Editorials - 05-04-2022

Mediation is certainly feasible and India is well positioned to act as a ‘Vishwa-Guru’ between Russia and the West

Nearly 40 days ago, Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in violation of international law and its security assurances under the Budapest Memorandum, 1994. And, there are no winners in sight. Despite peace talks held on March 29, in Istanbul (Turkey), direct negotiations between the conflicting parties have failed to make much progress: a ceasefire is yet to be achieved, and the Russian attacks on the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine continue. As a result, there have been 3,455 civilian casualties recorded in Ukraine (1,417 killed and 2,038 injured) while more than four million people have fled seeking protection, safety and assistance.

Similarly, in addition to casualties on the Russian side, financial and economic sanctions imposed by the European Union and the G7 have impacted the Russian economy. Despite artificial measures to prop up the rouble, the economy is tanking, annual inflation has jumped to 15.6%, the Russian Central Bank’s forex reserves remain frozen and it cannot access financing and loans from multilateral institutions. At the global level, this war is disrupting supply chains and is causing the fuel and food prices to surge. This begs the question — if this unnecessary war has resulted in a no-win situation, why have negotiations failed to end it?

Positions versus interests

Past negotiations, by video conferencing or as peace talks (held in Belarus and Turkey) have failed to make much progress because the parties have been negotiating over ‘positions’ rather than ‘interests’. A ‘position’ is a surface statement of what a party wants; for example, Russia’s demand that Ukraine recognises the separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states. Whereas, ‘interests’ are the underlying reasons behind those positions; for instance, why is Russia focused on the independence of these separatist areas? Therefore, mediation as a conflict resolution tool can assist the parties in identifying these hidden ‘interests’ and facilitate them in working towards crafting a solution that each of the parties would value — a Europe of common security and prosperity where the sovereignty of all nations (Ukraine, Russia and the West) are guaranteed.

Mediation (or assisted negotiation) is a flexible conflict resolution tool facilitated by a neutral third party. Depending on the choice of parties, it can be facilitative or evaluative and can be conducted in joint sessions or caucuses (i.e., private meetings). Additionally, its focus on collaborative bargaining producing a win-win outcome (in contrast to adversarial proceedings such as arbitration or litigation that result in a win-loss outcome) equips it to handle conflicts of all kinds: from workplace disputes to broken contracts to international conflicts. International mediation follows this process of “assisting two or more contending parties to find a solution without resorting to force”. Due to its immense potential, the Charter of the United Nations under Article 33 recognises the promise of international mediation for peaceful resolution of international disputes.

Brokering peace

Throughout history, individuals, countries and organisations (such as the International Committee of the Red Cross) have acted as third parties and have brokered peace between conflicting nations. Described by theorists as a form of power brokerage or a political problem solving process, international mediation has been used to resolve conflicts for hundreds of years. The best known example is of U.S. President Jimmy Carter who mediated peace between Israel and Egypt (known as the Camp David Accords of 1978) that has resulted in 44 years of peace.

Scholarship on neuroscience proves that emotions have a significant influence on cognitive processes (Kragel and LaBar 2016). If emotions are running high between conflicting parties it is very likely that either or both parties get re-active (i.e., to act without thinking). Ambrose Bierce wrote: “speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret’. This is where a neutral third party can act as a ‘go-between’ (termed: shuttle diplomacy) to gather more information and help the parties identify their hidden interests. This helps in ensuring that conflicting parties keep their eyes on the prize. More importantly, the mediator shuttling between parties helps in limiting or reducing re-active devaluation — a cognitive barrier where the disputants wrongfully construe the conflict as a zero sum game. As a result, even the value of a genuine offer coming directly from an adversary is automatically reduced in the eyes of the receiver. Therefore, subject to context and the consent of parties, the mediator can either play a passive role to facilitate communication or a more active role and exert more influence on the content of the discussion and the final solution.

Focusing on the priority

Certainly, international mediation has a lot to offer. But is it the right choice in the Russia-Ukraine conflict?

Despite bilateral peace talks, Russian air strikes continue on Ukrainian cities resulting in civilian casualties. The voice against dictatorships will want to hold the Russian President Vladimir Putin guilty of violating the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their additional protocols. It may appear that opting for mediation legitimises past violations of international law and civilian killings. Or does it even amount to trading justice for peace? The answer is a bit more complicated. Mediation is a tool that avoids ‘being re-active’. More importantly, it helps focus on the number one priority, i.e., the safety of the Ukrainian people through a complete ceasefire. Furthermore, a mediator’s skill of strategic empathy (also a tool of statecraft) will further help understand Mr. Putin’s underlying drivers and constraints.

Furthermore, scholars like Zartman (1981) have argued that power parity between disputing parties is pivotal to the success of international mediation. Indeed, there exists a huge power imbalance between Russia and Ukraine — Russia commands the world’s second most powerful military, whereas Ukraine, a nation of roughly 44 million people, was relying on the pinky promises (or security assurances) made by Russia in the Budapest Memorandum. However, U.S. President Joe Biden’s strategy of making American intelligence (about Russia’s intention to invade Ukraine under false pretexts) publicly accessible, equipped Ukraine with the ‘power of solidarity’ which balanced or even tipped the scale in its favour. As a result, Russia is cornered, Ukraine has the solidarity of the world, Germany shed its pacifism and took a harsher stand against Russia by halting the Nord Stream 2 project, and Finland and Sweden are being pushed closer to NATO membership. Thus, opting for mediation is the only way left for Russia to save face and escape the sanctions that have crippled its economy.

For the West, going ahead with mediation presents itself as an opportunity to build a Europe of common security, common prosperity and peace. Simply put, this could be a starting point to include Russia in the security infrastructure of Europe (like it did with East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989) — an opportunity that was missed after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

India fits the bill

Mediation is certainly feasible between Russia and Ukraine because there exists a willingness to talk. But for this to commence, the approval of the parties concerned will be crucial. Much depends on the identity of the mediator. With the recent diplomatic visits to India, by the U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economics, the British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and Minister for Women and Equalities, and the Russian Foreign Minister, show that the world expects India to play a more active role in the Ukrainian crisis.

This is India’s golden chance to establish itself as a global power. More importantly, playing mediator in this dispute is in India’s long-term interest in countering the China threat — especially with a growing “no limits” partnership between Russia and China. Moreover, with the rise of China and its belligerence, its relationship with the West has soured. As a result, the U.S. and its allies need India as a strategic partner to balance the rise of China in the Indo-Pacific; it is for this reason, that India is now a member of the Quad.

For now, India is right in not taking sides. Its relationship with the then-Soviet Union was forged to balance against China (as the U.S. was cosying up to China). But with the Ukraine invasion and western sanctions, Russia is now more dependent on China. Hence, if India wants the best of both worlds, it must step up and live up to its claim of becoming a ‘Vishwa-Guru’ (or world leader).

Utkarsh Leo teaches law at the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.

Faizan Mustafa is Vice-Chancellor, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad



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The events of April 3 will go down as one of the most clever, devious and unconstitutional steps taken

Can an unconstitutional act be considered a ‘brilliant political move’, a ‘masterstroke’? That is how Prime Minister Imran Khan’s subversion of both politics and the Constitution in Parliament on April 3 is being seen by many in Pakistan. As a consequence of Mr. Khan’s action, the country has no National Assembly as of today and no federal Cabinet. Mr. Khan stays on as Prime Minister for another week. As Prime Minister, Mr. Khan asked the President of Pakistan to dismiss Parliament. As per the Constitution, a new caretaker Prime Minister and Cabinet need to be announced within the week, and elections must be held in 90 days. The dissolution of Parliament and the way it was done is being seen as ‘brilliant’, largely because it was not anticipated and also because of the manner in which the blow was delivered.

The events of April 3 will go down as one of the most interesting, clever, devious and blatantly unconstitutional (of which there have been many) steps taken in Pakistan’s political history. Here is a micro history of the events of the last few weeks which led to the constitutional and political crisis which Pakistan now faces.

The opposition’s plan

The combined opposition in and outside Parliament, constituting primarily of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN), former President Asif Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), and Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahman’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), launched a movement some months ago to constitutionally oust Mr. Khan’s coalition government headed by his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI). This opposition created an umbrella grouping, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), in September 2020. It was clear that Mr. Khan’s governance model, particularly with regard to the economy, was failing. Since he came to power in August 2018, the Pakistani Rupee has lost 35% of its value against the U.S. Dollar, inflation has been running in double digits for many months, and only loans from some countries and the International Monetary Fund have kept the economy barely afloat. There has been huge discontent against the worsening economic situation and the PDM made this the cornerstone of its anti-government strategy.

However, the PDM dilly-dallied on how the political process to oust Mr. Khan should continue. The two main parties of the PDM — Mr. Sharif’s PMLN and Mr. Zardari’s PPP — often had different intentions, ranging from members of the PDM themselves resigning from Parliament to forcing Mr. Khan to resign. After many weeks of political sagacity and unity, the PDM eventually reached a stage where it was able to break Mr. Khan’s coalition government and create a majority in Parliament with the PTI’s former allies, to table and pass a no-confidence motion against Mr. Khan. The intention, had the PDM won, was to elect a new Prime Minister from the group and, given the imploding state of the economy, to hold new elections within a few months. In any case, the new government would have had 17 months before the Parliament’s five years would have come to an end. Mr. Khan was never going to give in so easily. As he said on many occasions, he would “fight till the last ball”.

Mr. Khan went to the streets, held numerous rallies, kept taunting the opposition about its composition, and calling the three leaders of the PDM “crooks” and “convicts”. He rallied his followers. It became clear that he had entered electioneering mode. While the opposition gained strength inside Parliament, Mr. Khan alleged that there was a “foreign conspiracy” against Pakistan and his government and that the U.S. had decided to oust him. He showed a letter, said to have been written by a U.S. official, in which these threats were made. This later became a memo written by a Pakistani official in Washington, DC. Nevertheless, whether any such letter existed or not, Mr. Khan upped the ‘foreign conspiracy’ theory and this became part of his political narrative. He stated that the leaders of the opposition were part of this conspiracy and were, hence, traitors to the state and to the Constitution of Pakistan.

A stunning turn of events

This is exactly what was stated in order to subvert the proceedings on April 3 when Parliament gathered to pass its no-confidence motion. The Law Minister stood up and cited Article 5 from the Constitution (Loyalty to the State and Obedience to the Constitution) to state that the opposition’s no-confidence motion should be dismissed as it had conspired against the State of Pakistan. The Deputy Speaker read out a statement agreeing with the Law Minister’s submission, and the Parliament session was ended instantly. The opposition parties, which had gathered in Parliament to pass a no-confidence motion against the Prime Minister, which would have certainly passed, were left stunned by the way the Law Minister and the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly started and ended proceedings — all within a few minutes. Soon after the dismissal of the no-confidence motion, Prime Minister Khan went on television to inform the Pakistani electorate that he had asked the President of Pakistan to dissolve the National Assembly. Within minutes, the President, on the advice of the Prime Minister and according to the Constitution of Pakistan, did just that.

Numerous complications have emerged regarding the events of those few minutes. A question raised is whether the Deputy Speaker’s action — he ended the Parliament’s session without giving the Leader of the Opposition a chance to respond to the Law Minister — was legitimate. Given that all this happened within just a few minutes, it seems clear that the Speaker, the Deputy Speaker and the President had pre-planned and coordinated the manner in which the events would unfold. Moreover, while the Supreme Court of Pakistan is set to debate and sort out the manner in which the events related to the Constitution took place, legal opinion and precedents state that the Supreme Court cannot intervene in the proceedings held in Parliament. This would imply, at first reading, that the Deputy Speaker’s ruling cannot be challenged by the Supreme Court, despite the fact that the Chief Justice of Pakistan has taken suo motu cognisance of the events of April 3 and constituted a Bench of the Supreme Court. Most lawyers have agreed that the Deputy Speaker’s move was unconstitutional, yet also consider Parliament sacrosanct. They argue that the Deputy Speaker’s ruling cannot be challenged.

Prime Minister Khan has repeatedly argued that since the opposition wanted him to resign and call elections, he has already done so and they should be grateful. While part of the opposition has got what it wanted, it knows it has been played. If elections are held under the fog of un-constitutionalism now, they will be as tainted as were the elections of 2018. At that time, there was much speculation that a particular state institution had ensured Mr. Khan’s selection. That institution is conspicuous by its absence from the public discourse at the moment and one waits for it to make its move.

S. Akbar Zaidi is a political economist based in Karachi. These are his personal views and do not represent those of any institution



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Amidst the scattered experimentation now, the Centre must offer strategic policy guidance for inter-State coordination

Only two years ago, in the wake of a nationwide lockdown, India was left shocked by the plight of migrant workers walking hundreds of kilometres, facing hunger, exhaustion and violence, to get to the safety of their home villages. The dire circumstances of the migrants tugged at our collective heartstrings. They became the focus of large-scale relief efforts by governments and civil society alike. The Government ramped up the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) project, announced the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHC) scheme, set up the e-Shram portal and began to draft a migration policy. These initiatives generated hope that the migrant crisis of 2020 would be a turning point, setting India firmly on a policy path by offering adequate citizenship and the accompanying social, economic and political rights to internal migrants.

Still a tale of distress

Two years on, migrant distress has disappeared from our television screens but continues to be a lived reality. Repeated surveys have found that the incomes of migrant households continue to be lower than pre-pandemic levels, even after returning to cities. Migrants are finding less work and their children eating less. The post-1991 poverty alleviation of almost 300 million Indians, driven by migration out of farm work, is being undone. Despite this, a cohesive migration policy guidance remains elusive. Instead, disconnected policy initiatives and technocratic fixes chase specific agendas while nativism re-asserts itself through domicile quotas and reservations. The agenda of migrant inclusion has been pushed to the periphery of our collective consciousness.

