Budget 2025: Only tinkering, no vision
In his piece for The Indian Express, Praveen Chakravarty – chairman of the All India Professionals’ Congress, critiques the 2025-26 Union Budget, following its presentation by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday, 1 February. The budget, argues Chakravarty, has fallen short of ushering in transformative reforms akin to 1991, leaving critical challenges – including, but not restricted to, GDP growth not translating into employment opportunities, and the ever-widening regional economic disparities – going unaddressed.
India’s budget is not merely an accounting exercise but the only platform for the government to present its economic vision. Big questions of capital-labour imbalance, increasing economic nationalism across the world, weaponisation of trade and import dependencies, GDP growth not translating into jobs and social mobility, India’s spatial economic divergence and its ramifications and so on, loom. What we heard from the FM was largely campaign rhetoric for Bihar.Praveen Chakravarty, for The Indian Express
Whilst the increase in income tax exemption to Rs 12 lakh has been widely celebrated by the proponents of the ruling party, Chakravarty claims the measure will be beneficial for merely 1.5 million Indians – a yardstick too insignificant to gauge the budget’s success, and a sample size too minute to ignite any significant consumption growth.
Ideology trumps Constitution
Former Union Minister of Home Affairs and Finance, P Chidambaram explains how Uttarakhand’s Uniform Civil Code (UCC) stands in direct contradiction with the Indian constitution, wherein Article 44 mentions the State must secure UCC for its citizens across the nation. Writing for The Indian Express, Chidambaram predicts Uttarakhand’s UCC, which has addressed issues like marriage and LGBTQ+ rights, will be challenged in court for territorial overreach, with citizens likely to circumvent its provision by moving out of the state.
The intent of the Constitution is that every citizen has the right to reside or settle in any place in India and the citizen should be governed by the same civil code in all places. The State’s obligation is to secure that right for all citizens. Parliament has, by and large, fulfilled that obligation — citizens of India are governed by the same law of contracts, the same law of limitation, the same procedure in any civil court, and the same law in matters concerning the citizen’s civil life (as opposed to criminal matters).P Chidambaram, for The Indian Express
Per Chidambaram’s argument, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has used Uttarakhand as a testing ground ahead of implementing a nationwide UCC, reinforcing majoritarian norms instead of fostering equality.
Why DeepSeek reminds us of China’s disruptive EV playbook
Writing for The Times of India, Jaspreet Bindra – founder of The Tech Whisperer and AI&Beyond – opines Marc Andreessen’s assessment of DeepSeek R1’s launch as Artificial Intelligence’s (AI) ‘Sputnik moment’ is indeed justified, given the profound disruption caused by the Chinese open-source AI model. Comparable to GPT-4o but built with only a minimal fraction of its American counterpart’s cost, reportedly only $5.6 million, DeepSeek R1’s impact has been so seismic that it triggered a $600 billion loss in Nvidia’s valuation in only a single day.
Much like ChatGPT did two years ago, DeepSeek has made the prevalent narrative of AI requiring bleeding-edge GPUs, gobs of money, gigantic data centres, and expensive talent look quaint now. The establishment players seem to be echoing that: Satya Nadella calls this “super-impressive,” and both Meta and OpenAI have promised to get back to innovating strongly now. However, it is Marc Andreessen calling this “the Sputnik moment” for AI that is the most revealing. It was the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the USSR in 1957, which started the space race and intensified the Cold War between the two superpowers.Jaspreet Bindra, for The Times of India
Commenting on its geopolitical ramifications, Bindra states DeepSeek R1’s release – coinciding with Donald Trump’s $500 billion Stargate initiative – will result in an American-Chinese duel for global dominance in AI, although there is provision for multiple players to operate on a global scale.
Slurs hurt too: Review the blind spots in anti-caste law
In his The Times of India piece, Sumit Baudh, a professor at the OP Jindal Global University, writes about the persistent public-private divide within India’s legal ecosystem. Notably, the Bombay High Court recently ruled that caste-based violence will not be judged to have violated the SC/ST Act, if they were made in a private setting and not in public view.
The SC/ST Act ignores the psychological effects of humiliation caused to the abused persons. The delivery of caste-based slurs in private, muttered venomously, snarled under the breath, grumbled inaudibly, or hissed quietly can cause immense psychological injuries to the abused. The Act must place the abused at the centre of its attention and redress their injuries. The surrounding circumstances (of public places and views) should not be discounted but rather considered exacerbating factors in gauging the severity of the offence.Sumit Baudh, for The Times of India
With the ruling having flagrant disregard for the psychological toll of racial slurs, be it in a private setting, Baudh explains how India’s judiciary has been unsuccessful in implementing what the Indian constitution states. According to Article 15(2)(a), non-discrimination is supposed to be upheld in both public and private places.
Challenges unresolved
Despite attempts of an optimistic portrayal of economic health in the Economic Survey, India’s economy continues to grapple with stagnation, writes University of Massachusetts Amherst professor Jayati Ghosh in her piece for The Telegraph. Ghosh highlights how India’s MSME sector, which is responsible for providing jobs to 85% of the nation’s paid workers, has yet to recover from the severe impact of demonetisation and GST.
