I once read somewhere that in ancient Athens, members of the Senate (or whatever the governing council was called) who proposed new laws, would do so with a rope round their necks. If the law failed to pass, they were hanged.

I don’t know the truth of this, but I certainly think it should apply to all of today’s politicians, with the proviso that the rope should be attached to a hook attached to their intestines. But for a change I’m not talking about politicians here, except unless the roles intersect.

No, I’m talking about those all-knowing, all-pervasive, incomprehensible, experts and masters of life and death, the economists.

Show me a guy who thinks he knows everything that matters, and I’ll show you an economist.

Show me a guy who thinks people don’t matter, only figures do, and I’ll show you an economist.

Show me a guy who thinks abstract and incomprehensible theories are more important than simple common sense, and I’ll show you an economist.

Show me a guy who lives at such disconnect from the facts that he might as well be on another planet, and I’ll show you an economist.

If an economist thinks that a particular economic policy will result in the poor becoming richer, for instance, he will insist that it is happening – even if right in front of him the people are getting poorer and poorer.

I think economists should be forced to stand up in public and explain their fancy theories in words of not more than two syllables. And then I think they should be forced to provide proof, right there in public, that the theories are working. If they don’t, they should be compulsorily made to ceremoniously and literally eat their words in the form of newsprint, CDs, and any other medium in which they have appeared, before being banished to work at digging ditches for a century.

What triggered this particular rant? I have always been contemptuous of economists, as those of you who remember my comments on Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar will recall, and generally I give the illiterate (in the facts of life) morons a wide berth, but today I began reading an article by one of the tribe on how to tackle rising prices. Since I’m not of the income bracket which can afford to ignore prices rising to the skies, I read the article, with my jaw hanging wider and wider open till it threatened to hit the floor.

This guy starts off with a standard enough idea: if the amount of available money in an economy increases, and the supplies of goods and services don’t keep up with the increase in available money, then larger and larger amounts of money will chase the finite supply of goods and services, so, basically, said goods/services will go to the highest bidder and all prices will shoot up. I don’t have to have ever touched an economics textbook to agree with that one.

Not that I have a great dispute with his follow-on idea either: that money that is neither regulated nor taxed, illegal money in all forms, is more easily acquired and hence more easily expended than regulated or legal money. This being one of the most corrupt countries in the world, there is an ocean of slush money out there. Fine.

So what does our economist suggest? Does he claim that the obvious solution is to try and crack down on corruption so as to cut the source of illegal money off at the roots? No. He’s much too brilliant for that.

No, what our genius suggests is worth the Nobel Prize in his discipline: he says the government should at once ban the circulation of the three highest denomination notes in circulation; the Rs 1000, Rs 500 and Rs 100 notes. According to him, this would force everyone to deposit their money in banks, where it could be taxed, or to buy tax free bonds from the government. Either way, the amount of money could be regulated.

Let’s see now. I go to the shops, let’s say, to buy a whole passel of stuff – like so many other people. Instead of carrying a few thousand and five hundred rupee notes with me I have to drag along a sack of fifty rupee notes, because the average Indian shop will – quite right too, in my none too humble opinion – refuse to accept cheques. I guess this character envisages a lot of applications for credit cards – and he may well be a vice president in some financial institution offering credit cards. But, unfortunately, the average Indian shop also doesn’t accept credit cards. And even the Great Indian Muddle Class, let alone the rural poor, neither understands nor uses credit cards. To say nothing of the recurring expenditure on them.

Brilliant, as I said.

All right now, let me help the whole thing by taking it to its logical conclusion. Since the eminent economist here wants the supply of money to be regulated, let’s regulate all, but all, money. Let’s demonetise fifty-rupee, twenty-rupee and ten-rupee notes as well, along with the coins and notes of five, two and one rupee value. Then let’s issue currency of denominations such as three rupees, seven rupees, nine rupees, and seventeen rupees. And see the prices drop like an express lift – as the eminent economist says should happen.

And when he wins the Nobel Prize, will he be so kind as to mention me in his acceptance speech at least?   

 

Once upon a distant time...

...in the Republic of Bhindia, there lived a Man named Rotten Tatter. He was a Big Industrialist and was also the de facto leader of the nation - for though the Republic of Bhindia was notionally a democracy, the real rulers were the Benevolent Capitalists who were close to the Throne.

