Commentary
Find our newspaper columns, blogs, and other commentary pieces in this section. Our research focuses on Advanced Biology, High-Tech Geopolitics, Strategic Studies, Indo-Pacific Studies & Economic Policy
Not the time for RBI to be adventurous. If bank ownership isn’t broken, don’t try to fix it
The Reserve Bank of India’s Internal Working Group startled everyone last week when it recommended that “large corporate/industrial houses may be allowed as promoters of banks only after necessary amendments to the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 (to prevent connected lending and exposures between the banks and other financial and non-financial group entities); and strengthening of the supervisory mechanism for large conglomerates, including consolidated supervision.” In fact, so startling are the words “large corporate/industrial houses may be allowed as promoters of banks…” that you can read the rest of the sentence and the report later.Read the full article in ThePrint
Don't micromanage
This article was published originally in the Orissa Post. You can read the full article here.
Nokia was once the world leader in mobile phone handsets. Its largest manufacturing plant was located in Sriperumbudur in India as part of a Special Economic Zone. In a six-year period, it produced more than 500 million handsets, much of them exported. Nokia employed a workforce of 30,000 including employment, and it had a big share of women employees. Nokia was indeed the rockstar example of what it means to make India a manufacturing hub of the world.Read More
Atmanirbharta may come at a price
This article was originally published in Mumbai Mirror. You can read the full piece here.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), which was formed 20 years ago, has more than 12 crore customers - 10 percent of all the telecom subscribers in the country. In landline connections, it has nearly half of the two crore landline customers in India. Telecom may be lucrative business, but as a company BSNL has been bleeding.Read more
Bursting firecrackers on Diwali isn’t the problem. Making it a national and moral issue is
As I write this, there is a continuous stream of firecrackers outside the window of my Bengaluru apartment: relatively subdued in my immediate vicinity compared to previous years, but nevertheless quite vigorous. It is just as well that the Karnataka government under B.S. Yediyurappa reversed its decision to ban firecrackers — albeit permitting only “green” ones — because it is unlikely that people would have refrained from celebrating Diwali the usual way, and the already overworked police force would have the unhappy task of enforcing a very unpopular rule.Read More
The need for a more direct stimulus
Economy to Decide Ties
Kamala Harris will become the first-ever Vice President of America to have Indian ancestry. Senator Harris' mother Shyamala Gopalan arrived in the United States at the age of 19 to do her PhD in nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California in Berkeley. Harris has maintained her links with her maternal grandparents and other Indian relatives.Read More
EC should allow Biharis in Bengaluru to vote for state polls. US showed every vote matters
Many of those who followed the drama of the US presidential election last week were struck by the seemingly patchy and disorganised manner in which the votes were counted. This also led to the impression that Joe Biden “caught up” with Donald Trump in the four battleground states that ultimately swung the election in favour of the Democrats. A number of Indian commentators took the opportunity to pat themselves on the back by comparing India’s own voting system favourably with that of the United States. As much as these conclusions are right at a superficial level, a deeper look suggests both direct comparisons are misleading and that democracies can learn things from each other.
The US president is not directly elected by the majority of people by design. Indeed, in many recent elections — including in 2016 — the winner of the electoral college has received fewer popular votes than the challenger. It might startle a lot of people — even in the United States — to know that it is a part of their constitutional system. Now it is fairly well known that the founders of the United States paid a lot of attention to prevent accumulation of power in the hands of one person. We have them to thank for the doctrine of separation of powers between the executive, legislature and judiciary. What is less well known is that they also engineered the system in such a way that raw democracy — in terms of majority votes — does not override individual liberties, and does not wreck the federal structure of the United States.
The consent of the loser
One of the best speeches of a candidate conceding electoral victory to his rival was that of Senator John McCain in 2008. America had just elected its first ever black President. It was close to midnight on voting day November 4, after a gruelling campaign season that lasted several months. Of course, not all votes were counted by midnight. Actually it always takes days or weeks to get a tally of all the votes, since they come by mail, from overseas, from military personnel posted in remote locations. But a concession speech is given much before the counting is done. A mature, experienced leader can see the writing on the wall, no matter how bitter the contest, and how close the result. McCain was such a man. As a naval officer he had fought in the Vietnam War, and suffered torture as a prisoner for six years. Yet his later life showed no bitterness, and in fact he was part of the effort to restore diplomatic relations with Vietnam. His life was dedicated to public service, as a core member of the Republican Party, and as people’s representative for more than three decades. It is worth recalling the words he said on that night. “The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly. A little while ago, I had the honour of calling Senator Barack Obama to congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country that we both love. In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans, who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president, is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.” Obama and McCain were opponents, not enemies.Read More
The unbearable rage of the road minister
The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) was last week inaugurating their brand new building in Dwarka, in Delhi. The chief guest was, appropriately, their boss, Nitin Gadkari, the Union minister for highways. Gadkari is popularly known as Mr. Highways for his impeccable record. Firstly, as PWD minister in Maharashtra from 1996 to 1999, he fast-tracked the construction of the Mumbai-Pune expressway, which had been languishing, and also built 55 flyovers in Mumbai. During his tenure, the state’s rural road connectivity increased to 98 per cent. Due to this, he was appointed as chairman of the National Rural Road Development Committee, which ultimately led to the launch of Prime Minister’s Gram Sadak Yojana.Secondly, and more importantly, as Union minister for highways since 2014 in the Modi government, under Gadkari’s watch, the pace of highway building has gone up from barely two kilometres per day to nearly 35 kilometres per day today. He is clearly a man of action, and in a hurry, and he is known to rally the troops and get contractors, builders, and even private investors to work successfully with the government.Read More
