January 2018 Hindu Leads

LEAD
On another New Year’s Day: Mahatma Gandhi's 'khorak' a 100

years ago
Concision - concise quality, brevity, terseness.

Fraught - filled with (something undesirable).
Iniquitous - grossly unfair and morally wrong.
Profligate - recklessly extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources.
Plangent - (of a sound) loud and resonant, with a mournful tone.
Behemoth - any creature or thing of monstrous size or power
Gopalkrishna Gandhi
JANUARY 01, 2018 00:02 IST
UPDATED: DECEMBER 31, 2017 23:59 IST
A century ago, an agenda was spelt out for India — it is as valid today as it was then
O ne hundred years ago this day, on January 1, 1918, Mohandas K. Gandhi was in Ahmedabad. And —
no surprise here — he addressed a meeting of residents in that city. One would imagine the meeting was
about the Great War that was coming to an end or the battle for Swaraj which was just beginning under
his leadership. But no, it was about – and again no surprise — something entirely different.
Three necessities
It was about securing three basic necessities which he spelt out as: “Air, water and grains.” He spoke in
Gujarati and his key sentence was: Hava pani ane anaj e khorakna mukhya tattvo chhe (air, water and
grains are essential to human nourishment). If Swaraj, he said, means self-rule, then securing these three
khorak means securing Swaraj. Explaining himself with typical concision, Gandhi said: “Air is free to all
but if it is polluted it harms our health… Next comes water… From now on we must take up the effort to
secure water. Councillors are servants of the people and we have a right to question them.” On the subject
of grains, he spoke with action, not just words. In a parallel initiative on the same day, he got the Gujarat
Sabha, of which he was president, to write to the Bombay government to exempt in some cases and
postpone in some others land revenue assessment due to the failure of crops in Kheda district.
Air, water and grains were the triple khorak of a people in Swaraj. This was the essence of his address.
On this, the first day of 2018, if we were to take, with great difficulty in Delhi and less so elsewhere, a deep
breath and look ahead on where we stand on Gandhi’s first khorak point, namely, clean air, or on
atmospheric pollution, we would we find, first, that India today is among the world’s largest carbon
emitters, following China, the U.S. and the European Union, is hurting itself by the global rise in extreme
climate events and water and food crises. Second, that having ratified the non-binding Paris Agreement
on climate change, India has undertaken a huge moral responsibility in terms of reducing the emissions
intensity of its GDP by 33-35% by 2030 from 2005 levels, changing over from coal-based generation to
renewable energy sources and, increasing the annual target of forest cover. Third, and the most stark,
with the U.S. pulling out of the treaty, the financial aid for the follow-up expected from developing
countries is in jeopardy. This makes default and deficits in follow-up a distinct possibility. We need to ask
and need to know how equipped we are to meet our commitment to the Paris Agreement. The outlook, as
we enter 2018, for India’s commitment to the Paris treaty is fraught.
Running dry
The scene on the second khorak, water, is even more worrisome. For millennia India has lived from
monsoon to monsoon. But now, the relentless thirst of 1.3 billion Indians for water — domestic,
agricultural, industrial, ‘construction’ — has turned our land into one giant groundwater sieve.
Technically renewable, our groundwater as a resource is hopelessly overdrawn. Per capita availability of
water in India dropped from 6,042 cubic metres in 1947 to about 1,545 cubic metres in 2011. Today the
figure should be much lower, and by 2030, India’s water scarcity will have reached alarming proportions.
Are we — the peoplehood of India — who form the stakeholders in our water resources really aware of
this? We are not. The rock-hard fact is that the National Water Mission’s efforts notwithstanding, we are
dangerously water deficient and deplorably water iniquitous. Water-profligacy by a few contrasts with
the water-inadequacy of the many. And water, or the lack of it, is the cruellest of these. Scarce water is also
about unsafe water, and it is estimated that 21% of communicable diseases in India are caused by poor
and un-overseen water supply. A significant percentage of our waste water, it has been estimated, is
discharged raw into rivers, lakes. Will this new year, 2018, see someone, anyone, from government or our
polity scream a warning about our water peril? Most unlikely.
Gandhi’s third 1918 khorak — grain — is in dire distress. Behind the dispossession caused by the real
estate mafia and corporates, the corrosive impact of cash-cropping and shrinking of timely credit lines is
a deepening gloom over output costs and minimum support prices (MSPs), of which farmer suicides are
chilling testimony. The five reports of the National Commission on Farmers that M.S. Swaminathan
chaired consolidated his warnings and his recommendations. It has been deeply disturbing to hear him
urge implementation of his recommendation on the MSP. In a plangent comment powerfully
reminiscent of Gandhi, he has said, “The future will belong to nations with grains, not guns.” P. Sainath
has been speaking of the agrarian crisis with unflagging zeal. Aruna Roy’s Mazdoor Kisan Shakti
Sangathan and Yogendra Yadav’s Swaraj Abhiyan have done likewise. The Kisan Sabha has remained an
inspiration for the cause and the energy brought to the farmers’ agitation in Maharashtra by Yashwant
Sinha’s espousal of their demands has been salutary. And yet, looking into just the twelve months ahead
of us, I cannot see any helpline to India’s lifeline, agriculture.
While these three essential khorak essential for India to ‘simply live’, as Mr. Sainath has put it, struggling
for breath, what are we getting instead, and on a priority? Three other khorak: the hava of intolerance, the
pani of polarisation and the anaj of uniformity. And why? Because these distract, they divert attention
from the real life-and-death crises. Intolerance, blowing strong since 2014, is likely to blow stronger in
2018. Polarisation, tried and tested in the 2014 election, then fielded formally in Assembly elections in
Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, is likely to be tried with greater impunity in the elections due in 2018. And as
for uniformity, the India of many-grained people, all secure in their plurality, is now being dispossessed
by an India which believes in codes being uniform rather than civil. To stand in line, sit in postures, speak
in chants, sing in tune is to be uniformly patriotic. To make Muslims self-conscious at Eid, Christians
nervous at Christmas is to be systematically patriotic. And notwithstanding the lessons of history, to host
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to be more than patriotic. It is to be mightily patriotic.
The right to question

Gandhi spoke of Swaraj’s three basic khorak. But he also gave, in the same 1918 speech, a fourth khorak
for Swaraj. And that lay in his words, “we have a right to question.” This fourth khorak extended to
political rights, social and economic rights. And very specifically, it led that year, 1918, to the Kheda
peasants satyagraha. Looking ahead in 2018, it seems quite clear that after about four years of cowering,
the right to question is reviving in India. The democratic opposition is more confident than before of
overcoming the fume of fear that had all but choked it. The emphatic improvement in the Congress’s
seats share in Gujarat is a sign that the fourth khorak — the right to question — can make our democracy
breathe the hava of Swaraj again. I see 2018 confronting the behemoth of majoritarianism with
increasing success.
The PIL (public interest litigation) and RTI (right to information) methods, combining with electoral
turnarounds, can well make 2018 lead to 2019 becoming the kind of year 1919 was — a year when India,
Hindu and Muslim together, gave the British Raj a taste of India’s Swaraj.
Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a former administrator, diplomat and Governor

LEAD
Understanding secularism in the Indian context
Palpable - perceptible, able to be touched or felt.

veritable - being truly or very much so
Buttress - a structure of stone or brick built against a wall to
strengthen or support it.
Concomitant - naturally accompanying or associated.
Mooring - make fast (a boat) by attaching it by cable or rope to
the shore or to an anchor.
Sui Generis - unique, constituting a class alone
Suhrith Parthasarathy
JANUARY 02, 2018 00:02 IST
UPDATED: JANUARY 02, 2018 00:08 IST
Our Constitution doesn’t acquire its secular character merely from the words in the Preamble, but
from a collective reading of many of its provisions, particularly the various fundamental rights that
it guarantees.
T here was a point of time, perhaps, when we might have taken the idea of a secular, pluralistic India,
tolerant of all sects and religions, as a position set in stone. But, incidents, especially since the early 1990s,
have radically altered both reality and our imagination. That certain groups, including many within the
political party presently in power at the Centre and in many States, actively believe in a different kind of
India is today intensely palpable. Against this backdrop, statements made on December 24, in a public
address, by the Minister of State for Employment and Skill Development, Anantkumar Hegde, scarcely come
as a surprise.
Secularism and us
“Secular people,” he declared, “do not have an identity of their parental blood.” “We (the BJP),” he added, “are
here to change the Constitution,” making it quite clear that in his, and his party’s, belief secularism was a
model unworthy of constitutional status. Since then, the ruling government has sought to distance itself
from these comments, and Mr. Hegde himself has, without explicitly retracting his statements, pledged his
allegiance to the Constitution and its superiority. But the message, as it were, is already out, and its discourse
is anything but opposed to the present regime’s larger ideology. Indeed, Mr. Hegde’s comments even mirror
those made on several occasions by people belonging to the top brass of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,
who have repeatedly stressed on what they view as their ultimate aim: the recognition of India as a Hindu
state, in which secularism lies not at the Constitution’s bedrock, but entirely outside the document’s aims
and purposes.
The reactions to Mr. Hegde’s speech have been manifold. Some have welcomed it, as a call for debate, while
others have viewed it as the ringing of a veritable alarm bell. Those on the far right in particular, though, have
embraced the message, and have gone as far as to suggest that India has never been a secular state, that the
Constitution, as it was originally adopted, did not contain the word “secular”, which was inserted into the
Preamble only through the 42nd amendment introduced by Indira Gandhi’s government during the height of
Emergency rule. They also point to B.R. Ambedkar’s pointed rejection of proposals during the Constitution’s
drafting to have the word “secular” included in the Preamble. Given that the Constitution is mutable, these
facts, in their belief, only buttress arguments against the inclusion of secularism as a constitutional ideal.
But what statements such as those made by Mr. Hegde don’t quite grasp is that our Constitution doesn’t
acquire its secular character merely from the words in the Preamble, but from a collective reading of many of
its provisions, particularly the various fundamental rights that it guarantees. Any move, therefore, to amend
the Constitution, to remove the word “secular” from the Preamble, before we consider whether such a change
will survive judicial review, will have to remain purely symbolic. Yet, Mr. Hegde’s statements nonetheless
bear significance, for they exemplify the confidence that he has in the broader project that is already
underway. The endeavour here is to steadily strike at the secular values that the Constitution espouses, to
defeat it not so much from within, but first from outside. Negating this mission requires sustained effort, not
only in thwarting any efforts to amend the Constitution, if indeed they do fructify, but, even more critically,
by working towards building a contrary public opinion, not through rhetoric, but through facts, by
reaffirming our faith in constitutionalism, and in the hallowed values of plurality and tolerance that our
democracy must embody.
Inbuilt freedoms
Now, it is certainly true that the Constituent Assembly explicitly rejected a motion moved by Brajeshwar
Prasad from Bihar to have the words “secular” and “socialist” included in the Preamble. But this was not on
account of any scepticism that the drafters might have had on the values of secularism. Quite to the contrary,
despite what some might want us to believe today, the assembly virtually took for granted India’s secular
status. To them, any republic that purports to grant equality before the law to all its citizens, that purports to
recognise people’s rights to free speech, to a freedom of religion and conscience simply cannot be un-secular.
To be so would be an incongruity. Secularism, as would be clear on any morally reasonable analysis, is inbuilt
in the foundations of constitutionalism, in the idea of a democracy properly understood. In the case of our
Constitution, it flows from the series of fundamental rights guaranteed in Part III. How can a person be
guaranteed a right to freedom of religion without a concomitant guarantee that people of all religions will be
treated with equal concern?
To fully understand what secularism in the Indian context means, therefore, we must read the Constitution
in its entirely. There is no doubt that within the Assembly, there existed a conflict between two differing
visions of secularism: one that called for a complete wall of separation between state and religion, and
another that demanded that the state treat every religion with equal respect. A study of the Constitution and
the debates that went into its framing reveals that ultimately it was the latter vision that prevailed.
As the political scientist Shefali Jha has pointed out, this constitutional dream can be best comprehended
from K.M. Munshi’s words. “The non-establishment clause (of the U.S. Constitution),” Munshi wrote, “was
inappropriate to Indian conditions and we had to evolve a characteristically Indian secularism… We are a
people with deeply religious moorings. At the same time, we have a living tradition of religious tolerance —
the results of the broad outlook of Hinduism that all religions lead to the same god… In view of this situation,
our state could not possibly have a state religion, nor could a rigid line be drawn between the state and the
church as in the U.S..” Or, as Rajeev Bhargava has explained, what secularism in the Indian setting calls for is
the maintenance of a “principled distance” between state and religion. This does not mean that the state
cannot intervene in religion and its affairs, but that any intervention should be within the limitations
prescribed by the Constitution. Sometimes this might even call for differential treatment across religions,
which would be valid so long as such differentiation, as Mr. Bhargava explains, can be justified on the
grounds that it “promotes freedom, equality, or any other value integral to secularism.”
We can certainly debate the extent to which the state intervenes in religious matters, and whether that falls
foul of the Constitution’s guarantees. We can also debate whether an enactment of a Uniform Civil Code
would be in keeping with Indian secularism or not. But what’s clear is that a diverse, plural society such as
India’s cannot thrive without following the sui generis form of secularism that our founders put in place.
It might well yet be inconceivable that the government chooses to amend the Constitution by destroying its
basic structure. But these are not the only efforts we must guard against. We must equally oppose every move,
every action, with or without the state’s sanction, that promotes tyrannical majoritarianism, that imposes an
unreasonable burden on the simple freedoms of the minority. We can only do this by recognising what
constitutes the essence and soul of the Constitution: a trust in the promise of equality. What, we might want
to keeping asking ourselves, does equality really entail? What does it truly demand?
Suhrith Parthasarathy is an advocate practising at the Madras High Court

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Looking for substance in style: the politics of Rajinikanth
K. Venkataramanan
JANUARY 03, 2018 00:06 IST
Rajinikanth signals a shift away from a politics rooted in ideology to one that is solely personality-centric
F or those of us who remember the first flush of excitement that ‘Rajini style’ caused in Tamil society in the 1970s, style was
the man. The idea that Rajinikanth, the superstar of Tamil cinema, is best known for his style has been with us for so long that
not many associate his films with substance. That some of his early films and performances showed promise is nearly
forgotten. He has come to be associated with superhuman achievements. His mythic appeal has been converted into
innumerable jokes about impossible feats. The time has come when his fans and admirers have accepted his style as his work
itself. This will be as true for his films as for his present foray into politics.
Improbable hopes
“Style is art,” Susan Sontag said, questioning the distinction often made between style and substance, between form and
content. Mr. Rajinikanth’s art, if the word can be associated with him, is his style. Sontag also warned against interpretation,
calling it the “revenge of the intellect upon art”. As the leading figure in the Tamil celluloid world takes the plunge into
politics, it may be too early to interpret the actor’s politics and political intentions. Looking for substance or a political vision
can wait. It is, for now, as futile as looking for deeper meanings and hidden subtexts in his fast-moving films with improbable
fight sequences.
Questions are being raised: whether his entry will worsen the cult of hero worship and charisma-driven politics in Tamil
Nadu; whether he is laying the ground for right-wing politics to take root in what was until now inhospitable terrain for it;
whether he is self-driven or being pushed by other forces. All these concerns are no doubt valid and require answers. However,
in the immediate social and political context of present-day Tamil Nadu, other questions have to be raised first.
Why does Mr. Rajinikanth want to enter politics? He says the present system is not right and needs to be changed; that there is
political degradation in Tamil Nadu; that the State has become a laughing stock; that rulers have become looters; and that if he
did nothing to stem the rot even at this stage, he would be wracked by guilt till his death. It may appear that the situation he
describes does prevail in Tamil Nadu after the demise of Jayalalithaa and the inability of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)
president M. Karunanidhi to remain active in politics for health reasons. The present All India Anna Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam (AIADMK) regime in Tamil Nadu is quite unpopular by all accounts. However, are the rest of the claims of the
politician-to-be true? Politics did not suddenly degrade in the last one year and corruption is not a recent phenomenon. If
something causes great shame and embarrassment to the people of Tamil Nadu, it is the ease with which film personalities,
both the famous and the also-rans, enter public life and are seen as natural political leaders. Most parties are led by those who
do not create or tolerate a second-rung leadership and are virtually clubs run by individuals. Film stars have been floating
political outfits based on individual popularity and converting their fan clubs into local units. There is little doubt that what
Mr. Rajinikanth is planning is just one more party on this list. A party of one followed by numberless zeroes.
Endemic corruption has been punished by the electorate in the past. The verdicts of 1996 and 2011 in the State Assembly
elections were clear mandates against the misdeeds of the AIADMK and the DMK regimes of the day. The State has a few core
issues on which its interests are seen to be under threat, and parties, willy-nilly, have to take a position on these matters. It is
difficult to avoid an issue-based agenda in the State. It is true that the two main parties have done their bit to render elections
devoid of issues by their election-time promises of freebies and, in recent years, rampant voter bribery. The mere absence of a
tall leader capable of helming the State now cannot be used to make a claim that it has no ideological moorings or that Tamil
Nadu is a ‘night-foundered skiff’ that can find safe harbour only in a new leader who does not have the trappings and baggage
of its present political class. The truth is that Tamil Nadu voters are not so bereft of political options as some observers say.
Who needs a messiah?

It cannot be forgotten that despite phases of political instability, new alliances and coalitions within the political spectrum
have come to power at the Centre when the two main parties were unable to form the government on their own. The question
is not whether Mr. Rajinikanth will be the State’s saviour, but whether the State requires a messiah in the first place. He has
sought to project himself in a messianic role by claiming that he is not looking for power but only guardians or sentinels of the
exchequer to prevent plunder and loot. He said the battle has to be joined soon and that only cowards turn away from war. For
good measure he quoted the Gita on one’s duty to wage war when required. The use of martial metaphors and the image of a
protector or saviour reveals a mindset that wants those governing to be patrons and the governed their clients. This sort of
clientelism is not something that can bring about any systemic change, but would rather entrench patronage and corruption.
As cynicism envelops the State, it is useful to remember that the only vacuum in Tamil Nadu today is the absence of a strong
personality. Democracy can survive without such personages. All it requires is that individuals and institutions play the roles
expected of them in adhering to the law and the Constitution. It is in the nature of democracy to appear inchoate in trying
times. To believe that this is a systemic dystopia that requires emancipation by a messiah amounts to a disbelief in the
fundamental nature of democracy itself. This does not mean that the polity should shut out a newcomer. The much-reviled
system can accommodate Mr. Rajinikanth and more of his ilk. However, it is a stretch to say that the entry of those currently
outside the political and electoral system is a dire necessity. Some have used the language of cinema to describe Mr.
Rajinikanth’s political entry as the release of a blockbuster. It looks like he intends to play the deus ex machina that will enter
in the final moment to resolve all the problems of Tamil Nadu at one go. The people may cheer at such contrivances on screen,
but it is doubtful if they will do so in real life.
The star and his fans

Given the nature of relations between a hero and a fan, there is a credible fear that Mr. Rajinikanth’s presence may result in
those backing him losing their political instincts and remaining blind followers with little concern even for the preservation
of their rights. Some see his open espousal of ‘spiritual politics’ as a challenge to the core ideology of Dravidian parties. These
are indeed portentous. However, the danger here is not merely about right-wing politics taking roots. It is the movement away
from a political legacy rooted in ideology to one that is solely personality-centric. Even the foremost practitioner of charisma-
driven and personality-centric politics, M.G. Ramachandran, built his popularity on a platform of welfarism and social justice.
Mr. Rajinikanth represents a change the State does not need.
LEAD
Towards a genomics revolution

The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of
determining the sequence of nucleotide base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying and mapping all
of the genes of the human genome from both a physical and a functional standpoint. It remains the world's
largest collaborative biological project. After the idea was picked up in 1984 by the US government when the
planning started, the project formally launched in 1990 and was declared complete in 2000. Funding came from
the US government through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as numerous other groups from
around the world. A parallel project was conducted outside government by the Celera Corporation, or Celera
Genomics, which was formally launched in 1998.
Celera sequenced the human genome at a fraction of the cost of the public project, approximately $3 billion of
taxpayer dollars versus about $300 million of private funding. However, a significant portion of the human
genome had already been sequenced when Celera entered the field, and thus Celera did not incur any costs with
obtaining the existing data, which was freely available to the public from GenBank.
GenBank sequence database is an open access, annotated collection of all publicly available nucleotide sequences
and their protein translation. GenBank and its collaborators receive sequences produced in laboratories
throughout the world from more than 100,000 distinct organisms.
Longitudinal - involving information about an individual or group gathered over a long period of time.
China Kadoorie BioBank - The CKB is an open-ended study with very broad research aims.
The main objectives of the study are:
1) To assess reliably the effects of both established and emerging risk factors for many diseases, not only overall
but also under various circumstances (e.g. at different ages and at different levels of other risk factors)
2) To determine the complex interplay between genes and environmental factors and between different genes on
the risks of common chronic diseases.
Endogamy - the custom of marrying only within the limits of a local community, clan, or tribe.
Bioinformatics - an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological
data. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combines Computer Science, Biology, Mathematics,
and Engineering to analyze and interpret biological data. Bioinformatics has been used for in silico analyses of
biological queries using mathematical and statistical techniques. Bioinformatics is an umbrella term for the body of
biological studies that use computer programming as part of their methodology,
Priya Moorjani Shivaji Sondhi

JANUARY 04, 2018 00:02 IST
India has the scientific resources for genetic research — all it needs is the vision at the national
level to leverage them
I n 1865, Gregor Mendel discovered the two laws of inheritance that are now named after him. Almost
90 years later in 1953, the work of James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin,
deciphered the structure of the molecule — DNA — that stores our hereditary information and gets
transmitted from parents to children over generations.
Personalised medicine
At this point, in principle, the prospect of building individualised medicine based on the precise
information stored in each human’s DNA (their genome) had come into view. But the human genome has
around 3 billion base pairs and in 1953 it wasn’t possible to imagine extracting genetic information on
the molecular scale and of this collective size.
Technological advances in sequencing methods have made the possibility glimpsed 60 years ago a reality
today. Already by 2001 the human genome project and its private competitor, Celera Genomics, showed
that an entire genome could be sequenced.
Since then the cost of doing so has plummeted — currently it is something like $1000 per person and
becoming cheaper — and the age of genomics-informed medicine is now within sight. Perhaps this will
also make interventional treatments feasible, in the not too distant future, thanks to the revolutionary
advances brought about by the discovery of new gene-editing techniques, such as CRISPR.
Surveying Indian variation

What implications do these developments have for India and are there deliberate choices that would
shape this coming future more advantageously for the country and its people? Are there strengths that
India can bring to this task? To gain fully from the genomics revolution, India needs to collect
information about the genetics of its population and train manpower capable of interpreting it. The
information that is needed has to come from a large and sustained collection of data — fully sequenced
individual genomes along with medical histories for the individuals who volunteer for this effort.
This kind of longitudinal study is what would allow actual physical manifestations relevant to health, e.g.
specific illnesses, to be related to features in the genome. To pick an ambitious but not impossible
number, a data bank that collects this kind of information on one million Indians over the coming decade
would be a feasible effort of the right magnitude. We note that the China Kadoorie Biobank has been
studying half a million people since their recruitment in 2004-2008. As India is much more genetically
diverse — with something like 5,000 ethno-linguistic and religious groups (castes and others), all of
which probably have some degree of genetic distinctiveness — it needs a larger survey to do justice to all
Indians.
The genetic distinctiveness of different Indian groups is in part the result of endogamy. While we cannot
know the full impact of endogamy in advance of a proper survey, some recent research has shown that
endogamy is very likely to be medically significant. Castes are not just “of the mind”. The genetic
implication of this is that there are likely to be many recessive diseases stemming from single genes
specific to individual groups that can be identified.
Decreasing disease burden

This knowledge could then also be quickly applied to the task of managing diseases in these groups as
well as be used for genetic counselling that could reduce their incidence in future generations. As an
example elsewhere, the founder group of Ashkenazi Jews have almost eliminated Tay-Sachs disease from
their population by such means. Looking ahead a bit more, with large samples the technique of “genome-
wide association studies” that compare genomes of cases and controls could be used to identify genetic
risk factors related to common diseases (such as heart disease that stem from many genes) that affect the
health of many more individuals. We would like to emphasise that much of this is simply a question of
applying existing methods and could all be done fairly quickly.
This is a good point at which to note that such a survey of Indian genetic diversity will be an important
asset, beyond disease genetics. The data collected as part of these efforts will also help to uncover the
basic biological function of genes and their interactions, which are not yet fully understood. This
knowledge will be useful to humanity worldwide and also offer India a chance to claim a piece of the
global medical and scientific frontier.
As a large part of the enterprise would be the application of information technology or “bio-informatics”,
the prospects of establishing viable commercial enterprises with synergies to existing IT champions are
also promising.
What then is to be done?