This is not something India can afford to precipitate. Today, a third of the nation’s workforce is mobile. Migrants fuel critical sectors such as manufacturing, construction, hospitality, logistics and commercial agriculture. Despite clear economic and humanitarian reasoning to bring migrants back into the policy discourse, the current policy scenario is at best fragmented and at worst waning. To course correct, we must recognise the entrenched structural constraints slowing the migration policy momentum and take strategic steps to push the policy needle forward.

A politicised phenomenon

First, we must recognise that migration is a highly politicised phenomenon in India. States are highly influenced by the political economy of migration. ‘Destination States’ experience a tension between economic needs, which require migrant labour, and political needs, which promote nativist policies that impose domicile restrictions on employment and social security. On the flip side, the ‘sending States’ are highly motivated to serve their “own people” because they vote in their source villages. This fragmented policy response to internal migration follows from State-specific calculations on what political dividends might be reaped (or lost) by investing fiscal and administrative resources towards migrants. Moreover, development policy in India has bet big on rural development as an antidote to migration. This widespread ‘sedentary bias’ continues to influence policy even though migration is an important pathway for impoverished marginalised rural households to find economic security (and social emancipation).

Second, migrants are a perennially fuzzy category in policy discourse, located inside two larger categories that have long troubled policymakers: the unorganised worker and the urban poor. Even the e-Shram portal, which has made impressive progress in registering unorganised workers, has been unable to accurately distinguish and target migrants. Policy interventions in major urban destinations continue to conflate the urban poor with low-income migrants. Hence, slum development continues as the primary medium for alleviating migrant concerns, while in reality, most migrants live on worksites that are entirely out of the policy gaze. There seems to be an implicit assumption in the policy circles: if we cannot solve the problems of informality, how can we help migrants? Further, it is assumed that migrants will be automatically catered to with the formalisation of the economy, the labour market, the housing market, finance and so on. This pushes the timeline for addressing the migrant issue far out. It is no longer an urgent priority.

Gaps in the data

Third, migration policy discourse is seemingly paralysed by the now well-acknowledged failure of official datasets to capture the actual scale and the frequency of internal migration in India. Data systems designed to periodically record only one spatial location have posed great challenges to welfare delivery for up to 500 million people who are part of multi-locational migrant households. The novel coronavirus pandemic has placed a sharp focus on problems such as educating and vaccinating those children who accompany their migrant parents, or ensuring that migrant women avail maternity benefits at multiple locations.

Policy in India often emerges from the ground up, taking decades to cement into national law and standard practice. We have seen this in education and food security. In migration too, despite the structural constraints outlined above, it is heartening to see many initiatives on the ground that have immense potential to influence strategic shifts in migration policy. For example, many States have initiated data projects that can track migrants and generate dynamic real-time data that aid welfare delivery. Maharashtra’s Migration Tracking System (MTS), which focuses on women and children has been successfully piloted in five districts. Chhattisgarh’s State Migrant Workers Policy is premised on registering migrant workers at source and tracking them through phone-based outreach systems.

In States, a heightened awareness about migrants’ issues is locating initiatives in departments other than labour, which has traditionally been the nodal department for migrant welfare. For example, Maharashtra’s MTS is located within the Women and Child Development Department. However, there is further need for multisectoral approaches underpinned by a strategic convergence across government departments and initiatives. Odisha’s Planning and Convergence Department, which offers an institutional mechanism for inter-departmental coordination, is one possible model.

The Centre has a lead role

In this scenario of well-meaning but scattered experimentation, migrants would be well served if the Centre played a proactive role by offering strategic policy guidance and a platform for inter-State coordination. State-level political economy constraints make the Centre’s role particularly crucial in addressing issues of inter-State migrant workers at ‘destination States’. The NITI Aayog’s Draft Policy on Migrant Workers is a positive step forward in articulating policy priorities and indicating suitable institutional frameworks, and deserves a speedy release.

At a time when economic recovery and inclusive growth are urgent policy goals, migration policy can hardly afford to gestate. Strategic initiatives to provide migrants safety nets regardless of location as well as bolster their ability to migrate safely and affordably must keep up the momentum towards migrant-supportive policy.

Mukta Naik is Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Varun Aggarwal is Founder and CEO of the migration research and advocacy organisation, India Migration Now. The views expressed are personal



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Children on the autism spectrum who have been part of early intervention programmes have shown great progress

Sameeran had not begun to speak by the age of two. He was restless and had to be called multiple times before he responded to his name. He would gaze at the moving fan for long periods and get upset if it was switched off. Sameeran’s mother was worried, but her husband brushed aside her concerns. Sameeran’s mother, however, decided to get him assessed. Sameeran’s diagnosis turned out to be autism. Speech and occupational therapy were initiated immediately, along with supportive education. Today, Sameeran is seven and has few traces of the autistic features. He has integrated into a mainstream school and while challenges still arise, he has been making steady progress. The early intervention provided Sameeran the skills necessary to cope with his challenges.

What is early intervention?

The set of services towards identification, assessment and a multi-pronged therapeutic approach to disabling conditions in the 0-3 age group is referred to as early intervention. While physical disabilities are evident from birth, intellectual disabilities take time to manifest. Autism Spectrum Disorder leads the list. Autism is a condition related to brain development that impacts how a person perceives others and socialises with them, causing problems in social interaction and communication. It also includes limited and repetitive patterns of behavior. The term ‘spectrum’ in Autism Spectrum Disorder refers to the range of symptoms and severity.

Early intervention programmes take advantage of neural plasticity or the ability of the brain to mould itself to stimuli. The greatest changes as a result of intervention are observed in the ages 0-3. This is not to say that programmes beyond this age are not effective, but they take more effort and time.

There are many signs that parents can look out for. The child may exhibit some or many of them: The child does not smile at the parent or return their smile. She avoids eye contact. She neither uses gestures nor imitates actions. She does not look at the parent when her name is called even though she can hear her name being called. She shows no interest in playing with other children. She lines up her toys instead of playing with them. She does not share any of her interests with the parent, nor follows when the parent points out something. She seems attached to objects rather than people. She loves gazing at moving objects, lost in thought for long periods. She hates anything sticky, but may love to play with water and pour it over herself. She resists eating certain foods, does not like to touch rice with her fingers and takes a long time to finish her meal. She gets upset if her routine is changed and wants things in the same place/order every time. She repeats words or phrases she hears on TV or in videos instead of ‘real communication’. She does not communicate her needs or respond when asked a question; she repeats the question instead of answering. She finds it hard to fall asleep or has a disturbed pattern of sleep.

The three big challenges to early intervention are parental ignorance; an unwillingness to accept facts; and social stigma attached to seeking specialised services. The following are the comments we often encounter. One: “Speech delays run in our family; she will catch up.” The fact is that this is a myth and the parent will only be losing time. Two: “She has no siblings and our apartment has no children she can play with.” The fact is that even if she had siblings, she would need some help. Three: “She loves gadgets; she eats better when she has the phone.” The fact is that gadgets affect sleep and exacerbate the uneven skill acquisition seen in children on the spectrum. Four: “Put her in playschool, she will be fine.” The child may not have the skills to initiate social interactions. Five: “What will people think?” What your child needs is more important than what others think.

An integrated approach

Paediatricians are the first point of contact. A vigilant practitioner can pick up the red flags as early as 18 months. The child should be assessed by a team comprising an occupational therapist, special educator, speech therapist and physiotherapist. A plan of action should be put in place. Communication within the team is of critical importance in helping the child. The child should receive a combination of therapy and special education for one to two hours every day. Parents need to be educated on home plans and in dealing with the condition and behaviour of the child. Sometimes, the extended family also needs to be counselled on how to provide the right environment to nurture the child. Children who have been part of early intervention programmes have shown remarkable progress, and the process of their integration with the mainstream has been faster. A programme that prevents disabling conditions is better than one that tries to mitigate the effects once disability has set in.

Rema Menon is Founder-Director, Rainbow Bridge



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Imran Khan’s moves to cling to power betray his contempt for parliamentary procedures

It was certain that Imran Khan, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, would be ousted in the no-trust vote. The Opposition had put up a united face. His allies had jumped ship, reducing the ruling coalition to a minority. His party lawmakers had revolted against him. The cricketer-turned-PM’s defeat was a matter of formality in a country where no Prime Minister has completed their term. On Sunday, the Deputy Speaker dismissed the no-trust motion, calling it against the Constitution, which was followed by Mr. Khan’s formal request to the President to dissolve the National Assembly. Pakistan will have to hold elections in three months, provided there is no judicial intervention. There were three bad options before Mr. Khan: resignation, no-trust vote or early elections. By choosing elections, he avoided a humiliating defeat and also sought to torpedo the Opposition’s bid to form a government for the remainder of the current Parliament’s term. Before the National Assembly convened, Mr. Khan had set the campaign pitch by accusing the Opposition of conspiring with a foreign power (an indirect reference to the U.S.) to unseat him. The current crisis would also allow him to play the victim of some foreign conspiracy and seek a fresh mandate. But the question is what price does Pakistan pay for his political manoeuvring? The conspiracy theories, the dismissal of the no-trust motion and the call for early elections all suggest Mr. Khan’s contempt for parliamentary procedures and basic democratic decency.

For the labyrinth he is in today, Mr. Khan has to blame nobody but himself. Having been a political underdog for years, he broke into Pakistan’s two-party political order in 2018 with the direct support of the military. His cocktail of religious conservatism, nationalism and anti-corruption crusade promised to build a ‘Naya Pakistan’. But while in power, he made three critical mistakes: mismanagement of the economy, mismanagement of his ties with the military, and full-spectrum hostility with the Opposition. His vindictive approach towards the Opposition brought together all the major Opposition parties, which tried to cash in on the growing public resentment amid economic woes. Cracks in the government’s relationship with the military began appearing last year when Mr. Khan reportedly sparred with the establishment over the appointment of the new ISI chief. His visit to Moscow in February, immediately after Russia’s Ukraine invasion, and the “neutral” policy his government adopted regarding the conflict seem to have quickened his fall. Last week, the Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, spoke against the Russian invasion and re-emphasised the importance of Pakistan’s ties with the U.S. in a public rebuke of Mr. Khan’s pragmatism. Now, out of favour with the military, a lost majority in Parliament and faced with anger amid a worsening economic crisis, the ‘Captain’ does not have any good options before him. With his back against the wall, what he is doing for political survival is only weakening Pakistan’s non-military institutions and subverting its democratic proceedings.



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While the government is prompt in its responses, this model of governance is far from perfect

Telangana is perhaps the first State in India to experiment with ‘Twitter governance’, a model of governance which uses the social media site for outreach. Under this set-up, citizens facing health, social or civic issues post their concerns on the microblogging site and tag officials. Their problems are quickly resolved and news of this is often amplified by sections of the mainstream media.

At the heart of this set-up is the State Industry and Commerce Minister, K.T. Rama Rao, who is known by his handles @KTR, @KTRoffice and @KTRTRS. Mr. Rao has a reputation for quickly responding to concerns. He tags the officials concerned to ensure that necessary action is taken. Besides responding to citizens, Mr. Rao even reached out to the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, asking him to set up a Tesla unit in the State. “Our state is a champion in sustainability initiatives & a top notch business destination in India,” he tweeted on January 14. Earlier, he successfully got Kitex Garments to set up a unit in Warangal by using Twitter to communicate with the company officials.

The @KTRoffice handle, which is operated by the Minister’s social media team, addresses healthcare and social issues. At the height of the migrant and food crisis during the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Minister’s team was very efficient.

Most requests posted with the hashtag #AskKTR are about expensive medical procedures for infants and children. There is now higher investment in medical care by the State government. The State has allocated Rs. 11,237 crore for the health sector in the 2022-23 Budget, which is nearly double the amount allocated in the 2021-22 Budget. The allocation amounts to 4.3% of the Budget. Only four States (Kerala, Rajasthan, Odisha and Chhattisgarh) spend more than 5% on health. A large share of Telangana’s allocation is for the establishment of new medical facilities. There is also a plan to establish medical colleges in all the districts of the State. While this improved focus on health may be largely due to the pandemic, some of it could also be due to greater awareness of health concerns stemming from the online requests.

However, this is far from being a perfect system. The Twitter governance model has no checks and balances. There is no oversight or responsibility. Officials can ignore issues that they cannot act on or do not wish to act on. For instance, the Right to Information (RTI) Act, which is fully offline in the State, is barely functional due to stamp shortage as well as reluctance on the part of officials to share data. In 2020, activists found that there were as many as 10,000 unanswered RTI queries. Official data, including tenders and government orders, are kept out of the public domain. Data on vehicles violating rules used to be available; now they are behind a digital wall. Citizens do not have physical access to the temporary Secretariat unless they are granted official permission.

While the government does ensure immediate action and transparency by using the Twitter model of governance, it could be criticised for using an ad-hoc approach for solving problems. Further, only tech-savvy people and those with social media access can benefit from this model. Telangana has a literacy rate of 72.8%. Twice the number of men use the Internet compared to women. The urban-rural divide is also sharp, with 60% of the people living in villages which have limited broadband access. While Twitter governance is a starting point for delivering good administration, it must be accompanied by regular governance mechanisms which have built-in regulations.

serish.n@thehindu.co.in



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The Government, Bharat Biotech should strive for better communication on vaccine safety

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) decision to recommend a pause in the supply of Covaxin for export is worrying. This follows an inspection of the company’s production facilities between March 14 and 22 that found “deficiencies” in the process to ensure that the vaccine produced is consistently suitable for use. Bharat Biotech, the makers of Covaxin, has said it is committed to addressing these ‘Good Manufacturing Process deficiencies’ and developing a “corrective and preventive” action plan that it will submit to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI). WHO has told countries that for now they should “consider” alternative vaccines but it has also said that the data available with it suggest that Covaxin is safe and effective. The details of these lacunae are not public but Bharat Biotech has said that sophisticated equipment needed to “enhance the process stringency” were unavailable during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is not the first time that Bharat Biotech has tangled with WHO. The global body sought information at least nine times from the Hyderabad company before approving it to be a global supplier of Covaxin. In March 2021, the Brazilian health regulator, Anvisa, pointed to several problems with Bharat Biotech’s manufacturing plant ahead of an agreement by the company to sell 20 million doses of the vaccine to Brazil. This deal was ultimately terminated, but there has never been clear communication either by Bharat Biotech or the DCGI on the concerns raised by the Brazilian health body.

