“It used to be that in the old days, the Western banks always were the ones that called the shots. That is no longer going to happen. There will be banks and financial intermediaries from around different parts of the world. In fact, it’s going to become a financially more equal world. On logistics — in fact, it is very good, because, again, the systems that exist have been disrupted. But what we are going to see, and there is going to be a renewed push, is to get the Eurasian systems and the customs unions, etc. to start reactivating. For instance, the international North-South Transport Corridor, which runs from Central Asia down to Iran, this is now going to be looked at again, because these are connectivity projects that are closer to West Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, maybe Russia and China. And Asia will see different kinds of connectivity, maybe maritime connectivity projects, I’m not sure. But certainly, these multimodal transport corridors are going to be looked at now with great interest,” Kripalani said.

Aug. 15, 2022 (EIRNS)–Speaking on the occasion of India’s 75th Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a strong push for the development of his nation. “By the 100th year of Independence, we have to work with the vision of accomplishing what our freedom fighters dreamt of,” Modi declared. He called on youth in particular to devote themselves to this goal, saying “We must resolve to work towards a ‘Viksit Bharat’ (Developed India) and remove any vestiges of colonialism from any corner or in our hearts.”

“In the coming years, we have to focus on ‘Panchpran’ (5 pledges). First: to move forward with bigger resolutions and resolve of developed India; second: to erase all traces of servitude; third: be proud of our legacy; fourth: the strength of unity; and fifth: the duties of citizens that also includes the PM and CMs,” Modi noted, referring to the Prime Minister and Chief Ministers. “We will work towards the development of the entire humanity. That is the strength of India,” he added.

The Prime Minister also referenced the freedom fighters of India’s past, including Gandhi, Bose, Ambedkar, Savarkar, and others. “When the dreams are big, hard work is important. It needs to be inspired by the pledge and the determination of freedom fighters who dreamt of a free India,” Modi said.

 The Hindu began by pointing out that the “global thinktank, Schiller Institute, that recently hit the headlines for organizing an international conference on the Ukraine war and economic crisis,” was shaped by the late economist Lyndon LaRouche. The Schiller Institute’s global conference last April 9 included three prominent Indians among its speakers: retired diplomat P.S. Raghavan (who was scheduled to speak but was unable to attend), journalist Saeed Naqvi, and Sam Pitroda. Subsequently, “it came under attack from Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation that fights online Russian propaganda, [which] released a list of 75 commentators, including the three Indians, whom they accused of promoting Russian propaganda.”

 Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche elaborated in some detail her late husband’s role in shaping policy debate in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). She reported that, after Richard Nixon dismantled the Bretton Woods system in August 1971, her husband warned that the so-called “Nixon Shock” would encourage speculation-driven economic activities and greater inequality, and that he “wrote in favor of the developing economies. Some of those ideas found expression in the 1976 Colombo resolution of the fifth NAM summit that called for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) to help the non-aligned countries,” The Hindu reported. The effects of that “Nixon shock” are still being felt today, Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche asserted.

 That the New International Order didn’t come into being was due to many factors, Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche explained, but stressed that when she and her husband met with Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister showed great interest in “having economic ideas that would safeguard India from the volatilities of international finances” that had affected so many other developing countries. Following Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, Mr. LaRouche authored the book Derivative Assassination examining the global dimensions of Khalistani terrorism that might have played a role in her murder. Even after her death, the LaRouches visited India on several occasions and met with such prominent economists as the late Arjun Sengupta and with President K.R. Narayanan in 2001.

 In the interview, Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche remarked that the “LaRouche tradition” within the NAM didn’t progress for a number of reasons, including the assassinations of Mrs. Gandhi in 1984 and of her son and successor Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, and the “interventionist wars” launched by the West in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, whose chief architect was U.S. President George H.W. Bush, were largely responsible for the global turmoil that made such progress impossible.

 Despite the crisis in Ukraine and the global financial crisis, Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche is hopeful that there is now a reemergence of non-alignment and other positive traditions, The Hindu reported, while warning that Western leaders failed to deal with earlier crises such as the 2008 Lehman Brothers crash, and that the crisis today is such that it could lead to a “blowout of the neoliberal system.”

