When I first visited Siringsiya village in West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand two years ago, while working with an NGO,  the first thing that I came across is still beautifully imprinted on my mind. One of the Self-Help Groups of women was having their weekly meeting. Everyone was intently listening to a woman sharing how she beat her husband few days back when he used all their savings over liquor. He beat her too in retaliation. There was a sympathetic understanding among the women hearing this. They inspected her wounds. The victim now was seeking a sustainable solution from the other members of the group. After much deliberation, it was decided that all of them will go and talk to the husband. The women made a few visits to the husband and the intensity of their conversations turned from warm to heated. I came to know much later that eventually the husband stopped hitting his wife. He was also seen less in aninebriated state.

A couple of years back, the highlights of local newspapers of Jharkhand were about women and women collectives marching and rallying in the streets against illegal liquor shops in the villages and small towns of Jharkhand. In effect, the block offices had to act and close down some of the liquor shops.

The above two instances give us an inspiring picture of gendered spaces and potentially fair justice system within the Adivasi community of Jharkhand. But is it really true? This paper attempts to understand gender relations, norms and bargaining of these norms within and outside the Adivasi community of Jharkhand. Different boundaries of the Adivasi eco-system are explored in order to understand the dynamics of gender. However, it does not necessarily give a holistic account of the Adivasis of Jharkhand.

Adivasi Women – Their Home and Their World

Historical evidence has suggested the multi-faceted role that Adivasi women play in their eco-systems. The status of these women in their society is determined by that role. Adivasi women are known to have an astute knowledge of their jungle and its resources. They play a key role in the economic sustenance of their communities. In addition to working on their own or others’ farms as laborers, engaging in off-farm work like MGNREGA or at construction sites in cities, the women work in the forests collecting forest produce or firewood for domestic requirements or income throughout the year.

If we take into account the role of Adivasi women and their jungle, an interesting observation could be found in the Adivasi carvings and murals in large parts of the erstwhile Chhotanagpur region, which were centred on natural forests. They invoked images of fertility among nature and the women. (Rycroft,1996) An important point to note here is the symbolic construction of the special relationship of Adivasi women with their natural environment, which had a basis in the prevailing gender divisions of labour. This division ascribed the responsibility of fetching forest produce on women (Damodaran,1997).

But it is becoming increasingly difficult for Adivasi women, to be able to contribute to her household and community in this role. Forests are greatly impacted by the forest policies and the forest and environment policies in India today are influenced by the global climate change policies and the neoliberal markets. These forest policies which displace the Adivasi community from their otherwise democratic and participatory governance of forests, predominantly hits the Adivasi women. Furthermore, with rising mining activities, Adivasis are increasingly being displaced or alienated from their forests and lands. With control over their forests eventually abrading, due to Forest Acts and industrial acquisitions, Adivasis in general and Adivasi women in particular are left in a void with nothing to fend for themselves and their families, especially in case of any exigency.

Intra and Inter Gender Conflict

Another inexplicable yet potential form of conflict around the issue of gender and forests within the Adivasis put forward by Sarah Jewitt depicts the ostracization over the lack of a particular skill to cut down a tree. Men in some villages are believed to be aware of the techniques to cut tress in a way that stimulates forest regeneration. Only women know of this technique. Though the administration system of Adivasis is believed to be that of collective ownership, the resource related decision making is mostly male-dominated. Hence men do not appreciate women cutting the trees. It has been popularized that women cutting trees stunts tree growth. Despite the indispensable and traditional gendered roles and indigenous knowledge that Adivasi women are endowed with, which also finds articulation in their murals, they fail to create an equivalent assertive space for them outside art.

Additionally, there can also be intra gender imbalances while considering the forest spaces. Relatively more affluent backward caste women consider themselves superior to the Adivasis. They dominate the gathering processes.

Adivasis in rural Jharkhand are majorly engaged in small-scale agriculture and allied activities. Most farming activities like sowing, transplanting, weeding and post-harvest activities are undertaken only by women. Women work as laborers, either in their own fields or of their neighbors and relatives. An interesting note to make in this regard is that in these agricultural communities, women touching the plough are regarded as a bad omen. So, ploughing the field mysteriously becomes the major agricultural activity. This relegates all other transplanting and cutting jobs as menial. Consequentially, this makes men an authority in decision making in the farm too. So, if the woman wants to farm in her land separately from or in case of the absence of the male member of the family, she either must pay someone to plough her land or if she does not have the resources, not grow anything in her field, or work in someone else’s field as a laborer.

If we consider gender bargaining over general task allocation, in addition to all the farm activities, the tiresome household jobs like fetching water, looking after the kids, cooking and cleaning etc. are in most instances ascribed to women. Besides, there seems to be a lack of convergence in the introduction of innovative specialized climate friendly farming systems on the one hand and training and building capacity in the Adivasi women on the other. They still depend on traditional farming practices involving much drudgery and labor. Furthermore, with such rigid compartmentalization of roles, with respect to forest and farm, increasing migration percentages from the rural areas augments gender imbalance.

Migration and Gender Dynamics

According to the Journal of Economic and Social Development, Jharkhand’s seasonal migration results in about 20% to 33% of the family members remaining out of villages for four to nine months. The journal also says that most of the women migrate with the men and that during agricultural off-season most of the houses in the villages are locked. Nevertheless, another perspective has evidences of men migrating in off-seasons to towns or even different statesleaving the women, children and family behind. There is a popular Santhali song which depicts the idea of more men migrating while the women expressing their helplessness over the absence of men from the village with whom they can’t dance to celebrate the advent of New Year on Sarhul.

Villages with relatively fertile tract of land and better farming opportunities do consist of men who do not migrate often for work, but this premise goes non-supplemented due to the uneven distribution of rainfall, land and resources. Some other villages have MGNREGA work during the agricultural off-season of the year. This engages both men and women in off-farm work inside or near their villages. Owing to the uncertainty of work generation in MGNREGA, it has curbed excessive migration, but only to an extent. Though NGOs and Krishi Vikas Kendras aim to provide training to farmers for incorporating better and innovative farming practices, farmer trainings and acquired skills can hardly be expended in case of uncertain monsoon adversely affecting produce and market.

In the absence of men from families, the responsibility of bread (arranging for food and resources with or without the money sent or given by the earning male) and butter (appeasing and catering to the day to day family tantrums and requirements) all falls solely upon the woman of the family. She temporarily gets promoted to the titular household-head position. So, she can mostly be found dealing with the apprehension of her husband’s return to the village on the one hand and managing the entire household by herself on the other. To add up to the income of the family, young girls from these communities are pushed to take up jobs at construction sites or as domestic help in faraway cities and towns.

The lack of education and wellbeing of these girls or the unstructured and precarious nexus that they often fall prey to is another alarming area of concern. Adivasi women are acutely affected by migration of the male members of the family and are dependent on the forests and farms for their survival – spheres where their roles are rather massive, traditionally too. It is imperative that vocally and actively Adivasi women reiterate and claim the spaces and roles that already belong to them.

If we consider the Adivasi community, we find that alcohol plays a crucial role in Adivasi society in rural Jharkhand. Hadia and Mahua (made out of seasonal flowers) is produced by a large number of Adivasi households for self-consumption as well as for sale. In addition to being used for enjoyment, these drinks hold an indispensable part in the festivals to celebrate agricultural cycles, ceremonies, or even to appease the ancestors or guests. Due to this awareness, or in the absence of proper awareness, the urban eyes usually perceive the Adivasis as drunkards and uncivilized. A gendered dimension to this view asserts the popular belief that Adivasi men drink and beat their women and portray women as victims.

Not contradicting this popular narrative, but a look at another aspect of Adivasi community reveals women and men equally partaking in the act of drinking. Either women or men process or produce the alcohol, serve it and drink it. Not ascribing empowerment to the act of drinking, per se, but if one comes to think of the relative freedom enjoyed by women in the process of alcohol production and consumption, gender dimensions find no imbalance. During a candid chat one evening with a household from a different village, I asked the women whether she ever felt differential treatment meted out to her from other men due to her drinking. Her husband and she replied in amazing unison, ‘Why will they belittle me if they themselves are doing it?’

That evening, I was also informed about the marriage of one of the daughters of the same household who had met her groom in the annual fair and had decided to get married. To settle my apprehensive eyes, the father told me that since I was educated, I would understand it better that only a girl can know and choose whom she can be happy with.

These anecdotes could certainly be sporadic, but do give us an idea of the much simpler and pristine process of everyday lives in the Adivasi community. Plethora of reports and indicators has depicted the abysmal state of the socio-economic and human development indicators of Adivasis. But the social status of Adivasi women if compared with the ‘upper’ castes in the villages or towns of India comes out as more emancipated and powerful.

Power of the Community

Undoubtedly, there also have been customs and practices which have constantly brought distress and disempowerment of women within the community. For instance, social practices like witch-hunting, though have been relatively declining, still occupies a central place in Adivasi cosmology. The same household that was asked about their drinking habits got offended when asked about killing their daughters for honor. It might not be ideal to compare the gender bargaining with regards to these social dimensions. The asymmetricity of the gender relations between the relatively educated and evolved urban spaces and gender relations in the Adivasi communities are very stark and complex. Justice or freedom could be an abstract idea meaning different to different people. But the essence of that meaning should be contextually explored, comprehended and implemented.

What was identical in the two instances mentioned at the beginning of the paper, of rallying against illegal liquor, and settling a domestic abuse in a village was the collective participation and effort of women towards claiming for anarticulate and equal space. Development workers working for gender equality in this Adivasi heartland work towards helping address health, education, sanitation and agricultural first and then by focusing on their rights and building capacities in them through Self Help Groups or farmer collectives. This is how the Adivasi women are enabled to acknowledge and collectively relate with the gender related issues.

Women rights groups and NGOs have increasingly adapted the community based approach to further the case of Gender Justice. With ‘women for women victims’ approach, nyayasamitis and nariadalats run in some districts of Jharkhand. They hold para-legal courts in villages and in most cases deliver justice faster than the courts of law. This collectively powerful approach supports the victims by motivating more and more people to come out with their violations who are otherwise afraid of the tedious process of law. Secondly, they are facilitated for a quick redressal of their issues.

Gender prescribes how gender relations in a society should be rather than recognizing how we are. It ascribes Adivasi men to come out and participate in the economic and political sphere but Adivasi women, who as compared to non-adivasi women, traditionally enjoy a fairer equality status in their communities, succumb to the larger narrative of gender inequality. In all our anecdotes, women have made a community led change possible, by organizing themselves and claiming their spaces by acting as a collective. Instead of uniforming them into the skewed urban idea of freedom and gender relations, one must try to incorporate their essence and together make their rightful spaces available in social, economic and political spheres.

If the status of women were traditionally decided by the role that they played in their communities, then Adivasi women have been playing much arduous and dominant roles, without recognition, in their society. This reality must be exhibited and put forth increasingly in the political and economic spheres. Activists must critically reflect on their idea of gendered spaces, their idea and vision of empowerment – one which does not alienate men from women as far asAdivasi community is concerned. They should rather bringboth of them together, as one force. For a holistic way of looking at gender balance within the Adivasi community, every facet discussed above as well as every other facet which affects the day to day lives of Adivasis should be taken into account.

(Arundhita Bhanjdeo is pursuing her PhD from Charles Sturt University, Australia.)  

 (This article is carried in the print edition of May-June 2017 issue of India Foundation Journal.)

 

Almost 80 people have lost their lives after being hunted down as witches in the last six years in Assam. Most of those who were killed were women. The popular narrative that exists regarding witch-hunting is that ‘superstitious tribal groups in the villages due to lack of education and scientific temperament target people as witches’. But why is that most victims are women? Mostly single, relatively well-to-do women. So, of course superstition has very little to do with it. Most of the survivors or their families we had spoken to pointed out the fact that the attacks were well-planned with the intent to usurp property or land. While witch hunting has existed in certain tribal groups such as the Mishings for centuries, the current practice of hunting women as witches goes beyond such age-old practices. Also, the practice is now spreading to non-tribal groups or tribal groups with no known history of witch hunting. What does this indicate then? A report by the organisation Partners in Law and Development, taking into account data from different states, says that 86 per cent of the primary targets of witch-hunting are women, and of these most fall in the age group of 40-60 years. So not just those women who are typically seen as vulnerable, such as single women and widows, but also the ones ‘secure’ in their marital families face the threat of witch-hunting.

North East Network (NEN) has been vociferous in demanding an anti-witch hunt legislation for the State but the bill has still not got the final approval. There are also other concerns around the present bill like a lack of nuanced understanding of the terms witchcraft and witchhunt, bez and ojha, both loosely used as terms for those who identify a certain person as a witch, and the differences between Assamese and Bodo languages. Activists worry that it does not focus enough on prevention. Professor Upen Rabha Hakasam of the department of folklore, Gauhati University, has personally faced the menace of witch-hunting as his own cousin, married in a well to do, highly educated household, had fallen prey to it. He says, ‘The British had been able to abolish the abhorrent practice of Sati by law. Why can’t our government use the law to abolish witch-hunting?’

The Making of a Witch

Women have been the face of evil in fairy tales and folklores for centuries, like Tejimola’s evil stepmother in one of Assam’s folktales. There are male ghosts too but in literature or motion pictures, the fear invoked by the woman with supernatural powers remains unmatched. Power in men is supposed to be a part of their natural being. There is a matter of factness about it. But women are inherently supposed to be defenceless and fragile. For them to have strong powers is an aberration. At times they are allowed to be wonder women, in ways that retain their attractiveness under the male gaze. But more frequently media and mythology suggest that they tend to get consumed by their own prowess more often than men. It is Eve who bit into the apple and because of her that all hell broke loose.

There are many ways in which this mystery, and then mistrust, around women’s capabilities gets built. In villages or cities, when there are programmes to raise awareness around reproductive issues men would keep out of it or would be asked to stay out. What happens is that instead of understanding there is fear or contempt for the reproductive capabilities of women’s bodies. One woman was targeted as a witch because during her menstruation she noticed some other emissions and when she went to a doctor about it, it became a matter of public knowledge and, soon, fear.

