Wealth | SabrangIndia

Under Modi Rule, Ambani, Adani Have Doubled Their Wealth

Mon, 14 Oct 2019 05:48:19 +0000

Meanwhile, several corporate bigwigs are heading to RSS HQ in Nagpur to earn some good marks.

The release of richest people’s lists is usually a signal for much back-slapping and triumphalism in the corporate world and its hangers on in the media. It is seen as some kind of symptom that India is doing well, people are getting wealthier, achhe din (good days) are here, although such lists are only for a 100 people (as in the case of the Forbes India list) or perhaps more (as in IIFL Hurun list), in a country of 1.3 billion people.

But these lists also reveal another side of the super wealthy corporates of the country. A comparison between the Forbes India richest people’s lists of 2014 and 2019 reveals which of the corporate honchos have flourished under Narendra Modi’s rule and which have not done so well.

Before going into the individuals, it should be noted that the total wealth of the top 100 richest Indian corporate heads increased from about Rs.25 lakh crore to over Rs.32 lakh crore between 2014 and 2019. That’s a 31% increase. The wealth of just these 100 people in 2019 is about 6% of the country’s GDP (gross domestic product). This is a measure of the high degree of inequality in the country that just 100 people own so much wealth while the vast bulk of India’s people have only a very small fraction of it.

Who has Flourished Under Modi?

Coming now to the rather curious case of individual growth among corporates, it turns out that the richest person in India, Mukesh Ambani, has more than doubled his wealth. It has increased by 118%, to be precise, from Rs.1.68 lakh crore to Rs.3.65 lakh crore between 2014 and 2019. [See chart below for top 10 sourced from the Forbes India lists]

In Gautam Adani’s case, the rise has been better. His wealth zoomed up by 121% from Rs.50.4 thousand crore in 2014 to a breath-taking Rs.1.1 lakh crore in 2019. He climbed up from the 11th place in the 2014 rankings to becoming the second richest man in India in 2019.

Both these illustrious men are known to be quite friendly with Prime Minister Modi and the ruling dispensation. Modi had even appeared in a full-page advertisement for the launch of Jio, the Reliance telecom service, which has, in three years, the largest subscriber base in India.

Adani’s association with Modi dates back to the days when Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat. But, it was Modi’s elevation to New Delhi that marked a phenomenal upswing in Adani’s fortunes.

A look at the chart above, shows that only two other people exhibit a marked growth in their wealth – Uday Kotak, owner of Kotak Mahindra Bank and other financial services, and Radhakishan Damani, who owns the DMart chain of hypermarkets in India, promoted by Damani-owned Avenue Supermarts Ltd., a company that had revenues of $2.7 billion in 2018-19. Damani’s rise is also dramatic, but remember that he owned just Rs.7,100 crore back in 2014. So, the percentage increase is from a very small beginning. He ranked 100th in 2014, and now he is at number 7.

Uday Kotak is another blue-eyed boy of the current government, and was appointed last year to head the government-controlled board of the collapsed infrastructure financing group, IL&FS.

All the other corporate bigwigs among the top 10 are doing well but only just. Pallonji Mistry, owner of construction behemoth, Shapoorji Pallonji, saw a 6% decline in wealth, as did UK-based Lakshmi Mittal, owner of steel giant Arcelor Mittal (by 34%). Kumarmangalam Birla, an old-timer in the rich list, grew his wealth by just 4%, the Godrej family increased its wealth by 3% and Shiv Nadar of HCL Technologies by 15% in five years.

Many notable rich families do not figure here because this is a list of rich men or brothers (mostly). Groups like Tata Sons have distributed wealth though each of their individual components are giants in their own right. But they do not make it to the top 10. Others like Wipro Chairman Azim Premji have ‘donated’ substantial chunks of their wealth to run charities or educational trusts and have thus fallen off the list, though they continue to be super rich.

