‘Sovereign, Secular, Democratic’
Veteran Congress leader and former Union Minister asks "with great trepidation" in his column in The Indian Express whether the Republic will remain sovereign, secular and democratic in 2047.
"It is the leaders of the BJP and the RSS who gave a bad name to secularism. They called it ‘appeasement’, and that has distorted their outlook and policy on Jammu & Kashmir, electoral representation, reservations, language, food habits, clothes, and personal law. The death of secularism and the declaration of a Hindu rashtra (nation) will be a body blow to the idea of India and may hasten the death of democracy itself. The overwhelming majority of Indians does not wish that outcome, but the overwhelming majority of BJP supporters seems to want a Hindu rashtra. When an irresistible force (the Hindutva believers) meets an immovable block (the moderate and tolerant Indians), I do not know which will prevail."P Chidambaram
Has India Changed Enough?
In The Indian Express, columnist Tavleen Singh reflects on the trajectory of the nation as it celebrates 75 years of independence, and on certain things that have not changed since 1947.
"If the lives of ordinary Indians had improved exponentially in the past eight years, Modi might have only a few disgruntled dissidents to worry about. But the truth is that the lives of ordinary Indians have not really improved. They will not improve unless there is enough economic growth for millions of jobs to get created. They will not improve if government schools remain academies of literacy, not education. They will not improve unless public services like healthcare show significant reform. They will not improve if millions of Indians continue to be compelled to live in shanties and filthy villages."Tavleen Singh
Bloodied Pen
Mukul Kesavan, in his column in The Telegraph, ponders over the questions surrounding how one should view the attack on author Salman Rushdie in New York, and the violence on free thought it symbolises.
"In the decades since Khomeini’s fatwa overset Salman Rushdie’s life, his critics have sometimes suggested that he isn’t really a free speech icon because he was protected by the British State in the aftermath of the fatwa while others, like his Japanese translator, suffered or died for the cause. Rushdie’s subsequent championing of free expression, his work with PEN, his insistence that writers and cartoonists had the right to offend were criticised as insensitive and tone-deaf, as the posturing of a coddled Western writer removed by distance and celebrity from the people whose beliefs he challenged and mocked. As the news of the savage attack on Rushdie at a speaking event in New York state trickled in, I wondered what difference, if any, this violence would make to these critics. Would Rushdie’s injuries make his commitment to writerly freedom more authentic? Or would this attack be seen as the appropriate full stop to a cautionary tale?"Mukul Kesavan
Free Nation; Unfree People
Historian Ramachandra Guha writes his report card on independent India at the 75-year mark, and questions in his column in The Telegraph to what extent the country has fulfilled the ideals set out in the Constitution and redeemed the hopes held out by those who fought for our freedom.
"Whether judged in quantitative or qualitative terms, the report card of ‘India at 75’ is decidedly mixed. To be sure, the burden for these failures cannot be laid at the door of the present government alone. The Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru may have nurtured democratic institutions and promoted religious and linguistic pluralism, but it should have shown more faith in Indian entrepreneurs as well as done far more to eradicate illiteracy and provide decent healthcare.Indira Gandhi proved herself an able leader in war-time, but her administration’s capture of independent institutions, its strengthening of State control over the economy, her own conversion of a storied political party into a family firm and the construction of a personality cult around herself grievously damaged our political life as well as our economic prospects. Narendra Modi may be both an entirely self-made as well as an extremely hardworking politician, yet his emulation of Indira Gandhi’s statist and authoritarian instincts, coupled with the majoritarian cast of his RSS-inspired worldview, has meant that historians will judge his legacy far more harshly than the bhakt brigade currently does."Ramachandra Guha
Three Goals for India@80
Author and political economy analyst Shankkar Aiyar presents a three-point agenda for India@80 in a column in The New Indian Express. Aiyar asserts that since India is poised to be the most populated nation in the world at over 1.4 billion by 2023, this rising young populace has to be nurtured and skilled to thrive in the future. He lists out what the country's goals should be in the three key areas of primary education, access to water, and primary health care.
