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Editorials - 28-03-2022

History will not absolve the U.S. of a part of the blame for the tragedy that has engulfed Ukraine

It is a tragedy that Ukraine has become the victim of a contest between great powers. The U.S. assiduously created conditions for Russia to be drawn into a quagmire, and Moscow obliged. Washington would now like the world to believe that this is entirely a fight to protect democracy and defeat a dictatorship. That is not exactly true. The war is the result of a cold, hard-nosed calculation of the U.S. to prevent the rise of a large power in the east with huge natural resources, including those critical for promoting green technologies. It clashed with the dreams of President Vladimir Putin for making Russia great again and for whom the break-up of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. Yet, the U.S.-led West has succeeded in creating a public opinion that it is fighting for protecting freedom. But its record of fighting for, and on the side of, democracy is at best patchy.

Challenges to U.S. claims

History is stacked against the U.S. In 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) toppled the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, to ensure the uninterrupted flow of oil from the Gulf. It followed up with its ‘twin pillar’ policy of supporting and arming Iran and Saudi Arabia (both dictatorships), making them U.S. gendarmes to safeguard its oil supplies.

When a resolution was tabled in the United Nations in 1963 to cut off oil to the apartheid government of South Africa in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre by the police that left 250 black dead or wounded, the U.S. voted against it. As the second-largest investor in the country, Washington gave priority to its economic interests. It is no different today. A Harvard University study concluded that the U.S. military operations in 2011 in “Libya demonstrate how corporate interest and U.S. foreign policy are intertwined”.

When Salvador Allende came to power in Chile and headed the first democratically elected Marxist government in the Americas, a CIA-sponsored movement killed him in 1973.

The U.S. arming of Pakistan against democratic India is the best example that challenges Washington’s claim that it is the champion of democracy. Virtually every soldier of democratic India who died in the wars with autocratic Pakistan was killed by arms and ammunition supplied by the U.S.

A powerful defence lobby

Today’s war in Ukraine has been largely brought about by the U.S. bid to perpetuate a unipolar world, though other adjunct factors work as influencers. A critical one is the immensely powerful U.S. defence lobby. Washington’s sales of billions of dollars of weapons to Saudi Arabia (whose military budget increased more than six and half times in eight years in the 1970s) were steered by its defence industry. It even led Washington to sell countries weapons that they had little use for.

Today, after the sudden withdrawal of the U.S. from Afghanistan, many defence contractors saddled with stocks of weapons have found a new destination for them in Europe. It gives credence to what Peter Kuznick, a history professor at the American University, said, “War is big business for the U.S.”

And when the dust settles, a new Europe primed to beef up its security will be the new and lucrative market for U.S. weapons. Germany’s announcement of increasing its defence budget from €53 billion to €100 billion next year cannot but please U.S. defence contractors (in the last 10 years, nearly 50% of all Germany’s military imports were from the U.S.).

Expansion of NATO

The sad fact is that if the U.S. had not pursued its relentless goal of expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it is unlikely that the present crisis would have taken place. Many defence strategic thinkers of the U.S., including the most celebrated — George Kennan and Henry Kissinger — opposed it. The latter categorically stated that “Ukraine should not join NATO” and had warned that if this “principle” is not adopted, the “drift toward confrontation will accelerate” and “that it will come soon enough”.

Even Mikhail Gorbachev, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for the reforms he introduced in the former Soviet Union that led to the dismemberment of his motherland, bemoaned that the West had assured him that the alliance will not “move 1 centimetre further east”.

And the expansion had no logic whatsoever. The raison d’etre for NATO’s existence had ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia was no threat to the West. It was economically ravaged, and its once-powerful military was in complete disarray. Its famed military hardware, some of which were more advanced than the U.S.’s in many areas, was unworthy of military deployment.

It was then commonplace to see the military machine of the Soviet Union dotting defence facilities like boats in the skeletal cost of Africa (for instance, the rusting gargantuan Typhoon submarines — more than double the size of the biggest submarines of the U.S. — that floated lifeless in the Sevmash shipyard on the White Sea). I had also observed the desperate efforts of some of the most famous military design centres of the erstwhile Soviet Union to make soaps and detergents to survive. Many did not.

Ironically, in 1999, when NATO expanded, bringing within its fold Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, Russia was at its weakest. The defence budget of Russia that year was a measly 4.26% of the U.S. and a pitiable 2.5% of the combined NATO budget. And its president was the fun-loving Boris Yeltsin, whose weakness for drinks often saw him dance happily on stages inebriated. The now-vilified President Putin was more than 10 months away from being appointed as the acting president.

History will not absolve Washington of a part of the blame for the human tragedy that has engulfed Ukraine while life goes on as usual in the U.S. Even if the West’s narrative that President Putin has attacked Ukraine as a part of his grandiose dream of rebuilding the Russian empire is to be believed, what begs an answer is why the West did not accept the wise counsel of Mr. Kissinger. If it had, or at least waited for a while, the U.S. would have denied Moscow a reason to invade its neighbour, and the 69-year-old old Cold War-era warrior would have had no option but to take his alleged dream to his grave.

To end the war, Washington should accept the neutrality of Ukraine. It should broker peace now. Supplying increasingly sophisticated arms to Ukraine will only serve America’s great power goals.

Thomas Mathew, a retired civil servant who has served in the Defence Ministry and at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, writes on security issues



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There are many indices of proof that seriously contradict the tall claims of employment generation in India

Reports on and the visuals of the recent agitations by railway job applicants reveal a widespread problem of massive job insecurity among India’s youth. Alarming figures of unemployment have been recurrent even before the huge dislocation unleashed by lockdowns imposed in 2020-21 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Much before the pandemic, the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) reported a 6.1% unemployment rate in 2017-18, the worst in over four decades. The picture has proved more dismal in the ensuing months since April-May of 2020.

For instance, in December 2021, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) estimated that nearly 53 million Indians were unemployed, a large proportion of whom were women. The unemployment rate was hovering at 7.91% in December 2021, and though there has been some talk of a dip in unemployment in January 2022, the figure still stands at a worrying 6.57%.

Exposing claims

Percentages and data spun out by governmental agencies and policy think-tanks are open to contestation, but there are other indices of proof that seriously contradict the tall claims of employment generation. One such index is the downward pressure unleashed by the influx of overqualified youth aspiring for middle and lower rung government jobs, which, despite their modest pay, are highly coveted given the greater job security ascribed to them.

Expectedly then, having advertised over 35,000 posts, the Railway Recruitment Board was swamped with over 1.25 crore applications; a significant proportion of which were postgraduate degree holders. This created massive insecurity among a section of candidates who met the minimum eligibility but were being forced to compete with candidates having higher educational credentials.

With government jobs being limited, and reducing in number due to the contractualisation and outsourcing of several substantative posts, intense competition persists across various categories of jobs; a point brought to light yet again by the recent Railways’ recruitment controversy. As clarified by the Railway Recruitment Board and Union Railway Minister, for the second stage of testing that stoked protests, the huge number of aspirants for the lowest right up to the highest level of jobs advertised, eventually compelled the authorities to shortlist 20 times the number of candidates for all levels.

Explaining the scramble

Shockingly, advertisements for even a handful of lower rung government jobs attract an overwhelming number of applications, leading at times to the withdrawal of such advertisements. In September 2021, news reports highlighted that among 18,000 applicants for some 42 posts (peon, gardener and cook) in the Himachal Pradesh secretariat, there were hundreds of doctorate and other postgraduate applicants. Earlier, in March 2021, more than 27,000 candidates with degrees such as BA, BSc, MA, MSc, MCom, MBA, engineering, etc. had applied for 13 positions for a peon’s job in the Panipat district court. Likewise, for 62 posts of messengers in the Uttar Pradesh police, in August 2018, there were a total of 93,000 applicants; 3,700 were PhD holders and 50,000 were graduates. This particular job vacancy required an education level of Class V and the selection criterion comprised a self-declaration that the candidate knew how to ride a bicycle.

The desperate scramble for government jobs stems in no uncertain terms from the high job insecurity (easy hire and fire), poor basic pay, and long hours of work that characterise the bulk of jobs in the private sector. Historically, only a small number of employer-employee work relations in India — associated mostly with the formal sector — have been subject to state regulation. However, in recent decades, there has been a steady decline of state regulation of labour-capital relations in the formal sector. This deregulation has been coupled with a concerted push toward rapid privatisation of the public sector. Together, these developments have contributed significantly to periodic unemployment among both skilled and less skilled workforces, in addition to reducing avenues of gainful employment for new entrants in the job market.

A spillover effect

The ramifications of this overall process are multifold. At one level, enhanced deregulation of employer-employee work relations in the formal sector has triggered periodic unemployment of higher skilled workers, who have been spilling over into and crowding lower-skilled, informal sector jobs. Likewise, the spillover effect of periodic unemployment within middle-rung and higher-rung professional jobs in India’s job market has pushed more qualified youth to crowd lower rung government jobs.

This tendency itself has rendered a deep crisis for those with lower educational qualifications who strive for the more modest government jobs, and for whom such employment has traditionally been envisaged.

Reduced expenditure by the state on health, education and the social sector as a whole has also ensured inadequate employment generation, despite the fact that the demand for ‘public goods’ has been growing exponentially. For a country with growing educational needs, especially with large numbers seeking to escape inherited poverty through avenues opened up by education, the marked shortage of government schools and public-funded universities is alarming to say the least.

A closer look at the higher education sector itself reveals a steady increase in the number of student applicants. The scenario naturally calls for many more job recruitments of qualified teachers through the creation of new public-funded Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) and an expansion of existing ones. However, successive governments continue to restrict and even delay recruitment of teachers to existing public-funded HEIs. For example, in a large public-funded university such as the University of Delhi, a recruitment crisis has intensified over the years with over 4,500 teaching posts being filled by ad hoc teachers and appointments to permanent positions being stalled repeatedly.

Antinomy of eligibility

This recruitment crisis is also the result of an inexplicable delay in the grant of the second tranche of teaching positions that was to accompany institutional expansion in the wake of implementation of reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs). A recipe for a complete disaster continues to unfold in such universities as a large, highly skilled workforce of serving teachers defensively holds on to insecure temporary job contracts as more eligible fresh candidates enter the job market. One of the contentious consequences of such heightened competition has been the enforcement of higher and higher qualifications for entry-level teaching jobs in public-funded HEIs.

In this way, another index of mounting job insecurity and unemployment is the arbitrary enhancement of educational qualifications stipulated for recruitment into better-paid government jobs, as well as new criteria for admission into professional training institutions. This tendency has not only manifested itself in public-funded HEIs wherein entry-level teaching positions now mandatorily require a PhD degree in addition to a Master’s degree and UGC-NET qualification. It is also evident in the barrage of common entrance tests for highly sought-after educational degrees such as in medicine (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, or NEET), as well as centralised eligibility tests for recruitment into jobs such as school teaching (Central Teacher Eligibility Test, or CTET). As the number of seats and vacancies fail to be augmented, we see a systematic effort to ruthlessly eliminate a growing number of aspirants using astute tests and arbitrary criteria.

In the backdrop of a large number of skilled and overqualified people languishing in the throes of unemployment, the shrill rhetoric of ‘Skill India’ rings hollow. We will see more instances of frustration and agitations by the youth in response to rampant unemployment. For the scores of educated aspiring youth, transcending the prevailing logic of the economy is a crucial starting point for envisaging a world free of unemployment. An economy that creates fewer jobs is one which overworks some while rendering large numbers unemployed. A tired India and an unemployed India are simply two sides to the same coin. The youth need to realise that their fulfilment of dignified employment cannot happen in isolation but is linked to how the sea of highly exploited labouring masses around them are also guaranteed their access to the basics — education, health and livelihood. A transformation of circumstances awaits newer sensibilities and a sense of solidarities.

Maya John is Assistant Professor, Delhi University, and a labour historian



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There are signs that this pandemic has not followed the usual script — of the poor bearing the brunt of the pain

COVID-19 has upended Indian society. Over two-thirds of the country has been infected by COVID-19 and perhaps five million or so people have died, directly or indirectly, from the pandemic. The economy too has taken a beating. Even though there has been a V-shaped recovery, output remains about 10% lower than 2019.

In macroeconomic crises, including the oil shock of 1990-91 or the global liquidity crisis of 2007-08, many expect the poor to bear the brunt of the pain. They are the most vulnerable, without contractual protections and adequate safety nets. But there are signs that this pandemic has not followed that script.

Poverty certainly rose during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined monthly data from nearly 2,00,000 households with a total of one million members from the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey through 2021.

We found that extreme poverty, defined by the World Bank as the percentage of the population with an income below $1.90, rose from 7.6% in November 2019 to 11.7% in July 2021.

