Looking at the long list of diplomats, officials, and ministers from across the globe rushing to New Delhi in the last few weeks, one would assume that India was playing an active role in resolving the crisis in Europe. Despite his ambitions to be hailed as a global statesman, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has scrupulously avoided engaging with the crisis. India has refused to condemn Russia’s military invasion, continues to trade with Russia, and has abstained from voting on United Nations resolutions.
An unmistakable signal
India is the centrepiece of the Joe Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Indian Foreign and Defence Ministers recently held the ‘2+2’ meeting with their American counterparts. The Japanese Prime Minister was in New Delhi last month. The Australian Prime Minister held a virtual summit with Mr. Modi days before the two countries signed an interim trade deal. He had to then explain that he had not betrayed Ukraine by signing the deal with India.
Even as India’s Quad partners (U.S., Japan, Australia) impose trade sanctions on Russia, condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin and provide military aid to Ukraine, India recently welcomed the Russian Foreign Minister to New Delhi. The signalling was unmistakable: he was the only visiting foreign official among the many in New Delhi to get a personal meeting with Mr. Modi.
A shift is nevertheless discernible: India has chosen to increase, rather than reduce, import of its meagre crude oil supplies from Russia, being offered at a discount. Despite a warning by the U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh in New Delhi that there will be “consequences to countries that actively attempt to circumvent or backfill the sanctions,” India and Russia are exploring ways of conducting bilateral trade by bypassing the dollar-based financial system.
India’s Quad partners have been exceptionally sympathetic towards New Delhi’s case so far, but the underlying stress in their ties with India will come to the surface as the crisis drags on. These tensions have been noted in Beijing, which has praised India for pursuing an independent foreign policy. In recent years, Chinese officials had looked at Indian moves in the region through the prism of their U.S. policy, but India’s stance on Ukraine has triggered a rethink in Beijing. Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Delhi in March was driven either by the need to wean India away from the Quad or as an exploratory step towards a larger strategic reset with New Delhi.
It would be erroneous to focus on the minimal outcome of the visit to deem it a failure. That the visit took place is itself a big success given that some 90,000 soldiers from both armies have been deployed in Ladakh for nearly two years now, after Chinese troops moved in to occupy certain territories that were hitherto in Indian control. Despite 15 rounds of negotiations between senior military commanders, China continues to occupy at least three such areas. From other such areas, both the armies have disengaged i.e., moved their soldiers a couple of miles behind, but there has been no de-escalation i.e., they have not moved the troops to their bases.
In his meetings with Mr. Wang, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar did not demand the restoration of status quo ante of April 2020 in Ladakh; disengagement from remaining “friction points” was the only precondition for return to normalcy in China-India ties. In a rush to declare the crisis as resolved, India made further concessions to China by seeking disengagement only from Patrolling Point 15, suggesting that the other two areas — Depsang and Demchok — are “legacy issues”. This is in keeping with Mr. Modi’s stance since June 2020, when he first denied Chinese occupation of Indian territory in Ladakh and has since kept silent on the matter. Questions on the border crisis have been denied in Parliament. No official media briefings have taken place in two years. The government has thus successfully kept the truth of Chinese ingress hidden from the Indian public.
Mr. Modi’s desire to downplay Chinese bellicosity was confirmed by former U.S. Ambassador to India Kenneth Juster, when he said that the Indian government had instructed U.S. officials to neither mention the Chinese aggression in any joint statement nor raise it in a strong manner otherwise. While New Delhi is being excessively accommodative of Beijing, China is unconcerned about Indian sensitivities. Before coming to India, Mr. Wang signed a provocative statement on Kashmir in Islamabad with the Foreign Ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation countries and asserted China’s strong ties with Pakistan. While it has allowed South Korean and Pakistani students to return to China, China has not extended the same courtesy to over 23,000 Indian students. If China is extending a handshake to India, it is only on its own terms.
Despite the border crisis, India’s trade with China reached a record high of $125 billion in 2021. India remains the biggest recipient of loans disbursed by the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank. The Modi government did not criticise China’s clampdown in Hong Kong and has never raised the issue of mistreatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, although it may have been driven by a defensiveness about the criticism of its own strong-arm policies in Kashmir. The activities of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community in India have been calibrated to remain within limits that do not provoke Beijing.
Changing relationships
China is the glue that binds the Quad together. While Indian and American policies are at variance in countries such as Myanmar, Iran and Afghanistan, China is the one interest that aligns the two countries together. That basic premise of a collaborative partnership with India will be tested by these recent moves from Beijing towards New Delhi. Questions have always been raised in whispered tones in Washington about the relative power gap between the two Asian powers (China’s economy is nearly six times India’s size). This notwithstanding, it has been an article of faith in Washington in the past couple of years that having suffered from Chinese military aggression in 2020, India realises that it needs the U.S. to counter the threat from Beijing. This was the thrust of Mr. Singh’s blunt counsel in New Delhi.
During Mr. Wang’s visit, China offered to create a virtual G-2 in Asia by protecting India’s traditional role and collaborating on developmental projects as ‘China-India Plus’ in South Asia. Once India’s limited preconditions for declaring the border crisis resolved are met, the offer will seem more alluring and real than it does today. When Mr. Modi as Chief Minister of Gujarat was denied a visa to travel to the U.S. owing to his association with the 2002 Gujarat riots, he made regular visits to China. His comfort level with Beijing goes far deeper than any tactical realignment at play due to current geopolitical churning. If this moment provides for a reset of India’s ties with China, it will alter New Delhi’s relationship with the U.S. and raise questions about the effectiveness of Quad.
While the Biden administration continues to harp on “shared values” with the Modi government, the truth is that New Delhi’s commitment to democratic values, basic freedoms, constitutional rights, and treatment of religious minorities has been alarmingly poor. Mr. Modi’s critics allege that his idea of democracy is closer to that of Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán and Mr. Putin than that of the current U.S. administration.
Misgivings already in place have been brought into a sharp contrast by the Ukraine crisis. The geopolitical churning has placed the choices made by Mr. Modi as Prime Minister under a harsh glare. New Delhi’s decisions have not been to the liking of the U.S. As India is put under greater pressure, the outcomes could spring another surprise for Washington.
Sushant Singh is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research
Some 2,000 years ago, Tholkappiyar, the fabled author ofTolkappiyam , said that poetic words can be distributed in four types: Lyarcol, Thirisol, Thisaiccol and Vadasol. Of these, he held, ‘Vadasol’, words from northern languages, “become fit to be used in Tamil only when they adopt Tamil phonetics discarding their northern phonetics”.
From ancient times, a sensitivity to language difference has almost been the core of Dravidic self-hood. A similar sensitivity existed among the speakers of Prakrits in ancient times. It was in one of the Prakrits that Mahavir had presented his teachings in the sixth century BCE. Eighteen centuries later, Acharya Hemachandra, a major Jain scholar, poet, mathematician and philosopher, produced hisDesinamamala , a treatise on the importance of Prakrit words used in Gujarat of his times as against those from Sanskrit. In the process, he gave a tangible form to the Gujarati language. Mahatma Gandhi, who defined the idea of selfhood for India in Hind Swaraj (1909), chose to write this iconic book in Gujarati. So, language sensitivity has been a feature of selfhood in the case of every Indian language.
Clarity in the Constitution
It would be unreasonable to expect a contemporary Indian to know about a 2,000-year-oldTolkappiyam or a nine-century-oldDesinamamala . But would it be too much to expect the person to know about the Constitution adopted by the republic seven decades ago? The Constitution states two things with utmost clarity. One, India, is ‘a union of states’; and two, the official language used for communication between the States shall be the language that has been in use at the time of adoption of the Constitution. The move from English to Hindi can take place only if, as the language related Articles unambiguously state, ‘two or more states agree’ for the shift. Article 344 (4) provides for a ‘Committee consisting of thirty members’, ‘twenty’ from the Parliament and ‘ten’ from State assemblies, for safeguarding language related provisions.
The functions and the scope of the committee, as laid down by the Constitution, are further clarified by the practice of distribution of language as a subject between two Ministries, the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry and the Home Ministry. The scope of the HRD Ministry with reference to language extends to education and the promotion of cultural expression. The Home Ministry’s scope extends to safeguarding relations of the States with the ‘union’, protecting the linguistic rights of language minorities and the promotion of Hindi. The last of these, the Constitution states, has to be ‘without interference with other languages’.
Data on language decline
There are two crucial questions for the Home Ministry and its Hindi Language Committee which should be understood correctly in light of the provisions of the Constitution: ‘Has Hindi seen any growth during the last seven decades? And, if there is such a growth, does it interfere with the growth of other Scheduled languages?”
There is quite a story to tell using the data from the Census. In 2011, Hindi speakers accounted for 43.63% of the total population, with a total of 52.83 crore speakers. In 1971, the number was 20.27 crore, accounting for 36.99% of the total population. Between 2001 and 2011, the growth in proportion of the population was 2.6%. The next most spoken language, Bangla, — the first is Hindi — had negative growth. It was spoken by 8.30% of Indians in 1991, 8.11% in 2001 and by 8.03% in 2011. Telugu, which slid from 7.87% in 1991, to 7.19% in 2001 and 6.70% in 2011, has a similar story to tell.
It is no different for Marathi either: 7.45% (1991), 6.99% (2001) and 6.86% (2011). Tamil, the oldest surviving language in the country, should have received at least some attention from the Home Ministry. But the truth is that it is no different from that of Bangla, Telugu and Marathi. Tamil recorded 6.32% of the total population in 1991, 5.91% in 2001 and 5.70% in 2011. The only major language to show decadal growth (though small) was Gujarati. And the only small yet scheduled language to show good growth was Sanskrit. The 2021 Census, when conducted, will have another count of languages in the country. And for reasons that are too obvious, the situation of all languages in the Eighth Schedule — except Hindi and Sanskrit, and perhaps Gujarati — will have worsened. In this context, the Parliamentary Committee for the promotion of Hindi should have expressed its concern about the decline of Indian languages, except Hindi, and the lack of growth of Sanskrit, which has ceased to be a living language since the ninth century.
Hindi’s growth is more fiction
If all other languages show a relative decline, why is Hindi recording steady growth? The 52.83 crore speakers of Hindi (as recorded in 2011) included not just the speaker of ‘Hindi’ but also those of more than 50 other languages. Bhojpuri, which was claimed by more than five crore speakers, and evident in its growing visibility in its cinema, literature, newspapers, songs, theatre and publication industry, is placed within Hindi. Most languages of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand have also been pushed into the Hindi package. Even the Pawari language (spoken mainly in Maharashtra and in some parts of Madhya Pradesh) has been shown as ‘Hindi’, overlooking the fact that most Pawari speakers may find Hindi almost unintelligible.
Thus, the story of Hindi’s growth is quite fictitious. Had the Census not included these other languages under Hindi, the strength of Hindi speakers would have gone down to about 39 crore, — just a little under 32% of the total population in 2011 — and would have looked not too different from those of other scheduled languages. The Committee should also have concerned itself with making the Census data for Hindi more realistic.
The data for English speakers is far more truthful. Census 2011 reports a total of 3,88,793 Indians as English speakers (2,59,678 men and 1,29,115 women). Compare this with the least spoken among the scheduled languages, i.e., Manipuri at 17.61 lakh speakers and Bodo at 14.82 lakh speakers. No further comment is necessary; there is nothing to be proud about these figures.
Other languages shine
Hindi is a beautiful language, as is the case with any small or big language in the world. Hindi cinema has brought India some fame and some foreign currency. Hindi literature is rich and evokes pride when mentioned. Yet, it is also true that among the languages included in the Eighth Schedule, it falls within the younger lot of languages.