Then there is this hostility towards the hungry woman. She is the antonym to the woman who starves and fasts for others in the family and never says she is hungry even if she is malnourished. A woman who acknowledges this hunger and wants it satiated becomes a witch who feeds on the flesh and blood of others to strengthen herself. Anita Rabha, 58, lives in Baida village in Lakhipur block of Goalpara district. Years ago, a boy in her area suffered a dog bite. His father consulted a kobiraj, who acted like a traditional doctor for villagers. The kobiraj said that he would not be able to cure the boy. When the boy died, another kobiraj said that he had been eaten by a witch and pointed to Anita’s house. Perhaps it wasn’t an entire coincidence that this second kobiraj was related to Anita and her spouse, and had been in dispute with them over a piece of land. At this juncture, Anita received the support of her maternal family, who brought the couple to their home after they got driven out of their own house, but Birbal Rabha, her spouse, decided to separate from her. She now works at the local thana, the police station, washing utensils and clothes. She talks of how her younger son is finding it tough to pass the matriculation exam. Once he does, she says, he could get a driving licence and a job as a driver. Anita’s daughter, 22, is in her third year of college and had also been going to computer classes but is not studying at present because of a problem with her hand. One doctor has diagnosed her with arthritis. Wrenched away from her home and village and fending for herself and her children, Anita worries as her own age diminishes her capabilities. When she does get some time, she tries to attend meetings of AMSS, the Assam Mahila Samata Samiti, which has been staunchly fighting the practice of witch-hunting.

The Prejudice of the Educated

It is believed that lack of education is the cause of witch-hunting in villages. But are the educated free of prejudice? The headmaster of Baida Junior College, Listiram Rabha, is also the honorary founder principal there. When asked about the practice of witch-hunting he says, ‘When a dakini commits malpractices, she gets beaten up by the public. I would say they should not be killed. They should get a chance to rectify themselves’. He recalls having acted as a mediator in many cases and saved the practitioners of witchcraft from the public, and the public from the law.

He continues to talk about the practice of dark rituals, ‘There is an oppodevata, a god with a supernatural, malevolent force that some people tame. If this force is sent to harm someone, the person would fall so ill that no doctor would be able to cure him. The patient would then have to offer some sacrifice. Content with this offering, the force will then help the practitioner again in the future when they summon the god. I saw on television that in a lady’s house in Guwahati, curtains get set on fire. Such things are the work of the gods that I speak of. To tame such gods is a big art and Rabhas are experts in this’.

While he condemns the violent methods of witch-hunting, he speaks of the importance of education not in reforming the hunters but in transforming those he calls the practitioners, ‘Education is increasing. Tantric practices around here have gone down by about 60 per cent. People are going out to study but there aren’t as many women doing this. They should’.

Beyond the Law

But outside of the law too there have been attempts by artists to focus on the implications of witch-hunting, while activists use art to bolster their campaign. AMSS has travelled twenty villages with its play, along with putting up 200 awareness camps. There are films like Aei Maatite, Witch-Hunt Diaries and Jangfai Jonak. 

Working for years now on ground zero, through village level branches called sanghas, members of the organisations say that there has been a decrease in the number of murders because of witch-hunting, though many cases of ostracisation and assault are still there. The survivors who would previously hesitate to report cases are much more confident now. They talk of instances when the police demanded affidavits from women saying they would not withdraw their complaints. Some survivors also end up joining the organisation. Women have started demanding property rights. AMSS members visit the homes of women employed as labour, as carpenters and stone cutters, and get them registered so they have economic stability and are not completely vulnerable or dependent. AMSS adds that the power wielded by ojhas has weakened, and people have started going more to doctors; health centres in villages have helped.

AMSS itself has faced assault by villagers, who feared that the organisation would report them to the police. They called the women witches and their leaders like Mamoni and Birubala head witches. But the organisation did not take legal action against them because they wanted people to realise what they were doing was wrong, which they ultimately did and apologised.

It’s Not Black and White

In trying to understand witch-hunting, if we look at each case carefully, there seem to be some immediate causes like deep-set prejudices against women, poor health, education and economic status, inter- and intra-familial rivalries, ignorance and superstition. But a superior, patronising approach of relegating these features only to certain sections of society, marginalised in terms of gender, social or economic status, won’t help. For example, there are enough incidents to show that the practice also goes on in families with ample money and education. So it is clear that something like non-conformism by women is punished across classes. In villages, women whose spouses treat them well, as equal partners, have been called witches. In cities, if a woman is loved and respected by her partner, she is asked what magic she had to resort to in order to keep the man in her ‘control’.

Similarly, rather than assuming that witch-hunting takes place in certain societies because they are ‘backward’ and uneducated would be taking a myopic view of things. In his paper ‘Assam’s Tale of Witch-hunting and Indigeneity’, Debarshi Prasad Nath makes some important larger connections, like linking witch-hunting to an aggressive, revivalist effort to establish cultural identities in a state where identity conflicts over resources are a common feature. Nath talks of how Bodo history doesn’t have records of witch-hunts. He relates the frequency of witch-hunting in Bodo communities to a possible attempt by Bodo people to integrate themselves with an ancient part of Assamese history. Nath’s paper suggests the possibility of witch-hunting being a skewed step towards a community’s resistance against a homogenisation imposed by majoritarian groups. The infamous witch-hunting incident that took place in Majuli in Assam comes to mind where for three days in 2013 even the police could/did not enter the area to intervene.

Along with a nuanced understanding of the triggers to witch-hunting while working with perpetrators, there also needs to be a patient unearthing of unsaid narratives of the survivors. NEN’s Anurita Pathak points out that in many cases the victims can hope to get some kind of justice only after they are dead. But witch-hunting is not just an isolated incident. It is often a protracted process that can also include sexual violence, stalking, disrobing, molestation, acid attacks and public humiliation, rejecting sexual advances being one of the causes. Due to stigma and resignation to the fact that the survivors have to continue to live amongst their attackers, many of these stories never come to the fore, leading to not just a denial of justice but also a never-articulated demand for it.

(Ankita Anand is a Delhi based scribe reporting on gender, labour and human rights. Nasreen Habib is the Editor of the Eclectic North East magazine)

(This article is carried in the print edition of May-June 2017 issue of India Foundation Journal)

In the process of implementing the new constitution promulgated on September 20, 2015, the government of Nepal decided to hold local elections of Village Councils and municipalities on May 14, 2017. Ever since the announcement of date for the local elections, the government and other major political parties seem to have made adequate preparations to conduct local elections. But the United Democratic Madheshi Front (UDMF), an alliance of seven mainstream Madhesh-based political parties, have determined to thwart any attempt by the government to hold elections in Terai region, which largely borders Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

There has not been local body election in Nepal over last twenty years. As such, at the surface level the justification for holding local election in the country cannot be undermined. But the Madheshi people take the local elections as an attempt to give continuity to discrimination as it is being imposed on them without giving any consideration to their demands for change in constitution through its necessary amendments.

Now only five weeks time is left for holding the elections. But the nation is in disarray not certain whether the elections will really be held or not. Of the three major cluster ethnic groups in Nepal, only the Khas Arya group constituting Bahun and Chhetri castes of people who have been at the helm of affairs in state mechanism are in support of local elections. But over two-thirds of the the Madheshis and hill Janajati people in the country are opposed to it.

One of the fundamental reasons for which the Madheshi people have been boycotting local elections is that their share in Village Councils and municipalities is only 34 per cent. Since the Madhesh region accounts for over 51 per cent of Nepal’s total population, the people in this region want at least half of the total 744 of such units in proportion to their population.

Moreover, the Madheshis hold the view that local elections are under the jurisdiction of provincial and not the central government. So they want the issue of demarcation of provincial boundaries to be settled first before holding parliamentary, provincial and local elections.

Unfortunately though, the present constitution proved more controversial than any of the constitutions that were promulgated in the country in the past. A section of the society support the constitution for it gives continuity to centuries old feudal rule. On the other hand, the other section of the society treats the constitution as most regressive for its failure to address their concerns. Therefore, there was jubilation in one part of the country on the day the constitution was promulgated; while in the other part people observed the event as ‘black day.’

In order to pressurize the government to address their grievances, the UDMF had launched general strike in the Terai region in 2015-16 in which all the industries, agriculture activities, shops, educational institutions and hospitals remained closed for months together. Also, the region faced acute scarcity of goods, particularly the LPG Gas and petroleum products during the five-month long economic blockade at the main custom points, including at Birgunj-Raxaul along Indo-Nepal border. Over and above, nearly sixty protesters of UDMF were killed and thousands of them were injured during the excesses committed by the security forces. Human rights violations crossed all the limits during that period.

Subsequently, before becoming Prime Minister in August 2016, Pushpa Kamal Dahal signed three-point agreement with UDMF leaders to make the constitution inclusive. Towards this end, the government introduced a bill in the parliament for re-drawing of the provincial boundaries through the amendment of the constitution. But to the dismay of UDMF leaders, the government later on kept the issue of amendment of constitution on hold and announced the date for holding the local election in its bid to distract people’s attention from the core issues of Madheshis and other dissatisfied groups.

Also, to add fuel to the flame of discontentment among the Madheshi people, KP Sharma Oli, former Prime Minister and leader of Communist Party of Nepal – Unified Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML), launched Mechi-Mahakali tour in the Madhesh region to prepare ground for imposing local elections. Unfortunately, when Oli tried to play with the sentiments of the local people in Rajbiraj, one of the important townships in eastern Madhesh region, people made peaceful demonstrations on March 6 in which five UDMF activists were brutally killed and many more were injured.

Ever since the Rajbiraj incident, the UDMF is engaged in protest programmes to foil any attempt of the government to hold local elections. In this regard, the Madheshi people have been padlocking government offices and organizing protest rallies in different districts in the region.

Now there is a growing pressure on the lawmakers of Madhesh-based political parties to resign from the parliament. Those political parties have only 45 lawmakers in the 595-member parliament and so they are weak there. Nevertheless, they are quite strong on the roads of Madhesh.

At a time confrontation between the Madheshi agitating groups and the government seems unavoidable on local election issue, the ultra-radical groups in Madhesh who are in favour of independence of this region are becoming more vocal. Youth between the age group of 18 and 25 years are getting more and more radicalized. On account of the failure of the mainstream Madhesh-based political parties to secure rightful place for the Madheshis in the constitution, the radical forces have intensified advocacy for the independence of the region.

However, the radicalization of Madhesh is not in the interest of India. It is likely to invite greater turmoil in Madhesh region, which might affect India’s security. Therefore, before holding elections at local, provincial or central levels, India needs to play active role in bringing all the parties on board through the amendment of the constitution for which it is committed. Nepal’s constitution cannot be implemented effectively and peace and stability cannot be maintained in Terai region in particular and Nepal in general until the demands of the dissatisfied groups are addressed.

(Professor Hari Bansh Jha is Executive Director of Centre for Economic and Technical Studies in Nepal)

At a BBC interview recently the  correspondent was asking about the Uttar Pradesh mandate and the choice of Yogi Adityanath as the Chief Minister. This has been talk of the town among the so-called liberal intelligentsia in the last few days. The questions naturally ranged from the controversial statements in the past attributed to Yogi to the Ram Janmabhoomi to anti-Romeo squads etc.

There may be certain reasons for these questions being asked and Yogi will have to respond to them through his actions as the Chief Minister. Those who know him will vouch for the fact that contrary to the stereotype image that Yogi enjoys especially in the hostile media, he is a quintessential politician known for his work among the masses without any discrimination or ill-will. He has been a Member of Parliament for the last five terms from Gorakhpur, a border town on Indo-Nepal border in Uttar Pradesh.

The Gorakhnath Peeth, which he heads, is a prominent Hindu shrine and institution with a millennia old history of serving the community in India as well as Nepal. The institution houses many activities including a famous temple. The place is known for its  catholicity and religious grandeur providing livelihood to thousands including people of non-Hindu religions as well.

As the head of one of the prominent Hindu institutions that has been closely associated with movements like Goraksha (Cow protection), Ghar Wapsi, (Reconversion) and Ram Janmabhoomi, Yogi has inevitably been at the receiving end of a section of the overzealous liberal media establishment. The association of the institution with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad for a very long time and the association between the royal family of Nepal and the institution have also been unbearable for the liberal elite of the Lutyen’s Delhi.

Nobody, except Yogi himself, can explain away the kind of utterances  attributed to him. In the erstwhile utterly lawless and superly surcharged lands of eastern Uttar Pradesh, many acts and deeds, undertaken out of sheer necessity of protecting the good also have the potential of becoming controversial. Additionally our intelligentsia has mastered the art of twisting and quoting out-of-context the statements of leaders like Yogi. His innumerable speeches, Parliamentary interventions and public utterances in the course of last many years exhorting the people of the country to be united, work for the country and culture etc are simply brushed under the carpet, and what are pulled out of the  closet are a couple of statements that seem to have controversial overtones.

This they do, not just to Yogi, but  everyone they dislike. Their dislike can be a product of many things, including the saffron attire of Yogi. They don the mantle of pseudo-moral superiority and assume self-proclaimed authority to sit over judgement on everybody and everything.

Tragedy is, this time round they find their breed fast diminishing and their influence waning greatly. They were expecting that the Uttar Pradesh results would throw up a hung Assembly and they would somehow manage to see that the BJP is kept away from power. But the results proved otherwise giving a shock for their lifetime. The magnitude of BJP’s victory was enormous. On the back of it came Yogi’s elevation as the Chief Minister. It has become too unbearable for them. Thus they turn to abuses.

That Yogi is a popular leader elected five times from his constituency is  inconsequential for them. That not a single charge against Yogi has been  conclusively proved in court of law is also immaterial. ‘Even if he has not made any incendiary statements, but some person has made them from the same dais and Yogi didn’t protest’, thus goes their goal-shifting argument.

In fact one correspondent argued with me about a statement on conversions attributed to Yogi. ‘If one Hindu is  converted to Islam, we will convert 100 Muslims to Hinduism’, Yogi is accused of having said. Whether he had said so or not could be confirmed by Yogi alone. But I asked the correspondent as to what was the incendiary part of that statement! If conversion from one religion to another is right, how can conversion the other way be wrong? He said, ‘how can he say  hundred for one’? So the great liberal argument is all about ‘Arithmetic’, not about any ‘Principle’! If conversions are right, reconversions also should be deemed right.

Yogi’s detractors are the same ones who raised the bogey of ‘minorities in  danger’ when Modi became the Prime Minister. They were hoping against hope that there would be communal riots all over the country and they could earn their bread and butter out of the communal cauldron. But PM Modi dashed their hopes to the ground. Last two and a half years have seen absolute communal harmony in the country. Barring few sporadic incidents of communal tensions the country largely remained peaceful and harmonious.

