The 2022 Uttar Pradesh election verdict is a latent function of deep communal and casteist mobilisation. However, it is being camouflaged under the garb of development and good governance. On the one hand there was ‘Kairana, Kashi, Ayodhya, Mathura, Jinnah, Assi-Bees, bulldozer (against a particular community), Teen Talaq’, and on the other side, the mobilisation of Brahmins, non-Yadavs (Kurmi, Lodh, Gujjar, Jaat, Rajbhar, Maurya, Saini, Nonia, Chauhan, Nishad, Nai), and non-Jatavs (Pasi, Dhobi, Kori, Khatik, Valmiki, Dhanuk) became the fulcrum of electioneering. Above all, the mainstream corporate media, YouTube media, pollsters, and so-called intellectuals, on the basis of flop-rallies by leaders of two political parties, described the UP elections as bipolar. Once this perception crystallised amongst masses, they forgot unemployment, price rise, Covid deaths, Hathras case, Unnao case etc.
This false consciousness created a strong perception that the contest is between the BJP and SP and that the BSP is not in the fight at all. So the Muslims, OBCs, and a few upper-caste voters who have traditionally voted for the BSP, deserted it. Had this section voted for development and good governance, for which the BSP had the best record during its 2007-12 term in UP, they would have picked the party again.
It is a fact that in this election the BSP lost approximately 74 lakh votes in comparison to 2017. The SP gained 1.26 crore and its ally, the RLD, gained 10 lakh votes. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BSP had tied up with the SP and RLD, and since the Dalit vote is often based on ideology, therefore in all probability, the BSP votes have shifted to the SP and RLD to defeat the BJP.
So did the BJP raise its tally? Of course, because of the Congress (which lost approximately 32 lakh votes) and the Shiv Sena (did not contest). The voters of these parties have no hesitation in voting for the BJP. It is in this context that the theory that the Dalit vote has shifted to the BJP is nothing but an ignorance of history.
Historically, non-Jatavs have always voted for the BJP (or the Jana Sangh). At one point, they were also considered Congress vote bank, before shifting to the BSP. This narrative was constructed to save the so-called upper-castes from being questioned — why did they vote en-bloc for the BJP.
That the BSP is the B-team of the BJP is another narrative which speaks volumes about caste prejudice. In Goa, the Trinamool Congress contested polls for the first time and did not win any seat, and in turn helped the BJP to retain power. Yet, nobody calls the TMC a B-team of the BJP. Mamata Banerjee also travelled to UP to campaign for the SP.
The caste prejudice in Indian politics is not only towards the BSP’s Mayawati. Take Congress’s Charanjit Singh Channi. In Punjab polls. Jat Sikhs and Hindus did not vote for Channi although he is a well-educated and seasoned politician. It is established fact that in Punjab, the Akalis and the Congress come to power alternatively, and the Jat Sikhs, Hindus and Dalits have voted for the Congress for 70 years. However, this time, AAP weaned away Jats, Hindus and non-Ravidasis and Ramdasis from Congress by projecting a Jat Sikh as CM.
Then what is the way forward for BSP? The answer lies in the fact that the BSP is not only a political party, it is a social movement. Losing and winning an election is part of the movement and till the gaps in democracy are filled, BSP will remain relevant.
Nonetheless, after five elections (UP polls — 2012, 2017, 2022 — and two general elections — 2014, 2019) it has been established that the mainstream society is not ready to accept the BSP as a centrist party, even though it is hailed for its good governance, social justice (land distribution), pro-poor schemes (Ambedkar Village, Kanshiram Housing Schemes), and development (with GDP of the state on a par with the national numbers during 2007-12).
Therefore, it has to reinvent its old ideology and identify elements which exploit Bahujans in institutions of governance, education, production and social life. It has to repeat its 2007 performance to provide representation to Bahujans in institutions of governance to strengthen democracy.
Kumar is professor of sociology at Jawarharlal Nehru University
The hijab, halal and aazaan controversies are rocking the state of Karnataka. They have been manufactured as part of a carefully designed campaign to divide the people of Karnataka into two camps — Hindus and Muslims — ahead of the State election in 2023.
Hijab is a dress where the girl/woman covers her head when she steps out of her home. Hindu women in north India, Sikh women, Christian nuns and some others (including Sikh men) also cover their heads.
Halal is meat from slaughtering animals or poultry, according to Islamic law, through a cut to the jugular vein or windpipe and draining all the blood. Other religions have rules for preparing food: Judaism prescribes kosher food and many Hindu sub-divisions prepare food according to certain rules.
Aazaan is a call to prayer broadcast from mosques five times a day, often through loudspeakers. Hindu and Christian places of worship toll bells. Hindu religious festivals are usually accompanied by reciting scriptures or playing devotional music that is amplified through loudspeakers.
Centuries of Co-existence
Hijab, halal and aazaan are not new practices. They have been part of Islam ever since Islam came to India. The people of Karnataka (and the old Mysore kingdom) had accepted these practices for centuries; no one objected to them, and no Muslim objected to Hindu religious practices. To put it shortly, Hindus, Muslims and Christians — as well as followers of other faiths — have peacefully co-existed with each other.
Until the BJP entered Karnataka. The BJP has ruled Karnataka for a few terms, in a coalition or alone. In recent years, it has ruled by enticing legislators from other parties to switch sides — the effort was labeled as Operation Lotus. The BJP faces a State election in 2023. Its governments have been non-performers and its position in Karnataka is quite shaky. Opposition parties have learnt to build protective walls to counter Operation Lotus.
Hence, the need to build another narrative that can polarize the voters and attract the majority of the Hindu votes. The BJP has enough evil geniuses who have the capacity to craft state-specific strategies: one such strategy is the deliberate effort to kick up controversies around food, dress and prayer in Karnataka.
The sudden proscription of hijab in schools and colleges by the state government was challenged in Court. A Full Bench of the High Court of Karnataka framed the question as “whether wearing of hijab was an ‘essential religious practice’ “, and ruled that it was not. The question was irrelevant. The only relevant question was whether the State had the power to proscribe hijab and thus violate the right to privacy (and agency) of the Muslim student and her right to education. An appeal has been lodged in the Supreme Court and it is hoped that the real issues will be addressed and resolved.