On the other hand, Tamil, Kannada, Kashmiri, Marathi, Oriya, Sindhi, Nepali and Assamiya have a much longer/older history. As a language of knowledge too, Tamil, Kannada, Bangla and Marathi (with their abundance of encyclopaedias and historical literature), quite easily outshine Hindi. A language evolves slowly and cannot be forced to grow by issuing ordinances.
More politics, the economy
If all wisdom related to the history of Hindi, India’s multilingualism, the federal structure of India and the issue of language sensitivity in so many States should have guided the Committee and the Official Language Committee to accept linguistic realism, what is it that prompted Home Minister Amit Shah to call for a Hindi-India all of a sudden? It is perhaps not so much the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of hyphenating Hindi-Hindu nationalism that has prompted the Home Minister’s Hindi assertion. It may also not be the Bharatiya Janata Party’s idea of majoritarian democracy that has prompted it. Hindi speakers in the country, despite the inflated figure of 52 crore against 121 crore put out by the 2011 Census, do not form a linguistic majority.
The fact remains that 69 crore (even in the 2011 Census), were non-Hindi speakers. In that sense, it was not and cannot be the majority language of India. It is quite likely that Mr. Shah’s attempt to stoke Hindi pride is required as a balm for the vast unemployment that hurts the youth in the Hindi belt, an area so crucial for the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Yet, the Home Minister has overlooked the fact that while harping on Pakistan being a threat to security works for Hindu mobilisation, depicting English as an anti-national entity will no longer work to mobilise the Hindi-speaking people. It makes for utterly poor economics and an absurd linguistics. Most of all, it makes for anti-federal politics. Does India need these?
G.N. Devy is Chief Editor, The People’s Linguistic Survey of India
The novel coronavirus pandemic has been an eye-opener to all about what a widespread, global public health issue looks like. Drawing an analogy from this communicable disease pandemic, one would be better placed to fathom the range and the depth of another pandemic — a silent ‘pandemic of non-communicable diseases’ (NCDs), i.e., diabetes and related conditions such as obesity, hypertension and heart disease, sweeping across the world, rapidly yet steadily over the last few decades.
The global burden
To illustrate the global burden of NCDs, let us use the example of diabetes mellitus. Diabetes is a disease characterised by a sustained increase in blood sugar (“hyperglycemia”) that eventually affects the blood vessels in the body causing damage of various vital organs that include the heart, eyes, kidneys, nerves and brain. In the year 2021, the prevalence of diabetes was estimated by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) to be 537 million people. On extrapolating the data to the year 2045, it is safe to say that almost 783 million people will be living with diabetes. In addition to this, for every person who is known to have diabetes, there is another person whose diabetes has yet to be detected. Further, a number of people live with what is called ‘pre-diabetes’, which is the penultimate stage before overt diabetes.
There is a saying in Tamil that one should not search for the origin of a sage and the headwaters of a river. But, in the case of diabetes and other NCDs, we have no other option but to fervently search for the sage and the headwaters before the world faces a deluge.
While several reasons can be ascribed for this rising trend — these include an aging population, urbanisation, genetic predisposition, nutrition and lifestyle transition — there is one factor that has not yet received due attention, namely, diabetes that occurs during pregnancy. Pregnancy-related diabetes encompasses both newly detected diabetes during pregnancy (or ‘gestational diabetes’) as well as women with pre-existing diabetes (or ‘pre-gestational diabetes’). For the sake of simplicity, we will use the broader term ‘Hyperglycemia-in-Pregnancy (HIP)’ that covers both. The global prevalence of HIP is 16.7% of all live-births. In India, one out of four live-births is complicated by HIP.
A programming
In the 1980s, the British physician and epidemiologist, Prof. David Barker, put forward his hypothesis of “fetal origins of adult disease”. Prof. Barker stated that a man’s susceptibility to many of the adult-onset diseases had already been programmed while he was still an unborn, developing baby (“foetus”) inside his mother’s womb. In this intra-uterine (inside the womb) programming, any adverse stimulus — say an increased blood sugar level in case of maternal diabetes — permanently affects the structure, the functioning and the metabolism of the developing human body at the cellular and tissue levels, thereby predisposing the individual to disease in adult life.
Furthermore, the pancreas of the foetus (which secretes the hormone insulin), is able to respond to the maternal blood-sugars present in the blood that go to the foetus. In case the blood sugar levels are increased, the fetal pancreas secrete excessive insulin, which in turn deposits fat in the growing foetus, sometimes even resulting in a ‘big baby’. When this adversely programmed child grows up, he is faced with an unhealthy environment of high caloric foods, lesser physical activity and stress. At this point of time, the trigger of the gun loaded inside the womb is pulled by the environment. Eventually, the child develops diabetes or pre-diabetes. He also becomes prone to other related NCDs such as hypertension and heart disease.
Transgenerational effects
The claws of HIP extend even more to reach future generations. The offspring, when an adult, might transmit unfavourable genetic and epigenetic effects to the next generation. If the offspring were a girl, she is also prone to develop pregnancy-related diabetes, adding additional adversity for her progeny. Thus, a vicious cycle is established. Hyperglycemia begets hyperglycemia; diabetes begets diabetes and the vicious cycle goes on. All of this started at one point — when a woman developed HIP sometime earlier!
A major strategic point for checkmating diabetes and other NCDs lies at the intra-uterine level. To achieve this, action should commence well before conception. In a woman with pre-existing diabetes, blood sugar values need to be maintained closer to normal levels prior to conception. She should also maintain a healthy weight. The first trimester in pregnancy is a critical period when the organ systems of the body begin to form. If any perturbation occurs at this stage, the damage is likely to persist for life. If such a perturbation could be thwarted, say by achieving good blood sugar control in the mother, the risk of future NCDs in the offspring could be minimised. Therefore, the need is that pregnant women should be screened for diabetes at their very first visit to a maternity clinic. The present recommendation by the ‘Diabetes-in-Pregnancy–Study Group of India’ (DIPSI) lays emphasis on testing for diabetes in ‘all pregnant women’ from the ‘early weeks of pregnancy’. Once HIP is detected, further management by medical nutrition therapy — and if needed, insulin therapy — is done.
DIPSI, led by its founder-patron, Prof. V. Seshiah from Chennai, has established a ‘single-test approach’ wherein a pregnant woman is subjected to a single glucose-load by mouth and blood sugar is tested after two hours. Here, the pregnant woman need not be fasting to undergo the test. This test has been approved and adapted by the Government of India in its National Health Mission.
A window of opportunity
The time around conception offers a great window of opportunity to optimise metabolic status in all women in the reproductive age group. The health of offspring and of further generations depends upon the metabolic health of the pregnant woman. Targeting pregnancy-related diabetes and breaking the vicious cycle of transgenerational transmission is a wholesome action to significantly bring down the expanding burden of diabetes and other NCDs.
In recognition of his numerous contributions to the field of pregnancy-related diabetes in India and around the world, the Government of India has declared the birthday of Prof. Seshiah, which falls on March 10, as “National Gestational Diabetes Mellitus Awareness Day”. Furthermore, Prof. Seshiah was conferred the Padma Shri in the field of medicine (as a part of the Republic Day honours this year). At this juncture, it is wise to reiterate his words on the prevention of NCDs in the community, i.e., “Focus on the Foetus, for the Future”.
Dr. A. Panneerselvam is Director, Aruna Diabetes Centre, Chennai.
Dr. S. Charles Bronson is a faculty member, Institute of Diabetology, Stanley Medical College and Hospital, Chennai
The rapid decline of the Bahujan Samaj Party over the years has led some to believe that Dalit politics lacks a suitable road map. Rebuilding the Bahujan movement will be difficult if the political agenda and electoral strategies are not improvised. In such a crisis, the Dalit-Bahujan leadership could learn from B.R. Ambedkar’s political experiments.
Ambedkar’s social movement and political thoughts are heralded for making Indian society sensitive towards the ideas of social justice and democracy. Ambedkar was keen to find a dignified place for the ‘Untouchables’ in modern institutions, including legislative bodies. He appealed to the ruling classes to recognise the ‘Untouchables’ as a new social and political minority, and demanded special safeguards for them from the state. He thought community-based political representation would liberate the ‘Untouchables’ from the hegemony of the social elites and help them bring their issues to the mainstream. But Ambedkar was not interested in framing the Dalits as a political force for the Dalits alone; he expected them to unify vulnerable caste groups, religious minorities and the deprived working classes and bring about revolutionary political change.
Forming political parties
Ambedkar’s first political party, the Independent Labour Party (ILP), was committed to the welfare of the working classes. The socially marginalised castes, especially the ‘Untouchables’, formed a significant part of modern industry, especially in Bombay. Ambedkar noticed that parties claiming to represent the interests of the working class did not pay attention to the concerns of ‘Untouchable’ labour. He reprimanded the socialist-communist leadership for betraying the trust of lower caste workers. The ILP, he proposed, would highlight the class-caste relationship and contest coercive “Brahmanism and Capitalism” together.
In 1942, Ambedkar established his second political party, the Scheduled Castes Federation (SCF), in Bombay. This was when hectic deliberations were taking place between the Congress, the Muslim League and the representatives of religious minorities over India’s Constitution. In new constitutions in the world then, different religious communities and groups were granted political safeguards and cultural rights according to their numerical strength and historical location. Ambedkar wanted to establish the Depressed Castes as one of the prime actors in the nation-building process. The SCF demanded that the ruling classes cherish the values of socially diverse groups and integrate the different aspirations of marginalised people in their plans for a new India. Further, the SCF meant to promote the interests of the diverse ‘Untouchable’ castes on a single national platform. Ambedkar introduced the SCF as a rival of the Congress and a harsh critic of M.K. Gandhi’s leadership. The Congress was depicted as an association of the social elites that mainly served the interests of powerful caste groups and rich capitalists.
Both the ILP and the SCF had a comprehensive political programme, attractive leadership and the zeal to challenge the hegemony of the social elites. However, in electoral battles, they failed. The non-Mahar caste groups remained distant from these parties and presented them as single caste-centric parties. Ambedkar contested the Bombay (North Central) Lok Sabha seat in 1952 and the by-election in Bhandara in 1954. He lost both times to Congress opponents.
To overcome the stereotype that the SCF only represented the Mahars, Ambedkar launched the Republican Party of India (RPI) in 1956. He envisaged the RPI as a secular-socialist front drawing its ideological motives from Buddhist principles and representing the poor agrarian classes and the socially marginalised castes. Ambedkar’s aim with these experiments was to establish a caste-less societal order: free from upper caste control, superstitions and social prejudice.
The BSP’s limitations
However, the RPI and later, the BSP also failed to escape the image that they represented only one community. Instead, for the BSP it even become imperative to roll out a social engineering formula, a method that exploits caste stratifications to achieve electoral victories and invariably drifts from the values that Ambedkar envisaged. Till the recent past, the BSP mobilised the Dalits effectively, but its engagement with other deprived communities has remained limited. It has not mainstreamed the problems of the poor working classes and landless labour. Unfortunately, today, there are no powerful movements to contest the ills of caste divisions, atrocities and violence or to raise a powerful challenge against the domination of ruling caste elites. Instead, it is right-wing politics that has attracted sections of the Dalit-Bahujan castes with cultural strategies.
Ambedkar’s capacity to learn from experiences helped him formulate better alternatives. Only with such deliberations can a new version of social justice politics emerge.