 Look at the West’s treatment of Russia, she said. When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, the Schiller Institute proposed a development corridor—the Eurasian Land-Bridge—that would have helped in economic development. Instead, Western powers adopted a strategy of destroying Russia, treating it as a “regional power,” planning to reduce it to the status of a raw-materials producing “ex-superpower.” These Western policy errors continue to this day, she warned, telling The Hindu, “If we don’t get the United States and Europe onto a new track, toward a new system [New Bretton Woods,] the war danger only worsens.”

March 26 (EIRNS)–The Guardian reported on Thursday that a high ranking delegation of ten UK Parliamentarians which had planned to visit India was suddenly informed that the invitation had been withdrawn. According to the report, covered by RT, the bi-partisan delegation, led by House of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, was called off at the last moment by the Indian authorities. This follows by only a few hours a previously unannounced visit to India by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, a meeting very well received by the Indian government, with both sides agreeing to improve their troubled relations.

The unstated but clear cause of the snub to the UK politicians is that they had made known that they intended to lecture India on why it had to join in the denunciation of Russia and join in the sanctions warfare. Not only did India refuse, but they are advancing plans to expand their trade with Russia on the basis of Rupee-Ruble deals, avoiding the toxic U.S. dollar, now widely recognized as a tool by the degenerating regime in the U.S. simply to impose sanctions, or even to steal foreign nations’ reserves deposited in their banks, as they did with Afghanistan and Russia.

RT notes that on Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke by phone with Indian PM Narendra Modi. Johnson lectured Modi that India must follow their lead in attacking Russia — which certainly rankled the Indians, who can never forget the degradation and genocide of their people at the hands of their former British colonial masters.

Sept. 16, 2021 (EIRNS)—The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is convening at the head-of-state level in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, with the crisis in Afghanistan the major immediate challenge to their 20-year mission. The eight SCO countries—China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—become nine with full membership granted to Iran. (Afghanistan, Belarus, and Mongolia are “Observer States”; Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Turkey are “Dialogue Partners.”)

Early reports indicate multiple “sideline” meetings of the leaders of various countries. In particular, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan was quite busy on Thursday, meeting on the sidelines with Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev. He had a more extensive bilateral meeting with Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on “trade, investment and transportation links.”

He had been welcomed at Dushanbe’s airport by Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon. According to the statement released by the Pakistani government, he described an upgrading of the two countries’ engagement—what he termed his “Vision Central Asia” policy—and emphasized connectivity and Pakistan’s “pivotal position in providing the shortest access route to the sea.” His key example of connectivity was the Trans-Afghan railway project connecting Termez/Mazar-e-Sharif/Kabul/Jalalabad/Peshawar. His statement repeated the need to transform from “geo-politics” to “geo-economics.”

He also addressed the new Pakistan-Tajikistan Business Forum on expanding the “minuscule” $80 million of trade. He declared that Pakistan would expedite work on the CASA-1000 power transmission line to benefit from “your clean and cheap energy [such as] hydroelectricity”, too much lacking in Pakistan. Otherwise, he stated that he would work with President Rahmon to stabilize Afghanistan: “We will be doing our best to make sure they get together and there is an inclusive government.”

“In a chaotic environment, the leading powers seek to secure themselves a privileged position in the international system and limit the opportunities for their key competitors,” Shushentsov writes. He notes in the first part of the essay that these four countries are the most powerful nuclear powers and have four of the world’s six largest economies. He notes further the strategic competition between America and Russia, between America and China–including the U.S. effort to rope India into the “Quad” vs China, and the positive relations between Russia and India. “Unprovoked crises or spontaneous episodes of conflict in relations within the Big Four nuclear powers can disrupt progressive global economic processes,” he writes further. “In this regard, these four powers should be mutually attentive and prudent, channeling their rivalry into a non-military area.”

Therefore, Shushentsov writes, “It is the responsibility of the expert community of the four countries to carefully study the train of thought of their competing partners in order to exclude the sudden development of a conflict. In this regard, it seems reasonable to create a permanent format for consultation among the high-level experts of Russia, the USA, China and India. To ensure that mutual deterrence does not lead to strategic disruptions and war, it is necessary to manage relations, emphasizing an interest in cooperation with respect to common areas, such as climate, the ecology, digital development, space, mining, demography, migration and counteracting natural disasters. The purpose of the high-level consultations is to prevent a shift from strategic containment to impulsive attempts to break the emerging status quo,” 

He concludes. “The formation of a stable dialogue format for the four leading global powers in the 21st Century will make it possible to minimize the likelihood of an impulsive breakdown into open conflict, the potential for which remains a factor in global politics.”

