Rinku Ghosh writes: The dance form also helps you feel the navarasas, enacting emotions through facial expressions and hand gestures, feeling something that you’ve not dared to in a long, long time.

The ball of the foot hurts a little, feels burnt actually. But there’s a blood rush in that toe-tapping, sole-thumping and heel-thudding, a sense of achievement in a beginner’s Kathak class. My fellow students, all between six and pre-teens, are all raring to claim everything the world has to offer. Best foot forward. But I am 51, battered by circumstance, too beaten to claim something new. Yet, here

I am, standing tall in my awkwardness. Unmindful of fears, expectations, judgments, age-appropriateness and all kinds of gaze.

Enough septuagenarian dancers have made headlines. But they began earlier. At Kathak maestro Shobhana Narayan’s studio, a handful of students between 50 and 60 are reclaiming their lost passion. I am a fresher. And while Narayan herself has been a guru for whom her sadhana never ends, for me dance is about self-indulgence. And a bit of self-evolution.

Growing up, I had always loved dancing. As I did painting, writing and drama. And if you have spent your wonder years in Kolkata, you would know that Bengali parents pursue their holistic education ideals with a missionary zeal. Good, because I got exposed to art and culture early on. Bad, because dancing got left behind for sound career choices. After all, journalism had a greater potential to change the world.

Those days, our choices were idealistic than being either oriented or driven. And adulting during the post-liberalisation years meant that the world had opened up and had to be gulped down ravenously. Then there was the sun-kissed warmth of a family life. Suffice to say,

I gave up on dance. Mid-life and mid-career, when life still seems to be a work in progress, having ducked a curve ball or two, I’ve realised that mine needed to be leavened by a dollop of passion. Many suggested story-telling, painting, pottery, all supposedly in the realm of suitability. What if dance happens to be my new-found moment of self-expression? Fulfilment?

You would think such existential questions should ideally be asked at a restless 25 than at a sedate 50. But then I got my answers from two people I had met early on in my career. Narayan was the subject of an interview and choreographer Bhavini Mishra an intern in my team. Narayan made it easier for me to understand Kathak beyond its raw physical energy and feel its sensuality, subtlety and nuances.

The dance form also helps you feel the navarasas, enacting emotions through facial expressions and hand gestures, feeling something that you’ve not dared to in a long, long time.

When I met Bhavini, she was finishing her mass communication course and getting her rhythms right, be it for Chhau, jazz, contemporary… Sharp and focused, she would have made it as a journalist but chose dance. And just when she was making her mark, a fall on stage meant that could never perform again. But she proved doctors wrong, soaring with abandon as she conceived her most difficult acts since. She believes that each one of us can create our own dance forms and get our bodies to speak our minds.

Why is it that I believe them now and didn’t go with my impulses before? Because I’ve been trapped by biases of my own making. I am professedly liberal but not liberated enough. People look at you one time, then the moment passes on. And we let that one moment ruin our free spirit. We’ve got to tell ourselves, we’ll still be okay. But happier.

Tavleen Singh writes: When things go badly for Modi, his spokesmen always invoke Rahul Gandhi to remind Indian voters that he is their only choice and that he is really no choice at all.

If proof were needed that Narendra Modi goes from strength to strength only because he faces no Opposition, it came this year. In the seven years that he has been Prime Minister, this has been the year most defined by blunders and fiascoes. The mistakes made by Modi personally in areas ranging from healthcare to national security are too long to list in this limited space. In my view the two that stand out are the desperate state that India found herself in at the height of the second Covid wave when public healthcare literally collapsed, and we discovered that the Prime Minister had failed to order enough vaccines to save us from this evil virus.

The second was Modi’s failure to understand in time that if farmers were ready to protest for a whole year against laws that they believed would ruin them, then the Prime Minister should have addressed their fears earlier instead of maligning them. Modi’s failure to consult the people he was trying to benefit was not just a terrible mistake but a poor reflection of the quality of his leadership.

