The number of fresh cases of COVID-19 in the country has been going up steadily in Delhi and Maharashtra, considered bellwether States in the country, as far as the pandemic goes. Is this an indication of a further COVID-19 wave in India, and what are the precautions that people and health systems have to take in order to avoid devastation on a scale as was seen during the second wave. In a conversation moderated byRamya Kannan , J Radhakrishnan, and Prabhdeep Kaur, discuss the possible scenarios. Edited excerpts:
Are the rising case numbers, and test positivity rate, that we are seeing in Delhi and Maharashtra indicative of a possible fourth wave of COVID-19 in India?
J Radhakrishnan:This is a difficult question; whether the next wave will come or not depends on the type of variant that will come through. Secondly, it will also depend on the level of immunity in the population — both on account of recovery from a natural infection, and also on rapidly increasing vaccinations. Of course, we must remember that vaccination has happened over a period of a long time, and it is practical to expect varying levels of immunity from that.
So our best position is that we need to be guarded, we just cannot be overconfident that there can be no more waves, because last time I remember in January-February of 2021, people were clearly overconfident. On the other hand, I personally feel that unless there is a dominant Delta-like variant at play, it may not be as bad as it was in May last year.
But having said that, what we need to look at is really testing everybody in all settings. Now, what has happened is there is a rapid decline in people subjecting themselves to tests. We also need to specifically look out for locations where there is doubling.
For instance, in Delhi, the way the cases have gone up. If, consistently over a period of time, one district or a group of districts start showing such a sign, then it is a sure warning. We also have to do genomic sequencing on a regular basis.
Prabhdeep Kaur:I would agree, first of all, with Radhakrishnan, on the fact that we need to keep looking for any changes in the existing pattern. I think that's the most important thing in epidemiology — whether we are finding any new clusters, in populations where we do not expect it. Also, if we look at persistent increase in cases in any particular district or a number of districts, then we need to worry about it, simply going by the pattern we have noticed in the past waves. You are right that Delhi and Maharashtra usually show up the trends first and the other States follow. Going by that, I do believe that it's likely that we may also see some upsurge in cases.
However, to what extent we need to worry about it, is a totally different issue. It could mean that we need to improve our surveillance — this is the most important thing, both epidemiological surveillance, as well as genomic surveillance. But whether we need to restrict any activities or whether we need to worry about increasing hospitalisation, at this juncture, it's very premature to see any of that.
Do we expect this wave, if it indeed does come, to be dominated by the XE variant?
PK:We know, from whatever genomic surveillance data has been released by various certified institutions, that BA.1 was predominant. And now it's moved to BA.2. Currently, with the entire INSACOG network of labs in place, I think we are in a very good position to know when the variant changes in our population. Going by the international trends, as you have seen in other countries like China, Thailand, and U.K., we do know that there is a change in variant, the new variant is replacing BA.1 and BA. 2. The same is likely to happen in India as well, and we just need to keep a close watch.
But as far as whatever limited understanding we have, since we've been studying this for a very short period of time only, it is clear that this new variant is sort of becoming predominant. What we also know is that it has a very rapid growth and high transmissibility. So that is something we need to keep in mind. We know that these patterns, as far as COVID is concerned, are global. So, whatever we get to see in one part of the world, over a period of time, it happens in other parts of the world. Going by that, yes, I do believe that XE may be the next variant, which may replace older variants in times to come.
JR:In the latest data which we analysed in Tamil Nadu, between January and March, the Omicron variant was 94.7% and Delta still was around 2.7%. All other variants were about 2.6%. Of course, we do have BA.1 and BA.2.
Ultimately, we have to be worried about whether clinical changes are there in the new variants, and how we treat them. Delta rapidly affected the lungs, there was rapid desaturation.
As on date, we have, in the State, only 232 active patients, hardly 10 are in hospital and nobody is in the ICU. That's a good sign.
But the same thing happened in January 2021. Before we knew it, Delta crept in, and it was a very rapid spread. So, we are taking, as advised by the NIE, samples not only when there is a family cluster. We are taking samples and keeping a watch on those returning from abroad. So far, we have picked up no XE variant in Tamil Nadu.
The main concern at the implementation level is the public’s abandonment of both the pillars which helped us in the past waves — adherence to masking and social distancing. Another source of worry is the falling interest in vaccinating oneself.
Is a three-month period not sufficient to study a variant, since XE was first described in January? We have had three months to study it, why are we still saying we have a limited understanding of the recombinant variant?
PK:As far as COVID is concerned, when we plan a response — either public health or clinical care — we have to analyse if something more needs to be done than what we are doing currently, and at a broader level. So what we need to keep in mind is that there are certain characteristics of the variant which determine whether we do certain things or we don’t do them. What has happened is that this variant did not show any such characteristics, that is, those that changed the course of interventions we had ongoing. Whatever measures we had initiated for Omicron seem appropriate for this variant as well. We keep watching whether variants are changing further, or causing increasing case fatality or excess hospitalisations. Since none of that has been observed or documented, the focus has remained on the same measures which were already initiated, which is promoting boosters, ensuring that masking continues and doing very good surveillance.I will again emphasise, as an epidemiologist, that surveillance is really the key. I feel that we have become a little bit lax with that, but if we keep looking, the patterns will really tell us if anything different is happening around us, in addition to, of course, genomic surveillance.
Since mandatory masking has been dropped officially, will it be difficult now to go back to ensuring masking as a public health measure?
JR:The public health preventive measures have to be in place, we just cannot abandon them. It’s an important protective mechanism, since crowds have resumed now, it is safe to always have a mask on. It affords us some level of protection even if others around us are not masked now. People tend to rapidly forget the importance and relevance of the non-medical measures which are very important. They have to be reinforced periodically. Caution is far better than overconfidence.
PK:We at NIE have been monitoring mask use in Chennai city. We observed that mask use declined in the latter half of 2020, and thereafter, after the Delta wave around March-April, it went up. Subsequently, again, in the later part of the year, around the festive season, it had further declined. So what we understand from this is that people seem to be responding to whatever they are hearing from the media and various sources.
Also, vaccination is very important. We should use this time, when cases are still not high, to aggressively educate the public to take their first and second doses, and the booster if they are eligible for it. Masking and vaccination are the best tools we have today.
In case of a possible third or fourth wave, is the way to go is to recommend that States implement a closure of some sort, or introduce restrictions in stages once again?
PK:I think now we have a very good idea when to enforce restrictions and what restrictions are required, from what we have learned over the last two years. And we are continuously monitoring the situation. So every week, we analyse the data which is there in the public domain, which is released by State governments, and we look at certain key indicators such as what is the change in the number of cases, test positivity and bed occupancy.
What we have seen over time is that, it's not that all of a sudden you just need to close down everything. It does take time for all these indicators to change. This, in fact, gives us sufficient time to respond in terms of what measures we need to put in place in advance. So as of now, I think we are doing fine and there is no need for any restriction. But we must keep monitoring these indicators very carefully.
We have also learnt that the extreme measures are really the last option, and we may not need them. But if there is a concern, and these indicators suggest that there is very rapid transmission, we need to think of measures such as enforcing masking compliance, reducing crowding, and maybe restricting the size of gatherings
Given that the economy is still recovering from brutal lockdowns, will it be easy to implement restrictions again?
JR:As Kaur said there is a large amount of learning that we have now, compared to what we knew in the beginning. And as implementers of policy, we have been constantly guided by public health expertise — both at the national and international levels.
The latest instructions are that you need to look at the test positivity, the hospital bed occupancy and the rate of spread. We are also constantly conducting drills in a military fashion — bed usage, oxygen usage, ventilators, if every service that may be required is adequately prepared.
With this information, at present, I personally feel that we are not at a stage where we need to look at the extremes. But we definitely need to understand that common sense precautions, such as masking in a crowded area, getting tested if you have a fever or someone around you is ill, should be taken. I still feel we need to take it by the week, look at the weekly trends, and keep ourselves ready. This is not the stage where we need to panic.
The public health preventive measures have to be in place, we just cannot abandon them.J Radhakrishnan
I have been deeply saddened by recent global developments of conflict and violence in Ukraine. Talk of nuclear threats have alarmed me. Regardless of provocations and causes, however justifiable they may seem to be, violence and consequent loss of human lives are deeply regrettable and avoidable. As Mahatma Gandhi’s nation, India must be a committed and relentless apostle of peace and non-violence, both at home and in the world.
Conflict and a reshaping
The Russia-Ukraine conflict portends a reshaping of the world order. Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a paradigm of free societies, frictionless borders and open economies evolved to be the governing order in many nations. This catalysed freer movement of people, goods, services and capital across the world. Global trade and per capita GDP nearly doubled in this period, marking an era of general peace and prosperity. Societies and economies in the world became intertwined closely in the pursuit of shared global prosperity. Such tight inter-dependence among nations will lead to fewer conflicts and promote peace, was the established wisdom.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has dismantled this wisdom. If inter-connectedness and trade among nations were mutually beneficial, then it follows that its disruption and blockade will be mutually harmful. Retaliatory economic sanctions imposed on Russia have hurt all nations, albeit some more than the others.
Egyptians are reeling from food shortages due to their dependence on Russian and Ukrainian wheat, Germans suffer from high costs of heating in winter due to their dependence on Russian gas, Americans face a shortage of electric cars due to unavailability of car batteries that are dependent on Russian nickel, Sri Lankans have taken to the streets on economic woes and Indian farmers run the risk of high fertilizer prices triggered by a global shortage.
‘Global Village’, a lived reality
‘Global Village’ is not just an academic term but a lived reality for the nearly eight billion people on the planet. This ‘Global Village’ was built on the foundation of advanced transportation networks, cemented with the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency and fenced by integrated payment systems. Any disruption to this delicate balance runs the risk of plunging the ‘Global Village’ into disequilibrium and derailing the lives of all.
India too has benefited enormously from being an active participant in this interconnected world, with a tripling of trade (as share of GDP) in the last three decades and providing vast numbers of jobs. Trade with other nations should and will always be an integral cornerstone of India’s economic future. A reversal towards isolationism and protectionism will be foolhardy and calamitous for India.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict is a global geo-economic conflict that threatens to hark back to the Cold War era of two dominant power blocs. Nations that did not condemn the Russian aggression in the United Nations constitute more than half the world’s population but a quarter of the world economy versus nations that condemned Russia, account for three-quarters of the global economy. The former, the Russia-China bloc, are large producers with rising consuming power while the latter, the western bloc, are today’s large consumers. Any new curtain that descends between these two blocs and divides them will cause major upheavals to the entwined global economic equilibrium.
A trade opportunity
During the Cold War, when India pursued a prudent foreign policy of non-alignment, trade was a small part of India’s economy. Now, trade represents a significant share of India’s GDP. India’s trade is dependent on both these power blocs and on the current global economic structures of free trade, established reserve currency and transaction systems. As the western bloc of nations looks to reduce dependence on the Russia-China bloc of nations, it presents newer avenues for India to expand trade.
The western bloc of nations has expressed its desire to embrace a new paradigm of ‘free but principled trade’ that values both morals and money. While one may reasonably quibble about this new doctrine, India, as the largest peace-loving democracy, stands to gain enormously from this ‘principled trade’ aspiration of the western bloc. It presents a tremendous opportunity for India to become a large producing nation for the world and a global economic powerhouse. However, to capitalise on these opportunities, India needs free access to these markets, an accepted and established global currency to trade in and seamless trade settlements.
The American dollar has emerged as the global trade currency, bestowing an ‘exorbitant privilege’ on the dollar, much to the justifiable consternation of other nations. But a forced and hurried dismantling of this order and replacing it with rushed bilateral local currency arrangements can prove to be more detrimental for the global economy in the longer run.
I recall the time when I was part of bilateral currency negotiations such as the Indian rupee-Russian rouble agreement in the late 1970s and 1980s, when we mutually agreed on exchange rates for trading purposes. Such isolated bilateral agreements are fraught with risks, but when trade is a small share of the economy and such agreements are limited to a few trading partners, it was wieldy.
Needed, ties on either side
Now, with India’s robust external sector, a flourishing trading relationship with many nations and tremendous potential to expand trade, such bilateral arrangements are unsustainable, unwieldy, and perilous. Opportunities to buy discounted oil or commodities may be enticing but if it entails a prolonged departure from the established order of dollar-based trade settlement or jeopardises established trading relationships with western bloc markets, it can have longer term implications for India’s export potential. In the long run, India stands to gain more from unfettered access to the western bloc markets for Indian exports under the established trading order than from discounted commodities purchased under new bilateral currency arrangements that seek to create a new and parallel global trade structure.
