It is my conviction that expression in one’s mother tongue lies at the heart of an individual or community’s cultural identity. For centuries, India has been home to hundreds of languages and thousands of dialects, making its linguistic and cultural diversity the most unique in the world. In fact, our linguistic diversity is one of the cornerstones of our ancient civilisation. As I always emphasise, it is our mother tongue that lends expression to our vision and aspirations, our values and ideals, as also our creative and literary endeavours.
In a speech some years ago, the former UNESCO Director-General, Koïchiro Matsuura, underscored the importance of mother tongue when he remarked that “the language we learn from our mothers [mother tongue] is the homeland of our innermost thoughts.” He aptly described each language to be “as valuable and distinct as every irreplaceable human life”.
Vanishing languages
While languages are among the key bridges that ensure cultural and civilisational continuity, globalisation and Westernisation have impacted not just the growth but also the survival of many of our dialects in this rich cultural and linguistic tapestry. Therefore, International Mother Language Day has special significance to the Indian context.
In November 1999, the UNESCO General Conference approved the declaration of February 21 as International Mother Language Day, in response to the declining state of many languages; it has been observed throughout the world since 2000. UNESCO has been striving to protect the cultural and linguistic diversity of member-states through such pro-active international measures. According to the UN agency, at least 43% of the estimated 6,000 languages spoken in the world are endangered — an alarming figure indeed!
This year’s subject
The theme of International Mother Language Day in 2022 — “Using Technology for Multilingual Learning: Challenges and Opportunities” — is one of special relevance to us. The underlying concept is to discuss the role of technology to further the cause of multilingual education. The central idea is to leverage technology to support and enrich the teaching-learning experience on a multi-lingual level. It also aims at achieving a qualitative, equitable and inclusive educational experience. Inevitably, the widespread use of technology would fast-track development. As the Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, observed in her message, “Technology can provide new tools for protecting linguistic diversity. Such tools, for example, facilitating their spread and analysis, allow us to record and preserve languages which sometimes exist only in oral form.”
Multilingual education predicated on the increasing use of one’s mother tongue is a key component of inclusion in education. To underscore the importance of mother tongue in laying the foundation for one’s intellectual development, I have always likened it to eyesight and spectacles to other languages. Spectacles can function only if there is eyesight. When applied to Indian classrooms, a multi-lingual approach would also create new pathways of learning by addressing the emerging challenges on a regional and global scale. Seen in its entirety, this is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of “sabka saath ,sabka vikas ,sabka vishwas ”.
Globally, the role of technology came to the fore during the COVID-19 pandemic when school shutdowns forced educators and learners to adapt themselves to online education. Over weeks and months, this became the new normal across the world, though it did present a host of new challenges. These include the requisite skills employed in distance teaching, Internet access, and, importantly, adapting materials and content in diverse languages. While the central and State governments are taking active measures to promote digital learning, it becomes our responsibility to ensure that there is no digital divide.
Direction of the NEP
It would be pertinent to note that the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is a visionary document which encourages the use of mother tongue as the medium of instruction till at least Class five but preferably till Class eight and beyond. In drawing up a road map for the future, the NEP seeks to tailor the teaching and learning process and modify it by making it holistic, value-based and inclusive. The use of mother tongue in teaching is bound to create a positive impact on learning outcomes, as also the development of the cognitive faculties of students.
There is a pressing need to create and improve scientific and technical terminology in Indian languages. This would help transform the educational experience by making existing knowledge systems in a range of disciplines accessible to learners. It would be relevant to recall the words of the renowned physicist, Sir C.V. Raman, who observed with great clarity and vision that “we must teach science in our mother tongue. Otherwise, science will become a highbrow activity. It will not be an activity in which all people can participate.”
Helping students
Sir C.V. Raman’s observation has a prophetic ring of truth when we see it in the light of the fact that we have been able to create a large English-based education system which includes colleges that offer courses in medicine and multiple disciplines of engineering. This impressive system paradoxically excludes a vast majority of learners in our country from accessing higher education. Therefore, the need to build an effective multilingual education system across diverse streams and disciplines becomes all the more imperative. It is important to bear in mind that in a survey conducted by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in 2020 involving over 83,000 students, nearly 44% of students voted in favour of studying engineering in their mother tongue, highlighting a critical need in technical education.
In this context, the collaboration between the AICTE and IIT Madras to translate some courses on the central government’s e-learning platform, Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM) into eight regional languages such as Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam and Gujarati, is commendable. Such tech-led initiatives will serve to democratise higher education. At the same time, the decision of the AICTE to permit B. Tech programmes in 11 native languages, in tune with the NEP, is a historic move which would open the door for students to a wide range of opportunities; the languages are Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, Malayalam, Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi and Odia.
Additionally, learning in (your) mother tongue is at the core of building a sense of self-esteem and identity. While I feel that one must accord equal respect to all languages, there is a tendency, which must be noted with regret, among some educators and parents to take a condescending view of education in Indian languages in preference to English language learning. As a result, children’s access to their mother tongue becomes restricted, leading to a sort of socio-cultural rootlessness, especially if corrective steps are not taken. We have to teach our children not to mistake competence in English to be a yardstick of intellectual superiority or as a prerequisite for achieving success in life.
Examples to emulate
Our policy-planners, educators, parents and opinion leaders must bear in mind that when it comes to education in mother tongue and local languages, we can take the cue from European countries as well as Asian powers such as Japan, China and Korea, among others.
According to the Language Census, whose findings were widely reported in 2018, India is home to 19,500 languages or dialects, of which 121 languages are spoken by 10,000 or more people in our country. It is our collective responsibility to revive and revitalise the 196 Indian languages which fall under the “endangered” category. Let us not forget that every single language constitutes a cultural crucible which stores the distilled knowledge and the wisdom of our collective consciousness — our values, traditions, stories, behaviour and norms, proverbs, sayings and idioms. Co-existing over centuries, borrowing from and nurturing each other, our languages are interwoven with our individual, local and national identity.
M. Venkaiah Naidu is the Vice-President
of India
Democracy is rapidly declining across the globe. This is the finding of reports published in 2021 by some influential non-governmental research and advocacy organisations such as Freedom House, V-Dem, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, and Cato Institute. Consequently, large democracies including the U.S. and India found themselves downgraded, among other things, on grounds of partisan pressure on the electoral process, bias in the criminal justice system, discriminatory policies, violence against Muslims, harassment of journalists and other government critics, and growing disparities in wealth, economic opportunity, and political influence.
The ulema-state alliance
If for most non-Muslim countries this sort of democratic recession is a recent phenomenon, Muslim nations have been scourged by it for a long time. In fact, the election of the first post-Prophetic Caliph, Hazrat Abu Bakr, was mired in controversy. According to a supposedlysahih (authentic) hadith in Bukhari, after the Prophet’s death, the Ansar community in Medina wanted the Caliphate to be jointly headed by twoameers (leaders), one each from the Ansar and the Meccan tribe, Quraish. But Abu Bakr, a Quraishite, allegedly refused saying, “No, we will be the rulers and you will be the ministers, for they [the Quarish] are the best family amongst the Arabs and of best origin.” He wanted the Ansar to elect Quraishites Hazrat Umar or Abu Ubaida bin Al-Jarrah. But Umar’s refusal resulted in Abu Bakr himself being finally chosen as the first Caliph.
What is unbelievable about this whole episode is Abu Bakr’s alleged tribal insularity. The Prophet in his famous farewell sermon had upheld human equality and categorically stated that every evil pre-Islamic practice including racism, ethnic superiority, and all forms of hereditary excellence stood abolished and lay trampled beneath his feet.
That Hazrat Abu Bakr being the Prophet’s closest companion did not go against any of his teachings is proved by the fact that his caliphate was not marred by any kind of discrimination or partisanship. Therefore, the only other possibility is, such hadiths were fabricated as part of a collaborative venture between later rulers and pliable Muslim theologians to contain statements the Prophet or his companions did not make, with a view to justifying dynastic caliphates.
Ahmet T. Kuru, Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University, calls this caliph-cleric symbiosis the “ulema-state alliance”. In his iconoclastic bookIslam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison, he explains how this dodgy association began in 11th-century Baghdad and continued for centuries to leave behind a legacy of authoritarianism and underdevelopment in the 20th-century Muslim world.
The alliance was the egregious outcome of some Sunni caliphs’ eagerness to unify Sunnis in the hope of creating an ideological bulwark against the rising Shii states in North Africa, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. It resulted in the establishment of a “Sunni Creed” that branded Shiis, rationalist theologians, and philosophers as apostates liable to be executed.
However, as this unholy nexus did not exist in early Islamic history, Prof. Kuru argues, contemporary political and socioeconomic problems of Muslim countries cannot be simplistically attributed to Islam or Western colonialism.
The institutions that fostered the ulema-state alliance were the Nizamiya madrasas founded by Nizamul Mulk (d. 1092 CE), the vizier of the Seljuq Empire who served as its de facto ruler for two decades after the assassination of Sultan Alp Arslan in 1072. It was Nizamul Mulk who made the fateful decision of appointing the polymathic theologian Al-Ghazali (d.1111 CE) as a teacher in Baghdad's Nizamiya madrasa in 1091.
And it was Ghazali, writes Prof. Kuru, who helped legitimise the idea of declaring even self-avowed Muslims as apostates. He pronounced free-thinking philosophers who held unorthodox views on God and the nature of afterlife infidels whose life and property the Islamic state had the right to take. In short, Ghazali's influential theology, which considered religion and state to be interdependent twins, rendered extra-Quranic legalism almost unquestionable and ultimately paved the way for laws that created the capital offenses of blasphemy and apostasy.
This would not have been possible had the earlier bourgeoisie-ulema alliance not been wrecked by the ulema-state alliance. For before the latter dramatically emerged in the 11th-century it was the merchant class that was funding the ulema and philosophers, thus ensuring their independence. But the Seljuq policy of bringing the economy, especially agricultural revenues, under military control weakened the economic capacity and social position of merchants forcing the ulema to depend on the state for support which came at a huge cost.
The Seljuq model not only endured but spread to other Sunni states in the vicinity. Prof. Kuru points out that the Crusader and Mongol invasions accelerated the expansion because Muslim communities sought refuge from these onslaughts in military and religious authorities.
Later, around the 16th-century, three powerful Muslim states — the Sunni Ottoman, the Shii Safavid, and the Sunni Mughal Empire — established versions of the ulema–state alliance in territories extending from the Balkans to Bengal resulting in the socio-cognitive backwardness of the regions they ruled. In contrast, during this period the printing revolution had led the West out of the Dark Ages to the Age of Enlightenment.
Put differently, the Muslim world was in a state of intellectual stagnation long before Western colonisation economically impoverished it, a fact symbolised by the 16th-century Ottoman fatwa against the printing press.
Secularisation of Muslims states
Surprisingly, even the secularisation of some of the Muslim states established in the early 1900s (such as Turkey) did not free them from authoritarianism. Prof. Kuru gives three reasons for this. First, most 20th-century secularist leaders were former military officers and could not appreciate the importance of intellectuals and the bourgeoisie. Second, their authoritarian modernist ideas led them to impose state control over the economy by restricting the intellectual and bourgeois classes. Third, secularist rulers used Islam to legitimise their regimes by co-opting established ulema at the expense of independent Islamic scholars. Besides, secular Muslim states experienced Islamisation of public life as a result of policy failures and people harbouring an anti-intellectual attitude under the influence of the ulema. The ongoing hijab controversy in India shows that this can happen even in non-Muslim democratic states.
So, how does one undo the doctrinaire statism that prevails in most Muslim countries today, especially in Turkey and Pakistan? Prof. Kuru's advice is: the relationship between Islam and the state must be redesigned in a way that would promote intellectual and economic creativity.
The ulema and authoritarians must pay heed.
A. Faizur Rahman is Secretary-General of the Islamic Forum for the Promotion of Moderate Thought. Email: themoderates2020@gmail.com
At the time it was presented, and in the context of the Assembly elections in five States — now underway in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa — the Union Budget was expected to contain measures to boost consumption expenditure. But the Government chose instead to focus more on capital expenditure. There were no major announcements on agriculture or rural development. Given the recent turmoil as a result of the farmers’ protests and the repeal of the farm laws, this was a little surprising. However, a closer look at the Budget presents a different picture.
Allotments, key subsectors
It is important to look at the budgetary allocations for agriculture from the perspective of agricultural growth and farmers’ income. Agriculture has registered a robust performance during the COVID-19 pandemic and has clocked decent growth rates of 4.3% and 3.6% during 2019-20 and 2020-21. Growth is projected to be about 3.9% in 2021-22, which is a very satisfactory performance indeed! This performance may partly explain the lack of any extra focus on agriculture. However, there is a different story. Within agriculture, livestock and fisheries are two subsectors that have shown an average annual growth rate of 8% or more in the last five years.
These two subsectors roughly contribute about 33% of the gross value added in agriculture. Also, as per the Situation Assessment Survey 2019, more than 15% of income is derived from livestock subsector. Thus, from a growth perspective as well as the viewpoint of farmers’ income, livestock and fisheries are important. In keeping with this, these two subsectors have attracted decent allocations in the Budget.
An increase
The allocation for livestock health and disease control — a major concern for those working in the sector — has rightly been increased from Rs. 886 crore to Rs. 2,000 crore, a 126% increase. The allocation for the National Livestock Mission has also increased by more than Rs. 100 crore (42%). Similarly, the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, a flagship programme of fisheries, has received an increase of about Rs. 679 crore (57%). Value addition in agriculture has also got increased attention. The production-linked incentive scheme for food processing has received a huge increase, from Rs. 10 crore to Rs. 1,022 crore (a 10,000% jump). Similarly the allocation for micro food processing, which can help in really small enterprises such as pickle and jaggery making, has increased by 125% to Rs. 900 crore.
