Coming on top of each other, the four seismic developments of the second half of the 1980s completed the alienation of the upper-caste Hindus from the Congress and the Janata Dal.
Nonsense! Had Rajiv built the Ram Temple he'd have returned to power. He had gained in shrewdness and would be on the qui vive for back-stabbers within his own Cabinet.
But what gave staying power to this shift was a simultaneous, and sudden, rise of insecurity in the intermediate bourgeoisie that industrialisation within a closed, autarchic economy had created in the previous half century.
This 'intermediate bourgeoisie' commanded little in the way of votes. Once Rajiv played the Ram Mandir card, he would himself be seen as 'Maryada Purush'. Indeed, the widow Sonia was seen as a 'pativrata' and commanded votes for that reason. Incidentally, after Rahul returned to India she announced that if Congress came to power, she would put the Sankaracharya who had performed her grha pravesh ceremony in charge of constructing the Temple, once the court case was decided.
This had begun almost surreptitiously with the removal of several restrictions on imports in 1978
remittances from the Gulf improved the balance of payments position and created a bit of fiscal headroom
and a relaxation of India’s industrial licensing laws in 1980 and 1981.
Because of the second oil shock and Sanjay- and later Rajiv's- lack of attachment to doctrinaire Socialism.
But the pace of economic liberalisation had accelerated dramatically in 1985
why did Rajiv get such a big majority? Does Jha think it was because the 'intermediate bourgeoisie voted for him in their hundreds of millions?' No. The answer was that Sikhs had killed Hindus and then the INC slaughtered Sikhs the way it had slaughtered Muslims back in 1947.
after Rajiv Gandhi became the prime minister. In his first budget, presented in February 1985, the government abolished industrial licensing for about half of all industrial production. In the next few months, it also took a large number of controls on industrial modernisation off the rule book, reduced duties drastically on the import of capital goods, and eased the import of new technology.
The problem with the 'license permit Raj' was that if officials don't turn up to extract bribes if the owner of the enterprise is a gangster- more particularly one who has become an MLA or a Minister. Why pay the 'Stationary Bandit' when killing his minions means you can extort money which would otherwise go to the Government?
This rapid shift away from the crippling controls of the previous three decades,
those 'controls' were a response to a hard currency crunch. But controls can be circumvented. The black economy grows. At some point the local gangsters can capture the local government machinery. Dynasties die nasty if their scions keep getting shot or blown up.
and the consequent return of modern industry into the consumer goods sector, fulfilled the essential economic requirement for the development of the fascist impulse,
Jha believes 'fascist impulse' is caused by eating nice things or having nice clothes to wear. As for people buying TVs or smart-phones- that will cause them to turn into Nazi Werewolves! Worse yet, the fucking Hindus might come to power! Queen Victoria would be totes not amused.
for it turned the seemingly solid ground that near-total import control, and a chronically shortage-ridden market, had created for the small and medium sized, owner-managed enterprises into quicksand.
Where? In Patna- where Jha was born? No. Jha is probably talking about Jharkhand which is known for its millions of SMEs run by members of the 'intermediate bourgeoisie'.
The shock this gave to it was almost as great as the shock that the onset of the 1930s’ Great Depression had given to the Mittelstand in Germany.
Very true. Jharkhand's Mittelstand was just like that of Germany. It also had great physicists like Albert Einstein and was famous for making Mercedes cars.
At first sight, India’s industrial landscape in the 1980s and ’90s did not look very different from that of other industrialised countries during the middle stages of their transformation into modern market economies.
India didn't have much industrial landscape and lots of it was shittier in 1985 than it had been in 1955.
There was the same sprinkling of large, professionally managed, multi-product firms at the top of the hierarchy,
Where? India had 75 percent rural population in 1980. Even in 1875 Germany had 67 percent. At that time, there wasn't a single 'professionally managed' conglomerate in the whole country. Its biggest company was Krupp which employed 13,000 people. Tata, which now employs over a million, had 100,000 employees in 1950. The plain fact is, India had a Managing Agency system which Germany did not. The first German conglomerate was only created in 1925. Jha is talking utter nonsense.
followed by a body of medium and small enterprises that grew wider as their size became smaller.
