The Aam Aadmi Party’s spectacular win in the recent Punjab Assembly polls shows that it has successfully crafted a new dynamic in State politics. In its election campaign, AAP exhorted voters to give the party “a chance” and allow it to replicate the “Delhi model of governance”, where it is in power. It offered several freebies against the backdrop of the State’s staggering debt of around Rs. 3.5 lakh crore. Will AAP deliver on its promises, and can populist politics help the party grow at the national level, in the run-up to the 2024 general election? In a conversation moderated byVikas Vasudeva , Pramod Kumar and Ronki Ram weigh in on the challenges ahead for AAP and similar parties. Edited excerpts:
AAP contested the Punjab Assembly polls on the plank of populism and sought a “chance” on its governance model in Delhi. Do you think that AAP can make the leap to the national stage?
Pramod Kumar:First, we have to understand how AAP scored such a massive win in Punjab, and it is not merely because they promised freebies. To my mind, it is a three-layered phenomenon. The first layer of AAP’s success in Punjab is that they didn’t locate themselves on the fault lines of caste, religion or region. It largely followed a “catch all” approach, whereas the other parties positioned themselves on one or the other fault lines; for example, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) largely located itself with the rural peasantry and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with urban Hindus and the Congress, isolated from all the fault lines, tried to strike a chord with the Dalits. These traditional parties competed with each other and branded the other as either drug mafia, or sand mafia, much to the comfort of AAP. AAP presented itself as an honest new party, which could be trusted on the basis of its performance in Delhi. Then the branding of AAP as a trustworthy paternalistic caretaker party, through promises of free education, health, free electricity up to 300 units to each household, and Rs. 1,000 monthly stipend to women resonated with the voter. Lastly, in this exercise of populism politics, it has emerged as a new Congress to compete with the BJP and is also poised to target States like Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan, currently all bipolar party States. The whole politics of AAP appears focussed on replacing the Congress and competing with the BJP to emerge as an alternative at a national level. The party’s strategy has changed as it is moving from the local towards the national in comparison to 2014, when the party contested the national elections first, and then tried to enter into States.
Do you think that AAP could become a political force to reckon with at the national stage?
Ronki Ram:To my mind, in Punjab, AAP has entered not just because of freebies. The people of Punjab were definitely not happy with the leadership of mainstream political parties. If AAP is able to establish itself with good governance in Punjab, its emergence can’t be denied. Because the gap between elections in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh after Punjab is small, AAP would want to deliver on the promises in Punjab and present its model of governance — which would push the party towards becoming a national entity as a political force. Against this backdrop maybe the anti-incumbency factor in Haryana and Himachal would work against the Congress party, which in turn, could give a new shape to politics with the possibility of AAP emerging as a visible force.
Punjab has traditionally been uncomfortable with the ‘Delhi Durbar’ kind of culture. AAP is controlled by Delhi. How do you think this will play out? How do you see the electoral prospects of regional political parties in Punjab?
PK:To my mind, in the new language and grammar of politics, the ‘Delhi Durbar’ somehow got either overshadowed or blurred. When people used to think of ‘Delhi Durbar’, they used to think that the interests, the rights, and the justice of the region blurred, because of the intervention of the controlling parties from Delhi. But in the recent elections, AAP presenting itself as a party from Punjab to deliver justice to people and liberate them from the traditional parties, showed a ‘reverse role’ of the ‘Delhi Durbar’. I think that the historical or traditional way of looking at politics may have to change now and, as political scientists or students of politics, we have to rethink the new language emerging at the grass-roots level. How AAP places itself with regional aspirations — for example, river water dispute, is a very crucial issue. How AAP being in power in Delhi, and also aspiring to be in power in Haryana and Himachal will be able to reconcile the claims of Punjab vis-a-vis Haryana and Himachal — will be a contentious issue. Also, this will provide space for the re-emergence of regional parties, mainly the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD). The whole notion of Punjab was to have a Sikh State in mind and this will be a challenge for AAP. If AAP fails to tackle these issues or fails to answer the regional aspirations of the State, it might provide space to SAD to re-establish itself in this domain.
RR:Bhagwant Mann, the Chief Minister of Punjab, before taking the oath of office clearly said that they would be taking guidance from the Delhi government. He stated that it would be a two-way process, they would take guidance from Arvind Kejriwal’s government and would also provide some suggestions from the State. In the near future, AAP will try to answer the federal-related questions of both the government in Punjab and the AAP government in Delhi. The party would be in a better place, to showcase two States working together in cooperative federalism. So here we need a new language and new grammar altogether, to understand New Delhi versus Punjab. I think people will wait and see what the new government will do; they are not going to buy the idea that “outsiders” are ruling the State. People want the government to resolve the real issues.
AAP made it a point to focus on basic governance — improving public schools, providing basic public health and responding to consumer issues in Delhi. This helped the party create an image for itself for being an efficient administrator. But the party has either tended to go with the establishment or has remained silent on issues related to foreign policy, asymmetric federalism, institutional autonomy. Will this populism allow the party to grow in other States as well?
PK:I think a good governance model is now a demonetised currency because a number of elections have been won on this plank. The more digital you become and provide efficiency in services, other issues will arise, which calls for moving away from delivery of services to income redistribution, allowing greater access for the marginalised populations and to integrate them into the economy. I think that the challenge will be bigger because the moment you achieve this, you face bigger challenges. AAP avoided the basic fault lines in Punjab and didn’t even mention certain crucial issues like national security, which are very important especially when it comes to having a relationship with Pakistan. Punjab has not been able to take full advantage of the trade between different States in India. At some stage, the party will have to face these issues as people in Punjab would want peace with Pakistan and open trade with the neighbouring country. If AAP supports this, it may mean making the party slightly unpopular in Gujarat and other States. The other issue is the agrarian crisis; there is a stagnation in agriculture. On the issues surrounding federalism, the party will have to evolve and become the main player in cooperative federalism. Finally to grow nationally, AAP will have to face these challenges.
Is it AAP’s strategy to remain silent on issues such as foreign policy, federalism etc?
RR:We need to study who AAP considers as its constituency — it’s the people plying auto-rickshaws, rickshaws, whose children study in government schools. Then there are the women and marginalised people. For these people what matters the most is employment opportunities, better governance, for example ease in getting domicile certificates etc., from government offices.
Are Pakistan and India going to fight? These issues do not matter much to ordinary people. And AAP knows this very well, and its worked on its strengths in raising local issues, which were people-centric. Before the recent polls, did you find any AAP leader talking about drones coming to Punjab from the Pakistan side. They focused on extending promises of providing 300 units of free electricity, providing better schools, health services etc., and said they will work towards fulfilling these promises. It is not their strategy to get lost in big issues.
Among its populist announcements, AAP promised 300 units of power free to each household, Rs. 1,000 to be given to all women above 18 years of age in Punjab. How difficult or easy a task is the new government facing?
RR:This is the litmus test for the strength, performance, and capacity of the new government. It was not only AAP which raised the pitch surrounding freebies; other political parties also made promises. It all depends on the management of resources. This is a hard task; how to build your treasury, how to build your strength.
Do you think the Delhi model of governance can be replicated in Punjab by AAP?
PK:Punjab has a history of delivering on good governance. So, I think AAP may not have to do much work on that front.
The infrastructure and institutions are in place; AAP has to only restructure them, re-brand them and the fact is that the party is very good at branding. It can brand the work and market it. In fact, the traditional parties of Punjab were not good at branding and marketing themselves. I think AAP will be able to market itself well and this will be to the party’s advantage. AAP will maximise this advantage and Punjab will be seen to be performing well until the day that elections in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat are held.
Do you think that if AAP is able to provide credible governance, it will pave the way for other similar parties in the future?
RR:Every State, every society is different; the ground realities are different. If similar conditions as those prevailing in Punjab are present in other States, and credible governance is provided, then the answer is, yes. Also one must examine the extent to which political parties stand discredited in States. The Congress certainly stands discredited in most States. But if you see SAD, it helmed the government consecutively for two terms.
The point is you can’t take this as a model and try and plant it everywhere. The same Punjab, which made the Aam Aadmi Party visible at the national level in the 2014 general elections, did not give them the mandate in the 2017 Assembly polls. So, there are lessons to be learnt.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is in India and is expected to meet External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. The changed global geopolitical situation is a good time to focus on the peculiar case of Ladakh’s eastern boundary and the unnecessary ongoing conflict.
Treaties, usage and custom
There has never been a defined boundary in this area because high watershed frameworks do not apply to the parallel ranges in Ladakh, where the topography shaped both its polity and relations with others. Leh was the ‘cross road of high Asia’ where traders exchanged goods by barter. Ladakh translates as the ‘land of high passes’, which defined the limits of its administrative control over trade routes via the Karakoram pass to the north, Demchok to the south and Zojila to the west, triangulating the small settled population limited to the Indus Valley, now with India. Grazing grounds in the south were shared with Tibet. The uninhabited soda plains to the east extending over 100 square miles at a height of 17,000 feet, now disputed between India and China, were of no use and not governed by anyone.
Ladakh emerged as a distinct entity with the Treaty of Timosgang in 1684. This treaty established relations between Leh and Lhasa through trade exchanges. With the Treaty of Chushul in 1842, Ladakh and Tibet agreed to maintain the status quo. The Treaty of Amritsar in 1846 between the East India Company and the State of Kashmir included Ladakh with its eastern boundary undefined, and the focus remained pashmina trade for making shawls.
After Britain took over governance of India, attention shifted to the northern boundary of Ladakh because of the Russian advance into Central Asia. In 1870, a British Joint Commissioner was posted at Leh, who continued good relations and correspondence with the Dalai Lama and the Chinese Amban at Lhasa and with the Kashmir State. Both India and China have relied on the correspondence and travel accounts, which had a very different purpose, obscuring the reality that the customary boundary was defined only for the limited area under human occupation.
The authoritative ‘Gazetteer of Kashmir and Ladak’, brought out in 1890, states that from the Karakoram to the head of the Changchenmo valley the boundary with ‘Chinese Tibet” is “quite doubtful” (the area of the current discussions) and clear only for the area to the south and west which represents actual occupation (currently not disputed). The unoccupied Aksai Chin is described as “neutral territory”, suitable for wheeled transport and where the Chinese built their road.
New domestic consensus
There has been advance in developing a common understanding, moving from establishing respective claims to recognising the ground reality. In 1959, experts of both countries, not unexpectedly, further hardened positions as both sides relied selectively on any correspondence or travel record that would justify their already established stand. In 1993, the signing of an Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control brought in diplomats, and the dialogue moved from history to principles. In 2020, the focus shifted to the ground situation and after 15 rounds of talks, the recent joint statement has highlighted continuing the military and diplomatic dialogue and reaching a mutually acceptable resolution of the remaining issues at the earliest for progress in bilateral relations.
Outside this process, Indian diplomats, Army chief Kodendera Subayya General Thimayya earlier and recently former Commanders of the Leh Corps have characterised the Karakoram watershed as a defensible border, to which the Chinese claim line broadly corresponds, leaving the area where earlier no one exercised control, Aksai Chin, to China. This raises the question why this assertion has been ignored at the political level.
A former Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to China and the U.S. has explained initial decisions as “ineptitude” and the approach as “unrealistic”, arguing that it is necessary to first acknowledge mistakes of the 1950s for moulding a new domestic consensus. For example, following the Seventeen Point Agreement between China and Tibet in June 1951, even as the Chinese moved into Tibet across Aksai Chin, the North-East Frontier Agency was handed over to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) but not Ladakh. Examining this Agreement, the MEA felt it was “reasonable” and inexplicably that India had no use for the Consulate in Kashghar across the northern border of Ladakh. In the India-China Agreement of April 29, 1954, it appears that the reference to passes marking the boundary in the central sector was taken as including the passes in Ladakh assuming recognition of the boundary. This led to new official maps in June 1954 with the MEA deciding on ‘the most favorable line’ in eastern Ladakh. As the Ambassador points out, in Parliament, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru never admitted that the entire boundary was unilaterally defined or even that it was in dispute leading to the notion of “Chinese betrayal” in the public imagination.
The year 1954, not 1962, was the turning point in complicating the situation. Unilateral actions in “neutral territory” establishing a strategic road and defining the boundary converted a colonial ambiguity into a dispute, instead of adopting the watershed principle as in the case of the border of all other Himalayan States. The Cold War heightened mistrust, with Pakistan joining the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and the United States’ covert operation with the brother of the Dalai Lama residing in Kalimpong arming Tibetans.
Omission and commission
The solution lies in the equally unique 70-year-old continuing dialogue despite each side calling the other an aggressor and sporadic military incidents. Instead of claims, the growing confidence of both countries should enable them to acknowledge acts of commission and omission in the 1950s as newly independent ancient civilisations extended overlapping sovereignty in the uninhabited area in Ladakh over which neither had ever exercised control.
In what would be a bold political step, agreement on the watershed boundary following a well-established principle would meet the national security concerns of India and China without bringing in intractable issues of sovereignty.
Mukul Sanwal is a former UN diplomat
Russia’s war on Ukraine has decisively shaped international opinion. Indian foreign policy is also going to be affected in a profound manner. The most important question facing Indian diplomacy is how to navigate India’s great power relations in the future. While there has always remained a pro-Russian popular sentiment in India, rooted in Moscow’s support during the Cold War era, particularly against the pro-Pakistani diplomatic activism by powerful Western countries in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), a majority of Indians today seem taken aback by Russia’s misadventure against a sovereign country.
Foreign policy conundrum
That Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, is moving closer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the hope of membership may be a sufficient reason for Russia to be infuriated, but it is still an insufficient condition for Ukraine to be attacked in violation of all norms of international law. However, India has not directly criticised Moscow’s action. Memories of the historic Indo-Soviet partnership still seem to tip the scales when it comes to India’s vote at the UNSC. Western countries have criticised India’s repeated abstentions at the UNSC on the issue of the Russian invasion, while the Kremlin has praised India for taking an “independent and balanced” position. While India has not cared much about Western criticism of its “independent” approach to foreign policy, it is the Russian angle this time which has come to restrain India’s strategic autonomy.
