On May 23, the Joe Biden administration took a significant step to turn the clock back to the Obama Presidency by launching its own version of a “pivot to Asia” through the establishment of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) with other partner countries — Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the United States. Within days of its launch, IPEF expanded its membership to the Pacific Island states, with Fiji joining the initiative.
An American initiative to bring together its allies in the Indo-Pacific region to enhance economic cooperation is bound to lead to comparisons with one of former U.S. President Barack Obama’s pet projects, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was spiked by Donald Trump immediately after he took over the reins in Washington. The IPEF reignites the twin ambitions of the U.S. to provide economic leadership and to challenge China’s hegemony in the region.
A tag that fits
The U.S. Trade Administration had touted the TPP as “Made in America” (https://bit.ly/3MT7KA6), a tag that seems equally appropriate for the IPEF. At its launch, the IPEF was proposed as an elaborate framework of rules covering four pillars, namely, fair and resilient trade, supply chain resiliency, clean energy decarbonisation, and tax and anti-corruption. It is not clear whether the original signatories to the IPEF were fully in the know of the details that were unveiled at the launch of the initiative, for there is no record of any prior discussion. However, evidence is available that suggests that Washington has been carefully constructing the framework ever since President Biden had first spoken about it in October 2021 during the East Asia Summit, in the presence of all IPEF signatories except Fiji.
Following its usual process of coalescing the views of all major business interests and the political establishment, the Biden administration sought public comments in March from “interested parties” on the four pillars to assist its trade administration for developing the U.S.’s position in IPEF negotiations. Not surprisingly, major corporations, including Google, Microsoft, IBM, Intel and Cargill and influential industry associations such as the Biotechnology Innovation Organization and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) responded to the call. The IPEF was also discussed in considerable detail in the U.S. Congress, a process that is vitally important to secure bipartisan support for the Biden administration to conduct negotiations to translate the framework into reality.
On IPRs
The Biden administration has announced that under the “fair and resilient trade” pillar, it “aims to develop high-standard, worker-centered commitments” covering labour rights, the environment and climate, the digital economy, agriculture, transparency and good regulatory practices, competition policy and trade facilitation. The clear focus of this agenda is to focus on issues which the U.S. considers vital to further its interests. One notable exclusion from this list is intellectual property rights (IPRs) that have generally been at the heart of the U.S.’ economic engagements with its partner countries. One possible reason for excluding IPRs could be that these are seen as the major reason why only 16.2% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine until today. But with several corporations, including those from the pharmaceutical and electronics sectors, and members of the Congress making a strong pitch for their inclusion, IPRs could soon figure in the IPEF negotiations.
Promoting “fair and resilient trade” defines the U.S.’s agenda on trade, side-stepping its pursuit of the free trade ideal. The reason behind this shift could be that for most IPEF signatories, import tariffs are passé. Only four of the 14 signatories have average tariffs in double digits. The U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Gina M. Raimondo has, thus, affirmed that the IPEF is “intentionally designed not to be a same old... traditional trade agreement” (https://bit.ly/3tipOMd). The primary objective of the IPEF is to ensure a high degree of regulatory coherence and to make market access contingent upon realisation of regulatory standards. It must be pointed out that standards and regulations in most developed countries often create discretionary/discriminatory barriers to trade and overcoming these barriers is usually beyond the capacities, both institutional and otherwise, of lesser developed countries.
Contentious issues
Two contentious issues that are generally included in free trade agreements (FTAs) involving the U.S., namely, labour rights and the environment and climate change, are duly included in the IPEF. Enforcement of labour rights using trade rules is quite contentious, having been rejected by the members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on several occasions. WTO members had arrived at a consensus that the “internationally recognized core labour standards” of the International Labour Organization (ILO) should be used to deal with issues pertaining to labour rights. They had also rejected the use of labour standards for protectionist purposes.
As regards the environment, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) had cautioned that “measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade” (https://bit.ly/3as4BZz). The IPEF could threaten abrogation of these decisions at the WTO and the UNFCCC.
Data portability
A third set of issues, whose ramifications on the future of the digital economy and beyond can be far reaching, are those related to standards on cross-border data flows and data localisations. Control over data, the driver of the digital economy, will increasingly determine the dynamics of economies, and hence the issue of data portability assumes critical importance.
Although China was not mentioned at the official launch of the IPEF, possibly for diplomatic reasons, the second largest economy has been at the centre of Washington’s strategies for the Indo-Pacific, especially with regard to supply chains. However, the crux of the American narrative on this issue is the hope that U.S. manufacturing giants, most of which have made China their preferred production bases at least since the 1990s, would move to the other countries in the Indo-Pacific. But even if these corporations move to countries other than China, how can the U.S. ensure supply chain resilience?
What New Delhi has to watch
What could India expect from the IPEF? While endorsing the IPEF, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had spoken of India’s aspiration to participate more substantially in the supply chains in the region. However, this would have its challenges. For instance, while addressing the needs of the digital economy, the U.S. has emphasised the importance of “high-standard rules... on cross-border data flows and data localization” (https://bit.ly/3xb0M2G). On this issue of data localisation, the Government of India has not yet taken a clear position. In 2019, its likely preference was revealed in the Draft National e-Commerce Policy, wherein it had backed restrictions on cross-border data flows. The key challenge for India is to sustain this diametrically opposite view to an uncompromising position of the U.S. on data localisation.
India should also be wary of the considerable emphasis that is being given to strengthening labour rights in the on-going discussions on the IPEF, both by corporate interests and members of the Congress. In a Senate Finance Committee hearing in April, Elizabeth Warren, one of the more vocal voices among the Democrats extolled the United States Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, who would be leading the discussions on the “fair and resilient trade” for “incorporating strong, enforceable labor and environment standards to demonstrate [the U.S.s’] commitment to the importance of these areas in [the U.S.’s] competitiveness and in our terms of trade (https://bit.ly/3tcUMFp). How would India’s preference for a “flexible labour market” gel with the regime that the U.S. is proposing for the IPEF?
Biswajit Dhar is Professor, Centre of Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University
The BJP’s leadership says that disputes about mosques, temples and rights to worship, which are tearing up Indian society, will be settled by courts according to the Constitution. Pew Research Center surveys and the Global State of Democracy Report, 2021, reveal that two-thirds of citizens in democratic countries, including the U.S., do not trust institutions such as elected assemblies and courts to represent their will. Another horrific assassination of school children in the U.S. has caused the U.S. President to throw up his hands. The U.S. Senate is divided, and the Supreme Court continues to refer to the Second Amendment of the Constitution to disallow any dilution of a fundamental right of citizens to bear arms. The looming possibility of the U.S. Supreme Court denying women their rights to reproductive health is dividing the U.S. further. In India, laws regarding citizenship and sedition are being used to curb the fundamental rights of citizens and are being contested in the courts.
The U.S. and India are democracies founded on written Constitutions, which state the democratic principles adopted by ‘We, the People’ living within the geographical boundaries of these countries. The Constitutions define the institutions which are required to maintain democracy — principally elected assemblies and independent courts.
Conceptions change with time
The U.S. and India must lead the spread of democracy around the world, U.S. President Joe Biden declared at the Quad summit, to contain threats from China’s and Russia’s authoritarian governments. Both India and the U.S. need to put their own democracies in order. The leaked draft judgment by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito regarding women’s rights to abortion for reproductive health highlights the fundamental problems of democratic governance in all constitutional democracies, including India.
The draft raises questions about conceptions of human rights. How are concepts of human rights formed? Which institutions have the constitutional rights to enforce them? Justice Alito says the fundamental question before the court must be answered systematically in steps. One, whether the reference to ‘liberty’’ in the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects a particular right; two, whether the right at issue in this case is rooted in the nation’s history and tradition; three, whether it is an essential component of ‘ordered liberty’; four, whether a right to obtain an abortion is supported by other precedents.
Conceptions of ‘freedom’, ‘liberty’ and ‘human rights’ are not cast in stone. They are always works in progress. All citizens were not granted equal rights in the U.S. Constitution in 1787: women and coloured people obtained these rights later; and people of various genders have begun to be treated equally only in this century. These new rights, not explicitly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, have emerged with struggles, from an ongoing civilisational dialogue.
The Alito draft explains why courts and elected assemblies find it difficult to determine the will of the people. “We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word, we do not mean the same thing,” Abraham Lincoln had said in 1864. Moreover, written constitutions, which courts must follow, state what the will of the people was at some prior time in history. The will of the people changes as ideas of human rights and liberties evolve. Therefore, good democratic governance requires a robust process for those who govern the people to continuously listen to the people. Also, the people must listen to each other; people ‘like us’ must listen to ‘people not like us’ for consensus on what ‘We, the People’ want, which is the foundation of all democracies.
Citizens want many things and may not agree about everything. The Arrow Impossibility Theorem, propounded by the economist Kenneth Arrow, is a fundamental dilemma in social choice theory. The Impossibility Theorem proves that there is no voting method in which voters, by merely expressing their votes as ‘yes’ or ‘no’, can produce a unanimous outcome, no matter how many rounds of votes there are. The mathematical problem here is that individual voters’ preferences cannot be sliced and diced; nor can the choices before them be made too simply as ‘this’ or ‘that’ to enable easy voting and counting (as done in referendums such as Brexit).
Human beings’ preferences are formed by combinations of many factors in their histories and their present circumstances; also, by what they value most, which may not be the same as other citizens. Therefore, their preference for a candidate in an election to represent them cannot reveal their consensus about fundamental needs. Outcomes of elections in first-past-the-post systems make the reading of the tea leaves even harder, when candidates, who do not even represent an electoral majority, win.
Democracy is a process of ‘ordered liberty’. It requires institutions to enable the will of the people to be implemented with checks and balances amongst them. Elected assemblies and independent courts are institutions for governance of the people. Constitutions lay down their powers. Neither must usurp the other’s powers. Justice Alito fears that the U.S. Supreme Court has transgressed the role of elected state assemblies. This is also a criticism of the Indian Supreme Court when it is spurred to act by public interest litigations.
Preserving democracy
Institutions are the means with which societies realise their aspirations. Constitutions, courts, elections, and assemblies are not all that a democracy needs to function. Institutions, Nobel Laureate Douglass North explained, are not merely constitutionally designed organisations; social norms are the fundamental drivers of institutions. Genuine democracy is government of the people by the people. People, not courts, shape the norms.
Democracies live outside courts and elected assemblies. People who belong to different political factions, practice different religions, and have different histories within the history of their nation must listen to each other and learn to live democratically together. Therefore, what healthy democracies need most of all are ongoing processes of democratic deliberations among citizens.
The right to freedom of speech is cited as a fundamental right in a democracy. Therefore, no one, not even the government, should curb the right of anyone else to say what they wish to. Technology was expected to provide solutions by enabling everyone to participate in debates about what matters to all. However, social media has resulted in a cacophony of voices and more divisions. Governments and courts in democracies are struggling to rein in social media democratically.
India’s beauty is its diversity. Democracy’s essence is the right of diverse people to live as equals. Citizens have rights in democracies. They have responsibilities too. While democracies must give every citizen the right to speak, democratic citizens have responsibilities to listen to others’ views too. The design of democratic institutions has so far concentrated on vertical structures, for upward representation and downward governance. To preserve democracy in this century, reformers should focus on designing lateral processes for democratic deliberation amongst citizens, founded on the discipline of listening to ‘people not like us’.
Arun Maira is author of Listening for Well-Being: Conversations With People Not Like Us
On May 31, 2022, in its press note on provisional estimates on national income, the National Statistical Office (NSO) released the 2021-22 fourth quarter GDP growth rate figure at 4.1% (April 1-March 31, 2022 in annual equivalent terms) compared to fourth quarter figures for the previous year, 2020-21.
In the first quarter of 2020-21 (April 1 to June 30), GDP growth rate according to the NSO, was –23.8% ,which is when the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading.
The combined subsequent and remaining three quarters of 2021-22 annualised growth rate was negative, and thus for the fiscal year of four quarters, the GDP annual 2020-21 was placed at -4.8%.
Points to note
The following two conclusions are important to the Narendra Modi government for a badly needed reality check. First, which I have detailed in my earlier Opinion articles inThe Hindu is that the Indian economy had been declining in growth rate since 2016 and fell below what was earlier sneeringly referred to by economists in the Congress-ruled period (1950-77) as “The Hindu Rate of Growth” of 3.5%-4% per year growth rate in GDP.
Second, the Modi government should recognise that during the present Prime Minister’s tenure since 2014, his plan for “Vikas” is more genuinely akin to the Hindu rate of growth planning of Jawaharlal Nehru. No P.V. Narasimha Rao tenure type structural reforms were systematically implemented. The decline in GDP growth rate from 2016 till today is thus a national shame for a dispensation that claims to bring “Vikas” to the country.
Not only has the growth rate of GDP been consistently declining since 2016 but the brazen but rosy predictions that were impossible to achieve without major reforms, such as a $5 trillion GDP by 2024-25, have been publicised in the media, (which in 2019, when Mr. Modi announced the goal, meant a 14.8% per year growth rate in GDP).
