Rebellions are not new to the Shiv Sena. However, the scale of defections of the Members of the Legislative Assembly is unprecedented in Maharashtra’s political history and is perhaps only second to N. Chandrababu Naidu’s revolt against N.T. Rama Rao in Andhra Pradesh politics in the mid-1990s. The defecting MLAs are primarily giving three reasons in one voice for their extreme step.
Style of leadership
The first complaint of rebel Shiv Sena MLA Eknath Shinde’s camp is the inaccessibility of Uddhav Thackeray as the Maharashtra Chief Minister. There is much truth in this allegation in part due to Mr. Uddhav’s health issues in the times of COVID-19 and also because of his style of leadership. He believes more in a delegation of responsibilities and some sort of a collective leadership, which is in sharp contrast with Bal Thackeray, his father. In the ministry, as a result, Mr. Eknath Shinde, Aaditya Thackeray (both from the Shiv Sena), Ajit Pawar (Nationalist Congress Party, or the NCP) and Balasaheb Thorat of the Congress have been in control of daily affairs.
At the same time, Devendra Fadnavis, as a leader of the opposition, has adopted a three-pronged strategy. He was always open to meeting all the MLAs, with warmth, extensively toured the State, and was constantly plotting against the Thackeray government. The media trials in the high-profile Sushant Rajput and Aryan Khan cases, allegations of corruption against NCP Ministers Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik (both are under arrest now) and the prompting of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) leader Raj Thackeray to take up the issue of loudspeakers in masjids were all used by Mr. Fadnavis within and outside the Assembly to try and corner the Shiv Sena.
These issues, more than the unavailability of Uddhav Thackeray, have disturbed many Sena legislators. The fact of the matter is that the Shiv Sena is not a party of governance at the State level. Out of the 56 years of its existence, the Shiv Sena was in power all together for 10 years which includes its present stint. Unlike the Congress and the NCP, its Ministers and MLAs are not conversant with what it means to be on the treasury benches. It really will not matter to the Shiv Sena if it loses power. The real challenge for the party would be to retain the municipal corporations as and when elections there take place.
Electoral strength
The second apprehension of the rebel camp is regarding the NCP’s aggression and the threat it poses to their own existence. Undoubtedly, out of the three alliance partners in the government, i.e. the Maha Vikas Aghadi, the NCP is making the most effective use of power to strengthen its presence and its organisation across the State. Whether it poses a large-scale threat to the Shiv Sena is questionable.
For example, in regions such as Mumbai and its suburbs as well as in Vidarbha, the NCP has barely an electorally strong presence. In Konkan, Marathwada and western Maharashtra, there are pockets where the NCP and the Shiv Sena have an overlapping presence.
An analysis of election results of the Shiv Sena legislators throws up interesting facts. Out of the 56 seats won by the Shiv Sena in 2019, the Congress had its candidates in 26 seats while the NCP had its candidates in the fray in 28 seats. Out of the 26 seats that the Shiv Sena won against the Congress, the grand old party was a runner-up only in 14 seats. It came distant third, fourth and fifth in nine, two and one Assembly segments, respectively. Out of the 14 seats where the Congress was runner-upvis-à-vis the Shiv Sena, the Sena registered a very impressive victory in eight seats, a comfortable win in five seats and had a narrow margin in one seat. Out of the 28 seats that the Shiv Sena won against the NCP, the NCP was a runner-up in 20 seats. Out of these 20 seats, the Shiv Sena’s victory margin was impressive in eight seats, comfortable in 10 seats and narrow in two seats. In the rest of the eight seats, the NCP came a distant third, fourth and fifth in five, two and one seats, respectively. This data shows that not many Shiv Sena MLAs face an existential threat from the NCP or the Congress provided they had won the election not on the strength of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The third and most important allegation of the Sena rebels is that Uddhav Thackeray is not true to his father, Balasaheb Thackeray’s Hindutva. The formation of a government with the Congress and the NCP (the Maha Vikas Aghadi) itself is perceived to be a sign of a weakening of the Shiv Sena’s position on Hindutva. However, the Shiv Sena under Mr. Uddhav Thackeray has not taken this position suddenly in 2019.
In terms of ideology
In the aftermath of the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Mr. Thackeray probably realised the emergence of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister as a major threat to the Shiv Sena’s existence. Prior to the Prime Minister’s emergence, the Shiv Sena was placed right to the BJP as far as Hindutva ideology has been concerned. Balasaheb Thackeray was adored by many activists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the BJP for his uncompromising and fiery positions on Hindutva, while the combination of Atal Bihari Vajpayee-L.K. Advani was considered to be soft on many issues.
The Prime Minister’s leadership has brought the BJP on a par with the Shiv Sena in terms of a radicalisation of religious identity politics. The choice before Uddhav Thackeray to preserve the Shiv Sena’s own identity was either to project himself as being more Hindutvavadi ‘than thou’ or to cast the Shiv Sena as the party associated with the interests of Maharashtra.
He has chosen the second option without giving up the Hindutva identity. From 2014 until recently, none of the defecting Shiv Sena leaders has shown any (visible) signs of discomfiture with Uddhav Thackeray’s politics. The Shiv Sena leadership has always been cautious about its alliance with the Congress and the NCP, and has been consciously maintaining the Shiv Sena’s Hindutva identity. Mr. Thackeray attempted to create optics of this at the swearing-in ceremony (for example, wearing a saffron kurta). The Shiv Sena has unambiguously supported the Modi government in Parliament on a reading down of Article 370 (before the Maharashtra Assembly election), on the Ram Mandir issue, on the Triple Talaq bill and on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
Based on this record, Mr. Thackeray seems to be questioning the rebels on their allegation of a softening of the party’s stand on Hindutva. The Shiv Sena leadership is questioning the rebels’ position that one has to be an ally of the BJP to champion Hindutva. According to it, the BJP has no monopoly on Hindutva ideology. In the past few weeks, Mr. Thackeray has repeatedly stated that unlike the RSS’s brand of Hindutva, the Shiv Sena’s Hindutva stands for defending the interests of Hindus and India without being poisonous.
The Shiv Sena is also raising questions on the RSS’s participation in the freedom movement and the sincerity of the Government (at the Centre) in protecting the lives of the Kashmiri Pandits. This much, however, is not sufficient for Mr. Thackeray to distinguish the Shiv Sena’s Hindutva from the RSS-BJP’s Hindutva. Eventually, he might be required to bring in, partially, the concept of a Bahujanwadi Hindutva as espoused by his grandfather and reformist, Prabodhankar Thackeray. The Shiv Sena has undergone fundamental changes on a few occasions since its inception, demonstrating its resilience every time. Today it is facing its most severe crisis. Its fightback has also begun.
Parimal Maya Sudhakar is affiliated with the MIT School of Government, Pune.
The views expressed are personal
In 2019, an Indian citizen died of suicide every hour due to joblessness, poverty or bankruptcy, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. About 25,000 Indians died of suicide between 2018 and 2020, said the Union government in the Rajya Sabha in February this year. Several unemployed people in India resort to protests — thousands burnt railway coaches in January 2022 over alleged flaws in the railways recruitment process and more recently, India saw protests over the Agnipath scheme.
A culture of hire and fire
For those employed in government, the situation is not much better. In May 2022, Haryana terminated the services of over 2,000 contractual health workers (nurses, sweepers, security guards, paramedical staff) who had been hired during the pandemic. In Delhi, hundreds of nurses, paramedical staff, lab technicians and other contractual workers have been terminated by Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College and others. After banging utensils to thank them, we have fired them.
Additionally, over 8,300 panchayat and rural development contractual staff in Assam staged protests in February 2022. They said they had been in a contractual state for 12-14 years and had not been given bonuses, allowances, pension or pay revisions. In April 2022, some 200 contractual workers of Chhattisgarh’s state electricity department were canned-charged and arrested. Being a public servant has rarely mattered less.
The problem is two-fold. First, vacancies in the government are not being filled at a sufficient pace. There were over 60 lakh vacancies in the government across all levels in July 2021. Of these, over 9.1 lakh were in the Central government, while about 2 lakh vacancies were in PSU banks. Additionally, there were over 5.3 lakh vacancies in the State police, while primary schools were estimated to have some 8.3 lakh vacancies. The government has sought to push for recruitment of 10 lakh people in a mission-mode over 1.5 years. However, this would fall short of the size of the problem. We need greater ambition on this front.
Second, where vacancies are being filled, they are notably skewed towards contractual jobs. In 2014, about 43% of government employees (about 12.3 million) had non-permanent or contractual jobs, with about 6.9 million working in key flagship welfare schemes (Anganwadi workers, for instance) with low wages (in some cases, lower than the minimum wage) and little, if any, social security cover, as per the Indian Staffing Industry Research 2014 report. By 2018, the share of government employees in this category had risen to 59%. For Central Public Sector Enterprises, the share of contractual (and non-permanent) employees increased from 19% to 37% (reaching 4,98,807 in March 2020), with permanent employees dropping in share by 25%. Consider select PSUs. ONGC had contractual employees form over 81% of its staff in March 2020. Some States have sought to take this further — in 2020, while the pandemic led to mass unemployment, the State government in Uttar Pradesh sought to amend recruitment for Group B and C employees (of which there were about 9 lakh in 2020 in U.P.), with a push for increasing contractual employment (for a five-year period), with such employees not offered allowances and typical benefits. Post the five-year period, a pathway to regularisation was offered, only if the workers could pass a rigorous performance appraisal; if they did not pass, they would be dismissed. Any dependent of a deceased employee, if appointed to such posts, would also have to go through similar appraisals. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that a contractual employee for a government department was not a government servant. If most government employees have contractual terms, will a public ethos continue to exist?
Instead of expanding contractual employment, we should seek to bolster public services. For the past few decades, we have been under-investing in public goods — as witnessed by the COVID-19 crisis, our healthcare system simply does not have the capacity to provide adequate healthcare support to citizens under normal conditions, let alone a pandemic. Expanding public service provisioning will also lead to the creation of good quality jobs, along with skilled labour, offering us social stability. A push for enhancing public health would lead to the creation of societal assets; having more ICU beds in the first place would have ensured that the COVID-19 crisis could have been managed better. A push for a universal basic services programme with public healthcare would also help supplement insurance-based models like Ayushman Bharat. Such spending, however, will eventually lead to an increase in consumer demand and have strong multiplier effects, while generally improving the productivity and quality of life in India’s cities and villages.
Job opportunities
Consider renewable power generation. There is significant potential for job creation (for example, in rooftop solar power generation, manufacturing of solar panel modules and end-use servicing). Meanwhile, on the waste management front, there is significant scope for expanding waste-water treatment capacity, with the building and management of treatment plants for sewer waste and faecal sludge treatment plants leading to generation of jobs. Encouraging solid waste treatment practices (such as dry waste collection, micro-composting) could create about 300 jobs per year in a city municipal corporation. A push for adopting electric vehicles and encouraging green mobility would require significant manpower, leading to the generation of ‘green jobs’. In addition, we must continue to encourage urban farming, with significant job potential in permaculture, gardening and nursery management. Perhaps another avenue of selective PSU reform could also be considered — a PSU with greater autonomy, with the government retaining control via a holding firm, can also be subject to the right incentives. Surely, Indian PSUs could aspire to be as large and efficient as the Chinese ones.
Government jobs have lost their shine. We need to attract talent to the government. Rather than downsizing or simply avoiding the cost of pensions and benefits, one should right-size government. Our public services require more doctors, teachers, engineers, and fewer data entry clerks. Reforms advocated by the Administrative Reforms Commission should be our initial step. This is the time to build capacity for an efficient civil service that can meet today’s challenges – providing a corruption-free welfare system, running a modern economy and providing increasingly better public goods. Improved public service delivery, through better compensation, should be our ethos. ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’ used to be a driving motto for the government of the day. Instead, treating them as dispensable seems to be the norm.
Feroze Varun Gandhi is a Member of Parliament, representing the Pilibhit constituency for the BJP
Today, June 29, is national ‘Statistics Day’, in ‘recognition of the contributions made by Prof. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis’, the ‘Plan Man’ of India; it is also his birthday. It was P.C. Mahalanobis, who established a strong statistical culture in India and nourished it diligently through his lifelong endeavours. Incidentally, June 28 also marked 50 years since his passing. Revisiting the life of India’s statistical inheritance from P.C. Mahalanobis is of utmost importance as various kinds of concerns regarding data collection, its publication, and data quality have emerged in recent years.
Mahalanobis certainly believed data to be instrumental in efficient planning for national and human development. Planning in the newly independent nation in the 1950s was largely based on the data obtained from various surveys. His fairytale-type success story is due to the blending of his talent with his dedication that thrives into perfection. The socio-political situation and Jawaharlal Nehru’s reliance on Mahalanobis certainly helped.
Ties with Tagore
At the centenary of Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva Bharati University — which Mahalanobis was instrumental in shaping in its most difficult formative years — it might be very interesting to discuss the relationship between two of the greatest Bengali stalwarts, i.e., Tagore and Mahalanobis. Tagore treated Mahalanobis as a close confidant, despite an age gap of 32 years, and they shared a three decades long friendship. Mahalanobis explained to Rani, his future wife: “It will be wrong to say he [Tagore] is my Guru…, ‘I love him’ is the right expression.”
Chancing upon statistics
Young Mahalanobis came to know about statistics, the subject, ‘by chance’ when, in 1915, his voyage to India from England was delayed. However, it is possible that Tagore was instrumental in bringing Mahalanobis, a professor of physics at Calcutta’s Presidency College, into formal statistical activities, when, in 1917, he introduced him to the scholar and educator, Brajendranath Seal, who asked Mahalanobis to analyse the examination records of Calcutta University. It was perhaps Mahalanobis’s first statistical venture with real-life data.
Seventeen-year-old Mahalanobis first met Tagore at Santiniketan in 1910. Then, as Satyajit Ray wrote, “When Rabindranath came to London in 1912 with his translation ofGitanjali , Prasantachandra, Kedarnath [Chattopadhyay] and my father [the Poet and writer Sukumar Roy] were present. He [Sukumar] mentions gathering in Rothenstein’s house more than once in his letters.”
The bonding between Tagore and Mahalanobis, however, was strengthened. In 1919, when Tagore had written a public letter to Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy of India, protesting the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and renouncing knighthood, he asked Mahalanobis to read it first. Mahalanobis accompanied Tagore on many of his international visits, mostly in the 1920s. He often documented the details of such trips with rigour. With a statistician’s perfection, Mahalanobis wrote a series of essays titled ‘Rabindra Parichay’ (‘Introduction to Rabindra’) for the prestigious Bengali magazine,Probashi . He also wrote a book,Rabindranath Tagore’s Visit to Canada in 1929. When Tagore met Einstein in 1930, Mahalanobis was also with him. In fact, Einstein asked Tagore about a young scientist named Bose. Tagore was surprised as Jagadish Chandra Bose, Tagore’s friend, was certainly no longer a young man. Mahalanobis then informed Tagore about Satyendra Nath Bose, another doyen, who would be ever-remembered for Boson, at least.
Mahalanobis introduced Tagore to cinema when, in 1917, he took Nitin Bose, the father of cinema technique, to Bolpur. At the request of Tagore, Nitin Bose photographed a dance recital of girls. The 17-minute film was processed in an improvised lab in Mahalanobis’ laboratory at Presidency College. Mahalanobis, at the Presidency College during that period, was a mixture of physicist and statistician. More precisely, a physicist was turning into a statistician, slowly but steadily. His physics background certainly helped shape his statistical ideology and perfection, which, in effect, yielded trustworthiness in his surveys, methodologies, and analyses.
