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Editorials - 08-09-2022

The agencies responsible for macroeconomic policy have hitched their wagon to Anglo-American economics

The Governor of the Reserve Bank of India reportedly stated that the inflation rate would be brought to its target level of 4% within 24 months. It had been above this level for 34 consecutive months already. If the prognosis is correct, by 2024 it would have remained off target for close to five years. In the United States and the United Kingdom, the inflation rate has been off target for a lesser period, but it has lately run at rates close to four times the target. What credibility do the world’s central banks have if they fail so egregiously in delivering on their mandate? Though the characteristics of India’s economy vary substantially when compared to those of the industrialised West, their governments follow the same approach to inflation control, termed ‘inflation targeting’ and implemented by their central banks. It would be reasonable to surmise then that the approach is ineffectual because it is flawed in its imagination.

A particular problem

The approach to inflation currently favoured in Anglo-American economics is the result of an evolution lasting close to a century. In the 1930s, the world faced an unprecedented crisis with the capitalist economies plunging into depression. We can now see that this was a particular problem of such economies, for the Soviet Union was unaffected. The Great Depression was as much a crisis for the economics profession, for it was expected to come up with ideas on how the global economy could be lifted out of the morass it had sunk into. The central banks were rendered helpless, for monetary policy, the preferred macroeconomic instrument, proved to be impotent under the circumstances. The profession responded momentously, through the publication by J.M. Keynes ofThe General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money . It provided the insight that at times, capitalist economies would require “the socialisation of investment”, by which he meant that the state would have to shoulder the burden of maintaining demand in the economy through its fiscal policy.

At some level, the message that when private investment was depressed public investment must take over, is no more than an application of economic accounting, but the proposal triggered an ideological backlash. Not all economists of the time were well disposed to the government intervention and larger public deficits, even when temporary, that was being advocated. However, confirmation of the validity of Keynesian economics came from an unexpected source. Hitler, through greater public spending on roads and armaments, showed that a market economy would respond to a Keynesian stimuli, and nothing like the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic followed.

Impact of ‘oil shocks’

The Keynesian principle continued to work after the war, when the reconstruction of Europe meant that aggregate demand was maintained by public spending on the infrastructure that had been destroyed. The consequent unprecedented rise in living standards came to an abrupt end, though, with the two ‘oil shocks’ of the 1970s, when the petroleum exporting countries combined to hike the price of oil. This both sucked demand out of the oil importing countries and gave rise to inflation in them. Stagflation, a combination of inflation and stagnant output, followed. It is indeed correct thatThe General Theory was unprepared for this phenomenon, but a complete explanation of it was quickly provided by the Keynesian economist Nicholas Kaldor, and possible solutions identified. This did not receive wide enough acknowledgement, however, and a revival of pre-Keynesian economics, with its assumption of a self-regulating economy, occurred. Its leader, Milton Friedman, argued that in an unfettered market economy, unemployment would tend towards the ‘natural’ level, where presumably everyone who wishes to work would be working.

Inflation targeting

Accordingly, public policy should not target unemployment, attempting which could destabilise the economy, and focus on inflation alone. And, inflation was solely a function of money supply growth which must always be controlled. Friedman’s assertion of the optimality of the market gained impetus after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. His diagnosis of inflation led to a clamour for central banks to be made independent of politicians and given an exclusive mandate to target inflation. The arrangement came to be known as inflation targeting, with the claim that the central bank can fine tune inflation by moving the interest rate. The Anglo-American orientation of India’s policy makers meant that this view of inflation control came to be adopted in this country too.

The allure of inflation targeting is the implicit premise that the authorities, in this case the central bank of a country, will now be both devoted to and capable of controlling inflation. Nothing demonstrates that the latter is make-believe more than the runaway inflation presently on view across the world. Inflation in the U.S. and the U.K., the epicentres of the Friedmanite revolution in economics, is far higher than the targets set for their central banks by their governments.

The question is whether this reflects a lack of commitment on the part of the central banks of these countries or their inability to do anything in the face of an inflation sparked off by a rise in commodity prices, notably the price of oil and food, as is the case today. Obviously, it is the latter. Nothing else can explain inflation rates that are over four times the announced target. Faced with high inflation, Europe’s policymakers exhort that central banks should raise the interest rate further, even if it means triggering a recession. But we can now see that this is no permanent solution to a supply-side driven inflation as the present one is. Even if it were to be granted that the global inflation of the 1970s was contained by the policies advocated by Friedman, we see the problem is back four decades later, driven this time by the disruption of global supply chains due to the war in Ukraine. A recession works to lower inflation when it does by lowering output, and thereby demand; it cannot increase supply, a shortfall in which had caused the inflation to start with.

In the face of the evident failure of monetary policy in controlling inflation globally today, central bankers concerned with retaining their relevance make a renewed case for it by arguing that by pursuing a high-interest-rate policy, central banks can ‘anchor’ the expectation of inflation, and thereby inflation itself.

But why would economic agents harbour such an illusion when forming expectations of inflation? “How,” they are bound to ask, “can a central bank ever achieve this?” A central bank can dampen expectations of a depreciation of its national currency so long as it holds sufficient reserves of the dollar. However, would it have any leverage when it comes to commodity price expectations? No central bank holds stocks of petroleum or wheat. Therefore, it can never directly influence commodity prices, and the public knows this only too well. Having established itself by arguing that Keynesian economics has no explanation of stagflation, the challenge to it finds its own remedy for inflation discredited.

In India

Coming back to India, there exists published research demonstrating that household expectation of inflation, based on data released by the Reserve Bank of India, is not a determinant of it. This makes it difficult to claim that inflation targeting, which is supposed to work via the central bank’s ‘anchoring’ of expectations, works in India. We have long known what needs to be done to control inflation in India, but the agencies responsible for macroeconomic policy ignore this knowledge when they hitch their wagon to the ideology of Anglo-American economics. The consequences are there to see.

Pulapre Balakrishnan teaches economics at Ashoka University, Sonipat



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Beyond signing cheques, corporates are recognising that what’s good for society is good for business

When COVID-19 spurred a nationwide lockdown in India in 2020, a grave need for localised social support emerged. Giving, both private and public, flowed to NGOs working towards combating pandemic-induced challenges such as loss of livelihood for vulnerable communities, food banks, and health and medical support.

In any such social effort, programme expenses attract the big cheques — especially when they come from corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in India. For example, an NGO working on education outcomes might receive funding for books, other online resources, teacher training, curriculum design, etc. But NGOs have other expenses too. In order to achieve long-term and sustained impact, they need to pay for administrative and support expenses not specifically tied to programmes— for instance, rent, electricity, technology and human resource costs. These organisational development and indirect costs, combined with programme expenses, make up an NGOs’ true costs. And underfunding an NGO’s true costs reduces the efficacy and impact of the very programmes that funders support.

To understand how funders and NGOs perceive an NGO’s true costs, and what it takes to build a financially resilient social sector, we surveyed and interviewed over 500 NGOs, funders and intermediary organisations across India as part of our multi-year Pay-What-It-Takes-India initiative.

The funder archetypes

Based on a recent survey of nearly 80 diverse social sector funders, we discovered three distinct funder archetypes — programme proponents, adaptive funders, and organisation builders. The three archetypes represent different beliefs in terms of how philanthropy becomes impact. And those beliefs manifest in different practices around funding indirect costs and organisational development. Programme proponents value programme outcomes above all. Adaptive funders are not rigid and support indirect costs and organisational development, if the NGO makes a case. Organisation builders see value in investing in stronger organisations in addition to programmes.

CSR funders, who now represent a fifth of all private giving in India, principally fall under programme proponents. They mostly contribute little or no money to organisational development and limit what they pay for indirect costs to a fixed rate often below 5%. Our 2020 primary research showed that NGOs’ indirect costs range from 5% to 55%, depending on their mission and operating model, much as a corporate’s sales and administration costs vary significantly by industry and product.

These practices are partly a consequence of CSR funders’ focus on regulatory compliance — amendments to the CSR law in 2021 include substantial financial penalties for non-compliance. Roughly 90% of the CSR funders are relatively small, unlisted companies — and companies that spend less than Rs. 50 lakh annually on CSR are not required by law to have a CSR committee. They generally leave decision-making and action plans to company boards, who may have little to no experience working with NGOs or on social impact. Hence, their priorities tend to sway towards risk avoidance, compliance, and cost minimisation. Several larger companies have added CSR to the responsibilities of their HR or administration or communications head, rather than hiring professional leads, experienced in the social sector.

Further, not every company is aware of all the facets of the CSR rules they are complying with. For instance, the 5% cap on administrative overhead costs is applicable only to a business’ internal CSR operation cost, not to the grantee’s administrative costs, as is widely perceived. Many CSRs make errors on safety with the unintended consequence of leaving an NGO with unpaid bills or worse still, drawing on its scarce core funding from other donors to pay for these essential costs.

How might this change? For one thing, companies can pool their resources with other mission-aligned CSR or social sector stakeholders, increasing their collective impact potential, and also hire or tap into professionals with experience working with NGOs. Since 2020, the number of philanthropic collaboratives, such as the Migrants Resilience Collaborative that supports migrant workers or Revive Alliance that finances semi- and unskilled workers, have more than doubled.

Learn from peer organisations

In addition, CSR funders would learn from peers who view organisational development and indirect costs differently. For example, ASK Foundation, the CSR arm of ASK Group, is working to enable better livelihoods for rural communities. Until four years ago, the ASK gave annual programme grants to NGOs, limited indirect cost coverage to between 5% and 10%, and did not provide organisational development expenses. Then, it shifted to a multi-year grant making approach and started providing up to 20% support for indirect costs. The shift in practice came after the CSR team presented benchmarks of the higher rates paid by peer CSR organisations and the beneficial effects of a stronger NGO partner on its programme outcomes. These peer examples and impact stories were instrumental in ASK getting board approval for changing its NGO funding policy.

The pandemic also exposed how vulnerable NGOs are to financial stress. Our research revealed that 54% of NGOs had less than three months in reserve funds in September 2020. This number stood at 38% before the pandemic. Without adequate reserves, NGOs cannot pay salaries or bills when faced with an unexpected funding shortfall.

The CSR programmes cannot currently contribute to NGO reserves/corpus by law. However, by covering indirect costs and organisational development, they still help to relieve financial pressure and make organisations more resilient. What’s more, corporates have considerable accounting and finance capabilities that they can offer to NGOs, in addition to their funding. NGOs don’t have clear financial reporting standards and many lack the internal capabilities to undertake a true-cost analysis. A corporate that has developed a relationship of mutual trust with an NGO could offer volunteer financial analysis services to help the NGO calculate true costs and communicate with other funders, and build financial resilience.

Not many CSR funders think this way right now, but CSR practices are maturing. As our research has shown, more CSR decision-makers are shifting their focus from compliance with CSR laws to the social impact they are making. CSR funders are following several themes to make this transition, such as hiring professionals, coming together in collaboratives, and defining and publishing their impact metrics to hold themselves accountable. The idea is to move beyond signing cheques to recognising that, ultimately, what’s good for Indian society is also good for business.

Pritha Venkatachalam is Partner and Co-Head, Asia and Africa, and Kanika Gupta is Senior Associate Consultant, Bridgespan Group.



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There needs to be an overarching energy policy that addresses environmental issues and also ensures affordable supply

For the first time in years, the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited (TANGEDCO) has submitted a petition which proposes an annual increase of tariff by 6%. Reeling under the weight of mounting debts and long-pending payments to generators, this was a long anticipated step.

Key reasons

One of the reasons for TANGEDCO’s poor financial health is that tariffs have not been revised on an annual basis, thereby resulting in a gap between average revenue requirement and average cost of supply. Continuous under-recovery over the years and the cancellation and or delay of projects have adversely impacted TANGEDCO’s capability to upgrade and modernise its distribution network and hindered the transition towards a smart grid future. Hence, the proposal of an annual adjustment of tariffs by the rate of inflation is a positive step — this will not only provide more predictability to its consumers but also avoid the one-time steep tariff increase every few years.