While India is no stranger to making and supplying billions of vaccine doses, it has historically done so with the benefit of time. The pandemic saw pulling out all the stops and the balance between safety and speed tilting towards the latter by both drug regulators, under pressure from their governments, and vaccine manufacturers, for whom gargantuan demand promised a financial windfall. Other companies, internationally too, have made mistakes in supply. AstraZeneca mistakenly supplied some volunteers who were being tested with the Oxford vaccine with half the required dose that led to surprising results. This was not disclosed until much after the trial results were made public and experts openly questioned the efficacy results. The defining characteristic of a vaccine is its safety profile and its acceptability is premised on its makers and the regulators being transparent about it at all times. Both the Government and Bharat Biotech should strive for better public communication on these fronts.



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Moscow, April 4: In the next few years, perhaps in late 1973, the Soviet Union hopes to land a robot life-detection laboratory on Mars. The Soviet laboratory, as it is described in the Moscow press, would seem to be along the same lines as the American Viking project. The Viking plan is to land two remotely controlled stations on Mars in 1976 to search for signs of possible life. The name that Soviet scientists are using for the planned system is descriptive — Automatic Microbiological Laboratory. The laboratory would analyse Martian soil and air for traces of living organisms. Soviet planning for the automatic microbiological laboratory was described recently in the newspaper Leninskoye Znamva. According to the article, which was prepared by space experts, the laboratory will be designed to scoop up a sample of Martian soil to examine it for micro organisms such as bacteria, yeasts and fungal cultures. It has been established, the article said, that these might survive in Martian conditions of a thin atmosphere and a minimal water vapour. The life-detection laboratory would also draw in Martian air through a filter designed to trap micro organisms and analyse them. It would also be able to detect the emission of heat and carbon dioxide, two signs of possible life such as is known on earth.



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Argentine President Leopoldo Galtieri declared his nation would go to war to defend the Falkland Islands it seized from Britain. He spoke as a powerful British fleet prepared to sail for the disputed South Atlantic archipelago.

Argentine President Leopoldo Galtieri declared his nation would go to war to defend the Falkland Islands it seized from Britain. He spoke as a powerful British fleet prepared to sail for the disputed South Atlantic archipelago. According to the official Argentine news agency Telam, General Galtieri told journalists, “If the Argentine people are attacked by military forces, be they land, naval or air forces, the Argentine nation in arms will present battle with all the means at its disposal”. Commenting on the British UN Security Council resolution calling on Argentina to withdraw its forces from the island. Galtieri said Britain was in no position to condemn the use of force by Argentina because the United Kingdom used force to seize the islands from Argentina in 1833.

Indians in Pak jail

Ten Indian nationals, including a woman, have spent the last eight years in a Pakistani jail without trial according to news reports from Pakistan. The 10 have submitted an application to the Sindh provincial government through their lawyer and Amnesty International for their release and repatriation to India on humanitarian grounds, it said. Pakistani daily Aman reported that Abdullah Tahir Ansari vice-president of the association for the protection of human rights has offered them free legal aid.

Suspect US doctor

An American public health expert whose activities near the Indian Air Force base at Halwara were stopped by the Home Ministry in 1974 managed to continue his association with some government agencies and participate in top-level meetings till about three months ago. Indian medical experts think that Carl Taylor is an “excellent scientist”. But intelligence bodies took serious note of his visit to Delhi during which he attended a Indian Council of Medical Research meeting.



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If anything, YouTube’s inappropriate subtitles highlight the astonishing phenomenon that is human communication.

Add this one to the expanding online archive of speech-to-text fails. It seems that children’s content on YouTube has a no-no word problem. The closed captions for several videos, which are provided by popular automatic speech recognition systems like Google Speech-To-Text and Amazon Transcribe, have been making R-rated replacements for innocuous words. So “corn” becomes “porn”, “beach” becomes “bitch” and “combo” becomes “condom”. This is not a problem if you’re a kid with an avid curiosity about the adult world, but it can be a meltdown-generating issue if you’re the parent of said curious child.

While the Luddite’s instinct would probably be to go pitchforking after the machine, it would be in order to remember that even the so-called superior intelligence of human beings has not been immune to similar errors. Internet users of a certain vintage will recall the early YouTuber known as Buffalax, infamous for slapping misheard English lyrics on non-English songs, such as the Tamil song “Kalluri Vaanil” which became “Benny Lava”. Or take the case of famously-misheard lyrics, such as, “In a Gadda da vida” by Iron Butterfly, which was originally “In the Garden of Eden”, but people continued to sing the nonsensical version.

If anything, YouTube’s inappropriate subtitles highlight the astonishing phenomenon that is human communication. As Steven Pinker pointed out in The Language Instinct, the space separating one word from another in a spoken sentence is really only the listener’s “hallucination”. To then understand the meaning of those words — if separated as the speaker intended — comes down entirely to the listener’s knowledge of the language and the context in which the sentence is spoken. Listen to a sentence in an unfamiliar language and try to discern individual words to appreciate what an underrated miracle human speech is. A poor machine’s substitution of “I love corn” with adults-only words can then be laughed off.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on April 5, 2022 under the title ‘I love corn’.



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The BJP attributes its string of electoral successes to governance that, in the distribution of its benefits, is blind to differences of caste and community. Narsinghanand says just the opposite.

Yati Narsinghanand, head priest of Ghaziabad’s Dasna Devi temple, out on bail after being booked for hate speech at the Dharam Sansad in Haridwar last year, spewed communal hate and venom again at a “Hindu Mahapanchayat” in Burari on Sunday. The organisers of Sunday’s event had been arrested earlier in connection with inflammatory anti-Muslim speeches made at a similar assembly at Jantar Mantar last year. That is, a line runs through Jantar Mantar, August 2021, Dharam Sansad at Haridwar, December 2021, and Burari, April 2022. The themes on Sunday — “ghuspaith niyantran (controlling intruders)”, “dharmantran niyantran (control of religious conversion)” and “devsthan mandir mukti (freeing Hindu temples)”, communal dog whistles all — are part of a larger and continuing pattern that remains unbroken, or is interrupted only perfunctorily by the kicking in of the law. In all likelihood, going by the indications so far, Yati Narsinghanand wears his arrest for hate speech as a badge of honour, and would not have a problem should he be arrested for it again. This dismal and recurring sequence frames a political failure and abdication.

Unfortunately, the emboldening of hate speech against minorities is becoming the other side of a spreading phenomenon of majoritarian assertion and both are seen to draw political sanction from the ruling establishment. It is true that Yati Narsinghanand and Co are not part of the mainstream, or not yet. But at the same time, they can no longer be described or dismissed as the fringe. The peddling of a Hindu sense of siege, and purveying of spectres of marauding Others, occurs too frequently and resonates too widely for it to be seen anymore as a mere sideshow. The BJP-RSS establishment needs to confront this reality, and address it. Or else, the BJP-led government at the Centre risks presiding over an increasingly corrosive climate of fear and insecurity that will only hold back a diverse democracy from stepping up to the challenges of complex transitions in changing times.

The BJP attributes its string of electoral successes to governance that, in the distribution of its benefits, is blind to differences of caste and community. Narsinghanand says just the opposite. An unambiguous message needs to be sent out that there are political — not just legal — penalties for promoting hate as he does. A red line needs to be drawn and enforced by the BJP’s top political leadership that it will not stand for the demonisation of the minority. It must do this because that is its responsibility and mandate — that’s what “sabka saath” means. And because the costs of not doing so are simply too high to pay.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on April 5, 2022 under the title ‘Yati & sabka saath’.



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Gotabaya Rajapaksa won a decisive mandate in 2019 with the promise to heal the scars of the Easter bombings. That popularity has dissipated with the economic crisis. He needs help from across the political spectrum to restore and repair.

The economic distress in Sri Lanka is spiraling into a political crisis. On Sunday, the Mahinda Rajapaksa ministry resigned en masse to allow the prime minister to reconstitute the cabinet. The governor of the central bank has also put in his papers after taking the blame for economic mismanagement. The situation had taken a turn for the worse on Thursday after protestors encircled the presidential palace demanding that Gotabaya Rajapaksa should resign. With the slogan “Gota Go Home” reverberating in the streets of Colombo, the administration has invoked emergency laws and declared curfew in the city. The anger on the street has singled out the Rajapkasa clan for the mess — the four brothers, Gotabaya, Mahinda, Chamal and Basil, are in government —which, perhaps, is why the president has pleaded with the Opposition to join a national government. However, the latter has rejected the proposal, apparently unwilling to share the responsibility for the crisis with the Rajapaksas, in office since 2019.

Multiple factors have contributed to the current crisis in Colombo. Besides short-sighted and reckless borrowing to build infrastructure projects that have since turned into white elephants and restrictions on fertiliser imports, unexpected events such as the 2019 Easter bombings and the pandemic have contributed to the collapse of the economy. There is a grave shortage of food, fuel and electricity. The credit line and supply of essential goods from India should help to ease the situation, but a drastic restructuring of the economy could become necessary. Meanwhile, the government needs to address the public unrest over high inflation and shortages carefully and sensitively. The administration should be careful not to extend emergency powers or restrict civil liberties. Sri Lanka has been down that path before, with disastrous consequences. The refusal to decentralise and share political power had ended in the civil war that lasted nearly three decades. Similarly, the state’s violent crackdown on the ultra-left Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna’s insurrections left the southern districts bruised. The long years of emergency during the war caused the militarisation of the society and curtailment of civil rights. Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had started out as a grass roots politician and trade unionist, and his brothers, have a record of ignoring civic freedoms while in office in the war years. However, the halo of winning the war against Tamil Tigers allowed them to escape censure then.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa won a decisive mandate in 2019 with the promise to heal the scars of the Easter bombings. That popularity has dissipated with the economic crisis. He needs help from across the political spectrum to restore and repair. The appeal to the Opposition to join his government is a promising beginning, but he may need to do more to convince his detractors of his intent. India, meanwhile, should deliver on the promised aid, for its commitment is to the people of a neighbouring and friendly nation.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on April 5, 2022 under the title ‘Sliding in Lanka’.



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Aditya Sharma, Christophe Jaffrelot write: It empowers police, governments to conduct such intrusive investigations with little accountability and few legal guidelines

On March 28, the government introduced the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill in the Lok Sabha, seeking to replace the Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920 which regulates how the police can gather data from convicted or suspected criminals. The Bill exemplifies the current trend to pass laws that are filled with ambiguity and lack safeguards. It also reflects a desire to expand the power of the government to interfere in the lives of citizens.

If the Bill were passed, the type of data collected by the police would shift dramatically, from basic fingerprint and footprint impressions to a range of other samples, including iris and retina scans, behavioural attributes, and “biological samples”. The National Crime Records Bureau would hold the collected data for 75 years. Rule-making power in this arena, currently vested only in state governments, would be extended to the central government. More importantly, the Bill would entirely reshape the remit of law-enforcement officers to gather personal data. While the present law’s provisions apply only to convicts, those who are out on bail or those arrested for serious crimes, the Bill extends this wanton collection of data not only to all convicts, but also to anyone who is arrested or detained, and even people who are merely “suspected” of committing a crime or are deemed “likely” to do so.

It is common enough for law-enforcement agencies the world over to collect personal data from people they arrest and convict. But two issues particular to the Indian context make this Bill disturbing. First, the Government of India has repeatedly demonstrated a crippling fear of dissent and a willingness to wage open warfare against its opponents – presented, lately, as enemies more than adversaries. If the Bill were enacted, nothing would stop the police from, say, detaining protestors and collecting their personal data to use against them at a later date. Considering the way law enforcement has used such methods in the past, notably against crowds who were peacefully protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh in 2019-20, such a law would encourage this kind of behaviour, and further erode the already scant safeguards that exist against the government’s intrusion into citizens’ lives. The chilling effect of such a law would be severe. The Bill’s widening of the present law’s scope, giving the police a free hand to gather personal data from more or less anyone they choose, proves that this fear may not be unfounded.

Second, India’s privacy rules are threadbare. The GoI’s casual approach was most recently exemplified by the controversy surrounding the paucity of safeguards built into Aadhaar, as well as the numerous failures of the Aarogya Setu contact-tracing app. Although the Supreme Court’s Puttaswamy decision in 2017 established privacy as a fundamental constitutional right, the process to draft and introduce national data protection legislation has dragged on for years.

Following the Supreme Court’s 2017 verdict, the state formed a committee chaired by Justice B N Srikrishna to deliberate on a law to protect privacy. In July 2018, the Justice Srikrishna Commission published its report and prepared the first Personal Data Protection Bill (PDPB). However, the version that was subsequently drafted by an ad hoc Joint Parliamentary Committee was so disrespectful of the Commission’s work that Justice Srikrishna declared, in December last year, that it “enhanced” the danger to the fundamental right of privacy and even had “Orwellian” dimensions. Indeed, the new name of the Bill now includes “national security” as one of its objectives – and this is one of the reasons why privacy has been so diluted.