India thus needs not just a non-aligned doctrine for the looming new world order but also a non-disruptive geo-economic policy that seeks to maintain the current global economic equilibrium. By the dint of its sheer size and scale, India can be both a large producer and a consumer. With rising inflation, volatile crude oil prices, global uncertainty, weak domestic private investment and deteriorating fiscal situation, expanded external trade in the changed global situation presents the best opportunity to salvage India’s economy and create large numbers of jobs for our youth and women. To best utilise this opportunity, India needs not just cordial relationships with nations on either side of the new divide but also a stable and established global economic environment. It is important for India to adopt a strategic economic self-interest doctrine within the larger paradigm of its non-alignment foreign policy.
Social harmony is a must
Just as it is in India’s best interests to balance the current geo-economic equilibrium, it is also imperative for India to maintain its domestic social equilibrium. To be a large-scale producing nation, India needs millions of factories with hundreds of millions of people of all religions and castes across all States to work together. Social harmony is the edifice of economic prosperity. Fanning mutual distrust, hate and anger among citizens, causing social disharmony is a shameful slide to perdition.
The reshaping and realignment of the world order will be a unique opportunity for India to reassess its foreign policy, economic policy and geo-political strategy and don the mantle of global leadership. Strengthening India’s global economic might through a cautious geo-economic strategy in the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine conflict can potentially mark a pivotal turn in India’s economic history. India can be the fulcrum of this new global order, as a peaceful democracy with economic prosperity. But this requires India to first stem the raging communal divisions within. I sincerely wish and fervently hope that India can emerge as the harbinger of peace, harmony and prosperity in this new world.
Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014.
(With help from Praveen Chakravarty)
On April 14, 2022, the British Home Secretary, Priti Patel, signed the U.K. and Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the United Kingdom and Rwanda. Under this MoU, most migrants who have made their way to the U.K. via unauthorised routes on or after January 1, 2022 will find themselves redirected to a holding centre in Rwanda where they will wait for the Rwandan government to make decisions on their asylum applications. For their assistance in hosting adult and non-criminal migrants, the U.K. will pay Rwanda £120 million along with an unspecified amount per migrant. The U.K. government refers to this as a humane solution that will deter people-smuggling operations run by gangs that charge desperate migrants from several war-torn and developing countries exorbitant prices for transit, only to endanger them by putting them on unseaworthy boats to cross the English Channel.
Broader debate in the U.K.
While there is no doubt that people-smuggling operations need to be combated as they exploit and jeopardise vulnerable groups of people, the Rwanda asylum plan is not the most effective way to achieve this goal.
This plan needs to be seen in the context of the broader immigration debate in the U.K. In 2012, the Home Office implemented the Hostile Environment Policy that was meant to make it as hard as possible for any person who had arrived through an unauthorised route, to stay in the country. According to a 2020 report by the Institute for Public Policy Research, this policy not only fostered racism and discrimination against minority groups but also negatively impacted people who had legally arrived in the U.K. In the run-up to Brexit in 2016, more immigration controls were promised to regulate the flow of European Union workers, especially from Eastern Europe. In the right-wing British press, distinctions between legal and illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees are seldom made clearly. This almost deliberate conflation of categories has worked effectively to mobilise the stereotype of an immigrant as a poor, non-white, non-English speaking, benefits sucking and free medical care consuming person, who also may be a threat to national security.
In 2021, the Boris Johnson government introduced the Nationality and Borders Bill with one stated objective being to “deter illegal entry into the United Kingdom, thereby breaking the business model of people smuggling networks and protecting the lives of those they endanger”. The Rwanda asylum plan is the operationalisation of this objective.
What the key issues are
At the heart of the Rwanda asylum plan, is a set of moral, legal and political issues. First, the plan punishes asylum seekers for entering the U.K. using unauthorised routes. This is a clear violation of Article 31(1) of the Refugee Convention, 1951, which prohibits any state from penalising any person seeking sanctuary for entering the country illegally provided they present themselves to authorities on arrival. So, the plan actively discriminates against refugee and asylum claims made by those who do not arrive via an authorised route. The plan also contravenes Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which gives everyone the right to “seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”.
Second, the Rwanda asylum plan is unclear on what economic, financial and health-care rights relocated persons will have once they are in Rwanda. The U.K.’s obligations for the well-being of relocated persons will end once they have boarded a flight to Rwanda, a country that struggles with its human rights record.
Third, there is very little evidence to suggest that such a plan will work to combat people smuggling operations. However, we do need to ask why people resort to using unauthorised means of entry to the U.K. British immigration laws make it very difficult for people without money and documentation to find their way into the country for asylum, thereby forcing extremely vulnerable people to use clandestine migration routes. Also, there is no guarantee that people who have been forcibly flown to Rwanda will not try to attempt the same crossing into the U.K. again. In this case, the people-smuggling gangs will only increase their profits.
Fourth, let us look at some parallel cases. Rwanda had a similar deal with Israel which was scrapped in 2019. Israel deported a reported 4,000 people from Eritrea and Sudan to Rwanda and Uganda under a voluntary departure scheme. Many who reached Rwanda, also left shortly after and were found attempting to reach Europe precisely through the same people-smuggling routes. Those who stayed had difficulty finding employment and many were left destitute. Similarly, Australia had an offshoring deal with Papua New Guinea and ran a processing facility on Manus Island. The Papua New Guinea Supreme Court found the facility “illegal and unconstitutional” in 2017 and directed Australia to pay Australian $70 million as compensation to the 2,000 detainees at the centre. Its other processing facility on Nauru has been reported to have detainees with declining mental health who are at risk of self-harm; reports of child abuse and sexual abuse in the facility have also surfaced.
Hardly ‘world-class’
So, who exactly is being protected when vulnerable people seeking refuge are forced to relocate to a country that has shown scant regard for rights and freedoms? Further, does not the forced relocation of already exposed and vulnerable people make them worse off? Ms. Patel has described her plan as “world-class and a world first”. It is neither. Similar experiments touted as humane policies to combat trafficking in migrants and refugees have failed and cost countries such as Australia more taxpayer money than if they had simply processed asylum applications and worked on integrating people into their communities. The U.K. has now shown that it is quite eager to run afoul of its international legal obligations along with demonstrating that it is willing to pay millions to build new systems of discrimination against people from the global south and view them as commodities. The question to put before the British government is this: when did abdication of a state’s responsibility towards any human being become ethical?
Vasundhara Sirnate is a political scientist and journalist. She is also the creator of the India Violence Archive, a citizen’s data initiative aimed at recording collective public violence in India
Hubballi city in north Karnataka saw a communal flare-up on the night of April 16, the immediate trigger for which was an inflammatory social media post. Big crowds gathered in front of Old Hubballi station and the violence that ensued left 12 police personnel injured. Over 130 people have so far been arrested in connection with the incident. However, the incident has rekindled religious animosity in a city that had slowly shed the tag of being “communally sensitive” and had emerged as an important commercial hub.
While all the focus has been on the gathering in front of the police station, stone pelting and violence by the mob on April 16, there was a slow build-up to it, as the rest of the State too was seeing an escalation in communal incidents. During Hanuman Jayanti procession in Dajiban Peth area of Hubballi inhabited by Somavamsha Sahasrarjun Kshatriya (SSK) or the Pattegar community, laser beams of “Jai Sri Ram” were cast on the walls of a nearby mosque at Pendar Galli. The elders of both the communities had quickly intervened to resolve the matter.
Closer to the incident, only hours before the provocative video surfaced, four Sri Rama Sene activists had been released on bail in connection with the vandalism incident around the Hanuman temple in Nuggikeri. The Sene activists had ousted Muslim traders from around the temple and footage of them destroying a pile of watermelons being sold by an aged Muslim trader had gone viral.
Predictably, a political slugfest has ensued over the incident. The BJP is blaming the Congress for having a hand in instigating violence, while the Congress has categorically denied it. It has said that the Congress’s district unit president, who tried to help control the situation by climbing on a jeep and appealing for peace that night, has also been vilified and targeted. There are no signs of the ripples of this incident dying down too quickly, with Assembly elections less than a year away. The role of private television channels in constantly beaming communally-provocative content and keeping the issue alive cannot be undermined.
This incident and what has followed in the aftermath does not augur well in a city that still remembers the large-scale violence during the 1980s and 90s, which severely affected the economy of the region. In fact, what has come to be known as the ‘Idgah Maidan row’ that reached a flashpoint in the 1990s played a crucial role in consolidating the BJP’s vote bank in Karnataka and particularly in this region. The Idgah Maidan is a small piece of land in the heart of the city, where the Muslims held prayers twice in a year and subsequently Anjuman-E-Islam staked claim to the land resulting in a litigation spanning over close to four decades. In the 90s, when the BJP was trying to find its footing in the state, the Idgah Maidan issue took centre stage.
In 1992, when Murli Manohar Joshi hoisted the tricolour in Srinagar on January 26, the Karnataka unit of the BJP had similar plans for Idgah Maidan in Hubballi, which however did not go as planned. Another attempt planned for August 15, 1992 was aborted later. On August 15, 1994 with general Assembly elections round the corner, the BJP made an attempt to hoist the national flag at Idgah Maidan and succeeded amid a curfew. The result was police firing and death of six persons. The BJP won all the three seats in Hubballi Dharwad area that year. In the subsequent years, the BJP has consolidated its position in the region.
While swift police action has prevented further escalation of the violence this time, efforts to rake up related issues is still on in Hubballi, which is a worrying sign.
girish.s@thehindu.co.in
China’s government announced on April 19 that it had signed a landmark security pact with the Solomon Islands, evoking concern from Australia and the U.S. The agreement is the first of its kind that China has agreed with any country, and underlines its ambitions to play a security role in the Pacific. The final version has not been made public, but according to a draft that was leaked last month, it will pave the way for China to deploy its security forces there. The Solomon Islands can request police and military personnel “to assist in maintaining social order”, while China can make ship visits and use its ports for logistics. This will give China’s vessels a strategic foothold in the Pacific, in a region close to Australia and Guam, where the U.S. has a naval base. Both countries unsurprisingly expressed concern, with Washington, this week, even dispatching a senior official and Indo-Pacific Coordinator, Kurt Campbell, to the Solomon Islands, who will take up the pact as well as plans to reopen the U.S. Embassy there. China questioned the motivations of the visit, noting that the Embassy had been closed for 29 years but the U.S. had now taken a “sudden” interest.
The significance of the pact extends beyond the immediate regional security concerns in the Pacific. For decades, China insisted it would never open a military base abroad. Then, in 2017, the PLA put into use its first foreign base in Djibouti. The Solomon Islands government said the agreement does not imply China will build a base there. Chinese military planners have, however, made clear that further bases — for its navy — are in the works, with experts suggesting possible locations in Pakistan, Cambodia, and Equatorial Guinea (in the Atlantic). The pact does, however, relate to a second key pillar of China’s avowed “peaceful rise” doctrine, which was, as popularised by “Panchsheel” or the “five principles of peaceful co-existence” — the “non-interference” in the internal affairs of other countries. The deployment of security forces in a foreign country certainly does not square with that idea. China has already begun to do so elsewhere, albeit on a limited scale. Chinese media have mentioned China-Pakistan patrols in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, while reports have suggested the deployment of security forces in Tajikistan near the Wakhan corridor that links Afghanistan and Xinjiang. China’s past commitments on military bases and non-interference were intended to show the world Beijing would not seek to become a global “hegemon”, its favoured term to describe the U.S. But this is less of a concern for Xi Jinping, who has made clear his view that the “East is rising and West declining” and that China should be unabashed about moving to the “centre stage”. The latest security pact is unlikely to be the last.
The bulldozer has now emerged as a dominant symbol of state-backed intimidation of Muslims in the country. After Khargone in Madhya Pradesh, Jahangirpuri in Delhi has seen the use of demolition of shops and houses seemingly as a punitive measure in the wake of a riot that followed a provocative religious procession. The Jahangirpuri demolitions, halted by an order of status quo passed by the Supreme Court, one which had to be reiterated as the drive went on for more than an hour after the order, represent an egregious violation of the rule of law. Even though described as part of a demolition process that had begun a few months ago, and done after prior notice, few would believe that the drive in Jahangirpuri had anything to do with ‘encroachment’, coming as it does in the wake of communal disturbances and in the middle of Ramzan. By intervening in time, the Court may have halted what could have been a series of demolitions of small businesses and households belonging to some of the poorest residents of the capital. CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat, who was present at the site, has highlighted the continuance of the demolition even after the court order was made known to the authorities. The Supreme Court should deal with this contumacious behaviour as part of the ongoing proceedings, in which its main concern, of course, ought to be to push back against the dangerously divisive and partisan manner in which authorities are responding to law and order issues.
