Last Friday, a Bench of the Supreme Court of India led by the Chief Justice of India, Justice U.U. Lalit, granted interim bail to human rights activist Teesta Setalvad who was arrested in June this year. She has now walked out of jail. The order is, without doubt, a great relief to Ms. Setalvad personally, and to the country’s liberty jurisprudence at large. The Court, in the instant case, has directly confronted a politically vindicative executive and performed its role. Yet, the order calls for critical discourse.
Needed, answers
Rather than the solution of interim bail that the Court has rightly provided to the activist, it is the set of questions that it has posed which requires the attention of all concerned, especially those at the helm of affairs. During the hearing, the judges underlined four “features” of the case that “bothered” the Court. They are: omission in filing the charge sheet even after two months of Ms. Setalvad’s arrest; registration of the First Information Report (FIR) on the very next day of the Supreme Court’s judgment that dismissed Zakia Jafri’s plea against exoneration of Narendra Modi and others in the 2002 Gujarat riots, with strictures against Ms. Setalvad and others; the long adjournment of the bail plea by the High Court (from August 3 to a date after September 19); lack of allegations regarding commission of any offence serious enough to deny bail.
These issues, which the Court posed, would travel well beyond Ms. Setalvad’s case. The Court’s pointed questions have clearly exposed the malice in the State’s action. More importantly, the same questions remain equally relevant and compelling in hundreds of cases across the country, with an important supplement — that, in many of them, draconian provisions have also been recklessly invoked, to victimise the dissidents.
The sad part of the top court’s order, however, is that the rigour of these questions and the enthusiasm to get clear judicial answers are conspicuously lacking in the final order. The questions on the features of the case were asked by the Court openly on Thursday, September 1, 2022, and after a day’s adjournment, the matter was heard further and the order pronounced on Friday.
Friday’s order, after noting the long custody of the appellant lady and the opportunity availed by the police officers for custodial interrogation, said that the petitioner had made out a case for “the relief of interim bail, till the matter was considered by the High Court”. The Court said: “We are therefore not considering whether the appellant be released on regular bail or not. That issue will be gone into by the High Court.” The Court also made an unwarranted clarification that the present order “shall not be taken to be a reflection on merits and shall not be used by the other accused”.
Lost opportunity
When the fundamental questions which the Court posed on the previous day remained relevant, the Supreme Court, as the guardian of the Constitution, should have and could have done better by answering them and granted regular bail to Ms. Setalvad, by which a useful precedent would have been set for the other accused (who are almost identically situated) in the case as well. Viewed in this way, the order is disappointing.
The questions by the Court are directed against the Gujarat High Court too. Adjournment of regular bail applications for an indefinite period occurs in many High Courts. This is an issue that should have been taken up seriously by the top court. In the very same context, the Court ought to have also held that when such an indefinite delay happens, that by itself is a reason for an appeal before the Supreme Court under Article 136 of the Constitution.
The Solicitor General had raised a contention on the maintainability of Ms. Setalvad’s appeal based on the doctrine of elections, suggesting thereby that the petitioner having moved the High Court, should have waited for the High Court’s final decision. This could have been easily rejected by the top court on the ground of a gross violation of fundamental rights. In a scenario where the High Courts take several weeks or even months together in deciding a bail plea, the Supreme Court should have deprecated such practice. Ms. Setalvad’s case was a classic one where the delay in taking the decision itself amounted to an adverse decision warranting intervention by the top court. It is curious to note that the Centre relied on the principles of ‘rule of law’ and ‘equality before the law’ at the Supreme Court, to detain the activist. This terrible irony required a judicial admonition, which too, unfortunately, did not occur.
On June 24, a Bench led by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar, quite unfairly and without materials, blamed Ms. Setalvad and others for showing “the audacity to question the integrity of every functionary” associated with the investigation. In the context of the long litigation for rendering justice to the Gujarat riot victims, Ms. Setalvad and others were accused of “keeping the pot boiling”. Without any convincing reason, the Bench also said that “all those involved in such abuse of process, need to be in the dock and proceeded with in accordance with law”. This deplorable approach, which was palpably erroneous and unjust, was the basis for the high-handed action against Ms. Setalvad and others. In view of this, the trial court as well as the High Court might have turned reluctant to grant bail to the accused. This is all the more the reason why the Supreme Court, as an institution, should have invoked its introspective jurisdiction to grant regular bail to Ms. Setalvad, which unfortunately did not happen.
A delay that is serious
A long delay in deciding the bail plea is a serious issue. The country’s judiciary has been infected with this pathological condition for quite a long time, because of which hundreds of political prisoners languish in jails even now. The predicament of Father Stan Swamy who died while in judicial custody and many others, from Siddique Kappan to Umar Khalid to Gautam Navlakha, who are repeatedly denied bail and stay in prison, has put the judiciary also under trial. Thus, Ms. Setalvad’s case was an opportunity for the Court to evaluate the state of freedom in the country. It offered a litmus test. It was an occasion for a formidable judicial reprimand to the political executive, and to the judiciary itself, that has failed the people during tough times. It is, clearly, an opportunity missed.
Stronger intervention missed
In the celebrated judgment inGudikanti Narasimhulu (1977), Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer wrote: “The issue of ‘Bail or Jail’ -at the pretrial or post-conviction stage-although largely hinging on judicial discretion, is one of liberty, justice, public safety and burden of the public treasury, all of which insist that a developed jurisprudence of bail is integral to a socially sensitized judicial process.” These prophetic words had resonance inJoginder Kumar vs State of U.P. (1994), where the Court ordered procedural imperatives for arrest. InSanjay Chandra vs CBI (2011), the Court put the issue in perspective: “The object of bail is neither punitive nor preventative”. It is only to “secure the appearance of the accused”. The judgment inArnesh Kumar vs State Of Bihar & Anr. (2014), relying on the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code and the Law Commission reports, warned against arbitrary arrests and detention. Even recently, inSatender Kumar Antil vs Central Bureau Of Investigation (2022),while urging for a Bail Act in India, the Supreme Court said that the ideas of democracy and the Police state are conceptually opposite to each other.
It is the Court’s own judicial philosophy on bail that makes the order in Ms. Setalvad’s case inadequate. The case deserved a better and stronger intervention. True, justice was rendered. But only incompletely.
Kaleeswaram Raj is a lawyer at the Supreme Court of India
In August, while addressing devotees gathered to celebrate Janmashtami, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdul Momen requested the Indian government to ensure that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stays in power when Bangladesh goes to the polls next year. He claimed that both India and Bangladesh would gain political stability by ensuring this. These out-of-the-norm comments from the senior cabinet member created a stir on both sides of the border. Senior leaders of the ruling Awami League distanced themselves from these remarks, while India maintained silence. Mr. Momen’s comments came before Ms. Hasina’s visit to India from September 5 to 8, 2022.
Trade and connectivity
Following the conclusion of the seventh round of the India-Bangladesh Joint Consultative Commission in June, the two neighbours have expanded their partnership to include Artificial Intelligence, Fintech, cybersecurity, startups, and connectivity. Trade will be a focal point during Ms. Hasina’s visit as the two countries gear up to sign a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). The two Prime Ministers are also expected to inaugurate a joint venture power plant soon.
CEPA comes at a time when Bangladesh is set to lose the duty-free and quota-free market-access facility to India after 2026 when it graduates to a developing country. Bangladesh is India’s sixth largest trade partner with bilateral trade rising from $2.4 billion in 2009 to $10.8 billion in 2020-21. Bangladesh imports critical industrial raw material from India on which its exports are reliant. According to a World Bank working paper, Bangladesh’s exports could rise 182% under a free trade agreement. This could become 300% if combined with trade facilitation measures and reduced transaction costs. Bangladesh also could improve several manufacturing industries by leveraging Indian expertise in service sectors.
India and Bangladesh have implemented several projects to boost eastern India-Bangladesh connectivity. India’s connectivity projects with ASEAN and Bangladesh will open up the region to economic growth. Bangladesh has expressed its interest in joining the India-Myanmar-Thailand highway project. India-Bangladesh bilateral waterway trade will get boosted as India can now use the Mongla and Chittagong ports. India is rallying Bangladesh to divert its exports through Indian ports in place of Malaysian or Singaporean ports. Enhancing connectivity through India’s Northeast and Bangladesh is important for bilateral cooperation. Currently, three express trains and international bus services operate between Indian and Bangladesh.
The sharing of the waters of the Teesta has remained a thorny issue between the two countries since 1947. For West Bengal, Teesta is important to sustain its impoverished farming districts which comprise 12.77% of its population. For Bangladesh, the Teesta’s flood plains cover about 14% of the total cropped area of the country and provide direct livelihood opportunities to approximately 7.3% of the population. The countries are expected to sign at least one major river agreement during the upcoming trip.
In 2015, India and Bangladesh resolved the decades-long border dispute through the Land Swap Agreement. Indian Home Minister Amit Shah recently reviewed the security arrangements in the Assam-Meghalaya-Bangladesh tri-junction, which used to a smugglers’ route. In 2019, India enacted the National Register of Citizens and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which created an uproar within and beyond the borders. Ms. Hasina termed the move as “unnecessary”. But her government has mostly kept silent on India’s “internal matter” even as political commentators and citizens have feared it could have ripple effects for Bangladesh. The detainees caught at the border that year claimed they were Bangladeshi citizens who were returning to the country on failing to obtain Indian citizenship.
Regional geopolitics
Chinese inroads into the neighborhood have been a cause of worry for India. China has been actively pursuing bilateral ties with Bangladesh. Bangladesh had successfully approached China for a mega project to enhance Teesta river water flow. Bangladesh also requires China’s support in resolving the Rohingya refugee crisis. Bangladesh is the second biggest arms market for China after Pakistan.
Bangladesh has also been warming up to Pakistan. The two shared frosty ties for decades after Pakistani politicians made unwarranted comments on the International Crimes Tribunal set up by Bangladesh. Although memories of 1971 remain, Bangladesh has expressed its interest in establishing peaceful relations with Pakistan.
In its election manifesto for the 2018 Bangladesh general elections, the ruling Awami League emphasised cooperation with India, including in sharing Teesta waters. Teesta remains a concern for the Bangladeshi population which is dependent on the river for their livelihood. Ms. Hasina has worked on strengthening bilateral ties and has uprooted all anti-India insurgency activities within Bangladesh by leading from the front. But the unresolved Teesta issue does not put her in good standing with the electorate. Many believe that her bold and pragmatic steps in strengthening relations with India have not been adequately reciprocated by Delhi and Kolkata.
India-Bangladesh ties witnessed the lowest ebb during the 2001-2006 tenure of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). In 2004, a 10-truck arms and ammunition haul took place in Chittagong. Investigators believed that the delivery of the smuggled arms was intended for the United Liberation Front of Asom, a militant group seeking Assam’s independence from India. These illicit activities created tensions between the countries. The BNP’s short-sighted and unwise handling of relations with India cost it dearly, for Delhi’s corridors of power lost confidence in the party. But by openly flouting its warm relations with India as a safeguard for continuity of power, the Awami League is not playing smart with the electorate either.
In Bangladesh, there is a prevailing perception that India’s goodwill towards the country is aligned to one particular political ideology or school of thought as opposed to Bangladeshi society at large. For India, the challenge is to earn the trust and confidence of Bangladeshis across the spectrum and strata. Ms. Hasina has deepened ties with the Narendra Modi government, but the two have failed to resolve long-standing issues such as Teesta water-sharing and killings at the border. The question is, how these factors may affect elections in Bangladesh. For India it will take more than cosy relations with one particular government to have long-term stable relations with its most trusted friend in the neighbourhood. Just as Bangladeshis remain grateful to India for the generous support extended by India during the Liberation War of 1971, they are equally sensitive to being treated with respect and fairness, no matter who rules their country.
Syed Munir Khasru is Chairman of the international think tank, The Institute for Policy, Advocacy, and Governance, which has a presence in Delhi, Dhaka, Melbourne, Dubai, and Vienna. Email: munir.khasru@ipag.org
In August 1950, one of Australia’s most celebrated jurists, Sir Owen Dixon (who sought to mediate a settlement on Kashmir) wrote to his daughter, Anne, in Melbourne that Delhi was “a place I hope and trust that I shall never again see”. More than 70 years later, as distinguished thought leaders from India and Australia meet in New Delhi (September 6) for the fifth round of the most important bilateral Track 1.5 dialogue, it is widely recognised that Canberra’s relationship with New Delhi is among the most important and critical for the future of the Indo-Pacific. The leaders at the dialogue will reflect on the past, but recommend more concrete steps to foster the relationship and ways to create a more habitable and sustainable planet.
A gradual change
When we started this dialogue we recognised that for most of the 20th century, India and Australia rarely had a meaningful conversation. The long shadow of the Cold War, India’s autarkic economic policies, the White Australia policy, and Canberra’s decision not to transfer uranium to India and other factors had kept the two countries apart for several decades. We used to celebrate each other’s problems rather than our successes. But that era of mutual schadenfreude is well and truly over.
Today, few countries in the Indo-Pacific region have more in common in both values and interests than India and Australia. Apart from being two English-speaking, multicultural, federal democracies that believe in and respect the rule of law, both have a strategic interest in ensuring a balance in the Indo-Pacific and in ensuring that the region is not dominated by any one hegemonic power. In addition, Indians are today the largest source of skilled migrants in Australia and the economic relationship, already robust, could potentially be transformed if the promise of the new Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA) is realised.
Setting markers for ties
A dialogue is a conversation between equals who have agreed to work as partners. No one just preaches, no one just listens. Thought leaders have come here, some from long distances, to have a robust conversation about our relationship and ways in which we can carry it forward. We are here also to lead and provide markers for the future of the relationship between our two great countries.