As things stand there is certainly progress under way. There has been path-breaking work in using
genomics to shed light on Indian history, a small number of hospitals are using genetic information to
help patients, and there is at least one private sequencing company in India. But all of this activity is on a
much smaller scale than needed and is currently not generating the manpower required to equip the next
generation of medical and research activities in the area. What is needed is a coherent push at the
national level that involves government, academic institutions, the existing health-care industry, the IT
industry and the nascent biotechnology industry. This coherent push should aim to set an ambitious but
realistic objective of creating an Indian genetic data bank, to promote academic programmes that train
scientists, technicians and doctors in this area and to create a regulatory framework that promotes broad
objectives for both public and private sectors without being self-defeating.
The fact is that both genetic data and biological samples are easily transported across borders and if
Indian regulation is shortsighted, it will simply cause Indian genomics to move abroad to places such as
Singapore. In this context it is worth mentioning that the GenomeAsia 100K Initiative based in Singapore
plans to sequence 100,000 Asian genomes, including some from South Asia. While this is eminently
worthwhile as it will provide a broader pan-Asian set of data, it would be important to make similar
investments at a national scale quickly to avoid the situation that this is one of the only enterprises to
which Indians can turn to.
All in all, the time is ripe for India to begin its own genomics revolution. The technical understanding and
will needed to launch this is present in India’s scientific leadership, in medicine and in industry. What is
needed is a vision and leadership at the national level to leverage this and seize the day. Nothing less than
the very health of the nation is at stake.
Shivaji Sondhi is Professor of Physics at Princeton University, U.S. Priya Moorjani is Assistant Professor of
Genetics, Genomics and Development, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley, U.S.
LEAD
Narayan Lakshman
JANUARY 05, 2018 00:15 IST
On the edge of destiny: what does Rajinikanth's politics entail?
Rajinikanth stands at a crossroads for Tamil Nadu, but can he define what his political rescue act entails?
I t had been more than 20 years in the making, and finally Tamil cinema superstar Rajinikanth delivered on innumerable
past overtures when he plunged into the troubled waters of Tamil Nadu politics.
The big question on everyone’s mind is this: will he be a force to reckon with after he cobbles together a party apparatus with
aspirations of political mobilisation, or will his democratic dream simply fade away after this foray comes a cropper against
the jagged edges of the Dravidian parties’ electoral juggernauts? Hard to tell with any certainty, but an analysis of his entry in
the context of Tamil Nadu’s colourful political past, its frustrating, dysfunctional present, or its ominously cloudy future
yields some clues.
Past: fish out of water

Tamil Nadu has always been a standout State. It was home to a unique social movement that was also one of India’s most
successful experiments in populist mobilisation and pioneering social welfare policies. Dravidian politics surged to the fore in
1967, when the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) unseated the incumbent Indian National Congress and in doing so,
forever altered the State’s political terrain.
Few Indian States have so purposefully used the motifs of ethnic identity, so adroitly deployed them through the silver screen,
and so rigorously converted caste politics into a practical class mobilisation.
Over time the social radicalism of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, C.N. Annadurai and M. Karunanidhi, under the aegis of the anti-
Brahmin, anti-Hindi campaigns of the DMK, gave way to a more inclusive style of governance under the All India Anna
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) founder M.G. Ramachandran (MGR), and later his protégé Jayalalithaa.
Against this arc of Dravidianist-mobilisation history, Mr. Rajinikanth’s entry in some sense reduces him to a fish out of water,
an aspiring wild card entrant seeking to make a lateral move despite lacking direct participation in the defining political
movement of the State.
This matters considerably, not only because he now faces enormous pressure to define his politics, but also because, sans party
association, he must embark on the unenviable task of building an organisation structure that is robust enough to take on the
muscle of the AIADMK and the DMK.
It is true that he will not be building it from scratch, the way Periyar and Annadurai did, in the mid-20th century. According to
some estimates, Mr. Rajinikanth enjoys the unflinching support of at least 50,000 fan clubs scattered across the cities and
towns of Tamil Nadu, with each having at least 25 die-hard admirers of their “Thalaivar”. Yet it is an open question as to
whether the millions of his fans are at all inclined towards hard-nosed political campaigning and mass mobilisation. All they
may care about are his movies!
This brings us to another dimension of Tamil political history that poses uncomfortable questions for Mr. Rajinikanth: is he
capable of being the sort of “benevolent” autocrat, the patronage-inclined “soft-authoritarian” like others before him,
including Jayalalithaa, MGR and Mr. Karunanidhi?
Mr. Rajinikanth certainly commands attention based on his legendary charisma, yet on the flip side he has been painfully
publicity-shy over the four decades that he has spent in the cinema world. Thus, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that
he will smoothly transition into an aggressive leader capable of marshalling party members and resources towards orderly
execution of campaigning, fundraising, lobbying efforts and much more.
Present: politics in ferment

Coming to the present scenario in Tamil Nadu, among the most widely touted reason for betting on Mr. Rajinikanth as the
cure to what ails State politics is the fact that both Dravidian parties have faced an untimely loss of leadership capacity, the
AIADMK owing to Jayalalithaa’s death in December 2016 and the DMK owing to Mr. Karunanidhi stepping back from an active
role after his health declined in recent years.
In the context of this power vacuum, the State may be Mr. Rajinikanth’s to lose. The vacuum, however, holds lessons for any
aspiring entrant. First, the AIADMK has imploded in spectacular fashion since Jayalalithaa’s death because it is being torn
asunder by bitter factional squabbling. That was a natural consequence of the weak-kneed leadership that has been thrust into
the hot seat overnight, after decades of rule by an iron-fisted politician who degraded four rungs of leadership within her
party to nix all potential challengers.
The second lesson for Mr. Rajinikanth is the fumbling of the DMK. The AIADMK clearly stole a march on its older rival since
1977 (the AIADMK has ruled for 26 years and counting, the DMK only for 12 years, of the past 40) owing to a more durable
party ideology and broader social base, both of which geared its agenda towards mass distribution of welfare goods. While
these are derided by some as “freebies,” social scientists consider them factors contributing to Tamil Nadu’s relative
outperformance on human development and poverty reduction indices. When will Mr. Rajinikanth delve into these complex
socioeconomic and policy questions?
Future: New Delhi calling

Finally, on the murky future that awaits any party that the superstar may float, he will have to be nimble on the radioactive
subject of Hindutva politics, and in that regard the tactical question whether to align with the BJP, for several reasons. First,
Hindutva politics as such never made headway in India’s southernmost State given the Tamil people’s consistent record of
rejecting the Hindu-North Indian-Brahmin matrix as a single, unwanted political package. They considered this matrix a
product of north Indian hegemony, one that the Nehruvian state and then other dispensations in a distant New Delhi sought
to thrust upon the “Tamizhan,” the quintessential Tamil man (or woman). That feeling of “Tamil-ness” is still very much alive.
Second, Mr. Rajinikanth may have struck a chord with some voters when he spoke of “spiritual” politics – yet he has more to
clarify on whether he intended that phraseology to convey the anti-thesis of corruption, or whether it was an overture to
Hindus and Hindutvavadis across the State and in New Delhi. If it is the former, it would be most welcome at this nadir of
democratic politics in Tamil Nadu, a dark period of grand larceny and covert institutional looting of the public coffers.
If Mr. Rajinikanth went out on a limb to take on politically connected corruption, shadow corporations and the massive rent-
seeking network that has permeated every corner of the government and has led to capital flight to neighbouring States, the
people of Tamil Nadu would flock to him.
Third, he may do well to give thought to whether his political foray would simply end up playing spoiler for either Dravidian
party and prevent both from forming a strong, stable government. In such a scenario, wouldn’t his efforts only delay the long-
awaited return of good governance?
Real-life hero?
Like many heroes of the silver screen, Mr. Rajinikanth’s entry into politics is a test of fire. He lacks many vital political
appurtenances and a living link to an important historical chapter of this State. His very announcement of entry has spurred
vicious attacks on his purported intentions, his character and his personal life.
Yet he stands – humbly, one must grant – at what might turn out to be a momentous crossroads for Tamil Nadu: its past
political glory depleted in the gradual decline of the AIADMK and DMK, its people now pray for a political renaissance.
Thalaivar to the rescue, perhaps?
Overture - instrumental introduction to an opera

Cropper - fail badly ; Jagged Edge - with rough, sharp points protruding.
Motif - a dominant or recurring idea in
Implode - collapse or cause to collapse violently inwards
Nix - (noun) nothing ; (verb) reject
Fumble - do or handle something clumsily.
Nimble - able to think and understand quickly. ; Larceny - theft of personal property
Appurtenance - an accessory or other item associated with a particular activity or style of living
Antiseptically - Scrupulously clean or pure; non-descript ; bland ; uninspiring
Rashomon-like - Contradictory interpretations of the same event by different people.
Surreal - resembling a dream
Spurn - reject disdainfully
Genealogy - Lineage / Pedigree
LEAD
Memory, myth and memorial: on the Bhima-Koregaon battle
Shiv Visvanathan
JANUARY 06, 2018 03:02 IST
The battle over Bhima-Koregaon is not just one of history, it is a battle for identity and equality
T he late Kannada writer U.R. Ananthamurthy once told me a story. His PhD guide and he were discussing
an Ingmar Bergman film. Ananthamurthy said when the West needs to access the past, it seems to enter a
historical archive. In India we just walk across town because an Indian always lives in simultaneous time
periods whereby Copernicus and Einstein share a neighbourhood. One wishes URA had written a story
around this idea because he seemed to suggest that India does not need science fiction given what we do to
history.
One also wishes URA was here to watch the recent battle between Mahars, a Dalit caste, and Marathas. The
linearity of history does not quite capture the subtlety of storytelling.
The memorial
It all began with a pillar, a little war memorial commemorating what history books antiseptically called the
third Anglo-Maratha war. The British had established it in Bhima-Koregaon village to commemorate the
British East India Company soldiers who fell in the battle of January 1, 1818. Along with a few British soldiers,
many Mahar soldiers also died.
The event can be read Rashomon-like in many ways. But Indians do what Akira Kurosawa did in a more
surrealistic way. For the Marathas and for our history textbooks, the narrative was a battle between
imperialism and nationalism. But the Mahars read this narrative differently. The history inscribed in
textbooks did not take their memories seriously. The Mahars recollect how during the reign of Baji Rao II,
they had offered their services as soldiers. The Peshwa spurned them, and this pushed the Mahars to seek out
the British in the next war.
ALSO READ
The Battle of Bhima-Koregaon is thus read differently. It is not seen as a battle in which
the British with 834 infantry men, of which over 500 were Mahar, defeated a
numerically stronger Peshwa army. It marked not the continuity of the British but the
end of Peshwa rule. For Mahar memory, the presence of the British shrinks and it
How a British
war memorial
becomes a story of Mahar courage and valour, a testimony to Mahar martial values in
became a their struggle for equality against the Peshwas. The Koregaon Ranstambh (victory pillar)
symbol of Dalit
pride represents a different kind of memory and a different kind of solidarity. It is now part of
a new genealogy, not part of a battle between Indians and the British, but a struggle for
equality.
A new memory
In January 1927, Babasaheb Ambedkar visited the site and gave it this new legitimacy. This new memory
triggered the formation of new communities. The Bhima-Koregaon Ranstambh Seva Sangh was formed to
commemorate the battle of the Dalits for self-respect and equality. Over time this parallel memory acquired
power as members of the Mahar regiment visited it to pay homage to Mahar militarism and valour. What was
a local source of pilgrimage soon expanded to cover other States such as Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.
Maratha history competed with Mahar memory over the interpretation of the Stambh.
One has to remember what Ananthamurthy said of past, present and future being enacted simultaneously.
An Indian storyteller has to capture the magic of simultaneous time. A friend of mine suggested helpfully
that one should imagine that one is watching three TV sets tuned to the past, the present and the future.
While the Mahars are enacting their memorial to history reasserting their sense of identity and equality in a
now immortalised village, the dominant castes are feeling unease with what they sense as re-appropriation
of history. Tune to TV-2.
For the Brahmins and Marathas watching these rituals, life seemed surreal. Suddenly, violence spreads across
Maharashtra as pitched battles take place between Mahars and Marathas, each guarding their identity as if it
were a piece of intellectual property. The battle now is not just one of memory, it is a battle for identity and
equality. As violence spreads and Maharashtra comes to a standstill, as the metro, the sign of modern civic
regularity, threatens to stop, normal life comes to a standstill in Pune, Nagpur, Thane and Kolhapur. The call
for the urban shutdown has been given jointly by Dalit and Maratha groups. Both groups in turn see the
villainy of the third as they protest against the march of Hindutva by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Hindutva, they feel, has turned this into a casteist controversy.
Other narratives
Hindutva forces, Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar felt, were trying to poison society along caste lines. Dalit
scholars point to Vadhu Budruk, a village close to Bhima-Koregaon and the controversy around Sambhaji, the
eldest son of Shivaji. Legend has it that Sambhaji’s body was mutilated and then thrown into the river.
Legend adds to it that Govind Mahar, a Dalit, gathered the body and stitched it together. It was the Mahars
who arranged for Sambhaji’s memorial and, when Govind Mahar died, they constructed a tomb for him in the
same village. Upper caste Marathas object to this narrative and a battle is being fought over it.
It is time to switch on TV-3. The BJP has over the years forged an anti-Muslim meta-narrative around these
struggles. Hindutva organisations invoke past Maratha glory to keep the caste within their fold. The recent
attempt to link Hindutva battles as a neo-Peshwa enterprise is disturbing to the BJP’s electoral campaign as
the party under its national president Amit Shah has been wooing Dalits into its fold. When other Hindutva
organisations evoke Maratha glory, Dalit alienation and unease is obvious. Dalit organisations in response
have organised a huge conference at what was once the dominant seat of the Peshwas. A caste split now
threatens the huge electoral wooing of Dalits as future vote banks. The BJP attempt to consolidate the
electoral future is coming apart, ironically through the same caste wars it encouraged before it sought to
consolidate an electoral future. What one sees are the scenarios that might change 2019 as an idea of the
electoral future. The BJP fear of another Jignesh Mevani appearing and disrupting its carefully quilted
electoral strategy is quite obvious. What was a caste war is being secularised into a law and order problem.
Cyber elks are warning against any attempt to create caste divides.
Beyond containment
As I researched the archives of newspapers trying to make sense of the Bhima-Koregaon incident, I realised
that the narrative cannot be contained or encapsulated in terms of one narrative. It is not a historical
controversy alone, it cannot be restricted to a caste war, it is not a battle for identity, it is also a search for
equality. It is also an attempt by politicians to go beyond all these fragments and create a more united future.
One suddenly senses the many octaves in which politics in India occurs. Suddenly one senses the Proustian
quality of such narratives where time redefines the nature of a problem. One realises that memory is a
strange, protean, alchemical force in India where linearity does not work, and past, present and future
struggle to simultaneously control narratives in India. It’s a reminder of philosopher Ian Hacking’s reading of
our time. He claimed politics in the 18th century was about control of the body, in the 19th about the control
of populations, and in the 20th about the control of memory. The only thing he forgot to mention is how
complex memory in our age has become as it combines myth, memory, history. One trembles as one thinks
how easily a fragment of the past can rewrite the future of a democracy, or the dreams of identity and justice.
Shiv Visvanathan is a member of the Compost heap, a group of academics and activists working on
alternative imaginations
Elk - Largest member of the deer family.

Proustian - Derived from personal memory
Protean - Exceedingly variable
Alchemical - pertaining to something special out of a common material ;
pertaining to an unexplainable transmutation.
LEAD
Yet another tectonic shift?
S. Gurumurthy
JANUARY 08, 2018 00:02 IST
Rajinikanth’s plunge into politics is well considered, and could transform Tamil Nadu’s electoral
landscape
T he decision of Tamil superstar Rajinikanth to try his hand at politics has added a totally new dimension to
the Tamil Nadu political theatre, which has been in turmoil for more than a year now. Except for a hiccup in 1988-
90, Tamil Nadu politics has never been in such tumult and uncertainty since the demise of Jayalalithaa in end
2016. Mr. Rajinikanth’s decision to wear the political hat appears to be well thought out, as the State seems to be
poised for yet another tectonic shift in its political history. A recall of how such shifts in Tamil Nadu politics in the
past have changed the political landscape of the State may help one make an intelligent guess about the likely
impact of yet another shift.
In the past
Politics in Tamil Nadu had experienced three major tectonic shifts since the advent of democratic polity. The first
one fully Dravidianised the State’s politics and the next two partly de-Dravidianised it. The first shift was the
ouster of the national party, the Congress, from power in 1967, and forever thereafter. The next was the expulsion
of the redoubtable M.G. Ramachandran (MGR) from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in 1972 and the
emergence of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) as the main challenger to the DMK,
reducing Tamil Nadu politics to just a play between two Dravidian cousins thereafter. This historic Dindigul Lok
Sabha by-election in 1973, which the newly formed AIADMK won, signalled the transfer of anti-DMK votes to the
AIADMK as MGR was seen as more capable of defeating the DMK. The AIADMK relegated the Congress led by the
towering K. Kamaraj and the DMK led by the mighty M. Karunanidhi to the second and third spots, respectively.
Since then, the anti-DMK voters have been unwaveringly loyal to the AIADMK, except perhaps only once in 1996.

ALSO READ
The third shift was the split in the AIADMK following MGR’s death and the advent of
Jayalalithaa, who rejuvenated the party as more powerful than before. While the first shift in
1967 drove Tamil Nadu into Dravidian exclusivism, the second and the third diluted the
Dravidian content of the State polity, by forcing the AIADMK and DMK to align with national
Stars in politics:
No jump cuts in
parties. Slowly, the national-minded voters increasingly turned to the AIADMK, seeing it as
T.N.
less exclusivist Dravidian in its impulses, further shrinking the space for national parties in
the State.
Vacuum and uncertainty

But, recently, the sudden demise of Jayalalithaa and the equally abrupt retreat of Mr. Karunanidhi from politics
forced by age — both occurring almost simultaneously — have completely changed the settled assumptions and
accepted grammar of the State’s politics. An unprecedented leadership vacuum has enveloped the two parties and
Tamil Nadu and led to an uncertainty, never faced, surrounding the State’s politics. And, more recently, the
shocking win of sidelined AIADMK leader T.T.V. Dhinakaran and the amazing defeat of the DMK, which forfeited
its deposit, in the recent R.K. Nagar by-election have deepened the uncertainty, indicating that the solution to the
uncertainty may not come from either of the two Dravidian parties at all. This has put the DMK on the back foot.
When Jayalalithaa passed away, the DMK had assumed that it would return to power if the Edappadi K.
Palaniswami government fell. It even began working with Mr. Dhinakaran to pull it down. But the reverse in R.K.
Nagar seems to have compelled the DMK to review its strategy to force early elections, which it may not want so
early now.

ALSO READ
Rajinikanth’s advantages
Clearly, the monolithic Dravidian politics, which dominated the State for 50 years, is
defreezing, perhaps even melting down. This is the context for Mr. Rajinikanth’s plunge. He
‘Rajini’s critics
pay only lip has said he would form his party and fight the next Assembly polls, whenever it was held.
service to their But, with that eventuality nowhere near, Mr. Rajinikanth seems to have bought for himself
own ideology’
enough time to organise his party, shape its philosophy and policies before launching it. The
way he has handled the major announcement and managed the excitement it has generated,
and now consolidating his fan clubs with the use of technology, indicates that he seems to have been well advised
not to rush in, but instead gather his forces for what he first called as the war that lay ahead. The announcement of
the virtual entry far ahead of the actual one seems to make strategic sense. He has undoubtedly taken advantage
of the uncertainty in the State’s politics by registering himself with its people as the new force strongly in the
reckoning in the next elections.
Of the many factors that may go in his favour, the anti-DMK voters who have been loyal to the AIADMK may shift
to him as now he, and not the weakened AIADMK, may be seen as the one who can do it. Also, the anti-AIADMK
votes, of which the DMK has been the main beneficiary, may shift to him. Another factor that may favour him is
the entry of more than 37 lakh new voters crossing 18 by the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, and a further 23 lakh by 2021
on the electoral rolls of Tamil Nadu. With the two Dravidian parties not as attractive to the youth as before — the
DMK leader M.K. Stalin himself has lamented that politics does not attract the youth — it is logical for Mr.
Rajinikanth to position himself as the new face.

ALSO READ
Puritans will argue that Mr. Rajinikanth’s entry will promote a personality cult that
undermines merit and principles in politics. While no one can say that a personality cult is
good, equally, no one will disagree that dynastic politics is worse as it is a personality cult by
inheritance as in the example of Indira Gandhi passing on the baton to Rajiv Gandhi to Sonia
I want to create
a political
Gandhi to Rahul Gandhi now. Given the experience of the DMK, Mr. Rajinikanth should
revolution: know that if he avoids the dynastic shadow over his politics, his family will be his personal
Rajinikanth
asset; otherwise, it will become a political liability.
Making a connect
Significantly, his entry has not met with any major opposition though some fringe groups have questioned his
being an ‘outsider’ in terms of his roots. The apparent Tamil chauvinistic impulses of the Dravidian movement did
not inhibit MGR, a Malayali, from winning and ruling Tamil Nadu, nor did that undermine Jayalalithaa’s
domination in the State. The inclusive cultural DNA of Tamil Nadu, which the chauvinist image of Tamil Nadu
masks, is bound to accommodate Mr. Rajinikanth as well. More importantly, most new political parties in Tamil
Nadu have connected themselves to Dravidian ancestry. But Mr. Rajinikanth’s branding of his politics as
“spiritual” too seems a well-thought-out idea to distinguish and distance himself from the anti-god moorings of
the politics of the State where people are becoming increasingly religious.
In sum, Mr. Rajinikanth’s political advent has the potential to erode the stagnating and fatiguing DMK and
AIADMK and sweep away the smaller local parties. With profound changes in the offing, interesting days lie
ahead.
LEAD
Dark clouds across Asia
The Concert of Europe, also known as the Congress System or the Vienna System after the
Congress of Vienna, was a system of dispute resolution adopted by the major conservative
powers of Europe to maintain their power, oppose revolutionary movements, weaken the
forces of nationalism, and uphold the balance of power. Historians date its operation from the
end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) to the early 1820s, although some see it playing a role
until the Crimean War (1853–1856).
The Concert of Europe was founded by the powers of Austria, Prussia, Russia and the United
Kingdom, which were the members of the Quadruple Alliance that defeated Napoleon and his
First French Empire. In time, France was established as a fifth member of the Concert,
following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.
Sabre Rattling - display or threat of military force.

