“Lost in translation?”: WHY IS THE WORLD PRESS PUSSYFOOTING AROUND WHAT XI XIN PING REALLY SAID YESTERDAY ?

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 pussyfooted over 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.

Sudarshan Madabushi

Long live SUDHARMA!

NEWS BRIEF

Published in The SWARAJYA

Editor Of India’s Oldest Sanskrit Daily Passes Away, Leaving Behind A Legacy Driven By Passion

by Harsha Bhat– Jul 1, 2021 11:16 AM

K V Sampath Kumar, Editor, Sudharma.

Snapshot

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.

“A global “Lehman Brothers” event looming ahead?”: Sombre thoughts of a man of sobriety.

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

For the entire list of the “Sugar Daddys” of US Debt see this link https://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt

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.

Kashmir, “Gupkar Gang” and Cricket!

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”!

Sudarshan Madabushi

The rotten-sweet but refreshing fragrance of Freedom — reflections on the 46th anniversary of the Emergency…

Indira, Jeeps and Blue Books
(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!

Maa, tujhe salaam! Mera Bhararat mahaan!

🙏👏👏🙏

Sudarshan
June 25, 2021

The English and the Americans may be divided by accent but they’re united by their fondness for spelling …

NOTE:

As might well be observed in everything about the English character, the ribaldry of spelling inherent in their language too is true to form. Just read the outrageously dyslexic examples of SpellingBee tricks below … And what is so touching about it all is that their dear cousins in America seem to simply love every bit of it too!

Sudarshan Madabushi

The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the winners

1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

3. Intaxicaton: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

3. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

4. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

5. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high

7. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

8. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action

14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating

The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.

And the winners are:

1. Coffee, n: The person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted, adj: Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. Negligent, adj: Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

4. Lymph, v: To walk with a lisp.

5. Testicle, n: A humorous question on an exam.

6. Rectitude, n: The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

A brief History of Indian historians

👍👏👏… What an amazing video-clip! You must watch it! And how true and so very well said!

If one thinks deeply about it, it would be very clear that the very idea and so-called “Study of History” as well as the art and craft of history-writing as we know it today is a 💯 % White Man conception that was thrust upon the rest of the world.

In India at least before the White Man came and taught us how History is made (or rather how it ought to be made up) , our peoples had only oral traditions of Itihasa and Purana retold to generations after generations by sages, bards and priests called “pauraanikar-s”… But then thosecoral traditions were not intended to be or serve so much as “historical accounts” as ethical (Dhaarmic) manuals or chronicles for mainly bringing about the edification of mankind.

The White Man then came and upbraided and humiliated us all as a people telling us severely that we all lacked even what he called as even a “modicum of a sense of history”. And it was because we had no “real sense of history” being written down or documented, and measuring up to the White Man’s own standards of historiography , that we were not really a people with an identity, a nation or a culture worth recognition.

Very soon thus in India we proudly began to embrace in fact as our own the History that history which was conceived by and made to be written by the White Man .

So that was pretty much how the White Man brought enlightenment to us. He began writing our History for us as he saw it and not exactly as how we had lived it. He taught us to understand and believe and then be utterly convinced why our Puranas, Itihaasas, Smritis and Dharmasaastra literature were all not History at all but ridiculous, priestly mumbo-jumbo and anachronistic obscurantism.

A new Dawn of Enlightenment descended upon we Indians … and for a whole new Post-Independence generation of “historians” that came thereafter in nearly 75 long years, Indian History became “A Discovery of India” of sorts … i.e. a view of India’s past seen through the lens of the White Man and then documented and constructed per the White Man’s norms and perspectives on History —- as it should be written, read, learnt, understood and embraced.

That was how the White Man’s History of India became the holy catechism of India’s acolyte-generation of historians too and whose copious output works then soon filled up the school children’s History text-books, the syllabi of History Faculty in universities across the length and breadth of India…. and yes, of course, filled up the minds and hearts of millions of educated Indians in tide after tides of brainwashing waves.

Then in 2014 … something strange and dangerous happened . The Modi Government seized power. With power comes the will to change the prevailing perspective and narratives of Indian History and rid it off its White Man bias and supplant it with a bias of a post-modern, new-fangled Indian ideology called Hindutva.