President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine has put New Delhi in a foreign policy conundrum that will not disappear soon because Russia’s action has changed the global order. The Western world has imposed unprecedented sanctions against Russia and banned energy imports. New Delhi is concerned about the impact of these sanctions on global finance, energy supplies, and transportation, amid growing signs that they will constrain India’s ability to import Russian oil.
The image of the Russian military might be tarnished now as Russian forces have under-performed in their Ukrainian campaign. Ukraine has been able to hold the Russian forces back for a long time, which can be seen as a moral victory for a weaker nation. Mr. Putin is neither a crafty strategist nor a charismatic hero who has risen from the ashes of the Soviet defeat to lead Russia into a new period of resurgence. His reputation has been severely bruised because a comedian-turned-politician next door has exposed the hollowness of Russia’s military tactics and operational planning.
The real strategic challenge
China’s blatant attempts to project its rising power as well as Russia’s threats against its “near abroad” will continue to test India’s strategic choices. Nevertheless, what must worry India is the fact that Russia will now become increasingly dependent on Chinese support to defend its policies. Mr. Putin may not know what he eventually wants in Ukraine, but he is aware of the ruble collapsing, the punishing sanctions being imposed, and the dire state of the Russian economy. This will push him further into China’s military and economic orbit.
India’s real strategic challenge is surfacing in the Indo-Pacific with the rise of China, as Beijing has consistently sought to expand its zone of military, economic and political influence through the Belt and Road Initiative. Moreover, instead of smoothing the ruffled edges of India’s insecurities, which are rooted in an undefined boundary, China has only aggravated them further. Though India would like the U.S. to continue to focus on China, it is not possible for Washington to ignore Russia’s aggression along NATO’s periphery.
Since the end of the Cold War, Indians have been debating the contours of strategic autonomy. For some, the notion is a re-branding of India’s non-aligned posture during the Cold War. Others say that the doctrine of ‘multi-alignment’ is the 21st century avatar of strategic autonomy as India has been expanding its engagement with all the major powers.
Reality has many dimensions. And in this case, history is relevant. Indian nationalists of various shades still fondly remember which countries were India’s allies during the Cold War and which were not. Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s advocacy of neutrality in the bloc politics was justified in the pursuit of an independent post-colonial foreign policy. The Soviet Union was seen as a trustworthy partner against Western hegemony. Following the disintegration of the USSR, India joined Russia and China against the unipolarity of the U.S. The purpose of this trilateral initiative was to promote a multi-polar world to constrain the U.S.’s unbridled power and ambition. India was also uncomfortable with the arrogance that defined Western attitudes towards Russia in the immediate post–Cold War period. For some time, this common concern about unipolarity put the three countries on the same path towards mutual cooperation and understanding. Later, Brazil and South Africa were also brought into this coalition. However, it soon became clear that India and China did not see eye to eye. Moreover, India was determined to maintain its partnership with Russia, an important arms supplier. Its ties with the U.S. have also improved significantly since the end of the Cold War. But continuing dependence on Russian weaponry has become India’s strategic headache.
An unpredictable Russia
Nostalgia cannot be allowed to trump reality. Mr. Putin seems too frozen in old-fashioned grievances against the West to appreciate the value of India’s friendship. Much of New Delhi’s disillusionment stems from a failure to understand not only Mr. Putin’s political thinking, but also Russia’s place in the emerging global order. If it was a nuclear-armed superpower yesterday, Russia seems to be behaving like a nuclear-armed bully today. Under Mr. Putin, Russia is in a state of transition, swinging wildly from one crisis to another. Therefore, it is too risky for India to pursue vague aims vis-à-vis Russia in these uncertain times.
Those in India echoing Russian resentment against the eastward expansion of NATO are reminded by Western analysts that a NATO-Russia Council was formed specifically to alleviate Russia’s concerns, and that Russia was recognised as one of the world’s leading industrial powers through a formal admission into the elite G-7 not on the basis of its industrial might, but to soften its bruised superpower ego. Truth lies somewhere in between, which perhaps explains India’s stance at the UNSC.
Everyone in and around government must think seriously about India’s relations with Russia as the unfolding Ukrainian tragedy has introduced a new era in international relations. Though Moscow has drifted much closer to Beijing, and is sharply critical of India’s engagement with the U.S. and the Quad, India finds it difficult to extend support to Ukraine. Prime Minister Narendra Modi may still personally like Mr. Putin, but he understands that in the halls of global diplomacy, nations have interests which are not determined by personalities alone. It goes without saying that the U.S. is the country most likely to bolster India’s future as a great power.
It is not going to be easy for New Delhi to maintain its balancing act in the future as Washington hardens its position further. It is inevitable that during this time of diplomatic and strategic uncertainty, New Delhi needs to be ready to radically redefine its relationship with Moscow.
Vinay Kaura is Assistant Professor, Department of International Affairs and Security Studies, Sardar Patel University of Police, Security and Criminal Justice, Jodhpur, and a Non-resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute, Washington D.C.
For the better part of its history, reporters in Pakistan have been closely watching the relationship between prime ministers and Army chiefs — presence or absence in meetings, tone and tenor, twist and turn, even body language has been analysed to gauge whether the big two in Pakistan are getting along or not.
In November 2019, Prime Minister Imran Khan extended the tenure of General Qamar Javed Bajwa for a period of three years; a vote of confidence in an Army chief widely believed to have helped him to an electoral majority in 2018.
With regular meetings dutifully pictured in the media, it appeared that this most difficult relationship in Pakistan was being managed well by Mr. Khan and Gen. Bajwa, both going out of their way to extend courtesy to the other. And then came a public spat over the appointment of the ISI chief in 2021.
On body language, the verdict of two dawnnews.tv anchors — Mubashir Zaidi and Zarar Khurro — after Pakistan’s National Day parade on Wednesday was that Mr. Khan stood aloof and apart from Gen. Bajwa, though they shared the same stage.
Both Mr. Khan’s allies, who have now joined the chorus of party dissidents in announcing that they will vote against his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, would have been watching. It looks like the first PTI Prime Minister is on his way out because he has fallen out of favour with Gen. Bajwa. Dissidents and allies would have walked along with Mr. Khan had Gen. Bajwa’s blessings remained with the Prime Minister.
In 1999, when this writer reported on the October 12 coup from Islamabad, there was no private television to discuss the nuances of how Army chief Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif behaved with each other.
But there were perceptive analysts warning that the “stallions in Rawalpindi” were getting restless and that Gen. Musharraf was not about to put in his papers and go home like his immediate predecessor Gen. Jehangir Karamat.
Proof that the stallions were indeed restless came when an American official very publicly warned in 1999 against a “coup” in Pakistan following meetings with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s younger brother, Shehbaz Sharif, now in the running to replace Mr. Imran Khan if the opportunity were to arise.
Unlike in 1999, when Gen. Musharraf chose to take power and rule the country directly, he took the title of “Chief Executive”, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq ran the show as “Chief Martial Law Administrator”. The Army as an institution is loathe to rule directly; it prefers to manage and guide civilian governments.
In a twist of history, the play of numbers in the current National Assembly allows the Army to manoeuvre a Prime Minister out of power through the parliamentary route. In the past, Army coups, pressure by the President, and the judicial route have had to be used.
After the elections in 1988, Benazir Bhutto (1990 & 1996) and Nawaz Sharif (1993, 1999 & 2017) were not permitted by the Army and powerful Presidents, acting in concert with the Army, from completing their terms as prime minister — Mr. Sharif’s 2017 ejection from office came following a Supreme Court order. Now, it would appear, Mr. Khan could join the likes of Mr. Sharif and the late Benazir Bhutto.
Pakistan’s democracy suffers from a fatal flaw, which is the all-powerful Army and its vested interests that don’t allow a democracy, warts and all, to function. Civilian leaders are also guilty of seeking support from Army chiefs to clamber up the power route, but in time the permanent establishment tires of them.
Junior generals and extensions haven’t helped Pakistani prime ministers complete their term. It’s clearly time that the rules of the game are rewritten to cut the Army and its chiefs down to size if Pakistan is to avoid the embarrassment of having a prime minister hold office at the pleasure of its top general.
In refusing to entertain ‘sealed covers’ submitted by the government or its agencies, the Supreme Court has made a noteworthy and welcome shift away from this unedifying practice. At least two Benches have spoken out against it. Recently, in the Muzaffarpur shelter home sexual abuse case, Chief Justice N.V. Ramana wondered why even an ‘action taken’ report should be in a sealed envelope. The use of material produced in a ‘sealed cover’ as an aid to adjudication is something to be strongly discouraged and deprecated. However, it gained much respectability in recent years, with contents withheld from lawyers appearing against the government, but being seen by the judges alone. Unfortunately, in some cases, courts have allowed such secret material to determine the outcome. In a recent instance, the Kerala High Court perused confidential intelligence inputs produced in a sealed envelope by the Union government to uphold the validity of orders revoking the broadcasting permission given to Malayalam news channel Media One on the ground of national security. It is quite disconcerting to find that courts can rule in favour of the government without providing an opportunity to the affected parties to know what is being held against them. In this backdrop, it is significant that the Supreme Court has decided that it will examine the issue of ‘sealed cover jurisprudence’ while hearing the channel’s appeal. For now, the apex court has stayed the revocation order and allowed the channel to resume broadcasting.
It is true that the law permits the submission of confidential material to the court in some cases. In addition, courts can order some contents to be kept confidential. The Evidence Act also allows the privilege of non-disclosure of some documents and communications. Even when authorities claim privilege over classified material, they had no objection to judges perusing them to satisfy themselves about the claims. The government usually justifies the submission of secret material directly to the court, citing national security or the purity of an ongoing investigation. Courts have often justified entertaining material not disclosed to the parties by underscoring that it is to satisfy their conscience. However, the practice sometimes has undesirable consequences. It compromises the defence of those accused of some crimes, especially those involving an alleged threat to national security, or money laundering and corruption. Undisclosed material is often used to deny bail, something the apex court criticised the Delhi High Court for doing in a case against former Union Minister P. Chidambaram. It observed that recording a finding based on material kept in a sealed cover was not justified. The main mischief of the ‘sealed cover’ practice lies in the scope it gives the state to avoid deep scrutiny of the need and proportionality of its restrictions on freedom. The time has come for the Supreme Court to determine and circumscribe the circumstances in which confidential government reports, especially those withheld from the other side, can be used by courts in adjudication.
Sri Lanka is facing an economic crisis with long queues in front of petrol stations, steep rise in prices of essential commodities and frequent blackouts. Although the COVID-19 pandemic precipitated a crisis of trade imbalance, the fundamentals of the Sri Lankan economy have always had serious issues. Debt, both domestic and foreign, has been a major problem. Even in February 2020, hardly a few months after Gotabaya Rajapaksa assumed office as President, his elder brother and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, during his visit to New Delhi, wanted India to reschedule the loan. Over the last three months, India has provided assistance of $2.4 billion including a $500 million loan deferment and $1 billion credit line to enable the supply of essential commodities. Apart from approaching Beijing, Colombo has also sought help from the International Monetary Fund, shedding its earlier reservation of taking help from the agency. As soon as the shortage of certain essential commodities ends, which the government expects before the start of the Sinhala-Tamil New Year (which falls in the middle of April), steps should be taken for economic recovery. Compulsions of electoral politics should not come in the way of tough measures such as restructuring the administration of concessions and subsidies. Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa should also use the scheduled meeting with the Tamil political leadership to create a road map on the issue of political devolution and economic development of the war-affected northern and eastern provinces, among the areas badly hit by the current crisis.
Perhaps, Tamil Nadu has already started feeling the impact of the crisis with the reported arrival of 16 persons from Sri Lanka, including six women and seven children, through illegal means. Tamil Nadu was home to nearly three lakh refugees after the anti-Tamil pogrom of 1983. Regardless of the motive of those who have reached Tamil Nadu clandestinely, the authorities, both in India and Sri Lanka, should ensure that the present crisis is not used to step up smuggling activities and trafficking or whip up emotions in both countries. On the contrary, the crisis should be used as an opportunity for New Delhi and Colombo to thrash out a solution to the Palk Bay fisheries dispute, a longstanding irritant in bilateral ties.
We have received an album of seven photographs described as showing the results of “Chauri Chaura massacre”. The pictures reproduce the burnt police station and the bodies of the victims. The album is issued by the Publicity department of the United Provinces. It is intended, it is said, “for private circulation among responsible persons”, but the object as announced in the Publicity Commissioner’s preface is to “make the public realise what are the dangers of exciting the latent ferocity of mobs of ignorant villagers”. As propaganda which ultimately aims to eliminate violence, this enterprise of the Publicity Department may certainly be commended, but one remembers a far more heinous massacre in the Punjab of very recent date when such contrivances were not thought of. That, however, was a case where the ferocity not of mobs, but of officers was at fault...
The Chauri Chaura tragedy inquiry commenced today at 2 p.m. in the District Jail, Gorakhpur before Mr. Mahesh Bal, District Magistrate. Mr. Kedri of the Aligarh Bar and Mr. Zaki, Government Pleader, Gorakhpur appeared for the Crown.
