An overview of the Indian, French, and Eurozone economies with economist

 

Presenting to you an engaging conversation with leading French economist and India specialist Jean-Joseph BOILLOT. Mr. BOILLOT qualifies himself as a heterodox economist, the one who considers that the realm of economy should also factor in social, political and cultural aspects, among several others. He is a prolific writer who has written several books on India, Pakistan, China, France, Italy, Russia, Africa, European Union and many more. His bond with India spans more than 45 years.

In this fascinating interview, we compare the intricacies of French, Indian and Euro zone economies. We examine how the national debt depends on the GDP growth rate, inflation rate, tax revenues, interest rates on the debt, the regulatory role of the public sector banks, the capacity of a country to depreciate / appreciate its currency, among several other factors.

M.BOILLOT presents to us the structural reasons behind the huge French national debt and how the economic crisis has lead to general social unrest in this country.

We also discuss the difference between the nature of unemployment in India and in France while exploring how infant mortality differs in its scale and nature in these two countries, as well as in the Euro zone.

Finally, Mr. BOILLOT both critically and candidly unravels to us his assessment of the conflict in Ukraine, considering in particular the friction between India’s official position and that of the western camp (EU, USA and NATO).

Notes:

1) Below is a link to the original interview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c3EIuAy47U  

2) Please note that there are simultaneous English and Hindi subtitles to this interview.

 

Anubandh: Hello! My name is Anubandh KATÉ. I am the co-founder of the collective “Les Forums France – Inde” and I work in Paris as an engineer. Today I have a great pleasure to welcome a great economist oo the sets of  “Les Forums France – Inde “, Jean-Joseph BOILLOT, if I pronounced his name correctly...

Jean-Joseph : It is perfect!

Anubandh: Thank you. So, to quickly introduce yourself, you are a renowned economist and you have written not only on India but also on Pakistan, on Africa, on China, on France of course, on the European Union and much more. We see that the spectrum of your interests is large. You studied at the “École Normale Supérieure (ENS)”. You currently work at IRIS, the “Institute of International and Strategic Relations”. You have been an advisor on emerging countries since 2018. Since 2006, you were the co-president of Euro India Economic and Business Group (EIEBG). Also since 2006, you have been an expert on India and Asia. You are part of Cercle CYCLOPE. It is a directory of global comMODIty markets. Between 2006 and 2008, you were an economic advisor to the CEPII club and recently, you were also an economic advisor on emerging countries at the Ministry of Finance.

When we talk about your publications, and I will quickly give an idea of what you have already published. So, quite a few books on India. There is "Arthshastra." It is the most recent. Arthshastra is the science of economics. This word is in Sanskrit. Then, "Utopias - made in the world, the wise man and the economist." There is a book on Africa, and one on India. "Jugaad: Innovation." There are books in English, in French. "The Economy of India." Before, you also published a book on "The European Union - an economic challenge for all." Another on Italy when it came to enlargement of EU for Italy. There are also the Regions of Russia. And right at the beginning, there is one on Pakistan. So, Jean-Joseph BOILLOT, welcome!

Jean-Joseph : Thanks. 

Anubandh: And the first question I have for you is about your connection with India, Pakistan and Asia, in general.

Jean-Joseph : Yes, of course. It is always important to put someone's words into perspective based on their own experiences. My beginning with India was in 1981. So, it wasn't yesterday. It was roughly the time when China and India decided to change their economic and political development strategy. In fact, it was around the same time I just finished taking the competitive examination in economic and social sciences and I was awarded top honors. Thus, I was appointed professor at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS). And there we were supposed to do research. So, it just so happened that after the competitive examination, to celebrate, my wife and I went to India for two months. It was a long vacation after years of hard work. We traveled through southern India, between Bombay, Hyderabad, Madras, and returned via Kerala. We really took our time for the first time. We traveled by bus, by train, as "backpackers," as they say.

