Is India China’s Biggest Threat? - Subramanian Swamy

india wanted to overtake china and united states it can do so if india were to develop its educational system properly we could overtake china in the next 10 15 years what that's a pretty bold statement to make let's talk about coronavirus india needs 1.2 million doses of vaccine shots there's only one place you can go to to get 1.2 billion and you know who that is doesn't that kind of validate the power of china has over the world or you disagree with that i disagree because we are the largest producer of vaccines us china or we can stand alone we need a solid alliance with the united states in the present juncture at least for 10 years india doesn't have the weapons system we need to deal with china in a way they're eliminating enemies and it sounds like you're the last one they haven't eliminated what's us's biggest threat long term united states doesn't have the staying power once they make a decision now you're going to leave afghanistan you went there and suddenly you just say no taliban can take over i don't think that we have to worry about china in fact china has to worry about us [Music] my guest today is dr sabramanian swami from india who is an author politician economist statistician and the former union cabinet to raja sabah uh under the member of parliament and he's a lot of different work with their government there are a lot of different work in the government there and you may not know him or his face in the u.s or other places but in india everybody knows who this man is former professor also at iit which i had a chance to speak over there a couple years ago in specifically in the topic of mathematical economics and he's gotten a phd in economics from harvard with that being said sir thank you so much for being a guest on valuetainment thank you so i got to tell you i sit down i watch one of your videos and i go to the second one third one fourth one fifth and i'm addicted like my algorithms right now think i'm your number one fan because i've been watching your stuff but if if you don't mind taking a quick minute and giving an intro to the audience for them to know what your background is before we get into the topics i think that would be great for the audience well i started as an academic and i came back to india which very few people do because i was also in the faculty at harvard and to leave all that and being a student of two famous or most famous economists samuelson and kuznets i left it all came back i said i won't work in india but i had unfortunately the ideology that india can only progress through a market economy and we were those days very pro-soviet uh socialism and uh and so the intellectuals all ganged up to see that i didn't teach at uh any university for a long time so by time i did three years at iit delhi as a full professor they sacked me and of course i fought it in the court and after 21 years i won the case but by then i'd become a cabinet minister and so i i said you know i'm not going back to the place which didn't want me and i made them pay all my back salary at eight percent interest which was much more than i would have got if i was getting my graduation pension so i entered politics at the in the parliament at a very young age i've been six times to parliament uh in each and each time i chose not my native town but i chose bombay i got elected twice from bombay i went twice from the central state of up and then once uh from the my hometown madurai in tamil nadu and now i am actually a nominee of the president which is a prestigious appointment for my eminence in economics uh in in the upper house of parliament so that's all i am i'm of course very strong in economics which is market oriented and of course i've got a tremendous reputation in the country i think for having opposed dictatorship of mrs gandhi and succeeding and uh so um um and uh i've done now 50 years of politics in india so so if for the for the american folks if you were to say you would be of us who would be the comparable to who you are in the u.s i know it's kind of a tough one to do because everybody has their own individual identity but who would be comparable to someone like you in the u.s well in terms of putting across ideas and then you know which are unpalatable but in agreeable way i would say i would compare myself mostly ronald reagan got it uh i i figured that when i was reading some of the views i figured that i would put you as a milton friedman ronald reagan type of a person maybe those two uh uh some of the views that you have so can you walk us through i mean if you look at the numbers today india went from not being in the top 10 of gdp they were not a name that was being talked about then they went into top ten then you moved into number five then you dropped to number seven then i think right now you're number six gdp but india's come up walk us through the history of what's happened to india specifically say the last 60 years what changes has india gone through the last 60 years well first of all uh the gdp calculation you are relying is on basis of the exchange rates which prevail in the market but we economists don't use that we use what is called as the purchasing power parity rate which means if i'm going to evaluate tomatoes in my or pizzas in my gdp uh either i will use the american price or the indian price because the quality is the same so the valuation goes up and we are actually in absolute gdp now the third largest in the world i saw that and not fifth or sixth which is subject to the exchange rate the exchange rate devalues our gdp also goes down so i think india has come a long way because we were really exploited and completely drained of resources during the british period before that we had the islamic invasions which destroyed our country in many ways and then after the independence we began really the bottom of the heap and uh and over the years we have we would have done gone much faster much further had we not adopted the soviet socialism for the first 40 years and now in the last six years unfortunately our prime minister is innocent of economics so he has been doing a lot of ad-hoc things which have failed and if you look at our gdp graph it's been this growth rate has been declining consistencies from 2016. and now it's in minus because of the corona but we were down to just three percent uh in the last quarter before the uh corona pandemic virus pandemic came so we need we can turn around and we can grow very fast because the amount of potential we have is enormous i could evaluate i deliberate on that during the course of the interview but i would say that if india wanted to overtake china it can do so and if india wanted to challenge the united states which is the united states the main strength is your ability to innovate and bring in new innovations uh and raise the productivity of capital and labor and we have shown our indians in the united states have shown that we got as much brains as the americans so therefore if india were to develop its educational system properly uh i think we could be a challenge to the united states and overtake china in the next 10 15 years that's a pretty bold statement to make to to say overtake china in the next 10 or 15 years which which we'll get into that here in a minute but prior to getting into that you know in the us gandhi is seen as a hero who is gandhi to you atman gandhi is uh uh was a man who actually converted the fight for freedom from just petitioners that we had before highly educated people who went to cambridge and oxford and you know qualified at the bar of law and uh but he may convert he himself was of course trained in the uh i mean educated in england uh he became a barrister he went and practiced in south africa for some time but uh he has completely transformed himself he started wearing indian clothes and that too of the poor farmer and then he converted this fight for independence into a mass movement and he had ideas which you know we found it very difficult in our modern world to practice but his uh his direction was super he wanted india to stand on his own feet and he thought that we had the resources do that which he was right but i think