There are aspects to the controversy that betray an emerging pattern of the use of state machinery to inflict misery on Muslims. One is the role of the ruling BJP, whose Delhi chief wrote to the North Delhi Municipal Corporation to carry out the demolition targeting ‘rioters’ who had allegedly thrown stones at a Hindu religious procession in the vicinity of a mosque. As the counsel contended in the court, this wish seems to have been treated as a command, and police force mobilised within a day to carry it out. Another aspect is the attempt to conflate the legal consequences of rioting and communal violence with administrative measures to deal with encroachments in public spaces. The official line leans towards the theory of clearing encroachments even as the political message is that ‘rioters’ will be dealt with. It is of concern that the Aam Aadmi Party, which while blaming the BJP on the one hand, has also made an unsubtle insinuation that those fomenting trouble are ‘Bangladeshis’ and ‘Rohingya’, terms that will render the residents of the area vulnerable to denial of their rights. The most dismal aspect is the apparent enjoyment that the BJP’s communal constituency derives from the infliction of suffering on the ‘other’. The challenge before the country’s political opposition is not only to take on the unlawful ways of the state but also to reverse this polarising slide in the wider society.
New Delhi, April 21: The Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi told pressmen here to-day that Government had no intention of killing the national press and the present 10-page restriction on newspapers was due to shortage of newsprint. When correspondents told her at a Press Association luncheon meeting that the present 10-page restriction was posing a threat of retrenchment to journalists, Mrs. Gandhi said “the question is whether we can protect the journalists, I do not know how we can protect them. I doubt whether it will come to that.” A correspondent said many newspapers were likely to close down because of fall in income due to newsprint restriction. Mrs. Gandhi said “I do not think we can guarantee every newspaper. I believe they, at least some of these newspapers, must be making plenty of money in other things.” A correspondent said some of the newspapers because of their classifications had employed large number of employees. “In view of the present restriction to 10-page, a large number of employees were now being threatened with retrenchment. Will the Government look into this aspect of the issue?”
The “Daily Chronicle” special correspondent writes from New York. “Every human being is both a sending and a receiving radio telegraphic or telephonic instrument and thus quality hitherto but vaguely suspected, explains so-called thought transferences and telepathy.” This is the theory advanced to me by an American scientist, eminent in his chosen fields of research. He believes his view can be proved with the aid of an amplifying instrument capable of multiplying wireless impulses, say, ten million times. Such an instrument would be sufficiently sensitive to catch radiations from active nerves and thinking brains. Thousands of cases of thought transmission from one human being to another across distances and without the possibility of words are on record and do not admit of doubt. Telepathy has been studied by scientists of world-wide distinction. Some have announced their firm belief that underneath the mass of crude misunderstandings are statements of exact scientific value. “Psychologists now agree to the fact,” said scientific informant, “that nervous energy is electrical.”
Israel on Wednesday bombed the outskirts of Beirut and other cities and villages in Lebanon, thus breaking the cease-fire it had entered into with the Palestinian forces in July last year. A communique issued by the Syrian army high command said that its airforce intervened to stop the assault. It said that two Syrian jets and one Israeli warplane crashed after a dogfight over East Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. An Israeli military spokesman in Jerusalem confirmed that two Syrian aircraft were shot down by Israeli warplanes. He said the downed aircraft were Soviet-built MiG 23 fighters that tried to intercept Israeli planes.
India is believed to have formally asked Pakistan to let it know whether it is backing out of the commitment it made in New Delhi during Agha Shahi’s visit in January accepting the Indian proposal for setting up a joint Indo-Pakistan commission. Some recent Interviews given by President Zia and Pakistan’s new Foreign Minister, Yaqub Khan, have caused considerable unease in New Delhi, which has already been perturbed over Pakistan’s formalising its annexation of Gilgit. Skardu, and Hunza. Pakistan’s Ambassador, Abdul Sattar, — who has returned to New Delhi after consultations with his government — has met Natwar Singh, Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, in this connection.
The Government enlarged the list of industries open to large houses and FERA companies to stimulate industrial growth and step up exports. The decision to revise the list was announced by Industry Minister N D Tiwari while replying to the debate on the demands for grants. Tiwari also announced a new scheme which would ensure increased utilisation of industrial capacity as part of the plan to liberalise investment procedure.
In a world seemingly designed for extroverts, avoiding a birthday party, especially one’s own, can be quite the challenge, as one man in Kentucky, USA, found out. Kevin Berling had asked that his colleagues not throw him a birthday bash. They organised a bash, instead, at which Berling had a panic attack, following which he was censured for “stealing other co-workers’ joy”. This led to another panic attack, and Berling was fired.
Berling’s case is, of course, extreme, but introverts everywhere know what it’s like to be dismissed as “killjoys” and “wet blankets”. They understand how it feels to sweat bullets at a gathering they’ve been forced to attend and to attempt to edge their way towards the nearest exit only for the host to say those five dreaded words, “Let me introduce you to…”. Introverts believe that if hell had a tenth circle, it would most definitely consist of office events where they’re expected to “mingle” and make “small talk” with people they’d otherwise run 10 miles to avoid (which could be most people). Not for them the drunken revelry of New Year celebrations or the forced bonhomie of after-work drinks. Because hanging out with the chattering multitudes doesn’t recharge their batteries — it drains them completely. To be this way is not to be “joyless”, as extroverts believe. It is simply to have a different definition of joy. This could just as well be chilling on the couch with a glass of wine, Netflix and a cat, as doing tequila shots alone at a bar.
Here’s something that might bring introverts joy: Berling finally sued his company for wrongful termination and the jury awarded him $450,000 for “past, present and future mental pain and suffering, mental anguish, embarrassment, humiliation, mortification and loss of self-esteem”. An ending fit to be alone with.
It’s clear now that India isn’t going to harvest a bumper, forget record, wheat crop this time. The all-time high output estimate of 111.32 million tonnes (mt) was made by the agriculture ministry in mid-February, when the crop looked good, thanks to surplus rains and an extended winter. A marginal 0.8 per cent acreage drop and initial availability issues in fertilisers notwithstanding, overall production prospects were bright till at least mid-March. But then came a sudden spike in temperatures and the mercury touching 40 degrees Celsius levels in most wheat-growing areas before the month-end. The early onset of summer, with practically no spring, impacted the crop at the time of grain-filling: Day temperatures should ideally be in the early-30 degrees range during this “dough” stage, when the wheat kernel is accumulating starch, protein and other dry matter. The heat stress post mid-March resulted in premature ripening and shriveling of grains.
Most field reports point to yields being about a fifth lower compared to last year even in Punjab and Haryana, where farmers mostly plant wheat before November 15. It could be worse in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where sowing stretches till late-December, making the crop still more vulnerable to the havoc wreaked by the hottest March in India’s recorded history. That production may have taken a significant hit is also evidenced by official procurement numbers. Government agencies bought 43.34 mt of wheat last year. Available trends for the new marketing season suggest achieving 30 mt to be a tall order, with some even pegging it at 25 mt. Together with 19 mt of opening stocks on April 1, this can cover the 26 mt-odd requirement of the public distribution system plus another 11 mt under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) free-grain scheme. That would leave year-end stocks at 7-12 mt, just around the buffer norm of 7.46 mt.
If production and procurement do turn out much below expectations, there are two things the government can do. The first is cut wheat and correspondingly raise rice allocations under the PMGKAY. Some additional wheat may, in fact, be necessary for undertaking open market sales, especially in the latter half of the fiscal. The second thing is to be less gung-ho about exports. Yes, Indian wheat is highly competitive in the global market today and there’s scope to ship out, maybe 10 mt in 2022-23 over and above the 7.85 mt last fiscal. But let these exports happen through the private trade in the natural course. The government mustn’t push beyond a point, leave alone exporting from its stocks. The worst thing would be to talk about “feeding the world” today and then, all of a sudden, announce a ban on exports.
The Naga peace talks, stalled since October 2019, look set for renewal with the Centre’s interlocutor, A K Mishra, meeting the NSCN-IM leadership at Camp Hebron, the headquarters of the rebel outfit. Mishra is scheduled to meet the NSCN-IM leaders including Th Muivah, members of the state government’s core committee and the Naga National Political Groups (NNPG). Last week, Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio, Deputy CM Y Patton and the former chief minister, T R Zeliang, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi. Though a framework agreement was signed by the Centre and the NSCN-IM in August 2015, a resolution has eluded India’s longest-running insurgency: A ceasefire agreed upon in 1997 has held out despite several ups and downs.
Talks were stalled after the NSCN-IM objected to the stance of the then interlocutor R N Ravi. Ravi had reportedly set October 31, 2019 as the deadline for concluding the framework agreement with or without the NSCN-IM’s consent. The NSCN-IM interpreted Ravi’s statements as an attempt to arm-twist the outfit to sign a deal. The stalemate that ensued threatened to turn worse when a botched counter-insurgency operation by a special forces unit led to the killing of six civilians in Mon district in December last year. To begin with, Mishra has to restore the trust between the NSCN-IM and the Centre. His gesture to visit Camp Hebron, a first by an interlocutor, signals the Centre’s keenness to take the talks forward. The NSCN-IM has been intractable on its stance that the Centre must agree to a separate flag and Yehzabo (constitution) for Nagaland. The NSCN-IM is deeply suspicious of the NNPGs, which claim the backing of civil society, and have a different view of what the framework agreement entails. In fact, the Centre and the NSCN-IM seem to read the framework agreement, especially the parts on sovereignty, differently: In a statement issued on April 10, the NSCN-IM has sought to interpret the agreement as a document that provides for solutions which will allow India and the Nagas “to co-exist as two friendly entities under the principle of shared sovereignty”.
Mishra needs to negotiate with all the stakeholders within the contours of the framework agreement. The big challenge will be to persuade the NSCN-IM to abandon maximalist positions and accept a middle ground that will ensure durable peace in the region. The informal meeting at Camp Hebron is a good beginning.
Does Urdu journalism go along with a world where the media takes pride in justifying the government instead of questioning its anti-people policies? Does it still stick to the anti-establishment posture that produced the trenchant observation: “Urdu journalism without fireworks is like a Wimbledon without strawberries and ice-creams.” When nationalism has become the subject of an everyday referendum, do Urdu newspapers seek to uphold the dignity of the term by making a candid distinction between patriotism and nationalism? Despite its frequent forays into regressive and sentimental topics, does it produce a public sphere for rational debate? These questions assume greater significance as Urdu journalism celebrates its bicentenary. The first Urdu newspaper, Jam-i-Jahan-Numa, was published on March 27, 1822. The weekly was launched by Harihar Dutta from Kolkata.
With their frequent engagements with emotive issues and support for pseudo religiosity, Urdu newspapers strive to live up to the glorious past of being passionate organs for rebellion and dissent, despite their dwindling readership and precarious financial fortunes. Not many are aware that Urdu journalism has the distinction of having produced the first martyred journalist of India, Maulvi Mohammad Baqar, editor of the Delhi Urdu Akhbar, in 1857. The Urdu press, the voice of revolution during colonial rule, was instrumental in the promulgation of the Vernacular Press Act, 1877. It coined the war cry of the freedom struggle,” Inqilab Zindabad”, which is still the slogan of dissent.
Since nationalism has become the central theme in India, one has to look at the editorial content of Urdu newspapers published from various parts of the country. Urdu periodicals, some owned by corporate houses with limited circulation, hardly ever shore up the hostile and aggressive notion of nationalism. Instead, they pitch for constitutional nationalism and patriotism. Their response to the debate on the CAA and NRC bears testimony to this. The Inquilab (Mumbai), Siyasat (Hyderabad), Rashtriya Sahara (Delhi), Aag (Lucknow), Qaumi Tanzeem (Patna), Salar (Bengaluru) and scores of others opposed the law. However, they urged their readership not to protest as victims of religious discrimination. They might take the issue to the streets as proud citizens of India who have been provided full citizenship rights by the Constitution. They tried to create a reasoned debate on the issue. This indicates the presence of a public sphere that strives to convert readers into citizens capable of logical debate. This is why an unwavering commitment to the Constitution frequently surfaced in these agitations. The Indian flag was displayed prominently at protest marches across the country. This is unlike what happened during the Shah Bano case, when the Urdu press became the voice of patriarchy.
