On May 19, inUnion of India vs Mohit Minerals , the Supreme Court of India delivered a ruling which is likely to have an impact far wider than what the Centre might have imagined when it brought the case up on appeal. At stake was the validity of a levy imposed on importers, of Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) on ocean freight paid by foreign sellers to foreign shipping lines. The Gujarat High Court had declared the tax illegal. The Supreme Court affirmed the ruling through Justice D.Y. Chandrachud’s judgment and held that the levy constituted double taxation — that is, that the importer, which was already paying tax on the “composite” supply of goods, could not be asked to pay an additional tax on a perceived “service” that it may have received.
Just recommendations
In making this finding, the Court proceeded on a technical reading of various laws, in particular the provisions of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act. That reading, in and by itself, has limited implications. But the Court also made a slew of observations, which, if taken to their logical conclusion by State legislatures, could potentially transform the future of fiscal federalism in India. It held, for instance, that both Parliament and the State legislatures enjoy equal power to legislate on Goods and Services Tax (GST), and that the Goods and Services Tax Council’s recommendations were just that: recommendations that could never be binding on a legislative body.
Reacting to the ruling, the Union Ministry of Finance has claimed that it “does not in any way lay down anything new”, and that it “does not have any bearing on the way GST has been functioning in India, nor lays down anything fundamentally different to the existing framework of GST”. But a close reading of the judgment belies this suggestion. Until now, governments across India have treated the GST Council’s recommendations — even where they disagreed with them — as sacrosanct, because they believed that this was indeed the law. WhatMohit Minerals holds, though, is that State governments, on a proper construal of the Constitution, need to hardly feel circumscribed by any such limitation. As such, according to the Court, State legislatures possess the authority to deviate from any advice rendered by the GST Council and to make their own laws by asserting, in the process, their role as equal partners in India’s federal architecture.
Advent of Articles
When, in July 2017, the Union government introduced the GST regime through the 101st constitutional Amendment, it did so based on an underlying belief that tax administration across India needed unification. ‘One Nation, One Tax’, was the mantra. To give effect to this idea, many entries in the State list of Schedule VII of the Constitution were either deleted or amended. No longer could State governments, for example, legislate on sale or purchase of goods (barring a few exceptions, such as petroleum and liquor) through the ordinary legislative route. Instead, a power to legislate on GST was inserted through a newly introduced Article 246A. This provision overrode the general dominion granted to Parliament and State legislatures to bring laws on various subjects and afforded to them an express authority to make legislation on GST.
In addition, the 101st Amendment also established, through Article 279A, a GST Council. This body comprises the Union Finance Minister, the Union Minister of State for Finance, and Ministers of Finance from every State government. The Council was given the power to “make recommendations to the Union and States” on several different matters. These include a model GST law, the goods and services that may be subjected to or exempted from GST and the rates at which tax is to be levied. In framing the manner in which the Council’s votes are to be reckoned with, the Union government was granted a virtual veto.
As I wrote in these pages when the Amendment was first introduced, there was some amount of confusion on whether the Council’s decisions would be binding. The use of the word “recommendations” suggested on the one hand that its decisions would be advisory, at best. But, at the same time, the fact that Article 279A directed the establishment of a mechanism to adjudicate disputes between governments on decisions taken by the Council suggested that those governments would, in fact, be bound by any advice rendered to them. If the former reading was to be deployed, the purpose behind the introduction of a common GST would be in jeopardy. But the latter interpretation effectively entailed a destruction of the well-laid plans of the Constituent Assembly. Fiscal responsibilities that had been divided with much care and attention between the Union and the States would now stand dissolved.
Not a symmetrical compact
In its judgment inMohit Minerals , the Supreme Court has provided what ought to be seen as the final word on this conundrum. Although States had until now proceeded on a tacit belief that the GST Council’s recommendations were binding, such an approach, in Justice Chandrachud’s words, would run counter both to the express words of the Constitution and the philosophical values underlying the language deployed. Our federal compact, the judgment holds, is not symmetrical, in that there are certain areas of the Constitution that contain a “centralising drift” — where the Union is granted a larger share of the power — and there are other areas where equal responsibility is vested.
Article 246A, which was introduced by the 101st Amendment, is one such clause. The provision provides concomitant power both to the Union and to the State governments to legislate on GST. It does not discriminate between the two in terms of its allocation of authority. That allocation, according to the Court, cannot be limited by a reading of Article 279A, which establishes a GST Council, and which treats the Council’s decisions as “recommendations”. “If the GST Council was intended to be a decision-making authority whose recommendations transform to legislation,” wrote Justice Chandrachud, “such a qualification would have been included in Articles 246A or 279A.” But in the present case, no such qualification can be found.
In perspective
The Court’s ruling does not mean that a legislature — whether Parliament or the States’ — cannot through statutory law make the Council’s recommendations binding on executive bodies. Indeed, insofar as the laws today make such a mandate, rulemaking by the executive would necessarily have to be bound by the Council’s advice. But a constitutional power, in the Court’s ruling, can never be limited through statute. Such curbs must flow only from the Constitution. And in this case, in the Court’s analysis, no restrictions on legislative power can be gleaned on a meaningful reading of the Constitution.
Today, because of the ruling inMohit Minerals , State governments will be free to exercise independent power to legislate on GST. It is possible that this might lead to conflicting taxation regimes, with the idea of ‘One Nation One Tax’ rendered nugatory. But as the Court puts it, “Indian federalism is a dialogue between cooperative and uncooperative federalism where the federal units are at liberty to use different means of persuasion ranging from collaboration to contestation.”
GST was conceived as a product of what some described as “pooled sovereignty”. But perhaps it is only in an administrative area, animated by contestation, where we can see synergy between different sovereign units, where our nation can take a genuine turn towards a more “cooperative federalism”.
Suhrith Parthasarathy is an advocate practising in the Madras High Court
In yet another brute show of power, Dr. Ratan Lal, a Dalit academician, was arrested for an ‘objectionable’ post on the Gyanvapi mosque row. He is alleged to have promoted disharmony or enmity between religious groups (Section 153A in the Indian Penal Code) and intentionally and maliciously hurt religious sentiments (Section 295A in the IPC). His arrest adds to the trend of increased use of the two provisions.
The latest annual report of the National Crime Records Bureau records more than four jumps (458%) of cases registered under Section 153A since 2014; it almost doubled in the last two years. This does not necessarily mean hurtful comments surged all of a sudden, as conviction could only be secured in merely 20.4% of cases. Though no separate data is available on Section 295A, anecdotal evidence suggests its increased use by the executive.
Legislative history
The increased use of these penal provisions draws our attention to the circumstances in which they were enacted. In 1927, when Section 153A was already in existence, Section 295A was brought on the demand of a religious minority community which alleged that a pamphlet titled ‘Rangeela Rasul’ published objectionable content against its founder.
The Legislative Assembly debates at the introduction of Section 295A expressed concern about its subjectivity that could be misused. The rationale behind the provision was to deal with intentional insults to religion or outraging religious feelings. At best, the Assembly members found it a temporary remedy for a temporary aberration, not one that would be in active use a century later.
A more direct measure was incorporated through Section 295A, which would not require proving that the speech promoted enmity or hatred between classes; now, a hurt sentiment would be enough. It can be argued that it safeguarded the spirit of tolerance amidst religious diversity. But its enhanced misuse raises the question: safeguard for who and against what?
The debates sensed and cautioned against a looming threat over free speech. It was anticipated that it could be misused to suppress honest, candid, andbona fide criticism, and hinder historical research towards social reform. If individuals were allowed to register complaints about a hurt religious sentiment, the courts would be flooded with frivolous cases. Then there would be a sweeping class of offences, where it cannot be objectively adjudicated if a crime has been committed.
Some safeguards
However, there were statutory safeguards that required deliberate intention and malice; and judicial rulings that needed looking at — words used, intent, and effect to ascertain criminality. Only a deliberate and aggravated form of religious insult would attract the rigor of the provision.
The judiciary laid down two ways to measure the effect — one by establishing a link between speech and public disorder, and by measuring the effects from the standards of a reasonable man, and not from one who fears all hostile viewpoints. However, no attempt was made to translate the safeguards into practice, which could have shielded the dear ethos of free speech. A half-hearted attempt left us with a law that cannot be enforced appropriately and is being let loose to chase the dissenter.
Element of subjectivity
Unlike bodily harm that can be verified, sentimental hurt cannot be tested against strict measures. The element of subjectivity overrides it as a sentiment’s vulnerability could widely vary, even among those of the same religion.
A critical inquiry of orthodox practices and superstitious beliefs encourages social reforms. The need for an intelligent counter is required much more amid the aggressive assertion of religious beliefs by the socio-political hegemon. Even the 1927 Joint Select Committee appreciated the argument that a religious insult inflicted in good faith, with the object of steering reform, would bring the follower’s required attention to the critique.
India’s Constitution celebrates diversity with the guarantee of free speech. With that aspirational pledge, should not the answer to hurt religious sentiment be tolerance, and not rampant criminalisation? This may be an unreal expectation in times of widespread hate and disharmony. It is anomalous for a pluralistic, democratic, and secular nation that runs on counter-discourses to criminalise speech for hurting fickle religious sentiments.
Even the statutory safeguards of ‘deliberate intention and malice’ cannot be objectively determined. The police do not get into the legislative nuances before registering a criminal case or making an arrest. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum critiqued the law by saying that it invites thugs to suppress speech on anything they dislike; she added that given India’s political climate, several would take up this ugly invitation. A hazy legal paradigm criminalising hurting religious sentiment facilitates the ruling dispensation’s strategy to stifle all dissent and use the law to fuel divisive politics.
On raging criminalisation of free speech, senior advocate Indira Jaising said that repeated use of law to stifle dissent reflects state policy. “It is not a ‘misuse’; it is being used the way the enforcement agencies want it,” she added. The executive is seemingly more fragile than a citizen’s hurt religious sentiment. It sends out a clear message that be it a stand-up comic script, a remark on the belief of walking barefooted in reverence, or taking beef to school, India is no longer the country to hold and express opinions challenging the state-backed majoritarian rhetoric.
Shrutika is an independent researcher pursuing Master of Laws (LLM) from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Mumbai. Mayank Yadav is a Delhi-based lawyer. The views expressed are personal
The World Health Organization (WHO)’s estimate of excess deaths due to COVID-19 in India triggered several responses. Among them was the response of several State Health Ministers, who slammed the WHO and asserted that India has a “robust, legal and transparent system for data collection and COVID mortality surveillance”.
This new-found love for the Civil Registration System (CRS), which was rarely being used as a source of vital statistics, is surprising. The claim was not even made by the Office of the Registrar General of India (ORGI), which is well aware of the drawbacks of the system, but by politicians. As such, I thought it necessary to place in the public domain some of the facts relating to the quality and completeness of birth and death registrations in the country.
