Modinomics unleashed: A new economic model taking root!

Not very long ago, only some 6-7years back when there was a lot of debate on social media, print, and electronic media and on the ground among common people on the street as to what should be done at Sri Ram Janma Bhoomi when the dispute was simmering and there were a significant number of people who were of the opinion that the best way to put the dispute to rest was to build a hospital or an educational institution there! In hindsight, those opinions albeit well-meaning then, sound hollow and apologist today – it was not just a historical wrong that was corrected on that fateful day in November 2019, but a much bigger era dawned upon India that is in fact Bharat – an era of Sanatan Economics. 

Let me get into explaining it right away – it has been well over eventful 4 years of the second term of Modi Sarkar. Whilst there has been a lot of action on the ground with infrastructure building (roads, expressways, airports, ports, metro rail, dedicated freight corridors, rail electrification, semi-highspeed Vande Bharat and the upcoming Bullet Train and the train to Kashmir valley and Leh, all the traditional areas of the economy have seen multi-fold growth over the last 9 years); technology leapfrogging (indigenous 5G network and now plan for leading development in 6G, space and defence production and booming exports); domestic defence industry growth and export; digital infrastructure and digitalization of economy; et al – the list is very long. All of these will help grow India as an economy with solid infrastructure and booming manufacturing and exports that will feed into the global supply chain as a reliable partner. All of this is evident now to all and we can see it unfold before our eyes – but these are the traditional economic engines the world has come to see over the last 200 years, country after country – from Europe to America to Asia and now in India. This model of economic progress is time tested and we are seeing its results already in India and they will become pronounced more and more in the coming decades. 

However, this isn’t the focus of my piece – it’s what’s happening in the hinterland as well as the cultural renaissance that is silently sweeping the nation across its length and breadth. Bharat as we have known this nation as for many a millennium is slowly rising and will be unleashing its potential for the world to see and embrace in the coming millennia. We have all known that Bharat lives in her villages – over 60% of her people live there. The cultural renaissance is slowly not just sweeping Bharat but India today – you know what I mean, right? Apart from all the known metrics of economic developments as mentioned above, there is a new economic metric taking shape and deepening its roots again in Bharat – it’s her cultural heritage that’s centered around her Sanatan past, her temples that have been her centers of faith, spirituality, education, culture, festivals, and livelihood –in other words, the entire human lifecycle in all its manifestations – this new economic metric is Bharat’s culture & heritage infrastructure, her raison d'être. In the last 9 years, Modi Sarkar has invested nearly Rs 13,000 crores in this new economic metric. Places such as the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, Mahakaal Corridor, upcoming Ayodhya Sri Ram Mandir, Sri Krishn Janmasthali and Vrindavan, Pandharpur Corridor, development of Char Dham circuit, Hemkunt Sahib, Kushinagar and Sarnath, the Ramayan circuit, just to name a few and the infrastructure around these places are some of the examples of this new economic metric. Do remember, these are the infrastructure around the temples and not the investment in the temples that have been made by the community. If you are wondering why I call it the new economic metric, then, I will say we are on the cusp of something spectacular that we will witness in the coming decade and far-far beyond which will put the economic growth model as we know it to flip on its head. We are already seeing some green shoots which I will talk about – in 2022, Varanasi witnessed 70 million visitors, Mathura saw 60 million visitors and Ayodhya 26 million of them – in comparison, the very popular tourist destination Goa saw only 8.5 million visitors! To give an idea about the boom we are witnessing consider these figures: Varanasi saw a mere 6.4 million visitors in 2019 and Goa saw 8 million in the same year. In 4 years and a global pandemic in between, we are seeing an 11+ fold growth in visitors to Varanasi but Goa’s tourism growth remains flat. Also, to put these figures in perspective – it will be interesting to see the statistics in some of the globally popular religious places: in 2019, the Vatican saw 6.9 million visitors and Mecca saw 2.5 million visitors – these figures have remained flat post-pandemic in 2022. 

