’t make a difference, but I think it’s important for me to articulate why I think Trump is the better choice for all concerned.

On the one hand, there are the purely objective factors: economic policies, foreign policy, immigration, and so on. On the other hand, there are the subjective factors: who I personally think is good for the US and for India, the only two countries, lets’ face it, that I care about.

The subjective factors are the ones that matter, I suspect, and my views are shaped by my own personal history. I grew up in an India that looked up to America; many houses had framed photos on their walls that showed a young John Kennedy walking with Nehru in the Rose Garden of the White House; as a food-deficit country we awaited the PL-480 shipments of foodgrains, so much so that cornflour in Malayalam is called ‘American maavu’ or flour.

I remember as a child when Marilyn Monroe died, and John Kennedy, and I listened to the Voice of America coming in on shortwave radio from, I think, Mauritius; I went to the nearby US Information Center to see an exhibit of moon rocks; my father’s PhD thesis was on John Steinbeck; I read SPAN magazine that showed a sanitized picture of life in the US that was aspirational.

In college, I devoured information about America, reading Time and Newsweek magazines. I went to the US consulate in Chennai to use the library; and my beloved professor Anthony Reddy, seeing our collective obsession with the US, referred to it as “God’s own country” (this was before Amitabh Kant as tourism secretary propagated that moniker for Kerala, and in any case I believed that my two homes – Kerala and California – were indeed God’s own countries, at least before systematic rot set in).

America permeated our consciousness. Those were the days before TV, and so American soap operas were not yet available in India, but American films were, and I still remember watching many of them. It was our Saturday ritual in the open-air theater. Do I remember many of them? No, but a few, like “Guns of Navarone”, “Death Wish”, still stand out. No, not exactly highbrow, but they left an impression. So did reading William Faulkner, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, Tennessee Williams, and even “The Exorcist”.

Nixon and Kissinger and their decision to send the 7th Fleet into the Bay of Bengal to intimidate India in 1971, and the shenanigans of Watergate, plus their coverup of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, gave me the impression that Republicans were not to be trusted and that they were the bad guys, as compared to the Democrats: I remembered the two Kennedy assassinations.

Taking the GRE and GMAT, and then going to grad school on scholarship was an achievement, especially because in those days relatively few from India were able to go to the US. Then working at Bell Labs, where I was active in the anti-apartheid movement there that asked AT&T to withdraw from any company doing business in South Africa. It was a just and proper position.

My friends in that effort were all, I suspect, Democrats, and when I was moving to California, they advised me to go Berkeley rather than Stanford, as I had been admitted to both. I didn’t, which was probably a good thing, as I found later that the People’s Republic of Berkeley, as it is derisively called in the Bay Area, was not that much to my taste anyway.

I was, however, left- and Democrat-leaning for years, and I used to even subscribe to the New York Times and Nation magazine. When I left for California, though, one of my friends at Bell Labs correctly predicted that I’d eventually prefer the Wall Street Journal. I became a member of Greenpeace, and I even joined the Green Party of California. In other words, I was pretty much like most of the other Indian-origin people in Silicon Valley. We thought immigrant rights were much more likely to be supported by Democrats; and also the rights of non-whites.

As for presidents, I sort of endured Reagan, whom I didn’t like because of what I thought was his over-rehearsed lines. I was sympathetic to Carter. I don’t remember much about Bush senior and junior, despite the post-9/11 exertions. Then I quite liked Clinton’s affable, avuncular charm, until, that is, I learned more about him. Obama, however, caused my political antennae to perk up: I thought he was sinister.

Somehow, along the way, I stopped being attracted to what I later realized was woke-dom. I began to see that the Republicans, despite their (what I had earlier dismissed as) somewhat primitive, troglodyte sentiments, were actually better for the US and in fact for the world. Clinton-era fossils like Madeleine Albright and Robin Raphel made me cringe.

Robin Raphel’s infamous rejection of the Instrument of Accession of Jammu-Kashmir in 1993, and her memorable characterization of Pakistan as a “modern, model, moderate Islamic nation” were landmarks in tone-deaf behavior by a US official. She was later investigated by the FBI in a counterintelligence operation on suspicion of having mishandled classified information and if I remember right, even of having passed some of this to other countries that need not be named.

Let us note that the US Council on International Religious Freedom, set up during the Clinton era, has been singularly focused on bashing and punishing India for imaginary offenses against religious freedom. It also never has a practicing Hindu as a Commissioner, only HINOs.

The USCIRF is a front organization for pushing a US agenda, in this case, evangelism. In that, it reminds me of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, signed under Johnson (Democrat), entered into force under Nixon (Republican), and intended almost entirely to prevent India from becoming a nuclear weapons power.

In the meantime, I had returned to India, and therefore the Indian perspective began to matter a lot more to me. Later, Clinton’s hyphenated 2000 visit to India and Pakistan (where he arrived in an unmarked plane immediately after Musharaff’s coup), and his lectures to India soured me even further on the intentions and objectives of Democrats.

It was during the George W Bush era, in 2005, that Modi became the only person ever to be denied a visa on the grounds of conducting “particularly severe violations of religious freedom” under section 212(a)(2)(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Yes, literally the only person ever. Dubya was so embattled and so much in over his head that it is not clear if it was a policy decision or a bureaucratic decision.

It is quite curious that this clause is not applied today to Mohammed Yunus who is not a head of state, but only ‘Chief Advisor to the Interim Government’ of Bangladesh. What it suggests, as many have noted, is that the Bangladesh regime-change operation was blessed by Biden and Harris and Deep State, and Yunus may be an “asset” they have long cultivated. Apparently a pogrom against Hindus does not constitute a “severe violation of religious freedom”.

Obama was notable in his dislike of India. Interestingly, at a young age when many American college students travel to India, Obama had instead gone to… Pakistan. He did make two visits to India as President, including as a Republic Day guest, but I could not shake the impression that this was done more as a marketing event than something with substance.

It was quite evident that Hillary Clinton was a particularly unappealing candidate, and that was why I thought that Trump would win in 2016, despite having, well, several character flaws. With Biden in 2020, I thought Trump was again the better candidate, both for the US and for India. In the latter’s case it was the Biden Amendment that delayed India’s cryogenic engine by 20 years.

Arvind Kumar suggests that Biden has been implicated in supporting many questionable rulers such as Pol Pot and Idi Amin, and with his Democrat friends has created havoc all over the place. His and Harris’ policies have not been positive for India: for example the downgrading of the Quad, or the rhetoric to bully India into toeing the US line on Ukraine and sanctions on Russia.

The completely unnecessary Ukraine war, based on an Atlanticist Cold War-era fantasy pushed by the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski, has merely succeeded in pushing Russia into China’s arms. And Biden has handled other wars badly too: the headlong withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the schizophrenic reaction to the Gaza war. There is every chance that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan will be mishandled too.

Biden’s proxy war on India, waged through Canada’s Justin Trudeau, using dangerous secessionist Khalistanis as a weapon, suggests that the Democrats do not believe in allies, only in vassals. The regime change in Bangladesh, the games played with Pakistan, and the evisceration of the Quad, only emphasize that the Deep State is capricious and unpredictable.

In the meantime, the California that I knew and loved is no more. It is no longer possible to stroll through downtown San Francisco, or park your car in the city, because crime and drug usage have become universal and ubiquitous, mostly thanks to woke Democratic governance. One of the greatest and most beautiful cities in the world is now becoming unlivable.

If this is what a Kamala Harris presidency would perpetuate, I believe it is bad for all concerned. Walter Russel Mead has invoked a crisis in leadership in America, and we have seen this aplenty during the Biden presidency, especially as the man himself exhibits signs of severe cognitive decline.

In the background, there is what appears to be the serious infiltration of Chinese agents into the echelons of US power (remember the advisor to the governor of New York?) and even of Iranian agents in high positions accused of passing Israeli plans to Iran.

Furthermore, the open and extremely generous support for Harris by Alex Soros, son of George Soros, is a red flag. Soros the elder had promised to spend billions of dollars to tackle “the spread of nationalism” (translation: regime change operations against the likes of India’s duly elected government); Alex is now engaged to Huma Abedin, a Pakistani-born woman who was earlier Hillary Clinton’s conscience-keeper and probably her handler.

Then there are the issues of the mishandled Covid crisis, with Anthony Fauci essentially toeing the Big Pharma line; the hard-to-believe invasion of the US by millions of immigrants, many of whom are criminals. Mark Zuckerberg recounted how Big Tech was weaponized to interfere in elections and to generally push a particular point of view to gaslight and manufacture consent.

And finally, Kamala Harris herself. I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area when she began her ascent, which was not necessarily because of merit, but because of friends in high places. I also do not remember her ever emphasizing her Indian roots: she always projected herself as a black person. This deliberate deracination may be clever electorally but it certainly does not endear her to me, nor does it sound particularly ethical on her part. (Note: Conversely, 2020 Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren claims to have Native American ancestry).

I was also pained by the fact that Kamala Harris did not attend the White House Diwali 2024 celebration, which I consider a slap on the faces of all the Hindu-Americans who have been supporting her because of her Hindu ancestry. Harris adds insult to injury by attempting, as leftists do in India, to detach Diwali from its Hindu roots, as Utpal Kumar notes.

On the other hand, Trump said something very statesmanlike, and the contrast is telling. Not only is he standing up for the rights of minority Hindus, he’s also saying that he will handle Bangladesh very differently, and that what Indians perceive as all-around anti-India actions by the Deep State will be curtailed. Trump is acknowledging that Modi’s signal of patching up with Xi at BRICS has been heard. This is a statement of some significance, geopolitics-wise.

I am also afraid that Harris has not covered herself in glory as a woman of intellect or one who has a vision of any kind. To be honest, she has come across as the Dan Quayle of our time, in other words “impeachment insurance” for Biden. I remember how her entire 2020 Presidential campaign was destroyed in under two minutes by Tulsi Gabbard on a debate stage. Harris looked like a deer caught in the headlights, quite in the manner of Dan Quayle or Rahul Gandhi.

Worse than Harris’ substance (such as it is) is her style. The incessant “unburdened by the past” slogan began to sound trite after about the fiftieth time. Can she hold a coherent argument without her teleprompter? How is she going to stand up to tough world leaders? Furthermore, her laugh no longer sounds funny. It actually sounds… creepy.

Compared to this litany of everything that has gone wrong with the Biden/Harris regime (which I suspect constitutes a kakistocracy), Trump did a good job in keeping out of wars, knocking heads together to get West Asian powers to a semblance of cooperation with the Abraham Accords, and fending off China’s attempts to dominate the world economically/militarily. The fact that he did not go to war is possibly the biggest reason that the Deep State despises him.

Admittedly, Trump is crude, a loudmouth and a braggart. But beyond the surface, his political instincts and policies were not bad: for instance, demanding that rich European nations must pay their fair share of the expenses for the military protection offered by NATO.

The interesting fact that the strongly Democratic Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have refused to endorse Harris (even though the usual suspects New York Times and The Economist have done so) suggests that despite the tsunami of disinformation and fake news via social media and a pliant Big Tech, the sentiment on the ground is that Trump has gained.

And then I came across a substack from a young man, Rishi Jaitly, a life-long activist Democrat, who is now wondering if the party that he cherished (he is a particular fan of Obama) is now living up to its advertised trajectory. I’d say no, and I suspect he’ll come to the same conclusion. That party has been in terminal decline for some time.

Now to move on to a purely objective perspective, choosing between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris involves evaluating their contrasting policies, leadership styles, and the implications of their potential presidencies. Here are key reasons some voters might prefer Trump over Harris:

Economic Policies

• Tax Cuts and Deregulation: Trump's promises include significant tax cuts, particularly benefiting corporations and wealthy individuals, which supporters argue stimulates economic growth. His approach emphasizes deregulation, which many believe fosters a more favorable business environment, although there is fear of rampant Big Business.

• Manufacturing Jobs: Trump has focused on reviving American manufacturing through tariffs on imports and incentives for domestic production. This strategy appeals to working-class voters who feel left behind by globalization. However, it remains to be seen if manufacturing jobs will in fact return, given supply chain constraints and loss of competency, especially in technician-level skills.

Immigration and Law Enforcement

• Strict Immigration Policies: One of the biggest concerns about Harris has been her mishandling, as border czar, of illegal immigration. While law-abiding and gainfully employed Indian immigrants wait for decades for green cards, illegal and even criminal aliens simply walk in and get everything, including the right to vote. Trump advocates for stringent immigration controls, appealing to voters concerned about border security and the perceived impact of immigration on jobs and public safety. His tough stance resonates with those who prioritize law enforcement and national security.

• Support for Law Enforcement: Trump's rhetoric often emphasizes strong support for police and law enforcement agencies, which can attract voters who prioritize safety and crime reduction. All the ‘Defund the Police’ rhetoric has boomeranged on the wokes.

Social Issues

• Conservative Values: Many Trump supporters appreciate his conservative stance on social issues, including opposition to abortion and support for traditional family values. This alignment with conservative ideologies can be a decisive factor for voters who prioritize these issues. However, some of this may veer into dangerous territory as racism.

• Populist Appeal: Trump's persona as an outsider challenging the political establishment resonates with many voters who feel disillusioned by traditional politicians. His direct communication style and willingness to confront political norms attract those seeking change.

Leadership Style

• Decisive Leadership: Supporters often view Trump as a decisive leader who takes bold actions. His approach to governance is seen as straightforward compared to Harris's more cautious style, which some may perceive as indecisive or dilly-dallying.

• Economic Performance: Some voters recall economic indicators during Trump's presidency—such as low unemployment rates before the pandemic—as evidence of effective leadership, contributing to their support despite controversies surrounding his administration.

• The Team: There are people such as J D Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are prominent in the campaign; there seems to be a well-thought-out program and plan that is waiting to be executed.

Foreign Policy

• America First: While there are potential irritants to allies in a MAGA (Make America Great Again) approach that prioritizes US interests, it is a lot more sensible than what Democrats offer: something that was lampooned by Kissinger as: “It is dangerous to be America’s enemy, but fatal to be its friend”. An interest-based (“there are permanent interests, no permanent friends”) foreign policy is not capricious, unlike an ideology-based approach that Biden has apparently followed in relation to Russia.

• Fortress America: There is the danger that Trump may turn his back on the rest of the world (America has done this navel-gazing periodically in the past). Given rapid globalization and the relative decline of the US, this may end up being counterproductive.

• Foreign Wars: Trump has promised to end the Ukraine war; he may be able to bring all parties to the table in Gaza and avoid an Iran-Israel all-out war; and he might put enough pressure on China through other means to avoid a disastrous war over Taiwan.

While both candidates present distinct visions for America's future, Trump's appeal lies in his economic policies, strong stance on immigration, conservative social values, clarity in foreign policy, and a leadership style that many find refreshing amidst political gridlock. Voters inclined toward these aspects may lean towards Trump over Harris in the upcoming election.

Finally, there is that intangible something: the courage Trump showed when he was shot in the ear by a would-be assassin.

Thus from both a subjective and personal perspective, and a more objective hands-off perspective looking at the benefits to the US, India and the world at large, I submit that Donald J Trump would be the right choice for the next President of the United States.

3100 words, 2 Nov 2024

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

The potential consequences of a Trump presidency for India span multiple dimensions, including military, economic, trade, cultural, financial, and social aspects. Here’s an overview of these impacts:

Military and Geopolitical Implications

• Defense Ties: Under Trump, India may continue to strengthen its defense partnerships with the U.S., particularly in countering China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

• Transactional Foreign Policy: Trump's approach is likely to be more transactional, focusing on bilateral deals without attaching conditions related to so-called human rights or internal policies.

Economic and Trade Consequences

• Tariffs and Trade Relations: Trump’s protectionist policies could lead to increased tariffs on Indian goods, challenging India's export competitiveness.

• Supply Chain Shifts: Despite potential trade frictions, India could benefit from the ongoing shift of supply chains away from China.

• Economic Growth: India's domestic demand-driven economy might mitigate the long-term impacts of any slowdown in U.S. growth.

Immigration and Social Impact

• H-1B Visa Restrictions: Trump's administration is expected to maintain a hardline stance on immigration, which could complicate visa processes for Indian professionals. This may be a good thing for India, forcing H1B seekers to return to India, especially given worsening conditions in Canada.

• Indian Americans: The tightening of immigration policies may lead to increased backlogs for green card applications among Indian nationals in the U.S.. On the other hand, these are desirable productive, legal, immigrants. The US just sent a planeload of illegals back to India.

Cultural and Financial Dimensions

• Cultural Exchange: Attacks on hinduism may or may not diminish, given the preponderance of religious christians in his republican party

• Financial Markets: Indian markets may experience volatility due to Trump's unpredictable trade policies.

Long-Term Impact on Indians in India

• Economic Resilience: India's robust economic structure may help it weather any adverse effects from U.S. policies.

• Geopolitical Positioning: As the U.S. seeks allies against China, India’s strategic importance is likely to grow, potentially leading to enhanced economic and military cooperation over time.

• Dedollarization. The impact of this on India is unpredictable, but the signals are unmistakable that India seeks to reduce the impact of a total dependence on the dollar and on US reserves so that it may undergird its financial sovereignty.

And here, as always, is an AI-generated podcast ABOUT this podcast. As usual, interesting and engaging, thanks to Google NotebookLM and its robot anchors. And twice as long as my actual podcast above!

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

• POTUS election: Trump has momentum, but this election looks increasingly like it’s going to be interfered with by the Democratic machine. Harris is likely to “win”; the DeepState will return with renewed vigor, and its embrace of thugs like Pannun, understandable only if you believe they have every intent to sabotage India, will resume.

• The BRICS+ shindig sends a signal to the US and the collective West that dedollarization may be upon us sooner than expected; but India should not jump into the BRICS currency without due deliberation because it exposes India to the economic and military might of China. However, it is a good signal to threaten the DeepState with.

• India’s neighbors, most recently the Maldives, are treating India as some easily-gaslighted uncle whom they can get free money from, while giving nothing in return. This has to stop. Extract a pound of flesh (like take an island or two, or maybe an airport as collateral for loans) especially from nasty people like the Maldivians who were just the other day shouting “India Out”.

Here’s the Google NotebookLM-generated podcast based on the transcript of the above podcast:

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-the-implications-of-a-kamala-harris-presidency-for-india-13828576.html

Here’s an AI-generated podcast based on this essay (courtesy Google’s NotebookLM): always entertaining and appealing.

Full disclosure: Parts of this essay were written by AI, and edited.

The entire sorry spat with the Canadians, the tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats and a virtual breakdown of ties leads to a good question. Are the Americans behind it (and if so why?), because for all practical purposes, Canada takes the lead from its Five Eyes friends and mentors? Several commentators have suggested that this is so.

Trudeau is not a serious politician, as he demonstrated in this photograph in blackface acting allegedly as an “Indian potentate”.

But the Deep State is deadly serious. They have meddled in country after country, leading to the utter misery of their populations. I can, off the top of my head, count several: Salvador Allende’s Chile, Patrice Lumumba’s Congo, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Muammar Ghaddafi’s Libya, Bashar Assad’s Syria, not to mention Sihanouk’s Cambodia.

We have to make a distinction between the US public in general and the Deep State. The nation as a whole still believes in the noble ideals of the American Revolution, and American individuals are among the most engaging in the world; however, the Deep State is self-aggrandizing, and now poses a potent danger to the US itself as well as others. Alas, it is taking its eye off its real foe, China, with what probably will be disastrous consequences.

The Khalistani threat is a significant concern for India because it appears that the Deep State is applying pressure through proxies. Since it likes to stick to simple playbooks, we have some recent and nerve-racking precedents: Ukraine https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/trudeau-is-us-deep-states-zelensky-2-0-why-india-should-fight-canadas-diplomatic-war-with-all-its-might-13827294.html) and Bangladesh https://rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/p/ep-134-the-geo-political-fallout.

So what exactly is in store for India after the new POTUS is chosen, which is just two weeks away? US betting markets are suggesting that Donald Trump will win, but it’s likely that Kamala Harris will emerge as POTUS. I was among the few in India who predicted a Trump win in 2016; admittedly I predicted a Trump win in 2020, and I do believe there were um… irregularities. I think in 2024 Trump would win if it were a fair fight, but it is not.

But I fear the vote will be rigged and lopsided, partly because of the vast numbers of illegal aliens who will be, or already have been, allowed to vote (by mail). Every day, I hear of strange practices in swing states, as in this tweet. There is room for a lot of irregularities.

On the other hand, the Indian-American voter (“desi”), apparently, will continue to vote for the Democratic Party, with some reason: there is racism in the Republican rank and file; but then let us remember that anti-black racism in the US South had Democratic roots: George Wallace and Bull Connor and “Jim Crow”. The Republicans had their “Southern Strategy” too, to inflame racial tensions. The racism Indian-Americans, particularly Hindus, face today is more subtle, but I doubt that the indentured labor and Green Card hell will get any better with Kamala Harris as President. I suspect 100+ year waits for a Green Card will continue.

A Harris presidency could introduce several challenges for India across various domains, including economics, foreign policy, terrorism, and military affairs. It is appropriate to consider historical contexts, especially the stances of previous Democratic administrations and notable figures. In particular, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright and Robin Raphel come to mind: they were especially offensive to India and India’s interests.

The Biden Amendment, and Bill Clinton/Hillary Clinton’s efforts delayed India’s cryogenic rocket engine and thus its space program by 19 years. https://www.rediff.com/news/column/who-killed-the-isros-cryogenic-engine/20131118.htm

One of the most vivid historical examples is that of Japan’s economy. After a dream run in the 1960s and 1970s, when they seriously threatened American supremacy in trade based on their high-quality and low-priced products, the Japanese were felled by the Plaza Accord of 1985, which forced the yen to appreciate significantly against the dollar.

The net result was that Japanese products lost their competitive pricing edge. Furthermore, it led to an interest rate cut by the Japanese central bank, which created an enormous asset bubble. The bursting of that bubble led to a Lost Decade in the 1990s, and the nation has not yet recovered from that shock. One could say that the reserve currency status of the dollar was used to bludgeon the Japanese economy to death.

Having observed this closely, China took special care to do two things: one, to infiltrate the US establishment, and two, to lull them into a false sense of security. Captains of industry were perfectly happy, with their short-term personal incentives, to move production to China for increased profits. Wall Street was quite willing to finance China, too. Politicians were willing to suspend disbelief, and to pursue the fantasy that a prosperous China would be somehow like America, only with East Asian features. Wrong. China is a threat now.

But the Deep State learned from that mistake: they will not let another competitor thrive.

The possible economic rise of India is something that will be opposed tooth and nail. In the background there is the possible collapse of the US dollar as the reserve currency (i.e. dedollarization), because of ballooning US debt and falling competitiveness, and the emergence of mechanisms other than Bretton Woods and the SWIFT network (e.g. the proposed blockchain-based, decentralized BRICS currency called UNIT).

Besides, the Deep State has a clear goal for India: be a supine supplier of raw materials, including people; and a market for American goods, in particular weapons. Ideally India will be ruled by the Congress party, which, through incompetence or intent, steadily impoverished India: see how nominal per capita income collapsed under that regime until the reforms of 1991 (data from tradingeconomics and macrotrends). The massive devaluations along the way also hurt the GDP statistics, with only modest gains in trade.

Another future that the Deep State has in mind for India could well be balkanization: just like the Soviet Union was unraveled, it may assiduously pursue the unwinding of the Indian State through secession, “sub-national diplomacy” and so forth. The value of India as a hedge against a rampaging China does not seem to occur to Democrats; in this context Trump in his presidency was much more positive towards India.

Chances are that a Harris presidency will cost India dear, in all sorts of ways:

Foreign Policy Challenges

1. Kashmir, Khalistan and Regional Dynamics: Harris has previously expressed support for Kashmiri separatism and criticized India's actions in the region. This stance could complicate U.S.-India relations, especially if she seeks to engage with groups advocating Kashmiri secession. The persistent support for Khalistan, including its poster boy Gurpatwant Singh Pannun who keeps warning of blowing up Indian planes, shows the Democrats have invested in this policy.

2. Alignment with Anti-India Elements: Her connections with leftist factions within the Democratic Party, which have historically taken a hard stance against India, may result in policies that are less favorable to Indian interests. The influence of figures like Pramila Jayapal could further strain relations.

3. Balancing Act with China: While the U.S. aims to counter Chinese influence in Asia, Harris's approach may involve a nuanced engagement with China that could leave India feeling sidelined in strategic discussions. Barack Obama, if you remember, unilaterally ceded to China the task of overseeing the so-called “South Asia”. Harris may well be content with a condominium arrangement with China: see https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-a-us-china-condominium-dividing-up-the-world-between-themselves-12464262.html

4. Foreign Policy Independence: An India that acts in its own national interests is anathema to many in the US establishment. The clear Indian message that the Ukraine war and perhaps even the Gaza war are unfortunate events, but that they are peripheral to Indian interests, did not sit well with the Biden administration. In a sense, just as Biden pushed Russia into China’s arms, he may well be doing the same with India: the recently announced patrolling agreement between India and China may also be a signal to the Harris camp.

Terrorism and Security Concerns

1. Counterterrorism Cooperation: A shift towards prioritizing “human rights” may affect U.S.-India counterterrorism cooperation, as can already be seen in the case of Khalistanis. If Harris's administration emphasizes civil liberties over security measures, it could limit joint operations aimed at combating terrorism emanating especially from Pakistan..

2. Support for Separatist Movements and Secession: Increased U.S. support for groups that advocate for self-determination in regions like Kashmir might embolden separatist movements within India (see Sonam Wangchuk in Ladakh, and the alleged Christian Zo nation that Sheikh Hasina said the US wanted to carve out of India, Bangladesh and Myanmar), posing a significant internal security challenge.

Military Affairs

1. Defense Collaborations: Although military ties have strengthened under previous administrations, a Harris presidency might introduce hesitancy in defense collaborations due to her potential focus on alleged human rights issues within India's military operations. This is a double-edged sword because it could also induce more self-reliance, as well as defense exports, by India.

2. Historical Precedents: The historical context of U.S. military interventions in South Asia, such as the deployment of the Seventh Fleet during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, raises concerns about how a Harris administration might respond to regional conflicts involving India.

3. Strategic Partnerships: Any perceived shift in U.S. commitment to India as a strategic partner could embolden adversarial nations like China and Pakistan, thereby destabilizing the region further. This, at a time when China is vastly outspending all its neighbors in Asia in its military budget (data from CSIS).

Economic Implications

1. Increased Scrutiny on “Human Rights”: Harris's administration may adopt a more critical stance towards India's human rights record, particularly concerning alleged violations of minority rights and alleged mistreatment of dissent, although there is reason to believe this is mostly a convenient stick to beat India with rather than a real concern: we see how the real human rights violations of Hindus in Bangladesh raise no alarms. This scrutiny could have economic repercussions, such as reduced foreign investment from companies concerned about reputational risks associated with human rights violations, and possible sanctions based on the likes of the USCIRF’s (US Council on International Religious Freedom) report.

2. Shift in Trade Policies: Historical Democratic administrations have often prioritized labor rights and environmental standards in trade agreements. If Harris follows this trend, India might face stricter trade conditions that could hinder its export-driven sectors.

3. Focus on Domestic Issues: Harris's potential prioritization of domestic issues over international relations may lead to a diminished focus on strengthening economic ties with India, which could stall ongoing initiatives aimed at boosting bilateral trade and investment.

Social Issues

1. Anti-Hindu feeling: There has been a demonstrable increase in antipathy shown towards Hindus in the US, with a number of incidents of desecration of Hindu temples, especially by Khalistanis, as well as economic crimes such as robberies of jewelry shops. The temperature online as well as in legacy media has also risen, with offensive memes being bandied about. A notable example was the New York Times’ cartoon when India did its Mars landing. And you don’t get more Democrat-leaning than the New York Times.

In summary, while Kamala Harris's presidency may not drastically alter the trajectory of U.S.-India relations established under previous administrations, given a convergence of major geo-political interests, it could introduce significant challenges stemming from her focus on so-called “human rights” and alignment with anti-India factions within her party. These factors could negatively influence economic ties, foreign policy dynamics, counterterrorism efforts, and military collaborations between the two nations.

Four more years of tension: revival of terrorist attacks in Kashmir, the chances of CAA-like riots regarding the Waqf issue, economic warfare, a slow genocide of Hindus in Bangladesh. It’s enough to make one nostalgic for the Trump era: yes, he talked about tariffs and Harley-Davidson, but he didn’t go to war, and he identified China as enemy number one.

2000 words, 23 October 2024

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

The podcast above was made by the Google Gemini AI via notebookLM.

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-narrative-building-of-west-and-the-threat-of-regime-change-13827231.html

While we can all laugh at the absurdities mouthed by Justin Trudeau in his crusade against India and Hindus, there are meta-questions that really beg for an answer: what the heck is going on? Who is behind all this? Why now? What other precedents do we look at? What do we see as immediate fallout?

I am a student of narrative building. I wrote of information warfare a couple of months ago in https://rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/p/ep-131-information-warfare-narrative and pointed out that this particular method of creation of narratives, while it has long been popular, now functions at warp speed, and the targets of such narratives often get blind-sided, or worse.

I spoke of the sudden U-turns that ended up deposing erstwhile friends like Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega; and I pointed out that something along those lines had happened with Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh in August. There are other examples: for instance, the Maidan Revolution courtesy Victoria Nuland that ended up in the overthrow in Ukraine of Viktor Yanukovych, the installation of Vladimir Zelensky, and… well, you know the rest.

There is a pattern: you unilaterally label somebody a terrorist, and then you proceed to topple him/her. In the old American idiom, “give a dog a bad name, and hang him”. With our supine obeisance to Big Tech and Western media, and thus the gaslighting, we (that is, anybody other than the elites running the West) just believe this, and blame ourselves for not noticing this all along. Total mind-control, in other words.

That makes me quite nervous about what’s going on with the Canadians. It’s true that the Trudeaus, pere et fils, have simply ignored the Khalistani terror problem, both before and after the tragic downing of Air India Kanishka, Flight 182, almost 40 years ago, and the deaths of 329 people. Since those 329 were mostly brown people, it appeared to be not an issue.

There was dissenting opinion: the Major Commission report from 2021 https://www.majorcomm.ca/en/reports/finalreport.html excoriated the Canadian government for incompetence and complacency. Here is an excerpt.

But nobody has ever been brought to book for the bombing. And this has gotten worse over time: Khalistanis like US citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun regularly threaten to blow up Air India planes, and warn that this will happen on specific occasions where he suggests people should avoid flying on Air India. These are acts of transnational terror and intimidation, but he gets a pass.

Maybe it’s a coincidence, but after Trudeau’s outburst earlier this week, there have been at least a dozen incidents of bomb threats against Indian-owned aircraft. One circumpolar Air India Delhi-Chicago flight ended up landing in an obscure Canadian airport in Iqualuit in the Great White North because of an online bomb threat. It’s possible that Khalistanis are involved.

Furthermore, there is some kind of a summons issued against Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval in a lawsuit filed by Pannun (who is a lawyer himself) in the comical case of an alleged plot to bump him off, wherein an alleged Indian operative allegedly tried to pay an alleged hitman money to do the deed.

The latest round of the hoo-haa has Canadians targeting Home Minister Amit Shah. Dutifully, the Washington Post with its old US State Department links has made a whole series of serious allegations, which would be funny if they weren’t noir.

The fact that the Ministry of External Affairs reacted sharply to this circus, alas, does not mean there is some new-found spine, but simply that the bureaucrats were peeved that one of them, the senior IFS officer who was Ambassador to Canada, was humiliated. Normally, most bureaucrats have children in the US, or are eyeing lucrative Western sinecures. They tend not to do anything that might damage their personal interests.

But this time it IS different. Things are coming to a head. The sum and substance is that, after the long-running attack on social media on Hindus as ‘pajeets’ and ‘street defecators’, now the stage is set to declare “the Modi regime” a “rogue government”, as though fascist, brutal, anti-minority, and other epithets they habitually use were not enough.

The next step would be regime change, of course. Is India prepared to defend itself?

All this is strictly from the Deep State playbook, so a priori I would blame either Foggy Bottom or Langley, but right now, in the middle of a grueling Presidential election? Don’t they have bigger fish to fry? So I started to wonder if it was some other entity that had prodded Trudeau.

It was interesting to see the closed ranks among the Five Eyes, which is to say English-speaking white countries or Anglosphere. Keir Starmer of the UK, again dutifully, supported Trudeau with alacrity, so much so that I began to wonder if this assault on India is actually a British plot, considering two things.

Brits must have been really annoyed that an Indian-origin PM, Rishi Sunak, ruled them for a while, and they think India is insufficiently respectful of the British King, who, oddly enough, is Canada’s Head of State, and probably Australian and New Zealand’s as well. Maybe they blame India for Chagossians finally getting out of brutal colonial control (which by the way means the end of the grandly named “British Indian Ocean Territories”) which has an impact on the US naval base at Diego Garcia, for which Chagos islanders had been displaced.

The Five Eyes have exalted opinions of themselves. For instance, one of the Biden administration’s many unfathomable decisions was to downgrade the sensible Quad (the brainchild of Abe Shinzo) and instead plump for AUKUS (which is all, well, white) with the remarkable story of wanting British technology transfer to Australia re submarines. Let me repeat that: British. Technology. Transfer.

And here I was, thinking the objective was to contain a rampaging China!

Then there are other little episodes that need to be remembered. Sheikh Hasina stated that the US wanted an island near Chittagong for a naval base, and more alarmingly, that there was a plan for a Christian Zo state that would include territories in India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. This is again a Deep State modus operandi, see East Timor and South Sudan.

Furthemore, the US Ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, has been hyperactive in “sub-national diplomacy” along with other US officials, meeting a Tamil supremacist M K Stalin one day, doling out funds paying special attention to the restive Northeast the next day.

Not content with that, here’s more from the energetic Garcetti:

Assuming these tweets are authentic, things do look a little bleak for India and the “Modi regime” at the moment. Balkanizing India has long been a goal of the Deep State, reflecting the wishes of its proxies in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

I hate to be a Cassandra, but a rising and strong India is not on the agenda of anybody but Indians, and that too only some Indians. Others, and you know who they are, are quite happy to revert to the status quo of the pre-1991 era, when India, the alleged socialist paradise, steadily lost ground and became poorer and poorer relative to other countries.

These are dangerous times. I have been nervous about Deep State intent since the days of Madeleine Albright and Robin Raphel, and I am concerned about the coming Kamala Harris Presidency (yes, she will be POTUS). I am worried about a faction of the US establishment that is congenitally anti-India.

Given the looming threat of China, I would much prefer a good working relationship between the US and India, my two favorite countries, and I’d like to take the protestations of common interests (including a very large purchase of Predator drones by India) at face value, but as Ronald Reagan said memorably, “Trust, but verify”.

1325 words, 17 Oct 2024

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

I wrote a note in January regarding BKS (which I will not post because of some sensitive information), and here I share a summary, created by Google Gemini NotebookLM.

Summary

Rajeev Srinivasan argues that India can use technology to advance its traditional knowledge systems (BKS). He proposes developing a "BharatLLM" – a large language model trained on Indian texts – to preserve Bharatiya concepts and create a "Splinternet" of domain-specific text repositories. This would allow for machine translation into Sanskrit, protect intellectual property, and foster research in BKS. Srinivasan acknowledges challenges like access to computational resources and copyright issues, but believes that building these systems could benefit India's cultural heritage and technological advancements.

=========

The podcast above is also created by the same LM and its Deep dive audio output, which is amazing, and the male and female hosts are uncannily human.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

First, in 2003, exhorting India to be a hard state. i wrote this 20 years ago about why India needs to be #hardstate. coercion, carrots, covert action and containment: the principles remain relevant even though the dramatis personae are different. https://www.rediff.com/news/2003/feb/21rajeev.htm

Second, in 2008, the fear that India would be a failed state. I wrote this just after the invasion of Mumbai on 26/11/2008. https://rediff.com/news/2008/dec/08mumterror-are-we-heading-to-being-a-failed-state.htm…

2008 was antonia maino rule. no wonder India looked like a failing state then.

in 2022, I wrote of India, a serf state, as per the neo-feudal #deepstate:

https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/nupur-sharma-neo-feudalism-and-the-geopolitical-squeeze-on-india-10808101.html

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Dr Puri is a Telegram enthusiast (and a tech maven in general, despite his day job as a radiation oncologist), so he is particularly concerned about the full-court press against the app recently: its founder was arrested in France, its antecedents were questioned, its business model (which includes its own cryptocurrency, and also a million paying subscribers) was mocked, and there was a suggestion that it was nurturing crooks, criminals, child pornographers, human traffickers, etc.

There are some fundamental questions about Freedom of Speech, as well as about the US First Amendment as well as their Section 230 of the Communications Code that provides immunity to common carriers. In the context of problems faced by X in Brazil and Mark Zuckerberg confessing that he had been forced to censor things during Covid, the issue of the control over social media does come to the fore. What is “all the news fit to print”? Who determines that?

This may also be very different from laws in other nations: India’s First Amendment actually imposes restrictions on free speech, for instance.

This podcast is available to all subscribers, both free and paid.

PS. The video is a little small, I think there was some conflict between Abhishek’s phone and my PC. The audio content should be fine.

PPS. As per Hari Mahadevan’s request, here are the slides that Abhishek put together that may not be so visible in the video.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

Note: Free subscribers can preview this podcast by clicking above. It is truncated; the full podcast is for paid subscribers. Please upgrade to a paid subscription if you can because that will help pay my bills. A good bit of my writing/podcasts will continue to be free, but some podcasts especially with guests will be only for paid subscribers. This is…

View Details

PLEASE NOTE: THIS PODCAST IS AVAILABLE TO FREE SUBSCRIBERS. BUT FUTURE PODCASTS IN THEIR ENTIRETY WILL ONLY BE AVAILABLE TO PAID SUBSCRIBERS.

Only truncated versions will be available to free subscribers.

Kindly upgrade to a paid subscription to Shadow Warrior to enjoy the full content here. Experts like Dr. Narayanan Komerath will regularly offer their insightful views on this Substack.

Get full access to Shadow Warrior at rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

The Dr B S Harishankar Memorial Lecture, Bharatiya Vichara Kendram, Trivandrum, 27th August 2024.

A Malayalam version of this has been published by Janmabhumi newspaper at https://janmabhumi.in/2024/09/01/3258051/varadyam/geo-political-implications-for-bangladesh/

It was startling to hear from retired Ambassador G Sankar Iyer on Asianet’s program with Ambassador TP Sreenivasan that the celebrated Malayalam author Vaikom Mohammed Basheer (once nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature) said in 1973: “In Bangladesh, we have created yet another enemy.” With his novelist’s insight, Basheer understood that the Two-Nation Theory held sway among certain sections of Bengalis.

In the current crisis situation in 2024, the ongoing pogrom against Hindus (amounting to a virtual genocide) and the forced resignation of teachers, police officers and other officials based only on the fact that they are Hindus (there are videos that show them being beaten and humiliated even after resigning) suggests that anti-Hindu feeling is running rampant in Bangladesh. It is another kristallnacht.

This is coupled with anti-India feeling. For instance, the current floods in Bangladesh are being blamed on India opening a dam in Tripura after torrential rains, although the Indian government has said that it provided all the hydrological data that it always has.

The fact of the matter is that the departure of Sheikh Hasina is a blow to India’s geo-political ambitions. It now appears as though India erred in “putting all its eggs into one basket” by cultivating only her Awami League, and not the Bangladesh National Party of her arch-rival Khaleda Zia.

The indubitable fact that Indian influence in Bangladesh has now been supplanted by forces inimical to India raises the question of who might be behind the regime change operation. Beyond that, there is the question of whether it was indeed a popular uprising based on the suppressed ambitions of the people that led to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina.

The third question is what this means for Bangladesh, India and the region going forward, especially as climate change may alter the very geography of the area. It is predicted that as much as 11% of the land area of Bangladesh could be underwater by 2050. This could displace 18 million people, which would lead to unprecedented migration of their population into India.

Regime Change operation: Who benefits from it?

Cui bono? Who benefits? That Latin phrase is used to consider who might be motivated to commit a crime (the other part is who has the means to commit it). In this case of regime change in Bangladesh, there are several entities who might benefit.

Obviously Pakistan. That country has never lived down its balkanization in 1971, and it had a number of its sympathizers already in place at that time. There were many who collaborated with the Pakistani Army in identifying Hindus and facilitating their killing or rape or ethnic cleansing, and also Muslims who were their political opponents. These are the people Sheikh Hasina referred to as “razakars”, and they are essentially in control now.

China is a clear winner whenever something happens that hurts India’s interests. There is the perennial issue of the Chicken’s Neck, that narrow strip of land that connects the Seven Sister states of India’s Northeast to the Gangetic Plain. It is a permanent threat to India that somebody (most probably China) will cut this off and truncate India, with the Northeast then becoming part of a Greater Bangladesh, with associated genocide of Hindus and Buddhists.

Former Ambassador Veena Sikri spoke to Ambassador TP Sreenivasan about something very odd indeed: Sheikh Hasina made a state visit to China in mid July, and she was thoroughly humiliated there. Xi Jingping refused to meet her; and she cut her visit short by one day and returned to Dhaka. This is an unheard-of protocol violation for a State Visit; what it suggests is that China had decided that Sheikh Hasina was on the way out. This is in sharp contrast to a Xi visit in 2016 when he made grand promises about Belt and Road Initiative investments.

The United States also has interests. Sheikh Hasina had alleged two things:

• An unnamed Western power wants St Martin’s Island (aka Coconut Island) off Cox’s Bazaar as a military base to keep an eye on both China and India,

• An unnamed Western power intends to form a new Christian Zo nation (for Mizo, Kuki, Chin) just like Christian homelands were carved out in East Timor and South Sudan.

The implication was that the unspecified Western power was the US.

It is not entirely clear that the US benefits greatly from a military base in the Bay of Bengal but there has been a long-running Great Game initiated by the British to keep India down as a supplier of raw materials and a market for their products. The US may have inherited this mantle.

Intriguingly, the US Deep State and its proxies in the Western media had built a narrative around Sheikh Hasina as a model leader for developing Asia, a woman who also succeeded in improving the economic status of her country. That Bangladesh’s per capita GDP had overtaken India’s, and that its garment industry was doing well were used to mock India’s own economic achievements. The switch to Hasina being a ‘dictator’ was a sudden change in narrative.

There is, therefore, enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that there was a foreign hand in the happenings in Bangladesh, although we will have to wait for conclusive evidence.

Was this indeed a regime-change coup or a true popular uprising?

It is true that Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina’s fifteen-year rule was not a perfect democracy. But there are mitigating factors, including a violent streak that led to the assassination of her father and independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman just four years after the bloody birth of the new State after the Pakistan Army’s assault on its Bengali citizens. The toppling and desecration of his statue shows that his national hero status may not be accepted by the entire population: in fact it looks like friends of Pakistan wish to erase his entire legacy.

The history of democracy in independent Bangladesh is checkered and marred by violence. Before he was deposed and killed in 1975, Mujibur Rehman himself had banned all opposition parties. After Mujib, there was outright military rule till 1986, when the erstwhile Chief Martial Law Administrator Hussain Mohammed Ershad became the elected President.

When Ershad was deposed after (student-led) agitations in 1991, Khaleda Zia (BNP or Bangladesh National Party) became the PM and after that she and her arch-rival Sheikh Hasina (Awami League) alternated in power. The BNP boycotted the 2018 elections partly because Khaleda Zia was jailed on allegations of corruption.

In all of these twists and turns, ‘students’ were involved. In 1971, when Yahya Khan launched Operation Searchlight, the Pakistani army went straight for students and professors in Dhaka University, especially if they were Hindus. Later too, ‘student’ protests were instrumental in the overthrow of Ershad.

The proximate cause of the troubles in 2024 was also a ‘student’ uprising. There had been a 30% quota in government jobs for the children of freedom fighters; along with other such set-asides e.g. for minorities and women, a total of 56% of government jobs were ‘reserved’ by 2018. This reservation system was largely abolished by Sheikh Hasina’s government in 2018 after yet another student agitation.

In June 2024, a High Court in Bangladesh overturned the 2018 judgment as unconstitutional. Even though the Supreme Court reversed it, and restored the status quo ante (of drastically reduced reservations to 7% in total), the peaceful ‘student’ agitation suddenly morphed into a violent confrontation led by members of the Jamaat e Islami (an Islamist party) and the BNP. There was police firing. The Daily Star, a respected daily, found out that 204 people were killed in the first few days, out of which only 53 were students.

It appears the supposed ‘student revolution’ was taken over by professional agitators and agents provocateurs, and it rapidly led to the overthrow of Sheikh Hasina, with escalating violence, especially against Hindus, and the Army getting involved. Even though the Army is in charge now, there is a smokescreen of an ‘interim government’ that allows entities like the UN an excuse to not impose sanctions on Bangladesh.

It is hard to take it on face value that this was a popular uprising; circumstantial evidence suggests that there was a clear agenda for regime change, and since it suits both China and the US to keep India constrained, either of them could have been behind it. The diplomatic snub to Hasina in July suggests the Chinese were well aware of the coming coup.

On the other hand, the sudden U-turn in the narrative about Hasina in the Western media suggests that the US might have decided to dump her. The process by which the regime change happened is also similar to what happened in other countries that experienced ‘color revolutions’. The actions of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and of some diplomats in supporting the BNP, have been offered as possible evidence of US bad faith.

What is obvious is the role of the fundamentalist group, the Jamaat e Islami, which has strong connections with Pakistan. It seems likely that they were the enforcers, and had invested assets within the armed forces. They have called for the secular Bangladesh constitution to be replaced by Islamic Sharia law, and for non-Muslims to be treated as second-class citizens. The Yunus government has just unbanned the Jamaat e Islami.

The attacks on Hindus, including large numbers of lynchings, rapes, and abductions of women, suggests that there is a religious angle and the Jamaat e Islami’s prejudices are coming to the fore. Notably, the entire Western media, Amnesty International, the United Nations, and the USCIRF, human rights specialists all, had nothing at all to say about the horrific oppression of Hindus.

The New York Times even had a headline about “revenge killings” of Hindus, as though somehow the 8% minority Hindus had been responsible for whatever Sheikh Hasina was accused of. Upon being called out, the NYT changed the headline to just “killings” of Hindus with no explanation or apology.

The role of Professor Mohammed Yunus is also intriguing: he had been invited to head an interim government in 2007 but abandoned the attempt and in fact left politics. He had been close to Sheikh Hasina at one point, for instance he got the licenses for his Grameen Phone during her rule, but they later fell out. Yunus’ Nobel Peace Prize and his earlier stint in the US have raised questions about whether he is in fact managed by US interests.

Given all this, it is much more likely that it was a coup than a popular agitation. It remains to be seen who was behind the coup.

What next for India and the region?

There are several long-term challenges for India. None of this is positive for India, which is already facing problems on its periphery (eg. Maldives and Nepal). The coup in Bangladesh also makes the BIMSTEC alliance as unviable as SAARC.

1. Deteriorating India-Bangladesh Relations

The overthrow of Sheikh Hasina, seen as a close ally of India, has led to a rise in anti-Indian sentiment in Bangladesh. The new government may not be as friendly towards India, especially on sensitive issues like trade and security. This could jeopardize the gains in bilateral ties over the past decade. The presence of hardliners among the ‘advisers’ to the interim government suggests that India will have little leverage going forward.

1. Increased Border Security Risks

India shares a long, porous border with Bangladesh. The political instability and potential increase in extremist groups could lead to more infiltration, smuggling, and illegal migration into India's northeastern states, posing internal security risks. Monitoring the border region will be critical. As it is, there are millions of illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingya residing in India, which actually poses a threat to internal Indian security.

1. Economic Fallout

Bangladesh is India's largest trading partner in the region, with $13 billion in commerce under the Hasina government. A deterioration in relations could hurt Indian exports and investments. The economic interdependence means India also has a stake in Bangladesh's stability and prosperity. Brahma Chellaney pointed out that Bangladesh is in dire straits, and has requested $3 billion from the IMF, $1.5 billion from the World Bank, and $1 billion each from the Asian Development Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency to tide over problems.

1. Climate Change Challenges

Both countries are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels, floods, droughts and extreme weather events. Bangladesh is especially at risk due to its low-lying geography. Millions of climate refugees could seek shelter in India, straining resources and social cohesion.

1. Geopolitical Implications

The regime change has opened up space for China to expand its influence in Bangladesh. India will need to balance its ties with the new government while countering Chinese inroads in the region. The U.S. is also closely watching developments in Bangladesh. Instability in the region plays into the hands of Pakistan, whose medium-term ambition would be to detach India’s Northeast as revenge for the creation of Bangladesh and for increasing normalization in J&K.

1. Quota Implications

Indians, especially those agitating for ‘proportional representation’ should note that the Bangladesh quota system was abolished in its entirety by Sheikh Hasina’s administration in 2018 in response to student demands. India has a constitutional limit of 50% for reservations, but some are agitating for even more, which is a sure recipe for resentment and possibly violence. It is not inconceivable that it could be the spur for regime change in India as well.

1. Human rights for Hindus and Buddhists; Citizenship Amendment Act and the Right to Return

The Hindu population in Bangladesh has fallen dramatically from about 28% in 1971 to about 8% now, and there is every indication that this is a demographic under extreme duress. Buddhist Chakmas in the Chittagong Hill Tracts are also under stress. India should enhance the CAA or create a formal Right to Return for Hindu and Buddhist Bangladeshis. Writing in Open magazine, Rahul Shivshankar pointed out that Hindus had faced attacks and threats in 278 locations across 48 districts.

In summary, the fall of the Hasina government and the long-term threat of climate change compel India to rethink its Bangladesh policy. Fostering stable, democratic and economically prosperous neighbors is in India's own interest. Rebuilding trust and deepening cooperation on shared challenges will be key to navigating the new realities in the region.

2350 words, Aug 26, 2024

Get full access to Shadow Warrior at rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/climate-tragedy-of-wayanad-and-the-vulnerability-of-western-ghats-13808331.html

After days of intense coverage of the landslides in Wayanad, the news cycle has moved on to other calamities. But the problems remain, and things cannot be left to benign neglect as is usually the case. For example there was a strange thundering noise from deep underground that alarmed people in the area. This is ominous, as it may presage a tectonic movement, although there have been no big quakes here for centuries.

A dramatic before-and-after report from Reuters, using satellite images from Planet Labs, Google, Maxar Technologies and Airbus, shows how the landslide left a giant scar on the surface of the earth, washing away hundreds of houses, leading to widespread fatalities and destruction.

Prime Minister Modi visited the afflicted area. Better governance, both by Center and State, is sorely needed to tackle the problem, because it is not simple: there are proximate, preponderant and root causes. A lot of it is anthropogenic based on local factors, but climate change is also a major factor, as the local climate and rainfall patterns have shifted dramatically in the recent past. There was a drought in 2015, followed by the Ockhi cyclone in 2017, and then landslides and floods in 2018 and 2019.

As a resident of Kerala, who has visited Wayanad only twice (once in 2018 and the second time in April this year), both the problems and the possible solutions are of immediate importance to me, because the very same issues are likely to crop up all over the State, and unless remedial measures are taken now, we can expect further tragedies and endless suffering.

Proximate Cause: Excess Rain

The proximate cause is La Nina-enhanced rainfall, which has been higher this year along the west coast. In Wayanad itself, it rained 572mm in 48 hours before the landslide: about 1.8 feet, an enormous amount.

Before the Wayanad landslide, there had been another in Shirur on the Karnataka coast near Ankola, where a number of people were swept away. The story of Arjun, a Kerala trucker whose truck full of lumber disappeared, was all over the news, and after a weeks-long search, there was no sign of him or the truck.

The total rainfall since June 1 was of the order of 3000mm in Wayanad, which is unusually high, creating vulnerability to landslides. In a recent interview, environmental expert Madhav Gadgil mentioned that quarrying may have added to the intensity of the rainfall, because the fine dust from the mining and explosions forms aerosols, on which water molecules condense, leading to excessive precipitation.

The intense rainfall saturated the soil, and in the absence of sufficient old-growth vegetation that might have held it together, the hillside simply collapsed.

Preponderant Cause: Population Pressure, Over-Tourism, Ecocide

The preponderant causes of the problems in Wayanad are obvious: population pressure, over-tourism and environmental destruction. The forest has basically ceased to exist due to human exploitation. According toIndia Today, 62% of the green cover in the district disappeared between 1950 and 2018 while plantation cover rose by around 1,800%. Fully 85% of the total area of Wayanad was under forest cover until the 1950s.

Overpopulation, settlement and habitat loss

My first visit to Wayanad was in 2018, when we drove to Kerala from Karnataka: from the Nagarhole/Bandipur Wildlife Sanctuaries to the contiguous Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary, all forming a Project Tiger ecosphere along with neighboring Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary in Tamil Nadu. Together they form the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve.

Bandipur/Nagarhole actually looks like a forest. But I was astonished when we drove into Wayanad, because it does not look like a forest any more: it is full of human habitation. It looks like any of the other districts in Kerala: thickly populated, with settlements all over the place. It appeared to be only notionally a wildlife sanctuary.

Habitat loss, especially that of forest cover, is true of all of Kerala, as highlighted in a study by IISc scientists. It is startling to see how much of this has happened in just a few decades. But it is the culmination of a process that started at least a century ago.

Wayanad, according to myth and legend, was once a lovely, lush forest inhabited by a small number of tribals. There were fierce Kurichya archers (it is possible they were warriors banished to the forest after losing a war) who, with Pazhassi Raja, carried on a guerilla war against the British colonials in the 19th century until the Raja was captured and executed. I visited the Pazhassi Museum in Mananthavady this May, on my second visit to Wayanad. There were artifacts there from the tribal settlements.

Then, in the 20th century, there was a large migration of lowland people, mostly Christians from Central Travancore, to the Wayanad highlands (and the Western Ghats uplands in general). They encroached on public/forest lands, cleared the forests, and created plantations and agricultural settlements. Their struggles against malaria, wild animals and the land itself was the subject of Jnanpith winner S K Pottekkat’s renowned novel Vishakanyaka (Poison Maiden).

The public land thus captured eventually made some people rich, but the whole process also in effect enslaved the tribals, who became an exploited underclass: the very same story as of Native Americans, who are still struggling for social justice after centuries of being untermenschen.

Since most of the settlers were Christians, the Church became a powerful spokesman for them. Successive governments gave a lot of the settlers title to the land they had illegally captured. So there is a class of rich planters, and on the other hand, miserable plantation workers, often migrants especially from Tamil Nadu.

The green deserts need to be turned back into forests

Kerala’s highlands, over time, became ‘green deserts’, rather than ‘tropical rainforests’. The monoculture of tea, rubber, coffee, and especially invasive species such as acacia and eucalyptus is destructive. They crowd out native species, ravage the water table, do not put down deep roots, and offer almost no sustenance to wild animals. It may look deceptively green, but it is no forest.

An expert committee, the Madhav Gadgil Commission, recommended in 2011 that the entire Western Ghats was ecologically sensitive (ESA or Ecologically Sensitive Area) and 75% of it must be preserved intact with minimal human presence. The report was scathing about quarrying, including blasting with dynamite, which upset the already fragile ecosystem, ravaged as it was by the removal of old growth forest and the root system that held the soil together.

At the time, Gadgil did say that the calamity would not take a 100 years, but it would happen in ten to twenty years. He was right, but he was ignored as though he were Cassandra.

The Church opposed the Gadgil report tooth and nail, and the Government of Kerala pushed back on it. So the Central government created the Kasturirangan Commission (2013), which reduced the proposed ESA to 37%. It classified 60% of the Western Ghats as a ‘cultural landscape’ with human settlements, plantations and agriculture.

But that too was not acceptable. In fact, Jayanthi Natarajan claimed that she was forced to resign as Environment Minister because she actually notified the order on protection of the Western Ghats the day before she was removed. Her successor duly put the order on hold.

Sitting Congress MP in nearby Idukki, P T Thomas, says he was dropped in the 2014 elections because he supported the Gadgil report against “encroachments… illegal constructions, quarrying, timber smuggling, sand mining from the rivers and ganja cultivation…My stand upset the Idukki dioceses of the Syro Malabar Catholic Church. The Idukki Bishop had openly opposed my candidature.”

The GoK convened a third committee, the Oommen Commission (2014), which was specific to Kerala, and it recommended keeping all inhabited areas and plantations out of the ESA altogether. Mission accomplished. No more restrictions on land use.

Over-tourism and carrying capacity of the land

This is one reason for the proliferation of resorts and homestays in Wayanad. Every second house caters to tourists, as can be seen from a Google Map (of the area around Kalpetta). The environmental pressure from this (what about solid waste disposal? Do they dump liquid wastes into rivers?) is horrific and increasing. Trash lines the area near the Thamarassery Pass.

As a tourist myself, I did not choose a plantation resort, but instead a homestay which has a working farm. Perhaps I made a wrong choice, because a plantation has a lot of space to absorb the tourist impact. The homestay had many youngsters from Bangalore over the weekend, and it was perfectly nice, but I wonder how much I contributed to the human toll on the environment.

I had gone to Wayanad to visit the Thirunelli temple and the Edakkal caves, which have petroglyphs and drawings reliably dated back to 8000 Before the Present, making them second only to the Bhimbetka caves in Madhya Pradesh, whose rock art dates back to 10,000 BP and earlier. So this area, despite the geological fault lines, has indeed been inhabited for a very long time. The carrying capacity of the land was sufficient in those prehistoric times and even up until recently; now the land can no longer sustain the population.

It is also host to another recent influx. Muslims from nearby lowland Kozhikode and Malappuram districts have come up the Thamarassery Pass and settled in Wayanad in numbers. They have added to the population pressure in Wayanad. Incidentally this is one reason Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency (which includes areas from nearby Kozhikode and Malappuram districts that are heavily Muslim) is so dependably a Congress citadel.

When I made my trip in April, just before elections, I asked several people who would win there: the candidates were Rahul Gandhi (Congress), Annie Raja (CPI), K Surendran (BJP). All of them said “Rahul Gandhi”. One man told me “Rahul Gandhi is going to become the PM”. Another laughed and said, “Are you joking? We all know the answer”. It was, pun intended, a landslide win for the Congress candidate.

Root Cause: Geology and Errant Rainfall

The root cause of the problems in Kerala is the increasingly unstable landscape. It is remarkable that Kerala has such a high number of landslides and vulnerable spots. India Today reports that Kerala has recorded the largest number of landslides in the country, 2,239 out of 3,782 that occurred between 2015 and 2022. The “Landslide Atlas of India 2023” from ISRO lists 13 out of 14 Kerala districts among the top 50 landslide-prone areas of the country.

This is surprising, because the more obvious fault lines must be in the North, where the Indian Plate continues to grind up against the Eurasian Plate, and the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau continue to gain a few centimeters in elevation every year. Indeed Arunachal, Himachal, J&K and Uttarakhand are landslide-prone. But why Kerala, at the other end of the land-mass?

It must be the case that there have been severe tectonic movements in Kerala in the past: the Parasurama legend of the land coming up from the sea is based on a real event, presumably caused by an earthquake in a prehistoric time frame. More recently, the thriving Kerala port of Kodungalloor (aka Muziris), the principal West Coast port in historical times along with Bharuccha in Gujarat, was suddenly rendered bereft in 1341 CE after a severe flood in the River Periyar, and port activities shifted to nearby Kochi.

More recently, old-timers talk about the Great Flood of ‘99, i.e. 1099 Malabar Era, or 1924 CE. Exactly 100 years ago there were torrential rains in July, and records suggest it was 3368mm or 1326 inches over three weeks, that is 11 feet of rain. Floodwaters rose up to 6 feet, rivers changed course, and at least 1,000 people died along with large numbers of livestock, and there was massive destruction of agricultural land and foodgrains. The Flood of ‘99 became etched in the collective memory of the area, but it mostly affected the lowland areas of Travancore and Cochin, leaving the highlands largely untouched.

That has changed with deforestation, quarrying, construction, and denudation of hillsides.

There were the floods of 2018, which affected the hills, especially in Munnar. A full mountainside fell 300 meters into a river there. Entire settlements were washed away. A total of 2,346mm of rain or 923 inches was recorded in July and August, almost 50% higher than the norm. 483 people were killed, with many more missing and unaccounted for. Infrastructure was wiped out, including roads and clean water supply. Dams had to be opened, wreaking havoc on those downstream.

There is also the perennial threat of Mullaperiyar Dam overflowing or being breached, which is, among other things, a source of friction between Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Other root causes include the following:

• Climate Change: A study by the World Weather Attribution group indicated that climate change has intensified rainfall in the region by about 10%, contributing significantly to the severity of the disaster. The ongoing increase in global temperatures has led to more extreme weather patterns, including heavier monsoon rains.

• Soil Characteristics: Wayanad's soils are loose and erodible, particularly in areas with steep gradients exceeding 20 degrees. When saturated, these soils lose their structural integrity, making them susceptible to landslides. The presence of large boulders and mud further complicates the stability of the slopes during heavy rains.

• Soil piping: Previous landslides in the region, such as the 2019 Puthumala event, created conditions for soil piping, where voids form in the subsurface soil, increasing the risk of subsequent landslides during heavy rainfall.

• Lack of Effective Land Management Policies: There is a notable absence of comprehensive land use and disaster management policies in Kerala, particularly in ecologically fragile areas. Despite previous disasters, there has been insufficient progress in implementing hazard mapping and community awareness programs to mitigate risks associated with landslides.

Thus Kerala is vulnerable to a host of issues, especially climate change (which is also eating away at the coastline). Behind the tropical paradise facade of “God’s Own Country”, there lie tremendous dangers related to excessive human exploitation, amounting to ecocide. What is the solution?

Maybe Madhav Gadgil was right, after all, and strict controls should be imposed on human activity, especially denudation of forest, and quarrying. His report had included Vythiri, Mananthavady and Sulthanbathery taluks in Wayanad as Ecologically Sensitive Zone ESZ-1, which means no change whatsoever in land use is permissible there. Chooralmala, Mundakkai, and Meppadi, where the worst of the disasters happened, are all in Vythiri taluk.

No effective disaster prevention or mitigation efforts have been put in place. The only solution is reforesting and restoring green cover, and stopping construction, quarrying, and tourism and the most contentious issue, relocating people away from the ESZ. Unfortunately the tropical rainforest may not restore itself if simply left alone (as temperate-zone forests do), and perhaps efforts such as Miyawaki foresting with native species may need to be pursued.

It is to be hoped that we have not passed the point of no return. Kerala’s population is shrinking (Total Fertility Rate is 1.80, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman), but there is no limit to human greed.

What needs to be done

There are no magic solutions, but comprehensive climate action and improved disaster management strategies can mitigate things to an extent. Experts emphasize the importance of:

• Enhanced Communication and Coordination: There is a critical need for better intergovernmental communication regarding disaster preparedness. This includes timely warnings and efficient evacuation plans to mitigate the impact of natural disasters.

• Land Use Policies: Implementing stringent land use regulations is essential to prevent construction in ecologically sensitive areas. The degradation of green cover due to unregulated development has significantly increased the risk of landslides.

• Early Warning Systems: Developing robust early warning systems for landslides and floods can provide crucial alerts to communities at risk. These systems should be supported by regular community education and drills to ensure residents are prepared for emergencies.

• Afforestation and Environmental Conservation: Massive afforestation and reforestation drives (especially with native species) are necessary to stabilize hillsides and reduce landslide risks. Protecting and restoring natural habitats can help mitigate the effects of climate change and enhance biodiversity. Collaborating with local communities for reforestation projects can also provide economic incentives and foster a sense of stewardship.

• Community Engagement: Empowering local communities to participate in disaster preparedness and environmental conservation efforts is vital. Education on risks and proactive measures can significantly reduce the impact of disasters.

• Tourism Management: Over-tourism can exacerbate environmental degradation. Developing a sustainable tourism strategy that limits visitor numbers, promotes eco-friendly practices, and educates tourists about environmental conservation is essential. Establishing eco-tourism zones and supporting community-based tourism initiatives can provide economic benefits while preserving the natural environment.

• Regulation of Quarrying and Construction: Strict regulation and monitoring of quarrying and construction activities are necessary to prevent ecological damage. Implementing sustainable practices in these industries, such as controlled quarrying methods and responsible waste management, can mitigate their impact on the environment. Regular audits and penalties for non-compliance can enforce these regulations.

• Surveillance and meteorological data collection: With modern technology like drones, continuous monitoring of the landscape is possible at a relatively low cost; and this can also be used for collecting large amounts of meteorological data to support early-warning systems. Satellite images from India’s own as well as foreign sources can be used to warn of dangerous construction, quarrying, and loss of forest cover.

Some of these are purely technical solutions, offering computerized forecasts and disaster warnings. The social and governance aspects are even more important: discipline, co-operation and awareness on the part of the residents, and the strict enforcement of land use rules and regulations.

Dealing with powerful settlers, encroachers, and vested interests requires a delicate balance of enforcement and negotiation, carrot and stick. Government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and local communities must collaborate to develop and implement policies that address these challenges. Advocacy for stronger environmental laws and community involvement in decision-making processes can help align interests and foster co-operation.

With all these in place, it may be possible to repair the damaged hills of the Western Ghats, one of the global hotspots of biodiversity.

2200 words, Aug 17, 2024 updated 3000 words, Aug 19

Get full access to Shadow Warrior at rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by news18.com at https://www.news18.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-beyond-lenient-laws-what-will-it-take-to-protect-indias-women-9023844.html

After this fortnight, it is not hard to see why some are demanding speedy punishment, including automatic death sentences for severe crimes against women. To put it bluntly, the Indian State is letting rapists and murderers get away with their crimes against both grown women, and especially tragically, against little girls. This is a blot on humanity. There needs to be recourse. There has to be a severe deterrent, and men should quake in fear at the prospect of instant, fearsome retribution.

The cry of anguish began with the extraordinarily brutal rape (suspected gang-rape) and murder of a 31-year-old doctor (revealed by her mother as Moumita Debnath) in the R G Kar Medical College Hospital in Kolkata on August 9th. As information trickled out, it became clear that she had also been severely tortured before being smothered to death. It is rumored that she had stood up to some important people and this may have been “punishment”.

The immediate parallel was with the gruesome rape-murder of Girja Tikkoo in 1990 in Jammu and Kashmir, where she was gang-raped and then sliced alive in two, screaming in mortal pain, on a mechanical saw.

There was also, in a hospital setting, the extraordinary case of Aruna Shanbaug, a 25-year-old nurse who was choked with a dog chain and raped by a janitor in a Mumbai hospital in 1973. She was brain-damaged and in a coma for 42 years, cared for by the nurses in the hospital until she died in 2015. Assaults on women staff in hospitals is especially ironic considering a recent finding that patients treated by female doctors have better outcomes possibly because of empathy.

Then there was the 2011 case of Sowmya, a 23-year-old shop assistant traveling in an empty women-only coach in a train in Kerala. She was chased around the coach by a one-armed vagrant named Charlie Thomas alias Govindachami, who repeatedly bashed her head against the walls. He then pushed her off the train, raped her and beat her head in with a stone. The lower courts sentenced Charlie to death, but the Supreme Court commuted it to life imprisonment.

Not about sexual crime, but about power over women

This is not about a sexual crime, it is about something more vile and reptilian. It is about sadistically inflicting pain and humiliation, dominating women, exerting power over them. It is extreme misogyny, and is motivated by pure hatred, possibly intent on sending a message. It is also about “putting women in their place”, so that uppity females are “taught a lesson”.

The rape-murder of “Nirbhaya”, later revealed by her mother as 22-year old paramedical student Jyoti Singh, in 2012 in Delhi, was similarly traumatic. Four of her assailants were executed after seven years, and one killed himself in jail, but the worst offender, who instigated the ramming of an iron rod into her genitals, was let go in 2015 on the flimsy reason that he was allegedly a juvenile. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal presented a sewing machine to the offender upon his release.

There was also the 2016 case of Jisha, a 30-year-old law student in Kerala who was subjected to extreme violence, including disembowelment in her rape-murder. A migrant laborer was charged with the crime, and sentenced to death, which was upheld in May 2024 by the Kerala High Court. However, it is rumored that Jisha was the illegitimate daughter of a local bigwig, and that she was “punished” for demanding a share in his property.

In Kerala again, there were the Walayar sisters, a 13 year old and a 9 year old, who were found hanging, two months apart, in 2017. The initial conclusion was ‘suicide’, but after an uproar when postmortems confirmed sexual assault, the case was reopened. Several politically connected people were involved, whom the POCSO court acquitted. But the Kerala High Court ordered a retrial of the five accused, including a juvenile, and the case is with the CBI as of now.

Every sinner has a future, maybe, but he denied his dead victim her future

There was the startling “every sinner has a future” Supreme Court verdict of 2022 that commuted the death sentence of a rapist-murderer of a four-year-old child into imprisonment for 20 years. The court also held that this was not a “rarest of the rare” case.

Using this “every sinner has a future” precedent, the Orissa High Court in May 2024 also commuted the sentence of a rapist-murderer of a six-year-old child. He had been on death row, but they commuted it to “life imprisonment”. In India, “life imprisonment” usually means the convict will walk after 14 years, so that is the total sentence the murderer will serve in practice.

On August 20th came another shocker. After 32 years, a POCSO court has convicted six men in Ajmer of raping/molesting, photographing and blackmailing over a hundred minor girls. It took 32 years for what should have been an open-and-shut case. The assailants are said to have political connections with a particular party.

Also on August 20th, the Justice Hema Commission published its report on the plight of women in the Malayalam film industry. It alleges that sexual exploitation including the ‘casting couch’ is rife, discrimination such as the lack of even basic amenities like toilets on sets is common, and that a ‘criminal gang’ of senior actors, producers, and directors perpetuates a cycle of abuse.

Soft on crimes against women and girls

All this signals that the Indian State, especially the Judiciary, is soft on horrific crimes against women and girls. This cannot continue in a civilized nation. One possible outcome is that the Executive and the Judiciary will take cognizance of these lapses, and provide severe deterrence, which can only come with fast-tracking of these cases, and enforcing capital punishment, instead of vague homilies quoting Oscar Wilde.

Another possibility is vigilante justice. There was the 1974 film Death Wish about an unassuming architect in New York who takes the law into his own hands after his wife is murdered and his daughter raped by violent criminals. He stalks muggers and criminals. Ordinary citizens may be tempted to do the same in India.

The third thing is to drum it into males from a young age, especially in school, that they have to respect women as human beings, not see them as sexual prey. Repeated insistence on that message will get through to them.

Furthermore, there is every reason to try juveniles committing heinous crimes (such as rape and murder) as adults. The existing Juvenile Justice Act is sufficient for this; it may well be that prosecutors are not using the law to its full extent. Prosecutorial incompetence was alleged in the Sowmya case as well, along with the involvement of shadowy benefactors for the murderer.

Copycat crimes, in particular against babies and toddlers, are becoming more frequent. In November 2023, a two-and-a-half-year-old girl was raped by a 17-year-old boy in Buldhana, Maharashtra. In August 2024, a Class 9 student was detained for allegedly raping a three-year-old girl in Mumbai.

This sort of thing simply cannot continue. It is not the case that India is particularly prone to sexual crimes against women: the number of reported rapes is not high compared to other countries, but for a nation that calls itself the Motherland and worships many female deities, the cavalier treatment of crimes against women is a disgrace, and must be stopped.

1100 words, 20th August 2024, updated 21st August

Get full access to Shadow Warrior at rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com on April 8th at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-generative-ai-creates-challenges-in-intellectual-property-and-epistemology-13757273.html

It is fairly obvious that the dominant, i.e. Western mechanism for generating new knowledge is rather different from the traditional Indian mechanism, and this shows up in all sorts of ways. One is that Indian epistemology seems to be empirical and practical, based on observation; whereas the Western tradition seems to prefer grand theories that must then be proved by observation.

Another difference is the Western idea that Intellectual Property is a private right that the State confers on an inventor or a creator. The Western gaze is fixed on the potential monetary gains from a monopoly over the use of the IP Right (for a fixed period of time, after which it is in the public domain): the argument is that it eventually helps everybody, while incentivizing the clever.

The Indian concept is vastly different. It was assumed that a creator created, or an inventor invented, as a result of their innate nature, their god-given gifts. In a way they could not avoid being creative or inventive, which would be a negation of the blessing they had received from the Supreme Brahman. Therefore no further incentive was needed: benevolent patrons like kings or temples would take care of their basic needs, allowing them to give free rein to creativity and innovation.

This seems to us today to be a radical idea, because we have been conditioned by the contemporary epistemological idea that incentives are a necessary condition for knowledge creation. Although this seems common-sensical, there is no real evidence that this is true. Petra Moser, then at MIT, discovered via comparing 19th century European countries that the presence of an IPR culture with incentives made little difference in the quantum of innovation, although it seemed to change the domains that were the most innovative..

In fact, there is at least one counter-example: that of Open Source in computing. It boggles the imagination that veritable armies of software developers would work for free, nights and weekends, in addition to their full-time jobs, and develop computing systems like Linux that are better than the corporate versions out there: the whole “Cathedral and Bazaar” story as articulated by Eric Raymond. Briefly, he argues that the chaotic ‘bazaar’ of open source is inherently superior to the regimented but soul-less ‘cathedral’ of the big tech firms.

It is entirely possible that the old Indian epistemological model is efficient, but the prevailing model of WIPO, national Patent Offices, and all that paraphernalia massively benefits the Western model. As an example, the open-source model was predicted to make a big difference in biology, but that effort seems to have petered out after a promising start. Therefore we are stuck for the foreseeable future with the IP model, which means Indians need to excel at it.

In passing, let us note that the brilliant Jagdish Chandra Bose was a pioneer in the wireless transmission of information, including the fundamental inventions that make cellular telephony possible. However, as a matter of principle, he refused to patent his inventions; Guglielmo Marconi did, and became rich and famous.

India has traditionally been quite poor in the number of patents, trademarks, copyrights, geographical indications, semiconductor design layouts etc. that it produces annually. Meanwhile the number of Chinese patents has skyrocketed. Over the last few years, the number of Indian patents has grown as the result of focused efforts by the authorities, as well as the realization by inventors that IP rights can help startup firms dominate niche markets.

India also produces a lot of creative works, including books, films, music and so on. The enforcement of copyright laws has been relatively poor, and writers and artistes often do not get fair compensation for their work. This is deplorable.

Unfortunately, things will get a lot worse with generative AI. Most of us have heard of, and probably also tried out, the chatbots that have been the object of much attention and hype in the past year, such as chatGPT from OpenAI/Microsoft and Bard from Google. Whether these are truly useful is a good question, because they seduce us into thinking they are conscious, despite the fact that they are merely ‘stochastic parrots’. But I digress.

The point is that the digital revolution has thrown the edifice of copyright law into disarray. At the forefront of this upheaval stands generative AI, a technology with the uncanny ability to mimic and extend human creative output. Consider two stark examples: the contentious case of J.K. Rowling and her copyright battle with a Harry Potter-inspired fanfic, and the recent Japanese law that grants broad exemptions for training large language models (LLMs).