It is a welcome step to protect its smaller consumers from the tariff impact in this petition. However, some of the additional tariff categories in this petition may be open to interpretation under non-verifiable conditions. Hence, a simplification of the tariff structures which is easier to comprehend could be considered.

Green tariffs, other charges

Green tariffs have been emerging as an alternative renewable energy procurement model for commercial and industrial consumers. However, TANGEDCO’s proposed premium green tariff, at 150% of the applicable tariff rate, may dissuade consumers from availing this. Green tariffs, if properly designed, could help TANGEDCO reduce sales migration of commercial and industrial consumers to open access while at the same time provide export-oriented industries with an opportunity to meet their sustainability commitments.

There is a steep increase in demand (fixed) charges for high tension consumers in this petition — more than 100% as compared to the last tariff order. Wheeling charges for open access have been increased from existing Rs. 0.21/unit to Rs. 1.52/unit for High Tension consumers (an increase of 624%). This may make Tamil Nadu one of the most expensive open access markets in the country, potentially impacting the industrial attractiveness of the State.

The inclusion of all high tension consumers (except lift irrigation) under the time-of-day tariff is a positive step, but this could have also included low tension consumers. The domestic consumer category is a main contributor to the evening peak load. In Tamil Nadu, the domestic consumer category (LT I-A) accounted for 41.28% (30,390 MU) of the total energy sales in the financial year 2020-21. Therefore, including the domestic consumer category under the time-of-day tariff and a detailed loss reduction plan could potentially result in cost savings for TANGEDCO.

Coal and renewables

TANGEDCO is planning to meet 87% of the expected increase in power demand from thermal power plants and only 13% from renewables. Commissioning of the announced coal power plants will lock-in TANGEDCO with a high fixed cost and could result in more expensive power for consumers in the years to come — 1,890 MW of TANGEDCO’s coal plants are 30 years and older, and are up for retirement. Also, 4,320 MW of TANGEDCO’s own-coal power plants need to be retrofitted with flue gas desulphurisation systems, which will further increase the per unit cost.

According to the Ministry of Power, TANGEDCO is to meet 35.95% of its energy from renewables by the financial year 2026-27 as in its renewable purchase obligations. However, less than half of the mandated target is shown in TANGEDCO projections. Additionally, it is not clear how the Ministry of Power notified storage obligation (starting from 1% in the financial year 2024 to 2.5% by financial year 2027), 20 GW solar by 2023 (as per the memorandum of understanding signed between Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency Limited (a Government of India Enterprise) and the Tamil Nadu government) and 3,600 MW rooftop solar (as per the Tamil Nadu Solar Energy Policy 2019) are considered in this petition.

Large-scale solar and onshore wind technologies have increasingly become cheaper than coal-powered plants and have continued to create employment opportunities. It will be useful for the utility to carve out a robust strategy to assess the risks associated with building new thermal power plants, especially in view of the State’s long-term energy security.

Focus on sustainability

While there is a strong equity focus in this petition, sustainability must also receive priority. Despite the climate change commitments, there are still plans to add coal capacities in the State’s electricity mix, as in the petition. Holistic scenario planning and exploring integration of distributed generation, storage, rooftop solar, green hydrogen, and offshore wind, will be helpful in visualising Tamil Nadu’s energy future, as well as building a climate-resilient infrastructure.

It is time to design an overarching integrated energy policy that addresses environmental issues, fosters economic development, and ensures reliable, secure and affordable energy supply for all. It must also inform the decision-making process on tariff determination in view of the State’s vision for a cleaner energy future.

Martin Scherfler is co-founder at Auroville Consulting. Sandhya Sundararagavan is the Lead on the Energy Transitions team at the World Resources Institute, India



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If India is to become a defence power, then an Indo-U.S. military collaboration in every field is necessary

India and the U.S. will undertake joint military drills in October in Auli, Uttarakhand. Auli is at an altitude of 10,000 feet and some 95 km from the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

The time is ripe for the inaugural India-U.S. joint space military exercise. First, this single act will push India’s defence partnership into a new orbit. Second, it will send a strong message to a common adversary. Third, it will have other ripple effects for the wider Quad.

Space has been singled out as a critical area of cooperation in the recent Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) meeting between India and the U.S. For the first time in history, both countries are jointly staring at a common adversary. Nothing binds friends together as sharing the same displacement anxiety.

A military domain

Space as a military domain is a well-accepted fact. In 2019, the U.S. stood up its space force as a branch under the department of the Air Force. At the time, it became the world’s only independent space force. In India, historically, space has remained the sole jurisdiction of its civilian space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO). However, the successful demonstration (dubbed Mission Shakti) of anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test in 2019 changed things forever. The same year, India conducted its first ever simulated space warfare exercise (IndSpaceX) with an eye on Chinese threats.

Furthermore, the launch of the tri-service Defence Space Agency (DSA) has permanently taken the military away from the shadows of civil space. The government has also set up the Defence Space Research Agency (DSRA) to help develop space-based weapons for the DSA. Space is as much recognised as a military domain as land, water, air and cyber.

India and the U.S. do drills on land, in air and at sea. Why not extend it to the fourth domain? It is inevitable as both countries can expect the exact same conversation happening in their adversary’s strategy rooms.

It will have actionable spill overs for the Quad, transform the moribund DTTI from a talk shop and send the right message to the adversary.

The lowest hanging fruit would be a joint anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test. It is essentially a missile launched from the Earth’s surface to destroy a satellite passing overhead. Both countries have demonstrated capability in this. The test would be against a simulated orbital target as that does not create space debris and is not included in the wording of the U.S. moratorium.

Eventually, this will lead to other space military collaborations such as directed energy weapons, rendezvous and proximity operations (RPOs), co-orbital ASATs (in space micro satellites as a kinetic kill option), etc.

Space programmes

Every country worth its weight in salt is working on the military aspects of space. France conducted its first space military exercise, ASTERX, in 2021. China is marching ahead to the Cis-Lunar space (region beyond the geosynchronous orbit) with an ambition to establish a permanent presence on the Moon by 2024.

The doctrine in space is still evolving with the U.S. urging partner countries to lay down rules and norms. China and Russia have released a draft binding treaty of their own. Red lines and norms will eventually emerge but until then it provides an ideal new theatre to push Indo-U.S. military collaboration forward.

Space has assets that form the bedrock of the modern economy — GPS (PNT — position navigation timing), telecom networks, early warning systems for missiles and weather forecasts all are enabled by our satellites in GEO or LEO orbits.

But there could be some expected pushback from the usual naysayers. First, it will provoke our eastern neighbour and compel them to draw a new redline. Second, our eastern neighbour will use our western neighbour as a proxy state. Third, it will derail the ongoing Core Commanders dialogue in Ladakh. Fourth, the United States cannot be trusted. Fifth, it will fastback militarisation for space. Our response to all the above is that it is an inevitable trend unfortunately, notwithstanding our action or inaction.

Changing times now require us to innovate on doctrines,technologies and deterrence. Xi Jinping is on his way to building a “world-class” Chinese military by 2049. If India is to become a space power and if the Indo-U.S. partnership is to become the alliance of alliances, then imaginative steps will be needed.

It is time for the India-U.S. military collaboration to get bolder and travel from mountains to outer heavens.

The authors work at the intersection of national security and technology



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The diplomat-turned-politician has positioned himself as an alternative to the establishment

Outwardly, Congress leaders from Kerala appear neutral on the possible candidature of Shashi Tharoor for the Congress president’s post, but their real stance on the sitting MP from Thiruvananthapuram running for the office in the upcoming organisational polls remains unclear.

Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president K. Sudhakaran said that if Mr. Tharoor wishes to contest the polls, there is nothing wrong in it as the Congress is a democratic party.

Although Mr. Tharoor said that he would take a final call on entering the fray only after the election notification was issued, he wants the speculation of his possible candidacy to be a kite-flying exercise because he knows that a candidate not sponsored by the Gandhi family will be at a huge disadvantage.

Therefore, it is still uncertain whether Mr. Tharoor would eventually take a shot at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) president's post.

Nonetheless, like any shrewd politician, Mr. Tharoor has been keeping people guessing. When, for instance, he was asked whether the next Congress president should be from a Hindi-speaking State, Mr. Tharoor said, "See, these days if you have to be in politics, you need to speak Hindi. People from the south are able to speak Hindi. I, too, can do it."

But, he first has to charm Congress leaders in his home State, of which most are said to be Gandhi loyalists. Considering his stature, the role of Congress Working Committee member A.K. Antony, a steadfast supporter of the Gandhi family, will be keenly watched. Mr. Antony has not taken any position on the organisational polls after the Gandhi family made it clear that none from the family will be contesting.

Then there is the looming presence of AICC general secretary (organisation) K. C. Venugopal, a close aide of Rahul Gandhi, whose disapproval can hurt Mr. Tharoor badly. But it is also a fact that now the Congress party in Kerala is driven by a new crop of independent-minded and feisty leaders such as V.D. Satheesan, for whom Mr. Tharoor could be a promising choice.

Since he is identified with the dissident G-23, the chances of Mr. Tharoor emerging as a compromise candidate in the event of loyalists such as Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge opting out of the race look bleak. Mr. Tharoor was not among the G-23 leaders the Gandhi family had tried to engage after the ginger group sought an organisational rejig and called for collective and inclusive leadership.

He has already positioned himself as an alternative to the traditional Congress establishment symbolised by the Gandhi family. Like Manish Tewari and Karti Chidambaram, Mr. Tharoor has also called for transparency in the poll process and has written to the party's central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry, demanding the publication of electoral rolls for the upcoming poll to the post of AICC president. This looks like a show of defiance as this demand was already shot down by Mr. Venugopal saying that the Congress presidential poll was an in-house process and that electoral rolls need not be made public.

As a former international diplomat, public intellectual and a best-selling author, Mr. Tharoor is also a non-conformist who had several run-ins with former KPCC presidents. This trait in him perhaps provokes sneers in traditional Congressmen but for the aspirational middle class, a constituency the Congress can ignore only at its peril. Mr. Tharoor is definitely perceived to be a class apart. But to get elected as the AICC president, only the votes of these Congressmen count.

biju.govind@thehindu.co.in



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Chileans have rejected a new Constitution,but they still need to replace the old one

Chilean voters’ decision to reject a new Constitution that would have replaced the 1980 charter written under the brutal military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet could deepen the country’s political divisions and throw its future into uncertainty. The new document, supported by Chile’s 36-year-old leftist President Gabriel Boric, would have transformed South America’s most free market-friendly country into a state-driven, rights-rich welfare society. But the voters seem to have concluded that the draft went too far. With almost all votes counted, 62% of voters said ‘No’. The Constitution drafting process itself was the result of months-long social and political struggles. Chile witnessed street protests in 2019 — triggered by a modest rise in subway fares — which prompted then President Sebastián Piñera to promise to rewrite the Constitution. Despite amendments, the Pinochet-era Constitution remains a pro-business, pro-market document, restricting state intervention in the economy. While Chile has seen fast development ever since its market reforms, it has also grown into one of the most unequal countries in the region, leading to disquiet. Mr. Boric rose from this chaos. In his election campaign in 2021, he had promised a new beginning. The referendum was his best opportunity to rewrite Chile’s future. But Mr. Boric and his comrades seem to have lost the momentum.

The 170-page, 388-Article document promised to legalise abortion, provide universal health care, mandate gender parity in government, empower labour unions, and tighten regulations on mining. It also sought to define Chile as a “plurinational” state that would recognise its 11 Indigenous groups, who make up some 13% of the population — they could have their own governing structures and legal systems. This proposal became the rallying cry of the rejection camp which argued that the enhanced rights of the indigenous communities (including veto powers on big-ticket projects) and the limits the new Constitution would place on security agencies would promote anarchy. Rising inflation and a militant uprising by the Mapuche community made it difficult for Mr. Boric to sell the proposals to voters. Chile is now back to square one. The old Constitution would remain in force until Chile’s political class finds a way ahead. Mr. Boric has promised to repeat the Constitution process — elections to the constituent assembly and then preparation of another draft that is put to a referendum — which would take time. The conservatives and centrists, who ruled Chile since the fall of the dictatorship, would try to maximise their interests in the coming elections. But political struggles could only make the political crisis worse. As Chileans have demanded the old Constitution be repealed and replaced, it is for the politicians to provide them a document that they would support. For that, they should start with building consensus on the future of the country.



