The Telugu film industry is caught in a dilemma and struck by a sense of déjà vu. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy harbours a 70 mm-sized dream that he is keen to fulfil, which is to see the industry move base to the scenic and populous city of Visakhapatnam. This, he hopes, will help the port city grow into “a mega city like Hyderabad or Chennai”. Reddy has been assiduously persuading the industry, popularly known as Tollywood, to shift from Hyderabad, which is located in Telangana and has been home for the industry for decades.
For the industry, this is a case of history repeating itself. About 50 years ago, established as well as upcoming directors, producers and actors were hesitant to move from Madras, where the industry was born and nurtured, to Hyderabad in united Andhra Pradesh. Back then, it was actor-producer Akkineni Nageswara Rao who was trying to convince reluctant producers and directors to shoot their movies in Andhra Pradesh, where he founded the Annapurna Studios in Hyderabad. The move, slow and steady, proved to do wonders for Telugu cinema.
Discussions today over the second move have reached a fever pitch. On February 10, the State seemed star-struck. Television channels and social media were awash with photos and videos as the Chief Minister met Chiranjeevi, Prabhas, Mahesh Babu, S.S. Rajamouli and Koratala Siva, among others. Apart from listening to their concerns, Reddy offered them sops such as land for studios and residential townships in Visakhapatnam. He reminded them that the industry earns more revenue (60%) from Andhra Pradesh than Telangana. He promised to construct a locality similar to Jubilee Hills, the affluent suburban neighbourhood in Hyderabad where many actors live. The Chief Minister left no stone unturned in his pursuit of getting the show on the road.
Chiranjeevi told the press after the meeting that the industry too wants to develop equally in the two Telugu-speaking States. But whether the industry wants to shift lock, stock and barrel to Visakhapatnam is still unclear.
Baby steps
The journey of the Telugu film industry began in the Madras Presidency. In the early 1900s, Raghupathi Venkaiah Naidu, known as the father of the Telugu film industry and a pioneer of Indian cinema, started a south Indian cinematograph company called Star of East Films. He also set up a film studio named Glass Studio, which had a roof made of glass to allow the sun to shine through in the days of no electricity. Naidu, a native of Machilipatnam in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, had moved to Madras at the age of 18 and had managed to make it big in the film industry. His audacious ideas soon turned into reality. He and his London-educated son, Raghupathi Surya Prakash Naidu, produced several films over the years, includingBhishma Pratigna (a silent film),Gajendra Moksham ,Mathsyavatharam andNandanaar .
But the going was tough. The company was expected to import technology and compete with European firms in the Indian market. A resolute Naidu swam against the tide. He made short films. He established Esplanade Ten House to exhibit his films, Gaiety Talkies on Mount Road, Crown Theatre on Mint Street, and Globe Theatre in Parasuwakka, all over a span of a few years. These theatres exhibited Indian, American and British films. But in the following years, Naidu faced severe financial issues due to intense competition from the East India Film Company.
Over the next decade, other Telugu-speaking filmmakers also pushed the envelope. The first Telugu talkie,Bhakta Prahlada , was made by H.M. Reddi on the sets ofAlam Ara , in 1932. Many Telugu films were shot in Calcutta and Bombay. The previous year, Reddi made the first Indian multilingual (Telugu and Tamil) sound film,Kalidas . The commercially successful film,Lavakusa , was directed by C. Pullaiah, in 1934. Socially aware films such asVande Mataram (1939), which presented the problems of uneven development, andMala Pilla (1938), on the issue of untouchability and produced by Sri Sarathi Studios, ruled the roost till India achieved Independence in 1947.
From then on, there was no going back for the industry. Chitoor V. Nagaiah, the director, producer and writer, produced several classic movies includingThyagaiah (1946). Telugu production houses such as Vijaya Productions of B. Nagi Reddy and A. Chakrapani, Vijaya Vauhini Studios of B.N. Reddy, Bharani Pictures of Bhanumati Ramakrishna, Prasad Art Pictures of A.V. Subbarao, Annapurna Pictures of D. Madhusudhana Rao, and Prasad Labs of L.V. Prasad were set up. The industry mostly made bilingual movies that catered to the Telugu and Tamil markets. Over 300 films were released between 1950 and 1960.
The big move to Hyderabad
The industry’s perception began to change when the Madras Legislative Assembly passed the Andhra State Act in 1953, to provide for the formation of the State of Andhra Pradesh with Kurnool as its capital. On November 1, 1956, Andhra State and the Telangana region of Hyderabad State were merged to form the united Telugu-speaking State of Andhra Pradesh. Yet, the industry, which had built studios and firmly established itself in Madras, did not show a keen interest in shifting to Hyderabad. But the new State of Andhra Pradesh opened up new markets for Telugu films and the industry soon saw a reason to expand. Soon after the first Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, called for relocation of the industry, Sarathi Studios was set up in Hyderabad in 1959. Soon, more directors and producers followed suit. Prominent among them was Akkineni Nageswara Rao, who built Annapurna Studios in 1976, in an almost barren stretch of land on the outskirts of Hyderabad. By the 1970s and 1980s, except for Bharani Pictures, all the production houses had either moved to Andhra Pradesh or expanded. Hyderabad steadily evolved as a hub for Telugu films.
Creative director, producer and writer Pavani Prasad Sivalenka, 63, recalled that period. While the industry produced movies in Madras, business happened in Andhra Pradesh, he said. Film personalities preferred to stay in Chennai but took lands offered by the Andhra Pradesh government. “Some of them shifted, but many of them secured land in Hyderabad for future expansion. There were others who got a second address in Hyderabad but continued to work in Madras. These include S.P. Balasubrahmanyam, K. Viswanath and Sobhan Babu,” Prasad said. Some of the younger actors preferred Hyderabad and left Madras, he said.
The industry expanded its roots in Hyderabad under the leadership of Chief Ministers Marri Chenna Reddy, N.T. Rama Rao, N. Chandrababu Naidu and Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. Many production houses came up after the creation of the new State of Andhra Pradesh, including Ramanaidu Studios, Padmalaya Studios, Prasad Labs, and Geeta Arts.
A game-changing addition to this was the 2,000-acre Ramoji Film City, which was built in Hyderabad in 1996. It entered the Guinness World Records as the world’s biggest such facility. The integrated film city and thematic holiday destination enabled small and big movies to be shot there. Hundreds of movies in Telugu, Hindi, Tamil and English were made in Ramoji Film City. With sets such as forests, gardens, hotels, a railway station, an airport, apartment blocks, mansions and workshops, the film city emerged as a unique destination for film production houses from across the world.
The film city has about 1,200 employees, including 8,000 agents. The non-production revenues too are huge considering the entry ticket price, which is Rs. 1,150 per head. Over 15 lakh people visit Ramoji Film City every year. The film city also handles about 400-500 movies per annum in various Indian languages. On any given day, it has the capacity to facilitate 15 shoots. Besides serious production activity throughout the year, the thematic holiday destination is filled with people visiting the sets of films likeBaahubali andWild Wild West .
It was in the 1990s that the Telugu film industry finally called Hyderabad its permanent home. Today, the industry is estimated to be making over 300 films annually. The approximate revenue from both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana amounts to over Rs. 9,000 crore per annum. Considering the pan-India appeal of movies such as Rajamouli’sBaahubali, the industry is estimated to grow multifold in the coming years. It took Tollywood more than half a century to make the transition from Madras/Chennai to Hyderabad.
A divided Andhra Pradesh
In 2014, Parliament passed the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, creating the new State of Telangana. In the process of bifurcation, Andhra Pradesh lost its capital city Hyderabad and along with it, the film industry. Hyderabad was where prime businesses and investments took place. The film fraternity, who are predominantly from Andhra Pradesh, were comfortably settled in Hyderabad.
As the first Chief Minister of bifurcated Andhra Pradesh, N. Chandrababu Naidu appealed to the film industry to relocate slowly to Visakhapatnam, the next best destination for filmmaking. However, the proposal did not garner much interest.
Former Andhra Pradesh Film Development Corporation (APFDC) chairman Ambica Krishna said Visakhapatnam has great potential to be a destination for filmmaking given its beauty, topography and history. “Visakhapatnam is a better place for filmmaking than Hyderabad. It has a long association with the film industry. Hundreds of films have been made in the city over the past seven decades. We have identified a 100-acre land around the city where the film industry can develop. Some senior actors had applied for land here, but the efforts did not fructify during the previous government’s rule,” she said. In fact, when the industry moved from Madras, Visakhapatnam was the location it initially considered.
Like Naidu, Reddy is now batting for Visakhapatnam as a filmmaking hub. Visakhapatnam, said many, has sufficient infrastructure to house the industry. Film shoots take place regularly. Ramanaidu Studios is a fully equipped studio on a hill top facing the sea coast on the outskirts of Visakhapatnam. Over 100 film shoots each year, small and big, take place at the 33-acre studio-cum-film city, according to its manager Avinash. “Most production houses come here for indoor and outdoor shoots. Most movies made here are in the Telugu language. We also have several filmmakers from Odisha and West Bengal coming here as these States are nearby,” he said. The facility is reportedly attractive for low-budget filmmakers as it is 50% less expensive compared to facilities in Hyderabad.
There is also a fully developed film club, Vizag Film Nagar Cultural Center, which has stayed active over the past few years. The club intends to develop a residential colony for the film fraternity in Visakhapatnam. The General Manager of the club, T.D.S. Hari, said, “We have over 1,200 members in our club. We are waiting for the government to give us more details about its offer of land for the industry. If the decision is delayed, we are prepared to buy land to develop a Film Nagar here.”
But is there equal enthusiasm among the well-known film directors and producers and actors? Director Geeta Krishna, who has shot several films, including the award-winningSankeertana , in and around Visakhapatnam, said the offer of land is definitely attractive and will trigger a shift from Hyderabad. “This was what happened when the industry moved from Madras. Many in the industry took land and expanded their facilities in Hyderabad. Eventually the ecosystem was built over a period of time. The same is likely to happen in Visakhapatnam. It took a long time to shift to Hyderabad. The shift to Visakhapatnam may also take time,” he said.
Telangana won’t give up
What then of Hyderabad film city? The Telangana government looks like it will do everything necessary to keep the industry in good humour. At a time when the Andhra Pradesh government has reduced movie ticket prices as well as the number of shows, moves which will negatively impact the industry, the Telangana government has allowed an increase in the price of tickets and in the number of shows.
During the film release function of the Pawan Kalyan-starrerBheemla Naik , Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s son K.T. Rama Rao, who is Information Technology Minister, stated that the State government will do everything it can to promote the film industry. “We will see to it that Hyderabad becomes the national hub of the film industry. We are committed to extending our full support to the industry,” he said.