J.K. Rowling's spat with Anna M. Bricken, the author of a Harry Potter fanfic titled "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Wine," ignited a global debate about fair use and transformative creativity. Bricken's work reimagined the Potterverse with an adult lens, but Rowling, citing trademark infringement, sought to have it taken down.

While the case eventually settled, it exposed a fundamental dilemma: can AI-generated works, even if derivative, be considered distinct enough from their source material to warrant copyright protection? The answer, shrouded in legal ambiguity, leaves creators navigating a tightrope walk between inspiration and infringement.

On the other side of the globe, Japan enacted a law in 2022 that further muddies the waters. This controversial regulation grants LLMs and other AI systems an almost carte blanche to ingest and remix copyrighted material for training purposes without seeking permission or paying royalties. While proponents laud it as a catalyst for AI innovation, critics warn of widespread copyright infringement and a potential future where authorship becomes a nebulous concept. The Japanese law, echoing anxieties around J.K. Rowling's case, raises unsettling questions: who owns the creative spark when AI fuels the fire?

For India, a nation at the precipice of the AI revolution, these developments raise crucial questions. With a burgeoning AI industry and a large creative sector, India must tread carefully. Adapting existing copyright laws to encompass the nuances of AI-generated works is paramount. Robust fair use guidelines that incentivize transformative creativity while safeguarding original authorship are urgently needed. Furthermore, fostering ethical AI development practices that respect intellectual property rights is crucial.

The debate surrounding AI and copyright is not merely a legal tussle; it's a battle for the very definition of creativity. In this fight, India has the opportunity to carve a path that balances innovation with artistic integrity. By acknowledging the complexities of AI while upholding the cornerstone principles of copyright, India can become a global leader in navigating the uncharted territory of digital authorship. The future of creativity, fueled by both human imagination and AI's boundless potential, hangs in the balance, and India has the chance to shape its trajectory.

Disclaimer: The last few paragraphs above were written by Google Bard, and lightly edited. A chatbot can produce coherent text, but it may be, and often is, completely wrong (‘hallucinations’). Now who owns the copyright to this text? Traditionally, it would be owned by me and Firstpost, but what is the right answer now? Would we be responsible for any errors introduced by the AI?

On the other hand, the ‘mining’ of text, audio/video and images to train generative AI is an increasingly contentious issue. As an example, the New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft, arguing that they weren’t being paid anywhere near the fair market value of their text that the tech companies mined.

This sounds familiar to Indians, because Westerners have been ‘digesting’ Indian ideas for a long time. Some of the most egregious examples were patents on basmati, turmeric and neem, which are absurd considering that these have been in use in India for millennia. The fact that these were documented in texts (‘prior art’) enabled successful challenges against them.

An even more alarming fact is the capture and ‘digestion’ (a highly evocative term from Rajiv Malhotra, who has warned of the dangers of AI for years) of Indian personal and medical data. Unlike China, which carefully firewalls away its data from Western Big Tech, and indeed, does not even allow them to function in their country, Indian personal data is being freely mined by US Big Tech. India’s Data Privacy laws, being debated now, need to be considered defensive weapons.

Paradoxically, there is also the concern that Indic knowledge will, for all intents and purposes, disappear from the domain of discourse. Since the chatbots are trained on the uncurated Internet, they are infected by the Anglosphere prejudices and bigotry therein, not to mention deliberate misinformation and ‘toolkits’ that are propagated.

Since most Indic concepts are either not very visible, or denigrated, on the Internet (eg Wikipedia), chatbots are not even aware of them. For instance, a doctor friend and I published an essay in Open magazine comparing allopathy to generative AI, because both are stochastic (ie. based on statistics). We mentioned Ayurveda positively several times, because it has a theory of disease that makes it more likely to work with causation rather than correlation.

However, when the article summarized by chatGPT, there was no mention whatsoever of the word ‘Ayurveda’. It is as though such a concept does not exist, which may in fact be true in the sense that it is deprecated in the training data that the chatbot was trained on.

One solution is to create Indian foundational models that can then become competent in specific domains of interest: for example an Arthashastra chatbot. These can also be trained, if sufficient data sets are created, on Indian languages as well, which could incidentally support real-time machine translation as well. Thus there can be an offensive as well as a defensive strategy to enable Indic knowledge systems to thrive.

India is at a point of crisis, but also of opportunity. If India were to harness some of the leading-edge technologies of today, it might once again become a global leader in knowledge generation, as it was a millennium ago with its great universities.

1680 words, Jan 10, 2024 updated Apr 7, 2024

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-hamas-war-is-an-immediate-setback-to-india/20231017.htm

It can be argued on several grounds that the 2023 Israel-Hamas war is a point of inflection indicating the general eclipse of the West, and in fact I have done so in an essay. What is unclear is how the end of this era will play out in the medium term and the long term.

The best analogy I can think of is the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian nationalist in 1914 or so, and how that set in motion a chain of events that, among other things, ended the European and Ottoman empires over the next forty or fifty years, and more immediately caused the so-called Great War, now re-framed as World War I.

Chaos theory at work: as the saying goes, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil setting off a tornado in Texas.

There is the obvious concern that the Israel-Hamas war could set off World War III, especially given that there are many nuclear weapons in the possession of the belligerents and their friends. Iran has recovered from the debacle of the Stuxnet computer worm that caused their Uranium-enrichment centrifuges to blow up (in what was then lauded as an unacknowledged triumph of American and Israeli cloak-and-dagger and technical know-how).

Then there is Pakistan and its rapidly growing arsenal, no doubt helped along by screwdriver assembly of Chinese components, and perhaps knocked-down kits. Pakistan is one of the most vocal supporters of Palestine as an Ummah cause, which is ironic considering that Pakistani soldiers (and maybe irregulars) seconded to Jordan in 1970 during the Black September uprising may have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Palestinians.

The specter of an encompassing World War III is sobering, and just as the crumbling League of Nations was unable to fend off earlier editions of world wars, the toothless United Nations is now unlikely to be able to prevent a new one. It hasn't been able to prevent all the smaller conflicts, such as the Ukraine war, and it is obvious that major powers simply don't care about the UN's exertions and bloviations. Therefore, one of the biggest fears is that the Hamas attack might seed a larger conflagration.

Of immediate concern, though, is that a nascent process of normalization in West Asia may now grind to a halt. This can have global consequences. It is likely that the earlier edition of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, led directly to the Arab oil embargo followed by the shock of their quadruplication of oil prices. This caused inflation in the US, but more seriously, it precipitated a massive transfer of wealth from developing countries, which set them back by decades, compounding human misery.

There are thus unforeseen consequences to what happens in West Asia, which, barring some miracle, will continue to dominate energy supplies for the next couple of decades, even if the most optimistic Green initiatives come to fruition. Things are obviously different from 1973, with West Asians (especially Saudi Arabia) much more self-confident, immensely richer, and also cognizant of the fact that their oil/gas bonanzas will run out sooner or later. They need to diversify their economies, and possibly make some new friends, other than those who are dazzled by their petro-dollars.

It is this realization that led to the landmark Abraham Accords, whereby several Arab nations normalized their relations with Israel. The general expectation has been that Saudi Arabia would follow suit, and Mohammed bin Salman has been signaling that he is willing to do this (but also, in his own national interest, willing to embrace China and the proposed BRICS+ currency, both of which would be setbacks for the US and the collective West). The biggest geopolitical casualty of the Hamas war is that this normalization will be put on hold.

Saudi Arabia simply cannot appear to be mindless of the plight of the largely Muslim Palestinians, even if they are nervous about the decidedly fundamentalist Hamas, who, in an interesting twist, may well be aligning themselves with Shia Iran, the principal regional foe of the Sunni Saudis. However, what is also worth noting is that the Saudis, as well as Egyptians and other Arabs, are all reluctant to resettle Palestinians in their largely empty, and rich, countries.

There might be two reasons for this: one, perhaps it is still the ambition of the Arab States to eliminate Israel and wipe it off the map altogether (which is what they, and Iran, proclaimed loudly in the past, although it is not clear this is actually feasible any more). If so, maintaining Palestinians as an aggrieved quasi-nation, which would supply an endless stream of militants to the Hamases and Hezbollahs of the region, is a viable, if brutal, strategy.

Two, Arab States may not actually want Palestinians as refugees because they might cause all sorts of domestic problems. This always puzzled me, because on average the Palestinians of 1948 were much better educated than most other Arabs, and could have contributed to other Arab nations. My conjecture is that, given the examples of Pakistani migrants in Britain, the Black September Palestinians in Jordan, and more recent Syrian etc refugees in Europe – easily radicalized and prone to blood-curdling rhetoric and possibly action against their host nations – Arab States want to keep them out.

This could be the real reason Egypt refuses to open the border for the fleeing residents of Gaza..

It is a bit like the Rohingya of Myanmar. They have a reputation for being troublesome radical Islamists, and so nobody wants to take them in: not Bangladesh where they originally hail from, not any Arab States, not Pakistan (although some Westerners suggested that India and China should take them. China laughed in their faces, but India dutifully did so).

Given all this, and the growing clout of Israel under the American security umbrella, chances are that the Palestinian cause would have become increasingly less relevant to Saudis and other Arabs. And that is precisely what might have motivated Hamas and friends: with the emergent normalization of ties with Israel in the region, and initiatives like i2u2 (Israel, India, US, UAE) and IMEC (India Middle East Europe Corridor), there would be commercial and trade ties that would bind.

After all, a major part of these trade corridors would be the infrastructure links (railway lines through Saudi Arabia, the Israeli port of Haifa) that would offer alternative trade routes to Europe from India and Southeast Asia. This would offend China too, because its grand Belt and Road Initiative and trans-European railway links would see less business. Thus, in passing, China also is a winner in this Great Game as West Asia goes on the boil, along with usual suspects Iran, Qatar and Turkey.

Thus, from several points of view, this Hamas war is an immediate setback to India: it is one of the few countries in the region that enjoys good relations with both Israel and Saudi Arabia, and IMEC would allow it to recreate the old Spice Route to Europe, which was highly lucrative over millennia. All this is in jeopardy now. The strategic and under-construction Vizhinjam container transhipment port in Thiruvananthapuram is a key part of this ambitious trade route.

India also has interests in Iran: the Chabahar port could enable India to create an alternative route to Central Asia and Russia called the INSTC (International North South Transport Corridor) bypassing trouble-prone Pakistan and Afghanistan (although that long-pending logistics link is years behind schedule). India cannot allow its relations with Iran to be affected by the war in Gaza.

More broadly, if world trade collapses and/or a war begins now it would be unfortunate timing for India. This is the very moment India is ready to finally leave behind the bitter legacy of colonialism, which looted enormous wealth from India (I have argued it was $10 trillion, but economist Utsa Patnaik puts the figure at $45 trillion). A collapse in the procedures of the ‘liberal, rules-based international order’, however biased it is in favor of the West, is unfortunate for India in the medium term, although it would probably be fine in the longer term.

There are two other aspects of the response to Gaza that are notable. The first is the rise of ugly anti-Jewish sentiments in many parts of the West. This is of concern to Indians, specifically Hindus, because Hindu-hatred is anti-semitism 2.0 and Hindus cannot wish it away.

On the other hand, the Left was startled by the dramatic reaction from American Jews to standard Left positioning of moral equivalence between Hamas and the Israeli Defense Forces. For instance, several Harvard student groups released statements about their support for Palestine and/or Hamas, which probably was seeded by Pakistani and, alas, woke Indian-origin students in their ranks.

Retribution was swift: Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge-fund manager, in effect asked fellow CEOs to blacklist these students. There was furious backpedaling as many students, worried about their job prospects, protested that the statements were made without consulting them.

This is positive. The Woke Left in the US is splintering. That may mean the Democratic Party tactic of uber-wokeism may now backfire on them, especially notable as elections are looming in the US. The less the wokeism around, the better for India (see Justin Trudeau’s Khalistan antics).

The weakening of Western power and resolve vis a vis China is another problem for India. The West simply cannot supply munitions for multiple wars (Ukraine, Gaza, and possibly Taiwan), partly because the US has been deindustrialized. What we might see in the medium term is the deprecation of US power in the Indo-Pacific, and indeed a fallback to isolationism and Fortress America. This would encourage a China that is just waiting to rampage.

The current Israel-Hamas war is a net negative for India; the issue of Western Hindu-hatred is a topic for another day.

1650 words, 16 October 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-does-the-war-in-israel-mark-the-end-of-pax-occidentalis-13235762.html

The attack by Hamas on Israel may well be remembered in future as marking the very moment the decline of the West became an indubitable fact. Thus October 7th, 2023 may be a point of inflection in geo-politics and geo-economics, although it is true that the economic center of gravity of the world has been moving eastwards (and southwards in future) for some time.

The question really goes to the heart of the so-called ‘liberal rules-based international order’, which is a nice euphemism for ‘America and friends lay out the rules’. To give credit where it is due, this was a pretty good paradigm for the post-World-War-II period, and it helped much of Europe and East Asia advance economically, although it didn’t help India, Africa or Latin America much (and that was partly due to poorly thought-out self-imposed policies as well).

But like all empires and quasi-empires, this one has also deteriorated over time, partly as it was based on the presupposition of overwhelming American dominance. The US was supposed to be the global policeman who could arbitrate if necessary, and offer a bracing dose of punishment if someone erred. But that is no longer the case, as the US is bogged down in arguably futile wars.

The rot goes much deeper, and affects every institution that has been built up by the ‘liberal, rules-based international order’. All of us thought the UN and in particular the Security Council would be champions at preserving world order, unlike the hapless League of Nations. But it has proven singularly ineffective, and the media didn’t even quote the Secretary General or the Security Council making a pro forma plea for peace in Israel on October 7th.

The World Health Organization was another entity that lost much of its credibility in the wake of its hapless performance during the coronavirus pandemic. UNESCO has long since become a woke fortress, shorn of its earlier importance. The World Bank and IMF are so often handmaidens of Western agendas and dogmas (see “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”) that nobody mourns their eclipse as new lending institutions arise.

The Nobel Prizes, we were brought up to believe, were the ultimate in impartial recognition of excellence. Perhaps in the sciences they still have some value, but the moment the Peace Prize was given to Henry Kissinger (and Le Duc Tho who had the grace to reject it), it became evident that it was political. Of course, never giving the Literature Prize to Leo Tolstoy had damaged it way back (Sully Prudhomme got it instead. Sully, a household name!).

The less said about the Economics Prize the better. Just look at the Indian-origin winners or the New York Times columnist. I think I can rest my case.

In passing, there is this reputation that the Scandinavians have for fair play, partly because of the Nobels, and partly, I imagine, because they are blond, blue-eyed Vikings. But increasingly I have noticed that their antics on the environment (“How dare you!”), on politics (“we can judge the quality of your democracy via V-dem index”), on psychology (“happiness index”) and various others things suggest that some gaslighting is going on. But that’s just by the way.

The other institutions that we have always depended on are the media. It was practically a given for most of us that the BBC was objective and trustworthy, the VoA a little less so, and Pravda was full of propaganda. The NYT was the gold standard, the Economist and the FT were, if not paragons, worthy of respectful attention, despite charges of ‘manufacturing consent’.

And the Lancet was impeccable, the very fountainhead of medical wisdom. During covid, it was stunning to find them endorsing research by an entity called Surgisphere, which, I wrote at the time in “Pious Frauds” (Open Magazine, June 2020), was a naked scam with the intention of deprecating a cheap off-patent medicine called hydroxychloroquine or HCQ. Let us compare prices: Rs. 6.25 for HCQ, Rs. 30,000 for Remdesivir. That must mean something.

Over the last year or so, revelation after revelation has exposed the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex’ as a handmaiden of governments; particularly shocking has been the suggestion that the Biden administration has been hand-in-hand with Big Tech in defenestrating anybody whom the Thought Police did not like, eg those who opposed vaccine mandates.

To be blunt, you cannot take Facebook/Meta, Google, YouTube, Apple, Amazon, Wikipedia, or any other Big Tech outlet at face value; parenthetically, and for different reasons, you cannot take anything spewed by chatbots like chatGPT or Google Bard seriously either. Twitter/X, after Elon Musk’s takeover, seems to be the least compromised news outlet available.

But the real kicker comes with Mossad and Five Eyes, and Israel’s total unpreparedness for the Hamas offensive. Mossad is legendary for its almost superhuman acts to protect Israeli lives and property, and is the world’s most admired intelligence agency. On top of this, there is the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing mechanism among the Anglosphere. In the recent past, we have heard a lot about this in the context of Justin Trudeau and Khalistanis.

The impression that I, for one, had was that these people were masters at intelligence gathering, with sophisticated technical means including satellite reconnaissance that could spot any substantial logistics on the ground. It would have taken a lot of organization to gather 5,000 rockets and dozens of pickup trucks and hundreds of fighters, but none of this registered on their signals intelligence or human intelligence?

That is hard to believe. Except for the likelihood that Mossad and the Israeli armed forces have been distracted by the internal squabbles between Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli Supreme Court. The usually apolitical security services took sides in what is partly a divide between white Ashkenazi and brown/black Mizrahi, with religious orthodoxy thrown in. (It is a stark reminder to Indians, especially the INDI alliance, that a house divided will fall.)

Yes, it is hard to believe the combined might of the Anglosphere did not anticipate the Hamas invasion catastrophe. Maybe they did not want to prevent it? That would be criminal, considering the sufferings of Israeli civilians, as well as what’s to come for Palestinian civilians when Israel, as it always does, hits back hard in Gaza.

A Jewish writer in Tablet Magazine, Liel Leibowitz, accused the Israeli ruling class of “cosplaying some game of Demokratia, complete with donning handmaid outfits and ululating about fascism”, and of entertaining “the fantasy that the United States was and always would be their protector—when in fact the ruling party in America has decided that Israel is a liability”. The same magazine, in March, accused the US Deep State of instigating Israel’s internal squabbles.

That is harsh, but in a nutshell it suggests that America in particular, and the West in general, is no longer able to, or willing to, run the ‘rules-based liberal international order’. Thus, the end of Pax Americana or Pax Occidentalis may be here. This does not make the world a nicer or easier place: Pax Sinica, for instance, could be brutal (ask the Tibetans). But it suggests that a Pax Indica in the Indian Ocean Rim is a worthwhile goal for India.

1200 words, 10 Oct 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-g20-and-its-fallout-india-the-swing-state-imec-and-trudeaus-tantrums-13162212.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

A fortnight after the end of the G20 Summit in New Delhi, it’s worth revisiting what really materialized, and what India can expect out of all the hard work that went into it.

First, the positives. The flawless execution of the Summit is something the Indian leadership and officials deserve to be congratulated on. There were all sorts of things that could have gone wrong – including security worries – but the whole thing was done with clockwork precision. In a way, this is unsurprising: Indians revel in complexity, and surely running this event, despite the VVIP foreigners, was easier than pulling off the Kumbha Mela.

Many pundits had written off the Summit, citing the absence of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, and predicting that it would be next to impossible for there to be a consensus based on which a common declaration could be accepted by all. In the event, the 83-paragraph Leaders’ Declaration, wide-ranging and comprehensive, was seen as a diplomatic triumph, with everybody giving in a little on their positions in the interest of the G20 community.

The fact that NATO members had to swallow a watered-down condemnation of the Ukraine war, without actually naming Russia, has been framed as a ‘climbdown by the West for the sake of G20 unity’ by the Financial Times. That’s pretty good spin, but it was remarkable that they didn’t seem to be bothered by such ‘G20 unity’ at the Bali Summit, 2022.

There are more plausible reasons for this ‘climbdown’. One is that the Ukraine war is not going according to plan, which anticipated Russia being beaten by now, both militarily and financially. On the contrary, the EU continues to be Russia’s biggest customer, by far. So the sanctions have failed, and the EU is probably fed up with energy shortages. Plus, the Ukrainians don’t seem to be making much progress with the much-hyped ‘counteroffensive’. NATO could well be on the point of throwing Zelenskyy under the bus any day now.

The West appears to be backpedaling furiously, and they have made such miscalculations before: 1971, Bangladesh; 1975, Vietnam, and so on. Ironically, POTUS Biden went to Vietnam after the G20 Summit, and announced billions of dollars worth of deals in semiconductors and AI, among other things. What a U-turn from the 1970s! Kissinger would be turning over in his grave, except he’s still alive.

A more optimistic reading of the G20 outcome could well be that India has finally become a swing state. While it is precarious being a swing state, it also has benefits: you get courted by both sides, and you can play them off against each other. India’s persistent and aggressive fence-sitting, combined with its robust economic performance, is now making others pay a little more attention to India’s needs. But it also invites hostility.

There was evidence of this new reality, in a back-handed sort of way, in Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s hissy-fit against India accusing it of a hit-job on a Khalistani terrorist. Trudeau has his own reasons (hurt amour-propre, perhaps), but the Washington Post reported that nobody else in the Anglosphere agreed to support him, with Biden going to great lengths “to avoid antagonizing India and court the Asian power as a strategic counterweight to China”. Even the usually hostile BBC said, “On the grand geopolitical chess board, India is now a key player”. Deep State is not amused. Nor are the rest of the Five Eyes.

India’s transition from ‘non-aligned’ to ‘multi-aligned’ has come at the right time. I do hope India does not get swayed by its own rhetoric of being the ‘champion of the Global South’ and go back to the Nehru-era ‘king of the banana republics’ self-image. Pretending to be the leader of the Third World, and all the NAM exertions got India nothing at all. In 1961, the entire Third World voted 90-1 against India’s decolonization of Goa, which was startling.

However, things are a little different now that India is looking out for its own interests first and foremost. In that context, the formal induction of the African Union into the G20 is a win for India, especially in light of the stacking of BRICS+ with friends of China.

Looking at it from India’s point of view, the African Union means especially East Africa, which is part of the Indian Ocean Rim, India’s backyard. Africa will be the fastest-growing area, in population and GDP, over the next few decades, and the giant continent’s people face problems quite similar to those Indians face. East Africa has millennia-old trade links with India. For instance, a 1500 year old Malabar-built uru, a wooden ship made of teak, was found buried, well preserved in the sands near Alexandria, Egypt, indicating ancient commerce.

It is in the context that the new Spice Route, or the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), is also a good initiative. For one, it is fairly direct competition to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has been dogged by accusations that it is ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ that ends up with valuable assets extorted from others, as in Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, now forced into a 99-year lease agreement as the debt payments became onerous.

Having said that, and despite the fact that a growing India will have more trade with Europe as in the millennia past, it is not entirely clear that the IMEC will take off. On the one hand, there is the history of prized Indian goods like spices, gold, gems, etc. The Roman Pliny the Younger complained that their treasury was being emptied because of the demand for spices and in satisfying “the vanity of [our] women” with cosmetics etc. from India.

India of the future may not become, or may not be allowed to become, a workshop of the world at the scale of China. After all, China will not go off into that good night without raging, raging. An article by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times pointed out that ‘peak China’ may be some time off. I usually disagree with the man, but here I agree: China’s obituaries are a bit premature. It will also double down on a new and improved BRI.

Going back to IMEC, there are also practical difficulties even if the political will and funding can be arranged: the port of Haifa, Israel, which would be a logical choice for it, has a major terminal where China is the concessionaire, and so does the Greek Port of Piraeus. Interestingly enough, Adani Ports has control over the older terminal at Haifa, and is reported to be seeking a terminal at Piraeus as well. How curious that Soros keeps attacking Adani again and again: perhaps he is acting on China’s behalf as well?

Chances are that IMEC will remain a pipe-dream, but there is more of a chance that the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) that India has excelled in may be appealing to many other nations. According to the World Bank, India only took 6 years to achieve development that would normally take 47 years, because of the efficiency improvements due to digitization. This is something the Global South can use.

There is also a negative from the G20. The upsurge in infiltration and the huge standoff against terrorists in Anantnag, Jammu and Kashmir, may well be a Chinese signal that they can ratchet up mischief any time, and that the G20 success should not go to India’s head. Given that there is a lot of alleged infiltration into and coziness by the Chinese into the Canadian establishment, Trudeau’s tantrums may also be inspired by China: the other shoe dropping.

All in all, India gets a solid A- for its G20 efforts; the outcomes, alas, may only be a B-.

1300 words, 20 Sept 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

On the one hand, there is massive propaganda from the west, ably supported by native sepoys, that India is on the verge of some genocide of Muslims.

On the other hand, last month, the Speaker of the Kerala Assembly, a Muslim, said that Lord Ganesh was “a myth”. Instead of censuring him for hurting the sentiments of Hindus, the ruling communists of Kerala supported him.

This month, Udayanidhi Stalin, a minister, who is also the son of the DMK Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu M K Stalin, said Sanatana Dharma is like dengue, and needs to be eradicated. A former Union Minister, A Raja, compared Hinduism to HIV.

Thus there is de facto discrimination and hate speech against Hindus, and Stalin Jr’s call, for all practical purposes, is an invitation to genocide of Hindus.

Several bigwigs in politics, including the DMK’s allies such as the Congress, instead of censuring Stalin Jr for calling for crimes against humanity, have instead supported him.

Then there is de jure discrimination against Hindus as well. The Constitution through Articles 25-30 appears to give protection to non-Hindus (based on some strange idea that Hindus would oppress them), which has been interpreted by the courts as giving extraordinary privileges to non-Hindus in all sorts of ways. The same is true of governments as well: in fact there are Kerala government job postings reserved exclusively for converts to Christianity, not to mention the pilgrimage concessions given to Muslims and Christians, but not to Hindus.

The Supreme Court, on its own accord, forcefully chided Nupur Sharma merely for quoting correctly a verse from an Islamic source, and claimed she was causing fissures in society. But the Supreme Court has not bothered with any suo moto comments on Stalin Jr or A Raja.

This is apartheid, a classic oppression of majority populations to benefit minorities.

Anand Ranganathan’s recent book goes into detail in this, and I am sure it is worth a read. An apartheid state is unsustainable and needs to be reformed.

The fact of the matter is that there are several religions intent on world conquest, Christianity, Islam and their modern-day variants Communism and Wokeism. All of them view Hindus as targets and as sacrificial lambs for their glory.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

• It’s illegal. There is a constitutional right to worship. Even more so there is a right to equality to all citizens. 

• It’s immoral and criminal. To call for genocide. This is not free speech. This is hate speech

• This is pure propaganda

• Demonizing the enemy has a long history

• Spaniards called aztecs cannibals and vice versa, but white people got to write the history books

• Yellow peril

• Nazis called jews vermin

• Hutus in rwanda called tutsis cockroaches, and then genocide them

• N s rajarams’s comment on how caldwell, naicker etc were attempting the same in tamil nadu

• History of the justice party, dmk etc is shameful: basically arms of conversion, not anti-religion, only anti-hindu

• Anti-hindu memes in the west: california bill, equality labs, audrey truschke, against vivek ramaswamy

• Progressively from hindutva to hinduism to sanatana dharma. escalation

• INDIAlliance has shown itself to be purely anti-hindu

• But questions for BJP too: why are hindu temples still managed by the state? Anand ranganathan maintains that hindus are not even second-class, they are eighth class, with far fewer rights than others. 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

I wrote ten years ago on Rediff.com (‘The great Indian rope trick and other illusions of progress’ https://www.rediff.com/news/column/the-great-indian-rope-trick-and-other-illusions-of-progress/20130716.htm) about how the average Indian is satisfied with illusion, never mind real progress. That made India a Potemkin State, where form is everything and substance is immaterial.

It turns out that I was wrong: Indians do want actual progress. I might be pardoned for saying what I said then because the country was at the fag-end of a Lost Decade, 2004 to 2014, wherein things deteriorated steadily. Decline had been par for the course throughout the Nehruvian-Stalinist decades of dirigisme.

Apart from mis-steps in economic management, the political environment was also dicey. There was the appalling spectacle of a constitutional coup, as I noted at the time (‘Four ways the Congress won power by Constitutional coups’ https://www.rediff.com/news/column/column-rajeev-srinivasan-4-ways-the-congress-won-power-through-constitutional-coups/20140107.htm): by colluding with the Communist Speaker in the cash-for-votes scam, the Congress clung on to power violating democratic norms.

We see the same recklessness today in the US (“Let’s jail the leading opposition candidate”) and in Germany (“One party is getting too popular, let’s ban it”). It does not bode well. The New York Times, on August 21, 2023 ran the striking headline, “Elections Are Bad for Democracy” before changing it to “The Worst People Run for Office. It’s Time for a Better Way”. Yes, democracy is too important to leave to the people. Let us elites tell them what to think.

The most striking example of this uncaring State, the very nadir of its contempt for the man in the street, was the length of the chain anchoring the mug in the loo in railway compartments: just three inches too short, thus shattering the illusion that you could actually clean your bottom. A daunting prospect for any traveler, especially because of the overwhelming stink, and a world of difference from Japan’s shinkansen and their amazing high-tech loos.

Recently I traveled in several train compartments, including ancient Jan Shatabdi chair cars and newish Hamsafar sleeper coaches, although, alas, not in Vande Bharat coaches yet; but I was surprised at how much better the toilets were. The ‘bio toilet’ means human feces are not dumped on the tracks; they do not smell terrible, and, wonder of wonders, there is a hygiene hose/bidet that is actually long enough to do the deed.

And, perhaps redundantly, the chain for the mug has been lengthened. And there is water!

It is hard to explain to a non-Indian what a difference all this makes. I had a cousin who denied herself food and drink while traveling by train just so she could avoid the toilet. It is a sea-change when you are granted a little self-respect. I am reminded of the placard held by a man at a Martin Luther King rally: “I am a man”. Yes, the proverbial average Indian aam admi is a human who deserves consideration: not only Lutyens and Khan Market types.

I am sorry to talk about a cringe-making topic like toilets, but this is something earthy and immediately understandable; it makes the point that India is, 76 years after the imperialists left and brown sahebs took over, finally on the march. Indians are beginning to see that they can demand respect from their rulers, and get it. Dignity, that watchword of the butler Stevens in Kazuo Ishiguro’s brilliant The Remains of the Day.

In a penetrating 1997 essay, “India shouldn’t have fantasies about the past, but face it” (https://www.indiatoday.in/india-today-insight/story/from-the-archives-1997-v-s-naipaul-india-shouldn-t-have-fantasies-about-the-past-but-face-it-1988599-2022-08-16) Sir V S Naipaul mentioned that those who have been oppressed and denigrated for centuries are now rising, and this rise will be messy. He was talking about those outside the charmed circle that ruled the country for long. It is also broader: the rise of the Other Backward Communities, that uncharming name for the majority of Indians, the bahujan.

Naipaul also said that the rulers will now of necessity be of the people, not overlords. It can be argued that for over a thousand years, Indians have been effectively ruled by a comprador ‘elite’, middlemen who did the dirty work on behalf of invaders or distant rulers. It is my suspicion that the zamindars and other local strongmen were largely from the upper or middle jatis, and it is only now that those from the bottom of the pyramid are finally getting a say in things.

No, this is not a jati-bashing exercise, and I may be extrapolating from my observations in Kerala, where a middle jati, Nairs, were the kulaks who lorded it over those below them in the hierarchy, such as OBC Ezhavas, SC Pulayas, and ST Mala-arayans. The latter are now rising, though not in full measure, yet. I think it’s similar in Tamil Nadu, too.

In the Soviet Union, Stalin liquidated the kulaks. In India, their eclipse has come about too late, though without violence. The usual woke Lutyens/Khan Market suspects were disappointed they couldn’t chortle about Chandrayaan-3 being yet another expensive failure a poor country could ill afford, echoing Brits upset that their alleged ‘aid’ was going to India (in reality, as per the UK Foreign Office, India politely declined any charity from them starting 2015; any money coming to India from the UK is foreign direct investment (FDI), or strictly in support of their geopolitical objectives, channeled via dubious NGOs or missionaries).

The ‘wokes’ also grumbled about ISRO engineers going to Tirupati and invoking the blessings of the Divine for their project. I am glad they got a munh thod jawab. There really is no dichotomy in Hindu thought between science and faith: science too requires faith and belief.

The ‘wokes’ have reason to be worried, not only by the picture-perfect moon landing, but also by Praggnaanandhaa, who almost unseated the reigning World Champion in chess; Neeraj Chopra, who won the World Athletic Championship in javelin to go with his Olympic gold; the 4x400 relay quartet with their heroics of almost defeating the Americans in the heats while setting an Asian record; and Vivek Ramaswamy, who is unabashedly Hindu and at the same time a patriotic American and a force to contend with in the Republican party in the US.

Even though they haven’t been defenestrated, except perhaps some unfortunate folks at Ashoka University, India’s Left are less and less relevant: relics of a failed ideology. They should count their lucky stars: in Singapore, Lee Kwan Yew liquidated them. And indeed, even in the US, the ‘woke’ capital of the world, their star is setting.

There is another reason I brought up toilets: the unseemly obsession that westerners have with them. I was delighted to see this cartoon on Twitter, and it is obviously a parody of the earlier one in the sadly overrated New York Times, below.

While the racist derision of the original cartoon, and the celebration of the be-jasmined and be-bindi’d women in Indian engineering are the obvious takeaways, I was intrigued by a detail: the white guy in the cartoon is dragging a shopping-cart full of toilet paper behind him! I am not sure why toilet paper is some kind of atavistic guilty pleasure for westerners.

Despite being purely climate-related (they could not afford to melt ice and snow just to wash their bottoms, or for that matter their hands, thus cutlery), toilet paper has become a cultural staple for them. You might remember the hoarding of toilet paper in the early days of covid! It’s time westerners abandoned killing trees, and went for the more healthy bidet-like health faucet. For that matter, the squat in Indian closets is apparently better than the sitting posture on a western ‘thunder-box’. Recently while traveling in the Czech Republic, I stayed in a (fancy) hotel that had a bidet: such a relief! May their tribe increase!

Of course, some things never change. This was demonstrated in two ways: the thinly-veiled envy from the British that manifested itself in their assertion that an India full of open defecation shouldn’t be spending on space research, and The Economist magazine in their recent obituary of Bindeswar Pathak repeatedly emphasizing caste discrimination and manual scavenging. These are vestiges of the past, and mostly due to the $10 trillion (or $45 trillion depending on whom you ask) that the Brits looted, impoverishing India. But then, who’s counting?

And you want to talk about open defecation? Once-beautiful San Francisco is now the champion, while India has built large numbers of indoor toilets all over the country. See the ‘poop map’ of San Francisco here (https://mochimachine.org/wasteland/# ).

One thing that has definitely changed in the last ten years is the amount of Hindu-hatred expressed in the West, particularly America. The California caste Bill, Equality Labs, Audrey Truschke, and the latest, tech journo Kara Swisher’s racist attack on Vivek Ramaswamy, are all related to the fact that Hindus have quietly become one of the most economically successful (but politically powerless) groups in the US. It is really a back-handed compliment, happily cheered on by rogues from the “Chindu” stable or similar. Caste is the weapon.

Hindus tend to be defensive about caste. We shouldn’t be. Caste is really a white invention, from the Portuguese casta, intended to segregate mixed-race people based on how white they are, half, quarter, one-eighth, etc: thus mulatto, quadroon, octroon, etc. It is their cross to bear. There is an ocean of difference between this caste business and jatis, but I digress..

Besides, there are de facto castes in the US: the investment banker caste, the doctor caste, the lawyer caste, the management consultant caste, etc. They all go to the same tony prep schools, the same Ivy League colleges (legacy admissions mean you easily get into Harvard, if your parent(s) went to Harvard, regardless of your grades. Raj Chetty has published reams of data about this); they are endogamous; and they all miraculously end up at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey. An outsider can’t break in. These castes are also Lindy (ask Nassim Taleb).

Perhaps, taking a cue from other groups that have prospered, Hindus (and Indian Americans in general) are becoming ‘white’, like others have before them. Irish, Italians, Jews, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese: there is a long list. ‘Whiteness’ is a construct. I was flabbergasted decades ago when a well-meaning white guy said, “You guys are almost white”. I stuttered: “But, but… we are brown!”.

If you have money, you pretty much become white. I give it another ten years. With India’s GDP at $10 trillion, and more Hindu-Americans creating unicorns, I bet by 2034 Hindus will be ‘white’. Maybe Vivek is the first white Hindu. I am not making a value judgment, merely making a prediction. You heard it here first.

1800 words, Aug 29, 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Here’s the video:

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-paris-is-burning-why-12837712.html

I had the disconcerting experience of being on the ground in Paris while the current riots raged. Oddly enough, on my previous visit, in April 2019, I arrived the night the Notre Dame cathedral caught fire, and then was in town during the Yellow Vest riots against fuel taxes. In both cases, my plans were affected: in the current case I stirred out of my hotel room near the Arc de Triomphe with trepidation, worried as I was by TV images of random violence and especially arson.

I had been to Paris for several years in a row (until covid) for an annual conference on innovation, so I have a slight familiarity with the city, and it remains one of the most charming cities in the world. Architecturally appealing, with world-class museums (I did my usual homage to the Louvre, the impressionist Musee d’Orsay and the Musee Guimet of Asian art), lovely boulevards, the peerless Eiffel Tower, the unhurried meals in sidewalk cafes: the very picture of the good life.

Then there is the dark side of things.

The proximate cause of the troubles was the shooting death of a 17 year old youth of Algerian heritage, possibly the result of excessive force by the police. But this is just the spark. As in other countries with restless minority populations (e.g. the US with periodic riots after police shoot yet another black man, as in Los Angeles burning after the death of Rodney King), there are many other resentments that fan the fire. It would be easy to surmise that racism and the reaction thereto are the main factors in action.

But I think there is another, possibly preponderant cause: demographic shift. France is getting less white, more black and Arab, and more Muslim. Coupled with an ever-restive leftist streak that has been evident for long (remember the student riots in May 1968 and the always volatile Left Bank?), today we have a left-migrant nexus of sorts that magnifies any issue and takes to the streets.

There are large numbers of migrants, including those who came from the colonies and more recently refugees fleeing terror and chaos in Syria, Afghanistan etc. One would think that they would generally be grateful to Europe for taking them in, but radicalization is literally visible on the streets: the older generation is more secular, but their sons and especially their daughters-in-law are more observant, with beards, hijabs and other signs of religiosity. They are influenced by fiery preachers who call for jihad.

It is now much easier to marshal ‘flashmobs’ via social media. In fact, France has just had to turn off the Internet to prevent further provocation and nastiness. Let us note that this was not trumpeted by Deep State journalists as a sign of autocracy, although that is exactly what they say when India has to turn off the Internet in Kashmir.

There were statements made by some of the rioters (I’m not sure if it is just bravado or whether they seriously mean it) that they intend to take over Europe through the power of their numbers, as they are noticeably more fertile than native whites. Eurabia is an inevitable reality, they believe. This, naturally, does not sit well with the locals. They will probably begin to curtail migration, as some Scandinavian countries have begun to do.

Perhaps there is also a crisis in governance, which was the opinion of an old friend, whom I met for drinks at the landmark Publicis Drugstore on the Champs Elysees. She was unhappy about the mayor and other politicians whom she blamed for the poor state of general administration. (I just read that a suburban mayor’s home was attacked, and his wife injured). Although my friend didn’t talk about him, Emmanuel Macron is not universally popular either; even senior citizens appear to be upset with him.

She also mentioned that the covid lockdowns had had a hugely disruptive, and lingering, effect, as many people lost their jobs, many moved out of Paris, and have had their prospects diminished. France’s place in the world is also diminishing: it is now mostly a purveyor of luxury goods (fittingly, the head of LVMH is now the richest person in the world), and it was roundly humiliated by the US in the AUKUS affair, even though it is still a major arms supplier.

Maybe there is a certain angst in the air. Maybe that is the root cause, or at least a root cause.

I met a Pondicherry-origin man working in the transit hotel near the airport where I spent my last night in Paris, not wanting to risk riots, arson and barricades on the way from the city to Charles de Gaulle. He was generally negative, warning me about crime ranging from pickpocketing to muggings and especially the riots. He felt that his life as an immigrant (he has been there for many years) has become worse, and he felt he could be targeted by both Arabs and whites based on his Indian looks and the certainty that he was harmless and would not retaliate.

I only personally witnessed a boisterous crowd shouting slogans that I couldn’t understand, and no violence or arson (thankfully), but there was the constant wail of police sirens in the background, and what sounded like shots in the middle distance. Sadly, the largest library in France was set on fire. Thousands of vehicles were destroyed, and hundreds of houses looted and burned. In the end, I am told residents responded with vigilante squads fending off the unruly mobs.

I also spoke to the proverbial taxi driver (a Moroccan-Frenchman), following in the footsteps of famous economists and journalists. He tried to be circumspect, and he didn’t seem to be a religious person (there were no accoutrements in his car), but he told me about hard times. He was running an illegal taxi service, and he overcharged me 10 Euros since (he claimed) he didn’t have enough change.

He spoke about unemployment and discrimination, and how inflation was hurting his living standards. I have in the past found French Arabs not very hostile to Indians (as we don’t threaten their livelihoods), and this man wasn’t either.

The same issue of economic problems was echoed by a Malayali manning a souvenir shop. He had arrived as a student, stayed on for a few years, and now was facing problems in bringing his family over from India. Incidentally, a lot of the souvenir stalls near Sacre Coeur, the Louvre and elsewhere are staffed or owned by Indian-origin people: I met one from Gujarat, another from Mauritius.

The number of Indians I saw around Paris has gone up from prior visits: both tourists and residents. There still are far more East Asians (in my hotel there were Koreans and Singaporeans) around. I met a young woman from Kanyakumari who was leading a tour group on the Eiffel Tower. She was optimistic: she was doing her MBA, working part-time, and she has an import-export startup in India that she will be returning to.

My chance encounters with these people illustrate the point about European decline. France has a nice little niche in luxury goods, but I suspect their buyers are increasingly from newly-affluent Asia. The departure area at CDG airport Terminal 1 is a veritable secular cathedral, with chandeliers and luxurious seats, surrounded by glitzy and expensive Dior, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Cartier, etc. shops tempting the departing traveler.

But decline in the former colonial powers (most evident in Britain, which also shot itself in the foot with Brexit) is a fact. In a way it is poetic justice: Paris is full of evident loot from elsewhere (the Egyptian obelisk from Luxor, the Cambodian sculptures from the Bayon and Angkor Wat) and France clearly was enriched by exploitation of the colonies.

But their core industrial strength has vanished (China continues to rape and pillage their IPR), along with their position in the global GDP standings. India has overtaken France and Britain, and will soon overtake Germany. Europe is now less of a factor in the world than it has been since the Middle Ages. Asia is rising again.

It’s a powerful cocktail: inevitable cyclical decline, memories of imperial grandeur, the determined Islamist assault, and general anti-government feelings going way back to the French Revolution. Surely, the crackdown by some 50,000 police and if necessary, the army, will control the riots, but one day the rioters may win. Predictably, all of Europe is now shifting right-wards: Italy, Finland, Greece, possibly Spain. Hard times beget hard men.

1450 words, Jul 3, 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-permanent-interests-not-permanent-friends-drive-foreign-policy-12814872.html

The optics for PM Narendra Modi’s visit to the US were good. There was a surprisingly positive reception to his speech to the joint houses of the US Parliament (known as the US Congress, not to be confused with the Indian political party with its congenital allergy to Modi). I read that the PM gave a bravura performance, and that he was interrupted by several standing ovations.

The rest of the trip also got generally good reviews. It would be wonderful if my two favorite nations were to become good friends. I lived most of my youth in the US, and I love the country. By ancestry and culture, of course my roots are Indian.

But any such rapport will not come about if the usual suspects can help it. I was not really surprised by the news that former President Barak Obama was scathing about India and Modi. I have not been a fan of Obama’s from day one: something about him made my antennae go up. And then I heard that he had gone to Pakistan in his youth, at a stage in life when most young Americans go to India to find themselves. I guess Obama had already found himself.

Then there was Fareed Zakaria who echoed the libel that India was massacring Muslims. He knows well enough that this is not true. If anything, Indian Muslims are more privileged than others. And Zakaria and his father are among the most privileged, a super-elite caste of “Anglo-Mughalais” (my friend Bapa Rao’s evocative term) who take advantage of everything India has to offer, in the name of the poorer castes of Muslims whom they find it convenient to keep poor and angry.

And then there was Sabrina Siddiqui, a Pakistani-American journalist who is part of the Biden administration, whose provocative question to the PM raised hackles.

The meme that is quietly being propagated by all of them is that India is on the verge of genocide of its Muslim residents. This is simply not true: just as they are currently doing in France, Muslims riot at the drop of a hat in India. This is hardly a dara hua population. Obama’s direct hint about a Partition 2.0 is a good summary of the standard Deep State perspective on India: keep it down, poor, and preferably broken: Hindus are not allowed to rise.

Less sinister was some guy in Foreign Affairs opining that the US and India do not share ‘values’ but only ‘interests’. Maybe, but that should not stop them from becoming friends. That is realpolitik: the enlightened pursuit of self-interest. Nations, in a Chanakyan way, can and should pursue their own long-term and short-term interests. I once invoked Chanakya’s ‘Far Emperor’: you cultivate the distant emperor to wage war against the neighbor, who, sadly, will sooner or later become your foe. That’s a good model for India. A benign US can be the Far Emperor when the nearby power threatens.

As for the US, with a rampaging China threatening to overturn the entire US-dominated international order, it is good to have friends who can keep China occupied in its neighborhood: to put it crudely, India is the only country to have recently killed Chinese troops, and stared them down in a tense stand-off.

And values. I have to believe that the guiding values of the US are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. So far as I can tell, this is exactly what India is attempting to do for its citizens and this is precisely what the much-maligned (by the US Deep State) Modi is trying to do. How much more congruent can your values get?

But I must acknowledge that there is a definite gulf between Abrahamic values and Dharmic values.

The ‘religions of the desert’, that is, Abrahamisms including the Christian, Islamic and Communist faiths, have as a central tenet world conquest. I classify Abrahamisms as follows:

• Paleo-semitic: Zoroastrianism, Judaism

• Meso-semitic: Christianity, Islam

• Neo-semitic: Communism, Fascism, Nehruism, Ambedkarism, Dravidianism, and so on

The common thread is that these are prone to promote competition and zero-sum games. This is a consequence of the fact that the Middle East, where these ideologies germinated (though they have obviously managed to capture much territory elsewhere) is mostly a fearsome desert. If you do not follow a few simple rules (‘Commandments’) you will perish: for instance, “carry water”, “cover yourself up against the sun and sand”, “kill or be killed”, “your life here and now may suck, but there’s a heaven after you die and if you want to get there, do the following”.

The Dharmic worldview, being that of the ‘religions of the forest’, is fundamentally different. This is because the Asian forest, while it can be dangerous, is benign. There are fruits to forage for, and water to drink. Your basic survival is not in such jeopardy, and so you can afford to be a little flexible. Of course there are rules like “look out for snakes”, and “climb a tree to escape predators”, but basically life is easier, and so you develop an attitude of “live and let live”.

I have recently been traveling in Europe, and spent some time in the Louvre Museum. The items on display there are a graphic reminder of these differences: the galleries showing Greek, Roman, Persian and Mediterranean art (pre-Abrahamic) are radically different from medieval (Abrahamic) art from later times. Yes, there is a difference ever since meso-Semitism became the European standard.

The biologist Richard Dawkins is a good example of the fact that Abrahamic values are the norm for anyone in the West, even if they reject Abrahamic religions, and claim to be atheists, although one could easily argue that atheism is yet another Abrahamism. He has admitted to being culturally Abrahamic, and he is both ignorant and arrogant regarding Dharmic systems: he doesn’t understand them, and fits them into a Procrustean Abrahamic mold. The same is true of Noam Chomsky.

I do believe that the US and India do not and couldn’t possibly share all their values: so that is a futile argument at best. Yet they can and do share interests, mostly the containment of China. Values at a grassroots level are not all that different in practice. Individual Americans are among the nicest, friendliest, most gregarious and decent people anywhere. And so are Indians.

It is possible to write reams about Chinese strategic brilliance and Sun Tzu and all that, but the fact remains that while it has thrived under centralized imperial rule, it has also regularly faced catastrophic collapse and periods of chaos. But there is no gainsaying the fact that for the last thirty years or so, China has outplayed the US, to the extent that the CEO of a big defense company (Raytheon if I remember right) says it is impossible to decouple from thousands of Chinese suppliers.

When I first went to the US, in the late 1970s, things generally looked good there, even though there was a period of high inflation. The Cold War came to an end soon thereafter (The Soviets were outmaneuvered) and Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History seemed possible: Western (that is, a special form of Abrahamic) values had won. Period.

Hubris is usually followed by Nemesis. The needs of the war industry took center stage, and money that could and should have been spent on the welfare of Americans was lavished on strange ‘projects’ everywhere, such as Iraq, and much later, Afghanistan. The latter was justifiable based on 9/11, but the way it was conducted and (in particular) terminated was atrocious. And now, Ukraine.

Meanwhile, China has deeply infiltrated the US through its agents; its unwitting fifth columnists now include Wall Street bankers and captains of industry. Then there are these suspicious little joint ventures, for instance, it now looks increasingly possible that the Covid virus was dreamt up by some billionaires, and executed as a biowarfare project by senior US government officials. It just got a little out of hand. 10-20 million dead, mostly in mRNA-vaccinated rich countries. Oops.

So there are many players in the US (and I am not going to get into the godawful wokeness issue or the dubious and dangerous anti-democratic games going on) who are interested in, or paid to, create a narrative that puts India down and keeps it down. This includes the Indian-origin activists and journalists who are astroturfed with ISI money and Chinese money, and when they attack Modi, it is perfectly clear that the target is really India and Hindus.

Given the power of these lobbies, the US will get close to India if and only if it has no other choice. Someone writing in the WSJ asked if the US needs India. My belief is that there is mutual benefit. India is no longer the country that some Americans remember: waiting for PL-480 grain to avoid mass starvation. Economics matters, and matters greatly. As and when India becomes a major consumer of all sorts of goods and services for its domestic market, the US will benefit.

Is India there yet? No. Can it get there? Yes, if all goes well. But things can easily go south. There are dangerous elements in India with their rent-a-riot crowds and their ‘500 rupees and biriyani for your vote’. The painful and hard-won infrastructure improvement and quality of life improvement can disappear virtually overnight.

India’s interests include American help in continuing to grow, and this may be in the form of funding and R&D, although quite frankly this could just as well come from Japan. It includes a modus vivendi with China, which is the original intent of the Quad as visualized by that visionary statesman Abe Shinzo: an armed truce, as it were. Red lines. Guardrails. And it wants the ‘rules-based, liberal, international order’ to be amended to include 1.4 billion Indians.

None of this sounds unreasonable. The question is, how much of this coincides with America’s interests. Values are nice, and yes, it would be good if they coincide. But if not, common interests are perfectly good bases for co-existence.

1200 words, 23 June 2023, 1700 words updated 1 July 1, 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-mr-modi-goes-to-washington-deja-vu-all-over-again-12750892.html

Considering that India and the US are my two favorite countries, it is odd that I get nervous whenever there is a summit between the two. I am reminded inevitably of the Frank Capra film “Mr Smith goes to Washington” (1939), where James Stewart plays Mr Smith, a naive idealist, who goes to the corrupt company town Washington DC and is bullied and humiliated. In the end (this being fiction) Mr Smith wins a famous victory for democracy and the power of the people.

In real life, things are different. Mr Modi is not naive, and he is a pragmatist (though there is a wee bit of an idealist in him), and he is quite aware of the Deep State and its regime-change agendas (e.g. they just did one in Brazil, defenestrating Bolsonaro, although it didn’t quite work with Hungary’s Orban). Besides, I am sure that the PM remembers the same Democrats giving him the dubious distinction of being the only person ever denied a visa on the grounds of “severe violation of religious freedom”, purportedly for the Gujarat riots in 2002. Yes, along the same lines as the absurd USCIRF.

When Democrats are in power, things simply don’t seem to go well for Indo-US relations. There are many reasons: one is that Democrats on average seem to prefer autocrats and uniformed caudillos because hey, they get things done; another is that many are Atlanticists, and quite a few are of Eastern European origin (eg Brzezinski, Albright, Nuland, Blinken) with scant regard for Indo-Pacific issues; a third is that they tend to be woke (trans-gender bathrooms, yeah!).

The Clinton Administration and especially the Obama Administration were unpleasant to India, in keeping with the above tendencies Democrats exhibit. Manmohan Singh was, with much hoopla, given the “first state dinner” by Obama, which so far as I can tell meant nothing whatsoever. It was an empty gesture.

In fact, I have been underwhelmed by various US shows of bonhomie. I panned the Obama state visit in 2010. To be honest, I have not been an admirer of Obama from day one, and the current Biden Administration seems to be, for all practical purposes, Obama 3.0: same ruinous economic and foreign policies, mostly the same tired faces, the same wokeness.

Even though I am Republican-leaning, I was not all that impressed by Narendra Modi’s interaction with Trump in 2017 either. Certainly, Trump was a lot better than the Democrats, but then I expected Trump to look out, correctly, for US interests, rather than do anything for India, even though Republicans understand the China threat better.

Earlier, I thought the entire full-court-press and hard-sell on the 2008 ‘nuclear deal’ simply indicated that it was a good deal for the US, and not so good for India. In the event, India’s nuclear power production capacity did not go up dramatically, India became a much bigger buyer of US military hardware, and there were surely (non-public) limitations placed on India’s nuclear weapons programs.

I guess I suffer from the soft bigotry of low expectations. I think this is a selling job on the part of the Americans, and that ill-prepared Indians will be taken in by flattery. Therefore I continue to be skeptical about the real value of the current tour by Modi to meet Biden, and have a ‘state dinner’ with him. In fact, I do hope Modi will take his own chef with him. Let’s be careful remembering (God forbid) what happened to Lal Bahadur Shastri.

I get particularly suspicious when The Economist magazine, which is the voice of the Deep State, starts waxing eloquent about something. Apart from the fact that they are generally wrong about all their geopolitical forecasts, being unvarnished imperialists, I am reminded of Kissinger’s dictum: “It is dangerous to be America’s enemy, but fatal to be America’s friend”.

I tried to get Microsoft Bing and DALL-E to get me an AI-generated image of the great mans’ quote, but I was warned sternly that such a query was “against content rules” (whatever they are) and that I would be kicked off the platform! So I am satisfying myself with this Economist cover story, which apparently is a parody of some Netflix show.

Prospects are actually worse for Indo-American rapport today than they have been for years, although it should be the opposite, given rampaging China. The principal reason is Democrat antipathy: for instance Biden’s staff explicitly hurt India in the past with the so-called Biden Amendment that set India’s space program back by 19 years by pressing the Russians to cancel the transfer of cryogenic engines, as seen in the brilliant “Rocketry: the Nambi Effect”.

On top of this, the US has hurt itself in the last few years through disastrous policies, allowing others to gain power in relative terms. So when Modi goes to Washington, it would be appropriate to revisit the old story about the emperor, the vassal king and his court bard, who wrote a new poem extolling the emperor as “the full moon”, and the king as “the new moon”.

Upon being berated by the king for diminishing him, the bard explained: “The full moon is waning, and the new moon is waxing.” This mollified the king, presumably saving the bard from having his head separated from his body.

India is on a trajectory to achieve economic (and military) power, but then it may or may not be in the US’s interests to accommodate India. The on-again, off-again US approach to the Quad (eg the AUKUS diversion) signals that the US is not serious about India’s concerns regarding China’s hegemonic ambitions. Not only US politicians, but the steady stream of Wall Street and business honchos making a beeline for China suggests that even for the money folks, despite calls for ‘de-coupling’ or ‘de-risking’, China is very much a factor in their future plans.

The US has made several strategic, even existential, blunders in the recent past, and again I think the Democrats are mostly to blame:

• The US actively collaborated in the rise of China by allowing it to be a principal manufacturing partner. People such as Henry Kissinger and several POTUSes wittingly or unwittingly helped in a process where China effectively de-industrialized the US. As the realist foreign policy analyst John Mearsheimer suggests, this may be the worst example ever of a major power paving the way for its own eclipse.

• The unnecessary Ukraine war, with the singular goal of humiliating and possibly balkanizing Russia, has already had disastrous consequences for Western Europe. Russia is a demographically declining power, and it will eventually fade away on its own; wasting enormous amounts of money and effort on ‘punishing’ it is a folly, as was the peremptory, headlong abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban. By pushing Russia into China’s dhritharashtra embrace, the Ukraine war is counterproductive strategically.

• The emerging facts about the Covid pandemic suggest that Anthony Fauci and others were working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology on ‘gain-of-function’, in direct contravention of US law. In addition, the poorly handled fiscal and monetary policies in relation to the pandemic have imposed pain, including high inflation, on the US.

• The awful culture wars and the focus on gender issues, diversity, equity, climate change and other divisive issues have been tearing the US apart since Obama’s time. Objectively speaking, some of these are manufactured issues. In addition, there is clear deterioration in the system, where now we have the unedifying spectacle of an ex-President indicted on mishandling classified documents, and the sitting President is accused of the same, as well as of relatives doing influence peddling.

None of this is a good look. The US is in trouble. Which it pains me to say, because I think the ideals of the ‘City on a hill’ that animate the spirit of the US Constitution still resonate after all these years. It is hard to think that the US is being overtaken by an authoritarian China.

Anyway, I think the general idea from the Biden Administration’s point of view is to get India into its orbit as a vassal, just like most of Western Europe, Japan, Australia, etc. The nastiness at the time India stoutly refused to toe the US/NATO line on Ukraine is a signal about this. People like the Portuguese Bruno Macaes and Duleep Singh, the architect of the Russia sanctions, chided India severely; the official US stance was that India somehow betrayed their trust. They couldn’t accept that India has no dog in this very European/Western fight.

I suspect a big part of the backroom negotiations on the PM’s trip will be to get India to toe the line on Ukraine. There will be various sticks and carrots dangled, such as technology transfers (which is actually an oxymoron, as nobody in their right mind transfers technology; the only way it happens is if you steal it, like China does). Then there is the GE fighter aircraft engine under discussion, and vague talk about quantum computing and other exotic stuff.

There will be more efforts to wean India away from Russian arms imports, and to sell lots of US hardware. There are expensive drones being discussed. An expert told me that if these are Reaper-class Sea Guardians, they may be a good buy, as they can be paired with the submarine hunter-killer surveillance craft, the P8i Poseidon, to help patrol the Indian Ocean.

All in all, the prospects for a mutually beneficial outcome seem bleak. Let us just hope that the Indians don’t come back with a whole lot of lemons, having been bamboozled. Again.

1473 words, June 15th 2023, updated June 17th

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by Open Magazine at https://openthemagazine.com/essays/the-new-knowledge-war/

Generative AI, as exemplified by chatGPT from Microsoft/OpenAI and Bard from Google, is probably the hottest new technology of 2023. Its ability has mesmerised consumers to provide answers to all sorts of questions, as well as to create readable text or poetry and images with universal appeal.

These generative AI products purport to model the human brain (‘neural networks') and are ‘trained’ on large amounts of text and images from the Internet. Large Language Models or ‘LLMs’ are the technical term for the tools underlying generative AI. They use probabilistic statistical models to predict words in a sequence or generate images based on user input. For most practical purposes, this works fine. However, in an earlier column in Open Magazine, “Artificial Intelligence is like Allopathy”, we pointed out that in both cases, statistical correlation is being treated by users as though it were causation. In other words, just because two things happened together, you can’t assume one caused the other. This flaw can lead to completely wrong or misleading results in some cases: the so-called ‘AI hallucination’.

To test our hypothesis, we asked chatGPT to summarise that column. It substantially covered most points, but surprisingly, though, it completely ignored the term ‘Ayurveda', although we had used it several times in the text to highlight ‘theory of disease’. This is thought-provoking, because it implies that in the vast corpus of data that chatGPT trained on, there is nothing about Ayurveda.

The erasure of Indic knowledge

Epistemology is the study of knowledge itself: how we acquire it, and the relationship between knowledge and truth. There is a persistent concern that Indic knowledge systems are severely under-represented or mis-represented in epistemology in the Anglosphere. Indian intellectual property is ‘digested’, to use Rajiv Malhotra’s evocative term.

For that matter, India does not receive credit for innovations such as Indian numerals (misnamed Arabic numerals), vaccination (attributed to the British, though there is evidence of prior knowledge among Bengali vaidyas), or the infinite series for mathematical functions such as pi or sine (ascribed to Europeans, though Madhava of Sangamagrama discovered them centuries earlier).

The West (notably, the US) casually captures and repackages it even today. Meditation is rebranded as ‘mindfulness’, and the Huberman Lab at Stanford calls Pranayama ‘cyclic sighing’. A few years ago, the attempts of the US to patent basmati rice and turmeric were foiled by the provision of ‘prior art’, such as the Hortus Malabaricus, written in 1676 about the medicinal plants of the Western Ghats.

Judging by current trends, Wikipedia, and presumably Google, LinkedIn, and other text repositories, are not only bereft of Indian knowledge, but also full of anti-Indian and specifically anti-Hindu disinformation. Any generative AI relying on this ‘poisoned’ 'knowledge base' will, predictably, produce grossly inaccurate output.

This has potentially severe consequences: considering that Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali (and non-Latin scripts) etc. are underrepresented on the Internet, generative AI models will not learn or generate text from these languages. For all intents and purposes, Indic knowledge will disappear from the discourse. These issues will exacerbate the bias against non-English speakers, who will not think about their identity or culture, reducing diversity and killing innovation.

More general problems with epistemology: bias, data poisoning and AI hallucinations

Generative AI models are trained on massive datasets of text and code. This means they are susceptible to inherent biases. A case in point: if a dataset is biased against non-white females, then the generative AI model will be more likely to generate text that is also biased against non-white women. Additionally, malicious actors can poison generative AI models by injecting false or misleading data into the training dataset.

For example, a coordinated effort to introduce anti-India biases into Wikipedia articles (in fact this is the case today) will produce output that is notably biased. An example of this is a query about Indian democracy to Google Bard: it produced a result that suggested this is a Potemkin construct (i.e., one that is merely a facade); Hindu nationalism and tight control of the media “which has become increasingly partisan and subservient to the government” were highlighted as concerns. This is straight from ‘toolkits', which have poisoned the dataset and are helped, in part, by US hegemonic economic dominance.

More subtly, generative AI models are biased towards Western norms and values (or have a US-centric point of view). For example, the Body Mass Index (BMI), a measure of body fat, has been used in Western countries to determine obesity, but is a poor measure for the Indian population, as we tend to have a higher percentage of body fat than our Western counterparts.

An illustration of AI hallucination came to the fore from an India Today story entitled "Lawyer faces problems after using ChatGPT for research. AI tool comes up with fake cases that never existed." It reported how a lawyer who used ChatGPT-generated precedents had his case dismissed because the court found the references were fabricated by AI. Similar risks in the medical field for patient treatment will be exacerbated if algorithms are trained on non-curated datasets.

While these technologies promise access to communication, language itself becomes a barrier. For instance, due to the dominant prevalence of English literature, a multilingual model might link the word dove with peace, but the Basque word for dove (‘uso’) is used as a slur. Many researchers have encountered the limitations of these LLMs, for other languages like Spanish or Japanese. ChatGPT struggles to mix languages fluently in the same utterance, such as English and Tamil, despite claims of 'superhuman' performance.

The death of Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual property rights are a common concern. Already, generative AIs can produce exact copies (tone and tenor) of creative works by certain authors (for example, J K Rowling's Harry Potter series). This is also true of works of art. Two things are happening in the background: any copyright inherent in these works has been lost, and creators will cease to create original works for lack of incentives (at least according to current intellectual property theory).

A recent Japanese decision to ignore copyrights in datasets used for AI training (from the blog technomancers.ai, “Japan Goes All In: Copyright Doesn't Apply to AI Training”) is surprisingly bold for that nation, which moves cautiously by consensus. The new Japanese law allows AI to use any data “regardless of whether it is for non-profit or commercial purposes, whether it is an act other than reproduction, or whether it is content obtained from illegal sites or otherwise.” Other governments will probably follow suit. This is a land-grab or a gold rush: India cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.

India has dithered on a strict Data Protection Bill, which would mandate Indian data to be held locally; indirectly, it would stem the cavalier capture and use of Indian copyright. The Implications are chilling; in the absence of economic incentives, nobody will bother to create new works of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, music, film, or art. New fiction and art produced by generative AI will be Big Brother-like. All that we would be left with as a civilisation will be increasingly perfect copies of extant works: Perfect but soulless. The end of creativity may mean the end of human civilisation.

With AIs doing ‘creation’, will people even bother? Maybe individual acts of creation, but then they still need the distribution channels so that they reach the public. In the past in India, kings or temples supported creative geniuses while they laboured over their manuscripts, and perhaps this will be the solution: State sponsorship for creators.

Indian Large Language Models: too few yet, while others are moving ahead

Diverse datasets will reduce bias and ensure equitable Indic representation to address the concerns about generative AI. Another way is to use more rigorous training methods to reduce the risk of data poisoning and AI hallucinations.

Progressive policy formulations, without hampering technological developments, are needed for safe and responsible use to govern the use of LLM's across disciplines, while addressing issues of copyright infringement and epistemological biases. Of course, there is the question of creating ‘guardrails': some experts call for a moratorium, or strict controls, on the growth of generative AI systems.

We must be alive to its geopolitical connotations, as well. The Chinese approach to comprehensive data-collection is what cardiologists refer to as a ‘coronary steal phenomenon’: one segment of an already well-perfused heart ‘steals’ from another segment to its detriment. The Chinese, for lack of better word, plunder (and leech) data while actively denying market access to foreign companies.

Google attempted to stay on in China with Project Dragonfly, while Amazon, Meta, Twitter were forced to exit the market. Meanwhile, ByteDance, owner of TikTok, is trying to obscure its CCP ties by moving to a 'neutral jurisdiction' in Singapore, while siphoning off huge amounts of user data from Europe and the US (and wherever else it operates) for behavioural targeting and capturing personal level data, including from children and young adults. The societal implications of the mental health 'epidemic' (depression, low self-esteem, and suicide) remain profound and seem like a reversal of the Opium Wars the West had unleashed on China.

India can avoid Chinese exclusivism by keeping open access to data flows while insisting on data localisation. The Chinese have upped the ante. Reuters reported that “Chinese organisations have launched 79 AI large language models since 2020”, citing a report from their Ministry of Science and Technology. Many universities, especially in Southeast Asia, are creating new data sets to address the spoken dialects.

West Asia, possibly realizing the limitations of “peak-oil”, have thrown their hat in the ring. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) claims to have created the world’s “first capable, commercially viable open-source general-purpose LLM, which beats all Big Tech LLMs”. According to the UAE's Technology Innovation Institute, the Falcon 40B is not only royalty free, but also outperforms “Meta's LLaMA and Stability AI's StableLM”.

This suggests that different countries recognise the importance of investing resources to create software platforms and ecosystems for technological dominance. This is a matter of national security and industrial policy.

“We have no moat” changes everything: welcome to tiny LLMs

Chiranjivi from IIT Bombay, IndiaBERT from IIT Delhi and Tarang from IIT Madras are a few LLMs from India. India needs to get its act together to bring out many more LLMs: these can focus on, and be trained on, specialised datasets representing specific domains, for instance, that can avoid data poisoning. The Ministries concerned should provide support, guidance, and funding.

The obstacle has been the immense hardware and training requirements: GPT-3, the earlier generation LLM, required 16,384 Nvidia chips at a cost of over $100 million. Furthermore, it took almost a year to train the model with 500 billion words, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. There was a natural assumption: the larger the data set, the better the result with ‘emergent’ intelligence. This sheer scale of investments was considered beyond Indian purview.

A remarkable breakthrough was revealed in a leaked internal Google memo, timed with Bard's release, titled "We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI," a veritable bombshell. It spoke about Meta’s open sourcing its algorithmic platform, LLaMA, and implications for generative AI research. Although there is no expert consensus, the evidence suggests smaller datasets can produce results almost as good as the large datasets.

This caused a flutter among the cognoscenti. Despite Meta releasing its crown jewels for a wider audience (developers), there was an uptick in its stock value, despite failures in its multiple pivots beyond social media.

To understand this better, Geoffrey Hinton, the ‘godfather’ of deep learning, explains in detail: All large language model (LLM) copies can learn separately, but share their knowledge instantly. That’s how chatbots know more than an average person. The performance trajectory of different LLM’s has skyrocketed; for example, consider this:

Using LLaMa as a base, researchers were able to quickly (in weeks) and cheaply (a few $100) produce Alpaca and Vicuna that, despite having fewer parameters, compete well with Google’s and openAI's models. The graph shows that the answers from their chatbots are comparable in quality (per GPT-4). A fine-tuning technique called LoRA (Low Rank Adoption) is the secret behind this advance.

This abruptly levels the playing field. Open-source models can be quickly scaled and run on even laptops and phones! Hardware is no longer a constraint. Let a thousand Indian LLMs bloom!

The way forward

Given the astonishing amounts being invested by venture capitalists and governments in generative AI, there will be an explosion in startup activity. There are already a few in India, such as Gan, Kroopai, Peppertype.ai, Rephrase.ai, TrueFoundry, and Cube. Still, TechCrunch quoted Sanford Bernstein analysts who painted a gloomy picture: “While there are over 1500 AI-based startups in India with over $4 billion of funding, India is still losing the AI innovation battle”.

Without exaggeration, it can be argued that this is an existential threat for India, and needs to be addressed on a war-footing. The AIforBharat initiative at IIT Madras is a start, but much more is needed. A sharply focused set of policies and regulations needs to be implemented by the government immediately that will both prevent the plunder of our intellectual property and data, and also encourage the creation of large numbers of models that make good use of Indian ingenuity and Indic knowledge.

2245 words, 4 June 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-no-the-finance-mandarins-dont-always-screw-up-they-only-do-it-in-petty-ways-12678122.html

The Twitterverse and the media in general have been brutal on India’s babu-log for several recent missteps. These, many fear, revive the ghosts of the late lamented License Raj: for instance the imposition of 20% Tax Collected at Source for overseas credit card transactions, the poorly-managed withdrawal of 2000-rupee notes, or the angel tax on domestic investments in startups (but not on investments from 21 specified countries).

But let’s be honest and give them credit where it’s due: they shepherded India through the pandemic leaving the economy in pretty decent shape compared to the rest of the world. Even more importantly, the general handling of the economy has gone so well (of course thanks also to other tailwinds like the infrastructure push and the manufacturing thrust) that there is a genuine feeling among both locals and foreigners that India’s time in the sun is finally here.

This is no mean achievement, especially given the withering information warfare waged by the Deepstate. India’s GDP grew in FY 2022-23 at 7.2%, pretty much the highest rate for any large economy, exceeding estimates even by the RBI. An optimistic report from Morgan Stanley, "How India Has Transformed in Less than a Decade" cites several reasons for such optimism: government reforms, demography, technology, strong economic fundamentals.

“India is broken”, it ain’t. And let’s not go with services alone, Raghuram Rajan!

And then the babus go and screw up on these relatively minor things, making everybody look bad!

This is like I have always said, Indians thrive on complexity. We can do the Kumbh Mela in fine style (kudos to the much-maligned babus), but we can’t queue up for an elevator to save our lives. Or desist from driving like maniacs, honking like mad and darting all over the place. Too simple, I guess.

There are also habitual naysayers (some surely beholden to the Nehruvian Stalinist ecosystem or on the Deepstate/Soros payroll) who simply cannot believe that things are finally beginning to look up in and for India. There are those who are perennially on pet hobby-horses (one who gets all his wisdom from taxi-drivers, and another who thinks low-quality service jobs that add no lasting value are manna from heaven). Others are periodically astroturfed like mushrooms after rains, to mix American and Malayalam metaphors recklessly.

What they fail to see (intentionally) is that the glass is half-full. Yes, there are major problems: India’s education system is going from bad to worse; corruption is still a menace; the public sector continues to be an albatross around India’s neck; the endless election cycle means that it is hard to think long-term (both for babus and for politicians); populist giveaways and special interest lobbies bankrupt the exchequer; the judicial system is in bad shape; and so on.

On the other hand, there is proof of progress. Undeniable proof. Once the dirigiste state was partly dismantled under duress by Narasimha Rao, things improved notably, as the animal spirits of Indian entrepreneurs and traders apparently had a field day. Under Narendra Modi India’s steady recent growth has been in nice contrast with tepid growth elsewhere.

But the more intriguing tale is about poverty reduction on the one hand, and of the provision of services on the other. If the UN is to be believed, India has lifted 415 million people from poverty in 15 years. Furthermore, various infrastructure projects providing electricity, drinking water, roads and railways to even remote parts of the hinterland are quite likely increasing the quality of life as well as the per capita income.

The other big deals, of course, are Demonetization and GST. Despite massive negative propaganda, I think the impartial observer today would be hard pressed to see these as net negatives. The giant strides made towards digitization, just by themselves, would justify the relatively minor inconvenience people went through at the time.

UPI has made inroads into the remotest interior villages (Ecowrap from the SBI says that 60% of transactions by volume and value are now coming from rural and semi-urban areas). The same report says the value of UPI payments has gone up from Rs. 6947 crore in FY17 to Rs. 139,00,000 crore in FY23, a huge growth of 2004x. The use of the smartphone as a Point of Sale system has been a nice adaptation of technology, supported by Jio and inexpensive data.

There is a video clip of P. Chidambaram, the former Finance Minister of India, mocking digital transactions. In the video, Chidambaram is speaking at an event and he says, "How can you expect a poor lady in a village to use digital transactions when there is no electricity and no POS devices?"

Pretty bad look from the supercilious Chidambaram. It is the same attitude displayed by nay-sayers from Lutyens and Khan Market: they do not believe the average Indian can or will progress. Only the mai-baap sarkar of the Nehru Dynasty can save them, they claim. On the contrary, the Nehruvian Penalty has kept 500 million Indians poor, as I wrote on Rediff.com in 2004. The reality is that under the Nehruvian Stalinists, India kept falling behind the rest of the world. After 1991, India is slowly and painfully clawing its way back up the ranks of global wealth.

The GST, despite many flaws, has also been a success in creating a single national marketplace, and in reducing logistics bottlenecks (remember those mile-long queues of trucks idling at state boundary checkpoints, and surely the enormous amounts changing hands?). As India ramps up manufacturing, the improvement in transportation efficiency will pay for itself.

None of this happened just like that, it was willed into existence, says TheEmissary in a positive post https://theemissary.co/modinomics-why-india-is-rising/ and this is true, somebody imagined it, and somebody else, yes, the very same babus, put things into motion.

Compared to all these pluses, surely the mandarins are entitled to screw up a little bit now and then. But the point is the mindset behind the TCS, and the poor communication strategy behind the Rs 2000 note withdrawal.

At a time when India is attempting to offer the rupee as a global currency, and trying to make India a more attractive investment location, the TCS (Tax Collected at Source) surely feels like a retrograde step dating back to the days of worrying about foreign exchange reserves (unnecessarily, as India’s current kitty is around $572 billion, which is close to an all-time high).

The signal it sends out is that officious babus will make life difficult for average users in the pursuit of either minor increases in tax collections or an illusory improvement in forex reserves.

