Very intelligent but wisdom... well

People often equate wisdom with intelligence or being knowledgeable; but all too often, it becomes apparent that being intelligent and being wise are quite different things. The world is full of brilliant people who intellectualise without really understanding the essence of things. In contrast, wise people try to grasp the deeper meaning of what is known and strive to better understand the limits of their knowledge.

As Mahatma Gandhi once said, 'Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.' Wise people are attuned to what constitutes a meaningful life. Being heated in crucible of life, they perhaps understand what actually matters and is only transactional requirement for managing life. Our daily distractions, financial and professional commitments add layers of hinderance to our quest for wisdom and in my humble student conclusion, it is the environment itself in which we nurture ourselves that can more fluidly put us in the "state" of readiness.

Wisdom implies more than merely being able to process information in a logical way. Knowledge becomes wisdom when we have the ability to assimilate and apply this knowledge to make the right decisions. As the saying goes, ‘knowledge speaks but wisdom listens’. Wise people are blessed with good judgement. In addition, they possess the qualities of sincerity and authenticity, the former implying a willingness to say what you mean, the latter to be what you are.

Wise people are also humble; their humility deriving from a willingness to recognise the limitations of their knowledge. They accept that there are things they will never know. By accepting their ignorance, they are better prepared to bear their own fallibility. People who are wise know when what they are doing makes sense, but also when it will not be good enough. Ironically, it is exactly this kind of self-knowledge that pushes them to do something about it.

I have seen people at the very top saying to very young me, " I don't know.. why don't you try it? That way, I will also learn & be able to contribute in some ways..". I have rarely seen wise people seeing things in perspective of absolutes i.e. Success or failure.

Wisdom is understating that in a world as complex as our, such generalisations ( Success ..failure) are a sign of naive, unsophisticated or even malevolent analysis.

Knowledge is understanding that we are always and simultaneously at point 'a' (which is less desirable than it could be), moving towards state/point 'B' (which we consider better in line with our implicit values and aspirations). Wisdom is understanding that as we continue to close on point 'B', we never really reach it, as everytime we touch, it metamorphose into point 'A'. Its understanding that we always encounter the world in a state of insufficiency and seek it's correction lifelong.

Wisdom is what the sages in Vedanta mentioned about limiting desires in order to be happy in personal life and that's why teachers, knowledge seekers (Brahmins) though dirt poor, continue to be respected.

Wisdom is in understanding that the future is like the past only albeit with a little crucial difference. As prof Jordan Peterson said, "The past is fixed but the future.... it could be better. It could be better , some precise amount. Happiness is to be found in the journey uphill and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at next peak.." ( 12 rules of life).

Now imagine the implications of this differentiation in corporates. What differentiates great &successful CEO with a good CEO. former understands being a CEO is a width job, upholding principles.. building alliances, helping people coordinates/collaborate. Later is a master of function and pivots organisation to what he knows personally & is a master.. knows the depths.

Thank god, my wisdom tooth has stopped aching for few week now.

Social media, being ordinary & happiness

 

Greatest calamity ushered in by social media is shunning of 'Ordinariness'. People don't understand that media is an eyeball game (mostly) & only extremes make eyeballs possible as none would watch ordinary. Social media addicts need to understand, 'Extreme' is not the norm. By the way, 'Ordinary' is NOT deformity, it's the NATURAL state of being. Genius is an anomaly. The way media glorifies genius or our social news feed shows people enjoying life with endless surfing in hawaii to dancing on pier 39 in frisco almost every single day, we have started assuming this as normal.

People like me, Ordinary, mostly at home on Sundays reading books or doing household chores, trying to break fights among children in our old T-Shirts and shorts have started looking like anomaly. We have somehow been thrown into an abyss of being 'losers'. our images of coming out of crammed trains/tubes, rushing to catch an auto to complete last mile to office are not 'Facebookable' with sweat beads & sometimes crumbled creases. Wearing a tie with fine cut suits (may be once in a month) in an office is real work, rest all of us ordinary men/women are failures.

This is dangerous & cutting the young from reality of everyday grind. The reason why lot of millennials are not able to hold jobs for long is the dissonance & dichotomy between the pictures of their friends/cousins in offices (nice fine suits in AC offices) messes up their heads.

