Is free trade with India actually a good idea? What we should be focused on instead
Luxon is trying to curry favour with India as we desperately scramble to geopolitically decouple from China and bewilderingly attempt to make India our new China, but is India a trading alternative from an authoritarian regime with questionable human rights practices OR is India another authoritarian regime with questionable human rights practices?
Arundhati Roy: The dismantling of democracy in India will affect the whole world
I thank the Charles Veillon Foundation for honoring me with the 2023 European Essay Award. It may not be immediately apparent how delighted I am to receive it. It’s even possible that I am gloating. What makes me happiest is that it is a prize for literature. Not for peace. Not for culture or cultural freedom, but for literature. For writing. And for writing the kind of essays that I write and have written for the past 25 years.
They have mapped, step by step, India’s descent (although some see it as an ascent) into first majoritarianism and then full-blown fascism. Yes, we continue to have elections, and for that reason, in order to secure a reliable constituency, the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party’s message of Hindu supremacism has relentlessly been disseminated to a population of 1.4 billion people. Consequently, elections are a season of murder, lynching and dog-whistling – the most dangerous time for India’s minorities, Muslims and Christians in particular.
It is no longer just our leaders we must fear, but a whole section of the population. The banality of evil, the normalisation of evil is now manifest in our streets, in our classrooms, in very many public spaces. The mainstream press, the hundreds of 24-hour news channels have been harnessed to the cause of fascist majoritarianism. India’s Constitution has been effectively set aside. The Indian Penal Code is being rewritten. If the current regime wins a majority in 2024, it is very likely that we will see a new Constitution.
It is very likely that the process of what is called “delimitation” – a reordering of constituencies – or gerrymandering as it is known in the US, will take place, giving more parliamentary seats to those Hindi-speaking states in North India where the BJP has a base. This will cause great resentment in the southern states and has the potential to balkanise India. Even in the unlikely event of an electoral defeat, the supremacist poison runs deep and has compromised every public institution that is meant to oversee checks and balances. Right now, there are virtually none, except a weakened and undermined Supreme Court.
…I’m not sure moving our trade from an Authoritarian Communist Regime that is committing cultural genocide and mass repression to a Racial Supremacist Fascist State that is committing hate crimes is really all that much of a win for New Zealand ethically.
Our trade is jumping out of the Chinese pan and into the Indian fire while our American Capitalist masters demand more heat.
India doesn’t want our Dairy, they want access to NZ for their citizens.
Modi may well be a race baiting extremist who is bordering on authoritarian overlord, but he ain’t no fool! India’s own subsidies on food to ensure they can feed their own massive population is a far more national strategic goal than allowing a tiny farm deep in the South Pacific to sell them food to undermine their own farmers.
We don’t produce anything they want, what we do have is literal population space, and that’s what they want!
India wants more path ways to residency and they want more educational opportunities to study in NZ, that are then linked to pathways to residency.
Seeing as NZ is already over run with exploitative migrant NZers who exploit their own fellow migrant citizens supported by a low wage addicted host population happy to exploit both, that seems like a rotten deal all around.
What we SHOULD be doing is focusing on our woeful skills shortage and when I say skills shortage I don’t mean importing Indian students to be exploited at the local bottle shop or Tobacco retailers, I mean bringing in more engineers and drs. NZ Universities should have Campuses set up in India that allow Indian students to upgrade there so they can pick up skilled jobs in NZ.
Simply allowing more Indian students to come to NZ to be exploited here with no real promise of residency or high skilled job is a disservice to them as guest and an abuse of us as hosts.
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Looking at whats happening in the world free trade is dead in the water .India does not want anything from NZ except easier entry for their over run population .A trade deal good or bad will be accepted by Luxon so he can pretend he is the great trader .If his record at air NZ is anything to go on it will be a shit deal for nz long term .We can only support so many corner shops and vape and alcohol stores .I had a lot of the so called students working with me over the last 15 years .80% never attended 1 class at the place they were enrolled at .They openly admitted they came to get the NZ passport because it allowed them entry to many more countries than the Indian one does .
