For power to reach all, it will need a multi-pronged strategy, collaboration between Centre and states

That the government of India’s recent initiatives in the power sector have started bearing fruit is undeniable(unquestioned,निर्विवाद). It is for this reason that the ministry of power and renewable energy (RE) has been graded as one of the most performing ministries at the Centre.

With the increasing availability of power in the country resulting in a fall in prices and the gradual easing of transmission constraints, it is clear that the milestone of 24×7 supply to all parts of the country is around the corner. The big question, however, is to ensure supply of power, even if it is not 24×7, to all and here, the objective of “power for all” set by policymakers comes under scrutiny(examine,जाँच).

Both Central and state governments have recently been applauding their rural electrification programme. As per government of India estimates, out of 5,87,464 villages in the country, only 18,542 were not electrified at the beginning 2015-16. Of these 14,813 were to be electrified through the grid while 3,639 were to be electrified off-grid through RE sources. Till March 2016, 6,479 villages have already been electrified and the rest are to be electrified by December.

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In the states, this figure stands between 95 to 100 per cent with the exceptions of Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh. States like Gujarat, Haryana, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tamil Nadu are already claiming 100 per cent electrification. Even states like Bihar, UP and Rajasthan claim to be touching 99 per cent. The glaring issue in the light of these figures is that by the Centre’s own admission, the number of households without electricity in the country stands at a staggering seven to eight crore. In UP, this figure is about two crore.

This contradiction(opposition,विरोधाभाश) comes from the definition of electrified villages adopted by the government of India. According to the rural electrification policy guidelines of 2004, a village is classified as electrified if basic infrastructure like distribution transformers, poles and distribution lines are provided in the locality, including one “Dalit basti”, and if electricity is provided in one of the public places like schools, panchayat offices, health centres etc and the number of households electrified are 10 per cent of the total number of households in the village.

Prior to October1997, the definition was that a village should be classified as electrified if electricity is being used within its revenue area for any purpose. After October 1997 and till the arrival of the present policy in 2004, a village was deemed to be electrified if the electricity is used in any of the inhabited localities, within the revenue boundary of the village, for any purpose. Thus, even though a village may appear in the electrified list of villages, the actual number of households getting power may be a mere 10 per cent.

The recent controversy over whether Nagla Fatela village in Hathras district, now famous because of its mention by the prime minister in his Independence Day speech, was electrified in 1985 or 2015, is, in a way, an outcome of this bureaucratic juggling.

Further, as per the existing practices of the electricity supply code applicable in different states, all households within 40 metres of an electrical pole are supposed to take their connection from the pole. This leaves a colossal(large,बड़ा) chunk of the population located within the “electrified village” but outside this 40-metre limit. Coupled with this is the problem that even in electrified hamlets, not all the households within 40 meters of the distribution lines/poles, take the connection.

Thus there is a situation where people wanting to take connections cannot get it because they are situated more than 40 meters away and those within the area refuse to take connections and instead use what is commonly known as “katia” to take clandestine(illegal,अवैध) connections. This results in double the trouble: First, the revenue of discoms does not increase and second, the dissatisfaction among the villagers grows.

If you look into the numbers as per the census, there were 22.66 crore households in the country out of which only 16.58 crore had connections. Of these, 30-40 per cent are unmetered. Those with unmetered connections get electricity at very cheap or subsidised rates as they are billed either on a per connection basis or a per kilowatt basis. The discoms, it is widely believed, use this as an opportunity to load most of the stolen electricity into the consumption of this category. This is also the cause for the poor financial health of several discoms.

A three-pronged strategy is required to tackle this problem: One, people who fall within 40 metres of the poles should be persuaded to take the connections. Apart from persuasion(encouragement,प्रोत्साहन), a legislative approach could be to charge the households within the 40 meters an electricity cess, as is done in the case of water provided by the municipal corporations.

Two, power department officials should ensure that people within the 40 metres range take connections. One impediment(barrier,बाधा) to taking these connections is their cost, which should be reduced and charged in instalments, especially from low-income applicants. Three, an extensive assessment of how much investment is required to let the electricity network go up to all the households. This investment should be made on priority basis, as it would bring more revenue to the discoms and it may reduce the tariff burden on existing consumers.

If the investment on expanding the network to each household is too high, governments may consider encouraging private micro-grids and mini-grids. In several states, off-grid micro and mini-grids are a reality. In UP and Bihar, where the grid coverage is poor, 70-80 such projects have already come up. Many other states are following suit.

Simultaneously, the Central government has come up with a draft mini-grid policy which should give a big boost to them in the country. The need is to have a coordinated plan to extend the existing grid and to set up more mini-grids in remote villages. This would require not just coordination but active collaboration among the states and the Centre. Only this can turn the dream of “power for all” into a reality.

 courtesy:indian express

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Chronicles in unlearning

When organisations of the Sangh Parivar periodically rail against “Macaulay’s children” and propose a review of the hold of western knowledge systems over Indian education, it should be widely welcomed. After all, indigenous(native,स्वदेशी) knowledge, as preliterate communities in India, for instance, have begun to point out, and as those who know our rich literary traditions have shown, have been monstrously ignored in the education system we have inherited. Why then does this announcement produce disquiet?

This is because the overall context of such pronouncements is one that is markedly anti-intellectual. Before this is decried(condemn,निंदा) as a baseless charge, let me provide some examples. Earlier this year, several “academics” denounced the overall editorship of the Murty Classical Library series under Professor Sheldon Pollock because he was not sufficiently “imbued with a sense of respect and empathy for the greatness of Indian civilisation.” Neither Prof. Pollock’s formidable(fierce,दुर्जेय) knowledge of Sanskrit and other Indian languages nor his acknowledged stature as an academic could pass the litmus test of a worshipful loyalty to “Indian civilisation” as the foundational ground of all pursuits of knowledge. Were the signatories of the petition alarmed that Buddhist women poets have been allowed to be heard in that series? That Sufi singers have found new audiences? That Akbar’s life and times are being read by more than medieval historians?

A ‘cultural revolution’

Of late, many distinguished intellectuals have been replaced by dubious(doubtful,संदिग्ध) dabblers(lovers,शौक़ीन) as chiefs in premier institutions of higher education and research across the country.

It would be a lazy error to read this as a mere change of guard, of places once ruled by some version of the luxuriantly varied Indian Left falling under the rule of the monotonous(dull,नीरस) Right. No doubt, English-speaking intellectuals owing allegiance(loyalty,निष्ठा) to one or another stripe of the Left/Congress enjoyed disproportionate power for decades, particularly in Delhi institutions, but normally no one doubted their intellectual abilities. The same cannot be said of the new appointees, who are taking major Indian institutions in directions that are not necessarily dedicated to the production and promotion of knowledge.

The home-grown “cultural revolution” that is under way is increasingly encouraging only obedience. The distinction between former leaders and the new heads lies not only in formal academic credentials; they must be placed within the larger framework of “national intellectual warming” that too loudly expresses doubt and distrust about intellectual life as we know it.

A senior Minister has openly called for an isolation of those he identifies as “intellectual terrorists”, internal enemies of the state who may critique the actions of governments and their armies. A good sign of the new hostility(enmity,शत्रुता) was the breathtaking declaration, in a pamphlet issued by the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad unit to welcome new students, that departments of social sciences and humanities, whether in the Indian Institutes of Technology or in other universities, are the source of all agitators and should therefore be closely surveilled.