Urdu newspapers have vociferously protested the widespread discrimination against the marginalisation of Muslims. However, they also perpetuate an ever-increasing sense of victimhood. The persecution complex became a means for much-needed solace. Religion-centric identity politics found favour in the majority of newspapers. Muslims’ response to the new reality is the most debated topic on their pages, but it hardly goes beyond laments. No strategy is suggested.
Nostalgia gains currency during dispossession and turmoil, but one must realise that the past – often an imagined past — no matter how glorious, can never be the future. The Urdu media falters considerably here, and the lapse has contributed immensely to pseudo-religiosity and conservatism.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Abul Kalam Azad, two prominent Muslim public intellectuals, through their periodicals spelt out to readers how to live in a society where they are not in the majority and the rulers do not subscribe to their faith. This was something Indian Muslims were not accustomed to before the British took over. Urdu periodicals, except for Qaumi Awaz, Hind Samachar, Siyasat, Aljamiyat, Azad Hind and the like, have rarely strengthened the legacy of Sir Syed and Azad by propagating liberal values.
Religious, cultural and linguistic identity, regional aspirations, and liberal values all occupy equal space in what Jurgen Habermas calls the “public sphere”. The media creates it, and the freedom of expression figures prominently in it. The latter is subject to reasonable restrictions. However, any attempt to inveigh against faith must not draw forth violence. Arguments must refute the counterpoint. Burning so-called profane books and demands for banning books serve no purpose. This was well-articulated by two Urdu periodicals of yesteryear. In 1864, Willam Muir’s book The Life of Mahomet was published. Muslims found it highly blasphemous. They took to the streets, but Sir Syed, despite being a highly influential Indian (a member of the Viceregal Council twice) and editor of two periodicals, did not pitch for its ban. He wrote a dispassionate and equally powerful rejoinder.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the issue of blasphemy surfaced in India time and again, and Sir Syed, in the Aligarh Institute Gazette, asserted that Quranic verses are mute on this count, and the Prophet pardoned many, but some of the offenders were punished. When Islam became the state religion, stringent punishment was imposed. This was essentially a sedition law — if one writes against Islam or its Prophet, it amounts to writing against the state. Abul Kalam Azad endorsed the radical views of Sir Syed.
Referring to religious bigotry and violence, he said a true Muslim carries Quran in one hand, and the other can never carry a bomb. Alas, contemporary Urdu newspapers hardly take this message forward.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 22, 2022 under the title ‘The Urdu public sphere’. The writer is a professor of mass communication at Aligarh Muslim University
“Muslims in India and their so-called protectors would do well to realise that most Indians endorse the Karnataka High Court verdict […] because they are avowedly against any emotional or cultural secessionism or spreading a sense of separateness for the sake of being politically correct.” — Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, IE, April 1
“We Indians love our freedom. When any attempt has been made to snatch our freedom, our alert citizenry did not hesitate to seize the power back from autocrats.” — CJI NV Ramana, IE, April 2
The strange idea, increasingly prevalent, that diversity leads to lack of unity, and “cultural and emotional secessionism” presumes that there is one homogenous cultural and emotional core, and that any divergence from it results in separateness. What is that cultural core, and what are the divergences that apparently display emotional secessionism? I am thinking of families that prefer to not cook meat in their kitchens, and yet the fathers, and the children happily step out to gorge on chicken tikka masala, without ever feeling that they have emotionally seceded from their mother, or from “dadaji who doesn’t like to eat non-vegetarian food”. Nobody, unless it’s a dysfunctional family, throws hissy fits about the non-veg cultural core and secessionism, or thinks too much about which eating habit within the family is the core, and which is peripheral. Indeed, the very idea of “cultural and emotional secessionism” attacks all such possibilities, where families and people intuitively learn to live and let live.
I am quite intrigued with this idea of “emotional secession” in merely following one’s own cultural or individual choices, like wearing the hijab, or a strapless dress on the streets, or eating lamb chops, or mutton biryani from a street vendor. The idea that each of these attitudes represents a disregard for sentiments is reminiscent of sulking, bullying husbands in matrimonial cases who insist that their wives are cruel, only because they do their own thing. This thesis proposes, much like the bullying husband, that one limited worldview should occupy the cultural universe of the nation.
However, this thesis deftly avoids naming that cultural core. Which is it, and what makes it the core to exclusion of all other practices? It avoids naming it, for even within the “majoritarian culture” that it alludes to, there are in fact no common, set cultural practices. It would like very much for Hinduism to also develop a central tenet, mostly as a tool of political organisation.
For the moment, the thesis focuses rather more on pointing randomly at certain practices and declaring that they are “definitely not the core”, and for no apparent reason, thus creating “insiders and outsiders” out of thin air.
There is a fine line between the old grievance that Muslims in this country are pampered, and a subtle shift reflected in the new position that claims that any expression of Muslimness is an example of cultural secession from the nation. This thesis sways wildly across that fine line, when it mixes up the old grievance against Muslim appeasement with the new demand for all to conform.
I had heard of “secession from reason”, centred on love and inclusiveness, in an effort to explore the relationship between the self and the divine. Such traditions focused on experiencing, rather than rationally understanding, the divine. The experiential practices, in turn, involved an unmooring from social rules, and a more instinctive turn towards social openness. The Sufi and Bhakti traditions are replete with examples of cultural and emotional secession from the regimented mainstream.
The present thesis is much less successful both in its literary form and in the philosophy that it espouses. It inverts the traditions of love and cultural and individual explorations, and ties the idea of “cultural secession” to a regimented notion of culture. Moreover, the assumption that the default national cultural position should be the Hindutva one, which is only a politically defined religio-cultural universe, is offered without any reason, other than the claim that it has the force of numbers behind it. The thesis doesn’t explain why the proposition that following community traditions, or individual choices is “culturally secessionist”, is in itself not an idea that is emotionally secessionist to the Constitution.
In any case, this odd formulation is suggestive of the medieval European principle, cuius regio, eius religio (the king’s religion is the religion of his people). Only here, “the king” is replaced with the party.
This articulation also resonates with the logic of Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s trial for disaffection, which was, in the colonial state’s reading, exactly the kind of cultural and emotional secessionism that this propaganda also encourages. The colonial state demanded overt affection and cheer for her majesty’s government: Judge Strachey ruled that “disaffection” meant a lack of affection, while the defence had argued that there was a long distance to be traversed between showing lack of affection, actively dissenting, and being seditious. This idea takes us down the same slippery slope as the colonial government.
This philosophy of demanding conformity, and treating difference as an affront is already quite common in popular discourse and vigilante actions (forcibly closing shops selling meat at Navratri, forcing women to disrobe and take off burqas in public places, and treating the mobilisation of Muslim political society as dangerous and substantially different from the mobilisation of Hindutva political society).
This insecurity at the visible display of difference is counterproductive. It results in the kind of ruptures that end centuries-old traditions of Muslims participating (and trading) at temple festivals, for instance. It prevents communities from introspecting about violence together, in Kashmir and elsewhere, and instead makes it an excuse to reiterate conformity, and to be intolerant of any difference.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 22, 2022 under the title ‘Difference as afront’. The writer is a lawyer practising in the Supreme Court
The path of confrontation that St Stephen’s College has adopted towards Delhi University in respect to conducting undergraduate admissions is avoidable. It betrays an unthinking adherence to antiquated privileges.
It is well-known that St Stephen’s attaches much value to interviews as a partial tool for selecting candidates. The main rationale for this, till recently, was that candidates seeking admission to it came from different boards that varied widely, even wildly, in standards. Marks awarded by them did not reflect merit reliably. With the introduction of the common university entrance test (CUET), this concern has become irrelevant.
Interviews are notoriously vulnerable to subjective considerations, besides being weighed in favour of candidates from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds. It is unnecessary here to enumerate the diverse ways in which this admission tool can be abused. Across the nine batches of admissions I conducted as the principal of the college, I had to be particularly alert to these patterns and possibilities. Convinced in the end that I could not be alert and all-seeing enough to avert abuses, I reduced the weightage of interviews from 15 per cent to 10 per cent. The college has been the gainer in the process.
It will be particularly unfortunate if the college insists on the right to conduct interviews on the basis of minority rights. The scope of Article 30(1), as interpreted by the Supreme Court is limited to the right to fill 50 per cent of the seats with candidates, based on inter se merit, from the minority community concerned. It is true, of course, that the apex court allowed St Stephen’s in 1991 to have its own admission procedure. In doing so, it took into account the national catchment of the college — a consideration that has become infructuous with the introduction of CUET. The maximum extent to which the scope of minority rights can be stretched in the present context is to base the selection of Christian candidates on the basis also of interviews. I doubt if that will make any beneficial difference to the academic stature of the college.
St Stephen’s must have due regard for the fact that a climate of disapproval is intensifying against minority rights nationally. For good reasons too. These rights are widely misused. The managements of Christian institutions, barring rare exceptions, view them as milch cows. The more prestigious an institution, the more readily it lends itself to covetousness and corruption. My ordeal as the 12th principal of the college started in 2008 with the CNI bishop in Delhi, the ex-officio chairman of the governing body of the college, demanding 20 per cent of the seats be “allocated” to him. When I resisted, he became indignant. I had to fight a prolonged and bitter battle for preserving my freedom to serve the college with integrity.
I was keen to have an objective idea of the extent to which interviews can be used to tilt the balance in favour of the candidates favoured, and against those who, consequently, are excluded. I asked Poonam Kalra of the economics department to conduct a statistical study. The findings were astounding. When candidates who scored, say, 97 per cent or above in the Class XII examinations are interviewed, the award of just one extra mark in interviews — often half a mark will do — is enough to push up a comparatively undeserving candidate to the detriment of a more meritorious one. Then imagine the devastation that 15 per cent weightage for interviews can mean.
In case St Stephen’s is allowed to retain interviews in the selection process, the following conditions should be prescribed. One, the weightage for interviews should not exceed 5 per cent. Two, the ratio of seats to candidates called for interviews should not exceed 1:3 for humanities courses and 1:6 for science courses. Three, the interviews should be videographed and rejected candidates should have access to the same, should they wish to. This could ensure, to an extent, that favoured candidates are not treated with kid gloves. Four, interviews should apply strictly to the admission of the minority candidates.
Once the college accepts CUET as the merit basis for admissions, it is wrong to insist on interviews.
The only consideration at work here is that of privilege. It is inappropriate to regard minority rights in the light of privilege. Every privilege corrupts. Corruption alienates. Exercising minority educational rights with exemplary transparency and unimpeachable integrity should be deemed the bottom-line duty of minority educational institutions, including St Stephen’s. Seen in that light, CUET is a blessing in disguise. It should not be diluted in any way.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 22, 2022 under the title ‘Don’t dilute CUET’. The writer was principal of St Stephen’s College, Delhi
The performance of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) — a landmark reform executed during the first term of the Narendra Modi government — has been under intense scrutiny. The Code has been mainly criticised on three counts: First, there are inordinate delays in the resolution procedure, second, there have been more liquidations than resolutions and, third, the recovery amounts under IBC are not substantial, making it more of a talking point than an effective structural reform.
In this article, we focus on the first of the aforementioned criticisms to evaluate the performance of the IBC vis-a-vis the Board of Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) regime. We contend that assessing IBC based only on the average time taken to resolve successful cases does a substantial disservice to how much more efficient the IBC is compared to the previous regimes. A common metric used to assess the efficacy of IBC is the time taken to resolve cases. It is calculated by taking a simple average of time taken on each completed case. This is one of the metrics used by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) to compare the IBC regime with the earlier BIFR regime. For instance, it is often reported that the IBC has reduced the average time to settle a bankruptcy case from 5.8 years to 1.6 years. However, the performance of a bankruptcy resolution should ideally be evaluated along at least three dimensions: The average time taken to resolve a case, the fraction of cases resolved within a given timeframe, and the recovery rate conditional on resolution. Focusing on any single parameter may result in a gross under (over) estimation of the IBC’s (BIFR’s) performance.
We begin by examining the fraction of cases that are resolved within a specific timeframe. To this end, we employ a simple metric often used in statistics. We first compute the total cases resolved under the IBC (and correspondingly with BIFR). Then, for any time t (in, say, months), we compute the fraction of cases that were resolved in less than t months. The figure plots the same for the IBC and BIFR.
