Anti-Incumbency Wave in N-E No Less Than BJP Wave
S A Aiyar leaves a warning for the BJP in his column in The Times of India: it must not become complacent about winning the general elections in 2019 after its recent victories in the North-East. Aiyar argues that other than a BJP wave which has seemingly painted the country saffron, there is a stronger wave of anti-incumbency sweeping across India, thanks to a slowly accelerating economy. If it is the latter that has pushed the BJP into power in the North-East, they also stand a very real chance of losing their power in Delhi next year.
An Economic Times research study once suggested that if the state GDP accelerated significantly compared to the preceding five years, the incumbent won 60% of the time. What mattered was not fast growth but accelerating growth. The personal honesty of the CM and good governance also mattered, as proved in the BIMAROU belt. The BJP is far from unbeatable. Modi is a very popular Prime Minister, but so was Vajpayee, and that did not save his party. GDP growth in Modi’s term has not accelerated compared with the second UPA term. That spells danger, according to our ET election model.
India’s Progressives Don’t get the Real Reason for Lenin’s Bulldozing
Swapan Dasgupta in The Times of India writes about how India’s intelligentsia is unable to fathom the recent razing down of Lenin’s statue in Tripura after BJP’s electoral win in the state. He opines that Lenin, in India specifically, symbolised the advancement of the Left through democratic means. However, this power was often maintained by the Left not necessarily by the book, including political control, local tyranny and electoral manipulation. Dasgupta says the bulldozing of the statue is more than just an electoral victory, it is the “exuberance of a liberation” by the masses.
As things stand, the competitive iconoclasm that followed in the wake of Tripura will at best be a footnote. It won’t distract attention from the main lesson of the Assembly elections in the three north-eastern states: that the BJP is now a truly pan-Indian party and not the political untouchable it was at the time of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 13-day government in 1996. Indeed, the rapidity of the government’s response clearly suggested that the Modi government is anxious to avert culture wars – an exercise that has ideologues drooling, but which distorts the political flow a year before the crucial general election.
Fifth Column: The Past is Still With Us
The ministries of Culture and Human Resource Development are collaborating to form a team to examine ancient India, a decision whole-heartedly supported by Tavleen Singh in The Indian Express. She writes that the truth of ancient India is “hidden behind a dark, dark curtain,” illuminated prejudicially by colonial historians and ‘Marxists’ who saw even Mahmud Ghazni as a benign invader and not a “jihadist”. There is a need to decolonise our education system, Singh writes, and if Modi is taking the lead on that, then it can only be a good thing. However, he too must be careful of falling into the same trap again.
If the Modi government has set up a committee to examine ancient India, it is to be welcomed. But, we must hope that there are real historians and scholars who constitute it and not the kind of pamphleteers who flock to the RSS and spend their time denouncing the books of western scholars in unreadable, unscholarly tomes of their own. What is worrying about the committee is that some of its members have said some very stupid things to the Reuters reporters who went to meet them. Of these perhaps the most embarrassing comments of all came from the Minister of Culture, Mahesh Sharma, who is quoted as saying, “I worship Ramayana and I think it is a historical document. People who think it is fiction are wrong.” Now there is a problem there already because if it is history, then it cannot be worshipped. It can only be worshipped if it is indeed a religious myth that sought to create for good Hindus the ideal man and the ideal king.
Pakodas, PCs, and the Future of Jobs
Raghavan Srinivasan in The Hindu writes about the government’s latest decision to formally drop the employment-unemployment surveys of the NSSO, as well as the annual jobs survey of the Labour Ministry; they want something new and more “robust”. Srinivas writes that while reliable data is crucial to policy-making, dismissing whatever data we do have, in hopes of a better set time in the future is foolish. The opposition is accusing the BJP of trying to hide its failure on the employment front, the BJP is accusing them of missing the big picture, all while Srinivasan says both are actually missing the real problem: glaring unemployment and an uncertain future for those who actually do have jobs.
The trouble is that while economists quibble over details and definitions, and politicians spar over numbers, the economy itself is changing at the speed of light. A recent report, ‘Future of jobs in India — A 2022 perspective’, prepared by consultancy major EY, in association with FICCI and NASSCOM, picks out an even more alarming trend. Forget the issue of creating enough jobs for the millions joining the workforce every year. There is now a real question mark over the future of those already employed, that too in the highly remunerative and growing sections of the organised sector.
Across the Aisle: The Hole in the Budget
Who better to break down the nuances of the complex national budget than former Finance Minister, P Chidambaram? In The Indian Express, he simplifies the government’s receipts vs expenditure statistics exposing a fiscal deficit of Rs 6,24,276 crore. This, with overstated revenue from GST and understated expenditures such as miserly food subsidies and an assumption that crude oil prices will remain the same or fall. So, really, Chidambaram calculated, the fiscal deficit is more likely to be to the tune of Rs 7,86,276 crore or a whopping 4.15% of the GDP!
