Editorials - 25-08-2022

With geopolitical currents redefining geo-economics, India needs to be ready to emerge as the chief global diplomat

The clock is ticking. In about three months, India will assume for the first time the Group of 20 (G20) year-long presidency from December 1, 2022 to November 30, 2023, culminating with the G20 Summit in India in 2023.The subsequent months will witness India hosting over 200 meetings with hundreds of ministers, officials, diplomats, businessmen, non-governmental organisations, working groups, and engagement groups of the G20 composed of 19 powerful economies and the European Union (EU).

India has hosted large international conferences such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in 1983 and the Third India-Africa Forum summit in 2015. But nothing compares with hosting the G20. It is the world’s informal steering directorate on global economic issues; it entails the responsibility of shaping decision-making on key challenges facing the world today; and its summit is preceded by a large quantum of preparatory deliberations that feed into the final outcome.

Importance, complexities

It is essential to neither overstress nor underestimate the significance of the G20’s work. The G20 membership represents nearly 90% of the world’s GDP, 80% of global trade, and 67% of the planet’s population. It is an advisory body, not a treaty-based forum and, therefore, its decisions are recommendations to its own members.

The weight of this powerful membership carries enormous political and economic influence. The representation of the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, and other multilateral institutions in it makes the G20 an incomparable body.

The G20 has played a vital role in addressing financial and economic challenges such as the global financial crisis of 2008-09 and the Eurozone crisis of 2010. The forum was elevated from the finance ministers to the heads of government/state in 2008. This was the era of the G8 (up to 2014 when Russia was suspended), of the major powers — the United States, the EU, Russia, and also China, but they needed to work together with the emerging economies in defining global challenges and crafting their solutions.

However, in this second decade of the G20, the forum is faced with an existential crisis, where the major powers have fallen out. It makes the task of the presidency country much more complicated, as the current president ( Indonesia) is discovering.

The disastrous impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the war in Ukraine, India-China border tensions, EU/U.S.-Russia hostility, and deteriorating U.S.-China relations are already visible in the run-up to the 2022 Bali summit (in November) where all G20 leaders may not be sitting physically in the same room. The outcome in Bali will affect the Delhi summit. Indian officials are thus carefully planning their strategy as the burden and the prestige of the presidency are bestowed on India. They know well that the currents of geopolitics are redefining the contours of geo-economics today. Their mission will be not only to save the G20 but also the future of multilateral cooperation in diverse domains of the grouping’s multi-dimensional agenda.

India’s choices

Guided by the triple motivation of promoting India’s national interest, leaving its mark on the G20, and maintaining its primacy as an effective instrument of global governance, there are four different ideas have emerged in New Delhi.

First, the G20 presidency offers a unique branding opportunity for India’s recent achievements, including the ability to combat COVID-19 effectively at home and abroad through vaccine aid and diplomacy. Other major achievements are India’s digital revolution, its steady progress in switching to renewables, meeting its targets to counter climate change, and its push for self-reliance in manufacturing and reshaping global value chains. New trends in entrepreneurship, business innovation, the rise of many start-ups as unicorns, and gender progress too need to be showcased. A single-year presidency does not empower the host to change the world, but India can provide evidence of its domestic successes, tested at the continental scale, for global adoption. It can also be utilised to transform India’s sub-optimal physical infrastructure to create an attractive investment and tourism destination, especially as several important G20 meetings will be hosted outside Delhi.

Second, by a remarkable coincidence, four democracies on the path to becoming powerful economic players — Indonesia, India, Brazil, and South Africa — hold the presidency from December 2021 to November 2025. This offers a rare opportunity for synergy and solidarity to advance the interests of the developing world and to assert their combined leadership of the Global South.

Third, another exceptional coincidence is that all three members of IBSA — India, Brazil, and South Africa — will hold the G20 presidency consecutively in 2023, 2024, and 2025. This forum, insulated from the geopolitical pressures constraining the BRICS (where these three countries are required to work with Russia and China), can develop a cohesive plan to project the priority concerns of the Global South. IBSA needs an urgent rejuvenation by convening an informal meeting of its top leaders, perhaps on the sidelines of the Bali summit.

Four, India needs to get ready to emerge as the chief global diplomat. As the G20 president, India will be obliged to take a broader view of the G20 agenda to synthesise divergent interests of all constituents of the forum: five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the developed world united under the flag of the G7, five members of BRICS, and other G20 members such as Argentina and Mexico. More importantly, as the president and host, India should factor in the perspectives of countries not represented in the G20. India will advocate an inclusive approach, with pragmatic and human-centric solutions to global issues. An important aim should be to end Africa’s marginalisation by elevating the African Union (AU) from permanent observer to a full-fledged member of the G20, thus placing it on a par with the EU.

A parting thought

These four choices are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to weld them together to create a holistic and comprehensive approach for the Indian presidency of the G20. The challenge is to combine an India-focused view, promote the vital interests of the Global South, and demonstrate diplomatic acumen to communicate with and reconcile the viewpoints of rival and adversarial power centres such as the West, Russia, and China. India today is in the enviable position to deliver this unique package. It must rise to the occasion.

Rajiv Bhatia, a former Ambassador, is Distinguished Fellow, Gateway House. He is also an author, writing regularly on multilateral governance



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Kais Saied is a populist zealot who promises El Dorado even as he leads his country into a quagmire

On August 16, the results of the referendum on the amendments to the national constitution proposed by Tunisian president Kais Saied were formally endorsed by the election commission, effectively terminating the country’s brief encounter with a democratic order. Tunisia, the shining success story of the Arab Spring, now stares at autocracy and chaos.

It has taken a year to reach this nadir. Last year, on July 25, Mr. Saied had abruptly suspended parliament, dismissed the prime minister, deprived the assembly members of their immunity, and declared he would now rule by presidential decree. Members of parliament attempting to enter the assembly were blocked by the armed forces.

Presidential coup

A well-known constitutional expert with no party or political affiliations, Mr. Saied came to power in 2019 in a landslide victory over several established politicians. Quickly thereafter, he began to express disdain for his country’s political class, refused to interact with political parties and civil society groups, and chaffed at the constitutional “locks” that prevented him from taking action to effect the economic reforms that were urgently demanded by the people. On July 25, 2021, he finally affected a “coup” against the very constitution that had empowered him.

The presidential coup initially enjoyed considerable popular support – it was estimated that Mr. Saied was backed by over 80% of his people, with support hovering between 70% and 80% over the next few months. This was largely because, while the country had given itself a democratic constitution in 2015, the assembly was deeply divided by diverse political groups, which made it impossible to pass the legislation to bring about the reforms the country needed. The assembly, instead, was seen as a corrupt and dysfunctional institution. The amnesty granted by parliament in 2017 to those from the former regime who were accused of corruption and criminal conduct thoroughly discredited the assembly and the democratic process itself.

In December 2021, Mr. Saied announced a “road map” for political change — online “consultations” on constitutional reform, a committee to propose amendments to the constitution, and finally a nationwide referendum on the proposed changes in July 2022. In April this year, the president dissolved the parliament, and initiated inquiries for “conspiracy” among prominent political leaders, including Rachid Ghannouchi, head of the Islamist Ennahda party.

But Mr. Saied had got his priorities wrong. While he dabbled in constitutional changes, Tunisia slid deeper into an economic malaise: inflation reached 8%, while unemployment was 16%, reaching 40% among the youth. As the currency depreciated by 60% and purchasing power fell by 40%, Tunisia’s credit rating was downgraded to ‘CCC’. Following the war in Ukraine, as wheat supplies from Russia and Ukraine got disrupted and prices shot up, Mr. Saied decreed that those spreading “fake news” about food shortages would be arrested.

Mr. Saied initiated a dialogue with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to obtain $4 billion for economic support, but the IMF insisted on a sharp reduction in subsidies on goods and services, a freeze on public sector wages, and privatisation of public sector companies. These conditions alienated the country’s powerful trade union, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT, in its French acronym) from the president.

Popular disenchantment

The UGTT had played a major role in the Arab Spring uprisings that had ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011. It had then facilitated national reconciliation among feuding politicians that led to the nationally accepted constitution of 2015, an achievement that led to the UGTT joining three other Tunisian groups in winning the Nobel Peace Prize that year. Last year, the UGTT had initially backed Mr. Saied’s initiatives to strengthen the presidency, but, amidst the deteriorating economic conditions and the president’s misguided focus on constitutional changes, it became a sharp critic of the president. On June 16, it called a general strike to protest the economic situation and the conditions being proposed by the IMF for its loan. With its one million members in a country of 12 million, the UGTT is a formidable opponent, particularly with its ability to influence popular opinion against the president’s political and economic plans.

The constitutional amendments to obtain a “new republic” were prepared by an advisory committee appointed by the president. These amendments had just one purpose — to strengthen the president by removing all constraints on the exercise of untrammelled power by him. A commentator noted that the amendments provided for “an unbridled presidential system, with an omnipotent president, a powerless parliament, and a toothless judiciary”.

However, there is now a pervasive apathy among Tunisians about the president’s policies, which is reflected in the absence of active support for his initiatives in the shape of popular demonstrations or actual votes in his favour — the referendum attracted a turnout of just over 27%. With a 96% ‘yes’ vote, the election commission declared the amendments as having been approved.

Outlook for Tunisia

For several months, American senators, congressmen, diplomats and academics have been lamenting the demise of Tunisia’s democracy and calling on President Joe Biden to pressurise Mr. Saied to prevent the political backslide. But no magic formula has emerged to correct the situation, despite Mr. Biden’s avowed commitment to promote democracy globally.

The instrument of cutting off military or economic aid has been viewed as a non-starter: the Tunisian armed forces are major U.S. allies and central to the fight against extremist forces, while reduced economic assistance would make the Tunisians’ living conditions more miserable. Mr. Saied has the option to turn to Saudi Arabia and the UAE for political and economic support — both of them are believed to have backed Mr. Saied’s constitutional coup in order to subvert the Islamist Ennahda as a political player in the country.

As the euphoria of a decade ago turns to ashes, the Tunisian experience has exposed the daunting challenges in achieving political and economic change after an authoritarian order has been overthrown. Crony capitalism, in which economic power remains with a few business families, has remained in place and works closely with politicians who integrate themselves with the ‘deep state’ and prioritise personal interest over national well-being.

External players are of no help — the U.S. has neither interest in nor the capacity to promote democracy, while Saudi Arabia and the UAE work assiduously to upend the democratic order that provides a place for political Islam, however accommodative it might be. And as the nation sinks into an economic abyss, the IMF remains committed to policy approaches that indicate little sensitivity towards the privations the people are going through.

Mr. Saied is only the latest example of a populist zealot who promises El Dorado even as he leads his country into a quagmire.

Talmiz Ahmad is a former diplomat



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There are good reasons why Universal Basic Insurance is a better proposition than Universal Basic Income

It took the COVID-19 pandemic to expose the precariousness of human society across the world. As the importance of social security came into focus after the major waves of the pandemic, the debate on universal basic income (UBI) began to resurface in policy circles across the globe. However, there is another UBI that needs to be examined in the Indian context, i.e., universal basic insurance. Before discussing the second UBI, or insurance, it is worthwhile looking at the design options for social security.