At the moment the Throne was not quite a Throne, it was a very little throne indeed, filled by a Man Sing-sing who was only a little man and a proxy for a Lady and a Prince. But that fazed not a whit Rotten Tatter. Who ruled in name was less important than who ruled in fact; and it was Tatter who ruled the land of Bhindia.

Rotten Tatter had a finger in every pie, from manufacturing to telecommunications and satellite TV and other sweet nothings. Now at the time the Republic of Bhindia was desperate for an alliance with the Empire of Yammerica. The Yammericans were desperate to sell  Bhindia their Eff-off 16 and Eff-off 18 aircraft, and who but Rotten should take a ride in the two of them and stamp them with his personal seal of approval?

Everything in Bhindia seemed to depend on the whims of Rotten Tatter. When he decided that he wanted a steel mill named after a Chorus, he did  not have the money. So he got the Bhindian government to give him the money from its emergency funds, and he bought the entire Chorus line.

That didn't mean, though, that if he had had the money, he would have acted differently. Not our Rotten Tatter. You see, he wanted to make even more money. He decided to make a "people's car", did Rotten Tatter. Said car, built on land given him practically free and with almost complete freedom from taxes, would cost an (allegedly) nominal amount, and would be called the Tatter No-no in recognition of the fact that anyone with sense would react that way, precisely, to it. But Tatter paid off the media to ensure that nobody said No-no to it...

One would have thought that roads and infrastructure and even the quality of fuel was adequate anywhere in the land of Bhindia. One would be wrong. But Tatter was powerful enough and influential enough to make all things possible, yea, even unto having the public transport systems sabotaged and taxed into oblivion so people could only buy his cars, shoddy as the No-no undoubtedly was...

So Rotten Tatter ruled the land of Bhindia. His sceptre was a laser pointer, his throne an executive chair, his herald his cellular phone. But was he intelligent enough to learn from another's mistakes, and beware? 

For Rotten was far from the first Benevolent Capitalist to rule the land of Bhindia. Before him went the Am-bunnies, a family of Great Men who had ruled before and had finally broken under the strain of the collapse of their Rule once the day-mock-crazy made a change of government inevitable. The poor Am-bunnies might give their wives airliners as birthday gifts now, but they could not even get their new inflated stocks to sell... the poor things.

Can you imagine what it's like, to be able to count all one's millions without reaching the tens of thousands?

Bhindia, unfortunately, has not yet abandoned day-mock-crazy, and  the people aren't too crazy about the idea of an alliance with Yammerica among other things, so, despite the No-no and all, Rotten might end up in tatters in just a year for now...he has just one year to get rich. The poor guy, for all that the media calls him a hero, must be stressed out.

Contributions are welcome to a relief fund.

This morning (I’m in Delhi right now and using a shared computer in an Internet café) I went down to the newsstand to buy a newspaper. The headlines were all the same, in type so big it occupied half the page…”Stock Market Crashes”,  “Nightmare in Dalal Street”, or even, Jesus wept, “Bloodbath on the Bourses”. I thought that last one had died with the dinosaurs.

 

Anyway, to get to the point. The stock market is the perfect example of unbridled greed. People invest in it to earn something for nothing. You can’t do that forever, just as you can’t pull yourself up by the bootstraps. About time some people learned this.

 

So, you know, when I read of “6 trillion – or whatever – rupees lost in sixty seconds” my reaction is of polite disbelief. What lost in sixty seconds? Nobody had ever seen any of this money. It never had any but theoretical form, in random bits floating through the internet. Losing it meant just knocking some theoretical zeroes off a theoretical figure that never existed in the first place.

 

Also it seems a bit rich to me that when the stock market’s climbing the skies investors don’t seem to have any problem with the government leaving them alone; in fact they decry any sort of governmental oversight. While as soon as the market falls they scream for action – any action – from the government to bail them out. Seems to be a contradiction of capitalism, really.

 

Also the really big stockholders, the big financial institutions that theoretically have the most to lose, won’t hurt at all, of course. They will simply buy up stocks when the market falls enough to make it profitable.

 

In any case, maybe I’m out of sync with the times, but I don’t see how this stock market fall has anything to do with the more than 95% of the population who do not invest in shares. As for the rest, if they were greedy enough to invest, let them take their chances. I don’t think any of them is going to be rendered homeless, in any case. And if they are, it’s their own fault for being so greedy.

 

And a note to the papers: find some less clichéd headlines while you are about it.

