The Tragedy of the Missing Middle
Former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram writes in The Indian Express it is disappointing to see the middle class indifferent to the protests of farmers. Explaining that the subject of his essay is, “what is this ‘middle class’ of an estimated size of 6 crore doing?” Chidambaram writes that from the 1930s to the 1980s “the middle class was really in the middle of things.”
He laments that this class has abdicated its social, intellectual and political roles and “exists only as a classification for economists, but it seems to have retreated from practically all walks of life.”
Alas, that middle class seems to have vanished. It exists only as a classification for economists, but it seems to have retreated from practically all walks of life. Full-time politicians have taken over clubs, societies, sports bodies, cooperative societies, trade unions, temple trusts and practically every other organised unit of society. It is perhaps the reason why public life, especially politics, has become acrimonious and monetised and the level of debate coarse, vulgar and vapid.P Chidambaram in The Indian Express
A Rural View of Covid-19
In her column for The Indian Express, Tavleen Singh writes that the ‘experts’ who predicted that there would be 500,000 deaths in India by last July “have been proved so wrong.”
“Where are those experts by the way?,” she asks.
As India nears the anniversay of the first COVID-19 lockdown, Singh reminds us “people who had days earlier participated happily in a day long ‘Janata Curfew’ and banged their pots and pans to celebrate its end, were thrown off balance. The worst affected were workers from distant villages who suddenly lost their jobs.”
Then as days went by and the disease continued its relentless march, anxiety and fear spread and the village banned outsiders from coming here because they believed it was them who brought the disease. Nobody died in this village and only a few people got sick, but a blanket of dread hung over everything for months. What made life more difficult was that weeks after the lockdown ended came Cyclone Nisarga. It ripped off the roofs of village homes and tore down old trees and fragile electricity poles. Luckily, nobody was killed in this village but there are times still when the sound of huge trees being uprooted and the howl of those cyclonic winds still rings in my ears.Taveleen Singh in The Indian Express
Mere Paas Bhi Star hai! Why BJP and TMC are in a Celeb-Wooing Competition
In his column for The Times of India Sandip Roy argues that celebrities, whatever the vintage, matter in Bengal. Roy writes that while “starchy dhoti-clad babus” of the Left generally looked down on Bollywood and its Kolkata cousin Tollywood as lowbrow, Mamata Banerjee had no such pretensions. She understands the pulse of mainstream Bengali culture and has always packed her MP/MLA line-up with film stars, sportspersons, singers.
According to Roy, the celebrity brigade now serves a different political purpose. It’s about quantity rather than quality, he argues explaining “Ultimately elections are a matter of perception and by filling up its celeb dance card the BJP wants to send out the message that the wind is changing in Bengal.”
Whether it can win the battle of perceptions is anyone’s guess. But while political parties and celebrities hope for a win-win relationship with each other, it’s debatable whether art and culture itself will emerge a winner. When some artiste gets ensnared in the next freedom of expression fight, and a political party goes after them hammer and tongs, will these celeb-turned netas, no matter which party they belong to, speak up? Or will they turn into silent film stars?Sandip Roy in The Times of India
Bengal’s Politics has Changed, Forever
In his column for Hindustan Times, Chanakya writes, irrespective of whether the TMC stays in power or the BJP wins, the political structure in the state is witnessing a rupture with long-lasting consequences.
Chankaya argues that even if the BJP loses the election, Hindutva has now established itself as an ideological factor in Bengal’s politics — this has already redefined politics. It is visible in Banerjee’s attempts to tone down her association with Muslims and play up her Hindu identity or in the Jai Sri Ram slogan becoming a chant of political resistance or in the discourse around Bangladeshi immigrants. The Hindu-Muslim question will now remain a defining feature of Bengal’s politics.
Bengal’s outcome will shape national politics, for a TMC win will serve as a check on the BJP’s centralising tendencies while a BJP win will give it renewed political legitimacy to push through its ideological and governance agenda for the remaining three years of its term in Delhi. But most importantly, the politics leading up to the election has already changed Bengal in fundamental ways, perhaps forever.Chanakya in Hindustan Times
Address Slide in India’s Freedom Perception
Writing in The Tribune, former foreign secretary Vivek Katju highlights that US-based NGO Freedom House’s latest “Freedom in the World” report caused a flutter in India for it downgraded the country from free to the partially free category.
“Significantly, while Freedom House depends on US federal government grants for more than 90 per cent of its funding,” Katju writes, “it has also dropped America’s freedom score by 11 points over a decade and has been critical of the erosion of the country’s institutions.” Nevertheless, the US still remains in the ‘free’ category, though it is considered along with India as a ‘troubled’ democracy.
