they have nothing in common with Pakistan they have nothing in common with pakistanis at all in fact even the pakistanis say that that we have more in common with North India and South India is like a different country as far as we are concerned we would say the same thing for the Sydney and the Baloch also yeah that's also true I mean uh I think in some ways India Pakistan is a Punjabi Civil War yeah in many ways and there are many in who say but Pakistan from an equation India Pakistan can actually resolve their relationship no no but look again I go back to 47. relationships which you keep telling us all we lived well we were all either myth making it was your neighbor who was butchering you right and I I have seen people who I've been I've known one of my accountants uh from another life you know the stories which I've heard his father was a bank manager and now Shera which is a big thing right this is a five-year-old kid he had a one-year younger


a five-year-old kid he had a one-year younger sister and the father had gone to wind up stuff in nashira in KP to come back and the mob attacked this kid hid with his little sister in a corner and he saw his parents and grandparents getting butchered this five-year-old kid and somehow he made it to some camp right and this is a personal story this gentleman was my accountant you've seen stories like this now you want to forget it all and say no no but we were living in peace together you were not the moment you got a chance you butchered each other so don't give me that crap you know that we were all it was all very hunky-dory it wasn't yeah it must have been among some people but by and large you had separate Villages propaganda said that even when the contest was between two Muslims and 45 elections 46 elections the air propaganda was that a vote for a Muslim candidate of the Muslim League can vote for a Muslim candidate of


the Muslim League can vote for a Muslim candidate of the Congress is a kafir so I am going to now come to the concluding remarks uh so in conclusion where do you see india-pakistan relations what do you see happening in Pakistan now I don't say indo-pakistan relations going anywhere unless it until Pakistan walks back on the position that it has taken it there's no regular room for diplomats at all to talk at any issue see on on Pakistan itself we've talked about the current situation in Pakistan which is extremely bad but you know below this which I've been writing and talking about other structural problems in Pakistan takes water is running out of water my favorite topic education 50 of the children don't go to Primary School how are they going to go to secondary and so it doesn't poorly educated or illiterate labor force how will they compete in a globalized world economy we have talked about population is growing at over 2.4 2.5 percent as it results the latest census are going to


percent as it results the latest census are going to come out there are about 3 million people entry the labor force every year unless until the Pakistan's economy or Pakistan's economy grows at about six to seven percent they cannot find jobs for these people so what happens to these poorly educated poorly educated people young people who are coming out of the job market so these are the deeper problems which nobody in Pakistan is paying attention to so I see even if they solve the current problems the Constitutional problems the political problems the economic problems are nothing what's going to happen to water see China can't give them water nuclear weapons can't produce water yeah as for Pakistan's own Studies by 2025-26 the per capita availability of water will fall below 500 cubic meters which is that drought chapter in his book by the way yes so you know I see people do something yeah nobody's thinking about it so uh sushant uh tilak has spoken about what's going to happen with Pakistan and the structural issues


going to happen with Pakistan and the structural issues I want to ask you in conclusion how is Kashmir reacting to this how do they feel like betrayed by Pakistan how do they see it kashmiri see it because it was always that Pakistan will bail them out you know so what now so a couple of things one I think what happened the Constitutional reforms in 2019 I have proven to be a game changer I think that's a no-brainer we honestly speaking uh The Audacity Of what was done the reforms that were initiated uh I was I was taken aback right and frankly I I was really hoping that I Hope they've thought this thing through but at that point of time a kashmiri Pandit friend of mine told me that kashmiris are very smart people and they can see which way the direction in which the wind is Flowing um right but everything will settle down and they will adjust to the new reality it seems that is happening there is of course


it seems that is happening there is of course there is a problem there will be an element which will never reconcile but I think what you need to do in Kashmir is to steadily marginalize those guys not give them the kind of space that people like Mr dullath and others used to give in the past so that they keep doing what they are doing nothing of the nonsense right it's good that this government has cracked down on money laundering it's good that this government has cracked down on a range of other issues and that is the way to go so that uh the only thing missing right now in that whole plan is a a kind of a political Revival or a Revival of the political process terrorism what about that yeah terrorism is a very low level they've just hit on your way those things will happen I remember what I told you earlier be prepared for an endless war right this is going to happen it'll happen so you have to be ready for that you have


so you have to be ready for that you have to continuously symmetrical where there has to be some kind of reaction Israelis have been doing it for 70 years have they got a result and they hit back even much harder than what we have been eating and yesterday it happened like last night uh uh the Israeli uh have the Israelis have launched uh another uh yeah so they'll keep doing it right yeah they'll keep doing it the other guys will keep coming back they will drive a car into somebody they'll fire a few Rockets So Israel I think is in an endless war we are in an endless war I think we need to internalize that reality uh so that we can combat it if we keep expecting that you know India will become a land of milk and honey and everybody it will be you know that Utopia thing then frankly I think you need to go to a mental Asylum that's not going to happen so I think one is as far as Kashmir is concerned


one is as far as Kashmir is concerned I am very very clear that that is the right that is the reality as far as Pakistan is concerned I I agree with what Mr Davis is saying that it's not just the current crisis it's also the deep-seated crises which are there right and they have absolutely no idea on how they are planning to address that they neither have the resources nor the intellect nor the intention okay because out there everything is three weeks that is there basically their time frame get to see today off tomorrow is another day and and they take it right to the wire before they back off right but on the india-pakistan uh thing I think it is very clear to me that the pakistanis are geniuses in not missing any opportunity to miss an opportunity and what they do is that they they go For Broke and every time when they are talking to India they will go For Broke right and what happens is that they take positions and whatever might be a


is that they take positions and whatever might be a possible solution or might be on offer to sort out certain problems is off the table after that when they come back to the table what was on offer in the past is no longer an offer so for example uh and I don't want to go back into history because now you're winding up but what was on offer during this era what Ambassador Lama and others have written about I don't think that's on offer anymore that's not an offering they've lost that opportunity yeah there might be something on offer right now right I don't want to talk about it but there might be something on offer right now if they want to accept it and I'll say something very very strange right and very counterintuitive everybody says that nothing will happen before 2024. I say the only window of opportunity the pakistanis have right now where they can get a deal that they might be able to live with is before ma February March 2024 because once the elections happen then


February March 2024 because once the elections happen then even that is off the Indian elections yes even that is off the table you think there's a political Capital I'm writing on it so you can read my article but there might be political Capital if they agree to a deal uh which uh India will also reconcile to it they can also reconcile otherwise Pakistan has never won an election for any prime minister no no no no but again right even though I don't think it will finally settle but I'm just saying that it's probably a point zero one percent chance but there is if there is a window you have it till then after that what is on offer right now is not on the time look what happened with my trying to be provocative even now every time Pakistan is spoken about or anything happens the first thing they're saying is [Music] so you know he has not been able to live down or at least the party has not been able to live down that thing that he made that


able to live down that thing that he made that effort he invited Nawaz Sharif so which is why which is why they blew that opportunity the pakistanis in pathankot yeah right they have a slim opportunity in my this is my analysis they have a slim opportunity till about February other then you know you're actually going they slim opportunities even if they take that opportunity which you are suggesting even if they take it they don't control their bats they don't control use your bad action they don't control it it will happen you know I I think that today Sharif is in such a weak position he cannot afford to expend any political capital on any sort of I'm talking about Indian political Capital I'm not talking about it till if they hold elections in October if let's say elections are held there's a new government that may have some political Capital after this is till then I agree with him that Pakistan always shoots itself in the foot and whatever was an offer is no


in the foot and whatever was an offer is no longer an offer I don't think so this is the time for Pakistan to grab any opportunity if Shabbat Sharif does it go after him and he'll be able to ride the religious is going into jail the religious parties will get after uh see my my own sense is uh and like I said I'm saying that this is a long shot but this is the only shot because once you go into an election and if this current dispensation comes back to Power in India in 2024 . five years they can forget it then they can there's nothing on the table right so that is why I am saying that yes Pakistan is weak Pakistan is not going to become America tomorrow or next year or in the next five years does it even matter they are only going to become weaker look at the trajectory India is going like this Pakistan is going like this right the trajectories have changed completely so it's not as though 10 years from now the pakistanis will be


though 10 years from now the pakistanis will be our equals I think that train has gone that's left the station so they have to understand that there might be something on offer to them right now and then Modi can use it uh rather than you know pillaring Pakistan he can use it to enhance himself and use it as you know you remember 99 elections when uh before Cargill happened what was vajpays a three-point agenda pass budget and there was one more I think bus budget and I don't know one more one more B right it was a 3B kind of that was the agenda the bus went to kargil and dropped on the cliff so they kind of completely changed and then they it made it BBK right uh but but what I'm saying is that vajpai tried to change the entire narrative by saying that peace actually becomes an election uh thing for me it didn't happen there it again I can see the skepticism on your face and I completely understand it


