Editorials - 11-04-2022

Sanctions not only lead to economic harm but also bear legal consequences for the sanctioning states

With the recent discovery of a series of suspected war crimes in the Ukrainian town of Bucha and the fear of a new Eastern offensive, Western sanctions on Russia have reached a new high. The European Union (EU) seems more determined than ever before to restrict the importation of Russian oil and gas, while the U.S. and the U.K. keep targeting financial assets and oligarchs.

Seen as the lesser of two evils against a member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and a nuclear power still supported by strategic allies, sanctions offer a seemingly efficient alternative to the use of military force. Yet, their damage on human rights and populations have been long demonstrated. In addition, in a globalised economy, their medium-term impact on the very countries issuing these sanctions can be rather severe. These reasons give rise to the need to regulate and monitor the use of this political tool for economic warfare at the crossroads between international law, trade, investment, or finance, and for which only a few legal scholars, other than human rights specialists, have showed interest. An apparent peaceful legal tool, sanctions can eventually backfire.

What are sanctions?

Although there is no universal legal definition, a sanction can be defined as a measure of coercion of an economic nature, as opposed to diplomatic or military means, taken by states, either collectively or individually. Collective sanctions can be imposed by an international organisation based on a multilateral (UN) or regional (EU) treaty. The UNSC is at the centre of the collective sanctions’ edifice with its Chapter VII, ‘Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression’. But a strict procedure needs to be followed: first the “existence of any threat to the peace, breach of peace or act of aggression” needs to be determined (Article 39) and then the decision to resort to measures not involving the “use of armed force” decided (Article 41). Article 41 states: “These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.”

Sanctions are not defined nor listed, as such, but the allusion is clear. Since 1966, the UNSC has established 30 regimes of sanctions which have taken a variety of shapes from trade measures to embargoes on arms; and financial tools to travel bans. The UN insists on the idea that these sanctions cannot operate “in a vacuum”, but should rather be seen as part of a larger apparatus to restore peace and security. Fourteen UN-supported programmes of sanctions are in place in the world today. Each of them is administered by a sanctions committee chaired by a non-permanent member of the UNSC. More than 30 EU sanctions regimes have been adopted and some of these already targeted Russia’s previous intervention in Ukraine.

With Russia as a permanent member and veto power member of the UNSC, the UN’s scope of action is rather limited, so much so that its credibility is questioned. Hence, sanctions are also taken unilaterally, that is by a given state with no basis in a treaty and often without any legal ground. The U.S. has historically championed this category with the adoption of tools like complete embargoes i.e., the total interdiction of trade, travel, and financial transactions, and more targeted measures such as blocking or freezing financial assets and imposing restrictions on importations or exportations with, for example, a licensing system. The authority to take these measures is a matter of domestic law.

However, the question of jurisdiction is particularly sensitive as there is a clear extraterritorial element to the unilateral imposition of economic restrictive measures. Aware of the controversial nature of these sanctions, the UN has put in place a system of monitoring and, since May 2015, appointed a Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights. In the language of the International Law Commission, these unilateral sanctions are called “countermeasures”. Close to the idea of self-defence, the measure at stake could be described as “self-help” or “self-protection”. The question of legality, however, remains and, in a globalised economy made of international trade and investment interconnections, could later backfire.

When sanctions legally backfire

What if trade and investment tribunals condemned the sanctioning states for treaty violations? In international economic law, sanctioning countries first appear to enjoy certain latitude. International trade agreements such as the World Trade Organization and various investment treaties provide for security exceptions. These include Article XXI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Article XIV bis of the General Agreement on Trade in Services, and Article 73 of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights along with a host of bilateral investment treaties. While some considered these exceptions as ‘self-judging’, recent WTO disputes including ‘Russia – Measures Concerning Traffic in Transit’ (DS 512) and ‘Saudi Arabia – Protection of IPRs’ (DS567) see these exceptions as partially justiciable, which means that an examination of their legality is not completely outside of the purview of international trade and investment tribunals. Accordingly, even if the policy space available for invoking national security exceptions is considered to be narrower than many states would tend to believe, the legality of economic sanctions in the context of war is unlikely to be questioned by trade tribunals.

However, other international tribunals may have a final say. The Nicaragua case has provided a clear illustration of the ambiguity and illegality of these measures. Economic sanctions were imposed by the U.S. to attain political goals in the comprehensive trade embargo levied against the Government of Nicaragua in May 1985. The International Court of Justice eventually condemned Washington, which had argued that the measures had been taken in compliance with Article XXI of the GATT (national security reasons). In the Bank Mellat case, the U.K. also learned the hard price of economic sanctions-related damages as an Iranian bank claimed £1.3bn over trade ban damages.

For all these reasons, there is at least a case for proper notification and basic legal due process. The announcement and invocation of sanctions cannot be hurriedly done as sanctions not only affect private actors and lead to significant economic harm and disruption in supply chains (as we observe today with energy and commodities), but also bear longer damaging legal consequences for the sanctioning states.

Leïla Choukroune is Professor of International Law and Director of the University of Portsmouth Thematic Area in Democratic Citizenship and James J. Nedumpara is Professor and Head at the Centre for Trade and Investment Law at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, and a Professor at the Jindal Global Law School



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New Delhi can play an important role in shaping a new, more democratic, world order

Western nations want to throw Russia out of the G-20. China has opposed them. India will be chair of the G-20 from December 1, 2022. The world is greatly disordered. What should India stand for?

Institutions of global governance have failed to unite the world. Summit after summit has produced mostly hot air in trying to resolve the global climate crisis. Vaccines were hoarded by rich countries in the COVID-19 pandemic: poor countries starved. The World Trade Organization (WTO) was already in the intensive care unit before the novel coronavirus pandemic, with rich and poor countries unable to agree on equitable rules, when COVID-19 froze global supply chains. The war in Ukraine in February 2022 has put the final nail in the coffin of the boundary-less global economy that seemed to be emerging with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Undemocratic architecture

Millions of civilians died in the Second World War. European cities were razed by carpet bombing. The war ended with two nuclear bombs to terrorise the Japanese government into submission, erasing two Japanese cities and killing thousands of civilians. Never again, the victors vowed.

New institutions for global governance were established — the United Nations and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to provide finance to build the economies of all countries to eliminate poverty. However, the victors retained their veto power within the United Nations Security Council to determine when force can be used to keep the world in order, and to prevent the proliferation of nuclear power outside their small circle because they could not trust other countries to use it wisely! They also control the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO.

The UN General Assembly meets every year — now 193 nations strong. It passes many resolutions to address global problems — hunger, poverty, women’s rights, terrorism, climate change, etc. However, “might is right”: members of the Security Council retain their right to deny the democratic will of the Assembly when it does not suit them. Global governance is not democratic. If the leader of any member country overrules resolutions of its own parliament, he would be branded an undemocratic dictator. Armed interventions and sanctions imposed on countries, authorised by the Security Council to restore democracy in other countries, make a mockery of global democracy.

The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Japan, West Germany and Canada formed the G7 in 1976 ‘so that the noncommunist powers could come together to discuss economic concerns, which at the time included inflation and recession following the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo’. The European Union was invited to attend in 1977. Russia joined in 1998 — and ‘its inclusion was meant as a signal of cooperation between East and West after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991’. However, Russia was thrown out in 2014 when it invaded the Crimea. China was never a member.

The rapid spread of global finance and trade after the victory of the Washington Consensus in 1991, created instabilities in developing countries. After the Asian financial crisis, the G20 was formed in 1999 with the aim of discussing policies in order to achieve international financial stability. Russia and China are members. Now western nations want to throw Russia out of the G-20. China has opposed them. India will be chair of the G-20 from December 2022, or will it be G-19 then? Meanwhile, India is being hectored by officials from the U.S. and the U.K. to support their sanctions on Russia. India has so far refused to be cowed down.

Inequalities have only risen

The belief that unfettered flows of finance and trade across national borders will lift people in all poor countries out of poverty and make the world flatter in terms of inequality has failed. Inequalities have increased within countries and amongst them too. Citizens are reacting everywhere. Even in democratic countries such as the U.S., demands are increasing for more “socialism” and less unbounded capitalism. Strong leaders who put the interests of their own countries first are gaining power through elections — in Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and even India. Donald Trump had once too.

Free market capitalism is not ideologically compatible with a genuine democracy. Capitalist institutions are governed by the fundamental principle of ‘property rights’: decision rights in capitalist enterprises are allocated in proportion to property owned. Whereas, genuine democracies are founded on the principle of equal human rights. All western electoral systems — in Britain, the U.S., and Europe, began centuries ago with rights to vote limited to property owners only. Universal adult franchise, wherein all humans have equal votes whether they are billionaires or paupers, is a more recent development in the West. In many western countries, women and racial minorities were given evende jure equal voting rights only in the last century, and continue their struggles forde facto equality in their societies.

Social tensions

The rules of governance of capitalist and democratic institutions have always been in tension within societies. Capitalist institutions want to be unfettered by democratic regulations to make it easier to do business. Democratic institutions want to rein in the competitive animal spirits, red in tooth and claw, of capitalism to create a more compassionate capitalism that improves the world for everyone, not only for financial investors. The simultaneous imposition of free markets and elections in countries “liberated” from communism or socialism by the U.S. has invariably increased inequalities and increased social tensions and sectarian conflicts, which more elections cannot resolve democratically.

This is the story of Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, and even Chile, which was once the showcase of the western model of liberal capitalism. When social tensions increase too much, elections often produce populist socialists such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, or capitalist autocrats such as Vladimir Putin in Russia. The West does not like either sort when they stand up against the Washington-controlled “North Atlantic” hegemony of the world. Though capitalist dictators such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and the monarchies of the Gulf/West Asia can be their good friends. Even Chinese communists were tolerated so long as they were not a threat to U.S. power.

Redistribution of power

Power accumulates in societies by the principle of “cumulative causation”. Those who already have more power, from greater wealth or more education, will use their power to not only improve the rules of the game — ostensibly to improve the world for everyone — but also to ensure they remain in power. Redistribution ofde facto power within a society must often precede the redistribution of assets of wealth and education that are the sources of power. Those who have power will resist losing it. That is the natural order. Violent internal revolutions and anti-colonial movements are the means of changing power equations, as are armed wars even between rich countries in Europe.

All violence must stop. To prevent violence, it is essential that global governance becomes genuinely democratic. Countries must not attack each other. But they must be given the freedom to evolve their own democracies and economies and not be dictated to by others. The hypocrisy of undemocratic global dictators using their financial powers to impose sanctions (which are weapons of mass destruction that harm innocent civilians), to bring down their opponents, must stop. Calling on a democratic country such as India, to take their side, must also end.

Arun Maira is the author of ‘A Billion Fireflies: Critical Conversations to Shape a New Post-pandemic World’



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Care work is vital for economies in general and India needs to have a strategy and action plan for improved policies

Greater investment in care services can create an additional 300 million jobs globally, many of which will be for women. In turn this will help increase female labour force participation and advance Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 (which is to ‘promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all’).

Still ‘unseen’ by policy

Every year, March 8 is celebrated as International Women’s Day. The immense contribution of women to all spheres of life is often overlooked, unfairly valued, and hardly rewarded. This is ‘particularly evident in care work — both paid and unpaid, which is crucial to the future of decent work. Care work encompasses direct activities such as feeding a baby or nursing an ill partner, and indirect care activities such as cooking and cleaning’. Whether paid or unpaid, direct or indirect, care work is vital for human well-being and economies. Unpaid care work is linked to labour market inequalities, yet it has yet to receive adequate attention in policy formulation. Paid care workers, such as domestic workers and anganwadis in India, also struggle to access rights and entitlements as workers.

The importance of care work is now widely acknowledged and covered in various international commitments such as the SDGs and the International Labour Organization (ILO)’s Centenary Declaration. Since March 2020, the demand for care services has skyrocketed. However, the investment in the care economy has not matched the pace. This year, to commemorate International Women’s Day, the ILO brought out its new report titled, ‘Care at work: Investing in care leave and services for a more gender-equal world of work’. The ILO is the only tripartite UN agency, which brings together governments, employers, and workers of 187 member States, to set labour standards, develop policies and devise programmes promoting decent work for all women and men.

