The Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement recently, saying that Hindi should replace English as the “link language” and that the Government’s work will increasingly be in Hindi, has set the proverbial cat among the Southern pigeons. The “Hindi-Hindutva-Hindustan” ideology that he represents has historically been impatient with the notion of Indian multilingualism, which it sees as a babel undermining national unity rather than the proud showcase of diversity that our constitutional nationalism celebrates. It has been a long-standing policy plank of the Hindutva movement that Hindi, the language of the northern and central Indian States, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has sunk its deepest roots, should be the ‘national language’ of India. BJP MPs have frequently risen in the national parliament to demand that their preference be made law.
Part of ‘Hindi promotion’
Mr. Shah’s is only the latest salvo of several efforts by the Modi government to promote Hindi. These include: the imposition of Hindi names on Central government programmes and schemes (Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, and the like) instead of translations or ‘neutral’ English labels; a ‘parliamentary committee’s proposal to make the use of Hindi mandatory for MPs and Union Ministers; making Hindi a compulsory subject for Central Board of Secondary Education schools across the country; re-lettering milestones on national highways in Hindi instead of English’; the use of Hindi in airport announcements; the Central government issuing media advertisements in Hindi, and launching ‘promotional campaigns exclusively in the Hindi script’, even when the words used may be from different Indian languages; and the practice of renaming well-known occasions or festivities only in Hindi or Sanskrit, such as Teacher’s Day as Guru Purnima.
The latest controversy has revealed two essential truths about our country. The first is that, whatever the Hindi chauvinists might say, we do not have one “national language” in India, but several. The second is that zealots have an unfortunate tendency to provoke a battle they will lose — at a time when they were quietly winning the war.
Missing the point
Hindi is the mother tongue of some 50% of our population; the percentage has been growing thanks to the spectacular failure of population control in much of North India. It is not, however, the mother tongue of the rest of us. When Hindi speakers emotionally decry the use of an alien language imposed on the country by British colonialists and demand that Hindi be used because it speaks for “the soul of India”, or when they declare that “Hindi is our mother, English is a stranger”, they are missing the point twice over. First, because no Tamil or Bengali will accept that Hindi is the language of her soul, and second because injecting anti-English xenophobia into the argument is utterly irrelevant to the issue at stake.
But deluding ourselves is a favoured pastime in New Delhi. The issue is quite simple: all Indians need to deal with the government. We need government services, information and support; we need to understand easily what our government is saying to us or demanding of us. When the government does so in our mother tongue, it is easier for us. But when it does so in someone else’s mother tongue with which we are less familiar than our neighbour, our incomprehension is intensified by resentment. Why should Shukla be spoken to by the Government of India in the language that comes easiest to him, but not Subramaniam?
Thede facto solution to this question has been a practical one: use Hindi where it is understood, but use English everywhere, since it places all Indians from all parts of our country at an equal disadvantage. English does not express Subramaniam’s soul any more than it does Shukla’s, but it serves a functional purpose for both, and what is more, it helps Subramaniam to understand the same thing as Shukla.
Ideally, of course, every Central government document, tax form or tweet should be in every one of India’s languages. Since that is not possible in practice — because we would have to do everything in 23 versions (22 and English) — we have chosen to have two official languages, English and Hindi. State governments complement these by producing official material in the language of their States. That leaves everyone more or less happy.
It is about efficiency
The Government’s requirement that Hindi be privileged in official work actually militates against the interests of efficiency. Obliging a Keralite bureaucrat in Delhi to read and write file notations in Hindi to be submitted to a superior officer from Odisha makes no sense, since neither man would be using a language with which he is at ease. Obliging both to digest a complex argument by a U.P.-ite subordinate writing in his mother tongue is unfair to both. Both may write atrocious English, for that matter, but it is the language in which they are equal, and it serves to get the work done. Language is a vehicle, not a destination. In government, it is a means, not an end. The Hindi-wallahs fail to appreciate that, since promoting Hindi, for them, is an end in itself.
In the five decades since the promulgation of the ‘three-language formula’, implementation has largely failed across the country, for two divergent reasons. At an ideological level, in States such as Tamil Nadu, the question of being required to learn a northern language such as Hindi has always been contentious, with anti-Hindi agitations a recurring episode in the State since 1937. In the northern States, there is simply no demand for learning a southern language, and so no northern State has seriously implemented the three-language formula.
Vehicle of entertainment
The irony is that the Hindi chauvinists should realise they were winning the war. The prevalence of Hindi is far greater across India today than it was half a century ago. This is not because of Mr. Shah’s (or even the Vice-President, M. Venkaiah Naidu’s) imprecations or the assiduous efforts of the Parliamentary Committee on the Promotion of Hindi. It is, quite simply, because of Bollywood, which has brought a demotic conversational Hindi into every Indian home. South Indians and north-easterners alike are developing something of an ease and familiarity with Hindi because it is a language in which they are entertained. In time, this alone could have made Hindi truly the national language.
But it would become so only because Indians freely and voluntarily adopt it, not because some Hindi chauvinist in Delhi thrusts his language down the throats of the unwilling. The fact is, its vocabulary, gender rules and locutions do not come instinctively to everyone: native speakers of languages such as Malayalam that do not use gender can understand why a woman must be feminine but are genuinely mystified as to why a table should be feminine too. If you have grown up with Hindi at home, it is a matter of instinct for you that it should be “desh ki haalat acchi hain ” rather than “desh ka haalat bura hain ”, but for the rest of us, there is no logical reason to see anything feminine about the national condition.
Fear of an agenda
Imposition is rarely a good policy in a democracy. But the real fear is far more fundamental: that the advocacy of Hindi is merely the thin end of a more dangerous wedge — the ideological agenda of those in power who believe in a nationalism of ‘one language, one religion, one nation’. This is anathema to those Indians who grew up and believe in a diverse, inclusive India whose languages are all equally authentic. The Hindutva brigade’s attempts to impose cultural uniformity in India will be resisted staunchly by the rest of us; the opposition to Hindi is based on our fear that such cultural uniformity is really what the advocacy of this language is all about.
Still, if we watch enough Bollywood movies, we will pick some Hindi up one day. Just do not tell us that we must, or else. Language should be an instrument of opportunity, not of oppression.
The quest for uniformity is always a sign of insecurity, and the BJP’s majoritarianism has gone to the point where it threatens to undermine the very social fabric that has held the country together since Independence.
It is time to let sleeping dogmas lie.
Shashi Tharoor, MP (Congress party) for Thiruvananthapuram, is the Sahitya Akademi-winning author of 23 books, both fiction and non-fiction, including, most recently, ‘Pride, Prejudice & Punditry: The Essential Shashi Tharoor’
The war in Ukraine has brought unexpected changes in the world as global powers seek to recalibrate their foreign policies. India’s position has been in the spotlight in recent days with New Delhi hosting diplomats and dignitaries from various countries. On March 31, the U.K. Foreign Secretary, Elizabeth Truss, visited New Delhi as a part of a wider diplomatic push. She had visited India last October. Ms. Truss met with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and also participated in the inaugural edition of the India-U.K. Strategic Futures Forum, a Track 1.5 Dialogue.
Areas of cooperation
Despite the challenge posed by the Ukraine crisis, the India-U.K. relationship has been on an upward trajectory, exemplified by the conclusion of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership on May 4, 2021. The agreement also established a 2030 Roadmap for India-U.K. relations, which primarily outlines the partnership plans for the bilateral relationship. During her visit to New Delhi, Ms. Truss emphasised countering Russian aggression and reducing global strategic dependence on Moscow by underlining the importance of democracies working cohesively to deter aggressors. Furthermore, she highlighted the importance of developing deeper ties between Britain and India in the Indo-Pacific which would not only result in job creation, but also foster security in the region. She also furthered talks on defence-related trade and deepening cyber security and defence cooperation between the two countries. A new joint cyber security programme is set to be announced, which aims to protect online infrastructure in India and the U.K. as both parties attempt to carry out joint exercises to combat threats from cyber criminals and ransomware. India and the U.K. also plan to hold the first Strategic Tech Dialogue, a ministerial-level summit on emerging technologies.
Additionally, the U.K. and India have agreed to strengthen their cooperation in the maritime domain as the U.K. will join India’s Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative and become a major partner on maritime security issues in Southeast Asia. In 2021,HMS Queen Elizabethand the Carrier Strike Group took part in a military exercise with the Indian Navy in the Bay of Bengal before proceeding to exercise with the navies of Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. India is a key strategic partner for the U.K. in the Indo-Pacific both in terms of market share and defence, as was underscored by the signing of the Defence and International Security Partnership between India and the U.K. in 2015. The U.K. is a regional power in the Indo-Pacific as it possesses naval facilities in Oman, Singapore, Bahrain, Kenya, and British Indian Ocean Territory.
The U.K. has also confirmed £70 million of British International Investment funding to support the usage of renewable energy in India, which will help in building renewable energy infrastructure and developing solar power in the region. In January, India and the U.K. managed to conclude the first round of talks for an India–U.K. Free Trade Agreement. The negotiations reflected shared ambitions to secure a comprehensive deal between the fifth and sixth largest economies in the world as technical experts from both sides covered over 32 sessions encompassing 26 policy areas. The first round of negotiations laid the groundwork for subsequent rounds which were held in March 2022. India and the U.K. are expected to meet this month in New Delhi with the expected possibility of signing an early harvest deal. New Delhi has sought easy market access for Indian fisheries, pharma, and agricultural products besides duty concession for labour-intensive exports. For Britain, a successful conclusion of an FTA with India would provide a boost to its ‘Global Britain’ ambitions as the U.K. has sought to expand its markets beyond Europe since Brexit. Britain has been trying to seize opportunities in the growing economies of the Indo-Pacific to cement its place on the global stage as a serious global actor.
New areas of cooperation
Amid a renewed optimism about the trajectory of the India-U.K. relationship, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to visit India at the end of April. Mr. Johnson and Prime Minister Narendra Modi last met on the sidelines of the COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021 where both leaders focused on the India–U.K. Climate Partnership. During his visit, negotiations on the FTA are expected to gain further impetus as the 2030 Roadmap aims to double bilateral trade between India and the U.K. by 2030.
Both India and the U.K. are serious in overcoming legacy issues and engaging in robust dialogues to promote cooperation on strategic and defence issues both in the Indo-Pacific as well as at the global level. The newer areas of cooperation — namely, fintech, market regulation, sustainable and green finance, and cyber security — have emerged as the new frontiers of this engagement. The notable success of the collaboration with Oxford-Astra Zeneca and the Serum Institute of India in producing Covishield vaccines in India has been just one of many instances of potential successful cooperation. The forthcoming visit of Mr. Johnson to New Delhi signifies the importance of India’s role in the dynamically changing global order as New Delhi prepares itself to host multiple foreign leaders in the upcoming months and the G20 presidency in 2023.
A unique moment
As India seeks to carve out a new role for itself in the evolving global order as a ‘leading power’ and the U.K. recalibrates its strategic outlook post-Brexit, this is a unique moment in India-U.K. ties. The top leadership in the two nations remain committed to building a lasting partnership and in the process, older issues like Pakistan have become marginal in the bilateral discourse. New geopolitical realities demand a new strategic vision from London and New Delhi. It is time to seize the moment and to lay the foundations of a partnership that can respond adequately to the challenges of the 21st century.
Harsh V. Pant is Vice President for Studies at Observer Research Foundation (ORF), New Delhi, and professor of International Relations at King’s College London; Rahul Kamath is a Research Assistant at ORF
Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are critical for achieving the overall objectives of economic development. The sector is a significant contributor in terms of industrial output, employment generation, and the share in gross domestic product and export. But despite many initiatives by governments since Independence, the sector has been facing challenges in its quest for survival and growth. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the vulnerability of the MSME sector. During the pandemic, this sector was among the worst hit on account of the demand and supply shocks caused and the measures taken later to curb the spread of infection. The sector is still struggling to survive and recover from the pandemic-induced shocks.
The pandemic’s deep impact
Let us focus on the impact of COVID-19 on MSMEs. A recent study (by the writers) — as a primary survey of 225 small firms located in the National Capital Region (NCR) and Uttarakhand — observed that the turnover of around 90% of small firms had declined in FY2020-21. Around 53% of firms faced more than a 50% decline in their turnover. Around 29% of firms reported a collapse of their businesses. Around 53% observed a decrease in demand while around 36% faced erratic supply of raw materials.
The main reasons for a fall in turnover included restriction/s on economic activities and mobilities; decrease in demand; shortage of raw materials; restriction on trade; slow recovery of markets; payment delays and labour shortage, among others. These firms faced a 25% reduction in their employment particularly in the informal workers’ segment that stood at around 47%. Major challenges faced by firms in their revival included delayed payment issues; reduced demand; a lack of financial resources; supply chain disruptions; increased cost of production; lack of skilled workers and, most importantly, business uncertainties.
