U.S. President Joseph Biden cannot forget his recent five-day visit to Asia. Hours after he left to return to the U.S., North Korea test-fired three ballistic missiles even as it is preoccupied with a ‘fever’ in the country. Japan’s Defence Minister said Chinese and Russian fighter jets carried out joint flights over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea on May 24 as leaders of the Quad met in Tokyo. And when Air Force One landed in the U.S., Mr. Biden became witness to the sparring between Republicans and Democrats about gun control legislation in the aftermath of a shooting at an elementary school in Texas which claimed 21 lives, of which 19 were children.
Biden’s Asian visit
Still, in the assessment of the Biden White House, the outcome of the Asian trip could not have been better. The new conservative South Korean government showed willingness to turn the heat on North Korea and said it would even expand the presence of a U.S. missile defence system in the country, which had earlier angered China. In Japan, the administration promised him that it was ready to do away with its long-standing 1% GDP ceiling for annual defence spending.
Against the backdrop of growing concern over Chinese military activity in the region, Mr. Biden said at a press conference that the U.S. would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan if it came under attack from China. The jury is still out on whether this unusually forceful statement by the President was a gaffe or a well-thought-out response. In any event, the President and members of his delegation were quick to walk back and clarify that there is no change in the substance of American foreign policy, which is still governed by the Taiwan Relations Act. As per the 1979 Congressional law, the U.S. “shall provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character” so that the region can defend itself; the law says nothing about the U.S. being required to step in militarily to defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion by China. But Mr. Biden made some folks happy in the region even if the primary purpose of his visit was not about clarifying ‘strategic ambiguity’.
It is no secret that the Indo-Pacific region has been under pressure and East Asia, in particular, has had to weather repeated storms. South Korea and Japan face regular nuclear and missile threats from North Korea. China not only challenges international maritime laws in the South China Sea, but also confronts Japan over the Senkaku Islands. Six nations, including China and Taiwan, are involved in the dispute over the Spratly Islands, which are supposedly sitting on vast reserves of oil and natural gas. China has vigorously militarised some portions of the disputed isles, islets and coral reefs; and countries like Vietnam and the Philippines are anxious not to be left behind.
The IPEF framework
The buzzword in the Indo-Pacific that President Biden wanted to emphasise was China. Nearly every one of the nations in this part of the world recognises the assertiveness and aggressiveness of Beijing, which is seen as wanting to be at the centre of things and on its terms, but few are able to come up with a strategy to deal with China. And one way that the Biden administration has sought to get around this is by establishing an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) with Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The IPEF will work on fine-tuning four major pillars: standards and rules for digital trade; resilient supply chains; green energy commitments; and fair trade.
But first indications are that while the IPEF may be a good idea, there is discontent that the framework does not address issues of trade and tariffs. The Biden administration would not want to touch this with a barge pole, especially with mid-term elections barely five months away. “I think what the U.S. has to offer, and the only thing the U.S. has to offer, is money. Which some, I think, will be forthcoming, particularly for clean energy, maybe even some for supply chain resilience, and anti-corruption,” Professor of Law and Trade Bryan Mercurio at the Chinese University of Hong Kong said. “But of course, what Asian partners really want is trade. I think they want market access. And the trade component of the IPEF is really lacking.”
There are two facets to the Asia Pacific/Indo-Pacific that any administration in Washington must pay attention to. One is that China’s neighbours would rather balance relations between Washington and Beijing. But as Michael Schuman said in a piece inThe Atlantic , the message to Chinese President Xi Jinping should be loud and clear: “As in Europe, where Vladimir Putin’s aggression is uniting the rest of the region against him, so too in Asia is an aggressive China entrenching, not weakening, American power.”
On the other hand is the extent to which countries in the region will want to get on the anti-China bandwagon, economic or strategic. Whether it is in East, Southeast or South Asia, every country has its own unique relationship with Beijing. South Korea and Japan are part of a strong American security/strategic partnership but will be keen on maintaining their economic status with China. This is also true for the Association of South East Asian Nations. India may be a part of the Quad, but is quite mindful that it is the only country in the group that shares a land border with China which is laced with disputes.
An uphill task
It is useful to recall what Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said at the International Conference on the Future of Asia in Tokyo on May 26: “In response to geopolitical tensions, countries have increasingly emphasised resilience and national security considerations over the economic gains from free trade and investment flows but they should be very careful about taking extreme measures, pre-emptively before conflicts arise. Whether to disconnect themselves from global supply chains and strive for reshoring or to go for “friend-shoring” and to cut off countries that are not allies or friends... such actions shut off avenues for regional growth and cooperation, deepen divisions between countries, and may precipitate the very conflicts that we all hope to avoid”.
For all the tough talking prior to the bilateral talks or at the time of the Quad summit, the four leaders of the Quad did not mention Russia or China in the Joint Statement, for each of them understands the sensitivities. Further, President Biden is perceptive and aware of the vagaries of U.S. lawmakers. As it is, foreign policy has little traction and with Democrats expected to perform poorly on November 8, legislation, especially pertaining to funding for external initiatives, is going to be an uphill task.
Sridhar Krishnaswami is a former senior journalist in Washington who covered North America and the United Nations
The unprecedented diplomatic backlash against India just a few days ago over the derogatory remarks made by the now-suspended spokespersons of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against Islam highlights the tenuous limits of a carefully calibrated and politically useful binary that the BJP-led government in New Delhi has been pursuing in conducting its relationship with the West Asian states: dismiss the growing anti-Muslim sentiments in the country as either a fringe or a ‘domestic matter’ while proactively improving India’s relations with the Muslim-majority states. The backlash has clearly put the Government on the back foot, which is now struggling to contain the diplomatic fallout.
While none of the Muslim-majority states in West Asia can claim to teach India the virtues of religious tolerance or pluralism — going by the despicable standards they adopt in their own counties — for India, this is not just a lesson in religious tolerance and pluralism but one that should drive home the stark lesson that vicious domestic politics has foreign policy implications. More so, when bilateral relationships carefully built over decades by professional diplomats start getting undermined by communal politics and electoral calculations, hate speech can no longer be dismissed as “our internal matter”; it becomes a matter of national interest.
Larger binary
In fact, there is a larger binary that has been at the heart of the conduct of India’s foreign policy in the recent past. So far, India has been able to fend off external criticism about shrinking democratic space and rising religious intolerance in the country while at the same time being a champion of those very global platforms rooted in democratic values – Quad (India, the United States, Japan and Australia) is an example; Summit of democracies is another. New Delhi has consistently dismissed, rather contemptuously, criticism from the U.S. and the West about India’s internal issues using a politically smart blend of ripostes rooted in its post-colonial identity, and its right to stand up to western hypocrisy and their imperial urges. However, India’s ability to manage its international normative identity while at the same time dismissing criticism against its own domestic failings will shrink, and the carefully calibrated binary will find fewer takers going forward, thanks to the current crisis.
After all, India has been called out not by the ‘colonial’, ‘hypocritical’ and ‘imperial’ West/U.S., but by the smaller regional states which do not come with any of these labels. New Delhi, in other words, has a ready set of templates to push back the U.S./the West, but none of those templates can help it fend off the criticism from the smaller but influential regional powers in West Asia.
When extremism boils over
An even larger question is whether domestic extremism can be fanned but kept contained without external consequences. Historically, India has had its run-ins and experiences with extremism, and sometimes has even fanned it. Dealing with Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, which has been one of the major preoccupations of the Indian state, and the deadly fallout of initially supporting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have taught India an important lesson: hobnobbing with extremism is counterproductive.
Despite this valuable lesson, there is an increasing number of ‘fringe’ but extremist groups in India today that are determined to make life difficult for Indian Muslims, and who are hardly taken to task by the BJP-led government. The reason why the international community has been more or less tolerant of such home-grown extremist elements in India is because they are, for all practical purposes, domestically focused and contained therein.
That is also in some ways an important difference between, say, the extremist organisations in Pakistan and those in India: while Pakistan’s home-grown extremism spilled over into other countries as terrorist violence with active state sponsorship, in India, home-grown extremism and intolerance has neither manifested itself as terrorism nor spilled over national borders.
More so, most manifestations of extremism in India have never received any state patronage (despite the occasional tolerance by the ruling party), and the various domestic checks and balances have been able to blunt its sharpness. But when extremism or communalism is increasingly viewed as being tolerated by the ruling party, and it boils over into spaces outside the borders, even if without any material manifestations, it is bound to have foreign policy consequences.
Take the example of global reactions to India’s policies in Kashmir, especially in 2019, or how certain right-wing Hindutva organisations have been going after Indian Muslims. While there were some criticisms of India’s Kashmir policy especially from the Islamic countries, even they had ignored these issues for most practical purposes. If anything, India’s relationships with the Islamic countries have only improved since the arrival of the Narendra Modi government in 2014.
What this means is rather straightforward. Outsiders more or less ignore what happens in the domestic space in India provided what happens there is kept below boiling point and contained there. While the external reactions to how Indian Muslims are treated by Hindutva extremist organisations in India may be muted, derogatory remarks about Islam in general are unlikely to be tolerated. So, the question before us is a two-fold one: one, is it possible to keep the temperature on anti-Muslim tirade in India below boiling point, and two, once a politically convenient anti-Muslim narrative is created in the country, would it be possible to ensure that there is no spillover, materially or rhetorically?
West Asia is not the West
There is also a noticeable difference between how India has reacted to the criticism from the U.S./West on the treatment of Muslims in India or other issues pertaining to democracy and human rights, and how it has chosen to react to the criticism and summoning of its diplomats by the Muslim-majority states in West Asia. If anything, the Indian charge of hypocrisy against the U.S./West applies more to the Muslim-majority states in West Asia. And yet, India’s response has been very different. Why so?
For one, the material consequences of defying the western/U.S. indignation are far less than those of aggressively or defiantly pushing back the criticism from the Islamic countries. India needs the region for remittances, energy, and more importantly, for the well-being of its millions of migrant labourers there. For sure, India also needs the U.S./West for similar and other reasons. However, given that the U.S. and the West are more advanced democracies, they are highly unlikely to impose any arbitrary material costs on India or Indian citizens living in those countries.
That might not be the case with the West Asian countries if the Prophet is denigrated. Put differently, if India defiantly pushes back using the same language it uses against the West/U.S., it could prompt them to impose material costs on New Delhi. Second, while India and the West/U.S. need each other for a variety of reasons, including the China challenge, such inter-dependence does not really exist when it comes to India-West Asia relations: India needs the West Asian states more than they need India.
A lesson
India’s foreign policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second term has been on a high, with a number of achievements to its credit. Indeed, just a month ago, the world was queuing up for New Delhi’s attention. Today, India’s diplomats are getting summoned for an apology. There is little doubt that New Delhi’s diplomats will be able to tide over the current crisis and repair the country’s relations with West Asia. But the recent incident has highlighted the undeniable danger of unconstrained domestic extremism harming India’s foreign policy objectives.