That the curve for the IBC (in blue) is significantly above the one for BIFR (orange) across the time series indicates that, for any fraction of the total cases resolved under each scheme, the IBC took considerably less time than BIFR. As one can see, even amongst those cases that were eventually resolved under the BIFR, over 80 per cent of them took more than 34 months. In fact, the figure looks qualitatively similar even if we restrict attention to the BIFR cases that were solved within 34 months, as is the case for IBC.
There are two grounds on which one could question the above conclusion. First, it may be the case that while the BIFR was somewhat slow in resolution, it solved significantly more cases. This is, however, simply not true. Since its inception in 1987, the BIFR has resolved less than 3,500 cases while the IBC, since it was launched in 2016, resolved about 1,178 cases until it was suspended at the onset of the COVID pandemic. A second criticism could be that this metric tilts the picture in favour of IBC because it ignores the number of pending cases. For example, let us say, given 10 cases to be resolved, IBC resolves one case in one month and nothing more, while BIFR resolved 10 cases with each case taking two months. Even in such a case, the graph will look similar. To correct the above bias of only looking at the settled cases and ignoring pending cases, we propose to use an alternate metric that combines the time horizon of resolution and the number of pending cases.
This method is akin to survival analysis. Specifically, we calculate the ratio of cases settled within a year to cases that spent one year in the bankruptcy system but remained unresolved (this is known as odds ratio). Applying the above metric, we find that within the first year, the IBC was almost 60 times more efficient than the BIFR. The ratio is 0.0047 for the BIFR, whereas it is 0.28 for the IBC. While we focus on a time interval of one year, the method is also amenable to estimation at higher frequency.
We start with a broad definition of case resolutions that includes both liquidation and as well as sales on a going-concern basis. Recognising the difference between the two, we narrow the definition of closure by excluding liquidations from the numerator, while still including it in the denominator. The outperformance of the IBC within a year increases significantly. We find that the IBC continues to outperform the earlier BIFR regime by 66 times which is substantially higher than a comparison based on simple time averages.
We then look at year two. Here the denominator consists of cases that remained unsettled for at least two years, and the numerator is formed by cases that get settled between year one and year two. The ratios for the IBC and BIFR turn out to be 0.3 and 0.0344 respectively — a large outperformance of almost 10 times. When we narrow the definition of resolution and exclude liquidation cases, the outperformance grows to 28 times during the second year. The IBC continues to outperform the BIFR even in the third year, but we stop the analysis here because the time frame coincides with the onset of the pandemic for many firms in the IBC. Although the IBC process continued for existing cases, drawing any inference based on performance during an extraordinary time such as the Covid induced crisis is not reasonable.
Finally, since many of the unresolved cases stuck in the BIFR were transferred to IBC, delays in resolution should be viewed in comparison with the historical case pendency. On adjusting the denominator for the legacy BIFR cases — that is, the unresolved cases shifted into the IBC from the BIFR — we find that the IBC is at least 23 times more efficient than the BIFR regime that preceded it based on the odds ratios in year one.
One could argue that because the IBC is more efficient, it is also likely to have seen more cases being admitted than under the BIFR. This is a fair point, but one that only bolsters our thesis that the IBC represents a structural shift and a substantive improvement over the BIFR.
The bottom line is straightforward: The IBC has significantly outperformed the earlier BIFR regime in terms of the speed of resolution. Most analyses of IBC’s performance overlook the important fact that many of the legacy BIFR cases were subsumed by IBC, and these were often zombie firms that were kept alive due to massive evergreening of loans between 2008-2015 — a “mysterious” sequence of events that wrecked India’s banking system that took the better part of a decade to fix. Further, the most powerful impact of the IBC is likely to be its ex-ante impact on firm and promoter behaviour. In other words, the IBC is potentially as effective as a disciplining device as much as it is a resolution mechanism.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 22, 2022 under the title ‘A high resolution tool’. Alok and Tantri are with Indian School of Business, Hyderabad; Kuvalekar is with the University of Essex; Mantri is with the India Enterprise Council. They thank Aditya Murlidharan from Center For Analytical Finance, Indian School of Business for research support
My Twitter is pretty much complete nonsense at this point.” This April 2019 tweet came from the man who is now willing to fork out $43 billion to buy all of Twitter. Other rich men aim rockets skywards for their private moments of zero gravity; the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is aiming for his private eternity of zero gravitas. For all his brilliance in creating a trillion-dollar company that produces a really cool car, Musk is barely an adolescent when he has his thumbs on a smartphone.
Consider this: “At least 50% of my tweets were made on a porcelain throne” (April 2019). Even if this were true, is the world better off with that extraordinary piece of insight on hand? And then consider the fun he has had indiscriminately tweeting about his own flagship company: “Tesla blows haha” (April 2019). His May 2020 tweet, “Tesla stock price is too high imo” (May 2020), wiped $14 billion off of Tesla’s value, including $3 billion off of Musk’s own personal stake. And all this is after he was fined by the US Security and Exchange Commission and forced to resign as chairman of Tesla after sending out a tweet that was meant to be a pothead joke: “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.” (August 2018) —4/20 is for April 20, a day for celebrating cannabis culture.
Shall I go on? From “Nuke Mars!” (August 2019) to “Kids are essentially immune (to Covid)” (March 2020), Musk’s torrential tweets would be funny if they weren’t about serious topics. Some don’t age well: “Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases (of Covid) in US too by end of April” (March 2020).
Why should we care? After all, being the richest man on the planet ought to come with some freedoms. And despite its occasional use as a lifeline during moments of extreme crisis — such as in India’s second Covid wave — isn’t Twitter a platform mostly for the elites, celebrities and a few mischief makers? Don’t we have bigger problems in the world? It turns out that Musk has 81 million followers. Even after discounting for the 46.5 per cent of these that, according to one audit, represent fake accounts, and millions of others who just think it’s Elon being Elon, a lot of people worship the man. Much of what Musk says can range from amusing to bizarre to dangerous. And here I am not concerned about the Martians but more about the children whose parents thought kids are immune to Covid because our own planet’s richest man said so and some conspiracy theorists decided to amplify it.
Musk says he is not interested in the commercial aspects of Twitter. “Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilisation,” he said. He is most incensed about Twitter’s moderation of content and banning some notable power users, one such outcast being the former president of the United States, who lost the last election and insists he didn’t. It is hard to imagine the future of civilisation being in a better place with that man reinstated in any place — be it on Twitter or in the White House.
My biggest concern about a Musk takeover of Twitter is that he is not just content with sending out tweets from the privacy of his porcelain throne, he also wants to take the company private. Taking it off the public equity markets would give him license to do whatever he wants with the platform with no external scrutiny or pesky analyst and shareholder pressures. You could argue that Musk has other serious commercial interests, such as satellite-delivered internet access, space travel and electric cars that all rely on some government oversight and these could give regulators leverage over a Musk-owned Twitter. But this would be a clumsy roundabout way to build back trust in social media at a time when regulators are struggling mightily to contain the proliferation of social media assaults on democratic institutions — and, dare I say, the future of civilisation. While other noted social media barons, such as Mark Zuckerberg, have failed after repeated attempts, how can Musk be so confident about finding the right balance between free speech and speech that kills? I am far more sanguine about him putting men on Mars by 2029, as he has hinted.
Elon Musk is an extraordinary man. He is the brains behind the world’s coolest car company, the co-founder of the online financial services company that became the granddaddy of digital payments, a rail system that aims to go faster than an airplane, the second largest solar power system in the US, and much more. At the age of 12, he invented a video game that he sold for $500 to a magazine. Today, he also plans to colonise Mars.
Do I trust Musk to be the arbiter of free speech on the planet that is our home for the foreseeable future? Heck, no. Musk recently tweeted, “A social media platform’s policies are good if the most extreme 10 per cent on left and right are equally unhappy,” It turns out the extreme right has been exceedingly happy about his hostile takeover attempt. And that should get us worried that free speech can come at a high price.
I pity Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal, who seems like a nice enough fellow and has barely been five months on the job. The chap needs help. The Twitter board has launched a “poison pill” defence aimed at diluting Musk’s current stake in the company making it more difficult to buy up the entire company, but it may not work.
In my opinion, Twitter needs a white knight — another buyer. My first pick would be … drumroll please … Apple. Apple wants to move even further beyond TV, into news and other content, Twitter is a proto news, and media service and ought to do more with TV/video. Apple has the resources to go into a bidding war with Musk. It is also not likely to face the same antitrust roadblocks.
Parag Agrawal — or his board chairman, Bret Taylor — needs to tweet Apple CEO, Tim Cook. Now. The future of civil discourse on planet Earth could be at stake. And we cannot even escape to Mars, because Elon Musk will already be there.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 22, 2022 under the title ‘An arbiter of free speech’. The writer is Dean of Global Business at The Fletcher School at Tufts University
What’s changed over the past year? In 2021 deliberations over election strategist Prashant Kishor joining Congress went nowhere. But assembly elections since then have underlined that the party is no longer able to mobilize the anti-incumbency vote against BJP even in states, not to mention how it is being beaten by regional parties too.
Unable to replace the Gandhis at the helm, even as they are no longer able to win elections for the party, Congress needs a desperate infusion of some fresh energy, and right now Kishor is the only one knocking on its door with three bags full.
Prashant Kishor proposal: A Gandhi to be Congress chief, a non-Gandhi VP
Could he prove a disappointment as in 2017 in Uttar Pradesh? Can the Gandhis really fall in line with whatever national narrative he judges will work? Can they line up the squabbling party elders behind him? Resistance to him being inducted as an office bearer is already widely reported. But against all these doubts, there are 1) the many impressive successes in Kishor’s CV and 2) Congress being completely out of better options. The party has a crying need for his command over big data management and over polling voter preferences. The continuous failures of its own political strategizing make an airtight case for experimenting with Kishor’s skillset, rather than replaying its own tired playbook.
Twice this week, the Supreme Court found serious fault with high courts failing to uphold judicial discipline while pronouncing orders. A Rajasthan high court bench granted bail to a history sheeter accused of raping his minor niece without specifying any reasons. An Allahabad HC bench summarily ordered acquittal in a murder case but gave the reasoned judgment a staggering five months later. In 2020, SC had spotted a nine-month gap by a Bombay HC bench and a ten-month-gap by a Delhi HC judge between the operative order and reasoned judgment. Invested with the all-important function of superintendence of around 20,000 subordinate judicial officers, high courts need to be setting the bar high, not lower.
On the Rajasthan HC judge’s modus operandi, CJI NV Ramana said the order was cryptic, with no suggestion of application of mind. He noted a recent trend of passing bail orders where a “general observation that facts and circumstances have been considered” supplanted specific reasoning. Judges carry the burden of not only doing justice but also ensuring that justice is seen to be done. Here, the HC ignored circumstances like the alleged rapist facing around 20 other criminal cases.
A reasoned order also helps appellate courts save judicial time and decide appeals faster. Allahabad HC’s failure to give a prompt reasoned order forced SC to order fresh hearing. Consequently, the case lodged in 2009, convicted by a trial court in 2012 and acquitted in 2019 must be re-heard by Allahabad HC, sinking under the weight of 1.83 lakh pending criminal appeals with wait times as long as 35 years.
Poor quality of justice delivery at various levels has found no satisfactory solutions yet. The quashed National Judicial Appointments Commission to replace the collegium system that critics blame for furthering mediocrity and nepotism had aimed to identify better judges. At the subordinate judiciary level, proposals like All India Judicial Services or a national district judges recruitment examination have made no headway. Meanwhile, collegiums are struggling to attract good candidates to HCs amid a power struggle with GoI and unrealistic service conditions like low retirement age of 62. While SC will be able to spot and rectify a few bad judgments courtesy resourceful litigants, it must be the case that – despite absence of relevant data – many bad orders are going unappealed. Dysfunctionality in the rule of law is a dysfunctionality that affects all aspects of governance.
A series of developments this week augured well for Sri Lanka. On the political front, 17 new ministerial appointments were initiated by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, suggesting an end to the political logjam. Separately, Sri Lanka began bailout talks with IMF. These talks were backed by India, and the first step is a Rapid Financing Instrument, which provides help before a restructuring plan is finalised. There’s a long way to go to attain normalcy but a start has been made.