And the discovery was a shock for me because the practice in France was to talk about a very poor country, the misery, the castes in India. In fact, all the negative aspects of India. And there, for two months, we discovered the other side of India. That is to say, the India that is dynamic, energetic, that gets up every morning, that is vibrant, that is colorful. We eat very well there. Therefore, this contradiction annoyed me, excited me. At the same time, I had to choose a thesis topic. Thus, I proposed as a thesis topic the Indian model in comparison with the Chinese model.  From that summer of 1981, I spent 30 years intensively visiting India with my family, both as a researcher and then I was a correspondent for the newspaper “Le Monde” based in New Delhi. And then I stopped covering India as such because the Berlin Wall fell in 1989-90. Therefore, I was asked to work on Eastern countries, but I always kept a very close relationship with India until one of my daughters, the youngest, married an Indian. Thus, I have in-laws in India, in the center of India, in a town called Vidhisha, near Bhopal. They are farmers. We are very close. Here again, the idea that we pass very easily, as they say, from one race to another comes to me spontaneously. I am a human being and I am neither French nor Indian. I am a citizen of the planet with a very strong dose of French and Indian, since I have spent almost as much time in India as in France.

Anubandh: Yes, and I also see in your profile that there is a transversalilty not only at the professional level. You are not only an economist, you also have interests that go beyond this field. Above all, you have a fairly broad view of countries, of continents. I quite often look at your comments, on LinkedIn and I see there too, you do not really follow the doxa, a sort of consensus that exists in France, in Europe, sometimes also in India on very varied subjects. I would say that you have a distinguished opinion. The year 1990 that you mentioned in India was the rather significant year of the opening of the Indian economy. Since then, we have come a long way, or at least a path that is marked by ups and downs. We will come back to that. If you agree, I would also like to discuss with you about your books one day and we will have a dedicated discussion. However, what I am proposing in this interview is to have a glimpse of comparisons between the current state of the Indian, French, and European economies. Do you have any words to say before I show you some graphs?

Jean-Joseph : Yes. First of all, I belong to a school of economists called heterodox economists. Heterodox as opposed to orthodox economists who believe that there is a doxa, a doctrine that must be the same for all economists. Moreover, in this school of heterodox, I have a number of mentors who have influenced me, including Amartya SEN, the Indian economist. Before meeting him, I was very influenced by Gunnar MYRDAL, who is one of the founders of heterodox economics. He is Swedish. He wrote a book, a 1,000-page tome called "Asian Drama," which was very much focused on India. I have a third "Guru," as we call it in India, who is a heterodox economist. He should have won the Nobel Prize, but because he was heterodox, he did not. His name is Albert HIRSCHMAN. For me, it played the most significant role in the economic models I use. These are broad economic models. That is why I studied social sciences, sociology, politics, geopolitics. Why? Because economists consider economics to be a closed box. Whereas we, heterodox, consider economics to be a discipline in its own right, but that it is influenced by non-economic factors that sometimes far outweigh economic factors. That is the framework.

Anubandh: Yes, Amartya SEN's example is quite relevant because he was the one who came up with the concept of the "Human Development Index" (HDI) and not just GDP. That goes in the same direction as with your approach as a heterodox economist. I will look up the names and the books of the other economists you mentioned later.

Now, I propose to share some graphs that I have chosen. Let us start with the French economy. The picture is not very rosy. It is about the French public debt and here we have the period between the 1990s and 2025. So the debt, we know very well now that it is more than 3,300 billion Euros. There is also an annual increase over the rolling 12 months. Especially if we study the years of President MACRON's presidency since 2017. That year the debt was at 2,200 billion Euros. Today we are at a little over 3,300 billion Euros. Therefore, it is an increase of 1,000 billion euros. Do you have a word on this graph?

 

Jean-Joseph : Yes, because it is obviously something that marks a period of structural crisis or profound crisis on two levels.

First, a political crisis. If the debt explodes with Mr. Emmanuel MACRON, It is because Mr. MACRON was poorly elected. He is not legitimate in reality. He was elected to block Mr. François FILLON, who was excluded from the presidential race under completely fallacious grounds. Even if there was, of course, corruption, it did not justify ruling out this candidate. Because M. MACRON is the candidate of the "establishment," and this establishment was indeed afraid of Ms. Marine LE PEN. Therefore, the political crisis has been very strong in France since 2017, and it obviously has not receded. Hence, the political power is forced to spend more than it has to buy, let us say, the social peace.