I am prepared to debate publicly with any Government official to prove to the Indian public that “Modinomics” to date is a gigantic failure. That is, to prove that no announced macroeconomic goal has been achieved during the Modi tenure as Prime Minister so far from 2014 till date.
What is needed
What the Indian economy needs today is a new economic policy that is based on clearly stated objective targets, priorities, a strategy to achieve the targets, and an intelligent and transparent resource mobilisation plan. At present we have an incoherent hotchpotch set of public announcements, with no accountability or logic.
The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government lost badly in 2004 despite the confidence in advancing the general election by six months before the due date because of the imaginary paradise of “India Shining”. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could not make an electoral comeback for 10 years after the debacle in the 2004 elections.
The BJP was lucky to come back in 2014 because of the Supreme Court judgments cancelling the 2G Spectrum licences, hopes of Ram Mandir re-building, and a failing economy.
Democracy’s dynamics
Today, the BJP is in its eighth year of its tenure as the ruling party. Although some socio-religious successes have helped to raise the morale of party workers, the 2024 general election is still not a done deal. State elections in West Bengal and Punjab are also not good omens. In the recent elections in Uttar Pradesh, the margins of victory were mostly very narrow. My own reading is that economic failure, which is fast becoming the main issue, could drastically unsettle even the most conservative forecast in 2024. Democracy could be threatened by desperate political extremists.
In every nation, democracy is structured on four pillars: electoral legitimacy, constitutional safeguards, functionally independent institutions, and embedded accountability. Mere elections are not sufficient for a democracy.
But there is a conflict between the market and democracy that requires to be resolved: a flourishing and vibrant democracy that empowers a relatively poor uncorrupted majority to vote, and hence can influence legislation against the relatively rich capitalist and entrepreneurial minority, and a thriving market economy driven by a rich empowered minority with disproportionate access to capital, skills and media and other networks has the capacity to undermine the electoral system through strategic funding of the same.
Therefore, there is a need to understand the dynamics of democracy especially since, in India, even economic reformers such as Narasimha Rao have so far lost elections.
Thus, designing reforms is most important because leaders initiating reforms must win elections. Let us understand how a democratic Japan came to have such an opaque financial system with no prudential norms or accountability because of cronyism that had to be pleased, or how the United States that had no proper regulation in place for the new sophisticated financial products gave free play to so much greed that it led to the global financial crisis in 2007-09.
Economic reforms in a democracy can be electorally successful if so designed that the losers from it (usually touts who organise quotas and licences for the rich for a price, and who, because de-regulations implicit in reforms make them immediately lose the “rent”) do not hijack the election, while the unorganised poor who cannot see early returns from reforms are kept satisfied by reducing unemployment and controlling galloping inflation.
Deregulations should also not mean that we reject government intervention for safety nets, affirmative action, market failure and creating a level-playing field.
Empower institutions
Democratic institutions have to be empowered to guard against public disorder arising from rapid de-regulation, as it happened in Russia, post-1991. The Russians underwent chaos and misery. Thus, dictatorship has returned for the Russians.
Thus, the trade-offs as between public order and de-regulation, through affirmative action, social security and a safety net, are essential to create a stake for the poor in the system, levelling the playing field to create hope, ensure transparency, accountability, and trusteeship (philanthropy) as also corporate governance to legitimise profit making that drives the market system.
Market systems are not a free-for-all. It is capitalism with rules of transactions. With that proviso, market system capitalism works since the principal driver is capital and its deployment for innovation to raise productivity.
Subramanian Swamy is a former Union Minister and a six-term Member of Parliament
Even as a real war rages on, tennis seems to be at war with itself. The recent Wimbledon row has opened a wide fissure in an already fractured sport. The removal of ranking points at Wimbledon by tennis tour operators is a scalding rebuke to the intransigence displayed by the oldest Slam in banning Russian and Belarusian players. Reports have now emerged that the All England Club is likely to take the issue to court. Such a move would bring to a boil a deep-rooted disharmony that sits at the very core of the sport.
As political experts grapple over moral questions of whether citizens (in this case, players) should be punished for the actions of a state, tennis fans are left to wonder whether this fiasco could have been avoided if only there was better communication.
The fiefdoms in an empire
Infighting is not new in tennis. Players and tournament organisers have constantly disagreed over issues such as prize money and playing schedules. But there are battles constantly waged within the upper echelons too. The power struggles are partly due to the lack of a cohesive organisational structure. Instead of one overarching governing body, there are seven predominant powers: the International Tennis Federation (ITF); the ATP (for men) and WTA (women); and the four Grand Slams.
And there exist other fiefdoms in this sprawling empire, like national tennis federations, which can wield power at will. Each has its own interests to fulfil and, in the case of Wimbledon, archaic traditions to preserve. Communication channels between them have been awkward at best and combative at worst. As former ATP chairman Etienne de Villiers once said, “Everyone distrusts everyone else.”
The Majors have a history of acting unilaterally, without consulting the tours or the players. The most recent example of this played out in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, at a time when organisers and stakeholders were expected to work together. The French Tennis Federation decided to postpone the French Open from the usual May-June schedule to October, merely two weeks after the U.S. Open, without consulting the other Slams or tours. Players were thrust into a chaotic autumn season. It was a case of one body singularly turning the tennis calendar on its head.
There have been rare cases of the Slams putting on a united front too. When former World No. 1 Naomi Osaka decided to boycott press conferences at Roland-Garros last year, the Grand Slam organisers came down on her, warning her of fines and suspensions. That the decision was taken to protect their own purses is another matter.
The ATP and WTA too have run solo at several junctures. Most notably, when tennis star Peng Shuai disappeared after making explosive sexual assault revelations against Chinese Communist Party officials, the ATP expressed concern but stopped short of joining the WTA in suspending tournaments in China. Ideas to merge the tours, as floated by the likes of Roger Federer and Billie Jean King, never came to fruition.
Fighting the good fight
At this point, when the Russia-Ukraine conflict shows no signs of ceasing, the powers that be in tennis find themselves faced with a question: how do you convince the world that you are fighting the good fight, especially when there is little evidence to prove that measures like sporting sanctions do anything at all to affect the war? The question is especially pertinent in tennis, where patriotic sentiments rarely exert any influence and fans are drawn to players less because of the boxed flag next to their name and more because of how they play the game and carry themselves on and off the court.
Staying in synchrony could be a possible first step. Reuters reported in 2021 that a ‘T7 working group’ involving the seven governing bodies was established to examine areas such as a unified calendar, shared commercial offerings, sponsorships and TV deals. The fact that such a grouping exists is an accomplishment in itself, but there is no better time to invigorate it than now. Apart from trying to just fix the economics of the sport, the group would do well to focus on other pressing matters too.
Perhaps what tennis also needs is one director or commissioner who can solicit feedback from all stakeholders and put forth a plan of action during a crisis like the one it is facing now.
The foundation of tennis was laid more than a century ago. The sport has always prided itself as being progressive. The with-us-or-against-us stance maintained by the top order only pushes it backward. What it needs now is more collaboration and less rancour. As Centre Court at SW19 celebrates its centenary year at the current residence, the drama should strictly be on court.
Preethi Ramamoorthy, formerly with The Hindu, is a journalist based in Bengaluru
The recent spat between the AIADMK and the BJP regarding who the “effective and principal” Opposition party in Tamil Nadu is has again brought to the fore their uneasy relationship. The two parties parted ways in late January over the issue of seat-sharing in the polls to the urban local bodies. Yet, AIADMK coordinator O. Panneerselvam and co-coordinator Edappadi K. Palaniswami have maintained cordial equations with the BJP leadership, which also appears to be favourably disposed towards them. This was evident from the Prime Minister’s demeanour when he interacted with the two leaders during his visit to Chennai on May 26 to inaugurate infrastructure projects. Earlier, the AIADMK was able to get the backing of the BJP as well as the Pattali Makkal Katchi, another erstwhile ally, for the election of its two candidates — C.Ve. Shanmugam and R. Dharmar — to the Rajya Sabha.
When everything appeared to be normal, the AIADMK organisation secretary C. Ponnaiyan’s outburst against the BJP came as a bolt from the blue. Addressing a workshop organised by the party’s Puratchi Thalaivi Peravai for its office-bearers on May 31, Mr. Ponnaiyan, who served under three Chief Ministers and held various portfolios, said even though the BJP was “an ally” of his party, its growth in the State did “not augur well for the AIADMK, Tamil Nadu and Dravidian policies.” He accused the national party of seeking to grow at the expense of his party in the State and indulging in “double-dealing” on inter-State disputes concerning the Cauvery river and the Mullaperiyar dam.
A key reason for the AIADMK’s veteran to lash out at the BJP could be the way the national party has been making efforts to enlarge its space in the State politics. This trend became more visible when L. Murugan, now Union Minister of State, was the BJP unit president from March 2020 to July 2021. Improving upon the approach, his successor, K. Annamalai, is taking on the ruling DMK on every issue, attempting to create a perception that the BJP is a fast-growing party in Tamil Nadu.
Mr. Annamalai reacted to Mr. Ponniayan’s charge saying it the AIADMK senior leader’s personal opinion. It was his party’s vice-presidents — V.P. Duraisamy and Karu Nagarajan — who launched a full-blown attack on the former Minister. Mr. Panneerselvam and Mr. Palaniswami initially stayed silent. This was in contrast to last July when Mr. Palaniswami issued a statement reiterating that the AIADMK’s alliance with the BJP would continue, after Mr. Shanmugam cited the alliance as the factor for the loss of support of religious minorities during the Assembly elections. Later, when the co-coordinator shot back at Mr. Duraisamy saying that the BJP’s vice-president did not have to certify the AIADMK’s functioning as the principal Opposition party, Mr. Panneerselvam sought to put a lid on the controversy by calling Mr. Ponnaiyan’s observations his personal view.
The exchange of words seems to have come to an end with both Mr. Panneerselvam and Mr. Palaniswami greeting Mr. Annamalai on Twitter on Saturday on his birthday. On Sunday, the BJP State president went on record saying that his party colleagues should not express any personal opinion on the AIADMK without the leadership’s permission. At the same time, he made it clear that his party had never entertained the thought of seeking to grow in the State at the cost of the AIADMK. A message also came from the AIADMK’s spokesperson and former Fisheries Minister D. Jayakumar that there was no split between his party and the national party.
ramakrishnan.t@thehindu.co.in
With the Indian drug regulator greenlighting Corbevax as a booster dose for all adults above 18 years who have received two doses of either Covishield or Covaxin as part of primary vaccination, a heterologous booster shot has come a step closer to being administered to people. Though booster shots have been administered since January 10 beginning with health-care and frontline workers, and people over 60 with comorbidities, India has been using the same vaccine for both primary vaccination and booster (homologous boosting). In clinical trials, a booster dose using a vaccine that is different from the one used for primary vaccination — technically called heterologous boosting — produced higher immune responses when compared with a same vaccine for primary and booster vaccination. A trial by the Christian Medical College, Vellore, too found the same result. As expected, Bio E’s phase-3 heterologous booster vaccine trial using Corbevax in people who have received two doses of either Covaxin or Covishield did produce significantly higher immune responses. But with the control group not receiving a homologous booster shot but only a placebo, the trial failed to bring out the enhanced immune responses by using Corbevax as a heterologous booster. Any vaccine administered as a booster — immaterial of being homologous or heterologous — months after primary vaccination will, by default, increase the immune responses. The trial has thus only shown that Corbevax as a heterologous booster increases the immune responses but failed to show that heterologous boosting with this vaccine produces superior immune responses than homologous boosting with Covishield or Covaxin. It is all the more surprising that the booster trial used a placebo for the control arm as even the phase-3 clinical trial to study the immunogenicity of Corbevax for primary vaccination used the comparator vaccine Covishield for the control group.
With Corbevax being approved as a heterologous booster based on a poorly designed heterologous booster trial, the drug regulator can be expected to soon greenlight Covishield and Covaxin as heterologous boosters based on the results of the CMC Vellore trial. Especially as the trial clearly demonstrated the advantages of heterologous boosting compared with using the same vaccine for primary vaccination and boosting. While the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) is quite likely to approve Corbevax as a heterologous booster shot without much delay, it remains to be seen whether it greenlights it for all adults above 18 years. Given the greater likelihood of NTAGI approving Corbevax as a heterologous booster, the Government is not likely to side step the expert group, as in mid-March. As booster shots have been rolled out for all adults above 18 years, the Government should not hurry to approve Corbevax without NTAGI’s nod.
