 Okay, we're back live with our last show of the week, our show in the 5 o'clock block on a given Friday, Think Tech Global. This time we're going to talk to Kartiki Mishra, who joins us from Varanasi, India. He is a student there, a business student, so we can discuss business in India and other things in India. Kartiki, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. That's great. So before we get to business, and by the way, what I've styled the show is India's ongoing emergence in the world economy. I'd like to talk about a couple of not so economic issues. One is the rape article that was in, I think, the New York Times a few days ago, concerning the number of rapes in India, especially rapes of young women. And this is of some concern. It's been discussed for a while. Now it seems to be in continuing, if not increasing. And people in India are very concerned about it. Mr. Modi has said that he wants the penalty for rape of young women, that is 12 or less, or under 12 as the case may be, to be increased to the death penalty, which is really, that's a hard step. What's happening? Can you give us a handle on what's happening in India, what people are saying about this? Certainly, as you know, there are a lot of crimes in India, rape is one of them. And it is something which has been an issue in all of nations. And certainly, there are some cases in rape in which young women kill targetless, whom I can call children. They were of the age 8 to 11. And in such cases, the cabinet decided that they can hand down testimony to all the criminals who found guilty in such cases. So that is a criminal law in 2018. And it was, I will say, a kind of amendment in the criminal law. And they say that such kind of activities will reduce if we have a strong punishment. Death penalty is something, I believe, can stop rape in India if the crime is so serious, so then I think it should be a serious call into it. Well, you know, is this happening in your city, in Varanasi? Is it all over India or just in the larger cities like Mumbai? Well, tell me where it's happening. Is it all over? Is it a kind of across-the-board phenomenon? In all of the cross-the-nation, but not specific about personal area or city. But it seems about an issue of, I will say, society that such kind of activities do not matter where it happens. That has an impact on the nation. And few were the cases in areas of UP, in areas of Kashmir. That's children for rape. So after that, some drastic measures were taken so that in future, no such activity takes place. So they had to find a death penalty for it and increase the sentence also for punishment. The minimum jail has been increased from, I will say, some years also. So they have categorized, how we will categorize the rape into cases between the years 7 and 8 if someone is raped at 7 or 10. And 16 to 12, 10 to 20, like that, they have defined that whole punishment thing. Is there a cultural overlay on this? I mean, in India, you know, I remember seeing Slum-Dung Landlord. You must have seen that movie too. And part of it has to do with abuse of children and circumstances way below standard for children. And I suppose for women and young women too. Is this a cultural thing where people don't give proper respect to children and women? Are people talking about that? It's not a cultural thing. It's totally about the, I will say, mentality of the crime. New culture promotes criminal activity. Even in fact, in Indian culture, we treat women as gods. We have goddesses. But it is a kind of hypocrisy that Indian society does an act like this. Because we praise women, we devote ourselves to the women goddesses when we can't respect women. That is a kind of hypocrisy. And I believe crime has nothing to do with culture. Well, so Mr. Modi wants to make the penalty stiffer for rape of young girls. Certainly, it's an outrage. But he wants to make it the death sentence. That's pretty serious. And I wonder if, you know, people, it's a two-part question, Carnegie. I wonder if people support his initiative in that regard. You think that will pass the legislature? The second question is, will it change things? Do you think there's different penalty in the case of a death penalty for someone who rapes a young girl? Do you think that will change what's happening? I believe that. People support it. I guess it is a kind of crime which destroys a woman's life. If someone is rape, a woman is rape, throughout her life, people comment on her that she was rape. She was also seen as a part of the crime. She was seen as a baby. But certainly after penalizing them with such a strong punishment, I consider it that crime will go down. If you know there is a death penalty for rape, then any person will think twice before committing any crime like this. So I say that strict punishment is necessary, no matter where is the place. Well, let me turn to one other non-economic issue for a moment before we get into the economy of India. And that is Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump, you know, last week he was fairly abusive with the NATO leaders that he met with, criticized them and insulted them, left them very unhappy about him and about the U.S. And then on top of that he went to Helsinki for a meeting with Vladimir Putin where he criticized and disregarded the determinations made by the American intelligence agencies, and in fact all of them, the intelligence community in the U.S. And it was met with all kinds of condemnation in the country, in the U.S., including by Republicans. It was sort of universal condemnation, the day that it happened. And then since