Wheel of History turns all the time

There were times when the saying “Sun never sets in British Kingdom” was true. It got changed. Brexit now demonstrates that the British like to hold their fort through protectionist policies. Their forefathers were very different, they went around the world exploring the opportunities. As the wheel of history turned, upward motion did not last.

Donald Trump’s win in the US and the emphasis he puts on in hiring locals shows that their upward movement too is ending. America became economic super power as it was consistently attracting best talent in the world. Look at those who are running Silicon Valley companies and holding highest patents. Immigrants have a greater share in it. In a vegetable market, if you stop fresh vegetables coming into the market, soon you would be left with rotten tomatoes. Why that would be different when you stop attracting fresh talent?

The last two centuries had belonged to the British and Americans respectively. They made most of it but now they are losing out their place. Before the 18^th century, India and China were half of global GDP. Now they are regaining their lost position. And there is Russia who had lost the opportunity to the US despite winning the Second World War making a fresh attempt joining hands with India and China. During the medieval times, Japan had shut doors to outsiders for many centuries. They were the losers, their economic growth started only after they opened their doors. Similarly, if US wants to close its borders, its benefits will be ultra short term as the history has shown it,

India is slowly shedding its socialist image. Now we have toll roads and the poor too pay for clean drinking water. As the subsidies fall out, India sees an economic progress. At the same time, it is going back to its roots as it is becoming economically stronger. How else “Patanjali” as a brand can take on the mighty “Hindusthan Unilever”? Clear majority for Modi showed that Hindus are uniting. And it helped pro-Hindutva activities. Take a trip to Gangotri, you will notice scaling 10,000 feet altitude in the Himalayas is an easy drive now and compare that with the experiences of pilgrims of the past decade going for a char-dham visit. Religion is getting higher importance for sure. Yogi being appointed as CM of UP proves this point again. Not just Yoga, Sanskrit and Veda too will be learnt in great detail in coming days. Economic growth seems to have no connection with religion at the high level, but both are beneficiary of each other. They take each other up or down so go together.

Wheel of history is turning and taking up India, China and Russia economically. That will rewrite the history all over again as long as it lasts. And that is going to last few generations. Forget going to the US and be there where the momentum is if you want to be part of the good times to come.

Bollywood, Cricket and GST

Going by recorded history, it was King Ashoka who had ruled over entire India. After him, there was no other king to match him for the geography under his command. Even the Great Mughals did not venture into south or north east. After a gap of roughly 2000 years of Ashoka’s rule, the British took India under their rule. They unified India to make it easy for them to administer. They built long rail roads and postal network to run their machinery. But that helped none other than M K Gandhi. He traveled by train mostly to all corners of India asking people to unite against a common enemy and fight for their freedom. People wrote to him addressing “M K Gandhi, wherever he is” and it was the job of postal network to locate him and deliver the mails. An idea of independent and democratic India was born and propagated using the infrastructure built by the British. After the independence, it was Mr. Patel played an instrumental role in shaping the geography of modern India, we owe map of India to him. Then Bollywood took over the job of keeping India united. The movie titles such as Raj Kapoor’s ‘Jis Desh Me Ganga Behti Hai’ to multi-starrer ‘Amar-Akbar-Anthony’, touched the underlying strings of united India. When P T Usha won the medal and Kapil Dev’s team won the world-cup for India, we all took pride in being Indians. Now Virat Kohli is not just a cricketer for us but a representative of Indian pride too. Last decade’s movies like ‘Lagaan’, ‘Chak De’ and the most recent ‘Dangal’ turned out to be block-buster successes as they were built on the theme of national pride and the motivation to fight against the odds. Though the heroes of these movies do not seem to be understanding what they stood for in their movies, the collective efforts of movie makers evoked the the right feelings in Indians. Thus, Sports and Bollywood have played a very important role in guarding the emotional sense of feeling the national pride.

As the baby boomers are aging and the new generation millennials are taking over, what would help us Indians in remaining united? First is migration across states. There are people from Punjab and North East who have found a home in Bangalore. Similarly lots of Mangaloreans are in Mumbai and Keralites have found to be far reaching and many more such instances. These migrants know the importance of inter-dependence across states and if their home state want to go separate, they would vote against it. But the in-equalities have to be reduced in the first place to avoid any such urges. Goa and New Delhi pay out the best wages in the country but those in Bengal or Orissa earn a fraction of what other Indians earn. This gap has to be bridged. Economic growth should spread and create a homogeneous India. And a step towards that will be played out by the tax reform GST. Central Govt. will collect a uniform tax from entire India and distribute the share to state Govt’s. This will avoid some state Govt.’s giving huge incentives and other states levying hefty state taxes. As the tax benefits or impact across states neutralize, focus moves on to labor rates. Those states with lower wages are likely to attract investments in the future, so job creation & economic growth spreads to under developed regions of India. Infrastructure too follows along with it. There comes a better India, with playing ground being leveled. Then Bollywood and Cricket will find some weight being lifted off their shoulders.

