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Editorials - 01-03-2022

It is part of a long-term effort to modernise the economy and create new jobs in Kerala

The debate around the SilverLine, the proposed semi high-speed railway in Kerala, has reached a blind alley. If the project, funded partly by the State government, comes through, the 530-kilometre distance between Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram and its northern-most district Kasaragod could be covered in less than four hours. This journey takes at least 12 hours now. But many critics of the new railway question the very idea of high-speed travel in Kerala, arguing that there would not be enough riders. The State government, for its part, is yet to convince the people that the railway line can be a catalyst for a progressive transformation of Kerala’s economy.

It may be useful for Kerala to go over the experience of Japan in building the world’s first ever high-speed rail line, called the Shinkansen. In the 1950s, there were serious doubts about its viability, in a country that had been devastated by the Second World War. However, ever since its inauguration in 1964, Shinkansen has been a powerful agent and a symbol of Japan’ s economic resurgence.

Modernising the economy

By the 1980s, Kerala had achieved most of the preconditions required for an economic take-off. Its record in public health and education then (as they continue to be now) was not only the best in the country but comparable to that of the East Asian tiger economies. However, the economic opportunity slipped away for Kerala, which received a relatively low share of public sector investments in infrastructure, and research and academic institutions. Over the decades, Kerala has been a large exporter of skills. Estimates suggest that between one and one-and-a-half-million people from Kerala are employed in high-skilled jobs — as nurses, engineers, teachers, media professionals, and so on — outside the State, most of them outside the country.

There is now a growing realisation that new economic activities have to be nurtured within Kerala, drawing on the talents of its educated job seekers. In colleges and universities across the State, 1,66,000 enrol for tertiary education every year, which include 60,000 who join engineering courses. The Kerala State Planning Board has outlined the possibilities for knowledge-led economic growth. In addition to tourism and information technology, the sectors in which Kerala sees potential include healthcare, life sciences, biotechnology, media and animation, space and aeronautical technologies, and artificial intelligence.

In the post-pandemic world, as companies seek greener and less congested spaces, Kerala offers a unique advantage. Modern economic activities can thrive across the length and breadth of the State, given its dispersed nature of spatial development. There are numerous towns and villages which provide hygienic living conditions, safe public spaces, excellent health and education facilities, good Internet connectivity, and all other modern amenities.

Dispersing economic growth

Building an effective public transport system is central to realising Kerala’s economic ambitions. The proposed semi high-speed railway, which will cover 11 of Kerala’s 14 districts, assumes importance in this context. The SilverLine could serve the function of a fast-paced suburban rail system for the whole of Kerala, with each of its stops becoming nodes for future economic growth. This could be similar to the way the local trains have uplifted the economy of the Greater Mumbai region or to the long-run impacts made by the London Underground railway. The northern districts of Kerala will benefit in particular.

In fact, the need to have frequent stops (at an interval of roughly 50 km) partly explains why Kerala has opted for a semi high-speed, and not a high-speed, railway line. The maximum speed that can be attained on the semi high-speed line being planned in Kerala will be 200 km per hour, while trains can run at a speed of 320 kmph on a high-speed line.

The debate must continue

The State government has to drive home the point that the SilverLine is not a vanity project, but part of a long-term effort to modernise the economy and create new jobs in Kerala. Many of the criticisms against the rail network will simply wither away when the project is viewed as a part of tomorrow’s, and not today’s, Kerala, catering to the needs of a much bigger economy. There are concerns that the rail project may damage the environment in the short run, especially during the construction stage. But in the long run, there are no doubts that a public transport system such as the SilverLine, run on renewable energy and capable of carrying more than a million passengers a day, will help reduce pollution and carbon emissions.

It is also clear that a land-scarce Kerala cannot afford to depend on the road network for its future transport needs. The number of motor vehicles on the State’s roads has doubled over the last decade. There were 14.4 million vehicles in Kerala in 2020, which included 3.2 million cars and jeeps, all for a population of 35 million. The number of accidents involving motor vehicles has been rising steeply. Compared to a six-lane national highway, the proposed semi high-speed railway will require only half the amount of land but can carry three times the traffic (according to a note circulated by the Kerala Rail Development Corporation).

The rail project, which will take five years to complete, is expected to cost Rs. 63,941 crore, or roughly 7.5% of Kerala’s annual income. But the argument that the railway construction will push Kerala into a debt burden is not correct. It arises from an assumption that the economy will remain where it is today. As Kerala’s economy enlarges with the stimulus given by the new rail line, the debt will be within manageable limits. The fears that the construction of the semi high-speed rail will cause natural calamities may be unfounded. Even as it crisscrosses an earthquake-prone terrain, the Japanese high-speed rail network has seen no fatal accidents in over the last six decades.

The public debate covering the financial and technical aspects of the SilverLine project must continue. It must address questions such as whether the new railway should run on standard gauge or broad gauge, and whether the modernisation of the existing railway network will turn out to be a more cost-effective option than the building of a new rail line. The concerns regarding environmental impacts and compensation to those who lose their land for the project must be looked into. The planning for the railway should not be done in isolation, but go hand in hand with the measures to reinvigorate the industrial, technology and tourism sectors in the State.

All of these must be done in a forward-looking and time-bound manner. Needless to say, the discussions should be well informed, based not on hearsay but on scientific and technical inputs. At the same time, the voices that reject outright the plans for a modern rail network in Kerala must realise that they are doing a grave injustice to the State’s future.

Jayan Jose Thomas is a Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi



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The grounds on which the Russian President has tried to justify Moscow’s illegal actions against Ukraine are erroneous

Notwithstanding the spin offered by international relations experts on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the unequivocal truth is this. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a brutal murder of the United Nations (UN) Charter and several other tenets of international law. Ironically, Russian President Vladimir Putin has invoked international law to justify Moscow’s barefaced illegal actions. But these justifications are erroneous.

Recognition of territories

Three days before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia recognised the supposedly independent territories of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine and signed treaties of friendship with these entities paving the way for Russian troops moving in as “peacekeepers”. In doing so, Russia seems to rely on the controversial theory of remedial secession, which posits the unilateral secession of a territory from the parent state in the most extreme cases. However, international law, beyond the context of decolonisation, does not recognise a general right to unilateral secession within the principle of self-determination. Even if an arguable case could be made for remedial secession, it requires a very high threshold such as severe violations of human rights and systemic oppression of ethnic Russians by Ukraine. Russia’s claims of the genocide of ethnic Russians are not backed by any evidence. Ukraine has moved the International Court of Justice on the issue of alleged genocide. In any case, Ukraine expressly agreed to recognise the autonomy of Donetsk and Luhansk under the Minsk Accords with Russia, thereby promising to protect the right to self-determination of these territories. Therefore, Russia’s claims have no basis in international law. In recognising the statehood of Donetsk and Luhansk, Russia has violated Article 2(4) of the UN Charter by undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

Use of force

The Russian illegality has not been restricted to just this. The Russian missile strikes in Ukraine including on non-military objects and the Russian forces marching through Ukrainian soil are a ruthless exhibition of the use of force in international relations, which Article 2(4) of the UN Charter proscribes. Bizarrely, Mr. Putin claims that he is acting in self-defence as per Article 51 of the UN Charter. Article 51 recognises the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence in the case of an armed attack by one state against another state. However, Ukraine has not launched an “armed attack” against Russia warranting defensive strikes. Moreover, there was no ‘imminent’ threat from Ukraine that would have justified Russia’s actions even under the arguable theory of anticipatory self-defence in international law. The right to collective self-defence under Article 51 exists only for states. Donetsk and Luhansk are not states under international law. Moreover, Ukraine did not attack these purportedly independent states. Even assuming that legitimate grounds for self-defence exist, nothing in Article 51 or customary international law permits a disproportionate action in self-defence, such as a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Mr. Putin’s despicable actions are tantamount to committing the crime of aggression as defined under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Rome Statute in Article 8bis (2) defines an act of aggression to mean any use of force against the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of another state. Ideally, the aggressor state and its leaders should face international criminal responsibility for aggression. However, the ICC is unable to exercise jurisdiction unless both the aggressor and victim states are party to the Rome Statute. With Russia and Ukraine not being a party, the likelihood of legal accountability to the actions of Russia is slim.

On ‘R2P’

Mr. Putin also indirectly invoked the controversial doctrine of humanitarian intervention, also termed Responsibility to Protect (R2P), in international law for its actions in Ukraine. R2P stems from every state’s responsibility to protect its population from gross violations of human rights and the international community’s responsibility in assisting states to fulfil such responsibility. Controversially, this principle has been stretched to justify the use of force by third states in the territory of a state which has failed in its duty to protect its citizens. Such actions may or may not be authorised by the UN Security Council (UNSC); the 2011 military intervention in Libya received UN authorisation, while the 1995 North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing of Bosnian Serbs did not. However, the R2P doctrine remains disputed in international law. Even if it exists, there is no evidence that ethnic Russians in Ukraine are facing atrocities that merit a humanitarian intervention of the scale that Russia has launched. The irony of Russia invoking the R2P doctrine for its Ukrainian invasion, in the same declaration criticising the West for R2P in Libya and the former Yugoslavia, is lost in hubris.

Russia’s revisionism

It will be futile to look at the current crisis through the narrow lens of black letter law alone without expounding the ideational moorings of Russia’s approach. The Kremlin believes that the world is divided into spheres of influence. Thus, one needs to distinguish between countries that are truly sovereign and countries that possess nominal or limited sovereignty. Russia views Ukraine as an entity that possesses limited sovereignty. The global community should take note of Mr. Putin’s precarious game of resurrecting a ‘Russian empire’ that could topple the very foundations on which the post-World War rule-based international order has been laboriously built. This is part of the Russian approach toward international law which believes that the basis of international law is not universal but cultural and civilisational distinctness.

Rooted in Russia’s cultural and civilisational exceptionalism is the emphasis on statism. Indeed, Putin’s Russia has doubled down on statism in international law through institutionalising several mechanisms. For example, Russia has created a constitutional apparatus to denounce international human rights law, by empowering the Russian Constitutional Court to invalidate any judgment by any human rights mechanism (including the European Court of Human Rights), if they are found to be inconsistent with the Russian constitution.

History tells us humanity has suffered at the hands of hyper-masculine autocratic leaders who set out on the path of achieving mythical civilisational greatness. The global community should collectively ensure that this is not repeated. International law should be marshalled to constrain arbitrary state power and check imperial designs. Or else the sustenance of a rule-based international order shall remain a pipe dream.

Prabhash Ranjan teaches at

the O.P. Jindal Global University.

Achyuth Anil is an international law researcher based in New Delhi. The views expressed are personal



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While India needs to remind Russia that its actions violate the BRICS Delhi resolution, the UN can assist Ukraine

The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in his televised speech on the night of February 21, 2022, had announced a “special military operation to protect people who have been abused by the genocide of the Kyiv regime for eight years.” Mr. Putin further said: “We will strive for the demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine, as well bring to justice those who committed numerous bloody crimes against civilians.” Who is ‘We’? In the 21st century, why is Mr. Putin using despicable 19th century Imperialist language?

A belief without basis

There is, or was, however no genocide in Ukraine proved by any documented report. Moreover, the Ukrainian government is nowhere close to be legitimately called “Nazi”. For example, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a Jew. He is also proud of his Jewish grandfather who had fought against Hitler’s German army. In fact, Mr. Putin’s actions during the last few days are making Mr. Putin himself sound more like the hated Nazis. As of now, Russian bombs are pounding Ukraine. Russian soldiers are pouring into Ukraine. The only question on everyone’s lips is: “Why? What does Russia hope to accomplish with this bloody invasion?” The Ukrainian people from the very top, from President Zelensky himself, have decided to fight and Russian troop movement is thus down to a crawl and behind announced schedule.

Mr. Putin seems to believe that “Ukraine is an illegitimate country that exists on land that is historically and rightfully Russia’s”. But even the most biased Russian history book does not suggest even remotely this outrageous Nazi-like belief of Mr. Putin.

Thus, the talk of a “de-Nazification” of the Russian establishment, while absurd at the factual level, nonetheless reveals that Mr. Putin is “acting on his long-held autocratic belief that the Ukrainian government has no right to exist”. His ultimate goal seems to be to make Ukraine into a vassal of his future as yet imaginary, Russian-led Soviet Empire.

In his earlier 2005 Declaration, Mr. Putin had stated that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster”. There are not many takers for this view even inside Russia. “The most relevant formulation, for the purposes of understanding the current invasion, however came in Mr. Putin’s inflammatory speech on Ukraine policy delivered on February 20 last, in which the central contention of his address is that Ukraine and Russia are, in historical terms, essentially inseparable. Mr. Putin’s narrative is twisted history: It is simply incorrect to say that Ukraine has had no independent national identity that is separate from Russia”.

The Narendra Modi government had decided to abstain on the vote on the United Nations Security Council Resolution (moved by the United States and its allies against Russia over the Ukraine invasion). But Prime Minister Modi should surely recognise that BRICS, in its New Delhi Declaration (paragraph 22 in the XIII BRICS Summit), had resolved that the five BRICS nations were opposed to the unilateral use of force against any state, and wanted all disputes resolved by peaceful means, and categorically ruled out the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State (September 9, 2021).

The BRICS Delhi resolution

The text adopted was as follows: “We (BRICS) underscore the inadmissibility of the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes and principles or United Nations.”

Thus, the New Delhi BRICS Declaration commits to resolving all disputes by peaceful means and is opposed to unilateral use of force against any state. Russia by invading Ukraine has violated that resolution to which India also was a prominent party.

This declaration was in fact approved and signed by Russia in the presence of Mr. Putin along with China’s President Xi Jinping. Yet, six months later, Russia, a founder-member of BRICS, has forgotten that resolution by Russia’s unilateral illegal violent military action against Ukraine.

That is why I have been advocating, since long, for India walking out of BRICS since I had earlier apprehended the coming collapse of BRICS. In 2015 I had declined Prime Minister Modi’s offer to me, conveyed by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Amit Shah in the presence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh representative, of accepting to become the first President of the BRICS Bank. I conveyed to the Prime Minister directly later that China would soon be turning hostile to India, and BRICS would lose credibility. Today the invasion and aggression against Ukraine has in effect cremated the spirit of BRICS.