The scale of the tourism boom we are witnessing in and around the temple towns of Bharat is phenomenal, to say the least. And do note that it is just the beginning – for instance, the Sri Ram Janma Bhoomi temple is yet to open to the public – expected in early 2024 – but booking for the hotels in Ayodhya are running full for the foreseeable future and these are not just budget hotels but even luxury ones! There are over 700 districts in Bharat and around 650,000 villages i.e., almost 1,000 villages to a district – a temple town will have the power to impact the economy of 5-10districts around it or 5000-10,000 villages as people living here would get a source of livelihood from the tourists that will throng these temples. Now for some numbers: there are over 6,50,000 temples across Bharat of which 800+ are major temples across the length and breadth of Bharat i.e., more than one major temple per district – for an idea of scale, there are 33,000 ancient temples in Tamil Nadu alone – yes, you heard right 33,000 ancient temples!  

As is evident from visitor figures in Varanasi, Mathura, and Ayodhya in 2022 – if on average a tourist spends Rs5,000 per visit, between these three cities, they earned Rs 80,000 crores which is only going to grow – that’s an addition of Rs 150,000 per capita p.a. for these three districts or Rs 30,000 per capita p.a. if we consider the economic impact to be to 5 surrounding districts too – this is just the direct impact and not considering the multiplier effect this will have on the local economy. Further, this growth in just three temple towns alone will add nearly 4% points to Uttar Pradesh’s GDP this year! Now, imagine Bharat’s culture & heritage infrastructure getting unleashed at all the 800+ major temple towns across the length and breadth of Bharat. This will have a huge impact on the local economy at the district level and especially the village economy making villages sustainable, thereby arresting migration to urban centres. And then there are things like the Kumbh Melas – four in all – all of them can be huge tourism drivers. So, the success of Uttar Pradesh in developing the temple towns along with its culture& heritage infrastructure will spur other states to act in doing the same and thus ushering in a sustainable economic model that will not just be dependent on an economic model that the world has seen over the last 200 years, but one that complements it and, in many ways, exceeds it.  

To facilitate this new growth engine, the Modi government is launching its latest program, PM Vishwakarma Yojana aimed at supporting the traditional artisans and craftsmen while encouraging more people to take up traditional vocations in rural and semi-urban areas with an outlay of Rs 13-15,000 crores. This will encourage learning skills in the Guru-Shishya Parampara and perhaps usher in the setting up of gurukuls across Bharat further bolstering Bharat’s culture & heritage infrastructure. Not to mention, the previous programs of Modi Sarkar will help act as catalysts for this new economic model – these include the programs such as the Swachh Bharat program which ensured the setting up of millions of toilets in rural areas; Har Ghar Bijli program which ensured every village was connected with the electric grid; Ayushman Yojana program which has ensured providing health cover to over 500 million people with most beneficiaries from the rural and semi-urban areas; Ujjwala Yojana program which has ensured providing cooking gas connection to 50 million women of below poverty line families; Har Ghar Jal program which is on the way to provide potable water to all village households – this has already reached 67% of the 190 million+ rural households. All these programs are going to empower the rural and semi-urban population of Bharat to contribute economically because they will be freed from the daily struggles of existence – all these programs along with the support of Viswakarma Yojana to be launched in September 2023 will empower the rural and semi-urban population to take advantage of the Bharat’s culture & heritage infrastructure being built around her temple towns. 

Just a millennia ago, Bharat accounted for almost a third of the global economy and it appears that the journey to reclaim that position has well and truly begun, that too with a new, yet old, and time-tested model of sustainable growth!

We forge the chains we wear in life!

 We forge the chains we wear in life!

                                                            - Charles Dickens

This quote by Dickens made me stop and wonder about its applicability or was it merely rhetorical.

Whilst, it is true albeit some of these chains are willingly worn by us as if we like wearing them. As if, they are lovingly forged and worn with a lot of pride. For instance, if I like to write or to sing, I would develop these skills with a lot of dedication and love and spend a lot of time and effort honing them. Thus, these skills become chains forged by me that I wear happily while knowingly or unknowingly they limit me from exploring a new area or skills which perhaps would have given me equal pleasure and fulfilment.

So, are such forged chains desirable or not? 

One can argue that no chain is desirable but then, human excellence stems from such forged chains...Charles Dickens wouldn’t have been a renowned writer if he had not bound himself by such a chain in life. So, the question isn’t if a chain is desirable or not but whether the chain that we forge and wear in life is setting us on a path towards excellence, pleasure and fulfilment or is it pulling us down and limiting our life from its full expression of its potential. 

So, let's go ahead and forge chains and wear them with pride that set us free to express our life uninhibitedly to its full potential.

Idiosyncrasies we nurture as if they were gold dust!

