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.

PM Modi’s Vision Of Converting A Pandemic Into An Opportunity

 With a big bang announcement about a fortnight or so back of Rs 20 lac crore comprehensive economic package, Prime Minister Modi has unveiled a vision of epic proportions which takes development of India to her roots, of what we know as Bharat, her villages. It is not the value of the package aka Rs 20 lac crores that is of any importance – in size, it is huge and does cover all the sections of the economy – however, what is of immense importance and is of epic proportions is the what it seeks to accomplish with the sector that employs the biggest chunk of Bharat’s workforce i.e. her farmers in the villages. Agriculture currently employs nearly 50% of Bharat’s over 50 crore workforce or as much as 25 crore people yet it contributes to only about 17% of her GDP of nearly $3 trillion or about $500 billion or so – in real terms, this means that a worker in sectors other than agriculture generates nearly 5 times more GDP than his/ her counterpart in the agriculture sector! No wonder, agriculture isn’t an attractive career for the youth and thus people moved from Bharat to India: from her villages to her cities and thus the cities are bursting at seams with fledgling slums and shantytowns.

So, what is this vision of Modi that has been unveiled? With the big bang package, PM Modi has broken the shackles agriculture has been tied down with for decades together – though, some claim that it has been so for hundreds of years! Whatever the truth, two major reforms in agriculture sector have been unleashed by PM Modi: one, the doing away of the binding on a farmer to adhere to Agriculture Produce Market Committees (APMC) act which stipulated him/ her to sell their produce mandatorily at the Mandis – s/he was not free to sell anywhere and to anyone; and two, major agriculture commodities are now excluded from the strictures of the Essential Commodities Act of 1955.

Now, how will these changes be gamechangers for the farmer?

Firstly, with APMC Act gone, the farmers will now be free to sell their produce anywhere and to anyone – this will open up the market for them. As of now, the farmer has to sell at the Mandi to the buyer via a Aadti (middle man) who took a commission from both the farmer and the buyer just because the Mandi system operates this way and instead of helping the farmer, it exploited them. This commission ranges from 8% to 20% and on top this, the price in Mandis is generally rigged by the Aadti cartels and thus the farmer is always shortchanged. With APMC gone, the farmer is freed from the Aadtis and the exploitative Mandis that their cartels ran! Further, the farmer can now also engage in contract farming for big institutional buyers (food processors, big retailers et al) wherein they can know the price of selling their produce upfront and thus doing away with the vagaries of price volatility too, ergo, the farmer can know the return on investment before they sowed the fields!

Secondly, the exclusion of major agriculture commodities from Essential Commodities Act means that private storage facilities can be built to store perishable agriculture produce and wastage can be reduced dramatically – currently, over Rs one lac crore worth of perishable agriculture produce is lost annually because of lack of proper storage facilities. With Essential Commodities Act out of the way, there will be a huge push towards building of storage facilities that will help sell farmer produce well into the lean season thereby further increasing their income. You may be wondering how the Essential Commodities Act stifled creation of storage facilities. Well, because of this Act, no private entity created large scale storage facilities for commodities that the Act covered as there was a storage ceiling these entities had to adhere to and hence, no economies of scales were ever achieved – now, this ceiling is gone! So, all the large retailers and food processors who deal in perishables will be free to create large storage facilities and store the produce to sell in lean seasons as well as to further process them as value-added produce.

Now, how will things play out from here?

This is where things get interesting – with Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing lockdown, there has been a huge movement of migrant workers from industrial belts back to native states of UP, Bihar, MP, Rajasthan, Odisha & WB. It is estimated that a few crore of the migrant workers have gone back to their native states – do note that India has nearly 10% of her population as migrant workers which translates to nearly 12-13 crore workers. The return of this workforce back to the native states is going to create a lot of burden for these states. Unless the state government does something dramatic to create jobs en masse, this can create a lot of issues for these states. PM Modi’s Rs 20 lac crore package amongst other things has increased the allocation in MGNREGA by two-thirds, which essentially means that whilst earlier, the program was going to support nearly 2 crore workers - now, it will support additional 1.3 crore workers! This should help with temporarily resolving the need for jobs for part of the migrant workers who have gone back. Further, many states (Gujarat, MP, Haryana, HP, Rajasthan and Punjab)

have recently announced significant dilution of all the labor laws – this too should spur attracting industry to these states. With companies wanting to move out of China and considering India actively this should help – recently, a German footwear maker Von Wellx moved its factory lock, stock, and barrel from China to India (Agra, UP) where it will generate 10,000 jobs! Further, UP CM Yogi’s administration is conducting skill mapping of the migrant workers – this will help it to showcase the same to all potential investors – clearly, the workers coming back from industrial belts of Maharashtra & Gujrat would have significant skills and mapping them would lead to creating a compelling skill bank that can be used along with incentives like dilution of labor laws as well as others such as easy land allotments etc., to attract investors into the state in a big way.