Within the crop subsector also major changes in allocations have been made. In keeping with the broad thrust on capital expenditure in the Budget, the allocation for the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, or RKVY (a programme to “ensuring holistic development of agriculture and allied sectors”) has been increased by a whopping Rs. 8,000 crore, a 400% increase. This programme provides a lot of flexibility to States to devise and implement their own agricultural development programmes.
However, it needs to be mentioned here that various other programmes such as the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) — to improve farm productivity — the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (a programme to “increase soil fertility and also the production of healthy food through organic practices” among other things), etc. have been brought under the RKVY fold this year.
Even after factoring in this inclusion, the allocation has gone up by more than 90%, which is substantial. Continuing the focus on agri-infrastructure, the allocation for the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF) has been increased by 150% to Rs. 500 crore. The central sector scheme called the “Formation and Promotion of 10,000 Farmer Produce Organisations (FPOs) has also received an allocation of Rs. 500 crore (100% increase).
But a decrease here
Turning to allocations for output price support, the policy appears to be a little unclear at present. For instance, the Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay SanraksHan Abhiyan (PM-AASHA), which is the flagship programme to provide enhanced Minimum Support Price (MSP) of 50% above the cost of production to farmers (started with a lot of expectation in 2018), has received an allocation of just Rs. 1 crore! The only conceivable reason for this could be the impending formation of the committee to address the issue of MSPs, which was announced by the Prime Minister while announcing the repeal of the farm laws. The allocation for the price support programme of pulses and oilseeds (the Market Intervention Scheme and Price Support Scheme, or MIS-PSS) has decreased by 58% to Rs. 1,500 crore. The allocation for price stabilisation fund, meant to address extreme volatility in the prices of perishables, has declined by Rs. 750 crore (33%). The allocations for price support have declined; so too the budgeted allocation for important subsidies. The budgeted estimate of fertilizer subsidy has shown a decline of nearly Rs. 35,000 crore (25%). Similarly, the food subsidy has shown a decline of nearly Rs. 79,000 crore (28%). Such a large decline in fertilizer and food subsidies does not appear achievable.
Not much for NREGA
Agriculture is not a stand-alone activity but is intrinsically linked to overall rural development. With nearly 40% of income being derived from wages by agricultural households, it is imperative that rural development is looked at in conjunction with agriculture. Most major rural development programmes such as the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (connectivity to unconnected habitations), the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (housing for all in urban areas), and the National Rural Livelihood Mission have received small increases in allocations. One exception is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). This flagship rural employment programme, which has been instrumental in reducing distress in the rural economy during the waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, has received lower allocation — by about Rs. 25,000 crore (25% decrease) from RE 2021-22 of Rs. 98,000 crore. This is a large decline indeed! A plausible reason is the possible reduction in the need for MGNREGS with the decline in the severity of the pandemic.
Transformative steps
The announcement of measures to promote kisan drones and encourage start-ups to improve value chains of farm produce are welcome steps. The adoption of modern technology in agriculture should not only help reinvigorate the rural economy but could also possibly encourage the younger generation to consider agriculture as a career option — generally perceived to be a laborious and drudgery-laden sector.
Finally, though there were no big ticket announcements on agriculture and rural development, the allocations appear to be in the right direction. The thrust seems to be on important subsectors such as livestock, fisheries and food processing and also on improving infrastructure in the crop sector. Although the allocations on MGNREGS and food and fertilizer subsidies are somewhat lower, there are positives in terms of adoption of technology. The Budget is in the right direction for agriculture. And now, implementation holds the key!
C.S.C. Sekhar is Professor of Economics, Institute of Economic Growth,
University of Delhi
India has a population of about 135 crore people. It is the sixth largest economy in the world with a high growth potential. But this growth potential cannot be achieved without giving equal opportunity to every State.
Do all States get equal opportunities?
The low-income States (LIS) are deprived on many fronts. They have low accessibility to credit, low investments, low power availability and accessibility, and high energy costs. The high-income States (HIS), on the other hand, have a big share in industry and commerce because they are not deprived on the same fronts. The six HIS (Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana) together account for 56.4% of factories and 54.3% of the net value added to the country, while their share in population is only 32.3%. Among other reasons, this is because they have higher credit and financial accessibility (55% of total institutional credit and 56% of total industrial credit went to these five HIS) at the credit-deposit ratio. On the other hand, the six LIS (Bihar, Jharkhand, U.P., M.P., Odisha, and Rajasthan) access only 15% of total institutional credit and barely 5% of total industrial credit, while their share in population is 43%. These States together receive only 50% credit from their hard-earned savings. The maximum benefit of the Atmanirbhar package (Rs. 20 lakh crore) also went to the HIS as they have a higher share in industry.
Does power play any role in the disparity? Among other reasons, the availability of adequate quality power at the cheapest rate attracts investments, either private or public, in a particular location. This is an important factor to start electricity-intensive industrial production. Of the total consumption of electricity, industry and commerce account for more than 50%. Energy India Outlook 2021 concludes: “Electricity prices vary not just among end users, but also between states, where a complex patchwork of different taxes and subsidy regimes can leave consumers in some states paying five times more for their electricity than their counterparts in neighbouring states.” This article provides two solutions in the power sector to attain higher economic growth.
The first is to eliminate price discrimination in the power sector. The power-producing States have the advantage of power, especially hydel power, being available at lower prices. This problem can be addressed by synchronising all the regional grids. This will help the transfer of energy (without compromising quality). The idea is of ‘One Nation, One Grid, One Frequency’. Further, this will pave the way for establishing a vibrant electricity market and facilitate the trading of power across regions through the adoption of the ‘one tariff’ policy. Without this policy, States with higher power purchasing costs face the difficulty of making energy traffic competitive by paying high subsidies from already scarce resources. Thus, they are unable to attract investments. The Central Electricity Regulatory Commission is in the process of implementing a framework of the Market-Based Economic Dispatch and moving towards ‘One Nation, One Grid, One Frequency, One Price’.
The second is the inclusion of electricity duty under the Goods and Services Tax (GST). Apart from uniform cost, the power sector also needs uniformity in electricity duty charged by different States. In general, the association between income and electricity consumption is direct. The HIS consume a higher proportion of electricity. According to the the Central Electricity Authority, Ministry of Power, Government of India, in 2020-21, six States consumed 50% of the total installed capacity of power. Thus, only 32% of the population used 50% of power. Contrary to this, six backward States got only 25% of the power though their share of the population is 43%. Therefore, it is clear that the substantial proportion of the power cost incurred in HIS is also borne by the LIS which buy those industrial products, as the input cost of power has already been included in the product’s price. Further, this situation justifies the fact that the final costs of power consumption are also borne by other States. Thus, the electricity duty should be redistributed among the States under the ambit of GST equally shared by the CGST and SGST. However, 100% CGST should be devolved among the States through the Fifteenth Finance Commission formula, without being shared with the Centre (as electricity duty is State subject).
In order to attain higher economic growth, the States should raise the issue of uniform energy tariff and inclusion of electricity duty under the ambit of GST. This decision will benefit the whole nation through rational tax devolution and, therefore, provide the opportunity to attain higher growth.
Bakshi Amit Kumar Sinha is with the Centre for Economic Policy and Public Finance, a research unit of the Finance Department of the Government of Bihar
In many ways the political dominance of the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal can be compared to the dominance of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the party which has won almost every election in the State with little or no opposition after its convincing victory over the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2021 Assembly polls has been facing its most daunting internal crisis over the past few months.
In parties like the Trinamool, which derives its strength from the charisma of its leader, it is rare to see organisational elections being held in public and to see the party dissolve all posts and reconstitute them in a span of just a few weeks.
On February 2, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was re-elected unopposed as chairperson of the party. On February 12, she dissolved all the posts of the party, including that of national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, her nephew. She set up a 20-member working committee, which included Mr. Banerjee and party loyalists, some of whom were district presidents and MLAs. Six days later, she reappointed her nephew as general secretary and introduced three new vice presidents of the party — former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha and two loyalists, Subrata Bakshi and Chandrima Bhattacharya. This is seen as an attempt to introduce checks and balances in the party. There is more to these developments than emotive family issues; this is Ms. Banerjee’s way of ensuring that the party top brass and rank and file know who is the boss.
Ms. Banerjee has responded to the tricky issue of introducing dynasty politics in her party by saying that she is preparing the next generation to take control of the reins one day. However, the rise of Mr. Banerjee after the 2021 polls was so dramatic that the party was unable to grapple with the development. In parties driven by the personality of the leader, the position of number two has its own challenges and pitfalls.
It was Mr. Banerjee who was instrumental in getting I-PAC on board when things were not going well for the Trinamool after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In the months following the 2021 Assembly polls, the line between Mr. Banerjee’s team and I-PAC started getting blurred. The veterans in the party did not like the fact that their authority and advisory role were being reduced abruptly. Sensing the tension, senior leaders started targeting Prashant Kishor’s I-PAC, which was a relatively soft target.
In the weeks preceding the February shake-up of the party, the choice of candidates for the civic polls turned out to be a critical issue. Differences surfaced over whether the old order or the emerging leadership should get prominence. The party had to issue statements that lists signed by senior leaders would be considered as final.
The situation escalated when young leaders and members of the Banerjee family went on social media expressing support for ‘one person, one post’. It was Mr. Banerjee who had emphasised bringing in a more professional approach in the party, but in the civic polls, the ‘one person, one post’ principle was flouted with Ministers being given tickets. This was seen as an attempt to undermine the supreme authority of Ms. Banerjee who was left with no option but to dissolve and reconstitute all the posts.
After the shake-up, the storm brewing inside the party has abated but the scars will take time to heal. The developments indicate that Ms. Banerjee remains firmly in grip of the party organisation, but the position of Mr. Banerjee as the second in command cannot be undermined. The party will continue to rely on loyalists. The wisdom of the leader and her political foresight have to be trusted in all situations. And if the party associates itself with an external agency, the agency will have to take responsibility for mistakes.
shivsahay.s@thehindu.co.in
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) earlier this month passed a significant order relating to the country’s largest stock exchange, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India. As the markets regulator, whose primary mandate is to ‘protect the interests of investors in securities’, SEBI’s 190-page order raises more questions than it resolves. In particular, it spotlights the regulator’s tardiness in adjudicating a sensitive matter involving the manner of appointment of a top-level NSE official as well as possible regulatory violations by the then CEO and MD Chitra Ramkrishna in sharing confidential internal information with an unknown person. By SEBI’s own admission, the first complaint alleging governance issues in the NSE’s April 2013 appointment of Anand Subramanian as Chief Strategic Adviser was received in December 2015. After an exchange of e-mails on the issue between the regulator and the NSE in 2016, SEBI tasked the exchange’s board with determining if there had been violations of norms. In November 2017, the NSE sent back a report by the board’s Nomination and Remuneration Committee which flagged several irregularities pertaining to his appointment including his lack of relevant experience and that Ms. Ramkrishna alone had interviewed him. Separately, but interconnected, SEBI had in the course of its probe into another matter at the NSE stumbled upon, in 2018, documentary evidence pointing to Ms. Ramkrishna having been in e-mail communication and sharing sensitive information with an unknown person.
The NSE’s conclusion based on findings in a forensic audit by Ernst & Young that this unknown person was none other than Mr. Subramanian was sent to SEBI in October 2018. And yet it took the regulator a further 40 months to inexplicably conclude that the unknown person ostensibly guiding Ms. Ramkrishna was unlikely to be Mr. Subramanian — the biggest beneficiary of the guidance by getting promoted as Group Operating Officer and receiving annual pay increases that vaulted his annual compensation to Rs. 4.21 crore by April 2016, from Rs. 1.68 crore in April 2013. To be sure, SEBI acknowledges that it was hamstrung by the NSE’s dilatory approach in responding to its missives. That the board of a Market Infrastructure Institution, charged with safeguarding the trust of millions of investors, distressingly failed to exercise crucial oversight over the conduct of its CEO apart, SEBI too hardly covers itself in glory. The regulator spills far too much ink in almost voyeuristically sharing the contents of the e-mail exchanges between Ms. Ramkrishna and her ‘unknown guide’ even as it concludes that it is unable to establish any “specific loss caused to investors” by the NSE and Ms. Ramkrishna. The onus is now on SEBI to reaffirm that there are no ‘holy cows’ in its regulatory regime and that it remains laser focused on protecting small investors.
If lack of data was an impediment to roll out action plans against antimicrobial resistance (AMR), now that excuse has been yanked off. The recent publication ofThe Lancet ’s global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance — an elaborate and studied estimate validated by using counterfactual analysis for the first time — comes at a time when the world, weary with battling COVID-19, seems to have lost steam to mount a robust AMR policy. But the report makes it clear that no slacking can be allowed on this front any longer; it estimated that 4.95 million deaths were associated with bacterial AMR in 2019 alone. It also identified the pathogens and pathogen-drug combinations that cause such resistance. Bacterial AMR occurs when the drugs used to treat infections become less effective, as a result of the pathogens becoming resistant to the drugs. This happens due to indiscriminate use of antibiotics, availability of antibiotics over the counter, poor hygiene and sanitation, antimicrobial use in the farming and poultry industry, lack of vaccines and newer antibiotics, and poor infection control practices in hospitals. While data on exact number of deaths might not have been available, there was no doubt about the alarming nature of associated mortality and morbidity. And yet, few nations have a policy to counter this pernicious problem.
In 2008, when the NDM1 enzyme that renders bacteria resistant to a range of antibiotics was traced back to India, it served as an urgent call for action. India released its own AMR action plan in 2017, and announced a task force for implementation. By 2019, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh had rolled out State action plans. Since then, little progress has ensued: 11 other States are still framing their action plans. The Chennai Declaration, a consortium of doctors and health-care institutions against AMR, was also formed in 2012 to draw up a road map. The ban on Colistin in the poultry, aqua farming and animal feeds supplements sectors, which India enforced from July 2019, was considered a strong strike in countering the AMR challenge. No doubt AMR offers humanity one of the most complex challenges that it has faced; but the recognition that solutions are not only in the realm of science is necessary. Scientific publications have established the correlation between AMR and poor hygiene, lax administrative governance and poor ratio of public-private expenditure. While the scientific community looks for solutions in its ken, governments must raise the standard of living for citizens, provide them accessible and affordable quality health care, besides regulating the sale and use of antibiotics. Not doing so in studied haste will only land up eroding the significant health-care gains India has proactively, and painfully at times, secured over the years.