It is not often that by-elections are of any significant consequence. But Uttarakhand, where the Chief Minister was in a do-or-die battle; Kerala, where the main Opposition, the Congress, was fighting for survival; and Odisha, where the ruling party was seeking another vote of confidence; all saw high-stakes contests. An impressive victory in the Thrikkakara Assembly by-election has revived the Congress in Kerala from the slumber and the chaos that had gripped the party following two consecutive Assembly election defeats, in 2016 and 2021. The seat is a Congress stronghold that stayed with the party even in 2021, when the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) won 99 of the 140 seats. The seat had fallen vacant following the demise of P.T. Thomas, who had shown great courage to stand up to the Catholic Church on issues of public policy. His wife Uma Thomas was the Congress candidate. The LDF was criticised on grounds that it sought to align its selection of candidate and campaign with the wishes of the Church. The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) also turned the election into a referendum on the Silver Line semi-high speed railway project that the Pinarayi Vijayan government was championing. The victory, by an increased margin in comparison with 2021, reinforces the leadership of V.D. Satheesan, the leader of Opposition, and K. Sudhakaran, the President of the Congress State unit. The CPI(M) and the LDF must take the lessons from the results with humility and appropriately recalibrate their positions.
In Odisha’s Brajarajnagar Assembly constituency, the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) candidate, Alaka Mohanty, won by a margin of 66,122 votes, defeating the Congress that pushed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to the third position. The bypoll was necessitated by the death of the winner’s husband Kishore Mohanty. The result has further strengthened the hands of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who revamped his Council of Ministers immediately after the victory. The BJP that has been nurturing ambitions to replace the BJD in the State had to eat humble pie in the seat, though it is part of the Bargarh Parliamentary Constituency which it had won in 2019. In 2024, Mr. Patnaik will be on his way to becoming one of the longest serving Chief Ministers. In Uttarakhand, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami won the Champawat Assembly seat as expected, tightening his grip over the party. The BJP has been going through a churn in the State, leading to the elevation of Mr. Dhami who was not an MLA, after the Assembly elections in February-March. But the path ahead will depend on how smartly Mr. Dhami navigates the dangerous roads in the hill State’s politics.
Madras, June 5: The Chief Minister, Mr. K. Karunanidhi said here to-day that all children in the City slums upto 3 years of age would be supplied with milk under the “expanded nutrition programme” by early August. To start with, 12,000 children will be getting milk under the new programme, which was inaugurated by the Chief Minister at a function in Shenoynagar. At present the Centrally aided nutrition programme for urban slums, under implementation in Madras and 18 municipal towns, covered only children upto 3 years of age, who are being supplied with bread. It is now being extended to children upto 6 years of age and to pregnant women of lactating mothers to benefit nearly 2.25 lakh children and 40,000 women in Tamil Nadu. Children in City slums (upto 3 years of age) will get milk in addition to bread. Mr. Karunanidhi said the State Government received Rs. 65 lakhs as aid from the Centre towards the scheme last year and it had been raised to Rs. 1.5 crores this year. The Central Government, he said, had commended the progress achieved by the State in this respect and had promised to give more aid if required. He expressed the Government’s determination to extend the nutrition programme throughout Tamil Nadu and said, while every effort would be made to secure as much Central aid as possible, they would not hesitate to meet the financial commitment from the State’s own resources.
The United States joined Britain in vetoing a Security Council resolution for an immediate Falklands ceasefire, but then abruptly changed its mind saying it really should have abstained. Jean Kirkpatrick, the US Ambassador to the UN told newsmen that instructions from the US Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, telling her to abstain in the vote had arrived too late. Security Council votes, once cast, cannot be changed. In Versailles, France, and US delegations at a Western economic summit attended by Haig, the US President, Ronald Reagan, and the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher refused to comment. But British diplomats said they were amazed at what has transpired.
The anti-Centre tirade started by the Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, on the controversial Resettlement Bill is causing serious concern to the Union Government and developments in the state are being closely watched. The Centre has reports that the ruling party in the state has mounted a systematic propaganda offensive against the Centre and it is possible that the Sheikh might go to the polls making the “bill” as an issue to maintain this momentum. Elections to the state assembly, the term of which was extended to six years instead of five, are due in June next year. But the Centre has a feeling that the Sheikh might go to the polls by September.
France and the United States appeared to be heading for a clash on the two main economic issues dominating the seven-nation summit — monetary cooperation and credit to the Soviet Union. While leaders from France, the US, Britain, Canada, Italy, Japan and West Germany — discussed the future of new technologies, their ministers engaged in negotiations about currency intervention and export credits. France and other West European countries want the US to stabilise the dollar, to which the Reagan’s administration has refused to agree. Reagan wants Western Europe to join in raising the cost of credits on industrial sales to the Soviet Union, something which France has so far held out against.
Last week’s busting of a network of kidney traffickers in Delhi evokes a sense of déjà vu. In the last week of May, a similar racket was unearthed in Pune. The latest scam in Delhi is the third such incident in the capital in less than 15 years. Like in most such cases, the web involved doctors and other healthcare personnel, hospital administrators and donors who have fallen on bad days — they cater to patients with end-stage kidney diseases who cannot be treated with medicines or dialysis and require a transplant. Reports and surveys suggest that more than 1.5 lakh people in the country require such a procedure every year. However, the number of organ donors is a small fraction of this requirement. In Delhi, for instance, barely 10 per cent of renal failure patients manage to get a transplant. Therefore, while the cleaning up of what medical anthropologists refer to as “kidney zones” is imperative, stopping the illicit trade would require plugging the vast gap between patients’ needs and the organs available for harvesting.
The Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 2011 recognises three kinds of donations by living organ donors. Those by near-relatives (parents, siblings, and spouses), altruistic donations and swap donations when a near relative is medically incompatible with the recipient, the pair is permitted a swap transplant with another related unmatched donor-recipient pair. The black market in organ trade flourishes by disguising illegal trafficking as “altruistic donation”. That in case after case — including the latest scam in Delhi — the desperately poor are lured into selling their organs speaks of the failure of the procedures that aim to establish the donor’s “altruism”. Suggestions to increase the transparency in the work of committees that scrutinise organ donations have been largely ignored by the country’s medical authorities.
In recent years, the “opt out” system — it assumes all citizens to be willing organ donors after death, unless they “opt-out” of doing so — has gained currency in several Western countries. However, medical ethicists caution that such a policy may not be always sensitive to the families of the deceased, especially in countries where awareness of organ donation related issues is low. India’s organ transplant law recognises cadaver donations with family approval. However, declaring a person brain-dead in time for the organs to be harvested is a complicated procedure and most hospitals in the country would be hard put to summon the expertise and facilities required for this purpose. With the number of people suffering lifestyle diseases increasing exponentially in the past two decades, addressing such challenges, in an ethical manner, cannot be postponed for too long.
One lesson from Sunday is that an electoral majority does not entitle a political party to believe there are no red lines to its conduct, that it can dismiss every criticism as petty pandering to a “vote bank”. The hate speech against Islam that two spokespersons of the BJP peddled so glibly, on a national television channel and on social media, is reprehensible but the truth is that it was no sudden eruption of bigotry. The BJP’s electoral victories since 2014, and especially after 2019, have emboldened party activists and others of the saffron brigade to an extent that they indulge in casual everyday anti-minority actions with the confidence that they have a free hand to do this. The government, from Prime Minister Narendra Modi down, and the party, from J P Nadda down, prefer silence as the baying gets more loud and shrill, as so-called dharam sansads advocate no less than mass murder and men, in saffron, claiming to redeem Hinduism, peddle hate and misogyny. Result: Every such act that is allowed to go unpunished and uncensured emboldens the next.
If the party acted to suspend spokespersons Nupur Sharma and Naveen Jindal on Sunday, it was because the anger against their remarks was not something that could be dismissed as expressions of “sickularism” but is resonating throughout the Islamic world threatening to upend India’s most important relationships, alliances key to its strategic imperatives that Prime Minister Modi himself has nurtured. But the condemnation of hate speech for the sake of international optics is like sticking a band-aid on a festering wound. In the diplomatic embarrassment that Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu had to suffer while on an official visit to Qatar — the Indian envoy was summoned and lectured to — is the second lesson. Such conduct is no longer protected by silos, and has wider repercussions. Prime Minister Modi once claimed that the Congress was upset that he had good relations with the Islamic world. All it took was 30 seconds of unadulterated hate spewed by the party’s face on television to send that goodwill evaporating. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, whose erudition in Bratislava is being hailed as India’s coming-of-age speech, will have to provide a better explanation for the conduct of his colleagues than reasoning that they mark the rise of the “non-elites” and “India’s way” of “correcting historical wrongs”.
India has the second largest Muslim population in the world, and irrespective of the fact that the BJP does not need their votes, as a party in office, it needs to show by word and deed that it is a government of all communities. On social media, the “trads” — hardline Hindutva trolls — are tearing up the BJP for caving in to international pressure. They are invoking the liberal posters of Salman Rushdie and Charlie Hebdo and the principles of free speech. The Government will be mistaken if it thinks two sound-bites are the problem and two suspensions the solution. Hate speech is unacceptable in itself, from the mouths of ruling party members targeting a minority it mainstreams bigotry, causes dangerous divisions, and is against the national interest. It is time this message went out from the very top. This doesn’t — and shouldn’t — need a prod from an ally in the Gulf.
A silent tear rolled down my cheek when the lanky German Alexander Zverev wildly clutched his ankle and writhed in pain as he fell on the clay court during the French Open men’s singles semifinal match. As tweets surfaced on social media about this “eye grabbing moment that one would not wish for anyone”, I went into flashback mode, thinking of the mind-numbing pain I had felt six months ago when my ankle had rolled.
During a hurried walk and an unfortunate stumble, my overstretched ankle ligaments had snapped. The pain was searing and it took me every ounce of strength to even sit on the pavement. The feeling of helplessness that came over me had never been so acute as I reached for my cellphone to call for assistance. Perhaps, athletes are used to experiencing varying degrees of pain, but agonising moments like Zverev’s etch a permanent memory that’s extremely difficult to erase.
Acute ankle sprain is the most common lower limb injury in athletes, accounting for 16-40 per cent of all sports-related injuries, according to a report in the World Journal of Orthopaedics (December 2020). The authors have noted that approximately 40 per cent of all traumatic ankle injuries and nearly half of all ankle sprains occur during athletic activity, with basketball, American football and soccer having the highest incidence. It is more prevalent in women, children and athletes taking part in indoor and court sports.
Sprains are usually graded on the basis of severity, says Dr Nilesh Kamat, a sports surgeon and former executive member of the Indian Arthroscopy Society. The incidence increases when pivoting activity occurs; when the foot turns depending on the direction of play. When this activity is sudden, as happens in sports like football or basketball, such injuries can occur. These injuries are reported in contact sports as well.
Also susceptible are the “weekend warriors”, people who find no time for sports during their working week but embark on strenuous Saturday-Sunday activity, often without proper training, adequate warm-up and appropriate footwear, says Dr Kamat. Soft tissue injuries are common here as are ankle sprains and their recurrence. At least 20 per cent of patients with ankle sprains develop chronic ankle instability, says the surgeon.
Now, ligaments are like static ropes which tie the bones together to provide stability to a joint. Ligaments work along with dynamic muscles that control the ankle by contracting and relaxing. Dr Anand Gangwal, sports and musculoskeletal physiotherapist, says ligaments usually get stretched or torn when an ankle sprain occurs. A damaged ligament can reduce one’s proprioception ability (the perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body). For example, a torn ligament can limit one’s ability to walk or kick without looking at one’s feet.
A report, `Recent advances and future trends in foot and ankle arthroscopy’, in the Journal of Arthroscopy Surgery and Sports Medicine, has said technological advances in instrumentation, imaging and biological reconstructive materials have most likely pushed the boundaries of what is doable with this treatment modality. However, ankle sprains are a spectrum of injuries, graded according to recovery time. When indicated, a surgical option that allows full recovery is often desirable, especially for complete tears.
Surgery may not always be the answer for ankle ligament tears. Ankle ligaments outside the joint tend to heal far better than knee ligaments. Experts like Kamat insist that rehabilitation is extensive; it cannot be a quick fix. The injury must heal and muscles around the ligament must be strengthened. Ankle rehabilitation can take between 12 and 16 weeks and failure to comply leads to increased chances of injury recurrence.
Other structures in the ankle can get damaged due to recurrent falls and even knee and hip injuries cannot be ruled out. Developing chronic ankle instability is a risk that has to be explained in detail so that a patient learns sports-specific drills and progressive loading before returning to competition is one maxim that Dr Gangwal follows.
There’s hesitation among sportspersons at the top level to go under the knife to remedy injuries and experience a long rehabilitation period as this has a bearing on their earnings. Getting sidelined and hoping to make the grade in the next sporting season is an uncertainty in one’s career that can be traumatic.
Before my third ankle twist episode, I had looked forward to bettering my 10 km run time from 70 minutes to under an hour. A carefree waltz and rock-and-roll session on the dance floor at Christmas was also on my mind. The road to those goals may appear long now. But hope burns eternal and igniting the spark is the sight of Rafael Nadal, a player living with a foot injury by his own admission, tearing the competition to shreds on clay for his 14th French Open title.