Happymon Jacob teaches India’s Foreign Policy at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi
A recent report submitted by the commission of inquiry headed by a former Supreme Court of India judge, Justice V.S. Sirpurkar, indicting the police in Hyderabad for the fake encounter, in 2019, on the outskirts of Hyderabad near Shamshabad, should serve as an eye-opener to senior police officials who by-pass the law and due processes and eliminate suspects with impunity. Decidedly, a fake encounter, the law should now take its own course; a first information report should be filed against the police officials concerned for the murder of the four youth suspected to have gang-raped a veterinary doctor and then murdered her and burnt her body on the night of November 27.
Stretching credulity
That D.R. Karthikeyan, a very senior Indian Police Service officer (also Special Director in the Central Bureau of Investigation who investigated the Rajiv Gandhi murder case), was associated with the commission of inquiry lends credence to the fact that after a thorough investigation, the killing of the youths was deemed to be nothing but a pre-meditated cold-blooded murder. The alleged culprits deserved severe punishment after observing all legal procedures. But definitely not execution by policemen who later boasted about their so-called heroic act — shooting down unarmed men in the early hours of December 6, 2019.
The public outcry to apprehend the men after the crime may have pushed the police to act fast. Indubitably, they did a great job by arresting the criminals in a very short time. But, thereafter, things became murky when the police preferred to take the law into their own hands and eliminate the four youth.
Even as the details of the encounter were reported in the media, it became amply clear that it was indeed a fake encounter. The version by the police, that the four youth attempted to escape after throwing mud in the eyes of the policemen and attempting to snatch their weapons, was silly and nothing but a cover up; it was a murderous act. That unarmed youth, who should have been in handcuffs, attempted to overpower a large number if policemen sounds too ludicrous to believe.
A signal from the top
In November 2017, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, had publicly stated that criminals would be jailed or killed in encounters. The message that went to the law-enforcing agencies, though in a subtle manner, was that they had been given a free hand to deal with criminals; no questions asked. By the end of his first term as the Chief Minister, 151 criminals had been killed and over 3,300 maimed by gunshot injuries, mostly in the legs, in over 8,500 encounters; 13 policemen are reported to have been killed and 1,157 injured.
Following the lead of Uttar Pradesh, the Chief Minister of Assam too gave clear directions to the Assam police personnel that criminals who attempted to escape should be shot. The message was loud and clear. It was for the police to prove that a criminal was shot dead while trying to escape. Between May 10, 2021 and January 28, 2022, as many as 28 suspects were killed and 73 injured by the police, a majority of them from the minority community and most others from ethnic communities.
Following three murders within 24 hours in three districts of Bihar in March last year, three legislators of the State (from the Bharatiya Janata Party) suggested that the Uttar Pradesh model of encounter killings by the police be adopted in Bihar too, in order to bring down the crime rate. In the same manner, the recent ‘bulldozer policy’ of Uttar Pradesh has also been adopted in Madhya Pradesh and Delhi, giving established legal procedures a go-by.
Extra-judicial killings go against the very spirit of rule of law. What is mind boggling is the fact that the very same veterans of the Indian Police Service who confabulate on fake encounters and custodial deaths on various television channels, condemning police actions, are also the ones who while serving in the police setup acquiesced to public outcry or political diktats and went with the tide. There are exceptions, of course.
When commissions are set up to inquire into fake encounters, it is usually low-ranking officers, from constables to inspectors, who have to face the brunt. Senior police officers who may have given their consent to eliminate the criminals are allowed to go scot free and are rarely indicted. If personnel from the ranks are incarcerated for fake encounters, so should senior officers; it is their responsibility to ensure that the rule of law is strictly followed in their jurisdiction.
Complaints of fake encounters need to be attended to on top priority and the judiciary activated immediately after a complaint is received. For obvious reasons, the police will not readily register a complaint of a fake encounter lest comrades in khaki land in trouble.
On magisterial inquiries
Magisterial inquiries conducted by local magistrates turn out to be farce as they have to work in consonance with the police of the district; they would be inclined to go with the police version and give them a clean chit. A solution would be to nominate magistrates from other States who would be impartial and fair in their inquiries. Commissions of inquiry should comprise police officers from other States who enjoy a reputation of moral rectitude and fair play. But for the intervention of the Supreme Court of India that had constituted the inquiry commission to look into the Hyderabad case, the 10 policemen accused of carrying out the murder of four youths would have escaped censure and may have been looking for more such opportunities to wear and demonstrate the “encounter specialist” tag placed on them.
It would not be a surprise if those indicted in fake encounters have been awarded police gallantry medals. These medals or citations should be withdrawn as fake encounters do not in any way give an opportunity to display an act of courage. Killing unarmed and helpless suspects who may not decidedly be criminals is an act of cowardice.
If States begin to adopt extra-judicial strategies to bring down the crime rate, the day may not be far off when the country would be ruled by criminals in uniform, with the judiciary watching mutely as the protective cover of rule of law is torn to pieces.
Back in August 2011, a Bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justices Markandey Katju and C.K. Prasad (while hearing a fake encounter case of an alleged gangster by the Rajasthan police in October 2006) had said: “Fake encounter killings by cops are nothing but cold-blooded brutal murder which should be treated as the rarest of rare offence and police personnel responsible for it should be awarded death sentence. They should be hanged.” The sooner it is done after trial through fast track courts, the better it would be for the nation, as it will serve as a signal and deterrent to other policemen.
M.P. Nathanael is a former Inspector General of Police, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami recently set up a committee to prepare a draft Uniform Civil Code (UCC) for the State. Several leaders of BJP-ruled States have batted for a UCC in India. Though implementation of a UCC has been a key agenda of the BJP and has found a mention in the last two manifestos, the party’s regional leaders have been more vocal in championing this cause than its national leaders. One wonders whether the BJP is employing a bottom-up strategy to accomplish its long-standing ideological goal, by urging a few States to pass their respective UCCs so that it can use these for its national campaign for one.
Opposition to UCC
Muslim groups, particularly Ulemas, have been opposed to the idea of a UCC for a long time. The Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, led by Mahmood Asad Madani, recently passed a resolution against a UCC at a meeting in Deoband which was attended by over 2,500 of its members. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) has been consistently opposing a UCC because it fears that such a code will undermine Muslim identity. Indeed, it owes its existence to this fear. The AIMPLB was set up in 1973 at the initiative of Muhammad Taiyab, who was then Muhtamim of the Deoband madrasa. When H.R. Gokhale, as Law Minister, tabled an Adoption Bill in Parliament, which was not consistent with Muslim religious laws on guardianship, Muslim clergies were anxious. They saw the Bill as a precursor to a UCC. A small meeting took place in Deoband followed by a larger congregation in Mumbai on December 27-28, 1972. The AIMPLB was born four months later. The fear of a UCC and the preservation of Muslim personal law were the reasons for the formation of the AIMLAB. Over the years, the body began to champion diverse Muslim issues such as protection of disputed Islamic religious structures.
Ever since the passage of the Hindu Code Bill, the Hindu Right is of the view that Muslims are being pampered by being allowed to have their own personal laws in a Hindu majority country and therefore need to be ‘disciplined’ and brought under a UCC. In 1996, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee called for a national debate on UCC during his speech against a no-confidence motion in Parliament. During the speech, he appreciated the practice of consent by brides in Muslim marriage rituals as progressive. One wonders how the Hindu Right would react if this practice is accepted as part of a UCC. Responding to the debate, former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao cited the age-old tradition of marriages between uncles and nieces among Hindus in Andhra Pradesh, and challenged the BJP to address it. Should this tradition of Hindus of Andhra be abolished or be made applicable among Hindus outside Andhra? The truth is that there are plenty of customs and traditions in Hindu society that have to be creatively addressed to do justice to the idea of a UCC. Moreover, Flavia Agnes and other feminists have recognised many anti-women biases in the Hindu Code Bill, which are not adequately brought forward in Indian public debate. This has resulted in the public perception that Muslim personal laws alone need reform.
What will a UCC look like?
It is plausible that a serious and honest exercise might end up causing more consternation in Hindu society than in Muslim society. In an erudite inaugural remark, Upendra Baxi, in a workshop on ‘Dispelling Rhetorics: Law of Divorce and Gender Equality in Islam’ in 2017, said: “Do we know enough about the personal law of various tribal communities from which the UCC may choose?... Do we know enough about the religious personal law of other Indian communities? It is a sad mistake to think UCC is all about Hindu- Muslim relations and identities...”.
The BJP has been able to realise two of its key ideological agendas over the last eight years: abrogating special status for Jammu and Kashmir and facilitating the construction of a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. Comparatively speaking, the task of realising a UCC is not going to be easy. The truth is, the caste system which is integral to Hindu society celebrates hierarchy, which in turn is incompatible with the idea of uniformity or equality. Sadly, since independence, no group, either in favour of or against a UCC, has been able to prepare a text of what a UCC would realistically mean for a confusingly diverse Indian society. Given the toxic political climate of our time, it is plausible that the efforts by various BJP State-level regimes may lend a majoritarian spin to such an exercise. Such an outcome will raise the political temperature of numerous secular groups and religious minorities and invite enduring dissent against a UCC.
Shaikh Mujibur Rehman teaches at the Jamia Millia Central University, New Delhi, and is the author of a forthcoming book, ‘Sikwa- e- Hind: The Political Future of Indian Muslims’
In what seems to be a replay of the widespread protests in 2013 against the demarcation of Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA) for the conservation of the Western Ghats, the high ranges in Kerala, dominated by settler farmers, are again becoming restive. While it was the bitter opposition to the Gadgil and Kasturirangan Committee Reports that led to the protests earlier, this time it is an order issued by the Supreme Court mandating the maintenance of a 1 km Eco Sensitive Zone (ESZ) around forests that has triggered the unrest.
Last week, Kerala Forest Minister A.K. Saseendran stated that the order would pose a setback to the State’s efforts to exclude human settlements adjoining forest fringes from regulations on development. Following this, the High Range Protection Council, largely representing settler farmers and headed by the church, has threatened to launch another round of protests demanding legislation to bypass the order.
The apex court’s directive will force the State government to revise the ESZ of at least 10 of the protected areas which were earlier marked as zero following massive public resistance.
In 2014, the Kerala Assembly had unanimously adopted a resolution urging the Centre to exclude human settlements and agricultural land from the 123 villages identified as ESA by the Kasturirangan committee. The then Chief Minister Oommen Chandy told the House that Kerala’s stand was dictated by the larger interests of farmers. The government later said that only protected areas would be demarcated as ESA, inviting criticism from environmentalists who warned that it would prove disastrous for the fragile ecosystem of the Western Ghats. They feared that the political consensus on excluding populated areas from the ESA would defeat the very purpose of the notification.
Eight years later, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s reaction to the Supreme Court order is similar to that of Mr. Chandy. He said the LDF government was not in favour of human habitations being turned into ESZs. Noting that Kerala had a peculiar situation in which regions in forest fringes were thickly populated, he said the government’s priority would be to protect people’s interests.
It is relevant that the order has not prescribed any new restrictions in the ESZs barring the ban on construction of permanent structures. The prohibited activities include commercial mining, setting up of sawmills and major hydel projects, commercial use of firewood, production of hazardous substances, and tourism activities such as flying aircraft and hot air balloons over the national park area and the discharge of effluents and solid waste to natural water bodies or terrestrial areas.
