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Editorials - 09-04-2022

Villagers of six areas of dispute between Assam and Meghalaya were asked to give their consent for inclusion in either State towards ending a 50-year-old boundary dispute. An agreement between the States has led to friction between the ‘Meghalaya supporters’, mostly Garos, and the ‘Assam supporters’, mostly non-Garos, reports Rahul Karmakar

Malchapara did not have a reason since July 2021 to hold themelkhol nok , a kangaroo court that settles local disputes. This Garo tribal village had been too glued to a dispute far removed from its jurisdiction — along the Assam-Meghalaya border 7 km away — to handle petty issues all these months.

The opportunity to hold court came a week before Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his Meghalaya counterpart Conrad Kongkal Sangma met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi to seal a “historic” boundary deal. It was not to sort out any domestic or social issue, but to extract an apology from 65-year-old Starson Marak for “selling his soul” to Assam.

The border settlement followed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) the two Chief Ministers had signed on January 29 to resolve six of the 12 disputed sectors along the 884.9-km border between the two States. Deemed to be less complicated, these six sectors were chosen to be resolved first when the two Chief Ministers and Shah met in the Meghalaya capital, Shillong, in July 2021 to end the boundary dispute hanging fire for five decades.

Let down by their own

Marak, 65, is one of the oldest residents of Malchapara, located about 85 km southwest of Guwahati. His belief that Malchapara’s future lies with Assam had dragged him to themelkhol nok . “I was born in Assam and would like to die in Assam. I apologised in the people’s court because some of our people wanted me to apologise for betraying the community by insisting on not agreeing to be part of Meghalaya,” Marak said.

Winath Ch Sangma, who had egged the villagers on to hold the court, said Marak and a few elders misled the members of a government-appointed committee that came calling in October 2021 to seek the opinion of the villagers. “Time may have run out for us to be with Meghalaya, where we belong emotionally, ethnically and geographically. But we are not giving up,” he said.

Malchapara and the adjoining Salbari village, in Assam’s Kamrup district, are a part of Gizang, one of the six disputed sectors taken up for resolution in the first phase. Gizang is sandwiched between two other disputed sectors – Tarabari to the west and Hahim to the east. Many residents believed that the five principles the two States had considered for resolving the boundary dispute would automatically keep Malchapara and Salbari within the redrawn map of Meghalaya after the final settlement. The five principles are historical facts, ethnicity, administrative convenience, the willingness of people, and contiguity of land preferably with natural boundaries.

“We were stunned when our Chief Minister (Conrad Sangma) told the State Assembly on March 16 that a majority in Malchapara want to go with Assam. As Garo people, it is but natural for us to be in Meghalaya where the Garos are one of the three principal tribes,” Jewash Sangma, a Malchapara resident said.

Marak and a few elders were subsequently marked for “betraying the community”. They had in October 2021 met the members of a regional committee, formed to study the disputed sectors and recommend solutions. Their opinion apparently spoiled Malchapara and Salbari’s chances of going to Meghalaya. Both States formed three such regional committees, each headed by a Cabinet Minister, tasked with preparing reports for the State governments to discuss and agree upon before forwarding to the Home Affairs Ministry. Each committee comprised stakeholders from the affected districts – Kamrup, Kamrup (Metropolitan) and Cachar in Assam, and West Khasi Hills, Ri-Bhoi and East Jaintia Hills in Meghalaya.

Divisions within

Malchapara is not the only village divided over the boundary issue. Clashes between the pro-Assam and pro-Meghalaya groups have been frequent at Malang Salbari nearby, also a Garo village. Members of one group have allegedly been destroying the shops and betel nut plantations of those belonging to the other in order to “teach them a lesson”. The intra-tribe and inter-community distrust has reached such a level that people have invested in walkie-talkies to communicate with their “own” by often changing frequencies. Mobile phone connectivity is poor in most of the disputed zones.

Frylin R. Marak, an executive member of the Rabha Hasong Autonomous Council (RHAC), elected in 2019 from the Luki constituency, blames the division within the Garo villages and families of thejowains (sons-in-law) from “the other side” of the boundary line. The Garos are a matrilineal society where a man stays with his in-laws after marriage. The disputed sectors are within the RHAC, which has 36 constituencies and straddles the Rabha tribe-dominated areas of Kamrup and the adjoining Goalpara district of Assam to the west. The villages of the Christian Garos and the mostly Hindu Rabhas are scattered along the boundary with Meghalaya.

“There were no disputes in areas under my constituency all these decades. We don’t want a single Garo village to go to Meghalaya, but thejowains , who have a sentimental attachment to Meghalaya and are influenced by some vested interests from the other side, took advantage of the boundary settlement initiative to push for the exclusion of the villages from Assam. They are misleading their own people by claiming they will enjoy more rights in Meghalaya, a Sixth Schedule State with special provisions for tribal people,” Frylin Marak said.

While many of the younger people have been rooting for the inclusion of their villages in Meghalaya, the older people think remaining in Assam is a better option. “Our people have been divided, so much so that last Christmas was celebrated separately by the two camps, a departure from tradition,” he said. “What the misguided Garo people do not realise is that the district on the other side is the West Khasi Hills, where they will be second-class citizens to the Khasis (also a matrilineal community). On the other hand, Garos have their own panchayats and, like I did, get elected to constitutional bodies in Assam. A satellite autonomous council for the Garos is also on the cards, although it will be difficult to carve out areas from the RHAC,” Frylin Marak said.

Since July 2021, there has been friction between the “Meghalaya supporters”, mostly Garos, and the “Assam supporters”, mostly non-Garos such as Rabha, Boro, Assamese and Gurkha. The strategic weekly market at Gamerimura, for instance, has split between the non-Garos and the Garos, who have set up a parallel market at Sildubi on the inter-State boundary about 3 km south. Gamerimura, about 5 km from Malchapara, is in the disputed Tarabari sector.

“The boundary dispute had never come in the way of local business until the two State governments decided to settle the issue once and for all. Two days after the two Chief Ministers met in Shillong last year, large groups of people from Meghalaya went on a painting spree. They began marking fresh boundaries with red paint, encompassing even non-disputed villages deeper inside Assam. Soon, most Garo people were made to pull out of Gamerimura market and set up stalls in Sildubi,” Niten Rabha, the general secretary of the local unit of All Rabha Students’ Union, said. “Business has been down since the two governments started the process of resolving the boundary. The Meghalaya supporters don’t like to come to the Gamerimura market on Fridays, our people don’t like to go to their new market on Wednesdays for fear of being abused or assaulted,” Biren Rabha, head of the Gamerimura Bazaar Development Committee, said.

Members of the Sildubi market committee said they set up the new market to be self-dependent and not because of any agenda.

“Only give, no take”

Assam has boundary disputes with Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland besides Meghalaya — all carved out of it between December 1963 and January 1972. The issues cropped up because of conflicting reading of the demarcation of boundaries in the agreement for the creation of the new States (Union Territories in the case of Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram, which became States later).

Assam said the neighbouring States have dishonoured the “constitutional boundaries” to capture its land. The other States have stuck to their “traditional boundaries” to claim Assam was the aggressor. Meghalaya said the local chieftains and traditional bodies possess pre-1947 documents that prove their ownership of land that wrongfully went to Assam at the time of the creation of the new State through a “one-sided” Reorganisation Act of 1969. The chieftain of Nonglang in West Khasi Hills, for instance, has had control over Malchapara and Salbari villages for centuries, Meghalaya claimed.

Over the years, Assam and Meghalaya held at least 50 high-level meetings to resolve the border issues. Pressure from the Centre for putting an end to the dispute during the celebration of India’s 75th year of independence made the two States push for a solution.

In 2021, Chief Minister Sarma said in the Assam Assembly that Meghalaya had encroached upon 53 areas of Assam. The Assam government later said 12 areas of differences evolved over time since 1993. The two governments agreed that the disputes will be limited to these 12 areas based on a decade-old claim by Meghalaya and that no claim in new areas would be allowed in the future. They also agreed to start with six “less complicated” sectors — Tarabari, Gizang, Hahim, Boklapara, Khanapara-Pilingkata and Ratacherra.

“Meghalaya made an official claim in 2011 and gave maps of the areas it wanted in the State. Based on that, we decided to accept the decision of villagers who want to go to Meghalaya but refused to accept claims in areas that were not part of their original claim,” said Kailash Karthik N., the Deputy Commissioner of Kamrup. He denied allegations that the district authorities had exerted pressure on the pro-Meghalaya villagers to be in Assam.

His counterpart in the adjoining West Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya, P.D. Sangma, also denied any coercion by the State authorities on pro-Assam villagers. “Some people are not happy to be included in Meghalaya, but there have been no law-and-order problems in the disputed sectors where the regional committees gave the locals the option to go either way,” he said, declining to go into the details of the territorial split. The committees adopted a five-phase approach entailing the exchange of records, joint field visits, detailed deliberations, negotiations, and the preparation of the final recommendations. In each of the six areas, the committees took into account the composition of the local population and recommended that Assam would get 18.51 sq. km of the total of 36.79 sq. km of disputed areas, while 18.28 sq. km will be in Meghalaya’s possession. The MoU was subsequently signed.

“We adopted the policy of give-and-take for a lasting solution to the boundary dispute that has affected so many lives all these years,” the Assam Chief Minister had said. “There has been no take, only give,” Nandita Das, the Congress MLA of Boko constituency, said. All three contiguous disputed sectors – Tarabari, Gizang and Hahim – are under her constituency, as is the “more complicated” Lampi to be taken up in the second phase of discussion. “The entire land belongs to Assam, and we have never made any claim on land belonging to Meghalaya. The Survey of India map, which Meghalaya refuses to accept, makes this very clear. Their claim is illegal and our government must find a way of holding on to these stretches rich in natural resources and with tremendous tourism potential. Meghalaya has been inching forward strategically because past governments in Assam did not foresee a long-term design of grabbing more land,” Das said.

“With a BJP government at the Centre, the BJP-led Assam government should have made Meghalaya understand that it is at fault. But what is more jarring is the silence of the RHAC, which will end up losing large swathes under its jurisdiction,” she said.

RHAC’s chief executive member Tankeswar Rabha chose not to comment on a matter “taken up at the highest level”.

Worrisome template

About 40 km east of Gamerimura, the Gurkhas of Lampi are worried that the 50-50 formula of settling a “manufactured dispute” would set a bad precedent for the remaining six sectors. Lampi (Meghalaya calls it Langpih) has been a disputed place since 1974 when the Assam police personnel came face-to-face with their Meghalaya counterparts who had allegedly expelled some Gurkha grazers from the area. The area, a set of villages divided almost equally between the Khasis and the Gurkhas, has been on the boil since May 2010 when clashes broke out between the two communities. Four Khasi men were killed in police firing.

“The very idea of seeking people’s consent is flawed. A village with a 1% Khasi population will not like to live in Assam and a village with 1% Gurkhas will be uneasy with the idea of living in Meghalaya, which has had a history of ethnic cleansing of non-tribal people. The encroachment of Assam land has been a long-term conspiracy and if we yield to an unjustified demand, our people will have nowhere to go,” Arjun Chhetri, the executive member of RHAC’s Jongakhuli constituency, said.

Lampi, a hill village unlike most others in the disputed sectors, is in Jongakhuli. “The give-and-take formula is dangerous. All the Gurkhas will be driven away within 24 hours if Lampi happens to be officially under Meghalaya. As it is we live constantly under stress. Our houses are often burnt down, livestock taken away,” Biju Chhetri, a Lampi resident, said.

The past came to haunt the Gurkhas when Raj Baruah, the Boko circle officer, held a meeting at the Jongakhuli panchayat office on March 23 for taking the Jal Jeevan Mission programme forward.

“We have insisted on getting water supplied from Assam although our main source of water, the Kupri Nalo, flows down from Meghalaya. But the officials want to revive a water conservation project on this stream that never took off in 1979,” Lampi’s Hemraj Sharma said.