This 'facebookable' fad leads to more and more entitlement, breeding more and more unhappiness in search of a new high.. This is what is killing relationships by creating this 'Outrage Porn' on social media platforms everyday. This brazen victimhood mentality & then demanding entitlements from society is creating a class of happiness junkies in search for another high through outrage or outrageous.

Dear Young graduates, everymen like me do succeed as well. Superstardom is not the perverse of genius alone. There is a way, ORDINARY man can do it also. Its called WORKING HARD & being disciplined. Though what success means to you is different to me but yes all can succeed basis our feet on ground.

Path to greatness exist but what is great depends on your value system. I am happy being the prophet (my measure of success), being 'God' is not my idea.

capitalism, stories and social media

Standard economic theory requires that consumers and businesspeople pay close attention to a vast array of prices, quantities and other information. Because keeping track of this flood of information is very costly, it makes sense to think that people economize on what they pay attention to. That kind of economizing is called bounded rationality, a term coined by polymathic social scientist Herbert Simon, himself a recipient of the Nobel.

Statistics are useful to the extent that we find their insights more persuasive than stories.

But we often don’t.

Data takes effort to contextualize. Stories offer instant gratification. With social media proliferation, everyone is a story teller and has access to publication at no cost.

Capitalism’s success rests on a belief that, given the right incentives, people can work together to solve problems. It’s the greatest story ever told. To understand this better, we need to understand human behaviour. Our brain stores information in bits & pieces as it tends to economise usage of energy. Given that our roughly 2.5 kg brain uses 25% of our overall energy consumption, it become all the more imperative to economise memories or analysis. Stories akin to experience, are a very useful way to believe..

• Stories are often wildly disconnected from our productive capacity.
• We confidently convince ourselves of absurd stories. 

As morgan housel says," The growth of anything -- an economy, a company, a market, a career -- has two parts:

• A technical ability that can solve problems and add value.
• People’s propensity to believe in that value.

It is intuitive to believe that most of what drives success is the first point. Real skills add real value. But the second point, the stories we tell ourselves about those skills and values -- can play the deciding role. Stories can infuence the production of real skills themselves, effectively becoming the pilot of our economy "

Think about stock valuations in 2017 for a minute... What is driving this boom?

Not actual problems being solved. No new laws to date actually solve people’s problems but mostly disturb the cosy status quo.

The boom is being driven by a booming belief in the boom.Stories of reforms being fundamental in nature (GST, RERA, Bankruptcy code), drove the optimism about future and thus increased our ability to take immediate pain.

 The higher bitcoin’s price goes, the less people think it’s a bubble. A four-fold price increase caused a 12 percentage point drop in those who believed it was a bubble, and a doubling of those who found it undervalued..

These stories can be healthy. Like the optimism bias, we wouldn’t get out of the couch if we believed otherwise. But we should acknowledge that they are stories, susceptible to change and often disconnected from reality. 

We must encourage application of the techniques of “scientific” study of the past to analysis of complex ongoing situations and estimates of likely future events. Just as rigorous analysis could cut through the gaps and ambiguities of information on events long past. Analysts shd be self-conscious about their reasoning processes..shd think about how they make judgments and reach conclusions, not just about the judgments and conclusions themselves.

Young Indian, rural, misunderstood and restless.

Nobody can turn 70 overnight, neither a living being nor a nation. An ancient nation (older than history) yet a young state, forged in the crucibles of fratricidal violence of 1947 turned 70. Slowly the generation of 1947 fades away enrolee to their heavenly abode & the one coming of age, so called millennial carry the burden of passing the baton to a generation who would have no physical contact with the 'Midnight children' per se. What they pass-on will depend a lot on how millennials live their lives, realise their dreams, fulfilled their aspirations.

There is a looming crisis that awaits India as a nation and subsequently the businesses as well. An army of 500 million young, literate barely employable (plenty of statistics) in formal sector, aspirational & voting populace is about to come to age.. deciding the destiny of this nation. Today agriculture employs almost 57% contributing to 12-13% of GDP. in 5 years contribution will come below 10%..where will be young (rural millennials) find employment if private sector doesn't step up?