  

 

 

Again, I’ve never sat in an economics classroom, but some things I think ought to be self evident.

Suppose you work hard to earn money, which you invest in buying gold. Then imagine, when your money is all in gold, the price of gold begins to drop – and drop. What would you do? Stand by and watch your savings melt away? No, you’d sell that gold while it was still possible to sell it and invest it all in something else, right?

This is common sense.

For some reason, though, common sense seems lacking in the professional economists who seem to rule our world these days.

I mean, it’s not as if the US dollar hasn’t been sliding steadily for a year or more now and shows no signs of halting its slide. What this means is that the foreign exchange reserves of nations and corporations are also, in real terms, depreciating steadily – if, that is, they hold their reserves in dollars.

All these days they didn’t really have a choice. Nobody holds foreign exchange in the form of, say, Thai ringgits or Ghanaian cedis. Therefore the countries of the world had no choice but to buy up US dollars, keep the value of the currency high, and indirectly subsidise the enormously, indeed criminally, wasteful American lifestyle. But that’s about to change.   

In the first place, there is now an alternative – the Euro. In the analogy I mentioned, one would have to hold on to gold if everything is also depreciating or if everything is uncertain in value. But if, say platinum, is stable in value, it would make sense to dump gold and buy platinum, right? And it would make sense to do this before everybody got the same idea and the tipping point came when everyone began dumping gold on the market and prices crashed through the floor.

Sooner or later, this is going to happen. Nations or corporations, no one enjoys seeing their savings devalued. They will begin decreasing dollar holdings in favour of Euros or maybe even Chinese yuan. More dollars in the market means lowered prices for the dollar. This happens when anything, be it biscuits or tomatoes, floods the market. Prices crash. Sooner or later, panic selling begins and the prices fall so low it is no longer attractive to keep the material on the market. I can see this coming for the dollar. Why it hasn’t yet is something I intend to discuss in a moment.

It’s not as if the US doesn’t see the danger of this tipping point. Among Saddam Hussein’s many sins was that he shifted Iraq’s foreign exchange reserves from the dollar to the Euro. Unforgivable. But the US’ military power can’t exactly overawe anyone any more. It’s stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan, and unable to muster the resources to invade Iran. Economically it’s being challenged by Russia, China, and Europe. It’s got its back to the ropes.

The problem is that if you wish to be a global hegemon you have to be able to pay for the privilege or force others to pay for it. The US can’t pay for it and increasingly the other nations don’t want to. The invasion of Iraq hasn’t yielded the promised oil bonanza; it’s turned instead into an economic sinkhole. Afghanistan is dangerous and unstable; the pipelines from Central Asia haven’t materialised to turn the economic screws on Russia and subsidise more imperial adventures abroad. It’s all very well to cut taxes for the rich. But even a child can tell you that when you spend more than the pocket money you get you end up in an untenable position unless you can get an assured source of funds, if only by nicking from your mom’s purse. Running a deficit economy is like fooling all of the people all of the time. If you can’t extort money from abroad, you can’t do it.

Maybe the slide hasn’t yet come because they’re waiting for the next presidential elections in the US to throw up an administration with a bit of sense, which will reverse the policies of the Bush regime, but even if that happens (most unlikely I think, the corporations own the candidates) it’s not going to bring the dollar back up.

There are people hoping the US is going to go back to being the boom economy of the nineties, but that’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen for several reasons. The first is the fact that resources are running out. You can’t keep raping the earth for ever so as to live in uxorious comfort. Not only are you going to run short of the resources necessary, your helots – the people who hew your wood and draw your water, in other words the producers of what you consume, are going to get rich enough to demand a similar quality of life – which is going to reduce your available resources even further.

Then, the environment. Even the US will have to admit that something has to be done very urgently about the environment if the world is to continue to be able to support human life. Environmental policies cost money, a lot of money, which is why nations like India and China refuse to let them come in the way of “economic growth”. With environmental concerns as well, the US is never going to be the huge consumer of yore again. It can’t. Which means that countries like India and China had better look to find some way of surviving without serving the US market.

Since the tipping point of the dollar is coming, and will probably arrive within the next few months, you’d think the Indian government, run by an economist, would see the writing on the wall and shift to Euros. Nothing doing. I don’t know why, unless it is to please the Bush regime. Hara kiri to oblige someone who is on the way out anyway has never seemed to me common sense.

