Editorials - 19-05-2022

An empty celebration of the current southern blockbusters could limit exploration of radical themes

The recent South Indian films,Pushpa ,RRR , andKGF 2 are rewriting Indian film history. A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that a Telugu and Kannada film, dubbed in Hindi, would become the highest all-time grossers in Hindi. This has led to an animated discussion about not only the supposed decline of Bollywood but also the emergence of a new “pan-Indian” cinema.

The rise of the southern film industries, hitherto marginalised as “regional” cinema, and the challenge to the domination of Hindi cinema is indeed a welcome development. But its celebration as pan-Indian cinema, breaking language and culture barriers, is premature without discussing what these films represent. These three recent films (two of which have crossed the stratospheric collection record of Rs. 1,000 crore), andBaahubali before, indicate that they do not challenge dominant ideas of a homogenous nationalism, caste hierarchies, toxic masculinity, or gratuitous violence. Neither do they offer any cultural authenticity.

National market

Such “massified” commercial films (albeit in new linguistic registers and with vastly superior technical quotient and cinematic experience) targeting the national market and the “lowest common denominator”, may in fact be counterproductive to the idea of linguistic/cultural plurality and the exploration of novel and progressive themes. Because the barriers to better, and world-class cinema is not merely the domination of Hindi films.

Recently, Telugu superstar Chiranjeevi spoke about the insult he felt in the 1980s at a national award function where Indian cinema was portrayed as Hindi cinema, and how the recent South films have become a vehicle to correct that notion. The same was also reflected in Kannada star Sudeep’s comments on the claim of Hindi as the national language.

Yet, this “regional” claim for an equal place in Indian cinema does not refer to the exclusions, and cultural homogenisation performed by the mega-budget, pan-Indian film emerging from the South.

Thus,RRR , for example, is steeped in a religious-inflected nationalism with a cartoonish and melodramatic take on colonialism: the evil British versus the good Indians. It is perfectly in sync with the present climate of aggressive nationalism even though it seeks to speak from a linguistic marginality. In this nationalism, while Subhas Bose, Sardar Patel, Bhagat Singh, Shivaji, and others from the South are unsurprisingly present, Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru are missing.

More seriously problematic is the appropriation of the trope of Adivasi liberation to the nationalist cause, and thus making it seem that the oppressors of Adivasis were merely the British. This is a move, as I have argued before, seen in movies likeLagaan . One of the two heroes Bheem, who is purportedly based on the legendary — but ignored — Gond leader Komaram Bheem, is shown in the film as asking the other protagonist Ram, asavarna Hindu, to educate him. This, writer Akash Poyam (a Gond himself) points out, casts Bheem as an innocent “noble savage” while in reality it was Komaram Bheem who coined the slogan, “Jal, Jangal, Jameen ” which is shown as being inscribed by Ram in the film.

Other films likePushpa andKGF are also not breaking any new ground, but reinforcing many of the tiredmasala conventions like a poor hero taking on the state-criminal nexus and as a saviour of the toiling masses, etc. Yet, they have been lauded as catering to small-town India, and the so-called masses, something which Bollywood has largely moved away from with its focus on the urban middle classes, the elite, NRIs and multiplexes. But this is a reductive understanding which posits the masses as capable of appreciating cinema only with excessive violence, misogyny and the low brow, and the urban rich as not the purveyors of the same. Yet, the recent blockbusters drew big crowds in the multiplexes as well as in the diasporic audiences.

Similarly, some scholars have argued that the success ofPushpa andKGF is that they exemplify the local against the nationalist rhetoric of the Hindi cinema, a contention that is questioned by the success ofBaahubali andRRR .

Beyond binaries

There is a need to go beyond such simple/only binaries of local vs. national, class vs. mass and Hindi vs. non-Hindi, or the anointing of new formulaic productions with monster budgets and targeting the national market as a pan-Indian film. Instead, there is a need to conceive pan-Indian cinema as one which is socially and cinematically expanding boundaries, culturally rooted and yet nationally/globally resonant, and as one which is a conversation among the languages.

The seeds of such a pan-Indian cinema were already present before the market success of the recent South blockbusters.

Pushing the envelope

For a decade now, the “new generation” films in Malayalam have rewritten Indian cinema history in their own way, and have captured national attention, especially since the flourishing of OTT platforms. There has been an explosion of films, especially small ones, dealing with an array of subjects and pushing the envelope in so many directions. Films likeMaheshinte Prathikaram ,Ozhivudivasathe Kali ,Ottal ,Angamaly Diaries ,Kumbalangi Nights ,Jallikattu ,The Great Indian Kitchen ,Pada , and so many others became successful because they moved away from male superstar-driven formulas.

Yet, if new Malayalam cinema has not fully contended with caste, there has been a veritable revolution in tackling caste oppression in Tamil cinema from the 2010s with films likeAttakathi, Madras, Kabali, Kaala, Pariyerum Perumal, Asuran, Karnan, Sarpatta Parambarai andJai Bhim. They also showed that films with radical themes are not dichotomous with superstars starring in them or mass commercial success. The latter was also proved with the huge all-India success of the Marathi filmSairat .

An empty celebration of the present southern blockbusters as pan-Indian cinema is scotching the above trends besides ignoring other possibilities within Kannada and Telugu industries themselves which produced excellent small films and cultural nuggets likeThithi andC/o Kancharapalem .

Thus, the scope for a real pan-Indian cinema is immense but can be only realised by the infrastructure (theatrical, and not just OTT) to experience the best cinematic content across different Indian languages. Until the Indian audience is able to, for instance, watch the National Award winningByari , in the tiny Beary language, or the internationally acclaimedKhasi filmlewduh in their own languages (not just in English), the idea of a real pan-Indian cinema would be stillborn.

Nissim Mannathukkaren is with Dalhousie University, Canada, and tweets @nmannathukkaren



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Electoral sinew to one set of States while depleting representative muscle to another will fuel north-south India tensions

There was a time, not all that long ago, when English speakers in the south of India routinely referred to our north as ‘Upper India’. This sense of the north’s upper-ness included, somewhere in its folds, a sense of the north having the upper hand in the affairs of the nation, of being bigger, more populous and, therefore, the more dominant of the two. Being ‘upper’ also encased within its meaning the fact of the nation’s capital, Calcutta and later Delhi, being ‘up’ there, with Simla as the nation’s summer capital ‘up above the world so high like a diamond in the sky’.

The political summit

The Imperial Legislative Council, with its Central Legislative Assembly as the Lower House and the Council of State as the Upper House, being located in Delhi pushed that upperness further up. Seeing persons of the eminence of Muhammad Habibullah, A. Rangaswami Iyengar, S. Srinivasa Iyengar, Omandur Ramaswami Reddiar, Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar, Tanguturi Prakasam, Ananthasayanam Ayyangar, T.S. Avinashilingam Chettiar, V.V. Giri, S. Satyamurti, N.G. Ranga, C.N. Muthuranga Mudaliar, T.S.S. Rajan, K. Santhanam, M.C. Rajah, the Raja of Bobbili and N. Sivaraj ‘move’ diligently to Delhi by up-bound trains, for legislative sessions, could not but reinforce the perceived image of India’s north as India’s political summit. Later, the Constituent Assembly with N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar, Alladi Krishnaswami Iyer, Rajaji, Jerome D' Souza, K. Kamaraj, C. Subramaniam, V.I. Munuswamy Pillai, in it, and some remarkable south Indian women — Ammu Swaminathan, G. Durgabai, Annie Mascarene, Dakshayani Velayudham — and successive Lok Sabhas and the Rajya Sabha drawing Members of Parliament of the stature of A.K. Gopalan, T. Nagi Reddy, C.N. Annadurai, P. Sundarayya, Panampilly Govinda Menon, C.H. Mohammed Koya, M. Ruthnaswamy, K.T.K. Thangamani and Era Sezhiyan, going to Delhi, by air rather than by rail, of course, continued the ‘India’s north as India’s peak’ image. Needless to say, that ‘peak’ was scaled in terms of outstanding legislative performance by these men and women.

Congress and Left symmetry

The Indian National Congress, however, it needs to be noted, was from the very start, aware of the need for India’s regions to be seen as equal, bereft of any asymmetry. Its very third session after Bombay (1885) and Calcutta (1886) was held in Madras (1887, and many times later), followed by several Congress sessions of note taking place in the south — Amaravati/Amraoti (1897), Coconada (1923), Belgaum (1924), and the seminal one, at Avadi (Madras) in 1955, attended by Yugoslavia’s President Marshal Josip Broz Tito, where the party adopted ‘a socialistic pattern of society’ as its avowed objective.

The All India Kisan Sabha, the peasant wing of the Communist Party of India, likewise, which had first met in a ‘founder-conference’ in Lucknow in 1936, met at its fifth session in 1940 in Palasa, Srikakulam, then in Madras Presidency and now in Andhra, under the chairmanship of Rahul Sankrityayan. It has, since, met very pointedly in southern venues as much as in northern.

These considered arrangements embody the opening Article 1 of our Constitution: India, that is Bharat.

That phrase makes India, Bharat and Bharat, India — one belonging to and in fact, being the other.

But the question needs to be asked, today: What makes India, ‘India’, or Bharat, Bharat?

And why, today?

Impact of delimitation

Because four years from now, India’s electoral democracy will stand on an existential crossroads. A delimitation of the constituencies that will elect Members of the Lok Sabha, following the population figures returned by the next decennial Census, is to take place in 2026.

A good thing! We cannot have, should not have, the same number of Members of Parliament— 543 — representing a vastly increased population in the Lok Sabha. Mathematically speaking, the higher the number of people per constituency, the lower the impact each voter has on parliamentary representation — clearly an undesirable situation. The Constitution of India recognised this and provided for a periodic, Census-linked re-arrangement of constituencies to make their representation in Parliament tenable. More people should mean more MPs. Simple, sound logic. But simple, sound politics also? No.

A population-based marking out or re-arrangement of constituencies, as envisaged in Article 82 of the Constitution, will have the effect of giving more MPs to the States and Union Territories that have let their numbers grow, and will give markedly less MPs to those that have held their numbers in some check. Realising the anomaly that a delimitation based on Census data would cause, a delimitation freeze was put in position by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi through the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution in 1976. This was extended by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee through the 84th Amendment. It is this extension that is to end in 2026, placing us at a crossroads.

What the data show

What is the way forward?

Considering the Census data for 2011, almost half (48.6%) of our population (of approximately 1.38 billion) is contributed by the States of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. According to the projections made by the Technical Group formed by National Commission on Population, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for 2011-36, Uttar Pradesh’s share in India’s population would see an increase by 1.74 percentage points (from 15.30% in 1971 to a projected 17.03% in 2026), Bihar’s by 1.59 percentage points (from 7.69% in 1971 to projected 9.28% in 2026) and Rajasthan’s by 1.17 percentage points (from 4.70% in 1971 to projected 5.87% in 2026).

Tamil Nadu’s share in India’s population would see a decline by 2.08 percentage points (from 7.52% in 1971 to projected 5.44% in 2026), undivided Andhra’s by 1.46 percentage points (from 7.94% in 1971 to a projected 6.48% in 2026), and Kerala’s by 1.36 percentage points (from 3.89% in 1971 to a projected 2.54% in 2026). Interestingly, West Bengal’s will also decline by 1.03 percentage points (from 8.08% in 1971 to a projected 7.05% in 2026).

Re-arranging and standardising the number of people per constituency through the scheduled delimitation exercise will inevitably lead to a reduced representation for States that have managed to stabilise their populations, and to a higher representation for States that have not stabilised their populations.

It needs no political forecasting to see that emotions will be strained by a delimitation exercise that adds electoral sinew to one set of States, while depleting representative muscle to another. The upperness syndrome, which has now become a thing of the past, should not come back in the guise of delimitation. We cannot afford a tension on the north-south front in addition to those we already have.

