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NCERT asserts right to modify textbooks, rejects ex-advisors' name removal request
The Indian Express | 12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

Reacting to objections from two former chief advisors who sought to have their names removed from the political science textbooks due to “irrational cuts and large deletions,” the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on Friday emphasised its right to make changes based on copyright ownership and stated that the “withdrawal of association by any one member is out of the question,” given that the textbooks are the product of a collective effort.Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav, who served as chief advisors for the political science books for classes 9 to 12 initially published in 2006-07, expressed their concerns in a letter addressed to NCERT director DS Saklani on Friday. In the letter, they stated that they were unable to find any pedagogic justification for the recent textbook rationalization exercise and expressed embarrassment at being associated with what they described as “mutilated and academically dysfunctional” books.Responding to this, the Council released a public statement on Friday night, highlighting that the textbook development committees (of which Yadav and Palshikar were members) ceased to exist once the books were published, and the copyright of the educational materials has since remained with the Council independent of the committee. It further said that all members of the textbook development committee had agreed to this arrangement in writing.“The roles of the members of the Textbook Development Committees in various capacities…were limited to advising on how to design and develop the textbooks or contributing to the development of their contents and not beyond this. Textbooks at the school level are ‘developed’ based on the state of our knowledge and understanding of a given subject. Therefore, at no stage is individual authorship claimed, hence the withdrawal of association by any one member is out of the question,” the NCERT statement reads.Furthermore, the Council clarified that it continues to print the names of all advisors and members of the committee in all textbooks to acknowledge their academic contribution and “for the sake of record.”The NCERT school textbooks are at the center of yet another controversy, with academicians and politicians criticizing the sweeping changes and deletions decided last year (and implemented this year) under the pretext of reducing the curriculum to help students recover from learning disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. These changes include removing all references to the 2002 Gujarat riots, reducing content related to the Mughal era and the caste system, and dropping chapters on protests and social movements.

NCERT asserts right to modify textbooks, rejects ex-advisors' name removal request
1 convicted for 10 Dalit murders after 42-year wait: 'Is this justice?'Premium Story
The Indian Express | 12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The wind was howling through the streets of Firozabad’s Sadhupur village — then in Mainpuri district — that chilly evening on December 30, 1981. The clock had struck 6 pm but it was pitch-black outside. Premwati, then just 30, sat in the dingy kitchen with her sons Harishankar, 12, and Kailash, 8, as her 14-year-old daughter Sukhdevi made rotis.Suddenly, two men entered the kitchen. A third man in a police uniform stood outside the main door as a lookout. For five minutes, the two men fired indiscriminately. Sukhdevi was shot in the stomach, Harishankar in the neck and Kailash in the chest and stomach — all three died on the spot.Somehow, Premwati survived. Shot in the leg, a walking stick would become her permanent companion. It would also become a stark reminder of the day when 10 persons, including six women, belonging to the Schedule Castes were massacred by men belonging to the gang led by dacoit Anar Singh Yadav.Nearly 42 years later — the creation of a new district in 1989 adding about 32 years to the long wait — a Firozabad court pronounced its judgment in the Sadhupur massacre case on May 31. While two of the accused — Anar and Japan Singh — died during the pendency of the case, 90-year-old Ganga Dayal, who was convicted under Sections 302 (murder) and 307 (attempt to murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), was sentenced to life imprisonment and also fined Rs 50,000.“Is this what justice looks like? I spent my whole life waiting for justice. And I get justice now?” cried Premwati, 72, as she sat next to her husband Ram Bharose, 82, in the very house where her children were shot dead nearly four decades ago.The new districtFirozabad district general counsel Rajeev Upadhyay, who appeared for the victims, said the creation of a new district in 1989 delayed the verdict as a lot of time was spent on deciding where the trial should take place.“When this incident happened, the Shikohabad police station (under whose jurisdiction Sadhupur village fell) was in Mainpuri district. In 1989, the Firozabad district was formed and Shikohabad became a part of the new district. Because the case had already started in Mainpuri district, there were arguments over which district court should hear this matter,” said Upadhyay, adding, “It was a while before the (Allahabad) High Court chose the Firozabad court. After that, the accused kept seeking adjournments. That delayed the case further.”As she recalls the carnage, her eyes filling with tears, her throat choking up and her lips trembling, Premwati said, “Everything happened so fast. For a moment, I could not understand what was happening. I was completely numb. I didn’t feel any pain despite being shot in the leg. They just started shooting. They didn’t ask us anything. They didn’t give us a chance to speak. All I can remember is someone saying, ‘Chalo, ho gaya kaam (Let’s go. It’s done)’.”Half of Premwati’s family was wiped out that day. The only survivors were Ram Bharose, Premwati and their son Mahendra Singh, then just 2. Now 44, Mahendra survived only because he was lying in another room that evening. Ram Bharose, who lost his eyesight nearly 10 years after the incident, survived only because he was at a neighbour’s house. The wizened man recalled running towards his house as soon as he heard the unending pop of bullets.Mahendra, who works as a labourer to support his family of seven — his wife, six daughters and one son — said, “The government promised jobs on compassionate grounds to each victim’s family members. I have been trying to get that job since I turned 18. I have written multiple letters to the government. In response, I am sent from one office to another.”Two of Mahendra’s siblings — a brother and a sister who were born after the shooting — too failed to secure the promised job.A few houses away, Ram Naresh said he had only heard about how his 60-year-old grandmother Chameli Devi was gunned down that day. The 36-year-old grew up listening to stories from his father Ram Ratan about her brutal massacre. He said his father died last year and with him died the fight for the promised job on compassionate grounds. Ram Naresh said his father was appointed as a peon for just one year.“He was appointed as a peon at a regional employment office in Agra (over 80 km from the village) in 1982 but dismissed a year later. No explanation was given for his removal,” said Ram Naresh, showing multiple letters written by his father to the district administration seeking the reason for his dismissal. He added, “Four people were given jobs on compassionate grounds but only two still continue to hold their posts. The others were removed without any explanation.”In response to the Firozabad Additional District Magistrate seeking a clarification, a letter dated July 6, 2009, by the regional employment office of Agra division states that Ram Ratan’s services were terminated on “28.02.1983 due to non-receipt of order from the Government/Directorate to maintain the continuity of the post”.That night continues to haunt 58-year-old Kishan Swaroop. A boy of mere 16, he saved his life that night by diving under a cot as soon as he heard the gunfire. He lost three members of his family that day and a fire later consumed almost every document and all photographs of the deceased persons. All Swaroop has to remember them by is an undated newspaper cutting, yellow with age, showing a photograph of his brother Suresh’s body. The photo caption states: “18 year old Suresh: What was my fault?”One of the main witnesses in the case, Swaroop said, “I heard gunfire in my street. I ran inside the house and hid under the cot. A kerosene lamp was lit inside. That’s how I saw the dacoits. Three of them entered the house and opened fire. They killed my brother Suresh (18), my mother Parvati (60) and sister-in-law Sheela Devi (28).”In days that followed, Swaroop said, the village turned into a fortress due to the arrival of state and national leaders such as former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh, then Union Home Minister Giani Zail Singh and then UP Chief Minister VP Singh. Two other VIP visitors — Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Chandrashekhar — would go on to become Prime Ministers.“Since the dacoits had attacked us taking advantage of the darkness — there was no electricity in the village at that time — the government promised the village free electricity for life. The government kept its word for a while. Now, almost four decades later, we are being given electricity bills. The administration has threatened to put us in jail if we don’t pay up. This is like putting salt on our wounds,” said Swaroop.Bhagwan Singh was just a toddler when his grandmother Saguna Devi, aunt Sheela Devi and uncle Suresh were shot in cold blood. The 44-year-old said, “This (the murders) happened because of hatred against the Jatavs. Even today, the Jatavs have a separate cremation ground. We cannot even burn our dead on the same ground as the other castes. When this massacre happened, the leaders promised a memorial for the deceased. That promise still remains unfulfilled.”He added, “The incident continues to haunt us to date. We are victims of one of the biggest caste crimes in the country but the government hasn’t given us the promised jobs. In fact, even basic amenities like water and sanitation have not been implemented in the village. This treatment is shameful.”The Indian Express also reached out to Ganga Dayal’s family. After the shooting, he left his ancestral village Gadh Dansahy, around 25 km from Sadhupur, and moved nearly 50 km away to Nangla Khar village. To a question on caste discrimination, Ganga Dayal’s eldest son Jai Praksh, 62, a farmer in Nangla Khar, said, “There may be casteism everywhere, but we do not discriminate on the basis of caste.”Despite the conviction, Jai Praksh continues to believe that his father is innocent. He said, “My father was not in Sadhupur that day. Due to personal enmity, someone got his name put in the police complaint. The administration has put an old man in jail since May 31. We will file an appeal.”In the order dated May 31, Session judge Harvir Singh of the Firozabad District and Sessions Court said, “The evidence produced by the prosecution in this case establishes the presence of the accused (Ganga Dayal) at the place of occurrence. The statements of eyewitnesses establish the fact that when the accused came to their house, they were present inside and saw them. The evidence presented by the prosecution does not indicate any conclusion other than the guilt of the accused Ganga Dayal.”The aftermath of the massacreAfter the sound of gunfire in the village died, Sadhupur village pradhan Munichandra immediately despatched someone to inform the Assistant Station Master (ASM) of Makkhanpur railway station about the carnage. The ASM passed on the information to DC Gautam, the then Chief Clerk of Shikohabad railway station, located around 15 km from the village. Gautam hurriedly called up the police. On the basis of that telephonic conversation, the Shikohabad police station registered an FIR around 9.15 pm against Anar, Japan and Ganga Dayal.Ramesh Chandra, a witness in the case from the nearby Shivram Gadhi village, said that on the eve of the Sadhupur massacre, Anar and his gang threatened him into providing them shelter for the night.“I was sleeping outside my house. It was around 1 am. Three men came to me and said they wanted to stay there for the night. Out of fear, I gave them space to stay and locked the gate from outside,” Chandra said in his witness statement in court.He added, “The next day, Anar Singh asked me to get a blank paper and pen. He said he would topple the government and commit such a massacre that CO Tyagi (Shikohabad Circle Officer Ramsharan Tyagi) would learn a tough lesson. Anar Singh kept on speaking and I kept on writing. He made me sign the letter. When I asked him what he planned to do with the letter, he said he would see how (UP CM) VP Singh and CO Tyagi would hold on to their positions after this letter. Then, Anar Singh put his stamp on the letter.”Raghuvir, now 61 years old, shows the said letter — which he got laminated since it was an important proof of the crime — that the gang left in a village gali after the murders. Initial paragraphs in the letter express Anar’s anger over the “persecution” of his relatives by “arresting innocent people and keeping them in the police station for 20-20 days”. The letter vows that “there will be more crime” because of this “harassment”.The letter was examined by handwriting expert Shiv Prasad Mishra, who proved that it was genuine. Taking the letter on record, the court said, “Accused Anar Singh (deceased) had enmity with Shikohabad Circle Officer Mr. Tyagi and he had the impression that the poor people were being tortured by the government. In this sequence, this act has been done by waging war against the government, in which ten people died, while the dead people had no fault in any way, but to prove their supremacy, Anar Singh and his other members fired indiscriminately on helpless people.”Sadhupur shooting was the second attack on members of the SC community in the district. On November 18, 1981, 24 people belonging to the Jatav community were murdered in Deoli village, around 30 km from Sadhupur, by a gang of 16 armed attackers led by two Thakur youths wearing fake police uniforms.Raghuvir remembers the visit by Savita Ambedkar, the wife of Dalit rights champion BR Ambedkar, to the village after the massacre. There were talks by the victims’ kin regarding leaving the village but Savita Ambedkar inspired them to stay put and fight for their rights.“I was around 18 then. In that one visit, she left a huge impact on us. She said, ‘If you go somewhere else, what will you do when people there attack you too? Will you run away from there also? This is not the solution. Stay in your home, fight or die, but don’t leave it’. So they stayed and fought back,” said Raghuvir.Despite the deaths and the verdict, much remains the same in the village even today. Bhagwan added, “Caste discrimination is very much prevalent here even now. Even today, when we have a dispute with the Yadavs on any issue, they taunt us by saying, ‘Bhul gaye kya woh din (have you forgotten that day)?’.”

1 convicted for 10 Dalit murders after 42-year wait: 'Is this justice?'Premium Story
Tamil Nadu abuzz with talk of a blockbuster political debut: Actor ‘Thalapathy’ Vijay
The Indian Express | 12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

After years of teasing around with the idea of joining politics — the conversation would come up before the release of several of his films — Tamil superstar Vijay may finally be taking the plunge. Sources close to the actor said he was looking to launch his party following the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and may contest the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly polls.All India Thalapathy Vijay Makkal Iyyakam is an organisation of fans of Vijay, who goes by the screen moniker Thalapathy or leader. All of the star’s activities outside of films, which include social welfare programmes, are conducted under the banner. And it is through the organisation, which has members across all districts of Tamil Nadu, that Vijay is doing the groundwork before he makes a decision.“Everything needed to start a political party is being done now. Our fans are currently being energised with specific local tasks and programmes. Basic data collection from all districts concerning voters and key issues is being carried out. Some agencies are being contacted for future predictions of issues and agendas. There is no fixed date for the party’s launch, but it will be after Lok Sabha elections. He has made up his mind,” a senior member of the Thalapathy Vijay Makkal Iyyakam said.Sources close to him in the film industry said Vijay would not headlong push into the 2024 Lok Sabha elections but plan gradually.Detailing the actor’s plan, they said: “His father (director S A Chandrasekhar) initiated his political plans in 2009 when the fan group was formed. Vijay has always been uncertain and unsure about his political destiny. In 2021, he told us privately that he might not consider politics until a significant political vacuum arises in the state. However, his current move (of starting groundwork) might be to advance his plans, indicating a decision to join state politics currently dominated by (Chief Minister) M K Stalin and (AIADMK leader) Edappadi K Palaniswami.”Another friend said Vijay was preparing for the 2026 Assembly polls. “It (joining politics) requires significant effort and time. But he believes he has a space here, especially with the gradual retreat of DMDK leader Captain Vijayakanth (a yesteryear Tamil star), and Rajinikanth’s decision to abort his political plans,” the friend said, also referring to “the larger political void in the state following the deaths of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi and former chief minister J Jayalalithaa”,Asked if the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections would decide Vijay’s plans, the friend said that would not be the case. “It is not about who is in power in Delhi.” However, the friend added, “the growth and resurgence of the Congress in a post-election scenario will influence his decision”.Vijay and senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi have met in the past. In fact, the initial rumours about the actor’s political debut surfaced after he met Rahul at his Delhi residence, which was a decade ago.Subsequently, his father Chandrasekhar came to be seen as pushing political ambitions for Vijay, with the latter seen as hesitant. In 2020, Chandrasekhar had formed an outfit called the Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (VMI), apparently without Vijay’s permission. In September 2021, Vijay had publicly distanced himself from the VMI and even filed a lawsuit against 11 individuals, including his parents. The VMI was subsequently dissolved.A month later, Vijay had made an indirect foray into politics, when members of his fan organisation contested rural polls, and won 115 of the 169 seats, though it was under an informal arrangement. Vijay’s criteria for choosing the contenders is said to have been “educated youth” and “equal representation for women”.According to sources, in his latest bid, Vijay is acting on his own and has distanced his father from his camp.The film industry in Tamil Nadu has always been intertwined with politics, with the two major parties in the state — the DMK and AIADMK — famously led by popular film personalities. While the DMK’s Karunanidhi was a screenwriter, the AIADMK’s M G Ramachandran, or MGR, was a popular matinee idol. His successor Jayalalitha was a successful and renowned actress. Current Chief Minister M K Stalin’s son Udayanidhi Stalin, the Minister for Youth Welfare and Sports Development, is also an actor.Other major actors have also flirted with the idea of politics. For years, there has been a buzz about superstar Rajnikanth’s political entry, with alleged backing of the BJP and veteran political strategists such as Tamilaruvi Maniyan, until he said in 2020 that he was dropping the plan.Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maalam (MKM), launched in 2018, has so far failed to make a major mark.Among the stars dabbling in politics, Vijayakanth, who had his heydays in the ’80s, had achieved some success. However, he was never considered a “superstar” in the league of the others before him, often branded as the “King of B and C Class theatres”.Vijay, on the other hand, is a massive star and is considered one of the leading film personalities in the state. His films continue to enjoy mega commercial success and he himself has a huge following. It is this status that he is expected to tap into as he makes his way to politics.However, Vijay’s political foray will find resistance from the DMK as well as the BJP. Stalin has already started grooming Udhayanidhi as his successor, and he has been taking breaks from his acting and producing career to increasingly focus on the party.The BJP does not have a veryr amiable relationship with Vijay, with the actor drawing party ire for his barbs against Digital India and GST, the flagship initiatives under the Narendra Modi government, in his 2017 movie Mersal. Then BJP national general secretary H Raja had even attributed communal motives to Vijay, referring to him by his rarely used original Christian name, Joseph Vijay. He had gone on to tweet Vijay’s voter ID with his real name, commenting: “Truth is bitter.”But for fans, it is Vijay’s relative youth appeal — he is 48 — that is his biggest draw, representing a break from traditional, legacy politics. “People will vote if you have a convincing face and dedicated youth behind you. Factors such as old faces, veterans, and legacy belong to old politics,” said one of the leaders of his fans’ association.

