Russia has granted official recognition to two provinces, Donetsk and Lugansk/Luhansk, in Eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region that have been seeking autonomy from Ukraine since 2014. Moscow has sent its army, under the guise of being ‘Russian Peacekeeping Forces’, to protect the separatists and Russian ethnic minorities who populate this region from the ongoing civil war. This has prompted outrage from the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and also calls from the rest of the world for de-escalation.
A war in Ukraine would be a disaster for Europe and the world. So, besides de-escalation, a review of the security architecture and a reality and narrative check are also essential. Security of one military alliance at the cost of the other will not work.
The two provinces of Ukraine asserting independence is a second time after Crimea broke away in 2014 on account of similar tensions. Populated primarily by Russian ethnic minorities striving for independence, separatist leaders supported by Moscow seized these two regions and declared the ‘People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk’ in 2014. Since then, the separatists run a government, use the rouble for currency and maintain contacts with Russia.
The West versus Moscow
The West led by the U.S. sees Moscow’s recognition of this independence and the building of its army on the Ukrainian border as a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and international law. Russia on the other hand justifies its position as safeguarding its own as well the security of ethnic Russians living in Donetsk and Lugansk which is on the Russian border. The events around this need explanation.
Talks between Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) led to the Minsk Protocols of 2014 and 2015. This Protocol proposed a ceasefire, decentralising power without recognising the autonomous Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, a pulling out of forces and heavy weaponry 15 kilometres from the Line of Contact.
However, breakdowns of the ceasefire led to 14,000 people being killed in the fighting between the Ukrainian army and Moscow-supported rebels. Talks again between France, Germany, Ukraine with Russia, called the Normandy-Paris Process in 2019, have not yielded success because the Russians want a legal guarantee of security that the West refuses.
Ethnic Russians in focus
The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has repeatedly said that Russia would protect ethnic Russians especially since they became subjects of new countries after the Soviet breakup. No Russian President can survive if ethnic Russians face extreme actions in a neighbouring country.
The anxieties of Russian ethnic minorities have increased after the coup in Ukraine in 2013-14 and overturned a pro-Russian regime that was blamed for letting Crimea secede. Under the presidency of ultra nationalist Volodymyr Zelensky, laws were passed making Ukrainian the only official language. The civil strife from separatists increased. Sadly, NATO and the European Union were not vocal on this violation of citizenship rights. So, Russia stepped in. Thousands of Russian ethnic minorities were given Russian passports and evacuated to Russia.
The proposals for Ukraine to join NATO have added fuel to the existing Ukrainian fire and are opposed collectively in Russia because: one, NATO membership would give Ukraine additional muscle to forcefully regain the autonomous regions of Lugansk and Donestsk/Donbas and also move into Crimea and hold the ports in the Black Sea region.
Two, NATO has continuously expanded to include 13 former Central East European countries, all of which are well armed and where Russia poses the major threat. NATO missiles from Ukraine could reach Moscow in five minutes.
Three, through the 1990s after the Soviet collapse, a weakened Russia made repeated offers of collaboration, equal treatment and better relations. For example, Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev was promised that NATO would not expand eastwards during his talks with the U.S. Secretary of State in 1989. But at first 10 and then three more central east European states joined NATO. The OSCE and Europe’s Paris Charter signed a mutual cooperation for steps forward in peace and security with Russia in 1990. Russian leader Boris Yeltsin made several concessions from the 1990s to accommodate NATO positions including in Serbia.
Four, the Russia-NATO Partnership for Peace of 1994 (a programme of practical bilateral cooperation between NATO and partner countries) and the NATO-Russia Founding Act 1997 made a commitment that NATO and Russian security would not be undermined. The 1999 OSCE-Charter for European Security declared that the security of countries in Europe would not be undermined at the expense of the other.
Five, Ukraine is the buffer and bridge between Russia and Europe. All the attacks on Russia earlier, from Napoleon to Hitler, came through Ukraine, just as Russia’s route to Europe for transport and oil pipelines is through Ukraine.
Six, after the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks in 2001 and the war on terror, Russia was supportive of U.S. concerns. Now, Russia under Mr. Putin has achieved strategic parity. U.S. President Joe Biden has rejected any written commitment for Russian security from NATO. Mr. Putin is prepared for a faceoff. NATO missiles near the border are a red line.
This rejuvenates the U.S.
The standoff with Russia provides Mr. Biden with several opportunities. The dominant and single narrative is that Ukraine is a sovereign nation that has the right to join NATO. Russia’s positions and its sending its army as peacekeepers will lead to heavy sanctions that could hurt and isolate Russia. Russia has provided Mr. Biden the opportunity to bring a fraying European alliance back behind America in the face of a major threat. France and Germany have been taking comparatively autonomous steps from NATO but have been forced back to accept U.S. leadership, presence and control in Europe.
France is upset on account of the U.S. undercutting the sale of French nuclear submarines to Australia when America announced the creation of AUKUS, or the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. (France even recalled its ambassador from the U.S. and Australia). The U.S. has been unhappy and sore with the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline project that could provide Germany Russian gas at very reasonable rates. Since the U.S. is seeking buyers for their own fracked and more expensive oil, this would be a great and captive market. The Nord Stream pipeline that is ready to be commissioned will now suffer major delays or could even be stopped. This will come at a great cost to Russia, Germany and Europe.
Spotlight on Ukraine
For Ukraine, which is already suffering from economic crises, inflation and huge gas bills, this is the worst self-inflicted crisis. Ukraine has been completely dependent on Russia for oil; it is a country deeply polarised between ‘pro-Russian’ and anti-Russian politics. Neo-liberal policies and majoritarian politics have furthered secessionist movements and civil wars from ethnic Russian minority regions. Russia has been fishing in troubled Ukrainian waters.
Most countries outside the West such as India and even China, that initially spoke in support of Russian actions, are now asking for a de-escalation and understand the need for an inclusive security. They do not wish for a unipolar or a bipolar international system. It is clear that the existential crises of our century are those of climate, ecological damage, pandemics, sustainable development and social justice. None of these can be addressed by the Ukrainian standoff.
The Ukrainian crisis is, therefore, multiple crises unfolding as one. It reveals the importance of inclusive citizenship, and accommodating ethnic and other minorities, rights and social cohesion. The crises call for an inclusive and common security and a deconstruction of dominant narratives.
Anuradha M. Chenoy is professor and retired Dean, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
She is Adjunct Professor, Jindal Global University
Recently, the Chief Minister of Telangana said India needs a new Constitution, as, according to him, governments at the Centre over the years have been suppressing the powers of the States. Being a citizen and a constitutional head of state, he was not wrong in exercising his fundamental right to express his views freely. Nor was what he said wrong: Central governments have indeed been suppressing the powers of the States in various ways. The Supreme Court, in judgments such asS.R. Bommai v. Union of India (1994) andGovt. Of NCT of Delhi v. Union of India (2018), has castigated governments at the Centre for this.
But the question is, can the people of India give themselves a new Constitution? Noted jurist Fali S. Nariman, in a lecture titled ‘The Silences in Our Constitutional Law’, delivered in 2005, rightly said, “We will never be able to piece together a new Constitution in the present day and age even if we tried: because innovative ideas — however brilliant, howsoever beautifully expressed in consultation papers and reports of commissions — cannot give us a better Constitution. In Constitution-making there are other forces that cannot and must never be ignored — the spirit of persuasion, of accommodation and of tolerance — all three are at a very low ebb today”. We can add a few more forces which cannot be ignored today, such as casteism, nepotism and corruption.
Nation first
This article highlights a few events that took place while India’s Constitution was drafted to argue how these events may never take place in the present scenario. The first is the appointment of B.R. Ambedkar as chairman of the Drafting Committee. Granville Austin, in his bookThe Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation , wrote that Ambedkar was originally elected to the Assembly as a member from Bengal, but lost his seat during Partition. He was subsequently elected from the Bombay Presidency at the behest of the Congress high command. This shows that the biggest party then had an accommodative spirit, which seems lacking today. Ambedkar was fighting to ensure rights for the depressed classes and, in his own words, he came to the Assembly to “safeguard the interests of the Scheduled Castes”. But he was trusted for his passion and talent and elected chairman of the Drafting Committee by the Constituent Assembly, which was dominated by the Congress. The result is the Constitution we see today, which safeguards the rights of majority and minority communities. Today, when caste and nepotism play a pivotal role in electing even a ward member, consensus over a new Constitution would be impossible.
It took two years, 11 months and 18 days to draft the present Constitution. During this period, the members read the constitutions of other nations, consulted constitutional experts, drafted the Constitution, debated it, redrafted it and approved it. During Constituent Assembly debates, if five minutes were wasted one day, the House would assemble five minutes earlier the next day and sit until night to complete pending work. This showed value for time, and value for work done for the nation. Now, all we see is ruckus and noise in Parliament, with little debate or discussion taking place on Bills. During Constituent Assembly debates, dissenters and hard-core critics were tolerated and their suggestions, if found apt, were accommodated. If their suggestions were not found apt, there would be a healthy debate. Now, Bills are passed without allowing Opposition members to express their views completely, let alone accommodating their suggestions.
Third, the members of the Constituent Assembly emerged from the clutches of colonial rule. They knew the sufferings that they and the nation had undergone under foreign rule and were determined to frame a Constitution, and spelled out fundamental rights, which allow every individual a right to live their life with liberty and dignity and challenge the state’s arbitrary decisions before an independent judiciary. Today’s leaders seem to lack that spirit. Members of the Constituent Assembly chose the nation first; today’s leaders tend to choose their party first.
Fourth, the Constitution states that India is a “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic”. It protects the rights of every section of society. On the other hand, today’s leaders give priority to particular ideologies and castes. Given this, drafting a new Constitution will be a chaotic exercise and will shut the voices of some sections, especially the vulnerable.
Fifth, and most importantly, an unelected body was trusted by the Constitution framers to declare the law. The purpose behind choosing an unelected body was that, by its nature of being not answerable to anyone except the Constitution, the judiciary can adjudicate disputes in an independent, free, fair and impartial manner. Today, leaders may choose to become judges as well as rulers. For instance, through the Constitution (Thirty-Second Amendment) Act, 1973, a proviso to clause 5 of Article 371D was inserted which gave power to the Andhra Pradesh government to modify or annul any order passed by the Administrative Tribunal, constituted to deal with service matters in which the government is a party. This Tribunal replaced the High Court. When the government is party to the litigation and when the Tribunal is exercising the powers of the High Court, how can the government be given power to override the decisions of the Tribunal? Fortunately, the Supreme Court declared this proviso as unconstitutional inP. Sambamurthy v. State of A.P. (1986). There are other such examples.
A strong Centre
Before independence, India comprised over 550 princely States, suffered from the problems created by Partition and faced a looming economic crisis. Thus, the Constituent Assembly’s members tilted towards a strong Centre with a blend of cooperative federalism. It is true that the governments at the Centre abuse their powers to cripple Opposition-ruled States, but that does not call for creating a new Constitution. It calls for seeking mandate from the people to elect regional parties in general elections so that States can have dominance in the Union, besides approaching the Supreme Court under Article 131 whenever the need arises to resolve conflicts between the Centre and State.
The Chief Minister should remember that if he could become the Chief Minister of Telangana, it is only because of the present Constitution, as despite the Assembly of united Andhra Pradesh rejecting the resolution in 2013 to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh, it was Parliament, which by exercising powers conferred under Article 3 of the Constitution, carved out the two States.
Baglekar Akash Kumar is an Advocate practising at the Telangana High Court. Email: akashbaglekar@gmail.com
India’s Union Budget 2022-23 demonstrates a clear intent to prioritise investments in clean energy and sustainable development, in line with the country’s promises made at COP26 in Glasgow last year. The Budget is also an opportunity to turn the spotlight on policy conversations — since it sets the tone for reflecting on policies, schemes, and how they are implemented on the ground. Electricity and development sectors need a more integrated approach to achieve the vision set forth in instruments such as the Union Budget that guide policy implementation at other administrative levels.