Actual levels of registration
The registration of births and deaths is governed by the Registration of Births and Deaths (RBD) Act, 1969. While the State governments are responsible for the establishment and management of the registration system, the Registrar General of India (RGI), who is appointed by the Central government, coordinates and unifies the activities of registration.
Based on a comparison with the vital rates obtained from the sample survey called the Sample Registration System (SRS), the RGI estimated that the country registered about 92.7% of births and 87.8% of deaths in 2019. Corresponding figures for 2020 are not available. Past studies on the SRS indicate that the vital rates are underestimated by 2-3%. This would mean that the levels of registration are probably closer to 90% for births and 85% for deaths.
The number of births and deaths registered in a year include those of earlier years. Some births and deaths are registered only in the following year. This is so even in normal circumstances. For instance, a birth/death in December can be registered in January as 21 days are available for reporting events for registration.
Events reported after 21 days can be registered under the RBD Act. Data provided in the 2020 annual report show that the number of births and deaths registered one year after occurrence is quite high. For example, in Bihar, of the 30.4 lakh births registered in 2020, nearly 7.2 lakh had occurred in 2019 or earlier. In Uttar Pradesh, of the 48.5 lakh births registered in 2020, 5.8 lakh had occurred earlier. More than 15% of the births registered had occurred in earlier years in Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Assam. In Nagaland, the figure was as high as 90%.
In the case of deaths, the proportion of delayed registration was lower. Among the larger States, more than 10% of the deaths registered in 2020 had occurred in earlier years in Assam (13.3%), Jharkhand (14.7%), Rajasthan (15.3%), Uttarakhand (14.8%) and Uttar Pradesh (13%).
To register a birth or death reported after a year of its occurrence requires an order of a First Class Magistrate issued after verifying the facts about the birth or death. In several States, this function has been given to the Sub-Divisional Magistrates. In 2020, about 20.5 lakh births and 7.6 lakh deaths that had occurred over a year earlier were registered. This does not include data for Maharashtra, Delhi, and Sikkim. In 2019, the corresponding figures were 21.6 lakh births and 5.3 lakh deaths. Assuming about 250 working days in a year, on average more than 11,000 delayed registrations are ordered by the Magistrates every day. I am not convinced that these orders are issued after verifying the facts, as required by the law. It may also be noted that this number did not change much in 2020 despite lockdowns.
A robust system should be able to ensure the registration of almost every birth and death within a short time after its occurrence. If we remove from the 2020 data, or the data for any year, the events registered with substantial delay, say three months or more, the picture of completeness would be very different.
COVID-19 impact on registration
COVID-19 resulted in prolonged lockdowns. These could have significantly affected the efficiency of the CRS in the following manner. One, the registrars could not work during lockdowns in many areas. Two, people could not travel to the registrar’s office to report the births/deaths that had occurred at home within the prescribed time. Three, in case of a delay of more than 30 days in reporting, the procedure of getting an affidavit or a Magistrate’s order as required under Section 13 of the RBD Act is cumbersome. Since it is a requirement under the Act, it could not be relaxed through executive orders. Four, in some States, the functionaries handling registration were deployed on COVID-19-related duties and could not register the events.
The impact of these would not have been uniform across the country as some areas had longer periods of lockdowns or travel restrictions.
One can reasonably expect that a large number of births and deaths that had occurred in 2020 would have been reported for registration in 2021 or even later. It is likely that a reasonable number of deaths, especially among women and children, may not get registered at all because the family may not require the death certificates for settling inheritance, insurance claims, etc. Female deaths formed only 39.8% of the total registered deaths in 2020. This was slightly lower than the corresponding figure of 40.4% recorded in 2019. The percentage of female deaths registered was lowest in Nagaland (26.7%) and highest in Kerala (44.9%). The fact that these numbers are so low points to the need for improvements in the registration system. It is also well known that child deaths have very low levels of registration. This can easily be seen by comparing the registered infant/child deaths with an estimate based on the rates from the SRS. COVID-19 may have worsened the situation to some extent, but it also acted as an eye-opener on the importance of the CRS.
Only about 20% of the deaths have a Medically Certified Cause of Death (MCCD) that conforms to the WHO standard. In other cases, the cause of death is provided by the attending medical practitioner in case of deaths in medical facilities and by the person reporting the death in domiciliary deaths. The State governments have not issued statutory notifications to increase the coverage of MCCD.
Not a strong defence
Thus, the CRS has several shortcomings. These facts do not support the argument that India has a robust system of registering births and deaths. The CRS is yet to mature into a robust and resilient system that can ensure that every birth and death is registered even in normal times, let alone during a pandemic.
While the law and a registration system are in place, it is necessary that the State governments put in more effort to ensure that all births and deaths are registered and more deaths have medically certified causes. This would require coordinated action by several departments of the State that have a stake in the CRS. It is also necessary to publish data in a timely manner so that so that it can aid the formulation of policies and programs backed by evidence.
K. Narayanan Unni is former Deputy Registrar General, CRS, and a retired Indian Statistical Service officer. Email: knunni@gmail.com
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had many impacts, but one area which merits more attention is whether it has produced effects sufficient to alter our understanding of warfare. A perusal of the evidence suggests that there is not any significant change in the nature of warfare. However, there are some key takeaways which have implications for the Indian military, which uses a significant amount of Russian-origin weapons systems.
Three claims
There are at least three claims made by proponents that the conflict has heralded a shift in warfare. The first is that the battle tank has been rendered obsolescent, because of the highly effective performance of anti-tank missiles such as the American-built Javelin or Advanced Anti-Tank Weapon System in visiting destruction upon Russian T-90s. But tanks have withstood past obituaries. Immediately after World War I, which witnessed the emergence of the battle tank, there were voices, especially in Britain, pronouncing the death of the tank, because it could not punch through German defences. This conclusion proved misleading because the Germans saw considerable merit in the tank and employed it to devastating effect in the form of the Blitzkrieg in World War II. Fundamentally, at a tactical level, for the tank to be effective requires the use of infantry in close support of armoured operations. As was the case in past wars in which the tank suffered losses, this is still absent in Russia’s strategy, which explains why the Russians have suffered such heavy tank losses. As a standalone capability, the tank provides advantages in the form of a trinity of elements – firepower, mobility and protection. No weapons platform for ground operations can serve as a credible substitute.
A second claim is that emerging technologies such as cyber and digital technology, Artificial Intelligence, remotely piloted systems such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and space-borne capabilities have rendered obsolescent legacy platforms such as fighter planes, warships, and artillery weapons. Emerging technologies cannot be a substitute for legacy platforms; they can at best enhance their performance. If precision firepower is to be delivered against adversary targets, legacy systems will matter for launch of ordinance. Emerging technologies can enable better Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, help optimise situational awareness, reduce decision time for commanders from detecting threats to responding to them, and augment sensor to shooter capabilities. The devastating losses incurred by the Russian ground forces from drone and anti-tank attacks operating in Battalion Tactical Groups, comprising largely armour and artillery units and little infantry, seem to have convinced proponents that there is a change in the nature of warfare. Infantry plays a key role in providing protection to any advancing tank column and retaliating when threatened. This doesn’t herald a change in warfare, it is just poor tactics.
Finally, the failure of the Russians to effectively apply air power botched the invasion from the outset. This has convinced proponents that air power is not consequential. Indeed, Suppression of Enemy Air Defences should be the foremost requirement for any invading force. Russia’s failure to neutralise Ukrainian air defences remains a glaring weakness. Active Ukrainian air defences have compelled the Russians to revise their military aims and confine their military operations to Donbas and the Black Sea coast.
Russia’s invasion left long lines of communications and military columns that could not be supplied and reinforced. This left them exposed to lethal interdiction by Ukrainian forces. A corollary to this is the low morale among Russian soldiers consisting of a large number of conscripts and poor command. Military effectiveness is critically a function of troop morale and command competence. These two vital variables have very little to do with technology or logistics.
Key takeaway
The key takeaway for India from Russia’s unimpressive military performance is to invest more in sensors, electronic warfare, greater digitisation, satellite communications and unmanned systems not just for reconnaissance and surveillance, but also attack missions. This does not require dispensing with legacy platforms, but rather making them more lethal and effective. India will also need greater missile forces to enhance its offensive capability. The Indian armed forces will need to be proficient at combined arms warfare. No amount of advanced technology can substitute or compensate for low morale and training, weak command, poor tactics and strategy.
Harsh V. Pant is Vice President, Studies and Foreign Policy, Observer Research Foundation (ORF); Kartik Bommakanti is Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme, ORF
It was no surprise when certain sections of society in Tamil Nadu celebrated the news of the Supreme Court ordering the release of A.G. Perarivalan, one of the seven convicts in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. But what has triggered a political controversy is the way Chief Minister M.K. Stalin received Perarivalan on the day of the Supreme Court’s decision. The image of the Chief Minister hugging Perarivalan at the Chennai airport went viral, evoking strong reactions from many, including survivors and other persons affected by the bomb blast in which Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in May 1991. While the BJP State president, K. Annamalai, was forthright in criticising the Chief Minister for his reaction, the Congress, an ally of the DMK in Tamil Nadu, simply stuck to disagreeing with the Supreme Court’s verdict.
Those directly impacted by the assassination are livid that Mr. Stalin greeted Perarivalan warmly. “What did Perarivalan achieve for the Chief Minister to hug him,” asked Anusuya Daisy Ernest, now a retired police officer and one of the survivors of the blast. As a sub-inspector in May 1991 and posted for the security of Rajiv Gandhi, Ms. Ernest had, seconds before the blast, attempted to stop the assassin Dhanu, “the human bomb”, from approaching Rajiv Gandhi but the former Prime Minister had restrained her. “Why did the Chief Minister not meet us (the affected persons of the blast),” the former police officer asked. In the last 31 years, successive Chief Ministers did not bother to meet the survivors of the blast and the family members of the 15 persons (apart from Rajiv Gandhi) who were killed in it, she added.
However, Mr. Stalin alone did not hail the verdict. A large number of political parties, including the AIADMK, the principal Opposition party, welcomed the development. In fact, the AIADMK claimed credit for the release of Perarivalan, as it was Jayalalithaa who, as Chief Minister, declared on the floor of the Assembly in February 2014 that if the Centre did not take a decision immediately, her government would go ahead with the decision of the State Cabinet to release all the seven convicts in the case. Perarivalan, along with his mother, Arputham, also met AIADMK coordinator O. Panneerselvam and co-coordinator Edappadi K. Palaniswami. The mother and son went on to meet several other leaders belonging to different parties.
Yet, Mr. Stalin has become the cynosure of public attention. In fact, his consultation with legal experts on the release of the remaining six convicts on the death anniversary of Rajiv Gandhi (May 21) too came in for sharp criticism as the Tamil Maanila Congress (M) leader G.K. Vasan said it was like rubbing salt in the wound.
