Bold Vision Of Modi 2.0
Gurcharan Das | former CEO of Procter & Gamble India
The Times of India
In this piece, Das writes that while the pursuit of a higher GDP can be easily maligned, GDP remains the best guide for policymakers. It is only through growth that jobs are created, the government earns taxes and provides better healthcare. He suggests that Modi 2.0 should adopt the slogan “Not only garibi hatao, but amiri lao”.
He outlines a list of focus areas where the government should direct its energies to make India a $5 trillion economy. First, he says that India should focus on its exports and adopt the approach of “Make in India for the World”. Second, India should focus on its private investments as currently its investment environment seems to be turning hostile. Third, India needs to provide its farmers more freedom of production and distribution.
Lastly, he writes that it is not just important to enact reforms but also important to “sell” them to the country.
India’s counter-insurgency doctrine needs a reboot
Raghu Raman | Former CEO of Natgrid
Hindustan Times
Raman argues that India has a faulty counter-insurgency approach. First, he writes that the army is trained for massive operations spreading across thousands of square kilometres but then these troops have to work in densely populated areas during counter-insurgency operations. Second, he suggests that the old-style counter-insurgency strategy (COIN) has some inherent flaws. It assumes that the insurgent blends with the local population and then attempts are made to locate him. But the information of an insurgent’s whereabouts is rarely correct, and it is also difficult for the troops to move undetected.
He further argues that our approach reflects “a bias towards militarising” when the focus should be on “political, social, commercial, cultural and psychological action”. We need to train our troops in local languages and culture, he recommends.
Maritime challenges and opportunities
C. Raja Mohan | Director, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore
The Indian Express
Mohan argues that as US cuts down on its role as a guarantor of maritime security in the Gulf, India should try to increase its presence in the region. He mentions that Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly told US President Donald Trump in Osaka that “he has ordered the Indian Navy into the Gulf to escort the Indian oil tankers”. Mohan also writes that top US officials plan to build an international coalition to secure the Gulf.
He highlights how China is working to enhance its maritime profile in the Gulf region. Its naval deployments from a decade ago in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea due to piracy threats have now become a permanent presence.
Mohan suggests that there is an opportunity for India to raise its Gulf profile as countries in the region are also trying to diversify their security partnerships.
A test of law and justice
Suhrith Parthasarathy | Advocate, Madras High Court
The Hindu
In this piece, Parthasarathy argues that the challenges made to the 103rd constitutional amendment — which provides reservation to the economically weaker section and which a Supreme Court bench is expected to hear this month — present a difficult test for the court. He writes that there are some fundamental questions which will require resolution in this case. For instance, “whether the amendment infringes the extant idea of equality, and… whether that idea is so intrinsic to the Constitution, that departing from it will somehow breach the document’s basic structure”.
Parthasarathy writes that allowing for reservation on a parametre such as financial ability will consolidate the position of the powerful castes and will lead to “even greater monopolisation of their share in administration”.
The tortuous path of corporate finance in India
C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh | Professors, JNU
The Hindu Business Line
As India’s dependence on private investors increases, the question of private investment’s financing has become critical, especially with the development finance institutions not there anymore, write Chandrasekhar and Ghosh. In the “recent period”, banks were clearly not eager to finance big ticket projects as they have been reeling under non-performing assets and didn’t want to further increase their relative exposure to the corporate sector. Financing requirements have largely been met with equity.
Data points to a “degree of disintermediation”, with private non-financial corporations reducing their dependence on banks and other financial institutions. This is not a “sign of change” in financing pattern but evidence of a slowdown in investment and a greater wariness on the part of financial institutions in increasing their exposure to the corporate sector in this depressed environment, write Chandrasekhar and Ghosh.
Over-dependence on the central bank will not work
Ajit Ranade | Economist and senior fellow, The Takshashila Institution
Mint
After the crash of Lehman Brothers, the US Federal Reserve became an instrument of fiscal policy, getting approvals to purchase or insure up to $700 billion of “toxic assets”. Ranade writes that 11 years later, unconventional monetary policy has become mainstream in most other advanced economies. Central bank chiefs face pressure from fiscal authorities across countries. India is no different and the Reserve Bank of India has been juggling the task of raising money for the government while keeping interest rates high enough to signal scarcity of savings besides controlling inflation. Last year, more than 80 per cent of the Modi government’s borrowing was funded by RBI, which is “dangerously close to monetisation of the deficit”. This is over-dependence, he writes. While the Fed made a profit it doesn’t mean governments need to lean on monetary policy for everything, adds Ranade.
Why it doesn’t feel like 7%
Mahesh Vyas | MD & CEO, CMIE
Business Standard
Employment growth in companies slowed down in 2017-18 to 2.2 per cent against 2.6 per cent in 2016-17. While employment generation slowed down, growth in real wages inched upward.
Vyas in his column writes that it is worrying that while 46 per cent — just less than half — of the companies registered increase in employment, 41 per cent registered a fall in employment and another 13 per cent recorded no change. A six year period between 2003-04 to 2008-09 registered significant growth in employment and wages. Employment rate was higher than the rate of population growth. Employment growth continued to be robust during 2009-14 as expectation levels were high.
However, high inflation almost entirely ate away the growth in wages during that period, adds Vyas.