Amartya Sen writes the above article in THE GUARDIAN, UK seeking mainly to ask the question and set off a debate on it: “what would India have been, and eventually become too, if the British had not occupied and ruled the country for 200+ years.”
Much of his article instead of actually suggesting interesting possible scenarios and hypotheses, which an eager reader would have expected from a scholar-historian of his erudition and status, is instead full of jejune rehash of William Dalrymple’s history of the British East Indian Company in the book “THE ANARCHY”.
A friend of mine with whom I shared Sen’s article wrote to me after reading it, “at best it’s specualtive and at worst hypothetical as it was quite possible that in the alternative, it could have been French or the Portugese spreading their wings here (in India)”.
It was a valid question indeed … but for which no clues are to be found in Prof. Sen’s article. (He does offer us though, by way of historical comparison, a dry, pedantic nugget about the Meiji dynasty before and after the American occupation of Japan in 1854 that Commodore Mathew Perry, with a just a small naval fleet, then heralded).
However, I ventured to oblige my friend with my own humble attempt in using my own relatively limited knowledge of history of my country (in comparison to Sen’s own) in providing what I thought might have most likely panned out as historical events in India between the period 1600 and 1947 when the British EIC, at first, and then the British Crown thereafter turned India comprehensively into the kind of nation that it became after 1947.
Below is reproduced what I wrote back to my friend:
It certainly is all just idle speculation… even if it does happen to be that of the Nobel Laureate, the great Prof. Amartya Sen.
My own idle speculation is that if the British EIC had not been able to aggressively expand in Bengal and the Awadh provinces, the tottering Mughal Empire would have collapsed and disappeared at least 50-60 years before we know it finally did with the death of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1862-3.
The Marathas would’ve then been able to certainly rule much of North India by unifying all other smaller princely states. And given then their collective might, the Portuguese and French would’ve been effectively stymied and prevented from allying with either the Nizam in Hyderabad or Tipu Sultan in the Carnatic and creating political mischief across the country as we know they did throughout our colonial history.
The British, French and Portuguese would’ve all been welcomed and allowed to do trade and commerce of course in India …. But the Marathas would never have given the foreigners political latitude the kind of which the fading Mughal Empire in its last days unfortunately did and perished because it did so.
I think the Marathas would’ve easily ruled all Deccan , all Central Provinces as well as large parts of the Northwest Frontier after seeking an alliance or power-share agreement in Punjab with the powerful Sikhs.
In the Deep South , where the Marathas were already present in Arcot, Tanjore and Tiruchirappalli , the Marathas would’ve turned those into vassal states with local regents.
India then would’ve become a largely Hindu nation. … not the nation with the severely broken or identity-disordered societies that it is made up of today, thanks mainly to the post-British colonial Westminster-style Nehruvianism that was adopted by the founding fathers of the new State that was born midnight 15 August 1947.
Amartya Sen instead of focusing on such possible or even imaginative “what-if” scenarios, and giving us far more authentic historian perspectives and deeply considered constructions than any that an ordinary person like me ever could, instead disappoints us all in his article which is filled with no more than boring, dreary stuff from history that we already know.
(Following is a letter written by Dr. B.R Ambedkar to Laxmi Kabir (Savitri Ambedkar), whom he later married. He expressed his views on the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi)
I have been the greatest champion of the elevation and emancipation of women … I have done my best to raise the status of women and I am very proud of it.
I entirely agree with you that Gandhi should have not met his death at the hands of a Maharashtrian. I May go further and say that it would have been wrong for anybody to commit such a foul deed. You know that I owe nothing to Gandhi and he has contributed nothing to my spiritual, moral and social make-up. The only person to whom I owe all my being is Gautama Buddha. Nonetheless, I felt very sad on hearing of his assassination. Notwithstanding his antipathy to me, I went to the Birla House on Saturday morning and was shown his dead body. I could see the wounds. They were right on the heart. I was very much moved on seeing his dead body. I went with the funeral procession for s short distance as I was unable to walk and then returned home and again went to the Rajghat on the Jamuna but could not get to burning place being unable to break the ring formed by the crowd.
