May I know exactly what sort of connections are we talking about it? Big business families have always had some relationship with politicians in India but they were less evident 2-3 decades back then due to then governments' incline towards socialism.
> Because the fundamental nature of Indian politicians is socialist and statist.
That seems to have changed significantly now, after all a right-wing party has been in power since 2014. It seems to fit well with a lot of the private sector, and it did open up many entrepreneurship schemes too.
> People should know if there is anyway to get rich is not by hoarding land or putting money in bank, but by starting business.
India still has a long marathon ahead, might take a decade or two to just let people start business easily [1]. When it cannot even help keeping existing business open, its wishful thinking to create an environment to flourish business.
But don't worry economy is not important factor in Indian politics, so its alright the incumbents will continue to pursue other agendas especially the one which secure them vote bank based on divisive politics.
>who literally is the Government in India.
Don't agree with that. Ambani is a Congress (opposition party) sympathiser and openly backed their Candidate in recently concluded elections. Agreed that capitalists are above politics, but what you saying "literally is the Government in India" is over enthusiastic and generic without bringing substantial reference. Remember his brother is almost bankrupt despite support from current and previous Governments. And BJP, the ruling party have made several rival entrepreneurs their patrons (Adani). Also since the economy grew substantially in modern times and donations are much more widely spread out, the political parties are not answerable to few handful Capitalists who have their own way unlike in the 80's politics. Ultra rich may have their say in policy decisions (lobbying), but it's an overkill to state they run the country.
> The sad thing is they have deep ties with the current Govt,
They have had deep ties with all governments since 80's
Rest of comment sounds like blabbering. As with Indian level of poverty where >80% people live on less than $2 a day no one can offer products with better privacy for just 2-3 dollar a month price.
> And, I find it so sad that the first independent government chose to double down on the control on the economy rather than just open it all up.
This is not accurate. The Indian economy was pretty open; the overwhelming bureucratic red-tape started after Indira Gandhi's nationalization program (and other such policies). India under Nehru wasn't laissez faire by any means, but neither was it Communist.
You also have to see the context under which the politicians operated then. Unbridled capitalism had lead to colonialism and the World Wars and led to much oppression for workers worldwide; the Indian leaders were trying to avoid that kind of wealth aggregation and income equality.
> farmers resort to suicide when they are unable to pay back their small loans
The govt. pays a lot of money to farmers. 21% of farm income is from govt. subsidies. (Subsidies that the US and other developed nations have been fighting to stop, so that they can compete in Indian markets).
Farmer suicides have been more or less constant for many decades now. Its a sad situation and the causes of suicides are many and varied.
The current govt. has brought in a lot of technology driven improvements to distribution of subsidies, eliminating middlemen, etc.
The current farmer protests are mostly by rich farmer middlemen from Punjab, who will see their commissions reduces significantly if farmers start selling in markets with real competition.
> when "elected governments" act as the nazi party and "image" is worth more than lives of ordinary citizens
This could potentially mean very many things. It would help if you could be specific. Just shouting Nazi and lives of ordinary citizens means nothing.
> have people disappear as they like
Not very knowledgeable on this subject. Would love to hear more.
> when journalists are arrested and people killed for speaking against this "Elected government"
Most incidents I have seen are for deliberate instances of mis-information and shoddy journalism, leading to tense situations. I would be glad to hear of any instances where journalists have been wrongfully arrested.
The example you cite is for a journalist who was arrested based on a complaint from a Woman's Union, and that was for his posts of FB rather.
I never support suppression of free speech and news media, but the North Eastern states of India have a unique situation because China is fomenting a lot of separatism within the states and it is internationally knows that it claims Arunachal Pradesh as its own.
For the context —- the framework to rule India was constructed by the British. While it’s easy to focus on the political structure, it should be noted that the day to day work is carried out by the bureaucratic apparatus, which was put in place by the British.
Institutions such as civil services, education framework, public works department, court, corporate laws, penal code etc are all from the British era, carried forward post independence with minimal change if at all.
It is this bureaucratic structure that makes India work and any work needs to make it’s way through this to get implemented. Whatever politicians promise is largely irrelevant, by and large because they’ve been known to get lost in this labyrinth of bureaucracy.
The Indian version of British comedy “Yes Minister” was quite popular in India, for a good reason as Indian could relate to it .
So yes, Indian ruling structure is definitely closer to “West” than to China. But we could be more specific and say it’s close to British, because they were the ones who put it in place to begin with.
>>That is one thing that is holding even India back. In democratic setup it is very difficult to take a long term view particularly when that comes with short term pain - the govt would be out in next election.
The one thing you can count India on is that democracy will prevail.