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India and Bangladesh must focus on future cooperation based on past partnership

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s ongoing state visit to India and meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi have resulted in positive outcomes and seven agreements, which include the conclusion of the first water sharing agreement in 26 years, the launch of free trade agreement talks, and infrastructure projects particularly in the railways sector. The water sharing agreement on the Kushiyara, which was preceded by the first Joint River Commission meeting in 12 years, is a particularly hopeful sign on resolving water management, and a very contentious issue, of 54 trans-boundary rivers. While there has been a smaller agreement on the withdrawal of 1.82 cusecs from the Feni in the interim period, the Kushiyara agreement is the first time the Centre has been able to bring on board Assam and other north-eastern States, for the agreement since the 1996 Ganga water treaty. However, the Teesta agreement, of 2011, held up by West Bengal, remains elusive, a point Ms. Hasina made several times. Clearly, the Teesta river agreement will require more efforts by the Modi government, and flexibility from the Mamata Banerjee-led State government, if the deal is to be sealed soon. The timeline grows more important for Ms. Hasina, who is due to hold elections at the end of next year, after three terms in office. Much of her focus was also on attracting investment by Indian industry, which now constitutes a small fraction of Bangladesh’s FDI inflows. Ms. Hasina made particular mention of two dedicated Special Economic Zones for Indian companies, coming up at Mongla and Mirsarai.

Ms. Hasina’s visit, which follows her previous state visit in 2017, and Mr. Modi’s visit to Bangladesh in 2021, have set India-Bangladesh ties on a firmer footing, and on course for closer engagement in trade, connectivity and people-to-people ties. However, the positive trend in ties goes further back, to Ms. Hasina’s advent to power in 2009, her unilateral moves to shut down terror training camps, and to hand over more than 20 wanted criminals and terror suspects to India. It is incumbent on New Delhi, which has benefited from such outcomes and the turnaround in relations with what used to be an inimical neighbour, to be equally sensitive to Dhaka’s concerns, particularly when it comes to comments made by ruling party leaders on deporting Rohingya refugees, comparing undocumented migrants to “termites”, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, and more recent references to annexing Bangladesh for “Akhand Bharat”. While cross-border sensitivities in South Asia often run high over such political rhetoric, it is necessary that New Delhi and Dhaka remain focused on their future cooperation, built on their past partnership, and what is referred to as the “Spirit of 1971”.



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Calicut: The Executive Committee of the Malabar Central Relief Committee met on September 6, Dewan Bahadur Varghese presiding. Mr. Madhava Rao explained how the existing stocks of rice at various centres were, at the suggestion of the workers and District Collector, being distributed as charity, which will last the people in most places for one month and how this decision will cost the Committee nearly Rs. 10,000. The Committee approved of this and authorised the Secretary to appeal to Madras, Bombay and other funds and individuals to remit their entire collections and subscriptions immediately to Calicut. The Committee says nearly 5,200 families are being relieved with cloth and other things during this month. The Committee thanked Mr. Suryanarayana Rao of the Servants of India who have worked very hard in Calicut and who is now in Madras for explaining the Committee’s position in Calicut to the Secretaries of Malabar Relief Fund, Madras.



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Jerusalem, Sept. 7: Israel yesterday began a seven-day mourning period for its 11 dead Olympic sportsmen amid the spectre of possible armed revenge of the Arab terrorist attack at the Olympic Games. Mixed with the gloomy atmosphere throughout the nation was a feeling of anger at the decision to continue the games. Israel had expected — without actually demanding — that they would be cancelled. The Government warned that it would “not save the terrorists’ accomplices” from responsibility for the bloodshed. The Government withheld official comment on the decision to continue the games, but Israeli officials privately did not conceal their annoyance. About a thousand young people, chanting slogans and waving banners, yesterday staged a loud but peaceful demonstration in front of the Bonn Embassy in Tel Aviv against the continuation of the Olympic games. Later, addressing about 3,000 students in Jerusalem’s Independence Square, Israeli Minister Joseph Burg criticised the Olympic Committee’s decision to resume and to complete the games. The nine Israelis killed at the Fuerstenfeldbruck airport in West Germany and two in the first attack on the Olympic Village at dawn on Tuesday will be given a State funeral in Israel.



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That so many are willing to pay for the companionship that, in a less disconnected world, would be freely available, speaks of a profound malaise

Shoji Morimoto has the perfect job. The 38-year-old Tokyo resident gets paid to do nothing. All he does is hire himself out as a companion. no small talk required, for 10,000 yen ($71) per booking. This “job” sees him accompany people who might, as one client wanted, go out for a quiet cup of tea or play on a see-saw with another. Morimoto makes enough money from this job — which he took up after he was rebuked for “doing nothing” at a previous job in publishing — to support a wife and child.

The appeal of Morimoto’s job is evident. Which hamster stuck on the 9-to-5 wheel hasn’t wished to be paid to simply exist or, at the most, to do the very least required to earn money? A story like Morimoto’s offers hope that there is a way out of the burnout culture that most employees find themselves stuck in, an alternative to the hustle-till-you-drop valorisation of productivity.

Look closer, however, and this story of the perfect job — one which may make the average person wonder if they’re a mug for risking repetitive stress injury at their desk job — is a lot less cheering. Take, for instance, the gig that required Morimoto to smile and wave at a complete stranger through a train window because the latter wanted a send-off. Or Morimoto’s claim that at least a quarter of his clients are repeat customers, with one having hired him 270 times. That so many are willing to pay for the simple companionship that, in a less disconnected world, would be freely available, speaks of a profound malaise of loneliness. It won’t be fixed by one man hiring himself out.



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Vaccines such as iNCOVACC can prevent mild cases of Covid and break the line of transmission of the disease

A shot in the arm muscle is no longer the only way of administering a Covid vaccine. In April, Russian drug regulators approved the use of vaccines that can be sprayed into the nose, but very little was known of their efficacy. Earlier this week, China became the first country to authorise the use of an inhaled vaccine for booster doses. On Tuesday, India’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) approved iNCOVACC, the country’s first intra-nasal vaccine for primary inoculation. Developed by scientists at the Washington University and manufactured by the Hyderabad-based company, Bharat Biotech, the vaccine uses a harmless version of chimpanzee adenovirus to deliver the spike protein to the lining of the nose.

Many experts believe that needle-free vaccines are the future of Covid inoculation. It’s now well-established that the first-generation vaccines protect against severe disease but they do not prevent breakthrough infections. A possible reason for this failure is the inability of the injectables to induce an immune response in the body’s first line of defence against the coronavirus — the respiratory tract. Nasal vaccines like the Bharat Biotech-manufactured drops behave differently. They target the immune cells in the thin mucous membranes that line cavities in the nose. The body’s defence mechanism, therefore, gets to work immediately after the coronavirus enters the body and stops the pathogen from using the respiratory tract to cause infection. That is why vaccines such as iNCOVACC can prevent mild cases of Covid and break the line of transmission of the disease. The vaccine has other advantages. A squirt in the nose is much easier to administer than conventional shots — in fact, trained healthcare workers are not required to deliver this needle-free vaccine. The vials can be stored easily at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius and Bharat Biotech claims that it can scale up production at short notice. All this means that though the drug regulator has approved iNCOVACC for the small section of the country’s adult population that has not received primary inoculation, the vaccine could be a potential shield in case the unpredictable virus throws up another variant of concern — healthcare authorities can turn to it in case of an emergency requirement for inoculation.

Non-injectable vaccines have proved to be a game changer in the battle against polio. But their record against influenza has, at best, been mixed. Researchers working on the Covid vaccine claim they have learnt lessons from the experiences of their counterparts who developed the influenza shots. The performance of iNCOVACC will be keenly watched.



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The net result of omissions in urban planning is on show in Bengaluru, where, as an IT czar put it, technology professionals are forced to be on the road for hours to design apps that promise to deliver groceries in 10 minutes

As Bengaluru reels under floods, schools are shut and tech firms have urged employees to work from home. Power and water supply have been hit in many areas. Residents in expensive enclaves have had to be evacuated from their flats and villas and CEOs of MNCs reportedly had to wade through water and even travel on tractors to work. There is flooding in the Outer Ring Road area, which hosts tech firms that bring in revenue of billions of dollars annually. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMK) Chief Commissioner has blamed the extreme weather conditions — this is reportedly the city’s second wettest rainy season in 50 years. Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai attributed it to the “maladministration” and “unplanned” development under previous governments. There is truth in that explanation but the CM did not reveal what his government has done to break from the past, or correct it. The unfortunate fact is that the Bommai administration has been busy with polarising issues such as hijab in educational institutions, or in stoking spectres of conversion, rather than attending to Bengaluru’s crumbling infrastructure.

Of course, the current predicament in Bengaluru is not an exception. The scenes seen in India’s Silicon Valley this week have been witnessed earlier in Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Guwahati, Kochi and several other cities and towns in India. Each town/city may cite local factors for the collapse of infrastructure in the face of extreme events, but a common thread runs through all the stories. A large number of urban wetlands that soak up rainwater have been built upon, including in Bengaluru. Corrupt civic bodies are guilty of treating cities as pieces of lifeless real estate to be sliced up for the benefit of the highest bidders. Stormwater drains remain locked in decades-old networks, whose deficits are aggravated by the inefficiency of municipal bodies. Last year, for instance, the Comptroller and Auditor General pulled up the BBMK for “its inability to manage stormwater drains in the city.” It raised questions about Bengaluru’s sewerage plan, especially the municipality’s failure to map the city’s tertiary drains, which have a critical role in managing run-off.

Urban bodies complain — and mostly, they have a point — that they lack adequate resources. Municipal tax rates are far too low for local administrations to build, manage and renew public services and utilities efficiently. But the truth also is that civic bodies are often guilty of impropriety in the use of resources. The CAG, for instance, also found that the Bengaluru municipality did not maintain proper records of the stormwater management funds allotted to it under the JNNURM. It also noted the lack of coordination between the municipality and the Bangalore Development Authority on drainage-related matters. The net result of all these omissions is on show in Bengaluru, where, as an IT czar put it, technology professionals are forced to be on the road for hours to design apps that promise to deliver groceries in 10 minutes.



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Subimal Bhattacharjee writes: Improved connectivity between India and Bangladesh not only enhances economic prospects but also builds better relations between the people.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina just completed a successful state visit to India where seven agreements were signed besides a few project inaugurations and announcements. Coming at a time when both the countries have achieved many lasting milestones in the eight years of coterminous leadership of the current prime ministers in their respective nations, this visit has set the ball rolling for the next few years of cooperation on many fronts, primarily economics and connectivity. As bilateral trade has soared to $18 billion now, doubling in the last five years, and as Bangladesh moves from the least developed countries category to developing country status in the next couple of years, both the countries confabulated on the way forward to keep the special relationship growing.

However, one of the defining aspects of bilateral relations since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to office has been on getting the northeastern region of India more engaged with Bangladesh. Dhaka has also reciprocated well and today there are many levels of engagements that have caught a sustained pitch on this front. Out of the 4,096 km-long border area with India, Bangladesh and northeast India share a total of 1,879 km and a significant part of that is riverine. This naturally offers the prospect for water sharing for navigational as well as economic pursuits. Hence the MoU signed during this visit between the Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India and the Ministry of Water Resource, Government of Bangladesh on the withdrawal of water by India and Bangladesh from the common border river Kushiyara in southern Assam is pertinent. Bangladesh will draw 153 cusecs of water which will help to irrigate 5,000 acres of land on the Sylhet side. The prospect of waterways via the Kushiyara is already under discussion and PM Modi has also talked about India and Bangladesh working together on data-sharing technology to detect natural calamities and disasters, especially those related to river overflow in the monsoon.