And so post -2014, a new breed of Hindutva historians sprang up and began to see urgent need to remove the crusty old patina the White Man had for so long been assiduously applying as taint upon India’s History and then rewrite it all over again … repaint it, rather … in iridescent, so-called vibrant “Saffron” colour and hue, all intended to make a new generation of young Indians proud of their real past and authentic heritage.

The old “Discovery of India”-generation of historians suddenly today finds itself besieged. All their own works of a lifetime suddenly are being challenged and threatened of being systematically invalidated and dismantled. The Marxist “scarlet red” monochrome of Marxist hue that they had succeeded so well in painting so painstakingly over India’s History suddenly now was going to be given a complete makeover by what they complain are a new parvenue breed of rabid “Hindutva historians” out to give it a brazen, brand new “saffron” sheen.

And that precisely is the truly existential moment that is shaking up the very roots of the stranglehold that they have been so used to be firmly holding hitherto in the seminar-halls and Dean-hoods of India’s vast academia … Should they now quietly accept the wind of change blowing all over them or should they fight it tooth and nail, hammer and tongs? To Be or Not to Be” is indeed the dramatic Shakespearean question for all of them to deal with.

Please do take time to read this link given below to understand much more about this epic Hamletian many-act drama:

https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/education/college-draft-syllabus-ugc-messing-with-history-continuation-of-sangh-parivar-attempts-to-saffronise-history/article34799051.ece/amp/

And that in short is the History of Historians in India today. It is the history of what in the popular imagination is called metaphorically, “Culture War”. It heralds a Dharma Yuddha. For both the combating champions of “White Man Scarlet-Red History” and the “Pure Saffron-hued Hindutva History” it has become a moment of ultimate reckoning… It has become indeed a titanic clash of Weltanschauung!

Sudarshan Madabushi

M/s Raghuram Rajan & Arvind Subramaniam will open shop now in Tamil Nadu

https://m.timesofindia.com/city/chennai/tamil-nadu-to-form-economic-advisory-council-to-cm-with-esther-duflo-raghuram-rajan-and-others-as-members/articleshow/83708640.cms?fbclid=IwAR2ZvAU-dYNovfClFeNtenrG0nruHc8Ax_y9IN4PQcy1m72SN5IuY6xXuF4#_ga=2.89626904.2090843072.1624267024-amp-Ft5J3qYc0BZYqU-CUaUsKdmCUH6KYKOkJNbkxHuQ0QK43vohrWFYAZ-DqjNZDJ9N

It’s a terrible kind of demotion for both R. Rajan and A. Subramaniam … that after holding such high-powered, high-voltage position in the Government of India 🇮🇳, as RBI Governor and Chief Economic Advisor to GoI , they now take up a sinecure as piddling policy advisors to a State Government in a corner of South India where finances are in a bit of a bloody mess.

Both RR and AS while serving in their respective offices some years ago in India were found to be quite of out-of-synch and step with the philosophy, priorities and policy-thinking of the Modi Government … And as a result, both were politely shown the door when their tenure of office ended and there was no chance of their ever being given an extended one.

Both left their positions with hardly any achievements of glory to talk about. In fact RR was later found to have been dozing off at his desk while allowing the country’s biggest and “baddest” ever NPA problem (non-performing assets) to build up monstrously right under his aquiline nose and on his Guvnor’s watch.

And as for the other gentleman, AS was acknowledged in all of New Delhi to be as uninspiring an economic adviser as a drinks-serving 12th man in a local-clubhouse cricket match.

Given that both of them were at such odds with the powers that be in the “Ondriya” (Union) Government one wonders how now suddenly their Advisory nostrums and policy prescriptions they’re going to be offering to the Tamil Nadu Government will really help make the Centre-State relationship between Tamizhagam and Central Government any better than the terrible state in which it is today.

The “policy presence” of these ex-Central Government worthies in the State’s interactions with the Centre/Union going forward is only bound to further needlessly aggravate the already fragile, frosty, feisty and frayed engagement between Team Nirmala Sitharaman and Team PTR Palanivel Thyagarajan.

