Over the past 10 days, the revelations about the functioning of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) during the tenure of Chitra Ramkrishna as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) have had people shaking their heads in disbelief. The savvy head of one of the world’s largest bourses taking guidance on organisational matters from a Himalayan yogi?
The damage is huge
In his order, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) board member Ananta Barua makes short work of Ms. Ramkrishna’s contention that there was no danger of any damage being caused to NSE as the yogi in question is a ‘spiritual force’. He remarks with grim sarcasm, “I note that there is no exception in the Regulations or the SEBI Act or SCRA [Securities Contracts (Regulations) Act], that confidential information of the stock exchange may be shared with a spiritual force.” It may be that, in this instance, the NSE did not suffer any financial costs through the leakage of confidential information. But the reputational damage caused to the NSE and to India’s capital markets is huge.
Sharing confidential information was one serious lapse on the part of Ms. Ramkrishna. Mr. Barua’s order highlights others. Ms. Ramkrishna appointed an individual, Anand Subramanian, first as chief strategic adviser and, next, as group operating officer without following due process.
Mr. Subramanian lacked the credentials for the job, the position was not advertised and Mr. Subramanian was interviewed solely by Ms. Ramkrishna. He was recruited on a salary that was more than 10 times what he last drew and his salary was frequently revised without any evaluation being recorded.
Mr. Subramanian was hired as a consultant and progressively given operational powers until he became virtual second-in-command in the NSE hierarchy. Ms. Ramkrishna ensured he was not designated as a key management person as that would have meant bringing Mr. Subramanian within the ambit of regulation.
Managerial wrongdoing
Clearly, there was managerial misconduct at NSE. That is no surprise; managerial misconduct is a global phenomenon. That is why we need checks on management such as an effective board of directors. The bigger problem is that the board of NSE has been found wanting.
Mr. Barua documents the board’s lapses. After the board was informed about the irregularities in Mr. Subramanian’s appointment, it discussed the matter but chose to keep the discussions out of the minutes on grounds of confidentiality and the sensitivity of the matter. Second, despite being aware of Ms. Ramkrishna’s transgressions, it allowed her to resign and on generous terms instead of taking action against her. Third, the Public Interest Directors (PIDs) failed to keep SEBI informed about the goings-on at the NSE.
How did all this happen and how could it have gone on for so long? The answers lie in the culture of the corporate world and the board room.
In the corporate world, much is forgiven on grounds of performance. When a performing CEO chooses to unduly favour a particular individual or individuals, boards see that as a forgivable infirmity. Considerations of equity or fairness do not trouble boards unduly — it is a mercy if breaches of regulation do.
The problem is structural
The NSE ushered in a revolution at India’s stock exchanges. It rakes in enormous profits. In such a situation, boards would tend to think they can live with a degree of nepotism and other human failings in the CEO. ‘She’s doing a great job, she’s entitled to pick her team.’ Such an attitude may pass muster at your typical private sector company. Not so in a public institution which is a Market Infrastructure Institution (MII) because it amounts to a violation of regulations. The board of an MII must tell itself that there is little margin for error.
As for dysfunctional or ineffective boards, these remain the norm despite numerous regulations, seminars and papers over the past four decades. The issue is not the credentials of board members or their domain expertise. Few boards can match the set of luminaries who sat on the board of the NSE. The SEBI order says that these very luminaries failed to measure up.
The problem is structural. It has to do partly with the way board members are selected and partly with the absence of penalties where directors do not live up to their mandate. Board members are selected by top management (or, in India, by the promoter who is also top management). In leading companies and institutions, board memberships are lucrative, prestigious and carry attractive perks. Board members have every incentive to nod their heads to whatever the management wants done.
To challenge management is to ensure that one’s term is not renewed. It also means antagonising one’s colleagues on the board, not just the top management. The dissenting board member becomes an outcast on the board — he will find it difficult to make conversation over lunch. In the closed club from which board members are drawn, word spreads that the dissenter is a ‘trouble maker’. Other boards will be reluctant to touch him.
As long as the top management selects all board members or can influence their selection, there is little hope of any active challenge to management. If we are to bring about meaningful change, we need to bring in diversity in the selection of board members.
The top management must be allowed to choose not more than 50% of the independent directors. The rest must be chosen by various other stakeholders — financial institutions, banks, small shareholders, employees, etc. Then, we will have independent directors who are not beholden to the top management for their jobs. They will be accountable, not to the top management, but to stakeholders who have appointed them.
Once that happens, the dynamics of the boardroom can be expected to change. Of course, we cannot be certain it will. At the NSE, there were five PIDs who were required to keep SEBI informed about any untoward happenings. They failed to do so. All we can say is that where independent directors are chosen by diverse stakeholders, there is at least the theoretical possibility of directors challenging the top management.
Issue of accountability
A second thing that needs to happen is holding board members accountable for lapses. In the NSE case, SEBI has penalised Ravi Narain who happened to be vice chairman. Mr. Narain has made the point that there is no reason why he should be singled out as the board of NSE was collectively responsible.
Regulators act against directors where there is financial malfeasance. They seldom act where there are breaches of regulation as in the present instance. This must change. Regulators must penalise errant directors through a whole range of instruments — strictures, financial penalties, removal from boards and a permanent ban from board membership.
Lastly, regulators themselves must be held to account. In the NSE affair, questions have been asked of SEBI. For instance, why did SEBI not seek the help of the cyber police to ascertain the identity of the yogi? SEBI needs to explain itself.
We need periodic independent audits of all regulators by a panel of eminent persons. The audits must evaluate the regulators’ performance in relation to their objectives. The internal processes and governance mechanisms of regulators must be subjected to the glare of public scrutiny. It is vital to guard the guardians.
Convulsions of outrage after particular episodes will not take us very far. We need significant institutional reform if corporate governance is not to remain an illusion.
ttrammohan28@gmail.com
The disappointing allocation for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in the FY 2022-23 budget has created a buzz. Organisations such as the All India Kisan Sabha and NREGA Sangharsh Morcha (NSM) have raised concerns about the inadequacy of the amount. Grassroots activists and academics have been demanding higher budgetary allocations for MGNREGA; yet, the actual allocations have been considerably lower and severely inadequate to meet needs. The initial allocations in the past two FYs have been just about half of what was recommended by groups like the People’s Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG) and NSM.
Consequently, the consistent shortage of funds has caused a situation endemic to MGNREGA — that of deficits for State governments, long delays in wage payments, decline in the work provided in the last two quarters of the FYs, and significant pending dues at the end of the FYs. In FY 2021-22, a tracker released by PAEG showed that the initial amount allocated was nearly exhausted by September, and many States were running a negative balance. For FY 2022-23, PAEG had recommended a minimal allocation of Rs. 2.64 lakh crore, and NSM had recommended Rs. 3.64 lakh crore, but the government has allocated only Rs. 73,000 crore. In its recent statement, NSM has argued that this amount provides for only 16 days of employment to all the active job card-holding households.
Why is the government’s allocation so much lower than what State governments ask for and civil society actors recommend? This question merits scrutiny of the way the government estimates persondays. A closer look at the Centre’s MGNREGA budget estimation in FY 2021-22 sheds some light on this.
Projected persondays
Among other things, the budget calculations depend on two important variables: the projected persondays for the coming year, and the wage rate. Projected persondays are the total days of work anticipated for the year. The District Programme Coordinator is responsible for calculating this and submitting it to the State, which in turn collates the entire State’s projected demand and submits it to the Centre for approval. The MGNREGA MIS Report R2.2.2 has the monthly projections approved by the Centre, along with the actual persondays generated. A closer look at these figures for the last two years reveals some discrepancies. In FYs 2019-20 and 2020-21, the persondays generated was about 18.4% higher in Q4 when compared to Q3. However, the projected persondays for Q4 in FY 2021-22 appeared to be strangely and significantly lower than that in Q3. FY 2020-21 was an unusual year, with the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown measures leading to significantly increased MGNREGA work demand. Work demand continued to be high in FY 2021-22 as well, implying that the rural population was still relying on MGNREGA for their livelihood. For the first three quarters, persondays generated this year were only 7% lower than the persondays generated in the same time period last year. And yet, as on February 3, 2022, the projection for the last quarter of this year was only about 40% of that for the same period in the previous year. There seems to be no clarity on how this projection was arrived at, given previous trends, and given that with the harvest concluding MGNREGA work has traditionally picked up in Q4. However, what it does suggest is that the government had not revised its projections for the final quarter of this FY even while it announced supplementary grants worth Rs. 25,000 crore for MGNREGA in December 2021.
There have been attempts by the government to curb work demand based on the availability of funds. In 2016, for instance,Business Standard reported that the Rural Development Ministry was unofficially communicating to States to cut down on MGNREGA work because funds were running out. Since budget allocations are based on projected persondays, underestimated projections will lead to inadequate allocation. The unusually low projections of the final quarter in the current FY certainly contributed to the supplementary allocation of only Rs. 25,000 crore, when activists had been demanding an additional allocation of at least Rs. 50,000 crore. The low allocation for FY 2022-23 is also likely to be an outcome of artificially low persondays projections.
Wage rate
The official MGNREGA wages also contribute to keeping the budget low. Despite a clear mandate of the MGNREGA Act that the wage remuneration cannot be lower than the minimum wage in each State, the former remains much below the latter. In doing so, the Central government has violated the provisions of the Act, as well as the fundamental rights of MGNREGA workers. There have been estimates devised of what the average MGNREGA wage should be. For instance, an expert committee under the chairmanship of Anoop Satpathy estimated a need-based national minimum wage of Rs. 375 per day as of July 2018. In comparison, PAEG used a conservative estimate of Rs. 269 per day in its recently released pre-budget brief. However, according to the NREGA ‘At a Glance’ report, the average MGNREGA wages paid this year remain at a meagre Rs. 209 per day, and the low allocation for next year indicates that the wage will not be increased by much, if at all.
However, even if we take the wage rate of Rs. 209 per day that the government is paying on average, the current FY is expected to end with dues of over Rs. 20,000 crore. The Central government’s expenditure for this FY is expected to be over Rs. 1.02 lakh crore even if the wage bill, material costs, and administrative costs are to increase in a linear fashion till the end of the FY. The pending dues for previous FYs add up to over Rs. 17,000 crore. Adding the two figures, the government’s estimated expenditure will be Rs. 1.19 lakh crore by the end of this FY. And yet, the government has allocated only Rs. 98,000 crore (Rs. 73,000 crore in the initial budget plus Rs. 25,000 crore as supplementary grants) for the FY. In such a likely scenario, only Rs. 53,000 crore will be available for expenses in FY 2022-23. In fact, since FY 2016-17, 20% of the initial budget allocation has gone into clearing pending dues.
