Electorate - shangaied

  The ' major ' parties in M'Rashtra are making a travesty of  the state election  .Worse ,they  sincerely  think that they are dong  so  for the ultimate benefit of the electorate . The state is being shangaied  by a power driven political collective that is dismissive of that very electorate. Sadly,political egos and personal fancies are steering the course of the state.If the governance in the state had been indifferent with pre-poll alliances, the picture that would emerge with four of these ,and perhaps MNS, can only be a wild rugby scrum for grabbing pole position.The entry of just the AAP, has  Delhi motoring for months without even a Third party insurance and  the  people continue to  pay  for every mishap ,with neither traffic lights nor a policeman.Things could be no different in this western state.And not long ago we were upbeat in imagining Mumbai as another Shanghai in the making .Trust our politicians
to rudely interrupt our reverie

Yellow fever

Purchases of gold by the two largest sources of demand for gold, India and China, have fallen sharply ,abruptly halting a consumption boom that started six years ago with the onset of the financial crisis. Gold prices, just over $1600 an ounce  not too long ago, are now  way below their all-time high of $1920 .With weakening Indian and Chinese demand, and a price stagnating , speculative demand for gold may be poised to collapse, triggering a self-reinforcing downward spiral. That’s what happened after gold peaked at about $900 an ounce in the early 1980s, ushering in a long downward slide in which gold lost almost 75% of its peak value. That process was helped by historically high real interest rates, could mean that the current gold bubble  may burst even with historically low  rates.
Two opposing  market segments that are dominated by inconsistent expectations. Bond markets are dominated by one of low inflation, while gold markets ;commodities, futures,  on medium-term hyperinflation. With generous doses of Quantitative Easing  in the US , the price of gold could now be highly volatile and tending down. It is very difficult to explain the apparently inconsistent expectations underlying the bond markets and the gold markets and abundant caution may well lie in selling.And that comes with even more unstable gold pricing.

China-India discourse

.The Xi -Modi meet came with new expectations, as both are young, in their sixties and elevated to top office within a year of each other.They were seen to be forward looking and relatively free from burdens of history.That said ,our equations be it with Pakistan or China ,are necessarily entangled in a long and shared history of lost opportunities.Sadly, bipartite talks have always been largely hijacked by hawks. If an ascendant military contributes to a hard line in Pakistan ,the communist high echelons in China,have had a set thought process .The very recent Chinese incursion and its timing on the eve of a dialogue,is not new .It seems that the Mao Red book with its ideological hard line and provocative might ,remains their primer while we go by pragmatism laced with firmness.China is India’s largest trading 
partner.  With both sides looking to scale up bilateral trade from around $66 to $100 blln by 2015, Xi and Modi must persist with their dialogue and  break newer grounds over time, with mutually complementary statesmanship. Sino -Indian equations stay set for the long haul.

India-US seek that political glue

     Mr Modi is due to visit the US shortly. At the turn of 1950,as we became a republic ,both the US with its  democratic capitalism of and the socialist USSR had   extended friendship   Unlike purely political ties of a NATO or economic ones as the BRICS , Indo -US relations have been far deeper and multi -planar and for long..Nehruvian non -alignment had served us well in handling our geo-politics till the ' 90s .With increasing  globalisation since and our economy rapidly growing, the relations  need re tuning. The strong ideological bonds with Russia have transcended time.Sadly ,the last decade witnessed a cooling off in Indo-US engagement, perhaps more due to the US being embroiled in its internal politics and economic slide.On top of this the US  has  been  shifting  the epicenter of its geo-political interests away from this sub continent. Its abdication from Afghanistan is a pointer and so is its diminishing attention over Pakistan ,post Bin Laden. A shared political dais is a prerequisite for large nations to have enduring relationship. Without a common minimum political agenda, we can but find transient relief in just a N'Deal or in   purchase and trade . 

         The welcome visit of Mr Xi Jinping was also accompanied by  unwelcome ones into our borders. Little seems to have changed since 1962 !.With the Afghan front coming to a crescendo this year and  growing  internal troubles  in Pakistan and given a powerful and unreliable China , a new politico-economic paradigm in Indo -US relations needs to be set to secure our interests Reinventing Indo -US ties lies in jointly aligning deeper and long term geo-political interests, by both the nations. 

Market must outgrow the teens

. It reflects poorly on an economy with  strong on going fundamentals  that waits with trepidation  for a regime change  and within days thereafter, chases  every other stock to new  highs !.That swings will be wilder on  say an Israeli- Palestinian flare up or even a substantial  QE taper in the US is understandable but to be inexplicably swayed purely by endemic factors, must ride on reckless hope and perhaps greed. That said,  weak fault lines  continue to exist, be it in the narrow band of retail speculative stock transactions  or the  dated 30 component Sensex and in other sectoral shares as well.  Sensex  seems to be largely reduced to a day to day  ATM for retail  investors , which is fine except that swings then  tend to become hugely separated from the core value  of a stock . Indian stock markets still remain tied to its nascent days of  a command economy wherein speculation and short haul political developments  were content to feed on each other .The mindset  continues to operate and  small investors  keep getting  hurt.It is time that our stock indices get reworked and investors get wiser  to a regimen where  fundamentals start prevailing over raw speculation.