The second aspect is that the French economy no longer has a dynamic springboard and the debt simply expresses that the growth rate is now barely more than 0.5 or 1% per year. And if this French economy is not dynamic, it is because, how can I put it, the economic model that is used is a model with far too many taxes, regulations, a centralizing state that prevents entrepreneurs from truly expressing themselves and which is centered around an elite called the CAC 40. That is to say, the large French groups that are in the corridors of ministries and the Élysée. For instance, Bouygues, Dassault, and so on, who, by chance, own all the media. Okay? Therefore, we really have had a deep crisis in France, I think, since, roughly, SARKOZY after CHIRAQ. After President CHIRAQ, we have all the signs of economic and political crises. They are intertwined. It is worrying and we can see that with the current affair of Madame LE PEN, who they are trying to remove from the electoral race, the crisis will continue.

Anubandh: Yes, the question we also ask ourselves, because we were told that Emmanuel MACRON, by repeating to us that he was the "Mozart of finance" and that things were going to get better. Of course, the problems did not start in 2017, it was even before and we know very well when you mentioned SARKOZY and even HOLLANDE. SARKOZY after the 2008 crisis used public money to save the big French banks like BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole from bankruptcy. Therefore, it was public money because they had invested it in speculation, in the crisis in the United States.

 

Jean-Joseph : That is correct.

Anubandh: Somewhere, they played gambled!

Jean-Joseph : Exactly!  

Anubandh: And then the French saved them.

Further, we also know that since 2013 François HOLLANDE has been giving tax gifts like CICE - Tax Credit for Competitiveness and Employment. That is 18 billion euros every year, without any visible compensation. Added to that is the 5 billion euros per year since 2018 from ISF (Wealth Tax) that Mr. MACRON has given up as a tax waiver. The French are perhaps asking the question where this money goes? Because we do not see that the social security is better or education is better or health is better. What do we use (this money) for and if it is "whatever it costs" but then to do what exactly?

Jean-Joseph : It is a system that buys social peace, as I told you. Okay? That is to say, for example, the slippage of social security accounts, particularly the health systems. Well, this system is completely uncontrolled. We have considerable expenditure on medicines, laboratories, and so on, which are the result of a regime that, how can I put it, is under the influence of the lobbies of laboratories, doctors, and so on. Therefore, it distributes money, a little to all these lobbies, to their intermediaries. And since it can not make people pay directly, right? Because it has a problem of political legitimacy, it distributes money right and left. Thus, France is a country where the taps are leaking. We call it leaking taps, and that explains why the over taxation of the system no longer makes people want to work. This is not a right-wing discourse. It is a profound reality. We do not want to get up in the morning because if I do not go to work, it does not matter, there are unemployment benefits, there are allowances and so on and so forth. Every time they try to bring a little order to this system that has lost control in terms of expenditures and revenue, well there is social protest. As they have no political legitimacy, well, in the end, all the taps are open.

Anubandh: I have one last point here on unemployment, the unemployment rate in France. This way, we will have a comparison with India. We see the rate for the last 5 years. It is roughly 7.3. let us say it is the most recent figure. If you have a comment on this, otherwise I will move on to India.

 

Jean-Joseph : Oh... very quickly. Statistics are an institutional fabrication of a representation. In fact, the unemployment rate simply measures the proportion of people who apply for and are entitled to unemployment benefits. In reality, what is important is the employment rate. That is to say, out of 100 people of working age, I repeat, of working age, how many are actually engaged in paid employment? Moreover, that, the problem in France is that the employment rate has fallen, among the elderly. It is well known, that is to say those over 50-55 years old. They are deteriorating at a rapid pace. These people are not allowed to register as unemployed or are removed after a certain time. Then, above all, there is youth unemployment, particularly among young people in the suburbs. France is constantly experiencing very strong instability in the suburbs, which is where the majority of the marginalized and working class population is concentrated. And there, the youth unemployment rate exceeds 50%. However, these young people do not have the right to register as unemployed. Therefore, they are not under this curve that you are showing. This is the reason why we actually have in France, a country where, let us say, approximately 25% of the population is supposed to support everyone else. That is not possible. Therefore, we really need to put the French back to work. Give them opportunities, of course. Give them substantial salaries. And we are off to a bad start because that would require profound reforms in the political, social, and economic system. Therefore, I am not very optimistic for the years to come.