Types of security nets

Income shocks result in a free fall of those living on the line of basic living wages (say line 1) down towards the critical survival line (say line 2). In any case, a fall that is further below line 2 needs to be prevented as it can be catastrophic — a household can end up facing a poverty trap. Social security systems are like a safety net placed at line 2. These social security nets can be of three types. The first is a passive safety net which catches those falling from line 1 and prevents a fall below line 2. The second is an active safety net which works like a trampoline so that those who fall on it are able to bounce back to line 1. The third is a proactive safety net which acts like a launchpad so that those who fall on it will not only bounce back but will also move up beyond line 1.

The first type of safety net is basically a social assistance programme meant for the most income-deprived sections of society. The second type of safety net is a scheme with a higher outlay. The third type of social security net is the most desirable option but requires immense resources and institutional capacity. For social security, people on the south end of the income line need social assistance schemes. Those on the north end of the income line should have voluntary insurance.

Social security mainly encompasses food security, health security and income security. India operates the widest spectrum of social security schemes which cater to the largest number of people than any other country. The sheer scale of Indian social security programmes delivered to millions of households spread over a vast geography is mind-boggling.

The Indian food security programme, for example, has over 800 million beneficiaries being provided heavily subsidised food grain under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). The NFSA is the world’s largest food security programme. About 120 million children are provided free lunch under the Mid-Day Meal Scheme. In addition, some 50 million people benefit from the free meals programme run by a few State governments. Nevertheless, there are issues of financial sustainability and leakages in the food security programme.

For health and income

On the health security front, for the unorganised sector, there is the Ayushman Bharat Scheme of the central government with over 490 million beneficiaries. In the organised sector, the Central government runs the Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) and Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) catering to 130 million and four million beneficiaries, respectively. Health insurance schemes run by various State governments cover about 200 million people. Only about 110 million people in India have private health insurance. Despite these large-scale provisions, about 400 million Indians are not covered under any kind of health insurance.

Income security is the trickiest part to tackle in the social security basket. For the organised sector, there are three types of provident fund schemes: General Provident Fund (GPF) which is availed by about 20 million Central and State government employees in the country. The second is the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) which is availed by about 65 million workers in the other organised sector. The third is Public Provident Fund (PPF) that can be availed by any Indian citizen but has contributions from the organised sector mostly. There are about 53 million New Pension Scheme subscribers in the country (about 2.2 million in the Central government, 5.6 million in the State government and the rest in the private sector).

In the unorganised sector, the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Maan-Dhan Yojana (PM-KMY) and the PM-KISAN scheme is availed by about 120 million farmers. Atal Pension Yojana (APY) benefits 40 million people. The Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan Yojana has about five million beneficiaries while there are about 50,000 beneficiaries under the National Pension Scheme for Traders and Self-Employed Persons (NPS-Traders) scheme. The largest unorganised sector income security programme is the scheme under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which has about 60 million beneficiaries. Thus, out of 500 million workers in India, about 100 million have no income security (pension, gratuity or other income) coverage. Proponents of universal basic income cite the informality of the Indian economy as the hurdle in rolling out schemes such as unemployment insurance in the country. However, besides huge fiscal implications (around 4.5% of GDP), the proposal of universal basic income runs the risk of implementation failure due to large-scale beneficiary identification requirements.

Why UBI

The other UBI, i.e. universal basic insurance, is a better proposition for two reasons. One, the insurance penetration (premium as a percentage of GDP) in India has been hovering around 4% for many years compared to 17%, 9% and 6% in Taiwan, Japan and China, respectively. Two, though the economy largely remains informal, data of that informal sector are now available both for businesses (through GSTIN, or Goods and Services Tax Identification Number) and for unorganised workers (through e-Shram, which is the centralised database of all unorganised workers). As a result of the recent initiatives by the Government, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) portal has 13.5 million registrations and the e-Shram portal has over 280 million registrations. As a prototype of a social security portal based on such data, the social registry portal, ‘Kutumba’, developed by Karnataka is available as a blueprint. Till the Indian economy grows to have adequate voluntary insurance, social security can be boosted through the scheme of universal basic insurance.

Rajesh Gupta is a research scholar



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While there are doubts over how the boy died, it is a fact that untouchability is practised in the villages of Rajasthan

Inder Meghwal, a nine-year-old boy, died recently in a village in the Jalore district of Rajasthan. The family say he succumbed to injuries caused by an assault by a teacher in his school who was angry that the young boy drank from a water pot meant for ‘upper castes’. The accused, Chail Singh, who is in custody, says he did slap the boy — not because of the reason stated, but because Inder had quarrelled with another student. Inder’s family members assert that the boy was beaten brutally due to his caste.

An unusual place

Many testimonies and individual claims have been made that neither the school nor the Rajput teacher holds any bias against the Meghwals, a community considered “untouchable” in Rajasthan. Some reports state that Inder had been suffering from a ear infection and probably died of septicemia, or sepsis (the clinical name for blood poisoning by bacteria), rather than brain hemorrhage caused by the teacher’s slap. Doctors have considered the possibility that the infection could have been aggravated by the assault. Reports also say there is no upper caste pot in the premises of the school; all the students and teachers, some of whom are from ‘lower castes’, drink water from one source — a cement tank. This is the most unlikely source of drinking water in the hot summer of Rajasthan. Generally, people drink from a clay pot (matki) . Nevertheless, Inder’s village (and school) must be an unusual place in Rajasthan as it doesn’t have caste practices.

I went to a school similar to the one Inder attended. It was a poorly maintained building. There were no benches or chairs; students sat on the floor. Everyday life at home, in school and in the village was governed by caste norms. Untouchability was, and still is, practised in the villages of Rajasthan. People from upper castes think of it as normal and desirable because they believe it is the right way to practise the Hindu religion. People of lower castes such as the Meghwals consider it a part and parcel of their lives. They remain forbidden from the main temple of the village; they are not invited to weddings and festivals of the upper castes; and they don’t mingle with upper castes. Occasionally, when the whole village assembles on Holi or Diwali or during elections, they sit separately, not on the same carpets. Usually, they sit next to the spot where upper caste men take off their slippers.

That is how I saw the world as a child in one such village between Jodhpur and Jalore. The school I attended had many Meghwal boys and I befriended some of them. Students used to do all sorts of chores — they used to clean the floors every morning and bring drinking water in pots from the main water tank of the village. There were separate water pots for the upper and lower castes all through the decade I was in the school. We knew the caste norms and followed them. Meghwal boys were exempted from one task, which was to make chai for the teachers. Most teachers were from the upper castes and drank chai twice a day. The job of making chai was that of boys from the upper castes and Other Backward Classes.

Though I was best friends with some of the Meghwal boys, I could not invite any of them home or even tell my family that I went to their homes. I still have the vivid memory of my first visit to a friend’s home. Everyone was astonished that I accepted their offer to drink water and tea. I once tried to bring a friend home, got caught, and was told strictly not to do that again.

Political considerations

Inder’s village, Surana, seems unique without the rotten practice of caste. I see villagers and some local politicians on TV and YouTube videos claiming that there aren’t any incidents of caste discrimination around them. I am perplexed. Not long ago, I read a report inThe Print that “weddings for Dalits in Rajasthan are no less than tragic suspense thrillers”, for the family of the groom doesn’t know if they will reach the bride’s house without getting beaten up by people of dominant castes. Discriminatory caste practices are often not acknowledged or addressed because of political considerations and vote-bank politics. Leaders have their narrow political interests in mind rather than social transformation for a better and just society for all. The police are few in number, prejudiced against the lower castes, and often not given the freedom to present all the facts.

Now there is doubt over the cause of Inder’s death. Was it the infection, aggravated by the slap, that took his life? Was it unruly behaviour rather than untouchability? Who will get the benefit of doubt is also a critical point of this sad case. Lastly, I am deeply saddened that teachers still beat students. This is a great agony for me, a teacher, to bear.

Khinvraj Jangid is Associate Professor and Director, Jindal Centre for Israel Studies, Jindal School of International Affairs, O.P. Jindal Global University and currently adjunct faculty at Ben-Gurion University, Israel



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As Yediyurappa’s sway over Lingayats is seen as waning, Congress is trying to woo the community

The Veerashaiva-Lingayat caste narrative in Karnataka politics has come to the fore again as the ruling BJP and the principal Opposition party, the Congress, are battling for this crucial vote bank, about eight months before the Assembly polls.

Earlier this month, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi visited the Murugha Mutt, a prominent Lingayat mutt in central Karnataka, where he underwent a ‘Linga Dharana’ initiation. Soon after, the BJP inducted Lingayat strongman and former Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa into the party’s Parliamentary Board and Central Election Committee. The 79-year-old’s elevation to the two key panels is being viewed as an attempt by the party to soothe the hurt pride of the Lingayat leader after he was forced to step down from the Chief Minister’s post. Days later, former Chief Minister and Leader of the Opposition, Siddaramaiah, who has been accused of attempting to divide the community by supporting a movement for a separate religion status to them in 2017, met the seer of Rambhapuri Mutt, another prominent religious institution. He is believed to have explained to the seer the sequences of events that led to that movement. The KPCC campaign committee head M.B. Patil has also been criss-crossing the State visiting Lingayat mutts.

The Congress’s attempts to woo back Lingayat voters comes at a time when Mr. Yediyurappa’s sway over the community is seen as waning. Observers of Lingayat politics believe that the community stood by him in the past since he had a chance to become the Chief Minister, which will not be the case in the next election.

In a scenario where the Lingayat voter is looking for an alternative, the Congress believes that it is the best choice, given that the JD(S) is perceived as a party of the Vokkaligas. The Congress is said to believe that riding on the combination of votes of the minorities, backward classes, especially the Kurubas, and the Lingayats with a chunk of support from the Scheduled Castes (SCs) would be its best bet to return to power. However, it still has to fight with the JD(S) for the Vokkaliga votes in south Karnataka despite D.K. Shivakumar, a Vokkaliga, helming the KPCC.

For the parties, the politically aware Lingayats remain crucial since an average 60 Veerashaiva-Lingayats have been getting elected as members to the 224–member Assembly since 2008. The community leaders believe that their political clout diminished post 2008 when about eight constituencies that had returned only Lingayat legislators till then were subsumed under other constituencies and about 22 such constituencies were reserved for SCs and Scheduled Tribes in the delimitation exercise. Before that, an average 70 legislators were getting elected to the Assembly. In the reserved constituencies too, Lingayat support is seen as decisive. Even in the battle for Vokkaliga votes in south Karnataka, Lingayats are believed to be decisive in many constituencies in Chamarajanagar, Mysuru, Hassan and Tumakuru. Barring 2013, when Mr. Yediyurappa broke away from BJP to form the Karnataka Janata Paksha, more than 50% of the total Lingayat legislators elected to the Assembly have belonged to the BJP since 2004.