Hate Speech Thrives
Such controversies lay the ground for hate speech. There has been an abundance of hate speech on both sides, though the initial provocateur, in many recent cases, was the Hindu zealot(s). Sadly, few prominent citizens of Karnataka spoke up: among the notable exceptions were the historian Mr Ramchandra Guha and the industrialist Mrs Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. The peddlers of hate speech turned their ire on the two!
Hate speech has crossed all bounds in some states, especially Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. A repeat offender is Yeti Narasinghanand, working as a priest in Dasna Devi temple. Last year, during a Hindu religious congregation in Haridwar, he had made derogatory remarks against Muslim women, was arrested and after some weeks released on bail. On April 3, 2022, he delivered a speech at a self-described ‘Hindu Mahapanchayat’ in Delhi when he said “to protect your sisters and daughters, take up arms.” Among the dire predictions he made was that a Muslim will be prime minister of India either in 2029 or 2034 or 2039! The police recorded an FIR but did not arrest him or move for cancellation of his bail.
Another horrifying example is the case of Mahant Bajrang Muni, a self-styled religious leader. On April 2, 2022, a video showed him addressing a gathering in Hindi. He said, while the crowd cheered him, “If anyone from your community harasses any girl in the area, I will pick up your daughters from your homes and rape them.” The target was obvious. The National Commission for Women demanded his arrest. He was arrested eleven days later.
Tolerating Intolerance
Ironically, acts of violence, intolerance and hate were committed on the day celebrated as the birthday of Lord Ram, who is Maryada Purushottam, the epitome of righteousness. These acts and utterances cannot be dismissed as extreme rants by agent provocateurs. They have the support of the BJP and the RSS who are determinedly on a course to consolidate and expand the Hindu core of India which now lies in the Hindi-speaking states.
Hartosh Singh Bal, writing in the influential Foreign Affairs, has observed, “More than 400 million people either do not subscribe to Hinduism or do not practice the kind of Hinduism that the RSS holds supreme. They will nonetheless be subject to what is, ultimately, an imperial project that attempts to homogenize the Hindu population while ensuring that India’s Muslims and Christians are relegated to second-class citizenship.”
Amidst growing intolerance, the studied silence of the highest authorities of the country is not a mere lapse
of governance.
Let me start with a question. Would it be right for the homes of policemen and officials in charge of law and order in Khargone to have their houses bulldozed? I ask because when violence breaks out in a public place it is because the local administration fails, and it must be held accountable. But instead of the tortuous process of inquiry commissions that take decades to give their verdict, would it not be better to punish officials without due process?
It is keeping this question in mind that we need to examine the demolition of the houses and properties of those charged with rioting in Khargone. What happened was outrageous because it was a violation of the fundamental principles that govern the rule of law, but public outrage has been subdued by the voices of those who believe that it serves Muslims right.
On social media I have heard jubilant ‘new’ Indians celebrate what happened in Khargone. I have engaged with them to point out that without the rule of law democratic countries become autocracies and what prevails is the law of the jungle. And the response has been that if the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh had waited to punish rioters through due legal process they would have remained unpunished for years. This is true. And there is a solution that is so obvious I feel foolish repeating it here, but it clearly needs repetition.
The reason why the justice system moves so slowly is because it is broken and badly needs fixing. There are some obvious reforms that can be made effortlessly. The most necessary of these, in my view, is to scrap the ludicrous procedures that exist from colonial times. An example that comes immediately to mind is that of Aryan Khan. On the day that he was given bail he would have been able in another country to walk out of court immediately. But, not in India. Here he was taken back to the cell in which he was confined for a month and made to wait another two days for the procedures of his release to be completed. Why do these procedures exist?
Why does it take the courts 20 years of deliberations before punishing those responsible for the bombings that killed nearly 300 people in Mumbai in 1993? Why do judges need to write short novels to make their judgments? Why do the police need thousands of words to make charges that could be made in a few paragraphs? Why do lawyers succeed in delaying trials? Why are there no deadlines for trials to end? These are only some of the questions that need urgent answers, but the answer cannot be to establish the law of the jungle instead of the rule of law.
What we saw in Khargone was the law of the jungle. The Home Minister of Madhya Pradesh defended what happened on the grounds that those who throw stones will have their homes reduced to stones. Well, what would he say to the old lady whose picture appeared on the front page of this newspaper last week? Hasina Fakhroo is in her sixties and clearly too old to be a rioter, but her house was reduced to rubble before she could prove that it was built under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana.
Long is the list of cases in which people have been punished without due process, and the list does not begin with Narendra Modi coming to power as the Congress party would have us believe. An example from supposedly benign Congress times is that of Lalit Modi. All the cases that were made against him have been thrown out of court, but he was hounded out of India as a result of a shameful media trial in which those responsible for upholding the rule of law played an ugly part. More recently this happened in the Sushant Singh Rajput case where the media was manipulated through calculated leaks to turn his suicide into a murder case. A young woman’s life was destroyed by TV anchors who declared her guilty on primetime. Should these anchors have their homes bulldozed? When should we stop using bulldozers?
Once we give officials the right to bulldoze the homes of suspected rioters and the right to seize the properties of alleged offenders, we establish the rule of the jungle. Once we allow income-tax inspectors to raid the homes of alleged tax evaders without proof that they have evaded taxes, we do the same. This is a practice that has been going on much too long.
What has changed since Narendra Modi took office is that somehow it is always Muslims that end up spending months in jail in cases that are bailable. It is shameful that this happened to a standup comedian for a joke he had not cracked. Shameful that student leaders and journalists, nearly always Muslims, spend months in jail on usually dubious charges. Let us then ask what happens to a country in which senior political leaders and high officials show total disdain for the rule of law on the fallacious grounds that the process of justice takes too long. The answer is that they are in clear violation of the Constitution of India, and the consequences are grim. When the rule of law is weakened, it weakens democracy because the rule of law has to be sacrosanct in democratic countries.
All through my childhood and teenage years, I noticed some inadequacies in my vision. For instance, when I picked up a dull-coloured shirt, others would call it bright. But I never knew I was colour-blind. My ‘inadequacy’, I presumed, had to do with how I saw certain colour combinations. I just told myself that my colour sensibilities were a little different from everyone else. After being associated with a few film projects as assistant director, working on some television productions, and making short films and video albums, I joined a film institute in Kochi as faculty. I was about 28 years old then.