Anubandh: Yes, absolutely. There is also a point: perhaps we need to look at unemployment by profession because in IT and engineering, in France, we are looking for people. In agriculture, we are also looking for people. Therefore, we can say that these are separate professions.

Jean-Joseph : That is very true.

Anubandh: It is not for all professions.

Jean-Joseph : That is absolutely correct. However, here, the reasoning is the same. Why in these catering professions, manual trades, in agriculture but also in IT, we cannot fill positions is because there is no real incentive to work. We are in a system where there are not enough incentives to fill positions where they are needed.

Anubandh: Yes, and just to finish on this subject, I would say that it also explains or perhaps justifies why we sometimes need foreigners.

Jean-Joseph : Exactly.    

Anubandh: In engineering or even in agriculture because there are not enough people. Either they do not want to, or they are not qualified, or there are simply not enough of them.

Jean-Joseph : Exactly. Absolutely.

Anubandh: Thank you. Now this is an overview of India. This is also the unemployment rate, and apparently, it is stabilizing. It is at 8.2% per 100. If you do not have a word to say, I will move on to...

 

 

Jean-Joseph : Yes, yes, of course. It is a very important subject. For anyone who knows India, and not necessarily a great economist. It is obvious that a figure like that does not make sense. We know very well that everywhere we go to India we see massive underemployment, people who do not have work. Among young people, in particular the unemployment is very high today. Therefore, we have the same statistical problem as what I was saying about France. That is to say, the unemployment rate there is a statistical snapshot based on extremely precise criteria. You do not declare yourself unemployed like that in India; just anyhow, because... you have to go and register. You have to have the right to be registered. In reality, India's problem is much greater than France's in terms of unemployment. It is because we have had an economic system, an economic model for several years that favors large companies, large projects, large equipment over the real use of labor. Therefore, you have a demographic boom entering the labor market. Basically, out of 100 young people who enter the labor market, only 25 actually manage to find stable employment. In reality, the others do not have jobs.

Anubandh: You are right because there is a lot of talk about this jobless growth, without having created jobs in India. There are also the oligarchs who control a large part of the Indian economy now. Therefore, there is this problem as well. For the next graph, it is the Indian national debt. It comes from the Statista website. I see that it seems to be fairly constant over the last few years.

 

 

Jean-Joseph : Yes, of course. Of course, because here we have... be careful. This is a ratio compared to GDP / Gold. India's GDP increases each year by about 6-7%. Therefore, if your debt does not increase faster than your growth rate, you stabilize your debt ratio. So, the absolute level is still quite high. We have to be careful. Why? Because India is a poor country that does not have a lot of tax revenue. Okay? Therefore, the debt has to be repaid. Ultimately, the Indian public system has difficulty repaying its debt because there is not enough tax revenue. Finally, there is much more inflation in India. So, that is important. Why? Because the debt is what we call nominal debt, that is, it is in current rupees. If last year the debt was 100, you have inflation of roughly 7-8-10%. I will take 10% for India. That means that the following year your GDP goes from 100 to 110. However, without having really increased. It is just an inflation effect. So India manages to control its public debt, to stabilize it, let us say in relative terms, thanks to so-called real growth, 7% per year plus inflation, an increase in public spending. Therefore, a debt that remains more or less reasonable.

Anubandh: Yes, and a quick comment on the French debt. Can you confirm whether this is true or not? The thing is, France's main budget now goes in repaying just the interest on the debt. It is not even the principal. Therefore, it is a huge sum.

Jean-Joseph : Of course. Because France pays very low interest rates on its debt, around 1.5%. While India pays much more. The interest rate on its debt is on an average 5 to 6%. Nevertheless, in the French case, since I am not experiencing growth, basically 0 in practice. And as there is no inflation, the debt actually keeps increasing. So, I am forced to borrow to repay the loans that have been taken out. In the Indian case, the system is very different because there is growth, there is inflation, and on top of that, there is the Indian financial system, which is in fact totally controlled by state-owned banks. Thus, the state-owned banks have an order to first finance the government's debt issues. That is why the Indian government does not have any major difficulties, even though it pays a fairly high interest rate. Because of inflation, the average interest rate, as I told you, is 5-6%. However, since the growth is 7%, ultimately, as you showed the graph earlier, the debt-to-GDP ratio remains roughly constant at around 60%.

