Dropping of "Buy India" policy in Electronics-Time to start second Swaraj movement against corrupt UPA Govt.

Biplab Pal, 10th July, 2013
biplab@zreyastechnology.com/biplabpal2000@gmail.com

Although India is shining in IT sectors thanks to outsourcing, the country is continually losing its capability in electronics and mechanical R&D/manufacturing. We run a small Electronics R&D company in USA and in India. My experience has confirmed getting electronics and mechanical talents/vendor/components in India is an increasingly difficult task. Reason is simple. This industry didn't grow at all  and worse, it has lost capabilities thanks to Chinese dumping of electronics good in Indian market. Today situation is so critical, India needs to import even the most simplest micro-motors and other communication chips. Nearly 100% of its electronics components are imported. Even the basics of electronics industry, PCB fabrication is facing a looming threat before cheap Chinese competition.

    Under this dire situation of electronics industry in home, Indian Govt. issued a preferential market access (PMA) policy. Under this policy, any foreign company who is selling electronics goods in Indian Govt, Telecom sector etc had to produce at least 30% of their goods in India. This policy did no discrimination against foreign companies. The policy wanted the foreign companies to set up manufacturing unit in India. This had tremendous potential for all round growth in electronics industry in India as the vendor line would have swelled. Moreover, it would have created jobs for skilled and unskilled Indians interested to pursue a career in Electronics.

  Besides homegrown Telecom equipment companies like Tejas would have benefited. Today, China is boosting two giant telecom vendors who have outplayed their western rivals CISCO and Alcatel/Lucent-Huawei and ZTE have grown to be the largest Telecom equipment company in the world. If you look at the history of both the companies, they have grown very fast on Chinese Govt order flow. On the other hand, Tejas in India could not grow and they are still struggling due to lack of order from Indian Govt. This was in sharp contract with Chinese Govt policy towards ZTE and Huawei which helped them to propel as $30B company within last two decades. Therefore PMA would have reversed all the mistakes done by the Indian Govt. in the past for not boosting local electronics industries.  Example of ZTE vs Tejas shows PMA is absolutely needed for India to boost its electronics manufacturing base.

   Many small companies like us who have operational electronics unit in India saw the benefit as well. Under the new policy, all foreign companies who wanted to sell products in India had to partner with local Indian companies to produce them in India. This would have led to job and industrial growth. Before this policy,  all these foreign  companies needed to do for bagging a contract in Indian public sector- hire an expensive dalal in Delhi who is a nephew of Minister X and they are done with their duties towards India to bag multi-billion dollar deal from Indian defense.

  We already started seeing its benefit. Since the PMA was declared on February 2013, we have already seen around $100M new FDI in this sector in India. Expert estimated this policy would have created 2M direct and indirect job in next 10 years.

 But on 8th July, PMO decided to drop present  PMA under tremendous pressure from foreign companies and other countries pursuing their interest in India. I am totally shocked by the perverted logic for dropping "Buy India" policy! Lobby groups are terming it as unrealistic target as India is not prepared for such a scale of manufacturing! Well then they have established the logic of why this PMA was needed in India badly in first place.

 It is clear the present Govt. acted under the pressure and money from Delhi  dalals hired by foreign companies who do not want to set up manufacturing in India due to  archaic Indian company laws. President of US-India business council, Ron Somers indicated India does not need a PMA policy as these companies will set up manufacturing base in India automatically provided they get right kind of infrastructure.  If that is the case they should try to reform the Indian bureaucracy which is deterrent to manufacturing initiative. We would have welcomed those steps. But Indian Govt should not succumb to the pressure from them at the expense of the interest of its own people.

   This action of dropping "Buy India" policy  amounts to treason against Indian people by its own Government.  For once, I certainly want Indian opposition parties to expose the present Govt. as stooge of foreign interest in Delhi. They need to hold UPA responsible for loss of 20 lakhs job to pave the way for dalal-raj in Delhi.
   

Indian court wants to ban Google and Facebook?

It seems to me the great disconnect between ruling class of India and world reality is widening apart. Laws confining to a country is outdated in the Internet world-more ever, even the concept of a nation and country will cease to exist sooner than many people can even dream. Those who have read Plato's republic as Bible of "Ruling class politics" must have learned that world has been ruled by showing "control/sanctioned" over social action and "the republic" is dead!