Mahalanobis established the Statistical Laboratory within the Baker Laboratory at Presidency College. Tagore also visited the Statistical Laboratory several times. In fact, it was Tagore who coined the Bengali word, ‘Rashibijnan’ for ‘Statistics’, and there is little doubt that this was only due to the bonding between Tagore and Mahalanobis. In 1933, Mahalanobis foundedSankhyā, the Indian Journal of Statistics . In the first issue of the second volume ofSankhyā , Tagore depicted Statistics as “the dance steps of numbers in the arena of time and space, which weave themaya of appearance, the incessant flow of changes that ever is and is not”.
At Visva Bharati
Mahalanobis, of course, helped Tagore immensely in his dream project — the founding of Visva Bharati. He not only served as a joint secretary of Visva Bharati for 10 years from the beginning but he was also a member of the governing body, executive council, academic council, and the agricultural board. Also, Mahalanobis’ contribution to preparing Tagore’s life calendar is astonishing. He even corrected some errors here and in also the bibliography prepared by the famous Bengali writer, Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay. When Tagore modified his writings, he wanted to destroy the earlier drafts. Mahalanobis, however, preserved them – a clear conflict between the attitudes of a poet and a statistician. Detailing and perfection were an inherent nature of Mahalanobis. These were also reflected in his surveys and data collection.
Tagore’s dance drama, ‘Basanta’ (meaning ‘Spring’), had a premier at the Calcutta University institute auditorium on Mahalanobis’ marriage day. Tagore attended the marriage ceremony after the show. He presented them with the manuscript of ‘Basanta’. Such a special bonding with the poet, certainly, did supply Mahalanobis with a different kind of light — that would help him create a rich statistical legacy for the country, and a trustworthy system of data collection and analyses. The system worked nicely for a few decades even after his demise.
There is little denying that data, in general, is on an ever-expanding pathway and is growing exponentially. Statistics, the subject, is also changing amid a wave of data science. One needs to adopt, for sure. Attempts such as transforming the Planning Commission to NITI Aayog or merging the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) with the Central Statistical Office (CSO) to form the National Statistical Office (NSO) may not be enough though. One certainly misses a person of the stature of Mahalanobis at the helm of the system. Also, the Mahalanobis-type innovation, dedication, and diligence are dearly missed.
Atanu Biswas is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
In States with bicameral legislatures, seats in the Legislative Council are filled following an indirect election in which members of the Legislative Assembly cast votes. On June 20, the members of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly were scheduled to convene at the Vidhan Sabha to elect the members of the Vidhan Parishad. Nawab Malik and Anil Deshmukh, who are in prison in connection with money laundering offences, approached the courts with a prayer: despite their incarceration, they should be temporarily released to cast votes in the election, so that they may discharge their duty as sitting MLAs. Their prayer was rejected, first by a special Judge under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, then by the Bombay High Court, and finally by the Supreme Court.
The yardstick for disenfranchisement
Interestingly, before dismissing the applications, the apex court observed that it is open to reconsidering the legal provision, Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which prevented the two MLAs from casting their votes. In the past, the Supreme Court has observed that the intent of this provision is to maintain the integrity of elections by excluding ‘persons with criminal background’ from participating in them. Ideally, this objective can be achieved through a provision which disenfranchises persons who have been convicted of certain kinds of grave offences.
However, Section 62(5) does not use conviction as the yardstick for disenfranchisement; it uses confinement. As a result, undertrial prisoners (who constitute over 75% of India’s nearly 5 lakh prisoners) cannot vote. Neither can persons detained in civil prison for failing to repay a debt. But remarkably, a person who has been convicted for a criminal offence and has managed to secure bail can vote. If the objective is to keep criminals away from elections, this is an anomaly. Indeed, it appears that as a result of a poor choice of words, an otherwise well-intentioned law has snatched away the right to vote from an undertrial who is presumed to be innocent and from a civil offender, but has granted it to a criminal convict (out on bail) whose guilt has been determined.
This puts Section 62(5) in direct collision with Article 14 of the Constitution (equality before the law to all persons). Whenever a law treats two groups of persons unequally, it must satisfy a set of basic tests under Article 14 to be valid: the distinction created by the law must be based on coherent differences between the two groups of persons, and these differences must have a rational link with the objective that the law seeks to achieve. Section 62(5) treats a group of people differently by stripping them of the right to vote. What sets this group apart from those allowed to vote is their confinement in prison. This has no rational link with the purported object of the law, i.e., keeping criminals away from the electoral process.
As alternatives, the provision could have disenfranchised persons convicted of certain heinous offences or those sentenced for a minimum duration. In the U.K., for instance, only convicts sentenced to prison for four years or more cannot vote. In Germany, only persons convicted of certain political offences are disenfranchised. Where the law formerly restricted all prisoners from voting (Canada, for instance), constitutional courts intervened and struck it down for being arbitrary and disproportionate.
Section 62(5) has survived many challenges before the courts. Each time, the courts have lauded the objective of weeding out criminal elements from the electoral process, but have stopped short of examining whether the provision, in the manner in which it is worded, can claim to achieve this aim. In a welcome move, while dismissing Mr. Malik and Mr. Deshmukh’s bail applications, the Supreme Court observed that it is open to reconsidering the constitutionality of the provision. The reason for this shift is that the voters who were deprived in this instance were not seeking to act as ordinary citizens but as constitutional functionaries. Through the MLAs’ votes, the residents of their constituencies indirectly exercise their franchise in the election to the Vidhan Parishad. By preventing the two MLAs from casting their votes, the court has inadvertently stripped all their constituents of their franchise.
Finding fault with Section 62(5) for only this reason would be missing the forest for the trees. As a result of its sweeping nature, the provision suffers from a deeper malaise. The question cannot be whether the voter is an ordinary citizen or an MLA, but whether the voter, given their conduct, deserves to participate in the electoral process or not. A constitutional inquiry into Section 62(5) with the former question as its only basis is set for failure. The apex court must re-examine the issue in the totality of its circumstances and Parliament must replace the provision with a tightly worded version disenfranchising only certain classes of prisoners.
Aditya Prasanna Bhattacharya is Research Fellow, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy
In the nine months he has occupied the Tamil Nadu Raj Bhavan, Governor R.N. Ravi, unlike most of his predecessors, has shown no hesitancy in propagating ideological and policy positions that go against the Dravidian school of political thought. While some who had handled gubernatorial assignments in the past had shown scholarship, many had confined themselves to attending functions and delivering speeches. They rarely pushed a counter-ideological narrative, even when the ruling parties in the State were opposed to the party running the Union government. However, Mr. Ravi, a former Special Director of the Intelligence Bureau, has disrupted this political balance by openly taking contrarian stands and speaking his mind on issues he holds dear.
Earlier this month, he said: “[Lord] Ayyappa seva is Rashtra seva (national service). There should be no doubt about it because this Rashtra, Bharat, was created by our rishis and sages who expounded and expanded the truth in our vedas, which became our Sanatana Dharma. It is this Sanatana Dharma which built this Bharat.” Questioning the notion that unity in diversity is a constitutional construct, he said, “It is not. Constitution doesn’t carry the soul of India. Constitution is for the governance of India. Bharat was born thousands... of years before Constitution was written… Sanatana Dharma has to prevail for the sake of the world, humanity”.
His defence of Sanatana Dharma created ripples in the rationalist discourse-dominated Tamil Nadu, which has politically for decades opposed it on the grounds that it perpetuates the Varnashrama dharma (caste-related occupation). Leaders such as Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi’s Thol Thirumavalavan have been charging the BJP of attempting to make Sanatana Dharma the Constitution of the country. DMK treasurer T.R. Baalu said statements such as these are unbecoming of a person holding a constitutional position and who should propagate secular principles.
On Sunday, the Governor said: “Spine of Bharat is Sanatana Dharma”. In an apparent counter to Mr. Baalu’s statement, he said vested interests have created the impression that secularism, as defined in the Constitution, had nothing to do with Dharma. “This is a mischievous and distorted interpretation. The political interpretation has put institutions that are supposed to carry Dharma forward in a very hard place. Dharma is all encompassing and inclusive,” he said.
On policy matters, Mr. Ravi continues to evangelically push for implementation of the National Education Policy 2020, which the State has rejected. Not only does he feel this is the right time to implement the policy, but he publicly told Higher Education Minister K. Ponmudy, “I would suggest [that you] kindly go through the NEP. You see the vast vistas it opens.”
Mr. Ravi has also made political remarks on subjects outside the purview of his office. Last month he dubbed the Popular Front of India “a very dangerous organisation whose aim is to destabilise the country”.
While the ruling DMK has occasionally expressed its disapproval of the Governor’s views through its party mouthpiece Murasoli, a section of academics too is opposed to his stand. In a recent letter, State Platform for Common School System (Tamil Nadu) general secretary P.B. Prince Gajendra Babu urged the Governor to uphold the Constitution and “respect the mandate of the people and desist from engaging himself in countering the policy position of the duly elected government”.
Meanwhile, the State government is awaiting the Governor’s assent for the 21 Bills passed by the Legislative Assembly that were sent to Raj Bhavan many months ago.
sureshkumar.d@thehindu.co.in
Time is of the essence when it comes to executing political manoeuvres to reduce a government to a minority. Dissident legislators need time to gather enough numbers to vote out the regime. Ruling parties need to close the window of opportunity soon, often using the threat of disqualification for defection. It is in this backdrop that judicial intervention in matters relating to disqualifying lawmakers for defection takes place — either buying the dissidents time or allowing disqualification proceedings to go on unhindered. By its order granting time until July 12 to dissident Shiv Sena legislators in the Maharashtra Assembly to reply to the Deputy Speaker’s notice under the anti-defection law, the Supreme Court has effectively made it possible for them to actualise their objective without the threat of disqualification for now. It is doubtful whether the Court should have done this in the face of a specific bar on judicial intervention in disqualification proceedings at any stage prior to final adjudication under the Tenth Schedule. In 1992 (Kilhoto Hollohan vs Zachillhu ), a Constitution Bench, while upholding the validity of the anti-defection law, held that the Speaker’s decision was subject to judicial review, albeit on limited grounds. It also made it clear that this should take place after a final decision, and there can be no interim order, except if there is an interim disqualification or suspension.
The Deputy Speaker’s grant of just two days for the MLAs to reply may have occasioned the intervention; but it is doubtful whether the Court should concern itself with the question now, when it can be decided after their possible disqualification. There are Court judgments that say compliance with natural justice is not based on the number of days given, but on whether sufficient opportunity was given before a decision. Based on a conclusion inNabam Rebia (2016) that a Presiding Officer should not adjudicate any defection complaint while a motion for his own removal is pending, the dissidents sent a motion to get the Deputy Speaker removed. After he rejected it, the rejection has also been questioned in court, thus raising a jurisdiction question on the adjudicatory power of the Deputy Speaker, who, of necessity, has to decide disqualification questions in the absence of a Speaker. Motions to remove a Presiding Officer should not become a ploy to circumvent disqualification proceedings. If courts countenance manoeuvres to pre-empt a decision on whether legislators camping in another State and questioning the Chief Minister’s majority have incurred disqualification by “voluntarily giving up membership” of their party, they undermine the anti-defection law and render nugatory rulings by Constitution Benches. When defection is seen as a serious menace by the Constitution, courts should not act in furtherance of it. The duty to protect those wrongly disqualified is important, but so is calling to account defectors whose motives are suspect.
Transcending partisan stalemate for the first time in several generations, the U.S. Congress has passed, and President Joe Biden signed into law, a gun regulation bill to place several important constraints on the proliferation of firearms across the country. The bipartisan gun reform law, titled the Bipartisan Safer Communities (BSC) Act, was passed earlier in the Senate, with a final vote of 65 to 33 including 15 Republicans who joined Democrats in support of the measure, and then at the House of Representatives, by a margin of by 234-193 votes, with 14 Republicans crossing the aisle to vote. While the bill goes a considerable distance in reining in the relatively unhindered sale of firearms across weapons buyer profiles, it falls far short of the critical regulations that Democrats have been pressing for. The law also comes into force shortly on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court striking down a New York law limiting concealed carrying of guns. Nevertheless, the bipartisan character of the bill reflects the best hope for a gradual and marginal shift in the public discourse on gun ownership and its right guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The fact that such a bill passed both houses of Congress and reached Mr. Biden’s desk also reflects the deep shock that the nation experienced in the recent acts of gun violence in a school in Texas, and at a New York store.
Therein lies the limited scope of the bipartisan gun reform law — it does nothing to address the question of limiting the availability of this weapon, nor does it yield any quarter to the long-standing demand by Democrats to institute universal background checks for those buying the firearms. Within its core ambit the law does mandate expanded background checks, including state and local juvenile and mental health records of gun purchasers aged 18 to 20 years; closing of the “boyfriend loophole” by denying gun ownership to convicted domestic violence offenders under certain conditions; ‘red flag laws’ that will grant federal funds to States with laws enabling removal of guns from persons deemed dangerous; and sets aside nearly $13 billion for education and advocacy towards improving mental health in schools, crisis intervention, violence prevention programmes, mental health worker training and school safety. However, the law does not hint at reviving the assault weapons ban of 1994, which expired a decade later, since which time this category of weapon has become the most frequently used in lethal mass shootings. While the BSC Act is a welcome step in the right direction, the U.S. has a long road ahead and complex questions to resolve regarding its obsession with unrestricted gun ownership before mass shootings in public places stop occurring.
Simla, June 28: The opening session of the Indo-Pakistan summit this afternoon lasted less than an hour — only 50 heads of Government and their principal advisers to settle even the bare preliminaries for the main discussions during the next three days of the conference. The Indian and Pakistan delegates indicated in a joint press release late to-night that the officials of the two sides, who have been nominated to commence the discussion on the agenda, met to-day and will meet again to-morrow morning to resume the talks after they have reported back to their respective leaders on the progress of their talks to-day. This statement implied that Mrs. Gandhi and Mr. Bhutto will get together only after the officials have completed their preliminary discussions and reached the stage where the two heads of government could usefully take up specific issues for further discussions. The officials who met at 7 p.m. adjourned at 9-45 p.m. to report to their leaders and obtain the necessary instructions before resuming the talk to-morrow at 10 a.m.
From Friday, several common use-and-throw plastic products will cease to be in circulation with the government’s rules to prohibit their manufacture and use, issued in August last year, coming into effect. Plastic cutlery items, ice cream and balloon sticks, sweet boxes, invitation cards, cigarette packs, PVC banners measuring under 100 microns and earbuds are some of the items that will no longer be available.
Given that the country generates more than 25,000 tonnes of plastic waste every day — more than 40 per cent of it stays uncollected, often choking sewage networks — the need for measures to restrict the use of this non-degradable synthetic material cannot be overstated. The government has also done the right thing in enforcing the ban in phases. The current strictures apply to relatively low utility items. The real challenge will come when the prohibition is extended to polythene bags under 120 microns in December.