Income inequality

However, income inequality actually fell. In 2019, the average monthly income of households in the top 25% and bottom 25% of the income distribution was approximately Rs. 45,000 and Rs. 8,000, respectively, in urban areas, and Rs. 22,500 and Rs. 7,500, respectively, in rural areas. While the average monthly income of the top quartile in urban areas fell almost 30%, to Rs. 32,500 by July 2021, the monthly income of the bottom quartile in July 2021 remained at pre-pandemic levels. In rural areas, the top quartile income fell by perhaps 20%, while the bottom quartile income grew slightly during the same period. The result is that inequality, measured as the percentage change in the income of the top quartile minus the income in the bottom quartile, fell by 15-20 percentage points. This is a robust finding: richer households saw larger drops in income all along the income scale, in rural and urban areas, within each State, and even within caste groups.

This remarkable finding is not unprecedented. Historians observed the same dynamic during the plague in 14th century Europe. Given how much the world economy has changed since then, however, the explanations for India’s experience will differ.

Three sources of income

To learn why inequality fell during the pandemic, we examined three sources of household income: government transfers, business profits, and labour income. Government transfers are cash or in-kind payments. Profits may be from any business, be it a food cart, a farm, or a manufacturing plant. Labour income is wages earned from hourly work or employment contracts.

Government payments to the poor cannot explain the decline in inequality. To be sure, income support was not insubstantial. Households received roughly Rs. 400 per month in urban areas and nearly Rs. 500 per month in rural areas during the lockdown and the Delta wave. They received roughly half that much during the rest of the pandemic. However, even when government transfers were netted out from income, income inequality fell by over 20% points by July 2021.

Business profits play a bigger role than transfers. The rich saw a larger decline in business income and depended more on that income than the poor. While just 7% of a bottom quartile household’s income is from a business, nearly 15% of a top quartile’s household’s income is from a business. Unlike labour income, business income is volatile because it is susceptible to changes in demand, and thus to aggregate income. We find that business income of the top quartile is four times more sensitive to the aggregate performance of the economy than the business income of the bottom quartile. Given the large negative effect of COVID-19 on the economy, this suggests that some of the disproportionate losses of the rich operate through business income.

Labour income, however, plays a critical role (Table ). Labour income is just over 65% and 80% of the income of the top 25% and bottom 25% of households. These are larger shares than those of government transfers or business profits. To explain the decline in labour income, we looked at supply-side and then demand-side explanations.

Looking at supply, one might suspect the rich chose to work less than the poor, perhaps out of fear of contracting COVID-19. That was also our conjecture, but it proved wrong. When the economy contracted, people lost jobs and income. They tried to compensate by finding alternate work, sometimes even in other occupations. While this seems a natural response for the bottom 25%, it was even more true for the top 25%. While the minimum amount that the poor were willing to accept to take a job fell roughly 40%, the minimum amount fell more than 45% for the rich.

Demand for labour

The better explanation for the disproportionate loss of labour income among the top quartile households is that demand for their labour fell more. The rich tend to work in the service sector, and demand for services fell more than demand for other sectors. While 30% of workers in bottom quartile households work in the service sector, 45% of workers from the top quartile households do. During the pandemic, consumer spending on services fell by 30%-40%, far more than the decline in spending on manufacturing or agriculture.

The situation was reversed in manufacturing. That sector employs a larger share of bottom quartile workers than top quartile ones: 35% versus 15%. But manufacturing declined less than 20% during the pandemic. The progressive contraction of demand for services swamped the regressive contraction of demand for manufacturing.

To be clear, our analysis does not suggest that the pandemic was good for the Indian economy. The loss of life and rise in poverty make it one of the larger disasters the country has borne. The reduction in inequality would be a silver lining if it were accomplished by lowering poverty rather than reducing the income of the rich.

Nevertheless, by understanding the decline in inequality during the pandemic we can assess prospects for inequality after it ends. Once demand for services rises, along with aggregate income, both demand for the labour of the rich and the business income of that group will likely return. There is a risk that inequality will return to pre-pandemic levels.

Anup Malani is the Lee and Brena Freeman Professor at the University of Chicago. Arpit Gupta is an Assistant Professor at the NYU Stern School of Business, U.S. Bartek Woda is a research specialist at the University of Chicago



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The draft TRIPS waiver dents the credibility of the WTO

The pandemic has tested the resilience of the global community on various fronts such as whether it can unite to ensure the availability of COVID-19 medical products for everyone. In this regard, India and South Africa, in October 2020, gave a clarion call at the World Trade Organization (WTO) demanding that key provisions of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement be temporarily waived. The developed world, especially the European Union (EU), kept dragging its feet on this while the virus raged on. Now, the EU has conceded. A deal has been brokered between the EU, the U.S., India, and South Africa on the issue of the TRIPS waiver. This deal will now be presented to the entire WTO membership to be accepted at the forthcoming ministerial meeting. However, the waiver is a classic case of too little, too late, and represents a significant climb down from the original proposal of India and South Africa.

Waiver weaknesses

First, the draft waiver includes only COVID-19 vaccines and not other COVID-19 medical products. This is a major handicap. Medicines also play an equally important role in combating the pandemic. For instance, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended baricitinib for treating severe or critical COVID-19. But according to the Médecins Sans Frontières, the generic version of baricitinib is not available in many countries because it is patented. This defeats the purpose of the TRIPS waiver, which was to ensure cheaper and faster availability of drugs such as baricitinib.

Second, the draft waiver proposes to waive only patents and not other IP rights. India’s original stand was that all IP rights, not just patents, be waived. The accessibility of COVID-19 medical products can be held up due to many IP rights like trade secrets.

Third, even on the issue of patents, the draft waiver appears to be old wine in a new bottle. For instance, the draft waiver allows countries to limit the exclusive rights conferred on patent holders under Article 28.1 of the TRIPS agreement through the use of Article 31, which permits the issuance of compulsory licenses. But this flexibility is already available under the TRIPS agreement. The only waiver is from Article 31(f) which requires countries to ensure that products produced under a compulsory license are predominantly for the domestic market. The draft waiver allows countries to export any proportion of vaccines to eligible countries. However, this waiver is subject to several notification requirements. Eligible members are obligated to prevent re-exportation of COVID-19 vaccines that they have imported. Furthermore, the eligible countries which issue a compulsory license for COVID-19 vaccines have to notify the WTO about the entity that has been authorised to produce the product, the quantities, duration, and the list of countries to which the vaccines are being exported. All these procedural requirements will increase the transaction costs and may deter countries from using the system. Not just this, the waiver adds a new TRIPS-plus obligation. Article 31(a) of the TRIPS agreement requires that permission for compulsory licenses shall be considered on a product-by-product basis. Concerning Article 31(a), the draft waiver clarifies that a single authorisation may be given to use the subject matter of multiple patents necessary for the production and supply of COVID-19 medicines. However, this entails a new obligation to identify and list all covered patents.

Fourth, the draft waiver is not universal. Only those developing countries that exported less than 10% of world exports of COVID-19 vaccine doses in 2021 are covered for exportation and importation. There is no mention of least developed countries. Fifth, while the draft waives the obligation of a member to protect undisclosed information submitted before a drug regulator to claim marketing approval in the present context, it is silent on overcoming the challenges posed by protection to other trade secrets covered under Article 39.1 and 39.2 of TRIPS.

History repeats itself

In the aftermath of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa , the WTO adopted a decision in 2003 waiving certain TRIPS obligations to increase the accessibility of medicines in countries that lacked manufacturing capability. However, this waiver was subject to stringent requirements because of which hardly any country made effective use of this waiver. The developed countries serving the interests of their pharmaceutical firms are all set to triumph, once again, over the public health concerns of humanity. This will further dent the WTO’s relevance and credibility. India has surrendered and will end up being on the wrong side of history. It is incumbent on the government to explain why it has accepted a strikingly withered-down version of the TRIPS waiver.

Prabhash Ranjan is with the O.P. Jindal Global University. Praharsh Gour gave inputs for this piece. Views are personal



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The Tamil Nadu budget marks a shift in the approach of the DMK towards subsidies

A tweet by Tamil playwright and public intellectual Indira Parthasarathy on Tamil Nadu’s budget and the way it went viral symbolises the public perception of the budget by and large. Professor Parthasarathy, not known for making comments often on political events, called the budget “nuanced, broad-based and people-oriented.” But what was more surprising, to critics and supporters of the ruling DMK alike, was the budget itself, the regime’s first budget for a full financial year (2022-23).

The supporters were surprised by the absence of any dramatic announcement of freebies. There was no word on the restoration of the old pension scheme for government staff, which was promised by the ruling party during the 2021 Assembly elections. The critics were surprised as the DMK, which rode back to power in 2006 on the assurances of free distribution of colour TV sets and cooking gas stoves, was showing an inclination towards the rationalisation of subsidy distribution.

The budget sends a clear message that the government is conscious of the challenges that lie ahead. The impact of the Russia-Ukraine war, the expected rise in inflation and interest rates, the COVID-19 pandemic, uncertainty over the continuation of compensation to States for the implementation of GST and the probability of monetary loss, and the absorption of entire losses of the perennially loss-making power utility, the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation, from 2022-23 all find a mention in the Budget. Keeping these factors in view, the government conservatively estimates only 17% growth for the next year with regard to the State’s Own Tax Revenue (SOTR), which accounts for 60% of its total revenue receipts. However, it has projected a growth rate of nearly 25% for 2023-24. Interestingly, since 2006, the SOTR growth rate breached the 20% mark only twice.

However, the government is bullish about the progress on the fiscal front in two years in the backdrop of what it has ‘achieved’ in the current year. As stated by Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan in his budget speech, this year there will be “a reduction in the absolute level of the Revenue Deficit by over Rs. 7,000 crore [vis-à-vis the previous year, a COVID-19 year], reversing an alarming trend of increasing deficits every year” since 2013-14. The government is upbeat about realising substantial gains in cost savings through measures including the data purity project, which is expected to weed out ineligible persons from the purview of welfare schemes.

This year’s budget is noteworthy for more reasons. It is seeking to refashion the existing marriage assistance schemes into one of promoting higher education for girls by paying Rs. 1,000 a month directly into their bank accounts provided they have studied from Classes 6 to 12 in government schools and joined undergraduate degree, diploma and ITI courses. The candidate will get the assistance till the completion of her courses without any break. Increasingly, the emphasis of the government is on ensuring that its welfare schemes reach only genuine beneficiaries. This DMK regime is seeking to mark a shift in the approach of the party towards subsidies, as universal application of subsidies had all along been the cry of the DMK and also of the AIADMK.

To give the much-needed push to the construction industry, the government has decided to raise the existing Floor Space Index in areas adjoining the alignments of metro rail, suburban rail, national highways and bypasses. Landowners have demanded a similar measure along the East Coast Road too. What is to be seen is how long the DMK regime is able to hold on to its position firmly on fiscal consolidation, without compromising on the concept of welfarism.

ramakrishnan.t@thehindu.co.in



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India and China will find it difficult to simply pick up the threads of their conversation

Brief as it was, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Delhi on Friday appears to have left behind more questions than answers on its purpose. The visit was a first by a senior Chinese official since the military standoff along the LAC began in April 2020. Since then, despite 15 rounds of border commander talks and eight rounds of meetings of the special Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC), friction areas remain — including Patrol Point (PP) 15, Demchok and Depsang — where troops have been amassed on both sides. However, it appeared that during his meetings, separately with NSA Ajit Doval, followed by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Mr. Wang proposed no new mechanism or formulation to break the logjam in those talks, as had been the case earlier. Instead, the Chinese side only repeated that India must put the differences on the border issue “in the proper place in bilateral relations”, and revive bilateral talks on all issues. The suggestion was part of a three-step formula, according to a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement that included taking a long-term, ‘civilisational’ view of India-China ties, seeing each others’ development as a “win-win” and cooperating at the multilateral sphere. The last point was a reference to China’s turn to host the BRICS summit later this year, which Mr. Wang hoped Prime Minister Modi would attend, and India’s turn to host the SCO and G-20 summits next year, where Chinese President Xi Jinping would be among the invitees.

However, neither Mr. Wang nor his hosts in the Government answered why, if his message did not differ from the past, he was received in Delhi at all. That he was merely in the region — visiting Pakistan for an OIC conference; Afghanistan to meet with the Taliban ahead of another conference in Beijing, and Nepal to further bilateral cooperation and infrastructure projects — and decided to “drop in” does not seem to suffice as a reason, when bilateral ties remain at a standstill. Nor does it explain why the Modi government, which has consistently said it would only hold bilateral talks about resolving the border standoff, departed from this precept to discuss bilateral and international issues. Neither side announced Mr. Wang’s arrival until the first meetings on Friday, indicating that there is something more behind the scenes. It is also possible that his outreach stems from a desire to compare notes on Ukraine, where India and China find themselves at odds with the western sanctions regime that threatens to isolate Russia and split global transactions into a “dollar vs non-dollar” system, while also finding themselves not entirely comfortable with Mr. Putin’s actions. Regardless of any common understanding on other issues, however, it is clear that New Delhi and Beijing cannot simply pick up the threads of their conversation until there is a full understanding of events since April 2020, and demobilisation by the PLA, followed by the disengagement of troops, is completed.