Already battling the anti-incumbency factor with allegations of corruption and weak governance, the BJP government is in a fix over the demand for 2A reservation status by the Panchamasalis, a powerful Lingayat sub-sect, and for the inclusion of all Lingayat sub-sects in the Central OBC list. Observers also believe that the fact that Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, a Lingayat, succeeded Mr. Yediyurappa has not fully satisfied the community. With the parties already in election mode, Lingayat politics is likely to turn crucial like it did in 2013 and 2018.

sharath.srivatsa@thehindu.co.in



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The Congress is looking at a new leadership, but the Gandhis cannot be aloof or meddling

The Congress is all set to be led by someone who is not from the Nehru-Gandhi family, with Rahul Gandhi making it clear that he is in no mood to return as party president. The party will finalise the schedule for organisational elections at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee on Sunday. The family itself is leading the search for the replacement. Mr. Gandhi had resigned as president following the drubbing of the Congress in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. He had led the campaign, and he took responsibility for the failure; but also felt let down by party seniors who he thought did not fight the election with their mind and soul in it. By turning down the pleas of his ardent followers to return to the helm, he has challenged Congress leaders to adopt a new culture, moving away from the familiar habit of relying on the family as the lifeblood and a façade simultaneously. For the Congress party, this challenge is no less than the external challenge of extinction that it faces from the Bharatiya Janata Party. His discomfort with formal power might make him seem a reluctant politician, but he has expressed a desire to be in public life as a matter of his democratic duty.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has emerged as the front runner for the post, for various reasons. Mr. Gehlot is an astute politician, a manager of conflicting interests, and deeply embedded in the Congress structure from the grassroots to the pinnacle. His charm, accessibility, clean image and expertise in heartland politics make him a good fit. He wears his loyalty to the Gandhi family on his sleeve, but remains acceptable to multiple groups within the Congress. If at all there is a contest for the post of party president, that will only enhance the legitimacy of the winner. However, with the Gandhi siblings in active politics, the authority that Mr. Gehlot or anyone else can exercise within the party as president will remain a complicated question. If Mr. Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra continue to remain active decision makers, as they have been in the recent past, the situation could turn out to be chaotic. Mr. Gandhi has done the honourable thing by refusing to buckle under pressure and return as president. But he, his sister, and their mother Mrs. Gandhi, should all have very clearly defined contours of involvement in the functioning of the party. A non-Gandhi at the helm can be a good attempt at rebooting the Congress, but that by itself is no guarantee of its revival. The new president should have the authority, legitimacy and vision to infuse new energy in the party. Ironically, the burden of ensuring that is upon none other than the Gandhi family, who will have to be supportive without being seen as interfering.



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Any mandatory linking of Aadhaarto the voter ID is problematic

One of the clear successes of Indian democracy has been the regular conduct of elections and the relatively high participation of electors in the voting process compared to other countries. Besides the fact that the process is relatively simple with the use of the electronic voting machine, high voter turnout has also been possible due to registration drives by the Election Commission of India (ECI). Periodically, the ECI does face the issue of a cleaning up of electoral rolls due to increases in migrant populations in urban sprawls, demographic changes due to the entry of more eligible voters, besides deaths of older people. But repeated cycles of elections have allowed for a cohesion in this process with voters allowed to register based on proofs of their age and current place of residence. With the increase in the school-educated population, and most Indian citizens living in houses whose addresses are to be mentioned in several identity documents, registering to vote is a relatively easy process. This begs the question as to why election authorities are coercing citizens to mandatorily link registration in voter rolls with their Aadhaar number, as recent reports have indicated. In December 2021, the Lok Sabha passed the Election Laws (Amendment) Bill seeking to link the voter identity card with the Aadhaar number in order to avoid errors such as voter duplication on the electoral roll. But the Government and later, ECI authorities, have insisted that this process would be voluntary.

The Aadhaar number is not a proof of citizenship and is meant to be issued to residents, while only adult citizens who are resident in India are eligible to vote. Instrumentally speaking, matching the Aadhaar number to the electoral roll in order to perform verifications is not a foolproof process. The Internet Freedom Foundation has cited data to show that self-reported errors in the Aadhaar database are higher than those in the electoral database. There is also evidence that Aadhaar-linkage with voter identity cards, as in the Assembly elections in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh recently, for example, led to the arbitrary deletion of eligible voters on a large scale. Besides, with the Aadhaar number now being used to access a variety of services, linking to voter IDs, when aggregated from booth level data, can possibly lead to misuse by agencies that can access them to profile voters based on harvested information. The absence of a data protection law heightens the risk of this possibility as well. Scholars studying elections in various countries have averred that simplicity of design and effectiveness of constitutional institutions such as the ECI have gone a long way in easing voting and setting India apart as an electoral democracy. The insistence on linking Aadhaar with the voter ID militates against these principles. The ECI should limit itself to utilising existing proofs for voter authentication and Aadhaar declaration should remain voluntary.



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Tokyo, Aug. 24: Under a new basic attitude formulated by the Government in regard to the Taiwan question Japan does not intend to remove Taiwan from the scope of “Far East” as defined in the security treaty with the United States as an area in which American forces in Japan will go into action in case of an armed conflict in the area it is reported here to-day. This attitude will be maintained by the Japanese Government. Notwithstanding the speed with which it is going about normalising diplomatic relations with Peking at the cost of its political ties with Taiwan. Under this new basic view Japan’s position would seem to be that in the event of an armed conflict breaking out in the area as soon as Sino-Japanese relations are normalised the U.S. would be permitted to use its forces stationed in Japan to go to Taiwan’s help. In other words, Japan does not want to see Taiwan belong to China simultaneously with normalisation but desires such integration to take place only at some distant date in the future.Observers view this new reported Japanese attitude as a foxy one. According to them by doing so Japan is taking a calculated risk. It can tell the U.S. that it is not resiling from its given pledge to it and yet it would not be facing any imminent risk of being involved in a war because under the existing detente in the Far East there is little chance of any new conflagration breaking out. At the same time it can tell Peking that it was only temporary phase which would soon pass.



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Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro — like Donald Trump, who he seems to have styled himself after – has been described as a “strongman”.

It’s easy to forget, given its current ubiquity, what a curious anomaly modern representative democracy really is. Throughout much of human civilisation, the idea that a group that holds office will voluntarily give up their power — on a principle as capricious as one person-one vote — had little currency. After all, it was only after World War I that many of the West’s so-called liberal democracies granted the franchise to women. The widespread success and acceptance of democratic politics, then, is indeed commendable. And the unfortunate attempts in many parts of the world to undermine the system are disturbing.

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro — like Donald Trump, who he seems to have styled himself after – has been described as a “strongman”. This “strength” has been manifested in statements against vulnerable groups and minorities, LGBTQ persons, Covid-denial and a general lack of respect for institutions. Now, as the election season in the country heats up, Bolsonaro is following a similar script to populists elsewhere, notably Trump: He is gearing up to deny a popular mandate. The president has recently repeatedly questioned Brazil’s election officials and voting machines and said that he will not accept the electoral outcome. Hinting at support from the armed forces, he has told people to “prepare for war” in case the verdict is, in his reckoning, suspect.

“Strongmen”, too often, are too feeble to take on challenges to their power. State power is used to target opponents, and when they do not succumb, they are demonised in the name of popular will. The final irony is when even the popular will —expressed through an election — ceases to be popular enough. Hopefully, Bolsonaro’s grandstanding, while exposing the strongman’s weakness, will not taint Brazil’s politics, come election day.

Arif Mohammed Khan’s outburst against Irfan Habib lowers dignity of his office, dents his own record and reputation



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Of course, Arif Mohammed Khan is far from being the first incumbent of a Raj Bhawan to court controversy.

On Tuesday, two days after he described Kannur University Vice-Chancellor and historian Gopinath Ravindran as a “criminal”, Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan lashed out at the doyen of the Aligarh School of History, Irfan Habib. He called the nonagenarian scholar of medieval India a “goonda”. The immediate provocation for the inelegant outburst seemed to be his disagreements with the VC over university appointments, but Khan was also raking up a three-year-old issue — he was allegedly heckled while inaugurating the Indian History Congress in 2019, in which both academics were present. As Chancellor of Kerala’s universities, the governor has had several run-ins with the state’s LDF government over university governance. The primacy of due process in the management of institutes is incontrovertible. But the Kerala governor should ask himself: Does his intemperate language behove his high office? By insulting two distinguished academics, Khan has made the Kerala Raj Bhawan a participant in the coarsening of public discourse.

Of course, Khan is far from being the first incumbent of a Raj Bhawan to court controversy. Over the decades, the constitutional office of governor has been dented and diminished, mostly by the tug and pull of politics. Red lines drawn by the Supreme Court have been repeatedly transgressed and recommendations by panels such as the Sarkaria and Punchhi Commissions seem to have gone abegging as more and more governors have become embroiled in partisan politics. At the same time, however, examples of gubernatorial high-mindedness, propriety and grace are not far to seek. President Droupadi Murmu’s tenure as Jharkhand governor, for instance, was notable for her playing by the book without being discourteous to the JMM-led state government.

Arif Mohammed Khan’s appointment as Kerala governor had led to expectations of decorum and fair play in the Raj Bhawan’s engagements with an Opposition-ruled government. In the 1980s, Khan emerged as a prominent voice of reform and reason. In later years, even though he changed political affiliation — Congress to Janata Dal to BSP, then BJP —Khan’s reputation as a thinking politician remained intact. Unfortunately, however, not only has Khan’s tenure as Kerala governor belied expectations of injecting sobriety into the Raj Bhawan, he has disappointed with his silences as well – on the remission of the sentences of the 11 convicts in the Bilki Bano case, for instance. The Kerala governor today seems a different person from the young politician who courageously spoke up for women’s rights and defied his party line in the Shah Bano case.



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To begin with, the JD(U)-RJD coalition will need to find a brand new internal equilibrium, one that includes the arithmetic but also goes beyond it

That the new Nitish Kumar government in Bihar would win the floor test was foretold. But the political test for the renewed JD(U)-RJD Mahagathbandhan begins now. A warning has already been sounded by the CBI raids on RJD leaders ahead of the Wednesday test, ostensibly in connection with a “land for jobs” scam dating back to Lalu Prasad’s tenure as Union railway minister in UPA-1. The guilt or innocence of those raided will be proved by due process of law. But the raids’ timing underscores the dismal pattern of the use of central agencies to target political opponents. An aggressive BJP, smarting after losing power overnight, and a vindictive Centre, out to settle political scores, however, are not the only challenges for Nitish and the government he leads with his ally-turned-rival-turned-ally Tejashwi Yadav.