The noted German scientist, Hans Oelke, just back from South Antarctica where he spent five months trying to discover why penguins are rapidly dying out, believes he has found the answer: They are being decimated by the deadly typhus-producing human virus salmonella. His theory is that the virus is being spread by globe-trotting seagulls, acting as “carriers.” Hitherto Ross Island and similar Arctic territories were “salmonella-free” areas. Dr. Oelke, resident researcher of the Hanover Natural Science Museum, whose assignment was backed by the German Research Association and the American National Science Foundation, said that for some mysterious reason, the 1,70,000 penguin couples on Ross Islands were decimated by some 40 per cent over the past five to ten years. Dr. Oelke began to check out every possible cause for the mass extermination. He made a broad sampling of penguin, seal and seagull manure. True enough, some 15 per cent of the seagull droppings were found to contain traces of salmonella. The obvious conclusion was that the danger of salmonella infection must now be regarded as global. — DPA
There is nothing new about an elected civilian government in Pakistan being ousted mid-stream, after it has done something to upset the Army. Prime Minister Imran Khan is likely to be voted out of office next week if he does not resign by then, as he does not appear to have the numbers required to defeat an Opposition no-confidence vote against him. But this time, there are no cries of democracy in danger. Pakistan’s political class never accepted Imran Khan as an elected leader, he is described as the “selected” prime minister. It is no secret that the Army and Inter-Services Intelligence did a lot of leg work to ensure that he won the 2018 election and put together his coalition. Now, the Army seems to have conveyed to him that he no longer has their patronage, though in public it has used the word “neutral” to describe its position in the unfolding political drama. Though he has vowed to play “until the last ball” — one cabinet member has said there might be early elections; his party is readying for a physical showdown with the Opposition at competing rallies on March 27 — it may not help him win the match.
Ever conscious of its public image, the Pakistan Army no longer wants to be associated with a government that has proved inept from the beginning. Internationally too, Khan was unable to get any purchase with the Biden administration, and the security establishment is miffed about his mishandling of relations with powerful western allies, at a time when it needs them to stabilise the situation in Afghanistan. But more than anything else, the prime minister’s falling out with Pakistan’s most powerful institution came when he tried to play divide and rule with the top leadership of the Army. Nawaz Sharif did that in 1999, and was ousted in a coup. Khan, who crossed a red line when he tried to assert himself by delaying the appointment of a new ISI chief, can consider himself more fortunate, as he is being allowed to leave office via a constitutional process.
What all this means, though, is that the Army continues to run Pakistan, and Khan’s successor must likely reach an agreement with Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa before being approved for the job, so that he or she does not attempt to disrupt the “hybrid” civil-military system. In India, there was real disappointment at Nawaz Sharif’s judicial ouster in 2017, but tears will not be shed at Khan’s likely departure from office. While the India-Pakistan relationship has not been top of the agenda for the Modi government since 2016, Khan’s offer to move several steps forward if Delhi took the first step, sat uneasily with the personal nature of his attacks against the Indian leadership, especially after the 2019 decision on Kashmir. His praise for India’s “independent” foreign policy now wins him no marks in Delhi. The February 2021 agreement for diligently observing the 2003 ceasefire remains the only one between the two sides in years. It was the result of a backchannel process in which the Pakistan government seems to have had little role, and was signed between the two militaries.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on March 25, 2022 under the title ‘No tears for Imran’.
Municipal governance in Delhi is in dire need of reform. In the past seven years, strikes by municipal agency employees over non-payment of salaries — including by doctors amid the raging pandemic — have compromised the national capital’s capacity to deal with its myriad civic problems. Now, on Tuesday, the capital’s longstanding need for stable civic administration got mired in controversy after the Union cabinet cleared a Bill that envisages the merger of Delhi’s three municipalities — East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC), North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC). The Centre has said that unification will improve the local body’s financial standing. That’s correct, to an extent. It’s the timing of the move, however, that has raised eyebrows. Delhi’s AAP-run government, which has had a troubled relationship with the BJP-dominated municipalities, contends that the merger is a ruse to defer the impending civic polls in the capital — the terms of the local bodies end in May.
The Delhi State Election Commission was slated to announce the polling dates on March 9. But the EC postponed the announcement at the last moment after the Centre expressed its intention to merge the three local bodies. The Delhi government alleged that the Centre’s decision was hastened by the exit polls on the Punjab assembly elections — the AAP went on to win a thumping mandate in the state. The party which, by all accounts, was poised to mount a strong challenge to the BJP in Delhi municipal polls, has accused the Centre of shying away from the problems of the local bodies.
The Delhi municipality was divided into three agencies in 2012 to decentralise local governance. The trifurcation not only failed its stated objective but also pushed the city’s local administration into a financial quagmire. The NDMC, which has the largest number of hospitals and schools, and the EDMC, which administers some of the poorest localities in Delhi, have struggled for revenues while the SDMC has done relatively better. Unification could correct some of this imbalance. However, much more will be required to put the city’s municipal finances in order. The BJP has repeatedly accused the Delhi government of not paying the municipalities their dues in time. The AAP has countered by demanding that the Centre allocate funds for civic bodies in Delhi in the same way it does for other states. It’s time that the issue of the capital’s municipal funding is resolved, in a way that is credible and transparent.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on March 25, 2022 under the title ‘Doing it wrong’.
At 25, the world was Ashleigh Barty’s oyster. She seemed destined for more Grand Slams and on course to becoming the dominant player in women’s tennis of this era. In a shock retirement announcement Wednesday, Barty spoke about not having “the physical drive” or “the emotional want” to play the sport at the highest level. Barty was not just retiring but was also taking an important step towards the normalisation of putting personal wellbeing above glittering trophies and millions in prize money. By choosing to dance to the beat of her own drum, Barty was telling the world that one’s goals can be different from the standards by which success is measured, on the tennis court or in any other field.
Striving to be the best is what drives the greatest players, is the very essence of sport and makes it compelling to watch. Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic brought the best out of Rafael Nadal, football is richer because Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo played in the same era. Lewis Hamilton with seven Formula One titles is willing to put everything on line to reclaim the throne from Max Verstappen. By retiring on her own terms, however, Barty was giving a life lesson about the importance of listening to an inner voice and about everyone not being wired the same way.
Barty has been ranked No 1 for over a hundred weeks, and has coveted Grand Slams trophies in her cabinet. All this was achieved during her second coming to tennis after she quit at 18 and played cricket in the Women’s Big Bash League. “I think it’s important that I get to enjoy the next phase of my life as Ash Barty the person, not as Ash Barty the athlete,” she said. Even if she doesn’t hold a racquet again, she will remain an inspiration for those who want to find a way off the treadmill, in sport and in life.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on March 25, 2022 under the title ‘Ash Barty, the person’.
After three years of civil administration, Bangladesh is back under military rule as Lt General HM Ershad, chief of the army, took over power in a swift and bloodless coup. Ershad has designated himself the chief marshal law administrator of the strife-ridden 11-year old republic. The nation on the brink of an army takeover since the assassination of President Zia-ur-Rahman in May last year saw the exit of the four month government of President Abdus Sattar and Prime Minister Azizur Rahman with a categorical declaration by General Ershad that the armed forces have taken over power to save the country from social, economic and political bankruptcy. The general said that he was not a politician and had never nourished any political ambition.
External Affairs Minister P V Narasimha Rao has said that he has seen some positive signs from Pakistan which has made him hopeful of resumption of bilateral talks. Responding to members on a call-in-attention motion, Rao said the recent speeches of General Zia in which he talked of improving relations with India and the dropping of the reference to Jammu and Kashmir in the document of the United Nations Commission of Human Rights were two developments that he hoped could pave the way for talks.
While pledging to follow the Bhatinda line of building a left and democratic alternative to the present system, the CPI is unwilling to identify the left and democratic parties. Its draft political resolution being debated in Varanasi mentions only the CPM. But the difference in the attitude towards the BJP is amongst the major issues in the two parties working together.
In 1946, I was nine years old, growing up in the then small town of Patna. I was hardly aware of the momentous goings-on around me but I clearly remember the cries of “Bajrang bali ki jai” and “Allah hu Akbar”, especially as darkness fell on the city. I knew from the precautions taken by the elders in the family that something sinister was afoot. Luckily, we were not attacked by the rioters and remained safe in our mohalla. I remember that on August 15, 1947, sweets were distributed in the neighbourhood school where I was a student. I partook of the sweets and was told that our country was independent now, though I was not aware that it had also been partitioned into India and Pakistan. The riots, Independence and Partition did not leave much of an impression on my mind as a child. What stayed with me was a story told to us by one of my elder brothers.
He had gone to attend a University Training Corps (later replaced by the National Cadet Corps) camp and was returning to Patna by train. Given the prevailing law and order situation, the cadets were required to stand guard in full military gear outside the compartment. When the train reached Masaurhi, a small station near Patna, it was my brother’s turn to stand guard. He told us that the platform was so full of dead bodies that he could barely find space to stand. These were the bodies of the victims of communal riots. I have never forgotten that conversation. But despite my background and experience, I have remained a liberal throughout.
Communal riots took place all over the country. Mahatma Gandhi’s call for peace had no immediate takers until he went on a fast unto death in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Around the same time, the wise people who were elected to the Constituent Assembly of India by the provincial assemblies sat down in the central hall of today’s Parliament building to draft the Constitution. On August 29, 1947, the Assembly set up a seven-member drafting committee headed by B R Ambedkar. B N Rau, an ICS officer, was appointed the constitutional advisor. The painstaking work of preparing the Constitution began in earnest. The Assembly finally adopted the Constitution on November 26, 1949.
All those who were involved in the drafting of the Constitution had been witness to the catastrophic events that had just happened in India — the communal riots, Partition, the massive transfer of population from one country to another, the bitterness and hatred between the two major communities, the fact that Pakistan decided to become an Islamic republic and the temptation to do something similar in India. Yet, they settled for a liberal, democratic and secular Constitution, though the word “secular” itself was inscribed only later during the Emergency.
Who persuaded India to adopt a democratic, liberal and secular Constitution and, despite the fraught times through which the country had passed, not make the country a Hindu Rashtra? It was the leadership of the time — Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Maulana Azad, Rajendra Prasad and Ambedkar. It was India at its best; an India which, throughout the centuries, had been a liberal, tolerant, inclusive and largely non-violent society. The leaders were only responding to this innate character. The people celebrated the adoption of the Constitution with jubilation.
What has changed today? Is our independence threatened? Is our unity in danger? Has the Constitution failed to serve us well? Has the Hindu become unsafe? Have unprecedented communal riots broken the back of communal harmony for good? What has changed is the nature of the leadership. The destiny of the country is in the hands of people who are out to change the centuries-old character of Indian society. They want the Hindu community to feel threatened, and if current events do not lend support to creating this atmosphere of fear, then they will dig deep into history to do so. And for what? To win elections. Religion is the opium being used by power-hungry politicians on an unsuspecting people. They have no use for Hinduism except as means to grab power. Hinduism does not teach hatred and violence. Anyone who spreads hatred and violence is not a true Hindu. The country today hungers for statesmen like Nehru, Patel and Vajpayee.
Is there light at the end of the tunnel? I do not know. I am now 85 years old — mentally alert but physically not fit enough to wage a struggle. But India is in peril today and I hope some selfless person or a group will take up this fight before we are consumed completely by darkness. The important thing is to recognise that this is a clash of ideologies, not merely a question of changing a government. People who were in the shadows in 1947 are today out in the open. Misuse of social media and complete control over the print and visual media and the falsehood they dish out day in and day out is having its impact on the minds of the people. I see it happening in my own extended family.
Of course, this clash is not confined to India alone. The war in Ukraine is a struggle between a democracy and a dictatorship. In India, the talk of parties in opposition to the BJP uniting to challenge and change the government takes a shortsighted view. The struggle is greater and more difficult than it was during the Emergency.
Indians’ commitment to democracy is proven. We only need the leadership to take the right message to the people. Those who seek power cannot do this. Jayaprakash Narayan succeeded because he never sought power for himself. We need a band of leaders who must declare that they are fighting an ideological battle and not seeking power for themselves. Only then will they be believed. Will I live to see that day? I am not sure. But I know one thing. People will wake up from their slumber one day, whatever the quality of opium used to keep them sedated.
I have great faith in the people of India.
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 25, 2022 under the title ‘Struggle against darkness’. The writer is a former Union minister and currently, vice-president, All-India Trinamool Congress
Two years ago, the imposition of the national lockdown in India had disastrous consequences for the working poor, especially the migrant labour. In October 2020, The Right to Food Campaign and associated organisations had conducted the first Hunger Watch survey (HW-I). The main objective of HW-I was to document the economic distress and hunger caused by the lockdowns and catalyse public action for relief. Covering close to 4,000 people in 11 states, the survey highlighted the extent of widespread hunger and a deterioration in the quality of diets compared to the pre-pandemic period.
In 2021, India was hit by a devastating second wave of infections. While no nationwide lockdowns were announced, the speed and severity of the spread meant inevitable disruptions to lives and livelihoods. Most states imposed curfews and restrictions on economic activity. The economy contracted by 6.6 percent in 2020-21. While the economy is estimated to grow at 8.9 per cent in 2021-22, the low base effect means that per capita incomes have still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Unemployment rates continue to be high.
Given the prolonged nature of the pandemic and the spike in indebtedness caused by unforeseen medical expenditures through the second wave, it was important to capture the continued economic distress. The second round of the Hunger Watch survey (HW-II) was conducted in December 2021-January 2022. While not conducted with the same respondents, HW-II followed a methodology similar to that used in HW-I. Close to 6,700 respondents were interviewed in person across 14 states; 73 per cent of these were based in rural areas, and 71 per cent of them were women. The survey focused on understanding food and income insecurities among the informal sector.
Food insecurity was widespread — 79 per cent of the overall sample reported experiencing at least one of the eight conditions of food insecurity from the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Global Food Insecurity Experience Scale (GFIES) in the month preceding the survey. The eight conditions range from worrying about not having enough food, to not being able to eat a diet of sufficient quality or quantity, to running out of food and having to go without eating a whole day. A quarter of the sample reported “severe” food insecurity, that is, they experienced seven or eight of the conditions.