Correcting for the mentioned discrepancies, PAEG recommended a minimal budget of Rs. 2.64 lakh crore for FY 2022-23, considering only the households that were active this year. However, even this number is much lower than the number of households that are registered under the scheme. MGNREGA treats employment guarantee as a legal right; any rural household can demand work up to 100 days every year, and the government has to provide it. As and when demand arises, the government must fulfil it. In this context, treating the budget allocation as a ‘ceiling’ to the work that can be provided erodes the core premise of the scheme. To illustrate, less than 5% of households active this year have completed 100 days of work. While an initial budget allocation has to be made, MGNREGA funds must be regularly replenished by supplementary grants provided based on actual work demand in each State. The Centre’s approach to estimating projections, keeping the wages illegally low, and treating the budget as an upper limit to the work that can be provided has eroded the very premise of MGNREGA.
Anuj Goyal (anujgoyal@riseup.net) and Laavanya Tamang (laavanyatamang@gmail.com) are members of the People’s Action for Employment Guarantee
If recent elections are anything to go by, turnout numbers are no indication of which way the mandate is swinging. Conventional wisdom has been that high turnout numbers correspond to an anti-incumbency effect, and indeed, a sudden spurt in voting numbers could indicate a wave in a particular direction. But with voter turnouts, especially among the poor, going up significantly in recent years across India, changes in turnout numbers offer little by way of explaining the outcome. The drop in voter turnout in Punjab from 77.4% in 2017 to 71.92% in 2022, however, indicates a certain frustration with the polity in the State. In the last few months, there have been drastic changes in the party system following the removal of Captain Amarinder Singh from the Chief Minister’s post, his leaving the Congress and joining hands with his erstwhile arch-enemy, the BJP. The anger over the farm laws that were later repealed, was felt the most in rural Punjab and the farm agitations against the Centre’s policies should have provided a viable path for the ruling Congress to succeed. But the infighting within the Congress and its belated but logical promotion of incumbent Charanjit Singh Channi as the “chief ministerial” candidate complicated matters for the ruling party. Reports from the ground suggested that the Aam Aadmi Party was also able to capitalise on the general resentment with the two national parties and the Shiromani Akali Dal, but the fragmentation of the polity and a general lack of clarity among them over the issues that have affected the electorate seems to have dampened voter enthusiasm in the State.
In the third phase of polling in 59 seats in central Uttar Pradesh, the voter turnout was 60.46%, marginally lower than the 62% voting in 2017 in the same seats. As with the earlier phases, there were a higher number of voters in rural areas compared to cities, a case in point being Kanpur city which registered only a 56.14% turnout. With identity politics, welfare and patronage dominating the narrative of the elections here, urban voters seemed less enthused compared to their rural brethren perhaps because of the lack of an adequate emphasis on civic issues in the political discourse. That said, ground reports from the three phases have indicated a closer contest in comparison to 2017 when the BJP had a field day sweeping district after district in the Assembly polls. Except in Bundelkhand, there has been enough of a wind behind the sails of the Opposition — the Samajwadi Party-led coalition in particular — and the high pitched third phase campaigns in the potato-growing areas are an indication that the election is not done and dusted. The relatively peaceful nature of the polls and the centering of socio-economic issues rather than religious identity bodes well for the next four phases of voting in India’s most populous State.
Washington, Feb. 21: A constant hide and seek game is going on between the navies of the United States and the Soviet Union to watch each other’s movements. The Americans claim that so far no Soviet submarine has managed to stay in the ocean depths, hidden from U.S. detectors. Anti-submarine warfare (A.S.W.) has become one of the basic calculations in the U.S. concept of strategic deterrent and gets a very big share of the new defence budget. Some $1,700 millions (Rs. 1,240 crores) will be spent on new hunter aircraft and attack submarines. A.S.W. is an area where the U.S. has a pronounced superiority over the Soviets, with many breakthroughs in acoustic research — still on the strictly secret lists. American researchers have developed an equipment which lowered from helicopters into the sea, can register normal harbour sounds 100 nautical miles away. They have also produced microphones which can be laid like a chain across the ocean-bed making a barrier through which no submarine can pass without being heard. The problem for the Russians is that they have not been able to build a really giant submarine. Here too the Americans are more advanced.
India and Tanzania expressed grave concern at the building up of military arsenals in the Indian Ocean and resolved to work together to make the Ocean a zone of peace. Speaking at the banquet organised for the visiting Tanzanian President Julius Nyeyrere, the President N Sanjiva Reddy said that the Indian Ocean was now bristling with lethal weaponry and it was essential to strengthen efforts to reduce tension and create peace. Nyeyrere who had arrived earlier on February 21 said that India and Tanzania were collaborating to make the Indian Ocean a zone of peace. He criticised South Africa for its continued defiance of international public opinion and sanctions against its “odious racist policies”. Reddy said India was proud to link with friends in the struggle for justice.
Train Crash
Eight railway employees were killed when a goods train capsized in the Nilgiris and rolled down a 60-feet slope between Adderley and Hillgrove stations. The train was carrying coal. The cause of the accident was not known and the entire crew died in the mishap. According to sources, the accident may have been caused by the failure of the brake system when the train was negotiating a sharp incline.
Delhi Bank Robbery
In a daring daylight robbery, five armed bandits looted over Rs 9 lakh from a branch of the Canara Bank in Maharani Bagh in New Delhi. The entire operation lasted about 10 minutes. None of the 23 bank employees present at the time of the incident were injured.
Antarctic Expedition
A fracture zone under the Antarctic landmass and a second undersea mountain in the Indian Ocean have been discovered by the Indian expedition that returned on February 20. The discovery of the fracture zone in the Antarctica is said to be of great significance.
The Winter Olympics wrapped up without any severe pile-up. But despite the most controlled outflow of information from the Games venue, the enduring legacy of Beijing 2022 will be of political calculation gone awry. Despite re-assertions from China about politics and boycotts not spoiling their Games, the lingering vibe from the postcard perfect venues will still be of a highly politicised sporting event that just couldn’t front and centre the sport.
China’s inability to address global concerns about tennis star Peng Shuai’s claims of sexual assault against a high-ranking party official, despite allowing access to a French news platform, showed why the hosts couldn’t pull off a Beijing 2008 encore of controlling every frame that the world watched. In fact, the chilling censorship, where not one voice of dissent could rise above the snow-blowers, only underlined that China could and would exert control over even their biggest tennis star, dictate every word she spoke, and control every move she made in the public eye. The silence of other athletes was loud. Beyond Peng, the row over Russian teenage ice skater Kamila Valieva’s uncertain doping status dragged on through the entirety of the Games, overshadowing the event itself. In fact, winter Beijing’s most glaring miss will be how completely overpowering was the stench of politics on sporting action, which might have risen to great heights, but simply couldn’t wrest back the headlines. Tokyo last summer, in comparison, stayed understated as hosts, allowing sport to breathe.
The Winter Olympics in Beijing will go down as China’s failed attempt to use and misuse sport for political propaganda. Try they did, even boorishly getting a soldier from Galwan to run the torch relay, but this time, China might’ve overplayed its hand. Turning sport into a sideshow, while hard selling their politics, might well have backfired in Beijing’s 14-year-itch.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on February 22, 2022 under the title ‘Politics, not sport’.
There is little doubt that the ongoing crisis in Ukraine is in danger of becoming a flashpoint for a prolonged conflict between the US and Russia. On the ground, both state forces and Russian-backed separatists have mobilised, and both sides have accused each other of killing troops in the exchange of fire. Denis Pushilin, leader of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”, a separatist region, has appealed “to all the men in the republic who can hold weapons to defend their families, their children, wives, mothers”. While an escalation of the conflict may not be part of the agenda for either Moscow or Washington, the showdown on Ukraine could spiral out of control.
On the diplomatic front, too, both sides have been raising the stakes. The Russian parliament has asked President Vladimir Putin to recognise the self-proclaimed “republics” of Donetsk and Lugansk in East Ukraine — a far cry from the 2014-15 Minsk Accords under which Moscow and Kyiv agreed to a ceasefire and a political settlement. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson accused Russia of planning to plunge Europe into “the biggest war in Europe since 1945”. Washington, meanwhile, has claimed that Moscow has placed 1,50,000 soldiers on its borders with Ukraine, preparing for an invasion. Both sides, it appears, are raising the temperature in a bid to gain the upper hand in the negotiations. While Russia has remained adamant that it will not allow Ukraine to grow closer to the West — in effect, curtailing the country’s sovereignty — the US and some of its NATO allies are presenting the dispensation in Moscow as militaristic and expansionist.
However, attempts at an urgent diplomatic solution are also clearly in the works. On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for a ceasefire between the forces on the ground. In the immediate term, two high-level meetings in the coming days hold the best hope for a de-escalation in Central Europe. US President Joe Biden has agreed, “in principle”, to a summit with Putin but the White House also said that “We are also ready to impose swift and severe consequences should Russia instead choose war”. The meeting, reportedly brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron, is contingent, according to the French presidency, on Russia refraining from an invasion. The meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday will, hopefully, move the proposed summit forward. It is in these talks that hopes for regional peace and global stability rest.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on February 22, 2022 under the title ‘Flashpoint Ukraine’.
The fact is this: In July 2008, 22 blasts took place within 70 minutes at various locations in Ahmedabad with explosives placed in buses, cars, parked cycles. In the rest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech in Hardoi in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, was more than a little spectre-mongering. Recalling the Ahmedabad blasts, days after 38 convicts were sentenced to death for them, the PM accused the Opposition of being soft on terror and joined dots that would otherwise appear to be impossible to connect. Linking the blasts to the SP’s poll symbol, he said: “Cycle par bomb rakhe hue the (bombs were placed on cycles)”. And: “Main hairan hun yeh cycle ko unhone kyun pasand kiya (I am surprised why they preferred the bicycle)”. The cycle evokes many associations, it has several connotations, from simple mobility and balance to empowerment — the inexpensive and unsnazzy vehicle of the poor and middle class, the unlikely star of the Bihar government scheme for schoolgirls, which helped them to continue to study even when it meant pedalling to a school outside their village. It can no more be linked to the terror act than, say, the Congress’s symbol, hand, or the BSP’s elephant, except by a similarly incredible semantic leap — the terrorist’s “hand”, or terror as the “elephant” in the room. That the PM sought to make the poll symbol of a political opponent look sinister ahead of elections, however, speaks not of words and meanings, but politics — a politics that revels in tarring the Opposition and labelling it.
The PM’s accusation of softness on terror cases against the SP, when it is in power, was also political polemic, but could be said to have more of a leg to stand on — in 2013, for instance, the then Akhilesh Yadav government ordered the withdrawal of cases against 19 persons facing terror charges, including for blasts in Varanasi and Gorakhpur, Lucknow and Ayodhya, on the ground of insufficient evidence. The PM’s portrayal of that decision is harsh, but it is in consonance with his party’s muscular stands on terror, and its strenuous projection of these positions to demarcate itself from its rivals in the poll arena. The airstrike on Balakot dominated the BJP’s winning 2019 campaign. The cycle-terror equation, however, goes an unbecoming step further. It is one thing to allege that the political opponent is weak on national security and quite another to suggest that it is, in any way, implicated in or associated with acts of terror. In the context of UP, it is also a communal dog whistle, which may not be surprising — the BJP campaign had spoken of kabristan vs shamshan, Ramzan vs Diwali, in the 2017 election in UP — but is nevertheless jarring.