To begin with, the JD(U)-RJD coalition will need to find a brand new internal equilibrium, one that includes the arithmetic but also goes beyond it. The political reality has changed since the last time the two parties were in alliance. While the JD(U) has lost ground under a leader who, despite his many achievements in government, looks more and more dependent on Tejashwi, the RJD has looked increasingly sure-footed under a younger leader who, in the last assembly polls, led it to the edge of victory. Tejashwi is also trying to remake his party — a new code of conduct for RJD ministers that gives them dos and don’ts, ranging from don’t-buy-a-vehicle-for-personal-use-from-public-money to encouraging them to say “namaste” and “adaab” and discourage feudal gestures like feet-touching, shows the vastness of his task, but he has time on his side. The first point of friction, therefore, will lie in the equation between two leaders who come to the alliance from different vantage points — it will demand patience and wisdom from both, and from the younger man especially. Then there is the BJP, which still lacks a face of its own in Bihar, but which, under Modi, is likely to inflate itself into a “double-engine” Opposition — it will not hesitate to use its control over central resources to fight the state government. At the same time, the Nitish-Tejashwi duo will have to pass the governance test. Bihar has shown improvements in the years of Nitish raj, but it still lags behind other states on economic and social indicators. The heated protests by aspiring teachers and the images of lathi charge on them by the police and an additional district magistrate on Monday show the long haul ahead.

The renewed Bihar Mahagathbandhan, therefore, will have to address unemployment and other issues, while facing a BJP that is looking for a chance, and also dealing with the heightened expectations from them at the level of the national Opposition, where their coming together has sparked off a frisson. As Nitish and his young deputy get going, then, they must know they have no time to lose. They are being watched, and much is at stake. How they perform and deliver beginning today will also decide whether their Mission 2024 is anything more than a pie in the political sky.



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Pallav Shishodia writes: Judicial interpretations shift with time and context. The next shift in PMLA jurisprudence will hopefully be more pro-citizen

The Vijay Madanlal (2022) judgment, which held the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) as valid law, is open for review/reconsideration in Karti Chidambaram with the extension of interim protection by the Supreme Court on August 25. This is a welcome exercise for some and somewhat baffling for others.

William O’ Douglas, an eminent jurist, author and a “Wild Bill” judge who served on the US Supreme Court for 36 years, recounted in his memoirs how, in the highest constitutional court, the judges first decide issues based on “gut feeling” and then employ rhetoric to justify their decision. While this rhetoric is mostly well researched, brilliantly articulated and finely crafted, it is predominantly an emotional bias that does the trick. These judicial emotions, not to be mistaken for some kind of sinister motives or individual whims, are very complex for lawyers and academicians to unravel. The public can get confounded when these emotions shift like sand.

Recently, in Dobbs, on the right to abortion, the argument that resonated with US Supreme Court against its own 1973 judgment was that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.” Its reasoning is “exceptionally weak” with “dangerous consequences” to inflame “debate and deep divisions” in society. The court came to an “inescapable” conclusion that the “right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions”. Nor can it be established in a broader concept of liberty under the 14th Amendment in the guise of “privacy” or “choice and autonomy”. It concluded that the right to abortion cannot be an integral part of “ordered liberty” because while “individuals are free to think and say what they wish” they are “not free to act in accordance with those thoughts”.

One wonders how the most influential court of the most powerful nation on earth was so fundamentally wrong for the last 50 years. Or was it really so?

There are several examples at home and abroad where judicial interpretations have taken diametrically opposite turns to make judicial opinions appear fungible as per time, context and expediency. Or, at times, changes occur due to a clash of ideologies or adherence to higher ideals or simply due to the advent of new ideas.

Back home, in Nikesh Tarachand (2017), the Supreme Court of India gave primacy to life, liberty and fair procedure guaranteed as fundamental rights under our Constitution for grant of bail pending trial to accused arrested for money laundering. It noted that the spread of PMLA is now too wide to cover the violation of laws regarding copyright, trademark, SEBI, child labour, bonded labour, emigration, passport, environment, air and water pollution, plant protection, antiquities, IT & privacy and cheating and prostitution. It cited the example of an offence under the Biological Diversity Act 2002 being treated as a predicate offence to find that alleged money laundering with such acts cannot be considered “so serious” that the accused satisfies the court with the stringent “twin conditions” before pre-trial bail.

In Vijay Madanlal, this decision was reversed to avert the dangers of a “soft state” where there is an “unholy nexus between lawmaker, the law keeper and lawbreaker”.

It disapproved of the “drastic provision which turns on its head the presumption of innocence which is fundamental to a person accused of any offence”. It cautioned that “we must be doubly sure” before the application of any law that makes drastic inroads into the fundamental right of personal liberty that “there is a compelling state interest in tackling crimes of an extremely heinous nature.” It negated analogies with terror or drug offences under TADA, MCOCA or NDPS. Thus, a “manifestly arbitrary” section 45 of PMLA, insofar as it imposes two further conditions for release on bail during the trial was declared unconstitutional.

In Vijay Madanlal, this decision was reversed to avert the dangers of a “soft state” where there is an “unholy nexus between lawmaker, the law keeper and lawbreaker”. Its major premise is to equate offences of money laundering (irrespective of the nature of the predicate offence) with narcotic drugs and terrorism. It disagreed with “utmost humility” that “the offence of money laundering is less heinous than the offence of terror” and that “there is no compelling state interest in tackling offence of money laundering.” The court disapproved of the notion that “community view(s) economic offender with a permissive eye, although the impact of the offence is way greater than that of the offence of murder.” Despite relatively fewer number of terror cases with a poor conviction rate under PMLA, it reposed trust in the discretion of high-ranking officials. The wider spread of the PMLA to lesser predicate offences is accepted in deference to legislative wisdom. It rejected as a logical corollary other arguments and negated procedural safeguards such as the presumption of innocence, supply of ECIR and inadmissibility of a statement before investigative authorities.

The validity of the PMLA was examined even though as per Rojer Mathew, a larger bench is needed to consider whether the 2019 amendments to the PMLA — including provisions to overcome the earlier judgment in Nikesh Tarachand – could have been passed as a Money Bill. The chasm is widened between proponents of human rights, personal liberties and fair procedure and those betting on a strong executive, more coercive powers to investigative agencies and pervasive police vigil. The critics’ view is that though the ADM Jabalpur was buried six fathoms deep, its avatars float free.

Maybe the next shift in the sands of judicial interpretations turns out more pro-citizen.

The writer is a senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India



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Government's strategy appears to be to coerce Imran Khan to adopt a more reasonable posture with the threat of disqualification from holding public office. This could backfire

Pakistan is on the edge again. Its economy is broken and Imran Khan is threatening to set the house on fire if the army leadership does not pave his way back to power. Three factors underlying its dysfunctional state have brought about this situation.

First, the Pakistani economy, prone to periodic crises because of its structural problems — notably the burdens imposed by its adversarial posture against India — has been hit hard by the pandemic and the Ukraine war. Inflation is high, the Pakistan rupee has nosedived, foreign exchange reserves are worth about six weeks’ imports and nearly $40 billion borrowing is required to meet the external financing needs in the current financial year. The Shehbaz Sharif government has had to take unpopular steps to secure the much-needed revival of the IMF Extended Fund Facility (EFF). The disbursal of these funds has been suspended because the Imran Khan government did not fulfil the stipulated conditions. A nod from the IMF Executive Board is awaited later this month.

Chances are that Pakistan will scrape through again, with the Board giving its approval, thereby de-blocking funding from other sources as well — the anxieties of the international community over an economic meltdown in an already highly troubled state make this likely. There are also signs of another transactional equation between Pakistan and the US. They include General Qamar Bajwa’s talks with the Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman to seek help in expediting the IMF approval. It’s also likely that Bajwa may have given assurances on Afghanistan – there are reports of Pakistan’s help in Ayman al-Zawahiri’s killing. The visit of the CENTCOM commander to Islamabad after an 18-month gap and the reported supply of military stores by Pakistan for Ukraine also signals the possibility of a Pak-US equation.

Second, gross interference of the military leadership in the country’s political processes has led to a serious political crisis, which threatens the path to economic recovery. Army chief Bajwa got Nawaz Sharif ousted from power through a dubious accountability process in 2017, heavily aided Imran Khan’s victory in the 2018 election and sustained him in power for close to four years. Finally, disenchanted with Imran, Bajwa got him voted out by getting the smaller parties supporting him – they are beholden to the army — to abandon the former PM, and brought in the Shehbaz Sharif coalition. Things have not panned out as expected by Bajwa or Shehbaz. Imran’s popularity has grown and his party, the PTI, has won hands down in the by-elections in the Punjabi heartland in July. Khan’s narrative — he was ousted by the army at the behest of a foreign power (US) because of his independent foreign policy — and description of his opponents as a bunch of corrupt politicians seems to go down well with the middle classes and youth, among whom he already enjoyed considerable traction. The recent findings of illegal foreign funding of the PTI have not impacted his support base. Worse still for Bajwa, Imran is reported to enjoy support in sections of the army’s rank and file and amongst some serving and retired generals. Shehbaz’s PML(N) finds itself carrying the burden of unpopular economic decisions. Its charismatic vote-getter, Nawaz Sharif, continues to be in exile.

Third, Pakistan’s politics of revenge has added fuel to the political firestorm. Imran, when in office, hounded his opponents through accountability cases, most of which made no headway. The Shehbaz government seems intent on paying him back in his own coin by pursuing the foreign funding case. One of his senior aides was arrested recently for remarks, allegedly aimed at dividing the army, in a TV appearance — the TV channel concerned was taken off the air. A ban has been imposed on the live telecast of Imran’s speeches. A case of terrorism has been registered against him for his remarks during a public address threatening senior police officers and a judge. Therefore, he could be arrested. He has responded by building a wall of his supporters around his residence on the outskirts of Islamabad.

Where do things go from here? The solution could lie in an election. However, the aspirations of the key actors are at odds with each other. Riding a wave of popularity, Imran Khan is demanding an immediate election, backed by the threat of mass agitation. It is not clear if General Bajwa harbours ambitions after completing his tenure in November. But if he does, he may have to manage his army family. He would like to ensure at the very least the appointment of a successor, who would protect him after retirement, even if Imran Khan returns to power. The PML(N) and its principal coalition partners wish to stay in power till the second half of 2023, when the election is normally due. The PML(N)’s hope would be to see the return of Nawaz Sharif and the hardship imposed by the government’s tough economic measures ease substantially by then so that it is in a position to give some sops to people.

The strategy of the government, backed by Bajwa, appears to be to coerce Imran Khan to adopt a more reasonable posture with the threat of disqualification from holding public office — much like Nawaz Sharif — on the charges of foreign funding of his party and terrorism. But this could backfire, making him more popular. Much would also depend upon the stance of the next army chief who would be free of the burden of long years of incumbency. Notwithstanding the resentment of political players, including Imran Khan, against the army’s interference in political affairs, the army continues to have a central place in their calculations. Greater political uncertainty and turmoil seem almost certain in Pakistan in the coming weeks and months. Pakistan has been here before but has carried on. The current crisis might also end sometime soon. However, Pakistan will continue to face such situations again and again till it resolves its dysfunctionality.