The situation was worse in urban areas, where 87 per cent reported any food insecurity, and 28 per cent reported severe food insecurity, compared to rural areas where the numbers were 76 per cent and 24 per cent respectively. Nearly one-third of the respondents said that they or someone in their household had slept without eating in the month preceding the survey and 36 per cent said they had had to skip meals. This is a slight improvement compared to HW-I, where 48 per cent said that they had slept without eating at least once and 46 per cent said they had had to skip meals.
The bulk of the poor relies on cereals for food security. However, in HW-II only one in three households said that their consumption of cereals was sufficient for their needs. Two-thirds of households could not afford cooking gas in the month before the survey. This was higher in rural areas than urban.
Given that food intake needs are not being met, it is no surprise that diets are also nutritionally deficient. HW-II did not include a dietary quality assessment but elicited the frequency with which respondents reported eating nutritionally rich foods. 50-60 per cent of households said that they were able to consume eggs, milk, flesh foods or fruits fewer than two-three times a month; more than a quarter could only eat even the more affordable items like dark green leafy vegetables and pulses fewer than two-three times a month. Here rural households reported somewhat poorer diet quality than urban households, with the sole exception of fruits. Other differences were small.
People expect the situation to deteriorate further. Two in five respondents said that the nutritional quality of their food had worsened since the pre-pandemic period; a similar proportion said that the quantity of food they eat had also declined. These numbers are similar to those from HW-I — 59 per cent of urban households reported a deterioration in the quality of their diets compared to before the pandemic, compared to 35 per cent of rural households, though this could be the result of a higher baseline in urban areas. Overall, the outlook about the food situation over the coming months was pessimistic. Only one in six respondents said they thought their food situation would improve in the next three months.
While the HW-II sample was not designed to be nationally representative, it is indicative of the predicament in which many poor and vulnerable households find themselves – unable to secure either enough food (of any kind) or food of adequate quality. Against the backdrop of the recent National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 findings which show marginal improvements in child stunting and underweight among women and a significant deterioration in anaemia across the board, the HW-II findings are not an outlier. There is an urgent need to acknowledge the problem of hunger and take immediate action, including allocating sufficient resources to address the issue.
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 25, 2022 under the title ‘Acknowledging hunger’. Raghunathan is a member of the Hunger Watch team, Sinha teaches at Ambedkar University, and Narayanan teaches at Azim Premji University
On March 11, speaking at the NCRB Foundation Day, the Union Home Minister remarked that the second phase of the Inter-operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS), a Rs 3,500 crore project, is set to be completed by 2026 with increased use of artificial intelligence, fingerprint systems and other tools of predictive policing. The minister noted that one crore fingerprints had already been uploaded and if these were available to all police stations as part of the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS), there would no longer be any need to pursue criminals.
Recently, the Indore Police Commissioner unveiled a “fingerprint-based criminal record data fetching system” developed by Citizen Cop Foundation to control crime in the state. The small thumb impression machine can be added to a phone to capture fingerprints at checking points, public spaces, etc. If the fingerprint recorded matches with the police database, all information about a person’s criminal record will be pulled up. The system is being lauded as it circumvents the long waiting period in fingerprint analysis as part of investigations. The commissioner noted that existing fingerprints of those externed from a district, drug peddlers, those who escaped from jails and those who have committed theft of vehicles are being added. But the enthusiasm for generating and cross-referencing data to make policing more efficient ignores privacy concerns and structural faults of policing.
The Supreme Court in K.S Puttaswamy declared a fundamental right to informational privacy as paramount and noted that any measure that sought to collect information or surveil must be legal, necessary, and proportionate. State surveillance for policing needs to be re-evaluated in this light, given that policing replicates existing casteist notions of who criminals are, and how they are to be controlled.
The existing systems of ICJS and CCTNS empower the state to cross-reference data between different pillars of the criminal justice system in the name of creating efficient police infrastructure. Beyond this, integrating “fingerprint-based criminal record data fetching system” to the list of predictive policing practices will give birth to mass surveillance, particularly of certain oppressed caste communities, based on little evidence.
Nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes were ascribed “criminality by birth” and considered as “hereditary criminals addicted to systematic commission of non-bailable offences” under the colonial Criminal Tribes Act, 1871. It has been replaced with the murky Habitual Offenders (HO) provisions, which have acted as a tool for police to continue to attribute criminality to Vimukta communities, by mandating their surveillance through regular check-ins at police stations, signing of bond undertakings for “security and for keeping the peace” through local police stations. The police maintain dossiers of habitual offenders, which includes extensive demographic details, personal information and “evidence” of criminality: Details of their habits, their method of committing crimes, property, particulars of their associates, places they frequent, etc.
With the introduction of the commissionerate system in Bhopal and Indore, members of Vimukta and Adivasi communities are being summoned by the police to get their records updated with copies of their Aadhaar cards and photographs as part of “Operation clean”. Data related to work, family members, fingerprints etc are being collected through vague notices that make no mention of the law under which they have been invoked or include any cogent reasons for the summoning of an individual. This effectively means that even after being acquitted by the courts, a person continues to be an object of policing. Mere suspicion or FIRs filed against an individual are sufficient to trigger the discretionary powers of the police. Those subject to policing rarely include dominant caste persons with resources, who may have even been convicted of a crime.
This has an all-encompassing impact on the lives and livelihood of these oppressed communities. They are forced to live in informal settlements in urban spaces which are heavily surveilled. With the interlinking of policing data, across different jurisdictions and centralised through the ICJS, this targeting runs the risk of being replicated as a pan-India phenomenon.
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 25, 2022 under the title ‘Police, tech and prejudice’. The writers are research associates, at Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project
As the premeditated, unprovoked and unjustified Russian aggression in Ukraine is ongoing, a debate has sprung up about the geopolitical origins of NATO-Russia tensions. We, the envoys of the Bucharest Nine — a group of NATO’s eastern flank countries that joined the alliance after the end of the Cold War — feel that the Indian public deserves to be acquainted with the basic facts on the ground.
Firstly, it must be underlined that NATO is not an organisation that “expanded” to the east. It was we, the independent European states, that decided on our own to go west.
Our countries have been for decades either forcefully occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union (for example, the Baltic States), subdued by it against their will and even invaded (Hungary in 1956, former Czechoslovakia in 1968). The tragic events of the Second World War and its aftermath placed us against the will of our people on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and deprived us of the self-determination promised in the United Nations Charter. The fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 opened new and brighter chapters in our history. Our governments, for the first time in decades, were elected in a free and democratic way. We finally regained the freedom to set our own destinies, in a process not much different from the waves of decolonisation that brought justice and dignity to other countries around the world. Our governments opted for the path of peace, security, economic growth and respect for fundamental freedoms. Integration with NATO and the European Union became a dream of our people.
Our path to NATO and the EU was not easy. It took a lot of effort to fulfil all the requirements: Adopting new national legislation and introducing reforms in such areas as anti-corruption, fiscal and judicial law, protection of human rights and minorities. We also had to build up our national defence forces as well as prove that we can contribute to the collective defence. This was no free ride.
With NATO membership, our borders became secure. For the first time in our history, the threat of invasion by a foreign power was unlikely with the collective defensive support of our allies — one for all, all for one. The process of joining NATO and the security guarantees it provided allowed our countries to focus on internal political and economic transformation — from centrally-planned and ineffective economies without fair elections to modern democracies with liberalised markets. NATO membership helped pave the way for nine of us to join the EU.
Over 30 years of uninterrupted growth, peace and security in our countries brought tremendous civilisational progress. Since the fall of communism, our GDP per capita has grown exponentially. Our countries are now leading economic models with impressive records in most social and economic indexes. From being one of the sources of global emigration before 1989, we became the destination for those who seek a better place to live and raise their children.
Secondly, neither our decision to join NATO nor the organisation itself poses a threat to Russia. It is a defensive alliance, one that seeks no territory. Moreover, in the last two decades, NATO focused efforts on fighting terrorism and piracy — threats that are common for most states, including India. And 109 of our soldiers lost their lives in Afghanistan while being part of the NATO mission there. These efforts contributed also to global security, including a reduction of maritime piracy in the Indian Ocean.
NATO stands for freedom, democracy, rule of law and respect for smaller nations. Russia, on the other hand, committed to respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty in return for Kyiv giving up its nuclear weapons in the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in 1994. And then it broke that obligation.
NATO has sought partnership and dialogue with Russia. No other state has received from NATO over the years so many offers of cooperation and dialogue as Russia: Starting from the Partnership for Peace in the early 1990s that our countries were part of as non-NATO members at the time, to the creation of the NATO-Russia Council. The 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, which defined cooperation between Russia and NATO, presented a positive direction for the development, even presaging the forthcoming enlargement of the alliance.
Russia has broken its commitments to work together and damaged our trust by conducting cyberattacks on some of us (Estonia in 2007), annexing parts of the territory of our neighbours (Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014) until finally starting unjustified and unprovoked military aggression against Ukraine. In January 2022, NATO offered to Russia the possibility of dialogue to discuss the security situation in Europe that would include transparency, arms control and other measures.
Instead, Russia chose war. If Russia claims it has a “legitimate interest” concerning Ukraine or “defending itself” against NATO, then why does it refuse to advance such interests through diplomacy? The arguments that European countries have cornered or encircled Russia by joining NATO or allowing other countries to join NATO are nothing else but false propaganda to justify Vladimir Putin’s imperial vision. Does anyone outside the Kremlin truly want to bring back a world of imperialism, land grabs and rampant violations of territorial integrity?
In this senseless war, Russia is targeting civilians and creating the biggest flow of refugees in Europe since the Second World War. We have provided shelter to them, and this includes helping to evacuate Indian students escaping Russian aggression, threading their way home through bombardment by Russian warplanes and artillery.
Finally, the people of Ukraine are fighting today for the same opportunities that our countries had in the last three decades. The Ukrainian people want to exercise their right to self-determination according to the UN Charter, to live in peace, and transform their country into a modern and functional state, free of coercion and corruption. However, Russia cannot accept this. A free and prosperous Ukraine would prove to the Russian people that a better world for them is possible. Ukraine fights for the values that we, the Bucharest Nine, believe in, and have fought for over many generations and which we will always collectively defend.
Ukraine today has become a symbol of the fight with imperialism, for all. No state wants to be a “buffer zone” or part of another’s sphere of influence. All states have the right to independently follow the aspirations of their people. Any attempts to brutally inhibit this right should not be accepted by the international community in the 21st century. All states, furthermore, should be ensured their free choice to decide about their alliances and paths of development. No one should wish for the times of colonialism, bullying of the small by the more powerful to return. We do not wish to see this again in Europe, Asia or on any other continent.
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 25, 2022 under the title ‘Ukraine & myth about NATO’. The authors of this article — representatives to India of the Bucharest Nine countries — are Eleonora Dimitrova (ambassador, Bulgaria); Katrin Kivi (ambassador, Estonia); Andras Laszlo Kiraly (ambassador, Hungary); Artis Bertulis (ambassador, Latvia); Julius Pranevicius (ambassador, Lithuania); Adam Burakowski (ambassador, Poland); Daniela Sezonov Tane (ambassador, Romania); Robert Maxian (ambassador-designate, Slovakia) and Roman Masarik (charge d’affaires, Czech Republic). All B9 countries are members of NATO and the EU
Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is in power in Delhi and now Punjab. It has raised expectations of a solution to the vexed problem of crop stubble burning, particularly during mid-October to around November 10, after paddy is harvested and before sowing of wheat. With both the “perpetrator” and “victim” states being ruled by the same party, despair has given way to hope.
That hope isn’t without basis. AAP is seen as a party with a clean slate, unencumbered by past baggage or links with entrenched interests. And by winning a record 92 out of 117 seats in the recent Assembly elections, it can claim the mandate to do what’s right for Punjab’s agriculture.
So, what should the new government of Bhagwant Singh Mann do? Punjab’s agriculture problem is simple: More than 85 per cent of the gross cropped area in the state is under paddy and wheat, which were, in 2020-21, planted on 31.5 lakh hectares (lh) and 35.1 lh respectively. The 31.5 lh paddy area included 4.1 lh under basmati and 27.4 lh under non-basmati varieties.
Punjab needs a plan of reducing the total paddy area to 15 lh (within that, 5-6 lh under basmati and 9-10 lh under non-basmati) and wheat to 30 lh, over a five-year-period. In paddy, the focus must be to not only halve acreage, but also promote direct seeding, as opposed to conventional transplanting, to the maximum extent. Direct seeded rice requires no nursery preparation, puddling, transplantation and flooding of fields, resulting in about 30 per cent water savings. Farmers further save on transplantation labour costs and nursery-raising time. Thankfully, there are herbicide-tolerant, non-genetically modified paddy varieties today amenable to direct sowing, just like wheat (https://bit.ly/3iwPNK0).
What are the crops that can replace paddy (on 16.5 lh) and wheat (on 5 lh) in Punjab? The alternatives to paddy are cotton, maize, arhar (pigeon pea), soyabean and other kharif pulses and oilseeds. For wheat, it is mainly mustard and chana (chickpea).
A few points are worth noting here.
First, cotton was being grown on over 7 lh area in Punjab till 1990-91. That’s down to 2.5-2.7 lh now. With some effort, an additional 5 lh can be brought under the fibre crop, especially in the southwest Malwa districts of Fazilka, Muktsar, Faridkot, Moga, Bathinda, Mansa, Barnala and Sangrur.
Second, the Punjab farmer will switch only to crops that are reasonably high-yielding and fetch much better prices than paddy and wheat. Yields per hectare in the state average around 70 quintals for non-basmati paddy and 50 quintals for wheat. The minimum support price (MSP) of paddy is Rs 1,960/quintal and Rs 2,015//quintal for wheat, with their corresponding per-hectare cultivation costs at roughly Rs 62,500 and Rs 37,500 respectively. The returns, thus, range from Rs 63,000 to Rs 75,000 per hectare.