Tamil Nadu abuzz with talk of a blockbuster political debut: Actor ‘Thalapathy’ Vijay
In Kolhapur, 2 friends run paan shop together: 'Never occurred that we were from different religions’
The Indian Express | 12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

Dilip Chowgule and Ghani Tamboli have been jointly running a paan shop for 23 years at Shivaji Chowk in Kolhapur, that has turned the epicentre of communal violence recently.Friends for 45 years, religion never came in between Ghowgule and Tamboli. “It is funny that you are asking me how we two did business together for all these years just because I am a Hindu and he is a Muslim. It never occurred to us that we were from different religions,” Chowgule said, giving a hearty laugh.“Do you really think that relations developed through generations would break over rumours and propaganda,” Tamboli asked.On June 7, a mob of few thousands had gathered at Shivaji Chowk to respond to a bandh call by Hindu right wing organisations who claimed that a social media post allegedly glorifying Mughal emperor Aurangzeb hurt the feelings of Hindus. The mob turned violent, pelted stones and tore digital signboards of shops owned by Muslims.Till Thursday evening, Kolhapur police had made more than 40 arrests and were in the process of identifying 300-400 protesters who indulged in violence. The district administration restored internet service on Friday, after 48 hours of affecting routine businesses in the city.Chowgule and Tamboli run the paan shop since 2000 and wonder what changed in Kolhapur, which had never witnessed communal violence. Their business has now been passed onto the next generation.“My wife is like his (Tamboli) sister and so is his wife to me. We go to each other’s house during festivals. When Taufik (Tamboli’s son) goes to Mumbai, he stays with my elder brother. We are so closely knit that religious identities were never a problem to us,” Chowgule said.Pointing to the statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Tamboli said, “We pass by that statue daily and consider him our true king. Almost 90 per cent of our friends are Hindus. Why would any of us try to disturb peace in our life?”Few metres ahead in Ganji gully, the scene was different. Sources in Kolhapur police said Hindu houses in the area were provided with saffron flags to mark them, on the night of June 6. “The investigation is in progress. But initial information shows that it was done to point out which houses are not to be targeted,” an official said.A Hindu resident said on the condition of anonymity that those youngsters who pelted stones were not local people. “When I tried to shout at them, I was abused. I had no option but to back off in front of a mob of over hundred with stones,” he said.Local Congress leader Taufik Mulani said that the violent mob threw stones at the building of Muslim boarding started by Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj. “Did they even realise that there were throwing stones at a structure set up by Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj? Moreover, it was the headquarters for activities and meetings when Maratha silent march was held in Kolhapur,” he said.All mosques in Kolhapur appealed for peace in the city after the Friday prayers. For Chowgule and Tamboli, friendship is sacred and so is their respective religions. “We treat each other as a human being. That’s the success of our long partnership,” he said.

In Kolhapur, 2 friends run paan shop together: 'Never occurred that we were from different religions’
Making sense of Modi govt’s latest MSPs: Good economics and bad politics or the other way around?Premium Story
The Indian Express | 12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

Dear Readers,Earlier this week, India’s Union government announced the MSPs (minimum support prices) for 17 crops in this year’s Kharif season.MSPs play a very significant role not just for India’s farmers and the farm economy but also for India’s consumers and the kind of food prices they face. That is why MSP announcements are keenly watched and often deeply politicised. With India heading for a general election in less than a year, the MSP announcements could prove of critical political significance, apart from their economic impact.What are MSPs? Why do they matter?MSPs are “support prices” announced by the government (and sometimes state governments add a bonus amount to them) and the intended aim in announcing them is to provide a safety net for farmers.As a farmer, one is worried sick each season because one does not know what one’s harvest will fetch. Given the acute lack of warehousing and cold storage in India, a farmer has little bargaining power in the market. If the market prices are below the farmer’s cost of production they and their families can be ruined.Widespread distress of this kind tends to have broader ramifications as well. For example, if one particular crop, say cotton, led to the ruin of many farmers, then farmers will avoid growing cotton next season. This, in turn, will reduce supply and push up prices. Higher prices will then show up across the different products for consumers.By announcing MSPs, the government makes a promise that it will buy (called procurement) from farmers at the announced prices. Since MSPs are calculated in such a manner that covers the basic costs of cultivation, the hope is that MSPs will save farmers from ruin.The other big purpose of MSPs is to serve as a tool in the hands of the policymakers to tweak the production pattern. If the government wants to incentivise the production of pulses, as against paddy (rice), then it can give a relatively higher hike in MSP of pulses than the MSPs for paddy.Does the government actually buy all crops at MSPs?No. It is important to remember that, while the government announces MSPs for a whole host of crops both in the Rabi (winter) and the Kharif (summer) season, it procures only a few of those crops and that too from only a few states.According to a CRISIL research report, crops such as paddy, cotton and, to a limited extent, pulses get procured at MSP. Only few Kharif crops benefit from government procurement.“However, not all crops benefit from it (MSPs), leave alone equally. While around 45% of the paddy produced is procured at MSP, it is about 25% in case of cotton and only 1-3% in case of pulses,” according to CRISIL.“Also, the procurement is concentrated in only a few states — in Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana for paddy, in Telangana and Maharashtra for cotton, and in Maharashtra and Karnataka for pulses,” states the CRISIL report.What are the economic and political aspects of MSP announcements?India’s farm economy — or for that matter that of any country — doesn’t really fully adhere to market principles. Partly that’s because national food security is a strategic concern. Moreover, if large a population is involved in farming as it is in India, then it is unlikely that farming will prove to be remunerative.But government intervention makes everything political. Closer to elections, it is natural for governments to announce high MSPs to win over the farmer vote.The economic aspect of MSPs, however, is not limited to farmers alone. While a sharp rise in MSPs (or higher MSPs over a sustained period) does alleviate farm distress, it can also lead to a spike in food inflation.The trade-off between the interests of the farmer, on the one hand, and consumers, on the other, makes deciding MSPs so difficult. The political dimension just adds to the complications.So, what has been announced?On June 7, the government announced that MSPs for the Kharif season will go up by an average of 7%; the actual range varies between 5% to 10.5% depending on the crop.However, since different people speak for different stakeholders, this increase can be viewed in many different ways.How big is the hike in MSPs? Has it been motivated by political concerns?“This is the highest MSP increase in the last 5 years and the second highest in the last decade,” states a Citi Research note by Samiran Chakraborty (Managing Director, Chief Economist, India).At the same time, “the government has refrained from large MSP spikes usually seen in pre-election years (34.1%, 19.6% and 15.2% witnessed in the last 3 pre-election years),” finds the Citi note (SEE CHART 1).While India’s farm distress is decades long, it is important to remember that it has only deepened over the past decade.How does this hike compare with the rate of food inflation and the rise in cost of production?The prices of cereals went up by almost 14% in April this year. In other words, they were 14% more than what they were in April last year. From that perspective, the MSP hike is modest.However, the Citi Research note finds that cost of cultivation went up by 6.8% and from that perspective, a 7% hike in MSPs is enough to ensure that farm economy does not lose out to the non-farm economy.How will this hike impact inflation and monetary policy?It is unlikely that this hike per se would spike inflation. However, it is noteworthy that food inflation may still spike if the normal monsoon is affected by El Nino.Given that this hike is unlikely to spike inflation by itself, it will allay the apprehensions RBI and the members of its Monetary Policy Committee might have about possible inflation surge later on in the year.What does it mean for the government’s finances?Higher MSPs and more procurement as well as the storage and disbursal of subsidised foodgrains are all expenditures that weigh down government’s financial health. According to Citi Research, this “MSP increase will not materially alter the government’s food subsidy budgeting.”What will be the likely impact on rural India?This is possibly the crucial aspect of the MSP decision.Latest GDP data showed that personal consumption growth — the biggest contributor to India’s GDP — was growing at around 2.5% over the past two quarters. This is starkly lower than India’s overall GDP growth rate of 7.2%.Worse, within this broader trend, it is the rural economy that is lagging behind urban India. “The consumption growth trends in the GDP have been weak with drivers of rural consumption remaining uneven,” states the Citi Research note.Given this context as well as the market expectation that the Karnataka election result would have resulted in a stimulus for the rural demand, this hike is muted.“The 7% MSP increase might just be enough to cover the increase in cost of production but does not signal a pre-election populist boost to rural consumption. There was some market perception that after the Karnataka election results, the government might be focusing more on stimulating rural demand,” states Citi notes.However, it does provide a caveat.“The extent of MSP increase does not support that hypothesis, though in theory, populist spending could be more back-ended, closer to the general election date.”See you on Monday,Udit

Making sense of Modi govt’s latest MSPs: Good economics and bad politics or the other way around?Premium Story
Very severe storm to intensify further in next 24 hours, says IMD
The Indian Express | 12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
Very severe storm to intensify further in next 24 hours, says IMD
  • Cyclone Biparjoy to intensify in next 36 hours: IMD

    • The Indian Express

    In the next 36 hours, the very severe cyclonic storm Biparjoy is set to intensify and will be heading north-northwestwards in the next two days, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted.As per the weather agency, the cyclone over the east-central Arabian Sea was located 840 kilometers west-southwest of Goa and 870 km west-southwest of Mumbai at 11:30 pm on June 8.“Very severe cyclonic storm Biparjoy over east-central Arabian Sea at 2330 hours IST of 08th June, 2023 over about 840 km west-southwest of Goa, 870 km west-southwest of Mumbai. To intensify further gradually during next 36 hours and move nearly north-northwestwards in next 2 days,” IMD said in a tweet.The IMD has advised fishermen not to venture into cyclone-hit areas in the Arabian Sea.Meanwhile, coastal districts of Gujarat are gearing up for the likely impact of cyclone Biparjoy brewing in the east-central Arabian Sea. The administration has readied cyclone shelters and drawn plans to evacuate people from vulnerable areas and activate control rooms at the block levels.Collectors of coastal districts, including Kutch, Jamnagar, Dwarka, and Porbandar, held meetings with officers of the respective district administrations to prepare for the likely impact of Biparjoy.Moreover, in Maharashtra, the progress of the southwest monsoon that brings rain across the Indian sub-continent is being monitored after it arrived in Kerala on Thursday, seven days later than the normal arrival date, an India Meteorological Department official said.The normal date for onset of monsoon in Maharashtra is June 10 and in Mumbai is June 11, said S G Kamble, the Mumbai head of IMD Regional Meteorological Centre.Weather forecastConditions are favourable for further advance of the Southwest monsoon into some more parts of the central Arabian Sea, remaining parts of Kerala, some parts of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, IMD predicted.The Southwest monsoon might advance into some more parts of the southwest, Central and northeast Bay of Bengal, and some parts of northeastern states during the next 24 hours, as per the weather department.🌧️ GujaratLight to moderate rain is very likely at isolated places in the South Gujarat region namely Navsari, Valsad, and in Daman, Dadara Nagar Haveli, the IMD said.Further, dry weather is expected in all the districts of Saurashtra-Kutch, and Diu.🌧️ South IndiaLight rainfall with thunderstorms is very likely over Kerala, Lakshadweep, Coastal & South Interior Karnataka whereas isolated to scattered activity is expected over North Interior Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh during the next 5 days, as per IMD.Meanwhile, heavy rainfall is very likely at isolated places over Andaman & Nicobar Islands on June 9 and 10; Kerala from June 9 to 13; Lakshadweep from June 9 to 11; and Coastal & South Interior Karnataka during June 10-13.🌧️ Northeast IndiaScattered to fairly widespread rainfall with thunderstorms very likely over the northeast region during the next 5 days, the weather agency reported.Moreover, very heavy rainfall is likely at isolated places over Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura on June 9 and Assam and Meghalaya on June 12 and 13; isolated heavy rainfall over Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur and Mizoram during June 9-13.Northwest IndiaAccording to IMD, a rise in maximum temperatures by about 2°C is very likely over the plains of Northwest India (except Rajasthan) during the next two days. (With ANI inputs)

  • Cyclone Biparjoy likely to intensify into severe cyclonic storm today

    • The Indian Express

    A cyclonic storm that formed over east-central and adjoining southeast Arabian Sea near Goa at 11.30 pm on Tuesday, is likely to move nearly northwards and intensify into a severe cyclonic storm, and then into a very severe cyclonic storm during the next 24 hours, the India meteorological department (IMD) said in its morning bulletin.“The cyclonic storm ‘Biparjoy’ (pronounced as ‘Biporjoy’) over eastcentral and adjoining southeast Arabian Sea remained practically s stationary during last 3 hours and lay centred at 0230 hours IST of 7th June, 2023 over the same region near latitude 12.5°N and longitude 66.0°E, about 900 km west-southwest of Goa, 1,020 km southwest of Mumbai, 1,090 km south-southwest of Porbandar and 1380 km south of Karachi,” the meteorological department bulletin read,Cyclonic storm “Biparjoy” over eastcentral and adjoining southeast Arabian Sea at 0230 IST of 07 June near lat 12.5°N and lon 66.0°E, about 900km WSW of Goa. Likely to move nearly northwards and intensify into SCS during next 06 hour.@WMO@ndmaindia@DDNewslive@airnewsalerts pic.twitter.com/jXdgDJcHFR— India Meteorological Department (@Indiametdept) June 7, 2023Gale winds with speed 80-90 km per hour to 100 km per hour are expected to prevail over the eastcentral Arabian Sea and the adjoining areas of westcentral and southeast Arabian Sea. It is likely to escalate to 105-115 km per hour to 125 km per hour over the same area from Wednesday evening. the IMD said. The areas adjoining westcentral and south Arabian Sea and those along the north Kerala-Karnataka-Goa coasts are likely to experience squally winds with speed 40-50 km per hour to 60 km per hour.According to the IMD, the intensity of Cyclone Biparjoy, its location of formation in the Arabian Sea and its subsequent movement are likely to affect the onset of the southwest monsoon over Kerala.This is the second cyclone to form within three weeks in the North Indian Ocean. Cyclone Mocha, which formed in the Bay of Bengal, barrelled into Bangladesh and Myanmar causing massive destruction.In 2021, Cyclone Yaas had formed at the time of the monsoon onset. 

How murder mystery of Mysuru diwan’s granddaughter unravelled after 3 yrs — at a liquor shop
The Indian Express | 12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

Shakereh Namazie, or Shakereh Khaleeli, was the granddaughter of Sir Mirza Ismail, one of the visionary diwans of the erstwhile Mysuru kingdom. On May 28,1991, she went missing but police took three years to find out that she had been buried alive by none other than her second husband, Swami Shraddhananda alias Murali Manohar Mishra, in one of the most sensational murders in Bengaluru. What no one expected was that police would solve the crime over drinks at a countrymade liquor shop.Who was Shakereh Namazie?Born in 1947, Shakereh hailed from one of the well-known families of south India. She was the daughter of Gulam Hussain Namazie and Gauhar Taj Begum Namazie, an Indo-Persian Muslim couple. Taj Begum was the youngest daughter of Sir Mirza Ismail.An elegant singer, Shakereh was married in 1965, at the age of 18, to her first cousin Akbar Mirza Khaleeli, who was an Indian diplomat. An ambitious Shakereh got into the real estate business but felt abandoned as her husband was always abroad on various assignments.Mother of Khaleeli’s four daughters, Shakereh came across Murali Mishra, who had renamed himself as Swami Shraddhananda in 1982. Impressed by his spiritual life and spurred by her desire to have a son, Shakereh divorced her husband in 1986 and married Shraddhananda, defying her family and social norms. While she continued to live in Bengaluru, little did she know that her new husband had different plans as she had a lot of property and money in her name. They lived at #81, Richmond Road, at the heart of Bengaluru.Shakereh goes missingWhile Shakereh usually called her children every day, her second daughter Sabah did not get her mother’s call after May 28, 1991. Whenever asked about Shakereh’s whereabouts, Shraddhananda avoided giving Sabah a proper answer but said that she had gone to London for some treatment.After realising that it was not true, Sabah filed a habeas corpus petition in 1992 for her missing mother. Retired police officer B B Ashok Kumar, who then lived close to Shakereh’s house, recalled that though they suspected Shraddhananda, there was no evidence against him. During questioning, he maintained consistency in his statements. The biggest challenge faced by police was that there was no clue even about her body, according to Kumar.The breakthroughWith the case not going any further and bringing embarrassment to the state government, the Central Crime Branch, a special wing of the Bengaluru police, was entrusted with the investigation. Then city police commissioner P Kodanda Ramaiah monitored the investigation into the high-profile case. Several rounds of interrogations of Shraddhananda and Shakereh’s family members had proved futile. In March 1994, police constable Mahadevaiah got close to Raju, a servant who worked in Shraddhananda’s home, by supplying him arrack. After some days, Raju told Mahadevaiah at a countrymade liquor shop that Shakereh had been buried alive by Shraddhananda. The three-year wait ended with police picking up Shraddhananda. As investigations progressed, police unearthed spine-chilling details of the crime.The murder and the motiveOnce they arrested Shraddhananda on the basis of Raju’s inputs, police discovered that Shakereh had sought Shraddhananda’s help to resolve some property issues, came to Bengaluru from Delhi and settled there. Their relationship grew and culminated in marriage. By the end of 1987, Shraddhananda managed to obtain a power of attorney over Shakereh’s property. For him, their marriage was merely a convenient means to acquire her property worth hundreds of crores of rupees.However, Shraddhananda became increasingly infuriated by Shakereh’s continued proximity to her daughters and mother, as he perceived it as a threat to his plans. He thus decided to eliminate her. He deceptively acquired a wooden casket saying that it would be used to safely store antiques and ornaments. He hired labourers to dig a “tank pit” in the courtyard behind their bedroom.On May 28, 1991, Shraddhananda laced Shakereh’s morning tea with sleeping pills. After she became unconscious, he placed her inside the casket and buried her alive in their backyard. It was so well-planned that Shraddhananda had fitted the wooden casket with wheels so that it could be easily dumped into the “tank pit,” which was also covered. Shraddhananda later hosted drinking and dancing parties at the backyard where Shakereh was buried alive.The sentence and court proceedingsPolice filed a chargesheet in the case and C V Nagesh appeared for the prosecution. Civil and sessions judge B S Totad sentenced Shraddhananda to capital punishment. Though Shraddhananda moved the Karnataka High Court, the sentence was upheld. He appealed against it in the Supreme Court, which commuted his death sentence to imprisonment till death in 2008 in a rare judgment.The Supreme Court said in its order, “Death to a cold blooded murderer or life, albeit subject to severe restrictions of personal liberty, is the vexed question that once again arises before this court. A verdict of death would cut the matter cleanly, apart from cutting short the life of the condemned person. But a verdict of imprisonment for life is likely to give rise to certain questions. (Life after all is full of questions!) How would the sentence of imprisonment for life work out in actuality? The court may feel that the punishment more just and proper, in the facts of the case, would be imprisonment for life with life given its normal meaning and as defined in section 45 (The word “life” denotes the life of a human being, unless the contrary appears from the context) of the Indian Penal Code.“In light of the discussions made above, we are clearly of the view that there is a good and strong basis for the court to substitute a death sentence by life imprisonment or by a term in excess of fourteen years and further to direct that the convict must not be released from the prison for the rest of his life or for the actual term as specified in the order, as the case may be,” the order said.Shraddhananda, now 84, is lodged in Sagar Central Prison, Madhya Pradesh. In 2022, he approached the Supreme Court to release him seeking parity with Rajiv Gandhi assassination convicts who were released. He said he had already spent 29 years in jail.In Dancing on The Grave, a recent documentary featuring the crime, Shraddhananda said he was innocent. He claimed that Shakereh died due to illness and that he buried her body and remained silent for fear of getting beaten up by her relatives. He also said he knew that her death would come to light some day.