Now, for the first time in the last two centuries, we are witnessing a virulent(poisonous,विषैला) form of anti-intellectualism which will leave a lasting impact on the future of a wide range of activities from filmmaking and art to other forms of knowledge-production. The visions that have been spelled out for programmes of research and for educational institutions put a low premium on open-ended, rigorous(strict,सख्त), creative intellectual activity of any kind.

Some recent examples will suffice(enough,पर्याप्त), but they can be multiplied. The newsletters of the Indian Council of Historical Research are generously peppered with photographs of the current Chairperson and his pious(holy,पवित्र) homilies on a wide range of subjects. Here is a sampling of what appears more like a moralising discourse in a temple courtyard: “Our ancient literature vouchsafes(decorate,विभूषित) that Indian social institutions enjoy solid cultural base reinforced(strengthen,सुद्रढ़) by Dharma unlike modern intellectual propositions. As argued today, social institutions like marriage, family, community, tribe, society and state should not be understood as contractual… the Vedic marriage system is qualitatively different from the marriages of other religious belief systems or modern social marriages or live-in relationships where both enter into a conditional agreement unless they bind themselves for life.”

Generally, what does the Chairman see as the purpose of historical knowledge? “To shape the character of the people and in turn the nation.” Here we have a rather frank admission of what higher educational and research must be made to foster(encourage,प्रोत्साहित): nationalism of the kind dictated by the ruling party. No wonder, asProf. Kumkum Roy has shown in her analysis of Rajasthan textbooks, Gandhi doesn’t get killed at all; he merely disappears from the book.

Obedience was on full display in some universities during the celebration of India’s Independence. Enjoined by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to record their “compliance”, the heads of premier educational institutions showed zeal at rangoli as well as national song renditions, as if to atone for the possibility of the university otherwise living up to its duty of encouraging critical thinking.

In other more predictable quarters, the attack on intellectuals has been reduced to unadorned(plain,सादा) abuse, as in the Organiser’s recent “review” of the book co-authored by Professor Romila Thapar on nationalism. When the “review” denounces the book’s “stinky logic of provincialising(narrowness,संकीर्णता) the otherwise wide-ranging cultural nationalism or Hindutva”, we realise that even intelligibility has become a dispensable virtue in such excoriating(scratch,रगड़ना) attacks.

Some robust memories

This is very bleak(colourless,बेरंग) scenario. Still, we are left with some robust(strong,मजबूत) memories of how institutions could think under inspired leaders. In the 1990s, early years yet of the National Law School University in Bengaluru, Professor Madhava Menon invited human rights lawyer Nandita Haksar and feminist legal scholars Flavia Agnes and Ratna Kapoor to teach and conduct research. He recognised, in short, the intellectual importance of engaging with those whose views he may have cordially(willingly,मन से) disliked, even opposed.

A more recent instance was that of the former Vice Chancellor of JNU, Prof. Sudhir Sopory, a celebrated biologist who respectfully followed not just the rules, but the norms that govern the university. He showed the greatest respect for disciplines, methods, and perspectives he knew not much about. In a farewell that endeared him to the teaching community, he declared his desire to return as a student of the School of Arts and Aesthetics at JNU, a relatively new and flourishing department. No greater compliment could be paid to the intellectual culture of the institution.

The current insistence on obedience, and the impoverished ideas of nationalism which university spaces are beginning to propagate, have already dented the intellectual agendas of such spaces. By turning universities and institutions of learning into places of unquestioning worship, we run the risk of being brought to our knees, in more ways than one.

courtesy:the hindu

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An experiment with power

On a visit to Manipur, I asked several people which aspect of their lives had changed the most from the perspective of governance and/or delivery of public goods and services. This wasn’t meant to be a systematic sample survey and was more of a dipstick indicator. Manipur has a population of 2.86 million and nearly 30 per cent of it is urban. The people I spoke to were from Imphal, so there is a bit of a bias(unfair,पक्षपात) in the sample. The Imphal agglomeration(mass,ढेर), not just the municipal area, has a population around 5,50,000. This gives you some idea of the possible sample bias.

Electricity distribution found the top mention in the people’s responses. Electricity supply has three aspects: Generation, transmission and distribution. Generation will be a major issue in Manipur, especially in times other than the rainy season. Much of the power will have to come from outside the state — Arunachal Pradesh (Lower Subansiri), Assam (Bongaigaon) and Tripura (Palatana) — even if hydroelectricity generation from the Loktak project increases.

The responses of the people I spoke to had to do with distribution, not generation. They talked of prepaid electricity. Manipur is not the only state to experiment with such an idea. Haryana was the first state to introduce prepaid electricity. Lucknow, in UP, has prepaid electricity vouchers. These vouchers require a prepaid electricity meter, so that consumers can be alerted when a recharge is requisite(necessary,आवश्यक). Such meters make life easier. In addition, the Lucknow electricity supply authority offered a tariff rebate to encourage the switch. Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh has a similar scheme, though there has been resistance in the state with consumers complaining that their monthly bills have increased. Their complaint is understandable. After all, the purpose of prepaid meters and prepaid vouchers isn’t only to make life easier. They also intend to reduce aggregate technical and commercial losses (ATC), a part of which is euphemism for theft.

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In Manipur, the idea of prepaid electricity was targeted at clandestine(illegal,अवैध) power connections. Seen this way, the resistance to meters in Itanagar does not seem odd. That there were no reports of resistance in Imphal appears bizarre(strange,अजीब).

Some towns and some types of domestic consumers in Madhya Pradesh will also have prepaid connections once the MP Electricity Regulatory Commission approves the scheme. Chandigarh is also slated to have a similar scheme, so are Pune and Mumbai. Telangana plans prepaid meters for government offices.

To get back to Manipur, the Manipur State Power Distribution Company Limited has plans to provide meters to all consumers. People unfamiliar with Manipur may not realise that the state has two distinct geographical regions: The valley— where 60 per cent of the state’s population lives — and the hilly areas. Access to public goods and services is much more arduous(difficult,कठिन) in the hilly regions, terrain being a major constraint. There will be 1,00,000 electronic meters outside the valley, but except for district headquarters and towns in the hills, these will not be be prepaid.

The experiment with prepaid meters has begun in four districts: Imphal East, Imphal West, Thoubal and Bishnupur. The government did not embark(start,प्रवेश) on the project in all the four districts at one go. Prepaid meters were first installed in central parts of Imphal because the government wanted to gauge if the experiment would work.

People have been jailed for stealing electricity and tampering with meters. The power situation has improved. Collections from payments of electricity bills have increased. At the same time, demand for electricity has reduced by 50 per cent and tripping incidents have become rarer. The number of consumers has also gone up. One should reiterate(repeat,दोहरान) that this is an increase in the number of legal consumers. There is better planning — on the supply side — and there is no need for VIP lines (those guaranteed uninterrupted power supply regardless of what was happening in the rest of Manipur).

My respondents — not just people who work for the government — told me all this with a sense of pride. If consumers know exactly how much electricity they are consuming (there are instant alerts) and how much that costs (not quite the same with post-paid bills), they are more judicious in using electricity.