In the past five years, more than 20 states have put in place some form of regulation on plastic use. But by all accounts, their implementation has been patchy at best. The poorly-staffed and feebly-empowered state pollution control boards or cash-strapped municipalities tasked with enforcing the bans have generally not been up to the task. Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav has said that his ministry will set up control rooms to monitor the ban. A better way would be to raise awareness amongst people and take all stakeholders into confidence — the success of Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh, to an extent, testifies to this.
Some food vendors, takeaway restaurants and grocery outfits have begun using biodegradable cutlery and cloth or paper bags. The government claims that a large number of plastic units are making the switch to using packaging alternatives such as cotton, jute, paper and crop stubble waste. However, the alternatives sector does not produce at a scale that will enable businesses all over the country to make the environment-friendly transition. There are more than 22,000 plastic manufacturing units in the country.
It will be some time before enough numbers are brought under the alternative segment to make a tangible difference to the packaging sector’s environmental footprint. Industry experts say that the prices of a lot of the current plastic substitutes burden the retailer and the consumer — a kg of fabric bags, for example, cost Rs 80 more compared to plastic bags. The government would, therefore, do well to hand-hold businesses, especially small outfits already strained by the economic fallout of the pandemic, during the transition period. In the long run, it must join hands with industry bodies to facilitate R&D in viable plastic substitutes.
Billionaire industrialist and chairman of the Shapoorji Pallonji group, Pallonji Mistry, who died on Tuesday in Mumbai at 93, was nicknamed the “Phantom of Bombay House”. His presence was felt in the Tata Group’s head-offices even though he was rarely heard or seen — the family holds a 18.4 per cent stake in Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata group. Pallonji took over the reins of the SP group in 1975 after his father’s passing and shepherded the group’s foray into West Asia, showcasing its abilities by building the Sultan’s palace in Muscat. This also served as a launchpad for the group’s successful operations in the wider region.
The SP group, founded in 1865, operates across several verticals but it is widely known for having constructed some of Mumbai’s most iconic landmarks, among which are the headquarters of the Reserve Bank of India, the buildings of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and the Standard Chartered Bank, and the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. The family which has tended to avoid the spotlight — incidentally, it produced Mughal-e-Azam, one of the biggest blockbusters in Hindi cinema — was thrust into the public eye following the high-profile clash between Pallonji’s son Cyrus Mistry and Ratan Tata. Cyrus had been appointed as chairman of Tata Sons in 2012. But after a falling out with Tata, he was forced out of the group in 2016 in one of the most high-profile corporate battles in recent times. In May this year, the Supreme Court dismissed the SP Group’s petition that sought a review of the verdict that upheld the removal of Cyrus Mistry as head of Tata Sons.
Despite his immense wealth and influence, Pallonji was an intensely private man who kept a low profile. His death comes at a time when the group has been attempting to firm up its financial position by paring down its debt burden.
The surprise win in Punjab of Simranjit Singh Mann in the recent by-poll from the Sangrur parliamentary seat, the pocket borough of Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann, has touched off questions — and anxieties. Even though the margin of his victory is slender, it’s a jolt to the reigning Aam Aadmi Party government that had swept to power with an overwhelming mandate a little more than 100 days ago. More than that, Mann, an IPS officer who resigned from service in protest against Operation Bluestar in 1984, has for long been looked upon as an anachronism as the state tried to move past the dark decade of militancy. He clung on to his demand for sovereignty, reiterating his reverence for the controversial figure of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. This is why his triumph, after over 23 years of his party Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) drawing a blank at the hustings, calls for introspection by Punjab’s political mainstream.
Simranjit Singh Mann’s victory comes at a time when the Shiromani Akali Dal, the oldest party of the state, seems to be at its weakest. It is facing an existential crisis after incidents of Guru Granth Sahib’s desecration in 2015 and its handling of the aftermath dealt a body blow to its credibility. Mann could be said to have began his comeback by calling a gathering of community leaders on the issue of sacrilege. Of late, he has been championing the cause of minorities against what he calls the ultra-right — in a probable bid to move into the space once occupied by the Akali Dal. The AAP government may have won a grand victory but its sweep should not paper over the fact that many unresolved issues require deft handling in the state. There are elements that are numerically insignificant, but with a potential to cause mischief disproportionate to their numbers and which draw support from sections of the diaspora in search of a mythical homeland. This minuscule section can also be exploited by inimical forces across the border.
The Bhagwant Singh Mann government has its task cut out. As it tries to inject new life into the economy and address issues like the state of education, it will do well to keep an ear to the ground. Be it inter-state sharing of river waters or the joint capital, there are issues that can snowball if not dealt with sensitively, and electorally marginalised elements that nurse a feeling of dispossession. The new government owes it to its mandate to keep its focus on an agenda of development and inclusion, which alone can help the state to step up to the challenges of the future.
In Germany, as in much of the world in recent months, Ukraine cast a long shadow. At the summit of the G7, which was also attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the leaders of South Africa and Indonesia, among others, the message was clear: The US and its allies foresee a prolonged conflict in Ukraine and they will continue to support Volodymyr Zelenskyy (who made an in-camera appeal to the leaders at the summit via video) and the people of Ukraine in their fight against a militarily superior neighbour. For now, the differences within the G7 with regard to their reliance on Russian commodity exports, especially the dependence on Russian natural gas, have been put aside, and the grouping has vowed to “align and expand targeted sanctions to further restrict Russia’s access to key industrial inputs, services and technologies”. With the NATO summit following the G7 meet, the contours of the strategic conversation around Ukraine were laid out.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated New Delhi’s position in unequivocal terms — there must be an immediate cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, and dialogue and diplomacy are the way forward. While the resolve to sideline Russia and support Ukraine “for as long as it takes” appears to hold firm at the moment, popular support to act against Moscow may wane as the war drags on and economies continue to suffer the pain. The fact is that as the conflict has progressed, its effects have been felt far beyond Europe. Food and fuel inflation continue to be on the rise and have hit the poorest people and nations the hardest. If — as Zelenskyy reportedly said in his address to the leaders gathered in Bavaria — the conflict gains new momentum in the winter, the global community must find ways to offset the economic and humanitarian crisis that will likely ensue, in Europe and beyond.
On the economic front, the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) announced by US President Joe Biden holds promise. Under it, the G7 has committed to invest $600 billion by 2027 in a host of countries, including India, “in critical infrastructure that improves lives and delivers real gains for all of our people”. The PGII aims to act as both an alternative and foil to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which has lately been seen as imposing an untenable debt burden on developing economies such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Along with the reasonable request by India for greater investment by the developing world in clean technologies to mitigate climate change, the PGII could help build a more resilient global economy.
Written by Kinshuk Gupta
It was our second year of medical school. We had heard stories of diligent doctors who do everything they can to pull patients out from the jaws of death. After a year and half of sitting in classes, learning the course of a vessel, the physiology of a nerve and the biochemistry of cholesterol, we finally got the chance to step into a hospital. We had to learn the tactics needed to elicit a useful clinical history and how to strike the hammer during a knee-jerk reflex test. We had so much to learn in so little time.
Geared with Littmann stethoscopes, we reached the wards crowded with patients. “Patients are your best teachers,” we reminded ourselves. We were preparing to go to the patients when the residents stopped us. The very next day, the government announced the Covid-19 lockdown. We returned to our homes. There were online classes to supplement our studies, but they could only simulate the practical experience. Over the next two years, our learning never picked up steam.
We returned in our final year — the toughest year in the curriculum. There were nine lengthy subjects to cover in just eight months. Our professors expected us to know the basics and skipped over them while teaching. But we could not properly learn them earlier, so we had extra work to complete. Our anxiety was already through the roof when a new pattern of exams was announced.
A top official anonymously spoke about the National Exit Test (NExT) to a newspaper, which was reported by other news portals without much additional information, stating that the new pattern will first be implemented for the batch graduating in 2023.
NExT will replace the two-decade-old NEET-PG that medical graduates have had to clear for acquiring postgraduate seats. Heavily borrowing from the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Exam) — a multi-step assessment that tests the recall, concepts, and clinical skills of medical students to allow practice in the US — it will be a three-day affair with morning and evening shifts every day.
Happening just after the final year, it will also do away with one year of preparation, as NEET is conducted after the students’ internship. To prepare for 19 subjects, along with a volley of tests and assignments, seems next to impossible. That too, when nothing concrete has been shared.
The problem compounds for the students planning to go outside India for their Masters. They would need to prepare for this exam and secure at least passing marks to get their undergraduate degree. They would also no longer be able to get extensions in internships for electives in hospitals in the US, since an internship needs to be completed within the stipulated time according to the new rules.
Shifting to an exam that would also double up as the final professional theory exam is fraught with multiple challenges for colleges as well. The most basic is being able to complete the syllabus within time — in fact, at least two months prior to the exam, which sounds preposterous right now, given that many private colleges in UP have only conducted pre-final professional exams this March.
The abrupt introduction of baffling changes in the last days leading to major exams has been a recurring pattern lately. Take, for example, INI-CET, an exam that allows entrance into the most sought-after central institutions. It replaced the older exam just a month before its scheduled date.
Every official order sounds like a warning. An update earlier this year stated that the exam would happen in two parts — once after the second year of college, and the next after the final year. Barring skeletal information about the basic course structure, and a few scattered facts that come unpredictably, students are left wondering about the details of an exam that they might have to attempt in January.
Gupta is a New-Delhi based writer and a medical student
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the UAE on June 28 was his fourth, having visited the country earlier in August 2015, in February 2018 and again in August 2019. Juxtaposed against the fact that no Indian PM had visited the UAE for 34 years since the visit of Indira Gandhi in 1981, the transformation in India’s engagement with this Gulf state has been quite extraordinary.
The reason for the latest sojourn, ostensibly, is to offer condolences on the demise of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan and to congratulate Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan on his elevation to the position of the ruler of Abu Dhabi and President of the UAE. Viewed from the perspective of traditional diplomatic protocol, the visit was not necessary. Vice President Venkaiah Naidu had gone to Abu Dhabi on May 15 to offer the Government of India’s condolences to the UAE leadership and in an unusual gesture, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had visited the UAE embassy in New Delhi to sign the condolence book.
But this is a relationship that has moved well beyond the confines of diplomatic protocols. The warmth and personal chemistry between the Prime Minister and Sheikh Mohamed is genuine and palpable. It has been almost three years since their last meeting in Abu Dhabi when PM Modi was bestowed the Order of Zayed, the UAE’s highest civilian award. He had also planned to visit the Dubai Expo in January but a rise in Covid-19 cases linked to the Omicron variant had come in the way. This stopover on the way back from the G7 summit in Germany was an opportunity to renew that relationship through a one-on-one meeting with Sheikh Mohamed and an engagement with key members of the royal family including the National Security Advisor and foreign minister.
Meanwhile, a lot has happened on the bilateral front, including a fairly substantive virtual summit with Sheikh Mohamed in February 2022 when both sides signed a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). The two leaders also issued an ambitious, forward-looking Joint Vision Statement titled, “Advancing the India and UAE Comprehensive Strategic Partnership: New Frontiers, New Milestones”.
CEPA is a significant milestone that was negotiated and finalised in just 88 days and promises to increase bilateral trade from $60 billion to $ 100 billion in five years. It came into force on May 1 and has already ushered in preferential market access for 97 per cent of tariff lines accounting for 99 per cent of Indian exports to the UAE. It is expected to help Indian exports in areas ranging from gems and jewellery and textiles to footwear and pharmaceuticals, apart from enhanced access for Indian service providers to 11 specific sectors. A high-level business delegation from the UAE led by Minister for Economy Abdulla bin Touq was in India on May 12 to identify trade and investment opportunities, brief Indian business leaders about the key features of the agreement and advise small and medium enterprises on leveraging its provisions. On the sidelines of the visit, the Dubai-based DP World and India’s National Skills Development Council signed an agreement to set up a Skill India Centre in Varanasi to train local youth in logistics, port operations and allied areas so that they can pursue overseas employment.
On the regional front, the rapid normalisation of ties between the UAE and Israel following the Abraham Accords of August 2020 has also opened new avenues of trilateral and multilateral cooperation. Some Israeli tech companies are already establishing a base in Dubai and seeking to marry niche technologies with Emirati capital and Indian scale. The US has announced that President Joe Biden’s forthcoming visit to West Asia will see a virtual summit of what it calls the 2I2U, a new grouping that brings together India, Israel, the US and UAE. The foreign ministers of the four countries had held their first virtual meeting in October 2021 during Jaishankar’s visit to Tel Aviv, articulating a focus on joint trade, technology, transport and infrastructure projects.
These positive developments must be seen in the backdrop of the turbulence caused by the comments on Prophet Mohammed by Nupur Sharma and Naveen Kumar Jindal. These comments reveal an utter ignorance of the crucial support that countries like the UAE have given to India in the Islamic world, first by inviting our late External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj as a guest of honour at an OIC foreign ministers meeting in Abu Dhabi and later by standing with us on Jammu and Kashmir following the abrogation of Article 370. Nor do they take into account the fact that the Gulf is our third-largest trading partner, our principal source of hydrocarbons, a major source of foreign investment and home to some 8 million Indians who send in over $50 billion annually in remittances.
The UAE today is India’s closest partner in the Arab world and fortunately, there is enough resilience in bilateral ties to withstand the recent convulsions. But India’s image has been dented in the hearts and minds of the average Emiratis and left many Indians living in the Gulf appalled at the wanton injury caused to their interests.
Visuals from the Prime Minister’s visit and his very evident personal rapport with the leadership of UAE have sent out a positive message but it will take a sustained public diplomacy effort to undo the damage. In other countries in the Gulf, the task will be that much more difficult.
The writer is Distinguished Fellow at ORF and former ambassador to UAE
The savage execution of Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur will deepen the darkest forebodings about India’s future. It is important to name this gruesome act for what it is, without aestheticising it. It was an execution and not a murder. Murders are horrible. But this act was far more sinister. It enacted the logic of execution.
The perpetrators were claiming the right to brutally punish Kanhaiya for speech that he was well within his legal rights to utter. By doing it publicly they were trying to claim the terrifying power of global precedent. There have been beheadings before on putative insults to the Prophet, and we cannot rule out more. The point of the execution was to lay down the clear line, “Say something on the Prophet that we find insulting, and there will be consequences.” It was to make clear that the perpetrators mean to enforce their idea of blasphemy, no matter what rational, secular and civilised laws require. The public nature of the act was to also signal that they do not consider this a crime but the enforcement of higher law. Its purpose is to create fear and terror. There is a Chinese proverb, “Kill one, frighten a thousand.” This execution worked on this logic of fear and terror.
This act has been unanimously condemned as an act of barbarity, without qualifications, across the political and religious spectrum. There was no immediate violent reaction. But the sense of foreboding comes from what these easy gestures of condemnation, which now come to us as flippantly as the “like” sign on Facebook, will leave unsaid. If we are to move forward, these dark, subterranean currents will have to be confronted squarely.
Talking about these is hazardous, for two reasons. In an already surcharged atmosphere, with a communal majoritarianism suffocating liberty and toleration, there is the justified fear of how particular arguments are used to whip up prejudice against minorities. Second, there is always what the late Paul Brass had presciently identified as the trap of discourse. Using the terms minority and majority, even for analytical purposes, even for progressive ends, often ends up congealing the very identities we are trying to complicate. So, even with these caveats, here are the fears we need to confront, even as we condemn the incident.