Although most of the firms were aware about the initiatives under the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ package, only half of them found it to be of any help. Given the lack of demand and business uncertainties, firms did not find it rational to avail of financial assistance available under the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ package. A majority of firms suggested that the Government should have been more focused on creating a revival of demand for products and services.
Lessons for resilience
Nevertheless, not all firms have suffered due to the pandemic-induced recession. Around 10% of firms under the study had either a rise in their turnover or reported no change. The key sectors these firms operated in included human health activities; manufacture of pharmaceuticals, medicinal, chemical and botanical products; food and beverage service activities; and manufacture of apparels, etc. The owners of these firms also reported that they tried to quickly adapt to the use of e-commerce platforms and even switched to other business activities that had demand — i.e., production of masks, sanitizers, home delivery of products, etc. They exploited the opportunity using their own savings to invest in the areas that offered new opportunities. This highlights that a firm’s resilience depends upon its financial resources and ability to invest in new technologies or new business opportunities. The firms that suffered, unlike the large firms, lacked financial planning for business uncertainties in order to overcome vulnerable shocks.
Planning ahead
COVID-19 is neither the first pandemic nor it is going to be the last. Even during the first two decades of this century, the world went through some other pandemics, viz. SARS in 2002-04, H1N1 influenza in 2009/Swine flu influenza in 2009, MERS in 2012 and the Zika virus in 2015-16. COVID-19 has been the worst among them. Apart from the pandemic, there were also other factors such as a sudden change in government policies, wars, and natural catastrophes such as floods and drought, etc. which caused business uncertainties and affected small businesses. Further, the bulk of MSMEs are in the informal sector which lack registration and the necessary financial documents to avail such benefits. These firms are at great risk of shutting down after a large-scale disaster or economic shock. Therefore, there is a need to develop a mechanism for MSMEs which should help rescue them from shutting down and support their revival during business uncertainties caused by economic shocks.
In order to make the MSME sector resilient we propose the provision of emergency funds for small businesses that should be made mandatory from the beginning. Similar to the public provident fund, the Government can initiate what is called an ‘Uncertainty Corpus Fund for Small Businesses’. This fund can be used to meet the financial needs of small firms during business uncertainties. It may be linked with the turnover of firms — a firm could maintain a certain fraction of its turnover to meet the needs of this fund. Although it would be a ‘forced saving’ it would still be very useful for MSMEs during business uncertainties caused by economic shocks. The Government should encourage small firms by assuring them a lucrative return on the investment through this fund. Further, the Government may also contribute to the corpus fund as a fraction of the contribution of MSMEs for firms up to a certain limit of turnover.
Another measure can be the ‘Small Business Insurance Scheme’ which can be similar to term insurance. There are lessons to be learnt from the crop insurance scheme. As there are more than 6.4 million MSMEs in the country, there is huge market potential for the insurance sector, if such a scheme is framed properly. In order to encourage firms to invest in such an insurance scheme, the Government may pay an initial premium or a fraction of the premium on behalf of such enterprises particularly micro enterprises and own account enterprises.
Gaps in the Budget
Although Budget 2022-23 seeks to lay a foundation and a blueprint to steer the economy over the (Amrit Kaal ) next 25 years, it has failed to bring in any plan/ideas that makes the MSME sector resilient. The proposed financial measures suggested above, namely, an ‘Uncertainty Corpus Fund for Small Businesses’, and ‘Small Business Insurance Scheme’, can help MSMEs become resilient and sustain their growth during business uncertainties caused by economic shocks. It could enable small firms to meet their working capital requirements, in particular retaining their workforce, and investing in new technology or new business opportunities to cope with uncertainties. In terms of planning, MSMEs can be on a par with large firms. It would boost the confidence of small firms during normal business times and make them more competitive by giving them a sense of security in times of an abnormal business cycle. It would also be of great help to the Government in a time of crisis as the Government can focus on addressing demand issues which is one of the biggest challenges faced by an economy during a shock.
Akhilesh K. Sharma is faculty at the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi.
Sushil K. Rai is faculty at the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun. The views expressed are personal
Over the last few decades in India, there has been a massive government drive to push for universal enrolment, extending to secondary as well as primary school children. Successive Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER) have shown that this drive has been largely successful for both age groups, with high enrolment rates even during the pandemic. Despite two years of COVID-related school closures, the increase in unenrolled 11–14-year-olds has been marginal, while the number of out-of-school 15–16-year-olds has actually fallen, for both boys and girls. This indicates that schools have been able to retain children beyond primary school. This is remarkable, because children are now enrolled beyond the age of compulsory education, and enrolment rates show almost no gender disparity. But enrolment is only one piece of the puzzle.
Absence of formal learning
Although efforts have been made by parents, teachers and governments, learning at home through online education during the pandemic has been far from successful for these children. ASER 2020 and 2021 brought to light a dismal picture of access to technology-based learning resources. Even though over 70% of children in Classes IX to XII had a smartphone at home, only about 35% of them could use it for studies at all times, while 17% could not use it at all. In the absence of formal schooling, family members often assumed the task of teaching. The ASER reports show adolescents did not fare well — older children received less learning support as compared to younger ones.
Additionally, some children — especially older girls — faced competing demands due to financial stress and increased requirement of care work at home. Even in 2017, ASER had reported that almost 90% of female youth aged 14-18 did housework on a daily basis, compared to three-fourth of male youth. According to the Building Back Better report by UNICEF, school closures exacerbated girls’ and women’s unpaid care work, limiting the time available to learn at home. During COVID-19, girls might have had to replace the work done by the missing caregiver, or simply because of gendered expectations. ASER 2021 data hints at the same. When asked if any child in the household above 12 years of age had started helping out more with household chores since the lockdown, almost two thirds of the respondents reported in the affirmative. In all age categories, girls were more likely than boys to be taking on this additional burden. For example, about three quarters of 15-year-old girls had started helping out more with chores since the lockdown, a figure which was more than 10 percentage points higher than 15-year-old boys.
Gender disparity
Gender disparity at home may have been aggravated in the pandemic, but it is not new. ASER 2017 had found that 14–18-year-old youth’s aspirations were gendered, with most male youth mentioning ‘Army/Police’ and ‘Engineer’, while female youth preferred ‘Teacher’ and ‘Doctor/Nurse’ as their occupation. The kind of work children did during lockdowns shows that they are exposed to gendered expectations from a young age. A study using ASER, India Human Development Survey and National Family Health Survey data suggests that long before the pandemic, gender disparity had started spilling over into learning outcomes too. The study found that female disadvantage persists in mathematics learning outcomes over the last decade, and shows no signs of disappearing. The study correlates this finding with “regressive household practices” that limit the autonomy of women (such as veiling of the face by women, and the practice of women eating after men), and finds that female disadvantage in mathematics learning is higher where there is higher prevalence of such practices.
All of this points to an eminent need to integrate gender sensitisation modules into curricula for adolescents’ education. School-based gender sensitisation programmes can play a transformative role in ensuring that all children get an equitable environment to grow. For example, an attitude change programme in Haryana run by Breakthrough and evaluated by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) showed promising results, with participants exhibiting gender-equitable behaviours even two years after the programme ended. It was centred around interactive classroom discussions about gender equality in secondary schools. Scaling up such programmes for all schools and States could help bring about more gender-progressive views among communities.
With schools reopening, a gender-equitable environment for their growth should be prioritised. As the world begins to recover from the effects of the pandemic, this is an opportunity to rebuild better — one which should not be missed.
Disha Trivedi is a research associate at ASER Centre
Twenty-five years ago, in Tiruvarur, the then Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK president M. Karunanidhi was asked by a journalist why he was not aspiring for the post of Prime Minister. He replied: “I know my limitations.” The question was raised against the backdrop of a serious bid made by the founder of the Tamil Maanila Congress (Moopanar), G.K. Moopanar, to become Prime Minister following the resignation of H.D. Deve Gowda as the head of the United Front regime. Today, concerted efforts are on to project Karunanidhi’s son and Chief Minister M. K. Stalin as a prime ministerial candidate.
In the last couple of months, many events can be cited as attempts at promoting Mr. Stalin to the national scene. In early February, the Chief Minister wrote to leaders of almost three dozen parties across the country, asking them to nominate their representatives to the All India Federation of Social Justice. Later that month, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, and former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah came to Chennai to participate in the launch of the first volume of Mr. Stalin’s autobiography,Ungalil Oruvan(One Among You). A month later, in New Delhi, leaders of various non-BJP Opposition parties came together during the inauguration of the DMK’s office. Mr. Stalin’s condemnation of Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s observations on the Hindi language issue and his participation at a seminar held last week during the CPI(M)’s party congress in Kannur were also viewed as part of his march towards national politics.
It is rather uncommon for a leader of Tamil Nadu to get national prominence. Other than Moopanar, Congress leader K. Kamaraj and AIADMK leader J. Jayalalithaa were talked about as prime ministerial material. While Kamaraj was content playing the role of ‘kingmaker’ in 1964 and 1966, Jayalalithaa, despite her turning the 2014 Lok Sabha elections into a ‘Lady versus Modi’ fight, and her party bagging 37 seats out of 39 in Tamil Nadu, did not make it.
In the last three years, Mr. Stalin has tasted success twice as a leader of a coalition. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when he proposed the name of Mr. Gandhi for the post of Prime Minister, the DMK-led front captured 39 constituencies, including one in Puducherry. Two years later, it got a two-thirds majority in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. After capturing power in the State, Mr. Stalin has continued to criticise the BJP on a host of issues. In the last 11 months, he has been particularly highlighting the importance of social justice, greater autonomy for the States and the Dravidian model of governance. Perhaps conscious of the criticism that Dravidian majors do not seek industrial investment in the way parties in other States do, Mr. Stalin has shown keenness in attracting investments in a big way. His visit to the UAE is the most recent indication of this. After he became Chief Minister in May 2021, the State government signed 131 MoUs involving an investment of Rs. 69,375 crore. Mr. Stalin also announced that the State would hold the next Global Investors’ Meet by 2023 end, the previous two editions of which were held during the AIADMK regime. There are signs of his government willing to bite the bullet in economy-related matters, even as Mr. Stalin has been keeping all his political allies together. Though it is too early to talk about the compositions of political formations for the 2024 general polls, Mr. Stalin, according to DMK MP R.S. Bharathi, wants to consolidate all the Opposition parties to defeat the BJP. Regardless of the outcome of the efforts to promote Mr. Stalin as the next Prime Minister, what is certain is that interesting times are ahead.
ramakrishnan.t@thehindu.co.in
As India sees a steady slump in its daily coronavirus count, the Centre has announced opening up the third, or ‘precautionary doses’, to everyone over 18 years. The restriction is that these doses must be the same as the ones administered earlier and there must be at least a nine-month gap following the second dose, implying that Covishield and Covaxin will comprise almost all of the demand. The experience of the past two years from around the world has shown that the third dose has only a little additional benefit over two doses in preventing an infection because of the constantly mutating character of the virus. But, because it helps keep antibody levels boosted, they are useful in protecting against a severe infection. A major aspect of vaccines is the risk of adverse events following vaccination, and previous experience has suggested that certain vaccines may induce a higher risk of blood clots in younger populations. While these instances are extremely limited, they become particularly relevant in India given the size of the population and that a large number of people — young and old — have already been exposed to the virus. Normally, a technical committee of experts, such as the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI), weighs the evidence before recommending an approved vaccine for roll-out but this practice has been effectively eschewed in the context of booster doses, as well as earlier decisions to inoculate those below 15.
The pandemic is far from over and reports from several other countries suggest that no country can consider itself immune from emerging variants. With schools reopened, mask mandates made voluntary and restrictions on international travel lifted in India, it is reasonable for the Centre to anticipate a future wave led by a more transmissible variant — reports of the highly infectious XE variant have already surfaced here — and, therefore, take steps to buffer against it. However, there is no public information on whether studies have been done to establish if administering a different vaccine as a third dose is better at boosting antibodies than repeating a vaccine. This ideally ought to have been a major area of research for the Centre. Another aspect that bears a closer look is progress on vaccines other than Covaxin and Covishield. The Serum Institute of India appears to be gearing up for large volumes of, not Covishield, but Covavax. Covaxin, following the World Health Organization’s recommendation to pause exports pending an upgrade of its production facilities, is also unlikely to see fresh stocks any time soon. Both vaccines in fact will be available at discounted rates in private facilities. Demand is currently lacklustre but were it to spike, will supply be adequate? The Centre needs to be more transparent about the rationale guiding its vaccine policy.