“We are afraid that the stream will be poisoned if it becomes the source of our piped water,” he added, recalling an incident in 1979 when miscreants had sprinkled toxic substances in the stream and the village wells, killing 40 of his cows. The local unit of the Khasi Students’ Union and members of traditional Khasi village said these are tall claims aimed at maligning their community. In reality, they said, outsiders have occupied their ancestral lands.

Way forward

Regional political parties in Assam and Meghalaya have demanded revisiting the border deal in view of the protests it has triggered. They have been egging the aggrieved villagers to keep up the tempo of protest before the boundary deal is approved by Parliament and ratified by the Assemblies of both the States. The Asom Sattra Mahasabha, the umbrella organisation of Vaishnav monasteries, said it was wary of two monasteries and nine namghars or prayer halls going to Meghalaya if the boundary deal is sealed. “We will appeal to the people and local organisations to agitate to save our places of worship. We will also approach the court for staying the deal,” the Mahasabha’s general secretary, Kukum Kumar Mahanta, said.

The two monasteries – Mateshor and Netwajapa – are two centuries old and are in the Boklapara sector under the West Gauhati Assembly constituency. Ramendra Narayan Kalita of the Asom Gana Parishad, who has been representing the border constituency since 1985, attributed the possible ceding of the areas to forest rules that have hindered the development of the villages along the Assam-Meghalaya boundary, prompting some fringe dwellers to side with Meghalaya.

“The Assam government can neither provide land deed in forest areas nor develop villages in forest areas due to the green laws unlike in Meghalaya, where forest rules are different. They can provide settlement, power connection and water supply to forest dwellers,” he said.

Officials in the border districts of Assam admitted that Meghalaya has had administrative control in stretches that are easier to monitor from the other side. “We have had zero or partial control in several border areas. Take the case of Athiabari beyond Hahim. The place has been completely under the control of the Meghalaya police although constitutionally in Assam. It is not wise to keep fighting for territory and shedding blood,” Karthik N. said.

The Chief Ministers of both States have been asking those opposed to the give-and-take policy to look at the bigger picture. “History matters and so does a future that eliminates the chances of more conflicts between two sister-States. We have managed to find a win-win solution for all,” the Meghalaya Chief Minister said. “Some people are feeling aggrieved but not solving the problem may lead to more such issues with reports of people from Meghalaya settling down in new areas. At the end of the day, this is not the India-China or the India-Pakistan border. It is a boundary involving our own people in our own country,” Karthik N. said.



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States could do better in incorporating the Supreme Court’s crucial guidelines to overcome certain deficiencies

Last year, the Supreme Court of India, while hearing a criminal appeal, tooksuo motu cognisance of certain deficiencies and inadequacies which occur during the course of criminal trials. As a result, it issued the necessary directions inIn Re: To issue certain Guidelines regarding Inadequacies and Deficiencies in Criminal Trials vs The State of Andhra Pradesh (2021). These directionsinter alia included presentation of site plan, inquest report and body sketches (in a post-mortem report) in a uniform manner, photographs and videographs of a post-mortem in certain cases, and separation of prosecution from the investigation. The High Courts and the State governments were, accordingly, asked to notify the draft “Rules of Criminal Practice, 2021” which all the States and the High Courts had agreed upon with minor variations, and make consequential amendments in their police and other manuals. The Guwahati High Court issued the essential notification and incorporated the necessary changes in January 2022.

Preparing a site sketch

The Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) mandates that the officer-in-charge of a police station shall, on receiving information about the commission of a cognisance offence, proceed to the spot (of the crime) in person to investigate the facts and circumstances of the case. The general practice (on reaching the spot) is to prepare a site sketch that show details of the crime scene and collect evidence which could connect the presence of the criminal. The Court has previously held that a site plan drawn on scale is admissible if the witnesses corroborate these statements of the draftsman that they showed him the places. The contents of the site map would not become admissible as evidence merely by its exhibition by the investigating officer.

The guidelines issued now say that the site sketch prepared by the investigating officer shall be followed by a scaled site plan prepared by a police draftsman, if available, or another authorised or nominated draftsman by the State government. Therefore, looking at the importance of a site plan (which captures the details of a crime scene and its surroundings) particularly in a case of suspicious death, the police need to develop its own cadre of draftsmen.

The guidelines mandate that every medico-legal certificate and post-mortem report shall contain a printed format of the human body (with both a frontal and rear view) on its reverse and injuries, if any, shall be indicated on such a sketch.

Testing veracity

The purpose of preparing an inquest report is to ‘ascertain whether a person has died under suspicious circumstances or died an unnatural death and if so, what the (nature of) injuries are and the apparent cause of death’. However, if the evidence and materials collected during an inquest ‘make it aprima facie case of any offence’, a criminal case is registered and regular investigation taken up even without any formal complaint from anyone. It is settled law that the contents of the inquest report cannot be treated as evidence, but they can be looked into to test the veracity of the witnesses of the inquest. However, if the investigating officer himself observes and records evidence, it is treated as ‘direct or primary evidence in the case and the best in the eyes of the law’.

Similarly, the post-mortem report is a ‘document which by itself is not a piece of substantive evidence. It is the statement of the doctor in court, which has the credibility of substantive evidence’. The post-mortem report can only be used as ‘an aid to refresh the memory of the doctor while giving evidence’. The significance of the ‘evidence of the doctor liesvis-à-vis the injuries appearing on the body of the deceased person and the likely use of a weapon’.

For better scrutiny

The National Human Rights Commission, India (NHRC) has already laid down similar guidelines for cases of deaths in police custody. The importance of body sketches (in a uniform format) in an inquest report and a post-mortem report cannot be overemphasised. Their standardisation will not only help the court to better appreciate these reports and scrutinise the evidence, but will also help the investigating officers and doctors to refresh their memory with more clarity.

The Supreme Court has directed that ‘in case of death of a person in police action or death in police custody, the magistrate or the IO [investigating officer] shall inform the hospital to arrange for photography and videography for conducting post-mortem examination of the deceased’. Similar guidelines, first issued by the NHRC back in 1995 — and then revised from time to time — are being meticulously implemented by the enforcement agencies. The Supreme Court inPeople’s Union for Civil Liberties vs State of Maharashtra (2014) issued similar guidelines for deaths in exchange of fire with the police.

The implementation of the scheme of having trained photographers at police stations (in accordance with Supreme Court’s ruling of 2018 inShafhi Mohammad vs the State of Himachal Pradesh ) is also under way in a phased manner so that scenes of heinous offences are videographed and photographed using digital cameras as a “desirable and acceptable practice”, and their hash values taken to make the evidence tamper-proof.

The draft Code now provides that the investigating officer shall seize such photographs and videographs, preserve the original (separate memory card) and obtain certificate under Section 65B (regarding admissibility of electronic records) of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.

The purpose of these guidelines is to ensure that there is uniformity of procedure in dealing with cases of death in police action or police custody without any tampering of evidence. Therefore, it will be appropriate for the police forces across the States to speed up implementation of the above scheme and have their own cadre of photographers so that expertise is maintained at the police station level.

On investigation

The Supreme Court has further directed that ‘the state governments shall appoint advocates, other than public prosecutors, to advise the investigating officer during investigation’. Currently, in many States, a public prosecutor advises the investigating officer to check and make up for any deficiency in investigation before submitting the charge sheet in the court.

Previously, there have been conflicting judgments by the Supreme Court on this issue. The Court inR. Sarala vs T.S. Velu (2000) held that as per the scheme of the CrPC, the investigation ends with the formation of an opinion by the police as to whether, on the material collected, a case is made out to place the accused for trial. The formation of the said opinion by the police is the final step of investigation, and this final step is to be taken by the police and by no other authority. The public prosecutor is an officer of the court and his role essentially is inside the court.

More recently, inState of Gujarat vs Kishanbhai (2014), the Court, while taking note of the many lapses in investigation, directed that ‘on completion of the investigation in a criminal case, the prosecuting agency should apply its independent mind, and require all shortcomings to be rectified, if necessary, by requiring further investigation’.

Since, investigation and prosecution are two different facets in the administration of criminal justice, the three judge Bench of the Supreme Court has now rightly asked the States to separate the two wings. Chhattisgarh has sanctioned a cadre of law officers (who shall function independently of the public prosecutors and will have no role in the court) to assist the investigating officers in educating and improving investigation work. Other States should also follow suit. Similarly, while the creation of a cadre of draftsmen and photographers may take time, executive orders may be issued without further delay, followed by training of investigating officers and medical doctors, in order to implement the Supreme Court’s directives.

R.K. Vij is a former Special DGP of Chhattisgarh. The views expressed

are personal



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Having course credits proportional to teaching hours, as spelt out in its draft NHEQF, will impact faculty productivity

As I waded my way through various documents that are generally referenced in any discussion on a four-year undergraduate degree programme in India — starting with the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS), the Learning Outcomes-Based Curriculum Framework (LOCF), and the University Grant Commission (UGC)’s latest draft National Higher Education Qualification Framework (NHEQF) document — the lost undergraduate student in me was happy.

Implications for teaching

Anyone who has gone through the rigid and terribly outdated course structure of degrees such as B.Com or B.A. in most Indian universities, would be really happy to see the choice, flexibility, and liberal ethos embedded in its vision. Following on with the proposed changes in higher education under the New Education Policy (NEP), it seems like Indian students are finally poised to receive an actual education and not just meaningless pieces of paper masquerading as degree certificates. Despite this bold vision, however, there seem to be quite a few kinks that need to be ironed out at the conceptual level before embarking on its implementation. Here I deal with the implications of the credit system as currently envisaged in these documentsvis-à-vis the teaching quality and research productivity of faculty espoused by the NEP.

While the NHEQF attempts to provide much-needed clarity on a variety of issues, from the types of courses in initial and later years of a four-year degree and the associated nomenclatures for multiple exit options, it continues to equate one credit to one teaching hour. If the CBCS or LOCF credit structure of core courses of six credits and electives of four credits each is to be followed, then it has serious implications for the teaching workload (about which there is not much discussion in any of these documents). At six credits for a core course, with an emphasis on tutorials in sections of not more than 20 students, a faculty member would end up teaching about eight hours per week per course. If as outlined by the NEP, a faculty is responsible for course content, assessments, and grading, it would require at least double the hours of preparation. Given the considerable ambiguity in the UGC’s description of faculty workload, many institutions inadvertently might end up burdening a faculty member with two such courses mechanically, adding the hours to 16 per week.

Interpreting the credit

Before we delve into the issue any further, let us think about the concept of academic credit. Though often used as a unit used to describe the workload for students, its meaning and interpretation differ across continents. In the United Kingdom or under the Bologna Process, a core undergraduate course might be listed as six to seven credits, indicating the total expected engagement from the student including the time spent in lectures and tutorials. The implications for the faculty teaching load are very different from students. A seven-credit course might mean approximately two hours of teaching per week, with the remaining hours credited for preparation and assessment. The standard workload for a faculty is typically decided via negotiations between faculty unions and the university administration, making it difficult to get the information officially. But a quick search on Google shows that a faculty in a typical U.K. university is expected to teach about two hours per week.

In the United States, the situation is a bit different. The credits listed for a course typically indicate the hours of classroom engagement, with the actual workload on students left undefined. On an average, in most U.S. universities, a typical undergraduate course is three credits and, therefore, about three hours of total classroom teaching for a faculty per course. Depending on the nature of the employing institution, the faculty workload could vary between two courses per year in a research-intensive university to four or five courses per semester in a community college. Obviously, faculty with lower teaching loads have higher research productivity, and possibly better content and delivery in teaching. A credit also signifies the minimum skill attainment for graduating from one level to another in education. Based on a personal experience of teaching in U.S. universities, a three-credit course would mean at least four additional hours of engagement for the student, making it a six to seven credit equivalent of a core course in the U.K.

