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The BBC's Soutik Biswas takes a look at prime minister Modi as he seeks a second term in India's general election in May 2019.  Modi's first term is marked by exceptional development schemes, efforts to provide health insurance to 500 million people who cannot afford health insurance, bringing cooking gas cylinders to hundreds of millions of Indian women especially in rural areas, efforts to jumpstart building of infrastructure projects such as airports and metro subways. A new law for GST brings together the country with one tax instead of a hodge podge of state taxes for interstate commerce, something India needed for a long time but different governments failed to implement. A failed effort to fight corruption by removing from circulation large denomination currency notes reduced economic growth briefly during the first term, though it may have accelerated the shift to formal economy needed in the long run to improve tax revenues for development needs. One of the problems for the Modi government is how do you put a value on something like Swach Bharat Mission, the achievement of the goal of defecation free India in 2019 by 100% on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, getting rural toilets up from 38% to 100%. Development had to start from the bottom up. Similarly in a country where middle men took up a lot of the transfer to poor families of government assistance- the delivery to hundreds of millions their own bank accounts.- how do you put a value on something like this, but it is essential for development from the ground up. More than missiles or other talk this has got to be the spirit of any development oriented administration in India. Ground up, big goals and rapid delivery and an apology for the difficulties that the people suffered earlier for lack of this infrastructure. For both China and India it is the same - moving quickly to make up for 100 years of colonial rule and stagnation. The Modi government has responded to rural farmer distress with support for guaranteed crop prices. As more young voters vote for the first time an important factor is how the new voters see the years ahead under either a government led by the BJP or by a patchwork of parties as the previous ruling Congress party depends on alliances with other parties with conflicting agendas or lack of rapid development agendas. The Modi government sees itself as setting the stage for the next phase of development that would change the economy through new infrastructure development and create jobs in construction and engineering, and other areas. The criticism is that not enough jobs were created in the first term. Yet bold infrastructure development targets such as transformed the Chinese economy could be the answer for job creation. The question then is who is better qualified to launch that effort based on its track record. The Congress party's main criticism is that it has to make alliances with parties that could stall development with conflicting agendas. The other is that in the the 2 years leading to the election of Mr. Modi the Congress led government of Manmohan Singh was stalled due to corruption charges, leading to a lack of decisionmaking at the highest levels, and stalled efforts for the rapid development that could deliver the kind of jobs India needs.  Young Indians would like to see growth first and foremost, only something rivalling China's transformation over 2 decades can do this. It should be kept in mind that China poured more concrete in the 21st century so far than all the concrete the United States poured in the 20th century, according to The Guardian report. The question then is who is best qualified and in a position to deliver this needed economic miracle.    ...

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The resistance of some youth and younger people to social distancing and mask wearing guidelines and restrictions on gatherings, is one of the hard to understand behaviours in France, Florida, California and other parts of the western world. On one day alone 500,000 persons went to bars in Los Angeles County the day after after they reopened on June 20, according to some reports. The surge in California today is not something that just happened or fell suddenly from the sky.

In France after 72 cases were detected in the Quiberon peninsula the top regional official told about "the irresponsibility of young people vacationing or living here gathering in large numbers for festivities, ignoring the danger." Some of the people 18-25 years have with the risky behaviours increased the level of the dangers in this pandemic in many countries.

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Shaktikanta Das, a former secretary at the Department of Economic Affairs, is appointed as the new governor of the Reserve Bank of India, India's central bank, after Mr. Urjit Patel resigns. Mr. Patel's resignation follows the resignation of Mr. Rajan, after differences with the government over bank lending, and government policies. 

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Oil cuts of 2 million barrels a day or 2% of global oil production by OPEC Plus will lead to oil prices surging back up to levels seen earlier this year.  Weakening of oil demand with a slowdown in China and the EU was leading to a drop in oil prices from the highs reached this year. OPEC Plus which includes Russia is taking this step to keep oil prices high. 

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As German schools reopen few countries can match Germany's robust effort to do speedy testing and contact tracing to limit the spread of the virus.