But the DMK’s take on the episode is different. Commenting on Mr. Stalin’s reception of Perarivalan, the party spokesperson, A. Saravanan, recalled the submission made by the former probe officer, V. Thiagarajan, in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court in October 2017, that Perarivalan had “absolutely no idea” about the deadly purpose of the two nine-volt batteries he had bought and handed over to the assassins. Contending that such was the material on which Perarivalan was convicted, the spokesperson also pointed out that the former police officer has not been prosecuted for perjury. Besides, the judicial verdict should be viewed as a victory for the rights of States vis-a-vis the powers of the Centre in the present political context, he added.
Notwithstanding the strong reaction to his action, Mr. Stalin’s meeting with Perarivalan will remain a subject of discussion for long.
ramakrishnan.t@thehindu.co.in
Recognition very often goes to those at the top of the pecking order, and stays there. Credit seldom trickles down to the worker at the bottom. The World Health Organization’s act of recognising India’s ASHA (accredited social health activists) and the polio workers of Afghanistan is an attempt to right that wrong. It is a rare, and commendable doffing of the hat for workers at the very bottom of the rung, and gives credit where it is due. When WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the names of six Global Health Leader awardees at the opening session of the World Health Assembly, over one million ASHAs and eight volunteer polio workers found themselves being counted amidst people leading from the front. The other awardees are Paul Farmer, co-founder of the NGO Partners in Health, Ahmed Hankir, a British-Lebanese psychiatrist, Ludmila Sofia Oliveira Varela, a youth sports advocate, and Yōhei Sasakawa, WHO’s Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination. Dr. Tedros who picks the awardees himself, said that the award recognises those who have made an outstanding contribution to protecting and promoting health around the world, at a time when the world is facing an unprecedented convergence of inequity, conflict, food insecurity, climate crisis and a pandemic.
The ASHAs were honoured for their “crucial role in linking the community with the health system, to ensure those living in rural poverty can access primary health care services....” These workers, all women, faced harassment and violence for their work during the pandemic, well documented in the media. While the pandemic rewrote the rules, creating danger where mere routine existed, it must be stressed that in general, their job, which takes them into difficult-to-reach places and hostile communities, confers a measure of privations. Even as they contribute to better health outcomes, this workforce continues to protest across the country, for better remuneration, health benefits and permanent posts. The eight volunteer polio workers of Afghanistan (four of them women) were shot and killed by gunmen in Takhar and Kunduz provinces in February 2022. Their work was crucial in a country where wild polio virus type 1 is still circulating, WHO recorded. Clearly, certain kinds of basic public health work are fraught with perils in several continents across the world. It is the duty of the governmental agencies that employ them to ensure their welfare, safety and security. While cheerleading about the award is rightfully reaching a crescendo, what matters is how the Indian government serves its last mile health workers who are its feet on the ground, once the dust raised by their unexpected recognition has settled down.
In a sudden decision not previously intimated, India became one of a 13-nation economic initiative led by the U.S., on Monday, as President Joseph Biden unveiled plans for an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF). The initiative is touted as a substantial step by the U.S. as part of its decade-old “pivot to Asia”, and an attempt at putting some “economic heft” into its Indo-Pacific presence that has been on the decline after its decision to quit the Trans Pacific Free Trade Agreement, the CPTPP, in 2017. Officials say the IPEF framework has four “pillars”: supply-chain resilience; clean energy, decarbonisation and infrastructure; taxation and anti-corruption; and fair and resilient trade. Mr. Biden’s visit to Japan and South Korea, attendance at the Quad summit and helming the IPEF launch is also aimed at reassuring the Eastern hemisphere about the U.S.’s focus. India’s joining is an equally strong statement of commitment to Indo-Pacific goals, and to broadening regional economic cooperation, particularly after it walked out of the 15-nation RCEP. It is significant that all IPEF members, other than India and the U.S., are a part of the RCEP free trade agreement, and yet have chosen to be part of the U.S.-led initiative.
Despite the strong signalling from all sides, however, there are many aspects to the IPEF that bear further scrutiny. Monday’s launch only signals the willingness of the 13 countries to begin discussions on the contours. Much will depend, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressed, on how inclusive the process is. Second, U.S. officials have made it clear that it is not a free trade agreement; nor will it discuss tariff reductions or increasing market access, raising questions about its utility. Shorn of the rhetoric of Indo-Pacific cooperation, there must be more clarity on its framework. The four pillars also lend themselves to some confusion, drawing into question whether there is enough common ground among the 13 countries that are part of very different economic arrangements, as well as outliers (the U.S. and India), to set standards together, or be open to issues that vary for each country. The U.S.’s statement that the IPEF is essentially focused on “American workers” also raises questions on whether increasingly protectionist global trends will chafe. Each of the IPEF countries has considerable trade interests in China, with most having large trade deficits. So, it remains to be seen how much they will be willing to sign on with the IPEF. Already three ASEAN countries, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, have decided to stay out of the framework’s launch. Above all, given the fact that the U.S.’s previous initiatives (the Blue Dot Network and the Build Back Better Initiative) have made little headway in changing the region’s infrastructural needs, the IPEF faces a credibility challenge. Negotiators will need to move with both caution and clarity before making any big promises on its benefits for the region.
Lautoka: Fiji’s general election had been an example to the rest of the world’s developing countries, the Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, said after the conclusion of the first general election after Independence. He said that apart from the success of the Alliance Party, the greatest achievement of the election was the way it was run peacefully and without incidents. He was satisfied with the Alliance’s performance in the Indian communal constituencies, which were won by the National Federation Party. The Alliance had increased its percentage of votes. The Prime Minister was asked by reporters how the Alliance explained its unexpected successes in some of the constituencies where the party fought national seats. He said that he did not regard the victories as unexpected. He expected to win these seats as the party organisation was very good in these areas. On the failure of the NFP to attract substantial Fijian support, Ratu Sir Kamisese said the leaders of the party did not understand the Fijian social structure. Its greatest error was the attempt to condemn the chiefs system. The National Federation Party members did not realise that in the Fijian patriarchal society, the chief was the head of the big family. When someone condemned the head of a family, he condemned the whole of the family. He thought the great support of the Alliance had from the Fijians was because of the attention the Government gave to rural areas where the Fijians mainly lived.
Would you spend $1,600 on a non-waterproof umbrella? It might help to know that it will probably keep out the sun. On the other hand, the fact that it has the bare minimum functionality to qualify as an umbrella might not be enough, just as it was not enough for the Chinese social media users who recently trolled the Italian luxury label Gucci, which had created the item as part of a collaboration with Adidas. Gucci responded by changing the “umbrella” in the product name to “parasol” on its official China website. Whether anyone would still want to spend all those dollars on something that could easily turn inside out on a windy day is, of course, the $1,600 question.
Even those who shop at discount stores and fill their closets with two-for-one deals know that once you slap a high-end logo on it, the most mundane item can be sold at an eye watering price. Why else would luxury labels produce skateboards (as French fashion house Chanel did) which are too expensive to be anywhere but in a bank vault, or brown paper bags that retail for $290 (as the ones created by German design house Jil Sander did)? Sometimes, a logo is not even needed, like in the cashmere baseball caps (as seen on Succession) which are worn to telegraph the wearer’s 1-per cent status and not just cover up a bald patch or a bad case of dandruff.
One might be tempted to draw parallels with the Gilded Age in 19th century US or late 17th century France as it was under Louis XIV, “The Sun King”, to make a point about how the rich have always spent absurd amounts of money on fripperies. But the only real comparison is with what happened at the Independents Exhibition in New York City in 1917. Marcel Duchamp brought in a porcelain urinal, turned it upside down and displayed it as an art piece called ‘The Fountain’. If money is to be flushed down, it might as well be for a joke.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on May 25, 2022 under the title ‘The $1,600 question’.
The Kerala police has booked two senior leaders of the Popular Front of India (PFI) after video clips from a rally held on Saturday featured a boy perched on the shoulders of an adult raising highly provocative and polarising slogans. That the hate speech came from a young boy suggests a disturbing level of indoctrination. The PFI had organised the Alappuzha rally ostensibly to protest attacks on constitutional values. The communally-charged slogans, however, gave the lie to its stated intent. The PFI’s militancy in the name of protecting minority rights is disquieting and a self-goal: It triggers more fear and distrust, shrinks spaces for conversation and potentially produces political ghettos. The Constitution respects free speech and guarantees the citizens’ right to organise, but constitutional politics allows little space for spreading hate.
The PFI, formed in 2007, has a dismal record of fostering polarisation and promoting violence. The outfit first caught national attention in July 2010, when eight of its activists chopped off the hands of a college professor, T J Joseph, for allegedly insulting the Prophet. In 2015, an NIA court convicted 13 PFI activists for this crime. Though the PFI, and its political wing, the SDPI (Social Democratic Party of India) has sought to position itself as an outfit invested in the welfare of Muslims, Dalits and tribals, it has been constantly on the police radar for its communal propaganda. In April this year, a PFI leader was hacked to death outside a mosque in Palakkad, allegedly by RSS-BJP workers, and in retaliation, an RSS worker was killed.
The rise of a brutish force like the PFI threatens to undo the social, political and economic gains made by mainstream Muslim outfits since the formation of Kerala in 1956. Muslims, who constitute over a quarter of the state population, are better-represented in Kerala’s legislative assembly and ministries than in other states — currently, 33 of the 140 MLAs are Muslims. Legislators from the Indian Union Muslim League have held important portfolios such as education and industry in various governments. The PFI has sought to diminish these achievements and play a politics of victimhood by framing the Kerala Muslim as an oppressed Other. It has sought to project a militant politics as an alternative to the democratic idiom — the boy rallying marchers with threatening slogans is being painted on social media as a hero. This crude and coarse politics helps neither the Kerala Muslim nor the wider Kerala society.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on May 25, 2022 under the title ‘Kerala warning’.
The Tokyo summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue comes at a time of momentous geopolitical changes triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has reaffirmed that the grouping of four important democratic powers in the Indo-Pacific region is here to stay, and remains relevant in the new world order that is taking shape. It has settled questions about US interest in the region at a time when it is preoccupied in what is now very nearly a proxy war against Russia. Much will, of course, depend on how long the the conflict in Ukraine lasts, how it might end, and what other changes and security and economic challenges it brings in its wake. India’s separate and differing stand on the war did not create any dissonance at the summit. Indeed, the Quad now seems more cohesive as a group, and ready to act on initiatives agreed upon previously — committing $50 bn for infrastructure building in the region, creating a new partnership for maritime domain awareness with regional states to combat illegal fishing and respond to humanitarian disasters, recommitting to a Covid 19 vaccination project, and making some forward movement towards tackling the disruption in the global supply chain for semiconductors, with the release at the summit of the Common Statement of Principles on Critical Technology Supply Chains. Even if China has not been mentioned, clearly all these initiatives are intended to act as a check and balance against the regional superpower, and build resilience in areas such as critical technologies, where it can prove to be a disruptor.