on your face and I completely understand it politically no Pakistan politically peace with Pakistan or moves towards Pakistan no Indian Prime Minister after he will risk it in a free elections I am telling you one thing the pakistanis are so dumb that they will not they will see it the way you are seeing it no I don't mean you are dumb but you are doing a political analysis but they are so dumb that they will not see that this is their own they're not going to become stronger they're not going to get anything after 2024 whatever they are getting they're getting now if they want it if they don't want it it's off the table they won't not only when they not see it so this is the future the Indian Prime Minister will not make that move is because no Indian Prime Minister can make that move the Indian Prime Minister was ready to make certain moves which were being discussed on the back channel on the back Channel I went but now with four or five assembly elections and


went but now with four or five assembly elections and a general election which is coming do you think that anybody wants Pakistan but what I'm saying is you talking about Rajasthan which is also a frontier state which goes into polls so there is anyway let's see how things uh yeah did not affect the 26 11 did not affect the elections which were happening while 2611 was happening yeah correct that's right so yeah so this is sum up what about Pakistan in one line the challenges in Pakistan today are beyond the capacity and the capabilities of the Pakistani leadership to resolve they just don't have the vision they don't have the ability so that is the dynamic that is the and nobody has a vision neither Imran Khan nor Shiva Sharif nor bilawal have any Vision what solution are you going to do for them yeah what the complex problems that you have this is the situation of Pakistan is in today okay thank you so much gentlemen as I said my Repeat Performance guess so uh


gentlemen as I said my Repeat Performance guess so uh viewers listeners uh please do like subscribe on whichever Channel you have seen this uh namaste click here to watch the previous episodes [Music]


the people who are vilifying India on the international stage are primarily India's own intellectuals IMF is probably lowballing that and not because I'm a better Economist than them but because I'm a better sociologist our knowledge of India comes from a relatively small number of Highly Elite intellectuals who have access to Publications Western Publications like the New York Times Washington Post Wall Street Journal they write op-eds in these Publications and the message we get is that India has become autocratic authoritarian country on the verge of despotism where elections are no longer free if you read any Western portrayal of the RSS they will say it is an ultra right-wing paramilitary organization everybody who is reporting in America on the Soviet Union were a bunch of white russian emigries had an ax to grind China buys it oh yeah China buys its positive coverage they go at the highest level they pay millions for example they're very expensive Chinese advertising supplements in most of the major newspapers in the US


in most of the major newspapers in the US they don't carry a lot of anti-china op-eds no you won't say that don't you see it but it's not a lot of it no because losing that China Daily advertising supplement is a big Financial hit G20 I forgive me I know it's a big deal here I don't take it very seriously the biggest challenge facing Indian democracy is the opposition just isn't up on its game welcome to another edition of ani podcast with Smitha prakash today my guest is Professor Salvatore babones who's an American sociologist living in Sydney Australia he writes about Asia's role in the global political economy with special focus on China and now India he's published a dozen books and several academic articles in 2022 he criticized democracy indices who downgraded India under Modi and for that the conservatives in India adore him and the Liberals are suspicious of him professor babones has been a regular on the Indian media scene and is very active on Twitter


the Indian media scene and is very active on Twitter with several Indians who retweet his India tweets Professor bobanis thank you so much for coming on the podcast with the you know I've been wanting to speak to you I met you at the Mangalore lit Fest and I was looking forward to uh you know your interaction there itself but then the podcast is where we meet so um I have a bunch of questions I'd like to begin by asking you that this is your second visit uh to India only my second visit only your second visit and I noticed that you know you had this fan crowds coming for selfies and the it seems like the left wing is suspicious of you and the right wing just adores you sees you as their massacred and uh they they kind of like it that you know you you are uh you're not suspicious of India and you are uh you're bullish on India of course you know so uh I wanted to know whether how your second visit has been uh first


know whether how your second visit has been uh first it's just been a pleasure and as the first visit was and it's been wonderful having let's be honest a small but highly committed fan following thanks everyone you know I'm thrilled that uh that that you want to read my stuff and retweet it and no one will be hearing about things I'm doing if people weren't retweeting it so thanks to the tweeters thank you retweeters uh you know it's really generous of them to put me in their timeline a second visit has been much more relaxed than the first the relaxed is a relative term uh the first visit I hardly got outside of a hotel conference room uh this second visit the one thing I really wanted to do was see Varanasi uh I wanted my first on the ground on foot no minders I can go where I want experience of India to be Varanasi because I wanted it to you know the oldest city in the world the holiest city at least in you know for


world the holiest city at least in you know for several religions uh I wanted that to be my first introduction to India and it really was uh worth it it was very special um I was a visiting professor at Bernard's Hindu University and my first morning there uh I just took a walk uh to the ganga straight to the ganga it was about 15 minutes to get to the banks of the ganga my first moment at the ganga I shared it with about half a dozen cows and we all had a nice visit together I shared my grapes I was eating grapes I'd gotten on the street yeah and uh the cows and I shared some grapes and views of the ganga and it was really magical much much better than going straight to the tourist center to start at the end and walk past all the gods down into the center you're not particularly religious person but what was that did you feel anything spiritual or did you feel what was the sense that you got because everybody


feel what was the sense that you got because everybody has a different experience when they go to the ganga I don't want to disappoint anybody but I'm not religious at all I I'm entirely atheistic uh that said I could tell that it was a very special place so I didn't have any Spiritual Awakening or or anything like that but getting there and I have to say with the cows it was the cows that made it truly special and I can see why uh why the cow is revered in India I myself am a vegetarian and a really enormous milk Drinker okay you get fabulous milks uh based sweets out there some desserts that they make in varanas oh I don't want the milk-based sweets I just want the milk if I could actually one one small disappointment in India is that people don't serve milk I I thought the cow is you know the the cow is revered just give me a big glass of milk no not all this sweet not all these curds


no not all this sweet not all these curds but I think uh they're hesitant to give it to foreigners because they think that maybe you would think that you know it's uh it's not pasteurized or you know it's not so I think they're hesitant to give anything which is not cooked and at the vishwanath temple I did have the opportunity to give milk to the God so that was uh that was an experience right so from Varanasi where did you go forward I arrived first in Delhi uh on each visit to Indy each my two visits my first visit I arrived in Mumbai and I immediately had a um uh uh oh how could the most standard Indian uh appetizer Samosa samosas thank you how can I blank so my very first meal was supposed to this time I arrived in Delhi uh and my very first meal was a Dosa so it wasn't disabled no no so the two greatest foods in the world uh a Samosa and a Dosa vegetarian so I


a Samosa and a Dosa vegetarian so I have my Dosa Masala then caught the plane to um to look now uh and so I was in Luke now for three days oh yes and then uh onward to Varanasi on the rajdani express that was an overnight not overnight it was a sleeper train but I was in the daytime or early evening portion and that was my my famous meal in second class in the rajdani express oh and that was an interesting you have to tell us about that anecdote where you put that picture it was wonderful so I I was on the train and they they sir I was shocked that in second class on an Indian train which I what did I pay five dollars for this seat I have no idea what it was it was super cheap um somebody came and brought me uh dinner I thought I thought you had to order dinner pay for it no no he just brought me this is part of your your ticket and I was really shocked and


of your your ticket and I was really shocked and I I put the tray aside and I went to take a photo of it and I think Mr Kumar the uh the porter was worried that something was wrong I wanted to complain so he asked someone who spoke English and I said no no I'm amazed I want to take a photo send it to the minister you know that like what great service that you're getting hot and then Mr Kumar wanted to take a photo with me so we did the selfie uh I ate it all some of the newspapers Mis uh identified it as chicken curry of course I'm a vegetarian it was a veggie Curry uh it was a veg Curry some kind of doll rice and naan or some kind of bread and it was uh just fantastic I I mean some of the I I'll say some of the best Indian food I've had certainly some of the best curries I've had and I guess Curry is something that if you make it well you