How murder mystery of Mysuru diwan’s granddaughter unravelled after 3 yrs — at a liquor shop
Impressed by Indore girl’s app, Tim Cook says her work ‘poised to impact world’
The Indian Express | 12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

Among the scores of students who won the Swift Student Challenge as part of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Indore’s Asmi Jain seems to have caught the attention of CEO Tim Cook who thinks her work is “poised to make a profound impact on the world”.The 20-year-old Medi-Caps University student has developed an app to track a user’s eye movements as they try to follow a ball moving around the screen and thus help strengthen their eye muscles. The EyeTrack app was among the  375 winners from Apple’s app development challenge for students this year.“At Apple, our mission is to help people everywhere pursue their passions and bring their best ideas to life. I had an amazing time meeting so many people from India’s innovative iOS developer community earlier this year, and Asmi’s incredible work exemplifies the creativity and ingenuity on display all across this country. She’s already poised to make a profound impact on the world by helping people with their health, and we’re excited to see what she does next,” Cook said after a virtual meeting with Jain.Jain is a first-time winner of the challenge, who started on the project after she found out that her friend’s uncle had to undergo brain surgery which left him with an eye misalignment and facial paralysis. This is what triggered the idea for her app and Jain hopes it can be used by people with a variety of eye conditions and injuries.“It was important for me to create an app playground that could positively impact the lives of people like him. My next goal is to get feedback and make sure it’s effective and user-friendly, and then release it on the App Store,” says Jain. “Ultimately, I want to expand it so that it helps strengthen all of the muscles in the face, and I hope it can one day serve as a therapy tool that people like my friend’s uncle can use at their own pace.”Jain says coding lets her create things that help her friends and my community. “And it gives me a sense of independence that is very empowering.”This year’s challenge saw projects from more than 30 countries and regions, and covered topics as varied as healthcare, sports, entertainment, and the environment.

Impressed by Indore girl’s app, Tim Cook says her work ‘poised to impact world’
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Gujarat Political News

Tamil Nadu abuzz with talk of a blockbuster political debut: Actor ‘Thalapathy’ Vijay
The Indian Express | 12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

After years of teasing around with the idea of joining politics — the conversation would come up before the release of several of his films — Tamil superstar Vijay may finally be taking the plunge. Sources close to the actor said he was looking to launch his party following the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and may contest the 2026 Tamil Nadu Assembly polls.All India Thalapathy Vijay Makkal Iyyakam is an organisation of fans of Vijay, who goes by the screen moniker Thalapathy or leader. All of the star’s activities outside of films, which include social welfare programmes, are conducted under the banner. And it is through the organisation, which has members across all districts of Tamil Nadu, that Vijay is doing the groundwork before he makes a decision.“Everything needed to start a political party is being done now. Our fans are currently being energised with specific local tasks and programmes. Basic data collection from all districts concerning voters and key issues is being carried out. Some agencies are being contacted for future predictions of issues and agendas. There is no fixed date for the party’s launch, but it will be after Lok Sabha elections. He has made up his mind,” a senior member of the Thalapathy Vijay Makkal Iyyakam said.Sources close to him in the film industry said Vijay would not headlong push into the 2024 Lok Sabha elections but plan gradually.Detailing the actor’s plan, they said: “His father (director S A Chandrasekhar) initiated his political plans in 2009 when the fan group was formed. Vijay has always been uncertain and unsure about his political destiny. In 2021, he told us privately that he might not consider politics until a significant political vacuum arises in the state. However, his current move (of starting groundwork) might be to advance his plans, indicating a decision to join state politics currently dominated by (Chief Minister) M K Stalin and (AIADMK leader) Edappadi K Palaniswami.”Another friend said Vijay was preparing for the 2026 Assembly polls. “It (joining politics) requires significant effort and time. But he believes he has a space here, especially with the gradual retreat of DMDK leader Captain Vijayakanth (a yesteryear Tamil star), and Rajinikanth’s decision to abort his political plans,” the friend said, also referring to “the larger political void in the state following the deaths of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi and former chief minister J Jayalalithaa”,Asked if the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections would decide Vijay’s plans, the friend said that would not be the case. “It is not about who is in power in Delhi.” However, the friend added, “the growth and resurgence of the Congress in a post-election scenario will influence his decision”.Vijay and senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi have met in the past. In fact, the initial rumours about the actor’s political debut surfaced after he met Rahul at his Delhi residence, which was a decade ago.Subsequently, his father Chandrasekhar came to be seen as pushing political ambitions for Vijay, with the latter seen as hesitant. In 2020, Chandrasekhar had formed an outfit called the Vijay Makkal Iyakkam (VMI), apparently without Vijay’s permission. In September 2021, Vijay had publicly distanced himself from the VMI and even filed a lawsuit against 11 individuals, including his parents. The VMI was subsequently dissolved.A month later, Vijay had made an indirect foray into politics, when members of his fan organisation contested rural polls, and won 115 of the 169 seats, though it was under an informal arrangement. Vijay’s criteria for choosing the contenders is said to have been “educated youth” and “equal representation for women”.According to sources, in his latest bid, Vijay is acting on his own and has distanced his father from his camp.The film industry in Tamil Nadu has always been intertwined with politics, with the two major parties in the state — the DMK and AIADMK — famously led by popular film personalities. While the DMK’s Karunanidhi was a screenwriter, the AIADMK’s M G Ramachandran, or MGR, was a popular matinee idol. His successor Jayalalitha was a successful and renowned actress. Current Chief Minister M K Stalin’s son Udayanidhi Stalin, the Minister for Youth Welfare and Sports Development, is also an actor.Other major actors have also flirted with the idea of politics. For years, there has been a buzz about superstar Rajnikanth’s political entry, with alleged backing of the BJP and veteran political strategists such as Tamilaruvi Maniyan, until he said in 2020 that he was dropping the plan.Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maalam (MKM), launched in 2018, has so far failed to make a major mark.Among the stars dabbling in politics, Vijayakanth, who had his heydays in the ’80s, had achieved some success. However, he was never considered a “superstar” in the league of the others before him, often branded as the “King of B and C Class theatres”.Vijay, on the other hand, is a massive star and is considered one of the leading film personalities in the state. His films continue to enjoy mega commercial success and he himself has a huge following. It is this status that he is expected to tap into as he makes his way to politics.However, Vijay’s political foray will find resistance from the DMK as well as the BJP. Stalin has already started grooming Udhayanidhi as his successor, and he has been taking breaks from his acting and producing career to increasingly focus on the party.The BJP does not have a veryr amiable relationship with Vijay, with the actor drawing party ire for his barbs against Digital India and GST, the flagship initiatives under the Narendra Modi government, in his 2017 movie Mersal. Then BJP national general secretary H Raja had even attributed communal motives to Vijay, referring to him by his rarely used original Christian name, Joseph Vijay. He had gone on to tweet Vijay’s voter ID with his real name, commenting: “Truth is bitter.”But for fans, it is Vijay’s relative youth appeal — he is 48 — that is his biggest draw, representing a break from traditional, legacy politics. “People will vote if you have a convincing face and dedicated youth behind you. Factors such as old faces, veterans, and legacy belong to old politics,” said one of the leaders of his fans’ association.

Tamil Nadu abuzz with talk of a blockbuster political debut: Actor ‘Thalapathy’ Vijay
Manipur crisis reveals the limits of BJP's politics in the Northeast
The Indian Express | 1 day ago | 09-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
1 day ago | 09-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The continuing violence in Manipur ought to be shocking for many reasons. But its sheer scale, endurance and brutality is still not getting national attention. As is typical, the prime minister who is never shy of taking leadership credit, is completely absent when there is an actual crisis that goes to the heart of both constitutional values and national security. In this instance, it seems like the double-engine sarkar, even after invoking Article 355, is unable to control the violence.It takes nothing away from the culpability of the present dispensation to acknowledge the long-standing and irresolvable contradictions of Manipur politics. Whenever the central organising axis of politics is a distributive conflict between identity-based groups, there is a high chance of violence. This is particularly the case where the conflict inherently has the character of a zero-sum game. In Manipur, the politics of distribution between Kukis and Meiteis turns on four goods whose inherent logic is zero-sum.The first is inclusion in the ST quota which is the proximate background to the current conflict. By its very nature, the inclusion of more groups in the ST quota will be a threat to existing beneficiaries. The second is land, and the tension between the valley and the hills. This is also a zero-sum resource, where protecting the land rights of Kukis is seen as foreclosing the opportunities for other groups. The third is political representation, where historically Kukis have felt dominated by the Meiteis. The fourth is patronage by the state in the informal economy, in which groups compete against one another for control of informal trade. Each state intervention in regulating trade becomes a locus of conflict.Place on top of that a default demand that the boundaries of ethnicity and territorial governance should, as much as possible, coincide. In principle, these demands could be negotiated through building inclusive democratic institutions. But this is easier said than done, when every policy instrument in contention — quotas, land, representation, and the state-economy nexus — are defined in terms of zero-sum games. The tragedy of Manipur was that, in part, there was no other game in town, one that could prise politics away from this zero-sum alignment of distribution and ethnicity.Dealing with such a situation requires at least three things. It requires a capable state impartially enforcing constitutional values. It requires a political culture that respects identity but does not politicise it. It requires a development narrative that all sections of society can potentially participate in.Instead, the Indian state made Manipur a charnel house of human rights violations, abetted violence and militarisation to unprecedented levels. It opportunistically used ethnicity both for electoral alliances and divide and rule. In some ways, under colonial divide and rule, the state pretended to hover above the various contending groups. The point of divide and rule was to present the state as neutral and shore up its legitimacy. But in democratic India divide and rule has meant the state itself getting implicated with one group or the other. The result was a weakening of the state’s capacity to govern. We can see the long-term effects of this even in the present crisis, where there is widespread agreement that the state security forces and police cannot be trusted to be neutral and impartial. This creates a vicious cycle where all ethnic groups feel the need to preemptively protect themselves. And finally, the state was not a neutral actor in the economy.It is worth remembering this structural contradiction when we diagnose the present moment. The politics of majoritarianism in Manipur was always more complicated. It was this history that had first given the BJP an opening, where the Congress was seen as an instrument of the Valley, so much so that the Kukis called for supporting the BJP. But the current dispensation, rather than seizing the opportunity to create a new politics, has made the same mistakes. Only this time, the consequences are even more tragic and irrevocable.The violence has given a lie to the BJP’s project in three senses. The first is that the BJP can build a capable law and order state. In this instance, that state has proven to be both deeply incompetent and partisan. The ease with which literally thousands of weapons have been looted would shame any half capable state. But more disturbingly, the pattern that the state is seen to be a partisan actor in the violence continues unabated. Second, it exposes the ideological dangers of the BJP’s project.The BJP tried for a brief moment to run with the hare and hunt with the hound. It tried to capitalise on Kuki construal of Congress in Manipur as majoritarian at the same time as it politicised and promoted Meitei identity. Now that contradiction has burst open: A visible demonstration of the limits of Hindutva accommodation. Contingently convenient alliances will, in the end, be overrun by the ideological juggernaut. And third, it has shown that the BJP’s political instincts can be overrated: Its capacity to negotiate complicated social fissures in the North-east has been overestimated. What the BJP had touted as the moment of its greatest ideological triumph, winning in the North-east, is turning out to also expose the limitations of its politics.It is not going to be easy for Manipur to recover from this violence. There are no credible public institutions that can hold perpetrators of violence to account, impartially. The nature of the violence is such that both the Kukis and Meiteis will be left with a deep sense of victimhood. But there is a deeper question: Is there any political force left in the state that can do the job of political mediation? In a situation where, singly, all parties are considered partisan, the only possibility would be an all-party mediation, one that tries to lift Manipur out of a fatal combination of zero-sum identity politics. But such imaginative gestures are now beyond our ruling establishment.When I first read journalist Sudeep Chakravarti’s book, “The Eastern Gate”, one line stood out. He recounts a visit to Churachandpur, ground zero of the current violence, where he sees a sign by a church: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but it ends in death.” Alas, these words seem all too prophetic at the moment, when no one is prepared to break the mould of politics in Manipur. Nero will, of course, continue to fiddle, while Manipur burns.The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express

Manipur crisis reveals the limits of BJP's politics in the Northeast
A UP story: In conviction of Mukhtar Ansari, a fight of two strongmen, a battle for justice
The Indian Express | 2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

On June 5, when a court in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi convicted jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari and sentenced him to life imprisonment for the murder of a local strongman Awadhesh Rai in 1991, his younger brother and Congress leader Ajay Rai hailed the verdict, highlighting that this marked the end of a 32-year-long wait for justice for his family.Awadhesh was 30 years old when he was shot dead. Ajay was then 22. According to the prosecution’s case, on August 3, 1991, Awadhesh was standing outside his house in the Maldiya area of Varanasi when some assailants arrived in a car and opened fire at him. Ajay Rai and an associate were present at the spot, who rushed Awadhesh to the hospital. However, he was declared dead on arrival.An FIR was registered against five accused, including Mukhtar Ansari and his associates, at the Chetganj police station. The complainant was Ajay, who claimed to have witnessed Mukhtar and other assailants gunning down his brother. According to former government counsel Alok Chandra, who had pursued the case, the murder was the fallout of a local “supremacy dispute”. Apart from being a local muscleman, Awadhesh was also engaged in politics and business.In the course of over three decades, Ajay, who switched several parties but continued his legal battle against Mukhtar in his brother’s murder case in which he was a witness and complainant. Before joining the Congress, he had been with the BJP and also the Samajwadi Party (SP).A musclemen turned politician himself, 53-year-old Ajay is a five-time MLA, who has been booked in several criminal cases over the years. He was said to be associated with gangster-turned-politician Brijesh Singh. He belongs to the Bhumihar caste, retaining his hold over his community as well as over Brahmins and seers of the Varanasi region. It is for this reason that the Congress fielded him from the Varanasi seat against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections.Ajay started his political career with the BJP, getting elected as the MLA on the party’s ticket thrice from the Kolasla constituency of Varanasi during 1996-2007. He was eyeing the Varanasi parliamentary seat and parted ways with the saffron party after it decided to field Murli Manohar Joshi from there in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. He then joined the SP and contested against Joshi on its ticket. While Mukhtar Ansari also contested that election on the BSP’s ticket, Ajay came third after Joshi and Mukhtar.However, Ajay soon broke ties with the SP as well and decided to contest the Kolasla seat bypoll as an Independent candidate that he won.Ahead of the 2012 Assembly polls, the then All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in charge of UP Digvijay Singh managed to get Ajay join the Congress fold. He then contested from the newly-formed Pindra seat in Varanansi as a Congress candidate and won.While Ajay could not win the 2017 election from Pindra and lost to Avadhesh Singh of the BJP, he was chosen by the Congress to contest against PM Modi from the Varanasi parliamentary seat in the 2014 general election, when Modi picked Varanasi as his constituency for the first time. In that election, when the then fledgling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s chief Arvind Kejriwal also took the plunge to contest against Modi, Rai finished third behind the runner-up Kejriwal.In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress again pitted Ajay against PM Modi in Varanasi. While Modi garnered over 6.5 lakh votes, SP candidate Shalini Yadav secured 1.95 lakh votes, with Ajay again coming third with1.52 lakh votes. AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had then held a road show in his favour.After Mukhtar Ansari’s conviction in his elder brother’s murder case, Ajay hailed the court’s verdict, saying, “This is the end of a long wait for us. My parents, I, Awadhesh’s daughter, and the whole family kept patience… Governments came and went and Mukhtar strengthened himself. But we did not give up. Because of our lawyers’ efforts, today the court has found Mukhtar guilty in the murder case of my brother…we are thankful to the court.” He maintained that he and his family fought for 32 years for justice in the case.Ajay also demanded that his security be tightened now. “The man, who stood constantly against all odds should be provided security by the government. If required, I would continue to fight the case even in the Supreme Court,” he said. He has long been demanding security from the government, expressing fear for his life.A prominent Bhumihar leader of the Purvanchal region, Ajay is currently one of the six regional heads of the Congress party in UP. He is party in charge of the Prayagraj zone, where the Bhumihar community has a dominant presence. With the Lok Sabha elections less than a year away and the Congress continuing to remain on the margins of UP politics, Ajay’s work seems to be cut out now amid speculation that major players like the BJP and SP are also looking to make overtures to him.