Benefits down the line

The report highlights the importance of maternity, paternity, and special care leave, which help balance women’s and men’s work and family responsibilities throughout their lives. Furthermore, it demonstrates that workplaces that provide time, income security and space for undertaking care services such as breastfeeding, enable positive nutrition and health outcomes.

Bridging the gaps in current policies and service provisions to nurture childcare and elderly care services will deliver the benefits of child development, aging in dignity and independent living as the population grows older and also generate more and better employment opportunities, especially for women.

Maternity leave, child care

Maternity leave is a universal human and labour right. Yet, it remains unfulfilled across countries, leaving millions of workers with family responsibilities without adequate protection and support. India fares better than its peers in offering 26 weeks of maternity leave, against the ILO’s standard mandate of 14 weeks that exists in 120 countries. However, this coverage extends to only a tiny proportion of women workers in formal employment in India, where 89% of employed women are in informal employment (as given by ILOSTAT, or the ILO’s central portal to labour statistics). While paternity leave is recognised as an enabler for both mothers and fathers to better balance work and family responsibilities, it is not provided in many countries, including India. Globally, the average paternity leave is nine days, which further exacerbates inequity.

Access to quality and affordable care services such as childcare, elderly care and care for people with disabilities is a challenge workers with family responsibilities face globally. While India has a long history of mandating the provision of crèches in factories and establishments, there is limited information on its actual implementation. There is scope for improvement in availability, accessibility, affordability and quality. Working conditions of care workers are another critical gap to address. Though childcare and anganwadi workers undertake important work, and childcare is recognised as professional work in advanced countries, they lack recognition as workers and do not have requisite access to workers’ rights and entitlements in India.

Domestic workers, on whom Indian households are heavily reliant, also face challenges in accessing decent work. They becamead hoc care workers during the novel coronavirus pandemic without adequate social or health protection measures. According to the Government’s 2019 estimates, 26 lakh of the 39 lakh domestic workers in India are female. While important developments have extended formal coverage to domestic workers in India, such as the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act and the minimum wage schedule in many States, more efforts are required to ensure decent work for them. Recognising care workers and promoting decent work for all, including for domestic and childcare workers are also necessary for India to achieve the SDGs which have a principle of ‘leave no one behind’. They, like all other workers, need to enjoy basic human and worker’s rights and access fair wages, enjoy a workplace free from violence and harassment, have good working conditions, and access social protection, among other benefits.

Look at it as public good

India spends less than 1% of its GDP on the care economy; increasing this percentage would unfurl a plethora of benefits for workers and the overall economy. Therefore, in consultation with employers’ and workers’ organisations and the relevant stakeholders, the Government needs to conceptualise a strategy and action plan for improved care policies, care service provisions and decent working conditions for care workers. The ILO proposes a 5R framework for decent care work centred around achieving gender equality. The framework urges the Recognition, Reduction, and Redistribution of unpaid care work, promotes Rewarding care workers with more and decent work, and enables their Representation in social dialogue and collective bargaining. Care work should be viewed as a collective responsibility and public good.

A human-centred and inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that benefits workers, employers, and the government, requires a more significant investment in and commitment to supporting the care economy, which cares for the society at large.

Dagmar Walter is the Director, International Labour Organization, Decent Work Technical Support Team (DWT) for South Asia and Country Office for India



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The National Education Policy is the best chance to set right architecture education

Recent documents give a sense of how the National Education Policy (NEP) will play out in professional education. Architecture, in particular, is set for radical shifts. Many architects hold the firm view that professional education should be left to professionals. They argue that practitioners can steer professional education better, as they now do through the Council of Architecture (CoA).

The concerns appear valid, and the demand that NEP limit itself to the humanities, science, and at the most include engineering seems persuasive. However, architects seem to overlook the historical reasons that bring them under NEP and the inadequacy of their current education model. An uninspiring approach, poor training, low employability of graduates and a choking regulatory framework undermine the discipline. NEP is the best chance to set the house right.

Undergraduate education trains students to practice. Hence, law and medicine have their independent bodies looking after education. However, historically, architecture was clubbed with engineering as ‘technical education’ and brought under the Education Ministry. It came under the purview of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), set up in 1945. By the time the AICTE got its statutory footing in 1987, the Architects Act was enacted in 1972, and education came under the purview of an independent CoA. However, this did not shift it to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, which would have been more professionally aligned as law and medicine are with their respective nodal ministries. It is now moot to ask if architects can reset history. The question to ask is: how can NEP bring progressive practices to architectural education?

Changing the course

Four key NEP recommendations can change the course. First, NEP seeks a close connection between education and profession, and directs professional bodies such as the CoA to set standards that education will strive to meet. It means that though education commences in campus, it will mature in practice. Second, undergraduate courses should be liberal, allowing students to be trained and to help identify their paths. Third, unlike the current model that trains only a professional apprentice, NEP enables students to take either a practice or a research route. This is bound to pave the way for diverse programmes and support research training. Fourth, autonomy will be granted to institutions, which will save them from stifling regulatory arrangements and the standardised programmes they push.

Taking advantage of the proposals

First, a summary of issues facing architectural education. While design and engineering are four-year undergraduate programmes, architecture is a five-year programme. The justification has been that a long and rigorous course is necessary since institutions train profession-ready students. The assumption that the longer the course, the better the training is spurious. The regulations do not adequately support industry connections. Those who try incur heavy additional expenses. As a result, many colleges have inadequate exposure. Finally, despite architecture practice scaling up and becoming multidisciplinary, education offers less scope for diverse specialisations and does not equip students to solve complex design problems.

NEP’s mission to restructure undergraduate education as a three-year, liberal, broad-based education bodes well for architecture. Shorter programmes can build sufficient capacities to work as apprentices in industry/field-based organisation. When combined with another two years of specialisation and an equal number of years of work experience, the student is better trained as a professional. Multiple entries and exits to programmes also enhance flexibility. After three years, students with an aptitude for research can take another path. For all these to become a reality, institutions need autonomy. The world over, professional bodies focus on professional standards and let academic institutions decide their creative ways to meet the objectives. NEP promises that.

Architecture institutions pack semesters with many subjects. They far exceed an average of 55 hours work week and deny space for the pursuit of personal development. NEP fixes this issue. It recommends a choice-based 20-credit-per-semester workload, creating better space for students to explore. A challenge in recruiting industry experts to teach is that regulations insufficiently acknowledge them as valid teaching faculty and recommend more full-time academic staff to meet the faculty-student ratio. By allowing 50% of the staff required to be filled by visiting faculty, NEP enables more practitioners to teach. Advantages abound. But to convert them to transformative changes, NEP has to keep to its promise and architects have to embrace changes.

A. Srivathsan is Professor at CEPT University. Views are personal



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States speaking languages other than Hindi should be free to use English as link language

Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement on making Hindi the language of communication for people of non-Hindi speaking areas or States was absolutely unnecessary. As the chairman of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee, he is duty bound to promote the spread of the Hindi language. But, the impression his speech generated at the 37th meeting of the panel in New Delhi last week is that he wanted to impose the language. Calling for the use of an Indian language among people who spoke languages other than Hindi, Mr. Shah said Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages. It is up to the people of any two non-Hindi speaking areas or States to decide what their language of communication should be. If they are comfortable with English, which is also a global language, the Centre has no business in advising them to abandon English and take to any other language or Hindi, as done in this case. Mr. Shah’s observations presuppose the position that English is not an Indian language. What he seems to have overlooked is that English has been recognised as an Indian language as much as Tamil or Telugu or Hindi have. This recognition is also due to the Sahitya Akademi, a central institution working for literary dialogue in the country. The Akademi, under the control of the Ministry of Culture, has, among others, been giving away annual awards for the best works of English, of course authored by Indians. Besides, the advantage that English gives to India has to be kept in mind. As pointed out by the president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee, D.K. Shivakumar, Bengaluru became India’s IT capital because of English. It would be befitting for a person holding the office of Union Home Minister to shed any aversion to English, which has been a unifying force in a vast and diverse society such as India.

Expectedly, Mr. Shah’s statement has been condemned politically, especially by the non-BJP Opposition parties. Even the AIADMK, a party that has been friendly to the BJP, has issued a statement through its coordinator and former Chief Minister, O. Panneerselvam, who expressed his disapproval of any move to “impose Hindi.” But, most significantly, it is Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin who rightly lashed out at Mr. Shah for seeking to create a “single identity,” which, Mr. Stalin has pointed out, will not create unity. It is nobody’s case that Indian languages, let alone Hindi, should not be nurtured and promoted. They all deserve the support of the state. Those in power should also follow up their words with substantive measures towards this direction. But, at the same time, no room should be given for any perception that the promotion drive will be at the cost of English. Respect for multiculturalism and a pluralistic identity is a quality that the political class, particularly those in power, should imbibe. Mr. Shah would do very well if he demonstrates, through words and actions, that he has that quality in abundance.



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The LDF government’s liquor policy, introduced to attract foreign investors, has met with criticism

Recently, the LDF government allowed the sale of legal alcohol in “specially designated areas” in IT parks in response to the industry’s grievance that techies lack socialising venues with alcohol where they can unwind after work in Kerala. It stated that such amenities were imperative to attract foreign investment. The government also sanctioned the production of local beer and the manufacturing of wine and ‘low proof’ liquor from local produce except grains. It said a less restrictive liquor policy would provide a lifeline to the State’s tourism industry, which has suffered the impact of the pandemic. It has also opened more liquor shops with a walk-in facility to prevent crowding in front of retail outlets.

The Congress-led UDF has portrayed the new policy as an attempt to liberalise the production and sale of hard liquor. It has alleged that powerful business interests have capitalised on the LDF government’s outsize dependence on liquor taxes. It feels that the liquor lobby is aspiring to make profits by getting breadwinners addicted to liquor. It has also alleged that the liquor lobby had promised to channel a part of its profits to the CPI(M) to buy political cover.

The per capita consumption of alcohol in Kerala is among the highest in the country. Alcohol has always been a politically and socially sensitive subject. The church-backed temperance movement has a long and tumultuous history in the State. In the 1980s, the Latin Catholic Church had launched a social movement to ensure that fisher hamlets were illicit liquor-free. Other conservative Muslim outfits, including the Jamaat-e-Islami, back total prohibition.

The previous Congress government had pursued a hard-line liquor policy. In 2016, it tried to introduce total prohibition in a phased manner by shutting liquor outlets and cancelling two-star and three-star bar licenses in the run-up to the Assembly elections. The UDF lost. In 2017, the LDF government upended the UDF's liquor policy and proceeded to liberalise it incrementally over the years.

However, the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), which is affiliated to the CPI, a ruling coalition partner, has opposed the LDF’s latest policy. It feels that the government has opened the door for the increased sale and consumption of potent spirits. The AITUC also fears that a profusion of breweries, wineries and distilleries would deal the traditional toddy sector a death blow.

The AITUC’s opposition to the policy could galvanise the opposition and religious groups into social action against the government. Various Christian denominations and the Jamaat-e-Islami's political arm, the Welfare Party of India, have opposed the current policy. The protests against the policy could also dovetail with the anti-SilverLine protests that have gathered steam. However, CPI(M) State Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan has said that the CPI “as a party” has not opposed the policy.

It is unlikely that the government will repeal the new policy. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has repeatedly stated that a vibrant nightlife is vital to woo IT majors. Nissan, he said, had pointed to the need for robust partying and socialising avenues that remain open well into the night for it to establish its global digital hub in Thiruvananthapuram.

