Who are the best traders for centuries? Indians

by Jose Manimala

Fighting the dragon on the battlefield is easy. But fighting and winning the trade war against the Chinese is an altogether different matter. But not impossible.

Our vigorous Prime Minister is tightening the screws, on the dragon slowly but relentlessly. PMO is on a full economic war footing. Yes, they are fully aware of the Soviet collapse against Western financial might.

But the pressing need of the hour is on the domestic front. Increase in local consumption, purchasing power, and real disposable income. Price Rollback.

The so-called Chinese invasion of the Indian market is passe. China rhymes with a dubious reputation in the Indian psyche. Indian rivals can climb the next technological rung. Consumer preferences can shift to a higher end. Then cheapness alone won't help.

Many experts say cheap rupee will make India paradise. No no! cheap Asian countries have cheaper currencies. Let us make rupee powerful. Then everything will fall into place. With a weak rupee, we will remain cheap and struggling forever. A devaluation country falls into deadly, perpetual inflation- recession- devaluation downward spiral.

Chinese economic vulture greedily scans post-COVID economic wasteland for easy pickings. At last, America wakes up against the Chinese leech. An urgent wake-up call sounded all over America against Chinese inspired fire sales. Too late. 

Also, the China model has very few takers. Pakistan and Africa are reeling under crushing Chinese yoke. Already there are riots and seething anger against Chinese economic colonization. 

Unless the Chinese grab a major chunk of the Indian market quickly, they can't double prices and recover their costs. Then they will end up with huge inventories and mega idle capacity. Dazzled by fast bucks, American tech giants, Amazon, Apple, and many more opened shop first In China.

As China was the poster boy then, they ignored India. They said India lacks infrastructure, per capita GDP, HDI, and has labour unrest and of course, too much freedom! But their dreams are shattered forever when ran into the great wall. China fever has come full circle.1971 – 2020. At last Tech titans realized Chinese Jade Gate is a one-way sucking vortex.

Pro Chinese economic lobby, theories, and economists have a stranglehold on India. Even World Bank, IMF, and WTO are under Chinese sway. Fortunately, BRICS is dead. 

China bleeds West and India to slow death through their covert yet deadly effective weapons; terrorism, organized crime, piracy. Limitless Chinese dumping and cheap tricks threaten Indian manufacturing and jobs.

Even with Russian might, Futuristic weapons, and fearsome intelligence agencies, its border districts are threatened by Chinese infiltrators, poachers, and creeping economic invasion.

We can safely ignore international rating agencies and western think tanks. They wrote off India till 1997 in favour of their blue-eyed boy, China. But the Asian meltdown made them the world's laughing stock.

Comparing India with Liechtenstein is always western economists’ hobby. India needs new Indian rating agencies. A dubious project raised serious questions about the world's most prestigious consulting firm and its work for corruption-plagued regimes.

In the fall of 2010, Jimmy Hexter, a senior partner of McKinsey & Co., the global consulting behemoth, began talking with Mongolia's government about a railroad project. Hexter was running McKinsey's office in Beijing. 

Hexter and McKinsey did exactly what American diplomats had cautioned could be risky: The firm signed a consulting agreement with a government entity even as the government adviser who brought McKinsey into the project also landed a piece of the same contract for his own private company.

Kerala government has decided to terminate the consultancy agreement with Price Waterhouse-Coopers (PwC) e-mobility project after its links Swapna Suresh, key accused in the gold smuggling case, exposed.

Indian Chartered Accountants are light-years ahead of American CPAs in quality and honesty.

Indian media often place India's plus points on page six and exaggerate riots, disasters, terrorism, scams, crooks, and mega crimes on page one.

But in Delirious Delhi: Inside India's Incredible Capital, Dave and Jenny Prager show us how caring and friendly Indians are. They were in tears to leave India. One of the best travelogues on India. It depicts India’s capital as the two experienced it, from office life in the rising tech hubs to the traffic jam philosophy that keeps people sane in the gridlock leading to them.

Anyone new to Delhi will have their understanding of it magnified by this book. And anyone who already knows Delhi will appreciate this candid tribute to a city that s everything to everyone at the same time.

Enron was glorified by Fortune – 500 even in 2002! Until the 1997 'Asian Melt Down', western media carefully excluded India from Asia specific features. They claimed Australia and New Zealand are Asian countries and termed Israel a Western country. By its flexible standards, China is a progressive democracy.

They have blown China out of Proportion. But let us go beyond this charade. Chinese FDI is four times India's. Too bad? 

Nope. Chinese triads and Beijing regime siphon off and recycle their dirty money through Hong Kong, Macao, and Singapore. Discount this laundering, Chinese FDI diminishes. If we take out overseas Chinese, Chinese FDI shrinks further. 

In stark contrast to China, India attracts FDI from western democracies. NRIs have a very little role. Indian utilization of FDI, productivity, efficiency, RoI, and management is far ahead of China. See Amazon, STAR TV's India, China experience. However, FDI and FII are predatory and destabilizing.

Same to tourist arrivals. Huge Chinese figures are ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao, and the west. But India is sought after by westerners. After all Hollywood Billionaires choose Varanasi over Shanghai. 

After the end of their compulsory two years and six months of military service, Israelis always take an Indian pilgrimage as Mukthi.

See Israel. almost the entire Political, Military, and Intelligence leadership is Spartan and atheist. Indian influence. 

But never underestimate our rival. China uses its brute force to arm-twist anyone. China forced the west to forget Tiananmen, freedom, and human rights. When Chinese leaders arrive in Washington DC, they exude confidence bordering on arrogance. They advise America to accept Chinese dominance and superior ways. They declare they will vanquish the west.

Artistic, literary wealth helps America's World Wide Web domination. Japan's technological overdependence and downplaying of arts downed it. They trail little Finland. Fortunately for India, IITs and IIMs back wild ideas.

USSR was America's military equal and Japan was a serious financial, technological rival. But they couldn't overtake America for an altogether different matter. America had English, Hollywood, John Grisham, Michael Jackson, and Micky Mouse. Also English was easy to learn. Compare to USSR and Japan, America had a big buddy image around the world. 

Here, India scores China. Now let us make Indian culture's global reach our more powerful. Indian books, films, music should grow beyond NRI populations. 

English is no more a foreign language to us. We contribute to the richness of English. To reinforce our global Internet dominance and integrate the Indian language, Indian languages can adopt the English alphabet and keyboard. 

English is constantly picking up words from Hindi and Malayalam. English is always changing, adapting, and flexible. Also, many versions of English coexist. Launch a crash course in English fluency to finetune our hospitality, tourism, computer, content creation, web, education, and entertainment skills. We have to build hype around Indian brands.

We Indians just started. I am confident resurgent India will take wings on the Next January 26.

We have to work on APJ Kalam’s dreams and vision. But uphold George Fernandes’ bold, haunting words “China Enemy Number One’ close to our heart. In memory of, our brave soldiers' heroic Galwan sacrifice in our burning, wounded psyche forever. 

As a proud Indian, I salute Kohima Epitaph to eternity.

“When you go home, Tell them of us and say,

“For your tomorrow, We gave our today.”

Jose Manimala Pala tracks military and aerospace issues closely. Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of IDN