Corporate-RSS Bonhomie

A noteworthy trend that has emerged in recent years – which may have some relevance to wealth creation – is the growing bonhomie between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (which is the mentor of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party) and corporate bigwigs. Only a few days ago, Shiv Nadar of HCL was the chief guest at the Foundation Day of RSS at Nagpur. A few days before that, Azim Premji visited the RSS headquarters and met Sangh supremo Mohan Bhagwat. In April, Ratan Tata had visited the RSS headquarters to meet Bhagwat. In fact, last year, Tata Trusts donated Rs 100 crore to Nagpur’s National Cancer Institute run by an RSS-affiliated trust named after Dr Aabaji Thatte, the personal assistant of second RSS chief M S Golwalkar. In 2017, ONGC, a premier public sector undertaking too donated Rs.100 crore to the hospital. Last month, Rahul Bajaj visited Smruti Mandir to pay tributes at the memorial of RSS founder K B Hedgewar at Nagpur.

Corporate India doesn’t kowtow to anybody unless they envisage some benefit. This increasing closeness of corporate honchos to the RSS, so much so that they have been making a beeline to Nagpur to pay respects to the founder and to confabulate with the current chief, is their way of extending support to the Modi government and generally be in its good books.

The nexus that has emerged – some call it the corporate-Hindutva alliance – also explains why the RSS supremo was all praise for the Modi government’s openly pro-corporate policies. In his Vijay Dashami speech, Bhagwat praised disinvestment of public sector units, justified foreign direct investment and talked down the “useless discussion” on economic slowdown. Remember: the Modi government had recently given corporate houses a big gift by slashing corporate tax rates from 30% to 25%, a move that would cost the government over Rs.1.45 lakh crore. Small wonder then that corporates are a happy lot – and the rich list is growing by leaps and bounds.

Courtesy: News Click

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Hamid Ansari on the uncomfortable questions India must ask about rising inequality

Sat, 11 Feb 2017 10:16:48 +0000

Full text of the vice-president's speech in which he warned that unless the problem is tackled, conflict is bound to follow.

Vice-President M Hamid Ansari on Friday called inequality the greatest risk facing the world today, saying it “corrodes social cohesion”, “breeds economic inefficiencies and limits productivity”. Delivering the inaugural address at a three-day conclave organised by The Hindu in Bengaluru titled The Huddle, he said that while living standards have improved for many in the last 30 years, this has perhaps masked a “dramatic concentration of income and wealth” in a small segment: the richest 1% in the country owns nearly 60% of its wealth while the bottom half of Indians collectively own only 2% of national wealth.

Rising inequality can lead to conflict, both at the social and national level, he warned. The growing threat of left-wing extremism, which he said has been acknowledged as the gravest security threat to the Indian state, has its roots in economic deprivation and inequality in access to resources, he added.

He cautioned against viewing rising inequity as merely “an inconvenient truth in the saga of India’s shining future”, saying that without equality, there is unlikely to be much of a future, let alone a shining one.

This is the full text of the vice-president’s address:

“When I was first told about this conclave, an odd thought came to my mind. I wondered if the theme was a verb or a noun; the definite article however settled that.
I recall the tablet that was affixed to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in the early years of the last century, and that reads:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuge of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest- tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp besides the golden door.

I do not propose to dilate on the context of these lines. I do nevertheless wish to draw the attention of this gathering to the second line: the quest for freedom by human kind, and to the response patterns we have witnessed in our times.

Freedom, in the dictionary meaning of the term, signifies ‘the power to act, speak and think freely’. It implies unhampered liberty to think freely, to question anything, to be able to speak frankly, to be free to explore boundaries.

Yet freedom or liberty in itself would be quite meaningless. To enjoy these ‘freedom of,’ there is a requirement first for certain ‘freedom from’.

To survive with dignity, humans require both ‘freedom from want’ and ‘freedom from fear’. Human development is understood as the continuing expansion of human freedom and humans flourishing beyond these freedoms.

In our case, the Preamble of the Constitution specifies what ‘We the People of India’ set out to attain: justice (social, economic and political); liberty (of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship); and the equality (of status and of opportunity), and fraternity (to assure dignity of individual and unity of the nation).