We are living through a period of immense turbulence, disruption and even subversion: the world is more uncertain than it ever was in our lifetimes. Even the Cold War, some may say, had a predictability, icy as it may have been.
The Australia-India Leadership Dialogue is critical because ideas matter in a relationship as much transactions and negotiations do. Stable, strong and sustainable relationships are built not just on the possibility of immediate gains, but on the promise of the future. In other words, the relationship is far too important to be left to the two governments alone. Governments matter tremendously, but forums such as these can provide the space and the ambience that can infuse new ideas to generate a new energy into the relationship.
Seeds that will germinate
The Leadership Dialogue is also important because ultimately, people and real connections matter. Technology and the cyberworld can blind us into believing that face-to-face conversations are outdated. We, in this Leadership Dialogue, still believe in the power of personal communication and collective communication in a shared physical space.
In her definitive account of India-Australia bilateral relations, historian Meg Gurry relates how Arthur Tange, High Commissioner to India and one of Australia’s most formidable diplomats, wrote in 1965 to his Foreign Minister, Paul Hasluck, that there was fertile ground between the two countries, but “no one seems to know what seeds to plant”. Nearly 60 years on, there are not only many seeds waiting to be planted, but much ripe fruit ready to harvest. And that is why we are here.
Some of those seeds will germinate during this important dialogue through discussion, from a broad range of business executives, government officials and scholars, eager to increase their understanding about how each country approaches shared challenges. From cyberthreats and artificial intelligence (AI) governance in a geopolitically turbulent region, to how they will decarbonise their economies and help each other develop trusted supply chains through critical minerals cooperation, to how India’s tech talent can help address Australia’s skills gaps through migration.
As the premier forum for informal diplomacy between Australia and India, backed by Australian-founded tech company Atlassian and its co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, outcomes that grow the relationship through emerging technology are high on the agenda.
Australia wants to find alternative markets to China and diversify supply chains for its critical minerals. As a country with reserves of about 21 out of the 49 minerals identified in India’s critical minerals strategy, Australia is well placed to serve India’s national interests required for India’s carbon reduction programme.
A shared framework
And while this is the first Dialogue since 2019, due to the novel coronavirus pandemic having kept both countries apart, as two nations we have only grown closer together through enhancing our shared framework for regional security, promoting business and commercial opportunities and strengthening our people to people links, bilaterally and multilaterally.
As India marks 75 years of Independence and surpasses the United Kingdom as the fifth largest global economy, the momentum around this fifth Australia-India Leaderships Dialogue and the bilateral fruit it may bear should not be underestimated.
Amitabh Mattoo is Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Honorary Professor, University of Melbourne, and founding CEO of the Australia India Institute. Lisa Singh is CEO, Australia India Institute, former Australian Senator and the first woman of Indian heritage to be elected to the Australian Parliament
In August 2, inRama @ Bande Rama v. State of Karnataka , the Karnataka High Court quashed criminal proceedings of rape and kidnapping under the Indian Penal Code, and penetrative and aggravated penetrative sexual assault under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, which had been initiated based on a complaint of a 17-year-old girl’s father against her 20-year-old partner. The girl stated in court that the acts were consensual and she had married the accused after she had turned 18. The marriage was registered and a child was born to the couple. The High Court observed that “if the court would shut its doors to the couple who are married and bringing up the child, the entire proceedings would result in miscarriage of justice.”
Normalcy of relationships
With the enactment of POCSO, a number of young couples in consensual and non-exploitative relationships have found themselves embroiled in the criminal justice system. Since consent of a “child” is immaterial, consensual sexual intercourse with or among adolescents is treated on a par with rape. While boys/young men are charged with sexual offences, the girls are treated as victims and institutionalised in children’s homes when they refuse to return to their parents or their parents refuse to accept them. Faced with criminal prosecution and incarceration, the only relief available to the couple is to urge the High Court to quash the case by using its inherent power under Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code, “to prevent abuse of the process of any Court or otherwise to secure the ends of justice.”
Several other High Courts too have recognised the normalcy of these relationships, the futility of prosecuting romantic cases owing to the consensual nature of the relationships and marriage between the parties, as well as the harmful impact of continued prosecution on both parties. While quashing a similar case inVijaylakshmi v. State Rep (2021), the Madras High Court observed that, “[p]unishing an adolescent boy who enters into a relationship with a minor girl by treating him as an offender, was never the objective of the POCSO Act.” InRaj Kumar v. State of Himachal Pradesh (2021), the Himachal Pradesh High Court allowed a petition filed by the minor girl’s father for quashing the trial against his son-in-law. It observed: “If criminal proceedings are allowed to continue, the same will adversely affect the married life of his daughter...” InSkhemborlang Suting v. State of Meghalaya (2021), a couple got entangled under the POCSO Act when the husband took his wife, who was 17, to a hospital for a check-up after she became pregnant. The Meghalaya High Court quashed the case observing that an application of the Act would “result in the breakdown of a happy family relationship and the possible consequence of the wife having to take care of a baby with no support...”
An analysis by Enfold Proactive Health Trust of 1,715 “romantic” cases under the POCSO Act decided between 2016-2020 by Special Courts in Assam, Maharashtra, and West Bengal revealed that such cases constituted 24.3% of the total cases decided by the courts. The parents and relatives of the girls constituted 80.2% of the complainants. They approached the police after the girl went “missing”, or eloped with her partner, or a pregnancy was discovered. The victim and the accused were married to each other in only 46.5% of the cases. In 85.5% of the cases, the girls said the relationship was consensual. In 81.5% of the cases, they did not state anything incriminating against the accused during evidence. In 61.7% of the cases, the Special Courts too acknowledged that the relationship was consensual. Moreover, acquittals were recorded in 93.8% of the cases.
Law reform
The high rate of acquittals shows that the law is not in sync with social realities of adolescent relationships. The High Courts have also acknowledged the disruptive impact of the criminal law in such cases. While the marriage between the parties appears to have influenced several High Courts and resulted in the quashing of romantic cases under the POCSO Act, sexual behaviour is normative during adolescence, and not all relationships end in marriage. Blanket criminalisation of such consensual sexual acts involving older adolescents erodes their dignity, best interests, liberty, privacy, evolving autonomy, and development potential. It also impacts the delivery of justice as these cases constitute a large burden on our courts, and divert attention from investigation and prosecution of actual cases of child sexual abuse and exploitation. There is thus a compelling need for law reform to revise the age of consent and prevent the criminalisation of older adolescents engaging in factually consensual and non-exploitative acts.
Swagata Raha and Shruthi Ramakrishnan are with the Research Team at Enfold Proactive Health Trust, Bengaluru
In a significant and welcome move, another layer of discrimination against the LGBTQIA+ community is being removed with the National Medical Commission (NMC) declaring conversion therapy a “professional misconduct” and empowering State Medical Councils to take disciplinary action if the guideline is breached. Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual or of any other orientation are often subjected to conversion or ‘reparative’ therapy, particularly when they are young, to change their sexual orientation or gender identity by force. The therapy can mean anything from psychiatric treatment, use of psychosomatic drugs, electroshock therapy, exorcism and violence. This can lead to trauma, manifesting in depression, anxiety, drug use, and even suicide. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry contends that the interventions offered in conversion therapy are provided under the “false premise that homosexuality and gender diverse identities are pathological”. The “absence of pathology” means there is no need for conversion or any other like intervention. To drive this point home, it is clear that an all-out effort will be required. In his landmark June 2021 judgment, Justice N. Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court had said pending adequate legislation, he was issuing guidelines for the police, social welfare ministries of the State and Centre, and the medical council for the protection of the community. The court sought updates from stakeholders every few months.
The NMC’s August 25 letter to State Medical Councils states that the Madras High Court had directed it to issue an official notification listing conversion therapy as a wrong, under the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002. If the Supreme Court’s decriminalising of homosexuality in 2018 by striking down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was a first step, the NMC’s notice is also a small move towards inclusivity. To make the LGBTQAI+ community feel safer, however, a lot more will have to be done. Taking the cue from countries such as Canada, which has banned conversion therapy, there should be clarity on what action will be taken against quacks, psychiatrists and doctors accused of offering reparative treatment and the punishment they will face. The groundwork has to be laid in education. Medical textbooks prescribed in 2018 still consider lesbianism a “perversion”, an act of “mental degenerates”. The change has to take place at a societal level, and complemented by laws better tuned to the needs of a diverse community than the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, has sought to do. To that effect, Indian institutions and society have a long road ahead. First, they will have to acknowledge the “variability of human beings” and accord equal respect to every one, whatever the sexual orientation or gender identity.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s recent decision to increase the honorarium to puja committees organising community Durga Pujas has once again triggered a debate on the relationship between state and religion. Since 2018, when the Trinamool Congress government started giving Rs. 10,000 to each community Durga Puja club, the honorarium has increased to Rs. 60,000. The number of clubs receiving the cash benefit has risen from 18,000 in 2018 to 43,000 today. Ms. Banerjee’s initiative will cost the State exchequer Rs. 258 crore. This is besides the 60% subsidy the government hands out to puja pandals on electricity tariff. The controversial decision comes at a time when the State is reeling under a financial crunch, physical infrastructure is crumbling, and the government is unable to pay dearness allowance dues to State government employees.
Durga Puja is a week-long festival organised with unparalleled pomp and splendour in West Bengal. It also provides a great opportunity for political mobilisation. For the last 11 years, Ms. Banerjee has used the opportunity well by inaugurating hundreds of community pujas weeks before the actual festival and instituting State government awards to honour community pujas. The new culture of providing political patronage to big-ticket Durga Pujas has helped the Trinamool to extend its influence.
The pujas contribute significantly to the State’s economy. A study by the British Council in 2019 had estimated that the economic worth of the creative industries around Durga Puja in West Bengal is about Rs. 32,377 crore and the festival contributes 2.58% to the State’s GDP. ‘Durga Puja in Kolkata’ got an important international recognition in December 2021 by making it to UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
The State government is well within its rights to promote Durga Puja, which is a grand spectacle. It has a duty to provide logistical support, ensure safety and security, and maintain law and order as well as traffic during the festival. But providing cash incentives to community Durga Pujas raises troubling questions.
But first, what led to cash offers to community Durga Pujas? In April 2012, less than a year after being voted to power, Ms. Banerjee announced a monthly honorarium to imams and muezzins. After the Calcutta High Court struck down the decision in 2013, honoraria given to imams and muezzins were routed through the State Wakf Board. Just as no imam approached the State government seeking money for performing religious duties, no community puja organiser sought an honorarium from the State. This was purely a ‘balancing act’ by the Trinamool government. Like most State government schemes, the move was populist and drew loud applause. By providing honoraria to puja committees, the Trinamool government was also aiming to counter allegations made by the BJP, of “Muslim appeasement”. Over the last few years, the Trinamool has gained politically by giving money to community puja organisers.
However, by promoting religion, the government is venturing into uncharted territory from where there might be no turning back. Despite changes over the last few years in designs, decorations and themes, community Durga Pujas in West Bengal have remained secular affairs as people from all walks of life and communities participate. With these cash incentives, the pujas could become dependent on the State government. The initiative also allows the government to interfere in community affairs. Above all, providing an honorarium could prevent the natural evolution of a religious and cultural practice that has spanned centuries.
shivsahay.s@thehindu.co.in
The shooting down of a Chinese drone by Taiwan’s military on September 1 has marked a new phase in the already simmering tensions across the Taiwan Strait, highlighting the growing risks of escalation, even if unintended. Over recent weeks, China’s military has carried out unprecedented military drills surrounding Taiwan, following the visit last month of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Some manoeuvres crossed the median of the Taiwan Strait and were declared by China’s military to have also taken place in territorial waters claimed by Taiwan. Taiwan soberly chose not to engage the PLA vessels. In the wake of the drills, the Chinese military has subsequently sought to continue asserting Beijing’s territorial claims by sending drones into Taiwan’s airspace. Photographs taken up close of Taiwan military personnel were subsequently shared on social media, apparently to demonstrate Beijing’s capabilities, but in the process raising pressure on Taipei to show a response. Taiwan’s military said it took the decision to shoot down what it called an unidentified civilian drone over its airspace in Shiyu Island after delivering several warnings. Shooting down a military drone may have elicited a different response from China, which has so far played down the incident. While the Chinese military reportedly has been deploying both military and civilian-use drones, so have ordinary residents in Fujian right across the strait, raising the risks of miscalculation triggering a serious incident.
The deployment of drones has added a further layer of unpredictability to an already tense situation. The past month’s developments have certainly served a reminder to the region of the fragility of the current status quo, and particularly of China’s willingness to change it. While most observers expect that a Chinese invasion remains too risky a prospect for the Communist Party leadership in the immediate future, an unintended escalation no longer remains a remote possibility. Most countries, including India, have preferred to stay out of the Taiwan issue, considering the One China Policy and the needs of the complicated relations with China. But sooner rather than later, they will need to assess the implications to their own security interests of a serious crisis. Taiwan’s status as a lynchpin in the global semiconductor industry is a case in point. While India’s recent reference to the “militarisation” of the strait is not a reflection of a major change in its approach, New Delhi has appeared to show greater willingness to do more with Taiwan particularly in the economic realm, such as setting up an alternative base for semi-conductor manufacturing in India. These are, even if long overdue, steps in the right direction.
