Bharat Rakshak

NEW DELHI: The world's second-largest standing Army is fast running out of ammunition. Tanks and air defence units, artillery batteries and infantry soldiers are all facing the crunch. The Army is, obviously, tight-lipped on the ammunition shortage. But a simple calculation reveals that at present, it may not have enough ammunition reserves to sustain a full-fledged war for even 20 days.

The norm is that war wastage reserves (WWR) should be adequate for 40 days of intense fighting, with 21 days earmarked for ammunition with shorter shelf-life. But according to a recent statement by Army chief General Bikram Singh, if there is proper budgetary support for the new ammunition roadmap, the Army should have 50 per cent WWR and three years of training ammunition by 2015.

In other words, the Army is at not even 50 per cent WWR right now, which means it does not have adequate reserves to fight a war for even 20 days. It is expected to reach 100 per cent WWR only by 2019.

With the huge shortages adversely impacting both operational readiness and training, the 1.18-million strong Indian Army is desperate that the new government which takes charge in May actively supports its new ammunition roadmap of around Rs 19,250 crore, both in terms of fund allocations and timelines.

This becomes all the more crucial since the Army has kick-started the raising of the new XVII Mountain Strike Corps, which will come into full force with over 90,000 soldiers over the next seven years, to add some much-needed teeth to its deterrence posture against China. This alone will see the raising of 32 new infantry battalions, apart from armoured, artillery and air defence units.

The Army already has 13 corps, which includes the three "strike" ones headquartered at Mathura (I Corps), Ambala (II Corps) and Bhopal (XXI Corps). They add up to 382 infantry battalions, 281 artillery, 63 armoured, 44 mechanized and 56 air defence regiments, apart from other support arms like signals, engineers, ordnance and the like.

Plans didn't take off

On one hand, almost none of its critical modernization projects for new howitzers, helicopters, anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) or air defence guns have materialized till now. On the other, operational hollowness or "critical" deficiencies in ammunition and fuses for existing weapon systems have built up over the last decade.

"There is a glaring mismatch between operational and training requirements vis-a-vis budget allocations, imports and the inadequate production capacity of our 39 ordnance factories," said a senior officer.

The Army holds ammunition, which is costly and also has shelf-life, at three levels. The "first line" of operational and training ammunition is held at the battalion level in the shape of "on weapon and unit reserves", while the "second line" is with higher formations like brigades and divisions.

Finally, there is the WWR, held in a dispersed manner.

With defence minister AK Antony sanctioning the roadmap, the next government will have to take it forward.

NEW DELHI: It's still over eight weeks to go before the results of the Lok Sabha election are out, but the bureaucracy has already begun laying the ground for a smooth takeover by the next government. So, while the ministers hit the campaign trail, the secretariat has immersed itself in drawing up a brief for the incoming government regarding the ongoing initiatives, intended action plan and pending decisions of each department.

The routine exercise - undertaken towards the end of term of each government, so as to ensure that the next government can hit the ground running - was initiated on March 13 by cabinet secretary Ajit Seth. Seth, sources in the government told TOI, wrote to the secretaries of all Central ministries, asking them to prepare a note detailing the budget allocation for their respective departments, their ongoing schemes, issues of national and international importance on which action needed to be taken as well as pending Cabinet notes.

The ministries were directed to mention the pending projects, if there were any delays in their implementation and the reasons of delay. Seth also asked the secretaries concerned to prepare a list of utilized funds under separate heads as well as the non-utilised funds along with reasons.

The cabinet secretary's communication set March 25 as the deadline for the ministries/departments to submit their respective dossiers. Sources said the notes would be compiled into an exhaustive brief for the next government to help it prioritise issues to be addressed soon after it takes over the reins at the Centre. While this does not mean much in case the same government is voted back to power, in the event of a new dispensation being voted in, the detailed department-wise briefing would go a long way in ensuring that transition hiccups do not slow down key ongoing schemes as well as pending issues warranting immediate attention.

NEW DELHI: The new Indian Prime Minister will have an opportunity to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at least three times between June and December apart from a possible visit by Xi to India later this year. In comparison, he will have barely a couple of potential "pull asides" or bilateral meetings with US President Barack Obama.