Undoubtedly, what has given the Quad a sharper edge in its objective of ensuring a “rules based order” and an “open and free” region — not so coded references to Beijing — is the launch of the US Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. This is a new trade bloc in which12 countries including India, Japan and Australia, have expressed readiness to join, though membership will come only after negotiations on commitments that applicants are willing to make.
At the summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the Quad as a “force for the good”, and lauded the “the confidence and determination” of the group to ensure an “inclusive” Indo-Pacific region. The statement, however, may have hid more than it gave away. For Delhi, the only Quad country dealing with an active land border with China, and stalemated talks on PLA’s incursions on India’s side of the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh, the challenges and choices are complex, especially as China continues to build war-like infrastructure on its side of the LAC. The Ministry of External Affairs deployed unusually sharp language by describing a new bridge across the Pangong Lake as coming up on “illegally occupied” territory. India knows that after the bonhomie in Tokyo is over, the challenge posed by the bridge will still need to be faced.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on May 25, 2022 under the title ‘Closer together’.
India was imagined as a country that would be built on the principles of science and reason. However, in the initial years, it was a great challenge for the country to emerge with a collective rational consciousness. From Daulat Singh Kothari to Yash Pal, and now K Kasturirangan, we have kept our education in the hands of scientists. For a county that wishes to advance with scientific and technological development, this was the right way to conduct its policy formulation. The New Education Policy 2020 has taken delightful steps forward in ensuring that we raise a generation of scientists and scientific thinkers through the education we provide to our students.
The policy ambitiously aims for a radical transformation in the next two decades by providing essential equity to stakeholders, enriching the quality of education without adding to the financial burden and most importantly, creating a system of accountability. The policy has not only been designed to completely revamp our systematic education into a more porous learning process but also to bring in an Indian lens. Yash Pal, talking about the true spirit of education, told me “shiksha vo hoti hai jisme baat se baat nikle” (education should produce a tangible effect), which I believe has been achieved with this policy.
The state’s exhortation of science and its education is not unprecedented. We built our nation on science. However, the dissolution of disciplinary mandates with the NEP to study sciences provides a better ecosystem to foster beautiful ideas. Making science available locally helps its acceptance and understanding in the masses, which assists in the greater cause of enriching the scientific temper and the spirit of inquiry. An education, deeply Indian, and science, distinguishably Indian in character, would also put an end to the gatekeeping which happens through the West’s diktats about the standardisation of thought.
The policy not only helps decolonise by inculcating a sense of nationalist commitment but also engages in Indian value-based education. The attempt is to make education go global from home, not the reverse. Our shared sense of humanist and global responsibilities should originate from our commitment to our country.
In the current dispensation, one thing that has come forward in the public conversation is that the state is sceptical about all forms of western intellectual enthusiasm and waits for the verifiability of ideas. Unlike the regimes bowing to western thought not only in India but in the entire developing, post-colonial world, I believe there’s some movement in the direction of making the scholarship undergo epistemological scrutiny before accepting any norm that has been dictated by the Western world and the NEP has set the standards right.
Education is central to the idea of modernity in independent India. In our education system, a certain aspect of European modernity lingered for a long time. That hampered the Indian intellectual discourse by making it eagerly look at the West. In doing so, we failed to create thinkers that can help us understand the structure and foundations of our own scientific thought. This is the NEP, which if executed right, might be able to raise a generation of Indian scientific thinkers who would be able to help us make sense of our ideas of scientific modernity rooted in Indian scientific thought.
The definitions, I must acknowledge, are not simple to formulate in the 21st century given that post-colonial science and science education is deeply mixed with the colonial hangover and practices. The discussion should also account for globalisation as a form of new-age intellectual colonialism, independent of which, creating demarcations and definitions is a huge task for the Indian intellectual.
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Once upon a time, we possessed a mind of our own in India. India thought, India felt and India expressed itself. It was receptive as well as productive. The NEP is an attempt to immunise our people against systematic attempts at curbing our indigenous creative thinking. The government, I presume, wishes to create a world of learning illuminated by a festival of thoughts, a festival where everyone brings his own light and geographical boundaries lose their significance.
Time has moved on. The test of our education system lies in our ability to explore the truth and give it expression creatively. Imitation and repetition can do no good, something the prime minister has explicitly made clear on several occasions. The NEP is also an attempt to unify our active engagement with creative thinking. With the NEP, we have hope that the true nature of the Indian mind can again be ornamented with our education system becoming a blend of the old and the young, the alpha and the omega, all and none.
The state has a commitment to work on public policies and diplomatic discourses that localise knowledge of science and enhance the character of Indian scientific enterprise to counter the deleterious effects of globalisation in the 21st century.
Education must be intimately associated with the life of its people; sadly, our modern education has served only to turn out the favourite professions of the English educated elite. This is important but not at the cost of education not reaching the farmer, the grinder, the potter. The NEP, by truly Indianising education and emphasising learning in regional languages, goes far in creating equal learning opportunities. The idea is to also ensure that modern schools, colleges and universities germinate from the soil instead of becoming parasites feeding on commercial oaks.
The NEP makes our education genuinely and creatively Indian. The imagination is of schools practising agriculture, dairy keeping, weaving on the best modern techniques, roped into one fabric — teachers, students and the ordinary people, culminating into Yatra Vishvam Bavatikanidam (where the world meets in one nest).
This column first appeared in the print edition on May 25, 2022 under the title ‘A science more local’. Sharma is a science historian
The ban on the export of wheat was not unexpected. It is a part of the DNA of governments to get nervous when prices go up in the market even though nothing is seen amiss in increasing the minimum support price every year. The rather ambivalent approach to agriculture comes out clearly with this move.
The broader question is whether we are prepared to let the market function in agriculture. The answer is – no. We are not comfortable with market forces operating. Nor are we quite sure whether we want the farmer to get a better price or the consumer to pay less. This happened with the farm laws, which were progressive but the government backtracked. Let us try and understand how this ban has come about.
Governments spend a lot of money in the form of subsidies to ensure farmers are enthused to produce more wheat. The Centre keeps increasing the MSP for this purpose and states often pay a bonus for procurement. There are political reasons too as the farmer lobby needs to be placated. We have been taking credit for the production of wheat and every year we set a new record. This year, the Ministry announced that wheat production will touch a record of 111 million tonnes, which has recently been revised downwards going by the 3rd Advance Estimates.
With the war, conditions have changed. Russia and Ukraine are large producers of wheat and their supply to world markets has been cut off due to sanctions and supply chain disruptions. With supplies interrupted, there is an opportunity for other surplus nations to step in. But the disruption has caused world prices to rise significantly. The World Bank data indicates that the price of US (soft red winter) wheat has gone up from $328/tonne in December to $672/tonne while US (hard red winter) wheat is up from $377 to $496/tonne. What does this mean? Countries that produce abundant wheat now have a chance to leverage this opportunity to export. This is what has been happening with farmers diverting wheat to the export market. As per some estimates, upwards of 10 million tonnes are being diverted.
But wasn’t the wheat output supposed to be at a new high? It does appear that production will be lower than expected. The government has also not been able to procure wheat as farmers are no longer selling at MSP (which is at Rs 2,015/quintal) as they are getting higher prices in mandis where traders are buying and selling in the overseas markets. But, shouldn’t everyone be happy as the whole edifice of agriculture policy has been to give farmers higher prices?
Now it is argued that stocks are low and it is getting hard to replenish them. As of May 10, procurement was just 18 million tonnes against 43 million tonnes last year. This is a significant fall. But stocks with the Centre and other state agencies are 30.3 million tonnes, way above the buffer norms of 27.6 million tonnes. But there is panic as the government’s free food programme involves giving wheat and rice to the poor. While this has now been reduced to just rice, the ban on wheat exports is because of this.
As an afterthought, the government has allowed all consignments handed over to the customs as on the date of ban to be exported. This ensures that contracts that had reached the last stage are honoured. There is also some pressure from other nations to relax this ban. Thus, it is possible that there could be some more allowances. But the knee-jerk reaction is more bothersome.
One may recollect that in 2007 and again in 2021, the government banned futures trading in wheat on grounds that it led to speculative pressure on prices even though the quantity traded and the open interest were minuscule. At that time, it was a decline in expected output which triggered this action. Therefore, it is not surprising that exports have been banned as there is some reluctance in letting the market decide.
It does look like the wheat economy will continue to operate within two constraints that have become barriers to commercialisation. The first is MSP and government procurement, which feeds into the public distribution system. The second is the arhatiya system of trading where middlemen have come in the way of any reform. It is tough to break these shackles.
The MSP and procurement system needs to be dismantled. As the government has successfully expanded both the Aadhaar and Jan Dhan programmes, there should be simple cash transfers to beneficiaries. If the government is trying to get out of running enterprises through disinvestment, there is justification to move out of the system of procurement and distribution. Buffer stocks can be held to ease distress during a crisis, but government involvement should stop there. Procuring unlimited quantities of wheat and keeping huge stocks has distorted the wheat matrix.
The mandi system too needs to be revisited and alternatives have to be made available so that farmers can choose the point of sale. There is continuous talk of moving up the value chain in agriculture and commercialisation will help this cause.
We have been critical of Indonesia banning the export of palm oil (which has just been revoked). Our actions appear to be similar when it comes to wheat. We have been talking about being a part of global supply chains to augment value addition and accelerate growth. But when it comes to agriculture it is a blow-hot blow-cold approach. This not only affects our credibility but also sends confusing signals to producers as to what is the best way out for them.
This column first appeared in the print edition on May 25, 2022 under the title ‘Export ban, dismal message’. The writer is Chief Economist, Bank of Baroda and author of Lockdown or Economic Destruction. Views are personal
On May 23, before the Quad leaders’ summit in Tokyo, the United States launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) with a diverse group of 12 countries initially — Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The US-led economic engagement is a salient attempt to allow countries to decouple from Chinese over-dependence in order to ultimately strengthen the existing free and open rules-based global order, which China has been targeting to upend, and re-establish US dominance. That the launch coincided with the Quad summit during President Joe Biden’s visit to Seoul and Tokyo signifies the essence of the Quad and its extension as a “plus” grouping.
Importantly, both the IPEF launch, and the Tokyo summit dispel any remaining misgivings about the Quad disintegrating and certify that it is a cohesive unit where it matters. The India-rest of Quad divide over Ukraine and the Western disquiet over India’s softer stance on Russia has hardly made a dent as far as the cohesiveness of the Quad and its future are concerned.