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Yogi Adityanath is now central to the BJP’s political ambitions for the whole country

Yogi Adityanath has become the first Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh to be sworn in for a second successive term after having completed a full five-year term. Among the 52 others who took oath with Mr. Adityanath on March 25 were Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak who are deputy Chief Ministers. The composition of the Council of Ministers signifies the continuing efforts of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to balance the claims of various caste groups within the Hindutva umbrella. Several new faces have been added and several others dropped, to infuse the new Ministry with fresh energy and optics. As many as 22 Ministers from the previous term were removed, of whom 11 had lost the elections. Upper castes have got a lion’s share of the berths — 21 of the 52, with the Brahmins and Rajputs in particular, who got seven each. These communities rallied behind the BJP like never before in 2022, forming the core of the party’s social base. Non-Yadav OBCs that largely stayed with BJP have also been rewarded, though to a lesser extent. Dalit support for the BJP has been acknowledged, with nine of them making it to the Council. The BJP has finally made a serious attempt at wooing the Muslim vote bank by including Danish Azad Ansari, a Pasmanda or backward Muslim. Rising through the ranks of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, he has been working on the ground to create a connection between Muslims and the BJP.

The BJP hopes that the distribution of power among various social groups effected through the Council’s composition will stand it in good stead ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The criticality of U.P. in its national plan cannot be overstated — it contributes 20% of the party’s current strength in the Lok Sabha. The party will do everything to keep its U.P. house in order. The central leadership of the BJP had a significant say in the selection of Ministers, but a balancing has been sought with the Chief Minister’s views. Mr. Adityanath has emerged as a leader of his own standing through his first term and this election victory. Controversial as it is, his aggressive style and steamrolling administrative tactics have won him tremendous popularity. He has become a new icon of BJP politics. For good reasons, the 49-year-old is being seen as a potential successor to Mr. Modi who is 71. He is likely to fashion his second term with that view firmly in mind. India’s most populous State is also a severely underdeveloped one. His governance in U.P. can influence the course of the country. Mr. Adityanath’s second term in U.P. will, therefore, be watched beyond the State, and around the world.



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Moscow, March 27.: The Soviet Union this morning launched an automatic space station to gather more information about the planet, Venus. Weighing 1,180 kgs. Venus-8 will reach the environs of the planet in July. A descending craft will attempt a soft landing to continue the research carried out by the earlier stations, Tass reported. During its journey to Venus, the station will conduct research in the physical characteristics of the inter-planetary space, in particular in changes of concentration of neutral hydrogen and fluxes of solar plasma. All systems on board the station are functioning normally, according to Tass. The agency said that the station was carrying pendants showing a bas-relief of Lenin and the coat-of-arms of the USSR. The descending craft will attempt a smooth descent in the Venusian atmosphere and carry out scientific measurements. The last Soviet Venus probe was Venus-7, which plunged into the planet's hellish atmosphere on December 15, 1970, made a soft landing and transmitted data for 23 minutes from the surface.



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Describing Lucknow convention in support of Sanjay Gandhi’s five-point programme as an “anti-party act” and especially against her, PM Indira Gandhi said it was sad that those who were supposed to have been close to Sanjay Gandhi wanted to destroy his image.

Describing the Lucknow convention in support of Sanjay Gandhi’s five-point programme as an “anti-party act” and especially against her, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on said it was sad that those who were supposed to have been close to Sanjay Gandhi wanted to destroy his image. Addressing a press conference within minutes of her arrival from London at Delhi airport, Mrs Gandhi said what she had said about the convention applied equally to the decision of Maneka Gandhi to attend it. Mrs Gandhi, however, said there was no question of her giving any call to her partymen to boycott the conference. About the convention, she said it was like the RSS and the BJP using the name of Gandhiji to further their ends. The convention was being encouraged by the very people who were against Sanjay Gandhi and had done everything in their attempt to destroy him.

Rajya Sabha Poll

The Congress (I) made a clean sweep of all four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka while the CPM-led Left Front captured all five West Bengal seats in the biennial elections to the Upper House. In Jammu and Kashmir, the ruling National Conference and the Opposition shared one seat each. With seven seats already in its bag from Orissa and Gujarat, the Congress (I) has so far won 11 seats in the current biennial elections covering 63 seats from 14 states.

Maruti Wants Suzuki

Maruti Udyog has recommended to the government Japan’s Suzuki four-door small car for being manufactured in India. According to Udyog Bhavan sources, the recommendation  is now being processed by the Heavy Industry Department. The final selection of the car and collaborator will be done by the cabinet after which the public investment board will have to take the decision.



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The global policy landscape has become more challenging for India and will demand renewed efforts at the domestic level to raise the competitiveness of the exporters.

Last week, the Union government announced that merchandise exports from India have crossed $400 billion in the current financial year. In fact, for the full financial year, which ends on March 31, this number is expected to touch $410 billion. Two things stand out about this performance. One, in value terms, this level of goods exports is far higher than the previous record of $330 billion, which was achieved in 2018-19. Two, this achievement is even more remarkable when one takes into account that the current financial year witnessed two waves of the Covid pandemic, especially the vicious second wave at the start of the financial year from April to July. However, for this growth to sustain, it is important to understand the true nature of this growth and what caused it.

The government has claimed that “there was a detailed strategy in place, including specific targets set — country-wise, product-wise & EPC-wise (Export Promotion Council), monitoring and course correction behind the achievement of the export target”. While these efforts need to be commended, it is also important to recognise that India’s exports are also a function of several global factors. Two factors stand out in particular. One is the overall rate of economic growth in the world. This matters because a strong economic recovery implies there will be demand for Indian goods in other countries. Two, the amount of easy money available in the global economy. The ongoing financial year — 2021-22 — provided a conducive environment on both counts. Many western economies recovered from the Covid dip quite fast, thanks to massive government spending in those countries. Moreover, in response to the pandemic, most central banks in the developed world also expanded their balance sheets and provided cheap credit. Both factors had a salutary effect on India’s exports.

But close to the start of a new financial year, most central banks in the West are winding down their balance sheets and raising interest rates in a bid to contain inflation levels that are at multi-decade highs. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further exacerbated inflationary concerns. Overall, the outlook on economic growth, too, has taken a beating. Globalisation, which was under threat even before the pandemic, is likely to come under renewed pressure with more and more countries wanting to become self-sufficient or at least reduce dependence on foreign goods. The global policy landscape has become more challenging for India and will demand renewed efforts at the domestic level to raise the competitiveness of the exporters. Lastly, the government must not forget that higher prices had a huge role to play in India reaching the $400 billion target. As a percentage of the GDP, merchandise exports are far from where they were a decade ago.



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While India rightly focused on the Ladakh border, from the Chinese point of view, the visit was likely made to gauge if India would be willing to play ball by attending the BRICS summit in June this year.

Beijing’s outreach to Delhi last week with a visit by Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi was not expected to bring about any dramatic changes in bilateral ties. The relationship has been at its lowest point in three decades since Beijing tore up a decade’s worth of agreements for maintaining peace and tranquility at the border and sent troops into India’s side of the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh in 2020. What it has done though is to convey that while Delhi cannot consider the relationship normal so long as troops continue to face off at “friction points” in the Ladakh heights, it is prepared to be pragmatic and engage at a fairly high level to talk about other day-to-day issues including trade and visas for students.

The pragmatism has been in evidence even before this. Despite the worst patch in the relations, India-China trade has touched new highs. Even though the words status quo ante were not used, both External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and National Security Adviser A K Doval have conveyed that the Ladakh issue has to be resolved expeditiously before the relationship can become normal. That much was evident in the secrecy around the visit, apparently at the request of the Chinese side, and the palpably cold reception Wang received in Delhi. If Wang was keen to convey where he was coming from — quite literally from Pakistan, where he backed OIC’s “aspirations” for Kashmir, and Afghanistan, where he welcomed the Taliban’s desire to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative, both red rags for Delhi — India responded in kind by lashing out at him for his remarks on Kashmir, on which it said China had “no locus standi to comment”, and pointing out that India refrains from commenting on China’s “internal issues”.

While India rightly focused on the Ladakh border, from the Chinese point of view, the visit was likely made to gauge if India would be willing to play ball by attending, at a time of great geopolitical flux, the BRICS summit in June this year in China, as well as the Russia-India-China summit. For Beijing and Moscow, having Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, along with the leaders of South Africa and Brazil, would be an important diplomatic victory. For now, Delhi appears to have conveyed that despite their common stand on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, both sides have their “respective” positions. The call — to attend or not — will have to be made soon, and the decision weighed against what could be gained and what might be lost.



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Iran is using its growing nuclear capability to bargain an agreement with the US and the West

Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, during his recent visit to Syria, noted that Iran and the major powers, who have been negotiating a mutual return to the Iran nuclear deal — or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — over the last eleven months, were closer to an agreement “than ever before”. If the US behaves realistically, Iran is ready to finalise the agreement in the presence of foreign ministers, he said. Amir-Abdollahian’s optimistic remarks came after the talks in Vienna paused on March 11 following Russia’s demands for written guarantees from the US that the sanctions imposed on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis will not harm its economic and military-technical cooperation with Iran. It was only after Amir-Abdollahian and Qatar’s foreign minister visited Moscow in quick succession that Russia retracted its obstructionist stance by accepting guarantees on protecting the Russian involvement in Iran’s sole nuclear energy plant in Bushehr. Moscow, given its involvement in Iran’s civil nuclear programme, has a crucial role in implementing the nuclear commitment aspect of the JCPOA, namely the shipping of Iran’s excess enriched uranium stockpile to Russia and providing 20 per cent enriched uranium for the Tehran Research Reactor. Tehran was therefore careful not to criticise the Russian move; instead, it maintained that the West needs to make “political decisions” about the remaining issues.

The ongoing eighth round of talks between Iran and P4+1, with the EU coordinator of the joint commission Enrique Mora playing the intermediary between the US and Iranian delegations, has been going on since December 27, 2021, except for routine breaks for political consultations with capitals. On February 23, when the European negotiators were leaving for their capital after two weeks of negotiations, they had signalled that the talks were in the endgame as only a “few difficult issues” remained. These issues are understood to be Tehran’s demand for guarantees against another withdrawal in the future, the verifiable lifting of all US sanctions, and the IAEA investigation into Iran’s past nuclear activities. On the last issue, in the run-up to the IAEA Board of Governors meeting in early March, Tehran signalled a cooperative approach as Mohammad Eslami, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation and Rafael Grossi, the IAEA director-general agreed on a three-month timeline for Iran to answer questions about possible undeclared nuclear activities and materials. On the issue of guarantees against another withdrawal, Iran is no longer demanding legal guarantees from Washington. It has made a case for the “inherent guarantees” of the JCPOA under which Iran will have the provision to swiftly scale up its nuclear activities as a retaliation measure. However, Tehran has refused to retreat from its uncompromising stance on the lifting of all US sanctions, while the Biden administration has so far been prepared to lift only those “inconsistent” with the deal. Another key sticking point, though not directly related to the nuclear deal, is Iran’s demand that President Biden reverse his predecessor’s designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation.

What is clear is that notwithstanding Moscow’s obstructionism, which was largely aimed at demonstrating that the West will still need Moscow in resolving key international issues, Iran and the US are the real players in the endgame in Vienna. Further, Tehran thinks it has the upper hand. Though Tehran denies seeking a nuclear bomb, its Western interlocutors are alarmed by Iran’s shrinking breakout time — the time needed for gathering enough weapons-grade uranium to make a single nuclear warhead. Also, they are concerned that the longer Iran stays outside the agreement, the more nuclear expertise and fissile material it will accumulate, thus making the original deal obsolete. Thus, time is of the essence for reaching an agreement that will turn the clock back on Iran’s nuclear activities. Tehran, therefore, uses its nuclear activities as a bargaining counter to seek an agreement that will best serve its interests. Recently, Iran’s atomic chief declared that the country’s nuclear programme is not tied to the negotiations and that it will mark April 9 as National Nuclear Technology Day to unveil a “Comprehensive Strategic Development Document for Nuclear Industry”. Such declarations serve the dual purpose of causing alarm in Western capitals and mobilising both elite and popular support for national technological achievements, irrespective of the economic costs borne by the people. Tehran’s strategy seems to be working as Enrique Mora, before embarking on another trip to Tehran, has affirmed that the stakes are high and the negotiation must be concluded.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 28, 2022 under the title ‘The long endgame in Vienna’. The writer is Associate Fellow, Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses



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Shifts in political choice are not the outcome of election campaigns alone, but a result of the long-term developmental strategies adopted and delivered by the BJP

“Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are”. These words of German poet Bertolt Brecht have always struck me as a socio-political analyst. In the context of the recent Uttar Pradesh assembly election results, they become more relevant. Why did a larger section of Dalits vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)? This question seems to trouble many political observers and a section of the public. It surprised a section of the metropolitan intelligentsia, who want to see reflections of their ideology and aspirations in the marginalised.