Although the connection is somewhat distant, the prepaid metering experiment reminded me of an anecdote in Prafulla Chandra Ray’s (1861-1944) autobiography — it has not been translated into English. It was published in 1937. Ray studied BSc (physics, chemistry, biology) at Edinburgh University. At that time, Edinburgh University didn’t have a system of tuition fees. If a student liked the lecture, he/she left some money for the lecturer while leaving the lecture hall. I wonder if we will ever have prepaid vouchers for higher education, specific to the lecturer.

courtesy:indian express

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Export policy

India’s export of agriculture and processed food products — which accounts for 12-14 per cent of the country’s total merchandise exports — had been enjoying brawny[bro-nee(strong,मजबूत)] growth for the last five fiscals. However, it declined by 9.8 per cent to $38.6 billion in FY 2015 from $42.8 billion in FY 2014, with export to the US declining to $ 2 billion.

What are the other factors behind the poor performance of farm exports?

Export data compiled by Agricultural Products Exports Development Authority shows that export of basmati rice declined in both volume (1.6 per cent) and value terms (7.15 per cent) in FY 2015 mainly because of reduced demand from Iran and the US.

Increased shale gas production in the US has led to lower demand for crude oil. Low priced crude in turn has reduced the demand for bio-fuel, especially ethanol, thereby reducing the demand for soya, corn, mustard, sunflower, palm, sugarcane and sugar beet.

China has cut its cotton import quota to 894,000 tonnes, just nuff[núf(enough,पर्याप्त)] to meet WTO obligations. It is reported to have imported 30 per cent less cotton in the first half of 2015. China also imposes an import duty of 40 per cent, and deprives India access to a gargantuan[gaa'gan-choo-un(large,बड़ा)] cotton consuming market.

Recent de-stocking and curbs[kurb(control,नियंत्रण)] on imports of agricultural commodities in China will keep international prices depressed. That will translate into lower demand for cotton exporters like India.

India’s farm exports also face prohibitive import duties in overseas markets. For example, dairy products attract peak import duties of 511 per cent in the EU, 93 per cent in the US, and 692 per cent in Japan. Fruit and vegetables, and oilseeds attract equally high import duties in the EU, Japan and the US, with Japan being the most protective. Though there is a free trade agreement between India and Japan, most farm products have escaped any duty reduction commitments.

India’s farm exports also have to compete with highly subsidised farm products supplied by other countries. Although India has been accused of being overly[excessively,बहुत ज्यादा)] protectionist about agricultural and food products, it is China, Japan and the US which are the top farm subsidisers. According to the OECD, China spent over $165 billion in direct and indirect farm subsidies, followed by Japan at $65 billion (50 per cent of its agriculture GDP compared to less than 10 per cent in India) and the US at $ 30 billion. Besides, nearly 70 per cent of Chinese subsidies are trade distorting.

India’s farm exports also have to face a series of non-tariff barriers in top consuming markets – for example, a ban on import of mangoes by EU that was lifted in January 2015.

Instead of global demand and supply factors, India’s farmers are guided by minimum support and procurement prices fixed arbitrarily[aa-bi-tru-lee(randomly,मनमाने ढंग से)] by government. Keeping domestic prices of farm goods artificially high disincentivises export. This affects India’s ability to capture export markets.

Even Bangladesh and Pakistan are now sourcing oil-meals from Latin America rather than India.

Exports of many agriculture commodities, sugar for instance, are regulated by arbitrary quota fixation in India. Such executive actions make India an erratic[i'ra-tik(unreliable,गैरभरोसेमंद)] supplier.

The cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops is quite common in the US.

China annually imports over 70 million tonnes of GM soybeans, but India can't supply any of it. Strangely, India does allow import of GM soyaoil and cottonseed oil.

Given the numerous[nyoo-mu-rus(many,बहुत से)] tariff and non-tariff barriers that its farm exports face in overseas markets, India needs to devise an effective strategy to counter them. India will have to take up the issues of farm subsidies, market denials and high import duties at all bilateral (FTAs), regional (e.g. RCEP) and multilateral (WTO) trade forums if it is serious about pushing its farm exports.

Among internal actions needed are long term measures to tackle the issues of low productivity, over dependency on monsoon, and lack of post harvest infrastructure that lower the net supply of agriculture commodities and leads to knee jerk[nee-jurk(natural,स्वाभाविक)] reactions in the form of export bans. It’s time India stopped over- promotion of cereals, and let demand and supply forces guide production and trade decisions.

It’s time to consider cultivation of GM crops for capturing a bigger share in global farm trade.

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Constitutional conversations on Adivasi rights

Even 67 years after Independence, the problems of Adivasi communities are about access to basic needs. These include, but are not restricted to, elementary education, community healthcare, sustainable livelihood support, the public distribution system, food security, drinking water and sanitation, debt, and infrastructure. For them, equality of opportunity remains largely unfulfilled. In this context, it is important to stress that the values of tribal culture are transmitted in a manner that protects the right of the bearers of knowledge to determine the terms of the transmission without exploitation or commodification. Nor can the Adivasis’ unhindered(unblocked,अबाधित) access to land and forests, including full access to the commons, especially in scheduled areas, be understated. Tribal communities have, over the decades, witnessed the fragmentation(broken,विखंडन) of their habitats and homelands and the disruption of their cultures through predatory tourism. All this has left them shattered and impoverished. Entire communities across States have been dispossessed systematically through state action, and have been reduced from owners of resources and well-knit, largely self-sufficient communities to wage earners in agriculture and urban agglomerates(collection,ढेर) with uncertain futures. Yet, we can scarcely(hardly,मुश्किल से) forget that the rights of tribal communities in India are protected by the Constitution and special legislations.

Rights enumerated

While most of these protections are available to groups named in The Constitution (Schedule Tribes) Order 1950, there are some tribal communities that fall within the categories of Scheduled Castes (SC) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) and some that don’t fall into any of these categories. Within the category of Scheduled Tribes (ST), there are over 500 groups listed of whom roughly 70 are part of the sub-classification Particularly Vulnerable(weak,कमज़ोर) Tribal Groups, a small cluster(bunch,झुण्ड) of groups that include the Jarawas of the Andaman Islands, the Chenchus of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and the Baigas of Chhattisgarh. These groups face an acute(sharp,तीष्ण) crisis of survival, evident in their rapidly dwindling(decrease,कम होना) numbers. Therefore, they are in need of special protection even within the larger ST category, protections in relation to non-tribal communities as well as in relation to other tribal communities. Notwithstanding these complex intersections and overlaps (and exclusions in some instances), tribal communities, especially the STs, are the subject of special constitutional attention.

The right of tribal peoples to development through pathways that affirm their autonomy and dignity, as set out in Article 21 and under Schedules V and VI of the Indian Constitution, is often seen as the core of Adivasi rights. And indeed, they are. The oft-quoted Samata judgment of 1997, rich in its defence of the rights of Adivasi communities to their homelands, posits an inter-reading of Articles 14 (equality), 15 (non-discrimination(unfair treatment,भेदभाव)), 16 (equality of opportunity), 17 (abolition of untouchability), 21 (life and liberty), 23 (right against exploitation) from the Fundamental Rights chapter of the Constitution and Articles 38 (securing a just social order), 39 (guiding principles of policy) and 46 (promotion of educational and economic interests of SCs, STs, and other weaker sections) from the Directive Principles of State Policy.

