Editorials - 30-04-2022

A contractor from Belagavi district was found dead after making allegations of corruption against a Minister in the Basavaraj Bommai Cabinet, who has since stepped down. K.V. Aditya Bharadwaj and Rishikesh Bahadur Desai explore the issues surrounding the death and the larger rot in the system that it exposes

Hindalga in the border district of Belagavi is one of the most picturesque villages in Karnataka. The hamlet, which is within 20 km of the Western Ghats range, is home to around a thousand people as well as an early 20th-century heritage prison where some of the country’s most notorious criminals, including death row convicts, are incarcerated.

After a century, the postcard village recently celebrated the local temple fair for which it got a makeover. Its patchy roads were re-laid amidst a slew of development works. But these very projects that the villagers had enthusiastically welcomed appear to have cost one of its residents his life. An alleged suicide of a resident of this little village has blown the lid off the underlying rot in the larger system.

A short stroll from the prison leads to ‘Kanasu ’ (dream), a newly built house in Samarth Nagar. This is where 40-year-old Santosh Patil, a civil contractor and Hindu Yuva Vahini leader, planned to live. Before moving into the house that embodied his dreams for a prosperous future, he had planned to host a house-warming ceremony on May 3, which marked the Basava Jayanti this year. Unfortunately, that future was cut short. Patil was found dead in a hotel in Udupi on April 12.

A desperate letter to the PM

Six weeks prior to his death, Patil had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi complaining about the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Karnataka government’s delay in releasing Rs. 4 crore towards 108 civil works for the village. It had been executed without work orders, allegedly on oral assurances from then Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) Minister K.S. Eshwarappa, in the run-up to the temple fair. In the letter, he alleged that Mr. Eshwarappa’s ‘agents’ were demanding bribes to clear the bill. He warned the Prime Minister that he would be left with no option but to end his life if the bills were not cleared.

When Patil went public with the letter, Mr. Eshwarappa claimed the contractor had not carried out any works in Hindalga, and filed a defamation case against him. Days before his death, when Patil spoke toThe Hindu , he recounted how he, along with a delegation of BJP workers from Hindalga Gram Panchayat, met Mr. Eshwarappa and asked him to re-lay roads in the village prior to the Lakshmi Temple fair. “The Minister immediately asked me to start the work and assured me that he would take care of regularising it by issuing work orders and clearing the bills when it was completed,” Patil said at the time.

When asked if he was aware of the risk of verbally agreeing to such a large undertaking without due process, the contractor claimed that it was how government works were executed. “After all, I was a member of the ruling party. What could go wrong?” he said.

Nagesh Munnolkar, president of the Hindalga Gram Panchayat, who led the delegation, concurred with Patil’s version of what transpired in the meeting. Roads in the village had been re-laid, though he had subcontracted the works. Concerns had been raised about the quality of the roads. Patil toldThe Hindu that he had paid a “commission” of around Rs. 15 lakh to various middlemen. He alleged that despite this, Mr. Eshwarappa and his agents were demanding more commission without clearing his bills. While his wife, Jayashree Patil, said she was unaware of all the details, she confirmed that her husband often spoke about the Minister and his agents harassing him for kickbacks. She admitted that he sold her jewellery to take out loans from acquaintances.

Through it all, Mr. Eshwarappa and the RDPR Department he headed at the time denied that they had anything to do with this. Both claimed that no work orders were issued. However, last week Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai clarified that henceforth no project will be executed without work orders. “Works were being taken up on oral instructions, particularly in rural local bodies,” he said, without specifically citing this case.

Contractors say that at any given time, nearly Rs. 400 crore—Rs. 500 crore worth of works are ongoing in the State without work orders and on oral instructions of Ministers or MLAs. Santosh Patil’s multiple meetings and appeals to central BJP leaders in Delhi failed to resolve the impasse. Apparently hounded by creditors, he took his life on April 12. But he left a WhatsApp message to his friends holding Mr. Eshwarappa “directly responsible” for his death. He called for the Minister to be appropriately punished.

Though Mr. Eshwarappa – a Hindutva hardliner and controversial Minister – tried to brazen it out, he was forced to resign on April 15, reportedly after a nudge from the BJP’s central leadership.

Until Patil’s death, the ruling BJP had been riding a two-month high on the continuous religious polarisation in the State that began with the hijab controversy and soon spread, with their strategic support or silence, to the economic boycott of Muslims and ban of loudspeakers in mosques and other religious institutions. Patil’s suicide came as a jolt, redirecting the public’s gaze back to allegations of corruption, shoddy roadwork and other problems that had been drowned out by back-to-back incidents of religious polarisation.

It resurrected an unprecedented submission made by the Karnataka State Contractors’ Association in July 2021, to Prime Minister Modi that in Karnataka “40% kickbacks” were being sought for contracts awarded by the State Government. The petition, made public in November later that year, had failed to gain traction in the public discourse.

In the aftermath of Patil’s death, the association announced members would stop work for a month in May if their concerns – eradication of corruption in tenders among others – are not resolved by then. They also warned that they will release “proof of corruption” against at least five to six Ministers and 20-25 MLAs from the ruling party.

D. Kempanna, president, Karnataka State Contractors’ Association, termed the incumbent BJP government historically the “most corrupt” in the State. Taking commissions on contracts is an old practice, but it was in the range of 5-10%. That changed when the BJP came to power in 2019, with commissions ballooning to nearly 40%, he alleged. “Since 2019, corruption under this regime is both quantitatively and qualitatively on a different scale. The impunity of Ministers, MLAs and bureaucrats is outrageous,” he said.

In an unprecedented turn of events, contractors are forced to pay a commission of 5% before the contract is even awarded to them, and 25-30% before starting the work. Another tranche is paid again to clear the bills, taking the kickbacks to around 40%, the association’s July 6, 2021 letter to Prime Minister Modi alleged.

“Never were we expected to pay a commission before our bills were cleared. Now we are expected to pay before the tender is awarded, before starting work and bills are cleared,” R. Ambikapathy, vice-president of the association said.

To add to their woes, the State government has accumulated “never-before” levels of pending bills, estimates of which vary from Rs. 25,000 crore to even Rs. 75,000 crore. “Bills for all works undertaken since 2020 are pending, some even older. This has steeped most contractors in a debt trap. At least 10 have ended lives, apart from Santosh Patil since 2019,” Mr. Ambikapathy claimed.

“With nearly 40% kickback, 12-18% Goods and Service Tax (GST) and 10% contractor profit, what remains to carry out civil works is only 30-40%, which is further affected by the rising prices of fuel, building materials and labour. What is the quality of work we can do? What assets are we building for the State?” Mr. Kempanna asked. “With the pandemic’s stress on the State’s economy, successive Budgets’ capital outlay has been less than impressive and in that only about 30% may be the real outlay to create assets. This is essentially making the State regress in development indices,” he toldThe Hindu .

Weeks after the letter to the Prime Minister, B.S. Yediyurappa, who faced allegations of corruption against his family members, resigned. He was replaced by Basavaraj Bommai. “Though we never got a reply from the Prime Minister’s Office, we really thought our letter had a role in the change of guard and hoped things would get better. But we have been disappointed that the systemic corruption seems to have only become worse under the new regime,” Mr. Kempanna said. The Prime Minister says “na khaunga, na khane doonga ( will not take bribes, nor allow anyone to do so)”, but we are definitely not seeing it in action in Karnataka,” Mr. Kempanna said.

Change of guard, but little else

The BJP fell short of a majority in the 2018 Assembly Elections, leading to a Janata Dal(Secular)—Congress coalition coming to power. But that did not last long when 17 MLAs from the two parties rebelled and defected to the BJP.

The process of defections also saw several allegations of inducements and corruption against Mr. Yediyurappa, who was also allegedly caught on tape trying to woo an MLA. His earlier tenure in 2008-2011 was also plagued by allegations of corruption in illegal mining. Mr. Yediyurappa resigned and was later arrested. However, he was acquitted in the case and has got a stay order on most other cases against him.

His second stint as Chief Minister was dominated by intra-party factionalism like his previous tenure. The faction opposed to him, in its attempt to unseat him, kept the political temperature high from day one. In February 2020, just eight months after he took over, two unsigned open letters by “hurt and loyal party MLAs” called Mr. Yediyurappa’s son B.Y. Vijayendra “super CM”. One of the letters even listed “agents working for Vijayendra brokering deals on his behalf”, with their photographs and contact numbers. Mr. Vijayendra denied the allegations. However, he couldn’t shake off the allegations. One of the defectors A.H. Vishwanath also made repeated allegations of corruption against him.

Ironically, Mr. Eshwarappa, in April last year, had complained to the Governor of Karnataka against Mr. Yediyurappa for interfering in his ministry. He even hinted at graft charges. A few months later, in October 2021, months after Mr. Yediyurappa handed over charge to Mr. Bommai and the Karnataka State Contractors’ Association letter to the PMO, the Income Tax Department raided a set of contractors considered close to the ruling party.

Mutts dragged into controversy

Patil’s death seems to have opened the floodgates. Suppliers of cattle fodder to goshalas have now written to the Prime Minister alleging non-clearance of bills due to their failure to pay a “40% kickback”. Lingayat seer Dingaleshwar Swamiji has alleged even the mutts have to pay a “30% commission” to get budgetary grants for their institutions. However, several other seers whose institutions have also got grants from the BJP government have countered the allegation. Many BJP leaders have also come down heavily on Dingaleshwar Swamiji, who dared the government to prove its honesty by releasing grants to his mutt without “commission.” The government, meanwhile, has also been hit by a police sub-inspector recruitment scam involving a BJP worker.