That being so, any alternative crop has to give at least comparative returns for making it worthwhile to plant. The Indian Agricultural Research Institute, which bred the earlier-mentioned herbicide-tolerant direct seeded rice, has developed Pusa Arhar-16 and Pusa Parvati. The first one is an arhar and the second a chana variety, yielding an average 20 quintals and 25 quintals of grain per hectare respectively. At their MSPs of Rs 6,300/quintal and Rs 5,230/quintal — cultivation costs are only Rs 25,000/hectare each — the returns work out in excess of Rs 1,00,000 per hectare.
Third, the above calculations make sense only if the government undertakes procurement at the declared MSPs — like it does for paddy and wheat. The Punjab farmer will definitely grow pulses if she is assured of MSP, which should ideally factor in the environmental gains from atmospheric nitrogen fixation and lower water consumption. The same goes for oilseeds, where yields are, however, a constraint. These average less than 15 quintals per hectare for mustard in Punjab, while existing soyabean varieties give 20 quintals at best. Both the AAP government and the Centre have to be open to genetic modification technology: Roundup Ready herbicide-tolerant soyabean and the Delhi University’s indigenously-developed Barnase-Barstar gene-based mustard hybrids can raise yields to 25-30 quintals per hectare. The Punjab farmer, to repeat, will not touch any crop yielding below global average.
Fourth, the Punjab farmer wants to grow high-yielding crops that can also be mechanically harvested. Pusa Arhar-16 matures in 120 days, as against 160-180 days for normal pigeon pea varieties. Moreover, the plants are semi-dwarf, semi-erect and have a compact canopy, with synchronous flowering and pod-setting at the top. Farmers can, hence, easily apply pesticides using regular knapsack sprayers and harvest the crop at one go using combines. In Pusa Parvati chana, too, pod formation is profuse at the top. Since the bottom 20-25 cm portion of the stems bear no pods, the combines can run and harvest the entire yield.
Fifth, the crop diversification plan suggested cannot succeed without central support. The latter should fund MSP procurement of pulses, oilseeds, maize and cotton from Punjab, the way it is already doing for paddy and wheat. Arhar and chana can be sold through the public distribution system.
In cotton, maize and oilseeds, building an eco-system of ginning-and-pressing units, feed mills, corn starch and solvent extraction plants may take time. Some handholding is necessary during this transition. Fortunately, prices of cotton, maize, soyabean and mustard are all ruling high, thanks to the post-Covid and the Ukraine war-induced global supply disruptions. That’s all the more reason to launch the proposed five-year plan of slashing paddy and wheat acreages — which is also the key to solving the stubble burning problem – from the coming kharif cropping season itself.
Last but not least, assured MSP should go hand in hand with crop area planning. Targeted reduction in paddy and wheat area can succeed only if farmers are confident about prices of the desired alternative crops at the time of harvest. A legally guaranteed MSP can be made conditional upon farmers cultivating crops suited to agro-ecology (a function of water availability and soil types) and market demand-supply conditions (https://bit.ly/3wya6yU).
Fixing Punjab’s agriculture calls for an approach that is practical, not sanctimonious, and takes its farmers along rather than viewing them as “perpetrators”. The Punjab farmer has fed India in times of need. We can trust in her more than god to make India atmanirbhar in pulses and edible oil.
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 25, 2022 under the title ‘A five-year plan for Punjab’. The writer is National Rural Affairs and Agriculture Editor of The Indian Express and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research
After a first term in which he attracted national attention as a prominent flagbearer of hardline Hindutva, Yogi Adityanath begins his second innings as Uttar Pradesh chief minister today. BJP’s impressive victory has propelled Adityanath to a higher pedestal but there are onerous responsibilities awaiting the CM. First, he has to ensure that BJP’s huge Lok Sabha numbers from UP can be preserved in 2024 despite the improved showing by SP in this assembly election.
There are also tricky governance issues that await Adityanath. UP produces 1.6 million graduates, post-graduates and diplomates every year. Finding jobs for this large corpus of educated and skilled youngsters would be a challenge given the adverse geopolitical and economic scenarios. These elections also saw farmers express irritation about stray cattle grazing in their fields. Can Adityanath find a solution that cheers up the farmers?
How Yogi transformed himself for the third time
One measure of the success Adityanath has achieved is the attempts by other BJP CMs to ape his policies. UP’s law criminalising interfaith marriages was replicated by other BJP ruled states. Yogi’s turn as “Bulldozer Baba” against criminals seems to have rubbed off on an experienced CM like Shivraj Singh Chouhan who is now pitching himself as “Bulldozer Mama”.
Adityanath’s second term will be interesting to watch for new governance idioms and attempts to establish pan-India political appeal. Meanwhile UP, struggling with a high poverty burden and a burgeoning youth demographic craving better paying jobs, will be hoping Adityanath can also push economic reforms that woo industry and investments to the state.
The Disaster Management Act, which was invoked by GoI for the first time ever two years ago to spearhead the Covid response, will not be used beginning April. Subsequently, states will have more autonomy to shape public health responses. It’s a milestone as GoI is now convinced the level of threat has diminished. The numbers capture just a part of the story. Cumulatively, there were 43 million infections and around 5.2 lakh deaths. Both are likely underestimated as proxy data thrown up by sero surveys and the civil registration system suggest.
Covid’s outbreak was a massive stress test on India’s governance architecture. It was found wanting at crucial moments in the first 15 months. With the benefit of hindsight, the intensity and duration of the first nationwide lockdown was excessive. Governments were unaware of the scale of short-term economic shock. A sudden shutdown led to both human suffering and severe economic dislocation. And a premature declaration of victory left India unprepared for the savage Delta wave between April and June 2021.
The success story has been India’s vaccination drive, which has now crossed 1.82 billion doses. By February 8, about 73% of the population aged 15 and above had been administered two doses. It cost Rs 27,945 crore, less than 1% of total expenditure in the 2021-22 Union Budget. Vaccines’ efficacy at a low cost suggests that we would have done well to pre-order larger quantities in 2020 as Serum Institute had the capacity to supply these. The National Institute of Virology showcased India’s scientific depth by developing an inactivated vaccine. However, India lagged in carrying out follow-up research on mix-and-match doses as well as boosters. We were over-reliant on studies carried out overseas.
India faced the pandemic on the heels of a slowdown in economic momentum. This factor and the uncertain trajectory of the pandemic justified a fiscally cautious stance at first. However, fiscal policy could have been more nimble later to support contact-intensive sectors that are yet to recover. Two years on, the takeaways are that (a) data collection has to improve and also be shared, (b) epidemiological science and research need upgrades, (c) economic disruption must be as little as possible, and (d) India needs a sound public health architecture.
Karnataka government’s inaction over some temple authorities denying permission to Muslim traders to conduct business during Hindu festivals and annual temple fairs is unconscionable. The government cited a rule under the Hindu Religious Institutions and Charitable Endowments Act 2002 barring leasing of land/building/sites near temples to non-Hindus. Rules drafted by bureaucrats straying beyond the intent of Acts passed by legislatures aren’t surprising: These rules aren’t subjected to scrutiny Bills receive.
Now imagine other communities like Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, applying this dangerous principle to exclude traders of other faiths from the vicinity of their religious places, festivals and fairs. What will self-styled champions of Hindus say then? What’s happening in Karnataka is not just violative of all democratic secular tenets, it is an invitation for future conflagrations. Let’s remember that among the Constitution’s fundamental guarantees is equitable access to public spaces for all citizens irrespective of religion, caste and gender and the freedom to work or trade subject to reasonable restrictions like public order. Plus, clearly there’s no ‘religious tradition’ for such a bar on Muslim traders, as that would have been in place long before 2002.
Karnataka is hosting too many of these combustible moments. The high court’s hijab judgment may have got the broad points right, but it is also true that only recently did hijab become an issue in Karnataka. Whatever may be the political calculation of those who wink at such aggressive attitudes, the social cost can be tragically big. Appeasing this new mood of zealotry at the cost of constitutional values brings India closer to neighbours like Pakistan and Afghanistan, which have patronised religious orthodoxy and partly as a result have killed their economic vibrancy. Also worth noting in this context is RSS’s worry about “elaborate plans by a particular community to enter the government machinery”. Everyone has equal rights to enter government, and if more minorities are joining the civil service it’s nothing but good news in a diverse country.
Karnataka’s law minister claimed Congress’s SM Krishna government framed the temple rules. Instead of a pointless blame game, the Basavaraj Bommai government should simply scrap the rule. Since when is BJP justifying a wrong by citing Congress?
With the selection of four companies for the ₹18,100 crore production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme to manufacture battery storage, the government has taken an important step towards transitioning away from fossil fuels. Battery storage is a critical component of the transition, and reducing storage cost central to adoption of clean energy. The PLI scheme and the choice of companies is a clear signal that GoI is set on addressing the issue.
The focus on the manufacturing of advanced chemistry cell (ACC) battery storage is important, as it will help drive storage costs down and facilitate adoption of clean energy. The selection of Reliance, Hyundai, Rajesh Exports and Ola - all end-users and proven entities - will provide speedy access to capital and other resources will help scale-up battery storage adoption. With the demand for ACC battery storage rising in the South Asia and Indo-Pacific region, India has a chance to leverage the market size to drive down cost and capture a sizeable share of the market. GoI must help create the ecosystem to sustain production, including market design and revenue models to encourage battery adoption. It will create jobs across the battery storage value chain. The PLI scheme itself is technology agnostic, allowing for greater experimentation, which could lead to longer battery viability. The focus on simultaneous domestic and export demand is important.
The choice of companies and design of the scheme is reassuring, making this an effort that goes beyond mere aspiration. Savings in import bill, improved energy security, lower emissions and pollution will be the attendant benefits. India has taken an important step towards actualising its goal of being a major clean energy provider to the world.
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By and large, most parts of most Indian cities and towns are conglomerations of concrete structures, unsightly public spaces and disagreeable stretches that make the outdoors, even without problems like pollution and the general lack of civic sense, a place that requires to be negotiated with rather than enjoyed. Both behavioural science and common sense tell us that people are far less likely to, say, litter, dirty or even vandalise public spaces that are visually pleasant. What can turn the tide is something simple and, yet, that can overtly leave a mark: street art.
Organisations like St+Art are already literally changing India's urban landscape via striking murals. In 2014, an area as visually ungainly as New Delhi's ITO crossing, changed its look - and the way it is looked at - when a 152 ft black-and-white mural of the Mahatma adorned the facade of the Delhi Police Headquarters in a collaboration between an art and government body. Walls of public buildings and even residential homes along Delhi's Lodhi Road and elsewhere followed. Bright, imaginative - some quite stunning - street art has crept up in other cities across India, including Mumbai, Coimbatore, Patna, Chennai, Kozhikode and Kolkata. The initial curiosity value segues into a genuine confirmation of how pleasing our urban public spaces can be courtesy large-scale, building-sized works of art.
Companies such Asian Paints are already collaborating with organisations, spreading colour and wonderful shape in our otherwise largely drab urban spaces. Corporates should join in and 'sponsor walls' for murals and street art projects across the country, perhaps as part of their CSR, or even as straightforward 'brand-buildings' exercises. India, as the cliche goes, is a land of colour. By replacing the all-too-prevalent grime and slapdash of cement-concrete with outdoor, everyday art depicting nature, wildlife and fantastical images - and not restricting eye-grabbing subjects to just 'great Indians' - we can make our cities not just liveable but also celebratable.
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As the dust settled on Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s whirlwind working visit to India, there was little to show in terms of progress in addressing the main issue bedevilling relations between the two Asian giants for the past two years – the military standoff in the Ladakh sector that has resulted in both sides maintaining tens of thousands of troops on the Line of Actual Control (LAC). All the speculation about Mr Wang delivering a special message to the Indian leadership or a breakthrough on the border issue remained just that. In his talks with National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Mr Wang reiterated the oft-repeated Chinese position that the LAC standoff should be placed in its “appropriate position” in the broader scheme of bilateral relations. Given that India has never bought into this proposition, it is to the credit of Mr Doval and external affairs minister S Jaishankar that they made it clear to Mr Wang that progress in disengagement and de-escalation alone can lead to normal bilateral relations. India and China have had 15 rounds of military talks and eight rounds of diplomatic discussions, and the message sent out from the Indian side to Mr Wang made it clear that the progress made so far in these meetings must be extended to all the friction points in the Ladakh sector before the two sides can move on to other issues.
It would appear the Chinese side believed the geopolitical realignments and the turmoil created by the Ukraine war had created an opening for exploratory talks with the Indian side. Mr Wang was also keen to ensure the Indian prime minister’s participation in the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (Brics) Summit to be hosted by Beijing later this year. Mr Wang spoke with Mr Doval about China not pursuing a “unipolar Asia” and respecting India’s traditional role in the region. If that were truly the case, the Chinese foreign minister could have proved his country’s intentions by agreeing on some measures to help end the standoff and restore the status quo as it existed on the LAC in April 2020. This was perhaps the reason why Mr Jaishankar said he was honest in conveying national sentiments about how frictions caused by China’s troop deployments cannot be reconciled with a normal relationship.
United States (US) President Joe Biden’s “shaky” remark at India was not only gratuitous but also untimely, coming as it did at a time when New Delhi is trying to forge an independent path on foreign policy, unencumbered by the binary it dealt with for decades — America or Russia (or Soviet Union, as it was once). Biden’s remarks sent partisan officials, experts and influencers scurrying back into their familiar corners and scripts.
Ukraine has presented India with an opportunity to take a long, hard look at ties with Russia, more specifically President Vladimir Putin. With a swift and emphatic win in Ukraine now out of the question, he is looking at one of these scenarios.