In a democracy, disrespect shown to the Opposition can end up becoming disrespect to the people’s right to choose, to democracy itself. For a campaigner of the PM’s stature to lose sight of these vital distinctions in the heat of electoral battle is dispiriting and disheartening.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on February 22, 2022 under the title ‘The vicious cycle’.
Democracy is under strain. We see social tensions within open societies intensify as citizens question whether their system can deliver for them during this pandemic. Our competitors sense discord and the opportunity to challenge the relevance of democratic nations on the world stage. The prospect of global conflict is rising, and strategic competition is heating up; the free world feels beset.
I am, however, an optimist. Throughout my 28-year career as an American diplomat, including my time serving as Chargé d’Affaires to India, I have engaged with governments, citizens, and civil society to pursue shared interests and advance a positive vision of a freer and safer world predicated on fundamental human rights. For these efforts to succeed, we must demonstrate to our people and the world that democracy can secure their well-being and dignity, create a fair and innovative marketplace, and deliver economic growth and good jobs.
We find ourselves at a critical moment of geostrategic and geoeconomic convergence that demands the US and India embrace closer economic cooperation. I believe our two democracies can demonstrate to the world that we can, proverbially, deliver the goods for our people.
Through the pandemic, the US and India have shown the remarkable things we can accomplish when we work together. Delhi and Washington came to each other’s assistance at moments of crisis, and we cooperated to airlift hundreds of millions of free doses of vaccines to low-income countries — generosity that reflects the values and compassion of our people.
This pandemic recovery, however, presents new trials. Inflation and supply chain woes are shrinking consumers’ buying power, leading them to question the direction of our economic policies. Americans are seeing a dire workforce shortage, shipping delays, and in some cases, empty store shelves. At the same time, Indians are seeing the prices of essential commodities like fuel, cooking oil, and produce skyrocket. Some of this is temporary, as the Omicron wave results in many sick workers in crucial fields. Other root causes, however, are structural and require our urgent attention.
To prove that democracies can lead in the post-pandemic world, the US and India must work together to increase supply, bring prices down, and improve economic confidence. Delhi and Washington need to work together to remove unnecessary barriers to trade and seize the vast opportunities of our commercial relationship — aspiring to achieve $500 billion in bilateral trade in goods and services. As strategically aligned partners facing shared challenges, the US and India can work to make the free world’s supply chains more robust and resilient through closer cooperation across a range of sectors — including defence, energy, healthcare, and agriculture.
This cooperative approach could lead to widespread and impactful benefits for our citizens. We could see lifesaving medical innovations reach patients faster and at a better price point by protecting innovation and avoiding unnecessary regulatory divergence. We could better secure our borders through a stronger defence partnership and accelerate the energy transition. In the immediate future, we could ensure more affordable and reliable access to the goods our people need every day, stretching paycheques for our 1.7 billion consumers and citizens.
With a reinvigorated Quad and a reopened Trade Policy Forum, we have the government channels to pursue these goals. Now is the time for both governments to begin the hard work of removing the stumbling stones in the commercial relationship and prepare the way for a bilateral trade agreement. That road will be long, and some will call the goal unrealistic. As a diplomat, I heard the doubters make the same arguments before we sealed the India-US Civil Nuclear Agreement. It was a seemingly impossible undertaking, with a thousand nay-sayers and unworkable obstacles, until leaders on both sides decided it must be done to serve the security interests of both countries. A bipartisan majority in each country ensured the passage of that agreement, which supported India’s rise in global affairs and facilitated strategic convergence between Delhi and Washington. Our leaders can likewise embrace the goal of a bilateral trade agreement as a powerful tool to deliver greater prosperity and opportunity that improves citizens’ lives and proves the case for democracy around the world.
As we encounter an increasingly competitive and risky geopolitical arena in the 21st century, the US and India can spearhead a sustainable and inclusive abundance agenda through our trade partnership, making the case for democracy through our shared prosperity. This includes relaxing India’s trade barriers, lowering America’s talent barriers, ensuring sound and aligned regulatory practices, securing the free world’s supply chain, and promoting investment across the corridor. As we face the challenges to democracy together, our prosperity is our strength, and our commercial relations are essential to enduring and meaningful cooperation.
The remarkable history of our nations demonstrates that democracies can secure the liberty, safety, and dignity of their people. Combined with free enterprise, these commitments can build a more prosperous and exciting future for the world. Our politicians, bureaucrats, and companies must work together to prove that democracies continue to deliver and show that the free people of America and India can lead the 21st-century world to even greater opportunities for the pursuit of happiness.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 22, 2022 under the title ‘Work of democracy’. The writer is a former US Chargé d’Affaires to India and is currently president, US-India Business Council.
The Omicron-led surge in India — popularly, the Third Wave — saw a rise in new Covid-19 cases beginning end-December for about four weeks. The decline was dramatic, in about three weeks. This phase was marked by less hospitalisations, fewer complications and reduced mortality compared to the Delta-driven second wave. India’s experience replicates that of South Africa. Some of the increase in death counts in recent weeks can be attributed to the “reconciliation” of deaths across states in the light of the Supreme Court’s directive on compensation.
Omicron is the dominant variant currently, globally and India. It is likely to shape the state of the pandemic for some time. The Alpha variant had nine mutations in its S gene and Delta had between nine and 13 mutations. Contrast these with the staggering 50 mutations in Omicron, including 32 mutations in the S gene. A French study found Omicron to be 105 per cent more transmissible than Delta and a Danish study found the variant’s capacity to infect 2-7-3.7 times more than its predecessor. Delta was 100 per cent more transmissible than the parent strain. The WHO had, therefore, warned of a tsunami of Omicron cases overwhelming hospital services despite the virus being less virulent. Indian has, however, weathered this ongoing phase reasonably well.
The Omicron variant comprises three sub-lineages: B.1.1.529 or BA.1, BA.2 and BA.3. As of February 10, India was among the 10 countries that reported a predominance of BA.2 sub-lineage. Emerging evidence suggests that BA.2 is 30 per cent more transmissible than BA.1. However, current evidence from the US, UK, South Africa and Nepal also confirms continued “decoupling” — low hospitalisation and fatalities amidst rising new cases. At the same time, mortality due to Omicron does remain a matter of concern in patients above 75 years, those with comorbidities and importantly, the unvaccinated.
Re-infection, people testing Covid positive 90 days after their last infection, is an emerging concern. The most obvious reason for this is Omicron’s uniquely abundant mutations that make the variant extremely efficient to escape pre-existing immunity. Immunity also wanes since the last vaccination. That’s why boosters are important. Evidence from countries with rollout and high coverage of vaccines, Israel and the UK, confirm protection from hospitalisation or death. The UK’s Office for National Statistics estimates that the rate of re-infection has increased 15-fold in the Omicron phase: Re-infections account about 10 per cent of current infections in England, in contrast to 1 per cent during November 2021. Re-infections with Alpha were symptomatic in 20 per cent cases. In contrast, Delta re-infections caused symptoms in 44 per cent cases and Omicron in 46 per cent. In general, re-infections boost immunity. But such re-infections do not confer 100 per cent immunity.
Analyses from UK confirm protection against mild disease 20 weeks after a two-dose schedule. A booster dose increases it by 65 to 70 per cent. That declines to 45 to 50 per cent after 10 weeks. Protection against hospitalisation after a booster dose, however, is a lot higher — it’s estimated at 92 per cent and remains high at 83 per cent after 10 weeks. The current lot of Covid vaccines provide substantial protection against systemic disease in the lungs and other organs, but do not generate strong mucosal immunity that would be effective against the mild but the early infectious stage that affects the patient’s nose and throat. Mucosal vaccines administered through a nasal spray can correct this significantly but these will quite likely require to be administered repeatedly as the duration of the immunity it confers is relatively short. Bharat Biotech’s intranasal vaccine, BBV154, has received regulatory approval for phase 3 clinical trials for use as booster dose (third dose) for those who have received a primary schedule of Covaxin. If it passes the final regulatory test, the vaccine can be a potential game changer.
The performance of the Covid vaccination programme, so far, provides ample testimony to vaccine confidence — trust in the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine, the system that delivers, including the reliability and competence of the health services and professionals and the perceived motivations of the policy-makers making decisions on the vaccine. In the journey ahead, two key challenges will require to be addressed. One, as perceived risks decline, there could be a rise in vaccine complacency with inoculation not being seen as necessary preventive action. Public messaging must ensure that such complacency does not arise. Two, the drive to make vaccines available and accessible must not flag.
The WHO foresees the acute phase of the pandemic to end by the middle of this year if 70 per cent of the global population is vaccinated — this will limit the emergence of newer variants. The goal of vaccine equity — an ethical imperative as well — has been bedevilled by vaccine shortages and funding and infrastructural inadequacies. Founded on the principles of human well-being, equal respect, national equity, reciprocity and legitimacy, the WHO’s Values Framework considers Covid vaccines as a public good. By and large, however, this message did not receive adequate traction, both across and within countries.
We could witness increased cases over relatively shorter periods, outbreaks of smaller scale and the emergence of new variants. Covid-related restrictions are being relaxed in all states. Isolation guidelines and contact management protocols are changing as well. The core principles of prevention continue to be relevant though: Mask-wearing, hand hygiene and vaccination. This is the time to test risk communication strategies. There needs to more investment in research on social and behavioural aspects of disease management. In fact, dealing with long-Covid will require far greater systemic response than what is being undertaken currently.
In its acute phase in the past two years, the Covid-19 response framework was seen through the lens of a disaster. It focused, almost exclusively, on the mortality and morbidity aspects of disease. Revoking the National Disaster Management Act that framed this response ecosystem should now be seriously considered. A switch to a “slow disaster” framework, instead, will enable re-profiling strategies over the next few years to deal with crises that could be long and complex — the resumption of economic activities and education and removing the trauma and scars of the pandemic.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 22, 2022 under the title ‘After the wave’. The writer is Chairperson at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
The recent verdict by a special court in the 2008 Ahmedabad bomb blasts case has brought back memories of the dark era, not too long ago, when Indians were routinely killed with wanton disdain.
Consider this data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) for regions outside of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and the Northeast. In just four years between 2005-08, 663 Indians were killed in terror attacks; since 2014 till now, just four and since 2016, zero.
This is not an incidental statistic. It is a reflection of what prevailing political ideologies can do to a country. Consider the contrast between 2004-14 national mindset of the Congress and 2012-17 mindset of the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh with what the Narendra Modi government has displayed since 2014.