Now they are again hoping that under Yogi-Raj there would be communal  clashes in Uttar Pradesh and they could prove their point. What they forget is that the agenda for the country has been set by PM Modi and all the BJP-ruled states are an integral part of Modi’s vision and mission. Whether it is Trivendra in Uttarakhand or Birendra in Manipur or Yogindra in Uttar Pradesh, all will follow the footsteps of Narendra in Delhi, with singular focus on a transparent and development-focused government  committed to social good, communal  harmony and development of all.

(The writer is Director of India Foundation and National General Secretary of the BJP)

The article was published in Organiser, April 2, 2017 issue.

~ By Raj K Mitra and Shailesh Jha

It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness. – Sigmund Freud

If we talk to a political analyst today about the overarching trend in global politics, chances are that the comparison of the world today with that in the 1930s will be easily invoked. There are indeed familiar themes – rising racial intolerance, trade protectionism, hostility to immigration, insecurity about technological progress, frustration with conventional politics and the search for a “hero” amid this confusion. Theoretically, it’s a fertile ground for right-wing populism.

Familiar as these motifs may seem, history may rhyme, but it rarely repeats itself. The rise of right-wing politics we see today has similarity in its origins to the inter-war right-wing radicalism in Europe. It has its genesis in the Great Recession of 2008-09, much as that of the right-wing politics of the 1930s lay in the Great Depression and the collapse of the Gold Standard. That said, the legacy of the current right-wing political resurgence, in the decades to come, is likely to be less violent, but more enduring in its impact on the global economic order.

It is tempting indeed to generalize and basket all nationalist political parties–from Donald Trump’s Republicans in the US to Theresa May’s Conservatives in the UK, from Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party in Russia to Narendra Modi’s BJP in India –as the manifestation of a global revival of authoritarian, exclusivist politics. However, much of what is called the “Right” today is defined less by what it is, and more by what it is not–an opposition to the left-of-the-centre social democratic political bloc.

Perhaps, it’s a natural product of radical political and economic challenges in “extraordinary times” – when old powers are waning and new alliances are taking center stage. And, in this sense, even President Xi Jinping’s pro-Market faction within the Chinese Communist Party could be considered an incarnation of an alternative to the traditional Left. It is better then, perhaps to describe, the rise of the Right as the displacement of the left-liberal social-democratic political consensus.These alternatives to the center-left occupy a large spectrum. Like a spectrum, the ideological colorsare varying combinations of three primary ingredients- protectionism, intolerance to immigration, and welfare chauvinism.

It is not as if concerns and policies of the 21^st century right-wing parties are entirely novel. Ironically, the political Left has often voiced before their modern anxieties about globalization and inequality. What then led to the collapse of that classic left-wing mobilization called Occupy Wall Street and the appropriation of its concerns by the Right? Fundamental changes to the labor market structure, greater global connectivity, highly opinionated dissemination of information and a misplaced faith in the wisdom of markets to distribute the fruits of globalization might be some explanations. We explore how each of these trends has affected the three aforementioned ingredients that form the blueprint of the modern Right’s political philosophy.

Protectionism

To understand the emergence of protectionism and the Right’s increasing opposition to the flow of capital and goods since the Great Recession, we need to turn our clocks a few decades back. The 1980s-90s saw the state’s retreat from economic activity around the world, though at different rates. Thatcher demolished the sick parts of British socialist state and welfare system, Reagan rationalized taxes, China opened its doors cautiously to the private sector, India embraced market reforms and in dozens of eastern European states, the Soviet-style command economy was being replaced by a private sector gradually integrating itself to the EU market.

Open competition was politically endorsed. Talented immigrants were welcomed across borders. Through mergers, acquisitions and internationalizations, firms expanded on a global scale. The transformation brought about by the rise of Internet, telecommunications and financial deregulations in emerging markets was almost as paradigmatic as that of the invention of steam engine and printing press in the West centuries earlier, particularly because, these societies had been at the exploitative end in the previous golden age of globalization (1870-1914). Per capita income in many developing countries doubled or trebled in a generation and inflation began to converge steadily towards a lower global average.

At the same time, these years of tumultuous resurgence in emerging markets produced some losers too –mainly workers in Europe, the US and the UK who lost out to their cheaper counterparts in China, East Asia, Latin America and former Soviet satellite states. However, this wasn’t perceived as a problem so long as de-industrialization in developed countries was compensated with an expansion in lending to households, by national and international banks. During 1980-2007, international bank lending rose a hundredfold, from USD324 billion to USD35 trillion. Markets, bankers and politicians were betting on a better future and rising incomes to help bring about a convergence in income levels of people across borders; until 15 September 2008.

British philosopher John Dunn presciently categorized the developed world society in the latter 1990s, early 2000s into three tiers – those who can take good care of themselves in the market economy (educated elite and talented immigrants); those who can hold their own because they belong to surviving units of collective action with a threat advantage out of all proportion to their value of labor (bureaucrats, PSU employees); and those who are already going under because no one would choose to pay much for their labor (blue-collar white workers). It is this last group whose ranks have swelled and voices become strident in the last nine years. Strangely, the rise in inequality did little to raise the appeal for the radical Left, which had been consistently critical of globalization and had for generations claimed a dominant share of votes among economically disenfranchised voters.

In addition, the paucity of left-wing ideas in the economic sphere to break new grounds beyond Karl Marx has challenged the Left’s alternative standing to traditional political parties – in India and elsewhere – as those ideas increasingly seem based on the interpretation of a world that probably existed in the 1950s. Instead, the Left has banked heavily on its authoritarian patronage politics and forceful exclusion of the non-patronized to stay relevant. Consequently, the Left has been usurped by the Right rhetoric of defending a strong welfare state and protecting social welfare benefits.

The deindustrialization and rise in unemployment in developed countries in the past two decades was not the result of capitalists preying on labor and replacing them with machines, but rather finding a new working class eager to take up production process – in Bangladesh, Vietnam, China, India or Mexico. Any exhortation of the Left asking “workers of the world unite” would have sounded quite disingenuous to the workers in UK’s de-industrialized north, whose jobs were perhaps being shipped to China.

Working class solidarity, in the present age of inequality, thus has become an anachronism, in so far as it seeks to universalize the misery of labor. For workers in the US, the workers in the other country were a problem – whether answering clients from call centers in India or servicing IT complaints with H1B visas closer home. A political rhetoric that claims to protect the interests of one particular nationality of workers over the others became more seductive.

A less understood, but equally strong force that makes the radical Right the more attractive choice to the people left behind by globalization is the change in the nature of employment today. Non-manufacturing sectors dominate the global economy today and few, if any, have strong unions. This lack of unionization, unlike manufacturing and mining sectors, is not an oversight. Indeed, the typical structure of a privately owned banking, retail or consulting firm makes it difficult for workers to bargain collectively or unionize. Usually a manufacturing unit has a stark contrast in the distribution of the fruits of labor, between a small and prosperous senior management and numerous and sparingly provided factory workers.

What changes in the non-manufacturing sectors is the presence of a middle management, where a complex hierarchy of privileges and distribution of incentives exists. This middle management consists of workers who have gained an increasing share of profits, as they have risen through the ranks, due to their ability to direct and lead other workers. Furthermore, modern managerial practices incentivize individual excellence over peers for securing promotion and prospects of career advancement. Even such a marginal decentralization of wealth and authority creates powerful reasons for workers to desist from forming interest-based unions.

In such a society, when faced with economic uncertainty, people do not instinctively rely on their colleagues for support, who are often their competitors. Rather, they lean on groups organized along racial, religious or cultural lines outside of their workplace. Ergo, the political Right, rather than the Left, becomes a beneficiary of this confusion. This anti-trade strain is the strongest in the modern American Right, where deindustrialization is perceived to be an outcome of an ever-widening trade deficit with China, Germany, Korea and Mexico.

Intolerance to immigration

If protectionism is the dominant animating force in the American Right, hostility to immigration is what really unites Right-wing parties in Europe. The threat to a proud local culture from “aliens” is exactly what drives the support for Right-wing parties in Europe, where despite a financial crisis, social inequality in the native population hasn’t risen as much as it has in the US, not least due to the robust and comprehensive welfare systems instituted in the postwar decades of 1950-70. Reprisals against foreign workers or cultural others in times of economic strain are not new to Europe. A prominent example is indeed the rise of fascist parties in inter-war years, which rode strongly on the deep-rooted anti-Semitism in the European culture, blaming Jews for the misery borne by the continent after the collapse of the Gold Standard.

More recently, stagnation in Europe following the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s saw widespread popular opposition in Germany, France and the Netherlands to foreign workers from Eastern Europe, Turkey, Portugal and Spain. To that extent, the resurgence of the Right was then expected even after a prolonged crisis in the Eurozone that lasted from 2008 until 2013. However, three factors are typical to the anti-immigrant sentiment prevailing in Europe in particular, and the developed world in general.

First is the size of the influx. Since 2015, Germany alone has taken in 1.1 million immigrants from the war-torn Middle East and Africa (1.3% of its population). The story has been similar in varying degrees in Scandinavia, Netherlands and Italy. The flows of refugees and asylum seekers across Europe over the past two years have been at an unprecedented rate since World War 2. However, unlike the late 1940s, norms of post-war mainstream politics dictate that the governments must ensure that the refugees are provided a minimum standard of living and security. The increasing burden of refugees on the state, many of whom are illiterate and not economically very productive, has shifted the opposition against immigrants from political fringes to the mainstream.

Second, for a big section of modern immigrants, war is not the reason for leaving their country. Globalization has encouraged and legitimized economic migration, where people cross shores to work for firms that promote and encourage talent. Immigration from South Asia (India and Pakistan) is a fitting illustration of this trend.

The spread of supply chains and corporate operations has also heralded a globalization of aspirations. A hard working young engineer in India can see Satya Nadella and possibly dream of emulating his success in the United States. In that sense, the changing racial composition of boardrooms in Fortune 500 companies is perhaps the unprecedented and lasting legacy of the current age of globalization. However, since the Great Recession, this successful “other” that inordinately benefitted from the dissolution of borders through its own merit and hard work has stood out in sharp contrast, perhaps because of its racial origins, amid the general deterioration in the quality of jobs and rising economic insecurity.

Cultural stereotyping and railing against immigrant communities from developing countries has found an eager audience, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world (English-speaking countries), where these communities were considered civilizationally inferior colonials not long ago.

Third, it wouldn’t be out of place here to mention the catalytic impact of “Filter Bubble Effect” on inflaming these passions. Facebook, Twitter and other forms of curated social media have become cognitive echo chambers. One hears the news one believes in, opposing views are blotted out, and videos confirm one’s worldview. People become a data point to be sold, with meticulous analytics on their political and psychological leanings.

In such a world, extreme outcomes and a lack of consensus are a norm. It was thus not surprising that most people polled ahead of the Brexit vote believed that their side (In or Out) would win with an overwhelming majority. Results were a tight race. However, if you supported Brexit, all the news you would have read in May and June last year would have confirmed that the nation was with you and your choices.

The reality is not very different in India. Every event, whether a budget or a terrorist attacks, is seen through diametrically opposite worldviews, depending on whether you support or oppose the current government. In a world of vanishing middle ground, it is often difficult to elicit a proportionate response to complex situations, such as the pros and cons of immigration. No wonder, hostility to immigrants has found fanatical adherents in the age of social media.

Welfare chauvinism

The public desire to minimize dissent and seek security in a strong political leader gives rise to the third component of the modern Right, particularly dominant in emerging economies. This particularly manifests in countries that are new nations but old cultures. Furthermore, they have all, over the past three decades witnessed the dismantling of moribund economic systems in favor of a dynamic market-driven economy. However, a breakneck economic growth has also created an existential anxiety in these societies, which for generations were feudal and preferred stability to change.

In India, the emergence of Narendra Modi’s BJP as the dominant national political force may in essence seem to be conforming to the broader rightward shift, but the similarities are as stark as the differences. By definition, Right-wing parties pander to the majority but, in India, the majority defined solely on a religious context isn’t one block with various caste and regional issues coming into play. Hindu nationalism is as utopian as Leftist pragmatism. In fact, much before the Ram Janmabhoomi issue in early 1990s, BJP leaders (then Jan Sangh) being aware of the limitations of ideologies in a pan-India context shunned the idea in favor of an ‘aggregative’ approach in 1977.

On the other hand, although the BJP inherited the economic right legacy of the Swatantra Party (which became defunct in 1974) and favored the abolition of the ‘License Raj’ and the empowerment of the private sector, the party essentially remained opposed to the idea of large corporations enjoying privileges in the economy. The Narasimha Rao government’s liberalization policies by dismantling the Nehruvian socialist structures exposed BJP’s inherent economic policy contradictions while its strong roots to Nagpur ensured its branding as a Hindu nationalist party. So, what changed in 2014 so drastically to make BJP the dominant political force?

With the center-left suffering from power fatigue and the Left still caught in a time warp unable to offer a workable alternative model, Narendra Modi’s arrival in the national political scene perfected BJP’s ‘aggregative’ approach – with the ‘achhe din’ slogan having an overarching impact on a heterogeneous electorate. The Hindutva ideologues saw a messiah in him, the backward class and castes (with Modi himself hailing from the MBC) celebrated his rise to the top, the educated middle class was in awe of his no-nonsense style of governance, and market liberals played cheer leaders to the Gujarat model of economic growth.

That said, whether it’s Modi’s victory or Trump’s or the Brexit vote, the common thread isn’t the world’s ideological shift to the Right, but the outburst of a simmering anger against the ‘liberal elites’(alienated from the sections they claim to represent) by cozying up to the supposedly authoritarian leaders often with questionable world views and not-so-flattering opinions about how the world has worked since the end of Cold War. The “put us first” welfare chauvinism is too hard to ignore — be it Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ or Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ or Nigel Farage’s ‘We Want Our Country Back’.The underlying tone is about regaining the control of our own fate that has been hijacked by anonymous elites.

However, the biggest beneficiary of this upheaval could be Vladimir Putin’s Russia. When nations across the world were coming under Communist control in the 1950s, US President Dwight Eisenhower had warned about the possible disintegration of the free world due to aggressive Soviet expansion. Billions of dollars were spent and millions of lives sacrificed to contain Soviet influence until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. However, with the European Union’s stability under threat and Russia’s growing assertiveness in world affairs, the tide is turning against ‘American-dictated Russophobic hysteria’. Persistent refugee crisis and a stagnant economy could very well dash the hopes further of a united Europe.