The UP election campaign can be considered as a text to explore this question. While caste, religion, women, youth appeared as overt categories of mobilisation by various political parties, an agenda for the poor did not come up in the political discourse. It is interesting to observe that the BJP emphasised the welfare of the poor (“garib kalyan”) as one of the important components of its electoral campaigning strategy. The BJP’s UP election in-charge, Dharmendra Pradhan, emphasised this agenda from his earliest meetings. When Narendra Modi started his rallies, his core argument was that BJP had delivered on development with special emphasis on social welfare schemes such as Ujjwala Yojana, PM Awas Yojana, free ration, etc. So, Dalits and marginals appeared in their discourse in two ways, as labharthi (beneficiaries) and in the campaign around the poor. The BJP tried to see Dalits and marginal communities not through caste but with the tinge of economic class. They successfully drew a bigger circle through the politics of governance and development, unlike political parties that approached these communities through ideas of identity politics.

Interestingly, the welfare of the poor, the core of the liberal and socialist discourse in Indian electoral politics, is being incorporated by the BJP in its language of developmental politics through ideas of garib kalyan and labharthi. Through its connection with these beneficiaries, the BJP tried to create a new identity, that of a development-aspirant community, named recently as vikas yoddha by PM Narendra Modi. The process of this shift became quite clear when Modi said in one of his interviews that if showing concern for the poor and marginals may be called as socialist concern, “I am a socialist in that sense”.

It must be mentioned here that whatever shifts we observe among Dalits and marginals’ political choice is not the outcome of election campaigns alone, but a result of the long-term developmental strategies adopted and delivered by the BJP to include these communities in their electoral base. The calculated social engineering-based representation worked in BJP’s favour, but the new social chemistry formed by the party through its governance strategies dented various identity-based mobilisations too.

BJP’s Hindutva politics has tried to approach vulnerable communities not only through the state-led developmental initiatives. It has benefited from the ground prepared by the Sangh Parivar and its organisations. Since many decades, the Sangh has been working among Dalits and marginal communities by imparting education, opening hospitals, organising health camps, strengthening entrepreneurship. In the Vidya Bharti-inspired chain of schools, the students from the Dalit and marginal communities are growing day by day. The Sangh is also present among these communities through its various chains of seva hospitals. Hindutva politics has approached these communities in symbolic as well as in substantial ways — by providing dignity in the Hindutva framework and also by effective delivery of various social welfare schemes.

It is true that humans can’t be free from identities but sometimes new, broader identities become more effective than conventional ones. In this election, the Hindutva identity and the labharthi identity worked together to cultivate a shift in the political choice of Dalits and marginals. How the social projects initiated by the state or by the social movements work in mobilising people in an electoral democracy becomes clear from the statement of a youth from a marginal community: “Jo hamari madad karega, hum uski madad karenge (Whoever will help us, we will help them)”. That sums up a new shift in our electoral democracy. It also shows the growing agency of the marginal.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 28, 2022 under the title ‘Drawing a bigger circle’. The writer is professor at the G B Pant Social Science Institute



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Films like ‘The Kashmir Files’, which turn pain into propaganda, facilitate polarising politics

The exodus of Kashmiri Pandits is in the spotlight following the release of The Kashmir Files.

The Kashmiri Pandit community is a minuscule minority, but it’s an inseparable part of Kashmiri culture. For three decades, the community has been longing to return home and demanding justice for members of their community who had been brutally killed, raped, maimed and terrorised during the insurgency years. The failure of successive governments to rehabilitate Pandits is the primary reason why even genuine grievances of the Muslim majority in Jammu and Kashmir are viewed through the prism of communalism.

The present government at the Centre has given Kashmiri Muslims reasons to believe that there is a relentless campaign to tarnish the image of the entire community, which was not even part of the conspiracy hatched against the Kashmiri Pandits from across the border. A fair probe into the events that led to the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandit families would help to rebuild the broken trust and bond between the two communities. That, in turn, could end the othering of the Muslim majority.

As a political activist, I have found that there is unanimous feeling among Kashmiris that a fair investigation could help to identify the perpetrators of violence and lead to their prosecution. This, they believe, would bring justice to the sufferers, and, perhaps, lead to closure in a tragedy that has hurt everyone.

Since 1990, the Congress or Congress-led governments have been in office for 15 years while the BJP-led NDA has ruled for 13 years. No government showed any interest in closure in this great tragedy. The Hindu Right weaponised it to polarise Hindu voters even if that meant destabilising efforts to bridge the gap between the two communities and facilitate the return of Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley. It has further helped the ruling regime use an iron-fist policy towards Kashmir.

Now, to the question of whether The Kashmir Files is an unbiased attempt at narrating the plight of Pandits.

I, a Kashmiri Pandit, left a well-paying corporate job in Delhi to return to the Valley to rebuild what I had lost 32 years ago, without any support from the government. So it is my imperative to dissect what has gone wrong after the release of the film, which the prime minister and his cabinet want the world to watch in order to know the truth about Kashmir.

For me, there are three takeaways from the film. The first is the targeting of institutions like JNU. I now see friends and relatives in WhatsApp groups making a case for silencing the “JNU-types”.

The second is the perpetuation of an unending cycle of hatred for Muslims in general. Videos have surfaced on social media, where post the screening of the film, viewers are accusing the Muslim community of sympathising with terrorists and are calling for boycott of tourism in Kashmir. The ruling regime has consistently equated Muslims with terrorism in election campaigns. We saw this recently in UP. Since the unconstitutional abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A, the BJP has lost considerable ground in J&K. The BJP and its allies were decimated in Kashmir in the DDC elections whereas their vote share declined by 19 per cent (as compared to the 2019 general election) in Jammu. The Kashmir Files may help the party revive the Hindu vs Muslim narrative and consolidate Hindu votes in Jammu. The pain and misery of the Kashmiri Pandits is being exploited to push a political narrative.

The third takeaway is the matter of justice to Kashmiri Pandits, their return, rehabilitation and reconciliation. These have now been pushed to the background. The promoters of the movie within the Pandit community and influencers, like the Global Kashmiri Pandit Diaspora who in their vision document talk about restorative justice, have conveniently missed the issue of reconciliation between Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits. This departure from their official position of restorative justice, about which they had written to the Union home minister, raises doubts about the real intention of those who live abroad and show little interest in returning to their roots. By smartly co-opting the movie, the ruling regime has showcased itself as a victim of terrorism and thus helpless in providing justice to Kashmiri Pandits. This way the government has subtly conveyed the message that the atmosphere in the Valley is still not conducive for the return of Pandits and that its militaristic approach in Kashmir should not be questioned. It has also allowed the government to evade tough questions about its failure in providing a blueprint on the rehabilitation of Pandits and justice to the victims of militancy.

Any discussion on the impact of the insurgency on Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits tends to slide into mud-slinging about who has suffered the most. While Kashmir Pandits have lost their homes, Kashmiri Muslims remain jailed in their houses. That’s what three decades of armed insurgency has given the collective Kashmiri society. Many events shown in the film are true and as cruel or gruesome as depicted. But an honest and unbiased discussion about the violence inflicted on Kashmiri Pandits becomes impossible if bigots are to pick these and turn them into material for propaganda. What the minorities in Kashmir underwent in the 1990s is now being experienced by the minorities in the rest of India today, minus the armed insurgents. In both cases, the majority was unable to protect the minority. Also, claims and counter claims such as “only 200 of yours were killed while 1,600 of ours were killed” does not make a discussion. That a bloodbath took place is a fact.

We Kashmiris need to unlearn hate and learn to respect each other’s trauma. People from both communities, or anyone for that matter, should be allowed to tell stories without apologising for the crimes meted out by the Indian state on Kashmiri Muslim civilians or by Pakistan-sponsored militants on Hindu minorities in the Valley.

Reconciliation is the way forward, not revenge. That’s one crucial message missing in The Kashmir Files.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 28, 2022 under the title ‘A narrative that divides’. The writer is spokesperson, PDP



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Ram Madhav writes: India’s rebuff of Chinese overtures during foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit reflects Modi government’s approach, which is based on principles and national interest

Adam Smith’s book, The Wealth of Nations, is well-known. His other book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, though equally influential, is lesser-known. Smith raises a hypothetical scenario of ethical conflict in it, asking what would a European do if the great Chinese empire were to be swallowed up by an earthquake. He would obviously express sorrow, make “melancholy reflections” upon the precariousness of human life, and might also speculate over how this disaster would impact commerce in Europe. “And when all this fine philosophy was over, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened”, Smith concludes.

Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, wanted to do something similar during his visit to India last week. After all the disasters in bilateral relations, he quietly walked into Delhi to tell the Indian leadership that the two should get along with “business as usual”. Wang was at his pontificating best, as if nothing serious had happened between the two countries. “As mature and rational major developing countries, China and India should not let the border issue define or affect the overall development of the bilateral relationship”, he told his counterpart S Jaishankar. He talked about a three-point approach: Viewing bilateral relations with a long-term vision, developing a win-win mentality about each other’s development, and cooperating in multilateral processes. India responded with its three points: Mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest.

This style is typical of China and has been played out several times in the past. The Peace and Tranquility Agreement of 1993 was also a product of this Chinese trickery. After making incursions into Indian territory in the winter of 1986 at Sumdorong Chu Valley in Arunachal Pradesh, they dug in their heels for seven years before forcing a treaty that provided a principle of peace and tranquillity but didn’t protect India’s sovereign interests. Even that principle has been violated several times subsequently in the last three decades.

The Chinese follow the formula – “what I occupy is mine, what I claim is to be debated”. Wang Yi’s proposal about a “long-term vision” amounted to India accepting the present standoff as normalcy. Fortunately, the Indian leadership refused to buy this “new normal”, with Jaishankar insisting on peace and tranquillity along the LAC as a precondition for normalcy.

The Narendra Modi government has effected an important shift in India’s border policy with China that includes, besides proactive diplomacy, strong ground posturing as well. While continuing with the military-led talks over disengagement — 15 rounds of which have concluded — India, during the two-year standoff, also participated in at least eight rounds of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination (WMCC), a process to address the outstanding border issues. But, it simultaneously kept up ground offensive by deploying men and weapons in large numbers. If the Chinese moved their field guns and military aircraft, India too did the same.

Despite Doklam and Ladakh, the Chinese don’t seem to realise that the current regime in India thinks differently and has a different approach. They continue with the old practice of upping the ante before every important bilateral visit to upset the Indian agenda by introducing new issues. Wang Yi’s visit to Pakistan before coming to Delhi was one such old trick, which they play every time a senior Chinese leader visits India. Wang attended Pakistan’s military parade where the Chinese-made J-10C fighter jets were flown for the first time. China supplied a full squadron of 25 jets to Pakistan recently.

In a deliberate provocation to India, Wang chose the Organisation of Islamic Conference Council of Foreign Ministers, held in Islamabad on March 22, to make unwarranted reference to Kashmir in a clear violation of the restraint hitherto followed by both countries in each other’s internal matters. India never publicly articulated its views on Xinjiang or Tibet despite justifiable reasons. Naturally, the Indian side has forcefully conveyed its disapproval of his Kashmir references, both through an immediate media response naming Wang Yi in person, and also at the discussion table in Delhi forcing Wang on the defensive.

On the issue of relations with China, there are hawks and hyper-realists in India. But the current regime has always taken a realistic and pragmatic approach in dealing with its important and troublesome neighbour. Both the EAM and the NSA of India have been able to convey Delhi’s position firmly but politely to Wang, sending him back almost empty-handed.

Wang Yi’s reference to cooperation at the multilateral level also included co-opting India on the Ukraine issue. After India abstained from the vote on Ukraine at the UNSC and the UN, both the Russians and the Chinese have tried to project it as India’s support to them. The Russian envoy at the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, publicly thanked India clubbing it with China, Kenya and Gabon, “who were brave to withstand US hand-twisting before the vote”. The Chinese media went overboard suggesting it as India’s change of heart.

India’s stand on Ukraine is markedly different from that of China. China justifies Russia’s aggression in Ukraine in the name of security concerns. However, India takes a different view. India is committed to international rule of law and respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of nations. It stood for a diplomatic resolution of disputes and opposed war. At the time of its abstention at the UN, India made its stand clear by asking for a cessation of conflict, immediate de-escalation of tensions and quiet and constructive diplomacy.