As most of the social actions will be happening through social media, e-commerce, trading algorithm and emails, state will have diminished role to play or to impose laws in any of these. Just for an example, when two parties, let say one in India and another in Pakistan do business through a site like elance or Guru, their trading actions are auto-guided more by the algorithmic rule than by the laws of any country.

This high court judge from Delhi only conspicuously proved how ignorant Indian judges can be- not just about the realities of web world but about the laws as well-because laws are founded on the principle of achieving greater good for greater mankind- ulitarianism.

Blocking Google and Facebook amount to taking India back to Pakistan or Talibaan or prehistoric age. You don't stop research on nuclear power just because it can also deliver Atom Bomb. Nuclear power will be absolutely necessary for mankind. You can not ban Internet because it spreads porn.

Besides, what is obscene? It is a subjective choice and in Google or Facebook you can always filter your own feed. Technology offers you that option. In the days of Internet, one can not decide what is good for me-I am to decide what is obscene for me. Old authoritarian world is dead-a new free world has been born from the womb of facebook. You either accept it or take "Vanaprastha" in Himalaya.

Anna and his campaign : An International Perspective

Finally Anna and his team won! At least Anna's supporters think so.

If we carefully look at Anna's agitation and campaign against corruption, it would be extremely clear - actually it was against inefficient system of parliamentary democracy. It was about limitation of representative democracy. You can not win an MP position without spending a lot of cash and therefore, politics is a business now. Else how could one manage 10 /30 Crore needed to win an election? And since in India, legislative members can manupulate judiciary ( 2G case is an exception), corruption in public position turns out to be the most lucrative business. In Delhi, I have seen agents of the foreign banks freely moving around in all the high class parties seeking and convincing the prospective clients on how to keep their "black" earning safe in other countries! There is no stigma attached for being corrupt in public position as it has become norm and only way to catch up with the "others" ! Over the time, I have met a lot of Indian students in USA who have joined US Universities funded by their parent who are mostly public servant and they too perhaps do not consider their parent's illegal earning as crime as they think their parent's high income in public position is perfectly fine and in norm! Most of them are so rich, their parent who perhaps earn 30,000/ per month in public job , can afford to buy them an apartment close to the US University which would cost around a crore in Indian rupees. Maladies run that deeper !

Limitation of representative democracy is well known and well debated topic in all the democratic countries in the world. USA is also suffering from same issue of money driven democracy as it is leading to corruption in many places although due to tough law enforcement, USA is lot more clean in terms of corruption in public position. Tough law enforcement is the key but not the final solution. Political corruption in USA is also rampant. Basically same election funding evil runs deeper in US as well.

A few notable anarcho-leftists like Arundhuti Roy thinks, real demon behind the corrupt India is free market and economic liberalism. That is probably the most stupid thing I ever heard because all the top clean countries ( as rated by Transparency international) are Scandinavian and they too practice free market and capitalism! They are free from corruption because of two reasons-limited form of direct democracy exists in those countries ( like direct voting for new law is mandatory in many of these small countries) and judiciary is independent of parliament. Therefore, India needs political reform to enforce more direct form of democracy and we need to make sure no elected representative can exert any influence on judicial system or police system like we experience in advanced countries.

Next question will be -how could we evolve to direct form democracy? Is it possible?

Answer is absolutely yes. 80% of India's population have access to cell phone now and that device integrated with UID project is enough to enact a direct voting system which can be practiced in a few cases like passing proposition ( small laws) which we see in California and many other US states. Social media, specially mobile social media in India can take a decisive role in the formation of new parties, may be a virtual one which can drive this kind of propositions into law. Last year, I was helping a group in Calfornia who were driving prop15 -a law to limit corporate fund into politics:

http://californiachoices.org/ballot-measures/proposition-15

Although they were defeated by a slim margin, it raised hope for the common people that election reform is possible by means of direct democracy. Supporters of Prop-15 were scattered around whole California- a state slightly smaller than India! They were all organizing themselves through Facebook/ Twitter and group mailing. There was no party behind them-common people came forward for a cause to defeat vested interest in politics.

Democracy is no absolute system of politics. Greatest essence of a democracy is its ability for auto-correction to give birth to a better form of democracy. Critics and office bearers of democracy have one thing in common-for them democracy is a stationary form of political system. But in reality, a successful democracy should be an evolving one which pays attention to its system error and constantly seeks for solution adopted through democratic means.