On the other hand, China could emerge as the biggest loser. In a recent speech at the World Economic Forum (which was ostensibly created to promote economic liberalization), Chinese President Xi Jinping warned against any protectionist measures: ‘any attempt to turn off the flows of capital and people around the world will be like trying to divert a river into lakes and creeks. It will not be possible.’ Although Xi’s speech was short on specifics, there’s no denying the role played by neoliberal economic policies in making ‘communist’ China an economic powerhouse and re-legitimizing the Chinese Communist Party that had been shaken in 1989. China found itself in the heart of the global economic engine not out of ideological “conversion,” but out of necessity to create jobs and build infrastructure.With China continuing to mitigate the domestic economic slowdown and Xi’s assumed 10-year tenure reaching half-mark in 2017 autumn, he would attempt to deepen his grip on the party further in the run-up to the party congress. Thus, any sudden shock on the global trade front could destabilize his plans and trigger renewed political jockeying by his opponents in the party for influence.

Thus, 2017 will test the endurance of the Right across the globe, especially in Europe hit by terror attacks and refugee crisis, with Germany, France and the Netherlands scheduled to hold national elections. These countries have witnessed the growing popularity of far-right dispensations that aim to capitalize on economic, political and ethno-nationalist frustrations of the times. In the months ahead, it would be clearer whether such popular support translates into political power for the far-Right. If opinion polls are an indicator, a new sustainable ideological landscape seems emerging, but then opinion polls could not indicate a Brexit or a Trump victory beforehand.

However, the rise of the far-Right or the alt-Right isn’t a false alarm, irrespective of impending election outcomes as they are increasingly cementing their place in the mainstream political discourse and may trigger a broader cultural shift with strong resistance to the idea of political correctness. With Farage playing the role of a catalyst (though UKIP is unlikely to emerge as a potential contender for power soon), Trump’s victory has provided a roadmap for the far-Right across the Westand a strong wake-up call for the Left and the aloof from their ideological slumber. Will the Centre-Left parties reclaim their lost grounds anytime soon? Unlikely. Nobel laureate behavioral economist, Daniel Kahneman, argues that regret is rare; people always find explanations that fix the blame on someone else.

(Shailesh Jha is an Economist focusing on Asia, with over five years of experience in economic and policy issues in the region. He has worked with Abu Dhabbi Commercial Bank and Credit Suisse, after graduating from BITS Pilani in 2011.

Raj Mitra is a freelance communication consultant and a leading online columnist on start-ups. He led the Investment Publishing Unit of Credit Suisse from 2009-16. He has also co-authored a best-selling analytical biography of PM Narendra Modi in Bangla, called Swapner Feriwala.)

~ By Siddhant Mishra

It began with Narendra Modi in India, in 2014. The Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies managed to register a thumping win, and received a huge mandate by the people. While the result was not a shock, the margin of victory was something that left even political analysts and psephologists stumped.

Yet, if one thing was certain, it was that Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi’s message of ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikaas’ had resonated with the masses, and people voted for the NDA cutting across caste lines. But that was not all about this election. What ended the 10-year scam-tainted rule by the Congress-led UPA, actually marked the beginning of a global wave that has been continuing till now.

Next to keep this run alive was David Cameron in the UK. While he has lost his job since, following the historic Brexit vote that took the UK further to the right, other European nations seem to be following suit. Not only is an anti-EU sentiment gaining strength, Far-Right parties seem to be gaining ground as poll projections have shown. However, the one that tops the list is Donald Trump’s stunning win that has shot him into the White House. Riding on a Right-wing ‘populist’ wave, Republican nominee Trump managed to see off Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton comfortably, despite opinion polls suggesting the race would be neck-to-neck and that Clinton held the advantage.

The fact that globally, the Left is on a decline and the Right is consolidating, has not gone unnoticed. While this has rattled socialists worldwide, it has also signified the emergence of a new revolution – against the alleged ‘appeasement’ politics of the Left as well as rising corruption. It could be no coincidence that the world seems to be taking a ‘Right turn’ simultaneously. There are pressing issues that explain the phenomenon.

First, the debate surrounding the refugees from the war-torn Gulf has found its way into the electoral agenda of both the Right and Left. Refugees fleeing from the Middle East found their way into Europe, and with crime rates shooting up, a sense of fear gripped the natives. The ensuing chaos resulted in incumbent governments losing public support. In Germany, people have become disillusioned with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Though Merkel is tipped to win a fourth term in the elections scheduled for September, her support has since dipped. Far-right ‘Alternative for Germany’ (AfD) shot to prominence after escalating attacks on her open-door policy towards refugees. Subsequently, the AfD managed to rake up a 21% vote share in the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerenia, Merkel’s home Constituency, back in September, and made significant gains two weeks later in the Berlin city polls, registering a record 14% of the vote.

Similarly, in The Netherlands, Geert Wilders’Party for Freedom (PVV) is tipped to end up as the single-largest in theDutch Parliament after elections. Riding on a similar anti-establishment wave, Wilders has pledged to de-Islamise the country, shut down mosques and close borders with the EU, a message that has resonated with Dutch voters fed up of the EU’s dominance.

Yet another Far-right outfit, the National Front of France, headed by Marine Le Pen, leads in the opinion polls, indicating she will make it to the second round of voting, ahead of Centre-Right Republican candidate Francois Fillon. Like her European counterparts, Le Pen too, stands for exiting the Union and de-Islamising France.

On the Pacific side, Australia’s “One Nation party”, headed by Pauline Hanson (called the Australian Trump), is weaning voters away from the ruling coalition, riding on a similar wave of anti-Islam and anti-Asian ideology. The party, according to the Australian media, has doubled its support base from November.

While an outright win for any of the Far-Right parties was never guaranteed, the win of Trump came as a shot in the arm. Donald Trump’s campaign was focused on protecting American jobs, playing tough with illegal immigrants, building a wall on the Mexico border and the “Muslim ban” rhetoric, a line of argument echoed by the European Far-Right. Trump’s win was an indication that the fear that had allegedly gripped locals on the issue of rising crime and the threat of the influx of refugees, were real.

But what could significantly be gauged from this trend, is the voice of the silent majority. In a liberal politically-correct world, it has become a fashion to resort to appeasement politics, while the majority is expected to compromise. Cutting across borders, people seem to be losing faith in socialism, while more pressing issues remain undealt with. While unemployment, economic slowdown, and rising terrorism remain core issues, people have lost patience with the constant denial of the liberal elite, who tend to focus more on pseudo-secularism and anti-capitalism.

The difference, however, seems to be the aspect of social media. With the Left having spread its influence in the academia, media and intelligentsia worldwide, where Right voices aren’t allowed to rise, social media gave an equal footing to the Right, which was long in the shadows and seized the opportunity for redemption. While social media helped in giving a platform to the Right, which constantly focused on the selective outrage of the Liberals on issues and the pro-minority bias, it simultaneously aided in creating a reach into inner territories of countries, which had not happened earlier.

It was here that the battle was won and created a wave that saw a shift in favour of the Right. While societies have become more polarized, and constructive debate is hardly possible in a world where both the Right and Left resort to slandering and abusing the other, the Right Wing, while making clear its stand on issues of economy and social identity, managed to call out the liberals on their selective outrage and pro-minority bias especially in the case of religious radicalism, a charge the Left couldn’t effectively defend, and fell prey to.

In India, voters from different communities and castes put their faith in Narendra Modi’s BJP, which now has spread its wings in territories it was earlier not strong in, during Assembly and Civic polls, over the last three years. Modi’s development agenda has won supporters, and bold moves like the scrapping of high denomination notes has hardly managed to dent the party’s fortunes.

Though the political scenario in Europe and the US is different from India, if there’s one aspect that could be seen uniformly across geographies, it was that of religious fundamentalism.

A call for putting greater checks on illegal migrants from Bangladesh and militants from Pakistan, in India; the European right’s anger on the open door policy for refugees; Trump’s call for the Mexico wall as well as severe restrictions on the entry of Muslims from certain Middle Eastern countries – coming at a similar time, couldn’t be a coincidence.

However, it is no given that the wave in favour of the Right will remain. While common grounds remain, certain differences in ideologies and policies mean the Right lacks unity. While the opposition to laws being dictated by Brussels remain firm across Europe, France’s Le Pen, on the lines of Trump, calls for protecting the French identity, and is openly anti-globalisation.

Britain’s UKIP, which spearheaded the referendum call for Brexit, however, has embraced free markets. Geert Wilders, while calling for closing of mosques and de-Islamising the Netherlands, has been a vocal supporter of women’s rights and LGBT rights. Though tipped to get maximum seats, other Dutch parties have refused to support the PVV to form a coalition government, indicating a hung parliament.

Germany’s AfD has been marred by anti-semitism and Nazi-like tendencies, which cause infighting and subsequently a drop in support. Moreover, the emergence of centrist figures like Emmanuel Macron in France, and Martin Schultz in Germany, has resulted in a sharp drop in popularity for the National Front and AfD respectively.

It would be unfair to call the BJP or Modi’s win as a win for the “Far-Right”, given the party’s ideology, though based on Hindutva, largely refrains from being anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant, and has off-late given more significance to development and anti-corruption.

To believe that Europe or Australia could ride on the populism wave of the US would be a strong assumption to make. A win for any of the Far-Right parties is far from certain, but projections show that they have become serious contenders after long.

(Author is a freelance journalist)

 

~ By Swadesh Singh

The Indian Right needs to be identified and redefined, not in terms of its detractors but in terms of its own salient features. 

Bharat is not a defeated but a wounded civilisation. Defeated civilisations cannot write their own history but ones those are wounded have the stamina and zeal for it. The question is what path must a wounded civilisation choose in its search of herself? How must it approach and read history so as to find out herself? What should this approach be called? And how do we reach such an approach?

Indian civilisational story is one of continuous evolution. Even after facing many attacks in the last 2,500 years, India has stayed alive simply because of its ability to survive and revive. At the precipice of darkness, the country has always managed to rediscover itself. Those who have faith in this past are billed as the Rightists. They are considered conservative, status-quoist, fundamentalist, rigid etc. These terms have been slapped on them by the Left-intelligentsia who dominate the social science discourse of this country. To begin with, this group of ‘Rightists’ needs to be identified and redefined, not in terms of its detractors but in terms of its own salient features. The quest for a new term may seem like a cosmetic exercise but it actually reflects the true spirit of those who want to build the future with an approach of ‘India First’, keeping in mind the agony of the present and the glory of the past.

Often dismissed for being outside the existing academic discourse, the vantage point of this intellectual-cultural tradition is largely unexplored. To take this forward, we need to arrive at a set of ideas that are not static in nature and which provide theoretical and scientific solutions to the problems of the existing world. There is also a need to identify factors that define or come close to defining the quintessential ‘spirit’ of this civilisation.

We must also relook at thinking within the framework of Right and Left. Dattopant Thengdi (RSS Ideologue and Trade Union Leader) talks about the ‘Third Way’ which is neither Right nor Left but talks about indigenous knowledge system and national interest. Conversely, going by popular intellectual discourse, we can say that in the 1990s, RSS-BJP were culturally Right but economically Left. It was a time when RSS-BJP were raising issue of Ram temple on one side and advocating Swadeshi and opposing GATT and WTO, on the other. Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh and Bharitya Kisan Sangh (Trade Union and Farmers Union associated with RSS) had almost same views as Leftist Trade Unions. Even today, many policies of Modi government cannot be classified under the ‘Economic Right’. C. Rajgopalachari was the guiding light of the ‘Economic Right’ in independent India and advocated free economy. He left Congress when Pandit Nehru declared in 1955 that Socialistic pattern of the society will be the official policy of the Congress in Avadi Session. Rajgoapalchari founded Swatantra Party which along with Bharitya Jan Sangh (BJS) and Lok Dal was instrumental in the defeat of Congress party in nine states in 1967 elections.

Four Points of Reference

In my understanding, there might be four points of reference which should be kept in mind for better understanding and reformulation of ideas what is known as Indian Right. First, India i.e. Bharat has to be studied and understood as a civilizational-state and not just a constitutional-state or nation-state. The idea of nation-state evolved only in the last 350 years after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 when the Papacy of medieval age was questioned by the newly formed ‘sovereign’ states which were supported by the capitalist merchants. On the other hand, India has existed as a civilizational unit since several millennia. After the Independence, the idea of constitutional nation-state came into being. The current history of modern Indian nationalism also does not go back to more than 150 years which is said to be evolved after the so called Indian renaissance during the time of Ram Mohan Roy and others followed by the evolution of the Congress party. For India to be studied as civilizational-state, we need to resuscitate the history of India of thousands years.

Second, the study of India as a civilizational-state will take back our civilisational march from Indus Valley to Saraswati Valley. Traces of the existence of the civilisation will have to be rediscovered where there have been no or negligible efforts since Independence. Recently, there was a small report that Bhirrana in Haryana was claimed to be much older than sites of Harappa and Mohanjodaro. Many more such discoveries need to be made to fill in the existing gaps in India’s historical map.

Third, the history of last 1,300 years needs to become the reference point to know about our freedom struggle instead of just 130 years. While it is acceptable to study the history of Modern India from where modern nationalism begins, but without the reference point of 1,300 years, our understanding of Modern India can never be complete. We cannot brush aside the critical context of King Dahir, who ruled over Sindh and whose defeat at the hands of Mohammed Bin Quasim heralded a long phase of stagnation in knowledge, culture and tradition. Instead of spiritual and mental battle, the country was now fighting for its existence. Hereon, the caste system became rigid, women were confined indoors and ill-practices proliferated. The chain of philosophical tradition’ set by the Upanishads was broken. One cannot understand India just by studying history of last 130 years, for that we need to take into account 1,300 years. While the history of the freedom movement of modern India is a great educator, we also need to study the freedom struggle of medieval India for a more comprehensive view. Moreover, our study of history has to be both dispassionate and unapologetic.

Fourth, spiritualism is the mainstay of this civilisational-state. This civilisation is not intolerant simply because its essential nature is of assimilation and evolution. From Peshawar to Ganga Sagar the plains between Indus and Ganges are as fertile as its culture and tradition. Suitable climatic conditions and fertile land made life simple and easy and this provided scope for inner quest i.e. ‘chintan’. As a result, for many millennia, spiritualism became the basic foundation of Indian civilisation. Each time the civilisation stepped into decadence – Buddha, Shankar, Mahavir, Tulsi, Soor, Kabir, Gynaeswar, Ramanand, Vivekanand, Gandhi, Golwalkar and Ambedkar showed up and reignited the light of knowledge, making India a ‘Sanatan’ civilisation.