Justice Srikrishna pointed out that the Bill allows the Centre to exempt any of its agencies from the provisions supposed to protect privacy – in the name of security. He also argues that the “Data Protection Authority” is “entirely captive to the government and cannot be said to be an independent regulator”. The Bill shows that the government has no serious intention of passing comprehensive privacy rules, let alone adhering to them – another cause for worry when assessing the possible ramifications of the new Criminal Procedure Bill.

The Bill has met severe criticism from several quarters. The Opposition has slammed the proposal, calling it “draconian” and arguing that it violates clauses of the Constitution that protect life and personal liberty and guard against self-incrimination. The Internet Freedom Foundation noted its “extreme concern” and urged Parliament to refer the Bill to a standing committee. Defending itself, the government has asserted that the present prisoner identification law is a century old and perhaps not appropriately rigorous for the present day, considering the array of technological and scientific advancements that have transformed crime and law enforcement since 1920. There is some merit in this argument. But some progress has already been made. The Crime and Criminal Tracking Networks and System project, for example, set up by P Chidambaram in 2009 under the UPA government, played a significant role in modernising Indian policing. Much more can be done and perhaps the legal framework behind this process does need updating to bring it into line with modern international standards.

But this sweeping and accountability-free Bill ends up making the cure far worse than the symptom. The government’s tendency to target protestors and political opponents using surveillance techniques means that the danger this Bill poses is simply too great. Empowering police and governments to conduct such intrusive investigations and in such an arbitrary manner, targeting whomsoever they choose with little accountability and few legal guidelines, will not make Indians safer.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 5, 2022 under the title ‘No accountability Bill’. Sharma studies Indian political thought at Cambridge University and Jaffrelot is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s India Institute, London



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Amit Bhandari writes: It can help solve India's critical energy security problems

The ongoing tensions between Russia and Ukraine have led to the prices of crude oil shooting to $130/barrel, the highest the world has witnessed in over a decade. The rise in prices of oil, natural gas and fertilisers highlights India’s vulnerability to geopolitical sanctions. Green hydrogen is an emerging option that will help reduce India’s vulnerability to such price shocks. This was reiterated by Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari when he drove to Parliament in a hydrogen-powered car.

Renewable energy (RE) technologies have four key deficiencies. First, RE can only be generated intermittently. Battery technology cannot store electricity at a grid scale. In the last months of 2021, Europe was forced to buy natural gas at record high prices as renewable generation fell.
Second, there are question marks on the financial viability of green power. In India, renewable electricity is a replacement for coal-based power, the cheapest form of energy. That’s a big constraint on its viability. Moreover, the customers of this power – the state distribution companies – are collectively insolvent. A business cannot prosper if its primary customers are not financially viable.

Third, EV (electric vehicle) technologies have limitations. While electric cars and two-wheelers get a lot of visibility, much of India’s oil is burnt in heavy trucks. Lithium batteries are not viable for trucks.

Fourth, is the availability of critical minerals. Electric vehicles require large quantities of lithium and cobalt that India lacks. These minerals also have very concentrated supply chains that are vulnerable to disruptions. Large-scale investments in electric vehicles may create unsustainable dependencies for the country.

Intermittent hydrogen in the energy mix can help circumvent some of these problems. Hydrogen is an important industrial gas and is used on a large scale in petroleum refining, steel, and fertiliser production. India has a large and growing capacity base in all these industries. As of now, the hydrogen used in these industries is grey hydrogen, produced from natural gas.

Green hydrogen produced using renewable energy can be blended with grey hydrogen. This will allow the creation of a substantial green hydrogen production capacity, without the risk that it may become a stranded asset. This blending can start with petroleum refining, which is financially the strongest of the three industries, and then move on to steel and urea fertiliser. The high price of urea due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and its consequent impact on food security should also be factored in. Creating this hydrogen capacity will provide experience in handling the gas at a large scale and the challenges involved.

To widen the use of green hydrogen, it can be blended with compressed natural gas (CNG), widely used as a fuel for vehicles in Delhi, Mumbai and some other cities. This will partly offset the need for imported natural gas and also help flag off the challenges of creating and distributing hydrogen at a national level.

One challenge of using new transport fuels, whether CNG or electric vehicles, is the creation of large-scale refuelling networks. Bringing hydrogen vehicles on the road too soon will require the creation of yet another set of infrastructure. Building fleets of hydrogen-fueled vehicles for gated infrastructure can be a good starting point. Airports, ports and warehouses, for instance, use a large number of vehicles such as forklifts, cranes, trucks, tractors and passenger vehicles. Many, if not all, can run on hydrogen fuel cells. Each such application can use hundreds of vehicles, creating demand that will allow manufacturers to bring vehicles that can use hydrogen fuel cells into the market.

By bringing down the price of green hydrogen sufficiently, India can help unlock some stranded assets. The country has close to 25,000 megawatts of gas-fired power generation capacity that operates at a very low-capacity utilisation level. The high price of natural gas reduces the viability of such electricity. These plants could use hydrogen blended with natural gas. Hydrogen should, however, be used to generate electricity after it has served its utility in other avenues.

To catalyse a hydrogen economy, India needs some specialist players to execute projects as well as finance them. In the past, ONGC, IOC, and GAIL were set up for executing mega projects. They then became corporations. The CNG networks in Mumbai and Delhi were created by MGL and IGL, and Petronet LNG was set up for creating India’s first LNG terminal. Establishing specialised companies with a clear focus has helped projects get off the ground. This approach can be repeated for green hydrogen. However, government participation in such a company must be capped at 50 per cent.

Apart from government-backed players, the hydrogen economy will need private sector participation. India’s start-up sector, with over 75 unicorns, is perhaps the most vibrant part of the country’s economy currently. This ecosystem has been enabled by a mix of factors, including the presence of entrepreneurs with ideas and investors who are willing to back up these ideas. Many start-ups have been able to find support from angel investors, venture capital and private equity backers. Involving this ecosystem in the hydrogen economy can be a powerful driver for this sector. Venture funds and private equity funds specifically focused on green hydrogen could make it easier for new entrepreneurs with ideas to get funding and achieve scale.

The government’s Green Hydrogen Policy sends the right signals about its intent. It now needs to ensure that investment can freely come into this space.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 5, 2022 under the title ‘Fuel for the future’. The writer is Senior Fellow for Energy, Investment and Connectivity at Gateway House



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Adoor Gopalakrishnan writes: As a museum and a storehouse, the upkeep of a film archive is an enormously expensive affair. This is something no profit-making body would want to take on

The merging of semi-autonomous bodies like the Films Division, Children’s Film Society, International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Directorate of Film Festivals, and National Film Archive of India (NFAI) with the National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) is nothing short of a gross blunder.

I have had opportunities to engage with each of these institutions and I believe that makes me eminently eligible to comment on the merger move.

Each of these institutions has been performing with a certain degree of freedom under the supervision of advisory bodies comprising experts in the respective fields. Over the years, they have come to gather a certain amount of expertise and special experience. If some of them have not performed to the best of expectations, the reasons are simple. Either the heads of these institutions have been chosen arbitrarily or not appointed at all or they have not been funded adequately.

The solution does not lie in their abolition. Examples are there before us. When Jaya Bachchan was heading the Children’s Film Society, it made reasonably good films. The film festivals she organised were memorable for their quality and impact. Likewise, under V S Kundu, the Films Division regained its past glory. When Shankar Mohan was its head, the IFFI was reckoned among the reputed festivals in the world.

Confusion is bound to rise when these institutions of distinctly different character and functions are brought under a monolithic structure that cannot claim to have special knowledge or experience in any of these areas. The sole aim, one suspects, is to do away with them all.

Even while blindly conceding that a moribund body organised on corporate lines could look after the designated functions of each of them with event managers, the NFAI needs to be mercifully exempted from such a body. Bringing the film archive under the aegis of the NFDC is an unwise, impractical and illegal decision.

The NFAI’s primary function is to treasure and preserve our film heritage. It is one of the largest reserves of cinema films (optical) in the world. Both old and new films are collected and kept in specially designed vaults where temperature and humidity are controlled as per international specifications.

The NFAI is a proud member of the international federation of film archives that shares, exchanges, and standardises modern methods of archiving and restoration. Its management requires special know-how and can be handled only by experts and committed and involved personnel. To compromise its functioning will be suicidal.

The remarkable collection of films in our film archive comprises both old as well as contemporary classics that have contributed to the growth of our film culture. It has virtually become the storehouse of Indian culture and heritage in a unique manner. Negatives and prints of so many films in various languages from all over India have been taken over by the archive on the condition that they would be preserved in the best possible manner. Passing over the film archive to a corporate body will be in violation of the government’s irrevocable commitment to the producers. It is the government’s duty to preserve and nurture our cultural heritage and not leave it to the vagaries of corporations.

No corporation would want to keep an archive that is not a business proposition. But as a museum and a storehouse, the upkeep of a film archive is an enormously expensive affair. The power bills alone will amount to several lakh rupees per month.

A sizeable budget has, reportedly, been allotted for the digitisation of films in the archive. A corporate body, not necessarily composed of experts and specialists in the field, may, in all likelihood, take the digitisation of films as an alternative to optical film preservation and decide to end it. The corporation, not being in the public domain, will be immune to public opinion however authentic and scientific it is.

A corporation like the NFDC may not even be aware that there is a strong movement under the leadership of the well-known Hollywood filmmaker Christopher Nolan to preserve cinema in its optical film format for long-time preservation. Film archives around the world are toeing this line.

No one knows how long the digital format will last and how secure it is for preservation. The optical film has lasted for 127 years and it is a known fact that its longevity is assured if preserved properly. The Royal Film Archive of Belgium, while acquiring a film of mine, wrote to me that the print would first be screened before an audience of 90 people in their auditorium and then moved to the vaults for preservation for the next 400 years. I thought this would preserve it for close to eternity.

It has been reported that the first move in the amalgamation has been made – to remove the head of the archive along with its film officers. Thus the functioning of the NFAI has come to a standstill. The anxious question on everyone’s lips is what would happen to their precious film materials that were passed on to the NFAI for safe keeping.

May I appeal to the good offices of the government to intervene and salvage the archive?

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 5, 2022 under the title ‘An image problem’. The writer is a filmmaker



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Aqsa Shaikh, Raghav Shukla write: Like NALSAR University in Hyderabad, other educational institutions too should consult stakeholders, especially queer-identifying students and staff, to undertake holistic changes for creating queer-affirmative campuses

In 2008, when I (Aqsa) had to pick my medical specialisation, I chose a subject that could be pursued without staying in a hostel. As a transgender woman, only a men’s hostel was on offer to me, which was not acceptable. I was fortunate that I could complete my post-graduation but not everyone is. A decade later, Nivedhiya Anand, a tribal, intersex, and transgender student from Kerala dropped out of school, where she was put up in a boy’s hostel, due to mental harassment.

The recent announcement by NALSAR University, Hyderabad, on the creation of a gender-neutral space in its hostel has generated a buzz for the right reasons. This, along with gender-neutral washrooms and a proposed policy on inclusive education for gender and sexual minorities, is the outcome of honest conversations with the students.

Two recent cases need focus when talking about accommodation for transgender students in hostels at universities. Yashika, an MA student at Panjab University, frustrated with the university for not being able to provide her hostel accommodation, had to approach the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which issued a notice to the university. In another PIL, filed before the Karnataka High Court, Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju, a medical student from Manipal University, has filed a case against the state government after being denied accommodation in the girls’ hostel even when she had changed her sex legally to female on her ID card. The university insisted that she get a sex reassignment surgery done before she is allowed in the girl’s hostel, denying her the right to self-determination, as provided by the 2014 NALSA judgment of the Supreme Court.

Even as inclusive spaces are created, we should be mindful of the intersectionality within queer communities. One, the presence of such facilities should not curtail the legal right of transgender men and women to get accommodation in men’s or women’s hostels, just like the presence of gender-neutral toilets should not be used to stop transgender men and women from using men’s or women’s washrooms. Secondly, such spaces should be accessible to persons with disabilities. Additionally, while such facilities give much-needed visibility to queer people and their issues, it can also expose the community to queerphobic attacks. University administration must pay special attention to the security of queer students on campus.

While infrastructure is essential for creating safe and inclusive places, we cannot underplay the importance of changing mindsets. There is a need for the sensitisation of students, teachers, and staff in all educational institutions, from primary schools to universities, on understanding and accepting queer and transgender folks. India has taken a step in the right direction by enacting the Transgender Persons Act, which speaks of a trans-inclusive education system wherein transgender students learn with other students without fear of discrimination, neglect, or harassment.

The National Education Policy 2020 speaks about providing equitable and quality education to transgender students. While that’s a progressive vision, it misses out on students from other queer identities. Such an omission is not just dangerous but can also be fatal, as in the case of a teenage student from DPS, Faridabad, who died by suicide, after being bullied by other students for his sexuality.

Creating safe educational spaces also demands that we change queerphobic curricula. It took a reprimand from the Madras High Court for National Medical Commission to issue a directive to medical colleges, faculty, and authors of textbooks to eliminate queerphobic content from books and pedagogy.

The step taken by NALSAR should nudge other educational institutes to consult stakeholders, especially queer-identifying students and staff, to undertake holistic changes for creating queer-affirmative campuses. Infrastructure, policies, and curricula need a thorough revision for creating not just gender-neutral but gender-positive learning spaces. In 2022, we owe this to our sexual and gender minorities.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 5, 2022 under the title ‘A campus for all’. Shaikh is Associate Professor, Community Medicine, Jamia Hamdard, Delhi and Shukla studies at the Campus Law Centre, University of Delhi



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C. Raja Mohan writes: He has challenged the army’s hegemony on a broad range of issues, blocked the no-confidence motion against him by dissolving the assembly.