Jha is talking about Japanese style 'duality'. Compare India with Japan by all means. Explain why Nehru did not allow the wage-good sector- textiles in particular- to grow in the Japanese manner. Then talk about his failure to create a technocratic cadre which would function like the Japanese MITI. Finally explain that for poor people and poor countries, Budgets matter. Plans do not.
But the similarity in the size distribution of industry was deceptive.
Not if the comparator was a 'dual economy' with a large pre-modern or informal, low productivity, sector.
For while in countries where the growth of capitalism had been unhindered, or actively encouraged by the state (as in the “tiger” economies of East and Southeast Asia), the relationship between small and large industry had evolved naturally from competition to symbiosis.
Jha means there was 'dis-integration' such that Marshallian industrial districts were created. But for that to happen you need more subsidiarity. China can create 'sock cities'- i.e. a city which just makes socks- because the local Party leadership has more freedom of action and a high incentive to achieve success. India has a demoralized bureaucracy and a gangsterish political class.
As technology progressed and the minimum scale of efficient production expanded, small industry turned increasingly from producing final goods sold directly to the consumers to providing components, ancillaries and specialised services for supply to the large industrial companies that produced and marketed the finished goods.
This also happens in India so as to get round labour laws and militant Trade Unions.
In sharp contrast, the vast majority of small-scale producers in India continued to produce final goods for the market in direct competition with the now liberated large-scale enterprises till the very end of the twentieth century.
Karsanbhai Patel, a lab technician, started making and selling washing powder in 1969. He is now worth six billion dollars. He delivered his product on his own bicycle. The reason people bought Nirma washing powder was because he sold at 3 Rs. per kilo. Surf sold at 13 Rs.
The reason for this “arrested development” of capitalism was
A Gujju wasn't PM and a Sikh wasn't in charge of Economic policy. Instead you had useless, Oxbridge educated, Brahmins like Jha.
a singular, and in retrospect tragic, convergence of economic and political compulsions.
Fuck off! Nehru said in his Autobiography that he wanted to 'Brahminize' Indian politics- i.e. send the 'banias' (businessmen) packing. He got Congress to embrace Socialism and shitting yourself if the Chinese invade. This is very Brahminical. If only the Germans had shat themselves, Hitler- who was Austrian- would have fucked off to Vienna holding his nose. For Nazism to triumph, it is enough if Oxbridge educated Brahmins don't shit themselves incessantly.
Before 1957, the Indian government had followed a relatively open trade policy because it had accumulated large sterling balances during the Second World War, and therefore did not foresee the need to husband the use of foreign exchange.
Hilarious! You have some money in the bank. You don't foresee that it will run out if you keep pissing it against a wall. Still, so long as you shit yourself incessantly, you will be safe from turning into a Nazi werewolf. Why is Modi not shitting himself? Is it because he is actually Adolph Hitler? YES! Kindly listen to Rahul Baba. This is what he is trying to tell you in-between wailing for Mummy to come change his diaper.
Its first Five Year Plan (1952–57), therefore, emphasised infrastructure, community development and agriculture, and left industrial development to the private sector.
Nope. It reserved some areas for the small scale sector. True mill production did grow to meet the shortfall caused by the War but, by 1956, Mills were banned from installing new looms save against export orders. Clearly, Nehru feared that the financiers of the INC during the freedom struggle might switch support to some rival of his.
The bottom line is that India decided to defy three different economic principles
1) Comparative advantage. India should have specialized in labour intensive, not capital intensive, industies
2) Economies of scope and scale. India decided this was unfair to the small producer.
3) Budgets are 'constraints'. You can't do linear algebra or dynamic programming or other such mathsy stuff unless you know what the fucking constraint is ahead of time.
Economic autarchy was ushered in by the Second Five Year Plan, which emphasised self-reliance
i.e. begging.
and gave priority to the establishment of heavy industry.
by begging foreigners to come and set up steel plants for us.