India is a spiritual entity which evolved in thousands of years. The spiritual power of India is so immense that it accommodates everyone and evolves without struggle and also without compromising with its core values. The history is replete with instances of rulers (Kanishk and Milind) who won in the battle field but were defeated by the spiritual power of this land.

India Today

Having set a foot firmly in the past we must now turn our eye to the future. What we need is a new set of ideas, tools, symbols, terminologies and methods to re-establish our civilisational march. So far we have been working with those provided by our detractors. We might win a debate or two with this borrowed armoury but we can never make a lasting contribution.

As we build our own bank of ideas, we also need to answer some critical questions. What should be our vantage point – Harappa Valley Civilisation, Chandra Gupta Maurya or 1947 or Ramayan and Mahabharata period? Far from the line-up of Ashok ‘the Great’ and Akbar ‘the Great’, what about Chandra Gupta Maurya, Rajendra Chola, Lalitaditya, Samudra Gupta, Rahtrakoot, Pratihar, Marathas, Kanishka, Harsh and others. On the other hand, what about the origin of caste based biases and women subjugation? Similarly, we need to find the answers to the question ranging from territorial integrity, economic policies to gay rights and other issues. By doing this we will be making contemporary derivatives and linking our past to the present. Without this connection we cannot claim our rightful place in the ideological streams of India.

Three Ideological Streams

Three ideological streams have been in existence in India for the last 100 years. First is of Congress inspired by the ideas of Jawaharlal Nehru which says that India is a ‘nation in making’ started with independence of India. The second is of Communists which say that India is not a nation at all and there are many nationalities and they support all the secessionist movement as a matter of principle in the name of self-determination. Third ideological stream is of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) which talks about national reconstruction. It believes that India was a glorious nation for a long time. It’s glory, lost in the last 1000 years, needs to be restored; hence there is a need to reconstruct our nation and society.

We currently study a distorted face of history where we are taught that Aryans came from Iran and ruled India first. Later, it was Turks and Mughals and then the British. The broad idea here was to establish the civilisational superiority of the West and justify their invasion of this land with narrative of ‘White Men’s Burden’; and to prove that caste and woman subjugation has been an integral part of Indian society and philosophy. Two hymns of Manu Smriti and Ram Charit Manas were used to build up an entire discourse against this  civilisation.

After the formation of the Modi government it was believed that an ecosystem will emerge that will assist the creation of a new narrative to understand the civilisational march of India.  However, the idea that India should remember and develop her own narrative is not is everyone’s interest. Hence, all efforts are being made to block the growth of any such narrative. Since the Modi government came to power, several attempts have been made to malign the image of the government and raise issues like intolerance, fundamentalism and fear of minority communities. Terms like “Hindu Pakistan”, “forces of intolerance”, and the “situation worse than Emergency” have been coined in the last 45 months. People campaigning on these lines are decidedly anti-Modi and propounded these theories when the formation of a Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre started looking imminent. Many of them had even claimed at that time that they will leave the country if Modi became the Prime Minister. Like true followers of Karl Marx, ‘secular-liberal’ intellectual elites started with a conclusion and all their arguments now are directed at proving it. Having lost the battle of ballots, they want to now take the fight to academic institutions using universities as semi-liberated zones.

Academia: The New Warfront

A world-renown artist like Anish Kapoor wrote that India is ruled by “Hindu-Taliban” and an academic like Irfan Habib thinks RSS is comparable to ISIS. The factiousness and monotone of these remarks makes one question the  sincerity of our present intellectual scenario. The most obvious yet inconspicuous truth about the academic and intellectual environment in India is that it has for years remained overshadowed by Western and Leftist thinking while maintaining the façade of ‘independent’ thought. Having accepted another’s thought tradition as the benchmark we forgot that each country has its own unique knowledge and experience, in our case it was the Indic tradition.

Anish Kapoor and Irfan Habib are the products of an intellectual sphere with strong imprints of the British and Marxist legacy. British bureaucrat Lord Macaulay designed a strategy to make it easy for the British to rule India. He advocated an education system which would produce Brown British to work as loyal clerks under the regime. The key to this was to make the “natives” disown everything Indian and covet everything that was British. We were made to see how flawed and redundant our traditions were and we were so grateful to learn the spelling of ‘renaissance’.

The post-Independence India could not rid itself of this mindset. Nehru-Indira governments gave ample space to Leftist-Marxist discourse and institutions like Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) churned out thousands of bureaucrats, academics, journalists and activists with ‘Leftist’ leaning. Over a period of time, the Left discourse elbowed out the Indic intellectual ecosystem which was shunned as regressive and backward.

Even today the course on Indian philosophy is not taught in JNU and the proposal for a centre on Sanskrit and Yoga studies is met with stern resistance by Leftists including teachers and students. It is this intellectual tradition that convinces people like Anish Kapoor and Irfan Habib that the Indian civilisation has forever been exploitative and hence the need is to stitch up a new system with no Indic traces.

According to ‘Left-Liberal’ line of thought Sanskrit is the road to Conservatism and Brahmanical dominance. The theory of a terrible Brahmanical regime thus comes to be accepted as a fact and often dangled as a fearsome consequence of faith in the Indic system. No one, however, cares to question that if the theory holds water, how was it that the two greatest Indian epics were penned by Valmiki and Ved Vyas, both non-Brahmins. Does no one wonder if it is possible for an exploitative civilisation to organically survive for more than 5,000 years?

Liberal and Popular Discourse

There is no liberal discourse in our country but there are only predominantly Left-liberals working in the field of media, academics and development. When the intellectual class should have worked on developing an ‘Indian Left’ idea, they found it convenient to accept super-structures dominated by Classical Marxism. The essential Indianisation of Marxism or Left never happened and we created a false paradigm for our debates and discussions.

In the field of popular cultural discourse, Indian cinema is one of the important media. India cinema has played a significant role in developing understanding of our myths and history in the last half century. There are more voices from the world of cinema that influence different issues of national importance. There is a need of group of cinema and literary personalities which can speak on issues of national importance but with a different perspective and represent the counter-cultural narrative of the current times which is now shared by millions of youth of this country and which the outdated intellectual class want to brand as ‘intolerant’ and crass.

A peek into the time of Partition provides us valuable insight into the Left leanings of the Indian film industry. That was the time when actors like Dilip Kumar and the Lahore Writers’ Group became a dominating force of the “Bombay” film industry. Many from the Progressive Writers’ Forum (read Communists) also joined the film industry from time to time like KA Abbas, Bhim Sahani, MS Satthu and others. Like the rest of the country, the film industry too was deeply influenced by the wave of Nehruvian-Socialism. The film circuit, as a result, was dominated by Left-liberals and Congress-supporters like Nargis, Sunil Dutta, Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna and Shah Rukh Khan. During the Emergency the cinema fraternity was asked by “Yuvraj” Sanjay Gandhi to organise musical nights and create an environment in support of Emergency. The only dissenting voice of that time was of Manoj Kumar who made patriotic films like Upkaar and Purab Aur Paschim. Today, there are few cine stars like Anupam Kher who have broken away from the old guards and taken a nuanced ideological position. We need more Anupam Khers which can represent a parallel narrative which has the potential to give birth to a new paradigm of intellectual-cultural tradition free from old ideological shackles and representative of a de-colonised Indian mind.

In Search of Indic Tradition

Collective efforts are needed to search and work for an Indic tradition. For Left-liberals, Indic is equivalent to Right-wing, Hindu-centric, nationalist or Hindu-nationalist but actually it is more than that. Indic comprises anything that originates from this land, blossoms in this atmosphere and prospers in this geo-cultural territory. An Indic tradition can lead to assimilative points of view, nuanced solutions and the creation of truly ‘new’.

Such an Indic ecosystem based on our civilisational values can provide the adequate environment to discuss our civilisation background, its legacy and relevance as well as its lessons. Today, when religion is a major area of conflict, very few academic institutions conduct a comparative study of religions. This is because of an academic-intellectual environment that alienates and distances religions from each other. An Indic intellectual environment will provide the necessary insight and compassionate approach needed for such a study. Our ancient texts and writings of intellectuals like Coomaraswamy, Yadunath Sarkar, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Vasudev Agrawal can provide the ammo to start this intellectual spark.

Respect for local heroes, beliefs and modernisation of Indian traditions would be the basic foundation of an Indic intellectual ecosystem. It would take inspiration from the past, think about the present and envision a prosperous future for all Indians. We can not prosper and develop with a borrowed narrative. We need to have our own story, conceptualised and narrated by our own people.

The creation of an ‘Indic’ intellectual ecosystem does not entail wipe out the Left-Marxist system, but simply balancing it out. It is the responsibility of the academic and intellectual community to create a new narrative that springs from their own intellectual rigour.

Conclusion

Mughals and Turks destroyed Indian temples and knowledge centres but the British developed an education system that was meant to kill India’s faith in itself. As a legacy of that education system, the colonial mentality still works in our mind obstructing our journey inventing or discovering anything new or original. There is a dire need to rejuvenate our civilisational discourse and develop an Indic knowledge tradition that will help us and also benefit people all over the world.

We need to develop a theoretical foundation for Bhartiya Drishti – an ‘Indian Way’ or Indic tradition to look at all the perpetuating problems of India and the world. Before that we need to understand ourselves – develop a vantage point of our knowledge tradition, study when and how it got weak and how it could be revived. We can reform only when we know the form.

(Author teaches Political Science in a college of Delhi University.)

 

~ By Meira Kumar

16^thDecember, 1971 was a moment of undiluted national pride. That was a time when we not only created history, but also changed the geography. Such moments come rarely in the life of a nation. Before 1971, we had a confidence deficit about our ability to protect our land. In 1948, we lost 28,000 sq. miles to PoK. In 1962 we lost 38,000 sq. miles to China. In 1965 India and Pakistan were on equal footing and we had to withdraw from Haji Pir. When the dark clouds of war began to gather on the Indian horizon in 1970, it was a time for India to redeem itself and establish its military prowess, its prestige and its honour.

My father, Babu Jagjivan Ram took charge of the Defence Ministry in June 1970 and he had exactly 17 months to prepare for the uphill task that he had before him. Our soldiers, our jawans, our officers, are trained to make supreme sacrifice for the mother land. They are not really trained to make supreme sacrifice for another land and thereinlay a challenge. Our armed forces had to be prepared to lay down their lives, if eventuality came, for another land. Their morale had to be boosted.

That was the task which Babu Jagjivan Ram undertook right in the beginning. He went around the country, to every post at the border telling them that we were not going to fight, that we did not have the history, the culture and the tradition of attacking, we did not have hegemonistic designs; but if the war was imposed on us, then the war would not take place on the Indian soil. We would push back the enemy and the war would take place on their soil. That was what really electrified the armed forces. Thiswas what he maintained right through and this was what happened.

I was reading the books. I read his speeches in the Parliament and I found that every second or third day he was briefing the Parliament. Every second or third day he was making public speeches. He was making public representatives aware of what was going on in the country and what our war- preparedness was.Hewas reaching out to every person in India – whether in the urban or the rural area – telling him or her that there was nothing to fear and that we would rise to the occasion and make it a historic war. He made the atmosphere, which is what counts.

Defence forces make supreme sacrifices. Once my father told me that you may or may not stand and pay respects to anybody else, but if u see a soldier just stand up, salute and pay respect. It is not easy. It is not easy to lay down your life for something abstract. So, here he was trying to boost the morale of the armed forces, of the jawans, of the officers, because they had seen the earlier three wars. He was also preparing the public. They had to also participate.

Defence of India does not mean only the army going and defending at the border. Defence of India also means every citizen of the country rising up to defend the country and its honour. He was doing it at the same time – boosting the morale of the armed forces and preparing the public for war.

He was constantly in touch with Mukti Bahini with regard to what help, assistance we could give. He was in constant touch with them. It was a unique war. Previous three wars we had the military at the ground, and the air force participating. But this was the time our navy was also participating. The coordination, the logistics, the exact precision, the chain of command and on another land all that had to be managed to send out the arms and ammunition, to send out the messages, to communicate was done all one time. In fact, the surrender of General Niazi had happened because of the excellent communication we had. It was the process of communication at the right time. Niaziwas demoralized and that led to surrender.

It never happened before – 93,000 soldiers of army surrendering. The army normally surrenders if there were no soldiers or if there were no arms and ammunition. Here there were 93,000 soldiers. Those days, we used to have Doordarshan in black and white. Other channels were not there. I saw mountain of arms and ammunitions which was surrendered by the Pakistani army.  I was talking of communication. They were completely demoralized by our officers commanding. General Manekshaw, General Jagjit Singh Arora (later he became field marshal), SM Nanda, PC Lal – brilliant officers. They completely isolated the Pakistani officers and their brigade was made to surrender.

A report appeared in newspapers and television that the seventh fleet was diverted by America from Vietnam to the Bay of Bengal and all of us got very worried. I was very worried. I stood in the portico, waiting for my father to return home for lunch. When he returned home, he got down from the car, he was a little surprised to see me waiting in the portico and he asked what has happened. He was smiling. I said when India was engaged in such a fierce war, and America, one of the super powers had sent their seventh fleet to Bay of Bengal, and the Defence Minister of India still managed to smile, I did not have to worry.

Later at the dining table I asked him what would happen now that the seventh fleet has come. He said that the same what had happened in Vietnam. Those people in Vietnam ate rice and water and they had no arms and ammunitions. Yet they were able to chase away the seventh fleet. We would do the same. He had tremendous faith in human spirit and human will. That was central to the war of 1971. Human spirit and human will was central to the MuktiBahini. They fought because of that. They won because of that.

Later I attended a memorial lecture of my father and there General Jagjit Singh Arora was delivering the lecture. He said during the war he had received every morning a phone call from my father just to check how I was and what my progamme for the day was. Something very ordinary, but that is how he was in constant touch with all his senior officers concerned. That is how he was controlling the war strategizing, leading, encouraging, inspiring.

There was this great surrender, which never really happened in the annals of history. After the surrender, there was question of prisoners of war (PoWs). They were in jail at various places. Nowadays,seedless grapes are common. But those days, grapes used to have seeds. In Hyderabad they just broughtout a seedless variety of grapes. My father said, the seedless grapes should be sent to them. He followed the Geneva convention to the teeth. He did not want the PoWs to go back to Pakistan and complain that they were not treated well in the jails of India. He wanted the same to happen to our PoWs in Pakistan.