Far more useful would be a deep analysis of what is causing the trade deficit with China to balloon (it is now bigger than India’s entire defense budget), which sectors or products will have the greatest bang for the buck (eg. pharma APKs), and solid Production Linked Incentives to increase Indian production of the same.

The withdrawal of the Rs. 2000 notes is probably a good idea, because by now the criminal ecosystem has figured out how to counterfeit them efficiently. As in years past, the ‘second-best’ notes are likely being produced in Pakistan and shipped through the Middle East to India. So there’s nothing wrong in removing them from circulation.

Two caveats, though. It would have been a lot better to withdraw them before the BJP’s debacle in Karnataka. It’s sort of locking the barn door after the horse has bolted. As in years past, the vast bulk of corruption money intended for elections is quite likely stored in these larger notes, and removing them from circulation is a good idea. Well, fine, this will have an impact on the 2024 elections, I imagine.

The second is the total cockup in the communication of the withdrawal. The first announcement said the notes could be deposited before a certain date, but that they would continue to be legal tender (which seems counter-intuitive). If you deposited more than Rs. 20,000 a day, though, the idea seemed to be that you would have to show some id, PAN/Aadhar. That would help identify anybody who had been hoarding large quantities of cash (usually for dubious purposes).

But then the second announcement, from SBI, said that there would be no need for any paperwork. Meanwhile people were using 2000-rupee notes to buy luxury items, especially gold.

So exactly what is going on? What is the point in this not-demonetization? Did the babus get cold feet and do U-turns?

The angel tax on startups is itself a dubious idea, especially when India is attempting to increase the viability of its homegrown early-stage companies. The regulatory atmosphere and the relative paucity of local venture funding is anyway encouraging startups to register themselves abroad, say in Singapore or Dubai or Silicon Valley. By adding a tax you’re making Indian startups less appealing to investors.

Furthermore, by picking and choosing investment from certain countries to be exempt from the tax seems either capricious or over-reach/meddling. It simply isn’t true that these Anglo and Nordic countries are all pure as the driven snow, as we have seen on numerous occasions.

The bottom line, though, is that despite periodic missteps, India’s finance folks and the central bank have done a stellar job, and it shows: India’s banks are currently among the most profitable in the world, with no worrying bank failures (unlike, say, in the US and Europe); interest rates and inflation are modest (again, unlike the US and EU). So two cheers for the babus!

1538 words, May 27, 2023, updated 1626 words, June 1, 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-crown-sceptre-and-the-saga-of-dharmapuri-12647632.html

In Malayalam, the terms are “kireedom and chenkol”, that is, crown and scepter, signifying the powerful symbols of the State. He or she who holds these is deemed to be the ruler, ruling with the full authority of the office, and the full approval of the subjects. The words chenkol in Malayalam and ‘sengol’ in Tamil are cognate, eg. Chenkotta (red fort) in Malayalam is Sengottai in Tamil.

The scepter is an important marker of kingship, so much so that during imperial times, Britain was referred to as the ‘sceptr’d isle’, that is, the unquestioned ruler of its far flung empire.

There is of course the third symbol, the throne, or ‘simhasanam’. During the recent investiture of the British king, I am sure all three of these were on full display. For some reason, the throne seems less important in Indian lore than the other two, but in a wicked pun, the great fabulist O V Vijayan in his savage satire “The Saga of Dharmapuri” equated the throne with a European toilet, as in a slang American expression for the erstwhile ‘thunder box’.

The Chola ‘sengol’ from Tamil Nadu was a sacred symbol included in a “vesting ceremony accompanied by a recital of 11 verses from the Thevaram text invoking the blessings of Shiva for the ruler” in 1947, according to S Gurumurthy in “How the Sengol embodied India’s freedom and why it was forgotten and lost” on republicworld.com. Not only was the sengol forgotten, the Cholas, and their great maritime empire that extended all the way to Indonesia, were erased.

In fact, all of South Indian history, including the fabled Vijayanagar Empire, the samurai-like kalaripayat warriors of the west coast and Tulunadu, Telugu patriots like Alluri Sitarama Raju, Travancore’s Marthanda Varma who defeated the Dutch at Colachel in 1749, and Travancore’s Chempakaraman Pillai of the INA who coined the term ‘Jai Hind’, was wiped out from the pages of textbooks. In their place, a weird pabulum of make-believe was installed.

The sacred ‘sengol’ denoting “virtuous and ethical rule” per Gurumurthy was deemed to be a personal gift, a gold walking stick given to Jawaharlal Nehru, which once again shows how a personality cult was relentlessly built up that would make Mao and Kim Il Sung green with envy. “L’etat, c’est moi” (The State, it is I), said Louis XIV, the Sun King of France. Well, we know what happened to his descendants: the guillotine. Indians, being more gentle, have not quite done the same thing. Or at least done so only metaphorically.

Which reminds me, why is/was Nehru called ‘Pandit Nehru’? Who certified him? What was he a pundit in? Did he pass some pundit exam? Ah, it was just part of the personality cult. I don’t see other Kashmiri Hindus going around calling themselves Pandit: they use their family names, so what’s special about these people?

Oh well, I guess I answered my own question. According to the cult, Nehrus were the hereditary rulers of India, and so it was only natural that the kingship would pass from the British to Nehru. There is only one slight problem. Again according to O V Vijayan in The Path of the Prophet, the Nehrus were not hereditary feudal lords, but ferrymen on the river Neher, “they who came from somewhere”, and had taken the name of the river as their surname. Jawaharlal’s grandfather Ganga Dhar was a kotwal in a Delhi police station. A Ghosh had some more startling information about this man, who was photographed in a full Pathan outfit, but I shall let that pass.

I made an attempt at deconstructing the Nehru myth in my 1999 Rediff.com essay Let us now praise famous menwherein I quote at length the relevant passage from Vijayan. In my considered opinion, Nehru was an almost unmitigated disaster for India: he thought India was his personal fiefdom, and he was entitled to dispense imperial largesse. He gave away all sorts of things (that didn’t belong to him in the first place):

• Treaty rights in Tibet inherited from the British given away in exchange for nothing

• The right of independent Tibet to exist was erased, as he colluded with Chinese road-building on the Indo-Tibetan border: Chinese troops were fed with Indian rice!

• Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir given away by taking the issue to the hostile UN instead of allowing the Indian Army to cleanse the area of invading Pakistani tribals

• UN Security Council seat, offered by both the US and Russia (yes, I can quote chapter and verse on this from Nehru’s collected writings), given away to China

• Coco Islands given away to Burma, which is now allowing China to build a naval base there

In addition, Nehru, in his own words in this video, thought that throughout history South India was a separate country. I get it, he must have taken his pundit exam along with Romila Thapar in ancient Indian history!

There is good reason to think of Jawaharlal Nehru as not quite getting the full picture (Chou En Lai allegedly referred to him, rather rudely, as a ‘useful idiot’).

Then what does that make his acolytes? That was the question Vijayan asked in “Dharmapuri”, which opens with the dramatic statement: “Prajapati wanted to s**t”, in crude Malayalam. “It was a little off the usual time that day, so the assembled dignitaries were a little disturbed when the Army Chief blew the conch signifying that the event was at hand. It was only the late afternoon. Normally Prajapati did his thing at dawn and dusk, to the accompaniment of Dharmapuri’s national song.” [See the photograph of Page 1 of the book in Malayalam]

Prajapati is seated on his ‘throne’, a toilet. That was important, because whatever Prajapati expelled into the toilet was eagerly consumed by his courtiers.

This Brechtian tale is hard to read: it invokes bibhatsa in the reader, creating both alienation and catharsis. Here’s a relevant bit: “Whoever became anybody in the kingdom, in industry, or in politics, had done so by regularly eating Prajapati’s s**t. Mothers would pray that their children would have an opportunity to consume those perfumed feces”.

That’s a gross way of putting it, but there’s an element of truth: the Dynasty demanded utter loyalty. Meanwhile, India’s economy kept declining steadily in comparison to the rest of the world, until there was a bit of a turnaround in 1991, and accelerating growth in the 2010s.

After all these years of living dangerously, India is now inching ahead. With economic growth, it is normal to think of tradition, culture and heritage.

It is only fitting, then, that the Prime Minister took part it an investiture ceremony, with several Tamil Nadu matha-adhipathis in attendance. With native Tamil and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman taking a visible role, the government has declared its intent to nip any sub-nationalism (the US ambassador’s obsession) in the bud. It is an emphatic re-assertion of pan-Indian nationalism, necessary in these times of increasingly complex geopolitics.

It is time to decisively throw off the shibboleths of the immediate post-independence period. The Chola-style sengol is being restored to its rightful place as a symbol of the resurgent Indian State, as it was intended to be in the first place, not, absurdly, some guy’s walking stick.

Errata: It was pointed out by Professor Subhash Kak that Vijayalakshmi Pandit was married to a man with the surname Pandit. The error is regretted.

1117 words, 25 May 2023, 1137 words, updated 27 May 2023, 1214 words, updated 28 May 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-svb-collapse-how-system-wide-problem-created-by-fed-led-to-us-second-largest-bank-failure-12307942.html

There are several interesting questions about the spectacular and sudden collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). Once you get over the initial shock of this possibility in this day and age (bank runs were only supposed to happen in the bad old days), then you will be confronted with the question of what it means not only for US banks, but also for your investment strategy going forward.

In a sense, the tension between economists and finance people, who may not think alike all the time, is coming to the fore in awkward ways. Finance professionals try to avoid risk for their companies. Economists try to manage the economy according to their orthodoxies.

What is of interest is not only how rapidly the collapse happened, but also why. Plus, what the bailout (it sure smells like one, although the US authorities are emphatic that what they are doing is not a bailout) means in terms of moral hazard, and the possibility of further contagion that could lead to systemic collapse. And finally, where the safe havens are, if any, especially in view of the possible loss of primacy for the US dollar.

The apparent bare facts are as follows: there was an old-fashioned bank run on SVB, as spooked depositors withdrew about $42 billion in one day, out of roughly $219 billion total deposits taken in. In order to make the payouts, SVB had to liquidate long-term bonds that it held. These bonds, both in US Treasuries and in fixed-rate mortgage-backed securities, had lost value because of the steady increase in interest rates by the US Federal Reserve. The forced selling of these bonds caused SVB to become cash-negative (they had negative $958 million in cash). An attempt to raise more funds failed. The US government put it into receivership.

The proximate cause of the collapse is two-fold: the bank run, which was accelerated enormously because of the fact that it could be done electronically, rather than by people showing up at the doors to the bank and trying to withdraw their cash physically. Besides, SVB’s depositors were overwhelmingly large players, most of whom had balances greater than the $250,000 for which accounts are normally insured.

Once these large players, often VC-backed companies or VCs themselves, got a whiff of trouble, they were quick to act. Besides, the surprising readiness of the US government to bail them out by promising to cover all deposits, not just those below $250,000, suggests they are influential.

The preponderant cause, however, lies in a poor decision made by the SVB. As all banks do, they had to park the deposits they took in somewhere where they could get a return. Unfortunately for them (in hindsight) they chose to invest in long-term bonds. At the time (before covid) it was probably not a bad idea, because if held to maturity these bonds would yield a modest return, and they are backed by the US government.

Unfortunately, what happened is that when they bought the bonds, interest rates were at a low, and so the return on these bonds was acceptable. But then the Federal reserve started hiking up the interest rates rapidly, for good reason: to control inflation. That made the yield on the bonds go up, and conversely the bonds lost value. Especially if you had to sell them they caused you to immediately take a big ‘haircut’ as you had to write your assets down and take the loss. This is a system-wide problem, and SVB was an extreme case (but not the only one).

Which brings us to the root cause. That is the Covid-19 or Wuhan virus epidemic. One of the ways in which the US government, and other Western governments, tackled the economic fallout from shutdowns and loss of business activity was to try to stimulate the economy by basically printing a lot of money, and giving it to the public. There was debate at the time about whether this was a good idea, but everyone seems to have got behind that plan.

On the face of it, when there were lots of business failures due to the lockdowns and other disruptions, and job losses, it seemed fair to just give people a lot of money to tide them over, and to stimulate the economy. Besides, the ‘Universal Basic Income’ idea was hot among prominent economists at the time. It was considered fair that everybody would have a small but adequate income doled out by the State: a sort of Welfare State on steroids.

Every US taxpayer received a few thousand dollars as a ‘gift’, which they probably used for emergency expenditures or saved. Interestingly, the Indian government did not give out a dole; instead, it tried to fend off the hunger problem by giving out free grains and pulses to large numbers of people. In other ways, too, India took a relatively cautious approach, and did not stimulate the economy a lot during the pandemic. This proved wise.

It appears now that the vast amounts of money thus printed in the West were inflationary (not surprisingly). In the case of the US, ever since Richard Nixon delinked the dollar from gold, it has been possible for the government to print any amount of money.

On top of this, the Ukraine war caused hydrocarbon prices to surge worldwide, as well as food prices, for a variety of reasons, including sanctions on Russia on its oil and gas, and the sudden disappearance of both Russian and Ukrainian products such as fertilizer.

Inflation shot up from about 0-1% to about 6%, which is uncomfortable, and pinches the man on the street. Unfortunately, just about the only way to deal with this situation (short of ending the war in Ukraine and related disruptions, which is politically uncomfortable) is the blunt instrument of interest rate increases from the US Federal Reserve.

The US Federal funds rate, which had hovered around 0-0.25% between March 2020 and March 2022 went up in several increments of 0.75%, so that they are now at around 4.75%.

The Fed has, most recently, slowed its pace of interest rate increases, and the latest, on February 1 was only 0.25%. But the damage to banks was already done, as in the following post by Balaji Subramanian, a venture capitalist and crypto investor (note that).

Inflation is a tax on savers, and a boon for borrowers. Some economists (for example Abhijit Banerjee) have suggested that governments (the biggest borrowers) may use it as an “inflation tax” to degrade their debt obligations, although there is no evidence that this was the case here.

This suggests systemic risk, though, and sure enough, two other banks, Signature and Silvergate, also collapsed. Silicon Valley Bank was the second biggest bank in US history to collapse; Signature was the third biggest. Now there may be other factors as well: for example Silvergate was a crypto-focused bank, and Signature had exposure to crypto, and after the FTX fiasco a few weeks ago, that segment is under pressure.

When Silicon Valley Bank went into a tailspin, one of the biggest voices arguing for its rescue (note: he claims it is not a bailout) was Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager. Ackman may or may not be correct, but what is surely interesting to Indian observers is that he was quick to denounce the Adani group and give a certificate of authenticity to Hindenburg. Twitter user @thehawkeyex pointed this out, and how the CFO of Adani mocked Ackman. Karma, I suppose. Adani is still standing, but FTX, and now SVB, are history.

Having said all this, the US has a way of being able to deal with financial firestorms, such as the global financial crisis of 2007-08. There is also the TINA factor. Where else would you put your money? Chinese yuan? Not likely! Euro? Isn’t Europe in a tailspin?

But there are a couple of ominous things in the background. Ever since Bretton Woods just after WW2, the US dollar has been the reserve currency for international transactions, in particular for oil and gas. Now, especially after sanctions on Russia, there are attempts to create non-dollar blocs. For instance there are rouble-rupee trades, and the yuan is increasingly used by China for its trade.

More importantly, there was a recent Saudi-Iran agreement brokered by China. This is startling, because Saudi Arabia has been firmly in the American camp, and Iran has been firmly out of it. These two oil giants being shepherded by China is remarkable, and it may signal that Saudi Arabia may now be looking at the petro-yuan in addition to the petro-dollar.

This is a danger to the value of the US dollar, demand for which has continued to be high because of its central role in trade and contracts between third parties, despite the loss of its earlier predominance due to America’s trade surplus in manufactured goods. If more and more contracts are denominated in other currencies, it may lose its de facto reserve currency position.

From an individual point of view, that raises questions. Where should one park one’s assets? The traditional answer has been the stable US dollar. Is that still the right answer? Should one look at commodities (notoriously volatile), or real estate (not very liquid), or gold (physical gold is not very easy to handle)?

I am tempted to say that in these volatile times, the traditional wisdom of the Indian woman may be the right approach: buy gold. And not paper gold, because that is dependent on how much you trust the intermediary that’s giving you their assurance that they will give you back your gold intact.

Things will take some time to settle. It is likely that the contagion will hit a few more American banks. I hope that it can be contained, and there will not be the global financial collapse that some doomsters have been predicting for a while. But Silicon Valley Bank is definitely the canary in the coalmine, pointing to major underlying issues.

1680 words, 15 Mar 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

There has been a whole series of alarming news stories from the US in the recent past. Each of them individually may have good reasons, but put together, they paint a disappointing picture. As someone who has long rooted for America, I am concerned about systemic problems..

Here the stories are, in random order:

• The appearance of Chinese balloons and other Unidentified Flying Objects in the sky

• The publication of the accusation that the US blew up the NordStream 2 pipeline

• The spectacle of former Twitter executives being grilled for unlawful censorship

• The train crash that spewed a million liters of poisonous liquids into the air and ground

• The mass shooting at Michigan State, one of many

Balloongate

Balloongate was intriguing when it was disclosed that a Chinese balloon with an attached payload had meandered its way across the entire United States before it was shot down on February 4th by an F-22, which incidentally is the most impressive fighter jet in the US air force. If I am not mistaken, people on the ground could actually see the balloon with the naked eye. Like many others, I wonder why the thing was allowed to be airborne for a week over the US mainland.

But it started taking on more sinister overtones when it turned out that three more such objects were shot down, that there had been some incursions during the tenure of former President Trump as well, and that this was apparently a regular occurrence. Surely nations spy on each other all the time, but the victims of spying generally know how to deal with it.

I was reminded of the U2 episode long ago, with American Francis Gary Powers being shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960 in his high-flying plane. This touch-and-go international incident flared up into one more Cold War spat. But the point is that nations can and do protect themselves from spies up in the sky.

Then why didn’t the most vaunted military force in history shoot these balloon intruders down upon first encountering them? What were the spy satellites doing with their killer lasers? What was the advice given by military intelligence to President Joe Biden? Why didn’t Biden bestir himself? Why didn’t they puncture the balloon over land so that its payload could be captured and inspected? Or did they not want the payload to be captured?

Online skeptics had a field day. For example,

In the end, the whole episode became rather comical, and the US air force, military intelligence and the brand-new Space Command looked incompetent, a bit Keystone-Cop-ish. Is that why they then proceeded, in a show of strength, to shoot down several more ‘UFO’s? Many questions remain unanswered. The latest reports suggest the last few were for mere show.

Nordstream 2

The detailed story alleging the US destruction of Nordstream 2 (written by Seymour Hersh) is worrying and potentially very consequential. Hersh was in the past celebrated as a journalist, winning a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam; but his claim that the capture of Osama bin Laden was staged did not gain much credibility.

But the point is that the US and Russia are not at war, and a straightforward attack by an undeclared combatant on the physical assets of an adversary may be treated as a declaration of war. Let us remember that iconic event in 20th century US history: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The US felt that was a good enough reason to enter World War II.

The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident (which may have been fake news of an attack on US naval ships) was the trigger for the US to enter the Vietnam War. Earlier, William Randolph Hearst in 1898 (falsely) claimed Spain sank the USS Maine to induce the Spanish-American War.

Thus there is precedent in American history itself for an unprovoked attack being taken as reason for hostilities and a declaration of war. My concern is that the Russians, embroiled though they are in Ukraine, may consider the Nordstream incident to be sufficient justification for war, or possibly sabotage, in the US (see below). There are discreet ways of unrestricted warfare.

Media censorship

The malign role media can play, as also seen in the Hearst story above, was brought into sharp relief in the Congressional hearings on Twitter’s suppressio veri, suggestio falsi. Clips circulating on the Net showed members of Congress tearing into former Twitter executives in charge of wokeness and censorship, Vijaya Gadde and Yoel Roth, for illegally limiting their Freedom of Speech. Much has been said in this context via the Twitter Files, released online.

The deliberate suppression of news seems to be the in-thing in today's America. We remember how highly damaging information about the Hunter Biden laptop was swept under the carpet. Similarly, medical professionals were made personae non grata and deplatformed when they spoke against the excesses of Covid mania (a Congressperson asked Vijaya Gadde where she got her medical degree from so she could silence Harvard and Stanford medical professors!).

In addition, there is the damning Columbia Journalism Review report by Pulitzer Prize winner Jeff Gerth about how the entire media gaslighted the country regarding alleged Russian collusion with former President Trump. The media is no longer about “all the news fit to print”.

The massive spill that nobody has heard of

A splendid example of that phenomenon is happening under our very noses now as the mainstream media has totally suppressed the information about the February 3rd rail accident near East Palestine, Ohio. This may well be the biggest chemical spill in recent American history. Piecing together information from diverse sources online, it appears several cars of a train carrying vinyl chloride derailed.

It seems that a million liters of vinyl chloride may have been spilled, and the chemical is highly reactive, although used as an ingredient in the making of stable poly-vinyl chloride, a common plastic. Not only will this have got into the groundwater, and into the nearby Ohio river watershed, which means trouble downstream (dead fish are showing up in the waterways). Significant amounts of the chemical burned, and have formed hazardous clouds which may be carried along by prevailing winds.

This may well be a disaster as big as the Love Canal chemical dump near Niagara Falls some time ago, although not as big as the Chernobyl or Fukushima nuclear disasters. Yet, 20 days later, there is almost no coverage in the US media. Why? It’s like the Sherlock Holmes meme of “the curious incident of dog in the night time”. The dog didn’t bark because it knew the perpetrator of a crime.

But the real question is, is this spill a coincidence? Or is it possible that either Russians or the Chinese are ‘punishing’ the US with plausible deniability? The Chinese have enough fifth columnists in the US to do anything they want; the Russians may or may not have them.

Of course it could simply be the result of poor maintenance and lax regulation. Fingers were pointed at Pete Buttigieg, the hapless Transportation honcho, but the real reason may well be a consequence of the wholesale transfer of manufacturing to China.

Anyway, the root cause may be the Ukraine war in one case (Russia) or general pre-2024 election interference in the other case (China). The US would be better off spending the $44 billion it has already earmarked for Ukraine on its own turf to fix creaking infrastructure or health systems.

Or in doing something about its law and order problems. There was yet another unfortunate mass shooting incident, this time at Michigan State. Why do these happen with such metronomic regularity in the US (and pretty much nowhere else)?

Is it poor leadership? Or are many malign forces attacking the country? Or is it just decadence and decline? Voters need to think this through as they prepare for Election 2024. Well, there’s Biden, and Trump, Nikki Haley, and now Vivek Ramaswamy. This is getting interesting.

1330 words, Feb 15th 2023, updated Feb 23rd.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-sarpam-thullal-naga-dance-of-kerala-12175812.html

Kerala has a long tradition of Naga (sarpa, serpent) worship, as has also been the case in some parts of the Northeast. There are sarpa kavu or untouched patches of virgin forest, where serpent deities reside. There are large temples, for example Mannarsala, where childless couples make offerings to gain the boon of a baby: Nagas are believed to grant fertility.

The Theyyams of Malabar, as well as the bhoota kola of neighboring Tulunadu, celebrate the autochthonic deities of the region. As in the superb film Kantara and to a lesser extent in the film Malikappuram about a girl-child who is an ardent devotee of Swami Ayyappan of Sabarimala, the deities of the land are a powerful presence in the daily lives of the faithful.

In Kantara the traditions are presented with neither explanation nor apology: they just are. In Malaikappuram, which is a very good film as well, there is a bit of a tendency to ‘explain’ away mystical and spiritual experiences in ‘modern, scientific’ terms (which Kantara wisely refrains from, and that is a major part of its charm).

There are traditions where the deities physically inhabit the faithful who have been chosen and undergone the required purification rituals, and the faithful have experiences that are not necessarily amenable to rational, scientific explanation: which probably just means that science hasn’t caught up with tradition. The oracle-like velichapads of Kerala, the oracular vestal virgins of ancient Greece, and the spirit dancers of the bhoota kola are examples.

So are the Nagaraja, Naga Yakshi, Sarpa Yakshi, Mani Nagam, Kari Nagam, Kuzhi Nagam and Kanyavu of the sarpam thullal that I attended at the family temple of some relatives in Alappuzha district in Kerala. They are chosen from among the matrilineal descendants of the family. Apart from the Nagaraja who is a male, the others are all female, and the Kanyavu is a pre-pubescent girl-child.

In passing, matriliny/Devi worship and Naga worship appear to go hand in hand.

I had seen videos of and listened to the hypnotic music of the sarpam thullal before: it is easy to imagine being induced into a trance while listening to it. But this was the first time I was fortunate enough to see it.

The ‘penitents’ stay in the temple for a week or so. (I am reluctant to use that term because they are not sinners, but rather the chosen few who are fortunate enough to experience the rituals first hand. But that seems to be the closest term in English. I think I’ll instead use the neutral term ‘Naga dancers’ for them.) They undergo purification rites (kappu kettu), perform ritual vrtam, and are put on a special sattvic diet that excludes salt or spice.

In addition, there are piniyal (literally minions), other family members who are not part of the thullal itself, but whose duty it is to protect the vulnerable Naga dancers who do enter into a trance-like state and are unaware of their surroundings as they sway to the music. The piniyal do not have to stay in the temple but do undergo the same vratam.

This particular sarpam thullal is conducted once every three years, and it goes on for three days at the temple, which was cleaned up, the surroundings cleared of vegetation, and lit up with bright lights. There are several thullals a day: late morning and/or late afternoon and late night. I attended the second day’s events, afternoon and night: it went on till two in the morning.

The entire function is orchestrated by a Pulluva chief, a tribal man who has a traditionally strong connection with Naga deities. In most temples in Kerala, there is a subsidiary shrine for the Naga deities, and on auspicious days, especially the ayilyam (ashlesha) nakshatra which is associated with Nagas, a Pulluva singer will sing an invocation for you, playing his violin-like instrument that is the basis of the thullal music, which also includes a deft chenda drum orchestra and nadaswaram pipes.

A major part of the thullal is the creation of the kalam or the drawing on which the naga dancers perform their dance, swaying to music. This is done in a custom-built pandal (covered temporary structure decorated with young coconut leaves). Using vegetable dyes, the Pulluva can quite amazingly create a beautiful and complex drawing in a couple of hours, with a Naga theme. Sadly, it is ephemeral, because the dancers will destroy it shortly thereafter.

These photos are of a kalam in the shape of a serpent coiled around a black palm tree (karimpana), with various Naga dancers in the foreground, getting ready for the thullal.

The dancers are brought to the kalam after an invocation ceremony and obeisance to the deities. They do a circumambulation of the kalam, and then they are given a bunch of tender florets of the arecanut tree, which they hold to their faces. Apparently the fragrance of the florets helps induce the trance state, and then they move to the kalam and start swaying rhythmically to the music, which waxes and wanes in a sinuous manner in a metaphor for a serpent’s motion.

As they move around, the dancers appear to become more and more detached from their normal, daily selves, and more and more involved in the trance state. Their movements become more uncontrolled, and their eyes and expressions take on an other-worldly hue. They are liable to hurt themselves by hitting the pillars of the pandal, or falling into the audience crowding around. So their piniyal form a protective cordon, linking arms, so that the dancers are safe.

They are given tender coconuts to refresh them while they dance. Sometimes they seem to be searching for someone in the audience. They may choose a person, and summon them to give them a tender coconut, in what is considered a blessing. Indeed, the dancers look mesmerized. I was told by a niece that a few years ago, she was watching the dance, and suddenly she felt the uncontrollable urge to join the dancers herself, and so she did.

After dancing the kalam to dust, the dancers then run to the sarpa kavu (sacred grove) and the nearby temple pond, where they immerse themselves, again with the piniyal joining them to ensure they don’t harm themselves. I watched the young Nagaraja run with astonishing speed to the kavu, so fast that his piniyal couldn’t keep up. He crashed into a tree and I was afraid he might have suffered a concussion. But doctors examined him, and he was fine.

In our case, the Naga dancers included several young women, a middle-aged woman who had come all the way from the US, the teenaged Nagaraja, and the 9 year-old girl Kanyavu. I noticed that the Kanyavu was reluctant to participate. She stood aside, looking confused. But on the final day, she suddenly danced with full enthusiasm.

After their visits to the kavu and the pond, the Nagas, now soaking wet, come back to the kalam pandal, and after some further ceremonies, that thullal is over, and they go back to their temporary accommodation in the temple. There are two or three thullals a day, and it obviously physically taxing for the Nagas, as well as for piniyal. The most elaborate one is at night and it goes on well into the early morning, say 2am.

I was present for the afternoon and night thullal on the second day. I should have been there for the third and concluding day, but I had to leave. So I was watching the live broadcast of the event around 11pm, and then there was a commotion among the ladies sitting on mats on the ground next to the kalam.

It was because a small serpent was sinuously wending its way towards the main temple steps.

This was astonishing. It was a finger-sized serpent about 3 feet in length, with a silvery spotted body. It went as far as the steps to the main Mahadeva shrine, in front of which the kalam pandal was, and remained there for a while.

Then it slithered up the back of a plastic chair, coiled itself around it, and remained there for the rest of the thullal until the final ceremony.

Someone brought the serpent a little nurum palum on a banana leaf: this is the mixture of milk, turmeric etc that is the main offering at Naga ceremonies. The serpent appeared to take a few sips of this.

Let us remember that all this happened in a place where the entire vegetation had been removed using a JCB backhoe just a week or two prior. There were a couple of hundred people sitting or milling around the pandal. There was deafening amplified music from the chenda orchestra. None of this seemed to deter the serpent. After the final ceremony where the Naga dancers return to their normal lives (kapp-azhippu), it disappeared below the roots of one of the nandyar-vattam medicinal plants around the temple, without any fuss.

I had heard from a relative that a few years prior, three serpents had come to this thullal. To be honest, I was skeptical: why would serpents, which try to avoid humans, come to such a loud ceremony? Then I saw a video of a recent thullal in another temple in Alappuzha, where again a finger-width (but this time golden-colored) serpent had arrived, stayed, and then disappeared.

But the fact that I was seeing this in real time (albeit on video feed) was staggering. None of my rational, scientific beliefs could explain what had happened: why on earth did this serpent appear and seem to be unperturbed, and even enjoy the ceremony? I have no answer. The only thing I can think of is Kantara’s premise: there are spirits and demi-gods all around us, if only we learn to look.

There is the belief that the real Nagas (such as the slender silver- and gold-colored ones I saw in videos) are not the same as the usual snakes one encounters. These are special, with semi-divine attributes, and they are the ones that accept our offerings.

One of my favorite writers, the brilliant Malayalam fabulist O V Vijayan, once explained to me his short story The Little Ones, about benign ancestral spirits that appeared as points of light in the sky when the family was going through troubles. It’s the same idea: unseen, unknown and often benign (presumably there are malign ones too) powers that we are only dimly aware of.

I had wanted for years to see a sarpam thullal, because of the hypnotic quality of its music that I had heard, and because of the connection between matriliny, Devi worship and Naga worship that were all hallmarks of Hindu Kerala society for long. It is my theory that these, along with ample monsoon rains and the rice and spice trade, had enabled Kerala, especially Travancore, to be a fairly prosperous tropical paradise.

Now that I have seen the thullal, I am even more in awe of my ancestors, who knew a thing or two: they had some of the most accurate calendars in the world; in the 14th century CE, Kerala mathematician Madhava of Sangamagrama discovered rapidly converging infinite series for trigonometric functions (the basis of calculus and of navigation across the open ocean). As early as the 2nd century BCE, Pliny the Younger was complaining that Roman coffers were being emptied for the spices of Kerala, especially pepper.

We must try to understand why our long-standing traditions have survived. Lindy, as Nassim Taleb would say: they survived because they have meaning, and value.

1950 words, 13 Feb 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-target-eject-modi/20230208.htm

Now that the hosannas to Pervez Musharraf have reached a crescendo (eg. Michael Kugelman of Foreign Policy: “...[he] could have well authored a peace deal with India”) perhaps it’s worth remembering not only the ‘how’ of the Gujarat riots of 2002, but also the ‘why’.

People seem to be suffering from selective amnesia about what happened then, and that’s what the BBC’s hatchet-job on Modi is taking advantage of. Most of us have forgotten. I was paying close attention then, and wrote quite a bit about what happened, but the details are a bit hazy. And so it is easy to ‘frame’ the events in ways that push certain agendas.

Here are a few facts that I remember from those days:

• Narendra Modi was an unknown then. He had been thrust into the limelight after the Bhuj Earthquake in 2001, and underwent a baptism by fire, so to speak

• After the torching of the Sabarmati Express and the gruesome burning alive of 59 pilgrims, the chatterati felt that they deserved it for being Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya. The Washington Post quoted Teesta Setalvad saying exactly that

• There were no funeral processions for the dead, which would have inflamed passions; indeed the dead remain nameless, and nobody knows their individual stories. This is in sharp contrast to the funeral processions of slain terrorists in J&K, and tear-jerking stories from sympathetic media about their being sons of headmasters or whatever

• The Sabarmati Express burning was perpetrated on February 27th, riots began on the 28th, and the Indian Army was on the ground one day later, on March 1st. But analysts pretended that February has 31 days, and said “Modi did nothing for 3 days”

• Nearby Congress governments (eg in Madhya Pradesh) refused to send armed police contingents that might have controlled the riots

• There is, in the background, the massing of the Indian Army at the Pakistan border, in Operation Parakram. The Gujarat riots entirely dissipated the momentum behind a possible punitive invasion.

I wrote several columns at the time, and re-reading them brings up a number of points I had forgotten: Blaming the hindu victim http://usnews.rediff.com/news/2002/mar/07rajeev.htm, Godhra, secular progressives https://www.rediff.com/news/2002/mar/25rajeev.htm, Predatory intelligentsia https://www.rediff.com/news/2002/may/13rajeev.htm

Most of the focus of the coverage has been on the riots, in which officially 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. There was a Banerjee Commission that concluded the train coach had been subject to spontaneous combustion. A Supreme Court SIT concluded, on the contrary, that there was a conspiracy to set the coach on fire.

Activists contributed plenty of disinformation.

Thus a lot has been said about how the riots happened, but there has been relatively little about why they did. That’s where Operation Parakram and Musharraf (who was in power in Pakistan at the time) come into the picture. By several accounts, Musharraf was a good tactician, but a poor strategist, as seen, for example, in the Kargil War: he had the advantage of surprise, but he was forced into an ignominious retreat.

The same thing was probably behind the Parliament attack on 13th December 2001. In the wake of the September 2001 (“9/11”) attack on the World Trade Center in New York, Pakistan was facing heat from the Americans for possibly harboring Osama bin Laden. What better than to divert attention with an assault on the hated BJP government in India, using terrorist cannon-fodder? There had also been an attack on the J&K Assembly in October 2001, for which there had been no serious consequences.

Tactically clever, but not so strategic. For, not only did the attacks fail to do any major damage, it got India so riled up that under Operation Parakram India massed troops on the border. The signal was that India was going to invade, despite the Pakistani threat of first use of nuclear warheads. India seemed resolute, and counter-mobilization was getting expensive to sustain.

There was interesting chatter on the leftist Internet at the time that ‘something’ would happen to break the deadlock (I was not aware of it then, but it was discussed by the Bharat-Rakshak forum). Lefties knew something would happen, but not what it was. And that ‘something’ was quite likely the Sabarmati Express burning. It was a tactical success: India had to abandon Operation Parakram.

But perhaps it was a strategic failure because it launched Narendra Modi’s national political career, and here we are in 2023: Musharraf is dead, Modi is popular, and the Indian economy is doing rather well.

Of course, there are forces that are not so happy with all this: e.g. the very same Deep State that likes Armani-suited, Gucci-wearing generalissimos like Musharraf. There is a regime-change operation in the works. First, there was Victoria Nuland, the architect of Ukraine’s regime-change (and we all know how well that has turned out for Ukraine), who showed up in Delhi last year, and met the usual suspects.

Then there has been a slew of recent activity that is, one might hypothesize, aimed at containing India’s rise, and a key aspect of it is ejecting Modi. The full-court press on India over Ukraine, the BBC ‘documentary’, the Oxfam report, the Hindenburg attack on Adani and obliquely on the Indian economy, and any number of other acts are signs that India is a target.

The most recent incident is a visit by Hillary Clinton to Gujarat. A case could have been made for denying her a visa, for war crimes in Libya on her watch, including the brutal killing of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. That would only have been sweet revenge for the US denying Modi a visa citing the Gujarat riots. Modi, as the WSJ reports, was the only person ever denied a visa based on an obscure law on religious freedom.

The attention being paid to India by the Deep State is alarming. We can expect any number of additional acts. The 2024 Election Season is well and truly up and running, although it would be wise of Deep State to focus on what’s happening in the US: their candidate may well lose, given the stories coming out of the woodwork about election manipulation.

1050 words, 7 Feb 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/shadow-warrior-three-exemplars-of-indian-cinema-in-2022-rrr-the-kashmir-files-and-kantara-11940742.html

2022 was a watershed year for Indian cinema and cinephiles. At long last, the formulaic Hindi/Urdu cinema that has dominated both mindshare and box office took a beating, for it appears to no longer appeal to the consuming public. It has long been accused of lack of originality; its anti-Indian slant, and especially its overt anti-Hindu stance, have now begun to annoy large numbers of viewers. They voted with their wallets, as per BookMyShow.

The yeoman efforts by @GemsofBollywood to demonstrate bad faith on the part of the industry have had an impact, as can be seen from the number of expensive flops: Lal Singh Chaddha, Shamshera, Raksha Bandhan, Cirkus, Dobaara, Liger. They should change course, though given the current crop of agenda-ridden poseurs and nepo-kids, it’s not clear they can.

As a direct consequence of the arrival a few years ago of high-bandwidth fiber-to-the-home, many cinema viewers have also become accustomed to a wide range of offerings on OTT like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. This has made them aware of cinema from around the world that frankly shows that Bollywood has always been inferior in content and form, except for the film music (at least in earlier days).

I was at one time a cineaste, enjoying the 20th century works of Kurosawa, Ray, Eisenstein, the Italian and French masters, Bergman, and the Indian New Wave. It was easy to dismiss the cinematic quality of the Mumbai film industry; but it has always been influential, and has set the narrative about India both internally and in the developing world, as well as Russia and Japan.

For a variety of reasons (including simple prejudice), the Mumbai film industry has not been able to make a mark on Western audiences, and RRR is the first Indian film to make waves in the US market. In a positive write-up about why RRR deserves an Oscar, perhaps for Best Picture (yes, not for Best International Feature), Douglas Laman suggests that Indian films have been unfairly ignored (h/t Hari G).

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

The fact is that all three of the films that became visible successes in 2022 (along with other big box-office successes KGF 2, Ponniyin Selvan, Pushpa) have origins outside the formulaic Mumbai industry, and it may well be the beginning of a trend. The three are distinctive and different, and it is arguable that they are archetypes of three types or even three genres of cinema.

Cinema as spectacle

RRR is cinema as spectacle (harking back to the big Hollywood productions whose intent it was to awe); The Kashmir Files is realistic, almost documentary in tone; and Kantara, the most difficult to precisely pigeonhole, is impressionistic, a cultural phenomenon immersing you in a world that you must be an insider to fully appreciate.

RRR is the easiest for audiences to appreciate, because it compels suspension of disbelief, and draws you into its make-believe world with its fantastic stunts and subtle theme of rebellion against authority and cruel white colonialism (which appeals to the newly woke sentiment of film fans especially in the US). It is cinema as entertainment; the dances and the swashbuckling take center stage with the buddy story while the freedom struggle is sort of in the background.

In a sense this kind of cinema is the lineal descendant of the story-tellers and bards of old. In India we had the katha-kalakshepam artists and traveling theater troupes telling/performing stories from the Puranas. Similarly, in many places there were shadow-puppet shows, again with heroic stories from the epics (like the wayang kulit of Java). Children would sit breathless often in dim lamplight, entranced by tales of brave warriors and fair maidens.

SS Rajamouli, the director of RRR, is in that tradition: he tells tall tales, and he does it well. In fact, his two Baahubali films were masterpieces of the art, and they were among the very best Indian films in decades. Gorgeous sets, glorious set-piece battles, beautiful princesses, treachery, stalwart warriors, noble companions, fearsome villains – the works.

And they were entirely believable because they were epics set in the (distant) mythical past, fables. Hollywood used to specialize in these too: remember Ben Hur and the like? Or even Kurosawa’s Ran, Seven Samurai and Kagemusha. Therein lies my small gripe about RRR: since it is set in the recent past, I found it hard to engage with the superhuman stunts and the dance sequences, which were quite appropriate in the Baahubali films. Okay, that’s just me.

This also probably means that Rajamouli will be snatched away by Hollywood’s rich ecosystem, as has happened to talented Hong Kong and Australian directors, who moved on to bigger and better things and global fame after relocating. That would be good for him, but bad for Indian film.

Realist cinema, including cinema verite

I am a fan of the understated and realistic school, having always preferred the low-key off-Bollywood film, such as Charulata, Pather Panchali, Bhuvan Shome, Chomana Dudi and in particular in Malayalam Uttarayanam, Thampu, Elippathayam. There is a subset of this realism, the class of historical film that does not veer into propaganda, for instance the Soviet masterpiece Battleship Potemkin or the Jewish-holocaust epic Schindler’s List.

Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, who created The Kashmir Files, is known for his powerful and hard-hitting contemporary portrayals of Indian culture. His Buddha in a Traffic Jam was an indictment of the ‘Urban Naxal’ phenomenon that seems to have infiltrated academia and media, and which, one could cogently argue, is a grave and existential threat to the nation.

All of us who lived through the dark days of the 1990s and remember the newspaper headlines about Jammu and Kashmir then knew terrible things happened there to the minority population: a violent, religion-motivated ethnic cleansing. But much of this was swept under the carpet in the interest of some Nehruvian-Stalinist secularism. Unlike for other peoples who were targeted and exterminated, there has been no truth and reconciliation for Kashmiri Hindus.

The Kashmir Files is almost entirely based on actual, well-documented atrocities against a defenseless civilian population, slightly fictionalized, and it is a damning indictment of the fecklessness of the Indian State, and in particular of the mindset that allowed the murders, rapes, and ethnic cleansing of Indian citizens by foreign-funded terrorists. [Note the Jammu attacks on Jan 2, 2023 as well: Hindus targeted and shot, and IEDs left in the house].

That an Israeli leftist film-maker dared to deride TKF as ‘vulgar propaganda’ as the head of the jury of the government-sponsored International Film Festival of India 2022 shows that the pusillanimity of the Indian State continues to this day. (I was also reminded of the powerful Malayalam Piravi, about one of the young men who ‘disappeared’ during the Emergency.)

But nothing takes away from the reality of the Kashmir holocaust; TKF is as chilling, and as accurate, a portrait as the Killing Fields was of Pol Pot’s Cambodian holocaust of the 1970s.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Cultural and spiritual phenomenon

Kantara is a difficult-to-define film, because it doesn’t fit into a neat category. I wish I could say it was like Kurasawa’s works, for example Rashomon, which immerse you into medieval Japan without apology or explanation. But Kurosawa was deeply influenced not only by traditional Japanese literature and theater, but also by Western film and theater traditions, and therefore his work is pretty much immediately understandable to a Western audience.

Not so with Kantara. It is hard enough for many Indians to relate to the film; I imagine it would be well-nigh impossible for those from a non-Hindu frame of mind to do so. Even among Hindus, quite a few were baffled and could not relate to it. I was induced to see it by a wonderful review by the photographer Gowri Subramanya, and my expectations were sky-high.

I could immediately understand and relate to the idea that there are spirits all around, a typically Hindu view. Thinking about it later, I remembered O V Vijayan’s Little Ones, about benign family spirits that appeared as little dancing points of light, always there in times of trouble. But many Hindus might find it hard to relate to.

I too had a bit of a hard time relating to the protagonist Siva’s (played by director Rishab Shetty himself) wayward life: all the drinking and boar-hunting and the ‘bro’ life irritated me because I wanted him to be the bhoota kola spirit dancer that he avoided becoming. (Spoiler alert) But in the end, he cannot evade his destiny, and in a glorious apotheosis he does become the fearsome Guliga. I later realized he had to go through his Hero’s Journey (as Nambi did in Rocketry): that was what the story was all about.

Maybe I was primed to appreciate Kantara, as Malabar’s theyyams are almost identical to the bhoota kola in neighboring Tulunadu. I have watched, at dusk, the awe-inspiring appearance of the thee-poti, or the Devi with fire; and the Gulikan, the fierce guardian deity. They appeal to me, for I believe in this land and its ancient autochthonic deities.

And here’s an interesting dance interpretation of varaharoopam by two Kerala women. Varaha Roopam|Dance choreography |Pooja and Mariya |Kantara

But a lot of Hindus have been gaslighted and taught in school to disdain the gods of their ancestors; they have picked up half-baked Western, Abrahamic prejudices, which in the final analysis are based on blind faith that is doctrinally defined to be unquestionable. They are apologetic, and may try to ‘explain’ the Hindu world-view to those who are programmed to not comprehend.

If you will pardon my introducing a personal note, this is very much like what happened when the late Varsha Bhosle and I started writing unapologetic Hindu nationalist columns on rediff.com around 1995. They resonated with many; but others, nurtured on standard leftie fare, fulminated against us as though we violated their deeply held beliefs. Well, actually, yes.

I have seen innumerable films that either demonize Hinduism (almost the entire oeuvre of Urduwood) or try to present a sanitized face for Western consumption. Kantara is the first film I have seen that presents Hindu beliefs as itihasa (iti-hasa, thus it is and was). This is the way things are. Deal with it.

The fact that these three films of three different genres were successful – and the intensely patriotic Rocketry: The Nambi Effect was a hit too – is a tremendous boost for India. It’s time to move away from self-flagellating mediocrity to proudly present Indian cinema as part of a cultural renaissance, as Japan, Hong Kong and Korea have done in the past.

1750 words, 1 Jan 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by thepamphlet.in at https://www.thepamphlet.in/en/shadow-warrior-a-deplorable-supreme-court-decision-on-demonetization/

The Supreme Court, in a 4:1 judgment, held that the 2016 Demonetization was acceptable. The dissenting judge, well, dissented, saying that it was flawed. This decision sets an awful precedent that will come back to haunt us all, and the judiciary is respectful of precedent. The law of unintended consequences will strike.

It is not that demonetization per se was a bad idea, or that it was executed poorly, or that its goals were not met. It was a pretty good idea, it was executed moderately well, and the declared goals, to reduce corruption, terror funding through counterfeit notes, and to increase the proportion of ‘white’ money in circulation, were met to an extent.

No, the problem is twofold: one, an unprecedented and unwarranted level of judicial overreach and encroachment into the domain of the Executive; two, the common sense principle of fait accompli: this is a done deal, and it is essentially impossible to undo it.

The point is that the judiciary has its role, which is in hair-splitting legal jargon and in particular the verbiage of the Constitution. With all due respect, judges are not trained in other disciplines, and would be hard-pressed to understand economics, or engineering, or medicine, or military affairs. They simply will not be able to make judicious decisions (to give them credit, the majority opinion did concede this). But then, they should not take up such cases in the first place.

I can imagine motivated petitioners waiting in the wings to now ask the Supreme Court to undo the 1971 Bangladesh War, the decision to impose covid-related mandates, or the Mangalyaan space probe. In fact, you could find somebody to make a cogent argument that the Constitution should not have been accepted in 1950, and that it should be rolled back.

There is no end to such litigation, and if it is allowed to proliferate, it would clog up the entire judiciary. Of course, the entire judiciary is already clogged up with 30 million cases, so why open the flood-gates and invite more frivolous litigation?

As for the law of unintended consequences, there is the recent experience of the Democrats in the US. After years of claiming ex-President Trump’s tax returns would reveal deep, dark secrets, they forced him to reveal them: and it was a damp squib, with nothing of significance, no tax evasion. But the precedent has been set, and the Republicans will now use this to harass every Democrat alleging skeletons in their tax closets.

The Indian Supreme Court should stick to its fundamental task: interpreting the Constitution. Not being a lawyer, I cannot say authoritatively that there is no constitutional issue in the anti-demonetization lawsuit, but I doubt it. It is a purely administrative issue, and thus the domain of the Executive, just as making a multitude of daily decisions is.

The activist Indian courts have long been accused of interfering in everything while at the same time creating cozy little fiefdoms for themselves, for instance in the continuous creation of post-retirement sinecures for judges, the most recent being the demand that retired judges should be on the committee choosing the Chief Election Commissioner.

The most obvious example of bad faith is the judiciary’s closed and opaque Collegium system, wherein they nominate and appoint themselves, with the predictable result of nepotism and hereditary elites. It is high time that Parliament put a stop to this, and created new laws that mandate a role for the Executive. The proposed NJAC could be one way forward. If the NJAC is unconstitutional, well then, bring in a constitutional amendment.

Many people have talked about judicial reforms; I too took a stab at it a few years ago (“Can we fix the deeply troubled judiciary?” Swarajya, May 2018). One of my points was the radical restructuring of the system into a Supreme Court that only hears constitutional cases, and a new set of regional Courts of Appeal, with status almost equivalent to the Supreme Court, that hear other things beyond the ken of state High Courts.

There is a serious concern about which cases the Supreme Court chooses to hear. At the moment, it appears whimsical. Why on earth would the SC hear cases about cricket, which is a mere entertainment? Why on earth would the SC not hear petitions about the 1990s ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus (it has refused to do so three times already).

The terror onslaught in Jammu and Kashmir is not history. We saw with horror the terrorist attack on Hindus in Jammu’s Rajouri just days ago, where the attackers reportedly identified Hindus by their Aadhar cards, and then shot them. This is an urgent, ongoing problem, and why does the court refuse to hear it, while at the same time accepting a case on the 1948 assassination of Mahatma Gandhi? Next, someone will file a PIL demanding the undoing of that assassination.

Why does the SC accept PILs (Public Interest Litigations) put up by motivated NGOs, often with foreign funding? These people are able to get, through the back door, rapid decisions that affect the entire country, whereas the cases should properly be heard at the local level in District Courts, and only be elevated to the Supreme Court through a proper process if they actually have merit.

Apart from this, some actions are virtually impossible to undo: time and tide wait for no man. How could the SC, like King Canute who ordered the waves to retreat, even possibly consider the undoing of demonetization? How will it be done? What about the major moves in digitization that resulted, the UPI revolution, the trillions of rupees flowing through a payment system that is now ubiquitous and available to anyone with a mobile phone?

India has now become one of the most digitally connected countries in the world, but the amount of cash in the system is now even greater than at the time of demonetization. Can the court explain why? So it is not as though cash suddenly disappeared. Yes, there was a temporary crunch, and yes, it was hardship for many, but on average, most people have recovered.

Malign NGOs have continually opposed national interests: remember Sterlite? Or the Sardar Sarovar dam? By accepting a plea that was clearly inappropriate, probably politically motivated, and in any case something that would be virtually impossible to undo, the Supreme Court has set a poor precedent.

The Indian judiciary acts as a law unto itself, unaccountable to anybody else. This is wrong. As the President and the Vice President mentioned recently, it is time the judiciary reformed itself. I suspect it will have to be done forcibly, not voluntarily.

1090 words, 3 Jan 2023

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/world/ftx-saga-and-many-implosions-in-us-especially-in-big-tech-11709111.html

Elizabeth Holmes, the formerly celebrated founder of Theranos, got hit with a jail term of 11 years, according to the Wall Street Journal. That was a startling end to what looked at one time like a huge Silicon Valley success story.

But it was not the only Big Tech or big company story. The following stories also come from the WSJ:

Along with these, there have been stories about massive layoffs: Meta axes 13% of its workforce, or about 11,000 people; Amazon lays off 10,000 staff, mostly those in core areas such as engineering and marketing; and Google (Alphabet) is under pressure from activist investor TCI to do much the same for cost-cutting reasons.

All this may add up to a “techno-winter” (if not a general recession), one might think; surely the “crypto-winter” is already in progress. But is that really true? I believe there are three separate things going on, and it does not make sense to mingle all of them and seek solutions. The first is just plain old-fashioned grift; the second is the normal churn in business models; and the third is whether crypto makes sense.

There are always major scams in the US: examples include Enron, Bernie Madoff, and the Lehman Brothers meltdown. There is the spectacle of supposedly sensible people (e.g. bankers and venture capitalists) being completely bamboozled by a smooth-talking person with a spreadsheet, with the result that lots of investor’s (and taxpayers’) money goes down the drain.

Elizabeth Holmes seems to have hoodwinked the whos-who of not only Silicon Valley’s VCs, but also name-brand politicians and captains of industry and got them on her board of directors. I mean, George Schulz and Henry Kissinger: it doesn’t get any bigger than this. Exactly what did these luminaries see in the company? Some earth-shaking vision, I suppose.

To be honest, I too wondered if Theranos did have a really disruptive technology that would upend the market for diagnostic blood tests. But after an expose in Bad Blood by a WSJ reporter, it was clear that the company was really a house of cards (see my column on this in Open Magazine, where I explored, among other things, Holmes’ ‘reality distortion field’).

It is now clear that Theranos was a scam built up by Holmes and her then-boyfriend, Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani, a Pakistani-American entrepreneur who was much older than her, who was also president of the company. Holmes got sentenced to 11 years, Balwani got 13. Bernie Madoff, and Jeff Epstein also got long sentences. Bernie Madoff is a champion of sorts, for he ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history: $64 billion.

Now Sam Bankman-Fried is giving Madoff a run for his money. His crypto exchange, FTX, valued at $32 billion just a fortnight ago, is worth virtually nothing at this time, and billions of dollars worth of customers’ money has… disappeared. John Ray III, the lawyer brought in to clean up FTX during bankruptcy proceedings (ironically the same person who did the Enron clean-up), said he couldn’t believe the ‘unprecedented mess’ he found there.

The point is that despite all the fuss about crypto-currency, it is increasingly evident that Sam Bankman-Fried ran an old-fashioned fraud: “pump and dump”. The crypto bit was merely window-dressing to give sex appeal to the whole gig. And it worked, too. Major investors like the blue-chip VC firm Sequoia Capital were so thoroughly taken in that the purported reactions of their partners is simply astonishing, if true.

Here’s a screenshot of an alleged Sequoia memo. There’s worse: another tweet purports to show that two partners, a male and a female, reported being sexually aroused on hearing Bankman-Fried’s pitch about FTX’s world-beating vision to control all money (it is too embarrassing and too crude to quote):

Is crypto a scam? Stephen Diehl, author of Popping the Crypto Bubble says so in this interview with the Financial Times. He calls post-2016 crypto the Grifter Era, and that’s not far from the truth. It’s like the carpetbaggers have arrived and set up shop. I am personally of the opinion that crypto may have some value, only that the killer apps haven’t been dreamt up yet; I do believe the underlying blockchains are useful, although successful rollouts and use cases are still too few.

But the point is that the FTX meltdown has relatively little to do with crypto per se. It was just a device to dress up a rather standard, old-fashioned fraud or Ponzi scheme. We have seen this sort of thing going even way back: remember the Dutch Tulip Bubble, and the South Seas Bubble. You have fast-talking hucksters hoodwinking gullible investors, who lose their shirts.

It would be unfair to blame crypto for the greed and indiscipline shown by the FTX founder, or the lack of governance and regulatory control which let insiders essentially loot investor funds. For example, here’s Bankman-Fried and Nishad Singh plundering away:

The other angle that’s remarkable is the fact that the meltdown happened just days after the US midterm elections. Coincidence? Hard to believe, because Sam Bankman-Fried had been a major donor to the Democratic party: he donated some $30 million directly to them, and then perhaps a few hundred million to the ecosystem around the Democratic party, especially the media. Said media then lionized Bankman-Fried beyond all reason, as though he were some messiah.

Once again, the media, sadly, is not covering itself with glory. They didn’t do any investigative journalism; and now that the skeletons are tumbling out of the closet, they should be kicking themselves for having missed out on a juicy story. But the omerta of left-leaning, ideological journalists is a wonder to behold. This is what the WaPo is worried about now? Not fraud?

The ‘effective altruism’ school of thought that SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried’s handle) allegedly espoused is probably another scam, even though it’s dressed up in fashionable ESG and DIE memes.

Sam Bankman-Fried was the second-biggest donor to the Democratic party before the 2022 midterms (George Soros was the biggest). The website Gateway Pundit quoting someone else (ok, they might have a beef with Democrats anyway, so take it with a pinch of salt) paints a staggering picture of SBF’s political and government connections, which is in itself highly suspicious. All this cannot be mere coincidence.

Did SBF materially affect the midterm election results? I hope the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will launch an investigation.

Frankly this smells like a Deep State operation. I am sure there is a Ukraine angle as well.

More generally, is the US business model facing a crisis?

‘Greed is good’, declared Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. Does modern corporate greed have an origin? In this interview with the Stanford Business School, David Gelles, author of The Man Who Broke Capitalism squarely blames ‘Neutron’ Jack Welch of GE for what he claims is a toxic culture of profit at all cost in US corporations. That may or may not be fair to Welch, but anyway slash-and-burn, as well as short-termism and ideological metastasis seem to be the watchwords of many US CEOs these days.

It would be difficult to accuse Elon Musk of seeking undue profit in his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, which probably is worth much less than that sum just weeks after Musk took it over. But the issue there is, as is probably the case with Disney too, that there is too much ideology permeating the firm. Disney’s recently fired CEO was seriously into woke causes.

What Musk has done is to sweep away the wokeness in Twitter, thereby possibly allowing it to fulfill its purported role of ‘digital town square’. Under the previous dispensation, it had become basically a far-left bubble, because anybody who didn’t fit into their world-view was simply deplatformed, defenestrated, silenced, censored: the very antithesis of Freedom of Speech.

I published this podcast long ago about how the explicit silencing of TrueIndology was a watershed event in the suppression of online speech in India. Shadow banning, reduction of followers, and other malign acts were common against anybody that the Twitter powers-that-be didn’t consider to fit their views, which in India meant anti-Hindu perspectives.

Despite all the noise in the media about how Twitter has gone down the drain, it is entirely possible that Musk will not run it into the ground. Advertisers who are now staying away will most likely return. The savage layoffs don’t seem to have materially affected the actual performance of Twitter on the ground, as it were: so was there a lot of waste? Wokes are known to live well off Other People’s Money, as in the very case of FTX (in the Bahamas), per the WSJ.

I am betting that Elon Musk will be able to return Twitter to some semblance of a business model, not run it in the ground. After all, the platform does offer value to its subscribers, even long-suffering shadow-ban victims such as me (I have often found people I’ve never heard of have blocked me: I am apparently on mass-blocking lists) still find it useful.

It is not clear, though, if the ‘greed at all costs’ attitude of US business will survive. It is clear, for instance, that they have surrendered America’s industrial capacity to China in the last 30 years, all in return for short-term profits from the ‘China price’. This is suicidal in the long run, as they are beginning to now realize. There has to be some introspection.

It may be too grand to claim that Western business will now go through a sea-change, a once-in-a-generation shift to something more accountable to national interests. This is especially hard when the Deep State is so ascendant, and its friends in the military-industrial-complex thrive on war in Other People’s Countries.

But these woes are coming at the very time that we are seeing the limits of globalization and to the excesses of Wall Street and Silicon Valley VCs. The US business community, and regulators, should consider FTX and Theranos to be canaries in the coalmine: there are useful lessons in their failures.

1675 words, 22 Nov 2022

.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

This essay was published by the indianaffairs.com at https://theindianaffairs.com/en/hindus-the-diaspora-and-the-rishi-sunak-phenomenon/

Now that the euphoria over the ascent of Rishi Sunak to the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has died down a little, it is worthwhile to consider the implications. On the one hand, there is understandable pride that someone in the diaspora has done well: I remember how delighted all of us were when V S Naipaul got his Nobel Prize in literature.

On the other hand, what is the tangible value to India of Sunak’s rapid rise to the leadership of what is, let us be honest, a racist, white-supremacist, imperial nation that is staring at the edge of an economic precipice? I was personally relieved a month or so ago when Sunak lost the leadership race to Liz Truss, simply because the rot is so bad in Britain that not even superhuman efforts are going to save the country from ruin.

My argument was that Sunak had dodged a bullet: whoever ended up as PM would inherit such an impossible mess, such a tar baby, that they would forever be blamed for it, even if they were innocent bystanders. So why not let someone else, like Liz Truss, fall on the sword?

If it were Sunak, not only would he be blamed individually, but also, in priority order a) Hindus, b) Indians, c) brown people, d) Stanford MBAs. It was best all around, I said at the time, to let some white woman be the fall guy, as it were. And we saw exactly what happened to her in 44 days: humiliated, disgraced, kicked out of office, her political career probably ruined forever.

The sad thing is that nothing has changed now. After Brexit, the UK is merely a small “tribal”, “bad-toothed”, “flavour-starved” “sub-Scandinavian archipelago” as a hilarious critic on Twitter, @gathara, calls it. His/her “breaking news” about the West is a cheeky microscope turned back on the US, the UK etc by a Kenyan using the same demeaning language Western media uses for the rest of the world.

Janan Ganesh, a columnist at the FT, had a good insight: Britain is laboring under the illusion that it is the US, which can wield its currency as a weapon; failing which, it has its military with which to quell challengers. Britain has none of the above. It has also been living beyond its means. Now it is forced to sell its family silver just to survive. As an example, there was a recent accusation that British Air Force pilots were sent to train Chinese pilots; which would likely mean American military secrets were dished out as they went ‘open-kimono’.

There is a fair chance that Sunak, too, will go down the same way Truss did, and indeed Boris Johnson did: resigning in disgrace. But in any case, everybody will find their expectations of him will be unfulfilled. Indians naively believe Sunak will be nice to India. On the contrary, his job is to look out for Britain's interests. And he has many constraints on him.

For example, Sunak has brought back Suella Braverman, who had been sacked as Home Minister. She irritated Indians by being an arch-imperialist saying there were too many Indians overstaying their visas in the UK. Surely, he did to ensure domestic support and avoid schisms in his own party. And yes, Braverman is of Indian origin, too.

Remember that Rishi Sunak is a Briton and not an Indian, even though he is a practicing and devout Hindu. His personal faith cannot get in the way of his doing his job as PM. In fact, he may even have to be particularly harsh on India to fend off allegations of dual loyalties. I remember Indian managers in Silicon Valley doing the same thing: they were especially hard on their Indian employees just to appear ‘neutral’: over-compensation.

I am by no means saying that there’s nothing to celebrate in Sunak’s rise. I am also delighted when Indian-origin people do well in other countries, against the odds. Maybe it is an irrational bout of ethnic pride. And it is true that Indians, especially Hindus, are now becoming more visible in their countries of residence, through hard work and the efforts of ‘Tiger Mothers’.

I was reminded of this the other day when searching through my usual podcasts: I came across two Indian-Americans, although based on their accents they are both immigrants. One is the Pulitzer-winning oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee speaking of his new book The Song of the Cell; the other is Nick Santhanam, a Silicon Valley investor and former McKinsey consultant, talking about his new book The Titanium Economy.

Then there’s the articulate Balaji Srinivasan, a visionary and crypto-evangelist who foresees the rise of distributed ‘network states’. And Saagar Enjeti, who runs an interesting podcast channel.

In a sense, Indians are following in the footsteps of Jews: they, too, leveraged their smarts, especially in medicine, finance and cinema, to rise to the top of the heap in the US. Indians are, interestingly, using medicine, finance and technology in their rise to wealth. Incidentally, the only other ethnic-minority PM ever in the UK was Benjamin Disraeli, a Jew.

I used to think there would be a natural alliance between Jews and Hindus, especially as both have been under relentless attack by the same Abrahamic groups. India was the only country to never to oppress Jewish residents, too. But now I am not so sure. Maybe it’s because Jews are, after all, Abrahamics themselves. And maybe they find themselves in competition with Hindus.

I am reminded of various Jews who are not exactly pro Hindu: Wendy Doniger, Sheldon Pollock, Amy Wax (a law professor), Amy Kazmin (former FT bureau chief in India). Kazmin, whom I befriended on Twitter, once gave me the generic equivalent of “But my best friend is a Jew” when I complained about her unsympathetic stance towards Hindus: “But I check my articles with a Hindu Kayastha”. The irony was apparently lost on her.

Similarly, Hindus are singularly unfortunate to not have allies, even though we are the last pagans standing. Some Buddhists are strongly anti-Hindu, as in the case of the Rev Zenji Nio, a Japanese. And we know about the Sikh diaspora and its Khalistan obsession. Yes, divide and rule has worked all too well.

Be that as it may, personally, I am irrationally happy when fellow-paisanos do well. I celebrated when Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella rose in tech; I was a big fan of the late C K Prahalad. But let us be very clear: while they will do what they can for the mother country, the diaspora are not Indians, and their success is not tied to India. To them, India is increasingly remote, a distant memory. Their reality is America, or wherever they have chosen to make their home.

They have no skin in India’s game. India will rise mostly based on the efforts of those who live in the country. Rishi Sunak, ironically, has a stake in India because he’s married to Infosys Narayana Murthy’s daughter Akshata, and she owns about 1% of the company. Sunak is independently wealthy, though, having made his fortune on Wall Street and private equity.

But that’s about it: we can all be proud of Rishi Sunak, whose Hindu values have enabled him to prosper in a hostile white world, and he is unapologetic about his religion. But his rise to the top of the Anglosphere is not particularly a win for India. India will have to rise based on its own efforts, not because of any favors from anybody. Permanent interests, not permanent friends.

1270 words, 6 Nov 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

The past year has seen a number of newsworthy stories in science and technology, and several of them may turn out to be of great significance. For instance the protein-folding smarts of Deep Mind’s Alphafold and Meta’s ESMfold may be a game-changer in the creation of new molecules, specifically in drug discovery, although these drugs will take at least a decade to show up on pharmacy shelves.

Lawrence Livermore Labs (US Department of Energy) made an apparent breakthrough in nuclear fusion, although a commercial reactor is still years or decades away. The James Webb space telescope captured extraordinary views of the universe.

Then there was the spectacle of the meltdown of cryptocurrencies (again) in the wake of the antics of Sam Bankman-Fried. And the ongoing saga of the “manufacturing consent” by Twitter and US government/Democratic party agents: potentially Watergate 2.0.

But quite possibly the most exciting event of all was the unveiling of the AI bots ChatGPT for text and DALL-E 2, Imagen and Midjourney for images, all generated with simple commands entered by a user. Stable Diffusion, Google and Meta also demonstrated text-to-video.

ChatGPT and DALL-E are two artificial intelligence (AI) tools that are making significant strides in bringing AI to the public. Both tools have the ability to generate text and images, respectively, in a way that is convincing to humans. This has the potential to revolutionize the way we create and consume content, as entire books, including illustrations, could potentially be written by these tools.

ChatGPT is a chatbot that uses the GPT-3 language model developed by OpenAI. It is capable of generating natural language responses to prompts, making it possible for users to have conversations with it as if it were a human. This technology has already been integrated into a number of popular messaging apps and virtual assistants, making it widely available to the public.

One potential use for ChatGPT is in the creation of written content. It could be used to generate entire books, including storylines, character development, and descriptions. ChatGPT could even be trained on a specific genre or style of writing, allowing it to create content that is tailored to a specific audience.

DALL-E is another AI tool developed by OpenAI that is capable of generating images based on a given text prompt. It works by using a neural network to understand the meaning of the text and then generating an image that represents that meaning. The results produced by DALL-E can be quite convincing, with many of the images it creates being indistinguishable from those created by humans.

Like ChatGPT, DALL-E has the potential to revolutionize the way we create and consume content. It could be used to generate illustrations for books, magazines, and other printed materials, reducing the need for human artists. It could also be used to generate images for social media and other online platforms, providing a quick and easy way to create visually appealing content.

Overall, ChatGPT and DALL-E are bringing AI to the public in a way that is both accessible and useful. These tools have the potential to change the way we create and consume content, and may eventually result in entire books, including illustrations, being written convincingly by AI. While there are certainly ethical and societal implications to consider with the advancement of these technologies, they have the potential to greatly enhance and improve our daily lives.

In the spirit of full disclosure, permit me to point out that the preceding six paragraphs were written by ChatGPT on a simple prompt: “write an essay about how chatgpt and dall-e are bringing artificial intelligence to the public, and may result in entire books, including illustrations, being written convincingly by these tools.”

It’s a little embarrassing to admit that the text is as good as anything I, or any human essayist, could have written. By utilizing the collective ‘wisdom of crowds’ on the Internet, and using neural nets to decode the structure of English composition, the bot emits plausible content, and can even hold quite believable conversations with you.

And anyone can sign up at chat.openai.com. It’s free at the moment, but OpenAI, a non-profit entity, may well start to monetize it, considering the huge cost of running the server farms that host the AI, which is based on GPT-3, a natural language interface that draws on 175 billion parameters in a neural network.

When GPT-3 was first announced in 2021, I did a podcast titled AI and the coming language wars. I was concerned about various things, including gaslighting, and those concerns have not gone away by any means.

OpenAI’s for-profit venture that manages ChatGPT was seed-funded with a billion-dollar investment by Microsoft. Similarly, Google has its own gigantic neural network, although that is not available to outsiders. Interestingly, ChatGPT may begin to compete with Google search as the default model for the search user experience.

However, there are several issues. One is that, at least for the moment, ChatGPT is not much more than an amusing toy, though it will improve. Old-timers will remember Eliza, a 1960’s LISP-based system from MIT’s AI Lab, that could carry on what seemed like a somewhat-stilted session on a psychiatrist’s couch.

Eliza was good enough to appear almost-human, and by sort of rephrasing a user’s words and regurgitating them back as questions, it seemed to possess a certain soothing intelligence. That was far from the case, of course. It had no semantic understanding.

To some extent, GPT-3 (which stands for Generative Pretrained Transformer, version 3) is only a sophisticated version of Eliza, because it too has no contextual understanding of what’s going on: it makes educated guesses based on statistical patterns in its text dataset gathered from many sources.

The diabolical thing about GPT-3 (and this will be even more so with GPT-4 that is due to debut in 2023 and is rumored to be able to handle multiple languages) is that it appears sentient, but it is not. It also has no qualms about giving you false information: for instance it ‘believed’ rumors, and gave ‘references’, about Noam Chomsky’s death.

I asked it whether it believed rumors about Chomsky, and it gave this anodyne response: It is not possible for chatGPT to believe or not believe anything as it is a machine learning model and does not have personal beliefs or emotions. ChatGPT is programmed to generate responses based on the prompts it receives, and it does not have the capability to believe or not believe anything. Oh goody.

On the other hand, the quality of its literary output is a little lacking, although I got it to emit haiku, limericks and sonnets. My benchmark for mechanical intelligence is Stanislaw Lem’s brilliant robot poet in the story “The First Sally (A) or Trurl’s Electronic Bard” (sorry, Marvin the paranoid android from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”: you are too depressing!).

Lem’s robot is given this command: compose a poem- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter S!

And it produces the sublime:

Seduced, shaggy Samson snored,

She scissored short. Sorely shorn,

Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,

Silently scheming

Sightlessly seeking

Some savage, spectacular suicide.

Given the same command, this is all ChatGPT could manage:

She sat in the chair, so sad and so forlorn

Her hair was a mess, a tangled and knotted thorn

The stylist approached, with scissors in hand

Ready to cut, to style, to make her stand.

But as the snips began, a sense of dread

Overcame her heart, her mind filled with dread

For with each lock that fell, a piece of her soul

Felt as though it left, leaving her feeling alone

Yet in the end, as the stylist stepped back

She saw her reflection, and her heart began to lack

For her hair was sleek, her eyes shone bright

And she knew, in that moment, everything would be alright.

No, not in the same class at all. ChatGPT, better luck next time! Of course, if asked to regenerate, ChatGPT will produce a slightly different opus, but I doubt if it will land on the poetic metaphor of Samson, whose strength lay in his hair, which the temptress Delilah, with malice aforethought, removed.

But then, Stainslaw Lem was a genius of science fiction (you must see Andrei Tarkovsky’s stunning adaptation of his Solaris, with its sentient planet), and so the comparison is a little unfair. And his translator was outstanding: I have never forgotten that phrase “savage, spectacular suicide”, which of course we have seen many times in the recent past.

Apart from the banality, there are serious legal issues as well. For one thing, since it has no common sense, an AI will absorb all the worst prejudices of the Internet, including racism, sexism, bias and religious bigotry. Some time ago, Microsoft hastily deactivated its AI bot after it started spewing hate speech. So who’s to control AI’s output?

How about surreptitious surveillance? One of the problems with big data per se is that governments and BigTech can snoop on you, and arrive at the moral equivalent of “pre-crime” as in the film “Minority Report”. In effect, that is what China’s “social rank” algorithms have done. AI’s broad sweep makes this ever more powerful. If you do things that governments don’t like, you could become a non-person.

There will have to be a whole slew of regulations to protect the public interest. Fake news, fake images, and especially fake videos (“deepfakes”) can have huge propaganda impact and could incite people to violence.

How these affect elections is already a good question: Cambridge Analytica allegedly worked with Facebook to nudge people into voting for the Congress in India. We have also seen how the Hunter Biden laptop story and the Russian interference story have been used to manipulate US elections.

There is a current New Scientist story about how deep fake videos about Ukraine’s Zelensky are in circulation. There will be more. One way to identify them would be to force watermarks on them via every application that can create them; but of course the dark web will have applications outside the purview of regulators.

I have concerns about the concentration of AI research in two countries, the US and China. Where does this leave India? In particular, I worry about Indian data: the draft law that was circulated seems to imply that India will permit Indian data to be held abroad in “friendly” countries. That is just plain wrong.

The concerns expressed by Rajiv Malhotra in Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power do need to be addressed if India is not to be left out in the cold.

There is also the question of language. It is becoming increasingly clear that English is not optimal for Indians as the medium of instruction and communication, partly because it brings substantial cultural baggage, and partly because it imposes an unnecessary epistemic burden on students.

I can see two diametrically opposite scenarios for the language issue. On the one hand, the dominance of English may well increase as a lot of AI that Indians are exposed to will be from US Big Tech (there is a barrier with Chinese technology).

On the other hand, sophisticated natural language systems such as GPT-3 and -4 could be used to perform real-time translation of both text and speech to Indian languages. If, that is, there are sufficiently large text troves in these languages; and that is a big ‘if’.

On a related topic, AI is already helping decipher ancient cuneiform text: can it do the same for the Indus-Sarasvati Valley inscriptions? That would be a tremendous boost for Indian civilization.

Philosophically speaking, there is also a debate about whether AIs can become truly sentient: the question of consciousness. Subhash Kak has written that it is unlikely that AIs will ever become conscious. I am not so sure any more, but if they do, it would in fact be a catastrophe for humanity, as we would become superfluous.

As has been said famously, all new technology and innovation can be used either for good or for evil. Besides, we often have no idea as to the directions in which truly disruptive innovation can take us. We are on the threshold of such a revolution today with advanced AI. One can only hope, and pray, that the outcome is benign.

