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In this analysis of Keir Starmer's speech at the Labour conference inLiverpool in October 2023 The Guardian looks at the scale of the task ahead. Starmer faces the task of the 1997 style decline of public services, the need to channel the Harold Wilson mission to modernize the economy in a time of change, and the Clement Atlee 1945 imperative to build a new Britain "out of the trauma of collective sacrifice." Starmer told delegates- "In 2024 it will have to be all three." Such is the task facing Britain and Starmer in 2024. Something similar is taking place in the US with Biden and Modi in India in 2024, in three of the largest democracies in the world, and two of the oldest.

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The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 was a point at which the country could have made a search for peace iwth the help of foreign powers India, Pakistan, U.S. which supported the mujhadeen and Russia. The missed opportunity under Reagan led to 40 years of uninterrupted war at immense human cost to the people of Afghanistan, and financial and human cost to the U.S. with its involvement in the country's wars. A lecturer at the University of Amsterdam looks at the missed opportunities from the past for a peaceful settlement with the help of foreign powers. This happens as the Taliban meet in Moscow with other parties in the dispute.  A missed perspective relates to the origins of the problem in the India- Pakistan conflict and the history of Afghanistan in the colonial period. Afghanistan was seen as a buffer by Pakistan after the 1971 war with India that created Bangladesh from the former Eastern part of Pakistan. As a result both the Russians and the Americans were embroiled in wars and passions that had little to do with ideologies and  more with feudalism, factions and religious conflicts. Much national treasure in human life and lost opportunities for development at home on the side of foreign powers was the cost of the involvement.      ...

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China faces risk of a surge inthe coronavirus in June 2021. The area in and around Guangzhou appears to be seriously affected. The city tested almost its entire population of 18.7 million between June 6 Sunday and June 8 Tuesday. This report shows pictures of a deserted Beijing airport, strict restrictions on foreign travel. The SinoPharm vaccine effectiveness against the Delta variant in India and UK is unknown. The government is locking down entire neighborhoods rather than entire cities or provinces.  As the risks of the Delta variant and other new variants increases most of the population even in the US and Europe have either no dose or one dose. Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia show the Astra Zeneca vaccine effectiveness with one dose at only 30%, only after two weeks following the second dose does the vaccine effectiveness reach about 70%. The population of China and India are so large that much larger parts of the population remain unvaccinated. In China with 1.3 billion people and even if the figure of 800 million doses stated by the government is accepted- it could be an overestimate as the US has only managed 300 million doses with many vaccines- most of the population is unprotected. Vaccine skepticism is high in China making vaccination an uphill task. SinoPharmvaccine is not as effective as Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca, or Covaxin vaccines, making the task even more of an uphill kind. ...