The writer is a former diplomat and author of the recently released book, India’s Pakistan Conundrum: Managing a Complex Relationship



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Rama Srinivasan writes: Men in the Netflix show, Indian Matchmaking, often appear to be frozen in time. But the women, even in their self-absorption, are refreshingly confident.

In the second season of Masaba Masaba, the eponymous character snaps at her mother – the unparalleled Neena Gupta – claiming that social mores have changed since the time the latter was young. Exasperated, Neena replies that they have not changed all that much. Whether Indians (in India and elsewhere) have changed and, if yes, how much is the question that plagued me through the second season of Indian Matchmaking – also a show about lonely 30-somethings who play exaggerated versions of themselves on camera.

This ponderous sequel to a very polarising first season showcases how marriage is – and has always been – an economic institution. Due to large-scale economic transformations or migration patterns, marriages can no longer be arranged the way they used to be and, yet, young women and men today have neither found alternatives to the institution nor adequately questioned the utility of marriage in their lives.

Having faced disappointments in their dating forays – another market where disillusionments are well documented – they seek to return, at least in some ways, to the world of arranged marriages that appears to offer more guarantees. In most of the narratives, however, the lines between dating and hunting for spouses are blurred. While this is a constant source of frustration for our matchmaker, Sima Taparia, who only deals with marriages, from the participants’ point of view it makes perfect sense. They believe they no longer have the luxury to date someone who does not also seek marriage (and children) at some point in the future, but closing the deal off quickly is not on their minds either. The women, in particular, have strong personalities and, having experienced personal freedom thanks to professional successes, they are unwilling to settle for a “compromise” marriage.

Dating and hunting for a spouse need not be a mutually exclusive process and the show manages to highlight that Taparia’s wisdom and experience may well come in handy in guiding young people through the stressful world of dating. In her old-fashioned way, Taparia warns Nadia, one of the more popular clients, that the young man she is dating will likely be too immature and is proved right. But Taparia does not see herself as a dating guru despite many of the participants treating her as one.

She has a unique, albeit cynical, view on how relationships are forged. It is far from romantic and ironically closer to the feminist critiques of Western romantic love than what some of wokish clients espouse. Romantic love gives women a semblance of control over their relationships – in consenting to or rejecting a proposal – but robs them of agency by promoting the idea that women need to passively wait for grand gestures from men. While Nadia waits to be swept off her feet by the stoic man Taparia has matched her with, the latter is more matter-of-fact about the fact women need to take initiative and generally be more clear-sighted about what they seek from life and life partners.

Our matchmaker undoubtedly subscribes to patriarchal scripts but she is also a professional working in a market that primarily caters to men, the prospective grooms. In India, where she purportedly did/does most of her work, the female employment rate is less than 20 per cent and, according to the latest CMIE data, only 16 per cent of adult women were employed in the last quarter of 2020. Whether or not Indian women hold views similar to their seemingly more confident and successful Indian-American counterparts from the show, Taparia’s advice to compromise and the watering down of preferences may play a larger role in Indian settings.

What this show then provides is a social experiment as well: If Indian women lived in a world where they were not forced to make choiceless decisions, would they take the same calls? More importantly, will they have the courage to make mistakes and bounce back with a little more than a bruised heart?

The only Indian client in India for this season is a 38-year-old man, who remains single despite seeming wealth and privilege. He blithely blames his city of residence for his predicament, a conceit in which Taparia indulges him. She even offers up a more juicy excuse — a curse of some kind. She does not ask him to compromise or call him superficial, which is part of her repertoire when it comes to handling women. She understands her job as one that caters to the man; difficult male clients are a professional challenge while difficult women are themselves the problem.

With the Indian-American women, she is visibly out of her depth. There is an uncomfortable gap that she seeks to fill with unhelpful lectures and meme-worthy eye rolls. As one of the former clients, Aparna, mentions in passing, you need to date the matchmaker as well as the match so they need to be your type. While clients like Nadia make the effort with Taparia, it is incredible that she herself has gone through several years with this set of clients without compromising and adjusting to their ways. Her patience for both the women and the men wears thin as the season plods on.

Taparia’s lack of success underlines the conflict between Neena and Masaba Gupta. Her approach is suited for a world where arrogant, self-centred men do not invest in personal growth because the women are guaranteed to make unfavourable choices. While the world has changed and so must our intimate relationships, how much has the world really changed? Men in this show often appear to be frozen in time while the women, even in their self-absorption, are refreshingly confident. As a recent Psychology Today article argued, dating opportunities for heterosexual men are diminishing due to a rise in relationship standards and, if Indian Matchmaking is to be believed, not even the arranged marriage route is coming to their rescue.

The writer is an anthropologist and the author of Courting Desire: Litigating for Love in North India



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Christophe Jaffrelot writes: Hope and justice for the victims were possible because the Supreme Court played an active role. Things seem to have changed.

The remission of the life sentences of the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case comes as a powerful reminder of a key dimension of the post-2002 Gujarat violence scenario — the guilty men and women went to jail only because of the then Supreme Court.

Bilkis, who was five months pregnant when she was gang raped by neighbours on March 3, 2002, after witnessing the murder of 15 members of her family including her three-year-old daughter, had tried to lodge a complaint the following day for rape and murder. While recording her complaint, the police only mentioned seven of the deaths, claiming that the bodies of the other people could not be found, and refused to record her complaint for rape. The case was closed in January 2003 for lack of evidence.

Bilkis, with the support of several NGOs, including Janvikas and the National Human Rights Commission, petitioned the Supreme Court (SC), which ordered the government of Gujarat to reopen the case in September 2003. The police then began a campaign of moral harassment, even waking her in the middle of the night to return to the location of the rape and murders to re-enact the events. In December 2003, the SC directed the CBI to reopen the case. It finally arrested 12 people for rape and murder and six police officers for obstruction of justice. Facing threats, Bilkis sought the transfer of the case in July, to which the SC agreed and a public prosecutor was appointed by the Centre in August 2004. Eventually, the case was tried in Mumbai and in 2008, 13 of the 20 accused were convicted, with 11 of them being given life sentences.

The SC did not stop there. The Best Bakery Case, named for a bakery in Vadodara where 14 people were burnt alive on March 1, 2002, had persuaded the apex court that, in this case too, victims would not get justice in Gujarat. On April 12, 2004, invalidating the High Court decision, the Court ordered a retrial outside Gujarat and took the government, police and High Court of Gujarat to task: “When the investigating agency helps the accused, the witnesses are threatened to depose falsely and the prosecutor acts in a manner as if he was defending the accused, while the Court was acting merely as an onlooker, there is no fair trial at all and justice becomes the victim…”

A retrial was held in Mumbai starting in October 2004. In February 2006, based on incriminating evidence gathered by the CBI (which was finally charged with the investigation), nine of the 17 accused were given life sentences.

At the same time, the SC considered that 1,594 cases should be reopened. Over 600 accused were thus arrested. This action, however, did not take the judicial process very far due to the obstructionist practices of the Gujarat government. Therefore, in March 2008, the Supreme Court appointed a Special Investigation Team whose terms of reference, outlined by the court in May 2009, restored the victims’ hopes, even though this new body was called on to concentrate on only a half-dozen cases, which amounted to admitting that full justice was impossible: Naroda Patiya, Naroda Gam, Gulbarg Society, Sardarpura, Dipda Darwaja, Sabarkantha, Ode and Godhra.

However, the SIT refused to make use of recordings of the telephone conversations that took place during the riots between police officers, senior civil servants and Sangh Parivar leaders. Secondly, it left the vast majority of the accused out on bail and made no systematic effort to protect the witnesses who, subjected to alleged intimidation, turned hostile in large numbers.

The SC called the SIT to order and attempted to put the investigation back on track. A few trials could finally take place. The first one concerned the burning of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra: 31 accused were found guilty and 11 of them — a record — were sentenced to death, while 20 others to life imprisonment. The second trial concerned the Sardarpura case, in which a special court sentenced 31 persons to life imprisonment, and acquitted 42 others in 2011. In the two Ode cases, in 2012, 27 of the accused were found guilty of murder and criminal conspiracy and sentenced to life imprisonment. In the Naroda Patiya case, in 2012, a special trial court acquitted 29 people and convicted 32 others of murder, criminal conspiracy and rape. And 22 were sentenced to a minimum of 14 years of imprisonment, seven to a minimum of 21 years; Maya Kodnani – a former member of the first Modi government in Gujarat — to 28 years (including 18 years under the charge of murder) and Babu Bajrangi — a VHP leader — to life imprisonment.

In the Gulbarg Society case, after receiving the SIT report in May 2010, the SC submitted it to an amicus curiae, Raju Ramachandran, who submitted a 10-page report, which led the Court to direct the SIT to investigate further. In 2011, in its judgment regarding the petition by Zakia Jafri, the Court, while it decided to cease monitoring the case, directed the trial court to decide whether the 63 persons mentioned in the petition — including Narendra Modi — had to be probed. This judgment was celebrated by the BJP as a clean chit, whereas, for some other people it meant that “trial court is now to ‘begin’”. Indeed, when a closure report was submitted to it, the SC did not close the case and in September 2013 Zakia Jafri made a final submission.

Things changed a few months later, not only because the Government of India changed, but because the Supreme Court’s approach appeared to have changed too. Many people who had been sentenced to heavy penalties — including Kodnani and Bajrangi — were liberated, like the 11 convicts of the Bilkis Bano case. The Supreme Court, which is not seen to oppose the government anymore, kept all these balls in its court.

(The writer is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s India Institute, London, and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)



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Sanjib Baruah writes: Can a democracy – even the world’s leading one – make itself safe against its voters and the politicians they elect?

“These are dark times for our nation”. This was the deceptive but perhaps unwittingly accurate opening line of the email that former president Donald Trump wrote earlier this month telling the world about the search of his home in Palm Beach, Florida by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “My beautiful home”, he said, “is currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before”.

The FBI action was not a “raid”; it was the lawful execution of a search warrant. The search was in connection with a criminal investigation of classified White House documents that Trump apparently took to Florida when he left office. The investigation has been going on for months; the decision to seek a search warrant from a federal magistrate was made only after efforts to get the material using less invasive methods had failed.

Once upon a time, most Americans would have welcomed such a move to enforce the law. It would have been taken as a sign of the health of their democracy, a validation of the American ideal that no one is above the law. But these are not normal times. The news of the “FBI raid” sparked anger among Trump supporters and his allies in the media. The rhetoric of violence escalated in pro-Trump online forums. Republican politicians, including contenders for the party’s nomination for president in 2024, quickly rallied around Trump. His reelection prospects shot up.

Trump, a master at shaping media conversations, lost no time to gain the upper hand in shaping the narrative. That the FBI or the Justice Department — under which the FBI operates — does not as a rule discuss ongoing investigations, gave him an opening. Trump, or his lawyer who was present at his home during the search, could have made public the search warrant and the list of items that was seized. This they did not do.

Instead, Trump politicised the search to appeal to his loyal followers who continue to repeat his false claim that he was fraudulently denied re-election. Nowhere in his lengthy email did Trump add the adjective “former” before president to refer to his present status.