In India

Despite these differences between the treatment of credits on the two sides of the Atlantic, one thing they have in common is that faculty teaching hours per course are much lower than what is currently practised in Indian universities and outlined in several UGC documents. If the higher education regulatory bodies in India are serious about boosting research productivity of faculty while staying true to the liberal ethos of NEP, then we cannot have course credits directly proportional to the teaching hours. Or reduce credits per course in line with the practice in North American universities. We must make sure that faculty have enough time to create quality teaching content and engage in research. For this we will have to train students to take more responsibility for their learning. Given the very high number of students that need to be educated in India, creative solutions such as technology-aided larger classrooms for introductory courses in universities with the help of graduate students as teaching assistants can be implemented to economise on faculty time and effort.

At a more fundamental level, we must acknowledge the resources and the time that go into the production of research and teaching. Otherwise, we risk perverse outcomes that would undermine the very objectives of the NEP. The vision is grand and very much needs to translate into reality. However, we need to spell out clearly now the resource requirements for this vision to pan out. The higher education sector in the U.S., which seems to form the basis of many things that have been said in the NEP, has evolved to its current state over a long period of time — at least a century. It is also one of the least regulated educational sectors in the world. So, we are literally trying to replicate the outcome of organic unregulated growth through a deliberate policy change. It is like taking a finished product and reverse engineering it to figure out how to produce it. As a start, we need to think about how to devise regulations that incentivise stakeholders in the higher education sector to behave in a way that collectively leads to the desired outcome. Not a trivial task, I would say!

Parag Waknis is an Associate Professor of Economics at Dr. B R Ambedkar University Delhi. The views expressed

are personal



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The full impact of Imran Khan’s actionswill only be known after the next election

With its verdict on Thursday, Pakistan’s Supreme Court effectively ruled that events of the last week in Pakistani politics were null and void, holding the Deputy Speaker’s actions on Sunday “unconstitutional and illegal”, when he rejected the opposition’s No-Confidence Motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan. The verdict, which has been hailed by the Opposition and Pakistan’s media as the defeat of Mr. Khan’s ‘assault on democracy’, has had the slightly unusual impact of reinstating PM Khan after he had voluntarily resigned, and resurrecting the National Assembly, which had been dissolved the same day by Pakistani President Arif Alvi, as he called for fresh elections. Parliamentarians will now, on Saturday, re-enact their actions, and convene again for the no-confidence motion vote. However, it will not all be “deja vu”, as the Speaker has been ordered by the court on how to proceed: by holding the no-confidence vote and then an adjournment only if Mr. Khan is able to win the vote. If he loses, as is likely, the session can be adjourned after a new Prime Minister is voted in. The Supreme Court has also ended Mr. Khan’s “Plan B”. After it became clear that the combined Opposition, including members of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, and many of his coalition partners, had the numbers to instal Pakistan Muslim League (N) chief Shehbaz Sharif in his place, he raised the “foreign conspiracy” bogey. He ensured the confidence vote was cancelled, and before the Opposition could gather its thoughts, raced through his resignation and recommendation to President Alvi for fresh elections. The pace and purpose of the actions of the former cricket captain were to ensure that none of the decisions could be reversed, and willy-nilly, the country would be pushed into elections a year earlier than when the Assembly’s tenure ends.

It is clear that Mr. Khan overestimated his ability to manage the denouement of the drama played out this week. He has also made some formidable opponents apart from the political Opposition, including Pakistan’s all-powerful military establishment, which he has openly challenged, the U.S., which has consistently avoided engaging with him, and which he has named for “threatening” him, and the judiciary itself, which his cabinet colleagues have accused of carrying out a “judicial coup” against him. While Saturday’s events may finally draw the curtains on the political thriller and usher in a new government, the final verdict on Mr. Khan’s seemingly reckless and unprecedented actions will probably only be sounded when the country next goes to the polls. If Mr. Khan is voted out, he will strengthen and reinforce the precedent in one respect: no Pakistani Prime Minister since 1947 has yet completed the full five-year term of the National Assembly in office.



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Putin should take note of the views ofthe global community and end the war

The suspension of Russia from the UN Human Rights Council has turned the global spotlight on the civilian killings in Ukraine. The U.S.-sponsored resolution in the UN General Assembly was approved by 93 votes against 24, with 58 abstentions that included India. Russia has faced immense criticism after bodies were found in the streets of Bucha, a northern Ukrainian town, from where Russian troops withdrew following the Istanbul talks. Russia claims it to be “staged events and fakes”. While the truth should be established in an independent UN-monitored probe, there is no doubt that civilians were targeted. According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 1,611 civilians have been killed and 2,227 injured in Ukraine since the war began. Russia cannot evade its responsibility for these losses. When Russia began the invasion, President Vladimir Putin had said the main objectives of what he called the “special military operation” were the “demilitarisation and denazification” of Ukraine. Considering the three-front war Russia launched, it was evident that Moscow wanted to meet its real objectives — whatever they were — quickly. But Ukraine’s fierce resistance, especially in the north, has changed the course of the conflict, which now looks like a war of attrition, focusing on Ukraine’s east.

Now, both Ukraine and Russia are in difficult situations. The Ukrainians, with military and financial aid from the West, have pushed back in the north, but lost territories in the east and the south. Given the power imbalance, it is unlikely that Ukraine can regain the lost territories. Russia now seems to have been bogged down in the battlefield, with international criticism mounting on its war conduct. What is in the best interest of all parties is a cessation of hostilities and a diplomatic solution. The Istanbul talks had opened a path towards peace. According to the Ukrainian proposals, President Zelensky has agreed to accept neutrality in return for multilateral security assurances. He is also ready for a consultation period of 15 years for Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and discuss the status of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk republics in a summit with Mr. Putin. It was after these proposals that the Russians announced their pull back from the north. But the Bucha killings appear to have clouded the peace process. The investigation into the civilian killings should go on in parallel and not derail the diplomatic process. Russia should follow up on its words with more demonstrable actions to end the hostilities. The war has damaged its economy and its reputation as a great power, while causing unspeakable losses and destruction in Ukraine. The most important message from the UN body to Moscow is that it should cease the fire and take the path of diplomacy immediately.



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Lok Dal president Charan Singh, who said he had retired from politics, suspended Biju Patnaik, Devi Lal and Kumbha Ram Arya from the primary membership of the party to force the fourth split in the Lok Dal since the January 1980 Lok Sabha elections.

Lok Dal president Charan Singh, who said he had retired from politics, suspended Biju Patnaik, Devi Lal and Kumbha Ram Arya from the primary membership of the party to force the fourth split in the Lok Dal since the January 1980 Lok Sabha elections. The 80-year-old leader’s action is certain to wipe out the Lok Dal in Orissa, and severely reduce its strength in Rajasthan and Haryana. With only the UP and Bihar units with Charan Singh, the party is likely to be brought down to the status of a regional party. With 41 seats, it had emerged as the biggest opposition group in the Lok Sabha after the 1980 elections.

Assam Talks Fail

The third round of tripartite talks on foreigners in Assam also ended in a deadlock. The government and the movement leaders once again failed to come to any agreement on the substantive issue — the principles for the detection of foreign nationals — which has a bearing on the eligibility of Indian citizenship of Hindu refugees who had migrated from erstwhile East Pakistan during 1961-71. According to the All Assam Students Union and All Assam Ganasangram Parishad leaders, the home minister abruptly left the meeting before the talks formally ended. They were “humiliated and insulted”, agitated members of the delegation told the reporters outside North Block. An official spokesman later denied the allegation.

Maneka Sympathisers

The Congress (I) high command, which had been alerted about Maneka Gandhi’s Karnataka connection, is reportedly contemplating disciplinary action against those who are identified as her sympathisers. Rajiv Gandhi and Gulam Nabi Azad, president of the Youth Congress (I) have already received complaints against BK Hariprasad, a protege of the chief minister, Gundu Rao and certain other Karnataka Youth Congress (I) office-bearers.



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The most exciting part of the proposal — which he plans to discuss in the ongoing ICC meeting in Dubai — is that it promises to make one of the fiercest rivalries in world cricket, between India and Pakistan, a more regular fare.

There is no larger narrative in sport than when two arch-rivals play each other. The contests make for riveting theatre. The sports industry thrives on it — the players find added motivation, the audience gets to watch thrilling action, the organisers and sponsors rake in staggering profit. Thus, an annual four-nation T20 tournament proposed by Pakistan Cricket Board chief and former cricketer Ramiz Raja is an idea whose time should come.

The most exciting part of the proposal — which he plans to discuss in the ongoing ICC meeting in Dubai — is that it promises to make one of the fiercest rivalries in world cricket, between India and Pakistan, a more regular fare. This generation of cricket-watchers is starved of this most fascinating of duels. Trapped in a political cage, they have not played a Test match in 15 years. Neither Babar Azam nor Virat Kohli have faced-off in whites, nor have Jasprit Bumrah and Shaheen Shah Afridi tilted lances. Even the white-ball encounters have been few and far between in the last decade. The biggest losers in the political impasse are not the organisers and sponsors, but the audience as well as the sport itself. An outlier sport in the global context, played in only a few nations of the erstwhile Commonwealth, it cannot afford to not harness its most colourful rivalry, as Raja emphasised in an interview to this newspaper.

Cricket administrators cannot always keep passing the buck to politics and politicians. They should parley and push more aggressively to realise their visions. The four-member tournament is an ideal template — it’s not just India and Pakistan or Australia and England that share rivalries, since the turn of the decade, India and Australia, Pakistan and Australia too have fought intensely in series. Such a tournament has all the components for a blockbuster. Cricket should take a cue from other sports like tennis, which hosts annual year-ending tournaments featuring the top brass, or rugby, which has the premier four-nation tournament every year.



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Lookout notices are usually issued when a person accused of a cognisable offence is deliberately evading arrest, is likely to leave India to avoid it, or in exceptional cases, when an individual's departure is deemed detrimental to due process in the case.

Within the span of a week, look-out notices issued by law enforcement agencies were used, or misused, to stop two citizens from leaving the country for speaking engagements abroad. Both individuals challenged the circular in court, and the courts stepped in to right the wrong — the apparently illegal cramping of the fundamental right to travel abroad and to exercise the freedom of speech and expression. Journalist Rana Ayyub was cleared to travel abroad by Delhi High Court on Monday, subject to certain conditions, while for former chair of Amnesty International India Aakar Patel, stopped twice at Bengaluru airport from taking a flight to the US, the theatre of the bizarre goes on. This, after a Delhi court held on Thursday that the CBI must “immediately” drop the airport alert and hand over a written apology to him given the “mental harassment” he suffered, and for upholding “trust and confidence of the public in the premier institution”. The ostensible reason for restricting Ayyub and Patel were ongoing investigations by the ED and CBI for their alleged violations of foreign funding rules. But for both, the wider message sent out is chilling.

Lookout notices are usually issued when a person accused of a cognisable offence is deliberately evading arrest, is likely to leave India to avoid it, or in exceptional cases, when an individual’s departure is deemed detrimental to due process in the case. From available evidence, Patel and Ayyub have been cooperating with the investigating agencies. It would take conspiracy theorising of a very high order indeed to see the participation of either in seminars abroad as a national security risk. Incidentally, look-out notices have proved spectacularly unsuccessful against powerful industrialists who actually fled India — be it Vijay Mallya or Nirav Modi. In the past, the courts have also set a high bar for restricting the individual’s right to travel abroad. The Supreme Court in Maneka Gandhi versus Union of India (1978), for instance, held that it is included in the right to personal liberty: “The mere prescription of some kind of procedure cannot even meet the mandate of Article 21. The procedure described by law has to be fair, just and reasonable, not fanciful, oppressive or arbitrary”.