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With so much coverage of other aspects of China,  to really understand China and Xi Jinping one has to understand the rural urban situation in China. Xi's long experience as a teenager in the cultural revolution of Mao was in rural areas, the 8 years he spent there till the age of 22, as this report by James Areddy with help of Yijun, Cheng and Qi aptly shows. It traces the shift and mass migration to cities starting with Deng's modernization drive in 1979. This shift of labor to city and town factories as the U.S. and Europe shifted factories and production to China is the story of our times. How it has both helped and hurt China and how it has become the dominant issue of our times, and a lesson for India in the middle of its own modernization and shift of labor to cities. It has helped China modernize with the shift during 1979 to 2016 and run into a road block with president Trump leading a movement in the U.S. of people most hurt by the outsourcing of factories and production to China. It was not meant to be this way. Yet the shift also led to ripping up the fabric of communities and towns with loss of factories across America over three decades. Because China is a large country the impact was huge decade after decade, leading to a backlash against lost jobs in the U.S. and in Europe.  Xi Jinping has romantic view of rural China as he spent 7 years in Shanxi province rural areas during the cultural revolution under Mao. During this period he toiled as part of farm labor alongside villagers which allowed him to get to know villagers and farmers in the countryside well, and formed his view of the world around him. As it is described in a description of the man in Chinese sources- "He arrived at the village as a slightly lost teenager and left as a 22 year old man determined to do something for the people."  China's system separated migrants from city dwellers not  giving same rights to better education, to schools and housing, and official documents separating the two, city dwellers and migrant populations from rural areas. As a result as China modernized and population shifted -shown here in excellent graphic charts over four decades- in 1979 from about 80% in rural areas and 20% in urban the shift goes to 50-50 by 2001. Today it is 40-60 with 60% in rural areas but a population of 40% suffering from severe inequalities and  low incomes. So that GDP per capita of $10,000 for China is deceiving. The real incomes in average disposable income is about $4300 in urban and $1700 in rural area, according to National Bureau of Statistics. High school education is hard enough to get in rural areas, medical care is very basic and the $1700 would hardly get a room in low income housing in a large town in China, says premier Li Keqiang. Keqiang did his masters thesis on urbanization and has studied this shift from his college days. Just as in Gandhi's India, Mao's China is the story of the villages, with 128,000 villages for 600 million people in Mr. Xi Jinping's anti-poverty drive. Hong Kong other issues have to be understood in the context of these concerns of China's leadership today- the sense that strong central leadership alone can keep the country together and bring a decent life to the people in the villages and in the countryside outside the cities.  Modernization of cities still set in the context of China's vast rural population and essential to its full uplift and progress. Xi has allocated $80 billion each year to bring roads, schools, medical facilities, and other amenities including electricity and modern heating. The idea now is to shift people back to the villages, find opportunities for jobs and livelihoods in farming, tourism with guesthouse facilities, and other occupations in the villages. The villages are being turned into attractive places to live one by one in this party drive and providing new enthusiasm and support for the party's efforts. India can learn from this experience in China. The western nations of the U.S. and Europe can no longer and will no longer undertake the wholesale shift of factories with loss of jobs to China or India to offer the prospect of bringing these countries to the kind of urbanization and overall prosperity of small nations like Japan and South Korea, which are a tiny fraction of the population of China and India+ Pakistan + Bangladesh. As a result China is changing strategy now with a return to some aspects of the informal economy in Chengdu with street peddlers and tiny retail, and return of migrants back to better built and improved villages in the countryside. A better life than in cities is possible this view says for people from these rural areas, if the rural areas are given modern facilities and construction and resources are allocated, job creation locally tackled. The villages can offer better air quality, better quality of life where villagers who earlier migrated to cities with ownership of land, when they are modernized with better roads and have better facilities for education, housing and healthcare, better amenities. The new approach is to strike a good balance for urbanization, by modernizing and investing in villages and small towns, so that cities can cope and overall life can be better than with mass migration and wholesale urbanization. It is also a balance that works well for the U.S. and Europe which can redirect manufacturing to their home regions as part of a better distributed and balanced supply chain than the one that was unwittingly built over the last three decades.    ...

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Germany's DW.com says in this report- "However, economists have pointed out that the US benefits from having large trade imbalances with the rest of the world, as the dollar is used in most trade, and offers major tailwind effects to the US economy." Which economists one must ask? Most of these economists had turned their back on the working people in factories in America, on their wages turned into a downward spiral, on their jobs, their factories lost for three decades. Today the American people have a sense of the true cost of this colossal failure to protect American workers and small towns across America depending on manufacturing. The pandemic exposed the risks of supply chain shocks and inflation by overly concentrating manufacturing in China.  The US has 1 trillion in trade deficits each year and it is completing the destruction of manufacturing in the US. Half of this is with China as China exports through Vietnam and Mexico, third countries, in addition to 295 billion dollars of trade imbalance the US has with China. China, Mexico, Canada and Vietnam are the largest offenders. No country can long endure with such a loss of its manufacturing base. The US Navy itself is in danger without the manufacturing to compete with China that has taken up over 50% of shipbuilding, and soon will not be able to protect the free world if these types of economists and self serving German or other foreign interests drive a false narrative. Without the US Navy in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans no one is safe, not Germany, not the EU, not India or the rest of the world. ...

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Entergy is still short of the over half a billion dollars needed to close each of the aging nuclear plants in Vermont and at Indian Point in New York.