New Delhi, Sept. 4: The Indian and Pakistan military commanders entrusted with the delineation of the line of control in Jammu and Kashmir have not been able to complete their work before the expiry of the revised deadline to-day, as agreed upon during the recent official level talks in Delhi for the implementation of the Simla Agreement. Consequently, there is going to be a further delay in the completion of the military withdrawals across the international border, which will commence only after full agreement has been reached over the delineation of the entire length of the new Jammu and Kashmir line. A Defence Ministry press release issued to-night pointed out that though “substantial progress” was made to-day, the second day of the fourth round of talks at Wagah, the two sides could not complete their work of delineation in time partly because of physical problems created by the different scale maps being used by India and Pakistan. While the Indian maps are one-inch to a mile, Pakistan is using slightly bigger maps which are one-inch to 78 miles. The Indian and Pakistan survey team, which began this time-consuming work only yesterday, have so far cleared only four of the 23 maps dealing with various sectors of the line of control, but they are on the job working overtime to complete the delineation in a thorough fashion without leaving any scope for misunderstanding at a later stage: Once the two Senior Commanders have approved the recommendations of the Sector Commanders and come to an agreement over the prevailing differences in the light of the political directives given to them by their respective governments, the surveyors will not take much time to complete the technicalities of delineation.
The Congress leadership should accept the demand made by a few senior leaders that the party make the electoral rolls for its presidential election public. The Congress, long used to a nomination culture, has attempted to carve a new path, and probably enthuse cadres, by deciding to elect the party chief: The last time it held an election to the president’s post was in 1999, which Sonia Gandhi won by defeating Jitendra Prasada, while Rahul Gandhi was elected to the post unopposed in 2017. This is a small but important step that can further internal democracy and enthuse cadres in the country’s main Opposition party. An elected president, especially from outside the Nehru-Gandhi family, can also blunt the BJP campaign that the Congress is merely a family enterprise. In such circumstances, it is necessary for the Congress to ensure that the election process is held in a free and fair manner, and also seen to be doing so. It will also send out a message across the political spectrum, which, unfortunately, is crowded with outfits led by founder-chiefs who prefer to appoint family members to party posts and ministerships than allow leaders to emerge through internal elections.
However, the Congress’s Central Election Authority (CEA) has refused to budge on the matter citing absence of precedence. It has held that the presidential election is an internal matter of the party and the electoral rolls could be misused if rivals manage to access them. These are facile arguments. Leaders such as Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tewari, Prithviraj Chavan and Pradyut Bordoloi, some of them potential candidates, have a point when they insist that making the rolls public is an essential step to ensuring transparency in the election process. Also, the electoral college consists of about 10,000 Pradesh Congress Committee delegates and it is not an easy task for a candidate to reach out to each of them via the PCCs. The CEA would be doing the party a disservice if it continues to be intransigent on the issue and allow critics to question the fairness of the election process.
The presidential poll comes in the wake of a section of the Congress turning sceptical about the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty’s ability to run the party or win elections. Old-time family loyalist Ghulam Nabi Azad’s scathing criticism of Rahul Gandhi in his resignation letter is a severe indictment of the dynasty’s record in helming the party. The presidential poll, in the midst of the Rahul-led Bharat Jodo Yatra, is expected to settle the leadership question for now and mute the criticism of G-23 leaders. This would, however, require the Congress to ensure that the credibility of the poll process is not compromised. A failure could further damage the party and discredit its claim to lead the Opposition.
The last two academic years were unlike any other. As the Covid pandemic took a toll on lives and livelihoods and limited social interaction, educational institutions had to make do with emergency arrangements that placed difficult demands on teachers and students. Now with schools, universities and other institutions of learning beginning to take steps to undo the disruption, one thing is becoming clear — students returning to classrooms will require much more attention than in the pre-pandemic years. Several studies and reports at the school-level, including the National Achievement Survey 2021, have confirmed the worst fear of educationists — substituting classroom-level interactions with online teaching has affected the ability of a substantial number of students to read, write and do basic math. Many of them have undergone grief and trauma during the past two years. It’s increasingly becoming evident that restoring the confidence of youngsters will require increasing the teacher’s agency. Called on to re-invent pedagogy as a healing process, she must be free of the shackles imposed by educational authorities and the management bodies of institutions, even curricula.
The New National Education Policy (NEP) — announced during the pandemic — does have provisions that could enable far-reaching innovations in the education system. It underlines the importance of making the child the centre of classroom processes, makes a strong case for the use of creative methods of instruction and suggests measures to empower teachers. The policy aspires to draw “outstanding talent” into the teaching profession. It suggests several measures — scholarships, housing, providing opportunities for the continuous professional development of teachers — that could make teaching a more rewarding profession than it is today. Implementing these proposals is likely to take time. NAS, 2021, data gives some indication of the challenges ahead. For instance, only 52 per cent of schoolteachers participated in professional development programmes conducted by District Institutes of Education and Training, CBSE and NCERT. The disinclination of teachers to participate in training programmes could stand in the way of implementing some of the radical objectives of the policy, especially the ones that envisage moving away from a rigid content-driven rote learning system to experiential learning. In any case, a teacher overloaded with work — according to the NAS 65 per cent of them had such a complaint — would be very hard-pressed to be creative in the classroom or give attention to students individually.
The last two decades have seen an explosion of aspirations and a manifold rise in the demand for education. By all accounts, the country’s education system has not kept pace with this social reality. It has fallen short of honing and nurturing the skills required by a growing knowledge economy. Educational institutes are increasingly being overwhelmed by centrifugal tendencies and their role as platforms that encourage inclusivity and nurture a diversity of views is seriously embattled. Acknowledging these challenges and framing policy, accordingly, would be the most befitting recognition of the educator’s work this Teacher’s Day.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on September 5, 2022, under the title, ‘This Teachers’ Day: Give educators autonomy’
Even as Sheikh Hasina prepared to board the Biman flight to Delhi, a journey which could well be her last as the prime minister of Bangladesh, India has a surfeit of reasons to be grateful to Bangabandhu’s daughter. After all, during the last 13 years, Hasina acted against fundamentalists and war criminals in her country that were not only threatening the secular character of Bangladesh but were rabidly anti-India.
She also ably led the crackdown on Indian insurgents that were operating from Bangladesh. Hasina undertook the task despite the ambivalence — and even resistance — that continues to characterise a section of the Bangladesh army and the DGFI to act against a “station” that they had inherited from the “Islamist backed barrack politics” system that was governing erstwhile East Pakistan for several decades.
One of the unqualified successes of Hasina’s crusade against the 1971 war criminals was the executions of several Rajakars including Salahuddin Quader Choudhury, Abdul Quader Mollah and Motiur Rahman Nizami who had not only aided the Pakistan army in its pogroms during the run-up to the War of Liberation, but had also committed atrocities against the Hindu population of Bangladesh.
If history is to be briefly resurrected, Choudhury was responsible for—among other crimes—the massacre of an entire village of Hindus in Patia on June 16, 1971, and Mollah for killing 344 people and raping an 11-year-old girl. The popular outrage against the war criminals was so pronounced that a protest was engineered in Dhaka’s Shahbag Square in February 2013, which called for altering the sentence of life imprisonment to execution for Mollah and for the banning of the Jamaat-e-Islami.
However, despite the fact that the word “genocide” is used by scholars to describe the events that led up to the 1971 war, the allegation that genocide actually took place during the Bangladesh War of 1971 was never probed by an international tribunal. This was primarily due to the partisan role of the United States at the time, which was clearly not in favour of the severance of Pakistan. Pakistan’s role both in the genocide and its continuing subterfuges against India inside Bangladesh is a proven fact. However, the primary concern of the present pertains to the anti-India role that China is playing in Bangladesh. This is so notwithstanding the “balancing act” that Hasina has been able to conjure up between the two Asian giants.
One aspect of Bangladesh’s socio-cultural polity that is generally not understood is the schism that continues to characterise the secular Bangladeshi, who is secured to the concerns of Bengali linguistic nationalism and the one who identifies oneself with the religious overtones of Pakistani irredentism, and even with radical Salafism that has caught the imagination of puritanical elements among certain Muslims. Analysis must take into consideration the difference in the milieu that propels Bangladesh’s demography and consequently, its politics.
Two distinct social groupings make up Bangladesh. One constitutes the Ashrafis or the north Indian Muslims of Turko-Persian or Arab origins that came and settled in Bengal but have retained their up-country culture. The other constituency comprises the Atrabis, who are Bengalis, mostly lower-caste Hindus who converted to Islam. The Ashrafis were the people who were extremely enthusiastic about Pakistan, and were consequently used by the latter between 1947-71. The Atrabis, on the other hand, were loyal to their Bengali identity and continues to practise Hindu customs like applying turmeric on the bride’s body during a pre-marriage ceremony and observing Poila Boisakh (Bengali New Year). It is this constituency that supports the Awami League and is a strong votary for Bengali linguistic nationalism. AK Fazlul Huq, who was the first and the longest premier of Bengal during British India, was an Atrabi. He even supported Hindu Mahasabha president Syama Prasad Mookerjee. The colonial rulers removed Huq and foisted a Jinnah protégé (an Ashrafi) Hassan Shaheed Suhrawardy. Huq’s keenness and efforts to create a united Bengal (meeting with Sarat Bose until the end of July 1947 to shore up the attempt) are well-documented facts. The tale of two Bangladeshs is, therefore, not a figment of imagination.
As a reaction to the visit of United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, China has been conducting provocative military drills in the Taiwan Strait. Chinese drones have been intruding on Taiwan’s airspace, which forced Taiwan to shoot down a drone recently. While the world assesses the political and economic costs of a revisionist China that will not shy away from using force to achieve its territorial ambitions, an important question is will Beijing’s use of force against Taiwan be consistent with international law?
One of the scathing criticisms of the League of Nations (predecessor of the United Nations) was that it failed to outlaw war. This failure was partly responsible for the Second World War, after which the UN was established. The Charter of the UN outlaws war in clear terms. This is evident from the Preamble and Articles 1 and 2 of the Charter. For example, Article 2.4 states that “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” The only situation where the UN Charter allows for war is those given in Article 51, which recognises the “inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs” against a UN member state. Two points must be noted here: First, the provisions relate to a “state”, and second, the right of self-defence is triggered only in the case of an “armed attack”.
In the context of the China-Taiwan dispute, the most important question is: Is Taiwan a state? Arguably, if Taiwan is not a “state”, as China contends, Article 2(4) of the UN Charter does not protect Taiwan’s territorial integrity or political independence. Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention provides that to qualify as a state, an entity must have a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states. Taiwan satisfies all these criteria. It is a prosperous country, with robust democracy, and a well-functioning government. Its political and economic systems are diametrically opposed to that of China. It has existed as an independent entity, outside the control of China for more than 70 years. However, despite all of this, Taiwan has never formally declared its political independence. Thus, its statehood in international law remains disputed. Nonetheless, as many international lawyers assert, Taiwan is a stabilised “de facto” state that has a comparable right to self-defence just like any other UN member.
In other words, even if the question of Taiwan’s statehood has not been settled under international law, nothing gives China the right to either use or threaten to use force against it. Pelosi’s visit per se can’t be invoked as a justification for launching an armed attack. The visit was a diplomatic one and non-threatening in the sense that there was no indication of an “armed attack” against China as understood under Article 51. In fact, China’s bellicosity towards Taiwan is a violation of Article 33 of the UN Charter which requires parties to any dispute to use peaceful means for settling their differences.
A final point is about the Taiwanese people’s right to self-determination — the legal right of people to decide their own destiny — which is a settled principle of customary international law. Although traditionally, the principle of self-determination has been applied in the context of colonial settings, experts like Christopher Hughes argue that Taiwan is a special case because it is already a well-functioning stable, democratic state. The people of Taiwan for the last 70 years have lived outside Beijing’s control and many Taiwanese do not identify themselves as Chinese. In such a situation, for China to forcefully re-unify Taiwan as part of its territory will be a grave violation of the right to self-determination of the Taiwanese people. No matter how one slices it, Chinese belligerence towards Taiwan is a blatant violation of international law. The world collectively needs to stand up to potential Chinese aggression against Taiwan.
Ranjan and Kumar teach at the Jindal Global Law School and IFIM Law School respectively
This article first appeared in the print edition on September 5, 2022, under the title, ‘China’s Taiwan Misadventure’
First, definitional clarity. Atmanirbharta translates literally to self-reliance. Many interpret it to mean self-sufficiency. That should not be our goal. Energy self-sufficiency is infeasible and uneconomic. A better statement of intent would be “strategic autonomy”.
Second, prioritise access to fossil fuels. The transition to a green energy system will take long. American factories took four decades to shift from steam power to electric power. This was because they had to be redesigned, if not rebuilt. Our policy must continue to emphasise affordable and secure access to oil and gas. Part of this objective could be met by intensifying domestic exploration. We must recognise, however, the low probability of finding substantive, additional domestic resources of hydrocarbons. Our geology is complex. Also, the fact that even if we were successful in making discoveries, it may be difficult to produce them on commercially viable terms. This is because of high exploration and development costs. The larger point is our PSUs do not have an impressive track record in this respect. We must ask, therefore, whether scarce public resources should continue to be directed towards this high-risk, capital-intensive activity. Should it not be driven instead by the private sector? Might it be time to privatise the ONGC?