This would have required tighter controls on non-essential imports anyway, but what really brought about a sudden and complete ban on all non-essential imports was a severe foreign exchange crisis in 1957 when the government belatedly realised that it had exhausted its sterling balances and was not exporting enough to carry on with its earlier liberal import policies.
They weren't liberal. Nobody had liberal policies back in those days.
Since this crisis occurred before the World Bank had shifted its focus from European reconstruction to economic development in the Third World, and before the era of liberal US economic aid ushered in by President John F Kennedy,
It began in 1958 under Eisenhower.
the government had no option but to pull down the shutters and ban virtually all but the most essential imports.
Fuck off! It could have stopped pissing money away on white elephant projects and a useless and stupid bureaucracy. Spend money on what earns you money. Simples.
The near-complete ban on the import of consumer goods that followed created the market space for the rapid rise of an intermediate industrial class in the country.
No. It created space for shitty products.
At that time, India produced very little for export except textiles, jute, tea and a few other simple manufactures.
It should have concentrated on textiles and leather goods. The world was much poorer back then.
Everything from lead pencils to liquor was imported.
India had started producing pencils in the Thirties. Liquor, too, was produced.
Importers had seen the foreign exchange crunch coming at least a year before the government, and had spared no effort to corner as many import licences as possible. When the government lowered the boom, these licences began to change hands at fantastic premia. Premia of 1,000 and 1,200 per cent were not unknown.
If that money was invested in manufacturing industry, no great harm was done. The fact is most countries had some sort of permit system back then because of the Bretton Woods strait jacket.
Those with import licences received a windfall profit of staggering dimensions overnight. Denied future imports, many of them asked their suppliers to help them set up manufacturing units for what they had previously been importing. Most manufacturers obliged, and sent equipment, often second-hand machinery that was to have been phased out, and took equity shares in the enterprise in return. In this way, commercial capital was converted into industrial capital overnight, and a new class of small and medium-sized enterprises was created.
The question was whether the momentum could be kept up. Unfortunately, Congress had committed itself to Socialism. Thus the feeling was that sooner or later the means of production would be Nationalized.
For the next ten years, hectic import substitution enabled industrial production to grow at an average of 9 per cent a year.
So, there was import substitution. The problem was quality and lack of incentive to tap economies of scope and scale.
By the time the foreign exchange crisis petered out, this new owner-manager class was firmly established and ready to make a bid for power.
Not really. It was content to seek a patron within the Ruling party. There was a drift to patrimonalism.
Its opportunity arose when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi abolished the privy purses of the princes and, in 1969, enacted the ban on company donations to political parties, described earlier, without creating an alternative mode of financing elections and electoral politics. Since political parties, including the Congress, still had to meet their expenses, they still needed large amounts of money, but now in cash. The intermediate class stepped into the breach and began to provide it.
So, the real problem was 'black money'. What created the black economy? High taxes.
The change in the financial patrons of the Congress party did not take long to get reflected in economic policy.
The question is why India decided to strangle the organized sector in Textiles back in the Fifties. There was no great policy shift. All we can say is that repeated hard currency crunches affected economic policy. The big change was the Green Revolution which empowered dominant agricultural castes. Indian politics was about power ebbing away from the Educationally forward Caste to the 'Backward Castes'. Charan Singh saw himself as the farmers' champion and considered his elevation to the top job as their victory.
Professionally managed businesses found it far more difficult to give unaccounted donations. When they said so, they were told openly by party treasurers and fundraisers to find ways of doing so “or else…”. The relationship between government and big business therefore, changed overnight from one of cosy co-operation to one of barely concealed hostility.
Money was less of an issue back then because you had populist leaders like JP who could mobilize the masses without spending any money. However, it was suspected that the RSS provided the organizational skills. There was some truth to this but backward caste leaders showed they were in the driver's seat.
The businessmen who found no difficulty in giving cash were the owner-managers of small enterprises and traders.