One of the first acts of the UPA government that came to power in 2004 was to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The message that went to the terrorists was unmistakable — we now have open season in India. Train commuters in Mumbai and shoppers in Delhi, devotees in Kashi and students in Bengaluru — everyone was a target, no one was safe. Such was the “freedom” that the terrorists enjoyed that they openly bragged about their impending attack through emails sent in advance.
The year 2008 was particularly gruesome. Three hundred and eight Indians were murdered by terrorists that year. That same year, the Indian Mujahideen (IM) attacked cities like Jaipur and Bengaluru while the UPA government contented itself with doing “kadi ninda” for public consumption.
On July 26, 2008, the IM targeted Ahmedabad. Modi was then chief minister of Gujarat. He had police powers only in his state, nowhere else. But when the IM targeted Gujarat, they wrote their death sentence. It was the leads provided by the Gujarat police investigation that eventually led to the Batla House encounter, the liquidation of dreaded terrorists and the arrest of many more. The Indian Mujahideen has not been heard of since. Some of those arrested were among the 49 convicted by the Ahmedabad special court and awarded the death sentence.
But we all know of how the Congress behaved after the encounter. As per Salman Khurshid, the then Congress president became emotional when she saw photos of the encounter. Congress stalwart Digvijay Singh has still not given up his insistence of defaming the Delhi police, even though they lost a brave soldier of India in that encounter.
Cut to 2013. Akhilesh Yadav had become the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Among his first acts was seeking to withdraw cases against terrorists who were later convicted. The court thwarted Akhilesh Yadav’s attempt to free Tariq Qasmi, accused of the Gorakhpur blasts of 2007, and instead, tried and convicted him, imposing 20 years of rigorous imprisonment. Imtiaz Ali and Sitara Begum of Kanpur were similarly found guilty and sentenced to jail terms despite the Samajwadi Party seeking to have cases against them withdrawn. During this phase, as many as 14 cases against terrorists were similarly sought to be withdrawn by the Akhilesh Yadav government. It is the courts that thwarted these designs.
It is, first and foremost, the duty of a government to protect its citizens against all enemies — foreign and domestic. Everything else comes later. The experience and commitment that PM Modi brought with him from his Gujarat days manifested itself at the national level after 2014 when he became the prime minister.
On the domestic front, anti-terror laws like Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act have been strengthened, NIA has been given more teeth, the investigating agencies have been modernised with more resources being made available to them and terror financing has been squeezed through the creation of the Terror Funding and Fake Currency Cell in the NIA. Insurgencies in the Northeast were ended with the signing of historic accords. Incidents of Naxalism have reduced by 70 per cent in 2020 as compared to 2009. Fatalities (civilians and security forces) have reduced by 80 per cent in 2020 as compared to 2010.
On the external front, the armed forces were given a free hand to deal with Pakistan through strikes which, for the first time, imposed a direct cost on that country. Terrorism and terror financing was consistently brought onto the agenda of the G20 through PM Modi’s interventions, eventually leading to a broad international consensus in dealing with terror finance. Pakistan has been on the FATF grey list since 2018, with the threat of blacklisting looming over it.
Today, if India has emerged as a nation that has attracted $80 billion in FDI even during the pandemic, created 42 unicorns in just one year and is the fastest-growing major economy in the world post the pandemic, then the bedrock of this success is the safety and security that has become the new norm under the Modi government. Any threat to the nation is treated as a threat to every Indian.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 22, 2022 under the title ‘A safer India’. The writer is CEO, Bluekraft Digital Foundation and was earlier director (content) MyGov.
Sandhya Mukherjee came to my listening universe inconspicuously. Growing up as a probashi Bengali in Delhi in the pre-digital age, I didn’t have Mukherjee as part of my early listening experience in the way Lata Mangeshkar or Geeta Dutt had been. I was two years away from hitting my teens when Mukherjee’s voice — unmistakable for its lilt and lalitya, Sanskrit/Bengali for sweetness or charm — entered my world as we moved to Chittaranjan Park in south Delhi. No Durga Puja went by without listening to songs by two legendary Mukherjees — Sandhya and Hemanta — being blared on loudspeakers. The pandals of the late 1980s were venues for the screening of black-and-white Bengali films on giant projectors. This was also when I found Sandhya Mukherjee’s voice merging with the screen persona of Suchitra Sen, even as Hemanta Mukherjee’s did with Uttam Kumar’s who often played her romantic interest. As I spent the past few days listening to the breathtakingly wide range of songs Mukherjee sang in her long and illustrious career, I found that the ability to adapt — to artistic idiosyncrasies, situational peculiarities and the basic demands of a piece of composition — was what made her such a versatile and gifted artist.
Recently, I stumbled upon some near-forgotten gems — a whole stack of Hindi songs in her voice. Between 1950 and 1951, when she went to Bombay answering composer S D Burman’s call, Mukherjee sang in as many as 17 Hindi films before returning to Calcutta and becoming a household name. One of the biggest appeals of Mukherjee’s singing is the effortlessness with which she glides through different musical genres. She has sung some of the most memorable romantic songs, which she injects with sensuous dreaminess or playful vibrancy, depending on the mood the words intend to convey. In songs like “Ke tumi amare daako” and “Ei je kachhe daaka”, Mukherjee imbues the notes with a quasi-mysterious air while retaining remarkable control. She’s equally at ease singing “Ghiri ghiri aayi”, a raag-based thumri in the film Antony Firingee, or in Kamallata, rendering Ham ekakini, tahe abhagini in kirtan style. In her ease in traversing this multitude of musical landscapes — film songs, Nazrulgeeti, classical and semi classical compositions, Rabindrasangeet, folk music — Mukherjee went beyond each style and made it her own. Each of her songs in Antony Firingee, a film in which she sang opposite Manna Dey, known for his classical command, remains a testament to her ability to combine skill and emotive persuasiveness. Whether it is “Tuhun mama mono prano hey” or “Champa chameli, golaperi baagey” or “Ami je jalsaghare,” every song Mukherjee sang under composer Anil Bagchi’s direction, bears the stamp of this fluidity.
Mukherjee belonged to an era when the artist fraternity often came together to lend support to social and political causes. In 1971, when refugees from the erstwhile East Pakistan flooded Calcutta, Mukherjee played a leading role in raising funds and creating global awareness. She sang “Bongobondhu phire ele”, written and composed to celebrate Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s release from the prison in Pakistan in 1972. The song aired on All India Radio in January that year. After the creation of Bangladeshin February 1972, Mukherjee was invited as a main guest to the celebrations in Dhaka.
Every autumn, just before the Bengali community gets into the Durga puja frenzy comes Mahalaya, the day inaugurating the festival. Bengalis across the world wake up to the notes of Mahishasuramarddini, a musical that plays at the crack of dawn on radio (and now on digital devices). From the stellar lineup of singers rises the voice of Sandhya Mukherjee, singing “Bimaney bimaney alokero gaane jaagilo dhoni” (“Riding air chariots, notes of light take flight in song”). Despite her passing, Mukherjee’s aloker gaan — bright notes —will keep taking flight.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 22, 2022 under the title ‘Notes of sweetness and light’. Ghosh is a writer and translator, and author of Victory Colony, 1950.
As diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine continue, the time has come for Delhi to devote greater attention to Central Europe, which is at the heart of the contestation between Russia and the West. Delhi can’t forever view this critical region through the prism of Russia’s conflict with the West. It must come to terms with its growing strategic significance.
While the prospects for defusing the crisis have risen amidst the planned summit meeting between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin — brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron — it is important to remember that Central Europe is no longer just a piece of territory that Russia and the Western powers can divide into “spheres of influence”. Central Europe today has an identity of its own and the political agency to reshape European geopolitics. A grand bargain between Russia and the West will work only if it is acceptable to Central Europe.
As External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar meets all the Indian ambassadors in Europe this week, it is a good moment to review Delhi’s stakes in European security and elevate the importance of Central Europe in India’s geopolitical calculus. Putin has been deliberate in raising the military temperature around Ukraine. He has set forth a clear set of demands, in writing, to the US and NATO for a sweeping overhaul of the current European security order that Putin sees as hostile to Russia. At the core of his proposals is the demand for a dominant role in Central Europe. One can quibble on Putin’s wisdom on embarking on this risky geopolitical gamble, but there can be no misreading of what he is seeking. He wants to leverage the military tension for specific political ends. As the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, had said, citing Clausewitz, “war (or the threat of war) is a continuation of politics (by other means)”.
Continuing high-level conversations between Putin and Western leaders may yet lead to a de-escalation and substantive negotiations on European security. But the carefully crafted-military tension on the ground could easily spin out of control. The growing clashes between Ukrainian security forces and Russian-backed separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine could trigger an escalation that neither side wants.
As war clouds gather over Ukraine, there is much focus on India’s diplomatic balancing act, its unwillingness to publicly caution Russia against invading Ukraine, and above all its reluctance to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty. This is not the first time that Russia’s approach to Central Europe has put Delhi in a tight corner. The Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968, exposed an important tension in Indian diplomacy.
In Central Europe, India’s pragmatism in not offending Moscow (an important partner) runs against the utter unacceptability of Putin’s doctrine of “limited sovereignty”, a continuation of the Soviet era policy of saying that the socialist states must subordinate their sovereignty for the sake of the “collective interests of the socialist bloc”. While Putin’s predecessors, Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, abandoned this doctrine, he has sought to restore it in spectacular fashion by demanding a Russian say in Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation as well as a veto over Central Europe’s security policies.
The Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 came amidst Jawaharlal Nehru’s thundering denunciation of the Anglo-French attempt to seize the Suez Canal. While Delhi minced words on the Russian invasion of Hungary many opposition leaders criticised Nehru’s ambivalence. That India needed the Soviet veto in the UN Security Council on the Kashmir question clearly shaped Delhi’s readiness to subordinate its foreign policy principles for political expediency; but it opened India to the charge of diplomatic double standards. The invasion of Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring of 1968 came at a time when Delhi was leading the Asian criticism of the US war in Vietnam. While Delhi twisted in the diplomatic wind to balance its political dependence on Russia with its commitment to national sovereignty, it was subjected once again to charges of geopolitical hypocrisy.
The prospective Russian invasion of Ukraine comes amidst India’s military tensions with China and Delhi’s continued dependence on Moscow’s military supplies. It also comes at a time when Delhi is trying to build an international coalition against China’s brazen attacks on the territorial sovereignty of its Asian neighbours. Delhi has no desire to see this coalition break down due to Russia’s aggressive actions in Europe.
For the moment, Delhi is in a safe corner by calling for diplomacy in resolving the Ukraine crisis. But if Russia does invade Ukraine, the pressure on India to rethink its position will mount. Any such review must eventually lead to an independent appreciation of the geopolitics of Central Europe. Five crucial factors must shape that review.