Prohibition has failed globally. Slashing the supply of legal liquor without reducing social demand is no panacea for addiction as people could turn to illicit sources. It robs the government of revenue and people of the freedom of choice. The government and the opposition should engage in a constructive legislative debate on the new policy. Unrest over the new policy is not something that Kerala can afford now.

anand.g@thehindu.co.in



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Without curbing inflation, the RBI will not be able to promote sustainable growth

The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee has rather belatedly acknowledged that its primary remit is, after all, to ensure price stability. Addressing the media on Friday after announcing the MPC’s first monetary policy review of the new fiscal year, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das was emphatic in stating that “in the sequence of priorities, we have now put inflation before growth”. More than three years after it prioritised growth over price stability — in February 2019, and well before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — the RBI has pivoted back to putting the horse before the cart, best reflected in the central bank’s own words on monetary policy goals: “Price stability is a necessary precondition to sustainable growth”. That it has taken the outbreak of war in Europe, with its accompanying commodity price shocks to remind the RBI of the imperative centrality of price stability is a salutary reminder that monetary policymakers can ill afford to be complacent when it comes to inflation. Less than two months after it rather sanguinely projected inflation to average 4.5% in the fiscal year to March 2023, the MPC has raised the forecast by a substantial 120 basis points to 5.7%. And this even as it cut its earlier projection for real GDP growth in the current fiscal by 60 basis points to 7.2%. The RBI also made it clear that while it had left benchmark interest rates and its accommodative policy stance unchanged for now, the time had come to commence the “withdrawal of accommodation”.

To be sure, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was still two weeks in the future the last time the RBI’s rate-setting panel finalised its policy review. And yet, the price of crude oil, which Mr. Das cited as the key factor that had necessitated the revision of the inflation projection and the pivot, had already been on the boil since December. In fact, the lone dissenter on the MPC on the issue of the policy stance in February, Jayanth Varma, had stressed the need to look ahead at the likely state of the economy at least three to four quarters later and shift to a ‘neutral’ stance given that monetary policy acts with a lag. The RBI’s Deputy Governor overseeing monetary policy, Michael Patra, had on the other hand at the last MPC meeting starkly warned that, “central banks have a choice: either accept higher inflation for some time or be prepared to be accountable for destroying demand”. With the RBI’s own quarterly projections for inflation now presaging the possibility of a policy failure by way of three consecutive quarters of inflation above the 6% upper bound, policymakers have clearly realised any further delay in changing tack would risk leaving the economy with neither growth nor price stability.



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New Delhi, April 10: Mr. A. C. George, Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade, told the Rajya Sabha to-day that the Government would be announcing the new newsprint import policy very soon. The Deputy Minister, who was replying to a question from Mr. M. K. Mohta explained that the main difficulty faced by the Government in regard to import of newsprint was the shortage of foreign exchange. Over and above that, the U.S. aid had also been cut, he added. Mr. George said imports of newsprint during the last three years were: 1969-70: 1,55,100 tonnes valued at Rs. 1,857 lakhs; 1970-71: 1,44,200 tonnes valued at Rs. 1,873 lakhs and in 1971-72 upto September 1971: 75,500 tonnes valued at Rs. 1,003 lakhs. The suspension of U.S. aid was likely to affect the import of newsprint from that country to the extent of about 25,000 tonnes annually. Under the trade agreement with the Government of Bangla Desh, a provision had been made for the import of newsprint and writing paper upto a value of Rs. 300 lakhs under the limited rupee payment arrangements. Details of actual imports of newsprint from Bangla Desh were still to be settled. Replying to Mr. A. G. Kulkarni, the Minister said the present annual requirement of newsprint was about 2.25 lakh tonnes while the internal production was just over 30,000 tonnes. A sizeable quantity of newsprint had therefore to be imported.



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ISRO scientists faced the first problem with Insat 1-A when their attempts to put it on a transfer orbit failed. The master control facility at Hassan announced that the apogee motor of the satellite failed to fire on command from the ground.

ISRO scientists faced the first problem with Insat 1-A when their attempts to put it on a transfer orbit failed. The master control facility at Hassan announced that the apogee motor of the satellite failed to fire on command from the ground. The satellite, heralding the country’s most ambitious project, to take the benefits of space technology to 60,000 villages developed the snag two hours after it was placed in the transfer orbit of the Delta rocket. Consequently, the apogee motor firing maneuvre has been put off by a day. The control team at Hassan is now engaged in working out contingency operations. Insat 1-A, the first civilian satellite to combine the function of telecommunications, TV broadcasting and meteorology will have a life span of seven years.

Britain won vital support in its diplomatic offensive against Argentina when the rest of the European Common Market banned imports in reprisal against the seizing of Falkland Islands.  The 10-member EEC announced the ban, the toughest it has imposed, after a meeting in Brussels. The EEC response came as PM Margaret Thatcher waited for news from the US Secretary of State who is in Buenos Aires to convince the Argentines that they risk an armed conflict with Britain if they do not leave the islands.

Left Front’s Demands

The Left Front wants Article 356 of the Constitution that enables the Centre to dismiss state governments to be scrapped. It has also demanded a guarantee that the requirement of President’s assent will not hold up bills passed by state assemblies. These are amongst the first time demands in the Front’s manifesto released by its chairman Pramode Dasgupta. It also wants the eligible age for voting to Parliament and other elected bodies be reduced to 18 years.



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The electoral bonds scheme was first mentioned in 2017 when then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented it as a way to reform electoral funding in the country.

India’s apex court will hear the petitions challenging the electoral bonds scheme. While this news should be welcomed, it is noteworthy that Chief Justice of India N V Ramana has not specified any specific date or set any timeline for arriving at a judgment. Two prominent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in India — Common Cause and Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) — have legally challenged the scheme that was started in 2018. They, along with several other critics, have been alleging that the introduction of electoral bonds is “distorting democracy” in India. Given the increasingly polarised nature of India’s polity, it is of utmost importance that the Supreme Court either removes all doubts about the validity of the scheme or orders the government to make the necessary changes.

The electoral bonds scheme was first mentioned in 2017 when then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented it as a way to reform electoral funding in the country. Until then, most political parties used to bypass scrutiny of their finances by claiming that they received most of their donations in cash. Further, since cash amounts less than Rs 20,000 were exempted from scrutiny, parties routinely claimed that most of the donations they received were in cash and in amounts less than Rs 20,000. This opened channels for black money to flow into political parties. So Jaitley capped cash donations at Rs 2,000 and introduced electoral bonds, which could only be bought either by cheque or a digital transfer. These steps, it was assumed, would ensure that black money was not used to fund elections.

However, in actual practice, the electoral bonds scheme has left a lot to be desired. For one, it has not improved transparency in electoral funding. Worse still, it is being argued that this scheme has rigged the game in favour of the ruling party. That’s because while a donor’s identity is hidden from the public view, it is possible for the ruling party to know since these bonds are issued by a government-owned bank (State Bank of India). This advantage with the ruling party allows the possibility for the government of the day to either extort money or victimise those individuals/ entities that fund the Opposition. The fact that the BJP has cornered more than 75 per cent of all such bonds issued to date gives credence to this criticism. Another key area of concern is that the government, as part of the introduction of the electoral bonds, had removed the cap on how much money a company could donate. A quick closure in these matters is necessary to ensure transparency in campaign financing, critical to the integrity of the electoral process.



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From India’s point of view, Khan’s exit could create opportunities for repairing ties with Pakistan.

Every last ball does not yield a turnaround in sagging fortunes, and so it was with Imran Khan. Even after he knew that his government had lost its majority in parliament, Khan fought every inch of the way to remain prime minister, pulling surprises on the Opposition, and delaying the inevitable. A no-confidence motion against him, which he and his party did their best to stall since it was submitted to the speaker on March 8, finally went through Pakistan’s National Assembly with 174 votes in the House of 225, bringing his term in office to an end 16 months ahead of time. The last minute delays, and a late night cabinet meeting, suggested he was preparing to try one final move. Was Khan playing with the idea of removing the army chief and appointing a new man before he was voted out, as suggested by a late night petition asking the Islamabad High Court to restrain him from doing this? Whatever it was, it threatened to turn what was an open-and-shut case of the removal of a prime minister by means of a parliamentary process, a first for Pakistan, into a full blown constitutional crisis.

Pakistan will have a new prime minister today, barring last minute surprises. Parliamentary elections are due in next July or August. It it is upto the new government to decide if these elections should be held earlier than that. Khan’s various gambits also carried more than a hint of a campaign for the next election. His ruse of alleging an American conspiracy to unseat him was possibly intended to tap into a deep-seated hostility in large sections of Pakistanis, especially the young who form the bulk of his support base, against the US. Khan has made clear he will remain in politics, and even if he does not win the next election, it will be no surprise if he and the PTI emerge as a strong opposition.

From India’s point of view, Khan’s exit could create opportunities for repairing ties with Pakistan. The Pakistan military establishment has so far been the main obstacle in this, but Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and his frequent assertions in favour of trade and “geo-economics” as the way forward for the region, give the impression that he wants to pursue these ideas with India. It is not clear though if all his army colleagues back him, or even if the new government will endorse his plans. Khan and his government did not. Bajwa’s own term in office ends in November this year. Irrespective of this, if and when a new page is turned, New Delhi should respond with an open mind. At the same time, given the fraught equations in the wake of the growing Russia-China axis, it must remain vigilant for spoilers.



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Rahul Bajaj and Nishtha Gupta write: The disabled have the right to exist and work in the world just like their able-bodied counterparts

In the judgment delivered late last year in Ravinder Kumar Dhariwal and Anr. v. Union of India and Ors., the Supreme Court dealt with the initiation of disciplinary proceedings against a mentally-ill CRPF employee. While concluding that the initiation of the proceedings against the employee was indirectly discriminatory, the Court held that it will have to develop, in an appropriate case, the standard of justification for evaluating the government’s decision to exclude any establishment from the nondiscrimination guarantee contained in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 [RPwD Act].

A case that the SC is currently hearing (National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled v. Department of Empowerment for Persons with Disabilities and Ors.) might just offer it the opportunity to enunciate this standard. The petitioner has challenged a notification issued by the Department of Empowerment for Persons with Disabilities (Department). The impugned notification exempts all categories of posts in the Indian Police Service, the Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli Police Service, as well as the Indian Railway Protection Force Service from the mandated 4 per cent reservation for persons with disabilities under the RPwD Act.

This notification is legally and constitutionally untenable. First, on the same day as the issuing of the impugned notification, the Department also issued another notification exempting from the purview of reservation under the RPwD Act posts only of “combatant” nature in the paramilitary police. This classification between combat and non-combat posts was premised on a clear recognition of the fact that persons with disabilities are capable of occupying non-combat posts in the central forces. The Department has offered no justification as to why this classification would not hold good as regards the services covered in the impugned notification.

Second, in an office memorandum issued in January last year, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment had identified a range of ministerial/civilian posts as being suitable for reservation for the disabled. The impugned notification is in the teeth of this identification exercise, by virtue of its blanket character. Further, on November 22, 2021, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs released Draft Accessibility Standards/Guidelines for built infrastructure under its purview (police stations, prisons and disaster mitigation centres) and services associated with them. These Draft Standards state that the police staff on civil duty could be persons with disabilities. Curiously, even as the Centre appears committed to creating a more disabled-friendly police service, it has foreclosed the possibility of the disabled being part of the police force through the impugned notification.

Third, the impugned notification appears to be a colourable exercise of power. This is because, as per the RPwD Act, the grant of any exemption has to be preceded by consultation with the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities. It is common knowledge that the office of the chief commissioner has been lying vacant for many years, with the secretary in the Department officiating in that role. Further, in the debate in Parliament at the time of the passage of the RPwD Act, an exchange between Sitaram Yechury and the then Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment is revealing. Yechury had feared that the central government would use the power granted to it under the RPwD Act to exempt people with disabilities from seeking reservation for posts that they are perfectly capable of occupying. The minister had assured that this concern would be addressed in the rules. By issuing the Impugned Notification, the Department has belied that assurance.

In a heartening development, on March 25, the SC passed an interim order, allowing physically disabled persons who have cleared the civil services (mains) exam to provisionally apply for posts in the IPS, IRPFS and DANIPS, considering this request to be “just and reasonable”. The Court has asked the government to explain its stance on the impugned notification and listed the matter for April 18.

