 Good afternoon, everyone. I think we'll get started. Thank you for coming today. My name is Milin Vaishnav. I'm director of the South Russia Program here at Carnegie, and I want to welcome all of you to the second event in our India-Alex 2019 series, which is an initiative that we have here at Carnegie that aims to provide kind of expert research and analysis on the greatest, greatest show on earth, which is the Indian National Election, and their impact on the country's economy, domestic political situation, its foreign relations. Today I'm pleased to be joined by an eminent panel of experts on India to discuss three topics. Number one, as many of you in this room know, the government of Narendra Modi will soon celebrate at the end of this month. It's fourth year in office. We wanted to use this opportunity to take stock of the government's performance to date on the economy, on the domestic politics, and on foreign policy, and to discuss what can only be described as a flurry of recent events, I think, in all three of these categories. Number two is India is currently in the midst of elections, which is sort of an evergreen statement I think you can make about the country. Campaigning in the southern state of Karnataka has now reached a fever pitch. We want to briefly discuss the importance of those elections in the current context. And third, and finally, once these two milestones are over, that is the four-year anniversary and the elections in Karnataka, the pivot to the 2019 general election, I think, will begin in earnest. And so we want to discuss how that race is shaping up, some of the contours, how the Modi government's performance is going to impact that particular contest. And to do so, we're joined by an all-star cast of characters. I want to start, to my right, the person who has come the farthest to be here today, James Crabtree, who is an associate professor of practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School in Singapore, and was previously, I'm sure as many of you know, was the Mumbai Bureau Chief for the Financial Times. I'm sure many of you here regularly read James' Missives. His first book, The Billionaire Raj, A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age, is going to be published in July. So more about that, and we hope that you'll come back and speak to this audience at Carnegie James once the book is out. Then we have, to my left, Sunvi Madan, who is the fellow in the project on international order and strategy in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution and director of the India project. And last but not least, Sadanandu Mei, a resident fellow at AEI, the American Enterprise Institute. I like to keep my neighbors very close and a regular South Asia columnist for the Wall Street Journal. So what we're going to do this afternoon is start first by just sort of hitting pause and taking stock on where we are on these three issues I mentioned, beginning with domestic politics. And so I'll start with you, Sadanandu, and just very broadly ask you to kind of tell us where we are. I mean, when the Modi government came to power in 2014, the BJP didn't control that much territory. Today it controls the majority of territory in India. We see that the poll numbers of the Prime Minister continue to be really high. Tell us where we are at this particular juncture in the domestic political landscape. Well, thank you. It's great to be here. And I'm going to spend my five minutes or so just, you know, instead of covering a lot of territory, I'm going to focus on where we are right now and how the BJP, just how dominant the BJP is as a national political party. And I have a few slides but I think only just one of them really in many ways sums all this up quite nicely. On the left you see the the blue bits are five years ago, almost exactly five years ago, May 15, 2013. Those are states that were ruled by the Congress Party and its allies five years ago. And the saffron bits, no surprise, are the BJP and its allies five years ago. The map on the right shows you what that looks like right now. The grazer, of course, the states that are ruled by neither the BJP nor its allies nor the Congress and its allies. And to give you a sense of just how staggering this is that we're talking about 21 states versus three. In terms of population, the BJP and its allies control about two thirds of India's population. The Congress has less than 10 percent. It has 8 percent. Only 8 percent of Indians live in a Congress ruled state right now. Karnataka elections are coming up depending on what happens there. That number could decline precipitously further. In terms of the part, in terms of India's GDP, the BJP and its allies now control 54 percent of the country's economy. For Congress that's only 11 percent. And the vast majority of that again is that one state, Karnataka, which goes to the polls soon. In terms of numbers of state legislators, the BJP, which was long much smaller as a national party, it has nearly twice as many members of state legislators as the Congress. It has about 1500 and the Congress has slightly fewer than 800. So not quite twice as much but close. And in terms of a funding advantage, the Association for Democratic Reforms had put out numbers. And it said that last year in FY17, the BJP raised 1034 crores. So in dollars that is about $155 million. The Congress, which was number two, had about one-fourth of that amount. So that just gives you a sense, right? So in funding it's 75 percent to 25 percent. Add to that the fact that the that Narendra Modi is the most popular politician in the country today. That Amit Shah, the president of the BJP, is the most feared strategist. That the BJP has the most dedicated cadres and workers on the ground. That they have an army of captive television channels and fake news sites and so on. And finally the fact that the main face of the opposition, and we can get into this more during the discussion, but the main face of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi, still does not appear ready for prime time. So if you take all of this together and you just look at the distance that has been covered by the BJP under Modi in the last few years purely as an electoral machine, we have not seen anything like this certainly in the post-liberalization era. And so obviously he goes in, Modi goes in and the BJP, they go into next year's election as favorites, very clear favorites. But I'd like to point out that that does not mean that they are shoo-ins and we can get into some of this, we can get into more of this in the discussion. So if I would sort of set the stage it would be here is this extremely powerful, extremely popular leader heading into an election way ahead of the pack for various structural reasons. However, he is not a shoo-in and we can explain why as we go on. Great. Thanks, Anand. James, I want to turn to you next and ask you about your big picture take on the economy. This was supposed to be Narendra Modi's calling card. I mean, he famously campaigned in 2013 to 2014 on the promise of bringing good times, good days for the Indian economy. It was part and parcel of the narrative that he sold the electorate. Where do we stand today in terms of his meeting those very lofty expectations? Yeah, thanks Milan. Let me say three things about this. I mean, I suppose you should try and be fair to the government's record to begin with. And if you were to have started in 2014 and thought you'd have roughly average 7% growth for the four or five years of the government, you have reasonable fiscal management, you have record foreign direct investment, a fairly good attempt to try and improve manufacturing. There's quite a lot that can be said for the government's record, I think. I mean, it's been moderately successful people. There were lots of hopes about double digit growth, double digit growth historically in India only tends to come before a crash. So there hasn't been an economic boom. And so people are disappointed by that. But actually, that's a good thing because typically when you have some kind of mini economic boom of some sort, then it ends in disaster. And so in a sense, what India wants is kind of, in addition to structural reforms, it wants solid growth at or around the level that it has been having for most of the last four years for the next two decades. And then it will be roughly where it needs to get to. And so I preface what I'm about to say by saying that by no means do I think the economic record has been disastrous. There are many things to say about it. So that's point one. The second, however, I think is there are reasons to question what has been achieved. I mean, we can have a much longer discussion about this endless, thumb sucking question about structural reforms and the extent to which they ought to have done more of them, been braver, whether some of the things that they haven't done like labor market reforms or have been were basically impossible given the electoral and parliamentary gymnastics that you have to go through, whether some that they actually did do like the big tax reform were bungled in their implementation. But I suppose I would point to a couple of definitional moments where it struck me that things were less than one would have hoped, one of which was the departure of Raghuram Rajan as the Reserve Bank Chief. That was entirely unnecessary and disappointing. It was a sort of signal in the end that the commitment of the government to keep a very widely respected and able technocrat was subsidiary to short term political demands. I would look at the appointment of Yogi Adityanath as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh as another example where it was perfectly plausible, regardless of what anyone would have told you that he could have put in place a reform-minded technocrat into that position. At that point, it's curious, as Saad says, that we're now back in this position of pondering whether Mr. Modi may be weaker than we think, but after that election in 2014, this was a gigantic success for the BJP and he could have done anything that he wanted. He did not spend his political capital doing something that would potentially have brought economic development to the largest and most important state in India. Then the third is the most obvious, which is demonetization, which was economically a disastrous thing to do, regardless of the fact that it was moderately popular domestically. All three of those things, I think, would lead reasonable people to ponder whether the economic instincts of the government are as good as they want to be. I think that there's also a bigger picture that we should keep our eye on. At this point, I shall brandish a copy of my book, which you should all go and buy. It's coming out in July, great for Christmas presents. The sort of argument in the book is about India's re-engagement with globalization after 1991, but particularly from the mid-2000s, where I think there were a number of very big things that happened to the Indian economy, one of which was the creation of what I call the billionaire raj, the sort of super strata of the hyper-wealthy embodied by people like Mukesh Ambani and the inequality that came with that, where India is now on most measures right up there with Brazil and South Africa as one of the world's most unequal countries. You also had an endemic wave of corruption, which to some degree, Mr. Modi has put a stop to in its most egregious and wholesale form, but which, again, I think, as Milen's book points out, reasonable people would agree that this is far from a battle that has been won. And then you had the collapse of a certain industrial model in India almost as a consequence of the first two, that the problems of the large industrial conglomerates, many of which are bankrupt, the problems of the Indian banking system, which have still not been solved. And I suppose the argument that I have in the book is that, although India has a lot to be hopeful about, that it ought to be the world's fastest growing economy for the next two decades, has many positive attributes, that until you fix these three problems, you are very unlikely to get East Asian-style movement from poverty to middle-income status to rich economy status, because if you look across East Asia, all of the successful examples had relatively egalitarian cultures. They managed, to some degree, either to use crony capitalism strategically in favor of growth or they got rid of it as in Singapore. One of those two options, and India is doing neither, and they had an industrial model at work that had kind of strong manufacturing and industrial and infrastructural investment. And India at the moment is struggling on all three. And I think that is how you judge Modi. What progress has he made on all of those three things? And I think there the progress remains pretty mixed. And so I'll stop there. Great. Thanks, James. Thunby now on foreign policy. There's been traditionally the separation, as saying, you know, there are elite issues and mass issues. And foreign policy is an elite issue. And, you know, a lot of these bread and butter issues are mass issues. But Narendra Modi arguably has tried to make foreign policy a mass issue. I mean, he's made it part of his persona, part of his appeal that, you know, he's India's back. And it's back on the world stage in a big way. So how do we assess his first four years in office on the foreign policy front? Because we've seen both a move towards strengthening great power relationships, but a lot of time spent with what many people traditionally view as kind of smaller insignificant countries where he's really made a big push. I'm not going to push you on naming the who you think insignificant countries. Some people say they're insignificant. Thank you, Milan, for including me in this panel. What I'm not going to do in kind of the few minutes I have is talk about detailed particular relationships, because we just don't have enough time. And as Milan said, there are a lot of relationships that the Modi government has been focusing on. But I'm happy to discuss those as we get into Q&A. What I thought I'd do is kind of step back and take a 30,000 foot view of where we stand four years into the Modi government, assess the foreign policy, his foreign policy, but also kind of a year out from, at least we think it's a year out from the next election. It could be earlier. You know, where do things stand on foreign policy? One of the things it's important to say, because of all this discussion about how much has changed or nothing has changed in Indian foreign policies, that we've seen a significant degree of continuity. And I would argue that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially in this time of great amounts of flux and uncertainty. And I think on the continuity side, you've seen that the element of Indian foreign policy that has been most consistent across governments since independence, diversification or kind of maintaining a diversified portfolio of partners has continued under this government. And over the last year, in fact, particularly, but over the last four years, more broadly, you've seen both globally, but also regionally in each region, Prime Minister Modi essentially double down on diversification. And that has meant also that the broad contours in terms of India's key relationships, but also its priorities, like neighborhood first, have remained the same from previous governments. In terms of change, now you can argue some of these things are good or bad, but in terms of change, a few things that I'll throw out there is, I think you've seen kind of the government in some ways be more proactive, including about using leverage to serve its interests. You've seen it take the lead even when other countries have not spoken out on things like the Belt and Road Initiative and arguably actually shaped the discussion and the narrative about that. You've seen this government seek a much more a larger kind of global and regional role, not saying, listen, we need time to grow, we'll do the kind of external stuff later. They've been much more open about certain relationships, whether that's with the US or Israel or even Palestine, saying, essentially, if we have these relationships, let's just admit these are the kind of relationships we've had. To some extent, you've seen a recognition of things like capacity issues in India's foreign ministry, attempts to try to fix that, though not necessarily dealing with the structural issues beneath that. You've seen a more personalized diplomacy, greater emphasis on things like diaspora issues, cultural issues. And you have seen as kind of Milan alluded to a politicization of foreign policy, I think, and perhaps kind of a use of foreign policy as a campaign instrument in some ways. Where has in terms of this continuity and changes, very briefly, I'm going to outline where I think the Modi government has had some success and where they still need to do work in the next year, but whichever the next government comes in. I think one of the things, the biggest kind of success you could say is, if we looked at where we were in April 2014, it is what Milan said, which is going to bring back the sense of optimism about India, kind of India's back. There was a pessimism in kind of April 20, sorry, not 2030, April 2014. But it's brought back this optimism that there was about India between kind of the mid 2000s and until about 2010. That's obviously been aided by economic growth, especially relative to others. I think there's also been success beyond India's immediate neighborhood, particularly in deepening partnerships with the intention of kind of expanding capabilities and shaping the regional power balance, whether these are with major powers, middle powers, or kind of Southeast and East Asian countries. And you have seen kind of India also increase and in some cases upgrade its representation in global and regional governance institutions. Where does there, has there still work left to be done? I think the biggest thing is translating intentions into outcomes. There are various reasons why kind of all this effort, and we've seen a lot of effort and time go into foreign policy trips, etc. various reasons for not all of this translating into kind of concrete outcomes, not all of which India can control their external factors, their development in various countries as well, particularly this is evident in India's relations with its neighbors where there are kind of other dimensions that have meant that they haven't been able to translate intentions outcomes. There is something that India does control, however, and I think this is where I think there is some disappointment about what the Modi government particularly with a majority could have achieved and what it has, which is in strengthening India's capabilities. And this really does whether military, economic or infrastructure capabilities, this does affect its ability to deliver, to implement and to reach those outcomes. But I think also two big areas which I think James talked also kind of suggested, which in terms of reform we could have seen and I think it would be good to still see a government take a more proactive or do a rethink on defense policy and trade and investment policy to really kind of engage, use these partnerships that India has developed to kind of strengthen its capabilities. I would say just kind of to end with what do we have to think about as we go into foreign policy in an election year, some things to consider, we might not see that big kind of taking proactive steps on defense or unless forced to by circumstances or kind of trade and investment because of political reasons. We might be wrong, they might actually say that these things might actually create more jobs, etc., make the case for it. But I think certain things that are worth kind of watching for the next year, which is one crisis, things that for example India can't necessarily control but might actually set the narrative in terms of foreign policy, crises that involve India. Second, I would say Trump twists. We've seen one today in terms of the US withdrawal from the Iran deal that has serious implications for India, but there could be a number of other things that shape India's regional and global options that India can't control. Third, oil prices. A key thing to remember is that when Modi came took office, India's the basket, the crude oil basket for India was priced at $108 per barrel. By the end of December 2015, it was $33. That gave him a lot of breathing room and space. We've seen things inch up to over $70 a barrel. We might see it inch up more. This has serious implications for a lot of things, including electoral implications. And I think one of the other things, just the final thing I will say is that it does matter who wins the election next year in terms of foreign policy, not just because of whether India will be back or not. But one thing particularly, not just Modi, but Modi in a majority gave is the space to do certain things, to do some of those proactive things, like for example, sign foundational agreements with the US, bring Japan into the trilateral and Malabar in a more significant way, sign the land boundary agreement with Bangladesh that has opened up other options. So it really does matter not just who is in office and their personality, their interest in foreign policy, but do they have a majority or not? Great. Thanks, Sunvi. There's a lot here, so let me just dive in and we could have hopefully a bit of a back and forth. Let me start with you, Sadanand. You started with a very optimistic kind of rosy picture about the BJP and Narendra Modi over the past four years, but you ended saying he's not a shoe-in. Certainly if you follow the op-ed pages of the Indian media in the last few months, you get the sense that we are seeing much more of a contest than I think many people had anticipated even six months ago, which certainly several, you know, a year or two ago. What do you see is the key sources of vulnerability, you know, 12 months ahead of the general election that Modi and the BJP face. Why is this narrative kind of shaping? It's a great question right now. If you could, without naming the newspapers, but there are two or three newspapers, if you were to just read their op-ed pages, you would think that, you know, this is Modi is in huge trouble and this is a crisis for the BJP. And what has happened is that even though he is popular and even though the party has gained so much ground under him, there is an alternative narrative that has developed. For starters, the BJP has lost a series of bi-elections. They've lost elections in Rajasthan, they've lost elections in Bihar, they've lost elections in Uttar Pradesh. So the Hindi heartland, which is where, which is how they got to this single-party majority in 2014, if you look at those bi-election results, it certainly seems like it's up for grabs. And so that's number one. Secondly, there are signs of consolidation among the opposition in Uttar Pradesh, which is the most important state with 80 seats in the Lok Sabha, the BJP with an ally won 73 out of those 18 in 2014. In Uttar Pradesh, the two major regional cost-based parties, the BSP and the SP, were in an alliance for the four recent bi-elections. If that holds in a national election, that has very large implications. So you have the opposition coming together. You have some of the economic missteps that James mentioned. I think the demonetization was indeed very popular in the beginning. I think it's less popular now, particularly when, you know, people have this very crude understanding of demonetization. I remember speaking with like, you know, scores of people in Uttar Pradesh last year before the election. And the dominant sense was that, look, he has struck this blow against black money and we're all going to get this money. Well, it turns out you're not going to get this money because all the money came back. So it's not as though people on the ground are disappointed with demonetization for the reasons that economists and technocrats are, that it was just a batshit crazy thing to do. But for sort of, you know, more mundane banal reasons. But that's like, well, what did I get out of it? So that along with, you know, GST, which has been, the rollout has been extremely messy, has kind of given, and of course the lack of jobs, which was one of these major promises in 2014. So that's kind of cast a bit of a shadow on his economic story. And then you have the cultural issues, which is fascinating because obviously he's attacked by liberals, and I would say rightly so, for encouraging figures such as Yogi Adityanath. But what's interesting is that there's discontent, even among his base, for not having embraced hardline Hindutva enough. And if you look at 2014, if you look at the coalition that brought him to power, you know, there are a lot of things that won't be there. So first of all, he was up against 10 years of a government that had in fact become very unpopular over the last three years, so there's no anti-incumbency. And he was able to sell a story of hope. Those two things are harder to do, so he's still formidable, but there are all these challenges that have cropped up in the past. Now my final point on this is that whenever you make this argument and you point this out to a BJP person or a BJP supporter, they have a clinching argument, which is that, well, how come we keep winning? And which is why I would say that the series of state elections starting with Karnataka, but also state elections in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh at the end of the year, the series of state elections between now and the end of the year are going to be very important because they are going to determine whether this narrative that the opposition has, this new narrative, takes hold or does not. So I want to ask you, James, at the economy, before that, let me just ask a quick follow-up and you segued nicely into Karnataka. Obviously, it's very difficult to predict which way that election is going, much like any other Indian election, but tell us a little bit about the scene and the stakes that are at play in that state election. The stakes are very high. I mean, the stakes for the the stakes for the BJP really are that if the BJP loses Karnataka, it means a few things. First of all, that the Congress would have held on to a major state, where the incumbent has never held power for the last 30 years since 1985. So the Congress would be able to sort of claim a fairly large amount of credit if they managed to hold on. It would give the Congress some sort of a model coming on the heels of its victory in Punjab last year, which is that they have a combination where a strong state leader combined with what the national leadership and the Congress ecosystem brings to the state can kind of make them viable in states. It would create, if you just look at that map again, it would effectively show that there is some kind of firewall and the BJP is essentially a northern and western party. I don't really count the northeast so much apart from Assam and Tripura. Some of these smaller states just flip based on who's in power in Delhi. So it's essentially a northern and the narrative that the BJP is essentially a northern and western party and it cannot make inroads into the south for historical and demographic reasons will get a boost. And then lastly, you know, Rahul Gandhi who is, you know, like a Bollywood star has been launched many, many times largely unsuccessfully will, you know, get one more launch and one end end and his, you know, many fans will, or few fans or in the media will get a chance to say that this time it's for real. So for various reasons this should, this would worry the BJP but I would say that though it is important for the BJP it is much more important for Congress. The stakes for Congress are higher because if they lose Karnataka just in sort of, you know, basic look at in terms of morale, in terms of resources, they will take a huge blow. So I'd say that for Congress it's critical if not to win to at least come a, you know, a very close second and if they lose and the BJP forms a government on its own then it really sets back the narrative that has been building over the last six, eight months of, you know, look the chinks in Modi's armor. Let me talk about the economy in relation to politics James because there's been a lot of criticism up here about demonetization. Your old paper The Financial Times had a very interesting story out two days ago where they pointed out in fact post demonetization a lot of positive things have happened. We've seen a pretty sharp increase in terms of income tax filers. We've seen less of a reliance on cash, an increasing shift to digital payments, to credit cards which are traceable and trackable and less vulnerable to the scourge of black money. We've seen a push towards a nudge towards formalization in the economy, right, so some of the job numbers that are coming out don't tell us much about new jobs being created but they tell us that there is a market increase in formal jobs becoming formalized. So these all sound like pretty good things yet you and Sadhanan seem to be indicating that this was a kind of harebrained not-so-smart idea. Why is, why the dissonance? I mean after you have an earthquake you rebuild the buildings and sometimes the buildings are better than the old buildings. That doesn't mean it was a good idea to have the earthquake. I mean this is self, I mean Sadhanan has been quite brave making this case on social media and gets kind of lots of pushback and the arguments that you make are the arguments that the more eloquent of the government ministers would you know they have to try and defend this self-evidently kind of scatterbrained idea. And so you know it wasn't entirely disastrous, no single policy is unlikely to be 100% bad. So if you do the most dramatic act of economic populism that I can remember in my lifetime then it will have some positive effects if it forces an entire nation to go through this extraordinary painful process some of the things that happen are going to be positive and so sure maybe it did nudge India slightly towards using online payments for instance but does that justify the fact that it came at enormous economic cost and as Sad said sort of on its face did none of the things that they said they were going to do like there was no evidence at all that this was a well targeted anti-corruption measure which was the first measure all of the money came back in so I don't know I mean you can go on about this for ages but on balance I'm utterly convinced it was a terrible idea even if there were a few positives. So I think I'd sit with that I mean it's interesting to go back to this issue of the politics I moved to India in 2011 and it's very reminiscent the debate that we're having now as we gear up for the election from what had happened before Modi that there was all of these discussions about you know could the BJP get this many seats and if they got that many seats would Modi be leader would someone else be leader what would happen if they got this many seats and you know the reason why we're having this conversation about can the BJP be beaten is that people like us and people in the media hate the idea that he's just going to win again by a big margin and so sad has given you a very good overview of the kind of case for why he may be weak but the case for why he may be strong is far more convincing you know the opposition is hopeless there is no sign over the last five years that Rahul Gandhi for all of his potential has managed to kind of make any more progress the BJP has an awesome and very well funded campaigning machine they have a leader who all of the available if patchy evidence says remains spectacularly popular by any measure on any other leader I mean the Pew survey was 85 percent so I mean kind of crazy approval numbers they have reasonably good economic growth even if not as good as some of us might have hoped and so you know don't take my word for it I got everything wrong you know Trump Brexit I'm sort of you know universally incorrect on these things but you know my sense is it would be entirely unreasonable to expect Modi to win as strongly as he did last time because it was such an epochal election and so if he were to be able to win at anything like that scale it would be a truly remarkable feat I see very little evidence that he is going to sort of lose this election or even come close to that I think all of the persuasive evidence suggests that the BJP will do you know look at the map like the BJP is going to do just fine that would be you know that's my instinct and I think most of the kind of the case on the other side is that it would be very boring to imagine that Modi will just kind of go over and do well and that that is what I suspect will happen so this is like a version and you know American politics every RNC or DNC convention is going to be a brokered convention right and there's going to be this one everybody's like you know you have a lot of fun thinking about so maybe Modi doesn't quite get so who would be the next leader that's a fun thing to think about or you want to think about who's the third front candidate these are all very fun parlor games if you're sitting in sort of central Delhi or South Mumbai and you look at them because they're fun instead of looking at the much more obvious list of reasons why one ought to suspect that the BJP must be overwhelmingly favorite right I mean it's just it's logical but but is your sense that net net the economy under Modi is an asset or a liability or it's just kind of a wash you know what I mean I mean is it sort of a feather in his cap or people are going to vote for him in spite of the fact that you know not much has changed I mean it's interesting so there's this think tanky academic discussion that that Milan and others have have really put good evidence on which is in India does does good economics make good politics if you do the the right technocratic thing and I think at some level it obviously does not just amongst the upper middle and middle classes who clearly do yearn for you know better standards of living but elsewhere elsewhere too I mean I was rattling around the UP elections last year and you know there was this real palpable sense of a desire for jobs better state services you know and so Modi is popular because he he promises that that remains I think his promise the question so will he run on the economy yes will they campaign at the local level on the economy or will the temptation be to to actually put other things in the fold now that I don't know I mean I think there's often this assumption that it's a binary choice are you going to be a sort of sensible centrist technocratic reformer who promises you know economic good things or are you going to be a you know a Hindu nationalist sort of fire and brimstone who talks about school textbooks and it's not that simple you know they're often the question is maybe actually makes sense to do both of those things you build your coalition in one way and that gives you the political capital to spend on reforms in another way you know you're feeling slightly under pressure as if you might not win so you decide to kind of get your base gend up by putting some red meat out there and I you know it's hard to tell what that balance will be like in the election but I think that to the extent that I have any insight into the mind of the prime minister I don't I mean I think he is he's genuine on his desire to deliver economic reform and I suspect he would feel frustrated as maybe some of the analysts are that he hasn't been able to do quite as much as he would like because he faces a lot of constraints and so I would expect that to be the main message that the BJP takes into the election and I think that that is still a very marketable message and is why I would expect them to win now getting to the foreign policy aspect of elections I want to read you a quote from the New York Times that they published I think last week in get your reaction to this and this was with regards to Modi's trip recent trip to China the quote is analysts say Mr Modi's fixated on winning next year's election in India and it's a measure of the fraught relationship between China and India right now that he is seen as needing Xi Jinping's help to do just that is that true this analyst thinks that the election factor has been overestimated in this I do not like the term reset but since everybody's using it this effort to get China India relations back on an even keel I think the election the kind of political situation of the domestic situation I think it has to be seen broadly in both countries is a factor but not the factor I think there are two aspects to this which is there's the one aspect is who wanted this reset and who was driving it and the second is this question about what could not having this summit or this effort have done over the next year that could impact the election I think the first the reason this kind of narrative has gone on and I think India could have done a better job of messaging this this narrative caught on that India was driving this because of a leaked memo in February suggesting or instructing government officials not attend some Tibetan celebrations in Delhi but if you actually look at when this kind of effort started it was actually much before the few months before and the particular sign the things that change really came from foreign minister Wang Yi's visit to India for the Russia China India tri-lateral having essentially said that he wasn't going to go early in the year so that itself was the big switch and you really saw particularly post-Doclaum and the Briggs summit in China but really since December etc that you saw this building so I'm not sure because this the New York Times quote would suggest that this was kind of just Modi out there and knocking on Xi's door saying I need you to help me win the selection the second thing I think it is the fact that I think Modi in some ways because he he's seen as kind of a strong leader probably has more space on this he's probably also aware of the fact I mean we don't have data on this but Indians don't tend to vote on foreign policy I think where this does impact and I think where I think the lowering of temperatures will help is in an election year if you had a Doclaum-like incident it would constrain a decision-makers kind of space that with Modi might not play in the in the sense that people assume which is he'd have to back down I actually think it would potentially mean that he couldn't back down or couldn't reach an agreement but I think once this I think there's different aspects of this I don't buy into kind of elections as being the driving factor I think this was the Indian side seeing an opportunity with the Chinese willing to come to the table and not kind of imposing terms that if India would find acceptable to see let's lower the temperature and let's see where we can go just one thing one other thing which is in some ways Modi has opened the door to the oppositional also pointing fingers if this goes south if there is an incident last year China particularly Pakistan both sides have kind of played you know brought it up in terms of who's weak or not China the China relationship people have generally not Modi brought it up in campaigns Rao Gandhi will bring it up in campaigns but it's not about the other party in what they're doing it is tended to be about the other country look those guys are eating our lunch last summer kind of bringing pointing fingers at the congress in the middle of the doclam crisis has now opened the door that if this goes south if does something does happen at the border you'll then have Rao Gandhi who's already been spending the last few months pointing fingers on this China front that you know the gap between China and India's increase it does open the door for that will it matter again I I think unless you see things really goes south this is just not what Indian voters are going to be focused on so you mentioned the role of Rahul Gandhi and I want to come back to sedan and on this and see if I can get you in trouble on social media a little bit right now Rahul Gandhi has had six to nine months of pretty good press he had what was seen as a successful visit to the United States he's seen more consistent more biting more active on social media where do you first of all is this good press deserved and number two do you think that there is a change in how Indian voters see him as well he used to be the butt of every joke on what's that but in fact now maybe he you can work with him you know he he may not ever be prime minister of material but he can put together a reasonably well functioning party that where he remains a kind of figure head and then you have you know powerful state leaders who kind of uh you know drive the message home first of all it's very easy to get me into trouble in social media so that's like aren't you always in trouble on social media so much greater achievement if you can get me out of trouble in social media but you know i think it's a it's a it's a great question obviously depends on who you ask my my own sort of you know subjective view is that to start with that some of the bad press that he got or some of the perceptions of him i think were unjustified the fact that he is widely seen as you know some kind of you know a foolish man boy whereas you know we saw here in Washington and the people who have met him is that in fact he is a fairly thoughtful person he thinks about the world he has views about everything from China to India's economic policies and so on you may not agree with those views but this is a he's a he's a thoughtful engaged person he's simply not the person that he's been made out to be by caricature so i think that was kind of unfair uh that said i think fundamentally he has problems that are difficult to fix in my view and my essential sort of assessment of him is that whatever else he may be he's not a natural politician right a natural politician has this ability to walk into a room and really kind of instinctively assess the temperature Modi has that Arvind Kejriwal has that that's just what politicians do in many ways Raul Gandhi is the anti-politician he knows how to walk into a room and say exactly the wrong thing so i think that you know we have we have to recognize that there's certain he has he has no charisma and i like to use the Bollywood analogy right this is a person born into a family which has had a string of successful hits over the decades and he has been given every every possible opportunity every possible leg up and here he is now and he fails and he fails and he fails again but there's this whole ecosystem around him which first of all has very strong memories of the previous hits and also has profited from the success of the of of of stars from the family now the question is how many times can he fail and i think he'll be allowed to keep trying until 2019 he has upped his game on social media he's got whoever's doing the tweets is sort of but in many basic ways do we can you and i confidently say that this is a person who between now and the national election will not take several vacations outside india one do we know and i got criticized for saying this because it sounded so trivial but actually it's not trivial do we even know if you're just sort of you know if you're a congress party headquarters and you're putting up a poster of you're making posters of Rahul Gandhi will he be bearded or clean shaven and we don't there's no other major politician anywhere in the world about whom you ask these questions and so in many ways his you know his his basic political game i think is so flawed that if i had i mean if i had to you know put money on this i would say that he will never be prime minister of india i think there's one other aspect that Modi has reminded voters often some ways is that voters can sense if you're hungry for the job if you really really want it and one of the things we'll see over this next year is whether he shows more kind of just share i want that job and you know i will do everything even some things that you might not like to get that job that just kind of killer instinct in terms of something that you really want and whether it's you know for different purposes but i think in the state elections etc we might have an opportunity to see it but i think that's something that indian voters might not have seen with other politicians in between but especially now that they've seen it with Modi they will be judging him on as well this is a fascinating part of game as well it reminds me that the potential for a kind of Rahul renaissance is clearly there and has always been there it reminds me a little bit of so maybe 10 years ago i remember going to canada and being told what a total laughing stock just in Trudeau was you know he was this calo dauphin completely incompetent always putting his foot in it no natural political skills just a complete joke they were just waiting to get rid of him and you know Rahul has that's the rap on Rahul as well right and and clearly it's perfectly plausible i think to imagine circumstances if he kind of ups his game a little bit and circumstances go his way the gravity of politics will make Modi unpopular eventually even if not now you know he has a fantastic family brand there's a story you know you can definitely see it happening i would not rule it out but you know if not now then when is the question right i mean there they if you're waiting for this plotline to emerge there is still no sign that it's going to happen there is a potential theoretically you could see that it could happen but there's no evidence that it will happen and and so you're right that he has had reasonably good press and he also he came to Singapore and gave a talk that went viral on social media at the Lee Kuan Yew School which is it was quite interesting to to see that but there are many what many indicators that you would look for you know has he shown any ability to kind of bring on new talent within the congress party i mean not really you always look at the same couple of younger MPs but basically it still appears that anyone who has any talent within congress can't show it because it's perceived as a threat to him and that is just an enormous problem that they face you know he himself has a kind of curious leadership style he still appears diffident and when you contrast him with Modi you know at some kind of guttural level again I remember talking to people in Uttar Pradesh and Modi projects kind of strength and confidence he looks good he speaks well Tanvi was talking about foreign policy I remember people talking about the phrase surgical strikes you know Modi was going to launch a surgical strike on something poverty lack of jobs whatever it was but that phrase surgical strike which came from the kind of incursion into Pakistan clearly resonated with sort of the man on the street because it spoke to Modi's offering which was that he looked like a good strong politician the sort of person you felt confident with as a leader you know Rahul clearly has none of that so yeah I think I'm with Saad that I remain pretty skeptical that that although theoretically this idea of a kind of second or third act for him and an end fact for the Gandhi family is always there the signs that you would look for that this might be happening are pretty hard to put your finger on so let me just end and then we'll open it up with the question James on the economy you know one of the things that's pretty interesting to watch about Modi is that he's kind of saturated the political space so effectively right so in a way he captures the center he captures the right he captures the left and you can find a little bit of everything right you can find some economic reform you can find some populism you can find some doubling down on social welfare policies the Congress has put into place where is the effective economic critique going to come from or can it be marshaled right because you're clearly not going to get much of a critique from the right and it's becoming I think increasingly hard to attack him from the left because he has taken over much of that debate right now it's a really great question and again it's why I don't think he's going to lose because I think that they're very clever in the way that they have done that and so you know people who are minded to be you know sort of in favor of kind of market friendly technocratic reforms you know there is a reason why Modi and his people have not dismantled parts of the kind of Mason Indian welfare state which is that this would be very unpopular and that they you know Modi is a is a democrat in the sense that he really likes winning elections and he's exceptionally good at it and so I mean I think there isn't a sort of effective critique of the government which is the one that I outlined you know before and sort of touch on in the book which is that in the medium term if India wants to continue the trajectory from lower lower middle income status up through different parts of middle income status then you can't put off forever the kind of things that Modi has put off in his first term and I think at some basic level people people know that you know you have to take hard decisions today to get the rewards tomorrow but I just don't think that that there's nobody who's going to be able to make that critique effectively in this electoral cycle and so I think I think they'll kind of get away with it if you see what I mean and then that opens up a second question about the character of the prime minister in his second term now I'm British as you can tell and there was always this question in Tony Blair's government so you had the first government he had a whacking majority and he didn't really do anything very much he was kind of timorous and afraid of the press and afraid of being too radical but people sort of said wait for the second term in the second term it'll be truly radical and the second term was I mean you know let's move Iraq to one side the second term was sort of pretty much like the first as was the third and so you know this question of whether or not Modi will really kind of you know his true colors will emerge the radical reformer in the second term I'm slightly skeptical of that too having been through this cycle before and I suspect to be honest that the second term will be pretty much like the first even if they get some magic threshold in the upper house or these constraints that are said to be holding people back that you know the mixture of attempting to dominate all of the political space and trying to kind of get right that balance between taking risks and not taking unnecessary risks will probably mean that this sort of steady as she goes approach to economic reform is what will characterize most of the second term as it has in the first that is the crack of that too I was just going to say arguably you can see that the critique that you will get and perhaps the most effective critique that they will actually care about is the critique from the street and I mean it both in terms of people, young people who do not who are thinking about jobs farmers who are thinking about incomes but also the Lowell Street and Wall Street investors are they investing in India so I think the critique will come not necessarily from the think tank analysts or because frankly they probably don't care about that or kind of economists in universities I think the critique will come that will perhaps make them change is this realization that everything they want to do if you don't have the economy that James is talking about you don't get to do the foreign policy stuff that optimism goes away the importance that you wanted that respect on the world stage all that goes away without that very fundamental thing of economic growth Salman Yeah I mean I agree with Tanvi I said I look at this in sort of two parts to the extent that the conversations we have or op-eds in the economic times and business standard and mint there's that whole sort of elite level conversation about the reforms process and over there I think they have obviously they've a lot of the sheen is off but I don't think that matters to them in electoral terms because the you know there all the attacks are you know in fact there is the opposition does have a story to tell because that story is very simple it's sort of like well he promised you job did you get a job and they go to the farmers and said well he's going to double your income has he doubled your income and the fact is that in terms of people's lived experience you could probably make the case that well look and because expectations were so high so I think that the opposition does have a story to tell and it's just the nature of Indian politics that no matter who is in power you they're always attacked for sort of not having done enough for the poor right and Congress has been attacking him from day one unfairly in my view you know as being sootboot ki sarkar and that's what they're going to go after and then they're going to toss in demonetization and GST and the kind of elite discourse on this matters to the extent that it it chips away at some of the aura chips away it it strips away some of the sense of great optimism we had earlier but it doesn't matter beyond that I think one very final thing if you think about what's happened in China over the last two decades you had a regime which whose fundamental justification was economic competence and as that kind of gradually you know the growth rate sort of tapered down you know things became more difficult you move up through middle income status and it just becomes a little bit harder the regime has shifted to just to a justification that is more fundamentally nationalistic in basis and I suppose the same something roughly of the same order the risk is that something of roughly the same order happens in India I don't think we're quite there yet and you know one can have an argument about the nature of nationalism in India that that I think is is the worrying thing that if you cannot continue to justify yourself based on on kind of delivered economic competence the basic question about jobs which is the the big problem where there is very little evidence that they've had much success in delivering decent white or blue collar jobs to the tens of millions of people who who need them then you need to justify your regime in some other way and that is the potentially alarming thing I think let's open up to your questions there's two mics going around so I just ask that you raise your hand and identify yourself and just keep your question short and we'll take a couple in the first round and then do a second round so we'll start at the end with you Vijay and then we'll we'll come to Tezi Hi my name is Vijay Indrakumar and I'm retired but I have a family in India that does business in India and through the two maps show that BJP is very successful and Modi is very successful politically but if you believe that the lives of people matter as to what the government does in improving the lives of people nothing much has changed if you look at the international indices a human development index India is 131 out of 168 pollution index India has the 10 worst cities in air pollution so and also manufacturing I think that India has missed the manufacturing revolution it's now a gig economy even labor intensive industries like manufacture toys are statue of Ganesh for Ganesh Chaturthi they get those items from China so in my view and in my view you know there's much that the BJP has not done Tezi thanks Tezi Shaefer from Mclarty Associates we've been talking about politics and we've talked about Congress and we've talked about the BJP and Modi where do the regional parties fit into this where does sub-nationalism fit into this where do the none of the aboves like Kejriwal fit into this they may not have the power to become to to produce the prime minister at least not by themselves but they certainly have the power to fragment the others great question now let's take one and just in the back Matthew right hand there right so my name is Vaman Desai my question is specifically for Sadan Dhumi as others might chip in as well so the prime minister Modi has he's shown that you know one thing he can do is sort of you know spring some surprises like in case of demonetization so what do you think you know looking at the kind of politician he is are the chances of him calling for an early election in December especially given the fact that a few states like Majapadishan Rajasthan will go into polls and that you know which face an anti-inconvency because the BJP is ruling great James you talk about this a little bit in your book the first question or the comment from Vijay about fundamentally there is this medium-run challenge of inequality of poverty of this kind of two-tiered system of haves and have-nots have we seen much of a dent I assume that your answer is going to be not much in four years but I won't put words in your mouth yeah I mean it's interesting so you're you make a very compelling points are it almost made me think that it's not that no progress has been made it's that progress of this sort is relatively slow it has to be measured in decades and so even if you were to go and look at I don't know sort of South Korea in 1950 then you know you're measuring progress over a kind of decade or two or three and then you have real measurable progress I mean so when we were in the UP elections I was on a trip with Shikha Gupta the newspaper editor and columnist and he's I'll credit him with this but he he made this rather nice point that I quote in the book that you know there has been real change in India even in the kind of the darkest corners of Eastern Uttar Pradesh which is you know these are the the badlands the places you go in Bollywood movies to meet mafia dons where there's you know just it's it's bad out there but even there you know this isn't the kind of the India of old this isn't people who don't have anything to eat these are you know you have cell phones you probably have television you might have electricity you might not be living in the best house but you are not supported by any kind of sort of useful state infrastructure so you have terrible disease levels of a certain kind of infectious disease the schools are rubbish you have very bad healthcare so you have kind of aspiration and you can kind of see a better life and you have some elements of that that would have been you know even 10 years certainly 20 years before would have seemed to be kind of improbable and some elements of that have improved a bit under Modi you know probably has got a bit easier to do business under Modi the electricity is not as good as they would have hoped but there are not that many places that don't have it anymore there are sort of you know there are gradual progress being made but as Saad said whether what this kind of whether this is enough given what people are coming to expect the sort of jobs that they actually want to do as opposed to those that are available now that is where the problem arises that people's expectations not unreasonably of what the good life should be are racing ahead of the capacity particularly of the Indian state to deliver and I do think that there is a problem a deeper problem in India about what you might call it's a very kind of boring phrase but what you might call inclusive growth so in the book this is why I'm kind of concerned with rising income inequality the fact that the super rich don't pay much tax you know the fact that the education system for the vast majority of people is not improving and hasn't been a government priority it doesn't appear to be a government priority because these are indicators of states in East Asia in particular that have made spectacular progress because they manage a form of growth that is broadly inclusive it's not perfect this isn't the sort of perfect world that Amartya Sen might imagine if you look at the growth path of South Korea you know or Thailand or Malaysia these are racked with cronyism all sorts of problems broadly speaking they took the bottom along with the top they invested a lot in basic state infrastructure as I said at the beginning they either used cronyism strategically to build industries that you needed or after a while they basically kind of drove it out of the system the most successful of them and I see little evidence that India is managing to do these things and this is the problem right people there is only one way that we know that poor countries become middle income countries become rich countries quickly and that is what East Asia did and so you can say that India is going to try and do some uniquely Indian variant of this but if you're saying India is not going to take this path at all then you really are in a kind of no man's land if you think that this is going to be a path that is going to be done entirely by services of a certain kind then you're kind of imagining India as an oil emirate in which you have this very productive very rich part of the economy that funds everything else and I just doesn't seem realistic to me you know in the end there is one model that was the kind of East Asian model that is has a heavy manufacturing and exporting component that has an inclusive state and that I think is where you have a point sir which is that the progress towards that model is much slower than we would have liked and therefore if you think India can then move very quickly through these stages of economic development then you have to say that it is going to do it on its own way may be able to do that but I think you at least have to say that then you're in uncharted territory where it's less likely so Sunvi Sadan I don't know if on the regional question are we haven't said much really anything about regional parties how do they fit and who are the people to watch right so in the past right we would say Jay Lalata we would say Nitish Kumar Jay Lalata has exited the scene Nitish Kumar is badly weakened Irvind Kejraal seems resigned to his small pocket of India who are the other people that we should be looking out for you know there was this term that used to be very commonly used right the index of opposition unity and in the old days that was a term that basically referred to everybody but congress congress was the poll and how well the opposition did really depended to a large extent on how united they could they could be that has flipped now I think Milan and others have made this point the poll is now the BJP and so but the index of opposition unity as a concept still matters I mentioned in my comment said it matters tremendously in Uttar Pradesh 80 seats out of 543 are going to come from there if the BSP and the SP which are the two major cost based parties of that state get together then if you just look at the math in terms of vote share they should do they should be quite comfortably placed though in fact how these things how these votes are transferred is a little bit more complex you can't just you can't just add add the two and you go back to the numbers right the BJP had 31% of the vote in 2014 with its allies the NDA had about 38.5 almost 39% of the vote so it's still sort of so there's if the opposition comes together they are able to obviously make inroads that's number one the second is that the BJP has been having some trouble with allies the Shiv Sena which is its oldest ally has said that it will not this if they may change their minds but they have said that they will not contest with the BJP in 2019 that map would have been even more saffron if Andhra Pradesh if Chandrababu Nidu had not fallen out with them and so there are sort of you know questions about about Modi's style and ability to take allies along that have been raised the people to watch out for I think the most important by far is Bhamta Banerjee because it's a large state West Bengal has 42 seats she is extremely powerful and every bit as dominant in her state as the BJP is in some other states so I would look at Bengal Odisha I'd say the BJP has probably has a good chance because of Naveen Patnaik they say he has health issues and so on Tamil Nadu is kind of there's no charismatic figure right now but it's anyway it's and it remains an important state simply because it has it has 39 seats so if so the ideal situation for the opposition is one that they come to some kind of agreement with the Congress and they figure out a balance that works to that in the Hindi heartland the SB and BSP get together and third that you have these other regional parties performing well right so that's kind of their dream scenario I agree with you on Kejriwal I think that he has he's a you know shadow of his former self I don't see him as you know emerging as this alternative and to that extent I think Raul Gandhi is better placed than he was a year ago where to the degree that people are looking at a face he is in some ways the most plausible face but that cuts both ways because that ends up hurting the opposition just a couple of things thinking it's I'm always remember something Adam Ziegfeld who's a expert on Indian domestic politics who said last year you don't need a grand coalition nationally of the opposition you need it in key states that they they can a grand coalition in key states can do enough damage in terms of number taking away a number of seats and the kind of second thing is I think kind of how important the regional parties or not just the regional parties but kind of the third parties are we'll find out that you know the day the election results come out because they could be king makers in some cases or irrelevant and one of the things we're not going to know necessarily in the lead up to those elections I will not answer the question I'll leave it to Sadanand or Millen to answer the question about early elections but is the fact that whether it's Karnataka Madhya Pradesh Rajasthan in the state elections that are coming up this is essentially a BJP Congress fight so we will not have a signal of kind of what kind of the regional party factor might necessarily mean let me quickly answer the early election question I honestly we're all just crystal ball gazing nobody knows I think the logic of a the logic of an early election from the from a BJP perspective would be especially if they if they win Karnataka and they have momentum on their side is to bank on Modi's popularity and to bank on the fact that he is the most favored choice for prime minister and hope that that undercuts the obvious unpopularity of their state government especially in Rajasthan but perhaps in Madhya Pradesh too Rajasthan is traditionally flipped and in any case it would be due for for the BJP would be due to due to lose and in Madhya Pradesh they've been in power for 15 years so the idea then would be that call in early election so that's that's the logic but I have no idea if they'll do that because I think one of the things that has informed this government to a large extent and we haven't spoken about this was that in many ways they view the a lot of politics through the prism of 2004 and one of the great mistakes of 2004 was by calling an early election in the assumption that that wouldn't help and that backfired so I have no idea whether it's going to do it or not in one of the arguments which has been put out there against having an early election is because there's some indicators that people in the BJP pointed to that the economy is turning around that you want to give a bigger a longer runway before the election to have several successive quarters of good economic news so you can go into elections with the feel of good spirit whereas you know if you curtail and you have elections in November or early December then you reduce that ability to kind of change the narrative well this is where factors like oil prices, the monsoons and all will come in as well because we won't know that for a few months let's do another round yes in the second row here Hi, Puneet Talwar doing a project right now with Senator Coons had a question about the implications for US policy there was a suggestion earlier that you know not to expect too much on trade in terms of bold decisions some question about defense but I'm just wondering more broadly where should US expectations be over the next year where should the US maybe try to advance things and pull back from as well perfect thanks Puneet we have a question way, way back in the back thanks Jonathan Ward Atlas organization I wanted to ask you about just returning to the question of the difference if any between Congress and the BJP when it comes to foreign policy but with a focus on major states so Russia, China the United States great there was one over here a second row here and the gray suit this is Mike with the center for pluralism Melan, the question is for you I'm the moderator I don't have to answer anything well you wrote an article if anybody can answer that question you wrote a piece about a month ago I think they meant about the possibility that investors may pull out of India if there is a lack of social cohesion and a lot of harassment whatever is going on in India it may cause investors to pull out of India and it may cause a collapse in the economy and that I wrote a similar article like you did Sadanam 15 years ago you were doing very well on social media at the Sajja group you and I were friends at that time thank you okay Tanvi I don't know if you want to take the Puneet's question about US policy or should we be looking for you know I think there is if Modi decided to actually do things on there's certain things even on trade but particularly on investment and I think in the defense policy space where I think there's a perception that there are domestic political implications but I think he can either manage them or those are overestimated and so I think for the US the other thing to keep in mind is there's the elections but there's also the regional space that is driving especially on the on the defense policy side a lot of decisions so I think there will be movement there you've already seen kind of the you know the re-engaging on the other foundational agreements for example driven and it's you know knowing that the opposition will kind of beat them up I've never thought the kind of foundational agreements I've always seen domestic politics use as an excuse more than kind of an actual matter because you can ship that narrative but you've seen kind of certain movements I think where you do see some impact is in terms of for example India for the kind of role it's been talking about should have a very different looking defense budget but because not just because of kind of the obligations it has for pensions and salaries but also because this is a political issue that makes a difference or for example the defense public sector undertakings and you know their employee unions etc kind of doing anything that would take away or decrease their role that kind of thing does end up playing in the domestic political space but I think especially on defense policy there is more space and so I think this is also why you were probably going to see as we have seen over the last year or so more happening on the US India front on the defense and security side than necessarily on the trade and investment side and I think you know others can speak to it including Rick who's here I think that is also there is an opportunity I think for India to take a very different view on this saying that people say well if you kind of open up the space they'll be increased in quality well the case we're seeing is that there is increased inequality anyway so how do you create a system where you're not going to Davos giving a speech that is anti-protectionist and then three days later increasing customs duties but essentially making the case the trade and investment done well creating social safety nets ensuring some of you know to make sure that inclusive growth is kind of an objective as well that this can actually help you create those jobs and also kind of tying it in with the strategic side which is saying essentially you know what here's this window of opportunity which might be last a year or two from now that companies are looking to diversify from China they will go somewhere now for India this is an opportunity and for Modi to say you know what come here doing it for for them to come and create jobs in India that means yes compromise on some things that have been sacred cow so far excuse the expression but frankly should actually involve a rethink but also from a strategic level to say okay you know we're gonna we're saying we're gonna be this alternative to China if the Chinese are putting pressure on a South Korean company saying we're gonna kick you out if you you know don't agree with foreign policy Modi should have stood out there and said you know what Lotte come to India come set up here you know China's putting pressure and saying we're gonna make sure that our tourists don't go to a certain country India should step up and say we're gonna work with your government to try to ensure that more of our tourists are going there because at the end of the day these India is the only country with the size in terms of the economy that could potentially even compete so I think and I hope we should we will still see this is the small part of me that's an optimist that we there can be a more forward leaning stance that could fit actually with this jobs message do I think it's likely to happen in the next year I think of the trade and trade side in particular I think that might be hard I think there's space on the investment and defense side I will just say I think that shouldn't should mean that there should be I mean for a number of reasons continued engagement I think you know just like India was continuing to engage not just running up to election season here but in the year after where there was some uncertainty I think this is just doing business with a fellow democracy that you know it might slow down but I think looking for spaces where there is actually quite a bit of space do either one of you want to take the US the difference sorry just between the congress and the BJP with respect to relations to the major states I don't know I mean I wanted to kind of follow what Tanvi was saying which I think that's exactly right there is I mean the kind of crystallizing decision on on that question I think is what India does with the other trade agreement this is not the TPP the one that's called RCEP which is the ASEAN led trade agreement that has both China and theoretically India negotiating to be part of it India as usual is what is probably the biggest sticking block but that is not because I think anyway that India is being kind of painful about it it's that there is a real trade-off between the short-term pain of opening up some of your economy to some much more advanced manufacturers and the long-term benefit particularly the kind of geo-strategic benefit of properly integrating yourself into East Asia and it sort of hangs in the balance I mean I think it's a very difficult thing to do in an election year to sort of to do to sign up to something like this and I think they're struggling there are very few pro-trade constituencies in India you know there's no one pushing them to do this and if you actually speak to some of the people who are there much more critical of the Indian side than they are of their negotiating partners in ASEAN and Japan and China and so I think if I were you know an American trying to kind of nudge India in the right direction that's what I'd be kind of pushing on and it raises this bigger question about so at the moment Modi the space to use Tanvi's phrase that he has to make these kind of bold long-term strategically sensible growth enhancing decisions is clearly shrinking because of the election the question is were he to win would he then go and do it you know would he spend some of that political capital and and it's not that's not clear to me it doesn't seem to me that Modi is a leader who actually particularly likes spending political capital on doing things that will be unpopular he hasn't done a vast amount about that and I suppose that is what worries me about the election that were he to win maybe then he would just continue to be cautious and not do the kind of things that in the long run the evidence suggests are the the kind of things that will unlock a more successful form of economic model over the next 10 or 20 years I think our step in particular has a crucial problem for India which is that a number of people now see it as essentially opening India to basically being the China India FTA which for India given the trade deficit with China which is 51 billion dollars and about half of India's total trade deficit would be problematic and that that does have domestic political implication it also has strategic implications because it has meant that certain sectors in India are highly dependent on things like Chinese equipment and that creates its own problem so I think our step in particular has certain certain kind of features that make it tough even beyond kind of election year politics so then it differences between the Congress and the BJP so yeah that's the reason everyone's been avoiding that question is because it's tough I'm happy to answer it I just thought I mean okay so I would say that you know broadly speaking there I mean I agree with Tanvi that there's a great degree of continuity in Indian foreign policy doesn't matter who's in power if I had to look for differences I would say one major difference is that the BJP under Modi has is less worried about the optics about being close to the US the most vivid example of that was the invitation to Barack Obama to be the chief guest at India's Republic Day Parade multiple hugs with President Trump and so on so these guys they don't seem to sort of you know because they're sort of you know they're seen as the more hawkish party the tougher party and so on they don't feel they don't feel threatened or that they will be kind of accused of being American lap dogs and so they have less of that baggage I think that's one difference China I'd say that sort of again more continuity than then more then both the parties have more in common than you know as the old cliche goes countries have permanent permanent interest but again if I had to generalize I would say that the BJP because it has an image of being more muscular so for instance I thought the way they handled Doklam again you know it fits in with their domestic constituency the idea of Modi as a strong leader the fact that they were you know willing to draw this very public line so I'd say that you know if you had to boil it down on the margins one party is more muscular on Russia I frankly don't see any real difference let's see Russia as a it's a legacy relationship it matters to India particularly for defense reasons but it's it's a relationship that matters but its importance has been declining across the board so I mean I think the bottom line is no there aren't key differences you know to down and point out some of the things in the margins I think there is a crucial aspect including in terms of the U.S. the other major power which is ask me if that's BJP in power versus BJP in opposition let's not forget that the BJP was out there kind of objecting to the U.S. India nuclear deal so they might not be shy about you know embracing the U.S. now but in opposition just like the Congress is criticizing them now for foundational agreements etc what has been actually remarkable is in the last 10, 15 years you have Indian diplomats saying if we had imagined that things would be on this trajectory with the U.S. despite all the changes in administrations that you sit in South Block in Delhi and you find out that hey you know there are certain structural reasons this relationship exists same thing for Russia and China you know I think there were certain key aspects of the border incident last year at Doklam that were different including the fact that it wasn't it involved Bhutan and it was about Bhutan-China relationship but we've seen India actually very consistently across different administrations pretty much react the same way to every border incident which is go there and send troops and just stand there happened in April 2013 it happened Modi did it again in September 2014 and then we saw it recently we've seen it even kind of since the late 80s we've essentially seen the same approach Russia is actually very interesting but the changes aren't coming because of parties the changes are coming partly because Russia is changing its kind of approach much closer to China India of course thinks that the West has helped push it towards China but also Russia is now kind of flirting a little bit with Pakistan and you have the Russian ambassador in Delhi the other day kind of say India you should really give Pakistan props and counterterrorism which let's just say did not go down well some of this might be just to put pressure on defense things but I think it's just it is an important relationship but India is even on the defense side been diversifying away so it's not it's not our you know our grandparents Russia-India relationship and I don't think you'll ever go back to being that India will try to kind of keep Russia on side but it's just unless I think especially China-Russia relations unless those kind of there's friction there I don't think you'll see kind of India getting any closer of course there are Trump twists that might change all this but I think you know we've largely seen continuity and not change uh so just to get your yeah I don't actually remember writing that column was one problem but the column I did write maybe so we were referring to is that it was about what I perceived as a crisis and the credibility of Indian institutions that you know we've had this kind of mental model on our head that India has a set of elite institutions like the like the IAS the Reserve Bank the Election Commission the Supreme Court that worked pretty well and then once you go down to the lower levels you start to have problems of of competence of corruption and so on and so you you have you know this Land Pritchett has this term of India isn't a failed or a failing but a flailing state right the head works pretty well but it's going to disconnected from its limbs and I think you know one thing we've seen particularly in the past 12 to 18 months is real signs that some of those APEX institutions aren't as healthy as we thought now this is not something that began with this government although I do think that this government has in some cases exacerbated some of the fissures and we're seeing it now in the Supreme Court most notably with a real just both accusations of executive judicial deadlock as well as potential collusion shall we say between the Supreme Court the Chief Justice and the executive and I think this is a real liability I think for this government that there is oftentimes an emphasis on Modi the man and not enough on the institutional structures that will live on beyond when this prime minister you know delimits office and I think that's something that if I would you know had a kind of wish list would like to see much greater focus on things which in some sense you know I think jive with with Modi's rhetoric at least about administrative reform about judicial reform about fixing the police and so on but we simply haven't seen those items be top priorities for this government and I think I think it's a shame because I think there is an opportunity actually to make some meaningful change so again I don't think it began with this government but I don't see any signs of things turning around either we're at five so I think we should we should wrap up let me thank all of our guests and thank all of you for coming and hope to see you here for our next India Lex 2019 event thanks very much we better get a picture aren't we we need a oh I don't know about that yeah you didn't bring me my coffee what's wrong you didn't bring me my coffee I'm gonna get the publisher to send you all one controlling the population how are we doing sir well where are we gonna go for a quick after after events well you you know where the places are so tell me how are you yeah my goodness how are you I'm not like good it's very nice