It is remarkable that he has been able to ride out the storms of this year and has come through, if the polls are right, as a man who India’s voters still trust more than any other political leader. The failure, as the Chief Minister of West Bengal so vividly pointed out last week, is the failure of the Opposition parties to take advantage of Modi’s many serious mistakes. She said that it was important for whoever led the Opposition parties to have the courage to fight, and that the Congress party had shown that not only did it not have any fight left in it but that it had a leader who was always loafing off to some foreign country when he was needed here.

Brutal. But, sometimes it is essential for the truth to be told brutally, and the truth is that if despite this year in which Modi has totted up a litany of mistakes and failures, the Opposition still remains stagnant, then we need to start asking if we have an Opposition left at all. Not whether it is capable of uniting to defeat the BJP in vital state elections that draw ever closer, but if there is any Opposition out there at all.

The Opposition parties routinely accuse the Modi government of making Parliament dysfunctional, but who is it who spends more time sitting under the statue of Gandhiji than inside that vaunted ‘temple of democracy’? The last session of Parliament was wasted because of the Opposition parties insisting that until Pegasus spyware was discussed, nothing else would be. This Session looks as if it will be wasted because those 12 suspended members of the Rajya Sabha refuse to apologise for extremely bad behaviour and choose instead to spend their time under Gandhiji’s statue. If there is a strategy behind this endless disruption of Parliament, then it is a bad one. And, one that seems to be designed by political leaders stuck in a time warp.

In that long ago time before social media and instant news, this kind of protest may have had some value. It no longer does and really looks as foolish as gathering outside the gates of Parliament and trotting off to Rashtrapati Bhavan to complain to the President. Is it any wonder that Modi continues to be seen as India’s only leader? Is it any wonder that despite the many blunders he has made this year, he still appears unscathed? If you were watching Mamata Banerjee’s press conference in Mumbai last week, you would have noticed that the people who have flocked to her side are those who once believed that the Congress party was the one bulwark against India becoming a Hindu version of the Islamic republic next door. Horrible thought, but one that we must start dwelling upon albeit gloomily.

The truth is that without the Congress party, there can be no real political alternative at the national level. But not only does it seem incapable of rising to the task, it seems not to have understood how much politics has changed. Instead of renewal it seems to be wallowing in its past glories, as if it has nothing else to offer. The sad truth is that Sonia Gandhi and her children appear to have learned nothing at all about why they have led our oldest political party to humiliating defeats in two general elections.

Unless they begin to question why all the Congress party’s stalwarts have either left or seem unhappier by the day, there is every chance that regional players like Mamata Banerjee will try to do what they can to fill the empty space that grows larger and larger, where the national Opposition should be. In her diatribe against the Congress party last week, one of the charges Banerjee made was that the Congress has ‘become the TRP’ of Narendra Modi. She is not wrong. This is why when things go badly for Modi, his spokesmen always invoke Rahul Gandhi to remind Indian voters that he is their only choice and that he is really no choice at all. If this were not true, there is no chance that Modi would have emerged unscathed at the end of what has been the worst year of his long political career.

P Chidambaram writes: The two reports — ASER 2021 and NFHS-5 — capture the picture of real India, unlike the BSE index or the NIFTY index that capture the health of no more than 100 listed companies.

The Central government and its ministers speak ad nauseum on the threat from Pakistan, hostility of an unnamed neighbour (China), Hindutva, disruption of Parliament, andolan jeevis (perennial protesters), dynastic politics, 70-years-of-no-development, India is a vishwa guru (teacher to the world) and so on. However, I have not heard them speak of the status of our children, especially the status of our children’s health and education.

I have diligently followed the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) that is published periodically. We had the reports for 2018 and 2020. Now, the ASER report for 2021 has been published on November 17, 2021.

At about the same time, the National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21) was published. It follows the same pattern as NHFS-4, and that is helpful for making a comparison. The two reports — ASER 2021 and NFHS-5 — capture the picture of real India, unlike the BSE index or the NIFTY index that capture the health of no more than 100 listed companies. These reports have been in the public domain for the last two weeks, but I cannot recall the Prime Minister or the Education Minister or the Health Minister speaking on the two subjects.