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Mr. Pascal Soriot of Astra Zeneca says his company has signed agreements for production of 2 billion doses of the coronavirus vaccine being developed by Oxford University. He says manufacturing is starting now because "we want it to be as fast as possible." One of the deals is with Serum Institute of India, the other is with Bill Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for $750 million for CEPI and GAVI organizations which he supports. Mr. Soriot says the licensing agreement with Serum Institute is to supply one billion doses for low and middle income countries, with 400 million doses ready by end of 2020. He says Astra Zeneca is building supply chains across the world and so far has secured manufacturing capacity for 2 billion doses of the vaccine. Mr Soriot tells BBC that manufacturing vaccines on this scale is not an easy thing to do. He says that Astra Zeneca will not make a profit in production of these Oxford University developed vaccines. The U.S. has secured 300 million doses of the Oxford vaccine, and the UK 100 million doses.   ...

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The simple fact that other countries are subsidizing heavily the early period for building a new industry, as Taiwan has done in semiconductors, China in solar panels, and European governments in other industries, had serious industrial implications that were ignored for too long. US president Biden is following the same approach to bring back American leadership in manufacturing of semiconductors - supporting and nurturing American manufacturing. The unavoidable fact is that tens of billions of dollars are needed in risky bets on semiconductor manufacturing that is feasible only with the help and cooperation of governments. The choice is do this or lose leadership in one sector after another autos, semiconductors, renewable energy, and so on. What many fail to understand is that loss of this leadership leads inevitably to dependence, and loss of national sovereignty or economic security in some form or other. The path to leadership comes through gaining a storehouse of knowledge and technologies which makes it harder for new entrants including ones such as the US who have ceded this position of leadership completely as in semiconductors manufacturing. ...

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New pictures released by NHS shows vaccination queues at Salisbury Cathedral near London, England. UK has reached 50% of people vaccinated or 33 million people, with July 31, 2021, the target date for all adults to be vaccinated. It took 136 days to do this for 64% of adults. Other parts of Europe are still struggling.

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Colleges and universities are preparing to reopen and investing in the changes required for coronavirus prevention and control. Installing plexiglass, hand sanitizer stations, and ensuring availability of face masks on campus, arranging for labor to do the hourly wipedown of door knobs and for taking student temperatures, are steps colleges are taking to reopen. Some universities expect to reopen with 30% of classes in face to face settings.

Other planning includes installing upgraded ventilation systems, retrofit doors for motion sensor technology or foot operated openers. Also included infrared technology to detect temperatures and ultraviolet lighting disinfection technologies.

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Stellantis reports a loss of $750 million on sales of 41 billion euros for third quarter 2023. As a company with operations distributed evenly all over the world Stellantis suffered smaller losses than GM and Ford. GM's losses of profit were $1.3 billion and Ford's $800 million. From the point of view of workers who want a settlement for fair wages in a cost of living crisis keeping losses sustained by the car company to a minimum so that the industry as a whole does better is important, because when the companies do better so do workers and management. 

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How do you rebuild the country Ukraine after so much bombing and continuing missiles in droves hitting the country? Most of the $300 billion in Russian assets are frozen in Europe and Europe does not want to violate international law to take over the assets. Instead it chose to give Ukraine $3 billon loan based on the interest coming from the $300 billion frozen assets. This is not going to do much as over $100 billion will be needed. The US Biden administration has a different plan. It is to use the interest to finance a loan of $50 billion from the EU and the US.

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Of the 291 million migrant workers, people from rural areas who work in cities, only about 120 million have returned to work by Feb 14, according to China's Transport Minister. Workers can choose to stay in their home region or come back to the cities and face a 14 day quarantine before being allowed to go back to work. In Beijing the entire city of 22 million has a 14 day quarantine. Even if workers complete the quarantine factories may be closed.

This is likely to cut the growth rate by half from last years 6.4% to 3% for the 1st quarter GDP.