This case presents the SC with the opportunity to rule that the disabled are not a monolithic entity. Every disabled person is different, and it is unfair to paint all disabled people with the same broad brush, based on a stereotypical understanding of what they can do. Let us hope that the Court recognises that the disabled have the right to exist and work in the world just like their able-bodied counterparts.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 11, 2022 under the title ‘Their right to work’. Bajaj is a senior resident fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and Gupta is a student at the NALSAR University of Law



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Ruchi Gupta writes: There are more thoughtful ways to structure social media platforms, which would help connect and root people in their own communities instead of isolating them locally while ‘connecting’ them virtually

Social media platforms have effectively supplanted traditional information networks in India. The dialectical relationship between online content, traditional media and political networks means that the messages propagated online effectively touch even those who are not yet online.

This ubiquity could have been a golden moment for India — democratising access to information, fostering community, increasing citizen participation and reducing the distance between ordinary people and decision-makers. However, social media platforms have adopted design choices that have led to a proliferation and mainstreaming of misinformation while allowing themselves to be weaponised by powerful vested interests for political and commercial benefit. The consequent free flow of disinformation, hate and targeted intimidation has led to real-world harm and degradation of democracy in India: Mainstreamed anti-minority hate, polarised communities and sowed confusion have made it difficult to establish a shared foundation of truth.

Organised misinformation (disinformation) has a political and/or commercial agenda. However, even though there is growing recognition of the political motivations and impact of disinformation, the discourse in India has remained apolitical and episodic — focused on individual pieces of content and events, and generalised outrage against big tech instead of locating it in the larger political context or structural design issues. The evolution of the global discourse on misinformation too has allowed itself to get mired in the details of content standards, enforcement, fact checking, takedowns, deplatforming, etc — a framework which lends itself to bitter partisan contest over individual pieces of content while allowing platforms to disingenuously conflate the discourse on moderating misinformation with safeguards for freedom of expression. However, these issues are adjunct to the real issue of disinformation and our upcoming report establishes that the current system of content moderation is more a public relations exercise for platforms than being geared to stop the spread of disinformation.

A meaningful framework to combat disinformation at scale must be built on the understanding that it is a political problem: The issue is as much about bad actors as individual pieces of content. Content distribution and moderation are interventions in the political process. There is thus a need for a comprehensive transparency law to enforce relevant disclosures by social media platforms. Moreover, content moderation and allied functions such as standard setting, fact-checking and de-platforming must be embedded in the sovereign bipartisan political process if they are to have democratic legitimacy. If this is not to degrade into legal sanction for government censorship, any regulatory body must be grounded in democratic principles — its own and of platforms.

Given the political polarisation in our country (and most others), the constitution of such a regulator and its operational legitimacy is difficult. However, the failure of a polarised political ecosystem to come to a consensus is not a free pass for the platforms. Platforms are responsible for the speed and spread of distribution of disinformation and the design choices, which have made disinformation ubiquitous and indistinguishable from vetted information. It is thus the responsibility of the platforms to tamp down on the distribution of disinformation and their weaponisation. We argue that platforms are sentient about the users and content they are hosting and bear responsibility for their distribution choices. Moreover, just as any action against content is seen as an intervention in the political process, the artificial increase in distribution of content (amplification) too has political and commercial value.

We recommend three approaches to distribution that can be adopted by platforms: Constrain distribution to organic reach (chronological feed); take editorial responsibility for amplified content; or amplify only credible sources (irrespective of ideological affiliation). The current approach to misinformation that relies on fact-checking a small subset of content in a vast ocean of unreviewed content is inadequate for the task and needs to be supplemented by a review of content creators itself.

Finally, as the country with the largest youth population in the world, it is important that we actively think of how we want our youth to engage in our democratic processes and the role of social media platforms in it. There are three notable effects of social media on our politics, which require  deliberation.

First, social media has led to a dislocation of politics with people weighing in on abstractions online while being disengaged from their immediate surroundings. Second, social media has led to a degradation of our political discourse where serious engagement has been supplanted by “hot takes” and memes. Third, it has obscured the providence of consequential interventions in our

political discourse because of opacity in technology.

Meaningful politics, especially in democracies, is rooted in local organisation, discussion and negotiation. However, the structure of social media has facilitated a perception of engagement without organisation, action without consequence. This wasn’t and isn’t inevitable — there are more thoughtful ways to structure platforms, which would help connect and root people in their own communities instead of isolating them locally while “connecting” them virtually.

Instead of moving towards more grounded communities, there is an acceleration towards greater virtuality through “metaverse”. Social media cannot be wished away. But its structure and manner of use are choices we must make as a polity after deliberation instead of accepting as them fait accompli or simply being overtaken by developments along the way.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 11, 2022 under the title ‘Politics of disinformation’. Gupta is founder of the Future of India Foundation



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Ashok Gulati, Bharat Sharma and Purvi Thangaraj write: State must address depleting groundwater and encourage diversification away from paddy

The people of Punjab need to be complimented for giving a clear majority to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the recently-held Assembly elections. Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann has a golden opportunity to put Punjab back on the track to higher sustainable growth, lower corruption and ensure freedom from the drug mafia. Only then can Punjab regain its happiness and prosperity.

Mann has already vowed to root out corruption from government offices, but so far, he has not revealed a blueprint for agriculture — a sector in which Punjab has been the front runner by ushering in the Green Revolution. But the state has been languishing of late. We attempt to sketch out the key issues in Punjab’s agriculture, the factors that have driven it to the current situation, and what could be the potential solutions that lead to sustainable prosperity.

The biggest problem facing Punjab’s agriculture is the fast-depleting and degrading quality of its groundwater resources. Over the last two decades (2000-2019), the groundwater table in Punjab has depleted by 9.2 meters, the highest amongst all major states in India (see graph). Groundwater stress is the highest in Punjab, with 78 per cent of the assessment units being categorised as “over-exploited” and the remaining falling under “critical” (4 per cent), “semi-critical” (6.7 per cent), and “safe” (11.3 per cent) categories. Moreover, within Punjab, groundwater has depleted by 24.8 metres in districts like Sangrur and Barnala (see graph). This is nothing short of plundering groundwater and robbing the rights of future generations.

In addition to this depletion, is the increasing degradation of water quality. Fluoride and nitrate contamination is directly linked to excessive use of fertilisers. Intensive use of urea and other nitrogen-bearing fertilisers leaves residual nitrates, which leach into the groundwater. Punjab also faces high uranium concentration in groundwater (CGWB, 2021), which is linked to anthropogenic factors leading to cancerous effects. There is the infamous “Cancer Express” that goes from Abohar to Bikaner. Nothing can be more serious than this. This trend must be arrested and reversed if we have any love and respect for our children and grandchildren. Interestingly, Mann comes from Sangrur, and reforms in this regard should start in his home district.

But how can we do that? Let us first understand the drivers behind this downward spiral. Punjab’s success in the Green Revolution led to an explosion of tubewells during the 1970s and ’80s. Then, in September 2001, the government announced free power for farmers. Paddy cultivation, which was already on the rise, became more entrenched with assured and open-ended procurement by the government at minimum support price (MSP). Massive subsidies for urea (almost 75 per cent of the cost) further lured the farmers to overuse it in a race to increase productivity. It is these subsidies on power, fertilisers, and open-ended procurement, at assured MSP, that made paddy more profitable compared to competing crops like maize and kharif pulses. Today, Punjab’s famous cuisine of “makki ki roti and sarson ka saag” and “dal makhni” are not supported by the state’s cropping pattern, which has become largely a paddy-wheat rotation. Punjab needs to get out of this for its prosperity and the sustainability of its agriculture.

It is clear that the solution lies in moving away from paddy to other remunerative crops that are less water-intensive. Today, paddy is grown on almost 3.1 million hectares, which needs to be cut to at least half. It cannot be done overnight. But Mann has five years to convert his dreams into reality. A five-year plan as a New Deal for farmers can be chalked out. Punjab has the highest irrigation cover (almost 99 per cent) of any state. It can move toward horticulture and other high-value crops with fertigation (drip irrigation with soluble fertilisers). This will immediately cut down water depletion and environmental degradation. But a horticulture revolution requires significant participation by the private sector in building efficient value chains from farmers to consumers.

Punjab can target airlifting horti-produce for countries in the Persian Gulf. Punjab has a huge agri-surplus and it must look to market its produce beyond the government agencies. The MSP business has outlived its utility and needs revamping. New start-ups in agri-marketing must be invited and given support to market “Grown in Punjab” produce in metro centres and large cities, as well as export them to Europe, Gulf, and Central Asian countries. Horticulture requires a cold storage chain, reefer vans, air-conditioned outlets, along with agro-processing. This is a great investment opportunity.

Punjab’s dairy is doing very well, with the highest yields. It needs to build on that with more value-added products such as Punjabi lassi, makhan and kulfi. Punjab can also emerge as a centre for buffalo meat export to Southeast Asian countries. The replacement of some paddy farms with dairy and fodder farms is water-efficient, too.

Basmati rice and wheat can continue with more value addition and branding. Pulses and oilseeds must be rewarded by extra incentives given directly to farmers to save groundwater, using less subsidised urea (as they are nitrogen-fixing), less power, and cutting down on methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Per hectare, direct benefit transfer for switching from paddy to pulses and oilseeds would be the way to go (not-MSP bound procurement by government agencies). This is like creating carbon credits and rewarding farmers for that through innovative policies and pilots. That would be the road to farmers’ prosperity with sustainability.

The challenge for Mann now is to device policies and scale-up pilots, especially in central Punjab’s hotspot districts, that can save groundwater and cut down emissions while making farmers more prosperous.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 11, 2022 under the title ‘Blueprint for a prosperous Punjab’. Gulati is Infosys Chair Professor, Sharma is Senior Visiting Fellow, and Thangaraj a Research Assistant at ICRIER



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Ajay Darshan Behera writes: As Imran Khan leaves office, ​​it is back to the old Pakistan with its intermittent political instability, difficult economic challenges and a military that will not allow the political class to govern.

Prime Minister Imran Khan’s loss in the no-confidence motion may have been the first in Pakistan’s history. But that fact may not be as significant as what has been reiterated about the political stability of elected regimes: No elected regime in Islamabad has managed to complete its tenure since the formation of the country.

Khan, who has had a remarkable political journey in a short period, became the prime minister in 2018. He has been instrumental in single-handedly building the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI). From just one seat in parliament in 2002, his party increased its tally to 116 in the 2018 elections. By holding agitations on an anti-corruption agenda, he created a new support base. His campaigns reached out to the young educated people and he successfully projected the PTI as an alternative third force capable of bringing change from the feudalistic and dynastic rule of the past. However, the 2018 elections were questioned for their fairness. It is strongly believed that he came to power due to the political engineering by the military establishment.

His politics reflected an eclectic set of agendas — Khan mixed his anti-corruption agenda with soft Islamism and anti-Westernism. He spoke about turning Pakistan into an egalitarian, modern, Islamic, democratic, welfare state. He gave the slogan for “Naya Pakistan” and promised to bring change. That vision of a “Naya Pakistan” has been shattered for some time now. He proved to be no different from other politicians when he dissolved parliament instead of facing the no-confidence motion and plunged the country into a constitutional crisis. His claim of being different from the existing political leadership and practising clean politics is now seen as hypocritical.

Khan’s tenure in office was a difficult one. He came to power at a time when Pakistan faced serious economic challenges — it was on the verge of a balance of payments crisis. Foreign exchange reserves were very low. The high trade deficit adversely affected the current account deficit and foreign currency reserves. Pakistan’s total external debt and liabilities have since gone up to $91 billion, 31 per cent of the GDP. Even then he continued to make populist promises like creating 10 million jobs within five years, constructing five million houses for the homeless and so on. His idea of an Islamic welfare state also required big public spending on health and education. But Khan had no pragmatic economic policy. He showed a superficial understanding of the problems faced by Pakistan. His economic mismanagement created enormous hardships for the people. The poor state of the economy diminished his popularity. There are also contradictions in his worldview. His populism has been punctured by the hard realities of governance.

