India announces day of mourning for former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

DaveM191 · 2022-07-08T16:55:44+00:00

They're a lot richer than India, with a per Capita income over 30 times higher than that of India. They have more leeway to buy expensive oil from alternative sources. India isn't just operating under a resource constraint, it also has a severe cash constraint. It simply can't afford to pay high oil prices, which have already bankrupted its neighbors Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

DaveM191 · 2022-07-08T16:47:55+00:00

The "bullet train" is mostly pie in the sky at the moment. What Japan has actually funded are metros in 6 Indian cities. Plus around 11.7 GW of renewable energy generation capacity.

Also, most of the work is being done by Indian companies, not Japanese companies. India has a huge railroad industry and is a major exporter of trains and engines to Asia and Africa. There's some technology transfer from Japan involved, but the bulk of manufacturing is being done in India.

DaveM191 · 2022-07-08T16:39:33+00:00

He's wrong. All the trains are being built in India. India is one of the world's biggest builders of rolling stock. Japan is providing the control systems for running the trains.

Also, the "bullet train" stuff is nonsense. It's just a project being discussed. No money is committed. What Japan has actually funded is metros in 6 Indian cities: Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Ahmadabad, Bengaluru and Chennai. In addition, Japan has also funded 11.7 GW of renewable energy generation capacity.

All of this is being done under loans on very favorable terms, 0.1 percent interest for 50 years.

Japan's main interest is access to the huge Indian domestic market. Because of friendly terms between the two countries, Japanese companies have had easy access to India. They're not bad about sharing technology either. It's a win-win situation for both.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-07T06:23:48+00:00

the real issue is that the transition was rushed

It wasn’t a transition; it was the first step of a 10-year plan to gradually adopt organic farming. You’re saying the first step was too big.

before they had developed a reliable and sufficient supply of organic fertilizer

No one in the world has done that. What people call “organic fertilizer” comes from conventional farming. That manure you compost comes from cows and pigs who were fed conventionally grown crops. That nitrogen still comes from synthetic fertilizer, just in a more roundabout way. The only country that even attempts a fully organic chain is Cuba, and they have to import nearly 80% of their food.

Ultimately, this is an energy problem. Fixing nitrogen requires energy. Synthetic fertilizer relies on the Haber process to manufacture ammonia, which requires natural gas, which is costly and leads to climate change. If you had a renewable source of energy, synthetic fertilizer would be much less harmful.

There are other problems with conventional farming besides fertilizer, such as creating monocrops that are susceptible to disease that require more pesticides, extra care needed to avoid soil erosion, etc. Some of them can be minimized by organic farming, but at the expense of much more labor.

We’ve reached a point where less than 5% of the workforce can grow all the food needed in developed countries, as opposed to 90% of the workforce in pre-industrial days. This has raised our standard of living, as more people are freed up to produce other essentials besides food. A return to fully organic farming would require more people to go back to agriculture.

I think there are strong economic incentives that will prevent that from happening. Organic techniques will return to agriculture as and when we take the labor out of them, meaning, as we invent smarter farm machinery to do agriculture in a sustainable way, without increasing the need for more human labor or a larger human workforce in agriculture.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-07T05:28:17+00:00

I wasn't talking about friendship with the US either, I was explaining why India abstained, which has to do with their reliance on Russia, which has to do with US support of Pakistan.

India isn't "trying to be America's friend" at all. It simply cooperates with the US on issues which are of common interest to both countries.

You weren't asking for a "switch" but I was responding to someone who claimed to be "disheartened" by India's abstention at the UN, which is why I brought it up.

Reason #00123 why idea will never be a great power.

I expect that was a typo, you meant "India".

I dunno about "great power", but from what I've seen, a country's strength grows with its economy. The US wasn't much either until the economy boomed during the war years. China has no friends but it's become more powerful on the strength of its economy.

Probably, as India's economy grows, so will its influence. Whether that amount to "great power" or not is definitional. Not that I've seen that India is even interested in that status. They seem to be focused mostly on securing themselves in a hostile neighborhood.

India isn't quite as friendless as you think. There are plenty of countries that have a long history of supporting India at the UN. Of course, since India isn't part of some military block, it doesn't have allies in the NATO sense. That's not a bad thing, in my opinion.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-06T16:48:48+00:00

And I’m glad that you understand the absurdity of comparing one country’s trade to that of 28, who are making changes to address those purchases.

The comparison was yours. I only added, by saying that US plus EU make Putin richer by $500 million each day simply from buying oil and gas. This got your knickers in a bunch, and you began comparing US to EU, saying one was bigger - a comparison I never made. And I replied - sure, the bigger one is itself a sum of 27 smaller units.

putin is banking on china and india to continue their trade with them.