Harish S. Wankhede is an assistant professor at the Centre for Political Studies, JNU, New Delhi
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi recently met with the warring leaders of the Telangana Congress in New Delhi. Mr. Gandhi apparently conveyed that he was willing to sacrifice people in the interests of the party. The message was that the party is supreme and persons can benefit politically only if the party comes to power. Whether the target of his comments were the senior leaders of the party who are questioning the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief, A. Revanth Reddy, or the leadership itself is unclear.
Senior leaders, who have personal and political issues with the PCC chief, lobbied and finally succeeded in ensuring the meeting. Some of them feel that Mr. Revanth Reddy, an “outsider” like Navjot Singh Sidhu was in the Punjab Congress, cannot lead the party. As expected, the meeting turned out to be a forum for complaints. Some leaders, who rarely come out in the media against the PCC chief, reportedly questioned his style and sought remedies, while others such as T. Jayaprakash Reddy and V. Hanumantha Rao, who have been targeting Mr. Revanth Reddy publicly, remained surprisingly silent. This indicates that the group led by Mr. Revanth Reddy succeeded to a large extent in silencing the dissidents by holding meetings with them and assuring them that they would be elevated to national committees.
Successes and failures
The meeting was a success on some counts and a failure on others. On the one hand, the cadres saw the top leaders on a single platform and Mr. Gandhi taking charge, which may have energised them and given them some hope. The main issue to be addressed was the lack of communication among the leaders. Mr. Gandhi’s promise to form a grievance committee to ensure cohesiveness was a positive outcome of the meeting.
However, there was little discussion on strengthening systems and structural changes, sources said. The meeting seemed to have missed the all-important strategy of creating a narrative to take on the ruling party and its strong leader, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao. None of the senior leaders spoke about the core issue of how the party should be prepared to face the challenge of elections and create counter-narratives to challenge the ruling party’s claims.
Following a similar strategy
The biggest message of the meeting was for Mr. Revanth Reddy, and that is to follow precisely what Mr. Gandhi did. If Mr. Gandhi, busy with responsibilities across the country, could take out four hours to listen to the Telangana leaders, nothing should prevent Mr. Reddy from adopting a similar strategy to hear the leaders of the districts in Telangana.
Senior leaders expect him to spare a full day for each district, call leaders of different groups who are fighting and listen to their concerns. “Assure them, give them confidence and address the issues that can be settled immediately using party mechanisms. The job of a leader is to make things happen rather than doing everything himself,” a senior leader said. He added that the PCC chief has to create effective systems, structures and processes and ensure outcomes rather than playing all the roles himself.
The belief in the party is that a leader will only succeed if he is willing to make sacrifices. Even the strongest supporters of Mr. Revanth Reddy argue that he has to take everyone along with him. That the fist is stronger than individual fingers holds true for the Congress, a party which is still a force to reckon with in Telangana given its spread in each and every village.
ravikanth.ramayayam@thehindu.co.in
The rule of law has a new interpretation in Madhya Pradesh: it is whatever is done by the rulers, and requires neither law nor process. The demolition of about 45 pieces of property, both houses and shops, allegedly belonging to “rioters” at Khargone, a day after a procession to mark Ram Navami, does not appear to be based on any law. It is undoubtedly an instance of collective punishment for the alleged acts of a few. There is little doubt that it was a state-backed drive aimed at Muslims. The basis for the action is the allegation that the Hindu procession was targeted by stones as it passed through a lane adjacent to a mosque. An official spin is sought to be given to the demolition drive that these were “encroachments” and were removed under existing rules. However, the zeal shown in bringing in bulldozers a day after violence marred the Ram Navami procession indicates that punishing those suspected of involvement was the main motivating factor. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has warned that rioters would not be spared and that action would not be limited to arrests, but would extend to recovery of damages from property owned by them. The legal basis is possibly a 2009 order of the Supreme Court, permitting the pinning of the blame on organisers of an event if it ends in violence, and recovering compensation from them against claims. However, even that was allowed only after their involvement in the violence was proved, an element clearly absent here.
Hindutva outfits have been, for some time now, targeting Muslim businesses with calls for boycott and dissemination of rumours about their practices. In the backdrop of an upsurge in calls for violence against Muslims, some with a genocidal tenor, there is reason to believe that there is a larger agenda behind the various incidents of communal colour taking place. The objective seems to be to provoke some sort of retaliation so that they can be portrayed as culprits and severe punishment, both legal and extra-legal, meted out. The ‘othering’ of Muslims is no more discreet, but is being actively promoted in public and shared through social media. In some disturbing visuals, men appearing to be saffron-robed monks are seen handing out death and rape threats. The sight of crowds dancing with raised swords and saffron flags outside mosques, even as obscene slogans and provocative songs are being played, has become a defining visual in the Hindutva project. The country should not be allowed to be driven towards an atmosphere of communal tension with the tacit support of the government machinery in several States.
Just four days after the RBI announced that it would be prioritising inflation over growth, official data show retail inflation disquietingly accelerated to a 17-month high of 6.95% in March. The pace of acceleration in price gains appears to have caught most economists too off guard. The RBI’s latest Survey of Professional Forecasters, released last week, shows the median Q4 inflation expectation of the 33 panellists polled made an assumption for March CPI inflation that was 73 basis points lower at 6.22%. The upsurge was largely driven by food prices, which at the food and beverages group level accounts for 46% of the weight of the Consumer Price Index. While inflation in food and beverages accelerated by 154 basis points from the previous month’s pace to an annualised rate of 7.47%, the month-on-month inflation too was a significant 1.3%. Prices of oils and fats rose 18.8% year-on-year and by as much as 5.3% sequentially. Even granting that the war in Ukraine has severely disrupted the import of sunflower oil and forced edible oil importers to seek alternative supplies at a premium, this is one food item that has been witnessing protracted price pressures. It reflects poorly on the Government’s efforts to proactively address the supply related issues. Meat and fish prices too saw a sharp spike, at 9.63% annualised and a 5% sequential acceleration. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das pointedly flagged the war’s impact on feed costs and warned that global supply shortages could continue to have a “spillover impact on poultry, milk and dairy” prices.
Consumers in the hinterland, where a vast majority of the poor live, have been harder hit, with rural inflation running a sizeable 71 basis points faster at 7.66%. Food price inflation for rural buyers measured by the Consumer Food Price Index, exceeded the 8% level, at 8.04%, hinting at the increasing precarity and nutritional vulnerability in the countryside. Most disconcertingly, the March inflation print barely factors in the pass-through impact of the ongoing increases in the pump prices of petrol and diesel, as state-run refiners began raising prices only from March 22. With road freight rates for transporting everything from farm produce to industrial goods set to rise to reflect the increase in fuel costs, looking ahead the 8% inflation seen in the transport and communication subgroup may end up seeming rather tame in comparison. Two other RBI surveys, on Households’ Inflation Expectations and Consumer Confidence, also raise cautionary flags. While the former shows both three-month and one-year ahead expectations rose from the last round to 10.7% and 10.8%, respectively, the latter points to consumer confidence remaining negative, an improvement in sentiment notwithstanding. Specifically, the one-year ahead expectations on inflation show about 84% consumers see price gains intensifying and the majority expect to spend more on essentials than non-essentials. It is time policymakers act to tame inflation before it dampens consumption and growth any further.
Dacca, April 13: A phenomenal job is being done by India in speeding up relief supplies of foodgrains to avert starvation in many areas of Bangla Desh, especially in the northern parts of the country. At the same time, India is in the unfortunate position of having to defend itself in the face of irresponsible allegations of smuggling of foodgrains back to India from Bangla Desh border areas. The total international pledges of foodgrain supplies to Bangla Desh average about three lakh tonnes a month until the end of this year. Contributing countries are India, the United States, Canada and Australia. The United Nations has arranged for the supply of nearly seven lakh tonnes of grain in April, May and June. So far 2.5 lakh tonnes have been unloaded at Bangla ports while another three lakh tonnes are expected next month. India has supplied large quantities of paddy seeds also. Four special trains from India have brought nearly 1.5 lakh maunds of seeds. India promised Bangla Desh nearly 40,000 tonnes of fertilizer and three quarters of the promised supply have already been delivered.
Retail inflation, as measured by the consumer price index, rose to a 17-month high of 6.95 per cent in March, significantly surpassing consensus estimates. This is the third straight month that inflation has come in above the upper threshold of the Reserve Bank of India’s inflation targeting framework. With this, inflation has averaged 6.34 per cent in the January-March quarter, higher than the central bank’s February forecast of 5.7 per cent. Considering that the full impact of the pass through of higher crude oil prices is likely to be felt in the period thereafter — oil marketing companies had begun to raise the pump prices of petrol and diesel towards the end of March — higher commodity prices and disruptions in supply-chains increase the likelihood of inflation not only exceeding the central bank’s near-term projections, but also breaching the upper threshold of the inflation targeting framework for three consecutive quarters. This will only restrict the monetary policy committee’s room for manoeuvre.
The rise in retail inflation in March was driven primarily by food items — the consumer food price index rose to 7.68 per cent, up from 5.85 per cent the month before. Much of this rise can be traced to vegetables, meat and fish, edible oils, and cereals. But what is equally worrying is that core inflation, which strips away the volatile food and fuel component, has also witnessed a rise. In fact, increases were observed across both goods and services — from clothing and footwear to personal care, heath services and others. This suggests that inflationary pressures are broad-based and are getting firmly entrenched in the economy. As a report from ICRA notes, in March, 78 per cent of items in the CPI basket “witnessed a sequential increase in prices”, up from 68 per cent in January.
In its recent monetary policy committee meeting, the central bank had projected inflation at 6.3 per cent in the first quarter (April-June) of the current financial year, moderating mildly thereafter to 5.8 per cent in the second quarter (July-September). However, the trends in prices so far suggest that these projections are likely to be overtaken. According to a report from Kotak Economic Research, “high frequency prices for April indicate further increase in prices of cereals, pulses, fruits and vegetables”. Moreover, the rise in retail petrol and diesel prices will only add to the inflationary pressures. While in its recent policy meeting, the MPC’s priority had shifted to inflation management, this inflation shock is now likely to bring forward its timelines for tightening of policy. These price trends not only increase the chances of the MPC changing its stance from accommodative to neutral in its next meeting in June, but also increase the odds of the committee hiking interest rates more aggressively to tackle vaulting inflation.
The University Grants Commission’s decision to allow undergraduate, post-graduate and diploma course students to pursue two academic programmes concurrently is in keeping with the New Education Policy’s welcome thrust on eliminating silos in education. An eligible student studying for a degree in a science subject should also have the opportunity to learn the intricacies of a discipline in the humanities, social sciences or commerce, and vice-versa. Currently, the higher education regulator’s rules do not allow simultaneous enrollment in two programmes. This inflexibility is often cited as a major cause for the lack of meaningful conversations across streams of knowledge. The deficit is particularly glaring because a range of contemporary challenges — from addressing climate change to designing employment programmes that cater to local needs to making workplaces more inclusive — require the broad-basing of expertise. The reform is, therefore, much needed and if done well, can go a long way towards fulfilling one of the major objectives of liberal education — broadening outlooks and expanding the perspectives of students. Implementing it will, however, pose challenges. It will place demands on academia and require hand-holding by policymakers.
A growing body of literature attests to the explosion of aspirations after the liberalisation of the economy but the country’s educational institutions have struggled to do justice to the pedagogical needs precipitated by the far-reaching transformations. Teachers are, by and large, still not trained to do justice to students coming from a variety of social and economic backgrounds. The new reform could compound this predicament, especially because instructors will now be required to design courses and structure teaching practices to cater to students with core competences in diverse knowledge streams — for instance, a history classroom may well have students who are currently specialising in physics or commerce, besides those with a grounding in a social science discipline. The UGC will have to draw up training programmes for teachers to enable them to adapt to the changing character of the classroom. The regulator will have to do this without becoming overbearing — its record is not too inspiring on this count.