The restrictions sought to be imposed on Patel and Ayyub speak of a disturbing pattern. That renowned anthropologist from the UK, Filippo Osella, was deported on arrival at Thiruvananthapuram recently — the scholar on Kerala was to attend a conference on the state’s coastal communities — was also part of it. Episodes such as these only make the government look like a bully. It would be deluded if it sees them as shows of strength.



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The policy statement suggests that the MPC is on the path to change in its stance from accomodative to neutral, probably in its next meeting in June.

In its first meeting of the new financial year, the monetary policy committee (MPC) of the RBI chose to keep the benchmark repo rate unchanged at 4 per cent, while retaining its accomodative stance. However, there was a distinct shift in the tone of the policy. The central bank was more cautious in its assessment, with inflationary concerns dominating. Considering recent developments, this was to be expected. Moreover, the explicit normalisation of the effective policy corridor to pre-pandemic levels indicates a gradual but steady withdrawal of the extremely accommodative policies that the RBI had embarked upon in the early days of the pandemic.

Since the MPC’s last meeting in February, much has changed. While the third wave of the pandemic did recede without significant economic dislocation, the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, which began in the weeks thereafter, has muddied the country’s macroeconomic outlook. The sharp rise in commodity prices, crude oil in particular, has grave implications for India, which imports around 80 per cent of its oil requirements. Its effect is visible in the central bank’s assessment of the inflation trajectory and its growth outlook. The RBI has sharply raised its forecast for inflation to 5.7 per cent for 2022-23 from its earlier assessment of 4.5 per cent, which was made in the February policy. The forecast, which now assumes crude oil to average $100 per barrel, expects inflation at 6.3 per cent in the first quarter, and 5.8 per cent in the second quarter. However, considering that inflation is likely to average marginally above 6 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2021-22, the subsequent daily increase in petrol and diesel prices poses upside risks to these projections, increasing the likelihood of inflation breaching the upper threshold of the MPC’s inflation targeting framework for three consecutive quarters. This will further restrict the policy room to manouvere. On the growth front, the central bank has now lowered its forecast for this year to 7.2 per cent, down from its earlier assessment of 7.8 per cent. The quarter-wise breakup of this projection shows that the RBI now expects growth to average 11.2 per cent in the first half of the year, benefiting from the base effect, but slowing down thereafter to just above 4 per cent — in line with its pre-pandemic growth trajectory.

The policy statement suggests that the MPC is on the path to change in its stance from accomodative to neutral, probably in its next meeting in June. This is likely to be followed by multipe hikes in the benchmark repo rate through the course of the year. The pace of tightening will be determined by the trajectory of inflation.



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Sachin Chaturvedi writes: BIMSTEC summit has created mechanisms that can help the organisation fulfil its potential. It must step up to challenges of post-pandemic world

The celebrations to mark the 25th year of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) have been accompanied by the announcement of several new initiatives. The collective’s fifth summit that concluded in Colombo in the last week of March showcased member nations’ resolve to facilitate connectivity and security and enhance the prosperity of the region. The summit had three important outcomes: Expanding the grouping’s agenda, deepening cooperation between the member countries and planning systematically for consistency and coherence.

The Bay of Bengal Community was launched in 1997. But its charter, finalised last week, was more than two decades in the making. Almost all international organisations and regional groupings have charters to decide the frequencies of their meetings, modalities of programme delivery and the nature of engagement among partner countries. The 20-page document adopted at the fifth BIMSTEC Summit articulates the purpose, principles and legal standing of the organisation. It also delineates the process to admit new members – this requires the consensus of the members. A similar procedure will be adopted for increasing the number of observer countries of the organisation. The emphasis on consensus is important, given the sensitivities of the member countries. One important provision in the charter is to keep regular meetings on track and provide enough scope to the BIMSTEC Permanent Working Committee to keep the process energised.

The summit also succeeded in creating mechanisms to deepen cooperation. Amongst the important decisions is the one related to the BIMSTEC Master Plan for Transport Connectivity. The region requires seamless connectivity through multi-modal channels that improve links within and amongst the member countries.
These channels should be in sync with the regulatory frameworks of the member countries.

The council could also play a role in the projects being planned in the region. For instance, there are proposals to extend the trilateral highway project between Thailand, Myanmar and India to Laos and Cambodia. Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal have also evinced interest in the project. Digitisation has enhanced cooperation in customs regulations and facilitated and improved cargo clearance procedures. All this will surely enhance investment linkages and improve regional trade. The early completion of the regional free trade agreement could provide a fillip to the organisation’s efforts.

Similarly, the MoU for legal assistance in criminal matters and additional MoUs for mutual cooperation between diplomatic academics and training institutes would help in creating an ecosystem of deeper knowledge-related cooperation. The technology transfer facility proposed in Colombo is likely to augment these efforts.

The Summit evolved a systemic approach to streamline the evolution of BIMSTEC. Establishing an Eminent Persons’ Group (EPG) for formulating a vision document for the region will help in articulating the aspirations of the collective. EPGs have been quite useful in the EU and ASEAN. For instance, the ASEAN-India Eminent Persons Group (AIEPG) was constituted in 2005 after the Eighth ASEAN-India Summit. Its recommendations still guide the grouping’s work. In 2011, the EU constituted an EPG under former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer to suggest a roadmap to address the challenges arising from the resurgence of intolerance and discrimination in Europe. In 2018, the G-20 constituted an EPG led by Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam to recommend reforms at the international financial institutions to promote economic stability and sustainable growth.

The fourth BIMSTEC summit at Kathmandu launched measures to strengthen the collective’s secretariat. India has promised $1 million to set up a Secretariat in Dhaka. India has identified several other areas where it will support the collective. Delhi will provide a $3 million grant to the BIMSTEC Centre for Weather and Climate, promote collaboration between industries and start-ups, and launch programmes that will help in the adoption of international standards and norms. Delhi has also suggested a regional value chain based agricultural trade analysis – this will be conducted by the RIS. The Asian Development Bank and the New Delhi-based ICRIER have stewarded awareness programmes on trade facilitating measures in the member countries.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has rightly described BIMSTEC as an important instrument of connectivity, sustainability and prosperity. Extending the term of the Secretary-General would help in providing further stability to several of the collective’s initiatives.

The pandemic has created fresh challenges and aggravated old ones in the countries of the region, particularly Sri Lanka and Nepal. India’s support to these countries, especially in financial matters, could help in reducing undesirable external intervention in the region. The region that’s rife supply chain disruptions could well stave off further disruptions due to the efforts of the BIMSTEC.

Besides economic links, the Bay of Bengal countries share a cultural and civilisational legacy. The role of institutions like Nalanda University in promoting research on cultural and civilisational linkages and improving the adoption of sustainable practices would be equally significant.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 9, 2022 under the title ‘Bonds of the bay’. The writer is Director General, and Information System for Developing Countries



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Madhura Rasaratnam writes: Policies driven by Sinhala Buddhist nationalism, which have been the bedrock of the Rajapaksas' governance vision, are no longer financially or politically viable

Sri Lanka’s ruling Rajapaksa family is facing mounting public anger, calls for resignations and political defections amidst the island’s worst economic crisis in its post-independence history. The family’s fall from grace has been rapid and precipitous. In November 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa convincingly won the presidential election with just over 52 per cent of the vote. A few months later, an alliance led by his brother Mahinda (President of Sri Lanka between 2005 and 2015) won the parliamentary elections, securing almost 60 per cent of the vote.

The proximate reasons for these dramatic reversals are clear. The Rajapaksas have badly handled Sri Lanka’s twin crises of unsustainable commercial debt and an acute balance of payments shortfall. The latter was brought on by the Easter Sunday bombings and the Covid-19 pandemic, which together hammered foreign exchange earnings. These exogenous shocks would have tested the most competent of administrations, but the Rajapaksas made a series of unforced errors that have made a difficult situation unbearable.

First, there was the decision to ban fertiliser imports and switch overnight to organic farming. The decision was reversed after sustained farmer protests but not before damage had already been done to crop yields. Then, precious foreign exchange was wasted in propping up the rupee while imposing controls on key imports that led to shortages and price rise. For several months, as the crisis deepened with rolling power-cuts and shortages of essentials, the government refused to seek IMF assistance. It has now relented on the IMF, but Sri Lanka’s economic distress has been prolonged and deepened by this indecision.

While the immediate causes of popular anger are explicable, the crisis also reveals a more enduring contradiction at the foundation of Sri Lanka’s politics. The Rajapaksas’ electoral success stems from their uncompromising commitment to defending Sinhala Buddhist nationalism against domestic and international pressures. What this crisis shows is that Sinhala nationalist-inspired policies are no longer financially or politically viable.

The Rajapaksas first rode to power in September 2005 on the wave of Sinhala nationalist antipathy against the then-ongoing Norwegian-mediated peace process with the LTTE. Mahinda Rajapaksa channelled popular rage at the indignity of having to negotiate with the Tamils and of the dire threats the talks posed to national (read Sinhala Buddhist) security. Upon his election as president, Mahinda expanded the military and launched a full-frontal military offensive that ended with the LTTE’s total defeat and destruction in May 2009.

While the LTTE’s defeat was celebrated in the Sinhala south, the loss of Tamil civilian lives was immense. The UN estimates that 75,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final months and that the Sri Lankan military was culpable for war crimes and crimes against humanity. After the war, instead of seeking a political settlement with the Tamils, Mahinda Rajapaksa unrolled a de-facto militarised siege of the Tamil-speaking areas and population.

The hardline approach to the Tamils and their demands was also linked to a new, more assertive foreign policy. The government turned away the long-established pattern of alignments with Western states and India. The West was blamed for forcing Sri Lanka into negotiating with the LTTE in the first place, and then, for playing into the hated West-based Tamil diaspora’s agenda by pursuing accountability. The antipathy to the West grew as the US and allies pushed for accountability at the UN Human Rights Council.

There is a long-standing mistrust of India amongst Sinhala Buddhist nationalists who see it as the source of historic Tamil invasions. The Rajapaksas translated this sentiment into policy, pushing back against Indian attempts to forge closer economic ties and a constitutional settlement of the Tamil question. In place of these ties, the Rajapaksas ostentatiously set out to forge new alliances, principally with China, but also others who were seen as more respectful of national sovereignty.

Their new economic policies were also more in keeping with Sinhala nationalist sympathies. The government distanced itself from the overtly pro-market, liberalisation policies of previous administrations and went, instead, for infrastructure investment and a welfare-driven approach, funded in large part by bilateral and commercial market debt. The shift to commercial debt was in part due to Sri Lanka’s graduation to middle-income status, which limited access to concessional multilateral aid. It was also promoted by the Rajapaksas’ nationalism-inspired rejection of the conditionalities attached to multilateral aid, especially in post-conflict settings.

The tilt away from the market-led approach was not novel. Sri Lanka’s post-independence history has been marked by shifts from state-led to market-led and back. The novelty the Rajapaksas brought was the reliance on international commercial debt to fund public expenditure, including the vastly-expanded military. The commercial markets at the time were also willing to lend, buoyed by high levels of liquidity and low interest rates.

The Rajapaksas also bet on a new geo-political optimism. They believed that with China’s rise, Sri Lanka’s location on east-west trade lanes would become a prized asset. They were confident that in the global competition for power triggered by China’s rise, international actors would be compelled to seek Sri Lanka’s favour for fear of “losing” it to the other side. With this geo-political calculus in mind, they assuredly rebuffed Western and Indian demands.

The current crisis has tested the assumptions of the Rajapaksas’ programme to its limits and found it cruelly wanting. None of the great powers who were supposed to be competing for Sri Lanka’s favour have stepped up to offer a bailout, although the sums are quite small by global standards. The bid for total sovereign autonomy has crash-landed and yet the alternatives are also politically difficult. Going to the IMF will require concessions on human rights and good governance to secure preferential access to European markets. At the same time, Indian bilateral assistance has conditionalities on clearing controversial investments.

