Now this relative absence of reason in religion very clearly gives us cause for a debate. Very clearly the liberty of thought and conscience and the right to profess and practice one’s religion is not the issue. What can be the issue is our reticence to criticize religions, and subject their basic premises to scrutiny.

Perhaps our bloodied history and particularly the conflicts of the recent past have made us want to seek accommodation by mutual tolerance. This is understandable and perhaps even commendable.
 

Soon after Narendra Modi became prime minister, construction began on a colossal statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first deputy prime minister, on an inland island called Sadhu Bet facing the Narmada Dam near Vadodara in Gujarat. Planned at a cost of about Rs 3,000 crores and to stand 182 meters tall, this Chinese-made bronze statue, when completed, will be the tallest in the world. There is no doubt that this statue will become a major place of political worship like Rajghat and the Indira Gandhi memorial in New Delhi. But beyond tourist commerce there is another reason driving this project. It is to give the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh a genealogy it does not have.

Manufactured genealogy is a recurring feature of our history. Pre-Islamic invaders from Central Asia like the Hepthalites (White Huns) and Ahir Gatae from the region extending from Bactria in Central Asia to present-day Xinjiang in China conquered a good part of northern India and established kingdoms. The greatest of these invaders was Kanishka, whose realm stretched from Turfan in the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang to Pataliputra (present-day Patna) on the Gangetic plain. Kanishka was of Turkestani origin. These new rulers, some of whom were Buddhists, were quickly absorbed into Hindu society and were made Agnikula Rajputs (family of the fire god), others got more extravagant genealogies deriving from the sun and moon, hence the Suryavanshi and Chandravanshi Rajputs. In this manner the integrity of the Brahminical varna system – that classifies society into four sections based on occupation – was preserved.

The Brahmin-dominated Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s government in Maharashtra has embarked on building another gigantic statue, this one of the Maratha King Shivaji. This is not without some irony as the varna of the Marathas is even now a contested issue, with some arguing that they are part of the Kshatriya (warrior) varna, and others that they have Kunbi peasant origins. This issue was the subject of antagonism between the Brahmins and Marathas, dating back to the time of Shivaji.

When it was time for Shivaji’s coronation in 1674, the Brahmins of Poona baulked, stating that the Bhonsles – Shivaji’s family – were not Kshatriyas. Legend has it that a Brahmin priest from Banaras, Gaga Bhatta, on receiving a generous payment, performed the ceremony. Shivaji’s genealogy now showed that the Bhonsles were a branch of the highly-respected Sisodias of Mewar, Kshatriyas of the purest Rajput clan. Whatever might have been his caste antecedents, Shivaji undoubtedly was one of India’s greatest kings. His achievements did not need a manufactured genealogy.
 

RSS and the freedom struggle

The ultra nationalist RSS is still in search of a genealogy that will connect it to the nationalist movement that won India its freedom.

The truth is that the contemporary writings and speeches of its leaders have a very different story to tell. These leaders showed little enthusiasm for the anti-British struggle. Though the founder of the RSS, KB Hedgewar had an early association with the Congress and other nationalist movements like Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad’s Hindustan Republican Association, he left it all behind to found the RSS.

He also stopped his followers from the nationalist path. MD Deoras, the third sarsanghchalak (supreme leader) of the RSS, wrote approvingly of how “Dr Hedgewar saved him and others from the path of Bhagat Singh and his comrades.”

With the death of Hedgewar in 1940, the RSS lost all interest in freedom. Its new leader MS Golwalkar drew inspiration from Adolf Hitler’s ideology of race purity. Paradoxically Golwalkar also admired Jews for “maintaining their religion, culture and language”.

Golwalkar’s focus was on religion, racial purity and exclusion. Freedom was to be left to lesser mortals like Gandhiji and his Congress. He wanted the RSS to be involved only in “routine work”.

In the words of Golwalkar:
 

“There is another reason for the need of always remaining involved in routine work. There is some unrest in the mind due to the situation developing in the country from time to time. There was such unrest in 1942. Before that there was the movement in 1930-31. At that time many other people had gone to Doctorji [Hedgewar]. This ‘delegation’ requested Doctorji that this movement [Congress] will give independence and Sangh should not lag behind. At that time, when a gentleman told Doctorji that he was ready to go to jail, Doctorji said: ‘Definitely go. But who will take care of your family then?’ That gentlemen told: ‘I have sufficiently arranged resources not only to run the family expenses for two years but also to pay fines according to the requirements.’ Then Doctorji said to him: ‘If you have fully arranged for the resources then come out to work for the Sangh for two years.’”
 