The NEP lays much store by “critical thinking” and free inquiry. Reforms towards that end, including the latest changes envisaged by the UGC, must begin by addressing a vexed issue: Autonomy, or the lack of it, for institutions as well as for teachers. Institutions have their own ethos and comparative advantages. The thrust towards multidisciplinary training should address deficiencies but it must also be careful not to undermine the advantages of institutions. The task of implementing the NEP’s vision has just begun. The UGC must allow education institutions to set their own pace, at least initially.
Eleven persons, including the last of the Lhasa-trained and eight other top PLA extremists and two army personnel were killed in a major encounter in Kodompopki about 10 km from Imphal. The four-hour operation, army authorities said, will spell the liquidation of the insurgents. The PLA had suffered a severe jolt in July last year when seven insurgents were killed and its top leader Bisweswar Singh was captured in an encounter. According to army sources, the 11 PLA insurgents had got training in China and all of them have been either killed or captured. Five extremists were captured, including four with serious injuries.
The government is likely to withdraw all facilities given to the outlawed Mizo National Front leader if he does not leave the country by the next week. The MNF leader came back to India in 1976 for talks with the Union government on the Mizo issue. Though Laldenga had a passport issued by a foreign country at that time, he was given all facilities to stay in Delhi and discuss the Mizo problem with the Centre. The talks between the government and the MNF leaders started in 1976 and dragged on till the middle of January this year when the MNF leaders insisted on the acceptance of all their demands.
B P Mandal, former chief minister of Bihar, died in Patna. He was 64. His last assignment was the chairmanship of the backward classes commission constituted by the Janata government. Mandal formed the first ministry of rebels who broke away from the first United Front ministry headed by Mahamaya Prasad Sinha in 1968. His ministry was in office for 47 days.
Days after he became the first batsman in IPL history to “retire out” to allow Riyan Parag to swing his bat around with just a few balls left in the innings, R Ashwin summed up the decision that shook some of the mental cobwebs around the game: “It happens in football all the time. T20 has moved towards football substitutions. We are already late. This won’t be a stigma like the non-striker run out,” he said on his YouTube channel. It’s indeed surprising that it has come so late in cricket and it’s only fitting that it took an innovator like Ashwin to push the envelope.
Not that it was the first time in cricket. In 2018, a small cricketing nation, Belize, in a T20 international against Bahamas retired out their batsman, Howell Gillet, who was plodding along for 23 balls for just eight runs in a game against Panama. This January, in a Big Bash game in Australia, Sydney Sixers retired out Jordan Silk for the final ball of the innings as they wanted a fitter player at the non-striker’s end to run faster. In some ways, cricket is evolving closer to the soul of gully cricket. Retired outs, baby overs (where a bowler is pulled out after three balls if he is too expensive), tactical drops (where catches are deliberately dropped if it is felt that it’s better to make a struggling batsman continue rather than invite the wrath of an incoming attacker). After all, most of the innovative shots, from reverse sweep, lap shots or balls like carrom, originated in the gully cricket of yore.
Cricket is witnessing a spiritual return to its grassroots, to its unorganised avatar. What kids do in streets, adults are picking up in a competitive environment. It will be interesting to see how technology is wedded to it. There has been talk of batting cages and virtual-reality headsets to help the incoming batsmen prepare better just before they step in to bat. With the stakes so high, any innovation that helps the game improve can only be welcomed.
“Minority communities may be crushed. If not crushed, they may be tyrannised and oppressed. They are sure to be discriminated against and denied equality before law and equal opportunity in public life.” These prescient lines were written by B R Ambedkar in Thoughts on Linguistic States. Tragically, India’s minorities are now being denied equality before law and equal opportunities in public life. The use of polarising narratives by BJP leaders — including the prime minister and the UP chief minister — in the recently-held assembly elections bear testimony to the veracity of Ambedkar’s predictions.
The manner in which young women in parts of Karnataka were denied their fundamental right to access education just because they wore the hijab painfully brought out the discrimination heaped on them. As does Muslim traders being banned from fairs organised in Karnataka during Hindu religious festivals. This is against the fundamental right of every citizen to pursue trade and commerce. The Centre and BJP-ruled states are trampling on the fundamental rights of citizens just because they profess a religion not in conformity with the project of the Hindu Rashtra. The majoritarian obsession of the ruling party has reduced politics, in the words of Ambedkar, to “theology in action”.
The toxic majoritarianism in “new India” — conjured up by the RSS — is a by-product of
V D Savarkar’s philosophy and vision that Hindus and Muslims have unbridgeable differences. Ambedkar wrote that Savarkar visualised a constitution in which the “Hindu nation will be enabled to occupy a predominant position that is due to it and the Muslim nation made to live in the position of subordinate co-operation with the Hindu nation.” Ambedkar then warned that “Mr Savarkar in advocating his scheme is really creating a most dangerous situation for the safety and security of India”. Similarly, the RSS chief and ideologue M S Golwalkar also advocated second-class citizenship for Muslims. Unfortunately, the Modi regime and BJP-ruled states are now implementing this vision.
The economic boycott of Muslims on any considerable scale has never been witnessed in India. Combined with manufactured narratives like “love jihad”, these steps are dividing India and creating conditions conducive to animosity and hate. Tragically, neither the PM nor any senior ministers uttered a single word condemning the open calls for violence against Muslims by so-called holy men.
Ambedkar wrote: “… if we want to build up unity, it is not by devising a day, however, sacred that day maybe, when both Hindus and Mahomedans will come to the same polling booth. If we want really to devise some means to build up unity, what we should do is break up the social barrier. I say that in this matter the lead has to be taken up by the Hindu community, because they are a very exclusive community. If other communities live a separate life, it is because the Hindu community regards certain interests as its own interests and the fault is entirely due to the Hindu community.”
Given these words, everyone who prefers democracy over communal majoritarianism, equality over exclusion and our Constitution over theology must come together to establish a lasting progressive unity to effectively neutralise the agenda of the RSS-BJP. We need a movement in the pattern of the freedom movement. In that struggle, political liberation went hand-in-hand with social reform. We fondly remember the herculean work done by Ram Mohun Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Jotiba Phule, Mahatma Ayyankali, Sree Narayana Guru and EVR Periyar in bringing about social reforms. Today, political unity among democratic people should be accompanied by liberating society from the attempts at homogeneity by the RSS.
Hinduism was a diverse and diffused set of practices with great regional variations and the absence of a centralised institution. Hindus themselves should remove RSS from its self-appointed role as the sole representative of all Hindus. Other organised religions should also make space for reforms. Mass education on these pertinent issues, a spirit of agitation and robust democratic unity can achieve these objectives. Ambedkar’s slogan of “Educate, Agitate and Organise” should become our path to political and social liberation.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 14, 2022 under the title ‘Babasaheb vs intolerance’. The writer is General Secretary, CPI
The biggest challenge to the world order is not the figure of Vladimir Putin. It is more a syndrome, a cluster of political tendencies that are congealing across the world that might be described as Putinism. At first sight, countries like India, France, Hungary, Israel, China, Turkey or even the United States seem like a motley bunch, each with a distinctive history. Yet powerful political forces in each of these countries are in the grip of a worldview that is not that far from Putinism. And the danger for the world is that Putinism may well survive the downfall of Putin.
The thread connecting these countries is not just admiration for the phenomenon of Putin. Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, and now the ascendant force in French politics, Marine Le Pen, have all been admirers of Putin. Turkey’s interests don’t align with Russia over Ukraine, but Recep Tayyip Erdogan used to admire Putin. The government of India’s position may carry a veneer of sophistication, but the outbreak of sympathy for Putin amongst India’s military, diplomatic and economic elites is as stunning as it is nauseating. Israeli politics’ rightward drift had something to do with immigration from Russia. The Chinese may be wary of the consequences of the Ukraine war, but they share Putin’s objectives enough to not want him to change his behaviour.
At first sight, Putinism might seem to be a peculiar Russian affliction: A product of a feeling of humiliation in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, fanned by an authoritarian regime. But its key tenets are widely shared. The most obvious is anti-Westernism, its avowed aim to displace Western hegemony. This might, in itself, not be a bad thing. But here, the West is not so much a geographical or even cultural idea, as much as an ideological one. In this construction, the West is a stand-in for “liberal.” It fuses anti-Westernism and anti-liberalism. If you are against the West, you oppose liberalism, and if you hate liberals you oppose the West. This explains, in a way, why Trump, Le Pen and Orban align with Putin. For they also want to rescue the West from its association with liberalism, and construct it as a more cultural or racial entity. It also explains the inner contradiction of Hindutva attitudes to the West. They strategically might court Western power, but they are also against Western hegemony — what they mean by that is simply the ascendant power of liberal ideas.
The association of the idea of the West with liberalism is one of the most potent mistakes in intellectual history. The West has only been intermittently liberal; and the strongest arguments for liberalism are not rooted in the Western cultural experience but in the demands of human freedom and dignity. But this fusion of the West and liberalism allows anti-liberals to wear the mantle of anti-colonialism and anti- Westernism. It allows them to trash liberalism while looking like national heroes. The West has a lot to answer for: Racism, imperialism, exploitation. But in this world view, anti-Westernism is simply a convenient dog whistle for being anti-liberal: It allows one to drape authoritarianism and ethnic supremacism in the mantle of virtue.
Second, there is an affinity in their attitudes to historical time. Putin might have the fantasy of creating Greater Russia that harkens back to Peter the Great. But these fantasies of undoing the past by erasing the present of other peoples or minorities is not unique. China fancies itself as recreating its position as the Middle Kingdom; India as terrorising its minorities to recreate the fantasy of an Indian history without a Muslim past; Turkey has always been fascinated by neo-Ottomanism, and references to a Greater Hungary, whose political boundaries are not the current moth-eaten product of the nation-state system, were aplenty in the Hungarian election. It is a fantasy world, but one that can license control and purification in its name.
But there is also a hostility to the recent past, an ambivalence about the post-1989 world. In Russia this hostility is, of course, apparent. But even countries that did well in that now much maligned neo-liberal phase of economic reform and globalisation, are ambivalent about that era in political terms. That economic reform came with, what is on this narrative, a political enfeeblement. This enfeeblement took two forms. The first is the reduction of the state to only quotidian goals like economic growth. The post- 1989 world was not just one of economic deregulation, but one in which the state becomes untethered from its higher purposes, or from fulfilling its nationalist purposes defined in ethnic terms. It also displays a fundamental political weakness: An unwillingness to assert control over culture, civil society and the economy, all in the name of some idea of freedom. It is not an accident that it is the political constellations that were ascendant immediately after 1989 that are getting decimated. In the French elections, Macron had already swerved right, but it is the decimation of the centre and the left that is striking. But the dissemination of the post-1989 “Liberal Left” in France, in Israel, in India, in Hungary, as if they were some kind of ancien regime that needed to be thrown out, is quite astonishing.
Third, there is a clear comfort with violence. Other ideologies have deployed violence as well. And there are differences in the institutional contexts that allow for the use of violence. But in Putinism, the threat of violence, internal or external, or its intermittent deployment, is itself the sign of success. It is useful for rallying nationalist sentiment, it is a raw assertion of ethnic privilege, and a sign of a masculine revenge of humiliation.