Fundamentally, the IPEF complements the “Quad Plus” process. It brings together seven critical countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), all Quad states, and dialogue partners, including South Korea, solidifying a case for the “plus” characterisation of the Quad process. The IPEF strongly imbibes a Quad Plus character at a time when two of the largest economies of the world, namely India and the US, are not a part of the China-led or ASEAN-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) or the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP; China is still an applicant). Thus, it is an encouraging sign that the Quad countries are investing their strategic orientation in this regard. Yet, doubts over the relevance and merit of the Quad Plus grouping still continue to abound.
Critics might dismiss the Quad Plus as a virtual assembly of agreeable nations that were engaged during the Covid pandemic. Yet, the format holds much promise amid all the current uncertainty. It would potentially represent an amalgamation of the eastern and western “like-minded” countries. Even in its current abstract framework, it includes a wide array of states (which also comprise the IPEF) — developing and developed economies as well as middle and major powers that are committed to maintaining an inclusive, rules-based and liberal institutional order.
The inclusivity angle is suspect as the grouping is essentially what China calls a US-led “anti-China” tool. However, the criticism could be mitigated by developing — instead of a reflection of a broader democratic coalition, which is very much abstract at present — a “plus” framework based more on a shared commitment to the existing international order rather than “democratic values” that are harder to define and more exclusive in nature. Therefore, what interested states must envision is a broad, all-embracing, and comprehensive framework that can stand as a pillar for regional security and stability, multilateralism, and defence of global institutionalism and the status quo. Establishing a stronger regional economic framework that promotes a resilient and secured supply-chain connect is just the beginning.
Further, the narrative of the Quad as an anti-China tool (with a range of epithets, from “sea foam” to “Asian NATO”) promoted by China along with its belligerent tactics in the neighbourhood and beyond has only served to coalesce the Quad states. The growing synergy would only strengthen the extension of the Quad, which is a China-containment rather than an exclusively anti-China grouping, both through inclusion of more states (plus format) and agenda (security). The expanded grouping and the related Quad initiatives will build a comprehensive and integrated approach to combating shared challenges arising out of Xi Jinping’s push to promote manoeuvres that achieve his ultimate goal of rejuvenating China’s glorious past and transforming it into an absolute great power.
The IPEF — which covers fair trade, supply chain resilience, infrastructure, clean energy, and decarbonisation, among others — is likely to complement the other Indo-Pacific projects like the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI, founded by the three Quad states, Japan, Australia, and India) that also seeks to build resilient and secure trade linkages by reducing dependence on China. In this respect, the inclusion of Taiwan, which already has a critical role in the global semi-conductor supply chain network, in the SCRI and the IPEF as well as, by extension, in the Quad format, in some manner (perhaps, first as a dialogue partner and subsequently a plus inclusion), would be a welcome addition.
Taiwan is a major economy in the Indo-Pacific region (as also the US’s eighth-largest trading partner in 2021 and a critical partner in diversifying the US supply chains), which is already engaged in the US-Taiwan Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue that includes many of the issues proposed in the IPEF. It is also an active member of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and has been consistently building its outreach within the region and beyond. Importantly, Taiwan’s inclusion would also be a geopolitical statement against coercion tactics by international actors.
A hallmark of Biden’s latest Asia visit has been South Korea’s embrace of the Indo-Pacific framework under the new Yoon Seok-yeol government; Yoon has been keen to participate in the Quad process for long. This is a long-awaited turn that could potentially lead to South Korea participating in a more meaningful manner in the Quad in the near future. During the Covid-19 crisis, the Republic of Korea (along with New Zealand and Vietnam) had joined the so-called Quad Plus meetings to coordinate actions to stem the pandemic.
Soon, the Quad Plus should take this process forward and strengthen cooperation on critical topics in the Quad’s agenda (for instance, security, critical technology, global health, climate action). States are showing their willingness, and now it is incumbent on the Quad states to allow for the creation of a “corridor of communication” that ultimately leads to a “continental connect” to strengthen a rules-based order.
Dr. Jagannath Panda is Head of Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs at the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP), Sweden, and a Senior Fellow at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, The Netherlands
The massive cache of data being described as the Xinjiang Police Files thoroughly exposes China’s repression of ethnic Uighurs over the last few years. The files have been hacked and downloaded from police servers in Xinjiang and have been subsequently authenticated by a consortium of 14 media organisations from 11 countries. They highlight a methodical detention policy targeting Uighurs and other Turkic minorities through a vast network of detention camps and formal prisons.
China has insisted that the camps are nothing more than vocational training centres. But the new data exposes that lie and details a clear correlation between the camps and the formal prison system in Xinjiang. The two are bound together by an unimaginably intrusive Chinese surveillance system that appears to have penetrated almost every family in Xinjiang.
The files contain more than 5,000 police photographs, hundreds of police spreadsheets detailing the identities of the inmates both at the camps and in prisons, speeches of senior Chinese officials, and detailed internal police protocols highlighting the use of armed officers in all areas of the camps. The publication of the new data coincides with the visit to China – and Xinjiang – of the UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet. The latter should take cognisance of the new evidence and ask Beijing some tough questions.
At the root of the issue here is a new authoritarian China that is leveraging cutting-edge technology to undertake cultural genocide of the Uighur people. In the 2000s China’s economic rise was welcomed by the world because it was seen as having a liberalising effect on Chinese society and polity. But with Xi Jinping coming to power in 2012, all of that has been turned on its head and China’s newfound wealth has become the means to perpetuate authoritarianism at home and aggressive postures abroad.
This is precisely why the international community must ramp up pressure on China and hold it to account. The way Beijing treats its ethnic minorities today is a direct reflection of its aggressive revisionist tendencies that have become a headache for the world. This China cannot be a force for global good.
Thirteen countries, including India and the US, launched a process to establish the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF). It’s a platform for economic negotiations among members who contribute about 40% of global GDP. The common thread running through them is anxiety about China’s aggressive positioning. Therefore, it’s a measure to complement a security-oriented platform like the Quad. IPEF currently is amorphous. The US has stated that it’s not a traditional free trade agreement. Yet, it’s the “foundational element” of their overall Indo-Pacific strategy. How is IPEF to be gauged?
IPEF needs to be juxtaposed to two critical FTAs many of its members have joined, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). RCEP, which came into force in January, includes China and is the world’s largest FTA spanning 30% of global GDP. China has also formally applied to join CPTPP, which is the gold standard for deep trade agreements that aim to dismantle barriers hindering freer movement of goods, services, capital, people and ideas. Therefore, the evidence shows many IPEF members chose tighter trade integration with China despite security concerns.
This challenges IPEF’s latent potential. Barring the US and India, other key members have moved towards greater harmonisation of their respective trade regimes with China. To that extent, China will remain a part of the supply value chains which run through these economies. The US till 2016 was the catalyst for an ambitious FTA such as the original TPP, which sought to set standards that would keep China out. However, American domestic politics makes it unlikely that the US will soon opt for a deep trade agreement with East Asian economies.
True, IPEF does represent a useful platform for India as it’s chosen to opt out of RCEP. But it also brings out the limitations of India’s current approach to trade policy. Opening the door to bilateral FTAs is a positive sign but it cannot match the potential of broader agreements in linking up with global supply chains. India should not shy away from real trade agreements spreading across the Indo-Pacific. The costs of keeping away are too high.
With Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar upping the ante on caste census, an issue peripheral to governance may take centre stage again. Caste counting is both unnecessary and problematic. The 2011 socio-economic caste census had revealed a staggering 46 lakh castes and sub-castes, making that part an unusable document for policy. Plus, individuals and community leaders, aware now of the proximate link between census, surveys and handouts, have made discovering the truth about various caste, asset, income and material claims tougher. Caste is so charged a political concept that incentives for untruth are very high.
Flawed data can set off massive political churning. Unsurprisingly and rightly, GoI has been sceptical about enumerating caste, unlike votebank-focussed regional parties. Not willing to wait, state governments in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Odisha are pushing ahead with “surveys”; the Constitution bars states from conducting a census. States reckon they can claim implicit sanction for these surveys: the Supreme Court has made quantifiable data on backwardness the key criterion for clearing state-level caste quotas in jobs, education and elected bodies. Politics is a factor too. JD(U), SP, RJD and TRS are worried about BJP’s OBC outreach.
But political will to conduct surveys is the easier part. Marshalling the data and managing outcomes, which will include agitation, litigation and competing quota demands by several castes, are the tough asks. Karnataka’s Siddaramaiah government started India’s first state-level Social and Educational Survey in 2014. But it back-pedalled as 2018 state elections approached. Tamil Nadu’s survey, initiated in 2020 following Vanniyar demands for a separate quota, is also in limbo. Even GoI’s OBC sub-categorisation exercise is stuck.
Instead of obsessing over caste numbers, political parties should worry about the lack of contemporaneous economic data. Policymaking without credible data, especially after an economic shock, is a terribly suboptimal way to govern. Good data, for example, on household consumption, can help everyone, no matter their caste. What opposition parties and BJP allies like Nitish should press for is another NSO consumer expenditure survey – the 2017-18 one was never officially published – as well as the decadal census, which is now delayed by two years.
GoI's policy moves to fight food inflation are muddled. After banning wheat exports, it has now imposed curbs on exports of sugar effective from June 1 and allowed duty-free import of 20 lakh tonnes of crude soyabean oil and crude sunflower oil a year. Any curbs or ban on the export of agri commodities ignores the need for the farmer to get better terms and trade, while making India an unreliable supplier. The curbs on sugar exports come in a year India is reportedly set to register its highest-ever exports, while the closing stock of sugar at the end of the sugar season (September 30) remains for three months for domestic use. With export contracts already inked, the restrictions on sugar exports are a dampener for trade. Last week, GoI advanced the target of 20% ethanol-blended petrol by five years, aiding the sugar industry. But policy uncertainty on farm trade, swinging between bans and incentives, is avoidable.
Scrapping the customs duty and agriculture infrastructure development cess on the import of crude soyabean oil and crude sunflower oil (2022-23 and 2023-24) is rational. Palm oil imports make for over half the total imports in the vegetable oil segment. With Indonesia lifting the ban on exports, India lowering the effective import duty (of 5.5%) merits consideration to help control cooking oil prices and support domestic processing companies. External price and supply shocks have pushed wholesale price inflation to a record high of 15.08% in April across all items. Retail inflation rose to 7.79%, remaining above the RBI's inflation target.
GoI rightly responded by cutting the excise duty on petrol and diesel. It also lowered the customs duty for raw materials of plastics and steel. Ideally, import duties must be lowered across the board to ensure that lines of value addition have the same level of protection. One line of production will not be privileged over the other if import duty is low and uniform, say, at 5%, on raw materials, intermediates and inputs. This will also help lower prices for the consumer.
