Two of my recently published articles. One on urbanization and second one on Public Private Partnership...

PPP: Balancing Equity and Efficiency

Another article I wrote for Spontaneous Order:
http://spontaneousorder.in/ppp-balancing-equity-and-efficiency/ 

Is Market Riding High on Black Money Spent in Election?

Here is link of the blogpost I wrote for spontaneous order:
http://spontaneousorder.in/is-market-riding-high-on-black-money-spent-in-election/

Supremacy of Politics: Telangana

Telangana has been in news recently after the decision by the Government of India to make it 29^th state of the country. I had a conversation with few friends about the decision and discussing various factors on the basis of which the decision of forming a new state is taken. The factors during our discussion ranged from backwardness to ease of administration to states too big to govern to language and cultural identity. However, in my opinion formation of the state has once again proved supremacy of politics over all other factors. Had the decision been taken based on the above mentioned grounds there are genuine demands of formation of other new states such as Gorkhaland, Bodoland, Purvanchal, Avadh Pradesh, Bundelkhand, Vidarbh, Maru Pradesh and many more. The current count of demand of new states could take the number of states in the country to 50. Ironically, demand of few such states has involved even violence and insurgence and the magnitude of the matter has increased after the decision on Telangana. The question is what is it that makes Telangana a unique case for bagging the status of a new state and others not to qualify? I join the group of many who believe the recent decision makes a stronger case of politics rather than the development of the region which should ideally be the case. Indian National Congress has taken the decision to harvest political advantage in the upcoming Lok Sabha election. The recent decision also raises the question of having a uniform method based on principles for all such demands instead of taking decisions as a favor for political gain or other vested interests.

The government has declined the request of creating ‘State Reorganization Commission’ which in my opinion is anti-democratic and against the constitution of India. I am of the opinion of creating ‘State Reorganization Commission’ with immediate effect to look into demands in greater details taking a decision based on the above mentioned factors to control the raising violence. May be all the demands can’t be accepted but as many of those can be, should be. There are concerns raised by some thought leaders such as danger to the unity and integrity which is beyond my understanding. People are mostly concerned for the basic services reaching to them and not so specifically whether it comes from central, state or local government irrespective of its size and functioning etc. Only when development and public services for long time didn’t reach to people, they realized that in the current political set up their interest wouldn’t be looked into in lack of appropriate representation and political advantages and started demanding separate state which better represents them. There are several advantages of having a small state which even comes as learning from Chattishgarh, Uttakhand and Jharkhand. And even if the policy makers don’t see many advantages, they need to respect the sentiments of people in Indian democracy. While their concerns can be too small states making it difficult to administer rather than giving it ease, I am sure people would also learn from their mistake and will also demand for unification. We do have a wonderful example of European Union to learn from where countries voluntarily decided to come together to make a larger union.

Issaq

Issaq reminds me of my days far from home. One day, I was trying to cook dinner with my mom’s constant guidance on phone. I had all the good quality ingredients, followed the process and did everything according to the instructions. While I thought I had done a wonderful job, when I sat down to eat with my friends I found the meal insipid. I wasn’t an expert cook and that’s why I was clueless as to why the food wasn’t tasty. Similarly the movie, in my opinion, has good story line, hard working team, actors who have done fairly good job with their roles, wonderful background of Varanasi, dialogues and scripting that gives it close-to-reality touch and even some good music too. However, the film is insipid and hardly connects to audience. I am not an expert movie critic and that’s why once again I fail to understand why so. What magic my mom does to food and I can’t do is the similar to what magic some expert film makers do what Manish Tiwari fails to do.

I think what product sells today in market depends upon its user friendliness. One would fail to understand logic and sequence of the incidents unless he is much focused (and in many cases not even then). I didn’t like at all unnecessary humor added. In fact it actually ruins the work. There circumstantial incidents that brings out humor and we enjoy it, not just to make it funny. By the way I liked the work of all the actors in the movie and the Benaras it has portrayed to some extent. The movie can be watched as several small clips by the students who learn film making but if you go to see it as entire movie, one would certainly be disappointed. Therefore, I find the film maker has wasted all the great talent the movie had to make it a wonderful movie in the same way as I wasted quality ingredients trying to prepare dinner.

Directed by: Manish Tiwary, Produced by: Dhaval Gada, Shailesh R. Singh.