We are a trading Nation. If we pick and chose who we deal with based on if we like the way they treat their citizens thre could be reasons to stop trade altogether. This does not stop us from not dealing with countries like Russia who aare attacking other countries.
@ Gordon-100% correct. The mass importation of labour will also deplete/destroy union membership (NACTS wet dream) to facilitate low wages in workplaces where unions are still dominant. When Luxon talks about higher wages, he is talking about CEO’s. NACT want a low wage economy to compete with India.
Already has depleted union membership.
The Indians and filipinos absolutely refuse to join the unions.
They bring the boss is always right mindset with them because that is what rules back home.
The company I work at in Chch is a classic example only 8 kiwis ( 6 of those are close to or over retirement age) are in the union the other 90% of the companies employees are migrants and bribed and told not to join the unions collective agreement.
India is the world’s largest democracy and the perfect counterbalance to our current reliance on China for food exports. It has a growing middle-class population who are prepared to pay a bit more for good quality food.
It would be a major win if we got that deal, but I don’t see what’s in it for Indias political class.
@Gordan you are right and no one in the media is prepared to talk about immigration. I’m inclined to think there are a lot of nationalites in the world and if you want a country that brings in a small melting pot of migrants each year then we should take one Tanzanian, one Belgian, one Indian, one Chinese, one Inuit, in that kind of proportion not this
https://figure.nz/chart/uWlUWJy4vdXpMxhJ?woo_campaign=adwords&woo_term=immigration%20rates&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwkN–BhDkARIsAD_mnIp0VZOkbkrncpis-XjNDor-KIBXM9x7ojuEdgm0VnBHItbvhZ8gQbcaAtskEALw_wcB
Are we morally obliged to trade only with those nations which have a perfect democracy and an unblemished record of humanitarian concern for their own people and the peoples of other nations? If so New Zealand had best prepare itself to give up on its chosen role as a “trading nation”.
There may be situations in which a state’s behaviour is so egregious that a trade boycott becomes the least one must do in response. For example the State of Israel’s programme of genocide makes it unfit to be a trading partner of any civilized nation. India, China, Australia, the UK and the US are different cases. While in some respects they may behave deplorably, in my opinion they do not cross the boundary such that we should break off all trade with them.
As regards India in particular, Martyn is quite right. India cannot replace China as a market for dairy or forest produce, and India is on record as seeking the right of mass immigration to New Zealand in exchange for opening up trade. Frankly, we can do without another wave of colonization, and Mr Luxon would be foolish to even entertain the possibility.
For the amount of trade between the two countries at the moment it’s ludicrous to have a trade agreement.
I think they bought $1.4b from us and we bought $1.5b from them. Hardly a big deal in terms of amount or imbalance.
Obviously as Gordon suggests the real deal is people trafficking with the long term objective of having us as an outpost
If the Indian empire.
Luxon will pretend he’s getting a great deal by allowing a few Doctors and lots of courier drivers in.
The Doctors will take for ever to be allowed to practice and won’t be GPs because the white crackers won’t go to them and the courier drivers will be on benefits because our economy is fucked.
Yes, my thoughts exactly. So, India, who’s Govt was involved in an assassination of an ex-Indian citizen, now Canadian citizen, in Canada, is our next target for their citizens to have access to our housing and citizenship?? We will get nothing out of India, and trade it for what? More legitimisation of an increasingly fascist world? Another murderous regime to add to our list of growing trade alliances with murderous regimes? NZ should be better than this, but, of course, we aren’t. Look whom we voted in to lead our country!! Shame.
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India is a very diverse country. Diverse in terms of language, religion, development, education, the whole shebang. It doesn’t have a single dominant ethnic group like China does, for example. I don’t think that makes it impossible for India to achieve the same level of economic growth, but it probably makes consensus and centralized control trickier to achieve. So my hot take is that growth in India will be very uneven in the future. Some areas will look like Singapore while others will be mired in poverty like they are today. Infrastructure at the country level will probably remain bad but certain local infrastructures will be at first world levels.