Third, prioritise access to the building blocks of green energy. We have ambitious targets for renewables. The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has forecast that wind and solar energy will make up around 51 per cent of the installed power generation capacity of 830 GW by 2030. This will be an increase from 22 per cent today. The sine qua non for realising this forecast will be cost-competitive access to minerals/components (copper, cobalt, lithium, semiconductor chips etc) required to build EVs, solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. The problem is these commodities are concentrated in countries that are not on the same political page with India. A study by S&P Global has noted, for instance, that 38 per cent of copper is produced from Chile and Peru. These countries have left-wing governments unreceptive to private sector mining. Further, China controls 47 per cent of copper smelting and 42 per cent of copper refining. Rajesh Chadha and Ganesh Sivamani (CSEP ) have noted in their paper, “Critical Minerals for India: Assessing their criticality and projecting their need for green technologies,” India has some resources such as cobalt, nickel and heavy rare earth metals but it has done little to expedite their mining and processing. Their message is clear. India must remove the obstacles to domestic mining and develop strategies to manage the dynamics of market concentration, global competition and unfavourable geopolitics.
Fourth, infrastructure development. The German economy is today in a perilous state. This is because it is not connected by pipeline to the LNG import and regassification facilities built by Spain. Germany has no option,therefore, but to source Russian gas. That in recent months has been weaponised. India cannot afford such vulnerability. GAIL is investing in the development of a national gas pipeline grid. In addition, we must expand our strategic petroleum reserves to cover at least 30 days of consumption and upgrade the transmission grid and battery storage systems to scale up renewables and smoothen its supplies. We will need to develop innovative financing mechanisms to fund green infrastructure. It should be emphasised that all such investments will get impaired if state discoms are financially insolvent.
Fifth, green incentives. The government’s production-linked incentive scheme (PLI ) offers benefits for investment in green energy. The investor response has so far been encouraging. Other governments are, however, going down a similar route. They are also looking to attract private capital to help them meet their net carbon zero targets. The US CHIPS and Science Act has offered, for instance, tax credits and subsidies that are a multiple of that offered under PLI. (viz $30 billion subsidies plus 10-year tax credit for solar panels/wind turbines/batteries; $30 billion for green utilities; $5 billion tax credit for blue hydrogen; $27 billion for a green bank). We may have to go back to the drawing board to retain the interest of potential investors.
Sixth, demand conservation and efficiency. In the face of high gas prices (at its peak, the oil equivalent of $500/barrel), Europe is discovering the disproportionately positive benefits of demand management. In India, the latter has not attracted as much attention as supply-side issues. This must be corrected. Energy usage norms must be standardised and tightened. Legislation should be contemplated to ensure compliance.
Seventh, retraining and upskilling. The nature of jobs and their location will change with the progressive transition to a green energy system. There might be, for instance, less need for maintenance workers on oil rigs and more for technicians on solar farms. The consequential requirements for training/skilling should be anticipated and delivered.
Eighth, energy diplomacy. Our diplomats should add the arrows of energy diplomacy to their quiver. This is because of our dependence on the international energy supply chains. Success in navigating the cross-currents of economic and geopolitical uncertainties will rest greatly on skilful diplomacy.
Ninth, holistic governance. The current siloed structures of energy governance are suboptimal. A root and branch administrative overall is required. Institutions should be created to facilitate integrated energy planning and implementation.
Finally, political statesmanship. Mark Carney, the former Governor of the UK central bank coined the phrase “the tragedy of horizons” to highlight the differing time horizons of politics, economics and society as regards the energy transition. Jean-Claude Juncker, the former president of the European Commission said “we all know what to do but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it”. These two comments strike at the nub of our challenge. We need leadership that can reconcile temporal differences and balance the short-term pressures of elections with the longer-term imperatives of sustainability.
The writer is chairman and distinguished fellow, Centre for Social and Economic Progress
This article first appeared in the print edition on September 5, 2022, under the title, ‘Building the Future’
There is increasing awareness that humans are over-exploiting this planet’s natural resource endowment. This may boomerang and threaten the very existence of humanity. Whether it is a question of survival or prosperity of the human race, one thing is clear: Lands are degrading, especially the topsoil that is crucial for providing us with food, animal feed and fibre. Groundwater is depleting and its quality is becoming poorer with the increasing use of chemical fertilisers and other industrial waste. The air that we breathe is becoming polluted at an alarming rate in certain parts of the world, especially in India, where at times it is difficult to even breathe in a city like Delhi when stubble burning peaks in farmers’ fields in Punjab and Haryana. As a result of many of these factors and some more, even biodiversity is taking a hit.
Against this backdrop, the moot question that arises is: What is the real cause behind such a rapid deterioration in nature’s wealth and whether humanity will be able to feed itself in a sustainable manner. Are there any silver linings on the horizon with improved scientific knowledge? Or do we need to go back to natural farming/organic farming to survive? These are some of the questions weighing over every awakened citizen’s mind. The extreme weather events such as the recent heat waves in Europe and Asia alongside droughts and floods in other areas, exacerbate these issues even more.
Let us focus here on the imbalance between people, our planet and the political economy of policies.
What we know is that roughly it took more than 2,00,000 years for homo sapiens to evolve into the current form of mankind. In 1804, for the first time in history, the human population touched one billion. The next billion was added in 123 years with the count touching two billion by 1927. Several major breakthroughs in medical science ensured that the next billion was added in just 33 years by 1960. Thereafter, humanity progressed even faster, no matter that a country like India faced a “ship to mouth” situation on the food front. The next billion was added in just 14 years with the population reaching four billion in 1974. The next billion took just 13 years (five billion in 1987), 11 years thereafter (six billion in 1998), 12 years thereon (seven billion in 2010), and another 12 years to touch eight billion in 2022. This explosive growth of humans, with higher and higher aspirations, has created a huge imbalance between the demands of people and the capacity of this planet to supply them in a sustainable manner.
Can this planet provide food for all through natural farming without the use of any chemical fertilisers, pesticides, modern high yielding varieties of seeds, etc? Many governments, religious organisations, and some NGOs and individuals believe that there is no option but to go back to nature and practice organic/natural farming. Sri Lanka, for example, wanted to get rid of chemical fertilizers. Even in India, we have some states (like Sikkim) declared as organic states, and many others are attempting to do so. Even the Union government has initiated a major programme on natural farming along the Ganga, five kilometres on each side of its banks. Many states like Andhra Pradesh are also scaling up natural farming. I have nothing against such efforts and I feel that farmers should have all the freedom to practice whichever farming techniques make sense to them, so long as they are safe for society, augment their incomes and ensure food security for the masses through ample availability of food at affordable prices.
Most of the studies conducted by ICAR in India show that with the adoption of natural farming yields go down for major staple crops like wheat and rice by as much as 30 to 50 per cent. These experiments have been conducted by scientists under specific conditions over three years. But there is other evidence at the individual farmer level that this author knows of, which shows that yields recover back to normal levels after some time. Given that India is going to be the most populous country on the planet in 2023, we need to take policy decisions with better and more scientific evidence if we want to avoid a Sri Lanka-like fiasco.
For me, the answer lies in aggressively promoting precision farming. It is this science of precision farming that can give us “more from less”. The innovations and developments in GIS (Geographical Information System), AIML (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning), which can use enormous data to bring about precision in farming, use of sensors, drones, doves, and LEOs (low earth orbits), space technologies, cloud computing, are all bursting out to provide the basis for a revolutionary epoch. Drips, hydroponics, and aeroponics, vertical farming, are all available for mankind to get much more with very little exploitation of the planet’s natural resource endowment.
But one critical factor in all this is the political economy. In India, specifically, we have the culture of free power, free water, almost 80 to 90 per cent subsidy on urea, and so on. These subsidy policies may have been good in the 1960s or the 1970s when the country was hugely food deficit. But they are continuing and even increasing. This casts serious doubt on whether we want to get the best results from the limited use of natural resources. It is this policy conundrum which is leading to irrational exploitation of nature’s wealth. Who will bell the cat?
Gulati is Distinguished Professor at ICRIER. Views are personal
This article first appeared in the print edition on September 5, 2022, under the title, ‘Feeding Humanity, Saving the Planet’
The newly elected panchayat of a village in Madhya Pradesh invited a retired teacher as the chief guest on Independence Day this year. Several members of the panchayat are his former students. The years he served the village school are remembered as a golden age. His name was once sent by the district office for consideration for a national award, but a higher official tossed it out. While the changes he had introduced were set aside after his retirement, his elementary-level students never forgot him. Nor did they forget what he had taught them through personal example: Dedication to your job. Had he accepted a promotion to a supervisory position two years before retirement, he would have been transferred from this village. By foregoing this promotion, he thereby voluntarily lost two increments which would have augmented his pension.
He was among the last teachers who enjoyed a career-track appointment and, therefore, a pension. Madhya Pradesh switched to new-age educational planning in the late 1990s. The governing philosophy from then onwards was committed to expanding enrollment and reducing the cost. The older, “dying cadre” — an official term — was replaced by young people whose aspiration to serve in schools would permanently compete with other emotions, including the fear of destitution. Political change did not disrupt the new policy trend.
This was a radicalised version of what was already happening in other states of the north. A new scenario was taking shape. Making children’s education cost-effective also meant encouraging budget schools set up by private players. They were local men with limited aims and vision. Some went on to start teacher training outfits. The clutter was well-documented by the late Justice J S Verma who chaired a commission appointed by the Supreme Court to look into the various pathologies of teacher education. Justice Verma submitted his report in 2013. It aroused great expectations, but they didn’t last long.
Soon after the celebration of this year’s special Independence day — marking the completion of 75 years of freedom — came heartrending news. The nine-year old boy, who was hit on the head by a private school teacher in Rajasthan, had died. Facts about his caste identity and the reason he was hit took time to emerge. His parents had taken him to several hospitals, but his injuries proved fatal. He had reportedly angered his upper caste teacher by trying to drink water from a vessel he was not supposed to touch. The accused teacher has denied this charge although he acknowledged hitting the boy. The Right To Education Act may have banned it, but corporal punishment remains a routine reality. How the accused in this case became a teacher requires little imagination. If you read Justice Verma’s report, you will realise that anyone can become a teacher.
No aerial snapshot can cover the millions of classrooms where teachers serve. Despite the limited resources available for engaged pedagogy, many teachers succeed in leaving an inspiring memory in their students’ hearts. But so deep is official suspicion of their integrity that many states have installed CCTV cameras in classrooms. That is not the only form of insult teachers face. They have little power to assert their professional dignity in the face of bureaucratic or managerial authority. Teaching children is not regarded as a serious profession. Non-teaching duties are routinely assigned, and now the digital regime has washed away the few traces of professional autonomy even in the best of private schools.
Three weeks separate Independence Day from the day that reminds society that teachers should matter. The celebration of this day takes different forms. Sentimental routines are common. In many schools, teachers take off on a picnic, leaving senior students to manage junior classes. Others hold special morning assemblies to recall the life of President S Radhakrishnan — whose birthday is marked as Teacher’s Day. A typical item in these assemblies is a rendition of Kabir’s couplet pointing to a guru’s spiritual role. The atmosphere in teacher training institutions is equally ritualistic, featuring posters, greeting cards and rangoli on the floor. Festive events disallow reflection or expression of what’s actually going on in the teacher’s lives and minds.
On top of the bureaucratic legacies of colonial rule, the Indian school teacher now faces new social and economic forces. Coaching institutions have marginalised the secondary-level science teacher. All over the country, children are allowed to bunk school to attend NEET and JEE coaching classes. Science and math teachers were, in any case, aware that their pedagogic effectiveness would be measured by an unreformed examination system. The pressure to use technological resources is now pushing the teacher to surrender to pre-designed pedagogic practices. Social science teachers are coping with a different kind of challenge — to justify their knowledge and interpretation. Children’s access to the internet exposes them to a wilderness of sociopolitical ideas and information. It is not easy for social science teachers to convince children that they are more reliable than a YouTube video or a WhatsApp message.
The ethos that surrounds education today makes it easy to forget that teaching is essentially a relational activity. No matter at which level someone is teaching — from kindergarten to college — it is the ability to relate to the class that distinguishes good pedagogy from its poorer variant. The impact some teachers make lasts lifelong. And even in many cases, the teacher is not remembered, the residue of how we learnt a subject in his or her class remains. It becomes a part of how we think. People who argue that because good teachers are few technological substitutes are necessary, don’t appreciate the bond that teachers alone can create. The question to contemplate, therefore, is why so many teachers fail to establish a bond. It seems that teaching the young is no longer an attractive profession because systemic conditions are so discouraging. Even if this is a partial truth, it points towards the kinds of salvaging and reforms that education now requires.
The writer is former Director of NCERT. His forthcoming book is Thank You, Gandhi
This article first appeared in the print edition on September 5, 2022, under the title, ‘The Missing Bond’
In December 2012, when Cyrus Mistry took over the much-coveted position of chairperson of the mighty Tata Group at the age of 44, replacing outgoing chairperson Ratan Tata, it seemed as if he was indeed fortune’s favourite. But Cyrus’s appointment at the Tatas proved to be a poisoned chalice. The Mistry family, that is still recovering from the death of Cyrus’s father, billionaire construction magnate Pallonji Mistry, in June this year, has suffered a series of setbacks ever since Cyrus was sacked as chairperson of Tata Sons in 2016.
An introvert who shied away from public gaze, and a straightforward, scrupulously honest businessman, Cyrus Mistry never really recovered from the trauma of being thrust into the national limelight for daring to challenge the Tata behemoth. The long and expensive litigation he launched against the Tatas in a bid to avenge his honour left him badly bruised and took a heavy toll on the Mistry family fortunes.
The ding dong legal battle between Cyrus and the Tatas stretched over many years. Though the appellate tribunal of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) upheld all of Mistry’s charges, the Supreme Court last year took a diametrically opposite view and ruled decisively in favour of the Tatas. The court held that a private company is not subject to the norms of good governance meant for public and listed companies. Though shocked by the court verdict, Cyrus commented sportingly after the outcome, “We will take the knocks on our chins. My conscience is clear. My aim at Tata was to ensure a robust, brand-driven system of decision-making and governance that is larger than any single individual.”
