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This means Lal Bahadur Shastri as much as Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi in her own way, other prime ministers such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee till today. In a way this would include all of the leaders such as Govind Vallabh Pant and Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Subhas Bose and presidents Rajagopalchari, Rajendra Prasad, and Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, southerners and northerners alike, westerners like Babasaheb Ambedkar and northeasterners like Syama Prasad Mukherjee. And above all Mohandas Gandhi and his mentors Tilak, Gokhale. It all started with Dadabhai Naoroji, a member of the British parliament in the Victorian period of prime minister Gladstone, who wrote the classic "Poverty and UnBritish Rule in India" which inspired Gandhi to write his own Hind Swaraj in 1910 on a ship from South Africa to London to negotiate for the rights of overseas Indians. Naoroji and Gokhale provided the tactical approach for Gandhi to learn and combine with his own ideas for Swaraj.

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China's plan to lift all birth restrictions by 2025. The one child policy was replaced with a two child policy, and now with a three child policy in 2021, as China's birth rate declined below the level needed for a stable population. The plan now is to lift all restrictions as the decline in population is expected to be very steep. Not enough young people to support a growing elderly population is a major problem for the economy. A mindset has developed over 70 years for one or two children that is seen as hard to change. Women now work and pursue careers, their expectations in life have changed. Couples are also finding it hard to get access to schools and afford the costs of education and home space needed for larger families. Housing in most cities is costly, making it harder to raise families. Attitudes are hard to change. Experts see little impact of the new policies. The three northeastern provinces suffered most in the shift to a market economy. This is where the drop in birthrates is very steep. The government will remove all birth restrictions in the northeast before applying it to the whole of China. ...

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Yale Insights on AI capital allocation failures in 2025 and economic risks from the Yale School of Management, Yale University.

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India's $1 billion credit line and about $2.5 billion in economic assistance comes at a critical time for Sri Lanka. Indian ties to Sri Lanka go back to the founding of the country with the landing of North Indian prince Vijaya in Tampabanni, cooper colored soil country. No other two nations have ties that go back so long in time to the Buddhist period in India when the Emperor Ashoka sent his son Mahinda with a branch of the Bodhi tree to Sri Lanka. India also provides a role model with Modi's sab ka vikas, sab ke sath, sab ka viswas, sab ka prayas, development for all, with all, with everyone's confidence, everyone's effort as the theme and policy for all of the nations in the Neighborhood Initiative. Another aspect of the ties is the revival of the Buddhist ties as India revives Buddhism and Buddhist religious places in India including Kushinagar where Lord Buddha gained Nirvana. It now has direct air links to major cities in Asia. ...

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The WSJ looks at Elizabeth Warren's Medicare for All plan that marks a major shift for the U.S. economy.  Households would see their costs go down by $11 trillion, boosting their ability to spend on other goods and services. Because income and wealth was highly skewed in the past three decades in one direction, the spending capacity of lower and middle income households was pushed down. This and other similar plans would help restore a higher level of spending and with it an essential element of inflation of 2-3% to the U.S. economy which was missing in the last decade. This sets the tone for the kind of broad based recovery that happened after 1950 that strengthened America's middle class and made it the core of the economy, the core of the post World War II recovery in America and Europe. The plan would be paid for by higher taxes on corporations, tax rate of 21% for corporations going back up to 35%, and reverse depreciation schedules in the 2017 Republican tax law. The argument that this would reduce business investment does not hold that much says the WSJ because amid new trade tensions business investment has declined over the last 2 quarters, and has been sluggish overall. The other source for the estimated $13 to $20 trillion cost of Medicare for All plan of Elizabeth Warren is a 6% annual wealth tax on billionaires, in an attempt to have all pay their fair share and reduce wide disparities in wealth. Mark Zandl, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, says his sense is at the end of the day from a macroeconomic view- because $11 trillion in the hands of 80% of households who could boost spending after lagging behind in the last decade- the negative effect on business investment will be cancelled out by the higher consumer spending. The overall effect and today's context is infused in this analysis. Private insurance, premiums for insurance, and out of pocket cost that the public pays would disappear in this new system where all health payments pass through the government. Health insurance premiums paid by employers would convert into a new employer Medicare contribution to the government starting at an amount employers pay now and adjusting gradually toward national averages over time. Smallest businesses are exempted. Mr. Zandl says the most important aspect of this now is that Mrs Warren has shown that her plan's revenue sources match the cost so that the plan would not lead to deficits increasing and pushing interest rates higher, leading to negative effects on the economy. Republicans under Mr. Trump have paid little attention to expanded deficits caused by their tax law, and economists across the landscape have also shown less concern. Still attacks are made if the plans don't add up. For this reason a sound assessment in today's context of depressed consumers and an overall impact becomes essential. The WSJ quotes from a pre- assessment of Warren's plan by Simon Johnson, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who co-wrote it with Mr. Zandl and Betsey Stevenson of the University of Michigan. What they point out is that putting cash in the pockets of the lower and middle class for spending makes a lot of sense today, and taking money out of the pockets at the way upper wealthy end,  does not contract the economy at all. Other effects they say are constructive by letting all workers get health coverage from the government instead of employers, this makes it easier to change jobs increasing labor mobility and productivity. A worker getting a better job and better utilization of skills could then shift without looking at the employer health care plan. Warren says there would be a five year transition so that workers in health care insurance industry can work in other insurance fields and in Medicare, no one would be left behind. The important thing being to build America's middle class again. ...