Inimical - unfriendly; hostile.
Peev - To cause to be annoyed or resentful.
Straddle - sit or stand with one leg on either side of
sit/stand astride, bestride, bestraddle
"she straddled the motorbike and revved(to accelerate sharply) it up"
Intransigence - refusal to change one's views or to agree about something.
"in the face of government intransigence, he resigned in disgust"
Needling - provoke or annoy (someone) by continual criticism or questionin
Wei-Qi tactic - (Chinese) abstract strategy board game for two players, in which the aim is to
surround more territory than the opponent.
Ratchet - a situation or process that is perceived to be changing in a series of irreversible steps
M. K. Narayanan
JANUARY 09, 2018 00:02 IST
From east to west, India must brace itself for more disorder across the continent in 2018
W hat awaits the Asia-Pacific in 2018? Prospects appear, if anything, bleaker than was the case in 2017. More
disorder, coming with increasing signs of a breakdown in inter and intra-state relations, is perhaps on the horizon. The
Asian region is nowhere near achieving the kind of equilibrium that the Concert of Europe brought to 19th century
Europe.
Between the two giants

The region is today an area of intense geostrategic and geo-economic competition. China is the rising economic and
military power in Asia today — the second most important economic power after the U.S. and having the second or
third most powerful military. In seeking dominance over Asia, however, it not only has to contend with a strong
military and economic U.S. presence in the region, but it also cannot afford to ignore the competition from Japan and
India. In mid-2017 in Doklam, India had demonstrated that it was more than capable of standing up to China’s
bullying tactics.
Much of the speculation about the extent of China’s rise is based on the common presumption that the U.S. under
President Donald Trump had surrendered its global leadership role. The reluctance of the U.S. to embark on ‘new wars’,
especially in Asia, does not, however, undermine its geopolitical, geostrategic and geo-economic pre-eminence. It is
not China’s rise, but the breakdown of the institution of the state, as is evident in Afghanistan and Syria, that poses far
more pressing problems for Asia.
Undoubtedly, East Asia will remain a troubled region for much of 2018, with the leadership of North Korea intent on
playing increasingly dangerous games and engaging in nuclear sabre-rattling. It is unpredictable at this point whether
this would lead to a major destabilisation of the region, with far-reaching consequences for Asia and the world.
The future of the rest of the Asia in 2018 is again dependent on how the strategic triangle of state relations between
China, Pakistan and India plays out, as also the extent to which events in West Asia deteriorate. The situation has
become more complicated as China and Pakistan have further strengthened their axis, which is inimically disposed
towards India. Fragmentation of already difficult relationships does not hold out much hope for any improvement in
2018.
As it is, options for an improvement in relations in 2018 between China and India appear limited. The 19th Congress of
the Chinese Communist Party (October 2017) essentially highlighted China’s quest for global leadership and the
means to achieve it, including making China’s military ‘world class’, one capable of ‘winning wars’. It contained few
hints that signified a possible thaw in India-China relations.
Shots across India’s bow

In 2017, India-China relations had steadily deteriorated. China is clearly peeved that India refuses to participate in its
Belt and Road Initiative that straddles Asia and Europe. The stand-off at Doklam in mid-2017 was possibly intended by
China to be a ‘shot across India’s bow’, to send a message to India. More such situations will, in all likelihood, be
repeated in 2018.
China can also be expected in 2018 to resort to other pressure tactics against India. Backing Pakistani intransigence in
‘needling’ India is certain to be one. Additionally, China can be expected to intensify its moves to displace India as the
major partner in relations with many of India’s neighbours — 2017 had already seen China moving in this direction vis-
à-vis Nepal, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar. As it is, China has succeeded to some extent in denting
India’s long-standing relationship with Russia, having established a strategic congruence with that country.
India would again need to be on its guard in 2018 as China consolidates its takeover of Gwadar (Pakistan) and
Hambantota (Sri Lanka) ports. Together with China’s establishment of a base in Djibouti (on the Horn of Africa), India
could find itself at the receiving end of China’s ‘Wei-Qi tactics’.
As India grows closer to the U.S. in 2018, the India-China equation could further worsen. The most recent National
Security Strategy of the U.S. refers to China as a ‘rival’, while welcoming India’s emergence as a ‘strategic and defence
partner’. This is certain to ratchet up the rivalry between India and China in the Asia-Pacific region, likely to be further
compounded by India’s association with the Quadrilateral (of U.S., India, Japan and Australia).
Looking at Pakistan
Again, 2018 holds out little prospect of an improvement in India-Pakistan relations. The last year ended with a serious
ceasefire violation along the Line of Control in the Rajouri Sector, in which army men, including a Major, were killed.
In 2017 there was an over 200% increase in ceasefire violations, with infiltration touching a four-year high.
This year began with a major terrorist attack by Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) elements on a Central Reserve Police Force
(CRPF) camp in Avantipur (Pulwama district) in which five CRPF men were killed. The treatment meted out to the
family of Kulbhushan Jadhav (currently incarcerated in a Pakistani prison) and the fake news that followed their visit
provides an index of Pakistan’s cold, calculated and consistent hostility towards India. The South Asian Association for
Regional Cooperation (SAARC) continues to remain in cold storage. Pakistan has also not refrained from persisting
with its proxies like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the JeM in its war with India.
In its neighbourhood, India must be prepared during 2018 for a further deterioration of the situation in already
disturbed Afghanistan. The Afghan state is in real danger of imploding, and this situation could worsen. The latest
attack by Mr. Trump on Pakistan’s duplicity in dealing with terrorism could well result in Pakistan adopting a still
more perverse and disruptive role here, and providing further encouragement to the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani
network.
The current peace talks may well collapse as a result. Any possibility of exerting greater military pressure by the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization and allied forces may prove futile.
West Asia in turmoil

The situation in West Asia in 2018 could well turn out to be far grimmer than in 2017. West Asia is at the crossroads
today. The entire region is in turmoil. Syria has almost ceased to be a state. The war here entails major powers like the
U.S. and Russia, proxies for certain West Asian countries, a medley of non-state actors, apart from terrorist outfits such
as the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda.
Intrinsic to the Syrian and West Asian imbroglio is the ongoing war within Islam featuring, at one level, intense rivalry
between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran, and at another, the spectre of a split down the line between the Arab and
the non-Arab and the Sunni and Shiite worlds.
In addition, there are other forces aggravating an already complicated situation, viz. the war in Yemen, the disruption
within the Gulf Cooperation Council, the nascent upheavals in Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the spectre of de-
stabilisation that hovers over much of the region. None of these issues is likely to find resolution in 2018, and could
suck in more states of the region.
If the U.S. were to follow through with its announcement to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it might well ignite
new tensions across the entire Arab world. This will further inflame radical Islamist ideas and tendencies across the
region, paving the way for a new round of conflict.
This year could also see a resurgence in terrorism. Both the IS and al-Qaeda seem to have acquired a new salience lately.
The collapse of the so-called Islamic Caliphate and its territorial demise has hardly weakened the terror potential of
the IS. In much the same manner as the Afghan jihad in 1980s and 1990s exacerbated insurgencies across parts of the
world, retreating IS members returning to their homeland could provide a new narrative of terrorism in 2018. Existing
cells across many parts of the world could well be re-vitalised as a result. The wave of attacks seen recently in
Afghanistan can be attributed to this vanguard of retreating IS fighters.
Given such a scenario, it is difficult to be optimistic about a better 2018.
M.K. Narayanan is a former National Security Advisor and a former Governor of West Bengal
Medley - a mixture, especially of heterogeneous elements; hodgepodge

Imbroglio - an extremely confused, complicated, or embarrassing situation.
Spectre - something widely feared as a possible unpleasant or dangerous occurrence.
Vanguard - a group of people leading the way in new developments or ideas.
a position at the forefront of new developments or ideas.
COMMENT
The Iranian crisis is not yet over
Ramin Jahanbegloo
JANUARY 10, 2018 00:02 IST
The largest public display of discontent since 2009, the current protests signal a new period of
uncertainty
Palpable - so intense as to seem almost tangible, perceptible
W hen revolutionary regimes stagnate, confusion and chaos reign, and both are palpably true of the Islamic
Republic of Iran today. Amid a deep economic, political and now social crisis, many on the ground in Iran and even
more observing from abroad don’t know what to think or to do. The recent protests which spread around Iran in
the waning days of 2017 and early 2018 represented the largest public display of discontent in Iran since the 2009
Green Movement.
Beyond Tehran
Unlike the 2009 Green Movement, which was largely a product of the urban middle class youth in Tehran, the
recent unrest in Iran seems to reflect the economic grievances of the lower and working classes, alienated from
institutional politics and suffering heavily from the consequences of an unjust and unequal management of the
Iranian economy. As a result, these protests have been largely driven by disaffected young people in rural areas,
towns and small cities who seized a pretext to express their frustrations with economic woes that are caused by
Iran’s foreign policy, as the country has been largely involved in both the Syrian conflict and turmoil in Yemen.
However, more than two weeks ago, the hard-liners who encouraged the rioters to direct their economic
frustrations against the reformist government of President Hassan Rouhani had no idea that a small regional
expression of dissent would take on a life of its own and turn into a general uprising. The protests, therefore,
turned not only into a reaction over rampant inflation, continuous corruption and rising prices, but also focused
on the crisis of legitimacy of the Islamic regime in Iran, totally misunderstood by a generation of Iranians who
were too young to remember the revolution of 1979.
The growing generational gap between the Islamic state and the Iranian youth, particularly young women, has
never been wider. In the ‘last 25 years Iran has been on a course of major political and societal evolution, as the
increasingly young population has become more educated, secular and rebellious’.
An ‘explosive mix of a growing population — which led to a youth bulge — combined with urbanisation, an
increasing unemployment rate and the rapid expansion of university education, produced new sociological actors
in Iran who were essentially young and educated (and mostly women, in fact) but with no political, economic or
social future. As a result, a generational gap divided Iranian society between moneymaking and powerful
conservatives and young rebels without a cause. Iran became a society divided between rich supporters of the
regime and poor rebels with no ideology and no political leaders. On one side are those who use power to make
money, and on the other side are those who disobey the social and political order’.
Political fragmentation
A large segment of the youth in Iran have access to ‘satellite television and the Internet and see how their
counterparts in the rest of the world, particularly in the West, are living, and they long for the same lifestyle’.
Recent events indicate the impact of a long-term demographic problem which has no short term remedies and
which foretells certain unavoidable truths for the Iranian regime — that undeniably, a young and restless
population can only be contained and repressed for so long. For the past 40 years the Islamic regime has
continuously searched for an ‘appropriate approach to cope with the challenge of governance while contending
with a perpetual struggle for power between competing tendencies and grave regional and international
challenges’. Political fragmentation within Iran has never been more evident, and the clerical elite have never
been challenged more clearly, both at the domestic and international level.
As recent riots in cities around Iran reveal, despite the subjects having been systematically arrested or killed by
the authorities, the tension between discontented youth and the regime will continue. It happens that Iranians
remain unsurprisingly unreconciled to theocracy. Moreover, even when protests in Iran start over economic
issues, as in the past few weeks, it seems that people are not just ‘demonstrating for better working conditions or
pay, but insisting on wholesale rejection of the system itself’. The widespread waves of protests that have swept
Iran practically every ten years suggest the gradual meltdown of the theocratic ideology in Iran.
Let us not forget that ‘Iran’s recent violent protests surged among the nation’s poor, presumed bedrock supporters
of the regime’, who have been disappointed by the limited economic and social improvements of the nation. The
Iranian government’s promises to revitalise the Iranian economy after the re-election of Mr. Rouhani as President
must be seen against the rise of youth unemployment which stands today at more than 40%. Also, those young
Iranians who supported the nuclear deal of 2015 between the Rouhani cabinet and the Obama administration
considered it as an ‘opportunity for Iranian civic actors to enable and empower Iran’s civil society space’.
Almost ten years ago, what was known as the Green Movement of 2009 ‘changed the destiny of the Iranian civil
society. The unprecedented protests that followed the presidential elections presented serious challenges to the
moral status of the theological sovereignty and its legitimacy in the world. The public anger and the ensuing
infighting among the founding architects of the revolution presented the most serious challenge to Iran’s clerical
regime since it replaced the Shah in 1979. Those among the reformists who believed that the system allowed scope
for reform found themselves face-to-face with a theological-political structure that used extreme violence to
ensure its legitimacy’.
The reformists’ silence

Strangely, the reformists were totally absent in leading or participating in the recent unrest in Iran. Iranian
reformists, like former President Mohammad Khatami, could have provided leadership but decided to stay out of
the action. Some have attributed the reformists’ reluctance to their fear of Iran turning into a new Syria, in other
words, a war-torn country heading for “failed state” status and threatening the region’s fragile stability. This is
certainly not what Saudi Arabia, Israel and Donald Trump’s America are looking for.
As a result, while the recent protests engulfed Iranian cities of all sizes and the country’s lower class population,
the reaction among political leaders around the globe has been far from united. While Mr. Trump endorsed the
protests in Iran, advocating change, the European leaders along with Russia’s Vladimir Putin took a more cautious
tone, pointing to the “unpredictable outcome” of the Arab Spring. Even Saudi Arabia, Iran’s arch-enemy in the
region, stayed unusually quiet.
One way or another, both inside and outside Iran, observers are worried about the future. All this as Iran might be
leading to a new period of political repression and economic hardship, while its population continues to grow,
with few new jobs, and more international isolation. It looks like the Iranian crisis is not yet over.
HuffPost US
EDITION
Iran’s Green Movement Five Years Later —

‘Defeated’ But Ultimately Victorious
By Akbar Ganji
ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 12 is the fifth anniversary of the birth of Iran’s democratic Green Movement. Though the open
resistance of this popular movement has been suppressed, it has been morally vindicated in the
intervening years and remains as a constituency imbedded in Iran’s body politic, ready to emerge once
again when the opportunity arises.
And the opportunity will surely arise. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not your usual authoritarian state. As
a hybrid of religious dictatorship and competitive elections, the regime generates its own opposition, see-
sawing back and forth between conservatives and reformists. One day, the balance of power will shift
decisively toward democracy and against the Ayatollahs.
It is precisely because competitive elections within a religious dictatorship are so meaningful that the
election five years ago in 2009 was so passionately contested.
REMEMBERING THE EVENTS
On that day in 2009 Iran’s 10th presidential elections were held. Over 39 million people, representing
about 85 percent of the eligible voters, cast their votes. According to the government’s claims, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad received 62.6 percent of the votes, while his main opponent, former Prime Minister Mir
Hossein Mousavi received 33.75 percent. The disbelief that these results were accurate ignited the
widespread protests of the Green Movement.
Unlike in previous elections, the results were announced too quickly. Mousavi and the third candidate,
former Majles (parliament) Speaker Mehdi Karroubi both demanded nullification of the elections. Their
supporters in Tehran and other large cities filled the streets, shouting “where is my vote?”
After the demonstrations by hundreds of thousands continued for a week, Iran’s Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei rejected the demands by the protestors, accused the United States and
other Western powers of interfering in Iran, and demanded an end to any protests. In his sermon during
the Friday prayers a week after the elections, Khamenei’s words were regarded by many as sanctioning
a violent crackdown on the demonstrators.
The
Iran’s
Huffington Green Movement Five Years Later — ‘Defeated’ But Ultimately …
Post
In the end, it took the regime about nine months to put down the Green Movement. Ten thousand people
were arrested, and many of them faced charges. At least 110 people were killed (although the regime
claimed only 33 people were killed, of whom 16 people supposedly belonged to the Basij militia, the
paramilitary force controlled by the Revolutionary Guard). Many prisoners were tortured and Stalinist-type
trials were held for them. Some of the prisoners were forced to “confess” that they had worked with
foreign governments.
But, Mousavi and Karroubi, the leaders of the Green Movement, continued their protests. Using the
political upheaval in Tunisia and Egypt as an excuse, they invited the people to demonstrate on Feb. 15,
2011. At least a million people demonstrated on that day in Tehran. Then, on the order of Khamenei,
Mousavi, his wife, Dr. Zahra Rahnavard (a university professor), Karroubi and his wife, Fatemeh
Karroubi, were put under house arrest. Fatemeh Karroubi was released later on, but the other three are
still under strict house arrest.
The Revolutionary Guard chief, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, said recently that his forces took
three “fundamental and strategic” actions against the Green Movement: widespread arrest of the
strategists and leaders of the protests, confronting the demonstrators with force in order to prevent their
street actions, and cutting off means of mass communication between them, such as cell phones, SMS,
etc.
VICTORY IN DEFEAT
The Green Movement may have been repressed, but it was only seemingly defeated. Its original
demand, cancellation of the 2009 elections, was never realized. Ahmadinejad continued as Iran’s
President, and left office last year after eight years of economic and political failures. He left a ruined Iran
for his successor, Hassan Rouhani.
Over time, the goals and demands of the Green Movement expanded and evolved. In the age of
electronic communications and YouTube, any group of a few hundred people can claim to represent the
“demands of the people.” Some have even called for the intervention of foreign powers and the imposing
of harsh economic sanctions on Iran. In interviews with Farsi-speaking, foreign-based televisions, then
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton even promised that if the U.S. receives a request from Iran’s
opposition leaders, it will provide the type of “help” that the U.S. gave the Libyan people during their
struggle to topple Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.
For their part, Mousavi and Karroubi have courageously resisted the pressure by Khamenei and his
supporters, and have also continued to insist on peaceful democratic principles. The vast majority of their
supporters have continued doing the same, but a small fraction has called for toppling the regime by any
means.
THE REGIME’S MORAL DEFEAT
Although under Khamenei’s leadership the Islamic Republic seemingly defeated the Green Movement, it
ultimately failed morally. The reasons are fourfold.
• Resorting to force against peaceful demonstrators. The regime did not accept testing its own claims
about the elections by cancelling them and holding new ones, and instead used naked force as the
ultimate arbiter of its dispute with the nation. Using force is always a sign of political weakness of a
regime’s political legitimacy. In fact, by resorting to force, the regime violated its own constitution and
encouraged the people to break the laws. This represents the biggest moral failure of the state.
• The resistance of the Green Movement’s leaders and a significant portion of the society against
the regime have kept alive those elections as an “unsolved problem.” The Islamic Republic has a
long record of creating unsolved problems, and transforming them into potential reasons for public
protests at many levels of the society. Moreover, once in a while new evidence emerges supporting
The
Mousavi’s Iran’s
and
Huffington Green
Karroubi’s Movement
contention aboutFive Years Later
the elections. — ‘Defeated’
For example, But told
General Jafari Ultimately …of
a gathering
Post
the IRGC commanders that in the 2009 elections “there were considerable concerns among the
revolutionary forces that the counter-revolutionaries that had penetrated the government during the
reform era [of former president Mohammad Khatami] will get another opportunity to do the same.” Jafari
added that the ruling group thought that the elections will go to the second round (it happens if no
candidate receives more than 50 percent of the votes), and that it was not clear what would happen in
that round. Thus, the IRGC was forced to intervene in order to block the possibility and prevent the
reformists from returning to power.
• Transformation of Mousavi and Karroubi into national heroes and the increasing public pressure
for their release from house arrest and the release of all the political prisoners represent the third
reason for the failure of the regime. President Hassan Rouhani has seriously pursued these goals, but
has been facing strong resistance by Khamenei and the hardliners in the security and intelligence
establishments.
• Over the intervening years, the Green Movement has created connections and trust among
many millions of people, hence creating a potentially powerful social force that can re-emerge,
given an opportunity.
THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC — DICTATORSHIP AND ELECTIONS
The Islamic Republic is a dictatorship, but not all dictatorships are similar. Iran holds regular elections for
the parliament, the presidency, city councils, and the Assembly of Experts (a constitutional body that
appoints the Supreme Leader). Although the Guardian Council vets the candidates and prevents a large
number of them from running, the elections are still very competitive and consequential. For example,
right from its inception, there has always been a struggle for the control of sources of power, wealth, and
social standing. The struggle is real and the competition can be dirty.
The presidential elections have always provided an opportunity for temporarily mobilizing the public and
bringing competing forces directly into play.
During the Khamenei era that began in 1989, the elections have always polarized the society, with the
supporters and opponents of Khamenei making up the opposite sides. The people demonstrate their
dissatisfaction with Khamenei by voting for the candidate opposed by his supporters.
The elections can always produce unexpected results — the reformist Khatami’s election in 1997,
Ahmadinejad’s election in 2005 and 2009, and victory by Rouhani last year are the best evidence for this.
A POWER STRUCTURE THAT CREATES ITS OWN OPPOSITION
The power structure in the Islamic Republic is such that it creates its own opposition. The late Grand
Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri was supposed to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but became his
most important critic, and revealed great crimes and torture of the political prisoners. He was also put
under house arrest for five years during the Khamenei era.
Khatami, once Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, was forced to resign due to his relatively liberal
policies, but won the presidential elections in 1997 in a landslide. But, he is now banned from leaving
Iran.
Mousavi was Khomeini’s hand-picked prime minister and was imposed on Khamenei in 1980s when he
was Iran’s president. He was also a member of many important organs of the state during Khamenei’s
reign.
Karroubi was Khomeini’s personal representative to many important state organs, as well as a two-term
Majles Speaker.
Mousavi and Karroubi are the products of the Islamic Republic and the Green Movement was born
The
because Iran’s
of their
Huffington Green Movement
presidential runs in 2009. Five Years Later — ‘Defeated’ But Ultimately …
Post
During the entire Khamenei era, the political developments instigated by high officials of the regime have
temporarily attracted many in the opposition in the diaspora, and have made them hopeful for the future.
The presidencies of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Rouhani, as well as the birth of the Green
Movement are the best evidence for this aspect of Iranian politics.
If a movement is created inside Iran, many Iranians living in the diaspora also join it and try to influence it.
But, when the internal movement fails, the diaspora is not able to prevent its failure.
A PEACEFUL PATH TO DEMOCRACY — NOT AN IRAQ-TYPE DEBACLE
The struggle within the Islamic Republic power hierarchy is still continuing unabated. New political blocs
and alliances are emerging in preparation for the next Assembly of Experts elections, and those for the
Majles to be held in March 2016. Hardliners have also been making extensive preparations for the
elections, saying publicly that they are worried that the reformists will win the next Majles elections.
But, because nuclear negotiations between Iran and P5+1 have still not produced the final agreement,
and the West’s most crippling sanctions in history imposed on Iran have still not been lifted, bringing the
country out of its deep economic problems is difficult, and the future is still uncertain. Rouhani,
Rafsanjani, Khatami, and Hassan Khomeini, the Ayatollah’s grandson, are pursuing the release of
Mousavi and Karroubi from house arrest. But, Khamenei and the hardliners, particularly some of IRGC
commanders are opposed to it.
The Iranian society has undergone deep structural changes that make it impossible to take the country
back to the early days of the Revolution of 1979. There is widespread dissatisfaction with the present
state of affairs. What is important is transforming the dissatisfaction into effective political action.
Taking a look at the region around Iran and in the rest of the world, the Iranian people see two types of
scenarios drawn the experience of other countries:
One is what has happened in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Libya that has destroyed the infrastructure of
these nations, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process.
But there is also the experience of Tunisia, South Africa, Chile, Brazil, and other countries that resulted in
a more or less peaceful transition to democracy.
Mousavi, Karroubi, Khatami, and most of the political prisoners and opposition forces inside Iran are
opposed to creating a situation that would bring to Iran what happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and
Syria. They are pursuing a peaceful transition from the religious dictatorship of the Islamic Republic to
democratic rule based on respect for human rights of the citizens, and are opposed to foreign intervention
in Iran. Their goal is a peaceful transition to democracy, not inviting the destruction of Iran the way their
neighbors have been destroyed.
The Green Movement and its supporters have not gone away. When the opportunity arises, they will be
mobilized once again, bringing democracy closer to Iran.
This article was translated by Ali N. Babaei.
Akbar Ganji
Dissident Iranian journalist; Intl. Press Association World Press Freedom Hero
Diaspora - A large group of people with a similar heritage/homeland who have since moved out to places all
over the world.
LEAD
The map of rural deprivation
Santosh Mehrotra
JANUARY 11, 2018 00:02 IST
For millions hit by agricultural distress, the escape to construction jobs is grinding to a halt
W ith the Union Budget to be presented on February 1, it is hoped that the Finance Minister will make a
significantly higher allocation for investment in infrastructure. It is vital for addressing rural distress. The
Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) informed us that ‘landlessness and dependence on manual casual
labour for a livelihood are key deprivations facing rural families’, which make them far more vulnerable to
impoverishment.
Based on indicators
The rural census, or SECC, mapped deprivation using seven indicators: ‘households with a kuchha house;
without an adult member in working age; headed by a woman and without an adult male in working age;
with a disabled member and without able-bodied adult; of Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST);
without literate adults over 25 years; and the landless engaged in manual labour. The more the number of
parameters on which a household is deprived, the worse its extent of poverty. Nearly 30% have two
deprivations, 13% have three. Only 0.01% suffer from all seven handicaps’.
While 48.5% of all rural households suffer from at least one deprivation indicator, “landless households
engaged in manual labour” are more vulnerable.
Nearly 54 million households are in the landless-labourer category; assuming that each such household has
five members, that makes 250 million of the nearly 850-900 million rural population. This number is almost
certainly an underestimate, since 84% of all those who even hold agricultural land are small and marginal
farmers.
The intersection of any of the six other handicaps with “landless labour” makes it more acute. The SECC also
said that ‘59% of households with kuchha houses are landless labourers; similarly, 55% of those with no
literate adult above 25 years and 54% each of SC/ST households and female-headed households without adult
male members are also landless households. At the same time, 47% households without an adult member of
working age are landless labourers as are 45% of those with disabled members and no able-bodied adult
members’.
Cohort - a group of people with a shared characteristic.
Pauperised - poverty or generally the state of being poor
Farmer distress
Along with landless families, small and marginal farmers are getting pauperised and more engaged in
manual labour. The overall farm size, which has been dropping since the early 1970s, and down from the 2.25
hectares (ha) average to a 1.25 ha average in 2010, will continue to become even smaller. For these farmers,
agricultural incomes are also likely to fall, hastening the exodus from agriculture. In fact, farmer distress has
been growing, with the past year witnessing farmers protesting on the streets in several States.
National Sample Survey (NSS) data show that there are two demographic groups which did reasonably well in
labour market outcomes both in terms of job growth as well as wage growth between 2004-5 and 2011-12;
these were the young who were getting educated at hitherto unheard of rates, and the older, poorly educated
cohort of landless labour in agriculture, who saw construction work rise sharply.
However, the question is: does the economy have the capacity to create non-agricultural jobs for both groups
whose numbers will grow over the next decade until 2030? The young have been entering and remaining in
education in unprecedented numbers for the last two decades. Hence, as a result, while the young joining the
labour force has been just 2 million per annum between 2004-5 and 2015-16, from this point onwards, the
numbers of the young will indeed grow significantly.
However, the numbers of landless and small and marginal farmers looking for non-agricultural work is an
immediate and top priority. Between 2004-5 and 2011-12, the number of cultivators in rural areas fell from
160 million to 141 million and the number of landless labour from 85 million to 69 million, both because
they found non-agricultural work.
Construction employment
The real net domestic product of the construction sector had only increased at the annual rate of 3.94%
between 1970-71 and 1993-94. From 1993-94 to 2004-05 and 2004-05 to 2011-12, the growth rate in the
construction sector output accelerated to 7.92% and 11.5%, respectively. Consequently, the share of the
construction sector in rural output increased from 3.5% in 1970-71 to 10.5% in 2011-12. Employment in the
construction sector increased 13 times during the past four decades, which led to its share in rural
employment rising from 1.4% in 1972-73 to 10.7% in 2011-12. This sector absorbed 74% of the new jobs
created in non-farm sectors in rural areas between 2004-05 and 2011-12. These trends indicate that rural
areas witnessed a construction boom after 2004-05. Further, growth in employment in the construction
sector was higher than output growth during both periods under consideration. One reason for the much
higher growth in the number of rural workers in construction over the manufacturing or services sectors is
that there are fewer skill and educational requirements in construction.
Construction employment grew at a remarkable rate from 1999-2000 onwards. While it employed only 17
million in that year, the number jumped to 26 million by 2004-5. However, what happened after that was
totally unprecedented. It grew to 51 million by 2011-12, which is a doubling in seven years or a tripling in 12
years from the turn of the millennium.
This was possible because of the sustained growth in investment in infrastructure, especially over the 11th
Five Year Plan period (2007-12) of $100 billion per annum, two-thirds of which was public, and the remainder
private. In addition, there was a real boom in real estate, residential and commercial, throughout the country.
However, private investment is now much lower than earlier.
Construction is the main activity absorbing poorly educated rural labour in the rural and urban areas. These
workers are characterised, as noted above, by very low levels of education. It is estimated from NSS and
Labour Bureau data that the absolute number of those in construction who were illiterate was 11 million in
2004-5, but which rose to 19 million in 2011-12.
Construction jobs were growing so fast between 2004-5 and 2011-2 that the share of construction in total
jobs for 15 to 29 year olds in the workforce doubled from 7.5% to 14%. Since then construction job growth has
slowed, such that the share of construction in total youth employment fell to 13.3%. Construction jobs are
growing more slowly since 2011-12, as public investment has fallen. And with the rising non-performing
assets of banks, private investment has fallen as well. The result: fewer workers have been leaving agriculture
since 2011-12. From the 5 million leaving agriculture per annum between 2004-5 to 2011-12, the number is
down to just over 1 million per annum between 2011-12 to 2015-16.
This is hurting landless labour and small and marginal farmers the most, since their households had
benefited the most from the tightening of the labour market that had ensued in rural and urban areas
because of rising construction jobs. Rural demand in particular has risen, raising consumer demand for
simple manufactured goods, especially in the unorganised manufacturing sector, raising employment in
those sectors especially in rural areas.
The Union government has sustained rural development expenditure for the last two years, especially for
rural roads, under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana and rural housing under the Pradhan Mantri Awas
Yojana (Urban). The Surface Transport Ministry has also attempted to sustain public investment in
infrastructure to generate construction jobs for growing surplus rural labour.
The Budget for 2018-19 should sustain this public investment effort. The announcement that the
government plans to borrow an additional ₹50,000 crore in this financial year, is welcome. Hopefully, the
intention here is to raise public investment, especially for infrastructure investment.
Santosh Mehrotra is professor of economics and Chair of the Centre for Labour, Jawaharlal Nehru University
LEAD
The road still runs through Ramallah