With his enormous strength, the Biblical character Samson destroyed the temple of Dagon in Gaza killing his Philistine captors and himself. Prime Minister Imran Khan, much like Samson, appears determined to bring down the house of Pakistan, dominated until now by the army. Imran is refusing to follow his many civilian predecessors, who quietly left when shown the door by the army. In Pakistan, civilian leaders who have defied the army found themselves in prison, executed or exiled. Imran has made bold to take on the army, test the boundaries of the national ideology that Rawalpindi claims to protect, and challenge the deep state by mobilising the street.

In brazenly refusing to let the National Assembly vote upon the no-confidence vote brought against him and getting the president to dissolve the assembly, Imran is not only looking the army in the eye, but also the constitution and the Supreme Court. His defiance will certainly be put down for now but he has promised the establishment that he will pose a bigger threat when he is out of power. Khan is prepared to take his chances, much like Samson, and play to his many strengths. He remains a national hero having won the cricket World Cup in 1992. He enjoys considerable political following and has an ego larger than life.

Khan has qualities that his predecessors lacked, except Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whose charisma moved the Pakistani masses in the early 1970s. He is deeply aware of Bhutto’s defiance which ended with execution in 1979. He now invokes Bhutto’s name and the dangers he faces from the system that he has challenged.

Imran’s narrative that he is a self-made man is only partly true and does not square with the fact that he was “selected” by the army as prime minister in the 2018 elections. The army wantonly undermined the two civilian governments that came to power with popular mandates after General Pervez Musharraf’s reign ended in 2008 — one led by Asif Ali Zardari of the Pakistan People’s Party and the other by Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League. The army was wary of both Zardari and Nawaz who wanted to break from the army’s policy of supporting militant jihadi groups as well as improve trade and political ties with India. The army hoped that Khan would provide a “handsome and modern” face for the army rule, and help destroy older political formations. But Khan had his own ideas for Pakistan’s future and generated a new set of problems for the army.

In the past, the army chiefs were the ones who “betrayed” the civilian PMs who appointed them. Ziaul Haq turned against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Musharraf ousted Nawaz Sharif. This time, it is Imran Khan who is betraying the army that ensured that his opponents were defeated in the 2018 elections and stitched a majority in his favour in the National Assembly. Khan can claim credit for being the first PM to boldly subvert the constitution; until now that was a privilege of the army. He also surprised the army leadership by playing politics with the appointment of the ISI chief last October. When army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa sought to move Lt Gen Faiz Hameed from the ISI last year, Khan resisted the transfer and made it an issue. Although he had to concede eventually, it became quite apparent that the PM and army chief were no longer on the same page. To make matters worse, Khan has been incompetent in governing Pakistan, has deepened Pakistan’s economic crisis, sharpened internal conflicts, and worsened its international relations.

Khan stepped into Islamic politics, traditionally controlled by the army. He took a tolerant view of militant Islamic groups like the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan and pandered to their extreme demands such as the expulsion of the French ambassador over questions of blasphemy. The mobilisation of Islamic sentiments has become an important part of Imran Khan’s political toolkit to strengthen his political position at home.

Beyond domestic politics, he also waded boldly into the disputes within the Islamic world. His attempt to align with Turkey and set up a new Islamic bloc angered Pakistan’s traditional friends in the Gulf — Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The army ensured that he step back.

Khan also blocked the opportunities that opened up for easing tensions with India. In February 2021, the army negotiated a ceasefire with India and Bajwa opened the door for a modest agenda of confidence-building with India, including on trade. But Khan overruled the move by citing India’s 2019 constitutional changes in Kashmir. Until now, the civilian leaders sought to improve ties with India and the army vetoed those plans. Now, it is a civilian leader who takes a more hawkish line on Kashmir and relations with India.

Although he has often viciously attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the RSS, Khan has also praised India’s “independent foreign policy”. It is less a compliment to Delhi than an attack on the Pakistan army that has long nurtured a close strategic partnership with the US and the West. Well before he became the PM, Khan often criticised Rawalpindi’s alliance with Washington and its decision to “fight American wars” in the region at great cost to Pakistan. As US-China relations deteriorated, he moved closer to Beijing and apparently under Chinese pressure travelled to Moscow as Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to march into Ukraine.

Last week, Bajwa publicly distanced himself from Khan and criticised the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and underlined the traditionally close ties to the US and Europe. In the past, the army used to carefully modulate the deep anti-Western resentments in Pakistan to bargain with the US and Europe. Khan has now gone full tilt with his anti-Americanism by charging that the opposition’s call for a vote of “no confidence” is a US conspiracy to oust his government. Hostile foreign interference was the main political argument that was used to dismiss the resolution and dissolve the National Assembly.

Imran Khan has embarked on a path no civilian leader has done — to confront the army’s hegemony on a broad range of issues. In the run-up to the elections (assuming they are held soon), Khan is likely to double down on religious mobilisation and anti-Americanism. That could add to potential fissures within the army on the appropriate means to deal with Pakistan’s intensifying crises.

Based on form, Khan does not have much of a chance against the army but the pitch is uneven, the ball has been tampered with, and the weather is heavily overcast — it is not easy to bet on the outcomes. One thing though is certain: This major intra-elite conflict triggered by Imran’s Samson-like defiance is bound to have far-reaching consequences for Pakistan’s political trajectory at home and abroad.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 5, 2022 under the title ‘The Samson option’. The writer is Senior Fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute, Delhi and contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express



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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its most recent report released yesterday sounded a note of warning. The ambitious aim of limiting global warming to 1.5 degree celsius in relation to pre-industrial levels seems beyond reach. This goal can be achieved if global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions peak before 2025, a timeline that is impossible to adhere to.

The report also pointed out that the energy sector contributes the largest share of GHG emissions because of fossil fuels. In this context, there is a case for India to increase its emphasis on transitioning out of fossil fuels faster. A faster pace of transition also serves larger strategic and economic interests as intermittent oil shocks have taken a toll over time.

Read: Time for action on climate change is running out, emissions need to be halved by 2030

A fast transition requires a coherent policy approach that prioritises use of alternate energy sources. In this context,  India may have to make a choice in the trade-off between slowing down the pace of transition to help domestic industry through tariff protection and relying on imports of high technology products to increase the speed of transition.

If climate change represents an almost existential threat confronting humanity, India may need to reconsider its tariff regime for the energy sector to do its bit in combating a looming calamity.



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The amalgamation of HDFC and HDFC Bank, once legal formalities are done, will create a private sector banking behemoth. It will result in a balance sheet size of almost Rs 18 lakh crore, with an emphasis on mortgages and retail loans. At one level, the creation of a large bank through the amalgamation embodies the growing importance of private banks in a financial sector dominated by public sector banks. In September 2021, private banks contributed about 38% of the industry’s total credit, up by over 10 percentage points in five years. This, however, is just a part of the story.

India’s banking industry has seen two phases over the last two decades. Between 2000-01 and 2009-10, there was growth at breakneck speed. Bank credit as a proportion of GDP ratio increased from 24% to 50%. In the next decade, as imprudent loans of boom years hit home, the credit to GDP stagnated at around 50%. The lost decade was marked by a slow process of first accounting for bad loans and then their clean-up. Among the tools introduced to aid the process was the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) in 2016, the most far-reaching measure thus far.

The report card, however, is mixed. Three broad trends are visible. Public sector banks that were the worst hit by the NPA problem have lost market share over the last decade. Second, risk aversion because of NPAs caused by exposure to industry intensified during the pandemic. For instance, RBI’s most recent Financial Stability Report showed that when indexed to December 2019, loans to agriculture and retail segments led the recovery. Industry and services sector trailed. Third, the level of gross NPAs to total advances has trended downwards to stand at 6.9% at the end of September 2021. However, even before the Omicron wave and Ukraine conflict, RBI’s stress test showed that NPAs may rise to 8.1% by September 2022 under a baseline scenario.

India’s bank-dominated financial sector remains vulnerable. To illustrate, despite IBC and numerous private asset reconstruction companies, a state-backed bad bank had to be created last year. It’s still to stabilise in terms of leadership. Looking ahead, India needs financial intermediation that can handle not just scale but also variety. It’s not merely about capital, there’s also a need to upgrade skills in the upper echelons of banking. And privatisation of public sector banks can no longer be postponed.



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That top central bureaucrats are worried over state-level populist schemes and freebies – as reported by TOI – should be another reminder to political parties that the fiscal party for vote-getting is not costless. Politicians have found freebies to be an easy way to reach out to low-income voters and some powerful interest groups. This is a cross-party, across-ideology tendency and although governing parties at the Centre are not free of this sin, the rush to populism is most evident in states. UP’s victorious BJP, for example, promised free electricity for farmers, free scooters for female college-goers and two free LPG cylinders. In Punjab, AAP vowed 300 units free power to every household and Rs 1,000 monthly allowance for every woman. UP has 2.3 crore farm holdings and Punjab has 55 lakh households – suggesting thousands of crores in revenue outgo just on power promises.

While the bureaucrats reportedly flagged Punjab, Delhi, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Bengal, BJP-governed states are no paragons of good spending. Also, while total outstanding debt as a percentage of GSDP has increased significantly from 2005 to 2022 for Punjab, AP and Telangana (the last from 2014), it has dipped for Delhi and Bengal. But off-budget borrowings bypass borrowing limits. CAG recently directed states like Telangana and Kerala to include them in their annual budget statements.

The price that states, their residents and coming generations incur from populism financed by borrowings and entailing long-term interest payments is clear: Even during Covid’s public health emergency, states just spent 6.6% of primary expenditure on healthcare against National Health Policy’s 8% target. Funds for capital and critical social expenditure are what get sacrificed when states buy laptops instead of improving schools. True, the Centre can help by adding revenue from cess in the divisible pool, but beyond that responsibility lies with state governments and all political parties.



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Last month in Parliament, Nirmala Sitharaman pointed out that India was one of the top five destinations for FDI during the pandemic. On Monday, she followed this up by stating that FDI is a better gauge of India's economic prospects than the flight of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) following interest rate readjustments in advanced economies.

India averted a global dip in foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows during the pandemic as it built digital infrastructure during worldwide lockdowns. FDI climbed 10% to $81.72 billion in 2020-21, pushed up by mergers and acquisitions in the IT sector, and has since eased to $45 billion during April 2021-January 2022, declining 12% from the same period of the previous year. These developments happened in the backdrop of worldwide FDI flows plummeting 35% from $1.5 trillion in 2019 to $1 trillion the next year. The OECD estimates global FDI flows have rebounded to $870 billion during January-June 2021, 43% above the level during the same period of 2019.

Last month in Parliament, Nirmala Sitharaman pointed out that India was one of the top five destinations for FDI during the pandemic. On Monday, she followed this up by stating that FDI is a better gauge of India's economic prospects than the flight of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) following interest rate readjustments in advanced economies. The concentration of incoming FDI in IT - the spike in the second half of 2020 was driven by Google and Facebook investing in Reliance Jio - masks an overall contraction in investment in the broader economy. Inflows to these sectors are now recovering with the global revival. On its part, the government is making FDI welcome, the latest endeavour being for the Life Insurance Corporation's (LIC) initial public offering (IPO).

Sitharaman also draws reassurance from the emergence of a new generation of retail investors that has cushioned the stock market from quick turnaround in FPIs. The market has not corrected by as much as it did during the financial rout following the taper tantrum of a decade ago, although more money has already been pulled out this time. FPIs have sold about $14 billion of their Indian holdings since the beginning of 2022, but the Sensex is still in the green. However, retail expectations of equity returns are driven by recent experience, and deeper FPI sell-offs in emerging markets could affect local sentiment.

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With the current level of knowhow, it is possible for the world to halve its emissions by 2030, keeping the 1.5° C goal alive. It requires increased international cooperation, and financial flows that have been woefully inadequate. The UN climate meet in Egypt later this year will address this imbalance.

The UN's climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warns that limiting temperature increase to 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels will not be possible without immediate and drastic cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Unfortunately, announcements and targets have been inadequate with the highest emissions being reported in 2010-19. Enabling massive reductions in GHG emissions requires financial flows and technology, a major challenge particularly for developing countries.

With the current level of knowhow, it is possible for the world to halve its emissions by 2030, keeping the 1.5° C goal alive. It requires increased international cooperation, and financial flows that have been woefully inadequate. The UN climate meet in Egypt later this year will address this imbalance. For developing countries such as India, the plan must be to rely on reducing emissions through efficiency measures. This requires faster deployment of clean fuels, such as renewables and hydrogen for energy. Going beyond energy, the cumulative effort must be to build better cities, improve mobility, construction of buildings that use materials with low GHG footprint, energy efficiency, and buildings that cut cooling and heating needs. In the agriculture and food sector, avoiding waste is critical to reducing/avoiding emissions.

India can play a leadership role by developing accessible and affordable solutions, making it possible for developing countries to make the transition. Efforts like the International Solar Alliance (ISA) and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) must be accelerated. The science shows it is possible to develop, grow the economy and reduce emissions to avoid worse climate outcomes.

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The retreat of Russian troops from key regions on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv revealed the most horrific fallout of the month-long war in Eastern Europe in the form of slaughtered civilians, their bodies strewn on the streets, hands bound, and shot in the head. The discovery of a mass grave of around 300 people, with local authorities citing evidence of at least some being freshly dug, marks a grim turning point in the ongoing saga of Russia’s aggression, and may further galvanise the West against Moscow’s revanchist ambitions. Most international groups and western countries are united in proclaiming that war crimes were committed in Bucha, and that Russian soldiers left behind evidence of egregious violations of international laws and the Geneva Conventions. Russia has called the revelations a hoax, and instead sought to blame Ukrainian authorities for staging the bodies. But Moscow has been countered by reporters and activists on the ground and by international organisations analysing satellite images.