The new Prime Minister will have to hit the ground running where India's global engagement is concerned. Barely a month after the new government takes shape, the PM will be in Brazil in July for the BRICS summit — the first time the new leader will engage with the world, fittingly with other developing nations. This will be the first time the new PM will meet with Xi of China, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Jacob Zuma of South Africa and Vladimir Putin of Russia. Post Crimea, Russia is likely to get tossed out of other international forums like G20 and G8.

This will be followed by the UN general assembly in September, which will be a sort of coming out party for the Indian PM. Given the high decibel elections, there will be huge international interest in meeting the person in charge. In November, the new PM will engage with his Asian neighbours at the East Asia Summit which will be held in Myanmar. This will be followed by the G20 summit in Brisbane where the Indian PM will have an opportunity to present his economic vision.

At both these multilateral events, the new Indian leader has the opportunity to meet the Chinese president again. The Chinese government has indicated to the foreign ministry that Xi could visit India later this year for a bilateral summit. The Indian Vice-President is likely to travel to China earlier which may be followed by a Xi visit.

The EAS and G20 will also give the Indian PM an opportunity to meet Obama. If the next prime minister is indeed Narendra Modi, a meeting with the US president will have other implications, given the decade-long visa ban on Modi.

Interestingly, the new PM is scheduled to travel out for two important bilateral visits — to Japan and to Russia. Shiinzo Abe was not only chief guest at Republic Day this year, India and Japan are transforming their bilateral relationship in a way that will have important implications for India's own evolution as well as Asian power equations. India and Japan have instituted an annual summit routine, which have held even during the years when Japan changed prime ministers every few months.

Its also the turn of Putin to trek to India for the annual India-Russia summit. The agreement for Kudankulam 3 and 4 may well be inked before the next government assumes office, but Russia will remain an important partner, particularly as Putin will probably once again become a western pariah.

It is only right that they put their money behind Modi for he has promised a revolutionary change and is working towards it tirelessly. In the international sphere, for a country to demonstrate its strength and thereby for it to be taken seriously, a confident leader is a condition precedent who can take firm and clear decisions. Modi has relentlessly spelt out his vision while the rest of the putative shirkers have hid behind their pseudo-secular credentials.

While his foreign policy cannot obviously be hinging on it, it is important to mention here that the crux of his foreign policy is mainly greater state participation in the country’s foreign policy. He argued that it would only be fair for individual states to foster economic and political ties with countries with which they have had some form of historical or cultural association. His game-changing formula seeks for Puducherry to pair up with France, Goa to ease up to Portugal and such like. This is notable as cultural linkages are a rather formidable tool of soft power in international diplomacy. To this end, he has been rather proactive in building ties with foreign nations in order to bring more opportunities to his state.

Modi’s recent successes in his foreign visits to China, Japan, Singapore underscore his reliance on trade and other commercial ties with the rest of Asia and this goes onto show how the central narrative of his foreign policy shall be economics. His thrust areas seem to be prioritising boosting trade and revitalising India’s depressed economy.

Modi has been equally assertive on India’s national interests when he articulated emphatically China’s recent policy of expansionism in a public meeting in Arunachal Pradesh, that Indian state which China dubs as its own backyard. Such a statement does not take away the importance that Modi places on China as a trading partner. In his time as the chief minister of Gujarat, he has made four trips to the country already.

Modi is a man of great pragmatic vision. To aid him in his task of steering the country through the complex quagmire of international politics, is Vajpayee’s perfect fusion of peace (shanti) and power (shakti).

In keeping with his nationalist inclinations, Modi is expected to bring in a veritable blend of defense and diplomacy. With the strong religious and strategic moorings that India already shares with Israel and other major defence suppliers like France, Australia, Mr Modi has already set out a grand design for maritime diplomacy in the Indian Ocean region. He has helped organise maritime security and anti-piracy conferences in his home-state Gujarat consistently over the years where representatives both defence and civilian, from Australia, UK, France, Mozambique, Japan, New Zealand graced the occasion.

Taken together, all these elements would suggest that Modi’s vision for India’s external policy is singularly focused on restoring India to its lost dynamism and grandeur. With him at the helm, India can expect to see a practical approach to its external ties with other countries predicated on improving trade and greater defence co-operation.

This is a time ripe for India to be at the forefront of international developments and Modi’s ambitious vision is bound to captivate an entire generation of Indians, provided it is assertive in its implementation.