The State government has brushed aside these allegations in the hope that it will ride out this storm unscathed. It also opposed a debate on the issue in the Assembly at the recently concluded Budget session terming the allegations “baseless” with “no evidence whatsoever”. The BJP has repeatedly attacked the Opposition Congress as having “no moral right” to raise the issue of corruption as it alleges that the the previous Congress regime was also rocked by scams. It also attacked State Congress president D.K. Shivakumar, who was jailed by the Enforcement Directorate in 2019. He faces a host of cases including money laundering, suppression of income, benami properties among others.

Airing ‘dirty secrets’

Former Lokayukta Justice N. Santosh Hegde, whose report on illegal mining led to the arrest of Mr. Yediyurappa earlier, hailed the “public airing of a dirty secret” that everyone was aware of. “The ruling and Opposition parties appear to admit there has been a system in place for paying commissions for contracts. Contractors have also essentially admitted to being party to corruption. Paying a bribe is also a crime. They are asking for lesser kickbacks, not its eradication. It is very sad to note that even people in holy positions like religious institutions are admitting to have paid a bribe,” he said.

“In 1985, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had said that for every rupee spent by the government, around 15 paise reached the last man. It seems to be true even today. Everybody talks of development. Now we, the people, wonder whose development – the State’s or those ruling us?” he added. While Mr. Hegde’s tenure saw several scams unearthed leading to the arrest of some Ministers, the Karnataka Lokayukta has been emasculated since then. First, when a subsequent Lokayukta himself was charged with corruption and then removed, and later when the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government took away its powers to probe cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 and formed an Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), which directly reported to the Chief Minister. While both the BJP and JD(S) promised in their poll manifestos of 2018 to strengthen the Karnataka Lokayukta by restoring all powers and dissolving the ACB, neither party who has enjoyed power since 2018 has sought to do it.

Justice P. Vishwanath Shetty, who recently ended his tenure as Karnataka Lokayukta, has also batted for the dissolution of the ACB and restoration of its powers to the Karnataka Lokayukta. In fact, post his retirement in January 2022, the institution has been without a head.

The Lokayukta has impleaded itself and filed an affidavit demanding the abolition of ACB in a writ petition pending before the Karnataka High Court. Justice Shetty said the State saw four Chief Ministers from all three prominent political parties during his tenure (2017-22) and that no government was better than the other in implementing the Lokayukta’s recommendations. “Most have been ignored. The situation is so bad that an anti-corruption activist has filed a PIL in the High Court seeking directions to the State government to implement our recommendations,” he had said in January 2022.

With no perceptible difference between parties on corruption, it was unlikely to become a poll issue in the upcoming 2023 Assembly elections, political observers feel. But the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), after its victory in Punjab, seeks to use it to its advantage.

AAP has launched an aggressive campaign in the State, forcing Ministers and veteran politicians to take notice. For instance, senior BJP leader Lahar Singh, speaking in the Karnataka Legislative Council, recently came close to admitting to corruption within his party when he warned all the three major political parties — the BJP, Congress and JD(S) - that if they did not bring about a major change in how they functioned, new parties like AAP would sweep the State and make them irrelevant.

Justice Hegde argued corruption couldn’t be controlled legally or politically. “We are a society that today worships money and power. That needs to change. If people accused of social ills face the wrath of society, only then will we see some change,” he said.

Mr. Kempanna, who has emerged as an unlikely face of the campaign against corruption, hopes whoever comes to power in 2023 will be forced to tackle the issue in the face of growing public anger. “As contractors, we agree that we have also been part of the corrupt system, and what we have done is wrong. Unless we correct this rigged system, the State is going to lag behind in all development indices very soon,” he said.

For now, the association plans to stop all work across the State for a month and hold a mega protest rally in Bengaluru on May 25, demanding a cut in kickbacks. The demand is for a cut, not removal of kickbacks.



Read in source website

Emmanuel Macron should tread carefully as the far right’s Le Pen and the left-wing’s Mélenchon cannot be written off

Who won the French presidential election?

At first glance, the answer to this question seems obvious: the winner was the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, who was re-elected with 58.5% of the vote in the second round of the election on Sunday. But you could be forgiven for thinking that the loser — the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen — also won. On Sunday night she announced that her defeat was a “spectacular victory”.

Even more confusingly, one of the candidates who did not make it to the second round at all — Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who represented a coalition of far-left movements — claimed victory on Sunday as well. When he appeared on television, shortly after the results were announced, he explained that he represented the “Third Estate”. This historical reference to the group that initiated the French Revolution in 1789 was a way of saying that, even if he had not won this time, he would win very soon.

So what is going on, and why are so many candidates claiming victory?

Macron’s half-victory

Let us start with Mr. Macron. Here, at least, there would seem to be little ambiguity. Mr. Macron came top in the first round of the election and won in the second round by a comfortable margin.

However, this was not a foregone conclusion. He survived the nationwide “yellow vests” protest movement in 2018-19, steered France through an unprecedented pandemic, and navigated a major war in Ukraine in the weeks leading up to the election. He secured broad political support throughout this period and managed to retain some of the youthful dynamism of his early presidency.

Politically, too, he has shown himself to be remarkably astute. His claim that he would transcend France’s 250-year-old left-right division seemed like misplaced hubris, but this election has demonstrated the success of his strategy. Having reduced the main centre-left party to a mere rump in 2017, he has now done the same for the main centre-right party, whose candidate in this presidential election received less than 5% of the vote.

Last but not least, Mr. Macron has enhanced France’s position in Europe. His calls for greater European integration fell on deaf ears five years ago, but the pandemic led to a unique Europe-wide economic support package, and the war in Ukraine has dramatically highlighted the need for a common European defence strategy.

And yet, despite these undeniable successes, there is a whiff of illegitimacy about Mr. Macron’s victory. This can be explained by the large number of people who voted for him without enthusiasm. As in 2017, he faced Ms. Le Pen in the second round, which meant that France’s significant left-wing electorate was deprived of a left-wing candidate for whom to vote in a presidential runoff for the third time in 20 years.

As a result, a big chunk of the left voted for Mr. Macron, not because they approved of his policies, but because he seemed a more palatable option than Ms. Le Pen. Given that the French take seriously the battle of ideas in election campaigns, the fact that Mr. Macron has again been elected by default is a source of intense frustration and resentment.

This has been compounded by Mr. Macron’s unpopularity. While he has maintained excellent overall approval ratings for an incumbent, he provokes a strong negative reaction amongst his detractors. They view him as authoritarian, classist, neo-liberal, and detached from the concerns of ordinary people.

All of this means that many people see Mr. Macron’s victory as little more than a formality. They argue that he faced a weak opponent and was never really challenged. And they point to the low voter turnout — a shade under 72% — as a sign of how fragile his mandate really is.

Le Pen’s half-defeat

Ms. Le Pen’s supporters have similarly mixed emotions. There is no way to conceal the fact that their candidate did worse than she had hoped. Several opinion polls had her neck-and-neck with the outgoing President, but she underperformed in the first round, scoring only 23%, and her support tailed off in the second round, where her final score was 41.5%.

This was, of course, significantly more than the 33.9% she managed in the second round in 2017, but she also had the benefit of anti-incumbency. This time, she surfed on a wave of dissatisfaction about the cost of living in France, and she could count on the transfer of votes from another far-right candidate, Éric Zemmour, who was eliminated in the first round.

Despite these advantages, the gap between her and Mr. Macron was still well over 10 percentage points. Her margin of defeat confirmed that she remains an “outsider”, a repository for a protest vote, rather than a credible candidate.

Nevertheless, there is cause for optimism among her supporters. Ms. Le Pen is no longer a political undesirable. From an institutional perspective, she has been normalised as Mr. Macron’s principal opponent in the presidential elections. The ideas of the far-right in France remain unpopular and she continues to be associated with instability and incompetence, but she has managed to make her political brand more palatable.

In particular, Ms. Le Pen has become the voice of France’s working class. She won a majority of the vote share among the working class and lower-middle class voters, especially in rural and semi-rural areas. Her face-off against Mr. Macron, who was unambiguously the candidate of the middle- and upper-classes, came to resemble a form of class struggle for the 21st century.

This suggests that Ms. Le Pen could still do better next time. If she can retain her identity as the candidate of the working class while continuing to burnish her leadership credentials, she can aspire to even greater success — assuming, that is, she survives that long.

What is left of the left?

Mr. Mélenchon was eliminated in the first round of the election, but his score of 21.9% exceeded most polling estimates. In the final days of the campaign, hundreds of thousands of left-wing voters decided to vote tactically for Mr. Mélenchon in the hope of consigning Ms. Le Pen to the first round.

This unprecedented mobilisation of voters, which included exceptionally high turnouts in the depressed urban areas of French cities, came as a surprise. The French left had been hopelessly divided in the run to the presidential election, with six different candidates on offer. No one believed that they could mount a credible challenge in an ideological landscape dominated by the right and far-right.

Mr. Mélenchon’s excellent score does conceal some major weaknesses: the combined vote of all the left-wing candidates in the first round of the election was a little over 30%, which is the same as the combined votes for all the far-right candidates. The left has a long way to go before it can win again.

But, given this extremely unfavourable ideological climate, Mr. Mélenchon’s performance was a source of hope. It showed that even in the face of disunity, France’s powerful left-wing electorate could come together. And it also showed that some of the themes dear to the left — such as inequality — could be claimed by the left, instead of the far-right.

Most of all, Mr. Mélenchon’s narrow elimination restored a much-needed clash of ideas to an exhausted and demobilised electorate. If the left can organise itself around a new set of candidates and ideas, it is well-placed to exploit the vacuum that will be open up when Mr. Macron steps down in 2027. Until then, the new President — who can fairly lay claim to a historic victory — will have to tread carefully.