At the institute, I was asked to help with the admission process. Some lecturers on the panel insisted that we also make arrangements for a colour-blindness test while selecting candidates. We put up some colour boards and I was given the responsibility to spot the colour-blind candidates.
That is when I realised that I was colour blind.
I realised the problem but I knew nothing about it. So, I started reading up. Since I was also an aspiring filmmaker, I was nervous about my future.
Once it became known that I had colour blindness, people around me also became curious. They would show me things and ask me about its colour. Even now, some friends ask me in jest, “What is the colour of this shirt?” For me, however, it was less about not recognising a particular colour and more about the realisation that I may be seeing a different world.
I was told my problem is with Red and Green, among the most common forms of colour blindness.
Then, I came across a report that said that even British-American film director Christopher Nolan is colour blind. It came as a huge relief. The fact that an internationally celebrated filmmaker was also colour blind gave me immense confidence.
So when the Supreme Court issued an order directing the Pune-based Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) not to exclude candidates suffering from colour blindness from its courses on filmmaking and editing, I welcomed it wholeheartedly.
The petitioner — a student who was denied admission to FTII’s Diploma in Film Editing course in 2015 after he was diagnosed as colour blind — had also cited Nolan’s example.
Looking back, I feel that if I hadn’t known about Nolan, things would have been far more challenging for me emotionally in the early part of my career. My transition, from suspecting that I had a problem with my vision to thinking that I had ‘lesser’ colour sense, to finally understanding that I had colour blindness, was slow.
The SC order said that “colour blindness is not a form of blindness but a deficiency.” So true. I would say that there might be a problem in my vision, but not in my sensibility.
Shyju Khalid, a renowned cinematographer, once told me, “While we see a largely dull world and all the dirt around, maybe you have a graded vision.” In films, colour grading refers to curating colours carefully to convey an atmosphere, emotion and style.
However, at times, the condition does make me conscious at work. To counter it, I have developed an immersive working style, engaging deeply with cinematographers and designers to avoid any conflict.
Until the recent Supreme Court order, I didn’t even know about the FTII case. When a prestigious institute denies admission to a colour-blind aspirant, it ruins the dreams of many. More importantly, it makes someone feel inadequate or unqualified.
Now, however, we know that there are many colour-blind actors and filmmakers. I believe that the scope of our vision is significant too. The colours and patterns we see are so different and beautiful. In a way, we can see the lives around us more closely because we are denied many colours. The Supreme Court order said, “Art is non-conformist in character…” Very true. The perspective of colour-blind people should be welcomed as the influence of cinema on people is also different and relative. I would go as far as to say that being colour blind is not an inadequacy but an extra advantage for a filmmaker. That’s how I see the apex court’s order.
Pothan is an acclaimed director, producer and actor, associated with Malayalam films such as Kumbalangi Nights and Joji. As told to Arun Janardhanan
After depicting blowzy romance via wind machines, designer wardrobes and incredulous coincidences, celebrity filmmaker Karan Johar’s latest foray into the business of love is a down-to-earth endorsement of http://www.iitiimshaadi.com. The website, promoted by the very aptly named company Alma Mater Matters Pvt Ltd invites registrations only from alumni of top institutions, with the explanation that “people desire companionship of matching intellects with similar experiences”. It’s perfectly natural that like gravitates towards like, the latest examples being Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt. But Johar has been receiving a lot of flak on Twitter for promoting a “regressive and discriminatory” approach to marriage, as if India’s unabashedly conservative wedding protocols have ever been anything else.
Internet matchmaking has become ubiquitous even in India, taking on the space once occupied by newspaper matrimonial ads. It can be overwhelming, sorting through lakhs of jeevansathi.com and shaadi.com profiles, constantly worrying about a potential prospect misrepresenting themselves. A friend of mine was alarmed to discover that someone she matched with on Tinder was a truck driver before starting a transport business. I pointed out that Russell Crowe was a waiter before making it in Hollywood to which she snapped she had nothing in common with people in the trucking industry. Right or wrong, we are all shameless traditionalists when it comes to choosing life partners, operating in our own little gilded circles, reluctant to consider an outlier. If one is venturing outside of one’s comfort zone, a filtering is required. That’s where iitiimshaadi.com scores; it makes no bones about sifting out the grain from the chaff, so to say.
It is worth noting that there are over 1,500 matrimonial websites in India, catering to orthodox Hindu demands, largely based on caste. Minorities (Muslims and Christians) would be wasting their time on many of them (however, they have their own specific websites full of equally tasteless idiosyncrasies). A glance through the top five matchmaking sites is a revelation; candidates who fail to identify their own caste and graciously tick “caste no bar” in their quest for a mate have a far smaller pool of responses to choose from. There are two reasons for this. One, Indians are hopelessly insular and casteist. Two, a lack of full disclosure is viewed suspiciously; perhaps a candidate is hiding an unsavoury past. Under the heading “Caste No Bar” I repeatedly saw: “SC/ST Please Excuse”, contradictory yet noteworthy—this is a rare specimen indeed, who stops short of taking a deep plunge but is at least, willing to look beyond his own sub-caste.
It is to be wondered that after all this painstaking anthropological streamlining and pairings based on socio-economic hierarchies, if, a few years in, people do a rethink and decide these yardsticks were wholly idiotic—and that giving oneself up to mad passion might have been more conducive to happiness. But romantic inexperience leads to the fear that the lovers one chooses may be chronically wrong (and there’ll be no one to blame). Mate selection is an issue in other countries too. In the West they go about it like normal adults, picking partners with a shared vision for the future, and similar interests. Critically, mummy-papa are not involved and nobody cares what a partner’s random ancestors did, 300 years ago. Indians approach their personal lives the way they do a 12th Board examination—industriously, the virtues of continuity of society hammered into them.
This attitude of risk averseness has led to an over-dependence on tribe and a cynical distrust of romance. After all, most of literature concerns the perils of scandal and doomed love; in Anna Karenina, Anna leaves her husband for Vronksy, condemning herself to a life of despair and death. Lydia, in Pride and Prejudice, is reduced to poverty by eloping with the county rake, Wickham. In this era, the path to true love may be paved with choices, but the safest is going en route the only destination that matters: a carefully strategized marriage.