Golwalkar’s point was crystal clear. Dharam (religion) came before dharma (duty).
 

The Patel project

The BJP leadership is very keen to project the RSS as a component of the freedom struggle. The BJP finds it embarrassing that the RSS – to which the top leadership as well as the overwhelming majority of the cadre of the BJP belong – was not a part of the freedom movement. The RSS lacks the courage to categorically state that it did not participate in the freedom struggle because its ideology prevented it from doing so.

There is the well-known concocted story of how the RSS tried to lionise Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s role in the 1942 Quit India movement. This ended in a huge embarrassment when it was discovered that Vajpayee actually made a confessional statement disassociating himself from the protest event at his hometown Bateshwar.

In the confession he wrote:
 

“Ten or twelve persons were in the forest office. I was at a distance of 100 yards. I did not render any assistance in demolishing the government building. Thereafter, we went to our respective homes.”
 

Hence the RSS is trying to attach themselves the legacy of Vallabhbhai Patel, to get a leg into the nationalist movement. They forget that it was Sardar Patel who had banned the RSS in 1948 after learning that its workers were distributing sweets to celebrate the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi

In the run up to the 2014 general elections Narendra Modi displayed his lack of knowledge of history, or willingness to distort it, by saying that the Congress Party wanted Patel to be the first prime minister. The fact is that Jawaharlal Nehru became the president of the Congress in 1946 after Maulana Azad was dissuaded from offering himself on the basis of the system of rotation that the Congress informally followed. Patel was never in the run. Given Nehru’s overwhelming popularity, even if Patel contested, Nehru would have defeated him.
Both LK Advani and Modi have tried to project that there was a fissure between Nehru and Patel. The BJP leaders seem to be confused between dissent and dissidence. Dissent is a genuine difference of opinion, and there were many between Nehru and Patel, as should be between two independent-minded individuals. Dissidence is a result of competing ambitions.

On this Patel was clear. He wrote:
 

“It was, therefore, in the fitness of things that in the twilight preceding the dawn of independence he (Nehru) should have been our leading light, and that when India was faced with crises after crises, following the achievement of our freedom, he should have been the upholder of our faith and the leader of our legions.”
 

Patel added:
 

“Contrary to the impression created by some interested persons and eagerly accepted in credulous circles, we have worked together as lifelong friends and colleagues, adjusting ourselves to each other’s advice as only those who have confidence in each other can.”
 

Now the RSS is trying to make Sardar Patel its own by attempting to give itself a lineage deriving from Sardar Patel – the colossal statue is intended to rewrite the Sangh’s history. But the saffron body will only end up as a parvenu, wanting in patriotism when it mattered most.
But Modi won’t know all this. History is not his forte, or else he would not think that Alexander died on the West bank of the Ganga!

Courtesy: Scroll.in
 

In 1960 after the spectacular flame out of his invasion of Cuba, US President John F Kennedy exclaimed to his closest advisors: “How could I have been so stupid?” By saying that, he assumed complete responsibility for the fiasco, however ill-advised he was and however ill-served he was by his officials. It was also an exclamation of contrition.

I listened to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s New Year’s Eve speech keenly trying to catch a sentence of contrition or assumption of responsibility. There was none. But there was a change of tone. There also was none of his characteristic sneering, distortions of historical record and half-truths. It was as if he had got a new speechwriter, as well as a new speech coach. I have no complaints with that and I hope this style will stay, and the Modi we have been seeing for the past half a decade is gone forever. India now needs a healing touch.

I have no issues with the schemes Modi outlined during his speech. It is necessary that after inflicting such grievous hurt to the economy that he apply not just a palliative balm but effective medicine. But he must ask himself if all this pain was needed at all. All that the government had to do to get money back into banks was to organise a simple and unobtrusive currency exchange. However, I hope the makeover is real and he is more open to consultation and will tell less lies.
 