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India's Supreme Court criticizes Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for failing to respond for more than a year to a request to investigate allegations about improper awarding of telecom licenses. Telecom licenses were sold by the government in 2008 to politically connected companies, at rates far below the market rates. The Auditor General's report showed that licenses were awarded in a way that "lacked transparency and fairness."

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Canada's Carney gives up on USMCA renegotiated deal with US as he makes deal with China Jan 2026. No date is set for USMCA renegotiation. Carney stepped up the criticism of the US and suggested middle powers find their way by makiing deals of their own. This has drawn criticism from DJT, Luttnick and Scott Bessent, the Commerce Secretary and Treasury Secretary. Canada's economy has some fragile points in its dependence on the US and this may not be the wise course of action for Canada at this time. Germany, Italy, are meeting on February 12 and Europe may follow a different course of action of working with the US, India is close to a trade deal, so that Carney's and other remarks about going to partner with China at a gathering as isolated as Davos is from the real world may be very counterproductive.

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Prime minister Modi spends the morning of his birthday at the Kunho National Park in Madhya Pradesh, a region known for its tigers. The cheetah population had disappeared in India and in this park over years of poor park management. Cheetahs were flown in from Namibia in Africa to Gwalior by special plane to give the cheetahs a new chance in their old habitat. Biodiversity is considered a big part of climate change action, in restoring habitat for animals in national parks a similar goal is achieved for restoring national parks.

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Addressing the UN General Assembly in a virtual setting Mr. Trump tells delegates that China should be held accountable for certain actions in letting the coronavirus pandemic spread. He included the denial by China of human to human transmission very early before Feb-March, and its allowing Chinese flights to go overseas when it had completely banned flights domestically. He said flights were allowed to leave China after the virus spread from Wuhan even after Mr. Trump banned flights from China to the U.S. This spread the virus from China to Europe and to America.  Mr. Trump says the WHO is controlled by China. And this happened after foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and other foundations partly replaced the strong role played by the U.S. government at the world health agency during the post war period maintaining strong U.S. and European oversight in the earlier period. The lack of cooperation by China to let American experts into Wuhan immediately in January played a role in delaying the U.S. getting a first hand look at the coronavirus at the epicentre. Instead a 2-3 week delay left the U.S. Europe and India unprepared for the speed and havoc caused.  The only way to tackle the coronavirus was with speed and that speedy response was doubly needed because Europe and the U.S. had no recent experience with epidemics. Even India and rest of Asia, Latin America, Africa have no experience with this type of transmission and spread making time absolutely critical.  This speed was affected because China and the WHO acted as stumbling blocks in this view of what happened. The result was that in past pandemics were fought together, this pandemic was fought on a country by country basis, a bad precedent. ...

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China is increasing use of domestic coal and reducing Australian coal imports in an effort to increase energy security and become self sufficient in coal. Spot price of thermal coal used to generate electricity is expected to drop by 39% in 2019. Coking coal used for steel production will decline by 38% as China uses more costly local coal and the steel industry in Europe, India and the U.S. lowers production with lower coal demand. The world consumed less coal in 2019 over 2018. Largely from less coal used in electricity generation which dropped by 2.5%.

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Alexander Freund of DW.com looks at the BRICs conference in Xiamen, China, and says its members are all facing serious problems at home. China's growth has slowed, and it faces problems with large debt, need to reorient the economy away from dependence on exports, and a bubble in real estate markets. Russia and Brazil are both hit by drop in oil and commodities prices, and Brazil's ruling elite faces corruption charges. South Africa's economy under president Zuma faces problems of mismanagement of the economy and corruption. Only India says Freund, is the bright light in this group. The Modi government in India is working on removing barriers to growth such as bureaucratic hurdles, unification of tax scheme through the new unified GST for the whole country, and efforts to attract foreign investment. In many ways the BRICs has become a thing of the past as China focusses on its own Belt and Road Initiative and tackles its internal problems. The border dispute between India and China at the time of the BRICs conference in Xiamen shows a lack of policy agreement on economic and development priorities between the two major countries in that group. This had the effect of reducing whatever impact BRICs had in the past. The term originated at an American investment bank and it appears to be an odd grouping of countries today. ...