The biggest danger is that the BJP and other parties may succumb to the temptation to use this incident to target and question the existence of minorities. Rajasthan has an election coming up. The conduct of political parties, the perception of arbitrariness in police forces, has created unprecedented communal tensions across the state, which even the Congress is helplessly presiding over. Condemning an incident is not an answer to the endless narrative of revenge and counter revenge and feigned victimhood that will be circulated to use Kanhaiya’s execution as an opportunity to polarise. This incident will very quickly allow concerns about authoritarian repression and majoritarian communalism to be overtaken by an obsession with transnational Islamism. It would be naïve to pretend that there is no issue here. We are certainly doing our best to create a society where anyone can light a fire, and create a conflagration. The perpetrators’ gruesome execution works as a strategy, because they know we will make a political business out of it.
The psychological impact of seeing a video where someone walks into a tailor’s shop, for a quotidian transaction, and executes them, is horrifying. What produces such a sinister method of execution? Can we comfortably treat it as an exception? These will be unasked questions. The short answer is, we don’t really know with any confidence. And this situation is compounded by the fact that there is a breakdown of trust. On the one hand, there is the state that finds even a joke as evidence of complicity with ISIS, and will spread the net of suspicion incredulously wide. It will cast this as a war against a global ideology of Islamism and terrorism. But it has shown no capacity to make a distinction between ordinary Indian citizens trying to claim their rights or protesting against a particular policy, and terrorists that really pose a threat to the state and a decent moral order. Our political culture is incapable of drawing this distinction.
Faced with a threatening state, we as civil society also fear to fully understand the possibilities and sources of Islamist radicalisation, and acknowledge that like Hindutva, it could also have an autonomous dynamic, not rooted only in reaction or the threat of subjugation. This vacuum of trust will be filled by our favourite political narrative. In our context, it will strengthen whatever prejudices we were predisposed towards. Even as we condemn the moral horror, our capacity to create a common truth about such incidents will not be any stronger.
The larger narrative in which this incident will come to be embedded — is this a one-off local incident, a political reaction or part of a wider conspiracy for organised violence — requires the state and Centre to cooperate. If this is treated as a terrorist attack, then the NIA and police must speak in one credible voice. It is beyond utopian to imagine that in a situation like this, all political parties and the home minister and chief minister would speak in one credible voice. The partiality of the state in other cases of violence makes this an incredibly hard act to pull off. The strategic silences of the prime minister are always a clear signal that the government intends for the pot to simmer, if not boil.
And finally, there is the ideological gauntlet that Kanhaiya’s killers have thrown. Even as we condemn the incident we have to rise to the ideological challenge, that no free society can have a legal prohibition on “offences to religion”. What enables this act to wear the imprimatur of punishment rather than crime is that it sees itself as enforcing higher law. Any society where individuals think it is their duty to protect their prophets or their gods is doomed to be unfree, and caught in circles of violence. In a world of billions of people, someone will be tempted to insult; the point is to render those insults banal, marginal and harmless.
The will to condemn this act has to be accompanied by the commitment to build a free society. Otherwise Kanhaiya’s executioners win. But it is hard to shake off the feeling that the cumulative weight of our history and prejudices is pulling us into an abyss, with an almost gravitational force.
The article ‘Media In The Dock’ by John Brittas (IE, June 9) is in part laced with innuendo and partly a veiled account of his exasperation with the common people’s temerity to think for themselves and deviate from the roadmap drawn by an intellectual oligarchy that has been in power since Independence.
Being in power doesn’t necessarily mean being in office, and vice versa. Though it has been out of office for almost eight years, the left-liberal pack is still in power. It continues to control public discourse in India. The Nupur Sharma-Naveen Jindal controversy is the latest example underlining the power of this nexus that cuts across continents, ideologies and creeds. Blind hatred of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and angst against a rising India, are its glue. The Nupur-Naveen duo is accused of blasphemy and hate speech. Within hours of the alleged blasphemy, video clips of their statements were resonating across continents, unilateral trials conducted and guilt pronounced, followed by a clamour to punish them. Isn’t this real global networking?
One question in this context begs an answer. Has anyone explained what was “hateful” or “blasphemous” in what was said? Worse, there is a cowering silence over the death and rape threats to Sharma. And these aren’t empty threats. In the recent past in India, several innocents, such as Kamlesh Tiwari, accused of blasphemy, have met violent death at the hands of zealots.
Brittas, however, is right when he says “the Ramjanmabhoomi movement led by the Sangh Parivar changed the mediascape drastically”. This movement, no doubt, triggered a cerebral revolution in the country. The national debate that followed the years-long struggle for a Ram Temple in Ayodhya helped explode many myths, raised questions about ideologically constructed paradigms, reconnected common people with their hoary past, and unshackled large sections of society from narrow doctrinal confines and encouraged them to look for facts about their history and identity.
Why is there any confusion about national identity or history in the first place? A little recap: After Independence, with help from a complicit, acquiescing establishment, the Left managed to become the sole arbiter on values like secularism, pluralism, human rights and individual liberty in the Indian public discourse. And there couldn’t have been a bigger joke.
The Left — along with the British and the Muslim League — was the prime mover for the creation of a theocratic Pakistan. It is now a high priest of secularism in India. Communism believes in the supremacy of the proletariat and has contempt for human rights. Violence is central to Communist working, and the system is notorious for quashing dissent ruthlessly.
The brand of “secularism” we usually see in practice in India has germinated in a Communist petri dish and is flavoured by a Pakistani mindset. Pakistan isn’t only a country, it’s an idea that transcends borders. An Indian passport holder too can have a Pakistani mindset.
The debate kickstarted by the Ramjanmabhoomi movement brought out these contradictions in the “secular” construct of India’s history and culture. Brittas accuses the media (especially TV) of “raking up issues that have created schisms in society” post-2014. The media hasn’t created the Hindu-Muslim problem; it merely mirrors it. Shooting the messenger doesn’t help.
Yasin Malik, accused of killing four Indian Air force officers in Srinagar in 1990, was “a youth icon and a poster boy of Kashmiri aspirations” for a section of the media prior to 2014. He is now behind bars. This is the change unacceptable to many. With the mushrooming of competitive television channels and the emergence of a vibrant social media, the stranglehold of vested interests on the flow of information is loosening. Their capacity to set a facts-free narrative tailored to fit their ideological straitjacket is getting compromised. Opposition to, and massive public support for, a movie like The Kashmir Files underlines the changing Indian media scene. Contrast this with the conspiratorial silence of the media on the targeting of Hindus in the Kashmir Valley during the period of1980-90.
I agree with Brittas when he says, “the Sangh Parivar organisations don’t participate in the democratic process only for power”. Pursuit of power has never been the Sangh’s motive. However, I differ with his interpretation of the Sangh Parivar’s “core agenda”. The Sangh draws inspiration from India’s rich past and ceaselessly works for a strong, inclusive, plural, democratic India, wedded to social justice and gender equality. Obviously, creeds and ideologies having extra-territorial loyalties and fissiparous tendencies and lacking faith in democracy and the right to dissent, find the Sangh irksome. The reasons are obvious.
The writer is a columnist and a former chairman of Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC)
The meeting of G7 leaders that concluded in Bavaria in Germany on Monday was an important one since it took place against the backdrop of a triple crisis: The war in Ukraine, the challenge of post-pandemic economic recovery and the eternal issue of climate change. In the circumstances, the G7 countries managed to present a united front which was noteworthy.
A standalone G7 Statement on Support for Ukraine was issued — an unmistakable indication of what was foremost in the minds of the leaders of these countries. There was an unconditional commitment that the grouping will provide financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support and stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. Predictably, the statement comes down very hard on Russia and comes close to accusing it of war crimes. Russia was also warned that any use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons would be met with severe consequences. Further intensification of sanctions against Russia was contemplated, including tariffs on Russian products, targeting gold exports, capping oil prices and restricting access to technology.
Despite the toughly-worded statement, it is unlikely the war in Ukraine will come to a quick halt. Indeed, the G7 statement may have the opposite effect of increasing Russia’s intransigence. Worse, increasing military assistance by the West to Ukraine, evidenced by the impending supply of the Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS, used by the Americans to protect the White House) by the US to Ukraine, could lead to an arms race. Russia too, by relentlessly pursuing hostilities in the Donbas region, is not helping matters. As if all this were not enough, NATO, ahead of its summit meeting in Madrid following the G7 Summit, has already let it be known that its rapid reaction force, meant to protect the alliance’s Eastern flank, will be increased from its present strength of 40,000 to a whopping 300,000. NATO’s Secretary-General minced no words when he termed Russia as the most immediate threat to NATO’s security and hinted that the alliance’s deployments will now be much closer to Russian borders. More fundamentally, the NATO concept of deterrence when it comes to the Baltic states appears to have undergone a paradigm shift. The alliance has made its resolve clear to protect every inch of its territory. Whichever way one looks at it, the war in Ukraine is not going to end anytime soon.
Significantly, the G7 final communique has tough language on China as well. It says there is no legal basis for China’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea, it calls on China to press Russia to withdraw troops from Ukraine and expresses grave concern about the country’s human rights situation. It calls on China to respect universal human rights and fundamental freedoms in both Tibet and Xinjiang, highlighting the issue of forced labour in the latter. If Russia has reason to be dissatisfied with the G7 final communique, then China has reason to be absolutely livid with it.
For India, G7 summits have always been an invaluable opportunity to exchange views not just in a plurilateral format but also in the bilateral meetings on the margins of the main meetings. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meetings with President Joe Biden of the US and President Emmanuel Macron of France, as also with the leaders of the UK and Japan, were extremely timely. The meeting with the Canadian PM was useful, too, given the recent ups and downs in the relationship between the two countries. The meetings with Indonesian, South African and Argentinian leaders may be seen against the impending assumption of the G20 presidency by India. India will be consulting closely with Indonesia to see how the Ukraine issue plays out at the G20 meeting.
The fact is that even the G7 knows its clout has declined compared to, say, 20 years ago. That explains the move to invite key G20 countries as observers to its summits. As for India, its importance lies in the undeniable truth that no global problem can be seriously tackled without New Delhi’s involvement. The question is whether India can use this to make the full transition from being a rule-taker to becoming a rule-shaper in at least some crucial areas.
India has lent its name to two statements issued by the G7. One is titled “Resilient Democracies Statement” and the other is “Joining Forces to Accelerate Clean and Just Transition towards Climate Neutrality”. The first statement talks of democracies as reliable partners seeking to promote a rules-based international order and supporting democracy worldwide including through electoral assistance. It is interesting to note that these democracies have also recommitted to fighting climate change, improving food security, pursuing concerted efforts to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic, fighting corruption, protecting freedom of expression, both online and offline, and ensuring an open and secure internet. This is a tall order for even perfect democracies. But it is an excellent message to send to countries like China and arguably, Russia.
The other statement to which India is a signatory is the one on clean and just transition towards carbon neutrality. PM Modi made a forceful intervention on how India, without being responsible for the problem of climate change, is doing everything in its power to be part of the solution. He also made a fervent plea to the Western countries to invest heavily in India’s renewable energy market.
The G7 is trying hard not to be yesterday’s club. It is still a powerful grouping, with seven of its members in the top 10 economies of the world, three of them permanent members of the UNSC and if you count the EU, it is still home to some of the best emerging technologies. India’s participation in this meeting as an observer serves to advance its foreign and security policy objectives and will keep it in good stead when it assumes the G20 presidency in December.
The writer is a former Indian Ambassador to France and Dean/Professor at OP Jindal Global University
Internet connectivity is critical for making the Digital India project inclusive, and widespread use of optical fibre in the remotest corners of the country is vital to ensure that no one is left behind in this endeavour. With over 117 crore telecom users and more than 82 crore internet subscribers, India is one of the fastest-growing markets for digital consumers. A 2019 Mckinsey study rated India as the second-fastest digitising economy. Digital infrastructure, which seamlessly integrates with physical and traditional infrastructure, is critical to India’s growth story and the country’s thrust towards self-reliance.
5G technology is going to make inroads into the country very soon. Top smartphone manufacturers in India have already released phones with 5G capability. Networking equipment that relies on optical fibre and other semiconductor-based device ecosystems are at the heart of building the infrastructure that will be needed when the country takes the next step in its digital journey. The government has taken several measures to build the next generation of digital infrastructure. But the success of initiatives such as Bharatnet Phase III and the world’s largest rural broadband project — which aim to provide broadband connectivity to all 2.5 lakh gram panchayats across the country — hinge on the deployment of high-quality fibres. A basic requirement of 5G will be data transmission networks. Optical fibre is the backbone of the digital infrastructure required for this purpose — the data is transmitted by light pulses travelling through long strands of thin fibre.
Indian manufacturers have a strong presence across the value chain of this industry. In the last 10 years, domestic manufacturers invested more than Rs 5,000 crore in this industry, which has generated direct and indirect employment for around 4 lakh individuals. India exported optical fibre worth $138 million to over 132 countries between April 2020 and November 2021. India’s annual optic fibre manufacturing capacity is around 100 million fibre km (fkm) and the domestic consumption is around 46 million fkm. Indian optical fibre cable consumption is predicted to increase to 33 million fkm by 2026 from 17 million fkm in 2021. A little more than 30 per cent of mobile towers have fibre connectivity; this needs to be scaled up to at least 80 per cent.
In anticipation of this demand, domestic manufacturers have been ramping up their capacities over the last few years. However, India’s optical fibre industry has also seen unfair competition from cheap imports from China, Indonesia and South Korea. These countries have been dumping their products in India at rates lower than the market price. The World Trade Organisation defines dumping as “an international price discrimination situation in which the price of a product offered in the importing country is less than the price of that product in the exporting country’s market”. Imposing anti-dumping duties is one way of protecting the domestic industry. The Directorate General of Trade Remedies has recently begun investigations against optical fibre imports. One hopes that the probe will also catalyse other efforts to encourage local manufacturing.
India needs to invest in R&D, offer production-linked incentive schemes to support indigenous high-tech manufacturing and develop intellectual property in critical aspects of digital connectivity. The digital infrastructure created in the process could serve as a springboard for our growth in the next 20 years. We are at a crossroads now. The need of the hour is to unlock the full potential of India’s optical fibre industry and enable India to emerge as a major manufacturing and technology hub while achieving atmanirbharta in its 5G journey.
The writer, a former secretary Government of India, is a development practitioner
The first GST Council meeting in 2022 couldn’t reach a conclusion on two critical issues, extending the period of compensating states for a shortfall in GST collections beyond the five-year duration agreed upon at the start and rationalising GST rates.
The meeting, however, did take an important decision which will have a bearing on the price of some items. A Group of Ministers (GoM) interim report made suggestions to correct inversion of duty and rework tax exemption for some items. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said these suggestions were approved by the Council and will take effect on July 18.
GST Council meeting: What will become costlier? Complete list
Sixteen states expressed their views on the issue of extension of compensation period. According to the finance minister, a few states wanted it to end while others asked for extension. A quick consensus on this issue was unlikely but if it drags on it can vitiate the environment in future Council meetings.
Another tricky decision will be revision of the rate structure. The GoM studying it has been given an extension. The indications given so far by different finance ministers is that most governments want an upward revision in rates as they feel the decision to lower them in the early days of GST went too far. In the context of the elevated inflation India is currently experiencing, the decision to rationalise rates may not be taken soon.