After a week’s delay, and twists and turns, Shehbaz Sharif has been voted in as Pakistan’s new Prime Minister at the National Assembly. Mr. Sharif, who won a majority of 174 votes in the 342-seat Assembly, has been made to wait for days due to the attempts by Prime Minister Imran Khan — now ousted — to abrogate the No-Confidence Motion (NCM) process. While Mr. Sharif and the Opposition led by the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and the Pakistan People’s Party, submitted a no-confidence motion on March 8, the debate was only scheduled on April 3 by Asad Qaiser, the National Assembly Speaker from Mr. Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party. In the Assembly, Mr. Qaisar’s deputy rejected the NCM over allegations of a “foreign conspiracy”, which was followed by Mr. Khan resigning, asking the President to dissolve the Assembly and calling for elections. The Supreme Court stepped in to end the cascading crises, and reversed the Speaker’s actions. Even when the Assembly was reconvened on April 9 under strict orders from the Court, the Speaker allowed a debate on the “foreign conspiracy” angle to drag on for hours, before the vote to oust Mr. Khan was finally allowed just short of midnight on Saturday. The ruling PTI seemed unwilling to give up power, and even proposed its own candidate, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, before resigning from the Assembly en masse before Mr. Sharif was elected. Mr. Khan, who continues to allege his ouster was the outcome of an “international regime-change conspiracy”, has vowed to now take his battle “to the people”, and is likely to spend the rest of the Assembly’s tenure, due to end in August 2023, in a political campaign against Mr. Sharif.
Mr. Khan’s defeat marks the first time a confidence vote has gone against a sitting Pakistani Prime Minister. However, the ouster of a PM mid-tenure is not new in a country that has often seen the military establishment prevail over any PM who challenges its power. In this case, the Army took no overt action, but it is clear that the strain between Islamabad and Rawalpindi was an important factor once the Opposition decided to push Mr. Khan out. The PTI’s dangerous flirtation with religious fundamentalism did not help Mr. Khan. Nor could he rely on his rabble-rousing street protests to save him, especially after he was unable to prove charges that his opponents acted as “agents of the US” in both the Assembly and in Court. There are lessons for Pakistan’s neighbourhood as well from the outcome of Mr. Khan’s brand of politics: polarising the polity, an unwillingness to work by consensus, and blaming external forces for domestic problems are the hallmarks of autocrats, not democrats, who need to offer their people something more substantial than demagoguery in the long run.
Houston, April 11: Apollo-16 might have been designed to keep the scientists happy. It has got experiments and tests for just about every scientific discipline. During the mission, which is scheduled for launch on Sunday, scientific experiments will be performed on the lunar surface in orbit of the moon and on the way to the moon. In addition, there will be a science satellite left in the lunar orbit, an atomic powered science station left on the moon’s surface and a biology experiment performed on the way back to earth. Apollo-16’s two spacecraft will carry 1021.5 kg. of scientific equipment. The lunar module will land about 540 kg. of science gear on the moon, more than twice the amount used on the first moon landing almost three years ago. Its astronauts John Young and Charles Duke Jr. will collect about 87.75 kg. of moon samples, almost as much as the total collected during the first three moon landings combined. Generally, the scientific activities on the moon mission can be divided into three categories: in lunar surface, and those performed by a science station left on the moon.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s suggestion, made at a meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee on Thursday, that people of different states should communicate with each other in Hindi, not English, threatens to stoke an old fault line. The debate over India’s official language has an acrimonious history, it triggered violent protests in the 1960s. The language war was finally settled in favour of accommodation of different languages as against the dominance of Hindi. There is no good reason to disturb the settlement that was arrived at after a tortuous process, one that has proved to be successful in a country that speaks in many tongues.
Several states in the country’s south are especially sensitive to the language debate because they were founded on the bedrock of linguistic subnationalism after intense and prolonged campaigns. Over the years, many have made significant strides towards making the local language the medium of official communication and governance. While some in these states understand Hindi — Bollywood has played a key role in popularising the language across the country — it is also true that it remains a not-so-familiar tongue, arguably even more than English, for large sections of the population. English is the preferred language of communication of these states with the Centre and with Hindi-speaking states, while the local administration conducts its business in the regional language. In his speech, Shah pointed to the seriousness with which the Centre may be pushing the case for Hindi: Nearly 70 per cent of the Cabinet agenda is now prepared in Hindi; 22,000 Hindi teachers have been recruited in the eight states of the Northeast, which have agreed to make Hindi compulsory up to Class X; nine tribal communities of the Northeast have adopted Devanagari script for their dialects.
Shah has been testing this ground for some time now. In 2019, he had spoken about “one nation, one language”. This slogan and approach is part of a vision of India that favours the imposition of a single language over the country’s diverse linguistic cultures. The Constitution envisages a Union of states working within a federal framework. Many of the states are home to subnationalisms imagined around a regional language, a fact the All India Congress Committee leading the freedom movement recognised at its Nagpur session in 1920. Most of these languages are older than Hindi and carry memories of protest. The Home Minister should let sleeping fault lines lie.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on April 12, 2022 under the title ‘Diversity in unity’.
It is likely that most viewers of Hindi-language entertainment will best remember Shivkumar Subramaniam, who died on Sunday, for the small but impactful roles he played on the big and small screen: As the stern father of the bride Shiv Swaminathan in 2 States (2014); the crooked cop Lobo in Kaminey (2009), the dementia-afflicted old man in Tu Hai Mera Sunday (2016) and the egotistic tycoon I M Virani in the TV show, Mukti Bandhan. However, among industry colleagues and cinema devotees, Subramaniam was loved and respected as much — if not more — for his work as the writer of some of recent Hindi cinema’s finest films.
The first of these was the 1989 sleeper hit Parinda, a gritty crime drama set in Mumbai’s underworld. The film was meant to be director Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s shot at mainstream success: It ended up also winning plaudits for the realism and emotional heft of the writing, becoming the template that subsequent classics of the genre, such as Ram Gopal Verma’s Satya, followed, and winning Subramaniam a Filmfare Award for Best Screenplay. He revisited the textures and tones of the criminal underworld – once again to much critical acclaim – in the 1996 thriller Is Raat Ki Subah Nahi, directed by Sudhir Mishra. Subramaniam’s second Filmfare Award — this time for Best Story — came for the 2005 film Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, which was widely recognised as one of the best-crafted political dramas in recent Hindi cinema.
That these seminal works form part of a short list of writing credits — including for story, screenplay and dialogue — says much about the finesse with which he wielded his pen. Subramaniam was a gifted actor, deploying his deep voice and authoritative screen presence to great effect even in the briefest of roles. But his most indelible contributions are the cinematic gems that he helped write and bring to life.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on April 12, 2022 under the title ‘Writing the image’.
From April 10, all adults who received the second dose of the Covid vaccine nine months ago have become eligible for a “precautionary” third shot. This is a step in the right direction. Though the SARS-CoV-2 virus is at its lowest ebb in the country, a number of states have relaxed safety measures and economic activity in most sectors is back to pre-Covid levels, the urgency to shield people more securely against the pathogen is far from over. A substantial body of literature and evidence from several countries attest to the efficacy of the third dose in boosting immunity against the contagion and preventing serious infection. A number of studies have also shown that the antibodies produced by the first two doses wane over a period of time. While the jury is out on whether a booster dose would confer lifelong protection against emerging variants, there is little doubt that such doses constitute a significant public health response against the virus. The latest extension of the country’s vaccination drive is, therefore, backed by sound science. An important question, however, remains: Has the government adopted the most potent strategy to take the precautionary dose to all sections of the eligible population?
Both government hospitals and private healthcare facilities were involved when the government launched the precautionary vaccination drive in January, for frontline workers, healthcare professionals and people above 60. But the people eligible for the shots after the government’s latest announcement will have to pay to get the jabs from a private hospital. This may not be a wise move for more than one reason. Since the private sector has a limited presence in the healthcare sector in large parts of rural India, the shots will be out of reach for a substantial section of the population. The third shot is, no doubt, priced much lower than the first two doses. However, initial reports suggest that the government does not seem to have worked out the economics to the satisfaction of all players in the vaccine supply chain. Private hospitals with unused stocks of Covaxin and Covishield have, for instance, expressed reluctance to administer the shots at the price fixed by the government – they had procured the vaccines at higher rates. The manufacturers of both vaccines have assured that they will compensate the hospitals for the price differential for the existing stocks. But by all accounts, the confusion does not seem to be over.
At least five homegrown or indigenously manufactured vaccines for adults have received the country’s drug regulator’s approval. Second generation vaccines such as Corbevax and Covovax have shown promise in clinical trials. However, they have not become part of the vaccination project largely because the mix-and-match approach — favoured by experts in several parts of the world — has not received much traction amongst the country’s policymakers. With the precautionary dose project still in infancy, the chance to use these potentially more effective vaccines must not be lost.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on April 12, 2022 under the title ‘The third shot’.
Historically, there was no way Homo sapiens could have survived without meat. Not that they were aware of the need for proteins or the presence of these in meat, but apart from meat there was hardly anything available for sustenance. If at all they depended on any vegetation and/or fruits and berries that was available, then it was only as a supplement to the meat which dominated their diet.
Domestication of animals occurred very early in human history and nomadism, which was the norm then, was in no way a constraint in “carrying” animals wherever people went. Domestication of plants, which gradually led to cultivation and a “settled” form of life, happened relatively late. In cultivation, there was no guarantee that a particular crop will last till harvest time and yield the required food. There might be drought, floods, or pests that could render the entire task of cultivation a futile exercise (Even today there is no assured return from a crop in all places and in all contexts). Given that early humans did not depend on any organic or chemical fertilisers, cultivation was a highly uncertain indulgence; and after 90 to 120 days or more, the returns could, at best, be meagre or nothing at all. On the other hand, animal food was available in plenty and the person-hours spent in hunting, unlike in cultivation, were negligible considering how much meat could be obtained.
So, why would an individual or group of people spend long hours in cultivation and give up an easier way of life that provided plenty of food in the form of meat? Besides, with cultivation, humans became dependent on the whims of Mother Nature, which invariably made the vagaries of the weather descend on them. It is also significant that, universally, cave and rock paintings were made between 40,000 and 14,000 years ago, during the Upper Palaeolithic period. The domestication of plants happened only around 12,000 years ago. This suggests that before humans became cultivators, they had ample time on their hands to indulge in art, which is a leisure time activity, and remains so in the contemporary contexts too.
However, humans did go in for cultivation and settled life, and one of the necessary but not sufficient reasons could be the depletion of animal food. Yet, all through history, irrespective of the yield from cultivation, animal food has never been given up. When enough non-meat food was available, a few people either gave up meat or ate it sporadically, leading to the emergence of the term “vegetarian”, although there remained a humongous section that ate what by then had evolved as normalised food, that is, meat. For no apparent or logical reason, the vegetarians eventually bestowed the epithet “non-vegetarian”, with all its negative connotations, on the majority which had simply continued to do what it had been doing throughout human history: Eat meat.
Take any part of the world and it is evident that the population of vegetarians has always been in a minority, if not minuscule in scale. In spite of the widespread belief that Indians are primarily vegetarian (and hence “non-violent”, as is often argued by some sections), the truth is the reverse. A majority is, in fact, predominantly meat-eating: As per the 4th National Family Health Survey, 70 per cent of women and 78 per cent of men in India consume some form of meat. That, in plain terms, means that a majority of Hindus are not vegetarians.
Given the above, why have there been frequent squabbles and skirmishes revolving around and involving meat in India, particularly since 2014? Most recently, a section of students allegedly attempted to stop the serving of meat at the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Kaveri hostel mess. As per reports, the police has registered an FIR against “several unidentified students affiliated with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) a day after multiple students were injured after violence broke out on the JNU campus”.
Is it the meat per se which generates such anger? Not by any stretch, as much of the ire that is directed against meat-eating seems to be aimed mostly against Muslims, although Dalits, Christians, and almost all the tribal communities, along with a host of other communities consume meat in India. In the politics of meat, the Muslim identity is reduced to a singular facet, that of meat-eating.
These disturbing happenings (including lynchings) have consistently had a highly negative impact on the very fabric of multiculturalism and secularism in the country. They are obstacles on the path of pluralism which should be the goal of any democratic and progressive country.
Incidentally, almost nowhere else in the world do people ask you if you are a “non-vegetarian”. The usual question is whether one is a vegetarian or — the fast-growing sobriquet — vegan. This is because everywhere those who have given up eating meat are called vegetarians, while the rest are just eating normal food.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 12, 2022 under the title ‘Truth about vegetarianism’. The writer, a social anthropologist, is Visiting Professor, Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad. Views are personal
The first bi-monthly meeting of the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) for the current financial year reaffirmed its focus on inflation management. While the MPC voted to keep the policy rate unchanged at 4 per cent and retained its accommodative stance, the wording was changed to “remain accommodative while focusing on withdrawal of accommodation to ensure that inflation remains within the target going forward, while supporting growth.” This statement sets the stage for a shift to a neutral stance in the next meeting and policy rate hikes in subsequent meetings. RBI has announced the withdrawal of some of the steps taken during the pandemic to support the economy. These will foster the normalisation of monetary policy.