In April this year, Bangladesh allowed India to use two of its important shipping ports, Mongla and Chittagong. Chittagong Port is well connected with Tripura through two of its cities — Comilla and Feni — whose distances are 212 km and 241 km respectively from Agartala, the capital city of Tripura. Today Agartala is well-connected by road, railway, and airway from the rest of the states of the Northeast, and so the possibility of regular formal trade through these routes is a reality.

India has successfully tested the cargo shipment of goods from central and east India to the Northeast through the Chittagong port. Very recently, on September 3, a vessel containing 25 MT of TMT bars was flagged off from Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port in Kolkata for Silchar in Assam via Chittagong and Sylhet under the Agreement on the use of the Chittagong and Mongla ports.

Connectivity besides the riverine route has also been of significant focus and capacity building on both sides has happened in the past few years and still continues. There are two new upcoming railway links between India and Bangladesh which will boost connectivity. Mahishasan in Karimganj Assam will be linked to Shahbazpur in Bangladesh and Agartala in Tripura will be connected to Akhaura in Bangladesh. These two new railway links will see the light of day within the next three years. In the near future, railway connections will be taken further down to Sabroom in Tripura which is a town just 111 km away from Chittagong Port. At the same time, through Sutarkandi in Assam, which is one of the only two existing functional Integrated Check Posts (ICP) in NER after Akhaura in Tripura, there will be alternate access to Chittagong Port via Sylhet. The direct connection between Sutarkandi to Chittagong port is about 400 km. With two new ICPs under construction in Meghalaya and Mizoram, the connection between Northeast India and Bangladesh will improve further.

Needless to say, the Northeast is a very important connectivity and capacity platform in the government of India’s Act East policy implementation and the Bangladesh corridor is significant in optimally realising that vision. Improved connectivity thus not only enhances economic prospects but also builds better relations between people on both sides, helping them look to the future and overcome the issues of the past like illegal immigration. The sustained momentum seen so far is thus a good outcome of the trip.

The writer is a defence and cybersecurity analyst



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Raghvendra Singh writes: Bose maintained that no revolutionary leader had the right to expect freedom in their lifetime. A movement, a fight, had to be passed on.

In the year of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, the nation pays tribute to Subhas Bose on September 8 as his statue rises tall next to India Gate.

The transfer of power to India took place on August 15, 1947. Had Bose and his Indian National Army (INA) succeeded, India would have attained freedom, not inherited it through a transfer of power.

The British endeavoured to black out news concerning the Indian National Army throughout its existence. As a consequence, very little was known of the INA in India. The British called it “JIFs” — Japanese Inspired Forces. Subhas Bose was portrayed as a dissenting radical maverick, driven by personal ambitions. Not till the INA trials began did India get to know about it. The impact was tremendous. Nothing had ever caught the Indian imagination in such a manner.

The British depended on the armed forces to subjugate India. Despite ascribing dubious motives to those who joined the INA, there was no doubt that the average “jawan” had done so for patriotic reasons. The British well knew that once this feeling seeped into the army, it would become impossible for them to hold India.

Bose had hoped to capture Imphal. That would give the INA a large number of Indian soldiers. Once this was achieved, fighting in India would create revolutionary conditions. When the fighting commenced, the INA had only one division stationed on India’s borders. Another was on the move towards Burma. And the third was in the process of formation. All three divisions were expected to be in Burma by the time Imphal fell. Bose was confident of raising three more divisions from among the Indian troops that would fall to him after the capture of Imphal. With six divisions, the INA would be the single largest force in the region. The rapid advance into India would create the right conditions for the Indian army to switch sides along with the people of the Northeast.

Bose knew that Japan was losing the war. Even so, he strove to gain a foothold in India. It was a touch-and-go situation. The fate of the operation was to be decided in 24 hours. If, in those 24 hours, the British garrison at Imphal had not been reinforced by a whole division, the INA would be inside India. Bose’s push needed to be backed by Japanese air power to deny British reinforcements. But that support did not materialise. Till the last day in Imphal, the intelligence reports indicated that the British Indian garrison was about to surrender to the INA.

Bose arrived in Singapore on July 2, 1943. In a historic meeting on July 3, he talked about mobilising Indian women’s power. On July 12, he sent for Lakshmi Sehgal. In a three-hour conversation, the idea of the Rani Jhansi Regiment was mooted. This regiment was to be a fighting unit. The main challenge was to recruit Indian women for fighting services, to be trained like infantry soldiers. This had never been contemplated in any phase of India’s freedom struggle.

The Rani Jhansi Regiment started with 500 women volunteers in Singapore, of which 30 were selected for officer training. Those who were not up to the mark were put into the Nursing Corps. After completion of the course, the recruits were moved to Rangoon in Burma. Their numbers swelled to 1,500 with 1,000 in the fighting unit and the rest in nursing, cypher and wireless communication. From Rangoon, the regiment shifted to Maymyo, Bose’s advance headquarters. The intention was to move further and get into India. But unfortunately, while in Imphal, the INA began to suffer reverses. Therefore, the Rani Jhansi Regiment also had to fall back.

The Rani Jhansi Regiment showed that Indians living far away were not only willing to join the INA but also to let women join the fight, aware of the remote chance of coming back alive. These volunteers had never been to India, and neither had they known of the life “back home”. But they still enrolled.

The provisional Government of Azad Hind was formed on October 21, 1943. There was a serious concern that the Azad Hind Government should not be seen as a Quisling government. Bose went to great lengths to explain that the Japanese had nothing to do with the formation of this government. Indians in South East Asia contributed to support this government but the offerings from the poorer sections were remarkable — they literally gave away whatever little they had. The financing of the Azad Hind Government was mainly through contributions. There was no tax or levy. It functioned till June 24, 1945. One of the first acts of the Azad Hind Government was the declaration of war against Britain and America.

Bose maintained that the Congress leaders wanted freedom in their lifetime. He believed that no revolutionary leader had the right to expect that. A movement, a fight, had to be passed on. Expecting freedom in one’s lifetime was bound to lead to compromises.

Subhas Bose was an exceptional leader who turned his vision into action. Lakshmi Sehgal, a confidant of Bose, was convinced from his words and actions that under no circumstances would he have accepted India’s Partition.

The writer is Senior Fellow, Vivekananda International Foundation and a former civil servant



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Christophe Jafferlot and Hemal Thakker write: There is a need to set restrictions on the reserves that the private sector can hold. This will help prevent the opaqueness of private sector reserves, which often fuels speculation by large international financial actors. Internationally, positional limits could be set on speculators

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Food Price Index has increased by 30 per cent in the year 2021-22. The last time it had increased in similar proportion was in 2010-11. This phenomenon was one of the factors that led to the Arab Spring. Currently, at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic had already disrupted the food supply chains around the world in 2020, tensions are exacerbated by Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine: Russia and Ukraine represent 27 per cent of the world market for wheat, 16 per cent for corn, 23 per cent for barley, and 53 per cent for sunflower.

In peacetime, the Black Sea ports, now blocked, account for about 95 per cent of grain exports from Ukraine. Railways could have taken over, and Ukraine certainly has a rather exceptional railroad network. Unfortunately, the gauge of the railway tracks built by the USSR in Ukraine is not the same as in neighbouring countries. As a result, wagons have to be transferred one at a time at the border.

Twenty-six countries, mainly in Africa, West Asia and Asia, depend on Russia and Ukraine for more than 50 per cent of their wheat imports. India wanted to fill in this gap and, in April 2022, the Prime Minister said that “India can feed the world if the WTO allows it”. However, just one month later, New Delhi banned wheat exports to control rising domestic prices amid concerns over production due to the heatwave and uncertainty about existing reserves due to private sector hoarding.

This is not a new phenomenon. In 2009, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), a World Bank initiative, in a report — Agriculture at a Crossroads — observed that speculation with agricultural commodities on the commodity futures exchanges was one of the main reasons for the spike in food prices. The original purpose of futures markets was that farmers could transfer the price risk — a “future” contract would allow them to sell the produce at the current price but for delivery in the future. This safeguarded both sellers and buyers against any excessive price jumps — for example, those caused by the vagaries of the weather or conflicts and war. It was a mechanism to ensure that the basic livelihood and survival of farmers were not jeopardised. However, the arrival of large pension funds, hedge funds and investment banks in these markets has resulted in excessive speculation. The derivative markets set a benchmark for the prices in the real world, and this is where excessive speculation became a problem. The logic of the markets has changed as price evaluation is not dictated by supply-demand or quality of the markets but by major financial actors’ bets on higher prices, which leads other actors to also speculate. While large financial actors bet on the futures markets and cause price volatility, when food prices rise, they endanger the food security of millions of people around the world.

An investigation by Lighthouse Reports, a non-profit media outfit, concludes from this phenomenon that no lessons had been learnt from the food crisis of 2008. It reports that the influx of speculators can be observed in the Paris milling wheat market, the benchmark for Europe: Speculators’ share of buy-side wheat futures contracts has increased from 23 per cent of open interest in May 2018 to 72 per cent in April 2022. Therefore, by April 2022, “Seven in 10 buyers of futures wheat contract were speculators in the form of investment firms, investment funds, other financial institutions and commercial non-hedgers whose aim was to profit from the rise in prices.”

In India, even though the year-long farmers’ protests have forced the Modi government to repeal the infamous farm laws, the growing role of the private sector in agriculture has increased the risk of speculation. For 2022-23, the government has already lowered wheat purchase estimates to 19.5 million tonnes — down by 50 per cent compared to the previous year and the lowest in 13 years. Union Food Secretary Sudhanshu Pandey said this sharp decline was due to huge buying by private players. India faced a similar situation during the 2008 global food crisis but managed to weather the storm due to the APMC food stock reserves.

Today, food inflation is a major cause for concern for food security in India. Declining incomes because of the pandemic have already raised hunger levels in India — India ranks 101 among 116 countries in the 2021 Global Hunger Index. According to the Hunger Watch Report conducted in February, 45 per cent of respondents reported running out of food in the preceding month. The situation could be even more precarious now because of the spike in prices.

So, what should be done? The Indian government could ensure more transparency on food stocks and regulate the private sector. For that, there is a need to set restrictions on the reserves that the private sector can hold, as they often tend to hoard food stocks to later sell at a profit. This will help prevent the opaqueness of private sector reserves, which often fuels speculation by large international financial actors. Internationally, positional limits could be set on speculators but that would require a multilateral accord, a topic which should be on the agenda at the next G-20 meeting.

Jaffrelot is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at King’s India Institute, London, and non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Thakker is a student of environment policy with specialisations in agriculture policy and African affairs at the Paris School of International Affairs, SciencesPo



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Aditi Nayar writes: Higher devolution, interest-free loans and easing of restrictions will ease stress on state finances

Three recent developments have brightened the outlook for capital expenditure by state governments. First, the Union government has stepped up tax devolution during July-August. Second, the interest-free capex loan scheme for states has seen a sharp pickup in off-take in July. Third, the norms for the adjustment of off-budget borrowings for the current fiscal have been eased. We believe all of these will reduce the stress on state finances and support higher capex in the coming months.

First, the Centre has stepped up the amount of tax devolution to states, releasing a double tranche in August. We believe this was warranted given the expected overshooting of its tax revenues relative to the budget estimates for 2022-23. We estimate that Rs 3.2 lakh crore has been devolved in the first five months of this year. This implies a growth of 49 per cent over the corresponding period last year. This should encourage the states to step up their capital spending in the post-GST compensation months.

Based on our projection, tax devolution will need to be as high as Rs 9.3 lakh crore this year, overshooting the budget estimates by more than Rs 1 lakh crore. Therefore, the amount left to be disbursed to the states in the remainder of the year is quite substantial. Additional double tranches may be prudent every quarter after the advance tax inflows are received to ensure that there isn’t too much back-ending of the devolution in the fourth quarter as was the case last year.

