I spent nearly three decades at the United Nations singing the virtues of multilateralism, but today I am not so sure of its prospects.
A backlash
It started with a backlash against globalisation that took two forms: economic and cultural. The economic backlash was straightforward. The poor and the unemployed in the developed world began to feel that they had no stake in the globalised system, and demanded to know why their governments’ policies benefited people in faraway lands such as China and India with what used to betheir jobs. They wanted to reduce the growing inequality in every “developed” economy and go back to the security of older, more familiar economic ways, in which each generation assumed they would earn more and live better than their parents did.
The cultural backlash derived from the same resentment but expressed itself in a different arena: the political denunciation of global trade led to hostility towards foreigners, as more and more people sought the comforts of traditional identity and ways of life. Animated often by bitter working-class and lower-middle class resentment of global elites, the “masses” rejected the entire brew of liberal politics, cosmopolitans and technocrats, trade agreements, immigration, multiculturalism and secularism in the name of cultural rootedness, religious or ethnic identity and nationalist authenticity. Some saw the world as divided, in David Goodhart’s formulation, between the “somewheres” and the “anywheres”: the “anywheres” being people who are comfortable anywhere on the planet, flit from business-class lounge to five-star hotel and join international gatherings, whereas the “somewheres” are rooted in one place, immersed in one religious culture, speak one language and share one ethnicity.
Political opportunity
Political leaders were quick to seize the opportunity to tap into both kinds of backlash against globalisation. Populist leaders such as Donald Trump, who rose to the presidency of the United States on slogans of “America First” and “Make America Great Again”, and a host of others — from Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey to Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Narendra Modi of India — successfully persuaded their voters that they were more authentic embodiments of their nations than the allegedly rootless secular cosmopolitans they sought to displace. Others have been rising, from the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and the Freedom Party of Austria to the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour in France, none of whom has won national elections but who came close enough to shift the national discourse. Together, such parties and leaders, combining nationalist fervour with popular prejudices, have made nationalism the default model of national self-definition. (And should we now, after Ukraine, anoint Russian President Vladimir Putin the Chairman of an oxymoronic “Nationalist International”?)
If these were trends that preceded the pandemic, they have, rather worryingly, accelerated over the course of the last two years. The COVID-19 pandemic confirmed, for many, that in times of crisis, people rely on their governments to shield them; that global supply chains are vulnerable to disruption; and that dependence on foreign countries for essential goods (such as pharmaceuticals, or even the ingredients that go into making them) could be fatal. Nations tried aggressively to acquire medicines, supplies and vaccines for their own people at the expense of each other. There was a rush to reset global supply chains and raise trade barriers: the demand arose for more protectionism and “self-reliance”. The Russian invasion of Ukraine forced all of our countries to grapple with the limitations on state sovereignty, the credibility of the UN Charter, new disruptions of supply chains and trade, energy inter-dependence and the future of warfare.
A vulnerable world
Ukraine and the pandemic have reminded us that much of what seemed to be knitting the world ever closer together — and which we till recently took for granted — was vulnerable. The world economy had thrived since globalisation began in 1980 on an open system of free trade. That had already been shaken by the financial crash of 2008-09 and the American trade war with China. The novel coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated these challenges, with estimates suggesting that nearly a third of global trade fell in 2020, though a gradual recovery trajectory is now starting to emerge. Now, the sanctions on Russia have severely restricted trade, investment and financial flows into and out of that country.
COVID-19 has also convinced many that foreigners are to be feared, that strict border and immigration controls are essential, that countries cannot always expect useful help from their neighbours and allies, and that national interests should trump international cooperation. Instead, the emphasis is on sovereignty, nationalism and self-protection. The UN has every reason to worry about its continuing relevance, with its perceived inertia in preventing the war or even mitigating the invasion of the sovereign borders of one of its own member-states by another, a permanent member of the Security Council.
There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic was a “mega-shock” to the global system. As sovereignties are reasserted across the world, and treaties and trade agreements increasingly questioned, multilateralism, the once taken-for-granted mantra of international co-operation, could be the next casualty. It was already in danger of being eroded before the pandemic: Britain withdrawing from the European Union (EU), America leaving the landmark Paris climate agreement and President Trump pulling the United States out of the World Health Organization (WHO). Now, isolationist voices portray themselves as being vindicated.
WHO’s response to the outbreak, with its indulgence of the official Chinese line, points to the waning legitimacy of international institutions. Many of our global institutions and their agencies suffer from politicisation, manipulation and a lack of representation, and independent leadership. Had global governance been working effectively, the world would have identified the coronavirus as soon as it emerged; sounded a global alarm earlier about its dangers; and identified and publicised the best practices that should have been adopted by all countries to prevent or limit its spread. That this did not happen is a damning indictment of the state of our new world disorder.
Regional implications
The phenomenon of “deglobalisation” has its regional implications too. Europe, once seen as a “poster child” for the virtues of regional integration, became the epitome of its limitations, since the “idea of Europe” crumbled quickly under the onslaught of the pandemic. The famous Schengen visa and the notion of border-free movement was the first casualty of COVID-19. The EU countries threw up the barriers at the first sign of the virus: it did not take them long to rediscover the disadvantages and limits of the very free movement of goods, services, capital and people that they had sworn by for five decades. Early in the pandemic, Italy, the first major centre of the COVID-19 crisis, was denied medical equipment by its EU neighbours, who introduced export controls instead of extending solidarity to their fellow Europeans in distress.
More governance needed
Yet, it is clear that the sheer complexity and immeasurability of our interdependence requires more global governance, not less. Turning our backs on multilateral institutions at the first sign of weakness is unfortunate. In my 29 years at the United Nations, the key lesson I learned is that the world is a better place when countries engage in dialogue, when they have a forum to talk through the problems they share rather than resorting to tit-for-tat responses on issues they disagree on. In the post-COVID-19 world, unfortunately, countries are turning their backs on such forums in their desire to reduce their exposure to external dangers. External forces do not only represent threats; they also involve opportunities that visionary leaders should seize.
The only hope for the future lies in international solidarity. When the current pandemic is over, the globe must learn lessons about what happened, and how international systems and institutions can be strengthened and radically reformed in order to forestall its recurrence. The same can be said about the ongoing war and sanctions. Instead of strengthening the capacity of our global institutions to cope with a future crisis, the world’s reaction to the virus and the war may well end up destroying the most fundamental feature COVID-19 has exposed — the idea of our common humanity. We must not allow that to happen. We must learn to live and work together again.
Shashi Tharoor, MP (Congress), left the United Nations in 2007 as Under Secretary-General after having been India’s candidate to serve as Secretary-General in 2006. He is the award-winning author of 23 books, including ‘Pax Indica’ (2012) and co-author of ‘The New World Disorder’ (2020)
As educational institutions began reopening in full throttle after the COVID-19 onslaught, there was news of a Common University Entrance Test. Unfortunately, measurable indexes for elimination and selection are becoming increasingly dependent on precision and objectivity, which is immensely worrisome for the social sciences.
In grey, ambiguous areas
It is not that there is a dearth of aptitude tests around the country to sustain the rat race of ‘competition success’. It is not that the pathetic and obsessive glorification of ‘toppers’ needs a top up. Still, our education policymakers often forget that the binary of a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ is not an all-mighty sacrosanct truth. Discourses in the social sciences are often housed in between — in the much celebrated grey and ambiguous areas that are, literally and metaphorically, the liminal zones between ‘true’ and ‘false’. While information such as dates, facts or events can be placed within the binary of right or wrong, the role of a higher educational institution is not to list or reproduce information, or to train students to do so. Textbooks, Google and an innumerable number of education-apps do that anyway.
The mandate of higher education is to nurture critical thinking that entails questioning; that includes a multiplicity of thoughts; and, most importantly, that offers multiplicity of choice that is not confined to two to five objective options in a multiple choice type question (MCQ)-scheme of answering.
For example, whether we are ‘modern’ or not cannot be answered with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. We live in a society where we encounter an assimilation of modernity and tradition in every aspect of our everyday life. Modernisation of tradition and the deep-rooted presence of the traditional in our modern lives is a lived experience. Forces of modernity have not bulldozed tradition into obsolescence. At times, in some spheres, there is peaceful dialogue and negotiation between tradition and modernity. Or else, in certain other spheres, they are engaged in conflictual negotiations. How can this nuanced and complex dialectic be expressed by being tick-marked as a ‘yes’ or ‘no’?
Opening up spaces
Social science deals with complex social facts and it attempts to make meaning of those through observational, analytical and argumentative skills. Which is why nothing can be distilled into a quiz-like game of ‘true’ or ‘false’.
The foundation of colleges and universities is premised on encouraging the spirit of a multiplicity of questions, multiple methods of observance, multiple modes of analysis and a coexistence of multiple arguments and counter-arguments. That sort of heterogeneity opens up spaces for diverse schools of thought, a variety of interpretations and interventions, and an existence of multiple perspectives — every stand point of which is valid in its own context.
One’s position on any social issue — be it on caste-based-reservation; on cutting trees to make way for a highway, or on religious fundamentalism — is defined by a septicity of perspectives and contexts. As a reader or as a scholar, one is free not to agree with the other’s claims and arguments. One is free to disagree with someone else’s reading and interpretation of the text — provided it is backed by reason. That freedom to disagree is a gift of living in a modern world and practising social science — where the world is not reduced to the confinement of ‘true’ or ‘false’. And that is how fresh ideas find grounding and recognition.
Going beyond the syllabus
And that is why — and that is how — a university experience is fundamentally different from a school experience. A good university constantly encourages its students to go beyond the syllabus. A good university mentors its students to question all the time instead of confining themselves to a limited set of binary answers. A good university allows its students to question everything instead of expecting them to fall in line. In a good university, one can question the text. One can question each other. One can question oneself. One can question one’s social circumstances. One can question the architecture and the operational structure of the university itself. One can question one’s teachers and all kinds of injustices and discriminations. And one can also question the idea of questioning as well. Knowledge production in institutes of excellence across the world is premised on questioning and criticising.
Doubting, disagreeing and dissenting is at the heart of higher education in any field, especially in the social sciences. Choosing a right answer from a limited set of choices is not only self-defeating but also goes against the spirit of critical thinking, and it does not do justice to the nuances of the social issues.
Social science operates with multiple truths. Like dialects, these truths alter, depending on one’s perspectives and geographical location. Just like every dialect is dominant in its specific space (and there are no good or bad dialects) every perspective is valid in its own context and is beyond the simplistic ‘true’/‘false’ binaries.
The social sciences have that enormous capacity to absorb those variations and differences. As students, we learn a lot more by choosing to disagree, deviate and criticise. We learn less or almost nothing by ticking or stating or remembering factual correctness. While trying to prepare for mindless entrance examinations, we often forget to examine the fact that the project of social science is inherently linked to ‘subjectivity’ and ‘reflexivity’. While reducing all subjects to ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, we often forget that the objective of a multiple-choice-question is neither pro-multiplicity nor pro-choice or pro-questioning.
Sreedeep Bhattacharya is a sociologist with Shiv Nadar University
On the occasion of International Museum Day on May 18, the Ministry of Culture has made admissions to all museums under its ambit free of cost for a week. This not only makes our art and culture accessible to all, but also provides us an opportunity to propagate our civilisational heritage.
The occasion also gives us an opportunity to look back at the progress that we have made in re-imagining our museums and cultural spaces. There has been a transformational shift in our perspectives of our heritage and this can be seen in our approach to preserve and promote it. First, there has been a shift from a museum-centric approach to a cultural spaces approach. Second, we have been able to build museums for specific purposes rather than rely on general purpose museums. And finally, we have looked at museums with a whole-of-government approach to ensure that museums provide a wholesome experience.