Centre for the Study in Developing Societies (CSDS) in partnership with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) conducted a sample survey-based study on the attitudes, anxieties and aspirations of India’s young population. The CSDS-KAS Youth Survey 2016 was conducted in 19 states of the country among 6,122 respondents in the 15-34 age group. The study gives us a fair idea about how the economic, political and socio-cultural, and technological changes in the country have impacted the Indian youth, as the last such survey was conducted by the two organisations ten years ago in 2007. Here are 4 big insights mostly ignored : deliberately or otherwise.

a. Most millennials are extremely anxious :

The number of young Indians who marked ‘student’ as their occupational profile has seen a significant rise from a mere 13% in 2007 to about 32% in 2017. Being more educated than their parents, they are more informed too.. share of news consumption continues to rise and the only the size of screen and medium has changed from Newspaper/TV to Mobile and videos on the go.. WatsApp forwards to Twitter/facebook

Yet... prospect of unemployment is their biggest worry. More worried are the urban youth even with their accessibility to resources, infrastructure, better educations and higher economic status. No sociologist or marketer has dived deep trying to understand the underlying fear. I at best have tried....

Given almost 65% prefer a govt job over a private one, it points to few very notable aspects..

i. They value stability over chaos... need time for their extracurricular activities which they don't want to give up. Socialising is important to them & Private sector in India is notorious for treating employees' time as unlimited commodity extended into late nights & holidays. They actually need a work-life balance. job preference in the private sector is at 7%. Tough luck Corp India.

ii. They don't have struggles of their own & don't have stomach for them either. Most millennials are product of relative abundance in comparison to their parents (urban india for sure), rural too. With basics met, they are prepared to make trade offs.

iii. Govt salaries are at par with better life & balance. With younger suave babudom on social media, millennials have heroes..

iv. Millennial generation in India is far more 'giving' and altruistic than parent's generation and they see govt job to serve society, bring about a change.

b. Young Indians are style conscious

Indian youth seems to be quite conscious about how they look. 61% says they are somewhat or very fond of wearing stylish clothes. 59% were keen on acquiring the latest mobile phone. 39% said they liked applying fairness creams quite a lot and 36% reported a moderate or high degree of fondness for visiting beauty parlours and salons.

Mobile phone ownership among the Indian youth has doubled in a decade. About 81% own a mobile phone in 2017 as opposed to only 34% in 2007. 24% of the households surveyed own a laptop, compared to only 8% in 2007.

They LOVE their badges & want to belong. Brands are giving them identity, yet they are cool with fakes as well (even if they can afford originals). Show healthy skepticism to price if the value doesn't match their parameters.

c. Young Indians are returning to their spiritual roots more vigorously.. even more conservative

This is reflected in their attitude towards women, wherein 51% agreed (either somewhat or strongly) with the proposition that wives should always listen to their husbands. 40% of the respondents agreed with the proposition that women should not work after marriage. Interestingly, a fairly high proportion of young women respondents also held such conservative views.

After taking into account five questions probing attitudes towards women, the survey found that about a quarter (24%) of the young respondents were very patriarchal and 29% were somewhat patriarchal, another 29% were less patriarchal and only 18% or one in every six were found to not be patriarchal at all.

When asked about their opinion on the issue of same sex relationships, three in every five or about 61% of the young respondents considered a love affair between two men as wrong. Similarly, 61% considered a love affair between two women to be wrong. Interestingly, young people living in big cities were found to be less approving of homosexuality than those living in smaller cities and villages.

Over 60% believe that movies that hurt religious sensibilities should be banned and mostly cinema makers are not fair to the majority belief system of this country.. This has nothing to do with Modi effect but actually may be the reverse. Narendra Modi is a result of this feeling of distortion & seize mentality that has gripped majority millennials in Urban India. So a church wedding of a Hindu-couple in love scenario in movies may not sit down well.. people are rediscovering their roots & holding them tightly..

Two-thirds or 67% of the respondents did not approve of live-in relationships and two in every five or 40% were opposed to the celebration of Valentine’s Day.

In fact, most youngsters don’t stand with liberals on contentious political issues like the death penalty, ban on films, and consumption of beef. 49% disagreed that death penalty should be abolished, 60% agreed that films that hurt religious sentiments should be banned and 46% disagreed that consumption of beef is part of personal eating habits and nobody should have an objection.

d. Proud to be Indian..