Emile Chabal is a reader in history at the University of Edinburgh. His latest book is ‘France’, a short introduction to postwar French history



Read in source website

Imposing Hindi would be catastrophic; instead, India would be better off having a multi-linguistic accommodative policy

The Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, recently urged the use of Hindi as the lingua franca, rather than English, in inter-State communication. He suggested (reportedly at the Parliamentary Official Language Committee) that when citizens of States who speak other languages communicate with each other, it should be in the “language of India”. It is quite natural that a leader of a political stream that raised the slogan, ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’ would air such a quixotic idea. It was V.D. Savarkar, the Hindutva icon, who first advocated the idea of Hindi to be declared the national language and articulated the slogan, ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’. R.V. Dhulekar, a member of the Constituent Assembly, bluntly stated in the Assembly, “You may belong – to another nation but I belong to Indian nation, the Hindi Nation, the Hindu Nation, the Hindustani Nation.”

India has a harmonious symphony of linguistic pluralism; it is not a disarranged cacophony. Ganesh N. Devy, in ‘Indigenous languages’, a UNESCO lecture in October 2008, and also in a media article, “Tribal languages in a death trap” in August 2011, has mentioned how Sir George Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India (1903-1923) had identified 179 languages and 544 dialects in India. The 1961 Census reports mentioned a total of 1,652 ‘mother tongues’, out of which 184 ‘mother tongues’ had more than 10,000 speakers, and of which 400 ‘mother tongues’ had not been mentioned in Grierson’s survey, while 527 were listed as ‘unclassified’. In 1971, the linguistic data offered in the Census was distributed in two categories — the officially listed languages of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, and the other languages with a minimum of 10,000 speakers each. All other languages spoken by less than 10,000 speakers were lumped together in a single entry ‘Others’. That practice continued to be followed in subsequent enumerations. This practice made many languages invisible, says Prof. Devy.

Exposing a myth

The so-called ‘National Grandiosity’ of Hindi is a dubious fallacy unsupported by facts. Prof. Devy had exposed the myth of Hindi as a pan-Indian language. In an article inThe Hindu on June 7, 2019, “Language, the opening move”, he wrote: “The 2011 Census data on languages, published last year, was heavily doctored. It presents Hindi as the ‘mother tongue’ of over 52 crore people by subsuming more than 5 crore claimants of Bhojpuri and more than 9 crore speakers of nearly 61 other languages — claimed as ‘other’ by their speech communities — from Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. ‘The Hindi’ is probably spoken by not more than 30% of the population, but it is not the mother tongue for the remaining 70%.”

Hindi is not a lingua franca for Indians; nor is it a dominant language. It is only aprimus inter pares among numerous Indian languages.

In the neighbourhood

The imposition of one language in neglect of the others in a multilingual state is disastrous. Pakistan and Sri Lanka are textbook examples of how stubbornness over language ruined nations. After Partition and Pakistan was formed, Pakistan became a multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic state. In 1948, the Government of Pakistan ordained the Islamisation of East Pakistan, with Urdu as the sole national language. “There can only be one state language if the component parts of this state are to march forward in unison, and in my opinion, that can only be Urdu,” asserted Jinnah. This arrogance of the West Pakistan elite ignited the violent Bengali language movement or Bhasha Andolan in East Pakistan, advocating the recognition of the Bengali language as an official language of the then Dominion of Pakistan in order to allow its use in government transactions, in education, in media, in currency and to maintain its writing in the Bengali script. The Language Movement catalysed Bengali nationalism and the eventual separation of East Pakistan from Pakistan.

The Sinhala Only Act (the Official Language Act) of 1956 was a high point in Sri Lanka’s history. It triggered intense enmity and distrust between the Sinhalis and the Tamils. The Act replaced English with Sinhala as the sole official language of the nation with the exclusion of Tamil. Sinhalese was the language of Sinhalese people who formed 70% of the population. Tamil was spoken by Indian and Sri Lankan Tamils (and most Muslims) who together constituted around 29% of the country’s population. The Act was discriminatory and alienated the Tamil community from the mainstream. The Act also symbolised the Sinhalese majority’s zeal to assert Sri Lanka’s identity as a Sinhala nation state; for Tamils, it epitomised minority oppression and a justification for the demand for a separate Tamil nation. This friction sparked the decades-long civil war and ruined the nation.

A place for diversity

In contrast, the nations that accommodated linguistic diversity prospered. Singapore has a multi-ethnic population (Chinese, Malay and Indian). In its formative years, there was immense pressure to declare Chinese as the official language of Singapore. But Lee Kuan Yew, the architect of modern Singapore, quelled the demand and opted for English. English language proficiency made the city state a global business hub. In an article inThe Straits Times (2004) he had said, “When we became independent in 1965, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce committee came to see me in my office, then at City Hall. They urged me to have Chinese as our national and official language. I looked them in the eye and said, ‘You must be mad, and I don’t want to hear any more of that from you. If you do, you are entering the political arena. I have to fight you. Because, Singapore will come apart.’ Supposing I had been otherwise inclined, which my colleagues would not have allowed, and had said, ‘Yes, okay.’ What would have happened to Singapore? Where would the Malays be, and the Indians, what future would they have? The English-educated Chinese would also be against us. The country would fall apart. Let us assume that we were all Chinese, no Malays, no Indians. Could we make a living with Chinese as our language of government and our national language? Who is going to trade with us? What do we do? How do we get access to knowledge? There was no choice.”

In South Africa, the national anthem of this Rainbow Nation, since 1997, is a five-language lyrical composition, making it the most unique anthem in the world in this regard. The languages are Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans and English. South Africa is an emerging leader of the African continent and its accommodative linguistic policy helped them a lot.

India should emulate the multi-linguistic accommodative policy of Singapore and South Africa; not the disastrous linguistic chauvinism of Pakistan or Sri Lanka. Imposing Hindi, which is the first language of the residents of only 12 of the 35 States and Union Territories (in the 2011 Language Census of India, and where Andhra Pradesh and Telangana figure together in the 2011 data) as a lingua franca would initiate the phonocide of other Indian languages. And it would prove to be catastrophic.

Faisal C.K. is Under Secretary (Law) to the Government of Kerala



Read in source website

The fire tragedy in T.N. could have been averted by adherence to safety norms

The tragedy on Wednesday at Kalimedu in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, which claimed the lives of 11 persons and left 17 injured after a small chariot touched a live wire of the high tension category and caught fire, could have been averted by just following laid down procedures. The idol-laden chariot was being taken out in a procession as part of an annual festival to perpetuate the memory of Saivaite saint Thirunavukkarasar. Almost 10 days earlier, two persons had died in a stampede at the annual Chithirai festival of the Madurai Meenakshi temple, which attracts lakhs of devotees. Ten years ago, an event that almost mirrored Kalimedu happened in Gudiyatham, Vellore district, killing five persons. What is disturbing is the regularity with which these events occur during religious or temple festivals. The fact that the State has such a dubious record should compel the authorities to adhere to the rule book as the protection of human life is a must.

Even as the findings of a one-member official panel and the police investigation are eagerly awaited, there are a number of questions that the authorities need to probe. These include whether the organisers, who have been holding the festival for over 90 years, had permission from the local officials; why there had to be a procession during the early hours; whether such an event could take place without the knowledge or the approval of the local authorities, and why power supply from the overhead HT line was not switched off, whereas this was not the case with regard to low-tension lines in the area. What is obvious is the lack of coordination among the electricity, highways, local administration and revenue departments, which ought to have been there for an event such as this. The height of the road was raised since the time of the last procession, but evidently the organisers did not account for this. The scope for such events occurring can be reduced drastically, if not eliminated, if the authorities strictly enforced existing guidelines. Though the institution which had organised the festival is said to be outside the purview of the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department, the authorities can still be proactive, at least in sensitising organisers of such events about safety guidelines and insisting that devotees who accompany a temple car or chariot are aware of the risks. The Government should make public the reports submitted by agencies that inquire into such events and issue regular updates in the follow up action. It is incumbent upon devotees to ensure that safety norms are implemented in letter and spirit. It is only through collective efforts that tragedies such as the one in Kalimedu can be averted.



Read in source website

Shifting the onus of providing relief from high fuel prices onto States can strain federalism

At a meeting with Chief Ministers about the resurgence of COVID-19 on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi charged Opposition-ruled States with committing an injustice to the people by not cutting duties on petroleum products as the Centre had done in November 2021. Those cuts of Rs. 5 and Rs. 10 per litre of petrol and diesel, respectively, came as fuel prices crossed well past Rs. 100 a litre — those levels have been breached again after a poll-driven lull. The PM noted that the Centre’s plea at the time, for States to back these cuts by paring their VAT levies on petroleum products, was not heeded by States not governed by the BJP. But even NDA-administered States are now facing extremely high inflation — retail inflation in April was 8.19% for Uttar Pradesh and Assam, and 7.4% to 7.6% in Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir and Haryana — far higher than the national retail inflation rate of 6.95% for the month. The PM’s remarks, buttressed by the slogan of cooperative federalism, attracted an instant backlash from West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala, Telangana, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh. While all States are fretful about resource constraints and pending dues from the Centre, some had reduced VAT on fuel products and others have not hiked rates for years. Despite its recent assertions that no taxes were levied to counter the pandemic, the Centre had hiked fuel taxes even amid the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown with a preference for cess levies that do not have to be shared with States.

While the political brouhaha over the PM’s pitch unfolds, the signal for the common man is clear — abandon any hope of immediate relief. This is akin to striking a cruel blow against the middle and lower-income classes, already besieged by successive setbacks on the job, health and income fronts. Household budgets are severely squeezed because of price rise. Even industry has mooted fuel tax cuts to sustain a fragile consumption recovery. With record tax collections last year and revenue buoyancy expected to hold up this year, the Centre has fiscal room to slash its fuel taxes, and there will be an automatic cascading effect on State taxes levied on anad valorem basis. Expecting States, which are worried about their limited revenue sources once the assured GST compensation stops flowing from this July, to take the lead in reining in petroleum taxes, is unwieldy, short-sighted and unnecessarily confrontational. Even more so as the States are also expected to ramp up capex spending to revive the economy. As the PM said, the Centre and States need to coordinate better to spur the economy amid global tumult. Singling out a few States to deflect attention from the Centre’s excessive reliance on fuel taxes is not the right approach to attain such harmony. Most of all, as high inflation will debilitate the recovery’s momentum, shirking corrective action to bolster its revenue kitty would be a case of being penny wise and pound foolish.