Cultural spaces approach
India is one of the few continuously inhabited civilisational states that continues to thrive. Therefore, our art, culture and heritage are not just available for viewing in museums but can be witnessed in our day-to-day activities. The festivals we celebrate, the deities we worship, the food we eat, and the dance and music performances we appreciate are all a testimony to our civilisational ethos. Keeping this in mind, our approach has been to continuously integrate our culture into our lives rather than to position them in museums. So, when the Prime Minister brings back stolen heritage from other countries, there is an attempt to restore it to the place it was taken from rather than to have it languish in the warehouse of a museum. It is with this underlying philosophy that the recently retrieved idol of Goddess Annapurna was returned to its rightful place at Kashi Vishwanath temple, Varanasi. There is now a plan to continue repatriating heritage objects to their original locations, wherever feasible. Similarly, the attempt to embed art and our civilisational heritage in places such as the new Central Vista Project also builds on this approach to have cultural spaces that are contiguous and transcend standalone buildings.
Specific purpose museums
In August 2013, in response to a question in Parliament on the government’s plan to establish a National Tribal Museum in the country, the government at that time responded that there was no such plan. Today, to recognise the role of over 200 tribal freedom fighters across India who participated in about 85 revolts and uprisings against colonial rule, 10 tribal freedom fighter museums are being set up across the country. On the occasion of the first Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas on November 15 last year, the Prime Minister launched the Birsa Munda museum in Ranchi.
Similarly, last month on April 14, on the occasion of Ambedkar Jayanti, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Pradhan Mantri Sangrahalaya. The museum is a tribute to every Prime Minister of India since independence and showcases the contributions they made and the challenges they faced in their tenure.
In tribute to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the Prime Minister inaugurated the Statue of Unity in October 2018, which also contains a museum that chronicles the various facets of Patel in great detail.
These examples show the transformational journey that has been made in the last eight years. The strategic shift to specific theme-based museums, which have unique content and a definite purpose, also ensures that rich material is on display and the overall experience is wholesome. There have been several other attempts along these lines that are worth mentioning, such as the Biplobi Bharat museum in Kolkata, the arms and armour museum at the Red Fort, a gallery on Gautama Buddha in Delhi, and the museum on Jammu and Kashmir.
Whole-of-government approach
India is home to over 1,000 museums representing a rich and diverse blend of the cultural, religious and scientific achievements that our civilisation has witnessed over the years. These museums do not just lie under the control of the Ministry of Culture. Other Ministries manage the Railway museums, the crafts and textiles museums, and the food museum, to name a few. Therefore, the government is taking a whole-of -government approach to provide a wholesome experience to all stakeholders. To achieve this, as an example, the 25 science cities, centres and museums under the National Council of Science Museums, an autonomous body under the Ministry of Culture, are backed with a Memoranda of Understanding with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). This ensures that the spaces are being developed with expertise, fresh ideas and new thought. The use of digital technology to enhance user experience is not limited to the use of Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, but to widen public access through modernisation and digitisation of collections and exhibitions. This is now a work in progress and is visible in the museums that have been recently inaugurated such as the Pradhan Mantri Sangrahalaya.
In all these efforts, there are challenges, but none of them are insurmountable. Breaking down silos to forge a whole-of-government approach in such a specialised domain requires new skills and perspectives and these are being developed. Human capacities and domain knowledge require continued upgradation, and the new Indian Institute of Heritage that is being set up as a world class university aims to address these challenges. There are also challenges in modernising our traditional museums from display spaces of past glory to making them more interactive, immersive experiences through technology interfaces, innovative curatorial skills and imaginative storytelling. Compared to new museums, successfully repurposing existing museum spaces needs more imaginative thinking and has a different set of challenges. The efforts in digitisation and reprography are painstaking processes that can take several years to complete.
With this renewed mandate of modernisation, upgradation, and establishment of new museums, we are bringing our institutions closer to international standards of museology in the 21st century. As a firm step in this direction, the Ministry of Culture organised a first-of-its-kind Global Summit on ‘Reimagining Museums in India’ in February this year. The learnings from the summit are being incorporated to devise a blueprint for the development of new museums, nurture a renewal framework, and reinvigorate existing museums. It is said that there is nothing more important than an idea whose time has come. Re-imagining museums in India is such an idea.
G. Kishan Reddy is the Union Minister of Culture, Tourism and Development of Northeastern Region, Government of India
The pandemic has taught us a great deal. We have all become familiar with terms such as variants, waves, vaccine supply chains and quarantine. It has also encouraged an interest in preventive health technology, especially in vaccines. This interest is understandable, given that India accounts for the second highest caseload of COVID-19 globally. Once the vaccines were available, the nation had to take on the task of rolling out one of the largest vaccination drives in the world; this of course, is not new to India.
India’s Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP), launched in 1985 to deliver routine immunisation, showcased its strengths in managing large-scale vaccine delivery. This programme targets close to 2.67 crore newborns and 2.9 crore pregnant women annually. To strengthen the programme’s outcomes, in 2014, Mission Indradhanush was introduced to achieve full immunisation coverage of all children and pregnant women at a rapid pace — a commendable initiative.
But the pandemic reminded us that vaccines alone do not save lives, vaccination does. While we have, over the years, set up a strong service delivery network, the pandemic showed us that there were weak links in the chain, especially in the cold chain, which needs to be robust and seamless.
Cold chain management
The success of any sustainable vaccination programme relies on many factors. A key factor is cold chain management because when this fails, the potency or effectiveness of the vaccine is wasted. Nearly half the vaccines distributed around the world go to waste, in large part due to a failure to properly control storage temperatures. In India, close to 20% of temperature-sensitive healthcare products arrive damaged or degraded because of broken or insufficient cold chains, including a quarter of vaccines. Wastage has cost implications and can delay the achievement of immunisation targets.
Here, India has strong foundations to build upon. India’s UIP comprises upwards of 27,000 functional cold chain points of which 750 (3%) are located at the district level and above; the remaining 95% are located below the district level. The COVID-19 vaccination efforts relied on the cold chain infrastructure established under the UIP to cover 87 crore people with two doses of the vaccine and over 100 crore with at least a single dose. This effort was supported by the government’s cloud-based digital platform Co-WIN, which helps to facilitate registration, immunisations and appointments, and issues digital vaccine certificates, highlighting the benefits of digitisation.
The Health Ministry has been digitising the vaccine supply chain network in recent years through the use of cloud technology, such as with the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN). Developed with support from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and implemented by the UN Development Programme through a smartphone-based app, the platform digitises information on vaccine stocks and temperatures across the country. This supports healthcare workers in the last mile in supervising and maintaining the efficiency of the vaccine cold chain.
The role played by supportive infrastructure for cold chain such as a regular supply of electricity cannot be underplayed. In this regard, there is a need to improve electrification, especially in the last mile, for which the potential of solar-driven technology must be explored to integrate sustainable development. For instance, in Chhattisgarh, 72% of the functioning health centres have been solarised to tackle the issue of regular power outages. This has significantly reduced disruption in service provision and increased the uptake of services.
Building back better and stronger
COVID-19, which disrupted supply chains across countries and in India too, marks an inflection point in the trajectory of immunisation programmes. As we recover from the pandemic, there is an opportunity for us to pivot to newer mechanisms that can help develop unbroken and resilient cold chain systems and thus augment the immunisation landscape. Going forward, this will be the only way to ensure access to the last mile with life-saving vaccines, in time.
As we reflect on the learnings from the pandemic, it is imperative that we look towards a future where the critical arteries that comprise the supply chain of immunisation facilities be strengthened. India has pioneered many approaches to ensure access to public health services at a scale never seen before. Robust cold chain systems are an investment in India’s future pandemic preparedness; by taking steps towards actionable policies that improve the cold chain, we have an opportunity to lead the way in building back better and stronger.
C.K. Mishra is Former Secretary, Government of India
Haridwar is a well-known pilgrimage site. Little known, however, is the district’s industrial face. A closer look at Haridwar’s development trajectory reveals how the district was able to achieve this feat over 20 years.
Haridwar is one of the 112 districts under the government’s Aspirational Districts Programme, launched in 2018. A key driver of socioeconomic growth in Haridwar is its vibrant and dynamic industrial township.
In 2002, the Uttarakhand government established the State Industrial Development Corporation of Uttarakhand Limited (SIDCUL), with the objective of catalysing industrial growth. This was reinforced with the Centre’s 10-year concessional industrial package for Uttarakhand, announced in 2003, which granted various fiscal incentives for industry setting up operations in the State. Haridwar was identified for developing an Integrated Industrial Estate. The estate was established at Roshanabad in Haridwar.
The development of physical and social infrastructure in the city coupled with the provision of economic incentives attracted a diverse set of industries to the district, including automobiles, pharmaceuticals, electronics, FMCG, packaging, agro and food processing. Today, the industrial township is home to heavyweights such as BHEL, Hero MotoCorp Limited, and Hindustan Unilever Limited. Prior to 2003, Roshanabad and its adjoining areas were akin to ghost towns. Today, the SIDCUL-IIE in Haridwar has about 700 large industries and MSMEs.
The spillover benefits from the development of the industrial cluster have been many. From the industries’ perspective, the clustering of economic activity reduced costs and provided access to a large local market and a skilled and unskilled labour pool. From the district’s standpoint, the industrial hub provided employment to 52,000 formal workers and more informal workers. In addition, lakhs of individuals are employed in sectors that provide ancillary services to these industries. This industrial progress has accelerated developments in the district’s social infrastructure — hotels, commercial complexes, malls, theatres and schools. A bonus benefit from these industries is their contribution to social development via corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. From girls’ toilets constructed by ONGC to basketball courts funded by Hero Honda, Haridwar’s schools have undergone a dramatic and rapid transformation.
But all this has also created issues such as traffic congestion and overcrowding. There is an urgent need to optimise logistics, develop supply chains and address inefficiencies in transportation and connectivity to ensure that Haridwar realises its industrialisation potential. Since Haridwar is land-locked, producers have a cost disadvantage as they have to incur higher costs for movement of goods. Traffic congestion across the district delays cargo movement and adds to transaction costs, thereby reducing competitiveness. Inefficient warehousing is another bottleneck. It is critical to develop larger, integrated warehouses which can be used for production, packaging and storage across the district. For sustaining growth momentum in the long-term, investment in human capital is crucial. While education has been a priority over the years, health is an area that merits greater policy attention. Steps must be taken to invest in health infrastructure and address the acute shortage of health personnel across the district.
Haridwar has made remarkable strides in socioeconomic growth over the last few years. As aspirational districts across the country continue to embark on transformative journeys, Haridwar’s SIDCUL-IIE model is definitely worthy of policy emulation.
Tanushree Chandra is a Young Professional, NITI Aayog. Views are personal
India’s current regime has a penchant for symbolism and optics, a tendency that becomes more pronounced when the symbolism is religious. So it was not a surprise that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a short visit to Lumbini in Nepal on Buddha Jayanti. Lumbini, in Buddhist tradition, is the birthplace of Gautama Buddha and Mr. Modi along with his Nepali counterpart laid the foundation stone for the India International Centre for Buddhist Culture and Heritage in the Lumbini Monastic Zone. The Centre will play a role in challenging the preponderance of the Chinese sponsorship and patronage of the Buddhist festivals and institutions in the area. It could also be a harbinger of a focused development of the area into a tourist and cultural hub for pilgrims and other visitors. To that end, the PM’s visit would have been welcomed by his Nepali counterpart. With the PM also unequivocally asserting that Lumbini was the birthplace of Gautama Buddha, who was born as Siddhartha, this should put to rest a needless irritant in the India-Nepal relations, with some hyper-nationalist Nepalis claiming that the Indian government had a different belief on the Buddha’s origins. The visit also coincided with the signing of a few MoUs, the most prominent being the development and implementation of the Arun-4 hydropower project. The PM’s visit followed his counterpart Sher Bahadur Deuba’s trip to India in April, which thawed relations after a series of controversial steps (during the tenure of Mr. Deuba’s predecessor, K.P. Oli) on the Kalapani dispute.
Mr. Modi’s speech in Lumbini sought to highlight the strong cultural ties between the two countries, which already share a special relationship, cemented by the Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed in 1950. There are several irritants that have developed, straining this relationship, and for now there seems to be a concerted attempt by both regimes to return to bonhomie, with the Indian government seeking to utilise “religious diplomacy” as a means to emphasise the special relationship. But there have been significant changes in Nepal’s political-economy, in particular a substantial reduction in the Nepali youths’ dependence on the Indian economy as compared to the past. Beyond a soft power emphasis on cultural ties, India-Nepal relations need to graduate to a more meaningful partnership on economic and geopolitical issues, with the Indian government continuing to retain a substantial role in partnering the Nepali regime in development projects. The challenge is to utilise the return of bonhomie in ties to refocus on work related to infrastructure development in Nepal, which includes hydropower projects, transportation and connectivity, and which could benefit the citizens of the adjoining States in India as well. Symbolism, after all, is useful only to a certain extent.