My own view is that great men are of great service to their country but they are also at certain times a great hindrance to the progress of their country. There is one incident in Roman History which comes to my mind on this occasion. When Caesar was done to death and the matter was reported to Cicero, Cicero said to the messenger, “Tell the Romans your hour of liberty has come”
While one regrets the assassination of Gandhi, one can’t help finding in his heart the echo of the sentiments expressed by Cicero on the assassination of Caesar. Gandhi had become a positive danger to this country. He has choked all free-thought. He was holding together the Congress, which is combination of all the bad and self-seeking elements in society who agreed on no social or moral principles governing the life of society except the one of praising and flattering Mr. Gandhi. Such a body is unfit to govern a country. As the Bible says ‘that sometimes good cometh out of evil,’ so also I think that good will come out of the death of Mr Gandhi. It will release people from bondage to a superman. It will make them think for themselves and it will compel them to stand on their own merits.
Yours, Bhimrao Ambedkar
I re-read the above letter of Ambedkar at least thrice and it still left me in a state of numb, unbelieving shock.
It’s truly startling to read Ambedkar’s line …. “Gandhi should have not met his death at the hands of a Maharashtrian….”. That’s the only regret he has! That a fellow citizen of his own province of Maharashtra committed the crime! It shows the parochial Maratha ‘manoos” mentality that even the great Constitutionalist and Indian freedom-fighter harboured deep inside his spirit. If only the same crime had been committed by any Indian other than a Maharashtrian, it would’ve made it seem, in Ambedkar’s eyes, so much easier to condemn so much more harshly.
But does Ambedkar condemn Gandhi’s assassination? Not at all … at least not in the letter he wrote privately to his wife or wife to be.
When Ambedkar recalls Cicero saying what he is said to have said when informed that Caesar had been murdered, and Ambedkar uses that recollection to imply that Gandhi’s own murder arouses similar feelings of relief in him, one does wonder how much could have been the difference in the degree of ill-feeling if not anathema that might have been harboured towards Gandhi between Nathuram Godse, the man who shot him dead and Ambedkar, the man who for so many decades had been a long-time colleague and compatriot of M. K. Gandhi, but who in the end said that the Mahatma meant really nothing to him and in fact, “contributed nothing to my spiritual, moral and social make-up.” A thought like that one as Ambedkar voiced about a man like Gandhi is indeed surely and tragically the “unkindest cut of all” ! What kind of a man is he who, in the tacitness of his heart even while penning a private letter to his wife, all but admits that in a rather Ciceronian way he has “come only to bury Caesar not to honour him!”.
That he was eager to “bury” Gandhi and “not honour him” is made very clear indeed when Ambedkar goes on to write this too… “While one regrets the assassination of Gandhi, one can’t help finding in his heart the echo of the sentiments expressed by Cicero on the assassination of Caesar.” Mark the words — the great Constitutionalist only “regrets” Gandhi’s assassination but finds no urge or even just a few token words to condemn it!
And then comes out pouring in the letter from Ambedkar, in what is perhaps a Freudian slip — given the sombre occasion on which his letter was penned — but which is unmistakably a torrent of abusive, unapologetic and unrestrained assessment of not only Gandhi’s legacy to a free and new India but also an expression of sheer and haughty contempt for his other freedom-struggle co-workers and comrades i.e. Nehru et al who then comprised the Indian National Congress. …. “Gandhi had become a positive danger to this country. He has choked all free-thought. He was holding together the Congress, which is combination of all the bad and self-seeking elements in society who agreed on no social or moral principles governing the life of society except the one of praising and flattering Mr. Gandhi. Such a body is unfit to govern a country.”
One wonders if such intemperate, unkind and ungracious words could’ve been ever written by “one of the most illustrious sons of India” , the “author of its Constitution”… who had it seems been all along nurturing in his heart such supreme contempt and derision for the Party that had given him so much indeed by way of a brilliant political career in his life and conferred upon him a high place too in the history of the country.