The central bank has acknowledged that the disruptions caused by the Russia-Ukraine crisis have upended their growth and inflation outlook. It has steeply revised its inflation projection from 4.5 per cent earlier to 5.7 per cent now for the current financial year. The projection is based on an average global crude oil price of $100 per barrel. While oil prices could swing either way, elevated non-fuel prices pose a substantial upside risk to inflation. The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) Food Price Index, a gauge of global food prices, posted a record growth of 12.6 per cent from February. The surge in the index was broad-based, driven by a rise in prices of vegetable oils, cereals, meat, sugar and dairy products. Input cost pressures emerging from a broad-based surge in prices of industrial raw materials and supply chain disruptions are also likely to pose a sustained upward pressure on inflation.
During the last monetary policy announcement, there were concerns that the RBI was falling behind the curve in managing inflation at a time when globally many central banks including the US Federal Reserve, and the Bank of England have started raising rates and signalling aggressive rate hikes and are reducing their balance-sheet to normalise monetary policy and tame inflation.
While the RBI has been managing liquidity infused into the system during the pandemic through the Variable Rate Reverse Repo Auctions (VRRR) to withdraw liquidity and Variable Rate Repo auctions to inject liquidity, it has now formalised the Liquidity Adjustment Framework (LAF). The LAF is a framework to absorb and inject liquidity into the banking system.
The RBI has introduced the Standing Deposit Facility (SDF) as the lower bound of the LAF corridor to absorb liquidity. The idea of the SDF was first mooted by the Urjit Patel Committee report on the monetary policy framework. The RBI Act was amended through the Finance Act of 2018 to allow RBI to use this instrument.
The SDF will be a facility available to banks to park their funds. The SDF will serve as the standing liquidity absorption facility at the lower end of the LAF corridor. At the upper end of the corridor is the Marginal Standing Facility (MSF) to inject liquidity. With the introduction of the SDF, the fixed rate reverse repo rate seems to be defunct. Through the SDF, the RBI can absorb liquidity without placing government securities as collateral, hence it will give greater flexibility to the central bank.
The LAF is now a symmetric corridor with a width of 50 basis points. The policy repo rate is at the centre of the corridor, with the MSF 25 basis points above the policy rate and the SDF 25 basis points below the policy rate.
The change also marks a shift away from reverse repo being the effective policy rate. During the pandemic, the reverse repo rate was reduced to incentivise banks to park lesser funds with the RBI and lend more. This led to the breakdown of the symmetric LAF corridor. With the introduction of the SDF, the RBI has reverted to a symmetric liquidity management corridor.
While on the face of it, there are no rate hikes, the shift from the reverse repo rate to the SDF signals a tightening of monetary policy. There is a 40 basis points increase in the floor rate. It may be argued that the RBI has been absorbing liquidity through variable reverse repo auctions where the cut-off rates are closer to 4 per cent. In the medium run, the call money rate would move towards the new LAF corridor, thus bringing orderly conditions in the money market.
During most of February and March, yields on government bonds were range-bound as a number of auctions were cancelled. But since the announcement of the half-yearly borrowing programme, yields have been inching up. The government is expected to borrow Rs 8.45 trillion in the first half of the current financial year. While there were no explicit announcements to cool the yields, through measures like G-SAP, Operation Twist and Open Market Operations (OMOs), the RBI raised the limit under the held-to maturity category for banks from 22 per cent to 23 per cent. This move will insulate banks to a certain extent from mark-to-market losses as yields inch up. It will likely ensure demand for government bonds by banks.
As RBI begins to normalise liquidity in a calibrated manner, its ability to manage bond yields will likely be limited. Yields on bonds are likely to inch up and remain above the 7 per cent mark. Going forward, the trade-off between managing inflation and the borrowing programme of the government will become challenging. For now the RBI has rightly decided to place top priority on inflation management. This will help in maintaining the credibility of the inflation targeting framework.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 12, 2022 under the title ‘Shifting to neutral’. The writer is Senior Fellow, NIPFP. Views are personal.
The IPCC’s latest report shows how smart urban planning can mitigate the effects of climate change. The Union budget 2022 had announced the formation of a high-level committee of planners, economists and institutions to make recommendations on urban sector policies. The finance minister said that by the time India turns 100, nearly half the population will be living in urban areas, making it imperative to not only nurture India’s mega cities but also facilitate tier-2 and tier-3 cities to gear up for the future.
India is witnessing one of the largest urban growth spurts in history. However, three-quarters of the infrastructure that will exist in cities by 2050 is yet to be built. This presents Indian cities with an unprecedented opportunity to look at urban planning and development through a long-term strategic lens to enable economic, environment and social impact.
Urban infrastructure development results in high economic value-add but often leads to unequal and inequitable growth. As a developing economy, negative externalities such as air and water pollution, climate change, flooding, and extreme heat events also impinge on the economic value of urban infrastructure. Research has shown if cities are developed as compact and climate-resilient centres, then infrastructure investments can produce more economic gain over time with minimal climate impact whilst ensuring equitable growth.
Town and country planning acts in India have largely remained unchanged over the past 50 years, relying on techniques set up by the British. Cities still create land use and regulatory control-based master plans which, on their own, are ineffective in planning and managing cities. Despite the many changes brought about by modernisation, the focus of planning continues to be the strict division of the city into various homogeneous zones such as residential, commercial and industrial. This is done to prevent mixing of incompatible uses and to avoid economic and social integration — a relic of the industrial age when manufacturing and trade were the primary economic activities in cities.
India’s hierarchical system of cities — from mega cities which are the drivers of innovation and economic growth to smaller towns which support local and regional economies and ensure linkages to the rural hinterlands — requires targeted economic development planning and positive climate action.
Master plans face prolonged delays in preparation, sanctioning and implementation. They lack the mandate for integration with other sectoral infrastructure plans which largely remain as wishlists. Inter-agency negotiations remain out of the scope of the master planning process. They tend to take a static, broad-brush approach to cities that have dynamic fine-grained structures and local specificities. In most cases, they end up having a low implementation rate. Globally, cities are moving to the practice of developing strategic plans and projects along with local area plans.
A set of strategic projects that have the potential to trigger growth in the region, to achieve the vision, are identified through a negotiated process. The projects are designed and developed in the context of land that can be made available and capital resources that can be raised. Indian cities should transition to using master plans for developing a shared vision and stating desired long-term outcomes as a regulatory control tool. Strategic plans should be developed every five years to increase a city’s competitiveness and help it achieve its strategic goals with respect to sustainability and economic development by identifying key projects to be implemented.
Finally, local area plans should be developed to ensure the health, safety and welfare of citizens through public participation, contextualising local challenges, needs and ambitions, while supporting the overall objectives of the master plan. Cities should also aim to mainstream the use of spatialised social, economic and environmental data to create robust links across the urban- rural continuum.
Plans are about people and not just physical spaces. Building consensus around future growth and development, with a focus on climate action, economic and social integration, is crucial. Such a participatory process is what will help build a vibrant, inclusive and liveable urban India.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 12, 2022 under the title ‘Climate in the city’. The writers are with World Resources Institute (WRI) India Ross Centre. Views are personal
Earlier this month, two different estimates of poverty and inequality were published by authors affiliated to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB). They added to the existing pool of private estimates of poverty and inequality since 2011-12. Private, because the government, which used to conduct consumption expenditure surveys (CES) and update poverty lines, has abdicated its responsibility.
The last consumption survey of 2017-18 was junked for no reason. Based on the leaked estimates of consumption expenditure from that survey, S Subramanian reported an increase in poverty from 31 per cent in 2011-12 to 35 per cent in 2017-18 with the number of poor increasing by 52 million. Santosh Mehrotra and Jajati Parida reported an increase in headcount poverty from 22 per cent in 2011-12 to 26 per cent in 2019-20 using the consumption aggregates from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) with the number of poor increasing by 78 million. As against these estimates, which used different consumption aggregates from the NSO surveys, estimates from the IMF and WB have reported a significant decline in poverty after 2011-12 although they differ from each other on the level of poverty as well as the magnitude of poverty reduction since 2011-12.
The IMF working paper is authored by Surjit Bhalla, Arvind Virmani and Karan Bhasin. This paper is similar to Bhalla’s earlier work on poverty in terms of methodology with not very different conclusions. Bhalla has argued for long that CES surveys do not capture the estimates of consumption expenditure correctly and are unfit for poverty measurement. He maintains that position here as well and in fact justifies the withholding of the 2017-18 CES survey by the government. He prefers using the Private Final Consumption Expenditure (PFCE) estimates from the national accounts. The difference between survey estimates of consumption expenditure and national accounts (NA) are not unique to India.
But the PFCE estimates do not give the distribution of consumption across households which is a prerequisite for estimating poverty. These are derived aggregates and are available for the country as a whole with no separate estimate for rural/urban or states. Bhalla or anyone else is left with no choice but to use the same CES surveys they dismiss as faulty for getting consumption estimates. One implication of this is that while the consumption expenditure estimates obtained from the surveys are deemed faulty and biased, the ranking of households from the same consumption surveys is seen as free from error. While they find the 2011-12 survey to be right, they see the 2017-18 survey as faulty even though both have been done using the same sampling strategy and concepts and by the same institution.
There is nothing new in this method of updating the NSS survey estimates using estimates from the PFCE. But it has been rejected multiple times by official expert committees after careful examination of the differences between the two estimates. All committees concluded that these are essentially non-comparable because of differences in concepts, design and aggregation methodology. All committees have unanimously rejected the practice of adjusting survey estimates based on NAS estimates of PFCE. This is not the practice in India, or anywhere in the world.
Based on this flawed methodology, Bhalla concludes that India has eradicated extreme poverty even before the pandemic with the percentage of population below the $1.9 poverty line of the World Bank at only 1.4 per cent. While the levels may vary, his conclusions on the trend in poverty reduction are not very different from a completely different exercise by the World Bank. Both conclude that poverty reduction has slowed down in the last seven years of the present NDA government compared to the 10-year period of 2004-2014 of the UPA. While Bhalla reports 26 million people moving out of poverty every year during the UPA regime, this number is one third at 8.6 million for the NDA government. In terms of percentage point per annum (ppa) reduction in poverty, it is 2.5 ppa for the UPA declining to one fourth at 0.7 ppa for the current NDA.
The World Bank estimates also come to a similar conclusion with the rate of poverty reduction between 2004-11 at 2.5 ppa which declines to almost half at 1.3 ppa for 2011-18. They arrive at their figures by using estimates from the Consumer Pyramid Survey of Households (CPSH), a privately conducted survey by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). They do this by reweighing the household and population weights of the CPSH given the problems with the survey. While their methodology is also questionable, they try and adjust for the anomalies of the CPSH surveys to arrive at estimates as close as possible to the NSS surveys. Notably, they also dismiss the Bhalla methodology as one of the options.
While the broad conclusion of a sharp slowdown in poverty reduction during the present NDA government compared to the UPA period may be valid, there are differences in the level and extent of poverty reduction claimed, with some studies showing a rise in poverty. But the real issue is not just what happened to poverty and inequality but also what factors contributed to poverty reduction.
There appears to be a consensus that many of the initiatives during the UPA era, including the rural employment guarantee programme and the Food Security Act have contributed to improvement in the lives of the poor, pulling them out of poverty. Bhalla also agrees and documents the stellar role of the in-kind transfers through the subsidised food scheme under the Public Distribution System. The expansion of the PDS during the pandemic has certainly contributed to reducing the misery of the poor who suffered through a sharp slowdown of the economy and the subsequent disruption in economic activity during the pandemic. This calls for strengthening the social safety nets and expenditure on food and livelihood schemes given the challenge of economic recovery coupled with rising inflation.
But an important message is also to strengthen the statistical system and make it independent of state interference. Poverty, inequality and a deeper understanding of what works for poverty reduction is not just an academic exercise but is crucial for designing policies and programmes that work. The responsibility of anchoring policies and programmes to clearly defined goals of poverty reduction rests with the government. Given the controversy over poverty estimates, it is all the more important that the government conducts the CES at the earliest and decides the yardstick of measuring poverty which is the poverty line.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 12, 2022 under the title ‘Addressing poverty’. The writer teaches at JNU
As Pakistan goes through a major political convulsion, India must resist the temptation to see the changes across our western frontiers through the narrow prism of bilateral relations. Delhi must focus instead on the potential shifts in Pakistan’s strategic orientation triggered by the current crisis. An India that gets an accurate sense of Pakistan’s changing geopolitics will be able to better deal with Islamabad.