subsequently his successor i or his nominated successor in in the government mr nehru didn't follow anything of his ideology and so he just remains as a kind of an emotional figure as the one who got his freedom but not that his ideology has been given a go by fair enough so so let's go back to what you were talking the only reason i bring that up because 60 years you know us americans we go to school you read the books you like quotes all over instagram you're thinking wow it's 100 all good but maybe there's a different perspective i've had a chance to visit mumbai and i had a chance to go to one of his homes that i believe is now a museum and get a chance to walk through and see what the place looked like was very interesting to learn uh there's a picture i believe of obama there visiting his place of living they have a picture in the museum of obama being there but you speak very bluntly of pm modi you've you've called them out you've said he's a great politician but a naive economist there's other words you use but you haven't necessarily complimented him on the economy side but but it sounds like you guys have known each other from the 70s there's a relationship there between the two of you and you will also recommended that you think you should be as a his finance minister if you were his finance minister today with what they have going on in the economy with your level of confidence to say where india can overtake china in the next 10 or 15 years you mentioned education but i kind of want you to go a little bit deeper what are some recommendations you would make for india to make adjustments in order to compete with china and potentially us the first place you see uh it's well known to economists i i never said he is either the phrase used used about his economic knowledge of economics i tell you i said he doesn't know in economics which is much harsher it's much harsher than i yes i was trying to be a little bit more subtle so uh you see the question today after this corona of one and a half years or whatever is that we have a essentially watch the our finance ministry which is also a lot of low iq people in have been packed into it because they are obedient this is one of the weakness of modi he is a friend of mine i've known him for a long time but he he just likes people to work for him and not you know become an independent poll so i'm being kept out on that ground i don't mind because i'm doing so many other things but the fact is that today we have what we call as a gross demand shortage and that demand shortage has come because the working class the middle income middle income groups they've all lost incomes and and the the migrant workers are all out of employment and if you you can see some of the manifestation if you go to an automobile showroom you will find cars and cars lined up you'll be surprised why because there's no demand so the economic growth has to be first positioned how are you going to augment this demand and there are two ways of doing it one is put like your americans did uh starting with the with the starting with the um with trump and then now with the biden you're putting money into the hands of the people people are getting checks in their own bank accounts in the united states i mean those who go you know couldn't go to work and that you know kept your demand up and so it's not such a bad situation in the united states but here there was across the board except of course the very rich uh where there was a uh a you know the sharp fault in demand so our policy should have been to see how we can put money into the hands of people what other things we can do to to increase demand one of the things i've suggested is that the income tax in our country is not paid in agriculture because all agriculture incomes are exempt from income tax in the urban areas there is a cutoff point and above that only you pay income tax and that the total amount is not more than two to three percent of our uh of our revenue so i'm saying that and then these laws are so complicated uh that people have to hire chartered accountants and so on to you know just uh to convince the income tax inspector that you are not you're not fudging your accounts and their cases and our cases have been there people are harassed and they spend enormous amount of time preparing income tax returns so i've said when you're getting such a small amount from income tax abolish it and it doesn't matter the rich will be benefited by that but the middle class also which does bulk of the savings you know in our country and likes the united states united states if you would be surprised to know that the household saving is negative because most people are borrowing and they don't save in india 80 percent of our total savings is comes from the households because people are very uh you know they want to provide for the future and so we our people save a lot now you should encourage them then you find that the interest rates in the united states you can get a loan for two percent but in india it's not less than 12 percent and then with the amount of corruption then the banks and so on you end up paying 15 interesting and uh the if you put money in the in a in a term deposit you get only six percent rent you know i mean the interest rate interest payments so you should raise that to nine percent and so that people you know find that saving is worthwhile and not just you know buying gold and keeping it in stock so i would say that i would begin by freeing the demand forces by either way there's another third one you build a road and print notes and give them wages uh that becomes demand too and uh you know we are still living in the past about the gold standard and all that they the money you print is owed to yourself there's a debt okay it's a big debt but you owe it to yourself nobody's going to come and liquidate you so there's no harm when there's a demand shortage to print notes liberally so that you can pay people for public works and so on so therefore i would begin by focusing on generating employment and putting money people into the hands of people so it becomes demand lower the interest rates uh because the interest rates are too high and they have a negative thing especially in the small and medium industry which is about 60 of our industry they are finding very hard to get capital and they're all closing down and that creates unemployment so you said so so interest rates in u.s if i want to go borrow something rates right now are two percent let's just say give or take it's nothing money is free right now if you want to get it so cheap but in india you said 12 to 15 percent because the bank is also gauging at you know gouging adding additional two or three percent we said savings is six percent so a saving account in india right now pays six percent to yes it's a term deposit that means you have to put it in for five years five years okay so it's even a five-year six percent that's a lot higher than u.s u.s doesn't have a fixed annuity or even a bond you get nowadays for five years you're lucky if you're looking at a percent to two percent so six is a bigger number but you're saying lower the interest rates bring it down make money a little bit easier get rid of taxes if if india gets rid of taxes how does the government generate revenue or in order to be able to sustain military all the other things how does india do that well there are two ways one is of course the inter indirect taxes sales tax excise tax you know tax on when you purchase the these will continue and they're in fact the bulk of the taxes we are getting today i mean income tax gets you hardly anything except harassment second is uh that um uh we uh in our country we uh we we need if you if you lower the interest rate in borrowing uh people will get the money they will they'll be happy to pay that kind of lower interest rates i'm not talking about the interest rates that you get on fixed deposit that i would call as the rate of return but in terms of interest rate on loans that if you lower it you will find people will borrow money and uh and and that's how you put money into the people's hands what what gives you confidence to believe that india can compete with china and