Anubandh: Yes. Another difference between France and India is that India has the possibility to appreciate or depreciate its currency.

Jean-Joseph : Yes. 

Anubandh: Something that is not possible for France.

Jean-Joseph : Exactly! You are right.

Anubandh: Now, since you also talked about the heterodox economics, I have another graph. It is on the child mortality rate for India. It may not be very visible (on the graph) but there is a clear decrease. From 1967 it was at 140 and in 2020 this figure is at 26. We see that the mortality rate for India is decreasing. Which is encouraging.

Jean-Joseph : Exactly. 

Anubandh: So, I am going to compare this with France, but not only with France. I am going to move on to Europe, and I will start with the infant mortality rate. Here you see the mortality rate for children, and we see that the countries in dark red, including France, are over 5%. That is per 1,000 births. This is the infant mortality rate, the number of deaths before the age of one year per 1,000 births. Do you have a word for all these countries in Europe, and can we compare it with India?

Jean-Joseph : You have seen, like me, that India remains at a very high level, with more than 20 deaths per 1,000 children, okay? Look at the graph again, and you will see, there has been a very clear improvement. How many are we at now? We are almost at 30?

Anubandh: We are at 26 in 2020.

Jean-Joseph : Well, with Indian statistics, you have to be very wary because frankly, having worked with survey collectors in the villages. In fact, they do not even go to the villages. There is massive corruption in the surveys.

Anubandh: This survey comes from "World Bank Group" (source).

Jean-Joseph : Well, I think we are still around 30-35 in India, actually. Therefore, there is nowhere near the developed countries. Infant mortality remains high in India and that is normal because the level of poverty, the areas of poverty, remain considerable. Now, you are right to show the very significant drop in infant mortality from year to year. That is quite some progress. It is incredible for India. Why has it dropped? We have to ask ourselves the question. Well, it is because we can clearly see that the Indian health systems have been significantly reformed, particularly by allowing clinics in villages, in provincial towns, and so on. So, women's access to health systems has significantly improved.

Anubandh: Yes, but to return to France, it is difficult to understand because France boasts about its public health system. Nevertheless, if we compare it with Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, the difference is clear. How can we understand this…?

Jean-Joseph : No, be careful. You know, the statistics are complicated here again. Be careful, the birth rate in France is significantly higher than that of the other countries you show. Here, we do not have the same level of births at all now. For example, Spain has experienced a complete drop in its birth rate. Italy is the same. Thus, these countries clearly have a better infant mortality rate, which means a lower rate because there are far fewer children! Thus, we pay much more attention to the children who are born. In the French case, on the one hand, there is a fertility rate that remains higher. Fertility rate, that is to say, the number of children per woman. And on the other hand, France is a country of immigration, okay? The vast majority of these births now are in migrant families, from the Maghreb, even from India and so on. In these families, the infant mortality rates remain relatively high because we have large families, because health care is expensive and because we have not adapted in France to this high level of immigration, which is also a political issue. You have seen, it is one of the major topics of political debates in France. There are between 500,000 and 1,000,000 migrants every year, so it is considerable in France. And that translates into births by the fact that we have a higher birth rate and infant mortality rate than others.

Anubandh: Hence the importance of being careful when interpreting graphs! I agree with you.

And just to clarify, this graph comes from the Élucid website and it was when the economist Emmanuel TODD was recently interviewed on their YouTube channel. Just to finish the subject of infant mortality rates.

 

Now at the European level and you can see it is interesting. For France, you just explained why we have a higher mortality rate. However, we see for Russia, for example, it is really a clear decrease. For Germany too. Do you have any comments when we compare these countries? 

Jean-Joseph : So for Russia, here again we have to be very careful. Russia is a country that is experiencing a complete drop in the Russian birth rate, okay? Replaced by migrant populations from Central Asia in particular. There they are not at all covered by the statistics, okay? What is worrying in France is the regrowth, the rise in the infant mortality rate, over the last ten years. You see, France is the only one, one of the countries where it is rising quickly, a little more quickly, especially than Germany. As I told you, this is because the sample has changed. It is no longer the same population. So every year, between those who arrive and like now they arrive with very bad infant mortality rates, very mediocre, especially from the Maghreb and black Africa, many from Africa now. Well we see them repeating the bad practices of the past. They hesitate to go to the doctor, they do not go to clinics and so on.