The unfolding battle for Pakistan is not just another internal power struggle next door. Pakistan is an important regional piece in the power play between the US, China and Russia. Given its location at the crossroads of the Subcontinent, Middle East, Eurasia, and China, Pakistan has always been a vital piece of real estate that was actively sought by contending geopolitical blocs. The internal and external have always been tightly linked in Pakistan. Today, Pakistan’s internal battles are tied to external geopolitical rivalry.
Engaging India is unlikely to be a high priority for the new government in Islamabad. Today, Pakistan has many other things to worry about — reviving its flagging economic fortunes, stabilising the Durand Line with Afghanistan, and rebalancing its ties with the major actors in the Middle East, including Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Every one of these tasks is a challenging one for Islamabad. Even more daunting is the need to reset Pakistan’s relations with the US and China at a time when Washington and Beijing are at each other’s throat. The sharpening geopolitical contest between the US and Europe on the one hand and China and Russia on the other will severely test the new rulers of Pakistan. India’s difficulties in navigating between the US and Russia in the Ukraine crisis might look rather tame in comparison.
Any Indian strategy in dealing with the new government in Islamabad would depend on an assessment of Pakistan’s post-Imran political trajectory. Two important factors stand out.
First is the changing nature of civil military relations in Pakistan. For many Indian observers of Pakistan, Imran’s ouster is a repeat of the familiar story of the army stepping in to throw out a prime minister who had become a problem. The fall of Imran Khan, however, must be seen as something more. It is part of a serious intra-elite struggle that transcends the well-known military dominance over Pakistan’s polity.
Imran Khan has certainly failed to build the “new Pakistan” that he had promised. The current episode suggests that it might not be easy to simply return to the “old Pakistan” where the army sets the ground rules and punishes those who choose to violate those rules.
One of the more interesting questions to come out of the current episode is whether the army’s famed internal coherence and unity of command might endure the crisis. The trouble between Imran Khan and the army chief, Qamar Javed Bajwa, came out in the open when the former refused to let go the ISI chief, Lt General Faiz Hameed, as part of the routine army transfers.
Although General Bajwa eventually prevailed, there was much speculation about the deepening relationship between Imran Khan and General Hameed and the apparent interest of the former in appointing the latter as the next army chief. Making any assessment more complicated are reports that Khan tried, unsuccessfully, to sack General Bajwa very late in the crisis.
That a large section of retired army officers were publicly backing Imran Khan through the crisis is not a secret. Equally true is the genuine empathy for him among the ranks of the Pakistan army. This mirrors the expansive following that Khan enjoys in the broader population. That was visible in Sunday’s massive protests against his ouster.
It is not clear if Imran Khan has the political skill and the organisational capability to turn his cult-like following into a force that can continue to challenge the establishment. But there is no doubt that he has thrown down the gauntlet. It remains to be seen if the army can handle Imran Khan’s challenge effectively and decisively in the coming days.
Second is the growing fragility of Pakistan’s polity triggered by the deepening economic crisis and sharpening social contradictions. This is not easily overcome by a celebration of constitutionalism that has prevailed last week against Imran Khan’s attempt to hold onto power. An important precondition for democratic stability in a developing society is the need for an elite consensus on the rules of political contestation and the distribution of economic benefits.
Imran Khan has broken that consensus within Pakistan’s political class on deference to the Pakistan army and has demonised his political opponents. There is no sign that Khan is about to change his ways and behave like the leader of a responsible opposition. And as the new government backed by the army seeks to stabilise the economy by turning to the IMF, the society will have to endure much pain in the near term. That in turn would open continuous political opportunities for Khan to attack the next government.
There is no guarantee that the army’s ties with new civilian rulers will be smooth nor can we assume that the civilian coalition against Imran Khan will survive the many challenges ahead as it confronts difficult policy challenges on multiple fronts.
These internal challenges are feeding into Pakistan’s geopolitics. The intra-elite confrontation in Pakistan is taking place amidst a global contest between the US and Europe on the one hand and Russia and China on the other. Pakistan, which traditionally enjoyed good relations with the West as well as China, is finding it hard to maintain a balance in its great power relations.
While the army and the new government are eager to restore ties with the US, Imran Khan has made it hard for them, by calling the new rulers “foreign imports”. By tapping into the deep reservoir of anti-American and anti-Western resentments in Pakistan, Khan has positioned himself as a true nationalist while painting the army as an American collaborator.
Imran Khan’s repeated praise for India’s independent foreign policy was in essence a critique of the Pakistan army that has long steered Islamabad’s international relations. Even in opposition, he might serve a useful purpose for China and Russia who want to prevent Pakistan from getting too close to the US.
In the past, China rarely objected to Pakistan’s relations with the US. Compare Beijing’s current anti-Quad rants with its deafening silence on Pakistan’s status as a “major non-NATO ally”. As it now locks horns with Washington, Beijing has high stakes in preventing renewed strategic warmth between the US and Pakistan. So does Russia. The potential geopolitical equations emerging out of the crisis in Pakistan are likely to be very different from the patterns so familiar to us.
The good news from Pakistan is that India is not part of the argument between the political classes or between Imran Khan and the “deep state” represented by the army. The bad news, however, is that India can’t simply stand by as the major powers seek to define the future of Pakistan. Can Delhi influence that contestation in its own favour? This is a very different question than the usual one on “how to improve ties” with Pakistan.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 12, 2022 under the title ‘The larger battle for Pakistan’. The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, Delhi and a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express
Newly elected Pakistan prime minister Shehbaz Sharif has indicated he wants good relations with India, a “just resolution” of the Kashmir issue and to focus on the country’s troubled economy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in turn, congratulated Sharif and reiterated India’s desire for peace and development in the region while highlighting that Pakistan’s support for terror groups was unacceptable.
For India, earlier attempts at negotiating with Pakistan’s civilian establishment were a failure because of the dominant role played by the Pakistan army in guiding the course of the country’s internal politics and external relations. Shehbaz’s mandate to govern is shaky, requiring support from arch-rival PPP amid mass resignations by Imran Khan’s PTI lawmakers requiring bypolls.
The frosty ties between PML(N) and the Army could also determine the course of India-Pakistan ties and the future of the new government. For the moment, Pakistan’s mounting economic troubles will certainly be top priority for Shehbaz and the Army. Whether these prerogatives will prompt Pakistan to dismantle the terror infrastructure and discontinue the proxy war remains to be seen. Given how Pakistan has received several bailouts without any discernible change in its Kashmir policy, India has good reason to remain sceptical about any dramatic breakthrough.
Also read: Who is Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s new prime minister
With Imran Khan in a mood to mobilise street agitations in his favour and PML(N)’s exiled supremo Nawaz Sharif waiting in the wings to return and the Army certain to keep the government on a tight leash, Shehbaz has a tricky road ahead. For India, the chronic instability in Pakistan politics would evoke a sense of deja vu. With Pakistan stuck in a rut of its own making, India must keep stressing on Pakistan withdrawing sponsorship for terror as a precondition for good relations.
Last week, the Biden administration issued a memorandum authorising a multipronged federal response to Long Covid – a spectrum of long-term health-damaging conditions that afflict many who recover from Covid and even those who were asymptomatic – after belatedly recognising it needed greater policy attention. In four months, the US will prepare an exhaustive public report on Long Covid, outlining federal plans to support financial and healthcare needs of patients and coordinate national research. India must also begin such an effort; there’s tremendous anecdotal evidence of many with Long Covid suffering silently in our midst.
The paucity of data shouldn’t be an excuse for ignoring the existence and struggles of these Covid survivors. From life-threatening blood clots to fatigue, breathlessness, anxiety attacks, muscular pain, “brain fog” etc, only a comprehensive national study can document the full spectrum of ailments, estimate the number of afflicted and their healthcare and financial needs, initiate sharing of medical knowhow between doctors, and kick off research projects.
Of 1.7 million people in UK (nearly 3% of entire population) who reported Long Covid symptoms last month, 45% had contracted the infection over a year ago. In UK and US these large numbers have posed worries about many incapacitated citizens leaving the worforce. In India a Max hospital tele-survey of 990 Covid positive persons found around 10% of them having Long Covid symptoms a year later. Serosurveys indicated Covid swept through the population, mostly asymptomatically. Even if 1% of India’s adult population suffers Long Covid symptoms, the numbers afflicted could be as staggeringly high as 10 million people.
Efforts like the National Clinical Registry to track clinical characteristics of Covid patients on a large scale began in September 2020 but have unfortunately not released enough data in the public domain to precisely establish India’s Long Covid challenge. The absence of such data hobbles patients from seeking medical help or creating a public discourse around their trauma and financial difficulties. Doctors are also struggling to prescribe treatments that could offer relief to patients without coordinated institutional responses. With the burden of treating live Covid infections subsiding, getting disparate medical research hospitals across India to collaborate on the Long Covid effort is GoI’s next challenge.
The Industrial Revolution which began in the 18th century was one of humanity’s most consequential events. Not only did it wholly transform every society’s economic arrangement, it also simultaneously forced changes in the way they are governed. It has, since then, largely been about finding ways to harmonise the gulf between community-centric traditions and economic arrangements which place strangers in proximity. Independent India’s pursuit of economic modernisation had to be achieved in a country of staggering diversity. Therefore the goal of governance has always been about finding ways of accommodation to pursue its economic and social vision.
The Indian Constitution is an instrument to seek modus vivendi. Its operationalisation needs even-handed governance to deal with India’s diversity. This diversity spans every conceivable aspect of human culture, beliefs, language, food, clothing etc. Neither is society monolithic, nor are even subgroups uniform. The differences between groups have always led to bouts of violence. The underlying theory which guides the entire apparatus of modern governance is about allowing different traditions to coexist while checking the tendency of any group to encroach on the rights of others. It’s this approach to governance which allows strangers to share common space in the pursuit of a living. A related benefit is the elimination of conflict.
An even-handed approach to governance has been scarce recently. Even without a legal basis, we have seen groups try to enforce their values on others. It has led to violence, spanning public spaces in cities to a university campus. The conflicts have emerged because the apparatus of governance across states has been remiss. There are no winners in this conflict. Everyone loses because economic progress cannot be realised in community islands. Moreover, given the level of diversity, once the governance apparatus lets one group encroach on the rights of another, there’s no end to it. It’s a slippery slope.
India’s states need to be alive to the fallout of ignoring governance. Without sticking to the spirit underlying the governance architecture, modus vivendi is not possible. That, in turn, will choke economic possibilities. An environment of coexistence is the only pathway to economic and social progress.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has slashed the reserve price for auction of 5G spectrum by over a third from four years ago. Yet, this is far higher than what telecom companies have sought. This raises the prospect of a recurrence of delayed rollout of the latest generation of cellular services. India was late to switch to 3G and 4G because of expensive radio frequency that forced heavily indebted telcos to slow network expansion. They also had to share their revenues with GoI, a hugely contentious issue till the portion was readjusted pragmatically. Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea have conducted trials and say they are ready to roll out 5G networks if the price of spectrum is right. It is not, by international standards, even after the Trai revision.
India is already trailing in the commercial launch of 5G services that hold out the promise of catapulting its digital economy through the Internet of Things (IoT). Low-latency, high-speed networks will carry communications between machines on a scale that dwarfs voice and data traffic among humans. The transformative capacity of this technology is immense for vast swathes of traditional economic activity. GoI will do well to draw lessons from spectrum pricing in the past when the upfront collections were offset by tax revenue forgone on account of delayed deployment of telecom infrastructure and the resultant loss of economic potential. Policymakers are pitching India as a $1 trillion digital economy by 2025. That may be a bit of a stretch if 5G networks do not materialise by next year.
Spectrum price is not the only obstacle to India's 5G rollout. There is also haziness in policy. Reconnecting towers with optical fibre runs into right-of-way issues at the municipal level. Security concerns about vendors from China narrow the network equipment pool. The active infrastructure that can be shared by telecom operators needs to be enlarged. Finally, Trai's suggestion of administratively allocated spectrum to private networks will face resistance.
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The Narendra Modi-Joe Biden talks that preceded the US-India 2+2 dialogue on Tuesday underscores the importance both countries attach to the relationship between the two countries. Issues discussed included climate and the Indo-Pacific region. The ghost at the feast, of course, was Ukraine, which was, tellingly, not brushed behind the arras. In fact, by bringing up the matter of Russian aggression without any lead from Biden, Modi underlined that India has not waffled its way to its position, but has made a policy call based on its context - not on the US' or Europe's, neither of which share the geopolitical problems New Delhi does specific to its geography and politics. Instead, the prime minister and the president shared notes on where India and the US can work together to ameliorate matters, such as global food supply and supply chains.
India's decision to import discounted Russian oil was addressed, with Biden doing the 'American job' of asking India not to accelerate importing Russian crude. Modi's clear mention and condemnation of the Bucha massacre should underscore that India's decision to abstain on key Ukraine-related votes in the UN is not support for Russia. India's continued humanitarian aid to Ukraine also means principled abstentions are not inaction.