In that sense it will be kind of like the US, but to an even more extreme degree.
Already has depleted union membership.
The Indians and filipinos absolutely refuse to join the unions.
They bring the boss is always right mindset with them because that is what rules back home.
The company I work at in Chch is a classic example only 8 kiwis ( 6 of those are close to or over retirement age) are in the union the other 90% of the companies employees are migrants and bribed and told not to join the unions collective agreement.
I guess that Luxon would be happy to sell his houses to them and consider it a good deal for the country. I came across another article on the Indian culture which was eye opening, I would not want to suggest that all Indians are like this although it does explain things that happen.
https://www.fulcrum7.com/apologetics/2024/12/30/christianity-it-makes-a-huge-difference-in-a-culture
I just looked at the source of that article and do not think that it is reliable.
‘We are a trading Nation. If we pick and chose who we deal with based on if we like the way they treat their citizens thre(there) could be reasons to stop trade altogether. This does not stop us from not dealing with countries like Russia who aare (are)attacking other countries.’
Missing the point again Trevor. The issue is ‘Free Trade Agreements’ with governments who use them to impose conditions upon us.
Free trade is when you make something people want and they willingly buy it. They make things you want and you buy them. You do not need trade agreement entanglements of do this.
Talk to someone from Mexico and ask them what they gain from NAFTA? American Agricultural products dumped on their market to bankrupt Mexican agriculture – and now conditions imposed by Trump the bully.
A few years back there was a scream about Chinese people buying property in New Zealand. Much of the yelling overlooked the fact that by making a Free Trade Agreement with P.R.China Aotearoa allowed Chinese investment in this country – including aquisition of property here.
It also curbed any active involvement by us in defending human rights in China.
India has already shown the way it intends to operate with Modi telling Luxon that he wants us to persecute Indian dissidents in Aotearoa (Sikhs in particular).
I am reminded of the Maori comment dealing with assimilation ‘ Let us assimilate’ said the shark.
‘Do I get a choice? ‘ said the Kahawai.
Free Trade Agreements put us in the position of the Kahawai and India and China are the sharks.
Beggars can’t be choosers.
If (and it’s a big if) they open their market to us then in this new world where goliaths are quite happy treading on the small without compunction then I don’t particularly care. We’re no longer rich and we can’t be choosy in whose crumbs we are prepared to eat.
Consider the economic consequences to NZ of China and the US going to war (our two largest trading partners). Well it won’t be pretty economically speaking – more than likely the US Navy would declare a blockade at the straits of Malacca with China in turn freeing their subs to attack any traffic entering Long Beach. This effectively closes the North Pacific to trade, with only infrequently used shipping routes to the South of Australia and South America viable. Any attempt to diversify our trade needs to be considered.
The Punjab’s make bloody good Royal Enfield’s
It’s not only about access to global markets and ‘free trade’. It’s also about access given to people. But who gains most from this kind of access? New Zealand gains ‘skills’- whatever they are meant to mean – arguably the educated Indian middle class, not those on the margins. Although, if you’ve ever been to India, even in recent times, there’s more than enough desperation in the air. Why wouldn’t there be with almost 1.5 million souls all competing for a small slice of the cake. A booming economy and a growing middle class simply hides the inequality, inequity and poverty – and masks all sorts of what most in NZ would consider improper behavior. Don’t get me wrong, its a vibrant place with a rich tapestry of history- and no doubt there are good people – but for a good many you couldn’t call India the land of milk and honey. A good many are desperate to get out. But then you could say the same about the UK or Ireland back in the day. Or Germany in the mid-19th Century – not that many of these folk found their way to NZ.
Under a trade deal, like air flowing into a vacuum, tens of thousands from the Indian sub-continent will flow into New Zealand. Win win? Maybe. But without checks and balances who knows what will happen. Dodgy pretenses, enablers able to exploit loopholes in the system, global capitalists undermining the position of labour, pretty much a bipartisan position that views immigration as cash cow to funding future superannuation and indeed propping up GST revenue, and an under-resourced capacity to keep everyone honest?