Thus liberty or freedom is anchored between justice and equality; also inter-spersed is a Hegelian construct on appreciation of necessity that circumscribes this freedom.
Furthermore, while equality is the premise of citizenship, the latter by itself does not guarantee substantive equality.

In advance of the world’s financial and economic elite going to Davos for their annual meeting, the World Economic Forum publishes its Global Risks Report. The 2017 edition highlights some risks facing the global system and places the issue of income inequality as the number one risk because it is associated with a rise in populism and threatens the cohesiveness of countries. It describes the present as ‘a febrile time for the world’.

Four earlier annual editions of the report had similarly identified rising inequality among the top four global risks. It is therefore not surprising that reducing inequality is one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

And still – in this age of ‘post-truths’ and ‘alternate facts’ – deceptive appearances can be made to prevail.

The improving living standards, in segments, have perhaps masked a dramatic concentration of income and wealth over the last 30 years. A number of studies have come to the distressing conclusion that despite the increase in the number of people coming out of abject poverty, the majority of people on the planet today live in countries where economic disparities are bigger than they were a generation ago. Please consider the following:

Including capital gains, the share of national income going to the richest 1% has doubled since 1980. Within it, the largest share going to the top 0.01% – some 16,000 families – who now control almost 5% of the global wealth.

If we divide the whole income of the world into two halves, we find that the richest 8% get half, while the other half would be distributed in the remaining 92% of the population.

In almost all countries, the mean wealth of the wealthiest 10% is more than 10 times the median wealth. For the wealthiest 1%, mean wealth exceeds 100 times the median wealth in many countries and can approach 1,000 times the median in the most unequal nations.

In developing economies like India and China, despite the fact that incomes have risen for many, inequality, in both wealth and income have also risen significantly.
The richest 1% in India owned nearly 60% of the country’s total wealth, with the top 20% commanding 80%. The bottom half of Indians by contrast, collectively own only 2% of the national wealth.

Nor is a reversal in sight. Rates may vary, but since the financial crisis of 2007, inequality has shown more increases than decreases in the world’s nations. Twentieth century history shows that this can be ominous.

While the economists may continue to debate the extent and causes of inequality, there can be little doubt about its implications for the political, social and economic fabric of society.

Some years earlier, Joseph Stiglitz had written about the price of inequality in the context of the United States. More recently, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson have describe the ‘pernicious effects’ that inequality has on societies and provide evidence for a strong correlation between higher levels of national inequality and a wide range of health and social problems.

More worryingly, rising inequality is seen as a contributing cause for the rise of authoritarian leaders, often with a divisive agenda fuelled by sectarianism, xenophobia and nationalism.

Rising inequality can lead to conflict, both at social and at national level. Research has shown that in contrast to oligarchic regimes; democracies avoid serious political turbulence only so long as they ensure that the relative level of inequality between the rich and the poor does not become excessively large.

Other studies, similarly, indicate that social conflicts are indeed likely to break out in situations where there are large inequalities between different groups. Some studies have concluded that ethnic groups with incomes much lower than a country’s average per capita income are more likely to engage in civil war.

New protest movements have broken out around the world, many arguably rooted in the burgeoning inequality. The Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring were both fuelled by growing public despair at the sharp inequalities and growing unemployment and the perceived inability of the existing governance structures to redress the situation.
In India, the growing threat of left extremism, which has been repeatedly acknowledged as the gravest security threat to Indian state, has its roots in economic deprivation and inequality in access to resources.

It has also been recognised that growing social inequality corrodes social cohesion and can destabilise states. Some recent research has found that the likelihood of a country remaining mired in poverty or achieving sustainable growth has a strong relation to the average life expectancy of the citizenry. There, it is argued, that a shorter average life span leaves less time to reap the returns on investment in human capital.

Inequality also breeds economic inefficiencies and limits productivity. Research by IMF has shown that income inequality slows growth, causes financial crisis and weakens demand. In a recent report, the Asian Development Bank has similarly argued that if emerging Asia’s income distribution had not worsened over the past 20 years, the region’s rapid growth would have lifted an additional 140 million people out of extreme poverty.