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How virus containment failed at its origin in Wuhan with politics overriding the agency setup to tackle pandemics. Dr George Gao an Oxford trained virologist was in charge of China's agency for pandemic disease control. This story shows how his effort ran in to problems from authorites in the province and other problems. Scientists in U.S. and Britain and in China say had the effort to control the virus started 3 weeks earlier by December 1, 95% fewer cases would have happened in China. With additional steps to control pandemic spread such as air and rail, auto travel restrictions this also means the virus could have been contained within China with only a limited and better controlled spread overseas. The bungled response in China shown here affected first China, then the whole world.

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Wuhan has announced  only 3 new confirmed cases since March 18. Restrictions on travel were lifted after a 77 day lockdown on the city, allowing inbound and outbound travel. Some restrictions on housing complexes have been tightened after reports of dozens of asymptomatic cases. The number of asymptomatic cases remains unknown. There is a fear of a second outbreak and authorites are staying vigilant, as it is feared that the first outbreak was worse than previously thought. Epidemiologists, intelligence agencies, and health experts believe the number of cases reported in Wuhan and China are undercounted. This could be they say a result of local officials wanting to present a better picture, of not enough testing in the early stages, not counting people who died at home, and including people who died of pneumonia under pneumonia instead of coronavirus. Dr Birx, head of the U.S. response effort,  says the U.S. lists people who died of pneumonia in New York as coronavirus deaths because of how widespread it is there, hitting seven people in a thousand. In addition there is a problem for all countries in counting people without symptoms. No one even knows how big that is, and Dr Birx in the U.S. says it is important to find out. ...

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Germany has shown that low tech contact tracing efforts work- no apps needed, a phone, a desktop computer with a centralized database, and most important the human relations skills of the person doing the calls. The  sensitivity to the situation facing each person being called, being able to talk to the person in the language they speak in a multilingual environment such as California, is shown here. A 40 person team operates in San Francisco consisting of public health officials, clinicians, medical students and librarians. They call the contacts of people with coronavirus, arrange tests, and as needed send packages of food and medicines to hotel rooms or homes. Every call is expected to last 15 minutes but all sorts of questions are handled.  English and Spanish are used. Here one of the persons doing the contact tracing says she does not use apps, just an open source software used in the fight against Ebola. Definitely low tech, no waiting, get going is the message to every city in the world. She says apps software such as what Google and Apple are putting out can tell you whether the person went to some place, but cannot tell you more about that person, cannot tell you about problems the person is having being tested, and how they are having difficulty providing for families. One of the big lessons from Germany and efforts such as this one in San Francisco, and in other places such as Paris, Singapore, Taiwan, is that there is a complex nature to contact tracing that cannot be solved by tech. In fact the best thing to do is to get started immediately, with a phone and a database on a computer, as long as you have a person who has the motivation and skills, empathy with people, a lot can be done. Waiting for apps is a dangerous waste of time is shown by the low tech German experience, and the experience in other places. Most important is starting immediately. The example shown here of working with migrant workers in contact tracing shows in the most vulnerable places it is these human relations skills that count, that no tech app can do. It requires detective skills to find out and get people to share their history of movements and contacts for 14 days . In Singapore crowded dormitories house 300,000 of 1.4 million migrant workers. Singapore using an app also but its use is secondary. Apps don't work in many situations but fail in the most critical situations such as these dormitories and other eccentric or atypical situations such as faced by South Korea with religious groups and gay communities, elderly people in Europe, that generate the worst dangers of spread and need to be cluster isolated quickly. Human contact tracing has a history of being an effective method and was used in China and South Korea during the 2003 SARS epidemic. More countries need to adopt the method used in Asia and in Germany, particularly Britain, the U.S., France and India. It is OK that Britain's NHS and India's national government with Aarogya Setu app have put out their own apps which balance privacy concerns with the need to act immediately and cover the entire country, but the hard slog of human contact tracing teams in each district is indispensable. This is why the former Health minister in Britain calls it Britain's national mission to do this. Speed is key- putting together teams across the country in every district from skilled volunteers or government workers, and pulling together the phone and a centralized database on a computer as basic equipment. The fact that this is easily doable and people with human skills needed can always be recruited as they have been in Germany- from public officials in local government who are less busy in lockdowns, medical students, clinicians, volunteers, people from different professions- makes it inexcusable not to learn from others experience and get going. Just Do It. You want to reopen business, professions, offices and public services- Just Do It, it makes this possible. You want to prevent spread of the virus- Just Do It, it makes this possible. You want to limit damage to the economy and get the recovery going- Just Do It, it makes this possible. People of all shades of opinion can agree on this- its the only thing that works, even when there is a lack of enough proper accurate testing. ...