There are alternatives

There are two alternatives before us: one, we go in for another freeze, this time not for any specific period but for until all States have achieved population stabilisation. Two, we request demographic and statistical experts to devise a mathematical model along the lines of the ‘Cambridge Compromise’ based on a mathematically equitable “formula” for the apportionment of the seats of the European Parliament between the member-states. That formula cannot be applied to our situation as such but needs to be studied so as to customise it for our needs.

Given the complications of the Indian demographic scene, and the distorting shadow that Census data may cast on the delimitation process, I would say the first option is the more persuasive one. The population-stabilising States of India that is Bharat, which include all the southern States, must continue to enrich our legislative and parliamentary processes as they have been doing since the time of the Imperial Legislative Council, with no penalties having to be paid for their sense of responsibility. We need to limit population, not representation.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a former administrator, diplomat and Governor. The article has statistical inputs from the Population Foundation of India



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If constitutionally protected women’s rights could face revocation, the rights of gay and lesbian people may be next

The leakedRoe vs Wade draft opinion has been in the news for its possible impact on abortion rights, but it also paves the way for the erosion of gay rights in America. If constitutionally protected women’s rights that were recognised almost 50 years ago, and then re-affirmed almost 20 years later, could be revoked by a conservative supermajority in the U.S. Supreme Court, then similarly situated rights for gay and lesbian people — such as the right to marry someone of the same sex — are also susceptible to revocation.

A background

In December 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded oral arguments inDobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization , an ongoing case that looks at a 2018 Mississippi law (The Gestational Age Act) that bans most abortions after 15 weeks. Almost 50 years earlier, the same top court held inRoe vs Wade (1973) that it was unconstitutional for states to ban or restrict abortions before fetal viability. Later,Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania vs Casey (1992) reaffirmedRoe’s central holding on viability. KeepingRoe andCasey in mind, lower courts permanently enjoined the Mississippi law, but the case eventually moved up to the Supreme Court, with the following question: are all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions unconstitutional?

This question (and the court’s acceptance to answer it) is at the heart ofRoe andCasey because theRoe court had already decided that answer in the affirmative back in 1973; and this was re-affirmed in 1992 by theCasey court. The leaked first draft of the court’s majority decision inDobbs , however, departs from precedent and signals a completely different turn. With conservatives currently holding a super-majority in the U.S Supreme Court, it should come as no surprise thatRoe andCasey are set to be overturned by June or July 2022.

Impact on rights

A running theme in this first draft of theDobbs judgment was the court’s emphasis on originalism. In fact, the very first page of the draft says that “the constitution makes no mention of abortion” (pg.1); then on page 9 it reads “the abortion right, which is not mentioned in the Constitution, is part of a right to privacy, which is also not mentioned. Throughout the rest of the draft, Justice Alito writes extensively about how abortion rights were never a part of the “Nation’s history and tradition” and non-essential to ordered liberty — hence, ineligible for protection under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as laid out inWashington vs Glucksberg (1997).

An originalist reading of the Constitution and an application of similar reasoning as the one applied in this draft opinion (minus the emphasis on protecting “life or ‘potential life”) could invalidate all rights for gay and lesbian Americans. Gay rights do not have any place in American history and tradition; it is quite the opposite with American history rife with instances of homophobia going back to the 20th century. Moreover, the reasoning employed by theObergefell court that legalised same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015 was similar to the reasoning applied by theRoe andCasey courts years earlier — namely, that the then-existing same-sex marriage bans across the country were a violation of gay and lesbian people’s liberty rights, as found in the Fourteenth Amendment.

Similarly, inLawrence vs Texas (2003), the Supreme Court upheld the privacy rights of gay and lesbian people while striking down Texas’s then-anti-sodomy law; these rights were located in a similar place in the Constitution as the right to abortion. Simply put, a rollback ofRoe andCasey could allow state legislatures across the country to re-instate bans or restrictions on gay rights such as limitations on same-sex couple adoptions or sexuality education in schools. States could do this by arguing that gay and lesbian people have neither the fundamental right to privacy nor liberty protections in the Constitution because their rights have no place in the history and tradition of the country.

Moreover, because the Constitution makes no explicit mention of “privacy”, “sexual orientation”, “gay”, “lesbian”, or “gay rights” anywhere, these rights could be challenged further. The constitutional recognition of same-sex marriage is, after all, only a recent phenomenon, both globally and nationally; with Massachusetts being the first U.S. state to recognise such marriages just 18 years ago (in 2004) and The Netherlands being the first country in the world to do so just 21 years ago (in 2000).

The bottom line is that if 50 year-old constitutionally guaranteed rights could be revoked today, then more recent and similarly, situated rights could also be revoked under an originalist reading of the Constitution.

Redefinition of liberty

Another key feature of the draft opinion is the court’s re-examination of the meaning of the word “liberty” as found in the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1992, theCasey court affirmed what was already decided two decades ago inRoe — namely, that women in America had the “liberty” to an abortion under the Fourteenth Amendment. However, theDobbs draft ruling discards this right to “liberty” just as it does the right to “privacy”. Page 14 reads: “the clear answer is that the Fourteenth Amendment does not protect the right to an abortion”. Interestingly, the Constitution also makes no explicit reference to fetuses as “people” nor any reference to marriage as a constitutional right, let alone marriage for people of the same sex or those of opposite races. But by specifically re-defining “liberty” and calling into question its applicability in the case of abortions, the court paves the way for potentially reviewing other “liberty” rights not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution — such as the right to travel (Kent vs Dulles , 1958), the right to inter-racial marriage (Loving vs Virginia , 1967), and the right to engage in same-sex activity in private (Lawrence vs Texas , 2003), among others.

As it stands now,Roe andCasey remain the law of the land; only time will tell what the final decision of the court will be, and when it will be announced. Either way, the final decision will most likely endRoe and usher in a new era for the abortion and gay rights debate in America.

Kanav Narayan Sahgal is Programme and Communications Manager, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and Nyaaya. He focuses on the domains of gender and sexuality research and advocacy (with a specific focus on LGBTQIA+ communities). The views expressed are personal



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The challenges in this approach need to be analysed

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has recently announced that it will do away with the mandatory PhD qualification to teach in Central Universities (CUs) spread across the country. It purportedly addresses a shortage of qualified faculty in CUs. According to the Ministry of Education data, there were 10,000 teaching positions lying vacant in CUs as of December 2021.

Industry experts and professional practitioners from different fields with domain expertise will be brought in to address the shortage by creating special positions of Professor and Associate Professor of Practice. Recently, UGC Chairman Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar stated that the New Education Policy (NEP) “emphasises better collaboration with industries. The experts need to have demonstrated experience in a given domain.” On the face of it, this appears well-intentioned. However, it also raises an important question. What is the main problem that the UGC is trying to solve? Is it acarte blanche to do away with PhDs to meet the shortfall? Are we going to treat PhDs and other professors as equals? If so, it should not be. It is a treacherous path laden with umpteen challenges.

What value do good PhDs bring to teaching? Besides imparting cutting-edge knowledge with a sound conceptual base that is relevant for a long time, they train and equip students with skills to face real-life challenges. PhD teachers are trained to answer “how” and “why” questions. Fundamentally they are researchers. Besides transferring existing knowledge to students, they are supposed to create new knowledge through long and deep investigations of relevant issues using academic rigour. They come out with concepts and theories tested and retested by others.

Such fundamental understanding is applicable across industries. To use a marketing example, the theory that rational consumers choose based on perceived superior value will be eternal and unchanging. However, the way a business organisation can create value would change depending on contextual characteristics, consumer behaviour, and available technology. A good PhD teacher would focus on the relevant theories and show how they are applied in practice in various contexts to equip students to face current and future challenges.

Practitioners bring knowledge and deep expertise relevant to specific contexts and applications. However, the fast-changing business and technological environment result in limited shelf-life experiences. Since non-PhDs are not trained to conduct original research, they reproduce what others have created to keep their teaching current. Such teachers are typically less aware of the concepts and theoretical frameworks related to their practice domain. These limitations would result in students getting knowledge that may be of great value but in a limited context. In our fast-paced world facilitated by technology, change is the only constant. Therefore, only contractual teaching positions would make sense for practitioners.

Another critical issue is: How would an institution judge the quality of a practitioner it hires? Using the number of years’ of work experience in a field as a yardstick to gauge a practitioner’s potential as a teacher could be misleading.

Although practitioners who understand both academic rigour and theories can make excellent teachers, sometimes even better than a typical PhD teacher, evaluating them is a significant challenge. Also, a relevant and continuous monitoring system is needed to assess the teaching performance of practitioners; else, they become archaic. Since students cannot adequately evaluate the material taught to them, PhDs are better suited to assess a practitioner’s potential as a teacher and thinker.

A mixed model

A workable and sustainable solution to this situation is to have a mix of practitioners and traditional academicians, as many business schools in India and abroad have realised and implemented, resulting in significant positive outcomes. They first hire PhDs to meet their requirements. Then they hire a limited number of practitioners as clinical and adjunct faculty on contract for a limited time to fulfil specific teaching needs. The responsibilities and evaluation of both these categories of faculty are also different. PhDs still maintain strict quality control.

Where control rests with practitioners, quality is likely to suffer. The final losers will be students for whose benefit the whole system is being designed in the first place. CUs can take a leaf out of the business school experience and devise a model that fits them.

Siddharth Singh is Associate Professor of Marketing at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad and Mohali. The views expressed are personal



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Controversy over the ban of beef at a proposed food festival in Tamil Nadu refuses to fade

Connoisseurs of non-vegetarian food would swear by the lingering taste of Tamil Nadu’s Ambur biryani filled with succulent pieces of meat that supposedly melts in the mouth. It is distinct and popular, just as Hyderabadi biryani is in the culinary world.

Naturally, when the Tirupattur district administration recently announced a three-day Ambur Biryani Thiruvizha (festival), the foodies were excited. So were the restaurateurs, keen on getting the Geographical Indication tag for the spicy dish.

Amidst the excitement a controversy erupted when Tirupattur Collector Amar Kushwaha mandated only chicken, mutton, fish and prawn biryani be served at the stalls and “banned” beef and pork. Stating he is personally not against any meat, Mr. Kushwaha contended he did not want to hurt Hindu or Muslim sentiments, as one group had represented in favour of pork biryani and another wanted beef.

Beef is on the menu in many restaurants in Ambur. While over 97% of Tamil Nadu’s population consumes non-vegetarian food, beef remains a delicacy for a section of the population. As per the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey of the NSSO [three rounds spanning a decade until 2011-12], beef-consumers stood at 31.4 lakh, i.e over 5% of the State’s population. Oxtail soup and beefpakoda are patronised in street-side stalls.

Alongside the emergence of cow vigilantism in India, the Dravidian State has witnessed incidents of “othering” beef. In 2015, the AIADMK government banned a beef banquet and a voluntary ‘thali (mangalsutra) removal’ event in Chennai organised by the Dravidar Kazhagam.

The Tirupattur Collector’s ban on the poor man’s meat at a government festival irked even the allies of the ruling DMK. Vanni Arasu of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, which predominantly represents the cause of the Scheduled Castes, argued that excluding the food of a particular community goes against Chief Minister M.K. Stalin’s ‘Dravidian Model’ of governance.

Incidentally, five years ago against the backdrop of an attack on a Ph.D. scholar at IIT-Madras for partaking beef and the Centre’s restrictions on cattle trade, Mr. Stalin had said the government could not deny the fundamental rights of people over choice of food. He rhetorically posed: “Are we supposed to eat only what [Prime Minister] Modi likes?”

The then State BJP president Tamilisai Soundararajan — now Telangana Governor — had challenged Mr. Stalin to consume beef, adding, “We will see what happens in Tamil Nadu.” Since the majority population does not consume beef, she was suggesting there could be electoral consequences for the DMK. The BJP, in its 2021 election manifesto, promised a ban on cow slaughter unaware that slaughtering cows is illegal in Tamil Nadu since 1976.

While the Chief Minister did not react to the latest controversy, the Collector at the eleventh hour put off the biryani festival citing forecast of rains.