The film industry is feeling the pinch in Andhra Pradesh. Upset over the decision regarding the pricing of tickets, many in the industry wanted the government to revoke the Government Order put out in this regard. In December 2021, the Andhra Pradesh government had brought out the Order to restrict the price of movie tickets and number of shows, arguing that movie makers and theatres have been exploiting the common man with high ticket rates and more shows.
Minister for Information and Broadcasting and Cinematography Minister Perni Venkatramaiah (Nani) said that the government would bring in changes in the Cinematography Act to introduce online movie ticketing, restrictions on the number of shows, and caps on the ticket price to control the exploitation. The State government had announced that it will initiate the process through the Film Development Corporation.
In response to the industry’s concerns, articulated during the February 10 meeting, Reddy proposed to offer a few concessions to films with big budgets of Rs. 100 crore or more with regard to ticket pricing in the first week of release. He also favoured a proposal to have five screenings per day.
The movie ticket pricing episode sits rather uncomfortably with the sops announced by the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister. While the government says its decision was taken keeping in mind the issue of affordability of entertainment for the common man, some in the industry see it differently. Director Ram Gopal Varma said that “the government, while settling scores with its political rivals, is punishing the entire industry with new ticket prices and restrictions on shows.” Such restrictions, he said, will definitely “impact creative zeal and discourage distributors from investing in quality films that would need big budgets.”
Branding it as “vendetta politics”, director Geeta Krishna said, “I like the Chief Minister’s policies in the manifesto but in my opinion, the government’s decision on ticket pricing is a big blunder.” Such a decision will definitely impact the industry post-COVID-19, he added. There are movies whose total worth would amount to over Rs. 5,000 crore waiting to be released any time now. “The recent pan-India moviePushpa collected over Rs. 100 crore. The Telugu industry is very important now and is making a big impact across markets in India. Considering the ground situation and potential, it’s important for the Andhra Pradesh government to incentivise the film industry,” he added.
The film industry wants to see the Andhra government walk the talk on its promises. To add to Reddy’s woes, the Andhra Pradesh High Court has ordered the government not to move the capital from Amaravati. This will likely cast a shadow over his Visakhapatnam dream city project for now.
Russia’s violent war on Ukraine has isolated it from the global community. Public attention has been diverted from Russia’s long-standing fears of suppression by the United States and western European nations to the misery of innocent Ukrainian citizens who are an inevitable collateral damage of war. Even countries with colonial histories, who could sympathise with Russia’s concerns of encirclement by an alliance of economically and militarily stronger nations, felt morally compelled to rally against Russia. India has been caught between a rock and a hard place. Across India’s long and insecure borders sits Pakistan, an implacable foe, and the mighty China, with an economy six times larger than India’s and more self-reliant in defence equipment. India is wary of relying on a distant U.S.: it needs continuing Russian support for high-tech defence needs.
Leading the way
India must never condone violence, no matter how just the cause. India is a global champion of non-violence; Mahatma Gandhi, the “father of the nation” is a global icon. “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind,” Gandhi said. He even called off the civil disobedience movement when Indian citizens, fighting for freedom from British injustice, turned violent.
Gandhi(picture ) advocated non-violence not only as a moral principle in fights for justice: whether in the struggles of colonised peoples against foreign rulers, or internal conflicts to correct structural injustices, such as the oppression of lower castes by upper castes and the poor by the rich. He was also a practical man. He also honed methods of non-violent resistance whereby the weaker masses, united for a just cause, could prevail against entrenched powers. Gandhi’s example was followed, with success, by leaders of the civil rights movement in the U.S., uprisings against Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa which won support around the world.
The dynamics
Strategies which work in ‘set piece’ conflicts and ‘bounded’ games, in which the opponents are clearly identifiable, cannot work in asymmetrical wars where the sources of power of the antagonists are very different: on one side, “organised” power, and on the other, a diffused mass. Even leaders fighting for justice for powerless masses can lose the support of citizens if the movement turns violent. They must enrol citizens who neither have arms to fight with nor wish to risk their lives in violence. InThe Politics of Nonviolent Action , Gene Sharp, a great admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, and one of the world’s foremost scholars of non-violent movements, distils the dynamics and methods of non-violent struggles from the histories of many countries. Attitudes and activities of wider populations associated with the struggle are critical because, if sympathetic, they may provide facilities and supplies. Gandhi’s strategy of non-violent civil disobedience was founded on this insight.
Even leaders of invading armies need the support of civilian populations for the safety and supplies of their troops. They need support from their own civilian populations at home also. “Non-violent action is capable of striking at the availability of sources of political power of the ruling authority,” said Sharp. “Over-reacting on repression may, instead of weakening the resistance, react against sources of an opponent’s own power”. The deaths caused by its military action in Vietnam lost the U.S. government the support of its own citizens. In a war to end all wars neither Russia nor the U.S. can claim the moral high ground.
Non-cooperation in the West
Before Americans rose up in arms against the British, several civil resistance movements and the boycott of British goods were underway in the American colonies. Americans refused to comply with the Stamp Act. The New York General Assembly and the people’s Council of Boston refused to make provisions for the quartering of the King’s troops. The British were discovering that it is difficult to rule uncooperative people. Though they had a strong army; they did not have weapons to win hearts and minds. On the other side, the non-violent resisters had to be patiently resolute while they wore the British down. Gandhi applied this strategy courageously and effectively to win India’s independence from the British, though he faced opprobrium from within — that he abjured arms because he was weak. Subhas Chandra Bose broke with Gandhi and joined the Japanese to create an Indian army to fight the British.
Leaders of non-violent resistance against the British had a hard time restraining hot heads chafing against British rule. When the Minutemen fired on British troops in Lexington in April 1775, the British called out more troops to crush the armed uprising. Then the revolutionaries, less equipped and less organised, had to fight the British in the conventional way. They suffered several defeats and many casualties before they won their War of Independence, with George Washington as their leader.
Histories of conflicts valorise wars and generals, even when they are defeated; not the non-violent movers of change. Cities and streets are named after George Washington, Nathanael Greene, Henry Knox, and the Marquis de Lafayette; their statues are raised on pedestals—even Robert Lee who lost the Civil War. Dates of major battles are memorised and war plans analysed for lessons in strategy. Nowadays, children grow up playing violent games on videos but which rake in millions for their creators. In real life too, the makers of weapons nudge leaders towards violent wars. It is good for their business, whichever side wins or loses, so long as the wars last long.
Soft power icon
Mahatma Gandhi stood out in the 20th century. He led a massive movement of freedom non-violently in one of the most violent periods of human history, with two World Wars within 50 years and bloody battles that continue to be themes of popular movies a century later. He demonstrated there was a better, non-violent way to shake off oppression. “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth, said Albert Einstein on Mahatma Gandhi’s 70th birthday.
Both Subhas Chandra Bose and Mahatma Gandhi were great men who dedicated their lives to the freedom of their country. They disagreed about methods to free India from the British. Bose collaborated with the Japanese army to fight the British with arms. He lost because the Japanese lost. One may wonder what would have happened had he succeeded and India had a government propped up by the Japanese when the Allies finally won the War. Years of further struggles would have followed for a friendless India. Fortunately, India won its freedom the other way and became a beacon of hope for a world wearied by violence. Gandhi’s way became the greatest source of India’s soft power — greater than its ancient culture, yoga, and Bollywood. We weaken ourselves when we do not stand up against violence anywhere.
Bose was a great man. His statue deserves to be on Rajpath — the old Kingsway in India’s capital — where armies parade and war memorials stand. However, Indians must not place heroes of wars on higher pedestals in their minds than apostles of non-violence, like Gandhi and others who actually won our freedom. Let us not be tempted to take to violence in our country for settling our grievances, by rioting, lynching, and burning, and by war-mongering against our neighbours. We must be role models showing the world a non-violent path to justice for all by practising what we preach.
Arun Maira, a former Member,
Planning Commission, is the author of ‘Transforming Systems: Why the World Needs a New Ethical Toolkit’
The morning after Lucknow went to the polls last week, I met a retired railway worker at a tea stall. Buddhu Rai told me how there was a swing in favour of the Samajwadi Party (SP). “Lag raha hai , cyclenikallegi (it looks like cycle will win),” he said, referring to the election symbol of the SP. As observers of the Uttar Pradesh elections of 2022 would tell you, it is largely a bipolar contest between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the Samajwadi Party led by Akhilesh Yadav.
Rai continued without my prompting: “Mehengai ,berozgari …logpareshanhai (People are tired of inflation, unemployment …),” followed by a sudden pause midway to ask me what I do for a living. The moment I told him I was a journalist from Delhi, his tone changed dramatically. He began to explain how unemployment cannot be blamed on this government and why people should be willing to bear the burden of inflation if that helps the nation’s development. I was confused by now. Was he critical of the BJP or not? Pat came his reply. He was actually trying to make me understand why some people, including him, were still voting for the BJP and why Mr. Adityanath should be the Chief Minister again. Before I could untangle the claims, he got up suddenly and left.
When people do not tell you what they mean, and they do not mean what they tell you, is any meaningful reportage possible? Undoubtedly, there is fear, personal calculation and, often enough, the need to tactically mislead. For journalists from Delhi in particular, who are always short on time, low on patience, deadline driven and prone to see and hear precisely what they are looking for, the Uttar Pradesh election of 2022 is mined with psychological traps. For one, in many cases, the person you are interviewing will most likely assume, unless proven otherwise, that you are with the current ruling establishment. I experienced this on many occasions in my recent travels through Uttar Pradesh, a fact corroborated when comparing notes with many of my journalist friends.
The ‘very aware’ voter
This radical difference between an on-camera version from the off-camera version when dealing with the same person, however, confirms that U.P. voters are not only playing their cards close to their chest but also making it clear that politics is serious business. Voting among the marginalised, in particular, is not simply about them exercising choice. It is also linked to an entire social and economic architecture that will subsequently enable their access to welfare schemes and the local administration. In other words, a journalist has to be extremely attentive about how to read the political changes at the micro-level.
There is a churn
Consequently, voting preferences, the talk around it, the entire web of claims, and even the general electoral noise have made the intensely fought U.P. election to date seeded with the flavours of post-truth; the need to understand a political culture that goes beyond a simple true/false or honesty/lying binary. And it is in such a post-truth context that non-voters and the silent voters might help us better understand the big ongoing churn within U.P.’s politics. A churn or caste realignment that is most certainly happening but not immediately visible to ready-made journalism and the usual observer.