Digged for Gold but got Copper

We came to know that Modi can take bold and tough decisions. But political mastery does not necessarily equate with mastery over economics. So the benefits of demonetization were overestimated and the inconveniences were underestimated by his close aides. And they had to learn hard way that poor execution can spoil a good strategy. Newly printed Rs.2,000 notes became an exchange for black money and created a large scale corruption. It proved that the majority of Indians are not ready to pay taxes they owe to the system.

Let us look at the negative effects first. Take a glance at credit growth rates, it shows that it has gone to 50 years low. Bad times for banks. Vehicle sales have plummeted. Construction industry is seeing a set back. What India badly needs is job creation but the jobs are being lost as the mass employing sector like construction is seeing a set-back. You think it is a temporary phenomenon, well, it is difficult to estimate when the turnaround will come. Forget growth, going back to past levels of valuation will take couple of years for the real estate industry, so there is not much motivation for investors.

There are many positives too. Interest rates are down, inflation is under check. Money in banking system has gone up. Cash to GDP ratio is reduced. Tax collections will see an upside. Indians learnt to use Paytm. Debit cards are not limited to withdraw cash at ATM’s and consumers as well as retailers are demanding for use of POS machines. All these will help offset the negative impacts over few years period. Unless monetary system is tampered again, India would absorb this shock and post higher growth rates.

Collectively, over a period of years, benefits may over weigh the injuries done by the demonetization. But the expectations were set very high that India would be clean in 50 days, which was quite unrealistic.They digged for Gold but what they found was Copper. It too has some value.

Rich will lose wealth and Poor will lose jobs

Debates on the effects of demonetization dominate every kind of media. Economists are rolling out all kinds of numbers from -0.25% to -3.5% of GDP growth slow down. While no one questions the intentions of this master stroke but the effectiveness of its implementation is where the opinions are divided. Look at following points and then you can form your opinions.

Time to Digtial Economy: This may look good as a slogan but do you know how much is the penetration of Internet and Smart Phones in our economy to go cashless? How will those living below the poverty line buy a smart phone and get a data pack to use mobile phone as their wallet? We do not have consistent power supply in many villages and when it rains, the mobile towers do not function for days. When villagers are struggling to get clean drinking water and primary health facilities, going for a cashless system will force them to migrate to towns but the cost of living in towns and the availability of jobs would put them into helpless situations for a long time to come. Our former PM Man Mohan Singh reminded us ‘In the long term, we all will be dead’. Yes, both the poor and rich, all of us die in the long term. But this move will likely make the poor move closer to their death prematurely. Short term impact can really be devastating. If the situation is not handled well, the same people who hail Modi now will begin to criticize him.

Self-Defeating mechanism kicks in: When Real Estate transactions reduce, construction activity reduces which employs unskilled labor in big numbers. And the consumption of Cement and Steel would come down. That would mean the mining activity will also see a slowdown. What will happen to the new investments in these sectors? How about the new jobs which were supposed to be created in these sectors? Automobile industry is cutting down their production levels. If the situation continues for some more time, how much will be the job loss resulting from it? When GDP growth begins to slow and deflation begins to hurt, rich will lose their wealth and poor will lose their jobs.

Pressure on banking system increases: We thought liquidity will drive down the interest rates but RBI has a different plan. It sucked out the liquidity, may be for a good reason. But this will push out the timing to reduce lending rates for banks. When the revenues are going down, profits will slide at a higher pace and this will put a dent on many companies ability to service their loans. Bad loans will raise again. Most of the existing bad loans are in Infrastructure space and that sector will see a significant headwind (as demand for cement, steel drops), so the pressure on banking system will intensify.

If relief measures (such as reducing taxes) are brought in, it may compensate for the damage partially but how soon they will roll it out and what would be the magnitude of it is not known yet. But the long queues at Banks show the struggle for a common man to get the cash to spend on the necessities. The behavior of Indian is going to change for sure, but will it be for good? It depends on further steps the Govt. will take. Acid test has begun for them. If they cannot manage it, they will learn a big lesson themselves despite good intentions.

The new divide: Bankable vs Non-Bankable

Demonetization is going to reduce the cash-supply in the system and force most of India’s population to use the banking system. This would impact the sectors where cash was used most – Real Estate. But real estate is a broad asset class of Agricultural, Industrial, Commercial and Residential. Valuation is different for these segments and all of them do not use the same cash level when they change hands. Take a look at this map. Agriculture is the segment where cash was used most in comparison to others. So when cash crunch begins to hurt, it is likely to hurt the segment which was heavily dependent on cash.

Housing prices will see lower impact as cash component is less and it is mostly bankable (can get loans). As the interest rates begin to drop, affordability starts cutting through lower income levels which has higher population. Any price erosion along with interest drop will see demand increasing at a faster pace so prices would stop from falling further and begin to reverse in a few months period.

After a few years from now, you will see that real estate assets having changed hands into the people who were bankable, who could raise loans. If you had paid your taxes promptly, there will be lots of opportunities knocking on your door to own some real estate in the near future. And don’t hesitate as India’s growth story remains firm.