u.s in the next 10 or 15 years see uh us i'll answer a second first let me answer china how what was the growth rate between india and china between 1950 and 1980 about the same three and a half percent per year which is dismally low and then what the chinese did especially because of thin shopping he made he improved his relations with the united states and told the united states you're buying so many consumer durables from japan and south korea and so on and uh in these countries now they're getting prosperous and the wage rates are going up and so the earlier on you you know motorola was more expensive than say toyota or so i mean not uh one of these panasonic et cetera and now they they know that the motorola is out of the business completely and these people's uh prior prices are going up and what i they proposed was that let these nations which are you know influenced can be influenced by you give us semi-processed goods and we will add value to it and then export it to the united states at the same cheap price that you were getting before so now take lenovo taiwan gives you the circuits and the the the base it comes to china and there they put in the keyboard and they put the glass and then the case and then put lenovo made in china it's not really made in china so this switch trade if you look at the chinese statistics they are always in a deficit of trade with the east asian countries but in a huge surplus of trade payments of course payments out of trade with the with europeans and the americans so this switch trade is now they're running out of steam on that because chinese labor is also becoming very expensive and their their non-adherence to uh inter inter intellectual property rights and so on these east asian countries are willing to look at an alternative and india can be that alternative but india needs to remove all the the what this cobwebs that we have inherited from the british rule you know the regulation on this regulation on that this simplification or regulation mr modi didn't do he made it even more complicated in my opinion you simplify that and make it possible for uh for foreign investors from japan and south korea and the philippines and you know taiwan to come with the minimum hassles if you want to buy land today in india to build a factory it takes you six years to get the land why is that so yeah because there'll be a court case somebody will fight like are you being serious yes yes yes yes you try and buy land in india i mean i'm talking about to build a factory you see so there's a lot of problems then the the left-wing trade unions will also come in oh yeah most people you talk to any foreign investment that's the problem they have that's why they go to cities and do uh um it's i.t matters because in bangalore you can get an apartment and the indians are cheap labor and you know we we produce a lot of uh good ide by products but uh intellect i mean the information technology products so i am i'm saying that uh if you do this simplify people will come with the money and uh yeah they're gonna get a very good rate of return but the hassles are the ones which are stopping them from coming in many cases they have to go many of these developed countries have gone decided to go to other countries take for example when i was commerce minister i had gone to this uh brussels for the conference on on on wto creation of a wto and we got textiles which the americans had the most you know most you know oppressive uh tariff rates we got the uh i got in in fact in a bilateral meeting with the americans that they would lower these rates for our garments and so on to come but we didn't get the benefit of it china and bangladesh got it and we are still nowhere in this so this is because the textile industries don't have the incentive to export so i'm saying the potential same thing with agriculture we have you know as much arable land as uh china but we produce only one quarter of what china produces on a plot of land they will in fact produce three three crops a year we produce in only 25 more than one crop we can easily because india at least we don't have snow and we have 12 months of the year you can do agriculture we have 150 million cows and we give a average of 200 liters per year one israeli cow gives you 11 000 liters per year so i i think the india's potential is tremendous and we need to do it and electricity can even be given cheap if you convert the thorium into uranium and nuclear reactors put all over the country you will produce enough not only for yourself to give it away free but you can give it to your neighbors too so india is a land of potential and it's a question of tapping that you see so so if i look at that's that's interesting on what you're saying i did not know about taking six years to take buy land and build a you know plant on it but you know if you look at population wise okay you look at population wise if we take and combine uh uh i believe it's us plus canada plus all of europe plus australia plus all of new zealand plus all of south america we have 1.432 billion people okay i'll say that one more time u.s canada all of europe all of south america australia and new zealand 1.432 billion people china alone is 1.439 billion people india is 1.366 okay so so automatically you have a lot more enhanced inventory wise to be able to grow that now the fertility rate has slowed down tremendously in china over the years you know they went from 6.11 and 55 i think they're at i don't know 1.69 today obviously some of the laws they came out with that you can't have you know all these other laws that they had they changed it so it's grown slowed down a little bit and the median age has gone up from being 21 19 years old it's like 38 now which i think is what they wanted but now it's kind of scaring them a little bit long term about what could happen but go back to the playbook of what china did from your perspective you have 1.366 they have 1.439 us is at 330 million the numbers just came back from the census bureau what was the playbook china used to compete in the marketplace in your eyes what is the playbook u.s used to be the dominant force in a marketplace what was both of their playbooks because it's a different playbook well of course uh they as i told you they don't produce anything in china the semi-semi-processed goods come from east asia they only add value to it and and export it to the united states uh i i it's industrial development i i i don't think any country should be replicated the way and today china has a problem they're calling it rebalancing they use all these fancy words but the fact is that today china is running into a saturation because their labor has become very expensive and it's going to be very difficult to bring in raw materials or semi-profit goods from east asia and and convert it into uh exportable goods for the united states and europe so i i am not i don't want to repeat the chinese thing except in a marginal sort of way i mean we are in the capable of producing in our country we don't need semi-processed goods from east asia but if east asia wants to export of course it will be advantageous for us because we can use our resources for something else but india is potential is much more than china china is in fact it's uh agricultural uh yield per acre is near saturation point it's uh industrial thing is based on uh on tomorrow the american companies pack up and leave and saying no we are no more interested in this processing uh china would have a very big problem uh in their country what they have done is you they have they mastered the art of selling abroad they're a great salesman and they have brought in a lot of resources they have been able to sell some of their products more easily even today india uh we are importing manufacture products from china and we just impor export iron ore and uh this kind of thing you see so china's cleverness is not in terms of using its own resources by in fact most of china is i think uh baron if you go to gansu province or urumuchi or tibet you can see whereas india is you know throughout the country you have um greenery and ability to manufacture tower you yield per acre is one of the lowest in the world our