A UP story: In conviction of Mukhtar Ansari, a fight of two strongmen, a battle for justice
  • UP court convicts gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari in 1991 murder case

    • The Indian Express

    A Varanasi court on Monday convicted gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari for the murder of Congress leader Awadhesh Rai that took place more than 30 years ago.Awadhesh Rai, the brother of Congress leader Ajay Rai, was shot dead on August 3, 1991, at the gate of his Lahurabir residence. A case in the matter was registered against Ansari and others.“Mukhtar has been convicted in the Awadhesh Rai murder case of 1991. The court will pronounce its judgment later in the day,” a lawyer told reporters in Varanasi.Reacting to the development, Ajay Rai said, “This is the end of our many years of waiting. I, my parents, Awadhesh’s daughter, and the whole family kept patience… Governments came and went and Mukhtar strengthened himself.“But we did not give up. Because of our lawyers’ efforts, today the court has found Mukhtar guilty in the murder case of my brother,” Rai added.Earlier in April, a Ghaziapur court convicted Ansari and sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment in an Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act case lodged at Mohammadabad police station in Ghazipur district in 2007. This is the fourth case in which Ansari, who is lodged at Banda district jail, has been convicted.More details awaited…

  • Mukhtar Ansari convicted in Awadhesh Rai murder case

    • The Indian Express

    A Varanasi court on Monday convicted gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari for the murder of Congress leader Awadhesh Rai that took place more than 30 years ago.Awadhesh Rai, the brother of Congress leader Ajay Rai, was shot dead on August 3, 1991, at the gate of his Lahurabir residence. A case in the matter was registered against Ansari and others.“Mukhtar has been convicted in the Awadhesh Rai murder case of 1991. The court will pronounce its judgment later in the day,” a lawyer told reporters in Varanasi.Reacting to the development, Ajay Rai said, “This is the end of our many years of waiting. I, my parents, Awadhesh’s daughter, and the whole family kept patience… Governments came and went and Mukhtar strengthened himself.“But we did not give up. Because of our lawyers’ efforts, today the court has found Mukhtar guilty in the murder case of my brother,” Rai added.Earlier in April, a Ghaziapur court convicted Ansari and sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment in an Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act case lodged at Mohammadabad police station in Ghazipur district in 2007. This is the fourth case in which Ansari, who is lodged at Banda district jail, has been convicted.More details awaited…

How Akbar and Aurangzeb have contrasting images in India and PakistanPremium Story
The Indian Express | 2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The study of history plays a crucial role in the nation-building process. This is particularly true for newly-established and post-colonial countries such as India and Pakistan. Both countries share a common past, but were born out of a violent Partition based on religion. The understanding of history in both these countries, thereafter, evolved in contrasting terms. This is best witnessed in the way both countries provide a diametrically opposite characterisation of two of the biggest rulers of Mughal dynasty — Akbar and Aurangzeb.In Indian textbooks and popular imagination, Akbar is often framed as a just and tolerant leader, a Muslim who put the country and people over faith. Meanwhile, his great grandson Aurangzeb is portrayed as the catalyst for the demise of the Mughal empire. In Pakistan, however, Aurangzeb is venerated as the ideal Muslim ruler, one who put his faith above all else. Meanwhile, Akbar is praised for his role as a conqueror and administrator, but denounced for his religious policies. As Pakistani historian Mubarak Ali notes in his paper, Akbar in Pakistani Textbooks (1992), “In the textbooks as well as in academic works, Akbar is criticised for bringing Muslims and Hindus together as one nation and putting the separate identity of the Muslims in danger.” Historian Ian Copland in A History of State and Religion in India (2013) writes that the “difficulty with such a binary approach is that it oversimplifies what are in fact extremely complex issues.” Copland argues that while religion did play a significant role in the lives of South Asians during Mughal rule, the perception of its significance today is influenced by the religious and nationalist politics that succeeded it.To understand those politics, we must first understand why the criticism of Aurangzeb is frequently collocated with the exoneration of Akbar. The recorded secularism of Akbar is rooted in his policy of sulh-i-kul or universal harmony. First articulated by the mystic thinker Sufi Ibn Arabi in the 12th century, the concept posits that kings are bound to a certain social contract with their subjects which permits the practice of any faith, given that all religions are a pathway to God. Following that philosophy, Akbar was known to be tolerant and respectful of all religious beliefs, codifying that tolerance into action and policy. In 1564, when he was just 22 years old, Akbar abolished jizya, the controversial, albeit common, punitive tax against Hindus. He also prohibited the slaughter of cows, ordered a translation of the Vedas, Mahabharata and Ramayana into Persian, and, to the disdain of Sunni clerics, permitted Shias to offer their version of namaz at court.While remaining a pious Muslim, Akbar was also known to drink Ganga water and was the first Mughal ruler to marry into a Rajput family. So revolutionary was Akbar’s religious permissiveness, that by the end of his life, Hindus believed him to be an orthodox Muslim and Muslims believed him to be a Hindu convert.However, Akbar was not without his missteps, chief of which was ordering a massacre of civilians after the Siege of Chittorgarh, possibly to fortify his Muslim credentials amongst Central Asian nobles, says historian Parvati Sharma in an interview with The Indian Express. Eventually though, Sharma says, Akbar was moderated by time and experience, and became a man who allowed complete freedom of religion across his kingdom.As the late scholar Nazid Ahmed writes in the Encyclopedia of Islam, “Akbar was a universal man; he was more than any single group thought of him… (and was) the purest representation of that folk Islam that grew up in Asia after the destruction wrought by the Mongols.” Aurangzeb’s religious policies are hotly debated amongst historians. Some, like Jadunath Sarkar, consider him to have been an orthodox bigot, while others, like Shibli Naumani, argue that his motives were political rather than religious. The former for example, claims in his book, A Short History of Aurangzeb, that the late Mughal ruler wanted to establish  ‘Dar-ul-Islam’, a complete Islamic state in India in which all dissenters were to be executed. On the other hand, Naumani, in  his book, Aurangzeb Alamgir Par Ek Nazar, writes that “Aurangzeb’s zeal for Islam was that of a politician rather than a saint”. What cannot be debated, however, is Aurangzeb’s own devotion to Islam, which was evident from, as Bengali poet Malay Roy Chaudhury writes in a comprehensive paper about Hindu-Muslim relations, the “iconoclastic zeal” he displayed as a prince. After his second coronation in 1659, Aurangzeb issued orders forbidding practices like drinking, gambling, and prostitution in adherence with his Muslim faith. He also abolished a number of taxes that were not authorised by Islamic law, and, to compensate for the lost revenue, reimposed the jizya tax on non-Muslims. Aurangzeb’s orthodoxy can be explained in part by his upbringings and complex rise to power. During Shah Jahan’s reign, there was a protracted struggle for power between Aurangzeb and his three brothers, most notably Dara Shikoh. Dara, who advocated publicly for harmony between Muslims and Hindus, was the heir apparent, favoured by his father to accede to the throne.In order to usurp the line of succession, Aurangzeb battled fiercely with his brothers, eventually sentencing all three to death and confining his father to a gilded prison for the last seven years of his life. According to Copland, these brutal events put into question the legitimacy of Aurangzeb’s rule, prompting him to enact policies that would appease the influential ulama, whose support he desperately needed to retain power. Audrey Truschke, historian and associate professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University, notes that Aurangzeb’s puritanical nature was driven by a need to distinguish himself from Dara and was more a by-product of politics, not religion. Historians are also divided on the factual aspects of Aurangzeb’s rule. As per popular understanding, under Aurgangzeb’s reign several Hindu temples were destroyed in the course of the 18th century. However, historian Richard Eaton, author of Temple Desecration and Muslim States in Medieval India, claims that just over a dozen temples were destroyed under Aurangzeb, with even fewer tied to the emperor’s direct commands. Copland, for his part, asserts that Aurangzeb built more temples than he destroyed.Additionally, while some studies claim that Hindus were barred from official service during this time, other studies show that there were more Hindu officers under Aurangzeb than under any other Mughal Emperor. These contrasting views are unlikely to ever be definitively resolved, especially given that the accounts provided by Aurangzeb’s court historians, Khafi Khan and Saqi Khan, are subject to considerable scrutiny. As both their sources were written years after the Emperor’s death, in The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King, Truschke alleges that they relied on memory and heresy to reconstruct events, “allowing unintentional errors to creep into their chronicles.” Indian historians position Akbar as the exemplar of a just and tolerant Muslim leader, with popular films like Jodha Akbar even celebrating the love between the Emperor and his Hindu wife. In contrast, Aurangzeb is blamed for his supposed cruelty against non-Muslims, his influences on modern day jihadis, and his role in the collapse of the Mughal empire which set the stage for British colonial rule. This depiction of Aurangzeb, and the larger Mughal Empire, was articulated by the British in the early days of colonial rule. Alexander Dow, Scottish orientalist and writer, in his 1772 book The History of Hindostan writes that “the faith of Mahommed is peculiarly calculated for despotism; and it is one of the greatest causes which must fix for ever the duration of that species of government in the East.” For him, and other colonial era thinkers, the solution to this despotism was the imposition of British command over India. While Indian nationalist leaders vehemently rejected the solution, many retained the fundamental characterisation.  In his book, Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru described Aurangzeb as a “bigot and an austere puritan,” who functioned “more as a Moslem than an Indian ruler”.  More than 70 years later, that narrative has not changed. In 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke about Aurangzeb’s “atrocities” and “fanaticism” at an event in Varanasi. In April 2022, on the birth anniversary of Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur, Modi said the Sikh Guru stood “like a rock” in front of “Aurangzeb’s tyrannical thinking.” Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded on the orders of Aurangzeb for refusing to convert to Islam.In Pakistan, however, Aurangzeb is considered to be the personification of an ideal Muslim leader, a notion exemplified by his militarism, personal deference to Islam, and willingness to weave Islamic morality within his empire’s social fabric. Allama Iqbal, a politician and philosopher who was a leading advocate for the Pakistani state, saw Aurangzeb as a nationalist and “the founder of Musalman nationality in India”. Influential political leaders such as Maulana Abul Ala Maududi praised Aurangzeb for his commitment to Islam, calling for his morals to pave the way for Pakistan’s political future.In Pakistani textbooks, Akbar, not Aurangzeb is accused of fermenting the downfall of the Mughal empire. Ali in his article writes that the contrast between the two “appears a conflict between evil and good, and Akbar suffers a humiliating defeat in the hands of textbook historians”.  According to Ali, in Pakistani educational curricula, Akbar is not mentioned directly but indirectly as a rival of Ahmad Sirhandi, a Sufi scholar. Ali quotes one Pakistani textbook that states, “Ahmad Sirhandi, a great Muslim saint and scholar who challenged the might of Akbar to revive and re-establish the glory of Islam in the subcontinent.” The idea that Akbar was not a devout Muslim is rooted in his policy of Din-e-Ilahi, which loosely combines aspects of different religions including Islam, Catholicism and Jainism. Although there is no evidence that Akbar attempted to promote this ideology amongst his subjects (its adherents were numbered at roughly 19 during his reign), Din-e-Ilahi is used by his critics as proof of his vision to distort Islam by combining it with other religions. Ali writes that the arguments to accuse Akbar for the downfall of the Mughal Empire is derived from the Pakistani historian I H Quershi, who vehemently criticises Akbar’s incorporation of non-Muslims in the Mughal Empire. “Akbar had changed the nature of the polity profoundly,” wrote Quershi as cited by Ali. “The Muslims were still the dominant group in the state, but it had ceased to be a Muslim state… Akbar had so weakened Islam through his policies that it could not be restored to its dominant position in the affairs of the State,” Quershi wrote. Akbar’s policies towards the Rajputs were particularly criticised by the historians in Pakistan. Sheikh Muhammad Raqif in Tarikh-i-Pakistan-wa-Hind (1992) writes “he favoured the Rajput so much so that his nobles had lost confidence in him. They regarded the Mughal rule no more Islamic.”Some authors, like M Ikram Rabbani, even blame Akbar’s secularism for the division of Hindus and Muslims, claiming it to be the reason behind the origin of the two-nation theory.On the other hand, Aurangzeb is seen as a vanguard of Islam, a projection of the man that is as influenced by nationalist politics as is his negative characterisation in India. As historian Ayesha Jalal writes in Conjuring Pakistan: History as an Official Imagining (1995),“Pakistan, with its artificially demarcated frontiers and desperate quest for an officially sanctioned Islamic identity, lends itself remarkably well to an examination of the nexus between power and bigotry in creative imaginings of national identity.”However, it is also worth noting that Aurangzeb’s legacy in Pakistan is not absolute. According to a report by the Brookings Institute, the conflict between Aurangzeb and his brother Dara mirrors the struggle for national identity today. The former represents the religious fundamentalists who denounce non-Muslims and the latter, the moderates who believe in tolerance and diversity.The report also states that Dara and his liberal interpretation of Islam is little known outside the circles of the educated elite whereas Aurangzeb’s purported views are far more mainstream. General Zia ul-Huq, who “seeded the extremism of today’s Pakistan with his severe, authoritarian version of Islam,” was heavily inspired by Aurangzeb, and since his time, the Mughal emperor’s image lines the walls of many government offices.Akbar and Aurangzeb were both Muslims. Both rulers of a vast and powerful empire. Both capable of acts of horror and acts of grace. Both hated by some and loved by others. Their actions, and public religiosity, rather than being seen in the context of their time and of their varying political landscapes, is reduced to an overly simplified personification of Hindus versus Muslims and India versus Pakistan.  

