Interesting Times

‘May you live in interesting times’ is an ancient Chinese curse. The elegance and subtlety of that particular curse are very evident this week as the world slips into interesting times. The Coronavirus and the Russian and Saudi actions on drastically cutting the price of oil while increasing production has delivered twin shocks to the global economy. The twin shocks though are likely to benefit India partly. This is because reduced oil price shrinks the current account. However, oil companies are expected to incur basis losses. This is because some oil purchases are tied through forward-contracts. Therefore irrespective of the oil price fall India would still have to pay those high contracted prices on physical delivery. But to the global economy, this may, on the whole, be a cost since import demand from West Asia is most likely to fall. These developments at a time when the global economy was already stressed by the trade war, make for interesting times. The global economic system, however, is headed for a change as the age of hydrocarbons slowly draws to an end. This will have an immense impact on the global economic order that was dependent on the price of hydrocarbons and faith in fiat currencies pegged to the USD.

The global economic system, however, is headed for a change as the age of hydrocarbons slowly draws to an end.

What is of particular import to India other than the obvious contingencies to contain the Covid-19 infections, is to protect its nascent innovation economy. The innovation economy is highly dependent on the global VC funds which have more or less frozen all new funding post the twin shocks. This can bankrupt the entire sector, further accentuating the deteriorating employment figures. This is something India can ill afford in the middle of transitioning from a leftist economic legacy to a capitalist economy. The largest youth bulge in history is another critical factor wherein any disruption in the employment market can be disastrous for India. With technology, especially in the ICT sector, a vital driver of the economy and strategic heft, this is a disaster that India can ill afford. What is needed is enlightened government intervention.

The Indian economy in INR is a 200 lakh crore GDP, with a 30 per cent saving rate.

Government intervention can be in the form of, declaration of telecommunications as a strategic field, accelerated implementation of the preferential market access for Indian ICT products and passing of the long-pending data protection bill. The data protection bill needs to mandate data localisation and indigenous technology for monitoring and to protect this data in the Critical Information Infrastructure. Another aspect that needs to be looked into is the creation of a strategic VC fund. The Indian economy in INR is a 200 lakh crore GDP, with a 30 per cent saving rate. This can be used to build a very dynamic domestic VC ecosystem. These actions will give a fillip to Make in India and Startup India and ensure the Indian ICT startups get a much-needed fillip. India awaits bold and decisive action from the national leadership. History many a time gives little opportunity for leadership to demonstrate decisive action, the Modi government has multiple times showed an appetite for bold measures. India needs bold and decisive leadership at this juncture. Too little too late might not be enough to stave off disaster.

2 thoughts on “Interesting Times

  1. Thanks for bring out the numbers . That means India has a savings stock of Rs 70 lakh crore and adding at least 8 lakh crore each year assuming a nominal GDP growth of 11 per cent ! Where do these funds vanish ? How come only a minuscule of these funds get translated to investible capital ? Why are the Dewan Bahadurs of North Block still obsessed with foreign finance capital from savings deficit economies ?

  2. We indeed live in interesting times. I agree with all what you say there. But most of them are treatment of symptoms. What we need to do is some serious rooting out inefficiency in our country. In my opinion, our population is not an asset any more. Our bane is our population. Because of this huge population density, we have two fundamental issues. Firstly our national wealth is getting dissipated and quality of life is hardly developing the way we should have. Secondly, there was s no way that we are going to give the growing population jobs. Manufacturing is an area that we could have gone ahead if we had a climate of individual growth. We have kept our labour cheap thereby giving no qualitative growth in our population. Where we need one machine can do the job we are happy to employ twenty people because they come cheap. But in the process we have kept 19 our of 20 guys on jobs which have no sense of achievement. So he doesn’t educate or skill himself. It is a huge loss to our nation. When China liberalised they had a skilled nation with all people skilled to take on the the Industries which came in. We are not investing in our educational sector or the skill sector.
    All this has ensured huge numbers of unemployed youth who in turn put in a spoke in every decision taken by the government. They all should be doing jobs which instead of protesting.
    The next thing is that not even Mr Modi has had the guts to wipe out political corruption. Look at the latest data on political donations. BJP received 67% of the share of all political parties and 87% of the donors are from unknown sources. So, we will continue to have license Raj or else the money will not come to them. And as long as that exists there can never be a climate for true growth.
    I understand that they have bitten the bullet of J & K as well as CAA. But they have neither done well in the area of perception management nor in the area of changing of the political climate of n our country.
    We have to wait for another Messiah

Leave a Reply to ShivkumarCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.