In my humble opinion, this private letter of Ambedkar to his wife should’ve remained private forever for the plain and simple reason that it is as hateful as it uncharitable and mean-spirited. It reflects so unfavourably on the public memory we citizens of India otherwise have of the man, his work and his legacy. Reading this letter in one fell swoop destroys for someone like me the respect I had for Ambedkar the man who I had always thought had had a heart as prodigious as his intellect. Alas, this letter of his to his wife disabuses me now of such full-measured esteem I had for him.
I go one step further to say that I truly fear very much that this letter might get read somewhere in this vast country by some mentally deranged person who, out of misplaced and misguided sense of political fanaticism, might misunderstand and misinterpret Ambedkar’s terrible words —- “I think that good will come out of the death of Mr Gandhi. It will release people from bondage to a superman.” … And furthermore that… “My own view is that great men are of great service to their country but they are also at certain times a great hindrance to the progress of their country.”
And finally, I do sincerely hope no mad man somewhere reads these chilling, messianic words of Ambedkar and, God Forbid, starts to believe that they afford more than sufficient religious inspiration to warrant them being put to deed: “As the Bible says ‘sometimes good cometh out of evil! “
Here is a near-perfect example of modern retail online marketing …
Take a cheap, pretty ordinary product like this one, give it a new name (day bed!) hype it through branding (Indian design 1000 years old!) , differentiate it from competition (hand-woven!) , infuse Australian national pride into the product by completely neutering its possible association with stereotypes of “Indian shoddiness” and/or removing unease from consumer mind about “Chinese fakery” (100% Australian made! ), make doorstep-delivery seem like manna from heaven …And finally move in for the kill, and quickly deliver the coup de grace : make the atrocious tag-price seem as though it’s a real swell bargain … a steal, a deal, and real “value-for-money” offer!
And above all, remember , the strategic intent behind all the above marketing moves is underpinned by the basically contemptuous assumption about mass-consumer herd-psychology: that the consumer is an idiot who must be pandered into believing he/she is super-smart in making informed shopping-choices.
IN the above “down memory lane walk” article penned, it’s not really clear if P. Chidambaram is paying tributes to PVN, MMS, Montek, to the few other Babu-bureaucrats he deigns to name or is simply tooting his own hoot as an architect — or at least perhaps a “fellow architect”— of the great transition in 1991 of India from the License-Raj era to the Crony-Capitalism era that followed.
In his article above PC refers to Narasimha Rao as the “true accidental Prime Minister” — a grand title and crown he unobtrusively removes from the head of Manmohan Singh (on which it has been sitting since Sanjay Baruah wrote a biography in 2014 on Singh) borrows it for a moment and mischievously places it upon the PVN’s wise and slightly even saintlike head . This is very typical of PC … a PhD in the subtle and perverse art of giving Left-footed compliments.
Let me explain myself.
To suggest that PVN was the real “accidental Prime Minister” is nothing but a deliberate, mischievous misreading if not travesty of history. In 1989, after the Congress Party had managed to scramble to power in a ragtag coalition and then following the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, there really was no one around then with the political gravitas, savvy and experience other than PVN to helm the government . There was of course Pranab Mukerjea who had equal experience but not the gravitas and certainly not the “trust of Madam Sonia Gandhi” and her inner circle of devious wheeler-dealers. PVN stepped in and thanks to him really , the Congress is still alive today … well, barely so … but still just about able to be kicking.
PC calls PVN an “accidental prime minister” only to please … perversely praise … his present master now in New Delhi , Sonia Gandhi , who used to be many a time simply ticked off and shown her place by PVN when he was PM of India … quite in stark contrast to the way the other “accidental prime minister” Manmohan Singh used to crawl for her sometimes when Madam had only wanted him to bend in office. But PC being PC knows best what he does best … praise the living queen and compliment the dead “saint” with not even the idiomatic left hand but with the barely concealed left foot … In this case, with one deft juxtaposition of the celebrity title — accidental prime minister — between both Singh and PVN, PC delivers a left-footed kick into the shins of both under the table, as it were, in a perverted sort of way .