Perhaps the time has come to move the development discourse of inequality beyond the current discussion of outcomes and opportunities. A conceptual framework is provided by Amartya Sen and some others who see human capabilities as the capacity and freedom to choose and to act; and calls for the opportunities that give individuals the freedom to pursue a life of their own choosing to be equalised.

The concepts of justice and fairness are tied to the idea of equity in development. Equity has an intrinsic value since some groups face consistently inferior opportunities – economic, social and political – than their fellow citizens. Specifically, it translates into the need for equal opportunity and avoidance extreme deprivation in outcomes.
To view rising inequity as merely an inconvenient truth in the saga of India’s shining future would therefore be a folly. Without equality, there is unlikely to be much of a future, let alone a shining one.

There is a need to revisit our commitment to investing in social goods. We have to move beyond seeing corporate social activity and government welfare schemes as merely minimum relief for the misery of the masses aimed mostly at neutralising the more aggressive antagonism of those who have lost income and wealth or those whose upward mobility seems permanently blocked.

We need to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions:

Can we ignore the great inequity as merely a by-product of progress?

Has the trickle-down model of growth failed us?

Have we paid too high a cost in terms of environmental damage for our material progress?

Are conflicts and human suffering the new normal? To what extent are they induced by failed ventures in quest for unrealisable utopias?

Can we just accept the growing insularity, intolerance and discrimination?

Have we made sufficient investments in improving our human capital and public goods, like education and healthcare?

Faced with growing global violence, poverty, and injustice, it may be difficult to retain hope for an equitable future. Yet, if the reality of global inequality inspires what Antonio Gramsci called ‘pessimism of the intellect’, work must nevertheless begin with what he termed ‘optimism of the will’ the undaunted commitment that drives radical change.

I have raised questions. I hope this Huddle will bring forth some answers.

JaiHind.”

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India is the Second Most “Unequal” Country in the World, after Russia

Wed, 07 Sep 2016 05:39:08 +0000

With 54 per cent of the country’s wealth owned by millionaires, India is the second most “unequal” country in the world after Russia, according the latest report of the Johannesburg-based wealth research firm New World Wealth.

India is among the 10 richest countries in the world with a total individual wealth of $5,600 billion, the average Indian is quite poor, the report said. "The higher the proportion the more unequal the country is. For instance, if millionaires control over 50 per cent of a country's wealth, then there is very little space for a meaningful middle class," the report added.

Globally, Russia is the most unequal country where millionaires control over 62 per cent of the nation's total wealth.

In what might come as a surprise to many, Japan ranks as the most equal country, with millionaires controlling only 22 per cent of total wealth and even the US is "surprisingly" equal, with millionaires controlling around 32 per cent of the nation's total wealth. "This is surprising low considering all the negative press that the US gets in terms of income inequality," the report observed. Britain is just a bit less equal than the US; its millionaires control around 35 per cent of the total wealth there.

Russia also tops the list of a country's wealth held by billionaires (with net assets of $1 billion or more) with 26 per cent of the total Russian wealth held by this category of high net worth individuals. Once again, Japan is the most equal in this group, with billionaires controlling only three per cent of the total wealth of the country.

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A Long ‘Hot’ Primary Season: US Elections

Sat, 11 Jun 2016 07:54:08 +0000

Home Page Image: Indian Express.com

It is the genius of the American system to make people vote against their class interests
Gore Vidal

A Slowly Unfolding Catastrophe:

Two decades ago, I worked in the small town of Madisonville, Ky (population 20,000). A four lane highway was the main road in and out of town. As one approached the town two empty factories stood, one on each side of the highway, awkward, forlorn even lonesome, as though surprised that all the activity they were used to had ceased.

One was a Whirlpool factory that had made washing machines, the other, across the road, Zenith, had made TV sets. No new factories had replaced the two. These factories had relocated either to Mexico or somewhere else. Coal mining, another staple in the area had also declined. White males had suffered the loss of jobs that paid a decent salary and provided benefits such as health insurance, paid vacation and sick leave. Similar job losses and factory closures occurred all across the United States. They also affected large cities like New York and Chicago, both cities over the past four decades had lost over a million manufacturing jobs .