Two Reports, Key Conclusions

The two reports assess the impact of the pandemic. They cannot be brushed aside as the results of a one-off occurrence. The conclusions of the reports are depressing. Let me list the key findings:

ASER 2021 (Rural):

1. There is a clear shift in enrollment from private to government schools.
2. There is a steady increase in children taking ‘tuition’.
3. Smartphone ownership has increased but children’s access remains an issue.
4. There is a decrease in learning support at home as schools reopen.
5. There is a slight increase in learning materials available for children.

NFHS 2019-21:

1. The Total Fertility Rate has reached 2.0 (slightly below the replacement rate), but the population of three states (also among the poorest) continues to grow at a higher rate.
2. Sex ratio among children born in the last five years has dropped inexplicably to 929 (females to males).
3. Sanitation, Clean Fuel and Health issues continue to be challenges to millions of families.
4. Mortality rates are falling, but are unacceptably high.
5. Stunting, Wasting and Anaemia are grave challenges to children.

Juxtapose the first set of conclusions on Education with the second set of conclusions on Health. It will be evident that the most precious resource of any country — children — is neglected in India, and there is scarcely any public discussion on the subject. Even the ministry exclusively set up for their welfare, the Ministry of Women and Child Development, seems to be in deep slumber.

Inequalities, Aggravated

Inequality among different sections of the people is observed in all countries. Income and wealth are the biggest differentiators. In India, those differences are aggravated by religion and caste. People from disadvantaged social and economic groups are among the poorest and the most unemployed, discriminated against and neglected by the State. You may imagine the status of their children’s education and health in comparison to other children’s.

ASER and NFHS have not done a religion- or caste-based enumeration or analysis of the data. They are about all children. Let’s consider what kind of children are growing up in contemporary India, especially when the country is affected by a pandemic. My conclusions are:

– Couples have fewer children, but they are not giving birth to an approximately equal number of male and female children. While the overall sex ratio of females to males is healthy (1,020), it has dropped alarmingly among 0-5 years to 929. This number has been contested — and it should be scrutinised rigorously — but the trend, if correct, is a matter of great worry.

– The three poorest states continue to be badly governed. They are adding to the population at a rate higher than the national average. That means more children are being added in poor states. Poverty alleviation measures seem to have failed in these states.

– Despite tall claims, India is not yet Open Defecation Free. The free-cylinder scheme (now called Ujjwala) is not the success that it is claimed to be.

– While health infrastructure and health services have improved, maternal and child health are still neglected. We cannot accept a situation where many children are dying at birth (24.9 per thousand), during infancy (35.2) and within the first five years (41.9).

– For the children who survive, nutrition is a big challenge. This is captured in the disconcertingly high percentage of stunting (35.5 per cent), wasting (19.3) and nutritional deficiency (32.1).

– The ‘learning loss’ in 2020-21 and 2021-22 has been colossal. Schools had been closed for 73 weeks against a global average of 35 weeks. Children have moved from private schools to government schools because of migration and financial distress. The capacity of government schools to absorb the increased number of children is doubtful and many children were observed sitting in multi-grade class rooms. Only 39.8 per cent reported receiving learning material when schools had been shut. Foundational skills (reading and arithmetic) were woefully short of the level of the class.

Will the Prime Minister, the Chief Ministers and the Central and state governments spare a thought — and utter a word — about the worrisome state of our children’s health and education?

Coomi Kapoor writes: Southern politicians say they will not allow their states to be politically marginalised for better family planning.

Agitated leaders from South India, cutting across party lines, are reportedly planning to meet in the Capital next week to discuss organising a joint protest against any attempt by the government to implement delimitation of parliamentary seats, scheduled for 2026. Delimitation would require each constituency to have roughly the same population. An indication that the government was planning to go ahead with a delimitation exercise was seen in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s instruction to Bimal Patel, the architect for the new Parliament building, to increase the seating capacity of the new Lok Sabha hall from 543 seats to over 750. If delimitation is implemented, states with low population growth rates such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu will see their share of representation in the House fall, while UP, Bihar and Rajasthan would increase their clout. Southern politicians say they will not allow their states to be politically marginalised for better family planning.