How Akbar and Aurangzeb have contrasting images in India and PakistanPremium Story
Operation Blue Star: Learn lessons from history, don't use history to teach a lessonPremium Story
The Indian Express | 2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

It is a testament to the deep meaning and significance of Operation Blue Star that its reverberations continue to be felt. On its 39th anniversary, the people of Punjab pay tribute to the lives lost and remember the pain experienced by individuals and communities. The event left an indelible mark on the collective memory of the nation, whether it was due to the Centre’s decision to direct the army to enter the precincts of the Golden Temple complex, or its aftermath that left a trail of violence, bitterness and a sense of betrayal within the Sikh community.Decades later, Operation Blue Star has become a reminder of the need for respecting religious symbols, rather than a marker of social divisiveness, the politics of religious dominance or the assertion of the notion of a theocratic state. Operation Blue Star has also introduced restraint on the part of the state when confronted with similar situations subsequently, as was reflected in the handling of the Hazratbal issue and even after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. This transformed the significance of the event from being a source of justification for revenge for the “hurt Sikh psyche” into an ongoing political discussion on the relevance of the rights of religious groups in a diverse democracy.The hurt felt by members of the Sikh community and secular-minded citizens touched a universal chord. It transcended the boundaries of religion, region, political and social affiliations. The stature of leaders like Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi was diminished. If Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale could not become an unquestioned icon of the Sikh masses, the former Indian prime ministers on whose watch Operation Blue Star and November 1984’s violence against Sikhs took place have been tainted in the secular and democratic matrix.Separatist fringe groups have made it a ritual to raise pro-Khalistan slogans to commemorate this day. Through the holding of congregations of Sikhs, and through the loud claims of hardliners of custodianship of Sikh religious institutions and the SGPC, efforts are made to try and disturb the peace. This is mainly because no concerted efforts have been made to reduce incentives to violence and delegitimise it, and to deliver restorative justice. In other words, the obvious goals of closure — that is, transparency, justice and reconciliation — have not been addressed adequately.The consensus in the country to ensure justice for Sikhs for the dreadful 1984 violence was extended to the rehabilitation of former terrorists. This was reinforced by eventually conceding (in 2014) the twice-denied appeal of Dal Khalsa, a radical Sikh organisation, for conferment of martyrdom on pro-Khalistan leaders by the Akal Takht. These organisations, having acquired a modicum of space and a veneer of legitimacy, raised their claim to control over the SGPC and the Akal Takht and their “liberation” from the moderates and liberals.The state, on the one hand, allowed the regrouping of fundamentalist outfits in order to coopt and appropriate the religious or panthic constituency, and on the other, its inept and inefficient handling of the violation of the sanctity of Sikh religious scriptures provided fodder to fringe groups to articulate their divisive agenda in mainstream politics. In the backdrop to all this was the absence of a counter narrative to “Khalistan”. It is urgent that a counter narrative to religious fundamentalists is promoted and an alternative political discourse is nurtured to commemorate Punjab’s spirit of perseverance and to reflect its innate multi-culturalism.No doubt, the delay in the delivery of justice to victims of violence has been used by some as a justification to take the law into their own hands. For example, there have been incidents in which men were lynched over incidents of suspected sacrilege, rather than bringing them to justice by law. This amounts to the legitimisation of violence.Closure does not mean revenge and it also does not mean a claim that “my” use of violence is privileged and above the law. The assertion that the violent acts of non-state actors must be pardoned while state actors involved in violence must be punished is nothing but a subversion of justice, not closure.The main focus of closure should be a recognition that atrocities were committed and the “willingness to live with truth”. This may involve setting up of documentation centres, and a Museum of Memories. This will create an understanding, and some degree of justice and reconciliation. It is never too late to work for the elimination of those conditions that create violence.The demand for setting up a monument in the memory of the victims of the November 1984 violence in Delhi should be extended to include communal riots in general, including Partition riots. A national monument must be constructed in the memory of victims of communally divisive politics, which will act as a reminder not to indulge in political misadventures in the future.These tragic events require a justice-oriented political response. On the contrary, in reality, we see the attempt to take refuge behind the rule-book to defend criminal acts of people in power. The legal recourse is used to make humane, ethical and moral responses redundant. We have witnessed it in the recent past in the case of the year-long farmers’ agitation, and now the protests by the women wrestlers. The lesson is that conflicts shall continue to simmer if they are faced with bureaucratic indifference, a legalistic approach and a commitment to the status quo. History should be used to learn lessons, rather than to teach a lesson.The writer is chairperson, Institute for Development and Communication, Chandigarh

Operation Blue Star: Learn lessons from history, don't use history to teach a lessonPremium Story
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Making sense of Modi govt’s latest MSPs: Good economics and bad politics or the other way around?Premium Story
The Indian Express | 12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
12 hours ago | 10-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

Dear Readers,Earlier this week, India’s Union government announced the MSPs (minimum support prices) for 17 crops in this year’s Kharif season.MSPs play a very significant role not just for India’s farmers and the farm economy but also for India’s consumers and the kind of food prices they face. That is why MSP announcements are keenly watched and often deeply politicised. With India heading for a general election in less than a year, the MSP announcements could prove of critical political significance, apart from their economic impact.What are MSPs? Why do they matter?MSPs are “support prices” announced by the government (and sometimes state governments add a bonus amount to them) and the intended aim in announcing them is to provide a safety net for farmers.As a farmer, one is worried sick each season because one does not know what one’s harvest will fetch. Given the acute lack of warehousing and cold storage in India, a farmer has little bargaining power in the market. If the market prices are below the farmer’s cost of production they and their families can be ruined.Widespread distress of this kind tends to have broader ramifications as well. For example, if one particular crop, say cotton, led to the ruin of many farmers, then farmers will avoid growing cotton next season. This, in turn, will reduce supply and push up prices. Higher prices will then show up across the different products for consumers.By announcing MSPs, the government makes a promise that it will buy (called procurement) from farmers at the announced prices. Since MSPs are calculated in such a manner that covers the basic costs of cultivation, the hope is that MSPs will save farmers from ruin.The other big purpose of MSPs is to serve as a tool in the hands of the policymakers to tweak the production pattern. If the government wants to incentivise the production of pulses, as against paddy (rice), then it can give a relatively higher hike in MSP of pulses than the MSPs for paddy.Does the government actually buy all crops at MSPs?No. It is important to remember that, while the government announces MSPs for a whole host of crops both in the Rabi (winter) and the Kharif (summer) season, it procures only a few of those crops and that too from only a few states.According to a CRISIL research report, crops such as paddy, cotton and, to a limited extent, pulses get procured at MSP. Only few Kharif crops benefit from government procurement.“However, not all crops benefit from it (MSPs), leave alone equally. While around 45% of the paddy produced is procured at MSP, it is about 25% in case of cotton and only 1-3% in case of pulses,” according to CRISIL.“Also, the procurement is concentrated in only a few states — in Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana for paddy, in Telangana and Maharashtra for cotton, and in Maharashtra and Karnataka for pulses,” states the CRISIL report.What are the economic and political aspects of MSP announcements?India’s farm economy — or for that matter that of any country — doesn’t really fully adhere to market principles. Partly that’s because national food security is a strategic concern. Moreover, if large a population is involved in farming as it is in India, then it is unlikely that farming will prove to be remunerative.But government intervention makes everything political. Closer to elections, it is natural for governments to announce high MSPs to win over the farmer vote.The economic aspect of MSPs, however, is not limited to farmers alone. While a sharp rise in MSPs (or higher MSPs over a sustained period) does alleviate farm distress, it can also lead to a spike in food inflation.The trade-off between the interests of the farmer, on the one hand, and consumers, on the other, makes deciding MSPs so difficult. The political dimension just adds to the complications.So, what has been announced?On June 7, the government announced that MSPs for the Kharif season will go up by an average of 7%; the actual range varies between 5% to 10.5% depending on the crop.However, since different people speak for different stakeholders, this increase can be viewed in many different ways.How big is the hike in MSPs? Has it been motivated by political concerns?“This is the highest MSP increase in the last 5 years and the second highest in the last decade,” states a Citi Research note by Samiran Chakraborty (Managing Director, Chief Economist, India).At the same time, “the government has refrained from large MSP spikes usually seen in pre-election years (34.1%, 19.6% and 15.2% witnessed in the last 3 pre-election years),” finds the Citi note (SEE CHART 1).While India’s farm distress is decades long, it is important to remember that it has only deepened over the past decade.How does this hike compare with the rate of food inflation and the rise in cost of production?The prices of cereals went up by almost 14% in April this year. In other words, they were 14% more than what they were in April last year. From that perspective, the MSP hike is modest.However, the Citi Research note finds that cost of cultivation went up by 6.8% and from that perspective, a 7% hike in MSPs is enough to ensure that farm economy does not lose out to the non-farm economy.How will this hike impact inflation and monetary policy?It is unlikely that this hike per se would spike inflation. However, it is noteworthy that food inflation may still spike if the normal monsoon is affected by El Nino.Given that this hike is unlikely to spike inflation by itself, it will allay the apprehensions RBI and the members of its Monetary Policy Committee might have about possible inflation surge later on in the year.What does it mean for the government’s finances?Higher MSPs and more procurement as well as the storage and disbursal of subsidised foodgrains are all expenditures that weigh down government’s financial health. According to Citi Research, this “MSP increase will not materially alter the government’s food subsidy budgeting.”What will be the likely impact on rural India?This is possibly the crucial aspect of the MSP decision.Latest GDP data showed that personal consumption growth — the biggest contributor to India’s GDP — was growing at around 2.5% over the past two quarters. This is starkly lower than India’s overall GDP growth rate of 7.2%.Worse, within this broader trend, it is the rural economy that is lagging behind urban India. “The consumption growth trends in the GDP have been weak with drivers of rural consumption remaining uneven,” states the Citi Research note.Given this context as well as the market expectation that the Karnataka election result would have resulted in a stimulus for the rural demand, this hike is muted.“The 7% MSP increase might just be enough to cover the increase in cost of production but does not signal a pre-election populist boost to rural consumption. There was some market perception that after the Karnataka election results, the government might be focusing more on stimulating rural demand,” states Citi notes.However, it does provide a caveat.“The extent of MSP increase does not support that hypothesis, though in theory, populist spending could be more back-ended, closer to the general election date.”See you on Monday,Udit

Making sense of Modi govt’s latest MSPs: Good economics and bad politics or the other way around?Premium Story
As BJP appoints election heads in Maharashtra, Shinde Sena downplays move, says ties intact
The Indian Express | 1 day ago | 09-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
1 day ago | 09-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

With the BJP on Thursday appointing election heads for all 48 Lok Sabha and 288 Assembly seats in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has found itself on the back foot. The party, however, tried to downplay the move, saying that it will not sour their alliance as it was an attempt to build the party base and asserted that it will contest all 22 seats like the undivided Shiv Sena did in the 2019 elections.“We have an alliance with BJP. There is nothing wrong if BJP appoints election heads. These election heads have been appointed for building the organisational network and expanding its base,” Shinde Sena spokesperson Naresh Mhaske told The Indian Express on Friday.“Our leaders and BJP leaders will be working in coordination in all Lok Sabha and Assembly seats. The election heads appointed by BJP will help its candidate in a particular constituency from where the party is contesting. Similarly, the election heads will also work for our candidate where BJP is not contesting,” he added.Mhaske said the Shinde Sena will contest 22 seats in the coming Lok Sabha elections. “In 2019, the Shiv Sena which was in alliance with BJP had contested 22 seats. This time too, we will contest 22 seats,” he said. In 2022, the Shiv Sena split following a rebellion led by Shinde; the other faction is led by Uddhav Thackeray.MP Shrirang Barne, who was elected twice from the Maval Lok Sabha constituency, also said that the appointment of an election head does not mean that the same person would be fielded by the BJP. “It is their strategy to build their party and organisational network. But one thing is certain. I will be contesting from Maval Lok Sabha in 2024,” Barne told The Indian Express on Friday. The BJP has appointed Prashant Thakur, party MLA from Raigad district, as its Maval Lok Sabha election head. Three Assembly seats from Raigad district are part of the Maval Lok Sabha constituency.On the other hand, BJP’s Bhosari MLA Mahesh Landge has been appointed as the Shirur Lok Sabha election head. Landge is keen to contest the Lok Sabha election. “I am one of the aspirants for the Shirur Lok Sabha seat,” he said.Amit Gorkhe, who has been appointed as BJP’s election head for Pimpri, said that he was an aspirant for the Pimpri Assembly seat. “But my appointment does not mean I will be automatically contesting the Assembly seat. My job is to expand the party’s network and make the party stronger in the seat. If a Sena candidate contests from here, both BJP and Sena will work together in the constituency for his victory,” Gorkhe said.

As BJP appoints election heads in Maharashtra, Shinde Sena downplays move, says ties intact
  • BJP, Shiv Sena to jointly contest all future elections in state: CM Shinde

    • The Indian Express

    Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde announced Monday that the Shiv Sena and BJP have decided to jointly contest all elections including the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections, state Assembly and local body polls. This was decided during a meeting between Shinde, Deputy CM and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis, and Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi.In a tweet, Shinde said, “It was also decided in this meeting that Shiv Sena and BJP will jointly contest all upcoming elections in the state (including elections to Lok Sabha, Vidhan Sabha, local bodies)”.काल, रविवारी रात्री मी आणि उपमुख्यमंत्री @Dev_Fadnavis यांनी दिल्लीत केंद्रीय गृह आणि सहकार मंत्री @AmitShah यांची भेट घेतली.कृषि, सहकार विभागाशी संबंधित विविध बाबींवर आम्ही चर्चा केली. राज्यात शेतकरी, महिला सक्षमीकरण अशा विविध क्षेत्रात गतीने कामे सुरू असून अनेक रखडलेले… pic.twitter.com/MdLoqiPoy2— Eknath Shinde – एकनाथ शिंदे (@mieknathshinde) June 5, 2023Shinde said that the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance for Maharashtra’s development is “strong”. “In the future, we will contest elections together and win with a majority to make Maharashtra the number one state in the country in all fields, to continue the race of development,” he added.Several issues of the state including agriculture and cooperation were discussed during the meeting with Shah. Shinde said that pending projects in the state have been streamlined now and they are on way to completion.“We have always received guidance from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for various projects. We met Shah to discuss issues related to the cooperation sector,” the chief minister said.The visit comes ahead of the completion of one year of Shinde-Fadnavis led government in the state.

Donald Trump, Mar-a-Lago raids, and previous cases of missing classified documentsPremium Story
The Indian Express | 1 day ago | 09-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
1 day ago | 09-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

Former US President Donald Trump is facing a number of active lawsuits, including the case involving missing White House documents. Accused by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) of stashing classified material at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump was asked to return what he took. Instead, his team returned only some of the documents, with the rest discovered by the FBI during a search of the property this August. It is unclear whether more documents are still in his possession.The FBI recovered more than 11,000 government documents and photographs during its search as well as 90 empty folders labelled as “classified,” according to unsealed court records. The agency found that at least 18 documents were labelled top secret, 54 were marked as secret and 21 were deemed confidential.For both taking the documents and refusing to surrender them, Trump faces multiple investigations.In May 2021, just four months after leaving office, Trump was notified by the NARA that he had failed to turn over at least two dozen boxes of original records. In December, his team told the Archives that they had located some of the records and proceeded to return them.In February this year, the US House of Representatives announced that they were launching an investigation into the matter. In April, the Justice Department (DOJ) followed suit and later that month, the White House Counsel’s Office formally requested that the NARA give the FBI access to the documents they recovered in December.In June, Federal investigators served Trump with a grand jury subpoena, seizing more documents from his private estate. However, even that failed to uncover all that was taken.On August 8, Federal agents executed a search warrant at Trump’s Florida property after receiving reports that the former president had not been forthcoming with authorities. They found more than twice the amount of documents than Trump voluntarily parted with. Some of the material was so sensitive that the FBI and Justice Department officials conducting the search required special clearances to review it.Two weeks later, Trump asked the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida for an independent arbiter to review the documents. Earlier this month, the Court ruled on his behalf, blocking government agencies from accessing the material retrieved until an arbiter assessed them. The judge in question was appointed by Trump.Despite that temporary respite, the judge’s decision is likely to be overturned on appeal and once the investigation resumes, Trump could be criminally charged.The main charge levied against Trump is violation of the Presidential Records Act (PRA), a piece of legislation passed to prevent former president Richard Nixon from destroying classified information related to the Watergate scandal after he resigned from office. Under the PRA, every presidential document is supposed to go directly to the NARA as the material is considered to be the property of the American people.Anne Weismann, a lawyer who represented watchdog groups that have sued Trump over violations of the Presidential Records Act, told CBS News that the former president “clearly violated” the Presidential Records Act in “multiple ways,” including by ripping up records.But “the real problem is there’s absolutely no enforcement mechanism in the Presidential Record Act and there’s no administrative enforcement provision,” she said.Although the PRA itself doesn’t specify any penalties, violations could trigger two federal statutes that make it a penalty to mishandle government property.The first law states anyone who “willfully injures or commits any depredation against any property of the United States” faces a fine or up to one year imprisonment if convicted. The second law states anyone who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates or destroys … any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited … in any public office” is subject to a fine or up to three years in prison if convicted.Additionally, the Justice Department is investigating if Trump violated the Espionage Act by gathering, transmitting, or losing national defence information.Trump for his part has argued that he didn’t violate any federal laws because he declassified the documents in question before leaving office. However, even if he did, and there is no evidence of the same, he could still be charged for removing or destroying them.Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under George W Bush, argues that the declassification of documents for an improper purpose could be a crime in and of itself.Beyond criminal prosecution for violating federal law, the Justice Department could pursue civil lawsuits against Trump. They could also drop the charges altogether.Depending on the severity of the findings, Trump could face a lengthy jail term. He could also potentially be prohibited from running from office again. However, it’s worth noting that although the law pertaining to destroying government documents stipulates that a convicted offender would be disqualified from holding office, many legal scholars point out that the Constitution may supersede legislation. As per Constitutional requirements for presidential candidates, being behind bars does not preclude them from running.According to veteran journalist Timothy L. O’Brien, there are three potential reasons why Trump would want to keep top secret information to himself.The first stipulates that Trump took the documents simply because he was careless, indifferent to legal procedures and/or unaware of what he was doing. There is some precedent from his time in office that this may be the case.During his presidency, Trump was alleged to have blurted out classified information provided by Israel during a meeting with two high level government officials. Two years later, he tweeted a sensitive photo of a failed Iranian rocket launch despite being advised against doing so by his advisors.Trump also demonstrated a flagrant disregard for record keeping. In 2018, Politico reported that Trump had a habit of tearing up official papers that were handed to him after he was done with them. The problem became so bad that multiple civil servants were reportedly tasked full time with repairing the documents with scotch tape to comply with the PRA.In February, The Washington Post reported that Trump’s team routinely used burn bags to incinerate a wide range of records based on personal discretion. Additionally, The New York Times wrote that staff periodically found clumps of documents clogging White House toilets. They later released photos of some of the alleged found documents.According to O’Brien, another reason why Trump could have stolen the documents was to satiate his lifelong “unfettered greed.”O’Brien writes that Trump’s financial pressures raise alarms “for any rational observer concerned that Trump might have been inspired to use the powers and access to records that his presidency provided to rake in lucre by peddling classified information after he left the White House.”Lastly, according to O’Brien, Trump could have been motivated by a desire to preserve his own reputation. Amongst the missing documents there is believed to be communications between Trump and a litany of foreign leaders including North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Given that his exchanges with the latter led to the first of his two impeachment proceedings, Trump may have been trying to cover up evidence that would further implicate him.Trump for his part has denied all the allegations, arguing at different times that he declassified the documents, that he took them with him to work from home, that the FBI search was a witch hunt, and that former president Barack Obama also kept 33 million documents after leaving office. While all those claims are dubious, the last was blatantly debunked by the National Archives.The most obvious example of presidential misconduct pertains to Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal. Nixon was believed to have complied with requests to turn in information after leaving office.Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s national security advisor held onto records for years before turning them over to the Johnson Presidential library. Those records showed that the campaign of his successor (Nixon), was secretly communicating with the South Vietnamese government in the final days of the 1968 presidential race in an effort to delay the opening of peace talks to end the Vietnam war. Confident of his impending victory, Nixon’s team was believed to have wanted to stall talks until he assumed the presidency so that he could claim all the credit.It is worth noting that the PRA was not in operation at that time and before it was activated, former presidents were free to handle official documents as they saw fit.After the act was passed, it was violated by Fawn Hall, a secretary in Ronald Reagan’s administration. Hall testified that she altered and helped shred documents related to the infamous Iran-Contra affair to protect Oliver North, her boss at the White House National Security Council.Similarly, Sandy Berger, national security advisor under Bill Clinton, pleaded guilty in 2005 to removing and destroying classified records from the NARA. Berger was sentenced to two years probation and ordered to pay a USD 100,000 fine.More recently, Obama’s CIA director, David Petraeus, was forced to resign and plead guilty to a federal misdemeanour for sharing classified material with a biographer with whom he was having an affair.Lastly, Hillary Clinton, while serving as Secretary of State under Obama, faced scrutiny pertaining to her use of a private server to handle sensitive information. While the FBI recommended that no criminal charges be brought against her, it did criticise Clinton for her “extremely careless” behaviour. That rebuke (timed days before the election) played a huge role in Trump’s victory, especially because he repeatedly called for her to be “locked up” over the matter.In May 2021, Attorney General (AG) Merrick Garland issued a memorandum to all Justice Department personnel, warning them that “law enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of public statements (attributed or not), investigative steps, criminal charges, or any other action in any matter or case for the purpose of affecting any election,” nor should they take any action that may create “the appearance of such a purpose.”Garland’s memo echoed similar memorandums issued by his predecessor Bill Barr in 2020, by AG Loretta Lynch in 2016, AG Eric Holder in 2012, and AG Michael Mukasey in 2008. In other words, the Justice Department has long been cautious about taking any action that could change the result of an election or cast doubt on the institution’s impartiality. It is because of these norms that FBI Director James Comey’s decision to publicly disparage Clinton’s email server was met with much criticism.The US institutions are justifiably cautious in levying charges against any high profile politicians, let alone a former president. The DOJ knows that it took a considerable risk when it started an investigation into the Mar-a-Lago documents and it is unlikely to have done so without sufficient evidence. We may not know all the details, but if we go by the Justice Department’s decision to prosecute, we can reasonably suspect that there is more to matter than meets the eye.

