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On The Horns of a Dilemma
Former Union Minister and senior Congress leader, P Chidambaram in his column for The Indian Express writes on the feasibility of pensions as a social security scheme in India.
"Not all citizens of India of a certain age get a pension. There is no social security scheme in India that offers a pension to a citizen. Millions of persons employed in the private sector do not get a pension on retirement. Even short service commissioned officers in the Indian defence forces do not get a pension," Chidambaram says.
He adds: "As long as life expectancy was low, pension was of little consequence. Few got a pension but fewer lived for long after retirement. In 1947, when India became independent, the life expectancy was under 35 years. Today, it is slightly over 70 years. The obligation of pension will, on average, remain for 10-12 years after retirement and may continue to the spouse if there is the concept of family pension. That is why most employers are wary of pension. The employees have a powerful case: pension is a right earned through long and loyal service; or pension is a deferred wage; or pension is the path to the right to live with dignity after retirement."
Telegram to Meta, Free Speech Battles Show Why Balance of Power Needs Reset
"A perfect storm is brewing in the world of internet platforms," senior journalist Nikhil Pahwa writes in his column for the Times of India.
He continues, "In the last 10 days, Pavel Durov, the founder of messaging app Telegram, has been arrested in France; in Brazil, a judge has banned X (formerly Twitter) after it refused to comply with orders, and in the middle of a hotly contested election in the US, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg has disclosed pressure from the Biden-Harris administration to censor content."
"These developments highlight the tension of ‘safe harbour’, a legal principle on the basis of which platforms are treated as mere messengers and absolved of the activities of their users, even though they retain the right to moderate when needed. This creates challenges for govts, which leverage issues such as the usage of platforms for illegal activity and inability to conduct surveillance and gather evidence, as reasons for disempowering platforms, and enabling surveillance of our private messages. Platforms are also rife with disinformation and the co-ordinated slow poisoning of society. However, illegal activity typically forms a minority of billions of messages and content that platforms carry every day."Nikhil Pahwa in Times of India
Bollywood’s Worst-Kept Secret: ‘Compromise’
"In the film industry, they call it “compromise” without the faintest trace of irony. Maybe the word assuages some of the guilt in the man and the humiliation of the woman, for what is, more often than not, a quid pro quo," writes senior journalist and critic Deepa Gehlot in her column for The Indian Express in light of the Hema Committee report on sexual exploitation in the Malayalam industry.
"The Mumbai film industry’s Producers’ Guild had set up a committee back in 2018 to address the issue of sexual harassment in the industry. It was a progressive and well-intentioned move in an industry notorious for its disrespect towards women. The A-list women actors may be spared the propositioning, but there are women in less privileged positions — the junior artistes, the dancers — who are easy prey. But if they complain, the male establishment will gang up against them, brand them as troublemakers and make sure they do not get work again. Many of these women support their families and do not have the skills for other jobs — they cannot afford to lose their livelihoods."Deepa Gehlot in The Indian Express
Kolkata: A City of Protest Music Is Now Numb With Grief and Anger
"If the story of any city in India can be told through the culture of protest, Kolkata is a strong contender," argues author Rupleena Bose in her column for the Hindustan Times.
She writes, "In a city ripped apart by the brutal assault and murder of a young doctor, angry protests have spread through the length and breadth of the milling metropolis of Kolkata. Since that night, students and citizens have redrawn the map of the city, walking through sultry days and nights lit by candles and mobile phone torches while vested interests have tried to seek political purchase rather than justice."
"The act of venturing onto the street in protest to demand what is the right of a citizen has had its expression in art, especially so in music, in this city. If the history of this city, which is now fighting its own darkness, could be parallelly told, it would be through its urban music."Rupleena Bose in the Hindustan Times
Rahul and The Question of Caste
In The Indian Express, columnist Tavleen Singh writes on Rahul Gandhi making caste the focal point of his politics.
She writes, "Rahul’s preoccupation with people’s castes has led him to say a lot of peculiar things. Not long ago, he declared that it saddened him to see lower castes unrepresented in Bollywood. Becoming a movie star is also not a government job. It is the box office that decides who becomes a star. It becomes hard to take the Leader of the Opposition seriously when he says things like this."