The three-day Nav Sankalp Chintan Shivir of the Congress in Udaipur has charted an action plan for its revival. The proof will be in its implementation, but at a minimum it acknowledges the party’s shortcomings. The party plans to give more opportunities to the youth, limit dynastic politics with a ‘one family, one ticket’ rule, and have a new deal for socially weaker groups such as the Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and the minorities. In a major deviation from its earlier position, the Congress is now backing sub-quotas for SCs, STs and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the women’s reservation Bill that has been hanging fire for long. A Social Justice Advisory Council is to advise the Congress president on issues regarding socially weaker groups. Half of the party posts are to be filled with people under the age of 50, a principle that will be applied in the selection of candidates too. Other measures announced include a Public Insight Committee to gather feedback on key political issues, a training institute to bring ideological clarity for party workers, and a committee for constant election preparedness — all aimed to overcome the inertia and decadence that have immobilised the party.
The Chintan Shivir was prompted by the party’s repeated electoral failures and serious questions about the effectiveness of the leadership of the Gandhi family, but it did very little in terms of addressing and enforcing the principle of accountability at the top. In fact, the three-day brainstorming session saw a clear assertion by the Gandhis. Amid demands by leaders of the G-23 — the ginger group purportedly pushing for internal reforms and collective leadership — to revive the Congress Parliamentary Board, party chief Sonia Gandhi announced the setting up of an advisory group from among the senior Congress Working Committee members. Ms. Gandhi made it clear that there would not be collective decision-making and that her word was final. While such an assertion may convey the message of being in control, that is no solution to the sagging popularity of the party and the family. Former party chief Rahul Gandhi admitted that the party had lost its connect with the people, but did not offer anything new. Udaipur was an assertion of his role at the helm, which will in all probability be formalised in the forthcoming organisational election. A Bharat Jodo (Unite India) yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and Jan Jagran Abhiyan (public awareness campaign) as ideas sound good, but a lot will depend on his ability to reinvent himself in an era that rewards and punishes individual leaders disproportionate to their role. If the Udaipur meet is not to end up as a new bargain among power brokers and interest groups, the party will have to immediately begin a process of regeneration free of nepotism and avarice.
Washington: No one talks about it, but there are definite medical hazards involved in running for the Presidency of the United States. One that is increasingly a problem has to do with a candidate’s face. Anyone who has been following the Democratic primaries on television knows that every Presidential hopeful always has a smile on his face. What people don’t know is that these smiles are frozen there and the longer the primaries go on, the less chance the candidates have of wiping them away. A plastic surgeon named Cooke told me, “Most of the candidates running for the Presidency have been smiling steadily for five months. By the time they get to Miami they will have smiled for eight months. The muscles controlling these smiles will have hardened them into place. I fear that by the time election day comes we could wind up with a President with a permanent stupid grin on his face.” “I don’t know,” I said. “Everybody likes to see a happy President. It’s all right to have a happy President,” Cooke said. “But what happens when he attends the funeral of another head of State? Suppose he has to go on television and tell the people the cost of living has gone up 25 per cent, and unemployment has reached a new high. He’d look pretty silly doing that with a smile.”
Three months ago, Rahul Gandhi’s “high command mindset” had come in for sharp criticism from Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma who chided him for once feeding his dog in the presence of leaders from the state and then offering them “the same biscuits” — a callback to the incident that Sarma had described as being the impetus for his resignation from the party. The same “mindset” is the target of some rather thinly-veiled criticism in the Congress’s latest resignation saga: Hardik Patel, who quit the party today, has blamed his exit on the leadership’s “hatred” of India, Gujarat and Gujaratis and the youth of the nation, even as it remains preoccupied with “chicken sandwiches”.
In his trilingual resignation letter, posted on Twitter, Patel is scathing about what he sees as the many failures of the Congress. Much of the letter bemoans the various ways in which he says the party has “insulted” Gujaratis (including, predictably, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel),the alleged venality of the Gujarat Congress and the national leadership’s lack of a proactive opposition agenda. Running through these complaints, however, is a charge that has long bedevilled the Congress — that the leadership’s elitism and absorption in “trivial things” (pet dogs, foreign vacations, parties and, now, chicken sandwiches) have led it to lose touch with the masses.
With the BJP looking to consolidate its hold over Gujarat in the state assembly polls later this year and the AAP threatening to spoil whatever chance the Congress has, a kerfuffle about chicken sandwiches is the last thing the party leadership needs. It could, of course, be said that with electoral prospects on the line, it is Patel who is chickening out of a tough battle by leaving what he sees as a sinking ship. On the other hand, considering that the much-hyped Chintan Shivir in Udaipur, which concluded on Sunday, also failed to address the leadership question, perhaps it is the Congress that is chickening away from addressing its real problem.
Three political leaders including two poll candidates from their Krishnagar East constituency in West Bengal’s Nadia district remained untraced for the fourth day. Chief Minister Jyoti Basu said that a vigorous search operation was going on and the police were working round the clock to trace the poll candidates, Kashikanta Moitra (Janata) and Gopal Sarkar (Congress J), and Shibu Chowdury another Janata leader. Basu said veteran Janata Party leader PC Sen had received an anonymous call from a person saying that he was speaking from a place from where Moitra was held. The caller said that unless 500 extremist prisoners were released, Moitra would remain with them till May 19. Basu said that there was no question of releasing any of the extremists.
Sino-Indian Talks
Indian and Chinese officials began talks at Hyderabad house in Delhi to find ways to resolve outstanding Sino-Indian issues including the border question. After a hour long plenary session, the two delegations divided themselves into four groups. One of them will discuss the tangled border question and the other three will hold talks on other aspects of bilateral relations including trade, cultural ties and cooperation in science and technology. The delegations have arrived at an understanding that nothing will be disclosed to the media till May 21.
Dost To Visit Geneva
The Afghan President Babrak Karmal is sending his foreign minister Mohammad Dost to Geneva to attend the meeting of UN representatives and Iranian and Pakistani delegations on the Afghanistan issue. Karmal disclosed this to K Natwar Singh, secretary to the External Affairs Ministry, who is in Kabul with a special message from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
The great burkini debate is once again set to roil France. The city of Grenoble has decided to allow the garment — as well as long shorts for men and topless bathing for women — in state-run swimming pools “for all men and women to be able to dress as they want”. The move was, predictably, met with a slew of protestations, describing the burkini as a “symbol of Islamic extremism” and “enslavement of women” that is harmful to France’s “Republican values”.
There are echoes here of the arguments made in 2016, when a number of French cities, had banned the burkini. A court overturned the bans citing “violation of fundamental freedoms” but that did little to change the popular perception of the burkini as standing for the failure of Muslim migrants to integrate into secular society.
But it was for precisely the opposite reason that Aheda Zanetti had created the burkini. Hereafter, Muslim women could participate in an activity that they would otherwise be excluded from. Not surprisingly, when it was first introduced in 2002, the burkini became a huge hit — not only with its target consumers, but also other women who are, for various reasons, far more comfortable in the full-body coverage that it offers compared to more conventional swimwear. For those who see a red rag in the burkini — or indeed, other modest garments, such as the burqa and the hijab — surely there’s a lesson here in accommodation.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on May 18, 2022 under the title ‘Modesty proposal’.
Data from the recently-released National Health and Family Survey (NFHS-5) confirms the hypothesis of a sizeable section of nutrition scholars. The number of Indians who eat non-vegetarian food has been increasing steadily. More than two-thirds of people in the 15-49 age group eat non-vegetarian food daily, weekly or occasionally — a steady rise compared to NHFS-4 when the figure stood at a little over 70 per cent people. The survey’s latest edition also shows that more people in the country eat meat at least once a week compared to 2015-16. The proportion of Indians who eat eggs too has gone up appreciably. The survey’s data on dietary practices, however, shows a distinct gender skew: The increase in the number of men eating non-vegetarian food is far more pronounced compared to women. All this has significant implications for planning on nutrition-related matters — it is especially salutary for policymakers who obstinately hold on to the stereotype of India being a country of vegetarians.
In India, food practices have been, for long, informed by complex rules of religion and caste. In recent times, these habits have become part of the country’s political discourses in ways that have bred acrimony between social groups and stoked violence against minorities. The myth of the vegetarian nation has also influenced policy matters such as serving eggs in the mid-day meal scheme for children attending government and government-aided schools. Barely a third of the states provide eggs to children under the scheme despite the Hyderabad-based National Institute of Nutrition — it works under the aegis of the Indian Council of Medical Research — certifying that eggs are loaded with more nutrients and easier to procure compared to alternatives such as milk and bananas.
In 2011, the National Sample Survey data revealed the declining protein intake of Indians. This was confirmed, in 2019, by the EAT-Lancet Commission Study on Sustainable Food Systems, which pointed out that Indians consume more simple carbohydrates than proteins as well as less complex carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables. Given that non-vegetarian diets are protein-rich, it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that restrictions on eating meat and eggs could increase the nutritional deficits of a section of the country’s population — a worrying proposition given India’s poor report card in repeated Global Hunger Index surveys. In fact, the gender disparities in the consumption of non-vegetarian food, highlighted by the NFHS-5, should make policymakers revisit the debates on reducing the protein deficit of the country’s women. Hanging on to facile stereotypes will do more harm than good.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on May 18, 2022 under the title ‘Meat of the matter’.
The Supreme Court has done well to instruct the Varanasi District Magistrate that the area in the Kashi Vishwanath temple-Gyanvapi mosque complex where a “Shivling” was found should be protected without impeding the right of Muslims to enter and worship. On Monday, a Varanasi court had ordered that the spot be sealed and that “only 20 Muslims should be allowed to pray at the mosque and they should not be allowed to perform wuzu (ablution)”. The SC’s directive has come in a plea filed by the Committee of Management of Anjuman Intezamia Masjid, Varanasi, challenging a videography survey of the Shringar Gauri Sthal in the complex ordered by the Varanasi court. The Committee has contended that the survey violates the provisions of the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act 1991.
The Places of Worship Act was legislated by Parliament at the height of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The BJP, which had 120 MPs and was the political face of the movement, opposed the Bill in the House. The Act “prohibits conversion of any place of worship” and seeks “to provide for the maintenance of the religious character of any place of worship as it existed on the 15th day of August, 1947, and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto”. It states that the religious character of a place of worship “shall continue to be the same as it existed” on August 15, 1947. The Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case was excluded from the ambit of the Act. Significantly, the Act covered all other sites to which Hindu groups had raised a claim, including in Mathura and Varanasi. A year later, on December 6, the Babri Masjid was destroyed by a mob, an action that the Supreme Court described as a criminal act in its 2019 order that gave the site where the mosque stood to the Hindu petitioners. In its order, the SC made a detailed reference to the Places of Worship Act, 1991. It said that “the State, has by enacting the law, enforced a constitutional commitment and operationalised its constitutional obligations to uphold the equality of all religions and secularism which is a part of the basic features of the Constitution”. The Court concluded that the Places of Worship Act “imposes a non-derogable obligation towards enforcing our commitment to secularism under the Indian Constitution”. And that the Act is a “a legislative instrument designed to protect the secular features of the Indian polity, which is one of the basic features of the Constitution”.
This will now be contested on the ground — a plea similar to Gyanvapi comes up in Mathura on Thursday. As per the Act, any attempt to alter the character of the Gyanvapi mosque is a violation of the letter and spirit of the law of the land. Of course, the BJP has the numbers to amend this Act. But such a move will be nothing short of a challenge to the post-1947 Indian nation-state, where a multitude and different religions have co-existed by respecting each other’s space and rights and embracing an identity defined by Constitutional values rather than claims made on behalf of faith or numerical strength. On Ayodhya, despite calls from within, the Government took a call to wait for the highest court to rule. What it does with the Places of Worship Act and how it responds to the current campaign being fought in courts but framed by majoritarian politics in terms of culture and faith, will shape how a democratic India looks at its history and its future. The stakes couldn’t be higher, all need to tread with caution — and the Constitution.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on May 18, 2022 under the title ‘Caution, Constitution’.