Healthy concerns

There is some concern over Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s health. Thackeray, 61, was admitted to a private hospital for a spine surgery on November 10, and was discharged on December 2, after 22 days. He conducted Cabinet meetings from the hospital and his residence has been fitted out to handle any medical emergency. With doctors advising Thackeray complete bed rest, he skipped father Bal Thackeray’s death anniversary function on November 17, and deputed his son Aditya to meet Mamata Banerjee when she visited Mumbai last week. The Maharashtra Assembly Session has been moved from December 10 to December 22 and curtailed to a week. Also, in a departure from tradition, the Winter Session will be held in Mumbai and not Nagpur.

The new team additions to the Indian Premier League were puzzling as Kolkata industrialist Sanjiv Goenka opted for the Lucknow franchise over the more lucrative Gujarat franchise. Goenka’s firm Rs 7,090-crore bid was way above the next highest of Rs 5,625 crore, by a little-known European private equity firm, CVC Capital Partners. So it could have picked either venue. Since the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad has a seating capacity of 1,30,000 and the Lucknow Ekana Stadium can accommodate only 50,000, it made more business sense to opt for the Ahmedabad franchise, particularly as it was also likely to attract more advertisers. Goenka, who owns the India Super League football club Mohun Bagan, attributed his surprise choice to the fact that he has business interests in UP and saw potential in the populous northern region. But sceptics wondered whether the real reason was that he did not want to rile Mamata Banerjee, the CM of his home state, by owning a team which would be viewed as a brand ambassador for Gujarat. Incidentally, Gautam Adani, who was widely expected to bid for the Gujarat franchise, stayed away.

Laid-back reply

A Congress MP on a recent visit to Jharkhand came across some news which he considered alarming. The government, with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Congress as partners, was in danger of collapsing, due to crisis brewing within the Congress. Some Congress MLAs were being wooed by the BJP, he learnt. The MP promptly messaged Rahul Gandhi that the situation was serious and immediate steps should be taken. He received a perfunctory response to his SOS 14 hours later, assuring him that his information would be checked out. Gandhi was out of the country for three weeks in November and in no hurry to act.

Not so private

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s attempt in Delhi to reach out to politicians and intellectuals disillusioned with the Gandhi family’s hegemony over the Opposition and looking for a viable alternative to the BJP was not as successful an outreach as she had hoped. Several of those invited to meet Banerjee were taken aback when they discovered Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee, Prashant Kishor and Derek O’Brien sitting close by. The presence of the three made conversation awkward since many were afraid to speak openly fearing that the talks would leak. One member of the Congress G-23 dissidents group cancelled his meeting when he learnt there was to be company. A Trinamool Congress member felt humiliated by the overzealous frisking by security personnel. Banerjee complained to her people that the meetings were badly organised. In Mumbai, Banerjee held a joint get-together with prominent civil society members.

Growth is picking up in India, but still remains vulnerable. Omicron apart, easy availability of credit is vital for sustaining economic momentum. The RBI would also need to guide banks on accommodating small companies that have repayment difficulties.

The market expectation is that the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank would raise the reverse repo rate and possibly also ramp up absorption of surplus liquidity through one or another of the central bank's reverse repo windows. The key thing is for the RBI to maintain the assurance that it would continue with an accommodative stance of monetary policy, and it is to be hoped that the MPC would not change course on this front.

Inflation has been sticky, primarily through input cost rise. Energy prices have been one source of worry. With the Omicron scare, oil prices fell $10 per barrel, but could recover if the threat from the new coronavirus variant proves to be less potent, as it seems likely, than initially anticipated. The good news is that the oil cartel, Opec, is sticking with its modest monthly production increase schedule. The not-so-good news is that the US Fed is likely to accelerate withdrawal from its extra-accommodative monetary policy sooner rather than later, thanks to persistent inflation. In the US, unemployment is falling even as the number of fresh jobs created dwindles, meaning withdrawal of labour from the workforce, probably due to Covid concerns. The resultant rise in wages is feeding into persistent inflation, and the yield on US treasuries has been pushing up. The dollar has been strengthening against other currencies. The MPC will have to weigh the trade-off between the inflationary effect of pricier imports, should the rupee fall on account of a reallocation of capital away from emerging markets and the dampening effect on growth from any policy rate action. Yields have been going up in India, too, and an upward tweak in the reverse repo rate and absorption of greater volumes of surplus liquidity should compensate for the effects of US Fed action.