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For all its ubiquity and dynamism, the United States of America can seem a strikingly strange country to the rest of the world, India included. Its Supreme Court is reportedly contemplating allowing individual states to make the termination of a pregnancy a criminal offence, while its legislators and citizenry refuse to get rattled - or at least rattled enough - to make the procurement of firearms by the ordinary citizen far harder than it is. Along with Joe Biden, the rest of the world was once again jolted by the death of 21 persons - 19 children aged between 7 and 10, and two adults - in a school in Texas at the semiautomatic-toting hands of a 18-year-old on Tuesday. This episode comes less than a fortnight since the last mass-shooting in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 at a grocery store, making it the 199th mass shooting in the US in 2022, so far.
Tellingly, a 2021 Gallup poll shows that only a little more than half (52%) of Americans want sales of firearms to be stricter, a proportion that's down from 68% in 2018. The issue of gun control is clearly partisan - Republicans are less likely to call for stricter laws than Democrats by a margin of 67 percentage points - pointing to the limits of political relativism. The argument for easy access to assault weapons and other firearms that has been trotted out as 'tradition' by the National Rifle Association and beyond is the right to protect oneself and loved ones. Clearly, this purpose continues to backfire.
For a country that has built a threat perception based on real and potential external attacks, the US is staggeringly blase about attacks to its own citizenry from within. In Texas this week, the world was yet again reminded of American exceptionalism as self-harm.
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For the third time this month, the Congress has suffered a jolt in the form of the depar-ture of a senior leader. Former minister Kapil Sibal announced on Wednesday that he has resigned from the party and filed his nomination as an independent candidate for the Rajya Sabha (RS), with support from the Samajwadi Party (SP). His exit, arguably the most high-profile in the party in two years, comes at a critical time for the Congress, which is trying to rejuvenate its ranks after a clutch of demoralising losses. Mr Sibal snapped his three-decade-old ties with the Congress after nearly two years of stormy exchanges as the de facto head of a group of leaders pushing for internal reforms and elections. He was the rare Congress leader who publicly questioned the party’s leadership and first family, the Gandhis. His exit will strike a blow to the morale of the so-called G-23, which has only managed to make modest headway in its exchanges with the party’s leadership.
Mr Sibal’s departure also punctures the narrative of revitalisation that the Congress has been seeking to put forth after its Udaipur Chintan Shivir (which he was not a part of). It remains to be seen if his exit has any electoral ramifications for the party but Mr Sibal’s exit is sure to have an effect on the party’s churn and the limited successes of the G-23 in engaging with the leadership. Two G-23 members — Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma — found a place in Sonia Gandhi’s key political affairs group announced earlier this week. But no G-23 leaders were included in the newly set up taskforce. With its most vocal leader gone, will the other leaders move closer to the leadership?
The fact that the SP accommodated Mr Sibal as a member from its quota of Rajya Sabha seats, and didn’t even insist that he join the party, doesn’t augur well for efforts to stitch together a unified Opposition. It hints at the diminishing stature of the Congress within the Opposition camp (the Trinamool Congress has previously poached leaders from the party), and indicates that the party may command significantly less bargaining power in such a grouping than what some of its leaders claimed at the Chintan Shivir. Worse still, it bolsters the public perception that the Congress is in terminal decline, one that the party needs to desperately reverse if it has to stand a chance in the upcoming elections. Its response will determine whether future departures can be stopped.
The grisly murder of 19 children by an 18-year-old gunman in a Texas elementary school brings America’s puzzling aversion to gun control to the fore again, along with the disappointing reality that with midterm elections coming up, little is likely to change legislatively, especially in gun-friendly states such as Texas. The rampage at Robb Elementary School in the heavily Latino town of Uvalde was the worst school shooting in the United States (US) since a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, in 2012. Reports said that it was the eighth mass shooting this year, and came just 10 days after another 18-year-old murdered 10 African Americans at a supermarket in New York.
Despite the horrors inflicted by unchecked firearms, little is expected to change. It is widely known that the US has more registered firearms than citizens, and its per capita ownership of guns is not only the highest in the world, but outstrips that in conflict regions such as Yemen. And yet, perceptions about gun control have largely remained the same, surveys indicate, and support for stricter gun control is sharply partisan, making any legislative movement difficult.
Scientists have linked gun violence to a number of factors, including financial stress, social isolation, loss of family or friends, breakdown of social fabric and deteriorating mental health. While these are important factors, there can be no meaningful crackdown on gun violence without legislative change. For this, lawmakers have to counter the influence of powerful groups such as the National Rifle Association and a section of Republicans who have consistently blocked any attempts to tighten gun checks. Hours after the shooting in Texas on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden appeared ready for a fight, when he asked in his address, “As a nation we have to ask, when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” The whole world is waiting for an answer.
All of us, and especially managers, need to understand how to co-exist with recent changes in technology. There are three things that can help us do this. One, we don’t all need to become computer programmers to stay ahead of technological changes. Two, an understanding of business functions and a framework to analyse and understand how business processes work will help us techproof ourselves. Three, there are only four roles that all of us play in our organisations. Being sufficiently informed on how technology is morphing will allow us to play those roles well.
This is the core of my new book, Techproof Me, which, I must add, is not a self-help book. My real intent is to give the reader a framework for thinking that can make them techproof. I have spent an entire career at the forefront of technology, and advise large corporations on key decisions on technology. It was only in the last decade that I started putting some of my learnings to paper — largely in HT’s sister publication, Mint.
I have always been amused by how technologists keep spouting acronyms and terms, but, in truth, most technological ideas are based on simple concepts of how a particular business process is supposed to function when it is automated. Even if you are not a technologist by training, once you understand the functionality of a system, and the specific type of logic it uses in order to perform that function, you are better off than 99% of the laity. This means you are now in the 1% that can be well versed in what that technology does and can be counted among the “gurus”. But there is one more magic ingredient in getting to be noticed as a guru, and that is if you can get the other parts of being a guru right — which is to play one or more of the roles below.
There are four roles: Soldier, Originator, Leader and Empath. Soldiers understand that being part of a system means working for the good of the system and not for themselves as individuals. For this, they need a micro-level understanding of how an organisation functions and what can be done to improve its working.
The Originators act as cross-pollinators who can apply ideas and concepts from technology to the real world and vice-versa. Leaders have a vision and the ability to get others to collaborate to work towards it. This means having an intimate understanding of what an organisation does and how it serves a particular market need as well as being able to envision the path forward.
Empathy is an important aspect of being able to adapt to a rapidly changing world. It helps one make more holistic decisions when it comes to analysing, understanding and implementing new tech in one’s life.
In my observation, those trained in other disciplines before finding themselves in careers that required a deep knowledge of several types of technology have two ways of making themselves techproof. One is to truly understand how a given technology works at a macro level, and the second is to figure out how to adapt oneself to the changes it brings.
While this is probably a simplified explanation, learning how to leverage technology does not demand that one become an expert programmer. In reality, it only needs the application of specific filters to understand a technology, so that one can play the role of a via media between those with only a passing knowledge of that technology and others so deep in its workings that they cannot understand its broader implications. This is the essence of the consulting business. Once you understand the functionality of the technology, you are techproof.
Siddharth (Sid) Pai is a co-founder of Siana Capital, a venture fund house that invests in Indian deep tech and science. Prior to this, he was personally responsible for managing over $20 billion in M&A and technology services transactions into India, as President of Asia-Pacific for ISG Inc. He is the author of Techproof Me The views expressed are personal
The administration of 1.91 billion Covid-19 vaccine doses (May 19) at an unprecedented pace is India’s story of celebration. This was possible due to the nation’s internationally benchmarked vaccine-manufacturing capability, a well-oiled cold chain, well-trained human resources, a strong technology backbone (CoWIN), and the united efforts of the central and state governments. A deeper analysis of the successful delivery of vaccines throws up several positives, including the role of frontline teams, and ideas for building India’s public health care capacity, which was hobbled by chronic low investment for decades.
First, Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA), the only activists in a public health care system, made a perceptible difference. An ASHA is a local person, who receives performance-based payments. Many ASHAs received capacity development training, enabling them to transition from community worker to basic community health worker. This journey is a success of the National Health System Resource Centre, in partnership with the states, and the National Rural Health Mission Framework for Implementation, which argued for strengthening the public system of delivery and providing human resources (HR) with flexible financing and decentralised management of services. The importance of robust HR in the public health system has to be recognised, while making further investments in the sector.
Second, frontline teams now have the ability to work with panchayats and community organisations such as self-help groups (SHGs). With 43% of the elected 3.1 million panchayat leaders being women and over 80 million women in SHGs, under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana National Rural Livelihood Mission, an all-women frontline leadership has emerged across the country. The ASHA, auxiliary nursing midwife and aaganwadi workers form a formidable team; this cohort, along with an adequate cold chain and good ground-level planning, can lead to high levels of coverage. The success of this integrated approach was also reflected in Mission Indradhanush for immunisation coverage. Institutionalising this partnership will ensure rich dividends.
Third, the National Health Mission and Mission Indradhanush made substantial investments in building a functional logistics and cold chain. Thanks to this and improved availability of electricity and physical infrastructure in rural areas, there is an effective delivery system in remote regions.
Fourth, the urban primary health care system does not match the rural one in most states. So, it is good that the Pradhan Mantri Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana focuses on urban primary health care. There is a need for investment in human resources to provide extension services. An equally active urban local leadership at the basti- and ward-level is required to make more effective frontline connections with households in urban areas.
Fifth, India’s production capacity in vaccine manufacturing and State support for research and product development have made innovation possible quickly. The expansion of laboratories and research helped India develop a range of vaccines with global demand. In addition, repurposing production lines made ramping up production faster without losing out on basic standards.
Sixth, ramping up testing facilities and the CoWIN platform and ease of getting vaccinated made the difference. This was possible due to meticulous planning and identifying weak areas for supplementation. This proves that when a whole of government, whole of society approach is adopted, gains are made faster. Everyone geared up for a common purpose, and this speaks volumes about the importance of a people’s movement. The private sector was also engaged, aligned with a public purpose, as outlined in the National Health Policy 2017.
Seventh, the use of technology such as drones for delivery, keeping the remote health worker motivated by recognising the efforts in challenging areas through a communication strategy all added to a spirit of public service. The Covid-19 experience showed that while the private sector can supplement, public health is essentially a public-funded sector. It needs a proactive State to build public health capacity with equally solid and well-equipped critical care systems.
Given the information asymmetry, a functional system of public health care has great relevance as a countervailing presence for the private sector’s cost and quality of care. Therefore, we need to invest in crafting credible public systems in partnership with states, focusing on HR for health. A system of upgrading, multi-skilling, reskilling and upskilling frontline health workers to meet the challenges of changing public health needs is our best guarantee for the safe health of citizens.
Ninth, the thrust of the finance commission recommendations on decentralised management of primary health care augurs well for a people’s-health-in-people’s-hands approach. Technology is a great enabler to connect communities and households to health facilities. But technology is not an end in itself, and the focus must be on the last-mile community connect and facilitation with adequate handholding and community oversight. The panchayats must work together across the 29 sectors assigned to them; the same holds for the urban local bodies in the 18 sectors assigned to them. We need to make the local government a gram panchayat-led convergence across the identified sectors. Then, the results will be remarkable.