Looking at the constituency-level voter turnout data, we can draw some credible inferences about who is not voting. When the temple city of Ayodhya reported a drop in voter turnout despite a high voltage campaign, the question of who chose not to vote became significant. The needle of suspicion pointed to the BJP voter. Similarly, in Sardhana in western U.P., where the sitting MLA was facing visible disenchantment among his own supporters, voter turnout fell sharply by 4.5 percentage points. In both Ayodhya and Sardhana, the BJP has a tough fight on its hands and if some of its voters are not showing up that could spell bad news for the party. The same seems to be the case with several other constituencies where the BJP voter, by staying away, might actually be making a political statement.
The voters to watch
While the no-show voter could play a decisive role in some constituencies, especially if the contest is close, it will be the silent voter who is and will likely make a bigger difference in this election. By silent voter, we mean the socially and the economically marginalised but not politically visible. They include mostly women (especially from the lower economic strata), backward castes which go unrepresented by any political party and non-Jatav Dalits who have been voting for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Although the BSP won only 19 seats in the 403-member State Assembly in 2017, the party polled a formidable 22% share of votes. A sizeable part of such voters often remain well below the noisy campaign radar. This time, with the BSP missing from the contest in most places, these voters will likely choose between the BJP and the SP.
The big picture that seems to be emerging is that the kaleidoscope of different castes that the BJP had assembled in 2017 is not so much disintegrating in one go as much as it seems to be fragmenting, ebbing and breaking away constituency wise. While bits and chunks of the core BJP voter are choosing not to vote, swathes and sections of silent voters might be making efforts to vote against their immediate fears. In other words, the 2022 U.P. State election seems to have set in motion a steady and confusing caste realignment. Only a careful scrutiny of the disaggregated picture might be able to tell us how tectonic or shallow the big churn in U.P. politics is. And, March 10 will tell us whether the results are the beginning or the end of this process.
Rajesh Mahapatra is an independent journalist based in New Delhi
and a commentator on current affairs.
He tweets @rajeshmahapatra
The COVID-19 pandemic is on a discernible wane. Just a month ago, India was reporting around 1,70,000 cases a day and the latest numbers suggest it has plummeted to around 6,000. India is now contributing to only 0.7% of global cases. Last year this time, cases were below 5,000 a day, encouraging several States and the Centre to claim that the pandemic was over, though within a matter of weeks there was a resurgence fuelled by the Delta variant which birthed a summer of catastrophe. There is, however, a crucial distinction between then and now in that over 75% of those over 15 years are now fully vaccinated in India. A small and growing number of those over 60 have had the third dose. Reports suggest that over 90% of Indians have been exposed to the virus over the last two years and, therefore, combined with the vaccination, are sufficiently protected against disease — but not infection — for many more months ahead. What bears emphasis is that avoiding vaccination makes one, particularly the elderly, vulnerable to serious infection. Balram Bhargava, Director-General, ICMR, said at a press meet this week that 92% of those who died of COVID-19 since January this year were unvaccinated, and underlined that vaccines and the wide vaccination coverage had played an important role in protecting hundreds of lives.
India is fortunate in that it does not have to battle vaccine hesitancy in a large measure. The initial scepticism regarding the vaccines not having passed the typical stages of vaccine approval saw a certain degree of hesitation, but very soon it emerged, in April and May last year, that India’s main problem was an insufficient number of vaccines. Though India today has administered nearly 178 crore vaccine doses and has several indigenously developed vaccines that have been approved in emergency mode by authorities, there are still serious questions on supply. Currently, vaccine demand is low and the vaccination drive is in ‘mop up mode’ and administering second doses. But were the pandemic situation to suddenly turn for a fourth wave to take shape, there would be a spike in demand for vaccinations for children, particularly those below 15, as well as booster doses for adults. The experience of Covaxin’s manufacturer being unable to ramp up vaccinations in time during the crisis months ought to be a persistent reminder to other biotechnology companies that having vaccines is very different from being ready with a seamless supply chain. The Indian government has still not made public a timeline for when vaccines from Biological E, Gennova and Zydus Cadila will be practically available for mass use. Though the world is occupied with a different crisis, India must not let its guard down and should insist on companies being ready with a measurable timeline.
That policies change with governments may appear acceptable in a democracy, but no court will allow a transformation so fundamental that rights and entitlements that accrued during an earlier regime are abandoned or frustrated. In 2014, the Amaravati region was chosen as the site of the capital of Andhra Pradesh, the residuary State left after the creation of Telangana, but work was stopped after the present YSRCP regime took over. Instead, Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy mooted the idea of ‘decentralised’ development, by which he meant that the State will have Amaravati as the legislative capital, while Visakhapatnam will be the executive capital, and Kurnool the seat of the High Court. In a stern rebuff to the ‘three capitals’ idea of the present regime, a Full Bench of the State’s High Court has ruled that it cannot abandon the project to develop Amaravati as the capital city after over 33,000 acres had been given up by farmers and Rs. 15,000 crore sunk in it over development expenditure. Holding the State government to its promise of developing the region into the capital city, it has directed the government to complete the required developmental work in Amaravati within six months. As a consequential relief to the farmers who had given up their land for the specific purpose, the court has asked the State and the Andhra Pradesh Capital Region Development Authority to develop the surrendered land and deliver reconstituted plots to them within three months.
In political terms, the decision to locate the three organs in different cities was possibly motivated by a wish to undo a key policy measure of the previous TDP regime, as well as negate speculative gains the erstwhile rulers may have allegedly made by choosing Amaravati. However, it was projected as a measure to decentralise governance and take the fruits of development to all parts of the State. After farmers approached the court, the government sought to render the matter infructuous by repealing its decentralisation law, the one that it enacted in 2020 for spreading the capital city and proposing ‘inclusive development’ of all regions. However, the Bench took note of the government’s intention to pursue its multiple capital cities plan and decided that it will adjudicate on the petitioners’ grievances. It held that the State legislature lacked the competency to shift the organs of the State. The verdict, if undisturbed by the Supreme Court, may put an end to attempts to shift the capital city out of Amaravati. A welcome feature of the verdict is that it has invoked the doctrines of constitutional trust andpromissory estoppel to prevent a regime from going back on its promises to citizens. It sends out a message that governance should not be buffeted by winds of political change or be held hostage to the passing whimsy of a particular regime.
The Supreme Court has removed the legal hurdles in holding elections in West Bengal elections on time by vacating the stay of the Calcutta High Court on publication of the final electoral lists. The election commission can now go ahead with preparations for the assembly elections due in June. The High Court stay had rendered the electoral work impossible to be completed before June and President’s rule would have become imperative on the expiry of the Left Front government’s term. The constitutional bench headed by Y V Chandrachud sat late to hand down a crucial verdict in a crowded court. The Supreme Court will hear a writ petition filed by the Congress (I) on the elections separately on March 15.
Minister’s silence
The Petroleum Minister P Shiv Shankar was reluctant to answer questions raised by Rajya Sabha members of aviation fuel. The house was seized of a call-in-attention motion and it was Aviation Minister A P Sharma who spoke all through, sometimes even speaking for his colleague. Shiv Shankar got up thrice but was unable to answer the barrage of questions directed at him. He had remained silent when a similar call-in-attention motion was tabled in the Lok Sabha.
Indo-Greek talks
President of Greece Constantine Karamanlis said Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, at their talks on March 4, had expressed concern at the dangers posed by increasing tensions in different parts of the world and the growing domination of the arms industry in world affairs. Mrs Gandhi, also said that an important change had taken place as the people of India and Pakistan were getting friendlier towards each other.
Firaq cremated
The well-known Urdu poet Raghupati Sahai Firaq Gorakhpuri was cremated with full state honours on the banks the Ganga.
There is a saying in Bengali that fits well the sad, desperate attempts to make the Oscars popular by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “Shingh khule bachchur er dole” translates into a “[a bull] taking off its horns and pretending to be a calf”. The #OscarsFanFavourite gimmick asks for votes on Twitter for a film that, in all likelihood, would not make the list of nominees selected by the Academy. In doing so, it tries to present as something new a concept that is already passe: An ageing bull, when it tries to be a calf, only brings more attention to how out of touch it is.
Over the last few years, the Oscars have been criticised on multiple fronts. First, there was #OscarsSoWhite, then a furore over a comedian host’s jokes on social media from a decade ago (that year, there was no host and the show suffered for it). All the while, viewership for the awards show — at one point one of the most-watched television events in the world — has been rapidly declining. This year, in addition to going to the hunting ground for trolls to select an awardee, awards for some categories — including Editing and Original Score — will not be telecast live. Both ideas are counterproductive.
Spiderman: No Way Home, the biggest grossing Hollywood film of the year, does not need the critical recognition the Oscars provide. The awards’ purpose — in the best interpretation — is to recognise good cinema and those that make it possible in the world’s richest film industry. The People’s Choice Awards have been around for decades: They do not pretend to judge art, only popularity. And anyone who knows films will tell you, editors are as important as cinematographers and directors. What the Oscars should do to stay relevant is focus more on films and stories that rise to the level of art, in more diverse settings. By starting popularity contests, they are reduced to just another tweet.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on March 5, 2022 under the title ‘#OscarsSoOld’.
When Sourav Ganguly became the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in 2019, an understandable breeze of optimism wafted in. It was felt that finally a player was in charge, that too a legendary one, and he would clean up the mess that had dragged Indian cricket into the high-ceiling offices of the Supreme Court. It turns out this was a naive urge as Ganguly has arguably outdone some of the old cynical non-player-administrators. Especially, as he had stepped in post the judicial intervention, and was expected to at least uphold the court’s order and recommendations. The latest overstep, as reported by this newspaper, was how he “bullied” other selectors by going against the BCCI constitution and sat in their meetings. And that’s one of his milder offences.
Ganguly has systematically undermined institutions, been brazen about conflict of interests, allegedly promised players stuff that he has no right to (the wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha claimed Ganguly promised him he will be in team), and generally acted as if he was a Maharaja accountable to none and not a paid office bearer of Indian cricket. Ganguly, by then president of the BCCI, was also director of ATK Mohun Bagan when Sanjiv Goenka’s RPSG Group, which owns that football franchise, successfully bid for the new IPL team based out of Lucknow. He was the brand ambassador of the fantasy gaming app My Circle 11 when they announced a three-year title sponsorship deal with the Lucknow franchise and all this when a rival fantasy gaming app was the official kit sponsor of the Indian team. Couple of years ago, he instagrammed his photo clad in a JSW Cement T-shirt with tagline “at work”; JSW Sports, the sports arm of the business conglomerate JSW Group, is a joint owner of the IPL franchise Delhi Capitals.