A reduction
While the health sector witnessed a 16% increase in estimated Budget allocations from last year, medical and public health spending was reduced by 45% for 2022-23. The education sector also witnessed an 11.86% increase in allocations. Interestingly, despite the push for digital education, which now includes the e-Vidya programme (to boost online learning), last year’s revised allocation saw a reduction of 35%. And despite these increases in estimates, health and education continue to share only about 2% each of budgetary allocations annually.
Budget estimates demonstrate intent, but the proof of the pudding lies in the actual expenditure which reiterates the need for greater attention to be paid to our health and education sectors. While the health sector was allocated Rs. 74,602 crore in 2021-22, the Government exceeded its spending by over Rs. 5,000 crore more (Rs. 80,026 crore) on health, signalling a spike in demand, likely propelled by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Given this scenario, a less than Rs. 1,000 crore increase in the Budget Estimate (Rs. 86,606 crore) in 2022-23 when compared with last year’s Revised Estimates (Rs. 85,915 crore) appears incongruent with the Government’s aim of providing quality public health care at scale.
Greater allocation of funds is welcome, even if marginally, but as our research (https://bit.ly/3BHDa7I) on health and education policy documents at the national and State levels indicate, the aim of providing better health care gets stymied, in the absence of electricity and when power provisioning is not linked to desired outcomes.
The role of reliable energy
It is widely recognised that the availability of reliable electricity supply can improve the delivery of health and education services; 74% of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals are interlinked with universal access to reliable energy. Despite this, 44% of schools and 25% of India’s health sub-centres and primary health centres remain unelectrified. For the Government’s proposed energy transition to succeed, these critical facilities require energy access first. These statistics only refer to the presence or absence of an electricity connection. Its reliability in terms of the number of hours that electricity is available steadily without any voltage fluctuations also plays a significant role in delivering services.
The lack of integration of electrification requirements in development sector policy documents may be partly due to lack of information about electricity and development linkages, poor coordination mechanisms between the sectors and departments, and poor access to appropriate finance. Even while electricity is considered, it is to the limited extent of being a one-time civil infrastructure activity rather than a continuous feature necessary for the day-to-day operations of these services. Departmental budgetary allocations are quite telling in terms of the extent to which electricity is prioritised by these departments; many do not even have line items to account for recurring electricity connection charges and maintenance expenditure. We must remind ourselves that while electricity is invisible and taken for granted when available, its absence is felt when it is not provided.
Think multiple policies too
Our research on development and electricity policies also demonstrates that integration need not only be at the level of a single policy. Sometimes, multiple policies can complement each other to achieve the larger sectoral objectives. For example, in Assam, the Energy Vision document that lays out the electricity and development outcomes is to be applied in tandem with the Solar Energy Policy 2017 that operationalises this vision via an action plan. To successfully integrate electricity provisioning and maintenance, policy frameworks should include innovative coordination and financing mechanisms. These mechanisms, while developing clear compliance mandates, must also allow sufficient room for flexibility to respond to local contexts. Such flexibility can be embedded in funds (such as untied funds) to provide local decision-makers with some authority to mitigate policy implementation barriers.
A successful policy outcome might be dependent on several invisible aspects that do not get the attention and the funding necessary to aid in successful policy delivery. Electricity is one of them.
This deepens exclusion
Many development policies that have objectives to improve health and education services require facilities to have access to reliable electricity as a prerequisite to qualify for benefits. This, unfairly, puts the onus of acquiring reliable electricity supply on individual facilities rather than their departments. Such requirements result in facilities and schools that are already deprived of electricity to continue to be excluded from other assistance.
Providing reliable electricity for health centres and schools should be the responsibility of centralised decision-making entities at the State or national level. Individual facilities should not be burdened with the responsibility to meet the eligibility criteria for policies or programmes.
It must also be noted that integrative policies are useful but insufficient to achieve intended developmental outcomes. For policies to become transformative, instruments that operationalise them must be in place. This is when budgetary allocations, institutional structures, finance, information and coordination mechanisms come into play.
Allocation of funds is a must to set up a robust data governance mechanism as it is critical for integrative action and evidence-based policymaking. However, as India has witnessed with other cross-sectoral and centralised statistical, planning, and implementation data governance, diverse contexts must support oversight mechanisms that ensure data credibility.
Systemic gaps
Finance is largely unavailable to ensure reliable electricity supply to schools and health facilities. Some directives, such as those governing the use of untied funds, need to be more flexible in allowing these facilities to prioritise providing reliable and sustainable electricity. The provisioning of reliable electricity, in turn, improves the delivery of health and educational services. Departmental silos in public administration have resulted in linkage gaps between critical “supply” departments (such as electricity and water) and “demand-generating departments” (such as health and education). This gap is accentuated when coordination mandates are not met with sustained finance to support human resources and common activities.
Uttara Narayan and Namrata Ginoya are researchers with WRI India’s Energy Program working on energy governance and resilience
Population health is more than just the health of all individuals. Suicide rates are an example of the distinction between population and individual health, as Johan Mackenbach discusses. While every individual case of suicide has its own unique aetiology, population rates of suicides tend to display remarkable stability over time,ceteris paribus . While individual and population health are inexorably linked, the causes, and thus the interventions required to address them, tend to be different. Trying to improve population health with merely individualistic strategies is foredoomed to failure and inefficiency.
Individualistic policy measures
In the previous decade, the government acknowledged that the focus of Indian public health remained near-exclusively on maternal and child health and infectious diseases for too long. The peg was proposed to be moved over to non-communicable diseases (NCD) and chronic illnesses, whose rising prevalence portends huge economic and productivity losses. What followed were a set of essentially individualistic policy measures in the form of enhanced NCD screening and management infrastructure, wellness and lifestyle interventions, patient referral mechanisms, and so on. The question is, what becomes of the array of population-level determinants of NCDs that are deeply intertwined with social, economic, and political dimensions? To reflect the enhanced policy attention to NCDs in contemporary times, population-level representative surveys seem to be embracing an expanded set of indicators including blood pressure and blood sugar. But where are the true population-level interventions?
A case from the Netherlands can help draw an apt analogy. In 2007, the Minister of Health of the Netherlands expounded their ideas on improving population health by exploring the inter-relationships between health and other related sectors such as economy, housing, social cohesion and environment. Soon, however, the reductionist tendencies of organised medicine came into play, turning it into a paradigm of personalised preventive medical care, backed by health insurance and dominated by healthcare professionals. A natural extension of this has characterised the Indian approach to NCDs too. With Health and Wellness centres, publicly financed health insurance schemes, and vertical NCD control programmes, the entire initiative to address NCDs has been subsumed into a largely biomedical paradigm with scarce vestiges of the social sciences. The private sector has come to complement this with a large array of self-tests, over-the-counter products, and lifestyle-change gimmicks. This is while overarching public interventions, which could also help raise much-needed revenue for health, such as sin taxes, attract hesitancy.
This reductionist approach rides the crest of an undue reliance on medical and healthcare professionals for all public health solutions, and a policy myopia that fails to appreciate that tackling NCDs warrants action across a range of sectors besides health. The bigger menace is that this approach is entrenched in political and public health tradition. This even reflects in the way it impacts our research priorities for NCDs, which remain concentrated on lifestyle and individual-level NCD determinants and solutions.
A flawed perception
In under-resourced systems in particular, what is readily actionable gets actioned and what isn’t so is softly swept under the rug. The elusive nature of social determinants has traditionally drawn funders and policymakers towards the better defined, easily actionable, albeit short-lived and inefficient technocratic solutions to mass health issues. These technocratic approaches have resulted in a flawed perception that social action for health is a high-order initiative reserved for affluent countries. The reverse is only true. Developing settings like India can gain far greater health for every rupee spent, by investing in social determinants. The same makes for a strong ethical case as well, by ensuring equitable distribution of such gains.
For India, NCDs will be a long-drawn challenge. With projected losses due to NCDs in the order of multiple trillions by 2030, the case for investing in inter-sectoral, population-based, socially embedded approaches is ripe. This requires a total galvanisation of different departments and sectors to the importance of population health. The push for digitisation must be mobilised to generate enough evidence for resolute action on social health determinants. Government policy pronouncements will need to enshrine actionable points and explicit mandates to address social health determinants. And political circles will have to outgrow the predominantly biomedical paradigm of health.
Soham D. Bhaduri is a physician, health policy expert, and chief editor of ‘The Indian Practitioner’
More energy is being spent on infighting in the Congress, this time in Telangana. Last week, Telangana Congress Committee working president and Sangareddy MLA T. Jayaprakash Reddy decided to ‘snap’ ties with the party, as there was a “conspiracy to malign him” by labeling him a covert supporter of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) on social media. Mr. Jayaprakash Reddy’s decision is not sudden, especially given his differences with Telangana Congress president A. Revanth Reddy ever since the latter was chosen over him to lead the party in Telangana.
Mr. Jayaprakash Reddy is a maverick and an unstoppable party hopper. He started his career with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He shifted to the TRS during the separate State agitation in 2004 and won as MLA. Then he joined the Congress and was made government whip. In 2014, he shifted to the BJP again to contest from the Medak parliamentary seat. When he lost, he returned to the Congress. This time, he has given himself a 15-day deadline to leave the party and chart out an independent political course.
The TRS also created an embarrassing situation for Mr. Jayaprakash Reddy. During his visit to Sangareddy for an official programme, TRS working president and the IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao hobnobbed with Mr. Jayaprakash Reddy giving credence to the rumours.
Resentment over appointment
A likely meeting between Mr. Jayaprakash Reddy and Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi may put an end to this drama in the Congress, which has been on slow revival mode after it was decimated in the 2018 Assembly polls and after 12 of its 18 MLAs defected to the ruling party. But that may not signal the end of the crisis in the party, which remains deeply divided.
The Congress has been grappling with a lot of resentment against its choice of president. Bhongir MP Komatireddy Venkata Reddy, bristling at Mr. Revanth Reddy’s appointment as president, vowed never to enter Gandhi Bhavan, the party headquarters in Hyderabad. Since then, he has patched up with Mr. Revanth Reddy and both of them frequently share the party platform. Earlier, his brother Komatireddy Rajgopal Reddy, MLA from Munugode, also raised the banner of revolt and went to the extent of stating that the BJP is the only alternative in Telangana. Opposition to Mr. Revanth Reddy’s elevation also came from senior leaders like V. Hanumantha Rao. All these leaders were upset that Mr. Revanth Reddy, a new entrant from the Telugu Desam Party, was elected president, while they spent years working for the Congress and did not bag any plum post.
Fighting the BJP
The infighting is overshadowing the party’s efforts to project itself as the real alternative to the TRS. The cadre’s morale was up when three meetings at Indervelly, Ibrahimpatnam, and Gajwel (Chief Minister, K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s constituency) turned out to be successful after Mr. Revanth Reddy took over. The new president has also been constantly attacking the government on various issues. He has accused the BJP of “killing the federal spirit”, “spreading religious intolerance”, etc. His adversaries, however, term these as sensational and controversial statements. They accuse him of lacking a strategy and direction. After losing the 2014 and 2018 polls, the Congress cannot afford to miss the bus in the 2023 elections if it has to stay relevant in Telangana. The BJP with its recent political successes in Telangana and resources is clearly leaving no stone unturned to expand in the State. In such a scenario, the Congress can hope to stay in the race only by ensuring unity among its leaders.
ravikanth.ramasayam@thehindu.co.in
A little over two years after it turned its back at the last minute on a major multilateral trade agreement it had spent years negotiating, India last week announced the signing of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The free trade pact is a tacit acknowledgment that India needs to strengthen its trade ties with existing partners by lowering tariff walls and obtaining more favourable access for its exports in order to boost trade and economic output. With the COVID-19 pandemic having thrown into sharp relief the public health and economic vulnerabilities of an increasingly interconnected world, a reflexive urge to turn inward was evident in the last two years as nations imposed tight travel and entry restrictions in a bid to protect their populations. And ironically, even as India sought to promote atmanirbharta or self-reliance, the pandemic also depressed domestic consumption demand, dragging down overall economic output. Exports on the other hand have rebounded strongly, with growth outpacing even the pre-pandemic levels. It is in this backdrop that the Government’s renewed push to negotiate its bilateral free trade agreements is a welcome change in tack and signals that India is keener to strengthen trade ties with individual partner countries on equitable terms rather than be tied into multilateral pacts that do not necessarily address its key concerns.