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This report in DW.com presents a situation where supply of oil runs out as demand way exceeds supply as shale oils in US are depleted, and no new reserves are found. A story in WSJ last week reports that the salty water from shale oil extraction is injected back into reservoirs at a rate that creates serious problems in the Permian Basian of the US including East Texas. The IEA forecast in 2026 shows about 97 million b/d of production and demand slightly exceeding this in both 2030 and 2050 which would suggest defossilization has not taken place. Yet the US pullout from defossilization under DJT is sure to be reversed by future governments in as short as 3 years, and the current DJT policy is simply a response to the cost of living concerns of the majority of Americans. The scenario that fossil fuels will be required forever is promoted by the oil companies and by OPEC+ including Russia. But this situation will reverse as the cost of living crisis and the low wages and incomes, loss of factory jobs, low savings, health care inflation, is tackled under the DJT administration and the US economy becomes stronger with lower inflation.  This scenario of  steady oil demand can be reversed if China and India and Europe push ahead with renewable energy and technological change as is happening today, and will not be seriously impacted when the US joins the battle with its renewable energy push in 2028. This is not just an optimistic scenario, it is a balanced one as private industry in the US will sense this and move ahead with development of new technologies for renewable energy so as not to fall behind and to pioneer on their own. That is the history of innovation in the US for the last 100 years and will not change. ...

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The instruments on board the Orbiter for Chandrayan 2, India's Moon mission, will be enabling much of the scientific work. The Orbiter is functioning well and will be there for 7.5 years providing critical scientific data on this side of the moon, even though the Vikram Lander did not function as planned.

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President Goodluck Jonathan as "Mr. Clean" aroused many of the same hopes now aroused by the election of Buhari as president of Nigeria. Under Goodluck Jonathan Nigeria's foreign reserves declined from $50 billion to $33 billion, and there is $1 billion in the sovereign wealth fund. About $20 billion in pilfering of state funds was reported by the Central Bank of Nigeria, but no action was taken by Jonathan. Indians may pride themselves on a better performance, yet prime minister Singh of India, seen as "Mr. Clean," allowed auctioning of telecom licenses in the second term, that had to be cancelled because of corruption. Throughout emerging markets not just in oil producing countries, poverty remains entrenched, because funds that should go into infrastructure and services are misused, which creates a disincentive for foreign investment, further adding to the problems in these countries. India and Nigeria are the two fastest growing countries in the planet, and the unspoken fear is that the demographic dividend with so many young people will be wasted by corrupt and inefficient management of the economy and resources of the two countries. The time lost in the last years of the Singh administration and the four years of the Jonathan administration will never be regained, the hopes of millions of young people are dashed again and again, and the goodwill of Europe and the U.S. eager to participate with the latest technologies in the development of the two countries, as they have done in China, is wasted....

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Ashwini Bhide, Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation's managing director has provided extraordinary leadership to the organization building India's most advanced Metro. Here she describes the new island concept incorporated in the rail platforms. About 1.7 million passengers will use this line daily, the Colaba-Bandra- Seepz Metro line.She says at each station 20,000 square metres of space has been created with this innovative island concept. There are 26 stations that are part of the Metro 3 line. Phase 1 begins by December 2023 from BKC to Aarey.

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WSJ report by Jon Emont warns that Indonesia has too much capital going into mineral resource develooment such as lithium and too little for development of a manufacturing bas as is happening in neighbors India and Vietnam. Indonesia lags far behind in manufacturing and as the supply chain shifts with its aging population there is need for policies that build the kind of infrastructure that is needed for foreign investment in factories in Indonesia that can employ its young people. Emont says just seeing that 60% of young people are employed in the informal sectors such as delivery and  transport is not the policy for a country with a large young demographic.

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The Jihad anti-Indian groups and the Pakistan Taliban in 2009, as they disrupt life in the Punjab province.

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Zelensky is going to Hiroshima to make his own case for support directly to all G7 leaders. The fact that G7 leaders are meeting in Japan also has significance as Japan unlike Europe with NATO faces Russian presence in its northern islands and China in the South China Sea and around Taiwan, North Korea, with only the American defense agreement in any conflict. Japan, Australia and India would want to see a clear end to the conflict in Eastern Europe that also sends a message that the status quo will be preserved on Taiwan and other issues in Asia. 