The era where a white male with a high school education could easily raise a family of four, buy a home which would be completely paid for by the time he retired, be assured of a regular pension, was passing into history. As family incomes fell, women entered the job market to make up the loss, generally earning low wages in occupations that left little room for learning new skills. But family earnings did not rise over decades, indeed real income has not increased ” ever since 1979 , the vast majority of American workers have seen their hourly wages stagnate or decline. This is despite real GDP growth of 149 percent and net productivity growth of 64 percent over this period. In short, the potential has existed for ample, broad-based wage growth over the last three-and-a-half decades, but these economic gains have largely bypassed the vast majority.(1)”.

The top one-tenth of one percent of the US population owns as much wealth as the bottom 90% (2). The Waltons of Walmart alone are worth $145 billion equal to the assets of nearly 2 million American families.

From the time of the Great Depression of the 1930s to the early 1980s the lower 90% of the population got 70% of the share of the growth in national income. Since 1997 it has got zero percent.

This economic hollowing out of working class employment security was carried out over four decades in which the Democratic party, the party that working people gave their allegiance to since the New Deal, was in power for half the time. It turned its back on fighting for jobs to be retained at home and enthusiastically promoted ‘free trade’ agreements that further increased job losses.

Neoliberal ‘mantras’ of privatization, ‘public-private partnerships’ carried the day. Sub contracted labour became common. Harsher conditions of work and fall in wages were skillfully disguised by a terminology that would have done Goebbels credit: Flexibility, be your own employer, set your own pace and so on.

The necessity of seeking the voters’ approval every two years in Congressional elections and every four at the Presidential level made for elaborate charades of “throwing red meat” to the loyal party base.

For the Republicans racism, overt or blatant, became a habit skillfully improved since the days of Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’ of 1968. Various euphemisms were used from Ronald Reagan’s ‘States Rights’ in 1980 to the staples of ‘family values’, ‘safe neighbourhoods’ etc.

The fierce emotions aroused by the limited success of the women’s movement were channelled with the campaign against the right to abortion providing many a grass root worker and innumerable votes. Thomas Frank has vividly described the anomaly of working class voters favouring Republicans in “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” (3)

In the country, as a whole, the Republicans mobilised voters by appealing to their race, their anti-immigrant, anti-gay rights and anti-women’s rights views. Once in power the party served the wealthy by decreasing taxes on unearned income, virtually eliminating estate taxes, and diluting the public sector by subcontracting whatever promised a steady revenue stream to their patrons.

For instance the US military began subcontracting many jobs to ‘Security’ firms. Several prisons were privatised yielding a captive and cheap source of labour to the owners. This was merely the tip of the policy changes that allowed capital sway, and big business free to ignore irksome environmental and safety laws.

Agencies dealing with these issues were either deliberately underfunded thereby understaffed or their leadership did not vigorously enforce safeguards previously enacted.

Meanwhile the reality that people faced was one of factory closures, of a future worse than that of their parents. Drug use, once considered a problem of the ‘inner city’ began to extract a toll across the land. (4,5,6).

The top one-tenth of one percent of the US population owns as much wealth as the bottom 90%

I remember an establishment scholar Nick Eberstadt writing about rising death rates in the former USSR in the 70s and the later astounding rise in death rates in Russia since the 90s as a failure of state policies in the earlier period and of loss of hope in the later.(7) The rise in white male mortality in the US has also been attributed to pessimism about the future.

Manufacturing jobs continue to disappear and under the present dispensation (8) this loss is presented either as a natural phenomenon or as a problem governments have no power to influence or modify.

Versatile politicians like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama never talked about the poor in their campaigns as though they were non-existent or a kind of blight that might herald bad luck?!! Bill Clinton for one always talked of ‘well paying jobs’ making me think what about those jobs that did not pay well? Were those who worked at them to be ignored?

Analysis in mainstream newspapers like the New York Times offer contradictory surmises. For instance Government can help says an article( 9), a few days after another has declared that a rise in productivity makes well paying jobs increasingly few in number(8).