The world has been here before, more recently in Aleppo, in Nagorno-Karabakh and in Grozny. Yet, on most occasions where civilians were intentionally targeted by armies, it has chosen to either look the other way or issue effete appeals for peace. The world community and the United Nations (UN), in particular, must ensure that this apathy is not repeated in Ukraine. The international community must assist investigators on the ground to collect evidence of alleged war crimes and build a case against the perpetrators of the atrocities in forums such as the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court (ICC). To be sure, such mechanisms have their own complications — Russia has long rejected the authority of ICC and Moscow’s veto as a permanent member of the UN Security Council adds further hurdles. A number of deadlocked votes in the UN over the past months have shown just how international law enforcement is held hostage to strategic national interests.

As Mahatma Gandhi once said, wars are bad in essence, but agreements such as the Geneva Conventions attempt to limit the destruction to formal combatants and spare civilians. The horrors in Bucha show that the international community has, once again, failed in its remit to hold powerful countries accountable for their follies. It must strengthen its resolve and send out the message that no matter the stature of a country or its power on the international stage, butchering innocent civilians is not acceptable.



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A spate of terrorist attacks rocked Kashmir on Monday, targeting a Kashmiri Pandit shopke-eper, two migrant workers and a Central Reserve Police Force trooper in separate incidents. A day before, two more non-local workers were targeted by unidentified gunmen, bringing back gory memories of last autumn, when the killings of several migrant workers in the Valley triggered panic. Migrant workers have always been vulnerable targets for gunmen looking to strike terror in the hearts of the civilian population.

The government has said that its decision to scrap the region’s special status and bifurcate it two years ago yielded positive results on the security front. Last December, the Centre told Parliament that between August 5, 2019, and November 22, 2021, 496 terror-related incidents were reported from Jammu and Kashmir, down from 843 reported in the same span of time before the abrogation. It must now take into account the string of attacks and look for ways to mitigate them.

The attacks on migrant workers and Pandits — the killing of a prominent Pandit businessman last October had already shaken the community — are meant to undermine faith in the administration and make local populations subservient to militant groups. The government and forces must take steps to bridge security gaps, guarantee protection to vulnerable workers and businessmen and ensure that the promises of prosperity and peace are kept expediently.



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The world is “sleepwalking to a climate catastrophe” announced United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres as he introduced a new report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This report on solutions follows earlier reports on the science and impacts of the climate crisis. IPCC reports are produced by scientists, but also reviewed and approved by 195 governments, in a painstaking line-by-line process that concluded this week.

So exactly how bad is the climate crisis? 2010-2019 witnessed the largest decadal emissions in history. Although the pace has slowed, unless there are deep, immediate greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions across regions and sectors, limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is out of reach.

Is this a doomsday message? No, but it suggests a subtle reframing of how we should think about the challenges ahead. Rather than focusing on a specific number, whether 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2 degrees Celsius, it is more useful to find ways to work urgently to reduce warming to as low a level as possible: For example, 1.5 degrees Celsius is better than 1.6 degrees Celsius, which is better than 1.7 degrees Celsius, and so on. To do so requires deep cuts before 2030, in the range of 27%-43% globally for the 1.5-2 degrees Celsius range, in addition to future net-zero targets that tend to get the headlines.

Most of the report is, therefore, focused on signs of progress and future solutions. A wide range of policy options across energy, land, building, transport and demand measures are available to reduce emissions by 25% by 2030 at under $20 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) or even with net benefits, and another 25% at under $100 per tCO2e. Moreover, the costs of key technologies such as solar power and batteries have fallen 85% since 2010, with wind power down by 55%.

There is evidence that these opportunities are being realised. Many more policies have been implemented around the world, with growing evidence that they are enhancing energy efficiency, reducing deforestation and accelerating renewable energy deployment. As of 2020, 53% of emissions have been covered by dedicated climate laws across 56 countries; another 690 laws indirectly impact emissions, such as energy efficiency or land-use laws. At least one study suggests that the effect of all these laws and policies has been to reduce emissions by about one-tenth a year.

The report goes further: Both rich and poor countries, it argues, should think about shifting development pathways toward sustainability. What this means is that broad economic and social shifts are as important to climate mitigation outcomes as adoption of low-carbon technologies.

By this metric, planning for urban futures are also implicitly climate decisions because they could make inner-urban areas more suitable for both business and living, thereby reducing transport costs and emissions. Strategies for job creation could take into account industries of the future, many of which include low-carbon options. For rapidly growing countries, it is particularly important to internalise climate futures, to avoid locking-in to a high-carbon pathway.

The flip side is also true — without more mitigation, development progress will increasingly be undercut by climate impacts. Mainstream development decisions, in other words, are also climate decisions, and vice versa. Thinking of the relationship between the climate crisis and development in this way opens up many more low-carbon pathways that also yield socially positive outcomes.

This is not to suggest that implementing this approach is easy or straightforward. Indeed, it is arguably more challenging to consider these interlinked problems than take each separately. But it is also to say that, given the nature of the climate crisis, it is now also necessary.

The report highlights at least two additional factors that need to be addressed to go down this path. First, while internalising the climate crisis in development decisions may yield big future gains, it may also require substantial upfront investment costs. The report notes that financial flows are currently 3-6 times lower than the projected needs by 2030, although this ratio is much higher in some parts of the world, notably in developing regions.

Second, governments need to build the capacity to manage these complex transitions. To strategically think through low-carbon opportunities, coordinate across multiple sectors and scales, and limit the effects of disruptive changes on vulnerable populations require building a climate-ready State.

Finally, the report makes it very clear that the way towards development transitions is going to be specific to each country; there are no universal solutions. The report does, however, provide the ingredients that policymakers in countries can use to devise context-specific ways forward — frameworks, institutions, policies and technologies.

The world is certainly not on track to achieve the mitigation goals set by the international climate negotiation process. But the response to that should be to redouble efforts and limit harm to the extent possible, drawing on the assessment provided by IPCC.

Navroz K. Dubash is professor, Centre for Policy Research. He is a Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC Working Group 3, and a co-author of the Summary for Policymakers

The views expressed are personal



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The Government of India took a bold step last week in lifting the disturbed areas notification from large segments of Assam, Manipur and Nagaland. The announcement by home minister Amit Shah meant that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (Afspa) will not be applied in 23 and half districts of Assam and a swathe of territory in Nagaland and Manipur.

The declaration of a state or part of it as disturbed, either by the Centre or the state government, operationalises Afspa. The Indian Army and paramilitary forces can be summoned under this clause to deal with conditions which the police and local administration cannot handle. Afspa arms security forces with sweeping powers, including to shoot on suspicion, and protects them from criminal prosecution.

For decades, almost automatically, every six months, either the Centre or the relevant state government would notify the extension of the Act to deal with continuing “disturbed conditions”. But last week, in a decisive action, nearly half of the area of the three states were freed of Afspa. This is nothing short of remarkable — in 1990, as many as seven of eight states of the region were under the grip of Afspa as insurgencies flared.

Hundreds of people have died on either side of this battle of arms and ideas since the Act was first used against a pro-independence movement in the then Naga hills district (later Nagaland state) of the composite state of Assam. At the heart of the Afspa debate has been the standoff between civil society groups, which raise the issue of violation of human rights, while the State asserts the need to protect national sovereignty and integrity.

These years have seen acute suffering and grief — including the killing of 13 innocent Nagas who fell victim to a botched Army ambush last December in Nagaland’s Mon district, triggering angry protests and renewed demands for the Act’s repeal. This region has also witnessed an epic 16-year hunger strike by Manipur’s Irom Sharmila demanding the Act’s repeal. A Supreme Court intervention in the case of 1,528 extra judicial killings in Manipur led to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probing 39 cases; charge sheets were filed in 29 of them. The Act has undergone no less than three reviews — including one by the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee, of which I was a member, in 2005-06 and now by a group of officials headed by the Registrar General of India, post the Mon killings. Last week’s announcement followed the submission of the third report.

Blunting the Act by reducing its use and the area under its control is a pragmatic way of handling a sensitive issue. Afspa may still be around, but its power is being contained.

Many civil society friends feel that this step is not enough. One needs to be pragmatic: The repeal-Afspa campaign has gone on for decades. But no Union government will repeal such a law. That would be regarded as adverse to national security concerns, especially in the current geopolitical situation. The demand for the repeal will continue — as sought not just by activists, but by no less than three chief ministers, including N Biren Singh, newly elected in Manipur, and the assembly of Nagaland. But it is a political process that will take time.

In the past decades, one needs to acknowledge that changes have come slowly but surely, both in the political field and in the realm of armed conflict. Swords or their equivalent — AK-56s — may not quite have been turned into ploughshares, but public fatigue with conflict has coalesced the State’s realisation that political issues had to be resolved politically and not through the barrel of a gun, making peace efforts possible.

Although the battle with insurgency ended in Mizoram with a peace accord in 1987 with the rebel Mizo National Front (MNF), the Act was not simultaneously withdrawn. That came later and the disturbed tag was also lifted from Tripura and Meghalaya (Tripura decided to do it on its own).

Negotiations began with the largest Naga armed group, the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (I-M), nearly a quarter century ago and although there is still no comprehensive agreement, the dialogue has embraced all factions. A substantive peace has returned not just to Nagaland, but also to other states. There have been peace accords with Bodo and other groups while talks continue with a range of diverse armed factions including the United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa). Barring a few targeted ambushes, there has been a significant decline in the level of violence across the region. This was an appropriate time to lift Afspa from different states.

One can hardly imagine the 1990s when a sense of fear and insecurity was palpable: There were no evening or night film shows in places like Guwahati, the capital of Assam and the commercial hub of the region. This is no longer the case: Markets, businesses, transport, schools and normal activities have resumed vigorously.

A region free of Afspa and the “disturbed” label may be a worthy ideal. Nonetheless, the announcement of the reduction of the area under the law should be welcomed as a significant step to restore not just peace, but also dignity.

Sanjoy Hazarika is commentator, author and researcher specialising in the issues of the North-East and its neighbourhood He was member of the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee

The views expressed are personal



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New Delhi: In two minds about whether to invite Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee for a strategy meeting of key Opposition parties in December last year, Congress president Sonia Gandhi decided to consult — not a party colleague — but Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) general secretary, Sitaram Yechury, for his opinion.

In Lutyens’ Delhi, it was, however, another example of an unusual bond between the Gandhi family and the general secretary of India’s major Left outfit that fights tooth and nail against the Congress in Kerala.

A bond that outlasted UPA

The Congress-Yechury equation survived the brutal withdrawal of the Left’s support from the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in 2008 over the Indo-United States (US) Nuclear deal. But before that, for four years between May 2004 and July 2008, the Left and Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) had shared many dreams. From the rural employment guarantee scheme to the right to information and right to education, all of UPA’s signature schemes providing legislation-backed rights found ardent supporters among the Left parties.

The then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went a step ahead and even institutionalised a UPA-Left coordination committee that met regularly to accommodate the “outside supporters”. Months after the Left’s withdrawal of support, Yechury rued that they couldn’t take the political credit for those “pro-people legislations”. Singh too, in a meeting with Left delegation at his parliament office, told Yechury, “I miss your counsel.”

The political ties, no doubt, suffered temporary damage. An angry Pranab Mukherjee, (then defence minister), yelled at CPI-M boss Prakash Karat that “you will be decimated in Bengal” when he invited Karat at his home in a last-ditch effort to prevent the withdrawal of support. PM Manmohan Singh, too, lost his cool and told The Telegraph that if the Left wants to withdraw support, “so be it” and Congress strategist Jairam Ramesh coined “Sitaram Obituary” to refer to the Left leader, whose party has the habit of pulling off support from elected governments.

But the political gulf notwithstanding, personal equations only grew with time. Yechury was the only visitor to Mukherjee’s office a day after the 2008 trust vote of the UPA government. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, according to many leaders from both Left and the Congress camp, remained sceptical of Prakash Karat and other leaders but saw Yechury in different light. The inter-personal equations also translated into political alliance amid the rise of a common, formidable opponent — the Narendra Modi-led BJP.

“The Congress finds it easier to handle the Left parties. We know what they stand for and there is a clear map of Dos and Don’ts,” said a Congress leader who was involved in drafting the Common Minimum Programme — a scrap book of demands of various UPA partners and the Left.

This convergence has only deepened.

Rahul Gandhi opted for a pact with Yechury’s party to elect a CPI-M leader to Rajya Sabha in 2020 from Bengal rather than accept Mamata Banerjee’s offer to nominate a common candidate from Congress and Trinamool. Rahul Gandhi approved a poll deal with the Left in the 2021 West Bengal election even as a large number of Congress leaders suggested otherwise. Or whenever Yechury, the only communist to write an obituary on Micheal Jackson, suggested to Sonia a joint protest on issues such as price rise or Rafale, she would say, “You must tell this to Rahul.”

A set of similar political challenges

But beyond the personal bonhomie lies a story of political decay.

In January 2013, Rahul Gandhi was elected as the Congress vice-president. On the sidelines of the event, he told one of his trusted confidantes that his anointment as president will also happen “in due course.”

Two years later, Yechury was almost bulldozed to the party’s top post by his Bengal comrades fed up with Karat’s ideological doggedness. The CPI-M’s “Calcutta Club” had pleaded with Karat not to pull the rug out from under the UPA. But he stood by his ideological commitments, overlooking strategy for street politics.

But ever since Gandhi (party president from 2017-19) and Yechury started leading the party, the two outfits have only dived to near decimation. The Congress has been reduced to just two chief ministers and 53 Lok Sabha MPs. In the last two rounds of assembly polls, the Congress couldn’t win a single state on its own.

Yechury’s CPI-M too, didn’t fare any better. The party’s government in Tripura, which ran for 19 years, lost to BJP in 2018. The Left parties didn’t get a single seat in 2021 West Bengal polls and are struggling to stay relevant in national politics with just three MPs in Lok Sabha — down from 43 in 2004.