The global macroeconomic situation is showing signs of macro instability reflected in increasing debt, deficits and inflation — global debt has increased sharply during the pandemic, inflation is on the rise, and macroeconomic uncertainties have increased due to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. The World Economic Outlook, published by the IMF in April, expects global growth to be slower than the forecast made in January, with inflation on the rise.
Apart from the war, inflation today is the inevitable consequence of fiscal and monetary expansion that happened during the pandemic. If we consider, both the revenue foregone and additional expenditure during Covid (as provided by the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department), it was around 15 per cent of GDP for the advanced economies, while in emerging market economies and low-income developing countries it was around 6 and 2.5 per cent respectively. Among the G20 emerging markets, both direct and indirect fiscal support provided by governments varied between 15 and 1.9 per cent. Estimates for Brazil, Turkey, India and Indonesia were above 10 per cent of GDP (see table).
Globally, the total support comprising revenue foregone, expenditure stimulus and liquidity support was estimated to be $17,000 billion, of which government guarantees accounted for more than $4,000 billion — roughly one-fourth of the total — the downside fiscal risks of which cannot be ignored. If there is a large default, it can weaken the fiscal balance sheet in the medium term for items that are below the line at the moment.
In the last few weeks, central banks in many countries including India have raised interest rates to deal with rising inflation. This reflects that the monetary stance is gradually moving to inflation management. That certainly does not mean that central banks have given up supporting growth. It is about the shift of focus on policies to the one that is most relevant at the moment for the macroeconomy — inflation. Why has the management of inflation become so critical? Some key data on money supply can help provide us with a perspective.
What was the increase in money supply during the last two years to support governments to deal with Covid? Information is sketchy and no direct estimate of monetary financing of the deficits during the pandemic is available. However, a sense of it can be obtained from the limited data that is available from the World Development Indicators on monetary aggregates compiled from the International Financial Statistics of IMF. The growth of the central bank’s “claims on central government” provides some idea of the additional increase in money supply due to the government operation during Covid. Even if not a precise estimate, the data on “claims on central government” reflects an increase in money supply due to the central bank’s support to the government. It showed a sharp increase among major advanced economies during 2020. In the US, immediately after the global financial crisis in 2010, the growth of central bank’s support to the government was 0.4 per cent. In the year 2020, this support increased to 9 per cent. It was above 9 per cent in the UK, 10.5 per cent in Brazil and 6 per cent in China.
Third, both domestic and external debt stock increased sharply during the pandemic. The international debt statistics published by the IMF for 2022 show that the external debt stock to the export ratio for 123 low-and middle-income countries increased from 101 per cent in 2018 to 123 per cent in 2020. The export to debt service ratio for these countries increased from 14 per cent to 17 per cent during the same period. The share of public sector external debt in total external debt increased from 37 per cent to 39 per cent during this period. During the same period, the increase in South Asia’s external debt stock as a percentage of export increased from 110 to 137 per cent, and the increase in debt service to export ratio was from 11 to 16 per cent. For Sri Lanka, the increase was from 258 to 424 per cent with an increase in debt servicing cost to export ratio from 36 to 39 per cent. Among the South Asian countries India’s external debt stock to GDP ratio remained stable at around 20 per cent, with a marginal decline in the general government external debt stock share in total external debt stock from 25.75 per cent to 24.68 per cent.
Reduction of debt takes time, but management of inflation can’t wait. Options are complex. Going forward, the global economy needs coordinated policy for monetary tightening and fiscal sustainability. There is a need to start fiscal normalisation without creating adverse distributional consequences. For this, countries need to chart out a fiscal normalisation plan to ensure that it is not abrupt and responses are sequenced in a manner that helps bring the economy back on track, enhances fiscal resources for the government for public investment in the social and economic sector and create a framework for sector-specific differentiated responses for a full recovery.
Finally, the money spent by low income developing countries to deal with Covid was far less than the advanced and emerging market economies and most of this spending was on health and emergency response. Rising debt and inflation are only going to compound macro challenges for these countries. There is a need for a quick and efficient resolution of the challenges arising due to the elevated debt levels of low-income countries. One can hope for an equitable, fair and sustained recovery post-Covid only when there is greater international cooperation to ensure more resource flow to the poorer regions of the World.
This column first appeared in the print edition on May 18, 2022 under the title ‘The inflation spiral’. The writer is former director, NIPFP
From 750 students in 1922 to over 6 lakh students from across India in 2022, the University of Delhi (DU) has come a long way. Not only has the university evolved with the nation, but it has also played a crucial role in its evolution. With 90 colleges under its umbrella, DU has played an important role in framing the discourses that guide the nation’s growth. Since its inception, the university has cherished the democratic values of free speech and diversity. The atmosphere of free-spirited discussions and camaraderie makes DU a big draw for students across India. Over the years, it has become one of the most sought-after universities in the country.
It is rightly said that a nation is as strong as its institutions. This credo is dear to DU: The university continues to lend support to nation-building by nurturing the finest young minds. It echoes the values of the nation and is a microcosm of our vibrant society: It’s a “Mini Bharat” where students from all financial backgrounds and all regions of the country have always received a warm welcome.
DU also has an excellent gender ratio. While the university had just 82 girls in 1930, its constituent colleges now have 3,24,067 women students — more than 50 per cent of the total student population. The number of departments has increased from eight to 86 in the course of its 100-year journey. DU has the largest pool of seats to offer and its research facilities and infrastructure are among the best in India.
It wasn’t all hunky-dory from the start. In its initial years, the university shuffled between rented buildings. Additionally, DU witnessed intense competition from other colleges and universities. Post-Independence (and Partition), the university also faced the challenge of accommodating students from the then-West Punjab. Nevertheless, DU expanded and new colleges — including Hansraj College (1948), SGTB Khalsa College (1951), Deshbandhu College (1952), and Kirori Mal College (1954) — were started. Subsequently, in the 1960s, several new women’s colleges — Lakshmibai, Kamala Nehru, Gargi, and Janki Devi — were set up under the university.
In 1973, the university got a new South Campus, which became the hub of extraordinary life sciences research — including affordable HIV tests, and genome sequencing of rice, among others — that gave the university global recognition. In the last two decades of the previous century, the university added the Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, Shaheed Rajguru College of Applied Sciences and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College to its fold. DU’s School of Open Learning, established in 1962, provides an excellent opportunity to more than 1,50,000 students every year to enrol themselves in graduation/post-graduation courses while preparing for competitive exams or working on the side. Today, five DU colleges — Miranda House, Lady Shri Ram College, St Stephen’s, Hindu, and Shri Ram College of Commerce — rank amongst the top 10 in the central government’s National Institute Ranking Framework.
The university has a rich history of its students participating in the Indian freedom struggle. Revolutionary Chandra Shekhar Azad had found refuge in the students’ hostel of Ramjas College when the British had launched a manhunt to nab him. In 1942, DU students took an active part in the Quit India Movement. In fact, Mahatma Gandhi came to the university to seek the support of students. After Independence, evening classes were started in Ramjas College for students who had come from across the newly-chalked out borders. In 1975, when an Emergency was imposed over the country, former Union minister Arun Jaitley, who was then the Delhi University Students Union president, participated in the movement against the order. Along with several other student union leaders, he was also imprisoned. Students and teachers’ associations have never feared voicing their concerns at DU. The strong support for freedom of expression keeps the university thriving and reaffirms the idea of “unity in diversity” — a principle fundamental to India. DU caters to a significant number of students from the northeast region, who in turn bring their unique values and make the varsity more pluralistic. Similarly, students from the southern states add to the diversity of the institution. This assimilation of cultures bridges the gap between regions, unifies the country, and helps students get a cosmopolitan perspective.
In 100 years, DU has created invaluable intellectual, cultural and social capital for a modern nation. Its alumni have excelled in all walks of life — business, politics, films, and sports. As it enters its 101st year, the university has a lot to look forward to — from the introduction of the Central Universities Common Entrance Test to the implementation of the New Education Policy of 2020. In the coming years, the university will be offering solutions to global problems while continuing to contribute to nation-building. In the next 25 years when India completes 100 years of Independence and DU turns 125, the university could be amongst the top-ranking institutions in the world, proving the mettle of the Indian education system and the country’s intellectual might.
This column first appeared in the print edition on May 18, 2022 under the title ‘A Mini Bharat’. The writer was a student leader and is currently a faculty member at the University of Delhi and State President of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad
The Supreme Court’s seminal intervention in a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of section 124A of the Indian Penal Code is a watershed moment in the progressive expansion of human rights jurisprudence.
Rampant abuse of the archaic colonial law in recent times has infracted the citizens’ right to liberty and legal due process, compromising in the process, their right to reputation and dignity. Cartoonists, journalists, activists, intellectuals, students and politicians have suffered prolonged incarceration and oppressive criminal trials for their convictions and beliefs. More recently, the slapping of sedition charges against political opponents and others in Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have confirmed that the abuse of the sedition law is no longer an aberration. It has become a norm that has hollowed out the constitutional guarantee of fundamental rights and exposed individuals to the rigour of draconian laws unjustly invoked, outraging national sensitivities as never before.
In this contextual framework, the May 11 order of the Supreme Court is largely viewed as an act of judicial statesmanship. Seizing the opportunity provided by the government’s revised affidavit in court seeking time for revisiting the sedition provision, the court, while conceding the government’s request for deferring the hearing, issued its much acclaimed interim directions. These have effectively stayed the ongoing prosecutions under the challenged laws, granting liberty to those in custody for offences under Section 124A to apply for bail to the concerned courts. The court also indicated in no uncertain terms its expectation that the central and state governments will not invoke the impugned provision in the future, till after a final decision in the matter.
In what is seen as a first in judicial history, the Supreme Court has virtually rendered redundant the provision of a criminal law without expressly declaring it as unconstitutional. Its directions, although expressed on a “prima-facie” basis, are a clear pointer to what the court’s final decision could be, should the occasion arise. In an example of judicial statecraft, the court has shielded individuals against a harsh law without trenching on Parliament’s legislative remit or the executive’s command over policy decisions. Leaning decisively in favour of the Constitution’s libertarian conscience, the Ramana court has risen to the nation’s expectation as the constituted guardian of the constitutional principle. Navigating between the “Herculean” and “Sisyphean” conceptions of the judicial role, the court indicated its philosophical preference to “keep a libertarian thumb on the scales of justice”, aligning itself with the collective conscience and moral imagination of the nation. It has shown that the highest court is not immune to finer sensibilities and the “swellings of the heart” when freedom and dignity of individuals is in the balance. The bench of three distinguished judges presided over by the Chief Justice has validated the aphorism attributed to Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes that “judges can be weighty without being heavy”.
Since every judgment has a generative power and a “….directive force for future cases of the same or similar nature”, it is only to be expected that the apex court will ensure a purposive enforcement of its decisions that affirm the sacrosanctity of human rights, a duty repeatedly recognised in its judgments. (Baradakanta Misra, 1974; Nagaraj, 2006; Shayara Banu, 2017; Brajendra Singh, 2016, et al). Exercising plenary jurisdiction, the Supreme Court is expected to see through its suggestions/orders to the government, particularly when these concern the non-negotiable fundamental rights of citizens.
As with the sedition law, it can nudge the government to enact an anti-lynching humanitarian law as suggested by it (Tehseen Poonawala, 2018) and a comprehensive law against custodial torture, considering the proven inadequacy of the guidelines issued by it for its elimination (D K Basu, 1997).
Even as the nation pursues its quest for a truly libertarian and liberal democracy, the scourge of custodial torture continues unabated. A report by the National Campaign Against Torture has confirmed that 1,731 persons died in custody in 2019 alone. The absence of an anti-custodial torture law, a glaring gap in the architecture of the criminal justice system, is inexplicable considering the command of Article 21, recommendations of the Select Committee of Rajya Sabha (2010), the Law Commission of India (2017) and the Human Rights Commission and the judgments of the Supreme Court (Puttaswamy, 2017; Jeeja Ghosh, 2016; and Shabnam, 2015).