The gruesome murder of tailor Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur and subsequent threats to PM Narendra Modi, all of which were captured on video and posted online, should catalyse a move towards designing a legislation to cover hate crimes. The two accused in this crime, Mohammad Riyaz Akhtari and Gaus Mohammad, may have been apprehended but the entire state has borne the fallout in the form of restrictions and an internet shutdown.
India does not have a stand-alone hate crime legislation. A few sections of the Indian Penal Code (153A, 295, 298 etc.) are used to deal with what would be widely considered as hate crimes. It’s inadequate.
Hate crimes are distinguished by the underlying motive behind the crime and not the crime itself. The victim is typically seen as a representative of a community. This is in stark contrast to crimes triggered by personal motives. The victims of hate crimes can often be people far removed from the initial crime itself. This is because the crime draws in communities and disrupts social equilibrium.
Political parties have been reluctant to take a meaningful step forward in debating hate crime legislation. It’s not an easy law to design because there is no universally accepted definition of hate crime. However, given the far-reaching fallout of this kind of crime, there’s a case to consider a stand-alone legislation covering all its dimensions.
In a radical move to choke off energy revenues for Russia, G7 nations will now try to manipulate and limit the price of Russian oil. Behind the risky proposition is the acknowledgement that sanctions and embargoes already imposed by EU, US and their allies have had little impact on Russia’s war-making ability against Ukraine. On the contrary, the squeeze on Russian oil has actually elevated global crude prices – which continue to be well above the $100 per barrel mark – helping Moscow earn more for its war chest. True, EU has already pledged to block 90% of its Russian oil imports by the end of the year. But with exemptions for countries like Hungary and pipeline supplies, Russian oil continues to flow at elevated prices, aiding inflation and pushing up cost of living.
The G7 plan, though a long shot, seeks to undermine the so-called Russian ‘oilogopoly’ through price caps. Although details are yet to be fleshed out, initial reports indicate that it will work by lifting sanctions on insurance for cargo ships transporting Russian oil in return for a price deal. Theoretically, this should incentivise countries to accept the price cap. Also, London-based International Group of Protection & Indemnity Clubs insures nearly 95% of the world’s cargo shipment. The group itself would face sanctions if it insures any Russian oil cargo above the yet-to-be-determined price.
But while the plan sounds good on paper, it fails to consider strategic calculations some countries are making in buying Russian oil. China, for example, is unlikely to go along with the G7 on this since Beijing and Moscow today have formed a strong strategic compact. Also, how Russia will respond to being browbeaten this way is hard to predict. Price manipulation almost always has unforeseen consequences.
A much better idea is the French one of getting Iran and Venezuela back to the oil suppliers’ fold. But talks on reviving the Iran nuclear deal are caught in the brinkmanship between Tehran and Washington, something that suits Russian and Gulf Arab interests. Venezuela presents its own political challenges for the Biden administration. So this will need work. The West wants to weaken Russia, even if it damages the global economy, including Western ones. Level-headed approaches will consider facilitating Moscow-Kyiv negotiations. Every new plan to punish Russia hurts the global economy.29
The Performance Grading Index is GoI’s big effort to publish a multidimensional tracker of outcomes and inputs in school education at the state-level since 2017. However, since primary education hasn’t received the high-priority attention many Centre/state welfare schemes have, it’s hard to spot significant transformations. This week the PGI-District report for 2018-19 and 2019-20 was published, giving district-level data that compares learning outcomes, teaching quality, access and equity, physical infrastructure, digital learning and governance processes. Both progress and backsliding are evident.
Eighty-four indicators were tracked, including average scores in various subjects pulled from National Achievement Survey (NAS) data and physical and digital infrastructure in schools from the UDISE+ database. Details of fund utilisation, attendance monitoring, transition/retention rates from primary to secondary schooling, and teacher/pupil ratios depended on district authorities providing the data. In a large country, this reporting and aggregation of grassroots granular data to district/state levels can tell us a lot about the state of education. But data serves its purpose best when it’s contemporaneous. The latest PGI report is from 2019-20 and the learning outcomes are gleaned from 2017 NAS data.
Much has changed subsequently. The pandemic disrupted two successive academic calendars. NAS 2021 survey showed stark drops in average scores across classes in English, Maths and EVS from the 2017 edition. PGI reports for 2021-22 must be published quickly to help policymakers respond. Recent reports also suggest teachers are struggling to bridge learning deficits accumulated over two years. PGI data points tracking teachers’ professional outcomes can offer a wealth of data on post-Covid pedagogical responses if district-level officials conduct sincere grassroots monitoring. PGI reports should also be bolstered by case studies from both progressing and regressing districts. Supplement the data with sharp evidence.
Delhi will remember the summer of 2022 as one that broke many weather records. After extreme temperatures and back-to-back heatwave days, the Capital’s heat index touched 53 degrees on Tuesday, and the wet-bulb temperature, 33.7 degrees (the highest this year). The heat index is a function of maximum temperature and humidity, calculated in the shade. The wet-bulb temperature takes into account maximum temperature, wind speed, humidity, and solar radiation, calculated under direct sunlight. According to the India Meteorological Department, moisture-laden easterly winds are keeping humidity levels at 45%-74%.
The high heat index and wet-bulb temperatures can have adverse effects; at wet-bulb temperatures of 32°C, even fit and acclimatised people can’t work; at 35°C, the same people sitting in the shade die within six hours. Scientists warn that the climate crisis is making high wet-bulb temperatures more likely. If this is the future, India is staring at a crisis. This will have a countrywide impact. But the economically weaker states will be hit the hardest because a large demographic depends on daily wage work.
Policy gaps must be addressed. First, redefine heatwaves to include humidity; second, set up a system for proper reporting of heat-related deaths (90% of such deaths are not reported due to technical difficulties in diagnosing them); third, establish an institution legally bound to make data available; and fourth, make heat-related illnesses “notifiable” diseases and list them as a disaster by the National Disaster Management Authority so that heat victims can qualify for relief assistance. The heat emergency must be tackled before it gets out of control.
Decisions taken in the 47th Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council meeting are on expected lines. The five-year window for guaranteed revenue compensation to states, which was a part of the original federal agreement on GST, has not been extended. The Council has, even if only partially, accepted the recommendations of the empowered committee to begin GST rate rationalisation. Tax rates on some commodities have been increased and certain exemptions have been done away with. If the deliberations and decisions are any indication, one can expect more rate rationalisation and phasing out of exemptions in the next meeting. This newspaper has always held the view that unless these steps are taken, the original promise of GST-driven reforms – a uniform but also simple indirect tax regime for the Indian economy – will not materialise.
While the argument might not be palatable to state governments, especially those ruled by the Opposition, phasing out the guaranteed compensation window was essential to align the incentives for rationalising GST. Now that states have a higher stake in growth of GST revenue, there will be lower resistance to raising tax rates. Politically motivated steps such as rate cuts or exemptions before elections have eroded the sanctity of the regime in the last five years. While there can be a debate on whether or not the rate rationalisation process should have waited for inflationary pressures to ease, it needs to be kept in mind that the politically driven progressive reduction in average weighted GST rates started at a time when inflation was not really a problem in the economy. Also, anybody who is opposing the rate rationalisation process on the pretext of inflationary pressures but asking for an extension of the guaranteed compensation period, is making a contradictory argument. The compensation awarded to states is also financed out of an additional cess and, therefore, inflationary in nature.
While the prospects of rationalisation are encouraging, the government, especially the Centre, should not lose sight of the other structural problems which plague India’s fiscal federalism framework. Now that the Union does not have to find resources to compensate states, it should do a serious rethink on reducing the share of cess and special duties in central taxes because these are not shared with the states. This is one of the biggest reasons for states receiving a much smaller share of central taxes than what is mandated by the Finance Commission. It is only with such reciprocity that India’s fiscal federalism will truly become cooperative in nature.
The daylight murder of a Hindu tailor in Rajasthan’s Udaipur town by two Muslim men on Tuesday is a reprehensible and barbaric act, one that strikes at the heart of a multi-cultural, pluralist society and underlines an intolerant, orthodox impulse that must be stamped out legally, socially and culturally. Initial reports show that the two Muslim men attacked the tailor, Kanhaiya Lal, with sharp weapons (machetes) because the shopkeeper had backed controversial comments made by former Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Nupur Sharma on Prophet Mohammed. The men videographed their attack and were later seen gloating with their weapons, issuing threats to even Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi. The gruesome murder has ratcheted up tensions in the town, prompting the government to suspend internet services and deploy a large posse of police forces.
There can be no defence of the savage act. No comment, however controversial or offensive, can be used as justification for violence and threatening senior government figures. The two suspects must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law to send a message that such acts of mediaeval brutality cannot be tolerated in any modern society. Moreover, the government, local administration, faith and community leaders, and civil society members must work in tandem to ensure that no impressionable mind is led astray or falls prey to these crude attempts at inflaming communal passions, and that relations between communities don’t fray due to this heinous crime. The local administration moved quickly to arrest the two men, but it must answer why no action was taken when Lal complained that he had received specific threats. It should also ensure that no further conflagrations are permitted and any communal repercussions of the murder are contained.
Moments such as this define a nation’s journey. The murder, the misguided attempt at sowing seeds of discord in society and the blind allegiance to dogma and violence serve no religion, society or country. This fog of poisonous orthodoxy needs the sunlight of tolerance and mutual respect to be dispelled. Community and faith leaders must come together to defeat hate and bigotry that have been weaponised for ideological and political reasons, stamp out extremist impulses that tend to provoke disharmony for narrow sectarian goals, and teach younger generations that the edifice of Indian democracy rests on a foundation of respect for every faith and dignity to every citizen. This is how the Republic has endured for seven decades. Anyone trying to distort this project, from any side, must be stopped at all costs.
There are less than 100 Great Indian Bustards left and many die by colliding with power lines that are largely a part of renewable energy projects in the desert areas of northwest India. Several other birds, particularly raptors, die by colliding with wind turbines. Alarming data on bird collisions with the infrastructure of renewable energy projects has led BirdLife International and the Asia Development Bank to launch a new eSensitivity mapping tool called AVISTEP (Avian Sensitivity Tool for Energy Planning) last week, which will help determine which areas have the most impact on bird populations from renewable energy projects.
Renewable energy projects, like other conventional energy projects, have a huge footprint on land and biodiversity.
The beta version of the tool was launched at the ADB’s 2022 Asia Clean Energy Forum in Manila and the portal will become operational in a month or two.
The open-access tool that the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) helped create will help power developers and regulators identify sites suitable for wind and solar energy and that are unlikely to negatively impact birds as well as areas that are highly sensitive and should be avoided. It's time that the government and renewable energy developers considered ways to mitigate the impact on birds and other flora and fauna. While India gradually undergoes an energy transition, moving away from coal towards more and more clean energy, it cannot do so at the cost of extinction of certain species.
A research study led by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) last year estimated 87,966 bird mortalities per year due to collisions with power lines in only a 4200 km2 area of the Thar desert. The paper published in Elsevier’s Biological Conservation journal last year said the Great Indian Bustard is particularly vulnerable to power line collisions due to its narrow frontal vision and heavy flight.
The WII team estimated that the most frequently crossed 200 km transmission lines in Thar lead to a population-level mortality of 16% per year for Great Indian Bustards. This could cause extinction in the metapopulation of Great Indian Bustards within 20 years, according to a population viability analysis by the team. Authors had recommended burying overhead power lines in high-risk areas, installing diverters in low-risk areas, and fencing-off breeding habitats to prevent disturbances, among others. The availability of solar radiation alongside large, open, free spaces has attracted many wind turbines and solar plants in the last decade in Thar. Consequently, power lines have expanded rapidly. A mapping exercise by WII shows 1200 km of less than 33 KV and 500 km of more than 33 KV power lines in the area.
Another research study published in the Current Science journal in 2020 reported bird collisions from two wind farms: one at Kutch and another from Davangere, Karnataka. A total of 47 bird carcasses belonging to at least 11 species were reported in a three-year period from Kutch and 7 carcasses of at least 3 species in a one-year period were recorded at a Davengere wind farm. Raptors are the most affected group of birds worldwide by wind turbines, the paper said.
“The global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy presents an opportunity for positive change but, if poorly planned, could come at the expense of biodiversity. Renewable energy projects require large areas of land, and if developers only consider the availability of wind and solar resources, we could lose many millions of hectares of natural land- areas that store millions of tons of carbon and provide habitat to thousands of threatened species,” a statement by ADB said last week.
“Renewable energy is not truly ‘green’ unless efforts have been made to limit negative repercussions for biodiversity,” said BirdLife’s Tris Allinson, who has led the project.
BNHS has provided information on bird distribution and ground realities throughout India for the open access tool. “Raptors are at very high risk. We have reports from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and West Bengal that show that several species of birds tend to collide with both power and transmission lines and with rotating wind turbines. Raptors are at the top of the food chain and when their numbers reduce it affects several other species. For example, there are reports of lizard populations going up near wind farms due to the loss of raptors. There are also reports that certain small bird species do not come back to areas where wind or solar farms have developed. The impact on Great Indian Bustards in Rajasthan is very high. This tool will help renewable energy developers and the government avoid bird-rich areas. It has information for India, Vietnam, Thailand and Nepal for now,” explained Ramesh Kumar, a scientist at BNHS, to me.
High collision risk birds include Gyps vultures, Great Indian Bustard, raptors and water birds like flamingos, pelicans, and cranes. “Some passerines and ground birds also will benefit from the tool as they are reported to be affected by displacement due to the renewable energy infrastructure. The ecological imbalance due to the habitat loss of species which are at the top of the food chain could be minimised to a large extent especially in areas like the Western Ghats, west and east Coasts of India by using this tool,” Kumar added in a statement.
When I asked Sumit Dookia, a wildlife biologist specialising in biodiversity of the Thar desert and an assistant professor at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University about the impact of renewable energy projects on birds, he said: “Jaisalmer and Bikaner area lies within the Central Asian Flyway, recognized under Convention of Migratory Species. The very same area is under consistent development to establish renewable energy parks for the last 2 decades. Earlier wind energy parks and now in the last five years, a large number of solar energy parks are being established and more are going to be established in due course of time. The energy generated through renewable energy is connected through the state grid and national grid with a huge network of different levels of power lines. In the last two-three years, almost every power line is responsible for killing birds, ranging from vultures to Great Indian Bustards, Demoiselle cranes and pelicans. Around 1 lakh birds die due to collision or electrocution in the Thar desert, according to research papers.”
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
Even as leaders of the G-7, a grouping of the world’s seven richest nations, were meeting in Germany, Russia was busy bombarding Ukraine in a show of strength. Just before the summit began, Moscow unleashed a series of strikes across Ukraine using long-range missiles. And during the summit, reports came of Russian missiles hitting a shopping mall in the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk. Against this backdrop, G-7 leaders tried to project a sense of unity in support of Ukraine for “as long as necessary” and promised to take serious steps to cap the Kremlin’s income from oil sales that are financing the war. They also imposed new sanctions on Moscow to restrict its ability to import technologies for its arms industry.
Unity was the buzzword and the United States (US) President Joe Biden had it on the top of his agenda. “We have to stay together,” he told Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, underlining that “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin has been counting on it from the beginning, that somehow NATO would, and the G-7 would splinter and... but we haven’t, and we’re not going to.” Scholz underlined that unity over Ukraine was the group’s clear message to Putin. “We are united by our world view and by our belief in democracy and rule of law,” he insisted.