If you must walk down your “memory lane”, Mr.PC and seek to pat your own back too in the bargain, please do so … but then please do so without twisting history through sly innuendo or suggestive juxtaposition. For, if as you have hinted, PV Narasimha Rao was indeed the true “accidental prime minister”, what is to be said about Manmohan Singh then ? An “incidental prime minister”? !
Did you hear or read about the speech translated into English of the “Great Dictator of China”, Xi Xin Ping yesterday on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China?
More than 70,000 citizens assembled on the streets to hear his speech and not one was wearing a face face-mask in a country from where the Wuhan Virus came and has devastated the rest of the world… China found it not one bit inappropriate and insensitive to celebrate and commemorate the glory of its ruling Party in power at a time while the rest of the world mourns its dead, all killed by the Chinese virus — more than 4 million of them and still counting. That alone should tell us all about the nature and character of this brutal, evil Communist regime that rules over a billion and a half people as if they were all just so much raw material to be used and abused by it at will for its own grand goal of world domination.
Be that all as it may … what intrigues me is the reaction of the world press … and the Indian Press and media too … to a particularly ominously sinister and utterly tasteless expression in Xi Xin Ping ‘s hour long speech which would by any standards of political discourse in the world be regarded as nothing but unbecoming of a world leader . The expression when I read it in the reports of the HINDU, NEW YORK TIMES and BLOOMBERG NEWS , and also as I watched it on WION Channel being translated into English made me suspect that the rest of the entire world has been so shocked and awed by, and rendered speechless and aghast at the Great Dictator’s choice of words that it squirms uncomfortably to even as much as provide a decently accurate translation of what he actually said!
Xi Xin Ping issued a chilling, blood-curdling warning to the rest of the world using pretty much the same raw, ugly language as a mafia Don in gangster-land Hollywood movie might have worded his sinister threat to a rival, victim or adversary. The words he used are to the effect that anyone who tries to mess around with China can expect their “heads bashed against a wall of steel in China and their blood spilt upon it” .
Such is the crass and graceless language used by the President of a country with the largest population of humanity on planet earth.
But the world … and it’s great representative media … the voice of, say, the intrepid CNN, BBC press reporter and the wise and learned WSJ or The Economist commentariat … do not seem to have the guts to call a spade a spade and the “bloody” shovel which in this case it certainly is … even in plain English translation!
Read below the extracts from the HIndu, Bloomberg and the New York Times, and try to fathom for yourself the extent of the kind of pussy-footed terminological knots into which these great worthy news-giants have tied themselves into while merely translating Chinese into plain English what most certainly is (at least from the perspective of international diplomacy conducted by so-called “international community”) utterly disgraceful, offensive language coming out of China! Compare the English translations with the official translated transcript of Xin Xin Ping’s speech put out by the Chinese Communist Party … and you will surely understand what I mean .
QUOTE: “We Chinese are a people who uphold justice and are not intimidated by threats of force. As a nation, we have a strong sense of pride and confidence. We have never bullied, oppressed, or subjugated the people of any other country, and we never will. By the same token, we will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us. Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people” UNQUOTE —— CHINESE OFFICIAL GOVT. MEDIA press release of TRANSCRIPT OF XINXIN PING SPEECH —— July 1 2021 @ https://news.cgtn.com/news/files/Speech-by-XiJinping-at-a-ceremony-marking-the-centenary-of-the-CPC.pdf
First , read now the report of THE HINDU print edition below dt July 2. 2021 the morning after — You’ll be shocked there’s not even an attempt to carry a faithful translation of what Xin Xin Ping said! It’s completely omitted!
