Documenting 21st Century - India and the World

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has created a climate of geopolitical instability and uncertainty not just in Europe but globally.  The motives of Russia are not clear. Surely, Russia has given a long list of grievances about west's hypocrisy and not keeping up with past promises. Russia says NATO has expanded beyond its promises, the color revolution in Ukraine, Americans have been imperialists and provocateurs, and Russia has a right to self defense. Surely, there are valid grievances but they do not amount to any immediate threat to Russia. What motivates Russian aggression? I don't know. There are several theories on it but that's another discussion. Some experts say that Putin's external aggression is motivated by his regime's domestic failures. My focus is on specific point. Russia claims that Ukraine is not a real country . This is dangerous doctrine. I know there's a past history of Ukraine, its special place in old Soviet Union, the history of Crimea,...

There is debate among economists, politicians, commentators and various experts about rising inflation in America and other countries of the world (we in India also have inflation problem). In America, there are various theories out there on inflation among various groups. A group, lets call them inflationists, says US spent too much in too little time which caused inflation (read 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ). This group says that to stop wage-spiral crisis (coming in near future), we have to use blunt tools like Fed rate hikes, sucking liquidity out of economy. The inflationists also want scaling down fiscal spending as they think that economy is overheating due to expansionary policies which they say spell a disaster down the road - wage price spiral and period of stagflation. The idea of inflationists is to bring down demand in economy (at cost of jobs, economic recovery & growth) to prevent bad future. The inflationists have been somewhat successful in stalling govt spending plans and conv...

Two flowcharts on some concepts i haven't fully articulated yet.

There needs to be a reconsideration of Delhi's GRAP system. Covid-19 GRAP was a system formulated in response to public health crisis (humanitarian carnage) unleashed by Delta wave last year. The GRAP system has formulated a mechanism for phase-wise economic shutdown and lockdown of Delhi in response to rising Covid-19 cases.   Photo - HT This system factors in positivity rate (percentage of detected infections to total number of daily tests) as a guidance to establish how serious pandemic emergency is at any point of time. However, situation with Omicron wave is different than Delta wave - considering mortality and severity of disease. This is due to various reasons - the nature of new virus variant itself, our present vaccination rates & immunity in population, natural immunity from past waves etc. On question of immunity, i am not implying that we have "so much or so high" immunity due to vaccinations and natural infections. That question is for the experts to de...

Since last few weeks Govt has been saying that their first priority is to fully vaccinate adult population before starting new booster program as Omicron wave has arrived. I misunderstood this as a constraint due to shortage of vaccines (i was wrong), but its something else.  India now has vaccine manufacturing capacity of 300-335 Million vaccine doses per month. That is 250-275 Million doses of Covishield/Astrazeneca and 50-60 Million of Covaxin. The reports say that capacity is 90% utilizable (on SII). Roughly speaking, it means that India has manufacturing capacity of 10-11 Million production per day (read 1 & 2 ). India is also importing some Sputnik V but this is a very small number in overall equation.     Overall Vaccination chart - Doses per day administered (7 day average). Source   Vaccine doses per day administered in December. Source     But the vaccine administration is lagging to vaccine production (or vaccine manufacturing capacity). I...

Apparently, there's a terrible policy paralysis in the Govt about vaccine booster shot policy. Reasons unknown. Its understandable that there is scarcity of vaccines and we haven't fully vaccinated adult population. But this is no reason to delay booster shots policy to healthcare workers, employed in high risk working environment in Hospitals, health centers, clinics, labs etc. India's vaccination program started in January and many of the healthcare workers are past 6 months of their second vaccine shot. Central Govt should immediately issue notification (do it tonight like Demonetization) that healthcare workers, Doctors, Nurses etc and other hospital staff (ward persons, guards etc) employed in high risk healthcare environment will get booster shots starting from tomorrow. Time period of booster shot gap can be consulted with experts (6 months ok?). If central Govt is sleeping, then state Govt should issue their own notification and start booster shots program in their...

Recently, i have been busy on other projects. But i felt going back to writing a little more on Pandemic. Yes, the bad news is that Pandemic is not over and there may be (will be) a new wave of Omicron variant of Covid-19 in India. The figures of detected Omicron cases (few dozen) are meaningless numbers and real numbers are much higher and we already have community transmission of Omicron.  I will get right to some core points. Certain positives Much better vaccination rate compared to the time of Delta wave   The vaccination rates and vaccine production in India in last several months has been good. I know, its not up to the mark in many ways - vaccinations per million, vaccination for children, diverse pool of vaccines still not available (mRNA) etc etc. But we now have fully vaccinated nearly 55% of adult population (would be over 60% by end of December), which frankly i didn't expect us to achieve back in May. Covidshield/Astrazeneca production capacity is around 250-27...

  Modi announced his decision to repeal regressive farm laws that have been causing social and political instability in country since last one year. A summary of controversies about these farm laws is in first part of this long article. To be very brief, the farm laws were seen as Neoliberal regulations that will dilute govt accountability & participation in Agriculture sector and empower private corporations to participate (or exploit) in the sector more freely. The laws were also seen dictatorial as they were passed without consultations with ruling opposition parties in several states, and passed without proper parliamentary procedures and careful scrutiny.  The farm laws have been causing mass protests in India, specially North India which is the bastion of much of the Agriculture production. Many farmers have died in brutal crackdown by Police in several states and it created a lot of negative sentiment against the regime among farming community of North Indian stat...

  Old Demonetized currency   With 5 years anniversary of Demonetization, i don't think i have anything more to add to my longstanding criticism of this foolhardy, extremely reckless and destructive economic decision. Demonetization was a self imposed bankruptcy of country by extinguishing 86% of its currency overnight in a national economy where more than 90% of financial transactions are in hard cash currency. Book by Yashwant Sinha has documented the collapse of the economy by severe shock therapy of Demonetization. You can read in it how Demonetization destroyed the economy, its various sectors, destroyed the livelihood of people, the businesses, the industry, damaged the organized sector and well as unorganized sector of economy.    The damage to the economy started from the bottom at small scale enterprises, agriculture sector, MSMEs, self employed daily wage workers and within a year, the damage reached to the organized core sector of economy like Corporate, B...