Friday, June 29, 2018

Vox Populi Issue 237

VOX POPULI   
by 
 S Kamat
 as
 Aam Admi
          Issue: 237                       Date: 25.06.2018
            Visit: aamadmi.blogspot.com or aamadmivoices.blogspot.com

Contents:
1. BJP Fails In Kashmir
2. One Arvind Follows Another
3. TMC vs. BJP : Who's More Militant?
4. Cancer Cases On The Rise Near Atomic Power Plants In India

                                        BJP Fails In Kashmir

Pulling out of the coalition with PDP in J&K and allowing that government to fall is clearly the sign of BJP accepting that it failed in the troubled State. This is yet another negative mark on the report card of the BJP's ability to govern. Firstly the conception of a coalition with the PDP was at fault, since ideologies and objectives of the parties were completely different. This led to one blaming the other when anything went wrong in the trouble-torn State. The PDP took advantage of this fact to the hilt since if it was not the BJP at fault then it was the BJP at the Centre that was not doing enough or was to blame. Thus governance needs a foresight of the ability to remain in power and perform which the BJP sorely lacks. It is more of an opportunistic approach that the BJP follows as we have seen of cobbling up a government and we will manage as we go along. This self-serving approach of wanting to be compulsively in power does not work and hurts the interest of the people which we have seen across India. As for Kashmir with the law and order situation deteriorating the BJP would have found it inopportune to ask for Governor's rule therefore it was best to quit the government. Governor N N Vohra has in the next instance almost as if waiting in the wings asked forGovernor's rule in J&K which is a fait accompli now. 

                          One Arvind Follows Another

By giving the most school-boyish kind of reason of expecting a grandchild Arvind Subramanian has made his exit from the post of Chief Economic Advisor of the Government of India. One would have expected keeping in mind the gravitas of the chair that he was occupying that he should have come up with a more plausible reason for his exit. In any case irrespective of the reason, it is good that we have had both the Arvinds, Subramanian now and the Panagariya earlier leave. Contrary to the fact that these foreign based economists bring enhanced expertise and knowledge to the job in India, it is found that such expertise is not relevant in the Indian context both in concept as well in the possibility of implementation. Thus they end up as glorified advisors without any of their ideas being put into action. They also do not understand the mechanics of the working of Indian government and our infamous bureaucracy and tend to get ignored when it comes to decisions to be taken on any policy matter. Thus apart from the occasional press conference or being called to address some gathering or other these advisors find themselves twiddling their thumbs. Slowly disenchantment sets in followed by disappointment and then comes the act of preparing excuses to find a way out. This is how becoming a grandfather becomes reason enough to leave the post of the Chief Economic Advisor of the Government of India! The other angle to these people coming to India is not to benefit the country but to benefit themselves. Working as the Chief Economic Advisor of the Government of India or Vice Chairman of the NITI Aayog, the former Planning Commission, has its own prestige internationally considering on the economic front India is a focus country what with its high growth rates when other countries including China are dawdling. Handling the complexity of the  Indian economy, it is perceived that this experience is valuable because it is believed to be so challenging. That is why if your CV says worked in India it is good enough to be short-listed for prestigious international assignments as Raghuram Rajan has seen. Rajan was short-listed for the job of Governor of the Bank of England as reported in the media recently. So all these foreign based Indian economists come and accept India assignments to further their own careers and also to get the opportunity to come back home. While what we should be doing is that give these opportunities to our own India economists. A start has been made with Rajiv Kumar at the Niti Aayog and such other positions should be given to India based economists. These local people will have the expertise of the India story, they have been through the grind here, they are familiar with how things work here and are more likely to come up with proposals and policy measures that are more practical and implementable. One hopes that we will go this way for persons to be appointed as the Chief Economic Advisor and other similar positions from now on.

                                  TMC vs. BJP : Who's More Militant?

Mamata Banerjee calling the BJP a 'militant organisation' is like the pot calling the kettle black. TMC the party she leads has used violence as a primary method to come to power by its confrontational encounters with the Communists and since then using the very same methods to consolidate her hold on power and lately to combat the BJP in Bengal who have been trying to expand their support base there. Mamata Banerjee's upcoming trip to China as the head of an official delegation of the Govt. of India had to be postponed because of the lukewarm response from the Chinese side in setting up meetings with appropriate level officials within their government. Mamata Banerjee could well ponder whether the reason for this is the fact of the TMC having been accused of killing many Communists in the past. 
  