“By casting the Ukrainian regime in the most negative possible light — and officially linking Russia’s official war aims to ‘de-Nazification’ and ‘demilitarization’ — Mr. Putin is all but openly acting on his belief, that Ukraine is not a legitimate sovereign state, into aggressive action. The Russian case for the war is thus built on an unwitting lie about Ukraine’s history”, as an article says.

The path for New Delhi

From this juncture onwards, India has to take stock since the apparent goal of India becoming a “Viswa Guru” is now, at best, a mirage. From Jawaharlal Nehru onwards, India has failed to become one since it cannot be a reality in the present global dispensation. Instead, India needs friends and collaborators but without bowing before any country.

One way for India to begin asserting itself is to suggest to Russia to withdraw its armed forces from the entire Ukraine in keeping with the aforenoted Delhi Resolution of BRICS. If Russia does not give weight to India’s suggestion, the Modi government should announce in the UN General Assembly, consideration of the U.S. proposed Draft Resolution; India would vote for it after the United Nations General Assembly adopts any reasonable amendments proposed.

India should also urge the United States to re-structure the objectives and the priorities of the Quad, outline a clear strategy to achieve the objectives, and mobilise the resources required.

For India, a President Xi-led China is a hostile nation directly, and in global competition. India is potentially capable of meeting this Chinese threat — a threat that is evident by China grabbing 50,000 square kilometres of Indian territory.

The potential strength of India can become actual capability with a little help from the United States. As for Russia, its position in global affairs will depend on the outcome of the Ukraine invasion. At present Russia is falling behind its announced schedule. Ukraine has by its bravery caused delays in Russia’s schedule. With help from members of the United Nations, Ukraine can become the David against the Russian Goliath and become a free democratic nation again.

Subramanian Swamy, a PhD in Economics from Harvard, has been in Parliament for six terms. He was also a Union Cabinet Minister of Commerce and Law & Justice



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If there is incentive for firms not to disclose security attacks, it affects cyber security and data protection

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is likely to come out with new cyber security regulations, as indicated by Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar at a recent cyber security event. The essence of this regulation will be to put the onus on organisations to report any cyber crime that may have happened against them, including data leaks. Clause 25 in the Data Protection Bill 2021 says that data fiduciaries should report any personal and non-personal data breach incident within 72 hours of becoming aware of a breach. Even the golden standard for data protection, namely the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR), has a clause for reporting data breach incidents within a stringent timeline.

Security breaches

While this, in principle, is likely to improve cyber security and reduce attacks and breaches, why are there continuing breach incidents every minute? According to Cybercrime Magazine, if it were measured as a country, then cyber crime — which is predicted to inflict damages totalling $6 trillion globally in 2021 — would be the world’s third-largest economy after the U.S. and China.

Apart from private firms, government services, especially critical utilities, are prone to cyber attacks and breach incidents. The ransomware attack against the nationwide gas pipeline in 2021 in the U.S. virtually brought down the transportation of about 45% of all petrol and diesel consumed on the east coast. Hence it is important that even cyber attacks on government and state-owned enterprises be reported so that corrective actions can be taken on the security of critical infrastructure of the nation.

What is the logic behind incidence reporting? If incidences are reported, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team and others can alert organisations about the associated security vulnerabilities. Firms not yet affected can also take precautionary measures such as deploying security patches and improving their cyber security infrastructure.

But firms are reluctant to notify the breach incidents to the regulators. This is because any security or privacy breach has a negative impact on the reputation of the associated firms. An empirical study by Comparitech indicates that the share prices for firms generally fall around 3.5% on average over three months following the breach. In the long term, breached companies underperformed in the market. After one year, share price of breached firms fell 8.6% on average, resulting in a poor performance in the stock market. So, firms weigh the penalties they face for not disclosing the incidents versus the potential reputational harm due to disclosure, and decide accordingly.

The other important aspect is enforcement of the regulation and associated rules. How will the regulator come to know when a firm does not disclose a security breach? It can be done only through periodic cyber security audits. These audits should be comprehensive enough to identify such incidents that might not have been reported by the firm. Unfortunately, the regulators in most countries including India do not have such capacity to conduct security audits frequently and completely. If either the probability of such audits is low or the probability of finding breach incidents during such audits is low, there is incentive for the firms not to disclose security attacks.

Possible solutions

Given the above complex nature of disclosure, what could be the possible solutions apart from enacting rules? The first is that the government empanel third party cyber security auditors for the conduct of periodical cyber security impact assessments, primarily amongst all the government departments, both at the national and State level, so that security threats and incidents can be detected proactively and incidents averted. The government can also mandate that periodic security audit reports be published by private firms and arrange to conduct surprise security audits towards enforcements.

The Ministry, as part of cyber security assurance initiatives of the Government of India, to evaluate and certify IT security products and protection profiles, has set up Common Criteria Testing Laboratories and certification bodies across the country. These schemes can be extended towards cyber security audits and assessments as well. Much like IBM, which set up a large cyber security command centre in Bengaluru, other large firms can also be encouraged to set up such centres for protection of their firms’ assets. Such measures will also pass the muster of the EU GDPR, thereby moving India closer to the set of countries that have the same level of cyber security and data protection as that of EU, for seamless cross-border data flow.

V. Sridhar is Professor, IIIT Bangalore



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The label of ‘anti-national’ can stick or get washed away, depending on the political exigency

Both the Houses of Karnataka’s Legislature were paralysed last week with the Congress demanding the sacking of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister K.S. Eshwarappa from the Cabinet for his controversial remarks on the tricolour andbhagwa dhwaja(saffron flag). The Legislature session had to be adjourned sine die three days ahead of schedule amid pandemonium over the issue.

It all began when Mr. Eshwarappa, who is also Shivamogga MLA, in response to a query by reporters on a student scaling the flag post of a government college in Shivamogga and hoisting thebhagwa dhwaja, said that after “100 or 200 or 500 years” the saffron flag may well replace the tricolour at the Red Fort. He added that the tricolour is the national flag for now and anyone disrespecting it is an “anti-national”.

The student who hoisted the flag was part of a saffron shawl-clad group of boys protesting against Muslim girls demanding that they be allowed to enter classrooms wearing hijabs. The issue, which had its genesis in Udupi, later spread to other places including Shivamogga. Petitions questioning the ban on wearing hijabs in classrooms are before the Karnataka High Court.

Mr. Eshwarappa’s remarks on the tricolour caused an uproar. The Congress demanded that he be dropped from the Cabinet for making “anti-national” remarks, and sedition charges be slapped on him. While they staged a day-and-night dharna in the Legislature, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai stoutly defended Mr. Eshwarappa. Mr. Bommai insisted that the senior BJP leader had said nothing wrong “legally” and he was only talking “hypothetically.” He and other BJP leaders said that it was the Congress that was “insulting” the national flag by bringing the tricolour to the well of the House during the dharna, while Mr. Eshwarappa was a “nationalist” beyond reproach. The BJP said that the Congress had allowed a “non-issue” to consume the session hours. Interestingly, BJP national president J.P. Nadda said in an interview to a TV channel that he had pulled up Mr. Eshwarappa for his remarks and that the party would not tolerate such “wrong, irresponsible statements.” But the Minister, while acknowledging the call from Mr. Nadda, remained unrepentant.

Days after the flag post episode, a Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad activist Harsha, 28, was murdered in Shivamogga, Mr. Eshwarappa’s hometown, leading to violence. Before an investigation could get underway, Mr. Eshwarappa publicly blamed “Muslim goondas” for the killing. Supporters of the slain youth took his body in a procession, in defiance of prohibitory orders, with violence reported en route. There are allegations that the police did little to stop vehicles from being set on fire and shops from being stoned. Mr. Eshwarappa and Shivamogga MP B.Y. Raghavendra were part of the procession.

The Karnataka Congress has blamed Mr. Eshwarappa for the worsening law-and-order situation in Shivamogga and asked how he, as a Minister, could participate in the procession despite Section 144 being in force. Several organisations have also asked why no action has been initiated against Mr. Eshwarappa and Mr. Raghavendra for the violation.

An uneasy calm now prevails in Shivamogga, with 10 people arrested so far in connection with the death of Harsha, while those hit by violence in the aftermath are trying to put the pieces back together.

Mr. Eshwarappa is no stranger to controversies and his remarks are likely to be soon forgotten even by the Congress, which is now busy with a padayatra to demand speedy implementation of the Mekedatu drinking water project. However, the events yet again show how the label of ‘anti-national’ can stick or get washed away by aggressive rhetoric, depending on the political exigency.

bageshree.s@thehindu.co.in



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Indian cricket’s emerging playersare showing no signs of stage-fright

With the Himalayas looming over Dharamshala, India scaled fresh heights in its evolving journey in Twenty20 Internationals. After winning the inaugural 2007 ICC World T20 in South Africa, the Men in Blue flattered to deceive in cricket’s shortest version, specifically in global events. However, India largely does excel in bilateral series and the latest triumph was the 3-0 sweep against the visiting Sri Lankans in a clash that had its final episode at Dharamshala on Sunday night. After clinching the opening fixture at Lucknow, India extended that winning-act in the next two games under the mountain skies. Having recently swept past the West Indies at 3-0 each in ODIs and T20Is, Rohit Sharma’s cup of joy continues to brim. The latest squad missed Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant, who were given a bio-bubble break, while the injured duo of K.L. Rahul and Hardik Pandya remain on the recovery path. Yet, India papered over the cracks and found men who could fill these vacant boots. Even Rohit after a 44 at Lucknow, managed just one and five in the last two encounters. The absence of key personnel and the meagre batting returns from the captain were tided past. The West Indies earlier and Sri Lanka now are essentially outfits in transition, but India deserves credit for the way it drove home its advantage with emphatic performances.

As India builds a unit leading into the ICC Twenty20 World Cup later this year in Australia, these results offer hope. Even from among those players pencilled in as part of the core group, Rohit missed an injured Suryakumar Yadav, who had flourished against the West Indies. But like the Test squad that revealed a strong bench-strength during the tour of Australia in the 2020-21 season, the Men in Blue displayed a similar resilience. Be it Ishan Kishan or a Sanju Samson being tried atop the batting tree or a Shreyas Iyer, positioned as the latest middle-order fulcrum, what caught the eye was the ease with which these batters embraced their roles. Shreyas was in blistering form as evident from his unbeaten knocks of 57, 74 and 73. The Mumbaikar and his alliance with Ravindra Jadeja in the second match, which perhaps could have gone to the wire, offered riveting fare and hinted at the host’s ominous form, especially in its backyard. Jadeja’s return again provides the all-round option that India has chased ever since Kapil Dev retired in 1994. Jadeja, Hardik and wicket-keepers who can bat like earlier in the case of M.S. Dhoni and currently through Pant, offer balance to any unit. Currently Indian cricket’s conveyor belt is chugging along smoothly with emerging players showing no signs of stage-fright.



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Talks to end the war are a must as sanctions on Russia will hurt the wider world

Saturday’s announcement by the U.S., the U.K. and European allies, including France and Germany, of a raft of ‘further restrictive economic measures’ to increase the costs on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine has just raised the risks of a more widespread economic fallout from this war. With a view to further isolating Russia from the international financial system, the western allies decided to block ‘selected’ Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system used to validate and complete international payment transactions. They also resolved to impose restrictions on the Russian central bank’s ability to access and deploy the country’s ‘war chest’ of an estimated $630 billion in foreign exchange reserves. The immediate impact of these moves on Russia’s economy and financial markets have manifested in a sharp depreciation in the value of the rouble — the currency tumbled almost 30% intra-day to a record low against the dollar in Asian trading on Monday and has weakened about 26% so far in 2022. They also forced the country’s central bank to more than double its benchmark interest rate to 20%, the highest in almost two decades, and impose controls on capital flows. Russia’s largest lender Sberbank found its European arm facing a run on its deposits, which the European Central Bank warned could lead to the unit’s ‘failure’. With Russians waiting in long queues outside ATMs on fears of likely cash shortages, the country’s citizens face the real prospect of runaway inflation.

But the economic costs of Vladimir Putin’s unilateral decision to embark on what he called a ‘special military operation’ to describe Russia’s all-out invasion of its western neighbour last week are already being felt worldwide. European banks and companies with significant business exposure to Russia have taken a beating on the bourses given the extent to which the sharp escalation in the sanctions is certain to hurt their operations and revenues. And though the western allies have carefully avoided any mention so far on closing the tap on Russia’s massive exports of oil and gas that contribute substantially to the country’s current-account surplus, concerns about possible disruptions to shipments from the world’s second-largest producer of oil have pushed the price of Brent crude futures well above $100 a barrel. With most large European economies majorly reliant on energy supplies from Russia, the spectre of rising energy costs fanning a bruising acceleration in inflation in Europe and worldwide is very real. At a time when a durable recovery from the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic is yet to take hold, the war initiated by Russia, and the consequent sanctions on it, especially if widened to cover countries that seek to bypass the sanctions regime, pose a challenge to the global economy that Rabobank’s economists projected could be ‘so bad’ as to be unquantifiable. Expedient negotiations to end the conflict are the only way forward.



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London, Feb. 29: Mr. D. P. Dhar, Chairman of the External Affairs Ministry’s Policy Planning Committee, told newsmen here last night that France, Britain and the Soviet Union agreed with the Indian view favouring a direct peace talks with Pakistan. Mr. Dhar, who arrived here on Sunday evening after visits to Paris and Moscow, had a meeting during his only working day here yesterday with Mr. Anthony Royle, Minister of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the absence of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who is now away on a visit to Spain. He is due to fly to Cairo later to-day before returning home. Answering questions Mr. Dhar said all these countries were genuinely interested in peace and stability in the sub-continent. The Soviet approach, he pointed out, had been closest to India throughout the Indo-Pak. crisis and Moscow agreed with the Indian view that genuine endeavours must be made for achieving lasting peace in the sub-continent. He said the relations between Britain and India had for the first time since the partition acquired new closeness based on mutual trust and understanding.



