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Showing posts with label right. Show all posts
Showing posts with label right. Show all posts

Friday 4 August 2023

Are Universal Human Rights a form of Imperialism? Is the Chinese Communist Party right?

From The Economist

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 held out the promise that the world was about to enter a virtuous circle. Growing prosperity would foster freedom and tolerance, which in turn would create more prosperity. Unfortunately, that hope disappointed. Our analysis this week, based on the definitive global survey of social attitudes, shows just how naive it turned out to be.

Prosperity certainly rose. In the three decades to 2019, global output increased more than four-fold. Roughly 70% of the 2bn people living in extreme poverty escaped it.

Alas, individual freedom and tolerance evolved quite differently. Large numbers of people around the world continue to swear fealty to traditional beliefs, sometimes intolerant ones. And although they are much wealthier these days, they often have an us-and-them contempt for others. The idea that despots and dictators shun the universal values enshrined in the UN Charter should come as no surprise. The shock is that so many of their people seem to think their leaders are right.

The World Values Survey takes place every five years. The latest results, which go up to 2022, include interviews with almost 130,000 people in 90 countries. One sign that universal values are lagging behind is that countries that were once secular and ethno-nationalist, such as Russia and Georgia, are not becoming more tolerant as they grow, but more tightly bound to traditional religious values instead. They are increasingly joining an illiberal grouping that contains places like Egypt and Morocco. Another sign is that young people in Islamic and Orthodox countries are not much more individualistic or secular than their elders. By contrast, the young in northern Europe and America are racing ahead. The world is not becoming more similar as it gets richer. Instead, countries where burning the Koran is tolerated and those where it is an outrage look on each other with growing incomprehension.

On the face of it, all this seems to support the argument made by China’s Communist Party that universal values are bunkum. Under Xi Jinping, it has mounted a campaign to dismiss them as a racist form of neo-imperialism, in which white Western elites impose their own version of freedom and democracy on people who want security and stability instead.

In fact, the survey suggests something more subtle. And this leads to the conclusion that, contrary to the Chinese argument, universal values are more valuable than ever. Start with the subtlety.

The man behind the survey, Ron Inglehart, a professor at the University of Michigan who died in 2021, would have agreed with the Chinese observation that people want security. He thought the key to his work was to understand that a sense of threat drives people to seek refuge in family, racial or national groups, while at the same time tradition and organised religion offer them solace.

This is one way to see America’s doomed attempts to establish democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the failure of the Arab spring. Whereas the emancipation of central and eastern Europe brought security, thanks partly to membership of the European Union and NATO, the overthrow of dictatorships in the Middle East and Afghanistan brought lawlessness and upheaval. As a result, people sought safety in their tribe or their sect; hoping that order would be restored, some welcomed the return of dictators. Because the Arab world’s fledgling democracies could not provide stability, they never took wing.

The subtlety the Chinese argument misses is the fact that cynical politicians sometimes set out to engineer insecurity because they know that frightened people yearn for strongman rule. That is what Bashar al-Assad did in Syria when he released murderous jihadists from his country’s jails at the start of the Arab spring. He bet that the threat of Sunni violence would cause Syrians from other sects to rally round him.

Something similar has happened in Russia. Having lived through a devastating economic collapse and jarring reforms in the 1990s, Russians thrived in the 2000s. Between 1999 and 2013, GDP per head increased 12-fold in dollar terms. Yet, that was not enough to dispel their accumulated sense of dread. As growth has slowed, President Vladimir Putin has played on ethno-nationalist insecurities, culminating in his disastrous invasion of Ukraine. Economically weakened and insecure, Russia will struggle to escape the trap.

Even in Western countries, some leaders seek to gain by inciting fear. In the past the World Values Survey recorded that the United States and much of Latin America combined individualism with strong religious conviction. Recently, however, they have become more secular–a change driven by the young. That has created a reaction among older, more conservative voters who reflect the values of decades past and feel bewildered and left behind.

Polarising politicians like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, the former presidents of America and Brazil, saw that they could exploit people’s anxieties to mobilise support. Accordingly, they set about warning that their political opponents wanted to destroy their supporters’ way of life and threatened the very survival of their countries. That has, in turn, spread alarm and hostility on the other side. Republicans’ sweeping dismissal of this week’s indictment of Mr Trump contains the threat that countries can slip back into intolerance and tribalism.

