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Edits | March, 2025
As written in the last editorial, Aam Aadmi Party seems to have lost its base, got confirmed in the government formation by BJP. On the road ahead, it is that Delhi has lost, since, when one looks at the vote percentages between the winner and the runners-up party there is hardly a difference. AAP had a vote percentage of 43.8%, while the BJP got vote percentage of 45.8%, with the rest of the votes being split between the Others and the Congress. From a democracy point of view, it is Delhi which lost. Surely, the rules for elections in a democracy cannot be changed, (the winner takes it all), but they surely can be re-interpreted. In any case any government that comes to power will be laden with corrupt practices, siphoning off from the exchequer, distributing freebies to people for votes on account of tax-payers money, and so on and so forth. It is a cycle which is simply repeating, and it is now becoming boring. The CAG report, which has been tabled in the Vidhan Sabha of Delhi, will now pave the way for imprisonment of the people not in power. It is a good chance for BJP to conquer Delhi in all its might, just as it has in the rest of India, and without any coalition. Most of the electorate and the parties in India are now lagging behind the BJP and the fight is to remain significant whenever the time comes for them to be back again.
The stock markets are bleeding – what’s next? Did the MahaKumbh not reignite the Indian economy? So why are the markets falling, and why are the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) taking away billions of dollars every trading day from India? It is also to be noted that in China, bank savings are rising as the economy is not doing well, and the real estate market has collapsed, which had attracted a large portion of Chinese earnings.
The Indian markets are primarily dependent upon offshore money. Internal consumption of India drives only a few Indian companies, which are also self-sustaining. The mayhem caused by mutual fund investments and SIPs has depleted the banks of their fixed deposits. This capital was the main source of capital and periodic revenue, and it was also the capital to fund new businesses and their growth. As the fixed deposits shrink, so does the funding to the Indian companies by the Indian banks.
Though this cycle is not clearly visible since there is more hullabaloo about investments in the market, this is the reality. There is less and less real capital, which is now available in the Indian economy, and there is more and more speculative capital in the hands of mutual funds, which is not used to fund companies and businesses.
But all said and done, the Mahakumbh was supposed to ignite the economy, which should have meant the stock market also, but this seems not to have happened. The pilgrims have gone for multiple dip-trips to the Sangam, and the party seems to be going on for the BJP like never before.
Trump announces a probable war agreement, reframing the world order and disturbing it like never before since the end of the Cold War. And America can become rash. So it has quite literally been decided that Russia and America are going to distribute some of the resources of Ukraine, worth a few Trillions of dollars in minerals and metal. It appears that the main cause of the war started by the Russians was to acquire mining territories in the Ukraine, lost after the split of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine, as a country, is the last buffer between Russia and the western world, geographically speaking. In the coming weeks it will be clear whether the partnership of the US and Russia will actually bear fruit for each of them. NATO is all up in arms about its own nuclear and war protection. On the other side, if Russia and the US become friends to stop the Ukraine war and to distribute the “booty” (read: Ukrainian soil full of minerals and mining), then why does NATO, at all, need any cover? All said and done, it was a few peoples’ greed that has ruined the country, displaced millions of people – including young children and women-who would have pitiful futures and struggling days in their lives to come.
You may now pay for citizenship in America. Trump has announced a $5 million “gold card”, akin to a green card, to buy yourself citizenship of the greatest business economy. He states that they will be rich people coming in and who will have good businesses, would be successful, shall create employment, and those are the kind of people he would like to populate the US with. What he did not say was that it would also mean that a lot of applicants who are unwanted in their respective countries, may find a safe haven in the US by simply applying for this card, paying $5 million and getting through. Be prepared for a lot of diplomatic slush-fest in the later years, since extradition treaties will have to be read and finally the gold card may not be such a great entry vehicle to the US, for the US. Anybody having $5 million to pay for citizenship, would also need to invest a few tens of millions of dollars to establish themselves. So, we are looking only at people who have a war chest, or dislocating themselves from the present country, or looking at the US as an opportunity where they invest better than the country they are presently in. Carefully need to watch out for this space.
CA Divesh Nath
Editor
Woman’s Era
LinkedIn: Divesh Nath