The Centre could also consider sharing with states the likely amount of devolution prior to the start of each quarter. This revenue visibility would enable states to plan their capital spending, given the lead time required to plan and execute capital projects. It may also result in more accurate assessments of their quarterly market borrowings, which have been woefully off-the-mark in recent quarters.

Second, this year, the Centre massively stepped up interest-free loans to states, which are earmarked for capital spending. The scheme for special assistance to states for capital investment was launched in October 2020 as part of the measures to support economic activity which had been negatively impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the Union budget 2022-23, the Centre had stepped up the allocation towards this scheme to Rs 1 lakh crore for the current fiscal from under Rs 15,000 crore in the previous two years. This amount will be given to the states as a loan, over and above the normal borrowing ceiling fixed. But, not all states had included the estimated inflows from the capex scheme in their respective budgets, although this does not prevent them from participating in the scheme.

Also Read in Opinion |Indian economy’s mixed signals

The guidelines for the usage of the funds under the Capex scheme permit the states to settle their pending bills for ongoing capital projects in addition to using them for new and ongoing capital projects that are duly approved by the Centre. The scheme is divided into seven parts. The bulk of the total or Rs 80,000 crore has been earmarked under part I of the scheme which does not have a sectoral end-use specified for the capital spending. Under this, 50 per cent of the approved amount will be released upfront after the list of projects is approved. The balance will be released after a utilisation certificate of at least 75 per cent of the first instalment is provided.

After a tepid start, capital expenditure amounting to Rs 31,500 crore was approved for 10 states in July 2022. Execution of capital projects typically witnesses a slowdown during the monsoon months. Accordingly, the second instalments are likely to be released in the second half of the year. Given the rising interest rates scenario, it makes economic sense for the states to avail the interest-free borrowing for fresh capital spending and/or clearing pending bills. However, the jury is still out on whether the capex loan will supplement the budgeted capex amount or simply fund the same. The answer may differ across state governments.

Lastly, the latest guidelines by the Centre indicate that states’ off-budget debt only for 2021-22 would be adjusted over a four-year period beginning 2022-23 and ending in 2025-26. This could provide relief to those states that had undertaken large off-budget borrowings in the previous two years, thereby creating the fiscal space for states to ramp up capital spending.

The writer is Chief Economist, ICRA



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M N Sabharwal and Manish Sabharwal write: Article 370’s death must birth a new J&K voter list that includes all residents by the new deadline of November 25

Changing your mind about electoral politics used to be fatal in J&K; the assassination of Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq of the Awami Action League felt baffling in 1990 because the hardline leader consistently supported Pakistan. But his tentative suggestion that peace needed political dialogue led to his murder by PoK-based Hizbul Mujahideen (the Askari wing of Jamaat-E-Islami). Pakistan-exported terrorism created a nine-year election-free J&K starting in 1987, but couldn’t prevent elected state governments after 1996 from four assembly elections. Pakistan’s queasy relationship with democracy — no PM has ever completed a full term — comes from their deep state embracing national poet Muhammad Iqbal’s lament “jamhooriyat ek tarz-e-hukumat hai jisme logon ko gina jaata he, tola nahin” (democracy counts people instead of weighing them). Pervez Musharraf, then concurrently President, Prime Minister, and Army Chief of Pakistan — condescendingly “weighed” citizens by making college degrees compulsory for all election candidates.

In contrast, India’s election track record is enviable. Our first parliamentary elections in 1952 required a Constitution, a list of 17 crore voters (of whom 85 per cent could not read or write), and 2.25 lakh polling booths. They were highly competitive: 30 parties fielded 1,874 candidates, and the Congress Party got 45 per cent of the votes but 75 per cent of the seats. Since then, half of the 17 general elections have led to a new central government. Our voter population is 91 crore, and more than 370 political parties campaign assuming everybody votes where they live.

J&K’s next assembly elections will be the first under the Indian Constitution — the last 11 assembly elections held under the J&K state Representation of People Act with six-year government tenures were hardly fair because they excluded residents from voting based on their birthplace, birth date, or ancestors. The National Conference (NC) won all 75 seats in the first state election of 1951 because 43 NC candidates were elected unopposed a week before voting, nominations of 13 candidates of Praja Parishad were rejected (this party later merged with the Jana Sangh), two independent candidates opted out, and two Ladakh seats were won by nominal NC members. In 1957 and 1962, the NC acquired a majority before polling began (their candidates were elected unopposed, or Opposition candidate nomination papers were rejected). In the 1972 elections, women candidates contested for the first time, and Congress adopted the unopposed or rejection technology to win. The 1983 elections were ferociously fought — Indira Gandhi hadn’t forgotten Sheikh Abdullah’s betrayal of 1977 — and she campaigned for a few weeks as a sitting Prime Minister, but Farooq Abdullah led the NC to victory. This victory was soon sabotaged by Farooq’s sister’s husband, G M Shah, in partnership with Indira Gandhi. Mufti Sayeed leaving Congress in 1987 influenced consequent state elections and created opportunities for Ghulam Nabi Azad (whose new party will surely condemn domicile-based voting, given his personal Parliament election victory from Maharashtra).

The state’s traditional political fault line was not Jammu vs Kashmir but Sher vs Bakra: Shers were Sheikh Abdullah supporters anchored around Hazratbal mosque, while Bakras (named after their beards) were Mirwaiz supporters anchored around the Jama Masjid Mosque in Nowhatta. Mufti Sayeed headed the Congress Party but didn’t always deride soft separatism; he disrupted a meeting that proposed to rename Radio Kashmir to All India Radio (ironically, he didn’t hesitate in fighting Parliament elections from Uttar Pradesh). Farooq Abdullah ignored requests to control pro-Pakistani sloganeering at a 1983 India-West Indies cricket match while smugly suggesting it would improve his bargaining power with Delhi. J&K local politics never became brutally competitive because these families weaponised Article 370, religion and Pakistan to create a 50-year oligopoly.

The recent J&K delimitation commission envisages elections with nine parliament seats and 90 assembly constituencies (43 Jammu region and 47 Kashmir region). The new constituencies for remote areas and the thoughtful constituency renaming of Tangmarg to Gulmarg, Sonwar to Lal Chowk, Khour to Chhamb, etc., are delightful. We estimate that seven lakh people from Bihar, UP, and Odisha are now J&K residents — they must vote in the next state election subject to the rules used for residency verification everywhere else in our Republic. Hopefully, this election also catalyses the overdue national consensus on using Aadhaar to deduplicate electoral rolls.

The academic David Shulman wrote, “All great civilisations and great societies have known that human beings are capable of imagining; India merely cultivated this art or faculty more boldly than most.” J&K — a confluence of many of India’s civilisations and societies — must use next year’s election to boldly imagine a representative state government populated by a new breed of politicians that listen, heal and rebuild rather than oppress, exploit and destroy. We both have voted as residents either in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, or Uttar Pradesh but couldn’t vote in J&K despite living there for decades. Article 370’s death must birth a new J&K voter list that includes all residents by the new deadline of November 25 because our Constitution was written by good ancestors who ensured India doesn’t weigh our citizens but counts them.

M N Sabharwal is former Director General of J&K Police and Manish Sabharwal is a J&K-born entrepreneur



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Peter Ronald deSouza writes: The Congress's yatra has much to learn from the previous yatras

Tour the length and breadth of the country, “with eyes and ears open, but mouth shut”, was the advice given to Gandhiji by Gopal Krishna Gokhale. This is how he would learn about India, its peoples, cultures, challenges, and aspirations on his return from South Africa – by going on a yatra. Gokhale was making the obvious point that seeing and hearing are two of the primary ways to know the world. But when he advised Gandhiji to keep his “mouth shut” he was making a subtler point. Let the people speak, he seemed to be counseling. Do not lecture them, for you do not have all the answers. They have something to tell you. Gandhiji followed this sage advice, and as a result India got a new vocabulary of politics.

Jawaharlal Nehru also undertook a yatra, but of a different kind. It was a mental yatra through Indian history as he wrote, in five months, while in prison in Ahmednagar jail from 1942-46, his voluminous 700-page book, The Discovery of India. He marvelled not just at India’s ancient land but also at its culture and philosophy. People have criticised him for the word “discovery” in the title, saying that no Indian needs to discover India, only outsiders do. Indians know India. This is a superficial and vacuous criticism for it has no understanding of the philosophical complexity of India, its cultural diversity, geographical variety, and long history. India’s layered reality can, in fact, only be known through many lifetimes of continuous discovery. That is what makes it so magical. Try understanding the significance of the 300 Ramayanas that AK Ramanujan mentioned and you will see how complex and how delightful India is. A regular yatra of the mind is certainly required in India.

Closer to our time, Chandra Shekhar undertook a 4,260 km six-month padayatra, later called Bharat Yatra, from Kanyakumari to Rajghat in 1983. In the Commemorative Volume published by Parliament, he says of his yatra: “When we started, it was doubtful whether people would react positively to Bharat Yatra or would take it as a political drama. But all through the yatra, the villagers who were illiterate, who were ignorant, who were helpless, lined up in large numbers to receive the volunteers who were walking. In almost all the villages, even the poor people managed to offer the best welcome that they could afford. There might have been difficulty of language, but the language of the heart, which was more powerful, helped to communicate the feelings. We ourselves understood that the people are willing to cooperate if we go to them. In this respect, it was Mahatma Gandhi who put his finger on the pulse of the people. It was an adventure in self, it was an adventure of self-education.”

Chandra Shekhar was anxious that the yatra would be seen as a political drama but it grew, instead, into the “language of the heart” as people lined up to connect with the leader. For Chandra Shekhar, the yatra turned out to be “self-education”. It raised his political profile, gave him moral authority. The power of the yatra as a tool of political mobilisation was later successfully used by NT Rama Rao, who launched the Telugu Desam Party after his yatra across Andhra Pradesh, and YSR Reddy who walked nearly 1,500 km across AP. Both won the assembly elections that followed. From a different political perspective, LK Advani embarked on a Rath Yatra that converted the demand to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya into the dominant discourse of contemporary India. Now, three decades later, it remains the pivotal idea of the NDA regime’s politics of mobilisation.

“Yatra” is one of the key ideas that India has contributed to the global democratic lexicon. It is a unique instrument of political mobilisation. Few leaders across the world have undertaken yatras, preferring air and road-hopping trips instead. The yatra is a powerful strategy to build a counter discourse on all things concerning the nation. Because it is peaceful, and because it is slow, it allows a prolonged engagement with the concerns of the political. It reduces the gap between the leader and the citizen, since its spatial and temporal attributes — one has to travel through remote villages and ignored habitations — bring it closer to the people. This can serve to produce a political excitement that change is coming, that better times lie ahead.

The Bharat Jodo Yatra has much to learn from the previous yatras. Build a new imagination for India, as was achieved by Gandhiji’s yatra. Learn about India’s rich history and cultural diversity, as bequeathed by Nehru’s yatra. Listen to the people with humility (shut up and listen), was the lesson of Chandra Shekhar’s yatra. And produce a counter mobilisation to the power of the entrenched regime, as was done by the yatras of NTR, YSR, and Advani.

Of course, there will be adverse comment. This is legitimate in a democracy. The NDA and its formidable media cell will employ every trick in the book to mock the Bharat Jodo Yatra, ridiculing its leaders, obstructing its progress, and belittling its goals. This has already begun. It will get more intense as the power of the digital world will be harnessed to diminish its possibilities. But India needs an alternative discourse to that of the politics of othering, which, in its best version, is what the yatra offers. The yatra is potent because it will show how far the rulers have moved from the people, and how dismissive they are of the people’s concerns. It carries the seeds of change which have to be carefully nurtured, if it is to win the support of the people. We live in a digital world and therefore capturing the symbolic high ground, in visuals and text, is vital. Like the farmers’ protests did in 2021.