It’s also an irony perhaps that while the two leaders have witnessed a rapid shrinking of the footprint of their organisations, Gandhi and Yechury remain the most popular leader of the respective parties. But the electoral setback has not diminished the two leaders’ popularity inside the party.

The clamour for Rahul Gandhi’s return as the Congress president has only grown louder. In the CPI-M too, there are hardly any visible alternatives to Yechury.

At the personal level, both are democratic and large-hearted. Yechury would write a column in bourgeois media and then quietly transfer his payment to a comrade in need of financial help. A colleague told Rahul Gandhi, “Stop being a philosopher and be a leader”. The former Congress chief replied, “We should meet more often.”

Both leaders also face the problems related to senior leaders, albeit in their own ways. The G23 rebels in the Congress are demanding a “collective and inclusive leadership”— a demand designed to prune Rahul Gandhi’s authority. On the other hand, the CPI-M has too many veterans at the top level and needs to inject fresh blood in the organisation — something that started in Bengal in the state unit reshuffle last month.

Gandhi and the Congress conundrum

The Congress veteran and former president, late Pranab Mukherjee, always maintained that the Congress can be only led by a vote-catcher. The Congress is not a Leftist party, he would argue in his close circle, and can’t be happily rest on ideology alone.

While Sonia Gandhi led the party to two consecutive terms in power, Rahul Gandhi not only oversaw two election defeats but also lost from his family turf of Amethi. He is now an member of Parliament from Wayanad.

Yet, a large section of the Congress refuses to consider anyone else at the top post. The party’s Maharashtra state president Nana Patole tweeted, “After the defeat of the Modi government in the year 2024, the Congress government will come in the country under the able leadership of Rahul Gandhi.” Congress’ chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala maintained that “every Congress worker wants Rahul Gandhi to lead the party. The next president, however, will be decided through the organisational elections.”

Even a G23 leader admitted, “If Rahul contests the election, we don’t have the power to defeat him.”

But Rahul Gandhi’s reappointment possibly doesn’t solve the problem. The Congress is looking at two plans that have already been tossed to the leadership.

The first plan is to appoint a non-Gandhi leader at the top post while Rahul Gandhi will continue to provide the overall ideological direction. According a senior leader, “In January, four names were proposed to Rahul Gandhi — Ashok Gehlot, Sachin Pilot, Bupesh Baghel and Mukul Wasnik — as possible leaders of the Congress. Gandhi identified at least two of these names as “good choices”.

The other plan, according to another key strategist, is to appoint working presidents to cover different parts of India. “May be Ghulam Nabi Azad can be the working president for North India and Mukul Wasnik can take charge of Western India,” said the leader who did not want to be quoted.

While Rahul Gandhi is largely seen as responsible for the electoral decay in the Congress, party leaders recognise that the solution, however, lies only with him. Without his backing, no alternative candidate would be accepted as the party president or get nominated to the Congress Working Committee (CWC).

“When he announced he will step down after the poll debacle in a CWC meeting, the top executive body had to anoint Sonia Gandhi as the interim president. It is clear that the Congress is accustomed with the Gandhis. So, any other president has to get the full backing of Rahul,” said a senior Congress leader.

Sitaram and survival of the Left

While the Congress thrives on a Gandhi family driven organisation, in the CPI-M, collective leadership — be it in politburo or the Central Committee (CPI-M’s equivalent of CWC) — is supreme. The leader does not always his way. For instance, in the last Party Congress, Yechury was personally keen to see Ashok Dhawale, Maharashtra unit secretary, in the politburo, but the party decided otherwise.

Yechury has served two terms as general secretary. His last opportunity for another term might come in the Kozhikode Party Congress scheduled in the next few days. But within a party that is a stickler for collective leadership, what can Yechury do to revive the party?

Left ideologue Samudra Guha maintained that his top priority must be to “to identify and empower those crucial workers or leaders who can organise a movement or strengthen the organisation at the ground level”.

“As the most popular leader of the CPI-M, he needs to inspire the organisation. And to do so, he must find new faces and the performers. Remember, Pramod Dasgupta had just 34,000 members when he was asked to lead the party. But he turned it into a mammoth organization that ruled Bengal for 34 years,” said Guha.

It’s also the same recipe for Rahul Gandhi, a Congress leader added, “to find the right people for the right job”. How two men, leading two parties which have declined under their watch, but who remain indispensable for their future, and have an unlikely bond between them, take their next steps will be important factors in shaping India’s oppositional politics.



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As the Food Safety and Standards Authority (FSSAI) of India comes out with comprehensive guidelines on health food for all, and health star rating for pack food and beverage, a raging debate has started over which rating system is better — health star or healthy/unhealthy warning system.

In the health star rating system, the products are rated from one to five stars on their health impact quotient. The warning system is simpler with the label clearly declaring whether a product is healthy or not. FSSAI, in the next few months, is likely to decide which label is best for the guidance of consumers.

Determining health and safety standards

To deal with the problem of rising obesity, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends front-of-package label (FOPL) nutrition labelling as a policy to promote healthy diets and reduce consumption of foods high in sodium, saturated and trans fats, and added sugar.

To deal with the issue, FSSAI, in 2019, set up a panel of experts to determine comprehensive food safety standards for food and beverages, whose consumption is on the rise and is said to be a cause of many health-related issues, especially for the younger generation.

The business of packaged food and beverages in India has increased from $1 billion in 2006 to $36 billion in 2019. In India, nearly one in four adults and one in 20 children are classified as overweight or obese. Studies have shown rate of obesity in India is rising at a faster rate than the global average, and obesity prevalence is expected to more than triple by the year 2040, without intervention.

In these two years, experts studied similar health standards in the developed world and came out with a set of recommendations. A committee of experts recommended lower than the World Health Organization (WHO) threshold levels for two categories — food and beverages — to declare them healthy. The levels recommended were for nutrients such as salt, total sugar, iodine, sodium, saturated fat and saturated fatty acids in 100 grams of the food.

The committee has recommended threshold levels for 18 food categories, with 25 different thresholds covering around 115 sub-categories, a government official said. He added that a food product is declared “excessive” if the nutrient is more than the threshold level. For instance, if saturated fatty acids are more than 10%, the product will be declared excessive for fatty acids.

After comparing energy intake from packaged food in various countries, the committee recommended a total energy intake of 400 calories for food and 100 calories for beverages for 100 grams. Sugar recommended is 20.7 grams for food and 6 grams for beverages for every 100-gram intake. Similarly, saturated fat recommended was 6 grams and 3 grams for food and beverages respectively. The recommendation is similar to the one prescribed in Australia and New Zealand.

The committee said that the threshold levels should be voluntary from mid-2023 and should become mandatory from mid-2027. Officials said that the recommendation was made for the industry to adopt the new threshold levels. FSSAI also recommended that the health advisory on packaged food products should be readable and clearly state how many calories it provides to a person and whether it is over the prescribed limit or not.

The emergence of the health star option

The recommendations will lead to a guide on healthy packaged food and beverages, and the labelling of food and beverage packets to clearly show consumers the impact of the food product on one’s health.

FSSAI has decided to come up with guidelines and a roadmap for improving the health quality of packaged food.

The first in this is the FOPL, clear guidance to consumers on the health quality of the food product. For this, the authority is likely to recommend a health star rating system, in which the product with an adverse impact on health would get a lower star than the one with a positive health impact.

“The star rating system will have a positive health impact. The five star rated products would mean they are good for health and a single star would mean that they have an adverse impact on one’s health,” the official said.

An FSSAI-commissioned Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A)study recommended the health rating system.

A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was carried out by IIM-A on a nationally representative sample of 20,564 respondents covering all major states of India, officials said. Of them, 62% were contacted physically and the remaining were through video calls. The sample size covered all groups and genders.

The sample size was randomised to one of the six groups, i.e. No FOPL, Health Star Rating, Nutriscore, Warning label, Multiple Traffic Lights and Monochrome GDA (Guideline Daily Amounts). These were the six warning systems suggested by FSSAI to IIM-A for conducting the survey.

IIM-A told FSSAI that most of the respondents preferred a health star rating over other models for “achieving a careful combination of the dual objectives of ease of identification and understanding; and change of purchase behaviour” of the consumers in large parts of society.

At an FSSAI meeting with stakeholders this February, it was decided that as FOPL is being considered for the first time, thresholds may be initially fixed as proposed and reviewed later based upon experience over the initial years of implementation, which showed minutes of the meeting.

Critics suggest clear labels

However, independent experts on the panel on FOPL such as George Cheriyan from CUTS International and Amit Khurana from the Centre for Science and Environment opposed the recommendation of the use of health star rating, claiming that these ratings are taken with “positive connotation” and may not lead to low consumption of low star rated products.

They asked FSSAI to consider the warning label which clearly tells the consumer whether the product is healthy or not. They also argued that several countries, especially in Latin America, have adopted the warning labels and it has led to a reduction in the consumption of unhealthy packaged foods.

“The health star rating fails to tell the consumer the harm of consumption of lower star rated product. International studies have clearly shown that the health rating systems have not led to lower consumption of unhealthy packaged food,” said Arun Gupta, convener of National Advocacy in Public Interest (NAPI) which campaigns on the adverse health impact of packaged foods.

He added that the All India Institute of Medical Sciences conducted a joint study of 2025 people across India and recommended that warning labels are quicker to understand and easy to recognise. The study recommended that FOPL should be mandatory for all packaged food and said that 93% of consumers surveyed were of the view that labels would be helpful to convey nutritional information. “Warning Labels are quicker to understand (40.6%), easy to recognise (40.7%) and help in buying healthier food products (39.6%) amongst all other labels,” the AIIMS study said.

Consumer rights groups also asked FSSAI to make FOPL mandatory for food and beverage products mandatory immediately and not to wait till 2027 considering increasing in obesity and other non-communicable diseases in the country. A WHO representative also made a similar point and suggested that at the most, three years may be given for such transition, said minutes of the meeting held at FSSAI on FOPL in February this year.

However, FSSAI has decided to stick with the expert group suggestion of a four-year transition from voluntary to mandatory FOPL in the draft regulations to be issued soon. Many experts believe that both not having the right FOPL and the delay in making FOPL mandatory will have adverse health impacts for millions of Indians, especially in the younger age group. FSSAI should make FOPL mandatory clearly stating whether food is healthy or not within a year.



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Like any power-hungry politician, Imran Khan Niazi is trying every trick in the book and some from out of it to not be dethroned when the votes in the national legislature seemed loaded against him in a no-trust vote. Taking to subterfuge when cornered, he used an ally in the Deputy Speaker who, agreeing with his PM that a foreign conspiracy was in the air, ruled that the trust vote against the Prime Minister was not in order. By dissolving the Assembly and not facing the confidence vote, Imran Khan may have finessed his opponents but the victory could yet prove pyrrhic.

Regime changes never come about in an organised or organic manner in Pakistan where coups and interventions — military or judicial or civilian through lawmakers shifting their loyalties — are staged with such stunning regularity that not one Pakistan Prime Minister has ever completed a term in office. Having come to power on the back of Army support and the endorsement of the people, the cricketer-turned-politician was aiming to fashion an Islamist welfare state but was undermined by his falling out with the Army top brass and by his overreach against opponents.

It is up to the Supreme Court of Pakistan to settle the matter and point the way forward from the quagmire of Imran Khan’s despair to keep his party in power through a caretaker Prime Minister. The anti-corruption plank is a standard weapon in the subcontinent and regimes are not averse to using it to pull the rug from the feet of political opponents and critics. But Imran Khan may have overstepped in wielding it indiscriminately and running afoul of the Opposition, which in Pakistan is never a spent force in any circumstances, particularly the one represented by the Sharif clan of politically significant Punjab.

The two principal reasons why Imran Khan was on the verge of losing power was his run-in with the Amy chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa over the appointment of the ISI chief, who is the Army’s handmaiden in several operations, and his mismanagement of the economy as reflected in runaway inflation and a steeply falling Pakistani rupee. His courting of China and Russia — he was in Moscow on the day the Ukraine war began on February 24 — at the expense of a longstanding relationship with the USA, a huge financial benefactor, was his choice as he had come to power with a fierce anti-American stance that struck a chord with his people.

To blame the US for his ouster was typically tactical. Their ties are at such a low now that the US President Joe Biden has not even picked up the phone to talk to him since taking up residence at the White House in January 2021. Nearer home, Imran Khan’s approach to India was nothing to write home about though he tried to sing its praises when it came to its stand on Russia vis-a-vis the Ukraine war. On the other hand, the Amy top brass has been of late dovish on India to the extent of promoting a ceasefire on the border and LoC that has held for over a year.

It may be of little consequence to India whether Imran Khan can reclaim his office or not and it might even be geopolitically better if a young Sharif were to ascend Pakistan’s thorny throne though the Army will continue to call the shots while being as loath as ever to give up terror as a state-sponsored weapon against India. The importance of Pakistan to China might, however, dim a little if there is a change in Islamabad. India will be keenly watching developments across the border.



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Spectacular and akin to an opening sequence of space-age doomsday mo-vies, several districts of Maharashtra witnessed a freefall of metallic in-fernos, lighting up the skies. People recorded the shower, initially wrongly speculated as a meteoric shower, and posted it on social media, setting off heightened tension and imaginative speculation amongst many netizens.

So bright and vast was the visual impact that it was spotted even in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Telangana. Not at all was burned up space debris though; and a large piece fell in Maharashtra which was found, damaged but unburnt, and sent for investigation.

By most accounts, it appears to be a piece of a Chinese rocket, purportedly of stage 3 of the Chang Zheng (or Long March) 3B, used to launch a satellite last year. It was the re-entry of the rocket into Earth’s atmosphere and landing that created the spectacle.

As per reports, no damage was done to any property or life by the theatrical space junk invasion; it just made for a spectacle and some social media buzz. It is scientifically considered a bit of an outlier event, because often such debris lands in the unclaimed oceans.