The draft notification issued by the Union Ministry of Environment in April to declare ESZs around the Neyyar and Peppara wildlife sanctuaries in Thiruvananthapuram had also run into a wall of protest, with local bodies expressing the fear that the regulations would hinder development activities and eventually lead to phased migration from the region.
Significantly, the final notification on demarcating ESAs in the Western Ghats spanning six States (Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat) has been pending for almost nine years, with the stakeholder States demanding exclusion of more areas, notwithstanding the devastation caused by recurrent natural calamities.
The Kerala government is trying to keep the lid on the unrest by excluding inhabited areas from the purview of the regulations prescribed by the Ministry and the court. But in surrendering to the compulsions of politics and the clout of pressure groups and religious leaders, it is losing sight of the larger issues of conservation and sustainable development. A State with 25 protected areas can ill afford to turn its back on conserving these precious natural assets for posterity.
nandakumar.t@thehindu.co.in
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has now joined battle by pitching the need to ‘keep inflation and inflationary expectations under check’ front and centre of its policy approach. Just over a month after the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided at a surprise ‘off-cycle’ meeting to raise interest rates for the first time in almost four years, the rate setting panel has followed up with a further 50 basis points increase in the policy repo rate. Simultaneously, the MPC has made it clear it no longer intends to ‘remain accommodative’. It will instead stay focused on the withdrawal of the pandemic-triggered accommodation as it races to tame retail inflation and anchor it within the 2%-6% target band. In acknowledgment of the herculean task it faces, the MPC now projects retail inflation to average 6.7% over the entire fiscal year ending in March — a full one percentage point increase from the 5.7% it forecast in April. Price gains are now expected to accelerate at a 7.5% pace in the April-June quarter, a sizeable 120 basis points faster than previously estimated, before printing at 7.4% in Q2, a sharp 160 basis points quicker than April’s projection of 5.8%. The headline CPI-based inflation is now seen stuck above the RBI’s upper tolerance limit in Q3 as well, at 6.2%, before easing to 5.8% in the fourth quarter. The MPC has listed a slew of factors clouding the inflation outlook: the war in Ukraine and the consequent elevated commodity prices, the heat wave stuntingrabi crop output, high edible oil prices, crude prices that continue to pose a pass-through risk to domestic pump prices of fuels, increases in electricity tariffs, and, crucially, manufacturing and services firms flagging input and output price pressures.
That inflation looms large over every other aspect of the outlook for the economy worldwide is also evident from the MPC’s pointed reference to ‘growing stagflation concerns’ that are amplifying the volatility in global financial markets. While the RBI has made brave to retain its April forecast for GDP growth in the current fiscal at 7.2%, citing an ongoing recovery including in contact-intensive services and an expected boost to rural consumption from rain-spurredkharif sowing and output, a 37% ‘below normal’ start to the southwest monsoon serves as an early cautionary augury. And it is precisely the “headwinds from accelerating inflation” and the resultant ‘erosion of purchasing power of consumers’ that the World Bank cited on Tuesday when it cut its forecast for India’s GDP growth for this year by 50 basis points to 7.5%. The only silver lining is the RBI’s finding in a quick survey, post the May 21 excise duty cuts on petrol and diesel, that show urban households’ three-months-ahead inflation expectations have moderated by 190 basis points. Governor Shaktikanta Das has cited this finding to underline that States too could do their bit to soften inflationary pressures by further reducing their value-added taxes on fuels.
Food safety and consumer empowerment are areas in need of constant attention in India, where enforcement is often lax. But in this, Tamil Nadu deserves credit for finishing at the top among 17 large States for food safety; it was ranked third in the previous edition of the State Food Safety Index. That Tamil Nadu, with 82 marks, is ahead of Gujarat by 4.5 marks and Maharashtra by 12 marks, highlights its creditable showing. Developed by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), the Food Safety Index evaluates States and Union Territories on these parameters, apart from their size: human resources and institutional data; compliance; food testing – infrastructure and surveillance; training and capacity building, and consumer empowerment. Tamil Nadu has improved its standing in ‘human resources and institutional data’, and ‘training and capacity building’. There has been incremental progress in ‘compliance’ (which measures overall coverage of food businesses in licensing and registration), and ‘food testing’ (which scrutinises availability of adequate testing infrastructure with trained manpower in the States/Union Territories for testing food samples). The State has performed marginally lower than what it did last year in ‘consumer empowerment’. But barring Tamil Nadu, there is nothing for the other southern States to cheer about despite the region being more advanced than the rest of India in many socio-economic indicators. Kerala, which came second last time, is now at sixth spot; Karnataka has retained its ninth position; Telangana slipped from 10 to 15 and Andhra Pradesh dropped to the last slot from the penultimate slot in the previous edition when 20 States were covered, unlike the 17 now. Among Union Territories, Puducherry rose from seventh to sixth spot.
But in an area such as food safety, States alone cannot make a big difference without the support of the Central government. Liberal assistance should be provided to the States and Union Territories as far as laboratory infrastructure and improvement of manpower, both technical and non-technical, are concerned. The private sector should come forward in a big way to have staff trained at their cost and where such persons are used productively for the purpose. There are inspiring accounts of the participation of some information technology majors in getting surplus food distributed to the needy, of course with the help of non-governmental organisations, and this should serve as a lesson to those who are still hesitant to make their contribution. What every player in the field of food safety should realise is that each one has a critical role to play, and there has to be collective and well-coordinated action.
Ankara, June 8: The Pakistan President, Mr. Z.A. Bhutto has told the Turkish leaders that he had sent a message to Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, Bangladesh Prime Minister, offering to meet him in either Turkey or Pakistan or in India or any neutral country, informed sources said here to-day. Mr. Bhutto also assured the Turkish Government that the summit meeting with Mrs. Indira Gandhi would not be postponed from the Pakistani side. The sources said Turkey had, meanwhile, given Mr. Bhutto an assurance that it would await the outcome of his projected summit talks with Mrs. Gandhi before making any moves on diplomatic recognition of Bangladesh. A joint statement issued after Mr. Bhutto’s talks with Turkish leaders expressed the hope that the planned “summit between Mr. Bhutto and the Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi would lead to a durable and honourable settlement of the dispute between their two countries that would safeguard peace and security for their peoples.” According to a Tehran report, Mr. Bhutto accompanied by his wife arrived in the Iranian capital to-day on a three-day visit and was given an official welcome by the Shah and Empress Farah at the airport.
It would be all too easy to poke fun at the spiriting away of legislators from three states to plush resorts in the run-up to the Rajya Sabha elections. MLAs from the Congress, NCP, Shiv Sena and BJP from Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Haryana have been sequestered by their parties in luxury properties to ensure that they are not poached. But the riveting images of leaders enjoying a swim, a leisurely stroll, watching magic shows and participating in antakshari sessions are, actually, deeply disturbing.
Resort politics runs across ideological lines, and seems agnostic to whether a party is in office or in the Opposition. It also keeps recurring. In times of political uncertainty — during government formation in the aftermath of an indecisive electoral verdict or when a party is in danger of losing its majority in the House — MLAs are often secreted away, as they have been, in Karnataka, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, to name the most recent examples. These stealthy moves point to disturbing things. They shine a light on the terrible weaknesses that have become endemic to political parties, the degradation of inner-party processes and structures, and loyalties. Political parties appear not to trust their own leaders. The lure, real or perceived, of inducements from rivals seems to be something that people’s representatives cannot be counted on to resist. In turn, this view of politicians, by their own parties, as ideologically promiscuous and lacking commitment organisationally is also a tacit acknowledgement of the leaderships’ own failures to create and foster a culture within the party that sees politics as more than just a route to the perks of office.
While the crisis of ideology and lack of political loyalty straddles political divides, in the prevailing scenario, parties in the Opposition have much more to lose from it than the ruling BJP. With a commanding majority at the Centre and governments in several states, and the prime minister as star campaigner, the saffron juggernaut seems ascendant, defections notwithstanding. The Opposition, on the other hand, has appeared to be in disarray since 2014 and shows of revelry in resorts do not paint a picture of leaders eager to address the sufferings and concerns of citizens. Every defection — even the impression of its imminence, as showcased by the hiding of leaders in resorts — adds to the dismal optics.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on June 9, 2022 under the title ‘The first resort’.
Acareer almost as long as that of Sachin Tendulkar, a body of work that puts her among the finest ever in women’s cricket, one-day international batting average and captaincy numbers that match those of MS Dhoni — Mithali Raj, who bids farewell to her playing days, was the first superstar of Indian women’s cricket. She was the single most transformative figure in women’s cricket in her country. She broke barriers and boundaries and changed perceptions. The force of her personality, the gift of her stroke-making and the dint of her leadership influenced the coming of age narrative of Indian women’s cricket, uplifted them from outsiders to genuine title contenders, and injected them with self-belief. Any summation of her career should comprise three parts. Mithali as a trailblazer of women’s cricket, as a world-conquering batter and as a World Cup captain.
She leaves the stage as the highest run-getter in the 50-over format in the world — 7,805 runs at an average of 50.68 in 211 innings. No one has come in the vicinity of her tally of 50-plus scores — 71 (64 half-centuries and 7 centuries). She straddled formats with ease, accumulating 699 runs in 19 Test innings including a double hundred and 2,364 T20 runs at 37.52 per knock. She mastered conditions, prospering in as contrasting climes as dewy Milton Keynes to sun-baked Karachi. Most of those victories came under her captaincy too — she captained 155 times and won 89 games, an unsurpassed feat in world cricket. She steered India to their maiden — and so far only — World Cup triumph in 2017, though her team lost in the finals of the T20 World Cup in 2020.
In so many respects, her career was Tendulkar-like. Both played for more than two decades, both racked up records that will take gifted players to break. Mithali’s last days in cricket were controversy-laden too, the coach-feud saga raged on, there were rumoured rifts in the team. But none of these should come in the way of Mithali being considered as a true great of not just women’s cricket, but cricket.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on June 9, 2022 under the title ‘Mithali, superstar’.
As it was expected to, the monetary policy committee of the Reserve Bank of India has voted unanimously to raise the benchmark repo rate by 50 basis points in its June meeting. After last month’s off-cycle rate hike of 40 basis points, the repo rate now stands at 4.9 per cent — 25 basis points lower than the pre-pandemic level. Combined with the current trajectory of inflation, this suggests that more rate hikes are in the offing. But while there is little clarity over the extent of tightening the MPC envisages and over which time period — perhaps the minutes of the meeting will provide greater clarity on this — considering the inflationary pressures in the economy, and the long response lags, policy action should ideally be front-loaded.
Alongside, the RBI has also released its revised forecast for inflation. The central bank now expects inflation at 6.7 per cent in 2022-23. This is significantly higher than its April forecast of 5.7 per cent, and its February forecast of 4.5 per cent, signaling the extent of price pressures in the economy. Recent government data also suggests that inflation has become more broad-based. Excluding the volatile components such as food and fuel, core retail inflation was around 7 per cent in April with almost all subgroups in the index witnessing elevated inflation. And considering the inflation in the pipeline — the wholesale price index continues to be in double digits — price pressures are unlikely to dissipate in the immediate term. According to analysts, while manufacturing firms have been passing on the rise in input costs, it remains incomplete in the case of the services sector. However, as demand firms up, the pass through is likely to gather traction. This combination of factors suggests that inflation may not fall dramatically as and when commodity prices fall — prices may prove to be a tad sticky on the downside. The RBI’s revised quarterly forecasts for inflation also seem to suggest so — inflation has now been projected at 7.5 per cent in the first quarter, and 7.4 per cent in the second quarter, trending downwards thereafter to 6.2 per cent in the third quarter, and 5.8 per cent in the fourth quarter.