Why do we carefully preserve and nurture our idiosyncrasies as if they were gold dust that had been handed down over generations as family jewels? It is an interesting subject – one that makes me wonder about a few of my own! One of them I was preserving and nurturing even though the decision to do so was making me suffer continuously without any sane reasoning and led me on a path of self-inflicted suffering and embarrassment. But why? It’s a question I don’t have a precise answer to yet!

For a better part of the year, till I decided to act on it and get it sorted, I could barely hear a thing spoken normally and was getting close to being deaf and the embarrassment was palpable as everyone who knew me, knew that I wasn’t. However, in my interactions with them, am sure there were occasions when they came across me be partially deaf or felt something was amiss with one or more of my mental faculties owing to the responses I was giving them – if nothing, some of my responses, verbal or non-verbal would have left them bewildered and asking questions of themselves but they never said anything to me – guess they were being polite! And there were others, whom I told about my condition as they asked me out of concern after they have had their full quota of being polite with me, and yet others whom I told proactively – they I guess were the most bewildered of all as they were people closest to me and they wondered what they did to hear such nonsensical course of action I had chosen for myself when I had more sensible options available. 

At the core of this idiosyncrasy of mine was my skepticism about modern medicine and loathing of visiting a doctor or much less a hospital – I want to clarify here before anyone judges me any more than they have already, that I don’t hold any ill feelings about the profession of modern medicine – just that I strongly feel that people and their bodies are capable of healing on their own and I had over the years instead of letting this belief serving my interests, I had started serving to it to a level that bordered ludicrity. Again, I don't know the reason why. 

If I were to ask any random person on the street about their thoughts on modern medicine, I am sure that a significant majority would agree with my belief that one should avoid doctors as much as possible. However, if I were to add a caveat that one of their key mental faculties was getting impaired and then ask this question again, then a significant majority will change their stand – but, not me! And, I somehow took pride in my decision, to begin with, and even though I had nearly become deaf, I continued to not consult a medical doctor to sort out my ailment. 

Finally, it was when I had to go to the hospital (not a doctor's clinic) for another matter, I mustered enough courage to consult an ENT specialist who looked at my ears and asked me, “when did I get my ears cleaned of the ear wax?” I knew now that another embarrassment was brewing! I told him, I didn’t know when it was done last even though I knew well enough that I hadn't ever got them cleaned by a doctor! To this, he said, “it appears you have somehow managed to push the ear wax deep inside your ear canal and they have gone in deep and solidified there!” Wow! I seemed to have shoveled and hid for myself a treasure chest of ear wax which now had to be flushed out – he did the needful and within about 10 minutes, I was hearing sounds I had not heard for a long long time! It was as if I had so far been in a soundproof room for the better part of a year barely hearing anything of the outside world and suddenly now I was let out into a fish market with sounds and noises hitting my eardrums from everywhere! It was sudden chaos all around – albeit happy chaos!

The point is that it took all of 10 minutes to rectify my ailment that I had carefully nurtured for the better part of a year! To what end, I still wonder!

Such is the power of our idiosyncrasies – all I can say now is that it would serve us well to be aware of these seemingly trivial matters and stop nurturing them and let sanity prevail at all times. I learned the lesson the hard way and whilst I suffered, I made people around me suffer along with me, which I shouldn’t have! Hope we can overcome such bouts of self-inflicted momentary insanity and stop the long-term suffering we subject ourselves and others to by nipping all such debilitating idiosyncrasies in the bud.

How much division is the limit?

Since time immemorial humans have divided themselves into various factions based on skin color, a piece of land, language, religion, sect, et al. 

Why? What is the limit of these divisions?

Why do we do it? 

It began based on our initial need to be around other humans who look alike and then later became a need to be around people who think alike or had similar thoughts and beliefs. 

What became more pronounced with time is the pathological need for us to narrow the groupings to narrower more restrictive categories and thus came religions, sects, and lastly cults. Till here the smallest unit of the division was a single family comprising an adult male, female, and their children. However, the divisions and the proponents of divisions didn’t stop there - they continued with the divisions to smaller groupings. 

So, where do we go from the limit that was set by the smallest unit i.e. family? 

Herein came the last division which intends to divide the family too - these categories attack the premise that humans are social animals and promote individuality. Therefore, came dividing the biological categories of humans between male, female and neutral genders to now countless sub-categories of sexual orientation. The premise is unless we distinguish between these categories, there will be discrimination - is that the real reason? Or is something more at play here? 