In India, a yatra has at least four meanings. It is a physical “journey” where the traveller moves from one place to another. It is an internal “discovery” where causes long overlooked, both personal and public, acquire new political significance, especially when one shuts up and listens. It is a “pilgrimage” — as in the “char dham” yatra — when the pilgrim travels to different hallowed sites to receive blessings from the people. And it is a “signal” of change that another India is possible. To succeed, the Bharat Jodo Yatra will have to be all four things simultaneously.

Peter Ronald deSouza is the DD Kosambi Visiting Professor at Goa University. He has recently co-edited the book Companion to Indian Democracy: Resilience, Fragility and Ambivalence, Routledge, 2022. Views are personal



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Bharat Jodo Yatra, Congress’s first attempt at mass contact in a long while, is an improvement to the extent that motion is better than appearing moribund. That this comes as party elections are again caught up in petty controversies does mangle the message a bit. But the yatra won’t hurt the party – unless Congress leaders, especially Rahul Gandhi, make the mistake of thinking that trying to establish direct contact with people is what the party needs, or needs the most, to win polls. The electoral reality doesn’t allow for such romantic notions. It’s not that yatras don’t yield political dividends – but they do so only when the yatris have already communicated a solid message, one that stands out from the clutter. LK Advani’s rath yatra, YSR Reddy’s Andhra marches, later emulated by son Jagan, Mamata Banerjee’s many marches in Bengal – all of these had a good story to tell and sell. Congress and Rahul don’t have anything right now to tell or sell that will attract new support or even hold back those deserting.

There are two parts to the problem of not having a solid political message. First, Congress has lost the ideas battle even as BJP has got smart on where and how to deploy Hindutva, become past master at social engineering, hijacked the erstwhile left-of-centre welfarist political line, and packaged muscular nationalism in a people-pleasing way. Second, and related to the first, Congress has lost so much ground in so many states – it hasn’t won an election on its own since 2018 – that even if it were to come up with a good story, it will lack heft. Therefore, more than yatras Congress must do the real hard work of rebuilding in at least four or five major states. Otherwise, Bharat may not take much notice.

It is astonishing that so little attention has been paid by Congress leaders to organisational atrophy. Electoral defeats needn’t necessarily lead to withering away of local party structures and mass disaffection among long-standing supporters. After all, BJP lost two consecutive general elections, as have regional parties that have bounced back. Congress, amazingly, has been lackadaisical after losing, occasionally making state-level appointments that have ended in disaster and/or defeats. Little wonder then non-Congress opposition parties have started making their own plans. The road ahead for GOP is long and hard, and it’s not the route the yatra is taking.



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Credit rating agency Moody’s retained India’s sovereign rating at Baa3 with a stable outlook, indicating that it’s subject to moderate credit risk. Baa3 represents the medium-grade category. The rating is unsurprising. If anything, India’s resilience to macroeconomic shocks is greater than what the rating implies. Moody’s believes geopolitical challenges will not derail economic recovery, leading to the stable outlook. Also, that the negative feedback between the economy and financial system is receding.

Among G20 economies India stands out. The base for government debt financing is mainly domestic. The process is smoothened by RBI’s liquidity operations and a mandate for banks to hold a proportion of their deposits in government debt. RBI also holds foreign exchange to insulate domestic financial markets from external shocks. India is well-placed today in terms of both retail inflation rate and forecast growth rate. Of all these factors, it’s growth rate that holds the key to a stable environment. Since 1991, India’s debt sustainability has rested on its growth trajectory. Barring a couple of years, economic growth has outpaced the interest rate on government debt, an important metric of debt sustainability.

Government expenditure is generally inflexible while revenue is influenced by growth. Therefore, every protracted spell of a slowdown in growth rate leads to an increase in the debt to GDP ratio. For example, states’ debt to GDP ratio was 22.6% in 2012-13. Subsequently, as growth trended lower, this ratio worsened to 26.3% by 2019-20. For GoI, the ratio of interest payment to revenue increased to over 40% after the 2020-21 economic contraction from the average 36.5% in the last decade. High growth rate, therefore, is the fulcrum of debt sustainability. That, however, shouldn’t deter a political conversation on the quality of spending or transparency in budgeting.



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The impacts of climate change - during June 1-August 31, rainfall in Bengaluru was 60% in excess of the long-period average - are exacerbated by poor urban planning. Bengaluru's growth is marked by large-scale encroachment of lakes and drains adversely impacting natural drainage systems.

'Bangalore must be the only tech hub in the world, where software developers travel 2 hours to get to their offices that they can build apps to deliver in 10 minutes,' goes a meme that has been doing extra rounds as parts of the city experience flooding due to heavy rainfall. While the description is decidedly wiseacre-ish, it does contain an embarrassing truth.

Reports of CEOs being forced to commute in tractors is no joke. While the situation may have reached a crisis point this year, urban flooding has been an issue in Bengaluru and many Indian cities. At the core of the problem is poor urban planning, poor maintenance of infrastructure and poor governance. Bengaluru 2022 must serve as a warning - of the need to equip cities, towns and habitations to live with climate change and its impacts.

The impacts of climate change - during June 1-August 31, rainfall in Bengaluru was 60% in excess of the long-period average - are exacerbated by poor urban planning. Bengaluru's growth is marked by large-scale encroachment of lakes and drains adversely impacting natural drainage systems.

Increase in built-up spaces and loss in interconnectivity between water bodies affect groundwater recharging. This is compounded by the lack of a robust policy governing storm-water management due to mismatch in plans of drains by the city's two urban bodies. There is also poor waste management and debris removal affecting the capacity to drain off excess water.

Bengaluru, and other cities, are impacted by the twin problem of flooding and depletion of groundwater. Both problems will be compounded by climate change. The current situation demonstrates the failure to recognise storm water as a critical resource worthy of conservation.
( Originally published on Sep 08, 2022 )<

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India’s transition into a Republic on January 26, 1950, stoked a new debate on merit, privilege and efficiency, especially against the backdrop of the Constitution institutionalising a robust affirmative action programme for the most marginalised castes and tribespeople. As the decades rolled on, the debate only became more polemical, with opponents arguing that reservations dilute proficiency and are a suboptimal way to select candidates for jobs and educational institutions, and proponents saying that social justice and equal opportunity are important goals to preserve democratic ideals and for progress.

But there’s a third way to approach this debate, one underlined earlier this week by Supreme Court judge, justice DY Chandrachud. Delivering a lecture at the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, he stressed that merit needed to be redefined, and that merit and upliftment should not be seen in dichotomy. In his view, merit encapsulated not just a candidate’s test scores, but also their potential, background and effort.

The judge is right. The opposition between merit and upliftment or efficiency is false. Social science researchers have proven over the last three decades that there is no causal link between hiring diverse candidates and a fall in efficiency. A 2014 paper on the Indian Railways found that a more diverse workforce sometimes boosted productivity. States that have more expansive affirmative action schemes do no worse, and sometimes do better than others. Merit should no longer be seen in individual-centric terms, but be socially contextualised. Diversity and plurality are important goals for a nation that wishes to lift people out of ignorance and prejudice. Being inclusive is a net social good.



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After 19 months of construction, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi inaugurated a revamped Central Vista Avenue — the newly renamed Kartavya Path and the gleaming lush lawns lining what is easily India’s most iconic stretch of road. The ceremony also included the PM unveiling a 28-foot-tall statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, fulfilling his pledge from earlier this year to train the focus on some freedom fighters whose contribution to the Independence struggle, he said, was less celebrated.

The Central Vista holds a special space in the Indian consciousness, not only as an imposing edifice of government but also as the living, breathing heart of the Republic. It functions as a tourist attraction, a place for people to meet, mingle and interact, for schoolchildren and older citizens alike to catch a moment of levity, share an ice-cream or street food. It is this people-centric touch that has erased the colonial history of the erstwhile Kingsway, and made it truly a people’s square. The overhauled Central Vista Avenue holds similar promise — with vastly improved public amenities, 16.5 km of red granite walkways, refurbished canals, polished facades, special vending zones, improved signages, new pedestrian underpasses, parking spaces, new exhibition panels and upgraded night lighting. The responsibility for maintaining this burnished heritage belongs to both the authorities and the people, but care must be taken that strictures don’t curb access for ordinary people, who, after all, make up the core of nation-building and history-making.

The facelift holds other takeaways. It is a continuation of the philosophy of governance unveiled during the PM’s Independence Day speech. The renaming of the erstwhile Rajpath, in particular, ties in with his push to eradicate colonial symbolism and the new name underscores his belief that citizens have a solemn duty to the nation. The Bose statue is part of the ruling party’s push to expand the vista of the Independence struggle heroes, portray itself as the rightful heir of erstwhile Congress stalwarts (such as Vallabhbhai Patel or Bose), and blame the Nehru-Gandhi family as having arrogated the legacy of the freedom struggle to itself, eclipsing others. Late on Thursday, after the official ceremony is over, the Central Vista will go through another inauguration — by the people, with tens of thousands expected to flock to the new avenue, once again highlighting the importance of having public spaces that are safe and accessible, egalitarian, and a pointer, at once, to both the country’s glorious past, and a future laden with opportunities.



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Bangladesh’s foreign minister AK Abdul Momen celebrated Janmashtami last month by stirring up a row. “I went to India and said that Sheikh Hasina has to be kept in power”, he told a largely Hindu audience in Chattogram. Delivered just before Prime Minister (PM) Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India, amid brewing economic turmoil, Opposition-led protests, and police crackdowns in the context of forthcoming elections, Momen spelt out a known but (officially) unspoken aspect of Bangladeshi politics ie, Dhaka’s leaders require New Delhi’s acceptance. The Opposition’s outreach to India confirms this.

India’s preference for Hasina is apparent. Dhaka is relatively stable in a crisis-ridden neighbourhood, respects India’s China sensitivities, denies space to anti-India rebels, and can enable port access in Chattogram. Regardless of whether the next election is controversial like the previous ones, India supports Hasina.

Negotiations on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, security cooperation, memorandums of understanding on water-sharing, railways, capacity building, and the Maitree power plant will benefit Hasina’s electoral campaign.

But it raises a bigger question. Why does India prefer a single party — in fact, an individual — over most others in Bangladesh? Such a stance stands in stark contrast to India’s famed people-centric regional approach. It is equally evident in the cyclical nature of India’s ties with Dhaka ie, suffering under the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) rule, and flourishing under Hasina. The dependencies are such that in many quarters, India is painted to be the enabler-in-chief of the Awami League’s errors and excesses. Hasina’s dilemma about how to remain in power without influencing (or be seen as influencing) an election, then, is as much India’s problem.

More than connectivity, India’s Bangladesh policy is driven by two red lines. One, the protection of Hindu minorities to obviate an exodus, and two, the denial of sanctuary and support to Northeast rebels. The genesis of these drivers lies in erstwhile East Pakistan wherein the State authorities not only targeted Hindus, but also supported Naga and Mizo rebels with Chinese collaboration. If the latter traumatised Indian policymakers into permanently viewing Bangladesh as a playground for big power rivalry, the former birthed the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951, the successor of which is ruling India today.

These perspectives governing India’s Bangladesh policy have one thing in common i.e., a mistrust of the Bangladeshi people. The belief that Pakistan retains oversized influence among liberation sceptics and Islamists is strong enough for India not to take chances with parties that tilt towards Pakistan coming to power.

The BNP’s former alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami and its mistake (as its leaders term it) of hosting anti-India rebels is one for which it continues to pay. Even if India accepts the BNP’s ailing supremo Khaleda Zia, its anger against Tarique Rahman, her exiled son who allegedly led such operations, is unabating.

Such mistrust explains why India wants to rekindle the cooperative “spirit of 1971” in Bangladeshi youth. That this spirit is a double-edged sword is overlooked. Memories of Pakistani army stocks being removed by departing Indian troops to Bangladesh’s chagrin, dumping of substandard products, and exploitative practices by some Indian businesses are ingrained in the Bangladeshi recollections of 1971.