The Modi-Biden dialogue marks an evolution in the India-US conversation. Apart from the more obvious fact that the two governments and countries share common beliefs and values - with concerns that can be aired between two such nations - what was important is the confirmation that India understands that the US understands New Delhi after the latter has made Washington understand its position. India and the US, like their two leaders, can talk with each other freely.
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Delhi recorded its fifth consecutive day of heat wave (when the maximum temperature is above 40°C and 4.5°C above normal) on Monday. The Safdarjung observatory, the Capital’s base weather station, recorded a maximum temperature of 42.6 degrees Celsius (°C), seven degrees above normal, making it the hottest April day since 2017, when the temperature touched 43.2°C on April 21. This year has been scorching with no western disturbance, which brings cooling pre-monsoon rain in the region, since February-end. In its seasonal outlook for 2022, the India Meteorological Department forecast a higher probability of heatwaves occurring over west-central and some parts of northwest India.
As the climate crisis fuels more frequent, intense, and longer heatwaves, record-breaking temperatures are becoming a significant health threat, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report highlighted. Health risks from heat stress are especially dangerous for certain populations, including older people, city dwellers, those living with chronic health conditions or in slums and low-income communities because of the combined effects of heightened heat exposures, health vulnerabilities, and limited access to affordable cooling options.
Extreme heat exposures, already a public health emergency in India that killed an estimated 46,600 people aged 65 or older in 2019, continue to worsen. The good news is that IMD now offers district-level vulnerability maps on heatwaves. The Centre is also working with 23 heatwave-prone states and over 130 cities and districts to develop and implement individual Heat Action Plans. A robust public health policy response to extreme heat events must include early warning systems, effective outreach strategies to improve community awareness, and tailored measures to reach vulnerable populations. As the climate crisis heightens extreme heat risks in India, authorities must work to further strengthen these plans and adapt them in consultation with local communities. After all, climate resilience is, in part, about asking people to think differently and see extreme heat and other climate challenges as solvable public health issues.
The 2+2 ministerial dialogue between India and the United States (US) got off to an unusual – and positive – start when President Joe Biden decided to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a virtual conversation. The Biden-Modi chat, attended by India’s foreign and defence minister and the US secretary of state, secretary of defense and national security advisor, marked the coming together of the top decision-makers in both countries, and was a signal of the importance both countries placed on the partnership. When supplemented with the 2+2 joint statement and ministerial remarks, three features of the India-US relationship stand out.
One, India and the US are not on the same page on Ukraine, but have found a way to underplay the divergences and focus on the convergences. The US wants India to speak up more clearly against Russia and reduce its engagement with Moscow. But it also recognises the historic nature of India-Russia ties – it was striking to hear both the White House spokesperson and Antony Blinken essential defend the Indian position. Both countries want an end to the violence, they don’t want killings of civilians, and they want to mitigate the consequences of the war, especially in terms of food supplies. Washington has been polite and measured, and Delhi has done well to adapt its position as the situation evolves. This remains a work in progress, but the political direction on how to manage differences has been laid down.
Two, India and the US know that the Chinese challenge in Indo-Pacific is the real threat and the best way to contain Beijing is to work together. Washington is vocal about it – Lloyd Austin spoke about Beijing’s belligerence thrice on separate occasions on Monday, including with an open commitment to help India safeguard its sovereignty – and Delhi is circumspect about publicly articulating its concerns. But privately, India is pleased that the US remains focused on the Indo-Pacific and hasn’t let the Russia challenge distract it from China. And three, both countries know that to counter the Chinese threat, as well as to secure and improve the lives of their own citizens, working across domains – defence, space, cyber, health, climate, education – is important. Progress on some fronts is more rapid than on others. There remain hitches, including the US’s concerns on human rights in India. But the remarkable commitment displayed by America’s top leadership to nurturing ties, and India’s recognition of the value of the US partnership, shows that both countries have their eyes on the big picture. Sustain it.
The National Health Policy (NHP) of 2017 listed among its foremost objectives, the achievement of universal health coverage. Achieving a significant reduction in out-of-pocket expenditure due to health care costs was another key objective. Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri – Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) was conceived out of this vision to move towards a more holistic approach to health care service delivery.
AB PM-JAY was not the nation’s first tryst with health care insurance. Due credit must be given to predecessor schemes such as Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, and state schemes such as Aarogyasri in Andhra Pradesh and Jeevandayee Yojana in Maharashtra. However, in terms of scope and scale, AB PM-JAY has dwarfed all existing health care insurance interventions. For the first time, we had a health insurance scheme with a pan-India presence.
As of April 1, AB PM-JAY, in alliance with state health schemes, covers a beneficiary base of more than 140 million families (700 million individuals). Almost 180 million individuals have been identified under the scheme and provided with an Ayushman card. AB PM-JAY has facilitated almost 32.8 million hospitalisations, providing treatment worth over ₹37,600 crore. All this has been achieved in a little over 3.5 years and amid the greatest global pandemic in recent times.
As I reflect on the trajectory of AB PM-JAY, the scheme’s success is mounted on the vision of the Prime Minister and the versatile policy framework conceptualised by the Cabinet. This policy framework crystallised the six guiding principles behind AB PM-JAY.
First, comprehensive health care benefits. AB PM-JAY was launched with 1,393 treatment packages covering treatment for various medical specialties such as oncology, neurosurgery, cardiovascular surgery up to ₹5 lakh per beneficiary family. This was subsequently increased to 1,670 treatment packages. The benefits under AB PM-JAY were comprehensive, covering pre- and post-hospitalisation expenses. Additionally, all pre-existing conditions were covered from day one of the policy period. The portability feature empowered beneficiaries from the remotest villages to seek treatment at the most advanced health care facilities.
Two, converged and integrated within the health care ecosystem. Under AB PM-JAY, considerable flexibility was provided to states and Union Territories (UTs) in choosing their mode of implementation, beneficiary database and network of hospitals. Further, National Health Authority (NHA) diligently pursued convergence with existing state-based schemes. Currently, AB PM-JAY is implemented in alliance with more than 25 state-specific schemes. Additionally, district implementation units were set up in over 600 districts to ensure the administrative reach of AB PM-JAY to the beneficiary’s doorstep.
Three, ensuring equity in access to health care services. Renewed impetus was given to extending benefits to marginalised sections covered under the Socio-Economic Caste Census database. AB PM-JAY adopted an enlightened approach towards ensuring gender-specific equity. The erstwhile RSBY scheme mandated a limit of five family members, which led to the exclusion of female members, especially the girl child. However, under AB PM-JAY, this capping was done away with. Women account for approximately 50% of Ayushman cards generated using the NHA IT platform and 47% of authorised hospital admissions.
Four, robust, scalable, and interoperable technology platforms. One of the problems that afflicted past efforts was fragmented IT systems. Therefore, under AB PM-JAY, a highly versatile technology platform was developed to aid in beneficiary identification, transaction management and hospital empanelment. This award-winning IT platform is active across 26 states and UTs. As a result, state health authorities (SHAs) and NHA have gained granular insights into the scheme to aid in evidence-based policymaking and course correction, where required.
Five, public and private partnership. Under AB PM-JAY, both public and private hospitals have been empanelled for providing health care services. The participation of the private sector has increased avenues for the scheme’s beneficiaries to seek treatment and concurrently reduced the burden on tertiary care facilities in the public sector. Under AB PM-JAY, it was ensured that public hospitals would be reimbursed equally for their services and at the same rates as that of private hospitals. This has also supported public sector hospitals and created a pool of untied funds that could be sustainably invested in infrastructure and human resources. The complementary role of the public and private sector hospitals has been vital in ensuring that the scheme implementation proceeded seamlessly.
Six, Aapke Dwar Ayushman, or the frontline grassroots mobilisation system. A key initiative that I greenlit upon assuming charge of NHA was Aapke Dwar Ayushman, under which a grassroots network of frontline health care workers, panchayat officials and village-based digital entrepreneurs was used to undertake door-to-door mobilisation of beneficiaries across communities. Special night camps were set up for daily wagers. These efforts translated into more than 47 million Ayushman cards being generated since January 2021, an increase of 55%. NHA is launching Aapke Dwar Ayushman with renewed vigour. This time we are focusing on states such as Assam, Bihar, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.
I would also like to take this opportunity to give credit to the entire AB PM-JAY ecosystem consisting of NHA, SHAs, district implementation units, implementation support agencies, Pradhan Mantri Arogya Mitras, frontline health care workers, Ayushman card creators from partner agencies such as Common Services Centre and UTI Infrastructure Technology and Services Limited, for their tireless support in making AB PM-JAY such a grand success. Going forward, much more needs to be done to help the scheme realise its full potential.
RS Sharma is chief executive officer, National Health Authority
The views expressed are personal
Two competing perspectives can be extracted from the ongoing drama in Pakistan. The first is the obvious one, of the continued fragility of democracy and its institutions that leads to these periodic crises of the kind that unfolded over the past month. That no prime minister (PM) has ever completed a full five-year term in the country is a symptom of that fragility.
An alternative takeaway is that Pakistan’s fledgling democracy has managed to avert a real crisis and successfully resisted a powerful effort to derail it. This is rendered more significant because the effort was not an external impulse familiar in Pakistan’s history, such as a military coup. Rather, this was an attempt mounted from within the political system, including by those who hold high constitutional office but who placed a higher premium on their political affiliation and personal loyalty. In the end, despite Imran Khan’s efforts and machinations, the vote of confidence was held after the Supreme Court pronounced its judgment purely on the legal issues involved. His acolytes in high places succumbed and a certain due process was observed. One Pakistani journalist described this end game as the country tottering at the edge of a precipice, staring into an abyss and then stepping back to retrieve the situation.
Both perspectives have validity. Those inclined to harsher, more cynical or jaundiced views of Pakistan may perhaps temper their judgment, reminding themselves of the transition in the United States in January last year when the world saw what is admittedly its deepest democracy similarly stare into the abyss of a constitutional void before stepping back. In both cases, the similarity begins and ends with populist leaders refusing to apply to themselves rules that catapulted them to power in the first place.
Between these two contrasting perspectives is a still shadowy and officially denied third view. This is that Khan, to avert loss of office, was prepared to go even further than what anyone could have imagined. The speculation is that he moved to dismiss the chief of army staff, Qamar Bajwa, who was adopting a decidedly neutral position on the political contest. Dismissing an army chief has been attempted without success in the past. Such a move, at the very minimum, would have meant Pakistan reverting to the turbulent 1990s. Such news stories have been denied vehemently, including by the Pakistan army. Perhaps speculation on this will never end. But the point also is that either on its own, or because an unseen hand cracked the whip, the system has, procedurally and constitutionally, at least cohered for the time being.
Yet the immediate future looks bleak. While Shehbaz Sharif stands elected as PM, this by no means implies that order will now prevail. It is clear that a smooth transition will be resisted at every stage, including by those loyalists who hold high office, beginning with the President of Pakistan, Arif Alvi, who proceeded on leave rather than administer the oath of office to the new PM-elect.
The rapid events taking place are part theatre and part bitter political vendetta fueled by Khan’s aim to muddy as many pools as possible to force the new government’s hand. The message he is sending out is clear — the new government is the consequence of a foreign conspiracy and coexistence with it is tantamount to being a foreign agent. This is going to be his principal election slogan.
The confrontations of the past month are by no means over and it is only a matter of time before they spill onto the streets with even greater intensity. Khan may have lost the majority vote, but he will take steps that will keep his support base energised and mobilised. Pakistan’s tryst with instability may again be beginning and will not ease till at least the elections are over, if at all.
Where does this leave the Pakistan military? The stability it seeks to enable a sharp focus on the economy and foreign policy will remain elusive. If political conflict spills onto the streets, whether the army will be able to resist pressures to emerge from behind the scenes will be a question that will appear periodically. How much it will be able to insulate its looming transition in November, when a new army chief is scheduled to be appointed, from this political turbulence and the forthcoming election is an issue that will also assume increasing prominence. And finally, what of India-Pakistan relations in the coming months? At one stage, Khan’s possible exit held out the possibility of some easing with a more pragmatic head at the political helm and an army chief who had spoken of its desirability.
That the ceasefire of last year could be built on with diplomatic moves appeared within the realms of possibility. With the narrative of a foreign conspiracy and agents acting for foreign powers, that possibility has prima facie shrunk. Yet the history of India-Pakistan relations is littered with the unlikeliest of outcomes and no possibility ever fully closes itself.
TCA Raghavan is a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan The views expressed are personal
The last few weeks have witnessed a move by the Supreme Court (SC) against the practice of some parties, usually governments and official agencies, submitting material and affidavits in sealed envelopes, either without giving a copy to contesting parties or redacting to the point of incomprehensibility, thereby denying others an opportunity to scrutinise or rebut its arguments in key cases.
