Count the Year-end Gifts
P Chidambaram, in his column for The Indian Express, unwraps the unwanted gifts of an unwanted visitor who he says does not resemble Santa Claus.
He writes, "For households: Retail inflation at 4.91 percent. Of which, fuel and light inflation at 13.4 percent. Santa’s suggestion: find a job that gives you dearness allowance and house rent, and the employer pays electricity and water bills."
"For Farmers: Freedom to lease the land to corporates, freedom to borrow from corporates, freedom to sell the produce anywhere to corporates and freedom to become landless agricultural labour. It is a different story that farmers refused the generous offer".P Chidambaram in The Indian Express
Handling with care the press freedom gift, Chidambaram writes,
“For the Free Press: A ‘bigger’ rank for India (currently, 142 out of 180, moving up from 140 of the previous year) in the World Press Freedom Index. India’s Minister of Information & Broadcasting may be right when he said that he does not agree with the conclusions drawn by ‘Reporters Without Borders’ who publish the Index. He should know a thing or two about press freedom. As long as India’s ‘Reporters With Orders’ print or telecast war cries such as ‘Goli Maaro’ and ‘Hara Virus’, there is ample proof that press freedom in India is alive and kicking."P Chidambaram in The Indian Express
How Polls Define the Idea of a Welfare State
Asserting that conscience and politics had not much to offer to those who lost their loved ones to COVID, Amar Bhushan, in his column for The New Indian Express, writes about how India may have taken the idea of a welfare state “a bit too far”.
"The Supreme Court though felt the need to help the affected families and directed the Centre and states to disburse Rs 50,000 each to kin of all victims as part of their duty in a welfare state."Amar Bhushan in The New Indian Express.
However, Bhushan adds,
“It is most unlikely that even Rs 50,000 will eventually reach the deserving hands without paying money to touts, politicians and officials involved in the processing and recommending cases and remitting the amount. They will meet the same fate as homeless persons who had to bribe in advance, 10 percent of the subsidy given under the PM Awas Yojana to middlemen and corrupt officials.”Amar Bhushan in The New Indian Express.
Further, stating that there is a difference in how India and other countries perceived the victims of COVID, Bhushan writes,
“Significantly, no other country has compensated for COVID deaths. Instead, they sustained workers till they found jobs and helped cash-starved companies to avoid closure. Their welfare package included full or part salaries to the affected and temporary wage workers, household employees...There was indeed a stark difference in how we and they perceived victims of COVID."Amar Bhushan in The New Indian Express.
Let’s Hear It for the School Bell
Seeking clarity on when Delhi’s schools will open, Leher Kala, in her column for The Indian Express writes, “the most valuable education is one that provides training to adapt to whatever googly life throws at you.”
Echoing that the Indian education system, despite its perils, gave a better chance to children than the wide gap introduced through online classes, Kala writes,
"Our current education system conspires to kill innovation, to replace wonder with superficial knowledge, that the children can obediently regurgitate via examinations every quarter. Having said that, there is no substitute for the structure and discipline of a regular school day, where children can engage with their peers, play games, compete, and learn their lessons. Well-to-do parents have the privilege of supplementing their children’s education, ensuring their kids watch documentaries, read, and while away hours in constructive ways. School closures are deeply unfair for the majority of India’s students — whose parents can’t engage with them intellectually and lack the resources for tuitions. If this goes on much longer, there will be an unbridgeable knowledge gap between income groups. What Yuval Harari eerily described as the rise of superior humans in his book Homo Deus, who can afford bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade their abilities, leaving 90% of the population behind."Leher Kala in The Indian Express.
Green, Gender-diverse Labour Force
Writing on the correlation between women and sustainability, Aanchal Goivndani, in her column for The Hindu, writes,
"The relationship, though, is not entirely inexplicable. Women assume the role of nurturers and comforters, often at the expense of caring for themselves. Because these aspects are concerned with the future, it requires regulating behaviour and exercising caution in the present."Aanchal Goivndani in The Hindu.
Making a case for why women need to be at the heart of a sustainable future, Goivndani explains,
"In poor households and in rural areas, women routinely assume additional labour. Leveraging this resourcefulness, advocacy groups and organisations across the world have launched grassroots-level programmes that empower communities to respond to the effects of the changing climate. These communities, spearheaded by women, have been implementing climate-resilient solutions such as rainwater harvesting and sprinkler taps, soil conservation and tree plantation, as well as low-cost roof cooling options to reduce room temperature."Aanchal Goivndani in The Hindu.
Concluding her piece, she adds,
"There is nothing quite like hindsight and past experience serves as reminders to abandon stereotyping and judging women — instead, making a case for why women need to be at the heart of a sustainable future requires a fine-toothed comb. Speaking of combs, I swapped plastic for one made of neem wood."Aanchal Goivndani in The Hindu.
Caste-less Comedy: Time To Lift Curtains
Writing on “two friends” that have never met, Kunal Kamra and Suraj Yengde, in their column for The Indian Express, contend that “caste is comedy” and how an "unapologetic conversation about caste" needs to become a part of the comedian’s routine.
They write,
“If comedy meets caste, they can make content of the highest quality. Think about it. What is funnier than an arbitrary system that differentiates one from the other merely by their last name. A billion-and-a-half people keep hunting for people’s last names like Indiana Jones does treasure, so they can find out how much of a ‘worthless’ person I am than the other.”Kunal Kamra and Suraj Yenge in The Indian Express.
