Across the Aisle: Debate, Questions, but No Answers
Dissatisfied with the way the No-Confidence Motion against the BJP-led government panned out on Friday, 20 July, P Chidambaram takes matters into his own hands. In his column this week in The Indian Express, he compiles a list of questions concerning the state of the Indian economy (questions that should have been answered by PM Modi last Friday) and turns to facts to answer them himself.
Q) In terms of economic growth, which was the worst year of the Modi government and why? A) 2017-18, because the government has given up on reforms and gone back to the days of a dirigiste economy. The government seems to have discovered the virtues of control, import substitution, price control, quantitative restrictions, non-tariff barriers, retrospective taxation, and punitive laws.
Curbs on International Media Are Not Wise
In his latest column for Hindustan Times, Karan Thapar looks at something that is seldom discussed. He speaks about an old law that seems to be slowly creeping back from being forgotten to being strictly enforced – a set of guidelines from 1958 that regulate the entry of foreign journalists into certain parts of India. What does it reflect about our country? Is this happening because we have something to hide?
Let’s take Srinagar as an example. Until now, foreign correspondents could visit this state capital virtually whenever they wanted. This underlined India’s insistence that Kashmir is a fully integrated part of the country. It gave meaning to the phrase ‘atoot ang’. Now each time a correspondent wishes to visit, he or she will have to seek permission from the government. Weeks could pass – and often will – before it’s granted. Indeed, occasionally or even often, it may not be. So what message does this requirement send about India?
Out of My Mind: Lynch State
In a column for The Indian Express, Meghnad Desai disagrees with the Supreme Court’s stance that India needs more laws passed at the Centre to curb lynching. He argues that lynching is not so much a nation-wide problem, as much as it is a Hindi belt one. Blaming a complete failure of state-level policing, Desai writes that he has a few solutions – including making police independent of local political authority and rebuilding the judiciary at the local level. However, he admits he knows that it simply “won’t happen”.
State-level policing has been a scandal for decades, especially in the Hindi belt. Under the Samajwadi Party in UP or the RJD in Bihar, criminals were highly placed in politics, kidnapping and extortion were rife. Each new party in power in UP starts by transferring police around the state so they can get their favourites in important posts. Members of the local ruling party know they have immunity from prosecution. MLAs and MPs behave like local rajas [...] We have a broken judiciary at the local levels to add to the politically manipulated police.
India Should Focus More on Its Railway Network
Mark Tully is bothered by a recent rule, announced by the government, which allows larger trucks to carry loads up to 25 percent over the current legal limit. Stating as much in his column in Hindustan Times, Tully explains the effect this will have on the already alarming road death statistics. Besides, he asks, why aren’t we focussing on getting more people off the roads and into trains?
The government’s decision on axle loads is evidence of the influence exercised by the road lobby. One report suggests that road constructors are licking their lips at the prospect of 20 percent top-line growth over the next few years. Last year, 17,000 km of road projects were awarded. But in many countries, the policy is to get as much traffic as possible off the roads and onto the railways. The railways are safer and far more environmentally friendly: think how many truck loads one railway engine can pull. Nevertheless, the railways find it difficult to compete with roads on costs, and the decision on road axle loads will make that even more difficult.With increased investment, the railways could become more cost-effective, but unlike roads, they do not have a powerful, independent lobby free to use any methods to push for investment. The railways only have bureaucrats to plead their cause and they are restricted to giving advice.
State and Capital
Ever the political scientist, Pratap Bhanu Mehta comments on the crucial nexus between state and capital in his guest column for The Indian Express. He examines first, how the UPA-led government managed, or rather mismanaged, these tensions to the extent of becoming a straight-out plutocracy. Then, he moves on to study devices employed by the NDA government to manage the same tensions. He writes that while the jury is still out on how things are working out for them, the whole thing is definitely more insidious now.
The relationship between state and capital is an important capillary of power in a modern democracy. This relationship is governed by many contradictory impulses. In a democracy, politicians need capital for elections and for sustaining politics as a career choice. But politics also has to be responsive to the demands of social legitimation. There is a second issue. There is often a tension between seeking policies that favour particular businesses and policies that favour a level playing field based on principles that produce growth. The third tension is between the imperatives of looking business friendly on the one hand, and incorporating genuine public goods into regulation on the other — like environment and human rights. These tensions are perennial in any democracy.