Even allowing for that, the Chinese claim that universal values are an imposition is upside down. From Chile to Japan, the World Values Survey provides examples showing that, when people feel secure, they really do become more tolerant and more eager to express their own individuality. Nothing suggests that Western countries are unique in that. The question is how to help people feel more secure.

China’s answer is based on creating order for a loyal, deferential majority that stays out of politics and avoids defying their rulers, at the expense of individual and minority rights. However, within that model lurks deep insecurity. It is a majoritarian system in which lines move, sometimes arbitrarily or without warning–especially when power passes unpredictably from one party chief to another. Anybody once deemed safe can suddenly end up in a precarious minority. Only inalienable rights and accountable government guarantee true security.

A better answer comes from sustained prosperity built on the rule of law. Wealthy countries have more to spend on dealing with disasters, such as pandemic disease. Likewise, confident in their savings and the social safety-net, the citizens of rich countries know that they are less vulnerable to the chance events that wreck lives elsewhere.

However, the deepest solution to insecurity lies in how countries cope with change. The years to come will bring a lot of upheaval, generated by long-term phenomena such as global warming, the spread of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and the growing tensions between China and America. The countries that manage change well will be better at making society feel confident in the future. Those that manage it poorly will find that their people seek refuge in tradition and us-and-them hostility.

And that is where universal values come into their own. Classical liberalism—not the “ultraliberal” sort condemned by French commentators, or the progressive liberalism of the left—draws on tolerance, free expression and individual inquiry to tease out the costs and benefits of change. Conservatives resist change, revolutionaries impose it by force and dictatorships become trapped in one party’s–or, in China’s case, one man’s–vision of what it must be. By contrast, liberals seek to harness change through consensus forged by reasoned debate and constant reform. There is no better way to bring about progress.

Universal values are much more than a Western piety. They are a mechanism that fortifies societies against insecurity. What the World Values Survey shows is that they are also hard-won.

Tuesday 18 July 2023

A Level Economics 25: Resource Allocation in Free Markets

The main assumptions of a free market are as follows:

  1. Perfect Competition: The assumption of perfect competition implies that there are a large number of buyers and sellers in the market, with no single entity having control over prices or market conditions. All market participants are price takers, meaning they have no influence on the market price and must accept it as given.


  2. Rational Behavior: The assumption of rational behavior suggests that consumers and producers act in their self-interest and make rational decisions based on maximizing their utility or profits. They have access to complete and accurate information and aim to optimize their outcomes given the available choices.


  3. Absence of Market Imperfections: Free markets assume the absence of external factors that may distort market outcomes. There are no barriers to entry or exit, no transaction costs, and no market failures such as externalities or public goods.


  4. Property Rights and Rule of Law: The assumption of well-defined and enforceable property rights ensures that individuals have the right to own, use, and transfer property and assets. The rule of law ensures that contracts are enforced, fraud is punished, and disputes are resolved impartially.

In a free market, the allocation of resources is determined through the interaction of supply and demand. The price mechanism plays a central role in coordinating the decisions of buyers and sellers. Here's how the market allocates resources:

  1. Price Signals: Prices act as signals that reflect the relative scarcity or abundance of goods and services. When demand for a particular good or service increases, its price rises, signaling that resources should be reallocated towards its production. Conversely, when demand decreases, prices fall, signaling a reduction in resources allocated to that product.


  2. Profit and Loss: In a free market, producers are motivated by profit. If a good or service is in high demand and prices are high, producers have an incentive to allocate more resources towards its production to earn higher profits. Conversely, if a good or service is in low demand and prices are low, producers may reallocate resources to more profitable areas or exit the market, leading to a reduction in supply.


  3. Consumer Preferences: Consumer demand and willingness to pay for goods and services influence resource allocation. As consumers express their preferences through purchasing decisions, producers respond by producing the goods and services that are in demand, adjusting production levels, and innovating to meet consumer needs.


  4. Efficient Allocation: The free market is assumed to allocate resources efficiently by directing them to the most valued uses. Through the price mechanism and competition, resources are allocated based on consumer preferences and production costs, maximizing societal welfare and economic efficiency.