Curry is something that if you make it well you can make yeah 10 000 gallons of it just as easily as you can make a one gallon of it you know you would enter Pradesh uh at this Summit and uh I recalled seeing one of the videos that you know where you have said you've compared uttar Pradesh and you said that if you see uttar Pradesh or Bihar the per capita income is really low in spite of that I mean it and you compared it to some of the others is the same GDP per capita as Ethiopia Bihar is down at Rwanda yeah we we forget just how profoundly poor these parts of India are and we forget it because compared to poor African countries these states are reasonably well administered they have they have working train Services they have a usable Road Network okay maybe they're not at you know California standard well the trains are better but maybe the roads aren't at California standards but um compared to other places that have similar income


but um compared to other places that have similar income levels now I haven't been to Bihar but I can say that uttar Pradesh certainly compared to places that have similar income levels uttar Pradesh is incredibly well administered now somebody out there will say how can you say uttar Pradesh is well administered I've had this problem I've had that problem and I said well go to Ethiopia I I mean Ethiopia is in the midst of its I don't know its fourth or fifth Civil War uh you know entire parts of the country are not reachable from other parts of the country you might have a you know Dusty dirt road connecting them there's no National Train Network in Ethiopia uh there's Perpetual risk of famine there's been a famine in the past year war induced famine in in Ethiopia um there the political violence in Ethiopia is Extreme uh there's right now only one political party that essentially controls the entire country I don't mean one party that wins like


country I don't mean one party that wins like you know Yogi and the BJP have one in neutral profession I mean it's effectively a one-party State um that's what you get on a thousand dollars per capita GDP and when you look at UT Pradesh already it might not be perfect there are lots of problems there's certainly persistent poverty but you know you're nearing I think you're at 100 electrification you're nearing 24-hour electricity uh everyone has a toilet access at this point um you know you're working on piped water I don't know the stats of profession but most importantly uh you know there's no food shortage and everybody got vaccinated during covid sure and and there's there's free meals on the second place production you know I'm sorry to keep going back to that but that's something emblematic that if you compare a poor area of India I mean India as a whole has the same GDP per capita as sub-Saharan Africa yeah and if you have a vision in your mind of


and if you have a vision in your mind of the quality of life in sub-Saharan Africa and Benchmark India to that of course India's social reality is incredibly better than the social reality of sub-Saharan Africa taken as a whole and that's why we would expect economic growth to continue in India because India's economy is simply bouncing up it's catching up to its Social Development yeah you know you your your an American professor and you live in uh Australia Australia yeah so you you you know Western democracy so Indians or middle class Indians at least tend to compare ourselves or our conditions with the West the Western democracies and then you feel that we haven't reached there as yet you you know when when you're privileged enough to have uh governments which change buy the ballot and you're you're privileged enough to not to worry about the next meal on your table then you tend to think that it's not enough because we are still not a middle income economy so um I read somewhere where you


income economy so um I read somewhere where you had said that um to get to a middle income economy is going to be agree reforms that will get us there and not make in India so could you tell me a little bit about that well first there's something wrong with making India and it's entirely appropriate to be seeking to make products locally and that's a perfectly legitimate and reasonable Aim so I'm not criticizing make in India but it's not necessary what's necessary to have middle income status is to have high productivity throughout the economy or to have middle income status have at least a reasonable medium productivity throughout the entire economy so India exports about 20 percent of its GDP that's pretty ordinary uh Brazil exports about 20 of its GDP Argentina exports about 20 percent of GDP those countries have GDP per capita that are three to four times India's level and they have that because they have extraordinarily productive agricultural sectors that is in those countries agriculture is a leading industry yeah they


those countries agriculture is a leading industry yeah they export their agriculture but the point is that their agriculture is productive and other sectors are less productive so the manufacturing sector in well in Brazil is not so bad in Argentina the manufacturing sector is notoriously very low productivity uh because there are lots of regulatory barriers and Union barriers to uh to manufacturing now you can contrast that with East Asia in East Asia exports is a percent of GDP tend to be more like 40 percent of GDP for China it's around 40 or Mexico Mexico is an export driven economy and their exports are about 40 percent of GDP now China and Mexico have the same GDP per capita again in rough terms as Argentina and Brazil they're just different models the most efficient sector in Mexico is the export sector and agriculture is lagging behind and keeping the economy back so the route to Middle income status simply is simply requires that the economy as a whole be productive at the level of roughly ten thousand dollars per


at the level of roughly ten thousand dollars per person per year if that's what the economy as a whole is producing okay you'll reach middle income status there's no one route to that and given the size of the average did you say ten thousand dollars yeah roughly ten thousand dollars GDP per cap but it would be a middle link I mean eight thousand ten thousand anywhere in that range right now we are at what twenty two hundred twenty two fifty I mean it is growing so fast I don't know the exact number but under 2500 and it's supposed to be uh at the end of the decade it's supposed to act according to the IMF it says four thousand dollars by the end of the decade and I think rather higher I think the I look I'm not an economist but I I think the the IMs IMF is probably lowballing that and not because I'm a better Economist than them but because I'm a better sociologist and then we have a lot


a better sociologist and then we have a lot of debate over whether sociological or economic approaches are better for understanding growth my own uh feeling is that if you want to know what inflation will be in Quarter Two of this year I talked to an economist I don't know what's going to happen if you want to know the long-term developmental trajectory of a country I think talk to a development sociologist the real question is uh what is the what level of economy is commensurate with the society you have and I use that approach most famously in studying China in in 2011 uh I had an article on the cover of Foreign Affairs magazine saying that Chinese growth would top out at around ten thousand dollars per capita in around the year 2020. and appearing in that same issue of Foreign Affairs was an article from your own Chief Economist to be Arvin subramanian who said no no by 2020 China is going to be growing at you know 10 per year by


to be growing at you know 10 per year by 2035 I think was 20 35 it would overtake Europe and GDP per capita and by 2045 overtake America and I just said that was ridiculous because China has a typical middle-income Society the problem was for China in 2011 its economy still was underperforming relative to its Society oh and that's because of central planning and you take away the bad Central planning and the economy will bounce up and in the same way India due to its Legacy of uh let's face it I don't want to take size in Indian politics but nehruvian Central planning his legacy of colonialism and neruvian Central planning uh India's economy has underperformed underperformed its Society for decades take off that lid and India is going to grow rapidly bounce back to be to an economy that's commensurate with its level of Social Development um countries with GDP per capita of two thousand dollars per year sub-Saharan Africa there is not a single IIT in


sub-Saharan Africa there is not a single IIT in sub-Saharan Africa yeah not a single one I mean you cannot find that level of training and education and Engineering in sub-Saharan Africa uh we can go to other stats like you know pave roads railroads Etc sub-Saharan Africa you can't match these statistics which means that India has a much better infrastructure social and economic infrastructure than sub-Saharan Africa but bad planning kept it down at African levels of output for decades remove the bad planning India's bouncing up let me come back to agriculture when you were saying that uh do you think that India is not doing enough or is it at the cusp of you know doing better as far as agriculture is concerned India India is still doing too much is the problem uh what Indian Agriculture and Industry needs is simple deregulation it needs the government needs to do less to get out of these spaces and in Industry that primarily means privatizing remaining state-owned Enterprises reducing regulation the sort of things the government is very


regulation the sort of things the government is very aware of you know cut red tape reduce regulation harmonize taxes you know make it easier for people to invest uh accelerate the legal system so stop this you know backlog of years in the in the legal system get rid of uh the retroactive application of tax laws all of these things if India simply gets rid of all of the oppressive government regulation uh industry will boom in India now if agriculture the situation is even worse agriculture of course is an extraordinarily highly regular subsistence level in many cases well some of it's subsistent some of it is just wasteful I mean India because of the price support minimum price support system produces extraordinary amounts of rice and wheat that just gets stockpiled and eventually Decay because they're just not needed all of these very productive farmers in pujam and haryana should be encouraged to switch over to high value-added products like edible oils I mean India it's ridiculous in India which is such a


India it's ridiculous in India which is such a massive agricultural producer today is still laboring under famine era policies that were designed to over produce basic food security stuff the food security issue when and it Imports I I think it's 10 or 20 billion dollars of edible oils well you know if India wants to reduce if India really wants to do import substitution economics and that's the idea behind make in India yeah make your vegetable oils in India that would be the number one easy win for India is shift Agriculture and the way to do that is through marketization of Agriculture right let's move to the other subject which is uh you know you've said that Indiana Modi is wrongly portrayed as a fascist State and you said Indian intellectuals are fueling that narrative yes about uh the country that was that was a very provocative state intellectuals or anti-india it was hilarious to me that was provocative I didn't mean it to be provocative because first of


didn't mean it to be provocative because first of all everyone knows it I mean that's why it resonated um but if I said American in such or anti-American Australian intellectuals are anti-australian and no one would carry hey look and everyone knows what I mean I mean the people who objected said you know how dare you call me anti-india that's obviously not what I mean this is shorthand for the people who are vilifying India on the international stage or primarily India's own intellectuals that that's the long hand if you want to spell it out um and you know I've had people complain well what about these other intellectuals look everyone knows what I mean uh it's just a shorthand but the shorthand I guess you know captured the imagination um India's intellectuals as a class are responsible for Western understandings of India the the West is not sending fact-finding missions to India right our knowledge of India comes from a relatively small number of Highly Elite intellectuals who have access to


number of Highly Elite intellectuals who have access to Publications Western Publications like the New York Times Washington Post Wall Street Journal they write op-eds in these Publications and those op-eds are they tell us I mean half a dozen Indians mostly Indians some other from around South Asia tell us what the reality is of India I mean our knowledge of India in the west comes from half a dozen Elite Indian intellectuals who have access to these Publications and the message we get is that India has become a an autocratic authoritarian country on the verge of despotism where elections are no longer free where fascist you know fascist shock troops roam the country I mean let me just give you one example if you read anything about the RSS now everyone in India knows assassins forgive my bad pronunciation uh you can like the RSS dislike the RSS I can take it or leave it I'm obviously not a sengi I'm an American an American intellectual um if you read any Western portrayal of