Fact that they are veering more towards thee roots is also reflected in the product choices they are making. This can be seen in the spectacular rise of products and services that appeal to the Indian taste and way of life. For instance, Patanjali Ayurved Ltd, an ayurvedic/natural products firm that was launched in 2006, has already clocked revenues of more than Rs.5000 crore, as of fiscal 2016, set to double to 10000 Cr in 2017, as it appeals to consumers who want to express their Indian-ness. Likewise, Fabindia Overseas Pvt. Ltd, a retail chain for garments, furnishings, fabrics and ethnic products handmade by craftspeople across rural India, continues to remain popular and see good growth even as the larger brick-and-mortar retailers complain of a slowdown in revenue.

Then there is Hector Beverages Pvt. Ltd, with ethnic drinks under the Paperboat brand such as ‘aam panna’ and ‘jal jeera’, which is fast gaining acceptance in the Indian market. Even when it comes to sports, we are now moving beyond cricket, with Indian sports such as kabbadi and wrestling also gaining sponsors and mindshare.

While young India is immensely patriotic and Indian at heart, at the same time, not everything desi is cool; likewise not everything foreign, too, is cool; basically, they aspire to be the best of both worlds as global netizens.. Paisa vasool is the motto but millennials are lapping up experiences like never before.

However, even as we move forward, limitations such as poor infrastructure, the lack of focused policy frameworks and, in some cases, the regulatory environment, continue to hamper progress. 

The youth today is impatient and demanding, taking to the streets to protest and often using social media to voice their opinions.

The imprint of technology has also changed the way we consume. There no longer is a desire to own or build assets.

With the rise of companies such as Ola, the cab-hailing service modelled on Uber, it is now all about usage and the here and now in the sharing economy.

Technology empowerment and media penetration has also blurred the lines between rural and urban.

Moreover, the roles of work and home, business and society are also blurring as it is now possible to pursue multiple roles simultaneously for businesses and people.

According to an Economist Intelligence Unit survey, “Supply on demand: Adapting to change in consumption and delivery models”, “Almost 80% of companies are seeing changes in how their customers access goods and services, and more than 51% are in the process of changing how they price and deliver their goods and services.”

What we are seeing today is the convergence of social, mobile, cloud and big data, which is presenting enormous opportunities for businesses to transform themselves as they can now capture the vast amounts of information and introduce new business, delivery and engagement models.

Technology is also changing the ways that people work, and is increasingly enabling machines and software to substitute for humans. Millennials being more tech savvy & educated are anxious yet optimistic about future.. Will corporate India rise to the challenge of providing platforms to nurture and exploit their talent or they choose Govt job. Credibility of Corporate india is very low with bank NPAs and promoter lifestyles.

Remember Millennials are far more socially conscious & responsible.

The increasing youthfulness of the country with roughly 50% of the population being less than 24 years old plays a huge role. “Nearly 50% of the world’s entrepreneurs are between the ages of 25 and 44. Moreover, 25- to 34-year-olds show the highest rates of entrepreneurial activity,” according to global reports referred to by the EY Megatrends 2015 report.

Giving start-ups a huge boost, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled a new start-up action plan in January 2015 , which included a Rs.10,000 crore fund to be deployed over the next four years, exemption from capital gains tax on investments, faster and cheaper patent applications and easy registration for new companies. Corporate India, are you listening?

I don't know when will I ever make use of what has been learnt over a lifetime of studying Economics, mother of human civilisation, along with being a obsessive 'behaviour addict' (this term belongs to friend Shalini Rawla).

The youth have lesser patience with status-quo and expect or rather demand quicker change.

Young people drift. Sometimes the forces in a country, be it corruption in the political classes or bad grammar in the national press, provoke a revolution. And sometimes, when it appears the revolution will exhaust itself before ever beginning, there is a new outrage & restless find a new cause.

There is a silver lining. millennials may be opposed to reservations (upper castes) but increasingly they are making strides in breaking the caste barriers, have friends across castes and communities. More and more young men have a close friend from the opposite gender than young women.. they are learning to respect choice of women friends..

Brands must listen or they will fade away.. If brands don't stand for something then chances are they may not exist in next decade.

** Credits : Mint & Swarajya for data.

War of languages & unrealised potential of India.