Eventually, it was Imran Khan’s relationship with the military and the Opposition that was instrumental in his fall. His standoff with the military over the appointment of a new ISI chief and differences over foreign policy issues created a rift with the military establishment. In the face of Pakistan’s difficult challenges, Khan was not able to build consensual politics of any kind and carry the Opposition along with him. He resorted to demagoguery to undermine the Opposition. The military has taken a neutral stand in the Opposition’s attempt to constitutionally unseat Khan. Whether Khan and the PTI will remain a formidable force in Pakistan’s politics is difficult to predict. While it is still believed that he has popular support, how he will fare in electoral politics without the support of the military is not clear. Given his self-image and ego, will he be able to rebuild bridges with the military? Can he reach out to sections in the Opposition, which is necessary in coalition politics? We must remember that the 2018 mandate was probably not reflective of the PTI’s actual popular support.

Questions have been raised about the role of the military in the current political crisis. Is this a sign of the military retreating from politics? While the military still remains dominant in the power structure in Pakistan, it is increasingly becoming clear that it is unlikely to seize power again. Pakistan has become a difficult country to govern. Even if the military does not wield power directly, it remains the final arbiter in Pakistan’s politics as the 2018 general elections had shown. Years of social and political engineering have unleashed forces in Pakistan that have created structural incapacities to address social, economic and security challenges. Neither the political class nor the military has solutions to these problems.

The vision of a Naya Pakistan lies shattered. It is back to the old Pakistan with its intermittent political instability, difficult economic challenges and a military that will not allow the political class to govern. The challenges for the new prime minister will be no different. He has to deal with these structural issues. There is not much light at the end of the tunnel. The military might take a back seat for some time, but it will ensure that it is able to decide outcomes. The political class will have to get its act together to ensure that governance is the main agenda of the political regimes. Pakistan needs a major reorientation in its politics and foreign policy. It has to set its relations with external powers and its neighbours right. Cutting off support to religious militants and improving relations with India will be helpful in dealing with its economic challenges.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 11, 2022 under the title ‘Failing the test’. The writer is a Professor and Officiating Director of the Academy of International Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi



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Kesava Menon writes: This time around the necessary political cleansing in Pakistan was carried through democratic, constitutional means

Imran Khan, who ceased to be prime minister of Pakistan after losing a trust vote in the National Assembly, has not shed his anti-American affectations because he has few other viable political assets. What is puzzling is that so many should have fallen for his line that the United States administration was involved in a conspiracy to oust him from office.

When US officials desire to steer Pakistan in a particular direction, they do not need to deal with elected civilians. They deal with the men in uniform sitting in Rawalpindi. Politicians, even those possessing rabble-rousing abilities, can at best cause delay in the arrival when it comes to decisions on national security. However, in times such as the present, obstructionist tactics can have dangerous consequences. Given the context in which Imran Khan was kindling the hostility of a superpower, it is reasonable to think that the most formidable force against him was within Pakistan, not outside.

There is one great difference this time round in that the necessary political cleansing was carried through democratic, constitutional means. Pakistan’s Supreme Court upheld the spirit of democracy by annulling a presidential decree dissolving the National Assembly and another order by the Deputy Speaker of the House by which a no-confidence motion against the government was invalidated. Imran Khan was judicially mandated to take a floor test. The ruling Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf resorted to all manner of delaying tactics when the revived House reconvened but was eventually defeated.

Khan could not have taken Pakistan out of the US orbit and into the Russian one no matter the degree of excitement he felt when meeting Vladimir Putin on the morning the 21st-century Ivan Konev drove his forces into Ukraine. Given the current closeness between Russia and China — and Islamabad’s multi-dimensional dependence on Beijing — there could not have been any wholehearted endorsement of US policy by Pakistan. But the Americans surely understand that. As they also know that with only about $200-million trade between Pakistan and Russia, there is hardly anything the South Asian country can do to stiffen the sanctions regime.

To the US, Khan does not and never has posed the sort of threat that would have necessitated a regime-toppling effort. Within the country, he had become a loose cannon that could jeopardise the operations of the ship of state during a difficult passage through stormy waters. This is a phase in history when Pakistan, like India, has to manoeuvre with precision to safeguard its interests.

Can it be said that the conspiracy, if any, originated in Rawalpindi, not Washington? No one will perhaps ever know the truth. According to the broad trend of independent opinion from across the border, the crisis erupted at a tricky moment for the military. Antipathy towards Khan was increasingly being directed at the army as well for installing and keeping in office a grossly incompetent prime minister. On the other hand, disgust at the military’s proclivity to grab power and make messes even messier had built up over the decades. The dam of respect that had held it back was about to be breached. The military, apparently, was not of a mind to mount a coup and invite more opprobrium.

Whatever be the truth about the army’s active participation in anti-Imran operations, that is less relevant than the manner in which it handled the reverberations. Its moves before Khan’s coup of April 3 and afterwards, have been sure-footed. While maintaining an overall posture of rectitude, the military top-brass flashed signals at just the right moments to keep national policy and politics on the tracks it prefers.

Even as Khan was boasting about being the only politician who had dared to confront the US, Army Chief General Qamar Bajwa was to tell a security conference that Pakistan had an excellent relationship with the superpower and had every intention of maintaining it. Immediately after Khan declared that the National Security Council had endorsed his assertion that a letter from Washington provided irrefutable evidence of his conspiracy charge, Inter-Services Public Relations issued a communique that had no mention of this letter being discussed. Khan still claimed that he had the army’s endorsement only for a top officer to deny it in a private briefing to the media.

The operations of this “guiding hand” certainly had political implications. Khan’s whole case, legal and political, was that the no-confidence motion was unmaintainable because it was the product of a US-backed conspiracy and thus violative of the country’s constitution. The “letter from Washington” was cited as evidence of this conspiracy. By rubbishing the letter and celebrating ties with the US, the army damaged this case severely.

That done, GHQ seemed content to let the judiciary perform its duties. A five-judge bench seemed to be taking inordinately long to settle what many senior advocates in the country believed was an open and shut case. To be fair to their lordships, they seemed to have moved with due deliberation, giving all sides a hearing so that they would not themselves be later accused of mounting a judicial coup.

From the long-term perspective, the verdict might itself be only a little more momentous than the processes through which it was wrought. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the guardians (of the national interest and not the ideology on this occasion) seem to have done their job with a sense of responsibility and due seriousness. A dangerous megalomaniac had to be ousted from power and that outcome was achieved without the stench of direct intervention.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 11, 2022 under the title ‘Without a coup’. The writer is former editor of Mathrubhumi and was a correspondent in Pakistan from 1990-93



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Booster doses for adults kicked off on a slow note on Sunday and it isn’t a good sign. Covid infections are sliding across most of India but a slight uptick has been noted in Delhi, Haryana and Gujarat. Per se, this isn’t worrying but the important point is that masking has to continue. India smartly gave up lockdowns as an option when vaccines became available, and our vaccines have been effective. This is where the precaution dose programme needs more aggressive state messaging.

The Covid spread has not been uniform across the world. Take the Chinese who are doggedly persisting with a flawed Zero-Covid strategy despite the greater transmission ability of the Omicron variant and its mutations. Other nations are left to worry now whether a massive Chinese outbreak could set off more waves abroad in countries where immunity levels are dipping.

Unlike many other western countries which have administered boosters to around 60% of the population, India’s booster programme has touched only 2% of its citizens. Many countries have had four or five waves of infections. India has only had three waves. Administering boosters is a good way to perk up immunity levels, especially among vulnerable citizens. Till everyone gets boosters, keeping masks on is the most sensible thing to do.



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Even in his exit, Imran Khan has created a record for Pakistani politics. He becomes the first PM of that country to lose a no-trust vote. After a day of high drama where Pakistan’s National Assembly was adjourned multiple times as it sat to take up the no-confidence motion mandated by the ruling of the Pakistani Supreme Court, Khan was left with no choice but to demit office. He never had the numbers. Intra-party dissensions within his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf coupled with the exit of allies PML-Q, MQM and Balochistan Awami Party – parties that are traditionally pro-military – had long sealed his fate. But Khan obdurately held on by citing a so-called “foreign conspiracy” to topple his government and moving to prevent the no-trust vote from being taken up.

However, with the Pakistan army rejecting the foreign hand theory and the judiciary sticking to procedure, it was only a matter of time before Khan’s resistance crumbled. The final no-trust vote – in which 174 out of 342 Pakistani parliamentarians voted in favour of the motion – was a mere formality. While due process appears to have been followed, Khan may well be the first creation and victim of what is widely referred to as Pakistan’s ‘hybrid regime’ – a new experiment in Pakistan’s political evolution where the Pakistan army remains at the centre of power but wraps itself with the veneer of institutional propriety.

The model involves a weak PM being brought to power by the military and then being made to dance to the latter’s tunes. Khan’s electoral victory in 2018 in one of the most managed elections in Pakistan’s history followed this pattern. His time in office saw the Pakistani media being heavily censored, civil rights being curbed with mainstreaming of extremist outfits like the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan, and activists being hounded even as systemic corruption in the military-ISI complex endured.

Khan’s big mistake was that he had forgotten he wasn’t his own master. He leaves Pakistan with the highest level of debt burden in its history, the lowest level of currency ever, the third highest level of inflation in the world, and relations with India in tatters. Pakistan’s Parliament meets today to elect a new PM with leader of opposition Shehbaz Sharif tipped to take the top office. Another Sharif’s return to the helm would signify the continuation of dynastic rule in Pakistani politics. But the experiment with hybrid rule has largely been successful for the generals at Rawalpindi GHQ. The incoming Pakistani premier will have to contend with this, painting a bleak future for Pakistan’s democracy.



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Political debates about language can convey the impression of fierce contestation and an issue that remains unsettled. Approach the subject from the other end, that of voters communicating their preferences, and the picture is quite different. Consider developments across states, administered by different political parties. The Chennai Corporation has now extended spoken English classes in schools run by it from just a handful to the entire list. Karnataka plans to introduce spoken English sessions in primary classes in its proposed model government schools.

The demand from parents has led to a sharp rise in the proportion of English medium schools in India. More than a quarter of schoolchildren are now enrolled in English medium, making it the largest after Hindi medium. This trend has influenced the political system and state governments are now experimenting with bilingual textbooks in government-run schools. Telangana, Maharashtra and Karnataka are among states where textbooks have content printed in both regional language and English to get children acquainted with key terms in both languages. It’s a pragmatic approach as the rapid expansion of knowledge is more easily accessed with a knowledge of English, the world’s most important lingua franca.

Historical circumstances have given India a national advantage by equipping a sizeable number of people with a knowledge of English, among other languages. It’s translated into big economic gains and it’s something China is trying to replicate in its education system. The issue should not be framed as one language or another. For millions of parents, the pragmatic choice has been more than one language. It’s a sensible choice as being multilingual confers many advantages, and the country has moved in that direction. Politicians have followed suit on the heels of democratic pressure. The task ahead is to find more effective ways of helping children learn more languages.



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A non-collateralised band around the repo rate provides a damping effect, and its imposition was delayed by the pandemic. The repo and reverse repo rates remain in the RBI's toolkit, although it has shifted some of the discretion, through standing facilities, on to banks.

The bond market turned skittish after last week's policy review by the monetary policy committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that signalled the end of pandemic-induced accommodation. Inflation estimates were raised sharply, the liquidity adjustment corridor was tightened and the commentary turned hawkish. Gilt yields have since touched three-year highs and the stock market has drawn some chill from the prospects of foreshortened interest rate hikes. The newly imposed standing deposit facility (SDF) to drain liquidity is being construed as effectively raising the floor rate at which banks park surplus cash with the central bank, making the reverse repo rate irrelevant for the large part.

The spread between the repo rate and the reverse repo rate is 65 basis points (bps), and the SDF has been set 25 bps below the repo rate. With a similar non-collateralised marginal standing facility 25 bps above the 4% repo rate, the liquidity adjustment corridor shrinks from 90 bps to the pre-pandemic norm of 50 bps. Since last year, RBI has been nudging banks away from the fixed-rate reverse repo by draining liquidity through variable-rate reverse repo auctions, and the cut-offs are approaching the repo rate. This is above the floor rate imposed by the SDF, and well above the fixed-rate reverse repo.