TKiran wrote:As unprecedental numbers of voters this time would be young (less than 30 years of age) a psychological analysis is needed
1. Most of the voters have seen a transition from a relatively stable and prosperous India to a very unstable and economically downward spiralling India. They want qick-fixes to everything (sudden stoppage of Inflation, sudden increases to their incomes, sudden respect to Indians from its neighbours and from western countries, sudden increases to opportunities to make quick bucks etc). Anything relatively slow will increase anxiety and restlessness in this age group

After a messed up three-year process and running through Rs 11,000 crore, the great discovery of a unique identity number for each Indian is practically dumped with the Supreme Court verdict that on Monday disallowed the government from sharing data with the CBI.

{However recall that MongoDB was compiling the data and is ownded by US govt agencies. So what about that aspect? If SC can prevent the UIDAI to share data with CBI, what about the data already shared with US govt!}


Moreover, a sting operation by Cobrapost revealed that the process is riddled with holes with practically anybody, even illegal immigrants, can obtain a unique Indian ID by paying bribes.

The main users of the unique ID, also called Aadhaar, were two: biometric data of bonafide Indian citizens (that could have been used by a number of government agencies for a variety of reasons including fight against terror and criminal investigations) and possibility of direct transfer of various subsidies as cash to the beneficiaries. Of course, the Aadhaar authorities haven’t yet said that they would share the biometric data with anyone and even appeared to be against the idea.

The Supreme Court order on Monday was two pronged - one, don’t share biometric data with any third party (say CBI) without the consent of the the registered person (the Indian citizen); and two, don’t exclude anybody any service or benefit because they don’t have an Aadhaar card. In a single stroke, the multibillion dollar project Aadhaar fell flat on its face.

So the Aadhaar, as many predicted, becomes a badly produced photo-ID card which has absolutely no extra value that a driving license or passport has. It’s not even as useful as a ration card or a voter ID card because they have specific purposes. Going by what the BJP has said about the card in the past, the whole process is most likely to be scrapped altogether.

The critics of the Aadhaar has always maintained that the agency engaged in the process, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), might share the biometric information of people with other government agencies thereby violating people’s right to privacy. They also thought that using the biometric data, people might be singled out, tracked, harassed and have their rights violated.

As it happened in the case on which the Supreme Court passed orders on Monday, the CBI might ask for data from the UIDAI for investigation even though the citizens of the country voluntary gave their biometrics for social benefits and national identification, and not to be subjected to investigation.

Right from the beginning, rights activists had raised this issue, but the architect of the Aadhaar Nandan Nilekani, who is now a Congress politician, as well as the UPA government brandished the cost-benefit analysis of the card.

"Even after taking all costs into account, and making modest assumptions about leakages, of about 7-12 percent of the value of the transfer/subsidy, we find that the Aadhaar project would yield an internal rate of return in real terms of 52.85 percent to the government,” said the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in its cost-benefit analysis in November 2012.

The cost of building Aadhaar and integrating it with the government schemes was estimated at Rs 37,182 crores, said the government. Besides its proposed tangible results such as avoidance of leakages and lower transaction costs, it also claimed intangible benefits such as empowerment, inclusion and labour mobility.

{They spend tangible money for intangible benefits and calim its cost benefit analysis!!! Looks like AADHAR was a ITVTy scam for the urban computer illiterates.}



But what rolled out over the last three years was a messy process although Nilekani claims that 60 crore people have been issued the card. Media reports showed that at many places, it failed to capture biometrics because many people involved in hard labour didn't have either usable finger prints or irises. In addition, the way the enrolment was outsourced led to faulty processes and corruption as the Cobrapost sting revealed on Monday.

People who have enrolled can vouch for the deep holes in the process because of the ease with which they could change addresses and other data. The data entry also was replete with faults that resulted in names and addresses having to be corrected over and over again.

Anyway, that’s about the efficiency of the process. The real story is about its utility.

The problem with the Aadhaar is that it was a technocratic fix to an international prescription to correct an Indian problem of leakages. It belongs to the cash transfer club - the fiscal deficit obsessed internationalists such as IMF and World Bank, and neo-liberals which like liquid cash rather than tangible social protection services. Cash is good for the market and can also put an end to age-old public distribution systems and social support in kind. Cash is an easier instrument to handle.