I keep on thinking I have hurt the wrong crowd..
I am Just trying to leave something behind
Oh money is free but loves costs more than a brick
Ceiling is hard to reach and future is hard to breech
I am trying to leave something behind
This whole world is foreign land,
We swallow the moon but don't know our own hand
We are running with the case but ain't got the gold
We are trying to leave something behind..
I can not read what I didn't write...

Because of this lack of language - our 1.3 billion actually translate to the population of a small nation. It gets worse and I will stop after this post - maybe we can take it elsewhere. We English clerks also have a contempt for the non English speaker that makes him feel very insecure. Our stress is on cultural belonging by good spelling and pronunciation and refuse to assimilate and modify English ourselves. We boast so much about our IT prowess but we don't even get an Indian spellcheck that does not object to names like Saurabh and Shiv - which get a red line underneath asking if I have typed shit, but William and Ronald are recognized. We should really be ramming in our own words into our own dictionary including grammatical errors as "Where it is" and "What it is" and puncher for puncture. 

But we are such hoity toity sons-a-bitches that we all slavishly follow someone else's dictionary and laugh at those who don't "quite come up to scratch" Harrumph

Game theory & objectives of conflict

The objective should be very clear. As of now it seems, defending territory. Must change to 'Great power status'

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

― Leon Trotsky

Many people in India or the world are baffled by the Chinese behaviour or how to negotiate out of tricky situation wherein you want to avoid conflict (not worth the time), as there are other more important things, not because you are afraid. One must understand Chinese history & cultural moorings to nullify the aggression Chinese state shows.

China, in Mandarin is 'Zhongguo'. It means 'Central country/kingdom'. Ie, centre of the earth. 

If Chinese are centre of the earth, then Emperor of China, who is the 'foremost man' in China, is the 'foremost man' in the world. Thus, to the Chinese, any treaty formed, without paying homage to their emperor, was considered 'unequal/null and void'. This is why, even when the Romans traded with China and formed contacts, they had to 'officially pay tribute' to the Emperor of China- even though Roman Imperium could've crushed China if they were closer. 

Same applies throughout history- when the Cholas, Sassanids, Khmer- all of them- wanted trade relations with China, they had to pay 'symbolic submission/tribute' to their emperor. This is also the basis of Chinese claim in Tibet or East Turkestan. 

In Chinese culture, all interactions follow this model : it is a hierarchy. Politeness is offered only to those above you in the ladder. And this is why China emphasizes so much on 'saving face', because central kingdom cannot be wrong, ever.

"The name China was given by Indians. Sanskrit cina which is cognate of zina. That is the root of historic insecurity. Later one of the Han Empresses suggested Sinifying the statues of Indo-Bactarian Buddha and popularized Buddhism.This was to heal the country and society from the mass casualties of the end of Han era."

I got these facts from the Asian Museum of Art in San Francisco.

Mao had great insecurity complex due to this.

The archetype I will describe now is the character of Master/Teacher. The ideal teacher for Indians is Dronacharya, because although he had favorites, he taught everyone equally and everyone was equal as disciples. Not so in Chinese stories where There are grades/hierarchies in disciples. There are IN-name disciples, who are typically naam ke vaaste disciples who do odd jobs. There are personal disciples, who are taught personally by the master and lord over the others and there is a Heritage-Disciple, who inherits everything from the master. He is typically the little emperor who terrorizes everyone, but his master does not stop him from bullying others, because bullying is thought top be a privelege of the strong. If you are weak, you deserve the bullying. People will even say you are responsible for your suffering because you somehow provoked the strong by your mere existence.

The Master does not interfere in bullying inbetween his disciples because he thinks its interfering with their natural growth. That stopping the bullying of a weak person by a strong disciple for the sake of the weak is not worth the risk of adversely affecting the growth of the strong, talented disciple. Parallels to this can be seen in the enormous suffering inflicted by CHinese over many little kids while training them to win olympics. Because the suffering of weak mediocre kids is thought to be okay if it brings forth a strong, talented kid who can win olympics' medals.

Another big trauma has been the cultural revolution & it altered the gentle behaviour of common chinese. In late 2015, when a singer stepped onto a neon-lit stage in Shanghai to perform a song about the tribulations of his family of six during the Cultural Revolution, the outpouring of public emotion surprised many people. One web commenter, quoting a line from the song, reflected: “ ‘After the Cultural Revolution, there were five of us left.’ That is not just the story of his family, but that of many others.”