Painful as it is, the only possible silver lining is that the crisis can serve as a reality check for the Sinhala nationalist leadership and electorate. The model of economic and political governance they have pursued is unsustainable, and the alternatives must be faced. The most pressing of these is the demilitarisation and normalisation of relations with the Tamils and Muslims. Sinhala political attention can perhaps then be turned to the other pressing failures of governance that have brought Sri Lanka to this state.

The irony of Sri Lanka’s push for total sovereign autonomy is that it has given international actors more leverage than they had before. International actors who really want to help Sri Lanka should use this leverage to push for tangible and non-reversible changes in the treatment of Tamils and Muslims whatever leadership emerges in Colombo. The Rajapaksas may be the principal protagonists of this crisis but the underlying script they have followed is a Sinhala Buddhist one and until Sri Lanka finds a new script it cannot find peace or stability.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 9, 2022 under the title ‘How Colombo lost the plot’. The writer is associate professor Comparative Politics at City, University of London



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Govind Mohan writes: India’s connection to zero is known, but its contributions in many other fields are not celebrated

Albert Einstein is once said to have remarked, “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.” While many of us may know about zero and its connection to India, it remains a regrettable fact that India’s contribution, across not just mathematics but many fields, remains at times unattributed and at others, uncelebrated.

Our history as an independent nation is 75 years old but our civilisation is more than 5,000 years old. Needless to say, the contribution and achievements of India are many and what better occasion than the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav commemorating 75 years of independence to initiate a concentrated and focused effort in this direction.

“Dhara: An Ode to Indian Knowledge Systems” is the Ministry of Culture’s flagship initiative in this direction. It is conceptualised as a series of lecture demonstrations dedicated to specific areas of enquiry, highlighting India’s contribution and achievements across domains. Dhara embodies that idea of “continuous flow” of information and knowledge from one age to another, being adopted, questioned and evolved over time so that we not only move ahead to the next level of insights across various fields but do so on the back of the findings and deep understanding already available to us.

Endeavours connected to topics related to the ancient past often generate polarising responses due to a lack of credible and rigorous evidence. Our attempt at programme curation is mindful of the same and systemic efforts are being made to bring in academic scholars of the highest calibre to add rigorous reasoning and scientific credibility to these discussions. To put in perspective the richness of antiquity which has been crucial in the development of modern concepts, the following examples may be pondered upon.

It is impossible to imagine the advent of the modern world without the concepts of modern mathematics. But these concepts are not really modern. They were born in India several centuries ago. For the modern world, it was the Greek mathematician Archimedes who produced the first-known summation of an infinite series. However, it was used by Madhava (c 1,400 CE) to find the approximate value of pi (p). The Arabic numeral system owes its origins to the Bakhshali Manuscript, the first surviving reference of the Indian numeral system. This system was transmitted to the Arab world by around 800 CE and was popularised by the Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi and the philosopher Al-Kindi. From the Arab world, it was transmitted to Europe by around 1100 CE. It was Brahmagupta who established, way back in the 7th century CE, that “the product of a debt (negative number) and a fortune (positive number) is a debt (negative number)”. Similarly, be it the Fibonacci Series (ingenious work of Virahanka) or Pascal’s Triangle (Pingala’s Meru Prastara), ancient India’s contribution to modern
mathematics has been dominant and consistent.

Moving to another complex domain, that of the space sciences, Carl Sagan, a renowned American astrophysicist, astronomer, and astrobiologist, explained how the ancient cosmological ideas that were central to Hinduism form the basis of modern cosmology. He states, “The Hindu religion is the only faith dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths.” This is exactly what we know today as the theory of the multiverse.

We all know that India was a centre of trade; little is mentioned about India being a centre of manufacturing. The Damascus swords, with a high carbon content of 1.5-2.0 per cent and known to have the ability to cut even gauze kerchiefs, were made from Wootz steel in India. Till the 19th century, Wootz steel swords and daggers were made at centres such as Lahore, Amritsar, Agra, Jaipur, Gwalior, Tanjore, Mysore and Golconda. The Wootz steel with carbon nanotube structures continues to inspire researchers to this day. The manufacturing process was forcibly banned by the British in the mid-19th century; the art was lost. There are multiple such manufacturing capabilities that have been disappearing or being repackaged by other societies as their own. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship programme Make in India is a long-overdue step towards reviving our indigenous manufacturing capabilities.

One of the founding pillars of modern economics is the constant optimisation of risk and return, the fundamental thought which drives the theory of differential interest rate. While certain thought leaders in the West prohibited interest on borrowing (terming it a sin), ancient philosophers like Kautilya advocated interest rates that varied with risk. It is the treatise Sukraniti which explains the need to balance moral hazard and adverse selection issues between the borrower and the lender. It states that if the interest paid was more than double the principal, only the principal amount be paid back. The Sukraniti also emphasises the need to consider a household and not an individual as a unit of analysis.

India’s rich heritage comprises tangibles like architecture and intangibles like the wealth of knowledge. Our efforts through “Dhara: An Ode to Indian Knowledge Systems” are aimed at starting these conversations and debates and ensuring that our collective history of achievements does not stay forgotten in the folds of some withering manuscripts. We at the Ministry of Culture remain committed to spotlighting the myriad contributions of Indians across fields and to celebrate them as part of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 9, 2022 under the title ‘Heritage gets its due’. The writer is Secretary, Ministry of Culture, Government of India



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Yoginder K Alagh writes: When Rajiv Gandhi and Mikhail Gorbachev set up a joint Indo-Soviet group to reform their economies

In 1985, we were well into the domestic reform process. Compulsory governmental approval of all kinds of investment and output activity was being abolished. Controls were being replaced by taxation and tariffs. The removal of negative protection — the efficient domestic producer suffering because his “protected inputs” leading to cost disadvantages made him uncompetitive in financial terms with his competitor abroad — was releasing the energies of efficient Indian firms. The Bureau of Industrial Costs & Prices (BICP) under me produced DRC industry level estimates separately of such producers. Firms which were marginally uncompetitive were given notice to shape up in three years time. Despite moving from controls to a reform process, industrial growth rates were high.

The prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, went to Moscow. It was a friendly environment. Mikhail Gorbachev was attempting Perestroika (economic reform) in addition to Glasnost (political liberalisation). Rajiv, at the spur of the moment, said: “Mr First Secretary, you are pushing reform and so are we. Why don’t we cooperate in this process.” Gorbachev jumped at the idea and a joint Indo-Soviet group was set up with me as its Indian chair and a member of the GOSPLAN (the state planning committee), an electronic engineer trained in the US, as the Soviet Chair.

I was told by the PMO to get cracking. I was aghast. We were well into reform. The last thing we wanted was bilateral exchange based trade. They told me I have no options. Clenching my teeth, working on second best options, I wrote to all the ministries. Check your list of projects not sanctioned but is of priority to you, and where you think the Soviets are doing well. If you are still interested, send the detailed proposal to me. I got back a list which, three to four decades later, is still relevant. The newer variant of the VVER reactor for producing nuclear power (the older version had failed in Chernobyl), rock blasting to get irrigation channels through mountains (from the Hirakud dam to the prosperous coastal plains in Orissa), mining deep water underground water reserves (like the Luni deposit in Rajasthan, which is a river trapped 700 meters below) and similar projects.

Moscow, here I come. Satyen Pitroda, who was a neighbour of my wife Raksha in Vadodara, was chairman, C DOT. He had given his name as Sam Pitroda. I asked him if he would like to join. Even though we both held the rank of minister of state in the government, I was the Indian Chair of this group. He readily agreed.

On the Air India flight to Moscow, he bought a lot of gifts. I told him he is breaking the exchange laws of India. In any case, we are carrying gifts.

He said, “Yogi, you know I have dollars.”

I told him: “Satu, you can use your dollars only if you repatriate them.”

He ignored my advice. After the government changed, he was persecuted by central agencies for using his own money for a national cause. He had to undergo a cardiac operation.

In Moscow, Kaul saheb (T N Kaul) was the ambassador. My discussions went on famously. In the return banquet, Kaul saheb agreed that we should invite all the men I had met. These were technocrats, the man who was completing the Siberian Railway, the man who led the teams to modernise steel and machinery industries and so on.

The small lane in Moscow that housed Ashoka Restaurant was full of cars with red lights and sirens. The dinner was a great success. But in the years to come, I met these men in Delhi and Moscow. I could see them wilting under the pressure. The Gorbachev regime had not worked out the details. Anyway, my Soviet counterpart took us to Kiev and Leningrad. In Leningrad, now back in its historical glory, we heard the story of the Soviets dismantling the palace of the Czars, stone by stone, as the Nazis advanced, taking it to Russia and rebuilding it after the War.

History repeats itself, but the second time as a farce, as Marx wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

The writer is an economist and a former Union minister



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Saugata Bhattacharya writes: The priority for monetary policy now is inflation, growth and financial stability, in that order. This is a reversal of the earlier priority.

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) gave a surprise, with a formal start to policy normalisation. This was contrary to the predominant market expectations of a hold. The RBI reinforced the de facto normalisation, which had already started in November 2021. The Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF) corridor was narrowed back to the conventional 0.25 percentage points from the earlier extraordinary pandemic widening in late March 2020. But with a twist. The cap of the erstwhile corridor was the repo rate and the floor was the reverse repo. Now, while the repo rate was held at 4.0 per cent and the latter at 3.35 per cent, the floor of the corridor was increased by 0.4 percentage points from 3.35 per cent. The de facto operative floor is now the rate of the new Standing Deposit Facility (SDF) at 3.75 per cent.

There was also a change in the monetary policy orientation, of which the stance is one component. The priority for monetary policy now is inflation, growth and financial stability, in that order. This is a reversal of the earlier priority. This has entailed a change in guidance on the policy stance as well. While the MPC voted unanimously to remain accommodative, in a change of language, the focus would now be on “withdrawal of accommodation to ensure that (CPI) inflation remains within the target (of 4 per cent +/- 2 per cent) going forward”. Remember, the RBI had become a (flexible) inflation-targeting central bank since FY17, whose primary objective is price stability, that is, inflation management.

These measures are still mostly normalising policy from the extraordinarily accommodative crisis measures back to pre-Covid levels. Actual policy tightening will begin with the first hike in the policy repo rate, which we now think will start sooner than our earlier expectation of around October 2022. In the interim, policy actions will focus on the management of system liquidity, which is currently at an (uncomfortable) surplus of Rs 8 lakh crore.

The likely reasoning for the unexpected tightening is as follows. Despite uncertainty over growth impulses and demand concentrated at the upper-income level households, inflation has increasingly emerged as a big concern. Unlike previous episodes of high crude oil prices, prices are now elevated across the board — gas, metals, minerals, commodities, food, gold, etc. This is likely to add to sustained price pressures, even after a cessation of hostilities. The RBI revised its FY23 CPI inflation forecast from 4.5 per cent (with balanced risks) in early February to 5.7 per cent, with a caution that extreme volatility and uncertainty make forecasting fraught with risk. Persisting high inflation increasingly suggests that consumer demand might actually be stronger than earlier anticipated. In addition, the RBI’s CPI inflation forecasts for the first two quarters of FY23 are 6.3 per cent and 5.8 per cent. Given that inflation is likely to average 6.1 per cent in Q4 of FY22, this increases the risk of inflation remaining above the 6 per cent upper target for three consecutive quarters, necessitating an explanation to the government by the MPC. One comforting aspect of this scenario is that household inflation expectations remain anchored, with the median of three months to one year ahead expectations (as of March ’22) rising by only 0.1 percentage points from the earlier January readings.