                         Cancer Cases On The Rise Near Atomic Power Plants In India

Media reports have indicated that cancer cases have shot up by more than 200% near the Kaiga Atomic Power Plant and adjoining areas in a study done over the period  2010-13 by the Tata Memorial Centre, the findings of which were released only recently. This goes to show that nuclear facilities near populated areas are a major risk to people including future generations. The Nuclear Power Board and the government remain in denial over the above findings. Their approach has been to pick holes in the report by saying that the report should have been more broad based and that incidence of cancer in any case among the Indian population has been on the rise for many reasons. This, however, does not take away the veracity that cancer has been affecting those who live in the proximity of facilities involved with the handling of nuclear energy. Therefore it is important that the government take cognizance of this fact and reverse the decisions to install larger capacities of nuclear power generation facilities across the country. Even for reasons other than the above there have been massive public protests about the nuclear power station coming up near Ratnagiri in Maharashtra as also lately about the expansion of the nuclear facility in Tarapur again in Maharashtra. Most of the nuclear power stations coming up in a new expansion program across India from Russian Cos., Westinghouse and the French Co. Areva need to be reviewed and the program shut down. This is for two reasons, the first is that these reactors particularly from the West are not even proven in their country of origin and who also do not use them then why should we become guinea pigs for these Cos. to prove their reactor plants. The second is that with our high population distribution near these proposed nuclear facilities we are inviting risks like Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl to happen. The incremental demand for power in the next decade at least we can plan to supply through renewables like solar energy and other sources which are safer and less risky. With technology upgradation in the areas like solar costs per unit for electrical power is comparable if not cheaper than that from thermal generation. Moreover renewable power plants have a faster capacity creation possibility. For these reasons the government should give a massive push for electricity generation through renewables. 

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Vox Populi Issue 236

                                                       VOX POPULI
by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
 Issue: 236                        Date: 18.06.2018
Visit: aamadmi.blogspot.com or aamadmivoices.blogspot.com
Contents:
1. The Greatest Show On Earth: World Cup Football Russia 2018
2. PSB Losses: Who's Paying For Them? & The Way Forward
3. You Should Not Have Activist Chief Ministers Like Arvind Kejriwal

The Greatest Show On Earth: World Cup Football Russia 2018
The greatest show on earth, World Cup Football Russia 2018 has begun. What a bang-on start it was for the host nation with a 5-0 drubbing that they inflicted on Saudi Arabia. Putin was all smiles sitting in the stadium alongside the Saudi Prince whose face one could see was getting longer and longer as the game progressed. After that the matches dropped down to the rather drab category with score lines matching them except for the Battle of the Iberias with Ronaldo, the exceptional opportunistic player that he is - though I personally do not like him too much, being a die-hard fan of Messi - single-handedly with his hat-trick drew Portugal level to Span at 3-3. Messi disappointed with the missed penalty bringing credence to his country's charge that he does not do much playing for his home nation, though this year in the qualifier rounds he was better than the earlier years. Starting off the World Cup on a bad note is not going to help Messi in his attempt to win the Golden Boot in what is rumoured to be his last year for turning out for his country. With Belgium's Red Devil’s pulling off a 3-0 victory the score lines are up and hope that continues as the tournament progresses. In the first few days this World Cup is putting one seems the form table or the line-up on those that are expected to take home the Jules Rimet trophy, on its head with Germany losing to Mexico, Argentina put on ice by Iceland and then Brazil held by the Swiss to a draw. There does not seem a dark horse yet but only time will tell. 

PSB Losses: Who's Paying For Them? & The Way Forward
The whopping Rs. 87,000 crores loss or close to it declared by the PSB's in the 2017-18 financial year should be an eye-opener to the government that serious action is indeed required to revamp our banking system. When the issue of capital infusion came up about a year ago, it was projected that with this some of the banks which were not doing well, would be able to recover and progressively come out of the red. 