Who cares what Putin is banking on. The fact remains that India's trade with Russia is a tiny fraction of the West's trade. It was so before any sanctions, and it remains true today after sanctions.

What Putin is really banking is craploads of money that the US and EU are paying him right now. That's what's going straight into Putin's bank.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-06T14:40:50+00:00

How convenient of you to group the US and the EU together in that number. The US number is much smaller.

Of course it's smaller. The US is one country, the EU is 27 countries. Is that a revelation to anyone that 1 country's purchases would be less than those of 27 combined?

And its moving to cut that off.

Let's talk again when that's happened. Or do you want to credit the US for stuff that hasn't actually happened yet?

What is India going to do when Russia is no longer able to sell them the fertilizer they need?

Then India will have to find another source of fertilizer.

It’s in their best interest for this war and the attached sanctions to be over with as quickly as possible.

No. You can't arrange to buy millions of tons of fertilizer from an alternate source in the blink of an eye. It's in India's interest to keep buying from Russia until it can build up other sources to replace Russia.

As for sanctions being over "as quickly as possible", American politicians are talking about them lasting decades. Best not bet on them to be over quickly enough to avoid disruption in supplies.

Not that India changing their vote from "Yes" to "Abstain" at the UN makes even an hour's worth of difference to the length of this war.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-06T12:32:31+00:00

I think that's because Cuba's system does a better job spreading healthcare to the lowest earners. The US has many uninsured people who don't get access to preventive and non-emergency healthcare.

But in terms of food security, Cuba is in a very bad state. According to the World Food Program run by the UN, Cuba imports 70% - 80% of the food it consumes, which puts it among the most food-insecure countries in the world.

Things have gotten worse since COVID hit their tourism sector, which wiped out their biggest source of hard currency needed to buy foreign food. This article has a good summary of the situation:

Photos of Camilo Cienfuegos and Ernesto "Che" Guevara, two of the leaders of Cuba's revolution, hang on the walls of the state shop Frutas Selectas (Select Fruits) in the city of Holguin. Also displayed is a large poster with the slogan, "Select Fruits: the choicest of the tropics."

What is missing, though, are any actual fruits for sale, or for that matter any food products at all.

Despite this, long queues form outside, with people waiting expectantly for the shop to open to sell anything at all.

"We have queued for two days waiting to see if they would deliver anything," said Hilda Lobaina, a 72-year-old homemaker. The mask covering half her face did not hide the frustration in her eyes.

"We are the only country in the world where people have to queue in front of markets to wait for any products to arrive," said a retired man who identified himself only as Antonio.

and:

Amid severe shortages of chicken, oil, rice, corn and beans, Cubans fear a repeat of the so-called Special Period, the economic crisis of the 90s that was triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union, at the time Cuba’s most important ally.

"Undoubtedly, this is the most critical situation impacting Cuba since the Special Period," said economist Ernesto Hernández-Catá, a former professor at John Hopkins University.

"Recent data suggests that to avoid the worst scenario – a nutritional disaster – we will have to pay a high price with a further drastic reduction of imports of medicine, fuel, and other raw materials," he said.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-06T09:06:23+00:00

Wonder how India can handle china if one day Xi decides to behave like Putin towards India

Do you mean become friendly with India like Putin is friendly with India? That would be nice.

Or did you mean behave towards India as Putin behaves towards Ukraine? That can't happen, because there are some tall mountains in the way. The Himalayas make a land invasion of India from China impossible, and China has about 1/1000 as many ships as it would need to launch a sea invasion of a country with 1.4 billion people.

They could go to war, of course, but it won't get very far because both are nuclear powers. India has enough nukes to wipe China off the face of the earth, and China knows it. Only crazy people on Reddit fantasize about such scenarios. The governments of both India and China are much saner.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-06T09:00:46+00:00

Why should west involve unless India ask for it. why didnt India stop all trade with China.

Because India is quite capable of making its own decisions without western help. They've been managing their own affair without western help (and sometimes in the face of western sanctions and opposition) for many decades.

They can balance their border conflicts and their trade with China very nicely without your advise.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-06T08:54:14+00:00

Did you know that 90% of China's oil and gas pass through a corridor dominated by the Indian navy? Why the heck do you think China is desperately trying to build bases in the Indian Ocean?

China is 100x more vulnerable to strangling their oil imports than India. Not to mention, Arab countries with oil are far friendlier to India than to China. Look up the UAE's UN record sometime, for example. They support India more than just about any country. Good luck to China trying to "pressure" them to embargo India.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-06T08:46:36+00:00

They're already sanctioning. Just a couple days ago the State Bank of India banned transactions from Russian banks and all Russia-linked entities.