Starring: Prateik Babbar, Amyra Dastur, Ravi Kishan, Makarand Deshpande, Neena Gupta, Prashant Narayanan, Sudhir Pandey, Prashant Kumar, Amit Sial, Vineet Kumar, Yuri Suri, Malini Awasthy.

Music by: Sachin – Jigar, Krsna, Sachinn Gupta.

Background score: Prashant Pillai

Cinematography: Vishal Sinha

Studio: Pen India Pvt. Ltd

Release date(s): 26 July 2013

Country: India

Language: Hindi

From Mid Day Maut to Food Tragedy

Since I am on break from work and get enough spare time to do things I have always longed for doing. One of the things that I make sure I do is to spend time with youth around my neighborhood. It helps me to understand more about what youth of a third tier cities these days, at the same time it also helps me share my learning to enrich their experience.

One fine evening I was on evening stroll of the town with one of boys of my neighborhood. While we passed the stinking public garbage, the boy was compelled to think of some solution to solve the problem which erupted an intense discussion among us which I think needs to be shared with others too. The discussion also is significant to other issues of contemporary public policy discourse in approaching election environment. While the boy immediately came out with his hypothetical solution of government doing more to solve to the problem of public garbage, I was more focused on helping him think of an alternate solution. Here is a sneak pick of our conversation:

Boy: The stinking garbage causes so much inconvenience to people. Government must do something about it.

Me: Why government should work on it?

Boy: Because it’s government’s responsibility to clean our garbage.

Me: Isn’t it our responsibility to clean our garbage.

Boy: Yes, but government has taken up this responsibility and has staffs to do so. We even pay for this.

Me: You are right. Government has an entire big department to maintain cleanliness in town and even after paying for this we don’t get satisfactory result. Doesn’t this give us a learning?

Boy: What do you mean?

Me: We usually in our personal life give more responsibilities to the ones who give us good result and curb the responsibilities of the ones who fail to deliver. Applying the same logic shouldn’t we take away the responsibility from government and figure out another way to maintain cleanliness and shouldn’t we even punish the government for failing to deliver? The thing is the moment we say government should do this or that, we must understand that we are making an expectation from an inefficient system to deliver which has never delivered. Can you give me an example of any public service delivery work where government has done really well?

Boy: Well, I am not sure if there is any such thing.

Me: Right. I am not sure whether this big stinking garbage existed here and how it was managed before government took over the responsibility of garbage management but I am very sure that the more you put this on government, the bigger would be the size of garbage management problem here.

While I tried to explain the boy what should be core function of government and what should be put back to civil society to do on its own, I got more examples from recent crisis to substantiate my point. One of the flagship schemes of government to provide Mid-Day Meal to students in government schools happened to prove killer for more than two dozen school students recently. News channels have filled up the screen with numerous stories of how inefficiently the scheme is managed since the incident took place. MNREGA has spread the corruption from big offices in city/state centers to far away rural areas.  Practically, it can be seen as the largest government program in world to decentralize corruption. And now I am wondering what would happen with the attempt of providing Food Security to us. Can anyone guess how this act can kick off artificial food grain shortage, inflation rate, budget deficit, politics entering into our daily personal lives, increase in corrupt practices and most importantly how many lives it would claim? It would be very interesting to calculate actual price that the country would have to pay for few Kilograms of subsidized food grains…

A Simple Way to Explain Evils of Socialism

An economics professor at a local University made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that  socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on the socialism principles".. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (Substituting grades for Ranks - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were HAPPY. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

An Old Story

An Old Story:

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house
and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.


Indian Version:

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant's house.

Medha fasts along with other Grasshoppers demanding that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter Mayawati states this as `injustice' done on Minorities.

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the Grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) .

Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for 'Bengal Bandh' in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.

CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the ' Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act' [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the winter.


Kapil Sibbal makes 'Special Reservation ' for Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions
& in Government Services.

The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left
to pay his retroactive taxes, it’s home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it ' A Triumph of Justice'.
Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice '.

CPM calls it the ' Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden '

Koffi Annan invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.

Many years later....

The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley, 100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India,

......AND

As a result of loosing lot of hard working Ants and feeding the grasshoppers, India is still a developing country…!!!