If we look at the argument of discrimination here, then, discrimination happens at so many levels within the same gender based on the looks of the individual. Research has proven many times over that good-looking people of either gender get higher salaries than their not-so-good-looking counterparts. So, does this mean that we should now have another division based on how someone looks?? 

But we don't see such a division based on looks happening - there is a division based on gender and sexual orientation only which have spurred two of large-scale modern-day movements, namely feminism and LGBTQ. Both these movements have impacted what mostly? The family unit! So, the forces behind these movements have an unsaid objective i.e. to disrupt the family unit - but why? A family makes up a cohesive unit of society and just like cells make up the tissue and tissue makes an organ and multiple organs make up the body - similarly, a family makes up a community and multiple communities make up a nation - so, when a family unit is disrupted, the whole chain leading up to the nation is impacted. What will these forces gain from this disruption? Unbridled access to the individual and the market they present for selling their ware. How? Simply put when we had a joint family system - one large house would accommodate multiple families with a single kitchen. They promoted economies of scale in terms of consumption but with the breaking of joint families into a nuclear families, consumption increased. Now with the breaking of family, individuals will spur more consumption in terms of housing (studio apartments), eating out (thriving restaurants and pubs), a multitude of gadgets (instead of one in a family), and so on and so forth. So, movements such as feminism and LGBTQ have led to the breaking up of the family unit and also promoted consumerism around these two concepts themselves with products and services that have sprung up to exclusively cater to these groups. Further, breaking up of a family unit will lead to a weaker social fabric which can further be manipulated by these marketers as there is no support system that a family offers as the individual will be left to fend for themselves.

Thus, these divisions are going on to the level of absurdity and we need to pause and reflect on where we are headed with these mindless divisions and ask, "what is the limit?"

What’s happening in the Indian economy & stock markets?

So, the doomsday sayers are prophesying that recession is coming and markets will deeply correct themselves in the coming months and quarters that follow. Is this true? Well, the indications of this are evident across the world with inflation skyrocketing, rising energy and food prices, and shortages, combined with a decline or stagnating economic activity globally. All these trends are running in parallel across the globe. Not quite! There are exceptions to this and India is one of the largest economies that is ducking this trend with the exception of energy costs. Whilst energy costs have spiraled in India since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, her granaries are overflowing and she’s well cushioned when compared to the rest of the world as far as food reserves are concerned. Further, the Indian economy is growing at the fastest tick and we are seeing a truly V-shaped recovery and it is expected to continue with good monsoons prediction for the current year. So, why are the Indian markets tanking? Two reasons: one, the FIIs are pulling out their investments because of the increase in rates by the respective federal banks across the globe which makes the treasury bills a safer bet, and two, the fear of rising inflation in India which is nearly at 8%, highest in many years! With the RBI tightening money supply by raising rates, local money too has dried up from the markets. So, under the double whammy of FIIs pulling out and RBI tightening money supply because of rising inflation, markets had only one way to head - southwards! 

But is this going to be the trend through 2022?

I don’t think so. Let me explain: since the Russia-Ukraine conflict India has upped its purchases of Russian oil from less than 1% to almost 20% today and its expected to touch 30% by end of July. What this means is that cost of petroleum in India would drop by nearly 10% vis-a-vis say a few months back by end of July and it will continue the downward trend either because India will keep increasing purchases of Russian oil or the Russia-Ukraine conflict will get over or the sanctions against Russia will fizzle away as it's biting the west and the U.S. badly. So, either way, energy costs in India are slated to come down in the coming months. Further, recently the Modi government has reduced taxes on fuel (with this, diesel cost in June 2022 is now at par with what it was in June 2021! And my guess is that the government cut the taxes on fuel to the extent to bring the prices to last year's levels to tackle inflationary pressure) which will have an impact on prices and also the government has acted to reduce the prices of cooking oil in a bid to tackle food inflation that’s mainly driven by cooking oil and fresh produce. With good monsoons predicted, we’d see food inflation too dropping in the coming months. This along with overflowing granaries, we will see food inflation too tapering in the coming months. Mainly, with the further easing out of energy prices in the coming months, we’d see inflation dropping as energy has a cascading effect on inflation across the economy. With inflation easing in the coming months, we’d see RBI give up on its hawkish monetary policy in the next quarter or so. Come September, we will see RBI dropping interest rates - something none of the other major central banks doing for some time to come. In addition, when compared, India’s Sensex has fallen around 16% from its all-time peak and on the other hand, Nasdaq has fallen over 30%! What explains this? One of the reasons for this is that the Indian DIIs and retail investors are filling in the place vacated by FIIs and with valuations looking attractive again, we’d see buying interest gaining momentum in a month or so when the next inflation data comes in - already, the last tick of inflation in India (about a week back) was downwards and I expect it to continue its downward trend with fuel already at par with prices of 2021. 