But when did politicians have any sort of sense, common or otherwise?   

    

   

I guess it had to come, they've been predicting it long enough.

The odd thing was the way it came.

It might have come because of the imminent invasion of Iran, but it didn't. Anyway, it looks like Russia, China and Iran between them have successfully staved off an invasion - for now.

It might have come because the world finally sat up to the reality of diminishing oil reserves and stopped pretending oil would last forever, so a shortage economy would make prices climb. But it hasn't.

It might have come because the Saudi people finally revolted and overthrew their revolting ruling family in a revolution that cut off a huge chunk of the world's oil supply, but that hasn't happened  yet, though it might.

What happened in this case was that the price rise was due to speculation in the futures market - that is, people are raising prices in view of their anticipation of increased demand from India and China.

While I don't know about China, the fact is that in India, at least, the "increased demand" is basically due to people buying more and more cars, and for no other reason. As regulars on this blog know, my views on private transport are not quite, let's say, printable; but the public transport system seems to be deliberately being sabotaged to let the roads be clogged up by cars of all shapes and sizes and by huge enormous fuel-guzzling SUVs. It's not the spread of industry that's literally fuelling this consumption, though it will, as the country moves over to serve the conspicuous consumption of the middle class.

Now you'd think that with the $100 mark having been on the horizon for some time, any sensible government would have made some arrangements to cushion the shock, wouldn't you? Only they didn't. And now, as soon as elections to various states are over in a couple of months, they're going to raise fuel prices by they say four rupees per litre. This is going to have cascading consequences on price rises across the board. The costs of everything from food to raw materials and finished products will rise because freight rates are going to be raised accordingly, and every speculator and middleman is going to want his cut. And all because everyone wants a car for every member of his family, even if there aren't roads on which to drive them.

The whole idiocy of the situation comes into focus when you realise that the $100 per barrel isn't even a real figure in the sense that it would have been earlier. The American dollar is sliding towards the abyss of free fall; I don't know any currencies which, unless they have been deliberately held back, aren't gaining against it. Indian tour operators, who earlier wanted only dollars, have even stopped accepting the currency completely. The actual translation of the $100 per barrel figure in terms of say a year or two ago might be $90 or less; bad enough, but for heaven's sake, not a total disaster.

I've never sat in an economics classroom in my life, and even I can see the total artificiality of this "crisis", so don't tell me the economists can't. Therefore all I can think of is that they are allowing this to happen; and when someone allows something like this to happen, it's because big money is being made somewhere.

Oh - you can bet that fuel-saving technologies will be even more aggressively suppressed, so long as there is a lot of money to be made.

    

                                        SECRET AND CONFIDENTIAL                  

To

H E Artless

Secretary, Grand Shopping Mall

Superabad

India

 

Sub: Marketing strategies for your new mall.

 

Sir,

 

As per your commission, my firm has conducted a study of how to pitch your mall towards maximising the returns from your target market. Appended is our detailed report for your perusal. However, in this letter, I would like the opportunity to sum up the salient points for your benefit.

First, I suggest that you must make your mall look exclusive. It’s in any case true that the mall will only cater to the rich – the upper middle and upper classes. So, it would be foolish and unproductive to throw your gates open to those who cannot buy anything and will just increase your cleaning bills and your wear and tear.

Therefore, we suggest that you restrict entry to your mall to those demonstrably capable of purchasing your merchandise. The easiest way of doing this is by making it compulsory to show one’s credit card at the entrance. Only those with credit cards should be allowed access. If it could be managed, it would be very good if you could make it compulsory for all purchases to be paid for with credit cards, but as far as I know this is probably against government regulations. Still, as we know, the current government is friendly towards progressive business interests and credit card companies could be asked to lobby hard to allow such regulations at least for malls catering to the empowered sections.

We are aware that this strategy (restricting entry to credit card holders) was tried before and did not work, because of objections from certain sections of the population and from left-wing anti-national elements it would be pointless to name. But in our opinion the failure of that brave and farsighted attempt was more due to incorrect marketing strategy than anything else.