When a news agency questioned him about his latest breach of selectorial independence, he said: “I have played 424 international matches for India.” The response suggests he believes that his record as a player allows him the privilege to abuse power, disregard rules, and ignore conflict of interests. When he was named president of the BCCI, he was expected to clear the mess left behind by the IPL spot-fixing saga and cleanse Indian cricket. Instead he has been “at work” for himself. The sad fallout of l’affaire Ganguly is that the trust in players to offer administration with a difference has quickly evaporated, revealing a broken system.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on March 5, 2022 under the title ‘On the wrong foot’.
The macroeconomic environment has changed considerably from the time Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union budget, and the RBI released its inflation forecast for the upcoming fiscal year. On Thursday, crude oil prices hovered around $120 a barrel for the first time in years. While prices have moderated mildly thereafter, for the Indian economy which imports around 80 per cent of its requirements, higher crude oil prices will have adverse consequences. Higher prices will impact growth, will be inflationary, and will exert upward pressure on the current account and fiscal deficit. Considering that crude oil prices are currently significantly higher than those factored in the Union budget and the RBI’s calculations, navigating this uncertain economic environment will require deft management by monetary and fiscal authorities.
Since November last year, when the price of the Indian crude oil basket stood at $80.64, oil marketing companies have refrained from revising pump prices, even though global prices have been on the rise. But, once the assembly elections are concluded, fuel prices at the pump are likely to be hiked. However, steep hikes will be needed — as per a report by ICICI securities, a Rs 12 per litre hike will be needed just to break even. This will be inflationary. Needless to say, fuel price hikes will upend the central bank’s optimistic assessment of the inflation trajectory. As per RBI’s recent assessment, inflation was expected to trend down from 5.7 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2021-22 to just under 5 per cent in the first half of 2022-23. This will complicate the choices before the monetary policy committee. Higher prices will also reduce discretionary spending by households. Governments may respond by lowering fuel taxes to absorb part of the burden. However, this will weigh down their revenues and spending. Thus, growth will thus take a hit. Higher oil prices will also push up imports, increasing the current account deficit at a time when global financial conditions are tightening. Recent data shows that the merchandise trade deficit has already widened to $21.2 billion in February, up from $17.9 billion, with much of the surge driven by oil. The rupee is already coming under pressure. This will only add to the inflationary pressures.
The indirect consequences of the deterioration in the economic environment are also beginning to show. There are reports that LIC’s initial public offering may be postponed to the next financial year due to prevailing market uncertainty. While the full effects of the oil price shock will be visible with a lag, when taken together with the third wave of the pandemic, it suggests further downside risks to economic growth in the fourth quarter, which as per the National Statistical Office’s latest estimate was already expected to slow down to 4.8 per cent from 5.4 per cent in the previous quarter.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on March 5, 2022 under the title ‘Cost of war’.
It is spring in Delhi — the three weeks spanning mid-February and early-March when all Delhi dwellers experience exhilarating optimism about their lives and their futures. The air is simply “moderate” to “poor” (and not “severe”), as per the various air quality index (AQI) applications on our phones. The Mughal gardens are in full bloom and thrown open to the public. Our public gardens are packed to the gills with picnickers amid the tombs, roses and preening peacocks.
Life is good. The Supreme Court is mostly functioning in physical mode, and the temperature is pleasant enough for us lawyers to stand around drinking tea while gossiping under the high domed ceilings and in the open-air corridors, wearing our multi-layered, mostly black advocate uniform, without sweat furiously dripping down our brows. It is amid this time of relative joy that I read parts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released on Monday. Perhaps, I shouldn’t have.
The IPCC, a body of almost 270 experts from 67 countries, brought together by the United Nations, gave a bleak assessment of the future of our planet and species. In its sixth assessment report, titled ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’, the IPCC discusses the increasing extreme heat, rising oceans, melting glaciers, falling agricultural productivity, resultant food shortages and increase in diseases like dengue and zika. Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary General, quoted in The New York Times, describes the IPCC report as being “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.” He added, “With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people, and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change”.
Now those of us who live in India don’t need the UN Secretary General to tell us that climate change is clobbering us. We are living in the future that the IPCC predicts. Our cities are experiencing more frequent extreme heat waves. In Delhi, the AQI for winter months averages between 300-500, akin to smoking one to two packs of cigarettes every day. Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata are in the list of the top 15 most polluted cities of the world, as per the Switzerland-based climate change group IQ Air.
The IPCC warns that should our planet get warmer than 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times (we are at 1.1 degrees at present), then there will be irreversible impact on “ecosystems with low resilience” such as polar, mountain and coastal ecosystems “impacted by glacier melt, and higher sea level rise”. This will cause devastation to “infrastructure in low-lying coastal settlements, associated livelihoods and even erosion of cultural and spiritual values.” The increased heat will lead to an increase in diseases like diabetes, circulatory and respiratory conditions, as well as mental health challenges. Clearly, adverse climate change is an all-encompassing condition damaging our minds, our lungs and our livelihoods.
The IPCC also highlights that climate “maladaptation” will especially affect “marginalised and vulnerable groups adversely, indigenous people, ethnic minorities, low-income households and informal settlements” and those in rural areas. Therefore, India, with a majority of its people falling in these categories, will be especially devastated.
Esha Roy and Amitabh Sinha in their reports in The Indian Express note that the IPCC highlights India as a vulnerable hotspot, with several regions and cities facing climate change phenomena like flooding, sea-level rise and heatwaves. For instance, Mumbai is at high risk of sea-level rise and flooding, and Ahmedabad faces the danger of heat waves — these phenomena are already underway in both cities. Vector-borne and water-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue will be on the rise in sub-tropical regions, like parts of Punjab, Assam and Rajasthan.
When the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, the grains we consume, including wheat and rice, will have diminished nutritional quality. But this presumes we will not face a crisis in food. Tucked away in annexure I of the IPCC report, I found a chilling factoid — that over the past 30 years, major crop yields have decreased by 4-10 per cent globally due to climate change. Consequently, India, which continues to be predominantly agrarian, is likely to be especially hurt.
Yet, it is not just our agrarian segments that will be impacted. Anjal Prakash, one of the lead authors of the chapter on cities and settlements, wrote that “urban India is at greater risk than other areas with a projected population of 877 million by 2050 nearly double of 480 million in 2020. The concentration of population in these cities will make them extremely vulnerable to climate change.”
We Indians know that we are experiencing the adverse consequences of the impacts of climate daily — the extreme heat, dirty air, poor quality of food grains. Our elders are mostly diabetic, and our streets are clogged with gas-guzzling vehicles. Yet, our political class has no cohesive and urgent policy roadmap to combat rising emissions and our diminishing life spans.
The problem is that fighting climate change requires fiscal expenditure and policy changes fuelled by political will, which will reap results in a decade or so. That is two election cycles too many for our politicians. Therefore, the primary electoral issues will continue to revolve around temples and mosques, dress codes and prohibited foods. Issues that presume we will continue to live as we do, ignoring the obvious question: Will we survive?
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 5, 2022 under the title ‘Climate of denial’. The writer is a senior advocate at the Supreme Court.
The government may very soon start selling your data based on a proposed policy released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), titled “Draft India Data Accessibility & Use Policy 2022”. The policy aims to “radically transform India’s ability to harness public sector data”. If passed, it would govern, “all data and information created/generated/collected/archived by the Government of India” as much as, “State Governments [who] will also be free to adopt the provisions of the policy”. The twin purpose to which this data will be put to will be government-to-government sharing and high value datasets for valuation and licensing. There are three clear reasons why this policy deserves a recall by the Union government.
The immediate risk arises from perverse incentives when a government starts licensing citizen data. Over the past three years, there has been a rapid expansion in the nature and scope of our most intimate details. While the middle classes faced the mendacity of voluntarily linking their Aadhaar to their bank accounts and mobile connections, today, the digital sweep is all pervasive. For agriculture, there is an Agristack; for unorganised labourers, we have the e-SHRAM portal; in health we have Aarogya Setu and ABHA (Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission); and for school children and teachers there is NDEAR (National Digital Education Architecture). This list goes on. For every area of our lives, the government now has a database filled with our personal data. The stated purpose for collection has been improving service delivery, planning and checking leakages. Such methods have been criticised by privacy and welfare activists but have been justified as serving public purposes.
This changes with the draft data accessibility policy. To adopt a phrase from start-up culture, the basis of such massive data collection over citizens is undergoing a 180-degree pivot. Public data is now being viewed as a prized asset of the Union government that should be freely shared, enriched, valued and licensed to the private sector. Given that more data means more money, commercial interests will prompt the government to collect granular personal details through greater capture and increased retention periods. Tying government policy determinations with a fiscal potential may also lead to distortion of the aims of data collection — the welfare of farmers, healthcare, unorganised labourers or even schoolchildren. There is no indication that consent will be sought in a meaningful form.
Over time, the original objectives for which databases are built will get diluted in favour of commercial interests. Even past experience signals caution, given that social risks such as arson and communal violence prompted the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways to recall a bulk sharing policy for licensing vehicular and driver licence data.
The second issue emerges from the disingenuous phrasing of “making data open by default”. The World Bank notes that one of the first benefits of open data is that it supports “public oversight of governments and helps reduce corruption by enabling greater transparency”. These principles were recognised in past policy pronouncements of the government. Specifically, the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy, 2012 and the implementation guidelines formulated in 2017 refer to the Right to Information Act, 2005. However, within the present draft data accessibility policy, while the phrase “open data” has been used, its values and objectives are absent. Of the 13 objectives listed, only one is relevant to transparency and is limited to a single sentence. The primary, overpowering objectives in the draft data accessibility policy and the background note are commercial.
The final area for reconsideration is a larger trend of policy-based administration detached from our constitutional framework. This is a malady afflicting large areas of data governance, with confusion on the enactment of a data protection law. Compounding this problem, the present policy, as many others, is untethered to any legislative basis and contains no proposals for the creation of a legal framework. Parliamentary scrutiny is not an inconvenient democratic artefact that can be jettisoned for a forecasted economic windfall. As per the Supreme Court’s Puttaswamy judgment on the fundamental right to privacy, the first ingredient to satisfy constitutionality is the existence of a legal, more often a legislative, basis. Without a law, there is absence of defined limits to data sharing that are enforceable and contain remedies.
