The present global order, mired in crises, is increasingly dysfunction. The US-led coalition strives to destroy Mosul in order to save it, as was memorably stated by an American general in the Vietnam War, after B 52 bombers had flattened a Vietnamese city. As significant are the political fissures in the Atlantic Alliance, with Turkey bristling at Washington’s support of the Kurds, whom Ankara perceives as terrorists, Turkey’s ties with Germany and the Netherlands already in shreds. American spy mania is the stuff of pantomime; and Russophobia, a psychological disorder requiring the close attention of available shrinks, rather NATO war games on Russia’s borders which, at some point, guarantees a wider conflagration.
The European Union is in jitters over Brexit. Eurosceptics across the continent are in good voice, affirming the supremacy of national sovereignty over transnational blocs that throttle their democracy. The rise of Islamism and jihadi terrorism have been grist to their mills, as has been the massive influx of humanity from the ruined Greater Middle East and North Africa, resulting largely from the folly of interventionist of US and European interventions in that region.
This maelstrom was highlighted by the France’s Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, who, following a visit to Moscow and talks with President Vladimir Putin, declared: ‘He represents a sovereign nation. I think he represents a new vision. A new world has emerged in the past years. This is Vladimir Putin’s world, Donald Trump’s world in the United States, Mr Modi’s world in India. I think I am probably the one who shares with all these great nations, a vision of cooperation and not one of subservience…that has too often been expressed by the European Union.’ (New Indian Express, March 25).
Le Pen’s reference to Messrs Putin and Modi is a point well taken. One cannot be as sure of President Trump at this stage. Confronted by a political blizzard over his secret links with President Putin - strongly reminiscent of the Pink Panther Peter Sellers comedy currently playing on Capitol Hill – the embattled US President is seeking cover by snuggling up to China – much to Beijing’s relief. His original desire to confront China on its dodgy trade policies and coercive behaviour on security issues - most notably in the South China Sea, - appears to have been put on the backburner – at least for now.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent visit to Beijing for talks on the Korean crisis, following North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, his soothing talk of win-win Sino-US cooperation based on ‘mutual respect’ might well be interpreted as a coda for the administration’s acceptance of China’s ‘core interests,’ which is scarcely reassuring to Indian ears. You can bet that continuing US indulgence towards China’s all-weather friend Pakistan - despite its jihadi activities - will rank high on the list of Beijing’s ‘core interests.’ A call by the influential (US) National Interest magazine to the Trump administration for a radical reset of the country’s toxic relationship with Pakistan appears to be a non-starter.
President Xi Jinping is to make a visit to the United States, where he will hold a strategic dialogue in the sumptuous environs of the Trump estate in Florida. Its outcome will be watched with considerable interest. One recalls President Obama’s ballyhooed Asian Pivot, whose end result was an emboldened, snarling China, intimidating neighbours on the consequences of infringing China’s ‘core interests.’
One hopeful sign is Russia’s assurance, conveyed by Mikhail Ulyanov of the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, to India that Russia would be engaging with China on India’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which Beijing resolutely opposes and Moscow resolutely supports. As India and Russia are signatories to the Missile Technology Control Regime, both sides are to start work on expanding the range of their jointly developed BrahMos supersonic cruise missile. The mailed fist in a velvet glove is the subtext to China, a timely reminder that other powers, too, have their ‘core interests.’
Assessing demonetization
Nothing so divided Indian than the Modi government’s sudden imposition of demonetization in November 2016 - that is the entailed withdrawal of high currency notes from circulation. This was accomplished as planned, without the commonly foretold catastrophe. There was undoubted pain in the immediate aftermath of the decision. Long queues outside banks told of the desperation of ordinary citizens to acquire cash for basic household expenses, and of small businesses, in particular, who pay their staff - among them day labourers without bank accounts – in cash. Their discomfiture was too visible for denial. However, the pressure began to ease as new notes were carried to all parts of the country on heavy lift transport aircraft requisitioned from the Indian Air Force, the exercise placed on a war footing.
There were a multitude of doomsayers predicting all manner of disasters, from hyper-inflation to a precipitate decline in the GDP, leading to collapse of the Indian economy itself. Media pundits foresaw a collapse in popular support for the BJP-led Modi government. The predicted apocalypse never arrived. The BJP swept the polls in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarkhand, and head coalition ministries in Goa and Manipur.
Over and above this, there was no hyper-inflation, no collapse of the Indian economy, flight of foreign capital, and much else. None of the dire predictions came to pass. Instead, there appears to have been a rebound from the early travails, and the economy is moving steadily into an improved trajectory of growth. The doomsayers proved hopelessly wrong on every count, and their present silence is positively deafening!
Professor Jagdish Bhagwati, the eminent economist writes: ‘With no compelling precedent for such a move in a growing and stable economy, not one suffering hyper-inflation – it was no surprise that most commentators failed to grasp its implications and many got it plain wrong…Indeed, we [ his close colleagues at Columbia University] were among a small minority of economists who had argued explicitly that, contrary to this emerging consensus, demonetization could, paradoxically, be expansionary rather than contractionary, or in any case, the contractionary impact could be made less than commonly believed. Additionally, the take-up of digital payments, the emergence of informal credit arrangements between sellers and consumers and the fast pace of remonetization’ [set by Reserve Bank of India Governor, Dr Urjit Patel] ensured that the ‘economy did not contract as much as was widely feared.’ Bhagwati dismissed the doomsayers with lines from Macbeth’s great soliloquy: ‘It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing.’
Manilal Bhaumik: Philanthropist scientist
Manilal Bhaumik’s life is a story of rags to riches, of triumph of the elect over the adversity and misery of the many. Born into a family of modest means in the Midnapore district of West Bengal, he had to get up at the crack dawn and walk four miles to school. After school he would take out the cattle to pasture. Back home, he studied under lamplight. A billionaire today, he lives in a marble mansion in California overlooking San Francisco Bay and the turquoise waters of the Pacific Ocean. His daily schedule begins with a drive in his Rolls Royce to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where his $11 million donation is helping construct a research centre for top physicists to plumb some of the stubborn secrets of nature through intricate mathematical modeling.
It was mathematics and physics that proved the game-changer and opened new vistas for him in a once famine-stricken, disease-ridden corner of India. From Midnapore, Bhaumik took a giant leap to Calcutta and the tutelage of the eminent physicist Satyen Bose. His next climb up the ladder was entry into the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, where he earned his PhD, thence a fellowship at Amrica’s UCLA on the recommendation of his mentor, Professor Bose. There, his researches in high energy physics led to numerous patented applications which made Bhaumik a billionaire philanthropist. He has donated a substantial sum to the National Institute of Advanced Studies Department at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. He has given Rs 400 crore to his alma mater, IIT Kharagpur and set up the Mani Bhaumik Foundation for the education of deprived children. Truly, it is more blessed to give than to receive.