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Rina Bliss, a professor of sociology at Rutgers, says while AI can bring information to kids it cannot make them think. To truly learn children will have to do it themselves and in interaction with teachers, parents and other children. She took the approach of a scientist and let her two children try out AI tools and software and came to this conclusion. One reason she says is that AI is based on computational intelligence and the human mind and brain are not quantifiable. The brain is flowing like a river and always learning from its environments.  There is a social environmental piece says Marin, there is interaction, there is a drive to know and connect, curiosity and passion that are part of learning.  Basically AI is developed through taking vast amounts of information collecting it and ordering it in a certain way. How each originator of the AI orders it affects how it will work. And what is in the basket of information collected will affect how it will work. There is no thinking brain outside of the human originator who put a particular version together. Like every piece of software there are implicit or explicit instructions on how to use the basket of information collected that is put in by an originator who developed the AI software. For these reasons it will only do basic tasks and is not intended for complex tasks that involve thinking processes and social-emotional aspects of human behaviour. The risks of using it begin to grow as soon as it is used for tasks it was never intended to perform such as replacing the human thinking  processes and the socio-emotional aspects of these processes.  If it is used to do things it was never intended for, the larger the activities it performs, the larger the mistakes and risks it it is liable to make or create. If it is assigned the task of transportation for a country, it will at some point be asked to think and at that point it will fail to make the right decisions, making the risks grow exponentially, very, very fast, leading to disaster. ...

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Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneer in the development of AI, resigns from Google and warns about the dangers of AI. He says AI poses profound risks to humanity and society. He says it is hard to see how bad actors would not misuse AI for bad things.

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The all England Champions League Final will be played in Porto on May 29.

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Matt Garman, head of AI and Cloud Services at Amazon talks to Emma Tucker of the WSJ. Garman says Amazon was not slow, just being deliberate and thinking it through rather than coming up with something quickly as Microsoft had done with ChatGPT. He sees the need for regulation, only that it not create a situation where others including China go ahead and the US falls behind. This means that the US needs to coordinate AI rules with other countries including China, India, Russia, for comprehensive solutions on how AI is to be managed to work towards good.

On a five day week vs remote work Garman says Amazon takes the view that the creative work can best be done with humans interacting at the office. It sees this as essential for good work. On the 3 day week with 2 for remote work, the only problem he says is that everyone picks different 3 days and this leads to loss of human interaction at work.

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Dw.com takes a look at the most costly World Cup Soccer of all time in Qatar.

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In a visit to Washington DC Mr. Trump talks about an all tariff revenue system that would replace the income tax. He says he would take the corporate tax down from 21% to 20%. He meets with the CEO's in the Business Round Table including Dimon of JP Morgan Chase and of Bank of America.

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Morning Star Firstlinks on AI investing which says that AI is not generating cash flow, it is burning it. It looks at the huge depreciation of data center technology over 5 years and that 25% returns on the AI center investments would not recover the cost of depreciation, let alone the whole investment. The depreciation for 2025 year is shown at $40 billion with $15-$20 billon in revenue in this hypothetical case. Revenue has to grow ten fold from what it is now to support the $40 billion in depreciation each year for these data chips.

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California introduces vaccine mandate for all school children. All schoolchildren from elementary school to high school will have to get vaccinated once the government completes full approval of vaccines for children. The government has fully approved children's vaccine for over 16 years and emergency authorization for 12-15 years old children. California's governor Newsom has taken this step for vaccine mandates after defeating a recall effort for governor recently.

Also helping reach this decision is the result in Los Angeles School district, where the vaccine mandate for all school children over 12 years has resulted in cutting by half the number of daily infections of schoolchildren. Schools reopened in Los Angles last month and this is an encouraging sign that schools can be kept open with the right policies.