When the Nazi general Himmler battered Warsaw in Poland in 1944, turning 80 per cent of the city into rubble, Hitler shed crocodile tears, blaming the Russians, French and British for the plight of the Poles. Putin is doing the same by pounding Ukrainian cities, blaming the West and NATO. Notwithstanding several justifications from both sides, it’s a war for supremacy over Eurasia, and China sees benefit in this new Cold War.

For India, it is as much about principles as about interests.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 28, 2022 under the title ‘Chinese checkers’. The writer is member, board of governors, India Foundation



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Just as in the defence sector, India needs to reorient its approach to agricultural self-reliance with a great focus on R&D

In the backdrop of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has emphasised the need for India to be atmanirbhar (self-reliant) in defence equipment. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also pointed out that hardly any defence equipment was bought during the 10 years of UPA rule preceding the Modi government. We may add a footnote here that for the Amrit Kaal (next 25 years) that the Modi government has announced, we need to be self-reliant not just in missiles (defence equipment) but also in meals (food). As the old proverb goes, no army can march on an empty stomach. “Jai jawan, jai kisan” (salutation to the soldier and salutation to the farmer) was the slogan given by Late Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee added “jai vigyan” (salutation to the scientist) to that. Focusing on science and scientists is critical for attaining self-reliance today.

But self-reliance in food does not mean that we have to produce everything ourselves at home, irrespective of the cost. Its true meaning lies in specialising in commodities in which we have a comparative advantage, export them, and import those in which we don’t have a significant comparative advantage. This is not an either/or situation — it is about the degree of self-reliance a country wants to have following the principles of comparative advantage. If some protection is needed for new areas to develop (infant industry argument), that may be okay. But one should not aspire to be self-sufficient behind high tariff walls. That would only breed inefficient and high-cost structures that cannot compete globally.

What is it that gives a country an edge over others in attaining comparative advantage? In the area of agriculture and food, our research reveals that it is the efforts and resources that a country puts in agri-research and development (agri-R&D), its extension from lab to land, investing in irrigation to boost yields, efficiency in marketing and processing the produce, and taking it from farmers’ fields to consumers’ table or export destinations.

Let us focus for the time being on agri-R&D. There is ample literature to show that agri-R&D raises total factor productivity and makes agriculture more competitive globally. Sometimes, the basic R&D to develop “miracle seeds” is done outside the country, but those seeds can be imported and adapted to local conditions with in-country R&D and scaled up for adoption at farmers’ fields. The Green Revolution was such a case.

If India wants to be fully self-reliant in food, it is generally agreed that it must invest at least 1 per cent of its agri-GDP in agri-R&D. But the budgets of both the Union government and the states put together reveal that this expenditure on agri-R&D and education hovers around 0.6 per cent of agri-GDP, with a roughly equal share of the Centre and all states put together. This is way below the minimum cut off point of 1 per cent and government policy must urgently work towards raising this substantially.

So far, India has achieved self-reliance in agriculture by producing a reasonably large amount of food, and also being a net exporter of agri-produce. The high dependence on imports for edible oils — hovering around 55 to 60 per cent of consumption — however, remains a concern. India’s potential to emerge as a significant exporter of agri-produce remains untapped.

The Economic Survey (2021-22) explicitly highlighted the correlation between spending on agri-R&D and agricultural growth. Our research also shows that every rupee spent on agri-R&D yields much better returns (11.2), compared to returns on every rupee spent on say fertiliser subsidy (0.88), power subsidy (0.79), etc. Yet, the competitive populism in Indian democracy leads to sub-optimal choices in the allocation of scarce resources. More on safety nets like food subsidy and MGNREGA or on income support and subsidies for farmers, but very little for agri-R&D (see figure).

With this type of resource allocation in the Union budget of FY23, which is heavily tilted towards safety nets and subsidies, India cannot develop cutting-edge technologies to attain competitiveness at a global level.

Can the private sector come forward and help India attain supremacy in agri-R&D and innovation systems that make the country not just atmanirbhar but a hub for exports and agri-technology?

There are some global and local companies like Bayer, Syngenta, MAHYCO, Jain Irrigation, and Mahindra and Mahindra that spend a considerable amount of their turnover on R&D programmes and developing high-tech inputs. The USP of these companies is that they develop technology that increases productivity while addressing the current challenges of limited net sown area, depleting water resources, vulnerability to climate change, and the need to produce nutrient-rich food.

The need of the hour is to focus on increasing expenditure on ARE and other development projects, which can aid in the sustainable growth of the agriculture sector. India’s budget allocations in the agri-food space should thrive on creating “more from less”. The financing should focus on altering the current atmosphere of a high incidence of hunger and malnutrition, keep a check on the mismanagement of natural resources and mitigate climate change issues. There is a need to work on building long-term sustainable solutions that have an aggressive approach to implementing relevant policies and developing new ones. India’s current budgetary allocation strategy and trends need to be reoriented to ensure that there is more room for R&D expenditure by the government. In addition to this, the government should come out with policies that incentivise private companies to expand their R&D programmes and invest more financial resources on development projects, which have the potential to overcome the challenges of the current agrarian setup of India.

This column first appeared in the print edition on March 28, 2022 under the title ‘From missiles to meals’. Gulati is Infosys Chair professor for Agriculture and Khurana is researcher at ICRIER.



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The Imran Khan government in Pakistan is on shaky ground as the country’s opposition looks to push through a no-confidence motion. Khan’s problems are compounded by the fact that he is facing dissidents within his own party, PTI, while his coalition partners too are unhappy. But what really seems to have got Khan in a jam is the perceived withdrawal of support to his government by the Pakistan army. The slide began in October last year when Khan and Pakistan army chief General Qamar Bajwa engaged in a public standoff over the appointment of the ISI chief. 

Read also: No-confidence motion moved against PM Imran Khan

Khan ultimately didn’t get his way but the episode is seen to have damaged his relations with the military. Add to this allegations of economic mismanagement and corruption, and Khan certainly finds himself in a tight spot. Notwithstanding his show of strength through a massive rally on Sunday where he alleged that foreign powers were trying to unseat him, the only thing that could save Khan is a last-minute deal with the military. After all, the Pakistan army continues to hold the levers of power in that country. And Khan’s coalition partners like PML(Q) and MQM have traditionally sided with the generals at Rawalpindi GHQ. 

From India’s perspective, Khan’s ouster will make little difference to overall bilateral ties. There is no evidence to suggest that the Pakistan army has changed its view on using terrorism as an instrument of state policy against India and Afghanistan. In fact, the return of the Taliban in Kabul puts the Pakistani deep state in the driver’s seat there, which would hurt India’s long-term Afghan interests. Meanwhile, militancy in Kashmir is entering a new phase of targeted killings with the help of Pakistani handlers across the border. Plus, given the current poor state of India-China relations and Beijing’s all-weather friendship with Islamabad, New Delhi should guard against the China-Pakistan axis working against it. 

With Pakistan also trying to cosy up to Russia against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, India must remain alert. The bottomline is that Pakistan’s political fate is in the hands of the Pakistan army that can make or break governments. And as long as the Pakistani military-ISI complex continues to see India as its primary enemy, no government in Islamabad has a real chance at peace with New Delhi.



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The financial year, which will draw to a close this week, represents an inflection point for the Indian equity market. So far in 2021-22, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have been net sellers of equity. The net outflow was a huge $18.5 billion. Also, during the same period, major stock indices such as BSE Sensex have risen more than 10%. Equity prices shrugging off such a huge FPI outflow represents a watershed. It symbolises the rise of domestic investors, powered by households allocating a growing proportion of savings in financial assets. This has long-term implications for resource allocation.

Households are India’s main source of savings. Traditionally, they have allocated a greater share towards physical assets and a smaller percentage to financial avenues such as bank deposits. Two trends are evident over the last decade. Relative allocations to physical assets declined and were re-routed to financial savings. The year 2020-21 was a milestone, net financial savings exceeded that of physical assets. Of the Rs 43.9 lakh crore household savings, 52.4% represented net financial savings. The lockdown of FY21 may have influenced the sharp decline in the relative importance of physical assets, but the trend was evident earlier.

Household savings flow into equities through multiple channels: EPF, NPS, mutual funds, insurance policies and direct investments. All proxy indicators of equity-related savings point in the same direction. Systematic Investment Plans (SIPs) of mutual funds suck in larger amounts. In 2021-22, Rs 1.12 lakh crore was raised, as compared to Rs 43,921 crore five years ago. NSDL data showed 25.3 million active demat accounts of residents at the end of February, up 68% over a five-year period. Research outfit Jefferies estimated that 4.8% of the household balance sheet is in equities. So, even as bank deposits remain the most popular avenue, relative shares among financial instruments are seeing a long-term change.

Going forward, the relative increase in financial savings and the linked drop in allocation to physical assets will be dominant influences. In this context, disintermediation of banks has its benefits. For instance, the large number of start-up IPOs offered young entrepreneurs opportunities that may not have come so quickly in an earlier era. However, as household savings shift from bank deposits to equities, regulators need to ask if the retail investor is fully aware of a different risk-return equation. This transition needs to be accompanied by a focussed financial literacy project spearheaded by regulators.



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The horrific killings in Birbhum, Bengal, that saw a TMC deputy pradhan and eight people – including women and children – being burnt to death in a suspected revenge attack, not only highlight the vicious political culture of the state but also the intense economic competition behind this. Reportedly, the victims and alleged perpetrators of the killings all have connections to the governing party with one Anarul Hossain – a TMC community block unit president – being taken into custody as the main conspirator. Therefore, prima facie this appears to be a case of intra-party rivalry and the Calcutta high court has done well to hand over the investigation to CBI to ensure an impartial probe.

That said, such political feuds and killings in Bengal are not uncommon and have a long history. With the erstwhile Left Front government’s three-decade-long dispensation in the state dealing a body-blow to industrialisation and jobs, the only avenue of economic sustenance for many from low-income groups became party politics. This in turn spawned a culture of syndicate raj, cut money and corruption where local party members had to be paid for running many businesses, whether construction, transportation or even running a roadside eatery. The very fact that Bengal’s politics in large part killed normal economic opportunities gave a free run to these mafias.

TMC inherited this legacy and despite its appreciable performance in welfare delivery continues to be a party that operates through local strongmen. In the Birbhum case, it is alleged that killings took place because of disagreement between local TMC functionaries over sharing the spoils of illegal sand mining. Unsurprisingly, the state government denies this but reports suggest that around 80 illegal sand mines are scattered along Birbhum’s Mayurakshi, Ajay and Brahmani rivers. Illegal sand mining is of course not a problem in Bengal alone. But the unholy alliance between party politics and illegal enterprises flourishes more in Bengal than many other major states. And TMC seems as comfortable with this arrangement as CPM was.



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The response to the two-day general strike called by 10 central trade unions — the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-backed Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh has not lent its support to the call — has been on expected lines (Monday was the first day). Barring the exception of Kerala, where the Left is still in power and some formal sector public enterprises such as nationalised banks, it was business as usual. The trade unions that called the strike have a wide range of demands. These include reversing the ongoing labour reforms and disinvestment processes, cash transfers for the poor, and reducing taxes on petrol and diesel. While some of these issues are sector-specific and, therefore, designed to have a limited traction, others have a larger relevance.

It’s interesting to look at why such calls to strike no longer generate the response they once did; nor indeed, affect life and work. Usually, it is public sector employee unions that respond to such calls. Because the size of formal sector workers in the public sector has been shrinking, the ability of trade unions to undertake actions which force the government to take notice has also been diminishing. This has been the biggest challenge India’s trade unions are battling in the post-reforms period. The squeeze in the striking power of working-class organisations has been an important factor behind what is largely a bipartisan consensus on economic reforms in India. While there is little doubt that economic reforms have delivered the goods, especially on income growth and poverty reduction in India, it is equally true that the recent economic slowdown and the pandemic’s subsequent disruption has created a situation where some of these gains have been reversed. The ongoing inflationary spiral could make matters worse.

To be sure, the Bharatiya Janata Party has adopted a carefully targeted and continuously evolving welfare strategy to make sure that the economic pain because of slow growth and high prices does not hurt its political prospects. While such policies are important harbingers of relief, they are no solution for what many economists fear is the widening of structural inequalities in the economy. It is in fighting such trends that democracies require strong working class participation. As of now, India’s trade unions seem to be struggling to meet this larger challenge. This is a more pertinent political economy question than the immediate demands of protests such as the current strike.



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The failure of the Indian women’s cricket team to secure a World Cup semi-final spot for the first time since 2016 is a setback for its immediate white ball aspirations. The Mithali Raj-led team was eliminated after a last ball defeat to South Africa in the final league game. India’s superlative performances in previous global tournaments — reaching the final of the 2017 ODI World Cup, and then battling for the top prize at the 2020 T20 World Cup — had captured the nation’s imagination and ignited hope that women’s cricket had turned the corner.