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More NATO

It would be more appropriate to describe the Russia-Ukraine developments as a NATO war rather than Putin’s war. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, given its origin and purpose, owes more than an explanation for Ukraine’s possible entry into NATO which precipitated this war. While NATO is known for its expansionism, Vladimir Putin only wants to be sure of Russia’s borders which are essential for its sovereignty. He has been repeatedly reminding Ukraine of its shared historical lineage with Russia. Unless Mr. Putin’s broader question on NATO is answered, Ukraine will remain a thorny question. History has taught us that the world is only bipolar.

N.G.R. Prasad,

Chennai

Ukraine students

The reports about hundreds of Indian professional students returning from war-torn Ukraine raise the issue of the rehabilitation of these students. The course of events in Ukraine has dashed their hopes and dreams. But by acting quickly to rehabilitate them, the Government of India and States can create a precedent and ‘resolution template’ if there are similar and unfortunate situations in the future. There should be a high powered expert group in place, with representation from the Government of India, States and educational institutions, to coordinate admissions for these students in domestic institutions, commensurate with their qualifications and academic record so far. Governments and corporates may have to subsidise costs on a need-based basis. Educational institutions may have to be permitted to create additional seats on a supernumerary basis, for once. Most students may be in a position to bear the costs up to the level they had planned while in Ukraine.

M.G. Warrier,

Thiruvananthapuram

Recruiting students, especially for medical courses, has become a lucrative business for overseas education consultants, and students from India have been lured to join even ‘substandard courses, after paying exorbitant amounts as fees. The high percentage of foreign-educated doctors who face difficulties in screening tests such as the Foreign Medical Graduates Examination (FGME) that is required for a licence to practise in India underscores the point. The Ukraine-Russia conflict and its repercussions must be a wake-up call for students planning to go abroad for higher education. Instead, more opportunities must be provided for their medical education in India by increasing the number of seats, and keeping a check on capitation fees.

Dr. Biju C. Mathew,

Thiruvananthapuram

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged the private sector to provide/enable opportunities for Indian students in the field of medical education. It is also an indirect question posed to the students: ‘Why do you go to such countries for medical education?’ The answer is that the Government ought to have fulfilled their aspirations by starting more colleges. There is brain drain in the field of medicine in India. In parallel, Indian doctors are not ready to work in rural areas too. Professional education should be removed from the concurrent list.

Rajakumar Arulanandham,

Palayamkottai, Tamil Nadu

Held at sea

A key reason for the atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan Navy against the fishermen from Tamil Nadu has to do with the stepmotherly policy treatment meted out to fishermen from the South. There needs to be a permanent solution which may include marking out areas around Katchatheevu to fish.

Tharcius S. Fernando,

Chennai



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The 31st meeting of the Indo-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission concluded its two-day deliberations. Both countries expressed optimism on finding a solution for sharing the Teesta waters. Summing up the meeting, the Indian Minister for Irrigation, Kedar Pandey told newsmen, “We are nearing a solution”.

The 31st meeting of the Indo-Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission concluded its two-day deliberations. Both countries expressed optimism on finding a solution for sharing the Teesta waters. Summing up the meeting, the Indian Minister for Irrigation, Kedar Pandey told newsmen, “We are nearing a solution”. Commenting on the statements of his Indian counterpart, the Bangladesh presidential adviser and leader of Bangladesh’s delegation at the meeting, Shafi-ul-Azam, said, “It is moving forward.” He expressed his optimism on the prospect of a solution to the Teesta tangle in the next JRC meeting due to take place in New Delhi in June.

Farmer Rally

The first ever kisan rally held in Bihar by three national parties in the opposition raised hopes of their leaders striving for united action with the aim of evolving a political alternative to the Congress (I). The galaxy of leaders who gave the impression that they were earnest about attaining the aim of a political alternative included Charan Singh, Chandra Shekhar and Sharad Pawar. Although there were kisans from far and near, they seemed to be outnumbered by the urban audience.

Sterilisation Deaths

The target approach to family planning has again done more harm than good. The Family Welfare Department observed February as “intensive month” in Dhenkanal district and at the end of it at least two women were reported dead and many hospitalised.

Hijackers Surrender

Armed hijackers holding an Air Tanzania Boeing-737 freed all their hostages without injury and surrendered to police. All the estimated 90 passengers held hostage were safe and well, with no injuries and no casualties.



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The invasion has brought the spotlight on Russian oligarchs and their ownership of clubs, notably Chelsea, which will serve as another moral and monetary leverage as the rest of the world attempts to stop Russia.

Sport is finally pulling its weight in international affairs, and proving to live up to the cliche of being a pathfinder for the youth. That’s a lone sliver of hope in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Football, more through its players than its feet-dragging administrators, has gone ahead and moved the summer’s biggest club draw — the Champions League final — out of Russia. Russia has been hit by economic sanctions, and freezing of its financial assets. But nothing visibly isolates a football-mad nation such as Russia like the refusal to engage with it on a football field. With Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic refusing to play their World Cup qualifiers against Russia and Belarus, football has used its clout to express its dismay with the invasion.

The invasion has brought the spotlight on Russian oligarchs and their ownership of clubs, notably Chelsea, which will serve as another moral and monetary leverage as the rest of the world attempts to stop Russia. Elsewhere footballers have donned ‘No War’ jerseys, and the World Judo Federation has removed Vladimir Putin from his top post in the sport. Sport upon sport — from gymnastics to badminton — have issued strong condemnations, revoking of hosting rights to Russian cities and ordered non-display of Russian flags wherever their athletes participate.

The most poignant opposition to the war has come from Russian big names on the international circuit. While Andrey Rublev scribbled ‘No War’ on camera after winning at Dubai, a host of Russian chess GMs — Ian Nepomniachtchi, Peter Svidler and Alexandra Kosteniuk — have ventured to take a stand against war, calling it a dark day. FIDE cancelled its Olympiad in Russia and pro-war GM and legislator, Anatoly Karpov, was put on an EU list of sanctions freezing his assets on EU territory as well as blocking travel. Chess moves have come to life, and Russia, the grand behemoth of that sport, is expected to take note.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on March 1, 2022 under the title ‘Checkmate Russia’.



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Angela Merkel took a bold leap when she opened her country to migrants fleeing the Syrian war amid rising xenophobia in Europe. Her successor has taken the next one.

One of the most consequential moments of the current conflict in Ukraine is Germany’s decision to shed seven decades of quiet caution and throw itself into Ukraine’s defence against the Russian invasion. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who had initially refused to take a stand against the threatening mobilisation of troops by Russia at the Ukrainian border, last week announced that Germany would give Ukraine 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 surface to air missiles to counter “Russian aggression”. Scholz also announced the allocation of $112 billion to ramp up defence production in anticipation of how Europe could now find itself in the midst of prolonged military tensions. This is a significant development for a country that firmly turned its back on nationalism as militarism after the trauma of the Hitlerian years and World War II. The reversal in Berlin in the defence of Ukraine, including by participating in the financial sanctions and suspending the Nord Stream 2 project, all of which it was reluctant to do earlier, has beefed up the opposition against Russian actions — and steeled European resolve.

The evolution of Germany’s idea of its post-war military from self-defence to humanitarian intervention to multilateral participation in expeditionary wars, took place against a background of massive public protests against even rearming for national defence, against the nuclearisation of German territory during the Cold War, and in the 1990s, against participation in the Iraq and Yugoslav crisis. German airbases and finances were available for the 1990 Operation Desert Storm, but not soldiers, and during the war in the former Yugoslavia, Germany contributed to enforcing an embargo at sea against Serbia and Montenegro. But German public opinion also underwent a shift after the Serbian army carried out a massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. Germany’s leadership at the turn of the century enabled the country’s participation along with other NATO countries in the US-led Afghan war in 2001, over the protests of German citizens. It was based on the rationale that Europe’s economic powerhouse simply could not sit out a war against terrorism, being waged for “everything our world holds dear” as the then Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said, including freedom, democracy, tolerance and human life.

Given the say that German citizens have had in matters of war and peace, Scholz, who ascended to the chancellorship only in October last year, has taken a huge gamble. Depending on how it ends, and how the German economy — dependent so much on Russian gas — comes out of it, there will be significant changes in how Germany perceives itself in Europe, within the transatlantic alliance, and in the wider world. Angela Merkel took a bold leap when she opened her country to migrants fleeing the Syrian war amid rising xenophobia in Europe. Her successor has taken the next one. Watch this space.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on March 1, 2022 under the title ‘New Berlin’.



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Considering the limitations of data, it is possible that these estimates do not accurately factor in the economic fallout of the third wave of the pandemic, and the ongoing geopolitical crisis.

On Monday, data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) showed that the Indian economy grew at 5.4 per cent in the third quarter of the ongoing financial year (2021-22). For the full year, the NSO now expects the economy to grow at 8.9 per cent, marginally lower than its earlier estimate of 9.2 per cent. These latest numbers imply that economic growth is likely to slow down further to 4.8 per cent in the fourth quarter (January-March). Thus, over the second half of this year, growth is now expected to average only 5.1 per cent, down from a base-effect induced 14.4 per cent in the first half. This is considerably lower than the RBI’s estimate, which in the December monetary policy committee meeting, had retained its projection for the full year at 9.5 per cent, while projecting growth at 6.6 per cent in the third quarter and 6 per cent in the fourth quarter. This implies that the pace of recovery has moderated considerably against what was expected earlier.

The disaggregated data shows the momentum dipping across sectors. The manufacturing sector has barely registered a rise. Value added by the sector grew at just 0.2 per cent in the third quarter. Construction activities have in fact contracted by 2.8 per cent in the third quarter. Further, the labour intensive trade, hotels, transport and communications sector — despite growing at 11.6 per cent in 2021-22 — will not be able to recover to pre-Covid levels (in real terms). Similarly, the outlook for both private consumption and investment activity remains muted. Private consumption which grew at 7 per cent in the third quarter, is expected to slow down to 1.5 per cent in the fourth quarter. Similarly, gross fixed capital formation, which essentially connotes investment activity in the economy, is expected to grow at just around 1.6 per cent in the second half of the year.

Considering the limitations of data, it is possible that these estimates do not accurately factor in the economic fallout of the third wave of the pandemic, and the ongoing geopolitical crisis. While the economic impact of each subsequent wave of Covid infections has been less deleterious than the previous one, activities, especially the contact intensive services, did take a hit — the Nomura India Business Resumption Index had dipped to 101.8 in January, down from a peak of 116.5 in the weeks before. Then there is the impact of the ongoing conflict between Russia-Ukraine to contend with. The surge in commodity prices, especially crude oil, will impact both businesses and households, though the effects may be visible with a lag. This would imply a downside risk to the fourth quarter and the annual growth estimates.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on March 1, 2022 under the title ‘Steady but slow’.



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P D T Achary writes: In its verdict in the Goa MLAs case, Bombay High Court has misread the 10th schedule of the Constitution, which was meant to prevent horse trading among legislators.

The High Court of Bombay at Goa in its judgment, delivered on February 25, held that the former members of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) in the Goa assembly who had defected to the BJP are exempt from disqualification under paragraph 4(2) of the Constitution’s Tenth Schedule, referred to commonly as the anti-defection law. The court said that under sub-paragraph (2) of paragraph (4), the merger of this group of Congress MLAs with the BJP is deemed to be a merger of the original political party (Indian National Congress) with the BJP. Therefore, these members are protected under paragraph (4).

Paragraph (4) of the Tenth Schedule exempts defectors from disqualification if their original political party merges with another party and two-thirds of the members of that party in the legislature agree with the merger. Ten of the 15 MLAs of the CLP in the Goa Assembly — two-thirds of the party’s strength in the House — had joined the BJP.

However, the basic premise of the February 25 judgment is that sub-paragraph (2) is distinct from the parent paragraph, and a factual merger of the original political party is not necessary. This does not square with the content, context and thrust of paragraph (4), which contemplates the factual merger of the original political party — in this case, the INC. The court’s view — the merger of the 10 MLAs of the CLP with the BJP should be regarded as the Congress itself merging with the BJP — goes against the letter and spirit of the Tenth Schedule, paragraph (4) in particular.

Paragraph (4) is an exception to the Tenth Schedule’s main provisions. It operates only when the defectors’ original political party has merged with the party to which they have defected and two-thirds of the members of the legislature belonging to that party have agreed to the merger. Under this provision, the merger of the original political party has to take place first, followed by two-thirds of the MLAs agreeing to that merger.

The High Court has made much of the following words in sub-paragraph (2): “The merger of the original political party of a member of the House shall be deemed to have taken place, if and only if, not less than two thirds of the members of the legislature party concerned have agreed to such merger”. But the opening words of sub-paragraph (2) — “for the purposes of sub-paragraph (1) of this paragraph” — clearly mean that to exempt a member from disqualification on account of defection, and for considering this member’s claim that he has become a member of the party with which the merger has taken place, a merger of two political parties alone is not enough. Not less than two-thirds of the members should also agree to such a merger. The lawmakers made it tough for potential defectors to defect.

For the adjudicating authority to entertain a claim by a member that his original political party has merged with another party, and that he has become a member of such party after the merger, he also needs to show that two-thirds of his fellow members have agreed to such a merger. The words “such merger” make it clear beyond any shadow of doubt that the merger of the original political party has to take place before two-thirds of the members agree to such a merger.

The HC seems to have missed the significance of the words “such merger”. In fact, the members of the legislature cannot agree among themselves to merge as the court has said, but they can agree to a merger after it takes place. The court has further said, erroneously, that the two sub-paragraphs 1 and 2 of paragraph 4 should be seen as independent entities. The error in the verdict seems to have occurred here. The second sub-paragraph is, in fact, a continuation of the first sub-paragraph and is in the nature of an explanation. The first sub-paragraph cannot be a code in itself because the claim of a member for exemption from disqualification cannot be decided independently on the basis of sub-paragraph (1). It can be decided only when paragraph (4) is read as a whole. The error in the judgment is obvious here.

