Only Two Cheers for the Economy
Stating that a “GDP growth rate of 8.4 per cent in Q2 cannot be scoffed at even if it is on a low base of -7.4 per cent in Q2 of the previous year”, Former Finance Minister of India P Chidambaram, however, observes in an opinion piece for The Indian Express that the government continues to harp on supply side measures. “Supply is relevant only if there is matching or excess demand,” Chidambaram writes.
“It is a sobering thought that while the officials of the Ministry of Finance were gloating, the other ministers and ruling party MPs were silent, and the people were not exactly celebrating! The CSO estimates-inspired headlines vanished in a day or two and what re-occupied the space were the prices of petrol, diesel, cooking gas, tomatoes, onions and the lack of customers in Market Street.”
He also points that there could be several reasons why people are consuming less in the “so called recovery year” than in the pre-pandemic years, including that people have lost their jobs and people are deterred by high prices. He then goes on to share what, as per him, is the correct prescription to revive the economy — “stimulate demand, especially among the bottom one-half of the population”.
More Than 50 years Ago, Another Crash, Killing 5
In the shadow of the sudden death of India’s Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, and those who were travelling with him, in an IAF chopper crash; Man Aman Singh Chhina recalls another horrific crash from November 1963, “a year after the Sino-India war, in which five senior Army and Air Force officers died.”
“Like the Coonoor incident that killed General Rawat and the others, it’s not clear how the Poonch accident happened,” he writes for The Indian Express, as he dwells over the apparent discrepancies pertaining to the 1963 crash.
“Sodhi had over 600 hours of helicopter flying experience and knew the J&K area well. Apparently, he did not notice the cables during the November 19 reconnaissance trip… In 1953, following the crash of a Devon aircraft carrying several Generals of the Army, who had a narrow escape, the Army Headquarters had issued detailed instructions restricting the number of senior officers who could travel in one aircraft. These orders were in place in 1963.”
Patel to Today, the Othering of the North-East has a Long History
While Nagaland reels from the recent killing of civilians in the state,Sandip Roy, in an opinion piece for TOI, casts a retrospective glance at Sardar Vallabhai Patel’s self-fulfilling prophecy and a long history of othering of the north-east. “Besides the all-encompassing shadow cast by AFSPA, the entire North-East has remained an even more shadowy presence in Indian minds from the very beginning,” Roy writes.
“In recent years, there has been an effort to be more inclusive about the North-East…. But some of those attempts at inclusion are also awkwardly ham-handed. Writer friends from that region roll their eyes at the “Writing from the North-East” panel at many literary festivals which makes about as much sense as an “African writing” panel. In some sense the North-East is our Africa. Just as many forget that Africa is a continent not a country, many of us think of the entire North-East as one state.”
Inked in Blood
Considering that the “tragedy (in Mon, Nagaland) may have been a mistake”, Sunanda K Datta-Ray, in an article for Telegraph India, points out: “But it is even more true that society — and the army itself — must be protected from reckless abuses that licensed-to-kill measures like AFSPA and UAPA encourage by creating loopholes to avoid accountability.” He also states that the challenge isn’t exclusively Naga or northeastern.
“It is a reminder that without discipline even a little power can go to the head of ordinary folk like jawans who are usually at the bottom of a grotesquely unequal society. It also reflects an inability to be reconciled to a common citizenship with people who look or sound different. The Muslim who finds it difficult to rent a flat even in Calcutta, Bihari workers who suffered Raj Thackeray’s ire in Bombay, or Bengalis who were driven out of Assam are victims of parochial prejudice rooted in ignorance and flaunted by rulers who reduce the cultural synthesis of centuries to “Barah sau saal ki gulami”.
Three Reasons why China’s Tech Prowess is Overhyped
Pranay Kostathane, in a piece for The Times of India (TOI) analyses China’s “three caveats to make you recalibrate exponential growth projections and over-optimistic predictions about China’s tech ecosystem”. These, as per Kostathane are: the Chinese Communist Party’s self-preservation imperative, America’s need to align domestic vectors and opportunity cost neglect.
“Simply put, every dollar used in pursuit of one technology goal in China is eight times as costly as a dollar used for the same purpose in the US. With limited resources available, China might well be able to take a lead in a few areas but the opportunity costs are likely to catch up much before it reaches anywhere near self-reliance.”
Clean Energy from Nuclear Fusion is Our Planet’s Best Hope
Jaspreet Bindra, in an article for LiveMint, advocates “Fusion energy” as a technology that can actually save the world.”Nuclear fusion or is not a new concept, scientists have known about it since Einstein’s times, and it is the phenomena that powers our Sun,” Bindra writes, and goes on to explain that fusion is not the same as fission.
“Fusion, which uses widely available chemicals like deuterium and tritium, can theoretically extract an energy equivalent of a million gallons of oil, from one glass of these! This can produce 9 million KWH of electricity, enough to power your house for some 800 years.”
While the road to successful fusion in a lab has not been sans hurdles, Bindra observes that “a few recent experiments by governments and private entities have given us cause for hope.”
A Mandakini Moment and Some Leaky Truths
Twinkle Khanna, in a piece for TOI, writes about impact and the commonality of urinary incontinence — a problem that affects one out of four women and “yet we never talk about it” — and the importance of discussing it with a doctor.
“While men seem to be totally comfortable with turning towards a tree and urinating in public view or participating in a fart competition like the one held in Surat last year, we spend our lives pretending we don’t even perspire,” she writes.
“So why are we so squeamish? For the same reasons we wrap sanitary pad packets in newspapers and why commercials use blue liquid to depict menstrual blood instead of red. It’s the sense of heightened embarrassment.”
COVID Remains Undefeated
Lamenting the fact that “by next week the the Serum Institute could be forced to halve its production of COVID vaccines because the Government of India has placed no fresh orders” even as “just over half of our population is fully vaccinated and… a huge section of those who have been fully vaccinated are going to need booster shots soon”, Tavleen Singh in an opinion piece for The Indian Express, demands accountability from officials in the Modi government.
“The fact is that almost half of India’s population has not been fully vaccinated yet, despite vaccines being in abundance. Instead of believing his propaganda machine, the Prime Minister needs to order his Health Minister to immediately buy the doses needed not just to complete the vaccination process but for the boosters that will be required by those whose last dose was taken more than nine months ago”
Challenges Ahead
Dubbing the recent coalition agreement reached upon by the three different parties in Germany “remarkably coherent, substantial and ambitious”, Timothy Garton Ash decodes the challenges new chancellor Olaf Scholz and his government are set to face. “As often before in German history, many of these lie in the east,” he writes in an article for Telegraph India.
As per Timothy Garton Ash, these challenges include the Far-Right, xenophobic Alternative for Germany — which garnered a quarter of votes in Saxony and Thanguria in September; erosion of democracy in Poland and Hungary where Germany’s economic presence is enormous; and concerns pertaining to balance of relations with Russia and other central and Eastern Europe countries, among others.
“The Russian/Ukrainian issue is the most urgent, but Germany’s fifth eastern question is the biggest in the long run: China. Call it the far eastern question if you will. The language on China in the coalition agreement is, again, quite striking. It adopts the EU’s triadic formula of ‘partnership, competition and systemic rivalry’, mentioning human rights violations in Xinjiang, the destruction of ‘one country, two systems’ in Hong Kong, and the need for transatlantic coordination of China policy.”
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