That the accord was finalised in less than six months’ time, from the start of negotiations in September, is a testimony to the strength of the bilateral ties and the recognition that there is more to gain from a deepening of the relationship. The UAE is already India’s third-largest trading partner with bilateral trade in 2019-20 valued at $59 billion. While India’s exports amounted to about $29 billion in the pre-pandemic fiscal year ended March 2020, the UAE supplied India with $10.9 billion worth of crude oil in that period and counts New Delhi as its second-largest trading partner. The two partners now aim to leverage the free trade deal to lift bilateral merchandise trade to $100 billion over the next five years. While the fine print of the tariff concessions on both sides is yet to be spelt out, India has made it clear that a range of exports including textiles and jewellery are set to benefit from a zero-duty regime once the accord is formally operationalised by May. Two-way investment flows and remittances — a major source of foreign exchange earnings for India given the large Indian workforce in the UAE — are also expected to receive a fillip. With multiple other FTAs in the pipeline, India has a fresh opportunity to reset its trade ties with the international community, one accord at a time.
The victory of the ruling DMK front in the Tamil Nadu urban local body polls is a resounding mandate across corporations, municipalities and town panchayats. Though the Opposition was splintered, the string of successes is an endorsement of the governance in the last nine months. Party president and Chief Minister M.K. Stalin meticulously planned the AIADMK’s decimation, wanting to avenge the DMK’s humiliation in the western region nine months ago when no DMK candidate made it to the Assembly from Coimbatore and Dharmapuri. Apart from governmental attention to the region, Mr. Stalin deputed two Ministers to Coimbatore and Salem to prepare the political pitch. The DMK has captured local bodies in the backyards of former Chief Ministers Edappadi K. Palaniswami and O. Panneerselvam. As Mr. Stalin impressed upon the newly elected representatives, it is important to deliver on the ground. As a former Chennai Mayor, he is cognisant that missteps by councillors, the last mile connectors with the people, could tarnish the ruling party’s image, and he will need to monitor their work constantly.
The AIADMK cannot wish away the rout on the scale of its 1996 debacle, blaming it on money power, misuse of government machinery or propounding it is natural for the Opposition to lose civic elections. Its two leaders can no longer confine operational bases to their respective caste-fortified political comfort zones and expect to ride on the approval by a coterie populated in the party’s high-level committees. Their vote pulling capacity is based on the strength of the organisation built by M.G. Ramachandran and Jayalalithaa. Hence, they must reach out to ground functionaries and undertake course correction. There could be patch up calls with Jayalalithaa’s confidante V.K. Sasikala and the breakaway Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam. Since the separation has not helped either party, there will be pressure to enter into mutual adjustments. The party would do well not to fight shy of criticising the central government when it comes to issues affecting the people. The BJP, which has created a perception that it is no longer a pushover in the Dravidian heartland, has had no qualms attacking the AIADMK or poaching its steering committee member. Irrespective of poll statistics, the BJP has indeed scored victories in newer territories. A section of voters chose BJP candidates over the Naam Tamilar Katchi and the Makkal Needhi Maiam, though the party did not make much of an impact in what is still a bipolar polity. Given that past alternatives to the Dravidian majors faded after one or two stunning shows, it is too early to conclude that the BJP would stay the course as a political alternative. Meanwhile, Mr. Stalin, who described the victory as people’s endorsement for the “Dravidian model” of governance, must continue to focus on development, and livelihood issues of the people, and not be distracted by petty politics.
Madras, Feb. 23: A programme for large-scale cultivation of exotic vegetables for export to Madras will be taken up in the Nilgiris under the Indo-German Nilgiris Development Project. Two cold storage units will be provided, one in Madras and the other at Ooty to store the produce when it is in surplus and to release it gradually so as to stabilise the price level of vegetables in Madras and avoid glut and distress sales for the grower at the producing end. The marketing scheme will be extended to Tiruchi and Madurai. The establishment of cold storages has been accepted in principle by the Government. This is one of the programmes aimed at diversification of crop pattern in the Nilgiris as the advent of the golden nematode pest and cultivation of potato in the plains in contiguous States like Mysore have made cultivation all round the year less attractive. Cultivation of cutflowers for export to Madras and other cities is also one such scheme to be implemented. Fruit development is another field on which attention will be focused by the IGNDP. Orange plantations will be established in the Kugal valley where these orchards once flourished and deteriorated for want of proper attention.
More than the resounding triumph of the ruling DMK in the Tamil Nadu urban local body polls — a foregone conclusion given the no-palpable dissatisfaction among voters over its governance before the polls — what baffles is its sweep in the western belt of the State, an AIADMK bastion for decades. As far as the AIADMK is concerned, the party’s dual leadership needs to undertake serious introspection about the party’s failure to stage a comeback after its defeat at the hustings in May 2021. For close to a decade, both rural and urban local bodies in the State have been functioning without people’s representatives. The numerous civic woes should be addressed with the seriousness they deserve.
M. Jeyaram,
Sholavandan, Tamil Nadu
Malayalam cinema has lost a versatile actor. KPAC Lalitha slipped into many a role with ease and could pull off any character. Her voice conveyed diverse emotions as inMathulikal . It was just one element of her stunning acting skills.
M.R. Jayanthi,
Bengaluru
KPAC Lalitha could change into any character in a flash which other actors would find hard to do. Hers was pure and natural acting.
Devadas V.,
Talap, Kannur, Kerala
KPAC Lalitha leaves behind a legacy of enthralling memories. Her versatile acting is what made Malayalam cinema special.
Prabhakaran Vallath,
Vatakara, Kozhikode, Kerala
Azania Imtiaz Khatri-Patel’s perspective on the hijab-controversy (Editorial page, February 12) is a much-needed rendition of the predicament of Muslim women. Stifled by an entrenched patriarchy which claims to be the only voice of their religion, they now face being stripped of their right to education by ‘knights’ whose anti-hijab stance is to brand and exploit them. The judiciary must halt this obfuscation of basic issues.
Vasantha Surya,
Bengaluru
The Drugs Controller General of India’s emergency-use approval (EUA) to Biological-E’s Corbevax vaccine should pave the way for bringing more children under the ambit of the country’s Covid inoculation drive. On Monday, the drug regulator approved the use of the vaccine in the 12-18 age group. Corbevax is the third vaccine approved by the DCGI for children’s use after Covaxin and Zydus Cadila’s ZyCoV-D. But currently, only Covaxin is used in the inoculation drive for children in the 15-18 age group. The project that began on January 3 has, by all accounts, progressed in fits and starts with states often complaining of shortages. Less than a third of those eligible for the vaccine have received both shots. Corbevax, which is being touted as a game-changer in the global fight against Covid, could also help upscale India’s inoculation programme for children.
The latest addition to the country’s vaccine basket has been developed by Biological E in collaboration with two institutions in the US: The Texas Children’s Hospital Centre for Vaccine Development and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. It uses a harmless piece of the spike protein of the SARS-Cov-2 virus to prepare the immune system for future encounters with the virus. This is a tried-and-tested platform that has been used against the hepatitis virus for decades. Vaccines based on this technique do require longer to develop in contrast to the non-replicating viral vector vaccines such as Covishield or the mRNA shots such as the ones developed by Moderna and Pfizer. But their production can be scaled up much more easily than the vaccines that have been used against the virus so far. Initial reports also suggest that Corbevax is far cheaper than Covaxin.
With the Omicron-driven third wave on the wane, schools and educational institutions have begun unlocking classrooms. Fears that the children could infect the elderly at home have been assuaged to a large extent with more than 80 per cent of the country’s adult population inoculated against the virus. However, given the contagion’s unpredictable ways, the need to strengthen the defences of the people cannot be overstressed. More than 6 crore doses of Corbevax have reportedly been cleared by the Central Drugs Laboratory in Kasauli. In January, the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation had talked of extending the children’s vaccination programme in March. The EUA to Corbevax should help it keep this commitment.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on February 24, 2022 under the title ‘Protecting children’.
Acting is hard enough. Only the most accomplished artist can give an assured performance as a character who remains, through the entire duration of a film, just a voice. As tributes from colleagues and fans poured in for KPAC Lalitha, who died at the age of 74 on Tuesday, it isn’t surprising that the role that was cited most often as evidence of the late Malayalam actor’s prowess was the one she played in Mathilukal (1990). In the Adoor Gopalakrishnan-directed film, based on an autobiographical novel of the same name by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Lalitha played Narayani, the female inmate across the wall of the prison that houses Basheer and who, with him, builds dreams of a future that will never come. By turns flirtatious, yearning and sad, Lalitha’s voice gave Narayani a form that never even needed to be seen by the audience for them to become deeply invested in the love story.
Born Maheshwari Amma, Lalitha started acting when she was still a child. She joined the prominent Left-affiliated drama troupe, Kerala People’s Arts Club, later adopting its initials as part of the new name by which she became known during her prolific film career. She was an audience favourite not only for the seeming effortlessness of her performance in movies such as Spadikam, Sadayam and Amaram (for which she won a National Award), but also for the impeccable comic timing indispensable for films like Vadakkunokkiyanthram and Manichitrathazhu.
Lalitha’s great gift was her ability to use a sideways glance, a lilt in her voice to convey the emotional weight of a scene. It is true that many of the roles that came to her — mother, sister and, later, grandmother — were limited in their conception. But by investing herself in them the way she did, Lalitha ensured that they were far from limited in impact.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on February 24, 2022 under the title ‘KPAC Lalitha’.
The 44-nation South-South consultations in Delhi ended without reaching a consensus on a precise strategy on global negotiations. With no consensus on vital North-South issues as well as South-South cooperation, the final document containing the views of the participants was held over for release because the summary presented to the plenary had undergone some changes. At the end of the three-day consultations, differences persisted on a common approach on the three controversial facets of the US position. The participants also failed to reach an agreement on India’s proposal for setting up a multilateral financing facility.
India has decided to defer indefinitely the visit of Foreign Secretary R D Sathe to Islamabad for talks on a no-war pact following references to Kashmir made by Pakistan at the Human Rights Commission in Geneva. According to a Pakistan embassy spokesman, the Indian decision was conveyed to Pakistan ambassador Abdul Sattar by Sathe. Sathe was to have gone to Islamabad on March 1 to continue discussions on a no-war pact as decided by the foreign ministers of the two countries during their talks in New Delhi earlier this month. The embassy spokesman said that Sattar had expressed regret over India’s decision and reaffirmed Pakistan’s resolve to “continue efforts in favour of normal, peaceful, friendly and cooperative relations with India”.
Parliament decried the reported statement of the chairman of the Railway Board, M S Gujral, at a press conference that suburban railway fares were likely to be raised shortly. They claimed that Gujral’s statement contradicted Railway Minister P C Sethi’s statement to Parliament on the budget. In the Rajya Sabha, A C Kulkarni (Cong-S) and S Bagaitkar (Lok Dal) wanted breach of privilege motions admitted against Gujral.