experimental plots in the agricultural indian agriculture indian agricultural research institute is six times what we get in the farmers get and we have neglected the farmers because we followed the soviet pattern and the soviet pattern was extract resources from agriculture and finance heavy industries industrialization and in the sense that the british also broke the back of the of the agricultures but we also did for the first 40 years it's only barely now we are in a position where some parts of india are producing bubble crops like punjab which is of course now in agitation south india in the district of tanja would like that so where is the problem for india we don't have the right policies we don't lack anything else if you want water desalination of seawater you got the longest coastline any big nation is having you see uh desalination seawater the chinese at the israelis have done a wonderful job of that and we have 60 percent of the thorium in our country if the uranium gets exhausted which is expected another 20 years it will be india which will be dominating the nuclear fuel so what is it that india enacts i know people have got brains they've shown it in america they've shown it in so many european countries they're not able to show it in india because we have got this bureaucratic structure which you know suffocates our people and it doesn't give them due credit if somebody does something then his boss wants to take the credit you know you said uh if america was to leave china tomorrow to china would be in in layman's terms screwed if america was traded but here's a question for you if you look at if you look at the world's manufacturing superpower you know china's here then you got us then you got japan germany then it's india right meaning they have manufacturing they're dominating the marketplace whether it's chips pharmacy you know people are trying eighty percent of all the pharmacy being produced there don't you think america kind of empowered china so much that it got the world to rely way too much on china which is now harder to lean away and get away from china because what you're saying is it makes sense when you say if america decides to pack their lunch and leave tomorrow and just say you know we're out of here that's true but i don't think america can do that because now they're too reliant on the chinese economy and that's given china the power well see first of all uh one historical event the americans couldn't have foreseen and none of us would have in fact had to pinch myself to believe it has happened that is the unraveling of the soviet union china was a counter and it made sense they had very bad relations with the soviet union so the united states saw this as a strategic advantage and therefore assisted that the way the americans assisted the chinese for their development is unbelievable but particularly because you gave them so much market access in your own country and so they benefited by that and now uh now they are they they may talk tough and so on but if uh if some of the democratic countries got together they will be in railroad soup china would be yeah china would be okay so let's talk about coronavirus you know the cases you're in india we hear about the news it's uh the seven day average uh in february in cases was eleven thousand one 000 145 a day the seven day average right now as of may 9th is 389 000 cases a day the seven day average on death is nearly 4 000 39.41 right and we're seeing the story i'm mentoring uh helping out with this one uh company in india i sit on their board and i'm talking to them and i said what does it look like he says you don't even know how bad it is right now they're in the capital where most of the covet is taking place workers going home nobody's buying p no there's a lot of fear there right okay so then a number comes out saying well modi wasn't responsible he said he's gonna get more vaccines out he didn't doesn't this validate because the number that came out is china india needs 1.2 million doses of vaccine shots right 1.2 billion that's a big number 1.2 billion and there's only one place you can go to to get 1.2 billion and you know who that is i mean that's what a lot of people are talking about it's china doesn't that kind of validate the power of power china has over the world or you disagree with that i disagree because we are the largest producer of vaccines not china so if you don't know we were became complacent because uh by by end of december and january of this year day 21 it looked as if the corona was gone and the prime minister went and boasted that i have solved the problem corona i've defeated them in the world economic survey i have an economic conference or whatever it's called in switzerland and he of course it was online but he uh his speech he said i've solved this problem i'm ready to assist any other country which also solves the problem and out of the blue this second wave came and we we had forgotten to see the the the there is a lot of he said we are a democracy so we got a lot of lobbies and uh the british uh uh oxford at uh zenika whatever it's called they wanted it to be manufactured in india there was an indian company which was doing by by a different route they were producing these maxines which are far safer tested and effective too and i took that there but originally when the prime minister announced that the contract is going he only announced this astrozenica vaccine produced in in pune and now the owner has gone off to london and he's sitting there because there have been so many i mean there must have been 200 deaths in that whereas in this other one co-vaccine uh produced entirely domestically uh there has been not any so uh we we became complacent and we are paying the price for that complacency and this attempt to want to grab credit and then project yourself in the world this weakness of politicians you know this is partly responsible because nobody wanted to do as i would utter a word of caution say i was of course i was in i'm the parliamentary committee on health so i was the one who fought and got the the co-vaccine uh to be cleared on the same day and now the government is putting all his faith in this vaccine because the other one is you know we don't know where it is when the owner himself has gone away to britain we don't know what's going to happen so we yes we are behind we are responsible for what happened in a matter like oxygen i am not surprised a country like india not being able to supply oxygen because we didn't make make arrangements because oxygen requires a lot of you know trucking and transportation and cylinders and so on and none of that was being thought of just having enough oxygen is not enough so so in in what so you're saying as far as the vaccine goes india doesn't at all rely on china for any of the vaccine because you can produce you're the largest manufacturer what what does india rely on china with because if there's one thing india did in the last 12 months you guys banned tick tock all these apps i think on one week it was a hundred apps that were fully banned of china and india which i applaud for them to take that position because nobody else is willing to take that position a lot of people are scared trump almost did something where he forced them to want to sell tic tac but you know it was kind of confusing how that ended up taking place what what does india rely on china with and if it's nothing what how does how does india view china does india view china as an ally or there's a view as they you know number one enemy it faces well first of all let me start with your last point chinese have crossed a mutually agreed line of actual control we drew a line in 1993 saying that there are disputes on whose land is whose land and we will you know take the present situation the status quo and will draw a line where there's no disputes and uh in that the chinese got a big chunk of kashmir the part of kashmir which is now called a separate state called ladakh but over the period of the previous government they had been silently coming into our land and this continued even after we came to power now i i do not know whether the prime minister knew about it i i can't believe that