For cash transfer to function, this club requires a better identification system and associated bank accounts. The cat was out of the bag, when a recent IMF publication appreciated the work of the UIDAI. There is no other reason why every citizen of a large, complex and federal country such as India necessarily needs a national identification system. At best, it should have been an opt-in process in which people who feel like taking a national ID - similar to a passport - could opt for one.

The problem with Nilekani’s model was that it was imposed on people - who didn’t want it - with an ulterior motive, the motive of collecting their biometrics and playing with their rightful entitlements to please the cash transfer apostles. Thankfully the Supreme Court order has asked both Nilekani and the UPA to take a walk in the park.

This should have been the logical end of Aadhaar and it should have happened earlier because it could have saved a lot of money and people’s hardship. It’s for the government to decide whether it still wants to move ahead with the process now that the apex court has rendered it useless for the purposes it was built.

The BJP had problems with the card, particularly since it violated the right to privacy. Given the party’s proclivity to take impetuous steps in handling law and order and terror, they might find the biometric data of people useful in a number ways. Will it stick to its earlier stand and junk it, or engage in some double speak and use it against people? Additionally, some of the economists that are waiting jump in, once the NDA is in power, are more right-wing than all the neo-liberals we have seen so far. They might find Aadhaar useful for cash transfers.

Either way - whether the BJP goes ahead or not - for practical purposes the Aadhaar is junked. Every Indian should thank the Supreme Court for that.

Sonugn wrote:Maoists leadership should be subjected to surgical commando raids and their overground workers should be named, shamed and booked.

Supply routes for NE terrorist groups should be stooped.

ramana wrote:IPC needs to be reformed along with a slew of national police agencies. An all points review of the current setup is needed.
I don't support the PC's terrorist organization of NCTC to scare the recalitrant state govts.

Domestic Intelligence should stick to intelligence and not policing.

RamaY wrote:Modi should focus on simple Governance Efficiency and Economy in first round (2014-19) without going into large ticket items

Focus Groups
Industrialists - Quality Infra & Access to capital & most importantly access to Technology & R&D>> Creates employment & growth
Youth - Skill Development, Employment Opportunities, R&D and access to capital
Middle Class - No IT <10L , Edu opportunities. Setup 50 IITs, IIMs, AIIMS each. Keep $5-10B annual education expenditure within India. Improve Civic Infra.
Farmers - Cheap Loans, Farm Insurance, Market Access, Fair Prices, Cold-storage godowns and access to small agri-tools
Women - Security, Education & employment
Cities - Civic Infra
Villages - Electricity, Water, Roads, Health Care, Quality Education & Toilets

Controls
- Ban on Foreign funds to religious institutions & NGOs
- Ban on Meat Exports

Focus areas
- Law & Order
- Infrastructure (including Civic Infra)
- Energy Security
- Agriculture
- Tourism

Goals for next 5yrs
- Balanced Budget
- $1TN investment in Infrastructure
- 100 smart cities (look at this list for most likely candidates (Covers hardly 200-250M citizens)
- 24hr electricity, drinking water, Road access, internet, quality education & primary health care to every village
- World-class Civic Infra (Law & Order, Medical & Emergency services, on-line governance for all govt services etc.,)
- An Army that can take on two-sided war while fighting an insurgency inside
- 20GW solar energy by 2019 (3 yrs before current solar mission)

Future Areas: setup committees for the following (2nd term) policy areas
- Indian Penal Code
- State Reorganization - what should be the basis
- Energy independence
- India-centric Foreign Policy
- Education Policy for next century

ramana wrote:One big issue is the AADHAR card scheme has collapsed on Supreme Court decision. Its odd that Rs. 11,000 crores were spent and yet it was legally unsound. If so what was the purpose?Supreme Court quashes AADHAR schemeBut what rolled out over the last three years was a messy process although Nilekani claims that 60 crore people have been issued the card. Media reports showed that at many places, it failed to cTher way - whether the BJP goes ahead or not - for practical purposes the Aadhaar is junked. Every Indian should thank the Supreme Court for that.

ramana wrote:I think the grand mandrins of US policy want a revivial of a new Cold War. I heard a cacophony of experts on NPR and all were invoking images of Cold War to describe the curretn situation when its hardly that. I think the West's economic revival is floundering and they need a war economy to revive it.