It's important to note that while free markets can be effective in allocating resources and promoting efficiency, they may also have limitations and require appropriate regulations and interventions to address market failures, promote fairness, and protect public interest. The assumptions of a free market provide a theoretical framework, and in reality, markets may deviate from these assumptions due to various factors and imperfections.

Thursday 12 May 2022

Bagga or Mevani, an unlawful arrest is just that. But tell that to Indians picking sides

Yogendra Yadav in The Print


Principles be damned, whose side are you on? This seems to be the ruling philosophy of our public life. We all talk about principles, we invoke norms, we cite rules — but only after choosing whom to support. Rarely do we allow our judgement about who is right or wrong to be touched by the principles, norms or rules we extoll. No wonder, no one takes any proclamation of principles seriously.

As someone who is a stickler for procedures, I have often been at the receiving end of this sorry side of our public life. No one is willing to entertain a suspicion that I might have said something because it is right, correct or fair. It is not just our political life, which is especially charged at this moment. I have faced the same reaction in academia, government institutions as well as social movements. If you object to a proposal by a “friend” just because it is a poor proposal, you are sure to risk your friendship. If you support something right done or said by someone from the other camp, tongues start wagging — zaroor kuchh setting hai! That is what happened when I spoke up against hoisting of religious flag inside the Red Fort on 26 January, or against lynching of a Dalit Sikh man at Singhu border by some Nihangs. My visit to the family of a BJP worker who died at Lakhimpur Kheri is still held up as a proof of lack of loyalty to the cause.

So I was prepared for the usual reactions when I tweeted welcoming the Punjab and Haryana High Court order staying the arrest of BJP member Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga until 6 July. My tweet simply said: “The order should be welcomed, no matter what our opinion about the person. Sending police to arrest someone on a tweet is not done. Be it Jignesh Mevani or Rana couple, Alka Lamba or Disha Ravi, it is unethical and illegal to use police to torment political opponents.” You can check my timeline for the replies I received. The usual trolling was joined by AAP supporters, no less vicious than BJP ones — who assumed that I was taking out khundak (grudge) against Arvind Kejriwal. (As and when I support something the AAP does, it is read as a sign of a wish to come back.)

Looking beyond the personal antics

Many critics made valid points: that what happened to Bagga was nothing compared to what BJP governments have done to their critics, that the courts were far from consistent in protecting other victims in his position. Some of them assumed that I had forgotten Bagga’s past, especially his leading a physical assault on my friend Prashant Bhushan. Some of them insisted that given his low-grade trolling, the Punjab police had good reasons to give him its famous dose.

Without doubt, Tajinder Singh Bagga is what in polite English you’d call a ‘disagreeable’ character. The thesaurus offers you less polite options to choose from: rude, nasty, obnoxious, repugnant, disgusting. Worse, we don’t even know if this public persona is his real self. All we know is his reel self on social media. All we know is that he has made a political career and business out of attacking — physically and verbally — those targeted by the BJP. We just know him as yet another cardboard character — straight from a cartoon strip — that has arrived in our public life to meet the ever-rising demand for hatred, contrived and real.

How do you deal with someone like him? Ideally, he should be ignored. Stop feeding people like him with negative attention and they perish. Or, you could turn him into a meme, as satirist @roflGandhi has done, much to my delight. Or you could refute him — an ineffective and unwise option, to my mind — through fact-checking or counter-trolling. But can you set the police after him? That is the operational question in this instance.

Just consider the facts of the case. In March this year, Bagga wrote a nasty tweet, since deleted, in response to Arvind Kejriwal’s speech in Delhi assembly questioning the BJP’s promotion of the movie The Kashmir Files: “When 10 lakh ***** are born, one Kejriwal takes birth”. Disgustingly provocative the post certainly was. But would you say it is “criminal intimidation” or “promoting enmity between communities”? These are the charges under which the Punjab police, following a complaint from a local AAP functionary, booked Bagga. He dodged police summons to come to Punjab for “questioning”, a euphemism for mental and physical torture. The Punjab police, ever so focused on this one FIR, landed in Delhi to arrest him.

