Former Congress leader and senior advocate Kapil Sibal has turned interviewer, as he has started a talk show on The Wire titled Central Hall with Kapil Sibal. The first episode streamed on YouTube today, 29th December, where Sibal talked to ‘BJP leader’ Subramanian Swamy on the topic of State of the Economy. While Kapil Sibal tried to attack the Modi government over the economy, he could not as numbers show that the Indian economy is doing well. As a result, Swamy concluded that the Indian economy is doing well on its own, and the current government does not know anything about the economy.
The talk started with Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, with Sibal saying that entire global economy is adopting AI, and asked what will be the challenges for India in the field. Swamy replied that India can face the challenge well, claiming that NASA is researching to use Sanskrit in is AI programs. He claimed NASA is preferring Sanskrit over English to for robots because Sanskrit does not have different pronunciations for the same spellings, like but and put.
It is notable that it is a long-standing internet rumour that NASA is researching Sanskrit for AI and robotics, and it is largely baseless. NASA is a space research organisation, and it is not actively involved in voice recognition systems. And there is no evidence that the US govt agency is researching on use of Sanskrit in AI, it is a widespread rumour
The root of the rumour is a research paper published by a NASA associate scientist in 1985, titled Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence. It was at best a personal work by the scientist, and there is no evidence that NASA conducted any further study on this subject.
Swamy said that Indians had solved the Y2K problem, and the west will have to depend on India in future too. However, he added that it will depend on the leadership of the country. Swamy said, ‘if you have dumb leadership,…’ and was interrupted by Sibal asking if he is saying that current leadership is dumb. To this, Swamy replied that there are no scholars in today’s leadership.
When Kapil Sibal said that there are highly educated people in the government, Swamy replied, “then they must have the spine to tell the prime minister, who is not highly educated, I don’t know what he is educated in…”, before Sibal asked to move to other topics to avoid a potentially controversial issue.
Kapil Sibal and Subramanian Swamy them moved on to economy, where Swamy said that India is nowhere near achieving the goal of $5 trillion dollar economy.
During this discussion, Swamy had to teach Sibal some basics about economy. Sibal insisted that Indian economy is bad because country’s per capita GDP numbers are low, he cited examples of Brazil and Indonesia, which have higher per capita GDP compared to India, saying that as a result, there is no money to invest. But Swamy explained him that the economy has to be measured in aggregate GDP numbers, not per capita. Swamy further explained that to measure investment, one needs to take the GDP, not the per capita.
However, Swamy continued to attack the Modi govt, claiming that nobody in the current government understands anything about any economics. He claimed that ministers do not know anything, everything is run by bureaucrats, and the ministers only sign files. He said that PMO has one official who did developmental economics in London in 1972, which is not relevant now. Swamy further claimed that the govt had some good economic advisors, but most of them have left, because govt didn’t listen to them.
He also questioned the GDP numbers released by the govt, saying that he is writing about this in The Hindu but nobody reads them. Swamy added that Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh transformed the Indian economy, and such transformation is not taking place now. Swamy also added that Manmohan Singh does not get due credit for his work on Indian economy.
Swamy then said that current govt is only worried about politics, not economy.
After both Sibal and Swamy concluded that Modi govt can’t run economy, they proceeded to recommend each other to be finance ministers. Swamy said that Indian economy is well structured compared to several other major countries including China, and we can turn it around. To it Sibal said, ‘we can if we have people like you’, and Swamy quickly responded, ‘or you’. Swamy claimed that because Sibal knows law, he will be able to transform Indian economy.
They went on to claim that share of states in revenue has come down, because the centre collects all the tax now. Swamy and Sibal claimed that the govt is monopolising tax collection for political reasons.
When Sibal asked what Swamy will do if he gets power in 2024, Swamy replied that he will abolish income tax, and then lower interest rates.
At last, Subramanian Swamy said, ‘you and I should be in the government’. Sibal laughed by saying that it sounds impossible, adding, ‘be that is as may’.