The controversy remains alive. The Tamil Nadu State Commission for the SC/STs has asked Mr. Kushwaha to explain why his decision to “specifically” exclude beef biryani, “shall not be taken as a discrimination on a communal basis, and initiate action for such an official discrimination”. The Commission took up the matter for enquiry [deeming it] “as a practice of untouchability in the form of discrimination against SC/ST and the Muslim population”.

Mr. Kushwaha had toldThe Hindu since the event has been put off, the notice “is null and void”. It is doubtful if the Commission would endorse his interpretation. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether the Ambur Biryani Festival would be held on a later date as assured by officials. If so, would Mr. Stalin ensure there is no restriction on the choice of food?

sureshkumar.d@thehindu.co.in



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Both Russia and Ukraine are worse off than they were before the start of the war

The surrender of an estimated 1,000 defensive forces who were holed up in the sprawling Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol likely marks the end of fighting in the eastern Ukrainian city that has been under a long Russian siege. Russia had announced a few weeks ago of having taken over the city. But hundreds of fighters remained in the steel mill. With many of them ending the fight and allowing themselves to be evacuated to the Russia-controlled territories of Donbas, the whole city is now in the hands of the Russians. Kyiv also said it wanted to save the lives of its servicemen. Mariupol, with a pre-war population of half a million, most of them Russian-speaking, had been briefly taken over by pro-Russian separatists in 2014, immediately after Russia annexed Crimea. But Ukrainian nationalist forces, including the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, took the city back and drove the separatists further towards east. Ever since then, the city, which hosted the headquarters of the Azov Battalion, has become a flashpoint in Ukraine’s civil conflict — for Ukrainian nationalists, a symbol of resistance, but for Russia-backed Donbas militias, a part of their claimed territories. Now, with Mariupol’s capture, the Russians can finally claim a major victory. But the fact that it took almost three months for Russia’s better-equipped military to make this happen speaks a lot about Ukraine’s resistance.

Russia has suffered several setbacks in its invasion of Ukraine. It started a three-front war but was met with fierce Ukrainian resistance in the north and east. Later, Russia gave up its attempts to envelope Kyiv in the northern front and, at least for now, retreated from Kharkiv, the northeastern city. Its battleground focus is now almost entirely on the Donbas region where Russian troops are making incremental advances. Now, with Mariupol under its control, Russia can free up resources to move to its next target, which suggests that the war could grind on. The tragedy of Ukraine is that it has got stuck in a larger power rivalry between the West and Russia. Despite the West’s massive financial and military support, Ukraine keeps losing territories. On the other side, even as Russia is making slow battleground gains in Ukraine, it is facing bigger setbacks. The invasion has already prompted Finland and Sweden, which have historically stayed out of military alliances, to formally seek NATO membership. So, in less than three months since the invasion began, there are no clear winners — Ukraine is losing territories, Russia is witnessing another round of NATO’s enlargement, and Europe, battered by inflation and an energy crisis, is likely to be facing prolonged instability and conflicts.



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The release of Perarivalan is no endorsement of any claim of his innocence

The Supreme Court has invoked its extraordinary power to order the release of A.G. Perarivalan, one of the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, for whose freedom his mother, many political parties and vast sections of public opinion have been campaigning for years. The suicide bombing that took the life of Rajiv Gandhi, along with that of 15 others, including nine police personnel, on “Tamil soil” caused a great deal of revulsion in the State, but this sentiment abated with the passage of time. Perarivalan drew much public sympathy, largely due to the fact that he was only 19 when he got embroiled in the assassination plot and later revelations that a portion of his confessional statement was improved by a police officer to link his purchase of a battery to the one used in the belt bomb that was used in the suicide bombing. But essentially, the verdict of the three-member Bench is an indictment of the disregard for federal norms in the deliberate inaction that Raj Bhavan displayed when presented with a Cabinet advice to release them in 2018. Going by the Union government’s arguments, one can discern that it was the Centre’s guiding hand that was responsible for the delay. The then Governor had referred the Cabinet advice to the President for a decision. The Centre, too, argued, that cases involving murder under the IPC came under the President’s exclusive jurisdiction in matters of remission of life sentences. The Court has put an end to all doubts by holding that the Governor is bound by the State Cabinet’s advice when acting under Article 161 of the Constitution, that his reference to the President was “inimical to the scheme of the Constitution” and that remission remains firmly under the State’s jurisdiction in this case.

Even when a Constitution Bench, while resolving legal questions over the statutory power of remission under the Cr.P.C., held that the release of these convicts would require the Centre’s concurrence, it had made it clear that the constitutional powers of the President (Article 72) and the Governor (Article 161) “remain untouched”. In the light of this, and the position that remission powers are exercised solely on Cabinet advice, there was no infirmity in the State’s recommendation to the Governor in 2018 for their release. While the Bench has done well to put an end to doubts about the Governor’s remission power and the manner of its exercise, a sticking point remains. Nothing has been said on what should be done when the absence of any time-frame for the President or the Governor is cynically exploited to indefinitely delay executive decisions. It is impractical for every matter to be escalated to the point that the Supreme Court needs to invoke its extraordinary powers under Article 142. However, the judgment should not be seen as any endorsement of the claims of innocence of the convicts in the dastardly conspiracy. And whether governments should recommend remission on the basis of public opinion remains a question to ponder.



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Peking: Sophisticated Soviet rockets and other weapons and equipment are moving across China by rail to help North Vietnam beat President Nixon’s blockade of its ports, authoritative Soviet diplomatic sources said here today. Speaking four days before Mr. Nixon is due to arrive in the Kremlin for summit talks, the Soviet sources said the American blockade would not affect Soviet military aid to the North Vietnamese. At the same time, a Western diplomat said Chinese officials had told them the Peking government would “put no obstacle in the way” of Soviet and other aid from the Eastern European bloc to their mutual North Vietnamese ally. A high-powered North Vietnamese delegation, including the Vice-Minister of Foreign Trade, Mr. Ly Bay and the Communications and Railways Minister, Brig. Phan Trong Tue, was in China to coordinate Soviet and Chinese deliveries to Hanoi despite the mining of North Vietnamese ports. Two railways from Kunmimg and Nanning cross from China into North Vietnam though sources here say, it is believed there are other less-known railway lines and roads from China into North Vietnam.



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The Congress (I) is facing its toughest challenge since it returned to power in 1980 when about 52 million voters line up at the polling booth on May 19 to elect state governments in Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal and Kerala.

The Congress (I) is facing its toughest challenge since it returned to power in 1980 when about 52 million voters line up at the polling booth on May 19 to elect state governments in Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal and Kerala. While the Lok Dal-BJP is fighting the keenest battle for 90 seats in Haryana and 68 in Haryana, the Marxist-led Left Front is making all-out efforts to defeat the United Democratic Front in Kerala. In West Bengal, the Congress (I)’s objective is limited to reducing the Left Front’s strength in the 294-member house. PM Indira Gandhi has spent four days in each state.

China-India Talks

The official-level talks between India and China continued through the second day. According to an official source, all perspectives on the border issue were gone through in a cordial manner but nothing has so far happened to change India’s earlier assessment that a breakthrough was not expected in the current round of talks.

Thatcher Ups Ante

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, accusing Argentina of stalling peace talks, said that Britain should know in 48 hours whether a diplomatic solution to the Falkland conflict was possible. She also said that no military action can be held up. “ We have been negotiating with Argentina for more than six weeks in good faith, but there’s little sign of Argentina implementing the UN Security Council Resolution,” she said.

Iran’s Overture

We wish to have relations with all, provided they do not impose their will on us, said Ali Akbar Hashmi Rafsanjani, the president of Iran’s Majlis. The West is angry with us because we have adopted an anti-imperialist policy, he said.



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The sharp spurt in wholesale inflation is driven by all major categories — primary articles, fuel and power and manufacturing — indicating how broad-based the price pressures are.

On Tuesday, data released by the government showed that inflation at the wholesale level had risen to a staggering 15.08 per cent in April, up from 14.55 per cent in March, despite a high base effect. With this latest print, wholesale inflation has now been in double digits for 13 consecutive months. Coming just days after data released by the National Statistical Office that showed retail inflation as measured by the consumer price index had risen to an eight year high of 7.8 per cent in April, this latest data print only reaffirms the inflationary pressures in the economy.

The sharp spurt in wholesale inflation is driven by all major categories — primary articles, fuel and power and manufacturing — indicating how broad-based the price pressures are. All three sub-groups registered double digit inflation in April. The WPI food index has also risen to 8.88 per cent in April on the back of higher prices in vegetables, fruits, milk and spices. Considering that an increase in food inflation at the wholesale level tends to have a “significant” impact on inflation at the retail level, this is a matter of concern. As per the recently released report by the RBI on the state of the economy, high frequency price data on food items for the first half of May (1-12) indicates “an increase in cereal prices, primarily on account of a surge in wheat prices”, a hardening of potato and tomato prices, and a “broad-based increase” in edible oils. This is worrying, as Ashima Goyal, member MPC, points out, “the history of past shocks in India shows food and oil price inflation together can give rise to second round effects”. On the non-food side, the latest data also shows that manufacturing inflation rose to 10.85 per cent in April, up from 10.71 per cent the month before. With cost pressures on manufacturers continuing to rise, they are likely to pass them further on to end consumers, exerting upward pressure on prices at the retail level. And then there are also concerns over services inflation firming up as demand picks up.

In the first week of May, the monetary policy committee of the RBI had held an off-cycle meeting to raise the benchmark repo rate by 40 basis points to 4.4 per cent to tackle inflation. This implied that hikes of another 75 basis points would be needed just to revert to the pre-pandemic level — MPC member Jayanth Varma has said that “more than 100 basis points of rate increases need to be carried out”. Considering current price trends which suggest that inflation will continue to remain elevated, and likely to breach the upper threshold of the RBI’s inflation targeting framework for three consecutive quarters, the MPC is likely to frontload the rate hikes.



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The real potential for turnaround in bilateral relations, though, lies via the more mundane route of infrastructure projects.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Lumbini on Buddha Poornima was intended to convey that the shared culture between India and Nepal is far more valuable than the money that China has been pouring into the birthplace of the Buddha. If the Modi government’s early reliance on a Hindu connect to win influence in Nepal did not have the desired effect, the carefully chosen date and destination of Modi’s fifth visit to Nepal since becoming Prime Minister was a push to make up for lost time and opportunity with another shared religion. Lumbini is also where China’s presence looms close to the Indian border, from a Beijing financed airport to a Chinese monastery. The announcement of a joint India-Nepal plan to give Lumbini its rightful place in the Buddhist circuit promoted by Indian tour operators, the Prime Minister’s reiteration that this was the birthplace of the Buddha, and the laying of the foundation stone for an Indian monastery are belated attempts to deploy Indian soft power to reclaim some space in India’s Himalayan neighbour. The real potential for turnaround in bilateral relations, though, lies via the more mundane route of infrastructure projects. One of the big stumbling blocks in the India-Nepal relationship used to be Delhi’s inability to complete agreed upon infrastructure projects in Nepal, including roads, railway lines and mega power projects. Over the last few years this has changed.

During his 45-minute meeting with Modi, Nepal Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba invited Delhi to take up the long stuck West Seti hydro power project, which was once taken up by Australia but abandoned, and later coveted by China Three Gorges Corporation. The offer follows India’s success with the 900 MW Arun III hydropower project, developed by Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam (SJVN), a joint venture between the Centre and the Himachal Pradesh government. Among other significant agreements signed during Modi’s visit is a proposed collaboration between Madras IIT and Kathmandu University for a joint degree programme, and a second in the higher education sector between Indian Council of Cultural Relations and Lumbini Buddhist University for the establishment of a Dr Ambedkar Chair for Buddhist Studies.

The spadework for the agreements in diverse sectors signed during the six-hour visit, was clearly done well ahead. Deuba, who replaced K P Sharma Oli as the Prime Minister last year, and was in New Delhi on an official visit in April, appears to have had a calming effect on bilateral ties roiled by stormy weather in recent years. The Prime Minister’s remark that bilateral ties are “as stable as the Himalayas” may have been more aspirational than accurate and, as a goal, also conveys a sense of the distance that both sides need to travel.