Liquidity normalisation aside, the standing facilities on either side of the adjustment corridor are an evolution over the repo mechanism in that there is no need for gilts as securities. This helps in draining out extraordinary amounts of liquidity, as in the present case, and also provides banks with more elbow room on statutory liquidity requirements. Also, GoI's borrowing programme comes less into conflict with liquidity adjustments. A non-collateralised band around the repo rate provides a damping effect, and its imposition was delayed by the pandemic. The repo and reverse repo rates remain in the RBI's toolkit, although it has shifted some of the discretion, through standing facilities, on to banks.

( Originally published on Apr 11, 2022 )<

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Knowledge incubators like JNU may well be many things to many people, some completely disregarding their function as temples of higher learning. But if India is serious about enhancing its research and scholarship capabilities, it must make its institutions hothouses of knowledge, not romping grounds for hotheads.

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi is one of the four Indian institutions of higher learning - along with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, IIT Delhi and the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) in Bengaluru - to feature in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings 2022 released last week. JNU, the only Indian arts and humanities institution to make it in the prestigious list, should be proud of the achievement. It is also where on Sunday, a section of students were attacked by another, resulting in at least six of the former group injured and taken to hospital. The injuries were, thankfully, minor.

But that is not the point. That the attack was over non-vegetarian food being served during Ram Navami in a hostel mess - an activity that is, unlike the attack, perfectly legal - sits at odds with a recognised world-class university. What this attack in particular, along with 'minor' acts of bullying, whether from the left or right in general, does is vandalise institutional reputation. This is the last thing an aspirational knowledge economy can afford.

Institutions like JNU and the IITs provide space where free thinking is not just allowed, but is made to thrive. Puerile intimidations over dietary or clothing matters are, at best, digressionary, and, at worst, destructive. There is a reason why so many scholars choose calmer, maturer pastures high on the 'ease of doing scholarship' index. Knowledge incubators like JNU may well be many things to many people, some completely disregarding their function as temples of higher learning. But if India is serious about enhancing its research and scholarship capabilities, it must make its institutions hothouses of knowledge, not romping grounds for hotheads.
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Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is in the news again. This time it was a physical scuffle among students on Ramnavami. One version claims that tension was due to attempts to stop meat from being served in the hostel. Another claims there was objection to Ramnavami celebrations in the hostel premises. Any kind of violence is reprehensible. But it is a matter of relief that the April 10 violence was localised, when compared to the incidents of January 2020. However, the incident has shown that normalcy remains fragile.

Two things need to be done: JNU must overhaul its grievance redressal mechanisms. It is now a norm for students to take such disputes to the police instead of the university authorities. This must change. Students are not criminals. The onus is on the administration to regain trust – just as it is on political parties, the police, and the media to display a sense of proportion in responding to these events.

As a university which attracts students from across the country, JNU is a microcosm of India’s diversity. It is natural that students who attend the university find established practices (such as hostels which accommodate both men and women or hostel messes serving meat and vegetarian food together) against their own value systems. Not only have these practices continued, they have taught students to appreciate diversity. This was possible because the university has possessed vibrant democratic forums to arrive at such decisions. The administration’s role has been to make sure that decisions arrived at democratically are not subverted by anyone. This time-tested protocol seems to have been compromised and must be restored immediately.



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There are several “deficiencies” in how India’s national identity project, Aadhaar, is managed, according to a report tabled by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in Parliament last week. The assessment is based on a performance review of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) that lasted four years between 2015 and 2019 that found several concerns. Chief among these were instances of junk enrolment and low-quality biometric information, UIDAI’s inability to directly audit whether fingerprints and retina scans of citizens could be stored by third parties, the lapse in verifying whether an applicant has indeed resided in India for six months before enrolling (as is the rule), and a much-publicised project to give Aadhaar numbers to newborns that led to “avoidable expenditure of 310 crore”.

Each of these has serious implications. First, as CAG noted, is the risk of privacy if authenticating agencies such as banks and telecom providers that commonly use Aadhaar for identity verification begin storing biometric data. Second, there are questions over the sanctity of the database, which already underpins several functions such as tax filing, pension distribution, and in the future could become a significant determinant of voting rights. Given this, the presence of duplicate entries or of people who may not have been eligible is concerning. Third, there is inconvenience to citizens when shoddy biometrics recorded during enrolment means they are unable to use biometric authentication and have to pay to have it rectified.

As CAG itself notes, the role UIDAI has played in streamlining citizen services is immense. Even a simple feature of allowing migrant workers to buy subsidised ration outside of their home state has only been made possible due to Aadhaar. But it is the scale of India’s population that also makes the deficiencies in the database and its risks a major problem. Even a 0.1% error rate would mean 1.3 million records are affected. Activists have pointed out a systemic fix that could help address these problems: The appointment of a separate oversight entity. Indeed, such an approach is being planned by other countries, such as Australia where the oversight and operations of the project are handled by different entities. The CAG report shows, and the UIDAI responses agree, that Aadhaar needs fixes. These will inevitably be painstaking, which makes it contingent on the government to start soon.



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The University Grants Commission (UGC) has announced that starting from the 2022-23 academic year, all admissions to undergraduate courses in central universities will be based on a Common University Entrance Test (CUET) in July. Colleges may use the Class 12 Board exam marks as an eligibility criterion – requiring a minimum percentage, for example – but not in the actual selection process.

This announcement is based on the National Education Policy (NEP)’s recommendation to create a “high-quality common aptitude test, as well as specialised common subject exams”. It is commendable that UGC moved quickly to implement this welcome recommendation. However, some deviations may notably dilute NEP’s intent and impact. For example, NEP recommends that the choice to use the test should stay with colleges and that the test should be conducted twice a year. UGC has made the test mandatory, while not making any mention about it being available twice a year.

The most important deviation, however, is that while NEP emphasises quality, conceptual understanding and testing of application skills, UGC has stressed that the test “will be strictly as per the NCERT [National Council of Educational Research and Training] syllabus” and its difficulty level will be “moderated so that students feel comfortable by just studying” class 12 content. Narrow adherence to the textbook can make a test rote-based, as we have seen with Board exams. Higher order thinking skills are best tested in a context unfamiliar to the student and not taken straight from the textbook.

Another trend, witnessed in Board exams too, is that of giving a lot of choice in the questions. CUET allows students to attempt only 80% of the questions in any section. While intended to make the paper easier and discourage coaching, choice reduces the psychometric validity of a test and its ability to discriminate effectively between students as two students doing the “same” test may attempt only 60% questions in common. A good test should have questions at varying levels of difficulty including some that only the best-performing students can answer – with all questions being compulsory. Otherwise, there will simply be a clustering of students at the cut-offs, making the process less fair and reducing the quality of student selection. Eventually, this may encourage top students to try and join more discerning education systems.

In India, the use of multiple-choice questions (MCQ) is favoured as they are seen as objective and easy to score. However, with critical thinking becoming important and specialisation increasing, there is a need to measure deeper skills. Obviously, an only-MCQ test cannot test students’ ability to write or present a convincing answer. The “extended essay” is one of the most important parts of many international assessments these days. There are challenges to scoring subjective questions, no doubt, but those can be addressed, as many large international examination boards demonstrate every year.

CUET is also signalling that Board exams are less important. This seems to be a devaluation not only of school examinations but also of schooling itself. The reason quoted for this step is that Board exams conducted by different states are not comparable. But there is a simple, immediate solution to that, and also a deeper, longer-term one.

The simple solution is to have every Board provide percentile scores to students. Even with papers of different difficulty, students scoring, say, 92.4 percentile in Assam and Rajasthan would be comparable. The deeper, longer-term solution is standardisation of Board exams across the country. This is a qualitative and quantitative process that will ensure that all Boards test and grade students uniformly. Most advanced countries with multiple Boards attempt this; we should as well.

A criticism of CUET has been that it will lead to increased coaching and a number of coaching courses have already sprung up. In our experience, demand for coaching depends less on the toughness of an exam and more on the stakes involved and the competition. There is a lot of coaching for the Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET), which is not tough but seen as a step to a “permanent government job”. Admissions to central universities neither have a very high stake nor witness intense competition – the UGC chairman said the selection rate would be one out of five or six. Hence, the difficulty level of CUET need not be diluted with an intent to reduce coaching.

Finally, between now and June – in less than 90 days – high-quality papers have to be set in 60 different subjects. Papers in 26 domain subjects have to be translated into 12 languages each – a total of almost 350 papers. Exam creators will be under tremendous pressure to deliver both quality and quantity for crucial examinations in this short span. This, compared to international Boards which take up to two years to prepare high-quality papers. Sometimes, the way to get quality is simply to give time.

CUET is potentially a welcome step in the right direction. If it can become a high-quality test that measures conceptual understanding in a psychometrically valid way, I believe it will be accepted voluntarily by a majority of colleges and play a key role in transforming education in India.

Sridhar Rajagopalan is co-founder and chief learning officer of Educational Initiatives, a leading Assessments and EdTech player in India. He was a member of the committee that drafted guidelines for PARAKH, the National Assessment Council recommended by the NEP 2020 

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French President Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen have predictably made it to the decisive second round of the presidential elections in France, to be held on April 24. A few elements of surprise in the first round of voting included the high abstention rate of nearly 27%, Macron’s margin of victory at five points, and, crucially, the fact that cost of living proved to be the most decisive issue.

The elections demonstrate that the French political landscape has shifted irreversibly to the Right – a global phenomenon not just confined to France. The two principal political parties that regularly won presidential elections until a young Macron burst onto the scene in 2017 have been decimated. The Centre-Right Republican party led by Valerie Pecresse polled a miserable 5%. And, the less said about the Socialist Party led by Anne Hidalgo, who got around 2%, the better. It is also worth recalling that anti-incumbency plays an important role in French presidential elections. In recent times, no French president has succeeded in getting re-elected. The last incumbent to win was Jacques Chirac who in 2002 beat his far-right rival Jean-Marie Le Pen (Marine Le Pen’s father).

In 2017, there was a run-off between Macron and Le Pen in the second round, which the former won handsomely. The run-off on April 24 may thus seem like a repeat of the last elections in 2017. But there are some fundamental differences. Macron was young and a breath of fresh air in 2017. He may still be young at 44, but anti-incumbency may come into play now. A month ago, Macron was cruising to what seemed like a definite victory. But in the last two weeks, Le Pen played her cards smartly by focusing on the “cost of living” issue. Macron, partly because of the Ukrainian crisis, was not able to campaign as much as he would have liked. He may have also made a tactical mistake by announcing that he was open to increasing the retirement age to 65, something that did not go down well with the French electorate.

Most importantly, Le Pen significantly softened her image compared to the last time. She was also helped by another far-Right contender, Eric Zemmour, taking far more extreme positions and the fact that the French are no longer hesitant to openly say that there are too many immigrants in their country.

Many feel that immigrants abuse the country’s famed social security system with its generous welfare benefits. Not all French people may speak out as loudly against the burqa in public spaces as Le Pen does, but many appear to agree with her in private. Le Pen may not speak explicitly about restricting immigration only to Europeans, but essentially, when she talks of France for the French, she is talking about reclaiming the country on the basis of religion, culture and language.

It is said that the French vote with their hearts in the first round and with their heads in the second. Le Pen may have softened her image considerably, but her deeply held views on immigration, religion and identity arguably run counter to the stated French ideals of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

Oddly enough, her party’s links with a Russian bank which appears to have lent her money and her own admiration for Vladimir Putin did not seem to have hurt her much. On the other hand, Macron’s party links with the American consultancy McKinsey, and that he is perceived as being distant and far removed from the common man, may prove an electoral liability.

More than anywhere else, the European Union (EU) headquarters in Brussels must be tracking these developments with some concern. Should Le Pen win, she has hinted at a fundamental reassessment of France’s relations with the EU. While she no longer talks of “Frexit” (France leaving EU), she does talk of French laws trumping EU laws. She also talks of France exiting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). To that extent, transatlantic ties are also at stake in these elections.