In our opinion, the correct strategy should have been pitched differently for the targeted crowd and the general populace. While the targeted population should be reassured of its exclusiveness, to be made to feel that the mall’s throwing open its doors to them is a statement of faith in their financial security and a reward for their financial success, the rest of the people shouldn’t be made to feel excluded. The rich should be told that there is no need for them to rub shoulders with the dirty, untidy common folk, that this is theirs, a consumer’s paradise, just for them and for people like them. The rest, though, even though they may not have a hope in hell of ever being able to enter through the gates, must not be made to feel neglected. You can always claim that this is actually a good thing for the others – it gives them a goal to aspire to. If the only way to enter the portals of your shopper’s paradise is to acquire the credit cards that are your entry ticket, it makes sense for people to work hard enough and earn enough to afford credit cards. So, excluding non-card holders makes it a positive thing for the economy. It promotes long term economic growth.

We hardly need to point out that the words “economic growth” are engraved in gold on the hearts of the current government, and anything that professes to promote economic growth will resonate well with them. And since the media can be easily co-opted with the same slogan, the media will also back any such move by you. A few discreetly bribed editors should do the trick.

It may be that some unregenerate left-wing pinkos may ask the question of where the poor are supposed to shop until they can afford the credit cards they must aspire to. If they do, we suggest that you point out that a branch of Wal-Mart is supposed to open in this city at some time in the future. The poor, you may suggest, can go to the Wal.

Secondly, the importance of proper packaging can’t be overemphasized. The issue of government support must be kept in mind. This government will support anything that backs up its policies. Since the thrust of this government’s current policy is to force through the Nuclear Deal, and since the rationale is increased demand for power, you should emphasise the extremely high power consumed by malls like yours and how such drivers of the economy demand high amounts of power. The government will readily uphold you as an example of why the Nuclear Deal is necessary.

As a part of this strategy, high energy consumption is essential; please ensure large, power-intensive displays and billboards that consume the maximum amount of electricity that can be managed. Economy in electricity is not the right way to go about this. Please don’t be concerned about high electricity bills. You do not have to pay them at all, if the government is on your side. And with the strategy we are outlining, it will be.

Thirdly, we are sure you must be aware that there will be resistance from reactionary left wing elements to the mall. This must be handled in two ways. First, media sources must be paid off so as to belittle the opponents as anti-nationals and Luddites who oppose economic development. Please do not skimp the fund meant to “educate” editors and journalists. Also, please ensure low level menial jobs to local families who might otherwise join in protests against the mall. These jobs will break up the unity of the opposition, and after the mall is established the concerned individuals can be quietly dismissed. We are, naturally, assuming that you have no intention of allowing any sort of effective employees’ union to come into existence.  

Fourthly, since the Tata Group is the reigning economic power behind the current throne, we would advise you to invite Mr Ratan Tata to formally inaugurate the mall. Anything Mr Tata does is automatically news. His influence on the media is so great that even his blunders and his bending of laws and ethics double are treated as immense personal triumphs. If he either inaugurates the mall or makes a symbolic purchase, you would get immediate media attention.

Fifthly, America resonates with your targeted demographic. We would suggest you design the mall round the US as a theme, with American flags prominently displayed and US resident George W Bush’s portrait with India’s current Prime Minister on as many walls as possible. This will also garner further government support.     

With all these actions, as discussed in greater detail in the main report attached, we can be reasonably sure that you can market the mall to your target group and gain sympathetic media attention and government support at the same time.

We would, of course, draw your attention to our bill, also attached. It may seem to you high, but as per the terms of your brief we believe, not excessive. After all, you are going to fleece the population and the economy, and we don’t see why you shouldn’t pass on a fraction of that to us.

 

                                                                              Yours sincerely

 

                                                                              S. Liz Ball

                                                                              Chairperson

                                                                              Moneybags and Associates

                                                                              Marketing Consultants.

If you want the people on your side, you do not take their fields and put up factories there - that is the message coming through from rural India, loud and clear.

People have decided it's better to die fighting than die of starvation after handing over their all to corrupt politicians and their industrialist partners, in return for a pittance of a "compensation" that will most likely never arrive.

Earlier, they were resigned to being taken advantage of. No more, if the resistance of peasant communities all over Eastern India means anything. They are perfectly willing to face police bullets, but they don't give in - from Kalinganagar in Orissa to Nandigram in Bengal, they are resisting and , wonder of wonders, sometimes they are winning.

To realise the odds against this you have to consider the fact that they are opposed by the entire might of the establishment - the capitalistic economy, its political servants, their armed forces and police, the slavish media, and opposition politicians who are just as rapacious but are only out for self aggrandisement and media sound bytes.