A matter of trust

Most of us accept that politicians are often required to tell us half-truths and outright lies. But it is important that the cup does not run over and the trust is not spilled. I hope Modi is not so consumed by hubris to mistake the faith of blind followers for trust of the people? With the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections around the corner, 2017 will be the year of reckoning for him. The Bharatiya Janata Party has 72 seats in the Lok Sabha from this state now, and if they lose badly here in the state elections, it can say goodbye to 2019.

India has lost about Rs 3 lakh crores of its Gross Domestic Product due to an act of incredible stupidity – demonetisation. The nation has to recover from this self-inflicted injury and make up for lost time and the gigantic financial loss. Millions of lives were disrupted by the loss of jobs and business. It will take some doing to restore the normal flow of everyday life.

The ruling party must start looking anew at the Indians largely ignored so far, particularly the Dalits and Muslims who occupy the bottom rungs of economic classification. The distribution of Automated Teller Machines and Point of Sale machines between regions and within towns and cities tells its own tale of exclusion in this digital age when financial inclusion is a key goal. For instance, only 19% of India’s 215,000 Automated Teller Machines are in rural areas. There are huge inter-regional disparities also. Bihar just has one for every 13,500 persons, while Tamil Nadu has one for every 3,000 persons.
 

The poor hurt the most

The last two months have showed who actually gets hurt when the government indulges in stupid policy making. The poor and silent majority stood in lines while the wealthy and vocal went about life as usual. The majority just either went hungry or got deeper into debt. To deal with our real problems we require the government to face facts and realities as they are, and not be obsessed with the facts it manufactures. The real challenge for the Modi government is to recover the pre-demonetisation Gross Domestic Product growth trajectory by getting into a faster near-term growth trend.

The essential truth is that what drives our growth is a passing favourable demographic phase. But our rulers since 2000, like the legendary King Canute, think they are ordering the waves. The facts remain as before. Savings and investment are still dipping. The flight of capital abroad continues unabated. More than half of all Indians admit to paying bribes to get even the smallest entitled services and promised benefits. Tax evasion at points of sale and unrecorded transactions are as before.

But the lies have begun again. Finance Minister Arun Jaitely, who can never keep away from the rolling cameras, has proclaimed his version of Mission Accomplished and has announced the beginning of a new age. According to him here is no black money anymore as everything is now locked tight in bank vaults.

Jaitely said that the flow of new cash has largely replaced what was extinguished by the demonetisation exercise. The truth is that the Reserve Bank of India has just about replaced half of the currency taken out in terms of value. The problem is that the vast majority of these new notes are of Rs 2,000 denomination, which only partially mitigates the cashlessness in the economy for the last two months.

This new high-value note is of little use in the market where the quantity of the smaller notes has remained just about as before. The small notes have now acquired a value higher than what is stated on them and the Rs 2,000 note has a much lower preference. What we need is many more Rs 500, Rs 100, Rs 50 and Rs 10 notes.

Jaitley probably doesn’t know that 98% of transactions representing about 68% of value transacted are in cash. If there isn’t enough cash there are other improvised IOUs or more informal credit now filling the gaps.
 

An enforced cashlessness

People who know better state that it will be many months before the cash gap is bridged. Cashless transactions can reach meaningful levels only when the network grows exponentially and not by forced cashlessness. Change cannot happen without change. It seems like small minds cannot contemplate the centrality of chillar (small change).

After the great cash grab, the government indicates that next on its agenda are benami properties. The fact is that there are relatively few benami properties. Individuals own most properties, buying them with their hard-earned money. But in the frenzied search for true ownership real owners will suffer.

Except for politicians like those who invested in Mumbai’s scam-tainted Adarsh building, wise people with money to hide are loath to invest in properties in the names of others. Such properties seldom go back to the people who paid for them. Owning assets abroad also involves trust. Politicians usually lose much of their untaxed incomes to people entrusted with managing their money. Who is flying with the late Bharatiya Janata Party leader Pramod Mahajan’s money now?

According to the non-profit Global Financial Integrity, India has exported an average of $46 billion each year for the past decade. The important takeaway here is that money gone abroad is money gone away and the only way you get it to return is by investment. This can be best done by speedily improving the ease of doing business in India. But this week’s news is that the government is contemplating shutting down the Mauritius and Singapore routes. In this case the money will just go elsewhere.

