Inside Track: Not So Invisible
Start your Sunday with your weekly dose of political gossip, courtesy Coomi Kapoor. In this week's column for The Indian Express, Kapoor tells us that all is fine between Modi-Shah, that Rahul Gandhi may soon be back as Congress President, how Hardeep Puri predicted the COVID situation in Mid-January, a mysterious virus-spreader at the Madhya Pradesh health department, and an interesting battle between two legal luminaries.
Under the cover of the COVID-19 crisis, steps seem afoot to ensure that Rahul Gandhi returns as Congress president. Rahul resigned after the party’s abysmal defeat last year and was reluctant to come back, unless he was given a free hand and the old guard, which regularly stymied his decisions, was out of the way. Acting president Sonia Gandhi recently formed a new committee to deal with the COVID-19 challenge and significantly the usual fixtures, Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad,Coomi Kapoor in The Indian Express
Let China Invest. It Gets Us Foreign Policy Leverage
Advocating for continued Chinese investment in India may seem like an anti-national thing to do in these times, but Swaminathan Aiyar, in his column for The Times Of India, says that this will give India power to lobby for change in policies of foreign investment such that it may disadvantage China. India just needs to protect its data and ensure that companies of strategic value are not taken over by the eastern superpower.
Subject to such safeguards, the more China invests in India, the greater will be India’s leverage over China since it can threaten changes in rules and laws on foreign investment to China’s disadvantage. Such leverage must not be used lightly but is of value. Foreign investors say India is notorious for arbitrary changes in rules and laws to hurt outsiders. It has a long track record of letting foreign investors in and then bashing them. I and other critics have called this bad economic policy. But it certainly means foreign investors are more at risk than India.Swaminathan Aiyar in The Times Of India
Trump’s Anti-Immigration Order Busts The Model Minority Myth Of Desis
In his column for The Times Of India, Sandip Roy, talks about the Trump administration's decision to hit the pause button on immigration into the USA. What does this mean for the Indian disapora there which consists of everyone- from spelling bee winners to corporate CEOs? Well, a huge bubble might just have burst for the American desis.
Indians, now a 4 million strong diaspora, have been happy to reap the benefits of being anointed the “model minority”. They were the winners of spelling bees, whiz kids with Ivy League degrees, hot shot bankers, academics and doctors, sometimes forgetting they were also gas station workers, janitors and working the graveyard shift at donut stores. The Pew Research Center reported in 2010 that the median income for Indian-American families was almost twice the national average. The 1910 government commission that deemed Indians “the most undesirable of Asiatics” was a distant memory. Many Indians bought into that model minority myth and the mantra for success was to be nonthreatening, keep your head down, focus on your grades, and drive your Honda Accord. The Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking tour busts that myth, telling the stories of Indian protesters that go all the way back to 1908. But as Indian-Americans have prospered economically, they have often distanced themselves from the struggles of African Americans and other immigrant communities, preferring to sit on the sidelines of civil rights debates though reaping its benefits.Sandip Roy in The Times Of India
How Politics Will Change Post The Pandemic
In a world where mass gatherings, mass protests and any kind of mass activity may be disallowed for the foreseeable future, how are people going to mobilise themselves? How will political parties mobilise people? In their article for The Hindustan Times, Chanakya talks about how the art of political consensus-building is set to a see a revolutionary change.
It is now recognised that the pandemic, and the restrictions that have accompanied it as the most effective way to battle the disease, will change the international system, the economic order, how businesses are run, and even the way people live and work. But one other element it will impinge on significantly is the method of political mobilisation, especially in democracies. Even after the lockdown is lifted, social distancing will continue to remain an established norm. This means that mass rallies (where hundreds of thousands of people jostled in a common area); mass protests (where thousands of people marched together, standing next to each other, and even pushing each other along); and small public meetings in urban neighbourhoods or village squares (where political leaders and civil society campaigners relayed their message to residents) may not be possible anymore — at least for the foreseeable future. It will be much harder to get a sense of where public opinion stands.Chanakya in The Hindustan Times
COVID-19 Gives India A Second Chance
In her column for The Indian Express, Tavleen Singh writes that the double whammy to both society and economy by the COVID-19 pandemic gives Prime Minister Modi a chance to act on his dual promises on 'parivartan' and 'vikas'. It is time to revisit how India looks at its businesses as well as its socialism, Singh says.