So, my outlook for the Indian economy and for the Indian markets is extremely bullish as I believe India will be the outlier performer on all economic metrics in 2022 and beyond! 

Modi's economic vision, as I see it!

So, what’s Modi been up to in the last seven years? Naysayers have been criticizing him since 2002 and they will continue to do so forever and over the last seven years, in their pathological hatred for Modi, they have exposed themselves to be more anti-India than anti-Modi. This piece of writing, however, is not for these pathologically virulent haters of the man. This is for others, the silent majority of Indians who are willing to see reason and can debate without being partisan. Let us assess what have we seen in India over the last seven years – apparent things done by him and something nobody can dispute.

 

One, we haven’t seen any terrorist attacks that killed civilians outside of Jammu & Kashmir in seven years – yes, seven years! It was a regular feature during CONgress rule, wasn’t it? Two, Pakistan has been shown its place and given an answer to in the language it understands – we can see how precarious the state of Pakistan is, both economically as well as militarily. Three, our armed forces are getting the best of equipment (this is in contrast to the situation when our CONgress defense minister said that we didn’t have the money to buy fighter aircraft in 2013!) as well as mandate to use them as they deem fit – be it on the western borders or northern/ eastern – thus, we have busted the myth the CONgress and its cronies perpetrated for decades together that the larger neighbor was invincible! Four, we are building highways at nearly 40 kilometers a day and railways are just at the cusp of connecting all of India including J&K and northeast and not to mention electrification of the entire network will happen in a few years from now (today amongst largest railway networks in the world, India stands second with over 70% of the network electrified). Fifth, we have achieved 100% toilet coverage across India and hence also achieved open-defecation-free across the country. Six, we have made electricity available to all our six lac plus villages in the remotest parts of the country with almost zero power cuts. Seven, the health insurance scheme, Ayushman Bharat is providing health cover to 500 million of our economically challenged brothers and sisters. Eight, we are well on the way to achieve another major milestone of water on tap to every household across the country!  Nine, housing for everyone is another huge initiative of the government that’s helping the economically weak to have a roof over their head. Ten, the opening of Jan Dhan accounts to make banking accessible to over 430 million economically weak beneficiaries who have added their savings of US$20 billion into the formal banking system apart from the fact that the Jan Dhan accounts ensure that all government financial support reaches directly to the beneficiary eliminating all corruption! And lastly, in the last 18 months, we have emerged stronger from the devastating pandemic that the world is currently witnessing with a couple of indigenous vaccines that have been administered at break-neck speed to reach 700+ million doses! These are only the top ten things or so, that came to my mind as I looked back – am sure there are many many more! For all these things, the government needed money, big money – and for getting the money (which the CONgress government didn’t have in 2013 even to buy us fighter planes!), the economy had to perform for the government to generate the revenues to fund all these humungous tasks. So, this busts one of the big fat lies the CONgress keeps spreading that the Indian economy is failing – if the economy was indeed failing, then, where did the Modi government get the resources to deliver all of the above when in 2013 the CONgress didn’t have the money even to buy fighter aircraft?

 

However, the objective of this article is not to bust the lies CONgress has been spreading but to see what the Modi government’s economic vision appears to be. Is there any common thread that ties all these seemingly disparate activities that the Modi government is undertaking?

 

Let’s look.