The elephant in the room is the Goods and Services Tax (GST). The GST was introduced on July 1, 2017. As per data published by the Controller General of Accounts (CGA), in the period August 2017 to January 2018, CGST collections (including IGST settlement) averaged Rs 22,129 crore per month. The Budget assumes that the average collection will rise to Rs 44,314 crore in February and March 2018, and then increase to Rs 50,000 crore per month in 2018-19. This strains credulity.On a generous assumption that CGST collections will increase to Rs 40,000 crore per month, and an annual collection of Rs 4,80,000 crore, there will be a shortfall of Rs 123,900 crore (gross) and of Rs 71,862 crore (net to the Centre at 58 per cent).
Out of my Mind: Poriborton
Meghnad Desai in The Indian Express points out what is really interesting about BJP’s victory in the North East. It isn’t that CPM lost one of its two major bases, it is that the Congress has decisively lost all political footing, under the feeble leadership of Rahul Gandhi. Desai writes that unlike a relentless Amit Shah who works round the clock, election after election, Gandhi tends to get bored with political chores within the week. Desai believes that with the 2019 elections coming up, neither the Congress and the BJP should be complacent, with foot notes on what both parties can do to take the lead.
For the government, the economic news will improve as the year goes by. The GDP growth rate is already above 7 per cent. Inflation is under control, but you never know whether another onion crisis would break out. The big challenge is jobs. As I have argued before, there can only be few formal desk jobs. There are other opportunities to earn livelihoods — roji. The pakodawala does not have a job but he earns a livelihood. The government has to show that opportunities to earn livelihoods are being created. As the economy is largely informal and services-oriented, most livelihood opportunities will be informal. NITI Aayog needs to clarify the situation.
An Inglorious Tradition that Diminishes the Idea of India
In Hindustan Times, Karan Thapar pens down his uncomfortable thoughts about General V K Singh, former Army chief and now minister of state for external affairs, dressed in full RSS uniform. Do they simply not care, he asks, about how disinterest in their post-retirement behaviour and abandonment of their neutrality reflects on the institutions they once headed? The errant general, Thapar says, has been around for a long time, but when it happens at the hands of Army generals, simply an apology is insufficient.
Army commanding officers participate in all religious festivals. On Eid they will happily wear a topi, on Diwali a tikka and on Gurupurab a pagri. In fact, the army is the only place where a maulvi will conduct the proceedings on Janmashtami if the regimental pandit is on leave!None of this is true of the RSS. Actually, it’s perceived as the complete opposite. So what does it mean when a former chief embraces this organisation? Was he a secret RSS member during his years of military service? Was his commitment to the army’s principle of religious neutrality hypocritical? And, most worryingly of all, are there other RSS-supporters masquerading in uniform who the army is unaware of?
The Art of Dying
With the recent demise of Sridevi and now the conversation about euthanasia, death is on a lot of people’s mind. Keerthik Sasidharan, in The Hindu, contemplates on the nature of death and dying and how we speak about it, today. Sasidharan feels the word ‘death’ has become either dirty or medicalised (complete with old-age homes and book genres about coping with the death of a loved one), when all it is is a chance to finally gain a natural dignity that life barely affords any of us.
Every so often, when a celebrity dies, followed by melodrama in the media, one loses sight of what exactly transpired. The more loved the person, the more we make efforts to obscure the physicality of death by building around that body a moat filled with meaning, portents, and lessons from that life. The reality of death is, of course, both shocking and disappointingly commonplace: a human body that laughed, cried, fought, gossiped, despaired and made love has now ceased to do all of the same. This much is easy to speak of coolly and objectively.
Inside Track: Glimpses of Karti’s Clout
To end your Sunday morning reading session on a lighter note, here is the latest dose of gupshup from within the hallowed halls of the Parliament, brought to you by the fly-on-the-wall Coomi Kapoor in The Indian Express. Look out for why Yogi Adityanath ignored Justin Trudeau on his latest visit, new claims about Karti Chidambaram’s clout in the Manmohan Singh government and why Sonia Gandhi refuses to answer any questions about the Congress’ political future.
Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju is clearly a fan of Bollywood actor Huma Qureshi, as seen from his Twitter handle. Recently, Qureshi posted on Twitter asking for a translation of the label for a Japanese spread called Macha, to find out if it had sugar content. The minister, who should have been preoccupied with the Northeast, considering that elections were on there, responded promptly with a tweet saying he would have tried to translate it for her but he was busy in the campaign. He added another explanatory tweet, “I am messaging you from a chopper while campaigning”. Qureshi’s name finds an occasional mention in the minister’s tweets such as clubbing her name with major stars like Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar and announcing that these actors are looking to do projects in the Northeast. Last year, Rijiju hosted the premiere for the movie Partition 1947 at the government auditorium in Delhi. Qureshi was the movie’s heroine.
From The Quint:
- Tie-Up of SP-BSP in 2019 ‘Imaginable’ But Will They Take A Leap?
- With China’s Rise, Strong Indo-French Relations More Than Welcome
- Sri Sri’s ‘Syria Remark’ Shows ‘Acche Din’ Are Here for Mobocracy
- Nepal and Pakistan’s Budding Friendship Should Concern India
- BJP & RSS Must Learn That There’s No Room for Hate in a Democracy
- If It Is My ‘Living Will’ to Die, Why Should the State Care?
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