In New Zealand, India suffered due to tame performances. They only beat unfancied Bangladesh and Pakistan, besides West Indies, who qualified for the semi-finals at India’s expense. Indian cricket officials must take firm steps to reshape the country’s white ball cricket plans. It was the last World Cup for stalwarts Mithali Raj and pace bowler Jhulan Goswami. Both are 39 and the cricket board and selectors must ensure replacements get enough games as they rebuild the side.

India need to be consistent and show foresight in selection. At the World Cup, they lost to three of the semi-finalists — Australia, England and South Africa— and to New Zealand due to inconsistent batting. Yet, they did did not choose aggressive young opener Shafali Verma until after losses to New Zealand and England. It proved too late. Against South Africa too, Verma’s 46-ball 53 was negated due to slow scoring in the last 10 overs. Other strategies, such as the board’s plan for a six-team women’s Indian Premier League, can also help attract talent, and make India’s white ball cricket robust.



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Adolescents and young adults are particularly susceptible to feeling worse about their lives the more they use social media, according to a study published on Monday that shows this effect is particularly pronounced at certain ages, underscoring the need to guard against problematic internet use.

In particular, the authors found distinct windows of age — 14-15 years and 19 years for boys and 11-13 years and 19 years for girls — when social media use appeared to particularly relate to reduced life satisfaction a year later.

The findings are significant because adolescence is a particularly sensitive period for social development, self-perception and social interaction. Previous studies, including some by tech companies themselves, have shown problematic media use can lead to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem in general, with bullying and harassment being particular cause-and-effect factors.

“The link between social media use and mental well-being is clearly very complex. Changes within our bodies, such as brain development and puberty, and in our social circumstances appear to make us vulnerable at particular times of our lives,” Amy Orben, one of the others and a researcher at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement issued by the research centre the authors are a part of.

The study, conducted by a team led by researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and published in the journal Nature Communications, is based on a routine household survey conducted in the UK. Responses from over 80,000 people who reported their social media use and how satisfied they felt with their life were studied to understand these correlations.

With these findings, Orben added, “rather than debating whether or not the link exists, we can now focus on the periods of our adolescence where we now know we might be most at risk and use this as a springboard to explore some of the really interesting questions.”

The authors note that their observations for young adolescents also differed from those in older ages in another significant way. The effect of technology on older age groups was consistent with what has been called the “Goldilocks hypothesis”, a concept based on past studies that shows both too much or too little technology use might be harmful.

But this was not the case with younger adolescents, since even “those who reported very little social media use did not routinely score lower on life satisfaction”.

Behind these may be factors that could be difficult to pin down. “It’s not possible to pinpoint the precise processes that underlie this vulnerability. Adolescence is a time of cognitive, biological and social change, all of which are intertwined, making it difficult to disentangle one factor from another. For example, it is not yet clear what might be due to developmental changes in hormones or the brain and what might be down to how an individual interacts with their peers,” said professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at Cambridge and a co-author of the study.

Critically, these correlations may play out differently in countries such as India where social, cultural and economic factors could make the outcomes of technology use different.

In a study published on March 10 in the journal Current Opinion in Psychology, some of the same Cambridge and Oxford researchers involved in the Nature study said they found “a striking lack” of inputs from the Global South nations.

They said the findings based on studies carried out in rich countries — “70% of the studied samples were from the Global North” — cannot be generalised to the Global South given the stark socio-economic or contextual differences.

But what is known is that social media use is a significant contributor to mental harm in the case of Indian teenagers and young adults. A 2021 study by psychiatry researchers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delhi and Chennai Schizophrenia Research Foundation found that the “commonest drivers of mental health problems were reported to be academic pressure, substance use and problematic internet/social media”.

In Perspective takes a deep dive into current issues, the visible and invisible factors at play, and their implications for our future

The views expressed are personal



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Over the last decade, there was much talk in foreign policy circles of a new Cold War. Many observers predicted a return to the type of bipolar superpower contest witnessed between 1945 and 1991, with China taking the place of the erstwhile Soviet Union. Others countered that the world is fundamentally different today. The United States (US) and China’s economies are deeply interdependent and the latter is enmeshed in a web of economic networks and multilateral institutions, making it much less likely that the international order will split into rival blocs.

Neither side of this debate fully accounted for one actor: Russia. Great powers do not vanish overnight. It was evidently a mistake to assume that post-Cold War Russia would be a relatively marginal player in world politics.

A new Cold War may well be upon us, but not in the way most imagined. Russia’s war in Ukraine, Beijing’s implicit support for Moscow, and the remarkable unification of the West have reintroduced the possibility of a bifurcated world. The ability of the West to cut Russia off from global economic networks reinforces this division.

These are far from ideal circumstances for India, which has, over the last three decades, pursued a diverse range of partnerships as a way of preserving strategic autonomy, or maximum options in its foreign relations. Strategic autonomy has allowed India to grow by transcending geopolitical cleavages. For example, China is India’s largest source of imports, the US its largest buyer of exports, Russia its primary defence supplier, Iraq and Saudi Arabia its top oil suppliers, and Qatar its top supplier of natural gas.

Strategic autonomy is hard to maintain in an increasingly polarised world. India risks alienating the West — or worse, running afoul of sanctions likely to persist in great measure at least until Vladimir Putin is in power — by buying Russian weapons and oil. Similarly, India risks provoking China (and now Russia) through its increasingly close relationships with the US, Japan, Australia, and Europe. Many have also argued that Russia, weakened by war and sanctions, will become China’s vassal and undermine India by withholding defence supplies in a future Sino-Indian conflict.

India’s response to Cold War bipolarity was to be non-aligned, whereby diplomatic activism compensated for material weakness. However, though it was overlaid with Nehruvian post-colonialism, non-alignment was essentially the pursuit of enlightened self-interest, i.e., policymaking based on India’s interests alone, instead of serving a particular ideology or bloc. Strategic autonomy can thus be considered non-alignment sans moralism, and still holds significant potential to help India pursue its great-power ambitions, today, from a position of relative strength.

Several factors suggest this. First, although Russia may become dependent on China, no great power — that too one with thousands of nuclear warheads, a permanent United Nations Security Council seat, and a strong desire to reclaim imperial glory — tolerates subordination for long. Russia is already concerned about its power asymmetry with China, as well as China’s increasing inroads, literal and metaphorical, in Central Asia. If Russia reacted negatively to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization knocking on its European door, it will hardly sit idly by while China begins to do the same in Asia. Therefore, as Russia’s largest arms buyer accounting for one-third of its export market, India will possess significant influence as a counterweight in Moscow’s China policy.

Second, as China is learning, a declining great power partner given to delusions of grandeur and military aggression is more of a liability than an asset. Unlike Russia, China does not desire to upend the US-led international order so much as control vital portions of it and be fully recognised as an equal of the US. Beijing will also be careful not to instigate a financial war with the West by extending substantial assistance to Russia, a country that only accounts for 2% of China’s total trade. Thus, during the current crisis, China has reportedly denied or deferred military assistance, access to yuan reserves, exchange rate support for the ruble, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank investment for Russia. The actual limits of the “no limits” China-Russia relationship will not resolve Russia’s predicament, leaving room for India to act as an honest broker between Russia and the West.

Third, and finally, as long as China’s actions remain a major concern in the Indo-Pacific, India will be a vital part of the West’s strategy. Although some analysts argued that India’s unwillingness to publicly criticise Russia for invading Ukraine would alienate the West, India’s Quad partners soon agreed that individual approaches may vary. The US officially admitted its tolerance for India’s “distinct” relationship with Russia. In a further sign of India’s value to its strategic partners, on his visit to India on March 19, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced a five-year investment package worth $42 billion.

Ultimately, each side of the debate over the new Cold War is partially correct. The world is deeply interdependent but also increasingly polarised, and will retain both features going forward. While observers may continue to emphasise India’s dependence or constraints on this or that front, Indian policymakers themselves have adroitly navigated this complex terrain so far. If anything, the coming world order will call for greater diplomatic skill and foresight. India has proven historical reserves of both, and remains structurally well-placed to navigate the new geopolitics.

Rohan Mukherjee is an assistant professor of political science at Yale-NUS College The views expressed are personal



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Question: Who gets to decide whether young women can cover their heads with a piece of cloth in school? Most definitely not the young women themselves, so that’s ruled out; we can’t allow such indiscipline in our schools, who knows what they might dare next.

After all, they have their fathers to decide for them. If not fathers, they have uncles; the Indian family is an all-encompassing institution with blanket authority. If family elders are ill-equipped to decide correctly, the school is competent to do so. And then the young women have a government that knows what’s best for them and can rescue them through an executive order with good intentions.

If someone disagrees with the government, there’s a long-established legal structure to adjudicate. A recalcitrant young person not willing to be a slave to a politically dictated education system has the option to drop out. A student unwilling to drop out and ready to fight for herself, with a little help from friends or even “instigators”, is not a problem either.

We have other problems. We have a macro nanny State because we have a micro nanny family. The same uncles form extended families and resident welfare associations and ultimately the government, their avuncular diktat the default destiny the young must submit to.

That is what leads to travesties, such as courts having to all of a sudden decide matters of religious scholarship. It takes a lifetime to study law; for religion, that may not be enough. Compelled to assume the intellectual duties of clergymen, their lordships are expected to shoulder a heavy burden indeed. The Karnataka high court’s order holding that the hijab is not an “essential” practice in Islam and can rightfully be banned in school has been challenged in the Supreme Court and the last word has not been had on it. Muslims hold varying views on whether the hijab is essential. The essentiality doctrine itself is being debated in circles of jurisprudence.

Yet the plain fact is that to those young women insisting on wearing it, the hijab is very much a sacred symbol, one that is part of a religious identity they are at liberty to carry, one that they cannot deposit in a collection bin at their school’s doorstep. To others it’s an academic point, to them it’s lived religion. They do not wear it as a fashion accessory, though some prints in the Arab world are positively trendy.

One may argue that the students’ hard position on the hijab is just down to patriarchal indoctrination and cultural conditioning. But that’s true of all faiths; else religions wouldn’t exist so many generations after their founding. Certain rituals get abandoned with time, but that process happens organically, not through government policy.

Whether the hijab is mandatory in Islam is beside the point. A large number of Muslim women wear it. Religious practice for regular folks is mostly a matter of custom rather than a scholastic interpretation of scripture — hardly anyone is in for constant research into something of settled personal value.

The hijab does not hinder learning or disturb the peace. If anything, it only adds to classroom diversity and a normalisation of “others”. The argument that “school has a uniform, which by definition is equal for all, so why don’t you just take that thing off” rings empty when made from a position of sociopolitical strength and majoritarian privilege. Well-meaning uniform apologists in this case remind one of white Americans saying “All Lives Matter” during the “Black Lives Matter” movement. All lives matter, of course, but using it as a counter to a movement against racial discrimination is where the problem lies. In the American context, white lives matter anyway. It’s the minority black people who have to hold banners and shout slogans. Discrimination is the issue, not just execution without trial.

In India’s schools and the public sphere at large, religious sensibilities of the majority are privileged anyway, as is the case in nearly every country. A rule targeted at banning the hijab needlessly shakes the confidence of an ethnic group. Lately, the French word laïcité has been fashionably invoked to stress the need for total secularism bereft of all religious insignia. That may be convenient to cite against the hijab, but it is disingenuous in our country whose secularism mirroring its cultural ethos is like an ancient banyan tree sheltering all comers.

The French word we should perhaps pay attention to is dirigisme, direct State intervention in economic and day-to-day affairs, something we’d do well to avoid. Meaningful intervention is what we need on the other hand, such as the central government’s ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ (save the daughter, educate the daughter) message.

On the first objective, no data is available as the practice of selectively killing unborn daughters in the womb is illegal. On the second, Muslims lag other communities in girls’ education, according to government data, so further dropouts over the hijab will abort more dreams. Asked to choose with a gun to their head between something religious and educational, take a wild guess what people will pick.

Somewhere outside the rarefied circles discussing the essentiality of the hijab lives a feudal guy for whom this is about power: “We’ll take your women’s hijabs off and you can’t do a thing”. Those ruling Karnataka should not overindulge that guy; he will vote for them in any case.

The Kauravas began to disrobe Draupadi after they won her in a royally sanctioned gambling match, so they felt they were within their rights to do with her as they pleased. The legitimacy of their actions wasn’t in question; their humanity was, so much so that it forced the hand of god. India, the timeless civilisation, may not see any of its abundant spiritual capital erode if a few women are not allowed to wear something sacred to them. But India the present-day Republic owes it to every one of them that their faith in it is honoured.

The views expressed are personal



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Even after several decades, multiple social inequities persist in India. Welfare programmes often fall short of their intended outcomes. Some commentators blame this on the presence of “algorithmic” thinking in the bureaucracy and the tendency to turn to technology to solve social problems. Others say there is a moral failure of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) due to a flawed system of incentives and penalties.