The drama that followed, involving Punjab, Delhi, and Haryana police, can only be called a farce worse than Bagga’s antics. The National Commission on Minorities, conspicuously silent on bulldozing of Muslim-owned houses and shops, was peeved at Bagga not being allowed to tie his turban. When the court opened at midnight for him, India’s criminal justice system looked like a joke. The Punjab and Haryana High Court order was a welcome end to this prolonged and pathetic public spectacle.

Noticing a nation-wide trend

This drama is being played all over the country, in what Shekhar Gupta calls Mutually Assured Detention. While the BJP leads in targeting its critics with the help of agencies, mainstream media and social media, the opposition-led governments have also taken a leaf out of the BJP’s book. They, too, use the standard recipe: file a frivolous complaint, slap draconian charges in the FIR, use the police to go after the target and teach them a lesson. The job is done before the case ever comes up for trial in a court of law.

That is why I cite the case of Jignesh Mevani. Now, it seems ridiculous to compare Mevani’s fight for justice and his courage of conviction with Baggas of the world. My point here is to remind us that the insidious trick used by the BJP in Mevani’s case is not different from that used by the AAP in the case of Bagga. Now that the AAP controls a police force for the first time (Punjab’s), it is happy to misuse it exactly as other governments. They have also targeted Kumar Vishwas and Alka Lamba on similar trumped up charges.

The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra is no different, as the recent case of MP Navneet Rana and her MLA-husband Ravi Rana demonstrates. Their proposed gimmick of reading Hanuman Chalisa outside the private residence of the Chief Minister could at the most call for preventive detention. But arrest under charges of sedition and spreading hatred between communities is plainly ridiculous. Such vindictive actions cast a shadow on other cases — the one against TV anchor Aman Chopra, for example — where the charge of spreading enmity between communities appear to be serious and worthy of a criminal trial.

Hence my plea to all those who are concerned about the endangered constitutional fiction called the Rule of Law: can we stick to principles, irrespective of the persons involved? Or am I whistling in the dark?

Sunday 30 January 2022

The failure of liberal democracy and the rise of China’s way

Eric Li in The Economist

ALARM BELLS are ringing about the state of democracy. Freedom House proclaims the “global decline in democracy has accelerated” and that even in America it has “declined significantly”. Much of the weakening is happening in countries that are aligned with America, according to research by the V-Dem Institute in Sweden. Larry Diamond, a political sociologist, argues that the “democratic recession” has reached a “crisis”, intensified by the pandemic. There are many diagnoses. Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist, believes the American government is captured by elites and the public is divided by cultural identities. And then there are those who always reach for the easy answer, blaming China and Russia.

On the other side of the spectrum, democracy’s sceptics are enjoying a moment of Schadenfreude. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, recently criticised the West’s failed attempts to “enforce democracy” on other countries whose cultures were ill fitted for such political systems and called on them to stop. Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean diplomat and scholar, believes America has in some ways “all the attributes of a failed state.” A decade ago even I weighed in, arguing that China’s model is superior to the West—a smug way of saying democracy is doomed.

Yet these pronouncements miss the mark because they share a flawed definition of democracy. To be more precise, they mistakenly equate liberalism with democracy, thereby rendering liberal democracy the only form of democratic governance. This is wrong.

In 1992, at the end of the cold war and beginning of a golden era for liberal democracy’s universalisation, Lord Bhikhu Parekh, a political theorist, wrote in an essay, “The Cultural Particularity of Liberal Democracy”, that “liberal democracy is liberalised democracy: that is, democracy defined and structured within the limits set by liberalism.” This combination, he noted, was crystallised around the 18th century in Europe and was widely championed in practice by the West only after the second world war as a way of opposing the Soviet Union. Democracy itself, in its earliest Western incarnation in ancient Greece, long preceded liberalism.

Moreover, in combination, liberalism was the dominant partner and democracy was subjugated. In fact, liberalism was hostile to democracy. The development of liberal institutions over the past two to three centuries has in many ways consisted of attempts at limiting the power of democracy. If we are to be historically accurate and intellectually honest, we need to recognise that liberal democracy is but one kind of democracy.