This is a good time to remind the Prime Minister of one of the things he said that made me support him with all my heart in the early months of his first term in office. Remember how he used to say that ‘government has no business to be in business’? Well, as someone who truly believes this, it won my total support. Sadly, in the past six years there has not been the smallest sign yet that Narendra Modi meant what he said. In some matters the exact opposite has happened, in the form of a company law that seeks to interfere in the minutest details of doing business. Unsurprisingly, this led to almost no new jobs being created and to the Indian economy going back almost to what used to be once derided as the ‘Hindu rate of growth’.Tavleen Singh in The Indian Express
Relax Fiscal Norms And Reform The Bureaucracy
In his column for The Hindustan Times, Mark Tully talks about the need to increase fiscal discipline in these times and also speaks against the notion that less government is better governance. It is time to move away from established neoliberal principles and discover new practices, Tully says.
The relaxation of fiscal discipline inevitably comes with a warning. It does not mean governments can print money when they feel the need. That would, beyond a point, lead to inflation. The money must be spent effectively on the development of productive resources and better use of existing resources. India is rich in human resources and they are underdeveloped. This is tragically illustrated by the 27.6 million Indian children who are wasted, according to the World Health Organization. That is more than half the total number of wasted children in the world. Wasting is a symptom of severe malnutrition leading to poor physical growth and susceptibility to disease. Another neoliberal myth that has been challenged by the pandemic is the belief that less government is better and private investment is always more productive than public. In Britain, previous Conservative Party governments undermined the National Health Service (NHS) by cutting its budget. But the present Conservative Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was cured of a severe coronavirus infection in an NHS-run facility, not a private hospital. At their daily briefings on this crisis, his ministers paid tribute to the NHS.Mark Tully in The Hindustan Times
Pandemic And Devolution Of Powers
As per usual, a crisis in India never comes without its politics. In his piece for The Indian Express, Meghnad Desai talks about how the pandemic has caused tensions between the centre and some states and is raising questions on the federal power structure in India.
The pandemic has turned the Union into a federation with border closures between states (Delhi and Noida) or created the need for a totally centralised unitary State of India. The Centre not only has the powers in reserve to impose lockdown but an asymmetrically larger financial clout which compels states to seek benefits from it. At the same time, some states do not want to be seen to be obeying Central injunctions lest politically it strengthens the BJP’s hand. This is the issue with West Bengal as well as Maharashtra. Mixed with this challenge is one that has been a weak link in the Indian Constitution for a long time. It is the metros which are the most likely centres of infection.Meghnad Desai in The Indian Express
Lockdown Tales: What I Learnt About Myself
Taking a departure from his usual political and social commentary, in this week's column for The Hindustan Times, Karan Thapar talks about the revelations he's had about himself during the month-down lockdown. Read and we're sure there are some bits you'd relate to as well.
The long lockdown evenings have revealed I’m quite happy on my own. Actually, I look forward to returning to my silent empty television room. Sometimes I read, occasionally I watch a video, but mostly I just fritter away the time doing nothing in particular. And I don’t spend hours on the phone catching up with family and friends. A quick call to find out all’s well, but no long gossip sessions. The astonishing truth is I’m content by myself and don’t feel I’ve missed anything or even anyone. I’m happy on my own. So, was there a hermit lurking inside me, hiding behind an earlier insecure personality that needed company and attention? Or have I realised I’m not as horrid as I feared, I was and can easily live with myself? Who knows? If I was of a philosophical or psychological bent of mind I might attempt to answer, but I’m not. I’ve noticed the change. Let wiser people fathom the explanation.Karan Thapar in The Hindustan Times
The Things You Can’t Do On Video Call
It's been a long lockdown and yes, we've made peace with Zoom calls and FaceTime, but can wine over a screen replace the good 'ol chai and adda? In this guest piece for The Times Of India, Regha Jha reminisces all that video calls have replaced. It may increase your longings, but hey, remember, we will soon come out of this- together.
Settled at the table with our tea, she’d muse for the 400th time, “this late afternoon light is just too good,” forcing the rest of us, a rotating cast of close friends, to pause and, for the 400th time, gladly appreciate the too good late afternoon light. Then senselessly, aimlessly, conversation would meander, recovering adolescent memories, posing radical theories about love, weaving through by-lanes of our evolving — always evolving — opinions on motherhood and dissent and drugs and Instagram, giddily fuelled by a rhythm of inside jokes and sometimes, only sometimes, paying our respects to the thrills of petty gossip. I miss all of our minds unspooling together like that, not noticing that her favourite afternoon light had quieted to pre-dusk purple, forgetting to check the time until our stomachs told us it was time for dinner and we’d have to decide what to do about it.Rega Jha in The Times Of India
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