Then next below there is a translation in the Bloomberg news … which gingerly pussyfoots around the Chinese expression of the Great Dictator, giving Oh an ever so soft tweak to what most probably was much more brazen Chinese phraseology .
QUOTE: “The Chinese people will never allow any foreign forces to bully, coerce and enslave us,” Xi, wearing a gray Mao-style suit, said to rousing applause before a crowd of some 70,000 party faithful, soldiers and foreign observers. “Whoever attempts to do that, will surely break their heads on the steel Great Wall built with the blood and flesh of 1.4 billion of Chinese people.” UNQUOTE —— BLOOMBERG NEWS July 1 2021 …. @ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-30/china-s-xi-celebrates-party-s-longevity-with-nod-to-his-own-rule
Meanwhile, before the editors of the print edition of our own great “Mount Road Mahavishnu”, THE HINDU, had woken up from bed on July 2, it seems likely the Editor of the HINDU ONLINE had the previous night boldly taken matters into his own hands by publishing his very own translation version – and a very “vivid” comment too – about the outrageous expression “heads of the world bashed against the Great Steel Wall of China” built by Emperor Xi Xin Ping of the 21st century. Read below:
QUOTE: “We have never bullied, oppressed, or subjugated the people of any other country, and we never will. By the same token, we will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us,” he said, adding that “anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” according to the official English translation of the speech. The original language was more vivid, using a Chinese idiom saying those who attempted to do so would collide into the wall and see “their heads broken and blood flowing”. UNQUOTE ——— THE HINDU ONLINE edition July 1 2021 …. @ https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/china-wont-be-bullied-says-xi-on-party-anniversary/article35081751.ece/amp/
And finally , the nearest possible to journalistic accuracy in translation was perhaps achieved by the New York Tines below …. The “blood and steel” was said to belong to the Chinese people but then, of course, it was made very clear that the heads that would be bashed or “cracked” would have to belong to the rest of the world.
QUOTE: “The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us,” he said, clad in a Mao suit. “Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on the Great Wall of steel built from the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese people.” UNQUOTE —— THE NEW YORK TIMES July 1 2021 ….
After reading all of the above, I now ask myself, “Why is the world so mortally afraid of Xi Xin Ping of China?”, that it trembles to even accurately weigh his words, and their true intention, and broadcast the same in plain English in their so-called free press and media ?
I now await eagerly the reaction of the world leaders of the so-called “international community” in America, UK and EU … that half of the world that claims so often that it is “free and democratic” and the true crusader against world tyranny and dictatorships against peoples everywhere on the planet. What will the leaders say about China and the Great Dictator and his words after they have been duly sanitised — and duly sanctified by diplomatic mumbo-jumbo— and … yes, very nicely pussyfootedover too for delicate consumption… ?
We must all wait now with bated breath what M/s Biden, Macron, Merkel, and Boris will say in the days ahead in response to Xi Xin Ping …. Don’t be too disappointed however if it turn out to be Puss’N Boots pantomime of theirs : A chorus of pussies all roaring in harmony like so many paper tigers.
Along with his wife Jayalakshmi, Kumar ran Sudharma for more than 31 years.
K V Sampath Kumar, editor of the only Sanskrit daily in the world Sudharma, passed away on Wednesday (30 June).
Kumar and his wife Jayalakshmi ran Sudharma for more than 31 years. Kumar took over the mantle from his father, K N Varadaraja Iyengar, who launched the daily in 1970. The daily celebrated its golden jubilee last September.
In keeping with the times, they launched an e-paper in 2009 but still ran the print edition, with Sanskrit institutions from across the country being their key subscribers. Its digital footprint was around 150,000 and had readers from across the globe.
Kumar, supported by his wife, functioned as reporter, writer, editor, proofreader and publisher of the daily. Sudharma was an initiative to bring the language relegated to the pages of religion and spirituality to everyday life. It covered a variety of sections from politics to crime to culture. The language was simple and ensured that anyone who could follow the Nagari script and had a basic understanding of Sanskrit, could read its content.Advertisementnull
“If somebody asks me why Sanskrit, one can give a long list of benefits but most importantly, I think, it is that the language opens up a new avenue to explore treasures of Sanskrit literature spanning over 2,000 years. And the knowledge one acquires is priceless,” said Kumar last year as quoted.