While space missions globally use a plethora of tactics to ensure human safety from unwanted but inevitable cosmic return gifts, the global space community feels frustrated because of the secrecy usual to the Chinese.

Like in strategic affairs and international matters, or even their trade and commerce, China adopts a tough defiant posture, evading answerability, transparency or accountability.

While there are no major global laws that can be enforced on largely sovereign space missions, nations have a right to sue other countries for financial damages. But such lawsuits are largely deemed frivolous.

A global body is much needed to bring in greater accountability and fix responsibilities in managing space debris in an increasingly more intense space age of mankind.

 

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The recent happenings in the world of geopolitics have proved to be most unpredictable. First, no one could believe Russia’s President Vladmir Putin would launch a war in Ukraine, one that would lead to such misery and violation of humanitarian norms, while causing such upheaval in the international order. And now Pakistan’s Imran Khan stumped everyone by getting Pakistan’s National Assembly dissolved to stave off a potential vote on a no-confidence motion against him, which he was expected to lose in the face of a Pakistan Army-sponsored united Opposition. He also recommended to Pakistan’s President to call fresh elections; which the President obliged almost instantaneously. The Opposition, which was expected to unseat Imran Khan, and the Supreme Court Bar Council have appealed in the Supreme Court against the arbitrary action of the National Assembly’s deputy speaker. An avoidable constitutional crisis has been created, which is likely to create more turbulence in Pakistan’s already fractious politics and be none too helpful towards a deteriorating economy.

The crisis will eventually be handled with all the turbulence usually associated with Pakistan, but what exactly has caused it? It is Imran Khan’s complete mismanagement of the economy, its foreign policy and internal security that has brought Pakistan to the current state. However, blaming Imran Khan alone may also not be right since in 2018 he had inherited a failing economy. He could do nothing much to improve that situation and further faltered by creating a situation whereby inflation was recently running at almost 20 per cent. The Pakistani rupee has fallen to Rs 185 to one US dollar, the lowest in many years. It was the Pakistan Army which had experimented with a selected rather than an elected Prime Minister by putting together a coalition for Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) to lead, after he failed to secure a majority in 2018. Since the Pakistan Army has virtually run Pakistan’s foreign and security policy, and overseen decisions on the economy for a very long time, it is in no position to place the full blame on the PTI. The consequence of all this is that the Army perhaps couldn’t afford to see the further sinking of the nation and had to fall back on what were considered by it as out of favour political parties, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Bhutto, and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of Shehbaz Sharif and Mariam Sharif. Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the Jamat Ulema-e-Islam was also taken on board to keep the flock of radicals in support. The Pakistan Army is no longer believing in the fixation of getting into governance. It prefers to shoot from other shoulders.

However, if all is not well in the streets of Pakistan, as is wont to be in the very near future, the Army will have no option and may have to step in to steady things. Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa is on a retrieval spree after Imran Khan put the blame of his failure on a “foreign hand”, pointing the finger at the United States.

At the Islamabad Security Dialogue, Gen. Bajwa praised the US-Pak relationship and decried Imran’s tirade against the Americans. Under the circumstances that was Gen. Bajwa’s best option because for the economy Pakistan should not expect anything from Russia, and China’s support comes with too much baggage. The trend of being critical of Russia’s war in Ukraine has suddenly picked up in Islamabad; that will definitely create some issues in the Russia-China-Pakistan linkage which in recent times after Afghanistan was emerging quite strongly.

Imran Khan doesn’t appear to be trying to recede in the background. He is reportedly already initiating things for the next election. If the constitutional crisis is not amicably resolved, and it has all the portents of escalating, Pakistan’s very unstable streets may erupt again. To add to the political issues there is always the lurking threat of radicals trying to make space for themselves through such situations. The Pakistan Army, which considers radicals as force multipliers if handled correctly, would then have to step in. It is reluctant to do so as another round of military rule will do no good for Pakistan’s image and make economic revival even more difficult. It would prefer that the current Opposition comes in to govern, and as before, the real power remains in the Army’s hands.

Another failure in governance can always be laid at the doorstep of the political parties. However, there are some differences this time. First, there are apparent cracks within the Army itself. The controversy over the appointment of Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, former DG ISI, as the corps commander of 11 Corps, much against the wishes of Imran Khan but on the insistence of Gen. Bajwa, has stoked apparent divisions in the Army. Lt. Gen. Hameed is much junior to Gen. Bajwa but his aspirations are obviously big. Gen. Bajwa considers those aspirations working against his potential continuation for another tenure as Army Chief. Effectively, if Gen. Bajwa gets another three-year term, with Shehbaz Sharif in power, he would have poured water on the ambitions of a generation of general officers of the Pakistan Army who would have vied to become the next Army Chief. That is a situation tailormade for rifts and cleavages emerging. Gen. Bajwa moved Lt. Gen. Hameed out from the ISI DG’s appointment as he was getting all too powerful and coming too close to Imran Khan, but in effect he also set him up to be in line for the Army Chief post, which he himself would like to continue in.

While there may be apprehensions about the Pakistan Army’s ability to control political turbulence, historically it has always risen to the challenge and managed to handle its internal differences. Fortunately for it, the situation on the borders with India is stable; the ceasefire agreed in February 2021 is holding remarkably well. It makes no sense for Pakistan to disturb that and gives it the opportunity to set its house in order without fear of having to handle issues concerning the Line of Control. For India, the emerging situation in Sri Lanka and Pakistan is worrisome. Economic disorder invariably leads to political turbulence, which has consequences in the stability of those nations; the effects of that invariably travel across the region as a whole. Remember, those who seek to promote violent terror as part of their aspirations invariably seek out such situations. It is observation time for India, but vigilance is also necessary.



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Make no mistake. Buoyed by the massive victory in four states, including Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will use his time-tested formula to put a loyalist in Rashtrapati Bhavan when Ram Nath Kovind demits office in July.

The unmistakable signal from the BJP’s poll victories, especially in UP, is that Mr Modi will use his “4-L” formula to have his man as the next President. “4-L” stands for “loyalist, lightweight, low-profile and low-key”.

A loyalist at Rashtrapati Bhavan has immense advantages for any PM, especially with the Lok Sabha polls not far away. Rashtrapati Bhavan plays a very important role after the Lok Sabha polls in the formation of the new government. The next Lok Sabha polls are due by May 2024.

The BJP’s first brush with power at the Centre was back in 1996, when President Shankar Dayal Sharma had appointed Atal Behari Vajpayee as PM after a hung verdict.

The highlight of the 1996 verdict was that the BJP became the first non-Congress party to be the single largest party in Parliament after the failed Janata Party experiment of 1977.  In that election, the Congress not only lost power but got just 140 seats in the 543-member House. It’s another story that the Vajpayee government lasted just 13 days.

No Prime Minister likes to take chances on a crucial appointment as the President when each Lok Sabha election is a different cup of tea. It is more so for Mr Modi, who likes to be seen as a “strong leader”. India’s polity had thrown up hung verdicts since 1989 till 2014 when Mr Modi became the first leader who brought his party absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, and this trend continued in 2019.

There is intense speculation in political circles on who could succeed Mr Kovind. One view was that Mr Modi may have promised the top post to BSP supremo Mayawati if she kept a low profile in the just-concluded Uttar Pradesh polls in order to benefit the BJP. Though Mayawati kept her campaign low-key and it did benefit the BJP, it is anybody’s guess how much Mr Modi can trust a mercurial leader in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Now Mayawati claims it is just propaganda against her by the BJP and has ruled out taking such a post. But the damage has already been done to the BSP.

Rajnath Singh could have been a consensus candidate for Rashtrapati Bhavan if the BJP had done poorly in UP as the defence minister has a good rapport across the political spectrum. In the new situation, however, senior leaders like Mr Singh and Nitin Gadkari should be thankful if they aren’t made a part of the Margdarshak Mandal. One should never forget that in New India’s “New BJP”, there is also a “new normal”.

One will have to see if Mr Modi again plays the dalit card by installing leaders like Karnataka governor Thawar Chand Gehlot or former Uttarakhand governor Baby Rani Maurya at Rashtrapati Bhavan. One thing, however, is clear in the Modi-Amit Shah scheme of things: that individual leaders are virtually of no consequence and what matters is how best to deliver a message to a social group or community in order to broaden the Hindutva vote bank. Every move is for a purpose, to further the leader’s agenda.

The promotion of vice-president M. Venkaiah Naidu seems doubtful. Mr Naidu may have been an ambitious man and may have swiftly shifted to the Modi camp by dumping L.K. Advani, but the PM always goes by his own priorities.

Interestingly, the RSS will have little role in suggesting names for President or vice-president as the PM has now emerged taller than the mother organisation.

It should be seen whether Mr Modi uses the presidential polls to increase the BJP’s footprint in the South, especially Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Whatever might have been the experience of the Opposition parties, the 76-year-old Mr Kovind fitted firmly into the Modi scheme of things. While Mr Kovind was the party spokesman for some time, no one ever thought the non-controversial dalit leader who mostly kept to himself and rarely faced the media could be destined for bigger things. His choice was nothing short of pulling a rabbit out of the hat, at least that was the feeling in political circles, including those of the BJP.

Mr Modi might have taken a cue from Indira Gandhi, who had installed her loyalist Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed as President nearly half a century ago. Ahmed had issued the Proclamation of Emergency by signing the papers at midnight in June 1975 after meeting Indira Gandhi earlier that day.

After becoming Prime Minister, Mr Modi could easily do business with then President Pranab Mukherjee, who had his own issues with the Congress leadership, which never considered him a loyalist. In fact, the senior ministers with whom Mr Modi had a good rapport as Gujarat CM were Pranab Mukherjee and Sharad Pawar.

All in all, the BJP’s triumph in UP has taken all the fun out of the presidential race, making it a tame affair. The Opposition’s top agenda now is to nurse its own wounds for survival, and the presidential polls are the last thing on its mind. The Congress, Trinamul Congress and the AAP are all resigned to the fact that Mr Modi will put his own nominee as President Kovind’s successor.

The vice-presidential polls, which are also around the corner, will be child’s play for the ruling party given its growing dominance in the electoral college.



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On Saturday the prices of petrol and diesel were raised again, the tenth time in the last 12 days. But this is not the especially the subject of much debate in the media. The Opposition has tried to raise the issue of inflation, which several surveys have claimed is the single most important issue for Indians, along with unemployment.

For some reason there is little traction on this at the moment. The Congress Party in Karnataka had said recently that “it is a cause of concern that people-related issues are being ignored in the frenzy stoked by communal elements” and that “we can only raise pertinent issues… but we can move forward only with public support”. This means that little or no enthusiasm for opposing the price rise was forthcoming from the public at large.

The state’s former chief minister, H.D. Kumaraswamy of the Janata Dal (Secular), said of this phenomenon that “people are prosperous under (Narendra) Modi’s rule, and that is probably why they are not protesting against the price rise”. The case is similar with unemployment. A Union government survey from just before the 2019 Lok Sabha election showed that joblessness in 2018 was at a 50-year high of six per cent. It has remained above that since then for the past four years, but like with fuel and LPG prices, there appears to be no way for it to become a subject of politics.

It would be interesting to examine why it is that the Opposition cannot mobilise public support on something that is clearly in the public’s interest. The first of their hurdles is the issue with the media. The structure of the Indian media is such that it is heavily dependent on the government, for licences, for advertising and for sundry other favours. The mass media in India is largely owned by corporate bodies, that have many other companies and treat their media outlets as an extension of their larger business interests. This is why most of them sound like government mouthpieces. This could be one reason why the ruling party feels no pressure, but it is not the only one.

Another reason could be that the Opposition leaders are not competent at mobilising people against the ruling party. Perhaps this is true, but it cannot be entirely true. The BJP has not won all states and it is not possible to claim that it has total dominance over the nation’s polity. Some space for the Opposition exists, but on this issue, it does not appear to be gaining mass support. In Pakistan, Imran Khan’s government has become unpopular and about to fall because of inflation. In India, with fuel prices lower than in Pakistan, the government continues to remain popular.

What other reasons can we ascribe to this unusual phenomenon? Let us hear again from the Opposition parties what they have to say. In Karnataka, the focus has been on introducing the Bhagavad Gita in schools, banning the hijab and keeping Muslim girls out of school, on the controversy over a movie on Kashmir, on banning halal meat, and banning non-Hindus from trading at temple festivals.

There is no doubt that these are popular issues, meaning that the public is interested in reading and watching news about them. They are certainly the dominant issues if we examine how much time the media spends on them. What India’s political parties are saying is that these issues are more important to many and perhaps most Indians than fuel prices and LPG prices and unemployment. The ruling party is saying this by pushing for communal issues constantly, and the Opposition is saying it by admitting that non-communal issues have no traction.

How long does such a state of affairs continue and what does this mean for our future? A couple of years ago, I wrote a book whose thesis was that Hindutva has no end state. Meaning that there is no particular goal that it wants to achieve.

It does not seek, for instance, to drastically change or scrap the Constitution, because the current law gives it enough space to be able to do what it wants. Its only aim is a constant stirring of the communal pot. And there is always something to be used here. Today beef, tomorrow namaz, the third day it could be the Sunday mass (which has also been attacked by Hindu organisations in Karnataka), the fourth day hijab, the fifth day halal, the sixth day love jihad.

On April 2, the Uttar Pradesh announced that all meat shops in the state would be shut for the entire duration of Navratri, which ends on April 10. Why? Because other people buying and eating meat offends some Hindus. There will be no shortage of things we have to torture our minorities, and for this reason it will continue like this. Because India is a democratic nation, our discourse is disproportionately focused on political victory and defeat. Very little thought is given to what happens after the elections and between elections. For a writer, India in the current times provides rich and fascinating material, but as a citizen it is disheartening to see where we have arrived as a nation.

 



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