Let us examine the nature of such algorithmic thinking. First, this mindset has nothing to do with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Whether in engineering or the arts, any degree in the present-day education system is likely to be more a credential, and proof of test-taking ability, than a guarantee of any particular kind of leaning. Having said this, the algorithmic mindset exists, not just in pockets of any particular segment but all sections of society, and among STEM and non-STEM graduates. But it is different from scientific thinking, which observes empirical evidence, questions assumptions, draws inferences, and is sceptical, instead of rushing to conclusions. In contrast, the algorithmic mindset is non-reflexive. It reduces complex social problems to a set of inputs and outputs. The algorithmic mindset is the result of a rote learning-based school education system that does not let students ask questions, reflect independently, inquire into social processes, or think of consequences.

As for technology, when thoughtfully designed, it can address many challenges in governance. It can limit discretion and bias, increase transparency, and reduce inclusion errors. However, it is of limited use in addressing the more serious moral problem of exclusion. The migrant woman worker at the brick kiln; the bedridden child with multiple disabilities; the teenage girl, married at 15 and pregnant at 16 — if these persons are sometimes invisible to a welfare system, it is due to gaps in policy design. Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus once said that welfare programmes fail when we do not have sufficient granular knowledge about people; and when we fail to see every person as an individual with agency.

In treating technology as a panacea, we ignore its tendency to aggregate and centralise. Simultaneously, we have ignored the potential of decentralisation. It is viewed with doubt by some civil servants, who prefer command and control. But it is the real way to regard the person, and reach them where they are. Decentralisation is, in fact, the “first mile” for service delivery rather than the last; it is the level at which citizens and local governments are within arm’s length of each other. Finally, the civil service reflects the values and beliefs of society. During the recent Mumbai floods, a resident tweeted about a clogged manhole. Within hours, the municipal corporation responded with the picture of a man unclogging it with his bare hands. The blockage was removed; but the inhuman practice of manual scavenging didn’t end.

As a society, we must reflect on the choices we make. True, there are no simple solutions to oppressive social structures. And yet, we cannot just turn away from the complex problems — and address only the superficial ones. As for incentives, surely there can be no more meaningful motivation for a civil servant than the work itself. The chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, was once trolled for the specious remark that banks are doing “God’s work”. Cynicism aside, civil service work has a societal purpose, invoked memorably in Mahatma Gandhi’s talisman: To recall the face of the weakest person one has seen while taking any difficult decision; and to ask whether such a decision would restore the person to control over their own life and destiny. It is powerful advice.

What could be the way forward? One answer may be in training. Trainee civil servants are often assigned a laundry list of attachments in different departments. This can distance them from people and their struggles; as the years pass, the distance grows. From this distance, the poor can look like “beneficiaries” — rather than as equals, fellow citizens, and partners in building the nation. However, thoughtful and immersive training can help trainees better understand complex social processes. They can observe what people do, hear what they say, and get a sense of their everyday lives. Public policy calls for deep reserves of empathy. Fieldwork in real-world settings, as one person among many, can teach young civil servants valuable lessons.

Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta is in the IAS

The views expressed are personal



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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought to the forefront crevasses in the international order amid a larger unfolding of great-power competition. While the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) have acted in concert to isolate Russia on the world stage, others, such as India and the Gulf states are looking to try and maintain a level of neutrality. 

The idea of “strategic autonomy” is one that has resonated in India’s foreign policy for a long time and is seen as a newer incarnation of non-alignment by some. India’s former foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale, speaking in 2019, described strategic autonomy as issue-based alignment, rather than ideological based, with partner states. Managing this design of diplomacy by New Delhi was always tricky amid growing strategic ties with Washington DC, a historical relationship with Moscow, and a much more fractious bilateral with neighbouring Beijing.

However, it was the United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s abstention from the United Nations (UN) Security Council vote against Russia along with India and China that caught attention recently, considering Abu Dhabi’s close partnership with the US. Saudi Arabia, moreover, refused to abandon its Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)-Plus agreement with Russia by ramping up oil production to lower prices, citing OPEC’s longstanding policy of not adjusting production in response to geopolitical shocks. Although all six Gulf states voted against Russia at the UN General Assembly, their refusal to take an overt stance against Moscow considering their historical security partnerships with the US has caught many observers by surprise. 

Saudi Arabia’s and the UAE’s ambivalent responses to the Ukraine war are partly driven by their perception that the parameters of their security partnership with the US have shifted. Having withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has largely turned the leaf on the Global War on Terror and is now focused on its great-power rivals in the Indo-Pacific and Eurasia.

Although the US continues to maintain a robust military presence in the Gulf, it has become less inclined to play the role of security guarantor for the Gulf states. This became obvious when the US failed to retaliate against Iran for attacking Saudi Aramco in September 2019. Washington’s slow response, from the UAE’s perspective at least, to the January 2022 attacks that the Houthis claimed on Abu Dhabi has cast further doubt on the US’s reliability as a strategic partner. Although Washington has helped its Gulf partners bolster their air and missile defences, it no longer aims to deter Iran from launching attacks against them in the first place.

In addition to a receding security partnership, the gap separating Saudi Arabia’s and the UAE’s core security interests in West Asia from US priorities in the region has also widened. 

On Iran, the US has prioritised reaching an agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme without doing much to address the concerns of the Arab Gulf states over Tehran’s short-range missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or its support for armed groups in the region. 

In Yemen, while Saudi Arabia and the UAE are focused on pushing back against the Houthi offensive in the energy-rich provinces of Marib and Shabwa to prevent them from winning the war, the US has curtailed its support to the Saudi-led coalition and, along with Europe, views Yemen through a humanitarian lens, ignoring the security interests of its Gulf partners.

With the US no longer willing to play the role of security guarantor to the Arab Gulf states, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sought to find ways to address the military imbalances they face against Iran. Although both Gulf states outspend Iran and boast of advanced air forces, they nevertheless are at a disadvantage when it comes to cyber, combat UAVs, and missiles. 

While Western partners have been reluctant to transfer combat UAVs or missiles to the Gulf states, China has been more willing to share these capabilities and know-how with the Saudis and Emiratis. Like India, the Gulf states have also announced ambitious targets for indigenous defence industrial development, with Saudi Arabia aiming to spend 50% of its military expenditure locally by 2030. Nevertheless, the Gulf states remain heavily dependent on imports of Western arms.

Some Western states and analysts are trying to impose a zero-sum frame on the Gulf states as the competition with Russia and, potentially China, escalates into confrontation. However, the Cold War-era vocabulary of blocs, alignments, and hedging are inadequate to make sense of the Gulf states’ choices. Today, regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE can act with greater agency than during the Cold War when many Third World nations were still under colonial rule. 

Contrary to US or Eurocentric analyses, the Gulf states are not hedging by cultivating Russia or China as alternative security partners to the US. Rather, the Gulf states have built networks of partnerships involving China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Israel, etc in a bid to diversify their foreign relations and acquire greater autonomy. Crucially, the Gulf states have grown weary of being dragged into great-power confrontations. While they may not be economically or militarily dependent on Russia, they are worried about setting precedents that they would ill-afford to uphold if China invades Taiwan one day.

While sharing a preoccupation with strategic self-determination, India’s and the Gulf states’ conceptions of strategic autonomy are shaped by their respective positions and historical trajectories. Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty and the West’s unprecedented weaponisation of globalisation are imposing difficult choices on regional powers that are keen on preserving their freedom to manoeuvre in an increasingly polarised world.

Kabir Taneja is fellow, Observer Research Foundation and visiting fellow, International Institute for Strategic Studies. Hasan Alhasan is research fellow for Middle East Policy, International Institute for Strategic Studies

The views expressed are personal



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Last week, the government gave replies to several questions on India’s stand on the climate crisis in the Parliament. Some of them made me hopeful, but some were extremely concerning.

The impacts of the climate crisis are now so pronounced that humans and ecosystems have already reached their hard limits beyond which adapting to these changes is likely impossible.

Hard limits have been reached for warm-water coral reefs, coastal wetlands, some rainforests, and some polar and mountain ecosystems according to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We know that globally, emissions are continuing to rise. Global energy-related CO2 emissions rose to their highest ever level last year because economies tried to bounce back from the pandemic, data from International Energy Agency showed.

In such a situation, when action on the climate crisis is slow, the least India can do is to help its vulnerable regions and people adapt to the changes.

But according to a reply by the environment ministry in the Rajya Sabha, under the National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change (NAFCC) which was set up to support adaptation activities in India, only 27.76 crore was released in 2021-22.

Since 2017-18, funds released for adaptation have been on a steady decline from 115 crore released 2017-18; 109 crore released in 2018-19; 33.5 crore in 2019-20; 42.94 crore in 2020-21 and only 27.76 crore in 2021-22. NAFCC was established in 2015 to support adaptation activities in the states that are vulnerable to the adverse effects of the climate crisis. NAFCC is implemented in project mode and to date, 30 projects are sanctioned in 27 states and Union Territories.

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is the national implementing entity for NAFCC and project funds are released to NABARD in instalments based on the project performance and utilisation of grants among other things.  

But how can adaptation requirements for a country like India be so limited? From the list of projects supported by NAFCC, it appears that these are prototypes that are being tried. Some examples of adaptation projects under the scheme include climate-resilient livestock production in Punjab; climate-smart villages in select districts of Madhya Pradesh; rainwater harvesting in Banswara, Rajasthan; gene pool conservation of indigenous rice varieties in parts of Nagaland and so on. At this juncture, however, India needs large scale adaptation interventions to protect its poor and vulnerable populations.

The NAFCC needs to be several times more ambitious to protect those at risk. The same Rajya Sabha reply suggests that the demand and utilisation of funds released under the Climate Change Action Program (CCAP) are very modest.

The National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) was released on June 30 2008 under the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The NAPCC includes eight national missions and 24 other initiatives, which are being implemented by the respective nodal ministries in the central government. Recognising the need of providing adequate resources for implementing state climate change action plans, the 12th Five Year Plan launched a Climate Change Action Programme (CCAP). The CCAP is meant to support state actions that build capacity to assess the climate crisis, formulate adequate response measures to the challenge and implement the relevant activities within agreed policy. In 2021-22, only 30 crore of funds were allocated under the scheme for states, of which only 11.98 crore have been utilised.

India has made very ambitious commitments in Glasgow. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India will go carbon-neutral by 2070 and take other steps, including raising the share of renewable energy in supplies by 2030 and reducing aggregate carbon emissions by a billion tonnes by the same year.

Apart from meeting these global commitments, the government should focus on the adaptation and capacity-building of states to deal with the impacts of the climate crisis. From the inadequate funds that have been released and utilised it appears that both the adaptation scheme and the climate change action program are dying.

In response to another question, on whether the government has issued any notice to the big oil and gas companies and their policymakers regarding the process of making the country carbon-free, MoEFCC replied that India is trying to increase the production of oil and gas.

“The government has taken a series of measures to enhance energy security and improve efficiency in [the] use of energy for inclusive growth and sustainable development. These inter alia include diversification in sources of imports, promotion of alternate fuels, increasing production of oil and gas, substitution of energy demand, improving refinery processes, notification of fuel efficiency norms, etc,” it has said. 

Diversification of imports and increasing domestic production of oil and gas are understandable in view of the massive disruption in the energy sector following the Russia-Ukraine crisis. But the government should be cautious of the ecological impacts of increasing oil and gas production and the bid to ensure energy security should not take away from the move to swiftly increase renewable energy capacities.

From the climate crisis to air pollution, from questions of the development-environment tradeoffs to India’s voice in international negotiations on the environment, HT’s Jayashree Nandi brings her deep domain knowledge in a weekly column

The views expressed are personal



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Late on Sunday, March 27, the Shanghai government announced that the city was going into a staggered lockdown for mass Covid-19 testing from March 28, the first time since the pandemic started in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late December.

China’s glittering financial hub has been in the midst of a battle against a new wave of Covid-19 infections for weeks now.

The numbers are low if compared to some global standards, but enough to worry the health authorities to start a phased nine-day lockdown of the city with some 25 million residents – and, of course, to make Shanghai an example of how China is still at the top of the Covid-control game.

In the past weeks, Shanghai authorities had already closed school campuses, locked down some residential compounds and launched a rigorous round of mass testing.

Until Sunday, however, city authorities had resisted and rejected the idea of locking down the city but after Shanghai recorded its highest daily number of cases on Saturday, authorities quickly changed course.

The eastern half of the city — comprising around 11 million residents — will go into lockdown from Monday for four days, while the remaining 14 million remaining people will start lockdown from Friday.

Public transport will be suspended, and firms and factories will halt operations or work remotely during the lockdown period.