Cape Kennedy (Florida): The United States will launch the first satellite aimed at Jupiter on February 27, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced yesterday. Known as Pioneer-10, the 250 kilo scientific probe will take nearly two years to reach its destination. The fastest satellite ever blasted off towards a planet, Pioneer-10 will cover 800,000 kms. a day during the first week of its flight. When it becomes “caught” by the pull of the gravity of Jupiter — 1,000 times more powerful than the earth’s — it will fly over the planet at 79,200 kms. an hour, towards the end of next year. After that, Pioneer-10 will travel indefinitely through the inter-stellar world in a straight line. During the four-day over flight of the yellow-orange, grey-blue planet, Pioneer-10 will take 10 photographs. It will study Jupiter’s magnetic fields, the atmosphere, and the radiation belts. NASA estimated that these radio-active belts were 1,000,000 times more intense than Van Allen’s rings around the earth. The Pioneer-10 probe will be one of the great “Firsts” in the cosmos, if everything goes according to NASA’s plans. It will give mankind the first-ever information on the hidden face of the planet which is now 800 million kms. from the earth.
In this round of the Assembly elections in Punjab, the difference, unlike earlier, is that there have been varied party combinations trying their luck. The traditional Congress-Akali ‘system’ has faced a challenge from the Aam Aadmi Party, a Captain Amarinder-led party, a farmer-led combination and a few others. The run-up to this election has also seen unprecedented defections. Some of the important issues such as education, health and unemployment appeared to be on the list but there have been a list of freebies to try and please the voter. In reality, Punjab is witnessing a slide, economically and socially. The economy is in decline, agriculture faces many issues, there is brain drain and the menace of narcotics hangs over the State like a cloud. Whichever party wins, transforming Punjab should be its main agenda.
Vishiwjeet Singh,
Chandigarh
The curious case of the unknown yogi in the NSE case is even better than the best suspense thrillers and stories! The probe team has a massive task in unravelling the irregularities.
The entire sordid episode shows that much of India’s wealth is in the hands of manipulators, which is extremely bad as investors could lose faith in the system.
Balasubramaniam Pavani,
Secunderabad
The Tamil Nadu State Election Commission deserves praise for ensuring that the urban local body polls were generally incident free and that voters exercised their franchise without fear. It is unfortunate that in urban areas, the turnout was low. Ensuring that there is a fair and free election is a challenge as the culture of granting freebies and the like must be rooted out.
Rajakumar Arulanandham,
Palayamkottai, Tamil Nadu
It is unfortunate that voter turnout in certain corporations was low. Every citizen, especially from urban areas, should have exercised their franchise. The people of Chennai should realise that many of their unique issues require their voices to be heard; they ought to have voted!
T. Aravinthkumaran,
Uthukuli, Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu
With the swift conclusion of an early harvest Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between India and the United Arab Emirates, Delhi appears to be signalling to the world that while it walked out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), one of the world’s biggest Free Trade Area agreements, that does not make it protectionist, or averse to free trade agreements. Worried about market exposure to China, the government had then defended its exit from RCEP by dubbing it an “FTA by stealth” and pointed to underperforming FTAs with most individual countries in the regional trade group. But now the focus seems to have shifted back to signing bilateral FTAs, where Delhi is apparently more confident of controlling its market exposure. Last year, India and Mauritius signed a Comprehensive Economic Co-operation and Partnership Agreement. Interim trade agreements with the UK, Canada and Australia are in the pipeline.
The negotiations for the CEPA with the UAE were concluded in three to four months. It aims to take bilateral trade to over $1billion within five years, including in services. The FTA covers 80 per cent of Indian exports to the UAE and is expected to stimulate export-oriented industries in India, especially in the MSME sector, because of a zero-tariff welcome by the UAE. Officials are also hoping that Indian investments in the UAE, spurred by the FTA, will see more remittances flowing into the country. The jewellery sector is also expected to receive a fillip with a concessional import duty. The agreement also speaks about expediting work on a special investment zone for UAE companies and joint ventures, and a dedicated India Mart in the Jebel Ali free zone. Relations between India and the UAE have improved significantly over the last few years. The UAE is India’s third-largest trading partner and second-largest export destination, oil being the main import from the Gulf country. The two countries signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2017. The CEPA may serve to deepen the partnership. India and UAE are also now part of an economic relations focussed, informally named “Middle East Quad”, in which the United States and Israel area also members.
The government hopes that the pact with the UAE will revive a long-shelved FTA with the Gulf Co-operation Council, a six-nation grouping of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman, and pave the way to markets in Africa, especially for India’s pharmaceuticals sector. With the UAE an important transit point for goods and people, this is not an unreasonable expectation, provided Indian industry, especially the ailing MSME sector, can live up to the potential offered by the FTA, and exports match imports.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on February 21, 2022 under the title ‘Riding trade winds’.
In an unprecedented move, the AP Congress-I Legislature Party turned down the parliamentary board’s directive to elect its leader by a secret ballot and instead asked Indira Gandhi to name the new leader. The person so named will be deemed to have been elected by the CLP-I said a resolution adopted at the end of a four-hour meeting, which was deadlocked over the modalities of election. The authorisation was unconditional negating any consensus that might have been reached on the candidate during the two-day exercise of “opinion gathering” conducted by party observers.
The three-day consultations beginning in New Delhi on February 22 to consider informal steps to break the deadlock in the North-South global negotiations and to regenerate South-South cooperation is unlikely to yield any breakthrough, despite host India’s “gratification” at 43 of the 44 proposals received.
The quiet pilgrim city of Pandharpur became the third city in Maharashtra to come under curfew in less than a week. Meanwhile the situation in Pune and Sholapur, under curfew since February 15, was reported to be under control by official sources in the wake of Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Janagran Abhiyan processions.
India and Pakistan clashed at a meeting in Geneva of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. The dispute between the two countries was reportedly over the Kashmir issue. Agha Hilaly, brother of the outgoing Pakistan foreign minister Agha Shahi, raked up the issue while discussing colonial domination.
India’s agriculture sector is all set to create an all-time high production record this year. According to the Second Advance Estimates of Production of Foodgrains for 2021-22, released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare last week, India’s total foodgrains production will cross 316 million tonnes. This is 1.7 per cent higher than the total production the year before. But what truly captures the remarkable growth in India’s farm production is the stark trend in the past six years: Foodgrains production has gone up from 252 million tonnes in 2015-16 to 316 million tonnes now; rising every single year. Contrast this with the performance in the six years preceding 2016-17 — production fluctuated between 244 and 265 million tonnes.
While overall farm production has increased there are diverging trends. Among cereals, coarse grains such as jowar, bajra and ragi are expected to see a decline in output while maize is expected to buck the trend. Thanks to good monsoons, rice production, both in kharif and rabi seasons, is expected to increase by almost 3 per cent. Wheat production, too, is expected to go up by 2 per cent. Pulses are expected to see their output grow by almost 6 per cent with the exception of tur, which is likely to dip by 7 per cent. Oilseeds are expected to see a production growth of 3.3 per cent, thanks to significant increases in mustard and soybean, making up for the fall in groundnut production. Among the key cash crops, sugarcane is expected to see a jump of over 4 per cent while cotton production may decline by over 3 per cent.
There are two policy concerns emerging from this data. One, what happens to food inflation. For instance, wholesale inflation has been 10.5 per cent in wheat, 14.5 per cent in maize, over 23 per cent in oilseeds and 45 per cent in cotton. While domestic production is one big factor in influencing prices, the minimum support prices announced by the government (pulses) as well as the international prices (oilseeds) of these commodities also impact them. The combination of these factors will play out in the year ahead. For example, lower production in cotton when prices are already high will raise the raw material costs of the domestic textile industry, weakening its competitiveness. The other concern would be to ensure improved remuneration for farmers. The ironic — and troublesome — aspect of India’s sustained increase in farm production in the past 5-6 years has been the concurrent rise in farmers’ distress as the terms of trade have worsened.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on February 21, 2022 under the title ‘After the harvest’.
Some time back, when pictures of a burqa-clad woman taking her child attired as Lord Krishna to school on the occasion of Janmashtami were circulated approvingly, a vocal section of Hindutva made an interesting argument. It was said this was reducing Hindu tradition to a fancy dress event and that such (mis)appropriation of Hindu tradition should be called out. Clearly, it is not enough that non-Hindus should behave like Hindus or participate in Hindu cultural-religious festivities.
Now, in the case of Karnataka, the argument is that non-Hindus cannot have their own practices (whether these are good or bad practices is beside the point). In the case of beef eating, the argument rests on the point that since the cow is sacred for Hindus, non-Hindus should ensure that Hindu sentiment is not hurt by killing the cow and consuming its meat. In the present case, there is no such “hurt” caused to Hindus and yet, non-Hindus are not left alone to follow their (supposedly) religious practice.
Three dimensions of Hindutva emerge through the Karnataka complication. The first is a political dimension, not just in the limited sense of consolidating the Hindu vote, which surely is happening. But the more critical political dimension is about issues such as what constitutes the nation and who are entitled to be India’s citizens. At a fundamental level, the citizenship of those who do not follow authorised Hindu practices is being denied. Increasingly, governments are ensuring that deviations from such practices as approved by Hindutva are formally discouraged and disallowed. So, the concept of an Indian citizen is being equated with adopting the Hindutva way of life and thinking. The rest will be marginalised and criminalised.
Another dimension is cultural. It speaks to the ideologically fed century-old anxieties of some Hindus. These anx ieties have produced a hankering for uniformity. The Karnataka developments give a wrong impression that it is only about Muslims. At a more immediate level, these are indeed aimed at Muslims: Muslims cannot have the freedom of being slow in modernisation because in this particular instance, a certain meaning of modernisation suits the Hindutva agenda. But let us not make a mistake of summarising this only as between Hindus and Muslims. More than that, this issue is literally and metaphorically, about the idea of “uniform”.
A cursory glance at the history of Hindutva shows its understanding of an ideal society is premised on everyone being similar, differences being only nominal, bringing about homogeneity in every respect. While in politics, this is reflected in the emphasis on “common” or national language, in the religious sphere it is reflected in searching for a foundational scripture either in the Gita or in the Vedas. In the sphere of popularly practiced religion, this obsession has found two expressions. On the one hand, one deity is raised at the all-India level both as a symbol of religious pride and also as a basis of national identity; on the other hand, regionally celebrated deities are promoted elsewhere to ensure that they do not remain identities of regions but assume pan-Hindu status.
In every sphere, this homogenisation of the idea of being Hindu is at the core of Hindutva. That is why diversity of practices about food consumption is discouraged and delegitimised as being against the Hindu religion. Besides beef, debates around inclusion/exclusion of eggs from school mid-day meals is being characterised by this search for true and pure Hindu.
This takes us to the third dimension of Hindutva — the search for the pure as the original. Besides the obsession with uniformity, cultural practices of Hindutva are also based on another ambition. It is about formulating a “pure”, unadulterated Hindu religio-cultural existence at the mass level. While a bikini can be easily condemned as western debasement, we are not far from de-claiming Khajuraho; recently, a book shop was vandalised for selling Kamasutra. So, a masculine yet pure (preferably celibate) identity and a feminine but de-sexualised identity are upheld as role models. Through these exercises, a pure religiosity as true Hindu religion contests the rich diversity of religiosities among the so-called Hindus. In a sense, this search for purity dovetails with both uniformity and nationalism.
At the most superficial but very loud rhetorical level, hate and suspicion of Muslims (both from India and elsewhere generally) constitute the immediate driver of Hindutva. But Hindutva cannot be explained only in terms of Islamophobia. In many instances, Islamophobia is a convenient tool given the widespread misunderstanding about Muslims and the intransigence of Muslim clergy and elite to steer internal reform. Beyond that, in matters of religious books, the emphasis on celibacy and simplicity, institutionalisation of seva as a “missionary” activity demanding long years of sacrifice and a search for unified religious order, the Hindutva project resembles traits of Christianity.
Finally, caste-based ideas of purity combined with the European obsession with pure blood as represented in the Nazi idea of Aryan race has informed the Hindutva project. Critics of Hindutva often draw attention to its “Brahmanical” character in this regard. While that has a certain validity, it must be squarely accepted that most castes (and the idea of caste itself) draw sustenance from the idea of barricading one community from others by restricting marriage practices. The violent opposition to inter-caste marriages, particularly when the male partner is from a “lower” caste, is testimony to this caste-based search for purity.
In this sense, the drivers of Hindutva are beyond the pale of many ideas of the Hindu religion. They are also quite far from popular cultural practices and that is why it has taken so long and so much violence for Hindutva to gain traction. The drivers of Hindutva — the othering of Muslims, influence of Christianity and an elite idea of purity — are also away from the moral or spiritual ideas of religion. These factors constitute the ideological base and work as the political weapons of Hindutva. If this broader context of what is happening in Karnataka is missed, we are likely to be waylaid by the “secular” argument that the hijab controversy is more a matter of reform than being a part of a larger narrative or restructuring of India’s culture and society.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 21, 2022 under the title ‘Decoding Hindutva’. The writer, based at Pune, taught political science and is chief editor of Studies in Indian Politics
Ravish Tiwari entered journalism almost a decade after I became a reporter but, for us, that gap never mattered. He was a political animal, I see myself as one too. Even though we were good friends since 2006, he was also a reporter with whom I competed and when he came as chief of bureau in The Indian Express, I was apprehensive. But Ravish proved me wrong, taught me lessons that no one else did, and made me realise that two political reporters could learn from each other.
