Not at all surprised. Most of us retailers are minimum or small investors who don’t matter. But our funds are hard-earned money marked for retirement, children’s graduation etc. Our stock investments are our nest egg. We invest our life savings in BSE/NSE, India’s national stock exchanges, and what happens? We are taken to dizzying heights only to be plummeted to unimaginable lows so harshly that most of us have to write off our losses. At the same time, the FIIs or the Foreign Institutional Investors have been spotted laughing their way out of our stock markets. I am not a tech person to talk about this but I can understand when experts explain things to us in layman language.
Entire market is manipulative, going by its nature, agreed. Still this is audacious. What has America got to say on this. Tight lipped as about Lehman brothers’ losses? The Third world countries bore the brunt of Lehman brothers. Any idea for America to make good our losses? To someone talking tough on immigration, dispensing economic justice must not be a problem. The US govt also holds tonnes of gold of world nations including India, entrusted to them for safekeeping. Sometimes one wonders, whether the gold may be safer in India!
Anyway, ever since Trump came to power and the markets went on bear mode, we have our DIIs in India , the Domestic Institutional Investors, picking up the reins which is a good sign. Anyway I trust the DIIs over FIIs. The industrial growth story looks promising, the order books look good, the net profits are soaring. India shall remain a top economy in Asia registering highest possible growth rate and a top investment destination.
As the Trump-Musk feud escalates, Indian media is out with their speculations. A few influencers are better than the mass media tv channels. One of them was detailing about how Elon Musk may go about forming a third political party in the United States, that is a rare occurrence though not unheard of. The analyst was laying out point-by-point, why it was a monumental task for a third front to make it in America. The first and foremost reason was that, the third political front may require signatures from at least two million registered voters to be recognized by the Election committee as a competent political party. This really left me speechless. I am leaving out the other reasons that are out of scope of this post.
I am from Tamil Nadu where we had those like filmy actor Kamal Hasan start a political party (Makkal Needhi Maiyam) just to divide votes (or so we believe in) in the state. The party was active for a very brief time and is now gone defunct. But it served the purpose. It divided the vote bank by packing home the then ruling ADMK and returning to the Assembly the DMK which was apparently the motive. It is alleged that the party was also church-sponsored. ADMK had BJP leaning. Soon as the elections were over, MNM dismantled completely overnight with key members jumping the ship to get on to other bandwagons. Many simply vanished into thin air abandoning their political careers and the lofty ideals they were touting for months wasting columns in newspapers and hours in tv debate. A key BJP candidate Annamalai lost the Coimbatore seat in parliamentary elections thanks to MNM. The founder/floater of the party Kamal Hasan himself returned to the silver screen soon after the elections, leaving no doubt about the quiet dissolving of the party. How MNM even got funded is a mystery. It came into existence in such a short time flush with resources. Church angle is most probable, that’s all. No ruling out the invisible foreign hand and connections such as Mauritius or Seychelles, just to say. Scenarios like this are very common in India if and whenever vested interests want to divide the vote bank. It happens even at the central level as we saw very recently in the last concluded Lok Sabha (Parliamentary) elections. India has a third front that comes alive around election times always. Modi’s BJP is winning despite all this tamasha.
Both India and the US are two of world’s largest democracies. India has the largest adult franchise bank in the world, with around a billion eligible voters ready to exercise their voting rights.
Indian Election Commission can take a leaf out of the American Democratic/Election process for the sake of stability of our own governments. The third party fronts, the independent candidates etc., may have to be filtered for motives. Sources of funds must be legal and established clearly and published in the gazette. We can have something like the minimum signature consent/campaign within a stipulated 60 days or 90 days based on American model, in order for a new political party to come into existence, like a mushroom shooting up in the previous night’s rains. The new front must have solid grounds by way of logic to come into existence in the first place. Otherwise the third fronts are a waste of our time, energy and resources.
I have been voting in the EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) since 2001 I guess. Now the list of candidates even for my constituency which is Central Chennai is getting lengthier and lengthier like the Hanuman tail. Too many independent contestants. There should be some basic criteria to check out the potential harmers who have it in them to inflict damage on the free and fair elections in India. Many promising candidates lose out to this third front/independent candidate mafia. Most independent candidates as well as the new third or fourth or fifth fronts, etc., that shoot up in India both at central and state levels have only one agenda: TO DIVIDE THE VOTE BANK UNSCRUPULOUSLY AND UPSET THE APPLE CART. This is nefarious and criminal ideology that needs to be addressed by our Election commission. Very recently actor Vijay from Tamil Nadu has floated his own political party (allegedly aimed at dividing BJP votes). The church connection is bold and written on the wall.
So as per Indian think tanks, even with the hurdles and constraints in his way, Elon Musk stands a good chance of getting successful with his new political party, if he is serious about it.
Things are getting interesting from here. Me taking no sides. Just a curious spectator from India who is keeping her fingers crossed.
They say, when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold. This is so true, believe me. What happens in America can have repercussions in not only in India, but in all parts of the world.
I hope my prime minister as well as the Election commission of India study the American two party democratic system for its merits and tighten the entry for third fronts/independent candidates who may try to destabilize India. If someone is solid and serious like Musk, then they can have no problem with the tough norms laid out to screen potential wreckers of our democratic system. The consolation is that, India and BJP continue to win in dire circumstances!
vijiravindran's 