Like the concept behind weight-loss inducing bariatric surgery, Jaitely probably believes the national economy can also be forcibly habituated to less cash by stitching up its gut. It does not work that way. There is more to governance than just cash, lies and sound bytes.

Courtesy: Scroll.in
 

When scrapping the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on November 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it was to 1. Rid India of black money; 2. Filter out counterfeit currency; and 3. Bankrupt terrorist networks.

Let us now briefly examine how much he has achieved in his asked for 50 days.

The parallel economy is now commonly believed to be about 20%-25% of the gross domestic product, which means the government is estimated to lose taxes on income of about Rs 30 lakh crore to Rs 35 lakh crore, or about Rs 10 lakh crore. Last year, the government of India expected to collect Rs 15 lakh crore as direct and indirect taxes.

The so-called demonetisation – it’s better to call it currency exchange – thus was a huge exercise, but what did the government achieve?
 

The benefits

The Reserve Bank of India has reported that it recovered Rs 29.84 crore in fake notes out of the currency it had taken into the banking system during 2015-’16. Even the total value of fake currency in circulation at any given time is Rs 400 crore, and only 250 in every million notes are fake, estimated a 2015 joint study by the Indian Statistical Institute and National Investigation Agency. So this is just a case of the government not knowing what it is talking about.

As for terrorism, the fact that money in new Rs 2,000 notes was recovered from slain terrorists in Kashmir and other places speaks eloquently about the success.

It is empirically evidenced that of the undeclared income each year, almost half is invested in property, and about 44%-46% is equally invested in gold and jewellery and illicitly exported overseas, and just 4%-6% is held in cash.

Most of this black money is in flow and very little is held in stock – like the cash recovered from Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams Trust Board member J Sekhar Reddy or suspended Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary P Rama Mohana Rao. People with great wealth keep very little of it in cash. Only fools keep money idle. Money, white or black, is constantly put to work.

How do we encounter this money? When even ordinary middle class families celebrate a wedding, the expenses for flowers and decorations, priests and musicians, food and refreshments, and even a part of the venue charges are asked for and paid in cash. This might very well be good and hard-earned tax-paid money, but it slips into the vast untaxed and parallel economy. Some of this money then re-enters the white economy in the form of expenses for food, fuel, clothes and other everyday expenses but a major part enters the black economy to be transformed into property and jewellery.

The better connected send it abroad. According to Global Financial Integrity, India has exported an average of $46 billion each year for the past decade. This from where the fabled Rs 15 lakhs for every Indian citizen was to have come. In the last two years, not a cent has come back. The Gold bond scheme has so far been mostly a flop and gold remains gold hanging on necks and buried in vaults. There has been no spike in the past 48 days either.

But of the Rs 14.4 lakh crore or 86% of all currency notes withdrawn, the banks have received Rs 13.2 lakh crore till December 13. Out of the outstanding Rs 1.2 lakh crore, about Rs 30,000-Rs 40,000 crores is in neighbouring countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan where Indian rupees are commonly used. In addition, our non-resident Indian brethren and cousins would have an equivalent amount. The rest would probably mostly be with very poor people deep in the hinterland who perhaps don’t even know that their carefully tucked away high value notes are no longer valid for exchange. So, at best, the government might get Rs 30,000 crore instead of the windfall of Rs 4 lakh crore to Rs 5 lakh crore the government seemed to believe it would get, assuming, of course, that the RBI decides to pass on these written-off liabilities to the government in some form.

We don’t know how many undeclared high value notes have entered the banking system after November 8. That will entail some taxation. Before November, the government had yet another amnesty scheme which fetched it declarations of about Rs 60,000 crores translating to about Rs 25,000 crores. This latest amnesty after November 8 is expected to fetch it a similar declaration but it will fetch it more taxation as a penal taxation also kicks in. This means another Rs 30,000 crores.
 

The costs

So what did these Rs 60,000 crores cost to get? The new notes will cost about Rs 42,000 crore, considering that Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes cost about Rs 4 and Rs 6 each to print and deliver. But there are other costs, which are far greater. The abrupt withdrawal of cash practically destroyed the daily wage economy that is about 200 million-250 million strong out of the unorganized sector’s 415 million. The average daily wage last year was Rs 272 per head.