Guidance provided by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys last week indicate topline strength for the Indian information technology (IT) industry. But there could be some pressure on the bottomline as employee churn scaled a new peak. Results put out by the infotech bellwethers for the Q4 2021-22 show the deal pipeline is robust as companies worldwide ramp up cloud adoption and digital presence. Growth is spread across business verticals. Smaller Indian service providers are expected to benefit from their niche offerings to clients in retail, manufacturing, healthcare, finance, technology and communications. North America and Europe continued to see traction and emerging markets are chugging along.
The niggles are over cost. Wage bills are bloating as IT companies grapple with skyrocketing attrition and a need for fresh hires. Travel and visa costs will kick in as worker mobility rises with the unlocking of most big markets for Indian IT services. Subcontracting is also becoming expensive. Salary increments have already overshot pre-pandemic highs as the industry battles its biggest mass resignation in history. These trends have been playing out over the previous financial year and the employee-related pressure on margin, the key cost variable for the industry, is likely to endure.
For India, it is critical that business keeps rolling in for IT. Its merchandise exports have had a stellar run on a global recovery from the pandemic. But the going will be uphill with food and energy supply disruptions, and with central bankers applying hard brakes on inflation. IT exports are relatively insulated from commodity market upheaval that is opening up India's trade balance. The resultant pressure on the rupee advantages the industry's export earnings. Market commentary on IT margins and valuations have turned sober. It could become even more so as the war in Ukraine and credit tightening begins to throttle growth in North America and Europe. That eventuality is some way off, given the hiring intentions of India's biggest IT companies.
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Covid cases are on the rise in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) and Maharashtra. The spike, likely driven by the XE variant, should not derail resumption of 'normal' activities. Learning to live with Covid must be more than a mantra. GoI should institute a robust precautionary regime to minimise possibilities of transmission.
Vaccination is the most effective precautionary measure. With 61% of the eligible population fully vaccinated, it is likely that the rapidly transmitting XE variant will have mild manifestation in most cases. The vaccination protocol for the remaining 39% of partially vaccinated or unvaccinated must be stepped up. To minimise spread, GoI must adopt a system requiring people to demonstrate that they are vaccinated or not infected. The European Union's Green Pass, based on vaccination or on Covid-19 test -RT-PCR or rapid antigen tests - results, is a good model. India already has a system of vaccination certificates. Presenting them to access public services and spaces should not be a problem. The partially and not vaccinated will present test results certifying their Covid-negative status. For the certificate, the government must recognise the cheaper and easier rapid antigen test as an alternative to RT-PCR, with a shorter validity period. Tests must be administered by authorised centres, which will upload the results to the health ministry to generate a certificate. With the certificate, people can access public spaces and services, allowing safe resumption of activities. As suggested by experts, the mask mandate should be reimposed.
The benefits to health and economy aside, the certificate will improve the testing infrastructure and tracking. Taking robust precautions is the only way to live with Covid.
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The northwest fringes of the national Capital were roiled by communal violence on Saturday evening, leaving at least seven people with injuries, six of them policemen. The violence, which broke out in the aftermath of a Hindu religious procession passing through the area, brought back disturbing memories of the 2020 Delhi riots that left 53 people dead and hundreds wounded. It is yet unclear what caused the violence. One group blames the members of the procession for allegedly shouting provocative slogans, while others say Muslims started hurling stones from buildings. The circulation of videos with no clarity on what is authentic and what isn’t has further muddied the narrative. The violence came on Hanuman Jayanti, a Hindu religious festival, and followed days of communal tension across seven states that flared up on Ram Navami.
For a country that has a venerable tradition of marking multiple religious festivities with equal fervour, this is a disturbing trend that must be arrested for the country’s tolerant, pluralist core to endure. The administration, political parties (especially the ruling parties in the city and at the Centre) and citizens must take it upon themselves to ensure that festivals don’t turn into spectacles to belittle any community, and that no space is given to groups that provoke and seek to stir passions for petty interests. It is also important to note that, unlike the early hours of disturbance in the 2020 Delhi violence case where the response of the authorities was found sorely lacking, the police were prompt this time, reacting immediately and efficiently to warning signs of strife on the ground. Some local residents have alleged that more policemen should have been present on the ground, and in the initial hours, but it is a matter of relief that the administration was able to stave off large-scale violence in the Capital.
Some arrests have already been made. But there are learnings there too from 2020. The 2020 Delhi riots probe has been dogged by allegations of favouritism, poor evidentiary work and unfair targeting of individuals and communities. Delhi Police should conduct a fair, impartial and transparent probe into the Jahangirpuri violence and bring the culprits, regardless of faith or political background, to justice. Such strong and prompt action will be the best antidote to the communal poison some groups seem determined to spread.
Ordinary exchanges of messages between the new prime ministers of India and Pakistan take on an added dimension because of the extraordinarily fragile nature of bilateral relations. Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi sent congratulatory messages to both Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan following their election in 2013 and 2018, respectively, and in the same vein, there has been an exchange of letters between Mr Modi and Pakistan’s new PM Shehbaz Sharif last week. Even before the exchange of letters, Mr Modi greeted Mr Sharif on Twitter in response to his comments in Pakistan’s parliament about the need to resolve the Kashmir issue so that the two sides can focus on shared problems such as poverty. Mr Modi reiterated India’s position about wanting regional peace and stability in an atmosphere free of terrorism.
The exchange does open up a window of opportunity for some sort of engagement between the two countries after a gap of several years, during which the atmosphere was vitiated by Mr Khan’s repeated personal attacks on the Indian leadership, even though the Pakistan Army chief, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, had signalled his country’s desire to improve bilateral ties. However, this window may not remain open for very long, for a variety of factors. Gen Bajwa is slated to retire by November, and Pakistan will head into its next general election in 2023, that is if the new government headed by Mr Sharif manages to complete its term. Already, Mr Khan is piling on the pressure for holding early elections by organising a series of large rallies.
India and Pakistan have continued limited contacts on matters such as sharing river waters and the security of nuclear installations, but there is clearly a need for a structured dialogue to address tensions and focus on new confidence-building measures. Both PMs now have an opportunity to build on last year’s revival of the Line of Control ceasefire through some meaningful engagement.