he wouldn't have known he had 18 meetings one to one xi jinping one to one one either in india or in china or turn by turn and suddenly out of the blue we come to learn that they have come and occupied our land and uh it's about two thousand square kilometers and now they are you know they enforce that they they are increasing their forces i think they are they're they're thinking i don't know whether they've got a date but they're certainly going to have another attack and the attack was actually by the chinese aimed at eliminating india from the global map that we are number two i mean we are in the second category of nations not in the first category of west categories only united states and and china and india is waffling because we are not able to we have been you know brainwashed earlier that we should be non-aligned not aligned with what uh with whom and we should have a clear policy that today the weapon systems are the best in the united states we don't want u.s troops in india because our troops are sufficient to deal with china but we certainly need the weapons systems the u.s is willing to give certainly i would like to see um like to see your f-35 being given to us you gave it to turkey i think but i don't know what is the the magnet the indians have decided to sign a contract and pay a hundred thousand uh crores uh to the russians for s 400. now as for hundreds electronics are entirely chinese second i don't know what the world realizes the russians in effect are a junior partner of china they can't go against china they are bankrupt and the chinese have been financing them and so therefore they today we need clarity we can defeat the chinese we have the weapons we have the the the wherewithal to engage in our warfare because the logistics is in favor of india the chinese have to come from a long distance and through tibet and then cross a mountain then come down so we can defeat them and in fact in the hand-to-hand combat we have already defeated them but the fact is now it's going to be the weapon system and we need to therefore have a clear understanding of the united states the main problem with the indian politicians is we are too emotional if you praise them they think oh we are now arrived they are the greatest in the world well the americans are all practical people i've lived with them i know everything is give and take what's in it for me or what i'll give you and what i want from you now that kind of language you should speak to the americans and americans i know want to give up they want to give up some of their uh they want to give up some of their uh responsibilities in say the indo-pacific i think we are in a position to take it tomorrow if india and indonesia came together the chinese won't be able to go through the malacca strait they can't come from their eastern coast and go to the to to the west because we can stop them there so we have that kind of thing but the chinese are very hard-working people they have got the sri lankans on their side they've got the bangladeshis on their side all our neighboring countries are today if they're not pro-chinese they certainly don't want to annoy them and we're in a terrible situation so do you think china sees you so in a way uh they're eliminating enemies one by one by one and it sounds like you're the last one they haven't eliminated before they go after the big guys and you know what the big guys so i think you are in the way of us because right now india is they have three choices okay they have three choices either number one india is gonna side with us either india is gonna side with china or either india is gonna say we're not siding with anybody we can stand on our own two feet right it sounds like it's one of those three options long term what do you think is going to be happening because when when the coronavirus started spreading in in india you saw chinese diplomat diplomats all the way at the top tweeting their tweet is weibo i don't know if you saw what they said about india says look what's going on in india and look what we're doing we're shooting rockets up in the space and we're going to mars we're doing all this stuff yeah and we have burning bodies yes they're burning bodies so so do do you what do you think in long term is going to be india's position not just the right thing to take but what do you foresee taking place with india us china or we can stand alone if india can get get stacked together on the economic policy we will be able to stand on on in ten years but india doesn't have the weapon system we need to deal with china and americans obviously can't send their troops here to fight the chinese so we need an a solid alliance with the united states in the present juncture at least for 10 years and we have got into something called the court but our government is uh really darling on how you know how much to commit not to commit and china is not an option as long as the present leadership is there there could be a change monster tomb changed and then we came everything changed and so if xi jinping goes and somebody else comes who is not like then i think we can we we have a historically a very long relationship with china and at man to man there is a lot of you know love and respect for the for each other we admire the chinese for all the things that they admire our culture in fact in 1936 i put this in my book the president of beijing university who later was an ambassador for the republic of china the chiang kai-shek by china he came to harvard invited to speak at the tri-centennial function and they asked him to speak on any topic that is of great importance to china and what was it the topic the indianization of china a case of peaceful borrowing for 300 years and i've given all the references you can access it through the weidner library of our harvard so this speech he says that the indians were mesmerized us with their concepts of god and you know um the various incidents that took place and how the gods intervened how they helped the human being he said they were so snowed in by that and he was not happy about it he said we have to get exercised it out and of course the communists came and all went but even today when when there is no hostility i've been to china many times i i really like china i know their culture i like their food even specially but they they have treated me with great respect but today we have a political problem after all i am an indian nationalist to begin with and friendship can't be something that it can say no no no we should continue to be friends with china even if they grab our territory that we can't do so we are going to have problems for 10 years we need the americans uh particularly in the weapons system if we change our economic policy and bring in what is what you know which means what then be clear about your objectives you clear be clear about your priorities be clear about your strategy and you'll be clear about how you're going to mobilize your resources and you can grow at 10 per year for 10 years and you will be already abreast of china and then on you can overtake and then it becomes you and the americans so and that will be a friendly match it won't be a hostile match because you are a democracy and we have got so many indians in the united states i can't see a situation where india and the united states will be ever in a hostile position we can have uh you know we can have exchange abuses and things like that but the fact is that we need to have clarity we have a problem with the chinese sitting on our territory and we can't go with the russians because they are no more the soviet union they are now a junior partner of china and therefore the squad is part of course there's other australia and japan they're well they're really allies of the americans so it's really india and the united states so india with this huge population huge military is not the capacity to uh to take on china especially in that terrain and we don't we have no interest in crossing the mountains and capturing chinese property chinese territory and that is the way forward but i don't know whether our prime minister has got this kind of a mindset because he has even today not said that the chinese have