In other words, Politics was an extortion racket.
This class led an insecure existence at the best of times. Its control over the market was virtually non-existent; its access to bank finance at reasonable rates of interest was limited; its dependence upon the government for infrastructure – power, water, communications and transport – was total. Consequently, its “transaction costs” (the bribes it had to pay) were higher.
Guess who doesn't have to pay bribes? The Mafia Don. He can extort the extortionist. If the State is a 'stationary bandit', bandits will try to take over the state.
It lived in mortal dread of any policy change that would enable modern enterprise to enter the fields it had chalked out for itself. Mrs Gandhi’s ban on company donations to political parties, and its consequent need for clandestine donations, gave it the opportunity to convert its growing economic power into political power. Within a decade, the Congress had transformed itself from being an ally of modern, large-scale industry into an ally of this new, intermediate bourgeoisie.
Interestingly, in the mid Seventies, Communist MPs helped the Tatas fight off extortion attempts by local politicians in Jamshedpur. Still, growth in the organized sector was anaemic. Jha does not mention the elephant in the room- viz. remittances from the Gulf, etc.- which slowly but surely lifted the hard currency constraint.
Between 1970 and 1973, the Indira Gandhi government passed a spate of laws that cut all remaining links with big business, and turned India into an inward-looking siege economy. A Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act defined monopoly companies as those with total assets of more than $7 million and those that controlled more than one-third of the market for a product. An Industrial Licensing Policy amendment act barred “big business” from investing in any but the core sector, ie, basic metals, heavy engineering and chemicals industries. It permitted even this only when they could further prove that the proposed investment would not make them a monopolist.
This scarcely mattered to the vast majority of districts where there was no organized sector to speak off. In any case, labour militancy was quite capable of killing off industry all by itself.
By an amendment to the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, the government also banned foreign investment except in 100 per cent export-oriented ventures. Its most draconian enactment was a “conversion clause” that permitted investment banks to convert 40 per cent of their loans to any company into equity shares, at their discretion.
The obvious workaround was 'pyramiding'. Essentially, the industrialist put in very little money of his own while retaining control rights and relied on Nationalized Banks and the LIC for funds.
Since the promoters seldom owned more than a third of the equity capital of the company, and since all the three institutional investors in the country – the Industrial Development Bank of India, the Industrial Finance Corporation and the Life Insurance Corporation – were almost wholly owned by the state, the conversion clause became a way to nationalise private concerns by the back door.
Though, if they became 'sick' (i.e. insolvent) the Government would step in by the front door.
This sowed an enormous fear of growth itself in large industrial enterprises, which was heightened when these institutional investors began to convert the loans they had given to the most successful enterprises into equity instead of those given to struggling companies to keep them afloat.
Why keep struggling companies afloat? Let them sink or swim.
Not surprisingly, the conversion clause put an end to new large-scale investment by private companies for more than a decade.
The best of monopoly profits is a quiet life. If there is a ten year waiting list for your product, you don't need to come into the office more than once or twice a year.
As if all this did not give sufficient protection to small-scale industry, the government also explicitly reserved more and more products for manufacture exclusively by it. The number of such products rose from an already high 177 in 1972 to 837 in 1983. So comprehensive was this list that it virtually blocked any large company from entering the consumer goods sector.
Unless, like Ambani, they paid off the right people and pretended they were actually running a cottage industry.
From garments to electrical goods, to transistor radios and household appliances, virtually every Fast Moving Consumer Good (FMCG) was reserved for the small-scale sector. Thus, in the mid-eighties, this “intermediate” manufacturing sector had 853,000 industrial units, produced 5,000 consumer products, employed 9.6 million workers and, including the output of the public sector, accounted for over 40 per cent of total industrial output.
So, India was a 'dual' economy where the unorganized sector, with low productivity, was gaining ground against the organized sector. Consider Nirma washing powder. A Chemistry teacher started making soap powder in a bucket and selling it on his bicycle. Soon it was able to take market share from the big boys.