Sri Lanka’s economic crisis was caused by a perfect storm. On the policy side, there was an imprudent level of foreign currency commercial borrowing by the government and a late-2019 tax policy change disconnected from the budget expenditure. Separately, the Easter Sunday bombings three years ago and Covid devastated the tourism industry. An IMF estimate puts the cost of these two developments on tourism at about $10 billion. The inflection point was undoubtedly Covid. But subsequent economic policy mistakes created a balance of payments crisis so grave that financial support from China, India and Bangladesh was not enough.
Following credit rating downgrades in 2020, Sri Lanka lost access to foreign commercial borrowing. The central bank reacted by trying to fix an exchange rate of 200-203 Sri Lankan rupee to the US dollar, similar to what Nepal does with the Indian rupee. The next step was price controls. The consequences were shortages and forex hoarding. IMF is certain to ask Sri Lanka to move away from an unsustainable exchange rate peg and restructure its tax policy to meet the challenge of repaying government debt that last year was about 104% of GDP. Sri Lanka has fully vaccinated over 65% of its population and tourist footfalls are rising. But economic normalcy is contingent on exchange rate, tax and expenditure reforms. There’s no easy way out.
Managing rising electricity demand, driven by the increase in the number of users and record-breaking temperatures, will require far greater planning than is being done today. The process will get more complex as India moves to transition its energy sources away from fossil fuels to clean energy and renewables.
The current overdrawing of power by states like Gujarat and Maharashtra could have been avoided had there been better assessment and planning of this heightened demand. Although Coal India fell short of its annual production target, there is no coal shortage. It is the railways that are unable to transport coal from the mines to generation stations. Rising mercury saw April register a demand increase of 10.7%.
But states were unable to project the demand rise and tie up coal supply, a problem compounded by rising global coal prices. The inability of state governments to raise electricity tariffs, made worse by promises of free power, meant the exchequer having to spend more. Some 16 GW of generating capacity that used imported coal were shut - their power was simply too expensive. It is no secret that temperatures will increase, driving up demand, and rains are likely to be more torrential and intense, making coal mining difficult during the monsoons. Despite availability of coal, there is a situation in which power generation is falling short of demand.
There is a need for proper assessment of electricity demand, and for reforms to address market distortions that affect power sector supplies. India's demand for electricity will rise, for the reasons mentioned above and rising industrial use. This demand will have to be met in the context of climate change. Without robust plans, it will be surging from one crisis to another.
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Sport utility vehicles (SUVs) have caught India's fancy and have opened a new front for car manufacturers. The share for SUVs has tripled in five years as automobile companies flooded the market with new launches. Tata Motors has made impressive inroads with its portfolio of SUVs, forcing rivals Hyundai Motor and Maruti Suzuki to shore up offerings in this segment. Hyundai has had success with its current SUV models. It is now, however, planning to bulk its line-up to build on these gains. Maruti Suzuki has steadily lost market share because it does not have adequate presence in the SUV segment. It intends to plug the gap with a slew of new launches. Newer players like South Korean Kia do not plan to offer anything except SUVs in India.
The roomier vehicles have a special value proposition in India where individual cars tend to carry more people than in most other countries. The higher driving position and bigger ground clearance also work better on Indian road conditions. This has caused a shift in consumer preference from low-slung hatchbacks and sedans and has resulted in the proliferation of the compact SUV. Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai have considerable dominance over the small car segment and a raft of foreign carmakers have withdrawn their offerings. A new set of players, including home-grown automakers, have tapped into the shifting demand for SUVs.
These automakers have also placed big bets on electric vehicles (EVs) and are considerably ahead in launch plans. A government push for EVs has accelerated the transition, with the result that carmakers that were exploring other alternate fuels like ethanol in the absence of battery-charging infrastructure could miss out another market shift. The incentives for electric mobility could reverse, and progressively enlarge, the gap in the cost of driving on fuel as opposed to driving on batteries. The price for storing electricity is also trending down. With a framework in place for battery-swapping, the switch to EVs could be closer than anticipated.
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The Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack named its Five Cricketers of the Year this week. Apart from England fast bowler Ollie Robinson, New Zealand opener Devon Conway, and South African women’s cricketer Dane van Niekerk, the list included Indian captain Rohit Sharma and pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah. This was the first time in the history of the annual list — it goes back to 1889 — that two Indian players featured in the same year. And Bumrah is only the third Indian fast bowler, after Kapil Dev in 1983 (also for batting and captaincy in a historic World Cup year) and Zaheer Khan in 2008, to make the cut.
While the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack list may not be as significant today as it was till the turn of 21st century when England was the epicentre of the global game, a study of the annual lists provides a nostalgic and instructive overview of players who led the march of the global game. The first Indian to make the list, for example, was the country’s first Test captain CK Nayudu in 1933. He was followed by Vijay Merchant (1937), Vinoo Mankad (1947), MAK Pataudi (1968), BS Chandrasekhar (1972), Sunil Gavaskar (1980), Dev in 1983, Mohinder Amarnath (1984), Dilip Vengsarkar (1987), Mohammad Azharuddin (1991), Anil Kumble (1996), Sachin Tendulkar (1997), Rahul Dravid (2000), VVS Laxman (2002), Zaheer in 2008, Shikhar Dhawan (2014), and Virat Kohli (2019). The list has an England tilt, insomuch as it factors in the impact on the English home season the previous year, and a player can feature in it only once. But looking at the Indians who were picked over the decades suggests that the list lays out a fairly accurate and objective overview of the march of the Indian team (with notable exceptions Sourav Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, MS Dhoni, R Ashwin, and perhaps some of Chandra’s contemporaries in the 1970s spin quartet).
But what makes this year’s list important enough to be picked out for commentary? Other than the fact that it features two Indians, mirroring cricket’s global power shift, it chronicles a crucial generational shift in Indian cricket – in terms of leadership with Kohli making the way across formats to the ascendant Sharma, and in terms of its metamorphosis into a fast-bowling unit since the arrival of Bumrah in 2018 provided the cutting edge to a burgeoning pace pool. Team India now has a different characteristic than any of its previous iterations, and the five cricketers of the year list by the 2022 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack manages to capture that transformation.
The human brain is amazing. It can remould itself, just like any other polymer. The activity of the human brain starts with its formation in the womb. It starts accepting signals from birth, and neurons start combining as humans develop senses and witness different circumstances. It gradually develops, and our brain keeps remodelling itself through neuron connections.
Neurons are the brain cells responsible for receiving signals from the external world and help the human body react differently to different stimuli. There are three types of neurons — sensory neurons, motor neurons, and interneurons — and all are essential for a healthy brain. Brain activities have a deeper connection with the building of memories as we form habits. But this is not deliberate conditioning; it is a normal process. Given this, deliberate changes can help you improve mental performance.
Shockingly, our brain does not treat success and failure equally. Research suggests that it reacts to success in a better way (and remembers it differently) and failure has less of an impact on the brain. Nevertheless, can we ignore the lesson to be learned from failures? This will help us acquire expertise — merging education and experience to work effectively and efficiently, and help others do the same.
So, we need to evaluate each failure and learn from them. This requires a change from the ordinary — in the way the brain functions. Called neuroplasticity, this is about the brain’s ability to learn from experience. It is about its ability to form new neural connections. Sometimes, this is a response to injuries. But at other times, it is a response to external developments. Most experts agree that learning something new (a language, an instrument, a skill), puzzles and crosswords, or yoga enhances neuroplasticity. It can also be developed by making changes in daily routines. Scientists believe that the easiest way to make something a habit is to stack it atop an existing habit. This can work in ways both mundane and complex.
Neuroplasticity is a profound concept that must be introduced to students to help them to not simply build memories (including skills and knowledge), but nurture them in their interconnected neurons through regular practice. The brain’s ability to reorganise itself by forming new neural connections can help build new skills atop old ones.
The link between neuroplasticity and learning is straightforward. As we learn, our brains develop new pathways. Each new learning strengthens existing neural connections and refines our worldview.
An entrepreneur must be able to effectively communicate, sell, focus, learn, and strategise. The capacity to consistently learn is not just an entrepreneurial talent, but also a key life skill. Building a firm demands a strong plan, based on innate business understanding and talent. Educators must understand the importance of such skills.
But it’s equally important to understand that the way different people react to exercises in neuroplasticity, could be different. Researchers are now making a concerted effort to record brain activity. It’s within the realm of possibility that this will, one day, help us understand issues such as focus, decision-making, inherent skills, and responsiveness. Their efforts may shape our understanding of how to use neuroplasticity to make better leaders and entrepreneurs.
Akshat Jain is a research scholar, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and is pursuing his research studies in the field of Neuroscience
The views expressed are personal
In the wake of communal riots that flared up in the aftermath of the Ram Navami celebrations in various states, the response of the administration has been to use bulldozers to demolish the homes of various people who — it is alleged — were involved in the riots.
Across states, this “bulldozer justice” has targeted people who are overwhelmingly poor and overwhelmingly Muslim. While in states such as Madhya Pradesh — for example — the demolition has already run its course, in Delhi, it was temporarily halted after an urgent order from the Supreme Court. However, unless this practice is promptly nipped in the bud by the judiciary — which remains the only institution with the power to stop it — there is a very short road from the present situation to a full-fledged mob State.
The moral bankruptcy of the administration is revealed by its two-faced approach to the issue. In the immediate aftermath of the riots, various statements were made that the homes of the rioters would not be spared, and that the “bulldozer” would arrive shortly. However, it is abundantly clear that this narrative would fall apart the moment someone challenged it in court. The administration — that is, the State — is bound by the rule of law, and is not allowed to dispense vigilante justice by tearing down people’s homes, no matter how much a majority might cheer on such actions.
Indeed, it is the job of courts to determine guilt and innocence in matters such as riots, after dispassionately assessing evidence. And even after an individual’s guilt has been established, civilised societies do not recognise home demolitions as a justified penalty. This is because demolishing homes that shelter entire families is a form of collective punishment, which does not distinguish between the guilty and the innocent (indeed, often, there will be entire families — including children — in those houses). Home demolition in response to allegations of rioting, therefore, is akin to medieval wars where armies would poison wells of villages that were suspected of harbouring enemy soldiers, so that both soldiers and innocent civilians would be deprived of water. Needless to say, this form of punishment is unsuitable in a constitutional democracy.
Having realised, no doubt, that this justification could not stand, the administration then changed its stance and publicly claimed that the properties slated for demolition were “illegal encroachments”, and could, therefore, be legally demolished. Indeed, in Jahangirpuri in New Delhi, the administration stated that it was conducting an “anti-encroachment drive” – which it continued for at least an hour even after the Supreme Court (SC) ordered a halt to it.
The language of an “anti-encroachment drive”, however, fools nobody. The fact that in all of Delhi — 65% of which is home to “illegal” colonies — the administration picked out the specific locality where riots took place, and targeted the specific houses that it had earlier claimed were sheltering rioters, makes it abundantly clear that the “anti-encroachment drive” is a smokescreen for the administration to continue to engage in vigilante justice, under the veneer of legality.
However, even if the administration’s claims were to be taken at face value, its actions are still grossly illegal. Under Indian law, it has long been established that no matter what the provocation, State agencies cannot march in without warning and destroy people’s homes.
The law requires that even when the administration believes that an “encroachment” is taking place, it must serve notice upon the alleged encroachers, and afford them an opportunity to be both heard and to challenge a demolition order before a court. Even after a demolition order has become final, the administration is required to afford individuals a modicum of fair warning before tearing down their homes, so that they can find alternative arrangements before they are put out onto the street.
This requirement of due process is premised on the common sense understanding that in many cases, encroachments are the result of human desperation: People build shelters “illegally” because the State and the social safety net have failed them. Their brutal removal only perpetuates State and public cruelty on the most vulnerable and marginalised. For this reason, courts have repeatedly held that individuals cannot be evicted from the only shelter they have without State agencies engaging meaningfully with them, and providing reasonable rehabilitation.
In the ongoing demolitions, none of these processes have been followed. This is, indeed, an increasing trend: In late 2021, there were large-scale evictions in Assam, where — again — there was State violence, and no due process. This makes the pending case before the SC — involving the Jahangirpuri demolitions — particularly important. It is true that the courts cannot solve our entrenched social problems, such as communal violence and riots. But the courts can, and must, stand up for the rule of law.
In this case, that means three things: First, reiterating that demolitions without due process, and demolitions as forms of vigilante justice, are illegal; second, ensuring that the State rehabilitates those whose homes have been illegally demolished; and third, fixing accountability upon officials who have carried out the demolitions.