Let me tell you one more thing. There was a clear cut instruction to our soldiers that when you were going into Bangladesh or enemy territory on the western side, please avoid the populated areas to not only avoid causing loss or damage, but also inconvenience to the civilians. Now it is 45 years since we fought the war. There have been many complaints coming to us from Pakistan. I was studying each one of them very minutely. I have never found any complaint of any kind coming about the 1971 war that any woman or man was mishandled or ill-treated by the soldiers of the Indian army.

That is the classic war we fought so honourably. After that, after having won the war, my father stayed as defence minister for two years. He stayed as defence minister because he wanted to ensure proper rehabilitation and proper relief.He wanted to look after the welfare of each jawan, each officer who suffered in any way in 1971 war. He took it personally, like looking after his own family. That is what he wanted to do.

This is the Great War that we have fought. It dazzles us with what we are capable of, of rising above ourselves when the moment comes. This is what reminds us of our inner strength.

(This article is the summary of the speech delivered by Smt. Meira Kumar, former Speaker of Lok Sabha at the Seminar on “1971 India-Pakistan War: Liberation of Bangladesh” jointly organized by India Foundation, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Indian War Veterans Association and Babu Jagjivan Ram Memorial Foundation on 16^th December, 2016 at NMML)

~ By Ram Madhav

India is today an important power in Asia, which is not just a great continent but a great power continent now. Asia is home today to some of the world’s leading and fastest-growing economies. About 45 per cent of the world’s population lives here. Half of the world’s container traffic and one-third of its bulk cargo traverses the Indian Ocean. Around 40 per cent of the world’s offshore oil production comes from the Indian Ocean; nearly half of the world’s energy supplies emerges through this region.

Strategically, Asia has emerged as a nerve centre. Asia’s defence spending is now larger than Europe’s. Reports indicate that in 2014, military spending in Asia increased by five per cent, reaching around $439 billion in total, compared to Europe’s spending, which grew by 0.6 per cent, reaching around $386 billion in total.

The region, hitherto called Asia-Pacific, should now be renamed Indo-Pacific. Asia-Pacific came into vogue half a century ago when Japan rose to prominence. Today, the entire Indian Ocean region has grown into an economic juggernaut. The global power axis has shifted from the Pacific-Atlantic to this region. Half of the world’s submarines will roam the Indo-Pacific region in the next two decades — at least half the world’s advanced combat aircraft, armed with extended range missiles, supported by sophisticated information networks, will also be operated by countries here.

Longer-range precision-guided missiles, including ship-based missiles, advanced intelligence, surveillance systems, autonomous systems like unmanned combat vehicles, in operation in the sub-surface, surface and air — this will be the region’s future. An Australian study indicates: “Over the next two decades, other technological advances such as quantum computing, hypersonics, energy weapons and unmanned systems are likely to lead to the introduction of new weapons into our region. By 2035, more countries in our region will have access to ballistic missile technology… The next 20 years will see the expansion of space-based and space-enabled capabilities, including military capabilities.”

This great power brings greater responsibility on nations in the region. Countries like India face greater challenges and need to equip themselves for these. The Asia-Pacific region has been a playground of big power politics in the last few decades. The US has vast interests, assets and allies here. President Obama talked of the “Asian pivot” and “rebalancing” in the region. He took interest in forging a new regional alliance, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

But the situation is changing fast. US President Donald Trump doesn’t seem to share former President Obama’s interest or enthusiasm in these matters. He described TPP as “catastrophic” and vowed to dismantle it. Together, 12 countries had drafted the 3,000-page TPP agreement in February 2016 at Auckland, New Zealand. But it is unlikely to see the light of day in America as the Republican-dominated US Congress has refused to ratify Obama’s brainchild. In the words of the commander of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, “TPP is more or less dead.”

After the TPP fiasco, it is likely that the role of the US in the region is going to significantly diminish under Trump. Although Trump talked tough about China, that was largely in the context of the US economy and jobs. In fact, an international magazine reported, quoting a senior scholar in China, that the Chinese government was happy about Trump’s election because the leadership there thinks that now, “America would no longer be at their backs.”

With America’s role diminishing in the region, China will emerge as much more powerful now. It has already built several new regional alliances through projects like One Belt One Road (OBOR), Maritime Silk Road, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). President Xi Jinping, who has now acquired the status of “Core Leader”, is pushing hard for another regional alliance called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). It was originally conceived as China’s response to Obama’s TPP. TPP is dead — but RCEP is racing ahead. India is not a partner in either of the groupings thus far. But it will be forced to take a view on RCEP in view of its status and interests in the region.

Significantly, the rule-based global order is also coming under tremendous pressure in the region with countries violating established norms with impunity. Multilateral institutions seem utterly helpless while countries continue with activities detrimental to regional peace. North Korea’s nuclear programme, developments in the South China Sea and increasing cyber violations are examples of this trend.

Under the circumstances, India can no longer remain a reticent nation in regional and global politics. In the last couple of years, India has given some indications that it has arrived. It started showing more interest in the UN’s affairs. It played a crucial role at the Paris Climate Summit and became increasingly assertive about its rights in the NSG, UN Security Council, etc.

PM Modi has set the tone for this in 2014 during his first visit to the US, “India is already assuming her responsibilities in securing the Indian Ocean region. A strong India-US partnership can anchor peace, prosperity and stability from Asia to Africa and from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. It can also help ensure security of the sea-links of commerce and freedom of navigation on seas.”

The new century now brings India face to face with these new realities. We need to face them because there is no other option.

(The writer is national general secretary, BJP, and director, India Foundation. This is an edited version of his speech delivered at the Halifax International Security Forum (November 18-20, 2016), Halifax, Canada)

 

~ By Walter Andersen

Some 70 years ago, India emerged as an independent country with daunting challenges at home and in its immediate neighborhood. Poverty and illiteracy, ethnic diversity and scattered secessionist movements, as well as the growing tensions associated with the then emerging Cold War were widely viewed as existential threats.   In 1947, many commentators, such as the eminent economist, Gunnar Myrdal, expressed doubts if a country as poor and socially diverse as India could sustain a democratic system of governance – or even survive as a united country. That flamboyant imperialist, Winston Churchill, agreed, arguing that this socially diverse country was not a nation at all, but a product of British power, and that it would likely fall apart when British power departed.

Well, here we are 70 years later, and India has not only survived intact, but its democratic systems, despite its flaws, have thrived.  The consensus for the democratic process is witnessed by fact that a higher percentage of the poor and illiterate vote than the rich and literate. At the international level, India is widely acknowledged to be one of the world’s rising powers. While not yet recognized as a great power on the international stage, it is a contender for great power status in the not too distant future. India, among the large countries of the world is the fastest growing economy, with a national income of 2.5 trillion dollars and growing at about 7.5 percent a year. If you look at its nearby Indian Ocean neighborhood, India is an arena of relative calm in a broad swath of littoral countries that the American foreign affairs scholar, my colleague at Johns Hopkins University, Zbigniew Brzezinski, once described as ‘an arc of crisis’. The clear majority of the population considers elected civilian authority in India as legitimate; India possesses an accepted line of authority responsible for decision making in domestic governance as well as in both – foreign affairs and security.  At the geostrategic level, India, jutting down 1500 miles into the middle of the Indian Ocean and crossed by critical sea-lanes, is compelled to look both east and west in the search of raw materials, investment and markets.  As it continues to expand economically, its global interactions will grow even more.

The key question is whether India will be sufficiently daring to take advantage of these opportunities and assume a leadership role on issues it faces in a changing world.  In short, can India get past transactional relations with individual major powers and pursue a larger strategic vision as a player at the Global High Table?  The answer to that is maybe — and depends, in my view, on how Indians manage challenges posed by two of the critical drivers shaping its foreign policy:  (1) domestic politics, and (2) economic growth.

On issue of domestic politics, mobilizing support for an assertive and imaginative foreign policy changes will require, in my view, a large measure of political stability at home and a leadership with a vision.  Whether this is possible as you look out is not at all certain, given India’s fragmented political system.  2014 saw a single party win a majority at the center for the first time since 1984. Chances are good that there will be a return to coalition politics at the 2019 parliamentary elections, though very likely the National Alliance will have a majority to form the new government and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government will lead that coalition and Narendra Modi will again be the Prime Minister of India.

The imperatives of revived coalition politics at the center may mean that foreign policy decisions are constrained by the parochial interests of regional political parties.  For instance, the opposition of regional political parties sabotaged India’s delay in the ratification of a river agreement with Bangladesh several years ago. While there is a legacy of weak and strong coalition governments, coalitions complicate and often delay efforts to make significant changes.

Second, on the economy, continued high growth (at desired level of 7 percent plus) faces political reality of a population that remains largely poor and a political system with a traditional commitment to equity. The unmet needs of India’s poor and the country’s huge infrastructure needs, which are in large part meant to stimulate jobs, also mean that the ‘guns vs butter’ debate must be addressed — and chances are good that the debate will be biased in favor of “butter” over security. India’s defense spending now is 1.62% of GDP, which is the lowest share of national income since 1962, and that will not fund the military modernization that a ‘leading power’ and a ‘net security provider’ such as India needs. It must prepare for an increasingly assertive China linked to an increasingly assertive Pakistan.

A third – and related economic issue – is the willingness of the political system to accept involvement of private enterprise as a player in such critical areas as defense production.  Question is how (and whether) the political class or the bureaucracy not accustomed to – and to a certain extent antagonistic to – outside influence will accommodate these new players from private enterprise. Defense industry analysts have watched carefully as India’s Defense Public Sector Undertakings (which goes by the acronym DPSUs) have given way to the private sector’s participation, including significant collaboration with large international defense companies.  On the Indian side, several companies have invested heavily in defense production and research – such as TATA, Mahindra, Larsen and Toubro and Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group.  Some of these have set up joint ventures with foreign private manufacturers of defense equipment. Reliance Defense Ltd. and Israel’s Rafael Defense Systems Ltd. have agreed, for example, to set up a joint venture to produce air-to-air missiles. Foreign private companies on their own have already begun to manufacture equipment for the Indian military. Lockheed Martin, for example is manufacturing tail wings for the global C-130 transport aircraft and Boeing is manufacturing critical components for the CH-47 Chinook heavy lift helicopter in Bangalore.  Chief executives of Boeing and Lockheed Martin have visited India to pitch for the manufacture of the F-18 and F-16, respectively, in India. These investments represent a strategic shift in the way Prime Minister Modi embarks on a major “make in India” campaign as it applies to defense manufacturing.

Yet the country faces several major challenges requiring leadership willing to chart the country on a more daring course: (1) a rising China that is both much richer and militarily stronger than India – and with an interest in deepening relations with its south Asia neighbors and around the Indian Ocean, (2) a terrorist threat from the northwest of the subcontinent, some of it with likely support from Pakistan’s military intelligence;  (3) increasing integration in the world economy and (4) looming environmental crisis (like the melting of the Himalayan glaciers).

So what will it take for India to move to a leadership position?  I think it useful here to refer to a speech that Indian External Affairs Secretary, S. Jaishankar, gave at the April 6, 2016 inauguration of the Indian Centre of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in New Delhi  – where he addresses the question of India becoming a major actor on the world stage.

• Jaishankar starts his discussion with the categorical statement that “the quest towards becoming a leading power rests first and foremost on our success in expanding the economy” – and I concur.
• He goes on to say that this quest will be a priority goal for Indian diplomats and, perhaps with an eye on his own bureaucracy asserts, “this task calls for a change in attitude and skills of our diplomats – which I can affirm [he says] is already underway.”
• While linking South Asia closely to India is an important immediate goal, he notes that “an aspiring leading power, at a minimum, needs to expand its global footprint” far beyond the region and specifically mentions deepening relations with the US, Russia, the EU, Japan and China. Yet, he further adds that an “important characteristic of a power that seeks to go beyond a limited agenda is its interest in global issues.”  In short, moving beyond mere transactional relations with individual countries.

The issues raised by the Foreign Minister are possible, of course, because Prime Minister Modi is willing to think differently about India and how the world should interact with it. The real question is how deep and politically sustainable are Modi’s new ways – and to what extent will they be undermined by liberals on the left who put ideology above self-interest and the nativist right that has little appreciation of the world and is easily influenced by xenophobia.

In summary, I argue that if India is to assume the role as a leader in international affairs, as it goes forward its policies must become more deeply interdependent with those of other countries. The hard part will be getting there.

(This is the summary of the address made by Walter Andersen, Director, the South Asia Studies Programs School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University at the India Ideas Conclave at Goa on 5^th November, 2016)

~ By Aroon Purie

The state in India has become its own worst enemy. While the Indian citizen has evolved, becoming more demanding for better social services and a better standard of living, the Indian state, by which I mean the government, has witnessed two contradicting trends – it has become bigger, in fact, too bloated in my view, but the standard of services offered by it has deteriorated dramatically. I believe the Government has become a major hindrance to the growth of this country.

The much touted reforms of 1991 by PV Narasimha Rao were much needed but they were like taking off the chains of a prisoner but not letting him out of the prison. Liberalisation was hailed as revolutionary but I believe it was just tinkering. He did not take on the bureaucracy in terms of cutting down its size. The country needed surgery and he gave it homeopathy.And that too he made no song and dance about it. It was reform by stealth. Maybe that’s the only way to do reform in India. Besides, liberalisation did not change the colonial mindset of the bureaucracy, which was to control the country and be served rather than be of service.

No leader yet has taken up the challenge to fundamentally reform the bureaucracy. I believe this has not happened because of the unholy nexus between politicians and bureaucrats where neither of them wants to lose the power of patronage. Let me be more specific with some of the problems.

Problem # 1

The state is too big.

Before he himself joined the government, economist Bibek Debroy did an analysis for India Today in 2013 on useless ministries. He suggested that 31 ministries out of 55 ministries at the time, ranging from animal husbandry to tourism, be scrapped. And the remaining be restructured into 12 major ministries of commerce, trade and industry, consumer affairs, infrastructure, defence, law and corporate affairs, external affairs, home, finance, social sectors, energy and natural resources and science and technology. He calculated that this would effect an overall saving of Rs 1,50,000 crore.

Many ministries oversee entities which are supposed to be autonomous. Like I&B oversees Doordarshan and AIR, Steel, Mines & Power monitors SAIL, Coal India and a host of other PSUs.The classic example is Civil Aviation. What is its job when there are four regulators – AERA (to regulate tariffs), AAI (for airports), DGCA (for airlines) and BCAS (ground handling). In the US, there is no aviation ministry and no regulators. All aviation aspects are handled by FAA (Federal Aviation Administration).