"A 2018 Niti Aayog states over 600 million face extreme water stress, and 70 per cent of groundwater is contaminated. India has 2.45 per cent of the world’s land and 4 per cent of freshwater resources. Annual precipitation, snowfall and rain is 4000 bcm translating into 1869 bcm of water, of which only a third is harnessed. Global warming threatens to worsen the ratio. India needs to rethink its hydrology management, accelerate restoration of water bodies, expand the use of Water ATMs, redraw the agricultural crop map, induct conservation, improve storage, enable recycling and invest in desalination plants."Shankkar Aiyar
Freebies vs Welfare Debate and the Much-Ignored Advice of Lee Kuan Yew
T N Ninan articulates his position on the freebies debate in a column in Business Standard, and says that if a government has the money, it can dish out whatever freebies it likes, but not if it is highly indebted.
"Singapore’s founder, the late Lee Kuan Yew, laid out the principle squarely: A government should not spend money such that it leaves behind a burden for future generations. He mandated high personal savings with which Singaporeans could buy government-provided housing, and also mandated personal health funds to pay for medical emergencies. In return for people paying their own way, he offered low taxes. Would that work in a poor country? In India, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana involves a subsidy, as does the Swasthya Suraksha Yojana."T N Ninan
Ninan argues that country after country has freely spent money it did not have, raising sharply the ratio of public debt to GDP, in some cases to twice or three times the GDP. "The resulting tax on the future, through rising interest payments on bloated debt, now haunts many countries, including India — where the debt-GDP ratio has crossed 85 per cent, when 60 per cent was considered desirable. When this debt includes large unpaid electricity subsidies, the Prime Minister is right to raise an alarm."
Why Freedom Came Early: In August 1947, Not June 1948
Saeed Naqvi writes in the Deccan Chronicle about how instead of 15 August 1947, our Independence Day could well have been 30 June 1948. What were the factors that made India get its independence those few months sooner?
"As soon as the mutiny expanded, Clement Atlee’s government in London dispatched the Cabinet Mission, replaced Lord Wavell as Viceroy by Lord Mountbatten, and set June 30, 1948, as the final date for Independence. Lord Mountbatten swiftly brought the date forward to August 15, 1947. He was quick to grasp the message from London: hand over power to the leaders the British had cultivated, the leaders who were “people like us”. Considering the Leftist wave sweeping the world since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, there was every danger of the ground being cut from under feet of the “moderate” politicians in India with whom the British Raj had struck a rapport."Saeed Naqvi
75 Years Later, It’s Time To Bury Partition Legacy
Congress leader Manish Tewari writes in the Deccan Chronicle about the need to bury what he describes as the Partition legacy. Tewari asks, "Why are we trying to validate the logic of Partition in India seven-and-a-half decades later? Would this not turn India’s “Amrit Kaal”, the next 25 years leading up to the Independence centenary, into a Vish Kaal?"
"Would an un-partitioned India have survived the centrifugal tendencies that a constitutionally weak Centre would have brought along with it? Would Partition or balkanisation inevitably have happened if not in 1947 but at a point in time not too distant into the future just as East Pakistan seceded from West Pakistan in 1971 after a horrific genocide unleashed by the latter’s army and its militias? These and many other similar questions that now lie buried in the undulating wasteland of time are interrogatories that should agitate the collective mind space of a diverse array of scholars across various fields. For in their answers may lie the key that could still integrate the South Asian landmass, ignite and unleash the collective potential of two billion restless souls filled with ions of creative energy."Manish Tewari
Bihar Is Set for Mandal 2.0 Politics
Political analyst Sanjay Kumar writes in The Indian Express about the implications of Nitish Kumar breaking up with the BJP, once again. Will the new coalition government survive? Can Nitish Kumar run a JD(U)-RJD coalition government when he received a mandate to run a BJP-JD(U) government? What will be the impact of this change in Bihar politics and how will the development impact national politics?
"The realignment could also give a new lease of life to the JD(U), but it remains to be seen what the development means for Nitish Kumar in the long run. There were clear signs of the party being on the wane in the last few years. Its vote share has undergone a steady decline since 2019. Lokniti-CSDS surveys gave clear evidence of Nitish Kumar’s popularity during the initial years of his chief ministership. But there has been a steady decline in his appeal in the past five to seven years. The latest change may dent Kumar’s image further. The coming together of the JD(U)-RJD and Congress also sends a message to regional parties in other states. They must come together to halt the Shah-Modi duo’s victory march (Ashwamedh yajna)."Sanjay Kumar
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