During the European Enlightenment, liberal thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu and Mill proposed revolutionary ideas about how human societies should be governed based on the tenets of liberalism, such as the individual as the fundamental unit of society, the sanctity of private property and the primacy of procedural rule of law. Most modern liberal political institutions were developed with these ideas—representative government based on elections, separation of powers, freedom of the press, an independent judiciary and so on. They are fundamental to America’s constitution and to most other liberal societies.

But at the same time, many liberal forefathers also recognised that the goal of liberal institutions is to deliver happiness to the people. If that outcome is not met, procedures must be changed. According to Mill, even access to voting could be curtailed, say, if a citizen were illiterate.

Liberal democracy had enormous successes, notably in the second half of the 20th century. During that period, liberal democratic countries delivered unprecedented prosperity to their people—so much so that many countries, including China, sought to emulate many of the West’s practices, such as market economics. However when groups like Freedom House and V-Dem rank countries on their levels of democracy, it in essence measures countries on how closely they follow liberal institutional procedures. When people say democracy is receding in many countries, they really mean liberalism is in trouble.

Why is liberalism in bad shape? The reason is that in many places it seems to be failing its junior partner—democracy. Liberal democracy is in crisis mode because so many of these countries face severe problems: persistent inequality, political corruption, collapse of social cohesion, lack of trust in government and elite institutions, and incompetent government. In short, liberalism has been failing to deliver democratic outcomes.

In the Soviet Union there was a popular joke: “We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.” In many liberal societies, people can turn that around: “We pretend to vote, they pretend to govern.” At this rate, the word “liberal” may soon no longer deserve to be followed by “democracy”.

A broader view of governance


The world needs a better and more inclusive way of evaluating democracy. Defining and measuring democracy by liberal procedures is way too narrow—historically, conceptually and under contemporary conditions. In ancient Greece, when democracy was first practised in the West, democratic politics was rather illiberal. There was no concept of individual or minority rights. That was why Plato and Aristotle—no democrats, both—criticised its majoritarian nature. Elections were not the only way of selecting leaders. Sortition—choosing leaders by lottery—was widely practised and fit Aristotle’s definition of democracy.

In the contemporary West, populist movements from the right and socialist activism on the left seem to be, at least in part, attempts to hold liberalism accountable for not delivering on outcomes. Looking at democracy anew is no easy task and will no doubt take a lot of work and debate. But I venture to propose a common-sense idea: let’s measure democracy not by procedures but by outcomes.

Democracy’s normative goal must be to deliver satisfaction to a vast majority of people over a long period. What good are elections if they keep producing poor leaders with the public stuck in perpetual cycles of “elect and regret”? What good is an independent judiciary if it only protects the rich? What good is separation of powers if it is captured by special interests to block necessary reforms? What good is freedom of the press, or freedom of speech for that matter, if it corrodes societies with division and dysfunction? What good are individual rights if they result in millions of avoidable deaths, as has happened in many liberal democracies during the pandemic?

In its attempt to challenge a rising China, America’s president, Joe Biden, frames this competition as a starkly ideological dichotomy of democracy versus autocracy. With that in mind, the administration is hosting a gathering of democracies on December 9th and 10th, to which some 110 countries or regions invited. A review shows that these 111 places (with the US included) consist of around 56% of the world’s population but had cumulative covid-19 deaths of 4.2m, which is 82% of the world’s total. More glaringly, the three countries with the highest deaths are the host country (780,000), which boasts of being the oldest democracy, Brazil (615,000) and India (470,000), which relishes being the largest democracy.

As for the seeming target of the gathering, China, it has 1.4bn people and just 5,697 deaths from covid-19.

Some may object that this was because China restricted freedoms more than “democracies”. But what kind of democracy would sacrifice millions of lives for some individuals’ freedom not to wear masks? It is precisely in this way that liberal democracy is failing its citizens.

Perhaps it is possible to develop a set of measurements that show which countries are generating more democratic outcomes. How satisfied are most people with their countries’ leadership and directions? How cohesive is society? Are people living better than before? Are people optimistic about their future? Is society as a whole investing enough to ensure the well-being of future generations? Beyond the narrow and procedural-centric liberal definition of democracy, outcomes must be taken into consideration when we define and evaluate democracies.

I would suggest that when it comes to outcomes, China doesn’t score so badly. The country has its problems—inequality, corruption and environmental degradation to name a few. But the government has been tackling them aggressively.