May 13, 2021 (EIRNS)—With record-breaking daily deaths, the total official COVID-19 death toll in India surpassed a quarter-million yesterday. The daily new cases continue to hover just under 400,000, with some experts forecasting that daily infections will peak at about a half-million sometime in June. The country now accounts for about half of all new COVID-19 cases and 30% of deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO has also designated the B.1.617 variant as a matter “of global concern,” given how highly transmissible it is. The Pan American Health Organization reported that the Indian variant has shown up in six countries in the Americas.

Numerous experts continue to report that the total infections and total deaths are probably 5-10 times higher in reality than the official numbers indicate. A large portion of the uncounted numbers remain in India’s countryside.

There is a major discussion going on inside India over how much to lock down and for how long. Dr. Balram Bhargava, head of the Indian Council of Medical Research, said in an interview yesterday that lockdown restrictions should remain in place in all districts where the rate of infection is above 10% of those tested, and that they should stay locked down for at least 6-8 weeks. Test-positivity rates above 10% now prevail in 75% of the country’s 718 districts, including major cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, and the tech hub of Bengaluru, according to Reuters’s May 12 report.

“The high positivity districts should remain (shut). If they come to 5% from 10% (positivity rate) we can open them, but that has to happen. That won’t happen in six-eight weeks, clearly,” Bhargava said in an interview. In Delhi, the positivity rate reached around 35% but has now fallen to about 17%, Bhargava said: “If Delhi is opened tomorrow, it will be a disaster.” Bhargava has been calling for a government-ordered lockdown in with a 10% positivity rate or higher since April 15. Prime Minister Narendra Modi preferred to leave the decision for states to decide, perhaps because of his concern that extensive lockdowns could lead to uncontrolled social explosions in the desperate population.

Absent an international joint attack on the root causes of the pandemic—50 years of global physical economic collapse, especially in the health and food areas—India, like most developing nations, is left with only two disastrous choices: don’t lock down and watch the pandemic spread like wildfire; or lock down, and drive millions of poor and unemployed or marginally employed people over the edge.

On May 4, WHO figures indicated India accounted for nearly half of the COVID-19 cases reported worldwide in the past week. The WHO said in its weekly epidemiological report that India accounted for 46% of global cases and 25% of global deaths reported in the past week. New daily infections in the country numbered 382,315 on May 5, health ministry data showed, the 14th straight day of more than 300,000 cases. Officially, India has reported more than 3,500 deaths every day throughout the last week.

On May 4, Allahabad High Court (AHC) in Uttar Pradesh observed that the death of Covid-19 patients just because of the lack of oxygen in hospitals, which is widespread throughout the country, is a criminal act and is “no less than a genocide.” The AHC stated that the authorities- in-power are responsible for not taking measures to ensure maintenance of the oxygen supply chain.

In January-February of this year, the first wave of Covid-19 had waned in India and the official numbers showed a 90 percent drop from the peak of 96,000 per day in September 2020. The daily death toll dropped from 1,200 to 80. A sense of triumphalism began to emerge, led by a pack of cheerleaders close to Prime Minister Modi who unleashed vigorous political campaigns in five states going to the polls in March-April. On February 21, the senior leaders of the ruling party, BJP, thanked Prime Minister Modi for his “visionary leadership” that effectively weathered the Covid attack. Addressing the annual conference of Delhi Medical Association on March 7, Modi’s Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan triumphantly declared : “We are in the end game of the Covid-19 pandemic in India.”

By April 4, the second wave of Copvid-19 attack became evident, when daily new cases exceeded the peak load of September 2020. Other than banning exports of vaccines at the end of March, the Modi administration did not take any new measure to either ramp up vaccine production or the production and supply chain of oxygen. Foreign vaccine developers that applied for authorization were told to carry out bridging trials that would take a few months before emergency use authorization could be given. The dam broke loose in mid-April.

It became evident on April 15 that India’s fragile health infrastructure, under the second attack of Covid-19, had collapsed. Oxygen shortages were causing deaths at hospitals throughout India and the vaccination rates dropped from about 3.5 million jabs a day to below 2.5 million, reflecting a looming vaccine crunch.

From one million active cases a week during the last peak, India already has 3.2 million active cases, and the peak lies somewhere in the future. The second wave of Covid-19 has hit India like a tsunami and the Modi government is wholly paralyzed, leaving the people unprotected to face this deadly wave.