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Shailaja Chandra writes: By using modelling, and not national data sources, it has ignored UN convention

The controversy over the under-reporting of Covid deaths in India has spiralled. A World Health Organisation report has projected, through mathematical modelling, that India had 4.7 million, or 47 lakh, excess Covid deaths in 2020-2021. Surprisingly, none of the authors seems to have engaged with the Registrar General of India (RGI) who is responsible for the Civil Registration System (CRS). The responsibilities for reporting and registering births and deaths are enunciated in the Registration of Births and Deaths (RBD)Act, 1969, which draws its strength from the Concurrent List of the Constitution.

Under the law, the Chief Registrar of every state gets one year to send the compiled data on births and deaths to the RGI for collation and publication. CRS 2020 came out on May 3 and a two-year time lag has been standard even in the pre-Covid years. The cause of death is registered under the Medical Certification of the Cause of Death (MCCD) system — the scope of this data is limited because it applies only to urban areas and notified hospitals. The RGI is yet to publish it. But for the WHO and other mathematical modellers to surmise that India does not have a system to enumerate the dead and plunge into calculating mortality based on minuscule samples collected through informal channels is preposterous.

Death data from CRS shows an over 6 per cent increase overall in Maharashtra, Bihar, Gujarat, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, and Haryana. The CRS data even provides a breakup by age cohorts and comparing deaths among the elderly from 2018 to 2020 shows a reduction of deaths in the 70+ age group in Kerala and partially in Telangana. Of course, greater analysis and commentary are required but no one can say the system is dysfunctional.

An even more reliable tool than the CRS is the Sample Registration System (SRS) — it’s the largest demographic survey in the world and has been implemented since the Sixties. Eight million house visits result in a corpus of data on fertility and mortality. Such visits, however, were delayed during the pandemic, from 2020 to early 2022, when families, enumerators and reviewers were confronted with repeated Covid outbreaks and lockdowns. The SRS has been operational for decades although the priority accorded to timely data collection could certainly improve.

Under the law, the informer and the registrar must complete the process of registration within 21 days. Registration after 21 days requires approval at the higher levels — these seem to be progressively increasing — specified in the RBD Act. Surprisingly, Maharashtra and Delhi are missing from the relevant tables because “only partial information was provided”. This shows that the state responses are not accepted mechanically. The gaps and delays call for assigning higher priority and oversight to birth and death data collection.

The RGI has a statutory duty to declare births and deaths. For the calendar year 2020, the CRS figure is about 81 lakh deaths — this is 4.7 lakh more than the previous year. The SRS publication is expected soon which will, in all probability, show a higher figure. But in no case will it be anywhere near the 47 lakh deaths the WHO modellers have put out for 2020 and 2021 for India. The WHO’s Technical Advisory Group selected India for its modelling exercise without engaging with the RGI. Instead, modellers and academics have published a slew of papers using data like deaths among MLAs and Indian Railway personnel or based their studies on state websites or RTI responses to media queries. None of these is representative enough to justify extrapolation to cover a country as large and diverse as India.

India’s population is soon to be (if it is not already) the largest in the world. Tamil Nadu’s population is about that of France and Bihar is the size of Germany. The population of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, is about that of Brazil. In such a scenario, to base a WHO international report and academic research on sundry samples and extrapolate data to give alarming results is a disservice to a time-honoured national system. But it also overturns a convention that UN systems rely only on national data sources. The report has needlessly alarmed Indian citizens and the world community.

That tens of thousands lost their lives under tragic conditions that no one was prepared for, is a fact. Currently, around seven lakh applicants have applied for compensation related to Covid deaths — not millions. The publication of CRS reports has always taken two years which, without question, requires reduction. But that does not justify the WHO’s ferreting for fresh sources, almost implying that the state data is unreliable. If that were the case, women’s mortality data, for example, would not be showing a 40 per cent registration as against the 60 per cent registration for men — this is in consonance with the ground realities because women’s deaths are not viewed as material to matters like inheritance and property rights.

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The good news is that awareness about the need for birth and death registration is growing. The RGI’s website indicates that the tightening of reporting schedules and making it mandatory for medical institutions and practitioners to report the cause of deaths is on the cards through amendments in the RBD Act. Digitisation at the primary level has touched 85 per cent and this will slash the data publication time. The use of digital software is increasing across states and dependence on manual reporting is reducing. Future RGI reports must be published promptly because only such data can alert the political system, policymakers and society of progress or the lack of it. This is what ought to stir reform.

India faces several challenges, but data collection and publication are not among them.

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 19, 2022 under the title ‘WHO’s gone wrong’. The writer is a former secretary in the Ministry of Health. Views are personal



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Firoz Bakht Ahmed writes: It’s unfortunate that every thinking Indian needs to today define their position on issues like mosques, temples, hijab and azaan while serious economic, educational, unemployment and social problems cry for attention.

There is Maulana Tauqeer Raza Khan, the Ittehad-e-Millat Council party chief and cleric, and there is Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati, the priest of the Dasna Devi temple in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. Unfortunately, both have loudspeakers with decibel levels that no one wants to control. Raza abuses the prime minister, blatantly calls for jihad and aims to provoke Muslims against Hindus. Narsinghanand, slapped on the wrist with a few FIRs, calls for genocide.

How much of a resonance they have in their communities beyond social media or WhatsApp is not known but one thing is clear: A majority in both the communities are invested in the future of a safe and prosperous India. People of both communities want their children to study hard and be treated fairly in the competitive world of education and employment. One can hope that the hate-filled words don’t carry far.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was absolutely right when he said that you cannot imagine India without the contribution of Muslims. And, “the day it is said that Muslims are unwanted here, the concept of Hindutva will cease to be,” he had said. It’s unfortunate that these remarks don’t reach the rabble-rousers who peddle hate.

It’s also unfortunate that every thinking Indian, with a minimum sense of civic responsibility, needs to today define her position on issues like mosques, temples, hijab and azaan while serious economic, educational, unemployment and social problems cry for attention. But let’s use this occasion as an opportunity to create a new social compact in which each one of us, whichever God we pray to, contributes to lowering tension and blurring the communal divide.

For, this is a country where the great poet Iqbal once said about Lord Ram:“Hai Ram ke wajood pe Hindostan ko naaz/Ahle nazr samajhte hain us ko Imam-e-Hind!” (The people of India feel proud to find Ram among them/ People of vision take him as a great spiritual leader of India). Iqbal’s words are not frozen in time but have to be part of a continuous process of assimilation. For this to happen, there has to be reform and rethinking on both sides.

Muslims must start thinking about the ideology of negating the BJP and vowing to vote for anyone who is “capable of defeating the BJP.”

This has done a world of harm to them because the parties wanting to “defeat the BJP” seem to be caught in a time warp — in a world in which dynasties are privileged. There was a time, during the six decades of Congress rule, when it was held — and the Congress is guilty of perpetuating this myth — that to come to power at the Centre, you needed the Muslim vote. That myth was shattered in 2014 and in virtually every election since then.

Muslims know that these parties have failed to address their social, educational and security problems. Yet, these parties banked on their vote. No wonder, the refrain of all these parties — the Congress, Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party, and the AIMIM — is that the RSS and BJP are out to marginalise the Muslims. Why don’t these parties have Muslims in their top echelons?

The controversy over the hijab in a few districts in Karnataka was sought to be made into a national issue when it found no resonance in any other state. The fears of India becoming a Hindu theocratic state are also overblown as secular and peace-loving Hindus vastly outnumber the bigoted, rabid fringe. When a young Hindu man in Hyderabad, B Nagaraju, was murdered in full public view by the Muslim brother of his wife Ashreen Sultana, his only crime being that he and his wife were in love, very few in the community stood up and spoke against it. Even the usual suspects who issue pamphlets were silent.

Before the dismemberment of the Subcontinent, the Muslim peasant in Bengal participated as joyously in the village Durga Puja as his Hindu neighbour. In Bangladesh, Hindus celebrated Id. If entire Muslim villages in Malaysia can watch the Ramayana being performed on stage, there is no reason why they cannot do the same in India or include Hindus in their tazia processions and Karbala enactments.

Meena Kumari, Nargis, Waheeda Rehman and Mumtaz played the role of the devoted Hindu wife with sindoor on their foreheads. What about bhajans sung in Mohammed Rafi’s sonorous voice? Should we ban these recordings? Should we stop seeing films starring Dilip Kumar or Aamir Khan or Salman Khan? After namaz when Muslims stepped out of mosques, in almost all walled city neighbourhoods across India, one could observe Hindu men and women standing with their sick children to be blessed. A maulvi sahib used to wake up a panditji to ring the temple bells in the morning. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan once paid a fitting tribute to India’s composite culture by describing the country as a beautiful bride with two bewitching eyes — Hindus and Muslims.

Sufi saints like Sheikh Muinuddin Chishti, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, Khwaja Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki and other pirs like Haji Malang in Maharashtra are revered by all Indians irrespective of their faith. The spirit of assimilation is India’s trump card; it can make the country a beacon of hope for the world. Urdu poet, Afzal Manglori has laid out the goal aptly: “Koi mushkil nahin hei Hindu ya Musalmaan hona/ Haan badi baat hai is daur mein insaan hona (It’s no feat to be a Hindu or Muslim/What matters today is to be a good human).

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 19, 2022 under the title ‘Nation’s trump card’. The author is former Vice-Chancellor, Maulana Azad National Urdu University



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T Nanda Kumar writes: With the expertise available in the country now, algorithms can be built to assess the impact of weather and pest events on crop size and quality.

I was “cooling off”(a bureaucratic term for spending a minimum period in the state after a central posting) in Ranchi in June 2006, hoping to be back in Delhi by October. One morning, I get a call from the establishment officer asking me to report as Secretary of Food and Public Distribution the next day. I was parachuted to the job and asked to “hit the deck running”, of a ship in turbulent waters. Import of wheat had begun and India was trying to avoid a food crisis. How we avoided the global food crisis of 2008 is another story.

While measures to manage the situation were underway, I made efforts to understand how it came to such a pass. Figure 1 offers some insights.

Procurement in 2006-07 (April-March) at 9.23 MMT was far below the requirement (note that the 2006-07 procurement figures relate to the 2005-06 crop of wheat). The buffer stocks were drawn down by 2 MMT, a cardinal error in food management. The stock position at the end of a poor procurement season had put the government in a tight spot.

What led to this situation? The central pool had been carrying large stocks and there was wide criticism that these were being held for no good reason and costing the taxpayer huge sums of money (some even said “to feed” the rats!). The government had, after due consideration, decided to liquidate some stocks with the FCI for export. Figure 2 explains the numbers for wheat.

Coincidentally, procurement had started going down from a high of 20.6 MMT to 15.8 MMT in 2003-04, marginally up to 16.7mmt in 2004-05 to drop again to 14.8 MMT in 2005-06. This trend and the resultant depletion of stocks went “unnoticed”.

With the advantage of hindsight, one can draw some conclusions. The exuberance that India has a food surplus and can feed its people and “ the world” resulted in the unintended depletion of public stocks. The drawdown on public stocks without reviewing the production and stock position every quarter was ill-planned. Overlooking the drop in production almost every alternate year, particularly in 2000-01, 02-03, and 04-05 followed by 05-06 proved costly.

Not estimating the impact of climate change (high temperatures) on production — grain formation and grain size/weight — turned out to be critical.

The last point above was the game-changer. The Department of Food, overconfident about procuring large quantities, believing that the crop size estimated by the Ministry of Agriculture is above 75 MMT, went about disposing of old stocks. By the time the third advance estimates came by end of May (there were no drones or satellite imagery in those days), the damage was done. I did turn to a few private sources to understand the impact of weather and the extent of private stocks. No official data existed on India’s privately-held stocks of grains.