This is probably why a vast majority of Chinese people tell pollsters that they are generally satisfied with how the country is being governed. Can we at least now entertain the idea that China is generating more productive and democratic outcomes for its people and, measured by these concrete results, its political system is more democratic than that of the United States, albeit different, at the moment?

Abraham Lincoln characterised democracy in the most eloquent layman’s term: government of the people, by the people, for the people. I dare say that the current Chinese government outperforms America on all three. Chinese people overwhelmingly believe their government belongs to them and they live in a democracy; and it is a fact that a vast majority of China’s political leaders come from ordinary backgrounds. Quite to the contrary, many Americans seem to believe that their government is captured by monied interests and formed by an elite oligarchy. As for the last part, “for the people”, China is way ahead on outcomes.

The world needs greater diversity in the concept of democracy that is both historically truer (because democracy was not always liberal) and practically more beneficial. Many developing countries have seen their economic growth stagnate. They need to be unshackled from the ideological rigidity of the liberal doctrine and to experiment with their own ways of realising their democratic potential. New perspectives and measurements might help liberal societies as well.

Decoupling liberal democracy


For too long, liberalism has monopolised the concept of democracy and liberals have taken their democratic credentials for granted. This may be one cause for why many liberal governments are failing to deliver democratic outcomes for their people. Being measured not on procedures but on actual performance may be just the spur for liberal countries to implement much-needed reforms. If liberal governments could again deliver more democratic outcomes, so much the better for the world.

This perspective, on the need to judge democracy by its outcomes, is rarely discussed in global debates over governance. Liberal societies champion diversity in just about everything except for diversity in models of democracy, even at a conceptual level. But the reality is that the history of democratic aspirations and practices has been immensely rich and diverse. Besides Athenian democracy being decidedly not liberal, there were centuries of democratic ideals and institutional practices in China’s Confucian tradition—also not liberal. At this point in time, the world is certainly in need of more democratic experiments.

I am not attempting to advocate any particular form of democracy, and certainly am not making a case for majoritarian or direct democracy—which China is definitely not. Rather, I am proposing to broaden and pluralise both the definition and measurements of democracy. China’s current socialist democracy is surely a model worthy of study given the country’s obvious successes.

The American foreign-policy thinker Anne-Marie Slaughter recently argued that the United States should “accept at least the possibility that other forms of government could be better.” She further suggested, as a new measure of governance, that people evaluate which countries are doing a good job at achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

It is a great idea. And the broader point needs to be amplified: end liberalism’s monopoly on democracy—and let more forms of democracy flourish.

Saturday 25 December 2021

What is Modi-Shah BJP’s ideology? You’re wrong if you say Right wing, because it’s Hindu Left

Modi-Shah BJP government is Right only on religion and nationalism. The rest is as Left as the Congress or any other.writes SHEKHAR GUPTA in The Print
 

 


Prashant Kishor, who prefers to be described as a political aide rather than a strategist, which is generally the preferred usage for him, featured in our serious conversational show ‘Off The Cuff’ this week. Neelam Pandey, a senior member of our political reporting team at ThePrint, co-hosted it with me.

At some point, we asked him the question that’s always intrigued us. Does he have an ideology? Doesn’t that follow from the fact that he’s worked with Narendra Modi, Mamata Banerjee, Congress-SP (Uttar Pradesh, 2017), M.K. Stalin, Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, Amarinder Singh and more?

To our surprise, he said no, I am not ideology-agnostic, you can call me Left-of-Centre. And then went on to elaborate what he meant, by using Mahatma Gandhi’s example. And so on. I noticed later, incidentally, that Kishor’s Twitter bio begins with the words “Revere Gandhi…”

His claim to a Centre-Left ideology set us thinking. What if we asked any of the other key political leaders the same question today? What is your ideology? Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Andhra’s Jagan, Tamil Nadu’s Stalin, Telangana’s KCR and so on. If any of them chooses to answer that question — the answer, honest or not, will be about the same. Everyone in Indian politics now wades in the waters of varying depth somewhere on the Left side of the pool. Nobody will say I stand on the Right.