intellectual um if you read any Western portrayal of the RSS they will say it is an ultra right-wing paramilitary organization right now the RSS is a conservative organization it's nationalist um right wing well I know you and India throw around the words left wing and right wing casually maybe you can call it right wing it's certainly not some kind of ultra Hardcore you know organization it's certainly not a paramilitary organization there are no arms in the RSS and but people will say well they've exercised with loties well well that's not the same as exercising with AK-47s let's face it but but when Indian intellectuals call the RSS a right-wing paramilitary organization what we imagine as people in Australia or the United States we imagine uh terrorists with AK-47s sure that's the we imagine people or or people in uniforms you know we imagine black shirts in Mussolini's Italy or brown shirts in Hitler's Germany um going around beating up uh people who belong to other beating up


up uh people who belong to other beating up Communists and beating up liberals I mean I'm sure someone has been beaten up by someone who's an RSS member with 1.3 billion people right but but Indian intellectuals I mean journalists for major Indian newspapers are not being beaten on the streets every day by gangs of RSS youth in fact most of the RSS people I've met are overweight overweight middle-aged men who could use some lothy training right so this is um you know this this wild exaggeration of the threats people feel they face in India becomes just what we accept as the truth in the west because why would we know any different and so it's not just the vilification of we are assessment you mentioned these uh these news portals you know in in the 70s and in the 80s till mid 80s Till There was a meltdown in uh you know in budgets in in America in in all the Western countries still there was that um these networks had budgets to cover


was that um these networks had budgets to cover India they would their reporter would not file a story unless he went on location it could be anything it could be Mrs Gandhi's death uh her assassination and the riots that followed they would go there and cover it it could be the khalistan movement they would go you know these reporters like Mark Tully and the others would go on location they would meet with victims of Terror they would meet even with the terrorists or you know find out what the ideology is they would do all that then came the shrink king of budgets and when the shrinking of budgets happen there's just one reporter for what's up the reporter is in most cases a non-resident Indian who's come back to India because who's desperate to come report on it who wants to be the major American newspapers India reporter well probably someone from India you know who succeeded in the west now I have nothing against non-resident Indians I have nothing it's Indian reporters but


Indians I have nothing it's Indian reporters but we've seen this before in the United States with you know in the 1920s 30s 40s with portrayals of the Soviet Union we saw it where the everybody who was reporting in America on the Soviet Union were a bunch of white russian immigrants who had been kicked out of the country and were very angry with the Soviet regime and so we couldn't you know our picture of the Soviet Union was entirely cute yeah because throughout the entire Cold War almost everybody writing about the Soviet Union had an ax to grind I mean the most famous American analyst of the Soviet Union was as big new Brzezinski now he was an eminent eminent uh political scientist and uh and journalist uh but he was a Polish immigrant who fled communism can I trust brzezinski's view of Communism yeah probably not he probably has a you know an ax to grind and in the same way almost always when you


grind and in the same way almost always when you see these extremely negative reports of India in the western media I don't know the citizenship status of the person writing it but the name is almost always Indian I'm going to read out some uh you know some parts because you're An American in Australia so you know both Western democracies uh there's this opinion piece which has been published in one portal and I'm sure it finds echoes in various portals which which you would have access in your country too it says Modi embodies right-wing populism a modus operandi he shares with with Trump Ben Boris Johnson and bolsonaro and each of these like-minded politicians share a propensity for anti-establishment and uh anti-elitis rhetoric uh Every Man's Persona peace to the masses both Hindu nationalism provides uh Modi with a specific ecosystem of support that differs from right-wing populist movements in other nations would you agree with this comparison about Modi uh and with Boris Johnson I I like to avoid terms


and with Boris Johnson I I like to avoid terms like left-wing and right wing because there are no true left Wingers and right Wingers in our the populism let's instead call it um traditionalist okay you know traditional store nationalist is he a traditionalist populist yeah that's a fair characterization uh is he much like Boris Johnson or Donald Trump I probably not I think he's probably a lot more conservative and a lot more um reputable in many ways than Boris Johnson Donald Trump but the the characterization you've just read is really not wildly off kilter I mean that's a and it's a reasonable characterization that the BJP is a conservative political party led by someone who is you know comes from a broadly anti-intellectual tradition let's face it the BJP is not the biggest fans of uh establishment University professors this is not these are not their core constituency and like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump uh bolsonaro let's leave aside because bolsonaro is it comes from a much rougher political environment


is it comes from a much rougher political environment in Brazil I mean Brazil has very extreme politics but you know Donald Trump or Boris Johnson um for those who want to vilify Donald Trump as the ultimate Evil that may sound like we're going to vilify Narendra Modi by a by comparing him but you know half of America voted exactly and um and you know half of Britain or 40 of Britain voted for Boris Johnson I don't so I don't find anything disreputable about being a traditionalist populist anti-intellectual politician uh I think the problem is the people who write these sort of pieces seem to think that some kind of insult now for me I'm not a traditionalist conservative if I've been embraced by traditionalist conservatives both in India and in Australia I might add it's simply because I've insisted that conservative traditionalism is a perfectly reputable tradition perfectly reputable legitimate uh political position with long-standing uh in our Western democracies as well as in Indian democracy in India the


as well as in Indian democracy in India the intellectual domination the domination of the intellectuals for almost 30 years of 40 years would was by socialist leaning intellectuals the other side was not heard at all and that's the reason the BJP would be termed as anti-intellectual they are anti-intellectual so I think people who resisted this label I think are just being ridiculous uh I mean the BJP you know has been at war with jnu you know for decades um of course they're an anti-intellectual party I just don't see anything wrong with with being an anti-intellectual party I mean starter Patel was if anything you know an anti-intellectual get things done sort of I mean everyone else in the Indian independence movement wrote a book they were all intellectuals not Patel you know he was he was a good things done in person and you know there's there's room in democracy for that the idea that uh everyone has to be in favor of intellectuals well who's in favor of workers of


of intellectuals well who's in favor of workers of doers those are legitimate positions there's another and I'm an intellectual I am not answering I simply accept that it's legitimate it's legit to be anti-intellectual even if that's not what I am so there's this one uh intellectual he's a professor of Journalism uh and at this opinion the global University now he says the key to modi's longevity is perhaps the more complex political milieu of India with its many cleavages for the politics of right-wing populism which waging itself into the deepest fault lines in society this offers multiple possibilities of creating and winning coalitions the only constant in Modi brand of politics is its islamophobia now this is what it is that you know the intellectuals that you were talking about they they tend to fall back on this islamophobia part of the RSS and of Modi in particular so that is the resistance that you know that is finding uh space in in social media where they get


finding uh space in in social media where they get angry with the intellectuals it's the one insult you can hurl at people and so it gets hurled all the time it's like in America being called a a racist everyone's called a racist in America so much so that we we now just ignore it and in the same way you can be called islamophobic in India and that's an insult you can hurl at anybody look this kind of analysis you could take the same facts and I've been reading dozens of books on Indian politics in the last couple years and I see the same facts repeated all the time it's putting different words to those facts so if instead I said the BJP is a traditionalist party that is strongly embedded in organic civil society that works to reduce uh caste and class differences among Hindus in order to build greater solidarity within Indian Civil Society that would be the same account just from a different perspective viewing it positively without putting labels instead of yeah


viewing it positively without putting labels instead of yeah negatively now now is the BJP uh more a Hindu party than a Muslim party yeah I I mean of course it's more a Hindu party than a Muslim party and in a country where parties uh do tend to be communal um BJP is probably one of the less communal parties in the country less communal in the sense that they are not well they may work at that fault line between Hindu and Muslim Society uh they are looking to explicitly working to unite Hindu Society they have language that is accommodating of other religions they don't seek to exclude again at the elite level now if you are hindophobic in India might you vote for the BJP because of your Hindu phobia you might but if you're racist in America you might vote Republican because you're certainly not going to vote Democrat yeah that doesn't make the Republican Party racist the fact that someone buddy who's racist might vote for them and in the same


racist might vote for them and in the same way the fact that someone who's hindrophobic might I'm sorry someone who is islamophobic might vote uh BJP doesn't make them islamophobic look according to our best survey data I know there are lots of Indian election surveys forgive me I don't know the quality of all those surveys they tend to be telephone surveys um Pew Research Center does extremely high quality survey research that according to their server from the 2019 election 19 of Muslims in India voted BJP and these now 19 yes and they said they were not being discriminated that pure research well that's different it's different survey we can get into that I mean of the 20 of the 2019 election survey Pew found that 19 of Indian Muslims voted BJP versus 49 of Indian Hindus now that means that the gap between well first of all the fact that a fifth of Muslims are voting BJP indicates to me that the party is much more perceived as a developmentalist party or as a