But this rhetoric could not hide the simmering worry among the leaders that this unity can easily wither away. As the war has dragged on, the western public is getting restless with rising inflation and a splintering of support for Ukraine remains a distinct possibility, something that Putin will be watching closely. Also, in most G-7 nations, domestic politics is getting murkier as leaders such as Biden and the United Kingdom’s Boris Johnson face growing dissent within their own parties. French President Emmanuel Macron suffered a significant loss of support in the recent parliamentary elections. Even in Germany, there is a growing divide on its Russia policy.
So, the G-7 members had to tread cautiously as they made their case to their own people and to each other for the best possible response to the Russian aggression. This summit saw them achieve seeming unity on the issue, but it’s unclear how long it will last.
The other major focal point of this year’s summit was a $600-billion infrastructure plan for emerging economies in response to China’s global influence via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) will have the US raise $200 billion through grants, federal funds, and private investment, while the EU pledged around 300 billion euros. With the aim of presenting a “positive powerful investment impulse to the world to show our partners in the developing world that they have a choice,” this partnership is geared towards tackling the climate crisis, improving global health, achieving gender equity, and building digital infrastructure. At last year’s summit, the Build Back Better World initiative was announced, but could not gather momentum. PGII is an attempt to rectify past problems and make it operational quickly.
India is now a regular invitee to G-7 summits and this year, despite New Delhi’s differences with the West over the Ukraine crisis, India’s presence, with Argentina, Indonesia, Senegal and South Africa, as a guest for the summit underlines its growing weight in global conversations. As a major democracy and a rising economic power, India’s participation is key in resolving global governance challenges, and today, more than any other time in recent history, New Delhi is willing to play a role in providing solutions to global problems. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s focus was also on showcasing India as a responsible global stakeholder as he highlighted India achieving the target of 40% energy capacity from non-fossil sources nine years before time and invited the G-7 countries to invest in the vast untapped market for clean energy technologies.
At a time when the world order is intensely polarised, India remains one of the few nations which can engage with both the G-7 and BRICS in a matter of days with élan. New Delhi has been consistent about its stance on global matters and in the process has managed to generate a sense of trust with its varied interlocutors. India’s pursuit of a truly multipolar world makes it incumbent upon New Delhi to engage with multiple partners while never losing sight of its own vital interests. Partnerships should enhance India’s strategic autonomy, not constrain it. India’s G-7 engagement should also be seen in that light.
Harsh V Pant is vice-president, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi and professor at King’s College London
The views expressed are personal
Over the past decade, the Hindu-Muslim axis has once again emerged as the central pole of Indian politics. But now, a period of churn has set in, following a raft of incidents, the latest being the brutal daylight murder of a Hindu tailor in Rajasthan’s Udaipur by two Muslim men, because the former backed controversial comments on Prophet Mohammed by a former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson. There is a view that the current state of sectarian tensions was inevitable in a way, because majoritarian rhetoric has been part of the ruling party’s electoral agenda. But signals coming from the top leadership of the BJP and its ideological fount, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), indicate that the ruling party is increasingly finding itself in a tricky position due to the cascading effect of these events. The tipping point seems to have been breached. It has not only exposed the inner fault lines of hardliners versus moderates within the Hindutva ecosystem, but also exposed a fundamental contradiction between the party’s ideological-political goals with its governance-related imperatives.
How will the BJP proceed from here on? There are two views on what the party must do. The first believes that the BJP must pivot before it’s too late and course-correct before the 2024 Lok Sabha (LS) polls, because, though there is no nationally assertive Opposition, the party might find it difficult to counterbalance anti-incumbency sentiments emanating from continuously winning LS seats for several terms in many parts of northwest India. Furthermore, as a ruling party, it must focus on establishing order, and shift from agitational routes of politics to implementing its governance agenda, especially on employment. This necessitates that the party must rein in some supporters who are flirting with what amounts to hate politics, adopt a more restrained position on majoritarian nationalism, and reach out to Muslim communities.
The second believes that the uproar over the remarks on Prophet Mohammed was yet another organised attempt to undermine Hindus and the Modi government. According to this view, the riot-like situations in many parts of the country thereafter, the backlash from West Asia, and the selective response of the liberal-secular position on some of these incidents (including those who commented on symbols related to Hindu religious beliefs) have been hypocritical at best. A section of the Hindutva base – which has been unhappy with the BJP for not doing enough – has been further galvanised by the Prophet row and the gruesome murder in Udaipur. This group has likely imbibed the idea that having the BJP in power is necessary to protect its religious interest and keep so-called anti-Hindu forces at bay.
The BJP confronts a clear dilemma and its strategies will depend on the party’s calibration of the positive and negative fallouts on various fronts. The party realises that the impulse towards radicalism and polarisation has strained the rule of law and impacted governance. And, many of these controversies will hurt investment and hinder the government’s efforts to rein in commodity prices and boost job growth. The current regime is already seen unfavourably by large sections of the global civil society, including many international media outlets, on questions of liberties, and it is now being forced to spend political capital in mending diplomatic strains.
The biggest challenges for the party are ideological and political. Since coming to power in 2014, the Modi regime has delivered on two longstanding ideological goals – construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and changing the status quo in Jammu and Kashmir. The current set of controversies – ranging from the Karnataka hijab row, the violent clashes on Hanuman Jayanti and Ram Navami and the revanchist campaign in Kashi and Mathura – has the ability to create new ideological planks. For this reason alone, the top leadership has struck largely conciliatory positions, and even occasionally admonished more extreme elements.
Politically, the BJP’s challenges are not merely electoral but also organisational. All political parties have layered support bases, with a core forming the nucleus. In the BJP’s case, while hardliners have clear anti-Muslim prejudices, the main concern of moderates is propagation of pro-Hindu politics. While these different support bases may share overlapping concerns, the BJP needs to figure out a way to engage with the hardliners, without alienating its more centrist base. The leadership understands that political power in India necessitates forging a broad-based social coalition. The current unhappiness of hardliners may not lead them to think of forming an extreme-Right wing alternative or vote for non-BJP parties, but they are indispensable for the party’s mobilisational infrastructure. A dip in their enthusiasm level will diminish the BJP’s mobilisational capacity to rally non-core voting blocs.
On the one hand, current communal conflagrations might bring clear electoral advantages for the BJP, and restraining hardliners could give them greater incentives to unite and emerge as a more powerful lobby within the party system. On the other, it won’t be easy for the party leadership to reverse this rising tide after letting the hardliners set the terms of debate by raising the bogey of one controversy after another.
The die has been cast and the fallout of these events is unpredictable – both for the BJP’s internal politics as well as its governance legacy. India is now in the midst of a cycle of incremental polarisation, with periods of highs and lows, which will keep shifting the ideological middle ground further to the Right. How the party treads this path will determine the future of not just the BJP, but also Indian democracy.
Rahul Verma is with the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi
The views expressed are personal
Less than a year after the forced closure of all its missions, India has made quite a return to Afghanistan. As a first responder of humanitarian relief after the earthquake that took over 1,000 lives, a group of Indian officials — cryptically termed "technical team”— landed in Kabul in an Indian Air Force plane, delivered substantial aid, and reopened the embassy last week. Such diplomatic reopening occurred days after what India believes, accurately or otherwise, is a warning signal from Rawalpindi: The Islamic State Khorasan’s attack on the Karte Parwan gurdwara, which forced the last Afghan Sikhs to leave their homeland.
India’s return to a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan has occurred against the backdrop of a raging debate about when, how, and to what extent, it should re-establish a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan. After all, India evacuated its personnel in 2021 to protect them from guaranteed attacks. Though it wants India back, the Taliban’s territorial control remains uneven, political writ challenged, and its stand on human and women’s rights uncompromising. Does it then make sense to invest capital and resources to re-establish limited diplomatic ties?
Few believe that India should not return to Afghanistan at all. But not all are convinced about the method and timing. Arguably, India could invest more in the anti-Taliban resistance groups, and wait for a more propitious moment in its ties with Pakistan to avoid a violent pushback akin to the gurdwara attack. The risk herein is that the resistance could falter, and Pakistan will never willingly accept India’s return. To make sense of India’s decision, then, it’s important to unpack Afghanistan’s internal situation, India-Pakistan dynamics, and India’s bureaucratic tussles.
The Taliban, flourishing with violent factionalism, wants revenues and legitimacy. Financial support is important to deliver necessities to a starving population, and to build a State that could inch towards abating, if not ending, conflict. International legitimacy is needed for the same reason. The Taliban’s diplomatic limbo, and the Haqqani family’s listing as a foreign terrorist outfit by the United States (US), limits the scale and scope of external aid and engagement. The Taliban is struggling on both counts, and views engagement with India, a regional heavyweight, as critical.
India’s relations with Pakistan, too, are undergoing a change. Imran Khan’s ouster and Shehbaz Sharif’s arrival has reduced vitriolic rhetoric on both sides. The ceasefire on the Line of Control holds, the backchannel remains open, and there’s recognition of the need to restart cross-border trade. India is unlikely to spend political capital on peace with Pakistan till it’s sure of Sharif’s political longevity, and the forthcoming Chief of Army Staff (COAS)’s — to be announced in six months — inclination. But a Pakistan drowning in debt, seeking an outreach to the US, and keen to reduce bilateral hostilities is unlikely to push back against India in Afghanistan, beyond a point.
Islamabad’s argument that India uses Afghanistan to foment militancy inside Pakistan stands belied, given the spike in attacks by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Baloch nationalists during India’s absence from Kabul. In this context, Pakistani attempts to obviate India’s return could complicate an already deteriorating Pakistan-Taliban relationship. The fact that former Pakistani intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed (after being bruised in the Imran-Bajwa battle) was in Kabul to secure a Haqqani-arbitered ceasefire with the TTP is a sign that the Taliban wants to increase its foreign policy autonomy, even if its leverage over Rawalpindi remains limited.
In India, the push for engaging with the Taliban came from a small but experienced set of officials. They picked up long-lost channels with multiple Taliban leaders — including the Haqqanis — and started building operational understanding, if not trust, where none existed. Part of India’s security bureaucracy remains unsure about the Taliban’s capability and willingness to provide security to Indian personnel posted in Kabul. These are genuine, but old concerns. Indians have long been under fire in Afghanistan, and that’s unlikely to change.
The onus of providing security is on the Taliban’s shoulders, including Sirajuddin Haqqani. To be sure that it is not reliant on Haqqani, who has Indian blood on his hands, New Delhi has invested in his competitor Mullah Yaqoob, who recently gave a first of its kind interview to an Indian news channel. Coupled with the fact that Iran, itself competing with Pakistan for leverage over the Taliban, is offering logistical support for evacuations is as good as it gets to cushion such security risks. To not capitalise on these moves is likely to make it harder for India to return to Kabul in the future.
There is a serious counter-argument that resistance to the Taliban is growing. The National Resistance Front is down but not out, and former power brokers such as Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ismael Khan, and Ustad Atta are planning a comeback. India is likely to keep its options open if battlefield dynamics evolve. But to remain aloof with regard to a neighbouring country of immense strategic value makes little sense.
To view India’s outreach as an endorsement of the Taliban’s violence and misogyny or giving up on old allies — which it is not — misses the point that India’s relations with Afghanistan are more than just about the Taliban.
To ensure continuity in its ties with all Afghans, and to support them with much-needed aid, India needs to be on the ground in Kabul, not thousands of miles removed.
Avinash Paliwal teaches at SOAS University of London and is the author of My Enemy’s Enemy: India in Afghanistan from the Soviet Invasion to the US Withdrawal
The views expressed are personal
As I put together my thoughts on queer representation in contemporary India’s photographic history, the Museum of London has just announced its acquisition of acclaimed photographer and queer activist Sunil Gupta’s seminal 1988 work, ‘Pretended’ Family Relationships, which will also be on permanent display in the museum’s upcoming West Smithfield location in 2026. On May 26, 1988, Margaret Thatcher’s government enacted ‘Clause 28,’ which stated that local authorities “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” This prompted Gupta to quote the phrase “Pretend Family Relationship” in the title of his series. He extended the ongoing work to include the lesbian community and images of protests against the clause, making the work as political as it was personal. Gupta’s work has been at the forefront of queer activism wherever he’s lived in the last five decades, including Delhi.
As a young photographer in the mid-2000s, I hadn’t come across any photojournalistic work that truly represented the queer community in India. On August 16, 2005, I was sent to photograph a protest in Flora Fountain, Mumbai, for a newspaper I worked at then. I reached there to see a large gathering of queer people and allies handing out pamphlets to passers-by and shouting slogans in support of queer lives and visibility. I remember filing the images and in the years to follow, attending and covering queer pride marches in both Delhi and Mumbai.
Having been a photo editor for over a decade now, I can confidently say that mainstream photojournalism has chosen to see the queer community only when the community has decided to show themselves publicly during protests or marches. There is no curiosity, visual insight into the LGBTQIA+ spectrum apart from this routine. I’ve always found this immensely reductive as a practice of simply seeing.
In 2012, when I came across Sunil Gupta’s book ‘Queer,’ it was an unforgettable viewing experience. From uncontrived images of young gay men walking in New York’s streets in the 1970s, to anonymous images of gay men in India the decade after, as well as Gupta’s documentation of the relationship with his own body before and after his AIDS diagnosis, ‘Queer’ was a proud archive of public and private intimacies.
As a photographer myself, I was and remain in awe of Gupta’s commitment to visualising the language of the queer way of life. A key text in the book is an unhinged conversation between Gupta and his close friend Saleem Kidwai, a queer activist, historian and scholar who co-edited the acclaimed ‘Same-Sex Love in India’ in 2000. Kidwai passed away in August 2021 and Gupta authored an endearing tribute in this publication. During their conversation in the book, Gupta admits that he has consistently searched for a “gay Indian image” and in the section ‘Sun City’ in the book, Gupta makes a series of constructed portraits of gay men in a bathhouse almost performing their opposing choices — that of being married or being promiscuous. Desire was universal in the depiction and experience of queerness for Gupta.
I first heard of Dayanita Singh’s book, ‘Myself Mona Ahmed’ in 2009, but managed to buy a copy only three years later. After having gone through it thoroughly, I was struck by the power of collaborative portraiture. Mona Ahmed was as much the portraitist as she was the archivist of her own life, with Singh being her chosen medium of expression — an honour rare in any artist’s relationship with their practice. This is such a remarkable photo book that it almost invisibilises the camera in its reading. In essence, the book is a collection of letters and photographs. Throughout the book, Ahmed writes letters about her life to Walter Keller, the publisher of Scalo Books, who produced the book.
Born in pre-Independent India to a Muslim family in Old Delhi, Ahmed was abandoned by them because of her gender, and then eventually by the hijra community because of her unwillingness to align to what was expected of her. What is radically queer about the book is Ahmed’s refusal to be boxed into her gender and understood linearly in any photograph. Ahmed chose all the photographs and wrote all the captions in the book, and as Singh reveals in an interview to Vikramaditya Sahai in The White Review, “This book is just one story, the one she chose to give me.”
After Ahmed adopts a little girl Ayesha, there is a remarkable series of photographs in the book that depict the celebrations around Ayesha’s birthdays between 1990-1992. What we witness is not just Ahmed’s sheer joy of becoming a mother, but also the camaraderie in the hijra community, where members travel from not just other cities, but even from across the border to celebrate with Ahmed. I had never known of the strength of this kind of queer family, before I saw it in the pages of Singh’s book.