There is an obsession with demography, the ethnic composition of populations. There is an abiding suspicion of the foreign and the cosmopolitan. In a slightly odd phenomenon what unites these countries is that they all hate the figure of George Soros, emblematic now of the foreign hand. They envisage re-altering the relationship between civil society and the state, where civil society is expected to serve the purposes of the state rather than be autonomous in its own right. There is a discomfort with pluralism, a contempt for moderation, disdain for freedom, and mistaking of ruthlessness for achievement. Putin may lose, but Putinism is ascendant as an ideology — now aligning itself with white supremacism, French chauvinism, Israeli right wing assertion, Ottoman dreams, Chinese aggression or Hindutva aggression. They want to take down the West but what they really want to take down is liberalism.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 14, 2022 under the title ‘Triumph of Putinism’. The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express
The Hindi imbroglio is back. We have been here before, not once but many times. In 2014, the newly-elected government’s diktat to its officers to use Hindi in official correspondence and on social media is now forgotten. The frequent move to be swadeshi and have an indigenous national language has been based upon a videshi (foreign) idea of nationalism in which nations cannot be imagined without a national language.
The spectre of Hindi emerges in India every few years and quite often, the reactions are to the state rather than to Hindi itself — the state and a particular version of Hindi. There is very little resistance to bolchaal ki (colloquial) Hindi, especially when made out of necessity and not inherent imperialism. Left to their own resources, the people of India manage to communicate across linguistic divides. It is when they are besieged that they ferociously proclaim the superiority of their languages.
Meanwhile, where has Hindi been all these years? Hindi had, after an abortive attempt to be the rashtra bhasha (national language), limped along as a raj bhasha (official language). Government institutions continue to pay ceremonial tribute to Hindi. Staff and employees are made to fill up forms confirming or denying their proficiency in the language. It’s a different matter that even filling up this form requires more than proficiency in sarkari (official/bureaucratic) Hindi. Dormant departments of Hindi translation continue to invent words that Hindi had hitherto not known. The difference this time is that Home Minister Amit Shah specifically mentions the Northeastern states — a region that was earlier beyond the BJP’s ambit. The honourable minister’s statement is made in a “reasonable” voice, almost as if it were natural that Hindi is the most used language in Parliament. Or that the unity of the country and communication in the country are two identical things. Both English and Hindi work as vehicular languages, sometimes one and sometimes the other. Life in India does not come to a standstill for lack of an official language, or even a national language. We know that on some days it is not about language, but about the power it represents, while on some days, language is business-as-usual. Language, in this case, is the symbol also of competing federal and centrist powers.
Upon thinking about the home minister’s recent announcement to make Hindi compulsory in all Northeastern states and the pushback from certain quarters, which was communicated widely on social media, I was reminded of the year 1949. We must remember that language is both an aid and an aim. As such, the constituent assembly debates on language did turn out to be the longest and were extremely charged. They betray deep sentiments attached to language, but also put on display the instability of what we term as a particular language, in this case, Hindi. Verses from writers we would consider as being in Braj, Urdu and Punjabi are quoted to buttress the cause of Hindi, while questions of whether legislation is kanoon or vidhaan are asked to show how difficult a proposition Hindi is. Presiding as the chair of the constituent assembly debate on language, then-president Rajendra Prasad said on September 14, 1949: “Whatever has to be said should be said in moderate language so that it might appeal to reason and there should be no appeal to feeling or passion in a matter like this.”
What is the most appropriate language to talk about language, one may ask? Was Dr Prasad anticipating a surge of passion when he said this? It is interesting how norms about expressing views on language convey the potential of language itself as a weapon. Perhaps, for the moment, we may even forget the pedantic word “appropriate” and ask a simple question: Can we debate the home minister’s declaration in one language? No, we can’t. Can we do it without becoming emotional? The answer is no, again. Does that mean we don’t manage to communicate that this is an imposition, with different ramifications for different people? What is interesting is how language seems so incidental and insignificant on some days, and acquires the intensity of a life-and-death situation on others. The first public immolation in independent India was on the issue of language. The home minister, like many of his predecessors, ignores the fact that language is not simply about communication. From his point of view, he has advanced what seems to him a more flexible approach, which is that Hindi needs to take words from “local” languages so that it is not set up against “mother tongues.” This is also a move to diffuse the fear of an incomprehensible and turgid sarkari Hindi which did a historic disservice to the language.
However, mother tongues that remain confined to homes become dialects, whilst those that go to baithaks (meetings) and parliaments have a powerful future. Hindi is being chosen by Shah as a language of power, and taking some words from Garo or Khasi is not going to change the fact that it is a language of imposition. Slogans declaring that Hindi’s competition is with English, not with other Indian languages, are empty precisely because we know that 70 per cent of the documents in Parliament (by Shah’s own admission) are in Hindi.
Finally, it is important (because such are the times we live in) to clarify that Hindi is one of my favourite languages. Most Sindhis have grown up speaking Hindi fluently in India, for they found their own language difficult or awkward. The point is not about Hindi as a language, but Hindi and its state-sanctioned register as symbols of who gets to define the nation and its terms today. India has a unique history of being a nation without a national language, a position not of lack or absence, but of a different model. The rest of the world stands to learn from this model; we don’t need to imitate the one-language-one-nation model.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 14, 2022 under the title ‘Speaking for ourselves’. The writer is professor of English at Ashoka University
Sometimes, CAG reports make us feel despondent. There is such a 2013 report on “Preservation and Conservation of Monuments and Antiquities”. Monuments and antiquities are part of our heritage and culture and we don’t market them adequately. In particular, this report flags the inefficiency of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Excavation and preservation require distinct skill-sets and expertise and since it seeks to combine them both, I have reservations about something like the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act of 1958. But let’s leave larger issues aside and focus on only one aspect.
To quote from the 2013 Report, “During joint physical inspections, we found that 131 antiquities were stolen from monuments/sites and 37 antiquities from Site Museums from 1981 to 2012… We observed that in similar situations, worldwide, organisations took many more effective steps including checking of catalogues of international auction house(s), posting news of such theft on websites, posting information about theft in the International Art Loss Registry, sending photographs of stolen objects electronically to dealers and auction houses and intimate scholars in the field. We found that the ASI had never participated or collected information on Indian antiquities put on sale at well-known international auction houses viz. Sotheby’s, Christie’s, etc. as there was no explicit provision in the AAT (Antiquities and Art Treasures) Act, 1972 for doing so… As part of its responsibilities, the ASI was also a nodal agency to retrieve stolen or illegally exported art objects. From 1976 to 2001, 19 antiquities had been retrieved by the ASI from foreign countries either through legal means, indemnity agreement, voluntary action or throughout of case settlement. But after 2001, the ASI had not been able to achieve any success.” This was compounded by discretion and abuse in granting non-antiquity certificates for exports.
India is a signatory to the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. (We ratified it in 1977). Perhaps we should also sign the 1995 UNIDROIT (International Institute for the Unification of Private Law) Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects. Cultural heritage can take many forms, though we tend to identify more with moveable cultural heritage, like paintings, coins and archaeological objects, and there are Interpol surveys and databases on such crimes. The CAG report was in 2013 and in the last few years, there have been several reasons to make us feel less despondent.
All of us have read reports about some 200-odd idols being returned by the US, Britain, Canada and Australia. The PM has spoken about “sabka prayas”. If there is a reason for reduced despondency, that’s because some citizens have taken Article 51A(f) of the Constitution seriously. “It shall be the duty of every citizen of India to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture.” I refer to initiatives and success of the India Pride Project. The credit for recent returns can largely be attributed to this.
A stolen Buddha statue has returned from Italy. Italy also suffers and several stolen antiquities have been returned by the US to Italy. That being the case, it shouldn’t be surprising that many best practices originate in Italy. The following list is illustrative. (1) A specific law on protecting cultural heritage, with enhanced penalties; (2) Centralised management before granting authorisation for archaeological research; (3) Specialisation in cultural heritage for public prosecutors; (4) An inter-ministerial committee for recovery and return of cultural objects; (5) MOUs and bilateral agreements with other countries and international organisations to prevent illegal trafficking; (6) Involvement of private organisations and individuals in protection; (7) A complete inventory of moveable and immoveable cultural heritage, with detailed catalogues; (8) Monitoring and inspection of cultural sites; and (9) Centralised granting of export requests. One could say the 2013 CAG Report did a bit of (8), but that was a one-off and isn’t a permanent solution. This isn’t a binary, nor is it possible to accomplish everything overnight. However, incrementally, one can move towards (1), (3), (4), (5), (6), (8) and, especially, (7).
Surely, we should start with that inventory. If we are informed in Parliament that idols and artefacts have been stolen from centrally-protected temples, museums, monuments and archaeological sites, we should be aghast. While fingers can rightly be pointed at Western museums and auction-houses (this isn’t only about the colonial era), there is internal connivance. How do heritage man-holes turn up at Sotheby’s? Monson Mavunkal may have been arrested now. But the fact remains he functioned in Kerala for years with impunity. (In fairness, he seems to have sold fake stuff, not genuine objects.)
Subhash Kapoor, also arrested now, sold genuine stuff to museums. How was Nataraja stolen from Sripuranthan? How was it smuggled to the US? How was it then sold to the National Gallery of Australia? How was provenance established? Subhash Kapoor may have been arrested and Nataraja returned, but the established modus operandi is, unfortunately, obvious. With non-existent security, idols are routinely stolen by local thieves, perhaps to melt. With international cartels, this moves to the big league. For two years after Nataraja and Uma Maheshvari (this idol was in Singapore) were stolen, we didn’t even know they had vanished. It shouldn’t be surprising that they didn’t feature in the ALR (Art Loss Register). “Poetry in Stone” has a lot of stuff about Kapoor, documenting how culture was left to vultures, without that inventory.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 14, 2022 under the title ‘A record of culture’. The writer is chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the PM. Views are personal
The dramatic revelations about UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak facing fines for contraventions of Covid-19 restrictions could not have come at a worse time for the Conservative party. There is little modern precedent for such figures at the heart of government to be publicly sanctioned for rule breaches. Intrigue abounds in Westminster with calls for resignation, backbench mutiny and leadership contests gaining momentum. Spring may have come but the government is not feeling the sunshine. Understandable as this unease is, the Tories should reflect on the bigger picture. As the Ukrainian conflict continues, voters face a terrible cost-of-living crisis with rising food prices, soaring energy bills and inflation. Internecine feuding within the party at this stage risks becoming a distraction from larger issues.
“Events, dear boy, events” Harold Macmillan famously quipped when asked about a statesman’s greatest challenge. So it has turned out to be for Johnson and Sunak. The prime minister’s supporters may be forgiven for wondering how quickly the public mood has soured against the man who secured a landmark general election victory and “got Brexit done”. Similarly, admirers of the chancellor might look back to the early days of the pandemic when Sunak captured the public imagination with the furlough scheme. Erudite and thoughtful, he seemed to personify the appeal of a modern conservatism that could transcend traditional boundaries. Talk of being a leadership successor abounded. But in politics — as in life — perception matters. If allegations of an extravagant Downing Street redecoration tainted Johnson, recent revelations about the Sunak family’s tax and financial affairs have wounded the chancellor. The duo has floundered on the Kipling test, that is, being able to “walk with kings — nor lose the common touch”.
Unsurprisingly, there are likely to be vociferous calls for resignation and leadership contests. Tory backbenchers will find themselves in the spotlight, rebels will generate headlines and party whips will be on edge. The economic circumstances are perilous. The conflict in Ukraine has pushed energy prices up by more than 50 per cent with fuel poverty a real concern. Inflation is expected to cross 8 per cent in Q2 2022, its highest level in 30 years. The Office of Budget Responsibility has warned that real living standards can expect “their largest financial year fall on record”. Local elections in early May could, therefore, act as a lightning rod for voter anger.