The crisis over Ukraine is now close to a tipping point. By recognising the two breakaway regions of Ukraine and sending troops into the “independent republics”, Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown complete disregard for the consequences of his actions. His televised speech, filled with nationalist grievances and the ahistorical denial of Ukrainian statehood, the claim that modern Ukraine was created by Communist Russia — specifically by Lenin, Stalin and Krushchev, by “separating, severing what is historically Russia’s land” — and the allegation that Gorbachev allowed Ukraine to slip out of Moscow’s grasp, provided an insight into the mind of a leader whose only plan to make Russia great again is to hark back to a grandiose past. This is the kind of nationalism that seeks to redraw borders and rewrite history, imagining that this will somehow restore lost glory. If countries across all of Europe, or indeed across Asia and Africa, whose borders were arbitrarily drawn at the time they shook themselves free of colonial rule, were to start reclaiming what they lost in history, there would be no end to irredentist claims and the world would find itself in perpetual conflict. From his brinkmanship, it appears that Putin is unafraid of war or the devastation it can bring to his own country and people, as well as to the rest of Europe, with the impact extending far beyond the theatre of conflict. This is why even China, which always cites respect for territorial integrity on the question of Tibet and Taiwan, has issued a cautious statement asking all parties to “exercise restraint”, as it tries to balance its blossoming friendship with Russia with its concerns about what Putin has done.
The onus is now on the Western alliance of the United States and Europe not to escalate this crisis, and find ways of dialling it down through diplomacy. Putin’s concerns about the expansion of NATO and the lop-sided security architecture of Europe are not without basis. After all, didn’t the US resort to regime change in several countries, in a bid to stop the advance of Communism in its “spheres of influence” during the Cold War? The Western effort to contain China in the Indo-Pacific, as well as India’s concerns about Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean, are born out of similar concerns of security that Putin has about Europe and the eastward expansion of its transatlantic security partnership. It is both unreasonable and irresponsible of the Western alliance to dismiss these concerns out of hand. It was Putin’s decision to mass troops on the Ukrainian border that focused the minds of policy-makers in Washington to begin engaging with the Russian leader. The Biden administration, and France and Germany, must provide the leadership that is now required to prevent conflict.
As the world struggles to re-emerge from a third wave of the Covid pandemic, the last thing anyone wants is a confrontation in Europe that would have an impact on countries far away, disrupting global supply chains, imposing heavy costs on economies that have barely survived these last three years. After two decades of a purposeless war in Afghanistan, powers that claim to be global leaders must tread more cautiously and wisely.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on February 24, 2022 under the title ‘Go no further’.
The ongoing row over wearing the hijab in Karnataka’s classrooms has reignited age-old debates around veils, patriarchy and the status of Muslim women. However, among the cacophony of familiar arguments and counter-arguments, an essential voice seems to be missing: That of Muslim women, especially young women, who have chosen to pursue education as well as their faith.
The singular narrative of Muslim women as secluded, brainwashed victims of perceived male oppression, peddled globally by imperialist powers, has also found favour with the majoritarian forces at home. Often, this narrative is peddled by various factions of the society to “liberate” the Muslim women from the clutches of the Muslim man, the quintessential “mullah”. It is easy to believe this singular story given its prevalence in the visual and literary representations of Muslims worldwide. The sheer number of movies, pulp fiction, and television debates based on this theme fixes the discourse with which Muslims should engage. This obsession with Muslim women’s plight continues to authorise and legitimise a moral crusade of “saving” Muslim women.
The heart-breaking images of Muslim teachers and students being made to take off their headscarves and burqas at the school gates in Karnataka hark back to the well-choreographed ceremonies arranged by the French colonial rulers to publicly unveil Muslim women in Algeria. America’s “war on terror” was justified by the aim of “saving” Afghan Muslim women through carpet-bombing Afghanistan. The anti-triple talaq legislation criminalised Muslim men to “save” Indian Muslim women. In this process, Muslim spaces get invaded, their practices criminalised, and Muslim women’s voices appropriated.
The spokespersons on the hijab row in the media such as Arif Mohammad Khan, Taslima Nasreen, Javed Anand and Javed Akhtar do not represent the modern, hijab-wearing Muslim woman. The lines between the right-winger, liberals, and progressives are blurred by their mutual pity for Muslim women. These voices claim to think for us and define the choices we ought to make, just as colonisers do. Muslim women prioritising their commitments to the values of their faith is not seen as a valid choice they should be making. The hijabi Muslim women, on the streets to defend their choice of clothing, remain persistently unheard by those preaching the virtues of freedom. There is an obsession with defining Muslim women’s rights by values of choice and freedom alone, which are projected to not exist within the community.
Such a framing of Muslim women’s oppression limits other concerns that plague them. Whether it is the online “auction” of Muslim women’s bodies or the fetishisation of Kashmiri Muslim women after the removal of Article 370, there is a growing trend of targeting Muslim women. Perhaps, the worst of such sexualisation occurs during communal riots, when Muslim women’s bodies are hunted as a prized possession. This discourse on liberating Indian Muslim women is silent on freeing them from these everyday acts of violence, and Islamophobia.
The dynamics that shape Muslim women’s lives in India are varied and need to be understood before reducing them to a single narrative. The political and historical explanations behind women’s oppression are often ignored in lieu of religious and cultural explanations alone, with little or no nuance. Many of the sufferings of women in general, and Muslim women in particular, can be attributed to reasons such as poverty, ill-health, low levels of education, limited access to public amenities, and political violence inflicted on them and their families. But concerns about being denied access to education and jobs are not acceptable, unless religious reasons are attached. The uproar over the hijab row shows the selective sensationalisation of their concerns.
Muslim women are not mute spectators in the Indian political discourse. The resilience of the women of Shaheen Bagh, many of them in hijab and burqa, should not be forgotten. These women have shaped the resistance in preserving the changing nature of increasingly majoritarian India. In this process, they have also paid a heavy price, with their brothers, husbands, and fathers being picked up, abused, and detained in Indian jails. The gatekeepers of civil societies need to acknowledge their contribution to defending Indian democracy when they are the most vulnerable. Any genuine engagement to address gendered forms of discrimination and violence in any community cannot be superimposed by an authoritarian conception and fixation with freedom alone.
Muslim women’s voices are infantilised, dismissed, and forced to choose between false binaries such as education or hijab, Indianness or Muslimness. Such a portrayal constantly pressures us to justify our choices, lest we be misunderstood. Our everyday lives in classrooms, professional spaces are turned into standing in courts — framing and reframing, constantly polishing and refining our justifications in fear of being judged on a scale of backwardness to literacy.
The language of the debate should not rob us of the dignity to exist as practising Muslims. Disrobing Muslim women in public spaces outside college gates is no less than auctioning them online because both humiliate and bully us. Our voices may be absent in media channels, but we are definitely on the streets, fighting for the right to exist on our terms.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 24, 2022 under the title ‘Speaking for myself’. The writer is a PhD scholar in IIT-Bombay-Monash Academy. She also runs a Muslim women’s collective called Muslim Women Study.
India’s first aircraft carrier, the original INS Vikrant, was commissioned in 1961 followed by a second carrier, the INS Viraat in 1987. Both have since been decommissioned. At present, India has only one aircraft carrier, the INS Vikramaditya, which is a Russian-origin platform. The indigenously-built aircraft carrier (IAC) Vikrant, the first of its kind and a symbol of India’s atmanirbharta in defence, is expected to be commissioned later this year.
There is a broad consensus in the strategic community on the Indian Navy having two aircraft carriers, one for each of the two seaboards. There also exists a broad consensus on acquiring a third carrier to ensure the operational availability of two aircraft carriers at any given time, accounting for maintenance, repairs and refits. The debate, therefore, revolves around the timing of the acquisition of a third carrier, whether now or later.
The proponents consider an aircraft carrier an operational necessity for sustained naval presence in the vast oceanic space. They favour the early acquisition of a third aircraft carrier, citing the rapid expansion of the Chinese PLA Navy (PLAN) and its growing forays into the Indian Ocean. Indeed, the PLAN is the world’s fastest-growing navy with more than 350 ships and submarines. China has two aircraft carriers — the Liaoning (Type 001, originally the Soviet carrier Varyag) and the Shandong (Type 002), which was built indigenously. China is also building a third carrier, the Type 003, and may have a few more in the next decade. The under-construction Type 003 will be the first Chinese aircraft carrier to use Catapult-Assisted Take-Off But Arrested Recovery (CATOBAR) and Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), which will permit bigger fighter aircraft with heavier payloads and longer ranges to operate from its deck. With the Indo-Pacific increasingly becoming a contested theatre, India must prepare for the future well in advance. Strategic observers aver that it is only a matter of time before China deploys a carrier-based task force in the Indian Ocean.
Aircraft carriers are mobile platforms that ensure sea control and power projection. They permit the use of tactical airpower over a vast region. They are equally capable of mounting offensive attacks on maritime as well as shore-based targets. Due to their mobility, aircraft carriers can evade hostile attacks. This aspect is increasingly of relevance against the backdrop of China’s development of Anti-Access and Areas Denial (A2AD) weaponry of growing lethality such as carrier-killer missiles (DF21D and DF26), as well as a large fleet of nuclear attack (SSNs) and Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) diesel-electric submarines. These have naturally questioned the continuing relevance of aircraft carriers that cost billions of dollars in future naval warfare.
Another argument favouring a third aircraft carrier is that the gestation period for any such indigenous acquisition is long. The Vikrant took 17 years to complete and is yet to be commissioned. Failure to take an early decision could result in India’s shipyards losing the expertise that has been nurtured in recent years. In the Indian context, effective reliance on shore-based aircraft for maritime dominance as against the use of an aircraft carrier would also involve developing effective jointness with the Indian Air Force. Shore-based aircraft such as the SU-30 MKI can support the Indian Navy with a combat range of about 1,500 km, with an additional strike range provided by the Brahmos missiles (400 km). At the same time, all shore-based aircraft have some limitations, in terms of loitering time for flying and distant support, regardless of the availability of air refuellers. While shore-based aircraft may be available for strikes at sea, their ability to provide air defence cover to our fleets would be limited.
The case against the immediate acquisition of a third aircraft carrier is also quite compelling. It hinges on the astronomical cost of an aircraft carrier versus cheaper alternative options that may be available today for achieving air dominance in the area of interest. Shore-based aircraft, for instance, are increasingly bigger, capable of carrying heavier fuel and weapons payloads and can be supported by airborne refuellers. There is also the case for greater strategic utilisation of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep Islands that abut vital sea lanes of communication. At the same time, shore-based aircraft and other assets are vulnerable to detection by satellites and potential missile attacks.
The question then boils down to whether India should acquire a third aircraft carrier at this time or in a few years until the Indian economic pie is bigger. The navy budget is the smallest of the three services. The cost of the indigenously produced Vikrant, without the aircraft and weapons systems, amounted to Rs 23,000 crore. The next aircraft carrier India builds is bound to cost much more. It is a moot question if the navy can absorb the cost of a third aircraft carrier within its existing budget. A related issue concerns the prioritisation of ongoing and planned major naval acquisitions, which include the Scorpene submarines (P-75 Programme), the Project 75 (India)-class submarines, the Visakhapatnam (P-15B) class destroyers, and the Nilgiri (P17A) class stealth frigates.
India occupies a pole position in the Indian Ocean. It wields a high degree of influence in the oceanic spaces which are crucial to its trade and energy requirements, as well as those of many others such as India’s partners in the Quad and Malabar Naval Exercise (the US, Japan and Australia). There is no doubt that a third aircraft carrier would add to the considerable punch of the Indian Navy. However, given the deleterious effect of the pandemic on economic growth, it appears that the idea of a third aircraft carrier may have to be put on the back burner.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 24, 2022 under the title ‘The third aircraft carrier’. The writer is director-general of the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. Views are personal.