Declassified top secret Indian documents offer some insight. In 1975, when Sheikh Mujib was assassinated, India didn’t worry about his failure as a democrat. It mourned Mujib’s incompetence as an autocrat, resented his tolerance of anti-Indianism, and its own inability to support the “hard core” of pro-India figures in Dhaka. India critic Khandkar Moshtaque Ahmad who became president was termed a “Trojan horse” in Mujib’s cabinet.

Tofael Ahmed, an India-supported arch loyalist, was called a “snake in the grass” for not responding to Mujib’s last-minute call for help to replace the army units guarding his residence by Jatiya Rakkhi Bahini loyalists. New Delhi concluded that Bangladeshis were indoctrinated against India and Hindus and sought a propaganda antidote.

Such history resonates even today.

Under pressure due to an ailing economy and human rights violations, as demonstrated during the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’s visit to Dhaka, Hasina has adopted a paradoxical strategy. First, she is negotiating with opponents and promising space for criticism to prevent an electoral boycott. This is coupled with the mobilisation of public opinion to repatriate Rohingyas, a cause around which people can rally behind Hasina. An international tour starting with India is meant to minimise external criticism if the situation does turn violent.

Second, her party is seen as protecting casino kingpins such as Ismail HC Samrat, a powerful former Jubo League leader, from being jailed on corruption charges. Local party leaders, partisan police, and mastans (musclemen) outside Dhaka are accused of using force to break Opposition-led rallies against fuel price hikes and enforced disappearances despite Hasina’s promise to the contrary.

To discard such protests as Opposition-sponsored noise could prove fatal. The Opposition is channelising longstanding, disaggregated, but potent discontent against Hasina. But neither they nor Hasina will be able to contain a sudden violent spiral in the absence of a consensual modus vivendi that sheds the curse of electoral malpractices.

India can help. But for that to happen, New Delhi needs to acknowledge that its core challenge in Bangladesh is not Pakistan-sponsored Islamists or Chinese capital, but skewed ties with the people. This doesn’t mean that India shifts political gears against Hasina, limits tourist visas or dampens its successful economic and security cooperation.

It must shape the negotiations between Hasina and her myriad opponents in ways that prevent a short circuit, the portents of which are visible to anyone who cares to see them.

Avinash Paliwal teaches at SOAS University of London and is the author of My Enemy’s Enemy: India in Afghanistan from the Soviet Invasion to the US Withdrawal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)

The views expressed are personal



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Of all the data points that reveal the contrasting fortunes of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress over the last decade, here is the most striking: The BJP won 78.4 million votes in 2009, but as many as 229 million votes in 2019 while the Congress won 119 million votes in 2009 and 119.4 million votes in 2019. In effect, while the BJP votes have almost tripled, the Congress votes have remained static, indicating a stark failure to attract new or floating voters. Which is why the ambitious Kashmir-to-Kanyakumari Bharat Jodo Yatra (Unite India march) is perhaps a final chance for the Grand Old Party to restore a lost connect with the voter before the general elections.

Rewind to 2009, the last time the Congress bested the BJP in a national election. The Congress was on an upswing, winning 206 seats, its best tally since the landslide of 1984. The BJP, by contrast, was down and almost out, winning just 116 seats, its lowest tally since the party’s breakthrough election of 1991. Success can breed complacency: The Congress mistakenly concluded that the 2009 mandate marked a return to an era of dominance when the verdict was only another opportunity to build for the future. By contrast, the loss was a wake-up call for the BJP, a realisation that the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-LK Advani era was drawing to a close.

Which leaves open the question: If the BJP could recover from the debris of 2009 to achieve its first parliamentary majority in the space of just five years, what stops the Congress from similarly bouncing back? The answer lies in the three key elements any party needs to script a revival: A strong message, an inspirational messenger, and a robust organisation.

Between 2012 and 2014, the BJP discovered all three. The message of providing stable, corruption-free governance resonated among voters fatigued by high inflation, scam charges, and the compromises of coalition politics. In Narendra Modi, the BJP found a messenger whose persona as an aggressive communicator and muscular doer neta was in contrast to Manmohan Singh’s docile public profile. While in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Sangh Parivar, the BJP had the enthusiastic cadre to ensure last-mile connectivity.

In the last decade, the Congress struggled on these fronts. It has been unable to enunciate a coherent message that can compete with the BJP’s Hindutva hyper-nationalism plank. As Sonia Gandhi candidly admitted in 2018, the BJP has managed to convince a large number of people that the Congress is a “Muslim party”.

The BJP’s other great success lies in mocking Rahul Gandhi by calling him pappu, a campaign designed to ridicule the Congress leader as an entitled naamdar (inheritor) who is unfit for politics. The credibility deficit has been perhaps most acute among the younger, social media savvy, demographic: The Lokniti post-poll survey in 2019 revealed that the gap in popularity between Modi and Gandhi was the highest in the 18 to 21 age group.

And finally, the Congress has been unable to reboot itself organisationally. As an umbrella party for decades, the Congress perhaps never felt the need to nurture a cadre even remotely equivalent to the saffron brotherhood. Moreover, a centralised high command culture inhibited the emergence of strong state leaders. Ahead of the 2019 elections, a Congress leader disclosed that over 250 Congress district units were non-functional.

So, what is the solution to the gravest existential crisis faced by the Congress? Message clarity beyond anti-Modism is the first step. If the Congress claims to stand for Bharat Jodo, then it must explain what the slogan means in reality, and not just as a catchword. Notions of income equality and social harmony need to be fleshed out beyond just the familiar attacks on Adani-Ambani or the RSS.

The Congress must provide a clear vision of its alternative economic agenda or the attacks on big business will prove counterproductive. If social harmony is a rallying cry, then it must be an article of faith and not convenience: Short-term alliances with religious clerics such as Maulana Abbas Siddiqui must be abandoned.

Second, the Congress needs an inspiring messenger. Rahul Gandhi still appears a reluctant leader, his “yatra as tapasya (meditation)” messaging is a half-hearted stab at ersatz Gandhism, hardly likely to enthuse party workers who are desperate for a political comeback. Leadership is about team motivation and not family privilege, about consistent action and not ad hoc involvement. Either Rahul Gandhi leads unswervingly from the front or makes way for someone who has the appetite for a fight.

Finally, there is no path to political rejuvenation other than mass connect. This requires a massive organisational shake-up. One of the biggest reasons for the BJP’s success in recent years has been the efficacy of its booth-driven model: Its booth committees and panna pramukh (block leader) volunteers are at the heart of the election machine. The Congress might justifiably argue that it doesn’t have the resources or institutional support. But if the Aam Aadmi Party can run such an energetic campaign in Gujarat, where it was practically non-existent till a few years ago, what stops the Congress from getting its act together? Finding excuses for sheer lethargy is no longer an option.

Post-script: At the Congress’s recent mehngai pe halla bol (raise your voices against price rise) rally, the focus was ostensibly on rising prices. But restive workers kept shouting for Rahul Gandhi to take over as party president. In the next few weeks, the Congress must decide: Is the Bharat Jodo Yatra about redefining the party’s message or relaunching the party’s star messenger?

Rajdeep Sardesai is a senior journalist and author

The views expressed are personal



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The 27th session of the United Nations (UN) climate conference (COP27) at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, is barely two months away, and the issue of climate finance continues to be one of the biggest sore points for the developing world. This is understandable because the historical emitters (developed nations) have consistently failed to live up to their promise of providing adequate funds to the developing world to tackle the climate crisis.

Climate finance refers to local, national or transnational financing — drawn from public, private and alternative sources of financing — that seeks to support climate mitigation and adaptation actions. It is needed for mitigation to reduce emissions and for adaptation to tackle the adverse effects of a changing climate.

Talking finance in Bali

The issue of finance was raised again by India’s environment minister, Bhupender Yadav, last week at the G20 environmental and climate ministerial meeting in Bali, Indonesia.

Addressing the opening ceremony, the minister said that the current pace and scale of climate finance from developed countries is not matching the global aspiration to combat the climate crisis, reported ANI. The minister highlighted that the world is going through multiple crises, with rising energy bills, food insecurity, and a pandemic that continues to push back years of progress in sustainable development.

Reminding the world that there is an urgent need to mobilise resources to stimulate the economy in a manner that makes it more resilient and sustainable, Yadav said: “... the promise of climate finance remains a mirage. An added problem is the clubbing of development finance with climate finance,” he said, adding, 70% of public climate finance was given out as loans instead of grants in 2019.

“In 2019-20, only 6% of climate finance was in grants. This is pushing developing countries into more debt. Developing countries face an estimated gap of $1 trillion in Covid-19 spending.” he added. Yadav also called for the need to recognise that development and environment conservation must be aligned, rather than treating them as exclusive of each other to effectively combat climate change globally.

Green finance flows: Miles to go

For those interested in the crucial climate finance story, I would suggest you read an informative timely and new report released by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), an analysis and advisory organisation with expertise in finance and policy.

CPI has analysed India’s first-ever effort to track green investment flows, and the news is, as expected, not great.

According to the new report, Landscape of Green Finance in India, the tracked green finance in 2019-2020 was 309 thousand crore ($44 billion) per annum, which is less than a fourth of India’s needs.

The report estimates that for India to achieve its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, the country requires an approximate 162.5 lakh crore ($2.5 trillion) from 2015 to 2030 or roughly 11 lakh crore ($170 billion) per year.

The evaluation of financial flows has been estimated for key real economy sectors like clean energy, clean transport and energy efficiency. The study tracks both public and private sources of capital — domestic as well as international — and builds a framework to track the flow of finance right from the source to the end beneficiaries through different instruments with an emphasis on bottom-up approaches based on actual flows rather than commitments, providing the most accurate analysis to date of where India’s climate finance stands, the finance gaps it faces, and the opportunities that lie ahead.

Key findings of the research report:

1. Domestic sources continue to account for the majority of green finance, with 87% and 83% in FY2019 and FY2020, respectively.

2. The share of international sources increased from 13% in FY 2019 to 17% in FY 2020: Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows increased substantially from FY2016-2018, reaching nearly 9 thousand crore ($1.2 billion) in FY2020. However, green finance still only accounts for ~3% of total FDI inflows to India.

3. The total fund flow towards mitigation was almost equally split between clean energy (42%) and energy efficiency (38%), and was significantly higher than clean transport (17%).

4. This report presents a first-of-its-kind analysis of adaptation funding in India. For the adaptation sectors, the total amount of green finance was 37 thousand crore ($5 billion) per annum over FY2019/FY2020. The major source of adaptation funding, however, was domestic (94%), fully funded by central and state government budgets.

The way forward

The concluding observations of the report provide a map of the road forward.

Green finance flows must increase rapidly to ensure that India meets its Panchamrit targets. 
Public finance has played a major role in increasing green finance flows, but more involvement of the private sector is required.
A strong policy environment is critical to enabling green finance at scale.
Coordinated efforts across data collection, reporting, and access will increase green finance flows.
Accelerating financial flows towards adaptation is critical.

While the climate crisis doesn’t know borders, it is much more severe on countries such as India because of their locations and weaker financial, administrative and human resource capacity to cope with the scourge. This is fuelling, rightly so, the demands for loss and damage compensation. So, it’s high time the West walks the talk and keeps its promises to pay up.

The views expressed are personal



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India-Bangladesh relations have been at a mutually satisfactory level with all-round trade picking up significantly, and connectivity and the energy sector gaining special salience in recent years. This was amply reflected in the four-day visit of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to India this week which concluded on a positive note with the signing of seven MoUs in a range of fields that would hopefully become actionable.

And yet, it is well understood in both countries that the present state of affairs derives in a very basic way from the current Bangladesh leader being in office.

The burgeoning bilateral relationship owes not a little to Sheikh Hasina’s stint as PM since 2009 and an earlier five-year term in the late nineties. The challenge is to create conditions that will permit the relationship to grow regardless of which party or leader is at the helm in either country.