Energy is at the nub of every politician’s deepest dilemmas. For it requires them to tread a careful path between the immediate demands of their constituents for affordable, secure, and accessible energy and the longer-term imperatives of economic growth and sustainable development. The Ukrainian conflict has deepened this dilemma. The conflict has triggered a radical churn in petroleum geopolitics. Prior to Feb 24, the day Putin marched into Ukraine, the oil market was globally integrated with one internationally acknowledged benchmark price and an expanded OPEC that included Russia amongst its de facto members. The gas market was headed in the same direction. Whilst still bounded by regional pipelines and inflexible long-term LNG supply contracts and prices quoted regionally in the US, Europe and Asia, the recently concluded LNG contracts all had clauses that allowed for destination flexibility. Also, LNG spot trade was gaining in market share and prices were converging. The industry presumption was that the gas market would soon mirror the oil market.
Feb 24th has upended these presumptions. The petroleum market is now fragmented, fractious and volatile. Europe and the US have sanctioned 90 per cent of the Russian crude and despite the fact that oil is fungible and can therefore be rerouted to other markets, it will not be easy to place the sanctioned quantum especially since crude oil tankers and the insurance industry have been forewarned against carrying or covering Russian oil. This means the crude oil and products market will tighten further. Russian gas has not yet been sanctioned but here too Europe has made clear its determination to draw an iron curtain to separate its market from Russia. It has published a road map for eliminating all energy imports from Russia by 2027. OPEC is also proceeding down its own path. It has refused to remove Russia from OPEC plus and has not bowed to US pressure to increase production to cool the oil market. There is a chance they will eventually draw down on their spare capacity but when they do, it will not be because they want to subserve Western interests. It will be because they want to keep control over the oil market and also benefit from the fact that Russia cannot meet its OPEC determined export quota.
Multiple forces are bearing on the petroleum market. No one can be sure of how the market will evolve. But what is clear is that the current “disorder” is pushing political leaders into conspicuously inconsistent positions.
President Biden has, for instance, gone back on his pre-election pledge to disallow petroleum companies from drilling for oil and gas on federal lands. He has approved the issuance of fresh leases. More interestingly, he and PM Mario Draghi of Italy discussed the possibility of creating an oil consumers cartel during the latter’s visit to Washington DC last month. This is interesting not because the idea is novel — it has been floated before and it does not stand much chance of seeing the light of day given that oil consumers have difficulty in agreeing to a schedule for the drawdown of stocks from their strategic reserves — but because America is the largest producer of petroleum liquids in the world and a major exporter of LNG. The reason Biden may have allowed this item to remain on the agenda is that he is clutching at all straws to recover political ground ahead of the November elections for Congress. One such straw is to find a way of reducing the retail price of gasoline. American consumers are currently paying historic high prices.
European leaders also find themselves between the rock of energy geopolitics and the hard place of energy economics. They want energy “independence” from Russia but to finance the investments in solar and wind generation, gas storage, LNG import infrastructure and intra-Europe gas pipelines required to reach this destination, they want to sell EU 20 billion worth of carbon emission certificates. The sale will, however, reduce the price of carbon offsets and make it cheaper for companies to burn fossil fuels. Some countries have also given the green signal to reopen coal mines. Analysts suggest these measures could release up to 250 million tons of additional GHG emissions and prolong the life of fossil fuels. EU leaders have countered by reaffirming their commitment to cut GHG emissions by 55 per cent in 2030 over the levels in 1990.
Indian leaders find themselves in a comparably tight bind. The rise in the price of oil has “forced” them to reintroduce de facto administered pricing. They have not allowed the public sector oil companies to pass on the higher prices to retail customers but instead to bear the loss. This decision will drive a deep hole in the balance sheets of these companies and adversely impact their investment plans. The government will have to ultimately pick up the tab but for the present, politics is their priority. The government is also reportedly interested in buying the assets of Shell LNG in the Siberian port of Sakhalin. The asset should be available at a discount and prima facie, the deal will enhance India’s security cover. But the molecules may be subject to sanctions and LNG carriers will find it problematic to secure insurance cover and generate arbitrage opportunities. Also, India may attract criticism for purchasing “contaminated” assets.
The above examples highlight the dilemmas created by the current energy disorder. There is no silver bullet solution to resolving these dilemmas. But in looking to find a pathway, political leaders should be mindful of the following. One, the Ukrainian conflict will end. It is an open question as to whether there will be a “victor” and if so who. But the fighting will eventually stop. Two, President Putin is mortal and there will be a post-Putin Russian nation. Russia’s energy industry and the Russian people cannot be indefinitely ghettoised. Three, the transition to clean energy will be long and expensive. Political expediency will prolong this process dangerously. And four, global warming presents an existential planetary threat.
The writer is chairman, Center for Social and Economic Progress
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities came into force in May 2008 to bring to centrestage disability as an intersection of health, human rights and development priority. Subsequently, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank jointly produced the World Report on Disability in 2011 to provide evidence for innovative policies and programmes.
In his foreword to this report, Stephen Hawking — who had motor neurone disease — noted that while persons with disabilities face attitudinal, physical and financial barriers, he had been fortunate in having the aid of computer experts who supported him with an assisted communication system and a speech synthesiser which enabled him to compose lectures and papers. The aids Hawking referred to are examples of highly sophisticated assistive technology (AT) – these may include any item, piece of equipment, software programme or product system that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities. These aids could also be “physical” products such as wheelchairs, eyeglasses, hearing aids, prostheses, walking devices or continence pads; “digital” such as software and apps that support communication and time management; or adaptations to the physical environment, for example, portable ramps or grab-rails. Different disabilities require different assistive technologies, and these are designed to help people who have difficulty speaking, typing, writing, remembering, seeing, hearing, learning, or walking.
A billion people globally are currently estimated to be in need of assistive technology (AT); this is projected to double by 2050. Drawing upon the World Report on Disability 2011, the 71st World Health Assembly resolved on May 26, 2018 to prepare a global report on effective access to assistive technology by 2021. There were two core concerns: One, 90 per cent of those who need assistive technology do not have access to it, and two, the inclusion of assistive technology into health systems was essential for progress toward the targets in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) relating to Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic in the last two and a half years, it is an incredible achievement that the World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) jointly launched the first Global Report on Assistive Technology (GReAT) on May 16.
The GReAT report draws upon surveys conducted in 20 countries. These indicate that the proportion of the population currently using at least one assistive product ranges from less than 3 per cent to about 70 per cent. Those reporting that they use or need at least one assistive product range from about 10 per cent to nearly 70 per cent; the extent to which these needs are met varies from about 2 per cent to nearly 90 per cent. Universal assistive technology coverage implies that everyone, everywhere receives the AT that they need without financial or any other hardship.
The barriers to access and coverage, in the context of AT, are best understood when seen from the following five parameters.
People: This is related to the age, gender, type of functional difficulty, location and socioeconomic status of those in need of AT.
Products: The range, quality, affordability and supply of assistive products continue to pose considerable challenges. Quality and standard issues such as safety, performance and durability are key concerns. Repairing, refurbishing, and reusing assistive products can be faster and more cost-effective than purchasing new ones.
Provision: The information and referral systems remain complex and services are not available across all geographies and populations. The range, quantity and quality of assistive products procured and provided, as well as the efficiency of delivered services, remain below par.
Personnel: The workforce gaps are not just about numbers but also about adequate training and education too.
Policy: A survey of more than 60 countries reported that they have at least one government ministry or authority responsible for access to AT. Almost 90 per cent of them have at least one piece of legislation on access to AT. Even then, the current levels of access imply a long road to universal AT access.
Disadvantaged groups and communities face hardships in their search for affordable quality healthcare in India and this is more so with respect to obtaining ATs and associated services — the estimated unmet need is about 70 per cent. ATs handed out in camps or as a part of social service initiatives are a sporadic activity without the use of statistics as a basis for unmet needs. Products are often sub-standard and lead to poorer health outcomes. Including assistive technology in universal health and social care services is a critical imperative. The health system’s responsibility in providing equitable access to ATs, just as for essential medicines and vaccines, is increasingly being recognised and country-level plans are being drawn up with an aim to fund and provide ATs under the UHC. Until AT solutions are integrated with the existing primary healthcare packages the current top-down approach is of limited benefit. The GReAT Report provides that roadmap.
Dasgupta is Chairperson at the Centre of Social Medicine & Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University; Sharma is an independent public health consultant, formerly with the Indian Council of Medical Research; Bhargava is Director-General at the Indian Council of Medical Research and Secretary, Department of Health Research. The authors are contributors to the GReAT report and Bhargava is also chair of the Editorial Advisory Group
Policymakers must have heaved a sigh of relief with the news of GDP growth clocking at 8.7 per cent for the year 2021-22. Based on a contraction in GDP of 6.6 per cent in 2020-21, it was somewhat on expected lines. The economy now seems to be largely out of the shadow of Covid-19, and only a notch better than in 2019-20. But the big question remains: Can India strike a similar economic growth in 2022-23? And more importantly, can India rein in the raging inflation that is at 7.8 per cent (CPI for April 2022), with food CPI at 8.4 percent, and WPI at more than 15 per cent?
My humble assessment is that unless bold and innovative steps are taken at least on three fronts, GDP growth and inflation both are likely to be in the range of 6.5 to 7.5 per cent in 2022-23. Focused policy action is needed on three fronts: First, fast tightening of loose monetary policy; two, prudent fiscal policy; and three, rational trade policy. Let me elaborate a bit on each one of these.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is mandated to keep inflation at 4 per cent, plus-minus 2 per cent. The RBI has already started the process of tightening monetary policy by raising the repo rate, albeit a bit late in the game. The RBI governor says that it is a “no brainer” to predict that it will continue on that path, but how fast it can move to pre-Covid levels is an issue that requires better assessment of the likely consequences of its actions on growth and inflation. Hence a fine calibration would be needed. I would expect that by the end of 2022-3, the repo rate will be at least 5.5 per cent, if not more. It will still stay below the likely inflation rate and therefore depositors will still lose the real value of their money in banks with negative real interest rates. That only reflects an inbuilt bias in the system — in favour of entrepreneurs in the name of growth and against depositors, which ultimately results in increasing inequality in the system.
The second front on which heavy weight-lifting is needed is from the mandarins of the finance ministry for more prudent fiscal policy. It has been running loose in the wake of Covid-19 that saw the fiscal deficit of the Union government soar to more than 9 per cent in 2020-21 and 6.7 per cent in 2021-22, but now needs to be tightened. Can it reduce its fiscal deficit to less than 5 per cent, never mind the FRMB Act’s advice to bring it to 3 per cent of GDP? I don’t see that happening especially when enhanced food and fertiliser subsidies, and cuts in duties of petrol and diesel will cost the government at least Rs 3 trillion more than what was provisioned in the budget. It will surely push the fiscal deficit higher than the targeted 6.4 per cent unless tax revenues improve substantially or the government goes all-out in monetising land and assets of public enterprises. My assessment is that fiscal policy will remain loose, more populist and muddled, and the fiscal deficit will remain in the range of 6.5 to 7.5 per cent in 2022-23. I don’t see it coming down below 5 per cent even by the end of 2023-24.
The third front is that of rational trade policy. In a knee jerk reaction, India announced a ban on exports of wheat, and imposed restrictions on sugar exports. There are also calls for banning cotton exports. Export restrictions/bans go beyond agri-commodities, even to iron ore and steel, etc. in the name of taming inflation. But abrupt export bans are poor trade policy and reflect only the panic-stricken face of the government. A more mature approach to filter exports would be through a gradual process of minimum export prices and transparent export duties for short periods of time, rather than abrupt bans, if at all these are desperately needed to favour consumers. However, even with these restrictions/bans on exports, I doubt if the government can tame inflation which is a global phenomenon today. Can India insulate itself totally from the global economy? Can it stop exporting all products where prices are going up — from mangoes to maize to fish to spices? A prudent solution to moderate inflation at home lies in a liberal import policy, reducing tariffs across board. Just to cite an example where CPI inflation has been very high and defiant (17 per cent in April) — in case of edible oils and fats, India has reduced tariffs on palm oil, soya oil, and sunflower oil, but tariffs on rapeseed and cottonseed oils remain prohibitively high at 38.5 per cent for crude and 49 per cent for refined. The domestic price of mustard oil has gone up by more than 47 per cent in last two years, global prices even more, yet our import duties remain at astronomical levels in the name of atmanirbharta. This does not work.
If India wants to be atmanirbhar (self-reliant) in critical commodities where import dependence is unduly high, it must focus on two oils — crude oil and edible oils. In crude oil, India is almost 80 per cent dependent on imports and in edible oils imports constitute 55 to 60 per cent of our domestic consumption. In both cases, agriculture can help. Massive production of ethanol from sugarcane and maize, especially in eastern Uttar Pradesh and north Bihar, where water is abundant and the water table is replenished every second year or so through light floods, is the way to reduce import dependence in crude oil. And in the case of edible oils, a large programme of palm plantations in coastal areas and the northeast is the right strategy. A beginning has been made on these lines. It needs to be doubled up. But if we want to tame food inflation on a sustainable basis, we need to invest in raising productivity and making agri-markets work more efficiently. There are no shortcuts.