Anubandh: Okay. Thank you.

I would now like to address the issue of this conflict between Russia and Ukraine. India's reaction and stand, which was heavily criticized in the so-called Western camp. So, how do you view this position, this conflict, the position of the European Union, NATO, and America, France, and India?

Jean-Joseph : Listen, I was lucky enough to work on Eastern Europe for about ten years. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was based in Prague and I covered all the countries of Eastern Europe, from Tallinn in Estonia to Tirana in Albania, okay? Moreover, I had never known this region. So for four years, I immersed myself in its history, its passions, its difficulties, in this part of Europe we call "middle Europe," the middle between the two empires. Then, I went to Moscow in Russia where I covered the former USSR from 1994 to 1997. So, you see. And in particular, I covered Ukraine.

Therefore, I have a very clear point of view on this war. Very, very clear. Thus, it is not to agree with Russia because it is not a regime with a future, but still. In the case, there is American manipulation from the start which is again under the influence of a military "establishment," the CIA, the NSA, which is anti-communist. Today, Russia is not a communist country, of course, but it is pro-American, chauvinistic, nationalist, imperialist, okay? And once the fall of the Berlin wall occurred and Russia got dismantled, it continued to push the advantage. In particular to put NATO's military border on Russia's borders. Obviously, this is unacceptable! For anyone. For the United States, I do not actually see a Chinese base being set up in Cuba without a reaction from them. Thus, the seeds of the war, they are in this aggressiveness, in this aggression and which is shared in the West also by the Europeans. When we see the elite in France today, its arrogance of judging itself superior to Russia. We understand that it fell into the American trap. That is to say that it supported the American position of being aggressive towards Russia. Therefore, the solution, we knew it. I was myself an advisor to President MITTERRAND. At the time when I was in the Eastern countries. MITTERRAND's idea was simple, it was to make a large European confederation with Russia in it and to neutralize the countries that were bordering Russia. To neutralize them like the Finnish scheme, that is to say they were countries that were neutral, on which American weapons could not be stored. Just as it was not possible to have stored Russian weapons at the time of what is called the Warsaw bloc. This proposal by President MITTERRAND was sunk by the Americans and the American "Establishment" who did not want it.

Therefore, from then on, the war was inevitable. We saw the manipulation in Maidan in Ukraine by a group of ultra-democrats who wanted to join the European Union and NATO, without understanding that there were also geopolitical interests to be taken into account for others. Thus,  there were the Minsk agreements. They were not respected by Ukraine. It was Ukraine that entered the war in the Oblast (Donetsk) and with its tanks and so on, which gave the Russians the justification to enter themselves in support of their Russian-speaking population. And the war broke out in 2022. Because on the Russian side, it was understood that Ukraine's entry into NATO was imminent and that once Ukraine had joined NATO, then Russia could never go back.

Thus, it is terrible because it is the logic of power that caused a war in which there were 1,000,000 victims, on both sides. There is no better or worse. We do not really see now how we can get out of this trap if it were through Russia's victory. Which is happening because obviously the United States cannot spend hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons. There is no European military capability. It is a reality. They were there, telling the Ukrainians to go to war, but it is not the Europeans who are waging it. I have not seen a single Frenchman go and get killed on the battlefield. Therefore, it is a shame, it is sad. It is the state of the world. It is not just in Ukraine. We can see it clearly with Gaza, in Israel. We have roughly the same logic. It is the logic of great powers with the Western bloc. Therefore, now that TRUMP is here, this bloc is cracked, so we will see if it continues. Likewise, we have the same thing in China with Taiwan. So, it is a worrying world because it is a remilitarization of the world. Instead of solving problems with political, peaceful solutions, we solve them with horrible wars. 

Anubandh: Yet everything you just said, and for someone like me who comes from outside but is integrated into French society, everything you say is not represented in the mainstream media. There, we see that it is Russia, it is PUTIN who is the aggressor. That is what we say. However, we do not look at the United States. They have more than 800 military bases in the world, Russia only has 10. As you said, in recent years NATO has practically encircled Russia and China. The American defense budget is more than 1,000 billion dollars per year and for Russia It is no more than 100 billion dollars I think. 