By 1984, therefore, the structure of Indian industry bore a remarkable resemblance to that of Germany at the end of the 1920s
No. Some German companies were the best in their field. No Indian company could claim this.
when the Great Depression began, and of Iran in the 1960s and ’70s.
Iran had an 'absorption problem'- viz. too much hard currency making it difficult to absorb imports. This was inflationary. India had the reverse problem.
In the 1980s, India had entered the middle stages of transformation into an industrialised economy.
That had happened in the Thirties. It was in the Fifties that policy decisions were made which would result in deindustrialization though this was not obvious at the time.
It had the same overt hostility towards big business; the same handful of favoured cronies among such businessmen; the same elaborate regime of controls to curb the growth of big professionally managed concerns;
Was Mrs. Gandhi wrong to end the Managing Agency system? Probably. An African American economist who studied them at the beginning of the Fifties found they were doing technology transfer and did enjoy economies of scope and scale.
the same xenophobia towards foreign businesses; the same autarchic determination to be self-reliant at any cost; the same benevolent attitude towards small enterprise; and the same elaborate structure of party middlemen to “fix things” with the government, that Germany had had in the 1930s and Iran in the 1970s.
Germany had a big 'shake out' before Hitler came to power. An LSE trained economist committed the unthinkable blunder of ordering a monetary contraction at the trough of the cycle! After that Rearmament restored full employment though there was repressed inflation. Some economists believe that the economy would have collapsed one way or another.
While this “intermediate class” was protected from competition by the Congress, and could rely on it to pass and maintain laws that would curb the growth of the large industrial houses and keep foreign investors out, it had no need to look for another patron.
Yet it did do so. Jha can't explain why Congress started to lose its grip on State after State. The rise of 'dominant' agricultural castes was the main factor. It is foolish to compare India- with a very small manufacturing sector in most Districts- with Germany in the Thirties.
Thus, Hindu nationalism remained without the third essential ingredient that had been responsible for the rise of fascism in Europe.
Jha is obsessed with Fascism. He doesn't understand that it only exists where there is a Communist threat and the Army supports an Il Duce or Fuhrer whose thugs will beat up the Commies on their behalf.
Paradoxically, that ingredient was provided by the success of Rajiv Gandhi’s partial liberalisation in 1985.
Rajiv was a Dynast. But his mother had used Fascist methods to establish Dynasticism. North Korea too was Dynastic. Ba'athist 'Secular, Socialist' parties too were trying to become dynastic.
This led to a burst of investment in industry that pushed manufacturing growth up from 4.9 per cent between 1980 and 1984 to 10.4 per cent between 1985 and 1990.
At a time of relatively low oil prices. Then came the Kuwait war oil shock.
The rapid growth of income, and consumer demand, that resulted from this jump in production softened the impact of the initial economic liberalization upon the intermediate stratum of manufacturers. But this proved a temporary reprieve.
Once again, it was the Balance of Payments which was the major constraint. The country ran out of hard currency. Fortunately, Manmohan was able to take advantage of the crisis to push through reforms. Edwin Lim of the World Bank was eager to offer low interest loans to finance infrastructure investment as he had done in China. Sadly, the activist 'andolanjivis' were able to block this with the result that Ambanis and Adanis used money from Nationalized Bank to do the needful and become very very rich.
Rajiv had lifted controls only upon the domestic market and left India’s highly overvalued exchange rate untouched.
This is the crux of the matter. Irma Adelman had persuaded the South Koreans to devalue at the beginning of the Sixties. India only did so when the UK devalued. In both countries, the administration became unpopular. India then had to double down on import substitution. Manmohan understood this was folly. By changing the focus from the exchange rate to the quantity of foreign currency reserves, he enabled India to start thinking in terms of export led growth. The success of IT and BPO was unexpected and had a big impact on the trajectory of some Southern States.
This kept Indian manufacturers out of the world market and ensured that little of the jump in production went into exports. The vast bulk – nine tenths or more – went into satisfying the pent-up demand of a growing middle class within the country
don't forget the role of remittances in this. The NRI became a dominant factor. Bollywood started churning out feel-good, consumerist, films for this market. The problem with Gandhian Socialism is that if people can run away from it, they do so with vim and vigour.
and pre-empted the further expansion of the small-scale enterprises.