It is expected likewise from the court to intervene suitably and read down the UAPA and other criminal laws that have been repeatedly misused to trample upon the civil liberties and rights of the people. Instances of their misuse are etched indelibly in the conscience of the nation. As an organ of the state, the Supreme Court’s suggestive jurisdiction is clearly in accord with its declared law (Nagaraj, 2006) that the state (of which the court is an integral constituent), is under a duty not only to protect individual rights but is also obliged to facilitate the same.
This is indeed the moment to seize, as the government reviews the nation’s legal structures. The initiatives suggested above are in aid of democracy anchored in the inviolability of human rights and would enhance India’s soft power in our engagement with the international community. The court-inspired initiatives would also validate the nation’s preeminent role in the shaping of a new world order.
Governments for their part must know that they can stand only when founded upon liberty and justice. For the present, the prime minister has done well in deciding to revisit a law that is anathema in a free country. Hopefully, the nation will be rid of the last vestiges of colonialism that defy the will of the Age, the promise of our national charter and are at best a painful reminder of the injustices inflicted on our people.
This column first appeared in the print edition on May 18, 2022 under the title ‘Act of judicial statesmanship’. The writer is a former Union law minister
In sport, tomorrow always comes. And it brings both promises and pressures of a brand new title to fight for. India’s victorious Thomas Cup team will be feted, hailed and will go down in the pages of history as path-breakers. But even these pages must turn, for tomorrow always comes. While the youngsters soak in the adulation, India’s two watch-towers — Prakash Padukone and Pullela Gopichand — have immediately called for building more turrets to bolster India’s badminton citadel.
Padukone waited 21 years for his All-England to find an encore, and Gopichand continues to wonder which of the women or men can actually forge ahead and trap down that one. The duo never had the wealth of depth surrounding them to contest for the Thomas Cup at times when Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea and China throbbed with talent. But the two guiding lights have patiently waited through the years for that next big headline to light up the shuttle world. As coaches running successful academies and guiding young talent — some of whom successfully won the world team event on Sunday — the two are wisely calling for urgency to step up efforts to capitalise on this triumph.
Indian hockey waited 41 years for the Olympic medal in 2021. Grand Slam doubles wins have dried up since Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Rohan Bopanna and Sania Mirza Malik began wrapping up their careers. Indian shooting has gone two Olympic Games without a medal. Vijender Singh’s bronze from Beijing is still looking for an upgrade. Viswanathan Anand won one World Championship after another, but the second rung wasn’t exactly a step behind.
Lovlina Borgohain did step up at Tokyo to follow in MC Mary Kom’s high-top boxing boots and Mirabai Chanu finally revived weightlifting 22 years after Karnam Malleswari. But Sania Mirza, Dipa Karmakar and Sakshi Malik are yet to find equally adept successors. PV Sindhu followed Saina Nehwal alright and went a step better at most events, but both Padukone and Gopichand have spoken of the sparse talent waiting to take up the women’s singles baton.
In men’s badminton, young Priyanshu Rajawat was waiting, swaying in front, to rush out from the wings as the newly minted Thomas Cup champions lined up to hit the winners’ podium. And there is Ravi Kumar, the tall find of the trials, Kiran George and Mithun Manjunath besides young Cup holders Lakshya Sen and Satwik-Chirag, who will take it upon themselves to defend the Thomas Cup in two years. Still, it merits restating that it was Kidambi Srikanth and HS Prannoy using the cumulative experience of their careers to propel the Indians towards the Cup. In two years, China and Malaysia who fielded young rookie squads at Bangkok will be in the advanced stages of their regeneration and become stronger contenders.
Nothing firms up resolve like stinging losses. And it was India dishing them out this time, with Prannoy, Srikanth, Satwik and Chirag channelling their disappointments from defeats to victory. Time never stops, and 2024 will be a stiff title defence — something that Padukone and Gopichand have focused the dizzily-celebrating country’s attention towards.
When H S Prannoy had the brainwave two months ago that India’s Thomas Cup squad should start seriously training their focus on the tournament in Thailand, and he started stringing feathers for the colourful dream-catcher, his optimism was based on results on the circuit. Srikanth and Sen had medalled at the World’s, with Sen making the All-England final. Satwik and Chirag were ripe for the ambushing of badminton’s superpowers, and also hurting from their narrow losses of the last few months.
But this was the amalgamation of a decade-long journey where these men plugged away at the inconsistencies in their games, effected lakhs of repetitions of that net dribble, chiselled the jump smash angle to get it just right in that one moment when it would be belted down to the floor. Indians watched a week of success. The badminton fraternity will have to start preparing for those years of silent training that will not be streamed live or trend on social media. Doubles coach Mathias Boe, just hours after the triumph, spoke of how India needs to quickly shed the perennial underdog tag and embrace the favourites one. The Thomas Cup was just the start, a giddy, grinning one, but now tomorrow will come.
This column first appeared in the print edition on May 18, 2022 under the title ‘The challenge of tomorrow’. Write to the author at shivani.naik@expressindia.com
What was being searched for (again) since the violent slogan “Ayodhya to jhanki hai, Kashi Mathura baki hai” (Ayodhya is a trailer, Varanasi and Mathura are yet to come) was exclaimed, has been found. No, not the Shivling that the petitioners of the lawsuit filed in a Varanasi civil court allege to have found in the wuzu khana of the Gyanvapi Mosque. What has been found, or rather, created, is a rupture in the wall that separates the modern constitutional democracy of India from its ancient and medieval polity — the polity characterised by expansionist warfare and legitimised by the divine instead of the values of modernity.
After the blot on our modern history called the demolition of Babri Masjid, what we see unfolding in Varanasi is another legitimisation of an apparent conflict in architectural history which, if we have not already learnt, is an exercise in violent majoritarianism. The courts that entertained the matter and then went ahead in much haste to launch an investigation into what was the building’s “true nature” are to be blamed. Had wiser discretion prevailed, the petition would not have been entertained in the first place. The question should not have been asked.
Architecture is one of the most commonly evident imprints that a civilisation leaves. While manuscripts and fragile objects remain largely inaccessible to the people — confined to the walls of museums and restoration laboratories, architecture is out for everyone to experience. People use historic buildings as inhabited spaces and visit historic sites for heritage tourism. In both cases, architecture is loaded with histories of construction, destruction, appropriation, building, re-building, and more re-building. Every building around us is a physical imprint of the times that it has lived through. It is a physical manifestation — a record — of layers of histories. And a lot of these histories are histories of conflict — a truth that cannot be escaped. To put it simply, the history of architecture is the history of politics also.
Earlier this month, the Varanasi court ordered a video survey of the Gyanvapi Mosque. The implied intention was to find out whether the fundamental claim of the petitioners that the mosque has been built by destroying or appropriating a temple holds water. While it appears fair prima facie, we — the courts, the prime time shows and the people in general — are debating the wrong question. This is not a question of secularism or that of minority rights, the question is, how will the “true nature” of our conflicted architectural sites be defined, and who has the power to define it. Reading architecture with political philosophy tells us that that depends on what values we adopt in state formation.
Historically, rulers derived legitimacy primarily in two ways. In the case of intra-state matters, the legitimacy for the king to rule came from God in the Abrahamic world and from mythology in the Pagan world. In the case of inter-state matters, kings asserted themselves through brute force and violence. The values of pre-modern state formation were divine/mythological and violent/expansionist. It was against these values that those rulers judged the function of architectural sites. The one who possessed the building by conquering the city or by becoming the king through clerical legitimacy decided what a mosque, temple or palace will be appropriated into or whether it will be allowed to exist at all. Since the French Revolution, the struggle of politics has been to find an earthly legitimacy to rule – one free from divinity, unbound to historical practices, and rejecting of violence. This has generated a long history of political thought and modern states were created on the values of modern morality – held by citizens to be self-evident truths, as proclaimed in the American Declaration of Independence.
At this juncture, it is imperative to look at The Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act, 1991. Much has been written about the legality of the ongoing conflict vis-à-vis this Act. I want to shine a light on an otherwise ignored aspect of this legislation. The Act prohibited the conversion of any place of worship from its religious character as that character existed on the 15th of August, 1947. Basically, the Act said that if a site was a temple on August 15, 1947, it shall remain a temple and so on for all religious sites. We must ask ourselves: Why did an Act passed in 1991, set the date to define the status quo of religious sites to the date of India’s independence? The reason is quite profound, and for a multi-cultural and diverse society such as India, it provides a resolution to the debate around conflicted architecture.
The Act does so in the spirit of a modern nation-state. It means that since we resolved to become a modern nation on August 15, 1947, and realised it on January 26, 1950, we shall cut our ties with the systems of politics that defined our past. On the 15th of August 1947, we resolved to create a break from the past and redefine our values of political legitimacy. From that day onwards, India was to be defined by, and courts were to judge conflicts using the values of a modern state enshrined in the constitution. Not against the values of the systems of politics or mythology that existed before.
This also means that we define the “true nature” of our architectural sites against the values of modernity and not those of mythology or medieval warfare. The philosophical and practical resolution to that, as understood in the Act, is top: not entertain mythological claims to historical sites and to not investigate their archaeology for claims of possession. By ordering a survey of the Gyanvapi Mosque, the courts have done exactly the opposite.
By conducting such investigations into religious sites, the courts have, like they did in the case of Babri Masjid, legitimised the values of an anti-modern polity. They have acted against the values that they are supposed to uphold. Courts cannot be acting on claims of mythology or those of medieval capture. They must leave buildings for what they are – complex sediments of history that we decided to resolve by proclaiming a break from the past and giving ourselves modern values.
When we debate whether Gyanvapi Mosque was a temple at some point or not, and the courts order investigations into finding that out, we are all debating the wrong question. Despite precedents that speak otherwise, the higher courts must exclaim the simple yet profound answer to this question – maintain the status quo, don’t define the architecture of today by an arbitrarily chosen slice of its history. Basically, reject such petitions.
This column first appeared in the print edition on May 18, 2022 under the title ‘We ask the wrong question’. Zuberi is an independent scholar and researcher of Architecture and City Studies
An update of The Lancet Commission on pollution and health’s analysis from 2015 finds that despite efforts against air pollution, India still had the world’s largest estimated number of deaths related to it in 2019. The toll from modern pollution has increased even while policy efforts have helped bring down death rates from traditional pollution. But a salient point is that though the death rate due to traditional pollution in India is now less than half that in 2000, the burning of biomass remains the single largest cause of air pollution deaths in the country.
As per the 2001 Census over 70% of all households in India used traditional solid fuels, primarily firewood and cow dung. Since then, as the Council of Energy, Environment, and Water study released in September 2021 underlines, great strides have been made in expanding clean cooking options, particularly through the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana – GOI distributed more than 80 million LPG connections among socioeconomically poorer households between 2016 and 2019; consequently the use of LPG as the primary cooking fuel increased from 28.5% cent in 2011 to 71% in 2020.
Read also: With 23 ‘poor’ days, this April also more polluted than last
However, the CEEW study also found that high refill prices still kept as many as 38% of Indian homes (mainly rural) stacking LPG with solid fuels. And steeper price hikes since then are pushing more people back to options like firewood. In summary, the Lancet study is a stark reminder about the centrality of affordable and clean cooking energy to Indians’ air and health. Coal combustion and crop burning follow the burning of biomass as the leading causes of air pollution deaths in India. The lesson from the fight against the latter for the former is that its sustainability is as hard and necessary as finding the solution in the first place.
In a significant and welcome verdict today, the Supreme Court ordered the release of AG Perarivalan, one of the convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The remission of his life sentence among others had been sought by the state of Tamil Nadu in 2016, then in 2018, and again in 2021.
The bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and BR Gavai limited itself to the reference of the 2018 decision of the Tamil Nadu cabinet made by the Governor to the President. The key takeaway of the verdict is that a state government has the authority to advise the Governor on remission pleas and he need not wait for the President’s response to take a decision on these. What further follows is that there should not be inordinate delays at Governors’ end in deciding such matters.