The anti-defection law was designed to eliminate political defection. However, the judgment of the Bombay HC seems to assume that paragraph (4) of the 10th schedule is meant to facilitate defection. This judgment is likely to open the flood gates to defection. The Supreme Court must intervene quickly.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 1, 2022 under the title ‘Misreading defection law’. The writer is former Secretary General, Lok Sabha



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Amitabh Mattoo, Amrita Narlikar write: The mishandling of the situation by the US, UK, and EU provides a textbook case of how not to negotiate.

Ukraine, a sovereign and European nation, was invaded by Russia last Thursday. There can be no excuses for this. While the almost universal condemnation of Russian aggression is justified, the West has had a direct hand in contributing to the existential crisis that Ukraine faces today.

If anything, the mishandling of the situation by the US, UK, and EU, provides us with a textbook case of how not to negotiate. And we do not even need to go as far back as the security guarantees that the West gave Ukraine in return for surrendering its nuclear weapons, and which nonetheless failed to kick in when Russia annexed Crimea. Seven deadly — and recent — blunders on the part of Western powers have brought both Ukraine and Russia to this point.

First, the Russian invasion must be taken in the context of the withdrawal of the US and its allies from Afghanistan last year. Since the Obama administration, the US had been that it was no longer willing to act as the world’s policeman. But signalling the helter-skelter process and the ignominious outcome of a handover back to the Taliban (after 20 years and trillions of dollars wasted) were evidence of fundamental policy failures and weakened US commitment and ability. In contrast, had the performance in Afghanistan by the US and the Europeans been less chaotic, authoritarian leaders and expansionist states might not be so emboldened today.

Second, the Biden administration, in the weeks prior to February 24, engaged in announcements that were tantamount to war-mongering. Not only did the US and UK begin withdrawing families of diplomats from Kyiv as early as January 23, but the US also made public announcements on the expected date of the Russian attack. While this type of information was essential to share with intelligence agencies of allies and friends, to go public with such announcements may have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even if Putin had not intended to unleash his forces on Ukraine, he would have had little choice but to do so after such declarations from the US. Not acting after having been talked up in this way would have resulted in loss of face, both internally and externally.

Third, in the lead-up to February 24, we saw multiple leaders come out in favour of Ukraine. This was evident at the Munich Security Conference, where President Zelenskyy received a standing ovation. And lest people think this was little more than lip-service, the moral support was accompanied at least by some actions. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for instance, took the important step of putting the approval process of Nord Stream 2 on hold, a courageous move that his predecessor had firmly resisted. Various friendly countries have provided a variety of assistance to Ukraine, ranging from aid to arms. But let us not over-glorify this assistance. Words of support and aid may perhaps have given Ukraine a false sense of security and optimism, but they would not have deterred Putin; that these words come without military support on the ground (or in the air) likely only increased Russian resolve.

Fourth, for all the frantic diplomacy and warning Russia of severe penalties should it violate Ukrainian sovereignty, empty threats seldom work, especially with strongmen. Former German Defence Minister, Annagret Kramp-Karrenbauer, understood this when she tweeted: “We have forgotten the lesson of Schmidt and Kohl that negotiation always comes first, but we have to be militarily strong enough to make non-negotiation not an option for the other side.” The West not only failed to give Ukraine the backing necessary to take on Russia, if actually attacked, but also failed to credibly signal enough military prowess on its own part that might have deterred Russian aggression.

Fifth, having issued failed warnings to Russia against invading Ukraine, the West turned to economic and personal sanctions. A debate immediately erupted among policy wonks on whether excluding SWIFT transactions would diminish the effectiveness of the sanction. But one way or another, this debate is really a second-order one: As one sanctions expert recently tweeted, “No sanctions are ‘nuclear’ in their effect; they’re just not that powerful.” Add to this the fact that most advocates of sanctions recognise that to see the effects of sanctions, one must exercise patience; the emphasis on the “long-term” was also clear in Biden’s speech of February 24. But what good is the long-term for Ukrainians, who are losing their lives to Russian artillery today?

Sixth, for all the big talk of sanctions from Western leaders, it is difficult to buy even their limited bite if one looks at the level of dependence of Europe on Russia for energy, and — even worse — the enmeshment of Russian money in the British economy. If Boris Johnson means what he says, then should he not — just as one example — be persuading the University of Oxford to give up the massive endowment it received to build the Blavatnik School of Public Policy? We have seen no sign of this, thus far.

Seventh, the entire Western strategy on dealing with Russia has been short-sighted — a classic instance of Europe and the US not being able to see beyond their noses, or in this case, the transatlantic region. Their weak and ineffective goading of Russia — and hapless refusal to protect Ukraine — will likely drive Russia further into the arms of China. And if the West was unable to curtail expansionism — on its own borders — by one authoritarian state on its own, what chance has it to preempt similar adventurism by China on Taiwan?

This brings us to our final point. As strong supporters of liberal values, we are disappointed to see India not standing up with Ukraine. But if events in the lead-up to the war are anything to go by, we cannot blame the Indian government for its fence-sitting. If the West could allow a potential close European partner to be treated in this way by an authoritarian power, then perhaps being perched on the fence is indeed the safest position.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 1, 2022 under the title ‘Failed by the West’. Mattoo is Professor at JNU and University of Melbourne. Narlikar is Professor and President at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and Honorary Fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge



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Anil Baluni writes: India has proven time and again its capability in carrying out rescue operations overseas.

For India, the Russia-Ukraine war has unfolded a crisis in the form of thousands of stranded citizens, particularly students, who are stuck in the conflict zone. Once again, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leading from the front to ensure quick evacuation of Indians from the war zone. Immediately after the war broke out, PM Modi wasted no time in putting the Ministry of External Affairs and other ministries in top gear to carry out a multi-pronged evacuation exercise, called Operation Ganga.

Within hours, response teams of the MEA and other ministries were in place with top officials coordinating Operation Ganga in New Delhi; and in Kyiv, Lviv, Chernivtsi in Ukraine. To speed up the evacuation process, the MEA also deployed its teams in Warsaw, Shehyni-Medyka and Krakowiec border crossings in Poland, the Zahony/Kipp Tysa border crossing in Hungary, Vysne Nemecke border crossing in the Slovak Republic and Suceava border crossing in Romania.

Thanks to the quick response from PM Modi and his diplomatic skills, within 48 hours, around 1,400 Indians, mostly students, have been flown back from the war zone in six special flights, where the entire cost of the evacuation is being borne by the government. The PM is personally monitoring the entire evacuation exercise, while Cabinet ministers like Piyush Goyal and Jyotiraditya Scindia received students and citizens at the airport.

As thousands more await evacuation from the countries neighbouring Ukraine, the Indian government has stepped up its efforts with more flights to join “Operation Ganga” in the next few days. The latest efforts also involve four senior ministers — Hardeep Puri, Jyotiradiyta Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and V K Singh — travelling to Ukraine’s neighbouring countries to coordinate the evacuation mission and help stranded students and citizens.

As tensions between Russia and Ukraine increased during the past months, the government started collecting information on Indians living in Ukraine in January itself. The Indian embassy in Kyiv established contacts with 19,763 Indians who were living in Ukraine, while the special focus was laid on establishing communication with student contractors.

On February 20, the Indian embassy issued a strong advisory with the anticipation that the situation might worsen soon. The Indian government was quick to respond to the evolving situation in Ukraine. The air bubble limit was increased and under this, special flights were started. Under the air bubble, three flights landed between February 20 and 23, a day before the conflict started. By then, 4,000 Indians were back home.

Now the focus is on the safe return of all the remaining Indians. PM Modi has already made it very clear in the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) meeting that his government’s top priority is the safe return of every Indian at any cost. To ensure the safe and speedy return of Indians, particularly students, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar spoke to the foreign ministers of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, who agreed to help in the evacuation. Within the next few days, the remaining Indians are expected to return home safe.

The swift response and meticulous planning by the PM in times of crisis have once again proven that the adage “cometh the hour, cometh the man” holds very true for Modi. Under his leadership, India has accomplished some of the most difficult evacuation exercises in Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria, besides the Vande Bharat Mission, which was launched at a global scale to bring back Indians who were stranded abroad as the Covid pandemic shook the entire world.

In August last year, when foreign troops withdrew from Afghanistan, a humanitarian crisis of massive proportions unfolded in the country. As countries struggled for the safe return of their nationals, the Modi government launched “Operation Devi Shakti”, which was jointly carried out by our armed forces and the MEA. Around 700 people, including 450 Indians and 250 Afghans and some other nationals were evacuated. The world also saw how India brought back with full honour and respect the “Swaroops” of the Guru Granth Sahib (considered the “living guru”) and some ancient Hindu manuscripts.

Similarly, in early 2020, India kickstarted one of the world’s largest air-lift exercises under the Vande Bharat Mission covering 100 nations. A total of over 88,000 flights brought back around 70 lakh Indians stranded abroad due to the global lockdown, following the coronavirus outbreak. Then there are other extraordinary rescue missions carried out successfully. Who can forget the Operation Sankat Mochan in 2014 when 46 Indian nurses were rescued from the clutches of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in war-ravaged Iraq or Operation Raahat of April 2015 when the Indian Navy and Air Force rescued over 4,600 Indians and over 950 nationals of 41 countries from Yemen during the military intervention by Saudi Arabia and its allies. Then, in March 2016, following the serial bombings in Brussels airport and metro in Belgium, 250 Indians were evacuated.

Rescue missions under crises and critical situations require exemplary diplomatic skills, impeccable planning, and effective implementation. India has proven time and again its capability in carrying out rescue operations overseas. When it comes to saving and securing the lives of Indians, PM Modi has always shown remarkable compassion and empathy and has always felt the pain and suffering of the people. This is why we see such urgency from him when it comes to dealing with crises and emergency situations.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 1, 2022 under the title ‘In crisis, with the people’. The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP and the BJP’s national media head.



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C. Raja Mohan writes: As Europe unites against the Russian president’s aggression, India must realise that Putin and Russia are not the same.

Just a week ago, Germany was the weak link in the Western coalition trying to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to dial down the crisis in Ukraine. This week, Germany, the richest country in Europe and with the greatest political empathy towards Russia, has thrown its lot with its European and American partners to stand up against Putin’s war in Ukraine.

In a major speech at a special session of the Bundestag convened on Sunday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared that the Russian invasion of Ukraine marks a “turning point in Europe”. “Putin is not just seeking to wipe an independent country off the map. He is demolishing the European security order that had prevailed for almost half a century”, Scholz said. Scholz has outlined a five-pronged response — military solidarity with Ukraine, punitive measures against Putin’s Russia, vigorous commitment to European collective defence through NATO, German rearmament, and a reduction in Germany’s energy and economic interdependence with Russia. These are a radical set of new policies that profoundly alter the geopolitical orientation of Germany as well as Europe.

Germany has long provided the European parallel to India’s political warmth towards and strategic dependence on Russia. As Germany and Europe rise up against Putin’s aggression, Delhi too will have to come to terms, sooner than later, with the impact of Putin’s reckless course on India’s long-term interests.

As a nuclear power, Delhi can’t view with any detachment Putin’s decision to throw the nuclear card into the Ukraine battlefield. If Putin persists with his messianic attempt to reconstruct the Russian empire, Delhi has no reason to be seen as supporting the Kremlin’s imperial project in Europe.

In India and beyond in the global South, Russia’s traditional image was that of a natural ally against Western imperialism. Today, many developing countries will join the West in the United Nations General Assembly in voting against Putin’s attempt to destroy another nation.

Although it did not get much notice in India, in one of his recent speeches, Putin denounced the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, for emphasising the importance of autonomy for various nationalities in revolutionary Russia. Lenin, who saw Czarist Russia as a “prison house of nationalities”, insisted that the Soviet Union must be a federation of national republics rather than simply a communist version of the Russian empire.

Putin, who believes that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the “greatest tragedy of the 20th century”, is not trying to resurrect the USSR. He is trying to revive Czarist Russia. This would involve making Ukraine and Belarus satellite states and constructing a sphere of influence beyond Central Europe.

Putin’s overweening ambition — rooted in the “Great Russian chauvinism” that Lenin sought to root out — is already running into trouble. Putin’s claim that Ukraine was never a nation and that it “can be sovereign only in association with Russia” is of course challenged by the nationalist narrative in Ukraine. But that is beside the point. Whether Ukraine was ever a nation or not, it is being forged into one today by the resistance of its people against the Russian invasion. Putin has long sought to bring back Belarus into a union with Russia. He might succeed with the current regime in Minsk that survives with Putin’s support against the will of its people.

Russian adventurism in faraway lands might not have stirred Russia’s European neighbours. But the attempt to wipe out the sovereignty of a European nation has produced a sweeping backlash in the continent.

If the Kremlin had bet that Europe would be deeply divided in dealing with the Russian attack on Ukraine, the European response has been swift and hard. The EU has agreed on sweeping financial sanctions against Russia, many European countries have closed their airspace to Russia, and are isolating Moscow on multiple fronts, including football — a sacred ritual in Europe. Many political formations in Europe that have warmed to Russia – whether it is the progressive constituencies on the left or the nationalist ones on the right — are beginning to distance themselves from Putin’s war.

Some European countries have begun to supply arms to Ukraine; many offering significant economic and humanitarian assistance. The EU plans to buy $550 million worth of arms for Ukraine. Obsessed with dividing Europe and distancing it from the US, Putin’s Ukraine aggression has united Europe and consolidated the Western alliance.

Even as Scholz chose to devote Germany’s massive resources to defeating Putin, he has left the door open for diplomacy with Russia. He also made it clear that Germany and Europe have no quarrel with the Russian people and that the problem is with Putin’s messianic agenda.

Few European countries have been as empathetic to Russia as Germany. Despite Germany being a critical member of NATO, the country’s elites have nurtured deep political, cultural, and economic links with their Russian counterparts. German trade last year with Russia was close to $66 billion (compared to the paltry $10 bn between Delhi and Moscow). India, of course, is tied to Russian military supplies in a manner that Germany is not.

Those who are critical of Delhi’s abstention at the UN on the Ukraine crisis are perhaps unaware of the deep interconnections between Indian nationalism and Russia. The issues at hand are not just about weapon supplies and the regional balance of power where the interests of India and Russia have tended to converge in the last many decades. For a century, Indian progressives of all hues saw Russia as a natural ally in building modern India; they brought Russian literature and culture as well as political and economic ideas into mainstream Indian thinking. After independence, Moscow was for long seen as a positive factor in India’s geopolitical and security calculus.

