Wonderful post! Samir is a treat to read. However, plenty of people named Varma have invested in China over the last 35 years & earned about 4 times what they would have in India. But that wasn’t portfolio investment. It was ‘make in China’ & facilitate ‘capital flight’ from China for the sake of ‘guanxi’. In the old days, worthless poets like me were enlisted to get the kids of Chinese bureaucrats into posh British schools & Colleges. Then, greedy Old Etonians & Oxbridge Professors disintermediated lowly darkies like me.

BTW it was McNamara, at the World Bank, & Edwin Lim who gave China this model whereby the Party maximises ‘long term residuary control rights’ (& thus Georgian rents) while minimising constraints on ‘decision rights’ (Hayekian). Initially this was to get the Chinese to adopt best practice Japanese tie-ups for infrastructure. But IP theft was always built in as was no fucking Georgian rents for foreigners. Get rich now. Do Guanxi (i.e facilitate financial and other crime by the nomenklatura) by all means. The benefits stay in the Party.

India is a decent country with a decent but, at times a bit dysfunctional, judiciary. Under Modi, you have Gujarati commercial ethics rather than faith (bhakti) in some idealistic, pro-poor, ideology. I come from Tamil Nadu- where ‘bhakti was born. Gujaratt is where it ‘dies’’ This is nonsense. TN has done well because women’s participation has risen. Mums don’t need no stinkin’ ideology or instructions in ‘Faith’.

I am aware that Samir’s post could be contradicted line line line. Would some minion of Soros or Singham bother to do so? No.

Why? They can’t write as well as Samir.

Modi should find some way to entice the fellow back to India. Alternatively, leave him in place as a more mathsy Sanjeev Sanyal.