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India recorded 100,000 cases in one day on April 5, 2021. About half of these cases are in one state Maharashtra. Most of the cases are in about 6 states. Super spreader events such as cricket matches, weddings and social gatherings, political rallies with elections in states of Tamilnadu, Kerala, West Bengal, and Holi festival, are increasing the rate of infection. People have become lax in wearing masks and following the safety protocol after cases dropped to less than 15,000 for the whole country in February. This report says variants also are playing apart. Google Mobility Reports have shown that movements around retail areas dropped to about 80% below regular levels in the middle of the national lockdown in spring of 2020, and have come back up to about 20% below normal levels. When the winter surge did not happen, and the vaccination drive started in January in India people became less vigilant, allowing infections to increase. The vaccination drive is accelerating and open to everyone over 45 years. About 80 million doses have been given and the target is still for 300 million doses by August.  ...

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Comment by a former Tory leader, Sir Ian Duncan Smith, on negotiations with the European Union's Ursula Leyen, show how much the term sovereignty has become the word on which everything depends. Smith said on December 10 about the EU demands that Britain adhere to EU environmental and other rules after leaving the EU, "either Britain is sovereign, or it is not."  The word sovereign is discussed in this context in this Times analysis. The word comes from the old French word "sovereinete" during the period when the King's authority was being contested by feudal lords in 16th century France. The Oxford dictionary defines it as the authority of a state to govern itself, and to do this without outside interference. Tory leaders such as David Davis and others including Smith see this as meaning making your own laws. For the European Union to insist on its laws being primary and British law asked to conform with EU law making it secondary, would not only be outside interference, but also divided authority. Older French and British political philosophers Hobbes and Rousseau see this as divided authority. Even though the meaning has changed in modern times, the essential definition in the Oxford Dictionary remains undivided authority. Which is why these Tory leaders insist on the original definition as the right one. Behind the wrangling there is the sense among Leavers that Britain could do better in economic terms by setting its own direction, and doing business its way. How would a new economic power in India by 2030 affect Britain, would it create many more opportunities for Britain to grow because of its history and cultural ties. Could the relationship with the U.S. provide more opportunities for growth? What about French indifference and even disdain of Britain, does Britain have other options? Isn't the European Union merely a Franco-German alliance led politically by France and economically by Germany, and propelled by their three wars since 1871, with a bunch of European countries added in, and what has Britain got to do with it? Closer to the negotiations with Leyen there is also the question - isn't France trying to make certain with its demand that Britain not violate EU law, that Britain's ingenuity and free wheeling spirit outside the European Union does not let it grow faster than France? Where one gets Boris Johnson's immediate reply that Britain is better off not being stuck inside "EU's regulatory orbit."   At the other end of the world you have India with "Atman Nirbhar Bharat" calling for a self-reliant economy and taking the time for transitioning out of the trade relationship with China, at short term cost and long term advantage. Britain is closely watching India as it makes big strides in developing infrastructure, in renewable energy, and setting a bold vision for the future. Even France is mapping out a pathway to self-reliant economy as it looks at ways to bring production home after the pandemic. The pandemic has only reinforced the drive to be self-reliant. ...

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India decides not to join the China sponsored Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. India says it has significant issues in providing market access that would hurt Indian industry and agriculture. Prime minister Modi called it a question of conscience. All parties in India now oppose RCEP because of a fear of India being flooded with cheap Chinese imports. Japan and China, South Korea, all protected their local industry to give it catch up time to come up to western technological and production levels before allowing limited access to U.S. and Europe. The U.S. has reverted to protecting its industry from cheap Chinese imports by rejecting the Trans Pacific Agreement, showing that advanced industrial countries can also be hurt by cheap subsidized imports if they are not careful. Workers in less densely populated areas were worst affected statistics show. Lacking the voice of larger urban areas and tech industry they were ignored leading to the situation the U.S. and Britain face today of a working class set adrift. ...