The psychic damage of the Cultural Revolution has been the subject of only a few small-scale studies. An interview project carried out by Chinese researchers in collaboration with German psychotherapists in the early 2000s showed that people with Cultural Revolution-related trauma exhibited symptoms typical of post-traumatic stress disorder: Many reported intense anxiety, depression and frequent flashbacks of traumatic experiences; some showed emotional numbness and avoidance behaviors.

Cultural Revolution trauma differs from that related to other horrific events, like the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide, studies have noted, in part because in China, people were persecuted not for “unalterable” characteristics such as ethnicity and race, but for having the wrong frame of mind. Constant scrutiny of one’s own thinking and actions for signs of political deviance became a necessity for survival that sometimes carried unbearable weight. Thus this horrible inferiority complex needs to be masked with outward aggression & thus need for respect for their thinking.

Give China a crushing military defeat along the border and, ideally, create suffocating chaos for the chinese economy by cutting off its trade routes in the IOR.  

Because China is a rational trading power with non-military culture, a short war is possible especially if we overwhelm them in the theaters of our choice and give them no incentive to pursue further hostilies by limiting territorial gains to what we lost in 1962 and bit more in defensible positions. It won't go long term or total war if we don't get victory disease and attempt to detach Tibet as a whole. They'll settle down to making money again once we magnanimously release our chokehold on the IOR and trade flows again

if Indians do not fight then they will not see India overtaking Cheen in our life time. China adds far more every year to its economy than we do to ours even with a higher growth rate. The GDP gap is widening and will widen for decades. The arms gap will widen, they have built four 12K ton Type 055s in parallel and that is on top of a flood of Type 054 frigates and Type 052D destroyers. Where are our P15Bs? And that's only the surface fleet. We are worst off on the submarine front and when their Type 002 and 003 carriers come out, we'll be behind in naval air as well. This will change the calculus of our stranglehold on their trade routes.

The PRC is already the top dog in Asia (after the US.) As I written above, without war we won't be able to overtake Cheen in our lifetime. War provides India with an opportunity but Cheen with a risk. 

OBOR happens unabated WITHOUT war, with war it goes on hold.  

Defeating India would not change their conflucts with Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam or Korea. It didn't in 1962 and it won't today. And in fact would spur them to arm themselves more furiously. 

G2 is dependent on the US. Why would it grant Cheen the privilege after a war with another democracy? The US public won't let it happen.

There is nothing that war can help Cheen with which is why I don't think they'll fight. They want to intimidate and grab a defensible position on the cheap. 

But it is not in Indian interest to allow them to just back off when we currently own overwhelming advantages along the border and in the IOR.

Advantages that will disappear over time as OBOR and CPEC kick in and their naval programs mature and their printing press buys their bases around the IOR.

Mao was an imperialist with overtly exceptionalist proclivities... his China would define its role on the world stage in terms of the CCP's unique worldview and nothing else. It could define the rules by which it played, simply through its sheer size and willingness to defy the worldviews of either the Western or the Soviet camps. In sharp contrast to the exceptionalism of Mao (a form of revisionist Nationalism, though cloaked in red garb) Deng Xiaoping set China on the path to becoming a thriving economy through leveraging what was then the globalist order in its embryonic form. 

The pendulum swung back and forth afterwards as different successors came to the fore. Jiang Zemin, the key architect of the policy of building up nuclear rogue states like NoKo and Pakistan as proxies via proliferation, was more Maovadi. Others like Hu Jintao were more Dengvadi. Yet none of these leaders had as much direct control of all three axes of the Chinese setup (the Party, the State Council, and the Military) to the extent that Mao used to. Until Xi Jinping.

To my mind Xi is like Napoleon III consolidating power as head of the Second French Empire after the interlude of the Orleans restoration. A man of strong political capability domestically, but more ambition than vision internationally.

Of course Napoleon III's grand ambitions ran headlong into a brick wall when he encountered a rival that would never again allow France to achieve pre-eminence on the European continent: the rising Germany of Otto von Bismarck. The Franco Prussian war furnished a bloody nose that is still in some sense bleeding, and marked the overall decline of France into the second rank of global power until this day.

India must take this opportunity to fight now!!!