There has been a lot of discussion and debate on the underrepresentation of women in the sciences. This exists across the entire career trajectory — in recruitment and promotion, in awards, in selection to science academies as members/fellows and in leadership positions in scientific institutions. The status of women’s representation in science academies reflects their overall position in the scientific community. Science academies have strict criteria for electing fellows; to be elected as a fellow in one or more academies of science is a mark of recognition and achievement. Even today, a fellowship of academies like the Royal Society (of Britain) is considered respectable and prestigious.
Historically, academies have been male bastions with the significant exclusion of women scientists, irrespective of their contributions and work. The early part of the 20th century witnessed the acceptance of women scientists as members in many of the European academies. The global picture of science academies also reveals considerable underrepresentation of women. A recent study done jointly by GenderInSITE (Gender in Science, Innovation, Technology and Engineering), the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) and the International Science Council (ISC) shows that elected membership of women in senior academies increased marginally from 13 per cent in 2015 to 16 per cent in 2020. However, in 19 academies it is 10 per cent or less. In the case of young academies, the position is better although there is under-representation as the average share is 42 per cent. Among the senior academies, the Academy of Sciences of Cuba leads with 33 per cent.
In 2015, a similar study stirred discussion among academies on this issue which led to various recommendations. Unfortunately, in 2020, it was found that only a third of them (34 per cent) had developed a specific strategy to enhance women’s participation and merely 16 per cent of them have a budget for activities to promote gender equality. What is more worrisome is the severe under-representation in academies in specific fields; in engineering sciences and mathematics, women are just 10 per cent and 8 per cent respectively. Undoubtedly, women scientists have a long way to go to be accepted and elected as equals. While the given issue emanates from the larger problem of the underrepresentation of women in all spheres of life, its persistence in science shows that scientists and science academies need to develop policies and strategies to enhance the representation of women. More importantly, science academies have to reflect upon their role and contributions to promote and retain women in science, thereby making science inclusive and sensitive.
In the Indian context, the survey conducted in 2020 showed that out of 1,044 members of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), only 89 are women, amounting to 9 per cent. In 2015, it was worse with 6 per cent women scientist members out of 864 members. Similarly, the governing body of INSA had seven women out of 31 members in 2020, while there were no women members in 2015. The three academies, the Indian National Science Academies (INSA), the Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS) and the National Academies (NAS) are striving to enhance the representation of women in science, including in professional bodies and related institutions. A report was published in 2016, pointing out the status of women in science outlining various suggestions to tackle the issue. In 2019, INSA elected its first woman president, Chandrima Shaha. Some of the recent initiatives of the IAS are notable and pioneering. Recognising gender equality as enshrined in the Constitution and the reality of discrimination, sexual harassment, gender bias and inadequacies in institutional infrastructures, it has adopted the five policy commitments. “Promote gender equality as an explicit human right; identify and eliminate practices that create systemic and structural impediments to the advancement of women in science; support the empowerment of women to enable them to flourish in the scientific profession; identify potential risks and hindrances to women in their pursuit of science and implement strategies to eliminate them; and engage with the Government of India, scientific institutions and the civil society to promote and support gender equality in general, and in science in particular.”
Each commitment has its own significance and can contribute immensely to creating synergies between principles and actions. The academy’s assurance to set specific goals and periodically monitor progress are steps in the right direction. The eight guidelines adopted by the IAS indicate its willingness to walk the talk. It is noteworthy that the IAS is prioritising addressing issues of under-representation within the institution rather than making general observations and suggestions.
The initiative to enhance the current representation in fellowships and the governing body will address a long-felt need, ensuring that the first step has been taken to tackle existing inequities in science. Although the IAS is explicitly avoiding quotas in this regard, it can be considered as an option in the initial years so that a critical mass of women can be attained. In 2017 and 2018, to address the severe imbalance in terms of gender, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences decided to elect only women as members with 10 in 2017 and six in 2018, as women were just 13 per cent of its 556 members. The IAS can consider such measures, including sub-quotas for a few years to begin with. Such measures without compromising on the quality of selection and rigour will make a welcome difference. In doing so, such interventions will supplement and complement other efforts of the IAS.
The guideline also endorses significant representation of women in all activities, functioning and positions of IAS. It will ensure more visibility for women in IAS and create greater impact, thereby addressing the issue of gender equality in the true sense, rather than reducing it to tokenism. The other six guidelines revolve around the aforementioned ideas.
Efforts to ensure gender equity in science should not be limited to the science academies. Much needs to be done by all stakeholders. However, it is truly a clarion call when academies set a precedent in matters of women’s under-representation by acting internally, without any external compulsion or pressure. In light of the thrust on gender equity and inclusion in India’s forthcoming Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (STIP), we optimistically anticipate the relevance of science academies in implementing recommendations to promote and retain women as well as in creating an enabling milieu to achieve gender equality in science.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 24, 2022 under the title ‘A more inclusive science’. Pandey is postdoctoral fellow, Centre for Policy Research, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Srinivas is Senior Fellow and Consultant, Research and Information System for Developing Countries.
In her budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman reaffirmed the Centre’s commitment to natural, chemical-free, organic and zero-budget farming. It is the third time in the last four budget speeches where (zero budget) natural farming finds a mention.
While the FM talked of promoting natural or chemical-free farming across the country, especially in a corridor in the Gangetic basin, no specific allocations have been made to the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. In fact, currently-operational schemes such as the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana and the National Project on Organic Farming did not find any mention in the budget. However, we hope that the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, which has received a 4.2-times (year-on-year) larger allocation of Rs 10,433 crore, will earmark some funds for the on-ground implementation of chemical-free farming. As the ministry plans the fund utilisation under RKVY, here are eight suggestions to scale up chemical-free farming.
First, focus on promoting natural farming in rainfed areas beyond the Gangetic basin. Home to half of India’s farmers, rainfed regions use only a third of the fertilisers per hectarecompared to the areas where irrigation is prevalent. The shift to chemical-free farming will be easier in these regions. Also, the farmers stand to gain as the current crop yields in these areas are low. While researching ways to scale-up natural farming in Rajasthan, we found higher interest among farmers, especially from tribal communities, who practise rainfed agriculture.
Second, enable automatic enrolment of farmers transitioning to chemical-free farming into the government’s crop insurance scheme, PM Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY). Any transition in agriculture — crop diversification, change in farming practices — adds to the farmer’s risk. Covering such risks could enhance the appetite of the farmers to embark on the transition.
Third, promote microenterprises that produce inputs for chemical-free agriculture. An often-cited barrier by farmers in transitioning to chemical-free agriculture is the lack of readily available natural inputs. Not every farmer has the time, patience, or labour to develop their own inputs. To address this challenge, combine the promotion of natural farming with the setting up of village-level input preparation and sales shops. Two shops per village across the country could provide a livelihood to at least five million youth and women.
Fourth, leverage NGOs and champion farmers who have been promoting and practising sustainable agriculture across the country. CEEW research estimates that at least five million farmers are already practising some form of sustainable agriculture and hundreds of NGOs are involved in promoting them. Learning from peers, especially champion farmers, through on-field demonstrations has proved highly effective in scaling up chemical-free agriculture in Andhra Pradesh.
Fifth, beyond evolving the curriculum in agricultural universities, upskill the agriculture extension workers on sustainable agriculture practices.
Sixth, leverage community institutions for awareness generation, inspiration, and social support. In other words, the government should facilitate an ecosystem in which farmers learn from and support each other while making the transition. Seventh, support monitoring and impact studies. Such assessments would ensure an informed approach to scaling up sustainable agriculture. Finally, dovetail the ambition on millet promotion with the aim to promote sustainable agriculture. Instead of the two remaining in silos, why not promote chemical-free millets and create awareness about both?
India’s food system needs a holistic transformation in demand, production, and supply chains. Let’s hope 2022-23 is the inflection point when we convert intent into action in our journey towards achieving a chemical-free food system.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 24, 2022 under the title ‘Road to natural farming’. The writer is a Fellow and Director of Powering Livelihoods at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW)
Russia’s recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk — the two breakaway regions of Ukraine — its decision to send “peacekeepers” and the still-evolving American and European reactions in terms of sanctions and other measures, offer stark lessons on the current nature of international politics. A crisis can be a cleanser of illusions and a clarifier of minds. This is surely one such.
That weakness is a sin is a harsh lesson that Russia has learnt since the Soviet collapse in 1991. The NATO expansion was a saga of false promises and unreal expectations. Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and even the ever-submissive Kozyrev were praised, ignored or lied to, but never respected or accommodated. Russia’s protestations were weak and sometimes confused, as with the NATO lollipop of a Partnership for Peace, a ruse which it fell for. Even President Vladimir Putin, in his early days, toyed with the idea of NATO membership. Each wave of NATO expansion brought the military alliance closer to Russia’s doorstep.
Today on its western borders, Russia is trying to wriggle out of a deeply disadvantageous situation that it was forced to accept out of weakness. Russia is not the Soviet Union. But it is also not the feeble power that it once was. With its military strength restored, it is employing aggressive means to defend its peripheries from US and NATO encroachment. Its actions are hugely destabilising, but are they unexpected? No. Which major power would accept unrelenting strategic encroachment in its immediate neighbourhood? After paying for its sin of weakness, Russia feels the time has come for a strong pushback.
Deafness is the twin brother of hubris. In the 1990s, Russia had no higher foreign policy goal than to be accepted by the West. This phase lasted until Putin’s 2007 Munich Security Conference speech — a remonstration against the strategic deafness in Washington. It was met with disdain and derision. The disastrous 2008 Bucharest Summit decision to put Ukraine and Georgia on the waiting list evoked the worst Russian fears and encouraged the comforting but false illusion in the two countries that the US and NATO would defend them against Russian aggression. In 2008, Georgia lost Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Ukraine has now been left to its own devices against Russian moves in the Donbas. For those in Ukraine, especially after the 2014 Maidan events, seeking distant protectors for proximate problems with Russia, these half-promises have proved lethal. Ukraine and Georgia are entitled to their rights of sovereignty and territorial integrity, but the entitlement alone cannot protect them from adverse consequences if these rights are pursued through diplomatic and military choices that yield the opposite results. Sadly, that is the case today.
Geopolitics is territorial genetics — it can be tamed but never erased. The NATO expansion has brought within its ambit territorial and ethnic disputes that have caused many European wars. NATO’s open-door policy on membership, strong in theory but disastrous in practice, has now reached its limits with the biggest crisis in European security since the 1990s. There is a yawning gap between its commitments and capabilities. Today’s NATO, with 30 countries, has fewer troops than the NATO of the 1990s, which had 16 countries. The failure of European powers — France and Germany, in particular — to rebuild European security outside the shadow of the US is now evident. America is back in Europe, reversing a major post-Cold War trend. Contrary to the “Beltway bubble analysis” (BBA), Russia is not seeking “limited sovereignty” in Central Europe — that is beyond its power. It is pushing back against states on its periphery that are conceding their sovereignty in favour of external military partners. But Russia’s success is not assured. In fact, a prolonged confrontation with indeterminate costs is inevitable.
Globalisation is judged by the margins of shared security and prosperity. Geopolitics, on the other hand, is driven by a country’s willingness to pay the costs and suffer for core interests. Russia, today, is one such power. Europe will be asked to pay for the costs of increased US-Russia confrontation, affecting its defence and energy interests. It will have no option but to comply — the hidden economic costs of a flawed security policy.
Double-front capabilities are a fallacy wrapped in a fantasy. No country in history has had the capability to fight simultaneously on two fronts on a global scale. Great Britain had India but was not able to prevail in its American colonies. Attacked by Japan in Pearl Harbor, the US ran a Europe-first strategy until late into the Second World War. The Soviets were bled dry due to the two-front mobilisations against NATO and China in the 1980s, even while fighting in Afghanistan. Even at the peak of its military power during the Cold War, the US planned major offensive operations in one theatre while seeking only enough military force for a holding operation in the second. The BBA would like us to believe that the US will be an exception to this historic trend. Forcing Russia to fight recurring fires on its western periphery — the Baltics, Ukraine, the Caucuses and the Black Sea — the West is opening the doors for China to expand its influence in Central Asia and the Far East. What starts in Europe will not stay in Europe.