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Bernie Sanders presents the case for Medicare for All, healthcare for all legislation in the U.S. Congress introduced in September 2017. It has the support of 15 Senators. He says the current system is costly, wasteful and bureaucratic. It is time says Sanders for the U.S. to join the rest of the industrialized world, join Britain, France, Germany and other countries of Europe, Japan and Australia, Canada, with healthcare for all Americans. After all he says only 50 miles north of his electoral district in the Burlington, Vermont area is Canada, where the system of healthcare for all works better than in the U.S.  And the Canadians, Germans, French, and British do this spending less than half the U.S. does. In 2015 the U.S. spent $10,000 per person for healthcare, this means that it cost less than $5000 per person in these advanced countries and the way they do it can be studied and its best aspects adopted by the U.S.  He says this is because the U.S. healthcare system is designed to maintain profits for the medical-industrial complex. A major problem is the manner in which the issue is distorted by different sides on the issue of health care in the U.S., without a consensus being developed on what the common interest is in a civilized society. Mostly because the U.S. unlike other societies is still grappling with the issue of what values it embraces on healthcare being made available to all. Under this legislation the transition to healthcare for all would take place over 4 years. In the first year eligibility for Medicare would start at age 55 years, and children under 18 would be covered. In the second year the eligibility starts at 45 years, in the third year at 35 years, in the fourth all are covered.  ...

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The new president of India Droupadi Murmu is from the state of Odisha, formerly called Orissa. She is from a tribal community in the state and brings a new face for development through "sab ka vikas sab ke sath" new India's slogan today of development for all Indians through their own efforts, as it brings to the forefront the tribal communities all over India. The tribal communities in India have a population of 106 million or about 9% of India's population. In Orissa percentage of tribal is over 25%, in most of the northeast it is at least 25%, and in borders areas with China Arunachal 70%, Sikkim 34%, Jammu & Kashmir 12%. In key states of Madhya Pradesh 20%, Gujarat 25%, Rajasthan 13%. The strategic nature of the decision for the unity of India can be seen on how the tribal communities are critical parts of the northeast, the border areas,  and even of the central, eastern and western regions of India which most people are not aware of. Bringing in the tribal communities through respected leaders is part of the unfinished work of Mohandas Gandhi in getting the delivery of services to the last man in the line, and the tribal communities are a forgotten part of this.   ...

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Three factors make up risk in diversification and risk reduction through bonds in 2025 with the estimated 1.5 -3 trillion in spending planned by 2030 with $400 billion in 2025 alone. AI in corporate bond indexes up to 15% and reach 20% by 2030 vs 40% of stock indexes (JP Morgan),  AI risk in bonds diversification from over issuance and downgrades is something to look at. One cannot assume bonds will reduce risk in the same way as before with overissuance of corporate bonds to power AI spending by Tech companies. There is also the risk to the Nation in the massive capital misallocation of funds that will crowd out essential spending in the crumbling infrastructure of the Nation, in education and healthcare, that degrade American leadership in industry, science and technology.

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Issues raised by the huge mismatch between revenues and investment for AI. $400 billion estimated investment by 5 Tech firms in 2025 alone with revenue of about $40 billion and huge uncertainty about when AI will produce returns. Articles seen this week of November 17 in the WSJ and NYT on this issue, podcasts, discussions in other media outlets. Could this lead to a dot com bubble type economic crisis? Could that lead to a recession? Alongside these articles another article in the WSJ on Nov 17 shows the benefits small firms get by using AI, benefits which are on the fringes of their business, not essential but with some experimenting firm owners/managers able to tweak AI information for use in business. Nothing significant which firms will pay much money for. The uncertainty is a major factor. Should geopolitics trump all these concerns? Is the competition with China require this scale of investment, and is China following a more utilitarian approach as reported in a WSJ article this month, of investing in AI in a utilitarian way targeting its use in improving manufacturing, improving infrastructure, and not wildly throwing money at experimental uses that are unlikely to yield much result. In geopolitical sense would the country that not only promoted AI but used it efficiently and cost effectively, used it in ways that promote the overall public good, get the WIN. In short it behooves everyone of us to ask hard questions of AI, to dehype the hype, to look for the public good that comes out of this from it's efficient use. To ask the tough questions when $400 billion generates only $40 billion in 2025 and the $3 trillion planned investment over 5 years is half unfunded, is it going to crowd out energy needs for homes and business, push renewable energy targets back, crowd out essential investments in the crumbling aging infrastructure of the US and Europe, crowd out essential investments in education, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing, that hold better promise for our People. Will it also put retirees at risk when corporate bonds from retirees money fund the unfunded portion of AI? This means making the political dimension not about migration, settling the illegal migration issue that was meant to be settled a long time back, or about cultural issues that have little day to day impact on our lives which are about groceries, childcare, housing that are non ideological. Making the political dimension not about remote countries that one knows little about except when it affects public safety and health as with fentanyl. Capital allocation decisions to the vital needs of America can then be free of politically induced error, so that it can be subjected to the test of how best it serves the public interest and the people of the Nation. ...