Nothing, neither the ordeal of cancer, the tubes and needles piercing his body nor the strong drugs pumped into him, doused his passion for reporting, or blunted the sharpness of his political instinct. Here is an example. On February 12, the BJP released a list of nine candidates for the election in Uttar Pradesh. I shared it on a Whatsapp group and within minutes came Ravish’s message from the hospital bed: “Zahoorabad becomes an interesting constituency to profile. Om Prakash Rajbhar contesting from SP-SBSP alliance, old SP hand Shadab Fatima (from Rahi Masoom Raza family) rebels and contests from BSP, and BJP fields a Rajbhar. The area is in Ansari influence zone too.” When it came to understanding the nuances of politics and making a report interesting for readers, Ravish was unique.
Ravish was never satisfied with the logic given by netas for their acts and decisions. He always looked for the why, and at how ordinary folk looked at it. In Parliament corridors, one could see Ravish engrossed in intense conversation with the most unfamiliar faces and back benchers. He would argue with the most articulate leader, too. I never heard him talk ill of anyone, he had friends from across parties, but he was no one’s friend when it came to news.
These are times when criticism against the political establishment can get you stamped as “anti-national” or “radical”, and embedded reporting can be the easy way out. But Ravish continued to ask leaders the most difficult questions with a smile. No one could get away without responding to him.
Ravish could challenge and provoke, with respect, without being rude. I used to envy his fearlessness and the felicity with which he carried out a conversation with leaders who might snub me for my faltering Hindi. The questions I would be hesitant to ask, or fail in putting across, Ravish would shoot effortlessly.
Ravish was an avid reader, he would read at least one or two books before writing about anything other than politics. In the newsroom, we were all entertained by Ravish the storyteller: When narrating an incident, he peppered it with mimicry of the main characters.
He was unenthused by money, he didn’t accumulate things. He did not bother to buy a new car saying the old one he had was running but finally gave in to his family’s persuasion to purchase a home. Long hair and the muffler casually hanging from his neck during winters marked his don’t-care attitude. About his disease, he would say: “It’s all about science. One has to rely on science to come out of this.”
I have lost a good friend, and a guide who helped me hone my understanding of the layers and nuances of north Indian politics. The mentor in him awakened whenever I mentioned my twin daughters to him. He got excited about their small achievements, chided me for putting the pressure of my own expectations on them — a baseless allegation, I would retort. When I was down with mild Covid, he, who was going through multiple sessions of chemotherapy and radiation, would call me three times a day to check on my temperature and oxygen levels. He was lucky to have a partner like Poojya, who stood by him through the tumult and pain of the last two years.
As I write this, it’s been more than 24 hours since he left us. Whose appraisal will I seek when I write next, who will I call now for help in framing the intro for stories ? Who will I call for confirming a tip I got from the beat? Ravish the journalist, earned the respect of many. As a colleague, he earned a cherished place in the hearts of all who worked with him. I can find solace in that old adage: “Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal”. But he has left all of us who loved and admired him with a sorrow that can’t be healed.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 21, 2022 under the title ‘My good friend and guide’. Write to the author at liz.mathew@expressindia.com.
Europe and its key Indo-Pacific partners are joining forces to deliver a positive agenda for the region at the ministerial Forum taking place tomorrow in Paris under France’s ongoing presidency of the EU. This first-of-its-kind event brings together the foreign affairs ministers from EU member states and 30 Indo-Pacific countries, including India’s Foreign Minister Jaishankar, with France and the EU as co-chairs.
The issues at stake in this crucial region, including security challenges, are of concern to all EU countries. Europe’s answer is a comprehensive and positive agenda of solutions, rather than a logic of military confrontation. This is also the guiding principle of the EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, unveiled in September 2021. Europe can offer the countries of the region a sustainable, transparent model for preserving their sovereignty, and an alternative to other models, such as China’s.
France, itself a nation of the Indo-Pacific, has a long-standing commitment to upholding the law of the sea in the region, particularly through our permanent naval presence and joint exercises, such as our annual “Varuna” drills with India. Other EU countries are increasingly present at the national level. We believe that stronger European engagement will help to better respond to the security challenges of this vast region. That is why we are working on a coordinated EU maritime presence in the Indian Ocean, a key item of tomorrow’s discussions. This would be a significant step, that demonstrates the EU’s role as a provider of stability in the region.
There are immense connectivity and infrastructure needs in the Indo-Pacific. But these needs should not force the countries of the region into unsustainable dependencies. Alternative options are required. The EU’s Global Gateway initiative unveiled in December 2021 hopes to address this by pooling the resources of the EU’s institutions and its 27 member states to raise 300 billion euros to build sustainable links. Tomorrow’s Forum will focus on strengthening connections between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, particularly in the air and digital domains. The EU and India have already concluded a Connectivity Partnership (last May in Porto), which can be a pillar of this wider initiative.
The Indo-Pacific is a crucial region for tackling global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity protection and health resilience. These challenges call for collective action. At the Forum, the EU will present the support it can provide to countries of the region, including in terms of green finance, to achieve their ecological transitions in a just manner. This is significant for India’s efforts to meet the goals set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at COP26. Moreover, in the fields of biodiversity protection and plastic pollution, France and India can act together to spur multilateral action, as exemplified by India’s decision to join the France-initiated international coalition to protect 30 per cent of the land and seas by 2030 (High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People).
Cooperation between France and India on protected areas and national parks can also be expanded at the Indo-Pacific scale. Finally, the ministers will discuss concrete steps to strengthen health sovereignty and promote the “One Health” approach to the pandemic response. France will propose the creation of an Indo-Pacific health campus, to be established in India, to bring together India’s pharmaceutical prowess and Europe’s technological capacity for the benefit of the region.
In a world of growing tensions, the core goal of France’s EU Presidency is to strengthen Europe’s sovereignty and its ability to decide its own fate. This endeavour matches India’s fundamental aspiration for strategic autonomy. That is why France believes that the EU can be India’s natural partner to reshape the post-pandemic world and promote a multipolar order. We can leverage our excellent bilateral ties and the momentum from the May 2021 EU-India Summit to bring about this vision. At tomorrow’s Forum, France and India will work together to place a truly strategic EU-India partnership at the centre of a new deal for the Indo-Pacific.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 21, 2022 under the title ‘EU in the Indo-Pacific’. The writer is Ambassador of France to India
In the early 2000s, I was doing research for my book on Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen. As a part of this journey, I not only watched many of the duo’s films but also spoke to people for whom the Uttam-Suchitra films had been a part of their growing years. Almost every one of these people also mentioned the songs in these films, and how important a part they had played in the overall impact of the film. Most of these immensely popular songs had been sung by two famous singers from Bengal, Sandhya Mukherjee and Hemanta Mukherjee.
Sandhya Mukherjee’s career as a singer began when she was a young girl. She started by singing for the radio, during and after which she received extensive training in classical music. Mukherjee’s voice soon became well-known, especially in Bengal, and this resulted in Sachin Dev Burman requesting her to sing for Hindi films. She shifted to Bombay in the 1950s to sing for the Hindi film Tarana, which was released in 1951, and where for the first time she sang with the by-now famous Lata Mangeshkar. The combination of Lata Mangeshkar and Sandhya Mukherjee in the hit song Bol papihe bol led to many more films and songs for Mukherjee. But in spite of having a flourishing career in Hindi playback singing, she opted to return to Bengal to continue her career there.
In Bengal, Mukherjee worked with many filmmakers but, undeniably, her best work happened with Robin Chatterji, who exploited her classical singing skills. A Patiala Gharana singer, Mukherjee brought a unique classical blend to film music. The timbre of her voice was fresh and unlike what audiences had heard before. While Sandhya Mukherjee was a known name, it was her pairing with Hemanta Mukherjee that became most memorable. In film after film, the duo began singing for the romantic hit pairing of Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen.
Suchitra Sen on screen became synonymous with Sandhya Mukherjee’s voice. Indeed, many would say they nourished each other’s artistic journeys. Soon it came to be that almost every other film of Sen, with a hit song, had a playback by Mukherjee. Apparently, they even altered their respective voices and mannerisms to suit the other while the songs were filmed. One of the earliest films where she sang playback for Suchitra Sen was Agni Pariksha (1954). The film was a huge hit and took both their careers on an upswing. Songs like Gaane mor kon Indradhonu or Ke tumi amare dako alokhe lukaye thako, became a rage. The songs, which were played again and again in public domains, from coffee shops to puja pandals, catapulted both the star cast and Mukherjee into immense fame. Other songs like the popular Ghum ghum chand jhikimiki tara (Harano Sur, 1957), or the semiclassical Kaun tarha se tum (Uttar Phalguni, 1963) followed one after the other in quick succession, and cemented Mukherjee’s reputation in the Bengali music industry.
In 1961, Sandhya Mukherjee sang Ei poth jodi na sesh hoy, a fun romantic song for the film Saptapadi, along with Hemanta Mukherjee. It was picturised on Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen, a song about lovers taking off on a journey of togetherness. The song caught the imagination of the youth of the time and went on to gain cult status, eventually becoming one of Bengali cinema’s most loved and iconic songs, hummed till date, and still known to resonate with young lovers. An octogenarian I had interviewed for my book spoke about the songs laughingly, “Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar with their good looks, and the voice of Sandhya Mukherjee and Hemanta — can you imagine what a potent combination it was? It was sublime, we fell in love!”
To her credit, Mukherjee’s career wasn’t limited to film music. She never let her training in classical music go to waste. She continued to perform in classical music soirées throughout her life with as much skill and gusto, as she sang in other Bengali music genres like Najrulgeeti and folk. In keeping with the tradition of creative artists, Mukherjee has always lent her voice to important issues that she felt strongly about, whether it was standing in support of the Bangladesh liberation fight in 1971, or her recent decision to return the Padma Shri award by the Government of India, which she felt had belittled her talent.
There are many singers who have sung before and after Sandhya Mukherjee — beautiful voices all of them, no doubt, but the ability to make people dream, to be able to take them to some far-away magical land where they become one with music, is a special talent that few possess. In that sense, Sandhya Mukherjee will always be remembered, for she enabled an entire generation to fall in love.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 21, 2022 under the title ‘The voice of Bengali romance’. The writer is a poet and the author of Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen: Bengali Cinema’s First Couple
Since schools closed, students have been through a lot of changes. Not only have they aged, they have become different people, having lived through a pandemic at such a young age. So, what should schools expect when children return, and how can they prepare to support their emotional adjustment and safeguard their development beyond academic achievement?
As a society, we have always struggled to accept that school is about more than academic achievement. School is where children make friends, encounter bullies, face anxieties, experiment with identities, have secret adventures, live independent lives, and learn who they are away from their parents. If their home environment is unstable for any reason, they have the chance to live a different life where they can feel like they have a higher degree of freedom and control. That this is essential to their psychosocial development is beyond debate.
Being home for the larger part of two years has denied them these necessary developmental opportunities. Undoubtedly, children will have missed their friends, and the routine of going to school can have induced grief and listlessness. Beyond this, though, several children will have experienced Covid-induced health anxieties, the loss of loved ones, varying textures of violence, financial crises and several other issues.
The symptom grabbing everyone’s attention seems to be an increase in screen time. Less attention has been paid to “nuisance” symptoms such as disrupted sleep or eating patterns, lack of focus and motivation to study, sullen behaviour and temper tantrums. Older children have been taken to doctors for anything from mild mood and anxiety disorders to instances of addiction and self-harm. Despite our intention to support our children, it seems we have instead decided to “manage” them and place the burden of coping — academically and emotionally — on them alone. It is one of the great privileges of adulthood to develop an amnesia about how we would have liked to be treated when we were children and adolescents.
Children do not always communicate directly, and often go unheard when they try. Nor do they have (read: are not given) an emotional vocabulary to explain the complexity of emotions they might be going through (neither do adults, if I’m being honest). Instead, they withdraw, get angry, stop studying or lose focus. Our instinct, unthinkingly, is to respond by telling them to engage, stop feeling angry, study harder and focus more. Unsurprisingly, such advice never works. These are expressions of their feelings. Withdrawing into their phones, for instance, can well be an expression of loneliness, despair and a feeling of being unmoored. Children are alive to everything around them. Holding it inside, trying to make sense of it, can be a lot to carry. Shutting down — receding into technology — might be a protective response that offers stimulation and engagement on their terms. Other responses to this felt helplessness, no less extreme, could be addictions of various kinds and attempts at self-harm.
It is, therefore, unreasonable to expect children to return to “normal” just by virtue of them attending school again. Students may struggle to reassimilate with friends, while others may not know how to study in a classroom. Schools need to be prepared for hundreds of students, each carrying the burden of the past two years, coming together under one roof. This is a moment to think beyond labelling students as those “falling behind” or “depressed” or exhibiting “conduct disorders” and sending them for behavioural interventions or calling their parents to reprimand them. It is an opportunity to move from a punitive to a compassionate, supportive stance. The aim, now, is not to graduate them from one class to the next but to help them mourn what was lost, recover and feel safe again.
This is an appeal to the administrations — governments, schools and PTAs.
Be proactive in addressing psychological and behavioural concerns. Help parents understand the “symptoms” as responses to the difficulties their children have been through. Give parents and children a vocabulary to talk about their concerns. Use age-appropriate language and creative ways to help children express their feelings and challenges. Make an effort to know which children may have faced death and other identifiable crises in these times. Reach out to them personally; let them know you care. Don’t ask why someone didn’t attend a class; ask what’s going on within. Look out for the really quiet or obedient child. Look out for behavioural signs that are completely discordant from the child you knew. Don’t be afraid to ask children what’s going on with them — often, they are hoping someone will notice them and ask. You don’t have to have all the answers — just hear them out.