Amarjeet Sinha is a retired civil servant The views
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As the Narendra Modi government completes eight years in office, one of its major diplomatic accomplishments has been the firm establishment of Quad. Its second in-person summit just took place in Tokyo. In some ways, Quad is a tale of a grouping foretold, since it brings together key relationships that developed once the Cold War ended. But the strategic vision and diplomatic skills that made it happen should be given due credit.
Quad as a platform and the Indo-Pacific as an arena reflect the era of globalisation. They underline that the Indian and Pacific oceans can no longer be compartmentalised, as they were after 1945. These are truly contemporary concepts that reflect the rise of Asia, the repositioning of big powers, their changed capabilities and approaches, the nature of supply chains and the criticality of technology and connectivity. From an Indian perspective, it is also a statement of its growing interests beyond the Indian Ocean. What began as a solution for an economic crisis in 1992 has developed into a strategic correction.
Some critics of Quad have deliberately sought to evoke the imagery of the Cold War. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is precisely because the Cold War ended that India’s partnerships with the United States, Japan and Australia could realise their real potential. And for the same reason, put behind a “zones of influence”-thinking that was so prevalent. Interestingly, these improvements started almost two decades ago when the dominant logic was economic engagement rather than political contestation. But taking it forward in a changing era demanded both confidence and application from Indian diplomacy. That Quad succeeded in 2017, as contrasted to its abortive start in 2007, says as much about leadership as the state of the world. Where India is concerned, much of that has been the overcoming of the hesitations of history. Equally, it has meant not giving other countries a veto on our choices. Quad is not only about developing bilateral ties or groupings in the national interest. There is also a larger vision of shaping the region and the world, which impels its evolution.
Quad members are all democratic polities, market economies and pluralistic societies. Apart from that natural understanding, similarity in the structural aspects of their relationships helps to foster the platform. In each case, there are regular meetings at the summit level, designated formally as annual, in the case of Australia and Japan. All of them have a 2+2 defence and foreign ministers’ interaction with each other. Again, all four countries are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean)-led forums, including the East Asia Summit, the Asean Regional Forum, and the defence ministers’ meeting. They also strongly subscribe to the centrality of Asean insofar as the Indo-Pacific is concerned. Between them, they are involved in multiple trilateral combinations with other partners. That all of them offer mutual logistics support and work on white shipping enables better maritime security coordination. Their shared commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 as the constitution of the seas is significant.
The working of Quad takes into account the consequences of globalisation, requirements of the global commons, and the implications of converging interests in the face of the changing geopolitical landscape in the Indo-Pacific. The Malabar Naval Exercise is often cited as its prominent activity. But this uni-dimensional projection does injustice to a group that makes a serious contribution to global welfare. It is, therefore, vital to have informed visibility of the entire Quad landscape.
As the Tokyo Summit revealed, the agenda of the grouping has grown rapidly. Quad collaborates on critical and emerging technologies, encourages a diverse and open telecom ecosystem, and discusses a semiconductor value chain. It promotes green shipping practices and corridors, supports cooperation on green hydrogen, and generates awareness of disaster resilience. Its collective efforts on sustainable infrastructure and transparent connectivity are notable.
Given the pandemic, it is natural for Quad to advance a vaccine partnership. A STEM Fellowship underlines the educational connection between its members, as a data satellite portal does the space one. The collaboration on humanitarian assistance and disaster response is its latest initiative, appropriate given the shared history of the 2004 tsunami. Counter-terrorism and cyber security are also prominent in their expanding scope.
The Tokyo Summit is the most productive to date, underlining both the distance that Quad has travelled and its potential for future growth. It saw a commitment by Quad members to extend over $50 billion of infrastructure assistance and investment in the Indo-Pacific over the next five years. A Quad debt management resource portal is expected to strengthen capacities to cope with that challenge. The launching of the Q-CHAMP (Quad climate change and adaption mitigation package) is a significant development in respect of climate action. The decision to observe a Quad Cyber Security Day is designed to enhance awareness about digital concerns. An understanding on 5G supplier diversification and Open-RAN will contribute to secure telecommunications in the region.
Two notable initiatives on the sidelines of the Summit demonstrate how Quad has contributed to greater regional cooperation. The launching of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework is expected to advance common interests in trade, supply chains, infrastructure, and finance. The Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness will bring together regional information fusion centres to address challenges like natural disasters and illegal fishing.
The objective of Quad, in the words of Prime Minister Modi, is to do global good. The need for that to be a collaborative effort is self-evident. It is equally natural that nations with significant capacities and shared interests would step forward in response to the need of the day. That India should be part of this makes sense given its growth, confidence, and worldview. Quad expresses the approach of the Modi government to put India’s interests at the centre of its thinking, even while embracing the world as a family. The Tokyo Summit is the most recent validation of this approach.
S Jaishankar is external affairs ministerThe views expressed are personal
Conflicts more often than not do not result in the peace that was envisaged. The reasons could be many and need to be understood and lessons learnt, lest we keep reinventing history, much to the chagrin of the citizens of the world who continue to suffer.
It might be easy to start a war, but what constitutes the end of this modern-day conflict is even harder to articulate. With the Russia-Ukraine conflict — or "special military operations" as Russia calls it — entering its third month, there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.
This long-drawn-out conflict is now seeing repercussions across a world that is still recovering from the Covid pandemic. Closer home, the eastern Ladakh crisis that led to casualties on both sides two years ago has resulted in a stalemate with the rival armies deployed face to face at a significant cost with no end in sight despite 15 rounds of border talks at the highest level.
Twenty years after the invasion of Afghanistan following the Global War On Terror (GWOT), the United States has pulled out while Afghanistan, continues to languish and it is questionable whether the objectives that were laid down by President George Bush have been achieved. The conflict in Ukraine may well become a turning point in history that could lead to a realignment between nation-States.
In these circumstances, it becomes important not only to understand the reasons that propelled the conflict, but also what India can do to ensure that a similar situation does not unfold in the neighbourhood.
Foreign policy
National interest assumes primacy in any nation’s foreign policy to secure its interests with economic, trade, diplomatic and military relations with its partners. The nature of governments or a government's ideology should not matter as long as the national interest is served.
India occupies an enviable position geographically, a continental power astride the Indian Ocean with the mighty Himalayan ranges offering a natural barrier to its north. A concerted effort towards development diplomacy with each of its neighbours, visa-free travel, and open borders that encourage tourism, education in premier institutes of the country, and medical facilities apart from free trade agreements would go a long way in building mutual trust in the neighbourhood.
Regional cooperation with extensive people-to-people connections was a vision of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. When speaking about neighbouring countries, he talked about “making borders irrelevant without redrawing them.” India’s foreign policy, with regard to its engagement in the neighbourhood, has more or less been bipartisan, irrespective of the government in power.
As the Ukraine conflict rages on, India must engage more proactively with a whole-of-government approach with its neighbours. This will ensure that the nation emerges as a net security provider in the region and will also promote peace and tranquillity along its borders.
Military relations and defence cooperation
Engagement among the armed forces of the neighbouring countries ensures that issues of interoperability, common understanding, and people-to-people contact nurtures relationships. For instance, when natural disasters or calamities strike, India has always been the first responder to provide help and succour in the region and beyond.
At the same time, the military capability to protect its borders from external aggression must reorient itself to the changing dynamics of war that permeate into the grey zone. There is a need to ensure synergy in the military domain with a concerted and coordinated approach that stems from a joint-but-singular vision to protect national interest at all costs.
The military capability must not only be synergised, but also be capable of waging war effectively through all domains including cyber, information, and space, apart from the traditional — land, maritime, and air. The national will, resolve, and capability must be demonstrably visible and exercised without refrain, should the need arise.
Former United States President Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quote, “Speak softly and carry a big stick — you will go far” couldn’t be more appropriate under the given circumstances. Increased defence cooperation in the neighbourhood through joint exercises, airshows, training, bilateral exchange visits, and staff talks would foster relationships that would not only preclude a conflict but also ensure peace and stability in the region.
Becoming a global leader
India, with its growing economy, an unprecedented demographic dividend, and an unrivalled capability in the services and information technology sector stands at the crossroads of history. It is from here that it can emerge as a regional and global leader which can make a difference.
As songwriter, musician, and peace activist, John Lennon, famously sang in 2010 “Give peace a chance”, India should do all it can to give peace a chance.
Anil Golani is additional director general, Centre for Air Power Studies
The views expressed are personal
Results of a new study published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine show that psilocybin, a powerful psychedelic compound found in “magic mushrooms” can treat patients suffering from clinical depression. Remarkably, psilocybin was shown to be more effective than a common antidepressant, escitalopram. Brain scans of patients also hinted that psilocybin works in a completely different way from known antidepressants.
People suffering from depression can face low moods together with repetitive patterns of thought. These behavioural patterns have signatures in the brain that are thought to contribute to depressive symptoms. Unfortunately, psychotherapy and antidepressant drugs don’t always alleviate symptoms for everyone suffering from depression.
New research on the use of the psychedelic compound, psilocybin, has found that just one or two doses of this drug provided in a clinical trial in conjunction with psychological support can reduce symptoms of depression even in patients who aren't responding to other forms of treatment. Functional MRI brain scans from both trials showed that there were changes in brain function that persisted beyond the use of psilocybin. This indicates that the changes are durable.
What psilocybin seems to be doing is help the brain become more connected, so that it works more fluidly outside of the rigid patterns of behaviour that it has formed. These inflexible patterns are often associated with depression. People suffering from depression report facing negative thoughts and behaviours that they can’t escape. The improvements in brain connectivity correlate very well with improvements in mood and mental state.
In the new study, Richard Daws at Imperial College, London, and his colleagues looked at data from two clinical trials involving patients suffering from clinical depression. The first set of patients took part in a one-week trial of psilocybin taken orally. The second was a double-blind Phase 2 randomised controlled trial which compared psilocybin to escitalopram, which is a standard antidepressant drug.
Psilocybin worked well to decrease depressive symptom severity in both trials. After three weeks, a 64% reduction in depression severity was seen after two doses of psilocybin. This was higher than the symptom reduction seen after six weeks of daily use of escitalopram.
Although more work is needed, the beauty of the study is that it shows that a very short course of psilocybin can provide a long-term benefit to patients not responding to standard treatment. What I found most stunning is that even a single dose of psilocybin can have a lasting effect on brain connectivity.
What is also intriguing about this study is that it shows both the effectiveness of the use of psilocybin in treating patients and that the mode of action might be different from approved antidepressant drugs. Psilocybin is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound that's found in around 200 different kinds of mushrooms that grow around the world. Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, psychedelic compounds such as psilocybin have been illegal in most countries.
