Murali's Writeups...

1. The Constituent Assembly of India, comprising of people of great eminence drawn from all walks of life, and representing linguistic and religious minorities thought it fit to include Article 44 in the Constitution of India as one of the Directive Principles of the State Policy. Everyone in India nowadays knows that DPSPs, unlike fundamental rights are not enforceable in a court of law. The makers of the Constitution felt that the objectives of Art. 44 (though not possible under the then prevailing highly polarised and charged situation) should at some point of time work to accomplish these objectives. Under the constitutional law, the DPSPs are not legally enforceable. Yet, when it comes to pronouncing on the Constitutionality of the Legislations passed by the Indian Parliament and various State Legislatures, Constitutional courts in India will pronounce on the challenges to Constitutional validity in the light of desirable guidelines provided in part IV of the Indian Constitution.

A few years ago, I wrote a blog on the topic “Imran leads Pakistan, who should lead India?” In that blog , I concluded that among all the leaders, Mr Narendra Modi is a better bet. In fact, I was once a very ardent admirer of Imran Khan. My admiration for him was essentially because he had an Oxford degree, led his country to a World Cup victory and married a Jewish lady (now divorced) notwithstanding the strong anti-semitism in his country. Most importantly he established a state-of-the-art cancer hospital in Pakistan. I thought he was head and shoulders above most of the cricketers that I had seen in India and abroad. While it was known to everybody that Imran Khan as a political leader was propped up by the Pakistani Army-which has been given a greater right under their Constitution to control the destiny of Pakistan than its Legislature, Executive and Judiciary. Imran Khan as the Prime Minister of Pakistan was an unmitigated disaster. During his tenure, he did something which is un

ORIGINAL INCIDENT  The entire Nation was stunned when Shahrukh Khan’s son, Aryan Khan was arrested and kept in judicial custody for more than 3 weeks for consuming prohibited drugs. Mr Sameer Wankhede is a Dalit IRS officer hailing from a family of Muslims. He is a Law Enforcement Officer with an active service record of effecting more seizures and initiating prosecutions. When he was a Collector of Air customs in Mumbai, he was shot into prominence because he stopped and detained (for a short while), many influential members of Bollywood.  Subsequent to the arrest of Mr Khan and a few more high-profile arrests, the Government of Maharashtra initiated proceedings for the revocation of the SC certificate issued to him. The matter was duly transferred to the National SC Commission for examination of wrongdoing or malpractice in Mr Sameer Wankhede becoming an IRS officer under the SC quota. He was exonerated.  Apparently earlier, when his father was an Excise Inspector in the Government o

 Us-China Relations: India at Crossroads Part 3 Both for India and China, US market access is very important for their full development. For the United States, trade with China is very important even as the US imports more from China than it exports to Chinese markets. In fact, Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs against Chinese goods essentially to see that the existing trade surplus with China is minimized. The arrival of Joe Biden indeed brought China some relief on this count. COVID and (the aggressive economic measures that China took against Australia when Australia wanted more transparent investigation and) the steadfast refusal of China to share full information about the origin and spread of COVID-19 made members of the Western Alliance to do some serious introspection about their trade relations with China. Japan had already announced all the Japanese Companies would pull out of China. Apple is relocating its manufacturing facility to India. Hence, China will be under pres

For about 100 years, the USA was undoubtedly the leading economic and military power of the world. Its dominance in global affairs will continue for at least another 50 years. The next serious competitor, if they are lucky, can hope to replace the USA as the number one economy by 2070. The present global monetary regime is based on the 1945 Bretton Woods agreements that originally established the gold standard, meaning, the central bank of the countries must back up their currency-issue with adequate gold. By 1970, the USA abandoned this Gold Standard Rule and ensured the beginning of the Petro-Dollar Regime. As per this regime, a substantial part of the trade in oil can only be bought by paying for it in dollars. Thus, Dollar became the global currency. It is reported that 38.7% of the current global transactions are carried out in USD. Next to USD, Euro is the commonly accepted International Currency having 36.7 % of the global market share. Somewhere down the line, many nations star

As I am writing this, the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) is having its annual summit in Goa. The Indian Foreign Minister who is arguably one of the best foreign ministers in the world (opinion courtesy: Imran Khan!) is having an important multilateral meeting. This meeting is taking place along with the parallel proposal that BRICS nations planning to float an international currency that would supplement (surely, it cannot replace) the US Dollar as the dominant currency for global trade. China has a serious ambition to become the biggest economy in the world, pushing US to the second place. India has plans to become the third-biggest economy in the world within this decade. It is in this context we have to look at the role of India in global trade and in the better maintenance of peace, security and good order in the world. 2.   China is our neighbour. Right from the time of independence, India has been having territorial and border disputes with China. The 1962 war between