Where are the Tories headed currently? The answer seems to be rather confused at the moment. A bid to continue to court the working class Brexiteers has seen the Tory party support greater taxation and spending policies. But the truth is that the increased borrowing cannot be sustained forever. Nor is increasing the taxation burden the answer. Incessant borrowing stands to pass debts on to the youth. Debt interest servicing stands at £83 billion — an all-time high. And increasing taxation — even to support laudable concerns such as social care — risks choking off a recovery before it has begun. The irony is that fiscal conservatism and making the case for lower taxes — especially for the low paid — has all but been forgotten by an ostensibly centre-right government. What is truly needed is not a change in leadership but a radical change in policy direction.
The government remains fortunate that the Labour party is still a work in progress. Granted that Keir Starmer cuts a more plausible figure than Jeremy Corbyn, but he hasn’t yet made a convincing pitch to centrist voters. Labour has not yet articulated a credible alternative plan. There is also merit in the argument that a prime ministerial change while a war rages in Ukraine might not be in Britain’s best interest. That said, simply carrying on with the status quo is unlikely to appease the party.
What should be Johnson’s and Sunak’s key priorities for a reset then? First, simplifying the structures of an inefficient state should be their core aim. Second, championing economic freedom and promoting innovation should be at the heart of any policy reboot. A post-Brexit Britain needs to embrace free trade and eschew protectionism. For all of Sunak’s professed conservatism, he hasn’t committed himself to any radical reshaping and simplification so far. That needs to change. Moreover, it is only through growth that Johnson’s promise to “level up” forgotten areas of the country — the so-called red wall — can be met. Importantly, the cost of transitioning to a green economy should not fall disproportionately on the least well-off. The core of this agenda would be a competitive tax regime to boost entrepreneurship and a fit-for-purpose approach to immigration. Alliances with like-minded democracies such as India will need to be cemented too. That calls for strategic nous.
None of this will be easy. But if Johnson and Sunak seek to survive “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and restore political credibility, they will have to be bold. The truth remains that while Britain has a conservative administration, it still lacks truly conservative policies that are capable of promoting transformative change. That needs to shift urgently. Only then will the vision of “taking back control” have a genuine chance of being substantively fulfilled.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 14, 2022 under the title ‘No party for Conservatives’. The writer is a London-based lawyer and political commentator
Just as Karnataka BJP was sitting pretty after sowing confusion in Congress ranks over how to respond to the hijab controversy, the death of a civil contractor who alleged corruption and harassment by the state rural development minister KS Eshwarappa has put the governing party on the defensive again. Even as the powerful contractor lobby threatened to launch an agitation, a defiant Eshwarappa has refused to quit. All eyes are now on chief minister Basavaraj Bommai to see how he will negotiate the latest upheaval during his brief but tempestuous tenure.
With the assembly elections just a year away both BJP and Congress have begun preparations. The 2018 elections had ended in a sort of stalemate with no party getting a majority forcing BJP to induce desertions from JD(S) and Congress to cross the halfway mark. Though it won the 2013 elections comfortably, Congress cannot hope to be the automatic beneficiary of anti-incumbency against the BJP. In those elections, Lingayat strongman BS Yediyurappa wasn’t with BJP but now that is no longer the case.
Read also: No action against minister Eshwarappa until preliminary inquiry is completed: Karnataka CM Basavaraj Bommai
But a decade is a long time in politics and BJP has managed to reduce its dependence on the North Karnataka belt but growing stronger in the Old Mysuru region. The weakening of JD(S) and to a lesser extent Congress has helped the process. But Congress is no pushover in Karnataka, unlike many other states where it is locked in a direct fight with BJP. Both Karnataka unit president DK Shivakamar and leader of opposition Siddaramaiah are formidable leaders. But dissension between them remains a cause of worry for the opposition party.
With hardline Hindutva politics finding greater traction in Karnataka but inflation giving incumbent governments the jitters, the next one year in Karnataka politics promises to be an eventful period.
After sporadic rioting on Sunday raised worries of wider disturbances, Madhya Pradesh government’s summary demolition of houses and shops of alleged rioters made a bad situation worse. The state’s action of using its official apparatus to pursue remedial responses outside the ambit of laws and rights is a violation of due process and procedure. MP government cites the Madhya Pradesh Prevention of Damage to Public and Private Property and Recovery of Damage Act passed last year, and claims it was acting against those rioters squatting on government land. But, crucially, this Act mandates the District Magistrate or other officers to first approach a Claims Tribunal. Even a demolition for encroachment of public land requires a reasonable notice period for the squatters to pursue legal remedies or vacate premises.
The state is constitutionally mandated to follow a fair, just and equitable procedure after the landmark Maneka Gandhi case of 1978. This inversion of due process and procedure by razing houses/shops of alleged suspects also victimises entire families who may have nothing to do with riots. Meanwhile, accountability of police and administration in preventing riots goes unmentioned.
Substituting the hard work of punishing rioters through collecting evidence, recording witness statements, and bolstering case diaries for filing chargesheets with the optics of “instant justice” can have bigger costs. Anyone’s life, livelihood and property are at risk when arbitrariness becomes the norm. For MP, struggling with huge multidimensional poverty, as per Niti Aayog, an arbitrary law and order system isn’t an investor-friendly measure.
Even if MP’s government leaders including its CM, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, reckon that such state responses can fetch short-term political dividends, they must also reckon with medium-term costs, because reputational damage from such political expediency can be consequential. US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s remarks on the US monitoring “rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials” are an indication that world attention on due process in India isn’t going to fade away. And while investors may not always care about rights – they don’t as far as China is concerned – they certainly care about a peaceable environment. When states act high-handed, that’s what they risk.
With Omicron’s different sub-variants continuing to wreak havoc in different parts of the world, combined with fears of the emergence of some new variant, India’s expansion of the ‘precaution dose’ programme beginning this Sunday was essential. But the extremely slow uptake of the first three days raised doubts whether public messaging on the necessity of boosters is too weak. GoI’s bulletin yesterday morning showed just 9,921 people in the 18-44 years age group and 35,368 in the more vulnerable 45-59 group had taken advantage of the expanded vaccination. But afterwards the CoWin portal showed an uptick through the day, crossing 55,000 for the two age groups combined. Building momentum is critical.
While the vaccine policy has been expanded to allow everyone over 18 to receive a booster, there are still two serious restraints that need loosening. First, the booster is still only available nine months after the second dose. Given the wealth of international data which underlines the waning of vaccine efficacy at six months versus the absence of publicly-available national data showing that this happens at nine months instead, the above time frame urgently needs revision. With the nine-month gap, 29 million Indians aged 18-59 become eligible for boosters today. With a six-month gap, this number would soar to 192 million. By the way, servicing such a target would not be difficult, with India’s pharma pipeline comfortably placed to buttress supply.
The second restraint of course is that the sub-60 boosters are only available at private vaccination centres. Even though Covishield and Covaxin prices were cut ahead of the booster expansion, they remain too high for working-class families. Moreover, that these boosters are absent from government facilities may be feeding suspicions that these are luxury goods. It is worth remembering that the global case for boosters really picked up after the Omicron variant was identified in November and data started emerging about how boosting offered very strong defence against hospitalisation. We have the vaccines. We have the science. We shouldn’t wait for the next storm to shore up our defences.
The Union government's disinclination to lower duties on petrol and diesel makes both economic and political sense. By asking state-owned oil refiners to cushion the pass-through of the spike in crude prices, it is resisting the temptation to alter the pricing of retail transport fuels through changes in the considerable taxes stacked on them. This was the intent behind dismantling the administered price mechanism and is ideally upheld. Fuel pricing in India has, in the main, moved beyond the political feedback loop, and incremental changes are eminently preferable to bunched-up adjustment. The latest round of duty cuts last year, followed by a freeze on prices for over four months, have made the adjustment more painful when equalisation resumed. Oil refiners have managed just over half the pass-through in petrol prices and a little over a third in diesel.
Tax rates are also best left unchanged because of the inordinate dependence of the Centre's revenues on fuel. The basic excise duty, special additional excise duty, road and infrastructure cess, and agriculture cess flow solely into the Union government's coffers and have been bolstering overall tax mobilisation. The states are not in a position to break the Centre's monopoly because bringing fuel under the goods and services tax (GST) would lead to considerable revenue loss. They can do precious little as the Centre's share of taxes on fuel eats into theirs.
If fuel taxes are to be altered, they should be restructured to carve out the implicit carbon tax that is funding India's transition to cleaner energy and moving the residual component into the GST. That would be a more transparent approach to climate change commitments while removing discretion in pricing fuel. As it stands now, the tax structure is regressive, serving neither the interest of the vulnerable nor addressing the externalities of fossil fuel. It is high time India re-examines the fiscal risks emanating from oil price volatility and creates a tax structure that can deal with it.
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Last Sunday's horrific Deogarh ropeway mishap and the rescue operations by the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF), Indian Army, Indian Air Force and other agencies underscores the lack of capacity to deal with such accidents at the local level, especially outside metropolitan India. To ameliorate matters, a strong first-responder network for quick response is needed.
At Deogarh, safety measures relating to operation and maintenance, and a contigency plan to deal with accidents or mechanical failures, were non-existent. With no system of first-responders, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), paramedics, firefighters and police, the only option for the administration is to seek NDRF or army help as the first - and only - option. These agencies have the requisite expertise. But the absence of first-responders can result in delays. So, in India, their role is usually provided by locals who step in before the cavalry arrives. This is seen at building collapses and train and road accidents, where they fill in till expert help is called in to carry out search-and-rescue operations. This situation is untenable. First-responder presence ensures that local units can begin work without losing time. They can be supported, if required, by state and national agencies. A robust network would build expertise that can be deployed locally, which, in turn, would create a system that could provide people with a critical service that can save lives - and not just in case of major mishaps or disasters.
Accidents happen. As do human errors. That is why precautionary measures and contingency plans are made. A country is judged by the value it puts in the lives of its own citizenry. Making loss of lives in accidents minimal should be India's priority.
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In India, Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Muslims account for a combined population of 450 million, making them some of the largest marginalised social groups in the world. This cohort routinely suffers marginalisation, violence, exclusion, and discrimination. While inequality in terms of education and mobility has received attention from researchers and policymakers, inequality in health outcomes is less explored. BR Ambedkar once said, “The health of the untouchable is the care of nobody. Indeed, the death of an untouchable is regarded as a good riddance”. Paying attention to life expectancy disparities in India shows the statement is relevant even today.
Life expectancy is defined as the average number of years a newborn is expected to live if prevailing mortality patterns remain constant. Life expectancy at birth is one of the most fundamental measures of health and well-being. India’s Sample Registration System (SRS), which started empirical measurement of life expectancy in the 1970s, estimated it to be 49.7 years for 1970-75, and 69.4 years for 2014-18. But this improvement was not the same for all segments. Recent research by demographers Sangita Vyas, Payal Hathi, and Aashish Gupta (2022) and Aashish Gupta and Nikkil Sudharsanan (2022), show large and persistent disparities in life expectancy for SCs, STs, and Muslims, compared to caste Hindus.