The constitutional arguments in the High Court of Andhra Pradesh resisting the Polavaram dam centred on whether the state could alter (diminish(decrease,कम होना)) the boundaries of a scheduled area without presidential assent. Submergence, in fact, alters boundaries, causes disappearance of villages and village institutions, and renders(provide,प्रस्तुत) people from these communities vulnerable through dispossession by displacement — all of which are the subject of special protections for the STs. The largest volume of litigation in scheduled areas has to do with non-tribal occupation of tribal land and the blatant(openly,खुल्लमखुल्ला) derogation of land transfer regulation laws. Financial inclusion poses the third major problem: despite policy commitments to financial inclusion of vulnerable communities as a measure to lift them out of debt bondage and predatory money lending and usury, moneylenders continue to thrive(grow,पनपना) in tribal areas.

“An important part of Article 19 protections have to do specifically with protection of interests of STs.”

Hidden provision

It is in this overall context that I flag an unused constitutional provision as perhaps holding a key to the justiciable, mandatory protection of the interests of the STs as distinct from other marginalised groups.

Article 19 of the Constitution is commonly understood, through text and case law, as a provision that protects freedom of speech, expression, assembly, association, movement, residence and calling. The first clause of Article 19 reads as follows: 19(1) All citizens shall have the right (a) To freedom of speech and expression; (b) To assemble peaceably and without arms; (c) To form associations or unions; (d) To move freely throughout the territory of India; (e) To reside and settle in any part of the territory of India; and (f) omitted (g) To practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business. Clauses 19 (2) to (4) set out the reasonable restrictions to speech, assembly and association in the interests of public morality, decency and integrity and sovereignty(free from control,प्रभुसत्ता) of the state — these aspects and their restrictions are what figure most often in animated fashion in debates around Article 19.

Clause 5 of Article 19 reads as follows: 19 (5) Nothing in sub clauses (d) and (e) of the said clause shall affect the operation of any existing law in so far as it imposes, or prevent the State from making any law imposing, reasonable restrictions on the exercise of any of the rights conferred by the said sub clauses either in the interests of the general public or for the protection of the interests of any Scheduled Tribe (emphasis added).

In other words, an important part of Article 19 protections have to do specifically with protection of interests of STs (Clause 5) as distinct(clear,स्पष्ठ) from other marginalised groups through limitations on right to freedom of movement [sub-cause 1(d)] and right to freedom of residence [sub-clause 1(d)]. This, I would argue, when read with existing protections (for instance as set out in Samata or similar cases) offers a core and express fundamental right protection to Adivasis (as distinct from legal/ statutory protection) from a range of state and non-state intrusions in scheduled areas as well as from the perennial(continue,लगातार) threat of eviction of Adivasis from their homelands.

It is the interests of STs that are paramount(dominant,सर्वोच्च) in this fundamental right provision, which is presented importantly as a restriction on an enumerated(count,गणना करना) right that is clear and specific — not a restriction of a general nature, namely, the “sovereignty and integrity of India” or “public order,” “decency” or “morality,” as is the case with the other constituent freedoms in Article 19.

Understanding the situation of tribal communities is key to understanding the Constitution, its framework and its possibilities in the fullest sense. Perhaps it is time to reinvigorate(give energy,स्फूर्ति से भर देना) our reading of the Constitution in the troubled times we live in. We may find answers to other questions as well around an idea of justice that we grapple(fight,लड़ना) with every day.

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An agreement that was called a deal

Ten years ago, on the morning of July 19, 2005, the readers of The Hindu would have seen a boxed news item next to the front page lead story with an innocuous(harmless,अहानिकर) headline that read “Manmohan expresses satisfaction over talks”. It was not just the byline of the writer (N. Ravi, the newspaper’s former Editor-in-Chief) that justified the placement of that report, but its stunning opening line: “In a significant development after the meeting that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had with American President George Bush at the White House, the United States, acknowledging that India is a nuclear weapons power, agreed to cooperate with it in the area of civilian nuclear energy.”

Sanjaya Baru

Thus began the long, rocky and uncertain journey of the “Agreement for Cooperation Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of India Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy” that finally secured the Indian Parliament’s imprimatur(approval,स्वीकृति) three years later. The agreement came to be called a “deal” because it was viewed in transactional terms by many in both countries. One U.S. Congressman put it bluntly(clearly,straight,मुँहफट,साफ साफ) during a meeting with Dr. Singh, “it’s 123 for 126” — the reference being to the 123 Agreement that had to be signed and the 126 fighter jets that the United States hoped India would buy from it. Others rejected such a transactional interpretation and viewed the agreement as the key that enabled both countries to open the door to a longer term strategic partnership.

The 10th anniversary

Interestingly, a decade later it was left to a think tank in Washington DC to bring together a group of some of the former U.S. and Indian officials, associated in various capacities and to varying degrees, with the negotiation of the agreement. There has been no similar high level celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Bush-Singh “deal” in India. Even the Congress Party has remained silent, not making any statement so far to remind the people of an important achievement of its own government. For a party that observes so many ritual anniversaries, it is indeed puzzling that there has been no celebration of such a historic achievement of its last Prime Minister. Of all his achievements in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Dr. Singh will be remembered for the nuclear deal.

“ Neither the Congress nor the BJP has been willing to openly endorse(support,समर्थन) the fact that the deal was made possible by the actions of successive Congress and BJP Prime Ministers”

In the U.S., on the other hand, given the bipartisan(two party,द्विदलीय) support for the agreement, the gathering last week in Washington DC was addressed by U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden. It may be recalled that as a member of the U.S. senate at the time, President Barack Obama had actually voted against the 123 agreement. In government, Mr. Obama has not only endorsed the agreement entered into between Mr. Bush and Dr. Singh but also joined hands with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to complete the journey begun a decade ago by endorsing a mutually agreed fudge(nonsense,निर्रथक बात) on India’s civil nuclear liability law.

Political reading

Despite the fact that the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are implicitly(not clearly express,अव्यक्त रूप से) on the same side as far as the civil nuclear agreement and the strategic partnership with the U.S. are concerned, neither party has been willing to openly endorse the fact that this agreement was made possible by the actions of successive Congress and BJP Prime Ministers — P.V. Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi. As I recorded in my book, The Accidental Prime Minister, on completing the 123 agreement with the U.S., Dr. Singh told Mr. Vajpayee, “I have only completed what you began.” In tying up the loose ends of the civil nuclear liability law, Mr. Modi can say much the same to Dr. Singh! While the Bush-Singh agreement was not just about nuclear energy, but also about defining a new relationship between two great democracies, the immediate considerations that defined the timetable of the agreement getting finalised had as much to do with Mr. Bush’s tenure(period,काल) coming to an end as it had with uranium shortage in India and the falling capacity utilisation at nuclear power plants. With some nuclear power plants on the verge of shutdown and with even friendly countries like Russia insisting that India needed the approval of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) before any fresh export of uranium could be authorised, getting the 123 agreement done became important in itself, and not just as a step towards a U.S.-India strategic partnership.