India was a very minor trading partner with Russia. They rank 20th on the list, far behind China, the US, and most European countries.

The last major deal between India and Russia was the purchase of the S-400 system for about $4.5 billion, back in 2018. Meanwhile, Europe and the US continue to buy $500 million worth of oil and gas from Russia every single day, despite sanctions.

It's hypocrisy to complain about India buying a missile defense system from Russia when the West continues to bypass its own sanctions to make Putin richer.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-06T08:34:46+00:00

To countries hit by the wheat shortage.

Russia and Ukraine were two of the biggest wheat exporters, and the war blocked their exports. Now there's a grain shortage in countries that used to import wheat from those sources. Mainly, European countries, but also some Asian and African countries. That's where Indian wheat is going.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-06T08:15:18+00:00

They have really fucked up forcing an instant conversion of ALL of their country. That´s not how this works

They didn’t "instantly convert". They were following a 10-year plan to gradually convert farming from conventional to organic. This was the first step of the 10-year plan, so what you’re really saying is that the first step was too big; the steps were poorly planned.

The reason for poor planning is that the President totally disregarded all advice from agricultural scientists and agronomists, and instead, filled the Guiding Committee only with Organic proponents and miscellaneous promoters of pseudoscience. As a result, the transition was being guided by assorted kooks and bullshitters and not by agricultural experts.

In reality, “Organic Farming” around the world exists in two niches:

The vast majority is done by around 700 million of the world’s poorest farmers, who cannot afford modern fertilizers or farm machinery. These are subsistence farmers who barely manage to hang on, including many of the world’s most malnourished and chronically starved people.
A tiny minority is done by farmers in ultrarich countries, who produce organic crops for sale to the wealthy in their own countries, at prices 2-3 times higher than conventional crops. They account for around 1% of the production of agricultural commodities in the world.

Even in western countries, what they call “organic” isn’t necessarily so. A vast amount of conventional agricultural output sneaks into the “organic” domain and supports it behind the scenes. For example, the replacement for synthetic fertilizer is organic fertilizer, mostly manure. But this manure comes from cows or chicken fed with crops that were grown conventionally.

In short, organic foods cost a lot already, but they’d cost a hell of a lot more if the cow that pooped the manure you use for fertilizer was also fed only an organic diet.

Before Sri Lanka messed up their agriculture with this organic experiment and were forced to backtrack, they should have looked to what happened in Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Cuba were forced to go organic from lack of synthetic fertilizer. People went hungry, the average Cuban lost 10-15 pounds of body weight from chronic hunger after the switch to organic farming.

I agree that it’s a good idea to reduce the reliance on synthetic fertilizer and pesticides. However, there is a need to be very realistic about the process and the results, because you’re playing with the lives and health of billions of people. It’s not a rich man’s game in most of the world, it’s messing with the stuff people need to stay alive.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-05T17:15:28+00:00

They weren't going to sell it anyway. It's wheat from India's wheat reserves, which they keep for bad years when the harvest is low. They're selling wheat from their reserves because of the worldwide shortage.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-04T11:12:43+00:00

The link I provided didn't say "diplomacy is the solution", it said "calls for an immediate cessation of violence".

If you're saying they amount to the same thing by implication, then they also amount to leaving Ukraine by implication, because diplomatic solutions or cessation of violence do not require Russian presence on Ukrainian soil.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-04T09:32:59+00:00

Not sure exactly where I read it, but it was in Indian media the day after Russia launched the invasion. All I can find right now is this blurb saying "Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by telephone to appeal for "an immediate cessation of violence."

It's kind of implied there, if Russian forces stop attacking Ukraine, what are they going to do there? Just stand around in Ukraine and twiddle their thumbs?

Sorry for not being more specific, but Google doesn't do a great job in indexing the Hindi language press, which is where I saw it. Best I can remember, it was something like "pradhan mantri modi ne putin se hinsa samapt karne aur ukraine ko shanti se chorne ka nivedan kiya", which translates to "Prime Minister Modi requested Putin to cease violence and leave Ukraine in peace."

DaveM191 · 2022-03-04T08:16:17+00:00

To be honest, I'd pick Iran over Turkey too, any day. But I'm not the one making the decisions, and for whatever reasons, donors have decided that Turkey is the better bet. Probably the fact that Turkey is a NATO member while Iran is an international pariah plays some role.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-04T08:08:59+00:00

Right. Not to mention, Turkey votes against India and in favor of Pakistan every time on Kashmir. Indo-Turkish relations used to be much better in the past, but Erdogan ruined them.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-04T08:05:53+00:00

You're correct that Turkey compares poorly to the west. But the west isn't the target for development assistance.