Ending Pakistan’s misery
The new government should move towards dismantling the terrorist neighbour.
By N.V. Subramanian (26 March 2014)

New Delhi: What follows does not emerge from official briefing. This writer has not met anyone in the Central government in years. But the new Indian administration that will take power in the middle of this year would be sensibly advised to heed the subsequent analysis.

Like it or not, the world is entering a Second Cold War. The Second Cold War is not like the First. This is not a war of ideologies. It is more like one monied ideology clashing with another. There is no Left and Right today. Just shades of the Right. China is to the Right. Russia, too, is. So is the United States and all of Western Europe.

But don’t imagine that a war that is not ideological cannot be fought viciously. At bottom, there were no classical ideological differences among the powers that went to war from 1914 to 1918 and dragged the world into it. The rulers of Europe where it was primarily fought were all related. Kaiser Wilhelm II was Queen Victoria’s grandson, the son of her eldest and favourite daughter. The Tsar of Russia was Wilhelm’s cousin at a remove. They tarted up their reasons to go to war with ideology. There was none at the core. Even so, the First World War was bloody. Trench warfare and the beginnings of mobile warfare inaugurated the sort of total war that the Nazis took to conclusion in the Second World War.

When there is no reason to fight, the fight can become bloodier. This is counterintuitive but true.

But in other respects, the Second Cold War is following the script of the First. There is an attempt to divide the world into blocs. And the most egregious example of this is the United States’ secretary of state’s message to Pakistan on the 74th anniversary of the Lahore Resolution that laid the foundation for its independence. Diplomats have found particularly noteworthy John Kerry’s reference to Mohammed Ali Jinnah in the message as Quaid-e-Azam, a first in many decades. “We have a stake in Pakistan’s success,” said Kerry, “just as Pakistan has a stake in ours.”

Telling. Very telling.

During the First Cold War, Pakistan was in the American bloc, permitting itself to be turned a “frontline state” against Soviet action in Afghanistan, which was provoked by United States’ meddling in the first place. From the so-called mujahideen war to the dominance of the Taliban was a small leap of consummate devilry and medievalism, which consumed Afghanistan, turned South Asia into a laboratory of jihad, and gutted Pakistan.

The United States is about to leave Afghanistan, condemning it once again to Taliban rule. It needs Pakistan for its exit. It needs Pakistan also to join the old bloc against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Presumably, some new jihad will be applied in Russian territory and on its restive Asian frontiers, for which the Pakistan army and the Inter-Services Intelligence would be drafted. Don’t be surprised if they haven’t already been.

In its imperialism, the United States can be downright evil.

And when Pakistan participates in United States’ misadventures (its jihadis are in Syria as well), it seeks to gain strategic advantages over India. For its aid to United States’ and Saudi actions in Afghanistan, the Ronald Reagan administration turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s military nuclear programme. The United States will not lift a finger when Pakistan’s terrorism against India is encouraged and emboldened by its rising stakes in America’s Second Cold War with Russia.

What should India do, apart from having supported Russia on Crimea?

India should revive the abandoned plan to break up Pakistan. Sind and Baluchistan are struggling for independence in the artificial state called Pakistan, and the North West Frontier Province would promptly join Afghanistan given the opportunity, leaving Punjab isolated and infirm. By itself, Punjab would be unable to retain the deterrent, already dispersed for reasons of security. Pakistani Punjabi revanchism will die.

A war with Pakistan would not bring this about. In a conventional war, Pakistan’s deterrent would act as a limiting factor. The war has to be unconventional, bloodless, with no harm envisaged for civilian populations, but with the clear aim to Balkanize Pakistan. There is scarcely another way to contain Pakistan’s nuclear and terrorist threats to India and to recover Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.

The Manmohan Singh government hoped improved trade relations would reduce Pakistani hostilities towards India. The Pakistan military has impeded the process. An authoritative new book by Carlotta Gall confirms that the Inter-Services Intelligence was behind the July 2008 suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, in which 58 persons died, including two senior Indian officials, a brigadier-ranked military attache, and an Indian Foreign Service officer. More than once, India has clarified the nature of its humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. But Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishments have remained unremittingly hostile to this country. They have employed sections of the Taliban to attack Indian interests.