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Boris Johnson wins the race to lead the Conservative Party and become the next prime minister of Britain. Several ministers resigned underlining the problem he faces lacking support from the Conservative party members who do not support exit from the European Union without some deal or arrangement with the EU. He will lead a minority government that could fall with the loss of support from within the Conservative Party itself. Boris Johnson beat Jeremy Hunt by 92,153 votes to 46,656. He now has a margin of only three votes with the help of the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland and faltering support from members of the Conservative Party who see Boris Johnson's idea of simply leaving the EU on October 31st deal or no deal as problematic. 

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South Africa feels a sense of relief as omicron cases follow a pattern of very steep upward increase, followed by a short period of a month, and then a very steep decrease. Cases in South Africa with a population of 60 million, about the size of Britain, dropped from 27,000 at the peak to about 15,000 on December 21, 2021. The area around Johannesburg was hardest hit. The median age is 27 years in South Africa, 40 in UK and 43 in Italy. With younger populations in India and parts of Asia South African population demographic is closer to India than it is to Europe where populations are much older. Scientists do not want to extrapolate from the South African experience with Omicron for this reason. Immunity from vaccination and prior infection could be contributory causes to the less severity of omicron say NCID scientists. "In South Africa this is the epidemiology. Omicron is behaving in a way that is less severe," says Dr. Cheryl Cohen, of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NCID). "Compellingly together our data really suggest a positive story of a reduced severity of omicron compared to other variants," he said at a conference with other scientists on Wednesday, Dec. 22.  ...

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A survey of 2000 workers by Prudential shows about 25% of workers plan to look for a better job after the pandemic, and 38% say challenges with work-life balance are a reason for them to change jobs. This is a trend seen also in labor statistics as there is a mismatch between jobs offered and jobs people are seeking in the job market in US and other countries, with job seekers looking for stability and work-life balance, and making physical and mental health a priority. This WSJ report shows how women are handling this challenge. It says it is not enough to go by a company's online policies one has to look deeper. Look for people in the know, look for clues in the interview, have a clear idea of what is important to you- flexible schedule, family friendly benefits. WSJ gives names of sites that can help provide more information- Mom's Project, InHerSight, Glassdoor, List Your Leave, Working Mother. Look for onsite child care center, fitness facilities, does company do followup emails at night, do employees appear frazzled, stressed or disorganized? Connect into alumni and other professional networks for clues and patterns at companies. Also says WSJ experts cited here employers will appreciate your asking the question early rather than later. Questions such as "does a firm promote associates with alternative work schedules" are normal questions to ask. ...

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With a shortage of nurses and healthcare workers, some hospitals are dropping the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. Shortages existed before the pandemic. The burnout for healthcare workers led to people dropping out. The lure of high pay has also led to nurses to travel to hot spots further crimping supply of workers. Recently workers who do not want ot get vaccinated have quit the industry or lost their jobs, some have left for facilities that do not follow the vaccine requirement. CDC estimates 30% of healthcare workers at 2000 hospitals in the US are unvaccinated as of September 2021. The Biden vaccine mandate would be effective for second shots by Jan. 4. A federal judge in Louisiana has ruled in Nov. questioning the president's authority for a vaccine mandate. Following that ruling HCA, AdventHealth, Tenet, Cleveland Clinic are among the hospital chains reversing earlier decisions for vaccine mandate. Other hospital chains in California Kaiser Permanante and in New York Northwell Health have kept the vaccine mandate. Kaiser had 98% staff vaccinated, with a similar situation at Northwell. Kaiser has 210,000 employees and Northwell 77,000. Utah Mountain also has 98% vaccinated.  Research on vaccine mandates suggests them to be effective. U Penn psychology research shows people are more likely to get encouraged to get vaccine than discouraged with a vaccine mandate not vaccinated working in healthcare in September will shrink considerably by January. ...