The US today is a global power, first and foremost, because of its preponderant domination and influence over Europe. With a reinvestment in NATO, the American commitment to Europe will get stronger. Again, despite all the BBA optimism, there are serious material and policy difficulties for the US, at a time of great domestic divisions, to transition from being a Eurocentric global power to an Indo-Pacific one. The smaller countries from Eastern and Central Europe and their lobbies in Washington will torment the US for enhanced security commitments. The stage is set for the US to get bogged down in a European quagmire, creating long-term distortions in its global commitments.
India has taken a well-considered and balanced position on the evolving crisis. We owe answers to no one except ourselves. The 1997 Russia-NATO Act, the Budapest Memorandum and the Minsk agreements, quite apart from the key arms control agreements in Europe — the CFE, INF and Open Skies Treaty — were abandoned by many who want India to stand up and be counted for a “rules-based international order”. Russia has not covered itself in glory. But that is no reason to doubt the merits of our long-standing relations with it — just as we held our noses and deepened our relations with the US during its decade-long intervention in Iraq. Just as India should stand up against those countries that seek military domination on our borders, those in our neighbourhood should also take the lesson coming from the Ukraine crisis — offering your land to external powers to threaten others will only invite unhappy endings.
This column first appeared in the print edition on February 24, 2022 under the title ‘The Putin pushback’. The writer is former ambassador to Russia (2018-2021)
It is now well established that the Western sanctions imposed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea were quite ineffective. Indeed, Russia’s current attack on Ukraine is proof positive that they were not a deterrent at all. It must be underlined that the goal of sanctions is not just to inflict pain on the Russian economy but to do so to such an extent that President Vladimir Putin significantly moderates his aggressive Ukraine policy. The new round of sanctions targeted at individuals and entities including some of Russia’s smaller banks are by all accounts simply not up to the above task.
The bigger “nuclear” sanctions are being withheld for use in the event of further escalation. And there is an irony to this in that when Ukraine achieved independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union it was persuaded to give up its nuclear weapons by the US and the UK pledging alongside Russia that if there was an “act of aggression” against Ukraine, they would “seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine”. But today, nobody is coming forward to put troops on the ground to help Ukraine withstand Russia. Even stronger sanctions are being withheld because they would inflict pain on the Western economies too.
The key problem today is a fundamental asymmetry between a government not shy of inflicting tons of domestic pain to push its global agenda, and governments that put growth, prosperity, peace, basically their people’s interests first. But if Ukraine is allowed to be just run over, tomorrow’s problem could be a new era of invasions and illegal conquests. To prevent that, democracies have to keep working to get through Fortress Russia collectively.
Soon after the geopolitical situation in Ukraine worsened, the Indian basket of crude touched $97 a barrel. The effect will be felt in days to come. On paper, India shifted to daily pricing of petrol and diesel in 2017. However, there’s a price inertia as elections approach. Consequently, retail fuel prices will start rising in March to compensate for weeks of stasis. This, when private consumption hasn’t caught up to pre-pandemic level. Therefore, GoI should reduce its fuel taxes immediately to offset the impact of the recent increase in the cost of crude. Doing so will synchronise fiscal policy to an evolving global scenario.
The period between 2014-15 and 2020-21 was marked by a moderation in the price of crude oil. GoI used that phase to increase fuel taxes, thereby, capturing most of the benefits. Between FY-15 and FY-21 GoI collected about Rs 16.7 lakh crore through excise duty on petroleum products. Moreover, most of it was retained by GoI as an increasing proportion of the duty was reclassified as cess to keep it out of the divisible pool that is shared with states. Therefore, it’s GoI that today has the fiscal cushion to lower fuel taxes and hold up private consumption.
The economic recovery over the last few quarters has been uneven. Contact-intensive sectors haven’t fully recovered and employment data points to a relative increase in the proportion of jobs in the informal sector. In India, around 80 of every 100 passenger vehicles sold are entry-level two-wheelers, running on petrol. Therefore, fuel price increases take a toll on a vulnerable segment of the population that is already feeling the pinch of elevated inflation in articles other than food and fuel. A reallocation of household budgets to deal with higher fuel prices will keep consumption weak and undermine an important premise of a growth-oriented Budget.
GoI did well in November to lower taxes on petrol and diesel by Rs 5 and Rs 10 respectively. But it remains high at Rs 27.9 for petrol and Rs 21.8 for diesel. There’s room to reduce them further as the Budget was conservative in revenue estimates. Gross tax collection for FY-23 is expected to increase by 9.6% to Rs 27.6 lakh crore, a level lower than the 11.1% growth in nominal GDP which is the foundation of the Budget. That prudence has now left GoI with the space to slash fuel taxes and insulate the economy from Ukraine’s impact on energy markets.
Nine months after winning the Tamil Nadu assembly elections, DMK has pushed AIADMK further to the backfoot in urban local body polls, potentially strengthening chief minister MK Stalin’s hand in national politics. DMK’s landslide victory in all the corporations and a majority of municipalities and town panchayats could trigger more churning in AIADMK, now run in a collegial style by former CMs EK Palaniswami and O Panneerselvam. Unlike AIADMK, which junked allies who had helped it perform creditably in defeat last year, the governing DMK carried its partners like Congress and Left parties along to notch an even bigger victory.
For Congress, which piggybacked on DMK to third position – national rival BJP got attention by contesting alone and earning some wins in 28 of the state’s 38 districts – the TN electorate’s reaffirmation of Stalin will be a welcome development nationally. Recall that it was Maharashtra ally Shiv Sena that had objected to Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee’s desire to build a coalition of anti-BJP parties without Congress. A strongly placed Stalin will have to be heeded and he is unlikely to be enthusiastic about excluding a key local ally like Congress in pan-Indian political alliances.
In all hung Lok Sabhas since 1989, TN with its 39 MPs has been crucial in government formation. DMK joined ministries in 1989, 1996, 1999, 2004 and 2009 while AIADMK’s support mattered in 1991 and 1998. AB Vajpayee’s failure to retain DMK in NDA in 2003 and BJP’s mistimed pre-poll alliance with AIADMK – both were blanked out in 2004 – helped UPA’s rise. So even as it targets a long-term strategy to increase its footprint in TN, BJP will be worried about erosion in AIADMK’s popularity, since every big state counts in 2024 national polls. But in politics, no alliances are permanent. Will Stalin join other CMs like KCR, Mamata and Uddhav in “federal front” talks or pull a Dravidian surprise?
The odds of a global post-pandemic economic recovery have worsened with Brent crude oil prices expected to stay well above $100 a barrel after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and US-led Western countries threatening Moscow with sanctions that could affect the latter's energy supplies. Fuel prices are cutting deep into American and European household budgets, and drawn out hostilities make both consumption and industrial revival less certain. Asia imports most of its energy, and could also be drawn into the maelstrom as central bankers face pressure to speed up the withdrawal of easy money. Oil and gas supply disruptions will feed into higher commodity prices and a flight to safety in capital markets.
The tightness in the spot energy market is expected to continue with Opec+ struggling with outages and US shale oil not having ramped up. Russia, on its part, has struggled with its enhanced oil production commitments and, at their most severe, sanctions could dent its gas supply to Europe. The world has enough oil capacity if Russia were shut out of the market. But it does not have enough gas. Bringing those oil capacities into play would require a stronger drive than Opec+ has shown till now on enhancing production quotas. At this elevated price level, private US producers are expected to raise output, and progress in talks over nuclear sanctions with Iran could, inshallah, bring in more supplies.
The oil shock will require Indian policymakers to revisit the growth-inflation dynamic that underlined this year's Union budget and the subsequent monetary policy review. The assumption was that inflation had peaked within the policy band, allowing for an expansionary fiscal position accompanied by easy liquidity. That flexibility is reducing with higher energy, commodity and credit costs jeopardising an anticipated upcycle in private investment. As investors shift to safe-haven assets such as US treasuries, emerging markets like India could very well end up paying a higher price for this latest crisis than they need to.
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The Rajasthan government's announcement to revert to the old pension scheme to provide assured returns to employees makes no sense. Ending the contribution-based pension system will raise the burden of pension on government finances, and crimp development spending. Already, the pandemic has pushed up borrowings of GoI and states. Such populism sets a terrible precedent for other states. The Samajwadi Party has already promised to restore the old pension scheme if it returns to power in Uttar Pradesh. The raison d'etre of the National Pension System (NPS), which manages pensions of central and state government servants who joined in or after 2004, was to rein in the government's growing pension liabilities. That will be defeated if the government gives a guaranteed return. Instead, it should enhance returns from NPS, which houses ₹5.62 lakh crore, and ensure that it offers old-age security certainty.
An employee contributes 10% of her pay and dearness allowance. The matching contribution by the state or central government has been raised to 14% to help enhance the corpus. As the pool of funds increases, fund managers will have more flexibility to diversify deployment across asset classes and try to balance their portfolios to optimise risk and reward. NPS has the institutional framework to generate superior returns. The three-year return for government employees, who have the option to invest up to 50% in equities, is about 10.6%. Superior returns will help employees build a decent retirement nest, and make long-term capital available for infrastructure funds.
States will spend over ₹4 lakh crore on pensions in FY2022. Abandoning NPS will cripple state finances. Rajasthan must scrap this regressive proposal.
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First, the aim was protecting the Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine. Then, it was supporting separatist leaders and enclaves in eastern Ukraine. On Monday, the goal shifted to recognising the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in the Donbas region as independent republics. It then rapidly expanded to extending the territorial claims of these new, so-called, republics to areas still under the control of the Ukrainian government. This was accompanied with the deployment of troops in the two provinces. And finally, on Thursday, it became a mission to overwhelm all of Ukraine, including its capital Kyiv, through a military invasion.
With that final act on Thursday, Russia, led by its president Vladimir Putin, left no one in doubt that its overall political objective was taking Ukraine under control and ensuring a pliable regime in Kyiv that would report to Moscow. Its method was “military-technical”, to borrow a phrase the Kremlin has been consistently using through this episode, which, in real terms, meant the use of overwhelming force against a much smaller neighbour. And, its message to the rest of Europe and the world was that the Russia of today was no longer the Russia of 1991, and it would do all that was needed to restore parts of the Soviet arc of influence, especially in its close proximity.
As this newspaper pointed out on Monday, Russia has legitimate grievances. The end of the Cold War transformed a bipolar order in Europe into an almost unipolar order, where the United States (US) and its allies pushed the frontiers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) towards the east. Russia was uncomfortable, and consistently objected to the security alliance coming close to its borders. The West should have taken Russian grievances into account. The US also did not anticipate, or deliberately ignored, the implications of its deep political and military engagement with Russia’s immediate neighbours. To the generation that ruled Russia -- which had not overcome what it saw as the humiliating defeat at the end of the Cold War and retained the vision of Russia as a great power and a civilisational State -- this was hard to digest.
But with an outright invasion of Ukraine, which followed Putin’s speech earlier this week that dismissed Ukraine’s statehood as fiction, Russia has crossed a line. It has violated the principle of respect for the independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of a State which is a recognised member of the United Nations, and whose sovereignty Russia too has recognised for the past three decades. It has opened up room for a prolonged conflict in Ukraine, for even though Russian forces are likely to overwhelm Kyiv quite rapidly, Ukrainians are unlikely to accept Russian supremacy without putting up a fight, one that the West has openly said it would back. It has possibly triggered the first steps of what will be a long saga of human suffering. It has destabilised the world economy, for Russia was fully aware that its steps would invite severe sanctions, which, in turn, will have an impact on energy and food prices and Russia’s economic engagement with the rest of the world. And, it has transformed Europe, almost 80 years after World War II ended, into a new battleground where hard power, rather than international norms, is the guiding mantra.