The story is as much about Ahmed’s dreams as it is about the photographs she chooses to show them crumble with time. The community abandons her, Ayesha is taken away from Ahmed by her guru Chaman, then she slips into depression, poverty and yet, Ahmed plans to build a palace in her family’s ancestral graveyard that she inhabits. Singh’s book about Ahmed is perhaps the most powerful work I have seen about a queer life in India. It is about a life on the fringes of identity and society, but not at the end of hope or love. The last letter in the book is to her daughter Ayesha, and not her publisher, Keller. “They stole my dog and poisoned my monkey. If you were with me, I could face any problem in the world. But now I am all alone, all alone in the graveyard,” writes Ahmed, signing off for the first time in the book as “Abboo (father).”
paroma.mukherjee@htlive.com
This is part of a special HT Premium series, spanning personal essays, reportage and analyses, to mark Pride Month
The views expressed are personal
Chickens are the most common domestic animal, with estimates of over 80 billion birds worldwide. That’s around 10 chickens per every man, woman, and child. But though chickens are found everywhere and commonly eaten, they weren’t originally considered a source of food.
It is widely held that chickens were first domesticated in the Indian subcontinent since signs of chickens were found in Harappan civilisations. But the early history of the bird is not well known and has been debated among scholars.
A new study led by Greger Larson of the Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network at the University of Oxford and published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on June 6 disputes the claim that domesticated chickens originated in India, finding “unambiguous chickens” around 3,500 years ago in what is now central Thailand.
The team analysed chicken bones from hundreds of sites in 89 countries and matched their findings with available historical and cultural information. They conclude that chickens arrived in China, India, and West Asia a few hundred years after their initial domestication. And it is from here that chickens spread to western Africa and Mediterranean Europe.
Though chickens are commonplace now, it is amusing to think that they might have been venerated as majestic and strange birds when they were first encountered in parts of Africa and Europe. In China and other parts of Asia, chickens would also have been used in sport for cock fighting.
The researchers found that a species of bird called the red junglefowl had been present where the first signs of domesticated chickens emerge, pointing to a likely origin. In Thailand, chicken bones began to show up in sites dating to the time when dry rice agriculture emerged in the region. Rice cultivation and chicken farming seemed to go hand in hand for a few centuries.
What about the widely held notion that chickens were first domesticated in India? Two wild birds – the red junglefowl species and another kind of bird, the gray junglefowl are present in the Indian subcontinent making a proper identification of early domestication here difficult. But the authors of the current study claim that bones from Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa discovered earlier had been misidentified as chicken bones. They also write that Vedic texts make no mention of chickens until 1200 BCE. So, according to the new study, while wildfowl have been in India since antiquity, poultry farming started in India much later, after the Bronze Age Harappan civilizations. This would fit with their hypothesis of an origin further east near Thailand and then spread to India.
Whatever their origin, chickens weren’t routinely eaten after their early domestication. Complete skeletons of older birds have been found in some of the oldest sites indicating chickens were perceived differently back then. If chickens were routinely eaten, we would expect bones from birds to be tossed away. Also, bones would have cut marks. These kinds of bones were found in sites dating to much later.
It took hundreds of years for people to realise that chickens could serve as a regular source of food. The Romans were responsible for much of the spread of poultry for meat across Europe. Much later, the Catholic Church aided the rise of chicken-eating, because chickens (which are two-legged animals) were allowed during certain fasting periods when four-legged animals were not.
But throughout history, domesticated chickens looked nothing like the broiler chickens that provide meat and eggs on a mass scale today. Early domesticated chickens were much smaller than the production line “meat factory” poultry birds that grow rapidly today.
Even in India, the popularity of chickens among non-vegetarians is relatively recent. Chickens were never considered “prestige meat”. For example, in Eastern India, eating chicken was verboten among many non-vegetarian Hindu communities (up until my father’s generation in my own family).
In North America, chicken cultivation was relegated to the sidelines until the middle of the last century. A contest called the “Chicken of Tomorrow” helped to develop commercial broiler chickens that grew faster. Commercial breeding and the use of antibiotics made chickens almost monstrous in size compared to their early relatives.
Now, of course, chicken is the most popular meat in many countries. Chicken farming and meatpacking are a multibillion-dollar global enterprise today.
Anirban Mahapatra is a scientist by training and the author of a book on COVID-19. He’s writing a second popular-science book
The views expressed are personal
The Supreme Court order on Monday extending the deadline for the rebel MLAs of the Shiv Sena to reply to the notice of disqualification issued by the deputy speaker of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly gives MLAs a much-needed reprieve. It also underscores the need for a controlled pace at which such processes are undertaken by the authorities concerned, at the same time, raising the question as to the extent to which constitutional courts can intervene in the functioning of the legislature.
Deputy speaker Narhari Zirwal had on June 25 issued notices to 16 Sena rebel MLAs, including their leader and senior minister Eknath Shinde, seeking their explanation by June 27 as to why they should not be disqualified from the membership of the Assembly for violating party discipline. The notice was issued under the Members of Maharashtra Legislative Assembly (Disqualification on Ground of Defection) Rules, 1986, on a petition by the chief whip of the party.
The court’s intervention can be welcomed on the ground that the deputy speaker’s decision to initiate the disqualification process — he had given the rebels hardly three days to respond to the notice with a rider that failing to meet the deadline would be construed as their action being indefensible — displays a haste which does not fit into the democratic scheme of things. Disqualification of a person elected by the people must follow a measured, just and fair process and cannot be triggered by extraneous considerations.
The court refused to issue directions to the legislature and its presiding officer on the way it should conduct their business. That is welcome but the court should ideally stop at this point: the issue of the no-confidence motion pending against the deputy speaker should not be a factor for the court as it’s the business of the legislature.
It is a plain fact that the ruling front and the rebel Sena faction are engaged in a political game which will be decided by its own rules; the larger common good or the constitutional niceties have very little role to play in this drama. Still, the people who are mandated to uphold constitutional principles are required to do so, and the courts will be called in if they refused to do so. It only serves the cause of justice and democracy if the members who face action are given sufficient time to explain their position and the processes are completed as per the rules. A show of haste would send the wrong signals, and the Supreme Court also referred to it when it said, “at time times, undue haste gives unavoidable inferences”.
It is in the interest of the people of Maharashtra that the stalemate ends at the earliest but that gives the governor no authority to cast doubts on the functioning of the government of the day by calling for the files on the decisions it had taken on certain days. A council of ministers is collectively accountable only to the House of the people and unless the House decides otherwise, its decisions have the authority of the law. The governor must desist from sitting in judgment on them.
...India and four other democracies attended the Group of Seven summit of the seven most advanced economies of the world on June 26-28. It was hosted by Germany at the Alpine city of Elmau. Besides India, the other attendees were South Africa and Senegal from Africa, Indonesia from Asia and Argentina from Latin America. Indonesia is the most populous Islamic nation, which is hosting the Group of 20 summit later this year. That is an expanded grouping which, in addition to the G-7, includes 13 nations selected for their geo-economic importance.
The G-7 faced especially acute challenges this year as the global effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have been compounded by the war in Ukraine. There is an escalatory impact on the price and availability of energy and food. Russia having blockaded all Ukrainian ports, the wheat and other foodgrain in their silos are isolated from the global markets. Russia and Ukraine are two of the biggest grain exporters of the world. Furthermore, eastern Ukraine, now the theatre of the Russian military advance, also constitutes its agrarian and industrial heartland. Therefore, even the sowing of the next crop is affected.
The 28-page Leaders’ Communique spells out the perceived challenges and suggested solutions. A two-page summary of this was also issued. The introductory para of the communique emphasises G-7 unity in a fragmented world and their resolve, together with their partners, to “jointly defend universal human rights and democratic values, the rules-based multilateral order and the resilience of our democratic societies”. The core immediate concern is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but looming above it are the rise of China and climate change.
The G-7, especially the United States, have been distracted from the latter two challenges due to the Ukraine war. There is an attempt to restore some balance between these near-term and more fundamental concerns. It is also correctly realised that the global liberal democratic order, now under challenge by resurgent autocratic powers like Russia and China, cannot be defended without strengthening democracy within nations and shepherding the transition of the world to a more sustainable, climate-neutral economic model.
For that, the G-7 resolved to rustle up $2.8 billion of humanitarian aid and $29.5 billion of budget aid to Ukraine. As regards the rest of the world, the escalating price of energy is to be tackled by a novel scheme of price caps on Russian oil. US President Joe Biden is also travelling to Saudi Arabia soon to try to wean it away from OPEC Plus, which includes Russia, and encourage increased oil production.
But the problem is that by pushing the developed nations to reduce their dependency on Russian oil and gas there is the danger of climate and environmental goals getting compromised. The German government, supported by the Greens Party, is unwilling to shift to nuclear power. It is relooking at fossil fuels for power production. A transition to LNG will also need time and capital. After three months of the Ukraine war and despite the sanctions, Russia continued to make nearly $1 billion a day from its oil and gas exports, enabling it to finance its war effort.
The difficulty in curbing Russian energy income is two-fold. European Union members will only complete their energy boycott of Russia by the yearend. Also, India and China have been lapping up discounted Russian oil at increased levels. Before the Ukraine war, India’s oil imports were only one per cent of the total. According to Kpler, a commodity data company, Indian imports from Russia last month were 1.15 million barrels per day (mbd). India’s refining capacity is 5 mbd, enabling India to import even a higher amount, catapulting Russia ahead of India’s current top supplier Kuwait.
To balance these different requirements, some of them mutually conflicting, the G-7 announced some pathways. A Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) will mobilise $600 billion over the next five years to “narrow the global investment gap”. Some will call it a counter to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. The G-7 proposal instead is not merely to create a spoke and hub network with the EU at the centre, like the Chinese BRI. It is also to enable the transition to an environmentally friendly order. That is why this initiative is dovetailed into Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETP), with India, Senegal, and Vietnam. There is already one with South Africa.
The summit also issued a clarion call for an open society and liberal democracy within nations, as a condition precedent to a liberal rules-based international order. That is why the five invitees and the G-7 issued a separate “2022 Resilient Democracies Statement”. On Page 25 of the Leaders’ Communique there is a commitment “to halt democratic backsliding and undermining of our fundamental values”.
In the separate statement, to which India is a party, the threats to democracy globally are noted, followed by a commitment to “defending peace, human rights, the rule of law, human security and gender equality”. The resolve to promote a rules-based international order, normally a euphemism for criticising Chinese unilateralism and now Russia’s attack on Ukraine, is prefaced by the words “as democracies”. The sub-headings in the Resilient Democracies Statement comprehensively delineate the contours of a liberal democracy, and are as follows: Global Responsibility: Democracies as Reliable Partners; Information Environment: Democracies Defending Open and Pluralistic Debate; Civil Society: Democracies Protecting and Fostering Open and Pluralistic Civic Spaces; Inclusion and Equality: Democracies Promoting Equal Representation.
Ironically, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was committing India to this high road of progressive thought, aligned with the internationally recognised principles of a liberal democracy, the conduct of the law enforcement agencies at home was at variance. The arrest of a lawyer and civil society advocate by the anti-terrorism cell of the Gujarat police and the action against a co-founder of a fact-checking website that tries to counter online bigotry for an old tweet, dating back several years, were a poor reflection on the state of democracy in India. Some resilience, if at all, was being shown by the beleaguered Opposition, especially in Maharashtra, where the ruling party’s breakaway legislators were cajoled, hosted, and protected by the BJP.
The question that lingers is whether a high moral tone abroad and no-rules electoral politics back at home can be sustained in the long run. So far, the world seems willing to look the other way if certain red lines are not crossed, like by Nupur Sharma.
Though N.T. Rama Rao (1923-1996) appeared on India’s political firmament like a meteor, many of his achievements have stood the test of time. I remember meeting him in early 1983 in Cuddapah district, where I had just joined as collector and district magistrate. Having assumed power in January 1983 as Andhra Pradesh’s first non-Congress chief minister, he began his term with a missionary zeal. According to NTR’s biographers, Chandrahas and Lakshminarayana, a Cabinet meeting in February had 32 items on the agenda, like the abolition of the Legislative Council, a bill to provide equal property rights to women and abolition of capitation fees in professional colleges.
Interestingly, another item was finally added -- to reduce the retirement age of government servants from 58 to 55 years. His intention was soon translated into action, retiring about 18,000 officials on one day, with 12,000 more to follow. It was a most difficult time, with young people charged with the hope to fill up such vacancies. However, his interaction with me and other district officials was very cordial.
His tirade against corruption, his pursuing of institutional reforms at the village level, espousal of women’s empowerment with bold affirmative action, his all-out endeavour to make the Rs 2 per kilo rice scheme for the poor a model in the public distribution system, and similar measures catapulted him to a position few chief ministers of his time could attain. He gave welfarism a new dimension.
In January 1986, the International Film Festival (Filmostav) was being organised in Hyderabad. Earlier, I was appointed in-charge of the State Film Development Corporation and department of culture, to coordinate activities with the Directorate of Film Festivals in New Delhi, which was primarily responsible for conducting the event. Hailing from the film world, NTR wanted to make it a grand show, as indeed it turned out to be. I will narrate three incidents to give a glimpse into NTR’s personality.
One day, we were finalising the names of members of various festival committees with NTR at his residence. Suddenly, the state’s lokayukta entered the room, and said something like: “Oh, you are surrounded by your able lieutenants.” Smilingly, NTR replied: “Yes, they are my wings. Without them I cannot fly.”
Another day, I suggested Satyajit Ray be invited as a state guest whose presence would add value to the festival. NTR agreed enthusiastically, but added that Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kumar (of Kannada cinema) and “brother” M.G. Ramachandran should also be invited. Other than Ray, who could not come due to health reasons, and MGR, the rest of the luminaries attended. NTR personally received them.
A few days before the festival, NTR was upset over the list of invitees for the inaugural event. The invitations were issued by the Directorate of Film Festivals, taking the state protocol list into consideration. But NTR perhaps expected the final list to be approved by him. In a meeting to convey his displeasure, I tried to explain the process when he thundered: “I am the Protocol”. Imperial hauteur, as someone remarked!
These incidents show how endearing he could be and also how stern, if needed. A man of action, he was guided by his own light. He was not unreasonable, but not many officers could face and guide him properly.
The NTR brand of politics, built largely around personality, capitalising on regional (Telugu) pride, was not entirely novel. But he lifted it to a new height. His detractors critiqued his working style and cult status, decrying many of his schemes as populist. But his personal integrity, commitment to traditional morality and discipline, capacity for hard work and charisma were traits never questioned.
Once, after an exhausting tour of the district, NTR reached the Cuddapah guest house quite late in the night, and decided to skip his dinner. Sometime later, I entered his room to take leave and saw something unusual. He was reclining on the bed and looked pleased at the sight of a priest-like man, sitting on the floor, savour a sumptuous dinner. Did NTR offer the elaborate fare meant for him to this Brahmin, I wondered.
I was once invited to a private screening of Shyam Benegal’s Susman that was arranged for NTR. It was a realistic film showing the struggles of the handloom weavers of Pochampally village. NTR also liked it but felt that the film should have ended on a happier and more positive note, reminding me how West Bengal’s first chief minister B.C. Roy had felt about the ending of Satyajit Ray’s epochal Pather Panchali. No two persons could be more different than NTR and Roy, yet their response was broadly similar.