By the end of the week, following a Justice Department request, a federal judge unsealed the documents related to the search. Now we know that the warrant was issued because of possible serious violations of the Espionage Act and laws governing official secrets. The seized documents include some categorised as so  secret and sensitive because of potential damage to national security, that they were to be viewed only in a secure government facility.

Yet, Trump called the FBI search “the weaponisation of the Justice System”, and a desperate attempt by Democrats to stop him from running for president. “The establishment”, he said conspiratorially, was trying to stop him now because of a string of victories of pro-Trump candidates in Republican primaries, and opinion polls showing that Republicans will make gains in the November mid-term elections, and others showing that Trump would beat Joe Biden in a hypothetical rematch in 2024.

It is indeed remarkable that nearly two years after Biden won, in the face of all contrary evidence and multiple failed legal attempts to challenge the outcome, many Republicans continue to say that the last presidential election was rigged. Quite a few Trump-backed candidates have won Republican primaries. They are all election-deniers, that is, they push the debunked claims about electoral fraud, and they consider Biden’s victory to be illegitimate. The latest and most significant among them is Harriet Hageman, who overwhelmingly defeated Representative Liz Cheney, who became a target of Trump’s ire because of her highly visible role as vice chair of the congressional panel investigating the attack on the Capitol on January 6 last year.

The US homeland security bureaucracy uses the terms “violent extremism” or “domestic terrorism” to describe political violence perpetrated by American citizens inside the country. However, the use of these terms for the January 6 events has proved controversial. Many Republican politicians call the violent protesters “peaceful patriots”.

Domestic terrorism or violent extremism may be useful terms for policing agencies. But they don’t explain the support and sympathy for the insurrectionists among large sections of the people including Republican members of Congress. For that it may be rewarding to turn to a constellation of beliefs, values, and political attitudes that has come to be called “white Christian nationalism”. Christian in this usage is an identity category; it is not about faith or church attendance. The “we” in this worldview consists of white, native-born, and culturally Christian Americans.

In their recent book The Flag and the Cross, sociologists Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry suggest that white Christian nationalism is a significant driver of the support for Trump, his rhetoric of resentment, and his authoritarian and anti-democratic impulses. It is no accident that Christian symbolism and icons of American patriotism and of white supremacy were on full display at the January 6 Capitol siege. These apparently contradictory symbols stand in for different facets of white Christian nationalism.

The Flag and the Cross provides clues to why the stolen election myth has been so resilient. White Christian nationalists make a distinction between people they view as “real Americans” and those that are not. Since “real Americans” voted for Trump, official results showing that he lost can only be the product of manipulation and fraud. The geography of voting patterns helps reinforce this belief. Detailed maps of poll results suggest that many Republican voters live in communities that are almost entirely Republican. To people who may not know a single person who voted for Biden — and don’t trust the institutions of election administration in other jurisdictions — a Biden victory may indeed seem suspicious.

These are dark times for democracy. The last few weeks in American politics raise a deeper question: Can a democracy — even the world’s leading one — make itself safe against its voters and the politicians they elect?

The writer is professor of Political Studies at Bard College, New York



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D Sivanandhan writes: Luckily, the unmanned boat that drifted to Maharashtra from the Gulf of Oman posed no danger. But how did it elude Indian Navy, Coast Guard and the police?

The entire rank and file of the Mumbai police, Maharashtra police, central agencies, Indian navy, and the Coast Guard went into a tizzy last week when an unmanned yacht reached the shores of Harihareshwar in Raigad district of Maharashtra. Local fishermen saw the boat and immediately informed the police. A day later, the Mumbai Traffic Police’s WhatsApp helpline number received messages warning that a “26/11-like terror attack” will soon be executed in Mumbai. The messages also claimed that there was a plan to blow up the city.

When a team of police officials reached Harihareshwar and checked the 16-metre-yacht, they found a cache of arms which included three deadly AK-47 assault rifles, some small arms, live ammunition, and some papers. Immediately, Maharashtra and other states were put on the highest alert, as the ghost of the audacious 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai raised its ugly head.

As per the statement given by Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister (DCM) Devendra Fadnavis, who also is the home minister, in the state assembly, the boat is called Lady Han and belongs to an Australian woman Hana Laundergun. She and her husband, James Hobert, who is a captain, were going to Muscat from Europe, when the boat’s engine got damaged in the middle of the ocean and they gave a call for help. A South Korean warship rescued the couple but since their boat was a small one, it could not be rescued in the rough weather.

According to a statement given by the Coast Guard, the yacht had made a distress call on June 26, it had a UK flag, and four sailors were rescued from the ocean.

Investigating the terror warnings received on WhatsApp, the Mumbai Police and ATS immediately started their investigations and reportedly detained a person from Virar. An initial probe revealed that the number from which the messages were sent had the country code of Pakistan. The Maharashtra ATS has been given the charge of investigating the matter. The police and authorities heaved a combined sigh of relief when initial investigations indicated that prima facie there was no terror angle to the incident and that the WhatsApp messages seemed to be fake. The question is: How did an unmanned and armed boat reach the shores of Maharashtra?

The incident has all the markings of the November 26, 2008, terror attacks, which resulted in the killing of more than 150 innocents and injuring hundreds in Mumbai. Ten heavily armed Pakistani terrorists, military and commando trained by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and ISI, entered Mumbai via the sea route and caused havoc and devastation for 60 hours. Several brave officers from the Mumbai police, including the then ATS chief Hemant Karkare, Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte, and Inspector Vijay Salaskar were martyred while fighting the terrorists. Mohammad Ajmal Kasab was caught alive thanks to the valiant effort by a martyred and brave constable from Mumbai Police – Tukaram Omble.

These terror attacks had left all our state and central agencies embarrassed. A special committee – the Ram Pradhan Committee – was formed to investigate what went wrong before and during the attacks. The committee in its report mentioned that there was a clear lack of coordination between state and central intelligence and investigation agencies, including the defence forces.

Based on the recommendations of the Committee, it was decided that heads of all state and central agencies, including the defence agencies, will meet at least once in six months to ensure that there is proper and seamless flow of information and intelligence between agencies. However, it is shocking and pitiful that in the past 13 years, this meeting has happened only once, in 2009.

After the 26/11 attacks, the Maharashtra state government along with the central government had taken several important measures to ensure that a similar attack doesn’t take place ever again. The coastal police was set up to man the 770-kilometre Maharashtra coastline. In Mumbai, coastal police stations have been established. Amphibian vehicles costing crores of rupees were purchased. But these vehicles today are no longer functional due to lack of proper maintenance.

According to initial information, the unmanned yacht that found its way to Maharashtra was abandoned in the Gulf of Oman on June 26. This means that this unmanned and armed vessel had been adrift for 53 days and travelled roughly 900 nautical miles (approximately 1,500 kilometres) crossing the international waters, entered the Indian waters, dodged the Indian Navy’s surveillance, managed to escape being stopped by the Indian Coast Guard and slipped through Maharashtra’s Coastal Police dragnet and reached the Harihareshwar shore.

This is exactly how Kasab and his team had entered Mumbai, by first travelling in a ship provided by the ISI from Pakistan to international waters. They then hijacked an Indian fishing trawler named – Kuber, killed its crew and abducted the owner. They entered the Indian waters in the Kuber, and hoodwinked the Indian navy and Coast Guard’s surveillance. As they reached the sea near Mumbai, they killed the owner and abandoned the boat and hopped onto two inflated rubber boats, attached with Yamaha engines, and sailed towards the shore undetected.

One can only shudder thinking about what could have happened if the yacht had been a manned and armed boat. It is now quite clear that, unfortunately, no lessons have been learnt from the astounding failures of 26/11.

The writer was Director General of Police (DGP) , Maharashtra, Police Commissioner of Mumbai & chief of the elite Mumbai Crime Branch. He was also Joint Director of CBI and IB



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John Brittas writes: Centre’s stranglehold over states is leading to a breakdown of trust between the two

One may call it much ado about a candy that half the country hasn’t even heard about, but the acrimony about “revdi culture” has only helped rev up the debate on the existential crisis looming over the cooperative federalism envisaged by our founding fathers. The Supreme Court should, in all its earnestness, turn its attention to the plaque of opaqueness that has accumulated over Centre-state relations instead of so-called freebies. It’s time the country and its opinion makers understood the Centre’s stranglehold over states on almost all fronts, which is leading to a breakdown of trust between the two “partners”.

The framers of our Constitution were aware of the apprehensions raised when India embraced a federal structure with strong unitary features. But they would have never dreamt of a situation where trumpeting unilateralism is hailed as some kind of a good governance model.

It’s interesting to recall how Jawaharlal Nehru defended the unitary slant of our polity. “It would be injurious to the interests of the country to provide for a weak central authority which would be incapable of ensuring peace, of coordinating vital matters of common concern and of speaking effectively for the whole country in the international sphere.” But B R Ambedkar assured the Constituent Assembly: “The Constitution is a federal Constitution…The Union is not a league of states…nor are the states the agencies of the Union, deriving powers from it. Both the Union and the states are created by the Constitution, both derive their respective authority from the Constitution.”

I will restrict this article to fiscal federalism since “revdi culture” is the focal point of the debate although the process of centralisation is now all-pervasive. Over the years, the very nature of fiscal transfer has become thoroughly centralised. For a long time, the Planning Commission and Finance Commission were the cardinal pillars of Centre-state relations on the fiscal front. But the ushering in of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the scrapping of the Planning Commission and non-adherence to Finance Commission recommendations have led to an asymmetrical framework.

The GST that was once hailed as a milestone for cooperative federalism is now touted as a manifestation of the growing dependence of the states on the Centre. When the Planning Commission was disbanded to make way for the Niti Aayog, all the powers of allocation of resources to states were passed on to the Ministry of Finance. Consequently, even the pretence of an objective allocation of resources to states has disappeared, and all decisions were rendered ad-hoc. Under the Planning Commission, the Gadgil formula was used to allocate funds to states. However, after 2015, transfers to states are determined based not on any formula but purely political exigencies.

Consequently, the federal foundations of the Indian polity were also enormously weakened. The National Development Council (NDC), where the prime minister used to regularly meet the chief ministers, has long been abolished. Instead, CMs were made members of the governing council of the Niti Aayog. This was neither a substitute for the discussions between the planning bodies of state governments and the Planning Commission, nor the discussions in the NDC. Even the occasional visits of Niti Aayog members to states have been reduced to a formality: No serious policy discussion, leave alone decision-making, takes place during these visits.

The concerns of CMs over the dwindling state revenues raised in the recently held Niti Aayog meeting presided over by the PM needs to be taken in its right perspective. It’s the states that deal with the broad range of aspirations of the people on the ground. As per the 15th Finance Commission, states bear more than 62 per cent of expenditure responsibilities but are given only 37 per cent of revenue raising power, while the Union government owns 63 per cent of revenue raising power to spend on 38 per cent of its expenditure responsibilities.