Also read: SC orders release of convict AG Perarivalan
Perarivalan’s case is particularly poignant not only because he has spent 31 years behind bars for the crime of buying two nine-volt batteries for LTTE when he was 19 years old but also because in 2017 former CBI officer V Thiagarajan revealed to SC that the agency had omitted to record in his confession the part where Perarivalan had said he had “absolutely no idea” for what purpose the above batteries would be used.
The Supreme Court invoked Article 142 of the Constitution, which provides it special and extraordinary power to do “complete justice”, to set Perarivalan free, paving the way for other convicts to also reach freedom. But it should now be by way of the Governor’s office. That would be the swifter, humane and just route.
The Supreme Court’s interim order on Gyanvapi mosque – removing restrictions on Muslims offering namaz but protecting the spot where a shivling was said to have been found – seems intended to make neither side too unhappy. But the fundamental question for SC, which the Varanasi lower court sidestepped, is whether the Places of Worship Act, 1991, should be upheld. And the answer must be an unequivocal ‘yes’. Anything else will burst a dam that is already being battered – following the Varanasi court ruling there are now demands on surveying and examining the religious character of Mathura’s Shahi Idgah Masjid and a fast-growing list of monuments including Taj Mahal, Qutub Minar, and Jamia Masjid at Srirangapatna in Karnataka. Nothing about this will end well.
The 1991 Act prohibits conversion of religious places and maintains their “religious character” as it existed on August 15, 1947. The law had solely exempted the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title dispute, which was of pre-1947 vintage. All other suits filed after Independence are supposed to abate and no court should entertain them. Even while granting the disputed Ayodhya land to Hindu petitioners, SC was all praise for the Places of Worship Act. It had said the law “addresses itself to the State as much as to every citizen” and that its norms “bind those who govern the affairs of the nation at every level”.
The law’s cut-off date of August 15, 1947 isn’t incidental. Before this period India wasn’t a nation-state in modern terms but a geographical area that saw many invasions and many centres of power and therefore many conflicts, until it became a colony of a ruthless imperialist power. The history isn’t pretty. But a modern nation-state, especially a diverse democracy that now aspires to be a major global economic power, shouldn’t expend its energy on relitigating history. The country already confronts a number of communal flashpoints. Adding a mosque-was-temple dimension to it can have dangerous consequences.
That’s why SC must draw a line while giving its Gyanvapi ruling. Any concession, however small, will be an invitation for other demands, and at some point, disputes are likely to move from courts to streets, and we know what that can mean. SC must also in no uncertain terms tell lower courts that they must follow the 1991 Act rigorously while hearing any further petitions and that no judicial transgression on this will be tolerated. That’s the only way to end what should never have begun.
On Monday, the price of wheat in the futures market in Chicago rose 6% in response to India’s decision on May 13 to prohibit incremental export of wheat. New contracts have to be through the government-to-government route. India’s original wheat export target in 2022-23, about 12 million tonnes, is unlikely to have placed it among the world’s top five exporters. Yet global supply is so tight that the impact on prices was immediate. It also led to expressions of disquiet by representatives of the German and US governments.
The aim of the export restriction is to rein in domestic wheat prices – the cereal’s price rose by an annual 10.7% in April in wholesale markets. There can be no disagreement with GoI’s underlying aim. But recourse to an export restriction is a suboptimal choice. Wheat inflation is being mainly driven by a market expectation that the rabi harvest will be lower than what GoI announced. To illustrate, consider the price trend in the wholesale market before and after the export shutdown. GoI data shows that the national average wholesale price on May 12, the day before the announcement, was Rs 2,591/quintal. Two days later, it fell 4.6% to Rs 2,483/quintal. However, by yesterday, it climbed back to Rs 2,583/quintal.
Moreover, an export restriction is an implicit tax on wheat farmers. Instead of using such a distortionary policy measure, which is inimical to GoI’s reform agenda in agriculture, fiscal measures should have been used to enhance domestic supply. GoI could have topped up the wheat MSP of Rs 2,015/quintal to boost its procurement and put itself in a powerful position to influence the domestic price trend. This is one occasion when a higher MSP would have been economically rational. GoI’s decision has only led to anxious allies and frustrated farmers. The export ban should be reversed.
Inflation based on the wholesale price index (WPI) rose to 15.08% in April from 14.55% in March, pushed up by a 3.4% sequential rise in food prices, 2.8% in fuel and 1.7% in manufacturing. This is the highest rate of inflation recorded since 2013. The acceleration comes on a high base of 10.47% in the same month a year ago. Annual fuel inflation shot up to 38.66%, manufacturing 10.85% and food 8.35%. Core inflation, minus volatile food and fuel prices, climbed to a four-month high of 11.1%.
At these levels of inflation, RBI can only quickly reverse its 2020 repo rate cuts. It announced a 40-basis-point (bps) hike after an unscheduled monetary policy review earlier this month. There is still a 75 bps reversal due to reach the pre-pandemic policy rate, and the market is readying for a front-loaded upcycle. Expectations are of a 300 bps increase in interest rates from their pandemic lows by next March. This would broadly be in line with the scale and pace of interest rate increases central bankers in advanced and other major emerging economies are likely to undertake.
Growth sacrificed in the effort to stabilise prices will be considerable. In its April assessment, RBI had shaved half-a-percentage point off its February GDP growth projection to 7.2%. This was at a time it did not see reason to begin its rate-hiking cycle. That projection also incorporated a low base effect in the first quarter and predicted GDP growth of around 4% in the second half of 2022-23. Significant downward revision from this point could affect the fiscal correction attempted in the budget. Elevated interest rates will have a bearing on GoI's borrowing programme that is at the centre of its efforts to pull the economy out of the trough.
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Multiple heatwave events and temperatures touching 48-49° C periodically means that March and April 2022 have been the hottest in 122 years. Climate change, induced by increased man-made greenhouse gas emissions, is a critical driver of rising extreme heat. While large parts of the country experienced scorching temperatures, in the east, higher-than-normal temperatures were accompanied by cyclones, floods and landslides. The periodicity, intensity and spread of extreme weather events have increased conspicuously. It is in this climate-constrained context that India will have to grow its economy. Dealing with climate change and its impacts will require more than substitution fixes. It will require a radical transformation of the way economies grow and develop.
There are no easy fixes. It is necessary to adapt to higher temperatures, longer heatwave events as well as reduce and avoid runaway rise in emissions. This requires better systems focused on minimising resource waste through increased circularity and reduced stress on power systems. Rather than relying on air-conditioners, there must be plans to build so as to reduce cooling demands, and improve energy and material efficiency. Habitations must incorporate elements to deal with heat, such as cool roofs, more green patches, improved air flow, as well as affordable, accessible and reliable integrated mass public transport that would aggregate energy requirements. Climate change must inform the entire economy.
The socioeconomic cost is substantial. Rising heat could lead to a loss of 2.5-4.5% of GDP annually. The deleterious impact on extreme heat on agricultural productivity is evident - 10-15% of the wheat crop was lost this season to the recent heatwaves. Rising food inflation, as a result of this loss, will impact India's economy. Sustained high temperatures make it difficult to work, impacting productivity. India can no longer afford to ignore climate change as a defining issue while designing policy. Even though it's a global problem, it is we in the subcontinent who are suffering the consequences disproportionately.
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The Supreme Court (SC)’s decision to free AG Perarivalan, one of the life-term convicts in the 1991 Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, is a stern reminder to the president and governors that the constitutional scheme binds them to the aid and advice of the elected government in the exercise of their powers. Releasing Perarivalan after 31 years of incarceration, the top court was emphatic that the will of an elected government is supreme in matters enumerated under the State List, which include, among others, remission and premature release of a convict.
In holding so, the SC referred to a Constitution bench judgment from 1980, which held that the president is symbolic, the central government is the reality; the governor is the formal head and sole repository of the executive power, but is incapable of acting on those powers except on, and according to, the advice of his council of ministers. Thus, the court ruled, the Tamil Nadu governor’s action of consulting the President despite the state government’s mandate in favour of the early release of Mr Perarivalan lacked constitutional backing. In its verdict, the court also drew attention to the “lakshman rekha” (inviolable line) of powers between the Centre and states, asserting that no express authority was conferred on the central government when a prosecution is carried out under the Indian Penal Code, and not under any other law such as the National Investigation Agency (NIA) Act or the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which are prosecuted exclusively by central investigation agencies.
“Non-exercise of power or inextricable delay in exercise of power” by a constitutional functionary further invited the censure of the top court, which reiterated that inordinate delays in taking a call on a prisoner’s plea make the matters amenable to judicial review because there is a person on the other side waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel. Keeping the individual at the core of its decision-making, the SC underlined that every person, including a prisoner, is entitled to due process and when constitutional liberties are imperilled, judges cannot be non-aligned.
It has now been nearly 40 days since India’s booster drive was thrown open to all adults. Third shots can be taken by those adults who completed nine months, or 39 weeks, after receiving the second dose. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that the road to achieving full booster coverage is going to be very different from the regular inoculation drive. According to health ministry data, till Wednesday, of the at least 126 million adults eligible for the third shot of the vaccine (this cohort of people received their second shots 39 weeks prior), only 31.4 million, or 25%, were boosted.
The highest booster coverage is among front-line and health care workers, where nearly two out of every three (66.6% and 62.2% respectively) eligible persons received their third shot. Among the elderly, 40.4% received their third shot. To be sure, these groups were deemed to be at the highest risk, and were thus the first cohort to be made eligible when the booster campaign was started on January 10.
But for the remaining, the numbers don’t look flattering. Only 2.7% of all eligible people between the age of 18 years and 45 years have been boosted, while this number is 2.2% for those between the age of 45 years and 60 years. A massive coverage gap between these population groups points to an area that needs focus from the government; the fact that people have to pay for these shots in most states could be one deterrent. The biggest lesson from India’s Omicron wave was that as long as people are sufficiently protected by vaccines, fatalities as well as disruptions to normal life can be contained. But a low turnout for booster shots may just be leaving an opening for possible future waves – one that must be addressed before it is too late.
Public opinion is the currency of democracy, and, therefore, vested interests cannot be allowed to hijack public opinion through the organised dissemination of misinformation. While this seems obvious, there is a morass of crosstalk and obfuscation on this issue.
The Future of India Foundation’s report, Politics of Disinformation, seeks to make two points: Disinformation is a political problem, and any way forward must be located within the bipartisan democratic political process. An attempt to seek resolution within a technocratic or solely government framework will not just be ineffective but also lack democratic legitimacy.
Second, the content moderation-driven approach to disinformation by all major social media platforms is a red herring designed to distract from the far larger problem of amplified distribution of disinformation as part of business models. Clarity and agreement on these two precepts provide a framework for the future.
Two recommendations — transparency and regulation — seek to bring governance of speech within the ambit of the democratic process. One of the biggest hurdles in being able to curb misinformation and understand its impact on our society and polity is the lack of transparency by social media platforms.
Even when platforms have disclosed certain kinds of information, the data is often not presented in a manner that facilitates easy analysis. It is important, therefore, to bring a comprehensive transparency law to compel relevant disclosures by platforms to facilitate action by a wider group of stakeholders. Such a law should include safeguards for user privacy since platforms are a repository of the private information of citizens. Legislative initiatives, in the United States and Europe, seek to address these issues. However, India must enact a comprehensive transparency law to ensure parity in India. Social media platforms are increasingly becoming the primary ground for public discourse. The status quo, where a handful of individuals heading technology companies have inordinate control over this discourse, lacks transparency and democratic legitimacy.
Moreover, this approach is inefficient: Platforms have been unable to evolve a coherent framework to stop misinformation and have instead responded erratically to events and public pressure. The absence of a uniform baseline approach, enforcement, and accountability vitiated the information ecosystem. External regulation is, thus, desirable.
However, bringing governance of speech under State purview is fraught with risks to free speech. It is, thus, proposed to constitute a regulator (answerable to Parliament and not the executive) with statutory powers to lay out broad processes for governance of speech, set transparency standards and audit platforms for compliance; and advisory powers to develop perspective on key misinformation themes especially those with public policy implications. Such a model will increase democratic contest by moving contested speech issues into the political sphere and facilitate transparency of powerful technology platforms.