The slow growth in domestic demand — despite an explosion in incomes at the top of the distribution — is driven by poor performance in employment generation (which has fallen if unpaid workers are excluded from the employment data) and stagnant, even falling, real wages, according to the official labour force surveys. The continued policy neglect of agriculture has also suppressed farmers’ incomes. Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs employ around 85% of all paid workers) suffered body blows over the past decade on account of demonetisation, the goods and services tax, and a brutal lockdown policy during the Covid-19 pandemic. So it is almost a miracle that they survive at all.Jayati Ghosh, for The Telegraph
Proposing a pathway to economic rejuvenation, Ghosh advocates for government policies that level the playing field in the MSME sector, and increase expenditure on essential social services, whilst revenues for such undertakings can be generated by levying additional taxes on the ultra-rich.
Mind the Gap: ASER survey finds the kids are (more than) alright
Unlike the Economic Survey, the Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) indeed elicits optimism, with the nation’s learning outcome not only meeting, but surpassing expectations. Writing for Hindustan Times, columnist Namita Bhandare explains the growth in India’s education sector, especially in government channels, despite threats of widespread stagnation since the pandemic.
Government schools, traditionally regarded as a sort of black-hole in terms of learning, especially in rural India where those who can afford it would rather send their children to private schools, the 2024 survey runs contrary to this stereotype. Private schools are still ahead of government schools in learning outcomes but while government schools have improved and are doing better than at pre-pandemic levels, private schools have shown a decline.Namita Bhandare, for Hindustan Times
Since the implementation of the Right to Education Act in 2009, the nation has seen the lowest percentage of out-of-school children in the 6-14 age group, at only 1.6%. Instead of being a disruptor, the pandemic has resulted in a staggering acceleration of digitisation in rural sectors, with 84% of rural households having smartphones for online classes.
Harvesting uncertainty: Climate change and India’s agriculture
In Deccan Herald, Gurucharan Gollerkeri, Joint Secretary (International Migration Policy and Financial Services) in the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, discusses the impact of climate change on the Indian agricultural sector. With the global temperature on the rise, each 1 °C leads to a risk in the reduction of global wheat yields by 6% and rice yields by 3%. Moreover, per the IPCC Framework Report 2024, India remains highly vulnerable to both floods and droughts.
Agriculture is particularly vulnerable to climate change, especially in rain-fed areas, making agricultural practices difficult. Its impact affects livelihoods in myriad ways: decline in agricultural productivity, deterioration in soil, and uncertainty of water resources. Hence a sense of urgency must inform climate action in agriculture. Against this backdrop, the time has come for a concerted community-wide effort to move towards regenerative agriculture – a holistic, outcomebased farming approach – with net-positive impacts on soil health, biodiversity, water resources, and farming livelihoods at the farm and community levels.Gurucharan Gollerkeri, for Deccan Herald
Proposing potential solutions, Gollerkeri advocates for regenerative agricultural measures, with the focus on improving soil health and biodiversity. With climate change likely to exacerbate rural challenges, Gollerkeri stresses on the importance of the local communities’ participatory involvement in climate action.
Dreaming of development
Columnist Tavleen Singh, whilst writing for The Indian Express, underscores the stark incongruity between the ground reality of India’s developmental progress, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious vision of ushering the nation into a “fully developed” status by 2047. Heralded by populist measures, Tavleen explains how schemes such as the Swacch Bharat Abhiyaan have had an impact on rural sanitation, albeit waste disposal remains a pressing concern.
If Indians, rich and poor, flee to developed countries, it is because they offer excellent public services that are made available even to their poorest citizens. In India, we have technically created a welfare state that offers free education and healthcare to those who cannot afford private schools and hospitals. But you do not need me to tell you that our government schools only teach minimal literacy, and our public hospitals remain places in which basic hygiene is so absent that instead of healing, the sick they often sicken the healthy.Tavleen Singh, for The Indian Express
Drawing parallels vis-à-vis the fully developed nations, Singh highlights how India’s public services, unlike the countries we strive to emulate, fall short of fundamental qualitative benchmarks. With government hospitals lacking hygiene, government schools providing minimal education, and clean drinking water still inaccessible to millions, India’s ‘Viksit Bharat’ plans might only remain a pipe dream, argues Singh.
Insulting Ravan, Bollywood style
Is Ravan Bollywood’s very own amalgamation of Jack the Ripper & Keyser Soze – enigmatic yet distinct, unambiguous yet malleable? Mythologist and author Devdutt Pattanaik, in his piece for Mid-Day, delves into the numerous iterations the Ramayana character has had in films, ranging from a devout to a lover, an antagonist to – almost along the lines of claiming Winston Churchill was a communist – a muslim!
Ravan is a favourite of Bollywood filmmakers. He is depicted variously. We have seen films where Ravan is depicted as a devotee of Shiva (bhakta-Ravan), singing hymns and pleasing the hermit-god in many stories and television serials. Others have made him the perfect brother (bhaiyya Ravan) in their narrative. They justify his kidnapping of Sita because Ram’s brother insulted and abused his sister, Surpanakha, who simply wanted to have sexual relations with the brothers and could not take no for an answer.Devdutt Pattanaik, for Mid-Day
At its core, Ravan might be a dissentient tool. For, he has been used to portray the staunchest of Brahminical principles by some, whilst the left-leaning writers have over-valorised him to contradict with Ram’s right-wing ideologies. Will the real Ravan please stand up?