Implicit in these quarterly inflation forecasts is also the acknowledgment that inflation will likely exceed the upper threshold of the central bank’s inflation targeting framework for three consecutive quarters. This implies that the RBI is likely to fail in upholding its mandate. It will thus need to write a letter to the government outlining the reasons as to why it failed, and the measures it intends to take, to bring inflation in line with its target. Considering the risks that the unanchoring of inflation and inflation expectations pose to macroeconomic stability, and the country’s growth prospects, the central bank must continue to focus on maintaining price stability, attaching primacy to inflation management.
In the 2008 blockbuster Iron Man — the movie that kickstarted the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) — there is a scene where Robert Downey Jr’s character, Tony Stark, is abducted by a vaguely middle eastern-looking terrorist group and they’re making a hostage video. In the scene, lead terrorist Raza played by Pakistani-American actor Faran Tahir is giving threats to the camera in Urdu. While he’s doing so, the English subtitles at the bottom of the screen are completely at odds with what he is saying and to top it all, the movie refers to the language spoken as “Arabic”. I distinctly remember bursting into laughter during this scene with a packed multiplex audience in Bangalore, most of whom, of course, understood Urdu due to its closeness to Hindi. Clearly, linguistic accuracy and representation were not the highest priority for the studio back then.
Fourteen years later, as I sat down with a huge grin on my face to watch the first episode of Ms Marvel, the same studio’s web series with a Pakistani Muslim teenager as the lead, I couldn’t help but marvel (pun fully intended) at how much things had changed.
For me, this show is critic-proof. I have been unabashedly in love with the character of Kamala Khan (who later becomes the feisty superhero Ms Marvel) since she was created by writer G Willow Wilson and artists Adrian Alphona and Jamie McKelvie in the pages of a comic book back in 2013. A huge part in seeing Kamala come to life was also played by comic book editor Sana Amanat, herself a Pakistani-American. Amanat also serves as an executive producer on the show.
Representation matters only when it is authentic. Though there have been sporadic bursts of South Asian representation in Hollywood films and TV shows in the past, a huge chunk of them suffered from being seen through the lens of western, most often white, filmmakers and creative teams. These stories and characterisations rarely went beyond the “exotic” tag associated with Indian/Pakistani costumes and jewellery and collapsed under a muddle of cliches.
And then of course there’s the sour topic of the portrayal of Muslims and Islam in Hollywood and in pop culture at large. One only needs to dial back the clock a little over a decade to see examples of TV shows like 24 and Homeland and films like American Sniper that almost built their identity around the harmful “cold-blooded Islamic terrorist” stereotype, sometimes going as far as to insinuate that even common, everyday Muslims with families had been brainwashed into believing an extremist ideology.
Which is why it filled my heart with joy to see how colourful, ebullient, funny and positive Ms Marvel is. Iman Vellani, who plays the titular character of Kamala is a star in the making. Her face and personality are the kind that light up a room. The first episode deals with a simple storyline of Kamala trying to convince her parents to let her attend “Avenger Con”, a superhero convention, dressed as her favourite superhero Captain Marvel. Her mother thinks the superhero costumes are too skimpy and will lead her to do “haraam” activities. Throw in a mysterious amulet inherited from Kamala’s nani, some high-school shenanigans and you have yourself a spectacular adventure in the making. In an era where superheroes are getting darker and grittier, the show does not shy away from its comic book roots. The New Jersey graffiti comes alive, as do the drawings and sketches in the students’ notebooks. The soundtrack is peppy and the emotions are heartfelt. The internal world of Kamala’s house and family feels “lived in”.
A show as mainstream as this also gives us the chance to see some glowing performances by desi talent. Zenobia Shroff is the perfect lovable yet stern mother, Mohan Kapur (where are my fellow ’90s Saanp Seedhi fans?) gets to break the “angry desi dad” stereotype by playing an affable father and stand-up comedian Azhar Usman also makes an appearance. Occupying the director’s chair are Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and Meera Menon and, if message boards and rumours are to be believed, Bollywood bigwigs like Fawad Khan and Farhan Akhtar might show up soon.
In 1962, Marvel comics writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko created a teenage superhero who got bitten by a radioactive spider and struggled to balance the life of being a superhero while trying to satisfy his aunt and be a high schooler. That character was, of course, Spider-man and it brought Marvel Comics into the limelight. In 2022, I sincerely hope the youthful Kamala Khan does the same for representation of South Asians in cinemas and on TV.
I would definitely like more of this combination of old Bollywood songs, gossiping aunties, dads struggling with technology and teenagers wearing their hearts on their sleeves than scary men with kohl-lined eyes plotting the next terrorist attack on my screen. Hollywood, please take note.
The writer is a podcast producer and stand-up comedian
There is an anecdote about Lord Byron from his days as a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the first decade of the 19th century. Byron wanted to take his pet dog along. At the time, the college statutes didn’t allow dogs on the college premises. However, there was no such prohibition against bears, presumably because no one had contemplated such an eventuality. Hence, in protest, as long as Byron was there, he kept a tame bear as a pet. For years, Tony Weir, Fellow of Trinity College, taught law in Cambridge. He was a celebrated teacher, specialising in tort law. Any lawyer worth his salt will know about the Donoghue versus Stevenson case. Weir possessed two cats, appropriately named Donoghue and Stevenson. By then, Trinity College’s bye-laws must have changed from Byron’s days and dogs must have been allowed on the premises. The folklore was that Trinity College’s powers-that-be decreed these cats would henceforth be known as dogs, to comply with the letter of the law. Selwyn College, Cambridge, had a converse problem, since Roger Mosey, the Master, possessed a basset hound and Selwyn allowed cats, but no dogs. Therefore, the college decreed that the basset hound would henceforth be known as a very large cat.
It reminds you of Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass. “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’” What’s in a name? In many matters, courts are monarchs and masters of all they survey. An appeals court in California has just ruled that bumblebees are fish, so to speak. California has an Endangered Species Act (CESA), the first US State to do so. The law is meant to protect plants and animals and using the powers of this statute, the California Fish and Game Commission protected four species of bumblebees.
No one denies that bumblebees are endangered and deserve to be protected. The legal question was whether the Commission had the powers to protect bumblebees as “fish”. It depends on what you mean by fish and the Superior Court of Sacramento County thought otherwise. The California Court of Appeal overturned that decision. “Although the term fish is colloquially and commonly understood to refer to aquatic species, the term of art employed by the legislature in the definition of fish in section 45 is not so limited… We certainly agree section 45 is ambiguous as to whether the legislature intended for the definition of fish to apply to purely aquatic species. A fish, as the term is commonly understood in everyday parlance, of course, lives in aquatic environments.” The expression “term of art” is reminiscent of Humpty Dumpty’s remarks — an expression may have a meaning not identical to its meaning in everyday usage. So yes, though the matter is complex, newspaper headlines got it right. A California court has indeed ruled that bumblebees are fish.
But the court also made a point about reducing legislative ambiguity. The more ambiguous a legislation is, the more the need for judicial interpretation. Indeed, the more interventionist the legislature is, the more the need for judicial interpretation. There is a Tacitus adage, linking the number of laws with the extent of corruption. Even if one disputes the correlation there, one shouldn’t dispute the correlation between the number of laws and number of court cases. If Sweden didn’t have a law on what names (for children) are allowed and what are not, would there have been a case about whether the name Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 (pronounced “Albin”) was acceptable or not? Protesting against naming laws, parents gave their child this remarkable name, which wasn’t accepted by the district court.
In my childhood years, we grew up with Binaca toothpaste, a brand that is now dead and gone. Those interested in music will remember Binaca Geetmala from the radio. I remember Binaca because I used to collect Binaca toys or charms. Each packet of toothpaste had one of these, the figure of a toy animal. Childhood collections are rarely treasured beyond a certain age. They too are dead and gone. However, I recently met someone who has a collection of these Binaca toys. I am told such a vintage collection has considerable value now. His collection dates mostly to the 1970s, when these toys were made of plastic. My childhood memories of the 1960s are of these animals with a gold finish, with a tiny gold-coloured chain. No memory is infallible and I haven’t seen these for a while. I suspect that in the 1980s, Binaca switched to water-stickers, before the idea fizzled out. In any event, our children, when they were growing up, were never enamoured of those water-stickers. The world had changed. Had Binaca still made those, I wonder what the GST rate would have been. It is 18 per cent for toothpaste. It is 12 per cent for plastic toys. What about one with a gold-finish? Since they weren’t made of plastic, the GST rate might well have been 12 per cent. There was no actual gold. Otherwise, 3 per cent. You can imagine the legal wrangling over what these were — toys or charms. Names, labels and HSN codes do matter and “term of art” can also lead to litigation and legal tangles. Couldn’t CESA have mentioned insects and avoided the problem? It could have. Couldn’t we have a simplified GST?
This column first appeared in the print edition on June 9, 2022 under the title ‘Laws in the dark’. The writer is chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the PM. Views are personal
The lesson emerging most unequivocally from the pandemic experience is that if India does not want a repeat of the immeasurable suffering and the social and economic loss, we need to make public health a central focus. The virus is still around. We have no option but to live with that reality.
Covid has also shifted the policy dialogue from health budgets and medical colleges towards much-needed and badly-delayed institutional reform. It is heartening to note that the Ministry of Health has issued guidelines to states to establish a public health cadre.
The importance of public health has been known for decades with every expert committee underscoring it. Ideas ranged from instituting a central public health management cadre like the IAS, to assess, manage and control public health problems to adopting an institutionalised approach to diverse public health concerns — from healthy cities, enforcing road safety to immunising newborns, treating infectious diseases and promoting wellness.
The process of reform to create a public health-centred primary healthcare system needs to start with looking evidence in the eye. After 15 years of the National Health Mission (MHM) and a trebling of health budgets — though not as a proportion of the GDP — less than 10 per cent of the health facilities below the district level can attain the grossly minimal Indian public health standards. Clearly, the three-tier model of subcentres with paramedics, primary health centres with MBBS doctors and community health centres (CHC) with four to six specialists has failed. Why, one might ask.
The model’s weakness is the absence of an accountability framework. The facilities are designed to be passive — treating those seeking care. Instead, like in Brazil, we need Family Health Teams (FHT) accountable for the health and wellbeing of a dedicated population, say 2,000 families. The FHTs must consist of a doctor with a diploma in family medicine and a dozen trained personnel to reflect the skill base required for the 12 guaranteed services under the Ayushman Bharat scheme — midwives, public health nurses, other paramedics, health workers and community workers. A baseline survey of these families will provide information about those needing attention — the elderly, diabetics, hypertensives, handicapped, pregnant women, infants, and those needing mental or physiotherapy services. The team ensures a continuum of care by taking the family as a unit and ensuring its well-being over a period. Nudging these families to adopt lifestyle changes, following up on referrals for medical interventions and post-operative care through home visits for nursing and physiotherapy services would be their mandate. Their work should be closely monitored and the personnel should be given outcome-linked monetary and non-monetary incentives.