Growth is picking up in India, but still remains vulnerable. Omicron apart, easy availability of credit is vital for sustaining economic momentum. The RBI would also need to guide banks on accommodating small companies that have repayment difficulties.

Transparency as to employee compensation leads to better taxation of employee incomes. The more complete the GST chain, the better eventual realisations of both direct and indirect taxes.

The spurt in both goods and services tax (GST) collections and issuance of e-way bills in November reaffirm economic recovery. GST revenues stood at over Rs 1.3 lakh crore, about 24% higher than those for November 2020, but trailed the April collections of Rs 1.40 lakh crore. A record 7.35 crore e-way bills were generated. However, the government is a long way from achieving the full potential of GST to raise taxes, in particular, direct taxes. This requires completing the GST chain, diligently following up the audit trails and deploying robust data analytics to track income escaping tax. With greater formalisation of the economy, more companies will report transactions transparently, pay tax, report their workers and pay their statutory dues.

Data released by the Comptroller and Auditor General of Accounts show that net direct tax collections grew by about 70% to touch Rs 6.4 lakh crore till October this year, better than the pre-pandemic level of 2019-20. But nearly two-thirds of the revenues come from indirect taxes that are regressive, underscoring the need to raise the share of direct taxes in total tax revenues. The way GST is    structured, it is a tax on the value added by an enterprise. Tax paid divided by the rate of tax yields the value added. This value added necessarily breaks down into two components: gross profits and employee compensation. Gross profits are very different from taxable profits, of course. But once you have a fix on gross profits, there is only so much that can be done to reduce taxable profits.

Similarly, transparency as to employee compensation leads to better taxation of employee incomes. The more complete the GST chain, the better eventual realisations of both direct and indirect taxes.

With Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi, expect the unexpected: Unpredictability is an offensive armour for a crafty leader who likes to keep his opponents constantly guessing. This is why, two weeks since he rather dramatically announced on Guru Nanak Jayanti that he was withdrawing the contentious farm laws, laced with an apology, no one is still quite sure yet just why the PM finally relented.

Those who have observed Modi’s politics closely will recognise that repentance has never been part of the leader’s well-cultivated, strongman image. The truth is, this isn’t about a sudden change of heart, but a deliberate change in strategy.

Which begs the question: Why did Modi allow a farmers’ agitation — that was primarily limited to three states in north India — to force him to publicly retreat?

The most plausible explanation lies in the fact that, as an astute politician, Modi recognised that the protests could prove electorally detrimental ahead of a string of assembly elections, especially in the politically critical state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Elections are Modi’s “go-to” oxygen cylinder. Even as PM, he has plunged into every electoral battle with the same zeal that he once showed when riding pillion to put up posters at night for an Ahmedabad municipal corporation election in the mid-1980s.

But while electoral concerns might explain the timing, they don’t quite reflect the manner in which the PM appears to have personally acknowledged his failure in not being able to push through the farm laws. After all, Modi could easily have got any of his Cabinet colleagues to step up and take the blame for misreading the mood of the agitating farmers.

If Harsh Vardhan as health minister was made to pay the price for the Centre’s failure in anticipating the second Covid-19 wave, agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar could have been made the scapegoat for the farm law debacle. That Modi chose to accept the responsibility reveals a strategic shift, howsoever momentary, in leadership style — from an imperious supreme leader to humble pradhan sewak. It is almost as if the seemingly indestructible “Big Boss” is trying to rebrand himself as an occasionally fallible leader, if only to remove the sting from his opponents’ prime criticism of being an arrogant autocrat. Recall also how the previous “suit boot ki sarkar” critique perhaps influenced the 2016 demonetisation decision and restored the PM’s credentials as an anti-corruption crusader.