An energy initiative

An important reason why the agreement was projected as an energy initiative was because many in government believed that politically it would be difficult to sell to the public a complex technical agreement without giving it a popular basis. Some political leaders like Lalu Prasad and Sharad Pawar recalled how the Narasimha Rao government was put on the defensive during the Uruguay Round of world trade negotiations because the Opposition projected the “Dunkel Draft”, a draft agreement authored by Arthur Dunkel (the last director-general of GATT — General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) as anti-farmer. Few in India may have actually read the Dunkel Draft but millions of farmers agitated(discompose,व्यथित) against an imaginary enemy named “Uncle Dunkel”.

It was for this reason that a document was prepared explaining how the nuclear deal was all about delivering electricity to people, especially power starved rural India. The document was translated into all languages and copies made available to members of Parliament and State legislatures. The media campaign that followed generated adequate(enough,पर्याप्त) public support for the nuclear deal so that every public opinion poll conducted during the period 2006-2008 showed majority opinion supporting the government on the deal.

This is not to say that India was not serious about increasing generation of nuclear energy. It is not widely known that for years the plan target for nuclear energy generation was that it would constitute a mere 3.0 per cent of total energy generation at home. In actual fact, in the mid-2000s it was not even 2.0 per cent. The proponents of the nuclear deal hoped that with easier access to uranium and new nuclear plants, India could try double nuclear generation capacity by 2020. No more.

Setbacks

Two developments have come in the way of this objective getting realised. First, in his second term Dr. Singh failed to get parliamentary approval for the original civil nuclear liability bill that his government had drafted in early 2010. Neither Prithviraj Chauhan, then the Minister dealing with atomic energy in the PMO, nor Shivshankar Menon, then National Security Advisor, was able to sell the original draft bill to the Opposition. Even though some senior members of the BJP had no problem endorsing the original draft, the L.K. Advani faction of the BJP, including Sushma Swaraj and Yashwant Sinha, teamed up with the Communist Parties, to demand redrafting of the Bill.

In the first such instance of taking the Opposition’s help to draft a government bill (later repeated when Anna Hazare’s supporters were drafted into writing the Lok Pal bill) the Singh government rewrote its own bill and introduced elements that have since made the liability law stillborn.

The second development was the Fukushima disaster in Japan that, on the one hand, increased the cost of building nuclear power plants and, on the other, revived the global anti-nuclear campaign.

For all these reasons, it may be argued that the expected take-off of the civil nuclear energy programme has not happened. However, when the political and business environment is more hospitable for the resumption of a larger civil nuclear energy programme, the U.S.-India agreement, the NSG waiver and the many uranium supply deals India has entered into would all make it easier for new investment to come in.

What of the U.S.-India strategic partnership? The 123 agreement was done at a time when the U.S., under the Bush presidency, and India, during the first Manmohan Singh government (UPA-I) had shared strategic concerns. The 2008-09 trans-Atlantic financial crisis and its aftermath(result,परिणाम) altered the global context. The first Obama administration and the second Manmohan Singh government virtually abandoned(give up,त्यागना) the nuclear deal and strayed(wanted,aimlessly,भटक जाना) away from the nascent(emerging,उदीयमान) strategic partnership. It is only in the last one year that there has been some course correction in both capitals. If in 2005 it was the nuclear deal that opened the door to a strategic partnership, in 2015 it is the strategic partnership that has enabled a closure on the nuclear deal.

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Who rules cyberspace?

A new architecture of social power and control is getting built with its core in the U.S. India should work through the BRICS group to develop an alternative to this Internet hegemony
The Internet evokes a deep dilemma(confusion,दुविधा) of whether ‘to govern or not’. Few things work as well as the Internet does: it’s always on, always obliging, and consists of endless possibilities, routinely conjuring wonders that we have not dreamt of. On the other hand, it is difficult not to be troubled by how the Internet is everywhere, but without any clear means of accountability and political reaction to how much it is changing around us. But without sufficient clarity regarding the nature of the problems and the required solutions, mere general political scepticism(disbelief,संशयवाद) cannot hold a candle to the populist governmental-hands-off-the-Internet sentiment. The latter is expectedly strongest among the richer classes, who trust the devices of the market to get the Internet to do their bidding. Other than routine knee-jerk reactions over people freely expressing themselves on the Internet, which could threaten various kinds of power elites(group of superior,विशिष्ट वर्ग), while also sometimes causing genuine security and cultural concerns, there exists no serious political conceptions around the Internet in India today, much less its appropriate governance in public interest.

This state of affairs is quite detrimental(harmful,हानिकारक) to society as the Internet is becoming closely associated with social power and control in almost all areas. It has become like a global neural system running through and transforming all social sectors. Whoever has control over this neural network begins to wield unprecedented power — economic, political, social and cultural. Two elements of this emerging system are the connectivity architecture and the continuous bits of information generated by each and every micro activity of our increasingly digitised existence — what is generally known as Big Data. Even a superficial scan of how the triple phenomenon of digitisation, networking and datafication is occurring in every area will suggest the nature of consolidation(strengthen,मजबूत) of power in the hands of anyone who can control these two elements.

Every sector is impacted
Take the agriculture sector for example. Monsanto is now increasingly a Big Data company, as it holds almost field-wise micro information on climate, soil type, neighbourhood agri-patterns, and so on. Such data will form the backbone of even its traditional agri-offerings. It is easy to understand how data control-based lock-ins are going to be even more powerful and monopolistic than the traditional dependencies in this sector. Recently, John Deere, the world’s largest agricultural machinery maker, told the U.S. Copyright Office that farmers don’t own their tractors. Because computer code runs through modern tractors, farmers receive “an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle”. There is a pattern of end-to-end informational controls.

Similar developments are occurring in every other sector. Policymaking and governance are becoming dangerously dependent on Big Data, even as the public sector is all but giving up its traditional responsibilities for public statistics. The state is increasingly dependent on data collected and controlled by a few global corporations. Data companies such as Google are entering verticals like automobile and health in a manner that is threatening the traditional players in these sectors. Doctors subscribing to medical information networks carrying patient data, disease demographics, pharma information, and so on could soon become but appendages(process,प्रक्रिया) of the network. The network they think right now is a mere support may become the primary agent in the relationship. Such is the power of the network, vis-a-vis its peripheral users. Network and data providers in the education sector sell their services in the name of personalised offerings for every student, and every context. Schools with resources may find them alluring(attractive,आकर्षक), but then they merely add to the power of the monopolistic networks, at the expense of their peripheral users. As their power consolidates, so do the terms of engagements mutate(change,परिवर्तित) in the favour of the network controllers.

Here we have deliberately used examples of power shifts across whole sectors induced by digital networks. On the individual-use front, it is perhaps even easier to see the kind of social power exercised by those who can at will alter the algorithms of Facebook and Google, which increasingly provide us the logic and pattern of our social relationships and of means of accessing information and opinion making.

All this should set us thinking about who really controls the digital connectivity patterns and Big Data. In this regard, one can speak of a global unipolar networked-digital complex, with its elements of political and commercial power, both overwhelmingly concentrated in the U.S..