First, Russia’s claim for a broad sphere of influence in the region has no takers in Central Europe. Neither the former members of the Warsaw Pact like Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania, nor nations such as Ukraine and the Baltic Republics that were part of the Soviet Union want to be part of Putin’s reconstituted Russian sphere of influence.
Second, while Russia has legitimate security interests in Central Europe, they can only be realised through political accommodation. Moscow cannot enforce a sphere of influence against the will of its prospective members. Central Europeans have long memories of Russian regional domination and look to the West for guarantees on their sovereignty. Third, few Central Europeans buy into the French vision for “European sovereignty” and “strategic autonomy”. They bet that NATO, led by the US, is a better option than a Europe that is independent of Washington. They view with even greater distaste the prospects for Russo-German condominium over Central Europe. Fourth, while they are eager to be part of the Western institutions, Central Europeans resent any attempt by the US and EU to impose political values that run against their traditional cultures. Finally, Central Europeans are eager to develop sub-regional institutions that can enhance their identity. The Visegrad Four — Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia — is one of them. The so-called “Three Seas Initiative” brings together 12 European states running in a vertical axis from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Adriatic and Black Sea in the south.
These groups of states are at once a barrier and bridge between Russia and the West. They underline the complexity of European geopolitics and are valuable partners for Delhi in India’s long overdue strategic engagement with Europe.
The writer is senior fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute, Delhi and contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express.
The loss of tourism caused by the pandemic, no doubt dealt Sri Lanka a more severe blow than to economies for which it is a less critical foreign-exchange earner. Pre-pandemic tourism amounted to more than 10% of the country’s GDP. But if today the country is struggling to pay for fuel imports, the shortage of which is having a cascading effect, and is on the brink of a sovereign bond default, the government’s ill-calculated policies have as much to do with it as the pandemic.
Before the pandemic, populist tax policy changes by the newly-installed Gotabaya Rajapaksa government (such as slashing the VAT rate) set off a decline in revenue, at a time when public finances were already fragile. Then, in April 2021, even as the pandemic had weakened the economy further, President Rajapaksa declared that import of chemical fertilizers would soon be stopped completely. Whether this was intended to promote organic farming or to save dollars from flowing out of the country, it crushed farmer sentiment. Prices of food and basic items have shot up since.
A big import order of organizer fertilizer from a Chinese company has opened a new can of worms, with its quality, price and payment all having become bitterly contested. China anyway accounts for around 10% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, with a notable part of this borrowing sunk into costly white elephant projects. It remains to be seen if Sri Lankan appeals to restructure this debt will be heeded with generosity, better late than never. Meanwhile, India is extending a $1 billion line of credit. For many within Sri Lanka, the writing is on the wall that the country should now turn to the IMF – to put its economy back on track with discipline. This will be a bitter pill for the government but it has largely itself to blame. It’s been a case study of how not to govern.
Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar in an interview to this newspaper, defended his government’s decision to legislate reservation of jobs for locals in the private sector. His case rests on two pillars. It’s the state’s responsibility to provide job opportunities, and the advent of GST has catalysed this reservation policy. Let’s deal with GST first. It moved India’s indirect taxation system from an origin-based one to a consumption-based one. It did impact states with a large manufacturing base that incurred upfront costs to encourage industrialisation. However, the issue was addressed and compensation provided.
Therefore, it’s incorrect on Khattar’s part to use GST as a reason to provide domicile-based reservation in the private sector. As for the CM’s first reason, there’s a much larger trend at work that is affecting not just states in India but also every other economy. We are in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution that is accelerating automation of manufacturing processes. Consequently, there’s a relative decline in the need for labour. A World Bank study said that between 1994 and 2011, the share of manufacturing in total employment declined in most countries. Even countries where the manufacturing sector expanded relative to GDP were not immune.
In India, Azim Premji University researchers found that, after adjusting for inflation, Rs 1 crore investment in 1994 could absorb 33 factory workers, but by 2015, the figure was down to just eight workers. Job reservation for locals is not going to reverse this trend. Instead, it will harm the entire country by sparking a chain reaction across states. So, what can states do? Here, Khattar needs to reorient Haryana’s focus on creating opportunities for locals. Technological changes are making the quality of human capital relevant to investment. It’s in this area, India needs to do much better.
The way forward for states is to invest far more in education and skilling to make the youth more employable. Technological change, across industrial revolutions, ended some kinds of jobs but not work. Chief ministers need to help the young prepare for work through skilling programmes that help them adapt.
UGC’s plan to allow nearly 900 autonomous colleges figuring in top-100 ranks in the NIRF subject rankings or having NAAC-grade higher than 3.26 to offer online degrees from the next academic session promises to be a big shift for higher education institutes. There are a clutch of autonomous colleges across the country that attract intense admission competition, pushing cutoffs to surreally high levels. Though many universities are offering online degrees, allowing prestigious colleges to do so can alter the dynamics. If these colleges can offer the same quality online, the number of students benefiting can be huge.
True, this may not really be a consolation for a meritorious student who had a close miss in admission to a top-notch college due to the supply-demand mismatch and isn’t keen on an online degree. For them and for the country’s future, India has no option but to continue creating more brick-and-mortar institutions focussed on quality. UGC’s proposal will however definitely help those with middling grades who may not mind virtual classrooms and are seeking quality education, which is in short supply. Additionally, these online degrees could help India improve the gross enrolment ratio in higher education, a key metric in improving human capital.
Nearly three in four young Indians don’t enroll for higher education. One reason is economic pressure. Affordable online degrees with a measure of flexibility could offer a ray of hope to these youngsters. Employability of many graduates is also poor. Online education from a top college may be a better alternative than campus learning in a low-ranked institution. But to make the UGC move a gamechanger, top colleges must invest in improving quality of online education and set up the infrastructure including manpower for continuous assessment of a larger student intake.
From internet speeds for live streaming classes to creating engaging online content and roping in the National Testing Agency to conduct online semester examinations, there’s much work to be done for the ambitious idea to live up to its billing. Generous public funding will be needed for economically weak students and for infra upgrades. The National Education Policy wants to nearly double India’s GER to 50 while delivering quality. That goal possibly hinges on the success of this initiative.
GoI is concerned about the quality of oversight that permitted dubious decisions at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) over a decade ago. In an interview to ET, Nirmala Sitharaman has flagged the issue as a wider investigation is under way into alleged abuse of colocation, or server hosting, facilities provided to brokers by India's largest exchange. Low-latency algo-trading on servers rented from the NSE was apparently gamed by exploiting the sequential data transfer protocol to brokers - the first to log in had a millisecond's edge over the next. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) investigated allegations of preferential data access and subsequently plugged the information asymmetry.
Sitharaman's concern is about preserving institutional credibility. Discretionary behaviour by an exchange went unreported for a longish time, allowing systemic manipulation before the market regulator took action on a whistleblower's allegation. The current round of investigations, based on fresh disclosures, does raise questions on the regulatory framework that allowed abuse, whether the system is more robust now, and if wrongdoing has been adequately punished. Trading is a zero-sum game - if somebody has made unlawful gains, it has been at someone else's cost, most likely the small investor.
The FM warns against a reflux and makes the point that intervention, within powers given to regulators, may need to work harder for investors overseas to see Indian institutions in better light. Possible rogue actors went undetected at NSE, a platform that funnels a bulk of foreign investments into the country. The follow-up investigation into money trails could help in restoring some faith. But Indian corporate governance is left wanting in best practices. India has been dismantling its state monopolies over the years, relying, instead, on the market to deliver a swathe of goods and services from telecommunications to energy. Independent regulators are vital pieces in this transition. They would do well to take Sitharaman's message.
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The insurance regulator's reported corporate governance concerns over GoI's move to appoint one person as the chairman of two state-run insurers are valid. There is a conflict of interest when one person steers two competing entities. Presumably, GoI, by virtue of being a majority owner in the two insurance companies - New India Assurance and Oriental Insurance - does not see it this way. However, any appointment of this kind does not reflect well on governance efficiency. New India Assurance is a listed entity and the procedure for appointment of key management personnel should be in accordance with the Companies Act. Bypassing the rules could impact its share price.
The health of Oriental Insurance has slipped due to deficient governance and poor underwriting discipline, warranting full-time attention of the chairman and managing director. The policy signals in the non-life segment, too, have been mixed and the approach somewhat indifferent. That is separate from succession planning, the easiest thing for the Centre to do as people retire on predetermined dates.
That the position of chairman of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda) has been vacant for almost a year now is also baffling. The member (finance) position is without an occupant too. This is strange at a time when GoI is set to divest part of its holding in the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) via an initial public offering. The selection process of the chairman must be expedited so that the insurance sector functions efficiently. Sound regulation also requires in-depth domain knowledge. Appointing civil servants who look for sinecure jobs must end. A careful selection process will ensure that the best person is chosen for the job, without any bias.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to recognise the independence of separatist-held Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine and to send troops for a “peacekeeping” mission to these regions has exacerbated the uncertainty and tensions prevailing in eastern Europe. Mr Putin’s long-winded televised address questioned Ukraine’s historical right to exist and he went so far as to say it was “madness” that other former Soviet republics were allowed to leave the erstwhile USSR. The Moscow-backed leaders of the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk claim territories currently controlled by the Ukrainian government, and the deployment of Russian troops to these regions has given rise to fears about their possible forcible occupation. Fighting between Ukraine and the pro-Russian separatists was stopped by the Minsk Agreements in 2015, but the validity of those pacts is now under question following Mr Putin’s actions. If anything, Moscow’s moves have set the stage for an intensification of great power competition, with the United States (US) saying that the actions are just a pretext for war, and the threat of hostilities is probably greater than it has been in the past few weeks. Mr Putin is unlikely to be deterred by the limited sanctions imposed by the US or the threat of more punitive measures.
India’s options in responding to the situation in Ukraine are becoming increasingly limited. The Indian envoy to the United Nations again refrained from speaking against Russia’s moves at the Security Council, and called on all parties to show restraint while enhancing diplomatic efforts to find a solution that secures the legitimate interests of all countries. Some Western commentators were quick to note that India is the only member of Quad that hasn’t criticised Russia or made a reference to Ukraine’s sovereignty. In fact, both China and India adopted similar positions at the Security Council, avoiding any direct mention of Mr Putin’s decisions. Any criticism of Russia could push that country closer to China — something India is keen to avoid amid the military standoff in Ladakh — or even have long-term implications for the close security ties between New Delhi and Moscow. Continuing on this path could lead to pressure on India from the West to pick a side. No matter which path India chooses, it may not be able to avoid making some tough choices.
India’s boards and regulators have a long way to go. That’s the larger message from l’affaire National Stock Exchange (NSE). And it is a message that is unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, lost in the details. That’s because the details are unbelievable. There’s Mr Nobody who is plucked from obscurity to become the second most powerful person in India’s largest stock exchange. There’s the chief executive officer (CEO) who, it emerges, is taking instructions from a yogi. There’s the yogi himself who displays an intricate understanding of NSE’s working.