NTR was above pettiness and parochialism, as his vision of Telugu Ganga, one purpose of which was to supply drinking water to Madras, shows. As chairman of the National Front too, he emerged as a force in national politics. After about eight years in Mussoorie and New Delhi, I returned to Hyderabad in mid-1995 and called on NTR during his third term as CM. He was a pale shadow, not the same person anymore. One aide sought to introduce me when he said: “Yes, we are old friends.” I met him one last time to brief him about irrigation projects in the Rayalseema area that he was planning to visit. He appeared totally unmindful. He lost power shortly thereafter and passed away in a few months.
Momentous changes have taken place since NTR’s demise in the vast area where he once governed with authority. Whatever be the limitations of his approach and vision, he played his part devotedly, preparing Andhra Pradesh to emerge as one of the most prosperous, forward-looking and technologically advanced states of India.
India’s representative to Bhutan, Ruchira Kamboj, is on her way to the United Nations to succeed T.S. Tirumurti as India’s new permanent representative. An Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer from the 1987 batch, Ms Kamboj has a lot of expertise with political problems, maintaining peace, and handling crises. Besides, she will be returning to a place she is familiar with because previously in her career, she was assigned to India’s Permanent Mission to the UN.
While most diplomats usually work behind the scenes, as India’s Chief Protocol Officer — another first as she is the first Indian woman to occupy the position — Ms Kamboj had attracted public attention in a way that most diplomats don’t, during the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, where several heads of state from SAARC nations and Mauritius were present.
Protocol, as insiders point out, is a frontline tool of diplomacy — and much more than welcoming foreign dignitaries and showing them around. It is the key to effective diplomacy — and not to be confused with grandeur, pomp and ceremony. There is relentless hard work behind the glitter. Like good wine, protocol often sets the mood and creates the right atmospherics for the serious diplomatic business that is being conducted.
In this sense, Ruchira Kamboj is at a decided advantage at the UN as India’s ambassador, having met most global leaders when they visited India during her days as protocol in charge. Her new assignment will, of course, require more than a genteel formality and diplomatic etiquette. But, by all indications, she is prepared to be India’s voice on the world’s biggest diplomatic stage.
Delhi babus ready themselves for massive reshuffle
In one of his first significant decisions since taking over, the new lieutenant governor of Delhi, Vinai Kumar Saxena, has ordered the suspension of P.C. Thakur, deputy secretary in chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s office, and two SDMs Harshit Jain and Devender Sharma over corruption charges. Sources have informed DKB that disciplinary proceedings have been initiated against the DANICS officers.
However, there are even bigger changes being effected in the Delhi government, which will likely impact 60-70 per cent of Delhi Administrative Subordinate Services (DASS) officers. According to sources, chief secretary Naresh Kumar has reportedly asked the heads of departments to prepare a list of DASS officers posted in a department for several years and transfer them. This decision comes days after the Delhi government transferred over 40 IAS and DANICS officers.
What’s behind this major revamp? It seems that 70 per cent of officials have been serving in the same department for over five years. The guidelines of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) state that officials on key posts should be moved every three years while others should be transferred after five years in a post.
However, given the sheer numbers involved, sources have told DKB that the transfers will likely be done in phases to avoid large-scale disruption of work.
Ministry stands by babu, ignores tribal board
R. Jaya, additional secretary, ministry of tribal affairs, will continue to hold additional charge of the Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India Ltd (TRIFED) despite the unanimous decision of the Board of Directors of TRIFED to discontinue her services. This unanimous stance was conveyed to secretary of tribal affairs Anil Kumar Jha by the TRIFED chairperson, Ramsingh Rathwa.
But, to the surprise of many who expected Jaya to be divested of her additional charge, the ministry has ignored the Board’s drastic decision and chosen to stand firmly behind the babu. It has been made clear that Ms Jaya will continue in this additional charge until a regular official is appointed.
The ministry’s stance should be shot in the arm for Ms Jaya, whose position had become shaky after the Board stated that it did not wish to continue with her as its managing director, after her alleged non-cooperation in implementing the Board’s decisions.
While the ministry has decided to stick with Ms Jaya, for the moment, it does make some observers wonder how it will work out for her as she will have to continue working with the TRIFED directors, who have already made their stance clear. It’s not going to be smooth sailing, for sure.
If the Moscow-Kyiv conflict endures, with no ceasefire likely in the foreseeable future, a drastic change of the conflict zone is inevitable as and when it eventually ends. So, forget any status quo ante.
This war follows the typical European pattern of jingoistic belligerents. One can foresee prolonged post-bloodshed haggling and wrangling, and grumbling over lingering disputes, as seen in pockets of Europe. Today’s bloodbath is the legacy of myriad conflicts going back centuries.
This has also triggered speculation about the potential shape and size of a post-war Ukraine. Who will get what? Which nation, which may not be directly part of the conflict now, may be a surprise beneficiary?
The ominous signs are crystallising. Even in the best of times, Europe has rarely seen peace for long. A part of the continent has always simmered and seethed with discontent or disillusionment since mid-eighteenth century due to the continent’s lopsided development and decay, and growth on the shoulders of imperial profits at the cost of the territorial loss of poorer and landlocked units.
We can only hope that the present doesn’t emulate the past to make the future murkier, darker and dirtier. Nationalism over land has usually been the prime headache for Europe. Put the clock back one century, and see the chaos “nationalism” created for Europe’s grandeur and decline. The fall in birth rates and rise in deaths made a prosperous generation wary of physical battles on its own soil. This transformed the nature of nationalism from physical combat to cash, commerce and profit.
When the First World War ended in 1918, the concept of “national self-determination” took centre-stage at the conference table. Even imperial powers gave lip service to the fancy new terminology to keep the small, gullible powers satisfied, lest they played spoilt-sport over the possession of distant empires. Four empires (of Berlin, Vienna, Istanbul, Moscow) fell under the internal weight factor of “national self-determination”. This gave rise to the new stimulant of “aroused national sentiment” to wage war and give hope to achieve sovereign self-rule for various subject people under the European empires.
This path had been revealed earlier, during the “blood and iron” policy implemented in the mid-19th century during the “unification” of Italy and Germany. But instead of the machine-guns of the past the post-First World War world saw the birth (and rebirth) of several nations through the redrawing of maps, forcibly implemented by the victor powers.
Six new nations were created: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland. Six existing nation states became bigger and more compact: Serbia (Yugoslavia), Romania, Greece, Italy, France and
Denmark. All the four mainland European imperial powers shrank. In one stroke, following the peace conference, the new map of Europe had 27 sovereign states, up from 21.
So great was the impact of the 1914-1918 war shock that virtually no one strongly opposed the changes. Even the newly-born USSR consented to the “secession” of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland from the historic Russian Empire.
This political recasting of Eastern and Central Europe on a “national” basis was, however, always extraordinarily difficult and challenging due to the sizeable minorities living on the wrong side of the map. Russians
or Poles, Serbs or Romanians, Greeks or Bulgarians, Ukrainians or Turks, all constituted strong and motivated nationalists, and who remain as complex as they were in past. In the ongoing European conflict too, the minority Russians in Ukraine is a major sore point for Moscow.
What then are the possibilities today? Will Ukraine emerge as it was prior to February 24, 2022 in one piece? Will Crimea see its pre-2014 status quo ante? Will the West accept the Henry Kissinger-proposed territory “surrender to Russia”? What is Poland’s position, as it shows unusual interest in countering Russia and collaborating with Ukraine? Is Warsaw eyeing Ukraine’s land over its historical grievance against Russia? Of all the big European powers, Poland is the only one which was wiped out from the map for 124 years, from 1795 and 1919, as it was partitioned between Berlin, Vienna and Moscow.
Besides Russia itself, several countries -- Romania, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Poland and Turkey -- could be eyeing additional land in the aftermath of a peace conference. Will Ukraine agree? Almost certainly not! But what if, for the sake of “guaranteed security”, Israel is also offered a plot, to be called “West Israel”, as one of the strong nations equally friendly to Russia, Ukraine and Turkey? Didn’t the Jews face extinction in Europe? What if the Jewish state founded in 1948 in the Levant is renamed as “East Israel”, and “West Israel” gets its moorings in the Balkans, on the shores of the Black Sea, where Jews have lived for centuries, till 1945? Will Ukraine’s Jewish President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accommodate a new Jewish state on Ukrainian soil? Will Russia be happy to see Ukraine being fragmented by Israel, Poland and Turkey, subject to all accepting Crimea and the Donbas region under Russian sovereignty?
Will the European Union be relieved to see some checks and balances to reduce political tensions on its eastern flank?
In fact, two simultaneous opposing and contradictory factors appear to be at work here. First, the arms merchants want the war to intensify and continue. Second, as the EU’s economic woes spike, creating possible political upheavals leading to unforeseen eventualities, it understandably doesn’t want the destruction of its economy based on “inter-dependence” and interlinked to world trade. But then there’s the “X” factor -- the role of the United States -- which will favour the bigger game in which mega military contractors like Boeing play the pivotal role, addressing the concerns of Brussels through an extension and continuation of the war.
The long and short of the unfolding European saga is this: following the Russia-Ukraine conflict, a partition or parcelling out of terrain is an historical inevitability, in which at least five adjacent countries and a slightly distant Israel coming into the picture is more than a possibility. No major European conflict in the past 200 years has let go the opportunity to realign or redraw territorial boundaries without new entrants, or exclusions, or fixing. Ukraine is unlikely to be an exception. Poland (1795), Korea, Vietnam, India-Pakistan (1947), Yemen, Sudan, the Congress of Berlin 1878, Versailles (1919), Germany (1945), Yugoslavia (1990s), USSR 1991, Czechoslovakia -- all stand out live on the new frontier formula.
The victor powers wait to “settle” scores through “fraternal” discussions over the drafting of treaties amid high-level diplomacy; culminating in a “show” of peace for the “redistribution” of wealth, territory and resources, however short-lived that may be.
The gruesome end that at least 51 illegal migrants met with in super-hot conditions inside a packed trailer on a secluded road near San Antonio, Texas came in one of the biggest tragedies to strike criminal human trafficking near the US-Mexico border. A group of dehydrated Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans was stricken by the inhuman conditions in which they made the crossing. It is a microcosm of the world’s problem of the yawning gulf between the rich and the poor, which some of those on the wrong side of the divide try to cross by becoming illegal economic migrants, or asylum-seekers fleeing criminal gangs that operate in Central America.
The humanitarian issue of economic migrants looking for a way out of dire poverty, violence and degradation of society in their homeland has proved a particularly difficult one to handle for the Democratic President Joe Biden. He may have tried to reverse some of the hardline immigration policies of his predecessor Donald Trump and he is being blamed for it as his more empathetic approach to people crossing the border is being pointed out as the reason so many are now trying to get into the United States.
In just the month of May, US immigration and border patrols, on which billions of dollars are spent annually, stopped as many as 2.5 lakh illegal migrants attempting to cross over. There is no knowing how many managed to snuck in to stay undetected while working menial jobs to keep body and soul together. Mr Biden may wish to get rid of the “Remain in Mexico” policy that Trump brought in to control the migrants as they waited to clear the legal immigration process. But the issue is up before the conservative-majority Supreme Court and it needs no second guess on what the outcome may be.
It may sound outlandish but the US is also being accused of racism in immigration as it fast-tracked around 3,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war. Can the more economically sound countries be expected to open up their borders to migration without affecting their demographics or serving to protect the interests of their own people first? People running in desperation from poverty suffer from a global evil which the world would like to alleviate but cannot and must suffer for it.
The days are gone when the meeting of the leaders of the western world would resemble more a garden tea party. This year’s meet in a secluded hotel in the Bavarian Alps was held in the shadow of the seemingly never-ending Ukraine war that began on Feb. 24, which meant that the western powers were preoccupied with their responses to Putin’s Russia and to an incipient global food crisis caused by the war more than other issues that the free world is facing.
It must be most satisfying that the presence of India, one of five democracies from the southern parts of the globe invited to the meeting, seems to have made an impact. In the highly personalised atmosphere, the bonhomie among them stood out. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi seemed to have particularly hit it off with the likes of Canada’s Justin Trudeau and US President Joe Biden even as the dozen defenders of democracy promised to find sustainable solutions to global problems.
Hard selling India at forums abroad has been something of a Modi speciality and he was on a tougher mission this time in promoting a vision of the future in which green energy would play a significant role. This is particularly relevant currently when the western powers are making efforts to move away from dependence on Russian energy sources for oil and gas. As a country with a lot of human capital involved in furtherance of technology, India has progressed much for a developing country and seeks a seat at the high table with regard to energy security.
Investments in Indian green energy companies have started coming in with an eye on the future. What Mr Modi is asking for from the seven developed countries is a lot more in terms of cooperation in technology exchange and money to take innovations to other developing countries. He also made the telling point that with 17 per cent of the global population, India is contributing only five per cent to global carbon emissions.
While that line only reiterates arguments between developing countries needing old and new energy sources to sustain their progress and historically major polluters who are hunting for greener energy now, there is still scope for a united approach. A proposed “Climate Club” to tackle global warming on a fast track to “a clean and just energy transition” is a way forward and India should aim to be on it too.
The bloodcurdling images of two terrorists beheading a fellow human being in Udaipur to avenge what they felt was an insult to their religion place on each of the citizens of this country a responsibility. A failure at meeting it could send our nation down an inescapable abyss.
The Rajasthan police have arrested the duo and the National Investigation Agency has taken over the probe into the case. It has already been reported that the criminal gang had connections with Islamist and pan-Islamic groups in Pakistan and had been self-indoctrinated. The agency must get to the roots of the conspiracy and identify the original plotters and their mentors within and outside the Indian border.
It must also look for such potential modules which are into indoctrinating people and planning such excesses under one pretext or the other. The agency must ensure that those terrorists and their handlers encounter the harshest face of the law and the ends of justice are met. The agency, at the same time, must take care that innocent people should not be harassed just because they shared the religious beliefs of the terrorists.
The Rajasthan government has already imposed a curfew in the whole state to prevent violent protests against the murder. While the government will, hopefully, use every trick in the rulebook to ensure that protests do not lead to violence, there is only so much that they can do if people opt for the path of hatred and vengeance.
It is the job of the political parties and social and community organisations to drive into the minds of the people the reality that violence begets violence and that the way forward for a multicultural society such as ours is strict adherence to the rule of law.
The governments at the Centre and in all the states must take on themselves the responsibility of preventing incidents that could trigger bloodshed. Every loss of life is a loss to the nation.
The believers of Islam can complain that their religious feelings were hurt by the words of BJP spokespersons. The police have booked them; the party has also acted against them. There are believers who insist that their belief is so strong that they do not feel like hitting the streets or taking the resort of violence. Such sane souls are in the majority in every religion in this country and they must stand together.
This nation and its ancient civilisation have nurtured every shade of belief, and tolerance to diverging ideas has been the cornerstone of it all. The Constitution of India ensures that everybody has the right to freedom of conscience. This nation also belongs to people who have no faith at all. And the law mandates that none should impose upon the belief of the other.
There is legal remedy available if one feels that the acts of someone else are hurtful. Those who believe that they must force their writ on others have no place in a secular democracy. If they don’t understand it themselves, then the law must make them understand it.