Since the mid-1990s at least, India has been inactive on the covert front with respect to Pakistan. Pakistan’s new mantra is that a Narendra Modi government would be able to continue Atal Behari Vajpayee’s peace process, forgetting the treachery of Kargil. Nawaz Sharief may be sincere in his aims although this writer would instinctively distrust Pakistanis in power. But even assuming Sharief is interested in normalizing ties, the military would not permit it. And India can make no concessions on Kashmir. No government can. The status quo does not satisfy Pakistan.

So what is the Indian option?

It must alter the status quo.

The plans are all there. They need implementation. A determined prime minister who works in the long term can address the Pakistan threat.

This is not the official Indian position. Not yet. But Pakistan has forfeited the sanction to remain even in its moth-eaten circumstance. It needs to be put out of its misery, a dysfunctional grouping of statelets masquerading as a nation, which holds the world to ransom.


N.V.Subramanian is Editor, www.newsinsight.net and writes on politics and strategic affairs. He has authored two novels, University of Love (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) and Courtesan of Storms (Har-Anand, Delhi). Email: [email protected]

Jhujar wrote: Few People registered with Aadhar now receiving email from EJ powered WorldVision. This Nilekani chap sold the data to them.

All undertakings presuppose the treasury. Before anything, therefore, he should attend to the treasury.”These words of advice come from the "Arthashastra," a famous treatise on statecraft written around the end of the fourth century BC by the ruthlessly pragmatic Indian courtier Kautilya (“The Crooked One”) and described recently by one scholar as “the world’s first manual on political economy.”Kautilya’s words were taken very seriously across the many centuries and empires of classical and medieval India, even as India's share of the world economy grew (see a history of world GDP here). Waves of colonization between the 17th and 20th century then drained the Indian economy of much of its strength, as did the disparities in technological capability created by the Industrial Revolution. The democracy that replaced the British Raj in 1947 turned India into a nation-state with its own economic ideology. Sadly, following the intellectual fashion of the time, it chose socialism.India's myopic interpretation of socialism as a means to lift several hundred million people out of poverty meant that the materialist conception of life and fiscal rigor articulated by Kautilya largely got short shrift. It finally took a balance-of-payments crisis for India to open its doors to the world economy in 1991.
India has been one of the world’s fastest growing economies over the last two decades. Its growth slowed recently, though, as the ruling center-left coalition government focused on ambitious expenditure plans (especially on giant social-security programs) rather than economic growth, which is needed to create jobs for a country that's adding 1 million new people every month to its workforce.Given India’s transitional place in the world economy, the most important person in the next government, which will be elected in May, won't be the prime minister but the finance minister. What’s more, India probably has the most demanding economic policy post in the world, involving the management of the economic well-being, expectations and security for almost a fifth of world's population.
When considering the protection and expanding power of India’s treasury, every finance minister must take into account the country's vast agricultural base, heavily dependent on the vagaries of India’s monsoon season; its burgeoning industrial and real estate sector, hobbled by poor infrastructure and crony capitalism; the many millions of its citizens still desperately below the poverty line and in need of carefully targeted assistance from the state; the steadily growing foreign investment and susceptibility to shocks in the world economy and currency volatility that come with it; a large current account deficit rooted in India’s dependence on expensive petroleum imports; a minuscule tax base in which less than 1 percent of the workforce pays income-tax; an informal economy that is larger than its formal economy; the development of large industrial projects and their impact on the subsistence economies linked to India’s rivers and forests that continue to sustain millions of people; and an electorate (along with influential voices in his or her own party) that still reflexively craves the security of a government job and subsidies for food, power, cooking gas and petroleum.Each time the finance minister makes a decision he or she can expect accusations of incompetence, naivete, delusion, wickedness, or of being a slave to foreign paymasters and the neoliberal order. Let’s just say that it isn't a job that, for all his pragmatism and ambition, even Kautilya would have wanted.
Still we should make a short list of candidates.Opinion polls suggest that the principal opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and its allies may win a narrow majority in the coming elections. So the first place to look would be within the rank-and-file of the BJP. The only time the BJP has been in power was from 1998-2004, and for four of those years the Finance Ministry was entrusted to Yashwant Sinha.Sinha displayed a shrewd understanding of India’s economic opportunities and bottlenecks in a globalizing world. His 2007 account of his time as finance minister, Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer (“swadeshi” is a word associated with Gandhian thought, and subsequently with the economic propositions of the Indian right, emphasizing economic self-reliance) is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the Indian economy. The economist Surjit Bhalla said Sinha is “among the top two finance ministers this country has produced.” I see no reason to disagree.There’s a catch, though, for someone like Sinha becoming finance minister again. He represents the most progressive faction of a party that heeds the advice of a Hindu-nationalist parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which, at least in the field of economics, can be so antediluvian as to be ridiculous. (When I went to the BJP’s national convention early in 2010, there was an elaborate demonstration of how India could become a superpower through cow power.)A forward-thinking BJP finance minister would need to be protected by a strong prime minister from the economic nuts and nationalists of his own party. But Narendra Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate is an RSS man at heart. That may be the reason that Sinha, the best man for the job, might not want it.Then again, there’s a small chance that a BJP-led government might not come to power in May. Perhaps a “Third Front” coalition India's smaller political parties, including several parties representing the left, could pip it to the post with support from the Congress. In that case, the resident economist of the Indian left, Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India, could become the next finance minister.In a recent interview in the business newspaper Mint, Yechury laid out the road map for “a more inclusive, sustainable growth trajectory,” essentially ending tax breaks to corporations and spending the “legitimate tax” on public infrastructure projects to provide a stimulus to the economy. This sounds like a recipe for returning India to the dreaded “Hindu rate of growth,” about 3.5 percent, that it experienced from the 1950s through the 1970s.Of course, the finance minister’s job is one for a specialist who doesn't necessarily need to be an elected politician. That means we can cast our net a bit wider and sift through India’s large cast of professional economists. Jagdish Bhagwati, who recently sparred with Amartya Sen over the subject of economic growth, may be one possibility. Raghuram Rajan has one of the highest profiles of any Indian economist. But last year he became governor of India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, and it may be too early for him to leave.
Of all the Indian economists, though, I most admire Kaushik Basu, currently chief economist of the World Bank. Basu’s book "Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics," is a masterly, if necessarily dense, examination of the assumptions and fallacies of Adam Smith’s economic theories. Not only has he published a large body of work on the economic realities in India, he also served briefly as the chief economic adviser to the current government -- unfortunately not a position with a lot of power.He’s strongly in favor of foreign direct investment in retail, which will please the country's next wave of foreign investors, and he understands that more economic power gives India a stronger negotiating position globally, from foreign policy to international trade treaties to the arts. India in the 21st century needs a new Kautilya to head its treasury, and his modern avatar might well be a man named Kaushik.