Create professional systems that involve all manner of mental health professionals who can help you navigate these problems. Offer school counselling services. Create informed and capable systems that can truly be relied on by the students (not as bodies that report to the teachers and principals in the “best interest of the child”). These can include psychotherapists, counsellors, parents, teachers and even some older students who, with basic training, can become the first line of therapeutic relief and instil a sense of community. These efforts can also take the form of team activities, sports, theatre and the like, which can be seamlessly incorporated into the daily calendar without additional budgetary or personnel stressors.
The time for gradually assimilating such changes into our systems is gone. This is a call for a pendulous shift in the approach to studenthood. Even so, the idea is not to attend to mental health as the flavour du jour; it is to demonstrate a sustained attention to it. This is imminently doable without disruption to other school activities and schedules.
We have not even begun to understand the long-term impact of this time on the lives of children. Short-term repair, at the very least, will require an additional commitment to the psychosocial development of the children. This is, then, also a good time to examine what education really means, and the place schools hold in the lives of our children.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 21, 2022 under the title ‘The compassion lesson’. These ideas were developed in conversations with Nupur Dhingra Paiva, child and adolescent psychotherapist and author of Love & Rage: Inner World of Children. Chandra is a psychologist and founder of KindSpace Center for Mental Health
The new National Education Policy’s goal of achieving a 50% gross enrollment rate in higher education by 2035 is a worthy one, indeed an essential one if such advancement is understood and delivered in skill-enhancing terms. In this regard the government move to amend the UGC (Open and Distance Learning Programmes and Online Programmes) Regulations to allow 900 autonomous colleges with good performance to award online degrees from July 2022, is welcome. This will be a significant addition to the online degrees being offered by universities, which alone are allowed to do so currently.
In 2011 China’s GER was 26 and India’s 23. By 2018, while China had raced to 51 India had only crawled to 28. So it is both clear that India needs to go some distance to catch up with the competition, and that picking up pace to do this is doable. But the many question marks against the quality of higher education being offered in the country currently and the extent to which it is actually aiding youth employability, must be kept front of mind as we proceed with online education as well. Building strong online courses also needs high-level integration of traditional and new teaching methods. Basically, expanding quantity through new online courses is the easier task. In undertaking it, the tougher ask of ensuring skill standards must not be neglected.
Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s meeting with Maharashtra counterpart Uddhav Thackeray and NCP supremo Sharad Pawar represents another attempt by regional parties to find answers to BJP’s national dominance. Meanwhile, the ongoing five-state assembly elections are witnessing SP in UP, AAP in Punjab and NPP in Manipur offering resistance to BJP, and Congress. But if opposition parties do well in this round, a big if, what might it mean for national elections in 2024? Going by recent history, all extrapolations should be consumed with large helpings of salt, even though it is true that a major state victory does provide political impetus.
Congress’s strong showing in three Hindi heartland states in 2018 was supposed to have a bearing on BJP’s 2019 LS poll performance. But it hardly mattered. There is now all round recognition that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has partly altered the dynamics of national elections. Voters in some states may also be distinguishing between a vote for Modi at the national level and BJP in states. So, it can work badly for BJP, too. Post its huge LS win in 2019, BJP faced adverse or not-too-happy outcomes in Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Delhi and Bengal.
What is undisputed is that regional parties are struggling to spot a durable national alternative or a pan-India leader to take on Modi. Parties like TMC and AAP are attempting to tackle this by testing waters in multiple states. Another reality check for some regional parties is their struggle in LS polls, even against Congress. In 2019, AAP trailed behind BJP and Congress in vote share in Delhi. TRS, which trounced a grand alliance of Congress-led opposition parties in 2018, had to share the honours with BJP and Congress six months later. Similarly, in Kerala, CPM, though dominant in the assembly and panchayats, was decimated by Congress-led UDF in 2019.
No less facile is the talk of UP elections as the semifinal before 2024. There are other states that matter. Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh this year, and Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Telangana in 2023, are all poised to witness intense contestation. But then again, if, say, BJP wins in Telangana and Congress in MP – it doesn’t necessarily mean that 2024 will see a saffron surge in the south and GOP revitalisation in the heartland. In 2017, Congress almost wrested Gujarat from BJP. In 2019, it got thumped. So, an assembly poll win in UP is great for BJP or SP. But it is no predictor for 2024.
As challenging as the long haul to take possession of one’s home can be in India, the multi-storeyed cave-in at Gurgaon’s Chintels Paradiso complex highlights what home-buyers are up against even afterwards. Even as two FIRs have been filed, including one naming the directors of the real estate company, the structural engineers and the architect, and an SIT has begun investigating the case, the district’s town and country planner has declared four more towers in the building complex unfit for living. Identifying and punishing the guilty is a necessary part of the restitution process. But actually preventing the building collapses that have become a common story across urban India needs fixing a more fundamental regulatory rot.
The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act makes provision for the promoter rectifying structural defects without further charge if they are brought to its notice within five years of handing over possession. But, first, this five-year provision is woefully inadequate given that a person invests in a home for her lifetime and her children’s beyond that. Second, legal expenses here would both be considerable and on top of EMI and rent. Rather than homeowners from Shimla and Delhi to Mumbai and Bengaluru wretchedly chasing compensation and justice, municipal regulators must do their job properly in the first place.
In the Chintels case, not only the original structural audit but also its follow-up after a roof slab collapsed last July, were evidently subpar. Failures to enforce state building bylaws and to make sure that the National Building Code of India is followed, are tied to rampant corruption. But equally, municipal authorities are very poor in engineering, geological and other building forensics skills. This is also a reminder of the limits of new CMs to deliver change, as long as local governance is overwhelmingly corrupt and/or inept.
The Sarkaria Commission, set up in 1983 to examine Centre-state relations, pithily defined federalism as being 'more of a functional arrangement for cooperative activity than a static institutional concept'. And it is the smooth functional aspect of governorships that has come into question down the decades, the latest involving Kerala governor Arif Mohammed Khan and the Kerala government. The state government has recommended that Sarkaria's successor, the M M Punchhi Commission that submitted its report in 2010, consider that Article 156 of the Constitution be amended to give the state government a say in the matter of a governor's recall. This is not a new request. Even as earlier commissions, including the M N Venkatachaliah-headed National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution set up in 2001 by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, dealt more with finding ways of appointing governors so as to avoid them being perceived as 'agents of the Centre'.
The Punchhi Commission suggests gubernatorial appointments be made by a committee comprising the prime minister, home minister, Lok Sabha speaker and the chief minister of the state, and that a governor can be removed only via a resolution by the state legislature. This leaves the matter of central disapproval vs state approval of recalling governors in a grey area. Historically, points of contention between Centre and states have been over governors' powers of inviting a party to form a government, dissolving an assembly, etc. Of late, cause of friction has come to include governors allegedly commenting on 'political matters'.
Whatever the points of Centre-state chafing may be, smoother functioning and 'cooperative activity' are needed. The Constituent Assembly intended governors to be apolitical. That horse may have bolted. But having a counterbalancing force in place - the state having a say in both appointment and removal of governors along with the Centre - is an idea that could serve an apolitical, larger, symbiotic purpose for a healthier federal India.
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The rules of geopolitics and foreign policy are fundamentally unlike universal physical laws in that the former come with an objective that the latter do not: best interests of a sovereign state. So, to impose a 'what applies here must also apply there' reasoning in foreign policy misses the wood for the trees. Responding to a query on how India can voice concerns over China's aggression along the Line of Actual Control (LoAC) with India while abstaining from the UN Security Council vote against Russia on Ukraine, S Jaishankar provided a lesson in Geopolitics 101 by underlining that 'the situations in the Indo-Pacific and transatlantic are not analogous'. As the foreign minister, while addressing a security conference in Munich last week, stated with diplomatic vigour and clarity, theatres of engagement and non-engagement are not chosen by sovereign states by their perceived structural similarities but by their contexts.
The issue of Chinese aggression on India's border invites obvious Indian condemnation and New Delhi seeking out support in international fora. The issue of reported Russian aggression on Ukraine, apart from being less clear-cut, requires India to not rush in, considering it needs to calibrate its equations with a Russia leaning harder on the very same China rattling at its gates.
For Nato's Western European and US member countries, India-China LoAC 'stand-offs' are as much 'nuanced skirmishes' as the Donbass 'stand-off' is for India. Too see both in terms of equivalence would be dealing in abstractions, rather than anchored in the real world of conflict resolution. It would be foolish to rush into making such equivalence where wiser counsel makes strategic considerations before deciding to tread.
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State-owned oil marketing companies have promised to install at least 22,000 charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) in prominent cities and on national highways within the next year, the power ministry said on Saturday. This is a crucial development because EV owners are worried about EV’s capability to reach destinations before the battery runs out. India has 1,010,021 registered EVs, but there are only 1,640 public charging stations, according to transport ministry data. Of these, the nine big cities account for some 940 stations. India wants 80% of all two-wheelers and 30% of all private cars to run on electricity by 2030. Expanding the charging station network is key for this.
There have been several positive developments on this front in the last few months. In January, the Union government formalised the practice of owners charging EVs at their residence or offices, using existing electricity connections and said that any individual/entity is free to set up public charging stations without a licence. Recently, Delhi said that State-run offices will have charging infrastructure and released EV charging guidelines for malls.
For India to reduce its transport emissions and ensure clean air, meet its climate goals, reduce its oil import bill, and bolster its manufacturing sector, it is important to expand the use of EVs. Electric scooters are leading EV adoption, but electric cars have less than 1% of total sales. One reason is the lack of affordable electric cars. In the next decade, reports project, the number of EVs on our roads will rise, and so readily accessible charging away from one’s home (or workplace) will also be essential.
Karnataka has become a boiling pot of communal passions over the past months. It can be argued that the state has always leaned to the Right, but even a cursory perusal of Karnataka’s politics shows that while caste often decided who came to power, money remained the governing currency — one reason for the corruption scandals (and allegations) in the state. If the liquor lobby called the shots early in the state’s history, it was the mining and land lobbies later.
In 2021, the state passed a stringent cow slaughter law and, towards the end of the year, another prohibiting forced religious conversion. And this year has seen a government order on uniforms that prevented the entry of hijab-clad Muslim students into schools and colleges, a follow-up government order (which pretty much said that banning the hijab was not unconstitutional), and widespread misuse of an interim order of the high court on the hijab issue by schools and colleges that did not have any rules regarding uniforms to bar the entry of hijab-wearing students, even teachers (for whom, there was no uniform). In the last instance, it has emerged that groups on both sides have fuelled the controversy, and political parties have been quick to jump into the fray. On Sunday, a Bajrang Dal worker was killed in Shivamogga, prompting the closure of educational institutions in the city for two days, and before the investigation was complete, a Karnataka minister attributed it to “Muslim goondas (criminals)”, while another linked it to the hijab controversy. It may well turn out that the killing may have been on account of the victim’s faith — after all, Karnataka has become a tinder box as elucidated above. Or it may not.
While it is evident that the government, as well as Opposition parties, in Karnataka are at fault for allowing the situation to come to this, the primary fault is the former’s — as it always is; the government has more responsibility to ensure that situations such as this do not spiral out of control, since it also has the power to ensure they don’t. It hasn’t missed anyone’s notice that much of this has happened after a change of chief ministers (CMs), one that came after much haggling, with the choice of the new CM in June last year continuing to be debated within his party (the Bharatiya Janata Party), for months thereon. While the hijab issue is now before the Karnataka High Court — and irrespective of the ruling, this is unlikely to mark the end of the legal challenge — it is incumbent on the government and other parties to restore a sense of calm, and for the CM to display both leadership and statesmanship in cooling tempers.
Last month, the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) released its report on India Enterprise Architecture 2.0 — which envisions the development of a digital ecosystem that enables an integrated delivery of services in the country. This is an improvement on the first version with more clarity as to the vision, principles and implementation aspects of such an ecosystem, but is missing a component essential to discussions on data governance — the financing models that need to drive the development and maintenance of digital platforms and digital communities.
Most civil society debates and government critique tend to avoid in-depth discussions on how digital public infrastructure should be financed — largely because the conceptual framework for financing is not fully developed. Traditional economic models have no direct applicability as digital goods are consumed differently. A movie theatre, for instance, has limited seating, but an online platform such as Netflix potentially has an unlimited number of “seats”. This has a direct impact on revenue, market share, and fundamentally changes our understanding of how movies and TV shows are consumed. Consequently, it also has a bearing on the financing mechanisms that should be allowed in a given sector as these differences could give rise to new benefits and pitfalls. Netflix can reach a wider audience at a lower cost, but can also dominate the market more easily than traditional theatre companies. How should we then regulate Netflix? Should we think of it as a PVR or a Google?
Economists and lawyers don’t have a clear answer to “who should finance what?”. Looking back, we’re unsure if Aadhaar would have been better off if it was privately financed. Looking forward, we don’t know if UPI should be owned and operated entirely by the government, instead of being co-owned by banks. Such questions require more attention, discussion, and resources to have a clear answer.
The two forms of financing that dominate the discourse are government-led on one hand and market-dominated on the other. Economist Mariana Mazzucato argues that the State must provide initial financing for digital innovation. Her thesis is that most of the breakthrough technologies central to our modern digital life have sprung out of investments in public-oriented missions such as landing man on the moon and connecting universities. Governments should not be mere “fixers”, but instead be actively “entrepreneurial”. They have got it right in the past — it was public investment that was responsible for all the technologies on the iPhone — with GPS, Siri, touchscreen, and the internet itself. They should, therefore, continue to invest in future innovation as well.
Journalist-businessman Matt Ridley, on the other hand, challenges such a top-down view of innovation. In his book, How Innovation Works, he argues, with numerous historical examples, that innovation is spontaneous and organic. It emerges out of freedom, and so, Ridley argues, governments should move out of the space of innovation, allowing individuals to innovate, fail, and innovate again. He doesn’t believe that government financing can improve the innovation capacity in any country or culture and, therefore, believes that governments should not pick winners. Instead it is the duty of the government to dismantle barriers that private players face and leave the job of innovating up to them.