The government depended on only production and public stock data to take policy decisions, ignoring the importance of private stocks in the market. The CEO of an MNC showed me how their company tracked temperature changes in North-West India on a daily basis and came to the conclusion, using changes in grain formation and grain weight, to arrive at a crop size of 68 MMT. Government agencies had missed this important part. Another CEO had drawn up a time series of a “wheat balance sheet” for India, based on production, export, import, procurement, consumption (NSSO data) and private stocks. He had foreseen a shortage. A third, from a market agency, gave me access to daily prices from across two dozen markets, a “real-time” ticker on my computer screen. These were eye-openers.

The current situation looks so familiar. The revised crop size is reported as 102 mmt. No bonus over MSP this year in spite of an expected shortfall. Now, an export ban, after claims of being willing to feed the world, raises questions about the government’s confidence in the production numbers. While most experts were predicting a lower crop in late March, where was the need to talk big on exports? A case of over-confidence based on wrong data?

What can India do to avoid such errors?

First, set up systems to get reliable and timely estimates of crops. The second advance estimates come in mid-February and the third in mid/ late May. Food management requires a better picture by early March (same for kharif). The National Crop Forecasting system including “FASAL soft” will have to be reset. The much-hyped Drone-Artificial Intelligence- Blockchain technologies should be deployed to do a simple thing: Prepare a correct estimate of the crop well in time, for the government to plan and act ahead of any crisis.

Reliable price data has always been a missing link in policy planning. Mandatory reporting of price (not just the APMC price data) of all large (limits can be defined) transactions are a must. Price movement is an important indicator of the supply-demand mismatch.

The government should be aware of the quantum of private stocks, preferably in anonymised, aggregated formats. This needs legal backing. A provision to mandate the submission of anonymised stock data from all warehouses should be put in place.

The futures market remains grossly under-utilised. A vibrant futures market can help plan better. Blaming the futures market for price rise is passe. A futures market should be allowed to function without knee-jerk interventions from the government.

A robust system (drones, satellites, ground data) to monitor weather conditions like temperature, moisture stress, etc needs to be put in place immediately with a focus on key crops and major growing regions. With the expertise available in the country today, algorithms can be built to assess the impact of weather and pest events on crop size and quality. The government needs this information more than anyone else.

It is time we walked the talk on technology and data.

This column first appeared in the print edition on May 19, 2022 under the title ‘Another time, another crisis’. The writer was Food Secretary during 2006-08 and Agriculture Secretary, Government of India during 2008-10.



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A G Perarivalan writes: My anguish that stretched for 32 years was shared by millions across the world with empathy, affection and care

When the Supreme Court ordered my release around 10.40 am, I was waiting at a public hall near my uncle’s house with a friend. Of course, I was waiting for the report from Delhi. And when the news finally came, I went home. My mother (Arputammal) who fought for me all these years was crying. My elder sister was too. In fact, I have never seen her cry so much. I had to struggle to calm her. My younger sister who reached home a little late, and my father, a retired Tamil teacher, were visibly happy.

My mother didn’t speak to me today, she just kept crying. I don’t remember if I tried to comfort her. But yes, I have to sit with Amma and talk to her.

It is just a few hours since the SC order came. I feel very tired, after taking so many calls from relatives and friends.

I couldn’t think of anything now, maybe except a few names who I miss badly this day, who I wish were alive, or here with me at this moment.

It has been a long legal battle for me. But I wasn’t tired as I knew how much my mother was fighting for me. I spent around 11 years inside a 6×9 feet cell in solitary confinement. It was in those days I started becoming aware of my senses — actually my diminishing senses. A room in which I had nothing but empty walls to look at. I told someone earlier how I used to obsessively count the bricks on the wall, take measures of the door and bolts and imagine the smells I craved.

There were days when I was desperate to see a baby in prison. And all those babies at home, who were born in the early part of my imprisonment, have now become adults. Sencholai, my sister’s teenage daughter, is with me now. She was very frank — she wanted me to give her a treat, buy her sweets. I am yet to make arrangements for that. I badly miss Agaran and Inimai, children of my sisters — Agaran is in the US, Inimai is on her way home from college.

I miss Selva anna (Selvaraj), who has been abroad for the past few months. He was one selfless person who helped Amma to lead an anti-death penalty campaign. I miss my lawyer, S Prabu Ramasubramanian, in Delhi, who was there all along with me in the fight. I did ask him to come to Chennai today but he has many more battles to fight.

My friend and brother, Sekar, an accused who was released in the case, is abroad now. I badly miss him when I recall the gift he gave me when he was released in 1999 — his shoes, a shirt and a pair of trousers — insisting that I wear them on the day I get released. I am 50 now, and have outgrown those clothes. But I still treasure them.

I remember one Thenmozhi akka who sent me her gold thaali (necklace) for my legal expenses after learning that I had been sentenced to death. She died of cancer later, I never got a chance to meet her.

I can’t forget the late Mukundan C Menon, a journalist and activist, who visited me in the Salem prison in 1997 to share a note that read, “I am always with you”. I cannot describe the impact his words had on me. It was Justice V R Krishna Iyer, who stood like a pillar of support in my fight. Many times, the limited number of phone calls I was allowed to make from the prison were to Justice Iyer, one of the few people who believed me, in my fight for justice and inspired me a lot in my fight for survival. I paid my respects before photographs of Justice Iyer and P Senkodi, who was 20 when she self-immolated in 2011 to protest the death sentence awarded to us.

Thirukkural says,Avviya Nenjaththan Aakkamum Sevviyan Ketum Ninaikkappatum (The unexpected rise of a dishonest person and distress of an honest person are worthy of public scrutiny as they are against the law of nature).

Similarly, my anguish that stretched for 32 years was shared by millions across the world with empathy, affection and care. My hope was my mother. Her stupendous efforts and incredible steadfastness were life-saving planks in an arduous journey through a hurricane infested ocean.

I thank everyone. I wish my story gives hope to everyone who is forced to fight a mighty system for justice.

I am reminded of the wonderful days I spent as a young boy in my hometown, Jolarpet. I find a huge gap between then and now – I am now a middle-aged man, more mature and with life experience. How am I going to bridge the gap? I don’t know. My hometown is not the little nest I had left over three decades ago.

Perarivalan was taken into CBI custody from Periyar Thidal, the headquarters of Dravidar Kazhagam in Chennai, in connection with the Rajiv Gandhi assassination on June 11, 1991. In 1998, a TADA court convicted him and sentenced him to death, which the SC confirmed in 1999. The Supreme Court revisited the case in 2014 and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. He was out on parole for the first time in 2017. He spoke with Arun Janardhanan



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Deepika Padukone, a jury member at the Cannes Film Festival, and the choice of her red-carpet sari was a missed opportunity to celebrate Indian handloom.

At Cannes, the mecca of cinema, the Indian film fraternity — actors, producers, directors, film critics, even politicians — checks in annually with a zeal, pride and politesse for fellow colleagues and countrymen that’s often missing in spaces back home (where their presence, in body and mind, would truly matter). It seems that if not seen on the French Riviera, the very purpose of the lives of these luminaries would come to a naught.

This year, the celebration are many splendoured — as will be the bling on display. It is great that Deepika Padukone is a jury member, sharing the pedestal with a fallen hero, a director who has been accused of plagiarism. She, however, is not the first Indian female actor to be on the jury of the Cannes Film Festival, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary – just like her country that is being honoured at the festival’s marketplace, the Marche du Film. What greater joy can there be than a joint celebration? Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, after all.

This is India’s moment in the sun, and our showstopper there, Padukone, is a truly international personality. A model for many brands – being a Louis Vuitton ambassador is no mean feat – here was a chance to represent Brand India in all its glory. Alas! Her go-to designer is one whose USP is dressing up rich and famous brides. Sure, she was gorgeous in her retro look. But that was just her, not the sari. Let’s give it to designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee, his outfit for her press conference — the tropical lime-green trousers, jaunty shirt, and headband — was excellent.

But the sequinned-sari look on the Red Carpet: Didn’t Sabyasachi design a similar blue-sequinned sari look for the promos of Padukone’s film Chhapaak (2020)? Sabyasachi says: “The sari is a story I will never stop telling… it has its place.” Coverage of her Cannes sari says it’s the “Royal Bengal Tiger look”. There’s something sexual about animal prints. Doesn’t that make the woman wearing it, a sexualised object, dressed/designed in a man’s vision? Why did Padukone agree to that? This isn’t a fancy-dress competition.

Why can’t India’s Cannes story weave the indigenous into its many folds? “Celebrated heritage Indian crafts and techniques through a modern lens,” is what Sabyasachi says about the sari in question. Padukone may carry contemporary looks far better than the traditional, but she could definitely pull off a handloom sari with élan. Why make her look like a thaan, wrapped in metres of unstitched cloth? Or worse, sofa upholstery.

She, of course, wasn’t making a political statement like Riz Ahmed did at the recent Gilded-Age-themed Met Gala. But why be coy? In her Western-appealing designs by Sabyasachi, the aesthetic belongs to an India that doesn’t speak to the other. The colour-coding of gold and black is nothing ingenious. The hues take off from the Cannes festival logo — the palme d’or (golden palm) against a black backdrop. And while black and gold aren’t a design aesthetic exclusive to the rich and famous, it has a socioeconomic story of its own, if anyone cares to peel off the shimmer and take note. It belongs to the nouveau riche. West/East Delhi’s showrooms and living rooms hold proof. On display are curtains and sofa upholstery, in similar stripes and shades — at which, some of us have, at some point or the other, turned up our noses. And, so, when former photojournalist-turned-author Farah Bashir posted a picture of herself seated on her black-and-gold-striped couch on Instagram, I felt heard/seen.

But really, this feels like a missed opportunity. Padukone could have led by example. Like Bangladesh’s Azmeri Haque Badhon did last year, when her film Rehana Maryam Noor was in competition (Un Certain Regard) at Cannes. She wore a slice of her home on her being: A beige-olive, half-silk Dhakai Jamdani sari with gold threadwork. A sari “true to my roots”, which “speaks of our heritage”, as per the actor. Last year, Bangladesh was celebrating 50 years of its liberation. Badhon’s film was the first Bangladeshi film ever to bag a slot in the festival’s main competition. A sari isn’t just a piece of clothing — it has its place, to use Sabyasachi’s words. It has many stories, many histories in its folds; it links us spatio-temporally to our roots and ancestors. Handloom-weaving, like indigenous languages and oral traditions, are passed down through generations. If we don’t preserve and celebrate them — and what better stage for this than a global festival like Cannes — then what country are we really celebrating?

If the Rajasthani folk singer Mame Khan walked the Red Carpet for the first time, if Indian food, music and movies are being celebrated, why not its handloom? Every state of India boasts of a handful of unique handloom styles. What Badhon did at Cannes — through that one symbol, the world spoke to the age-old, impoverished, Jamdani weavers who have kept the tradition alive — Padukone couldn’t. But picture, aur festival, abhi baaki hai. There’s still a week to go. Let’s hope Sabyasachi will surprise his critics.



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Ever since India unexpectedly announced a ban on wheat exports last week it has gotten a lot of international heat for compounding a worldwide shortfall triggered by the Ukraine-Russia war. Now at a high-level ministerial meeting (Global Food Security – Call to Action) in New York, MoS external affairs V Muraleedharan has defended India’s position by making the comparison with what had happened to anti-Covid vaccines: “Open markets must not become an argument to perpetuate inequity and promote discrimination.”

Recall that India had effectively banned the export of vaccines in April last year, as the Delta wave engulfed it. But if India’s own vaccine orders had been placed in a timely way, it need not have failed to meet other countries’ orders. Effectively it joined the richer countries in rendering the open market for anti-Covid vaccines non-existent at that time.

In today’s wheat scenario too what is needed is better domestic policy, including higher MSP, rather than a knee-jerk reaction that hurts both the country’s reputation as a reliable supplier in global markets and its own farmers. Instead of unpersuasively pointing fingers at hoarding and speculation, India should reverse the export ban.