Read in source website

Never before has the average moviegoer had such access to the cinematic variety that India offers. It should not be turned into an opportunity for one-upmanship over language.

Two weeks after its April 14 release, the Kannada film KGF: Chapter 2 is inching closer to the Rs 1,000-crore box office mark, a feat achieved by only three other films: Dangal (Rs 2,024 crore), Baahubali: The Conclusion (Rs 1,810 crore) and RRR (over Rs 1,100 crore). The film’s Hindi-dubbed version alone has already earned over Rs 300 crore. KGF: Chapter 2 is the most recent film from South India reporting such a phenomenal pan-Indian run, with SS Rajamouli’s RRR and Pushpa: The Rise (2021), also reportedly smashing box office records, including ones set by the biggest Bollywood hits.

Bollywood, of course, remains a giant of Subcontinental entertainment. But according to the March 2022 EY-FICCI report on consumer trends in entertainment, its preeminent position is facing a stiff challenge from the combined might of the South Indian film industries. In 2021, South Indian cinema generated three times the box office revenues of Hindi films, with a total of Rs 2,400 crore. One contributing factor, no doubt, is the sheer number of films released — compare the Telugu industry’s 204 and the Tamil industry’s 152 releases to the mere 84 produced by the Hindi film industry in 2021. But the real story these numbers reveal is of an audience that is, increasingly, region — or language-agnostic, eager only for high-quality entertainment. Part of this is because OTT platforms have made it easier to access films from across India. Even for films that are not dubbed, the average Indian viewer is now more willing to cross the “one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles”, as the South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho described it. But the most important factor in South Indian cinema’s success is its production quality. Today, the most ambitious set pieces, the most thrilling action sequences and the most breathtaking cinematography and sound in Indian cinema are found in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam films. The audience appreciates this.

This is a development to be welcomed. Never before has the average moviegoer had such access to the cinematic variety that India offers. It should not be turned into an opportunity for one-upmanship over language, such as the unseemly spat that broke out between Bollywood actor Ajay Devgn and Kannada star Kiccha Sudeep, after the latter tweeted that the success of KGF proves that Hindi is no longer the national language. The ensuing controversy, which also saw politicians weighing in, ended up reducing an important industry trend to bickering over language. No one and nothing is served well by this — not the languages whose honour is being defended so vociferously, and certainly not cinema and its audience.



Read in source website

A study published in the Journal of Science found that the correlation between breeds and behavioural characteristics in over 18,000 dogs was minimal.

A Rottweiler is dangerous, a labrador is the perfect family pet and Indian dogs — and the so-called “mixed breeds” — have an unpredictable temperament. Yet, true dog lovers have always known, from both instinct and experience, that “there is no such thing as a bad dog, only bad owners”. Now, research coming out of the US has confirmed their intuition. A study published in the Journal of Science found that the correlation between breeds and behavioural characteristics in over 18,000 dogs was minimal. Nature matters, of course, but nurture, it is quite clear, matters more.

Most of the breeds we know today began emerging in the Victorian era. And while much has changed in the last couple of centuries, the distinctly feudal obsession with the status dogs can provide remains intact. The upwardly-mobile family of the 1980s and ’90s wanted a Pomeranian, the barking bling of choice today is Beagles. And, perhaps thanks to their virality on YouTube, it is now easy to spot Huskies — a breed meant for snow-clad, high-altitude climes — in the 45-degree heat of the Indian Subcontinent. The most common response from the status-conscious dog lovers, when confronted about why they don’t adopt Indian breeds or “stray” dogs is: “Don’t know the parents, or breed. What if their temperament is off?”

Scores of people across the world adopted dogs during the pandemic. It was, for many, the one solace of being trapped at home — most canine companions, after all, require constant attention. But the reward for that attention is, to put it simply, unconditional love. As jobs, relationships and friends came and went, dogs stayed firm in their loyalty. It did not matter if they were Cocker Spaniels or Great Danes, Dachshunds or Dobermans. Thank god for dogs, breed no bar.



Read in source website

Governments at both the central and state level could perhaps consider building in some counter-cyclicality in the taxes levied — cut taxes when prices are high, maintain stability when prices fall.

The issue of fuel taxes has emerged as another flashpoint in Centre-state relations. A few days ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said several Opposition-ruled states did not heed the Centre’s call to lower taxes on petrol and diesel. While several chief ministers contradicted the PM, the situation is particularly challenging for both the Centre and states as revenue from fuel taxes accounts for a sizeable share of general government revenues. As per the Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell, the sector’s contribution to the Union government exchequer stood at Rs 4.55 lakh crore in 2020-21, up from Rs 1.72 lakh crore in 2014-15. In the case of states, it rose from Rs 1.6 lakh crore to Rs 2.17 lakh crore over the same period. For the latter, which are also likely to face a revenue shortfall this year as the collections through the GST compensation cess will possibly cease at the end of June, lowering of sales tax/VAT on POL (petroleum oil lubricants) products will be fiscally challenging.

In November 2021, the Centre had cut the excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 5 and Rs 10 respectively. Several states and UTs followed suit. However, in the months thereafter, as global crude oil prices hardened, domestic retail prices were kept on hold for around four months in the run up to five state assembly elections. This marked a departure from the routine practice of linking retail prices to global market prices, but rather subjecting them to the domestic political cycle. Introducing such distortions in the market has affected not just retailers, but also interest in the proposed disinvestment of BPCL.

As a substantial gap opened up between global and domestic prices, the OMCs opted for a phased recalibration rather than a one time adjustment, with prices being hiked over several days. As reported in this newspaper, since the revisions began in March, OMCs have raised prices of petrol and diesel by Rs 12 and Rs 10 per litre respectively. On April 16, the retail price of petrol stood at Rs 105.41 in Delhi (Indian Oil Corporation). This includes an excise duty levy of Rs 27.9 and a VAT of Rs 17.13 which works out to around 43 per cent of the retail selling price. As these taxes are levied at both the central and state level, calibrated action will be required at both levels — even the monetary policy committee has in the past called for cuts at both levels. Also, governments at both the central and state level could perhaps consider building in some counter-cyclicality in the taxes levied — cut taxes when prices are high, maintain stability when prices fall. This would factor in concerns over both revenue and inflation.



Read in source website

Home Minister Giani Zail Singh told the Rajya Sabha that the communal clashes in Amritsar had arisen out of a conspiracy aided and abetted by certain foreign powers.

Home Minister Giani Zail Singh told the Rajya Sabha that the communal clashes in Amritsar had arisen out of a conspiracy aided and abetted by certain foreign powers. Declining to name the power, Singh who was responding to a call in attention motion raised by HS Surjeet of the CPM and several others alleged that the Dal Khalsa elements in Punjab were playing into the hands of foreign powers. He said that there were striking similarities in events leading to the incidents of communal violence in Moradabad, Allahabad and Amritsar. The best solution to the problems posed by the Dal Khalsa extremists was to ostracise them socially he said. He did not subscribe to the view that the challenge posed by the Dal Khala could be effectively countered by the use of force.

Ministers Quit

Five cabinet ministers, one deputy ministers and the chief parliamentary secretary of Haryana who were denied the Congress (I) ticket for the state assembly elections have resigned. The deputy labour minister R Lal Singh who did not resign after having been denied the ticket has been dismissed. The chief minister Bhajan Lal said that the resignations had been accepted by the governor.

Falkland Tense

With a total British blockade only 24 hours away around the Falklands, US intelligence reports say that the British have already landed a few commandos to prepare the ground for the invasion just as they did in South Georgia.

Indians In Pak jails

The Pakistan government has agreed to India’s suggestion that there should be consular access on a reciprocal basis to ensure a better deal for Indian nationals detained in jails in Pakistan.



Read in source website

Sagar Sharma, Urmi Tat write: Doing so would make sense, both strategically and economically.

Semiconductor chips are the lifeblood of the modern information age. They enable electronic products to compute and control actions that simplify our lives. The manufacturing cycle of a semiconductor chip from sand to a finished product, sees it change hands approximately 70 times across international borders. It is not difficult to imagine that the chip in the device closest to you was made by a Japanese engineer working on Dutch machinery in an American foundry in Taiwan to produce wafers which were shipped to Malaysia for packaging before being sent to India as a finished product. There cannot be a better example of peacetime global cooperation than the resolve involved in making the meticulous chip. These semiconductor chips are the drivers for ICT development and one of the key reasons for the current flattening of the world.

The semiconductor is the cornerstone of all electronic products. However, the semiconductor manufacturing capacities are concentrated in a few geographies. Nearly all leading edge (sub 10nm) semiconductor manufacturing capacity is limited to Taiwan and South Korea, with nearly 92 per cent located in the former. Further, 75 per cent of the semiconductor manufacturing capacity is concentrated in East Asia and China. The concentration of capacities poses many challenges, leading several countries to be vulnerable to a few.

The current decade presents a unique opportunity to India. Companies are looking to diversify their supply chain and for alternatives to their bases in China. The chip shortages due to Covid-19 have hit automakers with a revenue loss of $110 bn in 2021. The Russia-Ukraine conflict and its implications for raw material supplies for the semiconductor value chain has also poised chipmakers to invest in strengthening the semicon supply chain. India must seize this opportunity and become an attractive alternative destination for semiconductor manufacturing. The way ahead is conceptualising a semicon diplomacy action plan.