2100 words, Dec 28, 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

This essay was published by firstpost.com at https://stg.firstpost.com/opinion-news-expert-views-news-analysis-firstpost-viewpoint/shadow-warrior-the-us-midterm-elections-and-implications-especially-for-india-11146761.html

This is being written on the eve of the US midterm elections, and so far as can be gathered from voluminous punditry, it appears the Democrats are going to take a direct hit. Normally the ruling party loses seats in the midterms, but this time the loss could actually turn into a rout, especially because of inflation and high interest rates.

If the opinion polls are correct, and there is no hanky-panky at the voting-booth, chances are that the Republicans will gain control over one or both of the upper and the lower house: the Senate and the House of Representatives. This means that Joe Biden will be a lame duck, and his far-left, ‘woke’ agenda will be stymied by continuous obstruction by the Republicans.

US election issues

Democrats are on the defensive on many issues that are top of mind for the US voter:

• Inflation and the economy

• Abortion and women’s rights

• Immigration and border control

• Climate change

• Law and order

• The war in Ukraine

• The Trump factor and the 2020 election

Undoubtedly there are other, local issues that concern voters, but on the national level this is what they will bring to the voting booth on November 8th. In general, there is a backlash to the extreme-left politics espoused by the ‘progressives’ who appear to have hijacked the Democratic Party.

Inflation is hurting people directly (at about 8%, a 40-year high, and very visible in the price of staples like food and petrol). Naturally, those in charge in times of trouble take the blame, whether it is deserved or not. As the Fed tightens, there will be job losses; there already are, in Big Tech, eg Twitter and Meta, including for other reasons. Small businesses are hurting, too.

The abortion issue looked like a major galvanizing force a few weeks ago when the US Supreme Court overturned the legendary Roe v. Wade decision, but it has faded in importance except for the activist leftist faction within the Democratic party (the so-called ‘progressives’).

Relatively uncontrolled immigration through the porous southern border is an emotive issue in border states such as Texas.

With riots in several cities, ‘defund the police’, and general mayhem such as repeated school shootings, rampant gun violence, breakdowns in law and order may be an emotive issue.

Climate change is less of a concern than it had been earlier, because it is increasingly clear that there will be pain to the general public in making a move to renewable energy.

The Ukraine war, although it has some bipartisan support, is dragging on, and is correctly seen as a factor in increasing oil and gas prices, as well as food prices.

Former President Trump is still a factor in the Republican party, and quite a few members of that party are convinced that the 2020 elections were flawed at best, and stolen at worst.

Finally, one of the imponderables is the ‘swing vote’: groups that may be persuaded based on specific issues.

Swing voters

It appears that there are only two genuinely committed votebanks: one is the mostly white, young-ish, college-educated ‘liberal’ Democratic cohort, that comprise the ‘progressives’ of both the East Coast and California. The other is the rural, again mostly white, older, non-college-graduate ‘conservative’ cohort, which has been dependably Republican for long.

Black voters have been Democrat-leaning for years, and that will continue to be the case. Other groups, for example Latinos (Spanish speakers, or their descendants, often immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Cuba and so on), may well change their allegiance. Latinos were dedicated Democratic voters, but they have shown signs of defecting in droves because of the overly-socialist noises coming from the Democrats. Latinos who escaped from leftist ‘paradises’ like Cuba and Venezuela have no illusions about the pleasures of socialism and communism.

Similarly, Indian-Americans in America have been dependably Democratic-leaning. That party was seen as immigrant-friendly, minority-friendly, etc. but as Indians (as well as other Asian-Americans) see the appalling deterioration in their cities, they are beginning to sour on extreme-left Democrats. For instance, Asian-Americans spearheaded the recall of school board members and a district attorney in San Francisco.

Unfortunately, those Indian-American legislators (you know who they are) who are most woke and most anti-India are unlikely to be dislodged as their constituencies are leftist strongholds.

Put all these factors together, and unless there is widespread voting fraud (the US equivalent of booth-capturing), it is hard to see how the Democrats are going to avoid a disaster. A lame-duck President Biden has consequences for the rest of the world, too.

Global implications from a lame-duck US Presidency

What are the implications? On the one hand, a number of the problems facing the world at the moment can plausibly be traced back to the US, and to be fair, they were not all created by the Biden Administration. But Biden has certainly exacerbated things, leading to global pain.

The four big problems are: 1. The coronavirus, 2. Inflation, 3. The Ukraine war, 4. Dependence on China.

It seems increasingly likely, despite strenuous objections and attention-diverting tactics by the US medical establishment led by Anthony Fauci, that the Covid pandemic is the result of a lab-leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where experiments in ‘gain-of-function’ were being carried on, with American funding channeled through Peter Daszack’s Ecohealth.

Impact: Ideally, in a lame-duck Biden regime, the US comes clean on the whole virus conspiracy.

The massive money-printing exercise and largesse (a few thousand dollars to every US taxpayer as stimulus payments) have led to too many dollars chasing too few goods, the textbook definition of inflation. This structural problem was exacerbated by supply-chain disruptions (read imports from China) due to the coronavirus and the Ukraine war.

Impact: Instead of throwing good money after bad, as in the ill-considered and Orwellian Inflation Reduction Act, a chastened Biden regime might pursue more sensible fiscal policy.

Speaking of the Ukraine war, neutral observers are hard pressed to see how it has helped anybody, other than the pals of the Deep State, for whom increased military spending means a windfall. Atlanticist Democrats with Eastern European ancestry have dragged the US into some obscure blood feud of theirs with the Russians. Starved of Russian energy supplies, Western Europe is likely to suffer a cold winter and find that its industry is severely damaged.

Impact: With the prospect of a loss in the midterms, WaPo reports that the hitherto pugnacious Biden crowd is telling Zelensky to seek a negotiated end to this pointless war. That is a relief.

Through a series of poor strategic decisions, the US has made itself almost fatally dependent on China as a supplier. While it is not impossible, a decoupling of supply chains (the China + 1 strategy) is difficult. Apple is the latest company warning that its production in China is taking a hit partly because of Foxconn’s well-publicized troubles with pandemic lockdowns.

Impact: This is the one Biden policy that makes sense: isolate China and deny it technology. Biden has been China-friendly but the U-turn will get bipartisan support.

There are some other secondary implications: for instance, the Republicans may probe the Hunter Biden laptop and its damning contents. This could potentially lead to a Biden impeachment, which would then make Kamala Harris the US President. That would be an outcome with many implications, especially for comedians and talk show hosts.

The impact on India

India is low on Joe Biden’s priority list: he hasn’t even bothered to confirm his ambassador to India, although that may be a blessing in disguise. Eric Garcetti, the designate, is a Los Angeles party hack who is being kicked upstairs after a disastrous showing in his home town as mayor.

In the 21st century, under Democratic Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden, it has been clear that America is not exactly India’s friend. That was perhaps fortunate, given Henry Kissinger’s dictum: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal”.

Biden’s most prominent action regarding India was the futile effort to bully India into joining the US-NATO camp regarding Ukraine. His officials have taken ‘revenge’ in a number of petty ways, including the denial of visa appointments (when last checked, the waiting time for a visitor visa in Delhi was 880 days. Contrast this with just 2 days in Beijing).

Then there was the announcement of $450 million worth of enhancements to their F-16 fleet to Pakistan, followed by the release of that country from the FATF gray list, as well as the approval of a billion-dollar IMF bailout package.

A less woke, lame-duck US Administration may well be in India’s interest. The more worried the US gets about China, the more value they see in the Quad, as the Trump Administration did. In that sense, continuing frictions between the US and China would be useful to India, as indeed also a full-fledged Thucydides Trap of all-but-war between them.

Similarly, a less cocksure US Administration may want to bring the Ukraine war to an end with a face-saving exit for all concerned. Nuclear brinkmanship is not good for business in general, and if pushed, the Russians may in fact use tactical weapons, or worse. Nuclear war always seems like a bad idea, including with China over the latter’s likely invasion of Taiwan. We don’t know the unintended consequences.

On the other hand, any commercial pressure that the US puts on China is good as far as India is concerned. Presumably the chip wars, wherein the US is apparently intent on putting the brakes on Chinese development and manufacture of leading-edge semiconductors, will continue or gain momentum. That is in the US interest, and incidentally in India’s as well, as India tries to attract more investment into its own chip industry.

On average, a lame-duck Biden Presidency is a reasonably good outcome for India. If 2024 brings back a Republican Presidency (not necessarily Donald Trump) that too may be a good thing. The decline of the woke ‘progressives’ is good; however the hostility of the Deep State and the Military-Industrial Complex is not going to diminish until and unless India becomes a major economic and military power; which of course will happen by 2047.

1720 words, Nov 7, 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

This essay was published by firstpost.com.

The Hero’s Journey is a common metaphor used by storytellers from the Ramayana to the Iliad, and in innumerable modern works. You have the hero rising, then facing odds that are so overwhelming that he is on the verge of failure, but he often wins in the end, and is transformed or redeemed in the process. And indeed, for each of us, our own lives are heroes’ journeys, as the mythologist Joseph Campbell elucidated in a series of excellent documentaries.

Both the recent films Kantara and Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, in my opinion, fall into this broad categorization; but what’s notable and different is that they are about very Hindu heroes, quite a departure from the standard Indian film (especially of the Urduwood variety) where overt Hindus are usually depicted with contempt or disgust.

The two films are very different from each other, of course, but it is telling that they both resonate with audiences, in a visible departure from the conventional wisdom that holds that neither a Hindu nor a nationalist should be depicted with sympathy, and especially not a Hindu nationalist.

There is another Hindu meme: the local and the national are not meaningfully distinct, just as the Atman and Brahman are not. Kantara, set in the Tulu-land of Dakshina Kannada district, Karnataka, is instantly understandable to Hindus anywhere; and Rocketry, the story of a patriot of Tamil origin living Thiruvananthapuram, who is attacked and to whom tejovadham is done by mysterious, malign forces, is understandable to any Hindu, we whose face hostility in India and elsewhere.

When I saw Kantara, I was surprised by how normal the story was to me: of course, obviously, there are spirits, or demi-gods/daivas all around. This is something that I grew up with. I remember as a small boy being taken by my grandfather to the bharani festival of the village Devi temple in central Travancore: there were wondrous, magical things there then.

Much later, I watched theyyams in Malabar, which is adjacent to Tulunadu, and the wonderful costumes are almost identical to those in the Bhoota kola depicted in the film; some of most impressive were thee-pothi (the fire-goddess) and the gulikan (the fierce deity identical to guliga in the film), especially as they performed at dusk.

The belief in possession by spirits, as in the hypnotic sarpam-thullals (serpent-dances) of Travancore or of velichapads (oracles) in many parts of Kerala, holds no surprises for me. It is easy for a practicing Hindu to believe in them. It is not hard to imagine benign (and malign) spirits all around, for example as in O V Vijayan’s story The Little Ones, luminous ancestral spirits that help in times of trouble.

I had a personal experience of the Divine, on my first trip to Sabarimala when I was a teenager. It was an incredible religious experience: for a moment, a glimpse of something extraordinary, a powerful vision of the Infinity of Grace. My friend, a doctor, tells me of medical miracles that can only be attributed to the power of prayer and Divine Grace.

In Kantara, the protagonist Siva consistently and carefully avoids the bhoota kola, as he was traumatized by the unexplained disappearance of his father, the oracular dancer of the village. He tries to lead the life of a carefree youth, drinking, hunting wild boar and getting into fights; but the panjurli daiva calls to him in his dreams. Spoiler alert: his hero’s journey culminates in a spectacular finale.

In Rocketry, the fictionalized story of the real-life Nambi Narayanan, the hero’s journey is even more evident. After early and brilliant success as a rocket engineer, his life and career were ruined in what was apparently a sordid combination of commercial sabotage by a three-letter acronym spy agency, and a power struggle among Congress politicians in Kerala, with some corrupt policemen in the mix.

Even if it is a little exaggerated for rhetorical purposes, Nambi Narayanan’s efforts to convince Rolls-Royce’s head (a Scot), the French Ariane rocket program, and the Soviet cryogenic labs to transfer technology and know-how to ISRO are amazing stories that I too had not heard, even though I live in Thiruvananthapuram, where Narayanan and Abdul Kalam did their work on solid and liquid-propelled rockets.

Despite Narayanan’s value to the Indian space program, and the evident holes in the 1994 Maldivian spy story (see my Rediff column Who killed India’s cryogenic engine?) it took a court saga of 24 years to clear his name, and to get the redemption he deserved (a Padma Bhushan in 2019). In the meantime, India’s cryogenic engine was delayed by 19 years.

What is remarkable in the film -- and it is disturbing that this should even have to be highlighted -- is that Narayanan is shown as an unapologetic Hindu. There is nothing whatsoever that prevents an observant and pious Hindu from also being an engineer and scientist: no dogma. But the prevailing filmi wisdom, which has become “truth by repeated assertion” is that Hindu rituals are superstition, but Abrahamic superstition is somehow ‘scientific’.

The very fact that such films are being made, and are becoming blockbusters, shows that the narrative is shifting (the so-called Overton window). There is pushback, though: a little-known band in Kerala is suing Kantara over the song ‘Varaha-roopam’, which has Sanskrit lyrics and traditional tribal music. Because traditional knowledge cannot be copyrighted, it is likely that their intellectual property claim is not sustainable.

There were also people grumbling that Narayanan was lionized and that he wasn’t as key to ISRO’s success as the film makes him out to be. Maybe, but even if it was 50% exaggerated, he is still an amazing engineer and manager, and in any case it was unconscionable by any measure to torture him for 50 days, defame him, and destroy his career. Those who ordered the hit have never been named.

My heroes have long been those among us who fight for Dharma and righteousness: Professor Eachara Warrier, Major Shaitan Singh. I am happy to now add Dr Nambi Narayanan to that list, and perhaps Siva, who brings to life the forest deities.

1020 words, 3 Nov 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost at https://www.firstpost.com/india/75-years-have-midnights-children-come-of-age-11093221.html

It is a bit of a coincidence that, just around the 75th anniversary of India gaining political independence from the British, Salman Rushdie should be in the news again, because he was stabbed in Chautauqua, a literary watering-hole in upstate New York. His book Midnight’s Children was, as is well known, a sensation when it first came out some forty years ago, in 1981.

The central conceit in the book is that 100,000 children born all over India on or around midnight on August 15th, 1947, are endowed with magical powers. Their lives are an allegory for India’s progress. It is a picaresque romp centered around the protagonist, Saleem Sinai, who can telepathically connect with and organize them.

When I first read the book, I was impressed by the verbal pyrotechnics, and more so the clever interweaving of contemporary events into the magical realism of the ‘children’s’ lives. The great human tragedies and triumphs of Bharat, that is India, are a rich mother-lode to mine for fiction, and another example is the re-telling of the Mahabharata by Shashi Tharoor in The Great Indian Novel.

But over time, the book’s impact faded for me. Even though I didn’t pay attention to it on first reading it, now I see it as significant that Saleem Sinai’s principal rivals among the children are ‘Shiva’ and ‘Parvati-the-witch’. Interesting choice of names, wouldn’t you say? A bit like Deepa Mehta’s choice of Radha and Sita for Fire, which I criticized as dog-whistle Hindu-hatred at the time in The problem with Fire.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Nevertheless, Rushdie’s and the book’s charm obviously did not fade for the Anglosphere, because it fit into their world-view of India, as an exotic, barbaric country where bizarre things happen. They awarded it a Booker Prize, and later a Booker of Bookers, basically dubbing it the best book to have been written in English in decades.

Rushdie rode his new-found stardom to riches and influence, and became a sort of seer on all things related not only to India, but also literature in general. And he physically moved to the Anglosphere, all the better to suit his new status as an oracle. In this he trod a well-trodden path which, for example, Amartya Sen and V S Naipaul also followed. More on that by and by.

If I am not mistaken, Rushdie’s output after Midnight’s Children is hit-and-miss. His only other work that gained fame (notoriety?) was The Satanic Verses, but that was for other reasons, not literary merit. Since I haven’t read that book, I have no particular opinion on it, and the politics is anyway complicated because of Shia-Sunni issues and internal Muslim issues of blasphemy.

But I am now beginning to wonder if Rushdie is also a one-horse wonder, like Arundhati Roy. I have not read her The God of Small Things, but her trajectory has been similar to Rushdie’s: one hit, instant elevation to global stardom and a bully pulpit from which to spout all sorts of radical ideas. A pliant Anglo media piled on and lionized both, regardless of actual merit.

Furthermore, I am struck by the parallels with Amartya Sen, who also parlayed fame from early works into global demi-god status, marriage into the Rothschild empire, and a Nobel Prize (although technically it is only the Swedish bank’s prize for economics). His theories about the ‘Kerala model’ of development turn out to be pure bunkum, but then who’s counting?

Which reminds me, I suspect the always au courant Scandinavians will now award the Nobel Prize in Literature to Rushdie as a knee-jerk reaction to the stabbing, as they awarded the Peace Prize to Barack Obama basically because, he was, well…. black. Well, bully for Rushdie!

That, of course, is pure speculation. But the comparison with Naipaul is interesting. Both made Britain their home, and both commented on India in less-than-flattering terms. Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness was fierce, disappointed, and condemnatory. But the difference is that Naipaul, over time, became convinced that India was on the rise. Rushdie, so far as I can tell, does not see any future for India, nor anything worth celebrating.

Maybe that’s why I like Naipaul, because he agrees with my prejudices; but objectively speaking his writing has greater insight. Here’s an excerpt from Naipaul’s India Today article on the occasion of the 50th Independence Day.

I think that within every kind of disorder now in India there is a larger positive movement. But the future will be fairly chaotic. Politics will have to be at the level of the people now. People like Nehru were colonial-style politicians. They were to a large extent created and protected by the colonial order. They did not begin with the people. Politicians now have to begin with the people. They cannot be too far above the level of the people. They are very much part of the people. The Nehrus of the world have to give way now to the men of the people...

It is important, in this apparent mess, for two things not to be interfered with. One is economic growth. I would like to see that encouraged in every way. It is the most important news coming out of India, more important than the politics. I would like to see education extended and extended. If this were to happen, and I feel it might, gradually, the actual level of politics will reflect both the economic life and higher level of education.

Rushdie doesn’t have that sympathy, nor the realization that there is something behind the chaos. Fair enough, he is entitled to his opinion. But the point at which I personally became annoyed with Rushdie was when he proclaimed (like Macaulay before him) that there is nothing worthwhile in modern Indian-language literature.

I knew this to be false because there is proof of existence: I had read O V Vijayan, Thakazhi, S K Pottekkat, Basheer, Anand, and M Mukundan in Malayalam; Ashapurna Devi and Tarasankar Banerjee in translation from Bengali; S L Bhyrappa in Kannada and a host of other world-class writers. For Rushdie to blithely denigrate them all showed both arrogance and ignorance, typical of India’s ‘liberals’.

In fact, it is India’s English-language output that is inferior and derivative. With the exception of a few tour-de-force works such as Vikram Seth’s Golden Gate and Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines, there’s nothing unique or noteworthy that will stand the test of time. Even Rushdie’s magical realism, I found out, pales before Vijayan’s 1960’s The Legends of Khasak with its shape-shifting odiyans and the disembodied flying oracular head of the ancient magician Kandath Nair; not to mention Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ 1970s English publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

It also turns out that Naipaul was right: 25 years later India is finally on an upward trajectory (that graphic from the FT is interesting, although it misrepresents India’s external boundaries). The colonialists are dead and buried, and ordinary men are now taking India forward. With economic growth, everything comes your way; and yes, the education system still sucks, as it’s infested with English and anti-national woke leftism (alas, also derivative and unoriginal).

A Rushdie, steeped in the groupthink of Lutyens and Khan Market, has simply failed to see this, which may mean he lacks the empathy, understanding, and feelings the greatest writers possess.

The children and grandchildren of ‘midnight’s children’, however, see this.And what of the real midnight’s children? Hat tip to @NAN_DINI: they are honoring the flag. They believe.

Now personally, I am a little ambivalent about the ‘fly the flag in every house’ request by Prime Minister Modi. Of course, in my neighborhood in leftist paradise Thiruvananthapuram, hardly anybody took up his clarion call. Besides, I feel a little queasy about the American kitsch of flag-waving jingoism. In addition, flying the national flag from temples bothers me. I believe in the separation of ‘church’ and state; and I honestly think the interference of politicians in temples is an abomination.

But I guess this Magnificent Generation that suffered through fifty years of kakistocratic dynasty mis-governance (see my earlier piece The Nehruvian Penalty: 50 wasted years) deserves to be applauded because they still believe. I do, too, but maybe I am an old cynic.

I am not as old as them, but I remember suffering through those awful years of PL-480 and war and shortages of everything. I left, but then I returned because I, too, do believe.

Giving credit where it’s due, I applaud Rushdie for coming up with the vanity of ‘midnight’s children’ and giving it a lot of airplay. But I’m afraid they, and their children and grand-children, have left Rushdie behind. They have moved on. He hasn’t, like the rest of the Anglo-Mughlai elite. Rushdie, midnight’s child himself, stayed stuck in the past while the others moved ahead. And that can become an avalanche, an irresistible force, if all goes well.

1470 words, 18 Aug 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

The ongoing debate about three Hindi/Urdu films: Lal Singh Chaddha, Shamshera and RakshaBandhan is interesting. Social media is trending calls to boycott all three because they show Hindus and Hinduism in a bad light. They are not all released yet, so in some cases it is the antecedents of the principals, and their prior bad behavior, that is triggering boycott calls.

This is intriguing for several reasons: one is that usually passive Hindus are standing up for their faith in peaceful dissent; two is that cinema has such deep visceral impact that they can manufacture the truth; three is that the financials don’t add up; four is that we may have passed peak Hindi/Urduwood; and five is the persistent hypocrisy of the ‘liberal’ crowd screaming about freedom of expression within weeks after they urged a boycott of The Kashmir Files and grumbled about devout Hindu Nambi Narayanan in Rocketry: The Nambi Effect.

I confess I am not a regular film-goer, especially not someone who habitually watches Hindi/Urdu films, although at one time I was a fan of the New Wave of independent/realist films in Hindi, such as Bhuvan Shome, Albert Pinto, Aakrosh, Garam Hawa, Uski Roti. The last two films I saw in theaters were Tanhaji and The Kashmir Files. This is partly because I find the increasingly Urduized lingo in mainstream films simply incomprehensible. Streaming video’s subtitles do help.

I used to see a lot of Malayalam films. Often New Wave, low-budget, realist films, such as Piravi, Uttarayanam, Kanchana Sita, Vaastuhara, Elippathayam, Swayamvaram (but now I watch mostly mainstream films streamed on OTT). Malayalam mainstream film is where I first encountered what has now become endemic enough to outrage a lot of viewers: the casual or deliberate attack on Hindus and Hinduism.

The specific film that first sensitized me was 1973’s Nirmalyam, which won national awards. The climactic scene has a velichapad, or temple oracle, spitting on the deity at the small, poor Hindu temple that he had served all his life, in despair that his life was ruined, and he falls down dead. Notably, the very fine actor was a Christian named P J Antony. (You might remember another Christian years later in Kerala who was accused of blasphemy and had his hand cut off.)

What staggered me was that you would never see such a scene about any other religion in even the most ‘progressive’ Malayalam films, as it would be blasphemous, and there would be umm… consequences. But in the lexicon of leftist ‘intellectuals’, such a narrative demeaning Hindus is acceptable, and the director/writer went on to win the Jnanpith for his body of work about decadent Nair families: after all, the Akademi was dominated by people with similar views.

I began to notice that Hindu swamis are inevitably portrayed as crooks, rogues or cheats in Malayalam films, whereas Christian padres are uniformly holy and kind, and Muslim mullahs always stern but with a heart of gold. That is a standard leftist narrative. Over time, the narrative has become rigid, and even in fictional retellings of real incidents where an Abrahamic hurt a Hindu, the roles are reversed, so that the villain is always a Hindu.

Over time, as wealthy Christians began to fund the films, their stories began to take center stage, but the motif of Hindu-hatred continued. Now the majority of films are funded by wealthy Muslims, but the Hindu-hatred is unabated. I think this is pretty much the case in Hindi/Urdu films too now, where it is par for the course to mock Hindus, Hindu religious rituals and deities.

The demonization in Malayalam is so extreme that a recent film, Meppadiyan, was attacked simply because it had a staunch and religious Hindu protagonist, and featured a Sewa Bharati-funded ambulance! This is reaching absurd levels of ‘cancel culture’, in effect denying Hindus the very right to exist. It is normalizing the idea of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The twitter handle @GemsofBollywood has documented widespread Hindu-hatred in Hindi/Urdu films, including surprising ones going way back into the 1970s. Certain script-writers specialize in mocking Hinduism; well-known actors too, including those with known sympathies to Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar etc. The evidence is overwhelming, and social media is making ordinary Hindus aware of it, whereas the mainstream media buried it.

That is point number 1: Hindus, fed up with this attack, are reacting in peaceful, legal, Gandhian ways, boycotting them. It is both tactical (“I’ll put my money where my mouth is”) and strategic, because films with their visceral impact have an outsize chance of becoming ‘The Truth’. They mold and cement lasting public perceptions, which is point number 2, as with Hollywood’s creation of massive US soft power.

For instance, there were several films in the works for the 2021 centenary of the Moplah riots and massacres, rapes, and forced conversion of Hindus in Malabar. Most of them planned to show the rioters as heroic figures; but a public outcry forced them to go slow. The only one that seems to be finished is sympathetic to the Hindu victims: it is From River to River (Puzha muthal puzha varey), and it is apparently planned for release.

Obviously, boycotts will hurt films’ revenues, which brings up point number 3: it is not clear that things are on the level. There are hundreds of films being produced in Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Hindu and Urdu, and the vast majority of them will fail at the box office. So why are they being produced in the first place, if they incur losses? The obvious answer is that they are a front for financial hanky-panky, most likely money laundering.

No, the financials simply don’t add up: something is fishy. Some films report massive collections in China. Which could mean Chinese money (or money from third countries) is being laundered for other, sinister, purposes. Similarly, some ‘house-full’ shows run to near-empty theaters, but they show pucca accounts to the tax authorities: lo, money has turned ‘white’.

Thus point 4: that we may have reached ‘peak Hindi/Urduwood’. There are two good reasons to believe this. One is the success of films from outside that camp, eg. Bahubali, RRR, Pushpa, KGF, indicating that the film-going public is fed up with Hindi/Urduwood. I am personally not a fan of the excesses of RRR, preferring realism in historical times, but I understand its value as pure entertainment (and I loved the fantasy of Bahubali, a modern masterpiece set in the mythical past).

Unlike RRR (which gained critical and apparent market success in the West), the Mumbai industry has not produced a single global hit… ever. That’s partly because of its dubious ideology, and partly because of lack of originality – almost everything is a second-rate parody of some Western film, as I expect Lal Singh is, although in its defense, at least it isn’t stealing intellectual property, being an authorized remake.

Another reason is that, in addition to illegal hawala transactions, in recent times Hindi/Urduwood has depended on selling its output to the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Disney. They have managed to convince OTT channels that their product sells well in India, thus in effect gaming the OTT guys into paying good money for not only anti-Hindu but also anti-India trash.

That gravy train is now grinding to a halt. Slowing subscriber uptake and plunging valuations have forced Netflix et al to take a hard look at what actually sells: the carte blanche to local partners will end. The Financial Times had a detailed article on this titled The Great Netflix Correction: loss of subscribers throws streaming business model into question.

The growing and visible ruckus about Shamshera etc, and several recent films that bombed badly, means that Hindi/Urduwood will have a hard time monetizing deadbeat scripts that piss off the public, as the OTT folks will ask more penetrating questions about viability and return on investment. There will be more demand for the likes of patriotic Family Man on Amazon Prime. Amazon with its billions is less troubled than Netflix and Disney, but it will surely also ask hard questions.

Finally, point number 5: the hypocrisy of the ‘intellectual’ ‘liberal’ class of India. They are quick to shout down and ‘cancel’ anything that they do not like (remember the ‘ghar wapsi’ dramas?), but when the same happens in reverse, they play the victim card. Not any more, folks. The NYT and WaPo may buy your crocodile tears, but the average film-goer is on to you. You have to make money the old-fashioned way, by earning it, not by arranging a suspension of disbelief.

1450 words, 6 Aug 2022 updated 7 Aug 2022.

Errata: Corrected the name of the Nirmalayam actor to P J Antony. Earlier, I had mentioned it incorrectly as ‘Joseph’.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/from-caatsa-waiver-for-india-to-chastened-visit-to-saudi-arabia-why-biden-is-making-conciliatory-noises-10961801.html

Samuel Johnson once said: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully”. Going by POTUS Biden’s recent hyperactivity, it seems that the prospect of imminent electoral catastrophe has the same effect. For, the hitherto imperious Democrats have been backpedaling so furiously that it is a wonder to watch.

Consider just a few events: the importunate, chastened visit to Saudi Arabia (after having trashed it for the Adnan Khashoggi murder); the CAATSA waiver for India (after blood-curdling threats by the sorely missed Daleep Singh et al regarding Ukraine); and the noises being made by several parties about bringing hostilities to an end in Ukraine.

Behind all these is the realization that pandemic management has been royally screwed up (the much-vaccinated and Pfizer-oral-vaccine-medicated Biden himself caught the Wuhan virus), and that Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak et al surreptitiously funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan was a major mistake. To be fair, even formerly lionized New Zealand now has significant numbers of covid deaths, but that is hardly comforting to Americans.

Printing trillions of dollars as the panacea for covid was an even greater mistake, because the blowback has been raging inflation at 9.1%, hitting the average voter in the pocketbook. I personally endured the previous bout of high US inflation in the late 70s, but as a poor student it didn’t affect me much; as a family man I am sure I would have been pinched badly if I were a US resident and voter now

. I remember petrol at $1-2, not $5 as it is now.

This does not bode well for the Biden Democrats in the November midterm elections.

Inflation is not fun, as the Turkish voter is also finding out. Someone will take the blame.

I don’t think blaming Vladimir Putin for inflation is quite working; nor is blaming Donald Trump, who, after all, was the only recent POTUS who didn’t go to war. Biden’s ratings may continue on a downward trajectory. The abortion rights issue roused some of the faithful, but I don’t think this has staying power till November.

Thus the U-turns, amusing to the impartial observer.

The energy squeeze (and related inflation) explains the Saudi visit. The European Union, in particular Germany, is in bad shape, as is evident from the Euro dropping to a historical low of parity to the dollar. Germany’s GDP shrank for the first time in, well… a long time. If there is no renewed supply of Russian gas, Europe is going to freeze this winter. So it is imperative for NATO to beg or cajole or threaten OPEC, especially the Saudis, into increasing production.

There had earlier been the unedifying spectacle of Biden seeking help from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and even Iran, all of whom his staff had demonized earlier. If I am not mistaken, the Saudis and the Venezuelans literally refused to take his phone call, which is humiliating.

There is a more subtle reason the Saudis are important to Biden: petrodollars. Who outside the US is going to want all those trillions printed by the US Fed other than to buy petroleum products? The fact is that, having been lured by the siren-song of the Chinese, the US has de-industrialized to such an extent that there's not much global demand for dollars to buy American goods, except for armaments and high technology.

If petroleum were to be traded in any other currency than the US dollar, it would depreciate, maybe even collapse. That is a scary prospect, which could trigger a serious global recession. Saudis have to be mollified and/or terrified so they don't even think of accepting other currencies in payment. Both Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein talked about accepting payment in Euros etc, and we all know what happened to them.

Besides, there is an interesting little trick: the ‘Tipu Technique’. I believe the British tacitly encouraged Tipu to invade and loot the temples of Kerala, which had grown rich through centuries of lucrative spice trading. The British saw this opportunity, and allowed Tipu to haul the loot to Srirangapatnam. Then they killed him, and took all the riches in one fell swoop instead of piecemeal. And the clever British came out smelling of roses, as the good guys.

They also charged the entire cost of their war with Tipu to Travancore, paupering the latter, while maintaining the fiction that they were ‘protecting’ Kerala. Absolutely brilliant tactics. Nice transfer of wealth from India to Britain.

This is similar to the American playbook in 1973, when OPEC suddenly tripled oil prices. The US didn’t invade, which is a surprise. Why? The reason is that though the US also had to pay higher prices (consumers and industry felt the pain), the Deep State (and the US economy) made most of it back by selling weapons aplenty to OPEC. It was, and is, a zero-sum dollar-recycling game for them.

But it was, and is, also a massive transfer of wealth to OPEC from developing countries who could least afford it. The Third World took it on the chin. Once again, brilliantly done.

Thus it is imperative for the US to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia. Moral grandstanding by the Democrats has reached a point of seriously diminishing returns.

Onwards to the CAATSA (Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act). It is intended to deter other countries from doing things the US administration of the day doesn’t like, as in the fashionable ‘social-justice warrior’ tropes of the day, although sanctions are clearly a blunt instrument. India was threatened with these because it is buying Russian SA-400 anti-missile defense systems, instead of US analogs like THAAD and Patriot.

As Gautam Sen of the London School of Economics said in a penetrating commentary on Why the West is so uncomfortable with a rising India and happy to sponsor its enemies, India is important to American plans for continued world dominance, unfortunately in a negative way as a permanent vassal, a low-caste neo-feudal flunky that exports raw materials and labor and imports manufactured goods.

And weapons, especially weapons. There has been a full-court press on India to buy increasing amounts of US armaments, and the Ukraine war provided a good excuse to bully India (which is easily shamed by the West chiding it) into dumping perfectly good Russian weapons like the SA-400 (and presumably the Indo-Russian joint venture, BrahMos).

India becoming a minor exporter of weapons (not just a big consumer) is not part of the plan. India has been the third-biggest weapons buyer in the world, accounting for 11% of global purchases in the recent past. Reversing itself on bullying India to buy nothing but American weapons is another tactical U-turn by the US.

Evidently Atlanticist-minded Biden is not serious about the Indo-Pacific, as seen in his evisceration of the Quad. But it must have dawned on his foreign policy types that India and Japan are the cornerstones of any possible response to China’s rampant imperialism in the region. Besides, India has endured American sanctions and technology denials before (supercomputers, cryogenic engines) without collapsing; and probably will do so again.

On balance, better not to piss India off totally. But Biden has no love lost for India: it was his Biden Amendment that messed up India’s cryogenic engine deal with Russia, which is the central theme of the movie Rocketry: The Nambi Effect. I wrote long ago about this in Who killed the ISRO’s cryogenic engine?, as it happened in my hometown. It ruined eminent aerospace engineer Nambi Narayanan’s career and delayed India’s heavy rocket GSLV by 19 years.

As far as the Ukraine war is concerned, even the war-mongering Deep State mouthpiece The Economist, which was gung-ho in the beginning, is now making conciliatory noises. Foreign Affairs, a notably optimistic outlet, had a story titled Ukraine’s Implausible Theories of Victory: The Fantasy of Russian Defeat and the Case for Diplomacy.

The fact is that Russia has (certainly in the short run) weathered the vaunted sanctions rather well, and the rouble is the best-performing currency against the dollar. The unintended consequence of the war has been widespread pain, especially in the ‘First World’, that is, Western Europe and North America. It would be better, as India has been saying all along, for there to be a negotiated settlement.

A stalemate is still a win for Russia, as it has captured the disputed Russian-speaking parts of eastern Ukraine, created a land bridge to Crimea, and now controls the ports on the Sea of Azov. That is the most likely outcome, as Europeans tire of the war, and Biden’s plans to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian seem to have unraveled.

It is time for the Great Reset. And that may not help the wokes; they are being consigned to the trash-heap of history at a record pace. It is the end of the Woke Century, after just a year and a half. And deservedly so.

1500 words, 25 July 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by Swarajya magazine at https://swarajyamag.com/world/does-roe-v-wade-foreshadow-the-end-of-the-american-dream

There are only two US Supreme Court judgments deemed epoch-making enough to be called ‘landmark’ every time they are mentioned. One is Roe v Wade, and the other is Brown v Board of Education. Both favorite liberal causes, one about abortion and therefore about womens’ rights; the second about ending systemic black segregation in education, which had a signal impact on the rest of their Civil Rights movement.

On the face of it, both were unexceptionably positive. Roe surely reduced the number of young women bleeding to death when some backstreet quack terminated their pregnancies with a coat-hanger. Brown made it possible to end the ‘separate-but-equal’ idea of racial segregation.

When the SCOTUS overturned Roe v Wade recently, that was another landmark. There are legitimate questions as to whether things have regressed badly in the US: the worry is that whatever women have managed to achieve over a century, in what is frankly a conservative Abrahamic patriarchy, is suddenly in jeopardy. Is the US going back to Stepford Wives and suffragettes struggling for the vote?

It is also true that despite decades of protests and hard work, and Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, the American woman still has miles to go. Despite the Pill and the sexual revolution and equal rights, I believe the average woman gets paid only about 70-80% of what an average man gets paid for the same job: not very different from the Biblical worth of 30 shekels to a man’s 50. Vast numbers of women struggle in single-parent households.

Curiously, American women, despite failure. bravely export their feminism. This is a sort of recursive feudalism, where white men and white countries treat white women and non-white (‘Third World’) countries as lower castes they are entitled to dominate. And the white women market their nostrums to Third World women as the ‘White Woman’s Burden’. An entire cottage industry of grifters and true believers is now offering these panaceas to India..

What is bizarre is that Professor S N Balagangadhara in “What Does It Mean to be an Indian?”pointed out thatthis is all old hat for Indians. India has been suffering from a surfeit of identity politics for half a century and the results are not pretty.

This stuff is not going to end well for the US. But it’s also true that their framing of issues elsewhere is laughable: and here’s a sarcastic take on the kind of breathless negativity the US media applies to other countries.

The US Supreme Court is providing a backlash to an excessive move to the Left by the entire political class. That is a benign interpretation. There is a more malign interpretation of a wholesale retrogression by the Court (and some politicians) that will take the US back to some benighted era of racism, bigotry and unabashed patriarchy.

The fact is that the SCOTUS has in quick succession issued several significant rulings: Roe, then it refused to curtail gun rights, and most recently, it ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot regulate greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change. In a single week, it has hit three of the Left’s hot buttons: abortion, guns, and climate change.

This may suggest a sharp ideological shift engendered by ex-POTUS Trump “packing the court”. In that case, given SCOTUS judges don’t retire until they die or quit, the Left is in for a long dry spell. Which is a good thing. They have driven the average US voter to distraction with their gender antics, climate fanaticism, law and order craziness, victimhood narratives, fiscal imprudence, and tendency to go to war on what appears to be a whim.

Therefore, if it is a useful corrective to deranged Left certainties, it should be welcomed.

On the other hand, some observers, including Indians living in the US, have painted a darker picture of regression to some mythical golden past, which would have been golden mostly for white males. I defer to Indian-Americans on this as they live it, and two of them I follow had warnings for all of us.

The first, a finance man, wondered if the US will revert to a point where immigrants, especially non-whites, would not be welcome. It reminded me of the 1900-era decisions that a) offered citizenship only to ‘Caucasians’ to exclude Chinese, and b) when some Indians got naturalized on the basis of being ‘Caucasians’, they amended the rule to restrict it to ‘white Caucasians’, thereafter revoking their citizenship.

The second, a journalist, painted a picture where the coastal ‘liberals’ were being overwhelmed by rural, white, working-class voters (he didn’t call them that, but he did mean ‘rednecks’).

Both are voicing a concern that cannot be ignored. There were, for example, the shooting deaths of two Indian-Americans in their new SUVs just this week: 25 year old Nakka Sai Charan on a freeway in Baltimore on June 22nd, and 31 year old Satnam Singh, in Queens, New York on June 28th. I also remember a spate of shootings of Telugu-speakers in the US a few years ago.

An America that reverts to its undeniably brutal and racist past would be extremely unfortunate. Its soft power will diminish, and its standing in the world will diminish as a result. Its institutions, including the SCOTUS, have been held up as role-models all over the world. They all seem to be under attack: e.g., the SCOTUS, once held in breathless reverence, is now being berated by many Americans on the Left.

The Federal Reserve is another. I remember times when its chairmen like Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan were spoken of in hushed tones, and their every utterance was pored over as though they were magic incantations that had the power to move markets. Many observers treated them as though they were as inscrutable as the Kremlin or the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Greenspan’s reputation was ruined after the 2008 crash; and now, along with POTUS Biden, the hapless Jerome Powell, and his immediate predecessors are all being criticized for having failed to anticipate or prevent roaring inflation, and it is feared, an imminent Recession.

The NIH, FDA and other medical bureaucracies also suffered loss of face as the result of the Wuhan virus. Francis Collins and especially Anthony Fauci were accused of gross irregularities including being on the payroll of Big Pharma, and of secretly funding biowarfare research (‘gain of function’) in Wuhan. Like The Lancet and the NEJM, they too suffered loss of credibility.

If one were to extrapolate from all this, it seems like a fin-de-siecle malaise is afflicting all of America. Is it really the end of the American Century, despite its extraordinary endowment, with all the resources of a vast continent, and its human resources constantly renewed by the best and brightest from around the world? As someone who loves the US, I hope this isn’t so. I hope this is a passing phase brought on by bad politics and the military-industrial complex. I really hope this is not the end of the American Dream.

1173 words, 30 June 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/requiem-for-a-japanese-statesman-who-loved-india-abe-shinzo-10896211.html

Abe Shinzo will be remembered as Asia’s greatest 21st century statesman. He recognized early that the Indo-Pacific will (re)occupy center stage as it did throughout most of history, barring a brief Atlanticist interregnum. And then he did something about it, by proposing the Quad and the “free and open Indo-Pacific”. He realized that China would revert to imperialism, and would have to be contained.

Abe-san understood that America would withdraw into its comfort zone (“Fortress America”) as its economic and military dominance diminished. It was up to Asians to defend themselves, and not depend on cross-Pacific partnerships. This may have driven his nationalist sentiments. Japan, with its proud history, could not forever be anybody’s junior partner. It would have to assert itself, and it could no longer be hobbled by the pacifist Article 9 imposed by the US, that prevented it from arming itself.

All of this has come to pass, more or less. After Obama’s content-free “pivot to Asia”, Biden’s obsessions with Russia, Ukraine and AUKUS, and China’s consistent saber-rattling along its entire periphery, it is evident that the old “liberal, rules-based international order” with its Euro-American bias can no longer protect Asia’s democracies. A muscular Quad, or even an ‘Asian NATO’ is necessary.

This is critical for India’s very survival, and Abe helped turn around Japan’s official attitude towards India. Even his grandfather, former Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, had been positive towards India, but Abe-san turned out to be a true friend. Under him, relations bloomed; and from a stance of anger at India’s Pokhran blasts, Japan has now become India’s most, and in fact only, trusted partner.

This endeared Japan’s longest-serving PM, Abe-san, to many Indians. He believed in India, and it showed. So much so that some of us are in personal mourning. India has lost its best friend, and in a world where it has no friends, that is a tremendous loss: even after he resigned the PM position on health grounds, Abe-san continued to generate goodwill for Indo-Japanese partnerships. The last time the death of a foreign leader affected Indians so much was when John F Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

Prime Minister Modi put it well in a personal note, “My friend, Abe-san” https://www.narendramodi.in/my-friend-abe-san-563044. He also declared a day of national mourning.

Among his greatest gifts to us and his most enduring legacy, and one for which the world will always be indebted, is his foresight in recognizing the changing tides and gathering storm of our time and his leadership in responding to it. Long before others, he, in his seminal speech to the Indian Parliament in 2007, laid the ground for the emergence of the Indo-Pacific region as a contemporary political, strategic and economic reality - a region that will also shape the world in this century.

There is a starkly different, and possibly grossly unfair, characterization of Abe-san in the US media, as some kind of ultra-nationalist. The left-leaning NPR was positively churlish. But then this goes back to the Manichean/Abrahamic “with us or against us” dualism put about by US sources. They portray Japan as being particularly wicked, with Pearl Harbor as Original Sin, and the “Yellow Peril” as being particularly dangerous, deserving of the ultimate horror of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Remarkably enough, this was along the same lines as the vitriol from China.

I can understand China being extraordinarily mean. That’s just par for the course. But an American outlet saying this is a little surprising, that too a public-sector, publicly-funded, non-commercial entity. Are there wheels within wheels?

But wait, here’s more:

Growing up in India, I too was subject to this negative barrage, but I had the advantage of reading Malayalam translations of Tanizaki, Kawabata and Lady Murasaki in my teenage days. I understood Japan as a unique but Dharmic civilization with integrity and codes of honor. Later, I read about Subhas Bose’s perspective on imperial Japan, and its support for the Indian National Army. Many years later, I went to Nair-san’s Indian restaurant on the Ginza in Tokyo: he had been Rash Behari Bose’s interpreter.

The dichotomy of reactions persists. The Western-Chinese narrative against Japan was one of convenience; on the one hand, the Chinese realized that they just needed to shout “Rape of Nanjing”, and the Japanese would give them money to shut them up. On the other hand, the famous “liberal rules-based international order” (see my deconstruction thereof at

) consistently tried to keep Japan down as a low-caste vassal even when it was the world’s second largest economy.

There was an enormous fuss about the fact that Abe-san visited the Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial to Japan’s war dead. I could never quite understand this. Every country is entitled to remember its warriors, and most do, with gratitude. Why is it that Japan, alone, was prohibited from doing so? In 2019, I visited the shrine myself. It is a stately, mournful, quiet place of introspection. It has a magnificent torii, a museum, and a shrine. It is pure gaslighting to claim this place is somehow loathsome.

And it has a memorial to Justice Radhabinod Pal, the Indian jurist who was part of the War Crimes Tribunal post World War II. He was the only dissenting voice in what he more or less said was a kangaroo court. Its intention, from the victors’ point of view, was to extract revenge rather than to arrive at the truth about the war. If some Japanese military men were deemed war criminals, were William Calley of My Lai and Henry Kissinger who ordered the carpet-bombing of neutral Cambodia any less?

It was an honor for me to stand before Justice Pal’s memorial.

Many older Japanese are grateful to Justice Pal for what he did then; Abe-san, though he was born a few years after the trials, may have heard from his grandfather Kishi-san about it.

There are several other connections to India. I used to visit Japan frequently on business in the 1990s, and I found a number of links old and new. Kabuki, for example, is rather similar to Kathakali in concept. Sanskrit is still chanted in Japan’s Buddhist temples, and they write it in the Siddham script that is extinct in India, but seen in temples in Japan.

I found actual Devanagari written on the Peace Bell in Hiroshima: it is one of the sutras that constitute prayers for the dead.

In Nara, where Abe-san was assassinated, there is the famous great bronze Buddha in the Todaiji temple. In the adjacent park, where a lot of tame deer roam, there is also a reproduction of the Ashoka Stambha, the Lion Capital of Sarnath, the emblem of the sovereign republic of Bharat/India.

The links between India and Japan go back a long way, at least to Daruma, or Bodhi Dharma, the preceptor of the Zen school of Buddhism, who took kalari payat and Buddhist philosophy to the Shaolin monastery in China, around 500 CE. He was reputedly a Pallava prince, who embarked from Muziris or Kodungallur in Kerala. There is the famous Zen koan, “Why did Bodhi Dharma go east?”.

Is that why Abe-san came west to India? To repay an ancient debt?

Moksham praptirastu, Abe-san. You were a good man. We miss you.

1150 words, Jul 9, 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/india/a-tale-of-two-supreme-courts-best-practices-from-the-us-and-india-need-to-be-adopted-10875201.html

I must confess a little shamefacedly that I watched the godawful fuss in the US following the SCOTUS’ overturning of Roe v Wade with some smugness. That was because, at long last, the Supreme Court of India finally threw the book at Teesta Setalvad, R B Shreekumar, Sanjiv Bhatt et al, in what had long been a travesty of justice. I began to think that maybe the Indian system, although glacially slow, has a thing or two to teach the much-ballyhooed Americans.

Sadly, my joy was short-lived. Within a week, there was the spectacle of a two SC judge-bench in India harshly criticizing Nupur Sharma. They denied her plea to bundle various FIRs filed in far-off places like Calcutta, expressed personal opinions not germane to the plea, and lectured her on how a blasphemy allegation against her was her fault. They had apparently made up their minds without considering any evidence.

I am properly chastened, and I am eating crow. Hubris before nemesis. I should have known. India’s institutions are severely compromised. Even the CJI implied in a speech in the US that India’s institutions are less developed because India is not a “mature democracy”.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Earlier, I used to stand in awe of the Indian judiciary. My great-uncle was a Chief Justice, and a family friend was on the Supreme Court. Two friends are or were High Court justices. I have always had a good impression of them. But over time, I began to see problems in the Indian system, and I wrote in 2018 about urgently needed judicial reform in Can We Fix the Deeply Troubled Judiciary?. The PIL (Public Interest Litigation) system has been weaponized, for one thing. The backlog of cases is daunting, for another.

Several years later, the same problems have gotten worse, including structural issues about the Supreme Court straying far beyond its remit of interpreting the Constitution. But in India, a judge recently condemned ‘social media’ for alleging that he had violated both decorum and propriety in what an impartial observer might consider extraneous comments.

In the US, those who were upset with the SCOTUS’ action roundly abused it; for instance an Indian-origin politician named Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal. I don’t know about the merit of her argument (and based on her ultra-woke-ness, it may have none), but it is very interesting that she could say rude things like this about the court and judges. In India, draconian ‘contempt of court’ provisions would be applied, and the critic jailed, for even mild criticism..

That is one of the differences between the US judiciary and the Indian. There are several others. To begin with they are a) selection, b) tenure, c) ambit/remit and jurisdiction, d) appraisal and termination.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Selection and Accountability

In the US, quite a few judges are elected: I have seen their names on election billboards, and so far as I can tell this is for state judge positions. That sounds odd to Indians partly because the US is a federation of states, whereas India is a union, and that makes a difference. Anyway, I am under the impression that most judges in say, the California state judiciary, are directly elected by the public.

On the other hand, federal judges are appointed by the government, but they also have to go through a confirmation process wherein they are basically grilled by the Senate, i.e. the equivalent of the Rajya Sabha. Thus, elected officials representing individual voters do ‘elect’ the judges. This brings in a level of accountability.

There is the obvious flaw that a determined government can “pack” the courts with people they like, especially if they have an ideological ax to grind. This only works, of course, if the Executive Branch can convince a majority in the Senate, i.e. the Legislative Branch. In fact, it is alleged, and it is likely, that ex-POTUS Trump packed the courts with people he liked.

Even then, it is hard to make the case that the US Supreme Court is representative of public opinion. Look at how the old school tie works, and how a discreet endorsement here and there might have worked.

In India, it is much worse. Judges themselves select new judges, and will not tolerate the Executive branch or Legislative branch getting involved in this. So far as I know, this is unique in the whole world. When the Indian Government suggested a National Judicial Appointments Committee (NJAC) that would have input from the other branches, the judicial branch shot it down claiming it was unconstitutional.

I wonder if a National Judicial Service is a good idea, because the obvious rot in the Indian administrative services gives one pause.

Common sense suggests a selection mechanism where there is a level of outside input. Without that, there is every incentive to promote friends and relatives of current judges. In fact, it turns out that many current Supreme Court judges are indeed related to former judges or politicians. It would be better to adopt the US system of confirmations by the legislature following a nomination by the government, of course with advice from the judiciary.

Tenure

Once selected, a US Supreme Court judge is in place for life, until he/she retires voluntarily, or dies, or is impeached. This means judicial appointments can have a very long impact, because a judge may be on the SCOTUS for fifty years. But judges have also been known to change in office, for instance moderating extreme views they might have entered with.

In India, Supreme Court judges retire at 65, state High Court judges retire at 62.

On the face of it, this seems like a more sensible system, because the judges are still relatively young and vigorous while on the court. However, there is a pernicious loophole: retiring judges are then absorbed into other positions, which means there is an incentive for them to write judgments that make them attractive to possible future employers.

Judges get such substantial pensions and other privileges that it would not be a hardship to place a moratorium on them accepting post-retirement employment. In the US case, it is unlikely that a SCOTUS judge would take up post-retirement employment, even though I wonder if they are explicitly forbidden from doing so. (Even post-retirement POTUSes don’t take up new jobs. They just sort of fade away).

A via media on tenure may be a better idea: raise Indian judges’ retirement age to, say 70, considering that people are healthier and live longer these days, and that they have valuable expertise, but strictly forbid any post-retirement employment of any kind, including commissions, arbitration, etc.

Ambit/remit and jurisdiction

In my earlier essay, I pointed out the need to bifurcate the top court and to clearly specify its scope. Here the US structure is clearly superior, and could be adopted more or less in toto.

For, in the US, the Supreme Court hears Constitutional cases, and only Constitutional cases. All other cases go elsewhere: Federal Circuit Courts that are courts of appeal, and Federal District Courts that are trial courts.

I think this fine distinction can be ignored, and India should institute four regional Courts of Appeal that will hear cases that exceed the state High Courts’ jurisdiction, for instance inter-state disputes.

One of the issues today is that the SC seems whimsical in what cases it decides to hear, and what it drops. For instance, it declined to hear a case brought by Kashmiri Hindus about their genocide saying the matter was too old, but paradoxically it agreed to hear a case about the Mahatma Gandhi assassination, even though that was much older. And it likes to take up cases on cricket!

Besides, certain influential lawyers (and certain NGOs) can get the SC to hear their clients at midnight, while others languish for decades.

There must be clear guidelines provided by Parliament perhaps through a Constitutional Amendment. This should also put paid to such quaint notions as “constitutional morality” (Constitutions are not moral documents) or “original intent”, the US version of “basic structure” (who knows what was going on in the minds of the Constituent Assembly; only what they wrote down can be discussed).

In addition, the PIL mechanism should be dropped, and all cases required to be filed at the District or Magistrate court, and they should bubble up through the system in case they have merit. It is deeply offensive to watch those with deep pockets, especially malign foreign-funded NGOs, getting their way with little effort by just waltzing directly into the SC.

Appraisal and termination

Judges are extremely important members of society, and the Supreme Court in particular is the last refuge for a common man. There should be mechanisms to ensure that the judiciary does not go off on tangents, but that they are working towards the common good of the nation.

An ancient judge was executed and flayed alive. His skin was used to upholster a judge’s chair. What is more, his successor, his son, was forced to sit in that chair, on his dead father’s skin, to deliver his judgments. That is barbaric, but it does make a point. Judges must be immaculately neutral and scrupulous.

So what is the metric for appraisal? In India, one should be the quick disposal of cases. Pendency is a huge problem, and a good bit of it is because of too few working days: too many holidays, and a two-month vacation in summer and a two week vacation in winter. These days there is no reason not to run the courts in multiple shifts, including a night shift. And most work should be done online, so that litigants needn’t waste time waiting around courthouses all day.

There should be clear Key Result Areas, and judges need to be measured on meeting them. These metrics can be determined by Parliament through a Constitutional Amendment. Justice delayed is justice denied, after all.

What if a judge fails in these metrics, or in other ways? There was a High Court judge, with the memorable name of Karnan, who was sent to six months’ imprisonment for contempt of Supreme Court. The rules for impeachment should be made more transparent. At the moment, it looks like judges can close ranks and prevent impeachment, or at least make it very difficult in India, and possibly even in the US.

There has been only one successful impeachment of a SCOTUS judge so far as I can tell: one Justice Samuel Chase in 1805. But the US senate acquitted him, so he returned to service. I am not aware of a single Indian judge who has been impeached, but surely some deserve to be.

While India’s democracy “matures”, there is nothing wrong in taking some lessons from the US about what works. There is no need to import everything wholesale, but pick and choose judiciously.

As has been discussed by many, it would be a good idea to also emulate the structure of the US Constitution, a brief document of 10 or so pages. A new Constitution is needed in India, as the prolix version we have now is failing to stand the test of time, as the many Amendments indicate. All the more reason why we need a better-designed Supreme Court to interpret it, and it alone.

1900 words, 5 Jul 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay has been published at https://swarajyamag.com/world/the-rules-based-liberal-world-order-or-whatever-is-coming-apart-at-the-seams

I don’t know about you, but I have long been a fan of the ‘liberal rules-based international order’, although to be quite honest, I have had only a rather vague idea what it meant. It sounded pretty good, though. I mean, how could any reasonable person be against ‘liberal’, ‘order’, and ‘rules-based’?

It is only lately that I have learned this is strictly a marketing moniker.

It’s a bit like the Moral Majority, which has a nice ring to it, and made waves as a bunch of fiery literalist Bible-thumpers some years ago. It turned out, alas, that they were neither particularly ‘moral’ and certainly not a ‘majority’. If I recall correctly some of its brightest stars were found in flagrante delicto, including one fire-and-brimstone preacher who was caught twice in cars with street prostitutes.

Just like the ‘Holy Roman Empire’ was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

Similarly, the ‘liberal rules-based international order’ is neither liberal, nor rules-based, nor an order. It is essentially a post-World-War-II mechanism to perpetuate the rule of the victors in that conflict, giving them a free pass in world affairs for as long as possible. In particular, it was an arrangement that assumed that the US would remain the paramount global power for the foreseeable future.

That ‘order’ almost immediately fell apart because the Soviets and the Americans started a rivalry for spheres of influence, including the Soviet evangelization of communism. The Americans embraced the Domino Theory and began counter-evangelization of democracy as the antidote to all the evils of society.

This ended up in the Cold War, although to be fair, the US did help a number of its allies to prosper. They were mostly white European countries, but also East Asians. Through the power of suggestion (hurrah, New York Times and Hollywood) we have been led to believe that the world is moving steadily towards the triumph of ‘democracy’, which turns out to be a euphemism for a world where Western European/American dominance is written into law.

Note how this means the United Nations Security Council has France and Britain, who really don’t deserve to be there; but not Germany and Japan, who do, along with Brazil, South Africa and India. Similarly there is a (written or unwritten?) rule that the World Bank’s President has to be an American. This was followed scrupulously until a South Korean (presumably a friend of America) was given the job in 2012. It is now back to an American.

Along the same lines, the IMF’s Managing Director has always been a Western European, with the current incumbent being a Bulgarian former World Bank acting President, with a bit of a chequered past: she was found to have inflated Chinese data to make it look better during her term at the World Bank.

Similar stories, I suspect, can be told about all the other major multinational organizations, for instance the WHO which the Chinese have turned into their fiefdom. The Russians, who probably did more to defeat the Germans in WW2 than anybody else, have been denied much of a role.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

That old caste system has a ‘First World’ consisting of the US and Western Europe, a ‘Second World’ consisting of the Soviet Union/Russia and Eastern Europe, and a ‘Third World’ consisting of everybody else. There have been some minor changes, such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and the UAE becoming honorary (but not full-fledged) members of the First World.

The other side of the picture is a certain feudalism that this caste system perpetrated, and that has persisted throughout the last 75 years. Feudal First Worlders dominate the serfs of the Third World. Today, First Worlders decry the neo-feudalism of the techno-billionaires, without irony and without recognizing that they continue to apply it to the Third World, most notably India, which has been kept out of the NPT, MTCR, and so forth.

And have you noticed that the very term ‘Third World’ has fallen out of favor, to be replaced by the anodyne but meaningless ‘Global South’? This is because the creators of narratives didn’t want to attract unwarranted attention to their straightforward caste system.

In this context, let us recall that ‘caste’ itself is a European construct, derived from the Spanish ‘casta’, and applied most intensely to mixed-race people in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, classifying them based on skin color and thus race. They obfuscate this by conflating it with the Hindu jati system. That is blood libel along the lines of them deeming the Christian Hakencreuz to be the Dharmic Svastika.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Of course, the other side of the picture is that the Chinese have crashed this party, and have pretty much jumped into the First World from the Third World. And they are mounting an intense challenge to the so-called ‘rules-based order’, partly by buying up opinion makers, and quite possibly by interfering in US elections in discreet ways: see recent revelations about the theft of US consumer data by Tiktok.

This ‘order’ is clearly being challenged by China; but the Ukraine war is also showing how tattered it is, especially as the ‘First World’ struggles to contain nasty inflation and to delink its supply chains from China’s vice-like grip.

Ominously, there is increasing political turmoil all over the ‘First World’.

In the US, Biden and company are flailing about trying to find a theme that would cover up consumer anger over food and fuel price inflation, shortages (eg baby food and tampons), and rising law and order problems. Paul Krugman even tried to explain that inflation is an (optical) illusion. They have tried, successively, abortion rights, gun control, and now they are falling back on the tried and tested January 6th outrage. None of this is raising Biden’s abysmal ratings going into November’s midterm elections.

In Britain, Boris Johnson just barely survived a no-confidence motion; the polls forecasting by-election results are not encouraging to the ruling Tories; inflation is a burning issue, and should reach a crescendo in the winter months with sharp rises in fuel costs. And they have a bruising rail strike as well.

In Australia, Scott Morrison was suddenly replaced by Anthony Albanese. To add insult to injury, they have decided to dump the British Queen as Head of State.

In Canada, Justin Trudeau’s image took a beating when he showed a dictatorial streak and walked all over the Freedom of Expression of truckers who were mostly protesting over extra-strict covid regulations.

In New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern came down from the delirious heights of being the Woke Queen when she was forced to abandon her imperious zero-covid policy; and now she’s boycotting the British Commonwealth, preferring instead to attend a NATO meeting as a guest.

The Pacific states are also concerned about China’s security pact with the Solomon Islands.

So much for the Five Eyes, the US’s closest allies. Things are not so hot with the second tier of allies, either.

In France, Emmanuel Macron was re-elected as President, but voters have punished his party in elections, sharply curtailing his room for maneuver.

In Israel, Naftali Bennett’s government has just fallen, and they will go for yet another general election, the 4th in 5 years. Binyamin Netanyahu may yet come back.

In the EU in general, and Germany in particular, there is great uneasiness about the US fiat about cutting off Russian energy imports. The EU has bought the vast majority of Russian exports, while the US bullies mostly innocent bystander India which is a minor sinner. And of course Biden is reluctant to chide China over its purchases.

All this leads me to believe that the already-moribund so-called ‘liberal rules-based international order’, a thinly-veiled vehicle for US-Western European neo-feudalism, is on its last legs. Francis Fukuyama spoke memorably of the ‘end of history’; in fact it is the ‘end of Atlanticism’ that we are seeing.

The future, and indeed the present, is the Indo-Pacific century. India is right to not throw in its lot with the declining West, or the rampaging but shaky China. There is good reason to aspire to be a third pole in a multi-polar world. The end of European and American exceptionalism. The beginning of Indian exceptionalism. No more neo-feudalism, tech or otherwise.

1350 words, June 22, 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at Nupur Sharma, neo-feudalism and the geopolitical squeeze on India

The commentariat has rightly focused on the specifics of the Nupur Sharma incident, such as the alleged blasphemy, the apparent provocation, the possibly pro-forma outrage and the street-veto (cheered on by certain politicians who spoke ominously about tinder and spark).

I couldn’t possibly improve on their perspectives. For instance Utpal Kumar wrote an excellent piece excoriating the cringe-inducing and thunderous ‘liberal’ response https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/nupur-sharma-has-erred-no-doubt-but-why-are-liberals-mutedly-supporting-islamist-challenge-to-her-right-to-life-10767521.html; and I would add that ‘feminists’ were also notable by their absence.

The blood-curdling death threats being hurled at Nupur, the fact that she has been hanged in effigy, and the related riots that appear to be astroturfed, are all deplorable.

I would like to look at the whole thing from the point of view of geopolitics. India is in the process of being squeezed badly.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Soft State

There are a couple of perspectives of interest. One is a throwback to the dark days of 1989-90, when the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban induced the most recent genocide of Kashmiri Hindus, because the terrorists Pakistan had assigned to their Afghan battle were (as they are now) available; and this time, thanks to Biden’s largesse, they have billions worth of weapons.

A related historical incident is the hijack of Indian Airlines 814 in 1999, and what, in hindsight, was a strategic blunder committed by India, with Jaswant Singh personally escorting the freed terrorists to Kandahar, who then proceeded to wreak general havoc.

In both cases, the Pakistani takeaways were predicated on triumphalism. They could see the dictum in their Brigadier General SK Malik’s The Qoranic Concept of War being put in place. “Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end itself.” They could with good reason argue that they were on a trajectory towards a final victory, and urge a final thrust that would bring the house of cards down.

The result was the Parliament attack, 2001. Operation Parakram. Godhra, 2002. And eventually 26/11 Mumbai in 2008.

Pakistan and its friends in India have been nothing if not lucid: they openly declare their intent to wreak havoc on India, balkanize it, massacre people, do gazwa-e-hind. There is every reason to believe that they mean what they say. To pretend otherwise is to repeat the US folly vis-a-vis China: China kept saying what they intended to do, and the US kept pretending not to hear; and we know where that got Obama and Biden.

The point is that every capitulation, every demand conceded, is viewed as a sign of weakness, and invites the next, ever more outrageous demand. India today may be going down this slippery slope, again. As it did repeatedly in the 20th century.

The deep freeze on CAA was a capitulation. The withdrawal of the Farm Bills was a capitulation. And now the silencing of Nupur Sharma is a capitulation. If the State blinks on Agnipeeth, that would be another capitulation. There may well be good reasons for all of them, but the fact is that they perpetuate the notion that India is a Soft State.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Neo-Feudalism and the Serf State

The second perspective of interest is global. Sociologist and demographer Joel Kotkin writes in his latest book The Coming of Neo-Feudalism that we are slipping into a period where there is a stark contrast between the ruling elites, in particular the tech billionaires, and the ruled proletariat. In other words, a return to the European era of feudalism, where a ruling class lorded it over the serfs, who basically had no rights.

On Singularity Radio, leftist and former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, echoes the same sentiment and argues it is ‘techno-feudalism’. He goes one step further to state that Capitalism is dead, whereas Kotkin only goes so far as to argue that a zaibatsu-ization of the US economy is happening, and the economic systems of the US and China are converging.

In a Hoover Institution podcast based on his Foreign Affairs article, geo-strategist John Mearsheimer suggests a convergence from a political angle too. He argues that the difference between a democracy and an autocracy are limited so far as great-power rivalries go, and that the US made an extraordinarily foolish move to enable China to rise. Says he:

Engagement may have been the worst strategic blunder any country has made in recent history: there is no comparable example of a great power actively fostering the rise of a peer competitor. And it is now too late to do much about it.

Put these two arguments together, and you get an interesting picture. On the one hand, feudalism requires an upper class and a lower class. It could be argued that feudalism never in fact went away in Europe, or even the supposedly class-less US. Social mobility there is far less than one has been led to believe, according to research by Raj Chetty, then at Stanford.

There indeed are traditional elites in the US: the East-Coast Wall Street types, for instance. Their kids all go to prep school like Philipps Andover or Exeter, then on to Ivy League colleges, and then on to Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, and eventually maybe to government. This is, for all intents and purposes, an upper caste, which is also largely endogamous. Just try breaking into it: it is well-nigh impossible.

Then there are the lower-caste serfs, the plebeian yahoos who are subjected to ‘manufacturing consent’ on a daily basis. They were earlier manipulated via the big newspapers, but now the tech platforms do an even better job. If you don’t believe me, see how the Overton window has shifted sharply in favor of woke tropes over the last few years. Or, for a more tactical shift, note how the topic of heated discussion has gone from Roe v Wade to school shootings to Jan 6 within days. I am reminded of a line from Pink Floyd, Welcome to the Machine: “What did you dream? It’s alright, we told you what to dream”.

In contrast to Kotkin, I would argue that there is no neo-Feudalism, it is the same lovely practice that never went away. Kotkin also said, in passing, “Silicon valley is full of indentured servants from Asia”. He meant India. He is right, and that is the role of India in the game: producing raw materials, including serfs, for the consumption of the upper caste feudal lords.

Feudalism applies also to nations. Whites have for a few centuries been the feudal lords, and their colonies, especially India, have been the untermenschen serfs. That is their pre-ordained role. As Mearsheimer candidly admits, the US blundered in allowing China to escape from serfdom. And it is too late. But of course it is not too late to contain India! They have no intention of blundering again, or allowing India to rise to be a great power as well.

China has become an honorary upper caste country by bulking up its economy and especially its military. But applications are now firmly closed for membership in this club. Even rich Japan has only a tenuous membership.

It is in the interests of the feudal lord countries to keep the serf countries as they are.

In this, the US and China are as one: there is no way India can be allowed to gain power.

This may explain the fury with which US and European commentators (eg Bruno Macaes) greeted India’s stance in the Ukraine war, of keeping aloof from it. That’s not how a serf state is supposed to act: it should do the Gunga Din tango.

This mindset is why the US has continually armed and financed Pakistan, propping up a failed state that should have been dismantled long ago: it is meant to contain India. This is also why you have the likes of Thenmozhi Soundararajan running rampant in the US shouting about caste. This is why a propagandist like Audrey Truschke is not ejected from polite company. This is why USCIRF, an evangelist propaganda body, gets free rein to pontificate about India.

This is why India is marginalized in the Quad, and the upper caste countries (Anglosphere is by definition upper caste) close ranks to form AUKUS. India must be put in its place, and that’s why a million mutinies are funded by the Ford Foundation and George Soros, and Xinhua and other CCP arms. There are plenty of sleeper cells armed and ready to riot on command.

Add to this mix the oil states of West Asia. Qatar has its giant natural gas reserves, and India is increasingly addicted to LNG including for its newly-minted rural women consumers of cooking gas. Furthermore, Biden is genuflecting at the feet of Saudi Arabia, as Glenn Greenwald writes in a stinging comment on substack.

Having successfully prevented India from buying cheap Iranian oil, and pushing hard to prevent it from buying cheap Russian oil, the Americans are forcing India to be ever-more dependent on West Asian states. Never mind that India has buyer power: of course the sellers have to sell the stuff to somebody to keep their economies ticking over.

Also never mind the fallacy of the argument that India must kowtow to these Gulf states, in case they send back the Indians working there. Well, that is not charity, either. If the Indians were ejected (let us recall what happened to Uganda in Idi Amin’s time), the serfs running everything would be gone, and the feudal lords would actually have to get their hands dirty doing something other than being rich and idle.

The fact that India has not asserted itself forcefully means that the pressure tactics are working: the malign forces have drawn first blood. Chances are that worse is yet to come.

1600 words, Jun 15, 2022 updated Jun 19, 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by Swarajya magazine at https://swarajyamag.com/world/the-quad-will-china-dominate-the-indo-pacific-as-the-us-reverts-to-atlanticism-what-can-india-do

A lot has happened in the last week or two: POTUS Biden’s visit to Japan for a Quad summit and related economic moves; China’s outreach to Pacific Islanders for security pacts; and the World Economic Forum pow-wow in Davos. In some sense, the Ukraine war and related disruptions have taken a back seat, even though related inflation and shortages are a long-term story.

In my opinion, the Biden Administration is pursuing self-defeating policies as far as the Indo-Pacific is concerned. On the one hand, it may be because (as is the norm in India) one political party wants to undo whatever their rival had done when they were in power. On the other hand, there is a curious lack of historical memory about great-power games: the US seems to be either blase about, or reconciled to, Chinese domination of Asia/the Indo-Pacific.

None of this is good as far as India is concerned. In a harsh analysis of India’s clashes on the Kashmir/Tibet border with China, two anonymous but trenchant critics suggest India has been defeated already: “China-India Border Crisis Has Quietly Resulted in Victory For Beijing’, based on the fact that the Chinese military buildup is well-nigh impossible for India to overcome.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Meanwhile, there is increasing criticism of American involvement in – indeed responsibility for – prolonging the Ukraine war, surprisingly from the pro-Democrat, pro-war pages of the New York Times: “The War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the US Deserves Most of the Blame.” A slightly dated (April 1) article on “The Military Situation in Ukraine” had already given a cogent explanation of how reality on the ground was vastly different from the narrative.

What I fear is that Ukraine will become a quagmire for not only Russia, but also the US. As the NYT op-ed said, it’s not much of a leap from a proxy war to a secret war. The US is rather good at getting into unfortunate messes like this, and then having to declare victory and run like hell: see Vietnam or Afghanistan.

Two brutal articles from Tablet magazine, “Three Big Questions That the American Establishment Got Wrong” and “Wingnuts vs. Factions: The two theories of American government—one fantasy, one reality” purport to show how making bad, often really bad, decisions is par for the course for US administrations, in particular Democrats.

All this presages the possibility that Ukraine will be a tar baby for the US and its NATO allies, and a drain on their national treasuries. It also means that their national attention will be riveted on Russia and Ukraine for the foreseeable future, leaving China free to run rampant in Asia. Democratic Party power brokers are anyway Atlanticists fighting the Cold War all over again.

Let us, therefore, consider the Indo-Pacific from a perspective where the US is increasingly hors de combat. There is this theory of the “three island chains” in the Pacific as first propounded by American John Foster Dulles, according to CSIS.org, which further states that today we have to add two more island chains in the Indian Ocean.

John Foster Dulles is attributed with designating the islands stretching from the Kurils, the Japanese home islands, and the Ryukyus to Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia as the “first island chain” in the 1950s. The second chain stretches from Japan through the Marianas and Micronesia, and the third is centered on Hawaii...

The addition of a fourth and fifth chain in the Indian Ocean would better describe emerging Chinese maritime strategy. Chinese naval planners hope to deny adversaries the ability to operate within the first island chain during a conflict, contest control of the second island chain, and operate as a blue water navy within the third island chain. A new fourth island chain through the middle of the Indian Ocean would reflect China’s ability to challenge its geostrategic neighbor India with dual-use facilities in Gwadar, Pakistan, and Hambantota, Sri Lanka. A fifth island Chain, originating from China’s base at Doraleh, Djibouti, would reflect Beijing’s ability to pursue its developing commitments afar, such as harnessing economic resources, conducting anti-piracy operations, and protecting Chinese living abroad. [emphasis added]

This is alarming, as the ‘fourth island chain’ is basically the ‘String of Pearls’ intended to strangle India and tie it down in the so-called ‘South Asia’, by negating its undoubted geographic advantage of straddling the sea lanes in the Indian Ocean. The Chinese submarine pen at Hainan in the South China Sea, with easy access to the Indian Ocean via the Straits of Malacca, is already a threat to Indian interests and blue-water navy aspirations.

In addition, China is currently in the middle of a furious ship-building frenzy, so they will also have surface ships, including aircraft carriers, capable of projecting force a long way into the Indian Ocean. Just as they have done in the Himalayas, and the South China Sea, China is using ‘below-the-threshold of war’ tactics to build up its capability until one day its foes are forced to submit. Degringolade.

POTUS Biden has made it clear that his administration has very little interest in Asia. He made three trips to Europe before his very first trip to Asia: a quick visit to Japan (and South Korea), where he attended a meeting of the Quad and a coming-out party for the newest American-mooted economic proposal, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. This seems to be too little, too late, after the US exited the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The IPEF also seems like a face-saving measure, and it is increasingly evident that Biden’s alleged new enthusiasm for Asia is as empty as earlier POTUS Obama’s botched ‘pivot to Asia’, which was a lot of hot air with no substance. I also remember with fury Obama’s granting of hegemony over ‘South Asia’ to China: like the Pope once divided the world between Portugal and Spain. As though Obama were dispensing papal bulls.

As Indian geostrategist Brahma Chellaney suggests on Nikkei Asia in “Biden’s empty Taiwan rhetoric reveals Quad’s core weakness”, Biden’s statement about US military support for Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion may be mere bravado.