Donald Trump, Mar-a-Lago raids, and previous cases of missing classified documentsPremium Story
A UP story: In conviction of Mukhtar Ansari, a fight of two strongmen, a battle for justice
The Indian Express | 2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

On June 5, when a court in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi convicted jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari and sentenced him to life imprisonment for the murder of a local strongman Awadhesh Rai in 1991, his younger brother and Congress leader Ajay Rai hailed the verdict, highlighting that this marked the end of a 32-year-long wait for justice for his family.Awadhesh was 30 years old when he was shot dead. Ajay was then 22. According to the prosecution’s case, on August 3, 1991, Awadhesh was standing outside his house in the Maldiya area of Varanasi when some assailants arrived in a car and opened fire at him. Ajay Rai and an associate were present at the spot, who rushed Awadhesh to the hospital. However, he was declared dead on arrival.An FIR was registered against five accused, including Mukhtar Ansari and his associates, at the Chetganj police station. The complainant was Ajay, who claimed to have witnessed Mukhtar and other assailants gunning down his brother. According to former government counsel Alok Chandra, who had pursued the case, the murder was the fallout of a local “supremacy dispute”. Apart from being a local muscleman, Awadhesh was also engaged in politics and business.In the course of over three decades, Ajay, who switched several parties but continued his legal battle against Mukhtar in his brother’s murder case in which he was a witness and complainant. Before joining the Congress, he had been with the BJP and also the Samajwadi Party (SP).A musclemen turned politician himself, 53-year-old Ajay is a five-time MLA, who has been booked in several criminal cases over the years. He was said to be associated with gangster-turned-politician Brijesh Singh. He belongs to the Bhumihar caste, retaining his hold over his community as well as over Brahmins and seers of the Varanasi region. It is for this reason that the Congress fielded him from the Varanasi seat against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections.Ajay started his political career with the BJP, getting elected as the MLA on the party’s ticket thrice from the Kolasla constituency of Varanasi during 1996-2007. He was eyeing the Varanasi parliamentary seat and parted ways with the saffron party after it decided to field Murli Manohar Joshi from there in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. He then joined the SP and contested against Joshi on its ticket. While Mukhtar Ansari also contested that election on the BSP’s ticket, Ajay came third after Joshi and Mukhtar.However, Ajay soon broke ties with the SP as well and decided to contest the Kolasla seat bypoll as an Independent candidate that he won.Ahead of the 2012 Assembly polls, the then All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in charge of UP Digvijay Singh managed to get Ajay join the Congress fold. He then contested from the newly-formed Pindra seat in Varanansi as a Congress candidate and won.While Ajay could not win the 2017 election from Pindra and lost to Avadhesh Singh of the BJP, he was chosen by the Congress to contest against PM Modi from the Varanasi parliamentary seat in the 2014 general election, when Modi picked Varanasi as his constituency for the first time. In that election, when the then fledgling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s chief Arvind Kejriwal also took the plunge to contest against Modi, Rai finished third behind the runner-up Kejriwal.In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress again pitted Ajay against PM Modi in Varanasi. While Modi garnered over 6.5 lakh votes, SP candidate Shalini Yadav secured 1.95 lakh votes, with Ajay again coming third with1.52 lakh votes. AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had then held a road show in his favour.After Mukhtar Ansari’s conviction in his elder brother’s murder case, Ajay hailed the court’s verdict, saying, “This is the end of a long wait for us. My parents, I, Awadhesh’s daughter, and the whole family kept patience… Governments came and went and Mukhtar strengthened himself. But we did not give up. Because of our lawyers’ efforts, today the court has found Mukhtar guilty in the murder case of my brother…we are thankful to the court.” He maintained that he and his family fought for 32 years for justice in the case.Ajay also demanded that his security be tightened now. “The man, who stood constantly against all odds should be provided security by the government. If required, I would continue to fight the case even in the Supreme Court,” he said. He has long been demanding security from the government, expressing fear for his life.A prominent Bhumihar leader of the Purvanchal region, Ajay is currently one of the six regional heads of the Congress party in UP. He is party in charge of the Prayagraj zone, where the Bhumihar community has a dominant presence. With the Lok Sabha elections less than a year away and the Congress continuing to remain on the margins of UP politics, Ajay’s work seems to be cut out now amid speculation that major players like the BJP and SP are also looking to make overtures to him.

A UP story: In conviction of Mukhtar Ansari, a fight of two strongmen, a battle for justice
  • UP court convicts gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari in 1991 murder case

    • The Indian Express

    A Varanasi court on Monday convicted gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari for the murder of Congress leader Awadhesh Rai that took place more than 30 years ago.Awadhesh Rai, the brother of Congress leader Ajay Rai, was shot dead on August 3, 1991, at the gate of his Lahurabir residence. A case in the matter was registered against Ansari and others.“Mukhtar has been convicted in the Awadhesh Rai murder case of 1991. The court will pronounce its judgment later in the day,” a lawyer told reporters in Varanasi.Reacting to the development, Ajay Rai said, “This is the end of our many years of waiting. I, my parents, Awadhesh’s daughter, and the whole family kept patience… Governments came and went and Mukhtar strengthened himself.“But we did not give up. Because of our lawyers’ efforts, today the court has found Mukhtar guilty in the murder case of my brother,” Rai added.Earlier in April, a Ghaziapur court convicted Ansari and sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment in an Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act case lodged at Mohammadabad police station in Ghazipur district in 2007. This is the fourth case in which Ansari, who is lodged at Banda district jail, has been convicted.More details awaited…

  • Mukhtar Ansari convicted in Awadhesh Rai murder case

    • The Indian Express

    A Varanasi court on Monday convicted gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari for the murder of Congress leader Awadhesh Rai that took place more than 30 years ago.Awadhesh Rai, the brother of Congress leader Ajay Rai, was shot dead on August 3, 1991, at the gate of his Lahurabir residence. A case in the matter was registered against Ansari and others.“Mukhtar has been convicted in the Awadhesh Rai murder case of 1991. The court will pronounce its judgment later in the day,” a lawyer told reporters in Varanasi.Reacting to the development, Ajay Rai said, “This is the end of our many years of waiting. I, my parents, Awadhesh’s daughter, and the whole family kept patience… Governments came and went and Mukhtar strengthened himself.“But we did not give up. Because of our lawyers’ efforts, today the court has found Mukhtar guilty in the murder case of my brother,” Rai added.Earlier in April, a Ghaziapur court convicted Ansari and sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment in an Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act case lodged at Mohammadabad police station in Ghazipur district in 2007. This is the fourth case in which Ansari, who is lodged at Banda district jail, has been convicted.More details awaited…

Message from Istanbul: How not to challenge ModiPremium Story
The Indian Express | 2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

No leader resembles Narendra Modi more than Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has just been re-elected for another five-year term as Turkey’s president. Both leaders are virtually doppelgangers in terms of their political roots, paths to power, ideological orientation, pet policies, and impact on their countries. What can the trajectory of Turkey’s most influential politician since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk tell us about Prime Minister Modi who aspires to at least a similar standing in India vis-a-vis Jawaharlal Nehru?Both Erdogan and Modi hail from humble backgrounds, well outside their country’s privileged elites. Both made their name as rulers of important regions — Erdogan as mayor of Istanbul, Modi as Chief Minister of Gujarat. Both came to lead their countries off the back of waves of popular disaffection with secular, left-leaning governments that had become mired in corruption. Both are polarising figures whose core base consists of tradition-minded, conservative voters in their countries’ heartlands. Both are one-man shows, who tower over their parties and governments and have ruthlessly centralised power and patronage of a select circle of businessmen. Both are self-styled strongmen who take pride in wielding muscular foreign policies and crow about having raised their countries’ global stature. Both have deployed a potent cocktail of religion, nationalism, welfare, and economic development to retain their grip on power while reshaping their countries to increasingly resemble majoritarian autocracies.The recently concluded presidential polls in Turkey were billed as the best chance to displace Erdogan since he first came to power in 2003, with the country under the grip of an acute cost of living crisis and the Opposition at its most organised in years. But despite pre-election polls pointing to Erdogan’s political demise, he managed to eventually comfortably beat his rival, extending his rule into an unprecedented third decade exactly 100 years after the Turkish republic was founded by Ataturk.Four observations from Turkey may be relevant for India’s political future. First, elected autocrats are difficult to vote out of office. The legitimacy gained from winning elections gives them freer rein to tilt the electoral playing field in their favour than if they were unelected rulers. Erdogan, like Modi, has relentlessly deployed not just the advantages of incumbency — showering largesse in the run-up to the vote, including free gas, discounted electricity, and broadband packages for students, and boosting the minimum wage and civil servant pay — but the full authoritarian playbook to gain every advantage at the polls. He has undermined institutional checks on his power — be it courts or election authorities — stifled the political Opposition, deployed government agencies to harass and even imprison critics, and restricted media freedom via laws, law suits, and police action. Just as in India, most private TV news channels are controlled by business groups beholden to Erdogan. The Turkish president — like PM Modi — is given wall-to-wall coverage by a fawning media, and his government’s claims are seldom critically evaluated. Meanwhile, Erdogan’s party, like the BJP, deploys aggressive propaganda on social media and manipulates public opinion via messaging platforms such as WhatsApp.Second, despite the serious erosion of democratic rights and constitutional values under authoritarian leaders, it is hard to galvanise voters over these issues. The rule of law, freedom of expression, independence of the courts, and abuse of government agencies all appear as distant and somewhat abstract concerns to the wider populace. Only an egregious violation of individual rights, as happened with forced sterilisation during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, can stir widespread outrage. Turkey’s united Opposition managed to compose a joint platform that pledged new laws increasing freedom of expression and individual rights, greater independence for the courts, and generally to reverse Erdogan’s consolidation of power, but these promises do not appear to have made much difference to their campaign.By contrast, and this is the third observation, the core nationalist and religious-minded supporters nurtured by Erdogan and Modi remain a potent force at the ballot box. Islamist voters in Turkey’s Anatolian heartland feel an emotional bond with Erdogan for allowing pious women to wear the headscarf in public offices (banned by Ataturk), restricting alcohol sales, and for endorsing Islamic values and practices previously sidelined by secular governments in Turkey. This appears to also be true of Modi’s Hindutva constituency for whom his delivery on issues such as the Ram temple in Ayodhya and playing up the overly Hindu character of the state (such as the prominence of Hindu rituals in the inauguration of the new Indian Parliament) at the expense of supposedly “foreign” (Muslim and British) elements underpins their continued loyalty.Finally, displacing an autocrat requires the Opposition to weave a powerful counter-narrative centred on the bread-and-butter realities of the average voter — and not on the hoary ideals of the constitution or bleeding heart laments against bigotry and pleas for unity. Turkey’s Opposition was simply not able to convince a majority of the electorate that they could govern better than Erdogan. Even in areas of the country that were badly affected by the government’s botched response to the devastating earthquake in February (which killed over 50,000), voters appear to have given Erdogan the benefit of the doubt. Corruption allegations wash over Erdogan who, like Modi, carefully projects a relatively austere image while tightly channeling his party’s funding and favours. And as for the crisis-ridden economy, the Opposition’s technically-oriented focus on strengthening the independence of the central bank and reversing Erdogan’s unorthodox interest rate policies (which have resulted in 50+ per cent annual inflation and a sharp drop in the value of the lira) failed to catch fire beyond urban centres.This last observation is particularly relevant for India’s Opposition. Even as the world apparently can’t stop cheering India’s prospects, the black hole at the heart of Modi’s economic record is around job creation. Despite headline GDP growth figures, India is simply failing to create even a fraction of the jobs required by its burgeoning youth population. The violent protests last year over the introduction of the Agnipath scheme and Railway recruitment were a stark illustration of the frustration. This despair over jobs presents perhaps the only opening for a credible anti-Modi election strategy. A 2020 report by the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that at least 90 million new non-farm jobs are needed by 2030 just to keep pace with India’s youth bulge. Unless India’s Opposition can unite behind a compelling programme to deliver these, they face an uphill battle to dislodge the BJP in next year’s Lok Sabha elections.The writer is a private equity investor based in London

Message from Istanbul: How not to challenge ModiPremium Story
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Gujarat Education News

New degree on table: Bachelor of Science for humanities, commercePremium Story
The Indian Express | 2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

Keeping in line with global norms and the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the country’s higher education regulator is poised to introduce a new range of college degree names, including a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in disciplines like arts, humanities, management and commerce.Currently, the University Grants Commission (UGC) permits universities to offer a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in arts, humanities and social sciences, and the Bachelor of Science (more commonly abbreviated in India as BSc) degree is typically for science subjects.However, with the NEP 2020 advocating a restructuring of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, a committee set up by the UGC to review degree nomenclatures has recommended that the new four-year undergraduate honours (or honours with research) degree programme, irrespective of the discipline, can also be offered as a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree.Similarly, universities can adopt the Master of Science (MS) nomenclature for both the one and two-year postgraduate programmes, even for disciplines such as arts, humanities, management, and commerce.Although the committee has recommended using BS nomenclature for degrees across disciplines, it hasn’t permitted the use of BA and MA for science programmes.The UGC, The Indian Express has learnt, will soon share the five-member committee’s recommendations in the public domain for feedback, following which the Commission will notify the fresh set of degree nomenclatures.The use of BA and BS for undergraduate programmes across disciplines is a prevalent practice abroad, where universities often offer, say, BA and BS degrees in Psychology or Economics. In such a case, the programme curriculum sets the BA degree apart from the BS. While a BS degree gives a student a more specialised education in the subject, a BA degree (in the same subject) provides more flexibility. The latter is designed with a broader choice of courses allowing the student to tailor his/her education to his/her interests.SECTION 22 of the UGC Act empowers the Commission to notify degree nomenclature. The decision, which offers more flexibility to students, is in line with global norms and the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.For instance, Harvard University offers both a BA and BS degree in engineering sciences. The BA engineering student is required to earn fewer credits than the BS student and has greater flexibility to pursue her interests outside of engineering. The BS degree, on the other hand, provides greater technical depth in the chosen engineering area.The committee’s report was discussed during the UGC meeting held in the last week of May. After discussions, the Commission decided to publicly disclose its recommendations for feedback before finalising the new degree names.The formation of the five-member panel was a direct response to the NEP 2020, which proposed the introduction of a four-year undergraduate degree programme offering flexible entry and exit options, along with a one-year master’s degree. Currently, undergraduate programmes, except for professional degrees such as engineering and medicine, typically are of three years, while master’s programmes extend over two years.The committee has also made the following recommendations:* The four-year undergraduate honours degree programme will include ‘Hons’ in brackets, such as BA (Hons), BCom (Hons), or BS (Hons). Additionally, a four-year honours programme with research components will have ‘Hons with Research’ in parentheses, like BA (Hons with Research) and BCom (Hons with Research).* The notification of new degree nomenclatures will be an ongoing process. Universities can propose new degree names that are relevant to contemporary and emerging societal needs to the UGC. Upon approval, the higher education regulator will notify the new degree nomenclature.* The committee recommends discontinuing the nomenclature of the ‘MPhil’ degree, as per the NEP 2020’s recommendation to scrap the MPhil programme.* If a student has earned all the required credits for a programme, she can be considered for the award of a qualification (such as a certificate, diploma or degree) even before the completion of the programme’s duration. For example, if a student has earned all the required credits for a four-year programme in 3.5 years, she should be eligible to receive her degree.However, the committee clarifies that the new degree names will only apply prospectively, and the old degree names will continue to be used even after the introduction of the new terminology. Therefore, the current three-year honours degree programme will continue alongside the four-year honours degree programme.