Suhasini Haidar JANUARY 12, 2018 00:02 IST UPDATED: JANUARY 12, 2018 00:08 IST
Advocating the Israel-Palestine peace process is vital for India to restore its influence in West Asia
N arendra Modi’s visit to Israel last year, the first by an Indian Prime Minister, stood out for his decision not to
visit the Palestinian territories. Two months before Mr. Modi’s visit, even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s closest ally, U.S. President Donald Trump, had coupled his visit to Jerusalem with a trip to Bethlehem to
meet the Palestinian leadership. The decision, India had said, came from a determination to “de-hyphenate” relations
with Israel and Palestine. This was underlined in the India-Israel joint statement, which didn’t refer to the two-state
solution, didn’t mention the status of Jerusalem, and didn’t even call for an early resumption of the Israel-Palestine
peace process.
Ramallah - a Palestinian city in the central West Bank
Strengthening ties located 10 km (6 miles) north of Jerusalem
Instead, the two countries focussed on burgeoning bilateral ties, most notably the defence and strategic partnership.
By one estimate, India accounts for 41% of Israel’s defence exports, and a possible sale of Spike anti-tank missiles
during Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to India will give this steadfast relationship an added fillip. Counter-terrorism
cooperation remains a cornerstone of India-Israel cooperation and there will be a powerful joint remembrance
ceremony during Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to Mumbai’s Chabad House, one of the targets of the 26/11 attack. The biggest
growth areas in bilateral ties will also come from memorandums of understanding in agriculture and water
technology, given Israeli expertise in this area.
During Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to Ahmedabad, where he and Mr. Modi will undertake a roadshow together, he will hand
over two desalinisation vehicles that Mr. Modi saw in Haifa. Showing how little he believed the political context
matters to the bilateral relationship anymore, Mr. Netanyahu said that neither China nor India conditioned their
relationship with Israel on the basis of the Palestinian peace process. “[Mr. Modi said], I need more water, clean water…
where will I get it? Ramallah?” Mr. Netanyahu had told a group of European officials a few days after Mr. Modi’s visit.
Difference of a few months

However, the decision to de-hyphenate doesn’t seem quite as set in stone as it had just a few months ago. Expectations
are that unlike in Jerusalem, Mr. Modi will raise the need to pursue the two-state solution with Mr. Netanyahu
directly during the India visit. Mr. Modi is also expected to travel to Palestine in the next few months, and receive
Jordanian King Abdullah II in New Delhi, during which the need for the peace process will be highlighted.
At a Non-Aligned Ministerial in September, calling India’s support to the Palestinian cause a “reference point” in its
foreign policy, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj affirmed that India’s “expanding relations” in the region will “only
strengthen the Palestinian cause”, not weaken it. And in a letter ahead of the UN International Solidarity Day with the
Palestinian People in November, Mr. Modi wrote that India’s vision for the creation of a separate Palestinian state
remains, and called for an “early resumption of dialogue”.
The biggest shift from what seemed to be a set trajectory for the Modi government, however, came on the floor of the
UN General Assembly (UNGA) on December 21, when India chose to vote for a resolution criticising the U.S. for
recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, and also called on Israel to end its “occupation that began in 1967”. The
Foreign Ministry defended its decision as consistent with past policy, but in fact the reverse is evident. In the past
three years, barring a vote at the UNGA in 2014, India has turned from its traditional pro-Palestinian stance, to one of
abstention. In 2015, India abstained on a UN Human Rights Council resolution criticising Israel for an aerial bombing
of Gaza that had left 2,200 people dead. It repeated its abstention in 2016. Also in 2016, at UNESCO in Paris, India
Cornerstone - A stone that forms the base of a corner of a building, joining two walls,
An important quality or feature on which a particular thing depends or is based.
changed its vote from voting ‘for’ to an abstention on a resolution criticising Israel for encroachments at the Western
Wall and near the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
Clearly, India could have easily made a case for abstaining on the UNGA resolution on Jerusalem as well, especially
given this recent record. The decision was taken despite strong lobbying from Israel in the run-up to the vote, and
despite Mr. Trump’s open threats to all those voting for the resolution. Another possible tack came from Mr. Trump’s
own statement when he announced his decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, saying it was not a “final
status” position, including on the extent of “Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem”. Bhutan has used that statement to
explain its breaking ranks with India at the vote, by choosing to abstain.
Meanwhile, the bogey of “domestic compulsions” used by several governments in the past, a euphemism for
objections from India’s Muslim minority on the Israel-Palestine issue, has long since been called out: there has been
no major ‘street’ reaction to or protest of any of India’s overtures to Israel, or to the visits by the leaders thus far, and
the Modi government had no cause to worry about a public reaction to an abstention in this case.
As a result, India’s position can only be explained by a desire to reassert its leadership role on the multilateral stage,
and to regain its leverage on the Israel-Palestine issue, a re-hyphenation of sorts. This is in keeping with the special
place and moral position India has always assumed on the peace process, and its support to a just solution. It is also a
rejection of the false equivalence often built between Palestine and Kashmir, or comparisons between de-
hyphenating the India-Pakistan relationship and the Israel-Palestine issue. De-hyphenating relations with Israel and
Palestine can only follow a peaceful resolution of the issue, which even Israel’s founding fathers believed was the two-
state solution. “The future of the Zionist project depends on [Israel’s] embrace of the two-state solution,” former
President Shimon Peres wrote in his memoirs. “The danger, if Israel abandons this goal, is that the Palestinians will
eventually accept a one-state solution. Because of demographics, this would leave Israel with a choice: stay Jewish or
stay democratic.” It is this solution that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated for espousing, and Mr. Peres
died hoping for — but Israel’s current dispensation is moving away from this long-standing consensus.
On principle
Weeks after winning on principle at the UNGA to have its candidate overwhelmingly elected to the International
Court for Justice, India could not have been seeing bowing to pressure or to the diktats of ‘realpolitik’ on the
Jerusalem vote at the same forum. More to the point, the government appears to have affirmed that in calculating the
national interest, it is necessary to value the role of India’s leadership on the international stage as well. If there is a
realpolitik calculation to be made, it is that India’s influence in West Asia cannot be squandered away so casually, and
advocating the peace process with Mr. Netanyahu will be an important step. The road to India’s prosperity may well
run through Jerusalem, but the road to its leadership aspirations on the world stage cannot bypass Ramallah either.
suhasini.h@thehindu.co.in
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LEAD
Rights in the age of big data
Apar Gupta
JANUARY 13, 2018 00:02 IST
Data protection legislation should be about protecting people, not innovation
“What do judges know that we cannot teach a computer?” There is a substantial public sentiment that
distrusts legal rules and state structures and looks to technology for solutions. After all, many trust their
smartphones more than they trust their government. But what may seem as a fairly modern libertarian
opinion, voiced in pitch decks and technology conferences, and buoyed by the success of the information
economy, has much deeper roots. Such ambitions of a technology centric society were voiced more than forty
years ago by John McCarthy, an influential computer scientist and professor at Stanford who coined the term,
“artificial intelligence”, and nurtured it into a formal field of research. It was not that such assertions were
without prominent challengers, noticeably Joseph Weizenbaum whose 1976 book titled Computer Power and
Human Reason put people at the centre of technological progress, rather than being its subjects.
Many concerns
Debates on permission-less innovation, social leapfrogging facilitated by technology, and challenges to the
legal order have now acquired greater urgency without losing any of their polemical flavour, shifting from
academia to law-making. Concerns are being voiced this month in several Indian cities by members of the
public, civil society groups, academic experts and technologists, think tanks, industry associations and
technology companies to a committee headed by Justice B.N. Srikrishna, a former Supreme Court judge,
tasked with making recommendations and drafting a data protection law. This committee holds immense
promise but a white paper it published, the primary public document on the basis of which public comment
is solicited, gives reason for concern.
The white paper, published late last year, extends into 233 pages and poses 233 distinct questions. While the
sheer breadth of the paper poses granular choices, the broader framing of the document proceeds from a
premise of weighing the scales between individual rights and technological innovation. The first few pages
note the rationale of the committee “to harness the benefits of the digital economy and mitigate the harms
consequent to it”.
Subsequent paragraphs provide further explanation: “Since technologies such as Big Data, the Internet of
Things, and Artificial Intelligence are here to stay and hold out the promise of welfare and innovation, India
will have to develop a data protection law... to ensure a balance between innovation and privacy.” This
framing of a trade-off between the demands of technological innovation and individual rights is a terrible
bargain for our future. It presumes to hold both fundamental rights and innovation as somewhat equal, or at
the very least as competing values. This appears contrary to the context and the mandate of the committee, as
well as principles of individual liberty.
The right to privacy

The formation of the Justice Srikrishna Committee on data protection was cited by government lawyers in
the midst of Supreme Court hearings on the fundamental right to privacy in the Puttaswamy case. This
submission was taken note by the Supreme Court of India, most prominently in the judgment authored by
Justice D.Y. Chandrachud who observed that a “carefully structured regime for the protection of data” may be
created, having “due regard to what has been set out in this judgment”. The judgment itself in previous
paragraphs proceeded from a premise of asserting that the right to privacy exists as a natural right inherent
in all fundamental rights of the Constitution. At the root of this is the liberty of the individual that finds
expression through concepts such as autonomy and dignity — choice and freedom. Justice Chandrachud
further noted that privacy has positive and negative features, where it restrains “an intrusion upon the life
and personal liberty of a citizen”, and also requires “an obligation on the state to take all necessary measures
to protect the privacy of the individual”.
A joint reading of all the six separate opinions which flow into the heart of the judgment lead to a singular
inescapable conclusion. The privacy protections that limit state intrusion and data protection laws should
shield individuals rather than commercial interests or technological innovation.
At this point a concern may arise about the dangers of a legal disruption to innovation. But using individual
rights as a foundation is not the same as advocacy of Luddism — and may even be its very opposite. By
avoiding a binary bargain between the benefits of rights and technology, a sound legislation would further
innovation as a social goal that serves human needs. It would make big data subject to greater legality, the
Internet of Things best suited to the Internet of people, and artificial intelligence subject to natural rights. To
forge such an understanding, a fundamental acknowledgement has to be forthcoming that technology is a
means, and not the end in itself. It must exist and work within the framework of the rule of law. While
traditional legal systems are slow to adapt and change, the right regulatory design will prevent pure market
mechanisms that concentrate power and cause harm to individuals. Doing otherwise would alert us to a
danger as forewarned by Weizenbaum, that “technological inevitability can thus be seen to be a mere element
of a much larger syndrome. Science promised man power. But, as so often happens when people are seduced
by promises of power, the price extracted… is servitude and impotence. Power is nothing if it is not the power
to choose.”
A practical way to operationalise individual choice in a data protection law is for the Srikrishna Committee to
take the benefit of past expert efforts. Most noticeably by the Justice A.P. Shah Committee which a little over
five years ago proposed nine privacy principles acting on a “fundamental philosophy” of “ensuring that the
privacy of the data subject is guaranteed”. To operationalise these principles and account for “innovation” the
A.P. Shah Committee among other things recommended, “the Privacy Act should not make any reference to
specific technologies and must be generic enough such that the principles and enforcement mechanisms
remain adaptable to changes in society, the marketplace, technology, and the government.” However, such
existing recommendations proceed from a clear acknowledgement of data protection protecting individuals
and not about protecting innovation, state interests for welfare objectives, or commercial interests of
technologists and corporations. To ignore them would be to chart a perilous path that has become apparent
over the past few months with wider implementation of Aadhaar.
Constitutionalism as guide
The Aadhaar project, which aims to usher a data-driven revolution in the private sector and at the same time
act as a state policy panacea, has become a topic of continuing public concern. Repeated press reports indicate
continuing data breaches, exclusion and theft of benefits, lack of legal remedies and the prospect of profiling
and surveillance. Sufficient evidence exists today persuading us to honour constitutionalism, privileging
individual rights over innovation. In doing so, we must forsake the artificial reasonableness of a balancing
exercise between unequals. Such caution was counselled by Justice Srikrishna himself when he quoted the
Garuda Purana in an article critiquing judicial activism to state, “He who forsakes that which is stable in
favour of something unstable, suffers doubly; he loses that which is stable, and, of course, loses that which is
unstable.”
Apar Gupta practises law in New Delhi

LEAD
Aadhaar: Enabling a form of supersurveillance
Suhrith Parthasarathy
JANUARY 16, 2018 00:02 IST
The Aadhaar project falls short in limiting biometrics collection to voluntary choice and in guaranteeing
data protection
W hat really is Aadhaar all about? Is the machinery that supports it constitutionally sustainable? How does
the creation of a central identity database affect the traditional relationship between the state and its citizens?
What, in a democracy, ought to be the role of government? On Wednesday, January 17, a five-judge bench of the
Supreme Court is scheduled to commence hearings on a slew of petitions that will bring these questions and more
to the forefront of a constitutional battle for the ages. The verdict that the court ultimately pronounces will
decisively impact the future of governance in the country. At stake is the continuing legitimacy of the social
contract that the Constitution embodies.
From voluntary to coercion
The Aadhaar project (although the christening of it came later) was put in motion through an executive
notification issued in January 2009, which established the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The
UIDAI’s task was to conceive a scheme that purported to identify residents using biometric information —
including, but not limited to iris scans and fingerprints — and to provide to people a “unique identity number”.
This, the state told us, will enable it to ensure a proper distribution of benefits and subsidies, by plugging age-old
leakages in delivering welfare services. What it didn’t tell us, though, was that it had barely, if at all, conducted
anything resembling a neutral analysis of the costs and gains of the project before launching it.
In any event, the UIDAI steamed ahead with enrolments, even as the government dithered in
enacting legislation. As a result, a mountain of data was collected without any safeguards in
place. Making things worse, a scheme that was supposedly voluntary was now proving to be
anything but. Citizens were coerced into parting with private information, compelled by
threats from the government. A failure to enrol, we were told, would close doors to a raft of
state services. Slowly, as the list of these facilities began to expand, given that the project
lacked any legislative sanction, the Supreme Court was driven to intervene. The court issued
interim orders, on different occasions, clarifying that the programme had to be treated as
voluntary, and that no person should be denied a service simply because he or she hadn’t enrolled themselves with
the UIDAI.
In March 2016, the Union government finally introduced in the Lok Sabha, in the place of an earlier Bill which had
been stuck in the logjams of parliamentary committees, a new draft legislation titled the Aadhaar (Targeted
Delivery of Financial & Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016. Remarkably, however, this proposed
statute was categorised by the Speaker of the House as a money Bill, meaning that it did not require the Rajya
Sabha’s affirmation for it to turn into binding law.
Ultimately, as expected, the Bill came to be passed, and the Aadhaar Act came into force. This law not only
retroactively legitimises the actions of the UIDAI before its enactment but also puts in place the structure that
underpins the Aadhaar programme. The law itself terms enrolment with the UIDAI as voluntary, but, as we’ve
since seen, the government has expanded, and continues to expand, the use of the number for a wide array of
purposes. Now, before the Supreme Court, the Aadhaar Act and its various provisions stand challenged, together
with the host of notifications issued by the government, which link Aadhaar to different services.
ALSO READ Heart of the matter

To reduce the merits of the petitions to a few issues would, no doubt, be reductive. But,
ultimately, in question are four core interests: the first concerns whether the state can at all
compel a person to part with his or her biometric information without securing the person’s
Rights in the informed consent; the second involves questions over the surveillance apparatus that the
age of big data
Aadhaar Act creates; the third raises questions over the level of exclusion caused by the use
of Aadhaar, for example, concerns over the extent to which the programme meets its
purported objectives; and the fourth questions the degree of protection offered to the data
that the UIDAI collects, stores and operates. On each of these, any sensible reading of the Aadhaar Act would show
us that the machinery that it has put in place flagrantly infracts fundamental rights, granting, in the process,
enormously invasive powers to the state.
Dither - be indecisive.
Flagrantly - conspicuously or obviously offensive.
Infract - to break, violate, or infringe
When a government creates a central database such as this, when it links that database with every conceivable
human activity, it naturally allows itself access to the most intimate details of a person’s life. Effectively, what the
Aadhaar programme tells us is this: our fingerprints don’t belong to us but to the state, that the government has
an untrammelled authority to insist on expropriating our identity as a precondition for it to do its job. It ought to
be clear that this vision, this basic hypothesis on which the Aadhaar Act operates, militates against the principles
that lie at the foundation of any democracy. The essence of individual freedom, of the right to life that Article 21 of
the Constitution guarantees, is that every person has a basic entitlement to bodily integrity, to decide for
themselves how they want to lead their lives. But, how, we might wonder, can we truly be free, when the state is
watching our every step?
Expropriate - (of the state or an authority) take (property) from its owner for public use or benefit.
Seamless police state
ALSO READ
Now, it would certainly be naive to contend that an Aadhaar-free India will also be free of
surveillance. But that is not the argument that the petitioners are making. Their argument is
somewhat more nuanced. It is that the Aadhaar Act, in centrally maintaining all this data,
enables a form of super surveillance, permits the creation of a perfect police state, allowing
All that data
that Aadhaar
the government to track every one of our activities in real-time, to trace, at any given point
captures of time, a person’s physical location. Some might find this kind of surveillance exhilarating.
But, in reality, it only emboldens the state to treat everyone one of us as criminals, to make a
presumption of guilt at the grave cost of basic civil liberties.
This mechanism for surveillance is further facilitated by the Aadhaar Act’s central design, which vests in the
UIDAI a conflicting dual responsibility: to act both as the custodian of all the information that it collects and to act
as a regulator of the Aadhaar database. This means that any breach made to the data that is centrally amassed,
unless exposed in the manner in which The Tribune recently did, will only be known to the UIDAI. It will then be
for the UIDAI to decide how it wants to remedy such intrusions. As a result, when our Aadhaar data is leaked, we
will be left with no recourse to an effective remedy.
Imperilling access to welfare