We are therefore witness to a phenomenon which is of extreme social importance, spanning all sectors of society. And the powerful levers of control of this phenomenon almost entirely lie in an eco-political domain over which the Indian society or state has no control, and very limited influence. This should be a public policy nightmare. However, you would not suspect it if you were watching the political discourse in India, not only inside the government but also outside. One comes across periodic discussions on freedom of expression issues, while the state, and some civil society actors, have begun to show heightened security-related anxieties. But one hears nothing about the overall new architecture of social power and control that is getting built, with its core in the U.S. It implicates very significant long-term economic, political, social and cultural issues that should greatly concern a country like India. Even freedom of expression and security are significantly related to this new power architecture.

Governments are traditionally slow on the take with regard to such rapidly moving phenomena, however socially important they might be. Civil society engagement in this area is dominated by middle class interests, whereby markets tend to be considered as essentially benign. Their major struggle is against the excesses of the state, the Internet no doubt being a significant new arena for such excesses. This has resulted in serious blind-spots regarding the larger architectural issues about the global Internet, with far-reaching economic, social and cultural implications. It is urgently required to undertake a systematic examination of these issues, situating them in the geo-political and geo-economic logics that overwhelmingly drive them. Appropriate domestic and foreign policies have to be developed within such a larger understanding.

India’s geopolitical options

Even for a country of India’s stature, it is not easy to play the geo-political game on its own, and certainly not in an area viewed by the dominant actors as among the most crucial for establishing global political and economic domination. No quarters will be given here, as has been clear from the pronounced non-activity in the limited UN-based global forums dealing with Internet governance issues. This, therefore, is not a field for the faint-hearted; it requires strong real politik approaches.

The only option left for India is to go with the strong nations that are similarly placed with respect to U.S.’s digital hegemony. Although this is one area where the EU countries are almost as much the victims as other countries, it is unlikely that they will break their geo-political alliance with the U.S. any time soon. They would either keep suffering silently, or seek solutions at the bilateral level with the U.S., and through strengthening EU level regulation. Just last month, the economic ministers of Germany and France sought a “general regulatory framework for ‘essential digital platforms’” at the EU level.

India should work through the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to develop an alternative to the U.S.-based global unipolar networked-digital complex. This may be the only viable path right now. It could be difficult for BRICS to work together on issues involving civil and political rights, for which reason the cooperation could focus on economic issues. The global architecture of the Internet today is mostly determined by its geo-economic underpinnings.

Going beyond the typical one-off treatment of Internet and big data issues, BRICS must begun to see them in a larger geo-systemic framework. The last BRICS summit gave a resounding response to the global financial hegemonies by setting up a New Development Bank, and an alternative reserve currency system. The next BRICS summit in Ufa, Russia, in July 2015 should come up with a similar systemic response to the U.S.-centred Internet. This can be achieved by pulling together a strong framework for BRICS cooperation on digital economy. That would be the biggest game changer with respect to what is now a complete stalemate(dead end,गतिरोध) over global governance of the Internet.

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Farming is not a political game

Given the high investment and negative incentives such as input subsidies, small farmers have not benefited from government schemes.
Everything about the suicide of the farmer from Dausa, Gajendra Singh, save the tragedy for his family, has been theatre — the very public venue, the occasion of a political rally, the politicians happily playing their populist cards, and the media’s focus on trivialities(something of small importance,तुच्छ). The tragedy is being skilfully milked for all its political mileage without addressing the grave issue of farmer suicides in India, which occur at the approximate rate of about 1,500 per annum and represent 11 per cent of the total number of suicides in the country.

Subsidies exist everywhere
Farmers are the holy cows of every country. They are the recipients of quotas, subsidies, and tax benefits not just in India but also in Europe and the U.S. In fact, benefits extended to the agricultural class in the West are significantly more than in India. According to a World Trade Organization filing, India’s total farm subsidy stands at $56 billion; this caters to approximately 120 million Indians who are engaged in full time or part-time cultivation.

In contrast, the U.S. pays out an average farm subsidy of approximately $20 billion to some two million farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural workers; the European Union pays €58 billion to its agricultural class that numbers slightly over 27 million. These numbers offer some perspective on the state of agricultural subsidies in India and where the focus of reform initiatives should lie.

Interestingly, studies into the causes of farmer suicide have not yielded(give,देना) any concrete results. It is usually found to be a confluence of pressures, of which indebtedness is a major but not primary factor. In a 2014 study, a prevalence of three factors accounted for almost 75 per cent of farmer suicides — land ownership of less than 10,000 m, excessive reliance on cash crops, and a debt of Rs. 300 or more.

The increasing vulnerability(weak,कमज़ोर,असुरक्षित) of this particular segment of farmers is a long story. In essence, however, the Green Revolution of the 1970s and early 1980s exacted a price in terms of soil salinity, fertiliser consumption, and water requirement. Farms that were not viable tried to get more bang for their buck by opting for higher yields through modified seeds and by growing cash crops. These were more expensive and susceptible to the vagaries of the market; if a crop failed, the burden of debt on a small farmer was enormous(large,बड़ा).

Small holdings stay unviable
Admittedly, the government has had several schemes for decades now to help farmers modernise their holdings. Unfortunately, the high initial investments required, in combination with negative incentives such as input subsidies (fertiliser, pesticide, water, electricity), have meant that small farms could not reap the benefit of these schemes and remained unmechanised, without micro-irrigation, and with poor crop storage facilities. Thus, small holdings continue to be unviable and the input subsidies that politicians eagerly announce do little to change this fact. In essence, government assistance does not usually reach the neediest segment. It is also a myth that frequent bank loan waivers alleviate(reduce,कम करना) the penury(poverty,गरीबी) of small farmers. In fact, most small farmers have hardly any collateral, and also fail to satisfy other conditions to qualify for bank loans in the first place. As a result, they turn to local moneylenders who charge exorbitant(higher,बहुत ज्यादा) rates of interest. As a 2012 government report revealed, 85 per cent of farmers who held less than 0.1 hectares of land had loans pending to moneylenders, while among those owning over 10 hectares, only 21 per cent resorted to borrowing from the unorganised sector. The methods that moneylenders use to recover their investment are legend, and likely the direct contributors to farmer suicides.

Living on the edge

The cumulative result of corruption, inefficiency, and lack of access to finance keeps small farmers in a high-risk category, where just a medical emergency or a marriage — even the poorest in India cannot abandon(give up,leave,छोड़ देना) extravagant marriage ceremonies — can tilt(To incline or bend from a vertical position,झुकाना) the balance from borderline sustenance to debt, poverty, and suicide.

Though the local requirements may vary from region to region, agriculture in India is desperate for a complete overhaul. This cannot be done in isolation(separate,स्वतंत्र रूप से) — if farmers are to be displaced from their lands, there must be alternative sources of income for them. In that regard, this government’s ‘Make in India’ programme is vital. If industry and manufacturing can absorb labour, with a little regulatory help, farm holdings can grow larger and become viable.

Yet, for industry to expand, it needs power and land. This is where the government’s efforts to reform land acquisition laws and improve the energy situation in the country interlock. Each sector carries part of the weight towards an eventual improvement in Indian agriculture and the lives of small farmers.