In this case, the promise of privacy preservation through anonymisation tools holds little promise when it cannot be independently assessed by a body for data protection. For instance, Luc Rocher and co-authors at the Oxford Internet Institute note, “results suggest that even heavily sampled anonymised datasets are unlikely to satisfy the modern standards for anonymisation set forth by GDPR and seriously challenge the technical and legal adequacy of the de-identification release-and-forget model.” This becomes vital as it is the principal measure suggested in the draft data accessibility policy.
Such risks will become a reality without an independent regulatory body or penalties. Parliamentary enactments also help bring accountability through deliberation that furthers foresight and contains financial memorandums – given that public money would be spent to enrich datasets of public data. Since the policy contemplates sharing data between databases of the central and state governments as well as through central funded schemes, it may also be prudent to deliberate further in the Rajya Sabha. Federalism becomes a relevant issue given that such data, when it is generated, processed and enriched by state governments to comply with interoperability standards, will lead to revenue generation for itself. These are the glaring issues in this short, 10-page draft data accessibility policy, which appears to transform the Union government into a data broker.
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 5, 2022 under the title ‘Our data, not for sale’. The writer is the executive director of Internet Freedom Foundation.
I still remember meeting 52-year-old Ratnamala in Mumbai, a waste picker who scrapes a living out of the garbage we throw away. Ratnamala told me she had been doing this work for 40 years, but could barely make ends meet and support her four children. Her meagre savings and feeble access to the government social safety net have left her highly vulnerable to emergencies and disasters. Marginalised, and at the very bottom of the socio-economic chain, Ratnamala faces the same questions every day: How to break out of this trap and move up? How to extricate her children from the same? How to create a life of dignity for herself and her children?
It is estimated that India generates 65 million tonnes of waste each year and is home to more than 4 million waste pickers like Ratnamala. Predominantly women, this army of waste pickers or Safai Saathis is the backbone of traditional waste management in most Indian cities.
Despite this, Safai Saathis have not found their legitimate space in India’s development discourse. When the government announced measures during the pandemic to support frontline workers, the waste picker community remained conspicuous by its absence. This is particularly disheartening as they continue to collect and sort through rising mounds of potentially dangerous waste including masks, hazmat suits, and plastic face-shields.
Their multiple vulnerabilities, including low and uncertain incomes, limited access to government schemes, high health risks, and severe social exclusion, have all been exacerbated by Covid-19.
In line with our mandate to ensure that no one is left behind, UNDP India works with Safai Saathis through our Plastic Waste Management programme. However, when we began in 2018, we were struck by the paucity of data on this community. How was anyone going to devise programmes and policies to support Safai Saathis if official data say so little? This led us to design and publish India’s first large-scale analysis of the socio-economic conditions of Safai Saathis, based on a survey of over 9,000 workers across 14 Indian cities. Our findings underline an urgent need to extend multifaceted support to these workers. Our survey shows that Safai Saathis are employed mainly on the margins of the urban informal sector. Their low incomes and job insecurity is compounded by the fact that nearly 70 per cent come from socially backward groups and over 60 per cent have no formal education.
More than 90 per cent of the workers reported owning an Aadhaar card — in line with broad national trends — but only a tiny subset owned an income, caste, or occupation certificate. This thwarts any attempts at formalising their work and limits their access to government social security schemes. Less than 5 per cent of those surveyed had any health insurance, indicating very high degrees of health-shock vulnerabilities.
Of those Safai Saathis who had a bank account, only 20 per cent were linked to the Jan Dhan Yojana — the government’s flagship financial inclusion programme. Half of the sample reported owning and using a ration card and this proportion was even smaller in cities where migrants formed a larger share among surveyed workers. With its focus on portability, the government’s One Nation One Ration Card scheme has the potential to play a transformative role in ensuring access to subsidised food grains for these workers.
As India progresses towards meeting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, our study makes a compelling case to intensify efforts to address the challenges faced by Safai Saathis. Its evidence-backed insights have the potential to inform government policy and action — including the government’s ambition to bring informal workers under the Swachh Bharat Mission, and the e-SHRAM initiative that links workers to the state-funded health insurance.
An important starting point is the registration of Safai Saathis by urban local bodies, and providing ID cards that recognise them as municipal workers with a clear role. Ensuring minimum pay and enabling their authorised access to waste are essential next steps.
The overall policy agenda for Safai Saathis must include a firm focus on building resilience against shocks, expanding access to social protection, and creating opportunities to graduate towards safe, sustainable, and dignified livelihoods.
First, diversified solid waste management-linked livelihoods like dry waste centre managers and machine operators can broaden employment horizons for these workers. Waste pickers’ cooperatives can strengthen Safai Saathis’ collective bargaining power enabling higher prices for what they collect.
Second, a welfare framework to design social protection schemes explicitly for Safai Saathis should be a policy priority. Proactively reaching out to the workers for enrolment in government schemes, minimising paperwork, and a greater awareness among Safai Saathis about their entitlements are essential for linking them to government programmes.
In the medium term, there is a clear need to create better, safer, decent jobs in the economy that informal workers like Safai Saathis can eventually move to, supported by efforts to enhance their skills.
Finally, as India makes determined strides towards realising the Sustainable Development Goals, it must look at exploring alternate, technology-led circular economy models that eliminate the need for any person to do this hazardous work manually. Ratnamala and her children deserve to break away from this cycle and have a chance at a life with better opportunities and a life of dignity.
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 5, 2022 under the title ‘Wheels of Swachh Bharat’. The writer is Resident Representative UNDP, India.
This cannot be the word. My head kept refusing what seemed the only possibility even as it tried all other combinations out of the yellow and unused letters on the keypad. I am talking about Wordle. Eventually, frustrated at the non-words I was making at 6 am, since it has become the first thing I do every morning, I punched in RUPEE. Voila! The tiles turned green! (Note to self: three vowels, voila is a good start word). I begin to see the headlines and social media posts that will follow: “This has been made possible because of India’s rising superpower status on the world stage”; “Wordle recognises India as vishwaguru”; “Was this possible under Nehru?”; “The rupee was never taken seriously before 2014?” Never mind that the rupee is the name of the currency of at least six other countries now and was of many more till the mid-20thcentury. Also, never mind that the rupee has been on a downward slide vis-à-vis key foreign currencies for some years. But, to be on Wordle, soon after it had been bought over by The New York Times must mean something.
I yanked myself out of this train of thought. In case I doze off, I do not want early morning dreams of political leaders giving speeches on anything. Till now, the few minutes of reflection that followed getting the Wordle word of the day had been pleasant: They dealt with the curious ways of the brain, which is sometimes unable to see the word staring right at you and sometimes hops over unlikely loops to arrive at the destination. It can also be a humbling experience, for there will always be words that those who aren’t Shashi Tharoor don’t know. “Caulk”, for instance. Now that it has become part of our textual sociality, it allows us to trace the trajectory of others. It is a refreshing alternative to “all is well” conversations. It also yields good jealousies, like what I felt till I hit that first 2/6 score that everyone I knew had achieved.
How long will the Wordle craze last? Why did it become a craze? What are the likely futures of the game in a world that is the most literate ever, and where the ascendance of English has been steady despite the return of revanchist nationalism? We already have interesting predictions and assessments of this phenomenon. Marketing scholar Gaurav Sabnis links its popularity to the “sweet spot” the game has hit in being moderately difficult — thus posing a challenge — but mostly yielding gratification. It provided default contrarians a chance to rack up their social media presence by claiming to be untouched by the obsession. My teacher cousin made it part of her pedagogy by creating her own wordle, wherein she puts a word every day from the ongoing lesson for her students to solve.
It is the spin-offs in other languages that are to watch out for. While linguists have been discussing the suitability of other languages to the wordle format (some have those trauma-causing features like that word ending in -ight brought on for many), I do hope this spurs innovation of word games in other languages. As Indians rapidly lose their multi-linguality, and urban kids grow up with barely passable competence in their parental tongue(s), the smartphone could become our route to retain languages and find our way to regional literature outside of translation.
For long, I have been bothered by the lack of a Duolingo type app for South Asian languages, apart from Hindi. Our land of tech experts and several university centres for languages have not yet come up with ways to make language learning fun and accessible. Yet, as more languages enter endangered and extinct lists, taking with them the unique culture, worldview and knowledge that every language holds, we need creative ways to not just preserve but keep languages alive. Language is what makes us human, as research into cognition and linguistics show. But could language also be the key to saving us from both planetary and self-destruction? Etymology shows the interlinked migrant history of our species and is a counter to linguistic chauvinism. In times of war, it is words, not nukes that can bring peace. For who will mourn us once we are all gone? Yes, that is the train of thought set off by my second 2/6 word: Mourn.
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 5, 2022 under the title ‘Dreams of Wordle’. The writer teaches political science at Panjab University, Chandigarh.
Just what does Putin’s invasion of Ukraine signify? How do we understand Putin’s objectives and motivations?
Let us begin with what the invasion is not about. It is not about the reconstitution of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated after seven decades in 1991. Putin’s hour-long speech on February 24, which laid out the rationale for war, was severely critical of the Communist handling of Ukraine, which he called “Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine”. Indeed, his critique of Communism was larger. As is widely known, the Soviet Constitution granted the right to secede to the 15 constituent republics of the USSR. Lenin’s assumption was that nationalism flourished if nationhood was denied. By recognising the languages and cultures of 15 national groups — from the Estonians on the northwestern tip all the way down to the Uzbeks on the southeastern flank — the Soviet Union would end up extinguishing internal nationalisms. All 15 nations would make a transition to a higher state of human consciousness. They would be Communist/Soviet. If you are no longer national, why would you secede from the Soviet Union?
In his speech, Putin called this theory an “odious and Utopian fantasy inspired by the Communist revolution”. Indeed, exercising the right to secede in 1991, all 15 republics of the Soviet Union did become independent nations. Lenin and the Communists, said Putin, were wrong about nationalism, whose “virus” still persists.
What should then Moscow do, if not rebuild the Soviet Union? Using the various speeches of Putin, scholars of Russia point to his frequent citation of the concept of “Russky Mir”, translated as “Russian World”. A non-literal, but more appropriate, translation would be a Russian imperium, consisting of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Belarus has already accepted Russian hegemony, but having less than 10 million people, it is small. With a population of more than 40 million and having a land-mass second only to Russia in Eurasia, Ukraine is infinitely more significant. In the words of Lilia Shevtsova, a scholar of the region, Ukraine is “a star in the Russian galaxy”, accounting for what she calls “Russia’s Ukraine obsession”.
In the February 24 speech and his widely noted 5000-word essay ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, published by the Kremlin on July 12, 2021, Putin offered three arguments about Ukraine.