Gulati is Infosys Chair Professor for Agriculture at ICRIER
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, disparaged by critics for being weak and powerless to check corruption, had ruefully remarked that history would be kinder to him than the media and political opponents. PM Narendra Modi has no such worries and said on Gandhi Jayanti, 2021: “…this is my conviction, that for my own healthy development, I attach big importance to criticism. I, with an honest mind, respect critics a lot. But, unfortunately, the number of critics is very few.”
There is no doubt that PM Modi, by virtue of his political skills, eloquence and popular appeal, would find a suitable place in India’s contemporary history. As PM of the world’s largest democracy, twice in succession, he has led his party to overwhelming electoral victories and made his mark domestically as well as on the international stage.
History, however, discriminates while according recognition and a nation’s achievements matter more than individual attainments. Indians have for long nurtured a sense of exceptionalism, not unmixed with hubris, that India’s “manifest destiny” guarantees it the status of a great power with some even fantasising about “Akhand (greater) Bharat”.
The reality is that unless the ship of state is steered with strategic wisdom and economic prudence, India may remain an overpopulated and under-developed nation — nuclear-armed and boasting of a huge GDP but facing mass poverty, jobless growth and a restive youth. Our failure, since independence, to assimilate alienated citizens and deliver social justice to the deprived remains a blemish on our republic.
The Modi government has, in the past eight years, launched a host of schemes that aim at providing relief and ameliorating public privation. But its real sense of accomplishment seems to stem from the fulfilment of the Sangh Parivar’s long-cherished agendas in two separate but related dimensions.
Firstly, Article 370, which entitled Jammu and Kashmir to its own constitution, flag, and “Prime Minister” has been an issue of concern to the Parivar since 1949 when the Jammu-based Praja Parishad started agitating for “ek nishan, ek pradhan aur ek vidhan” (one flag, one prime minister, and one constitution). In 1953, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, founder of the Jana Sangh, who had joined this agitation, died in a Srinagar jail, lending an emotive edge to this issue.
In 1977, the Jana Sangh joined the Janata Party only to break away in 1980 as the new-born Bharatiya Janata Party. Through all these transitions, the Parivar remained consistently focused on the “assimilation” of J&K. Thus, the 2019 abrogation of Article 370 and the fragmentation of India’s only Muslim-majority state represented the triumphant culmination of the Sangh’s long-standing aspirations.
The agenda’s second dimension relates to the implementation of the “Hindutva project”. In 1923, political activist and freedom fighter, VD Savarkar, had explained the concept of Hindutva by defining a Hindu as one “…to whom, Hindustan is not only a fatherland (pitrabhu) but also a holyland (punyabhu).”
Via this definition, Hindutva seeks to render the term “Hindu” synonymous with “Indian”, while excluding all other citizens from its ambit. It is in the context of this project that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the impending National Register of Citizens must be seen. Nationwide relief at the peaceful settlement in Ayodhya has been replaced by grave apprehensions as new Pandora’s boxes are being opened.
While electoral victories are no doubt image-enhancing, the benefits of playing domestic party politics must be weighed against the cost of damage being inflicted on the nation’s security and external relations. The balance sheet shows that the law of diminishing returns has been invoked. India’s international image has been dented, as seen from our slide on the scale of global indices — from poverty and hunger to democracy and press freedom. To domestic discontent, on account of unemployment and price rise, tensions are being added, fuelled by the exploitation of religion and caste-related issues for political ends. Rather than blaming “foreign conspiracies to defame India”, it would be far better for national morale to tackle these problems.
It is time for the nation’s political leadership to don the mantle of statesmen. Looking beyond party agendas, they need to privilege national interests — especially where the two are divergent. Herewith, some thoughts of a septuagenarian citizen.
India’s influence in the world has been rooted in the “power of its example”. The capacity of Indian culture to embrace diversity and assimilate with confidence not only new Indic religions but also foreign faiths attracted universal admiration. Descent into bigotry and public hate-mongering is damaging India’s image.
The current surge of majoritarianism may help win elections but the steady alienation of India’s minorities, constituting a fifth of our population, will irreparably damage national cohesion and undermine the integrity of our multi-religious nation. As religion becomes a convenient tool of polarisation, we must face the reality that the fires of religious strife once lit will be hard to extinguish, and even worse, will sideline our existential struggle against poverty, hunger and disease.
Finally, we must face the reality that India’s claims to being a “vishwaguru” now lack conviction. While public discourse has become coarse and abusive, speaking truth to power is equated with “sedition” and political pressures have denuded the media as well as public functionaries of their moral fibre. Disregard for ethical and democratic norms is manifest in the open trading of legislators and in visible rewards for pliant public servants.
Historically, India succumbed to foreign powers because it was a “house divided”. Today, as cracks begin to show again, our leaders must do their utmost to ensure national unity and cohesion. By following “raj dharma” or ethical conduct, they will not only ensure their niche in history but will also set a worthy example for us and our children to emulate.
The writer is a retired chief of naval staff
I once asked Pandit Bhajan Sopori about the pain that he carries within, caused by his relinquishment of Kashmir, the home of his sufiayana gharana. His response was a Rumi couplet translated into English: “He said: Tell me what you hold inside it? I said: Pain and sorrow. He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
A gifted child of the village of Sopore, 16 kilometres northeast of the town of Baramulla, passed away at the age of 74 in a Gurgaon hospital when Kashmir once again witnesses a killing spree. News about Sopori’s demise was a shock, and I can hear his santoor’s hundred strings singing lamentably, “The wound is the place where the light enters you”.
He was 10 years younger than Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, another santoor maestro who passed away just three weeks ago. No words can explain the irretrievable loss to our musical scene. I was fortunate to have had very close interactions with Sopori for more than a decade during my career in the All India Radio’s archives. He came to Delhi from Srinagar on transfer in the early 1990s and I reached the city from the South in the mid-1990s. He carried agony, while I carried ecstasy. This difference always remained an integral part of all our conversations around music in the years that followed. His sufiyana mind was restless in Delhi’s alien cityscape. He always resided in a jugalbandi of Kashmiri shaivism and sufiyana mausiqi.
There are two major streams of modern santoor playing from Jammu and Kashmir. Both Sharma and Sopori made equally commendable contributions in revamping the hundred-stringed instrument for absorbing the nuances of Hindustani classical music. Both of them brought the incessant presence of individual swaras in santoor by adopting ways from many influences, by adding bridges and changing the timbre of the strings. However, when it came to the alaap, Sopori championed a resonance that echoed a Drupad-style rudra veena. It was deep. I request the readers of this piece to listen to a one-hour track in the raga Gawati played by him which is available on YouTube.
Sopori had formal training in Western classical music as well. The soft-spoken maestro had a highly refined ear for harmony. I never heard him talk loudly in a personal or official space. Once I asked him what he had learnt from Western classical music, and he replied with one word: “Harmony”. He told me that “Indian classical music is solo in nature, but in the West, it’s always an orchestra based on an already written musical text. It’s the harmony that makes their music musical, and here it’s innovation on the stage”. I still remember the day he talked about the two-minute-long solo, Mozart’s Allegro in D Major. I asked him: ‘What is harmony to you?’. He replied with sadness in the eyes, “the Kashmir of my childhood”.
Sopori had the finest of ears for subtleties. The refurbishing of analogue recordings of archival music was on at All India Radio. We were working on the recordings of Pandit Nikhil Banerjee’s sitar. Sopori was requested to listen to a restored 30-minute recording for quality assessment. He reached our studios with his signature smile. He looked like an angel in white. After listening to just two minutes of the digitised recording he asked for the mother tape. After playing back the original he told us that the refurbished one is not giving the tonal character of Nikhilda’s strings. We had the most sophisticated software available at that point in time. But I still remember the warning he raised about the danger in the large-scale digitisation of archival recordings of Indian classical music without listening to the nuances.
Once I was listening to a Carnatic violin concert by Dwaram Venkataswamy Naidu (1893-1964), one of my all-time favourites. I rang up Sopori and asked, “Bhajan ji, do you have 30 minutes with you?” He always had infinite time to spare for music. He came down to the studio, and we together heard an outstanding Hamsadhvani.
When the music was over, he responded in one sentence: “Beautiful minds make strings exquisite”. Bhajan Sopori was a beautiful mind. Let a Kashmiri sufi song sing for our moment of grief: “Mangun tagima ba oush haarai khodaya” (I don’t know the requirements of praying, O My Lord, let my tears speak for me).
S Gopalakrishnan is a writer and broadcaster. He hosts the podcast ‘Dilli Dali’
The outcry in Gulf nations has forced BJP to scalp party officials Nupur Sharma and Naveen Kumar Jindal for their objectionable remarks. The episode should serve as a wakeup call to BJP that it has to send a strong signal down the ranks to tone down polarising rhetoric. Both domestic and international costs of divisiveness are very high. Riots like the ones witnessed at Kanpur point to weakening social cohesion.
Relationships that India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi cultivated over years have been strained by the views espoused by Sharma and Jindal. The Gulf countries are important for energy security but are also a source of livelihood for lakhs of Indias, who also bring valuable foreign remittances into the country. The social media calls for economic boycott are just as worrisome.
Hitherto, there must be no quarter for hate speech. Police must be given the freedom to act against hate mongers irrespective of their political affiliations or ideological ties. The “Unity in diversity” motto that has been among India’s foundational tenets must be re-embraced with gusto again and all attempts made to iron out the creases that have developed because of this fracas.
Drug regulator DCGI’s approval for administering Biological E’s Corbevax, a protein subunit recombinant vaccine, as the first heterologous booster for adults clears the decks for a shift articulated by experts since late 2021. The next step would be for NTAGI, comprising government and independent experts, to recommend its induction into the precaution dose programme, though the health ministry has skipped this process while approving Corbevax for 12-14-year-olds. Many subject experts have been advocating a mix-and-match strategy for months. They were doubtful about viral vector and inactivated virus vaccines generating high volumes of neutralising antibodies as homologous boosters.
Significantly, Corbevax’s Phase 3 mix-and-match trials showed a significant increase in neutralising antibody titers against the Omicron variant. This should prod GoI to make this the vaccine of choice in administering precaution doses. Over 5.2 crore Corbevax doses have been administered to children below 18 so far and Bio E has reportedly supplied 10 crore doses to GoI. Evidently, the low offtake of boosters, not supply, is the big problem now. It calls for a changed outreach strategy beyond bulk SMSs with Omicron infections increasing across multiple states in recent days.
It remains to be seen if DCGI’s recommendation of a six-month gap for administering Corbevax after the second doses of Covishield or Covaxin will be echoed by NTAGI too. An anomaly that will have to be rectified now is the nine-month-gap between homologous boosting. An NIV Pune study had shown that Omicron neutralising antibodies waned after six months for those fully vaccinated with Covishield or Covaxin. Yet the nine-month gap hasn’t changed. This must be reviewed.
Additionally, Bio E and GoI must pursue WHO emergency use listing for Corbevax with greater vigour. WHO approval would ease travel for international passengers and facilitate greater export of the vaccine. Because of WHO EUL approval, SII’s Covovax has been exported to five countries. Meanwhile, Covaxin has suffered with its export being suspended. Currently, Corbevax is still at the early stage where expression of interest for evaluation has been submitted and is under review. With Bharat Biotech’s intranasal vaccine and Covovax in the race to become heterologous boosters, availability of a wider vaccine bouquet is a welcome development. However, the number of government vaccination centres offering free precaution doses is significantly lower than last year’s drive towards full vaccination. States may be trying to skimp on expenditure; GoI must step in and offer free precaution doses for all adults.
Some may wonder whether restaurants’ billing practices should merit central government attention. Perhaps, more than the scale of consumer harm, it’s the principle that’s important – businesses should not be able to get away with dodgy practices by being clever. Restaurants’ arguments that the service charges are (a) not illegal; and (b) help pay staff are, respectively, irrelevant in the context and a zero-evidence assertion. Service charges don’t break a law because there isn’t a law dealing with this as yet – what they do break is the well-understood principle of transparency. Restaurants mostly aren’t upfront about this charge, they almost never make consumers aware that as per 2017 GoI guidelines paying this charge is voluntary, and in bills the charge is listed in proximity to taxes, giving it an appearance of legitimacy it cannot actually claim. Restaurants also conveniently ignore consumer court verdicts against service charges. In January this year the Kolkata Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission had directed a restaurant to hand back the service charge it had forcibly collected from a customer, along with a compensation amount. That a 2018 survey by LocalCircles showed just 12% of customers were asking restaurants to remove service charge from their bills shows how low consumer awareness is.
As for the noble-sounding argument that service charges help restaurants give better salaries to their staff, it’s instructive that over all these years the issue has been debated, restaurant owners have never sought to back this claim with evidence. As Piyush Goyal pointed out, restaurants are free to increase prices to cover their wage costs. There’s little doubt that restaurants are a tough business, with a high failure rate. It’s also true the pandemic hit the sector brutally. But the argument that restaurants need to levy a service charge to make the business stable is disingenuous – bad practices cannot be sanctified by citing operating environment difficulties.