more perceived as a developmentalist party or as a tough on crime party and only secondarily if at all as islamophobic second I want to put that in perspective I'm always a comparatist encouraging people to take comparative understandings fewer than 10 percent of African-Americans vote Republican okay so the Muslim acceptance of the BJP is more than is twice as high yeah as black African-American acceptance of Republicans now that is striking to me now it doesn't tell me it doesn't tell me that the BJP has been successful at massive Muslim Outreach now I know Narendra Modi has the new pashmanda Muslim uh outreach program from everything I've read There is this is the nascent stage well certain thing I've read you know the BJP leadership is aware that they want to do more Muslim Outreach and they seem to feel like they can win Muslim votes by being tough on crime and promoting development and they might succeed in that uh now are there people at lower levels in the BJP who uh


there people at lower levels in the BJP who uh maybe islamophobic by all accounts I've heard that may be true but we live in democracies people who go volunteer for political parties have their own motivations if if Indian Society if a large portion of Indian Society is islamophobic you have to accommodate that those people get to vote too and if they don't get to vote for the BJP they'll vote for somebody who is much scarier so when when you say these things do you find yourself in minority uh in intellectual circles very much so because look I'm a quads driven person I come to you not as an India specialist but as a quantitative comparative social scientist and so I'm always asking what are the numbers somebody says a journalist was killed in India I say how many journalists were killed in India right I mean I don't want to be insensitive but things happen everywhere yeah not anecdotal any one data we want systematic data and where we have systematic data


want systematic data and where we have systematic data we should trust the data not trust our personal Impressions okay so the data tell us that there is a low level of discrimination against Muslims in India Muslims report 24 of Indian Muslims report experiencing discrimination in India now again to put that in perspective in the United States on the same survey with the same question eighty percent of African Americans say they experience discrimination 46 percent of Hispanic Americans say they experience discrimination 42 percent of Asian Americans that's you Indian listeners 42 of Asian Americans say they face discrimination in the American society so Muslims self-reported discrimination in Indian Society is much lower almost half is much lower as that of Asian Americans in America now is anti-asian discrimination in America a problem yes are we worried that there's going to be a genocide of Asian Americans in 2023 no one mentions it yet genocide watch says there's an eight percent chance that there will be a genocide of India's Muslims this year they say


a genocide of India's Muslims this year they say India is one of the top 10 countries for genocide potential in the world well that flies in the face of the hard data and I can't emphasize enough this survey was the best conducted Story Probably the biggest and most best conducted Social Survey ever conducted in India this was in 2019 2020 conducted by Pew Research Center 29 9999 households were surveyed in both urban and rural India response rates were I think was 86 response rate for the survey which means you know there are no big biases due to due to like this is not a telephone survey this is not only English-speaking households it's 17 languages for this survey so this is the best this is the Platinum survey data the best survey data we have for this country anywhere and this survey says that Muslim Indians say they face some discrimination but let far less than any major group in the United States that faces discrimination Muslim Indians say that communal relations are a problem but they name their


that communal relations are a problem but they name their number one problem as Jobs their number two problem is crime their number three problem is corruption and communal violence is lower than corruption on their list of concerns that's not a country that is on the verge of genocide this is a country where yeah there's discrimination I I talked to in look now I I had the honor to uh visit a mosque and I talked to a group of uh Muslim barristers at a local Court the mosque was very close to a local courthouse and they told me that they've experienced their clients have experienced problems in front of Hindu judges where if they have a Muslim young boy you know who's accused of some kind of small property crime that they did they felt that their clients got the full penalty of the law whereas sometimes if it was a Hindu boy who had the same kind of property crime they may be let off with a warning now is that true I don't know that someone's


now is that true I don't know that someone's personal experience but that's the sort of complaint they had now that's a problem if that's true it should be addressed I mean no level of discrimination is an acceptable level but as social scientists we we have never met a society that has no level of discrimination we meet societies that have some level of discrimination and so again to get back to the BJP if that small number of people who discriminate against Muslims that residual background if they vote BJP I say good and I say good because they're voting for a party that at the higher levels is not going to tolerate discrimination if on the other hand the BJP you know shunned their vote kicked them out of the party and they went to a more extremist party that was actively calling for you know discrimination against Muslims that would be worse for Indian democracy so this is where some of the intellectuals don't agree with you is that you say that that the higher levels


you is that you say that that the higher levels the BJP doesn't want and doesn't believe and will not act on discrimination whereas some of the intellectuals including Indian intellectuals don't believe that I don't know what senior BJP officials yeah I don't know what Ahmed Shaw feels in his heart I have no idea you know interview I'm at Shaw he'll maybe he'll tell you maybe he won't but in their public uh policies in their public pronouncements uh even Shaw who's been controversial for some of his uh pronouncements in public which could be interpreted uh as being anti-muslim he seems to have been caught off guard when those were taken in that way I mean you know I'm not sure of all the major leaders he probably skirts the line most between what would be considered perfectly acceptable in America and what an American political discourse would be rabble rousing right I mean not not explicitly anti-muslim comments but rabble of playing to the crowd and uh and if that's again


to the crowd and uh and if that's again I'm not endorsing that sure um and if Mr Shaw wants to sit down with me and have a conversation about you know being polite and politically correct you know I'm happy to have the conversation but a small amount of political correctness I mean he is at Trump at Trump levels of saying untoward things okay Donald Trump has often said things that you know sound bad when you take the sound bite out of them but you know broadly speaking he's certainly not racist he's certainly not anti-black you know but he says things in an unguarded way in the same way Mr Shaw seems to say things in an unguarded way he could be more responsible now can you endlessly play a little clip of Amit Shah saying something Politically Incorrect and try to stigmatize him with it yes you could is it fair to do so sure it's fair everything's fair in politics right and and if he's going to say it the opposition is going


he's going to say it the opposition is going to repeat it relentlessly uh yeah you spoke about genocide and uh and you're critical about that about you know how India is on the verge of a genocide some of these uh research groups which say that uh you also criticize the Democracy indices which downgraded Indiana Modi uh and you I think that was in September 2020. well the paper was released in August uh and then published uh in print in the September issue of quadrant magazine and then I was here in India in November to talk about it at the India today conclave so a professor tell me uh has the world sat up and noticed that no do you feel that in the internet yeah uh no no there's been I think there's just been no acknowledgment maybe outside Australia in Australia I I'm able to reach the media in Australia and we're starting to you know fix the media narrative I think there's a conversation going no I think Australian journalists are uh look I I because I


think Australian journalists are uh look I I because I personally have those connections with journalists in Australia and Australian journalists I think are more open-minded about India than maybe in the US uh there's been a lot of interest among Australian journalists to to get the story right and so I've had access to Australian the Australian media did not report my paper but journalists did contact me for backgrounders on India and I gave them the background and I've seen that reflected in the news coverage which has been more balanced I think in Australia than it has been in the United States and hopefully we can ultimately get that you know correction out there but no no I I mean the the criticisms of the rankings uh they're used to being criticized they don't really care I think if they're criticized and and um but it matches a lot simply because you know we are this is the penultimate year before elections in India and uh what happens is that you know reportage from from these Western Nations they find uh


reportage from from these Western Nations they find uh an echo chamber in India you've seen what George Soros said and you've seen yeah and the Hindenburg report if if I could give some advice to Congress in AAP and the rest of the opposition I would say uh don't try to leverage George Soros and international media to your advantage uh because India is an extraordinarily nationalist country and it probably will harm your electoral prospects more than it was you tweeted that yeah it's going to benefit the BJP yeah and who's endlessly talking about Soros Dr jaishankar is endless talking about surrounding why is Dr Jay Shankar endlessly talking about storage Soros because he sends the the Electoral he tends he sends votes in the BJP in being criticized by George shorts the same with these International democracy rankings playing them to um to chastise Mr Modi or playing them just try to make you know the BJP look bad yeah it may make the BJP look


look bad yeah it may make the BJP look bad in Washington and New York but Washington and New York don't vote in India elections and uh sadly The Narrative of we are being unfairly criticized by the West that's much more likely to win votes in India than look the New York Times agrees with me that Mr Modi is a dictator the New York Times agreeing with you is the kiss of death in a national in a nationalist country like India so what about in in Australia how does like if the New York Times was to report something that happened nobody cares uh so so reporter Sons Frontiers uh downgraded Australia on its press Freedom index it wasn't even reported in Australia and they included a quote that uh 85 percent of journalists in Australia fear persecution at the hands of the government and I I read this on a podcast to an Australian colleague and he said you're talking hilarious he said you're talking about India I said no yeah I'm talking about Australia and