But, and here’s where everyone should start paying attention really, there is also the board that didn’t bat an eye when Mr Nobody was appointed, or when his salary was revised by the CEO. There’s the board that allowed the CEO (and Mr Nobody) to resign in the wake of the co-location controversy — where some firms seemed to be getting an advantage in trades — with no punitive action, and no sign of having identified the beneficiaries. And the regulator was also slow to react to the controversy, didn’t push for a proper investigation of either the CEO or Mr Nobody, and accepted the premise of the yogi.
Even as federal agencies start taking interest in the case, several questions remain unanswered. Was there a connection between the co-location controversy and the appointment of Mr Nobody? Why did the board allow CEO and her confidant to get away lightly? What did the board know? And what did it not know? Why was some of the evidence disposed as e-waste? And what was the stock market regulator doing while all this was going on? In this case, as well as the one concerning ICICI Bank and its former CEO, it is clear that the boards allowed unprecedented leeway to rockstar CEOs, and there’s probably a lesson in that too.
Every year, India’s annual Budget is elevated from a mundane accounting exercise to a statement of intent and priorities of the government at the helm. The Budget speech made by the finance minister (FM) is scrutinised to check how many times a particular sector, industry or policy issue is mentioned to gauge the government’s priorities and preferences. Jobs, by the way, was mentioned three times in the Budget speech this year.
In the speech, the FM mentioned there were initiatives in the pipeline that could create six million jobs over the next five years. That is, an average of 1.2 million jobs each year. While there is a minor sense of relief that the government is finally taking cognisance of the jobs problem (instead of relying on pakora wallahs), unfortunately, the overwhelming feeling is that of inadequacy. The vague pronouncement betrays the government’s lack of appreciation of the magnitude of the jobs problem.
Roughly 18 million Indians turn 18 every year, of which a large majority enters the workforce. Additionally, at least 100 million people need to get out of the low productivity and low-wage “jobs” in the agriculture sector — the disguised unemployed — and move into more productive non-agriculture jobs. Finally, there’s the stock of unemployed, which amounts to roughly 200 million Indians who need a job today. These do not show up in unemployment numbers in a country where the labour force participation rate is below 42%, the lowest in comparable emerging economies. The required rate of job creation is at least 20 million each year — a target removed from the government’s subdued ambition.
The consequences of a large population of unemployed youth can be drastic for India’s social fabric. Unless India creates 20 million jobs every year, we are going to increasingly witness unrest, demands for reservation, political activism, and heightened societal disturbances.
The answer to jobs is usually straightforward and requires economic growth. However, India’s unique economic structure makes it a lot more complicated. In order to achieve the scale of 20 million jobs, we need a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth above 10% every year and crucially, for employment elasticity to increase multiple times from the current level of 0.1%. Currently, a 10% increase in GDP results in about 1% increase in employment (elasticity), which needs to increase significantly.
The great GDP growth run that India witnessed in the last three decades has largely been jobless. Deep structural issues (labour laws, for instance) have rendered firms in a labour-abundant country to be capital intensive.
Large-scale manufacturing has a way of generating jobs, but manufacturing has just not taken off in India. Blame is rightfully laid at the doorstep of “archaic labour laws”, the non-performing assets crisis, ease of doing business or the lack thereof. There have been some improvements in these areas, but these leave a lot to be desired. A study by the International Labour Organization predicts India will have a severe skills shortage in the years to come and by 2030, we may have 29 million jobs that go unfilled because we do not have the right skills. A massive thrust is needed to help Indians upskill. Career-impact bonds that leverage the financial market by securitising “at-risk” loans given to people seeking to upskill themselves could be a great way of sustainably skilling the nation for job readiness.
Cities are where jobs are created due to agglomeration effects and the availability of opportunities. With Indian cities being listed among the least liveable in the world, there is an opportunity to build new cities. There is also an opportunity for building larger cities centred around educational institutions, industrial clusters or even large medical or transport hubs. If we create 20-30 new cities with a population of around 8-10 million, we can generate a significant number of new jobs in building, maintaining and running those cities.
Tourism, an area that is criminally overlooked in policymaking, has a vast potential to create jobs, as international experience shows. For a country as large and diverse as India, this should be a low-hanging fruit in the employment generation endeavour.
Creating a more enabling social environment where women can work with safety and dignity can increase women’s labour force participation rate (WLFPR). Encouragement to large manufacturing such as the garment industry has created a large number of jobs for women in Bangladesh; 80% of the four million people who work in the garment industry there are women. Bangladesh has a WLFPR of 36% against the abysmal rate of below 20% for India. Every woman employed can create more than one job, because some of the unpaid housework is now outsourced to others. Women entrepreneurs tend to hire more women. Helping women entrepreneurs access credit more easily can make a significant impact on jobs, especially for women.
Other ideas to create jobs include entering into treaties with countries struggling with labour shortages and providing a safe emigration process. The gig economy is creating many jobs but these come with huge income volatility and poor working conditions. Creating a safety net for gig workers will make a difference in supporting growth in this sector.
These are the outlines of some ideas for job creation, apart from many others that exist out there. The first step, however, is an acknowledgement of the magnitude of the problem and to think of solutions that can do justice on the required scale.
Sridhar Krishna and Anupam Manur are researchers at the Takshashila Institution, an independent think tank and school of public policy
The views expressed are personal
Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s visit to Punjab in January caused a huge uproar with the dramatic claim that his life was endangered by a blockade that prevented him from reaching Ferozepur. This allegation, however, is untrue. Still, the Punjab Police and the Special Protection Group (SPG)’s failure did result in an unacceptable breach in the PM’s security.
In the entire saga, one important aspect went unnoticed: Did those who decided to abandon the PM’s helicopter in Bhatinda and travel for more than two hours across the countryside in the rain and fog remember that the PM is the chairman of the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA)?
The security lapse happened even though the police and SPG knew that protests were planned, and demonstrators and the Bharatiya Janata Party supporters would throng the roads to reach the Hussainiwala Martyr’s Memorial, 200 metres from the India-Pakistan border. The incident shone a light on India’s unclear nuclear command structure.
The United States (US) president has the “nuclear football” (briefcase) by which he can authorise nuclear strikes when he’s travelling. Given India’s “no first use” (NFU) nuclear posture, Modi may not need a “football”, but he cannot afford to be incommunicado or blocked from performing his duties. In this case, the PM was cut off for 15-20 minutes, which is long enough. But it could also have been an hour or two and an encounter with the protesters could have been more threatening. There is, of course, the other matter of going towards the border of Pakistan, which has a penchant for sending armed attackers and drones.
In matters related to defence, people trust the government to do the right thing. The Parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence and the Comptroller & Auditor General keep track of activities and issue periodic reports, based on inside information. However, the subject of nuclear weapons remains off-grid. This has been in the domain of the executive, in particular the National Security Adviser (NSA). He heads the executive council of NCA and the PM heads the political council. These details came to us through a press release of January 4, 2003, detailing a Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) decision to approve a nuclear doctrine, constitute NCA and appoint a strategic forces commander (SFC) to execute nuclear strikes.
Nearly 20 years later, there is no public information on who constitutes these councils besides their chairmen. One can assume that the political council is likely to be the same as the CCS since it is the legal authority responsible for the country’s security. There, the PM has always been the primus inter pares (first among equals).
This poses a problem. What is NCA’s succession plan in the event of a nuclear strike that takes out Lutyens Delhi and the entire CCS? The last item of the January 4 press release said that CCS “also reviewed and approved arrangements for alternate chains of command for retaliatory nuclear strikes in all eventualities.”
All this, of course, sounds fantastic and improbable, but consider that, like us, our adversaries also possess nuclear weapons. Their use may be “unthinkable”, but these weapons have been made for use. And, so, you need procedures to deal with an exigency.
As per India’s nuclear doctrine, there will be retaliation but this “can only be authorised by the civilian political leadership through the Nuclear Command Authority.” With the NCA gone, some other political authority will have to authorise this. Will it be a surviving member of the council of ministers, or a council of chief ministers? In a country as huge and diverse as India, the issue of its legitimacy in the minds of the people cannot be ignored. Contrary to government instinct, the issue of alternative political succession should be made known publicly and legalised through law.
In the US, where the president is authorised to order a launch, there is a laid down legal succession from vice-president, speaker of the House of Representatives, president of the Senate, down a list of 15 Cabinet members named by their portfolio.
This issue gains more salience with questions about the NFU posture that the January 4 note confirmed.
A former NSA once told me, “Who believes in NFU? Certainly not our adversaries.” One former SFC has called for a mix of strategies that includes first use and “launch on warning” posture. Former NSA Shivshankar Menon, too, noted that there could be circumstances in which “India might find it useful to strike first.” While there remains a margin with China, which like us has pledged NFU, Pakistan makes no bones about its “first use” posture.
As it is, India and Pakistan may also be moving towards ready-to-use nuclear arsenals, rather than one with de-mated warheads. This makes the issues more manifest. It’s not that the Pakistanis would strike because they knew that the PM was stuck on a flyover. It is about responsible planning, which includes thinking of contingencies when the nuclear command-and-control chain may be disrupted, leaving the nation vulnerable.
Manoj Joshi is a distinguished fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi
The views expressed are personal
The 2022-23 Union Budget allocated ?86,000 crore for health care. Adding estimates for state allocations and out-of-pocket expenditure allocation for health care is over 2.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). There will be much hand-wringing over this because many countries spend much more. For example, member-countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation (OECD) and Development and China spend around 7% of the GDP on health care.
The relationship between expenditure on health care and outcomes is neither linear nor 1:1. The United States, which spends the most on health care (18% of the GDP), should have the best health care outcomes. But it does not.
So how do we tailor India’s Budget to match the requirement? We need to get out of the mindset of setting targets that are a fraction of the GDP. The “how much” question must be secondary to the “what do we want to accomplish in terms of health outcomes?” question.
How do we come up with outcome measures? The 2021-22 outcome budget of the Union ministry of health and family welfare lists several salient measures for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). For example, “the percentage of people living with HIV who know they have HIV” — the targeted outcome is 90%. Having such discrete and targetable outcome measures has contributed to the success in combating communicable diseases. We need to do the same for non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
In the case of NCDs, devising outcome measures, that can be tracked at scale, is difficult given the varied manifestations of these conditions. But more proximal measures can be used. Take hypertension as an example — we can have an outcome measure that tracks the percentage of hypertensives who know they have hypertension, or we can track the percentage of hypertensives receiving appropriate treatment or the percentage of treated hypertensives having blood pressures in the ideal range.
Making the health care budget salient to current needs is a self-evident priority. But this often gets derailed by the lack of coordination between central and state spending on health care.
India’s accomplishment in containing or wiping out infectious diseases was due to centrally led and coordinated mission-mode programmes. Such an approach must be considered for NCDs too. But before allocating funds to NCD missions, the means to measure and monitor outcomes must be in place.