This time, the apology can be seen as a tactical move linked to refurbishing the PM’s self-image as a protector of the garib kisan (poor farmer). Go through any major Modi speech on the campaign trail and he almost always refers to his commitment to the garib kisan. Modi could afford to antagonise India’s wealthy with his demonetisation gambit; he could even anger the middle-class by allowing fuel prices to climb. A large section of India’s rich and neo-middle class can, after all, be lured by a promised Hindutva haven that taps into sharp religious emotions.

But for the wider national constituency of the poor and farmers, the PM needs to be seen as a caring and benevolent patriarch above all else.

Ahead of the 2019 elections, the launch of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi was an attempt to woo farmers with a minimum income support scheme. But this pro-kisan image took a hit when farmers were barricaded at the Delhi borders with iron spikes and barbed wires.

Some people even attempted to demonise the agitators as “terrorists”, a toxic campaign that only invited a backlash, especially among the farmers of Punjab. By the end, the battle was unfortunately no longer about the nitty-gritty of the farm laws, but about the optics of being perceived as “kisan virodhi” (anti-farmer), something which the PM could ill afford.

This is where the viral video of protesting farmers being run over in UP’s Lakhimpur Kheri by a speeding jeep on October 3, was arguably the turning point. The alleged involvement of a Union minister’s son in the gruesome incident was a major embarrassment. In a digital age, where news knows no geographical boundaries, it angered farmers in areas far removed from the original conflict zone. That a Rakesh Tikait-like figure was now attracting sizeable crowds even in Maharashtra showed that the Modi government could no longer afford to take the “andolan-jeevi” farmer protesters for granted.

In a sense, the government, secure in its massive parliamentary majority, has paid a price for not taking the farm agitation seriously enough for way too long. In the end, all the PM could do is cut his reputational losses. The repeal of the laws, therefore, isn’t about addressing the farmers’ anxieties, but rather because, in politics, there is always one inner voice that no leader can ignore: The sound of the election bugle.

Postscript: Just days before the farm laws repeal announcement, a senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader reportedly met the PM to “persuade” him to reconsider his stand. Then, Modi allegedly brushed aside the apprehensions by insisting that the new laws were a matter of conviction for him. What suddenly changed may seem mystifying to Modi watchers, but often ideological conviction in Indian politics must cede ground to electoral expediency.

Rajdeep Sardesai is a senior journalist and author

The views expressed are personal

Even as India gets ready to participate in the Summit for Democracy convened by United States (US) President Joe Biden, New Delhi is hosting Russian President Vladimir Putin for the 21st India-Russia annual summit with Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi. This will be Putin’s first visit abroad for a bilateral meeting in-person ever since the onset of the pandemic, underscoring the importance he attaches to maintaining robust ties with India.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and defence minister Sergey Shoigu will also be meeting their Indian counterparts for the inaugural 2+2 ministerial dialogue. With this, Russia will become the fourth nation, along with the US, Japan and Australia, with which India has such a joint structure in place. A logistics support pact is likely to be concluded, similar to the one India has signed with Japan and the US. Ignoring the threat of US sanctions, India’s procurement of the S-400 Triumf Missile Systems stands testimony to the solid India-Russia defence engagement. A deal worth over ₹5,000 crore with Russia for the manufacture of AK 203 assault rifles is also in the pipeline. India, clearly, has no intention of downgrading ties with Russia

For Russia, maintaining strong ties with India is important to signal to China that Beijing is not the only game in town. Russia-China engagement is a product of their joint opposition to the West. But Russia’s seven-decade-old robust ties with India cannot be jettisoned that easily. For all the testiness on the Indo-Pacific and the emergence of Quad, Moscow values a partner such as New Delhi that has demonstrated its ability to maintain its strategic space by standing up to China along the border as well as challenge the US on defence ties with Russia. Russia did not cease its defence engagement with India even during the Sino-Indian border crisis last year, though China had reportedly expressed its displeasure.

New Delhi understands Russia is critical in the regional and global balance of power. Last month, India hosted the regional dialogue on Afghanistan which saw Russian participation along with Iran and the Central Asian Republics. The convergence on Afghanistan is remarkable given that Moscow was quite supportive of the Taliban in the initial days. There is quite a distance from wanting to see the Americans out to managing the negative externalities emanating from the Taliban takeover. And not surprisingly, Russia has moved closer to the Indian assessment of regional security. For its part, New Delhi has been sensitive to Russian core interests as exemplified in its UN vote last year against a Ukraine-sponsored resolution condemning human rights violations in Crimea.