I said no yeah I'm talking about Australia and he couldn't believe it I had to show him this was actually in the okay so none of this gets reported in Australia because no one in Australia cares at all about any of these international relations any International opinion or is it because there's a confidence in their own opinion and their own yeah there's a confidence there's a self-confidence and a comfort level that um they know they're fine uh nobody believes that New Zealand is a higher quality democracy with a Freer press than Australia New Zealand is a you know for by Western standards a troubled democracy that has a a very limited press that hardly ever disagrees with its own government it's almost it's paid for by the government uh so everyone in Australia accepts the journalists who rate Australia badly everyone knows that Australia is better than New Zealand on all of these on all of these metrics you know richer Freer you know more robust political debate and so when New Zealand gets extolled by


and so when New Zealand gets extolled by all of these International rankings they all Place New Zealand number one two or three in Australia down in the 20s and 30s um no one even notices it doesn't even get reported it's it's incredible uh no no it's in India where these things are weaponized they seem to have become part of the debate but they're weaponized in the English language debate about India where people seem to be more concerned with scoring points against each other than with winning elections the biggest challenge facing India democracy Indian democracy is the opposition just isn't up on its game and India needs a stronger opposition they they can't ask the United Nations to come and somehow slap down the BJP so that it can't fight as hard in the election you can't say it's unfair my opponents fight so hard you have to up your game and fight along with them and not expect Sorrows to uphill game look Source can't stop because it's the kiss


game look Source can't stop because it's the kiss of death to get money from Sorrows um you know you you you have to up your game and so I've seen complaints in the Indian media uh about well I'm reading everyone might might love or hate me for this I'm reading Raj deep sardisized book about the 2019 election I'm really enjoying it And he as effectively complained about the BJP complain is the wrong word he's criticized the BJP for having a culture where it makes its party workers get up at 6 a.m work all day and work until after midnight and then next next day at 6 a.m they have to be back at work you know this inhuman treatment this is somehow a you know authoritarian it's like no no that's that's how you win an election and also the use of media you know in 2014 and in 2019 the bjb had this media outreach they would they would provide uh platforms they would make the platforms and if you went there


they would make the platforms and if you went there to cover an election there was a platform which had a vantage point and you could get the best shot now if they've provided that and you are getting a good shot of the speech of course you're going to use it of course you'll use it right I mean it it saves a media organization from sending uh maybe a tripod yes but me you know not the the paraphernalia that goes or else a connection from the mic of the speaker to the cameras directly so you had multiple pods all of this local cool organization to have somehow it's been portrayed that as somehow anti-democratic that the BJP has Booth level organization at exactly 90 no that's exactly democracy the problem is that the opposition parties don't have and actually the Congress had that I mean in a democracy you know the size of India where you have you know a billion plus people uh eligible to vote or whatever you you need to have people at the booth level and


you need to have people at the booth level and that is what the congress party had but you know once you I guess a sense of inertia whatever you want to call it nothing is working governance yeah sort of thing so look the BJP the BJP first of all we all seem to think the BJP is is is overwhelmingly successful electoral Steamroller all of this it's only been there for the last four years yeah okay until 2019 no one thought that the BJP was an unbeatable electoral Steamroller not even the bureau Chrissy and you know how important bureaucracies are in uh you know in so-called third world the whole world in India hasn't changed in five years okay what's changed is that the BJP has a first mover Advantage it is the first Indian political party to modernize its campaigns and when I say modernize I mean make them look exactly like what the Republicans Democrats do in the United States where the republics and Democrats have poll workers at every single voting booth in


have poll workers at every single voting booth in the United States they have county level organization every County in America has a headquarters of the democratic Committee of the county and headquarters of the Republican Committee of the county they're there they all robocall every voter you know they've maintained voter lists they maintain lists with categorized voters as likely voter maybe vote you know and everyone in America is on a list of being How likely are you to vote and are you likely to vote Democratic or Republican and you know what if they have a neighborhood where there are lots of likely Republican voters the Republicans will send a bus around to get you to the polls you know and if you're in a neighborhood that is a likely Democratic voter they'll send the bus around to get you to the polls they are both parties are organized as vote machines to get their people to the polls and to get people voting they still have to get that act together about results though oh look that's not the party


about results though oh look that's not the party see oh no I said the earnings are highly professional and the reason we have so many problems with elections in America is that elections are local so you don't vote in a U.S election yeah you vote in Most states you vote in like a Pennsylvania or a Maryland election and in some states you're voting in an you know abbotsville Missouri election a couple of Elections there and believe me I still cannot get parties parties are modern political organizations India only has one modern political organization that's the BJP from what I've heard from people the AAP has started yeah in that direction uh but a modern political organization doesn't have a first family isn't based on getting a cast to vote for them isn't based on getting people of you know only minority religion to vote for them a modern political party fights hard for every single vote in the country in an organized way trying to reach everyone maximize its vote among every single person using I using modern I.T


vote among every single person using I using modern I.T Tools in India that means the WhatsApp groups in the U.S you know they're different tools you know Facebook may be more important in the United States but a modern political party uses all of the available 21st century Information Technology tools has a list of every voter has a likelihood or probability next to that voter now I I doubt any party in India other than the BJP has a list of you know more than 100 million voter in BJP probably has a list of 500 million voters uh and right next to them a probability of voting for US based on a statistical model well you can't beat a party that has that unless you also have that if you're if you're running elections on the basis of you know oh our you know our friends so and so is a long time supporter let's get him in oh people in this District love this person no no you know polling I.T organization at the ground level uh in America we call it the ground game


level uh in America we call it the ground game this is what wins elections now before anyone was doing that in India you could win with those old methods yeah but once somebody does it anyone who wants to compete has to orient yourself yeah and you can't just say it's unfair yeah you can't just say it's unfair for one party to want someone's vote more than you do yeah you have you can't say it's unfair you have to up your gaming and get to work sure you know you spend a lot of time with young students uh you know research students so Professor I want to ask you is there Curiosity about New India in Australia in America when you meet with students the curiosity is coming from Indians and so I have um India or South Asian students actually at this point all of my uh research students are from South Asia which is a transition if 10 years ago all my research students were Chinese okay and but this just reflects the fact that I've been studying India and Indian


the fact that I've been studying India and Indian democracy and so I've had uh South Asian students both from South Asia and in Australia reach out to me to study with me and that's gratifying and you know I'm very happy to work with them I'm especially happy because I don't speak the languages so my work is necessary fairly quantitative but with uh students from south of South Asian origin they can in some cases do more qualitative work more documentary work I should say I don't do interview-based research but they can do documents based research under my supervision using documents that I can't access because I don't I don't read Hindi I don't read Marathi I don't read Bengali so that's been a you know it's been very gratifying okay what are the questions questions that that most Americans or most uh Australians have the intellectuals I'm talking about when they speak to you about your research do they question you as to why yes so so I've become known in Australia for really in


so I've become known in Australia for really in the past year or so for my India work I I mainly been known as a China scholar uh until this year but just like with India I don't speak Chinese I'm not a synologist I was studying China from a quantitative comparative perspective not through my deep knowledge of Chinese language and the same thing with India I'm studying India from a quantitative comparative perspective now in Australia I've started to become known as an India commentator and I've repeatedly had uh surprisingly senior people in Australia who should know better and people who are well informed on global affairs send me articles they say Salvatore you know you're saying India is so democratic I read this in the Washington Post you know it says India has become an authoritarian regime and I sigh and I say yes that's an opinion piece by Rana Ayub who's a prophet who's a prominent um uh opponent of the current government in India uh you shouldn't take it too


government in India uh you shouldn't take it too seriously or they say look I've read this in the Wall Street Journal and Wall Street Journal says Indian democracies are threat and I say yes that's Sonata Dume who is uh not resident Indian is he American Indian origin Indian origin Indian origin intellectual at the Cato Institute who's very keenly interested in Indian politics there's they don't see the author of the one from the Wall Street Journal which is from a uh a Bengali uh I'm going to blank on the name he authored a book called uh to kill a democracy India's passage to despotism and you know people sent me his op-ed in the New York Times They said New York Times says India has now become a despotic regime and I say yeah you know don't take that too seriously yeah again that's a Bengali communist who's you know a very opposed to the current government in India so what they what they don't see the names of the authors names of the author means


the names of the authors names of the author means nothing to them yeah article appears in the New York Times that seems authoritative and in their minds I mean in most people's minds the New York Times sent some fact-finding journalists to India to find out the truth they don't realize that this is just Indian opinion being recycled through the New York Times being cycled through the Washington Post being cycled through the Wall Street Journal and so unfortunately most uh Australian thought leaders get their understanding of India from these kinds of sources um and I've had it's been a lot of work convincing them that no you're reading highly biased accounts and let me tell you about India and it it's it's very difficult for them to accept that there's something wrong you know and what's funny is these are the same people who if if I told if I sent them an article about Donald Trump from The Washington Post they would write it off they'd say oh yeah The Washington Post everyone knows they're you know a


The Washington Post everyone knows they're you know a bunch of liberals you know and hate Donald Trump um but for India they take it at face value because they have no other knowledge of India I mean they feel they feel confident making their own judgments about American politics about British politics but when it comes to India same as if you read an article in the New York Times about the politics of Mali in West Africa who knows you know exactly if the New York Times says the president of Mali is this this and this yes would you say oh I've got to do more research on Molly I better subscribe to one or two Malian newspapers what should Indian media do or what should to get authentic voices out uh if I could advise the ministry of external Affairs again if Dr Jay Shankar wants to come in for a chat uh I would say stop being so defensive uh you know Dr Jai Shankar always stands up for India and that plays very well for India that's not