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Setting at liberty AG Perarivalan, a 51-year-old life convict serving his 31st year in jail for his involvement in the assassination of a former Prime Minister, was never an easy verdict to pen. More so when successive state governments in Tamil Nadu batted for the release while central governments resisted it at every available judicial forum, and even made the state’s governors exhaust extraneous options to defeat the possibility. Perarivalan, along with two others, would have been executed in a TN jail on September 9, 2011, had Madras high court not stayed his execution just a week before the hanging.

It is for this reason that the May 18 verdict of the Supreme Court ordering his release ‘forthwith’ marks a seminal judicial moment. The top court had to balance the sovereign executive power of state governments to grant pardons, remissions or commute sentences, with the constitutional remit of a governor. On September 9, 2018, the TN cabinet recommended the premature release of Perarivalan and requested the state governor to invoke his power under Article 161 of the Constitution to approve it. The Constitution was crystal clear about the binding nature of the decision. However, the governor kept it pending for about two and a half years, and then made a ‘reference’ to the President.

SC’s decision faulted the TN governor’s interpretation of the Constitution and the statute on four main points. First, the law is well-settled that the state cabinet’s advice is binding on the governor in exercising powers of remission under Article 161. Second, governor not exercising these powers or causing inexplicable delay in exercising them is subject to judicial review. Third, the governor’s reference of the cabinet recommendation later is without constitutional backing. Fourth, the reference to the President was incorrect as no express executive power is conferred on GoI by the Constitution (or laws made by Parliament) to supersede state government’s Article 161 powers in IPC 302 cases.

Politically, it is a win-win for all. AIADMK made the all-important recommendation to the governor. DMK blunted every effort of the Union government to dilute state’s powers to recommend remissions and commutations. BJP had a say against terrorism in court and the governor did his best to delay the constitutional inevitability. The spotlight is now on the remaining six convicts. SC’s verdict, however, needs to be seen in a larger context. At a critical juncture in Centre-state ties, it has removed some ambiguity in the scope of a governor’s power.



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The ongoing four-day meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure has brought to Delhi officials from all member countries, including those from Pakistan and China, with substantial focus on Afghanistan. With global attention on the Ukraine war, sanctions and their economic impact, Afghanistan, abandoned by the US to Taliban, has slipped into hell over the last three months – there’s now a virtual collapse of administrative structures and the local economy. Healthcare facilities are scarce and more than 20 million Afghans – half the country’s population – are facing acute hunger. Girls are barred from getting secondary education, women can no longer get a driving licence and are not welcome in the job market.

These terrible humanitarian and social tragedies have not seen any concerted global effort to help, in part because most governments are reluctant to deal with Taliban. And unsurprisingly terrorism and violence haven’t abated either. Iran and Pakistan have seen hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees pour in. But the security situation in Afghanistan affects all SCO members, including India. In recent weeks both the Islamic State and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan have stepped up their activities on both sides of the Durand Line. Add to this the hard-to-believe hardliners of Taliban’s Kandhari group that wants even more medievalism.

All of this further jeopardises India’s painstaking investments in Afghanistan over the last two decades. Pakistan, of course, will try to use Taliban to block any Indian move, which means New Delhi has to work more closely with Tehran to maintain a strategic foothold in the region. But New Delhi should also help itself by continuing to send humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, even if dealing with Taliban is an unlovely prospect, and expediting emergency visas for Afghan nationals. The last is crucial. This is no time to forget our Afghan friends.



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But as the economy climbs up the cycle, the effects are felt more on interest rates. At close to its potential rate of growth, government borrowings tend to crowd out private investment.

GoI intends to push ahead with capital expenditure plans announced in the budget even as inflation is forcing RBI into a monetary contraction cycle. Price stabilisation imposes its cost on growth, and GoI is recommitting itself to keeping the momentum alive as the central bank gets down to fulfilling its statutory role of taming inflation. This combination of an expansionary fiscal policy and contractionary monetary stance, however, yields different outcomes at different points of the business cycle. It works best at the bottom of a business cycle by increasing income. But as the economy climbs up the cycle, the effects are felt more on interest rates. At close to its potential rate of growth, government borrowings tend to crowd out private investment.

The economy had almost regained its pre-pandemic demand before the Ukraine war created a second supply shock. GoI's expenditure plan at that point involved a big infra push to crowd in private investment. The nature of expenditure has the capacity to increase the potential rate of growth, and GoI is right to stay the course. The scale of imported inflation, and the resultant monetary contraction, may dilute some of the expected spillover into private sector investment decisions. But medium-term capacity-building overrides immediate demand management.

The fiscal balance can be restored through compensatory compression of revenue expenditure. The constraint here would be income support as fresh jobs are created in a public investment cycle. The path to fiscal consolidation was premised on a supply disruption due to a pandemic. An energy shock requires fresh intervention with monetary accommodation no longer possible. Improved tax revenue mobilisation could contain some expenditure spillage.

( Originally published on May 19, 2022 )<

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What looks like the first step of a reinvention comes in the form of disillusionment with the Democrat establishment, a party that he once supported for being '(mostly) the kindness party', and less in rousing support of the Trump School of Yahoos that put 'Make America Great Again' as its sole fulcrum.

If Elon Musk did not exist, post-Donald Trump America would have made it necessary to invent him. The SpaceX-Tesla CEO, of course, has been existing, and existing well, much before the advent of the US' last Republican president. But with Wednesday's announcement - on Twitter, of course - that he 'can no longer support [Democrats] and will vote Republican', the Musk is off. What looks like the first step of a reinvention comes in the form of disillusionment with the Democrat establishment, a party that he once supported for being '(mostly) the kindness party', and less in rousing support of the Trump School of Yahoos that put 'Make America Great Again' as its sole fulcrum.

When the richest extrovert in the world announces not just his political ideology but the political party he will vote for, he is either a Bruce Wayne, or prepping to run for presidency. For Musk, both are simultaneously possible with his Potus as a caped crusader. For all his future-readiness, Musk is an old-style libertarian. For many, his Ayn Rand-meets-Thomas Edison approach is jarring. But for much of America tired of Democrat doublespeak, Musk represents an older, American value that has weakened under liberal fundamentalism - capitalist anti-establishmentism. It is in a polarised US that Musk's contradictory stances stand out, ironically, as those of an arch anti-polariser.

Similarities with Trump may be cherry-picked. But where the two businessmen fundamentally differ is Musk's success as a strategic, not hell-raising, disruptor. Trump may have dialled the notch up against Democratic groupthink, but, clearly, he dialled up too much. In contrast, Musk's ongoing tryst with Twitter and the conditions he's set for the deal to go through, or his statements against war-mongering Russia (where Tesla does little business) and silence against no-free speech absolutist China (with its vast electric vehicle market) is a telling - even reassuring - sign. Musk may be testing the ground yet. But President Musk is something that America could well find itself inventing in the winter of 2024.

( Originally published on May 19, 2022 )<

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Politicians switching parties is a phenomenon as old as politics itself. Yet, the steady attrition of leaders from the Congress – the latest being its former Gujarat unit working president Hardik Patel and former Punjab unit chief Sunil Jakhar – cannot be good news for a party still struggling to come up with an attractive poll pitch and a cohesive public message.

The exit of Mr Patel, months before the Gujarat election, may rankle the party more. Seen as one of the young firebrand leaders who helped the party post its best results in a generation in the 2017 polls, Mr Patel wrote a scathing letter that mirrored some of the charges levelled by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders at the Congress – a disinterested leadership, an anti-Gujarat attitude, and a culture of insulting national icons. Many of these allegations smack of political opportunism – after all, why did Mr Patel spend years in the party if it had an anti-Gujarat attitude – but worryingly for the Congress, they add to a popularly held trope that the party is rudderless and unable to find a cogent ideological line to fight the BJP. The jibe about local politicians being more interested in getting “chicken sandwiches” for central leaders, while silly, is aimed at furthering this perception that the Congress leadership is out of touch with the aam aadmi or common man.

The party’s recently concluded Chintan Shivir was devised to address this crisis of leadership. But it appears that the party was hesitant to bite the bullet. Until that core question is addressed, and the party chooses to respond to losses and defections in a robust and clear manner, it will be very difficult to reverse public perception about an atrophying party, or repeat its commendable performance in Gujarat later this year.



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A report prepared by the Institute for Competitiveness — it was commissioned by the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PM-EAC) — has grabbed headlines because of what can be described as very populist recommendations. These include enacting an urban employment guarantee programme and introducing a universal basic income programme. To be sure, such concepts are not being raised for the first time, but this is the closest they have got to the realm of policymaking under the present government. The report makes recommendations in passing, without any talk about their fiscal implications. What is even more intriguing, however, is the fact that even though the report is titled The State of Inequality in India Report, there is hardly any analysis of what has happened to inequality in the recent past. “As the report states, there isn’t quite a conclusion,” Bibek Debroy, the chairman of the PM-EAC has rightly noted in his preface.

One of the reasons the report cannot give recent estimates of consumption inequality in India is the fact that the government junked the findings of the 2017-18 Consumption Expenditure Survey (CES). However, there should at least have been an attempt to look at asset inequality, for which data up to 2018 is available in the National Statistical Office (NSO)’s All-India Debt and Investment Survey. While the conduct and publication of a CES is essential to measuring consumption inequality and arriving at a poverty line, many economists, including Thomas Piketty, have been arguing that the government should also provide disaggregated income tax data for researchers. It is a well-accepted fact that the richest (say CEOs) hardly partake in NSO surveys. The other aspect of inequality that needs urgent attention in India is the one between firms. Policies such as demonetisation and rollout of Goods and Services Tax (GST) pushed the formalisation process in the Indian economy, which tilted the scales in favour of large firms. The pandemic’s economic pain has only strengthened this trend. While independent economists have been arguing on these lines, the lack of data on informal sector enterprises — this is also a delayed NSO survey — has prevented a comprehensive and objective analysis of the question. This finds no mention in the report.

When perhaps the most important advisory body on economic policy commissions a report on inequality, one expects it to try and engage with some of the more difficult questions and come up with ideas which trigger an interest and debate at the highest levels of government. On that count, this report disappoints.



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Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” That famous quote, erroneously attributed to Albert Einstein, exemplifies the state of the Congress over the last decade. Which is why the party’s attempt at reviving itself with a “Chintan Shivir” (brainstorming meeting) has been greeted with scepticism. When a party lurches from one defeat to another without learning lessons, what can a three-day retreat achieve that eight years in the political wilderness have failed to drive home?

Typically, the Congress’s Udaipur Declaration is replete with platitudes but no potentially game-changing idea. For example, it calls on members to imbibe the principles of “Bharatiyata (Indianism)” and “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (The world is one family)” as a counter to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Hindutva ideology, but doesn’t specify how it will make “Indian nationalism” appealing to a “new” India.

Take the “revolutionary” introduction of the “one family, one ticket” formula. On the face of it, for a party with so many family trees, this would truly mark a break with a nepotistic past. But the formula comes with a rider: The second family member seeking to contest polls should have worked for the party in an “exemplary manner” for at least five years. This exception keeps the door open for the presiding Gandhi triumvirate and many others to contest elections.

Or, for that matter, the most ground-breaking recommendation is that 50% of party posts will be for those below 50 years at all levels, including the Congress Working Committee (CWC), and there would be a five-year term limit for those holding posts at all levels. The party’s youth committee has even proposed a “retirement age” for all “elected posts”, almost akin to the BJP’s successful margdarshak mandal (guidance panel) concept. But the final resolution doesn’t specify any age ceiling or whether term limits will also extend to those who have been perennial Rajya Sabha nominees. The ambiguity suggests a reluctance to bite the bullet.

Recall that the Congress is perceived as an ageing party where no elections have been held to the CWC since 1998, where the parliamentary board is dysfunctional, where many remain in the same assignment for years despite failures and where Sonia Gandhi has been party chief for almost a quarter-century. In effect, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Can the Congress afford an incrementalist approach, especially when facing an existential crisis? Perhaps the most candid acknowledgement of the party’s dilemma came from Rahul Gandhi when he admitted that the party’s connection with the people was broken.