There is a good two-week window between now and the decisive round of elections on April 24. One thing to watch out for will be the presidential televised debate scheduled on April 20. A lot of the abstainers and undecideds could potentially make up their minds then.

In the context of how close this presidential race has become, the importance of the televised debate cannot be over-emphasised. Macron may well end up winning but he has his job cut out for him.

Mohan Kumar is a former Indian ambassador to France 

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Less than two months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, conclusions are already being drawn about its outcomes. With Russia’s advance on Kyiv halted, some are perhaps prematurely suggesting a Ukrainian victory, while others believe Russian forces are reorienting for a more protracted conflict. For some, United States (US) and European sanctions on Moscow have been punishing, while others point to their undermining long-term faith in the dollar. There remains an open debate as to the war’s implications for the Indo-Pacific and for India’s relationships with Russia, China, and the West. In all these cases, it is simply too early to tell.

That said, the Russia-Ukraine war has exposed some glaring gaps in our collective knowledge of a number of issues. Some are questionable assumptions that took hold among analysts and scholars of international relations. But other gaps have been exposed in India’s independent analytical capability, with potentially serious implications for its national security.

On a global scale, Russia’s actions have defied what were once widely-held beliefs about countries’ incentives to wage large-scale conventional war over territory. Despite decolonisation in the mid-20th century, the dissolution of the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Yugoslavia, and a handful of independence movements such as in Bangladesh and South Sudan, national borders have held relatively stable since 1945. The nuclear dynamics and alliances of the Cold War and the interdependence of the post-Cold War period suggested that major conventional war between countries would be a thing of the past, even if civil conflict in places such as Syria, Libya, Rwanda, and Congo; interventions such as in the First Gulf War and in the Balkans, and counter-terrorism operations and insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan would continue.

But the warning signs were there. Russia’s actions in Crimea and the Donbas in 2014 came at considerable risk to its energy and defence exports. Moscow was also willing to bear the costs of expulsion from the G8. Similarly, China’s fast-tracking and widening the scope of a sweeping national security law in Hong Kong, in contravention of “one country, two systems”, came at an economic and political expense that Beijing seemed willing to bear. China’s unilateral island-building and militarisation of the South China Sea was another example of revisionism at the risk of mutually beneficial relationships. The optimism of international politics between 1991 and 2008, which continues to linger in the popular consciousness, in some academic circles, and in business communities, now seems oddly quaint.

In a related vein, the Russia-Ukraine war has also further exposed the fragmentation of information systems in increasingly networked societies. It is not just different viewpoints. Individuals in Moscow, Munich, or Manhattan are likely to disagree about the basic facts surrounding the war, despite copious amounts of information being available, often in real time. The rampant proliferation of propaganda and disinformation should sow further doubts about projecting or mirror-imaging one’s worldview onto others. Rather than offering clarity, an open information environment often exacerbates the fog of war.

Further shortcomings have been exposed with more immediate implications for India. Since the end of the Cold War, the field of Russian studies in India has atrophied, which is surprising, given how much Russia remains an important partner for India. At the outbreak of a war that might have the greatest implications for Indian military procurement in decades, there were few independent Indian studies of the Russian military, its organisation, recruitment, capabilities, and operational culture. This was despite more than six decades of Indian cooperation and contact with the Soviet, and later Russian, armed services. Moreover, political assessments were found wanting: Leading experts were still suggesting a limited intervention by Moscow even after President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” against Ukraine.

The past is the past. The important lesson is for future challenges to be anticipated and gaps to be filled. The biggest uncertainty involves what may be the most important geopolitical debate in India today – but one in which the blind are debating the blind.

On one hand, there are those who see the China-Russia partnership as having crossed an irreversible threshold that will have adverse implications for India. They point to the China-Russia joint statement of February 4, 2022, when the two sides declared that their friendship “has no limits [and] there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.” Russia’s positions on Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Indo-Pacific, and at the UN Security Council have also been noted, as has the qualitatively improved defence relationship between Moscow and Beijing.

On the other hand, there remain those who believe that India still has the ability to meaningfully alter Moscow’s calculations. They believe that India has enough influence, through diplomacy, arms purchases, and economic incentives, to ensure Russian neutrality and autonomy amid unfolding competition between India and China. But there is a lot riding on this assumption.

Whatever the future of the Russia-China relationship, the repercussions for India will be tremendous. Scholarship and detailed analysis on the relationship between Moscow and Beijing in India are sorely needed. This ought to be a gap to fill before India faces its next major geopolitical crisis.

Dhruva Jaishankar is executive director, ORF America 

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India ranks third in global data breaches in 2021, a 356% increase from the previous year. Since we do not currently have a national data protection or data privacy law, such cybersecurity failures pose massive threats of financial fraud and identity thefts on citizens. There needs to be a better mechanism that incentivises organisations that are collecting and storing citizen data to maintain stronger internet security measures.

Neither the proposed Data Protection Bill nor the amendment to the Information Technology Act, speaks about the responsibility of cybersecurity compromises. The Data Protection Bill mandates that companies need to report breaches within 72 hours of the occurrence, but there is no requirement for companies to secure citizen data. India had also introduced the National Cybersecurity Policy in 2013 which suggested several broad strategies including the provision of fiscal schemes and incentives to encourage entities to install, strengthen and upgrade information infrastructure for cybersecurity. As the government changed in 2014, not much has been done to implement the policy or to extend it to legal accountability and enforcement.

India’s e-commerce sector has witnessed tremendous growth in recent years. It is expected to grow to $188 billion by 2025. The Fintech market in the country is estimated to be the third-largest in the world. India is also the world’s second-largest telecommunication market. 

This rapid and accelerated digitisation over the past few years has meant personal data collection at an equally rapid, yet unregulated, pace. The data collected online ranges from basic information (such as name, address, age, gender and phone number) to sensitive details (such as bank account numbers, credit/debit card numbers, government ID numbers, and so on). Added to this information that is directly collected and stored, there is metadata that can reveal deeper insights about customers (such as personality types, spending patterns, personal interests, political inclinations, food preferences, schedules, physical and mental health). However, other than the informal trust that the customer puts into these companies, there is no legal or policy promise requiring these companies to ensure customer data is safe, secure, and only used for purposes informed to the customer.

For a solution, we can look to banking regulation. There, policies of zero liability and limited liability for cards and online financial frauds made the banks responsible for unauthorised financial transactions. Similarly, we need to push accountability for data security on all companies collecting and storing citizen data.

The need for economic growth, and hopes for foreign investments, should not deter us from enforcing internet security. All companies, public and private, should be required to report to the government the measures taken by them to ensure data security and information regarding potential threats and targets. There needs to be a channel to facilitate information exchange between companies facing similar threats. For companies that fail to show serious efforts for internet security or lack compliance with standards set by the government, customers should be actively notified of the risks while sharing their data with them. The required standards of internet security measures can also vary basis the sensitivity of the data being collected.

This added accountability is often seen as an additional cost, especially for small and medium enterprises. But this can also be an opportunity where the government guides and assists SMEs to choose cloud services wisely, safeguard their websites and portals, and ensure that they are protected from ransomware attackers as well as other threats over the internet.

Over the last decade, many countries have established agencies to focus on cybersecurity and a safe national digital infrastructure: Singapore, the United States, and Israel are examples. India does have the National Cyber Coordination Centre, but this agency is an internet scanning agency for real-time assessments of cyber threats and report generation. It lacks real-time partnerships with domestic and international private and government agencies. It also does not act as a mentor on matters of cybersecurity or enforce guidelines around data protection and overreach. Without proactive measures, partnership with private enterprises, collaborative efforts and legal accountability, effective execution and results may prove difficult.

Government guidance and support are not interchangeable with government surveillance or government overreach. The Indian government needs to put in place standards to protect citizen privacy and digital security, from all domestic and international malicious players online, and itself.

Data is the new oil, the new weapon of war, and the new gold. 54% of India’s 1.2 billion population is estimated to have access to the internet. A large push to India’s growth has been from its accelerated development and adoption of digital public infrastructure and digital public goods. Internet security has been an elephant in the room and it's time it is seen as urgent and crucial for continued growth propelled by digitisation, internet penetration, and innovation.

Avni Sinha is at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government

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Last week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s working group III report titled “Mitigation of Climate Change” was not easy reading. The 64-page summary for policymakers (SPM) had a gist of the key takeaways from the report, which runs into 2,913 pages, and is dense.

Many of us climate reporters were anxious because we knew projections were grim, but we also had to put that urgency across to readers and explain that solutions still do exist.

And yet, this SPM was far more technical and indirect than the SPMs of IPCC’s recent two reports — “The Physical Science Basis” released last August and “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” released in February.

It may have been a far heavier reading because this report is not telling us about the current state of the climate. That is already very well captured in the previous two reports of IPCC. It is now asking countries to jump to action to avert catastrophe.

This also means implementing difficult, disruptive solutions and sharing the burden of mitigating the climate crisis. It is no wonder then that there was major political wrangling over several issues in the SPM during the two-week approval meeting of governments and scientists.

The Third World Network (TWN), a research and advocacy organisation that was present during the two-week approval process of the SPM as an observer, captured some of these conflicts in its bulletins. The approval session of the SPM was to be held from March 21 to April 1, but was extended by two days till April 4 because of disagreements among member nations over various issues.

Some of the most contentious issues included models chosen for assessment not reflecting equity and regional differentiation; databases chosen that consider 1990 as the base year for cumulative historical emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) rather than 1850; the text around categorisation of countries into developed and developing; climate finance; costs of mitigation options and so on, according to TWN.

India objected to the use of GHG emission flows by regions from 1990, even though multiple databases go back to 1850. It said that no explanation was given as to why 1990 was chosen as the base year and that it was an effort to undermine the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities by attempting to dilute the differentiation between developed and developing countries.

TWN in another bulletin said the United States (US) pushed to undermine their climate finance obligations to the developing countries by attempting to remove the two categories — “developed” and “developing” countries — from the SPM text. The US also resisted any reference to the unfulfilled promise of mobilising $100 billion a year by developed countries for developing countries.

A key paragraph under section E.5 of the SPM on “mitigation investment flows and investment needs” was eventually dropped due to a deadlock on country categorisation between US and China. The US reportedly argued that statistical country grouping is outdated and instead pushed for income-based classification to single out emerging economies.

Section E of the SPM deals with strengthening the response to mitigation of the climate crisis. The final wording in the published SPM states: “There are mitigation options which are feasible to deploy at scale in the near term. Feasibility differs across sectors and regions, and according to capacities and the speed and scale of implementation. Barriers to feasibility would need to be reduced or removed, and enabling conditions strengthened to deploy mitigation options at scale.”

“These barriers and enablers include geophysical, environmental-ecological, technological, and economic factors, and especially institutional and socio-cultural factors. Strengthened near-term action beyond the NDCs can reduce and/or avoid long-term feasibility challenges of global modelled pathways that limit warming to 1.5 °C (>50%) with no or limited overshoot.”

See the problem? Apart from the fact that it’s a very roundabout way of saying that we need to take action now to avert disaster, the mention of climate finance, a critical means of implementing solutions, is completely diluted.

We saw similar wrangling playing out during the Glasgow climate conference last November as well. The US had pushed to redefine the “developed” and “developing” country classification but those attempts thankfully did not get through.

Now that we have reached a juncture where countries need to act in the next 10 years or fail to keep global warming under 1.5 or even 2 degrees Celsius, developed countries will try to evade responsibility for historical emissions.

Countries must take IPCC’s mitigation message seriously and act immediately instead of trying to evade responsibility.

Mobilising climate finance for the mitigation of emissions in developing countries is a responsibility and obligation of developed countries under the Paris Agreement. IPCC has also underlined that the burden of mitigating the climate crisis will have to be equitable.