The advice of RR and AS to the State of Tamilnadu is thus going to be not only ineffective and unprofitable but is actually going to cause severe dysfunction in the management of its finances. We can expect only more and more areas of conflict and friction to be conceived and conjured by these 2 Advisors and placed adversarially between Centre and State at a time when Tamil Nadu needs actually only more not less solid support and cooperation, at least during the short to midterm, from the “ondriya arasu” of PM Modi. The choice of these two Advisors to serve the DMK Government is ill-advised and ill-timed.

For RR and AS of course it’s a jolly good plum opportunity to wreak at least some kind of moral vengeance on the Modi Government for the shoddy treatment they both received from it. It’s indeed a magnificent comeback through the backdoor for them again into the hallowed policy-making corridors of power-broking and lobbying in India. … from which they were forced to take an academic sabbatical. They are sure to now gloat in triumphant glee while mocking at the likes of M/s Subramaniam Swami and S. Gurumurthy— the prima donnas of “Swadeshi” economic think-tanking in the Sangh Parivar.

Together they have now both the motivation and the ability to cock a snook at the Government of India from the relatively safe sanctuary and constituency of a provincial backyard which Tamil Nadu will serve them as. And above all, to enable them to add some much-needed international flavour to the machinations and plots they will soon be concocting and brewing as “policy prescriptions” for the State, they can find truly no better and able an assistant than the colleague who comes on board with them—- Dr Esther Dufflo of MIT USA and Nobel Laureate!

And last but not the least of a pertinent and not entirely irrelevant comment to make here, I believe , is that with RR and AS (both Tamil Brahmins) now being inducted as venerable members into the highest advisory council of the DMK Government, the wind has been very effectively taken out of the sails of the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu …

In other words, the shrill voice of the Tambrahm petit-bourgeoisie of Tamil Nadu , often heard screaming on social media about the “anti-Brahmin mindset of this DMK government!” … has now been well and successfully shut up and shut down. No more can anyone say that Tambrahms are an emasculated or disempowered lot, can they?

Sudarshan Madabushi

IF AMERICA FIRES DR. FAUCI .. then America will have to stand in the dock along with CHINA on the charge of pandemic homicide. What happens then?!

Fire Dr Fauci !

You watch this video above and you cannot help asking yourself this question: If America fires Dr Fauci and holds him accountable and puts him on trial on the charge of causing a pandemic homicide in the world then out will most probably tumble many inconvenient facts and hitherto hidden skeletons from the cupboards of both the USA and China along with those in The Wuhan Institute of Virology, all then becoming the clinching evidential smoking gun.

In that case , merely reducing Dr Fauci’s salary to $ 0 is not going to make any difference . He will be taken down of course but then he won’t want to go down alone, will he? … He will want to take down all of America and China down with him too…

If he will be made to lose his compensation as an individual, shouldn’t both America and China also be made to suffer the same pain as nation-states ? The obvious question the whole world will then ask is: Why shouldn’t America and China be made to pay compensation to the families of the 4 million people who have died due to the virus in the last 18 months ?

Let’s look at a hypothetical scenario where the culpability or constructive responsibility for both American and Chinese Governments in causing the Wuhan virus gets established by a world judicial forum like the International Court of Justice in the Hague in a case brought against them both by a world body like, say, the UNGA ( United Nations General Assembly) . Let’s assume that the verdict of the Court is that both China and USA are guilty and hence they jointly and severally are liable to pay financial compensation to the family of every victim who died from the Wuhan virus in the amount of, say, $250k each.

How much does the liability of China and America towards such an award of global compensation amount to ?

4 million deaths multiplied by $250K … equals $1 trillion … which is really peanuts if you think of the combined GDP of the two countries which (in PPP terms) today is c. US $ 48 trillion (China $26 t and USA $22 t) . The total compensation liability for them would really be no more than 2% max. of their combined GDPs .

Just imagine — the United Nations collecting $ 1 trillion from America and China and then coordinating and overseeing the direct transfer of the amount to the bank accounts of the survivors/dependents of the 4 million persons who died during the pandemic!

Wouldn’t that be a good thing, a blessing and a wholly deserved manna from heaven for the whole world ? I wonder to myself ….

And won’t the millions of people and poor families in the world who survived the pandemic also see justice being actually done?

And with the small consolation they receive from America and China by way of compensation for the bereavement they suffered, will they not be enabled to make a fresh start and livelihood which otherwise they might not be able to do in a devastated post-Covid world ?