It is time for YOUNG INDIA. It is OUR time…

India winning the Cricket World Cup 2011 is not only just an award. It is another proof of rising India on the world map on the way to be a superpower. I remember my conversation with the taxi driver who drove me from Kottayam to Cochin Airport in Jan 2009. He was very sad with the status of country and I was able to show him a brighter future of the country in the area not only in the key sectors such as economy, foreign affaire, health, energy etc but also in the field of sports, culture, language, space research etc by 2020. The guy was deeply impressed and the interaction changed him from a frustrated person to a more enthusiastic and hopeful person. I am sure where ever he is today; he would have cheered for the victory and enjoyed the proud moment. We have conquered one battle while there are many yet to be fought. Go and prove yourself as Dhobi brigade has done it. It is time for YOUNG INDIA. It is OUR time…

Amit Chandra on Lok Sabha TV

Amit Chandra, Campaign Coordinator of Jeevika: Law, Liberty & Livelihood Campaign was recently featured in a show on Lok Sabha TV where he was talking about struggle of street vendors. Here is a small clip captured in a mobile phone. Here is the link to watch the clip on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIjLEUxA1sk

Centre for Civil Society under it’s ‘Jeevika: Law, Liberty & Livelihood Campaign’ formed a Human Chain urging the government to protect the honest livelihood of poor working in informal sector in partnership with Great India Dream Foundation, Pravah Jaipur Initiative, AIESEC, Rajasthan Abhyudaya Sanstha, National Association of Street Vendors of India and Jaipur Mahanagar Thdai Thela Footpath Vyawasayi Union, at Jal Mahal at 6 PM. Active Citizens of Jaipur and Youth Students of Different colleges also joined the Human Chain.

Mr. Amit Chandra, the Campaign Coordinator of Centre for Civil Society said, “The participation of citizen and youth is very crucial for bringing any kind of social change. We wanted to bring the common citizen out to stand for the livelihood and create a positive environment to enable government to reform the informal sector. Policy reform would ensure protection of livelihood and financial as well as welfare services to the poor working in informal sector such as street vendors, food dhabas, barbars, cycle rickshaw pullers to name a few. The message that we want to pass on to government, media and people is that the street vendors have traditionally been part of social and cultural India and we need to protect this tradition similarly as we have preserved our heritages such as Jal Mahal”

Mr. Ghanshyam Kotwani, Executive Member of National Alliance of Street Vendors of India said, “Street Vendors have to face natural hardships such as rain, sun and cold but they brave it because they have no other alternatives but what really creates problem is the continuous threat and torture of authorities. The stigma attached to us as traffic hazard is also not right. We should be seen as service providers and the one who brings colour, convenience and taste to the life of festival city, Jaipur.”

Mr. Babulal Ramchandani, representative of Jaipur Mahanagar Thdai Thela Footpath Vyawasayi Union at the gathering said, “The Rajasthan Government had introduced a policy for welfare and rehabilitation of street vendors named Pheriwalon Ka Sansar in 2007 which is in effect till date but the Jaipur Municipal Corporation hasn’t implemented this policy. Once the policy is implemented there wouldn’t be a problem of vending and hawking in the city.”

A street play was also done at the beginning of the program showing the hardships of the life of a street vendor. It brought lot of tourists also to come forward and share their view about the issue after which the gathering of around 200 people formed human chain in different shapes and sizes in a very creative and attractive way.

The event was coordinated by Ms. Meenu Nagpal and thank you note was given by Mr. Nitin Dixit at the end.

Amit Chandra
Campaign Coordinator, Centre for Civil Society, D-125, Mahaveer Marg, Ambabari, Jaipur 302012, India
Email: amit@ccs.in, amitchandra2006@gmail.com

Dear All,

We are organizing a Human Chain activity to pass on the message in public and media that we need to protect the means of making livelihood of poor as we have protected our heritages such as Jal Mahal.

We have created an event on facebook too which you can join and invite others to attend the event. Here is the link of the event http://www.facebook.com/amitchandra2006#!/event.php?eid=133309663365211 .

Kindly spread the event information to people in your contact and help us in publicizing the event and do join yourself. We have only two days to go…

Amit Chandra

Sunday on a Saturday!

I went for a talk show today which was organized by Dainik Bhaskar and Mahatma Jyotiba Phule University. Heard Mr. Surendra Golcha and Mr. Navratna Kothari. It was good to hear life stories of living legends of Jaipur. Got the insights of our traditional entrepreneur. There has been CSR approach in our business families since long. However, I was also upset to see that they all identify the problem of poor development of the state but hardly could work for solutions. CCS should reach to such well connected people and they might take our ideas forward.