Any government which comes to power will always appease industrialists and investors albeit their electioneering manifesto may have been on the upliftment of the proletariat and bourgeois
>> I think the instability of the current government has something to do with it.
Care to elaborate? I don't see the correlation between instability of a government and fining international companies for antitrust. Besides, the current United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in India has been in power for 2 full terms (10 years). The second term is about to end now and the elections are due in April 2014.
> India's problem was never socialism vs capitalism. India's fundamental problem is systemic corruption and heavy bureaucracy.
Socialism, in the context of poverty, inherently leads to corruption. This is something that's hard to understand for people who've only ever seen socialism and communism in countries that are already quite wealthy (e.g. Western Europe).
I say this as someone who is from West Bengal, which has had the world's longest-serving, democratically-elected Communist government.
> Let me give you an example of the political reach companies like Adani, Reliance etc. which are in nexus with current ruling party - BJP have in India. I have personally heard from Ex. High Court judges that when they were presiding over cases involving Adani, Reliance they were approached by officials from those companies and were asked "Would you like to be a Governor after your retirement?".
Corruption in judiciary is widely known and it predates Adani, Reliace etc. Nothing much can be done here as the Constitution exempts contempt of court from freedom of speech.
> As there is practically no real opposition party left in India, BJP will rule India for for decades to come as it slips into total authoritarianism(like CCP).
Similar predictions were made for Congress but things turned out differently. BJP has even lost some key states recently. That doesn't look like CCP in anyway.
>>> Many of the comments on this thread are just lazy armchair theories, including this one.<<<
That's an ad hominem that adds very little in terms of substance to your argument as you do not know anything about me or my background.
>>>You talk about a "historical precedent" that goes back to when India firmly identified itself as a socialist country. And from that distant, warped past, you fast forward 36 years to the present and to a country that in 1991 began its journey of economic liberation (which included jettisoning its socialist principles for all practical purposes), and expect us to believe that the two incidents are somehow related?<<<
Entity X has demonstrated a history of Y actions. Ignoring that day while analysing the probability of X doing something in the future is foolish.
Further, while the dialogue might have change. The individuals that hold power in India haven't changed over time. It's highly family oriented and it's reasonable to assume that they will act in a similar manner to preserve their interests.
>>>But what better examples to refute your ludicrous theory than Coca-Cola and IBM themselves, both of which came back to post-liberalization India. To the extent that India likely has IBM's largest global workforce [0], and Coca-Cola pours billions of dollars to maintain its leadership over Pepsi [1]<<<
It's a large market. They dropped the statutes is it unreasonable to presume that they won't capitalise on that? I don't see the point on attributing any emotional qualities to this. There is no profit in petty vendettas.
>>>Surely those companies would know a thing or two about "historical precedents", don't you think?<<<
I'm sure they do. Doesn't detract anything from my point or the analysis I've posted elsewhere. I fail to see the argument you're making over here.
>>>As for the most likely reason behind this $5 billion figure (sorry conspiracy theorists, it isn't extortion either as Indian politicians know Google's power isn't something to be messed with in the age of social/Internet savvy voters) is the old-fashioned plant. I'm guessing Microsoft (the primary shadow-backer behind all anti-Google cases in India) laid out the worst-case scenario off-the-record to a PTI journalist, along with the $5 billion figure. And the journalist was either too lazy to question/research it, or too taken in (journalists like throwing up "exclusives" like this with billions of dollars in the headlines) to reduce it to the decidedly unsexy $~33M.<<<
I've never mentioned anything about that. I merely pointed out that such fines and the Indian government being onerous towards entrepreneurial interests is something well established.
>>>It's just a theory mind you, but having been a business journalist in India for nearly 6 years (and having done stories severely critical of Google, lest you think I'm a shill for them), I think it's much more likely than some of the other fantastic theories in this thread.<<<
Okay. You still haven't refuted the core argument of what I had stated which is simply that there is a power base that would like to do such equity grabs and so on and it's not a convenient place to do business. Is that wrong?
>You only need to look at the current state of India's government, which over the course of more than 50 years of affirmative action (and other varying factors) has managed to convert the government sector into a cesspool of corruption and bad management.
This seems to imply that India's government fifty years ago was NOT full of corruption and bad management. The Raj was definitely corrupt but I know little about the two decades after India got its independence - were things really that good fifty years ago? Or was it just that it was less obvious?
> Entrenched companies like reliance/tata are known for that
Tangential to the topic, but can you point out where has Tata been found to have been indulging in that? If I recall correctly, Tata has refused to work with the Government when it required them to do something illegal on multiple occasions. This is why Tata went out of the airline market.
May I know exactly what sort of connections are we talking about it? Big business families have always had some relationship with politicians in India but they were less evident 2-3 decades back then due to then governments' incline towards socialism.
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