Everyone is required to participate in the citywide Covid-19 screening to maintain a “green” health code status that would allow them to access grocery stores and public areas.

The shutting down of Shanghai is somewhat symptomatic of the new waves of the outbreak that China has experienced this year, especially in March.

From March 1 until now, nearly 60,000 locally transmitted Covid-19 cases have been reported on the mainland, covering 28 provincial-level regions.

The epidemic situation in northeast China's Jilin province is still grim, with the number of newly added cases exceeding 1000 per day for several days.

The new wave has locked down millions of millions of people and disrupted trade and business even as much of the world learns to live with the virus.

“China continues striving to ‘achieve dynamic zero-Covid’ in the short term, as it is still the most economical and most effective prevention strategy against Covid-19,” Wu Zunyou, an infectious disease expert at China’s Centre for Disease Control (CDC) recently said.

What is the Dynamic zero-Covid strategy?

“The ‘Dynamic zero-Covid’ strategy is a transitional strategy to be adopted after a successful containment strategy, when the population immunity barrier is not yet established in the face of continued risk of foreign importation and high transmission of variants,” scientists from the School of Public Health, Peking University, Vanke School of Public Health, Tsinghua University, and the Institute for Healthy China, Tsinghua University, wrote in a paper for the CDC earlier this year.

“This is different from the traditional containment and mitigation strategies. The core is to take effective and comprehensive measures to deal with localised Covid-19 cases precisely, to quickly cut off the transmission chain, and to end the epidemic in a timely manner (to “find one, end one”),” they wrote.

“Dynamic zero-Covid” strategy sums up China’s experience in dealing with Delta, Omicron, and other variants, which has advantages in reducing infection.

The new wave, triggered by the Delta and Omicron variants, however, has raised sharp questions about whether the existing policies in China are equipped to handle the mild but rapidly spreading strains. And, at what cost?

In response, the national health commission (NHC) has tweaked some of the existing Covid control norms.

People with mild symptoms no longer need to attend designated hospitals but can isolate at centralised facilities, which means that the government now recognises that many infected do not need much help in recovering other than following medical protocols – in the past every infected person had to be admitted to a hospital.

Quarantine-period rules have been reduced.

Also, city-wide testing is no longer being carried out — replaced by targeted local community testing.

For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, self-testing kits are also being made available in stores across the country and online; but those who test positive will need to take PCR tests.

“The change is in response to the majority of cases involving the dominant Omicron strain being asymptomatic or only showing mild symptoms,” a state media report said on the changes.

“As most do not need much treatment, admitting those with mild cases to designated hospitals will take up medical resources unnecessarily,” the NHC said in a statement.

Some rules, however, remain the same, like the mandatory two-week quarantine for those coming in from abroad followed by further monitoring.

The Chinese government is putting up a brave face.

“The latest economic data has already demonstrated how China's economy, which posted stable growth of 8.1 percent amid the epidemic in 2021, began the year on a bright note. Several major indicators, such as retail sales of consumer goods and industrial output, have improved and beaten forecasts,” official news agency, Xinhua said in an opinion piece last week

More changes to Covid control rules, even if implemented gradually, can, however, be expected.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang speaking at his annual press conference in Beijing on March 11, said China will continue to make its Covid-19 response more scientific and targeted based on the epidemic situation and new developments and features of the virus.

Li said China will prevent and control the epidemic to protect people's life, health and safety to keep up the normal running of work and life, and ensure the security of industrial and supply chains.

“In the near future, at an appropriate time, there will be a Chinese-style roadmap for living with the virus,” Zeng Guang, former chief scientist of China’s CCDC and one of the experts behind the country’s initial anti-Covid response, wrote recently.

China is possibly coming around to a “dynamic clearing” policy, which acknowledges infections occur but aims to stop the transmission of the virus, given how difficult it is to prevent the highly infectious delta and omicron variants from spreading – according to Bloomberg, China hasn’t gone a day with zero new local cases reported since October.

Sutirtho Patranobis, HT’s experienced China hand, writes a weekly column from Beijing, exclusively for HT Premium readers. He was previously posted in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he covered the final phase of the civil war and its aftermath, and was based in Delhi for several years before that

The views expressed are personal



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The predicament of Volodymr Zelenskyy makes an apt metaphor for Europe. As he ran himself into a sword, the “Europe” of which he wants to be a part of egged him on and watched. By deliberately keeping Russia out of Europe, it has given itself a siege mentality. But what is this Europe? Dr Henry Kissinger once famously quipped: “If I want to talk to Europe, who do I call?” With individual nations conducting their own diplomacy, the EU is run by a bureaucracy of discarded politicians.

Time is also against Europe. It is rapidly ageing, and has entered the stage of very slow demographic growth and will be confronted with significant population decline in the first half of this century. Its 0-15 population is shrinking and it has a declining working-age population. In the near future, most EU countries will experience an excess of deaths over births. By 2050, its median age will rise to 48. That year, the number of Europeans over 60 will have doubled to 40 per cent of the total population or 60 per cent of the working-age segment. A century ago, Europe had a quarter of the world’s population. It will have only seven per cent by 2050.

The shortage of working-age people and its unwillingness to alter its immigration policies to attract a more skilled workforce and to draw highly educated technology professionals due to age-old prejudices will cost Europe dearly.

Paradoxically, the recent Ukrainian exodus has given fast-aging Europe a lifeline of working-age white refugees.

What can India expect from a loosely governed, economically slowing down, demographically ageing and contracting, and professionally unattractive Europe? Given its hostility to immigration, Europe has also largely showed itself incapable of reinventing itself as the United States has done to modify itself into a politically correct, more egalitarian union, where people are “judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”.

Low GDP growth rates lead to slower growth in tax revenues and, along with higher social security and welfare spending, leads to increasing deficits and debt levels, causing a poisonous cocktail to induce economic stupor. American journalist Fareed Zakaria best described the crisis in the Eurozone: “Europe’s core problem is a lack of growth. Italy’s economy has not grown for an entire decade. No debt restructuring will work if it stays stagnant for another decade.

The fact is that Western economies -- with high wages, generous middle-class subsidies and complex regulations and taxes -- have become sclerotic. Now they face pressures from three fronts: demography (an ageing population), technology (that allows companies to do much more with fewer people) and globalisation (which allowed manufacturing and services to locate across the world).”

In the years ahead, the issue of reforming the world governance system will come to the fore, as newly emerging countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa rise economically and militarily. It’s only natural for them to seek more political power. At present there are three global high tables -- the permanent members of the UN Security Council (P-5), G-7 and Nato. All three are Eurocentric. Nations like India, Brazil, South Africa and even Germany and Japan have been impatient over such a restricted system. Within two decades, global GDP and power rankings will see substantial changes.

Five European countries -- Germany, UK, Russia, France and Italy – are in the top 10 of the world’s largest economies in GDP. In 2050, only Germany and Britain will remain among the top 10 economies, ranking ninth and tenth. Quite clearly, restructuring of the world order cannot be avoided much longer. How can countries like the UK and France, with GDPs a third or less than India’s, or half of Japan’s, be in the UNSC as permanent members and India and Japan be left out?

Of late we have seen some discussion on expanding the UNSC and G-7. Nato, by its very acronym, defies expansion. While expansion will make these restricted forums more representative, it might detract from their effectiveness.

Right now, India, Brazil, Germany and Japan are knocking on the UNSC’s doors for co-option as permanent members. Even if they get in, the internal dynamics will remain tilted in favour of Europe and North America. As it is, the P-5, with each member armed with a veto, often finds itself unable to act decisively. An expansion with all members armed with a veto will only complicate matters. Clearly, the UNSC’s effectiveness depends on its compactness. Mere expansion recalls Groucho Marx’s comment; “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member”.

It is very clear that while the United States will be the engine of world growth for the foreseeable future, mostly possible by its sheer scientific superiority and climate conducive to innovation, it will be closely followed or even overtaken by an entirely new cast of countries. In less than a hundred years after the end of the First World War, among the victors, only the US will remain in the top 10 countries.

The US too is changing within. It has had its first black President. It now has an Afro-Indian woman waiting in the wings as vice-president. Its national political leadership is now increasingly a kaleidoscope of nationalities that gives countries of their origin a new reason to feel oneness with the US. Americans of Indian origin have entered several gubernatorial mansions and many more are in the executive branches of governments. Others occupy high positions in academia and industry, particularly in the new sunrise sector. Changing demographics also leads to changing attitudes, which reflect itself in a rearrangement of national goals and policies.

It should now be evident that the new rising countries will supplant Europe in the new global pecking order. This does not bode well for political relationships of any lasting nature in the future. The US has made clear that it wants greater engagement across the Pacific. Asia’s combined GDP, despite the slowdown in Japan, is still the highest in the world. By 2040, over 60 per cent of world GDP will be credited to it.

As their role in the world economy enlarges and becomes dominant, both China and India will demand changes to accommodate their aspirations and interests. While China’s relationship with the United States will stay adversarial, it will increasingly seek to balance the US with the EU. India, whose relationship with China is not likely to move even midway of the full spectrum from adversary to friend, might be drawn more and more closer to the United States.



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The strength of democracies is transparency. When people know of the difficulties that a nation faces, they can fight it together. They become closer, knowing that they face a threat jointly. This spirit, while possible, is not easy to achieve in nations that do not have democracy because all authoritarian leaderships are secretive.

An example of what is meant is visible today in the war that is being fought in Europe. Ukraine has come together and the world sees its spirit in the face of adversity. There is of course a dispute over the manner in which Ukraine arrived at its present democracy, and that is part of the reason why Russia has invaded it. But there is no dispute about how the two nations today differ in terms of transparency. Ukrainians know what they face and have come together to face it. This month Russia blocked access to Facebook for its citizens because Vladimir Putin doesn’t want his people to know what is really going on. He has also introduced a law that punishes media outlets and their employees with 15 years in jail for truthful reporting on the military. This will produce anxiety and alarm in many Russians and will be damaging in the long term for the nation.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant is a saying and it alludes to transparency in organisations and in the government.

On March 25, China’s foreign minister came to India. The government said it was an “unannounced” visit though the media was well aware that Wang Yi was coming. He met our foreign minister and national security adviser, so the subject of his visit was not a secret: it is the situation in Ladakh. Mr Wang also asked to meet the Prime Minister but this was not allowed, with the excuse that Mr Modi was away in Uttar Pradesh for Yogi Adityanath’s swearing-in. This is the second clue we have and it indicates to us that India is displeased with the situation. What is the situation?

This is the problem. Indians have been told by the PM himself that there is no problem and that nobody is on our territory. The defence minister has said nobody is stopping India’s soldiers from patrolling in the spaces that they have been historically patrolling.

If this is the case, then what is there to discuss with the Chinese? This is what the government is not telling us. What is called the “Godi” media reported it was the Chinese side that wanted the disengagement and this was because “the present situation was not in the mutual interest”. Disengagement from what? If they are on their side, then there is no real problem. On March 11, generals from the Indian Army and the Chinese Army met for the 15th round of talks since the clash of 2020. What do they talk about if there is no intrusion? Our government has not said.

The Indian Express reported the following day that “both sides have a platoon-sized strength of soldiers in Hot Springs, but the Chinese troops are on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control”. The government did not deny this report and did not comment on it. Most experts, including retired generals who write, are of the opinion that Indian land has been intruded on and China is refusing to vacate, and that is the problem.

Some have written that this may escalate and it will be the Chinese who will escalate it. There has also been news of their encroachment into fresh areas in Arunachal Pradesh (which the Chinese claim because the sixth Dalai Lama of Tibet was born in Tawang in 1683).

China is a dictatorship like Russia, and doesn’t like transparency. India is a democracy but we’ve chosen to not be transparent on this issue (among others), for whatever reason. I don’t want to speculate about why, though it is quite clear to me what the reason is.

We should consider that India is not a dictatorship and should be using its natural strength as a democracy. For some reason we are not, and in fact we appear to be misleading ourselves. And we are giving space to China. The foreign policy experts in Beijing will have noticed the confusion produced by the Indian government. It is unlikely that they will not have assessed how it can be used to their advantage. What is it China seeks and why has the Ladakh border become and remained hot for two years and what is going on in Arunachal Pradesh? What does this all have to do with the road that China has built in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, which connects western China to Balochistan?

China controls a port in Sri Lanka and the Bangladeshi newspapers are full of positive reports about joining China’s Belt and Road plan. Nepal is also a part of this plan. In South Asia, India and Bhutan alone have refused to join. What does this mean for the long-term future of India and what are the threats and challenges that we may face in the future?

Democracies can negotiate their ways through difficult problems because they have transparency and the strength of the entire polity, the people and the Opposition and civil society can come behind the government. For this to happen, however, there must be honesty and transparency. It is clear that here, on this issue with China that continues, unfortunately that has not been the case.



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