India has always sought to position itself as a good global citizen which contributes to global good even as it protects its own interests. It has earned respect and goodwill for its technical assistance programmes and its willingness to share its limited resources in times of global crises such as the current pandemic. Its supplies of vaccines even while they are needed domestically are a part of this tradition. While this meaningfully contributes to India’s soft power, it cannot lead to the attitude that their success means that India need not engage international liberal opinion. While seeking to gain new elements of soft power, the existing ones should not be ignored.Vivek katju in The Tribune
How 100 Unicorns are Propelling India forward
In his column for The Times of India, SA Aiyar dismissed as “rubbish” constant claims by Opposition parties and leftist journals that our economy is dominated by two-Modi-friendly conglomerates. Writing on “unicorns” —unlisted new companies worth over a billion dollars each, Aiyar argues that never before has India witnessed such a broad-based upsurge of massive new businesses unconnected with old wealth, political contacts or dirty deals with public sector banks.
Appealing to Union FInance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman “please pay attention”, Aiyar proposes India needs to go the same way as Facebook whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued shares to others with reduced or zero voting rights, enabling him to raise billions without losing control over his company.
This is not a bubble about to burst. The world has created massive new pools of private capital in recent decades from venture capitalists and private equity funds. It is now witnessing the explosion of a new species — SPACS, or Special Purpose Acquisition Companies. These raise billions from private investors (including the most illustrious financial names) with no specified investment targets or strategies, which is why some call them “blank-cheque” companies. They are free to search the world for good investment opportunities.SA Aiyar in The Times of India
The New Media Rules Are a Tightening Noose
Writing for The Hindu, Sashi Kumar focuses on the recently notified IT Rules, arguing “What is worrying is the executive’s idea that users need to be protected against the very media that seek to inform them.”
The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, notified towards the end of February by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology should not come as a surprise, he writes, because it is of a piece with the systematic incremental erosion of the freedom of speech and expression that has marked the Bharatiya Janata Party’s rule under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The fourth estate in India, though, has increasingly been at the receiving end of draconian executive acts, invocations of legislative privilege and judicial intolerance. If the fourth estate is to be treated by the executive as an inconvenience to be sidelined, surely the other pillars, the judiciary and the legislature, lay themselves open to the same fate. Already characterisations of democracy, like the illiberal democracy in Orbán’s Hungary or authoritarian democracy here at home, are intimations of the uncertainties ahead. Surely, the body blow delivered to our democracy by the Emergency of 1975-77 must be, more than a bad memory, a lesson at this conjuncture.Sashi Kumar
How Covid, BCCI Bit off a Year for Women
In his column for The Tribune, Rohit Mahajan argues that the gap year showcased a glaring fault in sport across the world: Due to ‘slashed revenues’, women’s sport was not a priority, mainly because of its lower ‘profitability’. “Sadly, that has been the attitude of the Indian cricket board as well,” he laments.
For India’s women cricketers, reaching the final of the World Cup, having also reached the final of the 50-over World Cup in 2017, was a great achievement. “Yet, after that, for one full year, they sat home, twiddling their thumbs,” Mahajan writes, adding “Covid turned 2020 into a year of nothingness, but the Indian cricket board (BCCI), at the earliest opportunity, did organise the IPL for the men — 60 matches in 53 days.”
And the women? They had four Women’s Challenge T20 matches during the IPL. No international cricket. Their first international match after the World Cup final was held one full year later, on March 7, the first One-day International against South Africa in Lucknow. They went into the series against South Africa after only three training sessions, no camp — is this international sport or a joke?Rohit Mahajan
Those Sunny Days
Mukul Kesavan writes in The Telegraph how former cricketer Sunil Gavaskar “saved us from second-rateness fifty years ago.” Commemmorating fifty years since the former India batsman’s test cricket debut, Kesavan, in the vein of a cricket romantic, makes an impassioned case for Gavaskar as the greatest test batsman India ever produced. “Many of us still date our young lives by the landmarks in his career,” he writes.
Along with his cricketing achievement, the reason Gavaskar became a hero to young people in the Seventies was that he took the trouble to build a persona for himself. He wasn’t just a creature of cricket, he was a public man in his own right. Bishan Singh Bedi was and remains the most independent-minded and outspoken Indian cricketer ever, but he was one of a generation of cricketers mentored by the Nawab of Pataudi. Gavaskar seemed interestingly self-made, an opening batsman who announced himself to the world as the finished article.Mukel Kesavan in The Telegraph
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