So how will the party reconnect with the masses? At the Chintan Shivir, the party announced a “Kanyakumari to Kashmir Bharat jodo yatra” from October 2. However, a yatra, invoking Mahatma’s sepia-tinted imagery, is no silver bullet for revival. A successful resurgence demands a compelling narrative, organisational robustness, plentiful resources and charismatic leadership that attracts ordinary citizens. At the moment, the Congress lacks all these and struggles to walk the talk. Rewind to last October when the Congress claimed it was launching a “continuous” agitation against rising fuel prices, even promising padyatras. In the end, there was more clamour on Twitter than on the ground.

Which brings us back to the elephant in the room: Leadership. At the Chintan Shivir, it was evident that Rahul Gandhi is still the de facto leader of the party. While the Gandhi scion describes the party as his “family” and promises to wage a long political struggle against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-BJP ideology, there is uncertainty about whether he can carry the party’s well-entrenched lobbies along with his reformist impulses. The Congress craves power and Rahul’s diffidence in practising power politics means that the party is trapped in pause mode, almost waiting for a miraculous turn in electoral fortunes.

Equally uncertain is Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s role in any future power arrangement. Her tryst with the minefield of Uttar Pradesh politics came badly unstuck, but she remains an influential figure in decision-making. But, will she have a more frontal role or allow her brother to take all the significant calls? And what about Sonia Gandhi herself? Will she fade into semi-retirement or remain the mascot who holds a factionalised party together for now?

If BJP is guilty of the politics of “permanent polarisation”, the Congress’s ad-hoc leadership style has left the party in a state of perpetual inertia. The Udaipur Declaration recognises the urgent need for a revamp, but a creaking Ambassador car can’t become a sleek BMW overnight without making some tough calls. Which is why before embarking on any padyatra, the Congress needs to end the self-delusional fantasy that one family alone can “save” India: New India has rejected the politics of entitlement embodied in the old Congress. Forget about saving India, the Congress first needs to save itself by ending the status quoism.

Post-script: In the last eight years, endless obituaries have been written of the Congress. “If we are dead, why do the media still keep obsessing about our future?” a senior Congressman asked me. My response: Because Indian democracy needs a strong Opposition where the Congress, as a pan-India brand, has a crucial role to play.

Rajdeep Sardesai is senior journalist and author The views expressed are personal



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Imagine this: You are arrested by the border police and told that there is a well-founded belief that you are not an Indian citizen, but an illegal immigrant. You are dragged before a foreigners’ tribunal to prove your citizenship. Here, the burden is on you to satisfy the tribunal that you are Indian; the smallest discrepancies in documents could lead to you losing your case, as it is a well-known fact that adjudicating officers at the tribunals are given incentives, depending on how many individuals they can declare to be foreigners.

But, despite all the odds against you, you manage to satisfy the tribunal that you are Indian. You are released, and you set off on your way home in relief, hoping to carry on with your life. One month later, however, there is a knock on your door. The police are back. You are rearrested and, this time, taken to a different tribunal. Your prior ordeal has no bearing upon these proceedings: You now have to prove your citizenship again.

While this may sound like a scene from a dystopic novel, until recently, this was the state of affairs under the foreigners’ tribunals in Assam. In law, there is a principle known as res judicata, which (barring exceptional circumstances) prevents anyone from reopening an issue that has been decided by a court. The purpose behind res judicata is to prevent the continuous harassment of ordinary people by powerful authorities, such as the State. The principle is thus one of the most important legal principles that protects individuals against State impunity.

With respect to the foreigners’ tribunals, however, this principle was given a go-by thanks to a 2018 judgment of the Gauhati high court (HC). In this judgment, the HC noted that technically, foreigners’ tribunals did not render judgments, but opinions, about whether or not a specific individual was a foreigner or an Indian citizen. It was then for the government to decide — based on this opinion — what action to take (such as, for example, detention or deportation of a “declared foreigner”). For this reason, the HC held that foreigners’ tribunals were not bound by the principle of res judicata. One, two, many tribunals could declare you to be an Indian citizen. Still, at any given time, another tribunal — on the instance of the border police — could disagree, declare you a foreigner, and put you under immediate risk of deportation or detention.

This asymmetrical state of affairs was worsened by a Supreme Court (SC) judgment in 2019, which held that foreigners’ tribunal opinions were binding on everyone, including for the preparation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC). Thus, one judgment (of the Assam HC) devalued foreigners’ tribunals orders to give the State multiple bites of the cherry, while another judgment (of the SC) placed a very high value upon the same orders, holding that a finding of non-citizenship would automatically exclude an individual from a place in the NRC.

Fortunately, in a recent judgment delivered on April 28, the Gauhati HC has resolved this contradiction. In the new judgment — Sital Mandal vs Union of India — justice Kotiswar Singh correctly observes that this state of affairs cannot be allowed to stand. Following the SC judgment, he holds that once a foreigners’ tribunal finds that a person is an Indian citizen, that finding can no longer be reopened or altered by another foreigners’ tribunal. Thus, it is no longer open to the State to keep asking the same question until it finally gets the answer that it wants.

Of particular importance is justice Singh’s rejection of the State’s argument that India’s national security requires abandoning the principle of res judicata. As we have seen in recent times, government lawyers regularly invoke the words national security to justify the abandonment of all principles of the rule of law, and allow complete State impunity. However, justice Singh correctly notes that there is no hierarchy between fundamental principles; res judicata plays a crucial role in maintaining a rule-of-law based system, and cannot be abandoned upon the mere recitation of the words national security.

This judgment does not resolve the multiple outstanding issues with the regime of foreigners’ tribunals, which are increasingly coming to light. These include, for example, extensive government control over tribunal members, dubious use of evidence, exclusion of oral evidence, and declaring thousands of people foreigners ex parte, ie, without a hearing. A thoroughgoing reform of the foreigners’ tribunals is an urgent need; for all that, however, this judgment is significant for restoring a modicum of fairness to the existing — flawed — process.

Gautam Bhatia is a Delhi-based advocate The views expressed are personal



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In literature, from Dante’s flatterers and Dickens’s Uriah Heep to the workers at the fashion magazine Runway sucking up to its abusive editor, Miranda Priestly, constantly seeking outrageous displays of ingratiation in Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada, we have a fair representation of this slippery breed that stalk us everywhere in real life. If the reptilian Uriah Heep happens to be one of literature’s most repulsive sycophants, royal courts were flattery’s most famous laboratories, perfected by masters such as Cleopatra, Shakespeare, and Disraeli.

A very interesting book of potted history titled In Praise of Flattery by Willis Goth Regier (University of Nebraska Press, 2007) chronicles how flattery flourished in imperial China and classical Greece, and how the infestation of the Roman empire with flatterers made Tacitus to note that “flattery is the worst poison of true affection (“blanditiae sunt pessimum veri adfectus venenum”).

The basic Greek corpus includes Aesop (sixth century BC), to whom we owe the stereotype of flattering fox; Plato (circa 427–347 BC), whose description of a flatterer as “a fearsome and most pernicious creature” might inadvertently and “co-incidentally” refer to some modern-day toadies; and Plutarch (circa AD 45– 120), whose “How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend” is the core text of flattery studies. Regier cites Athenaeus (circa AD 170–circa 230) as the record-keeper of the names, gains, and failures of famous flatterers of the ancient world: Tithymallus, Chairephon, Moschion.

Those who exercise flattery and sycophancy – from Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, who initiated the “Heil Hitler” salute and single-handedly created the prototype for subsequent versions of state-sponsored sycophancy, and the obsequious Indian President who in his gratitude for his leader for giving him the occupancy of Rashtrapati Bhavan, infamously announced that he would gladly "sweep the ground" that his leader walked upon, to the Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar declaring himself as a willing slave of the Gandhi family, to Dev Kanth Barua, president of India’s ruling Congress in the mid-1970s, who coined the cloying apothegm ‘India is Indira and Indira is India’, to Avadhut Wagh, Maharashtra’s BJP spokesperson, who called Modi the 11th incarnation of Lord Vishnu – are described in colourful pejorative terms such as apple-polisher, bootlicker, brownnoser, fawner, flunky, lickspittle, suck-up, toady, toadeater and worse.

To this holy pantheon, quite a clutch of new names was added recently when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee received the Bangla Academy Award for her "relentless literary pursuit". The award, introduced this year by Sahitya Academi to pay tribute to the best writers of West Bengal was presented to Banerjee for her book Kabita Bitan. The award came in for bitter criticism and triggered a few resignations. Many said the award was undeserved as the anthology contained no literary merit.

It is possible to argue that high culture’s harsh critique of popular or mass culture is a plea for the restoration of an elitist order that often betrays a resistance to lowbrow and middlebrow content. But the argument flies in the face of the quality of the jury under the watch of whom the award was apparently given. As stalwarts of Bengali literature such as veteran novelist Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay (who got Sahitya Akademi award in 1989 for his novel Manabjamin), poet Joy Goswami (who got the same award in 2000 for his anthology Pagli tomar sange), and novelist Abul Bashar (recipient of many awards as well) were involved, the critics said that the "Kavi Pranam" event organised by the West Bengal government’s Information and Culture Department on the occasion of the birth anniversary of legendary poet Rabindranath Tagore was not only a high watermark of sycophancy and nepotism but also was eminently risible for prizing clout over literary merit. Among the defenders, it was the state education minister and president of Bangla Academy Bratya Basu who tried to tamely explain how the consideration of literary merit was ‘relative’ and how even Dylan and Tagore, both Nobel laureates in literature, had to face questions to justify the award.

As coteries of agents and managers, execs and moneymen, publicists and journalists, gawkers and sycophants swirl all around our politicians, there hangs a cautionary tale in a country suffused with a culture of sycophancy. This culture is unparalleled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country. Though it has blown the Congress away, the cult of Modi is built around it. Other political parties might draw a lesson. 

Prasenjit Chowdhury is a commentator on geopolitical affairs, development and cultural issues, besides being an occasional essayist and a reviewer of books and films

The views expressed are personal



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Earlier this week, Delhi water minister Satyendar Jain took to social media to say that the Haryana government is not releasing the National Capital's “fair share of water”, amid a severe supply disruption. In response, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar said the state is “providing full water to Delhi”. As the two governments sparred over water-sharing, certain parts of Delhi faced severe supply disruption, amid unprecedented severe heat waves.

The daily demand for water for an estimated Delhi population of 20 million is around 1,200 million gallons per day (MGD), and the Capital relies on the Yamuna for about 90% of its water needs. But the river is drying up, and one of the key reasons is its high pollution load.

For those interested in a blow-by-blow account of how pollution is killing the river Yamuna, here’s a piece by Manoj Misra (Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan) and Bhim Singh Rawat (SANDRP): Blow by Blow, how pollution kills the Yamuna river: A Field Trip Report.

Rejuvenating the Yamuna

One of the ways to rejuvenate the river is to decrease the pollution load on the Yamuna, and also involve riverine communities in river-cleaning programmes, says a recent NCAER study done in collaboration with the University of Chicago’s Tata Centre for Development (TCD) at the University of Chicago. The report, River Yamuna: Deteriorating Water Quality and its Socio-economic Impact (Voices from the Ground), found that wastewater drains were a major source of river pollution and that Delhi’s stretch of the Yamuna is not fit for drinking or outdoor bathing purposes and rarely meets permissible Sewage Treatment Plant discharge standards.

While most studies on river pollution focus on the “degradation discourse”, the NCAER-TCD report focuses on other crucial-yet-under-examined aspects: The centrality of the Yamuna in the daily lives of riverine communities, their attitude towards the river, and their assessment of the status of river pollution and indicators of pollution, as well as, mitigation strategies.

This approach is pioneering and crucial because policymakers often do not see river communities as part of the river ecosystem. Therefore, urban river pollution has mostly ignored the riverine communities’ livelihood and health concerns.

Yamuna: Divine and polluted

The NCAER-TCD study results indicate that most respondents considered the river Yamuna to be divine and polluted at the same time. They could assess even slight changes in the already polluted water of the river. But, they believed that this pollution had no impact on the divinity of the river.