Yet, the Indian political class needs to separate its enormous goodwill for Russia from Putin’s self-destructive imperial project in Europe. Like Germany and France, Delhi too would like Russia to take its rightful place in the European and global order. That now appears impossible under President Putin.

Unless Putin reverses course quickly, Russia will pay a heavy price for his unseemly ambition. Delhi has no reason to go down with Putin on this disastrous path. It must recognise that Putin and Russia are not the same. India must hope that a great nation like Russia will endure and is not a prolonged hostage to a strong man’s delusions and terrible miscalculations.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 1, 2022 under the title ‘United against a strongman’. The writer is a senior fellow with the Asia Society Policy Institute in Delhi and contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express.



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Christophe Jaffrelot writes: Freedom fighter and unionist, Jafri belonged to the tradition of progressive politics in Gujarat.

Ehsan Jafri was killed exactly 20 years ago, on the first day of the wave of communal violence that devastated several cities of Gujarat, including Ahmedabad, his city.

Jafri was a freedom fighter, unionist and a literary figure. Born in Burhanpur, he moved when he was six years old to Ahmedabad in 1935. While still at R C High School in Ahmedabad, he published a magazine in Urdu and then joined the freedom movement in the 1940s. After becoming a labour union leader, he was jailed for a year in 1949 because of his “calls for revolution”. Upon his release, he became the general secretary of the Progressive Editors’ Union and completed his law degree, after which he practised as a lawyer in Ahmedabad. In the 1969 communal riots that ravaged the city, his house was burnt down and his family moved to a relief camp. He rebuilt his house almost at the same place in Ahmedabad, in the industrial belt, and even established a Bohra housing association, Gulbarg Society.

For Jafri, 1969 was an important year, as the communal riots prompted him to get involved in secular politics. He joined Indira Gandhi’s Congress and became president of its Ahmedabad branch in 1972. He was elected MP for Ahmedabad in 1977, when the Congress (R) was so unpopular that it returned an unprecedentedly low number of MPs in Gujarat (10 out of 26). No Muslim candidate had ever been elected MP for Ahmedabad before — or indeed since. He never contested elections again but remained involved in public affairs, even though literature (including Urdu poetry) played an increasingly important part in his life.

In February 2002, he canvassed against Narendra Modi who was contesting a by-election in Rajkot. In one of his speeches, he “had urged people not to vote for him because he was an RSS man”. He died a few weeks later.

The assault on Gulbarg Society offers the most telling and damning illustration of the police’s attitude. The report of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal points out that what happened there was “probably the first carnage to have been unleashed after the Godhra tragedy”. Indeed, it set a pattern. It was surely the first target because of the personality of Ehsan Jafri. In the locality, his compound was considered to be a safe haven. After all, he was a former MP and during the 1985 riots, high-profile officials had protected him. As a result, when tensions mounted, people from the neighbourhood came to take refuge behind the high walls of Gulbarg Society.

There were about 200 people there at 7.30 in the morning, when a large crowd gathered in front of the compound. At 10.30 am, according to some of the survivors who testified before the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, the Commissioner of Police of Ahmedabad, P C Pandey, visited Jafri “and gave him a personal assurance that they would send reinforcements and that he would be fully protected”. But “within five minutes of the CP’s departure, at 10.35 am, the Zahir Bakery and an auto-rickshaw just outside Gulberg society were burnt” and the attack on Gulbarg Society began. According to eyewitnesses, including a Parsi woman who stayed with him till the end, Ehsan Jafri had “made repeated frantic calls, pleading for police assistance against a huge mob in a murderous mood. He kept calling the control room for several hours”. Three mobile vans of the city police were on hand around Jafri’s house but did not intervene. It was only nine hours later that the Rapid Action Force (RAF) of the central government intervened, by which time it was far too late. In Gulbarg Society, 69 people were killed, including Ehsan Jafri, three Jafri brothers and two nephews.

The chief of the Bohra community, the Syedna, distanced himself from the victims of the 2002 events and nor did he even mention that Ehsan Jafri was a member of his community.

It is important to remember Ehsan Jafri today, 20 years after his death, not only because the events of 2002 are fading away, lost to history, but also because his personal commitment was part of a Gujarati political tradition that is also being forgotten. Jafri was one of the last incarnations of the Congress school of thought that Indulal Yagnik had created in the 1920s. Yagnik felt for the poor. He shared this inclination with Mahatma Gandhi, who became his mentor in Ahmedabad in the early 1920s. But he was isolated, as the Gujarat Congress was gradually captured by Hindu traditionalists, including Sardar Patel, K M Munshi, Gulzarilal Nanda and Morarji Desai.

Yagnik left Congress as early as the 1920s. Gandhi could not help and hardly tried to retain him. But he became the rallying point of progressive politics in Gujarat for 50 years. After the 1969 split, he followed Indira Gandhi, whereas Desai and others formed the Congress (O). He was re-elected on this ticket in 1971, to the same Ahmedabad seat he had held since 1957. This is the seat that Jafri won in 1977.

Jafri was not the last progressive figure of the Congress in Gujarat. The architects of the KHAM coalition, that brought together Kshatriyas (OBCs), Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims, drew their inspiration from Yagnik too. Another of Yagnik’s protégés, Madhavsinh Solanki, became the chief minister in the 1980s. 2022 is an election year in Gujarat too and whether this school of thought can be revived as an alternative to the BJP remains to be seen.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 1, 2022 under the title ‘Remembering Ehsan Jafri’. The writer is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, and professor of Indian politics and sociology at King’s India Institute, London.



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The tragic death of Indian student Naveen Shekharappa G in Ukraine’s Kharkiv has sharply brought home the extreme dangers confronting Indian citizens in that country. Naveen, hailing from Haveri in Karnataka, was a fourth-year student at Kharkiv National Medical University. He had taken shelter in the bunker below his flat as the Russian bombardment of Kharkiv intensified. He had reportedly gone out to buy food when he lost his life in the shelling. 

With thousands of Indian students still trapped in different parts of Ukraine, this is an extremely complicated situation. True, GOI has stepped up efforts to bring Indian citizens back from the war-torn country. But with the Russian invasion in full swing and reports emerging of Moscow deploying even heavier armaments in its military operations, things could get far worse. As things stand, GOI’s plan is to get stranded Indians to nations neighbouring Ukraine like Poland, Romania, Moldova, Slovakia and Hungary, and then fly them back home. But the real challenge for the rescue mission lies within Ukraine itself. With the war there intensifying, transport options have become extremely limited and there is a crush of refugees at Ukraine’s western borders. Thus, asking Indian students to get to extraction points would mean they would have to risk their lives as bombs fall on Ukrainian cities. 

Given this scenario, India has called on Ukraine and Russia to facilitate urgent safe passage for Indian nationals. But frankly speaking it is the Russian military assault that is endangering the lives of Indians in Ukraine. And with the conflict escalating, the possibility of more tragedies affecting India cannot be ruled out. If that happens, India has to seriously reconsider its neutral position on the Ukraine situation as well as review its strategic ties with Russia. New Delhi must draw a line at Indian lives. 



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GoI on Monday announced that four of its ministers, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Hardeep Puri, Kiren Rijiju and VK Singh, will travel to countries on the western border of Ukraine to enhance the coordination mechanism in place to evacuate Indian nationals trapped in the war zone. Currently, GoI’s efforts are focussed on using border crossings between Ukraine and its neighbours, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova to evacuate Indians. Subsequently, they are airlifted from these countries.

The foreign ministry said that its assessment last month showed that 20,000 Indians, including students, were in Ukraine. Following GoI advisories as the geopolitical situation worsened, around 4,000 nationals left Ukraine. Following the launch of the evacuation, named Operation Ganga, as of Sunday, 1,156 people have been flown back to India. It’s a good step on GoI’s part to organise the evacuation at its own cost. The primary constraint now is evacuating Indians out of the war zone as there’s no paucity of flights to bring them back. To make the effort effective, the foreign ministry has dispatched officers with knowledge of Russian to Kyiv. Separately, GoI’s communication with Ukraine has included efforts to ensure that no Indian national is harmed on account of the sovereign choices India exercised at the UN.

There’s been some criticism at home of the students staying on till the invasion began. Critics are misguided. Students who are pursuing medicine in Ukraine are there only because it’s a cheaper option than private Indian medical colleges. The demand for flights out of Ukraine resulted in air fares surging up to Rs 1 lakh, making them unaffordable for stranded students, many of whom come from families with modest resources. Given this backdrop, the four handpicked ministers are expected to smoothen the process. Separately, the root cause of the need for evacuation foregrounds a serious problem in the Indian education system.

It defies logic that so many Indian students have to make long journeys to pursue their dream of becoming doctors. It shows glaring failures in the Indian education system that Ukraine, a country with a per capita GDP about two times that of India, can offer more affordable training in medicine. This should serve as a wake-up call to GoI and states which oversee higher education. If they can get their act together in this sphere, many Indian families will be spared the agony and the expense that comes with having to organise finances to send their children overseas to realise their aspirations.



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School educators everywhere struggle to spot bullying before it escalates. What is specially indefensible in the case of a teenaged student’s suicide in Faridabad last week, is that his mother says she made repeated complaints to the school authorities and all of these were ignored. That other children mentally and physically tormented the student for various factors that set him ‘apart’, is classic bullying. That the teachers refused to take serious note of such behaviour, speaks to a more culpable shirking of the responsibility to ensure that schools are safe environments for children.

Experts say that poor local research and most educational institutes relying on Western data to design prevention and intervention programmes decreases the likelihood of their effectiveness. Such programmes are very rare to begin with. A 2014 Assocham survey that showed only 3% of private schools in Delhi-NCR having counsellors, as against the CBSE guideline requiring at least one full-time counsellor per school, was very telling. This makes teachers the default stand-in. But without proper training they cannot deliver either. The present case is indicative at best of a penchant for misreading seriously hurtful behaviour as harmless, and at worst of active negligence.

But the other thing experts emphasise is that suicide comes at the end of a complex pathway of factors. This makes the arrest of the school headmistress for abetment of suicide in the present case, as questionable as Rhea Chakraborty being similarly booked in 2020. The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 recognised that attempt to suicide is not a crime – both logically and medically driving people to suicide should not be a crime either. Indian schools are crying for structural protections against bullying and fixing accountability for excesses is also important. But populist scapegoating is a poor substitute and does little to prevent a recurrence of the present tragedy.



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Similarly, the decision to send Cabinet ministers to countries neighbouring Ukraine to help ensure smooth and safe passage of those caught in the crossfire is a wise move. It unequivocally signals GoI's intent to leave no Indian national behind.

GoI's decision to rope in the Indian Air Force along with commercial flights in Operation Ganga to evacuate Indian nationals, mainly students, from war-hit Ukraine is timely and much welcome. This will add speed to evacuation efforts under escalating circumstances. Similarly, the decision to send Cabinet ministers to countries neighbouring Ukraine to help ensure smooth and safe passage of those caught in the crossfire is a wise move. It unequivocally signals GoI's intent to leave no Indian national behind. The death of Naveen Gyanagoudar, an Indian medical student, in the Russian shelling of Kharkiv on Tuesday is one fatality too many.

It is also commendable that GoI has extended its efforts to evacuating nationals from other South Asian countries. It is in line with GoI's consistent call to stop the war. At the end of the day, geopolitics and realpolitik all lead up to one thing: keeping people safe. India has a long history of undertaking successful evacuation missions, most recently from Afghanistan (2021), and before that from Yemen (2015), Libya (2011), Lebanon (2006) and the biggest, of over 1 lakh nationals, in Kuwait (1990). India has a playbook. Its 'neutrality' also makes it possible to reach out to other governments to ensure successful evacuation efforts.

There is, however, a caveat: advisories issued by the Indian government should be taken by Indian nationals staying abroad with a greater degree of seriousness. Much before Russia invaded Ukraine, GoI did advise its citizens to leave the country. That advisory went largely unheeded. Bringing home one's people quickly and safely from war and disaster zones marks out a mature and able country. And this, India is undertaking well by using all the tools in its box.
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They resumed their march within a week of the Russian invasion. Insurance premiums on cargo to the region are trending up as well.

The government is concerned about the immediate effect on Indian exports to warring Russia and Ukraine as shipping rates and energy prices spike further. Freight rates to Indian ports have shot up in the past year over container shortages and pandemic disruptions. They resumed their march within a week of the Russian invasion. Insurance premiums on cargo to the region are trending up as well. At immediate risk is India's almost $10 billion bilateral trade with Russia and a quarter of that with Ukraine. Spread over other countries affected by shipping disruptions in the region, as much as $3 billion in monthly cargoes to and from India could be affected.

Nirmala Sitharaman has stated that she is worried about large imports such as fertilisers from the region, as well. The government had budgeted for a tapering of the fertiliser subsidy in the next financial year. But disturbances in supply from Russia, a major exporter, are likely to upset that assumption. The warring countries supply India almost its entire sunflower oil imports and the Indian government is asking importers to seek supplies elsewhere as prices have begun to harden in south India. On its part, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked banks to provide details of their exposure to Russia and Ukraine after the US and the EU denied access to a segment of Russian banks to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) payment system.

Indian banks are not expected to have a big exposure, given the size of bilateral trade, and the country has the option of reviving the rupee-rouble mechanism to ease trade disruption. But companies with plans to borrow abroad may have to put them off for a while till bond markets become less turbulent. In the last two months, India Inc has raised a quarter of what it did last year through dollar bonds. The crisis in eastern Europe may also spawn export opportunities for Indian industry, particularly metals, if Russia and Ukraine were to vacate this market alongside energy and food.
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The loss of momentum was marked during the third quarter when growth slowed down appreciably from 20.3% and 8.5% in the prior two quarters as the base effect of an economy under the Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns wore off.