Digitally-enabled collection and analysis of data in real-time can inform the budgeting process, making it evidence-based, cutting wasteful expenditure and improving efficiency.
The National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) is a move in the right direction. But it has to be more ambitious. The minuscule allocation of ?200 crore indicates that the State has not taken seriously the potential for digital medicine to transform the landscape for health care. The availability of high-quality data from NDHM can be the keystone for supporting a rational demand-led budgeting process for health care in which allocations are linked to specifically targeted health outcomes.
Swami Subramaniam is currently CEO, Ignite Life Science Foundation. Aparajithan Srivathsan is managing director, Intent Health Technologies
The views expressed are personal
India has often referred to its low per capita emissions and resource-efficient lifestyles during global climate negotiations.
More recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced a concept titled L.I.F.E (Lifestyle for Environment) at the Glasgow climate conference (COP26).
He reiterated the idea at the World Economic Forum (WEF) at its Davos Agenda summit in January and once again referred to it at the World Sustainable Development Summit on February 16 where he said that India has initiated the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) which aims to build strong infrastructure in areas prone to frequent natural disasters. On the sidelines of CoP26, India also launched an initiative called “Infrastructure for Resilient Island States” for vulnerable island nations.
“To these two initiatives, we now add L.I.F.E – Lifestyle For Environment. LIFE is about making lifestyle choices to improve our planet. L.I.F.E will be a coalition of like-minded people across the world who will promote sustainable lifestyles. I call them 3Ps — Pro-Planet People. This global movement of Pro Planet People (3-Ps) is the Coalition for L.I.F.E. These three global coalitions will form the trinity of our environmental efforts for improving the global commons,” he said.
The concept is currently being fleshed out by the environment ministry. Environment minister, Bhupender Yadav held a meeting last week with several environmental experts and institutions on how the concept can be explained and what lifestyle choices would guide it.
Such a concept needs careful documentation of per capita emissions and consumption patterns in India as it runs the risk of being brushed aside as a flimsy argument considering our high cumulative emissions. The developed countries definitely need to be shown the mirror on the vast disparities in consumption patterns historically and infrastructure available to people in terms of basic needs like housing, cooling and heating requirements etc.
But in India too there are wide disparities in consumption patterns with a very large section deprived of these basics — water, nutrition, energy for cooling and heating and hence extremely vulnerable to impacts of the climate crisis like heat extremes, floods and crop failure. On the other extreme are India’s rich whose lifestyles may be comparable or more resource-intensive than those in developed countries.
According to a briefing paper by Oxfam India, when 84% of households in the country suffered a decline in their income in a year impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic last year, the number of Indian billionaires grew from 102 to 142, ahead of the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda.
The briefing indicates that the collective wealth of India’s 100 richest people hit a record high of ₹57.3 lakh crore ($775 billion) in 2021. 1% wealth tax on 98 of the richest billionaire families in India can finance Ayushman Bharat, the national public health insurance fund of the Government of India for more than seven years, the analysis said.
One could argue that the rich could continue to have low carbon lifestyles but it's important to acknowledge that the extremely low per capita emissions of 84% of the households referred to in the analysis is not by choice. It’s a result of poverty and loss of livelihoods.
The concept of L.I.F.E should call for better lifestyles for those at the bottom of Oxfam’s analysis too, only then can the issue of climate justice be better argued. A lifestyle that is for the environment but covers people’s basic needs.
That would mean resource-intensive lifestyles of the West are moderated while those in abject poverty in Asia, Africa and other parts of the developing world find basic comfort and dignity.
In the coming days, PM’s conception of L.I.F.E will be shaped according to senior officials in the environment ministry. It will be one of the planks of India’s stance in the global climate negotiations to argue for more climate mitigation action by the developed world in this decade.
According to data provided by the Climate Watch by World Resources Institute, India emits 7.1% of global emissions and has per capita emissions of about 2.47 Tco2e (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent), as compared to the global average of 6.45 tco2/per capita. In comparison to top emitters, India’s per capita emissions are seven times lower than that of the United States, 3.4 times lower compared to China’s and three times lower compared to the European Union.
The impact of individual action is not as effective as collective action, so the concept of L.I.F.E will have to be supported by various schemes and policies that make collective action possible for lowering carbon emissions significantly. Individual lifestyles can be environment-friendly even when collectively a country or community has wasteful and environment-degrading policies.
From the climate crisis to air pollution, from questions of the development-environment tradeoffs to India’s voice in international negotiations on the environment, HT’s Jayashree Nandi brings her deep domain knowledge in a weekly column
The views expressed are personal
“Hijab-clad woman will be the prime minister of the nation, one day,” said All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi on February 13 amid the raging hijab controversy that started in Karnataka and has since become part of national discourse, with people on either side of the fence.
In a tweet the same day, Owaisi also said, “Women wearing hijabs will become collectors, magistrates, doctors and businesswomen.” His statement reminded many of Kanshi Ram, the founder-president of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), who always talked about giving the country its first Dalit prime minister. He partly succeeded in his mission in June 1995, a little over a decade after he had launched the BSP in 1984.
The question is: Can Owaisi meet the fired-up political ambitions of the community?
If not, why? After all, Kanshi Ram’s base vote — of Dalits — is almost equal to Muslims in Uttar Pradesh — ie about 20% of the population. Also, there is a similarity in both leaders' tone and tenor.
Some Muslims talk about the consternation of the community who, after seeing Jatav and Yadav-led parties form the government, wonder why they cannot do the same. This is precisely what Owaisi said to plant the seed of a Muslim-led government in UP, while it remains a dream in his state of Telangana.
However, Owaisi lacks the tenacity with which Kanshi Ram pursued his dream after shifting his base from Punjab. UP became Kanshi Ram’s "karmabhumi" and he camped here to consolidate the core vote, other than Jatavs.
The caste rallies that the BJP is organising today were first introduced by the BSP in the late 1980s in its quest to consolidate the Bahujan Samaj, which included the backward castes. Before that, Kanshi Ram mobilised government employees — from peons to bureaucrats — who worked behind the scenes for the party’s mission.
A BSP-like mindset
I remember meeting a chief development officer in the early 1990s. He had tears in his eyes while talking about BSP’s endeavour to empower Dalits and predicted, “One day, Mayawati will rule the country.” Many of them have still not lost hope and work fiercely for the mission.
Both Kanshi Ram and Mayawati slogged, though they are remembered more for their political ambivalence and manipulative skills. On the other hand, Owaisi is "seasonal", he lives in Hyderabad, and airdrops during elections. People don’t remember him visiting the state during the Muzaffarnagar riots or Yogi’s bulldozer on Muslims to end "love jihad" or cow slaughter.
He built a cadre but has no consistent plan to mobilise the support of his community members, who still trust mainline parties like the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the BSP. Thus, voters view AIMIM more as a spoilsport rather than a serious contender.
Second, his politics is not all-encompassing. Kanshi Ram gave the slogan of "jiski jitni sankhya bhari uski utni hissedari" (proportionate representation to all castes according to their population).
And though the BSP initially raised slogans against the upper castes, it changed track when it realised that the party cannot win elections without a rainbow coalition. They not only changed their tone, but also propped up Satish Chandra Mishra, Swamy Prasad Maurya and Naseemuddin Siddiqui as the party’s Brahmin, Backward and Muslim faces respectively.
Owaisi has done little to form any coalition of castes and communities, and his statements remain divisive. In the 2022 assembly polls, he gave about 20% of tickets to non-Muslims, formed Bhagidari Morcha of non-descript parties and offered an attractive formula — two chief ministers: A Dalit and an OBC and three deputy chief ministers: One of them a Muslim. But there are no takers, as voters don’t want to bet on a losing horse.
Moreover, such formulas are mere poll gimmicks in the absence of any groundwork.
Remember, the Peace Party of 2008
Owaisi is not the first leader or party to fire up the political ambition of the minority community that feels marginalised in a BJP-dominated India.
In 2008, Dr Mohammad Ayub, a surgeon by profession, launched the Peace Party primarily with an agenda to give UP its first Muslim chief minister. The party’s demand grew after it polled more votes than the established parties like the BJP, SP and Congress in the 2010 by-poll in Domariaganj assembly constituency, east UP, but the seat was won by the BSP. The Congress, desperately hunting for a winning combination, saw a potential partner in the Peace Party for the 2012 assembly elections.
But Peace Party was riding high as it was attaining votes. Ayub adopted Kanshi Ram’s template of uniting Dalits, Muslims and Backwards by fielding non-Muslim candidates and displayed his political prowess, too, in the 2010 by-poll.
Responding to a senior Congress leader’s query as to which party would get the chief minister’s post in the event of their alliance coming to power, party state president Dr Abdul Mannan said, “The party with more numbers.” The talks ended with the Congress leader’s comment, “I appreciate your confidence.”
The Peace Party is hardly relevant today. Its founder-president Dr Ayub was seen sharing the dais with Owaisi at a press conference. The Peace Party needed the support of the AIMIM, this year.
The fate of Muslim parties
Historically Muslim political parties have ended as spoilers in UP elections but Owaisi did raise the bar by enrolling about 7.5 lakh members in 44 districts of the state and attracting the youth. While some found Owaisi more articulate than most of the political leaders as he often refers to the constitution to drive home his point, others dub him as a creation of social media, whose craze will fritter away in some time from now.
Thus, his agenda will merely remain a dream for three reasons. One, society is vertically divided into two communal groups. Two, at this time, no mainstream political party will prop up a Muslim chief minister or party head, and three, unlike the BSP which stood committed in its fight for Dalits, no Muslim party appears to have the commitment or conviction to its cause.
From her perch in Lucknow, HT’s resident editor Sunita Aron will highlight important issues related to the elections in Uttar Pradesh
The views expressed are personal
The Prime Minister (PM) Gati Shakti programme announced in Union Budget 2022 seeks to integrate modes and create a connected transport plan, which has the potential to transform India’s travel behaviour to a sustainable, cleaner, and more efficient one.
Transport systems are critical for society. They facilitate access to jobs, health care and education. They enable goods to move from where they are produced to where they are consumed. In many ways, they are like the circulatory system of the human body — how smoothly the blood flows is an indicator of a person’s health. Similarly, how well the transport system functions is an indicator of the economic efficiency and the well-being of a country.
Transport systems are of different types — road, rail, water, air. Each has its own unique applicability, carrying capacity, travel speed and cost. These systems are not necessarily interchangeable and must be applied in the right context. Whether it is passenger trips or goods trips, they often have individual ‘legs’ that are best served by different modes. For example, a consignment moving from a warehouse in Guwahati, Assam, to a warehouse in Panipat, Haryana – a distance of over 2000 km — will involve legs from the warehouse to a railhead, then to another railhead closer to the destination and finally a leg from the destination railhead to the warehouse. Railhead to railhead can be best served by rail but the remaining two legs will mean road trips. Unless the transfer from railhead to a truck is smooth, transporters may just prefer the movement to be entirely from one warehouse to the other, by road. This is costly and polluting. It is for this reason that multi-modal integration is becoming increasingly important.