There are two reasons. The first is that, as Biden’s minions clarified after his alleged gaffe, US military involvement is not within the scope of US agreements with Taiwan and/or China, which maintain the fiction of “One China”. The second is that, given its diminished industrial capacity (China has hollowed it out), the US cannot fight two major wars at once: Ukraine and Taiwan.

To emphasize their disdain for the alleged ‘pivot’, the Chinese sent strategic nuclear bombers towards Japan while Biden was there, accompanied by Russian bombers. As I write this, China has just sent 30 warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense zone. The signals are clear: they threaten to invade Taiwan.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

In the meantime, China is attempting to expand its footprint in the Indo-Pacific. It scored a coup with the Solomon Islands where it signed a wide-ranging agreement. According to a podcast from The Economist, a leaked draft shows that the agreement allows Chinese police and soldiers to be deployed in the Solomons for a broad range of reasons. It stops short of setting up a military base, but only just.

Beyond this, Chinese FM Wang Yi had a blitzkrieg in the Pacific, visiting 8 island nations over 10 days, and on May 30th, he signed agreements in Fiji with a consortium of 10 of them. A draft talked about trade, tourism, security, training of police, forensic labs, and cyber-security, according to The Economist podcast Base Motives? China in the Pacific.

The entire Belt and Road Initiative was a covert effort to gain access to ports, and turn them into Chinese military bases (although it has stalled a little now because of its predatory debt-trap diplomacy side-effects, as best seen in Sri Lanka). Beyond Djibouti in 2017, Gwadar and Hambantota, there are others like Cambodia’s Ream military base where China has facilities.

China is also quite likely causing the sharp spike in global food prices. Economist Shamika Ravi tweeted as follows, and this is a good reason why India did a U-turn on wheat exports: instead of enabling Chinese proxies to buy it up, India will only do government to government deals.

Thus the picture is of a diffident America shuffling off into Atlanticist and Anglosphere dead-ends like AUKUS (Britain brings almost nothing to the picture in the Indo-Pacific), while a more confident China is expanding its reach. Its saber rattling threatens Taiwan immediately, and India, Japan and South Korea more indirectly.

The context of the Quad is also a far cry from what Abe Shinzo first envisaged as a tight military and economic alliance. It is pretty much a mere talking-shop. For instance, it is clear that none of Australia, Japan, or the US will send a single soldier to fight China on India’s behalf on the Kashmir/Tibet border. The creation of AUKUS (there are rumors about JAUKUS with Japan and CAUKUS with Canada as well) basically means India is being left out in the cold. Again. It has to depend on itself. Atmnirbharata.

There is talk of a Quad-Plus, including South Korea and New Zealand. But not Vietnam and Indonesia, which are more significant? New Zealand, especially under woke Jacinda Ardern, is marginal; in fact Australia is also of little interest in the Indian Ocean. There is also political instability in Australia: Scott Morrison was replaced by Anthony Albanese overnight.

I can remember at least five-six Australian PMs in the recent past, including die-hard Sinophile Kevin Rudd. How can you have continuity in such a situation? How can anybody depend on Australia to deliver on Quad? Similarly, Japanese PM Kishida Fumio is a far cry from the sensibly militaristic and nationalist Abe Shinzo.

In the US, the switch from Donald Trump to Joe Biden has meant chaos regarding the Indo-Pacific. And after this November’s elections, it is likely that Biden will be a lame duck: his approval numbers keep hitting new lows, and hostile Republicans are likely to take over the Senate, leading to a war of attrition: bad news for foreign policy.

In the middle of all this political turmoil, it is hard to imagine that the Quad is going to get better.

Meanwhile, the developed nations of the West are merrily carrying on with their old agenda as in the Davos shindig, as though there is no end in sight for the party. Rana Foroohar of the Financial Times sounded a warning, as if one were necessary in the wake of the carnage of stock market crashes and soaring inflation. But no, laissez les bon temps rouler! Let the good times roll!

And that’s exactly what India is up against. The rest of the world (with the possible exception of Japan) does not care. India has to assume it can only depend on itself, Quad or no Quad. It has to build up its military and economic muscle, and industrialize while keeping a low profile. The Thucydides Trap is a likely scenario, and presumably it will exhaust both the protagonists, leaving the door open for India to ascend to the G3 and then to the G1.

1850 words, June 1, 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by chanakya forum at https://chanakyaforum.com/infrastructure-in-the-deep-peninsula-for-national-security-and-self-reliance/

A Swarajya report https://swarajyamag.com/infrastructure/vo-chidambaranar-port-to-expand-with-rs-7200-crore-project-to-compete-with-colombo-and-singapore-as-transhipment-hub about V O Chidambaram port in Thoothukkudi (Tuticorin), TN, and its plans to expand into a container trans-shipment port was interesting. It reminded me of a plan I have mooted for some time (without success so far) about building up logistics infra, industrial capacity and defense capability in the deep south.

Briefly, India’s much-desired success as a manufacturing and export power will be compromised unless there is good transportation infrastructure for both bulk cargo and for high-value, low-weight industrial goods. Today, India’s container cargo is highly dependent on Colombo, Singapore and Dubai for trans-shipment (that is, transferring cargo from the giant motherships to smaller ships). If I am not mistaken, 25% of India’s containers transit through Colombo alone.

Colombo, in fact, depends on India for over 70% of its business. Their existing East Terminal is Chinese-controlled; the proposed West Terminal is apparently taken up by India’s Adani group on a BOT basis. Nevertheless, it is possible to imagine that at a point of geo-political stress, as with Sri Lanka’s troubles today, or if the Chinese decide to embargo Indian containers (as they did without notice for exports of rare-earths to Japan), Indian trade could be badly affected.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

The under-construction Vizhinjam port in Trivandrum, also controlled by Adani Ports, has a proposed capacity of 1.8 million TEUs in the first phase, and 5.3 million TEUs in the second phase. The proposed VOC container terminal at Thootthukkudi will have a capacity of 4 million TEUs. (A TEU or twenty-foot equivalent can be taken to be a single container for practical purposes).

The right solution would be for these two ports to work in coordinated fashion, one on each side of the Peninsula, and not get into destructive competition.

Image courtesy Swarajya Magazine.

Road connectivity Image: Courtesy Google Maps

Rail connectivity (upto Tirunelveli), image courtesy Google Maps

My idea has been a railway line and an industrial corridor linking the two, which are roughly 200km apart by road. Both ports have their advantages, and together they can serve a significant hinterland, and the proposed developments between them can provide a measure of maritime security in an area that has been neglected so far, but will become increasingly critical.

There are three aspects to it: connectivity, a focused industrial corridor, and security.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Connectivity, shipping routes and trunk national rail and road links

Vizhinjam has a multi-modal advantage: the port is only 15 km from a major international airport, Trivandrum, and both the port and the airport are controlled by Adani Ports, so that they could coordinate multi-modal shipment of goods, including at some point, inland waterway transport via National Waterway Three. Thoothukkudi airport is much smaller.

But both are linked to the national trunk routes of the Golden Quadrilateral highways and railway lines passing through Tamil Nadu. So container traffic can be moved between the two with relatively little effort; also upcountry containers from/to Bangalore or Hyderabad or further inland can be moved with relative ease down to either of them without much trouble (the connectivity links for both to the trunk routes are either in place or are being built up).

In terms of the shipping lanes in the Arabian Sea, Vizhinjam has the advantage, as it is only 10 nautical miles away from the main sea lanes. VOC is a bit of a diversion, and unless there is some incentive, very large container ships (12000+ TEU for instance) would hesitate to steam the additional nautical miles. Vizhinjam also has the advantage of draft (undredged 16m). However, the TN government is good at getting things done, so that’s Thoothukkudi’s advantage.

Industrial corridor

There is a surprising industry that could well be the focus of this corridor: aerospace. There are Thumba and Valiyamala in Trivandrum where ISRO has major facilities, including the rocket-R&D facility named Liquid Propulsion Systems Center. There is Mahendragiri in TN’s Tirunelveli district where the rockets are tested at the ISRO Propulsion Complex. Finally the new launch pad is to come up in Kulasekharapattanam in Thoothukkudi dstrict, TN (as a supplement to Sriharikota). All these are within a stone’s throw of each other.

The three could form the end nodes for a dedicated aerospace industry cluster. There is little room for manufacturing in congested Kerala (although the R&D can happen there), but it is possible to acquire large tracts of semi-arid land (this being a rain-shadow region, desalination plants may need to be set up) in Tamil Nadu. India must improve its aerospace industry, both defense and civilian.

There was also talk of Airbus seeking a production facility abroad, but perhaps that opportunity has been lost.

LPSC, Mahendragiri and Kulasekharapatnam of ISRO: Image courtesy Google Maps

India has fallen behind in aerospace; even a developing country like Brazil has its Embraer, and there is no good reason India cannot have a thriving aircraft industry, perhaps in a niche, especially as civilian air traffic is expected to soar in coming years.

In addition, Tejas and Dhruv have gained a measure of scale with induction into the armed forces, and Brahmos is even being exported (its production base is in Trivandrum now). This means an ecosystem of component suppliers has sprung up. There is no question that India needs to continue to develop its own defense systems, both aircraft and missile, as the possibility of damaging sanctions and technology denial has gone up. Atmanirbhar is key.

Maritime defense

Most Indian defense installations have been designed with Pakistan in mind. Thus northwest India and the west coast have been the focus. However, the very real threat of Chinese intrusions into the Indian Ocean needs to be given much more focus now. The Chinese are showing every intent of dominating the Indian Ocean with both surface ships and submarines.

China’s crown jewels (apart from its new aircraft carriers) are the contents of its submarine pen on Hainan island, near Vietnam’s Haiphong. There are increasing activities by submarines in India’s vicinity. India has little protection or early warning on its east coast. This is one of the reasons that there are new naval installations and long-range radars in the Andamans, which lie close to the mouth of the Straits of Malacca.

It would be a good idea to set up an airbase with long-range radar in southern Tamil Nadu too, to keep an eye on what’s happening in the Bay of Bengal/Indian Ocean area. Besides, surveillance with Poseidon P8i type submarine hunter-killer aircraft could be useful. I remember when I worked in Mountain View, California, I could see from my office Orion P3i craft taking off and landing incessantly at Moffett Field.

India does have important assets on its south-eastern seaboard. One example would be the Koodankulam nuclear plant. I suppose Kulasekharapatnam would also be a potential target for hostile forces. Sterlite would have been if only it hadn’t already been sabotaged.

The deep south has not gotten its fair mind-share. It is time to change that, and in ways that will benefit the rest of the country through efficient trade networks, manufacturing clusters, and defense.

1200 words, 30 May 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by swarajyamag.com at https://swarajyamag.com/politics/gyanvapi-discoveries-the-places-of-worship-act-and-what-next

There has been a slew of social media posts about the court-ordered survey of the Gyanvapi premises and what was discovered on Monday, May 16th. As I write this, on Tuesday, there is a case being heard in the Supreme Court as to whether the survey should continue at all.

While all this legal hair-splitting continues, I feel like the kid in the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’, marveling at the gaslighting and make-believe. How much longer will we continue with this charade?

There is not a shred of doubt about whether the Kashi Visvanatha temple was demolished by Aurangazeb. First of all, there is an order (I believe it is called a firman) signed by Aurangazeb himself that directs the destruction of the temple. Nobody has questioned the authenticity of this document.

Second, there is physical evidence: the structure in question has some of its Hindu temple walls still standing, on top of which the Muslim domes have been erected. If you see the building or photographs of it, there is no question: it is a Muslim structure stuck atop a Hindu temple.

Third, there is the preserved local memory of the repeated destruction and reconstruction of the shrine, and the legend that a priest sacrificed himself by jumping into the well with the Shiva Lingam so that it would escape destruction by the invaders. This story is replicated in any number of other temples when attacked, and ancient idols have indeed been found buried in several (see Meenakshi Jain, Flight of Deities and the Rebirth of Temples).

Fourth, there is the well-documented habit of the Abrahamic faiths from West Asia of demolishing the sacred spaces of the Old Religions they conquered, and erecting their own shrines atop them, as the ultimate triumph of their god over the gods of the vanquished. Here are a few examples out of thousands:

Chennai Mylapore Shiva temple destroyed and San Thome Basilica built on top

Ayodhya Ram Mandir destroyed and Babur’s mosque built on top

Aztec and Inca shrines in Latin America destroyed and churches built on top

The Hagia Sophia in Turkey, a pre-Abrahamic (or, ‘pagan’ [sic]) shrine captured by Christians first, Muslims next, turned into a secular space, and now turned back into a mosque

The Wailing Wall in Israel, where the Jews’ Second Temple was destroyed and the Al Aqsa mosque built on top

When Christians recaptured Spain from Muslims, every single mosque was (re)converted into a church, e.g. the famous mosque at Cordoba

So there’s ample reason to believe this is Standard Operating Procedure, and it is done with the express intent of humiliating the conquered. Abrahamics do it to each other, too, as examples 4, 5 and 6 above show. It is a corollary to the fact that Abrahamic religions believe in world conquest.

In other words, there’s nothing to be shocked at what the survey apparently unearthed. If you spent a little time thinking about it, this is precisely the behavior that would have been expected, as well as the dissimulation: the petitions that are designed to keep the evidence hidden.

There is the 1991 Places of Worship Act that is quoted by all and sundry as an effort to maintain ‘communal harmony’. So far as I can tell, this Act, hurriedly put together to assuage liberal ‘guilt’ in the wake of the demolition of the Ayodhya structure in 1991, is a parallel to white liberal guilt over atrocities like slavery, apartheid, etc.

However, the woke sentiment that drove the cut-paste was completely illogical. Whites did do horrendous things to blacks, and therefore should be guilt-ridden. But in India, it was Muslims who did horrendous things to Hindus, and therefore Hindus have no reason to feel guilty. If anything it should be the reverse, but based on past behavior, that is unlikely.

Nevertheless, that aptly named PoW Act exists (although I hear the BJP walked out of Parliament when it was put to vote, and since they have a majority now, they could well repeal it today). Therefore the courts have to rule based on the Act which is in the statute books.

There is a complication: here is a provision from the Act that says it does not apply to “any place of worship that is… an ancient or historical monument or an archaeological site” etc. So does that apply to the Gyanvapi? Presumably that is what the Justice Chandrachud bench will determine. A priori, of course, Gyanvapi is an “ancient or historical monument” and should be outside the purview of the Act.

Doubtless, the courts will choose an interpretation that is in keeping with their precedents; and it is a fair bet that the SC will strike down the lower court’s order to survey the Gyanvapi.

The question is: what then? Especially now that it is said (although not officially confirmed) that the original jyotirlinga has been retrieved from the well?

It has long been argued that Hindus, even though they are painfully aware that tens of thousands of temples have been been destroyed, mutilated etc. as part of the above SOP, would be satisfied with the release of three of the their holiest shrines: Ayodhya Ram Mandir, Kashi Visvanatha, and Mathura Krishna Janmabhoomi.

What is happening, though, is an epic dilemma suited to the Mahabharatha: will the secularist ecosystem allow that to happen, or will they encourage Muslim fundamentalists to dig in their heels? There have already been fiery proclamations by the likes of Asaduddin Owaisi to the effect that “once a mosque, always a mosque till Judgment Day”.

In the Mahabharata, as you doubtless remember, the Pandavas asked first for half the kingdom. Later they were willing to settle for as few as five villages. But the obdurate Kauravas were unwilling to compromise even on that, and this led to the disastrous war.

We have seen earlier how leftist pseudo-historians created problems. The Muslims were willing to relinquish the disused Babri structure, as it had no religious importance to them, whereas it was of great importance to Hindus. The leftists convinced Muslims that they could win them the case; we know what actually happened: the pulling down of the structure; riots, death and destruction.

Chances are that continued intransigence on the part of the secularists/leftists and their encouragement of the most obscurantist Muslims will lead to a hardening on the part of Hindus: instead of being satisfied with the three major temples, they will start demanding that all other temples also be released from occupation and desecration.

In that case, the BJP has no choice other than to overturn the Places of Worship Act. Whether they want to do that is a good question; what the consequences will be is another good question. But the fact is that the Gyanvapi discoveries will force some hard choices.

1111 words, 17 May 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

This essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/world/pyrrhic-victory-even-if-biden-defeats-putin-it-will-be-costly-for-the-us-and-most-of-the-world-10675401.html

Even for someone like me who is very pro-US, the smoke-signals emanating from Washington regarding the Ukraine war are ominous. Even in best-case scenarios, the US may have hurt itself by not focusing on the right foe, which is China, not Russia. More worryingly, the Deep State may have pushed the US into a no-win situation, with the rest of the world suffering collateral damage.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

The announcement of $40 billion approved by the US Congress as aid to Ukraine means the US may get bogged down in what could be a long, grinding war. This adds to earlier leaks that suggest US intelligence and weapons helped sink the Russian flagship Moskva and killed several Russian generals. Does this escalation suggest Vietnam? Afghanistan? And how on earth is Ukraine going to pay back this lend-lease debt? Or will it be forgiven?

Meanwhile, things are beginning to bite the US consumer. The NYTimes tweeted: ”Across the U.S., mothers say they are rationing food for their babies as they search for more formula. Some are driving hours, only to find empty shelves. Online, private sellers are gouging prices, marketing cans for double or triple their normal price.” Remarkable. The US Congress gave Biden $7 billion more than he asked for, while American babies go hungry.

It is possible that the Biden White House instigated this war for two reasons: one, the Military-Industrial Complex’s insatiable appetite for war, more war, and yet more war; two, the irrational Atlanticist fear of Vladimir Putin; For the moment, we can ignore other, more speculative reasons: eg. Hunter Biden’s business affairs in Ukraine, and Chinese infiltration.

The Deep State does remarkably well from war. Brahma Chellaney tweeted: “US's Afghan war was an incredible windfall for US defense firms, five of which alone got a staggering $2.1 trillion.” Of all recent US Presidents, Trump is the only one who didn’t go to war. Is it cause and effect that he got booted out?

The Democrats seem irredeemably Atlanticist, probably because their nerve center is at Harvard, and a lot of them, eg. Brzezinski, Albright, Nuland, Blinken, et al have Eastern European roots and an atavistic fear of the Russian bear. Their generals are re-fighting the Cold War, which is no longer relevant. It would make more sense, Huntington-wise, for NATO (white Christians) to make a tactical alliance with the Russians (ditto), against Asia and Islam.

Both Russia and the European Union are becoming less and less relevant in the world at large. The few hundred years in which Europe, and the Atlantic, bestrode the globe, will in hindsight be seen as aberrations, and reversion to the mean suggests that the Asian heartland and the Indo-Pacific littoral states will once again dominate.

Russia is a walking wounded nation: their demography is collapsing, and eventually they will simply not have the manpower to control their borders. Siberia will be overwhelmed by the Chinese. Russia’s nuclear weapons may be no more of a factor then than they are now in the Ukraine war. It is possible that the US can topple Putin, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory for itself and allies. The only victor will be China.

The European Union continues to be handicapped by its fragmented nature and inability to act in a coherent manner on any subject. In addition, energy is its Achilles heel. The EU estimates, according to the Financial Times, that it will have to spend 195 billion euros in the next five years to free itself of dependence on Russian oil and gas.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Furthermore, they will replace dependence on Russian gas with dependence on American fracked gas. A DW report on the ‘true cost of fracked US “freedom gas”’ points out that hydraulic fracking is banned across most of Europe, so a certain sleight of hand will be needed. The FT also reported that Mario Draghi is now talking about a ‘cartel’ of oil consumers!

Interestingly, US officials have been offering India similar “freedom weapons” with their siren-song of promised independence from Russian weapons. Caveat emptor!

The European relaxation of their once-mighty moral standards regarding global warming are quite risible. The ghost of Greta Thunberg will not be happy. In a sign of what’s to come, FT tweeted: “BlackRock’s decision not to support most shareholder resolutions on climate change represents a big step back. It in effect grants permission to other investors to relax their grip”.

So much for climate change. The new thing is Roe v. Wade, as the November election looms.

In another sign of the damage the war has wrought, Saudi Aramco has just overtaken Apple as the most valuable company in the world. Incidentally, and humiliatingly, both the Saudis and the UAE refused to take Biden’s call asking for higher oil output. Venezuela, and most recently Brazil, have also said ‘No’ to the US request for more energy supplies. This should show how isolated the US really is: only Western Europe and Canada/AUS/NZ are following its diktats.

Meanwhile, US inflation is historically high, but the impact of the war is far worse for developing countries. It is similar to 1973, when OPEC suddenly tripled oil prices. It was hard for developed economies too, but they made money selling things (eg. the US sold weapons) to the likes of Saudi Arabia. It was the developing countries like India that were squeezed badly.

On the strategic front, though, there are other dangers. One is that China may consider this an opportune time to invade Taiwan. Besides, Xi Jinping, damaged by the Covid lockdowns, needs to burnish his leadership credentials for his big coronation later this year (there are also reports that he suffers from a brain aneurysm). If an invasion happens, will the US be able to help defend Taiwan? Even the war-mongering The Economist is skeptical.

Can the US really fight two wars at once? Do they have the capability? Americans remember how the country rallied around their leadership and turned on a dime to beat plowshares into swords when they entered World War 2. Their immense industrial capacity was realigned. Detroit became the arsenal makers of democracy, as Biden put it. Can this happen today?

As the Ukraine war progresses, can the US supply ever more Javelin and Stinger missiles without dangerously depleting its own armory? Even granting that the munitions are ‘smarter’ these days, it is hard to believe that traditional gear like tanks, artillery, and the like can be dispensed with, or that the US has essentially infinite stockpiles of these.

In 1940, according to an Economist podcast, there was a lot of spare capacity in the US industrial sector as it was coming out of the Great Depression. “Cadillac produced tanks, Chrysler made Browning machine guns, Ford… B-24 bombers”. Given the rapid de-industrialization of the US by the Chinese, it is hard to believe this sort of industrial miracle can happen in 2022. The US doesn’t even make semiconductors at scale any more.

Will the US be forced to, out of sheer lack of materiel and will, sit out a potential Chinese capture of Taiwan? What will this do to South Korea and Japan? Will the American-led ‘rules-based international order’ collapse overnight? In addition, will the US dollar-dominated economic system also be damaged?

Thus the dangers of deepening and widening conflict are huge, and the consequences to the US (and innocent bystanders such as India) may be drastic. It would be much better if some ‘jaw-jaw’ were to replace ‘war-war’, and the US were to give up on this quixotic quest to unseat Vladimir Putin.

1280 words, 12 May 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

George Augustine Thundiparambil is a writer and translator dividing his time between India and Germany. He has written a historical novel in English titled Maya and has published many blogs and articles on faith and religion in several Internet forums. He is a partner of Geckolingua Translations International based in Freiburg, Germany.

Germany is the most important country in the EU. Will its reaction to the war set precedents that the entire EU is likely to follow?

Germany has made what appears to be a major U-turn. How much of this is because the new Chancellor Sholz wants to get out from under the shadow of Merkel?

Is this a strategic pivot or a knee-jerk response? Will all this result in slower growth?

Nordstream 2 has been put on hold

Defense spend to go up to the desired NATO level 2% of the budget

$100b funds for the armed forces

2 LNG terminals on the north sea coast to reduce dependence on Russian gas

Sending weapons to ukraine (not 5000 helmets)

Buying F-35 US planes

Will there be re-thinking on clean energy? What about nuclear and coal? 80% to be coming from clean energy by 2030?

But Germany is STILL buying gas and oil from Russia. As is much of the EU. That doesn’t worry the US, but India buying Russian oil is a problem? Why the double stds?

Re-arming germany? Is that wise? Does the country become a potential war monger? How will the rest of Europe view this, in particular France?

A fallout from the war has been the normalization of racism, eg. people said bluntly that blue eyed, blond Europeans mustn’t suffer. (Oh, it’s ok if blacks/browns do?)

India values its relationships with Germany and France. Will there be any negative fallout from all this war hysteria?

George has recently started a YouTube channel for his video podcasts titled Faith for Adults.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/india-is-standing-up-and-defending-itself-but-is-uncle-sam-taking-note-of-it-10565421.html

On the face of it, Indian Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar’s blunt responses to US pressure to toe its line regarding Ukraine are appropriate rebuttals to interference in India’s internal affairs. Because India has generally been reticent (for example in the face of aggressive Chinese statements), the general public has been delighted to see these as an example of a maturing of Indian resolve. I am not so sure.

I have long advocated mutually respectful US-India ties. And I was delighted by the promise of the Quad as a coming together of democratic forces in the Indo-Pacific, especially as an antidote to the rampaging Chinese. However, I was apprehensive about the Biden Administration, because the track record of the Democrats towards India is, well, abysmal.

In previous Democratic Administrations we had the spectacle of Madeleine Albright lecturing India rudely, and the dependably noxious Robin Raphel who was later accused by the FBI of being a Pakistani agent (she was cleared of those charges). The general tendency has been to treat India with disdain, if not contempt, partly as a vestige of Cold War attitudes, the silly Non-Aligned Movement, and inane moralizing by the likes of Nehru and Krishna Menon.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Besides, India was seen as a basket-case (with good reason: humiliating PL 480 emergency food aid was a defining moment, because Indians ate only when US ships showed up with grain that they would normally only feed to livestock). A country that cannot manage its basic food security deserves disdain. But those days are long gone, except in the minds of Atlanticist Cold Warriors: India is now one of the biggest exporters of grain, and will profit from the Ukraine war.

In other ways, too, the power equation between the two countries needs to be re-thought. I am reminded of the story of the court poet of a king in India who wrote a poem comparing his king to the Emperor. He called his king the New Moon and the Emperor the Full Moon. Furious, the king wanted to know why he said that.

The poet explained that the New Moon is waxing, and the Full Moon is waning.

In a nutshell, that is the situation with India and the US. Barring some unforeseen calamities, relative Indian economic and military might is going to increase, and America’s is going to decrease. In the not too distant future, India’s GDP in PPP terms will exceed that of the US, and it is a matter of speculation when the GDP in nominal terms also does the same. This is not jingoistic chest-thumping, but a very real possibility.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

The US is suffering from something like a midlife crisis. That is odd, for a nation with immense endowment – a vast continent with all the natural resources one could possibly want – and blessed with friendly neighbors and vast oceans separating it from possible foes. Its people have long been the most industrious and most innovative on earth, and the country is a magnet for the best and brightest from all over the world. Its soft power, too, is unrivaled.

Yet, the prevailing concerns that animate Americans seem odd: gender, abortion rights, human rights. They are not exercised over their virtual de-industrialization (and the loss of manufacturing jobs) courtesy China, nor the possible collapse in white collar jobs through automation and robotics.

They seem blase about their profligate use of energy (NPR reported in “How much energy powers a good life?” a Stanford study that Americans use “nearly four times the energy needed to live a happy life”). This is clearly driving global climate change.

They may well be living beyond their means, propped up by printing billions of dollars, which they can do because Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. The dollar remains the global reserve currency. However, the sanctions against Russia may well result in the bifurcation of the global trading system, and the Chinese would love to make the renminbi the currency of choice.

Yet, Americans are mostly worried about human rights. Granted, these are ethical issues that are the proper concern of rich countries, but there is a whiff of decadence: it feels like the self-absorbed navel-gazing of a civilization in decline, oblivious to the barbarians at the gates, and you know who said barbarians are. The word degringolade seems to sum it up: the possibility of sudden collapse.

The further problem is that they are lecturing others when their own system is not exactly functioning that well. The US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken injected a sour note into the recent 2+2 meeting with India when he said, gratuitously, that “human rights abuses” in India were being monitored by the US.

It was ironic that Blinken made this statement on a day when somebody shot up 10 people in Brooklyn; the next day two Sikhs were beaten and robbed in New York City. And a Kashmiri Hindu was shot dead in Kashmir. The NY Times, in the wake of a fatal shooting of a black man by a police officer, said: “American police officers, over the previous five years, have killed more than 400 motorists who were not wielding a gun or knife or under pursuit for a violent crime."

One could argue that human rights abuses are a problem for the US, too. The Chinese make the US squirm by listing instances. At a function (at Howard University, a historically black university), MEA Jaishankar said that India is paying attention to human rights issues in the US. He also talked about the threat of CAATSA sanctions on India, and in effect said that if the US were to impose those sanctions, India would find a way around them.

Indeed, India did get around earlier American denials and sanctions: when it went nuclear, earlier when the US unilaterally repealed the treaty about supplying nuclear fuel to Tarapore, when the Biden Amendment (yes, same Biden) forced Russia to renege on its cryogenic rocket engine deal with India, and when a Cray supercomputer sale was canceled.

So far, so good. Yes, India is standing up and defending itself. But the question is whether this is registering where it counts. The Indian media is agog with reports. However, the American media, so far as I can tell, didn’t report on this: which means that official America simply did not hear the retort by the Indian MEA.

Furthermore, there is the Good Cop, Bad Cop story: Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh threatened India with “consequences”. An emollient Daniel Lu, a senior State Department official, made soothing noises. Victoria Nuland, the architect of the ‘Maidan Revolution’ in Ukraine in 2014, visited, and met with mysterious “thought leaders” and with Arvind Kejriwal.

Shortly thereafter, the AAP government in Punjab demanded 50,000 crores a year from the Center to fulfill AAP’s own grandiose election promises of freebies; Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal casually dismissed the rape-murder of a 14-year-old Hindu girl by TMC cadres; the Tamil Nadu government ratcheted up separatist noises; and Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti shobhayatras were attacked with stone-pelting by Muslims. Pure coincidence? Or “consequences”?

Is the Biden Administration now convinced that India will, and should be allowed to, pursue its own interests? I am just not so sure as others are. After all, I hear AUKUS is becoming JAUKUS (pronounced “jackass”), and that leaves India out in the cold clutching the Quad.

1247 words, April 14, 2022 updated April 17, 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

This column was published by firstpost.com at World War ‘Z’: The world after Ukrainian crisis, and India’s role in it-World News , Firstpost

The most ironic thing, in fact the blackest of noir humor, is the use of the letter ‘Z’ in the propaganda surrounding the Ukraine war. It is alleged that this letter is the symbol of Russian obduracy, and therefore worth condemnation, as in the German embassy’s tweet and the Economist’s cover story below.

The irony is because there is an earlier instance when the letter ‘Z’ was banned, in Greece, in the aftermath of a coup there. Thus the title of the political thriller, ‘Z’, (1969, Costa-Gavras), one of the most powerful films of all time, a thinly-veiled retelling of the conspiracy behind the assassination of a leading political candidate in 1963. A magistrate unraveled the mystery and sentenced the culprits to lengthy prison terms for the murder.

The military coup followed, along with the banning of “Euripides, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Tolstoy, long hair, mini-skirts, the Beatles, Albee, Pinter, Ionesco, Sartre, Mark Twain (partly), Freedom of the Press, Beckett, Sociology, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, learning Russian, learning Bulgarian, modern mathematics, popular music...”, and the letter ‘Z’, because it stands for ‘He lives’ in ancient Greek. These and more are listed in the closing credits of the film.

In an extraordinary example of life imitating art which was imitating life to begin with, the letter ‘Z’ is now associated with Russia, and banned, along with, unbelievably, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Pushkin, Mendeleev, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Russian diamonds, vodka, oil, gas and so on. This is, literally, incredible.

History repeats itself, first as farce, second as tragedy.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

In addition, after POTUS Biden’s assertion about defenestrating Russian President Vladimir Putin (although the spin doctors quickly diverted attention), there is little doubt that the Ukraine war has a not-so-hidden agenda: regime change in Russia. In fact, that makes a warped sort of sense, and I compliment my friend Uday B for telling me this right from the beginning of the war, when I (wrongly) thought a negotiated, face-saving settlement could come within a week.

The Deep State has specialized in this for long, and usually with disastrous results for the residents of the country thus ‘blessed’ with regime change. I can, off the top of my head, think of Allende in Chile, Mossadegh in Iran, Hussein in Iraq, and Gaddafi in Libya. Then there’s the ongoing effort against Assad in Syria. The only thing in common is misery, penury, war, war crimes, extreme human rights violations, and masses of refugees. Add Ukraine to the list.

That is why I am alarmed at the sudden attention paid to India by all those ‘experts’ who are shocked, SHOCKED, that India is not unquestioningly getting with the program and toeing the line. The last time a whole queue of snake-oil salesmen descended on India was when the ‘nuclear deal’ was talked up as the best thing since sliced bread. But despite the promises of manna from heaven, the only visible outcome is India buying more US arms.

These good folks are now beginning to show up in India in droves, but the online eagerness has been evident for a while. India is really not all that important to the West, and so the attention is a red flag, and there are only two possible reasons for this Tender Loving Care: a) that they expect to bully India into continuing to be a slave nation, b) that they do not want another powerful manufacturing nation to come up: one China is more than enough.

Thus, the moral indignation about ‘one nation invading another’ in violation of the ‘international rules-based order’, let us remember, did not extend to Pakistan invading Jammu & Kashmir in 1947. Nor did it extend to China invading Ladakh in 2020. NATO, and the Deep State, kept very quiet. On what basis, then, do they expect India to care about something happening in Europe? Ah, European wars are ‘world wars’, of course. Atlanticism rules.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

And exactly what has the Biden administration done for India? Not much, but here’s the list of weapons they abandoned in Afghanistan; surely they will be used against India by Pakistan:

Staggering, isn’t it?

Going back to Ukraine, the US once, long ago, did what appears to be exactly the same thing Russia did: based on dubious excuses, it invaded Mexico and took away half that country’s land in 1846 in the US-Mexican war. China, similarly, expanded from their Han heartland, and invaded Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. These became fait accompli. In fact, China probably views its 1962 attack on India as similar to the US-Mexican War: grab land and “teach a lesson”.

There is also the worrying historical precedent of dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Biden administration appears keen (and earlier, the Obama folks did, too; ask Ms Nuland) to apply the same formula to India, and to balkanize the country. In other words, break it up into tiny little statelets. Official policy by the Democrats, we’ve been told repeatedly, is ‘sub-national diplomacy’, that is, encouraging fault lines.

Interestingly enough, this is precisely what Jinnah wanted as well, according to the book Jinnah: His successes, failures and role in history by Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed: dismemberment of India, not just the ‘moth-eaten’ Pakistan he got. So now we have a theoretical understanding as to why the Deep State has consistently attempted exactly the same thing.

For example, there is the laughable fake news about something that only affected a very small number of people, mostly in Kerala. Others claimed 250 million people took part in the strike, just as 250 million farmers rioted against the farm laws. Yes, exactly like Russia has lost 250 million soldiers in the war already, not to mention 7 generals!

It is as though there is some vendetta by Democrats and the Deep State against India. They have been flying into paroxysms of rage against India lately (yes, even more than the usual bog-standard badgering and abuse by assorted propaganda outlets such as The Economist, New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, BBC, NPR and so on).

As in the old Panchatantra tale of the old brahmin and the lamb, the rogues are trying to convince Indians that they actually have a dog, not a lamb. They are declaring Modi to be a fascist, and naturally, they’ll explain, a fascist has to be overthrown. Defenestration. Coup. Color Revolution. Endless misery. The end of the Indian Dream of prosperity.

Naturally, a Chinese war against India would just accelerate this trajectory. Quad or not, it is increasingly apparent that Biden would not lift a finger to help. Whether Trump would have is a moot question (probably not, but at least he was paying attention to the Indo-Pacific). But, for some strange reason, after the Nixon/Kissinger duo, it appears to be US Democrats who are more malign towards India than Republicans.

This is a strategic mistake. A solid Japan-US-India partnership in the Indo-Pacific could contain China (Australia doesn’t add much to this; in fact Vietnam or Indonesia would be more useful in a revamped Quad or Quintet or something). By retreating to the Atlantic, as with AUKUS, the US is proving to India once again that it has to go it alone in the Indo-Pacific.

1190 words, 30 Mar 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published on firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/world/the-meta-narrative-about-indias-non-involvement-in-the-ukraine-imbroglio-10403761.html

Disclaimer: Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb 24. This was written just before that happened.

The ongoing shadow-boxing between US President Biden and Russian President Putin over Ukraine has captured a lot of media attention. I was going to say “world attention”, but not really. It is a European problem, and those in the Indo-Pacific really don’t care much about it. Old-guard Atlanticists are bellyaching as though it were the end of the world, but it isn’t. And that is the first thing to note: Euro-centrism has had its day, and Europe matters less and less every day.

All of the dramatis personae have not-so-hidden agendas that they bring to the party. In the end, as far as the impartial observer is concerned, this is not likely to lead to World War III despite all the blood-curdling rhetoric; the problem for disinterested parties is that oil prices are zooming in anticipation of war, or biting sanctions. Oil at $100 is good for Putin, and probably for Biden’s shale warriors, but developing nations will be hurt.

Said developing countries are uninterested in the finer points of European nationalism, and would prefer that everybody make nice and go home. They really would prefer no war. This European hissy-fit is not their problem.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

There is a Malayalam proverb that goes: “whether the thorn lands on the leaf, or the leaf lands on the thorn, it is the leaf that is hurt”. That is the exact situation developing countries, already devastated by the covid pandemic, face. They don’t really care about the wounded pride of Putin or Biden or whoever, but would rather oil prices were back in the $50-$60 range, so they don’t face another extortionate transfer of wealth.

Of course the sentiments of Ukrainians have to be considered. My first exposure to this was in the late 1970s when I was a graduate student in computer science, and my study group partner was a pretty blonde Ukrainian-American. I casually referred to her as Russian, because at that time the Soviet Union was still going strong, and Ukraine was a part of it. She flared up, and gave me an earful about how Ukrainians were not Russians, but oppressed by Russians.

Clearly, there is a lot of bad blood between the old subjects of the Soviet Empire and the colonial masters, the Russians. In fact Indians can quite relate to this, because our colonial masters, the British, were absolute monsters. So yes, I am sympathetic to the struggles of Ukrainians to assert their cultural and territorial independence.

But then, I am also sympathetic to the Chagos Islanders, who were evicted by the colonial Brits, so that America’s Diego Garcia naval base could be built. Courts have ruled that the islands belong to Mauritius, not Britain, but none of those bleating about Ukraine’s ‘territorial integrity’ seem to be in a hurry to eject Brits from the Chagos islands. Ah, so that’s different.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Obviously morality and rule of law is not the issue here. I was listening to a talk by John Mearsheimer, a respected geo-strategist, and he said candidly that the problem was the fault of the Americans. Just as much as the Monroe Doctrine creates a sphere of influence for the US in its backyard, it is only reasonable that in the post-Soviet era, the succeeding power Russia would like to maintain a sphere of influence in its backyard.

At least, they would not want NATO to nibble at their periphery and expand itself, thus causing the Russians to feel vulnerable militarily. But the Democratic party appears to be chock-full of Atlanticists – possibly because their leaders are mostly from their East Coast, including Biden – and apparently they and the US Deep State are fighting the Cold War all over again. This is ridiculous because (checks notes) they won that war. But then generals are always fighting the last war again, because, well, that’s what generals do.

This is also counter-productive, because they are simply driving the Russians into the dhritarashtra alinganam of the Chinese. A Eurasian heartland that is controlled by a Sino-Russian alliance is not in the interests of the Americans or their allies in Europe. In fact, a Huntingtonian view would suggest that Western Europeans and Americans should ally themselves with the Russians to form a united white Christian alliance against the Chinese.

As Brahma Chellaney keeps saying, Western Europeans and Americans are fighting the wrong enemy. This creeping NATO-ization is a distraction when they should be worrying about China.

Strangely, this does not seem to occur to them, and there are many possible reasons: Democrats are still fighting Donald Trump, and they think the Russiagate angle is a winning tactic against the resurgent Republicans; there was a lot of hanky-panky done in Ukraine by Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son (you might remember his laptop, whose motley contents were a story buried by the complicit media); and there are untouchable US assets and interests in China (especially those of Wall Street), so China can do no wrong.

And that brings me to the distinctly intriguing reactions of certain strategic analysts with a degree of exposure to India: Bruno Macaes, Derek Grossman, Jeff Smith and the folks over at Foreign Affairs. All of them, it appears, were distressed and/or surprised that India did not throw in its lot with the anti-Russia diplomatic initiative because, well, the US is an important ally to India, see Quad.

That, in fact, is the interesting meta-narrative. Nelson Mandela once told off a hectoring American journalist, who was chiding him for meeting with Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam Hussain, by pointing out that “you’d like us to pretend that your enemies are our enemies”. Precisely. You have a beef with Russia, fine, but that doesn’t mean India must, too.

India’s and the US’ interests coincide on many things, but not on pissing off Russia, which, among other things, is supplying India with S-400 anti-missile systems, for which Americans have been threatening to impose CAATSA sanctions against India; but these are important deterrents to possible Chinese and Pakistani aggression. Interestingly, India just put on hold an order for 30 US Predator drones. The timing is, well, suggestive.

Here’s Bruno Macaes’ tweet:

I had email discussions with Macaes some time ago, when he reached out to me, and there were three points where I disagreed with him, although his biases were understandable because he was a Portuguese Foreign Minister, his wife is a Turk, and he and his daughter were living in China for a while. In my opinion, he:

Overestimates the coherence of the EU, which is full of squabbling neighbors, and therefore punches below its weight in foreign policy

Overestimates the strategic power of Russia, which has fewer people than Pakistan and is shrinking, and has a GDP lower than India, despite its nukes and gas deposits

Underestimates India’s ambitions for a G3, where a rapidly growing India will not be seeking to align with the Americans or the Chinese, but be itself a third pole.

I am pretty sure the other analysts suffer from versions of these flaws, although I only know them by what they say on Twitter. Here’s Foreign Affairs’ take:

But did you, Foreign Affairs, consider whether India has skin in this game, whether any of its national interests are at stake? You assume India wants to put pressure on Moscow. Not really. I am reminded of a VP at a company I worked at in Boston, who told a whining operations manager: “But Dave, you must be confusing me with someone who gives a damn (about your problems)”. What if India doesn’t give a damn?

Derek Grossman is a generally sympathetic analyst, but he cannot hide his disappointment with India in the current context. But Derek, the ‘bad look’ was the deafening silence from the West when Chinese killed unarmed Indian soldiers in the Galwan Valley.

Jeff Smith is another analyst who seems to have grasped the Indian reaction better than others:

Yes, Jeff. India ain’t got no dog in this here fight. India doesn’t see any value in tying itself to either the US or Russia, because it’s perfectly clear that India will be on its own. India is painfully aware that no white guy is going to die in the Himalayas fighting China for India’s benefit. So make India an offer it can’t refuse, like sanctioning China on India’s behalf.

This, I am told, is realpolitik. India intends to stick to its interests. No, it’s not that fraud called. non-alignment. This is multi-alignment, and India will seek Chanakya’s wise counsel.

What is admirable, though, is the consistency with which these strategic analysts approach the problem, which boils down to a few simple axioms:

India is part of the Quad, therefore it is a US ally ‘by other means’

Therefore India has no agency and has to toe the US and EU line on all matters

But the US and the EU are under no reciprocal obligation to worry about India’s own interests, even when 200,000 Chinese troops are massed on the Indo-Tibet border.

There are a few flaws here. First, the Quad is an Indo-Pacific security agreement, not a marriage. Second, I’ve been dying to use the ‘woke’ term ‘agency’, and yes, they view India as a vassal state that has to go by US/EU agendas: some kind of patsy, in the Kissingerian view of India. That was true of Nehruvian India, but this is a New India. As they said in the memorable US car ad, “This isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile”. Deal with it. Cope.

And third, Indians are asking the US and EU that famous American question: “So what have you done for us lately?”. Not much, actually. Then they should expect the same in return.

1620 words, 23 Feb 2022.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/world/the-usual-gambit-by-deep-state-and-isi-a-million-woke-mutinies-all-the-time-10372271.html

Why is there a veritable fusillade of anti-India commentary in the West these days? Why has there been a sudden upsurge of communal tension in coastal Karnataka? How come a bunch of MNCs including Hyundai, KFC etc. endorsed Pakistan’s claims to all of Jammu and Kashmir? How come the tragic story of Lavanya, who committed suicide because of pressure to convert, has suddenly been pushed off the front pages?

The answer, my friend, as Bob Dylan once put it, is blowin’ in the wind. There is a narrative, and it reaches a cacophony of hysteria whenever there are elections in India, because the intent is to rally the faithful against the allegedly fascist BJP: the Mudi sud rejine. Well, elections in UP have begun, so you can expect the baying to reach a crescendo soon. UP, they well know, is the prize. If they can defeat the BJP there, suddenly Modi is vulnerable.

UP shows a dramatic contrast between the utter fecklessness of the Congress years, and the tremendous improvement in the Yogi years: in law and order, in infrastructure, in how suddenly the state is a power to reckon with in its State GDP and industrial prowess. I received this interesting book from Garuda Prakashan about Yogi in the mail: it’s full of facts.

Personally, I am hopeful about the upward trajectory of UP and Bihar, and distressed by the downward trajectory of Kerala, Bengal and Punjab, as I wrote in:

Whenever there are important State elections, the ‘toolkit’ is activated, sleeper cells are given the go-ahead, and there is a plethora of stories in the compromised Western media about how things are going to hell in a handbasket in India. This is yet another reason to hold synchronized elections every 2.5 years rather than what appears to be endless politicking the entire time.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

My friend Gautam Sen connected the dots on firstpost.com in his essay https://www.firstpost.com/politics/why-theres-a-sudden-surge-in-international-efforts-to-destabilise-modi-government-10343751.html. I too wrote about this some time ago in an essay: https://www.indiafacts.org.in/the-withering-attack-on-us-they-have-good-reasons-why-they-wish-us-harm/

So Lesson Number One is that, internationally, India has no friends; no, not in the West, despite the honeyed words and the snake-oil salesmen. Just about the only two countries that we have common interests with are Japan and Vietnam, who are just as threatened by China as India is, but the one has the money and skills that we lack, and the other has the actual experience of defeating the Chinese in battle.

It is telling that it was Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who suggested the idea of the Quad. It is also telling that a Democratic US President, presumably on the insistence of the Deep State, eviscerated it by doing a side deal called AUKUS, basically a celebration of Atlanticism, which has been long dead and should be given a decent burial. Isolated and increasingly impoverished Britain is hardly the ally anyone wants or needs.

Even Russia, which some of us consider an all-weather friend, is no longer reliable. An allegedly state-related entity named redfish advertised a documentary with a clear bias in favor of the Pakistani point of view. They too, probably, are caught up in the Sino-Pak axis, and Chinese propaganda that India is getting too close to the US. In reality, India is in the unfortunate trisanku position of choosing between Scylla and Charybdis.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Lesson Number Two is that Pakistan’s ISPR is very clever (by half) at coming up with ideas on how to hurt India through propaganda. They were successful in getting a number of MNCs to endorse the Pakistani position that Kashmir is theirs, and theirs alone. Here is a partial list of those MNCs.

At first glance, it is hard to escape the feeling that this is a vote of no-confidence in India from a lot of large companies. It is a little unfathomable that they would do this, considering the growing ‘buyer power’ of the Indian consumer. What if they boycotted Hyundai or Kia in India? Didn’t they see how Fabindia was hurt by a boycott after their urduword-e-urduword for Diwali?

Besides, do these MNCs believe that the Indian government would not take punitive action against them? After all, they grovel and genuflect before the Chinese government despite their genocides of Tibetans, Uighurs and so on. Do they really think they can afford to exit the Indian market which will grow at 9% for the next few years?

Some of these MNCs will find their sales are hurt: there are alternatives. For example, Tata and Mahindra stand ready to step in should people drop Hyundai, Kia or Honda.

Then the realization dawns that Pakistan is too small a market for the MNCs to have subsidiaries there: they only have franchises. And it is quite likely that every one of these franchisees is a subsidiary of the Pakistani Army, considering that the Army runs most business in Pakistan. No wonder they toe the ISPR line.

ISPR was probably hoping to create some serious problems, perhaps even the burning down of the MNC factories or outlets (which is what would happen in Pakistan). That would in turn induce them to cease to invest in India, and eventually maybe even exit India. But none of this happened, which means the ISPR effort was a damp squib.

But there was something deplorable: the reaction of the MNCs’ Indian subsidiaries. I was observing, in real time, Hyundai India’s response. In a classic case study of what not to do in a crisis – business school students will soon be taught this – the PR people at Hyundai first stonewalled, weasel-worded, and started mass-blocking their twitter critics.

They should have learned from Johnson and Johnson’s legendary response to the poisoning by some psychopath of their product, Tylenol, on retail shelves. They immediately fell on the sword, apologized, and recalled every bottle of their product from the shelves even though it really wasn’t their fault. The goodwill thus created gave J&J an aura, which actually translated to higher sales rather than the opposite.

It is likely that Hyundai India’s PR – probably outside consultants – are the usual leftist types who have no idea what the average Indian consumer thinks. Said leftists may believe in the Pakistani view themselves. Anyway, they totally messed up their initial response. It took a second set of more thoughtful responses to calm things down, wherein Hyundai Global carefully pointed out that they do not involve themselves in local politics, and that their franchisee in Pakistan had not been authorized to make any statements, and that they had been censured.

Besides, the South Korean Ambassador was called in by the MEA and probably given an earful, and their foreign minister called the MEA with an apology. Even though some of us would have preferred India to bare its fangs like the Chinese do, perhaps the softly-softly approach is better for the moment. As Deng Xiaoping advised,

Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.

Lesson Number Three is that Abrahamics create tactical alliances. For example, USCIRF, the grandly named US Council on International Religious Freedom, is basically an evangelistic extremist entity focused on conversion. With Biden as POTUS, the USCIRF is openly cooperating with Islamists. The chair of USCIRF, Nadine Maenza, attended an Indo American Muslim Council event, ‘Protecting India’s Pluralist Constitution’ [sic] on Republic Day 2022, and it also had Archbishop Machado from Bangalore, along with ex-VP Hamid Ansari.

None of this is a coincidence. DisinfoLab has discovered intriguing connections among Nadine Maenza, USCIRF, IAMC, and various other dramatis personae

.

Archbishop from Bangalore. Isn’t that interesting? There is the Anti-Conversion Bill in Karnataka, which is vigorously opposed by the church. Is it pure coincidence that within a week of this tete-a-tete, a hijab controversy in coastal Karnataka started dominating the headlines? Oh, and did you notice how there are no longer any headlines about the tragic story of Lavanya, a 17-year-old student in a Christian school in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, who was so violated by tejovadham about forced conversion that she committed suicide, leaving a damning dying declaration on video?

It turns out Sahaya Mary and Rachel Mary whom Lavanya named are now quietly out on bail. So is the hijab issue a nice little diversionary tactic, that has gotten the entire commentariat (which was totally silent on Lavanya) a chance to display its ‘liberal’ credentials by supporting the girls intent on wearing hijabs to school? Is Lavanya’s case being swept under the carpet?

Of course, it could well be a pure ISPR exercise. It is likely they have sleeper cells in parts of coastal Karnataka, and Karnataka is a State that the Congress really would like to win back, thus they need to trigger their vote banks.

Breaking news: here’s a statement from the US’s “Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom”, Rashad Hussain, in virtually his first official statement after Joe Biden appointed him at the end of January. He is also accused of ties to radical groups.

This would have carried a lot more weight if the US had responded similarly to France, Canada, or Scandinavian countries that prohibit certain Islamic attire. But it has never said a word. The implication is that this interference in India’s affairs is driven by other considerations. The Anglosphere believes India can be shamed into doing things that are not in its best interests.

Furthermore, the Pakistan Army has recently been humiliated by the Baloch Liberation Army that attacked several army outposts and managed to hold off helicopter gunships and commandos for 48 to 60 hours. ISPR would naturally blame India’s RA&W for the debacle (never considering how much Baloch hate them). That means they have to hurt India somehow, and given the fact that they are virtually bankrupt, what better than to activate sleeper cells and their assets such as Malala, with the connivance of the Deep State and its assets?

1560 words, 11 Feb 2022

1640 words, updated 12 Feb 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-the-sooner-woke-dom-dies-the-better/20220211.htm

Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau is hiding “in an undisclosed location” after a huge convoy of truckers demanding relief from Covid mandates, joined by farmers with their combine harvesters and other heavy equipment, made steady progress towards the Canadian capital. Poor man, he now has caught Covid, too.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who boasts one of the strictest zero-Covid regimes in the world, is under fire for refusing to allow pregnant citizens living abroad to return home, under some quota called MIQ (Managed Isolation and Quarantining). She herself had to cancel her wedding, poor thing.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on the verge of losing his job: being impeached or whatever the Brits do to unpopular PMs, because it has come to light that he partied several times at his official residence in violation of strict Covid quarantine rules in his country.

US President Joe Biden now has some of the worst approval ratings of any POTUS in history, and faces the certainty of a drubbing for his party in the midterm elections late this year, mostly because of poor handling of the Covid pandemic, as well as high inflation resulting from the generous printing of money in an ineffective economic band-aid. He is now beating the war drums and may drag the US into an unnecessary war in Ukraine.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

What do all these have in common? First, Covid, and second, the Anglosphere, which is reeling. And, third, they are darlings of the Woke Left crowd, especially Ardern and Biden.

I’m reminded of the old song, “Video killed the Radio Star”. So Covid is killing the Woke left star?

In a sign that we are living in Internet Time, time scales are being accelerated. In the old days, centuries used to mean something, like a hundred years at least. But ‘centuries’ are getting awfully short these days. Consider:

The European Century of domination was over 200 years, from the Industrial Revolution to World War II.

The American Century was only about 60 years, from World War II to the Financial Meltdown.

The Chinese Century is going to be about 30 years, from WTO Accession till… well, we are yet to see how their empire will end, one hopes, as TS Eliot said, “not with a bang, but a whimper”. Chances are Xi will not go gentle into that good night.

The Woke Century began with the Biden accession to the throne (some, including me, think it was tainted with irregularities) and the celebration of the Millennium, as it were, by the luminaries of Wokeness. That was just a year ago, although it feels like it was much longer, given the endless debacles. Afghanistan. Build Back Better. The Fauci-Daszak-Collins circus re Gain of Function research.

And coming soon to a TV screen near you, war! Rejoice, Deep State! Let’s ignore the $80 billion worth of weapons abandoned in Afghanistan, a good bit possibly in Chinese hands now. And the signal of US fecklessness that the retreat broadcast.

There’s a word for it: degringolade. No, it has nothing to do with gringos.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

What has (I hope fatally) damaged Wokeism? In the ponderous tones of op-ed writers, it is collapsing under the “weight of its own contradictions”. Wokeism has brought us unedifying spectacles: the cancellation of those whom you don’t like (see Joe Rogan over on Spotify), the ascent of (white) privileged Karens, the relentless rebranding of propaganda as Science(™).

Wokes are into “defund the police” and high tolerance to theft, mugging, drug abuse and squatters defecating on the street, which has effectively erased my beloved San Francisco.

Wokes pretend not to understand that China has deindustrialized the West, and that their supply chains can be turned off at a moment’s notice.

As far as Hindus are concerned, the eclipse of Wokeism cannot come soon enough. There is a determined assault on Hindus (there are frequent conferences on Dismantling Global Hindutva, and the California State university system has just included caste as a marker of discrimination, like race).

This means that, like Jews earlier, Hindus are being made scapegoats in the West: declared mad dogs, and then shot. This project has gathered momentum in global media. The full-throated baying in the NYTimes, FT, Economist, NPR, Reuters, etc. has been going on for some time: they want regime-change. TL;DR: The Mudi sud rejine.

Their latest target is Netaji Subhas Bose. He is a complex and flawed hero. There is a lot to decode about him, as I wrote in 2016 in The abuse of Indian history.

But a recent series of Twitter exchanges by ex-Reuters journalist Myra Macdonald, ex-Financial Times India stringer Edward Luce, and others, was instructive: according to these Woke types, Bose is guilty by association with Hitler, but Churchill is blameless in the Bengal genocide, and is not a war criminal. And oh, according to Luce, Indian business schools teach Mein Kampf. That must be in some alternative Woke universe.

This is what Woke-dom is all about: the willing suspension of disbelief. The sooner it dies off, the better. It has already infected some Indians, for instance those who ‘took the knee’ for Black Lives Matter. They should abandon this silly Woke-ness and aping of the West. Just as India, correctly, abstained from the UN Security Council vote over Ukraine, a fight in which we have no dog.

880 words, 1 Feb 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/world/human-rights-all-humans-are-equal-but-some-are-more-equal-than-others-10340451.html

This story has already receded into the background, but it was quite startling when it took place recently: a Pakistani-Briton named Malik Faisal Akram held four Jews hostage in a Texas synagogue. He was demanding the release of a Pakistani woman, Aafia Siddiqui, sentenced to an 86 year prison term in the US. Why she is important is a good question, but that need not detain us here.

What is intriguing is the fact that Akram was apparently simply shot by a US military or police sharpshooter. The reports were bland, and they just said that the hostages had been freed unharmed; the fate of their captor was barely mentioned at all: it was as though he had been executed, as a matter of course, and that was the proper and normal thing to do.

Without condoning the man, one can look at the interesting implications. Akram may indeed have been a dangerous and unstable armed terrorist, but he was, after all, a foreign national. And he had not actually harmed anybody physically. Aren’t there norms about citizens of friendly powers? Can they be arbitrarily shot dead? Was the UK embassy involved? Could the police have used a tranquilizer dart instead? Why is nobody asking questions, but accepting it as a fait accompli?

True, the human rights of a terrorist or an insurgent are no greater than those of an average citizen, but shouldn’t there be some standard operating procedures?

I remember other incidents in the US where the use of massive force by federal or local authorities was somehow deemed appropriate, with few questions asked. One was the devastating attack in April 1993 on a compound in Waco, Texas, where a religious cult called the Branch Davidians were holed up. 76 members of the group were burned to death after a 51-day siege.

In 1985, the radical (black?) group MOVE, fortified in a Philadelphia house, was attacked by city authorities with a helicopter gunship, and a fire was allowed to burn out of control, killing 11 people, and burning down 61 houses in the neighborhood. A subsequent court ruling held that constitutional rights were violated, and excessive force was used.

The point is that in some cases violations of human rights (even of terrorists or outlaws) are condoned, but in other cases they are magnified, blown up, and used as narrative-building weapons. The judiciary is sometimes blamed, although in some cases the executive may be at fault for not making a good case, or any case at all, either deliberately or through incompetence.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

For example, there is the cause celebre of Ishrat Jahan. This woman from Mumbai was found traveling to Gujarat with her boss Javed Sheikh, and two others including a Pakistani, and they were shot by the police. It is alleged (including in testimony from David Headley, Pakistani-American kingpin of the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai) that she was an LeT operative, and that the group were planning to assassinate then-CM Narendra Modi. There was an international uproar protesting her innocence.

So why are Ishrat Jahan’s human rights so much greater than those of Malik Faisal Akram?

The answer, of course, is narrative. Information warfare is manufactured on demand.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

There has been a series of other human rights incidents in the recent past in India that show how dysfunctional the system is, and how empty the rhetoric is.

Four years ago, a starving tribal named Madhu in Kerala was caught stealing a small amount of rice. A group of young men videotaped him being tied up, humiliated, and then beaten to death. His hearing came up recently, and the prosecution did not appear at all in court!

Dilbar Negi, a young man in Delhi, was brutalized and slaughtered during the Delhi riots in 2020. His limbs were cut off, and he was burned alive. Recently, a high-powered lawyer got bail for six of the accused in Delhi High Court.

Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar was accused of raping a nun 13 times at a convent in Kerala. Several nuns braved the wrath of the church to bring out stories about oppression and (sexual) abuse in nunneries. Last week, the district court rejected in toto the evidence presented against him, and cleared him of all charges.

A terrified young commuter, Sowmya, was chased around the empty woman’s coach in a train, pushed off the train, raped on the tracks, and had her head bashed in with a stone by one-armed beggar Charly Thomas in Kerala in 2011. The fast-track court delivered a death sentence in the rape-murder. But on appeal to the Supreme Court, two things happened: the prosecution was not able to present a water-tight case, and the ‘beggar’ Charly was able to hire an expensive, hot-shot lawyer. The result? The death sentence was commuted to ‘life’, which means that he will be released after 14 years.

Just last week, retired BSF jawan Bhagwat Nishad shot and killed Dilshad Hussain in court premises in Gorakhpur, UP. It is alleged that Nishad’s minor daughter had been abducted and raped by Hussain, and though there was a POCSO case, the accused was out on bail.

There is the currently sensational case of Lavanya, a 17-year-old student of a residential Christian school in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu. A top student, she was allegedly repeatedly coerced to convert and even to become a nun. When she refused, she was punished, mentally tortured, and forced to do menial tasks like cleaning toilets. She consumed poison, and in her dying declaration from hospital available on video, she clearly implicates those who were torturing her.

Instead of taking action against the accused, the instincts of the state apparatus and the media were to cover things up, and to question the credibility of Lavanya and her parents. The police authorities dismissed the whole incident, and it took a consistent grassroots movement to prevent this sad, but not unusual, incident from being swept under the carpet.

All this leads to the disheartening question: do some people have human rights, while others don’t? Are governments not constitutionally required to treat the powerful and the powerless the same when investigating criminal offenses and human rights violations? Why does it appear that in some cases the executive is content to make a mockery of the judicial proceedings?

Are people gaming the judiciary by filing pointless PILs, which well-connected lawyers can ram through the system? Why, for instance, does the Supreme Court refuse to hear the case of the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus in 1990, but is willing to take up the case of Rohingyas, who technically have no locus standi in India, being illegal aliens? India is also not a signatory to non-refoulement treaties, and is perfectly at liberty to send them back to Myanmar.

Who pays for all the expensive lawyers? There is a pattern whereby unseen forces pump in money to hire the best lawyers (sometimes hiding it under ‘crowdfunding’) to get judgments that may have propaganda and other value for them.

Unfortunately, despite the soaring rhetoric about human rights, the reality is that unless your agenda happens to coincide with that of narrative-builders, you will get no traction. Indian cricketers, in an embarrassing display of cluelessness and dhimmitude, ‘took the knee’ for Black Lives Matter. That they would never do the same for Kashmiri Hindu Lives Matter tells the whole story in a nutshell.

1240 words, 27 Jan 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by swarajayamag.com at https://swarajyamag.com/culture/the-argument-about-a-british-hymn-at-beating-the-retreat-well-heres-an-alternative

I personally have had no idea what ‘Beating the Retreat’ is all about, so I was startled when a full-scale war of words erupted because the Government of India apparently decided to replace a British-era song called ‘Abide with me’ with a Lata Mangeshkar song named ‘Ae mere watan ke logon’ as part of the ceremony.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Upon reading the now-famous ‘Abide with me’, which I had never heard of, and looking it up on the Internet, I found out it is a Christian hymn, written by some unknown British padre in the 1850s. Insofar as its literary quality goes, it is not bad, and appears to be a plea for having the Christian God stand with the beseecher as he goes through his times of trouble. It is clearly directed to the Christian God because it includes verses about the cross.

It is not entirely clear why removing this uni-denominational prayer is a blow to tradition, such as it is. That too a colonial tradition imposed on a prone India in the 1900s.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

On the other hand, I have read that Nehru himself cried when listening to ‘Ae mere watan ke logon’ in the aftermath of the 1962 debacle. I have my doubts about that song’s appeal because of its over-reliance on words of Farsi and Arabic origin, which sound alien to my southern ears. When I first heard it, I confused the word ‘watan’ (Arabic for country) with ‘vadan(am)’ (Sanskrit for face), but of course it didn’t make any sense.

Interestingly, I found out on twitter that ‘Abide with me’ was Gandhi’s favorite hymn! This was on the authority of Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP, on January 26th. He didn’t elaborate as to how it is known that it was Gandhi’s favorite hymn, which I had been earlier led to believe was ‘Vaishnava Janato’.

Going one step further, another Congress MP, P Chidambaram, let on that it was also Subhas Bose’s favorite hymn. How did he know that? Why, Bose’s grand-nephew Sugata Bose told him. Sugata Bose is a professor at Harvard University; it is probably not necessary to remind people, as per Wikipedia, that “Harvard College was founded in 1636 as a Puritan/Congregationalist institution and trained ministers for many years.”

I guess that would have been clinching evidence for the importance of ‘Abide with me’, except for a small detail: Sugata was born in 1956, 11 years after Netaji disappeared in 1945. So how on earth did he witness the “tears flowing down Netaji’s cheeks”? So it is just a second-hand tale of dubious authenticity?

Remarkable that this obscure prayer was the favorite of not only Gandhi, but also Netaji! And I don’t know about you, but all these tears from the stalwarts of the freedom movement are beginning to make me feel a little queasy.

In other words, all this sounds like a red herring, if not proper fake news manufactured on the spot. The real issue is that the Congress is upset that Narendra Modi has recognized the enduring affection that average Indians have for Bose. Congress’ diligent attempts to obscure Bose’s contribution, along with that of other stalwarts like Patel, worked for a long time, but as they say, you can fool all the people some of the time, but not all of the time.

Personally, I used to hero-worship Bose, and even attempted to read the monumental Brothers Against the Raj, but later I found that he had certain blind spots about leftism for example, and he had rather absurd ideas about abandoning Indian scripts for Roman, so I now have a more nuanced view. But he clearly deserves, as the head of the Indian National Army, the signal honor of a commanding statue at the India Gate.

And in case the nation is in the market for a purely non-sectarian hymn that deserves to be accepted as a national prayer, I have one in mind. It is the Daiva-dasakam or Ten Couplets to the Almighty by Sri Narayana Guru. Here’s my translation from the Malayalam original:

*O Almighty, watch over us Without abandon Thou art our Captain In the mighty ship of Life On the sea of Existence.

Counting one by one And when all Essences are counted The seeing Eye alone is left Let that inner Self thus rest in Thee.

Thou alone art our Lord Thou Who without fail Bless us with food and clothes and everything else.

As the ocean holds deeps, waves, and storms, Let us hold within ourselves the Manifest World, Thy Glory and Thou.

Thou art the Act of Creation, the Creator And the innumerable creatures Thou hast created. O Almighty, Thou art also the very material of Creation.

Thou art the Material World, Its Creator, and its Enjoyer too, And the Noble One that grants Salvation by lifting Illusion.

Thou art Truth, Knowledge and Bliss, The Present, the Past and the Future too are None else. Verily art Thou the Spoken Word, too.

Thy Self, in Glory ensconced Both inside and outside us We forever worship O Almighty, Thy Will be done.

Victory to Thee, Grand One, Refuge of the weak. Victory to Thee, Abode of Joy, Ocean of Mercy, Hail.

Into that profound sea of Thy Glory Let us all plunge, And flourish forever Flourish in Happiness Flourish.*

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost at https://www.firstpost.com/india/are-things-looking-up-for-india-at-makar-sankranti-a-time-for-new-beginnings-10286661.html

It is true that the usual suspects and the usual problems remain: malign forces including moles and sleeper cells inside the country; a stepped-up assault on India and Hindus from the Deep State and other ill-wishers; an almost-war on the Tibet border; the creaking bureaucracy and especially the judiciary; and the single-minded hostility towards the Government of India projected by US Big Media and Big Tech.

In the midst of all this, let us consider a few things that make it look like India is on the upswing, while sounding a few notes of caution.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Technology Trends

Just a short while ago, there were two big announcements: India hit 1.5 billion vaccinations; and India hit $100 billion in digital transactions in October and November. The first is an example of how, against the odds and in the face of determined opposition by vested interests, India has managed to vaccinate a significant number of its people who are eligible for them, almost entirely with Indian-manufactured or Indian-developed vaccines. It means the State has capacity to scale and that the private sector has the capacity to do process and product innovation.

The second is an example of leapfrog: India now has more digital transactions than the next three or four countries combined, and this has happened where skeptics said there are no POS machines, no electricity, etc. The humble mobile phone has been a game-changer, and the public has taken to QR codes with gusto: they are ubiquitous. This is hopeful: it means India can use and improve on current tech models. Perhaps radical new technologies such as crypto currencies will take root in India.

India has been a technology laggard in the last century or two. But there is no inherent reason for that to continue. India’s STEM people are very competent: for instance, see how they dealt with technology denials such as with the cryogenic rocket engine or the Cray supercomputer. If we can harness upcoming technologies we should be able to ride the next innovation tsunamis. In areas such as web 3.0 with their distributed nature, Indians may well create the platforms of the future.

One example of the public acceptance of tech is the immense popularity of mobile phones. There are also the ingenious ways in which people have used them. For instance, there is the ‘missed call’ semaphore whereby you convey a specific message, such as “I have reached my destination”, without actually using up a call! A Harvard case study talks about how fishermen in Kerala increased their average profits by 12% by using their cell phones out at sea to talk to big buyers, cut out middlemen and take their catch to the optimal fishing port.

The uptake of mobile internet has been phenomenal, and is growing at a rate that will soon rival China. Once Reliance Jio brought inexpensive bandwidth to the masses, usage took off with entertainment and education (in a famous case, a railway porter studied for the State administrative services on his phone with free WiFi at the station, and got through the exam). There is an open-ness in India to science and technology, quite possibly because Dharmic religions are not anti-science or anti-logic.

One of the hopeful signs is the drive to set up a semiconductor fabrication facility in India. Since computers and cellphones and Internet of Things or IoT devices including connected cars will increasingly drive our future, it is imperative that we have the ability to manufacture the key component of all this, i.e. silicon chips. It is one of several seminal technologies we need to be present in: AI, blockchain, crypto currencies, quantum computing, CRISPR-Cas9 in biology. At the moment, we are far behind in all of them. This cannot continue, and we need to put in a crash program, like America’s Manhattan Project, to catch up.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Indian economy

India is the fifth largest economy in the world, having overtaken Britain in the recent past (which of course is a matter for some schadenfreude). India should overtake Germany and Japan in the next ten years. So India is a player.

The GDP growth figures of 8 to 9% in 2021 need to be seen in the context of the huge contraction due to the wuhan virus last year, but the important fact is that it is believed that this level can continue for the next several years. Both the World Bank and the IMF have suggested India will once again be the fastest growing large economy in the world. I am more optimistic about the 2023-2024 outlook than this:

This is not coming on the back of massive increases in money supply, as in the US which appears to have printed money by the boatload, which is leading to inflation. Indian inflation, if you adjust for sky-high energy prices, is not all that bad. Incidentally, even with the prospect of higher interest rates in the US, the rupee is not falling: it hit a 3 month high of $1 = 73.9 Rupees on Jan 11th. This implies investors are pricing in India’s improved economic prospects. The reasons are quite basic: improved state finances and thus improved infrastructure investment, along with a young and growing working class which is beginning to be a consumption engine.

Geo-politics and geo-economics

Things look a little tough in the near future both from the point of view of global politics and global economics. The Cold War between the US and China, despite President Biden’s conciliation or appeasement depending on your perspective, will probably get worse, and I would not be surprised if there is an actual invasion of Taiwan. I wrote twenty years ago about that possibility, and now it looks increasingly likely that the US may not have the will, or the capability, to defend Taiwan in that case. The conflict between the US and China may well lead to the concept of a Thucydides Trap, where the two exhaust themselves. That makes for a dangerous world, and India may have to step into the breach for the defense of the Indo-Pacific.

From an economic perspective, the massive amounts of money printed by many countries, to combat the covid crisis, is likely to lead to inflation and thus the progressive weakening of the US dollar. The fallout from the Evergrande crisis shows that the extraordinary leveraging of China based on huge corporate and public-sector debt fueled by real estate speculation may also cause prolonged pain, just as it happened to 1980s Japan which has struggled for decades now.

The chances of war in Asia, especially in Taiwan, or in Japan’s Senkaku Islands, or even in the South China Sea, are fairly high. India is part of the Quad, of course, but we should not be under any delusions that the US, Japan or Australia will come to our aid if war erupts on the Tibetan border. We will be entirely on our own, so it behooves us to be prepared to fight. We have to choose our friends carefully, and at the moment I see only two in Asia: Japan and Vietnam. Maybe Indonesia, too. The others are more likely to choose China.

Education

Unfortunately India needs a veritable revolution in education, or else it will miss the boat. Unlike East Asia, which opted for universal primary education, India invested in tertiary education. This created a few oases of excellence in a sea of mediocrity, and this is yet another reason manufacturing hasn’t taken off at East Asian levels, and probably never will.

Also, just last week, the CAG was complaining that at least the new IITs were not producing enough research or industrial consultancy revenue, and were still depending on the government for handouts. That shows a disconnect between the needs of industry and what academia is doing.

There are also concerns about the much-vaunted STEM schools, which are now producing skewed numbers. For instance, in Kerala, 5500+ students opted for computer science, but less than 10 for civil engineering. Can you believe that? Less than 10 in the whole state in government-run common admissions? The English language issue is also stark: far from producing world-class scientists and engineers, we produce people who are functionally barely literate in both English and STEM.

The less said about humanities education the better: these students are in the forefront of aping Western fads like wokeism, nothing more. So there are some serious problems, and recent education ministers have not been exactly confidence-inducing.

Stock Markets

Indian stock markets have had a good run, and naturally a correction should be coming. The economic fundamentals are strong, but by some historical measures such as Price Earnings Ratio, the current valuation of the market is too high. It is true that India has some 84 unicorns (startups valued at over $1 billion at the beginning of 2022, more so than any other country except the US and China). The entrepreneurial ferment is excellent, but one can question whether or not they will justify their valuations.

Some of the companies that went public also don’t seem to have a ‘moat’ protecting their business that would justify lofty valuations, eg payTM. Its founder reportedly rued the fact that he went public at this time. There is a bit of a bubble, as in the 1999 Internet Bubble in the US, and when the day of reckoning comes, it will be a little painful for a lot of us.

Nevertheless, the medium-term story is pretty good, and is based on good demographics and the observed fact that at a certain GDP per head, things take off in the economy. We are at that level, which I believe is in the range of $2000-$4000 GDP per head. With digitization, a lot of hanky-panky has become either more difficult or impossible to pull off, and the formal economy has grown and with GST, tax collections have grown as well. This is a positive feedback loop which will enable greater investment in both physical and virtual platforms, thus freeing entrepreneurs and industrialists to streamline their operations.

A simple example is how GST has removed border checkposts, thus reducing waiting time and bribes for interstate transport. This sort of easing of friction and thus improving efficiency is a long-term asset for India, and that optimism may be reflected in the market.

Thus, as always when it comes to India, there is room for both optimism and pessimism. But even the pessimists must concede that there is some positive momentum, and that India may finally be shedding the vestiges of the self-defeating policies of eras past.

1730 words, Jan 13, 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by swarajyamag.com at https://swarajyamag.com/politics/was-it-a-plot-to-assassinate-the-prime-minister

The events on January 5th were shocking: the PM’s motorcade was stopped for 15 to 20 minutes on a highway overpass, blocked by a group of ‘protesters’. His car, the only black car in the row of white cars, was completely exposed to a possible drone attack, a Stinger missile, a rocket-propelled grenade, or even an IED that could have demolished the structure.