As global structural realities undergo a fundamental transformation with the rise of China, both Moscow and New Delhi are trying to figure out their responses. Despite the Cold War legacy, Russia has moved quickly to cement ties with China. India, too, has witnessed the withering away of the “hesitations of history” when it comes to the US and the wider West. India’s growing weight in the global order ensures that its ability to navigate great power politics is much stronger now.

As it balances China’s rise and builds a strategic partnership with the US, India would like to invest in a stable relationship with Russia. The India-Russia engagement is responding to today’s geopolitical imperatives, not of the past. Devoid of yesteryear’s sentimentalism, this is a relationship grounded in pragmatism. This ensures that while New Delhi can do little about Moscow’s gravitation towards Beijing, it can insulate its own burgeoning ties with the US from the overweening presence of Russia.

Describing India-Russia relations “amongst the steadiest of the major relationships in the world after the Second World War,” external affairs minister S Jaishankar has suggested that “more than its contemporaries, it has withstood the test of time, finding new convergences with changing circumstances”. As long as the two nations can continue to find these new convergences, their bilateral relationship will continue to respond to the changing circumstances.

Harsh V Pant is director, studies, and head, strategic studies programme, ORF

The views expressed are personal

Both home minister Amit Shah and finance minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman, separately, detailed the nature of the economy’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on Saturday. GDP for the September-quarter was higher than that in the corresponding quarter of 2019, and many high frequency indicators, and also mobility and business resumption indices are at pre-pandemic levels. Tax revenues too have recovered smartly. On Saturday, India crossed another important milestone — a little over 50% of the country’s adult population has now been fully vaccinated, and another 35% has received one shot of the vaccine.

If there is a touch of grey to all these silver linings, it is the emergence of Omicron, already identified in a handful of cases in India. The little we know about this variant points to higher transmissibility but milder symptoms. We have no information yet on the effectiveness of existing vaccines against this heavily mutated virus, although, even in a worst-case scenario, we are only likely to see a blunting of their efficacy, not complete ineffectiveness. The threat posed by the variant (acknowledged by the FM) could well stay the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)‘s hand in this week’s deliberations of its Monetary Policy Committee. In the absence of Omicron, the central bank is likely to have carried forward its liquidity-tightening efforts, perhaps even reducing the reverse repo rate, the interest rate that banks get when they park their surplus cash with RBI. That, and the reduction of fuel prices (both the Union government and many states have reduced levies), which is sure to reflect in headline inflation readings, may mean the easy money policy could continue, at least for another quarter.

But sustaining the current economic momentum isn’t just RBI’s responsibility. The Union government and state governments need to ensure that their response to Omicron — it is a given that more cases will emerge, maybe even outbreaks in some parts of the country — is measured, and protects both lives and livelihoods. To put it bluntly, they should not consider lockdowns, even partial ones. It is becoming clear that the response of many countries to Omicron is not sending all spare vaccines to Africa (which may prevent newer variants), but booster shots for their own population. That means there is a high likelihood of more variants — all the more reason why countries have to learn to live with the virus.

India’s worst kept secret is its inability to eradicate manual scavenging, the medieval practice that forces workers to clean waste and faeces by hand. Despite a ban enforced eight years ago and several awareness campaigns, it remains pervasive in cities. Last week, the government confirmed another facet of this practice — an overwhelming number of manual scavengers are Dalits: 97% of those identified in surveys were from Scheduled Castes.

The revelation underlines how caste continues to operate, where this dehumanising job is reserved for the lowest castes, because of socioeconomic marginalisation and caste-based links of purity and pollution. It shows how successive administrations have failed in uprooting this practice, with measures for rehabilitation of people engaged in manual scavenging having largely remained on paper. It also shines a light on the grim underbelly of urban infrastructure, dependent on the manual labour of downtrodden communities locked in generations of exploitative employment with little chance of breaking through the barriers erected by caste.