Unfortunately, transportation policy and planning in India is fragmented across five national ministries — the ministry of road transport and highways, the ministry of ports and shipping, the ministry of railways, the ministry of civil aviation, and the ministry of housing and urban affairs. Such fragmentation does not lend itself to integrated policymaking and planning for this sector.
To achieve an efficient multi-modal, climate-smart transport system mooted by the PM Gati Shakti programme, we must recognise that transport systems are different in their technologies and have differing levels of complexity in how they are operated and what skills they need. Therefore, safety regulations for them will have to be different. Yet, the service they provide is common regardless of their mode — that of transporting people and goods from one place to the other.
It is hence important that policymaking and planning should be separated from the technical aspects of operations. While policymaking and planning need to be unified, operations have to be managed in different agencies. In fact, this is the practice in the United States, which has a single Department of Transportation but multiple ‘administrations’ (like Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration), dealing with different modes. Even in the United Kingdom, there is a single Department of Transportation which is responsible for policy-making and planning, but there are separate agencies responsible for different modes of transport.
India should restructure its transport planning along the same lines. Can a single ministry for transport, headed by a senior Cabinet minister take responsibility for policymaking and planning across all modes of transport? Under this ministry, there could be different boards for railway, roads, maritime and aviation. The annual budget for this transport system could be finalised by the ministry of transport and submitted to the finance ministry for inclusion. Based on the allocations made, the ministry could sub-allocate to different boards. The advantage of this is that transport planning can then happen with a complete national system in mind and not in isolation for each mode. It would also ensure that certain inter-linking features like transfer terminals, logistics hubs, data systems, and so on, and not overlooked.
Urban transport, which is limited to a certain geography, could follow a similar approach with a single agency being set up as the unified metropolitan transport authority, responsible for all modes of transport within that area. Different sub-systems like metro rail, buses, and paratransit could function under the control of this unified metropolitan transport authority so that good integration is ensured across all modes.
Such integration will go a long way even for meeting India's recent climate commitments. Transportation currently accounts for about 14% of energy-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and this share will increase over the years. As more people move to urban areas and increasing incomes make motorised modes more affordable, the share of emissions from the transport sector will grow. Integrated planning can help ensure that the emissions remain low.
About 90% of the emissions currently come from road transport. This necessitates a shift away from road transport towards cleaner modes. This would mean that railway systems must improve themselves to attract traffic from the road. Unfortunately despite lower costs, rail systems suffer from the inability to provide door-to-door services, thereby deterring users. This can be corrected if transport planning cuts across modes. Similarly, global trends are leaning towards short-haul flights being replaced by faster rail services, which a less polluting. India can adopt a similar model for short-distance intercity travel but this requires planning across modes — which could be best managed if the system was part of a single ministry.
Fixing India’s transportation systems to be competitive in the global market will have multiple benefits — it will be more efficient financially and for operations, it will improve connectivity for commuters and offer economical and effective travel options for goods transport, while supporting India’s climate commitments.
Dr OP Agarwal is CEO, World Resources Institute India
The views expressed are personal
Modern religions are akin to great commercial enterprises like Coke and Pepsi, constantly seeking greater market share while retaining the allegiance of existing customers. This has progressed into ostentatious theme park promotions like the Swaminarayan chain of temples in Ahmedabad, Delhi and London, the new Ramanujacharya statue at Muchintala outside Hyderabad and the new Ram temple at Ayodhya, where contemplation is sought to be replaced with awe and gawking.
It is the consequent faith, mostly induced and sustained by these exertions, which sustain the huge uniformed bureaucracies and extravagantly titled organisations that are the edifices of our major religions. But all the great Hindu, Muslim and Christian institutions are beyond the grasp of even their most faithful. It is indeed unfortunate that debates on religion and faith are no longer about goodness and decency or even present-day social concerns.
The acceptance of democracy as a way of life implies that we accept that we hold certain rights to be inalienable. The Constitution of India therefore guarantees justice, liberty and equality. The rights emanating from these are considered fundamental to our being a free and democratic society. These fundamental rights, therefore, are inviolable in the sense that no law, ordinance, custom, usage or administrative order can ever abridge or take away any of them. The Preamble elaborates liberty to be that of “thought, expression, belief, faith and worship”, leaving little room for ambiguity. Like Hinduism’s eternal truths, these are eternal rights. Without these rights we will be no different than a Saudi Arabia or a North Korea!
This very simply means that people are free to believe whatever they may want to, convert others to this belief and perform whatever rituals or ceremonies that are required by one’s faith.
In even more simple words, people are free to be Christians or Muslims or Hindus or whatever, free to preach and convert. Or for that matter even Marxism, which now is no different than any faith with its own depleted philosophy and impossible mythology. So, what is there to debate about conversion? This right is inviolable and is guaranteed by the Constitution and so there is nothing to debate.
It is another matter that religions as we know them to be practised are usually premised on irrational and primitive ideas. We are magical beings in a scientific age.
Notwithstanding all the remarkable achievements of our species in terms of understanding and harnessing nature, we are born to magical thoughts and not to reason. Now this relative absence of reason in religion very clearly gives us cause for a debate. Very clearly, the liberty of thought and conscience and the right to profess and practice one’s religion is not the issue. What can be the issue is our reticence to criticise religions, and subject their basic premises to scrutiny.
But this is not on our agenda and will not appear on it as long as we have the present dubious consensus on what has come to be called secularism. To be truly secular is to be a sceptic and therefore rational and reasonable. Merely to be silent on the unreason wrapped in ritual and ceremony that passes off as religion, or even to be fearful of criticising these lest we provoke irrational rage and violence, is not secularism. It is the silence of the truly secular and rational that has allowed the religious fanatics of all hues to seize the high ground from which the battle for our minds is being directed. This distorted notion on what is secularism makes even the maddest mullah cry stridently for it. To start with, to be a mullah or even a shankaracharya or a bishop is proof of one’s lack of secularism.
To be secular is to consider organised religion little more than humbug.
The criticism against Christian and Muslim missionaries is that they dupe poor people into converting by giving them money. If Hindus want to keep their flock, the answer is staring them in the face. Put some money where your mouth is and the flock will not deplete? To be true, there is more than cash that goes with this. More often it is housing, clothes, education and the care and respect that comes with acceptance that are the inducements. Ordinary people can be very practical when it comes to matters pertaining to their well-being.
Both the State and our predominantly Hindu society have failed to provide to the majority of this country the elementary essentials of living and quite often even the elementary decencies due to all human beings. Added to this, our society has systematically discriminated against the weak and the oppressed. Why do they exist mostly below the poverty line?
Why do more of them die younger? Now here are subjects worthy of a debate. The call for a debate on conversion lends itself to expansion to include these. Just as it lends itself to a discussion as to why people are so easily willing to give up their traditional faiths.
Clearly, the systematic exclusion of a majority from their rightful role in the community and the continuing discrimination against them is a great subject for a debate. If the Hindu upper castes were to be civilised in their treatment of the lower castes, would they now seek to escape from the social tyranny of the so-called Hindu society?
Such an expanded debate could possibly shed light on why for most of the about to conclude millennium we were a conquered nation. It is over a thousand years since Mohammed bin Kasim conquered Sindh, thus paving the way for a succession of Arabs, Persians, Turks, Uzbeks, Mongols, Portuguese, French and English to invade and rule parts, if not all, of this country.
In the process, we even became the only nation to be conquered by a private commercial enterprise -- the East India Company. How much lower than that can you get? Our thousand years of shame quite clearly calls for a debate that we have never really had.
Such a debate will almost certainly focus on the failures of the Hindu elites to defend the nation, to unite the country and harness its great resources. It is not very different even now.
The lessons of history are yet to be learnt. And so, we will want to debate what we shouldn’t be, and not debate what we should be.
The once-vaunted Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Maharashtra Police seems to have lost its sheen. Many senior cops in the state believe that this was brought on over the past few years by the ongoing political tussle between the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government led by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and BJP-ruled Centre. While some recent high-profile cases have been at the heart of this bitter rivalry, it seems to have led many cops in the state to lose interest in the ATS.
Feeling the pinch of several vacant posts, the state director general of police (DGP) Sanjay Pandey surprised many when he posted a message about two vacancies for the post of superintendents in the ATS Mumbai on Facebook. He invited interested candidates to approach the department or contact him through social media. Sources have also informed DKB that the state ATS chief, Vineet Agarwal, similarly, has written to the government seeking more manpower for the squad.
Even though the ATS is considered a prestigious posting and Mr Pandey even dangled the carrot of 25 per cent extra salary by way of allowances, the word is that even his unconventional approach of seeking applicants on social media has failed to find an enthusiastic audience among the cops.
Kerala babu triggers high drama, shunted out
The standoff between Kerala governor Arif Mohammed Khan and the Pinarayi Vijayan government has ended, for now. But for a while it did create an unprecedented situation in which Mr Khan refused to sign the ritualistic governor’s address to the state Assembly, forcing chief minister Vijayan to relent to his demand. However, as often seen in such tussles, a senior babu had to pay the price.
K.R. Jyothilal, principal secretary in the state general administration department (GAD, has been shunted out since Mr Khan was upset over a letter the babu had sent to Raj Bhavan with the appointment order of Hari Kartha, a BJP leader, as an additional PA to the governor. Sources have informed DKB that this letter, which started it all, mentioned that the government had approved the appointment of Kartha as per the governor’s wish. But it also conveyed the displeasure of the chief minister stating that there was no precedent of appointing political leaders in Raj Bhavan.
The governor took this as an affront, and it took the intervention of chief secretary V.P. Joy to pacify him and convince Mr Vijayan not to escalate the issue. Mr Jyothilal’s exit from GAD is being seen as part of the attempt to end the confrontation amiably.
IAS shortage in Karnataka likely to persist
Last month, when the Centre had sought the opinions of the states on its proposal to amend the IAS cadre rule, allowing it to pick any number of IAS or IPS officers from a state for Central deputation, Karnataka was among the 11 states that had opposed the move, initially. The state has now changed its stand obviously due to the “double engine” government in the state and at the Centre.
However, there is no denying that the state is facing a severe shortage of IAS officers with some babu watchers saying that there is a deficit of 63 officers. This has led to the unhealthy situation of the existing IAS officers discharging multiple responsibilities. Senior IAS officer Rakesh Singh is the additional chief secretary to the departments of urban development and water resources, as well as managing director of Karnataka Milk Federation. There are several others in a similar bind.
However, with the Basavraj Bommai government doing a flip-flop on its earlier stance and with the Centre aiming to persist with its proposal, the situation will only worsen, babu watchers say since the Centre is also facing a shortage of IAS officers — which inspired this proposal in the first place.