The share of cesses and surcharges, as percentage of gross tax revenue, has more than doubled: From 6.26 per cent in 2010-11 to almost 20 per cent in 2021-22. Moreover, the Comptroller and Auditor General ( CAG) has pulled up the Centre as it failed to transfer a substantial portion of the money collected from cesses and surcharges to the designated funds which ensures that they are used for the intended purpose. The very idea of a cess is being turned on its head.

Interestingly, whenever confronted with this stark reality Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman goes on the offensive saying that the Centre distributes these to states via central schemes. She doesn’t realise the fact that states are not merely implementing agencies of central schemes. The Constitution empowers the states to conceive schemes to provide sustenance and relief to people. And every study proves that state government schemes are more innovative and appropriate to the targeted groups.

Non-adherence to the recommendations of its own finance commissions is the tipping point in the chaotic Centre-state relations. Despite the last two successive Finance Commissions pegging the share of states in gross taxes to over 40 per cent, the actual transfer never reached this prescribed level. The peak was 36.6 per cent in FY19 and it fell to a meagre 29 per cent subsequently. In effect, the actual share of states has only shrunk.

The Centre invited rebuke when it turned a recent all-party meeting convened to discuss the Sri Lankan issue into a podium to “discipline” states on the fiscal front. Ironically, the Centre’s debt burden has shot up from Rs 53 lakh crore to Rs 136 lakh crore since 2015 but it considers states imprudent in fiscal management. The Centre’s record is even worse on the fiscal deficit front and off-budget borrowing, but the propensity to find faults with states has become a permanent feature.

India is at a crossroads today and the need of the hour is cohesion and not confusion. We need unity and not uniformity, assimilation not extinction. The Narendra Modi government has to find a new narrative instead of usurping the powers of the states and crying foul at the same time.

John Brittas is a Rajya Sabha Member from CPI(M)



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China’s southwestern regions battled fires this week following a severe heat wave, putting their autumn harvest under pressure. Europe last month experienced heatwaves and wildfires and further west, the US government has for the first time ever declared a water shortage on the critical Colorado River. Parts of India experienced a severe heatwave in March, which shrunk the wheat output. True, the southwest monsoon hasn’t disappointed. With a cumulative rainfall of 71cm till August 24, it’s 9% above normal. And the storage level in 143 major reservoirs till August 18 was 125% of the last decade’s average water level. At a regional level, however, rainfall has been deficient across a vast swathe from UP to Bengal. While the gap has narrowed recently in Bengal, the dry spell in July-August is bound to adversely impact the national paddy output.

There’s a strong link between paddy and water shortage – because it’s a water guzzling crop. So the message from climate change in this context is, get smart about how you use water. The telling statistic is that India has 17% of the world’s population and 4% of its water resources. Irrigation takes up 90% of the country’s groundwater draft. And Indian farmers use two to four times more water to produce a unit of grain as compared to China and Brazil – a terrible waste. This has serious environmental consequences too. A study by Nabard and ICRIER showed that paddy and sugarcane, which use more than 60% of the irrigation water available, are often cultivated in the most water-scarce regions.

Clearly, India’s cultivation patterns are out of sync with its resource endowments. And states will have to change habits. To illustrate, Punjab is unsuitable for paddy but it also has yields well above the world average. Therefore, policies that incentivise farmers in Punjab to move to less water-intensive crops need to be complemented by higher yields in eastern India. And whatever the policy, it can’t ignore the criticality of price as a signal to incentivise farmers. Market-responsive prices reflect scarcity of resources. For example, free electricity incentivises more borewells, which make water seem more abundant than it actually is. Allowing prices to reflect scarcity doesn’t mean governments cannot provide cash subsidies. India, however, can no longer afford in-kind subsidies that distort prices. Prices work better than exhortations.



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A big, bad change is afoot at India’s biggest tourist attraction, with ASI planning to shutter ticket windows at Taj Mahal, leaving visitors no way in except online bookings. But have the wizards who came up with this plan to trim the crowd considered how many citizens it would hurt? The monument’s website says that of the 7-8 million visitors it attracts annually, only around 0.8 million are from overseas. Indians from all parts and classes of the country make up the numbers. Many have little experience with online booking. Many may also be arriving via public transport, with little surety of making it to a fixed time slot. They deserve to enjoy Incredible India as much as internet savvy folks.

It’s well-established that individuals pay a price for over-digitalisation, say, via constantly and compulsively checking social media. For public services the case is similar. In well-calibrated amounts, digitalisation does governance a world of good. But when it becomes an end in itself, the poorest citizens bear the brunt. A distressing example is how the app launched to cut MGNREGA corruption by taking geo-tagged, photographed, real-time attendance is penalising workers who find smartphones too expensive or the network too unstable. The same ordeal has been reported with an app launched for anganwadi staff. Forget any gains, affected citizens find themselves painfully worse off than before.

Another example: India couldn’t have fully vaccinated 68% of its population against Covid by relying on CoWIN alone. Of course, the portal was a convenience boon for numerous Indians, but the rest were far more comfortable with walk-ins. India simply is not rich/developed/digital enough yet to kill off analogue options. Public service delivery should not be shaped by technocratic dogma. Keep ticket counters at Taj open.



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The haircuts that banks have to take relative to their admitted claims is 69%. This implies an average of Rs 69 going towards losses for every Rs 100 of their claims admitted for resolution under the bankruptcy code.

Banks are reportedly continuing to take steep haircuts in the resolution of bad loans. This is disconcerting. Latest data by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) for the end of June 30 showed that of the total claims of Rs 7.67 lakh crore in about 517 cases, creditors have realised around Rs 2.35 lakh crore through resolution plans. The haircuts that banks have to take relative to their admitted claims is 69%. This implies an average of Rs 69 going towards losses for every Rs 100 of their claims admitted for resolution under the bankruptcy code. This should improve, as the public policy goal of the insolvency resolution is to maximise the value of the asset being resolved, minimise the haircuts that banks have to take, and reduce the burden on taxpayers.

A key reason for recoveries plummeting is the delay in the process of insolvency. That must change. The legal infrastructure should be more robust to prevent any attempts to block insolvency resolution through stays. There should be no delay either in setting up multiple benches for the adjudicating authority. Banks must report defaults as soon as they happen, and the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) must admit the petitions swiftly. The resolution must also be time-bound. Delays could dissuade prospective resolution applicants and also lenders from taking the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) route.

Easing regulation to allow asset reconstruction companies (ARC) to participate as resolution applicants makes sense. The National Asset Reconstruction Co Ltd (NARCL) to acquire bad loans from banks and the India Debt Resolution Co Ltd (IDRCL) to manage and dispose of the assets are in place. There are 28 other ARCs too. Competition among ARCs will also help businesses revive, and protect protective assets of the economy. Any course corrections, if required, in the law to ensure faster progress in resolving the bad loan problem are in order.

( Originally published on Aug 25, 2022 )<

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India's position on securing affordable energy has been received well by the West, and it is in no one's interest that oil prices shoot up again. Russia could sweeten its oil export arrangement and India would do well to seek better terms from a strategic ally.

The US is trying to convince India to join a buyer's cartel for Russian oil at capped prices, as the next level of sanctions set in by the year-end. The Group of Seven (G7) countries are inclined to a price ceiling over a ban on insuring Russian maritime oil exports because the latter course could drive up global crude prices. India, which has entered into a special agreement with Russia to buy discounted oil, wants a broader agreement among oil-buying nations for the price cap plan to be implemented. Separately, Russia is discussing cheap long-term oil contracts with Asian buyers in an attempt to counteract the G7 bid to cap export prices. In either scenario, Russia may have to give up pricing power over energy exports that is helping fund its war with Ukraine. It could also stop pumping oil. But that would be an extreme step because oil wells are difficult to restart.

The G7 plan, though better than a transportation embargo, is not without its share of issues. First, for it to work, the price ceiling must be above production costs, leaving Russia with the incentive to produce. Second, buyers of Russian oil must be on board, which includes India and China. Gaining Chinese support for a plan to exempt Russian oil exports below a cut-off price from an EU ban on insuring shipments will be harder to come by because of its land border with Russia. Third, implementation will depend on transparency, which is difficult to achieve. Otherwise, there would have been an oil buyers' cartel by now. By seeking a broader consensus, India's position represents a nuanced approval to the price cap plan.

India's position on securing affordable energy has been received well by the West, and it is in no one's interest that oil prices shoot up again. Russia could sweeten its oil export arrangement and India would do well to seek better terms from a strategic ally.

( Originally published on Aug 25, 2022 )<

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There’s someone who sells bed sheets made of beautiful Egyptian cotton in a physical store and now, she plans to sell them online as a D2C brand. So, what can she do? Launch a website? Use an e-commerce company? Those come with additional costs and logistical obstacles. Even if she, somehow, overcomes all of that, she still runs the risk of not being noticed amongst the crowd of sellers, especially when behemoths may engage in anti-competitive practices that may hurt the small entrepreneur. But how can she cut the middleperson? Despite the massive wave of Covid-induced digitisation, she still had challenges with digital technology. What if she didn’t want to contribute to the monopoly of Big Tech? What if she didn’t want to enrol on various online sites? How can her bed sheets be subject to more visibility and accessibility? That’s where the ONDC (Open Network For Digital Commerce) comes in.

Let's try and understand what D2C (Direct to consumer) as a business model is. It works when the business owner sells products directly to consumers, instead of going to wholesalers, who goes to distributors, who goes to retailers and, finally, goes to consumers. The D2C entrepreneurs distribute their products through chosen channels, like e-commerce platforms, retail stores and social media. And now, the ONDC is another platform they can use to their advantage.

A new distribution approach is offered by the D2C business model: online-only retail, direct distribution, and social media marketing. It's a vertical business structure without a middleperson. Due to the abundance of VC funding, the lack of fierce rivalry and the extraordinarily low cost & great return of social media marketing, this model quickly gained traction. The simplicity of the paradigm is riveting.

To compromise the monopoly of e-commerce leviathans and move away from a platform-centric model, the Government of India established an open network. Helmed by innovation superstar Nandan Nilekani, this open-expertise community would support small merchants in India's $1 trillion retail business, which is fragmented but rising quickly. But why?

Small mom-and-pop shops ('kiranas') and shopkeepers, who have been concerned about their dominance, can now breathe a sigh of relief. For consumers and business owners to buy and advertise goods and services online, the government wanted to develop an openly available system. This also means that juggernauts like Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart would have their power restricted.

With aggressive sales and discounts that jeopardised the viability of D2C entrepreneurs, these Goliaths have invested around $25 billion in India to control nearly 80% of the digital economy. In essence, it turned into a few monopolies in a congested area. No longer, though. By enabling retailers and merchants to expand their reach and increase their economies of scale, the ONDC undermines the foundations of these monopolies. This implies that India effectively has its own e-commerce ecosystem and may eventually quit depending on Amazon and Walmart, releasing them from their economic shackles.