Since its creation in 1971, our eastern neighbour has had a constituency rooted in Islamist ideas and pro-Pakistan and anti-India politics. These come to the fore from time to time. During the recent visit of the Bangladesh leader, attention was drawn by India at the highest level to extremism, terrorism and radicalism. Ms Hasina responded to this saying she would be especially sensitive to the treatment of the (Hindu) minority in her country.

This is a positive sign. But long-term efforts are called for by both sides that may lead to a bipartisan investment in Bangladesh in the India relationship. Within South Asia, no two countries have a more beneficial bilateral relationship than India and Bangladesh. To strengthen this will require taking kinetic and non-kinetic steps by Dhaka to check radicalism and extremism. On the other hand, New Delhi too will be called upon to expedite action on the question of river waters as there are as many as 54 rivers that flow through both countries.

The agreement on the sharing of Ganga waters was signed a quarter century ago. Agreement on Teesta waters has been hanging fire for long. In 2011, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had scuttled a deal that was ready for signing. Her intransigent attitude on this matter for reasons of narrow state-level politics is robbing India of the opportunity to expand ties with Bangladesh in the bipartisan direction. River waters are a sensitive issue in Bangladesh since it is the lower riparian in the most prominent cases. Dealing with the question meaningfully can help neutralise constituencies in that country that strike up an anti-India stance. It is a positive sign that an interim agreement could be inked for the sharing of the Koshiyara river during Sheikh Hasina’s visit.

Reinforcing road and rail linkages, setting up a coal-fired thermal power plant by India, India’s active readiness to construct an oil pipeline linking the two countries, and Indian support in getting Bangladesh to get oil from Russia at concessional rates are effective steps to cement the bilateral ties. But the elephant in the room is China.

For about 15 years, China has made heavy investments in Bangladesh’s infrastructure, including its strategic ports, and the energy and defence sectors. If China’s relationship with Pakistan is designed as a strategy to contain India, in the east its policy has been to similarly entice Bangladesh.

Perhaps it is at this that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was hinting when he urged the visiting dignitary to jointly take on those who seek to “attack” the “mutual trust” between India and Bangladesh. The visiting leader did note that keeping each other’s strategic priorities in view was important. Being the bigger economy and regional power of substance, India has work on its hands in viewing the bilateral relationship in the wider context of regional geopolitics.   



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Billionaires in boats. Techies in tractors. India’s Silicon Valley sinking. The dramatic visuals and headlines coming out of Bengaluru in recent days give a flavour of the catastrophe unfolding in India’s most high-profile tech hub and the trauma of the residents of this southern Indian city of nearly 13 million. Bengaluru continues to reel from torrential rains, flooded homes, widespread power cuts, submerged roads and more. The worst may not be over yet.

In Bengaluru, while we watched billionaires being rescued in boats on our television screens, there was also another story. Bengaluru’s Bellandur is not only home to software companies that are bearing the brunt of the incessant rains. It also has slums and an informal city. Slum dwellers in and around Bellandur are struggling to find food and water as their homes are inundated.
What is happening in Bengaluru is horrific. But this is not just about one city. And while unpacking the dramatic images we are seeing we must ask a fundamental question that goes beyond Bengaluru.

India is rapidly urbanising. India’s urban population, currently at about 480 million, is expected to double by 2050. What sort of “development” do we envisage for our cities? This is not the first time a significant part of an Indian megacity has gone under water after intense rainfall and it will not be the last unless we are ready for the bald truth and act on it.

The unvarnished truth is that unregulated and unplanned urbanisation means an urban India which is likely to be underwater every time it rains heavily.

Sustainable growth is not just an expression used by activist-academics. Nor is it just the environmentalists’ narrative. It must become the survival narrative unless we wish to continue to have headlines like “India’s Silicon Valley Sinks” and the kind of trauma of ordinary people we are witnessing. If we fill up our lakes and wetlands, we will have Bengaluru-style floods. More and more.

Climate change is man-made at a global level. It has made heavy downpours much more frequent and we often hear local politicians blame climate change for a disaster and saying there is nothing they can do about it. But the disasters triggered by this round of rainfall are largely man-made at the local level. We need to face this. One key reason behind the current catastrophic “flood” in Bengaluru is property developers filling up drains, wetlands and lakes and building homes, offices, malls, roads and so on right on top of it. The rainwater has nowhere to go now.

Over the years, government agencies have turned a blind eye to this and now the price of ignoring the obvious is getting steeper. Lakes have been vanishing in this city once famed for its many water bodies. Many citizens’ groups have been fighting hard to protect the water bodies but builders in cahoots with politicians have got their way. Interestingly, the parts of Bengaluru that have been less affected by the floods are those places that have seen an investment in storm water drains. So, they are better-equipped. In sharp contrast are the areas which have experienced massive growth in recent years and which are also in the low-lying areas. Many experts say these areas have not invested enough in the kind of infrastructure that would make it more resilient.

How do we deal with the situation now?

First, we must recognise that erratic and extreme weather will be more frequent due to climate change. There is no longer any debate about this. A report by the urban development ministry notes the “increasing trend of urban flood disasters in India over the past several years where major cities in India have been severely affected”. The most notable among them, it goes on to say, are “Hyderabad in 2000, Ahmedabad in 2001, Delhi in 2002 and 2003, Chennai in 2004, Mumbai in 2005, Surat in 2006, Kolkata in 2007, Jamshedpur in 2008, Delhi in 2009 and Guwahati and Delhi in 2010. The most recent devastating ones were Srinagar in 2014 and Chennai in 2015”.

There is official recognition of poor city planning. The government report concedes that “unplanned development and encroachments of sprawling habitations alongside rivers and watercourses have meddled with the natural streams and watercourses”. As a result of this, it points out, “the runoff has increased in proportion to urbanisation of the watersheds causing urban floods. New and intensified phase of urbanisation during 2001-2011 coupled with spatial expansion of urban extents have compounded flood risk in the urban centres”.

Bengaluru had 262 lakes in the 1960s. Now only a fraction of that number actually holds water. The same story is playing out in many other cities like Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. The devastating floods in Chennai in 2015 were telling markers of the mismanagement of water bodies. There were many photographs of a flooded runway in Chennai airport. That airport has been built by filling in what used to be a river. No one seems to have asked the fundamental question -- where will the water go when it rains hard.

Second, lakes do not die overnight. The death of a lake is a gradual process. If we let them be contaminated, become dump yards and let encroachments happen, we are in effect saying “yes” to more catastrophes of the kind urban India is beginning to see.

It does not have to be this way. Political willingness and an aware public can change the fate of these lakes and urban India.

Blaming just house buyers who did not sufficiently investigate the terrain will not help at this point. We must ask questions of the builders and the local authorities who chose to gloss over the clear link between shrinking water bodies and increasing urban floods.

Across India, many citizens are banding together to stop destruction and degradation of urban water bodies. In state after state, they have filed legal cases to save urban lakes.

Citizens are doing their “duty”. But what is the duty of the elected representatives at a time like this? Can realtors get their way without collusion of politicians, municipalities and land mafias?

We cannot stop heavy downpours but we can minimise the damage. There is a movement in many parts of the world to build “sponge” cities that can soak in rainwater instead of letting it flow over miles of concrete and trigger devastating floods. Sponge cities focus on expanding trees, lakes and parks which can absorb rainwater and reduce flooding. This is not a fantasy. Cities as diverse as New York and Shanghai are exploring sponginess and improving their drainage system. Can we reimagine our cities?



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“The world was a better place during the Cold War”, I said. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev put his head back and guffawed. This was in the 1990s in his Moscow apartment, soon after Germany recognised Croatia ahead of the EU. “They were working according to a plan”, he said. How he must have suffered on the United States breaking its promise on Nato expansion. After the interview, my last with him, I asked him what was his dream when he embarked on his reforms? “Something like Sweden of the 1980s when socialism and a free market were being refined?” Thoughtfully, he nodded agreement. This interview is on YouTube.

The careers of Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-91) and Rajiv Gandhi (1984-91) were co-terminous. Almost on cue, I had resigned from Indian Express in 1984 to set up “World Report” with a vision I nurtured for a decade: Indian journalists must see the world with their own eyes. Rajiv’s visit to Moscow in May 1985, his first outing, enabled me to make my switch to TV from print. Doordarshan was the only channel until 1994, when private channels burst upon the scene to accommodate the advertising which rode on Manmohan Singh’s reforms. 

What promised to be the assignment of a lifetime led to a murmuring campaign among the 50-odd colleagues travelling with the PM. “Why should one journalist get the scoop?” they grumbled. Foreign secretary Romesh Bhandari, his mouth full of paan parag, didn’t know how to cope. A press conference had been firmly ruled out by the Soviet system.

Drop the interview, then. That had bigger obstacles. The two systems working on Rajiv’s visit were involved in the interview too: the PMO, G. Parthasarathy Sr as the super purohit, the foreign office, DD, RAW and ambassador Nurul Hasan in Moscow, and their Soviet counterparts.

Finally, Bhandari came forward with a compromise: I would do the interview but the rest of the media team would pick a representative to sit in. Approval was obtained from the very highest in the Kremlin. N. Ram of the Hindu cut the Gordian Knot: the spectacular Russi Karanjia of Blitz would represent the media. 

Adjacent to the hall where the summiteers would meet, a small area was enclosed with ropes, rather like a boxing ring, except this was on flat ground. Four chairs were placed inside the ring -- two for Gorbachev and his interpreter and two for Russi and me. The rest of the press corps would have a ringside view. 

All eyes were riveted on the door through which Gorbachev would walk towards us and take his seat. In these suspenseful minutes, Russi was collecting slips of paper from the journalists. These were questions they wanted Russi to ask. 

Just then the door opened. Andrei Gromyko, foreign minister since the Khrushchev era, walked in, stood near the door, took a good hard look at the arrangements and went back.

Next entered Romesh Bhandari, waving his hands like he was bringing tidings of joy. “Sorry friends, there will be no interview. A brief press meet would give out wrong signals.”

Later, I found out what happened. After seeing the media bandobast, Gromyko took Gorbachev aside, along with a few officials, including Bhandari. Gromyko had shrewdly sized up the situation. Bhandari’s choreography would lend itself to a melee. Journalists outside the ring would be asking questions out of turn. The new young CPSU leader was not going to be exposed to such assured chaos.

“What though the field be lost, all is not lost”, I said to myself, quoting Satan. This was to pull myself out of my deep disappointment. Soon enough, Gorbachev’s return visit to Delhi was announced in December 1986. I was in Moscow again.

T.N. Kaul took charge of the interview this time and insisted that not one or two, but four representatives of the official media would sit in with me. I had enough! This was my mood when I walked into the library next to Vladirminsky Hall. Every syllable of each question to be asked had been cleared by Kaul. At one, narrow end of a long table, big enough for a catwalk, sat Gorbachev. I sat at the corner of the long side, nearest him. To my left were the official media. On the other side of the table, opposite me, were three severe-looking Soviet officials, glaring at me like suspicious invigilators. Against the wall opposite me sat Veena Sikri, the Indian press secretary, grinning from ear to ear even as I broke all rules as you will see presently.

“Mikhail Sergeyevich, I was told we would meet in the library, but there are no books here”, I said.

“Books are in the adjacent room -- many books.” 

“Do you find the time to read?”

“Yes, yes”, emphatically, “I have a habit of reading.” 

“Name a writer you would recommend!” 

“Chinghiz Aitmatov”, he said, without batting an eyelid. 

Then I opened my cards.

“Your bureaucracy and mine have cleared a set of question. If I restrict myself to these sanitised questions, millions in India eager to see you will switch their TVs off. May I therefore ask you questions on what I think are important issues?”

Da, da, da” (yes, yes, yes), he emphasised several times. 

To everybody’s astonishment, the conversation, billed for 30 minutes, lasted 90 minutes, completely outside the parameters set by the two bureaucracies. Gorbachev looked very much the glasnost man, rejoicing in coming out of the old straitjacket. But as the subsequent years proved, he was clearly out of touch with the nation he had set out to transform. In dealing with the Americans, he was naïve.



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