This is the land of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. They might have tried non-violent methods of resistance. They did, and were ploughed under. Every time. When big dams of most dubious utility were built, they tried to stand against the rising waters and were dragged off to jail. When their lands were seized to be turned over to "developers" to construct luxury flats, they were not given jobs as even guards at the gates or janitorial staff.

Now the people of rural India have at last said: "Enough.

"We do not want your 'development'. We do not want your promises. We do not buy your arguments that we will benefit by turning over our land to you so you can sell it or lease it or gift it to land sharks and capitalists who don't want to buy it from us at fair rates. We do not trust your 'compensation packages'. We do not want to become like those millions who lost their lands five or six decades ago in similar circumstances and are still waiting for some kind of compensation.

"We do not believe in your claims that we would be better off leaving farming, leaving our homes and fields, in order to "retrain" as barbers or seamstresses. We do not believe, contrary to your assurances, that semi-literate rural farmers like us can be made into machinists to be "absorbed" into your planned factories. We may not be geniuses, but we know when we're being conned.

"We do not think we can eat the 8% growth of the national economy or wear the share price index or use the nation's 'international investor friendly image' to shelter from the elements. We think the lands we are asked to sacrifice will go to swell the bank balances of people who are already obscenely rich, degrade the environment, and impoverish us all.

"Therefore: you may shoot and club and baton charge us, but we shall resist. We shall expose you, whatever be the colour of the ideological coat you put on, and we shall fight. We shall fight to the end, and, because we are legion, you can not shut us away."

This is why they fought at Kalinganagar, they fought at Nandigram, they are fighting at Singur, and they will fight everywhere. And now they have begun to win, they will keep winning battles. Win enough battles, and you begin affecting the course of the war. No wonder the capitalist controlled media are already calling them dead enders, Maoists, et al.

Maoist dead enders, enemies of the nation, deluded innocents, pawns of "certain political parties", whatever you call them, they have some people very, very worried and very, very, scared.

Now that the tide of revolutionary battle on the ground is turning as well, we may be on the way to living in interesting times.

I have a dream...

I have a dream of a world where I do not sodding have to work for a bloody living, where I can have all the money I want to do as I please, and roam the world as a rich layabout.

Do I actually have such a dream? Well, no. But I could have a life like that, if only I could borrow, and borrow, and never have to pay.

Can I do that? No. But it can be done.

Not that I usually pay a lot of attention to the national budget, but when it involves people raising a furore over tax cuts for dog and cat food, I do sit up and take notice. But all those characters, politicians or journalists or stand up comics, are being sidetracked. Because while they are focussing on Pedigree and Nutripet, there is this little item in the budget which says that the government is going to allow its foreign exchange reserves to be used by specified companies to pay off their international obligations...

Which companies? Does, by any chance, this ring a bell? Now we know where a part of that money will come from. And, as I mentioned here, money makes the political wheels go round.

It's not only that company; India's biggest loan defaulters are all the biggest corporate entities, and no one dare touch them, and everyone knows all too well why. The Tatas, the Birlas, the Ambanis, and various lesser players - they've got the country in their pocket.

Just imagine if they actually cannot, or choose not to, pay back their loans. Will the government, or the government controlled banks, do anything? Will the government, or the government controlled banks, dare to do anything?

Y'know, it's the capitalist economy, the globalised scenario, and so on, yada yada. One can't see a business group go belly up. For one thing, it's a national standard bearer; then again, it would be kind of shameful if foreigners went out of work because our companies took theirs over and then found they could not raise the money to pay the bill. Not to talk of half the economy tanking.

(And donations for election purposes? Perish the thought.)

Anyway, we can't afford to call in the loans we made.

It's just that, the more you borrow, the less you need to pay.

Which is why my dream will remain a dream.