New degree on table: Bachelor of Science for humanities, commercePremium Story
Students from across India to be sent to Modi’s school for ‘prerna’Premium Story
The Indian Express | 3 days ago | 07-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
3 days ago | 07-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

OVER THE next year, two children from each district in India will be taken to the primary school in Vadnagar, in Gujarat’s Mehsana district, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi received his elementary education, as part of a week-long study tour.Announcing this on Tuesday, the government said the school will be developed as an “inspirational” school called ‘Prerna: The Vernacular School’, where the students will be trained on “how to live a very evolved life”, as part of a joint initiative by the central and state governments.The late 19th century school, which was functional till 2018, has been restored by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) as part of a mega redevelopment plan for Vadnagar, said officials.“There is a school in Vadnagar where our Prime Minister had taken his elementary education. It is a 19th century school… We are developing this school as an inspirational-experiential school,” said a senior official, adding that the school will get its first batch of students this year.Each batch will comprise 30 students who will be given residential training for a week. The cost of accommodation and transport will be borne by the culture ministry. “There are 750 districts in India and two children from each district (will be sent)… we will train a total of 1,500 children in the entire year on how to live a very evolved life…We want the first batch out in the current year itself,” said the senior official.The concept note for the project states: “Great leaders across the world have acknowledged their first school as a catalyst in their inspirational journey to cause change… Based on the vision of the Prime Minister, this first of its kind school redevelopment project ‘Prerna’ is being undertaken to inspire the youth of the county to become catalysts of change… It is envisioned to be a school of the future but with an impetus to education and values, imparted using various techniques and technologies.”While details like the age group of children are still being worked out, sources said it would mostly be for students of Classes 9-10.The selection process will start soon, for which the students’ “intellectual level, creativity and extra-curricular performance will be put to test,” said officials, adding that the training will be based on the concept of “Ek Bharat, Shrestha Bharat”. “It is not teaching. It is all experience,” said a senior official, adding that the training will include exposure to “virtues of life like courage and compassion through the lives and teachings of real-life heroes”.The school, originally called ‘Vadnagar Kumar Shala No 1’, was established in 1888 and was functional till 2018, when its restoration work began, said officials. “While it was being renovated, its students were shifted to the nearby kanya shala,” said a Gujarat education department official.“The old building has been restored using vernacular elements of architecture and by imagining the way the structure may have looked originally,” said a senior official, adding that the renovated school has eight classrooms, a cafe, orientation centre, souvenir shop and a community green space.Besides this, there is an extensive plan for “the overall development of Vadnagar town, funded by the Union government, and executed and overseen by the state government”, said officials. The plan to develop Vadnagar as the cultural centre of Gujarat includes a heritage site museum, being built at a cost of nearly Rs 200 crore.—With inputs from Ritu Sharma in Ahmedabad 

Students from across India to be sent to Modi’s school for ‘prerna’Premium Story
19th Century School Where PM Modi Studied Restored In Gujarat: Report
Ndtv | 4 days ago | 06-06-2023 | 08:24 pm
Ndtv
4 days ago | 06-06-2023 | 08:24 pm

The Vernacular School' is being undertaken to inspire the youth of the county.New Delhi: A heritage school in Gujarat's Vadnagar where Prime Minister Narendra Modi had his initial education has been restored and is being redeveloped under project 'Prerna' to serve as a centre of inspiration for children through immersive experience, top government sources said on Tuesday.Built in the late 19th century, the school has been restored in an old architectural style by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).Based on the vision of the prime minister, this "first-of-its-kind" school redevelopment project 'Prerna: The Vernacular School' is being undertaken to inspire the youth of the county to become catalysts of change, the sources said.The architectural revival and redevelopment of the old school are part of a holistic and mega redevelopment plan for the historic city of Vadnagar that traces an uninterrupted continuum of human habitation for more than 2500 years, they said."The programme is expected to be rolled out later this year. Two students from each district of the country will take part in the programme which will be conducted in a series of batches. Each batch will have 30 students, covering 15 districts, and in 50 weeks, all 750 districts will be covered spanning 1,500 students in total," a source said.This "experiential school" will offer an "unique pedagogy" and use both unconventional and tech-based means to impart values and inspire children to become catalysts of change in future, the source said."It is envisioned to be a school of the future, and to give an impetus to education and values. It will be a residential programme and the central government will bear all the necessary expenses on each child who will be part of 'Prerna'," the source said.The primary objective of this initiative is to inspire Indians across all the districts, starting from Vadnagar, and see, if can be replicated, perhaps in other parts of the country, the source said.The aim of this project is empower individual thought and self identity, build a feeling of pride and duty towards the country, instill a sense of initiative, invoke a feeling of unity and respect for the diversity of land, people and ideologies, and promote the spirit of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam', the source said."Children will take part in sessions on valour and and compassion, among other topics. They will learn about valour through the stories of 21 Param Vir Chakra winners, about compassion from the life and legacy of Lord Buddha, Lord Mahavira, Emperor Ashoka, Mahatma Gandhi, among others. Speeches of prominent leaders like Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru will be told to the children through holograms," the source said.On the late 19th century building of the school, the source said work on its restoration began in 2018."The old building has been restored using vernacular elements of architecture and it by imagining the way the structure may have looked originally," the source said.The criteria of selection and other modalities are currently being worked out, the source said, adding, children from all kinds of schools will be eligible to be part of the initiative.About 100 km from Ahmedabad, Vadnagar in Mehsana district of Gujarat, is a historic town with population of approximately 28,000.In December 2022, ASI officials had said that Vadnagar town and the iconic Sun Temple at Modhera in Gujarat, and rock-cut relief sculptures of Unakoti in Tripura, were added to the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.PromotedListen to the latest songs, only on JioSaavn.com"This listing on the tentative list of UNESCO heritage sites, will give a boost to tourism in Vadnagar and further in Gujarat," the source said.(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

19th Century School Where PM Modi Studied Restored In Gujarat: Report
60 girl students in Taliban-led Afghanistan poisoned: What happened?
The Indian Express | 4 days ago | 06-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
4 days ago | 06-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

Around sixty girls were hospitalised after being poisoned at their school in northern Afghanistan’ Sar-e Pol province, local police said on Monday.The big point: Some unknown persons had allegedly entered two girls’ schools in Sancharak district and poisoned the classes, Sar-e-Pol’s police spokesperson Den Mohammad Nazari was quoted as saying by news agency Reuters. The education of girls in Afghanistan has faced several challenges since militant organisation Taliban seized control of the country in August 2021.The details: Mohammad Rahmani, who heads the provincial education department, stated that 60 students – mostly girls – were poisoned in Naswan-e-Kabod Aab School and 17 others were poisoned in Naswan-e-Faizabad School. “After reaching school in the morning, the students suddenly started feeling dizzy, headache, and nausea,” Rahmani was quoted as saying by AP.FYI: Even under Afghanistan’s previous foreign-backed government, girls’ educational institutions had been the target of several poisoning attacks, including suspected gas attacks. In neighbouring Iran, poisoning incidents at girls’ schools are estimated to have affected an almost 13,000 mostly female students since November.Some context: The Taliban-run higher education ministry in December 2022 had suspended access to universities by female students. Even before the order, female students had been deterred from attending high school and colleges since the new regime began in 2021. The administration has only allowed girls up to the age of 12 to attend gender-segregated primary schools.

60 girl students in Taliban-led Afghanistan poisoned: What happened?
  • Sixty Afghan girls hospitalised after school poisoning, says police

    • The Indian Express

    Around 60 Afghan girls were hospitalised after being poisoned at their school in northern Afghanistan, police said Monday.The poisoning, which targeted a girls’ school in the Afghan province of Sar-e Pol, comes after intense scrutiny of girls’ education in the war-torn nation since the Taliban took over and barred most teenage female students and after a wave of poison attacks on girls’ schools in neighbouring Iran.“Some unknown people entered a girls’ … school in Sancharak District .. and poisoned the classes, when the girls come to classes they got poisoned,” said Den Mohammad Nazari, Sar-e-Pol’s police spokesperson, without elaborating on which substance was used or who was thought to be behind the incident.Nazari said the girls had been taken to hospital but were in “good condition.” No one had been arrested.In neighbouring Iran, poisoning incidents at girls’ schools sickened an estimated 13,000 mostly female students since November.During Afghanistan’s previous foreign-backed government, several poisoning attacks, including suspected gas attacks, on girls’ schools had taken place.The Taliban administration has prevented most female students from attending high school and university since taking over in 2021, sparking condemnation from international governments and many Afghans.Taliban authorities have kept primary schools open for girls, up until the age of around 12 and say they are in favour of female education under certain conditions.

UGC's clamp down on distance education goes against the spirit of NEP2020
The Indian Express | 4 days ago | 06-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
4 days ago | 06-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

When a reputed institution like Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) is taken head-on by a national regulator (UGC), it cannot but be noticed. Established in 1981, and given university status in 2003 under Deemed to be University (DU) category by the government, the institute ranked 51st amongst the management and ninth among private institutions in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), 2022. However, an affidavit filed recently in the court by the UGC after an inspection claims that NMIMS started its sub-campuses in five different locations without requisite permissions. Earlier, it claimed that Delhi University was conducting its open and distance learning (ODL) courses in gross violation of the existing rules, and without permission. It gave a notice barring the university from admitting further students to ODL courses for the next three cycles.At the risk of being charged with “whataboutry”, there are a few questions which need to be answered. Though the UGC’s decision sends a strong message that it will not tolerate violations of its regulations on ODL education, and also reminds students that they should carefully research distance learning or online courses before enrolling, it would have been more credible if this was done through a transparent process which assured that UGC was acting on similar indiscretions by other universities as well. Now that NMIMS has taken the UGC to court, one gathers that such an exercise has been put in motion.Higher educational institutions (HEI) are required to adhere to the UGC’s policy of territorial jurisdiction even for ODL which on the face of it seems like an oxymoron. It runs contrary to the idea of open learning as the technology on which it rides knows no geographic or political boundaries. To artificially impose restrictions is like trying to stop winds from blowing across the open skies. How does one stop anyone from Delhi registering in Maharashtra? It is, therefore, time to have a re-look at this recommendation made in 2011 by the Madhav Menon Committee.Institutions, no matter how rule-abiding, will be tempted to break them if the logic is weak. In the past too, this regulation caused several regular universities to lose their learning centres outside their state. Bharathiar University in Coimbatore was forced to discontinue around 450 franchises, 200 of which were located outside Tamil Nadu. Punjab Technical University centres had met a similar fate more than a decade ago.Any regulatory system that thrives on inspections as a means to deliver on its objectives will suffer from subjectivity, arbitrariness and corruption. For AICTE, the watershed came in 2009 when it introduced complete e-governance resulting in transparency and accountability. UGC too must adopt technology rather than rely on inspections as a primary method of compliance. The inspection teams have often been reduced to a fly swot or a laundromat depending upon whether they want to kill or clear a proposal. Serious academics generally shy away from being part of such teams.In a country where the number of seats in educational institutions is way short of demand, cutting off on an efficient alternative like ODL will be a major mistake and hurt the nation in the long-term. After all, is it not the responsibility of UGC also to ensure that the country achieves the target of 50 per cent GER by 2035 enshrined in NEP2020? As such funding of higher education by the state has gone down and the traditional brick-and-mortar campuses are too expensive.Under the graded autonomy scheme of UGC, only institutions with a NAAC score of more than 3.26 on a scale of 4 (A+ grade) are permitted to start ODL courses. Unfortunately, there are not many institutions in that category in the country. In fact, Kerala does not have a single such varsity and consequently cannot run any ODL programmes. ODL remains restricted to a few universities which could lead to monopoly and cartelisation.Since the DU regulations do not permit the setting up of off-campus centres, institutions like NMIMS which chose the DU route probably find themselves short-changed as many who came later via the state private university route are merrily expanding their network. They also find it galling that IGNOU and Institutions of National Importance (INIs) are not subjected to the same constraints.On the other hand, nobody can deny that ODL courses are a major source of revenue for universities. Whereas the bigger players go on an expansion spree, adding new campuses, courses, disciplines, starting collaborations and thereby multiplying their incomes manifold, the others find it difficult to keep pace, being shackled by a host of regulatory compliances discussed above. Whereas AICTE allows one or two divisions of 60 students in an institution in an academic year, some institutes and private universities add more than 50 divisions in a particular branch when they see a potential for earning. With each division of almost 100 students, the intake can rise up to 5,000 in a single subject. This renders several neighbouring institutes, especially the rural ones redundant. Also, the low earning disciplines are arbitrarily closed. Although regulators like the AICTE, the Pharmacy Council and the Council of Architecture prohibit technical programmes to be conducted online, many of them conduct these with impunity. Such blatant infringements have to be curbed by the regulators.Perhaps it’s time to call a spade a spade and revise our rosy notion about “education not for profit”. Even as it is inadvisable to foul the regulators, the money has to come from somewhere. If the state also does not provide resources then the burden has to shift to the students willy-nilly. There are no free lunches on the high table of the Indian HE system. Everything comes at a cost.Thakur is Former Secretary, Education, Government of India and Mantha former Chairman AICTE

UGC's clamp down on distance education goes against the spirit of NEP2020
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NCERT rationalisation exercise: Why Class X students need the periodic table
The Indian Express | 2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
2 days ago | 08-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The NCERT has removed the chapter ‘Periodic Classification of Elements’ from the Class X curriculum in its latest rationalisation exercise. The course load has been taken down by 30 per cent in view of the Covid-19 pandemic. Even though the Class X Chemistry textbook dropped the chapter that introduces students to the periodic table, it continues to be a part of the syllabus for Class XI.Generally, students start learning and understanding the reactivity series in class VII and extended learning on the same topic continues in grades VIII, IX and X. This topic is like the “motherboard of chemistry”. It forms the foundation of the subject. How will students study chemistry in Class XI if they don’t get acquainted with the periodic table in Class X? They are likely to lack even basic knowledge on the subject. Students will be in the dark about concepts like valence, bonds, molecules and basically chemistry itself. This will be burdensome for them later.The pandemic is over. There is no need to remove vital topics from the syllabus. The NCERT is still reducing topics in the syllabi to bring down students’ load, while colleges have gone back to pre-Covid times. I strongly advocate, despite the rationalisation exercise, this topic should be taught even if it is not going to be assessed. It can be made interesting by incorporating a plethora of activities with the amalgamation of art integration. I have taught it using the following interesting techniques.I used the method of storytelling to explain the history of the periodic table from Dmitri Mendeleev to Henry Moseley, the father of the modern periodic table. Then, I created a wall display board in the corridor, wherein the students would see the elements constantly. Because of it, the contents of the periodic table got drilled into their subconscious. Finally, students created one element card each where the element photo was displayed with vital information about the element, including its atomic number, atomic weight, name and symbol.Students arranged themselves according to their position in the periodic table and explained trends in the properties, moving from top to bottom or from left to right in the table. Conducting on-the-spot quizzes, crossword puzzles and a fun song based on the periodic table are a few activities that can make the subject fun and interesting.The writer teaches Chemistry at DLF QEC School Summer Fields

NCERT rationalisation exercise: Why Class X students need the periodic table
When AR Rahman recalled unrealised project to create ‘unplugged’ covers with SP Balasubrahmanyam: ‘He was a superman’
The Indian Express | 6 days ago | 04-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
6 days ago | 04-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

The connection between maestro AR Rahman and legendary playback singer SP Balasubrahmanyam, who would have celebrated his 77th birthday on June 4 if he were still with us, was a unique and cherished one. From the very moment they embarked on their creative journey in 1992, giving birth to the timeless masterpiece “Kaadhal Rojave,” audiences were consistently blessed with the sublime synergy they shared. However, the untimely passing of SP Balasubrahmanyam in 2020 marked the end of their magnificent collaboration, leaving a void in the hearts of music lovers everywhere.The duo has blessed their fans with timeless songs, ranging from “Anjali Anjali” and “Kathalikkum Penin Kaikal” to “Balleilakka”, “Oruvan Oruvan”, “Thanga Thamarai”, and “Sakkarai”. Their songs such as “Puthiya Manidha”, “En Kaadhale”, and “En Veettu Thottathil” too have left a lasting impression. Even the duo’s live concerts have consistently attracted admirers.However, the two geniuses couldn’t materialise the last concert they planned together. Though the duo had extended discussions about it, SPB’s untimely departure left the dream unfulfilled.“In January (2020), I saw a recording of him singing ‘En Kadhale’ and it sounded just the same. After seeing the recording, I called him and said, ‘Why don’t we take songs that you have not sung for me, of the past 10 years, and do an unplugged version?’ He was very excited. We almost planned the recording and even the arrangement was fixed and that’s when Covid-19 happened. We thought prayers were going to help him. There’s no use brooding over his loss, we should celebrate him,” Rahman had told The Hindu with a lump in his throat.“SPB was a superman. 40,000 is almost 1,000 people’s bandwidth. Some people do just 20 songs in their lifetime. But, he succeeds every time. He was amazing in every way,” he added.“My entire five years in the Telugu industry was just waiting for SPB. He almost sang every song (that the industry was producing). I used to go to the respective studios at 7 am, set up my equipment, and rehearse everything. At 12 o’clock we’ll be waiting. (If we ask someone) what happened? (They will say) SPB has to come, he is singing for Ilaiyaraaja. He’ll finish that, come at 12.45 pm and learn our song in 10 minutes or so. Finish recording it by 1.15 and then boom, he’s gone. This was what I watched every day,” Rahman said recalling his initial days of working with SPB as a technician.SP Balasubrahmanyam passed away at the age of 74 on September 25, 2020, following coronavirus complications. SPB was tested positive for Covid-19 in the first week of August. He was later shifted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of MGM Healthcare in Chennai after his condition deteriorated. He remained on ventilator and ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) support till his last breath.Widely regarded as one of the finest male playback singers with a 50-year-long career, SPB transcended barriers by singing in 16 languages, including Hindi, Telugu, Kannada and Tamil among others.From MG Ramachandran, Sivaji Ganesan, Gemini Ganesan to Kamal Hassan, Mohan and a slew of actors in the present day, SP Balasubrahmanyam’s voice was a fixture for all of them. That he held the Guinness Book of World Record for singing the highest number of songs ever (40,000 songs) was just another feather in his cap.