The regime change in India’s neighbourhood, with inevitable regional repercussions, is characterised by elements of continuity and change. Change in terms of regime, but Pakistani continuity in terms of foreign policy, vis-a-vis India and China.
Soon after installation, new Prime Minister (PM) Shehbaz Sharif brought up Kashmir. “We want good relations with India but a durable peace can’t be possible without Kashmir’s solution,” he said. The Chinese press began humming odes to the PM and the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, Global Times, claimed that bilateral relations between the two countries “could be even better than under [Imran] Khan”.
The challenge could be tougher for India, as Sharif is less wishy-washy, weak-kneed, and whimsical than Khan. Sharif also brings his long political experience as a three-term chief minister, equipping himself with every quality of a notorious neta.
India must rethink and reboot its Pakistan policy dynamically — economic, strategic, and diplomatic. Economically, India should ensure a quick stop to Pakistan’s continuing exploitation of preferential trade benefits from the world. First, Pakistan reaps massive trade and tax benefits through the European Union’s Scheme of Preferences (GSP+), which has accelerated its exports to Europe to €7.492 billion in 2019 from €4.538 billion in 2013 — a mammoth 65% increase. Though this is reviewable for human rights violations by the host country, India has been unable to leverage Pakistan’s established status as a global exporter of terrorism to deny these non-terror export benefits to Pakistan. Second, India should redouble efforts to ensure that Pakistan remains on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Grey List, if not blacklisted sooner. Pakistan is in deep economic pain and the conviction of terrorist Hafiz Saeed is nothing more than optics to circumvent FATF and fool its members.
Third, India should engage much more aggressively with the Gulf nations, the United States (US) and International Monetary Fund (all entities where Pakistan goes with a begging bowl for aid and bailouts), to minimise such doles. Fourth, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence is the only spy agency in the world that does humongous illicit trade. It controls nearly 90% of the global heroin trade from the opium grown by the Taliban. A weak Pakistan government with a borderline majority creates a conducive environment for India to give a decisive blow to this clandestine market and show off its six-pack abs as the Big Brother of South Asia.
On the strategic front, India has anomalously been out to lunch when it comes to the sufferings of dissident communities in Pakistan fighting for liberty and liberation. Pashtun youth icons such as Manzoor Pashteen, Mohsin Dawar and the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement have given sleepless nights to the Pakistani establishment, but remain largely unassisted. The impressive resistance by the Balochs also cannot be ignored. Similarly, the Sindhis are a hugely prosperous community with a powerful overseas movement speaking up against Pakistani human rights violations. India should have a separate strategy for every dissident group, based on their strengths and should extend all support to overseas Sindhis, empower Pashtuns and equip Balochs.
India should read out — loud and clear — that bilateral negotiations, unifocally meaning Kashmir for Pakistan, must include Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan issues and that otherwise talks cannot begin. A regime change in Pakistan means a direct change in command-and-control of the Taliban. Anticipating turning tides in the country, India should push for a collective decision-making for Afghanistan and try to re-establish itself as the regional leader through initiatives such as the Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan, which was hosted by Delhi last year while strengthening its engagements with all Afghan stakeholders.
Diplomatically, Khan’s desire to create an anti-Saudi alliance in the Ummah along with Turkey-Malaysia-Qatar has pushed the Saudi-led block closer to India. Not due to the smartness of the Indian government, but due to Pakistan’s foreign policy blunders, the stage is already set to cut Pakistan loose entirely from the Saudi-led alliance. India now needs to follow the principle of carpe diem i.e. make most of the present without agonising about the future.
India must also reclaim its regional leadership in a more institutionalised manner by revamping, relaunching, and rejuvenating the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, and establish it as a strong alternative to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, marginalising Pakistan.
As a nation with the world’s second or third-largest Muslim population, India should push for entry into the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), become a leader among Muslim nations and let Pakistan look like a lame duck and pretender.
We have always advocated for a strong Quad since inception. Philia Forum — an initiative of France, Greece, Cyprus, and Saudi — could prove as mighty as Quad in countering Pakistan in an altogether different region. Members of this forum have repeatedly expressed their desire to have India in the forum: The latter’s reticence is mystifying. India will lose nothing by joining, except hesitant diplomacy.
In conclusion, remember Henry Kissinger’s words, “A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.” Forget Kissinger as an India hater and adopt his realpolitik. Richard Lugar rightly said, “There are no shortcuts to victory. We must commit ourselves to the slow, painstaking work of foreign policy day by day and year by year.” The objectives must be and must always remain clear.
Abhishek Singhvi is a senior three-term sitting MP; former chairman, parliamentary standing committee; former additional solicitor-general; senior national spokesperson, Congress and senior advocate. Akash Kumar Singh is a PhD scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University
The views expressed are personal
The post-Covid-19 world needs food, not weapons. A shocking image from the capital of Estonia, Tallinn, recently showed dozens of women gathered outside the Russian embassy to protest the sexual violence and rape inflicted on Ukrainian women. Wearing black masks, the women were dressed only in shirts. This is a reflection of the brutal times that we live in.
In Finland, citizens are being asked to acquaint themselves with the techniques of modern warfare. Apart from this, the government has issued orders to stock rations, petroleum products and essential medicines for a period of three to 10 months.
Not just this, Sanna Marin, the prime minister of Finland, in a joint press conference with her Swedish counterpart, Magdalena Anderson, expressed the desire for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned both these countries to be prepared to face extremely serious consequences if they go down this path. Will Russia now launch an attack on Finland? Most analysts believe that judging by the manner in which Russia has been bogged down in the Ukraine conflict, it is capable of taking any step, in desperation.
It is true that Putin didn’t expect such fierce resistance from Ukraine. Despite becoming an independent nation in 1991, the people of Ukraine have continued to have an emotional connection with Russia. That’s why Putin believed the Ukrainian people would extend a warm welcome to the Russian military. Perhaps, he could have learnt a lesson from the failed strategy of Pakistani leaders Ayub Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1965. At that time, they dispatched their troops to Kashmir, in the belief that the Kashmiri people would welcome them and the Pakistani flag would be hoisted in Srinagar. They were proved wrong.