Such a system of primary care will need to work under the close supervision of a CHC manned by specialists in family medicine. If trained well and competently, they can handle most ailments and conditions that could and should be handled at the CHC level, referring only those needing specialist care.
The implication of and central to the success of such a reset lies in creating appropriate cadres. More immediately, there must be a public health cadre manning the posts at the PHC and CHCs consisting of sub-specialists in family medicine, public health and public health management. Likewise, among nurses, the cadre should comprise two distinct sets of personnel — public health nurses (not ANMs promoted based on seniority) and nurse midwives capable of independently doing all clinical functions for handling pregnancies and women’s health issues except surgical interventions. Primary care in India can get traction only if new skills, drastically upgraded competencies and a new mindset are embedded within the vision of a patient, family and community-centred health system.
There is also a need to declutter policy dialogue and provide clarity to the nomenclatures. Currently, public health, family medicine and public health management are used interchangeably. They should not be, just as cardiology and neurology should not be used interchangeably though both are clinical disciplines. Family medicine is the clinical arm of public health. The MBBS doctor goes through a two-year training in family medicine, specialising in disease control — communicable and non-communicable diseases, knowledge of health determinants such as nutrition, in addition to imbibing a comprehensive psycho-social understanding of the community being served and good communication capabilities. His training site is a district hospital. The public health specialist, in contrast, is a doctor or a graduate in an associated discipline, specialising in biostatistics, data sciences, epidemiology, health determinants and other population health-related issues. His training sites are dusty villages, densely populated slums, disease-prone areas and laboratories. Thus, while the family doctor cures one who is sick, the public health expert prevents one from falling sick.
The public health management specialist is a different animal — with specialisation in health economics, procurement systems, inventory control, electronic data analysis and monitoring, motivational skills and team-building capabilities, public communication and time management, besides, coordinating with the various stakeholders in the field. His training grounds are management institutions, public health departments that implement the National Health Programmes and a two-year probation where he works through the health system (like IAS officers). Such trained persons are the ones who ought to work as CMHOs (chief medical health officers). Imagine the energy and skills that such young, well-trained persons would bring to the district health administration and later as the DGHS, instead of the current arrangement where the DGHS could be a doctor who has never stepped out of the operation room in a Delhi hospital. The training of the cadre will not require medical colleges. But the competence of trainers, the way to be trained, the content and pedagogy require imagination.
Alongside, India needs to move beyond the doctor-led system and paramedicalise several functions. Instead of “wasting” gynaecologists in CHCs, when there is an overall shortage of them, midwives (nurses with a BSc degree and two years of training in midwifery) can provide equally good services except surgical, and can be positioned in all CHCs and PHCs. This will help reduce C Sections, maternal and infant mortality and out of pocket expenses. Likewise, lay counsellors for mental health, physiotherapists and public health nurses are critically required for addressing the multiple needs of primary health care at the family and community levels. This needs to be acknowledged and such trained persons appropriately positioned based on patient load and disease burden.
Bringing such a transformative health system will require a comprehensive review of the existing training institutions, standardising curricula and the qualifying criteria. Faculty reviews are required to make the training inspirational and not dull and repetitive, as it is currently. Spending on pre-service and in-service training needs to increase from the current level of about 1 per cent. And, finally, a comprehensive redefinition of functions of all personnel is required to weed out redundancies and redeploy the rewired ones.
It is time our political systems listen to peoples’ voices for a family doctor to ensure their everyday needs — and not easy options like privatisation, commodification and medicalisation of the system. Resetting the system to current day realities requires strong political leadership to go beyond the inertia of the techno-administrative status quoist structures. We can.
This column first appeared in the print edition on June 9, 2022 under the title ‘Signs of ill health’. Rao is former Union Health Secretary and author of Do We Care? India’s Health System.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was recently in Japan to attend a Quad meeting. On one occasion during the meeting, the leaders were walking down a staircase. Modi being Modi decided to walk in front, a step or two ahead of even the US president who was busy talking to the new Australian PM. Modi, as usual, was looking straight into the camera ahead. This photograph was published in the Indian media and was enough to send the “bhakts” into a frenzy. According to them, the PM had already become the most important global leader, leaving even the US president far behind. Modi’s cabinet colleagues and admirers in the party went to town in their “bhakti”. The Indian “Vishwaguru” had finally arrived.
That image has now come crashing down with a BJP spokesperson crossing all limits of decency by making derogatory remarks against the Prophet. For nine days that remark remained under the carpet until some Muslim nations woke up to it, called the Indian ambassadors and registered their strong protest. But the outrage has not stopped there. People are calling for the boycott of Indian goods and, obviously, the large Indian expatriate population there has been put to avoidable discomfiture. The government has called these spokespersons “fringe elements”, something nobody is buying. Earlier, the US Secretary of State had expressed his concern at the deteriorating religious tolerance in India, which we dismissed as being prompted by the “vote bank” politics there.
The outrage in the Muslim countries with which we have had very cordial relations until now obviously cannot be taken lightly. It has brought down India’s standing in the comity of nations and caused grievous damage to our image as a liberal, secular democracy. The cat is finally out of the bag because we are no more a secular, liberal democracy; we have, under Modi, become a “Hindu Pakistan”. Perhaps this is what the PM wants and that is why he has not said a word about it so far. It will be wrong to dismiss it as the fulmination of an isolated individual in the party; it is today the core of the BJP’s ideology and its sure-shot formula to win all elections. It is an important element of the new ecosystem of the “New India” the PM wants to create.
India had already earned a place of respect globally during the Narasimha Rao period because of its economic reforms. During the Vajpayee era, we made India stronger and that earned the country a place at the global high tables. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the first prime minister from the BJP, enjoyed great personal respect among world leaders and, therefore, it was not surprising that he was invited to sit at the same table as the G-7 powers. And all this, after India was declared a pariah after the nuclear tests of May 1998. India must forever remain indebted to Jaswant Singh for his remarkable personal diplomacy during the aftermath of the nuclear tests, ultimately resulting in the visit of President Bill Clinton in March 2000 and the global acceptance of India as a nuclear weapons state. It is another matter that the same Jaswant Singh was repeatedly humiliated by the party later. But the respect for India was not confined to the prime minister alone. We all shone in its reflected glory.
I remember once when I was attending a meeting of the IMF/World Bank in Washington, a senior official of our delegation, a veteran of many such meetings, walked up to me and told me that he had never, “in his long experience of attending such meetings, seen India in such high profile as today”. Before that, I had been unanimously elected chairman of the development committee of the World Bank, the first and the only Indian so far to occupy that position. Along with the chairman of the international monetary and finance committee of the IMF and the chairman of the G-20, which had already come into existence, we together constituted a high-level group to deal with global finance. Later, I was unanimously elected the second chairman of G-20 after Paul Martin of Canada, who was its first chairman.
My tenure in the external affairs ministry was equally rewarding. I used to regularly call on the heads of states/governments during my visits abroad as external affairs minister. But even I was greatly surprised when after landing in Washington in January 2004 I was informed by our ambassador that my first appointment was with President Bush in the famous Oval Office of the White House. The practice so far had been and still is that a visiting foreign minister would call on the national security advisor of the US in the White House and the President would, if he so wished, drop by for a photo op. This was the first and only time so far that the Minister of External Affairs of India was actually invited to meet the US President in the Oval Office.
I am mentioning these examples not to brag about my personal achievements but to make the point that there was a period earlier also which was marked by high achievements and great international respect for India. And it was for real, not contrived. The honour bestowed on me was not personal; it was an honour to India under Vajpayee. The foreign dignitary would have surely been briefed on the fact that I was really a political lightweight but gave me the undeserved respect because I represented Vajpayee’s India. But in those days, we believed more in doing our work than its publicity. Today, publicity is everything.
As someone who has been a participant in the affairs of state, I deeply regret the lows to which India has fallen today. The mask has come off and the ugly face of India under Modi is for all to see. I hope the Islamic countries will show maturity and leave the matter at that and the Modi government and the BJP will have learnt their lesson and in future will behave with the dignity expected of them as representatives of the great country that India truly is.
This column first appeared in the print edition on June 9, 2022 under the title ‘Mask comes off’. The writer, a former Union minister, is vice-president, All-India Trinamool Congress
A rate hike in the monetary policy committee’s June meeting was a foregone conclusion after the spike in inflation and an off-cycle surprise interest rate hike on May 4. The only deliberation was on the quantum of increase. In this context, a 50 basis points hike confirmed that the RBI is leaning harder to control inflation.
A fast-forwarding of interest rate hikes was unavoidable because of five reasons. One, a confluence of factors has pushed inflation higher and made it persistent and broad-based. The RBI also raised its inflation forecast by 100 basis points to 6.7 per cent for the current fiscal. Two, even with this hike, the repo rate, the signalling tool for bank interest rates, is still below pre-pandemic levels. The real policy rate (repo rate less expected inflation) remains negative and has some distance to cover before it reaches positive territory — where the RBI would like to see it. Three, monetary policy impacts growth, and thereafter, inflation with a lag. To control inflation, the RBI needed to act faster by front loading rate hikes. Four, the risk of inflation expectations getting unmoored had risen. Household and business inflation expectations remain elevated, as indicated by the RBI’s inflation expectations survey of households and IIM Ahmedabad’s business inflation expectations survey. Five, the aggressive stance of the US Federal Reserve and ensuing tightening financial conditions. India is better placed today than in 2013 to face the Fed’s actions with a stronger forex shield.
That said, India is not insulated. Also, the headwinds now are stronger than in 2013 and we have seen net capital outflows since October 2021. S&P Global expects the US federal funds rate to be hiked to 3-3.25 per cent in 2023, higher than the pre-pandemic level, and highest since early 2008. Despite a strong forex hoard, the RBI has had to deploy monetary policy to mute the impact of the Fed’s actions.
What does all this mean for growth and inflation? We expect inflation to average 6.8 per cent this fiscal. The risks to the forecast are still tilted upwards as all the key components of CPI — food, fuel and core — show no signs of relenting. The pressure on food inflation has increased owing to the impact of the freak heatwave on wheat, tomatoes and mangoes, which is driving prices higher. This is on top of rising input costs for agricultural production, the global surge in food prices and the expected sharper than usual rise in minimum support price. Fuel inflation will remain high, duty cuts notwithstanding, as global crude prices remain volatile at elevated levels.
Core inflation, the barometer of demand, is a complex story. Despite relatively weak consumer demand in many pockets, it printed at 7.1 per cent in April. As for its ingredients, goods (despite only partial pass-through of input costs) are witnessing higher inflation than services. During the pre-pandemic years (2015-16 to 2019-20), services inflation was higher than goods inflation. After the pandemic, services core inflation averaged 4.6 per cent, while the goods part was around 6.2 per cent in the last two years and currently stands at 5.4 per cent. That’s because services faced tighter restrictions during the Covid-19 waves, restricting their consumption and the pricing power of providers as well.