I also watched long awaited film for me, Hrithik and Barbara starer Kites. Had heard lot of criticism but heyyyy... It isn't so bad. Barabara looked beautiful. Hrithik is hot and has really worked hard. Direction, dialogues everything is very good. In fact, I am very impressed with the movie. However, I do agree that end of the story isn't as per what Indian viewers look for. Indian audience wants good to win over devil and wants the hero to fight back even with 100 bullets in his body. Indian viewers have still not been mature enough to accept other than the happy end... For me it was good to see some fresh ideas coming from the movie. So happy ending for me : )

We couldn't submit our memorandum to the Chief Minister Mr Ashok Gehlot after our Dharna on March 18 so the next day morning we went to his residence and submitted our memorandum. These days also we have been running to government offices for the same but very sad to write that nothing has happened so far. It is so disappointing that even after informing the Municipal Corporation about their own duty of taking back their land from the encroachers no step has been taken so far.

We had a very good vendors meet on Saturday in Vidyadhar Nagar market. We had around 40 street vendors all together. These were key vendors from 5 markets Vidyadhar Nagar, Murlipura, Ambabari, Dudh market and 17 no market. Presence of the market secretary, Mr. Keshar Singh made it special for vendors.

It lasted for two hours from 1-30 to 3-30. Mr Sing and I mainly tried to convince vendors as to why they should organize and how giving a shape to their association like cooperative will be beneficial for them. We succeeded in our effort to great extent. Watch out the two pictures.

We have asked the vendors present in the meet to convince all the vendors in their market and to ensure this to happen we decided to keep similar meets in each of other four markets too. Mr Singh has also promised to try to come in those meetings and that is why we have planned these meetings on weekends. We have also fixed up tentative dates too for the meets.

Apr 10: Murlipura

Apr 17: Ambabari

Apr 24: 17 No market

May 01: Dudh market

And we are looking for holding up a big meeting with all the vendors after all the market meets to discuss and start working on giving shape to the Cooperative idea. We are aiming for around 500 vendors to star with.

Meanwhile, I have bought the book on Rajasthan Cooperative Law and going through it J

Amit Chandra

Against Ban on Jugaads in Rajasthan

Let me go against the current waves and yell out I am against the decision of Rajasthan Government of banning JUGAADS. I do understand the concerns of Rajasthan government about the road safety but at the same time I don't think that banning Jugaads will help. Rajasthan Government should also understand how Jugaads are helping poor farmers in rural Rajasthan where the technologies haven't reached and people trying to tackle the problem of transportation with locally made rural Nanoes. State government must have read these article before reaching to a decision on banning Jugaads.

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/india-news/jugad-the-indigenously-built-lifeline-of-people-in-rural-rajasthan_10068338.html

http://yehhailife.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/jugaad-a-uniquely-indian-life-concept-worth-saluting/

http://www.rockstar4m.com/forum/index.php?forumID=37&ID=952&start=0

Amit Chandra

Dharna by Fruits and Vegetable Vendors

The fruits and vegetable vendors have taken out rallies in past demanding licenses and permanent space urging government to protect their livelihood. Now it was the first time I think when vendors are raising their voice againstencroachment to participate democratically in development and making Jaipur a world class city.

‘Jaipur Phal Sabji Vikreta Sayunkt Sangharsh Samiti’ planned of a strike by keeping their business close and to be on Dharna against illegal encroachment on at 11 AM on March 18, 2010 at Saheed Smarak, M I Road, Government Hostel Crossing, Jaipur. ‘Jaipur Phal Sabji Vikreta Sayunkt Sangharsh Samiti’ is being facilitated by Centre for Civil Society under its campaign on urban livelihood named “Jeevika: law, Liberty & Livelihood”.

The Dharna was good with around crowd of 200 street vendors. At the end we submitted memorandum to the Chief Minister. We had good media coverage too J I will share the detail about the event soon. For the time being watch out these pictures of the event.

Will come back with more updates and events like this.

Amit Chandra

My Profile

Amit Chandra currently works as Campaign Coordinator for Jeevika: Law, Liberty & Livelihood Campaign with Centre for Civil Society. He has mainly worked as youth mobilizer for past couple of years with Centre and has motivated hundreds of youth to take up civil society initiative in their own capacity across the country. He graduated in Commerce and post graduated in Social Work. He has been participant of "International Youth Exchange Program - 2007". He worked for campus and community radio of Guelph University, Canada and hosted a show spreading awareness about the availability of various social services in the city. He also worked at grass rout level with "Society for Promotion of Youth and Masses", Hathin, Haryana for assessment of micro financial status of self help groups of women. He is also a Think Tank MBA from Atlas Economic Research Foundation, USA. He was recently invited for an international conference for networking of think tanks at Niagara on Lake, Canada.