A third form of financing has played a role in India’s digital journey — philanthropy. Multiple foundations and private individuals have donated time and resources to build the technology products that have helped shape the development of India’s digital infrastructure. Organisations such as iSPIRT have built IndiaStack and other related technologies. The “not for profit” model has also extended to organisations such as the National Payments Corporation of India, which operates the UPI service.
So, how should India think about financing its digital public infrastructure? There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Different parts of the ecosystem will have to be financed differently. For instance, information access portals — the interface between the citizens and the government — have to be continuously updated with information and adapt to newer operating systems and technologies. Private financing will be more suited for this as government processes are notoriously slow. The IRCTC portal, which is still very archaic when compared to some other modern portals, makes this point. Users are better off using another interface to book tickets, which then plugs into the IRCTC on the backend.
On the other hand, governments can facilitate technologies where the market doesn’t see an immediate profit horizon. The UPI revolution was boosted when the BHIM app — backed by the government — was launched. Google Pay and Amazon followed later. Similarly, philanthropic capital can help in cases where the agility of the private sector is required but where a market doesn’t exist. For instance, open stacks such as the National Health Stack or the MOSIP ID platforms are funded by philanthropic initiatives.
In most instances, an optimal combination of all the three models discussed above is required. This calls for us to first develop a values framework with built-in principles and a clear description of the available choices. With the pace at which India is digitising, such a rubric is both urgent and imperative to develop and guide future policy and regulation.
Rahul Matthan is partner at Trilegal and Prakhar Misra is PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University
The views expressed are personal
China was wary of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, from the beginning. In fact, from the time the bloc was notional.
Even before the four members of Quad had one of its first meetings in 2007, China, according to reports, had dispatched demarches to the four involved, asking them what the meeting was all about.
What had been floated as an arrangement among India, the United States (US), Japan and Australia, the “core group”, after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami to coordinate humanitarian assistance, was gradually evolving into something more strategic.
China was keeping close track of it.
In 2007, the Communist Party of China (CPC)'s mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, questioned the intentions behind a naval drill between India, Japan and the US, held off the Japanese coast.
“It is absolutely not new for Japan and the US to sit down and plot conspiracies together but it is rather intriguing to get India involved,” the PD article said.
It went on to mention that then Japanese Prime Minister (PM) Shinzo Abe had “…repeatedly appealed for establishing a strategic dialogue mechanism among Japan, the US, India and Australia, a proposal described by media as having a self-evident objective”.
Later that year, Abe’s August 2007 “Confluence of the Two Seas” speech to the Indian Parliament became the ideological foundation for the Quad in its infancy.
“Japanese diplomacy is now promoting various concepts in a host of different areas so that a region called “the Arc of Freedom and Prosperity” will be formed along the outer rim of the Eurasian continent… By Japan and India coming together in this way, this “broader Asia” will evolve into an immense network spanning the entirety of the Pacific Ocean, incorporating the United States of America and Australia. Open and transparent, this network will allow people, goods, capital, and knowledge to flow freely,” Abe told Indian parliamentarians.
The bloc abruptly unravelled following Australia’s — under former PM, the Mandarin-speaking, Kevin Rudd — reluctance to anger Beijing, and possibly by New Delhi’s acumen that deep involvement in the bloc could have repercussions at the Sino-India border.
Quad went dormant for a decade. Until November 2017.
By then, in 2017, Abe was in the middle of his second term and India had emerged from a faceoff with China in the Doklam area of Bhutan.
China was poised as well.
“Xi’s China is poised to expand its global power and influence through the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), expansive military build-up and modernisation, assertive foreign policy, and forceful public diplomacy. As a universally acknowledged economic juggernaut and global force that can now manifest its own national destiny across the interlinked and contested global commons, China wants to be treated accordingly,” was how Tuan Pham, a maritime strategist with the US navy wrote about China’s position in a review of the country in 2017.
The time was ripe for Quad to reassemble.
Officials from India’s external affairs ministry and counterparts from the three other countries met in Manila in November 2017 for consultations on issues of common interest in the Indo-Pacific region, resuscitating the bloc.
Even if the revival was low-key, Beijing followed the development and scrutinised the four separate statements minutely.
“The relevant proposal should be open and inclusive and should be conducive to the win-win cooperation and avoid politicising or excluding some relevant parties,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Geng Shuang said in Beijing.
Since then, the Chinese response to Quad has become increasingly sharper and critical — calling it an “Asian NATO”, and openly alleging that the bloc has come together with the single-point agenda to contain Beijing.
“The so-called Quad mechanism is, in nature, a tool to contain and circle China, and preserve America's hegemony,” current foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian said earlier in February after external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, US secretary of state Antony Blinken, Japanese foreign minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and his Australian counterpart, Marise Payne met in Melbourne to deepen cooperation under the mechanism.
“It’s a man-made provocation of confrontation that undermines international unity and cooperation,” Zhao said.
A decade after its amorphous formation, Quad seems to have come back together with renewed resolve.
What happened in the intervening decade?
China’s ties with all four countries suffered setbacks despite strong, and expanding, trade ties with them.
China-US ties, for one, have been deeply acrimonious in recent years over wide-ranging issues including Washington’s ties with self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing sees as interference in its internal matters, and alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet.
Beijing-Canberra ties plummeted after Australia in 2020 urged an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus and participated in naval exercises with its Quad partners; China responded by restricting imports of Australian products.
A joint Japan-US statement issued after bilateral talks in Tokyo in 2021 “acknowledged that China’s behavior, where inconsistent with the existing international order, presents political, economic, military, and technological challenges to the Alliance and to the international community.”
The second paragraph of the statement listed shared concerns about China from “China’s unlawful maritime claims and activities in the South China Sea” to the need for “peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait” to human rights concerns in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
India and China, of course, are in the middle of one of the worst crises in ties as they try to resolve the ongoing border tension along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
China hasn’t helped in resolving the tension by painting India as the “aggressor” and absolving itself of any mistake.
Overall, Beijing’s diplomatic aggression — aimed at multiple countries — has actively aided the revival of the Quad.
A sign of India toughening its stand on the border was minister Jaishankar using this month’s Quad meeting in Melbourne to say that the “…situation (border tension) has arisen due to the disregard by China in 2020 of written agreements with us, not to amass forces at the border. So, when a large country disregards written commitments, I think it’s an issue of legitimate concern for the entire international community.”
But given India’s development status compared with the three other Quad countries — which are all first world, developed countries — New Delhi could do well to negotiate the choppy Quad waters carefully, especially if — some say when — the bloc acquires a military dimension.
Both the US and Australia are geographically far away from China; despite differences, Tokyo maintains a delicate balance of ties with Beijing, balancing diplomacy with strong trade ties.
India’s situation, quite literally, is unique, and so is its status in the bloc.
It also doesn’t share, at least not publicly and whether it’s right or wrong, the west’s critical views on Xinjiang or Hong Kong.
It will require nuanced diplomacy, and quite possibly, calibrated restraint on India’s part to make the most of what Quad has to offer, and yet send a robust message to Beijing.
Sutirtho Patranabis, HT’s experienced China hand, writes a weekly column from Beijing exclusively for HT Premium readers
The views expressed are personal
The February 11 meeting of Quad foreign ministers in Melbourne reviewed recent developments and prepared for the upcoming third summit. While it kept diplomatic attention focused on building cooperation between Australia, Japan, India and the United States (US), it did not release new information. The ministers reiterated the shared vision to advance “a free and open Indo-Pacific.” The joint statement revealed that the four governments were pursuing an ambitious work plan covering diverse domains such as maritime security and counterterrorism, besides addressing “regional challenges”.
So, if Quad is not about countering China’s growing aggression in the region, then what is it? It is conscious of that central challenge in the Indo-Pacific, made clear from references to adherence to international law, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the maritime rules-based order in the South and East China Seas, and freedom of navigation and overflights.
The message from Melbourne was duly received in Beijing, which lost little time in criticising Quad as “a tool to contain and circle China, and preserve America’s hegemony.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained that their, “objective is to give our region strategic choices and to build the resilience of all states.” India’s clear briefing on its border conflict with China and its calibrated disclosure to media thereof, exposed the violation of written agreements by China.
This grouping is engaged in a constructive campaign to win the hearts of the region’s people. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) figures high on the list of the countries it is keen to cooperate with. The ministers’ plan to advance practical implementation of ASEAN’s outlook on the Indo-Pacific, although it remains unclear on how this will be done, considering the ASEAN nations’ vulnerability to China’s military and economic power.
The ministers reviewed progress on vaccines, the climate crisis, critical technologies, infrastructure, cyber security and space, education and people-to-people relations. Not much information was shared with the public, except on two scores.
First, it was disclosed that the Biological E Ltd facility in India was set to produce “at least one billion” vaccine doses by the end of 2022, with the first batch being delivered by June. The success of Quad’s Vaccine Partnership is critical for its credibility.
Second, people-to-people relations, which are celebrated as “Quad’s greatest strengths” will receive a boost, given a new exchange programme by the US in cybersecurity, maritime security, countering disinformation, and promoting transparency in governance.
Two political issues drew attention. First, the absence of reference to the escalating Ukraine crisis in the joint statement was noted. External affairs minister (EAM) S Jaishankar explained that Quad was focused on the Indo-Pacific (not Europe), and that India advocated diplomacy to resolve differences over Ukraine.
Second, on Myanmar, the ministers crafted a shared articulation of concern, including support for the ASEAN Five-Point Consensus, and the need for Myanmar’s swift return to democracy. But India’s differences with the US and Australia on sanctions against the military government surfaced. Jaishankar said firmly, “…we don’t follow a policy of national sanctions.” Thus, India’s adherence to “strategic autonomy” was on full display.
Challenges facing Quad are formidable, a major being on-ground consolidation and enhancement of trade, technology and development cooperation. On political questions, they should be content with a marked policy convergence rather than aiming at unanimity on every issue. The conclusion is clear: Quad powers are strengthening their habits of cooperation.
However, concerns remain about the Joe Biden administration’s capability to multi-task in different geographies in the aftermath of Afghanistan withdrawal and hysteria over Ukraine. A senior administration official observed that the US government was “very confident of our ability to walk and chew gum at the same time.” Not a wise choice of phrase, under the circumstances.
Rajiv Bhatia is distinguished fellow, Gateway House and a former ambassador to Myanmar
The views expressed are personal
The story you often hear about the Industrial Revolution in 18th century England is one of technological transformation. But an economic transformation in the late 17th century — the setting up of the Bank of England — was equally important. The first modern central bank brought an end to centuries of financial instability, ensuring a reliable flow of funds to English entrepreneurs, who were setting up the first cotton mills and building the first steam engines of the world.
The Bank of England was a monetary counter-revolution of sorts. Fed up of despots who debased currencies and stoked the fires of inflation to reduce their debt burden, merchant bankers of medieval Europe developed their own “currency” to settle international trade payments. Initial attempts by royal powers to tame these monetary revolutionaries failed. Private money survived. But it remained prone to crises of confidence. Ultimately a heavily-indebted English government negotiated a grand bargain. Merchant bankers would be able to issue sovereign-backed money, but in return, they would have to finance and manage the burden of public debt. Established in 1694 as a public-private partnership, the Bank of England ushered in an era of unprecedented prosperity.
Three centuries later, another global band of monetary militants has come up with their own virtual currencies, posing a fresh challenge to sovereign powers. This time, the counter-revolution seems to be taking the shape of the central bank digital currency. The digital rupee announced in this year’s Budget signals India’s participation in this rearguard action.
The impact of this counter-revolution will depend on the kind of digital currencies central banks introduce. Globally, two key variants have emerged. In one variant, the central bank will become the sole deposit-taking institution, transforming itself into a citizens’ bank. Let’s call it the alpha variant. In another variant — let’s call it beta — the traditional banking model will be preserved. In both variants, you may be able to keep some of your money in physical form (notes or coins).
If the alpha variant is adopted, banks will be financiers. They will source funds from the central bank and lend to businesses. All your accounts will be transferred to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), although you may still use private digital wallets to access that central account. When RBI raises interest rates, your account will reflect the entire raise. No banker will determine how much of the rate hike should be “passed on” to you. In a recession, it will be easy to roll out an income transfer scheme. RBI’s balance-sheet expansion in this variant will be more than adequate to create a permanent recession relief fund. And given that RBI will have the financial details of each citizen, or at least each adult, the government can easily credit a lump sum amount to everyone who meets a certain threshold (say, monthly average balance less than ₹5 lakhs). It can also create an escrow sub-account, where the lump sum amount is available only for a short period (say six months) to ensure that the handouts are spent rather than saved, ensuring a quick economic recovery.
The key design imperative in the beta variant is to prevent a competition for deposits between commercial banks and the central bank so that current banking operations sustain. In this variant, your RBI account will be managed by commercial banks. It will either be a zero-interest account or pay a nominal rate of interest, so that you don’t feel tempted to transfer your bank funds into your central bank account. It will give RBI some leverage to ensure a quick pass-through of its policy rate but not as much as in the alpha variant.
In both variants, central banks become more powerful. But the alpha variant would completely transform the central bank, and end banking as we know it. The broad outline of the alpha variant appeared in a 2021 research paper by Saule Omarova of the Cornell Law School. Omarova has spent her life studying financial regulations, and was the presidential nominee for a key regulatory post: The comptroller of currency at the US Fed. Unsurprisingly, Wall Street banks lobbied hard against her candidature. Facing personal attacks, Omarova chose to withdraw from the race.
Omarova’s withdrawal suggests that the idea of a citizens’ bank is one whose time may not have come yet. An International Monetary Fund (IMF) survey of central banks published earlier this month points in the same direction. All central banks that intend to launch a digital currency are planning some version of the beta variant, IMF reported. The technical details vary but no central bank wants to bypass the current banking model.
While the beta variant is likely to be the dominant variant for some time to come, it is possible that the alpha variant makes a comeback several years down the line. History suggests that it can take years, if not decades, to stabilise a new monetary regime. Once central banks taste success with the beta variant, a few may be tempted to go further. On a cold November evening in 2036, you may find an Indian prime minister announcing an RBI takeover of banking deposits in the country.