This is changing with the rebound in contact-based services. Overall services inflation is still low as some large essential services with significant weightage are bringing down the headline. Categories that are mostly regulated, such as public transport, railways, water and education, have over 50 per cent weight in core services. However, prices of discretionary services such as airlines, cinema, lodging and other entertainment are rising. Some essential services such as internet, health and mobile charges, too, saw high inflation because of their growing relevance with the fast-forwarding of digitalisation.
Transportation-related services have seen the sharpest rise in the past six months due to fuel price increases. CRISIL’s freight price index shows a growth of around 22 per cent in May this year. With the rebound in services expected to continue, the rising input prices will be increasingly passed on to consumers.
Not all aspects of supply-driven inflation can be addressed via monetary policy. So the authorities are complementing monetary policy actions by using the limited fiscal space to cut duties and extend subsidies to the vulnerable. Despite these measures, consumer inflation is unlikely to print below 6 per cent (upper band of the RBI’s target range) before the last quarter of this fiscal year which incidentally is the RBI’s projection as well.
We expect GDP growth at 7.3 per cent this year, with risks tilted to the downside. S&P Global has recently cut the growth outlook for major economies for 2022 — that of the US to 2.4 per cent from 3.2 per cent, for Eurozone to 2.7 per cent from 3.3 per cent earlier, and for China to 4.2 per cent from 4.9 per cent. This will hurt exports which are very sensitive to global demand. The longer the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues, the longer would be the dislocation of commodity and crude markets.
For those at the bottom of the pyramid, high inflation hits harder because energy and food are a big chunk of their consumption basket. That said, not everything is gloomy because offsetting factors are emerging. A normal monsoon will support agriculture, particularly if well-distributed. As vaccination coverage improves and people learn to live with the virus, growth will get a boost from a strong bounce-back in contact-based services, which, in 2021-22, were 11.3 per cent lower than the 2019-2020 levels.
Monetary tightening impacts growth with a lag of at least 3-4 quarters so the peak impact of rate hikes will be felt towards the last quarter of this fiscal and the first quarter of next.
That, and the fact that real interest rates are negative and borrowing rates still below pre-pandemic levels, implies monetary policy is unlikely to be growth-restrictive for this year.
This column first appeared in the print edition on June 9, 2022 under the title ‘At this rate’. The writer is chief economist, CRISIL
Amidst the growing cacophony following the derogatory comments on Prophet Mohammad and Islam, the media, which is one of the biggest culprits in this matter, is getting away with impunity. Having played second fiddle to the rabble-rousers, the media continues along the same trajectory without any introspection.
The role that the Indian media — specifically the television media — has played in mainstreaming hate speech and divisive nationalism since 2014 is a topic that warrants a larger study. Undoubtedly, the majoritarian ideology propounded by right-wing organisations and fringe elements has played a fundamental role in raking up issues that create schisms in society. But television mainstreamed the fringe by bringing it into everyone’s drawing rooms. Day in and day out, non-issues are being hyped up to set a narrative. Halal, hijab, namaz, sedition, JNU, non-vegetarian food, Muslim-sounding names of places and roads, Mughal architecture and mosques are a few of the many topics that have been shouted out from television studios. Prayer caps and long beards were displayed intentionally to boost the melodrama. In one instance, while bulldozers were demolishing the makeshift houses of the poor in the national capital — they were named as rioters — one of the top English news channels ran a prime time discussion with the hashtag #BulldozerJustice!
This is precisely the ecosystem that gave birth to the Nupur Sharma syndrome. In earlier times, the media was reticent about demonstrating its religious inclinations and many of its deviations were imperceptible. But the Ramjanmabhoomi movement led by the Sangh Parivar organisations changed the mediascape drastically. The temerity demonstrated by the Hindi media was an early manifestation of the trend that was to besiege the country. Studies conducted by the Press Council and other independent groups castigated many Hindi newspapers for reportage which seemed to have the sole purpose of whipping up communal frenzy. This aberration has become a norm now, with many television channels feeling triumphant about the metamorphosis.
Aligning yourself politically to the rulers of the day at a time when your primary revenue comes from government ads and government-led events is one thing. But serving as the wholesale distributors of hatred is another thing altogether, something which future generations may not forgive. We are told many times that newsrooms end up parroting the fringe because that’s what gets them eyeballs. It’s a thesis that insults the intelligence of the Indian public and the ethos of the Indian republic.
The Sangh Parivar organisations don’t participate in the democratic process only for power. Their core agenda is to subvert Indian society, reinvent its history as they have imagined it, and distort the secular political culture of the nation. Their core tool in this process is a new type of nationalism that excludes rather than includes. One of the main characteristics of this nationalism is that it seeks to erase the lines demarcating Hinduism from Hindutva and the nation from the government of the day. Ergo, any criticism of radical Hindutva is interpreted as an assault on the idea of Hinduism and any criticism levelled at the government of the day is considered an attack on the very idea of India. And TV plays a crucial role in the project of inventing a particular thought process. Media being the intellectual industry, such selective choosing of historical truth and concocted reality will leave an inflammable trail. This is how hate speech gets normalised and public intellectuals are painted anti-nationals.
This culture has infected all aspects of our society, from school syllabi to Bollywood, a phenomenon exemplified by the remarkable hype over movies such as The Kashmir Files. This is precisely the reason behind the recent surfeit of so-called historical movies from Bollywood that project a stereotyped image of minorities as deemed fit by this nationalism. Primetime news debates that play on schisms left behind by Partition instigate the drawing room crowd to get out there and “goli maaro saalo ko”.
If we want to steer clear of the controversy and set civilised norms for public discourse, the primary responsibility rests on the media, especially the TV channels. It’s true that social media plays a similar role in the massive production and transmission of hatred. In fact, both feed on each other to up the ante. It’s high time our media introspects as to what they actually intend to achieve by being the catalyst, if not the torch bearers, of the divisive rhetoric that’s on full display today.
This column first appeared in the print edition on June 9, 2022 under the title ‘Media in the dock’. The writer is a journalist and Member of Parliament
After Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, it is Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan’s turn to face abuse of office allegations. The CPM government in Kerala has entered a testing phase with the prime accused in the gold smuggling scandal Swapna Suresh attempting to link chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and those close to him with the racket. Only two weeks ago the government was sitting pretty after celebrating the first anniversary of its second term in office.
Interestingly, Vijayan’s predecessor Oommen Chandy was in a similar situation nearly a decade ago. Chandy had faced allegations of close ties with a fly-by-night solar panel firm that had cheated several people. The fallout from that scandal had severely undermined Congress in Kerala. It remains to be seen how CPM will weather this latest storm. The gold smuggling case which was uncovered in 2020 had no impact on CPM’s electoral performance in the 2021 assembly elections.
But the popularity that Vijayan enjoyed last year, which led to the unprecedented second successive term, has eroded quite a bit over the last year. A poorly conceived big ticket project to link Kerala from north to south by a separate high-speed rail corridor has run into stiff opposition with a sizeable section questioning its utility. The publicity campaign over Kerala managing Covid better than other states has fallen flat. The state economy is also down in the dumps.
Also read: Swapna Suresh’s revelations against Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan in smuggling-case stir up political storm
Congress, wrecked by last year’s defeat, has a new leadership and is showing signs of a revival. This was evident in the magnitude of the defeat CPM sustained in a bypoll last week that the ruling party had unnecessarily turned into a referendum on its own performance. Reports suggesting that central agencies will renew their attention on the gold smuggling case will pose fresh trouble for Vijayan, especially if he is summoned for questioning. Has the brief lull in Kerala politics ended, where opposition parties fumbled to counter the personality cult built around Pinarayi Vijayan?
The Election Commission move to conduct a pilot project to explore the possibility of remote voting for migrant workers is a big plus for electoral democracy. Democracy becomes meaningful and equitable when every citizen has a fair chance to cast a vote. Not everyone can take a train or flight back home to vote. Nearly 300 million citizens out of a total of 910 million electors didn’t cast their votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Leaving aside those averse to voting, there’s a good possibility that many weren’t present at constituencies where they are registered to vote – the absence dictated by livelihood compulsions.
Ways to enfranchise them must be found. From the 2011 Census that counted 450 million internal migrants, the number is estimated to be 600 million now. Short-term migrants who spend some months of the year in cities far away from their villages rarely acquire a vote in their place of work. This category will benefit from EC’s move. For instance, Gurgaon assembly segment has just 3.6 lakh voters though the city’s population is far higher.
True, logistics will be complicated. Migrants will have to be mapped and then enrolled for remote voting. Designated polling centres must be set up across India. There will be election day tech challenges – verifying voter identities and ensuring the vote cast on the EVM is channelled to the correct booth and constituency. Also, those listed for remote voting but turning up physically at domicile polling booths due to personal or other emergencies – recall the lockdown – must be accommodated.
But none of these is a dealbreaker. From shuttling security forces and polling officers across polling phases, sanitising electoral rolls, enrolling first-time voters to getting the women’s vote out, EC is a past master at resolving logistical tangles. With institutional and political will, difficulties can be overcome. The previous Lok Sabha had passed a bill to extend proxy voting facility to NRIs, but the bill lapsed. Such reforms should get cross-party backing. As EC starts the migrant voting pilot project, it should also start the process of identifying migrant voter clusters. Gujarat is a migrant worker hub. Let the pilot happen there and EC should aim for a 2024 full rollout.
RBI’s monetary policy committee (MPC) yesterday increased its key policy interest rate, repo, by 0.5 percentage points to 4.9%. It’s the second increase in about five weeks, taking the cumulative rise in the repo to 0.9 percentage points in the current cycle of monetary tightening. Other highlights were a clear signal that tightening will continue longer and a sharp upward revision in the projected retail inflation in 2022-23 to 6.7%. It means RBI will fail to meet its statutory obligation to keep inflation below the upper threshold of 6% for three consecutive quarters.
MPC’s statement and the unanimity among its members on both the repo increase and communication mean that the central bank will henceforth prioritise inflation. A projection of 6.7% for the current year signals that there will be more rate increase in the future to rein in the second-round effects of inflation. Certainly, the movement of yields on government securities indicates that the financial market expects more rate hikes. Where does that leave economic growth? RBI believes that there will be no impact on GDP as it has chosen to keep its forecast of 7.2% for 2022-23 unchanged. That’s unconvincing.
The outlook for economic growth has worsened mainly on two counts. First, the global situation is deteriorating. For instance, the World Bank this week pared its 2022 global growth forecast made in January by 1.2 percentage points to 2.9%. Moreover, it warned of the rising risk of stagflation. Second, the domestic context has changed in an important way. To speed up the process of monetary transmission, RBI mandated the introduction of external benchmarks in pricing loans in 2019. Today, about 40% of outstanding credit, particularly to retail and MSMEs, is linked to external indicators. Therefore, monetary tightening will ripple out faster and act as a drag on private consumption.
Going forward, fiscal policy will have to be the main support for economic growth as RBI’s sole focus will be on controlling inflation. It calls for realigning spending to crowd in private investment through infrastructure projects and hold up consumption through other fiscal measures such as subsidies and tax changes.