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US president Biden campaigns in Nevada. His focus is on the cost of living actions and has proposed 15,000 affordable housing rental units on underused federal land repurposed for housing, action which can be taken on presidential orders. Other cost of living action is being prepared by Biden and he closely follows the mortgage rate increases from 3% to 8% that are leaving families stuck without owning an home. Biden is also focussing on the threats to democracy coming from the former president's rhetoric and actions, something that he devoted time to in his address in Philadelphia's Independence Hall, where the founders of this Union gathered together to draft the Constitution. This happened early in his first presidential term and in the 2020 campaign Biden focused on this threat to democracy. Peter Baker points out that Biden is best qualified to convey a sense of hope to America, yet what the NYT, W. Post and WSJ, and the television news channels -that are not watched as much by the core 25-54 years with a shift to digital- fail to do is to do their own introspection on how Biden has forged the consensus in Congress from his vast experience and wisdom to make the multi trillion dollar investments in America's future through infrastructure, job creation, manufacturing, chips and science. Not since FDR has America seen this happen and it shapes 2030. ...

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Dr. Michiaki Takahashi of Osaka, Japan, who developed the chickenpox vaccine in 1972. He decided to do research on a vaccine for chicken pox after his son contracted chickenpox in 1964 and barely survived. At the time he was at Baylor Medical College in Houston. The U.S. alone has about 4 million chickenpox cases a year. This vaccine is now used all over the world.

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This video shows Dr. Birx explaining the three Phases for reopening the U.S. economy. Each state's governor would decide when a state thinks it is safe to move to the first phase. States which have not been affected much and fewer cases in the western part of the U.S. such as Idaho, North Dakota, Iowa could open earlier. Texas could start in May. California would have to do more testing before it starts Phase 1. New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts, would come later because of the severity of the crisis. Each phase criteria are carefully set out and parameters set down for social distancing rules to be followed, number of people, locations, how offices open, how stores open, how hospitals open. Germany and the U.S. have set out detailed guidelines and phases. A state in the U.S. could even move back in phases if data shows it is doing badly. Hotspots would continue to be tracked and resources shifted from the federal government quickly to these new hotspots now that medical supplies, medical personnel and other shortages such as testing are being aggressively addressed. ...

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It is not such a far fetched idea after all- this town in Finland pays for people in their sixties to get fitness lessons because this will save on social care costs in the future. More cities can do this or provide more fitness facilities and park areas which help create better environments for living as well as reduce the cost of social care and medicine. Stockholm is doing this.

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Eighteen Senate Republicans under Mitch McConnell, the Minority leader in the US Senate, hold firm to support all Democrats for aid to Ukraine bill. This includes Senator Tillis of North Carolina who vigorously supported the aid bill on the floor of the Senate. Senator McConnell said "It is become fashionable in some circles to disregard the global interests of a global power, to bemoan the responsibilities of global leadership. It is idle work for idle minds, and it has no place in the US Senate." Mr. Trump and some Republican senators helped kill a immigration compromise legislation that Mr. Biden said would make it possible to close the border the day it was passed. This group also opposed the aid bill and lobbied to get the aid bill killed in the US Senate.

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There is more ot it than just the monopolies crushing new competition and small firms in their space. The gatekeeper role for information that Google and other tech monopolies have is a danger for democracy in a way that the Rockefeller's monopoly of the oil business by Standard Oil never was at the turn of the previous century. TR took up the role of government ensuring that fair competition exists by breaking up the monopolies in the oil business at that time. Today this is left to the courts and they take far too long and come up with decisions that do not address the main probem points brought up by the US Justice Department. Judge Mehta after 5 years did little to address the problems of tech monopolies and it is now left to other remedies and other leadership to come up with ways to break up these monopolies.