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Shuvam's avatar

Wow Sonali! Incisive and lays out the focus and priority very well. With all due respect, may I point out a few things?

What seems to be missing is the leverage that India internally can, in terms of resources, policy changes and planning...if everything is focused on winning the next election, and dictated by that, India is headed towards disaster economically and on the global stage as well.

With all respect, disagree on one area. We cannot consort with the US and EU for arms and strategic alliances and hobnob with China for trade. In the cold hard world of strategic geopolitics, as you rightly said, if you are not with us, you are against us.

China's way of control is primarily economic through loans and gifts of military hardware to create a dependence in exchange for natural resources or territory which give it an advantage militarily. We have to evaluate our relation with China on that basis.

As China looks Eastward, it will seek to curtail India's global reach and leverage by ensuring it is mired and bogged down in local, regional issues, which it has executed successfully as a strategy so far. Look at our relations with SriLanka, Nepal, Maldives, Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan...every country surrounding us, with the exception of Bhutan.

Also strategy. This, the mandarins and the jingoistic chest thumping idiots who populate the GOI today, with a focus on winning the next elections, do not have a clue about.

Our 'defense' against China in Galwan is costing us over 100 Lakh crores annually by a conservative estimate (We spend around 6000 crores annually to keep our hold on Siachen, by the way) This is apart from opportunistic purchase of arms ( we spent 4 times more than Egypt in buying each Rafale). Whatever the cost to China, it can afford it, given the cost of its economy. We can't. Which is the only reason that talks will keep dragging on as I predicted a long time back, because the economic cost to us to maintain our troops is using up a lot of scarce resources that this country has....Not to mention pandering to one's ego and megalomania and draining the country of its resources through areas like demonetisation, a poorly conceived and pathetically implemented GST and also by exclusive planes, the Central Vista et all....

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Sandeep Sagar's avatar

Great Analysis! Indian policy is too politicized to execute this clearly, sadly.

Was thrown off by the statement -"China is 18% of the global GDP, the US is 16% of the GDP," as US is still #1 in GDP. I noticed you used PPP instead of Nominal GDP (which is normally used) for country level GDP comparison. Any particular reason for this?

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