There's something fascinating about Macron, and a question that keeps coming back: is he cynical, or does he actually believe what he says? My take: he believes it. And that's far more worrying. Look at his path. His father was a neurology professor at a public hospital. His mother was a physician for the French social security system. His grandmother, a public school principal, partly raised him. Then the elite track: Henri-IV, Sciences Po, ENA (the school that trains France's top civil servants), the Finance Inspectorate, deputy chief of staff at the Élysée, Minister of the Economy, President. From birth to power, he never really left the orbit of the State. People will say: "He was a banker at Rothschild." Sure, for four years. But investment banking isn't entrepreneurship. You advise deals between large institutions. You don't risk your own capital. You never lie awake wondering how you'll make payroll. It's a world of networks, access and files. An extension of the high civil service, not its opposite. He never started a company. Never hired anyone with his own money. Never watched a customer walk to a competitor. Never got a tax audit and wondered if his business would survive it. For him, the reality of building something simply doesn't exist. It's not contempt. It's a blind spot. The image that comes to mind is a beautifully machined gear, spinning perfectly, that doesn't mesh with anything. It spins in a vacuum. His whole worldview works like that. Inside his world, everything is coherent. Every step follows logically. The reasoning is brilliant. But the axioms are wrong. And when you reason flawlessly from false premises, you reach false conclusions with flawless rigor. The most interesting part is what happens when reality knocks on the door. When you fail, you have two options. You can say: "I was wrong. What I've believed for fifteen or twenty years is false." That's brutal. It's an identity collapse. Or you keep the cognitive dissonance and explain the failure some other way: people didn't understand, we didn't explain it well enough, the reform didn't go far enough, the opposition blocked it. It's the exact same mechanism as "that wasn't real communism." The model is never wrong. It just was never applied properly. Reality is wrong, the theory is right. And meanwhile, the country burns. That's why "cynical or disconnected?" is the right question. You can reason with a cynic. He follows his interests, so if you change his incentives, you change his behavior. A disconnected believer, you can't. Every failure becomes more proof that you need to push further in the same direction. I think this explains much of the madness of European leadership. Not a bunch of villains plotting in a back room. Possibly sincere people, shaped in the same mold, raised on the same ideas, plugged into a system that is a flat denial of common sense. People so cut off from reality that their sincerity is what makes them dangerous. Macron is the purest embodiment of it. When you build a company, reality corrects you every single week. A customer who doesn't pay, a product that doesn't work, a competitor who moves faster. You don't get a choice: adapt or die. The State never dies. It never gets the bill. And people who have only ever known the State end up believing reality is just one opinion among many. The problem isn't that he lies. The problem is that he can't see.

1/5 Sharjeel Imam has given an interview detailing his Islamist manifesto. Surprisingly, no storm has been kicked up over pronouncements that are so unapologetically anti-liberal, anti-secular, anti-democracy, anti-Constitution—in a word, anti-national. 2/5 He openly calls the Constitution fascist, labels secularism a trap, and denounces democracy as a contrivance to deny Muslims their political rights. 3/5 The piece is a litany of indictments against the liberal class. Imam rejects any difference between liberals and Hindutvadis. In his essentialist worldview, all Hindus are the same, unanimous in denying Muslims political power they claim as a divine right. 4/5 Inadvertently, Sharjeel has recognised something that liberals have been fighting shy of acknowledging: that Hindutva’s idea of India is anchored in the same “overarching nationalist framework”— that Muslims are Indians above all else. 5/5 For more, read this Opinion article by Ibn Khaldun Bharati, who looks at Islam from an Indian perspective: Sharjeel Imam’s Islamist manifesto will be forgotten. The silence of liberals will not theprint.in/opinion/sharjeel…

Going by reaction of some seniors on the left of spectrum, it seems they are extremely upset and unhappy with what is happening in France. No no no, not because they have any sympathy whatsoever for French people. It's just because they fear all these visuals coming from Europe are going viral on social media. And that is puncturing their narrative on supporting street protests in India. Weird side effect. But interesting to observe nevertheless.

For India, Jean Dreze is the Mother Teresa of Economics.

In capitalism, there WILL be a staggering inequality between labour and capital. The entrepreneur bears the risk of the business shutting down. Without that differential, the incentive to take risks collapses. Labor is compensated according to the market value of its marginal product whereas capital is compensated for bearing uncertainty, forgoing consumption, and organizing production. Thought Experiment: You come up with a great idea of cold fusion. Prototype requires you to risk all your savings. Failure means you are out on the streets. You use up all your savings. The prototype works. Scaling up requires more labor and capital. Why shouldn't you be compensated MORE for your acumen and risk taking appetite over the labor who will simply replicate a portion of what you have done? If the debate is between wealth generation through Schumpeterian innovation Vs wealth generated through Rent seeking, please bear in mind that when Dreze was doing all what he does, India was independent for 60+ years and had Congress governments for 50+ of those years.

Dreze can evangelise bad ideas funded by Henry Ford, Arundhati Roy can annoint terrorists as Gandhians safe in the annuity of prize money funded by African slave trade. But woe betide Indians asking for more Indian Fords and Bookers...

Italian ‘cockroaches’, first cousins of desi ‘cockroaches’ and inspiration for Dipke-Bora Gang, ransack one of the largest bookshop’s in Turin. Among other things, the ‘cockroaches’ were protesting “lack of learning facilities”. An evil madness unleashed.

This is problem with media. They don't check credentials. These are Interns who do not have medical registration yet. Technically they're not doctors yet. SUCI probably. Speaking as if they're HODs

Italian ‘cockroaches’ trying to set historic Milan Cathedral, one of the grandest buildings in the world, on fire. Make no mistake: This is a plague unleashed by Global Forces of Evil which is sweeping through the world. Their Agenda: Destroy.

Three things: 1. MGNREGA is a failed programme orchestrated by the jholachap Dreze. It has deprived millions of their aspirations. In 2013–14, barely 9.6% of employed households completed the promised 100 days. If this is the grand success of a poverty alleviation model, i wonder what failure would look like. 2. You’re right, I never faced hardship for a single day in my life and I thank my stars for that. That’s why I want the lives of my countrymen to improve as well and not to be swindled by some poverty porn merchant for his ideological romanticism. 3. I have never hosted a single seminar in my life 😅

A lot of people are hurling abuses and sending weird DMs over the Drezé tweet, as if I had exposed their own father for something. Bros, take a chill pill. I have nothing personal against the guy. My assessment is based on neutral observation & a study of poverty alleviation models across other parts of Asia. I never thought people were so emotionally invested in a Belgian grifter. In that decade, China was leapfrogging us across almost every vertical while we were being governed by people like Drezé under Ms. Gandhi’s NAC. What a lost decade and what a braindead generation of leftist academia it sustained. Now, we have to spend decades cleaning up the mess as current incumbents also doubled down on populist net negative schemes. And once again, my position is simple: every welfare scheme should be judged by one test only - does it reduce the number of people who need it?

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy

Hypocrites

From Socialist to Socialite. Upper class, English speaking, iPhone walas are now CPM and hard working people BJP. True Marxism. Marx never worked

His work was funded by Ford Foundation and McArthur Foundation. How many million years would it take to those "100 workers" to match billionaires like Henry Ford and John McArthur? Or is this calculation meant only for the non-white billionaires? Saving Indian souls - backed by western business - is a very old game.....