This money is barely enough to feed and provide the most basic essentials for a family of five. Imagine how many jobs have been lost. Early estimates suggest that almost 80-100 million daily workers are without work. Millions have gone back home to their villages in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Assam. I was recently in UP and Bihar and the devastation to the rural economy is palpable. Overall, credit card spending in the country has dropped from Rs 55,000 crores in October to Rs 32,000 crore in November, though the number of transactions have gone up hugely.
Most economists, including the biggest economist of all, Dr Manmohan Singh are agreed that we are now set to lose about 2% of GDP. That means about Rs 2.5 lakh crore. GDP lost is lost forever so it is a cost. When the cost toting is all done it will most probably be much more than that.
Arvind Panagariya, the top sarkari economist speaking for demonetisation, agrees that “supply chains” have been disrupted but new ones will regenerate, as happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. This is an unfortunate and weak analogy. Katrina was an act of nature. Demonetisation is an act of utter stupidity.
 

Towards digitalisation

The prime minister seems to have realised this. He is now slyly making this a campaign for digitalisation or for cashless-ness.

Here is a reality check. In the poorer states like Bihar, UP, MP, Orissa and Assam, the teledensity is about 50%. The ATM density is about one for every 10,000 as opposed to one for every 3,000-4,000 in states like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra with superior banking networks. Only 20% of the ATMs are in rural areas. Development here is highly desirable, but it will take many years. Professionals expect we will reach a desired level only in 2021.

Then, there is a cost to digitalisation. According to the RBI, a Rs 100 note lasts about a year and is good for an average of 1,000 transactions or change of hands before it needs to be replaced. These transactions amount to Rs 1,00,000. A new Rs 100 note now costs about Rs.3 to print and distribute and is the cost of facilitating Rs 100,000 worth transaction.

But if you do a like number of digital transactions by credit or debit card, or by systems like PayTm, which the prime minister is apparently huckstering, the charge is anywhere between 0.6 % to 2%. Let’s be generous and assume 1%. A thousand transactions of Rs 100 each will generate a cumulative income of Rs 1,000 for the digital transfer companies and banks. Compare Rs 3 to Rs1000. What kind of economic logic is this for a country where the daily wage for over 200 million unorganized workers is just Rs 272?

Digital transactions are neat and simple. Better off people obviously prefer them for their convenience. But they are just too costly and inconvenient for people who cannot afford them or are not hooked up to the digital cash system. They will become more common in time when the average India gets wealthier and has much more than Rs 272 daily to support his family.

So the big question is: Why this shifting of goalposts? In a recent discussion, one fellow panelist described it as suddenly switching a game of hockey midway into football. I have a crueller description. I say digitalisation is just a fig leaf for the failed demonetisation.

Courtesy: Scroll.in

The term “voodoo economics” entered popular lexicon when George HW Bush derisively used it to describe his presidential opponent Ronald Reagan’s economic policies for the United States of America in 198o. It is also best suited to describe what the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s principal economic theorist, S Gurumurthy, has been saying recently in defence of his fellow RSS pracharak Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetisation policy.

But before I elaborate on that, given that any criticism of the party in power, or its supporters, is deemed as an expression of support for the Congress regime, particularly the United Progressive Alliance’s 2004-2014 tenure, it is perhaps best to start with where I stand with respect to it.
 

The golden decade

I have never been an admirer of Dr Manmohan Singh for many reasons.

Most of all, because he never articulated a vision for a truly liberalised society, where the jackboot imprint of the state would become smaller, with the state relying more on compensation and conditioning and less on coercion to govern and build this nation.

Instead, he assumed that by just dismantling the industrial licensing regime, of which he was a strong votary long after the evidence against it had piled up, he was liberalising India.

He also did not distinguish between a regime that ensured the free ingress and exit of foreign capital into capital markets and a freer regime for foreign long-term investment to cater to India’s rapidly expanding demands.

Singh followed the code of Omerta, ignoring all the wrongdoings around him, and showed inertia when his ministers quite openly flouted his directions. But, most of all, I detested his excessive deference to the Congress president, whose sense of right and wrong was largely shaped by her family’s immediate interests.

Despite this, I recognise that from 2004 to 2114, the Indian economy grew by an average of over 7.8% each year. Included in this decade were two years at over 10%, two years at over 9%, two at almost 8% and even during the years, when the national mood turned sour, India grew at 4.0%% and 5.9% respectively. If there ever was a golden decade of India’s economic growth, it was this. By contrast the first two Modi years saw Gross Domestic Product grow by less than those last two Congress years if the 2.2% tweaking of national income accounting is factored in.