But the struggle was real as it had very little support from the government as Kumar had lamented last year on the occasion of the golden jubilee of the publication. But that didn’t stop the couple from taking their printed daily to around 4,000 subscribers by post.
Although the paper is said to have seen better days, the numbers are low, and the Covid-19 pandemic had only made things worse. But they kept at it as the newspaper was an off-shoot of his father’s passion for keeping Sanskrit alive. His father had also been instrumental in starting Sanskrit news on All India Radio.
The couple had brought out a souvenir edition last year and had plans to conduct programmes that would enable conversations between scholars and the general public.Advertisementnull
As readers from across the world and the country’s top leaders expressed their grief, his final rites were conducted with full state honours. Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa, Union Home Minister Amit Shah were among the leaders who tweeted their condolences.
Sudharma (Old copy)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi also took to Twitter, expressing his condolences to Kumar’s family.
“Shri K.V. Sampath Kumar Ji was an inspiring personality, who worked tirelessly towards preserving and popularising Sanskrit, specially among youngsters. His passion and determination were inspiring. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his family and admirers. Om Shanti,” tweeted the Prime Minister.
Kumar and his wife were awarded the Padma Shri last year for their untiring efforts to keep the daily running against all odds.
But the efforts need much more than solidarity in words. Bringing out a paper every day will bear heavy cost, especially after Kumar’s demise.
In 1989, New York real estate investor, a man called Seymour Durst spent $120,000 to erect a “National Debt Clock” in Times Square to track the exact amount of money that the U.S. federal government was borrowing to pay its bills. At the time, the country had run up a $2.7 trillion tab, but that figure seems almost quaint today.
“Howstuffworks”
In 2008, the clock briefly ran out of available digits when the US National debt topped $10 trillion … about 5% of the global total debt at this time which was around $110 trillion. And it was in 2008 that the collapse of Lehman Brothers happened.
“Howstuffworks”
The company, with $639 billion in assets and $ 619 billion in debt and 25,000 employees worldwide, had filed for the largest bankruptcy in history, throwing the entire financial world into turmoil. It happened on September 15, 2008. Within a week, Merryll Lynch sold itself to Bank of America for $ 50 billion and the Federal Reserve had to provide emergency bailout funding of $ 85 billion to the insurance giant AIG, which had trillions of dollars in mortgages worldwide, to avoid a collapse of the global banking system. Worse, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, two of Wall Street’s largest investment banks, followed suit, seeking the FED’s protection to turn into commercial banks. As the contagion spread, panicky investors withdrew a record $ 144.5 billion in a single day on September 17, 2008, as against only $7 billion during a typical week. On September 26, the Washington Mutual Bank went bust and three days later, the US Stock Market crashed …. The Debt domino effect with potentially pandemic proportions was playing out… That’s an old story, anyway.
What’s the story today?
By June 2021, the upgraded clock for US Debt — which can now display up to a quadrillion dollars — has registered more than $28 trillion [source: US Debt Clock]. This is 10% the global Debt in 2020 : $281 trillion.
“Howstuffworks””
Now, a man with sober (and common) sense is bound to look at facts and ask himself some somber questions:
It took 2 decades from 1989 to 2008 for US Debt to quintuplicate itself (i.e. grow 5X) but it has taken only a decade for it to nearly further triple itself since 2008! In the same timeline, more or less, the total debt of the rest of the world grew only from about $100 trillion to c. $188 trillion in 2018… less than 2X.
By 2020, the global debt, thanks to the profligate but compelling Corona pandemic “distress funding” , again largely thanks to the USA , stands at a humongous $ 281 trillion!