Vyas et al, using the Annual Health Survey 2010-11 data from nine large and poor states representing about half of India’s population, show that compared to caste Hindus, life expectancy at birth is over three years less for SCs and over four years less for STs. Muslims’ life expectancy is about one year lower. One belief is that this reflects the poorer economic status of SC, STs, and Muslims compared to caste Hindus. Vyas et al create a wealth index using household assets such as washing machines, motorcycles, and cars, and household infrastructure such as the number of rooms to document the distribution of social groups across wealth categories. Caste Hindus are richer than marginalised social groups, on average, and richer people are also less likely to die. But they found class and economic status explain less than half of the life expectancy disparities. At all levels of wealth, SCs and STs experience higher mortality.
Gupta and Sudharsanan compare trends in life expectancy at the national level between the late-1990s to mid-2010s for these social groups using the National Family Health Survey 2 and 4. In this period of robust economic growth, while the life expectancy difference between caste Hindu women and ST women declined, the difference remained the same for caste Hindu men and ST men. Alarmingly, for SC men, the absolute differences in life expectancy increased, putting them at a six years disadvantage compared to caste Hindu men. For Muslims, life expectancy was comparable in the late 1990s with caste Hindus, but by the mid-2010s, a Muslim’s life expectancy was three years lower. They further show that these disparities are observed at all ages and not just driven by differences in infant, child, or older age mortality.
Gupta and Sudharsanan report that SCs and Muslims have the lowest life expectancy at birth in the Hindi belt, comprising Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Rajasthan. STs have the highest life expectancy in the Northeast region and lowest in central states, such as Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.
The two research papers reveal the value of large-scale and independent surveys, which can be used to understand inequality in life expectancy. It brings to attention the dire need in India to collect caste-based data. India’s civil registration system, which is incomplete, also does not collect information on caste. These findings suggest a need to focus on addressing caste discrimination and focusing on the health of marginalised populations. Economic growth alone has not reduced these large gaps, and social disparities in life expectancy are not just because of economic differences.
These inequalities are also prevalent in accessing health care to various health outcomes such as nutritional status and morbidity. They have likely worsened due to the pandemic and growing prejudices against marginalised groups. If India is committed to improving welfare, it is imperative that they devise a strategy to better measure and address these inequalities.
Aditi Priya is a senior research associate and the founder of Bahujan Economists. Vipul Paikra is research fellow with Rice Institute
The views expressed are personal
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s electoral victory in Uttar Pradesh (UP) has put the spotlight on the centrality of welfare schemes in the party’s electoral toolkit. This is not new. In the 2017 UP election, and the subsequent 2019 national election, welfare schemes were a loud and visible part of the campaign. The term “labharthi” (the BJP’s term for scheme beneficiaries) has entered the lexicon of political analysis. Given this, it is important to ask if there is a distinct BJP welfare model. If so, what are its characteristics and how does it seek to shape citizen-State relations?
First, an important caveat. We do not, as yet, have significant rigorous, national evaluations of these schemes and their outcomes. It is difficult, therefore, to comment on their reach or impact. But polling data shows that welfare schemes are actively used by the BJP to derive political legitimacy and access to scheme benefits plays a part in shaping voter choices. Thus, they merit a deeper understanding.
The most visible aspect of the BJP’s welfare is its emphasis on direct benefits — cash transfers, providing toilets, housing, and since the pandemic, ration. Economist Arvind Subramaniam describes this as “subsidised public provisioning of private goods”, a “new welfarism” where public goods — health and basic education — are under-prioritised in favour of private benefits. Focusing on the political contract that underlies this new welfarism, political scientist Hilal Ahmed has recently characterised the BJP’s welfare as an electoral bargain struck by a “charitable State”. Welfare is not provided out of political duty, but rather as an act of benevolence linked to electoral return.
Building on “new welfarism” and “charitable State”, there are three distinctive characteristics of the BJP’s current welfare model.
First, a repositioning of welfare as “empowerment”, distinct from “doles” and “entitlements” (as they describe) of the past. “The poor need to be empowered... to fight poverty on their own strength”, the Prime Minister (PM) said in his early days in power as he sought to position the BJP’s welfare through the slogan “empowerment versus entitlement”.
Welfare, in this imagination, is about the State providing the tools to fight poverty through new welfarism, but the fight is an individual one. In its essence, this is a remarkably neoliberal take on welfare — a point that is lost in public discourse that tends to view any kind of welfare as Left-wing.
In an interview in the run-up to the UP election, Amit Shah reiterated this position. “We have provided gas connections, it is up to them to pay their bills,” he said, “We have made toilets…they have to maintain them… what we did is.. to upgrade their lives — this is empowerment”.
Second, the idea of the labharthi. Logically, a discourse on empowerment ought to create political space for a deeper articulation of citizen rights and identity. But what is distinctive about the BJP’s welfare is that it seeks to limit the idea of empowerment to the provision of benefits. The careful nurturing of the citizen as a labharthi is central to this framing.
In this formulation, the citizen is cast as a recipient, a beneficiary of welfare beholden to the benevolence of a charitable State rather than a citizen actively claiming rights from the State. By thus stripping welfare of the language of rights, the BJP has effectively created a new language of political mobilisation. The “labharthi varg” is distinct from caste and identity-based politics that draws on an imagination of empowerment as identity assertion through a language of group rights and dignity.
Third, the strategies through which the labharthi is mobilised — centralised delivery and direct attribution to the party leadership — are designed to build the moral legitimacy of the PM and establish trust, what political scientist Neelanjan Sircar has termed the “politics of vishwas (faith)”.
This is not about establishing the patronage of the “mai baap sarkar”. Rather, it is about establishing an emotive connection and deep loyalty to the party leadership. Individual benefits, rather than diffused public goods such as education, are compatible with this politics. Tangible benefits make it easier for party workers to mobilise voters and invoke the image of the PM as the provider. And when benefits fail to reach — despite the noise there remain households that are waiting for the promise of ration, toilets and housing — this loyalty is extracted from the promise of the future. After all, “Modi hai to mumkin hai (Modi can make it possible)”.
Sociologist Patrick Heller coined the term “patrimonial welfarism”. This comes closest to describing the BJP’s welfare model: Welfarism that derives its power from the party leadership, while at the same time, leveraging specific welfare benefits as an instrument to establish the leadership’s moral legitimacy with voters.
This is not a uniquely BJP strategy. Politicians going back to late Tamil Nadu chief minister (CM) Jayalalithaa and even Indira Gandhi deployed versions of patrimonial welfarism. But the political reach of the BJP’s welfarism, one that several CMs across the country are now adapting, requires deeper engagement. What does it do to democracy when voters are cast as labharthis rather than rights-claiming citizens? How does this shape citizen expectations and democratic accountability? These are questions all students of democracy must ask and answer. This piece is a provocation to further this debate.
Yamini Aiyar is president and chief executive, Centre for Policy Research
The views expressed are personal
The defining image of this week’s India-United States (US) 2+2 dialogue is likely to be external affairs minister S Jaishankar’s response to a question on India importing oil from Russia: “Our [India’s] purchases for the month would be less than what Europe does in an afternoon.”
Many in India have viewed it as a rightful retort to America badgering New Delhi on the issue of its energy ties with Russia. And many in the US will view it as India continuing to pursue its own line on Russia, despite the Ukraine crisis getting worse. But Jaishankar was merely stating the obvious and making it clear that New Delhi and Washington have different vantage points to view the unfolding crisis in Europe.
And yet the larger message from this week’s 2+2, which morphed into 3+3 with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden setting the tone for the conversation, was that the world’s two major democracies are willing to work around their divergences to arrive at mutually acceptable outcomes.
Despite the headlines in recent weeks being dominated by their differences over the Russia-Ukraine crisis, India and the US have underscored their commitment to continue to build on the momentum of recent years and not lose sight of the larger strategic picture.
Russia’s war on Ukraine and its global ramifications certainly could not have been avoided and they were a large part of the agenda, but the India-US bilateral partnership today encompasses a whole host of issues including the response to Covid-19, economic recovery post-pandemic, the climate crisis and sustainable development, critical and emerging technologies, supply chain resilience, education, the diaspora, and defence and security.
The breadth and depth of this engagement remain unmatched and the drivers of this partnership have been growing at an unprecedented rate. This relationship remains unique insofar as this is driven at both levels: At the strategic elite level and at the people-to-people level.
This week’s dialogue saw the signing of the memorandum of understanding on space situational awareness as the two nations seek to deepen cooperation in outer space and cyberspace to develop capabilities in both “war-fighting domains.” The defence partnership between India and the US continues to grow rapidly with the US secretary of defense Lloyd Austin underlining that the two nations have “identified new opportunities to extend the operational reach of our militaries and to coordinate more closely together across the expanse of the Indo-Pacific.” He also pointedly mentioned that China was constructing “dual-use infrastructure” along the border with India and the US would “continue to stand alongside” India to defend its sovereign interest. This is not the language of two nations that are diverging in a strategic sense.
That India and the US will differ on the Ukraine crisis has been evident for quite some time. After all, Russia is not a new factor in this relationship. For years, the India-Russia defence relationship has posed challenges. The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) law has been part of the discussion for a long time in the context of New Delhi’s purchase of the S-400 Triumf missile defence system from Moscow.
Though US secretary of state Anthony Blinken had “not yet made a determination regarding potential sanctions or potential waivers,” these seem to be a clear recognition in Washington that any move to sanction India would take the relationship back by decades. In its own way, the Ukraine crisis opened up new opportunities for the India-US partnership as well. The US under-secretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, during her recent visit to India, acknowledged that “India’s dependence on Russia for defence supplies is crucial” and that this was a “legacy of security support from the Soviet Union and Russia at a time when the US was less generous with India.” But with the new realities of today shaping the trajectory of this bilateral engagement, it is time for the US to help India in building its defence manufacturing base through technology transfer as well as co-production and co-development.
India’s position on the Ukraine crisis has been described by many as neutral or even non-aligned. But this is not our grandfather’s non-aligned posturing by India. India’s approach is underpinned by clear principles that it holds dear in the Indo-Pacific but is also applicable in the Ukraine crisis — respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty of States, the UN Charter, and international law. New Delhi is willing to use the present situation to explore opportunities to further its vital interests — be it asking the US to look afresh at its defence cooperation with India or buying discounted oil from Russia to serve its economic needs.
India is reluctant to condemn Russia publicly but with its abstention at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), its repeated reference to the UN Charter and its humanitarian help to Ukraine, it is making its priorities clear. They are about India emerging as a leading player in an international system that is undergoing an unprecedented transformation.
India and the US are strategic partners today in the true sense of the term. But a partnership among mature major powers is never about seeking a complete convergence. It is about managing differences by ensuring a continuous dialogue and channelling these differences into crafting new opportunities. The latest iteration of the 2+2 has managed to convey that sentiment effectively.
Harsh V Pant is vice president for studies, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, and professor of international relations at King’s College London
The views expressed are personal
Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi on Thursday inaugurated the Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya, built at central Delhi’s Teen Murti Bhavan, as a tribute to the nation’s PMs. The museum’s 43 galleries are dedicated to the country’s 14 PMs with their memorabilia and personal possessions on display. State-of-the-art technology has been used to highlight the leaders’ journeys.
Flawed as it may be, Indian politics has been a vehicle of social change from the early days of Independence, standing in contrast to the experiences of many of South Asian nations, where the ruling elite, civil or military, has often thwarted democracy from sinking deeper roots. This is best exemplified in the diverse backgrounds of the leaders who have led this country — from lawyers, economists, and labour researchers to civil servants, farmers and engineers. Inaugurated on the day marking the birth anniversary of BR Ambedkar, a leader who never became PM, but articulated his deep ideological divergences with the PM of the day, Jawaharlal Nehru, the museum will hopefully give India’s citizens a chance to take an honest look at the lives and legacies of the PMs, divorced from political gatekeepers and enforced hagiographies.