You fools! Don't you realize what it means if the Chinese remain? Don't you remember your history? The last time the Chinese came, they stayed a thousand years. The French are foreigners. They are weak. Colonialism is dying. The white man is finished in Asia. But if the Chinese stay now, they will never go. As for me, I prefer to sniff French shit for five years than to eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life." : HO Chi Min

Geopolitics encapsulated in the vulgarity of a general. Priceless

PS : As usual lot of this is summary of writing, views of many ppl i admire Dr Shiv, Ramana, Rohit, Sridhar.. along with some of mine

Pak nukes, American real-politik & usage of multinational platforms to harm India

If US did 'perfectly fine looking after her own interests' (which by the way is how statecraft works and there is nothing wrong with that), then why are we blaming China alone for its 'maliciously intended nukes'? By the same token, China has also done 'perfectly fine looking after her own interests', hasn't it?

To me this line of argument is an urge to protect the US misdeeds but blame others. The evidence is so loaded against the US for this line of illogic to succeed. Of course, India has to handle its problems itself. But, to absolve the US of its commissions & omissions is completely wrong. It practised double standards against India and India alone, while positively helping India's enemy. As an Indian, I have, therefore, got every right to expose that and blame it.

The NSG (Nuclear Suppliers Group or the "London Club" as it is popularly known) which is an outgrowth of the Zangger Committee agreement of August 1974 and the MTCR (Missile Technology Control Regime) which have all been made even more comprehensive through "Energy" and "Wassenaar" protocols (which in c. 1992 banned dual-use technologies even when these were not meant for non-nuclear applications), were specifically meant for India and have affected India's civilian nuclear and space programmes significantly. By c. 1979, the US had restricted severely the export of high-technology and dual-use items to India (through its Export Administration Act, 1979). The ''Entry into Force' (EIF) clause in CTBT was introduced at the instigation of the US targetting India solely, though it was ostensibly meant for the three 'threshold states' - India, Pakistan & Israel. It was the EIF that prompted India to test its weapons in May 1998 before the window closed in September 1999.

After the May, 1989 successful test of Agni-I missile, MTCR rules were tightened against Indian entities and hundreds of items were banned from export to India necessitating India to embark on a massive programme of self-reliance to overcome the denial regime. The Western nations, led by the US, practised a ‘nuclear apartheid’ against India for over four decades. The Indian cryogenic engine programme was sought to be sabotaged through the ruse of a spy-scandal for which eminent engineers suffered for their entire life (of course, partly GoI has to be also blamed for this, which is quite another matter).

While all this was going on against India, what did the US do for furthering the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan? It passed the Pressler Amendment which was drafted in Islamabad with Pakistani inputs regarding the wordings and clauses and the American Presidents interpreted it deliberately differently to undermine the 'exalted American goals' of nuclear non-proliferation.

In hindsight now and in the context of revelations, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fall into place. In an interview in January, 1987 with India’s veteran journalist and ex-diplomat, Kuldip Nayar, A.Q. Khan admitted that Pakistan had the bomb and the CIA was aware of that. In an interview with the Washington Post on February 7, 1992, Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary, Shaharyar Khan admitted that Pakistan had components to make ‘at least one bomb’ and he was revealing the information to bridge the ‘credibility gap’. On the same day, while speaking in the UN, he said that ‘Pakistan possessed the nuclear weapon capability even in 1989’. The mention of the year 1989 was significant as the US had left the Af-Pak region by that time. The attempt by Shahryar Khan was obviously to bail out the US from any disconcerting questions.

Gen. Zia’s support for the US campaign in the Afghan jihad against the Soviets was predicated on two conditions, one, the United States should not raise any queries on Pakistan's nuclear programme and two, there should be no pressure or calls for democratization. On December 26, 1979, Brzezinski told Pres. Jimmy Carter “This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy.”

The US colluded with Turkey in allowing export of sensitive items to Pakistan even as it continued to issue demarchés to that country and even as Turkey protested these demarchés citing its weak export laws. So was the then West Germany. Not only did sensitive parts and machinery go to Pakistan, but also German scientists went to that country to train Pakistanis. So have been Dutch companies and Dutch friends of AQ Khan. The US pressurized Holland to release the thief AQ Khan twice (1975 & 1986) from any prosecution and punishment even after he was caught red handed by the Dutch police. No less than the Prime Minister of Holland, Rudd Lubbers, has admitted to this openly. Was the CIA ‘following' A.Q.Khan for three long decades to ferret out more information about AQ Khan’s clandestine work and proliferation (an usual spy operation tactic) without anything to show?

