Comments by "M Shastri" (@libshastra) on "State of the world as Modi meets Biden: China, West, threats, alliances, reality u0026 compromises" video.

I watched the press conference of Modi and Biden. One thing that stood out was the West's lack of insight into our (Indian) perspective of rights, freedoms and liberty. The West's ignorance (and condescension) is an irritation that sours the strategic value of any relationship with them. I think we need to explain to the Western world, the fundamental difference in priorities in Indian and Western democracy. Our constituent assembly deliberately choose to give broad powers to our Govt to violate individual rights because their priority was to enact social change. Ambedkar believed that political freedoms is useless without social change and economic freedoms. Western democracy's primary concerns were violations of individual freedoms - Magna carta was created because Nobles thought the king was usurping too many powers and freedoms away from them. US constitution was written under similar circumstance. Once you understand that deliberate choice, you will start to understand all our conversations regarding domestic politics - they are always about Social change. This is why I hate Western hectoring about India's domestic issues, it's extremely ill informed because it comes at it from the wrong perspective. Thankfully, Tripurdaman Singh and Rahul Verma have started to press this exact point to Western Intellectuals and have broken through "faaaassschit" glass ceiling that our own Liberal intellectuals place.
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I don't think Rajiv would have liberalized the economy - he's more dogmatic than his mom and son. The liberalization process started under Chandrashekar. He roped in MMS and told him to drop the socialism, got him to work with Yashwant Sinha.
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@meetadi4u absolutely. I think we are heading in that direction. Wealth is empowering and liberating. These conversations will naturally come. Without wealth, freedom is pretty useless - life of mere sustenance is a life without freedom.
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@varoonnone7159 our problems are not same as their problems. Their solutions won't work with our problems.
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@Suresh_Kamath he didn't liberalize as much he didn't enforce or create regulation. H/W and S/W boomed because Govt was absent, it was not because of the presence of Govt. Industry Act didn't apply on H/W and S/W companies but they still had to deal with a lot of onerous land and labour regulations.
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@Suresh_Kamath There was no regulations in the sector to deregulate to begin. Times Editorial claims a lot of myths. He just announced it and did nothing. Then blamed it on Bofors for doing nothing.
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@varoonnone7159 yes it is. We have our democratic system that has survived into the modern era. You'll still find an ancient form of democracy that's practiced in the Pahad (HP). You are quite ill informed about our country.
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