Data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) show India's gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 5.4% in the October-December quarter of 2021-22, accelerating from 0.7% in the corresponding period of the previous year. The NSO has trimmed its full-year growth forecast in its second advance estimates of national accounts to 8.9% growth in 2021-22, from the 9.2% it had projected in January, mainly because the economic contraction a year ago was less intense. The loss of momentum was marked during the third quarter when growth slowed down appreciably from 20.3% and 8.5% in the prior two quarters as the base effect of an economy under the Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns wore off.

The sequential deceleration was broad-based with gross value added (GVA) in manufacturing stalling and construction, with its linkage to employment especially for the lower end of the pyramid, contracting. The projection for the full year, however, sees these two segments posting smart recoveries. Agriculture lost steam from the same quarter a year ago, as did financial services. But contact-based services posted a turnaround from a virtual shutdown during Covid restrictions. Private consumption maintained its growth trend as front-loaded government expenditure eased off. The investment momentum was lower during the quarter. But it has held up over the first three quarters of 2021-22. The trade picture is positive overall for the nine months, with imports outpacing exports.

The estimates for the full year suggest the growth slowdown will persist in the fourth quarter, validating the policy response underlined in the Union budget to target it over inflation. That position has changed appreciably as pandemic-induced restrictions are lifted but the world deals with an oil shock. Tweaking policy to deal with energy inflation could have an effect on India's growth prospects. With buoyant trends in the government's revenues and spending, and an upward revision in the nominal GDP growth rate, the fiscal deficit could show up in better light.
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The second report of the Sixth Assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deals with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. It finds that the slow and fragmented efforts to adapt to the climate impacts already being experienced have left the poorest and most vulnerable at risk.

Increased political awareness about climate change notwithstanding, global effort at adapting to the impacts of warming and improving resilience lags far behind the rate of global warming. The second report of the Sixth Assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deals with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. It finds that the slow and fragmented efforts to adapt to the climate impacts already being experienced have left the poorest and most vulnerable at risk.

The report makes it clear that adapting to climate impacts is as critical as reducing emissions. The interdependence of climate, biodiversity and people reiterates the need for an all-of-government approach to adaptation and climate resilience, thereby preventing maladaptation that increases the vulnerability of communities least responsible for the climate crisis. This is a critical intervention that should be a wake-up call to policymakers, particularly in developing countries. Not designing policies that focus on adapting and improving resilience to climate change will endanger efforts to tackle poverty and improve well-being. Adaptation must no longer be a side issue, with the lion's share of policy attention and finance being directed at reducing emissions through green energy options and reduced dependence on fossil fuels.

India is among the most vulnerable countries. Though it has taken some measures, including setting up a National Adaptation Fund, India must prioritise adaptation. It will need to make it the core of its policymaking, be it building infrastructure or agriculture. Unaddressed, the complex compounding, cascading risk of climate impacts will undermine India's effort to grow its economy and pull all its citizens out of poverty.
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Bullying is a menace in educational institutions the world over, which has claimed thousands of victims by crushing their spirit, and in extreme cases, extinguishing their will to live. This was the case last week, when a 16-year-old student in Faridabad killed himself after months of alleged mental, physical and sexual harassment by his peers. His mother, a teacher at the school, alleged that her remonstrations elicited no response from the school authorities. On Sunday, police arrested the headmistress, who was named in his suicide note.

There are several takeaways. One, schools must be more vigilant of peer harassment and handle such cases firmly but sensitively. If the police find the school did little after repeated complaints, it is proof that it failed to protect students. Two, there is a need for clearer guidelines to prevent bullying. India has a law against ragging in colleges and guidelines issued by the Central Board of Secondary Education, but implementing these recommendations is key.

But ultimately, the law can only have a limited effect on the minds of young people. For example, the boy’s mother alleged he was bullied by male students for his sexuality. Irrespective of the victim’s sexual identity, it needs to be pointed out that homosexuality is legal in India, the right of transpersons is confirmed by the highest court in the land and positive portrayal is not uncommon in popular culture anymore. Yet, prejudice continues to poison young minds. To dispel this fog of bias, educators and parents will have to stress on the values of tolerance and kindness. Being different is neither bad nor an excuse for violence. It is a pity that a young life was lost in imparting this lesson.



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In an interview with Hindustan Times on May 19, 2016, movie star Abhishek Bachchan said, “I am trying to be the best I can. I don’t want to be compared to anyone, especially my father. I am not just his son, but also his biggest fan. Plus, it has been 16 years, and I’m still here in Bollywood. I am who I am because of my parents. Being their son is a matter of great pride for me.”

However, he disagreed with the contention that people have been hard on him because of his lineage. He said, “How many actors get compared to Amitabh Bachchan? How many actors have the privilege of being spoken about in the same breath as him? That’s my blessing. If anyone feels I am worthy of being compared to him, then I am doing something right.”

Dynasts in politics: Priyanka, Jayant, Akhilesh

The dynasts in the political world face similar challenges, perhaps even bigger. The comparisons are constant — of their looks and their work. And in every election, they are an easy target of attack from their opponents.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been — notwithstanding a few exceptions — trying to discourage party tickets to dynasty leaders. It has even made it a poll issue since 2014 by stating that the Congress, along with various regional parties, take on every election in the country and states, as parties that are run by families. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his rallies in Basti and Deoria on February 27, even went to the extent of dubbing the UP elections as a fight between dynasts and nationalists.

Despite the growing hue and cry over dynasties in politics, political parties continue to promote them, and there are valid reasons. While the educated youth in the cities are averse to the undue promotion of dynasties, rural folks aren't bothered by this. In fact, they tend to love the comparisons.

The Congress cadre has consistently been demanding Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's entry into active politics, primarily because she resembled her grandmother, late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and not for the political acumen that they saw in her. Hoardings and posters were sporadically put up in Prayagraj, demanding her entry even after Congress president Sonia Gandhi had introduced her son Rahul Gandhi as her successor.

Even after Gandhi Vadra dived into active politics, her every action was compared with her grandmother's — her quick, fearless steps, tearing into crowds, with bold statements, wearing cotton sarees, many of which were from her grandmother's collections. "She is Indira's avatar" — is how people reacted to her foray into the trouble-torn areas of UP, despite the bans and deployment of cops.

Jayant Chaudhary of the Rashtriya Lok Dal is also constantly compared to his grandfather, Chaudhary Charan Singh, a political stalwart. His clan members say fondly, “Arrey woh to Chaudhary jaisa lagta hai, baap pe nahin gaya hai (He resembles his grandfather, not his late father Ajit Singh).”

For someone, who is often accused of spending more time in Delhi than his home village Baraut in Baghpat, Jayant was in the news for the tenacity with which he stood with the farmers in 2021-22. The common refrain was, “He displayed the same temper as Charan Singh, spoke the same lingo in the same style, fiery yet witty. Who can say he studied abroad and quit a corporate job before taking charge of the RLD?” The Jat-dominated areas of West UP are seeing a rebirth of the RLD in 2022.

Akhilesh has it the hardest

However, neither Gandhi Vadra nor Jayant was beset with family issues like Samajwadi Party (SP) national president Akhilesh Yadav. Akhilesh faced this challenge the most because he inherited the party founded by his father Mulayam Singh Yadav, amid a family turmoil and a legacy battle with his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav, which started soon after the 2012 victory, but flared up in 2017.

His opponents, especially the BJP, never spare an opportunity to take a dig at him, so much so that it had an objection to his father and founder-president of the SP, campaigning in the Karhal assembly constituency, along with the inclusion of his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav and his wife Dimple Yadav in the list of star campaigners announced for the last four phases of elections in east UP. It is another matter that candidates, irrespective of the parties they belong to, depend heavily on the family members for their campaigning — an age-old practice in elections.

Because he bears a physical resemblance to his father Mulayam Singh Yadav, Akhilesh often faces a barrage of criticism for his style of functioning from his party seniors as well as opponents. “Had Mulayam been active, he would have kept the organisational machinery well oiled. He was a 24x7 leader. The other criticism was, while Mulayam had popular faces of all castes on party positions and billboards, Akhilesh had few. Third, he could not keep his family together as Mulayam did.”

Countering the charges, political experts feel the biggest challenge before Akhilesh is to change the image that the party encourages lawlessness. Akhilesh, without getting dragged into the discussions, has partly changed the pro-Yadav-Muslim image of the party and also denied tickets to big criminals. So, to refurbish the party's image, he stitched social alliances with other backward classes (OBCs) and established his political prowess. Experts feel that Akhilesh is now one of the tallest backward leaders of the state who, like his father, would play a crucial role in national politics in the years to come.

As for Akhilesh himself, he sums up the tumultuous situation with a famous quote, “Success has many fathers, defeat has none.” All said and done, he has come out of his father's shadow. Ask the people in rural areas about this debate on dynasties, and they quip, “An actor's son is a born actor. A doctor's children automatically pick the medical profession. So, why should there be an issue about a politician’s son or daughter pursuing politics?”

The scenario is no different in the western and the southern parts of the country where dynasties flourish, though the lookalikes may be a few.

The same looks may not always be a blessing as the legacy comes with lineage-triggered comparisons and caustic comments.

From her perch in Lucknow, HT’s resident editor Sunita Aron highlights important issues related to the elections in Uttar Pradesh

The views expressed are personal



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The Samajwadi Party (SP) has traversed quite a distance — from its fight for social justice to emphasising development — in the transition from the leadership of Mulayam Singh to his son, Akhilesh Yadav, in 2012. This election season, the SP is aware that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demolished the Opposition in the last three elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP). So, how can it respond to the BJP’s “all-encompassing” strategy — the politics of Mandal, mandir and market?

In the 1990s, Mandal politics engineered novel political alignments in north India. The rise of numerically strong, but politically marginalised, castes in UP and Bihar, such as the Yadavs and Jatavs, was unprecedented, with the vernacularisation of politics centred on leaders from these caste groups. This propelled leaders such as Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati to the top.

The politics of mandir (temple) and Hindutva, in its attempt to unite Hindus against a perceived Muslim and Western threat, was a response to the Mandal narrative. In the next decade, with the rise of the politics of vikas (development), the BJP was able to exploit the weaknesses within Other Backward Classes (OBC) politics. Ultimately, the coming of the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo marked a concerted push to win the OBC and Dalit votes. In return, parties that emerged from the fight for social justice were forced to start invoking Hindu idioms.

When Akhilesh arrived on the scene in the 2010s, voters saw him as the harbinger of a new style of leadership. His emergence evoked high expectations. He sailed through the 2012 elections but his relatively weak control within the internal party organisation and the tussle with his uncle Shivpal harmed his image. Eventually, in the last year of his tenure, he was seen as having emerged from the shadow of his father and uncle, but it was too late to change his image in the public eye.

The experiments of allying with Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), in 2017 and 2019 respectively, did not pay dividends. And then, the troika of Modi, Shah, and Yogi Adityanath made things more challenging.

This is a make or break election for Akhilesh. This may be why he started a vijay yatra (victory march) from Kanpur which took in 12 districts of Purvanchal, Bundelkhand, and western UP. This gave the party a new lease of life. Many voters — who once argued that this election will be a cakewalk for the BJP — now admit that the SP is in the fight.

But reports from the field after initial rounds of voting suggest that the SP has not overcome its main challenges. Akhilesh still has to confront the perception that his party is biased towards Yadavs and Muslims, and is soft on corruption and criminality. In constituencies where conditions are favourable for the SP-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance, voters felt that they would still vote for the BJP. Jatav voters who lost faith in the BSP are more likely to trust the BJP than the SP. While Akhilesh has brought many small parties representing non-Yadav OBCs on board, he has also wooed a few non-Yadav OBC leaders from other parties, including the BJP. However, at the height of its popularity in the 2012 elections, the SP garnered only 29% of all votes. In this bipolar contest, will it be able to go past this?

Additionally, Akhilesh is finding it hard to shed the label of a “dynast” though he has not given tickets to his wife Dimple and other relatives this time. Maintaining a balance between his secular credentials and responding to the Hindutva juggernaut will be the toughest nut to crack. That he is trying was evident when he claimed Krishna appeared in his dream to bless him to become the CM.

Akhilesh represents a new generation of leaders, but faces a complex situation. He knows what the voter clubs under corruption and political opportunism. And as a still youthful politician, he must, deep down, be reluctant to fall back on the old ways of doing politics. The extent to which he can balance his political background with the present contingencies will determine his future.

Shashank Chaturvedi is at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Patna; Sanjay Kumar Pandey is at the Jawaharlal Nehru University; and David N Gellner is at the University of Oxford

The views expressed are personal



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It is a war between two Vladimirs. One, the indomitable president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, a strong and boisterous leader with decades of experience at strategy and statecraft, and another, the diminutive President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Jewish-born actor-turned-politician with no experience of either. It is an uneven battle, between a Cold War giant with a million-strong military and a newly born nation-State with an army less than half in size to its rival.

Putin insists that his actions were driven by security concerns that stem from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s mischievous manoeuvres in Ukraine. But his refrain about denazification of Ukraine indicates that it was not just about a military battle. The roots of this conflict lie in history and ideology. And that is where Vladimir, a ubiquitous first name in Russia, becomes relevant.

Vladimir the Great, the 10th-century grand prince of the millennia-old Kievan Rus empire, is considered the father of the modern Russian nation. But the problem is, Ukrainians think that, as the king of Kyiv in 980-1015 AD, he was the father of the Ukrainian nation too. Putin wants to determinedly contest it, not just academically, but physically. Vladimir the Great couldn’t have been a father to many distinct nations, he insists.

“History will be kind to me, as I intend to write it”, Winston Churchill quipped once. Historic interpretations depend on who present them and with what force. In a long address to his countrymen a few days before marching his tanks into Ukrainian territory, Putin dwelled at length on the history of Russia, forcefully demolishing the Ukrainian argument for a separate national identity. People of Rus, the empire built by Vladimir the Great, were all Russian, he concluded, insinuating that it was the Austro-Hungarians, Germans, Poles, and Lithuanians, who, on different historic occasions, tried to manipulate the Ukrainians into believing that they were a separate people.

