Ladakh Flash Point

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Gatekeeper

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The problem with India is that it's run by Brahmins and Vaishya, not Kshatriya and Shudras. If it were run by a substantial Kshatriya-Shudra alliance, they'd be on the same wavelength as China; the Kshatriyas are the traditional political rulers of India alongside their military castes, and the Shudra caste is their traditional working class. For that, Kshatriya-Shudras, read Confucian Communist in a Chinese mode. The Brahmins are too abstract and theoretical, and Vaishya tend to economic dominance. A Kshatriya-Shudra alliance, in contrast, would be left and progressive based on its constituents (military elites tend to be less conservative than civilian elites because being too conservative gets you killed on the battlefield, Shudras are a potential hotbed of class struggle and worker consciousness).

The big drag on India is the traditional social structure, i.e, the caste system results in massive oppression and human capital wastage. You have Brahmins who pay lip service to anti-Brahmanism (the ideology against the caste system), but in practice they're its beneficiaries and don't want to put in too much effort to bring it down.

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The idea that India would have 4:3 the strength of China is based on a best-case scenario, i.e, it assumes both India and China can successfully modernize and develop. With the caste system in (partial) place, India is not going to be able to successfully modernize and develop unless they do something about it. But let's say they fix it. The 4:3 strength is what the Indians are counting on, but the 4:3 strength isn't sufficient for India to take aggressive action against China vis-a-vis the Arthashastra. So the Indian foreign policy vis-a-vis China is just plain stupid.

The caste system is the biggest abuser of human rights. Yet you don't hear a peep from the western nations about this. Where's armnisty international? Where's the Nobel price?
 

Gatekeeper

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A huge population is a big structural disadvantage for India. India is not a big market for anything (well, maybe gold) despite of its large population. The largely uneducated and undernourished young people are not productive workers, and therefore are not meaningful consumers. India would need to bootstrap itself, either internally or externally. But the global market is not large enough for such a large, low-skilled or no-skilled population. India has been very successful with IT and service outsourcing boom over the last two decades. How many people does the industry employ in India? A couple of millions, in a nation of 1.4 billion, with a revenue somewhat over $100 billions. And the industry has peaked now. Traditionally, manufacturing would be the only promising industry, but, alas, it's a bit too late in the game. So many countries are competing for the same industry. Plus mass manufacturing jobs are increasingly automated and AI'd away. In order to bootstrap internally and attract large-scale FDI, India would have to change drastically their societal and political systems (democracy is not enough); in fact, nothing short of revolution will do given where they. Frankly, it's unfair and unrealistic to expect India or any large country to undergo such changes in a reasonable time frame.

Then, if those young people do not get employed productively in their primes, they will become liability to the society and family when they become old. It would further drag down their chance of taking off down the road.

I'm not trying to bash Indian people; we all know that there are many outstanding Indians and I've persoanlly met many of them. The problem is not individual, it's systemic and structural.
Exactly, this is were a lot of lay person who thinks this uneducated/under educated mass of young people is an asset had better re-think again.

This is why multinationals decided to set up factories in China, Vietnam, Indonesia. Etc. Just having a mass of uneducated people is not enough. If it was, India would be the super duper power it aspire to long time ago, let alone 2020 superpower.
 

steel21

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The fundamental problem with India is that their higher ups think Western powers will back them up unconditionally. They thought so during Doklam and they still think so now despite evidence to the contrary.

Even if Western powers sides with them, how da f'k is that going to materialize into tangible tactical advantage. There is a lot of "hope" and aspirations in that OPSPLAN.
 

steel21

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For one they won't run out of ammo in a week if western powers are willing to resupply them.
Well, it's not like TRANSCOM's going to air drop directly to the Indian formations on the ground. So there is still a sizeable logistic gap from port of entry to the chamber of INSAS rifle.
 

Nobonita Barua

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It's not even that. Current IMF figures show Bangladesh behind India per capita.

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The issue is about growth for this year, no doubt due to the fact that India has had a heavier lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19 than Bangladesh, which has affected its economy heavily.
Ya nice bla bla bla bla bla.

2 facts -
First, We got through hell in 1971. We had to start over, everything was ruined after that bloody war.Indians got their country in a begging bowl in 1949. That's almost 2 decade difference.

Second, Despite all the 8-9% recent growth india saw(considering it has any truth in it) , our per capita in last half decade has been closer to their with a difference of barely 200-300 usd. Not to mention, we pretty much lead in every social indicators including income equality among all major economies here. There is Maldives & Sri Lanka above us i think, they are a bit smaller. But i ain't gonna use that as an excuse. In another decade & half we will surpass Sri Lanka to have second biggest per income after Maldives, probably in lesser time.

Now coming back to this indian comparison, India really never was a primary comparison factor/point for us. All the love letters from here to India is basically from Hasina government. People here are barely bothered about India.
Covid is once in a life time situation. A calculation re-adjustment with 10 usd difference doesn't mean anything. It's the Indians running news articles & you tube videos full day after that IMF report which barely worth anything.