Compare the size of the two markets. India has around 450 airstrips and airports, of which only 75 have scheduled operations. In comparison, the US has 19,299 airports and airstrips. In the US, the monthly passenger traffic for scheduled airlines is 7.44 crore. In comparison, just 83.81 lakh passengers fly in India every month. There are some 96 regional and national carriers in the US compared to a total of 11 airlines in India. The number of planes flown in India by scheduled airlines is 468. The fleet size of US commercial airlines, including regional carriers, stood at 6,871 in 2015.I have given all these details to highlight how superfluous our Civil Aviation Ministry is.

The crux of the matter is that departments and ministries are created not on economic or administrative logic but political accommodation. Such is the multiplicity that if one wants to improve sports facilities for women in rural areas it is not one but seven ministries (Rural Development, Social Justice, Sports, Youth Affairs, Finance, Women and Child Welfare and Panchayati Raj) that will be involved. How on earth can you expect anything to be done with such a complex structure?

It makes my blood boil when I read about the fact that our soldiers fighting on the front don’t have the basics of proper boots, helmets, night vision goggles and even ammunition. All this is stuck in our byzantine bureaucracy. Some babu is sitting on a file while our brave jawans risk their lives.

Instead of cutting ministries under one minister, there is a new trend of combining incongruous ministries, making for strange bedfellows. What has Chemical and Fertilizers got to do with Parliamentary Affairs or Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation with Information and Broadcasting?

The number of departments in the Government of India was 18 in 1947. And the number of secretaries to the Government of India was 19 and that of IAS officers 143. Today there are 134 IAS officers just at secretary level postings, while the number of IAS officers posted in the Central Government is 820—though the total number of IAS officers is 4,800.

In 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cabinet had 17 ministers. By 2016, the Council of Ministers had 75 ministers— 26 cabinet,  13 ministers of state (MoS) with independent charge, and 36 MoSs.Two Administrative Reforms Commissions, in 1966 and 2009, advocated small governments. No decision has been taken as yet.

The Second Administrative Reform Commission, in fact, recommended an integrated approach of combining ministries. Ministry of transport put together civil aviation, surface transport, railways and shipping. Today there are three ministers for this.

Similarly, for Energy. Energy is now being handled by at least four different departments —the ministry of power and coal, non­conventional energy sources, petroleum and atomic energy. In contrast, in the UK, there is a single secretary of state (cabinet minister) for transport and a single secretary of state for energy.

All this makes eminent sense but the unholy alliance I mentioned earlier just won’t let it happen. It requires bold selfless leadership to do this, which is simply not forthcoming. Not just that. Liberalisation has created its own bureaucracy, a permanent establishment, that forever remains in power. In 2012, of the 11 new regulators set up for new areas such as telecom and electricity regulations, nine were retired bureaucrats, creating an establishment that is inherently geared to preserve the status quo. Even the new rights created their own bureaucratic infrastructure. In 20 states, for instance, the chief information commissioner under the Right to Information Act is the state’s former chief secretary.

The point is that as we have progressed from a Nehruvian model of state controlled economy to a more market friendly one, the bureaucracy should have shrunk or at least not grown to this enormous size.

One radical solution borrowed from Nandan Nilekani would be to introduce 10 start ups or missions  into the system, of ten people each, to handle ten challenges identified by the Prime Minister, ranging from education to poverty. This would achieve two things: allow bureaucrats to develop much needed specialisations. And ensure that professionals come in and work with governments, much as Vikram Sarabhai started ISRO or Homi Bhabha started TIFR all those years ago.

This is apart from a restructuring of ministries, greater use of technology and greater share of private sector in delivering public service which would put us in the right direction. But in today’s context, I don’t see that happening.

Problem #2 

The state has no business being in business is a slogan ringing in my ears since the 2014 general election. Let us see what happened on this front.

Recently, Niti Aayog gave a list of 74 loss making PSUs to the PMO. These should be shut down forthwith instead of some attempts to revive some of them. So far the government has decided to shut down 10 PSUs. This is a good beginning but what about the other 64? Good money is being spent on bad – Rs 53,772 crore were provided to the 74 units between 2004 and 2016 and these sick central public sector enterprises owe Rs 33,960 crore to the Centre.

According to an audit report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, 157 central PSUs have accumulated losses worth Rs 1.1 lakh crore ($16.5 billion) as of 2014-15, which is larger than Zimbabwe’s GDP in 2014, and bigger than the economies of at least 65 countries.

The latest survey (2014/15) says we have 298 Central PSUs. The total investment made by the government in them till March 31, 2015, was over Rs 10 lakh crore, approximately the amount that is needed to develop India’s 7,500-km long coastline through its ambitious Sagarmala infrastructure development project. The plan investment for Central PSUs for 2014/15 alone was Rs 2 lakh crore.

Then there are public sector banks, the result of a cynical and politically motivated nationalisation by Indira Gandhi in 1971, which has left us a legacy of bad debts. Twenty-nine state-owned banks wrote off a total of Rs 1.14 lakh crore of unrecoverable loans between financial years 2013 and 2015, much more than they had done in the preceding nine years.

The total pile-up of bad loans of India’s public sector banks now amounts to Rs 13 lakh crore.

So why does the government continue to have a presence in areas where it clearly has no domain expertise? It’s a tribute to the patience and forbearance of the Indian taxpayers that they suffer this kind of foolishness. No government has shown the stomach for disinvestment in PSUs. The only government that tried to do anything about loss making PSUs was the coalition government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee which sold 28 loss making units to private players.

It saw Bharat Aluminium Company becoming part of Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Group, Tata Sons acquire majority stake in CMC Ltd, Indian Petrochemical Corporation getting merged with Reliance Industries, and Maruti Udyog Ltd turning into a subsidiary of Japanese Suzuki. By all accounts these companies are prospering.

Sadly, instead of adhering to his campaign promise of getting out of business, Prime Minister Modi’s government has been continuing the tradition of expanding the state. The Modi Government recently asked cash-rich public sector firms ONGC, NTPC and Coal India to adopt one closed urea plant each for revival, which would cost them about Rs 18,000 crore over the next four years. The government has already announced its plan to set up four steel plants in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Karnataka, the first state-owned greenfield projects that will come up in this sector in almost four decades.

This does not look like the government doesn’t want to be in business. It seems it wants to be in more businesses. Frankly, I believed Candidate Modi when he raised that slogan. And when he was elected  I said to myself finally we are going to get radical change. Now, I will only believe  they are serious about it when they sell Ashoka Hotel and Air India. Regardless of value, these will be signature acts.

Problem #3 

The state delivery mechanism is flawed.

In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi had famously said that for every rupee sent to the common man, only 17 paise reaches him. In 2009, then Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia echoed him, saying the leakage was upto 16 paise. In spite of knowing this we continue to proliferate government schemes where there is no match between outlays and outcomes.

There are many reasons for this. One, there is a multiplicity of Centrally Sponsored Schemes, which have to travel through all the states and villages of India after starting in the capital, Delhi, as a one-size-fits-all model. Two, the Union Government is the planner, financier as well as monitor, not the best case scenario for accountability. Three, these schemes end up making programme managers of bureaucrats who are unsuitable for the task. Also, this naturally leads to erosion of state autonomy. There is a need to move from a centralised to decentralised structure and localisation of implementation.Four, at all levels, there is an incentive not to take any decision. Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act defines what constitutes criminal misconduct by a public servant and specifies penal provisions, which includes jail up to seven years. Despite several attempts, the bureaucracy has not been able to get this amended to grant itself immunity from political vendetta.Five, there is no encouragement for innovative thinking.

For instance, to sell surplus army land – move cantonments out which traditionally were located on the outskirts but now, with growth, are located right in the heart of many cities occupying valuable land. The British located these cantonments to control the natives. The British have gone but the cantonments remain.  In just three years, 1,073 acres of defence land—equal to 412 football fields—has been swallowed up through encroachments by builders and private developers.

Similarly, surplus railway land value can be unlocked as well. One lakh acres of vacant land—nearly the size of Puducherry— is at the disposal of Railways and  is worth an estimated Rs 22 lakh crore.

Surely we can think of some innovative way to monetise these dead assets for public good.

Problem #4

This is a more philosophical point. Make the bureaucrat invested in the system.

The middle class has seceded from the state. Those who can afford it don’t use state services. Education, health, access to water, transport and security are so abysmal, India’s middle class and elite class rarely, if ever, use them. Until bureaucrats start sending their children to government schools, or start going to public hospitals (apart from AIIMS), they will not want to improve the quality. It’s a vicious circle.

As Ruchir Sharma says, India disappoints both optimists and pessimists. But hope is eternal. The Modi Government has shown some mettle in repealing over thousand outdated laws, in identifying ten loss making PSUs for stake sale, and in improving conduct rules, ending the transfer posting raj, and changing the appraisal system.

Now it has to show that it is capable of reforming itself and not only in what Chief Economic Adviser, Arvind Subramanian calls “persistent, encompassing and incremental reforms”- a phrase, that to me, embodies the real problem.

We have to stop being a nation of tinkerers. We need audacity in our public policy. The country is bursting with youthful entrepreneurial energy and innovative ideas. The government needs to get out of the way to let them flourish.

Lastly, I must say that my deepest disappointment in Indian politics is that BJP has not occupied the space of a genuine right wing, market friendly party. Instead it seems to have remained a party espousing cottage industry capitalism and embroiling itself in peripheral issues, in a manner not befitting its massive mandate.

(This is the summary of the address made by Aroon Purie, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, the India Today Group at the India Ideas Conclave at Goa on 5^th November, 2017)

~ By Dr. Arvind Subramanian

I am happy to speak about the budget and its context. First of all, this budget came at a somewhat unusual and momentous time. This is a critical juncture in history. If you look at the international background, 2016 will go down as something very significant happened around the world -Brexit and the American elections.But more fundamentally it was about the long march towards globalization – something has happened to it. There is indeed anxiety about globalisation at least in some of the advanced economies, which is going to have significant repercussions for emerging market countries like India.

The structural shift which has happened against which government had to craft this year’s budget. The last 7-8 years were an era of low interest rates, a kind of deflationary environment in advanced economies, and that was broken with election of president Trump. The feeling is that the US economy is picking up, policy is going to change, both fiscal and monetary policy. Notably, this means that the emerging market countries can no longer take for grantedthat they would get all these capital inflows. So, there was a kind of minor regime shift in that sense as well. These were the big international developments.

Domestically, I think there are two very big things that had happened. One is demonetization and the other absolutely path breaking reform that happened was the passage of goods and services act, which will go down in history as the landmark tax reform that the country has ever undertaken. So, these two domestic developments as well which created the context for the budget.

I will talk a little bit about the budget and what the implications are likely to be. Structurally three major innovations happened in presenting this budget. The calendar for the budget was advanced. Instead of being presented on 1^st of March, it was presented on 1^st of February. It is quite possible that India would move towards calendars that are much more aligned with international best practices and go towards calendar year based. This is the first step.

The second structural change that has happened is,we have done away with plan and non-plan expenditure from the Planning Commission era. The categorizations were based more on which agency was doing the spending rather than what it was for. We got rid of those anomalies, the distinctions which were more bureaucratic than economically meaningful. If you see the budget, there used to be capital expenditure, revenue expenditure, the world over everyone thinks about when you think about how to understand budget. It is an attitude or mindset that thinks about the impact of spending rather than which institution is doing the spending.

The third big innovation relates to the merging of rail budget into the regular budget. One of the colonial legacies we had that we presented a railway budget. There were historical reasons for it. We kind of persisted with it for no good reason apart from a bureaucratic inertia. The merging of the budgets, apart from rectifying the anomalies, is also going to be important in one sense. The two budgets that the minister presented were very significant in one way, which hasn’t been appreciated enough. It is one of the consequences of time being linear that the governments get credit for what they do and not enough credit for what they do not do. In the first two budgets it is quite noteworthy the lack of populism in those budgets. Traditionally Indian budgets have been a lot about – we need a train line from this constituency to another constituency for no good economic reason, the people would routinely succumb to it. The two budgets were noteworthy for absolutely repudiating any kind of populism. And that kind of decision making we would like to carry over.

Now, I would like to speak something about the content of the budget. As a macro economist, one number you look at first is what is the stance of fiscal policy that the government has embraced. It is embodied in fiscal deficit number. And this year what we did was, given the background of uncertainty, every budget has to balance a number of different considerations. We accord a lot of importance to maintaining macro-economic and fiscal stability – you are reminded of its consequences when you do not have it.

I want to take you back to 2013. In the fall of 2013, the Indian economy was falling apart because of lack of macro stability. India was part of fragile 5, a small trigger from US led to massive capital outflow, India barely avoided a full scale crisis. We should keepthat period in memory when I say that being wedded to macro-economic stability is a major tenet of this government. One of the manifestations of it is what is happening to fiscal policy. And the government has been steadily reducing the fiscal deficit. At the end of this year is going to be 3.5%. It is going to be a very steady reduction in fiscal deficit. It reassures investors that the commitment to macro-economic stability and fiscal prudence is rock solid. Head line number is the fiscal deficit going down from 3.5% to 3.2%.

There were some who actually wanted the government to increase the deficit because of the consideration that growth will dip a little because of demonetization. The economy certainly needed some impetus from the government. That is one point of view. The fiscal ayatollahs as it were, wanted it to be reduced to 3% at all costs. The government had to do this very delicate balancing act where it wanted to maintain the commitment to stability. Yet you do not want to squeeze so much and compound slightly inflammatory forces in the form of reduction in growth in short run. The government was committed to fiscal stability with reduction in fiscal deficit, continuing the onward march towards fiscal consolidation.

The second number was on spending side. Obviously the government was to devote resources to agriculture, especially to public investment. We are in a situation in last 3 or 4 years or slightly longer where private investment has weakened in the economy for a number of reasons. There is no real threat that the extra government spending will crowd out private investment because the sector itself is quite weak, the balance sheets are not very strong. The government had this responsibility to increase public investment. So, the allocation for public investment was also quite strong.