On demand conditions, the RBI scaled-down the FY23 real GDP growth projection to 7.2 per cent (from 7.8 per cent), indicating that a combination of continuing supply dislocations, slowing global economy and trade, high prices and financial markets volatility are likely to take a toll. Yet, there remains a point of ambiguity. RBI surveys indicate that manufacturing capacity utilisation (CU) was 72.4 per cent as of December 2021, up from 68 per cent in September. Despite the mild restrictions in Q4 FY22, this is likely to have gone up even further. Anecdotal evidence supports a narrative of tight capacities in many manufacturing sectors. One possible reconciliation with modest GDP growth is continuing weakness in services, which is also borne out by channel checks. Certainly, continuing high inflation is likely to lead to some demand destruction, which will act as, in economist parlance, an automatic stabiliser. A relatively loose fiscal policy is likely to offset some of this reduced demand, particularly with continuing subsidies to lower-income households.

The third priority is financial stability. This has multiple dimensions – interest and foreign exchange rates, market volatility, banking sector asset stress, and so on. An important objective for the RBI is the management of money supply and system liquidity. In a rising rate cycle, with a large borrowing programme of the Centre and state governments, interest rates on sovereign bonds are likely to increase without a measure of support from the RBI through Open Market Operations (OMOs). This will entail injecting more liquidity into an already large surplus, which might add to inflationary pressures. The introduction of the overnight Standing Deposit Facility (SDF) was a significant measure in this context. Unlike the reverse repo facility, this is an uncollateralised tool for absorbing surplus liquidity. The RBI will not need to give banks government bonds as collateral against the funds they deposit. This is thus a more flexible instrument should a shortage of government bonds in RBI holdings actually transpire under some eventuality, say the need to absorb large capital inflows post a bond index inclusion.

What are the implications of monetary policy tightening? First, interest rates will begin to increase but, for bank borrowers, this is likely to be a very gradual process. For corporates and other wholesale borrowers, who also borrow from bond markets, this increase is likely to be faster as the surplus system liquidity is gradually drained. Interest rates on bank credit will begin to rise faster once the repo rate hikes begin, since around 40 per cent of bank loans are now linked to external benchmarks (like the repo rate). How this is likely to affect demand for credit is uncertain, given the capex push of the government, some revival of private sector investment and likely continuing demand for housing.

What might be the sequence for continuing tightening? Any exit strategy following periods of extraordinary countercyclical responses presents difficult choices for monetary policy normalisation. This cycle will present a particularly difficult mix of economic and financial trade-offs, but RBI has demonstrated the ability to innovatively use the multiple instruments at its disposal to ensure an orderly transition.

This column first appeared in the print edition on April 9, 2022 under the title ‘Starting to pinch’. The writer is executive vice-president and chief economist, Axis Bank. Views are personal



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GoI’s decision to allow adults over 18 who received their second doses over nine months ago to get ‘precaution doses’ at private vaccination centres is welcome. Scientific studies have repeatedly asserted how immunity after infection and vaccination wanes over time. With citizens returning to workplaces a booster is both protection and peace of mind, especially with dilution of mask mandates. Uncontrolled European and East Asian surges also serve as warning. Plus India has a significant proportion of adults with comorbidities and comorbidities are catching adults younger.

Boosters will protect this vulnerable section, reduce Covid ferocity and keep the economy running. Therefore boosters should be extended to government vaccination centres with their greater reach. Many working in contact-intensive industries don’t have the wherewithal to pay Rs 600 and upwards for a jab. GoI’s expenditure on double-dosing 75% of the adult population till mid-February was just 1% of last year’s budgeted expenditure. Now a single-shot booster in a more competitive vaccine market having cheaper jabs will allow GoI to make bulk purchases at even lower prices, perhaps requiring not even 0.5% of this year’s budgetary outlay. Economic and health setbacks of a virus rebound would, in contrast, hit GDP harder.

Studies have indicated that a different booster increases protection for those double-dosed with viral vector and inactivated vaccines. Other than the CMC Vellore study on Covaxin-Covishield cleared last September, phase-3 trials on boosting with Biological E’s Corbevax and Bharat Biotech’s intranasal vaccine went ahead only by January, and with Covovax in March. The Vellore study should enable Covaxin recipients to get a Covishield booster. Meanwhile, UK studies on using Covovax to boost Covishield recipients are available. With the vaccine bouquet growing, including a potential mRNA vaccine, mix-and-match boosters are the way to go. GoI must shift course, sooner rather than later.



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Indians do have a sense of black humour. A couple in Tamil Nadu received a bottle each of petrol and diesel as wedding presents. Presumably, the 14 hikes in the retail price of petrol over the last 17 days influenced the choice. An article in this paper has shown that in terms of purchasing power parity, India’s retail petrol is the third highest in the world at $5.2 a litre. In the case of LPG, India’s price of $3.5 a litre is the costliest in the world.

Prices need to be seen in context. India’s retail price of petrol comes to 23.5% of average daily earnings. This level significantly shrinks the disposable income of a large section of the population. No one is left untouched as fuel prices feed into other items and push up the general price level. Are prices in India high only because of rising international crude prices? No, that’s just a part of the story. The increase in central taxes on petrol and diesel is a key factor. Central tax on petrol was Rs 22.98 a litre just before the pandemic struck. Today, it’s Rs 27.90 a litre, after Rs 5 reduction in November.

RBI yesterday marked down India’s GDP forecast for 2022-23 to 7.2% from the 7.8% it expected in February. In this backdrop, GoI should ease the burden by slashing fuel taxes. That will brighten economic prospects.

 



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A host of factors have contributed to the current economic crisis in Sri Lanka, most of which have been debated and analysed in detail by several commentators. Though the current government is being blamed for the crisis, especially the leadership of the Mahinda Rajapaksa clan, the crisis has been created by unfair policies followed by previous Lankan governments.

India’s Neighbourhood First policy has been operationalised and actualised with an immediacy that has drawn praises from all quarters. By extending a line of credit for procuring basic supplies, dispatching fuel supplies and arranging for a currency swap, India has stepped up to its role as a friendly and responsible neighbour. Being a first responder, India’s actions are being seen in opposition to the almost cold and calculated way that China has responded to the crisis. 

As of date, Sri Lanka’s request for a $2.6 billion loan has not been responded to very favourably by Beijing. As per some, if a loan is extended, a significant chunk will be used to service previous loans by China, ensuring that Colombo remains obliged to circle China’s orbit for a long time. In this scenario, a Chennai-Colombo corridor – for closer people-people relations and rejuvenating the free trade agreement between the two countries – can be seen as providing a means to create unbreakable linkages between the two nations on a mutually beneficial basis. Details and justification of this proposed corridor are laid out in the succeeding paragraphs.

India's engagement with Sri Lanka

While close cultural ties exist between both nations since time immemorial, the current connection needs a fresh look as ties have been marred by an era of confusion and a blow-hot-blow-cold relationship. The last three decades have been a rollercoaster with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), fishermen and Tamils at the centre of politics. Due to this, China has gained a foothold in the island nation with a debt trap used for leasing the strategic Hambantota port for 99 years and inching uncomfortably closer to India’s core strategic interests.

The failure of the accord between the Sri Lankan government and LTTE and later involvement of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), which led to several civilian deaths and Indian soldiers killed and wounded, created bad blood between the two countries. IPKF suffered about 1,165 persons killed in action with more than 3,000 wounded. 

India's concerns for the Tamil minority also underwent a major upheaval after the assassination of a former Indian prime minister. While India facilitated the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution, devolving more powers to the Tamil population in the north and east, its pending implementation has continued to widen a rift between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil population.

India has also shied away from strategic involvement in Sri Lanka. In fact, except for Indian Oil, there has hardly been any major investment from the Indian government directly, though the private industry-led engagement has taken place. On the one hand, Sri Lanka tried to get the best of both worlds by playing India and China against each other. On the other, China was playing its own game in obtaining a 99-year lease in Hambantota and Colombo Port City project. 

India only recently moved to strongly protest prospective Chinese projects on three islets in the northern portion of Sri Lanka, which were later awarded to Indian companies. With Sri Lanka slipping into an unprecedented crisis, a new level of relationship needs to be established between India and Sri Lanka. The establishment of a Chennai-Colombo corridor is one of these mechanisms.

A Chennai-Colombo corridor

The proposal of a Chennai-Colombo corridor is not related to the existing connectivity options but looks at the dynamics of Indo-Sri Lankan relations to forge a new connection between both countries.

Instead of a geographic entity, it is an idea whose time has come. A connection on similar lines existed between these cities when tickets purchased at either location were valid for the entire journey. The operationalisation of this corridor will establish a link with the entire Sri Lankan population. While the distance between the borders is merely 24 km away between Dhanushkoti (India) and Thalaimannar (Sri Lanka), it is recommended to be used besides other available means of communication. Chennai-Colombo connectivity could herald a new mass surface means of communication in addition to air connectivity.

The surface communication can utilise a mix of rail, road and ship communication to ensure seamless communication between these two locations. And while travelling on say, a bus, the vehicle can be loaded onto ships and offloaded onto the destination without passengers needing to disembark even once. A similar model is followed on Mekong Ganga while travelling from Vietnam to Cambodia. 

While stretches here will be long, resources in the form of heavy travel ships exist. Tickets purchased in Colombo should be valid on all modes of transport till Chennai and vice versa. We already have visa-free travel between India and Nepal and a similar arrangement can exist for movement through the Chennai-Colombo corridor. Passports certified for work/travel should be adequate to address some of our national concerns. Fears of demographic inversion and associated concerns should be addressed by ensuring adequate checks and balances. 

Sri Lankans travelling on this corridor can be encouraged to use the Indian rupee for their expenses besides adopting mutual currency usage in all expenditures whether personal or institutional. This corridor can allow free trade without any duty for the products manufactured in both the countries with the special exclusion of third party/country products. Basic facilities related to food, clothing, shelter and medicine can and must be extended to each other on favourable terms. Contractual jobs in skill deficit areas should be allowed.

The proposal can be further fine-tuned after examining the same in detail and study of both nations from a population perspective. An exit strategy from Chinese engagement in Hambantota and Colombo Port city project should be operationalised and Indo-Sri Lanka linkages should be taken to next level.

Irrespective of their conflict position during the World Wars, most European countries have coalesced into a Union for the larger good of their population. A similar model can be put in place in South Asia with India as the hub. The Sri Lankan crisis can act as a catalyst to embark on this path wherein the Chennai-Colombo corridor can be one of many options.

Maj Gen Ashok Kumar, VSM (Retd) is a Kargil war veteran and defence analyst. He is visiting fellow of CLAWS and specialises in neighbouring countries with a special focus on China

The views expressed are personal



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The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which wields considerable influence on national policymaking and conversation, recently commented that raising the legal age of marriage for girls should be left to society, referring to a proposed legislation to raise the minimum age for marriage for women from 18 to 21 years.

Such perspectives revive the debate on the law’s role in social change – a debate that has raged since at least World War II, when the use of legislation as a tool of social engineering gained attention.

Classical social theorists such as Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx viewed the law as a diverse and subjective concept, having a multiplicity and complexity along with an interconnectedness to social life. The emergence of welfare States and welfarism further affirmed this. This trend accelerated in the postmodern era, when noted socio-legal theorist Philip Selznick observed that “modern law has become increasingly responsive to society’s needs”.

Opposing views also existed, where the law was considered a product of society and only changed when social demands changed. German philosopher Jurgen Habermas considered the law’s intrusion in everyday life “a curtailment of individual autonomy”, and said that welfarism had resulted in the colonisation of life, casting a “tighter net of legal norms on individual’s life”. W Friedman, a German-American legal scholar, also underlined the ways in which laws were crafted at the time, noting that if a piece of legislation was made by the choice of only a small group of individuals, it was bound to fail.

Feminist theory injected a new dimension into this debate. Feminist philosophers of law such as Catherine MacKinnon and Martha Minow criticised the conceptualisation of rule of law in terms of coherence and consistency, saying that it only reinforced the status quo, legitimised existing power relations, and perpetuated sexist socialisation through a systemic bias.

