Thought for the day
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when
his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
-
Lao Tzu (Chinese)
Word for the day
Chirk (v)
To make a shrill, chirping noise.
(Source: Dictionary.com)
Teaser for the day
Instead of studio hopping, should Arvind Kejriwal take one
week break and reflect back?
Some random questions
Sunday evening during presentation of our latest report on
India’s current political landscape and outlook for 2014 elections to a group
of Rotarians, some very interesting questions were raised. I find it worthwhile
to share some of these questions with our regular readers.
A large part of the discussion was focused on the economic
impact of the outcome of elections.
While most of the participants were enthusiastic about the
prospects of a Modi led NDA government, the discussion was mostly focused on
“fears” of a Non-Congress Non-BJP government.
Many questions were raised to test a hypothesis – “what would
happen to the economy if AAP gets 50+ seats in next Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi
puts his weight behind it and somehow Kejriwal gets to form the next
government”.
Given the radical methods used by AAP during the 49day Delhi
experiment, many were worried that this might completely derail the slithering
economy. The participant debated whether the economic ideology of AAP is closer
to communists or the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (a unit of RSS).
Some not so young participant recalled how the radical
Industries Minister George Fernandez had forced IBM and Coca Cola out of India
in 1977. The question was could we see BP (from KG basin) exiting, and RIL
shifting focus to completely on shale gas in US rather than wasting time on
E&P activities in India.
In my view, this is an extremely difficult hypothesis to test at
once. I would like to break this in pieces and test each piece separately.
The major pieces could be as follows:
(a)
Modi forms a majority NDA government. (Our base
case)
(b)
NDA form a government, not led by Modi, but with
a much larger set of constituents. (Good probability)
(c)
A majority government is formed by Non BJP-Non
Congress parties. (Less probable)
(d)
A minority Non BJP-Non Congress is formed with
outside support of Congress. (Less probable)
(e)
A minority government Non BJP-Non Congress is
formed led by an AAP leader. (Least likely)
During the course of
this week we shall discuss the economic scenario in each of these scenarios.
We have received tremendous response to our “Mandate 2014: Decisively
transformative” (14 February 2014) report. Most readers have found it
thought provoking. Many readers have commented that it certainly does not match
with the popular discourse and therefore needs to be debated more intensively.
We agree. Let’s do
that.
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