Infant mortality rate (IMR), the number of babies who die before their first birthday, for India is now at 28 for every 1,000 live births, just shy of the global average of 27. It lags behind most other G20 nations. There is a wide variation among the states, ranging from 43 in Madhya Pradesh to 3 in Mizoram. India's gradual reduction in IMR from 47 in 2010 to 28 in 2020 is noteworthy. But there is much more to do for every state to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target of 25 or less deaths per 1,000 live births by 2030.
State-level numbers are unsatisfactory, the range of improvement, 30-60%, indicative of a positive direction of travel. The national-level IMR numbers are down by 40%. Large states like Madhya Pradesh still have a very high number of 43 (down from 62 in 2010). Even in states with higher than national average IMR, the numbers are declining. Interestingly, in most states, the decline was sharper in the first half of the decade than in the second, exceptions being Kerala and Bihar. Improved delivery of government programmes focused on pregnant women has helped. The rural-urban variation is stark as well. Differentials in access to healthcare and, therefore, delivery of support for pregnant women are reflected in the variations among states, as well as in urban and rural areas.
Improved healthcare, particularly easy access to obstetricians and paediatricians, is critical to reducing the major causes of infant mortality like premature births, neonatal infections and birth asphyxia. India must continue to invest in reducing IMR. Improving healthcare delivery, ensuring support for pregnant women through regular check-ups and better diet, and improving neonatal care will go a long way to bring down the numbers.
( Originally published on Jun 09, 2022 )<
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The Delhi Police announced this week that it registered cases against several people, including two former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokespersons whose controversial comments on Prophet Mohammed sparked a wave of international condemnation from many Muslim-majority nations. The Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations unit of the Special Cell confirmed that one FIR named suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma and another, ex-BJP spokesperson Naveen Jindal, politician Shadab Chauhan, journalist Saba Naqvi, politician Asaduddin Owaisi, right-wing leader Yati Narsinghanand, cleric Maulana Mufti Nadeem, among others. The complaint was filed under various sections for allegedly spreading hate messages, inciting groups and creating situations detrimental to the maintenance of tranquillity.
Fighting hate speech — particularly on social media that has become a swamp of barbs and illegal threats — is urgent. Hate speech, especially that directed at marginalised communities and genders, an individual’s faith, race or caste, undermines national unity. The recent controversy is testament to the damage that hate speech can inflict if left unchecked, or fanned for narrow political or sectarian considerations. But at the same time, any action by the administration must be sound in logic, and backed by transparent, deliberative processes. At a time when law-enforcement agencies are under political pressure and struggling to assert their credibility and independence, care must be taken that action does not descend into competitive FIR filing by police forces in states. The dangerous implications of hate-filled rhetoric make it more urgent to ensure that neither such speech, nor the legal tools to fight it, becomes an instrument of partisan political retribution. In the Delhi Police action, for example, it remains unclear what some individuals did to fall afoul of the law.
India has a bouquet of laws, some with vague and expansive provisions prone to misuse, that are usually used to rein in extremist speech, but what it needs are clear guidelines for the police to act consistently against hate rhetoric, law enforcement agencies that are clear-headed and free of political bias, and action that is not only fair and in accordance with the law but also be seen to be so by the larger public. Any form of partisan or knee-jerk action only threatens to hurt the fight against a malaise that has the potential to chip away at the base of the Indian democracy, and, therefore, needs to be muzzled with strong, clear and transparent action.
To control air pollution in Delhi-NCR, the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) has banned the use of coal for industrial, domestic, and other purposes in the entire area from January 1, 2023. The ban will come into effect from October 1 this year in regions where piped natural gas is available. For other areas, it begins on January 1. However, this ban does not cover thermal power plants, a key contributor to air pollution.
Delhi is among the world’s most polluted cities. While farm fires and emissions from garbage burning result in concentrations of PM2.5 ultra-fine particles, a study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) shows that seven industrial districts in NCR had an estimated coal usage of up to 1.4 million tonnes by industries. These industries, says CSE, need a road map to switch to cleaner fuels and common combustion facilities, controlling fugitive emissions, and improving infrastructure.
More critically, the government must push the thermal power plants to clean up their act. For example, in 2015, the government asked power plants to install flue gas desulphurisation (FGD), to control toxic SO2 emissions. But power plants failed to install FGD by the 2017 deadline, missed the 2019 one for Delhi-NCR plants, and most (61%) will miss a staggered deadline running till 2022. The State must push the plants to install FGD, penalise plants that have not awarded bids for doing so, and, as experts are demanding, make real-time and historical emissions from power plant units public to enhance transparency. Clean air is a fundamental right. Take all steps to ensure Indian citizens can enjoy that crucial right in letter and spirit.
A remarkable feature of India’s governance model in the last few years has been its ability to provide relative resilience in the face of unanticipated shocks. This is perhaps best reflected in economic management, which though, understandably not perfect, did navigate the economy and its economic agents through some very difficult times over the last two years, with relatively little damage, at least to the financial system in particular. As such, the decision of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to not proceed towards a more balanced policy stance earlier in 2022, and then suddenly raise rates in May did lead to the thought that the predictability of the policy regime that has served the Indian economy very well through the unprecedented times of the pandemic, may not be holding.
The messaging, though, from RBI is now clearer to the market. RBI is focused on containing inflation, which has risen to levels higher than that the system feels comfortable with. As RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said recently, rate hikes have become a “no-brainer”. But, as RBI has also made clear, while it is fighting to check inflation, most of the shocks to prices have emanated from factors beyond India’s control. Hence, while we need to acknowledge these negative shocks and make corrections, the central bank has maintained what could be described as a calibrated and measured tightening approach, rather than a reactive one.
To be sure, such a move was expected, and with RBI restoring the predictability of its policy actions, the season of speculation around potential policy moves is coming to an end. This is not to say that all risks are priced in. However, RBI can no longer be said to be “behind the curve”, especially since it has acknowledged through its inflation projections that it expects prices to rise further, and while doing so, growth too will be prioritised, so that the baby is not thrown out with the bath water.
Simply put, while bringing inflation down is an important priority, RBI is telling us that it will also respond to marginal data on growth to drive its decision making, and will not dogmatically pursue lower inflation, no matter what. As Das put it: RBI is not bound by stereotypes or conventions, and will do what it assesses to be the best course of action, based on economic data and hard facts.
This emphatic declaration perhaps also reflects that RBI no longer feels it is playing catchup with its peers anymore. And with RBI’s peers also fighting inflation worldwide, the tightening in global financial conditions will provide reinforcement to RBI’s own actions. While the central bank may perhaps be able to do little to curb imported inflation, the aspect over which it has most control -- domestic demand — has remained broadly manageable.
Indeed, while there are signs of some parts of the economy showing higher inflation, early actions such as reducing fuel taxes and increasing rates can prevent an entrenchment of inflation expectations. As per RBI, inflation expectations were reduced somewhat by the recent fuel tax cuts, and while it is improbable, Das did make a pitch for further use of counter-cyclical fiscal policies such as fuel tax cuts, especially by state governments, to manage inflation expectations and help household spending.
Looking ahead, economic managers can take significant lessons from the way India managed Covid-19. India followed a data-driven approach and responded to emerging challenges as they played out. Similarly, it is reassuring to note that RBI is cognisant of the tectonic shifts playing out in Europe, China and the rest of the world, and ready to minimise their impact on the Indian economy.
Domestically, India also appears to have effectively navigated the risks from the pandemic, and the variability of the southwest monsoon appears to be the biggest endogenous risk that the economy now faces, at least from an inflationary perspective.
It is also worth pointing out that while there have been fiscal support measures, RBI and the government have generally done well in avoiding policy mistakes. Still, with dark clouds gathering over the economy in the form of high energy prices, it will be timely to get our umbrellas out, and prepare the country for a downpour. The government and RBI will need to allow the economy to adjust to the new external realities and policy actions, such as cutting taxes and raising rates, will reduce the pain of adjustment at the margin.
Controlling inflation, too, will require joint action. The necessity for coordination has never been more strong than during the current situation, where the primary cause of higher prices remains external developments. Indeed, the objective of any coordinated action will not only be to hasten disinflation, but also reduce the need for aggressive monetary tightening. While interest rates will climb higher, some amount of economic growth is critical to ensure fiscal sustainability. Faster growth is necessary for keeping debt ratios in check.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the necessary fiscal expansion made by governments across the globe have pushed debt levels significantly higher, making financial conditions all the more critical.
It is in this context that RBI will have to continue to deftly manage its responsibilities of being the debt manager of the government, even as it strives to bolster its inflation fighting credibility.
Rahul Bajoria is MD and chief India economist, Barclays
The views expressed are personal
Advanced mechanisms have taken over the field of computing, with nation-States, along with private companies, embroiled in a high-stakes race to increase indigenous computing power for economic and strategic purposes. With India’s data generation at an all time high, there is a need to improve computational capabilities by using advanced computing technologies.
The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), 2015, was the first step taken by the State. A jointly funded programme, by the department of science and technology and the ministry of electronics and information technology, with a total outlay of ₹4,500 crore, has been allocated for the mission over seven years (2016-2023). The main objectives are to spearhead research in the development of supercomputers and build a national supercomputing grid. As of February 2022, 10 supercomputers have been installed at various host institutions. However, considering the distribution of the world’s top 500 most powerful supercomputers, India accounts for just 0.6% of the total. There is a long way to go before India can develop an interconnected grid of supercomputers.
The other major advanced computing technology dominating the market is quantum computing. While India has a dedicated supercomputer programme, there has been no dedicated government policy for quantum computing. However, the domestic private sector has gotten involved in the development of quantum computing hardware, software, and algorithms. The government has relied on partnership deals with major private firms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM to advance the quantum computing landscape.
Recent progress by the State has showcased the government’s intent. But a holistic strategy is in need to facilitate its further advancement.
First, the ability to build advanced computing facilities rests on raw materials. It would be impossible to indigenously manufacture the whole system from scratch. This is where the reliance on high-tech imports kicks in. Trade barriers — export control mechanisms and import restrictions — can hamper access to the building blocks of these systems. For example, advanced processors for supercomputers and cryogenic cooling systems for quantum computers are a necessity. But indigenously developing them will take time. Cutting down on import tariffs, along with embracing multilateral trade agreements such as the Information Technology Agreement must be the government’s priority. Moving towards a liberalised technology trade policy can help the country accelerate its computing programme.
Second, a grander vision to develop a nationwide computing grid is key. China’s national computing network can serve as a blueprint to scale-up computing infrastructure. The Chinese plan talks about a geographical approach to building data centres and computing clusters across the mainland.
The concept of “eastern data and western computing” in China has been proposed, which involves setting up computing architecture in the less-developed western regions of the country to handle the data stored in centres in the tech-aligned east. A computing grid in India can follow a similar pattern. The government, which has so far focused on academic research institutions as hosts for computing systems, must disperse these facilities. Creating a better network can improve the functioning of an advanced computing grid and handle large-scale data processing with ease.
Third is the need for a military lens into computing power, which will facilitate its advancement and improve computing technology. In the age of information warfare and cybersecurity threats from across the border, increased computational capacity is a necessary risk-mitigation tool. Advanced computing facilities at strategic environments such as naval bases, air command control centres, and border outposts can help in the faster analysis and real-time data processing that contains critical military intelligence. India must focus on its computing strategy, keeping the national security angle in mind.
