Documenting 21st Century - India and the World

Left - Kaaba in Saudi Arabia. Right - Idol of Lord Ram in India Modern world looks upon Islam, the Kaaba shrine as intellectual backwardness of middle east states. Primitive people worshiping a rock and subscribing to obsolete religious dogmas is seen as sign of intellectual shallowness of these states. Now, India is also joining the list with their own version of intellectual and cultural decadence. Ram Temple is India's version of Kaaba. Built on foundation of pogroms, mass violence, social backwardness and political Fascism, it's a project of India's vanity of all vanities. A false prestige and a kind of opium given to reactionary society to satiate their psychological needs. The current political class cannot solve the challenges of poverty, unemployment, standards of living, healthcare & education system, economic and social backwardness. The political class cannot solve the real challenges like Air pollution that's eating away 11.9 years of every citizen'...

In Indian PM's recent visit to US, India signed a MoU (memorandum of understanding) with Micron for building a chip assembly factory in Indian state of Gujarat. The factory will create 5,000 direct and 15,000 indirect jobs in the state. The cost of factory is pegged at $2.75 Billion out of which Indian Govt will bear 70% of the net cost. This is due to India's subsidy program to nurture semiconductor industry in India as India has lagged far behind the global competitors like US, China, Taiwan, South Korea & Japan. In fact India is not even in the race as of now & previous efforts to nurture semiconductor industry have failed. The project is promoted as the first of its kind to develop first "make in India chips". The factory however, will not really manufacture the chips but only assemble & test the chips as the key part of chip manufacturing process (front end) will not be happening in India.  One of the criticism of the project is that Indian Govt is...

India's PM Modi was given a red carpet by US Govt. He was paraded in Capital Hill, given WH dinner and singing opera tour - a grotesque promotion of Trumpian dictator. Irony is that US Capital Hill just recently desecrated by Trump's MAGA riots gave its floor to another Trumpian dictator who is possibly as worse as Trump in his own country. But that's all part of US Realpolitik in multipolar world to counter China & Russia (BTW, Putin is hanging by a thread in Moscow). US fully knows Modi's background but choose to use India against another malignant dictator Xi that is immediate neighbor to India. I won't go into discussion of US foreign policy right now. But I find that some of the western intellectuals, observers and analysts uninformed about Indian politics so i am summarizing some of my articles on India & Modi to try to make western observers more informed about Modi & India. Read them to know what Modi did to India. I wrote the book (it's free...

It's been a year since central banks around the world started their rate hikes cycles. Some are still continuing with hikes (ECB, BoE etc), some have now hit pause like US Fed & some paused sooner like India RBI, and continue to hold the rates. Building on last year's article , let's look at how things position today after rate hikes, changes in global economic & geopolitical factors and policies adopted for managing inflation. I also give a perspective on India's inflation problem and insight on why rate hikes are inappropriate tools for managing inflation. India has been reeling under elevated inflation in post pandemic times just like most other parts of world. India's policy response by government and central bank has dissimilarities with policies of 2010-2011 when it faced inflation problem under the previous government.  What caused inflation?  What caused inflation? - This is a complex topic with variety of opinions by various experts. Some attribute ...

Trump indictment, this time on more substantive and serious charges has finally come. The timing of indictment is impeccable in big picture of things - that is shaping of 2024 Presidential race and GOP primaries. This presents opportunities to finally wrap up MAGA movement and alter the course of American sociopolitical drift. Timing of indictment Ideally Trump should've been arrested and indicted a lot sooner. The brazen crimes of Trump demanded immediate detention, indictment and swift trial after Jan 6 insurrection but it was difficult for certain political reasons among which was fear of wider civil unrest and riots. Trump left White House with American institutions compromised, social order highly polarized and Republican party highly radicalized - Trump left WH with a whole lot of mess (and stealing secret documents). The Biden administration and various State DAs started their work systematically while carefully navigating the risks of handling Nuclear football of Trump. Inv...

New Indian Parliament house was inaugurated by Prime minister Narendra Modi in bizarre ceremonial ritual. Built with a budget of $110 million is a vanity project of Indian authoritarian Prime Minister who has worked hard to destroy India's secularism and its Democracy, Economy, sociopolitical tradition and social fabric. The new Parliament House is part of $2.8 Billion 'Central Vista' project of redesigning national capital. The new project is being built by demolishing several existing cultural & historical buildings like National museum and National center of Arts. Built during the Cataclysm of public health emergency The project was built during the cataclysmic period of Covid-19 pandemic in India which overran its weak & almost non existent healthcare system. Official Covid-19 deaths are gross underestimate & deliberately undercounted by Indian Government ( 1 , 2 ). Uncountable number of Indians died at the peak of Delta wave when Hospitals ran out of medica...