This is the set of reforms that politicians and the media need to be discussing, not the parasitic politics one has become accustomed to in this country.

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What makes cities really smart

Rather than grandiose(impressive,भव्य) plans, smart cities should focus on just three things: transportation, e-governance and easy land titling
There is no one definition for India’s proposed smart cities. The Ministry of Urban Development provides benchmarks for various services — maximum commute(convert,बदल देना) time should be 30 minutes in medium-sized cities and 45 minutes in metros; water availability must be 135 litres per capita per day; 95 per cent of homes should have shops, parks, primary schools and recreational areas within 400 metres, and so on. The proposed cities range from Varanasi to Dholera to Amravati, covering brownfield and greenfield areas. Benchmarks would be different for both; given lack of significant Internet penetration, brownfield smart cities cannot, for instance, focus on skyscrapers(tall building with many stories,गगनचुम्बी) or lavish(rich,expensive,खर्चीला,महंगा) promenades(mall,विहारस्थल) first.

City planning has undergone several changes since Independence. In the 1950s, regional planning and the city master plan grew in importance, but stayed divorced from the complex realities of a poor, independent, post-colonial country. While urban poverty rose, master plans fetishised about leisurely(easygoing,slowly,धीरे धीरे), low-density, spread-out cities, and obsessed over removing slums. This “high modernism” resulted in plans for newer cities. The National Commission on Urbanisation identified 329 cities called GEMs (Generators of Economic Momentum), which were further divided into National Priority Centres and State Priority Centres. Urbanisation was expected to grow along those corridors.

Bhubaneswar and Chandigarh were especially planned to represent modern India, emblems(symbol,प्रतीक) of “a new town, a symbol of India’s freedom, unfettered by traditions of the past” (Nehru, 1948). A ‘garden city’ with no high-rise buildings, Chandigarh’s wide boulevards broke the city into self-sufficient sectors, promoting liveability and exclusion.

However, the structure had its failures. Chandigarh’s urban planning was defined by an “absence of local authority, a lack of understanding of the local culture and values on the part of the planners, and the history of the region.” (Kalia, 1985, 135). In a survey of 21 cities in the Annual Survey of India’s City Systems (2014, Janaagraha Centre), Bhubaneswar and Chandigarh came close to the bottom in quality of life. Bhubaneswar scored low in urban capacities and resources as well as in transparency, accountability and participation.

Over time, national plans grew more reactive, and stuck to managing things as they were. A desire for better, cleaner, inclusive cities remained unfulfilled. We renamed more cities than building new ones.

The idea of a smart city, for most of the 20th century, was science fiction. But cities can now integrate critical infrastructure such as roads, rails, subways and airports; optimise resources better; and plan preventive maintenance. Given India’s finance crunch, any smart city we plan should focus first on three things: urban transportation, e-governance and land titling.

Urban transportation

For a sustainable city, public transport has to be the main artery. With metro systems viable only in large cities, integrated bus services will be primary. While the National Urban Transport Policy, 2006, pushed for public transport to rise from 22 per cent to 60 per cent, only 30 major Indian cities out of 90 have an in-place bus system. Even Delhi, with its extensive metro, faces significant gaps in its efforts to provide cross-sectional connectivity, with just 6,500 buses instead of 20,000. India’s bus services continue to be hamstrung(powerless,कमज़ोर) by limited or declining fleet sizes, loss-making services, inadequate(not enough,अपर्याप्त) resources, poor service quality and ignorance about modern vehicle technology.

Cities should design bus routes to ensure multi-modal integration. A city-level Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority, backed by legislation, should facilitate coordinated planning and implementation of transport projects. We need an intelligent software to improve systems for vehicle location, collecting online fares, priority signalling for buses, and real-time bus information. Cities should also set up Traffic Information Management Control Centres for effective enforcement and monitoring of traffic rules.

Financing this will require significant restructuring. A dedicated Urban Transport Fund, as seen in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Jaipur, should seek to generate inflows through advertisement revenue, additional vehicle registration fees and congestion taxes to fund new projects. A special purpose vehicle (set up in collaboration with the municipal corporation, city and private players), as seen in Indore and Jabalpur, could manage bus operations.

Better e-governance

The Indian government has experimented with various e-governance initiatives, most of which have failed to materialise, given poor cyber security and significant privacy and data protection risk. But the implementation of a secure ICT Infrastructure, comprising wireless hotspots, wi-fi networks, and fibre optic Internet delivery at home, remains fundamental.

E-governance could learn from these examples. The U.K.’s “Tell us Once” service allows citizens to inform public authorities about birth, death or significant life events just once. San Francisco’s DataSF.org displays public transportation arrival and departure times, recycle zones, crime patterns and more. Service requests for pothole repairs can be tweeted. Sweden has verksamt.se, both for entrepreneurs and for citizens to use theme-based portals on healthcare, taxation, etc. All procurement and invoicing is conducted electronically, restricting corruption.

Land titling

Providing affordable housing remains a critical challenge. The has been exacerbated(make worse,बिगाड़ देना) artificially by poorly conceived Central, State and municipal regulations, leading to land prices that are much higher than intrinsic levels. Urban development projects still have to undergo(experience,झेलना) a lengthy approval process — developers have to spend two-three years getting permissions from nearly 40 departments.

Titling issues and the lack of property rights information make this worse. While the law requires compulsory registration of the sale of land, it does not ask the registration authority to verify land history or ownership from the seller, weakening buyer protection and acting more as a fiscal instrument for the state, instead of a statutory support of certainty to title. Cities recognise presumed ownership to land, a questionable claim, which can be challenged on many fronts.

A smart city would provide formal digitised recognition of property titles, along with increasing transparency and registered brokers, cutting down long search times and high costs of acquiring real estate. A less cumbersome(difficult to handle,जटिल) process of accessing land records through the Department of Registration would increase its use, while helping to show actual transaction prices. Further, land inventory needs to be mapped comprehensively, and be accessible to buyers.

Globally, many countries offer streamlined online processes and incentives to facilitate affordable housing — these can include tax deductions, density bonuses, direct subsidies, land grants, land use changes etc. Many countries such as Malaysia and Canada have revamped their administrative requirements through fee waivers and fast-tracking procedures.

Smart cities can make daily life easier for residents simply by automating routine functions, and providing a basic transportation and housing network. Grandiose visions can be kept for later.

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Three speeches, three futures

Last Sunday, Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi and Sitaram Yechury all put in very different performances, each insisting that they represent the people. Each party seemed to take the poor as a pretext for politics, yet is absent-minded about their real concerns
Politics has a strange way of making you rethink ideas and stereotypes(old belief,रूढ़िवादी) by merely juxtaposing(place side By side,निकट रखना) events. Just as one finishes typecasting persons and parties and feels smug(self-satisfied,आत्मसंतुष्टि) about such judgments, politics delivers a series of googlies forcing a rethink. Last Sunday, one saw such a juxtaposition of events when three leaders addressed mass meetings. The triad of speeches included one by Rahul Gandhi who was returning from his sabbatical(leave,छुट्टी) and addressing a kisan rally. In the second, Sitaram Yechury was taking over as the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from his more tacitum predecessor, Prakash Karat. Finally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was addressing a rally of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers after his return from Canada.

