MODI's FDI; Fear Directly Ingested.

Yesterday, afternoon the government of India announced the further liberalization Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in many sectors and for those sectors which already had FDI the cap of investment was increased. The decision included 100% FDI in Defense, further to boost the Pharmaceutical industries a 74% increase was announced and 100% in Civil Aviation as well. The decision helped the Sensex to close at 241-point high presenting that the decision was welcomed by the market and all the other investors.

However, we must be critical of these decisions, they should be appreciated, but we must also be a bit investigative about the manner in which these steps should be implemented. If the government fails to put in a regulatory mechanism in place, we would end up putting every one of the Indian investors into jeopardy. Lack of regulations, were the main reason for the 2008 Global Economic Recession. This recession without any doubt was caused by the United States’ stock market and gigantic investment banks such as Lehman Brothers, Bear’s and Stern, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs-to name a few.

 Banks had drooled out loans to the common public at 1% rate of interest. Banks started to give out home loans and other loans to even those who couldn’t even understand English. These banks then started to sell these mortgages to investment banks (Mortgage Backed Security-MBS)  who restructured them into stocks and then sold them to them to investors all over the world. When these same investment bankers realized that these MBS were going to fail they started to bet against their own products. The aforementioned fraud took place purely because there were no regulations enacted by the Federal Government of the United States.  

To provide an example, absence proper regulation with the help of greed driven Bankers and Politicians, a country like Iceland who had never seen a recession, went bankrupt. Without due regulatory bodies many believe that Indian Politicians would end up taking the whole country public, this maybe a slight exaggeration but our politicians never fail to surprise us. Private investors and private cooperate entities are driven by profit and nothing else. To avoid the destabilization of this country which, undoubtedly remained strong during the time 2008 global meltdown will not be able to sustain an attack on its economy from within its own territory. The increase in foreign investment should always be studied and analyzed not as it stands but who will it react after few years down the line. But, rather than scrutinising the money we must scrutinise the Investor itself. Consequently, investigation of the investor would provide a better understanding of the intentions behind the investment. Undeniably, the major intention behind every investment remains profit, but the question that still has gone unanswered is – Profit at what cost? Corruption being systemic in India but not endemic can prove our worst fear true ramifications of which would be greater than anything the world has ever witnessed. For history has taught us something repeatedly; nothing is too big to fail.    

The Lost Art of Democratic Discussion in India

      Over the years, as the Indian society evolved the sense of morality went downhill. We as a pluralistic nation just doesn’t seem to step outside from our cocoons and engage ourselves in logical discussions. All we seem to do is to reach or have perceived to reach an impasse even before we start. 

Political monologue 

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      Modern India seems to be fueled by a constant rage, a fire which doesn’t seem to burn out and turns further into frustration. We should not be too surprised by this rage, as our society is being led by people who like the sound of their own voice, especially during the “News” hours every evening. This kind of vigilante journalism and unprofessional reporting helps the company to reach its targeted profit but instils a mass paranoia within the society. Many media house and other publishers, report an incident not by stating an individual has died but rather a believer from a particular community has died. The question thus arises: are these mainstream media outlets responsible for destabilising our society? Yet, the problem is not the aforementioned question, but the fact that we are not ready to have this conversation; not to blame but to rather understand the “why” behind the issue.

First Reason

      

      But then again how can we have this conversation, when every major platform is either owned by individuals of influence or have some kind of backdoor murky deal with the affluent. Just to clarify, our contention should not be to raise a finger at the influential and the affluent, rather have them join the lost process of decision making, and to have to confront these individuals directly would be redundant.

Second Reason

       

      Well, sadly modern India has never been its own master or governor. A closer look at the Indian history would help us prove this claim. If all of us try to remember one part of Indian history, it would quite natural that we would end up remembering a king, ruler or an emperor. If we agree that we had these royalties sitting on top and governing us all the time, followed by, are British masters, and then we finally got the independence; for the initial years, we were governed by a self-proclaimed Prime Minister. The reason we should call him  self-proclaimed cause he never got elected, there were no elections or anything of the sort. After which, when we finally got a chance to make a decision on how to govern ourselves instead of coming together the nation ended up getting pushed to the vicious circle of a failed electorate system. This electorate system once again replaced the convergence of the citizen with divisive state and zonal boundaries. Our power of having a democratic and real discussion was taken away from us placed in houses with green and red carpet respectively.

    

      In short, our electorate system destroyed us even before we were able to get a taste of power. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “that there is no people on Earth who would not prefer their own bad government to the good government of an alien power.” Not to blame Gandhiji, but it would only be unrealistic to imagine that he could  have predicted the kinds of governments we have had over the years. Neither, would he had been able to predict, that we would end up becoming slaves of our own people. We are the only nation in the world, presumably, that is “democratically exploited”, cause we as a nation decided that is better for others to makes decisions for us. This helps us to run away from taking any responsibility.

    

      If India doesn’t bring change in their electoral system, which is long due and in the mindset, we would end up becoming slaves of our kind, perpetually.  Cause from all the aforementioned truths and facts we have essentially given away the most important facet of being a human; thinking.