The Economist and its Spin-Doctors

The latest economist (15 Jan., 2022) makes makes a claim that seems absurd at many levels - "In an index of societal discrimination against minorities compiled by Bar Ilam University in Israel, India scores worse than Saudi Arabia, and no better than Iran".

Saudi Arabia and Iran are both self-proclaimed theocratic states with a population of 35 million and 84 million respectively, where religious minorities do no have the right to practice their religion openly; where proselytising by non-muslims is punishable by death...and these are the countries is being weighed against India!

This bit is part of a carefully crafted editorial note titled, "India - Stop Inciting Murder", which, in line with the Economist's long tradition of taking a condescending view of everything outside the Anglo-Saxon horizon, picks four recent instances of extremism displayed by one of the many lunatic fringes in India. This list includes news about the Hindu right-wing utterances and actions against muslims - the "religious parliament" of sadhus at Haridwar; "Sulli Deals" auction site 'selling' muslim women, and namaz in public areas of Gurgaon. Each of these incidents has attracted condemnation and discussion on the media.

A closer look also reveals that this is a carefully chosen list of one-sided reports from the English language media. There is, of course, no mention in the report of the legal action and arrests that have taken place in each of these instances. Perhaps presenting a balanced view would blunt the edge of their wordplay that seeks to paint the whole government as being inimical to 200 million muslim citizens of India.

It is true that the top leadership of NDA has been tardy in responding to reports of discrimination against minorities, especially Muslims. It is also true that there is a whole ecosystem of Modi-baiters, especially in the English language media that swings into coordinated action to blame the government for everything wrong under the sun. They only end up discrediting themselves.

What is interesting in this case is the attempt to build a case against India using a study conducted by an Israeli University. Even a cursory look at the actual study would show you that the "Index of societal discrimination" is itself based on a mathematical model that stands on shaky data. The study covered 771 minorities from 183 countries, and uses secondary and tertiary sources - government reports, academic articles, news reports, and reports from NGOs. The only mention of Saudi Arabia and Iran in this report is in a table tucked away in the annex. 

Strangely, even the data presented in the annex contradicts the claim being made by the Economist: 

According to this 'research', there has no record of "Targeting Minorities" in Iran and Saudi Arabia during the study period (24 years!). How on earth did the Economist editor deduce from these scores that "India scores worse than Saudi Arabia, and no better than Iran" ? 

I have always been a fan of the Economist, and will continue to be one. No other international magazine presents a world-view that you would find in its pages. Yet it is good to be reminded that the magazine's world-view is flawed, and that it often loses its own self-proclaimed goal - "...to participate in the severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress".

This just goes to prove that the Economist is as fallible as the leftist next door, with opinions coloured by preconceived notions, biases, lazy analysis, and plain stupidity.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

Article - https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/01/15/hindu-bigots-are-openly-urging-indians-to-murder-muslims

The Economist (15 Jan., 2022) - https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2022-01-15

India's External Debt

According to a recent issue of the Economist, India's financial health is in trouble. 

Rising international oil prices and a decline in exports is straining on our forex reserves, and on the other hand, a large chunk of the country's external borrowings (USD 500 billion now), is due for repayment in a few months. 

Having administered Yen Loan projects a few years ago and seen first hand the frantic to and fro that goes on between external lenders and India's Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Ministry of Finance, any article or report that sets such borrowings in a larger context was bound to get my ready attention. This one was no diferent.

How accurate was the TE analysis? Which are the external borrowings due for repayment. and what are our options at a time when Donald Trump is churning up the Middle East?

I looked at two sources for getting a better understanding. The first was the latest available DEA Status Report (Sep., 2017) on External Debt, and then QEDS - the Quarterly External Debt Statistics collated by WB & IMF. 

While the the DEA report placed overall external debt at $ 472 billion, the QEDS, which has data from 2017-Q4, puts it at $ 513 billion. So TEs $500b was a fairly good indicative figure.

Here are some other points that emerged from the DEA report, across various parameters:

• Duration: long term debt was 81% while short-term ones were mostly trade related credits;
• Types: commercial borrowings (36%), NRI deposits (25%), government sovereign external debt (SED) was $95 billion  (20%);

Source: DEA report

• Currency composition: US dollar (52%), Indian rupee (33%), SDR (5.8%), Japanese yen (4.6%) and Euro (2.9%); 
• Concessional debt was just 9.3% of the total - mostly from SED;
• Debt Servicing: Gross debt service payments  was $ 43.3 billion during 2016-17, a decrease of 2.2 per cent over the previous year;
• India’s debt service payments are dominated by the External Commercial Borrowings (ECBs) which accounted for 75.1% of gross debt service payments during 2016-17;
• Interest rates: External assistance (1.4%), NRI Deposits (4.4%) and ECBs (4.7%) -- overall "implicit" interest rate on total external debt - 2.8%;
• Sovereign External Debt (SED) - $95b in March 2017
• Debt from multilateral sources - 73% (external assistance) - $44b in absolute terms, of which:
• Multilateral: IDA ($23b), IBRD ($9b), ADB ($10b), IFAD ($0.3b)
• Bilateral: Japan ($15b), Germany ($2b), USA ($0.1b), France ($0.4b), Russia ($0.9b)

So when it comes to external assistance by way of concessional loans, they added up to just $44b (9.3%) of the total debt of $471b. Out of this Japan contributes $15b which, at second position, is larger than what we get from ADB but significantly less than the soft-loans from the World Bank. In overall terms, Japanese Yen Loans make up 3% of India's external debt!