First, Ukraine is an “inalienable part of our history, culture and spiritual space”. Only during 1918-21 and, then, for a mere three decades after 1991 has Ukraine been independent. In contrast, he said, Ukrainians have called themselves Russians for centuries and have also been Orthodox Christians, thus sharing their religion with Russia. Their statehood was “never stable”. They were historically an integral part of Russia.
Second, Ukraine’s new leaders are “building their statehood on the negation of everything that historically united us”, in the process “distorting the mentality and historical memory of millions of people”. In the creation of pro-Western, anti-Russian attitudes, the political leaders have been systematically helped by Ukraine’s oligarchs, who have “stolen billions of dollars from the people and kept them in Western banks”. Ukraine’s move towards Europe and the West is thus a conspiracy hatched by the political elites and oligarchs, going against the historical truths and violating the honest sentiments of Ukrainian masses.
Third, Ukraine’s gravitation towards the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), argues Putin, poses a grave security threat to Russia. It is a two-headed threat. If NATO admits Ukraine as a member, an anti-Russian, US-led security umbrella will reach the doorsteps of Russia. Moreover, Ukraine used to host Soviet-era nuclear weapons before giving them up in 1994. The know-how, says Putin, has not disappeared and Ukraine can easily develop its own tactical nuclear weapons capable of hitting Russia, an argument the scholars of nuclear weapons find wholly false. Nuclear weapons require much more than technical knowhow.
Essentially, these three arguments boil down to one foundational claim — Ukraine cannot have an independent state because it was historically part of Russia. Any attempt at expression of independence, or Ukraine’s Western desire, must be militarily crushed.
Longstanding nationalism theory tells us why this argument is deeply flawed, apart from being profoundly dangerous if accompanied with military action. Over the last four decades, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities has become the most authoritative text on nations and nationalism. Anderson has persuaded the scholarly world that nations were born only after the 18th century. They are modern political constructs. Indeed, most nations were born in the 19th and 20th century. Earlier polities took two forms, both non-national: empires or city-states. There was no Russian nation before the modern times, only a Russian empire.
Leaving this conceptual reasoning aside, the absurdity of Putin’s argument can be more concretely illustrated if we draw a South Asian comparison. We know that there was no Pakistan before 1947, and no Bangladesh before 1971. Both were, historically, parts of India, and they even speak languages also spoken in India. Such conditions, however, neither mean that India can legitimately claim them as its own today, nor that they must be brought back into an Akhand Bharat (undivided India) with military means. As history progressed, both Pakistan and Bangladesh emerged from the development of national consciousness, became nations in their own right, evolved statehood reflecting that consciousness, and received international recognition for their sovereignty.
With over 92 per cent vote in favour of independence, Ukraine opted overwhelmingly for a break-up from the Soviet Union in 1991, and other than in some small parts, especially on its eastern borders, there is no evidence of a popular desire to re-unite with Russia. It is also now providing one of the ultimate tests of national resolve and consciousness. Ready to sacrifice their lives, citizens are turning into street soldiers, mounting an impressive resistance against the Russian armed forces. The emergence of citizen soldiers, aiding professional soldiers, reflects a highly developed form of national consciousness.
Putin might have expected that Ukrainians would welcome the Russian armed forces with open arms, or view them as liberators from an illegitimate elite wrongly taking them down the disloyal Western path. But what we are witnessing today is a full-blown national rebellion against a mighty neighbour bent upon bullying and subjugating.
History tells us that these conditions lead to lasting conflict. Ukraine will be no exception. Devastation and resistance are likely to continue.
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 5, 2022 under the title ‘Putin’s decision’. The writer is Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences at Brown University
Every medical student who has finally reached India from war-torn Ukraine has reason for relief, but these returnees’ anxieties have hardly ended. One big question is how they will continue their interrupted education, especially if the Ukraine crisis doesn’t ease in the near term. As demands upon the government grow to intervene in this sphere as well, some solutions are easier to deliver than others. For example, relaxation of the NMC rule that blocks migration from one college to the other should be expedited, so that students so far studying in Ukraine have the option of transferring to medical colleges in other countries.
But as for accommodating all returnees in Indian colleges, that will be very knotty if not impossible. Remember that it is not just the affordability of Ukrainian options but also the terrible demand-supply situation in India that sent students away in the first place. Some 16 lakh students take NEET, some 8 lakh qualify, and then there are only 90,000-odd seats. There just aren’t that many spare seats to be had for the 20,000-odd students who had gone to Ukraine. And there’s the issue of whether returnees, who paid lower fees, should get discounts in Indian private colleges – a complicated question.
Both for the sake of its students and its overall health, India does need to expand medical education. But approving new medical colleges at breakneck pace will be counterproductive – as quality education needs quality faculty, hospital linkages and other high-grade resources that need careful nurturing. In the pursuit of quality, the common licensing exam for all MBBS graduates that’s scheduled to start in 2023 holds great promise. For students trained abroad, who are currently put through a separate and tougher screening, it will also bring fairness. But, even then, decades of official neglect means Indian students will look for options abroad.
The Delhi high court recently delivered a verdict we must raise a toast to. The backstory is as Indian as IMFL. In 2020 Delhi’s excise department raided the residence of the petitioner and began prosecution on the ground that he had stored more liquor – 132 bottles, to be precise – than legally permitted. It took two years for the petitioner to get an all-clear from the HC. But while the story is delightful, the larger context is serious. The case embodies the terrible flaws in India’s governance. The state is overly intrusive in areas it doesn’t need to be present and deficient elsewhere. And the intrusiveness is backed by a maze of laws that breed corruption.
Most states have convoluted excise laws designed to infantilise adults and encourage rent-seeking. Maharashtra, till recently, allowed wine to be sold only by outlets that met a threshold in terms of floor space. The requirement was recently removed but permits remain mandatory for consuming anything other than mild beer. MP’s recent excise liberalisation translated into allowing people to store four crates of beer from the earlier limit of one. Liberalisation of excise policies by states merely means that limits will be adjusted. But is there any need for the state to be inspecting liquor cabinets in homes?
Excise policies of states represent unhealthy moralism, which also influences legislation. From there what comes as regulation creates a situation where citizens are harassed and public resources frittered away on non-existent problems. The message in all these bottles is for governments to lighten and smarten up.
The world is dealing with a triple environmental crisis - climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Ensuring the health of forests is a critical pillar of the response. For India, it will mean not just increasing forest area but also improving its quality. The 2021 State of Forest Survey reports an increase of 0.2% in forest cover, mostly outside recorded forest areas.
Geographic areas listed as forests in government records such as reserve and protected forests are referred to as recorded forest areas. Areas outside recorded forests include any land area of 1 hectare or more with a canopy density of more than 10%. This definition, in keeping with the Kyoto Protocol, addresses the role of forests as carbon sinks. Natural forests serve a broader purpose, most importantly in providing ecosystem services critical for life such as hydrological systems. This makes it vital to focus on the health of natural forests through policy and measures that minimise their loss, and help regenerate degraded forests and mangroves. In India, recorded forest area has shown marginal change - most of its forests have canopy density of 10-70% and only 8.8 million hectares are dense forests. The trend of decline in forest cover in the northeast is a cause of concern.
The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate science assessment report makes clear that while there is a need to reduce emissions to restrict temperature rise, attention must be paid to adaptation. This calls for an ecosystem approach to forests that views their health in terms of long-term productivity and ecosystem services such as pest control, soil health, pollination and buffering of temperature extremes while addressing economic and social concerns.
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Exports in February grew 22.36% to $33.81 billion and imports 34.9% to $55 billion, widening the trade deficit to $13.12 billion. Engineering, petroleum and chemicals pushed up exports during the month, and imports were driven by the surge in crude oil prices. If merchandise trade stays on its impressive trend, India could end 2021-22 with exports in excess of $400 billion and upwards of $600 billion in imports, and a trade deficit of $200 billion. There will, of course, be an impact of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war on cargo shipments to and from India. It would play through higher energy prices threatening what has been a fragile economic recovery.
The current account deficit (CAD) had widened to 1.3% of GDP at the end of September from a surplus of 0.9% in June. And it is expected to widen further in the December quarter because the net exports ratio - an underlying indicator for CAD - has reached a three-year high. Beyond that, the war in Ukraine and ensuing sanctions by the western countries are likely to keep India's fuel bill inflated, keeping up the pressure on the current account. If oil prices stay elevated for an extended period, chances are India, which imports 85% of its crude and nearly half its gas, will see its CAD move into worrisome territory by March next year.
In its latest review of monetary policy, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) saw strength in the country's burgeoning foreign exchange reserves and a manageable CAD. Booming services exports, led by information technology (IT), and healthy foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows were expected to keep the CAD within the comfort zone of policymakers. The case for India's ability to handle a flight of capital as oil prices surge and central banks begin monetary tightening rests on this premise. Some of that will be put to the test during the forthcoming drawdown of global liquidity. The Russia-Ukraine conflict in Europe will play out in the Indian economy through inflation, worsening trade balance and a falling rupee. Heads need to be up for that.
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As the world moves ahead to mark International Women’s Day, the clock on women’s rights is moving backwards. All of us are paying the price. The crises of recent years have highlighted how women’s leadership is more crucial than ever.
Women have heroically confronted the Covid-19 pandemic as doctors, nurses, and public health and social care workers. But at the same time, women and girls have been the first to lose out on jobs or schooling, taking on unpaid care work, and facing skyrocketing levels of domestic and cyber abuse and child marriage.
The pandemic has highlighted, even more starkly, an age-old truth: The roots of patriarchy run deep. We still live in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture. As a result, in good times or bad, women are more likely to fall into poverty. Their health care is sacrificed and their education and opportunities are curtailed.
As we look to the future, a sustainable and equal recovery for all is only possible if it is a feminist recovery — one that puts progress for girls and women at its centre. We need economic progress through investments in education, employment, training and decent work. Women should be the first in line for the 400 million jobs we are called to create by 2030.
We need social progress through investments in social protection systems and the care economy. Such investments yield huge dividends, creating green, sustainable jobs, while supporting members of our societies who need assistance, including children, older people and the sick. We need financial progress to reform a morally bankrupt global financial system so all countries can invest in a woman-centred economic recovery. This includes debt relief and fairer tax systems that channel some of the massive pockets of wealth around the world to those who need it most.
We need urgent, transformative climate action, to reverse the reckless increase in emissions and gender inequalities that have left women and girls disproportionately vulnerable. Developed countries must urgently deliver on their commitments on finance and technical support for a just transition from fossil fuels. The successful, stable economies of the future will be green, gender-inclusive and sustainable.