Anything less would be an alarming retreat from the rule of law.
Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based advocate
The views expressed are personal
Speaking at an event in September 2020, I said that Covid-19 presented us with extraordinary challenges. Every facet of our national life was affected by the complexities and difficulties of the situation. I said that how we dealt with these immense difficulties — and whether we were able to transform some of them into opportunities — would influence our future trajectory as a nation.
Eighteen months later, the pandemic may or may not be over. We will not be in a position to definitively arrive at a conclusion on that score for some time. There can, however, be little doubt that India’s massive vaccination drive, unprecedented in scale and scope in epidemiological history, has blunted the deadly edge of the virus for us.
India also undertook significant steps to deal with the economic impact of the pandemic. As Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi noted in his “State of the World” address at the World Economic Forum, “During the corona period, when the world was focusing on interventions like the quantitative easing programme, India paved the way for reforms.”
India ensured food security for over 80 crore people through the pandemic.
Supported by widespread vaccine coverage, gains from reforms and easing of regulations, robust export growth and ramped up capital spending, the Indian economy is expected to witness a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of over 8% in 2022-2023. This would be among the highest in large economies.
The pandemic exacted a toll. Lives and livelihoods have been lost in India and globally. Lockdowns and disruptions have exacted an economic cost. The social and psychological costs, such as the impact on school-going children and the old, will become clearer with time.
When historians look back at this period, they will, at one level, recount the costs and suffering imposed by the pandemic. They will, at another level, describe the geopolitical and geoeconomic consequences of this tremendous shock and its impact on megatrends such as globalisation.
They will also talk about responses. They will talk about how nations responded and how the international community reacted. In India, the pandemic, while posing an unprecedented challenge, evoked an unprecedented whole-of-society and whole-of-government response.
To say that the government was faced with an unforeseen situation is an understatement. The initial response, as it must be to all black swan events, was necessarily ad hoc. There was no institutional memory of dealing with a crisis of this magnitude. There were no policy frameworks or operating procedures that could guide the government in formulating answers to the many difficult questions that arose. However, respond we did. And, as the pandemic persisted, these responses coalesced into a sui generis policy framework and administrative and operational responses.
What were the broad features of this response?
First was the citizen-centric focus. The Vande Bharat Mission brought hundreds of thousands, and then millions, of Indians home by air, land and sea. It was a complex logistical operation that kept India connected to a disrupted and locked-down world.
Second, and one of the most remarkable features of our response, was “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (the world is one family)” in operation. In its darkest and most dire moments, India never forgot that it belonged to a greater international community. India not only shared in the suffering, but also rose above it. Our leadership gave importance to a forward-looking agenda that made India’s capacities available to the international community. India walked the talk when it came to being a force for good and a responsible international citizen.
While Vande Bharat was underway, India dispatched large quantities of medicines as both humanitarian grants and commercial exports to partner countries. This was followed by Vaccine Maitri, which made vaccines available to many parts of the world. This was also a period in which Indian medical and technical expertise was being deployed through various platforms.
The third major effort related to the procurement of medical products and essential medical supplies. This became one of the greatest challenges faced by us in responding to the pandemic. It was a whole-of-society effort that added civil society and private sector contributions to a whole-of-government effort.
This was parallel to, and also supported, the process of scaling up domestic manufacturing capacity to meet demand and supplement health infrastructure in the country.
We also worked to safeguard critical vaccine supply chains; and facilitated access to vaccines, vaccine technology and vaccine raw material for Indian entities. We expanded the global relevance of India’s vaccine capacity by linking Indian manufacturing, and research and development capacities with markets and global institutions.
The “normal” business of diplomacy did not pause due to the pandemic. We adapted rapidly to a new world of digital and virtual diplomacy. A new type of hybrid diplomacy has emerged in which the virtual combines with the personal.
The pandemic was not just a health care and economic shock. It is a significant geopolitical event. Among other things, it established that crises of this nature require more international cooperation, not less.
India took several steps that placed it at the forefront of global efforts to combat Covid-19. We joined and catalysed several diplomatic initiatives to deal with various aspects of the pandemic. We worked through, and with, multilateral and plurilateral platforms such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc), G20, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). We worked with our Quad partners on several pandemic-related activities. India also supported organisations such as GAVI: The vaccine alliance.
It is obvious that we coped, and then, adapted. Our ability to respond to crises and deal with the unexpected was tested to the utmost. India rose to the challenge of the pandemic.
This is not the last crisis we will face. We have created structures that can surge capacities to deal with future crises.
The leadership provided by the PM as we dealt with the challenges of the pandemic has been inspirational. It was a privilege to have been a part of this effort.
Harsh Vardhan Shringla is the foreign secretary, Government of India
The views expressed are personal
Murasoli Maran served as the commerce minister under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government from 1999-2002. He was the best commerce minister India has ever had. This is not because India enjoyed one of its best-ever export performances during and immediately after his tenure. Maran’s biggest contribution to India’s, in fact, all of the Global South’s trade fight was in the role he played at the Doha Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001. The Doha Round declaration, as the outcome is popularly known, forced advanced countries to accept the fact that the multilateral trade regime could not just be about opening up the Global South’s markets. Maran and his peers from developing countries forced advanced countries to agree that issues of development and livelihoods in the developing countries were equally important. Agriculture and food security are among the most important issues discussed in the Doha Round.
It will not be an exaggeration to say that India’s National Food Security Act (NFSA) and subsequent additions to it such as the ongoing Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojna (PMGKY) would have been vulnerable to hostile trade litigation in the absence of the outcome of the Doha Round. To be sure, schemes such as these, still do not have carte blanche. India has managed to pursue these programmes, which, as the pandemic has taught us, are absolutely critical for food security and livelihood concerns, because it was able to secure a so-called Peace Clause in the Bali ministerial round of the WTO in 2013.
What explains these legal hurdles and the workaround India has been able to manage? The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), which governs international trade in agriculture under the WTO, is among the most unfair trade treaties in the world. It classifies subsidies into three heads: Green Box, Blue Box and Amber Box. The first two largely contain income transfers. Most of the advanced world’s support to agriculture comes under these two categories. The world’s most subsidised agriculture, by the way, is practiced in the United States. A 2016 Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) paper by Biswajit Dhar and this author looked at this issue in detail.
Product-specific support mechanisms such as Minimum Support Price (MSP), which is the mainstay of India’s food security programme, are clubbed under the Amber Box. While support under the Green Box and Blue Box categories faces no restrictions, Amber Box support is subject to a de-minimis criterion which says that total support cannot cross 10% of the value of production of a crop.
It is not very difficult to see why the free pass to Green and Blue Box and the restrictions on Amber Box are discriminatory. Farmers are a very small proportion of the workforce in advanced countries unlike developing economies such as India. This means that it is far more difficult for countries such as India to provide income support to farmers.
The Doha Round has not seen much progress in subsequent discussions at the WTO. In fact, most commentators agree that the multilateral trade regime itself is running the threat of becoming redundant as populism takes over the first world and countries are more interested in negotiating bilateral or regional trade agreements rather than invest in the multilateral framework.
Why is this column talking about these issues today?
Global food markets have seen a massive shock due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Food prices have climbed to an all-time high and many food-importing countries are facing the prospect of either an import bill shock or a shortage of staple cereals such as wheat. India, which is sitting on around 19 million tons of wheat stocks at the moment has announced that it is willing to fill the gap in the global food market. Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal expects India’s wheat exports to reach 10-15 million tons this year. The government’s wheat export ambitions need to look at two issues carefully.
First is the possibility of this year’s wheat production being lower than expected. Some experts believe the shortfall – it is expected because of the premature onset of the summer season and a fertilizer shortage in the previous sowing season – could be equal to what the government thinks our exports will be. This could create a shortage in the domestic economy, at least to the extent of eroding the government’s stocks. Anecdotal reports from states such as Punjab already indicate that government procurement is much lower than what it used to be. To be sure, the reduction in procurement is not just because of low output, but also because farmers are being able to manage prices which are higher than MSP in the private market.
A big reduction in the government’s wheat stocks will generate tailwinds for domestic prices and might worsen what is already a precarious situation on the price front. Ominous as it sounds, in this author’s opinion this is not the biggest issue of concern on the agricultural policy front. At worst, the shortages will kick in after a couple of months and the government will drop its ambitious targets for exports, and perhaps also impose an export ban, which, notwithstanding this government’s self-proclaimed commitment to agricultural reforms, have become an integral part of its agricultural policy.
The bigger danger from such mercantilist talk in agriculture – this government has not lost one occasion to brandish India’s agricultural exports and future possibilities – is the potential backlash India can face in multilateral trade negotiations in agriculture. While it is politically beneficial for a government to show off India as a powerhouse of agricultural exports and make claims that farmers’ incomes have doubled under this regime, such rhetoric can be extremely damaging in trade negotiations.
Facts speak for themselves. A 2021 <i>Economic and Political Weekly </i>paper by Biswajit Dhar and this author flagged some of these issues. “India has notified to WTO’s Committee on Agriculture that 99.43% of its farmers, or those operating on holdings of 10 hectares or less, are “low income or resource-poor”, the paper noted, while adding that “several WTO members, including the US, Canada, Australia and the European Union, have argued that India has been violating its subsidy commitments in respect of several crops”. While such claims are not exactly true — the paper discusses this in detail — what is true is that declarations of exporting from government accumulated wheat stocks violate India’s commitments in the WTO – India justifies its subsidies in the name of protecting food security and not earning wheat dollars – and could take India down a slippery path in international trade negotiations.
Of course, the ideal outcome in trade negotiations should have been that advanced countries also faced questions on their massive agricultural subsidies. It does not take rocket science to realise that subsidies have the same effect – lowering the economic cost of farmers – whether they are product specific or income transfers. It is this question that India must confront honestly.
Despite heroic efforts by the likes of Maran in 2001, advanced countries stalled the Doha Round in the WTO in subsequent negotiations lest their domestic interests are compromised. After its initial reluctance to enter into regional and bilateral trade agreements, the current government seems to have made up its mind to go full throttle on them. Such negotiations, however, provide no guarantee that advanced countries will not try to harm India’s agricultural support mechanisms through hostile litigation or question them in multilateral forums. The likelihood of such pushback will only increase when India’s actions (such as plugging this year’s shortage in wheat markets) pose a threat to the profits of the big players in global food trade.
A slightly provocative analogy could be given to close this argument. Many liberals would want the US government to penalise the Indian state against what they claim are violations of civil liberties in India. The veracity of these claims notwithstanding, there has been a voice which has been (in this author’s view rightly) arguing that India’s importance in the US’s realpolitik strategy to contain China in the Indian Ocean region is too big to be sacrificed at the altar of civil liberties.
A similar logic could be given for agriculture as well. No amount of trade reciprocation or bilateral deals will placate the powerful agri-business lobby in advanced countries to allow India to continue its agricultural support and mercantilism at the same time. Unless, of course, India can build an effective alliance with other countries in the Global South and get rid of the unfair trade laws in the multilateral trade regime, which are the source of advanced country dominance in agricultural markets. Maran’s successors have managed to kick the can of multilateralism versus mercantilism down the road for almost two decades. That road might hit a dead end very soon.
Every Friday, HT’s data and political economy editor, Roshan Kishore, combines his commitment to data and passion for qualitative analysis in a column for HT Premium, Terms of Trade. With a focus on one big number and one big issue, he will go behind the headlines to ask a question and address political economy issues and social puzzles facing contemporary India.
The views expressed are personal
Being in the eye of a storm while ignoring the crosswinds is something of a Boris Johnson specialty these days. Back in the UK, they are baying for his blood with Parliament setting up a probe into whether the Prime Minister, the first in British history to be held guilty of breaking the law and be fined for it, is guilty of lying about it to the House.
Out in India, he was feted like royalty at a time when there is little likelihood of the Tory party considering him an electoral asset anymore or the people not looking at him as a national liability after he was found to be a serial party participant in the time of the pandemic while breaking the law he had made and passed in Parliament. As the irony of ironies would have it, Mr Johnson even opened a JCB factory in Gujarat at a time when the bulldozer is fast emerging as a national symbol of hate in India.
Given the prevailing circumstances, the pomp and pageantry of Mr Johnson’s two-day visit, beginning in Gujarat like the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit did once, was a triumph of spirit over adversity and of diplomacy over practical politics. There were reasons for India to feel pleased too as Mr Johnson’s proposals offering to wean it away from over-dependence on Russian military hardware seem to make sense when Russian arms are not exactly overperforming on Ukrainian battlefields.