Some grew and grew. Others remained small. Quality of entrepreneurship is a constraint on growth.
Almost overnight, therefore, the intermediate class lost a large part of the comforting, secure “economy of permanent shortages” that Mrs Indira Gandhi had created for it between 1970 and 1973.
Their sons and daughters had already run away to greener pastures. Anyway, investing in real estate was safer and more profitable. The good thing about living in a Malthusian shithole is that land become scarcer and scarcer.
But that was only the first blow.
The 'arhatiya' (agricultural middle-men) have shown the world that they can defeat even the great Narendra Modi who was obliged to scrap this reform of farm laws. The plain fact is that an economic interest group is not powerless in India. There is a lot it can do to fight back against even the most popular Prime Minister. On the other hand, if a particular economic niche is disappearing for technological reasons, there is very little politicians can do to protect the affected class of people.
As for bleating about Germany in the Thirties and the spectre of Fascism- that is simply silly. India had a choice between Dynasticism and Democracy. I don't say it chose Democracy. I do say that assassination tempers autocracy. Rahul is in no hurry to become Prime Minister because he vividly remembers what happened to his Granny and his Daddy.
The Wire.in, carries a different excerpt from Jha's book
Over the decade since Narendra Modi has been the prime minister of India, at the head of a BJP government supported by a few local allies in the states of northern India, he has worked diligently to complete the conversion of India into a fascist nation-state—a process that began during his tenure as chief minister of Gujarat in 2002.
A fascist state is a one party state. It has a dictator whose word is law. Modi is a popular leader of one party among many. True, the opposition has not been able to offer an alternative Prime Ministerial candidate, but that is because of Rahul's dog in the manger attitude. He doesn't want the top job, because he is afraid of assassination but he won't let anyone else have it either. Still, Kharge was able to organize pre-poll pacts with other parties and thus the BJP does not have a majority in this party.
The history of this transformation has been written in painstaking detail by scores of
ignorant blathershites.
academics, journalists and defenders of civil rights and democracy, several of whom have been languishing in prison without bail, but also without having been charged with any specific crime, for years.
The UAPA act was passed in 1967 and has been used by various different administrations. If Courts refuse to grant bail it is because there is a prima facie case against the accused.
How Modi has completed the journey to fascism is described in broad brush strokes below:
Modi took the first step towards dismantling the pluralist, ethnically diverse democracy that his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had taken so much pride in,
He became CM of Gujarat under Vajpayee. Indeed, he was known as 'junior Vajpayee'. If Modi is a villain, Vajpayee must be one too.
within weeks of coming to power. His first step in this direction was seemingly innocuous: this was to instal TV cameras at the entrance to every ministry, and withdraw the PIB (Press Information Bureau) card which allowed special correspondents and other senior journalists to visit ministries and talk to civil servants without having to reveal their own, or their hosts’, identity.
In other words, Modi ensured that Ministers would not brief against each other. He avoided Manmohan's mistake. The Cabinet may have been divided but it appeared unified. That was a good thing.
The PIB card had been created deliberately by India’s first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, to encourage public debate within an infant democracy by allowing senior journalists to explore different views on impending policy decisions within the government, at a time when there was virtually no opposition to the Congress in parliament.
He passed the First Amendment which reduced the freedom of expression.
The Modi government destroyed this freedom barely a fortnight after it came to power.
Nonsense! The fact is, we live in a technological age. You don't need to physically visit a person. You can 'Facetime' them.
A further amendment during his second term, that required the officer to also come to the reception desk and sign his or her visitor in, ended all communication between government and the public except what Modi wanted the latter to hear.
Did Modi confiscate smartphones from officials? No. They could 'Facetime' with anyone they liked.