We need more women in leadership roles in government and business, including finance ministers and CEOs, developing and implementing green and socially progressive policies that benefit all their people. We know, for example, that having more women in parliaments is linked with stronger climate commitments and higher levels of investment in health care and education.
We need political progress through targeted measures that ensure women’s equal leadership and representation at all levels of political decision-making, through bold gender quotas. Gender inequality is essentially a question of power. Uprooting centuries of patriarchy demands that power is equally shared across every institution, at every level.
At the United Nations, we have achieved — for the first time in the organisation’s history — gender parity in senior management at headquarters and around the world. This has dramatically improved our ability to better reflect and represent the communities we serve.
Every step of the way, we can take inspiration from women and girls pushing for progress in every sphere and every corner of our globe. Young women climate campaigners are leading global efforts to pressure governments to live up to their commitments. Women’s rights activists are bravely demanding equality and justice, and building more peaceful societies as peacekeepers, peacemakers and humanitarians in some of the world’s most troubled zones and beyond.
In societies where women’s rights movements are vibrant, democracies are stronger. When the world invests in expanding opportunities for women and girls, all of humanity wins. As a matter of justice, equality, morality, and plain common sense, we need to turn the clock forward on women’s rights. We need a sustainable, feminist recovery centred around — and driven by — women and girls.
António Guterres is secretary-general, United Nations
The views expressed are personal
When a situation is not clear, but you can sense the implications and dangers, it’s more important to raise the correct questions than be certain of their answers. I believe what the crisis in Ukraine means for India is one such situation. Here are 13 questions that explore the problem we face. They could help you understand why a crisis in Europe is a serious predicament for us.
One, on the one hand, India has historically close relations with Moscow and 60-70% of our defence equipment comes from Russia. On the other hand, in the last 20 years, India’s relationship with the United States (US) has transformed. We are members of Quad and share a common vision for the Indo-Pacific. So, when both want our clear-cut support for their stand on Ukraine, are we getting torn apart?
Two, let’s start with India’s response. We are proud of being the world’s biggest democracy and we stand for a rules-based international order. Have we, therefore, damaged our image by refusing to criticise the Russian invasion of a sovereign country and by abstaining from voting at the United Nations (UN) Security Council?
Three, while Russia has expressed appreciation of India’s stand at the UN, US President Joe Biden has publicly indicated there are unresolved differences with India. Clearly, this has introduced a strain in Indo-US relations. How worrying is that?
Four, let me go a step further. India is the only Quad country that has not sharply and publicly criticised Russia. So are there now serious differences of perception within Quad? Is it weaker and less united as a result?
Five, the problem for India could become more difficult depending on how the crisis in Ukraine might develop. Not only has Russia divided Ukraine by effectively taking over the Donbas region, but the popularly elected Volodymyr Zelensky government is likely to be toppled, and a pro-Russian puppet regime put in its place. Russia will expect Indian support and, difficult though that may be, while we have a very tense and unpredictable situation on our border with China, will we have to abstain again?
Six, does this mean the Chinese problem and India’s dependence on Russian military equipment have substantially tied our hands?
Seven, if India now continues to abstain and not criticise Russia, even after Ukraine has been “gobbled up”, what sort of relationship will we have left with America? For, instance, will we get a waiver under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) for the S-400 missile system?
Eight, let’s look further down the road. Russia’s dependence on China, already undeniable, is likely to increase very significantly. Since most of the Russian military equipment we get is targeted against China or its close ally Pakistan, won’t Moscow be under pressure from Beijing to stop?
Nine, the tougher the sanctions the West imposes on Russia, the greater will be Russia’s dependence on Beijing and, therefore, the stronger the Chinese-Russian partnership. Could that lead to changes in Russia’s stand on the India-China problem and even, possibly, the India-Pakistan problem?
Ten, writing in The Tribune, former foreign secretary, Shyam Saran, went a step further: “The nightmare scenario for India would be if the US comes to the conclusion that it confronts a greater threat from Russia and that this justifies a strategic accommodation with China. In blunt terms, concede Chinese dominance in Asia while safeguarding its European flank.” How likely is this?
Eleven, if this nightmare happens, does it mean India will be on its own facing China, with a hostile Pakistan to our west and neither America nor Russia with us politically?
Twelve, there’s no doubt we’re walking a very difficult tightrope, but how long can we continue? If we have to come down on one side or the other, which should it be?
Thirteen, given India’s need for economic investment and technology, but also our commitment to democracy and a rules-based international order, and the fact the problem with China is not going away, is the US the better friend for the future?
Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story
The views expressed are personal
Last year, in a move that garnered domestic and international attention, pro-democracy groups Freedom House and the V-Dem Institute downgraded India’s democratic credentials on account of perceived backsliding. These twin moves sparked a heated conversation on the rise of majoritarianism, atrophying checks and balances, and increasing curbs on dissent at the national level.
In response to these worrying trends, some analysts claimed that federalism offers the first line of defence against illiberalism and democratic backsliding. While federalism can offer a space for democratic negotiation — the Union government’s about-face on three controversial farm laws has been hailed as an example — such arguments elide a simple fact: The state of democracy in India’s states appears dismal.
On issues of day-to-day governance, it is the states, not Delhi, that are charged with most sovereign functions. From law and order to public goods provision and fiscal management, the states are closer to the citizenry and their decisions have a more immediate and pronounced impact on daily life. Yet in nearly every state capital, the executive rules virtually unchallenged. Nearly all chief ministers (CMs) — irrespective of partisan affiliation — have sought to eliminate or marginalise the second-rung leadership. In all political parties today, power is vested in the hands of a single supreme leader or family. Once elected, the pathologies of the top-down party structure are replicated in government. CMs praise devolution from the Centre to the states, but most ensure it proceeds no further.
It is no wonder, therefore, that 16 of 30 sitting CMs have opted to retain — in whole or in part — the home ministry portfolio for themselves. Given the well-documented misuse of police and investigative agencies in service of political gains, most CMs are unwilling to relegate authority over the internal security apparatus.
The efforts of CMs to centralise power is aided by India’s feckless state assemblies. A June 2021 report by PRS Legislative Research notes that for 19 states — for which data were available —assemblies met for an average of 18 days in 2020. Lest one be lulled into thinking this is simply an artefact of the Covid-19 pandemic, these same assemblies met for an average of only 29 days a year between 2016 and 2019. The report also notes that most bills are passed by state legislatures with virtually no debate: Six in 10 bills enacted in 2020 by states were passed on the same day they were introduced. Rather than acting as an independent branch of government charged with scrutinising important policy matters, assemblies have become mere spectators. If Parliament has become a rubber stamp, the record of assemblies is no better — and may, in fact, be worse.
At the national level, troubling questions have been raised about the judiciary’s ability — and willingness — to hold a powerful executive accountable. At the state level, high courts’ (HCs’) proclivity to challenge powerful incumbents also varies. Across states, apex courts are hamstrung in performing their official functions. As of January 2022, the department of justice reports that nearly four in 10 HC judgeships lie vacant. While numerous factors limit the efficiency of India’s courts, the chronic shortage of personnel is chief among them. Roughly 5.6 million cases are pending in HCs, according to a PRS analysis.
Between 2019 and 2020, pendency in the HCs increased by as much as 20%. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that one in five cases brought before the HCs has languished for more than a decade. Such statistics are hardly indicative of a judiciary firing on all cylinders.
Of course, there is a broad array of institutions beyond the judicial and legislative arms that can hold the powerful to account. Take, for instance, state information commissions — the agencies authorised by the Right to Information (RTI) Act to ensure the smooth functioning of the RTI infrastructure in the states. An October 2021 report on the RTI Act issued by the non-governmental organisation Satark Nagarik Sangathan (SNS) makes for depressing reading. SNS found that four state information commissions were found to be non-functional, three of which were completely defunct. Across states, vacancies were the norm while backlogs in processing appeals and complaints have risen steadily.
Political scientists have coined the term subnational authoritarianism to describe concentrated pockets of despotic rule within democratic regimes. That label is often too narrow, as scholars Jacqueline Behrend and Laurence Whitehead have written, for even when fully authoritarian subnational regimes are absent, illiberal structures and practices can take root at the subnational level, reverberating throughout national politics. Indeed, as scholar Neelanjan Sircar has pointed out, the model of domineering executive power seen on display in Delhi was first pioneered in India’s state capitals.
The current situation suggests the need for several urgent areas for reform.
First, legislators in India rarely see parliamentary work as a vital component of their remit. This oversight is, in part, a consequence of the well-intended but self-defeating anti-defection law, which empowers party leaders to rule with an iron grip while removing incentives for rank and file legislators to invest in the parliamentary process. Thus, the anti-defection law has severed a key link in the accountability chain. By the same token, legislators have garnered new executive powers — through constituency development funds and district development authorities —that have subordinated their lawmaking role in favour of development administration. This situation must be reversed.
Second, judicial appointments to state HCs have reached an impasse. According to the memorandum of procedure for the appointment of HC judges, once the collegium finalises its recommendations, the government should act on those choices within a few weeks. Data collected and analysed by legal expert Alok Prasanna Kumar found that the median appointment time is nearly twice that long. What’s more troubling, Kumar notes, is the fact that the government has adopted a “pick and choose” model whereby it expedites the processing of some names, while sitting on others. This practice has given the government the ability to exercise a pocket veto over appointments — a clear violation of the letter and the spirit of existing arrangements. A new settlement is needed to bridge the executive-judicial divide.
Third, there is a renewed impetus for fresh investments in media and civil society organisations that operate at the state and local levels. The rise of investigative digital media that covers nationwide politics has shed light on many recent cases of abuse — from the Pegasus hacking scandal to the misuse of India’s outmoded sedition law. Organisations that do complementary work at the state level exist, but often operate under the radar and starved of resources. These groups are not anti-democratic forces, as often alleged, but strive to ensure democracy works as it should.
The debate about the wellbeing of India’s democracy — including the Union government’s robust defence of its record — should be welcomed. But in a diverse polity like India, a focus on national developments should not obscure the backsliding transpiring in the states. That would be a disservice to both federalism and freedom.
Milan Vaishnav is senior fellow and director of the South Asia programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC
The views expressed are personal
India desperately needs an exclusive legislation on human trafficking, but the Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Care and Rehabilitation) Bill 2021, an exhaustively drafted document, is awaiting parliamentary approval. The crime is covered under many laws, but even the latest definition given under Section 370 of the Indian Penal Code is limited. Notwithstanding the criticism of some aspects of the bill, it is the need of the hour. Trafficking in any form is prohibited under Article 23 of the Constitution.