Which argument is more plausible? In India, two current issues offer themselves as touchstones.

One is the issue of raising the minimum marriageable age of women. The government argues that amending the existing Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 will prevent underage marriages, and, consequently, accrue better health, educational and nutritional outcomes for girls. But many experts say this is flawed, because it doesn’t take into account social realities. Oxfam India, for example, said the law will end up being counterproductive, if the factors that drive families to resort to such social practices, especially, the disadvantaged ones, are not addressed.

The second issue is the criminalisation of marital rape, which is being adjudicated in the Delhi High Court at present. From a legal point of view, many have opposed it, contending that it will be grossly misused, and that it will be a difficult task to establish burden of proof. But women legal activists argue that since any law is open to misuse, it cannot be a logical deterrent to the enactment of a valid legislation. They point out that successive National Family Health Surveys have revealed increasing incidents of spousal violence and say that it is more important to see whether women will be able to get over the traditional mindset and file complaints against their erring husbands.

In India, using the law to advance social change has been a political consensus since Independence. Several pro-women legislations have been drafted to act as norm-setters and accelerate social change, but with mixed results. Flavia Agnes, a feminist legal activist, for example, said that “laws, old and new, are, more or less, structured to operate against women’’. Poonam Muttreja, a public policy expert, also feels that for a law to succeed in its purpose, more practical ways should be adopted to enhance women’s agency, autonomy, along with efforts in capacity-building in education and employment.

The bottom line is that Indian society can transition to a gender-just society with the new ideas of liberalism, only if an enabling societal environment is nurtured. The Indian legal system, going beyond the law’s instrumentalist attitude, can then become more responsive to social reasoning for equality and empowerment.

Archana Datta is former director-general, Doordarshan, and All India Radio; and former press secretary, President of India 

The views expressed are personal



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The war in Ukraine, or as Russian President Vladimir Putin puts it, “the special military operation” is well into its second month, but there is no sign of any end. Many are talking about the possibility of it dragging on for years. The recent pictures of streets littered with the bodies of civilians shot by Russian soldiers in the Ukrainian city Bucha led to Russia being suspended by 93 votes against 24 from the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council.

This is the first time a permanent member of the Security Council has been suspended from a UN body and surely must add to the pressure on Putin to end the war quickly. He has already suffered a major setback. Either mislead by his intelligence sources or blinded by his mistaken faith in the demonstration of military might, he believed that the Ukrainian government would collapse when the Russian soldiers crossed its borders and started bombing its cities.

But the Russian advance on Kyiv failed. It is still not clear why. The Ukrainian resistance was far stronger than Russia had expected. There were also reports of faulty equipment, bad planning, and the ineptitude of national service soldiers, their lack of training and esprit de corps.

The soldiers intended to capture Kyiv have now been withdrawn and are believed to be regrouping for a massive attack on East Ukraine. People who claim to know Putin well say that he will never accept any end of the war which he cannot see as a victory and sell it as such to the Russians.

So, his intention could well be to establish Russian control over the whole of the Donbas region of Ukraine. Russian-backed separatists have been fighting there for seven years. He could indeed be intending to use the same tactics he used in Chechnya, carpet bombing the cities to end the separatist movement there. But he will want that to happen quickly for fear that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) sanctions will cripple Russia’s economy, have a dire impact on everyday life, and create social unrest among his people. American President, Joe Biden, who has been the cheerleader of NATO, must also be deeply concerned. For him, a successful end to the Ukraine war would be the end of the Putin regime.

Although the unity of NATO is intact so far, there are signs that it is cracking. Despite the warning that the United States (US) deputy national security advisor Dalip Singh gave when he visited India, Germany is not all that happy about Biden’s proposal to block all supplies of Russian energy. Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary, who has just been re-elected for a fourth term, is close to Putin and signed an energy deal with him when he visited Moscow shortly before the invasion. He opposes the even tougher sanctions that NATO secretaries are discussing.

So, it looks as though Putin needs to, at the very least, win control of Donbas to end the war, while Biden needs the sanctions to bring him down before he achieves that objective.

Where does India fit in? So far, it has trodden a narrow path. It has abstained from voting on the UN initiatives, but expressed deep concern about the war. Narendra Modi, like Orban, has a good personal relationship with Putin. He has also brought India closer to the US and signed the declaration to defend democracy at last summer’s British G7 Summit. Since the war started, leaders from Russia and NATO have visited India, indicating its importance. So far, however, there is no sign of India playing a role in the Ukraine war beyond maintaining its neutrality.

However, is it beyond the bounds of possibility that Modi would attempt to find an agreement acceptable to both sides and persuade both of them to agree to it? Or is that impossible because both sides are fighting to win?

The views expressed are personal



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The pandemic was a great opportunity to read but, sadly, many books published during those dark days haven’t got the attention they deserve. Avtar Singh Bhasin’s Nehru, Tibet and China is a prime example. It raises disturbing questions about India’s stand on both the eastern and western border with China and suggests Jawaharlal Nehru’s handling of this issue was almost irresponsible. After 30 years as head of the historical division of the ministry of external affairs, Bhasin’s arguments are difficult to dispute, particularly when he’s corralled a mass of facts in support. Let me, briefly, share what he reveals.

From British times till 1954, Survey of India maps showed the western border as undefined. When Nehru decided a firm boundary must be marked, he chose to unilaterally include the whole of Aksai Chin without any reason for believing the Chinese would accept. Two former foreign secretaries demurred. RK Nehru said, “Our experts had advised us that our claim to Aksai Chin was not too strong.” Subimal Dutt said the western boundary was not “properly delimited”. However, Nehru insisted the boundary is “defined chiefly by long usage and custom”. Bhasin reveals that there was no proof of this.

Worse, after claiming Aksai Chin, India failed to assert its presence. Bhasin writes, “India even after having altered the border in 1954 had taken no steps to establish its military, political or administrative presence in the area … no check-post had been set up; no flag was unfurled to announce its sovereignty. India thought that merely drawing a line on the map was enough to announce its ownership.”

Worst of all, China built a 120-km road and during the seven years this was happening, India was unaware of its existence. In 1957, when India found out, the protest was only informal. More bizarrely, it complained the Chinese men who built the road had not obtained Indian visas! Then, almost ludicrously, New Delhi asked for Chinese help in locating Indians who had gone missing on patrol duty. When the Chinese said they would deport them, India’s response was further damaging, “The question whether this particular area is in Indian or Chinese territory is a matter in dispute which is to be dealt with separately”. That confirmed doubts about India’s Aksai Chin claim.

Now, the eastern border. Here India’s claim is based on the validity of the 1914 McMahon Line. China, however, was not a party to the Simla Convention and never accepted this line. That’s true of both the Kuomintang and Communist governments. Nehru knew this. In 1935, McMahon himself questioned the 1914 Line. He called it a “verbal definition of the boundaries between Tibet and India”. Bhasin says this means the McMahon Line was drawn “on a map without surveys and was not delineated… it needed to be surveyed, delineated and demarcated”.

Here four facts are important. First, the British never occupied all the territory between the north-eastern border of that time and the McMahon Line. Second, Tibet remained in the occupation of Tawang even though, according to McMahon, it was part of India. Third, Tibet wanted the McMahon Line adjusted to return “indisputable Tibetan territories that had been included in India”. Fourth, the British indicated a willingness to do this. Doesn’t this suggest the McMahon Line wasn’t sacrosanct?

In fact, Tawang remained in Tibetan hands till 1951. India only occupied it after Tibet began to fall under Chinese control, because if Tawang remained Tibetan, it would become Chinese and, as Bhasin puts it, India’s border “would come down to the plains of Assam”.

Finally, Bhasin’s conclusion: “The Prime Minister had taken a simplistic view of the frontiers… Nehru’s insistence that India’s borders were what they were, maps or no maps, was unsustainable and proved disastrous for him and the nation.” These are deeply disturbing findings and they clearly question the validity of India’s stand on both borders. If Bhasin is wrong, he should be challenged. If he’s right, we need to come to terms with the truth.

Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story 

The views expressed are personal



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A number of Indian strategists and former officials have protested the vigorous United States (US) confrontation of Russia through punishing sanctions and continuous military support for Ukraine as a blunder, one that will ultimately boomerang and set back both Indian and US security interests.

There are three assumptions in these assessments: That this confrontation is one of choice rather than necessity; that China will emerge as the clear victor; and, that the US entangled in Europe will be distracted from the Indo-Pacific. All these assumptions do not hold up under close scrutiny.

First, there should be no illusions that Vladimir Putin initiated this war; war was not “forced” on Russia. After Kyiv refused to capitulate to militarised coercion, Russia invaded Ukraine with intentions of territorial conquest, political subjugation, and possibly even mass executions of civilians as witnessed in Bucha. While condemnations of US punishment of Russia imply the US chose this confrontation out of revenge, the US was compelled to respond to such a brazen invasion of a sovereign country bordering its treaty allies.

We can debate whether decades of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion contributed to Russian insecurity or revanchism. I have been sceptical of NATO’s membership action plan invitations to Georgia and Ukraine since I attended the sidelines of the 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest. Nevertheless, these explanations for Russia’s insecurity do not excuse its aggression today.

After Putin chose to invade a sovereign nation, Washington had no choice but to coordinate with allies, supply Ukraine with weapons to defeat Russian military advances, and bring the financial hammer down on Moscow. The stakes were no longer just Ukraine or Europe but setting a precedent for what other would-be aggressors (like China) would face should they invade a neighbour (like India).

A second myth is that China will be the big beneficiary of this war with cheap Russian commodities, the yuan’s growing influence as a reserve currency, and deepened defence cooperation with one of the leading military powers. While Russia and China are well on their way to tighter strategic alignment, India has hoped to drive a wedge between the two, but has yet to articulate a compelling strategy on how to do so. The war in Ukraine, however, may generate the very friction between Russia and China that India has long desired. China analysts assess Beijing got “played” by Russia to look like an accomplice. US intelligence officials believe Xi Jinping has been “unsettled” by Russia’s struggles. China is walking a fine line with abstentions at the United Nations, compliance with some financial and technology sanctions, and thinly veiled criticisms regarding sovereignty.

Russia’s request for assistance places China in a bind. If China backs Russia’s brutal campaign — especially with military assistance — it will face economic consequences and new technology denials from advanced, industrial Europe and Asia coalescing even more tightly against China. If it abandons Moscow, it will lose a prized ally and forfeit any future quasi-allies from Pakistan to Myanmar that learn that China can’t be counted on.

More importantly, Russia seems likely to emerge from this conflict a much-depleted partner bordering on a liability for China. Russia has fared abysmally and lost a staggering amount of manpower and material in a few short weeks with little to show for it. The Pentagon estimates Russia only retains 85-90% of its preassembled combat power and has suffered significant losses –10,000 regular troops killed, another 30,000 wounded, missing, or taken prisoner, 10% of its equipment lost, and over 1,450 missiles expended.

Russia’s ability to “reload” will be severely constrained by a depleted economy, financial sanctions, technology denial regimes, depressed demographics, and brain drain. Russian military power—including training, morale, and equipment—has been exposed to be hollow. In short, China can no longer count on a depleted Russia to create a “simultaneity dilemma” for the US that forces it to divide its attention, planning, and resources between Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Whether bogged down in Ukraine or able to find a face-saving exit, Russia will be a spent force, far less intimidating to a rejuvenated, hard-balancing Europe ready to assume greater defence responsibility in NATO.

China will also be sobered by the consequences of invasion and disabused of the ease of major military offensives. The Ukrainians have provided a resistance blueprint for any targets of Chinese aggression (including India) on how to defeat an offensive through the stockpiling of small, cheap asymmetric capabilities like air defence and anti-tank missiles, drones, and mines. Taiwan is already taking notice and adopting lessons.