The BJP's response on Sunday to two of its high-visibility and -volubility members guilty of making and disseminating Islamophobic remarks has been swift, effective and welcome. No attempts were made by the ruling party to defend the rabble-rousing packaged in the form of 'whataboutery' that has resulted in disturbances in Kanpur on Friday, and diplomatic protests from Qatar, Kuwait, Iran and the Saudi Arabia-based Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC). The suspension and expulsion send out a firm and clear message that actions have - and will have - consequences. By describing the now-suspended party spokesperson and ex-BJP Delhi media head as 'fringe elements' in a statement put out by the ministry of external affairs (MEA), GoI, on its part, has underlined that India practises the religious tolerance it preaches, and deviations from such a position will not be tolerated.
There is much riding on India's liberal democratic credentials and adherence to an international rules-based order. It cannot afford to have its vice-president visit Qatar in a bid to bolster bilateral trade at the same time motormouths ply their trade back home. In February, GoI rightly expounded its bragging rights after it signed India's first free trade agreement (FTA) with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which targets to up bilateral trade in goods and services to over $100 billion and $15 billion, respectively. Apart from trade and investment, lakhs of Indian expatriates in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries risk backlash when irresponsible elements play to the gallery here in India. To put it in more tangible terms, remittances from GCC countries amounted to $83 billion in pandemic-hit 2020. GoI knows that this avenue of much-needed revenues can't be jeopardised during post-Covid economic recovery.
Elements out of sync - indeed, in contravention - with GoI's developmental and wealth-creating mission for India must be weeded out. This the BJP has attested on Sunday effectively.
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The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has done well to allow insurers to offer health and most general insurance products to customers without its prior approval. This transition will give insurers the flexibility to swiftly launch products, foster innovation and widen choices for consumers, helping increase insurance penetration. The rules say that the board must approve the product, and the project management committee will need to ensure compliance of the board's policy while launching new or modified products. This will bring in greater accountability, discourage mis-selling and ease the burden of product approvals on the regulator.
Insurers have to disclose the rationale for revising premiums on health covers along with the underlying claim experience (incurred claims ratio) that led to the repricing. This is rational. The new procedure will work well for standard products, but may prove tricky for non-standard ones. IRDAI can also withdraw the product in case of post-entry non-compliance. So, insurers must make the options clear to policyholders to help them make informed decisions.
Non-life insurers must have proper underwriting discipline and base their pricing on the assessment of risks. 'Utmost good faith' is the foundation of insurance contracts. The insurer must ensure the policy is designed to meet the needs of the insured party. Similarly, policyholders must fully disclose all information that affects the insurer's level of risk (family and personal medical history for health covers, etc). This will enable the insurer to protect itself by charging the policyholder a premium that is a correct reflection of the level of risk it undertakes. Insurers must also abide by ombudsman orders.
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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government has a problem — and the problem is of the party’s own making. Over the last eight years, the latter has appeared to legitimise anti-Muslim rhetoric as a part of its ideological outlook. It has created what could be seen as incentives for its workers and supporters to engage in this rhetoric by rewarding them. This combination of an ideology that excludes Muslims, institutions (including the media), that provide the platform articulating this worldview, and incentives where there is an abundance of leaders and workers who see this rhetoric as a route to quick upward mobility, has proved insidious. It has undermined India’s national unity, communal peace, pluralistic ethos, and now foreign policy.
The reason to reverse this outlook is internal, not external. At stake are India’s own principles and its future. But India is not insulated from the rest of the world — to think so would be a misreading of the evolution of the concept of sovereignty and the dense inter-linkages that govern ties. For years now, the Indian foreign policy machinery has been investing precious political and diplomatic capital to convince the world that India remains secular, that its policies and laws are not targeted at minorities, that the country’s democratic institutions and constitutional protections are robust. The world has been growing sceptical about these claims, but India’s strategic importance means these concerns have been relegated to the margins.
Until now. The provocative rhetoric of the BJP’s spokespersons against Prophet Mohammed has drawn a strong backlash from West Asian countries — with whom Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to his credit, has done a lot to improve ties. These countries are home to millions of Indians, and central to India’s energy security. Separately, there remains a powerful official constituency in the United States, which continues to track what it considers India’s democratic backsliding. India’s soft power, which often came from its democratic and secular ethos, is facing constant erosion, with global civil society and international media critical of India’s record on minorities. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat’s rebuke to those stirring up the mandir-masjid row, and now the BJP’s decision to act against two spokes-persons, is welcome and courageous (even if the latter came when the writing on the wall was clear). The BJP must persist and crack down on hate; it must not give in to the worst impulses of some members of its base. That is the best way to serve the larger national interest.
It’s easy when recounting sporting achievement to get lost in hyperbole. Every other new star is described as the “next big thing” after a season or two of domination, and terms such as “great”, “greatest”, and the uber-fashionable “greatest of all time”, or GOAT if you will, are thrown around a tad too soon, a tad too lightly. Conversely, a good sign of true sporting excellence is when, despite your best efforts, no matter how hard you try, it becomes impossible not to use degrees of greatness to describe an achievement or a phenomenon.
In keeping with this argument, let’s try a little test: On Sunday, Rafael Nadal won a record 22nd men’s singles Grand Slam title, taking a two-Slam lead over his rivals Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. It was his 14th title on the red clay of Roland Garros in 18 attempts. He has never lost a final in Paris — his tally of French Open crowns is six more than Max Decugis’s (back when it was open only to French club members in the early 20th century) and eight more than Bjorn Borg’s. To put the link between tournament, surface and player in perspective, Federer has won eight Wimbledon titles in 22 attempts; and Djokovic has won the Australian Open nine times in 17 attempts. Nadal’s French Open win-loss record is 112-3 for a win percentage of 97%; Federer’s at Wimbledon is 105-14 for 88%; and Djokovic’s at Australian Open is 82-8 for a 91% success rate. Nadal was 19 when he won his first French title, and he turned 36 two days before he won his 14th. No tennis player, no individual athlete in history — the list includes Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, and Serena Williams from this century — can boast of a level of domination that matches Nadal’s. So, is there any other way to say it? Great, greatest; perhaps of all time.
Last week, terrorists killed Vijay Kumar and Dilkush Kumar, the 12th and 13th civilians to be shot dead since March, triggering another round of exits of migrant Hindu and Kashmiri Pandit workers and their families from the Valley. These killings prove two things: One, Pakistan is returning to the 1990s strategy of targeted killings, and second, the Pakistani deep State seems to have re-established its control over the government after differences with the Imran Khan regime. Hence, it is now implementing a strategy to disrupt the peace that the Narendra Modi government has so painstakingly sought to establish after the revocation of Article 370 in August 2019.
By supporting terror activities, Pakistan is challenging the efforts of the Indian government to establish peace, bring about development and ensure grassroots democracy in Kashmir. After suffering a significant loss of cadre and weapons in encounters with security forces in the past two years, Pakistani terrorist handlers have engineered a shift to hybrid warfare. Instead of attacking only security forces, they have primed terrorist modules to expand their targets to include Kashmiri Pandits and other Indians from the mainland. This perhaps is also in response to the flourishing tourist season in the Valley. This course correction by Pakistan is aimed at derailing the far-sighted development schemes planned by Prime Minister Modi and his efforts to invite domestic and foreign investment to the state, all of which would destroy Pakistan’s dreams of acquiring Kashmir.
Apart from Pakistan’s new strategy, there is another area of concern: The brazenness with which terrorists are succeeding in their attacks, at a place and time of their choosing. These episodes indicate a complete lack of fear of being caught pre-emptively, proactively or retroactively during naka (barrier)-checking by the security forces. Given my years of experience in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) , I feel that there needs to be a strategy reorientation around basic policing and grassroots intelligence.
The J&K Police is a proud force, which has a history of containing and decisively defeating terrorism. Apart from the regular, ongoing police-led operations of seek and kill, they must develop a long-term strategy of basic policing (textbook policing). The first rule is community policing (Police Community Partnership Groups). It can prove to be an excellent forum for the exchange of views, which can at times get heated, but that too is an essential part of democracy, allowing the release of pressure and going a long way in building trust. Again, the district superintendent of police and station house officers are best suited to play this role, which has served all forces well in times of stress.
There is also a need to fine-tune the coordination of ground intelligence that is available with police stations, state CID, and central intelligence. This would require speeding up intel-based operations, targeted at eliminating top terrorists and tanzeems (outfits), exposing their safe houses, targeting overground workers, disturbing their arms supply routes, and disrupting their communication channels. In addition, cutting-edge TechInt platforms should be introduced in the districts to identify and eliminate the perpetrators of this new wave of violence.
Social media continues to be used by Pakistan to spread its negative narrative; this needs to be curbed decisively. However, the real need of the hour is human intelligence, which can be acquired only if the local police can build trust among the people. Utmost care must be taken by the J&K government to protect pro-India elements in the Valley. There are some instances of such elements being targeted and these are of much concern. A grand exercise is required to identify vulnerable targets and possibly move them to safer locations and strengthen defences at such locations.
Much needs to be done on de-radicalisation and counter-radicalisation, given that several Jamaat madrasas continue to function. The involvement of civil society and all government departments, including institutions of higher education, in ensuring that there is no increase in terrorist ranks, is essential. This task should not be relegated to the police and security forces alone, but implemented through a whole-of-government approach. Over the years, several terrorist sympathisers have infiltrated various government departments. They need to be identified, kept under surveillance and checked on regularly. The State needs to come down heavily on those who provide terrorists information, support structures and safe harbour.
Apart from focusing on the domestic population, the Indian Army must be alert to prevent infiltration and infusion of weapons, which may arise. If the police and Central Reserve Police Force have to handle internal security, the Army has to perform its role in preventing infiltration with a heavy hand. Care must be taken that all measures to prevent such targeted lone wolf attacks should not lead to the security forces shifting their focus from preventing mass killing attacks, which Pakistani planners are bound to consider. The use of sudden, short duration nakas and only random checking, as against universal search-and-frisk operations, has yielded promising results. The J&K Police have always played a proactive and positive role, and I am sure this will not be an occasion where the force will disappoint.
SP Vaid is a former director-general, J&K Police
The views expressed are personal
At the recently concluded Quad summit in Tokyo, India joined the United States (US)-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), created to provide an alternative trading arrangement and counter Chinese dominance in the region.
IPEF provides an opportunity for the US and India to integrate with the region. It is important to situate IPEF in the changing global world order, which has been marked by Donald Trump’s trade war and the global leaning towards protectionism and economic nationalism, the rise of authoritarianism in many parts of the world, and the spread of anti-immigration policies.
This gradual movement accelerated after Covid-19 and has now been exacerbated by the Russia-Ukraine war. The new world order can be described as “impeded-globalisation”, a term coined by my colleague, Narayan Ramachandran. Impedance, a term borrowed from electrical engineering, means the existence of both resistance and reactance.
In this world order, trade of some goods and services will recede as countries try to pursue risk-mitigation strategies and the trade of goods will be determined as much by geopolitical and strategic rationale as economic ones. The supply chain resilience of strategic commodities will be a predominant notion. Trade within predefined blocs may flourish, but global trade will flounder.
In this context, IPEF is a chance for India and the US to mitigate past errors in judgment on global trade agreements. The Trump administration had walked out of the previous iteration of such an agreement (the Trans-Pacific Partnership), and India has been copping a fair bit of criticism for being increasingly protectionist and refusing to partake in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Further, a credible geopolitical and strategic counter to China cannot exist without a beneficial economic platform with the East Asian economies.
Perhaps reflecting the new world order scenario, strategic concerns take as much prominence as economic ones. IPEF rests on four pillars: Connected economy, which will set standards on digital trade, data flows and data localisation; resilient economy, which will guard against supply chain shocks and disruptions; clean economy, with focus on the environment and decarbonisation; and fair economy, to counter money laundering and corruption and ensure fair taxation.
Thus, IPEF is about setting standards for trade rather than a trade deal itself, and therein lies its biggest weakness. While the scope is broad enough to provide an inclusive platform, the ambiguity, vagueness, and the lack of specific agreements can render it toothless. To counter China in the region, what the Indo-Pacific region needs is increased market access to the US, lower tariffs and higher infrastructure investment. The Biden administration has specifically stated that market access and tariff negotiations are off the table for now, as it will require Congressional clearance and the US is deeply divided on free trade issues.
It is also important to note that India has joined the launch as an initial founder and officials maintain that they will be a part of the negotiations to see where this will lead. However, this does not impose an obligation to join the eventual agreement. Or given that IPEF allows for signing up to selective modules, India could become a weak participant, if the set standards are not favourable to Delhi, for instance on data localisation, labour standards and certain environmental restrictions.