Jhujar wrote:

Chandrahas chaudhary of Bloomberg wrote:That means we can cast our net a bit wider and sift through India’s large cast of professional economists. Jagdish Bhagwati, who recently sparred with Amartya Sen over the subject of economic growth, may be one possibility.

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Of all the Indian economists, though, I most admire Kaushik Basu, currently chief economist of the World Bank. Basu’s book "Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics," is a masterly, if necessarily dense, examination of the assumptions and fallacies of Adam Smith’s economic theories. Not only has he published a large body of work on the economic realities in India, he also served briefly as the chief economic adviser to the current government -- unfortunately not a position with a lot of power.He’s strongly in favor of foreign direct investment in retail, which will please the country's next wave of foreign investors, and he understands that more economic power gives India a stronger negotiating position globally, from foreign policy to international trade treaties to the arts. India in the 21st century needs a new Kautilya to head its treasury, and his modern avatar might well be a man named Kaushik.

panduranghari wrote:

Jhujar wrote: [I sincerely hope we don't left these western stooges weaken us from within. I won't be surprised if Basu is feted by the west within the next 2 months to bring his name up in discussion.

muraliravi wrote:http://m.timesofindia.com/lok-sabha-ele ... 523742.cms

The new government should make it a priority to end this nonsensical first past the post system. It is farce that has been forced on the Indian public. This system is the culprit that makes elections caste based rather than being fought on issues of development or security or economics. The new govt needs to end this and replace it with a run off election at a constituency level if the 1st round topper does not get 50% of the vote.