Which brings us to the trick question. What would Narendra Modi’s answer be? We are, of course, making a brave and far-out presumption that he lets us or anyone ask him such a direct question: What’s your ideology, Prime Minister sir? Now, whether you are fan or a critic, chances are, your immediate response will be, of course the Right wing.

Over the past seven years since the Modi-Shah BJP has been in power, “Right wing” has become the widely accepted usage for the party, and the ideological forces behind it. We need to examine if this passes the test of facts. And fasten seat belts. Because, I will then make the case to you that what Modi and his BJP represent today is not a domineering national force of the Hindu Right. It is, on the other hand, the Hindu Left.

The Left-Right descriptors over time have become mixed up and confusing. In governance terms, the Right means first of all, social conservatism, strong religiosity, hard nationalism, low threshold for criticism, an authoritarian outlook. On all these parameters, the Modi government and today’s BJP pass the test of being Right wing. The reason I qualify it here is that we do not get caught in simplistic binaries. On all of these, this BJP and Modi are no different from, say, the Republicans in the US or the British Conservatives. Then, we enter contentious zones. 

How do we, then come to our argument that the Modi-Shah-Yogi BJP is not a force of the pure Right or even the Hindu Right, but of the Hindu Left?

Check out the many steps the Modi government has taken on the economy in the past seven-plus years. For historical reference, look back at the previous BJP government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It made its commitment to getting the government out of business explicit, and set up a disinvestment ministry. When the party returned to power in 2014, you would have expected it to bring that ministry back. No such thing happened, although now there is a department, DIPAM, in the finance ministry with a full secretary.

It is only now that there is heady talk of disinvestment, but not so much has happened yet, with the sterling exception of Air India. Much other privatisation is still merely talk, or sleight of hand. As in, getting one public sector giant to acquire a smaller one, and the government, as the majority shareholder, cashing out to balance its deficit. But it is, as we had said in an earlier National Interest, like genius Milo Minderbender of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 trading with himself and making a profit. Of course, using the state’s products and cash.

Actually, this gets worse than a sleight of hand often enough. Think of the LIC, or even ONGC, being made to buy another PSU the government wants to ‘disinvest’ from. A bunch of money is paid out to the government. Our complaint isn’t that it disappears into that bottomless pit called the Consolidated Fund of India. If you believed in a market economy, you would have no complaint if the LIC or ONGC paid out dividends from its profits to its only, or overwhelming, shareholder, the government. But when the government makes them buy assets from it, these companies are not necessarily acting in the best interests of the policy holder or the minority shareholder. We are not saying that it always works out to their detriment, but the fact is these are not decisions these companies’ boards are taking with these non-sarkari shareholders’ interests at the top of their minds. This is a characteristic of the Left, not Right.

The Left is also known for handout economics, large, ambitious, welfare schemes involving redistribution of large chunks of the revenues. Which is precisely what the Modi government has been doing, from the MGNREGA it inherited to Gram Awas, toilet-building, Ujjwala, direct cash transfers to farmers and the poor, free grain and so on. Have you noticed, in fact, how muted as the opposition criticism of this governments’ Budgets has been?

There is some usual sniggering about being “pro-rich” etc. But everybody also notices that taxes on individuals now are the highest — almost 44 per cent — since reform began. Add to that an average of 18 per cent or so GST on goods and services that people, especially the rich, consume. The Left would applaud this. Of course, they’d want this to be even higher. Hopefully not the 97 per cent it was at Indira Gandhi’s socialist peak, when the foundation of the parallel black economy was laid. 

An expanding, large, maai-baap (mom & dad) sarkar is something the Leftists love. See the expansion of our government in the Modi era. More and more Bhawans have come up in Delhi to accommodate a burgeoning government. Now the new Central Vista will create space for more. A comparison again with Vajpayee government. He had no hesitation selling the loss-making Lodhi Hotel in the heart of Delhi. An even bigger PSU dud was Hotel Janpath. Which, instead of being sold, has now become another set of offices and government accommodation. Samrat Hotel, next to Ashoka, ceased to be a hotel a long time ago. It has become a sarkari bhawan too. In fact, almost everyone here will be surprised when I tell you that even the new Lok Pal (do you remember we had appointed one? Okay, what’s his name?) has been given half a floor here.