ALSO READ Even more worryingly, the Aadhaar programme possesses the capacity to exclude individuals
from welfare schemes, as opposed to aiding a more beneficial delivery of benefits. A number
of studies conducted have already shown that biometric authentication comes with a series
of fatal flaws. Given that Aadhaar is being seeded with public distribution schemes, the
likelihood of people being denied basic welfare services, therefore, increases in manifold
Rights in the
age of big data ways. The elderly and people involved in manual labour are but two groups of people whose
fingerprints are difficult to record accurately, imperilling, thereby, their access to state
services.
For its part, in the Supreme Court, the government will no doubt argue that Aadhaar can
bring about many benefits, that it has the capacity to do good. But any policy, howsoever poorly framed, will likely
bring about certain gains, some of them even unintended. The question here is ultimately one of proportionality,
one of justice. In the case of the Aadhaar Act, the government’s intentions are patently clear. The aim is to create a
seamless police state, which will chill our freedom and place the state in a position of rampant power. Will the
Supreme Court dare to stop this?
Suhrith Parthasarathy is an advocate practising at the Madras High Court
Exhilarating - make (someone) feel very happy, thrill, excite
Imperilling - put at risk of being harmed, injured, or destroyed.
LEAD
Following the grain trail: on India's public distribution system
Jean Drèze
JANUARY 17, 2018 00:15 IST
Many States have initiated ‘reforms’ of the public distribution system that are hurting millions of people
I
I ndia’s public distribution system (PDS) is in danger of being derailed in several States across the country. Recent
disruptions of the PDS have taken different forms, from compulsory biometric authentication to so-called direct
benefit transfer (DBT). The consequences are alarming, but tend to go unreported.
Biometric mix-ups
Jharkhand is a prime example of this problem. By mid-2016, the PDS in Jharkhand had greatly improved, partly due to a
series of reforms inspired by Chhattisgarh’s experience and intensified under the National Food Security Act (NFSA).
Instead of completing these reforms, for instance by removing private dealers, the Jharkhand government made
Aadhaar-based biometric authentication compulsory for PDS users. The consequences, documented in a recent study
published in the Economic and Political Weekly, were sobering. Large numbers of people, especially among vulnerable
groups such as widows and the elderly, found themselves excluded from the PDS. Those who were still able to buy their
food rations faced considerable inconvenience due to connectivity and biometric failures. Worse, there was a revival of
corruption, as PDS rice meant for those who failed the biometric test was siphoned off with abandon.
ALSO READ
The damage was made worse in mid-2017, when the Jharkhand government mass-cancelled ration
cards not linked with Aadhaar. On September 22, the government claimed that Aadhaar had
enabled it to cancel 11 lakh “fake” ration cards, but this figure stands no scrutiny, and indeed, it
was retracted later. Many of the cancelled ration cards actually belonged to families that had been
Dark clouds
over the PDS
unable to link their card with Aadhaar for no fault of their own. The family of Santoshi Kumari, an
11-year old Dalit girl who died of hunger on September 28, was among them.
The mass-cancellation of Aadhaar-less ration cards, without verification and without even
informing the victims, was both inhuman and illegal. The State government received some flak
for it from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) — it is another matter that UIDAI is participating in the
crusade to make Aadhaar-based biometric authentication compulsory in various contexts. But far from learning from
this mistake, or doing anything to repair it, the Jharkhand government launched a further attack on people’s food
entitlements: the monthly PDS rations of 5 kg per person were restricted to those whose individual names had been
linked with Aadhaar in the ration-cards database. The following sort of situation is now very common in rural
Jharkhand: a family has five members, but only three are listed along with their Aadhaar number in the database, so the
family ends up getting 15 kg of rice per month instead of 25 kg. This restriction, incidentally, is a flagrant violation of
the instructions issued by the Food Ministry in Delhi on October 24, in response to the uproar that followed Santoshi
Kumari’s death.
The cash route

All this, however, is just a trailer. Preparations are on for a much bigger assault on the PDS in Jharkhand: the transition
to so-called “direct benefit transfer”. Under the DBT system, people have to collect their food subsidy in cash from the
bank before using it to buy rice from the ration shop at ₹32 per kg. Until now, they were able to buy rice from the ration
shop at ₹1 per kg. Direct benefit transfer is an odd term for the new system, whereby the food subsidy is provided in a
very roundabout way.
The DBT system was initiated in Nagri Block of Ranchi district last October, on an experimental basis. The State
government is planning to extend it in other parts if the experiment works. But it seems to have decided in advance that
the experiment is a success, without paying serious attention to the ground realities.
In Nagri, it does not take long to discover that the new system is a disaster, and that most people are angry with it. The
main problem with DBT is that people waste enormous time shuttling between the banks, pragya kendras (common
service centres) and ration shops to get hold of their money and then use it to buy rice at the ration shop. For many of
them, this is a three-step process. First, they go to the bank to find out whether the subsidy has been credited and
update their passbook. Second, they go to the pragya kendra to withdraw the cash, as the bank often insists on their
doing so from these centres. Third, they take the cash to the ration shop to buy rice at ₹32 per kg. At every step, there are
long queues, and for many people the bank or pragya kendra is also far away. For people with mobility problems, like
the elderly or disabled, this entire process is a nightmare. One elderly woman we met had to be taken to the bank each
time by two relatives – one to drive the motorbike and one to hold her from the back seat.
The ordeal was particularly trying in the last few weeks, when people had to adapt to the new system. Many families
have several bank accounts, but apparently, they were not told where to look for their subsidy. Even the bank manager
we met in Nagri, or for that matter the Block Development Officer, did not know which account is selected for DBT
when a household has several bank accounts. As a result, many people had to run from bank to bank to find out where
their subsidy had been deposited. This is all the more difficult as the food subsidy is not always easy to distinguish from
other bank credits.
If people had cash reserves, the system might work better: PDS purchases would not be contingent on bank
transactions. What is striking is that so many people in rural Jharkhand, even in a relatively developed block like Nagri,
have so little cash. And even those who have some cash, it seems, prefer to use the DBT subsidy to buy rice from the
ration shop, partly because they are not clear about the rules of the game.
Incidentally, the State government announced last year that Nagri was all set to become Jharkhand’s first “cashless
block”. Today, it is forcing people to handle more cash than they want to.
Beyond Jharkhand
Even as the people of Nagri fume and protest against the DBT experiment, the State government is trying its best to
project it as a success and justify its extension to the whole State. If this happens, millions of people will face renewed
food insecurity.
Jharkhand is among the worst cases of destabilisation of the PDS, but similar moves are happening in other States. Most
of them are under tremendous pressure from the Central government to impose Aadhaar-based biometric
authentication or move towards DBT. In Bihar, I am told, DBT failed in the pilot block (Kasba in Purnia district), but the
failure went largely unreported. In Rajasthan, the biometric authentication has caused enormous damage, evident even
in the government’s own transactions data. Even Chhattisgarh, known for its model PDS, is under pressure to follow the
diktats of the Central government and adopt Aadhaar-based technology. In all these States, we know senior officers in
the Food Department who understand the inappropriateness of this technology and privately oppose it. Yet, they have
no choice but to follow the Central government’s instructions. This is symptomatic of a larger malady in India’s social
sector: growing centralisation and technocracy.
The most disturbing aspect of this trend is a lack of concern for the hardships that people face. Aadhaar-less ration
cards are cancelled without notice. Pensions are discontinued without the victims being told what the problem is. Job
cards are cancelled just to meet the “100% seeding” targets. Elderly persons with rough fingerprints are deprived of food
rations without compensation. Cash payments are automatically redirected to Aadhaar-linked bank accounts that
people sometimes know nothing about. In effect, they are treated as guinea pigs for undependable technologies,
without any effective arrangements for grievance redressal or even information sharing. Let people perish if need be,
Aadhaar must prevail.
Jean Dreze is visiting professor at the Department of Economics, Ranchi University
Contingent - Dependent, conditional ;

occurring or existing only if (certain circumstances) are the case; dependent on.
"his fees were contingent on the success of his search"
LEAD
Talking over a law: the need for public conversation on the judiciary
Arghya Sengupta Entrench - establish (an attitude, habit, or belief) so firmly that change is very difficult
JANUARY 18, 2018 00:02 IST
There should be a frank public conversation on the judiciary — an internal patch-up is not enough
A s the consequences of the historic press conference of the four seniormost judges of the Supreme Court
play out, a constant refrain that has been heard is of the need to resolve differences internally. This was always
going to be the stock response of dominant sections of a legal and judicial fraternity that constantly speaks truth
to government but is uncomfortable when the same standards are applied to them. Such a refrain, at first glance,
is curious, as it appears to be an attempt to close the stable doors after the horse has bolted. But in reality it is the
carefully calculated response of an entrenched mindset that seeks to maintain public confidence in the judiciary
by keeping it insulated from public spotlight, discussion and criticism. It is this mindset that was challenged, in
cause and effect, by the press conference.
Lack of transparency
The immediate trigger for the press conference was the apparent arbitrariness of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) in
allocating benches for disposal of cases. Whether indeed there was arbitrariness, and whether such arbitrariness,
if any, was purely whimsical or motivated, is impossible for members of the public to ascertain. But if the four
seniormost judges, despite their internal meetings with the CJI, resorted to the extreme measure of appealing to
the public, their grievances are entitled to a certain degree of credence. Assuming such credence, the question that
any well-wisher of the judiciary, whether inside or outside it, must ask is this: What is the institutional design that
facilitated such seemingly arbitrary decision-making?
ALSO READ
One possible answer lies in the opaque internal structure of the judiciary founded on a
combination of unquestioning trust in the office of the CJI along with an instinctive distaste
for any interference by Parliament or government in judicial functioning. So sacrosanct are
both these premises today that anything to the contrary appears blasphemous. However,
Restoring order
in the court
their sanctity is neither natural nor long-held.
At the time of the formulation of the Constitution, B.R. Ambedkar warned that no matter
how upright the CJI might be, like any other mortal he too would have frailties. Thus no
absolute power should be vested in him. Admittedly, Ambedkar was speaking about not
giving the CJI a veto power in appointing judges; but the same sentiment rings true in case of the convention of
allocating benches as well. After all, England, from where the convention of the Chief Justice as the master of the
roster emanates, has been witness to several Lord Chancellors constituting partisan benches on matters of great
political moment. Consequently, the principle that one should trust one’s Chief Justice, while admittedly a sound
principle, cannot be an absolute one. That it has become so is testament to the legal fraternity closing ranks under
the ruse of convention.
Ruse - An action intended to deceive someone; a trick.
Conflation - merging of two or more sets of information, texts, ideas, etc. into one.
ipso facto - by that very
fact or act. Fears of politicisation
The second premise justifying complete judicial insulation that makes arbitrary decision-
Countenance - making in the judiciary possible is the fear of politicisation. This is undoubtedly legitimate
(verb) admit as acceptable — a politicised judiciary might well suffer from a lack of public confidence. But the
(noun) person's face or
implementation of this principle is both over-broad and misdirected. In public discourse
facial expression
there is a false conflation of any parliamentary action relating to the judiciary as ipso facto
affecting its independence. Whenever any move towards reforming the judiciary is made by
politicians, commentators are quick to hark back to the Emergency and the supersession of three judges for the
CJI that preceded it. But there is some distance, logically and factually, between superseding the CJI and proposing
an accountability law for judges, revising the opaque process of appointment and looking to institute credible
alternatives to a broken system of tribunals, as stillborn reform initiatives in the last decade have sought to do.
Unfortunately, so deep is judicial memory of the Emergency that it has clouded in distrust many well-meaning
attempts at judicial reform by governments and Parliament.
Equally critically, this fear of politicisation is misdirected, being based on a naïve view that overt parliamentary
law is the sole method of interference with the judiciary. What it fails to countenance is that more nefarious
methods of political interference in the judiciary exist, and have always done so; moreover, that such methods
thrive in opacity, subjectivity and a lack of norms. As Bentham said, a view the Supreme Court itself has endorsed
in Mirajkar, “in the darkness of secrecy, sinister interest and evil in every shape, have full swing.” It is this darkness
that the press conference of judges has shone a light on. To shut the light out and resolve the matter in darkness
through an internal resolution would be exactly contrary to what the situation demands.
Palliative - Calmative, relieving pain without dealing with the cause of the
Need a ‘Supreme Court Act’ condition. "orthodox medicines tend to be palliative rather than curative"
While internal resolution might be a palliative to tell the world that all is well with the Indian judiciary, it will, at
best, be a band-aid solution. Were such a solution genuinely possible, one can safely trust that the four judges
would not have resorted to a press conference to make their views clear. The press conference should make it clear
to all that the ship of internal resolution has sailed. Instead, what is needed now is a Supreme Court Act to be
passed by Parliament after an open public discussion involving all stakeholders — civil society, the judiciary, the
Bar and members of all shades of political opinion.
As a precursor to such reform, it is important to clarify that the Constitution envisages the powers and
jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to be the possible subject matter of a parliamentary law. This is clear from Entry
77 of List I of the Seventh Schedule which makes the aforementioned a legitimate subject of law-making. Passage
of such a law is critical to rectify the discourse of any parliamentary law relating to the judiciary being anathema.
The substance of a proposed Supreme Court Act must be the restructuring of the Supreme Court itself. It is vital
that a court of 31 judges, if it is to function as an apex court, must develop some degree of institutional coherence.
Such coherence is impossible when the court sits in benches of two judges each. Further this structure allows the
CJI to become the master of the roster, vested with the absolute discretion of allocating judges to particular cases,
leading to crises like the present one. An antidote to both the aforementioned problems is a restructuring of the
Supreme Court into three divisions: Admission, Appellate and Constitutional. All special leave petitions under
Article 136 ought to be first considered by the Admission division. The division will comprise five randomly
selected judges who for one quarter every year will deal only with admission cases.
Like the Supreme Court of the United States, making this process work by circulation and without oral hearing
needs to be strongly considered. The Constitution Division should be a permanent Constitution Bench of the five
senior-most justices of the Court. They will hear all matters of constitutional importance and authoritatively
pronounce the Court’s views on it. The Appellate division should comprise the remaining 21 judges (on the basis
of the sanctioned strength of 31) with seven three-judge benches. They will hear all matters admitted by the
Admission Division and any other writs or appeals which lie as a matter of right to the Supreme Court.
Such restructuring will have three advantages. First, it will yield more coherent jurisprudence, particularly in
constitutional matters, taking us closer to certainty and the rule of law. Second, it will allow for more careful
contemplation of which matters actually deserve admission to India’s apex court. Third, it will reduce the
discretion available to the CJI to select benches, since this will be limited to the appellate division alone. Needless
to say, norms for such bench fixation and other matters relating to jurisdiction and powers of the Court may also
be a part of the proposed law.
A public conversation
At this point of time, the proposed law is critical to start a frank public conversation around what the judiciary
needs to restore public confidence. Such a public conversation is necessary to underline that the judiciary is part
of a republican constitutional framework, not the preserve of lawyers and judges alone. An internal resolution
will be its antithesis, which might defuse the present crisis, but will exacerbate the deeper wound.
Arghya Sengupta is Research Director, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. The views expressed are personal
Anathema - abhorrent
Special Leave Petitions in India (SLP) holds a prime place in the Judiciary of India, and has been provided as
a "residual power" in the hands of Supreme Court of India to be exercised only in cases when any substantial
question of law is involved, or gross injustice has been done. It provides the aggrieved party a special
permission to be heard in Apex court in appeal against any judgment or order of any Court/tribunal in the
territory of India.
The Constitution of India under Article 136 vests the Supreme Court of India, the apex court of the country,
with a special power to grant special leave, to appeal against any judgment or order or decree in any matter or
cause, passed or made by any Court/tribunal in the territory of India. It is to be used in case any substantial
constitutional question of law is involved, or gross injustice has been done.
It is discretionary power vested in the Supreme Court of India and the court may in its discretion refuse to
grant leave to appeal. The aggrieved party cannot claim special leave to appeal under Article 136 as a right,
but it is privilege vested in the Supreme Court of India to grant leave to appeal or not.
Restrictions
SLP can be filed against any judgment or decree or order of any High Court /tribunal in the territory of India;
or, SLP can be filed in case the High court refuses to grant the certificate of fitness for appeal to Supreme
Court of India.
SLP can be filed against any judgment of High Court within 90 days from the date of judgement; or SLP can
be filed within 60 days against the order of the High Court refusing to grant the certificate of fitness for appeal
to Supreme Court.
Any aggrieved party can file SLP against the judgment or order of refusal of grant of certificate.
Contents of SLP
This petition is required to state all the facts that are necessary to enable the court to determine whether SLP
ought to be granted or not. It is required to be signed by Advocate on record. The petition should also contain
statement that the petitioner has not filed any other petition in the High court. It should be accompanied by a
certified copy of judgement appealed against and an affidavit by the petitioner verifying the same and should
also be accompanied by all the documents that formed part of pleading in Lower court.
LEAD
Failures of inference: liberalism and contemporary populism

Liberalism is complicit in generating the crisis of contemporary populism
I t is a measure of the abject inadequacy of liberal thought today that all it can bring to the political arena, and to
public discourse generally, is high indignation at the tawdriness of what it dismissively describes as ‘populism’. Even
when, on occasion, some of the more serious liberal ideologues try to do better, there is a tendency to produce a pattern
of analysis that goes roughly like this. They observe everywhere the dissatisfaction of ordinary people (by ordinary
people I just mean working and workless people away from the centres of power and privilege). They observe too — with
dismay — that these dissatisfactions result in alarming electoral decisions that succumb to the dubious appeal of
‘populist’ politicians, who will often only increase their dissatisfaction. They allow themselves no good account
(certainly no self-critical account) of how and why this has come to pass. They, thus, draw the conclusion that the fault
lies in the people themselves for (at best) their gullibility or (at worst) their xenophobia or racism or communalism...
And so, finally, they rest with the hope that the decencies of their own liberal orthodoxies (whether it is the Clintonite
Democratic Party — which includes the arch Clintonite, Barack Obama — or the ‘Remainers’ in Britain, or the Congress
technocratic elite represented in the past by Manmohan Singh and his economic advisers) will one day return to win the
day. It never occurs to them through these smug cogitations that this analysis has no bite, hardly even a jaw.
Indignation - anger or annoyance provoked by what is perceived as unfair treatment
Two examples Tawdriness - cheap and gaudy in appearance or quality
Let me explore the implications of these inefficacies of the liberal response to populism by looking at two examples.
Consider first, Brexit. Rather than try to diagnose what prompted the larger part of a population to have its nation sever
itself from a supra-nation, let us ask rather why the working (or workless people) of Britain would, in the first place,
have wanted to be part of it. As they say, what’s in it for them? Suppose one of them in Liverpool were to pursue that
question by first pondering the humane policies of safety nets for the worst off in education, health, housing, etc. that
were adopted by his government at the end of the Second World War. Suppose he were to ask, at what site were these
policies devised and administered. He would have to answer: At the site of the nation. Suppose he were to ask whether
there has been any serious talk or effort to conceive in detail a supra-national site for such policies? What would the
mechanisms to dispense welfare at a supra-national site even so much as look like? These are all shrewd questions and
if they lie behind the dissatisfactions felt by working (or workless) people in Britain, then, to that extent, we get a
glimpse of the good side of populism, the side of populism that dictionaries define as ‘the rejection by ordinary people
of the elites’ — in this case the banking and financial elites which have set themselves up in Brussels. Now, of course,
such a person may well often go on to express anxiety about the immigrant hordes who have for some decades now
invaded his country and undermined his prospects, not to mention undermined the longstanding national culture of
which he is so proud. This, liberals rightly identify as his xenophobia or his racism and, just as rightly, recoil from it.
This is the bad side of populism.
The right description

