Reflections

Asian Juggernaut is a book with a massive, vast scope - aiming for covering the challenges, prospects and history of a massive continent; a continent that for most of History of the Earth was the predominant one. This is historical fact; this also means that its strategic analysis will also have to be of that level of depth. Secondly, Asia is a modern strategic playground for European / American powers, and is likely to   remain as such for the foreseeable future. It has had the status of a plaything of the West for 300+ years now. Thirdly, thanks largely to Western interference – aided in no small measure by Asian Naivete & Power Hunger, it is a continent deeply divided. We Asians Fail to realise that we need to be cohesive, unitary, one – giving the West the opportunity to use us for their means & ends. That wont change. THE MISSES None of these facts is going to change anytime soon. Neither are they going to be forgotten - in that light, this book has more mi...

I went into reading The Verdict - Decoding India’s Elections with 0 expectations, anticipation, excitement, and a thirst of knowledge alongwith a concomitant increase in my understanding of my India, and its electoral realities. After reading it, I can honestly state that the anticipation, the excitement was worth it; the thirst of knowledge as well as my understanding or at least appreciation of the Indian Electoral realities and the trendlines has been increased by a significant extent. And yes, it does help us decode the elections! THE BOOK This is a book on, primarily, Elections in   India, Predictors, The art of Analysing, Opinion Polls / Pre-Election Polls / Exit Polls more than anything else. It goes deep into the polls, the method that should be adopted, the method/s that is / are in practice, and the analysis of the same. It gives a detailed explanation alongwith a comprehensive statewise analysis in the process. That said, to be completely honest, the book also ...

Between You And Me – Flight To Societal Moksha by Atul Khanna Among the many books on society and politics that I have read and reviewed – the current one under review, “ Between You And Me – Flight To Societal Moksha by Atul Khanna ” is easily the hardest to classify, and even harder to rate. In fact, for some days after reading it, I could find no words to even pen a review, as I myself was not clear whether to praise it, or not to praise it! And yet, several days later, I still cannot shake off the contents of the book, that somehow, somewhere touched a deep chord, and a deep seated desire… THE BOOK I would rather not say a single word, and move onto Analysis and Review section of this article – this is a book that should be a discovery, something to be taken up with no idea of its contents and zero expectations; however, given that readers prefer some context, I hereby present a ridiculously short summary of the central concept of this tome. I sincerely advise the...

Yet again, our nation has been shocked by a heinous terrorist attack – at Pulwama, martyring more than 40 of our brave CRPF personnel in the prime of life. My heart – numb with shock, can only pray to the Almighty to give strength to their families in this dark hour. Let us, before we analyse our options, spend a minute to think of what these families have lost; with grief in my heart, to those braves, I can only say : shat shat naman … may you Rest In Peace! MOVING AHEAD In this terrible hour, let us do our best to keep calm. This does not mean I recommend inaction; rather, let us allow our Government-   it is an excellent Government – to do its Job. Give them time and space to deal with the terror on their own terms. I do not advocate we forgive and / or forget; just that we remain calm, and confident that our Government is there to respond and deal with this . Building vocal pressure towards any particular response method – there are plenty of options {look below}...

One of the most talked about topics in the economics realm in India is the ongoing effort to formalize the informal sectors of the economy, bring everything into ship-shape and into the tax net; ensure registration, increase tax compliance and so on.  Let us consider the MSME sector and the informal sector. This employs the maximum people. You cannot call it an issue; you cannot just summarize non tax compliance as an issue and simply formalize. The thing is, the entire current structure as it exists - warts and all; performs a few functions : 1) First, it employs people. The concept of formalization will perforce lead to layoffs, and in the absence of proper handling will lead to massive social problems, and human problems. 2) Second, it is a supplier, vendor, customer etc of larger corporates and customers 3) The current system as it exists is a part of the overall competitive and cost structure and has extensive upstream and downstream dependencies THE N...

Ease of Doing Business: we can look at this ranking in two ways : one, as a political tool, analyzing Party A did this so ranking improved; or Party B didn’t do this, which is why we were bad – or indeed, Party A didn’t so as great as they claim for x,y,z reasons. The second way is use it to introspect, and ask ourselves, regardless of ranking, What can we do as a nation along these parameters, and how can we benefit by doing those steps? In other words, let us de-link politics from this exercise, at least for the purposes of this exercise, and go deep into the parameters of what constitutes Ease of Doing Business. EODB INTRODUCED But first, let us settle this Ease of Doing Business matter, and put it in the proper perspective. First, this is a matter of ranking – not an absolute ; your rank can improve by virtue of factors not in your control. Second, this ranking is measured in two cities in India – Mumbai and Delhi. By no stretch of imagination can these two citie...