"Yet, he must be taken seriously. A recent Mood of the Nation poll by India Today revealed that Rahul is seen as the man most suited to become prime minister after Narendra Modi. According to this poll, he is still some distance behind Modi, but ahead of Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath and Nitin Gadkari."Tavleen Singh in The Indian Express
English, and India’s Legacy of Languages
Author, diplomat, and former Member of Parliament (MP), Pavan K Varma, in his column for the Hindustan Times, asks if decades after emerging from the colonial rule, we are still adrift from our mother tongues and retain an inferiority to our own languages.
Varma writes: "Kenyan Nobel Laureate professor Wangari Maathai once told me that it was only the colonial rulers who truly understood the importance of a language. That is why it is the first thing they took away. In India, the undisputed architect of this colonial policy was Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), who, in 1834, joined the Supreme Council to govern India. His policy to impose English on the “natives” was so spectacularly successful that the British could well have put his statue in the canopy at India Gate!"
"Interestingly, Macaulay almost did not succeed in his mission. The Committee of Public Instruction set up by the British had been deadlocked for some time because it was divided five against five. One set of five members wanted education in India to be based on what was then recognised as classical languages — Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic; the other five wanted elementary education to be in the “vernacular” languages with English coming in at the higher levels. The linguistic destiny of India fell into the lap of Macaulay when he was made the president of the Committee in January 1835 to break the impasse."Pavan K Varma in the Hindustan Times
Ballot to Budget: Vote Acquisition Funded by Taxpayer
"The myth of responsible politics was shattered long back," writes author and columnist Shankkar Aiyar in The New Indian Express (TNIE) as he discusses the economic crisis looming large over the Himachal Pradesh government.
"On Friday, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu informed the state Assembly “I am suspending mine and state ministers’ and CPS’ salary allowances for two months.” The reason: his government was making efforts to increase its revenue and reduce unproductive expenditure. It isn’t clear what is deemed “unproductive expenditure” but the “symbolic gesture” would save the state barely Rs 2 crore," says Aiyar.
"It’s not just Himachal. Every election season, parties march to the tune of new sops and top-up schemes...Costs have consequences. The total outstanding liability of all states has rocketed from Rs 25.10 lakh crore to Rs 83.32 lakh crore. The total outstanding liability of the youngest state, Telangana, is up from Rs 72,658 crore in 2015 to over Rs 3.89 lakh crore, costing the state Rs 22,244 crore in interest payments. The top 10 states on the list of outstanding liabilities are: Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh."Shankkar Aiyar in The New Indian Express
The Importance of Being Himanta Sarma
"Sarma’s hoary Hindutva hyperbole indicates he has unlearned all he had absorbed from the Congress culture," senior journalist Prabhu Chawla writes in The New Indian Express.
"If religion is the opium of the masses, it is the cocaine of populists. It is piety that anoints political pygmies as national icons. The 55-year-old Himanta Biswa Sarma, Assam’s 15th chief minister has become Hindutva’s new high priest du jour. His roots are in the Congress, the historical vanguard of secularism. But he owes his national prominence to the BJP, which took him into its fold," says Chawla.
"Previously, Sarma was secularism’s anti-Sangh savant for an over a decade. Ironically, his first visit after he became Assam’s BJP CM was to the RSS headquarters in Guwahati. From the day he joined the party in 2015, the saffron depth of Sarma’s ideological identity became deeper than any longstanding Sangh activist’s convictions."Prabhu Chawla in The New Indian Express
Rift Over Quota Sub-Classification May Erode Dalit-Bahujan Unity
In his column for the Times of India, professor Khalid Anis Ansari writes on the Supreme Court ruling on sub-classification within the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe categories.
He says, "While the ruling correctly acknowledges the heterogeneity within SC/ST groups and upholds the validity of sub-classification, it also introduces the idea of applying the creamy layer principle to SC/ST reservations — a concept previously limited to OBC reservations. This ruling has received mixed responses from the SC/ST community, with strong opposition to introducing the creamy layer principle. Regarding sub-classification, the ruling is not binding on states but serves as an enabling provision, allowing states to sub-classify based on sound data, subject to judicial review."
"Relatively less disadvantaged and vanguard SC/ST castes — like Mahars, Chamars, Jatavs, Dusadh, etc.—have predictably opposed sub-classification, citing concerns like social unity, merit, lack of data, upskilling and economic packages instead of sub-quota, proper implementation of quotas first, reservation in the private sector, political power as the priority."Khalid Anis Ansari in Times of India
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