The Chinese are already providing market access, financial support and huge infrastructure investment in the region in the form of RCEP and its Belt and Road Initiative. As an expansion to Quad, IPEF can have strategic value, but if the US is serious on being seen as a credible alternative to China in the region, it must figure out its domestic political space and provide concrete benefits to signatories of this arrangement.
Anupam Manur is professor of economics, The Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy
The views expressed are personal
Elon Musk has a habit of using Twitter and interviews to make big statements. On May 30, for instance, Musk told Jack Dorsey that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) would most likely be here by 2029. And when Musk talks, people listen. But should they?
His pronouncements may cause some people to panic, especially when he sounded the alarm about what could happen. For example, he once told a crowd at MIT, “With Artificial Intelligence, we are summoning the demon”. What’s more, his pronouncements could distract from the real issues with a technology that is not yet ready for prime time.
The truth is there is a missing link between today’s Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is primarily pattern recognition, and the kind of Star Trek computer-level AI that Musk is dreaming about. Yes, AI can do amazing things such as speech recognition and holding surrealistic, entertaining conversations about virtually any topic. Still, when it comes to reliability and coherence, current AI is nowhere near what it needs to be. There are no firm fixes in hand to the limitations of current AI, it creates false stereotypes, spreads misinformation and fails at everyday tasks such as human-level driving, despite years of promises. Fixing that needs to start with a realistic assessment of the current state and how far we have to go. Claims such as Musk’s are detrimental to the public understanding of one of the most important engineering challenges of our time: Building an AI that is genuinely trustworthy. By painting a rosy and likely unrealistic picture, he has, in our view, led the public astray.
With so much at stake, we decided to call Musk’s claims “bullshit”.
One of us, Marcus, drafted a $100,000 bet. The bet highlights the disconnect between Musk’s claims and current reality. In the spirit of serious betting, there are five particular conditions. To say that AGI had been achieved, the field would have to defy at least three of the following five pessimistic predictions that Marcus compiled in collaboration with New York University computer scientist Ernest Davis. AI must be able to:
Watch movies and tell us accurately what is going on. Who are the characters? What are their conflicts and motivations?
Read novels and reliably answer questions about plot, character, conflicts, and motivations. The key is to go beyond the literal text and show a fundamental understanding of the material.
Work as a competent cook in an arbitrary kitchen. No cookie-cutter recipes, but real creativity.
Reliably construct bug-free code of more than 10,000 lines from natural language specification or interactions with a non-expert user. [Glueing together code from existing libraries doesn’t count.]
Take arbitrary proofs from the mathematical literature written in natural language and convert them into a symbolic form suitable for symbolic verification.
The other of us, Wadhwa, thought it was a great bet, fair and provocative, and something that could move the field of AI forward. (Ben Goertzel, for decades one of the leaders in trying to make AGI into something real, rather than just a fantasy, felt much the same way.) So Wadhwa decided to match Marcus’ wager. Within a couple of hours, there was a flurry on Twitter and Marcus’s substack had close to 10,000 views, and soon other experts in the field also offered their support for the wager, increasing the pool to $500,000. But not a word from Musk.
Then writer and futurist Kevin Kelly, who co-founded the Long Now Foundation, offered to host it on his website side by side with an earlier and related bet that Ray Kurzweil made with Mitch Kapor. WorldSummit.AI, the world’s leading AI Summit, has offered to host a debate. The AI community is excited. But there has still been no word from Musk.
Half a million bucks is chump change, of course, for Musk, perhaps the richest person in the world, but it is real money to us, and it symbolises something important: The value of getting public voices who hype AI’s near-term prospects to stand by their claims.
Feeding the public misinformation about the potential of AI and its likely progress may serve Tesla by distracting from the many problems it has with its self-driving software, but it doesn’t serve the public. If Musk believes what he says, he should stand up and take the bet; if not, he should own up to the reality that his pronouncements are little more than off-the-cuff hunches that even Musk realises aren’t worth the virtual paper he’s printed them on.
Vivek Wadhwa is the author of From Incremental to Exponential: How Large Companies Can See the Future and Rethink Innovation. Gary Marcus is a scientist, best-selling author, and entrepreneur, well-known for his debates with Deep Learning pioneers Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun. He was the founder and CEO, Geometric Intelligence, a machine-learning company acquired by Uber in 2016; and a founder of Robust AI. He is the author of five books, including The Algebraic Mind; Kluge; The Birth of the Mind; and The New York Times bestseller Guitar Zero. His most recent book, co-authored with Ernest Davis, Rebooting A.I., is one of Forbes’s 7 Must Read Books About AI.
The views expressed are personal
President Xi Jinping’s January 2, 2019 speech is often referenced to glean evidence on how China is looking at Taiwan’s “reunification” as military tension tightens across the Taiwan Strait. It's a narrow stretch of water that separates the small, well-functioning democracy from the vast, authoritarian Chinese mainland.
Xi made the speech, titled Message to Compatriots, to mark 40 years of a 1979 statement where China, for the first time, said Taiwan has to be reunited, and not liberated, and brought under the “one country, two systems” model.
(By now, many in Hong Kong will have an opinion about that particular model, but are no longer able to voice it.)
Xi was magnanimous in his speech: “On the basis of ensuring China's sovereignty, security, and interests of development, the social system and way of life in Taiwan will be fully respected, and the private property, religious beliefs and legitimate rights and interests of Taiwan compatriots will be fully protected after peaceful reunification is realised”.
He threatened as well: “We make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means”.
Essentially, he didn’t rule out invading a country, independently ruled since 1949, which China considers a renegade, rogue region.
What happened in 1949?
In 1949, Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China government and its ruling Nationalist or Kuomintang (KMT) party were defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communist Party of China (CPC) in a civil war. Chiang and some 1.5 million to 2.5 million people (estimates vary) retreated to the island of Taiwan, which had a history of Japanese occupation until the end of World War II in 1945.
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), transitioned from a hard military dictatorship to a full-fledged democracy by the mid-1990s.
But over the next few decades, it lost out to China in terms of global diplomatic recognition under Beijing’s relentless international pressure with its “One China principle” — it has kept Taiwan and its 23 million people in diplomatic isolation officially, allowing only proxy ties with countries including India.
Taiwan currently has official diplomatic ties with only 14 countries in the world, mostly small ones in the Caribbean, Latin America, and southern Africa and the Pacific.
But China isn’t happy with just that. It wants Taiwan.
“For many Chinese and the Communist government, the focus on erasing ‘the Century of Humiliation’ is to protect territorial integrity. Taiwan symbolises the last piece of this puzzle after the handover of Hong Kong (from Britain) and Macau (from Portugal),” TY Wang, university professor and chair, department of politics and government, Illinois State University, told HT.
Bonnie Glaser, German Marshall Fund’s Asia programme director agreed that it’s the “major missing piece” for China.
“Taiwan’s existence as a separate entity threatens Xi Jinping's claim that China is now a powerful country and the CPC can defend Chinese interests. He has stated that reunification is a requirement for achieving national rejuvenation, which he has said must be achieved by mid-century,” Glaser said.
The need to fit that missing piece into the mainland's geography has intensified. More since the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Tsai Ing-wen became president, first in 2016, and returned to power, much to Beijing’s disappointment, in 2020.
Since then, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has kept up the pressure — more and more in recent months — on the island with serious military posturing and "real combat drills".
The PLA has held many inter-services military exercises near the island — three large-scale ones have been held in less than a month since early May — and deployed fighter jets around the island, violating Taiwan’s air identification zone (ADIZ) frequently, and with impunity.
Last year, Taiwan recorded 969 incursions by Chinese warplanes into its ADIZ, according to an AFP database — more than double the roughly 380 carried out in 2020; and, so far in 2022, Taiwan has reported 465 incursions, a near 50% increase from the same period last year.
Taiwan's defence minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, said in October that relations with China are the worst they have been for 40 years.
Both countries, however, look at economic engagement in a pragmatic way: Trade volumes speak for it.
According to statistics from Beijing released in January, the trade volume between the mainland and Taiwan was over $328.3 billion in 2021.
The mainland remains Taiwan's largest export market and source of trade surplus.
While Taiwanese investment in the mainland was around $71.3 billion, the amount of investment in Taiwan by mainland businesses stood at around $3.7 billion.
China, the US, and Taiwan
China blames the United States (US) for ratcheting up tension in the Taiwan Strait by selling arms to Taiwan and, only last week, talking about a trade pact with the island.
Beijing keeps reminding the US that the “One China policy” is a key cornerstone of bilateral ties. The US’s “strategic ambiguity”, however, plays on the fact that its policy is not an endorsement of Beijing’s “One China principle”. Washington and Taipei maintain ties at various levels, only “unofficially”.
“As a leading democracy and a technological powerhouse, Taiwan is a key U.S. partner in the Indo-Pacific. Though the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, we have a robust unofficial relationship,” is how the US state department defines the ties.
Will China invade Taiwan?
China is unlikely to invade the island anytime soon. But given China’s aggressive military posturing for the past several months, even years, Beijing has allowed — maybe deliberately — the speculation of an invasion to flourish.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought in another dimension to that opinion: China is learning from Russia’s mistakes, and has pushed back its plans to invade, given the possible impact of international economic sanctions.
“Beijing is watching and drawing lessons from the international response to Russia’s violation of international rules, mindful that protecting its domestic legitimacy is a key consideration in Xi’s pursuit of its ambition to take Taiwan. In other words, taking Taiwan can’t come at the expense of domestic legitimacy and loss of domestic control over society,” Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, from National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan, and former political adviser in the European Parliament, said.
Despite the repeated talk about “reunification” by the Chinese leadership and diplomats, Beijing is likely to wait and watch.
“Whether China will decide to invade Taiwan is likely based more on political and military conditions than a deadline — at least for the near term. It will depend on a correlation of capabilities, intent, and confidence,” Russel Hsiao, executive director of the Washington-based Global Taiwan Institute, said.
An invasion would mean that Beijing has to launch one of the largest amphibious attacks across the Taiwan Strait, and a quick military is not certain despite the asymmetry in military strength.
“(As seen from the Ukraine war) The rapid, globally coordinated economic sanctions may also deter Beijing leaders’ aggressive actions. The Beijing government is likely to use other means such as information warfare, economic statecraft and diplomatic isolation to place pressure on Taipei,” Wang from Illinois State University said.
China, however, will continue to increase military pressure on Taiwan with drills and incursions: Hardly surprising that more Taiwanese are taking shooting lessons, according to new reports.
Back in January of 2019, Taiwanese President Tsai was quick to reject President Xi’s speech, and his offer to subsume Taiwan under the mainland’s “one country, two systems” model.
“Democratic values are cherished by the Taiwanese people; it’s their way of life,” Tsai said.
It is unlikely that Tsai's message will go through: The last time China's own citizens demanded democratic values from its government, it didn't end well.
Sutirtho Patranobis, HT’s experienced China hand, writes a weekly column from Beijing, exclusively for HT Premium readers. He was previously posted in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he covered the final phase of the civil war and its aftermath, and was based in Delhi for several years before that
The views expressed are personal
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) declared the onset of the 2022 Indian monsoon over Kerala on May 29, after it received 2.5 mm of rainfall over 10 stations in 24 hours, although technically, it should have rained 2.5 mm over 14 stations, covering a larger area.
In 2021, the overall monsoon rainfall received in the country increased from 94% to 99% of the normal rainfall. But IMD added the rainfall received after the monsoon technically ended, stating that the rains received were due to prevailing monsoon conditions over certain areas.
These two examples have put a question mark over the way IMD collects its rainfall data and presents its annual monsoon rainfall. Moreover, Kerala has witnessed 50% less rainfall than normal in the first six days of the monsoon.
There are more examples in recent years of IMD altering its norms to make people believe that the monsoon is normal. One was the change in the definition of “normal rainfall” to the average of the last decade.
For decades, IMD calculated normal rainfalls over a longer period than 10 years. Average rainfall in a decade may not measure the actual long term rainfall change trends caused by the climate crisis. This may, in turn, normalise these trends and minimise the impacts of the climate crisis.
IMD’s way to measure normal rainfall based on cumulative rainfall during the four-month-long monsoon period from June to September hides more than it shows. It doesn’t show that while rainy hours and days in the country are falling, extreme rainfall events are rising, while the cumulative rainfall has remained the same, thus showing the monsoon to be normal.
Lessons from 2019
Take the example of 2019, when the average rainfall received during the monsoon months was more than normal. IMD describes rainfall as normal if the average cumulative rain is 90% to 110% of the long period average (LPA). According to IMD, the “LPA of rainfall is the rainfall recorded over a particular region for a given interval (like month or season) average over a long period like 30 years, 50 years, etc”.
2019 recorded 115% of the LPA after 23 years despite 30% deficit rainfall in June, and September recording the second-highest LPA in 102 years. That year, IMD said, was of the highest recorded extreme rainfall events, meaning that more than 250 mm of rainfall was received at a meteorological station in 24 hours.
Despite that, in several places, the rainy hours or days have not increased. Analysis of IMD data showed that the rainy hours were less than in previous years — at about 25% of the total meteorological locations.