But the Ukrainians, too, have their history. The Ukrainians believe that theirs had been an independent nation for centuries with a distinct language and culture. Vladimir the Great’s kingdom of Kyiv, the present day capital of Ukraine, was an important and powerful empire during the second millennium and was never under the full control of the Russian Czars also, they argue. It was only in 1922 that Ukraine became a part of the erstwhile Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Even then, Ukrainian Communists maintained a distinct identity from that of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

Putin was a trusted lieutenant of Boris Yeltsin during the latter’s years in office as president of Russia after the USSR’s collapse. In gratitude, Yeltsin chose Putin as his successor when he relinquished office in 1999. Putin is an avowed Russian nationalist, who continues to hold the view that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe. He believes, not wrongly, that Western powers were responsible for the travails of the great Russian nation, including the last time in 1991.

“Tame Russia” had been a project of many European powers in the last millennium. It continued through the Cold War years. The famous Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957 was all about the containment of the Soviet Union. Stalin held deep suspicions about the West, so did his successors. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Putin initially attempted to square up with the West by offering to join the European Union. But the doors were not opened for him. Not one to take humiliations lying down, Putin decided to teach the Europeans a lesson.

Besides history, there was thus an ideological angle too. The West treated the Russians as barbarians and their religion and politics as inferior. In retaliation, Putin did everything possible to undermine Western liberal political institutions by not only rejecting them, but also undermining them through digital interventions. His emphasis on ethno-cultural national identity squarely contradicts the West’s modern geopolitical nation-State. Ukraine’s liberal democratic turn, for him, was thus tantamount to an ideological defeat of his brand of politics. Putin was unequivocal that “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia”.

The Communists detested religion. At the Tehran Conference in 1943, when Churchill suggested that the support of the Pope be mobilised in order to contain Hitler, Stalin famously asked, “How many divisions does the Pope have?”. Putin isn’t anti-religion, but he does suspect that the Catholic powers were trying to weaken the Russian Orthodox identity by weaning away the Ukrainians. 

It is this complex history and ideology behind the conflict that puts India in a difficult position. It could have not accepted Putin’s basic proposition that Ukrainians were not a separate nation, without risking negating its stand on Tibet, Taiwan and other occupied or claimed countries by China. It also could not have wholly rejected the genuine security concerns of Russia in the face of the provocative actions by the NATO allies either.

Today, the global opinion is against Putin’s actions. While India took a principled stand on opposing the war imposed on Ukraine, the optics of it standing with China at the United Nations are raising hackles in sections of the world. Can this great democratic nation continue to remain neutral for too long?

Ram Madhav is a member of the national executive of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and member of the board of governors of India Foundation 

The views expressed are personal



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It has been exactly a week since Russia’s President Vladimir Putin decided that invading another country was an acceptable way to resolve a political conflict with an unfriendly neighbouring government and a wider geopolitical and strategic dispute with the United States (US). It has also been a week since the world has had a chance to respond to this return to a mode of statecraft that international institutions, international law, and the written and unwritten rules of international political sought to avoid.

Even before Putin’s decision, global systemic stability had been under tremendous strain due to a mix of factors — China’s strategic belligerence and predatory economic practices; the rise of political extremism and insularity in the US; the return to economic nationalism across geographies; the pandemic-induced devastation of lives and livelihoods; the stunning evolution of technology, for good and bad, which has redefined the idea of State sovereignty; slowing growth and rising inequality; and a climate crisis that States have woken up to but haven’t shown the political courage to truly address.

All these issues were difficult to resolve. But, from India’s perspective, there was at least a notional recognition that politically, dialogue was the preferred path to dispute resolution and trampling on State sovereignty to achieve civilisational dreams or extracting revenge for perceived humiliations wasn’t acceptable; economically, the world’s dense networks connecting the most powerful economies needed to be stable, while reducing dependence on China; and strategically, the world had to contend with the rise of a new power and find ways to tame its more aggressive and expansionist impulses.

What Putin has done, in one stroke, is shattered this global systemic stability.

For one, the complete rupture in US-Russia ties will have an impact in every theatre. Each global conflict is going to get harder to resolve; each issue that requires cross-border collaboration will become harder to navigate; smaller states will become more insecure; each country, as distant as it may be from the ravages currently underway in Ukraine, will have to reboot its economic calculations at least in the medium-term; and each State will be forced to make choices it does not particularly want to make between contending powers. But fundamentally, the sense that you are alone, that respect for sovereignty is not sacrosanct, and that you have to do all that is possible to protect your territory and your economy will govern the mind space of each political decision-maker. Global political stability, fragile at the best of times, will become more elusive.

Two, given the nature and scale of financial and export control sanctions that the West has now imposed on Russia, Putin will do all he can to accelerate the creation of an alternative economic and technological paradigm. For this, he needs his friends in Beijing, which makes China a valued interlocutor for the West at the moment too. Unlike Russia, which is now pretty much outside the global economic system, China remains a net beneficiary of the current global economic regime and will not walk away from it. But it is also at stage where it has been — through its own institutions, economic projects, currency and trading arrangements, and technologies — attempting to create its own economic universe. Depending on Putin’s endgame, within the constraints now imposed on him by the West, and Xi Jinping’s choices, which will be governed by the opportunities he sees in the current moment to further his expansionist ambitions while playing both sides, the world is staring at a major economic churn in the months and years ahead.

Three, Putin’s actions will have a profound impact on domestic politics, and thus the strategic outlook, of a range of countries in the West. This is most visible in Europe already, where close observers of the continent’s politics believe they are witnessing a turning point — the need to invest in hard power has dawned on capitals which somehow harboured the illusion that wars were a thing of the past. In the US, the strong bipartisan mood against Russia is back with a ferociousness that hasn’t been seen since the Cold War. Joe Biden, after the humiliating withdrawal in Afghanistan, has to show that the US, under him, remains a strong power with the tools to cripple Russia; notwithstanding Donald Trump’s praise of Putin’s genius, Republicans will attack Biden from an even more hawkish position, for having failed to prevent the invasion and seek to impose more severe penalties. This turn in the popular mood against Russia, aided by images of its aggression, will govern the political and foreign policy choices of western governments at least for the next few years.

The good news is that it will strengthen western unity — and yes, that’s good news since the alternative paradigms and alternative powers are not particularly attractive options. The bad news is it will force the West into making unreasonable demands of allies and partners and distract them from the real challenge — China. Either way, this western unity will not lead to stability on its own; it will add to the importance and power of one pole, but only one pole, in a far more fragmented world.

As a status-quoist power — rather than a revisionist power — India has benefited from global stability. Vladimir Putin’s action puts this order at risk. And that is why Delhi, over the past week, has been uncomfortable with Russian actions and taken a more critical stance. Forget American pressure; to guard its own principles and interests, Delhi needs to be acutely conscious of the perils of the path Russia has embarked upon and adapt its diplomatic and strategic position accordingly.

The views expressed are personal



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I can’t remember the last time I said something rude about an Indian chef or a restaurant or a delivery kitchen or a home chef. This is not because I am a nice person --- my job description is to tell the truth, not to be nice. But over the last two years, everything has changed.

When the pandemic first struck, few of us realised how long it would last and how terrible the devastation would be. In the early days, neither the British NHS nor top US public health experts like Dr Anthony Fauci told us we had to wear masks. So, most of us thought that hotels and restaurants would survive easily, though perhaps the tables would have to be further apart.

As it turned out, we were totally wrong. Nearly two years later, the coronavirus has not gone away. Restaurants have gone under. Hotels have suffered crippling losses. And thousands of people --- lakhs, even --- in the hospitality sector have lost their jobs.

In 2020, as the true dimensions of the pandemic became clear, I reached two conclusions. First, I would do what little I could to help the hotel and restaurant sector get through this phase. The second followed from the first: at a time when restaurants were struggling to merely stay alive, was it worth pointing out that, say, the biryani was too dry or the idlis too dense?

As time went on, and home delivery options emerged, I expanded my resolution to include small businesses in the delivery sector which were hurting. I wrote several columns about the newcomers in the delivery sector and because I tried almost everything before I wrote about it, I came to the conclusion that when restaurants did open, they would have to rethink at least some of their food standards because many of the home chefs were so much better than them.

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More recently, when Omicron hit and restaurants faced restrictions again, I turned my Instagram page over to anyone who could deliver food and/or was hurting during this phase. This time I decided not to try everything before I posted and just made my page an avenue for troubled businesses to access potential customers.

I have no regrets about what I did. In fact, I am even a little proud of myself for doing it. Many of the people I featured were startled to find that it cost nothing to get on to my page: Instagram has now become a commercial activity. (More about that later.)

But it wasn’t what I am supposed to do. Many of my columns are about food in general (say, the origins of biryani) and about chefs and others who have made a mark in the hotel business. So that’s never a problem. But when I write about restaurants, I want to be able to say what is good and what is not.

I recognise that there are problems with doing this. I am recognised at many places so I may get better service (if not better food) than the average guest. But I look at it this way; if, even after I have been recognised, I have a terrible time, then what chance is there that the average customer will have a good experience?

There are food writers I know, and many (most, actually) restaurateurs who incline to the view that a critic should not express an opinion. The job of a food writer is just to provide basic information about a restaurant and let customers decide if they like it or not.

This sounds reasonable but is actually deeply customer-unfriendly. A customer can only decide if he or she likes a restaurant after he or she has spent good money eating there. Customers don’t need to be told only that say, a Chinese restaurant exists in Colaba or Connaught Place. They want to know whether it is worth going there and spending their hard-earned money.

Whenever I travel out of India, I find that I have no use for a guide that tells me that there are four Italian restaurants in my neighbourhood. I want to know which of them is the best so that I don’t have a bad lunch or dinner. With the internet, this has become easier. In New York, I check to see what the New York Times recommends. In London, there are many great critics—Fay Maschler, Marina O’Loughlin and others --- whose judgment I trust implicitly. Paris is the one city in the world where Michelin is an accurate guide to eating out.

We are not so fortunate in India. I fear we are going the Dubai way. In Dubai, everyone in the media is supposed to always be positive so there is no tradition of ‘negative’ reviews or any criticism of restaurants. This means that when you visit, you really have no way of knowing what is good and what isn’t. So you waste money and time in rubbish places.

In the United States and United Kingdom (UK), the internet has spawned a whole new generation of irreverent food writers who provide interesting perspectives on restaurants. It can sometimes get bitchy and incestuous (as it does in the UK) but it reaffirms the central truth of all food writing: you are on the side of the customers not the restaurateurs.

In India sadly, the internet has some become an enabler of restaurant rubbish. Food posts are often paid for so people post what the client wants. I have no problem with that: Being an influencer is one of the hot professions of the 21st century. My worry is that this is pretty much ALL you will find on social media on the net here. There is good food writing on social media; but there is very little in the way of good writing about restaurants.

I was skimming through Instagram while writing this column and the stuff I found was depressing in its stupidity and quality. The average post began with a dubious boast (“I bake my own bread so I can safely say I recognise good favour & texture”) followed by a pitch (“Today I tried Akshayakalpa bread …..and was very impressed --- good breading, not very dense…”) Or such sad little plugs: “Head on down to K-OS The Game Bar, in Koramangala ... Exciting foods. Like flatbread pizzas, patatas bravas …” And on and on it went: “Anand Sweets is synonymous for top quality…”

I have no idea if these posts are paid for (which idiot would pay for such credibility-less posts?) but so many pages I saw confirmed my view that fewer and fewer people in digital restaurant media care about the customers. They simply please the restaurateurs.

I have been resolutely on the side of the restaurateurs during the pandemic. But let’s not forget that these are exceptional times. If restaurants did not survive then there would have been be no point in saying which one was good or bad.

But as life seems to be returning to normal— fingers crossed --- it is time for us food writers to serve our readers again!

The armistice has ended.



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India has abstained on the vote in the United Nations Security Council (where we are a non-permanent member) condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. India said that it was deeply disturbed, called for an end to violence and for respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, and then said that “for these reasons” it chose to abstain. This may seem puzzling as India is repeating the world’s case against Russia’s war, and then refusing to condemn it.

But the reality is that India faces a difficult period in diplomacy. Russia provides more than half of India’s military materiel. For instance, 96 per cent of our main battle tanks are Russian, our only aircraft-carrier and only nuclear-powered submarine are Russian, 71 per cent of our fighter jets and all six of the air tankers are Russian. This is not classified information: these numbers come from the US Congressional Research Service. War and even training in these extremely high-performance machines requires constant spare parts and servicing, and for this reason India must remain connected to Russian suppliers. Additionally, experts see Russia as the peacemaker between us and China on the issue of Ladakh. So, we cannot afford to displease Mr Putin. India’s vote did not really matter in the end, because Russia as a permanent UNSC member has a veto, which it used, and it was known the condemnation would fail. However, it was an opportunity for the world to come together against aggression and the largest democracy chose not to side with the invaded country. Interestingly, China also abstained along with us.

India’s foreign policy under the current government has not been able to find its rhythm because it doesn’t have a theme. Throughout our history as an independent nation, India has presented itself abroad as an ancient land with secular and inclusive traditions. This changed after 2014 but without an official shift in doctrine, meaning there was no written policy that proclaimed Hindutva was India’s ruling ideology. Recent studies show that the government has begun instructing diplomats to focus on events abroad which showcased India’s Hindu traditions. This made some diplomats uncomfortable, but the change was accompanied by recruiting more diplomats who were aligned to the BJP’s ideology. For the first five years of this government, the change did not matter because the ideology did not show itself within India to any large extent.

After 2019, our diplomats have been kept busy in a defensive posture because the ideology bared its fangs against our minorities. After the second win of 2019 came a series of internal strokes that had external repercussions. The first was the decision to undo Article 370 of the Constitution. This was accompanied by an Internet blockade on all Kashmiris for 17 months. Kashmiri children had no access to online education for all of 2020. In the US House of Representatives (their Lok Sabha), a resolution was moved to condemn India’s actions against Kashmiris. The resolution could not progress far because the Republicans were in charge and President Donald Trump was our friend. Only days after Joe Biden’s administration was sworn in, India lifted the 17-month blockade, and one reason was the pressure it felt was sure to come now that Mr Trump was out.