Placing semicon diplomacy at the heart of India’s foreign policy is essential both strategically and economically. Semiconductors are used in critical infrastructures such as communication, power transmission etc., that have implications for national security. The establishment of the value chain for semiconductors would ensure a multiplier effect on the entire economy. Further, since electronics items form one of the most imported items after oil and petroleum products, domestic production would be saving forex and reducing the balance of payments, especially vis a vis China.

One of the ways of leveraging semicon diplomacy is increasing multilateral and bilateral cooperation. This should be done across the value chain of semiconductors — design, manufacturing, and packaging. A key institution with immense potential in this regard is the Quad. Australia, being rich in raw materials required for semiconductors, can be an important supplier to fill in India’s deficits. The US and Japan can be leveraged for capacity building and their advanced semiconductor technology in logic and memory segments.

Semicon diplomacy is pivotal to India’s Act East Policy, which aims to build resilient ties in the Asia Pacific region. Considering that the semiconductor manufacturing and testing bases are heavily concentrated in East Asia, the Act East policy provides an opportunity to connect and strengthen ties with key players in the region. At the same time, keeping an eye on the larger vision, frequent technological exchanges between a regional bloc like ASEAN via tracks in forums like the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN regional forum will be beneficial.

India’s neighbourhood has always held a special place in its diplomatic outreach. Attaining self-sufficiency in semiconductor manufacturing can mean collective growth of the South Asian region.

Considering that the global semiconductor market is projected to be $1.2 tn by 2030, India needs to be well-positioned to capture it. The recently announced Semicon India programme which provides $10 bn fiscal support and other non-fiscal measures shows strong political will and is a step in the right direction. India needs to harness its strengths, such as the strong presence of global EMS players, diaspora, world-class design ecosystem, demographic dividend, and use it as a pedestal for global partnerships and outreach.

The PM’s clarion call for Aatmanirbhar Bharat resonates well with India’s drive for self-sufficiency in semiconductors. India’s concept of self-reliance is not an individualistic endeavour but one that encourages growth and prosperity of all, in the spirit of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, meaning the entire world is one family. Similarly, as the prime minister himself stated, we don’t have an option but to be self-reliant in semiconductors.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 30, 2022, under the title ‘Blueprint for semicon diplomacy’. The writers are from the Electronics Systems Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) team at Invest India



Read in source website

Mrinal Kaul writes: India has never done justice to its linguistic diversity or focused on quality language learning. Languages, instead, have become instruments of exercising hegemony.

Mera azm itna buland hai ki parae sholon ka dar nahin,

mujhe khauf atish-e-gul se hai ye kahin chaman ko jala na de.

(My conviction is so strong that I do not fear the blaze of others, but indeed I dread the flame of a flower (of my own garden) lest it should not set ablaze the garden (itself)).

In the past few days, I have often found myself reciting, in my head, the above lines by the poet Shakeel Badayuni. If there’s a Bharat Mata (Mother India), she is likely to agree with the sentiment expressed in these lines. Her adamant and unruly children have been innocently robbing her of her multifaceted glory by imposing a certain uninformed and ridiculous linguistic monism. A mammoth is being reduced to a mink.

We never really think beyond the political maps of South Asian countries. We never really imagine or explore the linguistic or cultural maps of South Asia and misinterpret the political as cultural. It is really hard to kill a language. But cultural maps in South Asia are fading to a monocolour and the linguistic maps are shrinking too. Just imagine a multilingual landscape as variegated as South Asia becoming monolingual one fine morning. Think of a time when everyone will speak and understand only one language — Hindi, English or Urdu.

I grew up speaking Kashmiri. I think in Kashmiri because that is how I grew up. I have Kashmiri friends and relatives who speak better Kashmiri than I do and others speak terrible Kashmiri. I do not know when I picked up Urdu while growing up in the Kashmir Valley. When I came outside the Valley as a child for the first time, I realised I was speaking to people around me in Urdu though they called it Hindi. However, when I came across people from the Hindi belt, I initially kept wondering why they spoke like characters we saw on television in Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan or B R Chopra’s Mahabharat. I used to laugh at some of my friends and ask why they couldn’t talk in a normal language, not realising that this was probably normal for them. And they, in turn, kept taunting me that my language sounded like Farsi (Persian) and thus very foreign to theirs. It was all linguistic fun and we enjoyed it.

In a few years, I was to be trained as a Sanskritist, and began dealing with the idea of languages professionally. I was gradually unfolding the power dynamics and identity issues related to languages. I do recall a couple of times I felt severely discriminated against, along with a few other friends, while walking at Connaught Place in New Delhi at the hands of a few street vendors because we were talking in Kashmiri. I also gradually became aware of how the Kashmiri language had suffered in its land of birth by the dominance of Urdu (the state language) in the way that so many other South Asian languages are dominated by Hindi. The problem is not Hindi or Urdu or their marvellous literary traditions or the native speakers of these languages. The problem lies with the romantic notion of “one nation, one language” — the power that is being exercised through the imposition of a language of a large geographic zone of South Asia onto the length and the breadth of this multi-lingual landmass.

The line between love and hate is usually very subtle, but it could be rather simple as well. I love languages out of my absolute free will and according to my taste, but I would begin detesting them if they are imposed on me. I love my Urdu, but I do not like the Urdu that has been made to kill my mother tongue. One of the main reasons for the partition between Western Pakistan and Eastern Pakistan — later Bangladesh — was that the former was imposing Urdu on the latter. The former was predominantly a Punjabi-speaking area and the latter was a Bengali-speaking territory. Urdu as a concocted Islamic category was made to mediate between the two distinct cultural zones and unify them under a single imaginary Islamic linguistic umbrella. It had to be a miserable failure. In other words, the idea of a national language sounds wonderful, but only on a Wikipedia page. Language is not a representational symbol like a flag; it is a dynamic reality. Even if a multilingual nation like India becomes monolingual, over a course of time it will gradually create many distinct dialects. This is linguistic reality. Funnily India could end up with hundreds of Hindis, but all unique in themselves.

India should have a robust language policy that emphasises on the quality of language learning rather than running language departments, both classical and modern, in almost all its public universities. A large number of these departments do not make any contribution to scholarship anyhow. Issues related to learning languages are always hijacked by facile questions: How many languages or which language should be taught. There is never a sound focus on how to study language structurally and systematically. There can be no bigger irony than this for a multilingual landscape like South Asia.

I must confess that I would still not mind the jokes we used to crack about languages as children, but I have problems with linguistic hegemony — my mother tongue has succumbed to it.

The writer teaches philosophy at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, Mumbai.



Read in source website

Menaka Guruswamy writes: The Elon Musk-Twitter deal is a beginning. More and more self-made, innovative billionaires will seek to acquire and transform publicly traded companies into private entities.

This past week, as many of us shopped on Amazon or perhaps booked flight tickets for the summer vacations, Elon Musk evinced his interest in purchasing the social media platform Twitter for $44 billion. At the time of writing of this article, the Musk acquisition has nearly gone through and the Wall Street Journal reports that Musk has sold roughly $4 billion worth of Tesla stock over the past two days to help with financing the acquisition.

Let us discuss the events of the Musk-Twitter engagement as they have unfolded since they offer valuable insights into legally tenable manoeuvres within commercial practice, while also providing insights into the era that we live in — what I call era of new-technology-billions (NTB). By NTB, I mean the fortunes that are generated by technologies that have the potential to change how we live as humans or have already changed how we live. This includes companies that innovate and create social media networks, electric vehicles, accessible space travel and cutting-edge medical innovations. Musk’s own fortune comes from new technologies like these.

Let us first examine the precursors to the Musk-Twitter engagement. According to Forbes magazine, Elon Musk with a $273 billion fortune is the richest man on our planet. Initially, what started out as a purchase of a substantial portion of Twitter shares by Musk, led to an offer from Twitter of a board seat. This was followed with a rejection by Musk of the seat at the board due to the conditions attached. Subsequently, Musk declared his intention of buying Twitter.

When Musk offered to purchase the company at $54.20 per share, the board opted for a poison pill. A poison pill in commercial law is a defense strategy used by a target firm to prevent or discourage a potential hostile takeover by an acquiring company. Often it allows shareholders the right to purchase additional shares at a discount, thereby diluting the potential ownership interest of the new or hostile party.

As the Supreme Court explained in Pramod Jain v Securities and Exchange Board of India (2016), “a hostile takeover helps to unlock the hidden value of the shares and puts pressure on management to work efficiently. On the other hand, it has the potential of unduly upsetting the normal functioning of a target company. Thus, there is an undoubted need to regulate the process of acquisitions and takeovers in the post-liberalisation era after 1991.” The Supreme Court further observes that “poison pills make takeovers unviable for the acquirer by making the cost of acquisition unattractive”. In general, poison pills are also called shareholders rights plans. Such a plan is issued by the board of directors of the company that is being bought into.

Musk’s offer for the Twitter purchase is a generous one. Twitter shares are trading well below the price offered by the billionaire. So, the board was rightly enthusiastic about the purchase. However, when the board formally heard from Musk that he had secured the requisite financing for the deal, it insisted on two important terms. The two terms are a $1-billion breakup fee to protect Twitter shareholders should Musk walk away from the deal and should the deal go through then cash outs of employee-stock-options. The board has clearly prepared well to secure the company’s long-term interests. Finally, on April 25, Twitter’s board accepted Musk’s offer, and it will become a private company after approval by regulators and shareholders.

As this deal comes to fruition, the ownership of Twitter will not be 50-year-old Musk’s highest accomplishment. The South-Africa born Musk is the CEO of three innovative companies that have ensured his NTB — SpaceX, Tesla and Neuralink. Given his age, he clearly has many decades of entrepreneurship and innovation ahead of him. Each of these companies engages with new frontiers of science and technology. What do these companies do? SpaceX was founded by Musk in 2002 to enable colonisation of Mars. SpaceX manufactures the Falcon 9 and Falcon heavy launch vehicles. On April 26, a day after Twitter’s board accepted Musk’s offer, a SpaceX launch vehicle, consisting of a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket propelled the Dragon spacecraft carrying 4 NASA astronauts and one European astronaut into space.