But what, we must ask, is the right way to describe the flaw? As I’ve presented it, the right description is that he has
drawn a bad conclusion (his xenophobic conclusion) from some good questions he had asked. In other words, it is a
failure of inference, the lack of a logical link between sound questions and unsound anxieties. This is a point of some
importance.
Let’s consider now another manifestation of populism of recent times. This is the populist denial of climate change
among Donald Trump and his supporters in the U.S. The liberal again rightly responds to this with alarm. But now
consider the fact that any serious and honest analysis of the environmental crisis we are faced with would and should
make clear that there is no way to respond to the crisis sufficiently without putting serious constraints on capital, so
serious indeed that they might well amount to a terminus of capitalism as we know it. All else is ineffectual tinkering
which is quite inadequate to what the crisis calls for — as the Latin American walkout of the Copenhagen climate
meeting some years ago made perfectly clear. However, no liberal who expresses concern about climate change is
prepared to squarely draw this inference about what alone is sufficient to address his concern. In other words, here
there is a sort of inverse failure of inference, this time by the liberal, a failure to draw the right inference from his own
correct disgust with the populist denial of there being a problem of climate change. Why, then, is the liberal position on
climate change any more rational than the populist’s? If ‘p entails q’ (where what substitutes for p is ‘there is an
environmental crisis’ and what substitutes for q is ‘the only sufficient response to it may well be to usher out capitalism
as we know it’), why is it any more irrational to deny ‘p’ as the populist does than it is to deny ‘p entails q’ as the liberal
does?
I am keen to stress that in both examples there is a failure of inference. Let’s put it down schematically:
Sound scepticism about the European Union —> xenophobia.
Climate change is a serious problem —> no acknowledgement that capital must be undermined.
In the one case, the populist draws a bad xenophobic conclusion from a good premise of a sensible scepticism about the
inadequacies of what can be delivered by supranational banking and financial elites. In the other, the liberal fails to
draw the right conclusion from his own perfectly correct disdain for the populist’s denial of climate change.
What is very revealing, however, is that regarding the first of these, the liberal never focuses on the bad inference, but
only focuses on the populists’ bad conclusion (xenophobia). And regarding the second of these, the liberal never focuses
on his own failure to draw the right inference but instead only focuses on the populists’ denial of the true premise (i.e.,
the denial of the problem of climate change). No doubt, the populist is wrong to be xenophobic and to deny climate
change. But we need to diagnose even so why the liberal only focuses on that wrong and nowhere notices that in the
first case, the populist has something right in the premise (the sound skepticism of the European Union) nor, in the
second case, does he notice that he himself has something wrong in failing to draw the right conclusion. Why does he
fail to notice both of these things? The answer is perfect clear. He does not notice either because each of them would
involve a fundamental and radical questioning of contemporary capitalism.
The lesson to be drawn from this exercise I have indulged in is quite straightforward. Liberalism is complicit in
generating the crisis of contemporary populism even though it fraudulently affects a disdain and disgust of the
populism it generates. Because liberalism is blind to the fundamental transformations that are needed in contemporary
society, because it fails to allow into the political arena of liberal democracies the conceptual wherewithal to even so
much as raise fundamental questions about how to seriously constrain (to the point of perhaps even undermining)
capital, ordinary working people have no recourse to anything available in the political zeitgeist to address their deeply
felt dissatisfactions. It is small wonder that they turn haplessly to what is available to them, grotesque forms of
nationalistic, fascistic demagoguery which promise a fabulously different zeitgeist. When they feel the whole game is
rigged, they want to upturn the whole board on which the game is being played — even if that means voting for
extremist forms of nationalism bordering on fascism.
Capacity to imagine
The literary critic Fredric Jameson got one thing right when he said that it is easier today to imagine the end of the
world than to imagine the end of capitalism. This is particularly true of working people. When the political culture in
which they live and vote so completely impoverishes the options and so completely cramps the conceptual and critical
resources on offer, why blame working people for the populisms they turn to? It is a dark time we are living in, as we so
often say to ourselves when we observe the populisms around us, but what we don’t say often enough, indeed hardly at
all, is that it owes to a considerable extent to the limitations of liberalism.
Akeel Bilgrami is Professor at Columbia University. His latest book is ‘Secularism, Identity, and Enchantment’
Usher - end one's encounter with somebody by causing or permitting the person to leave
Zeitgeist - the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time
Supra-nation - beyond; transcending
Smug - having or showing an excessive pride in oneself or one's achievements.
Cogitation - the action of thinking deeply about something; contemplation.
Xenophobia - dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries
LEAD
Signs of a geopolitical whirlwind
Happymon Jacob
JANUARY 20, 2018 00:06 IST
As the U.S. recalibrates ties with Pakistan, India should maintain a cautious distance
W ith a New Year tweet from his handle accusing Pakistan of “lies & deceit” in return for “33 billion
dollars in aid over the last 15 years”, U.S. President Donald Trump ‘appears’ to be radically resetting his
administration’s Pakistan policy, with implications for the rest of South Asia. To be sure, this is unlikely to
have the gravity or determination of the post-9/11 threat from the American administration which at the
time made it clear to Pakistan that if it didn’t cooperate with the U.S. in the war on terror, it would bomb
Pakistan “back to the stone age”. The threat did work for some time.
A clever ploy?
A less worrisome interpretation of Mr. Trump’s outrage would be that it is a clever ploy to gain more leverage
in a region where the U.S. is seemingly losing ground. It is steadily losing its Afghan war, losing ground to
China in the region, and China is increasingly interested in politically managing the potential outcomes of
the Afghan war. And Islamabad so far is seen to have had the best of both worlds — being China’s closest ally,
while remaining a non-NATO ally of the U.S. In that interpretation, Mr. Trump decided to end the party for
Pakistan on January 1, till of course Pakistan agrees to deliver on American concerns regarding China and
Afghanistan. Yet, another way of reading this would be that it’s an empty threat on which Mr. Trump’s
officials will eventually soft-pedal.
So how is Islamabad likely to deal with an apparently belligerent Trump administration? Will it fall in line or
decline to act against the Taliban and the Haqqani network, widely considered to be Pakistan’s proxies in
Afghanistan? Any tightening of the noose around the Taliban is likely to be viewed by the Pakistan army as a
strategic blunder, the implications of which would outlast the irresolute U.S. commitment in Afghanistan. So
the reasoning likely to be, why not wait out Mr. Trump’s occasional rage?
The U.S. may also have ill-timed its outrage. Caving into U.S. demands would have grave implications for the
much-weakened civilian government in Islamabad, especially when all eyes are on the general elections later
this year. The government, then, is likely to brave Mr. Trump’s wrath, or smooth-talk its way out. The
response from Islamabad has so far been verbal, with threats of suspending military and intelligence
cooperation with Washington. However, it should be noted that American aid and reimbursements (for
expenses incurred by Pakistan in the war on terror) have been declining over the past several years. If so, the
impact of the U.S. withholding aid may not be exceptionally damaging for Pakistan. That said, it would be
instructive to watch what role Beijing would play in this war of nerves between its strategic adversary and
closest ally.
Noose - a loop with a running knot, tightening as the rope or wire is pulled and
Sharper fault-lines used to trap animals or hang people.
Notwithstanding how Pakistan responds to the U.S., the latter’s strong-arm policies have implications for
South Asia. For one, this would considerably diminish Pakistan’s ability to run with the hare and hunt with
the hounds: being China’s closest strategic partner while remaining a key U.S. ally in the region even as China
and the U.S. inch towards a Cold War of sorts. Pakistan has been steadily moving towards China from the
American camp: this will now be a far quicker shift.
Second, as a direct consequence of these moves and counter-moves, there would emerge a far severe
geopolitical competition in the region, the sharpest since the end of the Cold War. Southern Asia’s regional
geopolitics would be reshaped along several disconcerting fault-lines. The emerging China-Pakistan-Russia
axis is set to play a dominant role in the regional geopolitical order. All three members of this axis have scores
to settle with the U.S. The role of Iran — which also has hostile relations with the U.S. even as it maintains a
crucial strategic partnership with New Delhi — in this grouping would be interesting to watch. And what
would it mean for India-Russia relations? Is it the beginning of the end of the special relationship between
the two countries, signs of which are already apparent? Moreover, the closer India gets to the U.S., the more
each of these countries would display their discomfort towards India.
The emerging counter-pole is to be led by the U.S., with India and Japan on board, and the increasingly
cautious Western powers taking a rather subdued interest. However, given the rise of China and the retreat of
the U.S., current American allies are likely to hedge their bets. The one U.S. ally that has immense influence in
Pakistan is Saudi Arabia with which India also maintains a close relationship. The question then is two-fold:
Will the Americans choose to use Riyadh to put pressure on Islamabad, and will the Saudis want to do that at a
time when China-Saudi relations are on the uptick? Many of these compelling scenarios will play out in
various ways in the days ahead.
Uptick - a small increase or slight upward trend.
Implications for India
Implications of the U.S.-Pakistan rift may not be as straightforward as they might seem. Even though the
American rhetoric against Pakistan is viewed highly favourably in India, the freezing of U.S.-Pakistan
relations could potentially have negative implications for the country, certainly in the medium to long term.
For one, this will mean the end of the indirect influence (through the U.S.) that India has traditionally
managed to exert on Pakistan, especially on terror-related issues. Second, the ever-strong China-Pakistan
ties, without the balancing effect of the U.S. in the region, could push India further to the wall. Finally, what
happens should there be an India-Pakistan crisis like the Kargil conflict of 1999? For one, American ‘absence’
would embolden Chinese manoeuvres against India, and more so, China will be a far less pro-India broker
than Washington ever was.
Reluctant India will be prodded to make a choice: either to remain unallied and safeguard its strategic
autonomy or walk with the U.S. While New Delhi’s best bet would be to deal with Washington without closing
its doors to Moscow or Beijing, such fine balancing would require a great deal of diplomatic acumen, strategic
foresight and long-term thinking. Moreover, choosing sides while physically located in the middle of a
geopolitical whirlwind is no easy task. Such a crucial choice needs to factor in economic relations, defence
partnerships, and most of all geographic realities.
In any case, New Delhi should also closely consider the real intent behind Washington’s ire at Islamabad: it’s
the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani network the Americans are after, not so much India-centric terror
groups. When put under intense international pressure and American ire, Pakistan has managed to weather
the storm in the past. Whether it will be able to do so this time is anyone’s guess. But one thing is clear; if
Pakistan can deliver on these fronts, its relations with the U.S. will improve. It is also important to note that
even though the relations between the two countries were deteriorating in the recent past, the out-of-the-
blue statements from Mr. Trump may not be adequately thought-out; hence the possibility that the U.S.
establishment, with long-term interests in Pakistan, might soft-peddle its President’s angry outbursts. Put
differently, New Delhi should view it as a clash between Pakistani and American geopolitical interests, and
not get involved itself. To its credit, then, the response from New Delhi has been guided by ‘cautious
optimism’.
A sharper geopolitical competition in the region could also adversely impact the overall sub-systemic
stability in the region: when hard-nosed geopolitics takes over, focus on infrastructure development, market
access, development of regional organisations, and regional conflict resolution mechanisms is bound to
suffer. And that’s precisely what India needs to carefully consider; for unlike both China and the U.S., India is
deeply invested in stability in South Asia.
Happymon Jacob is Associate Professor of Disarmament Studies, Centre for International Politics,
Organization and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Prod - stimulate or persuade (someone who is reluctant or slow) to do something.
Whirlwind - tornado, hurricane, a column of air moving rapidly round and round in a cylindrical or funnel
shape.
LEAD
The great American arms bazaar
Gaffe - an unintentional act or remark causing embarrassment to its originator; a blunder.
Lynchpin - a person or thing vital to an enterprise or organization,

a pin passed through the end of an axle to keep a wheel in position.
Varghese K. George
JANUARY 22, 2018 00:02 IST
Donald Trump’s attempt to rework the commercial-strategic equation spells an opportunity for
India
I n a joint press conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg at the White House earlier this
month, U.S. President Donald Trump made up the name of a non-existent fighter plane, “F-52,” while lauding
the F-35 fighter sale in a new defence deal with America’s NATO ally. While the gaffe yielded a heavy round of
Twitter humour at the expense of Mr. Trump, what has not been adequately noticed is the significance of
weapons sales in his diplomatic pitch throughout. He has been an aggressive salesman for American defence
manufacturers during his foreign tours and to visiting heads of foreign countries in his first year in office.
Promoting the sale of U.S. arms could soon become a key result area for the country’s embassies around the
world, according to a Reuters report earlier this month. Arms supply has been a key tool of U.S. strategy for
years. Mr. Trump wants to make arms sale itself a strategy.
The existing policy

Arms transfers by the U.S. happen primarily through Foreign Military Sales, Direct Commercial Sales, and
Foreign Military Financing, all controlled by stringent laws, the most important of them being the Arms
Export Control Act. The U.S. government sells defence equipment worth about $40 billion every year under
Foreign Military Sales. Direct Commercial Sales are worth around $110 billion a year, in which a foreign buyer
and the American seller negotiate the deal directly. Foreign Military Financing is done through American
grants. Of the roughly $6 billion under that head, $3.7 billion goes to Israel each year. Egypt, Jordan and
Pakistan have been other significant recipients of Foreign Military Financing in recent years, followed by 50
countries that receive smaller amounts totalling $1 billion. Arms supplies to foreign countries is critical to
the U.S. for at least three reasons: it is a key leverage of global influence, it reduces the cost of procurement
for the U.S. military by spreading the cost, and by employing 1.7 million people, the defence industry is a key
component in the country’s economy and consequently, its politics.
But the sale of weaponry, traditionally, is guided less by commercial considerations rather than strategic ones.
The Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the Department of State is the lynchpin of this process; the other
players are the Department of Defence, the White House and the U.S. Congress. Each proposed sale is vetted
on a case-by-case basis and approved “only if found to further U.S. foreign policy and national security
interests”, according to the Bureau’s policy. The actual process of a sale could be long-winded, and could take
months even after it is approved in principle, an example being the ongoing negotiations to acquire 22
Guardian drones for the Indian Navy from American manufacturer General Atomics.
“We are very concerned that our partners have the ability to buy what they seek, within their means,” a U.S.
official explained. “So we assess the capability. If someone asks for [the] F-35, we have to ensure that they
have the money, the capability to operate it and protect the technology as well as we can. So if we conclude
that we cannot sell F-35s, we have at least 10 different types of F-16 fighters that we match with the capability
and importance of the partner country.” The process of initial assessment of selling arms to any country
involves the State and Defence Departments. There are around 100 military officers attached to the State
Department and around the same number of diplomats assigned to the Pentagon, who help in such decisions.
It is also sought to ensure that the systems sold to one country do not end up with a third party.
The White House, through the National Security Council, plays a key role in this process. Once all of them are
on the same page on a particular proposal, Congressional leaders of the House and the Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations are informally consulted. Once they are on board, the sale is formally notified. Significant
sales require a tacit approval by lawmakers.
Changes Mr. Trump wants

Mr. Trump has not hidden his disapproval for the American strategy, which he thinks has been a big failure.
His views on defence partnerships are in line with this thinking. He wants to reduce the Foreign Military
Financing to the least, except for Israel. He wants American partners to buy more weapons from it, and it is
also a move towards reducing trade deficits with key partners such as South Korea and Japan. He is
hammering NATO partners to ramp up defence spending and believes that all these partners have taken the
U.S. for a ride. He has little patience for linking human rights to arms sales. The fact also is that the actual
practice of American arms supplies does not often live up to its professed objectives. The Central Intelligence
Agency’s clandestine weapons supplies for Syrian rebels reached the Islamic State and al-Qaeda for instance,
and Mr. Trump has ordered the discontinuation of the programme. So, overall, the President is pushing for a
liberalisation of U.S. arms sales to partner countries, guided less by any grand strategic vision, but by
commercial and domestic political calculations. He is seeking to flip the equation between commercial and
strategic calculations behind arms sales in favour of the first.
The security establishment and Congress will not easily accede to major changes in existing U.S. laws in order
to further Mr. Trump’s ideas. However, Mr. Trump holds the last word on defining what U.S. national interests
are, and his thinking could turn out be an opportunity for India, one of the largest importers of major arms.
India has bought $15 billion worth of defence equipment from the U.S. over the last decade, but Indian
requests for arms often get entangled in the U.S. bureaucracy for multiple reasons. The honorific title of
‘major defence partner’ notwithstanding, the traditional American propensity to link sales to operational
questions such as interoperability and larger strategic notions dampens possibilities. India’s robust defence
partnership with Russia is a major irritant for American officials.
If Mr. Trump manages to emphasise the commercial benefits of arms sales, and de-emphasise the strategic
angle, it could lead to a change in the dynamics of the India-U.S. defence trade, and bilateral trade in general.
India, always wary of military alliances, will be more comfortable with weapons purchases as commercial
deals. For America, India could be a reliable, non-proliferating buyer of its arms. The U.S. also has a trade
deficit with India. It was the out-of-the-box thinking of a President that led to the India-U.S. civil nuclear
deal. With his unconventional thinking, could Mr. Trump offer F-35s to India?
LEAD
Getting back on the democratic path
Mangle - destroy or severely damage by tearing or crushing

Stultify - cause to lose enthusiasm and initiative, especially as a result of a tedious or
restrictive routine.
Edify - instruct or improve (someone) morally or intellectually.
Sloth - reluctance to work or make an effort; laziness.
Transmogrify - transform in a surprising or magical manner.
Blithe - showing a casual and cheerful indifference considered to be callous or improper.
Obscurantism - the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something
from becoming known.
K.S. Bajpai
JANUARY 23, 2018 00:02 IST
India gave itself a great system but now does not seem to know how to keep it up to standard
H owsoever anniversary stock-takings assess pluses and minuses, one conclusion is surely inescapable: India
remains woefully short of its potential. Whatever our excuses, one cause is equally fundamental: the decisions
shaping our destiny are themselves shaped by considerations increasingly unworthy of a serious nation. Yes, we
are a difficult country to govern, none ever coped with so many competing diversities, rights and claims, in such
huge proportions — and through democracy. This makes it all the more necessary to employ common sense,
vision and judgment, balance and largeness, and above all reason. The less these matter to us, the farther back
must we fall.
Mutual conflict
“The whole essence of… Parliamentary Government lies in the intention to make the thing work… [its] strength…
is exactly measured by the unity of political parties upon its fundamental objects.” Lord Balfour’s perception
pinpoints why we have mangled our system out of recognition: far from seeking congruence of fundamental
objectives, leave alone unity, our parties compete to prevent things working. Our needs, long incompatible with
the forces working amongst us, have moved into mutual conflict.
Our social tensions need sensitive healing, but suffer ever harsher divisiveness; our political institutions and
processes need to address rising challenges but sink ever deeper in backwardness; our administrative machinery
desperately needs efficiency but corrodes into dysfunctionality; we live in a turbulent, dangerous world but have
neither time nor expertise to attend to it. Our security challenges become more complex while both our
conceptual and procedural drawbacks retard our response-capabilities.
India is not alone in such difficulties. Countries worldwide find existing governmental systems unable to cope
with contemporary challenges or people’s expectations, some even with basic needs. Particularly alarming is the
condition in democracies, where the ideals and concepts, the very essence of their being, are threatened. Widely
idolised till now, with even those trampling it claiming to uphold it, democracy has never had many practitioners.
A few North Atlantic states apart, most even in Europe, claiming to be exemplars, actually became democracies
after India. Almost all colonised states started as democracies, almost all turned rapidly into autocracies. We
Indians could long claim shining exception, but the ease with which the Emergency could be imposed is warning
enough how fragile our version is.
Time for concern

Democracy depends on the Enlightenment’s ideals — the ceaseless expansion of liberty and equality, the impartial
functioning of impersonal law and institutions, the reconciliation of society’s differences by accommodative
compromise, above all the primacy of reason. India’s democracy, howsoever imperfect, worked awhile because
those who led us into Independence had imbibed these ideas. Always hugely disproportionate to their tiny size,
their influence is finished; Enlightenment teachings no longer resonate with electorates in which group
obsessions stultify basic national interest. Most stunningly is this manifest today in the U.S.; ugly forces prevail
there periodically, somehow the humanist Enlightenment principles come back. The world needs that to happen
there again, but our active concern must be at home.
That our democracy is seriously ailing is so obvious, one wonders why our political parties are so oblivious. The
party claiming, not unjustifiably, to have led us to freedom seems devoid of ideas — offering no vision, no version
of our future, which could possibly inspire anybody. And others are worse. The greatest success story of our times,
the astonishing speed and extent of China’s rise, surely shows that the decisive cause is that a directing mind
chose specific objectives and worked for them with determination. Authoritarianism doubtless made possible
advances open societies cannot match, but dictatorships abound which keep their countries backward, whereas
there are serious democracies seriously striving for betterment. Originally denoting differences in economic
levels and ideologies, ‘Third World’ also represents backward, if not chaotic, ways of governance — selfish, often
barbaric despotisms ruling by whim over peoples depressed and oppressed. The key difference that separates
properly run states lies in seriousness of decent purpose. We Indians lose our way in tangents: Third World
conditions beckon.
China’s record over the last century is hardly edifying — revolutions, civil war, famines, war-lords, etc. Corruption
is rampant, sloth and incompetence hardly unknown, but things get done because there is a directing force which
devises and executes forward-looking plans for national greatness. How many shaping our destinies have any real
sense of national, as distinct from personal or sectional, purpose, leave alone greatness? China is both a yardstick
and a warning: fall behind and we fall under. We have no option but to make our system functional and to the
right purposes. We gave ourselves a great system but have not known how to keep it up to standard. Currently
resurrected, Alexander Hamilton is appropriate: “A government must be fitted to a nation as much as a coat to the
Individual… what may be good at Philadelphia may be bad at Paris and ridiculous at Petersburg.” People end up
with governments functioning like themselves, and we have transmogrified our original system through our own
weaknesses.
Regain the checks

The dispersion of power between executive, legislature and judiciary is undermined by both our traditional
acceptance of personal rule and the appalling incompetence of each branch. Our political executives are self-
seeking while the permanent branches are dysfunctional; our legislatures hardly meet and when they do there is
bedlam; our judiciary, the last remaining estate to retain some public respect, has discarded it along with the
decorum of self-respect; and the Fourth Estate, so essential a safeguard, competes in descent. That we blithely
carry on as though it will all come out in the wash is as incredible as it is fatal. We must realise what we have done
to our system and repair it urgently.
Diagnoses upon diagnoses, what is the cure? It is hard not to conclude there is none: some problems have no
solutions, one can only manage things as best one can. In 150 years of modernising influences we never grew out
of our old ways. Enormous reforms we need we reject: how can any society advance when saddling itself with khap
panchayats, disgraceful dowry systems, blatant practice of untouchability, acceptance of castration and other
primitivisms? Ways of thinking and behaving are universally intractable. Claiming Europeanism, and with
generations of modernising after Kemal Ataturk, Turkey clings to old tendencies. For all its astonishing progress,
China practises female infanticide. One Western humanist state after another is rocked by tribalism. But
civilisation evolves through efforts to change, even if change itself keeps resisting, but the effort must be forward-
looking, not regressive.
The road map ahead

We need a planned, determined push to make our system work and modernise. Only an organised body with such
a purpose can do anything. Despite the obstructionism we have made our norm, this government is positioned to
get things done — if it only will; no other force seems at all likely. This Prime Minister, particularly, has built a
personal position of great possibilities, and his international approaches show the imagination and dexterity
needed for national greatness. His party’s electoral calculations present our greatest obstacle: of course, elections
need winning ways, but at what cost? The furtherance and exploitation of obscurantism and regression will only
help our enemies, denying us the progress essential for handling modern challenges. Can (re)building legendary
temples help us handle a China already reaching the forefront of technological innovation?
“Forget the excuse that politics is the art of the possible, remember leadership is the art of making even the
impossible possible.” My father Girija Shankar Bajpai’s observation points to the prime necessity: the will to
succeed, a carefully thought out plan, a commitment to fulfilment, obviously not to reviving a past irrelevant to
today, if indeed it ever existed, but to a state and society adapted to our times. We the people are ultimately
responsible but political leaders have to lead. We can only appeal to them to do so — or meander into the anarchy
we seem most at home in, or authoritarianism — or both.
K.S. Bajpai is a former diplomat who was Ambassador to Pakistan, China and the U.S., and Secretary, External
Affairs Ministry.
LEAD
Battleground Karnataka
Truant - absentee, non-attender, a pupil who stays away from school without leave or explanation.
Motley Medley - A varied mixture of people or things
Squatter - a person who unlawfully occupies an uninhabited building or unused land.
Riparian - relating to or situated on the banks of a river.
relating to wetlands adjacent to rivers and streams.
Stoke - encourage / incite
Valerian Rodrigues
JANUARY 24, 2018 00:02 IST
In the fractious run-up to the Assembly elections, the first round may have gone to the Congress
A favourable verdict in the elections to the State Assembly in Karnataka is important for both the Congress
and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for reasons more than one. For the Congress, which has not won any State
election, barring Punjab, after 2014, a victory here would help it cash in on it elsewhere, boosting its campaigns in
other States which go to the polls later in the year. More importantly, the party is now attempting to forge a
distinct social support base across the country which involves overt recognition to religious belonging as a
counterweight to the Hindutva agenda, reaching out to the farming community as a whole, and holding forth as
the champion of the backward classes, the minorities and the poor. In other words, the Congress is increasingly
veering round a package of values such as respect to religious commitment, social justice and equality, and human
dignity as its mantras, without necessarily disowning secularism.
For the BJP, while winning the State may not be very crucial to its overall dominance at present, losing it may have
ominous significance. Karnataka was the first State it came to power in in South India and its inability to repeat
this performance may tell badly on its future in the South. Karnataka has a weighty presence in the Union
ministry, which includes Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, a Rajya Sabha member elected from here, and the
State’s religious pluralism has often played truant to the homogenising call of Hindutva.
There is also a third player: former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular), with its base among the
Vokkaligas, the dominant farming community in Southern Karnataka.
Significance of caste
Caste has always been an important factor in the political process of Karnataka since wider ideological struggles
such as non-Brahmanism in the erstwhile Madras or Bombay provinces, or socialism in Kerala and the united
Andhra Pradesh did not leave much of a trace here. Instead, Kannada, and the culture it embodied, became the
rallying cry for the unification of Karnataka. However, alongside such a call for unity, it was the rivalry between
dominant communities that played itself out in the electoral arena. In the 1970s, Devaraj Urs, the then Chief
Minister, tried to reinforce the base of the Congress party among the Backward Classes, the Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes, and minorities through land reforms and an assertive reservation policy, and undercut the
importance of the Lingayats and the Vokkaligas, the two dominant communities.
While the Vokkaligas found a strong foothold in the Janata Dal led by Mr. Deve Gowda, the success of the BJP in the
State lay in attracting the Lingayats to its fold by the early 1990s. Meanwhile, in the 1980s, various Hindu sects and
traditions prevalent in Karnataka were brought on a common platform by the rising tide of Hindutva, led by the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad, which had a powerful impact in the erstwhile Bombay-Karnataka region, in coastal
Karnataka, and in urban centres such as Bengaluru. While this platform downplayed caste, and tended to other
religious minorities such as Muslims and Christians, caste and sect remained important players in the electoral
arena. This partly explains the troubled relation of B.S. Yeddyurappa, a Lingayat, with his own party, the BJP, whose
State unit he currently heads. The motley medley of sects, urban middle classes, upper castes and the rural elite
that have gathered under the umbrella of the BJP, with Hindutva as the cementing force, have made it a viable
force to win elections, almost on its own in 2008. However, apart from charges of widespread corruption, the play
of internal divisions within led to its downfall in 2013.
Under the Congress