One more aspect merits attention. In his speech, Mr Modi underlined how each of these leaders attempted to take India forward by confronting the issues of the day. Mature democracies build on achievements of the past, prefer a comprehensive appraisal of political legacies to mere name-calling, and avoid blaming past leaders for current problems. If the museum can facilitate this, it would have rendered a great service to Indian politics.
The Union environment ministry plans to exempt highway projects critical to the country’s defence or that are of strategic importance near the nation’s borders, from the requirement of prior environment clearance, this newspaper reported on Thursday. Instead, the draft notification, on April 11, prescribed environmental safeguards for self-compliance by developers. This pro-infrastructure stand is not unanticipated: In 2021, the Centre used the same defence-strategic requirement argument in the Supreme Court (SC) in the Char Dham Pariyojana (CDP) case. This argument was accepted by the SC. Environmentalists and geologists opposed the government’s stand because India’s northern borders fall in the highly eco-sensitive Himalayan region.
The Himalayan landscape is not just strategically crucial to India, but also has a huge role to play in ecological, economic, and cultural development. Its role has become even more critical in the era of the climate crisis. The region has faced challenges due to excessive focus on commercial forestry, cascading hydropower projects, mining, and unbridled tourism. These have led to deforestation, biodiversity loss, toxic waste accumulation, air pollution, and degradation of water sources. The impacts are evident: The once-pristine hills stations of the Himalayan region — Shimla, Darjeeling, and Shillong — now look like unplanned metropolises; every monsoon leads to floods and landslides; and getting a clear view of the Himalayan range is often a challenge because of the haze. The Himalayas also play a role in regulating the monsoons, and is home to some of the major rivers — essential for water security. The region is also a seismic zone.
The massive road-building projects in the pipeline will only devastate an already ravaged landscape. It is futile to hope that developers will follow the self-compliance guidelines in the absence of strong governance and oversight mechanisms. While the nation’s security is paramount, it also critical to keep in mind what the SC-mandated panel on CDP said in its report: “Today, worldwide, it is becoming clearer by the minute that any development devoid of honest and uncompromising ecological concerns will prove short-sighted; and inevitably in the long run bring devastation and disaster on our heads.” The government should remember that the costs of the large-scale and long-term devastation, which extensive road-building will unleash, may be too high to bear.
It is hard to see any signs of stability in Pakistan’s politics in the wake of the defeat of the Imran Khan government in the National Assembly and the swearing in of Mian Shehbaz Sharif as the leader of an unnatural coalition. This necessitates a cautious appraisal of the events next door by India, but that cannot only mean a watching brief.
The dramatic circumstances, including intervention by the country’s Supreme Court, that attended Mr Khan’s departure as Prime Minister have caused gushing comment that parliamentary procedures had prevailed and the leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party became Pakistan’s first Prime Minister to have to resign because he lost a vote of confidence. Ergo, democracy has taken root, bringing about new rules of the game in that country.
Such star-truck theorising is unrealistic. While Pakistan’s powerful Army, which has long held the country’s politics on a puppet string, had proclaimed that it remained “neutral” through the recent political drama leading to the fall of the PTI government on April 10, crucial questions arise.
Could Shehbaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (N) and the Bhutto-Zardari clan’s Pakistan People’s Party — natural and bitter rivals in the country’s politics — have cohered into an alliance and summoned the capacity to plot, along with Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s JUI(F), the downfall of the Imran Khan government without the encouragement of the armed forces?
Remember, these manoeuvres also included the defections of a sizable number from the ruling camp.
The current balance of forces seems to stand thus: the powerful Pakistan military and the country’s most important political parties together ranged against the populist former PM, who also appears to be the country’s most popular political leader at present.
While Mr Khan’s rule saw high degree vendetta politics and shambolic governance, and he hastened the collapse of an economy that has been structurally fragile, Gallup Pakistan gave him 46 per cent ratings in early April.
Besides Islamism, this may be due to the health card introduced earlier this year for several areas, including the crucial province Punjab. The facility guarantees health cover up to Rs 10 lakhs.
It is also noteworthy that Mr Khan forced his party’s Members of the National Assembly (or MPs) resign before the trust vote. They seemed to do so without a murmur.
Thus, Mr Sharif was elected Prime Minister by a half-empty chamber. This suggests without a doubt that the game is on. Huge nationwide protests greeted Mr Khan’s loss of power. The next Parliament election is due in July 2023, but Shehbaz Sharif (and the Army establishment) may choose to go the country a bit earlier in order to duck taking pro-market decisions to prevent economic chaos which would increase the economic pain.
Until then, the former Prime Minister might be expected to run a high-voltage campaign decrying Mr Sharif and his partners as traitors and America’s puppets since he claims the existence of diplomatic communication purporting to show that a no-confidence motion was brought to get rid of him under Washington’s direction.
The United States has emphatically denied the allegation but the charge is emotive enough for Mr Sharif to send it to a parliamentary probe committee.
Also, given the US record of intervention and sub rosa activity in country after country, such an allegation can be spun to devastating effect in the hands of a populist who plays the politics of Islamism in a desperately unstable society.
Unlike his flashy predecessor, the new Pakistan PM does indeed have a “doer” reputation. But this cannot be converted into political capital in the time before the next election unless the capsizing economy is salvaged somewhat. Only the United States, with its deep influence over international institutions, can help in this messy task, not China, though Beijing may contribute in order not to lose out in Pakistan as the country has some geostrategic value.
It is with precisely this in mind that the Army Chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, last week publicly repudiated then PM Khan and spoke in warm terms of Pakistan’s historical ties with the United States after Mr Khan had pivoted wholesale, taking his country in the direction of the China-Russia geopolitical axis against the US. The Pakistan Army has also repudiated Mr Khan’s charge of the existence of an American plot.
Speaking in Parliament upon being elected the country’s leader, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif sought to calm the national mood, promised to eschew vendetta politics and let bygones be bygones. A conciliatory approach may come naturally to the new leader, but there ought to be little doubt that the soft-hands method would also be the Army’s preference in the present circumstances. The game is doubtless aimed at winning the country back from Mr Khan’s populist wiles.
Mr Sharif has underlined peace with India and a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue, although the Pakistani street is likely to be in the grip of Imran Khan’s rhetorical politics, including on the Kashmir question. Mr Khan had practically cut all communication with India after New Delhi ended J&K’s special status in August 2019 but in Parliament the new Pakistan PM criticised his predecessor for not pushing India diplomatically on the question of the dilution of Article 370.
These constitute signalling that the door shut by Mr Khan can be opened a little if there is political will on both sides. This approach builds on the tactics mooted earlier by Gen. Bajwa which, for Pakistan, privileges “geo-economics” over “geopolitics”. It is evident to any observer that Pakistan’s economic well-being cannot be fixed while maintaining hostility with India. With deep-going current uncertainties in Pakistan, the time window is small, however.
While using Kashmir as a pathway for a possible de-freeze, the situation in Afghanistan may also be probed by India through the creative role of the United States as a viaduct. Using ISI chief Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed as an instrument, as PM Mr Khan had scuttled America’s last mile game in Afghanistan. The Taliban were not meant to enter Kabul militarily. There was meant to be a choreographed handover. But the ISI chief had choreographed the opposite, physically arriving in Kabul to place effective power in the hands of those with which the world finds it difficult to do any kind of normal business. If this situation can be moderated, regional geopolitics can receive an animating impulse.
After a high-decibel attack against the Central government for not procuring all the paddy set to be harvested in rabi season in the state, including a high-visibility dharna in the national capital joined by farmer leader Rakesh Singh Tikait, Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has assured farmers that the state government would be procuring all the grain harvested in a press conference in Hyderabad on Tuesday.
The announcement only brings to a pause the current episode of a long-drawn political showdown between the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi and the Congress and the BJP, the two increasingly belligerent Opposition parties in the state. The tensions would resume with the new farming cycle as a bound-to-be bitter election looms ahead.
The irony of the politics over paddy lies in the early success of the TRS government, led by Mr Chandashekar Rao, aka KCR, in restoring traditional water tank structures and mega irrigation schemes and creating the possibility of a near-perpetual water supply to all villages as well as converting a drought-prone zone into a green state. Besides propelling the separate statehood movement forward, this ended several historic problems that plagued the region, including labour migration and farmer suicides.
However, the “problems of plenty” arose faster than anticipated. Along with the pre-sowing season farmer cash input subsidy scheme, Rythu Bandhu, the abundant supply of water meant crop output grew dramatically, leading to problems of procurement. Given the strong political connect farmer issues naturally have, any reform or change is fraught with risk — and the TRS, after some feeble attempts to coax or coerce farmers to take to sowing other crops, gave up.
The moment the TRS started sending signals to farmers to grow other crops, both the Opposition parties began to exploit the situation, asking them to exercise their right to choose the crop they sow. As farmers sow, so are governments bound to reap.
The TRS was being cornered by both the Congress and the BJP in the state, led by their respective leaders, A. Revanth Reddy and Bandi Sanjay Kumar, ambitious men who believe they can have a shot at replacing the incumbent chief minister if they play the farmer card right.
The TRS tried to turn the tables on to the Centre, by directing all fury towards the Narendra Modi-led BJP government, demanding the Centre buy the paddy. The Centre refused to budge, citing the fact that the national crop procurement policy was not only important for ensuring national food security, but also facilitated subsidised food supply to poorer sections, created a level playing field for farmers across states and fulfilled India’s global obligations under WTO on food imports and exports.
Also, the Centre did not blink an eye in calling out the Telangana government on not meeting all its obligations of supplying crops in the previous two years. With agitations threatened by the Congress and BJP in the state, the TRS finally agreed to buy the crop. All three parties are now fighting for credit with regard to the move.
It is a problematic trend if parties indulge in irresponsible ways, more so with farmers, the true foundation of India. But it is an inevitable problem that cannot be wished away.
In an extraordinary twist to the long running drama over parties thrown at 10 Downing Street in the time of the pandemic, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, his wife Carrie and chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak have been fined by Metropolitan Police. It’s the first time in British history that such an event has occurred, leading to predictable Opposition calls for the PM and his finance minister to resign even while signals have been more muted from the ruling Tories.
The lesson it holds of the equality of democracy in which no one is above the law lends a piquant situation the seriousness it deserves. It’s hard to imagine there being too many nations in which such equality can be practised so fearlessly and objectively. Such scenarios are regularly imagined only by scriptwriters in the Indian version of an election-dominated democracy in which accountability perhaps ends at the swearing-in ceremony.
A remarkable aspect of the fines imposed on Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak, once tipped to succeed him as PM, is that such partying was never a crime until the rulers said so and legislators passed some of the most restrictive constraints in modern times on individual freedoms. Britons could not hug loved ones, grieve over near and dear kin in the event of death, get married or celebrate birthdays because Covid was thought to be so dangerously infectious that commoners were forced to endure virtual imprisonment for close to two years.
There cannot be one law for the citizens and another for the privileged. And those who suffered and sacrificed so much during the pandemic will not easily forgive their Prime Minister for partying. It’s also significant that Mr Johnson lied to Parliament in denying there were no such office parties while there were at least a dozen as well as a quiz show at the seat of power.
Mr Johnson, a Covid sufferer, will pay the price because he allowed his integrity to be undermined for the lark of partying during the pandemic. If he continues in office until the next general election, he would owe it to the international crisis that the Ukraine war is and the fact that he has been such a dynamic force in the region opposing the Russian invasion.