Sunday View: Whither RBI’s Autonomy; Mocking Women Mobilises Them

The weekend’s best opinion pieces, curated for you.

File Photo of new RBI governor Urjit Patel. (Photo: PTI)

1. Across The Aisle: Whither RBI’s Autonomy?

Writing in the Indian Express, P Chidambaram says that the RBI’s main objectives immediately after the 1929 Great Depression and today are the same: to keep the reserves and to issue bank notes. Under the Reserve Bank of India Act of 1934, the central bank has been conferred vast powers.

Since November 8, 2016, of course, the role of the RBI as the issuer of bank notes has come into prominence. The RBI has the sole right to issue bank notes (Section 22). The RBI shall recommend the denominational values of the notes as well as the discontinuance of issue of notes (Section 24). Further, it is on the recommendation of the RBI that the Central government may declare that any series of bank notes shall cease to be legal tender (Section 26). In the current exercise of demonetisation, how did the RBI acquit itself?  

P Chidambaram

2. Netas, The More You Mock Women, The More They Will Mobilise

While the tragedy in Bengaluru on New Year’s Eve cannot be equated to the massacre in the nightclub in Reina, Turkey, Shobhaa De writes in the Times of India that it was a massacre nonetheless. Politicians’ reactions to the incident, however, were “sickeningly” predictable.

For men like Abu Azmi and yourself, it is certainly over — the more you threaten and bully, the more you trivialise and mock, the more women will mobilise and hit back. Just look at your pathetic selves in a mirror before telling us how to dress, eat, drink, talk and behave. Fortunately, what you can’t do even if you tried, is to force your boorish beings into our brains and hearts. Get this — our thoughts and feelings are fiercely our own. Nobody can touch those.

Shobhaa De

3. Out of My Mind: SC Order Incomprehensible

Writing in the Indian Express, Meghnad Desai says that the Supreme Court’s decision that caste, religion, race, community or language cannot be used as grounds to seek votes should be cause for concern.

Thinking as hard as I can, I find this decision incomprehensible if the history of Indian elections has any relevance. The roots of this judgment are in the Representation of the People Act, Section 123. The broader issue is that India being a secular state, any exploitation of religion would amount to corrupt practice. For good measure, caste, language, race and community were added... India may be a secular State, but it is an intensely religious society.

Meghnad Desai

4. Fifth Column: Change at Last?

Writing in the Indian Express, Tavleen Singh says that Modi’s decision to take India “kicking and screaming” into the digital age has left little room for cheer. However, a senior official from the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation convinced her that it was incorrect to believe that nothing had changed.

He began by telling me that the Prime Minister’s heart was so much in this programme that he personally oversaw its progress. He said I was wrong to believe nothing had been achieved. According to him, in the past year, the number of villages where defecating in public has been stopped has gone up from 20,000 to around 1,40,000. This is no small achievement considering the size of the problem.  

Tavleen Singh

5. Keeping the Streets Safe

In his column in The Hindu, RK Raghavan writes that recently, the Karnataka Police has been slipping up “far too often for our comfort” and that unfortunately, police forces in other states are not blameless either.

Without intending to be caustic or uncharitable, I am afraid the Karnataka State Police is slipping up far too often for our comfort. Its handling of riots last year over the Cauvery water dispute is too fresh in our memory to be ignored or forgotten. Distressingly, the Kolkata Police is fast catching up in the matter of giving licence to thugs.

RK Raghavan

6. What Makes UK a Civilised Nation

Amidst news in British dailies about how terrible the National Health Service is, Aakar Patel is all praise for the system as he recounts his encounter with the NHS in his column in the Asian Age.

The UK spends Rs 9.3 lakh crore per year on the NHS, which is about Rs 1.5 lakh per citizen. India’s Union health budget is Rs 33,000 crore per year, which means we spend Rs 260 per citizen. Of course, we are a poor nation, but we are a poor nation that last year spent Rs 59,000 crore buying 36 fighter planes and this year is spending Rs 99,000 crore on a bullet train.It is unthinkable to me that in the UK citizens would allow their government to spend so foolishly on such toys, at the expense of the health of its citizens. 

Aakar Patel

7. Don’t Appropriate Post-Truth. India’s Truth is Different

“It has been said that when America sneezes, the whole world catches a cold.” US-inspired economic, political and social epidemics have begun influencing the way we perceive the world, writes Swapan Dasgupta in the Times of India.

Post-truth may be a useful category to understand the widespread liberal angst after the shocks of 2016 and, maybe, even the resurrection of nationalism in the West. Its Indian usage, however, tells us more of the cultural and political preferences of those who have appropriated it than about the country we live in.

Swapan Dasgupta

8. Palestine Forsaken

Writing in the Asian Age, AG Noorani says that US Secretary of State, John Kerry’s recent long speech on peace between Israel and Palestine offered the latter little, and is likely to win neither US nor Israeli support.

The set of principles Kerry propounded was an old hat with a relatively new ribbon — agreed changes to the 1967 lines; equal rights for all citizens; solution to the refugee problem; accord on Jerusalem; respect for “Israel’s security needs” after it ends its occupation; and peace with “all of its (Israel’s) Arab neighbours” in a regional security framework.

AG Noorano

9. La La Land: Here’s to The Good Old

“With the past being a foreign country that very few of us apply for visas to, there are obvious reasons to be entranced by Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, a film about two people who are in many ways anachronisms,” writes Jai Arun Singh for the Mint.

Notably, even though La La Land is set in the 21st century, in a world of intrusive cellphones and electronic car keys, the musical numbers, many of which could easily be from 1950s or 1960s films, are played straight.

Jai Arun Singh

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