<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'>
<div style="font-family:helvetica,arial;font-size:10pt;color:black">
<div id="AOLMsgPart_1_7b44fe88-5565-4ac7-acb9-ab4159765dc5">
<font color="black" size="2" face="arial"><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: large;"><font size="4">Modi</font></b><br>
<div style="font-family:helvetica,arial;font-size:10pt;color:black">
<div id="AOLMsgPart_1_f4683ade-9955-4325-8648-bf85bfa1fae2"><font color="black" size="4" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">
<div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family:"><font size="4"> </font></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4">Narendra Damodardas Modi is his full name but he is
called by his last name, like most in India.
He is the new Prime Minister of India after leading the <i>Bharatiya Janata Party </i>(BJP) into a
decisive victory in the last election.
We knew of <i>Janata </i>as the nationalistic
party averse to vestiges of foreign imperialism (not difficult to understand
since India keeps referring to Sonia Gandhi as an Indian politician rather than
the Italian Signora Edvige Antonia Albina Maino that Indira’s son Rajiv Gandhi
married). The BJP has evolved to be
broader in scope and more positively assertive to things Indian rather than
just a party of anti-colonial powers.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:">PM Modi is from Gujarat, southwest of
New Delhi and southeast of Pakistan’s Karachi, bordering into the Arabian Sea. Lothal would be familiar to those who read
their 6</span><span style="font-family:">th</span><span style="font-family:">
grade Social Studies book at SVES as part of the Indus Valley Civilization that
traded with Egypt and Persia in olden times.</span></font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4">Controversial Modi was denied a U.S.
visa in 2005. He is not one of Uncle
Sam’s favored politicians. The
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty still prevails (Sonia and Rajul’s resignation, President
and Vice-President, respectively, in the Congress Party was refused after
winning only 44 seats in the 534-seat legislature), but the simple vegetarian
Modi proved to be an astute politician, visiting Singapore, Japan, and China to
establish closer ties with Gujarat, rather than the models of the western
world. (Google Modi’s history of
leadership as Chief Minister of Gujarat, particularly on his environment and poverty
elevation record.)</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4">My interest is not on the politician
Modi <i>per se </i>as to what he represents
in the economic shifting of the world’s economy from the global stock market
model to more bilateral and multilateral models that emerge when parties in
consultation find mutual interests. The
powerful axis of Tokyo-New York-London that lords the global economy from their
Rolls Royce is finding competition in an emerging multilateral relation of
parties who were outside the power circle until now. They are called BRICS but it is not because
they operate together in their trade policies that make them a threat to the
western model. It is because they offer
an alternative, a thinking-outside-the-box, as it were, to the current situation.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4">BRICS for those who do not pay too close
attention to Forbes and WSJ are Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South
Africa. Though a rejuvenated Portugal
after Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Lisbon, Brazil has a widely mixed population
with the African gene considerably miscegenated with the Amerindian indigene
and the Euro immigrants. One only has to
listen to the energy of the Afro-European music beat from Recife to Sao Paolo to
know in one’s bones that doing the Samba at the Mardi Gras is more than just a
swivel of the hip. Ditto to South Africa,
energized by the Boer but chastened on its apartheid history by Suweto. Neither are beholden to EU’s clutches.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4">Due to Crimea in the Ukraine, EU/USA
cousins of the Russian descendants of Nicolas and Catherine west of the Urals have
been chastised. Vladimir Putin is
showing up at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in
Asia (CICA) this week in Shanghai. Kazakhstan’s
President Nazarbayev suggested the formation of the forum and consultation body
at a UN General Assembly in 1992, with the Secretariat in Almaty. Turkey held the last chairmanship (2012-14)
and China hosts the office in the next two years (2014-16). </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4">The Fourth Summit this week has Russia,
India, and China comparing notes. (Ukraine
and the US hold observer status and we will be forgiven if we note that the NSA
already has sufficient data not to be too worried about any surprises!) President Mahinda Rajapaksa of India
represents the country so it is too soon to expect any Modi-fied influence on
the group.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4">We note Putin’s presence because Russia’s
current situation helped make a little known fact suddenly relevant. The border town of Suifenhe in Heilongjiang, northwest
of Vladivostok, already allows the Ruble as legal tender with the Renminbi. To be sure, downtowns Harbin and Manzhouli
are closer architecturally to Petrogard than Xi’an, and my visits to border
towns like Shiwei, Mohe, and Heihe had Chinese-speaking Euro-Russians, and
Russian-speaking Chinese, but Europe’s pushing away of Putin after Crimea opens
the Russian Far East to collaborative endeavors between the erstwhile cool-heeled
neighbors. We noticed that border towns
do not hesitate to use foreign currencies (including the U$) in their retail
transactions. A pipeline for gas and oil
is also about to completed from Russia to Manchuria.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"><font size="4">Modi’s Gujarat uses Chinese design
services for infrastructure. His pet vision
of the new Gujarat International Finance Tec City looks like the skyline of
Pudong and Beijing. If India, China and
Russia meet more than just to share tea and sympathy in Shanghai, and share the
warmth with Brazil and South Africa, we definitely have a new world in our
hands.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica;color:#1C1C1C;vertical-align:baseline"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:"> </span></i></div>
<br>
<div style="font-size: 18px; clear: both;"><i>j'aime la vie</i><br>
<a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><br>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</i></div>
</div>
</div>
</font>
</div>
</div>
</font>
</div>
</div>
</font>