The enormity of this situation, and the implications for India’s national security, are astonishing. Here was the Prime Minister of the country with the world’s 5th largest economy and 3rd largest armed forces, a sitting duck, at a location only a few miles away from the Pakistani border.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

It cannot be seen as an attack on Narendra Modi, the man, but on the institution of the Prime Minister, and by extension on the Government of India. This, in a country where two Prime Ministers were earlier assassinated. It is almost an existential question. What would happen if Modi were to be killed? I hasten to add that I am certainly not advocating it, as he is the PM, and I have been a fan of his for long. But we have to think of what happens in that eventuality.

The same question was asked earlier: what would happen if Modi were to lose the elections? Well, not much. Modi would take his small suitcase, and, as in the famous painting, alight from the train in his hometown in Gujarat and walk home alone, in the rain, with his umbrella. It is not "Après moi, le déluge" as in the Nehruvian vanity: somebody will rule.

But the nation will be the loser, just when it is at the cusp of inflection.

There have been other dramatic moments in Indian history where one man made a difference. The stray arrow that pierced the eye of Hemachandra Vikramaditya at the second battle of Panipat doomed North India to centuries of Gurkaniya Timurid rule. The beheading of Rama Raya of Vijayanagar by his own renegade troops at the battle of Talikota caused the disastrous end of that bulwark that had protected South India against invaders from the North.

It may not be that bad this time if there were to be, in Karan Thapar’s immortal words in 2007, “the sudden removal of Modi”. There are others that could step in. But surely, momentum will be lost, and all those malign forces urging ‘regime change’, especially the Deep State and China and their psy-warfare organs, such as the New York Times and Global Times, will smell blood.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I also personally do not think it was an assassination attempt. If it were, it would have succeeded because there was nothing to prevent it. It was more a signal to Narendra Modi that if he dared enter Punjab again, he would be executed. The real question is, what will happen next?

We have seen this movie before. In West Bengal, there was massive election-related violence and the wanton killing of BJP and RSS people by TMC cadres. In Kerala, there have been dozens of murders of BJP/RSS people by Communists or Islamists.

There were at least two earlier attempts on Modi himself: the first when Ishrat Jehan, Javed (born Pranesh Pillai) and a Pakistani were intercepted driving to Gujarat to eliminate him. The second was the bomb that went off minutes before Modi was to speak in Bihar during election campaigning some time ago.

If I were to extrapolate, the federal structure of the Indian Union is itself under strain: opposition-ruled states are acting as little personal fiefdoms that are, in effect, independent nations with only a tenuous link to the Union Government.

For instance, just last week, the President of India was apparently humiliated when he had to cool his heels in the Kerala Raj Bhavan after an honorary D Litt to him was denied, allegedly under pressure from the state government (which, however, cleared D Litts for an actress, Shobhana, and a musician, T M Krishna).

Opposition-ruled states also did not reduce excise taxes on petrol and diesel, while at the same time opposing bringing those under GST. In Bengal, a Chief Secretary was removed by the GoI, but was re-hired by the state government. In Punjab, the DGP was just installed, hand-picked by an Indian National Congress leader. There are many more instances that we all know of.

So there are under-currents of anarchy being implemented nationwide. The bottom line is that a lot of people do not want the BJP to be in power: among them, the urban chatterati who keep pointing out that the BJP only got some 36% of the total vote, while quietly omitting the fact that the sainted Jawaharlal also did not get a clear majority, only a plurality, of the vote while ruling like an arbitrary, absolute monarch for 17 long years.

There are several groups hurt by various measures taken by the GoI. Among them is the ‘Chandigarh Lobby’, a group of ex-military middlemen whose handsome commissions earned from foreign arms merchants have evaporated. This explains their schadenfreude when General Bipin Rawat was killed last month, and some of the very same group showed their dismissive contempt for the PM as well.

Then of course there are the arhatiyas, or middlemen, who have profited from the aftermath of the Green Revolution. Let us ignore the fact that excessive rice cultivation has led to water tables falling precipitously and groundwater poisoning through pesticide and fertilizer runoff. This is not sustainable: I am reminded of Californians cultivating rice in the desert (see my old column “Water Wars: Cauvery, Chinatown, and Cadillac Desert”).

Presumably, these were the ‘protesters’ who stopped the PM’s motorcade. So exactly what are they protesting against? Their demand has already been conceded: the farm bills are withdrawn. No, they have become protesters-for-rent; they are now determined to cause trouble.

Proximate, preponderant and root causes

And that is the proximate cause of the problem. The Indian State, various anarchists have concluded, is a soft state, and they can keep escalating their demands without consequences. These ‘farmer’ protesters (including during their Republic Day 2021 shenanigans), and earlier the Shaheen Bagh protesters, realized that they could, with impunity, hold the GoI hostage. And so they will.

What can be done? Clearly, large-scale force against them would boomerang. But doesn’t the GoI know who the street thugs are, as well as their shadowy handlers in India and elsewhere? If the GoI doesn’t know, why doesn’t it know? Where is the humint as well as the reams of surveillance camera video? How about tracking their bank accounts, money transactions and vehicle movements via Aadhar, PAN, UPI and Fastag?

Savitri Mumukshu quoted Chanakya on twitter: “A nation has 4 threats. First, from external enemies. Next, from internal enemies helped by foreigners. Third, from external enemies helped by insiders. But most dangerous is when internal enemies are helped by internal spies, like a hidden snake lurking in the home.” As usual, he was right.

The intelligence agencies, assuming they are not riddled with moles, must identify, track, and then pick off the ring-leaders one by one, quietly. You know, the 2am knock on the door. Enough already with the kadi ninda! The State must show it will impose discipline: it has a monopoly on violence. A little bit of “iron fist in the velvet glove” is salutary and a deterrent.

The preponderant cause, though, is the ridiculous fact that there are elections all the time in India. Yes, ALL THE GODDAMN TIME! This is a serious distraction from the job of governing the country, and politicians must figure out what will win elections, not what is good for the country. It is high time that elections were rationalized, perhaps as follows: every five years there are national elections to Parliament. Half the states must synchronize their elections with these.

In between, 2.5 years later there will be elections to the other half of the states (so that their legislatures also have a life of 5 years). If there are problems in any state and the legislatures are dismissed for some reason, President’s Rule will be imposed until the next time their elections are due. In other words, no unnecessary and frequent elections, but only to a timetable.

The root cause of the problem, however, is the Indian Constitution, which has mandated the current system of continuous elections. In general, not only for this but for other reasons as well, the Constitution needs to be rewritten because it is a prolix document, largely a cut and paste of the imperial Government of India Act of 1935, with tidbits thrown in from the US and Irish constitutions.

Both the constitution and the increasingly bizarre interpretations of it, especially of Articles 25-30 that render Hindus second-class citizens, are problems. A Constituent Assembly should be set up and work should begin on a simple, 10-page document rather than a 500+ page behemoth.

It will be the job of the Supreme Court to handle nothing but constitutional cases, which requires judicial reforms, with Regional Courts of Appeal set up to hear inter-state disputes and non-constitutional matters elevated from High Courts. And the National Judicial Appointments Commission needs to be revived as well, with a clear mandate for the legislature to approve the appointment of judges.

So there are larger problems that need to be solved. But at the moment, the attack on the Prime Minister needs to be taken as an affront to the dignity of the Indian Union, and whoever instigated or participated in it needs to be taught a lesson. Some heads must roll. Otherwise the impression that India is a Soft State, especially after the mysterious death of the Chief of Defense Staff, will gain currency. We simply cannot afford that.

1600 words, 6 Jan 2022

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/india/punjab-phenomenon-is-devastating-psychologically-but-is-it-just-reversion-to-the-mean-10254751.html

Perhaps I am naive, but growing up in the South, I had a healthy respect for Sikhs, whom I viewed as men of honor and of principle. Later when I lived in California, I visited the Gadar Memorial Hall, and I wrote in 1996 (“Across a chasm of 75 years, the eyes of these dead mean speak to today’s Indian-American”) about the photographs of “glowering young men”, long-dead patriots, mostly Sikhs.

I wrote of Kartar Singh Sarabha, the 19-year-old from the University of California, Berkeley, who was hanged by the British for ‘sedition’ in 1915. He inspired others like Bhagat Singh. And then there is the Komagata Maru incident; once again Sikhs were prominent. They were the ones who tried, as economic migrants, to move to Canada and the US, and were forced to return, and massacred on arrival.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Later, I read O V Vijayan’s under-appreciated masterpiece The Path of the Prophet, and he spoke of “the lament of the innocent first-borns”, and I learned from a colleague named Inderjeet Gujral how he literally was the first-born of a Hindu family who had become a Sikh.

Vijayan wrote of the betrayal ordinary Sikhs felt when the Indian Army attacked the Golden Temple. I wrote about Jallianwallah Bagh (“Remember Jallianwallah Bagh!”) and the sacrifice of the Sikhs, quoting Vijayan (translation from the Malayalam is mine):

As far as the eye can see, gallows, hundreds and thousands of them; and on them, smiling, hanged martyrs, Sikhs! Merchants, hedonists, yet they paid the price for freedom. They loved India deeply.

In 2019, I went to Kala Pani, the infamous penitentiary in Port Blair, the Andamans. They broke our patriots there, in a Panopticon, as visualized by the famous British liberal Jeremy Bentham. I paid homage to Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. And I read the plaques that had long lists of those incarcerated there: and they were disproportionately Sikhs and Bengalis.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Therefore it is with personal anguish that I have followed the trajectory of the Khalistani movement, and the anti-India fervor espoused by them, including the Air India Kanishka bombing, followed by their infiltration into the farm-bill agitation. There is reason to believe that there are hostile entities’ fingerprints all over.

Then there were the horrifying incidents of two lynchings, one in Amritsar and the other in Kapurthala. It is likely that both the victims were Hindus (the authorities have carefully refrained from naming them and the media has not produced tear-jerker stories about their grieving relatives, and by past experience this only happens when the murdered are Hindus). The likely implication is that there is a plan (now that Afghanistan is in the bag) by the ISI to escalate things back to the daily murders and mayhem in the pre-KPS Gill days in the 1990s.

Worryingly, this is the same template that was used by the ISI to ethnically cleanse Hindus from Jammu & Kashmir in 1990. In Punjab, too, many Hindus were killed; but there was no exodus. Perhaps the idea now is to create enough terror and force a migration of Hindus out of Punjab.

That fits the proposed map from “Sikhs for Justice” of ‘Khalistan’, which, notably, does not include any Pakistani territory, not even the Gurudwara Shri Kartarpur Sahib. That is telling.

Also notice that J&K is not even in the map! This is reminiscent of similarly expansive ‘Eelam’ maps put out by LTTE, which included much of southern India.

Therefore we can conclude that there is a clear political angle. But there is also a socio-economic angle to the troubles in Punjab.

For one thing, there are serious caste fissures among Sikhs, and Jat Sikhs dominate and in some sense oppress SC Sikhs. And apparently Jat-ness transcends religion and even national boundaries: I was amused when a famous woman journalist bragged on Twitter that her half-Pakistani, out-of-wedlock son has classic Jat looks! Apparently this is also behind massive conversions to Christian churches in Punjab recently: what I gather is that the SC Sikhs are converting en masse perhaps in a rebuke to Jats.

But I wonder if there are also some more mundane explanations. It may well be a reversion to the mean. Those parts of India that were ahead may well be now declining in relative terms. Similarly there’s the interesting idea of the “middle-income trap” that has caused some nations to stumble in their path to wealth.

In addition to Punjab with its many freedom fighters (some of whom are alluded to above), Bengalis clearly led the flowering of a nationalist consensus, and there was a veritable constellation of greats: famous names like Bankim Chandra, Rash Behari Bose, Swami Vivekananda, Shri Aurobindo, Subhas Chandra Bose, all the way to unknowns like Bina Das.

So what happened to West Bengal? Why is it benighted, and not the glittering center of Indian civilization? Have both Bengal and Punjab regressed to a mean, after having been outliers for a long time? Of course the two also bore the brunt of Partition.

There is another reason to believe there is a reversion to the mean. Consider which states are well off and which states are poor. Look at the poverty rates in the graph.

Remarkable, isn’t it? The least poor states are: Kerala, Sikkim, Goa, Delhi and Punjab. For the moment, let us ignore Sikkim, Goa and Delhi as they are small. (By the way, earlier data I found showed that J&K was by far the least poor territory. I am not sure what has changed.) So let us look at Kerala and Punjab.

There is a simple reason for Kerala’s prosperity: it is a money-order economy, taking advantage of the superior indices of high school education and of healthcare, a legacy from the enlightened rulers of Travancore. This led to mass emigration, first to the rest of India, and later to many parts of the world: not only West Asia, but also rich white countries. Result: remittance money that props up creaking state finances.

Take a look at the footnote in the graph: Kottayam district in Kerala has 0.0% poverty! Why is this? Kottayam (and nearby Ernakulam, also a winner) are the most Christian areas in Kerala, and produce the majority of the nurses who have become a major export: you can find Kerala-origin Christian nurses in large numbers in every part of the rich world. They emigrate, bring family members, and send good money back.

More recently there has been a virtual invasion of oil-rich West Asia by Kerala people, leading to a windfall (most often from Muslim-dominated Kozhikode district, another winner). But that is coming to an end: I read that some 15 lakh emigres have returned, often after losing their jobs.

Similarly, Punjab’s prosperity is easily explained. Punjabis are talented farmers (note the Sikh-Mexican Catholic farmers of California’s Central Valley who have become some of the biggest producers of almonds and so on there) and landowning castes (Jats in particular) benefited from the Green Revolution.

These castes now do not want to share their prosperity with their landless laborer brethren; besides, they figured out how to make big bucks as intermediary arhatiyas who, among other things, ‘import’ lower-priced grain from other states and demand high support prices in Punjab. In other words, their prosperity now depends on looting the taxpayer and converting public property to private gain. Thus the opposition to the farm bills.

Slowly but surely, this neat trick will cease to work, and Punjab’s gains will disappear.

If I were a betting man, I’d bet on the laggard Gangetic Plain lands: yes, Bihar, UP, MP. All of them are low-hanging fruits, and within a decade, with good policies, leadership and a bit of luck, they will be the places to be. That would only be a reversion to what once was: the Gangetic Plain led the country with its empires: Mauryan, Gupta etc (of course, later there were the Cholas, Chalukyas and Vijayanagar as glittering imperial states).

Thus regression to the mean may not be such a bad thing; and it is only in relative terms. In absolute terms, the entire nation will rise. And I suspect Punjabi separatism will subside, too. It is fairly clear that Sikhs are better off in India than in an imaginary ‘Khalistan’: they merely need to reflect on how they had to flee from Afghanistan with their sacred books as soon as the ISI won there.

1350 words, 31 Dec 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Note: a version of this essay has been published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/business/column/rajeev-srinivasan-indias-quest-for-a-role-in-the-future-of-semiconductors/20211228.htm

The announcement of a new semiconductor policy on December 15th is welcome news, and the concerned ministers need to be complimented on putting it out there. There is a caveat though: it is too little, too late; this should have been done 25 years ago. And the amounts being committed by India ($10 billion) pale in comparison to what other countries are rumored to have earmarked: $50 billion by the US, $100 billion by South Korea, and $450 billion by China, according to the Indian Express.

This is a big boys’ game. IC Insights says chipmakers will spend $152 billion this year on new fabs and production equipment this year, up from $113 billion last year. They expect investment to continue to rise at that clip of over 30% a year.

The reason is simple. If abundant oil and gas drove the 20th century economy, it is data that will drive the 21st century. To be precise, it is the ability to collect and manipulate data. And at a very practical level, it means the ability to create the semiconductors, that is chips, that power up most of the data-manipulating devices such as phones, computers and IoT devices. So whoever owns the best chip industry will be the Saudi Arabia of the era of data.

There is one statistic that remains with me from the time I was running an incubator for electronic hardware companies, funded by the Government of India: that India’s import bill for electronics would exceed India’s import bill for oil sometime in the next year or two. And this was even before the production-linked incentives made India a big maker of things like mobile phones.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

As basically a software man I had always focused on the design side of things. My undergraduate degree in electronics is a distant memory. While trying to steer a bunch of startups, and establishing an assembly line for manufacturing for them (and others), I had to pay attention to this segment, and how important it is.

The bottom line is that it is pretty clear that it is a strategic imperative for India to have the ability to make its own chips. At the most elemental level, computer security of any kind can easily be subverted at the hardware level. In other words, if the lower layers in the stack are compromised, there isn’t a whole lot you can do at the system or encryption layers.

Therefore, at least for sensitive military applications, it is evident that India must control the entire process, and preferably the entire Intellectual Property, related to at least some part of the product spectrum. It has been customary to build military hardware with customized chips, often radiation-hardened and tamper-proofed, and also gold-plated-level expensive. However, it is also true that designers have lately started looking to use the far less expensive and fast-evolving commercial chips in their military-oriented products.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Beyond that, with its rapidly increasing consumption of commercial chips especially in the telecommunication market, India cannot afford supply chain disruptions. There is a global shortage of semiconductors as the result of the pandemic and related supply problems, and India cannot be at the back of the queue when manufacturers dole out chips in future crises.

See also: https://www.rediff.com/business/column/rajeev-srinivasan-suez-de-globalization-and-a-semiconductor-fab/20210331.htm

There is a telling parallel with the vaccine-production saga. Can you imagine how India, with its demand for some 2 billion units of covid vaccine, would have fared in the world of the Pfizers and Modernas and Astra Zenecas if it didn’t have its own giant pharma industry, with the ability to rapidly scale up production and also to invent new vaccines like Covaxin? That’s right, nobody in India would have been vaccinated, much like most of Africa has not been.vaccinated.

There is also another precedent. A few years ago, China, the world’s largest supplier of rare earth metals, abruptly cut off supplies to Japan without warning. As a result, a good bit of Japan’s electronics production came to a grinding halt. The same thing can happen to India if it depends on foreigners with agendas of their own.

In fact, chips are one of several seminal technologies that will determine India’s position in the world in the next few years, and India is lagging in every one of them: AI, quantum computing, CRISPR-Cas9, maybe mRNA and maybe blockchains. A famous paper by the late C K Prahalad on ‘The Core Competence of the Corporation’ suggests that companies (and by extension nations) that focus on long-term capabilities will survive. Others will not.

Therefore, India has to pursue chip-making by using its competitive advantages: design smarts, and a vast emerging market. Let us not dismiss buyer power: if India will buy a lot of chips, then chipmakers will gladly set up shop here. But more interestingly, the fact that chip design is a major skill in India can be leveraged. There must be a few thousand chip designers in India, who are employed by the who’s who of the semiconductor industry.

But this is a little misleading, like saying India has a lot of software services providers, because these people may only see a small part of the product life cycle. They may be adept at using software to do ‘fabless design’, ie. make the blueprints for what needs to be fabricated in actual factories somewhere else. I am not knocking that model: Britain’s ARM has made a fortune by doing precisely that, and it is more than 90% likely that your phone has a ARM-designed chip.

ARM has also done significant R&D to stay ahead of the curve, and anyway there is a new generation of chips coming up with open-source RISC-V technology from the University of California, Berkeley. This may democratize chip design, so that anyone is able to add value on top of a basic platform, but that needs R&D too. This may well be where there are opportunities for Indian companies to create Intellectual Property in new products.

So Indian firms, including the small entrepreneurial ventures that are coming up, will need to focus on products a few years down the road, because the current generation is already spoken for by the TSMCs, Samsungs and Intels of the world. And without some design-for-manufacturing nous, your designs may not be viable. I am wondering about what happened to IIT Madras’s RISC-V based Shakti chips: not sure they are being made in volume.

An entire ecosystem needs to be put in place, which needs everything from steady power to surprisingly large amounts of clean water, as well as guarantees about logistics and about disruptions such as through labor issues. Given India’s history of politically-launched strikes (see Sterilite and Koodankulam), possible industrial sabotage (see mysterious fires in Chandigarh’s Semiconductor Labs and at Serum Institute’s factory) there have to be strict security measures.

The ecosystem also consists of suppliers of specialty chemicals and gasses, and the large equipment manufacturers such as Advanced Micro Devices, LAM Research etc, as well as specialist photolithographers such as Canon and Nikon. There is a large set of these companies, and if you can get their attention, then you have reached viability.

This is exactly what Samsung did when it first got into chip manufacturing: they decided to built the largest chip factory in the world, which immediately got the attention of all the ecosystem players, who are keenly aware that their business is cyclical. Samsung quickly became a preferred buyer, and out of nowhere it has now become the second largest maker of all chips, including their powerhouse display division as well as their CPU division.

There is a precedent in India for this, too: private sector players that think big, have the risk-taking nous and the marketing savvy to make a difference. If the government sets the rules and demonstrates intent, creates a powerful regulator, and gets out of the way, things can happen. Any incentives are a sweetener. There are examples in cellular telephony as well as in software services. Given the right environment, India has managers who can excel.

Thus, even though it is belated, the semiconductor policy is something that can be a game changer for India. Hopefully, it will be.

1350 words, 22 Dec 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Note: a version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at Bharat is rising as 2022 looks like a year of living dangerously (firstpost.com)

I have long thought T S Eliot was wrong: April isn’t the cruellest month, but November. For there is the anniversary on the 12th of the momentous Temple Entry Proclamation by the Maharaja of Travancore in 1936; on the 14th is the birthday of my late, dear friend Varsha Bhosle; on the 18th is 13 Kumaon’s magnificent last stand at Rezang-la; and on the 26th was the attack on Mumbai.

But this year, I am beginning to think it is December, although it is only halfway done. On December 4th, the much-loved Chief of Defense Staff, General Bipin Rawat, died in a helicopter crash. On the 15th, there was the grand inauguration of the Kashi Viswanath Corridor. On the 16th is the 50th anniversary of the surrender of the Pakistani Army in Bangladesh. Also on the 16th, a $10 billion announcement about support for semiconductor fabs.

And, as in ‘The Waste Land’, a pandemic still stalks the land.

It is a mixture of hope and despair:

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

After the devastating death of General Rawat and 12 others, there was the astonishing spectacle of ordinary highland Tamils lining the route of his funeral cortege and showering flower petals on the vehicles carrying their mortal remains. It startled me, because I have been led to believe that the average Tamil is this close to secession.

The outpouring of genuine grief all over the country at the death of the General is a signal that there is a new India emerging, one where a nation is finally being built, overcoming the fissiparous tendencies and separatism that have bedevilled the country. This is a ray of hope. Gen Rawat stood for a hard, capable, and rising Indian State: he was lionized by the average Indian because he had stood up against the enemies of the nation.

There is another India, though, the one that has long claimed to represent the masses. They showed their abundant churlishness by mocking the General’s death. A famous newspaper had a headline where they didn’t even call him General, but just Rawat, an egregious violation of protocol. And there were others who could barely contain their glee.

These people may even actually represent some strands of India: those that are thrusting rentiers, footloose, beholden to or mentally colonized by or pure fifth columnists of various hostile powers, or just plain awed by the West and impelled to copy them. But their days in the sun are over, because Bharat is rising and their India, of connections and plummy accents, is falling.

The nationalist Dharampal once wrote movingly of a group of villagers on yatra, pilgrimage, that he met on a train. They were a group from two villages in UP, of different jatis, and they had gone all the way to Rameswaram. Now they were going to Haridwar, and they had voluntarily skipped the great cities, the Nehruvian ‘temples of modern India’. They were indifferent to them, and to people like us, Anglophone urban residents.

That Bharat has always been there, even if it is not visible to most of us. It was this Bharat that, with tearful faces, mourned the General. It is this Bharat that is happy that the dirty, disgusting bylanes of Varanasi have been removed. This Bharat will visit Ayodhya. And this Bharat is the one that has taken to UPI, QR codes, and digitization with a vengeance.

It is they who have benefited from various development programs in the recent past, including Direct Benefit Transfer, JAM, UPI, health insurance, crop insurance, new roads and other infrastructure being built, the cooking-gas revolution, reliable electricity, and most of all, the Jal Jeevan mission. If they can be freed from the fetters of the colonial-Nehruvian State (a friend calls it the Anglo-Mughlai State) I suspect they will create miracles.

It is this cohort, the salt of the earth, that we are only vaguely aware of, that has sustained Hindu civilization, bloodied but yet unbowed. And they are the ones under withering attack by various enemies of the nation, targets of conversion drives, false narratives, and outright extermination attempts. But it is they who are our hope.

Thank you for reading Shadow Warrior. This post is public so feel free to share it.

There will be a realignment, too. The low-hanging fruits are in the formerly benighted interior, the Gangetic Plain, sometimes derisively called BIMARU. From my vantage point, I see Kerala, which got an early start, now declining in the state rankings; perhaps like West Bengal. The North shall rise again, and that is a good thing.

But others are inventing dangerous myths. There is the oft-repeated (but repudiated even by the Vatican) claim that Saint Thomas came to Kerala in 72 CE. Similarly, there is an effort in Tamil Nadu’s Keezhadi and Kerala’s Pattanam to create a perception respectively, that a) Tamil civilization is older and different from Hindu civilization, and b) that Saint Thomas brought Christianity to Kerala even before Hinduism arrived.

The latest instalment in this saga is a story that some ancient rice has been discovered in a dig in Tamil Nadu. This has been breathlessly turned into ‘proof’ that Tamils are different, and in effect not part of Indian or Hindu civilization.

Just today I read about the new American ambassador-designate’s plans for India, which include vaguely-worded threats about inciting that mysterious animal, ‘civil society’. That’s a euphemism for creating and sustaining fault lines in Indian society. There was, for instance, an American named Gail Omvedt who lived (lives?) in India, and was systematically attempting balkanization under the rubric of human rights.

The ambassador-designate, by some accounts, has messed up so badly as Los Angeles mayor that he has to lie low for a while and get rehabilitated. What better than to send him to India on an errand of ‘sub-national diplomacy’? Surely he’s going to threaten India with sanctions over the Russian S-400 missile system, as well as on other Democrat hot buttons, for instance Ilhan Omar’s new Islamophobia Bill.

It is downright insane that a politician is the US envoy to India, when a rising India surely needs a savvy businessman: India will likely grow its trade and manufacturing clout especially given the trend towards reducing China exposure. It shows Democrat animosity towards India, and is further proof that the Quad is dead, after being put on life-support by AUKUS.

With the threat of war on the Tibet frontier, and of Omicron in the pandemic, 2022 looks like a year of living dangerously. The only consolation is that Bharat is rising, and that Kashi and Ayodhya have been reclaimed, though not in full measure, for Hindu civilization.

1130 words, 17 December 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Note: no text, only the podcast. Please press the ‘play’ button above to listen.

Moksham praptirastu, General!

Farewell and godspeed. You were a good man.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

This essay was originally published in ‘Hinduism Today’ in 1994 at https://www.hinduismtoday.com/magazine/june-1994/1994-06-my-turn/

India has suddenly become a fashionable investment destination. Is this a flash in the pan? I think not. There is a fundamental Hindu work ethic, and India will be a major player in the coming "Asian Century." Americans invoke the thrifty Yankee farmer's "Protestant work ethic" to embody the spirit that conquered a continent. In contrast, Western scholars presume that India's pervasive poverty is due to a Hindu ethic of self-abnegation, fatalism and other-worldliness. Hardly. Hindus are notably successful worldwide.

It is instructive to analyze historical Western attitudes towards East Asians. After the Opium Wars and World War II, the accepted wisdom was that Mongoloid peoples were inherently inferior-dull-witted, slothful, treacherous, imitative. Of course, the economic miracles in Japan, Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore have emphatically repudiated that notion. Pundits give full marks to a "Confucian work ethic."

Similarly, there is a "Hindu work ethic." In ages past, India was a major producer of textiles, high-value agricultural products, steel and gems. Further, Hindus were good traders. Phoenicians and Romans came to Malabar for black pepper—worth its weight in gold. Maritime Cholas and Pallavas dominated South East Asian trade.

India has suffered over the last millennium from inevitable cyclical decline, invasions and outright looting, especially by the British. What are the fundamental features of this Hindu ethic? They are: thrift, hard work, sense of duty, respect for the family and education, mathematical and entrepreneurial skills.

For a poor nation, Indians are remarkably thrifty. Those who have lived overseas can testify to the industriousness of Indian small-business owners. And several of California's high-technology millionaires are workaholic Hindus. The Hindu paradigm of dharma-of doing one's duty-is quite the opposite of fatalism. If one's dharma is to be a trader, to amass wealth, there is scriptural authorization to do so.

Hindus have been castigated for being clannish and stand-offish. But the Hindu, like the Japanese or the Jew, is loyal to a unit—the extended family or community. This "tribal" consciousness is crucial in a rapidly shrinking world (note the success of the overseas Chinese).

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Indians revere knowledge. Hindu science and mathematics were among the most advanced in the ancient world. Thus, the Hindu's notable predilection for science and technology despite the racist Western stereotype of Hindus as superstitious and primitive. Indians have shown tremendous entrepreneurial skills in the UK, East Africa, Silicon Valley (California, USA) and even in India.

Will all this result in prosperity? The term "the Hindu rate of growth" has been used disparagingly for India's recent history of 2-3% annual growth in GDP. But when the ravaged industrial base, poor infrastructure and stultifying bureaucracy are ameliorated, I believe the true "Hindu rate of growth" is a healthy and sustainable 6-8% a year.

There are limits to growth: environmental degradation, overpopulation, AIDS and cultural homogenization. Imported American television preaching violence, indiscipline and immorality is deleterious. There is also frightening speculation that AIDS might become a pandemic in India. If India can avoid most of these traps, the Hindu work ethic will transform the country in a single lifetime, lifting untold millions from poverty.

Srinivasan, a strategic marketing manager in the Silicon Valley, CA, with an MBA from Stanford, is a devout Hindu who pilgrimages to India as often as possible.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/india/the-indian-american-paradox-indians-expect-them-to-be-indians-but-they-are-not-10185071.html so please read it there. The podcast can be heard above by clicking the ‘Play’ button.

The promotion of Parag Agarwal to the position of CEO of Twitter created a bit of a commotion online. Many celebrated the fact that several Indian-origin people now head large technology companies such as Alphabet, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM and now Twitter. Elon Musk said something to the effect that he appreciated talented people from India.

Others bemoaned the fact that many Indians apparently had to leave the country to do well. The usual reasons were trotted out: reservations prevent the meritorious from rising; the bureaucrats and the system mess everything up; there is no room for independent thought, and you must kowtow to the Big Men on Campus; and so on. There is a little truth in all of them.

In this narrative, the US is the place where they reward merit; there is opportunity for all; and if you keep your nose clean and work hard and produce results, why, they will let you rise to the top. There is a little truth in all these claims as well. But that’s not the whole story, either.

The fact is that there is a brutal selection process. Among a billion people, surely there are some who are exceptional, and some more who are outstanding. So the fact that a few Indian-Americans do well may also be attributed to the fact that they are not 1%ers, but 0.001%ers. They might truly stand out in any crowd. But that doesn’t mean the average Indian-American is doing amazingly well.

Having been one of said average Indian-Americans before returning to India, I have seen the beast from the inside. We saw an opportunity and took full advantage of it. Those fortunate enough to get through the IIT JEE got a world-class engineering education for peanuts, subsidized heavily by the taxpayer.

Then we managed to get into good US universities because of good test-taking skills, GRE scores, and grades. They gave us financial aid for graduate school; we got jobs, and at least in my day, got the coveted Green Card in a year or two. Then we raised families, and lived middle-class lives (or better, if we managed to join the right startups). We began enjoying a kind of American Dream.

We made annual trips to India, though the kids rebelled against the heat and dust. We forced the kids to attend Indian classical music or dance classes, and the Tiger Mothers amongst us groomed them to win Spelling Bees and get perfect 4.0s and perfect 800s in the SATs, and get into Ivy League schools and onwards to med and law school.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Somewhere along the line, especially after our parents died, we realized that we had almost nothing that connected us back to the old country, especially now that we, finally, caved in and acquired our US citizenship. It’s just easier to travel with, we’d console ourselves, and in any case, just like Jews did about Jerusalem, we could always toast each other: “Next year in Mumbai” when we got together for a Christmas party.

Imperceptibly, as Vikram Seth, who knew a thing or two about the California of the 1980s, wrote in ‘Diwali’, America rose, and India sank in their hearts:

… Kalidas, Shankaracharya,

Panini, Bhaskar, Kabir,

Surdas sank, and we welcomed

The reign of Shakespeare….

This is not to blame anybody’s life choices. It is a dilemma: should you immerse yourself in the culture of where you live, or should you hang on to an identity that you once had? Bharati Mukherjee, who best chronicled immigrant angst (Jhumpa Lahiri is second-generation), felt that one had to abandon, in fact cremate, the old identity; and immerse oneself in the melting pot.

Let me note in passing that this is the life of upwardly mobile Indians, some of whom have become fabulously wealthy, and the rest are solidly middle-class or upper-middle class. They are at ease in American society, contribute to National Public Radio, read the New York Times, go to the Opera, the Symphony, and Lake Tahoe, to be simpatico with their native peers, even if they don’t enjoy it very much. They may also have married Americans.

There is another whole class of bluish-collar Indians, and they tend to carry a cocoon of Indian-ness with them. They mostly socialize with the local Malayali Association, the Tamil Manram, the Bengali group, etc. They live in America, but they are not of America. That, too, is a reasonable choice, and some of them end up wintering in India as they get older. There is a small connection left.

What is the point in all this? It is to emphasize that it is futile to expect Indian-American CEOs to suddenly swing their companies in directions that help India, or Hindus. They have other compulsions, and they don’t find it advantageous to wear their Indian origin on their sleeves. They have assimilated, and probably acquired native prejudices about India.

The narrative about India, assiduously cultivated by the Deep State and its organs, is that it is a benighted place, should be balkanized, is full of “beastly natives with their beastly religion”, as infamously said by war criminal Winston Churchill. The ‘caste, curry and cows’ narrative, in Rajiv Malhotra’s words. Indian Americans over time begin to believe that narrative.

The other thing that I find odd is the cult-like obsession many Indian Americans have with the Democratic Party. I used to identify myself as a Democrat, but over time I began to believe that their world view and narrative are fundamentally in conflict with both India’s interests and the US’s own long-term survival. So I became a Republican, although that I am aware of their (many) faults. But I believe they are better for the US and for India in the medium term.

I am in a WhatsApp group of former IIT classmates, and I am astonished at their groupthink about Biden, Fauci, far-left Democratic politicians, and so on. They swallow as the truth and the whole truth anything that is pushed by their favorite media. An Indian leftist piles on to this love-fest despite knowing virtually nothing about the US. Similarly, most of my old acquaintances in Silicon Valley are staunch Democrats, anti-Modi and pro-Congress. It seems to be a package deal.

Let us be very clear. Indian-Americans may do well in America. Good for them! That has nothing to do with India, except that they may urge their companies to invest in India, if it makes financial sense for the company. I did this: with a colleague named Deepak B, I got my former Silicon Valley employer to invest in India. I chose to stay on in India; Deepak, bless him, must still be in California.

1130 words, 2 December 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This essay has been published by Firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/india/there-is-another-crisis-in-education-can-india-turn-this-to-its-advantage-10153231.html and a few excerpts are provided below. Please read it at the link. The podcast can be heard by clicking the ‘Play’ button above.

There has long been concern about a couple of issues related to education in India: the poor quality of the humanities curriculum, and the concern that English medium is becoming an albatross rather than an enabler. On average, it is assumed that STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) is in fine shape in the country, and this is a source of pride.

Therefore, it was startling to see the results of the Kerala state entrance examinations and the uptake in engineering. According to KEAM statistics, less than 10 students all over Kerala opted for Civil Engineering. But 5000+ rushed into Computer Science, and 2500+ into Electronics. There were relatively few takers for Mechanical, Electrical (Power) and so forth: only in the hundreds each (Times of India, 12 Nov 2021, “2 engg branches get less than 10 candidates each”).

This, one could argue, is the free market at work, as there are more job opportunities these days for Computer Science graduates. However, it is an enormously skewed result: doesn’t India as a country need a large number of civil engineers to help build out infrastructure, which is a priority: roads, railways, ports, power plants, bridges, and so on?

…. most of the text deleted, see https://www.firstpost.com/india/there-is-another-crisis-in-education-can-india-turn-this-to-its-advantage-10153231.html for more

….

This sounds good, but there might be bigger forces at play. The traditional university may be on its way out. Going back to the Kerala example, a number of departments may close for lack of students; some engineering colleges have already shut down. This has also happened to business schools already. The age of campus placements may be over.

In a world where excellent content is available to anybody everywhere, often free, on the internet, and where I hope machine translation will soon make the content available in the mother tongue (in real-time), the preponderance of English as well as the Anglosphere model of universities may both be under siege.

Can India come up with an alternative model and do a leapfrog? As Dharampal’s work shows, traditional knowledge systems used to produce well rounded citizens long ago.

1097 words, 14 November 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by Firstpost.com at Opinion | Diwali, the powers that be, and civil disobedience (firstpost.com) and you can read it there. You can listen to the podcast by clicking the ‘play’ button above.

Thanks for reading Shadow Warrior! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I have personally noticed an odd phenomenon. At 6am, there is the chanting of the Venkatesa Suprabhatham from a nearby temple that I can hear for about 15 minutes. But lately, I can hardly hear it, because the state government has imposed a maximum of 45 decibels on all Hindu temple loudspeakers.

On the other hand, a new mosque issues its call at 5am. This is recent: earlier the calls were less loud and more distant. On Sundays, a nearby church used to have its singing, clapping, and sermons till about 11am. Now they have hiked up the sound levels and the program goes on the entire day.

This is symptomatic of state-sanctioned discrimination against Hindu culture, religion and rituals. Indeed, during Navaratri, the CM of Kerala said (I paraphrase): “Temples are public, but churches and mosques are private”. This appears violative of the Constitutional guarantee of equal treatment irrespective of religion. At around the same time, the Kerala government forcibly captured a Shiva temple in Kannur, against the strenuous objections of protesting Hindus whom they physically ejected.

… deleted

The fact that ordinary Hindus performed civil disobedience, in what can only be termed Salt Satyagraha 2.0, by peacefully asserting their right to burst Deepavali firecrackers as they wished, is a sign that the days of passive acquiescence to motivated nonsense are over.

6 Nov 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by Chintan at https://chintan.indiafoundation.in/articles/poor-optics-retreat-from-the-quad-and-proliferation-make-aukus-a-bad-pact/

The AUKUS strategic alliance among Australia, the US and the UK was an unexpected bombshell. Among the unpleasantly surprised were India and Japan, partners of the US and Australia in the Quad quasi-alliance. France (and the rest of the European Union) were also upset. (France also had a reasonable commercial peeve: its diesel-submarine order worth $40 billion with Australia was cancelled without notice).

AUKUS has been spun by American and especially British commentators as a wonderful new initiative to contain China, this time with some military might. Meanwhile China continues to rampage in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, and threatens to capture the continental shelves of nations like Indonesia and Vietnam via ‘research’ ships.

However, there are serious concerns, especially from the point of view of India, which obviously has its own military issues relating to China, based on the latter’s nibbling away at the Indo-Tibetan Himalayan border, leading of course to June clashes in Galwan. Reports about a huge build up of infrastructure and war materiel in Tibet, incursions deep into Indian territory, and the setting up of villages inside Bhutan point to a ‘salami slicing’ approach.

In the context of the looming Chinese threat to the prevailing international order, it is only natural that the US should take steps to preserve its primacy. Thus the Quad, which was first mooted by Prime Minister Abe of Japan: a coalition of democracies in the Indo-Pacific, with a common interest in containing a rampaging China, and the muscle to enforce their will. They will never say “contain China”, but that’s the intent.

Former US President Obama allegedly made a “pivot to Asia”, but it was on his watch that China captured the South China Sea, suffering no consequences therefrom. Former US President Trump at least made noises about decoupling from China and attempted to bring in a consensus about lakshmana rekhas around China.

In this context, three things current US President Biden has done appear to be counter-productive: one, the humiliating exit from Afghanistan; two, the AUKUS announcement, and three, the acceptance of Chinese hostage-taking tactics in the case of the CFO of Huawei.

All three instances created doubts about American credibility, dependability, and will/ability to stand up for its partners. In the aftermath of the withdrawal from Kabul and the announcement about AUKUS, China has redoubled its intimidation of Taiwan; it will likely do the same to Japan re the Senkakus; and generally do the same all over Asia.

It is true that the US needed to exit Afghanistan, but surely not like this. The headlong retreat implied that America’s friendship is hostage to expediency, and can be withdrawn any moment based on domestic compulsions. Henry Kissinger’s quip that “it is dangerous to be America's enemy, but fatal to be its friend” leaps to mind.

Similarly, maybe the US needed to bring Australia under its wing, but surely not like this. By sneaking the AUKUS announcement in a few days before the Quad summit, Biden deemed the Quad a lame duck. All the flowery language in the Quad declaration couldn’t conceal the fact that it had been downgraded. That the two non-white members of the Quad, India and Japan, were kept in the dark about AUKUS suggests certain agendas.

Besides, AUKUS does not seem to have troubled the Chinese very much: that, in and of itself, is ominous. The Chinese, as part of their ‘wolf-warrior’ diplomacy, habitually fly into a rage at the slightest of provocations: this is an intimidation tactic. But the official Chinese reaction to the AUKUS announcement was muted. Here’s what they said: “extremely irresponsible” and “seriously undermines regional peace and intensifies the arms race.”

Even the excitable Global Times only said, “Washington is losing its mind by trying to rally its allies against China”, “The US intends to turn the Quad and AUKUS into ‘sinister gangs’ containing China,” and “[we] warn solemnly Japan, India and Australia not to follow the US too far in confronting China. Once they step on the red line of China’s core interests, China will not care about their relations with the US, and China will not hesitate to punish them.”

That is very restrained by Chinese standards: the only conclusion we can draw is that they agree with Napoleon’s epigram: “Never interrupt the enemy when he’s making a mistake“. They think AUKUS is a win for them.

The Chinese are probably right. Despite the spin doctoring, this marks a historic retreat by America. The Biden team are laboring under an atavistic Atlanticist illusion of a white Anglophone alliance to dominate the world. Those days are long gone. The UK in particular is on a downward spiral after Brexit, and may soon be shorn of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

If the US wanted to proliferate nuclear submarine propulsion technology to Australia, they could have done so. Why choose an intermediary like the UK that doesn’t add value? I am reminded of the classic scene from Catch-22, where Yossarian wonders why the comatose patient needs to be an intermediary between the drip feed bag and the waste removal bag. Why not just connect the two?, he asks.

That also brings up the nuclear question. Why is the US proliferating nuclear technology to Australia, a non-nuclear power and a fierce NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) adherent which refused to sell uranium to India citing the NPT? Maybe I am missing something, but doesn’t this US act eviscerate the NPT? If India were to transfer nuclear tech to Taiwan, would everybody be so quiet? Of course not: there are serious double standards in play.

Besides, Australia is pretty far away from China, and in any case the first submarines under the AUKUS deal will not (according to plan) appear till the 2040s. Too little, too late. The spurned parties, France, Japan and India, should perhaps form a triad. France has nuclear propulsion technology; surely it can do a technology transfer to India (forget the NPT); and France has a lot of interests in the Indo-Pacific, far more than the UK.

On the whole, AUKUS seems like a very bad deal, despite the PR storm that shows it in a good light.

1030 words, 4 Oct 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by Swarajya magazine at https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/all-those-anniversaries-but-they-all-may-boil-down-to-the-powerful-screwing-the-meek

Is this a particularly momentous year? 2021 has important anniversaries, and everyone has heard about at least that of the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York.

But there are other anniversaries too, and when I started looking at them, what struck me is a theme: so many of them end up with the strong taking advantage of the weak to loot or persecute the latter! That may be a coincidence, but it is intriguing.

For instance, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the Moplah Riot in Malabar, in which Muslims attacked, slaughtered, raped and forcibly converted thousands of their Hindu neighbors for no fault of theirs, but simply because Turkey had abolished its caliphate.

This year is also the 30th anniversary of India’s economic reforms, wherein then-Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao began to dismantle the stifling dirigiste state that had condemned hundreds of millions of Indians to poverty. At least this case is positive: it marked the beginning of the end of the pauperization of India’s masses by malign forces.

This is also the 20th anniversary of China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, which event has done so much for the Chinese economy, essentially helping it become the hub of global manufacturing, although a remarkable technological innovation helped it too, and more on that later.

2021 is also the 50th anniversary of the US going off the gold standard under Richard Nixon. This led to the dollar becoming the unofficial reserve currency of the world, and that brought great economic clout, because the US could now print dollars at will, without having to hold an equivalent amount of the precious metal.

Undoubtedly there are other anniversaries I am unaware of, but let’s just go with these. What is intriguing is the connections between them.

On the anniversary of 9/11, we saw Biden’s debacle in Afghanistan. The question is why it took the US twenty long years to discover that they were in a no-win situation and that they were being led by the nose by Pakistan into things that were not in their interest.

It was evident to observers that things were going wrong as early as the 2001 November siege of Kunduz. I wrote at the time What happened in Kunduz | Rediff.com that the US allowing Pakistan to airlift its soldiers to safety (quite a few brigadiers etc were masquerading as Taliban) was an unfathomable act. But the US Deep State apparently had other ideas. Even when the CIA station chief was blown up Khost massacre: A point of inflexion in Obama’s War | Rediff.com in 2009, and bin Laden captured in 2011, the Deep State maintained its steadfast romance with the ISI.

Why? There are many possible reasons. One is that it was hubris leading to stupidity. Second, the $2-$3 trillion dollars spent was a windfall for the military industrial complex, so why would they stop the gravy train?

Chances are that it was hubris and stupidity in play. The Deep State simply couldn’t imagine a situation in which the US was no longer the only game in town. They were sticking with an old playbook that had outlived its usefulness, wherein American money and overwhelming military power could solve all problems, but that world is long gone. If it ever existed.

What they didn’t realize was that China’s accession to the WTO, and its insidious and steady deindustrialization of the US, had created a situation where it is essentially impossible to go back to a status quo ante where, as in the dialog from Top Gun, it was only “rubber dog-s**t from Hong Kong” that America needed to import, nothing of consequence.

This is where the retreat from the gold standard becomes relevant. By printing dollars by the boatload, the US has now become the world’s biggest debtor, as Chinese savings flowed in and allowed the US to live beyond its means, by selling $3 trillion in treasury securities to the Chinese.

That makes China and the US co-dependent in an uncomfortable way. If the Chinese were to dump US treasuries, the dollar would fall, and the value of their investments would collapse as well. On the other hand, if the US were to confiscate Chinese assets (as they have done to Afghan assets), they would have a war on their hands. Stalemate!

But that’s not all. The dollar was a powerful weapon in the hands of US elites, especially their investment bankers, a few years ago. They were able to fend off the Japanese challenge in the 1980s via the magic of the Plaza Accord of 1985, which caused the dollar to depreciate, and eventually forced the Japanese economy into its lost decades of malaise.

Unfortunately, that weapon is no longer available, because the investment bankers are now China’s best friends in the US China Has One Powerful Friend Left in the U.S.: Wall Street - WSJ. This is partly because investment banks have invested a lot there; they are not particularly tied to geography, and their clients, the big corporates, are also vested there. These clients are finding it difficult to extricate themselves from China, even if you assume that they wish to do so.

There is one other aspect of the supply chain vassaldom that the US is facing now: the role of the humble shipping container. The standardization of the 20 foot or 40 foot container and the concomitant dramatic fall in the cost and elapsed time for trans-Pacific shipping were the initial impetus for the migration of manufacturing to then low-cost Asia.

There was also a remarkable unintended consequence of the Vietnam war. The US Navy containerized early, according to a fascinating podcast titled Thinking inside the box—the story of the shipping container | The Economist. They were sending so many containers to the war front, it made no sense to return them empty, and so they started picking up shiploads of electronics goods from Japan, and that’s how the shift to importing manufactured goods from Asia began.

It’s too soon to tell what the unintended consequences of the Afghan war will be. There is indeed the possibility that it will be China’s Waterloo, as it was for the Soviets and the Americans. It may well lead to the collapse of the Chinese empire, a desirable outcome.

Let us now revisit the question of the Deep State benefiting from the Afghan war (at the expense of the US taxpayer). It was clearly a transfer of wealth from the public purse to private interests. There are other examples of extortion subtly presented as something noble, or at least something in which a player was helpless. An excellent recent example is the 1973 oil price shock. OPEC suddenly tripled oil prices, and it was extortionate, because all economies had become addicted to cheap oil.

Thus it was impossible for most nations to reduce their oil consumption overnight, however much they tightened the belt. The result was a dramatic transfer of wealth from sovereign nations to OPEC’s coffers. Of course, rich countries including the US were affected, but they could afford it. The real burden fell on poor, emerging nations, and what they should have been spending on their people was instead transferred to OPEC.

That was grand theft. Immoral too, as it literally took food from the mouths of the starving.

But there was an interesting twist. Much of the money that OPEC grabbed from all of us ended up in the US by dint of massive arms purchases by Saudi Arabia et al. The Deep State won. The US had enough clout and enough weapons that they could probably have forced OPEC to reduce the price shock, but they didn’t. OPEC looked like nasty, mean, inhumane monsters, but the US looked like a victim, too.

The US thus neatly covered up its role in the crime.

There is another fascinating example of clever extortion, this time from India, in the case of Tipu Sultan’s attacks on Malabar in the 1780s, which were a combined religious war and a war for loot. He captured the Samoothiri’s kingdom of Kozhikode, and principalities such as Valluvanad, Ernad, and parts of Kochi. Until Travancore repulsed him in 1790 at its Nedumkotta fortification with the aid of a ‘river bomb’, he was successful in both his goals.

Tipu was clear that temples were his target, along with religious conversion. He knew that, enriched by over two millennia of the spice trade, Kerala’s temples were storehouses of wealth -- and the reason is that temples were the centers of social activity, disaster relief, public works and culture, and so people donated generously to them.

The British were also keenly aware of this, and so they devised a diabolical plan. They would allow, or even secretly encourage, Tipu to prosecute his jihad on Kerala. And once he had hauled all the wealth to Srirangapatnam, they would attack, and take all the loot in one go. Very efficient, and they would get none of the blame of desecrating temples, but be lionized as the saviors of southern India.

And that is exactly what they did.

In fact, it was worse. The Brits were allegedly treaty allies of Travancore, but stood by and did nothing when Tipu attacked; but they charged Travancore the entire cost of the Third Anglo-Mysore war, on the theory that their attack on Srirangapatnam forced Tipu to retreat.

This paupered Travancore, and a powerful British Resident was installed, who dictated policy. One of the policies forced upon the kingdom was the commingling of temple properties and State properties, which in effect made most smaller temples unviable; furthermore, one Munro, a Resident, forced the reigning Queen to donate Rs. 10,000 to the church in 1819, a huge fortune then, which led to massive conversion drives. Within 100 years, according to the Travancore Manual, Christians went from 6% to 33% in the kingdom.

But the newspapers then and historians now give full marks to the Brits for their compassion and wisdom; meanwhile they enjoy their ill-gotten gains.

Tipu destroyed and desecrated scores of temples big and small, and converted thousands at the point of the sword. That is how there is a large Muslim population in Malabar. And it was these local Muslims who went on a jihad in 1921 on the flimsy excuse of the ban on the caliphate in distant Turkey.

The story put about by communists is that this was either a) a ‘peasant revolt’ against rich Hindu landlords, or b) a ‘freedom struggle’ against the British. We can easily eliminate (b) because not a single Briton was attacked, but thousands of Hindus were. As for (a), it turns out that the vast majority of those killed, converted, raped etc. were lower-caste Hindu agricultural laborers and so that explanation is also a little wanting.

In a new book, Beyond Rampage: West Asian Contacts of Malabar and the Khilafat, Dr Hari Shankar, an archaeologist and scholar, argues that the riot was instigated by wealthy Muslim traders looking to expand their monopoly over the sea-borne timber trade to the Middle East and Turkey from the Nilambur forests, where the lands were owned by the temples. This is an intriguing hypothesis: and once again economics may explain hidden motives.

There is yet another anniversary that is not spoken of very much: Brahma Chellaney pointed out that September 19th is the 61st anniversary of the unbelievably one-sided Indus Water Treaty. Said he on Twitter:

Thus the various anniversaries we have seen this year may be connected in subtle ways. Going forward, we may also see in the new AUKUS pact the genesis of a new white Anglosphere alliance, with the Quad being downgraded, and non-white, non-Anglo partners such as India, Japan and Indonesia being dumped by the West. And the EU as well, as France indicated with its furious reaction.

Twenty years later, we might look back on 2021 as the time the West retreated into an atavistic shell. Alternatively, perhaps we will see it as the beginning of the dissolution of the Chinese empire, and its retreat back into its Han homeland on the eastern coast. It is too soon to tell now. But I do suspect 2021 will turn out to be the year of living dangerously.

2000 words, Sept 21, 2021. Updated Sept 28, 2021.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay has been published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-what-did-modis-washington-visit-achieve/20210925.htm

This autumn has been cruel to India. Not only is the instantaneous collapse of the Afghan government a grave concern for India, based on entirely likely new terrorism threats, but then there is the obvious downgrading of the Quad partnership in the wake of the brand-new AUKUS grouping. The Financial Times believes that the Quad will become non-military.

In a sense, this is not news for India, as it was clear nobody from the Quad would send boots on the ground to help India in case the Chinese invade. But it was tone-deaf for the Biden administration to announce the AUKUS deal just days before the first in-person Quad summit during his term.

The other two Quad partners, Japan and India, were apparently left in the dark by the Americans. So was France, which was furious at the sudden cancellation of its own $40 billion submarine deal with Australia.

At the UN General Assembly, President Biden delivered soaring rhetoric about global unity (which was contrasted with former President Trump’s anti-globalist message): “We are not seeking a new Cold War or the world divided into rigid blocs”. That would have gone over a lot better if he hadn’t just abandoned his Afghan allies, or created a new AUKUS bloc.

Antonio Gutierrez, the UN Secretary General, said pointedly, and perhaps as a direct rebuke to Biden: “A breakdown in trust is leading to a breakdown in values. Promises, after all, are worthless if people don’t see results in their daily lives. Failure to deliver creates space for some of the darkest impulses of humanity. It provides oxygen for easy-fixes, pseudo-solutions and conspiracy theories. It is kindling to stoke ancient grievances. Cultural supremacy. Ideological dominance. Violent misogyny. The targeting of the most vulnerable including refugees and migrants.”

The US has a massive credibility gap today, because its rhetoric simply does not match its actions on the ground. In many ways, the US is ceding ground to China, for instance in its reluctance to push for an understanding of the possible lab origins of the Wuhan coronavirus. Open-source intelligence from the DRASTIC group found that Peter Daszak of Ecohealth had sought to cooperate with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in creating an unusual feature, a ‘furin cleavage site’, in bat coronaviruses, that would make them infectious to humans.

Furthermore, the US is under a Democratic presidency. We remember how badly the Democratic Clinton and Obama administrations treated India: with disdain and disrespect. Not to say that Republicans are wonderful, but these days the Democratic party has been taken over by their fringe leftists, and is remarkably ‘woke’. Thus there is no chance that anything of substance can come out of Modi-Biden meetings.

The only thing that the US is seeking is weapons sales. Brahma Chellaney has pointed out that all that was actually accomplished by the high-voltage sales program called the Indo-US nuclear deal is that India bought a lot of US weapons. According to India Today, there is a lot on the table today as well. If it were up to me, I’d focus on the submarine hunter-killer P8i Poseidons, and would have nothing to do with the Norwegian-developed NASAMS system, as the Scandinavians are known busybodies.

But the problem, as always, is that India opens its checkbook in return for no diplomatic or military leverage. The US sells technology to India that is obsolete or second-rate. For instance, despite much negotiation from India, the US refuses to sell its strategic nuclear submarine (SSN) propulsion technology to India: the very same stuff it is now selling to Australia. And there is also the threat of sanctions if India deploys its Russian S-400 anti-missile technology, which incidentally China also has.

The fact is that Biden has now created a new military alliance, which consists only of white, Anglosphere nations. He has either thoughtlessly or deliberately snubbed the two non-white members of the Quad, that is India and Japan. And perhaps other Indo-Pacific players such as Indonesia. The involvement of Britain, increasingly a marginal power even in Europe, and practically non-existent in the Indo-Pacific, is pure Atlanticism.

There are two possible explanations: one is that Biden believes the way to deal with China is to surrender the Indo-Pacific to them, and to retreat to being an Atlantic power. Australia is not much of a factor in the Indo-Pacific (will the US revert to the old term ‘Asia-Pacific’?) being far away and sparsely populated. The powers that matter in the Indo-Pacific are indeed Japan, India, and Indonesia. Even France is more of a factor in the Indo-Pacific than Britain is.

The second explanation is that the agenda of “climate, conflict and corona” is uppermost in the minds of the Americans. The many visits of the climate czar John Kerry (an unrepentant Atlanticist, and a disaster earlier as foreign secretary) to India, especially when India is doing much better than many others in moving towards renewables and Paris agreement commitments, suggest that Biden is seeking to hector and bully India into things that are not in its interest.

Yet another example of Biden’s pusillanimity with China is the fact that his Justice Department has dropped charges against the Huawei CFO (and daughter of its founder) who was held for a long time in Canada on charges of criminal activity. In return, China released two Canadians they held on spying charges. Lesson? China learns that hostage-taking and brazenness pays dividends.

As far as the Wuhan coronavirus is concerned, Biden’s approach of hoarding far more vaccine than is strictly necessary for the US has created vaccine haves and have-nots, the majority of whom are in developing nations that have been starved of vaccines, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

The AUKUS move is a definite indication that the Quad has been downgraded. What it suggests is atavism: Biden’s America is retreating to a white Anglo-Saxon view of the world. It has even decided to ditch the European Union. This is a Huntingtonian view, in which Biden has ceded Asia to China, and will attempt to rally the white Anglosphere as his last stand against the rampaging Chinese. Alas, this is a chimera.

Robert Gates, former foreign secretary, once remarked that Biden had been wrong on every single major foreign policy initiative in 40 years. Did you notice that China, which is usually quick to fly into a rage, was utterly quiet when Biden made two blunders: fleeing Afghan in disorderly retreat, and humiliating allies with the AUKUS pact? That signifies that China is a votary of Napoleon’s epigram: “Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake”.

The only thing that may salvage Narendra Modi’s trip to the US is his meetings with CEOs, such as those of Blackstone, First Solar, Qualcomm, Adobe, and General Atomics. These firms may recognize India’s steady growth, especially in comparison to the current chaos in China due to Evergrande’s imminent collapse.

That, and a meeting with lame-duck Japanese PM Suga, may be the only things for Narendra Modi to write home about.

1130 words

Sept 24, 2021, updated Sept 25, 2021.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by swarajya magazine at https://swarajyamag.com/technology/has-apple-peaked

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently celebrated 10 years at its helm. It is the most valuable company in history, at about $2.5 trillion -- an unimaginably stratospheric number -- and Cook has steered it to its massive valuation. That is a surprise to many who thought Cook, basically an operations man, would never be able to fill the shoes of the flamboyant and dashing Steve Jobs.

Cook has indeed done a remarkable job of steering Apple. But what next? The last real innovation Apple produced is the iPhone, and that was a while ago: 2007, to be precise. It is still a huge money-spinner, but where exactly has Apple innovated since then, except in minor, supporting products like the Apple Watch and the Apple Airpods?

There is an interesting claim by management theorist Simon Sinek that what distinguishes Apple is the ‘why?’ question. Why does Apple exist? Well, in Steve Jobs’ terminology, it was to make “insanely great products”. As Sinek would say, “Want to buy one?”. Jobs saw a lot of wonderful new technologies at Xerox PARC and intuitively understood how these were transformative, and so he adapted them. In stark contrast, other technology companies have mundane goals: profit margins, market penetration, etc.

But that differentiation -- design excellence -- may well have walked out the door with the exits of Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive, the chief designer. And brilliant design doesn’t always succeed, unless you are able to respond to the unarticulated needs of the people who will buy the products (which is the gospel of the discipline of ‘design thinking’, which, confusingly, is not about design per se but about solving problems the way a designer would).

Apple did have its share of fiascos: for instance the hand-held computer (personal digital assistant) named the Newton. Its demise almost brought the company down, and led to the exit of Jobs. On the other hand, the original Macintosh was a thing of beauty, and it was vastly superior to the competition. But my question remains, where is the innovation today? I hear there’s an Apple Car coming, or Apple Glasses, but they are not really “wow!”. Apple always shows up at the top of the list of innovative companies, but that is mostly resting on its laurels.

I must make a disclaimer: I have a love-hate relationship with Apple. The very first computer that I personally owned was a Macintosh Plus that I bought for a princely sum even though I got a university student discount. It was the obvious choice at the time: along with a dot-matrix printer it enabled me to produce presentable reports, graphs and term papers. The alternative on offer was DOS-based PCs, which, although they had Lotus 1-2-3, were distinctly user-unfriendly and far less appealing.

Source: Macintosh Plus, Photo by Thomas Millot on Unsplash

That Mac lasted me a long time: robust, rugged and reliable, in an all-in-one, portable chassis. Later, while working in Silicon Valley, I bought my second Mac, a Macintosh 2. This was a more conventional device with a separate monitor and CPU box. I bought it at a sale when the company Go went under: it was developing an OS for handheld devices, but it ran out of runway. To be honest, I didn’t like that Mac as much as the earlier one.

But the real surprise came when I decided I needed a laptop a few years later. I found out that Windows-based laptops had come a long way, and I could buy one for roughly $1000, which was significantly less than Apple’s laptops were going for. So I bought a Toshiba; I have never bought an Apple laptop, although I had one from work a few years ago. It was nice, but for an office worker, and not a media creator, it was not more appealing than a Windows laptop. These days I am happy with my Chromebook, using a Windows machine only to run specialized applications, or some like Audacity that don’t run on the Chromebook.

That sticker shock was the turning point for me. Maybe I was wrong in turning down a better put-together product than the average Windows laptop, but I was not willing to pay a premium for a consumer item. I may have been wrong, because my average Windows laptop has had a lifetime of only 3-4 years while the Macs, I hear, do not get obsolescent so quickly. I hear this about iPhones vs. Android phones too.

I didn’t realize it then, but the issue I was up against was Apple’s business model of detailed control over everything. That makes the Apple ecosystem both attractive and forbidding. On the one hand, if you are willing to cede control to Apple, then you have a smooth and pleasant experience. This is what has created legions of Apple fanboyz, who are totally happy with the walled garden, and have no wish to exit. Oddly enough, Apple has become the Big Brother (albeit more benign) that it lampooned in the famous 1984 ad.

There is a nice contrast between Apple’s highly integrated model (which incidentally ensures fat margins) and the Wintel model. I would certainly not call Wintel an ‘open’ system, because it was zealously controlled by Microsoft and Intel, but it was (is?) a disintegrated model, because although the principals held the IP tightly and extracted monopoly rents, there were opportunities for third parties to exist, and even thrive, where the two were not present. And they were not ubiquitous, unlike Apple in its own stack.

Source: Strategicmanagementinsight.com

Which is the better model? There is no straight answer. Today Apple’s model is incredibly successful. Earlier the Wintel model was incredibly successful too. One of the concerns about Apple going forward is that it may have reached the end of this business model. They are trying to reinvent themselves as a services+product firm, but we will have to wait and see.

There are several other issues. The first is, simply, size. It’s hard to sell more iPhones than there are people in a country, I suppose, even if they can afford them and want them. So Apple as a matter of basic economics will slow down, and its juicy profit margins will erode. In fact, I am rather amazed that there aren’t passable Chinese clones of Apple products. Maybe it’s the deterrent effect of Apple’s fearsome lawyers.

Or maybe it is the symbiotic relationship between Apple and China. There is the famous story (it may be apocryphal) that the iPhone originally had a plastic screen, but Jobs found it scratched up easily, so at a late stage he insisted on a glass screen. The story goes that the only place where they could quickly ramp up and find enough people to cut and process the glass was in the factories of Apple’s Chinese partners.

Source: Photo by David Švihovec on Unsplash

So the supply chain relationship between Apple and Chinese OEM’s has been good for both.

I’m not sure if this will be feasible going forward, as there is a general intent on the part of the US to decouple from China (although this is opposed by both Big Tech and Wall Street). So this happy state of affairs in supply chain management is under threat, which may either increase Apple’s costs, or end up in Chinese erecting barriers to market access, or both.

There are some clues in China’s recent clampdown on its own ‘high-tech’ companies like Alibaba, Didi Chuxing, etc. that China views these mostly e-commerce entities with disdain, preferring to direct investment towards the harder technologies such as, perhaps, quantum computing, biotechnology, energy, etc. They may well be right. Apple has more tangible products than Microsoft, Alphabet, Facebook, et al; still, when they all announced record earnings in July, investors were a little sceptical about future prospects.

My feeling is that these Big Tech firms are sort of moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic. Their core businesses are plateauing, and they will have to enter into each others’ areas to sustain their growth; thus Apple is rumored to be building its own search engine (though it gets some $10 billion dollars from Google to be the search engine of choice on iPhones) and even an advertising platform.

But the problem is that they are all following a model of advertising-led revenue (although Apple protests that they do not sell, or have to sell, their users’ data, I suspect they will not let go of user data that easily) or what is known as ‘surveillance capitalism’. This is already raising hackles among consumers as well as regulators concerned about monopolies, which these Big Tech firms do have in their niches.

There is an increasing trend towards anonymity or even pseudonymity, and I suspect a business model will emerge where users keep their data to themselves, or demand payment for it. That may put a major crimp on their businesses, that is if the regulators don’t get to them first. There have been record fines imposed by the European Union, Russia, etc on these Big Tech companies, and the US competition authorities may weigh in as well.

Whatever goes up will come down. We just don’t know when that will happen. It is certain that Apple will fade, as other champions have, for instance IBM or Toshiba. The question is when. My belief is that the best days are behind Apple, but I have been wrong before, so don’t count them out. The structural and environmental changes we see now argue that Apple is past its best days.

1600 words, Aug 30. 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay is published by swarajya.com at https://swarajyamag.com/world/chinas-clampdown-on-national-technology-champions-xis-new-industrial-statism-triumphalist-hubris-and-art-of-ju-jitsu

The world has been baffled by China’s sudden clampdown on its very successful, and giant, companies such as e-payments company Ant Financial, ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing, food-delivery firm Meituan, and several online education firms. Given the opacity of the Chinese communist party, commentators can only imagine what the reasons might be.

Writing in Nikkei Asia, Richard McGregor suggested that “Xi’s tech crackdown preserves socialism with Chinese characteristics”. On the website unherd.com, Marshall Auerback suggested that “The West can learn from China”. The Economist’s current cover story is titled, “China’s attack on tech”. There is a plethora of other views on the topic, and it is worth exploring why this happened, and what we might take away, especially from an Indian point of view.

It seems to me that there are at least three plausible scenarios, and any of them may be in play, and maybe all three at once:

Industrial policy, directing where investment and funding will go

Triumphalist hubris, because of how successful China has been lately

A cosmic form of ju-jitsu, using the very strengths of the West against it

Industrial policy

It may well be that China has decided (as in the Made in China 2025 plan) that there are certain technologies that have an outsize impact on the future, and they have decided to focus their attention therein. For example, Quantum Computing, Biotechnology, Materials Science, along with specific applications of AI and Machine Learning (a recent report suggests that China has overtaken the US in the citations of their papers in AI).

Such a direction would not be particularly surprising. A much-cited article by C K Prahalad (“The Core Competence of the Corporation”, Harvard Business Review, 1990) made a comparison between GTE and NEC, and concluded that the latter handily defeated the former by concentrating on the crucial technology of the then-future, semiconductors.

Others, for instance Scott Adams (cartoonists often have surprisingly sage perspectives), have suggested that China’s management model is engineering-driven and is thus focused, ruthless and unaffected by the legal hair-splitting that bedevils many other countries, including India.

Thus, industrial policy could well be a sensible way of dealing with the uncertainties of the future. Japan’s MITI tried to guide industry in the 1980s and 1990s with mixed results, but China’s mandarins may well believe they have a better handle on reading the tea leaves.

There is the other side of the picture, which is quite relevant to India as well. What is considered the ‘tech industry’ in the US these days consists of a number of behemoths in what is loosely referred to as Silicon Valley, although several of them, such as Microsoft and Amazon are actually in Seattle. The usual suspects include, apart from the above, Google parent Alphabet, Facebook and Apple.

In a sense, the Chinese are asking a very good question: what exactly is high-tech about these companies? It is true that they are extremely successful financially, in fact spewing out oodles of cash, and some are valued in trillions of dollars, but exactly what is their innovation? Take Apple, for instance. Yes, it is true that the iPhone, which debuted a decade ago, was revolutionary, but what have they designed lately?

Not to be dismissive, but Facebook and Google do ‘surveillance capitalism’, basically selling their users to advertisers. Amazon and Microsoft are soaring on the basis of their cloud-computing infrastructure. But one could argue that they are merely milking their innovations of a decade ago, and don’t have much of a recent product line that creates a ‘moat’ for them, or in MBA-speak, a ‘blue ocean’.

The same question can be asked of India’s lionized unicorns, of which here is a partial list as per the Economic Times a few days ago. Exactly what earth-shaking and life-changing innovations do they bring to the table? Yes, if they have managed to build big, loyal customer bases, sure, that can be of value. But just copying and indigenizing business models successful elsewhere is not exactly setting the stage for world-beating companies.

To put it bluntly, the Chinese may be calculating that Silicon Valley’s best brains are now engaged in minutely tweaking algorithms to capture the attention span of customers, and are not thinking of solving the world’s problems. For instance, Silicon Valley engineers have been notably less than successful in addressing climate change or even the Wuhanvirus/Covid-19 pandemic.

The Chinese may have a point, and India’s policy makers should take note. There has long been disquiet about India’s very successful IT services companies based on the fact that they have, nevertheless, left little by way of a technology legacy the way early Silicon Valley pioneers such as Hewlett Packard and Fairchild Semiconductor did.

Triumphalist hubris

China has good reason to believe they have won. They have, for all practical purposes, created a new world order dominated by them. Just think of what they have done lately in terms of riding roughshod over the world. Nobody would dare to demand reparations from them for what could be construed as the crime against humanity of 4 million dead from the virus that arose in their country (and could well be something they designed in a lab).

Similarly, they have captured the South China Sea, used their debt-trap diplomacy to extort their way to strategic assets, and cavalierly sent up rockets that might fall on anybody’s head. One could also make a cogent argument that they were able to harness their mediaand social media assets to defenestrate an American president they didn’t like. Not to mention the pandemic narrative that, for long, completely exonerated them from any blame.

I wouldn’t blame them for quietly celebrating a little, or for believing they have cracked the puzzle of how to, if not make friends, at least influence people and get them to do anything they want. In this context, they have also infiltrated institution after institution, insinuated their cadres into positions where they could capture data or inventions from others, often illegally.

Maybe they believe that they know so much about us that they, in effect, have incriminating evidence on us that they can use to intimidate us into doing their bidding.

One example is the big super-apps from China: Tencent and Ant Financial, which have evolved into efficient ways of vacuuming up data from and about consumers. Unlike the American model of stand-alone apps that know a great deal about individuals, the super-apps offer a walled garden that has everything from payment to mutual funds to loans to travel agencies. These apps know so much about Chinese people that the government, using it, is able to create the infamous social credit score for all residents.

There have been overseas ventures as well. It is rumored that Chinese-branded smartphones and surveillance cameras may well be capturing and transmitting data to their servers back home. There is also the story of the African Union, whose building was constructed by China. It is said that every day at 5pm, all the confidential conversations in the building were transmitted back to China.

There is also the sinister story of the Chinese gene company BGI group. According to a Reuter’s story (“China’s gene giant harvests data from millions of pregnant women”) their prenatal tests were “developed in collaboration with the country’s military” and they are using them to “collect data from millions of women for sweeping research on the traits of populations”. Perfect information, one could imagine, for well-targeted biological weapons.

It may well be that the Chinese have decided they know enough from snooping; they don’t really need the super-apps any more, and so they are cut loose. In their triumphalist fantasies, there is nothing that prevents them from reclaiming their (mythical) ‘Middle Kingdom’ status, the center of the Universe.

The art of ju-jitsu

The very strengths of the West are being deployed against it by the Chinese, who also believe that their model of “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” ie. the private sector is ultimately subservient to the State, is the right model for the rest of the world, rather than the buccaneer capitalism exemplified by the US. That anyway is CCP dogma, and it appears that they are proving it too.

Consider the (erstwhile strengths of the West, especially the US, that China has usurped:

Manufacturing: hollowed out, and China owns the supply chain now

Innovation and R&D: now confined to tweaking social media applications. China also sends it bright students to learn at the best US universities and then bring the knowledge back home with them

Education: while ‘woke’ dogma and the cancel culture are dumbing-down US students, China is deprecating its own online education companies because it doesn’t want rote learning and exam hell, but problem-solving skills and creativity/innovation in its children and college students.

Finance: Wall Street has been able to crush competitors in the past (for instance, they did something to Japan, I am not sure exactly what, to bring its meteoric rise to a halt), but now they are hand in glove with China. The Wall Street Journal wrote a year ago that “China has one powerful friend left in the US: Wall Street”

Marketing: the narrative building that China does is world-class, and it has bought its way into media (for instance, it is alleged by nationalinterest.com that the WSJ got $6 million and the Washington Post $4.6 million from China). The obvious biases in social media and in mainstream media (apparently including science and medicine journals The Lancet and Nature) support this perspective

Capitalism: Investors have made much money in the tech runup in the US, but they also lost a lot when China decided to make a policy change. According to the WSJ, “Investors lost hundreds of billions in July”, which means that the very ideas of capitalism are being deprecated in plain sight by China.

A case can be made that it is not any longer a single point attack by China, but “unrestricted warfare” as in the infamous book by two Chinese colonels. They are single-mindedly on the warpath, and they intend to do anything, I mean anything, to win. The skirmish over the technology companies should be seen in that light.

From an Indian point of view, it would be foolish to surmise that China has actually won: the much better lesson would be to take the good part of their industrial policy and to figure out how India can leverage the exodus of investors and funds from Chinese firms to create long-term competitive advantage.

1600 words, 13 Aug 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by swarajaya.com at https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/a-tale-of-two-hacks-pegasus-and-chinas-microsoft-exchange-penetration

In the recent past, we have seen a lot of news stories. Massive riots in South Africa and Cuba. The uncertainty in Afghanistan. Floods in Germany and China. Surging Wuhan virus cases in hitherto relatively unscathed Southeast Asia. A ‘border clash’ between Assam and Mizoram. Bezos one-ups Branson in the space race. China was accused of large-scale hacking of Microsoft Exchange a few months ago.

So there are plenty of real, meaty stories to report on.

Yet the Indian media was full of stories about something dubious: the alleged Pegasus hacking expose. There are two problems with it. One: as a narrative, it makes no sense; in fact, the meta-narrative is far more interesting. Two: It is an outstanding example of how gaslighting works on Indians (but not on Chinese).

The meta-narrative about Pegasus

There is a plethora of manufactured news stories about India. Everything from the Rafale accusations, rounds 1, 2 and 3, including fake news created by an Indian newspaper by judiciously cropping content; to the exaggerations about the Citizenship Amendment Act. Along with the constant low-level insurrections and mild rioting, this suggests that someone is pursuing an agenda.