These statements were made with insiders in the banking system knowing full well that the sword of Damocles was hovering over their heads in the form of the NPA's. That bird of bad loans has now come home to roost at almost all the banks. Misinformation has become a trend now and the tendency to suppress negative issues while projecting the positives in an exaggerated manner has become a common methodology and the banks and government using these methods is nothing new. Almost every single bank mostly PSB's has been affected which speaks of the rot within the banking system. It has got nothing to do with business risk or market downturn which could be true in some exceptional cases but generally the bad loans have been a result of collusion between the bankers and the trade and industry to defraud public money. They therefore need to be held responsible and accountable for their misdeeds. A case in point is the Nirav Modi scam where the PNB officials played along and Modi took advantage of this to the hilt almost to the extent of bringing PNB down. Just like hordes of vultures are attracted to carrion so also is the wilful defaulters portfolio at PNB increasing as reported at some Rs. 1450 crores since looking at the Nirav Modi the borrowers are adopting the philosophy that PNB is fair game. The malaise that has struck the PSB's has also affected the private sector banks like shown in the ICICI scam involving the Kochhar family and the Videocon group.

Therefore it is time that the government brought the guilty in the banking system who are responsible for the creation of the NPA's to book and proceeded criminally against them. No one should be spared and irrespective of the level that they occupy at the banks, criminal charges should be brought against them. This should apply to all bankers including those that that have retired as well as those serving currently. Unless this is done the message will not go across that the government means business on the NPA issue. The government in the recent past has been chary of instituting enquiries on the NPA's for fear of it being called a witch-hunt and generating a scare scenario among bankers. The bankers on their part have been blackmailing the government by slowing down sanctions of new institutional credit and claiming and also obtaining safety guarantees from legal action against them. This cat and mouse game has to stop and direct action initiated to prosecute all those within the banking system who are guilty of generating the NPA's and also action need be taken against the borrowers who may have resorted to illegal means in obtaining and/or utilising the loans. 

In the meanwhile the banks have been year by year writing off the NPA's, one does not know whether this is being done selectively where convenience deals have been worked out between the bankers and the borrowers. The question is who is bearing the cost of these write-offs and in turn the NPA's, it is the common man or the average savings account holder at the bank whose cost of using banking services has year by year been going up and the banks keeps on levying conditions like unreasonable minimum balance and charges fees on one pretext or another. This to make a category of people selectively rich the average citizen's pocket is being picked by the government run banks. We are not bringing the private banks into this since there you have a choice of moving away to other banks. While with PSB's where the terms and conditions are more or less uniform across different banks there is not much choice left for the account holder but to pay through his nose. 

The methodology that can be adopted is to expand upon the present process of auctioning off the assets of the borrower Co. to recover part of the NPA's by transferring all the NPA's to a Bad Loan Corporation (BLC), staff the BLC with specialist persons competent in finance and sector-wise expertise, and then progressively take action to prune the NPA's. This will take a generation to resolve but a start would have been made. The banking system relieved of the NPA's and the people connected with generating them out of the way, the banks and the industry can start off on a clean slate  to give the country a banking system it deserves which should be reactive, responsive to customers, efficient and cost-effective. This is the only way forward otherwise we will continue to be pussy-footing on issues while watching each of the PSB's going into bankruptcy over a period of time. This process requires political will also and it is time that the incumbent government belled the cat instead of being weighed down with concerns of this election or that.

                           You Should Not Have Activist Chief Ministers Like Arvind Kejriwal

When activists like Arvind Kejriwal become Chief Ministers they are unfortunately unable to forget their previous background. When Kejriwal was part of the Anna Hazare movement which led to the formation of the Aam Aadmi Party the same activist orientation was seen. Further back when you sought an opinion from Kejriwal, he would somehow manage to link it to RTI which was his strength or competence area. For activists results are not important. For them the process of protest and the fact that there is a protest is important. Thus after becoming the Chief Minister of Delhi with the AAP getting a stupendous majority instead of assessing his position, analysing it properly and then deciding upon a work strategy to meet his constitutional responsibilities, Kejriwal started ranting against Modi and the LG and the Central government. Now Kejriwal is not without intelligence but it was patently clear that he was following a wrong strategy of blaming the Centre for everything. This kind of thing is done when a person is convinced that he cannot deliver on the job and then manufactures excuses to throw a smokescreen around himself in the hope that he can divert the attention of the people. Everyone in Kejriwal's opinion is wrong. Now this cannot happen since if you tend to blame everyone then you in fact turn the spotlight back to yourself and your party and people will start asking the question - What's wrong with these guys? The present support that Kejriwal has been receiving from the TMC, JD(S), Telugu Desam and the CPI(M) is only opportunistic keeping a view on the 2019 elections and to wave the flag of Opposition solidarity. If the upcoming Lok Sabha Elections were not there none of these parties would have even given Kejriwal a glance.

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