Presentation session to Rajasthan Government officers

Dear all,

To update you about me and the campaign (Jeevika: Law, Liberty & livelihood) I am working on, we offered a workshop/presentation session to Rajasthan Government officers to give our expert input regarding effective and time bound implementation of the Bill on Urban Street Vendors. There were officers of the state related with vendors’ issues including the Principle Secretary (UD&H), Director ULB, Police Superintendent (Traffic), Secretary (HB), Secretary Development Authority along with CEO/Municipal Commissioner of four cities.

We had two experts to talk about how the Urban Street Vendors Bill (Protection of Livelihood and regulation of Street Vending) can be implemented. Ms Shalini Trivedi from SEWA talked about how the planning should be done at city level according to the provisions of the Bill. Mr Arbind Singh from NASVI talked about what are needed to be done to implement the policy. We also screened a small documentary on NASVI experience in Bhubneshwar and then we had a Question & Answer session.

Major issues that raised and addressed in the meeting are:

1. Land for Vendor markets
2. Vendors’ management at prime locations
3. Vendors’ management in old walled city
4. Identification of genuine vendors
5. Guarantee of not coming back to the same place
6. Licensing would lead to black market of licenses
7. Tolerance level for government
8. Influx of population from outside of city
9. Sustainability of vendors policy
10. Process of licensing

We also had few street vendors representative from major cities of Rajasthan and few representatives of NGOs of Jaipur. People also raised the issue of recent eviction in Jodhpur.

Mr. Snadhu Principle Secretary of Urban Development and Home has given instructions to take up the recommendations and start work immediately in all big cities of Rajasthan.

I can say that overall we had good start in Jaipur and things look positive. Now we need to enlarge this momentum and get things done on the ground. I am also attaching one picture of the meeting. Unfortunately, our camera ran out of battery in between the program and I had not many good pictures to choose from.

Thank you to all of you who joined us in the meeting. Do share your opinion about the meeting and your ideas for the way forward.

Wishes,

Amit

New Government, New Hope

Last month, congress had unexpected clean sweep proving all the projections of one more collaborative govt and one more early elections wrong and formed the new government. It seems like people of India didn’t want to spend their hard earned money to early elections at the same time didn’t find any good alternate to the previous govt.

I guess there were few things that brought things in favour of congress. First and most important the populist schemes during their last tenure such as NREGA, Loan Weavers etc. However, I believe that those are good politics but very bad economics. Rural India felt that the govt is concerned about them and that was probably the reason people also looked with hope towards the luring promises made by congress leaders during their election campaigns such as rice and wheat at the rate of Rs 3 a kg for poor people. Also with initiatives by Rahul Gandhi connecting more and more youth with party and village stays during his tour turned votes into congress favour. Urban India too found it most dependable party for a stable govt and Manmohan Singh as good PM candidate. I must mention one more thing that the negative critics by the second largest party BJP weren’t bought by the people.

Anyway, I don’t want to focus too much analysing the pre election factors those worked or didn’t work for congress or BJP and other parties. What I want to mention is the new energy in the newly formed govt. It seems finally the politicians also have realized that they can’t fool people for long and if they want longer political career not only they would have to work but also have to take the account of their work to the people. After around a month of formation of new govt there is new hope and for the very first time to me the new cabinet seems to be responsible to people. Previous governments also had common minimum programs with their allies and target for first 100 days but this time all the ministers are making their own target for first 100 days work plan and looking for bold unconventional steps than just continuing previous govt work. HRD, Defence, Foreign, Finance, Home and other ministries seems to be open to new ideas and set to take strong steps. Nadan has been made the chief for National Identity Card scheme with the power of a cabinet minister. So govt doesn’t want work to be delayed in bureaucratic system. Only time will tell us to what extent they would be able to meet their target and even meeting those would result into betterment of people or not but one thing is for sure that they have been able to bring new energy and new hopes. For the very first time I can see a political will power to change which was missing since long to reform governance. If this works out it is going to start a new trend in Indian politics which would be a trend of responsible and accountable govt and political leaders would also have a makeover of their Neta Ji image. My heart felt congrats to Manmohan, Sonia and Rahul for enlightening new hopes.