then, today is Friday, well, three, four days ago, he's been trying to walk back on that and explain that when he said he didn't mean it and when he said yes he meant no and when he said no he meant yes. And I wonder, you know, you're a fair witness on this. And, you know, India watches the U.S. and I wonder how you feel he's doing these days in terms of diplomatic relations. I think Donald Trump is not a good diplomat. He is a good diplomat and I will say that. But he is not a good president. He is not a good president. In international relations, we should think that what our decision will impact to the other nations, what will happen to do it if I take such decision. I don't think he thinks like this. He thinks diplomacy as business, but if you agree to my topic, I will do business with you. If you don't, I won't. That is not the kind of policy which a president should have. I certainly believe that. And what he did in that health issue summit was something a very great example of it. He is not a great diplomat, first of all, very clean. Trump should increase his diplomatic case so that people need to vote in the future. We should also think about elections for 2020. I think there will be elections and he is going to face something if he faces such a question. Well, you know, it's a great concern to a lot of people that there are indictments now pending in two separate matters in the U.S. against Russians who are indicted to have meddled with the American voting process and voters. In that matter, public opinion through social media. I wonder how somebody in India would feel about that. A lot of people here are very concerned that our democracy, as yours, is a function of voting. It's a function of how the public comes together to elect leaders and pass initiatives of one kind or another. And we have a foreign power that is not interested in our welfare but would rather really like to, you know, see us undermined in our welfare and sort of, you know, get on top of us. I wonder, you know, how you feel as a democracy when it happens to us. Do you worry about it happening to you? Very nice question, I look at. If we talk about democracy, one interesting thing I would like to do. Yesterday only on 21st, 20th of July, the opposition said that we should discuss on a no-confidant situation or no-trust motion on the parliament. Against the government which was democratically elected with a full majority. You bring a no-confident or no-trust motion against the government which does not hold a majority. It happened yesterday. The opposition in India discussed about no-confidence motions and that motion was rejected by the parliament. 325 people voted against that motion and 126 people voted in the favor of that motion. This shows us how democratic we can be. And that's what's going to happen to us all. People can bring a no-confidence motion or a teaching part of things against Trump. He may say that if people agree with his policies, they will vote for him, they will support him. If not, that no-confidence motion will remove him from power. If a democratic country like U.S. and India can have all these issues, opposition issues, the government of India also. Everybody can manage issues that can happen in U.S. also. How do you feel about it? Kartik, you're a student, you're going to graduate soon, you're going to be out in the economy. Presumably as a businessman, you're going to be influential in the way things work in the business community and by reference in the political community. How do you feel about these things? How important is the purity of the voting process to you? How offended are you by the notion that somebody is trying to manipulate the voting process? Anything in the democratic country, I think that everyone has to say, come with a description, come with a, I will say, some limitations that liberty is given to people but that liberty should not be misused. It is happening throughout the world. People say that it's our right to speak. But when they speak, they speak sometimes what is against the national interest in. My question is, can you say that a talk against national interest or nation will be the part of right of speaking? Will the right of speech promote in about our own or your own nation? I believe that democracy should be taken seriously. Everyone should have a say but not at the cost of national interest. How do your friends and associates feel about it? Would they agree with you? Are you of the same mind? If people agree that in a democratic country, everyone has a say. Sometimes its government is correct, supposedly, if the government is wrong, they reject it. And this rejection and accepting some people power of work with every single citizen has. And if they agree with the policy, they will vote the government back into power. If they don't have that acceptance of the government, they won't vote for government in next election. That is the only first democratic process that we have. Of every one nation, every democratic nation has. The power of work. Every single citizen is powerful enough to change the government. Well, let me say that I'm a lawyer and I care deeply about the constitution, the democratic process. In my view, the finest condition of humanity wherever it exists. And certainly it exists in India. And although I'm not sure, I don't think that Mr. Trump understands this conversation. I think from my point of view and the point of view of most Americans, we care deeply about the democracy we have and how hard we had to work to achieve it. And we care deeply about the democracy India has and how hard India had to work to achieve it. And we encourage you in those thoughts. And we are your brothers in democracy. And it's nice to hear you say those things. So, Karthike, let's take a short break. And we'll come back and we'll talk about what I promised. Namely, the condition of the economy in India. And how it is emerging and growing in our time. We'll be right back after one minute. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. Hey, Stan Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii. And they won't let me do political commentary, so I'm stuck doing energy stuff. But I really like energy stuff, so I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan Energyman at lunchtime, at noon, on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place. Just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan Energyman. Aloha. Okay, we're delighted to be doing Think Tech Global here on a Friday afternoon with our friend, Kartiki Mishra. He is a business student in Varanasi, India. And we talk to him every few weeks, usually in a late afternoon because it's early in the morning for him there. And today we're going to talk some more about life in India, namely the economy in India. And we have two points to cover. And the first one involves a large mobile phone factory which has opened in the city of Noidia. Can you tell us about that? How did this happen? How big is it? And what effect does it have, Kartiki? No second guess. This factory was first established in 1995 by the Korean government. And this factory was producing mobile. And after a large investment by the Korean government, this factory was expanded. And it became the world's largest mobile factory. Not just India, world's largest mobile factory in terms of production. And this thing will produce mobile, I think, around 120 million mobile or e-mobiles. And the first three of the mobile which were produced will be used by the Indian citizens in India. And the rest, 30% of the mobile will be exported to the nations such as Africa, living in India. And this mobile facility will, I will say, produce from the cheapest mobile to the most high-end mobile which stands for India. This mobile facility works for India. And the Modi government or the Prime Minister Modi inaugurated it on 9th or 10th of July. And this will help the global market, I think, as the exports will increase from India. And people are thinking that as the major prices are rising in China, people are looking for alternative and the best alternative they have is the right one, India. With the current growth rate of 7.5% per year in the GDP, this means a lot about our economy, our economy. This mobile facility will also provide jobs to 70,000 people and will also generate indirect jobs in India in that way. This has to be one of the biggest mobile factories in the world. It certainly sounds like it could service all the requirements of India, but it could also export the Korean phones, yeah? So what does it mean to the town of Nodya? First of all, Nodya apparently has the human resources, factory workers, people who can put these phones together precisely to find tolerances, careful technology. So it's a comment on the workforce in Nodya, but it's also an effect on Nodya. So can you talk about that? What kind of effect does the construction of a factory of this magnitude have on Nodya? Nodya is a city which is near to the capital, Delhi, and it is one of the most developed cities in India, or I will call it a desert in India, we can say. Nodya is a city, I will say, any future can compete with cities like Mumbai, Delhi, in terms of this. Nodya is right because the governments are investing a lot in this city because of the facilities which they have in the cities. Compared to the other cities of UP, Nodya is very limited. So this development has promoted business in that city and I think that it will benefit not just the city of Nodya, but also the city of Nodya and India as well. Well, you know, put yourself in the shoes of the Koreans for a minute, the Samsung company, and tell me why they would have chosen Nodya, why they would have chosen India instead of, say, China, say some place in Korea, some other place in maybe Southeast Asia, why India, why did they do this? India and South Korea share a relationship which is very ancient and we have established our diplomatic relations in the 19th century. As the Korean investment or the development degree, they started looking for new and emerging markets. As the names of emerging markets, as China is lowering down, India is growing. That is the benefit they have. For the market, for the products which they were producing, India has a very large market. India has a second largest market in terms of a smart food country just after the United States. So this comes in about our potential. So to see that potential in mind, to see that growth in mind, they established this facility in India. And secondly, they have a policy of, what they call it by the Korean government, to increase their diplomatic ties with the nations of Southeast Asia. And India is one of the three partners of South Korea. And that's the reason they established this factory in India. So from your point of view, I mean if you were a Korean businessman, a leader of Samsung, is this the right decision? Did they make the right decision here? Will they be thankful in five or ten years that they made this decision or will there be risks? Does this always come with a risk? As I am a business student, I know that. No business is without risk. That's for sure. But with risk comes with growth. Higher the risk, higher the growth. That is the