September 2018 marks the tenth anniversary of the global economic collapse when the US bank Lehman Brother filed for bankruptcy. Banks across the United States, Britain and Europe were blown apart and had to be rescued by the British government and its peers with huge injections of financial support – described as ‘quantitative easing’ – without which a panic-stricken public would have closed their accounts. Nothing could conceal the public shock, as the scale of the scam came to light, with senior bank executives in flight from the law luxuriating with girl friends, bankers all, in the Bahamas and other exotic places where millionaires and billionaires revel in bacchanalian pursuits.
A Halifax Bank executive recounted his firsthand experience on an international TV channel. Long retired, he recalled the mix of inadequate regulations, shoddy auditing, slack supervision that led to the denouement and its miseries. The impact is still visible, he said, and judging by present realities, another banking crisis was likely to reappear. Nothing fundamentally has changed, he averred. The historian Adam Tooze recently wrote: ‘The outcome through wilful policy choices, drove tens of millions of its citizens into the depths of a 1930-style depression. It is one of the worst self-inflicted economic disasters on record.’
Asia, including India and China, were shaken but not destroyed. The US and the European Union were trapped in the faults and fissures of the earthquake and its after-shocks. Southern Europe, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Balkans bore, and still bear, the brunt of their force. Their German bankers, unforgiving and ruthless, refused to ease debt burdens, as the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble insisted administering Athens with more shock therapies. As the European Union economic powerhouse, Berlin calls the political shots. Germany may have lost the Second World War, but its rulers seem stubbornly wedded to the idea that their country can ride roughshod over the political and social turbulence that presently affects the much of the EU. A united Germany, although in NATO’s vanguard, no longer excites a full throated Ode to Joy as it did in 1989 across the continent.
Globalization, democracy and liberty have been the principal casualties of the economic collapse of September 2008. A species of authoritarian populism are on the march, with the Trump administration in Washington very much the pied piper. President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ message resonated in vast areas of the country’s once vibrant industrial hinterland, now a scene of dereliction, of massive unemployment and food kitchens – the global superpower with decaying Third World body parts. Campaigning in the industrial swing state of Ohio, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, referred to America’s huge and growing trade deficit of $817 billion a year, saying he didn’t blame China: ‘They can’t believe themselves they got away with it. We have really rebuilt China, and it’s time we rebuilt our own country…Ohio lost over 200,000 manufacturing jobs since China joined the WTO. The World Trade Organization is a total disaster. For decades our politicians allowed other countries to steal our jobs, plunder our wealth and loot our economy,’ thundered an aggrieved Trump.
Ironically swathes of Latin America, Asia and Africa can denounce America’s hoary ‘Open Door’ policies imposed on vulnerable states unable to withstand such pressure. Regime Change has long been an axiom of US foreign policy. Self-righteousness is a telling handicap when dealing those perceived as the lesser breeds without the law. Poor judgment often leads the strong to bully and attack the weak, then reel back in horror and amazement when the weak turn out to be formidably strong and turn the tables on the aggressor. Vietnam’s victory over the United States in April 1975 was perhaps the most searing example in modern history.
As of now, the Trump Administration has imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, and has threatened to impose duties on the full range of Chinese goods entering the country if it receives no satisfaction within a reasonable timeline. Bit between his teeth, President Trump has imposed economic sanctions against China for its acquisition of Russian arms. India may be next in line. Indian sovereignty is inviolate, or else India becomes a banana republic in hoc to Uncle Sam.
International law and custom have been ridded roughshod by US domestic legislation. Lawlessness based on the principle of might is right was once the undoing of Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. Whither Planet Earth?
Theresa May’s Brixit woes
British Prime Minister Theresa May has been in the wars over Britain’s exit from the European Union. The EU summit in Salzburg at which Prime Minister May presented her government’s case, turned out to be a dialogue of the deaf. Time is running out for Britain. By mid- March 2019 an acceptable deal with the EU on the British exit from the union must be signed or else the UK will be cast into limbo. For all the Prime Minister’s robust rhetoric in defence of British interests, the EU leaders hold the stronger cards. They rejected her Chequers Plan envisaging a close alignment to the EU’s single agricultural market and goods (but not services), and on conditions of trade across the Irish border.
Furthermore, Britain is deeply divided on Brexit, none more so than the governing Conservative Party. Her former colleague in government Boris Johnson, described the Chequers Plan as ‘a suicide note.’ Theresa May is perceived by the militant wing of Brexit as too soft on the EU. Her critics say the EU rejection of the Chequers Plan was no surprise.
With the Conservative Party conference due this weekend there is much media talk of Prime Minister May’s enforced exit from 10 Downing Street.
The Prime Minister made a fighting speech on her return to London, one full of patriotic ardour; she upheld the verdict of referendum that voted for Brexit, as an unprecedented democratic exercise quashing rumours of a second referendum which the whispering galleries of the Remain lobby are busy circulating.
The Confederation of British Industry, however, has warned that Brexit would have a negative impact on the country’s economy. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), described by Birmingham Erdington MP Jack Dromey as the ‘jewel in the crown of British manufacturing excellence,’ said it was committed to invest new technologies and products in Britain, having invested 4 billion pounds in the past eight years, but was looking to the government to negotiate the right deal for Breixt, otherwise, said Ralf Speth, JLR CEO, company profits would tumble with all the consequences, including the shifting of facilities to Europe.
Science start-transforming India
Mutating science into technology requires a skilled workforce, capital and market access. The abundance of science talent in India was never in doubt. Capital, however, was in short supply and the market appeared static. The encouraging news is that these obstacles are now being actively surmounted – happily, with significant success.
Thanks largely to the telecommunications revolution the route to the workplace, which is home, has become the hub to the marketplace. This, in part, explains the nation’s burgeoning Information Technology (IT) industry, and partly Business Process Management (BPM) outsourcing mainly to overseas clients over the past two decades has led to broader market access. IT and BPM services exports post 2000 have grown to a staggering $200 billion per year. In order to cope with ongoing challenges the industry is rising to the next technological level with Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Services, Data Mining, to stay relevant in the manner of, say, Apple, Google and Microsoft.
The Indian government has set up several incubators and accelerators across the country. A measure of private funding has been a welcome development, resulting in a stream of ventures in biotechnology, health care artificial intelligence and pure science. Funding remains an issue, as not enough money in research from the private sector has been noticeable to date.
This is where Indian start-ups come in to bridge the gap. Pathshodh, Yyome Biosciences, Bellatrix Aerospace, Tonbo Imaging, are start-ups in a range of products, from biotechnology to aerospace.
The BBC last weekend produced a TV riveting documentary – India: Fast Forward – on the technological revolution that is transforming the face of the country. This is, of course, not the full story. A German TV documentary exposed India’s debilitating rich-poor divide, the lack of affordable social, medical and educational services for the nation’s poor, also revealed India’s polluted rivers and degraded urban environment. Both films were top grade and complimentary, underscoring India’s pains of labour in the epic transition to modernity.