Not only have the citizens of Ukraine displayed their unique patriotism, President Volodymyr Zelensky has emerged as a hero for the masses. Zelensky has evolved a unique art of dialogue. Far from escaping from the country, he didn’t even move out of Kyiv and has been addressing parliamentarians around the world from the Ukrainian capital. His easy manner and style have struck a chord with many people. As opposed to this, Putin doesn’t allow anybody else to speak on his behalf which has meant that Russia has not been able to put its point of view across to the global community.
Reports in the western media claim that three Russian major generals have been killed in this war and its biggest warship has been either damaged or destroyed. Putin has reportedly imprisoned more than 125 army and intelligence officers including Vladislav Surkov.
At one time, Surkov used to be the deputy prime minister of Russia and played a major role in Putin being made president. He is credited with coining the term “Putinism”. Not just this, Nashi, the radical political youth movement in Russia, is also Surkov’s brainchild.
There was a recent photograph of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Zelensky strolling down the streets of Kyiv on April 9. Perhaps, Johnson was trying to rectify the historical mistakes made by his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain.
Chamberlain and a former French prime minister had entered into an agreement with Adolf Hitler on September 30, 1938, in which a chunk of German-majority areas in Czechoslovakia was handed over to the Fuehrer. History has never forgiven the two leaders for their folly.
Another consequence of this attack is that NATO — which was perceived as inert not too long ago — has emerged as the great unifier of western nations. Today, along with the West, even countries such as Australia and Japan are partnering with Ukraine. The conflict has also set off a frenetic arms race around the world. This has led to several repercussions. Moscow is feeling the heat, but the American arsenal is also being depleted. The Pentagon has sent as many as 33% of its Javelin and 25% of its Stinger missiles to Ukraine. The US has already spent $2 billion on the crisis. A CNN survey says President Joe Biden’s approval ratings are down to just 39%.
Last Friday, with a joint military exercise on the border of Taiwan, China announced that the dark shadow of war isn’t looming only over Europe.
A six-member delegation of American legislators was visiting Taiwan during the time this exercise was carried out. At this point in time, the world, reeling from the trauma of the pandemic and the Ukraine conflict, needs basic amenities for life, not war.
Let’s not forget: Developing and poor nations require food, not weapons. The situation is fuelling inflation and the direct repercussions are being felt the most by developing countries. Sri Lanka is on the verge of bankruptcy and inflation is growing in Nepal, Bangladesh and India. If these trends continue or it triggers World War III, there will be global anarchy. The world must pull back from the brink.
Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief, Hindustan The views expressed are personal
The United States (US), European Union (EU) and several countries have imposed a raft of punitive measures on Russia for invading Ukraine. One of the more serious forms of sanctions has been the freezing of the Russian central bank’s assets held in foreign-denominated currencies. When a country earns more foreign exchange (forex) than it spends, it moves the surplus into its reserve account for future contingencies. These reserves are not held in physical currency, but in different forms of financial assets such as gold and debt instruments (bonds and bills) of foreign governments. Countries prefer to invest in currencies that are liquid (easily convertible), widely accepted and trustworthy. The US dollar fits all these criteria.
Russia built up its forex reserves since 2014 to the tune of $630 billion and around $300 billion was held in assets denominated in dollars, euros, and pounds. After two rounds of relatively mild sanctions, the West decided to freeze the Russian forex reserves held abroad so that the country cannot access funds for conducting trade. While it seems proportionate to the offensive carried out by Russia, this is unprecedented and is equivalent to a refusal to honour debt obligations.
This action has had unintended consequences. Other central banks’ trust in the US dollar as the safest investment option has taken a hit. They are scrambling to diversify their portfolios by holding assets of other currencies (euros, pounds, yen, Chinese yuan, Australian dollar) and gold. Unwittingly, the US has given a fillip to China’s ambition of internationalising the renminbi.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has $620 billion as forex reserves (about 15 months of import cover) and it is mostly held in dollars ($200 billion), while gold and other major currencies form the remaining amount. While the probability of India facing sanctions from the West is low, there could be other geopolitical risks.
However, RBI’s options for diversification are limited. It can rebalance its portfolio by holding other currencies, but the geopolitical risks are similar (the sanctions on Russia were jointly enforced by the US, the United Kingdom, and EU). Clearly, India would not want to hold a large amount of renminbi as part of its reserves for geopolitical reasons. Finally, the amount of gold that can be held is limited because it is not easily convertible to foreign currency for trade.
India should look at other options. One such is to invest in and build a strategic commodity basket, of which oil can constitute a major portion. India imports nearly 80% of its oil requirements, and energy security is one of the main reasons for holding large forex reserves.
It would make sense for RBI to hold oil reserves directly as part of its balance sheet. India has about 5.33 million metric tonnes (MMT) of oil (equivalent to 10 days of oil import cover) in underground reserves as part of its strategic petroleum reserves and is planning to add another 6.5 MMT in the next phase.
These underground reserves are expensive to build and maintain and RBI’s forex reserves can come in handy. Apart from oil, RBI can also focus on building a strategic reserve of rare earth elements (such as lithium and palladium) essential in producing batteries and electronic products.
Finally, the time is ripe for India to establish a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF), a State-owned investment fund that can be partly funded through the forex reserves, to make strategic long-term investments and asset acquisitions. In both cases, there is undoubtedly an element of price volatility risk, which central bankers dislike. However, as the present Russian scenario has shown, the nature of risk has changed from purely financial to one of geoeconomics. India must divide its forex reserve into two components — a safe component with the traditional sovereign debt plus gold and a strategic component. This will help India to diversify and mitigate geopolitical risk, and also provide a long-term strategic alternative.
Anupam Manur is professor of economics, Takshashila Institution, an independent and non-partisan think tank and school of public policy The views expressed are personal
Normally, the communal clashes witnessed in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone district on Ram Navami followed by the bulldozing of houses of “alleged” culprits (mostly Muslims) would have prompted the main Opposition party, the Congress, to hit the streets. But instead of taking on the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, there is radio silence in the Congress camp. Except for a tweet by former chief minister Digvijaya Singh, no state Congress leader has visited the site of the riots or taken up the cause of those whose houses were razed without any due process. Former state Congress president Arun Yadav, who contested elections from Khargone, was conspicuous by his absence. When told that instead of touring the state, he should visit his old constituency to show solidarity with the injured and those rendered homeless, his only response was that he was otherwise occupied with the ongoing wedding season. Former chief minister Kamal Nath also shrugged off a suggestion from agitated Congress leaders who wanted the party to extend legal help to the victims, saying such a move would prove to be a self-goal. It is obvious that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s charge that the Congress indulges in minority appeasement has immobilised the Congress.