Jean-Joseph : Yes, It is in those areas, roughly. 

Anubandh: So, there is no comparison. However, there is also another thing, which is that the French, German, and European economies depended heavily on access to this cheaper gas and oil from Russia, which has since been cut off. And we buy it from India at four times the price. We it buy from Saudi Arabia as if it were a model of democracy! We buy shale gas from the United States, which is very polluting. So, this all is there. And what is more, we have had 15% inflation in Europe. And here again, we have a proposal to spend 800 billion euros to build a European style army. Actually, even when the United States was with us, we had already lost the war (with Russia)! So the French, perhaps the Europeans, are wondering where all the money is going and why no one is talking about peace and diplomacy? 

Jean-Joseph : Yes, because the French media, the investigations are quite precise on this now. The media are concentrated in the hands of a few number of personalities. While in the public sector which itself has been controlled by a well-known ideological clan. We call it single-track thinking and it is the refusal to see, how to say, the plurality of the world. It goes on with an arrogance... "The West which is the mother of all freedoms, which is the beacon of civilization." We see it clearly in the way in which.... Besides, the image of India has changed. The image of India was detestable for a very long time and it clearly improved in the media when India paid cash for the DASSAULT planes. Is not that right? Therefore, now that India has become the leading buyer of French arms. Mind you, India has been France's leading buyer of arms for the past two years, okay? It is not just the Rafales. There are also submarines and so on. And India accounts for half of the world's foreign contracts. Thus, the media are closely linked to the French military or industrial complex. We call it the military or industrial complex, which is very Parisian, Versailles-style. All of a sudden, India has become a great friend! Even Narendra MODI, who is rather criticized by the democratic intelligentsia around the world, and particularly in the newspaper "Le Monde," no longer receives the criticism he would have actually, let us say a few years ago if India had not bought so many weapons. Thus, this shows to what extent France and the country, we will say of human rights but when it comes to suppressing social unrest... but it is not the country of freedoms, of real, effective human rights. Moreover, in the world ranking of press freedom in the world, France is at 25^th rank and it has continued to decline in recent years because of the concentration of the media in the hands of a few big billionaires who are, as it happens, friends of Mr. MACRON. 

Anubandh: I really have two last questions for you and then I will let you go. 

For me, everything you just said makes a lot of sense and is coherent, it is logical, it is rational. But does it happen to you that people sometimes characterize you as someone who is perhaps an agent of the Kremlin, of PUTIN, who is a conspiracy theorist? Does that happen to you or not? And how do you react to it? 

Jean-Joseph : Of course, anyone who has a heterodox position and it reminds me of Bernie SANDERS in the United States. The same thing happens. We are labeled as leftists, as idealists. For the moment, I am not being called a PUTIN’s agent. Nevertheless, my positions on China, for example, are also very poorly received. Not that I defend the Chinese regime, but I always explain that my problem is not... I am a small, humble economist. My problem is not to judge the whole world. What I am trying to do... I am a scientist. I am trying to understand a number of things, including the fact that China has undergone an absolutely remarkable transformation in the space of 30 years. That its standard of living is now at least equivalent to that of the French. There is no problem. Their life expectancy is surpassing that of the French. That they have scientific and technological prowess. There you go. Finally, their trains run faster than ours. They are more efficient. Their smartphones have been used as a means of payment for years. So, obviously, the intelligentsia who think that we should only speak ill of China because the political regime is bad, well, they have a hard time understanding BOILLOT! And they do not accept me. Therefore, we are generally marginalized in the media. 

For example, I was regularly invited in the media to talk about Africa for quite some time, until the day I suggested that the French army should be kicked out of Africa as it was untenable. And that there was a kind of neocolonialism. Then it happened that all of a sudden I was no longer invited to appear in the media! Well, it does not matter. History will happen without them.