Swami's Article

Where McCain scores over Obama

Dated: October 26, 2008

Barack Obama looks certain to beat John McCain and become the next US President. Most Indians will be delighted. An Obama victory will symbolize the vanquishing of racism and the dismal Bush legacy.

Besides, McCain is a military hawk, especially on Iraq. Obama is not exactly a dove, but is far less a military adventurer than McCain, and is preferred by Indians on this score too.

Yet, a look at the voting record and campaign content of the two candidates suggests that McCain might in many ways be better for India than Obama, especially on economic issues.

A nasty global recession has begun. Nouriel Roubini of New York University predicts we will suffer the worst economic downswing since the Great Depression. So, pressures will mount for protectionist measures and beggar-thy-neighbour policies in the US, hurting countries like India. Apart from erecting import barriers and subsidizing dumped exports, US politicians will seek to curb the outsourcing of services to India. Visa curbs will slow the movement of skilled workers and their dollar remittances back to India.

McCain is one of the few American politicians in either party with the courage and conviction to stand up to protectionist populism. By contrast, Obama embodies protectionism.

Look at the accompanying chart (more details are available at freetrade.org). It shows that McCain has voted 88% of the time against bills creating trade barriers, and 90% of the time against export subsidies for US producers. Few other senators have such a splendid record.

Obama has served a much shorter time in the Senate, and avoided voting on many key issues. He has voted against trade barriers only 36% of the time. He supported export subsidies on the two occasions on which he voted, a 100% protectionist record in this regard.

In 2007, he voted to reduce visas issued to foreign workers (such as Indian software engineers), and to ban Mexican trucks on US roads. He sometimes voted for free trade—he supported the Oman Free Trade Act and a bill on miscellaneous tariff reductions and trade preference extensions. More often he voted for protectionist measures including 100% scanning of imported containers (which would make imports slower and costlier), and emergency farm spending.

In 2005 he voted to impose sanctions on China for currency manipulation, and against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. He voted for the Byrd amendment, a disgraceful bill (later struck down by the WTO) that gifted anti-dumping duties to US producers who complained, thus making complaining more profitable than competitive production.

Obama says the North American Free Trade agreement is a bad one, and must be renegotiated. He has opposed the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement on the bogus ground that Colombia is not protecting its trade union leaders from the drug mafia. In fact, such assassinations have fallen steadily from 205 in 2001 to just 25 last year. Obama is cynically twisting facts to woo the most protectionist US trade unions. This cannot but worry India, which may also be subjected to bogus slander and trade disadvantages.

By contrast, McCain has consistently voted for open trade, He has opposed federal curbs as well as private curbs on outsourcing to countries like India. He opposed the disgraceful Byrd amendment on anti-dumping duties. He voted against farm subsidies and labour standards for imports (which are not necessarily bad but could become a disguised form of protectionism).

Unlike Obama, McCain voted against imposing trade sanctions on China for supposedly undervaluing its currency to keep exports booming and accumulate large forex reserves. India has followed a similar policy, though with less export success than China. But if indeed India achieves big success in the future, it could be similarly targeted by US legislators, and will need people like McCain to resist.

Obama favours extensive subsidies for US farmers, hitting Third World exporters like India. This has been one of the issues on which the Doha Round of WTO is gridlocked. McCain could open the gridlock, Obama will strengthen it.

Obama also favours subsidies for converting maize to ethanol. The massive diversion of maize from food to ethanol has sent global food and fertilizer prices skyrocketing, hitting countries like India. But McCain has always opposed subsidies for both US agriculture and ethanol. While campaigning, he had the courage to oppose such subsidies even in Iowa, an agricultural state he badly needs to win if he is to become President.

Okay, some readers will say, McCain may be better for India on economic issues, but will be a disaster on foreign policy issues. I’m far from sure. All Iraqi political parties want the US to withdraw most troops within a year and all troops by 2011, so a US withdrawal is certain regardless of who becomes US President. McCain is a hawk on Iran while Obama says he will talk without preconditions. But the difference may not mean much, since Iran refuses to talk before withdrawal of US support for Israel and US troops from the Middle East.

So when Obama wins, don’t cheer too loudly. It will be great to have a black US President. It would be even greater if he followed McCain’s economic policies.