Between 1999 and 2004, S.M. Krishna, as Congress Chief Minister, attempted to wean the Congress from its social
justice platform to a strong development-centred agenda, with industry and service sector on the lead. But such a
strategy did not succeed against the rising tide of Hindutva and the backlash from the State’s sprawling rural
hinterland. In 2013, the Congress won the election under the leadership of Siddaramaiah by reconnecting itself to
the backward castes, Dalits and the minorities, with a promise to heal the rural-urban divide. While the
Siddaramaiah regime has done little to overhaul social relations in the State, unlike Devaraj Urs whose legacy it
claims, it has introduced numerous schemes to alleviate distress, waived small farm loans, regularised squatter
holdings on government lands, and conferred title deeds on the settlements of itinerant pastoral communities. It
has also assiduously cultivated symbolisms, conferring public recognition on heroes and saints, and banning
rituals that it has regarded as superstitious and inappropriate to human dignity. Token grants have generously
been made available for such activities. Mr. Siddaramaiah has also succeeded in keeping the Dalit flock together,
by balancing the representation of major Dalit castes, which, the BJP had succeeded earlier in splitting.
However, it is his intervention on four fronts that has been politically very savvy. He has: kept the volatile
Kannada lobby in good humour, often through his own witticisms deeply rooted in the traditions of the region;
utilised the addition of the Hyderabad-Karnataka region to Article 371 of the Constitution to ensure that the
demand for a separate State does not resurface; taken the battle straight to the BJP camp by making Basava,
founder of the Lingayat sect, the icon of Karnataka, covertly stoking the popular demand of the Lingayats to be
recognised as a separate religion; and ensured that the fallout of riparian conflicts does not boomerang on the
Congress by cultivating farmers’ leaders, including Mr. Deve Gowda. It is also important to point out that as an
astute financial administrator, he has kept much of the corporate sector in good humour, in spite of the mounting
problems of urban facilities/civic issues especially in Bengaluru.
Although the JD(S) won 40 Assembly seats and 20% of the vote share in 2013, it is no longer a fighting force in the
State even though Mr. Deve Gowda has begun visiting temples and shrines. Mr. Siddaramaiah has made deep
inroads into the voter base of this party, and a section of the Vokkaligas supporting the party are favourably
disposed towards the BJP.
The strategy
So how have the main contenders in the electoral arena positioned themselves in the political scene? The BJP has
clearly marked out Mr. Siddaramaiah, rather than the Congress, as its enemy number one. It has already charged
him as being “anti-Hindu”, and will try to polarise the vote by appealing to a thick Hindu identity. Such an appeal
is also necessary to keep the BJP’s flock together in a State with diverse religious forms such as Shaivism and linga
worship traditions, Jainism and Buddhism, bhakti and devotional sects and rich folk-cults. In this context, the
early induction of Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, into the electoral arena becomes
understandable as he represents the renouncer traditions of Hinduism. Alongside, there will be the predictable
attack on corruption in the State where Mr. Siddaramaiah has much to account for; a sharp focus on its “Vikas”
mantra, promise of change in northern Karnataka under its charge, and a vow to remove all constraints in
Bengaluru to claim its status as a megapolis. The BJP will also seek organisational consolidation by closely
monitoring the voting process from booth level upwards. Given the internal fissures within the BJP in the State,
much of the organisational work will be entrusted to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), even using its
cadres from outside the State.
But the first round in the gladiatorial ring has already gone in favour of the Congress, particularly Mr.
Siddaramaiah. He has already started asserting himself as a truer Hindu than the protagonists of Hindutva.
Muslim and Dalit votes are likely to stay with the Congress as also those of a significant section of the backward
castes, and the small Christian community. While there are divisions within the Congress, especially between Mr.
Siddaramaiah and Dalit aspirants for chief ministership, they all know well, however, that they will be worse off if
the baton passes on to the BJP.
Valerian Rodrigues is Ambedkar Chair, Ambedkar University Delhi
Grim - very serious or gloomy, unattractive or forbidding.
Unravelling - untangle, undo (twisted, knitted, or woven threads).
LEAD
Afghanistan, on a slow fuse
Rakesh Sood
JANUARY 25, 2018 00:02 IST
Erosion in the international consensus on rebuilding the country must be reversed before it’s too late
T he attack by the Taliban gunmen at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul last weekend was a grim reminder of
the deteriorating security environment in Afghanistan. The siege at the hotel lasted more than 12 hours and
claimed 22 victims, including 14 foreigners, before the gunmen were neutralised.
Days earlier, in an interview with CBS, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had said that Afghanistan is “under siege”,
with “21 international terrorist groups operating in this country” and “factories producing suicide bombers”. He
acknowledged that without U.S. support, the Afghan national army would not “last more than six months” and the
government would collapse. This is a bleak assessment indeed coming from an insider who has seen the situation
unravelling.
Deteriorating situation
Over the last 16 years, civilian casualties have mounted to 31,000, increasing progressively to over 4,000 a year. The
Afghan security forces are losing nearly 7,000 men a year, an attrition rate difficult to sustain and twice the
number of casualties that the international coalition forces suffered from 2001 till 2014 when they ceased combat
operations and embarked on Operation Resolute Support to “advise, train and assist” the Afghan forces.
The U.S. has contributed significant blood and treasure, spending over a trillion dollars (considerably more if
long-term veterans’ care is included) and losing more than 2,400 lives in pursuing the longest war in its history. Of
this amount, about $120 billion has been spent on reconstruction and development, more than the inflation-
adjusted expenditure under the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Western Europe after World War II. The rest of the
international community has also contributed. India is a significant partner, having spent over $2 billion on
humanitarian assistance, infrastructure building and human resource development, with an additional billion
dollars committed.
U.S. President Donald Trump is determined to bring about a change in American policy and while authorising a
limited increase in U.S. troop presence by 4,000 soldiers, has also been critical of Pakistan. On January 1 he
tweeted: “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years,
and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the
terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!” The tweet has been followed by a suspension of all
military assistance to Pakistan. This has resulted in resentment in Pakistan but whether this will bring about a
change in its army’s behaviour remains to be seen.
Eroding legitimacy
Meanwhile, the legitimacy of the National Unity Government (NUG) consisting of Mr. Ghani as President and
Abdullah Abdullah as Chief Executive (a newly created position) is increasingly under question. Cobbled together
after the disputed 2014 election with political backing from the Obama-Kerry team, the Chief Executive’s position
was to be legitimised through a constitutional amendment creating the post of Prime Minister, which has not
happened. Without a clear division of power and responsibility, relations between the President and his Chief
Executive have remained strained. With presidential elections due next year, it is clear that the NUG experiment
will not be repeated. It is hardly surprising that since end-2016, there are growing questions about the legitimacy
of the present arrangement.
Meanwhile parliamentary elections, which were originally due in 2015, are yet to be held. Electoral reforms to
ensure greater transparency have not been implemented. The decision to issue new election cards based on
biometric voter registration has remained stillborn. The seven-member Independent Election Commission (IEC)
and the five-member Electoral Complaints Commission were finally constituted in November 2016 after
prolonged political wrangling between the President and the Chief Executive but the chairman of the IEC was
sacked recently. While July 7 has been announced as the date for Wolesi Jirga (lower house) elections, most
Afghans are certain that elections this year are highly unlikely.
Given that elections are funded by the international community and one election is likely to cost $250 million, it
is highly probable that the presidential and parliamentary elections will be clubbed together in the middle of
2019, for reasons of economy. However, whether these elections can be held at all will depend upon security.
Currently, Taliban controls over 50 districts while another 120 districts are contested, leaving more than 200
districts where the Afghan government exercises control. In other words, the current security situation will not
permit elections to be held in nearly 45% of the territory of Afghanistan. This is enough to raise doubts about the
legitimacy of any electoral outcome. It is true that the Taliban cannot secure a military victory as long as the U.S. is
present, but it is equally true that their ability to disrupt peace, prevent reconstruction and hamper elections
continues to grow.
Emergence of warlords
In December, Mr. Ghani announced that he had accepted the resignation of Balkh Governor Atta Mohammad
Noor. Mr. Atta issued a denial, refused to step down and declared that he would arrest the new appointee Engineer
Dawood if he entered the province. Mr. Atta is an influential leader of the Jamiat-i-Islami and had been in his
current position for 13 years, emerging as the regional strong man. In earlier times, he had backed Dr. Abdullah
but now he calls him ‘a snake’. When Kabul announced that his signatures were invalid and no provincial
payments including salaries to officials would be forthcoming, Mr. Atta coolly declared that he would take control
of the customs revenues from the Hairatan land port on the Uzbek border. He has been addressing public rallies
questioning the authority of the government in Kabul.
The message has not been lost on other regional strong men. Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek
leader, in Turkey since last May, has supported Mr. Atta. Mr. Dostum was forced into voluntary exile amid
investigations into allegations that he had arranged for the kidnapping of a political opponent who had then been
raped and tortured by him and his guards. Further west, Ismail Khan, a former minister in the Karzai cabinet and
governor of Herat, can take charge of the lucrative trade route with Iran. In Kandahar, police chief Abdul Razik,
who has been in his position since 2011, has resisted attempts to shift him. To his credit, he has delivered a
measure of security in Kandahar, in sharp contrast to neighbouring Helmand. He also controls the Spin Boldak
crossing into Balochistan. In doing so, he relies as much on his loyal Achakzai militia as on the official police.
The global imperative

The last two years have witnessed a significant shift in Russia’s position. While it has denied U.S. reports of having
supplied weapons to the Taliban, Russia acknowledges that it has opened up communication channels and is
prepared to both provide a venue and facilitate peace talks. At the recently concluded Raisina Dialogue in Delhi,
Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Igor Morgulov described the Islamic State as the principal threat to
Afghanistan and the region. He questioned as to how its fighters had been brought into northern Afghanistan in
unmarked helicopters when the airspace is under U.S. control. The U.S. flatly rejects such insinuations and
questioned Russian and Iranian motives in weakening the Kabul government by giving recognition to the Taliban.
After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, there was an international consensus on rebuilding Afghanistan and ensuring
that it should not become a source of regional and global instability. That consensus has eroded over the last 16
years. Further, the Afghans who had returned in large numbers determined to reclaim their country and rebuild it
are frustrated at the steady decline in both security and governance. The newly created Afghan institutions are
unable to address the challenges without significant international support, both financial and material. However,
with a breakdown in the international consensus, it may not be long before the slow fuse reaches ignition point.
And 2019 may well become the critical year.
Rakesh Sood is a former Ambassador to Afghanistan and currently Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research
Foundation. E-mail: rakeshsood2001@yahoo.com
Insinuation - an unpleasant hint or suggestion of something bad.

A warlord is a leader able to exercise military, economic, and political control over a subnational territory within a
sovereign state due to their ability to mobilize loyal armed forces. These armed forces, usually considered militias,
are loyal to the warlord rather than to the state regime. Warlords have existed throughout much of history, albeit in
a variety of different capacities within the political, economic, and social structure of states or ungoverned
territories.
Millstone - each of two circular stones used for grinding corn.
a heavy and inescapable responsibility.
Fiestily - spirited; touchy
Hanker - feel a strong desire for or to do something.
Teeter - to move or cause to move unsteadily; wobble
Vanguard - a position at the forefront of new developments or ideas.
Moribund - at the point of death.
Morass - an area of muddy or boggy ground, a complicated or confused situation.
Gavel - a small hammer with which an auctioneer, a judge, or the chair of a meeting hits a surface to call for
attention or order.
Parlous - full of danger or uncertainty; precarious.
LEAD
Pulapre Balakrishnan
JANUARY 26, 2018 00:15 IST
The grounding of Air India
When the public sector does not serve the public interest, it becomes a millstone around our
necks
H
H aving announced its decision to sell Air India, the government is making arrangements to do so.
The move itself has come after multiple efforts by successive governments to resurrect the national
airline. Though there has been news of it finally turning in an operating profit under a determined CEO,
its debt, reportedly a staggering $8.5 billion, must weigh on the minds of a public drawn into a discussion
of its future.
The beginnings
It is unfortunate that so iconic an entity, once feistily steered by J.R.D. Tata, has met this fate, but it is not
uncommon in the history of India’s public sector. To understand this ending we would have to start at the
beginning, and that was with the transformation of the economy attempted in the 1950s. While there
were monumental gaps in that attempt, there were also creative innovations, the most important being
the public sector. By design, the public sector was to exist along with a private one resulting in what had
been referred to as ‘the mixed economy’. To those hankering after institutional purity this was no more
than a joke, an arrangement that had strengths of neither full-bodied American-style capitalism nor of
out-and-out Soviet-era communism. Half a century later, the Soviet empire imploded and for a brief
moment in 2008, the American one teetered on the brink, having been taken there by its vanguard,
finance capital. We can now see that the mixed economy, combining the public and private sectors, is
superior to one located at either extreme.
So if the public sector is a force for the good, why is it that we see Air India, and a section of the rest of the
Indian public sector, in so unsound a financial condition? In its early days, the public sector had been
quite healthy. This need hardly come as a surprise when we recognise the then Indian leadership’s motive
for building one. Stripped of its somewhat ideological construction as straddling ‘the commanding
heights’ of the economy, it was to have a central role in the quickening of the economy after 1947.
Wrecked by two centuries of colonialism, India’s economy was moribund. The post-colonial Indian
leadership had envisaged the public sector as the ship that would steer the economy out of the morass.
And they were not wrong.
Under Nehru, India’s economy rose spectacularly and public investment was the principal engine of
growth in that remarkable phase. Used as we are to Air India having to, at times, borrow even to finance
its working capital, it may come as a surprise to know that it was still making profit into the second half
of the 1960s. As for the public sector as a whole, during the Nehru era its savings had grown faster than
that of the private corporate sector. Actually, to an extent India’s public sector had financed itself.
Nehru’s speech at the inauguration of the second plant of the Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) in
Bangalore in 1962 is instructive in this regard. He congratulated the workers of HMT for having produced
a second plant entirely out of the surplus of the first one. In one stroke, this conveys the rationale
imagined for India’s public sector at the moment of its conception. It had been imagined as a source of
investible funds for the public purpose. Underlying this was the belief that the private sector may not
generate the necessary surplus, especially if the economy was not first quickened through public
investment.
It is noteworthy that in the heyday of the public sector, India’s private corporate sector had not done
badly at all. Its investment rose at least much as that of the public, demonstrating that claims of its
suppression due to the licence-permit raj are exaggerated. It is true that some entities had been excluded
by licensing. Licensing was necessary to ensure that resources were used in accordance with the plan for
industrialisation, but it was the case that private firms receiving licences benefited greatly from the
expansion of the market resulting from public investment. It is perhaps not known widely enough that
in the Nehru era India grew faster than China.
What went wrong?

So if the public sector had such a central role in lifting India out of a morass, why are we where we are
today? Why is Air India awaiting the gavel? This has entirely to do with politics. Politics underwent a sea
change in the second half of the 1960s and with this the de facto status of the public sector was to change.
It became the handmaiden of Indira Gandhi’s attempt to gain absolute control. Performance no longer
counted and the public sector was now validated by its very existence. Intimation of the changed policy
stance appears in the form of an entry in an ‘Economic Survey’ from the 1980s emphasising that a large
section of employees of the public sector were those absorbed from loss-making units. This was to be a
point of no return as the public sector was no longer treated as the fulcrum of the economy but as a
political instrument. It was not as if some successes, such as of Maruti Udyog, were not to come yet but
the original sense of purpose was lost.
If Air India, nationalised in the 1950s, is now privatised, we would have come full circle. However, its case
is more symbolic than substantive. Today there is no dearth of air-travel service providers in India, and
the public airline reportedly has less than 15% market share. This is not the case in some other areas of
the economy where public provision is fundamental. Take rail travel, which has no substitute. For it to
serve its public purpose, the financial health of the Indian Railways is vital.
We have reason to believe that this is threatened. The present Minister for Railways has announced that
the decay of the capital stock has contributed to reduced safety. In particular that the recent spate of
derailments has to do with inadequate signalling equipment and damaged tracks. Scarcity of funds for
proper maintenance of the capital stock is directly related to populism. The replacement in 2012 by his
party supremo Mamata Banerjee of a Railways Minister who had raised passenger fares demonstrates the
role of politics in running India’s public sector into the ground. Unlike the airlines, the railways are a life-
line for a large number of Indians, and maintaining their good health is vital to their interest. It is naïve
to imagine that the public sector can remain immune to inflation in the economy.
Meanwhile, an effort to turn around the public sector has come from a unlikely section. The Communists
of Kerala, prone to rationalising inefficiency when it suits their politics, have now embarked upon a
revival of the State’s public sector undertakings. This has met with success in a short time, with at least
some loss-making units turning profitable. The parlous state of public finances may have forced this
political party’s hand but the move itself shows maturity. Hopefully it will serve as a model for the rest of
the country. The public sector would be a jewel when worn in the public interest. When it is not, as was
the case with Air India, it turns into a millstone around our necks.
Propensity - an inclination or natural tendency to behave in a particular way.
Fissiparous - inclined to cause or undergo division into separate parts or groups.
Prowess - skill or expertise in a particular activity or field.
"his prowess as a fisherman"
Commensurate - corresponding in size or degree; in proportion.
"salary will be commensurate with age and experience"
Concomitant - connected, naturally accompanying or associated,
Non chalance - feeling or appearing casually calm and relaxed; not displaying anxiety, interest, or enthusiasm.
Natural partners in the Asian century
Subramanian Swamy
JANUARY 27, 2018 00:02 IST
There is a need for a fresh perspective in India’s China policy
A s we complete two decades of the 21st century, a paradigm change in the global power structure is taking
shape. Technology and size are causing this change. The physical size of a nation did not matter during the 19th
and most of the 20th centuries. Britain, Germany, France and Japan leveraged their Industrial Revolution
advantage on technology for armaments to become world powers despite their relatively small size. Europe
thus became the global centre till the late 1950s. Now, potential power is shifting to the two large nations of the
Asian mainland, China and India, which are nuclear weapons states and with fast-growing economies. Together
they represent 60% of the Asian mainland.
Continental shift
Asia already accounts for almost half of the world’s population, half of the world’s container traffic, one-third of
its bulk cargo and 40% of the world’s off-shore oil reserves. It is home to several fast-growing new economies
with GDP growth rates above 7% per year, i.e. a doubling of the GDP every 10 years.
Asian defence spending ($439 billion) is also much more than Europe’s ($386 billion). In a few years half of the
world’s naval fleet and combat aircraft with extended range missiles, supported by highly sophisticated
communications networks, will soon be seen roaming in the Indo-Pacific region.
Also, since the late 1990s, China and India have been rapidly emerging as influential power hubs. Being two of
the three most post populous and largest GDP nations, India and China, both culturally akin, are socially
structured on family values and associated social attitudes.
Potentially both are poised to fill the role of global powers. To achieve that potential, both require hardware,
software and the clear mindset for exercising this power. As of now, China is ahead of India in reaching that
level. We are concerned here with the question whether India can reach it.
India’s China policy thus needs a re-structuring based on a fresh perspective that is relevant for the 21st century.
This is because the global power matrix has undergone a paradigm change, from an exclusively Atlantic shores-
based concerns to emerging Indo-Pacific ocean strategic issues. Thus India-China relations matter as never
before.
The diminishing influence of Western powers in the region, and as of now the acknowledged rising power of
China are the new global reality. In terms of hardware capability and mindset, India is at present only a regional
power. Because of its present mindset, it is obsessed with the problem of Pakistan-trained terrorists entering
Indian territory rather than asserting higher priority on global issues, and thus it is complicit in international
attempts to hyphenate the two regional-minded nations, India with Pakistan.
This is the Indian myopia, because India has the capacity and the opportunity to rise as a ‘responsible and
influential global power’. As a collateral effect, this will easily fix Pakistan and its terrorist propensity.
Looking beyond Pakistan

Since 1971, Pakistan has already broken into two, and there are still fissiparous internal pressures. India
therefore needs a new mindset: to look beyond Pakistan. Moreover, it depends on whether India’s intellectual
outlook matures enough to find acceptable accommodation with China for a partnership in Asian peace.
The U.S. has become a much friendlier nation for India, especially because the Soviet Union unravelled, and
India’s economy is growing fast to become an open, competitive market economy, the third largest in PPP terms.
But the U.S. also is hesitant to put boots on the ground to fight terrorist establishments. Hence India can help
the U.S. fill that growing void in return for the sophisticated military hardware that it lacks.
The world already is dazzled by India’s prowess in information technology, the capability to produce
pharmaceuticals at low cost, and the high quality of its trained manpower capable of innovation. But India does
not exert this soft power advantage on the world scene commensurate with this potential or its size in Asia.
We are still on the international stage in a “petitioner” mode on vital national and international security issues
— an unfortunate hangover from Nehru’s diplomacy of the 1950s. Unless we take ourselves seriously, stop
craving foreign certificates and acquire commensurate military hardware by reaching spaces vacated by the U.S.,
others will not acknowledge our global status and comply accordingly.
A strategic bond
My prescription is thus short: the key for India today is to bond strategically with China. But this requires
dealing bilaterally on huge pending issues. After my recent visit to China, I believe there is an unfortunate trust
deficit that requires frank, hard-nosed bilateral discussion at a high political level and not between bureaucrats.
China recognises India’s potential and respects the same.
There is sufficient common ground to cement the relationship. The question for us is: do we want to be strategic
partners with China and accept sincerely the concomitant commitments, and trust China to do the same? The
answer lies in our relations with the U.S., and China’s relations with Pakistan.
For that to happen, India has to completely reorient its strategic mindset. A change in strategic
conceptualisation is needed, that is, from the colonial hangover of junior partnership for the sake of crumbs
from the materialistic “Westward Ho” syndrome, to an Eastward ethos, concomitantly from the present land-
focussed thinking to Ocean-centric articulation.
The Indian Ocean has now emerged as the epicentre of global power play in the 21st century. Gone are the
outdated phrases like Asia-Pacific. Let us articulate and embrace the new concept of Indo-Pacific alliances that
accommodates Chinese perspectives on a reciprocity basis. Hence we need to recognise this centrality and
primacy of the Indian Ocean in India’s global economic and military activism: the Indian Ocean is the epicentre
of global power play in the 21st century. With Indonesian partnership, India can monitor the Malacca Strait
through which over 80% of the freight traffic of China and East Asia passes.
My recent meetings with influential Chinese leaders and scholars convinces me more than ever before that
China recognises India’s potential to match Chinese reach and strategic goals.
Simplified, China would be more flexible in dealing with India if it is convinced of India’s equidistance with the
U.S. on China-U.S. disputes involving distant places such as Taiwan and South China Sea islands. Of course, we
will require that China respond with similar nonchalance on Pakistan-India disputes.
As an important part of its diplomacy, India has thus to develop deeper cultural and civilisational linkages with
China and the rest of Asia. India has to realise that it can’t just be a spectator, or a mere visible participant, or
even a ‘pole’ in the so-called multi-polar world. China has conceptualised and implemented the centrality of
befriending all of India’s neighbours and has brought them on board in its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
In the Chinese Communist Party Congress in the early 2000s, Hu Jintao, then President of China, had got
adopted the goal of developing a “Harmonious Society”, of blending spiritual Confucianist and Taoist values
with aspirations for material progress. This is similar to the Hindu values of placing on a pedestal intellect and
sacrifice (gyana and tyaga). Since then China has proceeded systematically to bring countries of Asia under its
influence with imaginative proposals such as the BRI and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. India has been
reduced to merely reacting to such proposals without any of her own to canvass as an alternative.
New paradigm
India, therefore, has to strive imaginatively to become a stakeholder in this new global power paradigm: to give
up its reticence and passive diplomacy and learn to exercise power without being seen as a bully by our
neighbours.
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi we have at least conveyed to the world that we have arrived and are
interested in carving out India’s due place.
To some extent, China too has made that clear already by writing into CPEC and BRI documents, since India
objected, that the proposed road through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir would be subject to the “final solution” of
the so-called Jammu and Kashmir issue.
In brief then, India is now poised to form a global triangle with the U.S. and China, and therefore the
government must seize the opportunity, which requires a serious effort at reconciliation with China in a give-
and-take mode without sacrificing our national interest.
Subramanian Swamy is a Member of Parliament
LEAD
A vote for state funding
Zoya Hasan
JANUARY 29, 2018 00:02 IST
Electoral bonds cannot clean up campaign finance
I ndian elections are the world’s biggest exercise in democracy but also among the most expensive. India’s
campaign spend is only rivalled by the American presidential race, the world’s most expensive election. Parties
and candidates need large sums of money for voter mobilisation, advertising, consulting, transport, propaganda
and printing of campaign materials to reach voters in constituencies. Corporate donations constitute the main
source of election funding in India which is awash with black money, with business and corporate donations to
political parties commonly taking this form. The public disclosure system that exists is limited. Only in 2008,
using the provisions of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Central Information Commission allowed
disclosure of income tax returns of political parties, though it is an open secret that actual expenditure is much,
much higher than what is disclosed.
Best practices elsewhere