According to NASA, the crew will conduct a science expedition in microgravity aboard the space station. Since 2020, SpaceX has launched five flights with NASA astronauts. On April 18, a SpaceX Falcon rocket was used to successfully launch a US spy satellite force from the company’s Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The Musk company that has the potential to transform transportation for humans is Tesla, the electric vehicle maker. The New York Times reports that in 2012 Tesla delivered 2,650 cars. By the end of 2021, Tesla had 70 per cent of the market share on electric light-duty vehicles in the US and had delivered 936,000 vehicles worldwide. Neuralink aims to develop implantable brain-machine interfaces.

Whether or not the Twitter-Musk deal goes through, what is clear is that we live in the era of NTB. More and more acquisitions will be attempted by self-made, innovative billionaires who will seek to acquire and transform publicly traded companies into private entities. Challenges will emerge from these acquisitions. For instance, in the Musk-Twitter acquisition challenges of ensuring free speech, the regulation of fake news, and Musk’s stated aims of ensuring open access to the algorithms relied on. Whether the law in all its facets — constitutional, commercial and tech-law — keeps up with the challenges posed by the acquisition ambitions fuelled by NTB remains to be seen.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 30, 2022, under the title ‘Big tech, big money’. The writer is a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India.



Read in source website

Khinvraj Jangid writes: Filmmakers like Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt who made films promoting egalitarianism, universalism and peace were agents of India's soft power

The Kashmir Files was released in Israel with Hebrew subtitles this week. Israel’s Consul General in Mumbai, Kobi Shoshani, released the Hebrew poster of the movie, and director Vivek Agnihotri tweeted how significant this was for him, his film and the India-Israel friendship. On April 20, he tweeted somewhat enthusiastically: “I am told that this such a huge demand for a Hindi film is the first time ever in Israel for an Indian film”. Here, he is presumptuous and self-congratulatory.

Hindi cinema was very popular in Israel in the 1950s and ’60s. Raj Kapoor’s movies, in particular, had a great fan following and his film Sangam (1964) was a super hit in the country even though the Indian state did not have diplomatic relations with Israel. India under Jawaharlal Nehru was very critical of Israel. However, Israelis have been fond of Hindi cinema, Indian philosophy, yoga and food. Popular cable companies, like HOT, have had an exclusive channel for Indian movies since 2004.

In 2001, Israeli filmmaker Benny Toraty made Kikar Ha-Halomot (Desperado Square) to narrate how Sangam became a legend in Israel. Toraty’s film is about a working-class neighbourhood outside Tel Aviv. It tells the story of the people who missed their great love but continue to hold on to their dreams and fantasies. The neighbourhood is thinking about reopening its cinema hall, and one of the characters, Aaron, suggests that it is only possible to do so if an Indian film like Sangam is screened. People will go crazy and forget their wounds, agonies and annoyances and reunite to watch the film.

The film depicts human folly but it’s also about love and sacrifice. The renunciation of the self for greater good (in a tragic sense) appealed to the early Israelis — they came to their homeland, which was in conflict and that demanded plenty of self-sacrifice from them. They were all Jewish, but divided by language, culture and ethnicity. Emotionally tense, melodramatic but aspirational Hindi cinema resonated with them.

Monika Mehta of Binghamton University, New York, has written a paper on the enduring popularity of Sangam as well as other Hindi movies in Israel. She argues that the traditional themes of love, friendship and sacrifice appealed to Israelis coming from Africa and the Middle East — the Mizrahi. Because of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Arab cinema and music were scant in Israel and the Arab Jews had to keep away from their heritage, language and culture. Israel was, and still is, a country of immigrants. European Jews were the pioneers who established the state, enjoyed more power and shaped much of the Israeli identity, one which was alien to most non-European, including Indian, Jews. According to Ronie Parciack, professor of Indian Studies at Tel Aviv University, Hindi cinema was loved, because it provided a way to bypass the Israel-Arab Conflict. Arab Israelis could relate with Hindi movies as they were non-Western, attuned to norms of conservative sensibilities, traditional, and at the same time they depicted social realism, class conflict and melodrama.

India’s diplomatic distance with Israeli and vocal solidarity for the Palestinian cause did not sour Israeli affinity for Indian culture in the 1950s or later. In 1975, India voted for a UN Resolution that dubbed Zionism as a form of racism. But that did not affect the popularity of old India’s biggest soft power resource.

Israeli leaders often pick a song to greet their counterparts from India. Raj Kapoor’s films such as Shree 420 (1955) and Aawara (1951) were hits in Israel before Sangam. The most well-known Hindi film song in Israel is Ichak Dana, Bichak Dana from Shree 420. It is a riddle that is sung on screen by Nargis (another popular star in Israel) that has lasted generations. Indian leaders, while visiting Israel, are often greeted with this song, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi organised a special live band’s rendition of it for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited Delhi in 2018.

Filmmakers like Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt and many more who made films promoting egalitarianism, rather than chauvinism, universalism rather than nationalism and peace rather than war, were agents of India’s soft power. Many worthy things happened before “new India” and its pseudo-cultural ambassadors.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 30, 2022, under the title ‘Sangam in Tel Aviv’. Jangid is associate professor and director, Centre for Israel Studies, Jindal School of International Affairs, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat



Read in source website

Suhas Palshikar writes: It is symbolic of the party's abdication of centrist, non-sectarian politics. It also raises fundamental questions about nature of party politics

We may not have heard the last word yet on the Prashant Kishor (PK) episode in connection with the Congress party. It was bold on his part to offer to play a role larger than that of a mere consultant. For a party that is on the back foot, spurning the offer of PK’s services was a bold move. Kishor exemplifies the new breed of political actors who cross over from the threshold of consultancy and bring a new approach to politics. Let us consider the party on the one hand and the phenomenon of “new politics” that PK symbolises on the other hand.

How does one make sense of the Congress’s response? As is its practice, the party took an overtly bureaucratic approach to PK’s offer. It also tried to delay the process as much as it could. So much so that one got an impression that the Congress did not want anyone to help it come out of the pathetic situation it is currently in. The baggage of being the oldest party and the self-perception of being the only all-India alternative to BJP weighed heavily on the Congress’s response.

PK wanted a key role in implementing his ideas about the survival of the party. This meant that PK wanted to be equal to the three Gandhis. Obviously, that didn’t go well with many party leaders. It is not clear how insecure either of the Gandhis felt due to this proposal but they were surely not enthusiastic about it. Besides, a new power centre would have curtailed the powers of two other sets of leaders — the Delhi-based confidants of the Gandhi family and the state-level bosses. Not many belong to the latter category.

This fiasco, then, was born out of a convergence of three factors: A less-than-enthusiastic reception of the PK plan by the apex leadership, the self-interest of those without much of a popular base but who have access to the top and the misgivings of leaders with a limited regional mass base.

There would have been no need to take the PK episode seriously if the Congress had been actively engaged in its reconstruction. But during the past eight years, the Congress has been moving from one crisis to another. Electoral defeats constitute one part of this story. After every defeat, we are told that the party will introspect but there is neither introspection nor course correction. In these eight years, the party has lost the will to win elections; in fact, it has cultivated a habit of losing to such a degree that when it does win, it is unable to handle victory — as was seen in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Not a single move in eight years can be identified as a serious effort to overcome the dismal state of affairs in the party.

The offer by PK was valuable because the present moment in Indian politics is about much more than the political fortunes of the Congress. It is about the survival of competitive politics and the centrist space, that allows the slow but sure march of democracy.

There is a gap between the Congress party and the Congress space in Indian society. If the Congress party is not urgently reactivated, this gap will only widen and the Congress space will shrink further. That Congress space is marked by the centrist and non-sectarian tendencies in our public life. The failure of the Congress party to own this space has already meant that it either gets disintegrated or is occupied by disparate state-level forces, many of which may eventually be steamrolled by the now-dominant BJP. Surprisingly, not many in the party seem to recognise this reality. At the top, there is confusion over who will lead the party; at the middle, there is a short-sighted concern about individual and factional survival and at the bottom, the entry-level workers are left without purpose and promise.

That is where outside interventions become pertinent, which PK symbolises. Such interventions are not without their inherent traps. Organisationally, the trap is tricky: Someone like PK will bring new ideas and strategies but how will he ensure the in-flow of new members? Or will he turn around the party’s future with the existing cadres alone? In the entire public spectacle that unfolded over the question of leadership and the role of newcomers, the party does not seem to have discussed this critical issue.

Another critical issue someone like PK underlines is the nature of party politics. He represents the professionalisation of politics. In itself, this is an attractive path and has been underway for a long time: Most parties take recourse to consultants, they commission voter surveys and monitor popular perceptions about policies and leaders. In fact, leaderships are overburdened with the idea of image building rather than actually connecting with voters. Election strategists like PK have become a common feature of electoral politics, from the local to the national level, because of this transformation. But we do not know what happens when a professional strategist crosses the threshold and seeks to become a political actor.

In the role as a consultant, we know the “commodity” called PK but we do not know him as a leader: What are his ideological inclinations? What policies would he prefer for his voters? Does he look upon people as supporters, stakeholders, citizens or just as voters? For that matter, how does a political consultant look upon politicians? Are they merely carriers of the brand or are they human agents negotiating alternative political routes, with dreams of their own?

Finally, can a party be rejuvenated by the intervention of a consultant-turned-professional? Does it not require the motivation and human agency of its active workers? Or, are parties set to turn into electoral machines alone?