Structural reforms are also required in platform design and treatment. Two issues are notable. First, blanket immunity for platforms as “intermediaries” no longer makes sense since platforms are far more interventionist with user content. Therefore, platform accountability should be linked to their distribution model. In this regime, platforms would either adopt a hands-off approach to content and constrain distribution to organic reach (chronological feed); or exercise editorial choice and take responsibility for amplified content. Further, platforms must be compelled to default to a chronological feed, allowing users to make an informed choice to opt-in for a curated feed. Also, digital literacy as a means to reduce misinformation works only if done at scale. Social media platforms must increase digital literacy initiatives with a target for outreach linked to the user base.
Finally, platforms must recognise the impact their products are having in India and the global South. This means prioritising investments and capacity commensurate to their impact instead of revenue and supporting transparency and knowledge sharing initiatives here on a par with the West. Similarly, India has primarily focused on controlling social media platforms through legalistic instruments and threats of criminal liabilities. Instead, it should locate its regulatory efforts in the broader democratic political process and by bringing about a comprehensive transparency law to force meaningful disclosures by platforms to enable a broader community of informed stakeholders.
Ruchi Gupta is executive director, Future of India Foundation. This article is based on the Foundation’s report, “Politics of Disinformation”
The views expressed are personal
A few hours before Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi landed at Lumbini, Nepal, on the occasion of Buddha Purnima, Nepal’s aviation sector made history. Kuwaiti airline Jazeera flight number J9545 landed at the newly-built Gautam Buddha Airport in Bhairahawa, the second international airport in Nepal, 74 years after the first aircraft landed in Kathmandu. The flight, however, took a circuitous route after going over Indian airspace close to Gorakhpur. Although Bhairahawa is just across the border from Gorakhpur, the flight had to go further east to enter Nepal’s airspace, before doing a U-turn and flying back to Bhairahawa.
The reason for this curious passage is that India is yet to open new entry routes for aircraft to enter Nepal, despite a 2014 joint statement issued on the occasion of Modi’s first visit to Nepal, which stated that the authorities concerned would meet and resolve Nepal’s demands for three additional air entry routes within six months. Almost a decade later, the issue is unaddressed.
Questions were also asked about why the PM was taking a chopper directly to Lumbini instead of landing at the newly-built airport (which is an hour away from Lumbini at most). While the Indian foreign secretary suggested it was because of reasons of security, that the Bhairahawa airport was built by a Chinese firm, albeit financed by the Asian Development Bank, has been cited as a possible concern. To the Nepali observer, such insecurities seem unreasonable, especially since bilateral trade between India and China has risen despite the 2020 Galwan violence, and several Chinese infrastructure companies such as heavy-equipment manufacturers Sany and Liugong have set up plants in India.
Nonetheless, Modi’s fifth visit to Nepal expands upon bilateral economic and cultural engagements after a period of frost. Relations seem to be back on track after the events of 2015 and Nepal’s new political map. Modi’s Lumbini speech built on the shared religious heritage he has highlighted since his visit to Janakpur, Sita’s birthplace, in 2018. He is also the first Indian PM to visit two Nepali border towns close to India — both religious spots. The open India-Nepal border, unique as it may be, remains the foundational pillar of the relationship, but one only needs to cross it to understand the challenges that exist on both sides.
The two countries signed six Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) during the visit, including one to build a 695 MW hydro project on the Arun river as a joint venture, the second such venture on the river by India. Further, MoUs will expand on India’s cultural and educational outreach, such as an agreement to initiate a joint Master’s degree programme between Kathmandu University and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Delhi has rightly focused on furthering economic connectivity with Kathmandu in this period of thaw, especially with federal and provincial elections slated later this year in Nepal. Local election trends suggest a political churn may be underway in the country, and India would do well not to be distracted and build on the current bilateral framework while working towards a resolution of outstanding issues.
For, as with any relationship, trust is paramount, and especially more so in Nepal-India ties that extend beyond generic diplomacy. As much as Kathmandu must show that Delhi can trust it to protect its interests, Delhi must also be cognisant of Nepal’s aspirations. For example, the long-pending demand for new air routes has come to be associated with divergent priorities in bilateral ties in Kathmandu.
Similarly, while the Kalapani border dispute, as the foreign secretary rightly said, will have to be addressed under bilateral mechanisms without politicising the issue, Nepali observers have also long been dissatisfied with the lack of progress on the Eminent Persons’ Group report, which was tasked with reviewing various agreements and treaties, including the 1950 Nepal-India Friendship Treaty.
India’s push towards expanding connectivity is bearing fruit. There has been new energy (pardon the pun) in the hydropower sector, with India recently permitting the export of an additional 360 MW of electricity from Nepal and new cross-border transmission lines in the pipeline. With several new hydro projects slated to generate more power than Nepal can consume within the next few years, the Nepalis are, however, concerned about its decision to not buy power from projects built by Chinese firms. Slowly but steadily, cross-border railway projects are also gathering steam.
Delhi can similarly benefit from the opportunities that have arisen from the lack of progress on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects in Nepal. China replaced India as the highest source of foreign investments in recent years, but given the longstanding ties, this is another possible area where India can build upon.
The Lumbini visit, combined with Nepal PM Sher Bahadur Deuba’s April visit, has laid the ground for deepening bilateral ties beyond the political arena. The Buddhist Circuit, as imagined by India, must take Lumbini into consideration since Buddha’s birthplace is a quintessential part of the pilgrimage.
The agreement in principle to establish sister-city ties between Lumbini and Kushinagar, where the Buddha achieved parinirvana, is a step towards this. The PM once again spoke in Nepali in Lumbini, but the relationship now demands actions as much as words. As unique as bilateral ties are, the two countries must move forward from here.
Amish Raj Mulmi is the author of All Roads Lead North: Nepal’s Turn to China
The views expressed are personal
Washington: The United States (US) is in the middle of confronting what President Joe Biden, on Tuesday, called “terrorism, domestic terrorism”.
In Buffalo in New York State, on Saturday, an 18-year old White man, Payton S Gendron, drove 200 miles from his home to a grocery store. He had already extensively surveyed the store, which was a hub for the Black community in the neighbourhood. Wearing a body armour, he took out an assault weapon, shot 13 people (of whom 11 were Black) and live-streamed it. Ten died.
The horrific killings have sparked a debate in the US on the ideological framework, political discourse, legal architecture and technologies that made this hate crime — and a series of such hate crimes in recent years — possible.
First, the ideology.
Gendron was inspired by what has come to be known as “Great Replacement Theory”. Originally drawn from the writings of a French far-Right conspiracy theorist, Renaud Camus, in the context of Europe, the theory — now embraced by the American far-Right — basically suggests that an elite, through permissive policies and as a part of a political design, is enabling widespread immigration to replace “native Americans” — with the explicit aim of disenfranchising Whites and reducing their political power. Immigrants, in this view, constitute a deliberately created vote-bank and must be expelled or eliminated.
As political theorist Pratap Bhanu Mehta put it in a recent talk in Washington DC, the obsession with demographics often constitutes the core of such majoritarian identity projects. Or as scholar Kathleen Belew said in a recent piece in the New York Times, “the violent defence of whiteness”, is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory.
After January 6 — when White supremacists, along with others, in response to Donald Trump’s call against the electoral result, stormed the US Capitol — the new US administration woke up to the threat, and the fact that the internal terror threat was potentially more significant now than the external terror threat.
In June 2021, the Biden administration released a National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism which explicitly stated that the terrorism threat today emerged from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, “whose racial, ethnic or religious hatred” led them towards violence. “These actors have different motivations, but many focus their violence towards the same segment or segments of the American community, whether persons of color, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, other religious minorities, women and girls, LGBTQI + individuals, or others.” The US intelligence community noted that this violence can be explicit at times; it could also be less explicit at other times, rooted in ideologies based on the “superiority of the white race” that called for violence in furtherance of perverse and abhorrent notions of racial “purity” or “cleansing”.
Now add the politics to it.
As Republicans have shifted further and further Right in recent years — to the point of becoming unrecognisable to those who believe in old-fashioned conservatism, but not bigotry — they have been driven by a fear of the changing electoral map. Instead of recognising the diversity that has been truly at the heart of America’s modern political project and crafting plural multiracial, multiethnic coalitions, the Grand Old Party (GOP) has chosen to tap into White insecurities; stoke it; and then use it as instrument of political and electoral mobilisation. This has meant the constant reproduction of ideas along the lines of Great Replacement Theory, where the majority is consistently shown as under threat and as the victim, either on Fox News or in direct political interventions by senior Republican leaders. The fringe has become mainstream.
As Republican Congresswoman and a rare dissenter in the party, Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney (who is a moderate by today’s Republican standards), put it:
But whether leaders will do so is open to question, for these views appear to be gaining popular traction. A recent AP-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research poll found that 32% adult Americans believed that a group of people was trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gain; 29% also said that an increase in immigration was leading to native-born Americans “losing economic, political, and cultural influence”. “These two key measures tap into the core arguments of Replacement Theory… the study indicates about one in five (17%) adults agree with both of these central tenets.”
Now mix the ideological framework and the politically enabling climate with technology that makes the dissemination of these views, as well as the crafting of mass killings as a public spectacle, possible.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Gendron had grown concerned about “declining White birth rates” and the “genocide of European people” on 4chan, an anonymous online message board. He assembled a to-do list on Discord, another messaging platform. He discussed weapons on Reddit. He broadcast his attack on Twitch, a live-streaming service. And he drew direct inspiration from who from Brenton Tarrant’s mosque attack in New Zealand’s Christchurch in 2019 which left 51 people dead which he found on 4chan during the pandemic. In a 180-page document that the Post accessed, Grendron wrote, “Brenton started my real research into the problems with immigration and foreigners in our White lands, without his live-stream I would likely have no idea about the real problems the West is facing.”
This digital universe, operating on a laizzes-faire basis, is widely recognised as contributing to radicalisation. In its 2021 document to combat domestic terrorism, the American intelligence community said that widespread availability of domestic terrorism recruitment material online was a “national security threat” whose frontlines were “overwhelmingly private sector online platforms”. But it recognised that the supply of this material will persist — on platforms that encourage or condone such messages as well as on end-to-end encrypted platforms. Biden too, in his remarks in Buffalo on Tuesday, referred to the role played by the Internet, appealing for action. “You can't prevent people from being radicalised to violence, but we can address the relentless exploitation of the Internet to recruit and mobilise terrorism.“
The final ingredient in this mix is unique to the US and, therefore, explains why an ideology rooted in racism, politics of fear and xenophobia, and technology that allows for the spread of these ideas eventually translates into violence — gun laws, or, to put it more accurately, the absence of those laws.
With the Second Amendment a no-go area in American politics, the debate is not about whether American citizens should be allowed to own guns — both parties agree they should. The debate is about the background checks and the controls to be put in place to prevent people who should not have a gun from owning one. Republicans resist any attempt at moderation, Democrats often lack the numbers to introduce these checks.
New York governor Kathy Hochul got to the heart of this debate on Tuesday, saying, “You could have that hate in your heart, and you can sit in your house and foment these evil thoughts, but you can’t act on it — unless you have a weapon”.
While Biden pushed back hard against the fusion of White supremacism and domestic terrorism, the outlook is grim. The Great Replacement Theory is only set to get more attention. Republicans haven’t shown any indication that they will return to the centre-Right of the political spectrum from the far-Right violent streak they are increasingly embracing. Online platforms continue to be the home of hate. And there is no possibility of strong moves on gun control in the US Congress. There are more Gendrons out there preparing to mount the next attack.
The views expressed are personal
How do wars end? In victory or defeat, you would say. In the olden days, we knew what that meant: Capture or the death of the rival king or emperor either on the field or his citadel.
But what does victory or defeat mean today? With nations developing strong ethnic, cultural, and political identities, an individual’s elimination, even that of the head of government, is not enough. For a victory, the defeat of a State’s armies on the battlefield may be a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient one, as the Americans learned with the Taliban. The outcome of some wars is such that you may be left wondering who won and who lost. The ambiguity of victory and defeat makes it difficult to forecast when the Ukraine war will end.