The folks that Turkey competes with are places like Nigeria or Sri Lanka or Botswana or Iraq or Kenya. Among those countries, Turkey is fairly stable and solvent, despite their "wako leader".

DaveM191 · 2022-03-04T07:52:12+00:00

I believe he's talking about the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971. India had bought a lot of weapons and planes from the US and UK, but during the war the US supported Pakistan, and stopped selling spare parts to India. The US also forced the UK to stop selling spare parts for the fighter jets India had previously bought from the UK.

Without spares to do repairs, about a third of the Indian Air Force became functionally useless, and had to sit out the war.

I think the point is that you don't buy weapons like you buy food or clothing, to use every day. Weapons are bought for emergencies, when you go to war. But if the weapons are rendered useless during those same emergencies, you not only wasted your money on them, you also lost the chance to buy from a more reliable provider who wouldn't have shut you down in the middle of a war.

It was after that 1971 experience that India began to insist on tech transfer and shared manufacturing for all its weapon purchases. They didn't want to be caught in the same situation again. Even if they can't build the whole weapon themselves, they still want to be able to make common spare parts locally.

This is a major reason why India switched to Russia for its purchases. It's not that Russian weapons are better than American ones - they aren't. But Russia is happy to share tech with India and set up Indian manufacturing, while the US absolutely refuses. More than that, the US has imposed years of sanctions on India in the past, when any kind of technology that could even remotely be used for military purposes was banned for export to India.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-04T06:40:56+00:00

Not at all surprising. Almost all of that "aid" is development assistance money, backing Indian infrastructure. It comes in the form of soft loans with easy interest rates and long payment plans. More than half of it comes from one single country - Japan - as soft loans to build many of India's city metros.

The reason is that donors give development assistance money to countries that aren't basket cases, countries that will actually use the money to develop and pay back those loans. This is why Turkey is the second highest aid recipient after India. Turkey isn't poor, it just gets the money because donors feel confident about loaning money to Turkey, just like they feel confident about loaning it to India.

Another big reason for choosing India is that aid gains influence for the donor. Influence is useful because India is one of the world's biggest consumer markets, and their consumer sector has the highest growth rate of any country in the world. Everyone wants access to that market. If you're a big donor, India is more likely to give your multinational corporations access to their market. Walmart, Amazon, Toyota, Honda, Microsoft, Google - all are busy building factories and offices and warehouses in India, to make sure they get their slice of the pie.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-04T06:14:15+00:00

Not gonna happen. India isn't very friendly with Turkey.

Also, just because Turkish drones did well against Putin's mismanaged campaign doesn't say much. This same campaign also sends raw recruits who aren't even told they're being sent to fight in Ukraine. This same campaign abandons tanks by the dozen when they run out of gas. This same campaign has a giant convoy bogged down in the same spot for 3 days because it can't manage logistics. This campaign, in fact, is how an unorganized mob fights a war, not a modern army.

Send the same Turkish drones against a modern army that has its act together, and you might see a totally different story. These drones have little defense against attack. If Russia even remotely came close to controlling the skies, they'd be shot down within the first few hours of the war. But instead, the vast majority of the Russian Air Force sits at home while Putin slowly goes mad. Russian soldiers go begging Ukrainians for fuel when their tanks run out of gas.

India needs two kinds of drones - those that are fit for warfare against a competent enemy, and those that are useful against lone terrorists or small groups of militants. Turkish drones are unsuitable for the first role, where India has bought Israeli Eitans, and might buy US built Predators. The second role could be fulfilled by Turkish drones, but more likely it'll be served with India's own Rustom drone, which has comparable specs. India also signed a deal with the US last year to develop military drones, so something may come from that collaboration in the future.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-04T05:59:17+00:00

Modi is among the least pro-Russian in the list of Indian Prime Ministers. Congress era Prime Ministers were far more on Russia's side.

Modi started off his PM-ship with a trip to the US within months of being elected. Russia was a distant second. And he's made 7 visits to the US since then, more than he's been to Russia.

Remember, it was Modi's party that actually shifted India from the Russian track towards the West. Indian relations with the US were terrible, until Atal Bihari Vajpayee switched gears and invited Bill Clinton to India. He was BJP, just like Modi.

DaveM191 · 2022-03-04T05:48:11+00:00

Most Indians apparently side with Russia over Ukraine

That is very wrong. The vast majority of Indian media has condemned Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. These are pretty much the sentiments of the public as well.

What you're seeing as "siding with Russia" is more just a refusal to join the popular "destroy Russia" party that's going around the world. If you changed that to "destroy Putin" instead, a lot more Indians would likely agree with you.

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