The last few years have not been kind to the Mistrys on several fronts, with the family suffering heavy financial losses during Covid, since their assets are mainly tied up in construction and real estate, apart from their sizeable shareholding in Tata Sons. The family also lost huge revenues that they traditionally enjoyed through their long association with the Tata Group.
Most tantalising for the Mistrys is the fact that they are unable to monetise their 18.37 per cent shares in Tata Sons without the consent of the Tata Sons board thanks to new Articles of Association which were put into effect just before Ratan Tata relinquished charge in December 2012. The Articles of Association ensured that the Tata charitable trusts, notably the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and the Sir Ratanji Tata Trust, tightened their grip over Tata Sons, the holding company which manages India’s top corporate house with an annual turnover of well over $100 billion. (Two years back, while the Shapoorji Pallonji Group pegged the worth of its Tata shares at Rs 1.76 trillion, the Tatas valued it at a mere Rs 80,000 crore and refused to even give the Mistrys the right to pledge their shares for raising money in view of their mounting debts.)
A qualified civil engineer with a degree from Imperial College, London, and an MBA from the London Business School, Cyrus along with his brother Shapoor had helped modernise and diversify the family’s core business and proved extremely successful at it. When his father stepped down as a director of the Tata Sons board in 2005, it was he, rather than his more flamboyant elder brother Shapoor, who was chosen by Ratan Tata to become the family nominee on the board.
Eventually, when Ratan Tata retired as chairperson of the Tatas at the age of 75, Cyrus was chosen to step into his shoes since the selection committee could not find a suitable candidate. Unfortunately, once Cyrus took over charge of the group, the relationship between Ratan Tata and him slowly deteriorated. On October 24, 2016, Cyrus was unceremoniously and abruptly removed as chairperson without giving him any notice, and though there were only five months left for renewal of his contract. The reason for the growing differences between the two men was never completely clear. Cyrus believed he was trying to fix things, Tata perhaps feared he was attempting to undo his legacy.
Both Tata and Cyrus were members of the small minority Parsi community, but they came from rather different backgrounds. (Technically Cyrus was an Irish citizen as his mother was born in that country. Though he tried while at the Tatas to change his nationality, he did not manage to complete the necessary formalities.) The Tatas, as one Parsi businessman put it to me, considered themselves aristocratic and noble, and the Mistrys mere real estate people. But while Cyrus’s grandfather, the legendary builder Shapoorji Pallonji, and father, Pallonji Mistry, were hard nosed businessmen in the rough and tumble of the construction world, the bespectacled, earnest Cyrus grew up in a different era and environment.
He earned a reputation for sincerity and straightforwardness. A team player, he deliberately kept a low profile as Tata chairperson and believed the CEOs of the respective companies should be projected rather than himself. Business journalist Sucheta Dalal described him to me as “incapable of guile and very genuine… What he says is generally backed by documents.” Business executive Mukund Rajan, who has worked closely with both Ratan Tata and Cyrus, in his book Brand Custodian described Cyrus as “one of the smartest people I have ever met, a great leader who was not insecure, and voluntarily surrounded himself with people with great talent, skills and strong opinions, unlike many other leaders I have seen”.
Cyrus once corrected me when I termed his famed confrontation with Ratan Tata as a corporate battle. In a conversation, he remarked, “I was removed in an inappropriate manner. I can lick my wounds and put that behind us. That phase is over. But we have to do whatever is necessary to protect our 18.37 per cent in Tata Sons.” The reason he had persisted in his David versus Goliath fight was to ensure that the values of the Tata Group’s founders were respected. “This is about governance. It’s not about me, it’s not about position,” he stated.
The long, messy legal battle was also a fight for his reputation. Cyrus wanted to tell the world that he was doing the right thing. He was following all the rules and doing what he thought was best for the company. He was deeply hurt by Tata executives’ insinuations that he was removed for incompetence. The facts suggest otherwise. During Cyrus’s three-and-a-half-year tenure as Tata chairperson, Tata shares fared better than average on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Cyrus could also feel vindicated in the fact that his successor, N Chandrasekharan, would go on to implement most of the measures he had already conceived in his recovery plan for the group, including unburdening the loss-making Tata Telecom business and closing down Nano production.
After his exit from Tata Sons, Cyrus did not take back management control at Shapoorji Pallonji and Co. and instead carved out something for himself. He floated a venture capital fund, Mistry Ventures, to back startups. In 2022, the Shapoorji Pallonji Group cleared a major portion of its outstanding debts by selling its stake in companies such as Eureka Forbes and Sterling and Wilson Renewable Energy. Post the Covid pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, its real estate division had finally started picking up.
In the tradition of most Parsi business families, the Mistrys too were notable philanthropists. In 2018, Shapoor and Cyrus set up the Institute for Zoroastrian Studies in the memory of their grandfather Shapoorji Pallonji, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
Cyrus is survived by his wife Rohiqa, the daughter of leading lawyer Iqbal Chagla, and sons Firoz and Zahan.
The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express, and the author of The Tatas, Freddie Mercury & Other Bawas: An Intimate History of the Parsis
The week ended with the image of Teesta Setalvad, activist, in custody for 70 days for allegedly fabricating evidence in connection with the 2002 riots cases, stepping out of Sabarmati Jail, bearing a smile and a bag with a floral print in white and mauve.
The Supreme Court, which, for some time now, comes out, more and more, on the side of the government in cases that involve encroachment upon individual rights and freedoms, stepped into the matter this week. A bench led by the new CJI, UU Lalit, asked sharp questions of both the Gujarat High Court and the state, and granted Setalvad interim bail.
The bail is interim and Setalvad’s case will go on, independently, in the high court. But whatever its final outcome, the tone and tenor of the apex court’s interventions on Thursday and Friday sent out a heartening message — of the return of the watchful institution, applier of the check, restorer of the balance.
There are new stirrings in another space where activity had seemed to dim and dampen — to democracy’s detriment: The national Opposition. In Patna, a meeting over this weekend of the national executive and council of the JD(U) authorised Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to “devote full time” for “Opposition unity”.
Of course, Opposition unity is something of a mirage. And at the centre of the project this time is the flawed figure of Nitish — a leader who has changed sides more often than a single sentence can hold without becoming unwieldy. And yet.
This latest political experiment, scheduled to take off with meetings in the coming week between Nitish and other Opposition leaders, is not going to be another version of the Third Front. This is not a non-BJP and non-Congress politics that contrives equidistance from both. This time, the political line is being drawn more cleanly between the BJP and the Rest. One of the first calls that Nitish made when he took the decision to walk out of the BJP-led NDA this time was to Sonia Gandhi, despite the deep political revulsion he has often professed against Congress entitlement and arrogance in the past.
So far, since 2014, even as the BJP has notched serial electoral successes, it has also been helped along by the lack of resistance or pushback by the Opposition. With a full-time chief minister mandated by his party to also move, full-time, into the national Opposition space, that story could be changing.
In the national space, as in Bihar, Nitish’s great weakness could be his great strength.
In Bihar, a state where caste identity is politically salient, the fact that Nitish does not belong to a dominant caste has come to his aid in forming a larger alliance — Nitish’s community of Kurmis is too small in the caste matrix to threaten or alienate either the forward castes or the other backward castes, and this has helped him forge a coalition of extremes.
In the national Opposition space, which bristles with egos, another Nitish weakness could come to his rescue for at least striking a conversation with other leaders: His proven bendability. For all his achievements as “Sushasan Babu” since he became chief minister in 2005, and even when he was at the peak of his popularity in and around 2010, Nitish has been a leader supremely underconfident of going it alone, always seeking the coattails of an ally, and to that end, forever ready to bury past history or a grudge.
Could we be seeing the beginning of a real fightback against the dominant party, which is always good news in a lively democracy, taking shape? That question is raising its head, slowly though still faintly.
Till next week,
Vandita
PS: A tribute to a teacher in this paper today by actor Adil Hussain — tomorrow, September 5, is Teacher’s Day — recalls a man who taught him to see and to listen, never telling him what to think or do.
Khalid Tyabji, who taught Hussain at the National School of Drama, took his student on a journey on a motorbike to different parts of the country, where they met “many people, faces, colours, rituals, customs, food, clothing, and behaviours of India”. At the end of two years of doing this, says Hussain, the teacher’s gift was the straining to look at truth from a billion perspectives.
That motorcycle journey, a million miles from the classrooms-with-CCTVs, must have been so exhilarating. Ahead of Teacher’s Day, it’s a reminder of what teachers can do, the powerful role they play in shaping students — and nations.
Must Read:
Shobhit Mahaja, “Light upon dark matter”
Neerja Chowdhury, “Speaking truth to party”
Sanjay Srivastava, “A cinematic demolition”
Faizan Mustafa, “Let Ganpati come to Idgah”
Fahad Zuberi, “The Noida problem”
“The only currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”
— Lester Bangs
It is easy, as the years wear on, to forget the bonds of fellowship that bind us to our closest friends. By the time the mid-30s come around, the raucous drinking sessions of the decade before have become a bit more staid and a lot more maudlin. Loud revelry, bar fights and romantic (mis)adventures are replaced by reminiscing (“do you remember the time we…”), pointless gossip (“did you hear what happened to…”) or the anxiety-inducing, never-ending drudgery of EMIs, SIPs, school admissions and IT return deadlines.
But perhaps the worst development of all, in recent years, has been the insidious ways in which the politics of virtue signalling on the one hand and deep bigotry — enabled in no small part by technology — on the other, have infected relationships. The final blow came when the fake sense of victimhood that marks majoritarian politics found its way to J R R Tolkien’s Legendarium in the long run-up to Amazon Prime releasing The Rings of Power.
First, a little background. There are levels to Tolkien fandom and many of the more extreme of us are no better than religious fanatics. Most people have seen Peter Jackson’s trilogy and rightfully judge it as one of the finest works of cinema in recent history. Then there are those who have read the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit — if they have done so only once, they may well be mocked by the more senior monks of this erudite order. To be a true fan, one has to also have read The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Children of Hurin, The Histories of Middle Earth as well as many of the compilations Christopher Tolkien published of his father’s letters, notes and other assorted writings. Finally, there are the crazies who start learning Elvish, Dwarvish and a bit of the Black Speech of Mordor.
Imagine, then, when a teenager (at least at the post-Silmarillion level) finds like-minded souls who see the fascinating layers of this universe. Like the hundreds of Ramayanas and several versions of the Mahabharata, they flesh out the book’s characters, see the story from the perspective of the villains, and imagine the political implications of the metaphorical “White Man’s Burden” in the myth.
The Rings of Power – along with, perhaps, House of the Dragon – was one of the most anticipated cinematic-television events of the last few years. Fans, while numerically minimal, often present themselves as an army of zealots, bound across geographies by their love of Tolkien’s universe. That universalism, as it turns out, was misplaced.
When the first look and trailer came out, many diehard fans insisted that the show would be a disappointment. It appeared to depart too much from the source material and took liberties by introducing new characters. The more disturbing kinds of criticism were just outright prejudicial: How can there be black, brown and women characters in the lead? How can a high-elf “glow” with the light of Valinor if they are a shade darker than the Nordic, Germanic, or Aryan idea of a superior race? How can a story revolve around Galadriel, who is fair and strong to be sure, but not a woman of action (in their eyes)?
Woke politics, concluded the largely white male fandom, without even watching the show, would destroy the universe.
There are, in this universe of nerds, many unfortunate parallels to the wider politics of hurt sentiments. For all its biblical imagery, the stories from the Legendarium have more in common with “pagan” myths and deities — from the Norse gods, to ancient Greece and closer home, to the Subcontinent’s great epics. In video games, fan fiction, and just conjecture videos on YouTube (in addition, of course, to private conversations) we have all added to the story, come up with our own interpretations and enjoyed the universalism of the tale.
Rings of Power is, in essence, the ultimate form of fan fiction – albeit on an astounding scale with an almost unthinkable budget. How can it be, then, that some from the community abuse those trying to do what they have been doing since they first read the books or were introduced to the mythical world through Peter Jackson’s films 20 years ago? This is supposed to be a band of the faithful, not an insecure government trying to police a syllabus.
So, in the run-up to the release of the show on September 2, there was an understandable, almost debilitating sense of despondency. Fantasy was supposed to be a refuge from the polarised politics that marks so much of life now. Politics, and the vitriol that accompanies it, had long ago crossed the water’s edge and invaded family WhatsApp groups and college reunions. Now, it would take away the joys that have sustained so many for so long — just as it has taken away our human gods and tries to dam the river that feeds our collective imagination as it splits into the many stories, the distributaries of our own making — through a singular idea of religion and nationhood.
But as the humble Samwise Gamgee said in the film version of The Two Towers, “this darkness too shall pass”.
On Friday, just after I binge-watched the first two episodes of The Rings of Power, the phone buzzed. And we spoke of who the new characters could “actually” be; whether the man on the boat was the Witch King or Sauron; whether The Stranger was Gandalf or one of the Blue Wizards. Gibberish, really, for all the people who are not in the know. Not so high-minded as the discussions about Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky in the soirees of the snooty, but not so basic as the MCU. Just the pure joy of being a fan. Or, maybe, it is the joy of fellowship that Tolkien wrote about so well, of friendships recalled and strengthened, slipping into old patterns and conversations like into a comfortable pair of slippers.