And, the scientific explanation for this is that extreme rainfall may bring so much rain within a few hours that it would erase the rainfall deficiency of months in one go. So, suddenly a place would appear on the IMD map as rain surplus, from deficient, even though large amounts of the water were run-off — which does not help with groundwater retention or agriculture.
Over the past few decades, India’s total annual rainfall averages haven’t changed, but the intensity of precipitation has increased as extreme weather events (EWEs) become more frequent and widespread. The IMD recorded 560 extreme rainfall events in 2019 — 74% more than the previous year.
An analysis of IMD data shows that rainy hours and rainy days are coming down at a steady pace, without any impact on cumulative rainfall for the monsoon period.
Rainy days in big cities
In 2018, a study of rainfall data of 22 big cities in the country showed that almost half of all the monsoon rain comes to these cities in a few days. For instance, Delhi received 50% of rainfall in 33 hours, Mumbai in 134, Chennai in 121, Ahmedabad in 46 hours, and Bengaluru in 141 hours in 2018.
In a way, most cities receive half of the rainfall in less than a week. And, the rest of the monsoon days are mostly dry. This is not reflected in IMD data, which just shows that a deficiency in rainfall followed by or following an extreme rainfall event is enough to show the monsoon as normal or above normal.
A 2007 study of the rainfall data of Kerala, from where the southwest monsoon arrives and leaves, by the Indian Statistical Institute, showed that the rainy days in the state had fallen by nearly 25% since the 1960s, even though most years had normal cumulative rainfall. The study also said that in certain areas, the fall in the percentage of rainy days was as high as 40%.
Monsoon: India's lifeline
The nation’s meteorological department does, however, admit that this is a clear consequence of the climate crisis. Intense storms pose a huge danger to India’s agriculture-based economy and millions of farmers whose livelihoods still largely rely on a consistent rainfall season.
In the backdrop of how the climate crisis impacts the Indian monsoon, the government needs to change the way it informs people about rainfall data. In India, the monsoon is the lifeline of the economy, which shapes the country’s agriculture sector and ensures food security. It should inform its citizens of the number of hours it has rained in the country, in addition to cumulative rainfall.
Averaging out the rainfall hours for the entire country and every station is not difficult, as per some former IMD senior officials to whom this author spoke. They say 1 mm of rain in an hour could be considered a rainy hour. “The data is available with the IMD,” a former official said. “It needs to be culled and presented in a people-friendly manner.”
It is awareness about the number of rainy hours that can help make people understand the impacts of the climate crisis on the Indian monsoon. It could also help the government advocate for less water-intensive crops and effect livelihood changes.
The views expressed are personal
Two years ago, I wrote about the crisis faced by Indian tea in Rude Food, my column in Brunch. It was acknowledged, I said, that though some Indian teas were among the best in the world, the tea industry itself was in bad shape. Worse still, I added, there were new scares about how safe Indian tea was: Did it contain too many pesticides? And were the fluoride levels in some of our teas so high that they could eventually contribute to bone disease?
Certainly, most of the safety concerns I expressed in that column went largely unaddressed though there was pushback to the article from fans of CTC teas. These are teas made using a process called Crush, Tear and Curl (hence CTC) which is usually associated with the cheaper teas that hold sway in about 88% of the Indian market. I said that India’s best teas were leaf teas made in a style that it called orthodox. This provoked baffling outrage from fans of CTC.
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Two things have happened since that column appeared. First of all, the pandemic may actually have helped the tea industry. As Anshuman Kanoria, chairman of the India Tea Exporters Association (and owner of two famous Darjeeling gardens) explained to me, the reduction in supply caused by the pandemic led to a rise in prices. Fortunately, for the industry, the rise in prices was so high that it compensated for the loss in revenue caused by having less tea to sell.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the concerns about safety that I had raised in my piece which were generally brushed off can no longer be ignored. Last month, the Tea Board wrote to all tea producer associations warning them that various teas offered up for auction had been tested and found to be not fit for human consumption. According to the Federation of All India Tea Traders, failure rates of teas that had been tested were between 15% to 40%. These teas would now have to be destroyed. Apparently, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) was conducting random raids at tea warehouses and had found that much of the tea produced in India did not meet the standards required for human consumption.
So far, at least, this development has not attracted that much attention outside tea circles and among consumers, but within the tea industry it is hotly debated and much discussed in WhatsApp groups and on social media.
So, are there genuine safety concerns about Indian tea?
There are those who argue that there always have been concerns but that the industry has failed to address them in time. Nirmal Sethia, the London and Dubai-based billionaire who runs Newby Tea as a passion project (all profits go to charity), had complained about fluorides and pesticides when I wrote about tea two years ago. Sethia says that Newby spends lakhs on testing every year to make sure that its teas are safe. “Every tea of ours is compliant with EU and US standards. We are the number one tea brand in the world when it comes to safety.” But, he says, others have been reluctant to do so. Now, he argues, FSSAI’s decisions have vindicated his position and the criticisms he made of the rest of the industry when he spoke to me two years ago.
In fact, tea safety is a complicated business. The problem of fluorides in tea hit the global media a decade ago. The pesticide charge is also familiar. Tea companies all over the world (including such prestigious brands as Singapore’s TWG) have had their teas rejected by various export markets.
Every country has its own criteria for acceptable levels of pesticides. So even if you meet say, US standards, you may not meet the EU’s standards. So Indian tea exporters have had to try hard to adjust to different global standards. By and large, the guys who make the prestige teas have learned how to cope.
As Prabhat Bezbaruah, chairman of The Tea Research Association says, “Nobody wants to make any product that harms consumers. But because acceptable levels and standards vary so much from market to market and new conditions keep being added, it becomes difficult for tea producers to keep up.”
The FSSAI raids and the rejection of so many teas as unfit for human consumption, however, strike at the very heart of the industry not just at top exporters. It echoes similar trends in Iran and other export markets where cheaper Indian teas have begun to face problems. It begs the question: Have Indian tea growers got away with using too many pesticides for too long mainly because they have been under the radar?
This is no simple answer to that question, but what is clear is that growers are much more careful when they grow teas for the export market than when they grow tea for the Indian market. Some large companies are reputed to even have two sets of standards, one for teas that are grown for export and one for the cheaper stuff meant for domestic consumption.
The sad reality is that using pesticides is the most economical way to grow tea. The organic approach, favoured by a few top growers, costs much more than farming with pesticides. Not only are yields lower (which they are even if you don’t go fully organic but simply use less pesticide) but there is also the problem of weed growth. Tea gardens need to hire extra workers to root out the weeds which can be expensive.
Sethia says that his cost of production at Newby Tea is around double that of other gardens. That’s because he wants Newby to guarantee safety. On the other hand, as his critics point out, he charges high prices for a passion project; his tea business is a rich man’s indulgence, designed for charity.
At the lower end of the market where margins are small, gardens try and get the largest yields. Often this is impossible without lots of pesticides. Teas that are grown at higher altitudes (say Darjeeling) are usually less vulnerable to damage by pests. But tea gardens at lower levels (in Assam, for instance) can be severely infested with pests. So, argues the tea industry, it is not difficult to see why more pesticides are needed.
Within the tea industry, some even see conspiracies. Why, they ask, has this issue suddenly come up at a time when it could affect the sale of the second flush? Is it a move to drive prices down to pre-pandemic levels?
I have no idea how this will end and while I worry for the future of the Indian tea industry, I think we have to accept that we live in a globalised market. India cannot sell one kind of tea, grown to one set of standards, to its domestic population and grow another (to higher standards) for foreigners.
Whether we agree with global pesticide norms or not, we will have to follow them. The FSSAI action may be harsh but, on the other hand, it is frightening to note that as much as 40% of tea offered for sale at some auctions was ‘unfit for human consumption’.
There is a tendency now to sensationalise the issue and to claim that our teas are being sent back from export markets. This can be an exaggeration. And it’s not even the real issue.
What matters is this: The tea industry should not fob Indians off with teas that it would not dare send abroad. I understand the difficulties faced by small growers and why they use so many pesticides.
But health is more important than profit.
My initial column writing for many years was for Pakistani newspapers. I have visited Pakistan many times, have spoken at its universities and its literature festivals often and know the place intimately for three decades.
What is striking is that while India has been moving consistently away from secularism and towards a Hindutva-style state, Pakistan is trying to move in the other direction, away from religion.’
In 1947, Pakistan wanted to be constitutionally a religious state. The integration of religion into law and government would lend a positive impulse, felt M.A. Jinnah’s successor Liaquat Ali Khan. Speaking only a few years after the atom bombs were dropped on Japan, Liaquat said mankind’s material and scientific development had leapt ahead of the development of the individual. Man could thus produce inventions that could destroy the world. This happened only because man had chosen to ignore his spiritual side, and if he had retained more faith in God, this wouldn’t have come up.
Religion tempered the dangers of science, Liaquat felt, and as Muslims, Pakistanis would adhere to Islam’s ideals. The State’s enabling Muslims to lead their lives in alignment with Islam didn’t concern non-Muslims, so they shouldn’t have a problem with that, he said.
This is what the Muslim League intended, but what happened was different. The focus shifted from Muslims to non-Muslims. Pakistan restricted its minorities from becoming President (in 1960s) or Prime Minister (from 1970s).
Meanwhile, the laws concerning Pakistan’s Muslims fell away in time. The law enforcing fasting in Ramzan (quite needless as most subcontinental Muslims observe the fast anyway) ran into opposition after Muslim restaurant owners and multiplex owners complained.
The law enforcing zakat by debiting 2.5 per cent from bank accounts of Pakistan’s Sunnis failed as people withdrew their money just before it was due to happen. Shia, who have a hierarchical clergy to whom they give money directly, had previously objected and were exempted.
Pakistan shares with India the penal code and Pakistanis are as familiar with the numbers 302, 420 and 144 as we are. Here they tried to change the laws. Early Islam existed at a time when there were no jails. Punishment for criminal offences was usually corporal instead of detention. In the 1980s Pakistan introduced amputation of limbs as punishment for theft and trained a set of terrified doctors to carry these out. But Pakistan’s judges, trained in common law like India’s, were reluctant to pass these sentences and so the laws remained frozen and unused. Pakistan introduced stoning as a punishment for adultery but nobody has been stoned to death.
A brief period of enthusiasm, also in 1980s, for lashing those accused of drinking alcohol ended. In 2009, Pakistan's Federal Shariat Court read down the punishment for drinking, with the judges saying it wasn’t a serious crime. Under President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan returned the punishment for rape (which was conflated with fornication if the survivor couldn’t produce witnesses) from the Shariah back to the penal code. A Sharia court order seeking a ban on interest in banking, which would finish the economy, has been ignored by successive governments.
The last major attempt to Islamise Pakistan was over two decades ago under Nawaz Sharif: the 15th Amendment, which was defeated in the Senate. Pakistan remains insufficiently Islamic and, with no hierarchical clergy like Iran’s, can never become theocratic. Unlikely Saudi Arabia, it never had a moral police as Pakistanis are culturally South Asians with local practices.
While Pakistan attempted to secularise, India has gone the other away. The one thing India can claim is that it doesn’t prevent Muslims from holding high office.
India has had Muslim Presidents but unlike Pakistan, India’s Presidents are figureheads with no real authority. If they had the power to dismiss Parliament, such as Pakistan’s Presidents had, it would be interesting to see how many Muslims India would have elevated.
Today, there is no Muslim chief minister in India for the first time since 1947, no Muslim minister at all in 15 state Cabinets, and in 10 states there is only one Muslim minister, usually given minority affairs. Of the ruling party’s 303 Lok Sabha MPs, none is Muslim. There was no Muslim among its previous 282 Lok Sabha majority either. When Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who hasn’t been given a Rajya Sabha seat, loses his position as a minister, there will be no Muslim in the Union Cabinet for the first time. Whether the exclusion of minorities from power is through the law, as in Pakistan, or through practice as in India, the exclusion is real.
On the side of laws, of course, India has moved substantially away from pluralism. Starting 2015, BJP states began criminalising the possession of beef, triggering a series of lynchings. In 2019, Parliament criminalised the utterance of triple talaq in one sitting, punishing Muslim men for a non-event (as the Supreme Court had already invalidated triple talaq earlier). After 2018, seven BJP states criminalised inter-faith marriage by disallowing conversions and invalidating such marriages, including those which had children. Conversions to Hinduism, defined as “ancestral religion”, are exempt and not counted as conversions in BJP states like Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh. Nobody has ever been convicted of forced conversion in India, but the intent is to harass.
In 2019, Gujarat tightened a law that keeps Muslims ghettoised by denying them access to purchase and lease properties from Hindus. In effect, foreigners can buy and rent properties in Gujarat that Gujarati Muslims cannot. We needn’t get into the treatment of Kashmiris as the collective punishment imposed on them no longer arouses interest in us.
In effect, there’s no real difference between India and Pakistan as they move towards each other. One began at the communal end but has edged towards secularism. The other began at the secular end, and has slipped into communalism.