The discussion never argues in favour of say controls on the flow of capital, or of making an annual increase increase in minimum wage mandatory.

Image: Rolling Stone

Education served as a panacea, a sure fire way to climb the economic ladder, is another source of anxiety for most Americans. College has become progressively more costly with most students having loans of around $30,000 to pay back.(10).

For some colleges, whether private or state run, the debt can be double that. Private colleges and online ‘franchise’ colleges have low graduation rates of 16% compared to a national average of 55% (11) along with high student debt.

The for-profit school Trump University, started by the presumptive Republican nominee, has been shown to be “an unscrupulous business… with unqualified instructors…” (12).

The ‘Great Recession’ of 2008 further increased the vulnerability of the mass of Americans. Home ownership, a major part of their assets, was no longer a safe and trusted ‘nest egg’ for their old age needs.

Many found themselves having to pay mortgages on homes that were no longer worth what these families had originally bought them for. Housing was one asset that had always increased in value, therefore the decline in housing values, which overwhelmingly affected the middle class, was a shock that reverberated through US society.

Meanwhile the reality that people faced was one of factory closures, of a future worse than that of their parents. Drug use, once considered a problem of the ‘inner city’ began to extract a toll across the land.

In 2008 the “Hope and Change” candidate Barack Obama swept to victory. His supporters’ hopes were soon dashed as he became what Angela Davis so aptly described as : “the difference that makes no difference, the change that brings about no change”. Early in his Presidency he was quick to reassure Wall Street titans: “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks,” Obama said. “You guys have an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem. And I want to help…I’m not here to go after you. I’m protecting you…I’m going to shield you from congressional and public anger.” (13).

With even the party of working people – the Democrats – assiduously courting and catering to the very rich the stage was set for a reaction from the party base.

Unintended Consequences of Unforeseen Contests and Candidates

What was to be a ‘coronation’ for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton turned out to be anything but. A non-telegenic septuagenarian, self-declared socialist, and mediocre speaker began to draw big crowds as he campaigned from those winter days in Iowa to the just concluded summer primaries of California and New Jersey.

When he entered the race Senator Bernie Sanders’ candidacy (14) was never regarded as anything but a token opposition to the formidable Hillary Clinton. Campaigning on the urgent need to reduce inequality in wealth and income he found a responsive audience as he thundered “This campaign is sending a message to the billionaire class: “you can’t have it all.”

"You can’t get huge tax breaks while children in this country go hungry. You can’t continue sending our jobs to China while millions are looking for work. You can’t hide your profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, while there are massive unmet needs on every corner of this nation. Your greed has got to end. You cannot take advantage of all the benefits of America, if you refuse to accept your responsibilities as Americans. “(15)

Promising action to make college tuition free, getting big money out of politics to restore democracy, combating climate change, he won several early primaries and forced Hillary Clinton to move to the left on these issues, and to at least publicly disavow the ’ Trans Pacific Partnership’ trade deal which is in the offing.

The millions of people who voted for him, and their enthusiasm for a different society, more equal and just is indeed a welcome phenomenon. But it is unclear if this campaign will be able to shake the Democratic ‘poohbahs’ sufficiently to compel them to implement policies that Senator Sanders’ supporters favour.

The Democratic establishment, which worked hard to ensure that Hillary Clinton is the nominee, will do whatever it can to secure her victory in the November election. The party has become very adept at making historically symbolic choices as its Presidential candidate: an African-American in 2008, and now a woman.

These choices, while not to be dismissed completely, do little to affect the US’ power equations where wealth, corporate interests and the maintenance of an imperial lock on global resources holds sway.

Campaigning on the urgent need to reduce inequality in wealth and income he found a responsive audience as he thundered “This campaign is sending a message to the billionaire class: “you can’t have it all.”

Hillary Clinton impresses with her tenacity, grit, and intelligence. It is the uses she puts them to which is troubling! Though she is the most likely winner of this year’s election, her victory would not herald the beginning of a new progressive era if her husband’s and President Obama’s policies are anything to go by.