There is no need to get so defensive for your "world's biggest democracy" pal. Or you are worried that india is going to be World's biggest failed democracy? putting another blot in your long list of failed democracy export list?
Tell your buddy no to be worried about us, because we sure aren't bothered about them.
 
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bomberman

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Hope this help...

The Next China? India Must First Beat Bangladesh
Andy Mukherjee
Fri, October 16, 2020, 8:00 PM EDT


(Bloomberg Opinion) -- India’s Covid-19 economic gloom turned into despair this week, on news that its per capita gross domestic product may be lower for 2020 than in neighboring Bangladesh.(1)
“Any emerging economy doing well is good news,” Kaushik Basu, a former World Bank chief economist, tweeted after the International Monetary Fund updated its World Economic Outlook. “But it's shocking that India, which had a lead of 25% five years ago, is now trailing.”
Ever since it began opening up the economy in the 1990s, India’s dream has been to emulate China’s rapid expansion. After three decades of persevering with that campaign, slipping behind Bangladesh hurts its global image. The West wants a meaningful counterweight to China, but that partnership will be predicated on India not getting stuck in a lower-middle-income trap.
The relative underperformance may also dent self-confidence. If a country with large-power ambitions is beaten in its own backyard — by a smaller nation it helped liberate in 1971 by going to war with Pakistan — its influence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean could wane.
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Where have things gone wrong? The coronavirus pandemic is definitely to blame. Bangladesh’s new infections peaked in mid-June, while India’s daily case numbers are starting to taper only now, after hitting a record high for any country. With 165 million people, Bangladesh has recorded fewer than 5,600 Covid-19 deaths. While India has eight times the population, it has 20 times the fatalities. What’s worse, the severe economic lockdown India imposed to stop the spread of the disease is set to wipe out 10.3% of real output, according to the IMF. That’s nearly 2.5 times the loss the global economy is expected to suffer.
Fiscal squeamishness, an undercapitalized financial system and a multiyear investment funk would all delay India’s post-Covid demand recovery. Worse, even without the pandemic, India might have eventually lost the race to Bangladesh. The reason is nested in a new paper by economist Shoumitro Chatterjee of Pennsylvania State University and Arvind Subramanian, formerly India’s chief economic adviser, titled “India’s Export-Led Growth: Exemplar and Exception.”
Consider first the exceptionalism of India’s growth. Bangladesh is doing well because it’s following the path of previous Asian tigers. Its slice of low-skilled goods exports is in line with its share of poor-country working-age population. Vietnam is punching slightly above its weight. But basically, both are taking a leaf out of China’s playbook. The People’s Republic held on to high GDP growth for decades by carving out for itself a far bigger dominance of low-skilled goods manufacturing than warranted by the size of its labor pool.
India, however, has gone the other way, choosing not to produce the things that could have absorbed its working-age population of 1 billion into factory jobs. “India’s missing production in the key low-skill textiles and clothing sector amounts to $140 billion, which is about 5% of India’s GDP,” the authors say.
If half of India’s computer software exports in 2019 ceased to exist, there would be a furor. But that $60 billion loss would have been the same as the foregone exports annually from low-skill production. It’s real, and yet nobody wants to talk about it. Policymakers don’t want to acknowledge that the shoes and apparel factories that were never born — or were forced to close down — could also have earned dollars and created mass employment. They would have provided a pathway for permanent rural-to-urban migration in a way that jobs that require higher levels of education and training never can. Bangladesh has two out of five women of working age in the labor force, double India’s 21% participation rate.
A bigger danger is that instead of taking corrective action, politicians may double down on past mistakes and seek salvation in autarky: “Poorer than Bangladesh? Never mind. We can erect barriers to imports and make stuff for the domestic economy. Let’s create jobs that way.” Suddenly, the 1960s and ’70s slogan of self-reliance is making a return in economic policy.
It’s in dispelling this pessimism that the Chatterjee-Subramanian study comes in handy again: Contrary to popular belief, India has been an exemplar of export-led growth, doing better than all countries except China and Vietnam. The glass is more than half full.
Trade has worked for the country. It’s the composition that’s wrong, because of an unusual “comparative advantage–defying specialization,” the researchers show. India exports a lot of high-skilled manufacturing goods and services, such as computer software. But as the world’s factory, China is now ceding room to others at the lower end of the spectrum. That is where India’s opportunity — and the competitive advantage of its cheap and not particularly healthy or well-educated labor — really lies.
Given the urgent challenge of creating at least 8 million jobs year after year, it’s also the country’s biggest post-pandemic headache.
(1) At their current prices, and not adjusted for the difference in the purchasing power of their local currencies.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services. He previously was a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews. He has also worked for the Straits Times, ET NOW and Bloomberg News.
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