Scenario No 1: The invasion succeeds, on day 31 on Sunday, or sometime soon. Putin declares victory, installs a puppet regime in Kyiv. Job done, but at loss of personnel, materiel and his equity as a world leader.
Scenario No 2: Russia continues raining mayhem on Ukraine. It has the upper hand in the war, but is unable to wrap it up.
Scenario No 3: Faced with unsustainable battlefield reverses and mounting global scorn, Putin unleashes weapons of mass destruction — biological, chemical or, even, nuclear. Hard to imagine the aftermath.
Scenario No 4: Putin gives up, and is quietly retired.
The Russian president emerges severely diminished in stature, equity and, therefore, clout in all four scenarios. There are no upsides for him in this war.
How effective will — can — he be as an ally in this shape?
A diminished Putin is not a problem for India. The real issue is the impact it will have on Russia’s ties with China. And that’s the outcome that should agitate India now, irrespective of the eternal debt to Soviet Union for 1971 and the dependence on Russia for military supplies.
The Russia-China equation is changing. Here are some of the most troubling signs.
Sign No 1: Presidents Putin and Xi Jinping declared in February that “friendship between the two states has no limits”. Question for India: Which way would Putin go under this arrangement if Xi launches a full-scale assault on India in Arunachal Pradesh?
Sign No 2: This declaration came on the opening day of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Putin delayed his Ukraine offensive till after the games to allow Xi to use the games to offset the blowback for the Covid-19 pandemic and violations of human rights and democratic values in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
Sign No 3: Russia has sought Chinese help to bail out the economy, hit by sanctions and cancelled oil purchases.
Sign No 4: Putin has sought military hardware from China, according to the US. That’s a stunning reversal of an equation in which China was the lesser party for decades.
How useful of an ally is Putin going to be, as Xi’s wingman, diminished and discredited on the world stage at large and increasingly at risk of being declared a war criminal?
Gratitude for 1971 cannot become servitude in 2022.
yashwant.raj@hindustantimes.com
The views expressed are personal
Medicines can account for nearly 90% of health care spending by the poor. According to the Health in India report, Out of all health expenditure, 72% in rural and 68% in urban areas was for buying medicines for non-hospitalised treatment. This is the situation, despite India being branded as the pharmacy of the world, producing nearly 20% of the generic medication worldwide by volume and 13th by value. Out-of-pocket expenditure is still responsible for 90% of health care spending. As doctors, we have numerous experiences where a patient discontinued treatment because of not being able to afford medicines.
Western countries managed, to some extent, to control the cost of medicines by importing generic drugs from India. The generic name is the actual name of the chemical used as the drug. Drug manufacturers give medicines a brand name based on dosage, concentration, and patent rights. The companies then advertise their brand of medicines to make them popular and influence prescription behaviour of physicians, thereby increasing sales. Generic drugs are much cheaper primarily due to savings from marketing expenses.
Interestingly, when generic drugs become popular, the price of branded drugs comes down dramatically. In India, generic medicines can be legally produced when the patent rights expire.
In this backdrop, launching of the Pradhan Mantri Bharatiya Jan Aushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) by Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi not only challenged the status quo, but brought around an irreversible revolution in our health care sector. For example, the gemcitabine injection for cancer, a branded product, was sold for ₹6,000 in the market, while the generic version costs only ₹800.
Similarly, insulin for treating diabetes is sold at Jan Aushadhi Kendras for ₹71, while the branded product costs much more. Unfortunately, most pharmacies are reluctant to sell generic drugs because of the low margin. With a network of more than 8,700 Jan Aushadhi stores across the country, to a large extent, affordable quality medicines are available to the poor in most parts of the country. Behind the network of stores around the country is a governance model in itself. Built on a digital platform, the Jan Aushadhi scheme created an immaculate system to maintain the quality of drugs and address the logistics of supplying these quality drugs and disposables to thousands of Jan Aushadhi Kendras. The entire process was engineered with the help of technology which kept consumers at the centre.
It started with the tendering from recognised vendors, both private and public sector pharmaceutical companies, followed by state-of-the-art inventory management and forecasting systems with the warehouses and distributors. A rate contract mechanism was initiated for multiple vendors and suppliers so that a scenario of a stockout is avoided.
I have been reliably informed that to ensure that quality medicines were procured, a provision to blacklist vendors and suppliers was brought in. The procurement ecosystem was further bolstered by recognising and providing incentives to suppliers based on performance. The quality is assured through mandatory procurement only from World Health Organization Good Manufacturing Practice (WHO/GMP)-certified facilities. The products are further tested through laboratories accredited by the National Accreditation Board for testing and calibration.
The health care sector is the largest industry in the world. In most countries, the health care sector is the largest employer. Unfortunately, during the 75 years after Independence, our national policies never looked at the health sector as one of the largest employment generators. Thanks to PM Modi, today, the health sector has come to the forefront of national policies towards building a healthy and wealthy India.
Contrary to common perception, Jan Aushadhi Kendras are not managed by the government. They are managed by local entrepreneurs who own and run the business. Jan Aushadhi Kendras provide a vital opportunity for self-employment with sustainable earnings as the average sales of the stores have now reached ₹1.5 lakh per month.
Apart from maintaining an efficient supply chain on a credit basis, the government also offers incentives up to ₹2.5 lakhs to encourage more people to apply for Kendras. At Jan Aushadhi Kendras, sanitary napkins are sold at ₹1 and reach sales of more than 210 million. Jan Aushadhi Kendras have proven that there is a viable business model in taking care of the needs of the poor and creating millions of mini entrepreneurs. In the last three years, PMBJP has helped poor and middle-class families save nearly ₹13,000 crore. While it is not a direct cash transfer scheme, it has a similar impact on beneficiaries — crucial support from the government that impacts the disposable income of the common man.
The health care ecosystem has now evolved with some overarching welfare plans supported by individual government schemes as its pillars. Schemes like Swachh Bharat Mission, free LPG connections, Mission Indradhanush, the recognition of yoga and promotion of healthy foods such as millets are aimed at promoting a healthy lifestyle and preventing diseases.
The Ayushman Bharat health scheme has served millions of people by sponsoring secondary and tertiary health care at thousands of government and private hospitals. Until December 2021, medical procedures worth almost ₹30,000 crore have been performed under the scheme.
Today, India has the largest number of medical colleges in the world. With 605 medical colleges offering medical education to 90,825 students, we perhaps produce the largest number of doctors in the world. With financial intermediaries for the poor sponsored by the government, innovative low-cost health insurance, and affordable quality medicines, India will disrupt health care delivery.
Throughout his career, health care has always been one of the top priorities of PM Modi. Under his leadership, I do not doubt that India will become the first country in the world to dissociate health care from affluence. India will prove to the world that the wealth of the nation has nothing to do with the quality of health care its citizens can enjoy.
Devi Shetty is chairman, Narayana Health
The views expressed are personal
“To the American people, I promise I will be straightforward and clear in sharing what we know, in explaining what we don’t know and how we will learn more, and what the future will ask of all of us.”
The Bihar-born Harvard physician, Dr Ashish Jha, 52, who has only recently been appointed Covid-19 response coordinator by United States (US) President Joe Biden, said this in a statement released by Brown University, where he was the dean of the school of public health.
I have not read a more moving statement in a long, long time. It comes from a clear mind, clean intent, and honesty and sincerity of purpose. It comes from total humility about the limits of human intelligence, human endeavour and the limitlessness of human fallibility. Above all, it comes from a keenness to own mistakes made along an earnest journey on a road that is rough, to learn from them and – most significantly – to correct them.
Public health policy is an area where such mistakes are entirely possible, given that policymakers are also human, and because situations such as the one caused by the Covid-19 pandemic are wholly new and have caught the world unaware of many of its ways.
And so Jha has said something that is only to be expected from a person of responsibility. But where his words are so unusual, unique, almost, for our times, is in his use of the following expressions, “keywords”, as current jargon would have it: One, I promise. Two, I will be straightforward. Three, I will be clear. Four, I will share what we know. Five, explain what we do not. Six, we will learn more. Seven, (so that we do) what the future will ask of us.
His use of the “we” is important. It shows his sense of partnership with his colleagues and others helping him respond to the virus’s challenge in the US. He is not assuming, and much less claiming, some special status or position in which he will stun or startle the American nation by an individual’s – his – act of daring or caring. Jha is being a team-man. But the “we” is not just about his team. If one ponders his words, it becomes clear that he is, in fact, speaking of American society itself. “We, Americans, know this much”, he is saying, “and not more. There is a great deal about this pandemic that we just do not know – its behaviour, its impact, its future mutations, and ways of ending its sway. And so even as we learn more, we, who are directly in charge of this response, will share our learning, our understanding, the gaps in those, with all fellow citizens. We are not know-alls, but we are going to know-as-best-as-we-can.”
And then, he says he promises to do this. Not just intends to, proposes to, but promises to.And straightforwardly by which, I take it, he means to say he will speak frankly, honestly, not to impress, not to conceal, not to obfuscate, certainly not to under-state or whitewash but to speak the true word, truly. The matter is, after all, one of life and death.
Salutary.
This kind of honesty, plain-speaking, this entering into a covenant with the people of his country, makes what he has said more, much more, than a new office entrant’s assurance of good aims. It is a word being plighted, a commitment being made in the solemnity of public responsibility by one who is aware of his limitations, even his failings, but aware too that his new role has lifted him to a plane where he must and will rise to its expectations.
How many in our political world, in our professional world, in India today, would have the courage to say that in the glare of the judging day? How many would place their word on the table so straight, like that? I cannot remember a politician in living memory say, “I promise I will be straightforward.” “Straightforward” — that is all. Difficult!
To say “I will uphold the Constitution”, “I will protect the people and the laws”, “I will serve the well-being of the people” is to light lamps at the altar of great aims. “Straightforward” is different. It is simpler in its sound, but tougher in its verifiability. Done into the Hindi of everyday speech, “straightforward” translates into imandar, that is, honest, reliable, true to his word. A person either is or is not imandar. In fact, the meaning of imandar is best understood by its opposite – be-iman.
As war flames across Europe, hatred is ignited in peoples’ minds, lies and deceit become politics’ daily fare, a single voice promising nothing more but nothing less than imandari to his people makes rare, almost divine music.
Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a former diplomat
The views expressed are personal
With the government announcing an increase in fuel prices on March 22 and 23, the unofficial freeze which came with the assembly election cycle has ended. While petrol-diesel prices have been increased by ₹1.6 per litre over the last two days, cooking gas prices were increased by ₹50 per cylinder. Even with the price freeze, fuel prices have played a big role in driving up inflation in the past few months. This can be seen clearly from the contribution of fuel and light sub-category to increase in headline retail inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI). With fuel prices beginning to rise once again, inflationary tailwinds from this end are likely to regain momentum.
While the government’s decision saw some customary protest by the Opposition in Parliament, there has hardly been any large-scale and sustained protest over the issue. This can be said for the period preceding November 2021 as well. Fuel prices were frozen in November. To be sure, the government did reduce excise duty on petrol and diesel in November 2021. But this rollback did not bring central taxes back to pre-pandemic levels at all. Similarly, subsidies on cooking gas cylinders have been nearly abolished – it is only applicable in remote areas – under the current government for the first time.
This raises an important political economy question in India. Have people, especially the poor stopped protesting against high fuel prices, and therefore, inflation in general now? The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not suffered because of inflation in the recently held state elections.
From a purely economic perspective, this argument does not make any sense. A large number of India’s workers are employed in the unorganised sector and the incomes of most of them are not indexed to inflation. When prices rise at a faster rate, their real incomes actually fall. Monthly data on rural wages is the biggest proof of this fact. Annual growth in real rural wages has been negative in six out of the nine months ending January, the latest period for which data is available. The rich, on the other hand, have not suffered much. While the final tax collection numbers for fiscal year 2021-22 will only be available in May, news reports suggest that India’s direct tax collections (and by extension white-collar salaries and profits of companies) have seen very high growth this year.
This kind of inequality, where the poor are witnessing a squeeze on incomes and the rich are not, should have added to the angst over inflation. But what explains the lack of it?
The only plausible explanation seems to be that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has adopted a more nuanced approach to managing the impact of inflation across classes and that the Opposition is still banking on a general messaging which is failing to strike a chord with the constituency which is the most vulnerable to it.
Let us take the case of fuel prices as an example. There was very little protest when the government did away with LPG subsidies initially. To be sure, the policy was rolled out very tactfully: First by nudging people to give up subsidy voluntarily for a larger good (subsidising poor people’s consumption), then excluding those with income above ₹10 lakh per year from the subsidy net and finally doing away with subsidies entirely. While this was being done, the government created a separate constituency of LPG subsidy beneficiaries through the Ujjwala scheme which basically entails a one-time subsidy to households that did not have an LPG cylinder. This kind of a class-differentiation has allowed the BJP to cushion the poor more than the rich. The government announced a free refill for Ujjwala beneficiaries last year.
The provision of free food grains under the PMGKY is another example. National Account Statistics (NAS) data shows that the food consumption component of private final consumption expenditure (PFCE) actually increased in 2020-21. This is more likely to be a result of the additional free food grain provision under the PMGKY – food received under such schemes is added at imputed prices in the PFCE as per accounting practices – rather than the poor actually spending more on food items.
While it is entirely plausible that the poor are still worse off than they were before the pandemic and inflation is playing an important role in this, it cannot be denied that the beneficiaries of these welfare programmes would see the government as having offered limited, but concrete, relief to them. Such targeted welfare provisioning, when married with targeted political campaigning, can explain why the BJP was able to manage the political anger around inflation.
As far as the Opposition is concerned, an interesting counter-factual could be asked. Will it be a better idea to raise class-specific demands such as making additional PMGKY grain entitlements permanent and adding things such as cooking oil to it across the country at the Centre’s expense or reintroducing a significant LPG subsidy for Ujjwala beneficiaries rather than protesting against inflation in general?