Clinical trials using these compounds stopped after they became outlawed but have picked up in recent years. Since then, there has been accumulating evidence that certain psychedelics may have benefits in treating anxiety, major depression, and in stopping forms of addiction.
Pharmaceutical companies have developed drugs to help people deal with anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric disorders, but they are not equally effective in treating everyone. Alternative means such as natural psychedelic compounds could help people better deal with these conditions.
Certainly, these compounds which have been used by indigenous communities recreationally and for spiritual experiences for thousands of years might serve to treat psychiatric conditions. Psilocybin is not addictive in the physiological sense and isn’t toxic at the doses administered. But because psychedelics are still illegal and not approved for any condition, they should not be consumed unless under the direct guidance of a physician as part of a clinical trial.
Future studies with psilocybin will include Phase 3 trials for use in depression to find how safe and effective it is in a larger population. Additional studies will also glean out just exactly how it works. Right now, no one really knows.
Many patients who have benefitted from psilocybin say that their brains seem to have been reset like computers that have been restarted. So, when proponents say that magic mushrooms “free the mind”, maybe they are correct. But it may soon be time for broader society to open its mind to them too.
Anirban Mahapatra is a scientist by training and the author of a book on COVID-19. He’s writing a second popular-science book
The views expressed are personal
The observations made by a bench of the Supreme Court about the lack of respect for the judiciary and security for the people who serve it calls for serious attention of all those who have a stake in the democratic institutions in this country. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud has said that it has become the fashion of late to make allegations against the judiciary and that the stronger the judge, the worse are the allegations. He also mentioned that there is little physical security for judicial officers at the district level.
The judge’s observations have a context but their import is not limited to it; he was in fact highlighting the larger pattern of the attitude evolving in this country towards the judiciary. And the people at fault cannot be those in the lowest strata of society; they find it difficult even to access the judiciary, leave alone show defiance to it. He must be referring to people who have a hand on the levers of power.
It was not long ago that Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana made a similar remark to an audience which included the Prime Minister. The CJI had pointed out that contempt of court petitions against government officials are on the rise and they make a major share of the total number of litigations.
Fair criticism of court pronouncements is a democratic right but turning to the judge is not. While casting aspersions on a judge, a person is attributing a motive for a judicial decision outside the parameters of the law and the Constitution. If this becomes the fashion, as the judge pointed out, it would weaken the very institution.
The judiciary may be the weakest of the three arms of the government for it has no infrastructure to implement its decisions. It has to depend on the executive to get the job done in this respect. In a constitutional democracy where the rule of law prevails, it thrives on the respect the executive shows to its orders. If the executive is unwilling to go by judicial decisions and does not see to it that they are implemented, it effectively means a breakdown of the constitutional scheme.
The government must take the reference as a warning for the weakening of the institution. It must take immediate remedial action. It must be ingrained into all levels of the bureaucracy that judicial orders are to be complied with both by the people inside the system and those outside it, and that the erring people will have to face the music. It is unfair to persuade the courts to intervene again to get its orders followed.
There are far too many issues that plague the judiciary, including lack of infrastructure and the physical security for the judges. The former involves allocation of funds and the government must give it priority on its agenda. It could be a slow process but there is little justification in leaving judicial officers vulnerable to anti-social elements. This must be addressed forthwith.
There are complaints against the judiciary, too, but these have to be dealt with differently. As we progress as a democracy, the legislative oversight of the executive is not being strengthened, it is being weakened instead. The judiciary remains the only effective mechanism that plays its role in the scheme of checks and balances. Signs of its weakening warrant the greatest urgency on the part of the government and the people.
Most cities across the world have long ceased to be environmentally sustainable.
They may bear the bulk of economic burden of a country or region, allowing for millions of people to eke out a livelihood, or even make a good life for themselves, crucially paying the lion’s share of the taxes that financially sustain the spending of nations and states, enabling welfare programmes and social benefit schemes and supporting unending migration from villages, but they have become environmentally unsustainable themselves.
Indian cities, especially its six big metros, have metamorphosed into ecological-disaster-attracting hubs, bearing the brunt of global warming. Sadly, there is little alternative for young, ambitious Indian youth from anywhere in the country who are trying to make a career but to live and work in big Indian cities and larger towns.
As over an estimated 46 million residents of Delhi-NCR realised when they woke up on Monday after a scorching summer spell with temperatures crossing 50 degrees Celsius. They found themselves in a rain-inundated city, with flights delayed or cancelled, roads impossible to ply through and, for many of the less fortunate, homes invaded by rainwater and debris from their colonies, making life impossible.
When temperatures fall in a city by 11 degrees overnight, the citizens may temporarily rejoice, but the governments must be alarmed. In point of fact, they shan’t be, because cities might be economic powerhouses but are not politically too rewarding, or lucrative.
Every other major Indian city — Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad — have faced similar sudden rains and floods, dry spells and every element of nature’s fury showing its carefree dance of destruction, forcing the city life on its knees or to a standstill.
India must protect these cities, not with tactical, hyper-local green steps, like banning plastic, planting saplings or cleaning lakes, but by creating a 100-plus-kilometre urban radius around to ensure these disasters are mitigated at a greater level of effectiveness.
Whether one takes an optimistic view of man’s ability to fight ecological disasters in the future, or not, we must increase the vigil and take the fight up several notches. India must set aside the romantic and profound view that its soul lies in villages for a moment, and introspect and find that its heart, and brain, are still urban.
Save your cities, India, before it is too late.
President Joe Biden finally began his first visit to Asia last weekend to visit key American allies like South Korea and Japan, and also to attend the second in-person summit of the four-nation “Quad”, comprising, besides the United States, India, Australia and Japan.
Prior to Australia’s closely-fought election last Saturday, it had been speculated that if the Labour Party came to power, it might emulate Kevin Rudd, the last Labour PM, who had backpedalled on the Quad after becoming Prime Minister in December 2007, months after its birth. But things appear to be different in 2022, and there is bipartisan support for a much tougher line on China. Australians have undergone years of coercive Chinese trade restrictions to damage Australian commodities exports. A recently signed Chinese security deal with the critically- located Solomon Islands, in Australia’s maritime neighbourhood, has irked them more.
President Biden’s Asia tour has strategic significance. He explained his foreign policy priorities during a visit to the state department on February 4, 2021, just after taking over. He said he aimed to repair the alliances which his predecessor Donald Trump had worked overtime to damage, and fight authoritarianism by rooting diplomacy in America’s democratic values. President Trump had done the reverse by his unabashed praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin. President Biden also wished to uphold universal human rights, the rule of law, freedom and human dignity. The importance of “climate change” was emphasised, pointing out that on his very first day in office he had the United States re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement, which Mr Trump had abandoned. He also announced an early global summit on safeguarding democracy globally.
His first trip abroad was to Europe to repair the European alliance system. But Covid-19, mismanaged by his predecessor, swallowed much of his time and energy. He nevertheless convened the first in-person Quad summit on September 24, 2021 in Washington. The Tokyo summit was the second in-person meeting of the four leaders.
President Biden wanted to signal that his original agenda was not forgotten despite the distraction since last February with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Over the last three months President Biden’s leadership has been crucial to the unity of Nato, collective resistance to face the Russian breach of the UN Charter and extension of military and economic assistance to beleaguered Ukraine.
Russia has been denied capture of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, the full annexation of the Donbas region and the completion of the north-south Russian pincer to lop off a third or more of Ukraine. Odessa remains in Ukrainian possession, blocking Russia’s move to cut off Ukraine from the Black Sea. With Russia’s challenge in Europe countered though not reversed fully, President Biden now turned to the original priority of containing China. Hence the Asian visit began with South Korea, with Japan as a natural second leg.
While the US has gained strategically since the Ukraine War, China has been entrapped by Vladimir Putin’s misadventure. After the February Xi-Putin summit, days before the war began, the phrase bandied was a “no-limits” partnership. It indicated a mutually empowering convergence of interests of two premier military powers and permanent
members of the United Nations. Three months later, the economic strangulation of the Russian economy leaves China dangerously exposed, with a crucial Communist Party meeting approaching. In addition, its “Zero Covid” policy, requiring massive lockdowns in major cities, has slowed its economy. According to Bloomberg, for the first time since 1976, China’s GDP growth at two per cent would be lower than that of the US at 2.6 per cent. Russia’s fate is still subject to Mr Putin deciding to either cut his losses or gambling on a longer and debilitating conflict. If the US threat of bleeding Russia to permanently weaken it is credible, China is stuck in the middle.
China is also seeing the dangers of unilateral military action to achieve self-defined strategic goals, like annexing Taiwan militarily. The Quad summit was important to lay out the next steps to constrain Chinese misconduct. The Quad leaders’ joint statement explains that while the first summit in Washington was to delineate a “positive and practical agenda”, the Tokyo one was to “deliver on this promise”. The Quad is characterised as “a force for good”. China naturally strongly disagrees.
The joint statement expounds this under several headings. Under “Peace and Stability”, it reveals the members discussed “our respective responses to the conflict in Ukraine”. Publicly, India still only seeks a ceasefire and peaceful resolution, while decrying the humanitarian crisis but without condemning Russia or joining the West’s economic boycott.
However, by introducing the UN Charter and international law, Russia’s Ukraine invasion and China’s unilateral actions in its maritime and continental neighbourhood get clubbed. The UN Convention on the Laws of the Seas (UNCLOS) is re-emphasised. Asean’s unity and centrality in the Quad’s Indo-Pacific approach is highlighted. India is thus cajoled to adopt a uniform approach towards the depredations of Russia or China as principles cannot be applied selectively between partners.
On climate change, about which Australia’s new Labour government is more forthcoming, the Quad Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Package (Q-CHAMP) was adopted. A “net zero” by 2050 is promised. To handle the Covid-19 pandemic, the Quad has committed $5.2 billion to the COVAX AMC vaccine programme.
Terrorism is condemned with the need reiterated to punish the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai and Pathankot attacks.
The announcement of the 13-nation Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) came as a welcome surprise as it began creating a larger trade and investment underpinning for the narrower Quad grouping of four democracies. The US chose this route for it does not require going to the US Senate as tariff reductions or eased market access are not envisaged. This partially fills the gap remaining after President Trump made the US exit the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). China utilised that to seize charge of the 15-member Regional Cooperation Economic Partnership (RCEP), which India refused to join.
The Tokyo Quad summit enabled the US to demonstrate commitment to the Indo-Pacific and China’s containment. President Biden’s cryptic affirmative reply to whether the US would intervene militarily if China attacks Taiwan, despite his office’s attempt to dilute it, would have been noted in Beijing. The space for India to adopt double standards in judging events in Asia as compared to those in Europe is shrinking. The Joe Biden-Narendra Modi bilateral meeting would have reinforced that message despite praising democratic India’s success at handling Covid-19 compared to authoritarian China’s failure. Finally, the Quad is here to stay and perhaps grow.