Here are key takeaways for me from the report: Current policies/ nationally determined contributions (NDCs) will lead to global warming of 2.4 degrees Celsius to 3.5 degrees Celsius by end of this century; global financial flows from developed countries are a factor of three to six times lower than levels needed by 2030 to meet the Paris Agreement goals; average annual GHG emissions in the past decade were higher than any previous decade; global greenhouse gas emissions need to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030 to keep global warming under 1.5/2 degree Celsius.

This will require a very large reduction in fossil fuel use, carbon capture, lifestyle changes that can bring large reductions in GHG emissions including low carbon buildings, minimising food waste, encouraging plant-based diets, shared mobility, electric vehicles, teleworking, compact cities, extending the life of products, and the circular economy.

IPCC has also underlined that countries at all stages of economic development seek to improve the well-being of people, and their development priorities reflect different starting points and contexts, hence equity should be reflected in actions. Congratulations to IPCC scientists who managed to send their message across despite attempts by countries to divert focus.

From the climate crisis to air pollution, from questions of the development-environment tradeoffs to India’s voice in international negotiations on the environment, HT’s Jayashree Nandi brings her deep domain knowledge in a weekly column

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On April 7, 2020, Wuhan, the first city to be locked down because of the Covid-19 pandemic, celebrated its reopening after 11 weeks of harsh restrictions on movement and individual freedoms with a light show in the sky.

As restrictions were lifted, buildings lit up and honking cars lined up at toll booths for joy rides across city borders.

Some 11 million residents of the central Chinese city breathed a collective sigh of relief from exhausting restraints.

It was liberation from lockdown, a word, which wasn’t really in our collective until Wuhan’s status was unexpectedly updated to it on January 23, 2020.

The good thing was that despite the criticism of the nature of restrictions and the toll of over 50000 confirmed cases and 3869 deaths — which as it turned out were much, much smaller compared to global Covid-19 statistics — the policies worked.

In the remaining months of 2020 and until early 2021, China did not eliminate but effectively curbed the spread of Covid-19 at home with quick lockdowns, mass testing, effective tracking of contacts and mandatory quarantine to isolate infected people whenever new cases were recorded.

A new Covid-19 situation, however, evolved in 2021.

Unlike previous outbreaks, which didn’t spread far beyond a single geography, Covid-19 clusters in August 2021, for example, were confirmed in over 30 cities in 17 of China’s 33 provinces and regions.

China responded with more of the same policies but gave it the mathematically lofty name of the “Zero-Covid” policy, essentially meaning that every single Covid case – at least the ones transmitted locally – had to be eradicated.

In the following months, China’s anti-Covid policies didn’t change but the virus did; sneaky, virulent mutants began to spread faster and in manners stealthier.

So, towards the end of 2021, China subtly changed the name of its Covid-containment policy — also called rebranding in marketing — to “Dynamic-zero”, or some variation of the phrase thereof, accepting that there will be a handful of cases but large scale outbreaks will be prevented. At whatever cost.

The phrase “dynamic-zero” was much in use in the run-up to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and neighbouring Hebei province when China allowed a large number of foreigners to fly in because of the Games.

The Covid-19 tally wasn’t high when the Games ended: A few hundred cases in the Games villages but no outbreak.

The dynamism of China’s anti-Covid policies had worked. Again.

No. Not really.

Barely weeks later, the situation in Shanghai, China’s snazzy financial hub, home to about 25 million people and a handful of the world’s tallest skyscrapers, is grim.

The megapolis and its people are looking at an indefinite lockdown as of April 9 with city authorities scrambling to control the Omicron-driven outbreak, which has logged a record number of cases every day from the beginning of the month.

Since March 1, and until April 7, the city had reported a total of 131,524 local positive infections, including 127,131 asymptomatic infections and 4,393 confirmed cases.

It’s not glamorous Shanghai alone facing the rapid Covid-19 spread.

The other severe local outbreak is in the northeastern Jilin province.

Daily case numbers in the province have given no sign of subsiding even as full lockdowns have entered their fourth weeks in the province’s two largest cities, Changchun and Jilin City.

The province has logged over 60,000 cases in the ongoing wave.

“We estimate that around 193 million people are currently under full or partial lockdowns, in regions that contribute around RMB 23trn of GDP. These 23 cities account for 13.6% of China’s population and 22.0% of China’s GDP, but these figures could underestimate the full impact,” Nomura, a global financial services group said, in a note on April 5.

The note, under the category “Lockdown Measures”, added: “Areas are classified into three categories for Covid containment: high risk, medium risk and low risk. As of 08:00 on 4 April, according to the State Council website, China currently has 57 sub-areas that are classified as high risk, and 355 areas are classified as medium risk, while the rest of the country is classified as low risk.”

The negative forecasts have failed to change China's Covid-19 containment policies.

After tweaking the “dynamic-zero” policy — including allowing centralised quarantine instead of hospitalisation for asymptomatic or even mild Covid cases — China is now doubling down on existing policies.

An opinion piece published in China’s official news agency, Xinhua, made it amply clear that there will be no change.

“Indeed, the new epidemic waves put the country's dynamic zero-Covid policy to the test. Based on more than two years of epidemic control experience, this policy has proved effective in China's fight against the virus. In the days to come, it will continue to guide the country's epidemic control and prevention efforts,” the Xinhua article said, adding: “In the face of more complicated and pressing challenges, China has the knowledge, determination, and ability to bring epidemic waves under control”.

That “determination” also comes from the knowledge about what could go wrong especially among the elderly — given that China is an ageing society — if the outbreak keeps spreading.

For example, the majority of those who died in the recent Hong Kong outbreak were unvaccinated old people; some 65% of the population above 80 in Hong Kong had not been vaccinated when the Omicron wave swept across the city.

China has around 264 million elderly and more than 250 million minors among its 1.4 billion people — the first category most vulnerable to the virus.

Here are some official vaccination numbers for the elderly on the mainland.

As of March 17, for people aged 60 to 69, the first dose rate, the full vaccination rate, and the booster vaccination rate hit 88.8%, 86.6%, and 56.4%, respectively.

Among people aged 70 to 79, the numbers were 86.1%, 81.7%, and 48.4%, respectively.

And, as for the group who are 80 or older, those three figures are 58.8%, 50.7%, and 19.7%, respectively.

“Generally speaking, of the 264 million people aged 60 or older, 211.76 million have been fully vaccinated, which means there are still 52 million people who have not received full vaccination. Among those, those aged 80 or older account for the largest proportion as their full vaccination rate and booster vaccination rate are a mere 50.7% and 19.7%, respectively,” Zeng Yixin, national health commission (NHC) Vice-Minister, said in March.

Containing the virus as early as possible is crucial for the country to safeguard the well-being of the elderly, which is the thinking among policymakers.

The NHC head, Ma Xiaowei said as much last month at a press conference.

“This is why the dynamic zero-Covid policy attaches equal importance to prevention and treatment, for China cannot afford to leave the virus on the loose. Ma (Xiaowei) warned that should China give up on epidemic prevention and rely entirely on treatment of symptoms, the country's medical system would be stretched too thin,” the Xinhua article said.

It’s clear that lockdowns, mass testing and curbs on international travel will continue to be implemented as Omicron clusters spread.

It’s also clear that the Communist Party of China is far from confident about its health infrastructure: Building makeshift hospitals is one thing but managing them with good doctors and enough healthcare workers is another.

It also, of course, raises questions about the efficacy of Chinese vaccines and whether the CPC policymakers are themselves not confident about the jabs, and hence, reluctant to move to “living with the virus” mode from the “dynamic-zero” policy.

At some point, in the weeks ahead, Shanghai, often called magical city or “Mo Du”, will get its own light show in the sky but until then it will have to hunker down and bide its time.

Sutirtho Patranobis, HT’s experienced China hand, writes a weekly column from Beijing, exclusively for HT Premium readers. He was previously posted in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he covered the final phase of the civil war and its aftermath, and was based in Delhi for several years before that

The views expressed are personal



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Imran Khan Niazi left his official residence before midnight on Saturday as the first Prime Minister of Pakistan to be ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament. He departed while screaming of a US-led conspiracy but not before he had dented his image as a democratically elected Prime Minister heading a coalition government of unlikely allies in a politically peculiar arrangement propping him up in office for close to four years filled with controversies.

His anti-US, pro-China foreign policy may have played as much of a part in his ouster as his obvious mismanagement of the economy in Covid-hit times — inflation is raging at 13 per cent, foreign debt stands at 43 per cent of GDP and the rupee has dipped to 190 to the dollar. In refusing to accept the ‘umpire’s verdict’ and running brinkmanship to its extremes on the day of the Supreme Court-designated trust vote, Imran lost his image as a reformist democrat who was the people’s first but not overwhelming choice in a parlous democracy with the Army perennially breathing down its neck.

The top judge ordered the gates of the Supreme Court to be opened at midnight even as prison vans waited outside the National Assembly in Islamabad. Army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa had to call on Imran at his residence to probably warn him of consequences even as rumours swirled of Imran considering ousting the general in his desperate bid to cling to power. The Speaker, forced by his loyalty to the Prime Minister to confront the top court for hours on end, threw in the towel just before the day’s deadline to allow the trust vote to begin a couple of minutes after midnight.

Knowing it was a loaded vote that he could not survive despite his posturing as a cornered tiger — a term he used for his valiant and mercurial bunch of egomaniacs he melded into a cricket World Cup winning team 30 years ago — Imran acted like a recalcitrant schoolboy unwilling to face the music in a democratic floor test. His threats of a street revolution and waving of a “letter” proving his international conspiracy theory were unlikely to challenge a powerful system backed by an assertive top court that had to intervene in the parliamentary process.

What Imran leaves behind at the moment is a collapsing economy with a yawning balance of payments problem not quite bridged by grants from Saudi Arabia and Gulf nations, a battered constitution that barely stood up to silly posturing by an embattled Prime Minister and political uncertainty that may lead to elections sometime this year itself. Meanwhile, a beaming scion of a political dynasty in Shehbaz Sharif is to be sworn in as Prime Minister on Monday to head what should be termed an interim government provided his party and partners retain their majority to head off Imran Khan’s party PTI’s nomination of Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

In his last days in office, Imran was effusive in praise of India’s independent foreign policy in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine but his tenure was marked by his encouragement of both wings of Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan and his needling of India despite his Army’s dovish stance with a ceasefire that has worked for over a year. As a cricket-crazed nation, India may have held admiration for Imran as a player but it won’t be sorry to see him go as PM. Of course, Imran will be reinventing himself in his political career, perhaps playing the victim card to stoke his popularity with the voters.



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Nothing better supports the theory that there two different Indias as the media report on drug hauls; one, routine, drab, a brief: nameless, where police nab some drugs and their consumers or street-level peddlers. This sporadic kind of action, where the people arrested are nobodies — uneducated, poor, anonymous, faceless, socially powerless and unconnected — is meant to assure us all is well and the system is regularly able to overpower the menace.  

Then there is the celebrity drug crackdown. Private parties in a luxury yacht, exclusive membership-restricted pubs, underbelly of the powerful, connected, rich, and glamorous, marked by celebrity power; where police and narcotics officials intrude by exception, like a failure in the system meant to protect the children of the elite, those who are the future of the India that matters, scions, inheritors, entitled brats.

In the first category, media and society are unconcerned, bored, disinterested, whereas in the second category, the entire system becomes opaque; and works to ensure easy acquittal and whitewashing of the records of those who must not suffer; after all these are the future rulers.

Globally, the best dictum and wisdom on any fight against narcotics is: if you chase the drugs, you will get addicts, consumers, street peddlers, retailers, and very occasionally, higher up the chain, wholesalers, distributors, manufacturers and, seldom, the kingpins. If you follow the money, you will find the truth of the entire system.

India, given its two set of rules, must innovate in its fight and focus on the second. One of the most interesting suggestions is to block drug addicts completely from elitedom. To contest elections or to get your company listed in public, to take UPSC exams or hold positions in bureaucracy or police, have a movie released, or even to get a passport or book a flight, etc., like in sports, there must be white tests.

If we keep the costs of consuming drugs for the elite stringent enough, it will lead to amazing results, proving, all change is possible if we can force a little inconvenience on the truly powerful drivers of the other India.



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