When you look at the spending side of this budget, what is important for me is that there is no scope for simplistic or knee-jerk expansion in creating new programmes. There was a strong feeling that new programmes would be wasteful, unproven, untested. Whatever we do is high priority but all spending is in programmes having some proven record of having worked. One of the successful programmes in India whose allocations we increased is rural road programmes, Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, launched by the previous NDA government. Similarly, the employment guarantee programme, especially in the aftermath of demonetization. It has some reasonable features like self targeting as a way of helping people who are more distressed and so the government decided to allocate more money to that programme as well. Housing was another area, but the spirit, logic and thinking was to build on programmes that work and not to be populist, not to start experimenting and thereby increase the number of programmes whose track record may not be terrific.

You get fiscal prudence by reducing fiscal deficit. Very responsible, but targeted spending- that is what the government had to do in the short run. The most exciting part of this year’s budget was on revenue side. Instead of all the things that were done on revenue side, I would focus on what was the underlying thinking to that. What are the themes on revenue proposals? Essentially the revenue proposals must be seen in the context of demonetization. The measures on revenue side tried to reward tax compliance and hence there were reductions in individual tax rates for people at the low end of the spectrum. Lowest tax rate was reduced from 10% to 5%. Second, this is one of the aims of demonetization, incentivize non-compliers to become compliers.

Remember, it is a sad fact about India that we need to make lot of progress in terms of the number of people who pay tax- something the Prime Minister and Finance Minister have been talking about a lot. For the first time, for tax payers the administrative  requirements would be quite relaxed to try and get the people into the tax net. So, having rewarded compliers, you also have to have sticks against non-compliers. It is quite significant in this budget that, the finance minister actually laid out statistics on what is happening on tax paying side as well as highlighting on what is happening to the money that has come back to the banks as a result of demonetization. It is basically a signal to non-compliers saying that government has a fair amount of data now and we started the process of big data analytics. To be able to reconcile what is coming, with the status of who is paying and who is not paying taxes, reward the compliers, also send a signal to non-compliers that there would be some surgical analysis, and follow up action against them.

The fourth innovative part on revenue side, for the first time there were proposals on tackling major sources of black money. If you think about India, there are four types of major sources of illicit money, black money – cash, gold, and the two other big areas are election financing and real estate. The budget has for the first time spelt out the initial steps that would be taken towards addressing the black money that is generated in election financing.

In the economic survey, we forecast for the year that is going to end 2016-2017, growth which is otherwise going to be 7%, something like 0.25% to 0.5% is going to reduce relative to that base line on account of demonetization. The actual liquidity crunch was smaller than the people thought it was, in fact remonetization is proceeding at pace. Our estimate is that within a month or month and half the liquidity is going to be close to what the underlying demand isgoing to be.

There would be an impact on growth. We should not hide that. It is felt most severely felt on the cash part of the economy that is relatively short lived. As remonetization happens, the economy should come back and converge the underlying potential. The range we have given is between 6.75% and 7.5%. India needs about 8 to 10% growth in the medium term. That is how we see demonetization.

One of the macro challenges in the economy is what we call the twin balance sheet problem. After the go-go years, over exuberance and over indulgence in investment, we are saddled with the legacy of weak private sector balance sheets. It is not strong as it should be except that who invested in infrastructure. As a consequence of that bank balance sheets are also weak because they were not able to service their debts.

There were lot of comments saying why didn’t the budget specifically address it. It is important but not everything. Policy making is a 365 days affair. We are completely aware of the seriousness of the problem on twin balance sheet. There are very serious and high level discussions underway in terms of how to address the problem. It is not an easy problem. You cannot use magic wand. All countries around the world face this problem. How do actually the political class write off debts to the private sector including to big corporates. That is the heart of the problem. Even Denmark, often referred to as utopia of how the world should be, has such problem. It is a constraint on the economy. It is holding back growth. We need to address that.

Finally, in the survey we have raised discussion about universal basic income. There is radical discussion going on about the idea whose time has come. The idea is ripe for discussion. There are some states which are enthusiastic about the idea whether this idea takes hold or not. Budget came in the back drop of fairly difficult international environment. It had to do difficult act of maintaining balance, providing stimulus, filling in weak private sector, taking actions to follow on demonetization.

(This is the summary of the speech delivered by Dr. Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance, Govt. of India at the breakfast briefing to young diplomats organized by India Foundation on 22^nd February, 2017)

~ By Sanjal Shastri

2016 has been a testing year for Turkey’s relations with the European Union (EU). With Austria’s foreign minister threatening to freeze talks regarding Turkey’s EU membership bid, irreparable damage might be done to the relationship between the two sides. Turkey, a land that is described as a natural meeting point between the East and the West, is increasingly finding itself out of favor in Europe. This commentary attempts to look at the possible fallouts of the turbulent year in EU-Turkey ties. Has irreparable damage been done to Turkey’s membership bid? And finally what could we expect in 2017?

The migrant deal inked in March was the high point to EU Turkey relations in 2016. While many critics lambasted the deal for its total disregard for human rights, the fact that the two groups were able to come to the agreement was a major milestone in Turkey’s attempt to join the EU. From this high point in March, they journey has gone steadily downwards, now threatening to permanently derail Turkey’s bid for EU membership.

For Turkey, 2016 has been a particularly testing year. A series of terror attacks and an attempted coup has pushed President Erdogan’s government to employ emergency powers to deal with the situation. It is the use of emergency powers that has been the bone of contention in the EU. From the alleged ill-treatment of the deputy leader of Turkey’s parliament in Germany to the many verbal battles between the two sides, several pressure points have arisen. Ultimately, the EU voted to freeze all talks of Turkey’s membership bid, which is where the situation currently stands. What could possibly be the fallout of this tension?

The immediate victim of this could be the migrant deal the two sides struck in March. President Erdogen has already sent to feelers that he would not hesitate to scrap the deal with things spiral out of control. Much more than a battle over the use of emergency powers, for President Erdogen, this is become an, us versus them situation. In such situations, pragmatism and foresight falls prey to jingoism and hyper-nationalism. Looking at how things have panned out over the past few months, one cannot but help fear that the migrant deal would be the first victim in the whole process.

Scrapping the migrant deal would have drastic consequences across Europe. The influx of migrants has been a very volatile topic across the 27 EU member states. Right wing parties in several countries including France, Germany and Austria had been receiving a lot of support for their anti-migrant stand. The migrant deal put breaks on the number of migrants entering Europe, which halted the growth in popularity of the various right wing parties. With elections coming up next year, a return of a large number of migrants anywhere near the 2015 numbers, will mean that right wing parties will begin to see more support. Popular support for Angela Merkel, which had fallen in late 2015, had picked up again after a fall in the number of refugees. If there is an increase in the number of refugees, it may seriously damage Merkel’s chances of getting re-elected.

With Turkey’s future with the EU in jeopardy, there could be changes in the regional balance of power and security calculations. Currently, Turkey, which is a member of the NATO, is a crucial ally for the West. The US and the EU have been cooperating closely with Turkey regarding the fight against ISIS. If the tensions with the EU continue, Turkey will be pushed to look for a future alliance somewhere else. There have already been sights that the Turkish leadership has begun to look elsewhere. Talks have commenced over a possible partnership with the Shanghai Cooperation Group. The last thing the EU would want is for Turkey to move towards Russia. A possible Turkey, Iran, Russia and Syria alliance will not be a bright possibility for the EU. While we are still very far away from getting here, if things deteriorate further between the EU and Turkey, this possible re-alignment would not be too farfetched.

The question comes, have EU and Turkey gone to a point of no return? There is still some light at the end of the tunnel. European leaders like Angela Merkel understand the importance of the migrant deal on the upcoming elections. They realize that pushing Turkey too far will jeopardize the migrant deal. The hope is therefore, some sort of understanding would be reached over the next couple of months. There is a lot at stake for the EU to mend fences with Turkey. That being said, the outcome of the French, German and Dutch elections next year will have a lot to say. If right wing parties come out stronger, chances are that Turkey will be pushed beyond a point of no return. This however depends on the right wing parties winning a significant number of votes in the upcoming elections. As of today, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

For many in the EU, Turkey’s bid to join the Union has always been a very contentious issue. Despite constant tensions with Greece and Cyprus, promising progress had been made. 2016 has however, bought about doubts if such a membership would ever be possible. A debate over emergency powers adopted by President Erdogan is quickly turning to an, us versus them debate. It puts in the all-important migrant deal between the two sides in jeopardy. If this does happen, Europe may again witness an influx of migrants, which will have an impact on the elections planned next year in Germany, The Netherlands and France. Turkey, which has already begun looking for greener pastures with the Shanghai Cooperation Group, may be forced to look towards Russia for a possible alliance. A change of this sort is bound to have serious consequences for the security calculations in the region. While a lot that could go wrong has gone wrong, while have not yet reached a point of no return as far as EU and Turkey are concerned. For EU, there is a lot at stake and one should not be surprised if a deal is struck between the two sides in early 2017.

(Aauthor is an Academic Associate at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He regularly rights about issues linked to the Middle East and South Asia. He can be contacted on sshastri93@gmail.com.)

 

~ By Dr. Manan Dwivedi

The American Presidency is the highest and the most hallowed power pedestal in the international system. The personage who is anointed to head the proverbial land of milk and honey is expected to take care of crucial decisions bearing criticality on the firmament of Global Politics. The “Regulator and Democratizing” role playing being attached with the American impact in the larger world makes the United States President run true to the dictum of, “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”.

The outgoing President has been perceived to be found wanting in his response to the major conflict points in international system such as Syria, the complete denouement of the Iran’s nuclear negotiations, the inaction associated with the Libyan developments along with the raging domestic issues of gun violence and general unrest among the Black population in the homeland, according to one set of observations. Thus, President Obama leaves behind a tarred terrain infested with new challenges and the new President Trump will have to hit the road running to combat pertinent issues such as counter terrorism, the sustainability of the economy, unemployment issues, infrastructure enhancement along with the raging bull theme of reinventing and resuscitating America, after, all the palaver about, “the Rising tide of the American Decline”.

President Trump envisages a protectionist policy tilt for the American nation which will create obstructions in a global polity ruled by the idiom of convergence and interdependence by one reading of the scenario. Still, the American overarch will not be completely wished away as is evident from the interactions which President Trump has had with his counter part in Taiwan and the strict wordings of the White House on the recent missile tests by North Korea a few days back.

As key concern the international community has is how seriously doesPresident Trump take his campaign-time characterization ofNATO as being, “obsolete” and as a corollary, in what manner will the geo-economic footprints of United States in the Asia Pacific be curtailed. The Trump argument of recalibrating“the responsibility and contributions” of the European and other Asian allies such as Japan and South Korea as being a key criterion of regional and ally behavior, too, has raised a great iota of doubt and multifarious permutations in the psyche of international relations experts.

The key question is  whether the traditional “Philanthropic” positioning of United States will dwindle with an isolationist foreign policy perch of President Trump who has quintessentially propagated a general and comprehensive withdrawal from the overarching conflict and hot-spot zones of the global system. In any way, it has been a characteristic feature of US foreign policy which stipulates that there is a schism between the interventionist/ expansionist and the Isolationist strain of the nation’s foreign policy practice. The interventionist zeal was very much reflected in the Diplomatic overtures which the President elect undertook with the Taiwanese Premier which infuriated the Chinese mandarins.

A lot of global turbulence might be created with the Chinese terming President Trump’s foreign policy inclinations as being Revisionist, where-in, Beijing felt that questions will be raised in the context of the “One-China-Policy” of People’s Republic of China. Speaking about Asia, the Trump transition team has already declared that New Delhi will be a key and strategically significant partner- a continuitywith the Obama Presidency who designated the India-US relations as the defining relationship of the 21stcentury.Trump’s counter-terror policy will also play a role in cementing ties with India.

The two legislations and the executive order passed by President Trump barring citizens from seven Moslem dominated countries such as Libya, Iran. Iraq, Somalia and Syria happens to be one the flagship campaign promises of the President which has been quickly realized by him. With the debate around visa regulations gaining currency, Indians accounted for 63% of the H 1-B visa grantees in the year 2013, with the percentage rising to66% in 2014 and reaching an all time high of 83% in 2015. Also, President Trump has declared that the Obama proposal to form the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been shelved and this amounts to an inward looking policy. This standpoint in the case of TPP makes Washington withdraw from the South East Asian leadership and leaves nations such as South Korea and Japan threatened due to a lack of an American business and commerce umbrella. Still, what needs to be underscored is that such decisions might create a power vacuum in the region and leave the traditional American allies exposed to the Chinese hegemonic designs by one reading the geo strategic situation.

President Trump will sign the new law despite multiple anti-rulings by the American courts. All this has led to the nationwide immigrants raising their placards in a general protest against Trump’s Immigration executive orders. Still, Immigration Acts in 1911, 1924, the anti-Chinese immigration legislation  along with the Johnson Reed Act in the 1930s have already been part of the US law.Therefore,what President Trump is attempting has many precedents in US history.Even in the ever changing sphere of H1-B visa regime, the Trump administration might not opt for a far-reaching curtailment as that might alienate the friendly and partner nation states such as India.

The transition time’s mellowing down of rhetoric on other related themes is an indication that some of the blatant sounding pronouncements might be made ductile and have already been sobered down to a certain extent. Still, the key characteristic of the Trump Presidency is to bear a penchant to “Shock and Surprise” on various themes with palliatives following suit.Also, containing China will form a cornerstone of the Washington’s Policy which will engage with India in a bid to be the Containment Pivot which augurs well for New Delhi.

         Along with Trump’s dictat on ISIS, Washington is expected to be firm on the concerns of South Asia with an enabling policy to curtail the likes of Haqqani networks and other Indian irritants which pose a grave threat to peace, stability and pose as developmental hitches to South Asian governance. Also, the quasi frontline state-status of Pakistan will not change overnight as the strategic depth of the US Pakistan relationship points at the utilitarian nature of the bilateral relationship in the context of combating Terrorism and on the issues ofnuclear proliferation.

The Trump Presidency is expected to go stern on the plank of counter-terrorism which will definitely augur well for the region as well as for the threat faced by India since the last few decades. The American perception on non-proliferation might turn hawkish on certain issuesand select regions but Obama’s legacy of agreeing to agree with Iran and forging the Nuclear cooperation agreement with Tehran might be endangered which is a cause of concern for  some of the disarmament experts. North Korea might be in for a rude surprise causing turbulence in the strategic and the status quo-scenario in the Korean Peninsula.

Still, keeping all geo-strategic and geo-economic views in the purview, the ear;y days of the Trump Presidency is a reflection of the times to come, where-in, mellowing down on some of the issues will make the Trump administration more acceptable and amenable to popular-international and global prescriptions.

(Author is a Faculty of International Relations and International organizations at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi)