Monday’s applications to resume trading applied to the Evergrande Group and its services arm, while there was no such request for the EV unit. It is just weeks since the firm resumed trading following a 17-month halt caused by its failure to publish its financial results. Evergrande estimated it hadContinue Reading
SINGAPORE: A woman who lost her lawsuit against her ex-lover for medical negligence is now facing bankruptcy after failing to pay more than S$250,000 (US$182,600) in costs and other fees to him.
Ms Serene Tiong Sze Yin took Dr Chan Herng Nieng, a psychiatrist, to court in 2020, accusing him of making her addicted to Xanax, a medication to treat anxiety, during their relationship from 2017 to 2018.
Dr Chan, a medical professional with around 20 years of experience, previously ran his own practice at Capital Mindhealth Clinic.
Ms Tiong, who was married, began an affair with Dr Chan in January 2017, according to previous media reports. Dr Chan, then single, gave Ms Tiong Xanax tablets for her anxiety.
The duo broke up around May 2018, after Ms Tiong found explicit WhatsApp messages between Dr Chan and his then-close friend, colorectal surgeon Julian Ong about their sexual exploits with other women. Ms Tiong filed a complaint with the Singapore Medical Council, which launched an investigation and disciplinary proceedings.
In turn, Dr Ong sued Ms Tiong for defamation for claiming that he and Dr Chan had colluded to take sexual advantage of their patients. Dr Ong won the lawsuit on appeal.
However both Dr Ong and Dr Chan were found guilty of improper conduct and suspended from practice. On appeal by the Singapore Medical Council, both doctors had their suspensions extended in December last year.
Ms Tiong also sued Dr Chan, claiming that he prescribed her Xanax, which she suffered a side effect from, and later became addicted to.
She also alleged that Dr Chan had told her that he was committed to a long-term and exclusive sexual relationship with her. Subsequently, Ms Tiong suffered a mental and emotional breakdown when she discovered that Dr Chan was having sexual relations with other married women during their relationship.
In July last year, the High Court rejected Ms Tiong’s claims. The judge found Ms Tiong’s testimony to be unreliable and her claims to be an “abuse of the court process”.
The judge ruled that the lawsuit was, at its core, a lover’s spat, and described it as “the latest episode in Ms Tiong’s plot for revenge against the one who spurned her”.
The court ordered Ms Tiong to pay costs to Dr Chan, but Ms Tiong has not been able to pay her debt, amounting to S$250,475.40 in court documents seen by CNA.
The sum includes costs arising from the lawsuit, and from related applications, such as Dr Chan’s application to revoke a subpoena issued by Ms Tiong.
Dr Chan filed a bankruptcy application against his former lover on Sep 22 this year. In an affidavit supporting the application, he said that his solicitors served a statutory demand setting out the debt to Ms Tiong on Jun 13 this year.
The statutory demand stated that Ms Tiong should apply to set it aside within 14 days, or settle her debts within 21 days – or by Jul 4 this year – failing which she could be made bankrupt, and her property and goods seized.
However Ms Tiong did not comply, or apply to set aside the statutory demand.
“I therefore believe that Ms Tiong is presumed to be unable to pay her debts,” Dr Chan stated. Dr Chan then filed the bankruptcy application to recover the debt.
The hearing for the application is fixed on Oct 26, during which the court may decide to grant the bankruptcy order. If Ms Tiong is unable to repay the debt, she will be declared a bankrupt and her assets taken.
In response to queries about the application, Ms Tiong said she was a single mother raising a teenage boy, while her father was unemployed.
She also said she is servicing a Housing Board (HDB) mortgage.
Asked if she intends to challenge the application, Ms Tiong said: “I have no choice. (I) can’t pay up.
“(I am) shocked, sad. I can’t travel with my son. I wanted to bring him overseas. (The bankruptcy application is an) embarrassment to my family. I tried so hard, worked so hard, yet I lost,” she said.
CNA has contacted Dr Chan for comments through his lawyer.
PUBLISHED : 2 Oct 2023 at 11:54
A list of “influential figures”, people wielding dark influence across the country, has been completed and will be tabled at a meeting of the committee handling the matter on Tuesday, Deputy Interior Minister Chada Thaiset said.
Mr Chada said there were 600-700 names on the list. Fewer than 100 were considered hard-core and included in the Red group.
The rest were in the Yellow group and were people on a watch list and they included gunmen for hire, who were a small group and most of them were freelancers, he said.
He declined to go into further detail, saying the list would have to be checked against the data bases of police and security agencies. He had not seen the list, which was still deemed secret, he said.
Mr Chada said the list would first screened by the committee set up by the Interior Ministry. The names would be examined to see whether they were on record as having been involved in any of the 16 types of crime which were the criteria for being classified as an influential figure, or someone wielding dark influence.
The 16 types of crime are – illegal money lending, collusion in bidding for work contracts with government agencies, illegally colllecting brokerage fees from bus operators, extortion of businesses, smuggling, running gambling dens, the illegal sex trade, human smuggling, cheating workers looking for overseas jobs, cheating tourists, being a gunman for hire, collecting debt with use of force, dealing in war weapons and other illegal guns, encroaching on state land/destroying natural resources, demanding bribes on public highways and being involved in illicit drugs.
Mr Chada said he would also go on tour to meet with village chiefs (phuyaiban) and tambon chiefs (kamnan) throughout the country, to adjust their attitudes.Local leaders would be told to refrain from any illegal activity.
People who take on the posts of village and tambon chiefs would also be required to undergo urine tests.
Mr Chada was formerly highly influential in his home province of Uthai Thani and admitted he was once listed as an “influential person”.
“But I have proved that I have not done anything illegal. I am no longer an influential person. I am now a cabinet minister working for the country,” he declared.
AFPA new transport corridor announced on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Delhi will become the basis of world trade for hundreds of years to come, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a recent radio address. Can it really?
US President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman upgraded their frosty relationship from an awkward fist bump last year to a firm handshake as they announced the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). (Biden had once vowed to make Saudi Arabia a global pariah.)
The project launched to bolster transportation and communication links between Europe and Asia through rail and shipping networks, while beneficial for the region, was also telling of American foreign policy, “which, to put it simply, is anything that would further US interests against China,” Ravi Agarwal, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine told the BBC.
America does not benefit materially from being part of the project, “but this can be put in the category of the Japan-South Korea summit at Camp David,” says Parag Khanna, author of Connectography. The US marked its diplomatic presence at the presidential country retreat by brokering a thaw in the relationship of the two pacific nations in the face of growing Chinese expansionism.
The IMEC is also being seen by many as a US counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure-building project that connects China with Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Russia and Europe.
This year marks a decade since President Xi launched the BRI.
Some say the project’s grand ambitions have dwindled significantly, as lending to projects has slowed down amid China’s economic slowdown. Countries like Italy are expressing their desire to withdraw, and nations such as Sri Lanka and Zambia find themselves caught in debt traps, unable to meet their loan obligations.
BRI has also faced criticism for a numerous other reasons from its “underlying objectives of gaining strategic influence through developmental footprint… aggressively linking different regions with Sino-centric value chains, inadequate attention to local needs, lack of transparency, disregard for sovereignty, adverse environmental impact, corruption, and lack of sound financial oversight,” Girish Luthra, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation think-tank wrote in a recent paper.
Despite the hiccups the Chinese have achieved a “staggering amount” and IMEC isn’t even close to being a “rival” says Mr Khanna, adding that it can at best be a moderate volume corridor.
“It is not a game changer on the scale of BRI. It is a good announcement but you don’t look at the proposal and say, oh my god, the world can’t live without it,” Mr Khanna told the BBC.
You can see why.
China has a 10 year head-start with BRI with total investments under the initiative crossing an eye popping $1 trillion this July. Over 150 countries have joined as partners, which as Mr Luthra writes has significantly expanded its geographical scope “from a regional to a near-global initiative.”
IMEC isn’t the first effort by the developed west to use infrastructure as a counter to contain China’s growing footprint.
The G7 and US launched a Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment in 2022, aiming to mobilize $600bn in global infrastructure projects by 2027. The Global Gateway is the EU’s answer to BRI.
Neither match its scale or ambition. However the fact that the past five years have witnessed a surge in these projects in response to China’s initiative is evidence that BRI has been a “global economic multiplier,” says Mr Khanna.
Some analysts caution against exclusively viewing IMEC through the lens of opposition to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), suggesting that such a binary perspective may not be fruitful.
Its formation gives a further boost to the ongoing trend of transactional partnerships, where countries engage in collaboration with multiple partners simultaneously. “Most countries these days tend to participate in multiple fora and alliances,” says Ravinder Kaur, a professor at the University of Copenhagen.
IMEC’s memorandum of understanding document is thin on detail but an action plan is expected in the next 60 days. As of date all it has done is map out the potential geography of a corridor.
Making it happen will be enormously complex. “I’d like to see an identification of key government agencies who will underwrite the investments, the capital each government will allocate, and the time frames, says Mr Khanna.
A new customs and trade architecture will also be need to be put in place to harmonise paperwork, he adds, giving the example of the Trans-Eurasian railway through Kazakhstan that passes through 30 countries. “That transit is seamless. You need clearances only at the beginning and end of the journey. We don’t have this with IMEC.”
Then there are also the obvious geopolitical complexities of navigating ties between partner countries such as the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia who often don’t see eye to eye. It wouldn’t take very much for tactical cooperation of this kind to go awry, say experts.
The IMEC will compete with the Suez Canal, the sea-level waterway in Egypt used to transport freight between Mumbai and Europe. “To the extent IMEC improves our relations with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, it will hurt relations with Egypt,” economist Swaminathan Aiyar wrote in his column for the Times of India.
Transport by sea through the Suez Canal is also cheaper, faster and considerably less cumbersome. “It may make excellent political sense, but it goes against all the tenets of transport economics,” Mr Aiyar adds.
But IMEC’s ambitions transcend the narrow scope of trade and economics to include everything from electricity grids to cybersecurity – building on conversations that have taken place in security forums like the Quad, points out Navdeep Puri, a former Indian ambassador to the UAE in a column for The National News.
“If the lofty ambitions outlined in New Delhi can become a reality, they would make a singular contribution to a safer, more habitable planet. For now, let’s live with that hope.”
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ReutersA pro-China candidate has won presidential elections in the Maldives, defeating an incumbent who had strengthened relations with India.
President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih accepted defeat in the run-off poll, congratulating his rival Mohamed Muizzu who won 54% of the vote.
Mr Muizzu, mayor of the capital Male, campaigned with the slogan “India out”.
Mr Solih will serve as caretaker president until his successor is inaugurated on 17 November.
In power since 2018, the 61 year old from the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) strengthened relations with India, with which Male has strong cultural and financial ties. He called it an “India-first” policy.
The Maldives have long been under India’s sphere of influence. Maintaining its presence there has given Delhi the ability to monitor a key part of the Indian Ocean.
Mr Muizzu, 45, from the Progressive Alliance coalition favours better relations with China.
China, with its rapidly expanding naval forces, wants access to such a strategically important location – something its rival India wants to prevent. Beijing is also keen to protect its energy supplies from the Gulf which pass through the area.
In the last decade, Delhi gave the Maldives two helicopters and a small aircraft. In 2021, the Maldivian defence force said about 75 Indian military personnel were based in the country to operate and maintain the Indian aircraft.
Soon after, the opposition began an “India out” campaign which demanded Indian security personnel leave the Maldives.
Before Mr Solih, Abdulla Yameen from the Progressive Party (PPM) was president from 2013 to 2018. During his term, the Maldives moved closer to China and joined President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Yameen is currently serving a 11-year prison term for corruption, barring him from contesting this year’s vote.
Hundreds of supporters of Mr Muizzu gathered in front of the PPM headquarters to celebrate victory.
Mr Muizzu, born in 1978, holds a PhD in civil engineering from the University of Leeds in the UK. He entered politics in 2012 as minister of housing.
When Yameen came to power, the minister kept his post and signed off on some huge projects, such as a $200m (£164m) bridge that connects Male with the international airport that is situated on a different island.
In 2021, he won mayoral elections in Male, a first for the PPM.
MALE: The Maldives began voting Saturday (Sep 30) to decide their next president in a referendum on whether to hitch their fortunes to China or India, both vying for influence in the tropical paradise. Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, 61, faces an uphill battle to secure a second mandate after a termContinue Reading
Getty ImagesHui Ka Yan, the founder and chairman of Chinese property giant Evergrande, was once Asia’s richest person.
The 64-year-old, who is also known as Xu Jiayin, rose from a humble upbringing to head a vast business empire. His fortune was estimated at $42.5bn (£34.8bn) when he topped the list of Asia’s wealthiest people compiled by Forbes magazine in 2017.
Now he is being investigated over suspected “illegal crimes” as his company teeters under the weight of $300bn (£245.4bn) of debt.
Born into a poor rural family in 1958, his early childhood was shaped by the Great Leap Forward – Mao Zedong’s campaign to rapidly industrialise a Chinese economy reliant on agriculture triggered a famine that killed millions.
Mr Hui was raised by his grandmother in a village in central Henan province after his mother died of sepsis when he was just eight months old.
After graduating from university in 1982, he spent the next decade working as a steel technician before becoming a salesman for a property developer in the city of Guangzhou in southern China. It was there that he founded Evergrande in 1996.
The company expanded rapidly as China’s economy boomed by borrowing large amounts of money.
“He was an example of how anybody can become rich if you’re smart enough and if you work hard enough,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, the chief economist for Asia-Pacific at French investment bank Natixis.
Mr Hui, who has been a Communist Party member for more than three decades, was elected in 2008 as a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The elite group of government officials and business leaders is the country’s top advisory body.
A photograph of him at a party conference wearing a gold-buckled belt made by the French luxury label Hermès went viral on social media in 2012, earning him the nickname “belt brother”.
A rapidly expanding Evergrande raised $9bn in its 2009 Hong Kong stock market listing.
That growth was then turbo-charged by by Mr Hui’s “maximum leverage” approach, according to Jackson Chan from financial markets research platform Bondsupermart.
“Evergrande grew fast but even faster after he [Mr Hui] made friends with a group of [the] richest real estate tycoons in Hong Kong and the company was listed on Hong Kong Stock Exchange,” Mr Chan says.
“He received numerous support from these friends as they bought a lot of Evergrande’s stocks and bonds to help the company grow.”
Evergrande’s business model was to borrow large sums and then aggressively sell apartments that had not even been built. The group’s real estate unit currently has more than 1,300 projects in more than 280 cities in the country, according to its website.
Mr Hui’s business empire grew to encompass far more than just property and now includes operations including wealth management, electric car making and food and drink manufacturing.
It also has a majority stake in what was once China’s top football team, Guangzhou football club.
In 2020, Beijing brought in new rules to control the amount of money owed by big real estate developers.
The new measures led Evergrande to offer its properties at major discounts in an attempt to keep the business afloat. But it is now struggling to pay its debts.
The crisis has seen its stock market valuation shrink by 99% and Mr Hui’s fortune plummet to $3.2bn.
Evergrande suspended trading of its shares in Hong Kong as Mr Hui became the latest Chinese billionaire to find himself being investigated by authorities.
Some experts see a link between China’s wealthy elite coming under official scrutiny and President Xi Jinping’s Common Prosperity policy, which aims to reduce income inequality.
Mr Hui is “the symbol of extreme wealth especially with his flamboyant lifestyle, flying around the world in his private jet,” Dexter Roberts, Director of China affairs at the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana, told the BBC.
“Xi has made it clear that extreme wealth, especially when displayed publicly like Hui, isn’t good for the economy and the society,” Mr Roberts said, adding that Mr Hui was “seen as a natural target”.
Although there has been no official statement yet on the investigation of Mr Hui, an opinion piece in the state-run Global Times newspaper indicated that the interests of ordinary citizens were being prioritised.
“Minimising homebuyers’ losses at all costs should be the next biggest consideration in dealing with the Evergrande crisis,” Hu Xijin, the paper’s former chief editor wrote.
“We should deal with the matter strictly and in accordance with the law, keep the public informed, and look at how to support the company’s customers as much as possible,” he added.
Financial bookmarks can be very illuminating in assessing a market’s readiness for global primetime. Such is the case with JPMorgan Chase & Co adding Indian debt to its emerging market indices.
The Wall Street icon plans to do just that in June 2024, perhaps drawing US$40 billion into South Asia’s biggest economy – and at a moment when investors are buzzing that India is a ready alternative to a slowing China.
Perhaps most interesting, though, is that India will enter JPMorgan’s benchmark just days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaches his 10-year mark in power. On May 26, 2014, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party returned to power with a bold economic reform agenda.
The question, nearly a decade on, is whether the Modi era has whipped India into shape as a more innovative, productive and prosperous investment destination. And it’s here where investors rushing India’s way may be more disappointed than fulfilled.
In the Modi era, India is really a tale of two economies. The macroeconomy is going gangbusters with its China-beating growth rate and stampede of tech “unicorn” startups juicing the stock market. At the micro level, though, India is more cautionary tale than emerging-market exemplar.
At the BRICS summit in New Delhi earlier this month, Modi declared that “soon, India will become a US$5 trillion economy.” That would make India’s economy bigger than Japan’s.
And clearly, India is winning friends in high places. As JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon views it, the surge in optimism on India is warranted.
Speaking at a forum in London this week, Dimon said: “Look at this conference. I remember eight years ago or nine years ago we started with 50 or 75 clients. Now it’s 700 investors around the world, 100 companies presenting. I think the optimism of India is actually completely justified.”
Morgan Stanley strategist Min Dai notes that its inclusion in indices like JPMorgan’s “could be a push factor to prompt foreign inflows into India and foreign investors are likely to be more active in the Indian fixed-income market.” This is, he says, a “milestone event.”
Economist Robert Carnell at ING Bank says “It remains to be seen whether the JPMorgan decision will spur others, such as the FTSE Russell to follow suit. Either way, as well as supporting the Indian rupee, the decision should also help to reduce government bond spreads over US Treasuries, and also pass through into lower corporate bond rates.”
Not surprisingly, Modi is working overtime to capitalize on this India-rising optimism by seeking to lure multinational companies disillusioned with China. The recent move by Beijing to order employees at some state-linked firms to cease using Apple’s iPhones has been a gift to Modi’s commerce ministry.
India, meanwhile, grew a China-topping 6.1% in the three months ended March year on year. Asia’s third-biggest economy grew an even more impressive 7.2% for the fiscal year through March as its post-pandemic recovery drove consumption.
As China becomes more isolated amid “de-risking” and “decoupling” calls, and Washington and its allies in Asia seek a new emerging-market growth champion, Modi’s $3.4 trillion economy is keen to step up.
This year, the International Monetary Fund sees India contributing more than 15% of global growth. While still less than half of China’s 35%, India’s global clout is clearly growing.
As Modi was happy to highlight at the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa — summit, India finds itself in something of a geopolitical sweet spot just as Global South nations come into their own. This gives Modi a unique degree of leverage to play China’s interests against America’s.
This, just as India surpasses China to become the most populous nation, a reminder that Modi’s demographics are healthier than Xi’s. China’s Communist Party is grappling with record youth unemployment, reported as high as 21% until authorities banned future readouts on the figure.
But India’s outlook also depends on Team Modi making the most of India’s so-called “demographic dividend.” If New Delhi doesn’t create enough good-paying jobs, it will face a demographic nightmare rather than daydream.
It’s here where India’s micro policies lag the heady exuberance at the macro level. Look no further than the lack of confidence among currency traders selling the rupee. India’s inflation troubles and the government’s shaky fiscal position have rupee trends defying economists’ optimism.
“Foreign investors have poured $16 billion into equities this year, viewing India as a haven amid rising US rates and economic stresses in China,” notes analyst Udith Sikand at Gavekal Research.
“They have been well rewarded, with stock markets hitting record highs. But the prospect of a weaker rupee, in addition to the outlook for elevated global interest rates, makes the risk-reward proposition on Indian equities less favorable in coming months,” Sikand says.
True, Sikand adds, the inclusion of Indian government debt in JPMorgan’s benchmark index “should prove a watershed event, turbocharged by investors’ need to find alternatives to China.” He adds that India’s “bond market is both deep enough to absorb much larger flows and remains largely untapped.”
Yet “the flip side of greater foreign participation in domestic bond markets is that policymakers will have less room to maneuver, particularly as the twin deficits widen,” Sikand says.
“Still, as long as the Modi government does not give in to its populist instincts in the run-up to elections next year, bond yields are likely to fall as investors look to front-run the expected flood of passive inflows.”
It’s a big “if,” though. Another worry: India’s infrastructure and competitiveness in manufacturing lag China’s by magnitudes that are impossible to dismiss.
Modi’s ambitious “Make in India” push has only increased the flow of Chinese imports, leading to a marked deterioration in New Delhi’s trade balance. Along with rubbing currency traders the wrong way, this dynamic complicates hopes that multinationals might shift supply chains India’s way.
Other warning signs include rising inequality, partly thanks to Covid-19 fallout and inflation running at 15-year highs. Kunal Kundu at Societe Generale speaks for many economists in cautioning that “consumer fatigue” could soon cause giant headwinds.
Modi’s decade in power hasn’t sufficiently addressed many of the challenges he pledged to tackle in 2014. They include poor infrastructure, inequality, chronic youth unemployment, high levels of private debt, a deterioration in balance of payments dynamics and underwhelming household demand.
This has opposition parties ready to pounce. At least two dozen minority parties are joining forces to sideline Modinomics in favor of a more inclusive model. Along with inflation, opposition forces are drawing attention to worsening religious violence and assaults on press freedom.
Here, it’s worth considering another worrisome bookend: the number 85. This is India’s current ranking in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.
It’s the exact same ranking India achieved in 2014 — and fully 20 rungs behind 65th-ranked China. So, while Modi’s tenure hasn’t unleashed a bull market in graft, it hasn’t been a golden era for good governance either.
That helps explain why nearly a decade after Modi took national power S&P Global still rates India just one notch above junk at BBB.
Modi’s appeal, of course, derived from the folk-hero reputation he cultivated during his 13-year stint running the western state of Gujarat. From 2001 to 2014, Modi’s local government routinely generated faster gross domestic product (GDP) rates than the national average.
Gujarat often also boasted greater productivity and innovation, less bureaucracy, better infrastructure and lower levels of corruption. A major reason why voters returned the BJP to power in 2014 was in the hope that Modi would replicate the “Gujarat model” nationwide.
Modi’s team did put some early wins on the scoreboard. It opened some key sectors to increased overseas investment, including aviation and defense. It implemented a national goods-and-services tax. It projected a sense of confidence as a startup boom put India in headlines for all the right reasons.
Yet Modi has often read more from the playbook of Shinzo Abe than Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan.
In 2012, Japanese Prime Minister Abe took power pledging epochal reforms, channeling the supply-side revolutions that Thatcher unleashed on the UK and Reagan on the US.
Abe did manage to improve corporate governance. That, over time, drove the Nikkei Stock Average to 30-year highs. Mostly, though, Abe relied on hyper-aggressive Bank of Japan easing to revive growth. This trickle-down economics scheme failed to boost wages or rekindle innovation.
The parallels between Abenomics and Modinomics are clear enough. In certain ways, though, the Modi era in India has been far more damaging than Abe’s 1980s-influenced economic exploits.
Take India’s press freedom score, which has plunged precipitously. In 2014, its 140th ranking out of 180 nations on Reporters Without Borders’ tables was poor enough. Today India ranks 161st, trailing Cambodia by 14 rungs and 11 behind Pakistan.
If Team Modi were serious about reducing opacity and leveling playing fields, it would embrace a free-wheeling press as an ally in raising India’s competitive game. The Modi era has dragged India in the other direction.
Making this dynamic all the more awkward: this year’s scandal involving the Adani Group, led by billionaire Gautam Adani, whose alleged close ties to Modi date back to their Gujarat days.
Short seller Hindenburg Research accused the conglomerate of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud,” spotlighting cracks in India’s financial sector.
In February, billionaire George Soros exacerbated the storm by saying that the Adani crisis “will significantly weaken” Modi’s “stranglehold” on New Delhi politics. In Soros’ telling, Modi and Adani are “close allies” with “intertwined” fates.
BJP officials pushed back, arguing that Soros has “now declared his ill intentions to intervene in the democratic processes” in India.
Weak corporate governance is raising concerns about the health of India’s business environment. It also collides with Modi-era efforts to spotlight India’s giant industrial conglomerates, many of which might not be ready for global primetime.
Another bookmark worth noting: In the latest financial year, foreign direct investment inflows fell for the first time in a decade. The 16% drop to $71 billion would seem at odds with a booming economy winning new converts around the globe as the new China.
It speaks to the need for Modi’s team to accelerate efforts to increase domestic and international competition, build trust in New Delhi’s regulatory institutions, scrap policies that support national champions and curb protectionist impulses.
If his “Make in India” strategy is to gain traction, Modi must rethink tariffs on foreign components. Though intended to advantage domestic supply chains, the protectionist policy dents India’s argument that it’s open for business.
Modi’s government must also invest more in human capital. One in five of India’s 1.4 billion people is under 25. Increased funding must go toward improving financial literacy, education and training. Modi’s team must delve into the economic effects of societal norms.
In a March report, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development argued that “in South Asia hundreds of millions of people – not just in India – are affected by caste-discrimination. Caste systems divide people into unequal and hierarchical social groups. Those at the bottom of hierarchy are considered lesser human beings. In the business and work-sphere caste-discrimination affects workers.”
To be sure, Modi has racked up some notable victories, notes analyst Alexis Serfaty at the Eurasia Group consultancy. He says that “India’s policy ecosystem seems to have finally found the right mix to enable rapid manufacturing growth.” Powered by broader geopolitical trends” and Modi government policies, “electronics manufacturing has grown 275% over the past eight years.”
But “while the overarching policy environment at both the central and state levels is realigning toward enabling export-led manufacturing growth, industry executives are still concerned about long-term policy stability, given India’s checkered history,” Serfaty says.
“The Modi government has assured investors that it has the political capital, and the policy will stay the course. Still, realigning bureaucratic behavior and state-level political views to support long-term growth will pose a big challenge in the medium term,” he adds.
And for global investors about to pour $40 billion into Indian debt, a reminder that Modinomics hasn’t transformed the economy as much as hoped and as much as needed to be the new China.
Follow William Pesek on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @William Pesek
Now that the writers’ strike in the US is over, I can pitch my script for that blockbuster version of Cervantes’ classic crying out to be made: Don Quixote in the White House, updating windmills to stray weather balloons, complete with paranoia and mustache-twirling villains.
(Oh. Democrats don’t do facial hair?) I’ll be putting the donkey into Don Quixote. Maybe work in a nice tune. Hey, Madonna can sing the theme song, give Ted Nugent a break.
We got a red-hot A story – the trials and tribulations of Don Quixote, our hero in his sunset years running the world, getting into scrapes, his mentis not quite as compos as it should be.
He’s an elderly, forgetful, stumbling protagonist, just like the original Don. No, not that one (he’s busy right now – more trial than tribulation), I mean DQ, the lovable old guy from the story.
Character flaws? Plenty. Regrets? He has a few. But then again, too few for the press to mention. A man of mystery, there’s a touch of of something untoward in the background keeping us hooked. Did he? Didn’t he? Loves his family. A fool for his reprobate son who, in a hilarious reversal of everything else in his eyes, he sees with a glowy halo and angel wings. Did I mention character flaws?
The B-story is a light romance set in the world’s seat of power. He loves Xi but the sweethearts fall out over a misunderstanding that Xi wants to ditch him and run off with Europe. We open with DQ defending his squeeze: “China is going to eat our lunch? C’mon, man.” Just to show he was lucid once so mebbe, the movie promises, we can get him there again.
What’s at stake? Only the survival of the entire world.
After he falls for this comical misapprehension, the rest of the movie is spent struggling to restore equilibrium against a spiral of decline. The A and B stories intersect and turn each other in a rising crescendo of mistake after mishap after disaster until they come together at the end, the problem resolved in an explosive payoff – Ka-boom!– and we all live happily in the hereafter.
Ker-ching!
At the start, a choir is telling him, “Now play nice.” OK, they’re minor characters: we kill them off in a car crash in Act One. The other, the devil in his ear, is dragging him to hell in a handcart – we’ll give that one a British accent.
Heh! He commits a series of boo-boos so comically absurd, they’ll have the audience in stitches. Literally. Crimea river and pass the cookies.
With all this screaming hysteria going on, this is where the weather balloon comes in. We know it’s innocent. Xi knows it’s innocent. Senior American General Milley knows it’s innocent and says so, loudly and several times. But still DQ shoots it down. “No, don’t, baby, you’ll only look silly,” Xi pleads with him but, Grrr, he sets his Raptors on to it and shoots that bad boy down.
As if that’s not enough, there are two massive snakes he has to fight in an exciting sequence of subterfuge, sabotage and derring-do. Actually, they’re only oil pipelines, not the mythical serpents of his imagination. Being the gentleman that he is, though, he won’t take credit for decapitating them but pushes Sancho Panza up front to take a bow.
Is it a misunderstanding? Senility? An over-eagerness to grab his former love’s attention? Who knows? Soon, every bozo is jumping on the spy-balloon bandwagon, radiating in intensifying circles of comic horror tragedy.
Across the world, every two-bit, dime-a-dozen demagogue, any politician or public figure in need of a reputation cleanser or booster realizes they can play the China “Get out of jail free” card, ready made for every grade ‘n’ shade of no-goodniks.
In Great Britain, there’s fun-and-frolics in deflecting their flaming nosedive on to China. “Human rights” is the watchword for the biggest Empire ever (except for the US). Reds in the bed, spies in Parliament, no charges in court.
They ban Chinese teachers, replacing them with Taiwanese teachers who don’t have Mandarin as first language, because “spying.” In a call-back to Freedom Fries, they’re only allowed to teach Democracy Mandarin. Ho fun noodles are now no-fun noodles because everything Chinese is a spy. And Britain should know. As the longest-lived, oldest spy network in history, they wrote the book.
Not just Johnny English. All DQ’s little friends get in on the act. Nazis in Parliament? The Russians made us do it. Running away with tech? The Chinese stole our IP. A $33 trillion debt? It’s China that’s collapsing.
So, after promising his lost love, “No, honey, I don’t want to contain you. Let your spirit run wild, fly free,” we realize what he really wants is to put a leash and a muzzle on her and take her for walks.
The DQ gets a catch-phrase: “Not on my watch.” Or “Oh, no, better not let peace break out.” Or how about, “Xi’s a dictator.” Or is that too bitter?
We’ve established him as likable, and earned him sympathy by making him good at his job. OK, he fails at that, but he tries – a goldmine of comic relief. As his inner motivation changes places with his outer skin, transforming him into the villain, we recognize the human dilemma: that we are all a seething mess of contradictions and confusion. Especially him! Big Reveal: he was his own antagonist all along!
So: we need an actor who can capture the full range of his complexity.
I was thinking Chuck.
No, “cold, dead fingers” Chuck. Heston. Ben Hur. Remind me of the doll when we cast the sequel.
Waddya mean Chuck’s dead? He’s playing the president – how will they tell?
If we strapped Chuck as Dead El Cid to the back of a charging steed and slapped it into the battlefront, we can do that with Chuck as DQ. CGI is your friend.
Too far-fetched? Nah! Art imitates Life imitates centuries of Art and eons of BS.
What the audience comes to realize at the end is, this is the movies. It’s all projection.
This script is perfect – who can we get to rewrite it?
PUBLISHED : 28 Sep 2023 at 12:27
A woman, who had opened a mule bank account for a scam gang linked to a family tragedy in Samut Prakan in August, was arrested at the Aranyaprathet immigration checkpoint in Sa Kaeo upon her return from Cambodia on Wednesday afternoon.has been arrested at Aranyaprathet immigration checkpoint in Sa Kaeo after she returned from Cambodia.
Immigration investigators, local police and paramilitary rangers arrested Jirapinya Naeyued, 22, at the inbound passenger terminal shortly after crossing the border through Ban Khlong Luk checkpoint from Cambodia’s Poipet town, Pol Col Rung Thongmon, chief of Sa Kaeo immigration police, said on Thursday morning.
The arrest followed information that a suspect who had opened a mule bank account for a scam gang linked to a tragic incident in Samut Prakan, where three family members were murdered, was returning to Thailand through Ban Khlong Luk checkpoint. The suspect had been involved with the scam gang operating in Poipet.
Ms Jirapinya was wanted under an arrest warrant issued by the Samut Prakan provincial court on charges of collusion in fraud, inputting false information into a computer system that caused damage to people and participating in transnational criminal activities.
During questioning, the woman admitted to being the individual named in the arrest warrant. She was initially detained by immigration officers before being handed over to Bang Kaeo police in Samut Prakan for further legal proceedings.
Earlier, deputy national police chief Pol Gen Surachate Hakparn said the scam gang was responsible for a family tragedy in Samut Prakan. In this incident, a man killed his wife and two sons at their home in Bang Phli district on Aug 28. The man, devastated after his wife fell victim to the gang and incurred a substantial debt, unsuccessfully attempted to take his own life.
On Aug 29, another woman, who opened a bank account for the same scam gang, was arrested as she returned to Thailand from Cambodia through a border checkpoint in Sa Kaeo.
Earlier this month, four Thai people, including three women, were arrested in Poipet for allegedly making the scam calls that resulted in the family tragedy in Samut Prakan.