Politics and social media posturing may have contaminated the public conversation, spreading like the darkness out of Mordor. But it hasn’t yet infected the simple joys of Hobbits in the Shire.
aakash.joshi@expressindia.com
As widely predicted by the pollsters, Liz Truss has beaten Rishi Sunak to become the new leader of the Conservative party. This also sets her up to take over as Prime Minister from Boris Johnson, loyalty to whom was a key factor why the Tories went with her rather than Sunak, perceived as having stabbed Johnson in the back.
Following in Johnson’s footsteps, it is expected that the Ukrainian capital will be one of Truss’s first foreign ports of call as PM. But even as she pens her support package for Kyiv the impact of events there on prices back home will be her key challenge. The UK energy regulator has cited the war and reduction in supplies from Russia to raise its cap on home-energy prices such that these are set to rise by 80% in October. Inflation is already in double digits. Overall, her campaign proposals to tackle what may end up being the worst cost-of-living crisis in generations, has left experts pessimistic.
In India commerce secretary BVR Subrahmanyam has said that the India-UK FTA negotiations are at the last stage, with 19 out of 26 chapters closed, and a Diwali deadline nearing. But whether the deadline given by Johnson will be upheld by Truss is uncertain, as increasing domestic economic turmoil may reset her priorities and even politics.
Also read: All you need to know about UK’s next PM
Truss has modeled herself on Margaret Thatcher, who also came to power in a great Winter of Discontent. In her victory speech today she has pledged a “bold” cut to taxes plus that she will “deliver” on the rising energy bills plus grow the economy. How all these hold together remains to be seen and it certainly won’t be a cakewalk.
In a development replete with both substance and symbolism, India has overtaken the UK to become the fifth largest economy. Powered by a massive young demographic waiting to burst into the middle class and a robust digital ecosystem, India is certain to grow bigger in coming years. SBI Research indicates that India could become the third largest economy before this decade ends. India has survived the Covid pandemic and the Ukraine war avoiding the surging inflation and energy crisis that’s hit countries like the UK. In hindsight, GoI has been proved right in its resolve to not run up a high fiscal deficit, despite pressure to imitate the West’s overgenerous stimulus packages.
The growth path ahead needs more such out-of-the-box thinking. The primary challenge is to prepare enough people to participate in the country’s future growth trajectory. The low GDP per capita and the continuing Covid relief package providing free foodgrains for 80 crore people are pointers to low-individual productivity, signifying that the macro represented by GDP numbers is only one part of the big picture. The success in lifting millions of people out of extreme poverty was no small feat. But the next step, of replicating East Asian countries that have relied on manufacturing to take the masses out of agriculture, awaits.
India’s GDP per capita of around $2,500 is in large part dragged down by farm households; their average annual income is just $1,500. For decades, India hasn’t focussed enough in areas like education, skilling and healthcare. Against Unesco’s Education 2030 Framework for Action’s appeal to countries to spend 4-6% of GDP on education, India’s central and state combined budgeted expenditure on education in 2021-22 was just 3% of GDP.
Such budgeting constraints make the freebies debate relevant. The state plays a crucial role in the lives of poor people. Instead of swaying them with populism, schemes that can improve human capital must be welfare priorities. To achieve this end, states spending recklessly require transparent budgeting. Centre must also reciprocate by devolving more tax revenues to states, and avoid the cess route of resource mobilisation. Ultimately, these Centre-state tangles reflect inadequate private sector job creation that increases reliance on governments. More economic reforms are needed. All parties in government must realise that every government must be in reform mode, that’s a prerequisite for mass prosperity.
In contrast to the present treatment comprising 13-14 drugs daily given for 18-24 months, a promising new therapy protocol for drug-resistant tuberculosis does the job better with 3-4 drugs given only for 6 months. The ZeNix phase III clinical trial that has shown the above result has been conducted in Georgia, Moldova, Russia and South Africa, but it is in India that it may end up having the maximum impact. This is because of the straightforward reason that India has the world’s highest burden of the disease, including its multidrug-resistant strains. A simpler, shorter drug protocol here will translate into greater compliance and cure.
But India’s long struggle against TB makes it clear that no new process or compound can be a magic fix for the complex therapeutic chain that is crying for an overhaul at multiple points. For example, a government survey finds that a high 63% of the chest symptomatic do not seek healthcare. This reflects the shortfalls of public awareness campaigns but also the broken primary care links that were exposed by Covid. Lack of timely diagnosis of TB is of a piece with the overall gaps in disease surveillance.
How much Covid set back India’s fight against TB can be gauged by 2019-20 seeing its mortality rate increase by 11% even as there was a 25% reduction in the number of cases reported. But even besides the pandemic’s interruptions, the public supply of free drugs that is generous on paper does not actually flow smoothly on the ground, barring some islands of excellence in the metros. Science may invent medical miracles daily, but ultimately it is public healthcare that has to take them to the masses. At the latter end, Indians await a pronounced upgrade.
Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) are chasing the Indian consumption story, directing an overwhelming part of recent inflows into consumer and financial services stocks. This meshes with latest GDP figures showing consumption outpacing investment and government expenditure in April-June.
Resilient urban consumption received a leg-up from reopening of contact-intensive services even as demand for consumer durables is pushing factory output. Households continue to pull up bank lending as they buy houses, cars and consumer durables. But the pace of such credit-driven purchases could slow as interest rates rise. Consumer non-durables should benefit when monetary tightening pulls down retail inflation.
Industry's demand for credit, which has broken out of a multi-year range, can get a fresh impetus from the consumption revival. So far, industrial credit demand is being driven by targeted lending over the course of the pandemic to industries with a higher concentration of small enterprises that have a wider employment footprint.
Some heavy industry segments are also embarking on a new debt-enhancement cycle in step with a government-led capital expenditure push, a move towards self-dependence in strategic areas, and India's effort to offer a 'China plus-one' manufacturing opportunity.
With equity interest increasing in India's consumption prospects, debt exposure to this segment is likely to rise with improvements in capacity utilisation. Indian companies are well placed to ride out the interest rate upcycle, according to an S&P stress test. The interest rate trajectory is shallow and is starting out from a low base. System-wide liquidity is not a concern, lowering refinancing risks.
Top drawer companies have built buffers by locking into low rates during the pandemic to fund the subsequent capex cycle. Finally, banks have built lending capacity by improving capital cushions and reducing stressed assets. India's demand revival is one of the few bright spots in a grim global economic landscape. Capital could gravitate towards it.
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Conservative Party leader Liz Truss is set to become the third woman prime minister (PM) of the United Kingdom (UK) after her convincing but narrower than expected victory over Rishi Sunak in the race for leadership of the party. She defeated Mr Sunak by a margin of 21,000 votes after a campaign that Ms Truss herself described as hard fought. The party election was necessitated by the decision of scandal-ridden PM Boris Johnson to resign in July, ending months of political chaos triggered by an investigation into parties held at the Prime Minister’s Office during the Covid-19 lockdown. The position that Ms Truss assumes will require her to respond speedily to a wide and daunting range of challenges, not the least of which are surging inflation and a massive squeeze on living standards brought on by soaring energy prices due to the Ukraine crisis. The Bank of England has predicted that the UK will enter almost two years of contraction or zero growth the month after Ms Truss assumes office, with inflation topping 13% by the end of the year. Ms Truss will also have to take a call on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, a deal finalised by Mr Johnson in 2019 that allows checks on goods coming into Britain from Northern Ireland.
The full contours of Ms Truss’s plan of action will become clear when she forms her cabinet on Tuesday, but in her victory speech, she promised “bold action” to get the UK through tough times and grow the country’s economy. There is already talk that she plans to freeze energy bills and cut a wide variety of taxes, which could cost her government some 80 billion pounds over the next year — something that is hardly expected to inspire confidence at a time when the markets have been flashing red. On the foreign policy front, Ms Truss will be expected to continue with Mr Johnson’s policy of steadfast support for Ukraine, including the training of troops and supply of advanced weaponry, while clearing the air on her recent remarks that “the jury’s out” when she was asked whether French President Emmanuel Macron was a “friend or foe”. On the trade front with India, Ms Truss’s victory is expected to give a fillip to efforts to stitch up a free-trade agreement by the target date of Diwali. However, policymakers in New Delhi will keep a close eye on whether Ms Truss will continue with Mr Johnson’s policy of a tilt towards the Indo-Pacific, including military deployments and closer maritime cooperation with India. That may be the key driver of strategic bilateral ties.
At 75, India is a rising economic power and an aspirational society with a bright future. Prime Minister Narendra Modi outlined this positive vision for India during his Independence Day speech. By its 100th anniversary of Independence (2047), India could stand transformed, a colossus of ancient wisdom and a high-tech developed economy. As India rises, so can its commercial ties with the United States (US), towards our shared goal of $500 billion in annual trade. We can achieve this goal if we view each other as economic partners and members of the same high-trust ecosystem.
The US and other free societies have a vested interest in India’s rise. India’s growing economic weight supports the case for democratic values, a rules-based international order, and development led by a system of free enterprise in the Indo-Pacific and the world at large. By working with the US and other like-minded partners, India can maximise its ‘techade’ and build a high-trust ecosystem to facilitate mutual growth and set the right rules for an increasingly digitised 21st century economy. By doing so, India can shape the next phase of Indo-Pacific development and expand the sectors that will pave its way to developed nation status by 2047.
A cornerstone of such a high-trust ecosystem would be a secure data corridor that establishes protocols for cross-border data flows, which balance the interests of consumer privacy, national security, and economic growth. As digital powerhouses, the US and India should enable industry, academia, and civil society to move data freely, with efficient regulatory oversight such as the regime being developed by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. India’s participation in the Budapest Convention — even as an observer — will enhance the regulatory ties necessary to efficiently govern digital markets in a global context.
A promising first step would be for both sides to leverage Quad to create a Memorandum of Understanding that outlines Common Principles on Data Governance, and then use that to facilitate a US-India CLOUDAct Agreement, supporting India’s global leadership and full participation as part of the next phase of the Budapest Convention.
Another key pillar of a high-trust ecosystem is mutual recognition of standards, certification, and testing. The US and India both have high standard certification procedures for equipment testing and Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products. Currently, retesting approved American goods in India increases the costs of doing business. A Mutual Recognition Agreement between the US and India that covers areas such as commercial electronics would allow us to reduce and distribute regulatory costs across our economies and accelerate how quickly products made by American and Indian manufacturers penetrate the market.
America’s national security apparatus is strengthened by technologies developed by Indian companies and other allies. Likewise, India could benefit from cutting-edge technical capabilities developed by American firms, and managed by Indian nationals with appropriate security clearances. Together, the US and India should forge a trusted defence tech ecosystem and expand it to future-focused sectors such as Artificial Intelligence, space technologies, and quantum research.
Equally important is to fortify cybersecurity defences through greater knowledge-sharing across government and industry. A US-India Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Forum could give governments a better understanding of this highly technical space and allow CISOs to engage closely with policymakers. Taking such steps will ensure that democracies such as ours retain the edge as strategic competition in the region escalates and enemies of human freedom abound.
Additionally, as the US faces a talent shortage in its strategic sectors and economy at large, it is in its national interest to open more doors for Indian students and workers. The US can make progress through solutions such as an e-visa agreement that could facilitate investors, entrepreneurs, and small traders to come and work in the US, followed by further reforms to its visa system. Indian talent makes the US economy stronger, and many invest in the rise of their mother country through greater skills, resources, and entrepreneurial spirit.
India’s full participation in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) is also key to building a high-trust ecosystem with partners in the region. Critics claim the IPEF is an amorphous body that lacks the market access incentives to expand commercial ties among its members. Such criticism ignores the fact that IPEF has much potential for growth. By participating in IPEF, India and America and like-minded partners can shape a trade and technology convergence that mirrors what our companies are already doing. From tiny acorns such as IPEF, mighty oak trees of prosperity can grow.
At 100 years of bilateral relations, the world would benefit from seeing the US-India partnership stand proudly as one between high-trust partners, who serve as anchors of democracy and stability in their respective hemispheres. If we are not ready to trust each other, and to put our combined talent and economic weight toward free enterprise and free people, the rules of the 21st century economy will be written by regimes inimical to both. It is time for both our governments to be ambitious, reflecting the reality of high-trust convergence already taking place across the private sector.
Ambassador (retired) Atul Keshap is president, US-India Business CouncilThe views expressed are personal
The global economic outlook appears bleak today, with growth likely to slow down in the two largest economies, the United States (US) and China. Europe faces a grim winter, with uncertainty around Russian fuel supplies. India’s growth performance appears healthier than that of most other large economies at the moment. But the global growth slowdown is unlikely to spare India. Net exports dragged growth down in the June-ended quarter. As global demand weakens further, expect this trend to persist.
The growth slowdown will complicate the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s fight against inflation. Typically, a fall in demand eases price pressures and allows a central bank to focus more on growth than inflation. But this time is different. Global food and fuel shortages, accompanied by heightened expectations of inflation, could keep prices high even as demand weakens, a phenomenon economists describe as stagflation.
The economic scenario today resembles the 1970s, when another supply shock drove the world into a stagflationary trap. The big macroeconomic lesson from the 1970s was that policymakers need to prioritise the fight against inflation when faced with the twin threats of high inflation and slow growth. Else, the economic costs in terms of lost output and livelihoods can be devastatingly high, as it was in the 1970s.
Hopefully, the policy response will be more decisive this time. Modern-day central bankers have grown up studying the mistakes made in the 1970s. They understand that they may need to do all it takes to prevent a stagflationary trap, even if that means engineering a mild recession.
Central bankers in the West are confident enough to say this out loud without fear of repercussions. In India, the hoary tradition of shooting the messenger prevents RBI officials from delivering this message emphatically. But the trade-off is stark. Unless India is prepared to accept some reduction in growth induced by monetary contraction, it will face a long era of stagflation.