Pramit Bhattacharya is a Chennai-based journalist. This column uses the prism of economics to look at the world and society
The views expressed are personal
The growth of the Indian e-commerce industry has been phenomenal in the last two decades and it is expected to grow further. The current size of the market is estimated at around $47 billion, which may grow at 20% CAGR to reach the level of $110-120 billion by 2025. Market experts believe that India may overtake the United States (US) as a second largest e-commerce market by 2035. All these estimates rely upon the revolutionary internet penetration in India. About one in every five families in India used the internet in 2017, but by 2021, this number rose to six in every 10 families. With a lot many households gaining access to the internet, the potential of e-commerce will increase. But access to the internet is only one part of the story. The success of e-commerce equally relies on the level of urbanisation and consumer preferences.
Urbanisation: The success of the economy, remarkably, is a “story of missing cities”. In 1985, India’s rate of urbanisation was well above the expected level as per its GDP per capita. In next two decades, although the economy soared high due to economic reforms, the rate of urbanisation remained stagnant. So, I call this growth story as one with “missing cities”. This inadequacy forces about two-third of India’s population to remain trapped in rural areas with limited access to public infrastructure. The lack of urbanisation and high-quality public infrastructure can become non-profitable for the execution of logistics of e-commerce such as the delivery of goods and services to those far-flung areas with low-population density.
Consumer preferences: It is correct to say that about 80-90% of the Indian population will have access to the internet in less than a decade. But considering it as a proxy for growth of e-commerce may be misleading. The growth in access to the internet is largely taking place in rural areas as the urban centers are almost saturated. So, unless the internet access changes the way rural people shop, the growth in internet and e-commerce cannot be correlated with each other.
I conducted a random survey of about 730 rural people in India’s largest state to analyse their shopping preferences. The people who answered the questions did so using their cell phone and the internet. It was revealing to know that only 7% of those users in rural area admitted ever buying from online portals. And most cited reason for their purchase behaviour was the convenience of getting the goods immediately.
Additionally, the rural market in India has two other distinguishing factors:
First, it relies on networks and relationship because it is a community-driven society, and second the volume of shopping in monetary terms is not significant. For e-commerce companies, the convenience of “immediate purchase at nearest grocery store” can be offset by offering lower prices, but delivering small volumes in those far-flung areas and countering the “community relationship” could be a big challenge.
It is true India provides a vast opportunity for e-commerce players with its dynamic and vibrant young population. But I will prefer to remain cautiously optimistic about the sustainability of the growth potential of this marketspace until there is a rapid growth in urban infrastructure and we successfully address the peculiarities of rural consumer preferences.
Saurabh Pratap Singh is a second year student at Harvard Kennedy School
The views expressed are personal
New Delhi: On the eve of the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Peking that led to United States (US)-China détente, President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin this month turned the 1972 rapprochement on its head by reaffirming “strong mutual support for the protection of their core interests, state sovereignty and territorial integrity” and resolutely opposed any interference in their internal affairs by external forces without naming the US.
The Sino-Russian February 4 joint statement went a step further with Moscow reaffirming its support to the “One China” principle — confirming that Taiwan was an inalienable part of China and opposing any “form” of independence for Taipei. The ever-growing and close defence cooperation between two neighbours with a common Marxist-Leninist foundation has virtually rebranded Nixon’s 1972 move from a brilliant gambit to the strategic blunder of the millennium.
“It is Chinese victory all the way. First, China used America to bring down the erstwhile Soviet Union, then it used the US to bring down Russia, then it played American against America using its economic muscle power. Today, Nixon’s legacy has been destroyed with China being the sole beneficiary of the 1972 miscalculation,” said a former Indian Ambassador to the US who asked not to be named.
Although the basic purpose of Nixon engagement with Beijing was to draw Red China from the influence of the erstwhile Communist Soviet Union, the larger American purpose to democratise the middle-kingdom has failed as the Chinese Communist Party is in absolute control of the People’s Republic. “With Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping proposing the four modernisations in 1977 and xiaokang or moderately prosperous society in 1979, the Americans thought that they had succeeded, but this turned out to be a false dawn with the so-called Chinese reformer leader ordering the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989,” said a national security planner who asked not to be named.
It is quite evident from the declassified White House papers of the 1970s that then Chinese Premier Zhou En-Lai ran circles around Nixon’s pointman Henry Kissinger by making it quite clear that the US had to abandon its independent Taiwan policy without which there would be no reconciliation with America. “A read-out of US-China negotiations during and after Nixon’s week-long visit to China on February 21, 1972, makes it quite clear that China was boxing much above its weight category and that Nixon’s America sacrificed the Taiwan card in favour of the Soviet card by yielding to Beijing more than even what they expected by pledging to remove troops from the breakaway island and adhering to One China policy,” said a former Indian ambassador to China who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In his July 23, 2020, speech on US-China relations at Nixon Library, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo succinctly summed up these lapses by saying that the US gave the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the regime itself special economic treatment only to see that CCP insist on silence over its human rights abuses as the price of admission for western companies to enter China. “American Airlines, Delta, United all removed references to Taiwan from their corporate websites to not anger Beijing. And Hollywood, not too far from here, the epic centre of American creative freedom and self-appointed arbiters of social justice, self-censors even the most mildly unfavourable reference to China,” Pompeo said. The situation of western media was no different as handicaps in return for investment were distributed to Beijing by turning a soft focus on events in Tibet and Xinjiang region.
The Nixon-Kissinger legacy today stands firmly discredited after five decades with China well on its way to becoming an economic-military superpower with both the capacity and capability to stare at Washington. Thanks to US help in getting China admitted into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2000, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the biggest Communist power has grown from a mere $113 billion in 1972 to $14 trillion in 2021. Along the way, China has moved away all manufacturing and global supply chains from the US with European powers like Germany and France contributing to the rise of Beijing for a few pieces of silver and gold. China is also at the root cause of fracture in the Anglo-Saxon alliance with France upset at both US and the United Kingdom (UK) for the cancellation of the $50 billion submarine deal with Australia by offering much required nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra under the September 15, 2021, AUKUS pact.
From an Indian perspective, Nixon’s China gambit not only alienated New Delhi from Washington but also created two nuclear-powered nations at its doorsteps. A declassified White House Memorandum of Conversation document on the meeting between Nixon and then Pakistan Martial Law Administrator Yahya Khan on October 20, 1970, makes it clear that Islamabad played the role of a commission agent between Washington and Peking. The document shows that Nixon asked Yahya Khan to communicate to Peking that the US wanted to open negotiations with China and for that White House was willing to send ambassadors secretly to China. The Pakistani dictator affirmed to the then US President that he would indeed convey his message to Peking during his forthcoming visit. The conversation was greased by Nixon offering $100 million in economic aid to Islamabad and support to Pakistan against arch-rival India. Looking back five decades, Pakistan also milked the US, in turn, for playing the broker with China, throughout the Afghan jihad with Washington turning a blind eye to Islamabad acquiring nuclear technology and delivery systems with help from Beijing. While the US kept its counsel on human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang post-1970s and turned a blind eye to nuclear proliferation by Pakistan, it passed up no opportunity to tick off India on Kashmir. One unfortunate result of Nixon’s China card is that Indian politicians such as AK Antony, the longest-serving defence minister of India, still have memories of the USS Enterprise Task Force 74 in the Bay of Bengal during the 1971 Indo-Pak war firmly etched in their minds as an example of US perfidy.
In hindsight, the only gainer in the entire Nixon gambit has been China, who has not budged an inch from its stated position on Taiwan since 1972 détente. This is just the same as Beijing’s insistence on imposing the 1959 line on East Ladakh LAC with India, coveting Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, and calling the 14th Dalai Lama a splittist and a terrorist.
While the US, post-Trump has reversed the appeasement of China and now firmly views it as an archrival, Beijing under Xi is openly challenging American superpower status with Russia now reduced to a supplicant in a role reversal. Caught between rock and a hard place, Pakistan virtually is advocating a non-alignment policy to deal with US and China. The White House declassified document reveals that Yahya Khan recalled a conversation with Chairman Mao to Nixon. The Pakistani dictator said: “ Mao talked to me about permanent revolution during my previous visit to Peking. He said Americans hope we will die out, but no, I will teach every child from the day he is born to be a revolutionary.” Henry Kissinger, now 98, must be a very lonely man today.
Lata Mangeshkar’s passing away does end an epoch but her music will remain part of the air generations will breathe. The tragedy is that the eclectism which shaped Lata is being replaced by a cultural wasteland.
Lata Mangeshkar’s art was shaped by the fervour which accompanied Independence when music, indeed culture, was freeing itself from feudal patronage, opening up spaces for democratisation and a wider participation.
Sarod maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan’s father, Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan, never allowed his performances to be recorded because he did not want his music to be “played at paan shops”.
When All India Radio brought music to the “paan shops”, Hafiz Ali Khan was confined to courtly enclaves. Radio predated cinema, which is where Lata’s genius flowered and proceeded to overwhelm radio too.
Partition was painful; a new optimism had to be rediscovered. This was when a young Kaifi Azmi was writing: “Naye Hindostan mein hum nayi jannat banayenge” (We shall create a new paradise in this new India of ours).
“Hum abki zarre zarre ki jabeen par taj rakh denge” (“zarre” means particles). In Kaifi’s new India, “the common man shall wear a crown”.
This poetic exaggeration disguises an aspiration for human dignity, equality, egalitarianism. Kaifi did not write as many songs for Lata as, say, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Sahir Ludhianwi and others.
The man who brought this pool of talent into the cultural mainstream was CPI secretary-general P.C. Joshi. Party “whole-timers”, short of cash, found an outlet with the biggest mass entertainment industry: cinema was opening up. The commune, in other words, was the source from where lyricist came out to write songs which Lata sang.
Cinema required actors, story writers, directors, lyricists and, of course, singers, influencing each other in the workplace. The primary vision conditioning this collective was that of a secular, socialist, democratic republic, quite markedly Left inclined.
Chetan Anand was no raving Marxist, but his pathbreaking Neecha Nagar was structured on intense class struggle, carried over by Bimal Roy into Do Bigha Zameen. Lata sang for both. Balraj Sahni had come out of the IPTA stable when he played the first angry young man in Hum Log and a dispossessed small farmer in Do Bigha Zameen. Lata was associated with both.
Progressive writers like Islmat Chugtai were writing stories for films like Ziddi and Arzoo, of which Lata’s songs were a premier part. “Chanda re ja re, ja re” was among Lata’s earliest hits.
The influences on Lata came from myriad other sources and traditions. After all her own father, Pandit Dinanath Mangeshkar, was an actor, director and singer for what was famous as Marathi Natya Sangeet. He even acted in a play written by Veer Savarkar. But the region extending from North Goa, Hubli, Dharwar and Pune had come under the spell of another eclectic influence in music.
The migration of Hindustani music gharanas, or schools of music, from Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan to these regions rich with classical sangeet, is a fascinating phase of cultural cross-fertilisation. Wealthy patrons of music invited ustads like Alladiya Khan of the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana, Abdul Karim Khan of Kirana gharana (also named Kairana, currently in the eye of a communal storm) for two prime purposes: to train musical talent for Marathi Natya Sangeet and to groom singers for the “mehfils” of the patrons.
Kesarbai Kerkar, Mallikarjun Mansur, Mogubai Kurdikar, and scores of others, were gifts bestowed on Hindustani classical sangeet by Alladiya Khan. Abdul Karim Kahn’s Kirana gharana was adorned by Hirabai Barodekar, Gangubai Hangal and Bhimsen Joshi. The entire lot came from the same area where Lata was put through her first paces in singing by her father.
Unlike Kesarbai, who left behind no protégé, Mogubai trained her daughter, Kishori Amonkar, into one of the foremost classical singers. Lata, by her own admission, was an admirer of Kishori. When Mogubai and her daughter placed flowers annually on Guru Alladiya Khan’s grave in Mumbai on March 16, his death anniversary, the syncretism of the ritual was not lost on Lata.
Hindus and Muslims were no factors. The music director who spotted the genius in Lata was music director, Ghulam Haider. Later, Naushad placed her on a pedestal where she remained to the very end.
Heavier voice, in a lower octave, was in fashion those days. Lata initially resisted, but the silken serenity of her voice set her on a path which was irreversible. There were no leaping flames in her singing. Poet Momin compares the “taan”, or the melodic line to a lamp: “Shola sa lapak jaaye hai awaz to dekho”. The “leaping flame” of Momin’s songstress was no description of Lata’s singing.
Majrooh, who wrote numerous lyrics which she sang, was moved to write a poem on Lata filled with the sincerity and affection for which he was known. “Mere lafzon ko jo chhu leti hai awaz teri,/ Sarhadein tod ke ur jaatey hain ashaar mere” (The mere touch of your voice gives wings to my words which fly, breaking all boundaries of mind and space).
Patriotism, unlike the one being simulated today, was spontaneously a part of the post-Independence fervour. “Watan ki raah mein watan ke naujawan shaheed ho”, was the hit song from Shaheed, one of Dilip Kumar’s earlier films. The music was by Ghulam Haider who, as mentioned earlier, first saw Lata’s talent. Chronologically, this was the period when Lata met Dilip Kumar, two aspirants setting out at the same time for different careers in the film industry. Dilip remembered the days of meagre earnings: “We could just have tea in the studio canteen”.
A rakhi for Dilip Kumar was mandatory every Raksha Bandhan until he was afflicted by Alzheimer’s.
Lata Mangeshkar will be part of the lives of generations. But sadly, the milieu which shaped her is gone.
It is a testimony to his standing both within India’s business community and society in general that the tributes to the memory of industrialist Rahul Bajaj have been so effusive and warm. Banker Uday Kotak offered the most appropriate eulogy when he tweeted: “Bold and fearless. A rare businessman who spoke truth to power. Built a world class enterprise.”