The first thing Modi government embarked on was the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan – we know that the naysayers of Modi were ridiculing him when he embarked on this drive and by the way, the toilet-for-all mission was part of this project only. How was it significant? We know that India lives in her villages – we have known this for a long time now, and in villages (as well as in urban centers), a simple illness such as diarrhea can make an entire household (particularly economically backward ones) a financial wreck and make them trapped in debt forever! So, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan would ensure that cleanliness was made an intrinsic part of all our lives and cleanliness will ensure that majority of diseases that emanate from lack of sanitation will be eliminated, and thus, most people will get de-risked from potential financial misery – isn't that simple yet brilliant? Modi government’s other programs have been similarly geared towards empowering the economically weaker segments across the length and breadth of the country – these include programs such as Gram Jyoti Yojana or rural electrification, Awas Yojana or housing for all, Jan Dhan Yojana or banking for all, Mudra Yojana or microloans for small entrepreneurs, Anna Yojana or food for the poorest of poor,  Ayushman Yojana or health insurance for covering all of the economically weak, Ujjwala Yojana or gas cylinders for rural women, and now the Jal Shakti Yojana to provide potable water on tap to all households, including all villages across the country. All these programs have only one theme and that is of empowering the rural as well as urban poor across the country. What would it deliver? One would say, a huge political dividend – that is for sure, but that apart, it is superb economics as well, as it has unleashed Bharat in ways that have perhaps not been done for nearly a millennia! I will explain this a little later but let me take up a few other things that Modi has done before I paint the overall picture of Modinomics as it will play out across Bharat in the coming decade and well beyond.

Apart from empowering the rural and urban poor across the country, what Modi has also done is also break the agriculture sector from shackles of inefficiency with the roll-out of three farm laws that as I have explained in one of my previous blogs – is a major gamechanger for the rural economy. Then, with his Atmanirbhar program, Modi is giving a huge push for indigenous manufacturing with amongst the lowest corporate taxation regime anywhere in the world attracting record FDIs into the country as well as incentivizing local players to step up their investments. Not just that, local manufacturing in the area of defense and opening the sector to private players have also spurred the sector into action with a significant jump in defense exports in the last seven years. Further, huge investment in the development of infrastructure across the country including roads, rail networks, ports, airports, and waterways is going to unleash the logistics sector in ways that we have never seen before leading to making Indian manufacturing competitive and further spurring domestic investment and FDI into the manufacturing sector. Further, with credit support to micro-enterprises, the Mudra Yojana has provided over 300 million microloans with an overall credit outlay of over $200 billion over the last seven years! Lastly, a program such as the One District One Product program will facilitate healthy competition within and across all the 700+ districts in the country to bring the best out of our people to showcase to the world.

 

Now that we have more or less captured most of what Modi has done over the last seven years – let's now see if there is a common thread that ties it all up and how does it unleash Bharat in ways that have not been done for nearly a millennia.

 

What is needed for a society to flourish and grow? Five things: stability, security, freedom, infrastructure, and opportunity. Modi has ensured all these for our people. As it is said, we can move as fast as our slowest constituent – hence, Modi's focus on the last man in the chain. Modi is empowering the poorest sections of our nation by giving them access to healthcare, electricity, potable water, food, and access to credit for setting up micro-enterprises, thus, unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit at the bottom of the pyramid – this will spur livelihood and eventual wealth creation for these currently marginalized segments of our nation. Imagine a scenario: with no lingering worries about healthcare, or for that matter food security or of roof over their heads and the fact they can now save two hours a day they spent just on getting potable water for the household and that they will have access to electricity giving them another four productive hours per day, the women in villages are getting empowered to start a micro-enterprise – now, assume that just a third of the women in Bharat (in the villages) potentially start such an enterprise, we are talking about nearly 100 million women who can potentially add say ₹6,000 per month to our GDP or over ₹7 lac crores p.a. or 3% of FY21’s GDP – assuming we can achieve this over 5 years period, this alone translates to a GDP bump up by 0.60 percentage points every year over the next 5 years just from women in rural India from a base of zero today! Now, imagine it’s not a third of such women but two-third of such women or for that matter all women participate in this revolution: GDP will see growth by 1.2% points to nearly 2% points just from this alone year-on-year for next five years! Further, with access to reliable electricity, a lot of agriculture-processing can take place within villages and apart from value-addition and value-creation in villages, food spoilage can be reduced or even eliminated – what would be the addition of this to the GDP? Also, with access to electricity and with the New Education Policy in place, the children pursuing studies in rural India i.e., over 300 million pupils will be spurred into pursuing academics and from that say just 0.1% achieve scholarship, we are looking at the very least over three hundred thousand high achievers coming from Bharat! All this will push rural India or Bharat’s resurgence as the new growth engine (right from the bottom of the pyramid) for India’s GDP, leading to not just be the source of GDP growth but also be the huge source for domestic consumption that would stimulate further demand creation in the economy that would be fed into by urban producers and service providers aka stimulation of economic activity across the country, from the bottom to the top.