India and that plays very well for India that's not very Charming to his audience he doesn't do a lot of work to Charm Western audiences into being you know sympathetic to endure or pro-india and I would encourage him to get a list of speakers at every consulate to be ready to speak to issues whenever India is in the news and introduce them to journalists so find um mostly probably NRI in Indian professors now it'd be difficult in the social sciences but you could find management professors engineering professors people at Eminence universities who would be ready to talk on Indian Affairs to the likes of you know the New York Times Wall Street Journal Etc who are just ready to be speakers to explain issues in India from a broadly sympathetic again not a government spokesman we're not talking about the consulate maintaining lists of yeah you know BJP official spokespeople but instead people who are well respected who have highly reputable positions and given India's Tech success and


reputable positions and given India's Tech success and and Science and and Engineering success there are a lot of eminent Indian professors at Western universities who may not be social science professors but nonetheless if you're a professor at Yale if you're the professor at Stanford the fact that you're a computer science Professor really just goes below the radar foreign buys it oh yeah China buys its positive coverage they they go at the highest level they provide so for example there are China they're very expensive Chinese advertising supplements in most of the major newspapers in the US they pay millions for these supplements everyone throws them out yeah okay but so then what's the point but U.S newspapers are very reluctant to CR I mean they do when they have to sure but so the news reporting will criticize China they may tone it down a little but they don't carry a lot of anti-china op-eds no you won't say that don't you see it but it's not a lot out of it no


it but it's not a lot out of it no because losing that China Daily advertising supplement is a big Financial hit yes um not only that you won't find a lot of anti-china op-eds Because The China Study centers in the United States and Australia are almost all staffed with people who while not necessarily pro-regime are circumspect they don't want to lose access to China they want to be able to visit regularly so they're muted even at academic institutions everywhere you can't find I mean uh Austria most Australian universities have some kind of China Study Center and it's rare at any of them to find anyone who is critical grants and donations come also now well I've wrote a whole book on this so I can talk endlessly about how Chinese influence Works in Western universities you get my 2021 book Australia's universities can they reform which has a whole chapter on it um but China goes in at the highest level its approach is by the peak level so don't worry about


is by the peak level so don't worry about convincing professors to be on your side by the Vice Chancellor you know give the vice Chancellor okay and again it's not a bribe I shouldn't say buy the vice Chancellor but no yeah give the vice Chancellor something he needs like give give the vice chance which he or she needs give her a a campus in China where you provide the land for free and offer to get lucrative Consulting contracts for the campus in China well amazing you know Vice chancellors love that they don't want to lose that so they're just very worried and they have their in every Australian University and many U.S universities has their uh public relations staff just they have a you know you can buy in the Press clipping services tell us if try if any of their professors mentioned China gets reported back up to the vice Chancellor's office not the vice Chancellor personally because it's it's it's seen as a critical reputational issue for the University now the


a critical reputational issue for the University now the same professor at the University says India is a dictatorship no one cares which is why you will not see any reporting on xinjiang you will not see anything about atrocities you see the reporting the New York Times the New York Times broke the story on genocide in xinjiang and full credit I mean let's not let's not or even Hong Kong the media let's not exaggerate what they do is they mitigate they add qualifiers they don't talk about it too much they report it and the Western media reports negative things happening in China but they only reported to the extent they have to so for example look at the persecution of falun gong in China which is very serious I mean this is really crazy stuff I mean the organ harvesting which is extremely well documented that you know falun gong members in China are vivisected and have their organs removed you know to create a transplant market for export I mean people literally can go


market for export I mean people literally can go to China and just get an organ your liver is failing go to China pay the money you get a falun Gong members liver right I mean it's horrific yeah this doesn't get reported right the the big headline stuff that you can't ignore uyghur oppression concentration camps can't ignore it it gets reported but but when you get below that level lots of stuff that would be reported if it happened in India I mean if there were allegations in India of Muslims being vivisected for their organs but this is routinely happening in China it's very well documented it's happening in China there are activist doctors in America who Western act not falun gong related who are just horrified at what's happening in China's organ Market um yeah it gets reported a little bit falun gong members claim such and such but they don't put the resources into investigative reporting of this why because they don't want to go too hard it's so


they don't want to go too hard it's so dishonest well it it's certainly not honest but it's not but look it's not as Extreme as people say it is these you know American newspapers have not been bought out by China influenced yeah right the the it's it's it's at the level of uh you know play up the good play down the bad um it's not at the level of being proper you know the New York Times is not a Chinese propaganda mouse piece whenever I hear people say that I tell no that's simply not even if it's not a propaganda newspaper and I won't single out just the New York Times I'm talking about a lot of the western media they will not write about women's rights or persecution of women in Saudi Arabia or in or in China or in China women's rights in China are but that one incident in India gets played up and that's only now because of a right-wing government I mean again you don't like right-wing and left wing


mean again you don't like right-wing and left wing but a conservative I know these are the terms used in India in India a conservative government in India so it gets reported now it did happen even during Dr Manmohan Singh's tenure there was that one incident in Delhi and um it's sometimes it happens that one incident captures the imagination is that all of the incidents oppression of political opposition all of the incidents listed in the Verizon Democracy institute's report on India text report on India in 2020 all of them had to do with incidents that occurred between four 2014. yeah yeah they were reported vedem only found them important after 2019. uh and we see that we see a lot of this kind of mendacity yeah so that's what I want to know is that uh do you see a correction ever happening a kind of Awakening or awareness in the western media that they are putting on blinkers when it comes to India we're working on that I mean with a group of members


working on that I mean with a group of members of the Indian diaspora we've started a think tank called the Indian Century round table and we are dedicated to providing a factual account of India I'm pretty sure we can have that in Australia I mean we have good enough Connections in Australia and the Australian media have been pretty good on India they've been pretty good on reporting kalistan and kalistani violence in Australia not simply not simply repeating the things you would see in the U.S of you know these poor Sikhs are fighting for their rights as an independent country in Australia they've correctly reported No in fact most Indian Sikhs do not want to secede from India that kalistan is mainly a diaspora phenomenon and so the Australian media has been pretty good very open to this and we're talking to them and I think with our new Indian Century Roundtable I think within this year by the end of this year we'll we'll be pretty solid on making sure there's a balanced uh


be pretty solid on making sure there's a balanced uh well-informed coverage of India in the Australian do you think that it'll take more time to get to them do you think India being part of the quad and uh you know there is a more greater understanding about India no if anything the problem is because India is in the quad it's become targeted uh that is the narrative outside India well certainly in the US and UK and especially in the U.S The Narrative has been how can we work how can we say that this is an alignment of democracies when India is an electoral autocracy you know footnote Verizon Democracy Institute right uh uh you know when India is repressing Kashmir and I've heard very high levels in the United States and I mean you know former National Security advisor I once talked to saying that India will never be a proper free country until it liberates Kashmir and this idea that you know India has somehow illegally occupied uh Kashmir is that that simply received


occupied uh Kashmir is that that simply received wisdom in policy circles in the United States so uh no no the India being in the quad has not really benefited India's image if anything it's caused more targeting of India as people sent the opportunity to to do something by saying you know uh no the only thing that's kept India off the U.S sanctions lists has been the uh defense purchases and the fact that India is buying so much defense equipment that you know the the state department has been reluctant to accept the advice of its own panel the U.S committee United States commission International religious freedom which keeps vehemently demanding the last two years that India be named a country of concern for religious freedom the state department has held off on that I think almost entirely due to the fact they want India to buy f-18s and maybe f-35s and artillery yeah and I once told this to an Indian uh Ambassador uh he said you know I was at a think tank Summit in


you know I was at a think tank Summit in in Australia and he said how can you how can China do so well and how can we you know beat this and I said well you know China is willing to tell its state-owned Industries to buy a hundred billion dollars of Australian iron ore if you if Australia plays ball I said will you buy 10 billion of Australian uranium and he said I can't do that we're a democratic country we have to have open bidding and I said well you know if you're not willing to spend your 10 billion dollars you can't buy a bunch of miners to to promote your interest in Australia I mean in Australia the biggest pro-chinese interests are the iron ore miners um so you know India it's very difficult for India to fight this because it is a democracy because it has to play by the rules what about asean Nations do you see them looking at India as some kind of a bull work against China at some point of time I


bull work against China at some point of time I I have less knowledge of asean uh the historical bulwark against China for asean has been uh Japan Japan has been the main supporter that said asean is not one entity Laos in Cambodia are in many ways Chinese puppet States Vietnam on the other hand is so vehemently anti-china that it doesn't need any help to be anti-china Malaysia is in play you might say Myanmar is of course highly troubled and you know that's its own story Thailand is in play yeah I think Malaysia and Thailand are probably the two countries in asean that um are on the fence a bit where India might be able to have some influence Singapore has its own yeah that's Dynamics yeah and uh Philippines uh you know is a unique case because of the former American colonialism uh Indonesia and Brunei are are a bit you know they're not in this fight so much as the other countries are um you know India Indonesia is a giant of course and