These and other similar issues expand the Congress-PK episode beyond the fortunes and tactics of one party. They pose fundamental questions that are obscured by the debates over personalities and temporary turnarounds in the fortunes of parties.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 30, 2022, under the title ‘To PK or not to PK’. The writer, based in Pune, taught political science and is currently chief editor of Studies in Indian Politics



Read in source website

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assertion that the Centre is working towards revoking the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from the entire Northeast is indeed welcome. This comes after the Centre’s recent move revoking AFSPA from 23 districts – plus partially from another district – in Assam and 15 police station areas each in Manipur and Nagaland. There’s no denying that militancy in the Northeast – the reason why AFSPA has been in force for so many years – has appreciably declined with many militant outfits inking peace agreements or joining negotiations with the Centre. This obviates the need to impose a colonial-era law that gives armed forces personnel extraordinary powers to search, arrest and even shoot on suspicion. 

AFSPA has long been criticised by civil society organisations and activists for undermining Constitutionally guaranteed human rights and giving armed forces personnel too much power without accountability. How the draconian law can lead to tragic consequences was once again exemplified by the botched anti-militancy operation in Nagaland’s Mon district last December that led to the killing of 14 civilians. Plus, the imposition of AFSPA also led to a sense of otherness that prevented full integration of the Northeast with the rest of India. This lack of normalisation for the Northeast in turn provided conditions for rampant corruption and militants to thrive. 

Thus, to break out of this vicious cycle, AFSPA must end in the Northeast. With development slowly making its mark in the region, full normalisation will cut off all oxygen to the remaining militant outfits. In any case, security concerns can be addressed on a case-by-case basis with rapid deployment of security assets to particular spots as and when required. But lakhs of people across vast stretches of the Northeast shouldn’t live in unnatural conditions with their rights curtailed. After all, these areas are very much parts of India and should be treated as such. Besides, with a revisionist China threatening India’s borders, it is imperative to ensure normalisation in the Northeast so that Beijing can’t foment trouble in the region. Revoking AFSPA is a key part of the solution to the militancy problem in the Northeast. Plus, if India is to actualise its Act East policy and use the Northeast as a bridge to Southeast Asia, it must open up the area for private investments and businesses from the rest of India. Again, revoking AFSPA is crucial for this. With BJP in government both at the Centre and in all Northeast states either alone or through coalitions, the time for this historic move is now. 



Read in source website

Indian Railways (IR) will cancel nearly 670 trips of passenger trains till May 24 to focus on moving coal to thermal power plants. Forced to choose between massive power outages on account of coal shortage and inconveniencing passengers, IR took a tough call. The real question is did IR have to be faced with this choice in the first place? No. The shortage of railway rakes for transporting coal is on account of poor planning. The current situation is not unexpected. Plenty of signs pointed to a surge in domestic coal demand, but IR missed them.

Transporting coal to thermal plants is the most important part of IR’s freight operations. It makes up about 18% of its goods traffic. The best measure for freight movement is net tonne km (NTK), which measures a payload of one tonne carried over 1 km. By this measure, IR vastly underestimated the requirements for 2021-22. At a time when the finance ministry was forecasting a ‘V’ shaped recovery in the economy, IR got its calculations wrong. On February 1, 2021, IR estimated it would move 118,750 million NTK in FY 2020-21. A year later, the revised estimate forecast 143,462 million NTK.

Is this level of coal movement for thermal plants unprecedented? No. In FY 2015-16, IR moved 196,136 million NTK. That level of freight movement was even higher than the budget forecast for the current financial year, which may also turn out to be an underestimate. IR over the last few years has seen an increase in investment, with rolling stock taking up the largest chunk of capital expenditure. However, the nub of the matter is that IR has fallen short on planning and forecasts. The current situation gives the impression that different arms of GoI are working in silos. That won’t do.



Read in source website

What’s in a name? It can carry a whole worldview, which in turn can shape material reality in powerful ways. Specifically, patrilineal surnaming norms carry a wide-ranging patriarchal dividend, where fathers have dominance in family decision-making while mothers sacrifice their jobs to do the unpaid labour of housework and childcare. And the next generation is trained to repeat this cycle.

It is this backdrop that lends immensity to a ruling by Italy’s top court this week, which has found the automatic imparting of the father’s name to children as “constitutionally illegitimate”. One Italian MP has noted in appreciation that the mother’s name henceforth getting the same dignity as the father’s is a “sign of civilisation”. The ruling recognises the surname as “a fundamental element of one’s personal identity” and emphasises both parents having equal say in choice of this surname. Options of the child carrying the mother’s surname alone or both parents’ surnames with the mother’s coming first, are now on the table. It is this choice, and the principle of equality underpinning it, that is the mark of “civilisation”.

In India recent years have seen rules being amended to allow mother’s name as a valid identity marker for documents ranging from PAN cards to passports. But even when this option is theoretically available, practically it can still be an ordeal. Patrilineality in naming continues to mirror deeply unequal allocation of roles to women and men.



Read in source website

Centre-state ties are back in the spotlight. At a meeting to discuss the Covid-19 situation with chief ministers (CMs), Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to states to cut taxes on fuel sparked a backlash from states ruled by forces other than the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). They alleged this was a ploy to deflect the blame of rising prices onto them even though the Centre was responsible for this, while BJP leaders pointed out that states ruled by their party had responded to the Centre’s move of cutting federal duties on fuel by reducing state levies on the commodity.

Notwithstanding the merits of the position of each side on this specific issue, the episode is a reminder that Centre-state ties are in unchartered territory and Indian federalism is under test — this is because of both politics and economics, and, of course, the interconnections between the two.

Indian federalism has gone through four distinct phases. The first lasted for close to four decades after Independence. The Constitution created a quasi-federal system with a powerful Centre. The hegemony of the Congress meant that the party was often in power in Delhi and most state capitals. And the national Congress leadership was more powerful than the state Congress leadership, even more so during Indira Gandhi’s time than that of Jawaharlal Nehru. This period, therefore, saw a tilt in favour of the Centre, with states largely — even if unhappily — abiding by Delhi’s diktats. And when they didn’t, the Centre didn’t hesitate to use Article 356 to impose its political preferences.

The second phase saw the rise of the coalition era post-1989. The Congress was no longer the hegemon. Forming a government at the Centre meant depending on regional parties, which, in turn, had become increasingly powerful in states. States assumed a greater say in policymaking, the use of Article 356 dipped, and India appeared to be moving towards a federal arrangement where the balance of power was tilting towards the states.

The third, brief, phase was between 2014 and 2018 when the BJP rewrote the political playbook and assumed power both at the Centre, with an outright majority of its own, and also won power in a range of states. This allowed the revival of a stronger Centre and states once again willing to abide largely by Delhi’s rulebook. It is no surprise that the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime was passed in this period. Arun Jaitley’s remarkable interpersonal skills helped, but so did the fact that the Centre was powerful enough to use its powers of persuasion to bring together all the states on the same page.

And the fourth phase, in the last four years, has seen both a strong BJP at the Centre and in key states, but also the revival of strong regional parties taking over some of India’s most important states. Some of these smaller outfits have found ways to do business with the Centre — think of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi or Biju Janata Dal or YSR Congress Party. Others see the BJP as an existential challenge and, therefore, have an incentive in challenging the Centre, just as the BJP has an incentive in undermining their governance models. Think of the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra or the Trinamool Congress in Bengal or the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu or the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi and Punjab or even the Congress, which is, at the moment, in effect, a regional party confined to power on its own in just Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. In this fourth phase, a strong Centre is colliding with a set of assertive states, with both ruled by distinct political formations.

The post-2014 political context has been accompanied by a revised fiscal federal architecture. The 14th Finance Commission (FC) devolved greater resources to states, which was sustained by the 15th Finance Commission. The GST regime eroded the autonomy of states in key spheres of tax collection in return for the promise of fair distribution of resources, additional compensation and carve outs in areas such as fuel. But it has also seen the growing use of cesses and surcharges by the Centre, and these go into its kitty, not the divisible pool that is shared with the states.

It has also been accompanied by a dip in economic conditions in general, where growth witnessed a slowdown both due to structural and cyclical factors before March 2020, and the pandemic after March 2020.

The new political phase has been accompanied by a new model of welfare politics and intense competition between parties to be seen as the most effective vehicle of welfare delivery. With job creation a challenge, all parties have turned to distribution of state resources for public goods as a way to offset economic distress and lack of opportunities. The BJP has now positioned itself as the party of welfare with a robust track record in the direct transfer of resources for a range of goods (gas cylinders, housing, toilets and cash in the case of farmers) while state-centric parties are busy playing catch up by devising their own schemes (free electricity, pension for elderly and cash for women).

This has led to its own complexities. And no one has sounded the alarm bells on it more eloquently, for over a year-and-a-half now, than NK Singh — one of India’s most distinguished economic thinkers with unparalleled experience across policy institutions, including as chair of the 15th FC.

In an interview to HT in February 2021, Singh pointed out that the Seventh Schedule (which lays out subjects under Union, state and concurrent lists and provides a framework for the division of authority) needed a reset, given the transgressions that have taken place “from one end to another”, with most centrally-sponsored schemes in areas which would fall under the state list. In a recent lecture, Singh sounded another warning about sub-national bankruptcies, given the tendency of states to engage in what he called “freebie politics”. While distinguishing this from merit goods and public goods, Singh suggested that the freebie culture hurt India’s fiscal federalism framework, undermined macroeconomic stability, distorted expenditure priorities, created issues of intergenerational inequality, pushed governments away from environmentally sound practices and had a debilitating effect on manufacturing.

But to understand why this is happening, we must return to politics. With the BJP under Narendra Modi, perfecting a model of centralised welfare delivery and earning electoral dividends from it, its political competitors are tempted to use resources of states where they enjoy power to engage in their own model of welfare politics. The former still, it must be said, is done within a largely fiscally responsible framework; the latter, at a time when states are more constrained in raising resources, ends up veering towards irresponsibility. And when it comes to the issue of fuel price rise, which is politically contentious with huge inflationary consequences, non-BJP ruled states believe they have little room to cut duties while the Centre believes it has done its bit and would like states to act.

Political competition in a democracy is healthy. The distribution of power between different political formations at different levels of government, Union and state, and among states, is healthy too. But this can only remain healthy if political competition does not end up dangerously entering the territory of unsustainable economic practices which discards long-term public good and immediate relief for citizens. This is a tough balance, but it is a balance that must be found. And for that to happen, the Centre and states, irrespective of which party is in power, may want to seriously begin considering a new federal compact.

letters@hindustantimes.com



Read in source website

May 1 marks the day that the University of Delhi (DU) steps into the 100th year of its existence. From its inception on May 1, 1922, DU has been an exemplar of an academic institution built on a legacy of rich history, plurality, and inclusivity. From a humble beginning with three colleges and 750 students, DU has grown, in eminence and stature, to represent 90 colleges, 16 faculties, 86 academic departments, and approximately 700,000 students today.

Historian Thomas Carlyle once said that history is the essence of innumerable biographies and reviving memories. Seen in this perspective, centenary celebrations are not meant to just lay down goals for their continued march forward, but also to pause and reflect on the past. It is with this sense that two remarkably fortuitous, but obscure, tales from the archives of DU must be shared.

DU may now have about 700,000 students, but in the early 1960s, the stress of having around 25,000 students was intense enough to propel it towards splitting into two separate universities. A Bill was even introduced in Parliament by MC Chagla, the then education minister. He wanted the new university to be named after Jawarharlal Nehru, the then prime minister, but Nehru had strict reservations about naming an institution after a living person. He suggested that it be named Raisina University. The Bill was referred to a select committee in April-May 1964. Nehru’s death in the same year only reinforced the desire to name the proposed university after him as a tribute to his personality and contributions to the nation.

In the deliberations of the committee, however, it later emerged that if Nehru’s name was to be used, it would make better sense to prefix it to an institution that was entirely new and exclusively dedicated to his ideas. It wouldn’t be befitting to add his name to a university that was to be carved out from an existing one, especially one created to ease the financial constraints of an existing university. The stakeholders at DU weren’t supportive of the idea either. And so, an additional campus, DU’s south campus, was set up. The split was averted. A university named after Nehru (present-day Jawaharlal Nehru University) was then established in 1969.

The founding of DU was also spontaneous – unlike the histories of universities in the colonial era that owed their existence to general administrative charters or resolutions such as the Wood’s Despatch, the Indian Universities Act 1904, or the Government of India Resolution 1913.

In 1917, a commission was appointed to look into the needs requirements as well as the structural operative mechanisms of the University of Calcutta. The commission came out with an exhaustive set of recommendations, which suggested the need for the participation of teachers in university governance, cooperation between universities and colleges, less government control, and the appointment of full-time vice-chancellors. It also suggested that the universities in India be organised as unitary residential ones, with territorial limits.

These recommendations were accepted by other universities such as those in erstwhile Allahabad and Punjab, which restructured themselves as unitary residential universities and consequently no longer qualified to examine students from colleges located in Delhi. To redress the grievances of the existing students in Delhi, the idea of a university in Delhi was formed. The bill to establish and incorporate a unitary teaching and residential university in Delhi was passed by the legislative assembly on February 22, 1922, and the Act received the assent of the viceroy on March 5. DU was founded as a unitary teaching residential university, with St Stephens College, Hindu College, and Ramjas College as affiliates.

One only hopes that in its 100th year, the University of Delhi will augment its commitment to its motto: Nishtha Dhriti Satyam (dedication, steadfastness, truth). Its march forward must continue on cutting-edge research to address its immediate and wider spatial and socio-economic settings. The centenary year also happens to be in a year of major changes, because of the National Education Policy. It must, therefore, remain open to the views and suggestions of the stakeholders while ushering in plans for innovation and change.

Chandrachur Singh is associate professor of political science, Hindu College, University of Delhi 

The views expressed are personal



Read in source website

All efforts to build back better after the pandemic would be strengthened if women had more agency in autonomy, decision-making, and power within the family structure and community. Particular attention must be given to adolescent girls who are facing several challenges as a fallout of the pandemic, among them early marriage.

An interesting experiment to enable adolescent girls to champion changes related to their health, education, and marriage, among other things, is the Sphoorthi project, funded by Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives (APPI) and implemented by the non-governmental organisation (NGO), Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT), over the last four years in 51 villages of Koppal district in northern Karnataka. It covers 4,600 adolescent girls from marginalised families and uses a framework that recognises the importance for vulnerable groups to overcome their disadvantageous positions and gain agency in three interrelated domains: Power within (self-esteem and self-efficacy), power with (others), and power over (resources).

Satyanarayana Ramanaik, thematic lead, adolescent health, KHPT, says, “After a year of Sphoorthi’s intervention, we realised the importance of addressing the parent-daughter relationship. Especially once the girls attain menarche, communication and interactions between the father and daughter were less in the rural context. We have been working with parents and daughters and we found that the daughters’ wishes and wants were communicated to the fathers through their mothers. This affects the girl’s autonomy and negotiation power. The Sphoorthi intervention made a conscious effort in shifting this norm.”

The peer role model approach to empower adolescent girls to make decisions that impact their education, nutrition, and social relations resulted in these role model girls training their peers in their villages. Some of the key achievements of Sphoorthi included the positive changes around the increase in the girls’ decision-making capacity and involvement in key decisions about their lives, increased self-esteem and self-worth, improved parent-daughter relationship, better nutrition levels and reduction in school drop-out.

The multifaceted intervention model starts with developing the capacity of the girls and engaging the family and then providing platforms for the girls to engage with community members and boys. The interventions create an enabling environment for helping families understand the importance of educating girls and gender equity.

The interventions with boys are to transform their attitudes towards gender, emphasising the right of adolescent girls to a life free of violence and abuse. The interventions with the community are to help understand the importance of educating girls, gender norms, and the consequences of early marriage and teenage pregnancy.

To ensure the sustainable transfer of learnings and attitudes from the role models and peer girls, Sphoorthi established groups and collectives of girls at the village, cluster and taluk levels to help them sustain the change process. The Karnataka government now plans to scale up the effort.

Ramanna, a father from Budhgumpa village, Koppal district says, “After SSLC (secondary school), we asked our daughter to quit school for two years. But after Sphoorthi came into our village, I wanted my child to grow, so I enrolled her in a college. Now she is in her second year, PUC (pre-university course). We earlier were superstitious, but now we challenge those superstitions. Our daughters have progressed. In our opinion, our children are our inspiration.”

lalita.panicker@hindustantimes.com 

The views expressed are personal



Read in source website

I get sent a lot of books, but only browse through a few and read an even smaller number. So, I have to thank my lucky stars that Nariman Karkaria’s caught my attention. Perhaps it was the Tintinesque cartoon on the cover? Or Amitav Ghosh’s rapturous recommendation: “Amazing! An astonishing find!”

Whatever the explanation, The First World War Adventures of Nariman Karkaria, rivetingly translated by Murali Ranganathan, is unputdownable. It’s not a profound book. I wouldn’t compare it to Erich Maria Remarque’s iconic All Quiet on the Western Front. But it is delightful reading. Ranganathan’s glorious translation makes you feel the author is beside you “reminiscing aloud”.

So, who was Karkaria and why is his book such a joy? He was a young Parsi from Gujarat, who, in 1915, at the age of 20, left Navsari with 50 and embarked upon an unbelievable adventure. Bombay (now, Mumbai) was his first destination, where the ships in the bay caught his fancy, and soon he boarded one heading for Hong Kong. Undeterred either by ignorance of the city or lack of money, he found shelter and hospitality with local Parsi entrepreneurs. They found him a job and he settled down.

However, restlessness struck again. This time he set off on a series of train journeys across China, the whole of Siberia, and all the way to war-time London. There he enlisted in the British army and ended up fighting for King and country at the Somme, the Middle East, and the Balkans.

Karkaria had an eye for fine detail. In Siberia the priests are like “the dustoors in our villages… people offer fruit, eggs or chicken as donations”. In Petrograd, “one has to walk on one side of the road, either on the left or the right, depending on the direction in which you are walking. There is no question of colliding with anybody as you walk.” And he observed people closely. “Only God knows why he elongated the faces of Swedish women!”

He was also no spendthrift. “How much do you think it costs to eat in a Swedish dining car?... A single meal… costs five rupees. If you felt like having a cup of tea at four in the afternoon, you would have to shell out nine annas. And coffee was twelve annas… How could a person like me, who was used to paying one paisa for a cup of tea at the Irani restaurants of Bombay, stomach these prices?”

This is, of course, a war memoir, and Karkaria writes of the trenches and gasmasks with a casualness that hides the traumatic experience it must have been.

“These trenches were named after London streets; our trench was named Liverpool Street. Once we entered … we had to cook for ourselves. In the morning, I made tea with the help of a companion; we had some ‘dog biscuits’ with us, which we soaked in water, then added a little sugar to it, and heated the mixture to make a sort of pudding. We filled our stomachs with this grub.”

He lived with the ever-present threat of poison gas. “We would always have to keep our gasmasks in readiness as if our whole life depended on them…the medication in the masks dried up our throats, besides making us feel nauseated.”

Not surprisingly, he was often surrounded by the dead. “Soldiers were falling all around us with piteous shrieks, but there was nothing that could be done. Each man was on his own and could not be bothered about anybody else… Bodies of dead soldiers were lying all around us. These corpses proved very useful in sheltering us from the enemy gunfire… we would lie behind these corpses, and they would act as our shield taking all the gunfire.”

When the war ended, Karkaria returned to Navsari. After serialisation in a magazine, his memoir was published in 1922. Ranganathan discovered it by chance in 2012. What a stroke of luck for the rest of us.

Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story 

The views expressed are personal



Read in source website