In the absence of a robust implementation of the 2013 Prohibition of Employment As Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, manual scavengers have been eradicated mostly in name, and are known as safai karamcharis and sanitation workers, who regularly make the news due to their grisly deaths while cleaning sewers. Firmer law enforcement, acknowledgement of caste dynamics, humane and economically sound rehabilitation and truly emancipatory use of technology to deploy cleaning machines can make a start in fulfilling the constitutional promise of right to life and dignity.

It’s time for parties to come together and institute safe campaigning methods, with the resources usually spent on mobilising crowds put to better use

Preliminary research shows that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is potentially several times more infectious than the other variants. Even as the new virus spreads, large election rallies are being held in five states. Shouldn’t we take measures to see that these do not become superspreader events?

Many experts are seeking more restrictions now. Figures suggest that some of the world’s richest countries have so far been unable to overcome Covid-19. In India, fortunately, there are less than 10,000 new cases being reported daily while in the United States (US), this figure is over 80,000 per day.

Greece has imposed a fine of $113 a month on those who have not been vaccinated. It has proposed to cut one-third of the pension of those above 60 years of age who are unvaccinated. In Britain, masks have been made mandatory again in public places. New Zealand and Taiwan, which were praised for handling the situation in the previous phases of the pandemic, are on the ropes now.

Recently, when journalists asked US President Joe Biden about the possibility of a return of earlier restrictions amid news of this new variant, his reply was that there is no need for any panic right now.

However, his administration later announced some new measures to tackle the new variant. It may be recalled how the lax policies of former president Donald Trump contributed to the virus spreading as was the case in the United Kingdom where Prime Minister (PM) Boris Johnson too did not take the virus seriously enough.

In this time of apprehension and panic, what is India’s position?

Due to the efforts of the Union and state governments, we have controlled the pandemic to a great extent. But no one knows the trajectory of the Omicron variant. The government machinery is on high alert but, at the same time, election campaigns have begun for the forthcoming assembly elections. Crowds are turning up in large numbers for the election rallies held by PM Narendra Modi and those of state leaders. The events which followed the Bengal elections and the kumbh mela in Haridwar should serve as a wake-up call.

The Election Commission (EC) was criticised then for overlooking necessary precautions while managing the elections. The Union government, all the political parties and the EC should jointly try and find an appropriate solution. PM Modi set an example earlier by making calls for a symbolic kumbh which was accepted by most of the sants. If the kumbh can be symbolic, why should this not be so for election campaigns?

This is the age of social media and communication. India has over 500 million smartphone users. Around 770 million Indians have internet connections. The PM himself used these tools effectively well before the 2014 general elections. From Ahmedabad, he held various chai pe charcha events across the country. The results showed that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) reaped rich dividends from this.

The time has come for political parties, which always claim to act in the public interest, to come together and institute safe campaigning methods. If they use technology correctly, their messages will reach voters in real-time and the resources which would have been spent on mobilising crowds can be put to better use. In any case, crowds at rallies are no longer any guarantee of victory in the elections.

If election campaigning is in virtual mode, the use of black money for elections can also be reduced. The EC should ban large rallies and relax the limits on the amount of money which can be spent on the use of media platforms so as to ensure transparency. The tax collected from this will boost the finances of the exchequer. Politicians can use the media to make their message long lasting and reach as many people as possible. Election campaigns often fuel conflicts at the local level, which spills over into violence. This and similar problems can be obviated through the judicious use of the media.

The question now is how a mindset change can be effected and how well politicians will accept this. Let me give you an example of the social reform movement that started in Bengal during the 19th century.

It was not an easy task at that time. Social evils such as sati, child marriage, untouchability and the zamindari system had wreaked havoc on society over the centuries. But the reforms slowly took root and, today, we are largely free of those debilitating social evils. We should not forget that elections are being held in only five states and the number of people involved is far less than the numbers involved in the social reforms.

Will the EC be able to muster the courage to make changes in the way the assembly election campaigns are conducted in the larger common good?

Shashi Shekhar is editor-in-chief, Hindustan

The views expressed are personal