The long and short of it all is that it is the USA which is merrily adding to the global pile of Debt much more significantly and and a great deal faster than the rest of the world combined… while the latter simply looks on helplessly ! The world is being mired more and more in US Debt while being duped into believing that what gets reflected as Debt on the US Balance Sheet in turn however gets reflected as “semi-precious” Assets on the World’s balance-sheet! And therefore, US debt that is really good for the USA is indeed even better for the rest of the world!
As everyone with common sense knows there is direct correlation between the size of Debt and imminence of Risk of Default … and also that greater the size of default the more catastrophic are its consequences… for entire capital markets, financial systems and networks of the world. So, then should not one be fearing that the rest of the world, thanks to the unbridled debt-growth of the US, must expect to witness another Lehman Brothers happening sooner or later in a post Covid world?
A man of sobriety is likely to be asked then to look at the robust exuberance of all the global stock markets today and be told this: “what is there to fear? The credit-default spread rates and the VIX volatility rates are all within acceptable range, after all … it doesn’t quite look like God is not in his Heavens and all is not well on earth! Stop worrying too much”!
A man of sobriety might also be given a stern lecture about how the profile of the holders of U.S. debt today is vastly different from those creditors that held US Debt back in 2008.
For e.g. the USA doesn’t really owe that entire $28 trillion national debt outstanding to its creditors, which include individuals, businesses and foreign governments who purchased U.S. Treasury bonds and securities. More than 20 percent of the national debt, or $6.2 trillion, is incurred for intragovernmental holdings, which are funds the U.S. government owes itself, mainly for the Social Security and Medicare trust funds [sources: Amadeo, U.S. Treasury]. And there is Zero risk of the US government ever defaulting on its own debt since the US Fed can always simply print greenback notes to extinguish it.
“Howstuffworks”
But then the man of sobriety will of course persist in worrying about a possible, if not probable “Lehman Brothers” event lurking and looming somewhere … not in the dark, deep and murky woods of corporate capital markets in some corner or Wall Street corners of the world… but somewhere in real-world sovereign countries out there on the high seas under the bright blue skies of the heavens? That fear cannot be simply dismissed as ridiculous.
Take a look at who today are the prime owners of the US Debt of $ 22 trillion:
Creditor Name U.S. Debt Owned US $Bn
India 211 Cayman Islands 217 Hong Kong 223 Taiwan 234 Belgium 234.8 Brazil. 255. 3 Switzerland 261 Luxembourg 291 Ireland 307 United Kingdom 431.8 China 1.1 trillion Japan 1.2 trillion
A Lehman Brothers like event, happening in any imaginable form or shape or avatar, in any of the above listed countries at any time in a fragile and uncertain Post-Covid world, will almost certainly send them rushing in panic to call up a substantial if not significant portion of their holdings of US Debt to save themselves and their souls.. And that event if it happens can snowball into a perfect financial storm that could potentially make the 2008 crisis seem like a storm in a teacup.
In the current tense and parlous state of relations between USA and China , the real hotspots are Hong Kong and Taiwan both of which China claims are its own sovereign territory. The US, UK and EU reject that claim. Considerations of global Realpolitik might cajole both parties in the short term to keep saying nice sweet things to each other about the matter … and how it ought to be constructively “negotiated across the table”.
But the world knows only too well that in the long term there is really no room for negotiation at all on the very crux of the matter for either parties… not definitely in the military sense. Sooner or later , the negotiation will stumble and falter and exhaust itself … And that is when there could be a Lehman Brothers moment … And that is when the rest of the world too might just decide it is high time its own US Debt asset-holdings are called up.
What then might follow will not be really for the economist or politician to contemplate about . It will have to be a historian to do so. And as for me, I, a sober man, can imagine that he/she might then view it as the perfect beginning of a great new chapter to be written for a new epoch unfolding in the history of the 21st century world.
Sudarshan Madabushi
PS: In 2008 I was serving in Cairo a multinational shipping & logistics company as their CFO. I led a project finance team of professionals to raise multilateral non-recourse debt funding for a $650 million project for construction of a greenfield deep-draft modern container terminal port at Port Damietta —- on the Mediterranean coast between Alexandria and Port Said. We had worked for 2 years to secure that funding from 13 banks in the GCC and MENA region.