This brings up a related question of political praxis. Does the Opposition have the required organisational wherewithal to be able to think of such demands before the BJP implements them and then champion them among the relevant beneficiaries to make political gains? India’s Opposition ought to introspect over this question rather than lament over the fact that people have become unresponsive to their calls for action against economic misery.
Every Friday, HT’s data and political economy editor, Roshan Kishore, will combine his commitment to data and passion for qualitative analysis in a new column for HT Premium, Terms of Trade. With a focus on one big number and one big issue, he will go behind the headlines to ask a question and address political economy issues and social puzzles facing contemporary India.
The views expressed are personal
A few months ago, Vidhi Bubna, a 23-year-old scuba diver and founder, Coral Warriors, got in touch with me because of our mutual interest in the climate crisis, oceans, and biodiversity.
She had a distressing story to narrate.
“When I did my first dive in the Andamans Islands last year, I was shocked to find massive bleaching of corals,” said Bubna. “It was like a graveyard down there.”
This is alarming because corals are an important ecosystem for life underwater. They protect coastal areas by reducing the power of waves hitting the coast, and provide a crucial source of income for millions of people since corals teem with thousands of marine species.
What Bubna witnessed is well-documented in scientific studies: Coral reefs are among the most threatened ecosystems on earth, largely due to unprecedented global warming. According to UNESCO, coral reefs in all 29 reef-containing World Heritage sites would cease to exist by the end of this century if humans continue to emit greenhouse gases under a business-as-usual scenario.
Marine heatwaves and bleaching of corals
I recently remembered my conversation with Bubna during a presentation by Roxy Mathew Koll of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune.
Speaking to 60-odd environment journalists at the Centre for Science and Environment’s Anil Agarwal Dialogue, Koll, who led the study, said that his team has seen a significant increase in marine heatwaves, aided by rapid warming in the Indian Ocean and strong El Niños.
Marine heatwaves are periods of extremely high temperatures in the ocean, which leads to coral bleaching, seagrass destruction, and loss of kelp forests, affecting the fisheries sector adversely.
An underwater survey showed that 85% of the corals in the Gulf of Mannar near the Tamil Nadu coast were bleached after the marine heatwave in May 2020.
These marine heatwaves, Koll explained, used to be rare in the tropical Indian Ocean, but now they have become an annual affair. The western Indian Ocean Region experienced the largest increase in marine heatwaves about 1.5 events per decade, followed by the north Bay of Bengal at a rate of 0.5 events per decade. During 1982–2018, the western Indian Ocean had 66 events, while the Bay of Bengal had 94 events.
First identified in 2013, marine heatwaves such as The Blob resulted in mass mortalities in marine mammals and birds, and the collapse of fisheries and aquaculture in the United States and Korea. However, Koll added, there is no research on how it has impacted India/South Asia.
His team’s research shows that between 1982 and 2018, the western Indian Ocean experienced a four-fold rise in marine heatwaves. The north Bay of Bengal saw a two-to-three-fold rise in the number of marine heatwaves.
Koll also warned that as oceans warm (93% of the heat from global warming goes into oceans), there would be an increasing number and intensity of cyclones and heavy rainfall.
On Thursday, the issue of marine heatwaves came up in Parliament. Member of Parliament Ripun Bora asked Jitendra Singh, minister of state, ministry of science and technology and earth sciences, whether it is a fact that marine heatwaves have increased temperatures over seas and oceans of the country and have increased significantly in the past few decades. Referring to the IITM study, Mr Singh confirmed that there has been a spike in marine heatwave events.
Impact on monsoons
For the first time, Koll’s team’s study has demonstrated a close link between marine heatwaves and atmospheric circulation and rainfall.
The marine heatwaves, it showed, in the western Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal are leading to drying conditions over the central Indian subcontinent. At the same time, Koll added, there is a significant increase in the rainfall over south peninsular India in response to the heatwaves in the north Bay of Bengal. These changes are in response to the modulation of the monsoon winds by the heatwaves.
All climate model projections suggest further warming of the Indian Ocean in the future. This, Koll warned, is likely to intensify the marine heatwaves and impact monsoon rainfall. This means a greater need to enhance India’s ocean observational arrays to monitor these events accurately, and update weather models to skillfully predict the challenges presented by a warming world.
If the marine heatwaves are indeed threatening to change India’s rainfall pattern and impact marine biodiversity, India must invest heavily into not just improving its observation capacity, but also its climate resilience and adaptation efforts.
kumkum.dasgupta@htlive.com
The views expressed are personal
A month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the mighty Russian army seems to have lost momentum and is struggling to take control of major cities. Almost three million people are said to have left Ukraine. The number of civilian casualties increases day by day: In the city of Mariupol alone, there are possibly more than 2,000. The number of Russian deaths may have crossed 7,000.
Vladimir Putin and his ministers keep denying that this is an invasion and talk about the de-Nazification of the country, arresting protesters on Russian streets and whoever is using the words “war” or “invasion”. He insists on the fact that Russian precision weapons are only hitting military targets, and that hospitals, theatres, and other public buildings are being shelled by Ukrainian “Nazis”, destroying their own cities to damage Russia’s image. His statements would be laughable, if people weren't dying and a country wasn't in the process of being destroyed.
In Russia, most of the independent media has shut down and access to social media is blocked by the government. At this time, Russia seems to be in a much worse situation than its President could have anticipated. The pace of the “special operation” is much slower than he would have hoped; its army has certainly lost clout; the Rouble has depreciated by more than 40% in a few weeks; international travel has become difficult and disruptions in the supply chain are causing factories to shut down. While Russia may eventually win the war, in the meantime, it is losing many battles.
On the other hand, Ukraine is surprising the world with the resilience of its people, their resolve to stay and fight a giant opponent, the confidence of their president — who seems determined not to give up — is receiving standing ovations from the parliament of Western nations.
People wonder why this war started to begin with. Pro-Russians state that the possibility of Ukraine getting into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), pushed by America, was too threatening to let it happen and that the invasion was a reaction to this. The choice of the timing was also well pondered by the aggressor, since after the impact of the pandemic, neither European nations nor the United States (US) would have wanted to be directly involved in a war to defend a country that, though with a strategic position and relevant export of food and minerals, is not important enough to risk a global conflict.
In a war, there are always winners and losers. While it is difficult to predict who will win, there are clear gains apparent even in the current situation.
The two UN resolutions, backed by the US, within 10 days are an indication. On February 26, the first resolution won the support of 11 nations and, unsurprisingly, was vetoed by Russia. Among those who abstained from voting were China, India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Why would they avoid voting against Russia?
China
In the last month, we have seen clear — and growing — links between China and Russia. China needs to find the right balance between its friend and neighbour opposing the joint rival America, without risking losing access to the global financial system (read: the SWIFT ban) — one of the most effective sanctions imposed on Russia as a consequence of the invasion.
Undermining the legitimacy of the sanctions is in China’s interest because it has always believed that no external player should intervene in matters that happen within a certain nation (Ukraine was once part of the USSR, and China may still consider it within Russian influence). During the Hong Kong protest not too long ago, some sanctions were imposed on China. Looking at the future, China might envisage the take over of Taiwan, which they have always considered a part of the mainland. And China would, obviously, not want the West to intervene in such a situation.
Therefore, it cannot condemn today what it may think to perpetuate tomorrow. China is also receiving a large part of Russian crude and liquefied natural gas, which it cannot afford to lose.
However, some Chinese firms such as Tik Tok and Volvo have already suspended operations in Russia. Other firms dealing with Russia may be affected by secondary sanctions as an effect of bans imposed on Russia. At this moment, China seems to be a careful observer of the current situation, gaining some additional confidence from its new friend representing a possible export partner for enhanced trade. At the same time, it is trying not to appear too explicitly pro-Russia, to avoid the consequences of worsened trade relationships with the West and denied access to financial tools.
India
The other abstention from the vote of the resolution in February, as well as of that of March 3, was India. This surprised some Western observers, since India has been trying to improve its relationship with the US over the last few decades. However, looking more closely into the move, it is not difficult to find reasons for the lack of a strong stand against Russia. The relationship between India and Russia dates back to the years of Indian Independence, when food and economic aid were provided by Russia. Even today, India depends on Russia for its arsenal. India is also a net importer of energy.
There are rumours that, when the ban on Russian fuel was being discussed and later implemented, Russia offered India a large quantity of crude and gas at highly discounted prices. This would contribute to partially offset the rising price of commodities (like fertilizers) that are pushing up Indian inflation, a matter of great concern for India. India's abstention may also indicate its need for Russia’s help in a possible conflict with China at its borders. India also knows that its abstention would have not caused retaliation from the West, given the fact that America needs India to contain the expansion of China.
At the moment, India seems only relatively affected by the war. It may see its inflation rise further, but this could be mitigated by the lower cost of energy thanks to the bargain on Russian crude. India may also see its reputation as the largest world democracy affected by not condemning an aggressive invasion in a democratic country, but, at the same time, its geopolitical clout may be enhanced, thanks to improved relations with its long time Russian friend and its balancing role (among authoritarian regimes) in Asia.
The UAE
Now, we come to the third country that initially abstained from the first UN resolution, but later joined the over 140 countries that voted in the second resolution. The UAE is a much smaller player in the world geopolitical scenario, given its bigger neighbour, Saudi Arabia, which aspires to dominate the region in competition with Iran. The economy of the UAE is based on oil, tourism and, to some extent, capital transiting through the country thanks to its good logistic infrastructure as a trade hub. Many Russian tourists and businessmen chose UAE as a base, given the fact that it is just four hours away from the Russian capital and happens to have the same time zone. The relationship with Russia has historically been good, being both cooperating members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
However, the ban on Russian oil represents an opportunity for the Arab country. Because of the war, Russian tourists have not been very welcome in Western countries and their presence in the UAE has visibly increased. Many Russians are moving their money from their country with difficulty, given what happened with the SWIFT system. One of the favourite destinations of such out-flowing funds seems to be the UAE, which has never discriminated against the origin of the in-flowing financial capitals.
Among the three countries that initially abstained to vote in the first UN resolution, UAE seems to be a net winner. China and India may gain or lose, depending on how facts will develop.
Between the two nations in the current war, the most powerful might eventually prevail, but in economic, political and social terms, Russia may suffer the strongest disruption since the time of Stalin, possibly even worse than that experienced with the collapse of the Soviet block in 1989.
Stefano Pelle is the former MD of Ferrero South Asia, Piaggio Vehicles (Vespa brand owner) and Perfetti Van Melle South Asia, Middle East and Africa. He currently runs his consulting practice based out of New Delhi and Dubai.
The views expressed are personal
India published its finalised Arctic Policy document on March 17. The document casts a wide net and explains India’s priorities, objectives and course of action for the Arctic in impressive clarity. A thorough examination reveals that the policy has benefited from the Government of India publishing a draft and inviting comments in January 2021. A clear imprint of similar publications from around the globe, most recently by the European Union (EU) is also visible.
In objective terms, the policy has almost all the elements of a good strategic publication, with largely no unaddressed areas of relevance to India’s national interest in the Arctic region except when it comes to encouraging private space sector companies. As the policy lays out, India’s interest in the Arctic is primarily scientific and meteorological, pursuits, which have direct implications for India’s development goals, economy, agriculture and food security.
Further, India takes strategic polar problems like melting permafrost being a cryospheric-biosecurity concern, the need for hydrography and the production of navigation aids, the provision of connectivity and space-based infrastructure coverage quite seriously. India also has plans to seek international cooperation, especially with near-Arctic states. This may include the United States (US) for Earth Observation capabilities enabled by a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite, and most likely Russia for developing polar ice-class research vessels able to transverse the frozen swathes in the North.
The war in Ukraine and international cooperation in the Arctic
The publication of the strategy also can’t be ignored in the current climate of international politics, with the ongoing hostilities between Russia and Ukraine. While there is no direct confrontation between Russia and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces, the unprecedented sanctions and export controls imposed on Russia by the collective West has projected a dire picture for the Russian economy.
The fallout also concerns cooperation in diplomatic spheres elsewhere, like the Arctic Council, where members Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and the US, suspended their participation citing Russia’s recent actions. This, hopefully temporary fracture in the Arctic Council, may become an impetus for India to focus on its bilateral ties with these near-Arctic states. At least in the short term, India may pursue engagement beyond the observer status it enjoys since 2013 at the Arctic Council.
The growing pressure on India to align more closely with the G7 which led by the US has inflicted sanctions on Russia, has yet not swayed India, and it continues to cooperate with Russia. It is a matter of great disappointment for India’s Arctic prospects that a Reciprocal Exchange of Logistics Agreement (RELOS) wasn’t signed at the December 2021 India-Russia 2+2 summit. RELOS would have been instrumental to India’s access to Russian maritime logistics in the Arctic. It can only be hoped that with the altered geopolitical context due to the Ukraine conflict, Russia and India will no longer delay in signing this agreement.
Russian State companies are India’s best bet for polar research vessels
In its Arctic policy, India has reiterated the need for constructing ice-class polar research vessels with International cooperation. The major challenge until now has been the funding and lack of shipyard capability in India to construct ice-breakers or even less capable ice-class ships which can transverse the polar seas. Ideally, India should exploit its long history of shipbuilding cooperation with Russian shipyards under the Russian state conglomerate United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC). India should explore the prospects of building, smaller custom heavy icebreakers based on the template of the “Arktika” Project 22220 icebreaker ships with the USC.
Cooperation with Russia and its Rosatomflot state company seems like the best bet to overcome these challenges. Atomflot a subsidiary of the Russian State-owned nuclear energy company, Rosatom, is in charge of not only Russia’s nuclear-powered heavy icebreaker ships but also the development, infrastructure and logistics of the Northern Sea Route (NSR). India has not only shown interest in the NSR, but also intends to contribute to its development. India’s ties to Rosatom are already quite strong with several Indian civil nuclear power plants being constructed by them, leveraging this relationship will doubtless gain India concessions and favourable terms in other services and contracts too.