Hearing a criminal appeal against the Bihar government on March 15, Chief Justice of India NV Ramana remarked, “Please do not give sealed cover reports in this court. We will not accept it”. Later the same day, justice DY Chandrachud, while hearing an appeal against the Centre’s ban on the MediaOne channel, said, “I am very averse to what is called the sealed cover jurisprudence.” He observed that the court would be examining the larger issue of sealed cover jurisprudence.
Reading the headlines the next morning, I recalled the words of Lord Atkinson in defence of openness in courts: “...in the public trial is to be found, on the whole, the best security for the pure impartial and efficient administration of justice, the best means for winning for it public confidence and respect.”
The SC’s concerns are not unique or case specific, but in the context of an ongoing legal debate on the practice, which has been allowed even in some constitutional cases, involving challenges to State action and fundamental rights violations. In some instances, this has not been accompanied by any judicial determination justifying such a recourse.
A glaring illustration is the National Register of Citizens case. While the declared aim of the Assam government was to check illegal cross-border migration and deport non-citizens, the court held an in-chamber presentation of reports by state officials, excluding litigants, stakeholders and the public, and approved a new method of determining citizenship — family tree verification, under which people had to furnish proof of parentage and blood relations. No opportunity was afforded to debate, challenge or question this method. In a largely rural country with migrant populations and scanty public records, proving a genealogical family tree became a formidable challenge.
Similarly, in a matter alleging corruption in defence procurement of fighter aircraft, pricing details, which were at the core of allegations, were permitted by the court to be submitted in sealed cover. In the electoral bonds case, the court directed political parties to furnish details of these bonds in sealed cover to the Election Commission. Ousting the public and the press from court proceedings by resorting to “sealed covers” and “confidential reports” derogates from the principles of open justice and is perilous to the justice delivery system as it erodes public confidence in the judicial process.
Even though the principle of open justice enjoys constitutional status in India, there is no doubt that it is not absolute and exists in tension with individual and corporate assertions of privacy and confidentiality, and State claims of national interest and national security. Such forces, however, should not overwhelm the objectives of open justice, namely, to protect individuals from the exercise of arbitrary power by the State, secure freedom of expression and ensure that judges act in accordance with law, probity and evidence.
In a trias politica (separation of powers) model, open justice is a key source of public information about, and a check on, legislative and executive actions. Exceptions should be restricted only to those situations where an open court would undermine the object and purpose of a hearing. Further, in consonance with the idea of the culture of justification, according to which each individual is a justificatory agent, every departure must necessarily be based on judicial evaluation and determination of whether interest of justice would be better served by concealment or disclosure. Understandably, the executive is reluctant to limit its right to claim privilege. It rests with the judiciary alone to develop a consistent position on the limits of open justice by laying down guidelines to prevent ad hocism and arbitrariness. And, the welcome move by the SC shows promise for change.
Samarth Krishan Luthra is a lawyer practicing in Delhi and currently studying at Columbia University The views expressed are personal
The partial withdrawal of the Disturbed Areas Act in more parts of Assam, Nagaland, and Manipur with effect from April 1 has been welcomed by the people of the region. Irom Sharmila, of Manipur, fasted for 16 years demanding the removal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act or AFSPA.
Civil society organisations in Manipur have been more aggressive in pushing for the lifting of AFSPA even though there have been similar demands in other states of the region as well for decades. The partial withdrawal of the Act commenced in 2004 during United Progressive Alliance (UPA-1) in Imphal.
Its complete withdrawal from Tripura and Meghalaya was affected by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 2018, based on a much improved overall security situation. The Justice Jeevan Reddy Commission in 2009 also recommended repealing the Act along with an appropriate amendment to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) 1967. Dr Manmohan Singh wished for a "more human face" in the Act. The unfortunate Oting incident in Mon District of Nagaland in December last year also came under severe criticism.
AFSPA is an enabling instrument for the armed forces to fight insurgencies when called to do so in aid of civil authorities when all other forces (such as the state police and the Central Armed Police Forces) are unlikely to be able to handle the situation.
Internal security is a secondary function of the Army while the defence of India is the primary role. AFSPA, 1958, was first imposed post-Independence, in the erstwhile Assam state in Naga-dominated areas where large-scale insurgency had broken out during the 1950s.
Later, the Act was imposed in most parts of the Northeast region and Jammu and Kashmir. Regular assessments of the ground situation are carried out by the government to assess the need for extension or removal of the act in the concerned areas. The situation is far better in almost the entire region today, according to the ministry of home affairs and the ground realities.
Many groups in Nagaland, Manipur, and Assam are in talks with the government for the peaceful resolution of their demands, while a few continue to be hesitant of entering into any talks with the authorities. The 1,760 km-long Indo-Myanmar border is practically a semi-open border due to the free movement regime in place between the two countries.
This is a border where the militant groups are found to sneak through and carry out attacks against security forces with impunity. The smuggling hubs of Moreh in Manipur and Champhai in Mizoram are infamous for the illegal smuggling of drugs and narcotics to an estimated worth of ₹20,000 crore annually or much more.
Most of the proceeds find their way into the hands of anti-national groups and militants who are operating against the country. A dangerous mix of Narco-terrorism and identity wars in the region is in the making for a long time. Gun-running from unstable neighbourhoods continues unabated. A semblance of law and order is hard to come by in these border areas even today. The lack of enforcement of rule of law by multiple agencies in these areas is also a cause for concern. There are reports of a few of the Indian insurgent groups based in Myanmar either fighting alongside the military Junta or a few others opposing the military Junta.
Border management activities entrusted to the Assam rifles are progressing, but at a slow pace due to many security and administrative angles and turf wars. The state police forces bordering Myanmar need more effective mechanisms to show their presence and take on the anti-terror activities in these areas.
The conviction rates of crimes — which stand less than 5% in these border states compared to the national average — tell the true story. Besides, the reach of the administrations in these areas (national highways included) is often curtailed by extortions, kidnappings, and other forms of coercion from the militant groups or their front organisations.
The presence of a few Indian militant groups in Kunming in the Yunnan province of China further complicates the situation in light of Indo-China relations after Galwan. The linkages of Islamic terrorist groups with elements in Assam are well known. Identity wars often take violent turns mostly aggravated by legacy issues and imagined history. The unfortunate fighting between Mizoram and Assam police in July 2021 is a case in point. Such Inter-ethnic and inter-state issues tend to assume many dimensions of law and order which will also need a central mechanism to cope with very complex situations. Hence, AFSPA or modified AFSPA with "a human face” will need to be in place in many sensitive areas in the Northeast today or in the future.
While the Indian Army will be pleased to be relieved from internal security duties for their primary role, national interest, demands that any secessionist activities are nipped in bud. For that, the CAPFs whose combined overall strength is almost comparable to that of the Indian Army will need to take on more internal security responsibilities along with the state police leaving the Army for their primary role. The Army should only be deployed as an instrument of last resort in internal security matters, particularly when the integrity of the nation is seriously challenged.
The security forces will also need to reorient their standard operational procedures (SOPs) and deployments in these areas where the AFSPA will no longer be in force by focusing on intelligence gathering and WHAM (winning the hearts and minds) activities. The borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh, in particular, will need added impetus to ensure stable internal security of the country.
The partial withdrawal of the Act is well appreciated. Any future partial withdrawal of AFSPA in the region or in Jammu and Kashmir should be seen from the view of overall security scenarios, both internal and external. A holistic and synergised approach of the governments and security agencies will need to be in place to combat any activities by the anti-national forces directly or by proxies to avoid any re-imposition of the Act.
Lt General (Dr) K Himalay Singh is an Army veteran
The views expressed are personal
The ideal among deities, a king who abandoned his throne without an iota of doubt, second thought or bitterness, and happily accepted being banished to the forests for 14 years, the royal who lived the life of an ascetic with delight, the leader who forged an unlikely alliance with the Vanara tribe and built a bridge across the ocean to defeat a mighty Rakshasa king, and in neither Kishkinda nor Lanka set up his own rule, but instead allowed the respective local rightful ruler to assume the sovereign crown, and then on his return took a critical troll of a drunken washerman seriously enough to abandon his wife, the queen, to keep Raj Dharma has, as a story, as a legend, as an avatar incarnate of the almighty, as a primal Indian cultural icon, the power to unite all Indians.
Yet, Lord Rama, in the nefarious and virulent re-carving of his form for political one-upmanship, has been the unfortunate, and tragic, centrepiece of conflict and controversy, one, who ended up unwittingly, against the very message and meaning of his own life, dividing us.
Such a dual role has this divine light of humanity played in India, that oftentimes, we ourselves are confounded deeply in how to show the rightful bhakti to Rama; because even when we wish to revere Rama the deity and Rama the ideal, the politically weaponised Rama takes centrestage of our public life.
It is not just troubling or unacceptable that Ramanavami, the beginning of a period of fasting, of introspection, of rededication to virtue and values, has defenestrated the absence of riots across the country for nearly eight years at large.
Clashes in four states — two ruled by the saffron BJP, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, and two ruled by the Opposition, West Bengal and Jharkhand, leading to disturbances during the twin religious observances of Ramanavami and Ramzan, vitiating the social fabric of life in local communities across; fuelling further rage through social media across the country are deeply condemnable.
There would be little point getting into finger pointing, it would be the job of the investigations which must be prompt, unforgiving, and whose integrity and objectivity must be unimpeachable. Every single transgressor and aggressor must be nabbed and the maximum punishment ensured by courts without exception.
Each of the four state governments have to be held accountable too, with law and order being a state subject; and each state has both power and responsibility to ensure that the lives of citizens, the safety of their properties and their right and freedom to practice their faiths without fear is protected and upheld.
Neither the religious identity nor the political affiliation of the culprits and communally-minded malefactors should matter in this stern response needed from the law and order machinery of India, circa 2022. No criminal should ever sense safety in being part of a mob, or behind a flag or slogan.
There is no fundamental antagonism or irreconcilable conflict between communities or faiths as the larger modern Indian success story as a democracy has proven, despite the aberrations and exceptions. India must preserve its chance after two millennia to own a century and not let communal monsters hijack our opportunity to emerge as a Vishwaguru.
The 23rd party congress of the Communist party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] ended in Kannur, the red bastion in Kerala, with a call to all secular and democratic forces to join together to fight against what the party calls the communal and divisive agenda of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates including the BJP and the government the latter leads at the Centre.
As per the political resolution passed at the congress, the CPI-M does not envisage a national political alliance with the Indian National Congress though it looks forward to working with like-minded secular democratic parties at the state level. The Communists feel the grand old party has messed up on its own agenda and even follows a soft-Hindutwa politics.
The BJP, which the CPI-M identifies as the bête noir, has exhausted the most important items on its agenda including building a Ram temple at Ayodhya and scrapping Article 370, and is now very focused on reworking its agenda and pursuing it, the last being the advice for non-Hindi speaking states to use Hindi as the link language instead of English. The saffron party does not see merit in the argument that India is home to all possible diversities and hence binaries seldom solve issues, rather than create them.
Thus, the BJP and the CPI-M are clear on their agendas but the difference is that while the former has been gaining strength electorally in a steady way, the leftists are losing ground in a similar way. If the CPI-M were to succeed in defeating forces which it thinks would divide India further and compromise the lives and livelihoods of the working class and the poor in favour of the rich, it must gather strength on its own and then create a platform that can put up a joint fight. Given the ground realities of Indian politics, the comrades will have a tough time pursuing their goals.
What is a democratic government? Often it is reduced to one essential element, and that is the electoral process. This refers to having heads of government who are elected through fair and free elections. This also extends to whether or not all sections of society have the right to participate, that is, to take part in the electoral process. India usually scores well on this count. Even in the rankings of Freedom House, the American outfit which has declared that India is only “partly free”, on the count of electoral democracy, India scored 33 out of 40, which is pretty good. In fact, it is one point more than what the United States of America has scored, which is just 32.
On civil liberties, however, India has only scored 33 out of 60, while the United States has scored 51. And so, the US was rated as “free” while we have been categorised as “partly free” (and Jammu and Kashmir was rated as “not free”). It may surprise some readers that electoral democracy was only good for 40 points while civil liberties was 60 points. But that is how most of the world views democracy. It is about the rights and freedoms of the individuals and not just limited to a single act once every five or six years. This, then, is how democracies are rated and why we are constantly slipping.
However, there is a third aspect to democracies which has not been discussed here, and that is the functioning of the State. The engagement the most citizens have is not with the politician that they elected. It is with the bureaucrat and collector and the police officer and the judge that we have to deal with. For us, it is these people who are the State, and who are the ultimate representatives of the democracy. If they were to be rated, how would it go?