In early 2008 we did the financial close and the port construction began … I got my bonus too … we were all happy!
Then in September that year Lehman Brothers went belly up … and the world financial and banking sector sank …
I got a letter from the Lead Lenders in November that the consortium of lenders for the project will have to completely review and revise the terms of lending. We were shocked. My BoD and Shareholders were livid.
The $650 MN port project was no longer financially viable. I tendered my resignation as CFO and returned to India in 2009. (before I took up another international assignment later) .
So, my memories of the 2008 financial crisis are vivid and personal too.
Gupkar Gang doesn’t seem to know that Kashmir politics is a bit like a game of club cricket …
First, you have got to assemble the 2 playing teams.
Then the rival captains must go onto the pitch for ceremoniously spinning a coin and only then, depending on the outcome of the toss of the coin, as we all know, the game can begin … There is a certain logical and conventional order in which the 3 steps are taken in natural sequence.
Likewise , PM Modi laid out to the Gupkar Gang of Kashmir the day before that first there must be (a) delimitation of electoral constituency areas, (b) then state elections must be held by the Election Commission and thereafter in the logical and constitutional order of sequence, (c) the emergent and elected Assembly will duly vote for and enact full statehood for J&K.
That’s how the game ought to be played.
The Gupkar Gang now wants that sensible order skewed and deranged … and to my mind, what it wants makes really neither sense, constitutionality nor cricket.
The Gang wants delimitation first, then statehood and only thereafter elections!
It’s wanting to put the cart before the donkey… or, to stick to our cricketing analogy, the Gupkar Gang wants to have the toss of the coin for the match well after match is over!
I think what the Gupkar Gang really intends telling PM Modi is this: “We want to play the match first… and no matter how it ends eventually, it shall be that Heads we win, Tails you lose”!
(Thanks to my dear old friend VK Kanna for this link)
June 25th 1975 … The Emergency !
I still remember the day …
I was a 2nd year B.Com undergraduate student in Loyola College , Chennai, who having finished the First Year university examination was enjoying the ensuing holidays until the new academic year commenced for the 2nd year …
On the morning of that fateful day , I got off the public transport bus at Sterling Road junction and began walking down to the college gates …
An eerie surreal silence had descended on the world …
The college gates and campus usually teeming and buzzing with the raucous , rowdy noise of swaggering students — yells, guffaws, whistles, honks, and boos—was strangely deserted and so funereally quiet … No more than a handful of souls going about …
The nations’s voice had just been silenced the midnight before by a black, draconian ordinance of the government .. And the whole of the Loyola college campus seemed to me that morning to be cringing , and echoing very meekly, very obediently and dutifully that reverberating national silence …
I confess that on that day , never did I imagine that India would ever at all emerge out of the Emergency as a free country again. I thought I would be destined eventually to graduate from college and enter into an absolutely totalitarian state the foundations for which Indira Gandhi had just lain and set so swiftly and brutally …
Thankfully , History took a different uniquely different turn …
And upon graduating out of college later in 1977 and when I too joined the ranks of millions of unemployed in the country, I saw India was free and joyous again… and as usual … became the roiling “functioning anarchical” circus that it had always been the way I had always known my country to be .
I was a very young man then .. 46 long years ago! I was just stepping out from academia to make something of my life in the brave new world I was about to enter . A page in a chapter in Indian history I’d feared would never be turned … had been been marked in bloody red ink as a black day … and the nation was about to move on ..
I look back 46 years ago when I was just 19….and I say to myself now: “Ah! How wonderful indeed it is to keep smelling the same rotten-sweet, but delightfully refreshing fragrance of so many unfettered, tumultuous human freedoms Mother India has gifted me and that have kept me blessed and well nourished all these years … the same freedoms that my children too can breathe today!
