Month: July 2022

  • Half-Lion: How Narasimha Rao transformed India (2016)

    I am trying to understand the present situation better for a selfish reason. I am trying to decide what direction my career should take in the next few decades up to retirement. For this selfish reason, I am trying to understand the direction India will likely take in the next few decades.

    The present moment has its roots in the liberalization of 1991. Books by Gurcharan Das spoke of India’s growth despite the state. The dismantling of the License Permit Raj was the state moving out of the people’s way. Das’ book spoke about what happened as a result of the dismantling process. One of the first books I read about liberalization itself was Jairam Ramesh’s book, To the Brink and Back.

    Cover of the book

    I heard the podcast episode with Vinay Sitapati on The Seen and the Unseen in June 2022 and later that month decided to pick up the book on Audible.

    My reading had slowed down considerably since February 2022 and listening to this book was another effort to break the readlock.

    In writing this book, Sitapati was given access to Prime Minister Rao’s private archives. He makes deductions based on his notes and balances them with accounts of people who were with Rao in those crucial years. These give an insight indirectly into Rao’s actions and his thinking. The title of the book is a direct translation of Narasimha –Half Lion.

    On the subject of economic reforms, there was a charge that Rao undertook liberalization as a result of pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Sitapati argues convincingly to state that Rao used the IMF and Nehru-Gandhi’s legacy to push reforms. Rao makes these arguments at the Congress session held in Tirupati in 1992. Sitapati argues that Rao learns from Deng Xiaoping to reform while seeming to maintain historical continuity.

    On the subject of Rao’s inaction during the Delhi Riots of 1984 and the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992, Sitapati argues that 1984 is Rao’s vilest hour while he is more innocent than guilty for his inaction in 1992. He asks why Kalyan Singh, then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh is not vilified for 1992 as Chief Minister Modi is vilified for 2002 and not Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

    There are two parts of the book that were of interest to me. One, was his contributions to Indian foreign policy. Second, was his contribution to the Indian nuclear programme.

    He is known for his Look East policy looking at South-East Asia. He is also known for opening channels of communication with the USA and Israel. In the background of the fall of the Soviet Union, he is credited with making sure that Indian defense products got continued maintenance support from Russia and the newly created Eastern European countries.

    Rao is also known for laying the foundation for the nuclear tests India conducted in 1998.

    I was disappointed to see only one chapter dedicated to Rao’s foreign policy and the nuclear programme but hope this is the first in a series of new well-researched political biographies. Sitapati has written another book about the BJP before Modi. I would probably listen to Sitapati’s podcast episode on The Seen and the Unseen before deciding if I might buy the book.

  • Skein – Media consumption

    After a long time, I found myself browsing Binny VA’s website. After that, I went to his Twitter handle.

    Rabit holes follow:

    Binny VA’s tweet appreciates a shout-out!
    Binny VA’s shoutout led me to a lovely Zettelkasten twitter-thread.
    MostlyNotWorkin’s Twitter thread led me to another Twitter thread by Roam’s Connor White-Sullivan.
    CSW’s tweet thread led me to this Twitter thread by Priya on how social media consumption is linear.

    Priya references a blog post by Aaron Z Lewis article on how the way we consume media is changing. I was following Visakan on Twitter. Aaron’s article clarified what Visakan was actually doing. The other examples that Aaron provides in the blog post need more digging from my side. But, it shows new ways in which the impact of Twitter threads was going beyond Twitter.

    1. Venkatesh Rao – Ribbonfarm – blogchain
    2. Ben Hunt – Epsilon Theory – Discovery Map
    3. Are.na – non-linear threading product.

  • Grokking my world – Services and Networks

    Raghuram Rajan, India’s former central bank governor, wrote a piece in February 2022 that said India would do economically better to follow a services-led path than a manufacturing-led one. He argues in the second of a two-part essay that India being a democracy will have a more challenging task of improving infrastructure and providing cheap labor. (my notes)

    Saurabh Mukherjea, Chief Investment Officer at Marcellus Investments, wrote and spoke in a Marcellus Webinar that India was undergoing a period of rapid networking in transportation and telecommunications. He argued that this would particularly help in the growth of the services sector which contributes about 50% to the Indian GDP against manufacturing which contributes 25%. (Working Column)

    Noah Smith, a former opinion writer at Bloomberg writes in his newsletter, Noahopinion, that new manufacturing jobs would also be increasingly automated. This means that manufacturing jobs would also increasingly be like the tech sector jobs of today. He felt that growth in the services sector needs more development of local services jobs. This needs to be further improved by new labour movements to improve pay and working conditions in the same way that it did so in manufacturing. (Working Column)

    Balaji S, in a recent podcast episode with Tim Ferriss, says that the next century would be between the global Indian network and centralized China towards the very end of the episode. So, Network:Services :: Centralized:Manufacturing?

  • Notes: Raghuram Rajan’s essays

    Raghuram Rajan and Rohit Lamba wrote a couple of pieces for the Times of India. He shared these pieces on LinkedIn.

    1. The End of Free Lunch Economics
    2. An Alternate Vision for India’s Growth

    He also spoke about the idea behind these articles with Karan Thapar for The Wire.

    Video Interview embed

    The following are my notes from the second essay:

    • It provides an alternative path to India’s Growth Path than following the Manufacturing and Infrastructure development path we have chosen now.
    • What has worked for India?
      • Clear Economic Vision
      • Roll-out of well-thought-through frameworks that harness the energy of our people.
    • The vision in the 1990s was to separate the government from the economy.
      • Allow more private entry
      • Competition
      • Innovation
      • Opening up to the world through trade and investment.
    • Government would
      • Provide regulatory frameworks
      • Infrastructure
      • Safety Nets
    • Civil Society’s role in governance was enhanced through RTI.
    • India seeks to copy China’s plan to become a manufacturing export powerhouse.
    • India is a democracy, unlike China. We will not be able to do the things China did like suppress worker wages.
    • Alternative Vision
      • Draws on India’s people, their minds, and their creativity.
      • We should continue to build out infrastructure and encourage our manufacturers to seek out new global markets.
      • We should particularly increase our presence in global services by strengthening our human capital.
    • To pursue services-led growth:
      • Recognize and remedy the damage done to children’s schooling by the pandemic.
      • Build on India’s democracy:
        • Protect data privacy
        • Limit the government’s ability to intrude on privacy.
        • Be respectful towards its minorities.
      • This makes the world want to trade with and invest in us without hesitation.
      • People everywhere will want to visit, study or work in India.