Foil to the other

None of the three speeches was by itself exceptional. But each of the trio, and then together, created a conversation as if three hit movies had been introduced on the same day. The first surprise was that of Mr. Modi. He looked almost reluctant(unwilling,अनिच्छा) to be in India after the highs experienced after visiting Europe and Canada. In all his overseas visits, it is clear that Non Resident Indians (NRIs) dote(love,प्यार) on his nationalism and his alleged(declared,कथित रूप से) efficiency while he revels in their success and their enthusiasm for him. After the exciting NRI engagements, India almost seems banal(commonplace,साधारण) and disappointing to him, one could say. Mr. Modi, in his speech, seemed to complain about the Indian gene that discourages an approval of authority. The native Indian, unlike his counterpart abroad, is a determined contrarian. Worse, the Opposition seemed to have stolen Mr. Modi’s punch lines. His voice had more of a bully’s humour and he almost sounded like yesterday’s newspaper.

In contrast, Sitaram Yechury sounded human, relaxed, even casual. As visual appearances go, the careful grooming of Mr. Modi was not for him. Mr. Yechury almost looked like an absent-minded boy scout being asked to take over his party. He presented a clenched(tight,जकड़ना) fist which lacked a dramatic touch. This gesture was informal, almost absent-minded, as if he was flagging down an auto. Yet, one realised why he is the human face of the party. He sounded almost matter of fact. The CPI(M) tried to create a sense of drama but the performance on the podium appeared almost listless.

While Mr. Yechury enacted his leadership role, I looked at how Rahul addressed the kisan rally. For once he was coherent(ordered,सुसंगत), sentences flowed into each other; now, he seems ready to be a leader. Senior Congressmen smiled with content that their “slow” nephew had blossomed at last. The realists knew that he has years to go but at least for the 22 minutes he spoke, his spirit of leadership seemed willing.

Each leader enacted a characteristic script which acted as a perfect foil to the other. Mr. Modi began, didactic as ever, realising that his party has been slipping while he was playing to audiences abroad; the BJP is now losing initiative and is being seen as anti-poor and anti-farmer. Mr. Modi has begun to sound like a speaker at a FICCI meeting and when he declaims that his party has been pro-poor, he sounds hollow(empty,खोखला). The charisma is gone. The poor do not interest him. He projects them as a Congress conspiracy(unlawful act,षड़यंत्र). Now, Mr. Modi wants to talk of the second stage of development; of his exploits and negotiations abroad. He wants to tell his aspiring masses that his negotiations with France and Canada have enabled him to access nuclear energy. He sounds like Father Christmas but the audience is not convinced.

Rahul worked hard in presenting a pro-poor Congress, listing out the party’s attempts to waive rural debt, and remembering how he had promised to fight for them. He contrasted this with Mr. Modi repaying his electoral debt to the capitalists by selling land. He talked of the tribals from Niyamgiri, Odisha, as his little fiefdom, and cited(make reference,उल्लेख करना)  how 400 of them swore to him that if they lost their land, they would become naxalites. Rahul seems more alive, almost grateful for the land issue. What began as a morsel of an issue might turn out to be the crystal seed of a Congress revival. Rahul attacked Mr. Modi with ease contrasting the indifference of the BJP to the Congress’s attempt to side with the farmer.

Reinventing a party

I was watching the show with Kiran Majumdar Shaw of Biocon who detected a deep immaturity in the Congress. She claimed that in being a pro-farmer, pro-tribal, Rahul sounded anti-development. For a corporate leader, there is no greater heresy(unorthodox,अप्रमाणिक). She ended by saying that the Land Acquisition Act needs to be read and understood. Suddenly one realises that what one has on hand is a major class battle.

It is here that the CPI(M) was in the limelight(spotlight,चर्चा में). In his acceptance speech, Mr. Yechury was relaxed, uttering(express,कहना) a few happy lines in Telugu and Hindi. His ease of language was a foil to Rahul’s, and his relaxed sense of leadership, a dramatic contrast to Mr. Modi’s. Whether it is the Congress party’s masses or the CPI(M)’s classes, both seem ready to battle the aspiring generation of Mr. Modi.

There was a vestige(shadow,निशान) of scientism in Mr. Yechury’s speech. He talked of the objective situation and referred to the BJP as a communal party enacting the neo-liberal agenda. He accused the BJP of confusing history with mythology, of being anti-scientific. Like most Marxists, he appealed to history, claiming that history is on his side, inviting the CPI(M) to enter into battle with the BJP. Yet, he was so amiable(friendly,स्नेही) that one was not quite sure whether he was delivering a lecture on table manners or on class war.

One wished that there was less certitude and more doubt. He talked of his comrades(associate,साथी) dying in West Bengal due to the Trinamool Congress’s aggressive and violent ways. There was no moment of reflection, or of guilt that this culture of violence was initiated by the CPI(M) when in power. The personality of the man dominated the moment. With the entry of Mr. Yechury, even people critical of the CPI(M) felt that “acche din aagaye hai” (good times are here). In his speech, he did not have to strain(stress,जोर लगाना) for effect like Mr. Modi or Rahul had to. It was clear that the CPI(M) has found a leader who can reinvent the party of the future. However, his claim that socialism is the way for the future sounds happily old-fashioned.

One needs to contrast the atmosphere of the three speeches. The CPI(M) oozed(leak,बहना) a sense of solidarity. The Congress looked at its potential leader avuncularly(relate to elder,बड़े बूढो जैसा). There was a sense of hope, and of modest expectation. On the other hand, the BJP atmosphere was surly. Mr. Modi was almost disappointed with India and he told his cadres to work hard and ignore ‘the games of the media’. This response reminded one of sour grapes. The man who was, hitherto(so far,अभी तक), the darling of the media, suddenly felt that things are not the same. One could sense unease beneath the superficial(apparent,अल्पज्ञ) calm in his party. He realises that the BJP faces an uphill battle in Bihar and that his party has messed up the script in Jammu and Kashmir.

A hollowness

Even as the detached spectator prepares the report cards of the three men — awarding an ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ to Mr. Yechury, Rahul and Mr. Modi respectively — there is an unmistakable sense of dread(fear,डर). One wants to join in the celebration of the prospect of revival of the CPI(M) and the Congress but there is clearly a degree of hollowness around this political exercise. One wonders whether the three parties can offer much to address the ongoing crises in agriculture, the way to revive the economy and open and good governance. All three thrive(grow,फलना फूलना) on old categories and have little sense of the future. There has never been a time where political ideas in the public sphere have lagged so far behind the imperatives of institution building. It is a strange time for India, what a friend called “a conspiracy of mediocrity(ordinary,साधारण कोटि का) and hysteria”. At this moment, a touch of civility almost seems like a moment of genius.

Each party seems to take the poor as a pretext for politics and yet is absent-minded about them. The Congress has a seasonal interest in the issues of the farmer. The CPI(M) has for long ignored issues related to marginal groups and instead focussed only on organised labour. The BJP prefers the middle class and finds the poor an obstacle(problem,बाधा) to development. One is almost desperate and wants to say “stop the train, I want to get off”. One faces a desperation, where the crisis of faith is so deep, that even a few morsels(bite,कौर) of hope make one grateful.

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