aggressed and come and occupied our territory not even once you're you're a reagan fan so you know how reagan said we're one generation away from losing our freedom do you think india is one generation away from being owned by china of losing what one generation away of being owned by china because you said 18 meetings with g one on one modi had some in india some in china but it's one on one face to face and they're still buying land and gradually you know moving into india do you think because china typically as a long-term thinker they're patient for modi to not uh win an election so the next guy comes and they can hopefully win that person over to allow them to start investing into china you know what i'm asking right i mean i know that i don't think that the case of modi is out of love for china that he is doing that there are some other factors since i don't know i i i mean i'm not being properly briefed on it so i can't say but he has been consistently avoiding taking a confrontationist position with china he's been consistently denying in fact he used the media our government used the media to make out the chinese actually withdrawn and gone back till the satellite photos came and made a joke of it so i i would say that the indian psychology is such that we have a long history by the way these islamic forces ruled us for 600 years and the british ruled us for 200 years all brutally but we survived them as iran was a zoroastrian country the islamic forces took over took them over in 15 years they made them hundred percent islamic same thing with babylon and and other parts in uh which are now called iraq egypt even the christians took 50 years for europe but in our case 600 years and 200 years and you're still 82 what you were that is the hindu population so we are we we may look passive but we are not passive well we have fought and overcome many many many um you know reverses and we have come out on top we had a case in 1965 when the americans used to make fun of us that we are living from ship to mouth because we had there was a failure of the agricultural crop and so the americans had to send under a scheme called the pl 480 a grain they used to send grain by by ship to india and they said that india is living from ship to mouth if one ship doesn't come there'll be starvation and there are predictions that in 10 years india will have food riots and people will eat each other up written by a state department official called a world famine it's called world famine you can access it through google so uh that india has then go in a short period of ten years got agriculture what they call is green revolution and today we are exporters of grain at the cheapest price in the world if we get a market access we'll be selling a guy a wheat to america which of course the americans want to love but if you could we would be able to sell you all the wheat you want so i i think the potential of india is can be any time invoke if you have the uh the the perspective we have the the thinking and the self-confidence that we can do in ourselves and we can i don't think uh that we have to worry about china in fact china has to worry about us do you really believe that absolutely because if history goes we are the ones who went to china our religious leaders went and you please read uh what uh who should says doctor who should he has said precisely this they just came here and they gave us wonderful concepts and we just fell for it never again we should in fact went to the other extreme and wanted the china to become christian so that we never have another hindu invasion it's it's it seems like it's the game of who who can get the most people to think like them right americans think in a certain way indians think in a certain way the chinese think in a certain way then you have religions you know christians think in a certain way you know uh sikhs think in a certain way buddhist thinking a certain way muslims think in a certain way it's the imposing of the way of thinking to see who can win at the end so is it more philosophies or is it more religious beliefs to be imposed this is a complete different conversation because i think india's number two country in the world population wise for muslims it's shy of 200 million i want to say 195 196 million give or take and i think number one is indonesia is like 216 220 million people that they have there yeah in regards to the muslim population what what concerns you more do certain religious ideologies being imposed on the indian population or does the you know more philosophy of chinese trying to get folks in india to think like them what concerns you more long term you know in uh over the last uh maybe i should say a thousand years uh the hindu religion has gotten compartmentalized into concepts which are not there in our spiritual scriptures for instance this brahman you know the the warrior class called the shatria the commercial class called the shwaisha and the farmers called sudra and this untouchables that has grown this is not there in our scriptures and it's not birth-based we today make it birth-based i am called a brahmana because my parents were brahmanas okay but brahmin is a is a characteristic if you are given up all the material aspirations except the minimal that you need but concentrate on knowledge that is called a brahmana if you pick up the sword and defend the country you are then called shatter your father may be a brahmana but you will not be here brahmana so that has got you know it has degenerated into a birth concept and the country has got divide so this hindu movement which about everybody is getting real panicky about is not directed at the muslims it's directed at ourselves unite yeah they're they are crazy people in our country they are the crazy people in the united states they say all kinds of things about the blacks i don't think that that's the mainstream american thinking so uh in india we are those of us in particular in the bjp we are thinking in terms of bringing about a renaissance where we become a one community without threatening anybody else because of our unity and the only religion in the world i know and by the way in our constitution we include amongst hindus we include buddhist sikhs and and jains and none of the three object to it so this sikh separatist is only some guys in san jose california but in india the sikhs are 20 of our army and the hindus so-called hindus has differentiated from sikhs if the sikh gurus had not lifted the sword we would all be finished so we all i mean we have that kind of uh reverence for the sikh uh uh uh you know of the the people who let the see a seek sikh movement do it sing it you know it doesn't believe in any divisions at all it's a very very uh if i may use or misuse the word catholic it's they're very catholic in outlook now the war that was predicted by professor huntington of harvard called the clash of civilizations was that christians and hindus will combine against muslims because muslims is an international religion and but that problem is not there because the indian muslims i would say 95 percent they look like us they are us because they are all converted people then come from some from from mars or something and their social habits are very similar to ours my own daughter is married to a muslim but i can't tell him i can tell the difference it's only when the these mullahs and so on financed by money from abroad who want to create this a separateness yes there are there's a lot of prejudice there's no question about it it has to be dealt with very strongly but the the blackening of this hindu movement in the united states is not based on on solid facts we are not aiming at anybody else we are saying we are trusted we have for years we have we have become ossified so we want now to go back to our scriptures in which all religions lead to god we have committed to that in our constitution so they when you say hindu you are you are automatically assuming that that hindu will say all religions lead to god my way your way and so on that's what happened when when the jewish delegation came the chief rabbi came here and i was there in the indian delegation when the our our religious leaders decided to meet