Her own record in domestic affairs is of one who favours Wall Street over Main Street. In foreign policy she is a consistent hawk, who besides being a crucial player in a coup that overthrew a democratically elected government in Honduras(16), was in no small measure responsible for the havoc that Libya and Syria, to name two countries, are experiencing.

A book that deals with Mrs Clinton’s imperial world view has a title that seems unkind “Queen of Chaos” but maybe apt (17). She has a high ‘dislike’ and untrustworthy’ index (18) but her opponent’s is even worse!

Meanwhile on the Republican side a most improbable individual will head their ticket. A crude, bombast of a billionaire who promises to “Make America Great Again” won over 17 other candidates including the Bush scion Jeb.(19)

At one level ‘daring’ to say things other politicians would or could not Donald Trump appealed to those who have lost jobs and status, who feel adrift in the sea of globalisation, who resent the changing demographics of the country especially the rise of the Latino population from 17.3 million forming 6.5 % of the population in 1980 to 55.3 million or 14.8% of the total in 2014.(20)

Those who turn out for Mr Trump’s rallies and may even catapult him to the White House represent a segment that every ruling elite fears. Not those with nothing to lose but those who had something and see it slipping away, maybe forever.

Their anger at their changed situation is deep. Their sense of betrayal by the party leadership, which egged them on solely to win elections and forgot their needs once in office, is raw and enduring. Trump has mobilised these sentiments by mocking the Republican leadership for their many sell-outs, for ignoring the base and being craven to the rich and powerful.

He promises to bring back lost jobs, to cut foreign competitors to size, to end migration from Latin America indeed to build a wall on the US-Mexico border. What might in ordinary times be dismissed as the rantings of a crank have reverberated all across the United States, from ‘sea to shining sea’.
Misogynistic, feeding into racist and anti Muslim sentiment, with utter disregard for facts, he holds nothing sacred. Hurling insults at individual reporters, contemptuous of the press (21), he recently lashed out at a judge (22) and routinely speaks of Mrs Clinton as ‘crooked Hillary’.

Come November, I feel Mrs Clinton will easily win major states like New York and California, as also overwhelmingly get the Latino and African-American vote. The election will depend on how the ‘swing states’ of Ohio and Pennsylvania vote, the ‘rust belt’ where deindustrialization has taken a heavy toll.

Whether he wins or loses Donald Trump has already achieved something worrisome in the American political discourse. He has brought racist and anti-Muslim sentiment into the mainstream, made them respectable as it were.

A victory for Trump would ensure that the views of chauvinists and bigots flush with the trappings of power occupy ‘centre stage’, with his ardent supporters trying to cower those who dissent into silence, while fostering an atmosphere of fear.

(The author is a semi-retired neurologist who divides her time between the US and India)

References:

1.    2014 Continues a 35-Year Trend of Broad-Based Wage Stagnation
2.    Bernie Sanders, in Madison, claims top 0.1% of Americans have almost as much wealth as bottom 90%
3.    What's the Matter with Kansas?
4.    Why Are White Death Rates Rising?
5.     Overdose Death Rates
6.    Opioid Addiction 2016 Facts & Figures
7.    The Dying Russians
8.    The Mirage of a Return to Manufacturing Greatness
9.     Government Must Play a Role Again in Job Creation
10.   Average Student Loan Debt Approaches $30,000
11. University of Phoenix
12. Former Trump University Workers Call the School a ‘Lie’ and a ‘Scheme’ in Testimony
13. “Progressive” Obama: He’s Melting, He’s Melting
14. Bernie Sanders
15. Income and Wealth Inequality
16. Hillary Is Being Misleading About Her Role in the Honduras Coup
17. Queen of Chaos- The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton
18. http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-04-08/ap-gfk-poll-many-dislike-clinton-but-more-disdain-trump1
19. Thank You For Your Support
20. Statistical Portrait of Hispanics in the United States
21. Donald Trump Lashes Out at Media While Detailing Gifts to Veterans
22. What Donald Trump Thinks Judges Are Good For

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