Underlining the need for platforms where comedians from Dalit backgrounds could crack jokes, Kamra and Yengde, conclude,
"If stand-up comedy and the entertainment industry, in general, has to prolong its identity, it has to integrate and educate. A workshop of ideas integrating our history with artists and the anti-caste academic sphere can be a good start. The entertainment industry can support a festival of anti-caste. We need to create platforms and spaces for comedians from Dalit backgrounds to take the stage. As a start, whosoever has a space and a dedicated audience needs to start an unapologetic conversation about caste."Kunal Kamra and Suraj Yenge in The Indian Express.
Indo-Taiwan Edu Alliance Key to India's Hardware Bus
Hoping that India would not miss the hardware bus that it did in the 1980s, as far as the production of semiconductors are concerned, S Vaidhyasubramaniam, in his column for The New Indian Express, writes,
“The time has come for India to take a quantum leap in the semiconductor manufacturing space as India’s Digital India and FAB India movement gains momentum. The National Electronics Policy 2019 envisages India to be a global hub for Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) and enable the industry to compete globally."S Vaidhyasubramaniam in The New Indian Express.
Vaidhyasubramaniam adds,
"The Indo-Taiwan negotiations for a free trade agreement and setting up a semiconductor manufacturing facility in India may see Taiwan’s second manufacturing facility outside Taiwan, the first being in the USA. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which produces almost 50 percent of the world’s semiconductors presence in India, will be a boost for Indo-Taiwan relationship."S Vaidhyasubramaniam in The New Indian Express.
Further, Vaidhyasubramaniam asserts that "an Indo-Taiwan educational alliance across all levels in the next two to three years is the key to India’s hardware bus. With the signalling done, the policy vehicle needs to move."
The One Left Behind Isn’t Always a Pale Shadow
Questioning the stereotypes that come to define widows in the Indian society, Manjula Lal, in her column for The Indian Express, argues that there is “no need to produce an instant sketch of loneliness and pathos” on the presumption that a woman’s whole persona is defined by her marital status.
She writes,
“Personally, what has been intriguing six years into single status is how no one rings up with concern asking how I’m doing minus the spouse. I expected friends to ask, ‘Do you need anything?’ or ‘How are you managing?’. Generally speaking, any kind of call was rare, as if the mourning period is some kind of solitary confinement. To be fair, they might have thought the offspring was providing appropriate care. That would be a reasonable presumption, although there is no daughter to provide comfort, only a son — most people know the difference."Manjula Lal in The Indian Express.
Stating that "where is the male member" is a standard question asked in hospital corridors that should be banned, Lal writes,
"To go back to what I thought was my friends’ strangely negligent attitude, perhaps they knew that I would be able to cope and therefore were not so solicitous. Which just proves that I have myself internalised stereotypes about widows being helpless. Clearly, they were not defining me by my bereavement, whereas I have been in danger of doing so."Manjula Lal in The Indian Express.
Fanatics Take Charge
Writing about the rising religious intolerance in India and increasing attacks on its minorities, Tavleen Singh, in her column for The Indian Express, believes that it is “the fanatics seizing the religious narrative across the lines of faith.”
She adds that this is:
“The culmination of a deliberate process of stirring religious passions and inter-communal hatred into politics that began after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister."Tavleen Singh in The Indian Express
Stating how it was PM Modi's silence that has paved the way for the current religious intolerance and killings in the name of faith, Singh writes,
"Partition was horrible for most Indians but, as the years went by, its wounds were allowed to slowly heal or at least be forgotten. But, this did not happen for the RSS whose idea of nationalism became inextricably mixed up with a hatred of Muslims. So, it was in a sense inevitable that when a man schooled in Sangh ideology became Prime Minister, he would ensure that those old wounds were reopened, and this is what Modi has done in different ways. When Muslims and Dalits were lynched by cow vigilantes directly affiliated to the BJP, Modi said nothing. When his handpicked chief minister in Uttar Pradesh set up ‘Romeo squads’ in police stations as almost his first act in office and BJP spokesmen defended this on the grounds that ‘love jihad’ had to be stopped, Modi remained silent again. When BJP chief ministers started passing laws to stop religious conversion, he chose to remain silent, so Christian priests and churches have come under attack in recent months. These attacks have become more frequent and more barbaric. Modi has remained silent."Tavleen Singh in The Indian Express
Beyond the Hard Numbers
With Census 2021 expected to be launched soon, N Rama Rao, in his column for The Hindu, shares with the reader “some of the amusing sidelights of the mammoth exercise”, and the problems enumerators come across.
"Sometimes funny situations crop up due to semantics. A middle-aged man in a village gave his marital status as “separated” in answer to the question whether he was single, married, widowed, divorced, or separated (not legally). On learning that the respondent’s wife was briefly away at her son’s house in a neighbouring town, the enumerator, with a wry smile on his face, ticked the entry “Married”."N Rama Rao in The Hindu.
Rao adds,
"More often than not men, were chary in disclosing the economic activities of their wives. The husbands’ stock answer was, “She is doing only household work”, though the women might have been working on a farm or in some other occupation. It is, therefore, no wonder a fair proportion of women is conspicuous by their absence in the labour force statistics."N Rama Rao in The Hindu.
Maintaing that Census 2021 will be more challenging, Rao finds these musings to reveal that only with the cooperation of the enumerators and the public, could the Census be done smoothly.
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