The biggest advantage of the ONDC is that anybody may join: Even the smallest retailers in the most remote area. By ensuring that they have an equal opportunity to connect with big organizations, serve customers online through e-commerce platforms and protect their individual ventures, small business owners have some skin in the game. There may not be operational obstacles like product cataloguing and onboarding. With the ONDC, D2C entrepreneurs can finally have the digital empowerment they always wanted and their products and services could come on the radar of the masses.

And many are calling ONDC the UPI of e-commerce. It has the potential to democratize the digital commerce space and put forth a level-playing field for D2C companies and bring micro, small and medium enterprises and small traders online. Before UPI, in the payments space, a company had a wallet and would enjoy the lion’s share of the market with the merchant and the consumer using the same closed-loop ecosystem. UPI made it more interoperable, just like how ONDC wants to be. No matter the platform or software, the open network makes for a good platform for buyers and sellers.

It is now much more feasible than ever, thanks to the COVID-19 epidemic, which has accelerated prospects and digitization. To make it all possible, there must be strong accessibility, affordability and ubiquity of tools. Recall how incredible UPI and India Stack have been at capturing the whole Indian market; this is another example of an open network producing a broad ecosystem.

D2C brands are now better equipped to take part in the brand-new, rapidly expanding sector of digital commerce. It remains to be seen if the network will be able to accomplish its objectives. After all, the behemoths have reached their current position by continuously improving their operations and learning what attracts merchants and customers and what doesn't. Can the ONDC recruit necessary parties like buyers, sellers, warehousing providers, logistical intermediaries, and others? Can they make sure that people switch over smoothly from popular e-commerce platforms to their own system?

Both entrepreneurs and startups will undoubtedly face many challenges adopting a new system. Although that can be difficult and Herculean, it might go smoothly once they acclimate to it. To provide a seamless transition from existing systems or the status quo to anything new, platforms must also figure out solutions for the same. Long-term opportunities must be offered by the ONDC in order to support their populations and increase their revenue.

Nonetheless, before the ONDC, it was a winner-take-all market for small entrepreneurs. Here, this could be for the masses and brew many more entrepreneurs and startups. D2C entrepreneurs have been at the mercy of wicked algorithms. Now, they have a chance to be their own boss. This could be a tectonic change with the hegemony of Big Tech being challenged. This open-source network may spur more D2C entrepreneurs. It’s no longer about leaning against the glass of the conference room, it’s about sitting at the adult table. Here’s to equity.

Shrija Agrawal is a business journalist who has covered startups and private capital markets before it was considered cool in India

The views expressed are personal



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The Mahagathbandhan ministry in Bihar led by Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar winning the confidence vote on Wednesday was a foregone conclusion given the arithmetic in the Legislative Assembly. But the event was made into a spectacle with the Central Bureau of Investigation conducting raids on the premises of the leaders of the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar and Jharkhand during the day.

The Mahagathbandhan is an alliance of seven political parties with a combined strength of 164 in a House of 243 members and the Nitish Kumar ministry passed the test with 160 votes polled in its favour. Mr Kumar had a lot of explaining to do on his parting of ways with the BJP and he did it by blaming his former ally. He had been a respected partner in the National Democratic Alliance during the time of Atal Behari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, he said, implying that the current dispensation had its own gameplan in which Mr Kumar is not a pivotal force. He also complained that state BJP leaders who kept cordial relations with him such as former deputy chief minister Sushil Modi were sidelined within their party. The socialist’s nostalgia about his days in the Sangh Parivar camp sounds ironical but politics is always the art of the possible. And Mr Kumar is a master in this art among the current crop of politicians. 

Mr Kumar’s friend-turned-foe-turned-ally, the RJD, made the most of the CBI action against it. The raids were part of the federal agency’s investigation into allegations that members of the family of RJD patriarch Lalu Prasad got land in lieu of jobs he offered in the railways when he was helming it during the first edition of the United Progressive Alliance government. Tejashwi Yadav, party leader and deputy chief minister, was spot on when he said that the BJP lets loose three central agencies — the CBI, the Enforcement Directorate and the income tax department — when it cannot buy political opponents out. Mr Prasad was only reflecting the reality even though there are doubts if it works with every political opponent. Mr Prasad, for one, was nonchalant in the face of the raids.
But the CBI action against allegations of corruption by RJD leaders looked directed more against the chief minister than his deputy. Given the way the new alliance has started off, and the statements emanating from the two parties thence, it seems likely that the partners have settled on a plan by which Mr Kumar will be projected as the prime ministerial candidate of the combined Opposition and should it work, the RJD, the single largest party in the state Assembly, can lay claim to the chief minister’s post.

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That’s not a scheme palpable to the NDA, and hence the decision to remind Mr Kumar of the circumstances that he cited when he ditched the Mahagathbandhan in 2017 — corruption charges against the RJD leaders. The BJP would like Mr Kumar to remember that he is not in the company of squeaky clean politicians and cannot flaunt his image as a warrior against corruption any more. Even if he has won the confidence vote, Mr Kumar has been told that the coming days won’t pass as smoothly as he had expected them to. The game in Bihar has only just begun.

...


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“Development”, like beauty, is a word that triggers lively discussions and polemical exchanges. No surprise then that the one sentence from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 80-minute Red Fort speech on the 75th anniversary of the country’s Independence that grabbed headlines round the world pivoted around the promise to make India “a developed nation” in 25 years.

Arguably, the idea of development not only varies, it is constantly shifting. But crucially, it is the matter of the tag. Just as winners at beauty pageants are officially-certified beauties and enjoy all the perks that go with the title, countries officially classified as “developed nations” have power, prestige and get to sit on the high table on many occasions.

Developed countries are not all the same, nor have the same political ideology. But typically, they have some things in common -- high gross domestic product per capita, an overall high quality of life and advanced technological infrastructure compared to less industrialised and less developed nations.

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A lot has already been said about what it would take for India to get there and the challenges on the way. What is less discussed are two “what ifs”.

First, what if India continues to chug along on multiple tracks, at multiple speeds, with vocal segments of the population resembling denizens of a “developed country”, while millions of people remain far from the goalpost. That has been the India story till date.

Second, what if remaining in this hybrid mix of first world and developing world has a much steeper cost given the rapidly changing geopolitical realities in the wake of the series of global shocks that have smashed old assumptions, and an increasingly polarised landscape at home?

Consider some hard realities. Huge differences persist between states, often between different districts in the same state, and between cities and villages in the absolute basics. Kerala has 94 per cent literacy; Bihar has 61.8 per cent. There are similar contrasts when you look at issues around gender, caste, religion.

In GDP terms, India is one of the biggest economies in the world, but that means little when it comes to GDP per capita which gives an idea of the average income of a country’s people. On that metric, we not only are way behind the traditional clutch of high-income countries but also many in the “developing world”, such as neighbouring Bangladesh.

On many other fronts, official data reveals glaring contradictions within a state, and the yawning chasm between the India that is close to a developed nation and the India that trails woefully behind. Take women’s empowerment -- the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5, 2019-2021) tells you that the number of women between the ages of 15 and 49 who now have a bank account that they themselves operate jumped from 53 per cent in 2015-2016 (NFHS-4) to 78.6 per cent in 2019-2020. The percentage of women who have a mobile phone of their own has also shot up from 45.9 per cent to 54 per cent in the same period.

Now posit these figures against another metric of empowerment -- freedom of movement, a basic expectation in the developed world. “Women are considered to have freedom of movement if they are usually allowed to go alone to all three of the following places -- to the market, to the health facility, and to places outside the village or community”, says NFHS-5. “Fifty-six per cent of women (15-49 age group) are allowed to go alone to the market, 52 per cent to the health facility, and 50 per cent to places outside the village or community. Overall, only 42 per cent of women in India are allowed to go alone to all three places, and five per cent are not allowed to go alone to any of the three places.”

The figures are demoralising. Equally demoralising is the use of words like “being allowed” in officialese. India also has one of the lowest female work participation rates and it has dipped even further in recent years.

Whether a state is considered “developed” depends entirely on which indicators you pick and which ones you gloss over. Take Gujarat. On many parameters, it has done very well. But on many others, it has an abysmal record. In Gujarat, 77 per cent of households own a house (81 per cent of rural households and 72 per cent of urban households). Almost all urban households (97 per cent) and most rural households (89 per cent) in Gujarat have a mobile phone. Ninety-five per cent of households have a bank or post office account. Sixty-one per cent of households own either a motorcycle or a scooter.

But here’s the catch. In this relatively affluent state, four-fifths of children in the 6-59 months age group are anaemic. The overall prevalence of anaemia in children in Gujarat increased from 63 per cent in NFHS-4 (2015-2016) to 80 per cent in NFHS-5.

To qualify as a developed nation, everyday life of ordinary Indians must improve massively so that they have more choices and can live up to their potential. That the extraordinary and those with power and privilege will do well is taken for granted but the extraordinary doing extraordinary things does not lift the boat and will not help India get the developed country label.

Quite a few nations have moved from developing to developed country status in recent decades. Some nations in East Asia showed it’s possible to have rapid economic growth, bridge the gap with developed countries and make the lives of ordinary people significantly better. They also show there is no magic bullet and no one recipe book.

For India to become a high-income, developed country, all Indians, and not just some, should have more control over their own lives and be able to optimise their potential. That means not just access to mobile phones and bank accounts and the hardware of development like roads, bridges and highways, but also lifestyle features, including freedom of mobility and choices in one’s personal life.

India has more children than any other country in the world. It will be a developed nation when all children can aspire to a future and none are beaten by teachers because they come from vulnerable populations and those at the bottom of the economic and social heap. The festering social tensions, the growing religious tensions and polarisation are roadblocks that come in the way of India realising its full potential and will delay or derail India’s ascent.

All this necessarily means having honest conversations on our strengths and weaknesses and confronting the inconvenient truths and contradictions. The “developed nation” tag is possible, but it’s not pre-ordained or inevitable.



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India has decided to give a push to e-passports and, as per the latest announcement of the ministry of external affairs in Hyderabad recently, the first of such passports would be issued to citizens by the end of the year. The ambitious plan, even if it meets the later part of the deadline, which is to roll out the first of e-passports early next year, will put India in the club of pioneering nations in the world to take the move.

The digital revolution has spanned and conquered most facets of our lives — from media and entertainment, communications, healthcare to legal and government matters. Digital identities are safe and can be scaled to meet common global standards so that e-passports become the norm.

The current plan is to issue a physical copy of the passport, with an additional element of an electronic chip. The e-passports, thus, are regular passports but with an additional layer comprising a chip and an antenna, which will enable them to be “read” and scrutinised by machines. This will enable airport, immigration and security staff to process travellers faster.

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But India’s ambition is larger and the government is considering a plan to roll out cloud passports eventually — a reality which most people on earth would be delighted with — a global travel made possible without a physical passport but a completely digitally available proof of nationality — easy to verify by devices globally.

India, with over 32 million non-resident Indians (NRIs) and people of Indian origin (PIOs), is in a position to make a strong disruption with technology in the domain and create a good captive entry of the new standard in passports. It is a right interpretation and approach to being a vishwaguru, by making a good difference to people of the world, with our knowledge capital.



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