The study also found that traditional occupations of the riverine communities have been adversely affected by river water pollution. Most of the respondents, who are dependent on the river for their livelihood and with a household monthly income of less than 10,000, believe that pollution has a negative impact on their income. These people, the study noted, already living in economic stress, did not want their next generation to pursue their respective traditional occupations, such as fishing/washing.

Interestingly, the study found people were aware of the causes of river pollution. For example, the majority of respondents pointed out the discharge of untreated wastewater from the drains as a major cause of river pollution and suggested treating and reducing the flow of drain water into the river to check the river pollution. But people could not see agency in themselves or means available to them to play a role in pollution mitigation.

Based on the study, the report suggests several ways to revive the river:

Treat pollution at the source: The main source of pollution is drains carrying domestic wastewater and industrial effluents, such as Chandni Chowk and Najafgarh drains, as well as rubbish is thrown along and, in the river, such as ritual waste, polythene bags, and plastics. To effectively clean the river Yamuna, the study recommends stopping pollution at its source. For this, wastewater generated from household areas and industries could be treated and recycled at its generation point and recycled water could be used to meet non-potable needs, such as for irrigating the parks, lawns, sidewalks green belts on the roads, etc.

Improve community participation: Unlike popular perception, the study found that many people still have a vital relationship with the urban stretch of the river Yamuna. Thus, they should be looked at as a component of the larger riverine ecosystem. These riverine communities, who are still involved in traditional occupations and spend a significant amount of time interacting with rivers, have rich local knowledge about the river. They should be considered as one of the stakeholders and could be given preference to take part in monitoring and implementation of river cleaning programmes on a local level.

A reliable, transparent, and participative Water Quality Monitoring System is the bedrock for a healthy river and riverine community. The study used the Water-to-Cloud approach, which measures water quality in real-time and displays it near real-time on publicly available portals. The cost of sensors is dipping, a similar sensor-based real-time monitoring approach can be deployed at critical segments of Yamuna and the data can be shared with the local community and wider stakeholders through either LCD display boards or mobile applications.

“Effective river basin management and water policy formulation requires access to reliable and up-to-date data in easy-to-understand formats for timely decision making. Traditional water quality monitoring approach involves grab sampling, followed by transportation of samples to a laboratory where they are analysed using scientific instruments and the results are produced in a couple of weeks,” says Dr Supratik Guha, professor, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and principal investigator, Water-to-Cloud project. “Traditional laboratory-based testing is tedious, slow, expensive and prone to inaccuracies due to mishandling. The Water-to-Cloud system ensures high-resolution spatial and temporal monitoring to gain insights that may be missed with the traditional approach.”

Build a deep understanding of economic and health costs of river pollution: To better understand the impact of river pollution on livelihood, it is important to collect data regarding the economic cost of pollution being borne by these riverine communities in the form of change in income and occupation due to poor water quality. An understanding of the economic cost of river pollution can help prioritise the need to solve the issue of river water quality, which mostly remains neglected.

Rivers are complex, dynamic systems. They need regular monitoring at various sites to get a complete sense of the health of the river system. Along with active monitoring, involving communities in pollution management could be a win-win situation for all stakeholders.

The views expressed are personal



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Rahul Gandhi’s role as heir to the 137-year-old Congress Party is very apparent after the Udaipur “Nav Vikalp Chintan Shivir”. It was obvious long before and reconfirmed after political strategist Prashant Kishor’s firm but polite refusal of the party’s membership offer. The unsettled question, however, is what is his role, responsibility and accountability in a party that has pledged to restructure itself through a democratic dialogue which promises transparency, but is blithely opaque about the leader and how that leader will be elected or stealthily inserted.

After abdicating his post as party president following the dismal performance of the Congress in the 2019 general election, it is appropriate to ask, in what capacity did Rahul Gandhi address the assembled party leaders, the media and, by extension, India’s voters at the end of the Chintan Shivir? As a general secretary, he is just one of many. If his rambling address was as a member of the Gandhi family, it means the party has reinstated Rahul as the proprietor, which makes nonsense of the democratic exercise of engaging in a “conservation” or dialogue.

 

Like the Caesars, who established a dynasty over republican Rome, the Gandhis cemented their ownership of the run-down party through the Chintan Shivir. As long as the Congress and the Gandhis fail to achieve a separation and Rahul gets away by saying that from his perspective, “you are my family”, the prospect of revival and reconstruction is bleaker than ever before. The claim that the Congress is the only party that can hold a conversation with itself, where every shade of dissent is allowed, is fairly dubious. By his own admission, Rahul Gandhi proctored every officially scheduled conversation. An exercise in openness that was tightly controlled does not add up to a free and fair exchange of views, nor a business-like exercise in reconstruction.

 

The Congress, like all other political parties, including the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is an institution in a competitive electoral democracy. By that logic, members of political parties are not family. The BJP talks in the idiom of paternalism, describing itself and the hordes of organisations it has spawned as its “parivar”, or family. By reducing the Congress to his family, Rahul Gandhi is denying the party the status of a political institution and erasing the history of its leaders, unconnected to the Nehru family, including the Mahatma and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Maulana Azad, and many more.

 

The outcome of the intensive exercise in reflection produced no seismic shift on the crisis of leadership and strategy, and Rahul acknowledged that “this conversation is not new in the Congress”. Nor is his declaration “I stand with you”, and “all my life is dedicated to this fight”, meaning against the RSS-BJP’s divisive and incendiary ideology. That doesn’t count as a consequential change.

Even less illuminating is the realisation from the exercise in contemplation is the admission that the Congress has lost its connect with the masses. Voters have emphatically delivered judgment on the Congress as a party that has lost its credibility as the national alternative in 2019 and in multiple Assembly elections over the past several decades. The vow to re-establish the broken connection with the masses is just words; there is nothing transformational or inspiring in them.

 

The claim to foresight by Rahul Gandhi that India is on the brink of an inferno is not original; what is intriguing is that he didn’t call it what it could so easily become, a civil war. The spiralling tensions, the source of which can all be traced back to the BJP’s identity politics and hegemonist strategy that is committed to establishing a Hindu Rashtra on one hand and creating a One Nation-One Party State on the other, are in danger of sparking a conflagration.

The international community has articulated it in surveys and the media, the most recent being the Economist’s cover story summing it up neatly as “India’s moment: Will Modi blow it?” The magazine notes that “the biggest threat to all this is India’s incendiary politics”, that is the simmering religious tensions “stoked by the anti-Muslim chauvinism of the Bharatiya Janata Party, in power since 2014 under the strongman Prime Minister, Narendra Modi”.

 

Lofty declarations that it’s not the Congress’ goal to fight against one party but against the entirety of enemies embedded in every institution and the ideology of the RSS-BJP sound hollow, when there are significant elections coming up. The elections of the President and vice-president are due in July. Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh will vote at the end of the year and in 2023, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Tripura and three other Northeast states will go to the polls.

With its back to the wall, almost no political capital, it wasn’t clever of Rahul Gandhi and the Congress to dismiss the regional parties as caste- based, parochial organisations that lacked the specific ideological ammunition necessary to take on an adversary like the BJP. At a time when these regional parties are already in conversation with each other about the forthcoming presidential election, possible collaborations and a collective strategy to take on the BJP in 2024, alienating potential allies and vote multipliers is a move that exposes Rahul Gandhi and the Congress, including Sonia Gandhi, as incompetent politicians.

 

Leisurely as ever, the Congress has decided it will begin the long-term fight first by going on a “Bharat Jodo Yatra” starting October 2. By then, the BJP will certainly have arrived at the final stretch of the race to win the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh elections.

If the Congress can’t juggle and strategise its long-term political tasks of fighting the BJP ideologically and the immediate target of defeating the party in some states in the elections due in 2022 and 2023, it should abandon its bragging as the only party capable of unifying India.

 

The Congress, it seems, has indulged in a pointless exercise in Udaipur. The purpose of reflection was not to settle the issue of the head of whatever remains of the Congress undivided family. The expectation was that the Congress would talk of how it would reorganise to take on the formidably effective machinery of the BJP and RSS by listing winnable fights and concentrating its depleted resources to make breakthroughs. Its failure to unveil a calendar of concrete actions is the outcome of proctored conversations by a leader, who is neither in as president nor out of office, using Sonia Gandhi as proxy and ducking accountability by talking about the Congress as a family.



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The Centre’s lateral entry policy in which it is hiring domain specialists from the public and private sectors is being offset by a trickle of high-profile exits of senior babus to the corporate world. In many instances, these babus have taken up lucrative assignments shortly after leaving the civil service or retirement, even though rules stipulate that officials have to undergo a year-long “cooling off” period.

The recent appointment of Archana Goyal Gulati, former member of Niti Aayog and Competition Commission of India (CCI), as head of public policy at Google, has revived the old debate. Sources say that Ms Gulati was posted at CCI when it ordered a probe into Alphabet Inc, Google’s parent company, Ms Gulati, however, has pointed out that she joined well after the end of the mandatory “cooling off” period. But murmurs are unlikely to die down.

 

Ms Gulati, however, is following in the footsteps of several other babus who decided to explore the challenges and opportunities offered up by brave new corporate world.  In 2019, Anandvijay Jha left babudom after two decades for the greener pastures of a multinational, and further an international investment powerhouse. Last year, Rajiv Aggarwal, a UP cadre IAS officer, joined a global social media platform as head of policy.

It isn’t hard to see why senior babus are showing keen interest in leaving the confines of babudom, with its rules and restrictions, to join global companies. But the issue of having a mandatory cooling-off period for retired babus with corporate or even political ambitions needs greater debate. Does it lead to a better rapport between the government and private companies, as its votaries claim, or does it raise the inevitable questions about propriety, transparency, impartiality, etc. of such babus that may have dealings with a corporate entity in their official capacity and then join the same company later?

 

Babus regain control of law ministry
When unsure, fall back on the old and reliable. The Centre has apparently decided not to appoint officers from the Indian Legal Service (ILS) or law specialists as the Union secretary of the law ministry. It has chosen to rely on the old workhorse, the ubiquitous IAS, by naming 1990-batch IAS officer Nitin Chandra as the new law secretary.

Though this all-India service has existed since 1956, few in the public are aware of its existence. ILS officers are generally appointed at various levels, beginning with undersecretary in various departments including the legal affairs department, legislative department and the justice department of the ministry. Though ILS officers are largely appointed by the UPSC, officers are often taken on deputation from other departments as well.

 

Mr Chandra replaced A.K. Mendiratta, a judicial service officer, who was appointed as a judge of the Delhi high court earlier in February. Interestingly, it’s Mr Mendiratta who reportedly drafted the ill-fated farm laws that created such a stir, leading to a year-long agitation by protesting farmers. Recall that even the Chief Justice had lamented the fall in quality and precision of drafting legislation in the country.
This could perhaps hold a clue to Mr Chandra’s appointment. Perhaps the Centre felt that an IAS officer would be a better fit for the post. Sources have informed DKB that the stellar track record of previous law secretary Alok Srivastava might have persuaded the government to return the post to the IAS cadre.

 

Centre raps Haryana on postings
The tussle between IAS and IPS officers of Haryana over postings has escalated after the Centre’s intervention. Of late, the Manohar Lal Khattar government has been appointing non-cadre officers from IPS, IFS and IRS to cadre posts. Further, the state government had sought the Centre’s approval of 11 non-cadre officers for cadre posts.

Now the Centre has responded stating that the state government cannot post non-cadre officers to cadre posts beyond three months without the Centre’s prior approval. It has also sought from the state government details of all cadre officers against cadre posts. Sources say that the state government is yet to take a call to this directive from Delhi.

 

But the IPS Officers Association has written to state chief secretary Sanjeev Kaushal that there has been no violation of cadre rules. The IPS officers argue that the three posts of principal secretaries held by non-IAS officers are not cadre posts.

But that may not cut ice with the babus in Delhi. The IAS officers have clearly struck back at the Khattar sarkar, but whose will prevail? How Mr Kaushal responds to the Centre’s directive will give an indication.



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