India’s privately funded election campaign stands in contrast to the trend in most countries, which have partial or
full public funding or transparent regulation and financial accountability of political finance as in the U.S.
Corruption in election finance and the flawed party funding system drive political parties to misuse government’s
discretionary powers to raise funds for election campaigns. The combined effect is the absence of a level playing
field which has reduced the effectiveness of our democracy.
In his 2017 Budget speech, while emphasising the absence of transparency in funding, Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley noted that even 70 years after Independence the country had not been able to evolve a transparent method
of funding political parties which is vital to the system of free and fair elections. But the concern for transparency
in political funding is at complete odds with the electoral bonds scheme notified by the government this month
to clean election finance. Simply put, anybody can buy electoral bonds in the form of bearer bonds from specified
branches of the State Bank of India and donate it anonymously to a political party of their choice; the party must
cash the bonds within 14 days. All donations given to a party will be accounted for in the balance sheets but
without exposing the donor details to the public. Donors continue to prize anonymity as they fear disclosure
could invite adverse consequences from political opponents. As a result, the Election Commission (EC), the
Income Tax department and the voter would remain in the dark about it. However, the ruling dispensation at the
Centre, if it wants, can ferret out information on who’s funding whom from banking authorities on some pretext
or the other.

ALSO READ
The most significant aspect of the electoral bonds scheme is that it will not carry the name of
the payee as there is reluctance to donate to parties through bank instruments citing loss of
anonymity. Bonds will allow corporate houses to make anonymous donations through
banking channels to the party of their choice. This would lead to further opacity in the
The danger of
electoral bonds
funding process and further limit oversight and accountability. Transparency is a global
norm while opacity of election funding is an area of existential concern for democracies.
Subversion that such anonymity affords is perhaps one of the biggest threats to our
democracy today; it is the very wellspring of institutionalised corruption.
Far from reducing the large-scale corporate funding of elections, the introduction of electoral bonds does not
even address this issue. The government’s principal aim is to reduce the role of unaccounted cash in the electoral
process and not the corporate control of politics. Sure enough, the bonds scheme imposes no restrictions on the
quantum of corporate donations. Consequently, electoral bonds cannot address the problems that arise from the
corporate control over politics and corporate capture of government policies and decisions. Rather, electoral
bonds will result in unlimited and undeclared funds going to certain political parties which will be shielded from
public scrutiny as the balance sheets will not show which party has been the beneficiary of this largesse.
Three steps back

Electoral bonds must be seen in conjunction with: (1) lifting of the maximum limit of 7.5% on the proportion of
the profits a company can donate to a political party, thus opening up the possibility of shell companies being set
up specifically to fund parties; (2) amendment of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) opening the
floodgates of foreign funding to political parties, especially those which have a foreign support base; and (3) the
refusal of political parties to come under the RTI Act in order to conceal their sources of funding. These three
things will end up strengthening the business-politics nexus. It goes against the position taken by various
electoral reform committees that the existing pattern of political funding encourages lobbying and capture of the
government by big donors. Far from making the funding process transparent, the bond scheme could provide a
backdoor to corporates and other lobbies for shaping public policy to benefit their interests. There is thus a
legitimate fear that policy decisions of political parties and politicians after being elected may be biased in favour
of groups that fund them.
Moreover, these bonds are likely to reverse the small steps towards transparency of political finance that came as a
result of RTI-driven public disclosure of income tax returns of political parties arguing that these disclosures were
a matter of public interest and should be available to citizens. Furthermore, all registered parties were required to
disclose to the EC the identity of individuals and private entities donating more than ₹20,000 every year. Proposed
amendments to the Income Tax Act and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act will exempt parties from keeping
records of donations made through bonds. However, the decision to reduce cash contributions from ₹20,000 to
₹2,000 is a step in the right direction, but the net effect is debatable, since it could prompt parties to take smaller
cash donations, and therefore not declare their source. This would not decrease the drift towards non-transparent
funding reported by the Association for Democratic Reforms which found that nearly 70% of party funding over
an 11-year period came from unknown sources; nearly ₹7,900 crore donations came from unknown sources in
2015-2016. Electoral bonds will not change this. In fact, political parties don’t need to reveal the donor’s name for
a contributions above ₹20,000 provided these are in the form of electoral bonds.
Elections that work well are essential for democracy; conversely, money power can corrode the entire process. A
major concern associated with the high cost of elections is that it prevents political parties and candidates with
modest financial resources from being competitive in elections. Whilst the bond scheme can be an attempt to
burnish the anti-corruption credentials of the Narendra Modi government ahead of the 2019 general election, it is
clearly a regressive and flawed move. A number of government committees have outlined reform proposals to
contain the negative effects of the high cost of elections. These include strong disclosure norms, strict statutory
limits on election expenses and ceiling on corporate donations to political parties. The rules to limit and restrict
the campaign expenditure of parties are largely inoperative because it is easy to circumvent them.
Staring at the solution

State funding of elections (in various forms) is a potential solution to this problem. The Indrajit Gupta Committee
on State Funding of Elections had endorsed partial state funding of recognised political parties and their
candidates in elections way back in 1998, but the lack of political will has prevented any serious discussion on this.
The mechanics of this process need to be carefully worked out to establish the allocation of money to national
parties, State parties and independent candidates, and to check candidate’s own expenditure over and above that
which is provided by the state. Based on the experience of countries that have total or partial state funding of
elections, it will not be difficult to work out a formula that is both efficient and equitable to ensure that
democracy works for everyone and not just for the wealthy few.
Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Repertoire - a stock of skills or types of behaviour that a person habitually uses.
Ontological - the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.
Eschatological - the part of theology concerned with death, judgement, and the final destiny of the soul
and of humankind.
Seminal - strongly influencing later developments.
Dialogical - characterized by dialogue
LEAD
Walking with others on a tightrope

Ramin Jahanbegloo
JANUARY 30, 2018 00:02 IST
Gandhi knew well that one cannot be a friend of Truth without living on the edge
J
J anuary 30 marks the 70th anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Once again the
ideas of non-violent resistance and self-transformation are brought before the public arena. But
more than ever, this is an opportunity to evaluate the theoretical and practical status of M.K.
Gandhi in India and in the world.
Gandhi everywhere
It is practically impossible to live in India and not to see or hear references to Gandhi. Gandhi is by
far the most recognisable Indian put on currency notes. He is also honoured all over the country
with statues erected in the middle of town squares and his pictures posted on the walls of business
offices and shops, even restaurants. But this does not mean necessarily that Gandhi is well read and
understood by all Indians. A quick look at everyday Indian politics and the debates in the press and
elsewhere shows that the spirit of Gandhi is no more fully present in his native country. Though his
name is pronounced by all politicians and managers, when it comes to his teachings, young, middle
class technologists, corporate lawyers and businessmen in India consider Gandhi an old-fashioned
figure with his preference for an austere, simple lifestyle.
ALSO READ
Despite being misread and misunderstood, Gandhi’s legacy lives on over 70
years after his death. Today, for many non-Indians, the name “Gandhi” is
synonymous with non-violence and civil resistance. As such, Mahatma
Gandhi continues to be studied and taken seriously by all those around the
On another New
Year’s Day:
world, (including Indians) who are engaged in the struggle for freedom and
Mahatma democratisation. Over the last seven decades, political and spiritual leaders
Gandhi's
'khorak' a 100
and civil activists, from Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, the Dalai
years ago Lama through to Aung San Suu Kyi, from young militants of Otpor in Serbia to
the freedom fighters of Tahrir Square in Egypt, have increasingly incorporated the Gandhian
philosophy of non-violence in their protest repertoires, realising the ways in which it challenges
the ruling elite’s power and domination.
More interestingly, there has been a new interest in Gandhi among political theorists in the West.
For the past seven decades, very few theorists considered Gandhi’s seminal work, Hind Swaraj, as a
major work in modern political thought next to Machiavelli’s The Prince, Hobbes’s Leviathan and
Mill’s On Liberty. But a new interest in Gandhi the political philosopher is emerging among the
comparative political theorists. Actually, his relevance to contemporary debates becomes even more
pertinent by analysing his philosophical and political contributions in a comparative perspective.
Moreover, it reveals the multidimensional aspect of Gandhian thought while providing a sharp
contrast between his approach to ethics, pluralism and autonomy and many challenges of our
contemporary world, including lack of empathy, legitimised violence and exclusion.
An ethics of empathy
As such, what the comparative analysis of the Gandhian thought reveals to us is that unlike many
contemporary liberal political thinkers, who put rights before duties, empathy and cross-cultural
understanding are the ‘hallmarks of the Gandhian view of everyday politics. The heart of Gandhi’s
ethics of empathy is to look within oneself, change oneself and then change the world. That is to say,
at a more fundamental level, for Gandhi, cultures and nations are not isolated entities, because they
all play a special role in the making of human history’. Therefore, ‘Gandhi rarely speaks in terms of
linear world history. His goal for every culture (including his own) is the same as his goal for every
individual: to experiment with Truth. This is a way to open up the world to a harmonic exchange
and a transformative dialogue among cultures’.
ALSO READ
At a more philosophical level, in Gandhi’s view, every culture should learn
from others. As a result, politics for Gandhi is a matter of non-violent
organisation of society with the aim of becoming more mature and more
truthful. At the same time, Gandhi is always concerned with cooperation
No material to
probe Gandhi among nations in terms of mutual understanding, empathic friendship and
assassination non-violent partnership.
again: SC
Last but not least, Gandhi is a thinker and a practitioner who is constantly
experimenting with modes of comparative and cross-border cultural
constellations. As he affirms, “I do not want my house to be walled in on sides and my windows to
be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I
refuse to be blown off my feet by any.” This statement of Gandhi has a particular relevance to the
cultural situation in our globalised world. Gandhi’s ‘house’ can be understood as a metaphor for an
autonomous and democratically self-organised system within a decentralised community of
‘houses’ where communication between equally respected and equally valid cultures can take place.
In other words, this capacity to engage constructively with conflicting values is an essential
component of practical wisdom and empathic pluralism of Gandhian non-violence.
It also involves a belief in the fact that an understanding of moral views is possible among all people
of all cultures because they all participate in the same quest for Truth. This why Gandhi affirms,
“Temples or mosques or churches… I make no distinction between these different abodes of God.
They are what faith has made them. They are an answer to man’s craving somehow to reach the
Unseen.” Consequently, the Gandhian non-violent approach to plurality is a way of bridging
differences and developing inter cultural awareness and understanding among individuals and
nations. As a result, Gandhi suggests a view of civilisation deeply rooted in an ethics of non-
violence. However, his ontological and political demands for an ethical approach to human affairs
are not of an utopian nature, but more of a dialogical sensibility. Maybe that is why Gandhi’s
response to the phenomenology of violence is not the exclusion of certain historical self-
consciousness but a mutual recognition among subjects of history. As a matter of fact, the
pluralistic and inter-cultural recognition in the Gandhian vision of democracy can determine our
sense of who we are and the value accorded to the common world we live in. That is, for Gandhi,
one’s sense of freedom is never a matter of simple self- introspection. Rather, understanding
oneself as an autonomous self-consciousness requires the recognition of the otherness of the other.
For Gandhi, recognition is the mechanism by which our democratic existence, as self-
transformative beings, is generated.
Importance of dialogue
The point here is that in Gandhi’s political philosophy, the experience of freedom derives from the
diverse modes of participation in common concerns and community-engendering values spelt out
in terms of a dialogue with the otherness of the other. Actually, Gandhi’s message would be that
dialogue with the other would save the self from its own tyranny. In short, what all this means is
that with Gandhi, human conscience finally returns to earth, to the here and now, after centuries of
temptation looking for salvation in eschatological constructions.
Gandhi knew well that one cannot be a friend of Truth without living on the edge. For him,
therefore, thinking and living became one. But, thanks to his comparative and dialogical attitude,
he always thought differently and lived marginally. His opening up to the world went hand in hand
with his act of being free. While listening to his inner voice, he also had an acute sense of the world.
Gandhi preferred to walk with others, even on a tightrope, rather than walking alone on a rigid,
inflexible and impenetrable ground. This is his legacy, which is needed now more than ever.
Ramin Jahanbegloo is Director, Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Peace, Jindal Global University, Sonipat
LEAD
A road map for renewal
Veritable - used for emphasis, often to qualify a metaphor.

Quirk - a peculiarity of action, behavior, or personality; mannerism:
Inane - silly, lacking sense or meaning.
Headwind - a wind blowing from directly in front, opposing forward motion.
Melt up - A dramatic and unexpected improvement in the investment performance of an asset class driven
partly by a stampede of investors who don't want to miss out on its rise rather than by fundamental
improvements in the economy. Gains created by a melt up are considered an unreliable indication of the
direction the market is ultimately headed, and melt ups often precede melt downs.
Ajit Ranade
JANUARY 31, 2018 00:02 IST
Will the Budget address the concerns raised in the Economic Survey or will it go its own way?
T he Economic Survey, a statutory document tabled in Parliament, is meant to be a scorecard of the economy
for the current fiscal year. But over the years, it has morphed into a sourcebook for data and policy analysis.
Indeed, economists and even academicians look forward to its scholarly content, even though it may have a
partisan outlook.
Sober realities
This year’s Survey too does not disappoint in being a veritable feast and also presenting fairly sober realities.
Under the leadership of Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) Arvind Subramanian, one quirk of the Survey is its
thematic catchphrases. For instance, a few years ago, the CEA, in the Survey’s preamble, said that the Indian
political economy was not capable of big bang reforms. Instead, reforms would be persistent, creative and
incremental. It’s a different matter that in November 2016, India got the world’s biggest bang announcement in
the form of demonetisation. Last year the Survey introduced the catchphrase JAM (the Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and
Mobile trinity) indicating their potent combination of enabling direct benefit transfers and using technology to
deliver subsidies as well as trim leakages.
ALSO READ
In its first chapter, the latest Survey highlights 10 new facts about the Indian economy.
Unfortunately some are not so new, and some are inane. For example, the fact that adverse
weather affects agricultural yields and that parents in India have a preference for male
children are hardly new “facts”. But others are significant, such as the finding that
The Economic
Survey 2017-18
demonetisation and more formalisation of the economy have led to a huge jump in the
number of taxpayers, for both direct and indirect taxes. Or that the formal part of the non-
agricultural payroll is much bigger than believed. Unfortunately, this new “fact” is not
substantiated with latest data; the Survey presents data from 2012. Surely the government is
not stuck in a time warp, is it?
Another interesting fact is that India’s export sector is more diversified in comparison to other peer countries;
that is, the top 1% of exporting firms account for a much smaller share of total exports, compared to East Asian
countries. It is heartening to note the important role of small and medium enterprises in industrial employment
and exports. On the other hand, this could be due to the inability of Indian firms to achieve global scale. Are the
scale aspirations being thwarted by restrictive labour laws?
A populist hint
One of the most sobering facts in the Survey has been on the rural and agricultural sector. Farm incomes have
remained stagnant for the past four years, hit by a drop in crop prices, output glut, and possibly demonetisation.
So what is the prospect of doubling farm incomes in the next few years? Given that the Budget will be the last one
before the 2019 general election (a fact reiterated by the Survey), it is almost a foregone conclusion that there will
be great emphasis on the farm sector. This also means a tilt towards populism.
ALSO READ
How then will the fiscal limits be obeyed? Here the Survey hints that some slippage from
pre-announced fiscal deficit targets are to be expected in this pre-election Budget. The bond
markets hate fiscal slippage and already there is sell-off of bonds. This will lead to a rise in
interest rates. The biggest loser from a higher interest rate is the biggest borrower in the
‘Fiscal populism
would be really
system, the Government of India. Even an increase of 0.5-0.6% rate over one year is an
counterproductiv increase in the interest burden of more than ₹40,000 crore, equivalent to the full budget of
says CEA Arvind
Subramanian the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
Hence the government will have to think very carefully on how to avoid slippage and keep
bond markets happy. The disinvestment target was overachieved this year which is quite impressive and could be
continued next year, given the euphoria in the stock markets. The Survey does point out that India’s stock markets
have a different dynamic when compared to global markets. Stock markets all over the world are at record highs
and there is concern about a bubble formation. In fact, a new phrase in the international lexicon is melt-up, which
is the opposite of melt-down. So whether it’s oil prices or commodity prices, and now stock markets, it’s all going
up and this may be the big surge before a crash, big or small.
But in India, according to the Survey, stock market valuations may not be in bubble territory. That is why the
disinvestment target for next year may be higher. Also, the widening of the tax net can be positive for revenues,
thus cutting the deficit.
Global factors
The Survey mentions key macroeconomic headwinds from abroad. First, oil prices are going up. This would mean
that the triple advantage that the government enjoyed since late-2014 for almost two years of a lower import bill,
lower oil subsidy burden and lower inflation is going to go away. Every $10 increase in oil prices can reduce GDP
growth by 0.2-0.3%. And oil prices have gone up by almost 60% in the last six months. The second headwind comes
from the tightening stance of the world’s most influential central bank, the U.S. Fed. As rates are being tightened
in the U.S., it is likely to lead to a reversal of dollar flows, which can impact India’s domestic liquidity situation, the
stock market, and perhaps the exchange rate.
ALSO READ
In addition, there are domestic challenges. The Budget priorities are clearly in these five
areas: job creation; revival of private investment spending; revival of exports; focus on rural
and agricultural economy; and bringing the banking sector back to a healthier condition. To
this one, in the medium to longer term, add worries about increasing inequality. On the eve
India’s
‘unwanted’ girls:
of the recent World Economic Forum at Davos, Oxfam released a report which said that 1% of
Economic India owns 73% of its wealth. This was reportedly mentioned by the Prime Minister in his
Survey
highlights how meeting with Indian corporate leaders at Davos. One cause of inequality is the strain of
preference for indirect taxes, which tend to be regressive because they affect the poor disproportionately.
The goods and services tax is an indirect tax. Excise duties on petrol and diesel are indirect taxes. In the last three
years, the share of indirect taxes in total taxation has gone up steadily, which needs to be reversed. So there is an
expectation that there will be action on the direct tax front to correct this trend.
Tax disputes
Finally, the Survey points out that India’s rank in ease of doing business has jumped significantly, but an area
which remains a cause for concern is the settlement of disputes or litigation. A telling statistic is the large amount
stuck in tax litigation. By definition, one party to the litigation is the tax department, and quite often the other
party is also a government company. The total amount estimated to be locked up in tax disputes is more than ₹8.2
lakh crore. And this happens despite the lower authorities or tribunals ruling in favour of the tax-payer; it is
automatically escalated to the higher level till it goes to the courts. There is an incentive problem because tax
officers are not incentivised to settle claims for fear of being accused of collusion or corruption. The Economic
Survey points out that such a high rate of pendency and the huge amounts stuck in litigation are hurting India’s
ease of doing business. Another telling statistic is the pendency in settling or granting of patents. These are
“property rights” arising out of innovations. More than two lakh applications are pending, and isn’t this a bad sign
for innovators?
The Survey is overall an excellent document which doesn’t shy away from painting a realistic picture whether it is
about jobs, investments, growth outlook or burdensome litigation. Now all eyes are focussed on the Union
Budget. Will it address concerns raised in the Survey or will it go its own way?
Ajit Ranade is an economist

January 2018 Hindu Leads

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LEAD

On another New Year’s Day: Mahatma Gandhi's 'khorak' a 100

Concision - concise quality, brevity, terseness.

The right to question

Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a former administrator, diplomat and Governor

Understanding secularism in the Indian context

Palpable - perceptible, able to be touched or felt.

Suhrith Parthasarathy is an advocate practising at the Madras High Court

Looking for substance in style: the politics of Rajinikanth

Who needs a messiah?

The star and his fans

Towards a genomics revolution

Priya Moorjani Shivaji Sondhi

Surveying Indian variation

Decreasing disease burden

What then is to be done?

Past: ﬁsh out of water

Present: politics in ferment

Future: New Delhi calling

Overture - instrumental introduction to an opera

Memory, myth and memorial: on the Bhima-Koregaon battle

Elk - Largest member of the deer family.

Yet another tectonic shift?

Vacuum and uncertainty

Dark clouds across Asia

Sabre Rattling - display or threat of military force.

Between the two giants

Shots across India’s bow

West Asia in turmoil

Medley - a mixture, especially of heterogeneous elements; hodgepodge

The Iranian crisis is not yet over

The reformists’ silence

Iran’s Green Movement Five Years Later —

REMEMBERING THE EVENTS

THE REGIME’S MORAL DEFEAT

THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC — DICTATORSHIP AND ELECTIONS

A POWER STRUCTURE THAT CREATES ITS OWN OPPOSITION

A PEACEFUL PATH TO DEMOCRACY — NOT AN IRAQ-TYPE DEBACLE

This article was translated by Ali N. Babaei.

The map of rural deprivation

The road still runs through Ramallah

Difference of a few months

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Rights in the age of big data

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The right to privacy

Apar Gupta practises law in New Delhi

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Contingent - Dependent, conditional ;

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Gaffe - an unintentional act or remark causing embarrassment to its originator; a blunder.

Lynchpin - a person or thing vital to an enterprise or organization,

The existing policy

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