Thankfully, India’s institutional setup today allows RBI to focus on its core mandate of price stability. As this column has pointed out earlier, RBI was slow to react to the inflation threat but it shifted gears in May. India’s inflation-targeting law enacted in 2016 prescribes an inflation target of 4% (with +/-2% deviation allowed). The law said that RBI should produce a report outlining remedial measures when inflation breaches the thresholds.
Like any other law, this too can be gamed. The finance ministry worked with RBI to ensure that the central bank didn’t have to produce the mandated remedial report when inflation targets were breached in 2020, right to information (RTI) replies obtained by journalist Somesh Jha showed. Officials feared that remedial measures to check inflation could jeopardise the country’s economic recovery when it was still reeling from the impact of the initial Covid-19 lockdowns. Citing limitations in inflation data-gathering, RBI got away without submitting the mandated report.
The subversion of the law doesn’t mean it is meaningless. The exceptional circumstances of 2020 allowed our policymakers a free pass. They will find it difficult to evade the accountability clause in 2022.
On its part, RBI should view the law as a political and constitutional shield for doing its job, rather than as some kind of shaming mechanism. In a poor democracy such as ours, policymakers will always face pressures to bump up short-term growth through fiscal and monetary stimuli even if such measures jeopardise macroeconomic stability. The inflation-targeting mandate provides a countervailing mechanism against such populism.
Most economists agree that the inflation-targeting law has been a worthy reform, helping narrow the inflation differential between India and the rest of the world. But it is not without critics. The critics argue that there is no evidence to show that RBI has been able to anchor inflationary expectations in the country. Besides, inflation in India is driven by food and fuel prices, which RBI can’t control.
It is difficult to agree with the critics. Since India doesn’t collect reliable nationally representative data on inflation expectations, any empirical claim on household inflation expectations must be taken with buckets of salt. We shouldn’t confuse the absence of evidence with evidence of absence.
Food and fuel price spikes can be ignored when they change relative prices of these items compared to others. But when such price spikes spill over to other product markets, leading to a sustained rise in the overall price level, it provides a signal that inflation expectations may be getting entrenched. In such a scenario, a central bank needs to clamp down on demand to douse inflationary fires, even if it lacks precise data about household inflation expectations.
The inflation-targeting law is, of course, imperfect. But it is far from useless. RBI can and should use the cover of the law to stick to its core mandate of price stability. When the time comes to present an account of its failure to keep inflation under control this year, it should use the opportunity to educate the government and Parliament on the trade-offs involved in making fiscal and monetary choices. A well-informed public discussion on such issues will only help RBI do its job better in future.4
Pramit Bhattacharya is a Chennai-based journalist The views expressed are personal
The United States (US) announced recently that all taxpayer-supported research must be immediately made available to the public at no cost. This will become the norm by the end of 2025. This policy is likely to have worldwide ramifications.
The US’s plan mirrors the European Union’s Plan S and India’s open-access policy. The latter has been in force since 2015, with all publicly funded work mandated to be placed in institutional repositories. But implementation has been poor, with most research behind paywalls. Recognising the importance of making scientific knowledge accessible, the draft National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP) 2020, called for a one nation, one subscription model, whereby all Indian academics could access published scientific works via a single subscription. However, with the market power held by global scientific publishers, there has been little progress.
For scientists, publishing in well regarded journals, controlled by a small set of global publishers, is vital to building their reputation. The current business model of publishers is to make money via subscription fees for their journals, and/or by charging authors publication fees. The US’s move to make content open- access is likely to impact this model’s profitability.
The positive externalities associated with open-access publishing enjoin that scientific knowledge is universally available. The popularity of Sci-Hub, which provides free access to publications, is evidence that there is a demand for scientific literature at price points that current publishing monopolies don’t serve. A government-supported open-access model would solve the copyright problem and move the knowledge market in the direction Sci-Hub has shown. The likely response by publishers will either be to demand that all publications to pay exorbitant open-access fees or increase subscription costs to compensate for the loss of revenue. Both negatively impact Indian scientists, the first by raising immediate costs of article publication and the second by limiting access to prior published research. The circumstances call for India to implement its mandated open-access policy while increasing research funding to cover the increased costs.
The current policy creates institutional repositories and archives for publishing articles before peer review. While this provides a valuable option, it omits peer review, which provides a layer of credibility and is an aid for non-experts to trust the published results. Further, such repositories cannot substitute for the reputational benefits of publishing in recognised journals and their search or discovery value. India would do better to invest in improving domestically run scientific journals, while cracking down on predatory and dubious publications. As the US policy pushes authors to publish in open-access journals, a window has opened for new or less-established journals to compete with established publishers as they transition from subscription to open-access models. The thousands of dollars in publication fees charged by legacy publishers are a massive cost to even the US taxpayers. In this market, Indian journals that provide quality publications at lower costs have an opportunity to establish themselves.
Finally, with the advent of new technology, publishing in traditional peer reviewed journals is becoming outdated. Therefore, there is a need to think beyond the present system that restricts scientific work to the form of a printed (or online) document. For example, innovative journals can experiment with multimedia publications that include images and videos.
The transition to open access has been difficult, with entrenched market players putting up stiff resistance and the lock-in effect of journal reputations making scientists reluctant to experiment with new publishing venues. India’s academia and publishers need to take this opportunity to establish a presence in a domain where it is still a marginal player. In the short-term, India needs to support its researchers through increased funding and find ways to make Indian publishers globally competitive. In addition, publicly funded scientific knowledge should be made publicly available, and this signalling by the US is another step in that direction.
Shambhavi Naik and Mihir Mahajan are with the Takshashila Institution The views expressed are personal
The United Nations (UN) report on serious human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang released early Thursday elicited responses on expected lines: Widespread condemnation of Beijing’s hardline policies in the remote region and a strong rebuttal from Beijing, which called the report “groundless”.
“Based on a rigorous review of documentary material,” the report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said that the extent of “…arbitrary detentions against Uyghur and others, in context of “restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights, enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
The two sets of polarised opinions might have been along expected lines but less expected was the damning nature of the report itself against China’s treatment of minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
Given the delay in releasing it, Beijing’s reported efforts to have it buried without ceremony and human rights chief Michelle Bachelet’s seemingly underwhelming fact-finding mission to China in May – the unequivocal description of Beijing’s policies as “crimes against humanity” wasn’t really expected.
Bachelet released the report literally minutes before her four-year term ended, in itself an indicator of China's influence and pressure against its release.
Despite the misgivings over the delay in the report’s release and Beijing’s insidious influence, the report’s assessment and recommendations essentially gave the UN’s stamp of approval on a long list of allegations made — repeatedly — by members of the Uyghur community living in exile, global rights groups and western countries against Chinese policies against minorities in Xinjiang.
To some experts, the UN’s failure to mention the word genocide in the report weakened the overall message of severe and deliberate rights violations; the word “genocide,” was used by the US and an unofficial tribunal in Britain, The Uyghur Tribunal, last year to describe the treatment of minorities in Xinjiang.
To some others, the report has come too late, and said that the damage to the Uyghur community has already been inflicted.
Nevertheless, the report confirmed that wide ranging and devastating crimes had been committed against Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.
It accused China of carrying out ‘serious human rights’ violation against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the province — China’s largest and among the least populated — saying there’s credible evidence to call Beijing’s actions in the region as “crimes against humanity”.
The report said that “allegations of patterns of torture, or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence.”
It outlined accusations of torture, forced medical procedures including sterilisations, as well as sexual violence against Uyghur Muslims.
Furthermore, the report said that Chinese government policies in the region have “transcended borders”, separating families, “severing” contacts, producing “patterns of intimidations and threats” against the wider Uyghur diaspora who have spoken out about conditions at home.
These are serious allegations, allegations which have been levelled earlier by rights groups and investigative media reports based on satellite images – of “vocational education and training camps” (VETCs) — and internal Chinese documents.
The UN assessment was initiated following the first allegations were brought to the attention of the global body in late 2017.
Then in August, 2018, an UN human rights panel said it had received many credible reports that one million ethnic Uyghurs in China were being held in what resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy.”
Gay McDougall, a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, had then cited estimates that two million people mostly from the Uyghur community had been forced into “political camps for indoctrination” in XUAR.
In June, 2020, a joint statement by 50 UN Special Rapporteurs and human rights experts, called on China to address concerns about the treatment of ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang besides Tibet and on the charge of using excessive force against protesters including in Hong Kong.
The same call was repeated June, 2022, ahead of the 50th session of the Human Rights Council, by a group of UN experts who urged China to cooperate fully with the UN human rights system and “grant unhindered access to independent experts who have received and addressed allegations of significant human rights violations and repression of fundamental freedoms in the country”.
The new report seems to be a culmination of this process, which began at least four, long years ago.
(The OHCHR is yet to respond to HT’s questions on the reasons behind the delay in releasing the report.)
After issuing a 131-page response to the 48-page OHCHR report denying wrongdoings and abuses, China’s or the ruling Communist Party of China’s (CPC) response has been two-pronged: To dismiss the report in anger through the Chinese foreign ministry, calling it a western “smear campaign” for the international audience, and to entirely black it out for its captive, domestic audience.
“But perhaps the most revealing fact to note today, 48 hours after the release of the Xinjiang report, is that there has been almost no reporting at all inside China. If the external messaging of the China’s leadership has been all about pique, its internal messaging has been about creating a vacuum,” the China Media Project, which is based at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre and monitors trends and in journalism and communications in China, said in a analysis of China’s response.
The silence, the analysis says, tells its own story, “…of Xinjiang as a matter so sensitive to China’s leadership that the only voices permitted to speak are the megaphones intended for external audiences.”
It’s likely that China will continue to do more for “external audiences” in the days to come as it has been doing since 2018 — arrange more choreographed group tours for diplomats and journalists to Xinjiang.
Like it did this August for some 30 envoys and representatives from Islamic countries.
China's state-run English television channel, CGTN, quoted Hassane Rabehi, Algerian ambassador to China, gushing: “The fruit here is so sweet, just like the life of the people here”.
Rabehi’s statement, made before the report was released, sounds tone-deaf and jarring against its grim assessment and recommendations.
“It (the report) also calls for a prompt (Chinese) Government investigation into allegations of human rights violations in camps and other detention facilities, “including allegations of torture, sexual violence, ill-treatment, forced medical treatment, as well as forced labour and reports of deaths in custody.”
On that, expect nothing.
Sutirtho Patranobis, HT’s experienced China hand, writes a weekly column from Beijing, exclusively for HT Premium readers. He was previously posted in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he covered the final phase of the civil war and its aftermath, and was based in Delhi for several years before that
The views expressed are personal
Education aspires to create individuals who can think for themselves and solve problems independently using their critical acumen. Whether in schools, colleges or the university, this objective of education remains a constant. This is endorsed in vision statements and policy documents.
However, merely stating this repeatedly does not mean it has been achieved. As an educationist, over the last three decades, one has noticed a few impediments. In schools, many teachers promote what they call “model” answers. Students are encouraged to reproduce the “model” answer and the carrot of “high marks” is dangled before them. True enough for when results are declared, such “model” answers fare well and those that are not quite “model” enough, but are possibly filled with brilliant insights, score lower marks. The bogey of grades/marks makes teachers and parents insist that the student suppress her/his perceptions and merely regurgitate what is available! These are the beginnings of a lifelong habit of seeking shortcuts. It is also another form of plagiarism to which all stakeholders turn a blind eye.
The burgeoning of tuition centres is another symptom of this easy remedy. In old times, family members or a schoolteacher helped the child handle academic challenges and learn to fend for themselves. They have now been replaced by the “tuition teacher” regarded as nothing short of a jinni who can open the golden gateway to heaven of A pluses. While some exceptional tutors exist, by and large, tutors focus only on ensuring that the “client” scores well. One can also call it the nanny syndrome, for nannies are now the need of the hour as our tutors.
So, the systemic failure of education to create out-of-the-box thinkers begins at the school level. The single most important factor that weighs down heavily upon the system is the evaluation method; undoubtedly, there is a need to bring urgent reforms.
In higher educational institutions, there is some attempt to encourage critical and “different” thinking in the class discussions, assignments and presentations by students. But at the university level examinations, students often write almost identical answers. Obviously, they are advised that answering questions a certain way will fetch higher marks. And thus, the cycle continues; the student remains just a vessel (vassal?) who processes the information received prescriptively. And the outcome? Perpetuating suppression of ingenuity and stalling creativity. Again, another chance for an individual to be original, inventive and imaginative, is sacrificed at the altar of the evaluation system.
Further pursuit of education can be limiting. I recall a time when I was doing my PhD on British Agit prop Theatre and was told incessantly by all in the academic circle that the “topic” was not current enough. Also, to my bewilderment, that it was fraught with dangers. I continued to research the topic as it held her genuine interest and faced the “danger” of being marginalised/stereotyped with equanimity. Ironic that while education seeks to break stereotypes, the intellectual community creates its own.
Another more insidious danger is using the classroom as a site for cloning. And here, the cloning occurs in that some teachers see the classroom as an opportunity to propagate a faith, an ideology and a way of thinking that they are followers of as the only right way. Given the effective communication skills of teachers, students often fall prey to the rhetoric and, with scanty or no knowledge of the whole picture, make ill-informed choices. So, while educational institutions exhort holistic education, and interactive teaching-learning and are expected to engage students through dialogue and discussion, the question arises as to whether that happens. Is it not true that some teachers jeopardise this mission by colouring the lens through which students view the world?