It is almost two years since a group of senior Congress leaders, referred to as G-23, wrote to party president Sonia Gandhi pressing for internal elections and an organisational overhaul. While the process of party elections has been set in motion, the G-23 is not entirely happy with the way the party is functioning. The group is now planning to gather together at least 100 like-minded party colleagues for a brainstorming session in Delhi sometime in the coming months.
The plan is to discuss the proposals they had put forth in the letter to Sonia Gandhi and chalk out the progress made on each of them. The proposed meeting will also seek inputs from the floor on the changes and improvements. Members would like the leadership to undertake to revive the party in the run-up to the next round of elections. Only time will tell if this meeting will succeed in mounting sufficient pressure on Sonia Gandhi to implement their suggestions.
Although the Rashtriya Lok Dal won only eight of the 33 seats it contested in the recent Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, its leader Jayant Chaudhary has not given up. While he got down to reorganising his party’s state unit immediately after the declaration of election results, Jayant Chaudhary now has his eyes set on positioning himself as the future Jat leader. As a first step in this direction, Mr Chaudhary is planning to expand the RLD’s footprint by contesting in the next Haryana Assembly polls. Since Haryana is a Jat-dominated state and borders Uttar Pradesh, Mr Chaudhary believes the RLD can create a space for itself here. However, it will not be easy as the RLD chief will be competing with Haryana deputy chief minister and founder of the Jannayak Janata Party Dushyant Chautala whose party surprised everyone by bagging ten seats in its first electoral foray. The young Chautala also sees as a future Jat leader especially since there is no other young leader from the community who has sufficient potential to take on the mantle of older Jat leaders like former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Is there a secret understanding between Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav and Bharatiya Janata Party leader and environment minister Bhupendra Yadav? At least, that’s the buzz in Bihar’s political circles. The BJP minister, who was entrusted with several important assignments for the party before his induction into the government, was, at one point, in charge of Bihar. According to Janata Dal (U) insiders, whenever there is talk that a repentant Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is reaching out to RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav for an alliance, it is the BJP which prevails upon Tejashwi Yadav camp followers to rule out any tie-up with the Janata Dal (U). It is no secret that Nitish Kumar would like to end his partnership with the BJP as the saffron party has reduced him to a political pygmy.
The Uttarakhand unit of the Congress is in turmoil after the party president appointed Yashpal Arya as the leader of the legislature party in the state Assembly. Mr Arya was among the Congress leaders who had joined the BJP but returned to the party shortly before the recent Assembly polls. Other contenders like Pritam Singh, who was the leader of Opposition in the government’s last term, are predictably upset at being ignored. It is being speculated that the Congress leadership felt compelled to pick Mr Arya, a dalit, for this job as it is under pressure to drop Kumari Selja (also dalit) as Haryana Congress president.
The party apparently wished to avoid any criticism that it had removed a senior dalit leader from a key party position and it, therefore, placed another dalit in a key role. Already under pressure, the Congress wanted to avoid any controversy at this juncture when it is chalking out a special plan to woo dalits to the party fold.
A foreign policy independent of America is difficult for countries where the elite have parked their progeny in the United States. In Pakistan, this elite will gouge out Imran Khan’s eyes if his anti-Americanism persists. This elite is influential, but numerically small. Imran has decided to ignore this coterie and tap directly into people’s anger against decades of Islamophobia, particularly since the 9/11 wars.
He has a role model in Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erodgan, who blocked American troops from passing through Turkey for Iraq’s occupation in 2003. Anti-Americanism, simmering since the televised brutalities of the Bosnian war, flared up and Mr Erdogan’s rise became unstoppable. It wasn’t a meagre feat. His popular ratings surpassed the founder of the Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The Army, the guarantor of the secular Ataturk constitution, was with steady strokes undermined by people’s power. Today, Turkey is just like any other Muslim country.
Anti-Americanism is a sure-fire electoral trick in a Muslim country that nurses a deep grievance against the US. Pakistan was yoked by the US into the Afghan war, where it lost 80,000 lives.
Did the winds from Ukraine fan the flames in Islamabad? That a regime change was instigated by America is Imran Khan’s chosen narrative. Does the predicament in which Imran finds himself have something to do with his official two-day Moscow visit starting February 24, the day the Russians invaded Ukraine. The high-stakes game the Americans were leading the West into made it important for them to prove that Imran was on the wrong side of history.
The message was simple: Imran must wrench away from the Chinese-Russian embrace. This embrace impedes the world order being sketched and any US move in Afghanistan. It was galling for the US that the Kazakh adventure failed in January, ironically, as Russia intervened. It is a cruel admission to make, but this war isn’t about Ukraine. Sadly, Ukrainian blood has been purchased with Western treasure — in cash and arms. The amazing media management has been breath-taking — bringing Volodymyr Zelenskyy live to every European Parliament, nay, even at the Grammy awards.
Some of the West’s war aims are straightforward: to retain Anglo-American dominance in the world order; preserve Nato’s centrality to this order; keep Russia in focus as a weakened pariah in Ukraine for as long as possible. The West is having kittens as China and Russia have declared their friendship “has no limits”. They have to be separated; that is American policy.
This mindset was on display even as Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah persuaded the Americans to end what was an existential threat to the House of Saud and Israel, namely Iran. To target Iran, the “Shia arc” — Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas — had to be dismantled. That is how the Syrian expedition began. “Get out of the way, Assad” secretary of state Hillary Clinton waved her hand imperiously. Has Assad gone? Does the US have a status of forces agreement with Iraq after the Stars and Stripes were “cased” on December 31, 2011? The ignominious Afghan exit in August won’t be forgotten in a hurry. This after 20 years of occupation. So, it’s do or die in Ukraine.
Is Liz Truss, UK’s foreign secretary, cheerleader for “democracy against autocracy”, pleased with the election results in Hungary and Serbia, in Ukraine’s neighbourhood? Viktor Orban and Aleksandar Vucic are both self-proclaimed “illiberals”. The spectre of Marine Le Pen haunts France. At the other end of the world, a real-life theatre of the absurd produced and directed by the US and Britain is being played out. In a moment of pique bordering on desperation, Washington, unable to set aside or digest Venezuela’s duly elected President Nicolas Maduro, floated a parallel presidency and picked 38-year-old Juan Guaido as President. Besides the US and UK, no European country is part of this sideshow.