Modi’s second step towards the centralisation of power was to create a system of monthly meetings between his departmental ministers and senior officers, and nominees of the BJP, in which the party would ‘oversee’ the functioning of the ministry. This transferred much of the decision-making power of government from the ministries to the party.
That is democratic. Political parties take political decisions. Civil servants implement policy.
Modi’s next target was the audio-visual media, which he tamed by using every instrument at his command, from the denial of advertisements to selected print and TV channels,
as has always happened
to the framing of never-proved charges of tax evasion and money laundering against their promoters, under which it ‘attached’ (seized) their passports, and all their property till as long as the case lasted. Prannoy and Radhika Roy, the founders of NDTV, India’s first commercial TV channel, were his first targets. Despite this, NDTV retained its independence till November 2022, but succumbed because by then all advertisers had deserted it, presumably under government pressure. Faced with imminent bankruptcy and the loss of the hundreds of jobs of its technical staff, the Roys resigned from the board of the company in November 2022, and allowed NDTV to be purchased by the Adani Group, Modi’s principal financial supporters ever since his days in Gujarat. Since then, NDTV too has become a mouthpiece of Modi’s budding fascist regime.
The fact that a case is not proved does not mean no crime has occurred.
Modi’s third target was the judiciary, which he corrupted through the offer of lucrative post-retirement appointments to High Court and Supreme Court judges.
Again, this has always happened.
These ranged from the unprecedented appointment of a former chief justice of the Supreme Court of India, P. Sathasivam, to the governorship of Kerala, which we discussed in Chapter 12,
Jha does not mention S. Abdul Nazeer's appointment as Governor of Andhra Pradesh.
to the appointment of former Supreme Court judge A.M. Khanwilkar to the post of India’s Lokpal, its chief vigilance officer.
What's wrong with that? Surely, the Lokpal should know the law?
Other judges of the Supreme Court whom Modi similarly rewarded with post-retirement elevations and appointments are Chief Justices of the Supreme Court Ranjan Gogoi and Sharad Bobde, and Justice Arun Mishra.
Jha won't mention Nazeer because that goes against his narrative of Modi as an Islamophobe.
Modi also made three other, more insidious and—over the long run—even more destructive moves, one deliberate and two defined by sustained avoidance. But all were expressly designed to undermine India’s infinitely varied ethno-national, federal democracy.
India is not a Federation. It is a Union.
The first was that in all his years in power, Modi never held a single press conference.
So what? Technology has changed.
The second was that in those years, Modi also never held a meeting of the National Development Council
which was formed to implement the 5 year Plan. But the Planning Commission has been scrapped.
, a council of state chief ministers that had become the main forum for coordinating central and state policies after the Congress lost its dominant party status in 1989. During Modi’s decade, communication between the people and their government, and between the central and state governments on policy issues became strictly one-way.
No. It remains two way. What has gone is the Planning Commission.
But his most insidious assault on India’s federal structure was his replacement of the Planning Commission with the NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog.
The Planning Commission concentrated power in the hands of the PMO. It has gone because it was shit.
On the face of it, nothing changed: NITI Aayog continued to work from the same building as the Planning Commission; none of its staff were dismissed and no new staff was added. The change of name therefore looked like no more than another, petty, manifestation of the BJP’s obsession with ‘Hinduizing’ India.
Newflash! India is largely Hindu.
Beneath that deceptively innocuous change, however, Modi took away the Planning Commission’s most important function, and vested it in himself.
The PM already controlled the Commission.
This was the annual allocation of central Plan grants to the state governments. Till he came to power, this had been done by the Planning Commission on the basis of the oft-revised Gadgil formula for allocation based on factors like population, per capita income, and fiscal performance, aiming to promote balanced regional development, recommended five decades earlier by D.R. Gadgil, then deputy chairman of the Commission. Modi turned this allocation into his personal prerogative, and began lavishing the lion’s share of these grants upon BJP-ruled state governments, at the expense of states in which the BJP had been unable to extend its influence.
In other words, he didn't bother with revising some silly formula. This means he is a Nazi. He has suspended the Constitution and jailed his opponents