War, to follow Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, is a means to a political end. And in line with this, victory in war is presumably the attainment of an objective that is usually political. Just how realistic this objective is, to start with, is often the difference between success and failure. Bringing democracy to Iraq in 2002 was a will-o’-the-wisp, as was the notion of transforming Afghanistan. Both led to signal defeats of a country deemed the world’s only superpower.
History tells us that it is easy to start a war, but extremely difficult to figure out the course it will take. Initiators of wars, from Napoleon to Hitler, George W Bush (Iraq 2003), or nearer home, Field Marshal Ayub Khan (Kashmir 1965), and Pervez Musharraf (Kargil 1999), have learnt this the hard way.
An entirely different lesson had to be learnt by the Chinese, who initiated a war against India in 1962, carefully limiting it in time and space, and avoiding targeting non-combatants. They were even quick to pull out of territories captured. But they never anticipated that the trauma they inflicted on India made them a forever adversary.
War termination is a well-known academic specialty, given the prevalence of all kinds of war in the world today. From focusing on the causes, course, and conduct of war, this now looks at issues of halting conflict, instituting ceasefires, and promoting stability in conflict-prone areas. But even academics find it difficult to come up with a general set of principles that could be applied to end wars because “victory” and “defeat” are deeply embedded in our psyche, even if they are increasingly ambiguous.
In 1962, India accepted the Chinese ceasefire because it had no option, and was in no position to continue. As for the Chinese, they had achieved their politico-military objective of humiliating India. In 1965, Pakistan accepted a United Nations-ordered ceasefire when its plan to capture Kashmir failed and the continuance of war would have resulted in defeat.
As for India, its aims were not too clear and it was satisfied with preventing Pakistani gains. In 1971, after Indian forces entered Dhaka, Pakistan called for a unilateral ceasefire and surrendered its army in Bangladesh. It could have kept fighting in the West, but that would have played into India’s hands. New Delhi had plans, but they were foiled by Washington.
So, what is involved in terminating this war in Ukraine? The Russians had laid out some objectives at the outset — demilitarise and “de-Nazify” the country. The first objective meant that they wanted or expected a Ukrainian surrender. The Nazi part was for domestic consumption. Both were as unrealistic as the Americans bringing democracy to Iraq.
The “special military operation” was carried out without regard for the civilian population and non-combatants. Entire cities have been devastated and millions made refugees. But, by the measure of its initial claim, the Russian operation has failed.
Victory and defeat are vested with enormous emotional significance in our minds. Many would say that a defeat would be condign punishment for the Russians. But this has its own hazards. Russian commentators are already threatening to use nuclear weapons to wipe out the world. This may be a bit of psychodrama, but it is scary nevertheless.
For the Ukrainians, defeat would have meant a military occupation of the country, followed by an effort to “Russianise” it. For the Russians the tough Ukrainian fightback itself was the defeat, definitively underscored now by the accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO.
Hostilities will cease when both sides realise that there is little more to be gained by continuing a military struggle. That stage may not have come yet, but it is not too far away.
The challenge would be to end the war without either side accepting it is defeated. Though the Ukrainians are talking of liberating Crimea, an immediate ceasefire would be a victory since it would prevent further death and destruction being visited on its people. The bigger challenge is to dress up the Russian defeat as a victory. Holding on to some of the slivers of the territory it has grabbed could be sold as one, though the setback it faces by the doubling of its land border with NATO cannot be avoided.
A ceasefire alone would not end the conflict as it would leave both sides dissatisfied. It would leave sufficient room for recurring skirmishes in the heart of Europe in the decades to come, somewhat akin to our problem in Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan.
Manoj Joshi is a distinguished fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi
The views expressed are personal
Even before infants can talk, they have the tools to navigate the world. Children are “scientists in the crib”. And by the time they enter primary school, they are attuned to asking “how” and “why” hundreds of times a day. Schools should be actively equipping children with critical thinking skills and fostering their innate curiosity. Sadly, what happens next is as relatable as it is disappointing.
Psychologist Margaret Donaldson writes in Children’s Minds that there is a mismatch between school and children’s minds. Inquisitiveness is stifled and learning becomes an act of parroting facts. Children become fearful of failing, of being mocked, and of giving wrong answers.
In our school system, the entire worth of a child is reduced to how well he or she does on exams. This focus on reducing people to scores persists into adulthood in the pecking order that society has created. Your board and entrance exam results hang around your neck like an albatross. Even in social gatherings, you introduce yourself with your professional title, and people size you up based on educational institutions attended, perceived salary, and credentials.
In my own life, my own sense of curiosity and wonder were beaten out of me by an unforgiving school system. We were told to place value not on actual learning but on “cracking” tests. It was in this system that I learned that what I needed to do was to “commit and vomit” (according to the well-known adage in West Bengal). Or in other words, I needed to uncritically commit to memory facts presented in textbooks (which had often not been updated in decades) and vomit these facts from my brain on to sheets of paper on exam day. I survived the system. But what happened to my sense of curiosity?
In my case, it was not until later when I joined a PhD program and nearly failed in an open-ended experiment that required me to think out of the box, did I realize how poorly I had been served by exam hacking tricks of my schooling. I had shiny degrees but lacked creativity when it mattered. I could hardly ask probing questions or think for myself. Fortunately, curiosity and creativity can be revived with effort. It may atrophy over time, but it can also be nourished at any age.
Frank Keil is a professor of psychology and the director of the Cognition and Development Lab at Yale University. For nearly 50 years he’s researched how people understand the world. Keil has included his insights in his new book, Wonder: Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science. “Wonder is an exuberant, joyous embrace of puzzles that we encounter in our everyday lives. These puzzles launch cycles of question-asking, exploration, and discovery,” he writes. He laments that very few adults retain a sense of wonder from early childhood.
Keil gives as an example the differences in books that children enjoy that are filled with probing questions that ask “how” and “why” and books that make bestsellers lists for grown-ups. There are rarely popular-science books that reveal the nature of the world in lists of top-selling nonfiction books for adults. And among those listed in science categories are often books that aren’t science at all but rather promotions of fad diets, conspiratorial theories, and antiaging elixirs.
“When wonder is stifled and demotivated, it can lead to cognitive decay that makes us all more susceptible to misleading cognitive biases, misinformation, and the blind following of consensus. Ultimately, a life without wonder can lead to disengagement, disillusionment, and even distrust of science,” writes Keil. We are seeing this all around us with anti-science narratives that hamper our ability to navigate a chaotic world full of microbes, unpredictable weather, rising pollution, and diminishing forests.
Some psychologists hypothesise that the reason most adults do not foster the curiosity of childhood is that we spend most of our time on very specific goals like financing a house or finding a better-paying job. Asking expansive questions does not become a priority and so there’s no time or mental bandwidth allotted for it. A second reason is that while our mental toolbox grows, we become less receptive to new ideas. Devoid of the bright-eyed wonder of childhood, we begin to take the world around us for granted.
So, what’s the cure? I’ve found that the queries of small children are an antidote to the apathy and incuriousness of adult life. We tend to see things as they are, as the way they’ve always been, and as they should be. They ask why the universe is the way it is and not in a myriad of other possible ways. Spend an hour with a small child and you’ll realize how much we’ve come to take the world for granted and how little we actually know about it.
The cutting-edge of science is imbued with the imagination and curiosity of childhood. It is a playground where inventive minds ask why the moon exists, why certain viruses infect some people and not others, why life exists on one planet and not on another, and why leaves change colours. As machines take over routine jobs, creativity and curiosity which are human attributes will become more highly valued in the workplace too.
So, here’s a thought. Instead of treating children as inferior versions of adults that need to be shaped to fit our narrow mindsets, let’s learn from them how to rekindle our own curiosity.
Anirban Mahapatra is a scientist by training and the author of a book on COVID-19. He’s writing a second popular-science book.
The views expressed are personal
A tectonic shift in Europe’s security architecture caused by Russia waging war on Ukraine has led to Sweden and Finland going hand in hand to apply for membership in Nato. This may lead to a further hardening of Vladimir Putin’s attitude, seen already as excessively belligerent, though the Russian leader’s immediate response seemed muted enough after having earlier fulminated against the move. But that could change once military infrastructure, including possibly nuclear arms, is put up in the two countries.
Finland’s security concerns are understandable given that it shares a 1,300 km border with Russia’s northwest. Sweden believes joining the US-led club for mutual defence would strengthen security in Sweden and the Baltic Sea region even as it displays Nordic solidarity with its eastern neighbour, Finland. They are a natural fit to seek the security guarantee of Article 5 of Nato’s founding treaty by which an attack on one member is taken as an attack on all.
The expansion of Nato to 32 countries might hinge on Turkey accepting the proposal as it had objected to the new applicants on the grounds that they had hosted Kurdish militant groups and imposed arms embargoes on Ankara in 2019 over Turkey’s role in the Syrian war. The West believes Recep Tayyip Erdogan may be posturing only for domestic political gains ahead of next year’s elections and that he could be brought around to agree to the unanimity Nato seeks to admit new members.
The return of the Cold War was signalled the day Mr Putin ordered the invasion (Feb. 24) and the likely expansion of Nato is a corollary in the wake of the war. What effect this latest provocation, as Mr Putin sees it, will have on the ongoing “special military operations” in Ukraine, which he still justifies as a manoeuvre to help Russia “feel safe, develop and exist”, will have on the scale of Ukrainian operations is anybody’s guess.
If Mr Putin were to declare a full-scale war on Ukraine — despite events on the ground not having gone exactly Russia’s way except in its conquest of Mariupol this week with about 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers in the Azovstal steel plant surrendering — the world could be in for its greatest challenge since the days of interventions by the West and Russia in the Middle East. The aftereffects of the war have been explosive enough already for the global economy and fears will only grow over the return of reason.
Even before political opportunism could stoke public emotion to intense hysterical levels, the Supreme Court has, with utmost wisdom and sagacity, quickly, restored status quo, balance and temperance to the issue of the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, after a local court, allowed a survey to be conducted to establish, or refute, archaeological and historical evidences about the primordial character of the structure.
The Supreme Court bench, headed by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, also comprising Justice Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha, sternly instructed the local court in Varanasi and administration to provide full protection to the structure, including the shivling that was reportedly found during the quick, explorative survey. The SC also ordered the local administration to ensure that devout Muslims are not impeded from having access to the mosque to offer prayers, the namaaz, or conduct other traditional religious observances.
The apex court, which will hear the matter again on Thursday, rightly removed the advocate commissioner, Ajay Kumar Mishra, from his post, besides giving the panel two additional days for submitting its survey report, moves which are bound to ensure both sides are satisfied that the processes followed can and will dispense justice.
A multitude of voices of concern have been heard across the country that Gyanvapi in Varanasi could soon play out as a redux of Ayodhya. The contentious issue of the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid defined the conflicts in politics and society for decades, lasting in the courts for over half a century, for which the country and its people from all sides have paid a heavy price.
Even though both the BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and its parent voluntary organisation, the RSS, represented by its sarganghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, had taken a reconciliatory stance after the final verdict of the full bench of the Supreme Court was given in favour of the Ram temple, giving a sense that the saffron brigade will not pursue with its earlier call of three temples, and instead use the Ayodhya verdict as a social balm to heal wounds on all sides, it is not inspiring confidence that the present issue will go uncontested.
There are already voices within the Sangh Parivar and the BJP that the “finding” of the shivling was a ‘historic’ turning point, and it would only accept a unilateral progress from here on, an encore of Ayodhya, which, in already stirred waters of Indian society, is deeply disturbing.
Since it is unlikely to expect political parties to forsake partisan gains and electoral windfalls, against the backdrop of more secular and mundane complaints of anti-incumbency — economy, unemployment, inflation, health and education — it is India’s big hope that the Supreme Court will ensure the judicial pillar of democracy is braced to live up to its highest expectation.
The verdict of yesterday, the first intervention of the highest court on the land on the matter, was sagacious, wise and humane; it was built on fairness and legal correctness, but also a heightened social awareness of the consequences, and established balance.
If the apex court continues to hold such high standards for itself throughout this case, however long that may be, India of the future would be grateful.