 

Can you imagine the juggernaut that would be set rolling?

 

An empowered Bharat contributing by way of transformed agriculture and rural GDP will lead India’s economic growth from the bottom-up setting off a perpetual cycle of tremendous growth for decades to come. This is what Modi’s economic vision looks like to me!

God and man – where things went wrong?

Today’s conversation with a very dear friend made me write this up and ponder over this profound topic which has been reduced to a petty squabble in today’s context with the daily conflicts we see mankind engulfed in across the globe. This should make us wonder where things went wrong?

When we think of God, the first question that comes to mind is who made whom? Is it the humans who came up with the concept of God or was it God who created the humans? Now again, if we see, this question itself is reeking with the arrogance of humans – to even consider that God is a construct humans came up with is ridiculous. God has been there always – metaphysically speaking, God may be a word that humans came up with but He’s been there from time immemorial. Humans, as we exist today, have walked on this Earth for less than a few hundred thousand years but this Earth has been in this universe for 4.5 billion years – so, humans have just existed in about 0.007% of Earth’s history. Further, this universe has been in existence for 13.8 billion years and in its history, humans have contributed to just about 0.002%! Assuming, it is God that created this whole universe – which is exactly what all major religions of this world tell us – then, in God’s history, He’d have created and destroyed countless universes and in all those infinite numbers of universes, what’s the significance of humans and their history? The answer we all will agree with is an unequivocal “nothing!” Yet, here we are today squabbling over ownership of God and He must be very amused thinking that after all the primitive forms of life that He created such as the dinosaurs (who once ruled this Earth) et al, He created humans thinking that they were a creature with consciousness and the ability to think and reason – therefore, they would not squander away the chance to thrive and bring balance to life on Earth unlike all other species before it – yet, here we are, acting just like the dinosaurs did some 70 million years ago – perhaps it is time for Him to take a call and decide on the fate of humans just as He did to dinosaurs!

Before I go ahead and describe what God has kept in store for humans, let me first delve into how we reached where we are today. It is our arrogance that we think that we came up with the concept of God – the fact is, not so long back one famous astrophysicist, Carl Sagan said that there are surely many intelligent alien races that occupy this universe and thus was set up the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) and after decades of this search, what they came up with that we are all but alone in this vast universe and that what we have on Earth is a very rare accident where too many happy coincidences occurred all together nearly 4 billion years ago and life appeared on Earth! Who brought about all these happy coincidences? Someone would say it was mother nature – well, that mother nature was existing across the whole vast universe but why all these happy coincidences did not happen anywhere else in the vast universe but only in its remote corner, on Earth? This perhaps was the first recorded act of God in the current version of the universe as we know it that is now nearly 14 billion years old! Were humans there when this act was done by God? No! So, this proves one thing that God is eternal and humans are just a blip in that eternity and that we take ourselves any more seriously only exposes our vanity, nothing else!

Jumping back to human history i.e. the last few hundred thousand years – we know that the earliest humans lived in caves mostly in hunter-gatherer communities. Along the way, we would have seen mother nature in all her raw glory – the heat of the sun, the wrath of the rains and the wind storms, the power of lightning bolts and the ferocity of fires – all of these would have instilled fear and awe in him and thus they became first symbols or representatives of his earliest God. So, we somehow came to believe that God is a concept made by man! Slowly, as his understanding of mother nature grew, man could control all these forces of nature to a certain degree and even overcome them, and thus his concept of God too grew complex. So, just as humans migrated from Africa some forty thousand years ago and went around the world, this concept too evolved just as how humans settled across different corners of Earth. This led to the eventual formation of religions as they exist across the world today.

The common denominator here is what we call religions that exist on Earth today aren’t representing God but the concept of God as we humans perceive Him.

The problem is further exacerbated by some religions who think that their “God” is the only God that is the true one and the God of all other religions are false and thus all humans who follow any other God should give in and follow their God or be eliminated. If you see, this whole premise is flawed as God that created the universe (long before the humans came to walk on Earth) is universal – He is the source of all that has been here and all that will be there!

So, how can a human concept of “God” ever replace this universal God who is the source of all creations of the past, present, and the future, including humans or excluding them? For all we know, just as dinosaurs went extinct, humans too may go extinct in the future, and along with them, all their concepts of God!

Further, if all religions believe in a universal God, then, why is there strife in the world today among humans over God? That’s the question for all of us to ponder about.