Unfortunately, it would be quite bad. One part is obviously the corruption and inefficiency that we all have to live with. But there is something else, and it is the ability of the political establishment to bend the bureaucracy to their will. The police and the various agencies of the State are unleashed by the politicians in power on their opponents, and there is no resistance to this from within the system.
There appears to be no real morality prevalent among the officers who are staffing the agencies that are used in this way. The raids by the Enforcement Directorate (which is controlled by the Union government) on Opposition leaders and parties have become a weekly affair. And the targeting of those who are especially threatening is obvious. Similarly, the National Investigation Agency, again controlled by the Union government, has been used against many activists. The Bhima Koregaon case was initially about the violence between the Marathas and dalits in the village of Bhima Koregaon, but it was taken away from the police in Maharashtra after the BJP lost power in the state to the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). Those in jail in the case include individuals whose work the BJP doesn’t like and doesn’t want to be continued. One of those, Father Stan Swamy, died in prison as the BJP kept opposing bail to him.
But the intent of the political party is separate from what actually happens. Some officer will have to write down a case that is either wholly fraudulent or cooked up in some way or meddled with in other ways. Another officer must approve this file, knowing fully well that what is happening is patently illegal. But they go along with it. These things do not happen in other democracies. We have to accept that. And when they do, these things are caught and exposed and there are consequences. There is none of that here. And that is the reason that officers continue to harass people whom the political leaders want harassed. What can be said about those individuals in government who as officers and as advocates denied Stan Swamy the right to die with dignity? What can be said about those in the police force who, as the courts in Delhi have said, deliberately went after the victims of the Delhi pogrom rather than the perpetrators? You have to be a particularly venal sort of person to do such things. And yet it seems that there are more of such people in the system than of the sort that resist. On such things as the meat ban and the hijab ban, we are finding out that elements that comprise the system are enthusiastic about denying people their rights. It says something awful about us as a society.
It is bad enough that the State structurally does not allow us to exercise our rights and freedoms, as the global indices’ scores show. But it is even worse that within such a restrictive space, the apparatus of the bureaucracy has succumbed to the whims of those who are elected. It is why our road to becoming a modern, civilised, prosperous and free society is long and will continue to be full of obstacles.
The Imran Khan pantomime may have ended in Pakistan, but the fat lady is yet to sing. He was handheld by the Army into power, calculating that as a pan-Pakistan figure he could marginalise if not eliminate the two national political parties that have intermittently ruled the country since the death of military dictator Gen. Zia-ul Haq in an aircrash in 1988. Another Army chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, tried to run Pakistan but was eventually forced to concede political space to the Bhuttos’ Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Sharif family-controlled Pakistan Muslim League (N).
The assassination of a resurgent Benazir Bhutto and the security forces’ action against Lal Masjid sealed Gen. Musharraf’s fate. Whether the Army was complicit or simply negligent over Benazir’s death has not yet been established. But Benazir also was unwilling to listen to their advice about curtailing public meetings. The truth lies probably somewhere in between as she was beginning to assert her independence, seeing the public response to her on her return from exile.
Like India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is the handmaiden of the party in power at the Centre, in Pakistan the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) does that job. The NAB’s task was made easier with the Panama Papers revelations. Imran Khan was happy to act as the flag- bearer of the anti-corruption crusade, combined with Islamism and nationalism.
But populism-based politics has two problems. Rabble rousing is fine if economic arguments are used or if neighbours like India are baited. But when it starts questioning the country’s basic foreign policy consensus, which also has the Army’s endorsement, the political leader is treading on dangerous territory. And second, the leader often gets carried away.
Imran Khan misread US-Pakistan relations and the recent developments in Afghanistan as the United States withdrew its troops, clearing capture of power by the Taliban. It is unknown how much the Pakistan Army was involved in the US-Taliban deal, but the presence of the ISI’s director-general in Kabul to oversee the allotment of portfolios was shocking. In particular, the installation of a Haqanni scion as the interior minister created tremors regionally. Did Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, the Pakistan Army chief, and Imran Khan quarrel over the ISI D-G’s role in Kabul, before the known differences over his future deployment?
Imran Khan had exulted in the Taliban’s victory, saying in August 2021 that they “have broken the shackles of slavery”. The Wall Street Journal wrote: “That a US security partner would say this out loud certainly raises eyebrows”. The view already existed in the United States, and especially in the US Congress, that a key obstacle to America’s success in Afghanistan was the unrelenting Pakistani support to the Taliban. The Pakistan Army, which has been playing a double game since 2001, did not want their Prime Minister boasting about it. Imran Khan thought that America-bashing would position him as a fearless and independent leader of Pakistan. It seems his sponsors in the Army did not concur.
After Afghanistan, Imran Khan tried aligning Pakistan firmly with the China-Russia axis. His presence alongside Russia’s President Vladimir Putin as Russian soldiers invaded Ukraine on February 24 was optically and strategically dangerous. It assumed Russia would succeed quickly in capturing Kyiv and replacing the Volodymyr Zelenskyy government. The unity of the Nato alliance and the European resolve to impose severe sanctions on Russia and Russian entities and individuals challenged this assumption. Even the Chinese were unwilling to openly extend full support. Having upset the US, Pakistan faced the danger of retaliation when its economy was under stress. A sign of this was China rolling over a $2.5 billion commercial loan, after an earlier similar relief of $2 billion.
The Pakistan Army observed that Ukraine was becoming an irritant in India-US relations, as India had refused to condemn Russia. New Delhi even welcomed Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. An opening thus arose for Pakistan to regain US goodwill. Imran Khan, on the other hand, raised the bogey of American meddling to destabilise his government. Pakistan’s Army chief Gen. Bajwa had to publicly contradict his Prime Minister and reaffirm that Pakistan wished to keep excellent relations with both China and the United States.
Gideon Rachman, in his book The Age of the Strongman, delves into the success globally of populists. He writes: “To varying degrees, they all claim to speak for the common man, while undermining institutions, stoking nationalism and cultivating a personal style of politics, if not an outright personality cult”.
Imran was only following in the footsteps of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the original Pakistani populist. Clearly, the Pakistani Army realised that its puppet had snapped the strings. It also calculated that with Imran still in play, neither of the traditional parties may get a majority.
The Pakistan Army was always closer to Shehbaz Sharif than his older brother Nawaz. His becoming Prime Minister, besides his son Hamza becoming chief minister in Punjab, would be a fresh start between the Army generals and the Sharif family. Nawaz’s heir and ambitious daughter Maryam may put up with this arrangement till the next election. At the moment, the Sharifs and the Bhutto-Zardaris will be happy to bring some governance back to Punjab and Pakistan. They would feel that Imran’s appeal may fade with normality being restored to politics.
But the protests in Pakistan and even Dubai over Imran’s ouster indicate that he still has support among the people. How wide and deep it is and whether only Gen. Bajwa opposes him or there’s a consensus in the Army about sidelining him would determine his political trajectory. In keeping with South Asian vendetta politics, it’s possible Imran’s image of clean politics may be challenged when the NAB turns attention to the whispers about his spiritual guide-cum-wife being involved in Punjab corruption. The new Pakistan Prime Minister has a full domestic and foreign agenda.
Abroad, Islamabad may pick up Gen. Bajwa’s floated proposals about an incremental revival of India-Pakistan relations. But it remains to be seen if the Narendra Modi government decides relations with Pakistan can’t be permanently frozen. In any case, it will be diplomatically astute to not keep pushing Pakistan into China’s arms. The designation of Hafiz Saeed’s son as a terrorist is a positive step. But the BJP cannot ignore the domestic dimension of such outreach. The Muslim baiting, now reaching a fever pitch in Karnataka, will need to be curbed. Otherwise, another opportunity will come and go. Only rarely do political cycles synchronise between two historically divided nations. The next few weeks will show if the willingness exists on both sides to normalise relations.
Given the vagaries of party politics in the world’s two biggest democracies, nothing may come of President Joe Biden’s flattering assessment that its relationship with India is the most important for the US. Going far beyond Atal Behari Vajpayee’s “natural allies” comment, it recalls the verdict of Sir Olaf Caroe, a British diplomat and scholar who crafted Washington’s West Asian strategy and wrote as long ago as 1979: “It is impossible to see Gulf problems in correct perspective unless the view includes an India which, despite Partition, still stands at the centre of the ocean that bears its name.”
The politics is especially relevant because even though India looks like a rock of stability while the surrounding countries are in turmoil, it is still threatened by the cankers of majoritarianism and fundamentalism that are also and more obviously ravaging Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Pakistan, whose new ruler Shehbaz Sharif lost no time even before being sworn in on Monday night in dredging up the Kashmir dispute. Ukraine’s plight cannot but move India’s leaders and it is undoubtedly highly gratifying for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be singled out by the American President for a tete-a-tete. But the increasingly serious challenge within is something India cannot ignore. Only an India that ensures good governance, economic growth and equal justice to all its communities can think of playing the role of a global policeman.
Jagat Mehta, India’s foreign secretary from 1976 to 1979, believed that Singapore was “the only former colony to make a success of independence” largely because its strict disciplinarian first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, walked a sternly impartial line between the Chinese, Malays and Indians in a squeakily clean economy. Lee had tremendous respect, admiration and affection for Jawaharlal Nehru, but, at the end, he felt like James Cameron, the British journalist and friend of India, that Nehru “made India and lost it”. Nehru “could have done with India anything he wished, but he let it wither…”
Mr Narendra Modi’s actions must live up to his rhetoric before he can respond to Mr Biden’s call to help suffering Ukrainians whose plight may partly be blamed on competitive global power politics.
Few Indians except for stalwarts of the now defunct Swatantra Party viewed the Cold War — which the United States and Russia are continuing with additional zest — as a battle between dictatorship and the “free world”. It was and is a struggle for power in which the Asian nations on the American bandwagon (including the Shah’s Iran, Syngman Rhee’s South Korea, the erstwhile South Vietnam, Ferdinand Marcos’ Philippines and, of course, Pakistan) had little in common with the liberal humanism that is Nehru’s most significant and still not totally destroyed legacy.
Equally anxious to cozy up to America’s principal adversary, the old Soviet Union, successive Pakistani rulers saw membership of the Baghdad Pact, Cento and Seato only as an insurance against India. When US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman said the other day that the US would prefer India to “move away” from its long-term history of non-alignment (and) G-77 partnership with Russia, she appeared to visualise the future in similarly opportunistic terms. It is historically inevitable that India and the United States cannot forever remain estranged allies, but a nation whose civilisation goes back 5,000 years does not switch sides simply to ensure regular supplies of fuel or military spares and avoid uncomfortable votes at the United Nations.
Whether or not Ms Sherman is aware of it, India-US friendship boasts a more respectable provenance rooted in shared values and convictions. If this was not translated into active defence trade, it was mainly because of American phobias about Communists evident in restrictions such as the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GESOMANIA) or the bureaucratic demands that held up for over 30 years implementation of the Indian plan to develop a $20 million (original cost) Light Combat Aircraft, which eventually became the Tejas, with a striking range of up to 500 km. The LCA was the symbol of all that was wrong between the two supposed natural allies. It affected the development of education, famine relief and even deployment of the cheques in payment for the PL-480 wheat. It was typical of the connection that when after years of bickering, the Reagan administration at last agreed to sell India two supercomputers (but not the advanced XMP-24 which Rajiv Gandhi sought), the senior Indian officials sent to collect the machines muddied the record by demanding commissions.
The change began in October 1981 when Indira Gandhi wangled an invitation to the two-day North-South Summit (International Meeting on Cooperation and Development) at Cancun in Mexico, where she met Ronald Reagan. The real breakthrough, however, was in July 2005 when President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement in Washington. That agreement in effect extended de facto recognition to India as a nuclear power and cleared the way for India to develop nuclear energy.
A no less significant development, but perhaps not fully appreciated at the time, was the observation by Colin Powell, then US secretary of state, during Jaswant Singh’s visit to Washington that while America’s Pakistani friends should not be neglected, he recognised that India alone had “the potential to help keep the peace in the vast Indian Ocean area and its periphery”.
This is precisely what Sir Olaf Caroe had meant all those years ago when he waxed lyrical about India’s traditional eminence in the Indian Ocean system around which more than 50 per cent of the world’s then known reserves of crude oil were located, and of the kotas and ganjas (traditional boats) of Kutch and Bombay which had sailed right up to Basra since ancient times. This was also the core of the Quad, or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, between Australia, India, Japan and the US that was initiated in 2007 when Dr Singh was Prime Minister, and which China later dubbed as the “Asian Nato”. The Quad became moribund when Kevin Rudd became Australia’s Prime Minister but was revived in 2017 and may now be destined for an active role under Mr Biden.
Whether domestic politics, communal friction and an obsession with majoritarian supremacy will allow India to play a leading part is quite another matter. And whether the Quad will serve India’s principal security aims by deterring China in the Himalayas and Pakistan in sponsoring cross-border terrorism may be even more relevant.