Pakistani operatives caught red-handed within the US for exporting nuclear-related components and devices were treated with kid gloves and also released without prosecution. The US thus violated its own Solarz Amendment of 1985 which demands that the US cutoff all military and economic aid to purportedly non-nuclear nations that illegally export or attempt to export nuclear-related materials from the US. In view of these actions, one must only conclude that the US ensured that Germany also did not act against the violators of its export rules because there is no other explanation for the German silence.

The US also forced the Swiss government to destroy vital evidences of nuclear proliferation by a Swiss family which was part of Dr.A.Q.Khan’s network. By mid-2008, it turned out that the what the Swiss government destroyed was an advanced design for miniaturized nuclear weapon that A.Q.Khan had given. Prior to that, Mr. Tinner, the head of that Swiss family, had worked with Dr. A.Q. Khan for three decades knowing fully well the clandestine nuclear weapons programme of not only Pakistan but also Libya and Iran. As an agent of the CIA, God alone knows when he was recruited but it certainly was only when centrifuge parts were shipped by A.Q.Khan to Libya that the alarm bells were set ringing by the US. Until then, the US did not intervene in the activities of the Tinners when they were helping with the centrifuge programme at Kahuta. In order to cover its tracks, the US forced the Swiss government to destroy all documents and prevent prosecution of the Tinners by all means.

Even as late as c. 2003, the US President George W Bush thought it fit not to apply sanctions on Pakistani entities exporting nuclear technology to North Korea even after Pakistan was implicated. The US Government simply said that ". . . cooperation between the two was a thing of the past". The US Government exhibited a similar attitude to bail out its ally Pakistan in its more dangerous liaisons of nuclear proliferation to other states, especially rogue states, when the State Department of the US briefed other friendly governments with information contrary to what its own intelligence agencies were reporting about the Pakistani-Libyan deal which in fact went back to Z.A.Bhutto’s days. The US said that North Korea sent Uranium Hexafluoride to Libya while it was Pakistan that re-exported this gas to Libya.

Even as the CIA confirmed the supply of M-9 & M-11 missiles to Pakistan by PRC (in c. 1991), the White House refused to take note. The F-16s that were sold to Pakistan came with a rider that they would not be modified to deliver nuclear weapons. But, Pakistan did indeed modify them and the US has since then given three more tranches of F-16s with the same farcical condition. The DoD even lied to the Congress (or played with words to be more charitable) when queried about such Pakistani modifications, as the US President himself did by claiming Pakistan did not 'possess' a nuclear weapon.

There are many instances of such US collusion, collaboration, acquiescence in making Pakistan get its nuclear weapons and delivery systems. The pattern of US behaviour is consistent where it not only exported dual-use material to Pakistan and violated its own laws with impunity, but also forced its allies to do so. The US has justified Pakistan's security paranoia against India for this.

In one way, I would put the US collusion as more dangerous from an Indian perspective than the Chinese assistance because the former allowed the Uranium enrichment process to produce HEU, to come to fruition (the Chinese didn't have this to perfection at that time) by not only allowing the stolen blueprints from Holland to be used without punitive action but also helping Pakistan get all critical items, machinery and components to make that process a success. This is what that has been threatening us now. Pu-based weapons are a more recent phenomenon.

India may have failed to do many things but that doesn't absolve the US of the following:

• Its nuclear proliferation both directly & indirectly to Pakistan
• Its attempts at strangulation of genuine Indian efforts in every sphere of activity, including nuclear, until things changed somewhat after 9/11
• Attempts to wean away Kashmir & keep the pot boiling

It is said that Chester Bowles and Adalai Stevenson met the Sheikh and encouraged him for an independent Kashmir. As such the U S A wanted to make the State of Jammu & Kashmir an Independent Country with Sheikh Abdullah as its Head! Thus the USA would make Abdullah’s J & K a “Dependency” of the United States. As such IMO the USA will continue to have Pakistan and India at Loggerheads.

I do understand perfectly that every country would act in its sole interests and the US did exactly the same. But, that does not acquit it of its criminal intent and actions against Indian interest regardless of whether India should have independently acted against Pakistan or not.