It also turns out that there is indeed going to be a sharp increase in loan repayments. However this process started a year ago. Projections on long-term debt service payments shows that repayments were $33 billion for 2017-18, and they are going to be $29 billion for 2018-19, and then declines progressively for the next 10 years.

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LINKS:

* DEA Status Report (Sep., 2017) - https://dea.gov.in/sites/default/files/External%20Debt%20%28English%29_0.pdf

* QEDS - Quarterly External Debt Statistics collated by WB & IMF - http://datatopics.worldbank.org/debt/qeds

* (22 Mar 18) Mint - https://www.livemint.com/Industry/4yerAga6HW5Z1KbvYdnRLO/UBS-sees-Indias-external-finances-at-risk-despite-high-rese.html

Comparison of gross external debt to GNI (source: DEA)

Japan provides the lions share of bilateral loans (3% of total debt)

The Power of QA

How far will you go to buy a quality product?

According to the Economist, Chinese tourists are flying in droves to markets in Tokyo to purchase... toilet seats!

On the face of it this may seem a trivial or even whimsical thing to buy. But to those who have used to this piece of working art, it is difficult to see the regular plastic and ceramic contraptions as anything but retrograde.

However the point of interest is not the art or electronics but the fact that many of the seats the Chinese buy from Akihabara and carry back home, actually carry the label "Made in China".

Aparently, many Chinese consumers do not trust the reliability of such items sold at home—and refuse to pay the often higher prices charged for export-standard goods. Prime minister, Li Keqiang, has told Chinese firms to raise the quality of their own seats. “At least that could save consumers the price of a plane ticket,” he said.

Saving plane tickets is besides the point. It took a Chinese reader to hit the nail in the head:

I bought many stuffs in Japan even it says Made In China, but nothing in China itself because I know if the Chinese want to sell their stuffs in Japan, they must go through the rigorous Japanese quality assurance procedure, whereas there is none in China.

How do companies, and countries, acquire a reputation for accepting and delivering nothing less than the highest possible quality?

The Japanese embraced the ideas of an American guru, Edward Deming, to pull itself out of the morass of exporting poor quality umbrella's, matchboxes and textiles.

In India it appears that many outward looking, export-oriented companies have grasped the importance of perception, and understood the power of QA. There are also exceptional organisations like Aravind Eye Care and Narayana Health/Hrudayalaya that have blended high quality with affordability and public access.

What will it take for this idea to seem through our government and the vast network of institutions it controls?

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LINKS:

* http://www.economist.com/news/china/21647299-rush-buy-japanese-toilet-seats-prompts-soul-searching-china-race-bottom

Plants, Light & Excitons

Once in a while, the Economist publishes an article where the reader's comments turn out to be a lot more interesting than the original piece. Here is one  -

TE (3Dec14): HOW PLANTS EXPLOIT SUNLIGHT SO EFFICIENTLY - http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/12/economist-explains-1?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/howplantsexploitsunlightsoefficiently

The main point of contention is this claim by the TE author -

"The very best photovoltaic cells, the kind seen on many roofs, convert sunlight to electrical energy with an efficiency of around 35%; for more affordable cells the figure is closer to 20%. Plants accomplish the same process with about 90% efficiency during the first stage of photosynthesis."

Are plants really so efficient?

A reader contests this claim by quoting three articles:

• Scientific American (2011): http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/plants-versus-photovoltaics-at-capturing-sunlight/
• ScienceMag - http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6031/805.full
• Current Opinion in Biotech (2008): http://sippe.ac.cn/gh/2008%20Annual%20Report/Zhu%20X-G.pdf

He then reiterates the original question - where did TE source the '90% efficiency' figure?

No answers yet from the Economist.

Silicon Landscapes

"A surface of silicon was revealed as a land of gentle, steadily rising undulations, in which the track of the probe could be seen like furrows dug with a plough. This particular image was so riveting and so beautiful that “Heini” (as Dr Rohrer told everyone to call him) had to take young Dr Binnig away for long walks through the real mountains to get their discovery in perspective, and to calm him down."

This is an excerpt from the Economists' obituary to Heinrich Rohrer, the father of nanotechnology, "quantum tunneling" and the Scanning Electron Microscope (STM).

When the technique was discovered in the 1980s, scientists were amazed to discover completely distinct, new 'landscapes' on the surface of metals.

Where can I find the image that Rohrer found so beautiful?

Was it something like this?

Surface of Silicon under STM (Image - Webphysics)

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LINKS

• http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21578630-heinrich-rohrer-father-nanotechnology-died-may-16th-aged-79-heinrich-rohrer?
• IBM - STM Image Gallery - http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_project.php?id=4245
• http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee230/sp08/giessibl%20Si%207x7%20AFM%202000.pdf
• http://education.mrsec.wisc.edu/Edetc/background/STM/
• http://webphysics.iupui.edu/warmup/iupui_archive/stm.html