Atomflot operates the largest, most capable ice-breaking ships with virtually unlimited range, capable of traversing the frozen Arctic seas throughout the year, and offers convoy services.
India can look to not only contract Russia’s unique nuclear-powered cargo ship “Sevmorput” to transport its scientific equipment and personnel but more importantly be a part of convoys led by Arktika class icebreakers clearing the way for other Indian contracted, crewed or owned ships. It is no secret that funding for large equipment purchases is not a quick process for the Indian establishment to clear, but it is presumably easier to contract case-by-case, one time services for expeditions in the Arctic. Atomflot will likely be onboard to negotiate with several stakeholders like India’s Ministry of Shipping, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the ministry of defence, the Navy and Coast Guard.
What about private space companies?
While the policy pays token attention to involving Indian private companies in its Arctic endeavours, the message by and large in the policy is decidedly skewed towards State to State and international fora cooperation. In the age of private NewSpace companies leading the charge for the global space economy, it is in bad taste that an entire section about “space technology” is plastered by the Indian government-controlled space agency ISRO’s logo.
Further, there is barely any mention of opportunities India’s private space companies may have towards contributing to all the listed projects, which are predominantly ISRO initiatives. With such curious disregard for explicitly acknowledging the potential role India’s nascent private space sector can play, it is unlikely India can ever see its dreams of its own companies rising to the level of SpaceX in the global private space economy.
Although a very thorough and impressive document, the policy still has some room for improvement to accommodate the Indian private space sector in any future revisions.
Aditya Pareek and Ruturaj Gowaikar are research analysts, Takshashila Institution
The views expressed are personal
The war in Ukraine has brought the world to the brink of “Knightian uncertainty”, where the geopolitical risks are so varied that they become immeasurable. These uncertainties range from the threat of nuclear detonation – as Russian President Vladimir Putin put his country’s nuclear forces on high alert – to a global imbroglio on the scale of the 1970s energy crisis; it also includes the spectre of a new Cold War fought between a Western-led bloc and a Chinese-Russian coalition in two theatres of action, Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
In addition to the supply chain crisis following the Covid-19 pandemic, we now face major disruptions in global logistics and payments as a result of Western sanctions on Russia and possible secondary sanctions on countries that do business with Russia. The Brent oil price is around $115 per barrel, but future forecasts range from $150 to $300.
For India, staying non-aligned represents the least geopolitical risk. The cost of joining the West with full gusto risks alienating India’s most important military partner, Russia, which accounts for 62% of India’s arms imports since 2010. Staying overtly silent on Russia also risks jeopardising India’s links with the United States (US) and Quad, which seek a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. India has little choice but to continue walking this tightrope, evident in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent calls to both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Although India has little direct interest in Ukraine, it is impacted by the profound economic changes brought about by the war.
First is the impact on India’s energy security. Rising oil prices are a burden on the government since the majority of oil imports are undertaken by government-owned companies; this is likely to also increase India’s oil and gas subsidies in the medium-term. The oil price trajectory remains dependent on external factors, including policy measures taken by oil-producing nations, geopolitical issues such as the Iran nuclear deal that could bring another one million barrels per day (bpd) of crude into the market, and sanctions on Russia’s energy sector. Some of this can be hedged by India’s exports of finished petroleum products such as diesel, which forms the largest part of the country’s export basket. With state elections having come to a close, the government will also pass on the cost of rising oil prices to the consumer, a process that has already begun.
Second is the impact of rising prices of commodities beyond the energy sector, including agricultural products such as vegetable oils (particularly sunflower oil), and minerals such as gold, nickel, coal and palladium, which also affect sectors such as jewellery and auto components. India is among the largest global importers of these products, and government-owned companies account for the lion’s share of mineral imports.
Third is the direct impact of the war on India-Russia energy ties. Although Russia accounted for only 0.5% of India’s energy imports between 2010 and 2020, lifting oil from Russia will remain difficult and continue only in small quantities in the short-term given that most banks, shipping companies and insurers remain fearful of Western sanctions.
More importantly, India’s government-owned oil companies have invested $16 billion in Russian oil and gas assets. These investments may well be written-down if sanctions on Russia remain in place. Another casualty is Rosneft-owned Nayara Energy, which operates India’s second-largest refinery and some 6,000 fuel retail outlets. Nayara raised $528 million through a State Bank of India-led consortium to expand into petrochemicals with a polypropylene plant in Gujarat; this project is likely to be stalled as long as sanctions remain in place.
Unfortunately, there is little to nothing India can do to influence rising oil prices, nor can New Delhi fully shield itself from the impact of sanctions on Russia. Indian firms also remain susceptible to secondary sanctions if they continue doing business with Russia, and will also find it difficult to use intermediaries.
So, what can India do?
India should first increase its strategic petroleum reserves from the 9.5 days of emergency stock to the 90 days recommended by the International Energy Agency. It would be wise to expand the mandate of the Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Limited and set expansion targets, which could help the country prepare for energy disruptions that are likely to continue in 2022.
New Delhi can also lobby to receive specific waivers to continue engaging with Russia in strategically indispensable sectors such as energy and defence. India cannot afford to let its guard down by stalling essential defence imports from Russia at a time when China is becoming increasingly assertive on the Sino-Indian border. The government needs to rapidly infuse more funds to promote renewable energy, which remains the quickest path to energy independence. Government subsidies for fossil fuels are today seven times more than the allocation to renewable energy; this needs to be reversed, and quickly.
In all this geopolitical manoeuvring in Europe, we must not lose sight of the larger picture: The outcome of the war in Ukraine will have ramifications on the changing global order, one where China looks to challenge the United States and expand its influence. If the China-Russia relationship strengthens further, India may be forced to recalibrate its relationship with Russia and cosy up further to Quad.
Hari Seshasayee is an adviser, Government of Colombia, and a non-resident fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center
The views expressed are personal
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the recent assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP) decisively. Behind its impressive performance were visible and invisible factors. The visible factors included an assertion of beneficiary consciousness among large sections of the rural poor – a phenomenon that was seen across castes and faiths – an implicit trust in Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi and his promises, a silent Hindutva consolidation on the ground and the party’s aggressive campaign around a strong law-and-order plank during the election.
Indeed, the effective delivery of welfare schemes such as Ujjwala, PM Awas Yojna, free ration, pension schemes and direct cash transfer helped the BJP win the poor vote. It is also true that the campaigning of PM Modi and chief minister Yogi Adityanath shaped the poll discourse and helped blunt the Opposition’s charge. But there is an additional factor that helped the party to retain its large social coalition: Its organisational capabilities of social engineering.
The BJP’s senior leaders, helped by its grassroots workers, strategically planned to mobilise communities, evolve the Hindutva social engineering machinery and neutralise caste-based assertion by the Samajwadi Party (SP) and its allies.
The biggest example of this was how the party managed to stop a consolidation of Jats behind the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and small Other Backward Class (OBC) groups behind rebel BJP leaders as Swami Prasad Maurya.
Before the election, there was a feeling that Jats might move away from the party after backing the BJP in 2014, 2017 and 2019, due to anger over the now-scrapped farm laws. Similarly leaders such as Maurya, Dharam Pal Saini and Dara Singh Chauhan – who all quit the BJP weeks before the election -- were raising issues of the dignity of Dalits and OBCs, and threatening to rupture the BJP’s broad social coalition.
But this didn’t happen.
Union home minister Amit Shah worked to pacify Jat anger by going from door to door in western UP. But, in the end, only about half of the Jats voted for the SP-RLD. Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who was also the election in-charge of the party in the state, tried hard to neutralise the impact of caste-based assertion by carefully tailoring the candidate list and asking nominees to keep the campaign focused on the poor. This campaign, centred on social justice and anchored by PM Modi, helped the party safeguard its poor vote.
The BJP planned the electoral mobilisation around its beneficiaries, sent a list of welfare receivers to its candidates, and asked its cadre to follow up with people and persuade them to reach the booths on poll day. Organisers such as Sunil Bansal prepared booth-level management designs that helped the campaign run smoothly at the grassroots level. It ensured that party supporters turned out in large numbers and created a perception of the BJP’s dominance or hawa.
There may be many such sub-narratives behind the BJP’s victory. In this election Mahabharata, many characters played their role and further analysis will explore the role of important figures and issues that shaped the polls.
For now, the challenge before the BJP is to respond to this impressive majority and various governance challenges in India’s most populous state. But one thing is certain: From campaigning and narrative setting to social engineering and caste management, the BJP functioned as one unit, from the grassroots cadre and the candidate right to the top leadership.
Badri Narayan is director, Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute, Prayagraj.
The views expressed are personal
The conundrum of the Nehru-Gandhi family and the Congress has been with us for some years and acquires a life of its own, especially in the media, and particularly when the party loses elections. Here is a recall from history which might be useful for the Congress to consider.
In the 1989 Parliament election, under the leadership of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the Congress failed to secure 50 per cent of the House. But the Congress leader still had way more seats than his main challenger, Vishwanath Pratap Singh (197-143). As such, President R. Venkataraman invited Rajiv Gandhi to form the government before exploring other options, but Mr Gandhi declined the offer, saying that he had lost the election. He had the option to carry on, but didn’t.
This is an example Mrs Sonia Gandhi could have followed with benefit after her party’s comprehensive defeat in the five state Assembly polls recently, but didn’t. This was a defeat more stinging and morale-sapping than the one in the 2019 Lok Sabha election because on all the normal parameters — very poor governance, very bad economic performance, very shoddy handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and discriminatory approach towards the minorities that is disturbing in its intensity — the BJP should have lost badly, especially in Uttar Pradesh, but it won in thumping fashion.
Mrs Gandhi made a feeble offer to step down. That was neither here nor there. What is needed is an orderly withdrawal process, properly announced. The Congress as a whole needs to consider: Is staying on by the Gandhis the best way to keep the party together? Is it even the best way to enhance the reputation of the Gandhis?
To be fair to her, Mrs Gandhi has said there will be party elections in a few months. Therefore, it is in order for her not to quit in dramatic fashion, post-defeat.
She does need to ensure orderly polls. This is where Rahul Gandhi erred in 2019. He honourably resigned as party president after the Congress’ defeat in the Lok Sabha polls but just moved away and did not guide the party into electing a new leader. He paid the price for this faulty tactic. In the Congress culture of rampant sycophancy, he just ended up being the de facto leader, a sort of “extra-constitutional authority” — a familiar expression in the Emergency era that attached to his uncle Sanjay.
In that sense, Mrs Gandhi has shown wisdom. She was not blown away by the gratuitous advice of some in the G-23 to “step away” along with her children. She reminded the G-23 that the election for the top party bodies and for party chief was only months away. In that case it would indeed be comic to have the party leader replaced now and then again in three or four months.
However, what Sonia Gandhi could have fruitfully done was to ask all the party general secretaries, including her daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, to resign and not only the PCC presidents of the five states where the elections were lost. This would have ended the factional infighting and, importantly, convey the political and ideological message of non-“parivarvad” (non-dynasty politics).
More than anywhere else, this is likely to have caused tremors in the ruling BJP, for that party’s main political propaganda has been that the Gandhis have developed a sense of entitlement and a vested interest in sticking to the chair. This is a message that is avidly lapped up, and so powerful is the saffron false news department operating through one crore or more WhatsApp accounts dedicated to denigrating opponents.
Ms Vadra campaigned vigorously and with elan in UP, and put the Congress on the campaign map, although the party had no leg to stand on, organisationally. Hoping for a decent showing was therefore academic. Nevertheless, the answerability is hers alone. As for Mr Gandhi, her brother and senior Congress leader, he does not occupy a party post and could not have been dropped from one.
But as interim Congress president, which today looks like being a caretaker position till fresh arrangements are made, Mrs Gandhi can still announce an ad hoc advisory committee of senior advisers drawn from different states, effectively suspending the present Congress Working Committee, who are an ad hoc bunch anyway, being nominees of the party chief. An elected Working Committee will be in place anyway in the foreseeable future and the new elected chief can add his/her nominees, as permitted by the party constitution.
Creating an advisory committee to help the chief with the crucial party polls will take Mr Gandhi out of the equation for the present. Whether Mrs Gandhi takes such a step is moot. She is, in fact, not required to do so. But what she can possibly ensure is that neither of her children will contest for the post of party president in this election.
In 2019, Mr Gandhi had made a statement precisely to this effect. It is time to honour it. That said, there is no arrowhead in the Congress more powerful than Mr Gandhi to take on majoritarianism and communalism in public life and government policy. In fact, this is true across parties. Mr Gandhi can with profit to the country speak and write about these themes, safely ignoring the unfathomably curious advice that the Gandhis must relinquish politics altogether, not just leave party posts.
For some four decades, the Congress has been nothing more than a party that can run governments, when elected. Otherwise, its leaders have shown themselves to be a pack of lethargic, squabbling dandies, and the “G-23” (of which one has defected to the BJP and one to the NCP) are a good example.
In effect, the Congress has left a huge ideological vacuum in the public sphere (notwithstanding Mr Gandhi’s spirited interventions), permitting the saffron family a clear field even before Narendra Modi arrived on the scene. This is why it is now absent from the election map. Indeed, this can be said for almost all non-BJP parties, as the recent polls showed.
Toughening the party organisation can’t happen without the scaffolding of an anti-communal ideology, persuasively advanced. Nor can the coming together of centrist, leftist and non-majoritarian forces to challenge the religious right. The late Mohit Sen, a stalwart ideologue, was derided by the Left for suggesting that the Right would dominate if the Left misread the Congress altogether as a predominantly reactionary outfit. The irony is that today the RSS-BJP attack the Congress for being too “left-liberal” and “pro-minorities”, and many in the party take fright.