The most obvious conclusion is that a time-honored tactic is in play: throw a whole lot of dirt, and hope some of it sticks. So far, almost nothing they have tried has worked, but that is not going to stop them. They will keep coming. The recent Rafale allegations were warmed-over allegations that an NGO named Sherpa and some dicey website had already made. The money trail as to who funds Sherpa and friends is quite instructive. (Hint: some white billionaires).

The Pegasus allegation is also not new: it is recycled from before, as seen in these screenshots from 2019 and 2020.

If you follow the trail on the ‘AdivasiLivesMatters’ post, you end up with one of their prime motivations: the whitewashing of the Bhima Koregaon Urban Naxals who have been hauled up for sedition and fomenting separatism. The breast-beating over one of them, Stanislaus Lourdusamy, Society of Jesus, happened just a week or so ago.

Here is more from 2020. Aha, 121 Indians then, only 33 now. Odd, isn’t it?

Incidentally, the very same Congress supporters and MPs who are on the warpath now were silent a few years ago when Manmohan Singh declared that “phone tapping is the right of the government”. Which, to be candid, is true. All governments need to spy on their people: even the sainted Ashoka had a huge surveillance operation. Did we hear anybody shriek “treason” when Manmohan said this? Apparently not.

In the US, there is widespread surveillance by the government. Under the sainted Obama in 2010, they even tapped the phone of their most important ally, Germany’s Angela Merkel: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/10407282/Barack-Obama-approved-tapping-Angela-Merkels-phone-3-years-ago.html

The US left are good at narratives. There is the salutary example of what happened to the Trump administration in 2020. It appears there was a concerted effort by various vested interests to gaslight the US electorate, leading to the (somewhat violent) overthrow of the incumbent. I am not making this up: TIME magazine billed it as the “inside story of the conspiracy to save democracy” https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/ .

For a dissenting opinion, please read the startling substack below that tells the story that has been suppressed.

If you know anything about computer security, it is evident that the purported story about Pegasus is not supported by the technical facts. Much has been written about it, so I shall not belabor the point. But the fact is that the narrative has changed from “50,000 phones hacked” to “50,000 phones may have been hacked” to “the 50,000 phone list is an indicative list of phones that someone might potentially want to hack” suggests that this is like “Aryan Invasion” becoming “Aryan Migration” and then “Aryan Tourist™” Theory.

Or how “Kerala has slayed Corona” became “Kerala has 50% of Corona cases in India”. In Trump’s case it was “The Steele Dossier documents how Russian prostitutes peed on Trump” to “There is no evidence that the Russia narrative has any basis according to the special prosecutor”. But the narratives succeeded in misleading most everybody for a while.

And who are the alleged hack-ees in India? To be honest, they don’t appear particularly interesting, nor likely to be the bearers of state secrets. It’s quite a weak list. In general, these are not people any self-respecting government would want to snoop on. There are many other People of Interest in the country that a spy agency would want to phone-tap.

The meta-narrative, in fact, is far more interesting than the narrative. Just look at this headline story in The Guardian. Even though several other countries were alleged to have used Pegasus, that was sleight-of-hand and intended to obfuscate: the clear target is Modi.

The ecosystem was already primed, and this dates back to 2019 as above. Here is a lurid story from a known Modi-baiter. It is not clear how he’s an ‘expert’ on hacking or security.

Similarly, Arundhati Susan Roy, a woman for all causes, launched into typical hyperbole.

And inevitably, the prolix Pratap Bhanu Mehta chimed in, too. Clearly, there was a toolkit, and the memos had gone out to rally the troops to all sing from the same hymn-book.

The American wing of the ecosystem also swung into action. Within 24 hours, 30 groups organized a protest against India, Hindus, and Modi. Notably, this included rabid Christian fundamentalists like this person below, various Muslim groups like CAIR, and radical leftists. Obviously, there was a plan, and surely a toolkit for the Americans as well.

The sum and substance of all this is that there is a concerted effort to paint India as a violator of freedom of speech, fascist, dictatorial, etc etc etc. All the usual suspects are involved. Diligent people who dug into the antecedents of various groups involved and followed the money trail arrived at the conclusion that there are a few sinister individuals and organizations behind this. The presumed goal: regime-change and preferably balkanization of India. No surprise, this.

Even though this particular effort was an abject failure -- nobody in India gave a damn, and within a day it had disappeared even from the NYTimes (so it is possible to embarrass Deep State bastions!) -- this is not the end of it. The ecosystem will, like Robert Bruce, try, try and try again. Two reasons: one is to give the Nehru dynasty scion some excuse to strut about; two is to prevent Parliament from conducting business, thus negating the BJP’s majority.

The reaction to Chinese hacking: softly, softly

Simultaneously, there was the case of the Microsoft Exchange hack from earlier in the year, which affected some 30,000 businesses.

As this magazine, a known cheerleader for the Deep State, points out, the US, its Five Eyes Anglo allies (the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), Japan, and the EU got together, and gave China a delicate slap on the wrist. The fact that all of them “admonished” China together means that they would not be able to agree on anything to “punish” China other than the most anodyne and soothing actions.

There is ample evidence of Chinese mischief. Apart from large-scale hacking (Obama negotiated what was billed as a ceasefire, but apparently it wasn’t), it has been stealthily acquiring genetic data about millions of pregnant women from all over the world: all the better to create targeted biological weapons.

That’s not the end of it: China is even stealing data from its client states like Cambodia.

Despite all this, there is extreme reluctance to call out China’s bad behavior. We are familiar with the year-long saga of how the origins of the Wuhan virus have been obscured by the Chinese, with the apparent active collaboration of US officials such as Anthony Fauci and intermediaries such as Peter Daszak. Yet, just this week comes the news that the WHO is, once again, well, helpless.

One might ask why. Why is the all-powerful West unwilling or unable to tackle cyber-mischief from China, when the evidence is all over the place? And why are they so quick to pounce on India when there is vanishingly small evidence of wrong-doing here?

There are several answers, and none of them is particularly appealing.

The first is that the West, and especially the US, is so entangled with China that despite all the huffing and puffing by Biden, no decoupling is going to happen.

The second is that China has frightened the US with its wolf-warrior diplomacy that we saw in Alaska and more recently just this week, where they intimidate the US side by listing all the unsavory things they do, including the dubious elections, racism, and so on; and the US really has no defense against this onslaught.

The third is that India is far easier to bully because we are easily gaslighted and shamed by Anglosphere narratives, we do not retaliate, and we are infiltrated by fifth columnists. India could easily have sent a message by putting the screws on Amazon, as Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which was active in the Pegasus fairy tale. It could have, as I have been saying ad nauseam, sued or defenestrated the pompous white migrant workers from The Economist, NYTimes, FT, BBC, WaPo, NPR and all the other hostile media, as Lee Kwan Yew used to do with such notable effect.

Until India applies some pain to the perpetrators of fraud and their paymasters, this sort of thing will continue.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Please listen to the podcast (click the ‘play’ button above).

A version of this essay will be published by Chintan of the India Foundation.

The terrifying riots there have died down a bit, but not before causing significant damage. Not only the deaths, but the damage to the economy and to investor confidence must be substantial. A major oil refinery was shut down, highways were blocked, telecom towers and warehouses were torched. Thousands of small businesses as well as malls were looted, and in many cases, burnt to the ground.

From an Indian point of view, the plight of Indian-origin businesses, as well as of people of Indian origin, is of great concern. There is the naive belief in some circles that because of the Gandhi legacy (after all, he lived in that country for years) and the respect Nelson Mandela had for him, there must be some goodwill among South Africans for Indians.

That is far from the case, as a rule. It is just as risible as believing American blacks have some fellow-feeling for Indians just because Martin Luther King spoke glowingly of Gandhi. On the contrary, the average American black views all Asians as competing for the crumbs that non-whites get.

I realized this long ago about South Africa while reading apartheid-era novels, wherein the Indian-origin people are members of the African National Congress, but they are distinctly second-class. Quite rightly, black South Africans dominate: it is their country, after all. A few whites, propelled by what we now call ‘social justice’ are also part of the inner circles. But the Indians are outsiders, tolerated at best, excluded at worst.

We have seen this in many countries: Tamils in Sri Lanka, Chettiars in Burma, Gujaratis in Uganda and much of East Africa, and Tamil plantation workers in Malaysia. The list goes on. It mirrors the Jewish experience in much of Europe, and the Chinese experience in Southeast Asia: unloved immigrants who nevertheless are important for the economy.

Apartheid-era South Africa, if I am not mistaken, had clear divisions: whites, coloreds (mixed-race people), blacks and Indians. There was little mixing across the groups. I knew a white American in Boston who had worked in South Africa. He had interacted with hardly any Indians, and thought they were under the ‘colored’ rubric. In a Laurens van der Post novel, there’s a character named Miss Naidoo, an ANC member, and a cripple. I think the metaphor was not accidental.

Indians have a history of being outsiders in the societies they immigrate to; and often the butt of both envy and disdain, as they are non-violent, and often affluent, and thus perfect victims. It is also known that the Indian government does very little even for its expatriate citizens, not to mention long-ago migrants. This could well be the reason that many Indian businesses were attacked. Durban, KwaZulu Natal, is where most Indians live.

The prevailing wisdom from the Western media is that the riots were political, instigated, and pre-planned. It is said that the goal was regime change, as the current president, Cyril Ramaphosa, is unwinding widespread corruption by the previous president, Jacob Zuma, whose arrest was the proximate cause for the troubles. Zuma’s children and foundation, as well as his ethnic group, the dominant Zulus, are accused of malfeasance.

We in India should note those words: regime-change, instigated, pre-planned riots, ethnic-group, corruption. This is precisely what is going on here too: the ancien regime, corrupt to the core, manufactures reasons for riots, with the help of malign outsiders, and its vote-banks can create disturbances at the drop of a hat. The intent is a ‘color revolution’, a violent overthrow of the current regime. It is an exact match with what apparently went down in South Africa.

But there are dissenting voices. A friend who’s a professor at the University of Cape Town (he could well be a Zulu himself, I didn’t ask), said, and I quote his message verbatim, in its entirety:

Looting and many forms of violent public protests are very common in South Africa. The current one has been very massive. To a large extent, this has been a result of the covid-19 pandemic. Due to the lock down restrictions, unemployment has risen so much, people are struggling. Initially govt was providing a sort of social grant to cushion the effects, but that was stopped months ago. So any trigger would get people into the streets.

The professor is painting a different picture. South Africa has long been infamous for violence, including against foreigners; car-jackings; murders; and general mayhem. Coincidentally, I was watching a film named ‘Chappie’ about robot cops set in Johannesburg: the crime is getting to be too much for human police to handle.

So which is it? A pure political spectacle as we see in India, or is it the aakrosham of a people who were restive anyway, but have been devastated by the pandemic? It is important for us to know. South Africa is a beautiful country; it is the locomotive economy for the entire continent; and if it collapses into a failed state, it puts a big crimp into India’s own Indian-Ocean-Rim based economic prospects for the future.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by swarajyamag.com at https://swarajyamag.com/world/lessons-for-india-from-south-africa-beware-of-those-bearing-gifts. Please listen to the podcast (click the ‘play’ button above), and give me feedback. It takes a lot of work to put the podcast together, and I would like to hear what you guys think of it, and your suggestions on how it can be improved.

As I write this, there are riots in South Africa over a court order to jail former President Jacob Zuma on corruption charges. It may escalate to a quasi-civil war. It was startling to hear that model-minority Indian-origin South Africans are facing threats to their lives and livelihoods, and that some of them are defending themselves with firearms.

As a teenager I read several novels by the Afrikaner author Laurens van der Post about the days of apartheid, and I was struck by the trisanku nature of the Indians there: disrespected by both blacks and whites, living a tenuous and uncertain existence. We saw what happened to Indians in Idi Amin’s Uganda, and we saw how the Chettiars were ejected from Burma.

A big reason for the assaults is the certainty that Indians are soft targets: that they do not fight back and they often have assets because they are diligent and save whatever they can. Indian businesses are being torched, and their very lives are in jeopardy.

It is important to pay attention to this because India’s future is entwined with the Indian Ocean Rim, and with the fast-growing (at least till the pandemic struck) economies of that huge and relatively empty continent. The Chinese have made massive inroads there, but there is also a backlash. India needs to have an Africa strategy. India, meanwhile, merely gets second-hand information about Africa from the Anglosphere.

This has to change. There are serious commercial opportunities. For example, Indian digitization and payment options may be attractive to African nations: UPI, RuPay, Aadhar, Cowin, India Stack etc., along with a bridge between UPI and Kenya’s mPESA.

More to the point, there are lessons for us from the African encounter with the West. The net result has been the impoverishment and suffering of the African, including arbitrary lines drawn across the continent tearing apart traditional ethnic identities, leading to endless wars and displacement and ethnic cleansing. That must sound familiar to subcontinentals: the legacy of European empire.

I shall confine myself to three examples: Rwanda, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

Rwanda

There are two ethnic groups in Rwanda, the ‘tall, fair’ Tutsis and the ‘short, dark’ Hutus. Well, that’s the theory, but to the impartial observer, they seem identical: they are very close genetically, and they had generally lived peacefully with each other for centuries.

Christian missionaries arriving in Rwanda ‘discovered’ that the minority Tutsi were lording it over the Hutu. I don’t remember if they ‘discovered’ that the Tutsi were also migrants who had defeated and now oppressed the Hutus. In any case, under the missionaries, cleavages in society were manufactured or at least dramatically magnified. In the end, there was a horrific genocide. The Hutus attempted to wipe out the Tutsis, with the collusion of the church.

If you get away from the gruesome killings, this might sound vaguely familiar to Indians: yes, it is the ‘Aryan’ Invasion Fairytale in a slightly different form. But the intent was the same: divide et impera. The goal was to maintain white control by fomenting fratricide and civil war.

It was the late N S Rajaram who had the insight that what happened in Rwanda was the template for the ‘Aryan’-‘Dravidian’ divide that missionaries created in India. One Bishop Caldwell, and later, his ideological descendants such as EV Ramaswamy Naicker, created exactly the same kind of unscientific and unsubstantiated division between the allegedly ‘Aryan’ Tamil Brahmins and the allegedly ‘Dravidian’ middle castes.

We have to assume that the intent in India was also (in addition to divide and rule) continuous fratricidal warfare, bhedam, and thus easy pickings for the imperialists. The funny thing is that Tamil Brahmins are genetically identical to the allegedly ‘Dravidian’ middle castes, but then, there is no reason to let science stand in the way of a good narrative.

The fact that this whole thing didn’t lead to genocide in India, a la Rwanda, is miraculous, because it could easily have done so. Perhaps some vestige of civilizational tolerance meant only exile, not physical liquidation.

In Rwanda, after the horrific genocide, Tutsis led by Robert Kagame, who had honed fighting skills in neighboring countries, came to power. They have maintained the peace, and led to some level of development, although there are murmurs about autocracy. Interestingly enough, a deep dive into Kagame’s Rwanda brings up a lot of not-so-flattering comparisons to everybody’s poster-child du jour, Bangladesh, but that’s a story for another time.

Ethiopia

This is an ancient Christian country with roots going back to the days around the Council of Nicae, 325 CE, that codified Christian dogma. Some seafaring European adventurers who ended up in India were looking for the fabled lost kingdom of ‘Prester John’, supposedly the king of Ethiopia.

That didn’t save the country from going through a brutal civil war in the 20th century. The province of Eritrea rebelled, and after a 20-year-long war, which took the lives of an estimated 100,000 people on both sides put together, Eritrea formally became a new nation.

In the past year, another rebellion in the province of Tigray has become a serious military problem. It appears as though the Tigrayans, whose fighters had earlier allied with different factions in the Ethiopia-Eritrea war, are now on the verge of defeating combined Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, and are now threatening to take the war into neighboring states. Just like Yugoslavia a while ago, Ethiopia has fallen apart.

Why is this relevant to India? Because the West is pushing for the balkanization of India, under the new and sexy name of “sub-national diplomacy”. Thanks to Abhinav Agarwal for pointing out the following article and a pithy quote from it: “Subnational diplomacy should be a crucial tool of Biden’s India strategy... "

And, putting their money where their mouth is, Americans are following up by ‘canceling’ the word ‘India’. It is either ‘South Asia’ (which, to quote that war-criminal Churchill, is “about as tangible as the equator”), or it is sub-national. It appears the West is reaching out to West Bengal and also to Tamil Nadu (see the ecstasy with which they received the appointment of Esther Duflo and Jean Dreze to an economic affairs panel there).

So it’s never “Indian-American”, but “Bengali-American”, or “South Asian American”, as far as US communiques are concerned. It took them 48 hours, and a lot of noise on social media, to issue a half-hearted retraction to the following. The funny thing is that Samir Banerjee’s father is not even Bengali, he’s Assamese! But hey, anything in the cause of bhedam. Chanakya, I am sure, would approve. Creating divisions where they don’t exist: now where have we seen this before?

South Sudan

This country was created exactly ten years ago, as a refuge for Christians who, it seems, were being oppressed by North Sudan’s Muslim majority. That is also a story we have heard elsewhere: partition on ideological or especially on religious grounds, courtesy the West. East Timor, for instance. Intriguingly, though, when a European country was divided (Germany) it was quickly reunited. I doubt the same will be true for other countries divided by the West.

In 2011, there were hopeful predictions about an egalitarian and prosperous South Sudan, especially because it has oil. But the reality is far from it: the country is desperately poor, and there are accusations of gross human rights violations and oppression based on ethnicity. Child marriage is rife, child soldiers are common, and rape is used widely as a war tactic.

The creation of South Sudan has not led to any great improvement in the lives of the people.

Of the various ‘splittist’ (to use Chinese vocabulary for a minute) groups in India, the most virulent are the ‘Dravidian’ parties of Tamil Nadu, which nurse fond hopes for something they call ‘United States of South India’. India has also seen that widespread Christian conversion leads to secession and demands for separate homelands: as in much of the Northeast. As conversion increases in Andhra, Telangana and Tamil Nadu (there are already substantial numbers in Kerala), the urge to secede will likely increase.

South Sudan’s case is salutary: creating a new nation based on religion is not exactly the most sensible course of action. Fortunately, in India’s case, apart from a few hard-core Tamils, most people in South India have no particular interest in anything ‘Dravidian’. But the ‘subnational diplomacy’ specialists from the Biden administration will likely create trouble. As an example, the closure of the Sterlite copper plant -- precisely when copper prices and demand are set to go through the roof -- must rank as one of the most brain-dead, malicious acts of recent times.

It is quite likely that the famed sub-national diplomacy spoken of by CSIS is being applied to the cause of ‘Dravida Nadu’. In this, there will be other eager partners: Pakistan, China and various busybodies such as the Scandinavians who like to fish in troubled waters.

African Lessons

Interestingly, I have been seeing at least on social media that ordinary Africans are far more cognizant of the malfeasance of ex-colonials than Indians are. Their leaders are aware, too. Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, who died recently, was one. So was whoever it is who said, pithily, “When the missionaries came, they had the book and we had the land. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened our eyes, they had the land, and we had the book”.

Indians, and our leaders, are still bedazzled, and mouth platitudes such as vasudhaiva kutumbakam and athithi devo bhava out of context. It is time we learned something from the Africans.

1600 words, 14 Jul 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this essay was published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-pakistan-will-soon-control-all-of-afghanistan/20210714.htm

Indian geo-strategists are rightly worrying about the fallout on India from the Afghan situation and America’s comprehensive defeat there. The specter of Saigon 1975, with the last helicopter leaving from the Embassy, and desperate people hanging on to it, haunts those Afghans who will be seen as collaborators with the Americans.

After consecutive defeats of two superpowers -- the Soviet Union and the US -- the Afghan Taliban and their sponsors the Pakistanis must be feeling their oats. Pakistan now has the ‘strategic depth’ they have long craved; and they will redirect their pious holy warriors (after all, many Taliban have been ISI in beards and baggy pants) towards India. We can expect a long hot summer of discontent.

Even the Economist magazine, a known cheer-leader for the Deep State, and which I recall was enthusiastic when the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, is now backpedaling furiously.

The US, in general, acts like a gigantic baby. It latches on to a shiny new toy, spends a lot of time and energy on it, then tires of it, and discards it. That’s what’s happened to Afghanistan: the US basically got tired of spending time and money on ‘democratizing’ the country, so they just took their ball and went home, leaving Afghans worse off than they were before 2001. Vietnam recovered from the US dhritarashtra alinganam, but it took them 40 years.

Therein lies a lesson for India: you depend on American attention, and friendship, at your peril. Kissinger once said memorably, “it is dangerous to be America’s enemy, but it is fatal to be America’s friend”. This is why India has long been suspicious of close ties with the US (although clearly Pakistan, a US ‘ally’, has successfully navigated these turbulent waters).

Nevertheless, India has come around to the idea that the Quad is beneficial. Certainly, Japan is as committed as India, because they too face an existential threat from China. India is the only one that has a land border with Chinese-occupied Tibet and Chinese-occupied Xinjiang. Australia and the US, separated by oceans from China, are only mildly involved.

There is an amusing metaphor about a ham and eggs breakfast to show the difference between ‘involvement’ and ‘commitment’. The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed. India, and Japan, are committed.

The siege of Kunduz in 2001 was a point of inflexion

The real problem is that the US Deep State has, for unfathomable reasons, been enamored of Pakistan. They have encouraged Pakistan to play a clever game of running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. This has enriched the ruling class in that country, which consists of the Army and the infamous 24 families that run the show. It has done little for the public.

There is some version of the Great Game between Russia and the British Indian empire that the US Deep State has been playing since independence. The Anglosphere wanted to have a foothold in the region to keep an eye on the Soviet Union and to deny it access to the warm water ports of the Indian Ocean. In addition, there were some absurd ideas about accessing the mineral wealth, especially oil, of the Central Asian ‘stans. This made Pakistan seem strategic to the Deep State, and they made them a treaty ally in the old CENTO days.

The sad fact is that any utility Pakistan may have had for US strategic interests has long been superseded by its nuisance value as a nation that uses terror as an instrument of state policy. There is a Pakistani manual of war (The Quranic Concept of War by Brig Gen S K Malik) that offers a pithy definition: “Terror is not a means of imposing [a] decision on the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose [on the enemy].” They have practised precisely this.

Yet the Deep State’s fascination with the Pakistani Army persists, even after Osama bin Laden was discovered comfortably ensconced in a garrison town. Observers have long pointed out that this would not end well. The point of inflexion was the siege of Kunduz in November 2001. The Northern Alliance had surrounded most of the Taliban top brass (which were basically mid-level Pak Army and ISI officers) and was on the verge of massacring them.

But the CIA colluded with the ISI to airlift hundreds of them out to Pakistan. I noted then (The Siege of Kunduz https://in.rediff.com/news/2001/nov/30rajeev.htm) that it was a peculiar and unfathomable thing for the US to do, when the Taliban were about to be wiped out. The Northern Alliance, which later formed the core of the Afghan national government, was never able to gain the same leverage over the Taliban again.

Graveyard of empires?

The British were never really able to control Afghan tribes. And now the tribes have defeated both the Soviets and the Americans. So a certain mythology has grown up around the invincibility of the lawless Afghans. Perhaps the US Deep State has a secret plan? Can they quietly turn the fierce Afghans against the Chinese, by supporting the Taliban to foment civil war in Chinese-occupied Xinjiang (CoX)? The oppression of Muslim Uyghurs there continues.

This is a good theory, but there are flaws on both counts. One, the Afghans are not superhuman. Maharaja Ranjit Singh did defeat the Afghans and keep them under his control for some years. Two, unless they are doing taqiya, both the Taliban and Pakistan, despite avowed support for Muslims, have been deathly silent about the Uyghurs.

A more likely scenario is that China will have untrammeled access to $3 trillion worth of Afghan minerals.

That part is speculative, but there are real losers. India is one: the billions India invested in dams, schools, etc. will be gone. The Hindu and Sikh population of Afghanistan has already shrunk from some 200,000 to about 500 (CAA, anyone?). The Durand Line has been erased, but instead of Pashtuns uniting on both sides, Pakistan will soon control all of Afghanistan. Of course, the biggest loser is the Afghan population. For them, and for us, it is an unmitigated disaster.

1056 words, 12 Jul 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this article was published by Chintan on 7/7/2021: please read it at https://chintan.indiafoundation.in/articles/bidens-america/

I heard this, almost exactly in those words, from two different Indian-Americans: one, a spiritually-inclined female cousin, and two, an apolitical old friend.

I was startled, and reminded of the old rock ballad from Crosby, Still, Nash and Young (Our House, from the album Deja Vu, 1970):

Our house is a very, very, very fine house with two cats in the yard

Life used to be so hard

Now everything is easy 'cause of you…

If only it were that simple! If only!

I asked my friend to elaborate. Said he, “Even when the virus situation was getting worse, [Trump] was the most dividing factor... ”

… deleted

Is that true, or is it an illusion? I once wrote https://www.rediff.com/news/column/the-great-indian-rope-trick-and-other-illusions-of-progress/20130716.htm about how Indians have been conditioned to seek the illusion of progress, Potemkin-style, rather than actual progress. I wonder if Americans have been gaslighted similarly with something that looks like normalcy, but isn’t quite.

… deleted

Social media is turning out to be positively evil. Belying fond hopes about the democratization of information flows, Big Tech are providing platforms only for pamphleteers and propagandists, with narratives to spin. (They defenestrate those who do not adhere to the approved narrative).

I am reminded of Hermann Hesse’s Nobel-prize-winning masterpiece The Glass Bead Game (1943). He called our time ‘the Age of the feuilleton’: the word translates to ‘gossipy newspaper supplement’, which is arguably the nature of social media. The reference comes from the point of a view of a more enlightened future century, that looks askance at the present as a time of primitive, superficial political cultures and narratives,

Hesse predicted the discourse would be manipulated: he wrote when fascism and propaganda were rife; but he didn’t imagine the nexus between government, Big Tech, and a pseudo-academic nihilistic movement of ‘wokeness’ that worships ‘critical race theory’, and ‘cancels’ things.

In the case of the Wuhan virus, the feuilletons demonstrated the extent to which this nexus can do suppressio veri expressio falsi: they shut down any discussion of the possible lab origin of the pandemic.

The feuilletonistas, which now include once-upon-a-time respectable entities like the Lancet, the WHO, the US CDC and FDA, have shown that they dance to agendas that are plainly visible. They have little credibility left. The mainstream media have long lost any integrity, especially those in the Anglosphere such as the NYTimes, WaPo, the Economist, the Financial Times, et al.

… deleted

In Afghanistan, the headlong rush for the exit means that Pakistan, through its proxy the Taliban, has now beaten both the Soviet Union and the US, and will deliver the region on a platter to China.

The race problem hasn’t gone away: a young black man was shot to death by police again last week. More horrendously, a Puerto Rican couple were dragged out of their car and shot dead in Chicago. But there were no #BLM riots, nor anything about #LatinoLivesMatter. There was total radio silence from the media.

I wonder if all this is indeed the ‘New Normal’. If it is, we should adjust. But if it’s only an illusion, then beware of the gaslighters.

1025 words, 22 June 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A version of this article has been published by rediff.com at https://www.rediff.com/news/column/india-blundered-along-like-others-did/20210623.htm

There is a loud chorus of voices blaming India for somehow messing up its response to the massive wave of Wuhan virus (Covid-19) infections that have devastated the country. Many articles and editorials have come out in both the Indian media and western media suggesting that the Government of India was negligent, indifferent, or both; in effect that it criminally abdicated its responsibility to the people of India.

It is normal to expect these cavils from political parties and from the mainstream media. In India the MSM is highly compromised and infiltrated by vested interests, both from local political parties and from foreign powers set on propagating a narrative that leads, inevitably, to regime change, and, preferably, balkanization.

One of these outbursts was an editorial in the Lancet, a British medical journal, that puts the blame squarely on the GoI (with no blame attributed to the State governments, despite the fact that health is a State responsibility). I used to be impressed by the Lancet as essentially the paper of record in medicine, but a massive screw-up last year in regards to HCQ made me change my mind, and realize that politics takes precedence over science.

I wrote a long essay, Pious Frauds, https://openthemagazine.com/essay/pious-frauds/ about how credentialism rather than scientific truth is the hallmark of some of these storied institutions. The Lancet has been in the middle of several serious frauds, and it is astonishing that they still have a sterling reputation. So I would take their opinions with a large grain of salt, unless supported by impeccable data/evidence, which it is not in this case. Even purportedly neutral scientists and labs labor under agendas.

Here’s more on bad faith from the Lancet.

Much the same happened with another cheap, off-patent drug, Ivermectin.

In both these cases, it was not at all convenient for Big Pharma that cheap, generic drugs made mostly in India would eat into their windfall profits. Let us note that Pfizer made a profit of $15 billion in 2020. Moderna made a profit for the first time in its history in Q1 2021. Also, Gilead Pharma’s Remdesivir, that was pushed as some sort of panacea, but in the event it proved mostly useless.

Another case in point is the increasingly vocal allegation that the US government in effect colluded with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to do gain-of-function research in bat coronaviruses, which made them far more potent as well as transmissible to humans. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak, and others look like they concealed conflicts of interest and deliberately propagated the narrative that the Wuhanvirus must have evolved naturally.

Nicholas Wade’s seminal essay, republished by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, is a scathing indictment of the media and its omerta in burying an important story that somehow didn’t fit their narrative: the lab-origin hypothesis, and in particular the conflicts of interests. See https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038 and a video version at https://unherd.com/thepost/nicholas-wade-the-case-for-the-covid-lab-leak-theory/

It looks increasingly likely that the Wuhanvirus was developed in a lab and was either leaked because of poor security in BSL-2 and BSL-3 labs, or, more alarmingly, that it was deliberately released as a bio-weapon. That is significant, for a variety of reasons: of most concern, the possibility of bio-warfare, which would be considered a crime against humanity, considering almost every country has signed treaties against it.

On a more mundane level, it means that the Wuhanvirus outbreaks are in effect, force majeure, by definition things that cannot be defended against or predicted, as they are unpredictable and out of the expected set of possible scenarios.

All of us, individuals and societies alike, make plans based on events with a non-trivial probability. When an extremely improbable event hits -- Nassim Taleb famously called these Black Swan events -- it is beyond the scope of our normal strategic planning.

This goes hand-in-hand with the sensible engineering principle of built-in safety factors. For instance, an engineer designing anything, a bridge, an aircraft, or a circuit, will assume a certain level of uncertainty, and build in some slack say 30-50% over the designed load. This enables the system to be resilient in the face of a sudden surge or stress on the system.

But there are practical limits to how much safety you can build in, because there is a cost to it. You can design in 100% or 200% margins of error, or more, but these start to get expensive. There is a tradeoff: so you take an informed decision about the expected value of the maximum stress. That is what you engineer the system for.

A good example is the Fukushima reactor in Japan. It was (I may be a little bit off on the numbers, but bear with me for the principle) built to withstand an 8.5 earthquake on the Richter scale. There have been no quakes greater than 8.2 for 500 years, or since accurate records started being maintained. So that seems like a fair tradeoff on cost and risk. In fact, no project manager will approve the budget for reinforcing it to withstand an 8.8 quake.

But what happens if you get hit with a 9.0 earthquake? The system is overloaded, and all bets are off. There is catastrophic failure.

This is more of less what happened to every health system in the world when the Wuhavirus struck. India is no exception. Neither was the US when it was going through its peak: a year later, there are still hundreds of unclaimed bodies stored in refrigerated trucks; and there were mass graves with tens of bodies buried on an island near New York City. Nor was Italy, when people were dying in droves on ventilators. Nor was Osaka, more recently.

There is more: Thailand, Vietnam and several other countries, which had escaped the calamity earlier, are now showing signs of new outbreaks. The virus continues to ravage the world. So the first point is that it was not humanly possible to fend off the lethal virus, in particular the 617 or Delta variant, which was far more infectious in the second wave: its R0 was greater than 3 or even touching 4 in many places, which implies a combinatorial explosion in terms of infections.

The second point is that India was complacent about how it had escaped catastrophe, and ‘boasted’ about how it was “vaccine supplier to the world”. There is some quote from PM Modi at the World Economic Forum that India had defeated the virus; this is trotted out by all and sundry to show hubris on the part of the Indian government.

This reminds me of the ritual in Silicon Valley companies called “the massacre of the innocent”. After every failed project, there is a meeting to apportion blame. Some suitable bystander is anointed as the scapegoat, and the entire thing is blamed on him (it’s usually a man). The actual culprits who messed up are given a pass, and are sometimes promoted.

The point is that if somebody made a reasonable decision, one that was appropriate given the information on hand at the time, cannot be blamed for the circumstances changing later. Hindsight does not count. Yes, one should anticipate, even war-game, for various scenarios, but you cannot be expected to be omniscient.

By finding a scapegoat (which, historically, comes from a Middle Eastern custom of actually blaming a goat for all the ills that befall the village, and forcing it to wander off into the desert) you allow the real culprits to escape. This is what happens all the time in business, and surely elsewhere too.

Given the circumstances after the first wave subsided around the end of the year, it really did look like the strict lockdown had taken the wind out of the sails of the virus, and India was expecting to produce large volumes of Covishield and Covaxin over the first few months of 2021. So much so that India would give away some doses to small developing countries, and sell a lot more to the Covax alliance that would in turn distribute to the developing world.

Production levels at least for Covishield were seriously affected by a February 2021 (yes, Biden era) ban on exports of critical components under the US Defense Production Act. Belatedly, on June 4th, these restrictions were lifted. Here’s the New Indian Express’ coverage:

India was being a good global citizen in providing free vaccine to small countries; the contrast with big developed nations could not be more dramatic -- the latter were ordering 3 or 4 times the total doses they needed. In addition, the US was hoarding 45 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine which isn’t approved for use in that country. Classic dog in the manger syndrome.

There are loud commitments from the G7 to provide a billion doses of vaccine free of cost to poor countries. This is good, but as Ronald Reagan once said, “Trust but verify”. I’d like to read the fine print. Does this mean a billion doses of mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna? What about the sovereign guarantees required by Pfizer as well as indemnity against any claims of side-effects? Who is going to provide that?

To sum it up, I have to fall back upon something from the Christian Bible: “let he who hath not sinned cast the first stone”. Not to say that India couldn’t have handled the situation better, but on average, it didn’t do anywhere near as badly as the naysayers make it out. It blundered along, exactly as every other country did.

1592 words, June 12th, 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

[PLEASE NOTE: THE FIRST 30 SECONDS OF THE AUDIO ARE MESSED UP. PLEASE BEAR WITH ME AND IGNORE THAT, THE REST OF THE AUDIO IS FINE. I DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO AUDACITY TO FIX IT UP AS MY PC IS BROKEN RIGHT NOW.]

There was an outstanding Doonesbury cartoon from 1980 lampooning then-POTUS candidate Ted Kennedy for making high-flown statements with nothing actionable: the punch-line was, “A Verb, Senator, We Need a Verb!”.

I was struck by deja vu when PM Modi made a bold announcement on 7th June that the GoI was (re)assuming full control of vaccine procurement. I think Indians elected PM Modi to take decisive steps, but he has seemingly vacillated recently, so this was a welcome return to form.

The decision was also a reiteration of a sound business principle: size matters. Large customer orders always get better terms than smaller ones. It was evident all along that there was no way a motley crew of States would ever get the attention of pharma majors when there is a large supply shortfall.

It was apparent that the grandstanding opposition CMs were hoping to do the following:

Order the famous Pfizer vaccine at 10-20x the price of Covshield and Covaxin

Get supply commitments from Pfizer (and presumably commissions)

Then force the GoI through a public outcry to pay for the vaccine anyway

Obviously, that would have been a win-win for them. But this was doomed from the start, because Pfizer demands sovereign guarantees of indemnity. They asked Argentina to surrender its embassies and warships as guarantees of indemnity in case there were side effects/deaths and legal obligations. “Sub-national diplomacy” is all very well for Biden, but BigPharma is more hard nosed, and they know States have no assets they can seize, and so they will only deal with the GoI.

The opposition leaders are not really interested in vaccination, except as a stick to beat PM Modi with. Their support of the super-spreader ‘farmer’ agitation is clear proof of that. They flip-flopped, too. First, they wanted the GoI to allow States to procure vaccines. To their surprise, the GoI agreed. They were caught in a bind: and they had to backpedal furiously, because hardly any Big Pharma bothered to respond to their global tenders, except highly dubious Chinese vaccine makers.

So the PM has temporarily shut the politicians down, and they have been shown up. I am reminded of a poem by Oliver Goldsmith, “Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog”, which says, among other things:

But soon a wonder came to light,

That shew'd the rogues they lied;

The man recover'd of the bite–

The dog it was that dy’d.

That, of course, is what politicians do: and we price it into our calculations about them. Not that they don’t need some discipline. It would be highly instructive to, say, Mamata Banerjee, who runs a medieval fiefdom, to charge her for culpability in the killings and ethnic cleansings of Hindus in West Bengal by illegal Bangladeshi aliens and/or her party cadres. So would it be to indict the Nehru dynasty scion on his dicey citizenship (British? Italian?) and other sins such as the National Herald kumbhakonam.

But there are, in my opinion, three other ‘institutions’ in India that are even more dastardly than politicians, and that need some decisive action.

Bureaucracy

First, babudom. I have lost count of the number of ‘open letters’ from retired babus with suggestions for the GoI about how to go about various things. Wonder of wonders, none of these things occurred to them when they were in power and could actually have done something useful. No, then they were too busy applying their lips to the ample mammaries of the welfare state and milking it for all it was worth.

IAS/IPS/IFS babus are excruciatingly sensitive to two things: their pension benefits and post-retirement sinecures. I remember a famous Nehruvian babu who joined an evangelical ‘aid’ group at 3x his salary, after going on leave and thus ensuring that his pension benefits would remain intact. It took a lot of shouting to force him to resign from the service and forgo his juicy pension/medical benefits.

There have been several other IAS/IPS officers in the limelight recently for all the wrong reasons: one barged into a Hindu wedding in Tripura (I think), slapped the priest, terrorized the attendees, ripped up the permit that allowed them to hold the ceremony at the muhurtam at midnight (as an exception to Wuhanvirus lockdown norms).

Another slapped a young man who was stopped on police while proceeding to buy medicines, and slammed his phone to the ground.

A third ordered a firing on a Hindu religious procession in Munger, and caused young Anurag Poddar to be shot in the head, and he died in his stricken mother’s arms.

So far as I can tell, none of these babus paid for their excesses with a dismissal from service, or even a suspension. They were merely transferred elsewhere. The ecosystem takes care of its own.

The latest example is a man who was Chief Secretary, West Bengal. There was gross insubordination on his part when he was 30 minutes late to a meeting with the PM, and then walked out early (the same antics as his Chief Minister). Upon being recalled to the center (after all, the IAS is a central service), he demurred. Shortly after, he retired, and was absorbed into the West Bengal government as a ‘senior advisor’.

There is a simple solution: on any transgression, suspend them without pay, and revoke the extremely generous pension and medical benefits pending a judicial inquiry into wrong-doing. Furthermore, make it a service rule that no retired babu can get a new post without its being advertised openly, and inviting qualified applicants, especially from the private sector.

If these steps are taken in the case of one, just one, high-handed bureaucrat, the whole lot of them (selected on the basis of a single mandarin exam, with the subjects being ludicrously out of touch with current realities) will think twice about lording it over the public.

After all, their job is administration: they should be selected on the basis of the IIM Common Admission Test or the GMAT and trained in the IIMs, and all the rigmarole of the fancy IAS Academy should be dispensed with. The days of generalist babus are over: industry increasingly requires domain knowledge and lateral entrants with short-term contracts.

The IPS needs specialized training in law and order; similarly the IFS needs training in diplomacy, trade and geopolitics. These can be add-ons to the basic IIM training.

Here’s an appalling example of how those with domain knowledge, not generalist mandarins, are the need of the day. This person is a retired Health Secretary, I am told:

Judiciary

It has been clear as day for some time that the Indian judiciary suffers from deep structural flaws. The most obvious issue is that it is extremely inefficient, and has allowed millions of cases to languish: the Supreme Court has a backlog of 68,000 cases; High Courts together have 58 lakh cases, and District Courts have 3.3 crore cases pending. This is appalling.

Judicial overreach is an endemic problem. Instead of fixing itself and ensuring that the unconscionable backlog is cleared in a time-bound manner, judges are encroaching on the territory of the Executive Branch by issuing peremptory orders on things they have no business in, no expertise in, and no value-added to offer in.

The solutions are also obvious:

1. Defining the focus of the Supreme Court to be strictly on Constitutional cases, and nothing but: no grandstanding on cricket or other high-visibility but trivial issues,

2. Ensuring that appointments to the high judiciary are vetted and approved by the Parliament and thus the elected will of the people, and also not left to an incestuous, unaccountable Collegium that specializes in nominating sons, nephews and other relatives,

3. Canceling the singularly outrageous device of the Public Interest Litigation (PIL), which has been used by well-heeled and motivated NGOs with foreign paymasters to bypass every check and balance and make a mockery of the process of escalation and appeal.

In a 2018 essay, https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/can-we-fix-the-deeply-troubled-judiciary I wrote at length about these issues, so I will not repeat myself.

However, there is something the government needs to do: impeach one, just one, of the most outrageous of the judges. I have a candidate in mind, but shall not name names, mindful of draconian contempt-of-court strictures.

The same issue with post-retirement sinecures and extravagant pension and other benefits comes up in the case of the judiciary as in that of bureaucrats. I had a great-uncle who was a State Chief Justice, and he had any number of tribunals and other jobs after he retired. I have a friend who was a Justice in a State, and post-retirement somebody is assigned to meet her at airports, carry her bags, and escort her to her flight!

Media

This is quite possibly the very worst and most corrupt institution in the country. It is thoroughly compromised and infiltrated by various vested interests, top to bottom. At one end, there is reason to believe that one of the richest and most visible editors in India was recruited by a New York Times correspondent as an ‘embedded asset’ more than thirty years ago. At the other end, the jibes about ‘2BHK’ journalists strike a chord, given their abject slavishness.

Indira Nehru Ghandy demonstrated that India’s journalists, when asked to bend, will grovel. Today, they can clearly be counted on to carry the agendas of any anti-India power: they are for sale.

This, of course, is par for the course for journalists everywhere. Some hallowed names in journalism, including science journals, especially British titles, have demonstrated that they are for sale to the highest bidder. Which for all practical purposes these days means they are ‘friends of Xinhua and Xi Jinping’, as the latter have splashed out on information warfare in a big way. Stories that reflect poorly on China tend to be swept under the carpet.

The Big Tech social media platforms give themselves airs these days for obvious reasons: they can defenestrate sitting presidents not only from their platforms, but from their seats of power, too. Sometimes there are unintended consequences, as in what happened in Nigeria: Twitter blocked the President, and Nigeria suspended Twitter indefinitely.

The ongoing saga of Twitter’s defiance of Indian law would be comical, if it weren’t such black humor. Twitter has thumbed its nose more than once at India: the first incident was when Jack Dorsey, its boss, showed up in India, got himself photographed with a bunch of women brandishing a slogan about “Brahmin Patriarchy”, and was photographed with the PM with body language screaming “arrogance!”.

Among many other transgressions, Twitter India in November 2020 deplatformed the scholarly @TrueIndology on flimsy or nonexistent grounds, essentially because they didn’t like him using well-reasoned and well-sourced information to trash leftist mythologies. I said in a podcast at the time that it was a watershed event, and that India should suspend Twitter forthwith. https://rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/p/podcast-episode-9-trueindology-incident

Later, there was an incident in which Twitter showed Leh in China. Showing the borders of India incorrectly (especially out of malevolence) is a non-bailable offense, which attracts immediate arrest of the perpetrator, which in this case would be Twitter India’s honchos. That was strike two, enough to block Twitter’s IPs in India. I thought that by March 2021 India had enough reason to shut the platform down. https://rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/p/episode-16-is-india-reining-in-bigtechsocialmedi

It’s comically appalling after all this history, and the fact that much bigger fish, such as Facebook, Youtube, etc. have acceded to Indian law, Twitter still goes around acting as though it were a sovereign government ‘negotiating’ with the Government of India on behalf of the “freedom of expression” of Indians. Nobody elected Twitter, did they? Such delusions of grandeur, such megalomania!

Why, PM Modi, is this relatively trivial application being given so much importance? Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? In reality, Twitter is -- get this -- the world’s No. 16 social media by number of users! It really is the chicken that should be killed to scare the monkeys such as Facebook, YouTube and Whatsapp, who are all watching with interest.

And exactly what will happen if Twitter is kicked out of India? I’m not sure what happened in Nigeria, but I suspect not much. Yes, Twitter is a convenient news feed for many of us, but its utility is limited, and other platforms can easily step into the breach, say India’s own Koo.

India simply cannot be held to ransom by an app. If India could kick out Tiktok (ironically Biden is revoking the ban on Tiktok by Trump), CamScanner and other Chinese apps, what is the hold that Twitter has over the country? Is it some fear that the New York Times and its Seventh Fleet will suddenly appear in the Bay of Bengal? Oh, wait, the NYT doesn’t have a fleet.

Just pull the plug on this whole sorry drama, Mr. Prime Minister. A verb, we need a verb from you: enough is enough. There is no reason to go around broadcasting that India is a Soft State.

2194 words, June 9th, 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

https://chintan.indiafoundation.in/articles/biden-afghanistan-and-relations-with-india/

It is up to every nation to pursue its interests; as has been said famously, there are no permanent friends, only permanent interests. India must accept this reality. The US will pursue its own interests, as defined by the current administration, although the question remains whether its short-term tactics will be counterproductive for long-term strategy.

(paragraphs deleted)

The generals know what they are doing. The NYTimes reported that in 2014, Hamid Gul, the godfather of the ISI, said: “When history is written, it will be stated that the ISI defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan with the help of America. Then there will be another sentence. The ISI, with the help of America, defeated America”. Exactly. The only update is that “ISI, with the help of China, defeated America.”

(paragraphs deleted)

There is a trio of sinister events: one, the pointless provocation of a FONOP (freedom of navigation) operation in India’s exclusive economic zone in the Lakshadweep; two, the sheer cussedness of the embargo on vaccine raw materials (despite all the theatrics of a Quad vaccine initiative); three, the haranguing on climate change by John Kerry.

(paragraphs deleted)

It was evident to America-watchers that a Biden presidency, especially with Kamala Harris and her loud niece Meena in the fray, would not be pleasant for India. Time to grit one’s teeth and ride out the next four years. The first 100 days have been bad. Things are likely to get much worse, alas.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Note: Sorry for the silence for a couple of weeks, as I was busy. And computer problems: my Windows PC, where I normally use Audacity to record, has been messed up with boot problems. So this is recorded on a simple audio program on my Chromebook, and no chance of any post-processing editing.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

I think western media has been less than honest in its ‘data analysis’ of Wuhan virus cases and deaths in India.

One newspaper said the numbers were an undercount by 30x. Several others have confidently assumed similar large undercounts. After all, India must be hiding the true numbers — for what exactly, they didn’t say.

I tried to understand how they concluded this, just as they confidently said there were ‘250 million “farmers” protesting’, ‘the largest protest ever in the world’, etc, when the actual numbers were probably 2500.

That is an overcount of 100,000x! This is ‘data journalism’?

Even if you assume 25,000 ‘farmers’ (in reality kulaks) were involved, this is a gross exaggeration by a factor of 10,000. This is Soviet-level or CCP-level propaganda. Slate and Foreign Policy ought to be tarred and feathered.

Here’s my hypothesis. The Wuhan virus ‘data analysis’ looked at the obituary pages of local newspapers, added up the deaths from all causes. They did not take the incremental death toll from the Wuhan virus. The base or normal death rate was not considered.

Is this innumeracy, or confirmation bias?

My local paper in Trivandrum has an entire page+ of obituaries every single day, year in and year out: that’s much bigger numbers than the Wuhan virus death toll. Here is the page from May 3: I count 64 obituaries (one is a relative of mine who died of a brain tumor). One person, it says, died of Wuhan virus.

There are three major local papers, so let’s say they will carry notices of 50x3 = 150 deaths, eliminating duplicates.

Now here’s news about deaths in Trivandrum district (population around 3.5 million) from the unquestionably leftist newspaper, The Hindu.

The actual number of Wuhan virus deaths in Trivandrum during the recent spike? Roughly 5 a day.

Ergo, by the impeccable logic of the ‘data journalists’, Trivandrum is under-reporting by a factor of 30, ie 150/5. There you go! Quad Erat Demonstrandum.

I bet this FT fellow (“I collated local news reports”) did precisely what I did above: took all deaths from all causes reported in the media, and pretended they were all from the Wuhan virus. Out of 1.3 billion, some number of people die every day from other causes: heart attacks, accidents, strokes, diabetes, asthma,….. but the Brit and his native informant simply added up all the deaths in the obituaries.

Anecdotally speaking, just think. How many people in your circle of acquaintances fell ill with the Wuhan virus? How many died? How many died of other causes? My hunch is that the all-causes deaths would dwarf the Wuhan virus deaths by a factor of 10-20x.

So much for ‘data journalism’. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Pandemic porn narrative wins!

3 May 2021, updated 4 May 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

There are three plausible reasons for the Biden Administration’s tone-deaf reaction to India’s humanitarian crisis in the #Wuhanvirus vaccine imbroglio:

malign neglect

a woke agenda

a monstrous conspiracy.

As someone who lived half his adult life in the US, I have fond memories of the people and the country, and I have long been an advocate of closer India-US ties. The two are Estranged Democracies that share common values. I found the American reaction startling because of:

a) the optics regarding a quasi-ally,

b) the alleged Quad vaccine cooperation,

c) the fact India is the biggest supplier to the Covax initiative that provides the vaccine to developing countries.

Given the global pandemic, it would not do any good to America if pockets of the infection remained in some far off country. It has to be eradicated everywhere. We all have to be vaccinated.

If that’s not true, then there’s something truly sinister going on.

There are three possible scenarios, in decreasing order of probability:

Scenario One: Commercial considerations of Big Pharma

There has long been the suspicion that Western Big Pharma is in the vaccine game for the profits, and that it will brook no competition. For instance, the moment their mRNA vaccines went on the market, they began strong-arming customers. It is said that Pfizer demanded (and got!) total sovereign indemnity from any potential lawsuits; they also are rumored to have asked some countries to put up their embassies and military assets as collateral!

Estimates are that Pfizer made $15 billion in 2020. This data is a little old, but is shows the trend: Pfizer and Moderna are priced much higher than AstraZeneca (Covishield) and Bharat Biotech (Covaxin) products at Rs 150 ($2) in India. Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine is also cheaper. AstraZeneca and J&J promised to sell at cost, and not make a profit, for a while. Therefore, the hit job. QED.

No wonder, then, that there have been all these media horror stories about blood clots following AstraZeneca and J&J vaccinations, which have led the EU and the US to issue warnings. Meanwhile, there have been no major reports about any side effects of mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. That is distinctly odd.

I am reminded of Sherlock Holmes’ famous “curious incident of the dog in the night-time”. I am also reminded of the old saying “What’s good for General Motors is good for America”, only suitably updated for today.

So why was the Biden administration forced to back-pedal furiously and declare they will help India? First, the optics were really bad: India has exported 44% of its production, and America 0%.

There was broad support for India, even from groups such as crypto-enthusiasts.

Of course the usual suspect Cold Warriors weren’t very happy.

But it appears that American businesses (other than pharma) were a little concerned about India’s ‘buyer power’. After all, India buys a lot of stuff from Boeing, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, etc., and will probably buy even more going forward. Unless, of course, some unfortunate things happened. Like embargoes.

Scenario Two: Regime change and Balkanization in India, and ‘sub-national’ goals

The unrepentant East Coast Atlanticists and woke banshees who make up the Democratic ruling cabal have decided that two things must happen: the toppling of Narendra Modi, and the breakup of India into a bunch of squabbling state-lets.

In case it occurs to you that this is exactly what the Pakistani establishment wants, it is, and that is no coincidence.

It is quite possible that Biden’s Afghan exit is predicated on a deal with Pakistan’s ISI and its proxy the Taliban. Biden will (metaphorically) deliver Modi’s head on a platter, and in return the ISI will not severely harass and kill off American troops as they run for the exits.

But you can’t blame just Biden for this. It has been the general tenor of Democratic presidencies going way back to that charming rogue Clinton and the sainted Obama (who, if I remember right, also publicly granted China the ‘contract’ to manage ‘South Asia’).

The accepted narrative in the West (and this is reflected in their media’s breathless schadenfreude over India’s current Wuhanvirus wave, see for example, https://rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/p/ep-26-the-stunning-reaction-to-indias) is that Modi’s is a monstrous regime, that needs to be overturned in a ‘color revolution’, of which anti-CAA/anti-370 and ‘farmer’ [sic] protests are dress rehearsals that need American support and encouragement.

The Deep State definitely wants its old embedded assets, the Congress Party, back in power. They smell blood: they used the Wuhan virus and social media to do regime change and get rid of Donald Trump in the US. They think they can do the same in India. The 500,000 bots recruited by the Congress party (they advertised openly for it) can be counted upon to manufacture consent on social media.

The Congress party has a long history of giving away Indian land: starting with Partition and the gift of PoK by Nehru, then the gift of Cocos Islands to Myanmar, the tremendous efforts by Manmohan Singh to give away Siachen to Pakistan, and now the Congress’ support to Khalistani separatists aka ‘farmers’.

This fits right in with the Deep State’s balkanization efforts for India. “Subnational” is code for “let’s split India into many pieces”.

Incidentally, Biden’s graceless offer under duress to help India was intended to be through “partners” and “institutions”, read NGOs and embedded long-term assets including astroturfed activists. I hope India put its foot down and insisted that all transactions would be government-to-government.

John Mearsheimer, a well-known geostrategist, pointed out the fatal flaws in the Deep State’s assumptions about “Liberal Hegemony” and the huge bloodshed they have caused, but they march on, regardless. (Hat tip Megh Kalyanasundaram).

I can tell you this delusion isn’t going to end well for anybody concerned.

The narrative that Indians need to be ‘saved’ is so pervasive that no western media would ever run a story that shows we actually have agency, for example the story of 85 year old Narayan Dabhadkar, who voluntarily gave up his COVID bed in a hospital for a younger man, a stranger, “because I have lived my life, and he hasn’t”. He died 3 days later, at home.

Narayan Dabhadkar, an RSS man, will for that reason not be honored in Indian media or textbooks. Compare this to how Captain Oates in the ill-fated South Pole expedition of Robert Scott was lionized by the British as the ultimate in self-sacrifice, and we lap up the European sentiment vicariously.

Scenario Three: A large climate change initiative of depopulation

This is the doomsday scenario. We may be facing a perfect storm of several things: technological discontinuities, the possibly exaggerated fear of climate change, and ruthless power politics.

On the one hand, the AI revolution is making more and more people redundant. They are surplus workers who will never again find employment. What happened with factory jobs through automation is on the verge of happening to white collar jobs through GPT-3 and natural language processing neural networks.

Then the question arises: why should the Earth be burdened with over 8 billion people who are ravaging the environment? There’s COP-26 on climate change and COP-15 on biodiversity coming up later this year, and it is evident that the two are linked, and that both are severely affected by growing human populations.

We have seen utterly ruthless exterminations of various populations by big powers in the past: and today we see Chinese settlers doing it to Uighurs and Tibetans. Earlier, white settlers did this in North America and Australia, wiping out not only the natives, but also the passenger pigeon and the American bison. (I am not sure if it’s a European custom, or an Abrahamic custom, or both.)

In case you think I made up the scenario of depopulation, here’s The New York Times saying so just yesterday, hat tip to Sujeev Kommana. Since the NYT is to Biden as Global Times is to Xi Jinping, we should be concerned. Very concerned.

Here is a relevant screenshot:

“Perhaps some rogue technology…bioterror attacks… will kill enough people”. The question is, “which people"? The answer is obvious. And that is precisely what the Wuhan virus could well be: a bio-weapon. There are unanswered questions:

How did the virus actually originate? Was it an accident or was it deliberately engineered?

Since it first appeared in China, why has Chinese mortality been low, and why have new mutated variants not appeared there?

Why have East Asians been notably less susceptible?

How come new catastrophic variants appeared in the UK, Brazil and India? (Note: brown indigenous people in Brazil, and brown people in India)

In India, the mutations appeared in Delhi and Mumbai, all of a sudden after the earlier wave had died out. (Note: not where election rallies took place)

What I’m driving at is that there seems to be a series of engineered variants that are quietly being introduced into different places. It doesn’t appear natural.

What’s even more remarkable is that high-ranking Americans (whom I dare not name) funded the Wuhan virology lab; others accurately predicted the trajectory of the pandemic; in fact, there were even films made that were startlingly accurate, such as Contagion.

It does sound like science fiction. If one were to feed the climate change data into an impersonal AI like HAL of 2001: A Space Odyssey, it would definitely suggest depopulation using any means possible, just as it decided to kill its astronauts since it thought they might jeopardize its mission.

HAL would even suggest to the West an alliance with the Chinese to get rid of the pesky global South, all those useless black and brown people just occupying space and using up resources.

It could well be that bio-weapons are the most efficient and least damaging way of achieving the desired depopulation of brown and black people. Let us note that India is only about 10% vaccinated, and Africa is roughly 1% vaccinated. Deny them vaccines, and it’s mission accomplished.

Apr 28, 2021; updated Apr 29, 2021.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

From the transcript:

Today for Episode 28, I’m delighted to have with me Dr Naras Eechambadi, who’s an expert in the use of data science and analytics to drive marketing. This is relevant because the majority of startups fail not because of poor or inappropriate technology but lack of innovative and creative marketing. But Naras’ personal journey through management consulting and the two startups he founded, grew and exited honorably from, is also very interesting.

Let me quickly go through his bio: engineering at IIT Madras to a doctorate in marketing at UT Austin to a leading ad agency (BBDO) to management consulting at Booz Allen and McKinsey; a senior executive at First Union, and then a successful serial entrepreneur. And an adjunct faculty at Berkeley, U Connecticut, Yale, Duke, North Carolina.

On his career journey, the importance of networking, and the common thread

My network has always been invaluable in helping me either find opportunities or have the opportunities find me… At UT, Austin I made friends with a number of doctoral students and faculty in the marketing department and they convinced me to change my major from Operations Research to Marketing. I am really glad I made that shift. I love analytics and marketing and that has indeed been a common thread throughout my varied career and roles.

How companies are making the transition from services to products/platforms

Two great examples of companies right here in Chennai that have done [that] successfully are Zoho and FreshDesk. I think we will see more of these in the future.

How he managed good exits from both the startups be founded

Fortunately for us, the acquiring company was not impacted by the financial crisis and they felt our company fit a strategic need. So the acquisition driven by strategic rather than financial considerations. They made us a very generous offer and stuck with it even while the markets were imploding all around us [in 2008] …

The second company i built was in the same space but it was a software platform. The pandemic hit some of our clients hard right at the beginning, which impacted our business. Fortunately, we were in a very attractive space and were able to generate multiple offers to buy the company and manage a decent exit [in 2020].

On consumer-centered marketing in India

Because this is still an emerging, growth market most companies are still riding the wave through traditional mass marketing and mass media approaches. Most B2C companies in this market are still not data savvy. They really do not know who their best customers are, so do not really treat them differently. Their knowledge is often limited to mobile phone numbers and email addresses. They use these channels to bombard their customers and prospects alike with often irrelevant offers and messages. Data and customer insight are still an afterthought. Companies that decide to take it seriously will be able to build great businesses in the future.

On prospects in India, and Asia more broadly

There is a palpable energy, positive attitude and infectious optimism among people here, not just in tech but across the board India and Asia are still at the initial stages of a broader renaissance.

On his immediate future plans

I do enjoy mentoring and advising entrepreneurs and senior executives in larger companies. I am starting to connect with the local startup ecosystem in Chennai, particularly those linked to IITM Research Park. I look forward to engaging actively with them.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Dr K V Bapa Rao from Los Angeles and I discuss the current situation in India-US relations.

Excerpt from the transcript:

We have had a little time to explore what the Biden presidency means in practice for India and more broadly for Asia, in the last few weeks. I don’t know about you, but I am severely underwhelmed, because I see the US blowing hot and cold towards India, while it is being sandbagged and humiliated by China, for instance in the Alaska encounter. As a life-long supporter of an India-US rapprochement, I must say I am disappointed.

On the Wuhanvirus vaccine imbroglio

For instance there was a lot of noise about vaccine cooperation in the Quad, but the reality is that Biden has used his war powers under the Defense Procurement Act in February to deny vaccine components to Indian manufacturers. Serum Institute of India made a public request to the White House to stop the embargo, and the way Press Secretary Psaki and the State Department guy sidestepped this issue altogether makes it sound like a punishment, an actual undeclared sanction. All this is not exactly confidence-inducing about the reliability of the US as an ally.

It’s complicated, as they say. About the Covid situation. It is heartbreaking, and even as we are speaking, the Biden administration’s response seems to be shifting somewhat. The story has dominated the headlines, and there is some pressure from the public on them to shed their earlier callous attitude… low-profile articles have appeared from sources that are presumably US pharma lobby mouthpieces, urging Biden to curb competition from the Indian Pharma industry, specifically to not make the vaccine inputs available to India. I don’t think this is a coincidence.

On the soft demonization of Modi

The Biden administration has bought into the prevailing facile global perception of India under Modi becoming authoritarian or majoritarian or something of that nature, and has plugged this perception into its formula to have, and keep the upper hand in the relationship with India. The relationship itself, though, hasn’t gone anywhere, and it’s largely positive and will stay that way.

Is Biden continuing down the Obama route?

I think Biden wants a legacy of having forged his own path, he has had enough of Obama’s shadow. As of now, I see elements of both Trump and Obama paradigms in his policy, when we subtract the question of personal style. We see the Obama paradigm in speaking softly and carrying a tiny stick.

On Afghanistan

Afghanistan is the nadir of American foreign policy because they refuse to see the obvious truth, that Pakistan is running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. Basically Pakistan defeated the Soviets with American help, and now have defeated the Americans with Chinese help. Can you see any logical reason why the Deep State has sacrificed American lives and money, all for… basically nothing?

We could have asked the same question about the Vietnam war, and would have come up with the same answer: the US military-industrial complex--the long-form name for the Deep State--is not particularly interested in the welfare of the American people or the lowly soldiers who fight in these wars. Let alone the welfare the people of the countries in which the wars are waged.

On China

The US public, despite the resonating effect of Trump’s anti-China rhetoric, is not all that keen on stopping cheap Chinese imports, and the corporate sector is not ready to give up its profitable engagement. So, there is no constituency there to make Biden take real steps on China. Even outside of politics, the China problem is hard for the US to really solve, due to the hardness of the problem itself, and also due to the intellectual limitations and timidity of the US policy establishment. They simply have no idea what to do about China, which is defiant, is a threat, and has a credible capability to severely hurt America.

I don’t believe any time is too late to build a more “atma-nirbhar America”, but that’s provided there is political intent, clarity vision and goals, willingness and capability to manage the process, and above all, readiness to take risks and bear the costs.

On FONOPS and other irritants

Their world view includes, as I mentioned earlier, the default idea that Modi is rebuilding India as an oppressive Hindu tyranny with the trappings of democracy. I believe that his administration has plugged this idea into its India-China strategy: India as a useful chess piece to keep China moderately in check, but a chess piece that cannot be allowed to have too much volition; and this is to be achieved by keeping India under pressure and keep it anxious about the relationship.

On climate change

In any case, if you look at the official US statement on the Kerry visit, it has only positive things to say about India’s role in climate change mitigation and its adherence to the Paris accords, and why not? India has more than kept its commitments. Again, keep in mind that the climate change constituency is one that Biden has to keep appeased, and that means sounding tough on China and India; China pushed back rudely in Alaska, and that leaves polite and diplomatic India as the whipping boy.

On neo-colonialism

And that is something that has continued from the old colonial-era vision, which of course relegates, as you said, the blacks and browns to a secondary, and maybe even dispensable position. This is of course not going to work as it did in the colonial era, hence the continuous string of failures in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and even with India, which has pretty much done whatever it needed to do for its national security, regardless of Western browbeating.

On the core US-India relationship: good despite irritants

To be a little less flippant, I think we are seeing a mild chill in the relationship, but that’s a good thing. It is a shift towards the natural equilibrium between the US and India, with less empty rhetoric. I think South Block, under Jaishankar, understands this, and is not too worried. it’ll be good if the Indian public also learns to get away from pegging its emotions to every shift in US rhetoric, swooning with delight when Trump says nice things, and fainting with shock when Biden says not-so-nice things. All the while, the core relationship is more or less the same, and pretty stable, as we discussed here.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

The late Christopher Hitchens once wrote a book titled “The Ghoul of Calcutta”: it was about those profiting from deaths in that city. I looked up the term, and it means a monstrous being associated with graveyards and consuming human flesh. I was struck by how appropriate that term was when I saw the following tweet. Note the use of the term ‘stunning’. It implies that the pain of hundreds of families of the dead is a spectator sport for this woman, a former WaPo reporter in India. Isn’t that the very definition of ‘pandemic porn’?

Can you condemn a person for the use of a single word? Yes, if it is consistent with a series of actions. Besides, remember how in ‘Z’, the greatest political thriller of all time, the single phrase “lithe and fierce like a tiger” was the smoking gun. It’s hard to give Gowen the benefit of the doubt as she was a repeat offender in her days in Delhi, as I pointed out in 2018.

It is a pattern repeated by almost every foreign correspondent in India, as I said. My ‘favorites’ in this regard are Amy Kazmin of the FT and Max Rodenbeck of the Economist. Their outlets’ coverage of the recent Wuhavirus panic in India is illuminating. The crocodile tears don’t quite cover up the pure gloating:

It is remarkable that all of the ‘seven districts’ that the FT reporter has allegedly studied (“collated local news reports”) are in BJP ruled-states, whereas the epidemic is considerably worse in Congress-ruled states. It seems to be an attempt to discredit the official numbers. And why only cremation numbers? Why not burial numbers as well? Can we say “selective cherry picking”?

In this more detailed screenshot, see the districts, as well as the sources of data (yes, such neutral sources as scroll.in and NDTV). Why not Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Punjab, Chhattisgarh?

The fact is that this coverage is essentially the same -- intended to distort, cause mass hysteria, and, presumably, lead to regime change -- as the #toolkit vendors’ tweets exposed in the following: there is obviously an agenda, and disinformation, and possibly taqiyya too. Swati Maliwal is an AAP politician:

The breathlessly negative coverage of India contrasts with any number of earlier western articles that wondered why Indians were not dying like flies in the streets (while citizens of developed nations were) as in this image from New York of mass graves of unclaimed bodies a year ago. Nobody in India called these ‘stunning’, nor did we do that when 9/11 happened: we sympathized and empathized with the Americans then, but clearly, that’s not reciprocated.

Now that Indians are in fact dying in droves, all’s well with the world according to these people. Vasudhaiva kudumbakam, it ain’t.

Today, the world-famously liberal Biden-Harris administration in the US is withholding essential raw materials, which will prevent Indian vaccine maker Serum Institute from producing vaccines not only for India, but for the entire developing world: it is the largest producer globally, and has supplied 60 million Astra Zeneca doses around the world, much of which was donated by the Indian government, and some under Covax contracts.

Unbelievably, the US is hoarding 45 million Astra Zeneca doses. They cannot be used for vaccinating US citizens, because the product is not approved by the US FDA. So why doesn’t the US donate the doses to India and others at this crunch time? Maybe Annie Gowen has an answer? This is classic ‘dog in the manger’ syndrome.

In addition, rich countries have emphatically nixed a call by India and South Africa to suspend TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) provisions: that simply means that during the emergency, licenses to patents and other intellectual property will be provided at a nominal price so that poor countries can produce generic vaccines for their use.

I am also reminded of the pneumonic plague scare in Surat a few years ago. The media (both Indian and western) painted a grotesque picture of negativity that led to mass hysteria and panic. The same thing is happening today in regards to panic buying and shortages of oxygen, Remdesivir (a drug that has been proven to do virtually nothing for virus patients: this is on authority of the WHO; although, admittedly, WHO fiats are a bit dicey) and so on.

Why? You might legitimately ask. I have one, somewhat lame, answer: persistent racism. Here’s another example of that in breaking news on April 23rd. They used Indian and African troops as cannon fodder in WW1, but never acknowledged their sacrifice, as they were untermenschen. This is from the British media, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56840131

But there is more: pervasive contempt for India. See this verbatim report of what the sainted Angela Merkel said in the context of Indian vaccine production: they have “allowed” India to produce vaccines. Now, now, little doggie, you get your biscuit, coz you’ve been a good little doggie, but understand your limits, ok?

There is more, much more, that hints darkly at sinister intent: and we have seen glimpses of this in the past, in the cavalier disregard for the lives of people from the global South. Usually, the perpetrators also benefit monetarily. Today, a perfect storm is developing, of technology, climate change and balance of power. The Wuhanvirus pandemic fits neatly into a Final Solution, the kind that an impersonal Artificial Intelligence might produce.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

For the last few years, the idea that “Smart Cities” were the inevitable next stage in the evolution of urban spaces has been the consensus among policy buffs. It stands to reason: city-based clusters are where creativity and innovation have always flourished, because of the collision and co-operation between diverse viewpoints and diverse backgrounds of densely-packed residents.

In fact, chance meetings of people with different interests (sometimes called water-cooler conversations) were encouraged in some of the most innovative places in the world. I worked at Bell Labs, arguably then the most intellectually stimulating environment anywhere, and the deliberately long corridors to the cafeteria meant physicists, material scientists, electrical engineers, mathematicians and so on rubbed shoulders. The long-running games of Go in the cafeteria also encouraged random encounters among kibitzers.

When you added Big Data and Machine Learning into the mix, it sounded logical that a heavily networked Smart City would be increasingly efficient, and could be optimized for smart mobility, zero carbon emissions, resilience, digital transformation, and so on. All this is quite true.

But this vision struck me, as an observer at the UNESCO Netexplo Smart Cities Forum 2019, as overly skewed towards developed nations, as well as soul-less and clinical. From the point of view of a resident like me of a mid-sized city in a developing nation, these objectives were not very relevant to the issues that we faced, which are more elemental and basic:

the preservation of heritage buildings and water bodies

providing drinking water, reliable electricity and internet access

hygienic waste management and recycling/upcycling

the husbanding of animal and bird populations

managing marginalized populations of migrants and the indigent

disaster mitigation and recovery

and the provision of traditional public transport such as buses and metros.

So it was not a great surprise to me that Smart Cities failed the “crash test” provided without warning by the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic, as described by Bernard Cathelat, eminent sociologist. Says he, further:

Reading the conclusions of a CEPESS (Economic and Social Studies Centre) symposium (held in November 2016 in Louvain), we encountered the pioneering concept of ville réliante, which we borrowed to develop and model as Linking Cities.

“Smart cities bring a technological dimension to sustainable cities associated with innovation and digital solutions [...] But in our opinion, Eco-cities and smart cities do not sufficiently take into account human, cultural and political dimensions [...] The CEPESS wishes to make its contribution by proposing a new vision of the city, that of connecting cities, of linking cities: a model which places the development of links at the heart of the urban project.” (Jérémy Dagnies and Antoine de Borman, CEPESS.)

Furthemore, Cathelat (ibid, pg. 10) summarizes what might make a city more human-scale:

more vegetation

reduced concentration and decentralization

the stimulation of social interaction… and solidarity initiatives

more interactive governance.

In other words, a departure from the Cartesian, mechanistic point of view, and a call to a more humane perspective. I have written about the inadequacy of Cartesian thought and especially about the issue of emergent intelligence that arises from social interactions. We do need a more holistic perspective.

What did surprise me upon listening in detail to Bernard Cathelet’s excellent presentation in April 2021 was that I had encountered in my own village and small-city life elements of what he described as Linking Cities: a human rather than a technology focus, which make them more responsive/resilient to shocks. Somehow, I had overlooked them, in the headlong rush towards ‘modernity’.

Earlier, I had presented, at the conference on Disaster-Resilient Smart Cities at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi in 2019, a case study of the Smart Cities project where I live, Trivandrum, in southwestern India. It is a Tier-2 city with a population of about 2.5 million, the capital of coastal Kerala State, blessed with natural beauty and centered around an 1,800 year old Hindu temple, a grand historical monument.

The official Smart City Trivandrum list of objectives is as follows:

This bears little resemblance to the futuristic utopian vision typical of a Western Smart City. Furthermore, developing nation cities cannot afford the investments needed to get to the Western level. Surely their citizenry would protest at what they considered frivolous, ivory-tower expenditure while their real, day-to-day needs were not being met.

My conclusion was that cities evolved to be Smart Cities, and it was not one-size-fits-all. This distinction has to be recognized, and a simple way would be to acknowledge that there were several levels to which a city could aspire, and be certified. The analog I used was the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) for software developers, which has several levels.

I thought a typical developing country city should aspire to Level 0 first, which would meet the basic needs of its citizens; once that had been achieved, it could move up to the next levels.

What the 2021 definition of Linking Cities has given me, though, is a greater appreciation for the many things that my city and my village have (or had), which would handily allow them to be much better Linking Cities. In other words, we have, in the recent past, lost many good things, and pushed ourselves into urban dystopias in the single-minded pursuit of economic growth.

“Prosperity comes with three terminal diseases: debt, obesity, and tourism”: according to public intellectual Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in Bed of Procrustes. To that, one could add, ‘anonymity’ and ‘modernity’. I can remember in my own lifetime how there were working farms and paddy fields within a mile of any point in Trivandrum; instead of high-rise apartment buildings, most of the pleasantly undulating city had neighborhoods of single-family homes.

Linking Cities: Social Interaction and Solidarity

I grew up in a cul-de-sac of about 20 homes (new ones were built over time), and every one of them had a small yard and a profusion of trees and vegetable gardens. Over time, the plot sizes grew smaller (initially most of them were 6 to 10 cents (ie. 6%-10% of an acre), later they were as small as 3 cents, more crowded and cheek-by-jowl with the neighbors. Some homes were turned into rentals, one tenant on each of two floors (there is only one three-floored structure, which is three flats).

There was a community; it had a Residents’ Association, and every month the secretary would visit every house to collect the small dues, and that was an occasion to discuss any concerns the residents had. If there were major issues, a petition would be drafted and submitted to be municipal authorities. So there was a measure of self-governance and a sense of togetherness.

Periodically, there were get-togethers on somebody’s rooftop terrace or yard, where children would demonstrate their skills at song or dance; a guest might deliver a lecture on household finance or the medical problems of women. Everybody knew everybody else, including the transient renters.

In this enclave, only one household had a car; another household had a phone. All of us gave that single phone number to our friends and relatives in case of emergency, and it was a chore for the poor man with the phone to despatch his kids to the neighbors’ houses whenever someone called.

In the evenings, the children would gather on the street and play cricket or run around in the vacant lots. A particular favorite was the haystack that would appear after the paddy harvest: it was a pleasure to inhale the fragrance and feel the rough rice-stalks on one’s face. Periodically a few wild rhesus monkeys from the nearby large Palace compound would traverse the tree-tops and wreak havoc on houses with unguarded windows, or on the fruit-bearing mango or coconut trees.