I’m also imagining how much of such a pandemic compensation claimed and received from the UN might ease a bit of pain for the Govt. of India too and for the families of the 400,000 dead. I concede USD one hundred million so received will not mean much to the GoI ….But then I ask myself silently, to the individual surviving families receiving such amount of compensation being the equivalent of ₹. 7.5 billion, not mean the world of a difference between sheer hopelessness in life and at least some glimmer of hope in it in a post-Covid world?

Latest Breaking News from New Delhi: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/cant-give-rs-4-lakh-compensation-to-covid-victims-compensation-applies-to-natural-disasters-centre-tells-supreme-court-2467971?amp=1&akamai-rum=off

Families of Covid victims cannot be paid compensation as it applies to natural disasters only, the government of India told the Supreme Court, adding that states cannot afford to pay Rs 4 lakh to every victim. In a 183-page affidavit filed late last night, the centre also added that if they pay compensation for Covid, then denying it for other diseases would be “unfair”.

The centre added that the deadly disease has caused more than 3.85 lakh deaths – which is likely to increase – and states, reeling under severe financial strain, cannot pay everyone. The government’s response comes after the Supreme Court asked it to inform its policy on Covid compensation and death certificates after a plea asked for Rs 4 lakh for victims.

Sudarshan Madabushi

INDIA’s BURGEONING RESERVES OF FOREX : To what purpose?

https://in.news.yahoo.com/indias-forex-exchange-reserves-surge-030850560.html

US $ 608 billion … as on date .. in gold bullion and a basket of foreign “hard currency” and Special Drawing Rights(SDRs) all stashed away in the safe vaults and on the books of accounts of the Reserve Bank of India!

The purpose for which individuals and nations accumulate Reserves is mainly to meet the sudden, unexpected challenge of any emergency, crisis, contingency that may arise on a proverbial “rainy day” … or of any other terrible “black swan” event that may occur and overwhelm the country.

A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight.

An investor and mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb was the first man in the world to define a “black swan” event when it synced perfectly with the global financial crisis of 2007-8. He wrote in his book about Black Swan: “First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme ‘impact.’ Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.”

Now, going by the above definition, it fits exactly the Wuhan Virus crisis even more than it ever explained the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. What we in India are today going through is a terrible “black swan” event in the form of a tragic pandemic caused by a virus that as on date remains undefeated. Death, disease, disruption, demoralisation and despair prevail throughout the country.

If ever there was a nation-wide emergency and calamity to hit pan-India in its entire history , it must surely be this present one in the throes of which we are all caught and are trying to cope with. If ever there was a moment in history when India needed to put to effective use its national Reserves of Foreign Currency Assets — FCA— it must surely be it the one in which we live today.

The question I ask myself now is this: to what ends does India’s $608 million serve in helping its citizens to deal with the pandemic that seems to have crippled their daily economic and social life? How does it help in improving the situation of Food Security, Unemployment, Health, Education and Housing ?

I listen daily to what the Government is saying it is doing to manage the crisis of the grave moment. But I have not yet heard of one idea, plan or proposal of either the RBI of the Ministry of Finance that tells me how the massive Reserves of the country will be used for thr very purpose for which they were being accumulated in the first place viz. to meet and deal with a national calamity and emergency.

Are the Foreign Reserves of India meant merely to give its citizens a false sense of financial security? Or, a matter to boast about in international quarters and forums such as IMF, World Bank or Davos ? Forex Reserves serve only to be flaunted as a badge of national pride?

As an individual I know clearly how to .. and to what purpose household family Reserves of money and assets I shall be putting to use in the present time of crisis.

As a citizen however I have no idea at all how the country’s Reserves are being put to use to ease the national crisis. And I am still waiting for either the RBI Governor or the Union Finance Minister to say something on the matter.

My deepest fear is that so true to Taleb’s definition of the Black Swan, this pandemic crisis too “in spite of its outlier status” will only make all the central bankers, economists and politicians of India typify “human nature (that) makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.” That would be too late and too little on their part to make any difference to the lives of millions of naive Indians like you and me who had always been led to believe that $680 billion of Reserves would assure us plenty of shelter and protection on a very bad, cold and terribly unpredictable “rainy day”…

Sudarshan Madabushi