them meet the religious leaders of of judah judaism and they had a problem with us saying that you are a multi polytheistic we are you know we have only one god i said we also have one god but our manifestations are different they take different forms but the god is only one so i mean these are the things that need to be told to our younger generation the only reason i'm going to understand the only reason i'm bringing this up is because you did an interview with showtime and you were talking about uh uh uh uh you said uh uh wherever the muslim population is large there's trouble and you gave a percentage of 30 percent uh if a country's muslim population becomes over 30 that country is in danger why do you why do you believe that because like you said you said something very interesting you said 95 of the muslims in india are converts it's not like somebody else came in they converted so they're like you they're the only difference they believe in muslims so but they live together they go to school together so what what concerns you the most so i am i know that the muslim population will never be 30 in india their maximum would be 15 because they are also subject to the same the population growth rate has been going down uh it's now 1.8 percent and both hindus have gone down faster because we are economically better off than the muslims today and the muslim population was also going down their growth rates are going down not as sharply as the hindus but it has gone down and in terms of educated muslims who uh we find it's very easy to work with them we have got them in various places we have got even in the bjp which is supposed to be anti-muslim we have got ministers who are muslims uh and uh so uh it gets you know the black and white presentation of these things is what the difficulties i certainly believe that in in the countries that are having trouble take for example uh the palestinian uh israel conflict that's going on uh what is the problem uh the palestinians already have one one country which is called jordan measure 50 is 50 55 uh 55 percent are uh palestinians so uh they got it they they got a a a authority palestinian authority and if they were agreeing to exist to the the agreeing to israel being accepted as a uh as a given fact they tomorrow they will be recognized as the country and now you see uae uh bahrain so many countries have now started having diplomatic relations with the israel look at egypt not a single conflict after the israelis gave up senate so i i am not saying that i'm just saying that in countries where you have this problem because the idea theology of islam says that there are three parts to the world one is called islam where the muslims are in overwhelming majority and rule that's called darul islam then there is a uh this is all in quran and and in the hadiths and the sira it's all there and in writing if it is if there is the muslim population is a minority and the majority is all amorphous you know fighting amongst each other then he says the the object of muslims this is what is the the direction given the object of muslims is to slowly go into a majority and that's called harab and then there is the third thing called like new zealand or australia where you're you're you're you're a minority but the majority is united and there they say comply so they will not agree to uniform civil code that is one man one woman which hindus have they will say no no no you can't allow you people have for wives you can't stop us we have our own separate i think but in australia they have agreed in the united states they have agreed why can't they agree in india so there are the you know these the clerics they read uh from the quran the quran was written long long time ago there's been no it's not you're not allowed to amend it so these are preached so therefore i think the when i said 30 percent uh i i had no idea that this would be applied to india it's not in india india cannot be they have been uh from the day of partition uh after pakistan was created they have been 12 today they may be 14 or 15 because the census last census said they were 14. so i don't know whether they are 15 or 16. there's no doubt that because of poverty because if you look at the muslims of kerala they have fewer children than the muslims of u.p why because the u.p muslim is poor compared to the kerala muslim same thing the the number of children that hindus in kerala have is much less than the number of children that up hindus and up have because hindu you know up is a poorer place and the hindus are also poor on per capita basis and so they as economic growth the thing goes continues you will find that all these countries do want that fewer children so they can educate them and bring them up and to have a better standard of life than they have and in india we have no problem we have got muslims in the army we got in the muslims our number two man on our intelligence is muslim you are muslims ministers and this is just you know the the the people a handful of leftists and others who make a demonstration get international press and then we are given lectures uh from uh from uh from the united states by the liberals there last question for you before we wrap up is you you're seem very insightful what is the biggest threat u.s faces from your perspective as an outsider not india not russia not china what's us's biggest threat long term u.s is the biggest threat according to me is not your any of your internal problems because i have seen having lived in the united states almost continuously for a period seven years and then in and out in and out have been coming to teach at back at harvard uh you know i'd say it's a problem-solving country and uh when i was there they were in the 60s oh my god the vietnam war then the those days they used to call themselves negroes now they call them black africans or something uh and uh they were on streets and were beaten up they couldn't climb on the bus and uh you know so on and now when i look back on america and when i go to mecca i am amazed the amount of progress you make so you have a problem solving problem i i don't expect any difficulty in your social problem even trump may come and grant may go but it's not going to change your demography or your political democracy the thing that i am finding which is disturbing is that united states doesn't have the staying power once they make a decision you pulled out of vietnam dumped everybody and then luckily for you the vietnamese are anti-chinese so you know now they are your friends now you're going to leave afghanistan now afghanistan you you went there you didn't say that i'm going there just to take a revenge you said no no we are going to translate into democracy and so on a lot of people trusting you came and joined with you they took english education the women dropped their all their pardos and i was we call it in our countries all these garments and became modern women spoke english and suddenly you just say no taliban can take home i mean this is not the way to generate confidence that you can rely on the united states on a long term basis everything is cost and benefit very interesting sir thank you so much for your time i have really enjoyed it and i hope the audience has enjoyed it just as much as i did okay i hope you learn more about india because india is going to play a very big role long term 5 10 15 years from now us staying strong because china is trying to get india to be on sale like many other countries are to them and india say no i think we can hang and compete with you directly and you kind of saw what he had to say curious you know what you took away from this by the way if you've never seen my uh visit we did vlog style when i was in india take a look at this because it also has a part of me meeting with devyang turaki was the youngest billionaire at the time and i gave a speech to 5 000 students at iit which you know he used to be a professor at for math so if you've never seen that click over here and if you've never seen my interview with the former chairman of the state bank of india 400 i think 240 000 employees arundhati bachcharia click over here to watch that interview as well take care everybody bye