Funny things happen.
Like when prices, especially of food, rise towards the roof, and our economist Prime Minister's acolytes talk of how shifting to an industrialised economy is vital for national growth.
Like when these economic experts did not know that a rising population needs more food, something even I could have told them, and did not restrict exports and arrange for imports in advance.
Like when wheat is exported as its prices steadily rise in country and shortages mean more and more people are unable to afford food, because the amount spent on food forms a larger proportion of a poor person's limited income, yet we talk about how subsidised food is neither necessary nor affordable for the national economy.
Like when we read all the fancy talk of how industries are going to employ all those who lose their land to set up car factories, yet we cannot even employ the unemployed we already have.
Like when the Reserve Bank of India has to force the subsidiary banks to suck money from the supply chain to cut down on inflation, the "economists" would like us to increase production instead, of food as well, and at the same time turn farmland into factories to stimulate growth.
Like when the exploding population means that we fall behind the goals of providing health care, education, or even clean water to all, let alone employment , and all the government does is talk about the "demographic dividend" of a large population.
Like when we spend several times more on defence than we do on education and health put together, yet we tout our nuclear arsenal as a deterrent which will ensure we never have to go to war again.
As I said, funny things happen in this emerging superpower.
Let's have the funniest scene of all for the perfect end.
Vive l' Guillotine.    

I don't own shares and I will never own shares. I don't subscribe to that philosophy. But just because you aren't personally involved, when you see a man crossing the road and a big articulated truck coming at him, you don't hesitate to yell "Look OUT!"

So, I'm taking a vicarious interest in the Indian stock markets, which our news media are (as usual) extolling in orgasmic tones as the bellwether of our emerging superpower. You can see them peeing in their pants in ecstasy at the new heights scaled by the share price index (Sensex) - today at Rs 15000, tomorrow at thirty thousand? Is the sky the limit? 

But isn't it a good thing if share prices rise? Won't all the shareholders benefit?

Do you know what proportion of the Indian people own shares?

Answer: Three per cent.

So. How does such miniscule share ownership translate into big stock market gains?

Because, in this country, the small stockholder is less than a cipher. Most stocks are held by monetary institutions - especially Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), which, because of an odd Indian reciprocal arrangement with Mauritius, do not have to pay taxes in India if they are registered (which means paying taxes) in Mauritius. What this means is that all an FII has to do is open a hole in the corner office in Mauritius, and pay rent and a farcical tax, and all its profits in India are tax free.

Sweet deal, isn't it?

So the stock market rises, then crashes, but not too much, and rises again. The FIIs know exactly what to do. They let the prices rise, sell out, take in their profits and let the prices fall, and buy when there is the usual panic selling. It's manipulation at its most transparent.

Why don't our politicians (among whom even "communists" own shares) scrap the deal with Mauritius and at least force these corporate leeches  to pay a tax on their obscene profits?

Do you really have to ask?

In that case, I have a stock option on a gold mine to sell you.

Something happened a day or two ago. There was a tremendous national victory.

What happened? Did Indian demands get the Koh-i-Noor diamond back? Did we break the back of our insurgencies? Did we solve our energy problems? Did we beat Pakistan at cricket?

No.

Ratan Tata, head honcho of the Tata empire, bought the Corus steel company. He outbid a Brazilian firm and got it. For $12.1 billion. (I guess that means American billions, not real billions, so it's 12.1 thousand million dollars, not million million.) What a tremendous national victory!

The Indian media went crazy. Again, that state isn't abnormal for India's media, but you'd have thought there was a functioning brain somewhere. Well...today's The Times of India seems to have woken up to an extent. Rip van Winkle.

What does $12.1 thousand million mean? What can you do with it?

(Before I go into that, let's remember that Mr Tata is the same Mr Tata who is chary of paying a piffling - by his standards - Rs 1500 million to the people who are being thrown off their land in Singur to make way for his car factory. Instead, his company will pay just Rs 200 million - and that in five years. And avail of tax cuts. Remember that.)

So, what can you do with $12.1 thousand million? That is 545 thousand million rupees. What can you do with it?

The 2006-07 budget of the Indian government allocated Rs 241.15 thousand million to education and Rs 129.94 thousand million to health. It would therefore pay for the entire amount, combined, and still leave over 170 thousand million rupees to spare.

It would, alternatively, pay for more than half the Rs 1041.24 thousand million defence budget...

Or pay all government employees' salaries and allowances (cost, Rs 410 thousand million) and still leave Rs 130 thousand million.

It would pay all subsidies for food, petroleum, and fertilisers, and still leave a hundred thousand million rupees over.

It would be enough to build eighty superspeciality medical centres of AIIMS standard  where poor people could be treated.

It could build a top class expressway stretching 4500 kilometres.

And what did all this money do? What did Mr Ratan Tata, who cannot spare money to buy land for his factory from peasants at fair market rates, do with all this - borrowed - money? 

Answer: he bought a European steel company. A national victory, indeed.

Congratulations are in order.