In these last two years there has been zero job growth, though the prime minister claims to have created 31 million new jobs.
 

Fantasy figures

Modi derives this extraordinary conclusion by directly linking it to his claim of having disbursed 3.1 crore Mudra loans. What makes this patently bogus is the fact that the average Mudra loan is about Rs 1000 each. If a loan of Rs 1,000 can create one new job, as Modi assumes, then the country will largely rid itself of unemployment by spending just Rs 1 lakh crore to create 100 million new jobs.

These are the kind of fantasy economic figures only pracharaks – literally, propagandists – can cook up. That is not all – they don’t only cook up what doesn’t exist, they also ignore the reality pertaining to their main political adversary.

In his recent column, Gurumurthy blandly writes that the National Democratic Alliance I government of Atal Behari Vajpayee created 600 lakh jobs during its five years, while the UPA I and II just resulted in 27 lakh jobs. The reality is quite the opposite.

According to the Economic Census, “new jobs grew at an annually at 3.2% between 2005 and 2013 (UPA period), faster than the annual pace of job growth of 2.78% between 1998 and 2005 (NDA period).”

Employment generation and economic activities grew at their fastest pace in nearly two decades with over 13 crore people employed and 1.92 crore new establishments set up in the country in the eight years leading to 2014.

Most of non-agricultural employment is in the “informal sector”. The sub-sectors that account for a dominant share of informal sector employment are manufacturing, construction and trade. It is these sectors that grew fastest in the UPA years when economic growth was the fastest.
The growth rate in employment since 2005 was 38.13% and manufacturing was the largest employer followed by retail trade. But I will leave it to the UPA to put forward its case. It has quite a few people in the Rajya Sabha who are qualified to speak on such issues and are yet to earn their pay and repay the trust reposed in them by the Congress.

According to Gurumurthy’s voodoo economics, “the well-kept secret” of the Manmohan Singh period’s high economic growth was “huge asset price inflation, not production.”

Now, economists track economic growth by measuring the change in the GDP and then adjusting for inflation. Asset-price inflation refers to the nominal rise in the prices of stocks, bonds, derivatives, real estate and other assets. All standard measurements of inflation, such as the consumer price index, do not account for rising asset prices. GDP does not factor asset price inflation. Real GDP is just a plain and simple sum of all the goods and services produced adjusted for comparison. Paradoxically, it is nominal GDP, not adjusted for inflation, that is the real GDP. These are basic economic principles that Gurumurthy seems to be ignoring.

Gurumurthy ascribes high GDP growth to increased money supply. The reality is that a growing economy needs more cash, and India is a cash-driven economy where almost 40% of wages are paid daily by cash. The demonetisation exercise, which has rendered large swathes of the economy sterile leaving behind in its wake huge number of unemployed people, should tell him that now.

It’s unfortunate that this realisation must come after shooting oneself in the foot.

Gurumurthy would do well to start with reading and digesting Economics, an introductory textbook by the great Paul Samuelson. It is the best selling economics textbook of all time, described as “the canonical textbook of mainstream economic thought.” My advice to him is that what is not in it on economics does not exist – as yet, anyway.
 

Old technique

In early 1999 I had an intellectual encounter with Gurumurthy at an event held at the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, about how to stimulate investment and hence growth.

I argued that foreign investment is a key driver of rapid industrial growth, as it was in China, because it invariably brings with it the latest technologies and opens up great export markets. Like Ford, Suzuki and Hyundai now do in India.

Gurumurthy argued that ancient India had all of the technologies needed and we need to just draw from them. He said all the capital investment could be achieved by retrieving the gold held in Indian households which, according to him, was worth several trillion dollars.

He kept repeating that all those who advocate foreign direct investment and the import of technologies must be foreign agents.

I see the same technique of simply maligning the opponents, being employed in defence of demonetisation, not only by Gurumurthy but also by his great friend and fellow conspirator, Finance Minister Arun Jaitely.

Mohan Guruswamy heads the Centre for Policy Alternatives, New Delhi, an independent and privately funded think-tank. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.

Courtesy: Scroll.in