The United States and China are already looking at these systems to simulate military operations and gain an advantage in the new era of warfare. India must take cognisance and act swiftly and decisively to build an impregnable computing ecosystem.
Arjun Gargeyas is a researcher with the High Tech Geopolitics programme, Takshashila Institution
The views expressed are personal
Tesla will not put a manufacturing plant in any location where we are not allowed first to sell & service cars,” tweeted Elon Musk in response to a question about its plans for India. Like some other things Elon has been saying of late, this did not reflect the reality. Many Indian states, and the central government, have been bending over backwards to get Tesla to establish a manufacturing plant in India and take advantage of the country’s massive market. What Elon wanted, and India was not prepared to offer, was a licence to import its Chinese-made vehicles without any duties, providing it with an advantage over every other company.
India made the right decision in locking the Chinese-made Teslas out, because India is developing a new generation of electric vehicles (EVs), built for the masses, which could dominate global markets. These incorporate the latest technology breakthroughs — unlike the Teslas, which are now a decade old with little more than some software upgrades and a dangerous autonomous-driving technology.
For India, in this age of rapidly expanding technologies, Teslas are as out of date as the 1950s vintage Hindustan Ambassador cars that dominated its roads until the mid-80s. The concept car that Tata has developed, the Avinya, is what Tesla should have evolved into six years ago. The next-generation Mahindra’s EVs will be as functional as the Tesla Model 3, and cost less than half as much. I can’t wait for these to be available in the United States (US).
Before you write me off as another Tesla short-seller or someone with an axe to grind, let me tell you about my background with Elon and Tesla.
I became one of the first purchasers of the Model S after Elon had me bumped to the front of the waiting list in 2012. Elon had endorsed my first book, Immigrant Exodus, and disclosed for perhaps the first time his plans to retire on Mars, at a discussion we held at an event at Fox Studios in Los Angeles. In those days, Tesla was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Elon was taking incessant fire from sceptical journalists, particularly one from The New York Times. In an article in The Washington Post, I proclaimed myself a “Tesla fanboy” and raved about the Model S, calling it a “spaceship on wheels”. Subsequently, I wrote many articles defending and praising Elon.
I also sold my original Tesla and bought a new one in 2016, to be ready for the software upgrades that Elon said would add autonomous-driving capabilities within two years. E-mails from his sales executives confirmed that the car I was purchasing had all the hardware necessary for what Tesla calls full self-driving (FSD).
But the upgrades never arrived. Tesla’s technology is essentially the same as it was a decade ago. Now I am told that if I want the full self-driving features, I will need to buy another new car — and pay an additional $12,000 for FSD. Frankly, given the many reports about Tesla collisions and the negative experiences I have had, I don’t trust anything that the company says. The car’s autopilot once drove the car into my garage door, and I’ve had many close calls on the road, including while being filmed by PBS NewsHour’s Paul Solman for a segment in which I was raving about my Tesla.
I don’t think that Tesla’s technology will ever drive itself safely because it lacks the proper sensors, relying only on cameras. But companies such as Waymo and Cruise, which are using more advanced sensors and treading more carefully, surely will. I had even purchased a Model X because I wanted a more modern look and feel — but I returned it because the interior was constructed of what seemed to be cheap plastic, and the car had design defects.
Therefore, a decade after falling in love with Tesla, I am ready to break up.
India, lacking the gigafactories that Tesla built in the US and China, could be left behind in battery production. But, here too, time and technology may be on India’s side. The dark horse in this race is Reliance’s Mukesh Ambani, who recently purchased a British company, Faradion, for 100 million pounds. In email exchanges, I surmised that he had global ambition concerning sodium-ion batteries.
Faradion’s sodium-ion batteries have almost the same energy density and power as the lithium cells that Tesla uses, but can be produced for a fraction of the price, without the environmental destruction, because sodium is abundant and easy to capture. The slight trade-off in extra mass may be worth it to EV manufacturers, because most people don’t need the 300-mile range that US consumers desire. The sodium-ion batteries also perform better in the cold and aren’t subject to the thermal runaway that has led lithium-ion batteries to burst into flames.
Elon’s insistence on conditions unacceptable to the Indian government may be a major gift to India: It will provide the Indian automotive industry with the space necessary to build vehicles that will take the global automotive industry by storm. And they will eat Elon’s lunch.
Vivek Wadhwa is the author of From Incremental to Exponential: How Large Companies Can See the Future and Rethink Innovation
The views expressed are personal
A flashback to the troubled nineties which saw the first flush of the now fashionable Hindutva in the demolition of the Babri mosque, won’t be out of place as India of a ‘different mind’ fields a welter of protests from the Islamic world. The opprobrium’s against blasphemous references to the Prophet by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s designated spokespersons who’ve since been chastised but continue receiving massive online support from hardened right-wing troopers.
Institutional memories of countries don’t change with the change of governments. It’s useful therefore to recall and learn from what followed the razing down of the mosque over three decades ago. When Babri which later came to be referred to as a “disputed structure” was demolished in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, the Congress was in power in Delhi and the BJP in the Opposition. Having devoured the VP Singh regime on the very same issue in 1990, the centre-right party had moved ‘far to the right’ in pursuance of its Ram Janmabhoomi movement with its attendant divisiveness.
At the Indian diplomatic mission in Islamabad, the unexpected turn of events was received with deep self-doubt and disbelief. Our foreign secretary of the time, J N Dixit was India’s envoy in the Pakistani capital before picking up rank. He was remembered there for his oft-repeated assurance that the disputed mosque couldn’t be safer as harming it would harm the country’s unity and integrity.
While on a visit to Islamabad a little over a year later for the near-barren January 1994 foreign secretary-level dialogue, Dixit admitted being disproved by what transpired at Ayodhya but insisted that the “resilience of the Indian people” helped the country tide over the crisis. The veteran diplomat kept brief his comments before emplaning for home after the talks where Islamabad lectured Delhi on building a ‘propitious’ climate in Kashmir for progress in bilateral engagements.
A low point it undoubtedly was for Indian diplomacy.
The moral high that India lost
What India had lost post-Babri was precious. Gone with the rise of the Hindu zealot was the moral high the country always had as a non-denominational secular State as opposed to the Islamic Republic that’s Pakistan. It was the pluralistic nature of our democracy, especially the joint electorate system, which buttressed our claim on Kashmir. A country that did not place any one religion above another afforded space for all, including the “disputed” Muslim-majority province. The syncretic edifice so painstakingly built since Independence was razed to dust with the disputed mosque/structure at Ayodhya.
For these reasons and more, a palpably despondent air enveloped the Indian mission on the morning after December 6. The ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) had given a call for a countrywide strike on December 8 and the High Commission, led by Satinder Lambah who had succeeded Dixit, was busy working on a diplomatic ‘defense of the indefensible’ besides ensuring that his men and the mission remained out of the harm’s way in an increasingly volatile environ.
With Pakistan promoting the narrative of an intolerant, bigoted India, be it Ayodhya or Kashmir, it was an extremely difficult period for our diplomatic corps. On running into an incensed Jamat-e-Islami (JI) delegation at the gates of the Indian mission, this writer’s response to their badgering was: Ayodhya isn’t as much a Hindu-Muslim question; it’s a tussle between the dominant secularist viewpoint and the religious right’s quest for centre-space from the polity’s fringes.
“That’s plain nonsense,” retorted Liaquat Baloch, the delegation’s leader who headed the JI in the Pakistan National Assembly. “It might not make sense to you,” I replied, “but look towards my country and you’d known that Indian Muslims repose greater trust in parties led by non-Muslims.”
The conversation ended with Baloch leaving in a huff after submitting a protest note at the Mission’s out-gate. The testy exchange got reported ad verbum the next day in the mass-circulated Urdu daily, Jung. Displayed prominently on the newspaper’s front page, the report was widely noticed, including by our diplomats who tended to agree with this writer’s off-the-cuff interpretation of the Temple-Mosque conflict. “You could say it as a journalist. The way you put it was good,” a senior Mission official told me later.
Babri could be explained, not the insult to the Prophet
The crucial difference between Ayodhya and the challenge India currently faces is that Babri wasn’t a prominent place of worship for Muslims and the actions of the BJP, which wasn’t in power in 1992 could be explained (to foreign interlocutors) as domestic politicking spinning out of control. In comparison, the provocative references to the Prophet (through whom Allah speaks) vilify the very sanctum sanctorum of the faith of over two billion people.
“Even the most powerful and autocratic among the leaders of Islamic countries cannot ignore their citizenry’s religious sensitivities,” explained an Indian diplomat. He said the ruling BJP would be playing with fire if it persists with the kind of narrative it has promoted for electoral gains: “The world hereon will watch us more closely and easily, thanks to the internet.”
By some quirk of luck after Ayodhya, the PML (N) sponsored agitation went out of control, what with the ruling party cadres using bulldozers to demolish or damage inert and active Hindu places of worship across Pakistan. The retributive action got big play in the Indian, Pakistani and international media, affording our diplomacy the breathing space it direly needed. Had it not been so, Islamabad would’ve used its then formidable clout in the OIC, known at the time as the Organization of Islamic Conference and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to force an “oil squeeze” on Delhi.
That debilitating possibility could be avoided as the Narasimha Rao regime, which has failed to protect the mosque, moved thereafter with alacrity to dismiss the BJP governments in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal. The action helped salvage some diplomatic ground to obviated wider global fallout from Ayodhya. From that standpoint, the response of the Narendra Modi regime has been less than salutary with the PM maintaining silence and his party making a second-tier official reprimand and announce disciplinary action against the spokespersons in the dock.
Narasimha Rao’s template the BJP can replicate
Widely respected for his grasp of international affairs, Rao moved quickly on the diplomatic front to bring about a hugely successful official visit to Iran within months of the Ayodhya episode. The highlights of his visit: the Indian premier became the first non-Muslim to address the Iranian Majlis after the 1979 Iranian revolution; was received by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini; had a private meal with President Rafsanjani at his residence and was accorded a reception by Khomeini’ son at the renowned Qom seminary.
The optics India needed to live down 1992 were there. Few people know, but Rao undertook the visit after having LK Advani briefed by a senior foreign ministry official. The BJP leader took a “matured” line for his part, asking the official to report to the PM that his party supported the initiative “in national interest.”
By some coincidence, the first foreign dignitary to visit India after the Islamic blowback is the foreign minister of Iran, the very country to which Rao reached out after Ayodhya. The BJP’s iterations to inclusivity, to respect for all faiths are a throwback as much to the pre-2014 period. In order not to come across as a “serial offender” on issues of faith, the party will need to travel back in time to find the way forward. The one daunting task it has towards that goal is the bottling back of public forces unleashed by its exclusive socio-cultural constructs which weren’t ever in sync with its global and economic ambitions.
HT’s veteran political editor, Vinod Sharma, brings together his four-decade-long experience of closely tracking Indian politics, his intimate knowledge of the actors who dominate the political theatre, and his keen eye which can juxtapose the past and the present in his weekly column, Distantly Close
vinodsharma@hindustantimes.com
The views expressed are personal