While Russia will prevail in the short-term, especially given the lack of appetite in the West to engage in a new military conflict, its invasion will have strategic and economic consequences. For India, in particular, the balancing act between maintaining close strategic ties with the US – which it sees as the most important strategic relationship, especially in the wake of the Chinese aggression – and maintaining its privileged partnership with Russia, which is both a major supplier of defence hardware and a supporter on international platforms, will get more difficult. Maintaining ambiguity will lose Delhi credibility and friends in the West; speaking up for values will lose Delhi goodwill in Moscow and alienate Putin and the Russian security establishment.
The fact that Russia’s closest friend at the moment is China doesn’t help. So far, Moscow has not let its proximity to Beijing affect ties with Delhi, but if Delhi lets its proximity to the West affect its position on Russia, the situation may well change. On the other hand, seeking a US executive waiver on the acquisition of the S-400 missile systems will become more challenging for India, given the strong bipartisan mood in Washington against Moscow. The more immediate impact for India will, of course, be economic, as it grapples with higher energy prices – which will affect the ongoing economic recovery – and comes to terms with the new wide-ranging sanctions that will inevitably affect Russia-India economic ties. But while doing a careful cost-benefit assessment, India must let it be known that it is opposed to the unilateral use of military force and violation of sovereignty, for these principles are central to a rules-based order that India seeks in its own region.
In the narrow lane leading from the Hanuman Garhi temple to the Ram Janmabhoomi site in Uttar Pradesh (UP)’s Ayodhya, the shopkeepers are upset. Their shops will be demolished to widen the road as part of a renovation design. Who will you vote for, I ask them. “Vote toh BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] ko padega, without Modi-ji and Yogi-ji, there would be no Ram Temple. Aastha [faith] bhi important hai!” is the telling response.
In a village near Kanpur, farmers from the Kurmi community are complaining about rising diesel prices and the stray cattle menace, but indicate that their vote is with BJP. “Yogi-ji’s government is giving us free ration for months now,” is their reasoning. Not surprisingly, the ration packets carry pictures of chief minister (CM) Yogi Adityanath and Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi.
Switch to urban Lucknow where the city’s youth is hanging out on a food street. Many of them are troubled by the lack of jobs. So, who will they vote for? “I would like to give the Yogi government one more chance, at least women’s security is now better, and I can move around after 7 pm,” says a software engineer.
While crisscrossing the Awadh belt of central UP, the country’s most populous and politically influential state remains a puzzling bundle of contradictions.
This isn’t the turbulent 1990s where caste and community identity “wars” were fought with frenetic zeal. There is disquiet over the tough times during the pandemic, but anxiety hasn’t turned into anger. Except for western UP, the epicentre of the farmer agitation, which dramatically changed political equations in the region, the state seems to have settled into a more stable order.
So, what explains the paradox of a disenchanted voter, but relatively clear-cut electoral preferences?
First, the lack of options is stark. Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, which only 15 years ago won a majority, appears to have disintegrated. Under Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the Congress has tried to lift itself from the mire, but decades of organisational sloth can’t be overcome by a few months of effort. That leaves the energetic Akhilesh Yadav. His attempts to recast the Samajwadi Party (SP) by striking strategic alliances with smaller caste-based parties are a recognition of the limits of the party’s original Muslim-Yadav base. However, he still has to live down the perception of leading a force that is identified with Yadav “bahubali” (strongmen) dominance.
Second, the BJP has invested heavily in astute social engineering over the past seven years. It has built a new power structure where non-Yadav Other Backward Classes (OBCs) have become the party’s engine. This has led to friction at the leadership level between the upper-caste elites and the more recent entrants, but it has also meant that the party has a much wider social base than its competitors.
Third, the flagship welfarist schemes of the Modi-Yogi “double engine” have created a pro-poor image that may enable the party to tide over price rise and creeping discontent against its MLAs. For example, the PM-Kisan launched in February 2019 assures farmers an income of ₹6,000 per year over three instalments. UP has the highest number of beneficiaries (25 million): It is this vast pool of beneficiaries of cash transfers and free rations that is at the heart of the BJP’s political outreach.
Fourth, the media is tightly controlled by the government’s bureaucratic machine so that no negative news can become a sustained prime time narrative, be it dead bodies floating in the Ganga during the Covid-19 second wave (2021), alleged ministerial corruption, the Hathras rape and murder case, or the Lakhimpur mowing down of protesting farmers by a VIP cavalcade. The occasional journalistic expose has been met with heavy-handed state action, including FIRs against journalists, creating an atmosphere of fear and foreboding.
But above all else, there is the lure of the Hindutva project, wherein UP, much like Gujarat in the Modi years, has become the centrepiece of a deepening religious polarisation. Yogi Adityanath’s controversial “80:20” remark is designed to shore up his image as a “protector” of “Hindu interests”. The CM has been a serial offender when it comes to brazenly appealing to one religious grouping while demonising another. But what is offensive to those who swear by the constitutional norms of non-discriminatory politics is cheered on by vast multitudes of supporters. They contrast Hindu assertiveness in the last five years with the so-called “appeasement” of Muslims in the previous regime. In fact, even the CM’s core appeal of being tough on law and order is viewed through the prism of anti-Muslim sentiment: ‘Muslim’ gangsters are seen as prime targets of Yogi’s “bulldozer” boast.
This doesn’t mean UP’s traditional caste fault-lines have disappeared or that local anti-incumbency isn’t a factor, one reason why the BJP faces a decline in its 2017 numbers. It is just that a majority in UP seems unwilling to break with the Modi-Yogi fixation. Women, in particular, remain a crucial demographic whose support may cut across the caste barrier. Just how long this cult-like fascination for the BJP’s “UP-Yogi” poll pitch lasts is uncertain. But for now, it seems that the Hindi heartland is still content to keep rocking in its Hindu cradle.
Post-script: In the power corridors of Lucknow, there is much speculation on whether a section of the BJP leadership would prefer a narrow victory to an overwhelming one. As per this theory, a downsized Yogi would suit specific political interests within the BJP’s established power structure. If only electoral politics were so easy to control.
Rajdeep Sardesai is a senior journalist and author
The views expressed are personal
The Ukraine crisis has crossed a critical point with Russia following up its recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk with a full-fledged invasion to “demilitarise” Ukraine. This decision by Moscow is a rejection of the inviolability of national borders in Europe as agreed to in the Helsinki agreement of 1975 and a major challenge to the global order.
Contestation about post-Cold War central European territoriality and resurrecting a burnished Russian past is at the core of the Ukraine crisis. The United States (US) and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies are in a huddle and sanctions have been imposed on Moscow. The different strands of the run up to World War II and the German belligerence of 1939 are being recalled even as the US and NATO review military options in the face of the dire Vladimir Putin warning against any “interference” in support of Ukraine.
But conflict over territorial transgressions is not limited to Ukraine. As much as the tense US-Russia relationship dominated the proceedings at the recently concluded Munich Security Conference (MSC) 2022, the troubled India-China relationship over contested territoriality also came into sharp focus. The deliberations at the conference mark a definitive punctuation in Delhi’s assessment of Beijing’s border transgressions.
At MSC (February 19), external affairs minister (EAM) S Jaishankar noted that the bilateral was going through a “very difficult phase” after Beijing violated border agreements — the reference being to the Galwan incident of June 2020. He added, “The problem is that for 45 years there was peace, there was stable border management, there were no military casualties on the border from 1975.”
Apropos the Galwan clash, the EAM noted that there were agreements with China not to bring military forces to the Line of Actual Control [LAC], and the Chinese “violated those agreements”. Taking umbrage at this, China’s Global Times noted (February 20) in a caustic manner, “New Delhi may try to exploit the force of the international community to embolden itself and further play with fire on the border issue. Such a dangerous tendency is what China needs to be wary of.”
The manner in which the Ukraine crisis has unfolded could be described as an extension of the hybrid warfare model that Moscow, on Putin’s watch, has successfully honed — from Syria to Kazakhstan and now central Europe. The leavening of military muscle with a robust information campaign and the resolute exploitation of suasion that does not rule out brinkmanship tactics, offers certain cues for India in relation to the discord with China.
While the Indian Army has considerable experience in confronting the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) along LAC in the military domain (from October 1962 through the 1980’s that include Sumdorong-Chu and now Galwan), China’s current hybrid model — that combines rapid building up of infrastructure, selective demographic leverage, enabling domestic laws and shaping of the popular narrative by occupying the “victim-perch” through an innovative information campaign — is a new ballgame.
India has been reticent in this regard, and the post-Galwan information canvas is illustrative. By early 2021, after the initial setback where Indian soldiers were killed (as also PLA personnel) and the kinetic developments around the Pangong Lake area, India chose to forfeit certain tactical advantages with an expectation that this would create the necessary politico-diplomatic framework for negotiations. More than a year later, that hope has floundered on what India perceives as Chinese intransigence. Beijing claims the reason is Delhi’s lack of sincerity.
Regrettably, the strategic communication about the Galwan setback and the status of LAC has been below par as far as India is concerned. The Modi government chose to obfuscate the grave challenge to national sovereignty by asserting that “no Indian territory had been lost” (June 19, 2020) and this has been the emphasis for the domestic audience, given the perennial electoral compulsions related to the image of a strong government zealously defending national sovereignty and honour.
Thus, at an election rally in Hoshiarpur, defence minister Rajnath Singh claimed (February 4) that “not a single inch of land” was allowed to be occupied by China in Galwan, leaving the average citizen confused about the border violations ascribed to the PLA. Senior military veterans who served in Ladakh aver that China is now physically closer to its 1959 claims along LAC.
Regarding the current status of LAC and India’s post-Galwan tactical position and patrolling constraints, former foreign secretary Shyam Saran notes, “I would not say that India has forfeited its right to patrol certain areas in eastern Ladakh, but it is undeniable that Indian troops are being prevented by Chinese troops from accessing areas that they were routinely patrolling on a regular basis before the Galwan clash. This remains the situation in the Depsang Plains, the Hot Springs and Gogra regions. We may argue that India has not conceded any territory in terms of giving up its claims but the situation on the ground is that there are areas over which we no longer have physical access.”
Contested territoriality is only one manifestation of the troubled India-China relationship and as India seeks to equip itself appropriately to deal with the emerging strategic flux engendered by Ukraine, the right lessons need to be internalised in relation to strategic communication and national security.
Commodore (retired) C Uday Bhaskar is director, Society for Policy Studies
The views expressed are personal
The proposed law on personal data protection is principally civil in nature. Under the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, 2019, every data fiduciary (an entity that controls the storage and usage of data like say, Google) and data processor (which processes the data, such as, for instance, Cambridge Analytica) is responsible for implementing security safeguards to protect the integrity of personal data and prevent its misuse. In case of contravention, there are provisions for penalties and compensation. For offences punishable under the bill, a court cannot take cognisance unless a complaint is made by the Data Protection Authority of India.
The primary objective of the proposed law is “to provide for protection of the privacy of individuals relating to their personal data”. But as far as the ambit of criminal offences is concerned, the bill is silent on some potentially wilful acts of the data fiduciary and the data processor. It is also overly implicative because it includes the heads of government departments for criminal liability.
The bill identifies three major offences. The first is about re-identification and processing of personal data (without the consent of the data fiduciary or data processor), which has been de-identified already. De-identification entails the removal of sensitive personal details, but as experts have argued, such personal information can be retrieved when large datasets are compared and merged.