thought they were keeping in mind. They were growing very fast, very fast, 7.3. And it will increase in future. So this will affect the businessmen who are especially foreigners because they can get special privileges according to the some agreements or some policies to promote the jobs in India, to promote the economic development in India, and to increase their own profits by reducing the cost. Producing the same mobile in China will increase the cost of those mobile. But producing in India will decrease the cost and increase the benefits for the Korean. Well, it strikes me that if they're successful in this regard about putting this much money in and having a factory of that size and scope and manufacturing precision products for the world, really, as well as the huge population in India, if that works and it sounds like it will work, then there will be other similar factories that are created by foreign organizations in India. I mean, beyond what it is now in India, it could become a hub of manufacturing such as China has been in so many ways. You see India as competing with China for global excellence in precision manufacturing? Yes, I say that. India is increasing to promote business in India. How to start manufacturing? That was the area in which India was lacking and China was exceeding. India has excellently serviced. The best example is IT, which Silicon Valley is a very good example of a lot of Indians are working there. So India was good at servicing, not good at manufacturing. Now the trend is changing. India is trying to develop itself as a manufacturing economy. And that's the reason that our government and various other people who are affected or related to India are trying to set up businesses to increase manufacturing. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. And that leads me to the other topic we wanted to talk about, how India has replaced France, certainly a Western European country, as the sixth largest economy in the world in terms of GDP according to the World Bank as a serious judge of such matters. So, okay, that's really quite something. And my question for you is, how did this happen? What are the elements that made this happen? What are the sea changes that made India's economy exceed France? And I suppose the manufacturer of precision equipment is one of them, isn't it? Yes. I was present the Indian journey started in 1947 after independence and in 2018 in only just 70 years we have achieved a lot. We have achieved a lot, which I will say, whole of the African Union I recall has combined GDP of 2.2 billion towards Europe, 15 nations of Africa combined. And with the whole population of the African continent is 1.3 billion people. But India did something amazing in 70 years. 2.6 trillion dollar economy with 1.3 billion people. That means we developed equal to the 50 nations of Africa. One single motion developing equal to the 50 nations of Africa. That's our achievement. But one thing I would like to point out, as the developments are increasing, one thing we should keep in mind that per capita income is not achieved. We have replaced France in terms of GDP. But this per capita income, which France and India have a very wide case. France has a per capita income of 42,000 billion dollars per citizen. India has a per capita income of 2,000 dollars per citizen. 20 times higher nearly than that of India. So people in France are much richer compared to an average citizen of India India should aim for increasing the per capita income. We may replace them in GDP, but due to our huge population, our per capita income is huge. So what I believe is we should focus on increasing the per capita income and GDP will increase according to the decision of this. Well if I said to you that India has a long way to grow, that it has advantages, it has not yet opportunities, it has not yet played out, and the result is that you're like a coiled spring. Once you get started on growing like this, you are likely to grow much more than already. So today France, who knows where tomorrow, and I guess Mr. Modi is in favor and supports business, so you'll have a perfect storm here, a perfect situation for further growth. And then of course, of course, Karnaki, we have you, we have your generation of young Indians who are going to look to business and try to make this a global business center. Am I right? Yes, thank you. And people are starting to invest in this. India has started innovation so that we can compete and provide services to the rest of the world. And that trend is increasing. Government is trying to promote innovation. Government is trying to promote starters. Government is trying to promote entrepreneurs throughout the nation. This is happening. But it will take time, I think, about a decade or so, or two decades or so, to compete with the nation, like the US and China, in terms of business. Because the liberalization of the Indian economy started in 1991. Before 1991, there was no such initiative to promote a business identity. But gradually the trend is changing and people are getting more much more interested in this. As people are facing lack of jobs, small business, medium businesses and large businesses are providing jobs to the people. And that's the reason this trend will increase. Very important. Very important to know about. We learn so much from you, Kartiki. Kartiki Mishra, Varanasi India business student, the next generation of Indians to put Indian business and the Indian nation as a global power. Thank you so much, Kartiki. I look forward to talking with you again in a few weeks. Aloha. Thanks for having me. Aloha.