Mr Johnson’s body language seemed to suggest that the UK needs India more at the moment than the opposite though there is no convergence on the national stand on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, of which Mr Johnson is Europe’s fiercest critic. An understanding of India’s position on Russia and its abstentions from UN votes lambasting the aggressor has extended to Britain, too, which is at least what Mr Johnson’s speeches revealed.
A Free Trade Agreement, on the anvil for a while, is expected to fructify by Diwali or Christmas to give the UK a major trade deal it seeks post-Brexit. Both sides should benefit from it, including, perhaps, Indians from less taxed Scotch whisky. But of greater importance would be visas for highly skilled Indians for whom the UK is a favoured destination, thanks to colonial ties with the English language.
The easing of procedures to buy defence equipment through an India-specific Open General Export Licence to be rolled out by 10 Downing Street is a welcome sign of awareness on both sides of the changing geopolitics post-Ukraine war and an opportunity for India to look at Britain and others for its fighter jets, helicopters and other military equipment, besides crypto battle abilities, that may be in need of modernisation from ageing Russia technology.
The “joyful” vibes were such that the right noises were made about economic fugitives from India hiding in Britain besides a host of issues being addressed, including the question of human rights. The mood at the bilateral table endorsed the views expressed that “Brindia” ties are at their best currently. Amid the positivity hang such questions as to whether India will ease tariffs that protect its home industry to make any big difference to the quantum of trade and if Boris Johnson’s position when he is back home will allow him to convert optimistic words into action.
The midnight arrest and three-day police custody of Gujarat legislator and dalit leader Jignesh Mevani for an alleged offensive tweet on Prime Minister Narendra Modi at best follow the pattern of the ruling dispensation’s propensity to silence its critics through the state machinery and “legal” means; and at worst, signal an undeclared Emergency.
Mr Mevani’s tweet, since been withheld in India by Twitter, suggested that Mr Modi is a follower of Nathuram Godse, the assassin of the Father of the Nation. That’s a grievous allegation, and anyone accused of being one has every legal right to prove that he is not so. That option is available to Mr Modi as well.
But to allege that the tweet, which went on to request the Prime Minister to appeal for peace and harmony during his visit to Gujarat, “has the propensity to disturb public tranquility, prejudicial to maintenance of harmony among a certain section of people” is outrageous. The Assam police has not only arrested the MLA in another state, but also slapped on him sections in the Indian Penal Code which, among others, deal with criminal conspiracy, promoting enmity between communities), deliberate and malicious acts to outrage religious feelings), insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace and Section 66 of Information Technology Act. This is undemocratic, malicious, arbitrary and smacks of political vendetta of the worst kind.
The police in India have often been reduced to be mere tools in the hands of the powers that be, but to allow themselves to be puppets that have no qualms about making extreme misinterpretations of the law to suppress fundamental rights, including the right to speech and expression, is unacceptable. The courts in India, including the apex court, have in recent times repeatedly warned the government against the misuse of the laws to take on people who express dissent. The judiciary must intervene, again, to stop the state bulldozers that are being unleashed on dissenters.
There was a clash between groups of Hindus and Muslims near a mosque in Jahangirpuri in northwest Delhi on the evening of Sunday, April 17, as a Hanuman Jayanti procession called Shobha Yatra was passing by the mosque. There was stone-pelting. Some people were injured. The police used teargas, arrests were made and a First Information Report filed. The police says that permission was not given for the third procession of the day as the letter seeking permission for the procession came late. The details are hazy, as always. No one knows how the clash happened after the heated arguments. An FIR that was registered was by a policeman who was injured. People were arrested.
On Wednesday, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation sent in its anti-encroachment squad with the bulldozers to the mosque area where the clash took place on Sunday, and a kiosk selling soft drinks was pulled down and a nearby spare parts shop was razed. An extra force of 1,250 Central Reserve Police Force jawans was deployed in the area prior to the demolition work. Senior Supreme Court lawyers like Dushyant Dave, Prashant Bhushan and Kapil Sibal brought the matter to the notice of the bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana. The court ordered that the demolition work should stop, and the status quo maintained. But the demolition continued because the municipal officials said that they did not receive the court orders. Mr Dave had to go to the Chief Justice’s court again and to tell him that the demolition was still continuing. Then the CJI directed the court registrar to emphatically communicate the orders to the officials concerned.
One of the incidental aspects of the situation is that the demolition squad brings down structures owned by Muslims. The riot on April 17 occurred near a mosque. A determined BJP government at the Centre — the municipal corporations come under the jurisdiction of the Union home ministry in the bizarre administration structure of the National Capital Territory of Delhi — shouts from the rooftops, through the pro-Narendra Modi government television news channels, that the law was being followed and no one should object to encroachments being demolished. And once anyone mentions the word “Muslim”, the BJP representatives begin to cry out aloud that this is minority appeasement and “pseudo-secularism”.
This is not an unusual situation. It would be foolish to be shocked by the fact that there was a clash between groups of Hindus and Muslims near a mosque as a Hindu religious procession passes by, and the reasons for the clash are not far to seek. The clash itself cannot be laid at the door of the barely-concealed anti-Muslim bias of the BJP and its other ideological affiliates. Communal clashes from the 1920s onwards have been a regular feature of modern India’s political life. BJP spokespersons are loud in their protestations that their party does not discriminate against Muslims and all that it wants to do is to preserve law and order, and that it is not the BJP’s fault if the law is broken by Muslims, and it does not matter that they are poor Muslims, who are punished under the law. Of course, the high-handedness and the illegalities that can be committed under the guise of the law are too well-known to Indians.
The BJP is not afraid or ashamed to target Muslims under the cover of the law because it is fetching the party rich electoral dividends. It would be stupid to speak about morality in politics. The BJP and its friends are only too eager to counter any criticism by saying that the Congress had pampered the Muslims, and this is payback time. What the Supreme Court does or does not do, what lawyers who want to defend the weak and the poor — and of course if the weak and the poor happen to be Muslims, then they are committing a grave political sin and they deserve to be labelled and shamed. There is then an undeclared low-intensity communal war that the BJP is waging wherever it is in power, and it cannot be criticised or penalised because it is exercising the political freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. The political parties and civil society groups that are fighting against the BJP’s communal politics carry a huge burden of acts of omission and commission, and the BJP unsparingly uses that ammunition.
The question of whether the Hindu-Muslim animosity the BJP wants to keep simmering is good for the country seems unimportant because the electoral support that the BJP enjoys in Hindi-speaking north Indian states reveals that there is an undeniable undercurrent of hostility of Hindus towards Muslims. The BJP is tapping into it, and it cannot be faulted for taking advantage of the communal fault lines. The Muslims will survive the constitutional onslaught because no people can be trampled upon, and their self-respect razed to the ground. There will therefore continue to be outbreaks of communal violence.
India, at the social level, divided by caste and religion, and there will be caste and communal violence. It is not enough to lament that the BJP has destroyed secular India. There never really was a secular India on the ground.
Dr B.R. Ambedkar rightly observed in his closing remarks in the Constituent Assembly that creating a system of political equality will not be sufficient if there is deep-rooted social and economic inequality. And we must add that even if inequality is removed in all senses, caste and communal prejudices will continue to simmer and periodically erupt into spurts of violence. This violence needs to be contained to the extent possible and if the BJP governments want to live off communal violence, there is no remedy.
In Europe, the religious wars between the Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ended by the eighteenth century because the people were simply tired of sectarian violence. A majority of Hindus and the minority Muslims must wake up to the futility of hatred before communal violence can end. It may well take a long time, or they may continue to indulge in hatred. Of course, there will be many who will argue that one should not equate Hindus and Muslims over their hatred quotient. Hindu communalists believe Muslims are the culprits of communal violence, and the Muslim communalists believe that it is the Hindus. The clear political beneficiary of communal animosities is the Hindu-oriented BJP.
“In the honeyed glades my beloved dances
To my fluted melodies, avoiding my glances
Why is she shy to declare her devotion?
It’s plain to see in her every bodily motion.
Maybe that’s just part of her womanly allure
The eyes declare — why long for more?”
— From Kumbh Mela to Mumbh Kela, by Bachchoo
We live, as the Chinese say, in interesting times. Britain’s Opposition Labour Party had tabled a motion forcing BoJo, the Prime Minister, to be referred to the House of Commons’ Privileges Committee to decide whether he had lied to Parliament. As the debate progressed on Thursday, it became clear that BoJo didn’t want his party to oppose this motion. He wants to give the country the impression that he is open to any investigation as he has nothing to hide. The motion was passed and the “Privilegewallas” will now investigate!
If he is found guilty, it’s not just naughty boy stuff with a slap on the wrist — for ministers it is, as we used to say in my reckless childhood in Poona watching idiotic Western movies, “Curtain Call at Cactus Creek”! Resignation time!
Days before this vote, two issues came to the fore in Parliament. The first was a proposal by the home secretary, Priti “Clueless” Patel, to send all the seekers of asylum in Britain to “camps” in Rwanda. She proposed to pay the Rwandan government millions of pounds to accept and house the refugees attempting to seek asylum in Britain. She doesn’t want them to remain here. Her proposal was widely opposed by the Opposition parties and human rights activists. After her debate, BoJo dramatically entered Parliament and apologised for “Partygate”, a term used for the fact that he, his wife and the chancellor of the exchequer, Hedgie Sunak, were fined by the police for meeting in “party gatherings” and defying the rules of isolation that they themselves had set. It was, said the Opposition, a resigning matter.
So, what happens now? The “privilegewallas” may conclude that BoJo didn’t knowingly mislead Parliament. They could rule him innocent. But, like Martin Luther King, I have a dream and in tune with the great man’s nocturnal subconscious activity, I too think I am on the side of democracy and natural justice.
So, what then, gentle reader, do I see in my dream, or like Alice in the Looking Glass? I see the Privileges Committee condemning BoJo in the strongest terms. He is guilty of lying to Parliament and resigns. The Tory party is thrown into turmoil. They can’t agree on a successor. There are moves in Parliament to dissolve it and call an election. The Tory MPs, preferring to keep their seats even as Opposition MPs, rather than go down with BoJo, agree. The watching public bravely elect a coalition with Labour leading it.
Hah! Now what happens in Looking Glass land?
Firebrand Angela Raynor, Labour’s deputy leader, is appointed home secretary. The first thing she does is, surprise, surprise, pass Priti Clueless’ bill to send the asylum-seekers to Rwanda with two added amendments.
The first of these specifies that those who are targeted for shipment to Rwanda have to fill in seventy-five forms send them to the Rwandan embassy and then to a newly-formed Committee for Immigrants’ Advancement (CIA) chaired by the newly-ennobled Lord Tariq Ali of Wahyatt. Lord Ali has the privilege — I mean duty — of choosing which individuals should fill in the forms and be targeted for deportation. Angela’s second amendment to the Rwanda bill is that it shall be retrospective. So, the daughters, for instance, of immigrant refugees from Uganda in the 1960s will be eligible for such deportation to the heart of Africa. Now I am personally acquainted with Lord Ali of Wahyatt and know him to be a fair and humane person. He is the perfect choice for the job and I am sure he will only consider deporting those individuals who are a menace to British society. I am also sure that Priti Clueless, having originated this fascinating and unusual legislation, will be delighted that it has been passed into law. Unless, of course….
And there will, after years of the drift of the UK between all manner of poles of hypocrisy, be other reforms. The breaking of the law by defying it and partying when it was forbidden will be retrospectively made a criminal offence. Not being murder, rape or other serious breaches of the law, this will carry a sentence of community service — small jobs such as cleaning red wine stains from sofas and carpets every day for a period of not less than three years.
Despite BoJo’s boasts of being Ukraine’s staunchest ally and sanctioning every billionaire who earns money from Russia, it will be discovered that his administration had a very large-holed net to trap such slimy fish. There are for instance foreign registered firms, let’s say in the IT industry, which trade or traded, until recently, in billions of rupees, roubles and international currency with Russia. The gains from these Russian earnings have, on occasion, landed up in the possession of “non-doms” who live at well-known addresses in, for instance, London. Their funds and houses will now be subject to immediate, sanctioning confiscation.
No doubt the former Tory chancellor, Hedgie Sunak, will be biting his lip at the thought that he had allowed this oversight and these particular “non-dom” billionaires to get away with their, at least part-Russian, gains on his diligent watch.