Evo Morales, the first indigenous, left-wing, anti-World Bank Bolivian President, was replaced by an ideological lookalike, Luis Arce. Was the success of 35-year-old socialist Gabriel Boric in Chile an improvement on military dictator Augusto Pinochet, whom the CIA installed after killing the popular Salvador Allende, a friend of one of the world’s greatest poets, Pablo Neruda?
Colombia, nursed by the US as its pocket borough for decades, has come out of its suffocation. In irreversible lead is another socialist, a former guerrilla leader, Gustavo Petro. Peru’s President Pedro Castillo is called a far-left socialist. Is all this a march of democracy or autocracy? A battle royale is due in Brazil in October, where Lula da Silva will take on Jair Bolsonaro, known for ignoring the Covid-19 pandemic, burning the Amazon patch by patch and being chief guest at India’s Republic Day in 2020. One commends to Ms Truss the thought that she sees Edge of Democracy, a masterly documentary on how Lula, the country’s most popular politician ever, was dethroned by global corporate intrigue.
How do the votaries of democracy in this format approach developments in Pakistan? The principal charge against Imran Khan was that he mismanaged the economy, his team selection was poor and he is self-righteous and arrogant. Those arrayed against him have proven cases of corruption against them.
Obviously, these groups, with a possible signal from the Army, leavened their numbers with defectors, and asked for a vote of no-confidence. Imran Khan showed, on a selective basis, minutes of a conversation between Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington and Donald Lu, US assistant secretary of state for South Asia, which seems to suggest the US wants Pakistan to fall in line “or else”. Will this revelation eventually help Imran, or is it an albatross around his neck, given the hostile elite?
Ask not what the United States does for India, ask what India does for the United States. Prime Minister Narendra Modi ought to have paraphrased that famous line from John F. Kennedy during his recent interaction with US President Joe Biden. In media reports of the virtual meeting between the two heads of government and the 2+2 meeting between the defence and foreign ministers of both countries that followed, the focus has largely been on how the United States can and does extend strategic support to India. It is helpful to remind ourselves and the US every now and then that India too has long extended strategic support to the United States.
Too much is made of the merchandise trade deficit of $23 billion that India enjoys with the United States. Former President Donald Trump and his administration’s trade representative made quite a fetish out of quoting it. The US seeks to wipe this out by doubling its defence sales to India from the present level of $21 billion, at the expense of several rival suppliers, especially Russia.
What the bilateral trade figures do not reveal is the transfer of wealth from India to the US through the export of highly talented Indian migrants. Indian brain power fuels the engines of education, research, innovation, corporate management and the services economy in the United States — all fields that give the US a global edge over its rivals and peers. As recently as in 1990, the total number of Indian migrants to the
US was estimated to be 450,000. By 2020, this was over 2.7 million.
Till the turn of the century economists viewed this migration as a “brain drain”. Over the past couple of decades they have come to view the Indian global diaspora as a “brain bank”. Whatever form this brain power takes, the fact remains that this Indian talent has contributed positively to all the countries hosting it. This “brain power” is India’s investment in the development of those host countries. One need not take a moral or political view of this phenomenon, whether it is good or bad, but one must quantify it and understand in what way India’s society and economy have contributed to the development of the countries that are receiving such talent.
In the 1950s, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited the Nobel Prize-winning American economist Milton Friedman to study India and offer his advice on its economic development. While Friedman made himself unpopular with Nehru by suggesting that the Planning Commission be wound up and the public sector be privatised, he made one prescient observation that ought to have been taken more seriously. The United States economy grew, Friedman wrote in a 1955 note to Nehru, because it had vast natural resources at its disposal and sucked in labour power from across the world. India has limited natural resources but a vast pool of people. Invest in your people, he suggested, and they will be for India what land and natural resources were for America.
It is one idea that has failed to capture the imagination of successive generations of the Indian political and intellectual leadership. Of course, India has invested in its people and many of them fuel the engine of growth. But compared to the vast pool of people available, the educated and skilled remain a limited set.
Worse, from this pool of talent, a sizeable number migrate to the developed world, mostly to the United States. It is, therefore, time for India to define the two-way relationship in a more balanced way, quantifying not just what the US does to support India’s rise but also what India and Indians do to support America’s global dominance.
India certainly needs the United States, not just for the guns, ships and jets that it can sell and the intelligence it can share, but for all the new technologies it can give access too. The United States also needs India, not just as an ally against China and a provider of low-cost defence personnel and services in this part of the world, but as a source of highly talented manpower that can ensure America’s global dominance in information technology-enabled businesses.
The US-India strategic partnership has often been viewed through the prism of third parties, and they are relevant to a certain extent. In dealing with the China-Pakistan axis, India has found its relationship with both Russia and the US to be helpful.
However, the US-India partnership also stands on its own legs precisely because it is a two-way street. This fact is not adequately appreciated, indeed generally not recognised, because it has not been quantified. What exactly has been the contribution of 2.7 million people of Indian origin to sustaining US global power?
Milton Friedman thought that population can do for India what natural resources did for the US. The irony is that the best of Indians are doing for the US what Friedman had hoped they would do for India. Of course, we in India must take full responsibility for this.
The out-migration of talent has both a pull and a push dimension and there is no point blaming individuals. The question to ask is what can more India do to retain its talent so that it can fuel the country’s development.
The problem of out-migration of talent has been accentuated in recent years by the shortage of opportunities at home as well as by domestic social and political trends. In my book India’s Power Elite: Class, Caste and a Cultural Revolution (2021) I show how the “secession of the successful” has accelerated in the past five years. The turn that domestic politics is taking may contribute to a further acceleration of this process.
The beneficiaries will be the countries of the Anglosphere — the United States, Britain Canada, Australia and other English-speaking countries like Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
The government may be able to do very little to prevent this migration, and indeed it is doing a lot to make educated young Indians want to leave the country, but it can at least try and quantify it so that the host countries are aware of India’s generous contribution to their global dominance.