As I pondered over those words, it occurred to me that the last business leader of whom one could say that was J.R.D. Tata. In 1992, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao conferred the Bharat Ratna on him. Rahul Bajaj too deserved that honour.
They do not make many like them these days.
Bajaj’s boldness may have been rooted in his upbringing, given his family background, steeped as it was in the national movement, but his entrepreneurship was of his own making. Perhaps his success as an entrepreneur added to his boldness. So too his reputation for honesty and integrity in business. The economist Omkar Goswami, who knew him well, has written in a business newspaper about Bajaj’s commitment to corporate good governance and the leadership role he played in producing a code of good governance for business.
My first encounter with Rahul Bajaj was in November 1993 when I was business editor at the Times Of India. Commenting on a note addressed to then Union finance minister Manmohan Singh by a group of top business persons, I published a column entitled “From Plan to Plea”. It contrasted the boldness of vision of the famous Bombay Plan of 1944, a long-term plan for national development, written by J.R.D. Tata, G.D. Birla, Lala Shri Ram, among others, to what I viewed as a “plea” against liberalisation of what came to be dubbed the Bombay Club, that included Rahul Bajaj, Hari Shankar Singhania, M.V. Arunachalam, C.K. Birla, Jamshed Godrej, B.K. Modi, Bharat Ram and L.M. Thapar.
The note was reported in the media as a complaint against the liberalisation initiatives of then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. Soon after my column was published, I received two phone calls. One from Mr Singhania and the other from Mr Bajaj. Both claimed that their views had been misrepresented in the media and their note was no more than a “pre-Budget memorandum” presented to Union finance minister Manmohan Singh. They did not want their statement to be viewed as being opposed to the Rao-Singh reforms nor did they wish to add their voice to the anti-liberalisation forces.
They did not want critics to allege that they were lobbying for protection, nor secure concessions from the government. They fully endorsed the vision of Prime Minister Rao and Dr Singh but were seeking a proper “sequencing” of liberalisation and only sought a “level playing field” in dealing with competition from the more financially powerful global competitors. If the purpose of external liberalisation was to shift dependence from foreign debt to foreign investment and trade then, they said, ways should be found to reduce foreign debt without hurting domestic industry.
Years later, when I was in the Prime Minister’s Office, Mr Bajaj came to call on Dr Singh to discuss some policy issues. Dr Singh teased him and asked if the Bombay Club had met again! Turning towards me, Mr Bajaj jocularly claimed it was all media mischief. If in 1993 I, like many in the media, had viewed him as someone lobbying against government policy, by the mid-2000s I had come to respect him for what he was. He had emerged by then both as a courageous leader of Indian business and a successful global business leader.
Apart from his entrepreneurship and courage, many people have paid wholesome tribute to his social commitment. I saw this up close as a member of the board of Bharat Yuva Shakti Trust, an NGO that was focused on promoting young, first-generation entrepreneurs. Mr Bajaj was chairman of the trust. Flying down from Pune to Delhi, leaving his corporate work aside for an entire day, he never failed to attend a single meeting of BYST over the years. His commitment to the empowerment of the less privileged was palpable.
Mr Kotak’s tribute draws attention to the fact that few business leaders today are known for promoting world class enterprise, being committed to national development and social justice and willing to speak “truth to power”. That is a pity.
India today has more billionaires than even a decade ago and yet Indian business leaders remain shy of speaking their mind on important issues of policy and governance. The “atmosphere of fear” among business persons that Mr Bajaj articulated at a meeting of a business organisation in the presence of Union home minister Amit Shah some years ago is pervasive and palpable.
Mr Bajaj’s exceptional example raises an important question. Why has business leadership lost the courage to “speak truth to power”, or just speak in the larger interests of society and the nation? There are just a handful of billionaires today whom one can think of as having that kind of courage and commitment.
Perhaps this is because even three decades after the licence-permit-control raj ended, there is still a “regulation raj” and, worse, political bossism through various agencies of the State.
There has of course been some improvement in business-government relations. One does not come across too many instances of the sort when a young Union minister would harass an elderly businessman, openly demanding a slice of the cake. But business persons still have to deal with the routine harassment of a Kafkaesque State or plain bad manners when Union ministers and chief ministers seek supplication before engagement.
There was a time when a business leader like J.R.D. Tata could have a civil relationship with the Prime Minister and yet be critical of government policy. Many are today not aware that J.R.D. Tata openly funded the Swatantra Party because he agreed with its views on economic policy and was critical of Jawaharlal Nehru’s policies. Many business persons are wary today of extending such open support to the Opposition political parties even as they fill the coffers of a ruling party.
The standoff over Ukraine refuses to drift away with Russia deploying over 150,000 troops on the periphery of the targeted state. Multiple theories are circulating as to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s real intentions. The simplest is the “madman” theory, based on the premise that leaders like Adolf Hitler are not mad, they just pretend to be. Their bluff, consequently, mostly enables them to achieve their desired strategic objective without a fight. The classic case in this regard was the appeasement of Hitler by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in Munich on September 24, 1938. The question then arises as to what does Mr Putin wish to achieve.
The immediate root of the crisis can be traced to the displacement of a pro-Russia ruler by a democratic alternative in 2014. Russia then seized the Crimea and destabilised Ukrainian control over its two eastern provinces -- Luhansk and Donetsk -- by using irregular fighters. But at the back of it exists a desire, since the revival of Russian power under Mr Putin, to create a buffer zone between Russia and the European Union. Russia desires to restore its sphere of influence in areas of the erstwhile Soviet Union. In Central Asia, this push has encountered Chinese and American counter-pressure. In Europe, it is simply a case of a pushback against the eastward expansion of Nato.
In his February 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference, Mr Putin, referring to Nato’s expansion, had asked: “What happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?” He quoted the 1990 speech of Nato’s secretary-general that Nato was not ready to deploy its forces “outside of German territory”. Once again, after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, Mr Putin had decried the eastward expansion of Nato.
Mark Kramer has drawn on declassified Western records to assert that no assurance was given or even discussed by the Western nations when negotiating German reunification. What the Germans, as well as the Americans, British and French had agreed on was not to deploy non-German forces on the territory of the former German Democratic Republic. Article 5(3) of the 1990 Treaty on Final Settlement states that after the withdrawal of Soviet forces, German forces could be deployed in the former GDR. The only bar was on foreign forces or nuclear weapons. In an interview with “Russia behind the Headlines”, the Soviet Union’s last President Mikhail Gorbachev revealed that “the topic of Nato’s expansion was not discussed at all”.
Thus, Mr Putin’s claim about the West reneging on its commitment on Nato expansion appears to be baseless. But the Western desire to extend its sphere of influence over the former Warsaw Pact nations has been undeniable, while Russia underwent a major power depletion after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Today, the allegation of “betrayal by the West” captures the Russian people’s imagination, whether or not it is true. Mr Putin is using it to force a redrawing of the strategic order that was settled in 1991 as the Cold War ended.
Ukraine is an instrument to achieve that end. Earlier, the Russian intervention in 2015 in Syria was to reassert Russia’s role in West Asia. What looked like a dangerous gamble then has worked out quite nicely for Russia as the Islamic State was dismantled and the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus stabilised. Russia’s meddling in Ukraine began after a pro-Russia regime was displaced in 2014.
Even more bothersome to Russia was the possibility of a functioning democracy taking root, as it did in most nations liberated from Russia’s yoke. Mr Putin would hardly desire such an example flourishing on Russia’s borders. If anything, the popular uprising in Kazakhstan, put down by Russian security forces invited by the tottering regime, would have rattled Mr Putin. The election of US President Donald Trump in 2016 was preceded by serious allegations of Russian interference in the US electoral process in 2015. Simultaneously, the two Minsk agreements were signed in 2014 and 2015. Ukraine figured prominently in President Trump’s impeachment proceedings.
The current standoff entered an escalatory phase last week when US President Joe Biden claimed that a Russian military attack on Ukraine was imminent. Earlier, on February 4, alongside the Winter Olympics inauguration, Mr Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met. In a joint statement, their “friendship” is described as leaving “no forbidden areas of cooperation”. A bilateral agreement on oil and gas was augmented.
Even more tellingly while Russia endorsed Chinese opposition to Taiwanese independence, China decried Nato’s eastward expansion. With this strategic convergence complete, Mr Putin signalled the ability to defy Western economic sanctions. Thus, he ratcheted up the military pressure on Ukraine, while continuing to talk to Western leaders and keeping the dialogue open.
President Biden, meanwhile, managed to get the European leaders more aligned to the approach that any Russian attempt to breach Ukrainian sovereignty would be met with strong European sanctions. Germany hinted that it may even discard the almost-ready Nord Stream II Russian pipeline, owned by Gazprom. The US is suggesting that even secondary sanctions may be imposed on countries assisting the primary target.
While Ukrainian President Voldomyer Zelentsky sought, at the Munich Security Summit, a timetable to join Nato, Russia decided to leave in Belarus its 30,000 troops sent there for a military exercise. Diplomacy still has a narrow window. The two Minsk agreements of 2014-15 provide a path to de-escalation. Its 13 points weave together steps towards restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty over the Donbas region, Russia’s withdrawal of its irregular forces, greater devolution of powers to that region, etc. The problem is how to choreograph those steps.
Moreover, if Mr Putin is seeking a new European security order in which Russia’s veto is embedded, then risky military blackmail is hardly the right path. The Russian threats will only enhance cohesion on the Nato side.
Some analysts are suggesting a “reverse China” strategy. This implies that while 50 years ago US President Richard Nixon had engaged China to isolate the Soviet Union, it now needs to wean Russia from China. This assumes that the primary threat to the US is from China. But this can succeed only if Russian insecurity can be successfully handled.
For Indian diplomacy, a Russian attack will present a challenge as remaining silent would seriously upset its American and European partners. India has dithered over extracting many thousand Indian students from a possible war zone. Russia and Ukraine are two big wheat exporting nations. Interrupted global supplies will cause prices to rise and human distress. Thus, Ukraine needs urgent de-escalation.
The NDTV anchor Ravish Kumar rightly says that the Indian media does not focus on the important things. For this reason, it is vital that we keep emphasising these things and that we write and read about them. In a few months we will enter the ninth year of the National Democratic Front government. This is long enough period for there to be clarity on where we have been brought to as a nation. There are several aspects which need to be explored. For today, let us look at two.
First, on the economy. India’s economy is not describing the trajectory previously described by economically successful nations like China, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, or those succeeding today, like Vietnam and Bangladesh. A few facts bear repeating and being emphasised:
First, five crore more Indians had jobs in 2013 than do today, though 12 crore more people came into the workforce. These jobs vanished before the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of Indians over 15 either working or looking for work is lower as a percentage than in the United States, China, Bangladesh or Pakistan. Jobs in manufacturing have gone down and those in agriculture gone up since 2014. MNREGA spending reached four times its 2014 size in 2020 and the demand has remained there, so people want work but there are no jobs.
Second, Indians were spending less on food in 2018 than in 2012, going by a government survey. Consumption, the largest component of GDP, is also the weakest.
Third, the Reserve Bank of India conducts a bi-monthly survey asking thousands of homes across India whether they were better off in economic terms, employment terms and inflation than a year ago. For 60 months -- meaning five years -- only a minority of people have said that things have improved. Except for one period (March-April 2019), the majority of Indians say that they are worse off.
Fourth, growth in our Gross Domestic Product began a sequential decline beginning in January 2018. For 13 quarters before the pandemic, meaning two years and three months, it plummeted. It was around three per cent before Covid-19, and many feel that is an overestimate and that we were actually close to zero growth. The other indicators support this. Covid-19 and the lockdown exacerbated our economic crisis but was not the primary cause of it. Bangladesh, which was about 50 per cent behind India in per capita GDP in 2014, is today ahead because we slipped.
Fifth, our middle class has stopped growing. The number of cars sold in India has remained flat for 10 years, with 27 lakh units sold in 2013 and the same this year and last year and in 2019. The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers analysed its data up to March 2020 (meaning before the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown) and said it was in the middle of a “long term, structural and deep slowdown”. Two-wheeler sales have been flat for a decade at 1.6 crore units. Residential sales have been flat at three lakh units in India’s eight major cities for the last 10 years.
Sixth, 80 crore Indians, meaning 60 per cent of the population, are dependent on 6 kg of free grain from the government.
Seventh, on 49 out of 53 global indices, India’s ranking has slipped since 2014. Those saying this include the World Bank, the World Economic Forum (Davos), and the United Nations. This then has been the performance of the government in this sphere.
Let us turn to the second aspect which has remained constantly in the news -- and that is the desire of the government to persecute its own Muslim citizens.
A series of laws and policies targeting Muslims have come after 2014. These include laws criminalising beef and cattle transport, criminalising inter-faith marriage and Muslim divorce, tightening of laws where they can rent and buy property in Gujarat, of course there is the constant harassment and brutalisation in Jammu and Kashmir (the only part of India not to have democratic government), the violence against them and their places of worship in Delhi, the stream of stories of harassment and violence against their vendors, their being forced out of prayer spaces specifically allotted to them by the state, their being wrongly blamed for spreading Covid-19. The list goes on and on and one. What is happening to Muslims in Karnataka’s colleges is a continuation of a persecution that either the majority of Hindus approve of or are comfortable with.
If we can conclude that the government has either not succeeded or failed on the side of managing the economy, we can also conclude that it has been successful in this part of its agenda. What is the goal of the harassment? There is no goal and the harassment is an end in itself. For this reason, it will continue and one day it will be the hijab, the next day beef, the third day namaz, the fourth day it will be renaming something. It will go on.
India’s media is largely an accomplice of the State here. As Ravish Kumar has said, it has shown little interest in what has been done to the economy. If it has shown interest in the second aspect, it has been only to goad society on to harass minority Indians.
For this reason it is important that what actually matters to this nation be written about and it be read.