Our taxes are higher than in a generation, our government is bigger than two generations and still growing, we ‘privatise’ our companies often by selling one PSU to another, now our government also decides for all of the country which Covid vaccine to have when, to be allowed boosters or not, and what can be sold in India. In a genuinely free market, there will be shops and buyers for Covaxin, Covishield, Sputnik, Pfizer and Moderna.

As with cars, consumers can choose a Maruti or a Mercedes. But not vaccines. Why? Because ours is a maai-baap sarkar. It is in no way a government of the economic Right. The Right is limited to religion and nationalism. The rest is as Left as the Congress or any other. The reason we call Modi-BJP ideology as the Hindu Left.

Tuesday 24 August 2021

IMF chief: how the world can make the most of new special drawing rights

Kristalina Georgieva  in The FT 

On Monday, IMF member countries start receiving their shares of the new $650bn special drawing rights allocation — the largest in the fund’s history. This injection of fresh international reserve assets marks a milestone in our collective ability to combat an unprecedented crisis. 

In 2009, during the global financial crisis, a $250bn SDR allocation helped to restore market confidence. This time around, as the world continues to grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic, SDRs are even more important. The additional liquidity will bolster confidence and global economic resilience. 

SDRs can help countries with weak reserves reduce their reliance on more expensive domestic or external debt. And for states hard pressed to increase social spending, invest in recovery and deal with climate threats, they offer a precious additional resource. 

It is crucial, however, that these SDRs are used as effectively as possible — with accountability and transparency, and with as much as possible going to countries most in need. 

So how can we make the most of the new allocation? 

First, by making SDRs available to member countries quickly. With SDRs distributed in proportion to IMF quota shares, closely related to a country’s economic size, about $275bn is going to emerging and developing countries. Low-income countries are receiving about $21bn — over 6 per cent of gross domestic product in some cases. 

Vulnerable countries will be able to use the new SDRs to support their economies and step up the fight against the virus and its variants. Combined with grants and other essential support from the international community, this will help achieve the goal of vaccinating at least 40 per cent of the population in every country by the end of 2021, and at least 60 per cent by the first half of 2022. 

Second, every effort should be made to ensure SDRs are used for the benefit of member countries and the global economy. The decision on how best to utilise them rests with member countries of the IMF. They can hold them as part of their official reserves, or use them by converting them into US dollars, euros or other reserve currencies. 

But while this is a sovereign decision, it must be prudent and well-informed. The fund will work with its members to help ensure accountability and transparency. 

We are providing a framework for assessing the macroeconomic implications of the new allocation, its statistical treatment and governance, and how it might affect debt sustainability. The fund will provide regular updates on all SDR transactions, plus a follow-up report on their use in two years’ time. 

Third, with increasingly divergent economic fortunes due to the pandemic, we need to go further to ensure more SDRs go to those who need them most. That is why the IMF is encouraging voluntary channelling of SDRs from countries with strong external positions to the poorest and most vulnerable nations. 

By magnifying the impact of the new allocation, redirecting SDRs could help those most in need, while reducing the risk of social and economic instability that could affect us all. 

The good news is that we can build on progress achieved so far. Over the past 16 months, some better off member countries have pledged to lend a total of $24bn, including $15bn from existing SDRs, to the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust, which provides concessional loans to low-income countries. We hope to see further support to the PRGT from the new SDRs. 

The IMF is also engaging with its members on a possible new Resilience and Sustainability Trust that could use SDRs to help poor and vulnerable countries with structural transformation, including climate-related challenges. Another possibility could be channelling SDRs to support lending by multilateral development banks. 

Of course, SDRs are not a silver bullet. They must be part of a broader programme of collective action by countries and international institutions. Since the pandemic began, the IMF has played its part, providing about $117bn in new IMF financing to 85 countries — and debt service relief to 29 low-income nations. The fund also joined forces with the World Bank, World Health Organization and World Trade Organization to promote the urgent task of vaccinating the world. 

The poet Robert Frost wrote of the “road not taken”. We now have a unique opportunity to take the right road as the world strives for a more resilient future. We at the IMF pledge to do our best to ensure that this historic SDR allocation, used wisely, plays its part in promoting a strong and sustainable global recovery.