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Imran Khan: The Perfect Match for Pakistan
Shazman Shariff pens a colourful personal essay in The Times of India about watching Pakistan celebrate Imran Khan’s electoral victory. She writes that she feels no need to hide her bias and is all praise for him: his journey to the top, his looks, his ideas about Indo-Pakistan ties, his passion for a Naya Pakistan etc – but is now watching from the sidelines to see if he acts on his words.
It is hard to find anyone hailing from Pakistan untouched by the matchless charm of Imran khan, an Oxford graduate, who took his swelling popularity; he gained from cricket, to another level when he announced his noble plan to build a cancer hospital in the memory of his mother, who lost her life to the disease. As a student I remember watching others, grownups and children, contributing whole-heartedly, unreservedly to his call for charity. Women bowled over by his compelling charisma and overwhelmed with his social cause and kind intention impulsively gave away their gold ornaments they had with them, when he came on a donation drive. This stirs up the account of an awestruck girl who didn’t wash her hands for days after an unforgettable handshake with the man, who literally made girls go weak in their knees by his dashing looks. The appeal, the allure, the attraction is yet to fade away, it is already being touted he would smash the monopoly of Justin Trudeau for being the only charming Prime Minister across the globe.
Fifth Column: Taliban Khan or Imran Khan?
Tavleen Singh writes, in The Indian Express, about seeing Imran Khan, an old friend of more than 40 years become the Prime Minister of Pakistan. She tells the engrossing tale of how they first met at a cricket match, how it took her a while to realise that he was basically an international icon and sex-symbol and how his life has recently taken a drastic, pious turn. While musing upon the challenges he will face going forward, she reckons he will be brave and honest, but confesses she knew him “in a time before Allah got to him.”
This was before he became so Islamic that his latest wife does not allow even her eyes to show through her heavy veils. Pinky Peerni as she was known before she became Mrs Imran Khan apparently saw in a dream that he would only become prime minister if he married her. So as his ‘spiritual advisor’ (and for Pakistan?) she abandoned her first husband and children to become his wife. Under her guidance he appears to have become increasingly Islamic and is rarely seen without prayer beads and often seen paying obeisance at religious shrines. In militant Islamist tones, he speaks against America, feminism, westernisation and the global war on terrorism. He sounds so jihadist in the process that he is called Taliban Khan. So as prime minister will he be good for India?
Man of Destiny
Mukul Kesavan’s Sunday column in The Telegraph is one of the more interesting and meaty takes on the hot topic that is Imran Khan becoming the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Kesavan credits two historical events for turning Khan into a “man of destiny”: his first stint as captain of Pakistan’s cricket team in 1982 and India's wildly unexpected triumph at the 1983 World Cup. And yes, he juxtaposes Khan’s posh Oxford education with his unorthodox Sunni Muslim status, but argues that his upbringing has primed him for the job rather perfectly.
It was a part for which his upbringing had trained him perfectly. Raised in privilege in a kitsch-feudal republic, Imran embraced the Establishments that defined his nation: the army, the ulema and the Sunni insurgency that had remade Pakistan in its own image. His willingness to stigmatise Ahmediyas and defend the fanatical laws that criminalised their faith was not out of character; it was par for the course, it was the price of entry into Pakistan’s majoritarian politics. Imran embodies the Pakistani ruling class as completely as WASPs once defined America’s. Even the acronym fits; he is a Westernised, army-sponsored, Sunni patriot.Some liberal commentators saw a silver lining in Imran’s elevation: at least the parties led by bearded fundamentalists did terribly. They did, but that was beside the point: in Imran, Pakistan has found what its founding mandated: a clean-shaven, cosmopolitan, English-speaking defender of the faith.
Inside Track: Hug vs Slug
Here with her weekly report on the hushed whispers and goings-on behind closed doors within the Parliament is Coomi Kapoor in The Indian Express. Look out for details on the pop psychology the Congress has been using to explain Rahul’s ‘hug-a-Prime-Minister’ moment last week, and the political heat a certain journalist is facing for breaking the honour code by writing a tell-all book!
Earlier this month, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari deputed popular Marathi actor and writer Nana Patekar to act as a go-between for a patch-up between the BJP and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray. Patekar sought to explain to Thackeray that if he cut ties with the BJP, the Shiv Sena would be wiped out. Recent polls in the state have shown the Sena’s vote share steadily declining. Thackeray’s caustic response was that his party would in any case be decimated if it continued with the BJP as Amit Shah has no respect for allies.
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