When AR Rahman recalled unrealised project to create ‘unplugged’ covers with SP Balasubrahmanyam: ‘He was a superman’
Criticism of government’s attempt to combat fake news is premature and misguided
The Indian Express | 1 week ago | 03-06-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
1 week ago | 03-06-2023 | 01:45 pm

On April 6, MeitY announced the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023. The rules, amongst other anticipated provisions, introduce “fact-checking units” to tackle the menace of fake news. These fact-check units have been tasked with the duty of identifying false, fake or misleading information pertaining to the central government’s business. Interestingly, the IT Amendment Rules, 2021 had previously introduced provisions to tackle information “which is patently false or misleading in nature but may reasonably be perceived as a fact”. Therefore, by introducing a provision for notifying a fact-check unit, the new rules have created regulations that further insulate social media users from misleading content.In the last half-decade, governments across the world have begun to recognise the threat posed by fake or false information, especially on digital platforms. More than ever before, authorities began to realise the hazards of fake information during the Covid-19 crisis. The pace at which false information began to spread was unprecedented. Eventually, governments realised that the dangers of fake or misleading news are in their ability to spread like wildfire on social media. Scholars at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology even found that falsified content spreads six times faster than factual content on online platforms. What this effectively means is that people are more likely to spread fake and misleading news than verified truthful information. Upon realising the reach of falsified news, governments have begun to take concrete steps, such as creating task forces (in Australia, Canada and Denmark) and laws (in France and Germany).So as to fully understand the gravity of the issue that we are grappling with, reflection on past instances of the spread of government-related fake news is needed. A study conducted by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions found that India was a hot-bed for Covid-related fake news. Such misleading information ranged from the vaccine drive to the symptoms and aftermath of the virus itself. It is thus unsurprising that an absurd falsified claim that all vaccinated persons will die within two years was being aggressively shared and reshared by social media users in India.As we enter the next sphere of the digital realm, it is becoming doubly important for governments to prepare themselves for the dangerous interplay of fake news and AI-related technologies such as deepfakes. For instance, imagine a viral deepfake (a digital manipulation used to create fictitious persons or fictitious videos of persons) of the Prime Minister making misleading statements about government schemes, policies or even communities and groups. Although it might sound far-fetched, the use of deepfakes to spread disinformation is already a reality. In February this year, deepfakes of purported news anchors praising China’s role in geopolitical relations were spread across accounts on Twitter and Facebook by pro-China accounts. Deepfakes of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announcing a surrender were also circulated across platforms last year. This convincing ability of deepfakes, and connectedly, the inability of people to separate them from truthful content, is what makes them prone to being used to spread false information.Against this background, the government’s announcement of the new rules shows foresight. It is not hard to envisage the detrimental impact that falsified information has on the government’s ability to manage emergencies; for instance, carrying out essential vaccination initiatives. Any roadblock in the easy and quick implementation of such initiatives could be life-threatening. Further, such falsified information is rarely ever positive, since its very purpose is to create a state of alarm amongst the public. This can have dangerous law and order consequences and lead to pandemonium. However, compulsive contrarians have raised their usual objections, vociferously arguing that the rules have a “chilling effect” on the public. This criticism is wholly unsubstantiated considering that the fact-checking units, which form the fulcrum of the rules, are still to be notified by the government. Even the Bombay High Court, whilst hearing a challenge to the rules, orally remarked that at this stage they are presently “inoperable or sterile” owing to the non-notification of the fact-checking units. It is only upon the notification of the units that further nuances will be discerned. Thus, any arguments against the rules right now would be premature, if not illusory. Critics would do well to, if not understand the legitimate intent behind the rules, at least hold off tired objections until the fact-checking units are notified.While the rules continue to be debated, online and in court, one must keep in mind that over 80 million Indian citizens are online. This fact, coupled with the perils of false information, leads to a worrying cocktail that the government has to proactively tackle to prevent chaos. Although the trend of compulsive contrarians continues, it seems that in introducing these rules the government has caught onto the macro perspective, the one that Jonathan Swift warned us of in his essay in 1710, “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after”.The writer is vice president,  BJP Mumbai Pradesh and Managing Partner, Parinam Law Associates

Criticism of government’s attempt to combat fake news is premature and misguided
How the Modi government has overcome the challenge of change
The Indian Express | 1 week ago | 30-05-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
1 week ago | 30-05-2023 | 01:45 pm

Prime Minister Narendra Modi often says, we have not come here to enjoy power, but to bring about fundamental changes in critical areas of governance. Nine years is enough time to prove that he walked the talk.The new Parliament built in record time, abrogation of Article 370, pushing up the economy into the world’s top five despite Covid, amalgamation of 10 state-owned banks to four and getting them into prime health, the Goods and Services Tax, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, digital public infrastructure yielding six billion payment transactions in a month, 74 airports built and operationalised, delivery of six notoriously delayed infrastructure projects (one delayed by over five decades), repeal of 1,400 archaic laws and 39,000 compliances, permanent commission for women in the armed forces, highest ever defence exports, becoming the third largest producer of renewable energy — these are but a few outcomes of the fundamental changes made in the way we are governed.The need for fundamental change in the way we are governed was not a cliché. The lethargy, the stasis in governance, were deep-rooted and, dare I say, a result of unstable governments or dynastic rule. It must be recognised that there have been attempts to break away from this even earlier. However, they didn’t make much progress. Prime Minister Modi’s political will and stability, vision, relentless pursuit of set goals and putting nation above self are yielding results. The role of the Opposition has, sadly, been less in Parliament. It has been more to disrupt and delay through filing petitions in the courts of law rather than debate and discuss in the House. Over 15 cases, including on the GST, Article 370, vaccination, triple talaq, Central Vista, were vigorously argued only for them to lose in each one of them. In each of these cases, if the time spent in the courts is reconciled, then we have perhaps delivered outcomes in less than nine years’ time.It would not be an exaggeration to say that three of the nine years saw challenges beyond our control. The pandemic and its second wave, volatility in fuel and fertiliser prices, and the Ukraine war, have had spill-over effects globally. To provide immunity to our large population, there was a pressing need to have a vaccine in time. Thereafter, the emphasis was on manufacturing sufficient doses to meet the urgency. Then again, to get our people vaccinated. India conducted the biggest vaccination drive administering 220 crore vaccines — free of charge. If our prime minister strongly supported and encouraged speedy development and production of our vaccines, he had another sensitive job to perform. He used the trust that people have in him to appeal to all citizens to accept vaccination. He took the vaccine himself publicly, when he was eligible as per the policy. Why was this necessary? Because, some of our Opposition parties raised doubts, creating vaccine hesitancy among the people.In his speech in the new Parliament, the prime minister drew a comparison: If parliamentarians needed a new House to discuss issues related to the common people, people needed a pucca house to live in. More than 3.5 crore pucca houses have been constructed in these nine years. 11.72 crore toilets have been constructed, with 100 per cent saturation achieved in rural areas. 12 crore households have been given access to clean drinking water.It is with untiring work, rooting out corruption, delivery on promises and by remaining continuously responsive that Prime Minister Modi has earned the trust of the people. Trust is also earned by standing by those in distress. During Covid 2.97 crore Indians who were caught up in various parts of the world were safely brought back home. Similarly, over 20,000 Indians who were stuck in strife-torn countries were brought back.The encouragement and support given to youth has shown in the results achieved in various global events. The number of higher educational institutions built and made operational is staggering, to say the least: 700 medical colleges, 15 AIIMS, over 69,000 medical seats, 7 IITs, 7 IIMs, 15 IIITs and 390 universities — all new.Efficiencies have increased dramatically in many sectors such as fish production. It had taken 63 years to take the production level to 59.14 lakh tonnes. In just nine years, we have added another 59.89 lakh tonnes and globally we now rank third.We rank second in fruit and vegetable production, next only to China. Our dairy sector which employs more than eight crore farmers today ranks first in world milk production —India contributes 22 per cent to the global milk production. We are the second largest honey producers in the world. Indian poultry sector ranks third globally in egg production.Eliminating pilferages of benefits meant for eligible beneficiaries is a duty of a responsible government. Misuse of taxpayers’ money had to be removed. 3.99 crore duplicate/fake ration cards and 4.11 crore fake LPG connections were cancelled. This has resulted in a saving of more than Rs 2.73 lakh crore (2021-22). However, in these nine years, total transfers through direct benefit transfer (DBT) are more than 29 lakh crore. For two years since the pandemic, over 80 crore people were given free foodgrain and pulses, so they do not remain hungry.Approaching national security issues comprehensively and with a greater sense of purpose is a hallmark of this government. Gone are the days when we were told by the Raksha Mantri that there are no resources to better equip the forces. Our border roads and villages were left underdeveloped because, we were told, that if developed, they would be useful for the enemy. Now, PM Gati Shakti and the Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo Informatics (BISAG-N) are bringing resource efficiencies and real-time monitoring.Transformative changes are happening in empowering women. For the first time, there are 1,020 women per 1,000 men. Maternal mortality rate has declined to 97 (2019-20). Under the MUDRA Yojana 68 per cent beneficiaries are women. Paid maternity leave has been increased from 12 to 26 weeks. Jan Aushadhi Kendras dispensed over 27 crore sanitary pads. Girls get admitted to Sainik schools now.The past nine years were dedicated to lifting India from the hopeless morass it had been thrown into. The next 25 years leading to India@100 need similar dedicated, corruption-free governance. Policy stability and continuity are critical. PM Modi, as a sevak, has given India that stability.The writer is Minister of Finance, GOI 

How the Modi government has overcome the challenge of change
Hits and misses of 9 years of Modi governmentPremium Story
The Indian Express | 1 week ago | 30-05-2023 | 01:45 pm
The Indian Express
1 week ago | 30-05-2023 | 01:45 pm

The NDA government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will complete nine years on May 30. The past nine years have witnessed several landmark events, including demonetisation of high-value currency notes (2016), the introduction of Goods and Services Tax (2017), the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic, a call for making India self-reliant (Aatmanirbhar) amid aggression on borders, and an emergence of a new class of beneficiaries — the “Labharthi Varg”.Modi, who ascended to the top post by getting a clear majority and took oath as the PM on May 26, 2014, is the fourth-longest serving PM after Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, and the longest serving PM from a non-Congress party. Here are nine charts showing the journey of the last nine years:India became the world’s fifth largest economy by overtaking the United Kingdom last year. It is now behind only the US, China, Japan and Germany. However, India’s GDP growth trajectory has remained uneven in recent years. The main reason is Covid-19, a global outbreak with severe domestic repercussions that resulted in a contraction of the economy during the financial year 2020-21. Even before Covid halted economic activities, the economy was on a downward track after registering over an 8% growth rate in 2016-17 — the year that saw demonetisation of high-value currency notes of denominations Rs 1,000 and Rs 500. In the following years, India’s growth rate slowed down to 6.8% in 2017-18 — as the businesses adjusted to the change in indirect tax system after the introduction of GST with effect from July 1, 2017. It came down further to 6.45% in 2018-19 and 3.87% in 2019-20. During the Covid lockdown (financial year 2020-21), the growth plummeted to -5.83%. However, it bounced back to 9.05% in 2021-22, primarily on the previous year’s low base. In 2022-23, the growth again moderated to 7%.Per capita income followed the same trajectory as the rise and fall in the GDP. The annual rate of growth in the Per Capita Income has been recorded in the range of -8.86% to 7.59% during the last nine years. (See Chart-1).One area that has remained in focus of the Modi government is investment. The Centre has taken various steps to encourage domestic entrepreneurs and to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Be it ‘ease of doing business’, focus on minimising compliance, liberalisation of the FDI policy for various sectors of the economy or ushering in legislative reforms, the government has taken several initiatives to create a favourable atmosphere for investment. These efforts have yielded some fruits. For instance, FDI inflows increased from $45 billion in 2014-15 to $84.83 billion in 2021-22. However, it registered a fall in the following year and declined to $70 billion in 2022-23. (See Chart-2)One of the indicators of rural distress is the performance of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which was launched to provide a guarantee of 100-day employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. The rise in the number of NREGS beneficiaries is a sign of growing distress in rural areas. Data available on the NREGS portal shows that 4.14 crore families availed the rural job scheme in 2014-15. This number peaked during Covid and reached 7.55 crore during 2020-21, when many migrants walked back to their villages in view of the pandemic. Thereafter, it came down marginally to 7.25 crore in 2021-22. However, it is still over the Rs 6 crore mark (6.18 crore families availed the scheme during 2022-23). (See Chart-3)Infrastructure has been one of the priority areas of the Modi government in the last nine years. Be it roads, railways, or airports, infrastructure projects have increased in number and size. This has reflected in the growing capital expenditure on them over the years. One of the success stories has been highways construction. However, several big-ticket projects, like the bullet train project, are yet to see the light of day. The total length of highways in the country had increased from 97,830 km in 2014-15 to 1,44,955 at the end of December 2022. (See Chart-4)One of the biggest challenges the NDA government has faced in the last nine years was the Covid pandemic. However, data shows that health expenditure (as a percentage of the GDP) has not seen a big change. (See Chart-5). In the period 2014-15 to 2022-23, the expenditure on health remained in the range of 1.2-2.2%. The Central government’s share in the current health expenditure is just a little over 2%. According to National Health Accounts Estimates for India 2019-20, “Of the Current Health Expenditures, the Union government’s share is Rs. 72,059 crore (12.14%) and the State Governments’ share is Rs.1,18,927 crores (20.03%). Local bodies’ share is Rs. 5,844 crore (0.99%), households’ share (including insurance contributions) is about Rs. 3,51,717 crore (59.24%), out-of-pocket expenditure being 52.0%.Like health expenditure, spending on education too has remained low. Though the education sector has witnessed a big reform push with the introduction of the New Education Policy, the expenditure on education (as percentage of GDP) has remained in the range of 2.8-2.9% during the last nine years. (See Chart-6).The government took a bold decision to demonetise high-value currency notes in November 2016. The move was expected to hit the black economy and move towards lesser use of cash. However, data shows that neither has the tax-GDP ratio increased, nor has the use of cash gone down. For instance, the direct tax-GDP ratio has remained in the range of 4.78-6.02% during the last nine years. (See Chart-7). On the contrary, the currency to GDP ratio has increased from 11.6% in 2014-15 to 14.4% in 2020-21. However, it came down marginally to 13.7% in 2021-22. This shows that despite a push for digital transactions through new initiatives like UPI, the use of cash is still on the rise. (See Chart-7)In recent years, the government has focused on Make in India. It even launched the Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, data shows that India’s share in world merchandise exports has stagnated in recent years. From 1.69% in 2014, it has increased marginally to 1.77%. (See Chart-8)The last nine years have seen the emergence of the ‘labharthi varg’ — a new class of beneficiaries of Central government schemes. The Modi government used the architecture of the DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer) scheme, which is based on JAM (Jan-dhan, Aadhar, Mobile) trinity. Between 2014 and 2023, 49 crore bank accounts were opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. The figure of deposits in the Jan Dhan accounts has increased from Rs 17,219.70 crore in May 2015 to Rs 1,97,193.67 crore in May 2023. Besides, other welfare schemes like the Swachh Bharat Mission, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, PM Ujjwala Yojana and PM Mudra Yojana have seen an unprecedented scale of implementation in recent years. For instance, 11.72 crore toilets were built under the Swachh Bharat programme, while over 3 crore rural and urban houses were built under the PM Awas Yojana. The government also provided free foodgrains to 80 crore people under PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana.

Hits and misses of 9 years of Modi governmentPremium Story
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