The women would chat over their walls with their neighbors until it was dusk, and thus time to prepare the evening meal. Empathy and conviviality. There was no TV (literally), and this was their best form of entertainment.

All this has changed now. Every house has a couple of cars; every individual has a mobile phone. The children are busy with their tablets; the men with their social media or cricket. Women watch soap-operas on broadcast TV, or Netflix or Amazon Prime. People know each other vaguely, but there is no intimacy or sense of community; everyone is wrapped up in their own little cocoons.

Another aspect of urban blight is plastic waste. We simply didn’t have packaging when I was a child. Instead of cereals or vegetables packed in plastic in a supermarket, in the old-fashioned bazaar or corner grocery store they used to wrap up our purchases of lentils or tomatoes in old newspaper cones or pages ripped out of school exercise books. Meat was packed in banana or other leaves. Everything was biodegradable.

Even the unglazed clay cups used to serve tea in trains were biodegradable: tossed out on the tracks, they degraded into mud shortly.

Today our roadsides and especially railroad tracks are covered with plastic waste. Even worse, so are our urban water bodies: people unthinkingly throw trash into water, resulting in the gumming up of streams into fetid, disgusting pools which then overflow during the monsoons onto the streets. Plastic packaging is a curse, and whenever I segregate garbage, I am astonished at how much of it I have to haul to the recycler.

And there is no guarantee that any of this is recycled. Given the unscrupulous nature of petty traders and corruption in local government, it is entirely possible that the waste that I have laboriously sorted is just dumped into some hole in the ground, to leach everything from heavy metals to other toxic waste into the groundwater.

Without being mistily romantic about a past fifty years ago that definitely had its share of human suffering and environmental degradation, it is worth considering the hugely negative effects of the hydrocarbon economy: in climate change, in the proliferation of plastics, and the health effects.

Earlier, the newspaper boy, the milkman, the postman, and the fish vendor, among others, used to ride their bicycles, with their goods strapped to the ‘carrier’. Today, every one of them uses mechanized transport, either a two-wheeler or a three-wheeler. It is likely that their health has suffered from the reduced exercise.

There was ‘smart transportation’ then too, of a different sort. The produce from distant suburbs used to come by bullock cart: convoys would unhurriedly travel through the night, with the tinkle of a bell and a circle of light from their hurricane lamps. The bullocks knew the way, and the drivers would nod off. Now there are mini-trucks, often with loud two-stroke engines, that do the job: the bullocks are gone. They are no longer in much use in paddy fields, either.

Linking Cities: Vegetation

In fact, the paddy fields are gone, too. Every one of them within city limits has been paved over and turned into residential land, as demand soared with migration. In addition, well-meaning but highly damaging economic policies under left-leaning governments destroyed the very rationale for paddy cultivation. This is a warning for overly intrusive governments as in the San Francisco Bay Area: you can easily drive business away, as is already happening.

When I was a child, my great-uncle made good money from farming a few acres of land in our home village about two hours away. Later, my uncle, who was an agricultural scientist, made decent money running his father’s fields that surrounded his beautiful house with an interior courtyard open to the heavens. But over time, he told me, he was forced to subsidize his rice cultivation with his salary as a scientist. So he stopped farming; and others had similar stories.

Governments, with the intention of improving the incomes of agricultural laborers, pushed up minimum wages to the point it simply became uneconomical. Labor militancy meant that mechanisation was also not possible. Paradoxically, the end result was not that laborers got good wages: it was that agriculture disappeared. The laborers ended up migrating, and coincidentally, there was the post-1973 Persian Gulf oil boom: they became, in effect, slaves there with virtually no rights, toiling away in the blazing desert heat.

Well-meaning Western commentators were impressed by the high quality of life in our villages but their extrapolations may not have anticipated the downsides of “radical reform as development” as they put it. The delicate equilibrium that had sustained some of the best, well-watered, fertile, rice-growing land in the world for millennia came to an abrupt end in the 20th century.

The idea in Linking Cities of bringing vegetation and urban farming to cities, albeit with vertical farms or hydroponics, is appealing, because there’s something very old and deep in the human psyche that responds to crops, economics aside.

There are two other aspects of village life in Kerala worth noting: community and health.

Linking Cities: Family-centric Communities

There has traditionally been a matrilineal system of inheritance in the area among Hindus (though not among Christians or Muslims). Descent was through the women, and therefore property also passed down the female side, and a child belonged to one’s mother’s family, not father’s. The sisters in a family would live together in a joint family, and that would be matriarchal as well: women gained power as they aged. The husband moved in with the wife’s joint family.

This construct was particularly suited to an agrarian setup, because it ensured that landholdings remained intact with the joint family, and were not atomized through nuclear families splitting away. It was an economically sensible protocol, and women in Kerala were more equal than their sisters elsewhere in the country: they had economic freedom, and were not dependent on their husbands.

My late mother, a professor, remembered with fondness the joint family she grew up in: there was always some aunt to take care of the children even if the parents were busy; and the old people in the household had children to spoil and pass on religious and cultural values to. Somehow, everybody was fed and taken care of. My mother was essentially an orphan, as her mother died young and her father had a traveling job, but she, too, was brought up by the family.

Unfortunately, this system broke down when people started moving to the towns in search of non-agricultural jobs, thus setting up nuclear families of their own. Worse, in misguided zeal for ‘reform’, the princely state in the 1920s — possibly influenced by British prejudice, as about half of India was colonized by Britain at the time — abolished the matrilineal joint family.

As Nobel laureate Mohammed Yunus of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh has demonstrated, women are far more careful and sensible users of money for the welfare of their families than men are. Men, on average, spend a large portion of their earnings on themselves, including in gambling, drinking and other vices.

This phenomenon is widely seen to this day. Every maid-servant in Trivandrum has the same story: they take an hour-long bus trip from the exurbs, and work for 2-3 hours cooking, cleaning, and washing clothes for middle class families. They might do this for two or three families, perhaps visiting them twice a week. It is a hard life, but it is one way to earn a living.

Every one of them complains about their lazy, no-good husbands, and often, alas, their layabout sons, who are casual day laborers or workers without steady jobs, and it is up to the women to maintain the household.

The woman-led joint family is far removed from single-mother-led nuclear families, and the sense of community and loyalty it engenders may have lessons for a world in which atomization, angst and anomie are major problems. How can that sense of togetherness be re-created?

Linking Cities: Decentralization

One of the consequences of the pandemic has been the increasingly tenuous links between geography and work. It turns out you can work — at least a lot of things can be done — remotely from anywhere. This is likely to be a lasting change. There are those who view this as an opportunity. For instance, there’s self-made technology billionaire Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho, sitting on a verandah (thinnai in Tamil) in a small village, from where he directs his global business.

This trend is likely to become more widespread, as ‘digital nomads’ build up their ‘network states’, as articulated in a wide-ranging podcast by Balaji Srinivasan, a respected Silicon Valley venture capitalist, who himself has migrated to Singapore and India, reasoning that the future of technology will be in Asia.

Similarly, a number of technology workers have moved from the crowded Silicon Valley, to Austin, TX, or Miami, FL, to remote Montana or Colorado where they could enjoy nature, or to places like Estonia or Bali.

This, then, is the competition for Linking Cities: the good life is no longer confined to certain parts of rich countries. The truly global worker is now (almost) a reality. The age of decentralization is here; distributed systems, more robust and resilient, can now become part of de-globalization, and paired with blockchain and perhaps cryptocurrencies, can create an alternative model.

Linking Cities: Health

Finally, on to health. The pandemic has shown the limitations of technological solutions of monitoring or surveilling the population. Track-and-trace systems, including the vaunted Apple/Google cooperative venture, did not prove up to the task of predicting, isolating, or directing resources to the worst-hit areas.

Says Bernard Cathelat (ibid, pg. 40):

“Smarter city” professionals have to look at the issue of the balance between the cold logic and phenomenal computational ability of artificial intelligence, and another type of intelligence, a human one, whose talents lie more in the “right brain” of intuition, imagination, creativity and improvisation.

There is more. We may be reaching the limits of industrial medicine. Once again, the mechanistic Cartesian vanity of Western Science is reflected in the elaborate and expensive paraphernalia of the drug industry, although fundamentally its output is stochastic and not deterministic. There is only a certain probability of a medicine working on a particular person, and the gold standard, the Randomized Controlled Trial, is purely about correlation, and not about causation.

There simply isn’t a Theory of Disease in Western medicine, or, as it is called in India, allopathy. Whereas traditional Indian medicine, Ayurveda, does have a theory of disease, which is about the balance among three doshas: vata, pitta and kapha. When an individual loses the natural equilibrium amongst these, diseases emerge; thus Ayurveda has a causal effect for systemic, long-term illnesses, and a physician provides customized health care that is unique to the individual.

There is evidence, for example from the gut biome, that it is the disturbance of a balance (in this case between benign bacteria and malign bacteria) that causes much diseases.

An Ayurvedic physician spends time with a patient, understanding his family history, his work stress, his food habits and his hobbies, because all that goes into a gestalt of what he is all about. The physician then prescribes a treatment which includes herbal medicines, diet restrictions, yoga and meditation. Sometimes all that the patient needs is a two-week course of rejuvenation.

Can technology help in this personalized medicine? Of course, it can. An AI that can sift the Big Data about the individual and correlate his actions to his personality can help guide the physician. Tracking the effects of the course of treatment over time can also help.

But most of all, what can help is that there is a system of medicine that treats you as a human being with emotions and a certain personal history, rather than a Cartesian machine. Ayurveda has dealt with pandemics in its millennia-old history, and baked into its protocols are insights on how to improve immunity to fend off pathogens. Unfortunately, in the mad rush towards vaccines and anti-viral drugs, even the Indian Government has paid little heed to Ayurvedic formulations, even those that have shown efficacy against the SARS-COV-2 virus.

To sum it up, Linking Cities can indeed provide for better diagnostics and better healthcare especially if it takes into consideration traditional knowledge in medicine.

Nobel laureate Octavio Paz once said of his country, Mexico, that it was “condemned to modernize”. Linking Cities suggests that there doesn’t need to be either-or. You can modernize, but also retain that which is valuable from the past. Japan, for instance, has modernized without losing its core values. Linking Cities give us hope that we can, globally, do the same. Those who manage them have to think deeply about the Ethics of Linking Cities, and ask “Whose cities are these?”

April 19, 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

A wide-ranging chat with Dr Uday Balakrishnan (retired from the Indian Postal Service as a Member of its Board), currently teaching governance at IISc Bangalore, who has seen the beast from the inside, warts and all. We discuss:

Can the bureaucracy be reformed? What are its biggest problems and sins? Is it attitude, perhaps unchanged from James Mill’s time, ie 1817? Is it the way they are recruited and trained? Does the problem lie in the way there’s a brutal hierarchy in place where lesser babus are humiliated and treated as sub-humans while the elites play God? What about the way babudom is not accountable for results achieved (or not)? Why do they have no skin in the game? How can evaluation be made more rigorous? Do they stick up for each other to the detriment of the national interest? What about all the little jaunts to Harvard etc that they go on: are these useful to India or to someone else? Are they giving away Big Data about India to possibly malign outsiders? A no-holds-barred critique of what’s good and what’s bad with India’s fabled babus.

Can babudom be salvaged? The answer: a big ‘Maybe’.

And here’s a companion look at the Judiciary, from 2018: Can We Fix The Deeply Troubled Judiciary?

Excerpts from Uday’s Bio:

Dr. Uday Balakrishnan belongs to the 1975 batch of the Indian Postal Service the world’s most extensive. He has worked across India in areas of logistics, banking, insurance, financial inclusion, child, women and unorganized labour, human resource development, as well as vigilance and anticorruption in the postal services and in the larger Government of India.

He has headed two large staff training centres and also served as the administrative head of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) –Bengaluru. To pursue his other interests, Dr. Balakrishnan retired voluntarily in 2010 as Member of the Postal Services Board & Chairman of the Investment Board.

Dr Balakrishnan’s academic interests include modern history, International Relations and public policy. Dr. Balakrishnan has been a visiting fellow at prestigious institutions like the Centre for Contemporary Studies-IISc, National Institute of Advanced Study (NIAS) and the Central European University (CEU) Budapest.

Dr. Balakrishnan has been teaching a popular public policy and contemporary history course, developed by him, titled ‘Introduction to Governance in India,’ for undergraduate science students at IISc since 2014. It is the only one of its kind in India.

Dr. Balakirshnan is a prolific columnist and reviewer of books for ‘The Hindu,’ and the ‘BusinessLine’.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

podcast above

a version is published at https://chintan.indiafoundation.in/articles/artificial-intelligence-2-0-the-language-wars-are-coming/

There have been major technological breakthroughs recently, such as CRISPR-cas9 in gene-editing, AlphaFold2 in protein-folding, and the spread of blockchains and cryptocurrency. But it’s a fair bet that natural language processing via AI and Deep Learning will have the most impact on the most people. For, advances like GPT neural networks mean that machines can process language in ways practically indistinguishable from the way humans do.

These language systems give us the first glimpse of Artificial General Intelligence, something that broadly comprehends the real world, as opposed to domain-specific systems (e.g. AlphaGo) that are competent only in narrow domains. This is, literally, AI 2.0.

Language can be dangerous. We have heard of Deep Fakes, fake videos that look like the real thing, but fake text is equally, if not even more, frightening. Some of the scenarios Rajiv Malhotra outlines in Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power show how the destructive capacity of AI is being harnessed by certain nations and companies, and their impact is already overwhelming. India’s very sovereignty may be in jeopardy.

The rapid evolution of GPTs

The non-profit research entity OpenAI of San Francisco started its development of a series of GPTs (Generative Pre-trained Transformers) a few years ago. These are Neural Networks that don’t need human training but use Deep Learning techniques to crunch gigantic amounts of content to discover their own rules of, in this case, language.

… deleted, please listen to the podcast above

Five Problems with GPT-3

There are, however, at least five huge problems with something like GPT-3.

… deleted, please listen to the podcast above

Can these problems be fixed?

Is there a way of alleviating concerns about the five above-mentioned problems?

… deleted, please listen to the podcast above

The fourth problem is related, and it is sociological. We tend to trust anything the computers spew out, and more worryingly, anything that comes from the West. India is a country that has been gaslighted so much already that we willingly put our faith in charlatans of all sorts: politicians, epidemic experts, economists, et al. The Cambridge Analytica scandal showed how it is possible to sway sentiments; with Deep Fake text it is possible to misdirect people to astonishing levels. Is any kind of oversight or regulation even possible?

The fifth problem is perhaps a little theoretical. It goes to the question of whether computers have consciousness, and whether they can ever become conscious. Subhash Kak has suggested they cannot, in Why a computer will never be truly conscious; but can they appear to be conscious to the extent that they can be malicious? The Skynet of the Terminator series comes to mind; so do the machines of the Matrix series. But if computers can never become conscious, can they ever be truly creative? We don’t know the answer.

The arrival of natural-language processing models appears to be a significant breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence. Whether it will fulfill its promise, or fall by the wayside as earlier revolutions did, is not known at the moment.

What is known is that once again India finds itself on the back foot when a new technology appears. We have neither the trained people nor the hardware infrastructure to play more than a bit part here. And that means almost certainly that the technology will be weaponized against us, as previous technologies were, by previous invaders.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

It hit 41.5 degrees Celsius in Palakkad this week. In the blistering heat, there is an 89-year old man campaigning for the post of MLA from this storied town that sits in a gap in the Western Ghats between Tamil Nadu and Kerala. He is the legendary Dr Elattuvalappil Sreedharan, India’s most accomplished engineer.

At his age, he has no need to prove anything to anybody. He has been awarded India’s second-highest civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan, as well as the French Legion d’Honneur. I have suggested that he should be made President of India, because he would be a fantastic role model, and an inspiration to youth.

Dr Sreedharan has frequently faced long odds in his engineering career spanning seven decades, and defeated them. There are very good reasons to honor him with a Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award, as well, as argued delightfully by kaipullai who recounts the herculean tasks that Dr Sreedharan set himself. To take just three: the Pamban sea bridge, the monumental Konkan Railway and the Delhi Metro — all bhagiratha prayatnams.

At the age of almost 90, when most people prefer to take it easy, he has taken on another huge challenge: he is on a mission to revive the BJP’s chances in Kerala. In 2016, after a fine campaign, the BJP had to be content with just one seat in the legislature. Conventional wisdom is that it will not get much more in 2021.

There are several reasons for this grim forecast. One is the entrenched nature of the two fronts (LDF led by the CPI(M) and the UDF led by the INC) which have alternated in power for a long time. Another is the highly polarized nature of the electorate, where ideological metastasis has set in. The third is demography: Abrahamics, who tend to form vote-banks, make up more than half the voters.

The Hindu vote has been fragmented. The numerically largest group, the OBC Ezhavas, have long been the backbone of the Communists. The next largest group, the FC Nairs, have been Congress supporters, but have moved somewhat to the BJP. Other groups, including SC, have been wooed by the BJP with little effect.

In 2016, the BJP made an explicit call for Hindu unity by headlining their campaign around Sri Narayana Guru, Chattampi Swamikal, and Mahatma Ayyankali, who were respectively from the three groups mentioned above. However, groupism and internecine warfare especially among the Ezhavas and Nairs, along with tactical voting by both LDF and UDF, buried its chances.

Several things have changed since then, though. See articles in the Indian Express and the Hindu about a consolidation of Hindu votes (although the articles may also represent the respective biases of the two newspapers).

One big difference is that the Indian National Congress seems to be running a lackluster campaign. So much so that typical alternation every five years between the Communists and the Congress (much as between the DMK and the ADMK in neighboring Tamil Nadu) may not happen this time.

The second is the changes in the previously monolithic Abrahamic vote. Christians of all stripes have viewed the Congress (and allies) as their own party. But now some of them, especially some Eastern Orthodox groups (as compared to the dominant Vatican-affiliated groups) seem to be vacillating a bit.

The Muslim League has been a Congress ally, but this time they are being challenged by the more radical SDPI, which has made a strong alliance with the CPI(M). So the Congress, despite their safe Parliamentary seat in Wayanad for the current Nehru dynasty scion, can no longer count on the Muslim vote.

There are also allegations that there are lakhs of illegal alien Bangladeshis and Rohingyas in the Kerala voters’ list. There are many lakhs of them working in Kerala doing everything from construction to plucking coconuts. It is not hard to believe that ruling parties (both LDF and UDF) have stuffed the rolls with them.

There are regional differences too: Northern Kerala is Marxist and Muslim dominated; Central Kerala is Christian and Congress dominated; Southern Kerala is where Hindus may have a chance: and indeed the one seat the BJP captured in 2016 is Nemom, south of Trivandrum.

The state has also been wracked with stories and rumors of large-scale corruption, including gold and dollar smuggling, scams in construction, deep-sea fishing boats, the sale of coronavirus patient data, and a whole lot more. Whether these have an impact on the ruling LDF’s chances remains to be seen.

There are interesting twists. It is said that in 2016, the BJP spent 64 crore rupees, while the LDF spent only 14 crores, and the UDF somewhere in between. But there appear to be other, hidden factors. On March 25th, three boats with alleged Pakistan links were captured off Minicoy. So there could be unaccounted sources of money and muscle in the fray.

There was also a tweet from Kanchan Gupta about what has happened in his native West Bengal, and, well, much of the same is applicable to Kerala as well.

The only difference in Kerala is that there has not been a TMC here. However, the explicitly anti-Hindu nature of those in power is exactly the same. We saw this in the Sabarimala agitation, which brought tens of thousands of apolitical Hindu women on to the streets with lamps, to protest the desecration of their temple. People4Dharma (led by Shilpa Nair, Padma Pillai, and Anjali George) and Indic Collective (led by Adv J Sai Deepak) were able to arouse the silent majority out of their lethargy.

There is also the fact that two of the most striking modern Hindu artifacts in the country are in southern Kerala: the Gangadhareswar murti at Aazhimala, and the Jatayu sculpture at Chadayamangalam, both in the suburbs of Trivandrum.

This possibly means that if the NDA is able to energize injured Hindu sentiment, based on the continuous hostility of the LDF (e.g. contemptuous statements about Hindus by their leaders) and the UDF (e.g. an ostentatious slaughter of a calf and a beef fest conducted by their leaders), there is a possibility that the BJP may yet do better in Kerala than we think.

If that happens, Dr Sreedharan may have pulled off yet another impossible dream.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

The most vivid analogy for the latest crisis in global supply chains, the Suez Canal blocking by a grounded super-container ship, is that of a heart attack. Just as a block in an artery can lead to disastrous consequences for a human, the blockage of an arterial waterway can disrupt global trade. The Suez accounts for 12% of the world’s total cargo movement because it is a key transit route between Asia and Europe.

There are ways to mitigate, and, even better, to prevent heart attacks. It is necessary to consider how to do the same for supply chain disruptions. The simplest mitigation is bypass surgery (or in this case, taking the long route around the Cape of Good Hope, or the more tentative Arctic Route made possible by global warming). Putting in a stent is another (which translates to widening Suez to be, say, two-lane, which has happened, in parts).

Preventing heart attacks altogether would be the other approach (say, exercise, better diet/lifestyle, drugs). In logistics terms, this means reducing the amount of cargo that is being shipped long distance. That is to say, avoid the tyranny of the supply chain by shortening it. Build near where you sell. In fact, the very antithesis of globalization.

That is paradoxical, considering how very global the ship in question is. MV EverGiven is Japanese-owned, managed by a Taiwanese company named Evergreen, operated by a German company, has a 25-member crew that is fully Indian, and had on board 2 (mandatory) Egyptian pilots whose job it is to shepherd vessels through the canal without incident.

Before the usual suspects start to lay the blame on the Indian crew, it is worth pointing out that in the canal, the local pilots are, by law, in charge of the ship. The captain and crew defer to them. So human error probably has to be attributed to them; in addition, there was apparently a severe dust-storm that may have affected the ship’s movements.

A retired marine engineer in who has traversed the Suez many times confirmed the above. He also said:

There could be problems with engine maintenance. If there were attempts to finely position the vessel in the wake of the storm, that would depend on how well the engine starts, stops, reverses, etc. Managements want to keep the boats running, not in drydock; sometimes necessary repairs and maintenance get postponed for too long.

Thus there might be several causes behind the mishap. But squeezing out maximum profits while keeping costs down is something that not only ship managers do (the ship earns money only when it is moving; repair or drydock time is dead time). This sentiment is what has driven the entire thrust towards supply-chain efficiency, and methodologies like just-in-time that minimize inventory and thus carrying cost.

Perhaps Toyota could do JIT because of Japanese exceptionalism, whereby the suppliers were next door and felt honor-bound to meet their commitments. That is not true in the real world. For instance, see the vaccine wars: the EU, the US, the UK, etc. are hoarding units, and India is cutting supplies, for various reasons. In any case, it is illusory to think that inventory disappeared: it was sitting on a ship instead of in your warehouse.

However, Soren Skou, the CEO of Maersk, the largest shipping company in the world, now says the world is moving to “just-in-case”, and multiple suppliers:

We are moving towards a just-in-case supply chain, not just-in-time. This incident [in the Suez Canal] will make people think more about their supply chains…

How much just-in-time do you want to be? It’s great when it works but when it doesn’t, you lose sales. There’s no just-in-time cost savings that can outweigh the negative of losing sales…

We clearly see our customers saying we need to have multiple suppliers to make sure that one small sub-supplier can’t close us down.

It is possible to argue that efficiency is the antithesis of strategy. Extreme efficiency brings risk. There is no Plan B; there is no slack in the process. Engineers typically overdesign, and leave a large margin of error to account for unforeseen circumstances. Over the past couple of decades, managers, especially in America, have thrown this sensible caution to the winds, leaving their companies on a knife-edge, subject to geopolitical and technical risk, in the pursuit of (relatively small) increases in profitability.

The change has even been visible in personnel. Once upon a time, the smartest young MBAs were hired into sales or finance jobs; but more recently, many have gravitated to being purchasing managers. They have been ruthless in pruning costs; but they have been unmindful of the risks they are taking. These are now coming back to haunt them.

A generation of management consultants and ambitious young MBAs in effect conspired to move the world’s production to China. There was a supply chain tyranny of groupthink. Oil was cheap so shipping costs were low; China was efficient and skilled at scaling up; thus production was moved offshore. An extreme case was where chickens reared in the US were slaughtered and shipped to China for processing, and shipped back as packaged food.

But there were unintended consequences. China moved up the experience curve, getting better and better at manufacturing. Conversely, it hollowed out not only production jobs, but also the knowledge of design for manufacturing back in the consuming countries. Thus, not only did the jobs migrate, entire industries did, and they are not going back.

This is a double blow: both to developed economies where workers will become permanently unemployable, and to developing economies that will never be able to get a foothold in some industries. The latter case is the Cargo Cult of today: countries completely dependent on the container ships that bring them what they want.

The old David Ricardo theory of comparative advantage, which has been the theoretical basis for offshoring, is now passe. It has become important for large economies like India to be able to depend on local production. Otherwise, you are subject to crazy geopolitical risk with no warning. For instance, the Japanese were sandbagged by the Chinese when the latter simply stopped outbound customs clearance of rare earths products, bringing some electronics manufacturers to their knees some years ago.

Chinese can and will use every trick in the book. They view trade as part of “unrestricted warfare”. This risk must be mitigated: for instance, India must produce its own Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients so that the pharma industry is vertically integrated and not subject to a potential Chinese veto. The same is true of shipping too: India has to move its container shipping from Colombo (where the Chinese run part of the facilities under long lease) to the under-construction port at Vizhinjam as soon as possible.

The larger picture is that the Suez incident is going to make more nations wary of China, if the pandemic hadn’t already done so. This also makes marine choke points more interesting: most notably the Straits of Malacca. An EverGiven-style accident (or more ominously, a military blockade) there would bring the Chinese economy to its knees -- and so would similar action in the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. There were threats earlier that Iran might deliberately sink ships to impede the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.

China is painfully aware of this, and it partly explains their debt-trap diplomacy habit of acquiring port assets all over the world, and their focus on Gwadar in Baluchistan, and the proposed Isthmus of Kra canal in Thailand: these are ways to bypass Malacca (and so is much of the Belt and Road Initiative). Incidentally, India with its Andaman and Nicobar command can keep a close eye on Malacca.

China is in fact the ultimate loser in the Suez incident, because it makes it difficult for other nations like India to ignore the elephant in the room: their vulnerability and therefore the need to decouple China from their supply chains. Autarky is no longer a bad word. But we also have to be realistic about our lack of certain capabilities or resources.

Even though we tend to blame the Chinese for the theft of intellectual property and reverse-engineering, other capabilities have been less visible: on the one hand, government mercantilism such as in hidden financing (often at rates that approach 0%) and in cornering strategic resources (eg. lithium, cobalt, rare earths). On the other, in tooling.

A mechanical engineer who runs a robotics company in Bangalore told me the following when I asked him what his main challenge from the Chinese was:

It’s definitely tooling. It takes me maybe 18 months to get the product all tooled up; but when I start shipping it, the Chinese guy will reverse-engineer and tool it up in 2-3 months. So he will have a product competing directly with mine within 3-4 months, at a lower cost. So I am desperately running as fast as I can just to stay ahead for that short window of opportunity.

In a sense, India has lost an entire generation of mechanical engineers (and civil engineers) because they were all absorbed by the IT industry to do offshored services work. This, in a larger national sense, has been a tragedy. We now have to painstakingly build that capability up all over again.

But this is literally the best time to do that; in fact, we do not have a choice. In the most strategic industries, India is far behind; in some cases, so far behind as to be non-existent. For instance, consider semiconductors. It is imperative that India not be dependent on anybody else for chips. There’s a global shortage of chips now, and there is not a single semiconductor fabrication plant in India. This is a critical deficiency. Today, yes, India can do chip designs and get them fabricated by merchant foundries such as TSMC. Tomorrow?

Taiwan’s TSMC is dominant in the most advanced chips, ie those under 10-nanometers, and is currently building a next-generation 3-nanometer plant. It has overtaken the US’s Intel and Korea’s Samsung. Intel is now forced to respond with a $20 billion investment in two fabs in the US. There are huge geopolitical risks for India (and the rest of the world) from various issues. What if the Chinese invade Taiwan? They are threatening every day to do so: the latest is an incursion of 20 Chinese planes into Taiwanese air space.

There is another, unforeseen problem: water. Taiwan is going through a bad drought, and fabs are facing a big problem with not enough clean water. A chip engineer told me:

Clean room setup and many gallons of clean water are needed. Some years back, there was this push to set up a fab in Hyderabad; and it went nowhere because of water requirements. We have to fix that problem as well.

The Taiwanese are quite aware of the dangers from a potential Chinese invasion, or even of a blockade. This is the best time for India to put on a hard sell to attract TSMC to set up a fab in some part of India which has sufficient water and the requisite other infrastructure.

If the almost literally heart-stopping Suez block has any positive outcome, it is to be hoped that it will accelerate the setting up of a fab (perhaps Taiwanese) in India.

(UPDATE: As of March 29th, the MV EverGiven has been floated free after a 6 day-long emergency operation).

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Due to widespread Anglophilia, there is a benign image of Britain with memes like “the sceptr’d isle”, “home of Shakespeare, the Knights of the Round Table”, “Oh, to be in England now that spring is in the air!”, the Battle of Britain” and so on. But is the reality a little different? The experiences of three women there recently suggest that something is not right. Racism, bigotry, and vicious intolerance against women are common, especially if they are non-white.

The three are Rashmi Samant, a young Indian graduate student at Oxford, who was bullied and canceled essentially because she’s a brown Hindu; Meghan Markle, an American who married into the British royal family and complains of intolerance and racism against her because of her part-black ancestry; and Sarah Everard, a 30-year-old Londoner who was abducted and murdered, possibly by a police officer, while walking home one night.

Rashmi Samant, studying engineering, was elected by a record margin as the president of the Oxford student union: the first Indian woman to do so. What followed was vicious online trolling and bullying (in which, sadly, Indian-origin faculty took part) to humiliate her based on allegedly anti-Jew and anti-East Asian comments by her which they dug up from her social media accounts from years ago. To the impartial observer, these comments don’t seem nasty, only slightly tasteless: normal for a 17-year-old.

The reality, though, was inadvertently exposed by Abhijit Sarkar, the post-doc faculty whose involvement in the lynch mob is inexcusable. He said, “Oxford student union is not ready for a ‘Sanatani’ president”. In other words, there was a religious bias behind the attack on her, and it was specifically because she is a Hindu. We can imagine what is behind this religious bigotry, but worryingly, Oxford and Sarkar have offered neither explanation nor apology.

In the meantime, Rashmi felt forced to resign from her student union presidency, and, possibly fearing physical assaults on her, a lone young woman in an alien country, she has returned to her native Udipi in Karnataka. Let us remember that in 1976, a brown Pakistani Muslim woman, Benazir Bhutto, had been elected president of the same student union. A clear indication that racial and religious animosity has become far worse since then?

The revered royal family of Britain has many skeletons in its closet, and it may be a dangerous place for women. We remember the sad, brutal, and mysterious death of Princess Diana (and her apparently miserable life too, and rumors of affairs). Her son, Prince Harry, is obviously dominated by his upwardly mobile, commoner wife, Meghan Markle, but her explanation that she was hounded and humiliated for her black ancestry may not be untrue.

A Charlie Hebdo cartoon captured it perfectly, situating it in the context of the murder of George Floyd (black) by a policeman (white) choking him with his knee in Minneapolis last year. A rude (as usual for the magazine) but insightful perspective. Meghan too couldn’t breathe?

Sarah Everard’s case is obviously the most tragic. Her disappearance and murder have provoked a national outcry in Britain. The police were also brutal in breaking up the protest by women: there were viral images of a red-headed woman, a student named Patsy Stevenson, being pinned to the ground roughly, according to her for doing nothing more than being a bystander.

Britain’s police have a nice friendly image, with the unarmed bobby saying, “Now, now, what’s all this then?”, but maybe this is passe. There have been longstanding accusations of incompetence, for instance regarding the grooming cases of Rotherham, where hundreds of young white girls were turned into sex slaves and prostitutes by Pakistani-Britons.

But the accusation of police involvement in Sarah’s abduction and murder is more serious. I think it’s time the BBC, which assumes the air of being the world’s conscience keeper, did a penetrating investigation into what ails Scotland Yard, the home of the British police.

I suggest Israeli-British filmmaker Leslie Udwin be pressed into service to make an in-depth film “Britain's Daughters” to understand what ails women there. She was quick to make the accusatory “India’s Daughter” that blamed the Jyoti Singh Pandey murder on India’s religion, culture, and ethics: quite the hatchet job. I thought it was a vile, poisonous film then, and said as much.

My hunch is that Sarah Everard’s murder (and the bullying of Meghan Markle and Rashmi Samant) has everything to with Abrahamic patriarchy, notions of the inferiority of women and non-whites, an old-boy culture that tolerates bigotry and insensitivity, and an insularity sharpened by Brexit.

And that’s not all. Leicester University, which I understand is rather well-thought-of, has an official toolkit on student sex work. (h/t to Bimal Trivedi for finding this). As much as you spin it as benign recognition of diversity, and even if it is not gender-specific, this is a smoking gun: it suggests that young women are far more at risk in the leafy halls of academia than we assume.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is due to visit India shortly. He’s a rather decent sort, but he should be grilled mercilessly about the Rashmi Samant case. He is coming as a supplicant, as post-Brexit Britain needs trade with India more badly than vice versa. Nothing less than the dismissal of Abhijit Sarkar, and the censuring of lax Oxford officials should be considered satisfactory. It is a legitimate expression of concern for Indian citizens and women and minority populations in Britain.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Did Pratap Bhanu Mehta jump from Ashoka University? Or was he pushed? This seems to be the Hamlet-esque “to-be-or-not-to-be” question of the day in the Indian media. The simple answer is that it is very good if he was pushed. And it’s even better if he jumped.

That of course needs an explanation. The push option is if the Government of India made an offer to the trustees of Ashoka that they couldn’t refuse: get rid of the fellow, or else! That, of course, would be Godfather-esque, and it would mark a welcome change from the pusillanimity that India has traditionally exhibited. Soft States don’t work, which should have been abundantly clear to us all along.

If it wasn’t clear, the antics of Xi Jinping’s minions in Alaska just a few days ago should have been enough to convince the most obtuse among us. They calculate that Biden is soft (we can speculate as to why they are so confident about that), so they humiliated the US side as is their wolf-warrior habit. Xi is broadcasting loudly that Biden’s US is a Soft State and that he pwns Biden. Whether this is true remains to be seen, but it is a good opening gambit.

India has been the ultimate Soft State, mouthing meaningless platitudes and cringe-inducing homilies while spectators roll their eyes and silently pray: “Just kill me now!”. Hark back to V K Krishna Menon delivering marathon lectures at the UN General Assembly or J Nehru turning down the offer of the Security Council Seat “because China deserves it more”. (By the way, I can quote chapter and verse: no, it is not an urban myth).

So if there is — finally — a change of heart, and India does stand up for its interests, then it would be welcome news. Doing tejovadham to undesirables is part of what governments are supposed to do. This was visible in the case of yesterday’s cause celebre as well, the mop-haired Disha Ravi. The fact that she was arrested is important. She herself is unimportant, but it sends a message to other wannabe Urban Naxals: “Your ass is on the line, kid!”, pardon the French.

For a long time, secessionists have labored under the illusion that they were immune to the power of the State. They have seen overground and underground purveyors of sedition treated with kid gloves, and they got used to thinking that this is the natural order of things. Not quite. They should look up Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden.

The human rights of outlaws or insurgents or their middle-class supporters are not — and they cannot be — greater than those of the average, law-abiding citizen. That is an axiom, and all the billions of the Open Society Foundation and #DeepState are not going to change that very easily.

The alternative in Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s case, the jump option, is even better because it means he had no option but to fall on the sword. In other words, the Government didn’t do anything, but out of enlightened self-interest, the trustees of Ashoka informed him that he should resign, or else they would have to fire him: Because he was causing real damage to the Ashoka brand.

Of course, Mehta has friends, powerful and shadowy friends. Within 24 hours, there was a letter written by 150 professors from “Harvard, MIT, Yale, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge” and so on, in his support. Commendably swift. The Ecosystem has its act together to protect its own.

The letter also means… exactly nothing.

It is precisely like the letter signed by 22 (or was it 35?) Nobel laureates supporting a Naxalite doctor some years ago. I would wager that none of these worthies could even spell that man’s name, or pick him out in a police lineup of suspects. They just blindly signed a piece of paper somebody put in front of their noses.

There was also the petition signed by 47.5 “ancient India scholars” some years ago regarding the Aryan Invasion Mythology and related stories in the California Textbook Case. I wrote an unpublished piece then where I pointed out that these alleged “scholars” included people who can’t read Sanskrit or Tamil, urban planners, astrophysicists, economists, sociologists, linguists in unrelated languages, deconstructionists, etc. The one person who had the requisite background in both ancient history and languages retracted her support.

In other words, these letters are part of a “toolkit”, a term immortalized by Disha Ravi in her 15 minutes of fame.

The same worthies crying about Mehta’s “freedom of expression” or whatever chose to ignore the fact that a young, brown, foreign, racial/religious minority Hindu woman, Rashmi Samant, was cyber-bullied, trolled, terrorized, and forced to resign from her post as elected president of the Oxford Student Union, just days ago. Why? That was a rhetorical question. We know the answer.

The same worthies have also ignored a vile campaign by a foul-mouthed assistant professor at Rutgers University to demonize a small racial and religious minority, Hindus, mostly Asian Americans.

Tulsi Gabbard, a Hindu though not Asian (she’s a Pacific Islander), has been attacked directly for her faith. Although the hate campaign against her was utterly horrifying, not a single academic bothered to condemn it. Here is an actual campaign poster against Gabbard. (Hat tip to Sheenie Ambardar for this).

No, none of this bothers the 150 letter writers. That means they have no moral leg to stand on: they are hypocrites.

But they make it sound like Mehta was subjected to something akin to what Hypatia, the foremost woman scholar of her time, and a philosopher and mathematician of repute, experienced in Rome around 300CE. They dragged her out of her chariot and into a church, stripped her naked, gouged out her eyeballs while she was still alive, slashed her to pieces with broken tiles, then cut her body up, dragged the pieces through the streets, and burned them: all because newly-ascendant Christians hated pagans.

In fact, it was Rashmi Sawant who was treated a bit like Hypatia, not Pratap Bhanu Mehta; and explicitly for the same reason: she is a Hindu. Abrahamics have a serious problem with Hindus and others of the Old Religions. As described in the fascinating book The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, majoritarian rule by Christians meant the total destruction of the old Roman religion around 400-500 CE.

Majoritarian rule by Abrahamics almost inevitably means religious minorities are oppressed, and frequently they are wiped out, exterminated. So there is good reason to fear majoritarian Abrahamic rule, as freedoms will be curtailed.

However, by sleight of hand, this Abrahamictechnique is ascribed to Hindus, and the likes of Mehta talk up a storm about ‘fascistic’, ‘majoritarian Hindu nationalist’ rule! This sells well to the Deep State and Christian fundamentalists and regime-change enthusiasts in the West, but is entirely without basis. It is a gigantic fraud that ordinary Indians have also been gaslighted into.

Hindu rule is demonstrably benign and liberal. Look at the classical Chanakya niti: he advocates sama, dana, bheda and only when other avenues are explored and fruitless, danda. The Pandavas give the Kauravas innumerable opportunities to negotiate a settlement without bloodshed, even willing to accept merely five villages for themselves, while the empire went to the Kauravas.

Then there’s the Sisupala story, where Lord Krishna forgives 99 transgressions before slaying him.

And look at India today. It may have a large numerical majority of Hindus, but it is a MinoritarianState, as interpreted by the Executive and Judiciary and enshrined in the Constitution. Religious minorities get all sorts of privileges not available to Hindus, most distressingly the fact that Hindu temples are captured by the State. Just two days ago, government bureaucrats were selling off 35,000 acres of land belonging to the Lord Jagannath temple.

The vast holdings of churches (the #2 land-owner in the country, after the government), much of it expired 99-year-leases that they squat on illegally as though they were land grants, are never touched. Waqf properties, that is Muslim community properties, are also left alone.

There are special provisions for all sorts of things for minorities. Kerala’s government has posted employment advertisements that are reserved for converts to Christianity! There are schemes to pay Muslim priests salaries and Christian priests pensions and to greatly subsidize Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca and Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem, while Hindus have to pay for their pilgrimages out of their own pockets.

And the Modi government, accused of ‘majoritarianism’ has itself rolled out goodies like scholarship schemes, even entire universities and schemes for women, explicitly for non-Hindus! In other words, extreme liberalism is being painted as fascism! How very predictable! How very Orwellian!

All the breast-beating by Mehta and friends about ‘majoritarianism’ boils down to a concern that Hindus will get equality. That’s right: any attempt by Hindus to merely demand equality under the law is treated as ‘fascism’. This is the kind of extreme rhetoric that the malcontents in India espouse.

For instance, they made a godawful fuss about the badly-named Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which merely provides non-Muslim minorities being genocided in Pakistan and Afghanistan fast-track access to Indian citizenship. This was portrayed as a grave offense: why? Because the Pak and Afghan Muslims doing the genocide would not gain Indian citizenship! That is utterly absurd!

The genocide is not theoretical, either. Just two days ago, there was news of Ajay Lalwani, a Hindu journalist in Pakistan, being shot dead by a gunman. His crime: he had reported on how underage Hindu girls in Pakistan suffer regular kidnap, rape, conversion to Islam, and forced marriage to Muslims. This happens on average to three teenage girls a day, every day. That is explicit Abrahamic majoritarianism. And that is precisely why CAA is an utterly liberal law, protecting the victims of religious apartheid and genocide.

Nevertheless, here is Pratap Bhanu Mehta fulminating against the CAA, passed into law by the elected Indian parliament, and suggesting in so many words that the way to challenge it was not to use the Judiciary, but to riot in the streets.

But we should recognise that this direction is not going to be set through the nice formalisms of law, or the contrived conventions we can adhere to in normal times. The direction is going to be set by the mob, by brute power, by mobilisation.

This is outrageous. Some might call it seditious. If there were McCarthyites in India, they would nail Mehta. There aren’t, so he gets cushy sinecures, while spearheading a reverse-McCarthyite movement to blackball anybody who is not part of his cohort’s Big Brother thought control!

What explains this strange power Mehta has to keep an entire country in thrall to his views? It couldn’t possibly be his regular op-eds in the Indian Express. I have been surprised by the drivel he churns out. It is verbose and prolix, full of the turgid and impenetrable vocabulary of the cultural Marxist. He writes 3,000-word essays that say… exactly nothing.

That is, of course, when he’s not inciting people to riot, as above. On second thoughts, maybe it is better that he not use many verbs, unlike this famous Doonesbury strip from 1980 lampooning Ted Kennedy.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta remains an enigma; nay, a mystery wrapped in a conundrum. What is the source of his influence? How does he regularly end up in prestigious positions for which he may or may not be qualified or competent? Is he an outstanding scholar who has produced great work? Why is he the darling of the Ecosystem?

The blurb on Mehta says this:

His areas of research include political theory, constitutional law, society and politics in India, governance and political economy, and international affairs.

Not being in that business, I have no idea what his contribution is. I used to think he must be a globally-renowned scholar. But so far as I can tell, he has not done any path-breaking, seminal work. The only awards on his blurb are from India. So why is there such a fuss about him from Anglosphere friends? Mehta sounds rather like Yogendra Yadav, who is famous only for being famous.

It would also be interesting to see if any of those worthies from Columbia, Yale, Harvard, MIT, Oxford, etc. actually invites Mehta to a position in their home institutions. Somehow I doubt that, because they have their own bailiwicks to protect, and anyway he’s probably more useful to them if he is in India.

But it is not unknown for washed-up Ecosystem journalists (I can name at least two) to be given cushy slots in the Deep State newspapers of the West. There was also a journalist who said she was an Associate Professor at Harvard, until it crashed and burned and she made (hard to believe) excuses about mail fraud.

So I for one would not be surprised if Mehta were to turn up at some university that is friendly to the Deep State and Atlanticism.

Don’t cry for Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Argentina. Or Lutyens, or Khan Market. I am pretty sure he’ll pop up somewhere, being hailed as the new Solzhenitsyn. The real Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, poor guy, will turn over in his grave.

POSTSCRIPT: Gurcharan Das confirms that Mehta jumped, and was not pushed. Somehow that is a little disappointing. So we are still a Soft State? Sigh. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/a-tale-of-two-heroes-tragedy-at-ashoka-university-shows-the-difficulty-of-doing-good-in-todays-world/

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Vaccine diplomacy has brought out the best and the worst.

There are the usual small-minded intellectual property battles, which really do not show #BigPharma in a good light. See my piece on Chintan here: https://chintan.indiafoundation.in/articles/why-india-should-rely-on-its-domestically-produced-vaccines/ and its podcast version is above.

The US is reputedly hoarding 30 million doses of AstraZeneca (which is not approved for distribution in the US yet), and the UK is complaining that India is not giving it units, instead, how dare they deny it to the former imperial overlord!, India is using it for its own, much larger population! https://www.ft.com/content/d5a26194-9537-4b57-b35a-99236b67823b

There are claims and counter claims of hoarding by EU members.

Meanwhile, India has shipped out more units to other countries, quite a bit of it for free to neighbors and smaller developing countries, than it has used for ramping up its own vaccination.

But one thing is for sure: India has cracked vaccine manufacturing. Other industries should learn from this, and both should now go up the value chain to R&D and product design. Manufacturing savvy is a big leg up for innovation.

PS. Out of courtesy, here’s the article on vaccine imperialism from redflag.org.au. https://redflag.org.au/node/7542. I neither endorse not disagree with them, I am simply posting it here to thank them for their striking photography above, which I give them due credit for.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

There is a vicious, long-term Plan for us. Every day we see instances of this in action.

Here’s what they did to use before when they had power.

Now things are no better. We have to heed the lessons of the past.

https://www.indiafacts.org.in/commentary/the-withering-attack-on-us-they-have-good-reasons-why-they-wish-us-harm/

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Social media was once viewed as a breath of fresh air, with independent citizen-journalists providing unbiased content. Alas, those days are over. Today, social media is a powerful #BigTech force for thought control, and as such, it needs to be reined in. The GoI’s proposals in this regard are modest, and entirely reasonable.

See a version of this podcast in print at https://chintan.indiafoundation.in/articles/the-international-push-to-make-social-media-accountable/

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

The article is available at https://www.pgurus.com/the-lament-of-the-kulaks/

The positioning of the ongoing agitation, mostly in Punjab and Haryana, has been brilliant. Full marks for marketing, because we are programmed to be sentimental towards annadaatas. Food, after all, is pretty elemental. Farmers everywhere are a dour lot, prone to being glum -- often with justification -- about bad weather, subsidies and the antics of politicians.

But the sad fact of the matter is that this particular agitation is not a farmer agitation. It is a kulak revolt. Those who remember their Soviet history will recall how kulaks, landed farmers with a few acres, zamindars or janmi, were ruthless exploiters of the landless peasantry. They were liquidated remorselessly by Stalin and company. Lenin called them “bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten on famine”.

If you see this as a kulak revolt, a lot of things fall into place, for example the deluxe arrangements for the protesters encamped in Delhi: electric leg-massagers, pizza delivery, stylish tents. A far cry from our image of the lone, skinny, hard-scrabble farmer, eking out a perilous, hand-to-mouth existence.

Professional agitators, andolanjeevi, have infiltrated the protests; so have separatists, and, fishing in troubled waters, nearby foes. There is a pattern of keeping India on the boil with internal agitations, while there is a state of war on the Tibetan border. Koodankulam, Sterlite, Pegatron, anti-CAA riots, Bangalore riots, now ‘farmer’ riots. You can connect the dots.

Worryingly, the agitation has metamorphosed into, first, a religious revolt, with overseas Sikhs in Canada leading the charge; and then into a caste cleavage, with the protesters being largely upper-caste Jats, with almost no representation by the landless peasants, mostly SC. Fault lines, very Chanakyan: create bhedam, exploit the animosities, introduce anarchy.

The alleged reason for the ‘farmer’ protests is that the small farmer will lose out to big, bad corporates. There is a grain of truth to this, but only if you extrapolate wildly. That has happened, for example, with the giant factory farms in the US, with thousands of acres under cultivation; just 2% of the population produces food-like substances for the entire country. (There is also $20 billion in annual subsidies for cotton, wheat, rice, corn and soy, but let’s ignore that for the moment.)

The downside is that industrial agriculture has devastated the land, plundered groundwater, introduced poisonous chemicals, and generally wrought havoc, including with CO2 emissions and water pollution from animal husbandry. There have been horror stories such as the cultivation of water-loving rice in arid California, leading, for example, to selenium poisoning.

In a new book, “Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal”, NYTimes food writer Mark Bittman lays out how factory farming has led to low-nutrition, high-calorie junk food being the norm in the US. The result is an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Moreover, the land is degraded: Bittman talks about how you cannot even find earthworms in factory-farm land, a clear indication of dead top-soil.

So excessive corporatization is not healthy either. The key is moderation. Today, small farms are under-productive: records show that in ancient Tamil Nadu, it was possible to produce more than 15 tons of paddy per hectare, but today, our productivity is in the low single digits, and it is among the lowest in the world. So consolidation, larger farms, mechanization, and investment in technology can improve agricultural output and outcomes.

So can the opportunity for farmers to sell to anybody, without being constrained to sell to the monopoly mandis or APMCs and thus the arhatiyas or commission agents. Part of the solution is to shorten the supply chain: today, there are five or six go-betweens separating farm and consumer. A single vertically integrated buyer (such as ITC with its e-choupals and factories making value-added products, or a Reliance which also has retail outlets) wil be much more efficient, and both the actual farmer and the consumer will benefit from disintermediation.

Such producers will have an incentive to add silos, cold chains and value-added processing plants (eg. ketchup instead of tomatoes), all of which the government failed to do, because it ignored agriculture in the go-go “temples of modern India are dams and factories” Nehruvian era. Not that agribusiness is benign, but they know where there is profit to be made. In an era of uncertainty among the big producers (US, Canada, Australia) due to global warming, India’s heat-tolerant crop varieties may well be a precious asset in the medium term.

In the long run, India can and should become one of the world’s agricultural superpowers.

But obviously the intermediaries will lose out in the short term. A good number of the kulaks are also commission agents. The Farm Acts will require non-farmers in the supply chain to register their PAN numbers, thus becoming subjected to income tax (instead of masquerading as farmers and gaining the benefits of free water, free electricity, and tax-free incomes while enjoying above-market guaranteed procurement prices) and this surely will hurt the kulaks.

It has been a gigantic subsidy, estimated by Balbir Punj in “Protest of the Privileged” (Feb 9, Indian Express) to be at Rs. 2 lakh crores in unnecessary, excess inventory held in FCI warehouses, not to mention farm loan waivers of Rs. 2.34 lakh crores over several years. And this is not going to the poverty-stricken marginal tenant farmer or landless laborer, but to the kulaks. The Farm Acts 2020 will reduce the transfer of taxpayer money to wealthy kulaks in Punjab and Haryana.

This is the real reason behind the protests, if you strip away all the rhetoric.

941 words, 9 Feb 2021

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Of course it’s too soon to make any authoritative pronouncements about the effect of the Biden presidency, but the first signs for Asia are none too good. There were anodyne noises about Asia from Biden though he seems allergic to the term ‘Indo-Pacific’, but the memory of Obama’s feckless “pivot to Asia” is emboldening China.

To be succinct, China is rampaging, and having a field day. It cannot hide its disdain for Biden.

The first thing China did, on the very day that Biden took over, was to sanction 28 Trump-era appointees, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Then it gave its Coast Guard orders to open hostile fire on anybody passing through its claimed maritime territory. Considering their expansive claims on others’ waters, this is dangerous.

To make it clear what they meant, the Chinese then did a mock drill on how to attack an American aircraft carrier in the South China Sea.

Chinese aircraft began to violate Taiwanese airspace in larger numbers and more frequently.

Myanmarese generals met Chinese diplomats, and then there was the coup d’etat in Burma. The net result is that China gets to build a deep-water port at Kyaukpyu, another entry into the Bay of Bengal; also the earlier regime had entered into large military procurements from India to the tune of $100 million, and India had gifted them their first submarine.

Sri Lanka, which had agreed to let its Colombo East Container Terminal be developed with Japanese and Indian support, did a U-turn. It appears it will be a Chinese firm in charge now.

There is a ‘glacier bomb’ in India’s Uttarakhand, bordering Tibet, and there is a fair chance China triggered the flash flood that led to dozens of casualties downstream.

A WHO team, which went to China, a full year after the Wuhan virus epidemic began, declared that the Level 4 virology lab isn’t the origin of the virus, but suggested it came from bats, and that too quite vaguely from somewhere in the region, not necessarily China. A year is a long time to scrub all incriminating data, and of course WHO boss Tedros is a China protege.

China unilaterally announced a pull-back by its troops and Indian troops from positions they occupy around the Pangong Tso lake in Ladakh. This would be suicidal for the Indian side, because they occupy the strategic heights there. Therefore this is likely to be a trial balloon.

Chinese Coast Guard vessels have entered the territorial waters around Japan’s Senkaku Islands in a provocative move. Chinese have unilaterally claimed these islands.

The sum and substance of this is that China believes they have nothing to fear from the Biden Administration. According to the Chinese Communist Party, they won. They got rid of the tiresome Trump, and imposed a giant health and financial catastrophe on the world, and are getting away with it.

Hubris before nemesis. And another step in the drastic decline of US power.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

i said india-china border. pardon me, i meant “india-tibet” border.

and quite honestly, i am not a big fan of sun-tzu.

but there is the very interesting manual of warfare, “Unrestricted warfare” that is more or less what they follow: use all sorts of leverage; wage economic, cyber, biological, chemical, warfare; use strategic resource capture (eg lithium); use tons of fifth columnists and embedded assets to cause mayhem.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

first there was kishore mehbubani, an indian-origin singaporean diplomat, long known as a chinese shill. https://www.nus.edu.sg/alumnet/thealumnus/issue-124/perspectives/panorama/biden-and-china-friends-or-foes

then there was kevin rudd, a solid sinophile former aus PM saying “resistance is futile” and that you MUSTN’T contain china. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-02-05/kevin-rudd-usa-chinese-confrontation-short-of-war#author-info

then the FT’s martin wolf told us you CANNOT fend off china, quoting mehbubani. https://www.ft.com/content/83a521c0-6abb-4efa-be48-89ecb52c8d01

then the chinese propaganda entity global times tells us this is true, china is the supreme power, center of the universe. exhibit A: martin wolf’s article. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1154379.shtml (h/t to @SCS_Disputes)

so who’s left now in this coronation of china? india (ok indian-origin kishore, tho i’m sure there are several actual indian resident fifth-columnists who are dying to say the same thing), australia, britain.

ok, so japan is missing, and the US. i have a candidate for the US: susan shirk, former obamista aide, now at the university of california at san diego. she’ll be happy to let us know how it’s time to kowtow abjectly to china.

honestly, i don’t know if they’ll be able to find a japanese to toe this line. they are a people, on average, with dignity.

but do you see how this works? you keep piling up those quotes, and lo! it has become “truth by repeated assertion”.

in less polite circles, this is known as a “circle-j**k”.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

something i recorded but forgot to upload.

oh, i also forgot about mia khalifa’s glasses. that’s also her trademark, apart from the gigantic mammaries.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_term=politics_2020-election&linkId=110711695

remarkable stuff, an anarchist manifesto of sorts?

on a different topic, who are the most embarrassing First Relatives you remember? i can think of jimmy cartuh’s brother, joe biden’s son, and now, introducing (drum roll!!!!!) meena harris, the to-be-president comma-la harris’s niece.

meena is trying to impress SOMEBODY, i am not sure if it’s the church, or the lefties. or does she just have commercial interests to push her books and fashion line?

and why her opinion matters to us is a mystery to me. who IS she, anyway? had anybody heard of her at all until recently? the words ‘astroturfed’ and ‘sock puppet’ leap to mind.

the fact that she has a hindu name is immaterial. so does rukmini callimachi, the recently disgraced NYT writer whose very interesting ‘caliphate’ series seems to be based on fantasies fed to her by some guy in canada. sigh. i did like ‘caliphate’.

rukmini is a white woman of romanian origin.

similarly meena is a random faux-black christian woman of part indian origin. that’s it. nothing more. we don’t need to pay any attention to her.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

In contrast to the outgoing Trump Administration, there are disturbing signs that the new Biden Administration in the US will revert to the unsuccessful appeasement strategy of eight years of the earlier Obama presidency.

While Barack Obama pontificated, looked professorial and twiddled his thumbs, China essentially captured the South China Sea. Given a Biden administration full of rehabilitated Obama-era relics, it is likely China will feel emboldened.

A signal indication of this likely U-turn was the fact that the very word “Indo-Pacific” was omitted by Biden in a major policy speech, reverting to the old and tired “Asia Pacific”. This was duly noted by the Chinese mouthpiece Global Times, and surely seen as a dog-whistle by Beijing’s America-watchers.

The consequences of abetting Chinese hubris are unclear at the moment, but a forced annexation of Taiwan is certainly not off the table. Nor is a physical invasion of Japan’s Senkaku islands. And a massive Himalayan attack on India in Ladakh or anywhere along the Line of Actual Control is entirely possible. It is in this context that a series of moves by incumbent Foreign Secretary Mike Pompeo needs to be evaluated. The fact is that, despite what the usual suspects say, there have been significant wins in Trump’s foreign policy. Just three: unlike his predecessors, he didn’t go to war; Israel has signed peace agreements with several neighbors; and he pushed back, hard, against China.

One could legitimately question the downsides of exiting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris accord on climate change, or the Iran nuclear treaty; but none of them is an unequivocal error. And one could suggest that by pushing back on European allies, Trump has forced them to be more responsible.

The hard line against China, however, is the most important, and it is tempting to think that there is a bipartisan consensus in the US that China has become Enemy No. 1, no ifs, thens and buts. But if you consider the Obama legacy (for example, an ex-aide at UC San Diego is practically a spokesperson for China), and how many of them are in the Biden Administration, there is reason to worry.

There is, for example, with John Kerry back in the Cabinet, the possibility that, in the zeal to get back in the good graces of the global-warming mafiosi, Biden will bend over backwards to appease China. I would be saddened, but not amazed if he even accepts the 9-dash line in the South China Sea as China’s territorial waters!

The 9-dash line, for which China makes highly dubious ‘historical’ claims using some old maps, in effect suggests that the entire South China Sea belongs to China. In reality, there has been no time in history when China dominated that sea, and it is a major economic lifeline, as a great deal of gloabal trade passes through it via the Straits of Malacca. The rest of the world cannot sit by and allow China to deny FON (freedom of navigation) in these open seas.

Thus the importance of the single-minded steps taken by Pompeo. For instance, he recently said the following regarding the Wuhan Virus (aka COVID-19):

Wuhan Virus: CCP covered it up. CCP disappeared the doctors who knew. CCP still refuses to let the world in to see what it wrought. CCP lied about where the virus came from. CCP closed travel inside China and allowed the world to suffer. America invents vaccines for the world. Every human being can see this contrast.

This was followed up by a fact sheet from the US State Department that squarely puts the blame for the virus on the Wuhan Institute of Virology, brushing aside the usual obfuscation about the “wet market” and so on:(https://www.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/). It stops just short of directly accusing the lab of having engineered the virus.

The charade continues, however. A belated WHO fact-finding team found obstacles placed in its way, according to a January 5 report by CNN.

The World Health Organization said that China has blocked the arrival of a team investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, in a rare rebuke from the UN agency.

On Taiwan, Pompeo, without necessarily violating the US’ long-standing “One China Policy”, eased restrictions on contacts between Taiwanese officials and American diplomats. That is only fair because China has a history of not abiding by the treaties or agreements it has signed, for instance the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS).

When the binding court of arbitration ruled in 2015 that China had violated the Philippines’ territorial integrity in the Scarborough Shoal, China simply ignored it. The arbitrator also found no merit to China’s ‘historical’ claim, based on some doubtful old maps, to the infamous “9-dash line” as its territorial boundary (which means almost the entire South China Sea). This too was ignored.

Unilateral adherence by other signatories to treaties China signed is pointless, because China does not live up to its obligations: another instance is India’s concession by Vajpayee on Tibet. A good case can be made for India to abandon its own “One China” policy, considering China has no obvious “One India” policy: the latter interferes in J&K, questions Sikkim, and of course squats on Aksai Chin.

There have been several other strong indications of US displeasure with China on human rights issues and trade, including over human rights violations in Chinese-occupied Tibet (CoT). Sanctions have been slapped on exports of Chinese-occupied Xinjiang (CoX) products such as cotton, based on systematic allegations of slave labor, forced sterilization, and denial of religious freedoms to Uighurs.

The latest is the strong and unusually blunt statement on January 19th — that is, the very last day of the Trump administration — from the State Department accusing China of genocide.

“I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uighurs by the Chinese party-state,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement, adding that Chinese officials were “engaged in the forced assimilation and eventual erasure of a vulnerable ethnic and religious minority group.”

The January 5 crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong against Chinese usurpation of democratic rights in that territory had also attracted Pompeo’s wrath.

But the strategic South China Sea probably remains the most contentious issue, as Beijing builds up its military muscle and treats the sea as its inland lake, threatening freedom of navigation. It has long been obvious that China will attempt serious mischief. I said the following as far back as 1998 in “The Danger from China” https://www.rediff.com/news/1998/jun/15rajeev.htm:

China is attempting to establish the South China Sea (the name has 'China' in it and so it must be China's private lake, you see) and its potential mineral (natural gas and oil deposits) as its own private property. The activities around the Spratly Islands, Mischief Reef, the Paracel Islands etc are well-known -- China simply walked in and grabbed these, paying no attention to prior Vietnamese, Malaysian, Taiwanese and Filipino claims, for instance.

Thus the welcome decision by Pompeo on January 15th to impose travel bans and trade sanctions on violators. Says the report from the AP, reprinted in The Hindu:

In its waning days, the Trump administration put in place travel bans on an unspecified number of Chinese officials and their families for what it said were violations of international standards regarding the freedom of navigation in those waters.

The administration also said it was adding China’s state oil company, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, to a list of companies with which U.S. citizens are banned from doing business…

“The United States stands with Southeast Asian claimant states seeking to defend their sovereign rights and interests, consistent with international law,” Mr. Pompeo said.

“We will continue to act until we see Beijing cease its coercive behaviour in the South China Sea.”

This is as much a warning to China to behave as it is to the Biden administration to not attempt grandstanding and appeasement. After all, we are still experiencing massive human suffering and economic loss wrought by the Chinese-origin virus. There is a limit to how much forbearance the rest of the world can muster.

I did go further in my 1998 predictions about Chinese misbehavior. Obviously I got the dates wrong, but my concerns may not be that far off the mark.

My forecast is that, if unchecked, there will be continued Chinese military adventurism in Asia. I predict that by 2003, the Chinese will cross the Ussuri River and attack Russian Siberia, citing flimsy historical claims; impoverished Russians will have no way of defending themselves.

Further, I suspect China will either threaten to, or actually conduct, an atmospheric nuclear blast over Japan by 2005, with the clear threat of frying all their transistors -- and thus infrastructure -- with an electromagnetic pulse. America will stand by, powerless, and its nuclear umbrella for Japan will turn out to be a fiction.

China will almost definitely attack Taiwan by 2002; I wonder if it makes sense for India to befriend Taiwan, and perhaps even offer it certain nuclear components, including blueprints and enriched uranium, returning China's favour vis a vis Pakistan. The chances of China attacking India over Arunachal Pradesh have perhaps receded a little after India's clear indication that it will deploy nuclear missiles. The Chinese understand belligerence -- they practice it and respect it.

I am no expert at global strategy, so I am quoting people who are: Caspar Weinberger, formerly US secretary of state, projected the Taiwan scenario to happen in 1998; the Economist suggests the Japan scenario. Well, okay, I made up the Siberia scenario myself: it stands to reason.

As a confirmed China-hawk, I predicted doom:

A couple of years ago, I read a review of a hugely successful Taiwanese book called Yellow Peril, in which a series of altercations between Taiwan and China end up in a few nuclear bombs being exchanged. I think the PRC attacks Taiwan, which retaliates with an atom bomb; Russian and American nukes enter the picture somehow. The final scene is yet another sorry exodus of Chinese -- by boat towards Australia, and by land over the Silk Road towards Central Asia. In the end, that is the issue, isn't it -- lebensraum?

I really hope that Chinese belligerence does not lead to such a scenario. Even though China has come a long way economically and militarily, it shouldn’t overplay its hand.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

My guest is Dr. V Raman Kutty, an expert in public health, who was a practising physician before getting his advanced degree in public health from harvard and then spending many years as a professor at the Sri Chitra Institute of Medical Sciences and Technology, and as the director of the Achutha Menon Center for Health Sciences Studies, focusing on policy issues. He is an epidemiologist and data science consultant.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

disclaimer: i’m not antivaxx, but just want proper scientific validation of the effectiveness and lack of bad side-effects

india approved the oxford astra zeneca vaccine, covishield, today 3 jan on an emergency basis. cold chain friendly and non-mRNA, adenovirus. the actual vaccine used in their trials was not produced by serum institute, but from some european labs. said India’s comptroller general of drugs, according to the ToI https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-approves-oxfords-bharat-biotechs-covid-19-vaccines-for-restricted-emergency-use/articleshow/80081573.cms:

bharat biotech covaxin may be better: traditional dead-virus vaccine. it has also been approved on an emergency basis. it is undergoing phase 3 trials right now.

some concerns about issues between oxford university and astra zeneca, according to WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/astrazeneca-and-oxfords-bumpy-partnership-hangs-over-covid-vaccines-future-11609336498 (alas, firewalled)

lancet paper at https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32661-1/fulltext has the data on astra zeneca’s vaccine

several questions come up. first on the trials themselves

four trials in the UK, Brazil, South Africa are described here. kenya trial mentioned in passing. what about the india trials done by serum institute of india, in which there were accusations and counter-accusations of side-effects? why isn’t this mentioned at all?

they talk about pooled data of 20,000 patients, but in the data appendices, the total number of patients in the trials is only 11,636. does it mean that only 11,636 got the vaccine? or is it that placebo+vaccine = 11,636?

if these trials are not complete, why is their interim data being put out?

efficacy. not well defined. all the trial is testing for is if the person is seriously ill and has to be hospitalized, but it’s not really testing for:

whether the person is NOT infected with the virus at all

whether the person is an asymptomatic carrier

whether the person is infected and is exhibiting mild symptoms

the serious confusion about 1/2 dose + full dose vs full dose + full dose. was this an accidental experimental error? the former got 90% efficacy, the latter 62% efficacy, and how can you lump the two and get a result of 70%? also, WSJ says:

the trial RCT design

two of the trials are single blind

one of the trials is double blind. why this discrepancy?

can you extrapolate from one to the other?

trial participants, total 11,636, of which

9625, ie 83% are white

517, ie 4.4% are Asian (and what is the definition of ‘Asian’?)

479, ie 4.1% are black

is that diverse enough?

7045, ie 61% are female

77.8% are healthcare and social services workers (not very diverse!)

974, ie 8.4% are 56-69 years in age

444, ie 3.8% are over 70 years in age

is that diverse enough? here are the co-morbidities:

1241, ie 10.7% had cardio co-morbidity

1360, ie. 11.7% had respiratory problems

270, ie 3.9% were diabetic

side-effects: there were 175 adverse effects, with at least three as possibly related to the vaccine. there were as many adverse effects (91) among the control group as there with the vaccinated group (84), so that suggests vaccine isn’t doing visible harm

summary findings: what about the p-values: one missing, the other is 0.01, ie 1% probability there is no correlation

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Welcome to the Shadow Warrior podcast. This is Episode 10, on the Glitter Belt, an exciting new technology to fend off global warming.

Today, I have with me Dr.  Narayanan Menon Komerath, retired professor of aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech, and he’s in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s great to have him here today, and we will talk about a remarkable idea for which he’s been granted a US patent recently. It is an extraordinary invention that could reverse global warming if there is sufficient investment, because it involves the stationing of thousands, if not millions, of reflective mylar sheets in the atmosphere that can send excess solar radiation back to space. 

Listen on, and let me know your feedback.

For more information, please visit www.komerath.space or search for ‘Glitter Belt’.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

what is the proximate issue? the repeated suspension by twitter of user @Trueindology for no good or apparent reason

what is the preponderant issue? systematic silencing of a non-left perspective in twitter india in particular, but also in the rest of the world, eg. the US

what is the root cause? the ability of the military-industrial complex in the US, ie the Deep State, to set a narrative that is deeply damaging to india’s national interests; and india’s inexplicable hesitation in pushing back on it.

the narrative is not neutral, nor is it without consequence in the real world. in the US, we have seen how the story of hunter biden’s laptop was sunk without a trace; earlier in how tulsi gabbard, candidate for POTUS, was turned into an unperson; in india similarly the story of explicitly treasonous and seditious behavior by certain individuals, including rioters and mediapersons, is swept under the rug, and there are no consequences to them. and framing, for instance: the farmer agitation is being turned into a Sikhs being oppressed narrative right in front of our eyes

there is a certain effort in the US to protect freedom of expression, and whistleblowing: there is a move to pardon both julian assange and edward snowden, both of whom may have exposed classified information, military and diplomatic

what TrueIndology did is far more benign: nothing treasonous. his only crime is that he quotes primary historical sources to support his assertions, and very often he shows the claims esp of the ‘eminent historian’ type to be totally bogus.

so TrueIndology has acquired a huge and loyal following on twitter, which irritates the votaries of the “trust us” school of history, committed leftists who have played havoc with the narrative and who made the Ram Janmabhumi issue such a problem, when it could easily have been settled amicably

this doesn’t sit well with the leftist ecosystem because he makes them look like complete amateurs, so his reward is that he is frequently suspended and bullied

the latest episode, the preponderant cause, is a little sad, an IPS officer named D Roopa in Karnataka, who’s actually a pretty decent sort, got into a twitter argument with TrueIndology, and lo! and behold, he got not just suspended but deplatformed with no explanation whatsoever!

so this goes back to the root cause. there is a narrative that is put forth most eagerly by the Economist, FT, NYT etc which seeks to firmly entrench in Indians the idea that they are second-class people, and that India will never catch up

there is a corollary narrative, which is to pave the way for the genocide of Hindus, after demonizing us as monsters. that facile narrative is being challenged and largely defeated by some people and that is the real reason they don’t like True Indology

in 2011 i had written an article “India is finally seeing the birth of alternative journalism” which was liked by amitabh bachchan. unfortunately, SM has now become compromised. i like the next phase: citizen journalism, as exemplified by substack or ghost, (balaji srinivasan talks about it) but the power of distribution is still with the big guys and the GoI has to do something about them

and what can the GoI do? what should the GoI do? TrueIndology suspension is a symptom that like the narrative is getting away. there is the chinese idea of “killing the chicken to scare the monkey”. the chicken is twitter, which really doesn’t matter that much in the scheme of things. but the indian market matters, and will matter a lot, to facebook, google, amazon, apple, NYT, FT, theeconomist, WaPo, etc.

therefore, use “buyer power”. impose conditions on them. which includes the use of indian laws. eg. there are powerful laws against the inaccurate portrayal of the borders of the country: these include non bailable warrants. suspend their licenses. freeze their accounts. block their IP addresses.

you think the monkeys will notice? you bet they’ll notice. this is also the old panchatantra story of the serpent which became pacifist; it only had to hiss and lunge to deter, it didn’t have to bite. deterrence is worth a lot, and the TrueIndology episode is the moment to use that so that these people don’t run roughshod over us.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Text is at https://www.pgurus.com/animal-rights-violations-everywhere-but-only-india-is-targeted-by-peta-busybodies/

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

This is the podcast version, in 12 mins, of the message I sent out by mail yesterday, assuming some readers would prefer audio over text.

There’s also new, and even more alarming, information about mRNA vaccines. A group at Imperial College, London, is working on a ‘self-replicating’ mRNA, so that once it gets inside a cell, it creates copies of itself that will then create the Wuhanvirus spike protein that it has been programmed to make. You can see where there is going, right?

Guided missiles that can self-reproduce? Why does that make me feel warm inside?

Besides Astra Zeneca/Serum Institute of India has given more clarity about its pricing: it will be “upto 1000 rupees” for the two-shot course of treatment. Which means, if you add in the cost of distribution, you’re not talking 80,000 crores anymore, but way north of 150,000 crores. That’s $24 billion. A billion here and a billion there, and soon you are talking some real money!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Am I right to be sceptical about the extravagant claims for this new vaccine?

An earlier version of this article (that became the podcast) was published at https://chintan.indiafoundation.in/articles/the-god-vaccine-is-it-the-second-coming/

Excerpts:

The God Vaccine? Is it the second coming?

Let us temper expectations about the immediate end of Covid.

The announcement by US giant Pfizer and startup BioNTech about their candidate vaccine for Covid-19 has been greeted with understandable euphoria, as people are chafing under the ‘new normal’ of lockdowns and restrictions. Indeed, markets cheered: stock market indices hit new highs; airline stocks soared; Zoom’s (an online video conferencing system) took a hit.

This reminds me of the fuss in certain circles about the Higgs Boson, the so-called ‘God Particle’, which, when found, confirmed certain theories about fundamental particles. Now people are acting as though we have found the ‘God Vaccine’.

But it is too soon to celebrate, as there are many concerns and considerations.

Most intriguingly, there is no clarity about efficacy, though the phrase “90% effective” has been bandied about. Exactly what does this mean? 90% of those who were vaccinated remained immune when exposed to the virus? What about the ethics of the trial? How can you deliberately expose people to possible harm: what about the other 10% of the test subjects who actually caught the disease when exposed? Did they die? What if it had been 50%?

What was the composition of the alleged 43,000 test subjects in the, let us emphasize, incomplete and ongoing Phase 3 trial? How many were aged, how many had co-morbidities? What was the breakdown by gender, race, age, body mass index, blood sugar level, cholesterol, cardiac calcium score, blood pressure, etc, etc? In other words, how random a sample was it?

… end of Excerpt

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

Sorry guys, this ended rather abruptly because I got a phone call which I had to take. I thought it wasn’t worth re-editing and re-recording. I did cover the US SC stuff briefly.

The US SC has accepted one case: that of Pennsylvania, which had extended its deadline by three days to Friday. This could be heard by the full SC bench shortly, and that may lead to the tossing out of the votes that arrived after Nov 3.

The SC is generally kind of status-quoist, and in particular Chief Justice Roberts is rather said. But with the new Conservative majority — and this is why such a big fuss was made about the nomination of Amy Barrett — it is a fair bet (though not a given) that any ruling by them could help the Trump camp.

There is a

“After the hanging and other stories” by O V Vijayan: that’s the nod.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com

View Details

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com