Across the Aisle: A Wish List and Some Notes of Caution
One can almost hear the glee in his voice, as former Finance Minister P Chidambram describes (rather unflatteringly) the state of the economy and provides a wish-list to his successor Arun Jaitely a day before the the NDA government’s third Budget. The budget, about half-way into the government’s term, is perhaps their last chance to turn the economy around and use their majority in Parliament to make “broad structural changes”.
The reason is that the government had over-promised but has under-performed. The party (BJP) and its supporters (RSS and its affiliates) did not help the government: they changed the narrative from development to intolerance and from cooperation to confrontation. So, instead of the rise of the economy, we have seen the rise of intolerance. Instead of all sections of the people warming to the government, we find that important sections like farmers, Dalits, tribals, Muslims and students have become apprehensive and insecure.Former Finance Minister P Chidambram in the Indian Express
Aspirational India may turn against Modi
The agitation of the Patitdars (Patels) in Gujarat, the Jats in Haryana, Kapus in Andhra Pradesh and Ahoms in Assam is a worrying sign for the Prime Minister, writes Swaminathan Aiyar. These dominant, politically and numerically powerful castes are finding that agriculture and land is no longer the key to wealth and social status. Many of them are the aspirational class that brought the PM to power in 2014, but they may be turning against him.
Fast economic growth has created much prosperity for salaried folk and businesses, including millions of small ones. But it has left behind millions with only school degrees, or useless college degrees. These millions are part of the aspirational class that Modi tapped into in the 2014 general election. They hoped Modi would give them jobs. That is not happening. The pace of economic growth is much too slow to provide good jobs for even a tiny fraction of the unhappy millions. Modi is unwilling to contemplate hire-and-fire labour policies that might create millions of jobs eventually, but will initially lead to industrial strife.Swaminathan Aiyar in Times of India
Not the Emergency by Any Stretch of the Imagination
The ‘crackdown’ at JNU has many people, from Sitaram Yechury to lawyer Kamini Jaiswal and just regular folk on social media drawing parallels between the current government on the one hand, and Nazi Germany and Indira Gandhi’s Emergency on the other. Ramchandra Guha thinks that this kind of talk, is both alarmist and an over-reaction. But that apart, Guha argues that PM Modi is no longer in control of his party, unlike Indira Gandhi.
In a moment of delicious irony, Dr Manmohan Singh recently accused his successor of being ‘silent’ on the major questions of the day. That he is; meanwhile, he is absent too. During the JNU troubles and the Jat agitation, Mr Modi was criss-crossing India, one day in Mumbai, another day in Odisha, a third in Chhattisgarh, a fourth in Varanasi, speaking on many subjects, but not those of immediate consequence. As is increasingly evident, Mr Modi is not in control of his Cabinet ministers or of the RSS. He is not even in control of the ABVP. And he is not remotely in control of the governments of Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Telangana, West Bengal, Odisha, and some other states of the Union. In comparison to Hitler or Indira in their pomp, Modi is a very weak ruler indeed.Ramchandra Guha in the Hindustan Times
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Fifth Column: A New Idea of India, Please
Tavleen Singh has defended the PM with vigour in her Indian Express column on the issue of JNU and anti-nationalism. For her the choice between Hindutva and what she calls “democratic feudalism” is an easy one.
When the debate began in Parliament on the events in JNU and Hyderabad University, I found myself on the side of the nationalists because all the political parties on the other side were socialist, semi-socialist or Marxist. They quoted Ambedkar and Tagore to make the case that nationalism was a bad idea, but I remained unconvinced. The reason is that in long years of political journalism, I have watched these leftist political parties lend unashamed support to democratic feudalism. Using secularism as their excuse, they have backed political leaders who have turned their parties into private companies to be handed down to their children.Tavleen Singh in the Indian Express
For a Quantum Leap to Deliver Primary Medical Care
The insurance based healthcare schemes offer specialised care at the secondary and tertiary level. But what about primary healthcare, which is still out-of-reach for many in rural India?
However, this current model of health insurance is structurally flawed. Merely enhancing covered medical expenses and adopting persuasive labelling and semantic changes does not in any manner alter the distinguishing feature of the RSBY. It is essentially a catastrophic, health insurance scheme that promises access largely to specialist medical care at the secondary and tertiary levels. What happened to that first and most critical building block for universal health care, i.e. primary medical care? Expanding health insurance devoid of organised and accountable primary medical care services is like putting the cart before the horse.Meenakshi Datta Ghosh and Dr. Prasanta Mahapatra in The HIndu
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Reverse Swing: Dear Mr Modi, More Growth, Less Hindutva
On the eve of the budget, Tunku Vardarajan says that PM Modi seems to be following our first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru where he shouldn’t be and destroying his legacy where it’s worth protecting. Modi has attacked Indian secularism, but kept intact the statist economy.
The part of Nehru’s legacy that has been under siege by the present government is the one that India needed to lose the least: that of secularism, and of a nationalism that transcends crude religious dogma and obsessions. India is not a Hindu Rashtra. It never has been and — by the grace of my ancestral deity — it never will be. Its ideals are those of tolerance, co-existence and (to use a word that English-speaking Hindutva-types hate) syncretism. That means that India’s whole is greater than the sum (and scum) of its parts; and that the religious and cultural ingredients of India are naturally inclined to combination, not separation. India is greater than its component religions: every single one of them.Tunku Vardarajan in Indian Express
BJP’s Contradictions on JNU are Mounting: Barkha Dutt
Television journalist Barkha Dutt had agreed with the rationale behind the BJP’s alliance with the ideologically antonymous PDP in Kashmir as a way of strengthening mainstream politics in Kashmir over ‘azadi’ sentiments. But recently, the alliance has only served to point out how deeply problematic the government’s attack on a handful of university students and scholars has been.
But the reason the PDP alliance has become a lightning rod in the increasingly polarised patriotism argument is because it exposes a glaring contradiction in the government response to the Jawaharlal Nehru University students it’s charged with sedition. Take a closer look at the agreement between the BJP and the PDP, co-written by Ram Madhav who was the public face of the RSS before formally joining the BJP and Haseeb Drabu, the former finance minister in the state. The document refers to the previous NDA government’s dialogue process with “all political groups including the Hurriyat Conference,” and promises to replicate AB Vajpayee’s principles of “Insaniyat, Kashmiriyat and Jamhooriyat”… on other words — on the one hand the Modi government will engage (rightly so) those whose politics has for decades demanded ‘Azaadi’ from India (Hurriyat literally means liberty/freedom); on the other hand, it will jail students who organised a university event where similar slogans were raisedBarkha Dutt in Hindustan Times
Out of My Mind: We Indians
The recent debates in Parliament, from issues of caste and religion to nationalism and economic policy are a welcome change from constant disruptions in the recent past, according to Meghnad Desai. They have put some of the diverse identites and narratives that make up India centre stage.
In the coming years, India will have to endure many debates of these differences. Like it or not, Kashmir is a beleaguered part of India as is Nagaland, where wars have raged since 1947. There are people who consider the assassins of Indira Gandhi as heroes if not saints. The people who want to build a temple to Godse are as Indian as those who loathe the idea. There will always be people who have doubts about Afzal Guru or those convicted in the Batla House murder as others who believe Naxalites are the real patriots. It is this extreme heterogeneity of opinions which defines what India is and will remain.Meghnad Desai in Indian Express
From the Quint
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