China must note how the US, Europe, and East Asia allies quickly unified politically, reversed course on previous policies (such as gas pipelines, defence spending, or weapons sales), coordinated crippling financial and technology sanctions (which also builds the foundation for a technology coalition to counter China), and helped tilt a conflict with security assistance, training, weapons, and intelligence.

Fears that efforts to back Ukraine against Russian aggression will entangle US strategy in Europe and distract it from its priority theatre of the Indo-Pacific are unfounded. Even in the throes of the crisis, the US remained focused on Asia with a steady stream of senior official visits to the region, a Quad leaders meeting, a renewed Indo-Pacific strategy, a National Defence Strategy that prioritises China, and significant progress on AUKUS to bolster Australia’s advanced defence capabilities.

That the Biden administration has carefully resisted calls for no-fly zones, fighter jet transfers, or special operations trainers that could entrap it in an escalating conflict provides an important signal to Asia. Even while demonstrating resolve with enormous amounts of materiel, intelligence, and diplomatic and financial pressure, the US has avoided getting drawn into a direct war with Russia to husband its resources for the bigger challenge in the Indo-Pacific.

Moreover, Ukrainian defences have applications for the Indo-Pacific. They set precedents for the kinds of retaliation and interdiction the US, its allies, and its partners can marshal against any aggressor who tries to change borders by military force. Most importantly, the confrontation with Russia is finally inducing Europe to assume a larger role in ensuring stability in Eurasia. Since the war, European heavyweights, most notably Germany, have begun to unwind their vulnerability to Russian energy coercion while building up their militaries. The news that more rich, high-technology states are on pace to join NATO, doubling defence spending, and advanced fighter aircraft purchases signal a Europe ready to assume a larger burden of its own security, freeing the US to concentrate power in the Indo-Pacific.

Condemnations of the West may be smokescreens for the stress of geopolitical turbulence felt since Russia’s invasion. The war may presage a return to Cold War blocs rather than the freewheeling multipolarity that would afford India more manoeuvre room. New Delhi will have to confront hard choices about the reliability of its partnership with Russia, the effectiveness of its largely Russian-origin force structure, and how to navigate new sanctions and export controls regimes without alienating Europe and America.

But these challenges should not obscure new realities and opportunities. Transatlantic partnerships are re-energising. Europe is hardening. Russia is staggering. China’s military optimism is likely moderating. And the US continues enhancing deterrence in the Indo-Pacific around reliable partners. Most of these work in India’s interest.

Sameer Lalwani is a senior fellow at the Stimson Center and a non-resident fellow with George Washington University’s Sigur Center for Asian Studies 

The views expressed are personal



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And ask from whence these waters came?

Did you stare at the wooded mountains

And ask if a Creator was to blame?

Or did you accept that day and night

That sand and sea, disease and blight

Were part of His eternal game?”

 

— From Kabhi Kabhi Merey Ghar Mey Polees Aa Jaatha Hai, by Bachchoo

The British government intends to privatise the nationally-owned television station Channel 4. Yes, gentle reader, you are entitled to ask why the readers of this column need to know about this. You may not have even heard of Channel 4. Allow me to say that this proposal raises an issue of profound importance in our world. Bear with me while I tell you how.

I will begin by saying why I feel personally aggrieved over this move. I was a commissioning editor at Channel 4 between 1984 and 1997, and wrote several programmes for the channel before and during that time. This mooted privatisation is not a transfer from the State to capitalists.

Channel 4 is not owned by the State but is a national institution initiated by an Act of Parliament in the early 1980s with a brief to bring to broadcast television the voices, subjects, dimensions, attitudes and movements which were not represented by the duopoly of the BBC and the Independent Television network (ITV).

It avidly and rapidly established itself as the voice of critical, even impertinent, free speech.

The previous decades had given rise to social voices unrepresented on the established channels: the women’s movement, the movement of the new communities living in Britain — West Indian, African and subcontinental — gay people and the disabled.

Apart from these thus-far-unrepresented groups, Channel 4 set itself the task of bold investigative reporting, critical of the government and all institutions. It was one of the instruments of nationwide free speech. In addition, in keeping with its “minority” remit, it introduced hitherto unrepresented sports such as American football and, yes, Indian kabbadi, to the nation.

Indian readers must know Channel 4 programmes such as the situation comedy Tandoori Nights starring Syed Jaffrey, Mira Nair’s films Salaam Bombay and Kama Sutra, Shekhar Kapoor’s Bandit Queen and Gurinder Chadda’s Football Shootball (originally in English called Bend it Like Beckham).

By the late 1990s, the movements which Channel 4 had championed in its initial pioneering years were no longer new and had gone some way to becoming established. The other phenomenon which radically changed the necessities, policies and commissioning of Channel 4 was the proliferation of commercial TV channels. Channel 4, a unique non-profit organisation which existed by selling its own advertisement spaces and ploughing the money back into programming, was compelled to compete. It began chasing viewing figures and in that pursuit the remit was “reinterpreted” to mean anything that would get bums on seats — or eyeballs to screens. (I must say that I had left for pastures new by the time this “deterioration” set in — without claiming, I insist, that my departure was not the principal cause of the decline in standards!)

The two impediments to absolute free speech in the media are State control and commercialism. Commercial outlets — newspapers owned by tycoons, channels owned by those who, for one reason or the other, dare not speak truth or defiance to authority or oppose, advertise and expose the capitalist feints and deceptions of “free enterprise”. Think here of the Russian oligarchs who have stakes in television stations and national newspapers. Or think of the criminal behaviour of the newspapers under Rupert Murdoch’s control.

State ownership or control of every media outlet with the enforced closure of all critical voices has, in Russia, led to the shameful fabrication of news to the point of demonstrating through fake footage that the holocaust Vladimir Putin’s regime is carrying out in Ukraine is being welcomed by its bombed, butchered and yet brave and resistant population.

All Russians, and the populations of all other countries where this propaganda is transmitted, whose blatant lies may even have appalled Joseph Goebbels, are not idiots. The protests in St. Petersburg and Moscow against this meaningless megalomaniac slaughter have met with bans, brutality and arrests.

Of course, “free speech” doesn’t mean the rants and raves of those who advocate harm to innocent people. This phenomenon has acquired the label of “hate speech” and if the ban on it extends to those who, in some fanatical dispositions, say kill all Jews or kill all Christians, which human being today with an ounce of reason would not support it. The ban on hate crime shouldn’t extend to forbidding the opinion that virgins don’t give birth, that the Old Testament has some nasty out-of-date prescriptions or that God doesn’t dictate books.

That all criticism of the regime, however murderous its actions against Ukrainians or Uyghur Muslims in Russia and in China, is suppressed is an indisputable fact. The Nazis under Adolf Hitler were by no means the first to stamp with brutality on free speech. They are now not the last. Whatever one thinks of the aggressive actions of the United States, say in Vietnam, there was adequate evidence that they didn’t poison opponents or throw them into jail. Neither did the US government stamp on the media that reported in detail their Vietnam and Iraq wars as unjustified and criminal.

Come back the non-privatised old Channel 4  — part of your commercialised recent past is forgiven!



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Pakistan’s Supreme Court does not figure very prominently in the country’s governance system. It is monopolised by the Army, the various religious groups and the political parties. The Supreme Court does not even occupy the high ground of impartiality and wisdom as it does sometimes in India. But on Thursday, Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial and four of his fellow judges — Justices Ijazul Ahsan, Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel, Munib Akthar and Jamal Khan Mandokhail — delivered a clean, decisive verdict. They called out the political foul play that Prime Minister Imran Khan had indulged in to avoid facing the non-confidence motion moved by the combined Opposition. In cricketing terms, Imran Khan had indulged in ball-tampering.

The importance of the verdict by Justice Bandial and the others is in proportion to the audacity that Imran Khan displayed in misusing the provisions of the Constitution. Imran displayed the arrogance and recklessness of the man in office, a common trait in the political scenario of South Asia. And he would have easily got away with it because he put in motion the process of the National Assembly and the holding of elections in the next three months. Speaker Asad Qaiser and deputy speaker Qasim Khan Suri obliged Imran Khan, and so did the titular President, Dr Aril Alvi. The Supreme Court had to call the bluff and it did, and it did so in short order. The judgment would come later and the so will the reasons.

The Supreme Court did three things through its Thursday night order. First, it held the deputy speaker’s decision to throw out the no-confidence motion as unconstitutional. It is to be recalled that deputy speaker Suri invoked Article 5 of the Constitution and declared that the non-confidence motion came out of the conspiracy hatched by a foreign power, and that the entire Opposition was in cahoots with the foreign power. The non-confidence motion was declared to be “anti-Pakistan” and therefore unconstitutional.

This was the most dangerous move of Imran Khan, to delegitmise the entire Opposition as anti-national and disallow the non-confidence motion because it comes from a so-called anti-national quarter.

Had this gone unchallenged, it would have set a dangerous precedent — the presiding officer, who usually belongs to the ruling party, declaring the Opposition as anti-national. It shows the ways that a party in power can misuse constitutional provisions and do the most atrocious things in the most legal way. That is why, at one point during the hearing, Chief Justice Bandial asked the government’s lawyers that if everything was done according to the Constitution, where then was the constitutional crisis?

The judges through their questioning showed that the parliamentary national security committee meeting, where the so-called “threat letter” from the foreign power was shared with the members of the committee, and which became the basis of the deputy speaker’s decision to throw out the no-confidence motion, was nothing more than a charade. The court wanted to know whether foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureishi was present at the committee meeting, and it was told that he was away on an official tour. The government’s lawyers presented the minutes of the paper to the court, which revealed that it was nothing more than a way to provide a basis for the deputy speaker’s decision.

The court’s order then fell into a logical sequence. As the deputy speaker’s decision on the no-confidence motion was invalid, it followed that the no-confidence motion was to be restored and debated and voted, and the National Assembly should not be prorogued until the debate and vote was carried through. This was an important direction. It does not matter how the debate plays out, and who wins. The issue was Imran Khan’s attempt to sabotage the parliamentary proceedings and using the presiding officers to do so was stopped.

Imran Khan’s recommendation to President Alvi to dissolve the National Assembly also becomes invalid because he is facing a non-confidence motion. His resignation and that of the entire Cabinet to make way for a caretaker government in the run-up to elections also therefore turns out to be premature. The court had clearly shown that the Prime Minister must face the National Assembly. Imran and his lawyers tried to invoke the populist argument that a Prime Minister is elected by the people and not by the National Assembly. The fact is that in a parliamentary democracy, the Prime Minister is the leader of the legislature, and he is elected to it by the party with a parliamentary majority. Khan had grown to believe he would not be judged by fellow members of the National Assembly because he considers them to be corrupt. It is this moral arrogance that drove him to break all parliamentary norms. The court has put a stop to it.

The Supreme Court’s decision does raise the important question as to whether the judiciary can interfere in the proceedings of the legislature. But the order showed that the court wanted the constitutional provisions which were laid down for the functioning of the parliament should be followed. The court did not even interpret the Constitution, but simply pointed to the provisions of the Constitution.

By doing what it did, Pakistan’s Supreme Court showed that tampering of the constitutional provisions should be disallowed. The temptations of the politicians and the parties, especially those politicians and parties holding office, to throw the rules out of the window, is understandable. But it becomes the duty of the court to play the good umpire.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has emerged as the most unlikely hero in a country where democracy has been on the edge, and where the Army traditionally plays the role of the arbitrator. The court’s intervention to restore constitutionality assumes crucial significance in this context. It is possible to make the cynical argument that the Army continues to play the role of a praetorian guard as the Army did in Turkey some years ago. It seems, however, that in Pakistan, as in Turkey, the Army has been pushed into the wings because of the United States being unwilling to finance governments run by the Army. The Supreme Court then becomes the torchbearer of democratic norms, and with all its imperfections, the politicians in Pakistan turned to the court for justice. It is a positive aspect of a volatile situation.



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