The teacher is influential and even Spiderman said that with great power comes great responsibility. It is the responsibility of a good teacher to remember this cardinal principle that educational institutions must be multi-hued. Then only will there be true inclusivity and independent thinking.
We live in fragile times, and it is important that we live it well. The guru leads the way from darkness to light, from chaos to harmony. However tough the times are for teachers, they cannot compromise on the aims of education to create thinking and self-reliant individuals. The principles documented by institutions must be transformed from paper to actual practice. Then only will teachers be deserving of the wishes they are greeted with on September 5 in India, “Happy Teacher’s Day”.
Prof. Swati Pal is principal, Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi.
The views expressed are personal
Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah wrote, on the death of former chairman Cyrus Mistry: “There is never a right time for anyone to die but some deaths are just more untimely than others & to die at the age of 54 with some of his best years ahead of him is deeply tragic.” This sums up the response of many people to the news of the tragic death of Cyrus Mistry, the scion of one of India’s storied business families of Mumbai, in a road accident on Sunday.
Cyrus Mistry was one of the bright minds that the Indian industry had in recent times. The reclusive man was appointed managing director of the 154-year-old Shapoorji Pallonji Group when he was 26, in 1994. Despite his lack of experience initially in running such a large group, he increased its turnover from the construction business from $20 million to nearly $1.5 billion. Soft-spoken, Cyrus Mistry was clear in his vision and firm in executing it on the ground.
This zeal of Cyrus Mistry endeared him to Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata. Mistry became the youngest chairman of Tata Sons when he took over the mantle of the business conglomerate from Ratan Tata in 2012. As the chairman of Tata Sons, Cyrus Mistry focused on profitability and sustainability. He targeted many non-performing assets that were slowing down the growth prospects of the Tata Group. His stint on the board of Tata Sons ended abruptly because of internal differences.
Looking at the performance of Cyrus Mistry both at the Shapoorji Pallonji Group and the Tata Group, nobody would have any doubt about the contributions that the media-shy business leader could have made to the Indian economy.
The death of Cyrus Mistry also brings back the country’s focus on people’s unsafe travel practices. According to preliminary reports, Cyrus Mistry, who was sitting on the rear seat of a high-end luxury sports utility vehicle (SUV), died after his head hit the front seat when the accident occurred. It was suggested that, as he was not wearing a seatbelt, his head hit the front seat due to the impact of the accident. It is understood that rear seats do not have front-facing airbags.
The fact that the accident had occurred when the vehicle was cruising at 133 kmph — a speed at which most people with high-end vehicles drive on highways — points to faulty road design, which reportedly could have confused the driver as to which road to take.
According to National Crime Records Bureau data released recently, over 1.55 lakh people were killed in road crashes across India in 2021 — an average of 426 lives lost every day or 18 every single hour. In most cases of road accidents, the prime cause would invariably be over-speeding, unsafe travel practices or improper road designs.
If a highly-influential billionaire travelling in a high-end vehicle could become a victim of a road accident, the less one speaks of the common driver and passenger the better. It is high time the government reviews factors that are causing road accidents to fix them and spread greater awareness among people about safer road travel practices.
The end of a remarkable 27-year career which defined more than tennis, or even womenœs tennis, came last week at the US Open as Serena Williams fought one last time against the odds, saving five match points while pummelling away at the ball with unmatched ferocity, until time told on her. Serena lost in the third round on the very court on which she had won her first major title, as a 17-year-old. Along the way, as she played tennis in some part of four decades, Serena had helped change the very perception of women, particularly Black women, in sport.
Straight out of Compton, a working-class neighbourhood of Los Angeles where race ruled every part of their lives as Blacks, the Williams sisters climbed out of relative poverty. To get out of Compton, where they lost one of five sisters to a gangland shooting, may have been their first aim. Coached early on by a father who was driven to make them succeed, but on his terms as he kept sponsors on tenterhooks and signing when there was true value for the talent of his daughters, the sisters zoomed to unimaginable highs.
Initially seen as the more talented Venus’ sister, Serena showed what mind over matter really means. Her feel for the ball, her aggression flowing from an inner rage that went way beyond gender, and her sense of timing that powered one of the most formidable forehands in the game, were to bring her 23 Grand Slams, but not the elusive 24th, not after the birth of her daughter Olympia five years ago. Aware of her race and the battles she fought for equal rights, much like Muhammad Ali did in boxing, she skipped the Indiana Wells event for 14 years because she had once been insulted there while she was winning.
A packed Arthur Ashe court of 24,000 spectators rooted for her for a week in the greatest tribute to a player who had conquered her sport, but who is now ready to “evolve away from tennis”, have another baby and live the life of an off-court tennis celebrity. As tears flowed on her exit, Serena explained that they were tears of joy, of an achiever who accomplished things way beyond the statistics of wins and losses, of someone who had just finished an incredible ride and journey in her sporting career. Thanks Serena, young tennis players of various backgrounds would like to say today, thanks for a career that inspired so many, in sport, in life.
India has overtaken the United Kingdom to become the world’s fifth largest economy. This is the second time we overtook the UK, the first being a few years ago. But as our growth slowed, we fell behind again. The nations ahead of us are Germany, Japan, China and the United States. That two of the four are Asian nations gives us hope that we can become a developed and wealthy nation.
The overall size of a nation’s economy is one way of looking at gross domestic product. The other way is to look at per person GDP. India’s population is 20 times more than Britain’s, and so we must keep that in mind when we exult. Our per capita GDP is $2,200, which is around Rs. 1.75 lakh/year or around Rs. 14,500/month. The UK’s average income is $47,000 or Rs 37 lakhs/year. The question is how can we get to that stage. Surely it is possible for us as well if other nations in the recent past have gone there, including South Korea ($34,000), Japan ($39,000) and China ($12,500).
The World Bank defines lower middle-income nations as those where the per person GDP is between $1,036 and $4,045 (at $2,200, we are lower middle income and have been here since 2008, around when we crossed $1,000). Upper middle-income economies are those with per capita national income of between $4,046 and $12,535. Above that are the high-income countries.
An interesting facet of these three economically successful Asian nations is that their highest growth rate phases came when they were where we are today. Japan was at our level ($2,056) in 1970. In the decade till 1980, it grew its economy by 16 per cent a year to reach $9,463. In the four decades after that it averaged a growth rate of 3.5 per cent to come to over $39,000.
South Korea was at $2,198 in 1983. In the 10 years till 1993, that nation grew its GDP by 15 per cent each year to reach $8,884. After that, it grew at around five per cent a year for the next three decades. The most recent story has been that of China. It is also the one that should interest us most because China has as large a population as ours. And it was as poor as us at one point in time. The World Bank’s data shows that India’s per capita income in 1960 was $82, while China’s was $89. In 1970, we were $112 and China was $113. In 1980, India was $266 and China $194. In 1990, meaning 32 years ago, India was $367 and China $317. That was the last time we were ahead of them. In 2000, we were $1,357 and China was $4,450. Today, as mentioned earlier, we are $2,277 and they are $12,556. How did they do this? By growing at 11 per cent between 1990 and 2000, and then growing at 16.5 per cent per year between 2000 and 2010 and then growing at 10 per cent in the last decade. On the other hand, in the same period, we grew at six per cent. To grow at 15 per cent per year is an astonishing feat which we have never achieved ever, but these three nations have achieved it in a sustained fashion over several years to escape poverty.
What is their secret sauce? Japan was able to create consumer brands of the highest quality in the world, like Toyota, Sony, Honda, Panasonic, Yamaha and so on. Consumers in all nations were willing to pay for their cars, pianos, Walkman sets and TVs. They also had industrial companies like Mitsubishi. Similarly, South Korea created engineering giants Hyundai and consumer brands like Samsung and LG. China did not follow the exact same route, but became the world’s manufacturing hub. Businesses relocated or set up operations in China because of costs and efficiency gains. All three nations also moved up what is called the value chain and developed industries in the manufacture of electronics and semi-conductors.
For India to repeat their success, we will have to figure out how to do what they did, but that is not the only way to get there. Cuba ($10,000) has a life expectancy, per capita income and health and education of world class standards despite not having an open economy and being under severe sanctions.
There is also another way, in which other nations which are today called developed, achieved prosperity in the modern era. And that is through having transparent and functional democracies, including with an independent judiciary and criminal justice system. These are things only democracies can provide and not tyrannies, and for this reason, this particular route is closed to those nations which are authoritarian.
India is on the cusp in the same way as Japan, South Korea and China were when they were at around $2,000 per capita. Can we make the leap like them? All of us want this and it would be great for the world as well. But something must shift for this to happen. The only time we were close to growth rates like those achieved by our fellow Asians was in the 10-year period between 2004 and 2014 (growing at nine per cent from $627 to $1,573). This is not about political parties: global trade boomed in that period and therefore our exports rose exponentially. That boom has now gone and we can no longer take advantage of it.
After 2014, our growth has averaged around five per cent. If this goes on, we will remain here like Egypt, Brazil, South Africa and Bangladesh. The fact is that it is only the rare nations that succeed economically.
Way back in 1843 Karl Marx in an introduction to a book that criticised Hegel's Elements of the Philosophy of the Right wrote: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Karl Marx thus saw in religion a utility to the State by creating illusions to mitigate the immediate suffering of the people. It made them dull to oppression and induced a sense of fatalism. Hegel, of course, saw in the existence of the State the presence of God upon the earth. Both would now be turning in their graves in London and Berlin seeing how their postulations have shaped up in India. Far from becoming the opiate, religion has now metastasized into a pernicious thought process that threatens to destroy the State itself.
That’s because of the proliferation of cults within religions. Religiosity is being displaced by veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object. Ironically, it is not the veneration of inanimate idols that is worrisome but increasingly the cults around living figures that tend to pose challenges to authority. All the major religions have seen the emergence of outsized cult figures or “godmen” who themselves become objects of veneration, superseding the divinities that they represent. From being objects of veneration to claiming divinity is just a small leap.
The late Satya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi, a much-venerated cult figure who counted Prime Ministers, distinguished soldiers, learned scientists and corporate overlords as his loyal devotees, was probably the most successful of the godmen in terms of market size and revenues. He stated status by cryptically saying: “I am God. I am Sai.” He promoted by selling sleight of hand tricks to the credulous as powers of materialisation, with holy ash or wristwatches or rings or whatever else was on hand. After he died, almost 100 kg of gold and many packets of diamonds and gemstones were recovered from his bedroom. Where this might have materialised from is anybody’s guess.
They might be interceding for many gods but one commonality is that godmen have mesmerising control over their devotees. What differentiates them is just the size of their following and the bizarreness of their demands to prove fealty. One godman demanded Rolls Royce cars and the recently convicted Ram Rahim of Dera Sacha Sauda demanded sex, which he quaintly sold to his followers as his “maafi”, or forgiveness. The sexual peccadilloes of cult leaders seems to their common currency. The Prime Minister’s preferred one-time guruji, Asaram, now languishes in prison awaiting trial for rape.
Because godmen have mesmerising powers, politicians flock to them to seek their beneficence in votes. The godmen then seek favours for themselves or for others to prove their divine powers. The Puttaparthi Sai Baba used to intercede with his political cronies and devotees to place persons in high positions. Such people also know how to manipulate the faith of powerful figures to their advantage. There is the well-known case of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee waiting for a few hours at the home of a prominent businessman waiting for Sai Baba to give him darshan. When the darshan was denied that day, he returned to his 7 Race Course Road residence distraught, and only when Sai Baba relented did the political potentate find peace of mind. What he had to sign on or the number of times he had to order is still a matter of much speculation?
Finding togetherness in cults is a common human condition. The level of education and wealth of a society has little relationship with the incidence of credulousness. Other-wise, America would not have had a David Koresh of the Branch Davidians who led 77 followers to a fiery death after a confrontation with the FBI in Texas, or Jim Jones of the People’s Temple who persuaded his 900 followers to drink poison-laced Kool Aid in Guyana. The perceived power of televangelists like Billy Graham, Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell made politicians like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan court them and espouse policies favou-red by the religious right. In Japan, we saw Shoji Asahara’s mesmeric message to his Aum Shinrikyo cult into attacking the Tokyo Metro with sarin gas. So why should India be an exception? Credulity is inbuilt into the human condition.
What should cause us concern, however, is the proliferation of “deras” in Punjab and Haryana. By some counts, there are 900 now. A “dera” is more a militant encampment rather than a benign monastery. The most notorious cult figure in recent times was Jarnail Singh Bhindran-wale, whose temporal journey was ended only by an Army assault to free the Golden Temple back in 1984. In 2014, the followers of a Hindu godman, Rampal, dared the state to enter his “dera” in Hissar and pick him up for trial for murder, sedition and conspiracy. It took over 5,000 Haryana policemen to take him in.
In 2016, a cult centred around the return of Subhas Chandra Bose that had taken control of Jawahar Bagh in Mathura had to be stormed by the UP armed police and 29 followers of their leader Ram Vriksh Yadav were killed in the clash that followed.
The Dera Sacha Sauda of Ram Rahim Singh has been a cult that was much in the news. In its case, the CBI court in Panchkula forced events by convicting the bizarrely-dressed godman on a 17-year-old rape charge, despite the open patronage of the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister of Haryana.
Thus, August 25, 2017, is red-letter day for India’s judiciary, that asserted itself by ignoring political connections and the cupidity of the authorities. It is not surprising that the criticism of the political spectrum about the activities of this bizarre “guru of bling” was uniformly anodyne, very unlike the vitriol they routinely pour over each other. After all, politics is not about rationality or good sense or decency, but just about votes, when it is not about money.