Weeks after the Article 370 move, a confident BJP passed the Citizenship Amendment Act. The world was again alarmed. In the European Parliament, a resolution was moved condemning India. It was reported here that it would likely pass. India’s diplomacy managed to stave off the vote but the quid pro quo was that we would not implement the CAA (which has not been enforced). These are the sort of things that India’s diplomats have not had to deal with in the past with those who are supposed to be our friends. The contradiction — portraying ourselves as secular and pluralistic abroad while acting in the opposite fashion at home — has not been easy to resolve.

To add to this issue which we have brought on ourselves is the problem of the neighbourhood, also coming after the change in Article 370: the Chinese incursion in Ladakh. We must defy China, but also be friendly with Russia (which is aligned with China against the West). We want to get closer to the United States militarily and have signed a series of agreements after 2014, but we do not know how close to get. The Quad alliance was meant to be a naval partnership, but that role has now been given to something called AUKUS, of which we are not part of, while the Quad is dealing with Covid-19 vaccines.

Our external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar says the world is multipolar and so India must be opportunistic and discard what he calls the “hesitancies of the past”. However, what is being exposed is that we have no real doctrine and no idea how to deal with the world. It is hard not to conclude that our standing in the world has reduced because of what we have chosen to do internally. On the other hand, we have gained no new friends or allies by going down the road that we have.

Fortunately, we don’t have to debate this or even recognise this debacle. Our global stature is less important than opposing namaz, beef and the hijab, and we will remain focused on that.



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The debate on electoral reforms focuses almost entirely on the funding of political parties and expenses incurred in campaigning as if just taking care of these will ensure the cleaning up of the nation’s polity. We are as usual barking up the wrong tree. Funding is a problem, but it’s the lesser of the problems. The question of inner party democracy and the constitutional functioning of political parties almost never figures in any discussion. We never seem to consider whether many of our parties are in fact political parties or just disorganised assemblies driven by primitive impulses.

When Rajiv Gandhi introduced the “anti-defection” bill in Parliament soon after his huge 1984 electoral victory, Madhu Dandavate welcomed it, exclaiming in the Lok Sabha that he felt he was “hearing the voice of Jawaharlal Nehru again”! He soon realised the bill was only meant to keep the party under the jackboots of a coterie. It prompted him to append his name to a petition challenging the law. His switch provoked many to acidly comment the poor man thought he was hearing Nehru’s voice when in fact it was that of Indira Gandhi!

He justified it by saying it was not the right time to oppose the bill then as public sentiment was in favour. Only Chandra She-khar and Madhu Limaye had the vision and courage to attack the bill for what it was — an attempt to institutionalise the illegitimate power of undemocratically installed party leaderships over the people’s elected representatives. The original bill was then somewhat modified to distinguish between a split and a defection, though it didn’t address the main reasons for opposing the bill.

Unlike some others, India’s Constitution doesn’t recognise the institution of political parties. It’s the same in other serious and major democracies. The term “political party” doesn’t appear even once in any of them. Political parties are therefore extra or non-constitutional arrangements to organise people on the basis of shared ideas, interests or philosophies. Members of Parliament or legislatures are the people’s representatives. That they are or aren’t members of a political party is only incidental. The elected members are meant to represent and protect the interests those who elect them and not that of a handful of leaders.

It follows that if a representative defies a party whip, the most the party must be allowed to do is remove the member from the party. Expulsion of the member from the House can only be the right of the House or the people. Each time that power is invoked it must be for a specific reason, such as receiving a bribe, that may be seen as unbecoming of a member, or bringing disrespect to the institution. In India, we don’t give people the right of recall, possibly as it's not practical. Even if a mechanism and a set of conditionalities is codified to set the process of recall into action, who among the present crop of MPs would be willing to legislate this?

The argument that most members are elected because of the party has some validity, but only if it’s a properly constituted and functioning party. If the political party is to be incorporated in our Constitution as a constitutional institution, it must first be so legislated. Besides a few parties like the BJP and the CPI(M), which have a somewhat strained system of inner democracy assured by intermittent party elections, and passably collective decision-making, most other parties are very poor examples of democracy at work. We know how the Congress conducts its “elections” or takes decisions by deferring them to the “high command”. “Leaders” like the Badals, Thackeray, Lalu Yadav, KCR, Stalin, Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati consider these niceties to be sheer hypocrisy, and don’t have even a single-page constitution to legitimise the workings of their outfits. Yet these “fuhrers” have the authority and legitimacy to issue diktats or whips to suit their private interests and whims. Remember how a nominated Congress president, Sitaram Kesri, issued a directive to the CPP’s elected leader, P.V. Narasimha Rao, ordering him to send his resignation within 24 hours. Consider the implications. A leader chosen by elected representatives is dismissed by a handpicked courtier’s coup?

There are other implications to consider as well. What if a member of a party promising people the nationalisation of all property is directed to vote for a rich man’s dream budget? Suppose the member was to vote as per the party’s commitment to the people and not as per the convenience of its leaders? Who is more important? The people who elect them or the people who select them for party tickets? The argument that if members aren’t restrained by law, anarchy will prevail, may have some validity to it. This can be met by ensuring whips are restricted to confidence votes alone, with the rider that representatives voting against a whip must seek the people’s confidence within a stipulated period, say six months. To deny a ministership to a “defecting” member is silly as it implies that a ministership is somehow a reward to enjoy, and not a call to service or recognition of ability. Not all ministers are corrupt. Also, all this hair-splitting about what percentage constitutes a defection is equally silly.

That the Election Commission recognises these parties and recognises their leaders’ authority is a matter of shame and evidence of its utter helplessness, indifference or ignorance, or all these basic issues. To give the anti-defection laws even the thinnest veneer of political and philosophical legitimacy, it is first essential that inner-party workings conform to the letter and spirit of democracy. Par-ties have shown they are incapable of doing this by themselves. The EC had earlier made some noises in this regard. But adding to the cacophony isn't enough. It must speak out loudly and insist Parliament empowers it to oversee regular party elections and their compliance with the provisions of their constitutions. That’s why Narendra Modi has placed flunkies there.

State funding of parties has often been discussed as another solution. But can we allow the State to fund all these parties, which don’t have any inner-party democracy or democratic structures, most with husband-and-wife “high commands”, if not father-son or mother-son “high commands”? No Indian party has anything like fair and free inner-party elections. Giving them state funding will only enable public money to serve private purposes. With our democracy now preferring cobbled-up coalitions to single-party dominance, the issue of defections will always loom large. But will anyone now speak up? Of course not. Kissa kursi ka hai!



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Whatever else Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may or may not achieve, it has killed the myth of a “new world order” brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union over 30 years ago. In fact, external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s reference at a recent Paris conference to China’s attempt to grab “the global commons” (presumably the Indo-Pacific region’s South China Sea extension) recalled the realpolitik underlying such developments as Panama’s secession to provide the United States with an international waterway and Sikkim’s absorption by India for strategic reasons. It is in this age-old context that India and China must accommodate each other in an emerging Concert of Asia instead of bickering over rocks and rivers as during the latest abortive 14th round of military talks on the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.

Understandably, both sides are weighing up costs and opportunities as they try not to fall off the diplomatic tightrope. India is anxious to avoid American sanctions over its $5 billion purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile defence system without jeopardising ties with Moscow as it tries to ensure Indo-Pacific security with possibly reduced Western participation. For China, the priorities are Taiwan, its island claims against Japan and several Asean members, business with Russia and the global space it covets. It was unrealistic to expect the UN Security Council to solve these problems; it would be equally unrealistic not to factor in the impact on Asian economies of the higher cost of fuel, soaring inflation, tightening interest rates, and the need to abandon many budgetary premises.

It serves little purpose in the circumstances to brand China a rogue state. Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew often warned Dr Manmohan Singh to speed up economic reforms and catch up with China while there was still time.

For whatever reason that didn’t happen, ruling out the use of coercive force despite the brave boasts of our politicians. India must therefore look to persuasion and cooperation as it works towards peaceful co-existence just as Europe’s historic arch-rivals, France and Germany, did in the European Union. It is the only practical option.

M.K. Narayanan, our former national security adviser, had warned nine years ago that President Xi Jinping’s stress on “the renewal of the Chinese nation” left “little room for doubt that China would be uncompromising in defending its core national interests”. It is in India’s interest to attempt some understanding of those supposed interests in Nepal, Bhutan, the Indian Ocean, Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. Both Mr Narayanan’s warning, and the consequent need for India to take appropriate action, remain even more pertinent today but need not mean everlasting enmity. What they do demand is an awareness of the long-term basis of what China calls its “peaceful rise”, a thorough understanding of the impact of these needs on India’s own requirements, and a comprehensive and coherent response that recognises China’s centrality in Asian affairs. Bombast is no substitute for pragmatism in diplomacy.

Given Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s famous comment that China had never “intruded into our border”, it was hardly surprising that the last rounds of talks ended in failure. If the Chinese had never transgressed, what was there to discuss? What in fact were India’s military leaders, politicians and the media bleating about? But why blame the Prime Minister alone? After his first visit to China in 2003, the late George Fernandes, defence minister in Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government, announced in Singapore that his new slogan would be “Chase China”. And to think that for years until then the Chinese had refused him a visa because he had called China “India’s Enemy Number One”! The switch from undying hostility to fervent admiration recalled the old gag: What did the politician eat yesterday? Answer: What he had said the day before.

China was reduced to just another item in the short-term stock-in-trade of India’s political rhetoric.

However, this enigmatic ambivalence was moderated when Qi Fabao, a Chinese soldier who was involved in the Galwan clash of June 2020, was selected as one of the 1,200 torchbearers for the Winter Olympics in Beijing. The title of “hero regiment commander for defending the border” conferred on him by China’s Military Commission indicated that Beijing attached far more importance to the Galwan Valley conflict than Mr Modi’s earlier cavalier dismissal had suggested. Unfortunately, India’s belatedly sharp rejoinder only confirmed the impression of trying to be all things to all people at the same time.

Consider the sequence. Mr Modi did not attend the Games’ opening ceremony unlike Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan and the Presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. At the same time, India also refused to join the political boycott that the United States organised in protest against China’s treatment of Xinjiang’s Uyghur population and other human rights abuses. While Japan, Australia, Canada, Britain and a number of European countries, including Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and the Czech Republic supported the US stand, the trilateral Russia-India-China virtual meeting that Mr Jaishankar hosted in November 2021 issued a joint statement which “expressed support to China to host Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games”.

After Qi Fabao’s appointment New Delhi did announce that India’s charge d’affaires in Beijing would not attend either the opening or closing ceremonies, and that state-owned Doordarshan would not cover either event. But in a classic case of eating your cake and having it, it was also announced that Arif Mohammed Khan, a skier from Kashmir, would remain India’s solitary participant in the event. Did the belated token boycott delight the Americans? Were the Chinese gratified by Mr Khan’s participation? Both are open to doubt.

India should be able to assess the neighbourhood’s reactions in a more tranquil light after Sri Lankan foreign minister G.L. Peiris’ reassuring February visit to New Delhi. But a similar awareness should also extend to China. If nothing else, knowledge of the adversary can only be an advantage in the negotiations to which both sides are committed. The dozen or so Chinese correspondents in India may write little but obviously report much to justify their employment. It would be in India’s interest to match their industry and expertise as the decks are cleared for the 15th round of talks on the Line of Actual Control while China further consolidates ties with Russia without reducing the economic integration that makes it invaluable to the United States.



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A division bench of the Telangana high court has agreed to hear a plea filed by a social worker seeking directions to the state government to remove IAS officer Neetu Kumari Prasad from the post of member secretary, Telangana Pollution Control Board, for allegedly not possessing the mandatory qualifications in subjects of environment, forests and science, which are statutory requirements according to the Supreme Court.

Earlier, responding to similar PILs questioning the legality of the guidelines fixed for selecting candidates to the posts of member secretary and chairperson of the board, the state high court, too, had ruled that the state government cannot decide to appoint only an officer from the IAS or IFoS to these posts. Further, the court had pointed out that appointing IAS or IFoS officers would affect the functioning of the board since the government would transfer these officers frequently whereas the post of member secretary requires a minimum tenure of two to three years.

Babu watchers say that, given the Supreme Court’s directive and the high court’s earlier ruling, it is unlikely that the current petition challenging Mr Prasad’s appointment will have a different outcome.

Commerce babus set to work on ambitious export target

India’s flagging exports have necessitated the restructuring of the department of commerce. Sources have told DKB that at a recent meeting with senior officials, commerce minister Piyush Goyal highlighted the need to revamp the department to take advantage of opportunities in global trade due to the rapid growth of services and disruptive potential of climate change. The minister has given secretary B.V.R. Subrahmanyam and his team an ambitious target of facilitating exports worth $2 trillion by 2027.

Those aware of these developments say that after the revamp the directorate general of foreign trade and other organisations in the ministry that promote investment and trade will be given a freer hand to achieve the export targets. They also see a stronger role of overseas missions in trade promotion and market intelligence.

Apparently, Mr Goyal has also indicated that a dedicated trade remedies review committee of specialists will be created, which will also include the ministry of finance and line ministries to ensure transparency in investigation outcomes. Clearly, this is yet another push to strengthen Brand India and Mr Subrahmanyam and his colleagues have their work cut out.

Gujarat tightens screws on corrupt cops, officers

Besides the recent avalanche of scams that have been unearthed in Gujarat, the state chief minister Bhupendra Patel faces another problem. Of late there have been several allegations of bribery and corruption against police officers. Most recently, there have been allegations of bribery against the police commissioner of Rajkot, Manoj Agarwal. The complainant is reportedly a BJP MLA, and thus cannot be overlooked.

Sources have informed DKB that the Patel government has received several named and anonymous complaints alleging extortion and misuse of the land grabbing law by cops. Apparently, it is becoming a serious issue, and not just in Rajkot. Now the government is believed to be preparing guidelines to keep police officers away from cases where land deals are involved. Among the new rules will be an instruction that police officials cannot take up an investigation of any complaint in a land matter without the government’s permission. The government is planning to set up a high-powered committee to investigate all major allegations of corruption in land matters against senior IPS and IAS officers. The government will consider the recommendations of the panel and take necessary action.

Share a babu experience! Follow dilipthecherian@Twitter.com . Let’s multiply the effect.



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