That said, all this will take time – but if played well along with increased MGNREGA allocation as well as breaking the shackles for agriculture and attracting populace back to agriculture as a viable career option, it will be a gamechanger for these states. What these far reaching policy changes as well as pandemic’s side-effect of migrant workers’ return to home states can lead to is not just this! I am going to now paint a scenario that this vision can achieve for Bharat.

Three trends are likely to play out in parallel from here on.

One, and the most important as well as the pivotal trend is the revival of agriculture as a result of the policy changes supported by private investments as well as new interest from a brand-new breed of agriculture-entrepreneurs who will foray into this hitherto unattractive sector in a big way. Smaller and marginal farmers can get together and form Farmer Producer Organizations to scale up their production and investment abilities and share equipment, marketing reach as well as profits – they can also go for forward integration and get into value addition through food processing. Apart from increasing the income of existing farmers and spurring new ones to join the ranks, this will also encourage the migrant workers to stay back and encourage many of them to get back to agriculture with improving income prospects. With success of agriculture, we will see more and more people staying back in the villages and also encourage those who had left the villages for cities, to return back – this story should fully unfold in about a decade or even earlier but we will see credible offshoots within the next few years. To draw a parallel, do note that the milk revolution saw India double per capita milk production in 30 years (or nearly a four-fold increase in milk production between 1970 & 2000) – with technological advances along with information revolution, this kind of growth should be doable across the agriculture sector in a decade or even less. I say this because India’s per hectare yields in all crops from cereals to pulses is less than half or one-thirds the best that is there in the world. With the breaking of the policy shackles and focused push on agriculture with government and private involvement, there is no limit to what our farmers can achieve. This will have an immense impact on the rural economy leading to increase in per capita income like never before. As much as Bharat’s villages, this will have a huge impact on India’s cities that were bursting at their seams because of increased migrations from villages to cities leading to creation of slums and shantytowns – all this should reduce dramatically in the coming decade as people will prefer staying back in villages and some more of the migrant workers will return and engage in agriculture and allied services.

And, this is what will spur the second trend that will run in parallel: the increase in per-capita income in Bharat’s villages will lead to higher consumption driven by rural markets, which will spur industrial growth like never before. Till now, the industrial growth was driven primarily by urban and middle-class demand albeit there was secondary factor of rural demand driven by how agriculture fared in the said year. However, with the kind of growth we will see in agriculture in the coming decade and that too driven from grassroots involving nearly 70% of Bharat’s population, we will be witnessing demand generation at unprecedented scale. This will fuel India’s industrial and services growth at a different level pushing the overall GDP growth well into double digits pulling all of her populace out of poverty in the coming decade!

The third trend, a minor one albeit equally significant in its impact and one that will run in parallel to the other two and support them is the huge push towards renewable energy – India is already leading the International Solar Alliance and there is recent news of India taking lead in setting up the World Solar Bank, which will spur development of renewable energy projects in 84 countries that are already part of the ISA, mobilizing US$1 trillion. India has already achieved sub-Rs 3 per unit cost of electricity via renewable sources – with advances in technology this can and will further be improved upon. All this will help establish India as a leading force in renewable energy sector globally – a sector that will for the foreseeable future be a very important for all the nations. Then there is the accelerated adoption of electric vehicles in the coming decade because of improvement in technology as well as significant reduction in costs. All this will result in reduced dependence on fossil fuel by the end of this decade leading to reduced emissions and consequent environmental dividends. Availability of cheap and clean energy will help fuel industrial and agriculture growth throughout this decade without the fear of environmental impact. Reduced petroleum imports will also have a positive impact on Rupee which could see levels of 60 or even stronger vis-à-vis US Dollar too by the end of this decade – this essentially means that the Indian Rupee will have a higher buying power by the end of this decade.

These three trends having well played out by the middle of this decade we will see emergence of an atmanirbhar Bharat which, by then will be taking roots deep into India!

So, what's it about the new year?

In a few hours the current year will go into history and a new year will turn a new page with a new day!

The whole world is celebrating from the far east in the remote island of Kiritimati of Kiribati (where the new year day has already dawned as I write this) to the far western remote Baker Islands across the world - the spread of this new year moment is over almost 26 hours and 39 time-zones! So, if you wish to party into the new year like a real party animal you can hop into a new time zone and celebrate the new year 39 times over! Are you game?

You must be wondering why am I wanting to be party pooper? I am not!

I am just wondering why we celebrate this day and this moment only, why not every moment and every day? Why don't we celebrate every day like this day? I wish we learn to celebrate every day of our lives like we do on this day!

Wishing you all the joy that you get celebrating this "new year" on every day henceforth! :)