know India Indonesia is a giant of course and it has its own ability to resist China uh I don't know if we've missed any uh but but yeah asean's a mixed bag it's wrong to think of asean as a single country true with a single uh with a single position India's position though is probably most important for Myanmar and Shoring up Myanmar institutions is something that the U.S simply can't do I mean politically it's just impossible for the US to work in and with Myanmar uh India has such long-standing and deep connections and interconnections and historical connections I mean Myanmar was carved out of India yeah uh that uh is probably the country in asean where India can have the most positive impact yeah Myanmar and Vietnam I think with India is going to be very ambitious when it comes to interactions uh during the G20 Summits which are going to happen here and uh you know with the summit meeting and the other meetings that are going to take place so it's going to be


are going to take place so it's going to be a very busy year for Indian diplomats uh uh well uh what are you looking forward to in your visit are you planning to come again in 2023 um I I I've been invited perhaps to a festival in October we'll see if that invitation firms up so I hope to be back maybe later in the year but for me visiting India look I I know it's supposed to be a pleasure and that you know it's wonderful and everyone's so friendly but it's work and I have other work to do and I don't particularly benefit in terms of my work from visiting India that is I don't come here to study India I study India by studying statistics and reading books and documents that I can get in Australia so uh we'll see about a future visit G20 I forgive me I know it's a big deal here I don't take it very seriously I don't think the rest of the world takes G20 very seriously I know that India


world takes G20 very seriously I know that India is you know making a big best foot forward for this as a showpiece for India on the global stage but uh for the rest of the world certainly for the developed world I think the days of G20 are pretty much over uh G20 was an emergency response to the global financial crisis and that's now 15 years in the past and I don't know anyone who's closely following G20 outside of India it's a big deal here uh but it's not a big deal uh out in the rest of the world well we'll see you again in October when you come and all the best thank you so much for spending time with us and discussing so many issues great to talk to you thanks for the invitation thank you thank you very much for listening or watching this podcast do like or subscribe on whichever Channel you have seen this or heard this Namaste click here to watch the previous episodes [Music] thank you [Music]


I have never ever served in a country where I was more impressed by the women than I was in Afghanistan ignoring Afghanistan Taliban role inside the country very sad to say but we cannot export democracy somewhere where we want to have it when we started there there were no women in school what the time we ended they were like 50 percent of the students were women people of Afghanistan did not welcome the Taliban with open arms they came in through violence the fate of Afghans has never been decided by Afghans themselves it's always been either decided from outside or by other political leaders the biggest Afghan community in Europe is in Germany there is still support coming from Germany from European Union I think the biggest plight in Afghanistan is off the women the children and the greatest lost we fell Afghanistan is no place for a girl to study their University seem like a far away problem but I don't think ignoring Afghanistan is ever going to be the solution Namaste Jain welcome


ever going to be the solution Namaste Jain welcome to a special edition of ani podcast with Smitha prakash held at the rysina dialogues in March 2023. the topic of discussion with Afghanistan and after betrayal and migration since the U.S withdrawal in March 2020 and the consequent Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan a tragedy has been unfolding in the country there are many aspects to this issue in this podcast we spoke about the question of the humanitarian consequences of the Taliban takeover are there new political Dynamics shaping U.S engagement with Pakistan and Afghanistan and what is the role of others such as India and the EU in the humanitarian and security aspects in the podcast I spoke with Dr Kosh ARA fellow at the Atlantic Council scoutcraft Center for strategy and Security USA he's previously served as the senior transition advisor at the U.S embassy in Kabul and coordinated the completion and execution of the first tranche of the transition strategy shabnam nasimi former policy advisor to the


transition strategy shabnam nasimi former policy advisor to the UK Minister for refugees and Minister for Afghan resettlement UK shabnam is a political commentator on British politics foreign policy immigration and ethnic minorities Eunice okasi partner Eva in Germany he's been head of the office of Christian Democratic Union general secretary and first individual with a migration background to hold this position shabnam I'll begin with you you're a prominent British Afghan political social activists you were just eight years old when you fled your home country and uh that's when the Taliban came in you once said I took my Refugee status as an opportunity and not a disadvantage tell us your story of course um so my family migrated to the UK in 1999 during the first era of Taliban rule in Afghanistan and it was me and my sister uh with my family uh who fled um and as we've seen now recently um and as has become evident Afghanistan is no place for a girl to study uh and um


no place for a girl to study uh and um have any sort of aspirations and hopes and so that's what one of the reasons why we left the country and over the last 24 years or so um my family and myself have spent much of our time and the opportunities that have been presented to people uh like us to be able to speak for the people of Afghanistan um who are one of the most disadvantaged deprived nations in the world and particularly post August 2021 uh when the Taliban returned it has been devastating for so many across the world particularly the diaspora community who have I guess there's a sense of responsibility and Duty uh particularly when there's media suppression in the country there's very little coverage of what's going on inside uh on the ground uh it is up to People Like Us who have those connections a cultural understanding religious understanding geopolitical understanding to be able to make the global Community aware of what's happening in inside and it is honestly uh


happening in inside and it is honestly uh catastrophic I think one of the things that I've seen just um have been inspired by attending the rice Cedar conference this year this is my first time in a South Asian country neighboring Afghanistan seeing particularly women so prominent speakers and in government positions and I think that's something that has made it a lot more pressing now to try and see how we can make sure that we support the women of Afghanistan uh as you may have heard on the news they are banned from going to school going to University from working from having any public profile or role in society which is why we're now at a critical juncture this might seem like a far away problem but I don't think ignoring Afghanistan is ever going to be the solution it can't be a far away problem uh for for long 9 11 happened because we ignored six years of Taliban all inside the country and it you know my hope and what so many of us have been


my hope and what so many of us have been advocating for is we don't want a return of another horrendous terrorist islamist attack anywhere in the world both outside but also inside the country for us to begin to pay attention and think of this as a serious problem not only for for the country but for the global Community do you have family and relatives in uh friends in Afghanistan do they tell you oh of course my my maternal family my grandparents aunts cousins they're all inside the country and particularly for the female members of my family who aren't unable to to um to be educated I'm constantly in contact trying to see what I can do just last week one of my young female cousins who is living in Kabul um is unable to go to university but she's asked if I can find help for her to get a laptop so that she can study at least at home and find a way to continue her education within her household so the the connection and the the um the


household so the the connection and the the um the problems inside the country is very close to home for me it's something I'm having to face and deal with on a regular basis which is why it's so much more pressing to see what we can do yeah gosh shabnam uses the terms like catastrophic and devastating it's these are terms you must have heard you know being since you served as senior advisor for strategic engagement at usaid um you must have heard these terms so often when talking about Afghanistan what in your opinion led the U.S to leave Afghanistan in such a hurry it led to the Total Wipeout of all that was achieved in 20 years right so I think I I'd agree with her and her use of the terms that she mentioned um I was in Kabul at the U.S embassy for a little short of three years so I had the pleasure and honor to work in our mission there why we left I think the short answer to that is that the support


think the short answer to that is that the support for the Afghan Mission among the American public was veining and it has been 20 years and I think the public American public that is didn't see a way out of it and saw this a never-ending ever going sort of a military campaign or at least a military presence so both president Trump and President Biden I think were looking for a way out got the way out it was certainly something that most of the military and the civilian folks that had served in Afghanistan took it very hard including myself I think the way we left was dishonorable perhaps and certainly a one can talk about a betrayal but that's a use but I have to say is a betrayal more of our own Vision our own ambition but we never made a promise to Afghanistan that will always be there so that the promise to Afghanistan was to help Afghanistan stand on its feet and after 20 years not being able to do so people said we'll cut


not being able to do so people said we'll cut our losses and leave now this argument could be made that we should have stayed there longer I certainly made that argument and believe in that particular case but but you're a democratic country and you respond to people there are having said that I want to make a couple of points I think just to go off it one that it is probably one of the worst sort of the top three big Refugee humanitarian crisis Syria Venezuela Afghanistan it's kind of if you look at the U.N HCR reports there are about six million people since 2021 since we left have been displaced about half of them are internally within Afghanistan about 2.5 have went refugees outside most of them are in Pakistan and Iran followed by turkey and Germany and the rest and almost 80 percent of them are women and children of after 6 million displaced so um and and the biggest sort of humanitarian crisis is one of hunger and starvation I mean even on


one of hunger and starvation I mean even on a when we were there uh for in the Hunger issue and being able to get the nutrient value was was tough even with the American presence when we were there it's a country that takes its caloric intake is heaviest on Wheats as a non-eating country it eats a lot it Imports a lot of not only wheat but Milling from Pakistan other places so the there's the humanitarian crisis and related to that there is also a food security crisis which is further and for all of us who especially in this sort of liberal era where people talk a lot about women's rights and others I think the biggest plight in Afghanistan is off the women the children and the greatest lost we fell was I mean one of the things we used to often say but what was the great uh you know assets what have you done in Afghanistan the most important thing we always said was when we started there there were no women in school while the time we