Yet, this modern-day slavery is growing in intensity, dimension, and spread. A 2017 International Labour Organization (ILO) report states that more than 40 million people are enslaved for exploitation. The spectrum of the purpose of exploitation ranges from sex slaves to child soldiers. The report estimates that in the preceding five years, 89 million people were victimised. Its classification projects that out of 40 million, 25 million were exploited in forced labour and 15 million were pushed into forced marriage to which they had not consented, and out of this, 5.7 million were children. For every 1,000 adults, 5.4 were victims, and for 1000 children, 4.4 children were victimised.
The UNODC 2020 Global Report estimates that in 2018, for every 10 victims of trafficking detected globally, about five were adult women and two were girls. About one-third of the overall detected victims were children. So, there is a commonality in UNODC, and ILO reports that around 70% of victims are females (adult and child included). UNODC observes that “invisibility’ of some sectors helps to hide trafficking for forced labour.”
As per India’s National Crime Record Bureau, 2278, 2208, and 1714 cases of trafficking were reported in 2018, 2019, and 2020 respectively. 85.2% of the cases have been charge-sheeted. In 2020, 4,709 persons were victimised, out of which 2,222 were children, including 1,377 boys and 845 girls. It also projects that 2151 children were rescued out of which 801 were girls. Among adult victims, 535 were males, and 1952 were females.
If we analyse the data, it seems to be misleading and untenable. The factual situation would narrate a different story. The figure of merely 845 girls being victimised in the country in one year reflects flaws in reporting. If we see the data projected in the NCRB report, there is almost no trafficking in India.
While ILO says, out of 1,000 persons, 5.4 persons are victimised, the data of NCRB says out of 1.3 billion populations, only 4,709 have been victimised. This is a huge mismatch to the projected magnitude of human trafficking. This anomaly has to be understood. This huge gap in reporting could be attributed to the lack of an all-encompassing Act. The revised definition in the Bill would, to a great extent, clear doubts about what constitutes trafficking.
The passing of the Bill should be followed by proper research and a study to understand the domestic and global situation, with reference to cause and effect, dimensions beyond the conventional definition, the vulnerability and attempts to alleviate it, the methods used by a trafficker to sustain captivity and role of stakeholders in prevention, protection, and prosecution, and other issues.
It would help understand human trafficking through intersectional analysis and beyond the lens of gender-based violence while locating anti-trafficking work as part of a globalised movement.
But for sure, an Act would help stakeholders and government and non-government organisations put a concerted effort to combat modern-day slavery.
Veerendra Mishra is Fulbright Humphrey Fellow; honorary adjunct professor of law, Jindal Global Law School
The views expressed are personal
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused serious economic disruptions. As we celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD), a focus on gender-responsive economic recovery is imperative to counter the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women, especially in India.
The majority of the working women (around 91%) in India are in informal employment, characterised by job insecurity, income volatility, and the absence of social safety nets that prevent and assuage the impact of economic shocks. According to the State of Working India Report 2021, by December 2020, nearly 47% women suffered a permanent job loss, compared to 7% men.
Even though the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2019-20 reported an improvement in female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) for women aged 15 and above – 30%, against 24.5% and 23.3% the previous two years – scholars have disputed these gains. As per the latest official data, FLFPR had dropped to 21.2% in January-March 2021, with the female unemployment rate increasing to 11.8%, against 10.6% a year ago. (PLFS Quarterly 2021).
The informal sector lacks access or awareness of the financial services, new modes of payment banks/platforms, and the requirements needed to access credit. For women workers, the hurdles to access are compounded by a lack of access to smart gadgets and the knowledge of using them.
The pandemic has also severely hit the women-owned MSMEs. The disruption caused by the successive lockdowns has led to a loss of revenue and business discontinuity for MSMEs, including women-owned ones. The Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem is heavily skewed - the last published economic census (2013-14) revealed that women-owned enterprises comprised only 13.8% of the total number of enterprises. Most of them are small businesses. Further, women entrepreneurs in India face issues like lack of skills, training, and support, adversely impacting their professional journey. In such a scenario, the pandemic may push women entrepreneurs out of the market, who may find it harder to return.
For a gender-responsive recovery, targeted and accessible government assistance is important to improve women’s access to jobs and earnings. Moreover, it is not only important to arrest the decline in FLFPR but also sustain the gains made in women’s economic empowerment, which clearly leads to positive spill-over effects on family planning, maternal and child health, investment in child’s education, etc. In this context, we outline a few proposals from our paper on a Gender Responsive and Inclusive Economic Recovery in the COVID-19 Context.
Let us begin with urban employment. There has been a discussion around the need for a national urban employment programme to complement the National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA) since the later part of 2020.
States such as Tamil Nadu have also implemented similar programmes. The scheme could inbuilt minimum workdays guaranteed for women, with mandates on urban local bodies to pursue gender-responsive works and IEC campaigns. Such programmes have the potential in facilitating women back into the labour force.
Women are also securing opportunities in the emerging digital-enabled gig economy, particularly in platform work in the service domain. However, this form of employment is still precarious and needs social security coverage. The Code on Social Security was passed in 2020, which includes mention of platform and gig workers; however, its implementation is yet to be felt. Recent reports suggest 10 crore unorganised workers have registered on the e-Shram portal, of which about eight lakh are gig workers. The Government of India may consider providing incentives for platforms to offset the implementation costs that digital platforms will have to incur to provide social security to their workers.
To prepare women for industry 4.0, India has to provide skilling and training in digital and business skills tailored to the future of work. In line with the government’s priority to bring India online, women should be equipped to exploit the internet’s opportunities. Existing gender resource centres under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) and National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM), where women access information on schemes, entitlements, etc. could be upgraded to impart these skills. The PMKVY should include provisions for digital training of young girls.
And finally, prompt action is necessitated to redress the disproportionately (six times) high time Indian women spend on care work, which has worsened during the pandemic and has driven many women to withdraw from the labour force. Therefore, it is imperative that infrastructural provisions that reduce time spent on household chores and enable child and elderly care be provided to women at every nook and corner of the country. This would entail ensuring basic infrastructure such as water supply, road connectivity, energy, and clean fuel access. In addition, the universalisation of creches needs to be approached with utmost seriousness.
Further, as India has one of the worst health/education worker to population ratios, these are areas in which women can potentially find opportunities. Researchers at the Azim Premji University estimate that regularising the jobs of anganwadi workers, Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA), etc. and filling existing vacancies can create up to 3 million jobs.
As the country strives to get back to normal, the government has an important role in ensuring that women do not get left behind. This IWD is a reminder that we must strive for a gender-inclusive economic recovery and not lose the strides made in women’s empowerment in the last few decades on account of the pandemic.
Sona Mitra is principal economist, IWWAGE, and Mayank Mishra and Nikhil Iyer are public policy manager, and policy analyst at The Quantum Hub Consulting
The views expressed are personal
Against the backdrop of an attack by Russia, Ukraine turned to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on February 27 and asked the court to hold Moscow accountable for its actions. Ukraine emphatically denied that any act of genocide has occurred in Luhansk and Donetsk or elsewhere in the country, and that Russia has any lawful basis to take action in and against Ukraine for the purpose of preventing and punishing genocide, as alleged by Russia. However, as Russia does not recognise the compulsory jurisdiction of ICJ, the only possibility for bringing the action before ICJ available to Ukraine was to rely upon a treaty that provides for the possibility of judicial settlement in ICJ and has been ratified by both the parties.
Given that both Ukraine and Russia are parties to the Genocide Convention of 1948, Ukraine has used Article IX of the Convention along with Article 36(1) of the ICJ Statute as the ground for its action before ICJ. Article IX of the genocide convention gives powers to ICJ to decide “disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention”.
Ukraine is seeking provisional measures to protect its rights so that it is not exposed to the false claims of genocide made by Russia. The requested measures include the immediate suspension of the military operations commenced by Russia on February 24 and no steps in furtherance of any military operations.
This is not the first time that Ukraine has approached ICJ against Russia. This case follows three other (pending) proceedings brought by Ukraine in relation to events in the Crimea region in 2014. Two cases are arbitrations under Annex VII of United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS”), while the third is before ICJ.
In 2017 also, Ukraine initiated proceedings against Russia at ICJ on the basis of two international treaties: The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), with regard to Crimea; and the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (ICSFT), with regard to Donbas. Under CERD, Ukraine alleged that Russia had carried out a policy of cultural eradication of ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in Crimea, including enforced disappearances, no education in the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar languages, and the ban of the Mejlis, the main representative body of the Crimean Tatars.
Under the ICSFT, Ukraine alleged that Russia had supported terrorism by providing funds, weapons and training to illegal armed groups in eastern Ukraine. Both these treaties are binding upon Ukraine and Russia and enable an individual State party to refer a dispute concerning them to ICJ. In its judgment of November 8, 2019, on the Application of ICSFT and of CERD, ICJ found that it does have the jurisdiction to hear Ukraine’s complaints about Russia violating its obligations under both the treaties and went on to grant some provisional measures against Russia.
The judgment constitutes a stepping stone for Ukraine as it represented a partial triumph for the country as part of a broader dispute with Russia. In the case ICJ disagreed with Russia’s submission that Ukraine had to resort to both the negotiations and to the CERD Committee. The court clarified for the first time that these procedures under CERD are two ways of achieving the similar goal, and, therefore, alternative and not cumulative. ICJ further said that requiring states to use both procedures before reaching ICJ would undermine the very purpose of CERD, which is to promptly eliminate racial discrimination.
Coming to the current case filed by Ukraine against Russia, there is all probability that ICJ will grant provisional measures as requested by Ukraine seeing the urgency and gravity of the situation. The next step may even be more cumbersome for Ukraine. The ICJ Statute does not contain any provisions on the methods of enforcing the judgment or ensuring its observance. In all practicality, compliance is left to the state under Article 94 of the UN Charter. At the same time, the UN Charter does consider the scenario where a state fails to comply with ICJ’s judgment under Article 94(2).
In that scenario the UN Security Council may be approached by the other party. So, in the event that ICJ does grant provisional measures sought by Ukraine and Russia fails to comply, Ukraine will have the option of approaching UNSC over it. Given that Russia has a permanent seat in UNSC, which carries veto power, Russia may have the upper hand finally. Whether the provisional measures granted by ICJ in 2019 have been obligated by Russia is also somewhat obscure. Nevertheless, the ICJ hearings and the approach of the court towards both the countries in Ukraine v. the Russian Federation, will be something to look forward to.
Jyoti Singh is a Delhi-based advocate
The views expressed are personal