Is India A Stable Place To Do Business In?

Till very recently, India’s political stability and growth prospects were taken for granted. Now, both are coming unstuck

- Paran Balakrishnan

There hasn’t been such a gloomy start to a new year in a very long time. In the US, President Donald Trump’s set off a firestorm of unknown proportions by ordering the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Special Forces. The Iranians have vowed revenge and Trump has issued extraordinary counterthreats, saying he’d bomb Iran’s historical monuments — even though that would be a war crime as it contravenes the 1954 Hague Convention on protecting cultural sites.

When the Pentagon insisted Trump’s threats were misreported, he doubled down and repeated them. The next few weeks could determine whether open war erupts in the Gulf, a region where we’ve got crucial interests.

Cross to the UK, where newly re-elected Prime Minister Boris Johnson, bolstered by an 80-seat majority, aims to rush through in three days a complicated law to ensure Britain leaves the EU on January 31, and has set what critics call an “extremely unrealistic” 11-month deadline to conclude a wide-ranging free trade deal with the European bloc.

Johnson’s planning big celebrations to mark Britain pulling up anchor and sailing away from Europe. But such festivities will only distract Britons for so long from Brexit’s potential grimmer effects.

Unstable environment

Here in India, too, the picture’s bleak. The country’s been in turmoil over the government’s new citizenship law and protests against the legislation have claimed at least two dozen lives. In the closing days of 2019, police went on the rampage in Jamia Millia University.

By sharp contrast, when goons wielding sticks and iron rods smashed their way around Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) injuring dozens of students this week, the police stood meekly on the sidelines. Late at night, they appeared to be escorting a group of goons off the campus.