Same for India. I try to maintain a balanced vision of India. It is not because MODI is in power that all of a sudden we should throw India in the trash. It is not because MODI is in power that we should not try to understand the reasons why Narendra MODI came to power. Why the nationalist regime today is so powerful? And I explain that there are objective reasons behind it. Indian social democracy, particularly the Congress party has lost all credibility. It is a pseudo-left that has not respected the cultural traits of Indian civilization because the leaders of the Congress Party, for a large number of them, have nothing Indian about them. It is a reality. It is not because Sonia GANDHI is Italian. But I know Rahul GANDHI personally. This man has his head completely elsewhere than in India. He spends his holidays in Thailand, he studied at Cambridge and so on. But India is in a very strong identity crisis. It wants to rediscover its cultural identity and the nationalist regime is the only one that has managed to offer an alternative. it is the same thing That is happening with TRUMP in the United States. and I think It is the same thing that will happen in Europe. Everywhere, everywhere! Because Europeans, as we see in France, Germany and so on, are fed up with this globalist, globalist vision of values that are supposedly those of progress where there are more male and female sexes. I have the right to do what I want, the important thing is... how to say, absolute freedom, I have the right to do whatever I want! Well no, in life it is not like that. We need rules of coexistence. That is why India continues to interest me enormously because for me it is also a laboratory of what is happening on a global scale. 

Anubandh: Your comments on Africa and French diplomacy, as we have seen, have proven true since France has suffered many setbacks. Regarding Mr. MODI and his policies, personally, I have many points of disagreement but I would say that concerning India’s position on the conflict in Ukraine and his relationship with Russia, it is understandable and I would say that it is even reasonable. 

My last question for you is the picture you have shown to us, of France, Europe, India, and the European Union. It is still quite gloomy in several aspects, whether economic, social, political, or otherwise. But what about some hope? Is there any hope for the French, Indian, or global population ? 

Jean-Joseph : Yes, of course. We are... Life has cycles, oscillations, true? Therefore, we are rather in a phase of a historical cycle, let us say for Europe in any case. And for France, it is a very difficult phase where global competition with Europe is combined. To give you an example, after the (second world) war, Europe had 30% of the world's population. It was more populated than China. Today it has 7%! It has an average age of almost 60. Therefore, it is no longer a player and it is taking it badly. It is taking it very badly. It is losing its economic and scientific competitiveness. Thus, it is increasingly dependent on migrants, which poses a problem in relation to (local) populations. We immediately see a dark-skinned person as someone who is inferior to us and all of a sudden, we discover that the opposite is happening, okay? Therefore, Europe is going through a bad period and of course, as with India, it is the population that will try to find solutions to this historic crisis. Europe will return to a position, like everyone else, neither more nor less, neither above nor below, perhaps a little below. Besides, it is because the wind no longer carries them along. Thus, it is the people who make history. That is why we can listen to the media, but it does not matter what they say. The important thing is what is fundamentally happening on the ground. 

Anubandh: Thank you very much for this exchange! Thank you, Mr. BOILLOT, for the clarity, rationality, and frankness of your remarks. I appreciate them very much, and I am sure our listeners will appreciate them too. See you soon. 

Jean-Joseph : Thank you very much. See you soon. Goodbye.

 

 

Jean-Joseph BOILLOT

Jean-Joseph BOILLOT is an associate researcher at IRIS (Institute for International and Strategic Affairs), Paris. He specializes in the Indian economy and the emerging world, particularly the China-India-Africa triangle, seen as a structuring pole of the new global economy in formation.

Jean-Joseph BOILLOT holds a doctorate in economics and social sciences and a doctorate in economics. He has taught at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) and worked on Asia as an associate researcher at CEPII, working on a doctoral thesis on the Indian development model.

He is a co-founder of the Euro-India Business Group (EIEBG), and a member of the CYCLOPE expert group and the ISEG scientific council. He regularly contributes to several online sites and writes a monthly column for the Alternatives Économiques website.

He is the author of more than 20 books including “Ancient India at the bedside of our politicians” (éditions du Félin, Paris 2017), “The Economy of India” (La Découverte, 3rd ed. 2016), “Africa for Dummies” (First editions 2015), “India for Dummies” (First editions 2014), “The Innovation Jugaad” (translation and adaptation, Diateino 2013) and Chindiafrique - China, India and Africa will make the world of tomorrow (Odile Jacob 2013). HIS latest book, Utopias made in the world, the wise man and the economist was published in April 2021 by Odile Jacob.