Channel: Valuetainment

Views: 379,168

Rating: 4.8011894 out of 5

Keywords: Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur Motivation, Entrepreneur Advice, Startup Entrepreneurs, valuetainment, patrick bet david, Is India China’s Biggest Threat? - Subramanian Swamy, Subramanian Swamy, India, India as an economic superpower, The rise of India, India as a rising power, India vs China - Who will win?, India vs China

Id: -0rw5tDpxBA

Length: 69min 3sec (4143 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/MotorNeckLE]

Timestamps

Talks about visiting Harvard and getting blacklisted. India's term deposit (fixed deposit) rates should be increased to 9%.

13:00 His wife opens the door behind him

20:00 - 30:00 India can replace China's uranium supply (or something), takes 6 years for MNC to buy land for a plant,

32:30 Does India need Chinese vaccines? PM Modi boasted about exporting vaccines. Covaxin safer.

37:00 India can defeat China, needs F-35 from USA.

41:00 Pet dog barks

43:00 Swamy was well-treated by the Chinese, "Indianisation of China"

48:30 Is China waiting for Modi's replacement? Islamic rule of India, India not passive

54:00 BJP bringing Hindu renaissance, Brahmin caste, crazy (Hindu) people inside India

57:00 95% of Muslims are converted Indians, prejudice exists against Muslims to a small degree

58:45 Jewish visitors and polytheism

59:25 30% of Muslim population equals trouble? Muslim population growth. Division of world according to Islam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divisions_of_the_world_in_Islam

1:05:00 America's biggest problem?

The interview was recorded on May 9th and uploaded today.

[u/scottydoesknow7]

Do people take Swamy take seriously? I don't think he is credible and just seems to like to hog the limelight.