But what if the data fiduciary or data processor wilfully re-identifies the data for commercial or other purposes? As the primary responsibility of data protection resides with both these entities, they must be brought within the domain of criminal liability with stiff penalties. But the section doesn’t deal with any such eventuality.
Second, the bill is silent on the intentional sharing or disclosure of personal data to a third party by the data fiduciary or data processor as an offence. In recent years, the world has seen significant data breaches, raising serious privacy concerns of individuals. The White Paper of the Committee of Experts on a Data Protection Framework for India mentioned the domestic legislation in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and South Africa, which make intentional or reckless sharing of personal data a criminal offence. Surprisingly, the joint committee (JC) on the PDP bill did not take this aspect into account. It would be judicious to follow international practices and make intentional disclosure or sharing of personal data a criminal offence.
Third, the bill has a provision to hold the head of department vicariously liable and deemed guilty for an offence committed by its (government) data fiduciary. Both this provision, and the recommendation of the JC on this issue, are problematic.
The usual rule in cases involving criminal liability is to avoid vicarious liability. Though this legal fiction (of criminal vicarious liability) can be created in any statute, the JC appreciated that it may “impede decision making process” and create hurdles in the everyday functioning of the department.
But its alternative — of an “an in-house inquiry” to fix responsibility before initiating criminal proceedings — may not find favour with the judiciary. It is an established principle of law that any information that discloses the commission of a cognisable offence must be recorded as a First Information Report (FIR) without delay. Any in-house inquiry to fix responsibility will amount to an investigation into that offence, which is not permissible under the Code of Criminal Procedure. Further, departments other than law enforcement agencies may not be well versed with procedural laws and equipped to undertake a criminal investigation. The investigating officer, in any case, will have to undertake the probe de novo.
Therefore, it will be prudent not only to do away with the provision of criminal vicarious liability, but also not to allow other departments to enter the domain of the law enforcement agencies.
RK Vij is a former special DGP, Chhattisgarh
The views expressed are personal
A recent study focused on the United States and India pointed out the lack of attention to digital media literacy in education policies as a critical factor in spreading online misinformation.
The power of social media to optimise and speed up the spread of misinformation and its detrimental consequences for democracy are matters of concern among policymakers across the world. Misinformation spread through social media applications (49% of the global population are active users) have been linked to entrenched social polarisation, the rise of authoritarianism, vaccine hesitancy, and real-life violence. Hence, upholding democratic values requires measures to limit and control the dissemination of misinformation on social media platforms.
There are two main policy-driven approaches to tackle misinformation – regulation of social media platforms and social media literacy.
Regulation and its limits
The more popular approach among governments is regulating social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. However, such interventions are fraught with adverse political fallouts as citizens in most liberal democratic societies are suspicious of State interventions on free speech. Another strategy is self-regulation by the platforms themselves, which can make changes quickly and at scale. However, engagement is a key source of their revenues, and thus these platforms have an incentive to rig their algorithms to spread emotionally charged misinformation. Further, research shows that strategies to tag misinformation have a marginal effect on the propensity to consume and share false news.
A second strategy that has not received sufficient attention (particularly in India) is digital media literacy to the citizens, especially school children, to equip them with skills to steer through the information they receive via these platforms. Hence, technological interventions to tackle misinformation should be complemented with human-centred solutions focused on digital media literacy. A recent study focused on the United States and India pointed out the lack of attention to digital media literacy in education policies as a critical factor in spreading online misinformation. A report by the United Kingdom’s communication regulator Ofcom also underlined the significance of media literacy skills to limit the spread of misinformation.
The Government of India’s National Education Policy 2022 is a missed opportunity to insert media literacy in the curriculum. The policy gives considerable importance to ‘higher-order’ cognitive capacities, such as critical thinking and problem-solving – but also social, ethical, and emotional capacities and dispositions” (p.3). However, ‘digital literacy’ is mentioned once in the entire document, and social media literacy is entirely neglected. This is a serious gap as social media is the primary source of students’ literacy. Education policy should equip students with social media literacy that would involve the application of critical thinking to the information they are flooded with daily through social media.
Digital media literacy programme for school children:
A recent study from Stanford highlights how ill-prepared students are for checking the credibility of the information received online. Differentiating credible information from misinformation or fake news is a skill that needs to be imparted right from school to become responsible citizens. Several international examples can provide templates for governments in India.
A study piloting 50 schools in Ukraine focusing on 8th and 9th-grade students found improvement in students’ ability to identify disinformation, propaganda, facts, opinions, and hate speech after teachers incorporated the “Learn to Discern in School” (L2D) curriculum in their classes. The curriculum was adapted from IREX’s “Learn to Discern skill-building methodology” for media and information literacy. The results of the study point that L2D participants were twice as likely to detect hate speech.
Another example of such an initiative is from Finland. The government launched an anti-fake news initiative to teach residents, students, journalists and politicians how to counter false information designed to sow division. The training programme was piloted by a 30-member high-level committee representing over 20 different bodies, including the government ministries and welfare organisations. The national educational system was also revised in 2016 to include critical thinking and multi-platform information literacy into the curriculum.
Kerala has made a similar initiative in Kannur district. During 2016-2018, there were multiple instances of misinformation regarding the MMR (Mumps Measles Rubella) vaccine. The district administration responded with a digital media literacy programme called “Sathyameva Jayate” to combat this. The programme included sensitisation on topics like how the internet works, how money goes to the creators through click links, click baits, filter bubbles, how social media customises our internet experience as per our choices. Teachers used various audio-visual forms for training the students. The state government is rolling out a new digital literacy programme to tackle fake news through government schools.
Politics of curriculum
Setting a school curriculum is a politically volatile process. This is particularly relevant when implementing media literacy programmes through school curriculums on truth and fake news. For instance, media literacy education can be suspected of indoctrinating students and pushing partisan ideological agendas. In addition, treating dominant ideology as the neutral norm can reinforce prevailing hierarchies through media literacy education.
Some scholars also argue that media literacy education may lead to an anti-media bias, which may take away the potential for empowerment media can offer. In response to these ideological and political debates, some scholars stress making students (and adults) aware of the power dynamics of production, purpose and themes of dominant media to evaluate the information being presented to them. The type of funding also influences the kind of media literacy programmes put in place.
Political actors are becoming increasingly adept at using social media to spread misinformation to suit their interests. Policies to govern technology platforms – whether State-led or voluntary – is important. However, equipping citizens with the awareness and skills to navigate the vast amount of information being flooded through social media is just as important. Inserting digital media literacy programmes into school curriculums is a desperately needed policy intervention to prepare responsible future citizens in this digital world and uphold democratic values.
Chandana S is a student at the Centre for Policy Studies, IIT Bombay
The views expressed are personal
Washington claims that a new spectre is haunting the world: Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who early Thursday ordered his military columns into hapless Ukraine. Explosions have been heard in its capital Kyiv and several Ukrainian cities. The global order, democracy and world peace are under threat and the West is determined to prevent this from happening. Or so goes the narrative.
What exactly is up in Ukraine? On the face of it, it’s about two enclaves within that country — Lugansk and Donetsk “oblasts”, or provinces, which are collectively known as the Donbas —where ethnic Russians are in a majority and wish to separate from Ukraine.
These areas have seen fighting in the past eight years in which thousands have been killed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has put his foot in it by declaring the two regions to be independent entities: the Lugansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic. He has signed friendship treaties with them and pledged to help them. Worse, on Thursday, he ordered his military into the Donbas ostensibly in response to a call for help.
“I have decided to conduct a special military operation”, President Putin said early Thursday, in response to “increased Ukrainian aggression” in the Donbas. Russian troops, amassed at Ukraine’s border as a deterrent against possible Ukrainian military action in these enclaves, have been ordered to go in to “protect” these areas.
The Ukrainian government reacted by imposing a state of emergency, authorising its citizens to carry arms and appealing to the United Nations to stop Russian aggression. Its President, Volodymyr Zelensky, had till recently ruled out military conflict: “We believe that there will be no large-scale war against Ukraine, and there won’t be a wide escalation from the side of the Russian Federation.”
There is more to the whole fracas than just a bunch of unhappy ethnic Russians stuck in a country where they don’t want to be. The Ukraine crisis involves three sets of issues, the first related to principles: Is it acceptable to change national boundaries by force as Russia has for all practical purposes effected? For status quo-ist powers like India, forcible alteration of national boundaries is abhorrent, especially as its two key adversaries China and Pakistan have for decades been attempting to do just that. Sadly, ethical standards rarely deter the powerful or determine the course of history.
Russia, however, is hardly an exception as the Western powers are trying to make it appear. The West has been altering national boundaries, invading sovereign states and breaking up nations for over a century now. Much of Africa and large parts of Asia are the result of some pretty nasty cut and paste jobs. India too has suffered the imperialist scalpel.
In recent times, the former Yugoslavia was the target of major national re-engineering by the West whose support ensured the balkanisation of that country while a helpless and enraged Russia watched on. Yugoslavia was systematically cut up and when the Serbs resisted, Nato moved in to complete the process of dismemberment.
In other words, while Moscow’s argument that large parts of Russia were wrongly incorporated into Ukraine may sound much like China’s claim that it has been short-changed in Taiwan, Arunachal, Ladakh and other parts, it’s not unique or entirely without historical precedent. The question ultimately is whether a nation can actually pull it off and escape the consequences of its actions — which brings us to the second question: why exactly is the West and Washington in particular so agitated by the plight of the powers in Kyiv? After all, they were not similarly concerned when Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad sought help at a time his country was being overrun by Islamists hordes committing abominable excesses against his people. Nor did Washington even rap its ally Turkey on the knuckles for repeatedly attacking Kurdish areas to kill as many Kurds as possible. The list goes on and on. So why this immense outpouring of Western solidarity with Kyiv?
The answer lies in history: the Cold War never really ended entirely in the sense that the USSR’s demise didn’t mean the end of hostilities with Russia. There are many in America who point to Russia’s massive nuclear arsenal, its powerful military and its pugnacious President Vladimir Putin as enduring challenges.
Russia in recent times has thwarted the US in several areas. Regime change as in Iraq and Libya was averted in Assad’s Syria only because the Russians stepped in with their military to protect the regime. Moscow also successfully blocked Washington’s inroads into the Central Asian republics and in recent times sided with China in its skirmishes with the Western powers.
Washington is also deeply concerned about Europe’s growing reliance on Russian energy supplies. The Nord Stream-2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline, that would double the flow of Russian gas to Germany, has been particularly contentious. This $11 billion project was completed last year but has not been put to use yet due to US objections and European hesitation. Now, Germany has said Russia’s actions in Ukraine have forced it to reject the project. But that could be temporary.
The bigger picture is that the Cold War mentality hasn’t fully gone away. President Putin is hardly a paragon of democracy but no one would fault him for putting his country’s interests first. The fact that Washington has not succeeded in completely grinding Russia into the ground is in part due to Mr Putin, who is demonised in the West as a fascist, Russian jingoist and a dangerous geopolitical upstart.
What Mr Putin has been trying to do in his part of the world is what the Western powers continue to do in theirs: define and dominate their spheres of influence. As one writer noted, Russia did not grudge the US for turning both the Atlantic and Pacific into “American lakes”, or protecting its interests in the Americas and Europe. Nato, on the other hand, has been consistently moving eastwards.
In Ukraine, Mr Putin has thrown down the gauntlet and warned against any further Western advance into its area of core influence. Significantly, he also warned Ukraine against joining Nato. Now, whether he is right or wrong in doing so is a philosophical question.
Nobel laureate Joseph Rotblat, one of the brains behind the atom bomb, had once said: “The Cold War is over but Cold War thinking survives. We were told a world war was prevented by the existence of nuclear weapons. Now we’re told nuclear weapons prevent all kinds of wars.”
The world hasn’t changed much since he made those remarks 27 years ago. The imperatives of a bygone era still rule our world.