Criminal taint grows on ballot choices
In September 2018 a five-judge constitution bench that included the Chief Justice of India, pronounced an important verdict on criminals in politics. The Supreme Court was hearing a batch of petitions seeking disqualification of candidates who have pending criminal cases. One of these petitions was a PIL filed by the Public Interest Foundation of India (PIF) back in 2011. The Director of PIF had written these words, even before the results of the 2014 elections were announced. “The next government will face the challenge of curbing corruption… It must be remembered that the government will be on probation as its performance would be critically tracked by a very vibrant civil society and media.” That Director was later handpicked to become the Principal Secretary to the new Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. The PIF petition had asked for the removal of criminals from the ballot. This was the petition that was disposed of by the Supreme Court in 2018. But its verdict, unfortunately, stopped short of disqualifying criminally tainted candidates. The Central government which was a defendant in the suit, firmly opposed the petition, saying that legislating a new disqualification was not in the domain of the court. It was for parliament to pass such a law. Besides, the Centre used the old argument, that a person is innocent until proven guilty, and cannot be deprived of the right to vote, or the right to contest elections merely based on criminal charges. The court expressed helplessness, and not for the first time.Read More
A front-footed approach to the world calls for a strong economy
The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World is an interesting book because it is written by four authors: a scholar of international relations, a career diplomat, a serving foreign minister, and a member of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. It so happens that they are all named S. Jaishankar. Almost every paragraph in the book is an exercise in balance between four perspectives: of the scholar reading the past and the present in realist terms, the long-serving diplomat totalling up the successes and failings of India’s foreign policy over the past four decades, the cabinet minister outlining the incumbent government’s policy positions, and the BJP member connecting the book’s narrative with his party’s. The tension between the four Jaishankars is not always apparent, and I suspect is visible only to keener students of international relations who in any case tend to connect dots into shapes they wish to see.Read more
Cracked screen, broken dreams
Introducing Rohit Varak, who at 16 is so mature for his age. He wants to be an electrical contractor, after getting ITI training. His family lives in a remote village in northwest Goa. Rohit is acutely aware of his father’s struggle to secure a government job. Bhago has been trying for several years, even knocking on the door of their MLA. Bhago has had an elbow injury and suffers from severe back pain. He has tried in vain to get a job as a driver with the government. That MLA only gives jobs to his cronies and their relatives.“So many houses have four or five government servants, but we can’t even get one job.” Rohit has told his baba, not to beg anyone for a job. He would be an ITI technician, and he would take care of the family with great dignity. He is inspired by his cousin, who is a driver in the army. His older sister Riya too has a dream of becoming a nurse. She is enrolled at a nursing college in Hubli. Riya’s birthday was just last week.Read More
The Bangladesh comparison
India was a midwife in the birth of Bangladesh. She sent in her army to liberate the newly born independent nation and even stood up to threats from the world’s mightiest power, the United States, which had sent its Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal. Henry Kissinger, the US secretary of state, contemptuously referred to an infant Bangladesh as a “basket case”, meaning it would be hopelessly mired in poverty, hunger, and disease. India welcomed and gave refuge to almost ten million refugees from the newly forming nation, as they fled military atrocity, hunger, and deprivation.Bangladesh from the very beginning was counted among the least developed nations as per the United Nations and enjoyed the generosity of foreign aid in its development. It also had other concessions like the generalised system of preferences (GSP), which meant that its exports had duty-free access to western nations. India lost its GSP status recently. Bangladesh got interest-free long-term loans from development banks like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.Read More
India’s local governments must do far better in raising revenues
Covid hospital, not coastal road
Mumbai is the richest municipality in India with a budget whose size dwarfs many state government budgets. For instance, it is 50 per cent larger than the state budget of Goa. It can legitimately brag about many excellent hospitals, which provide highly subsidised healthcare services to the poor and vulnerable. Patients flock to Mumbai’s hospitals from across the country, and the city does not discriminate against anybody. The doctors, nurses, ward staff are all dedicated and constantly fighting uphill battles against rising caseloads, inadequate infrastructure, long working hours, and funding shortage.Wait a minute. Is Mumbai not the richest civic body in the country? And it has funds shortage? Despite sitting on real estate whose value is greater than gold? How come?Read More
Police reforms still a distant dream
The Rashomon effect is named after a 1950 movie made by Akira Kurosawa. In the movie, a murder is described by four witnesses in contradictory ways. Their description reflects their own subjective interpretation and vested interests rather than the objective truth. If their testimonies are used as evidence in a litigation, this can result in the unravelling of the case due to inconsistency. Many famous cases recently have resulted in zero indictment for either lack of evidence, contradictions or hostile witnesses. The 2G scam or Babri demolition are two well known cases, which resulted in all acquittals. This failure could also be because the prosecution did not build a watertight case, or the investigation was shoddy. Was the investigation or prosecution shoddy deliberately orbecause of a lack of training and resources with the officers?These questions come to mind as we witness the evolving case of a brutal gangrape and murder of a young woman in Hathras in Uttar Pradesh. The police say they filed a first information report on the same day as the incident. The woman died more than two weeks later as she was moved from one hospital to another, due to her serious injury. Before she died, she identified the group that savagely assaulted her. She was cremated hastily by the police in the middle of the night, and even her family was denied the right to claim her body. Now the police say that the rape charge was after a week, when she was in hospital, casting a doubt on her. Senior officers are saying that forensic evidence shows there was no rape. A second post-mortem was not allowed or conducted.Read More
Needed: Price Assurance
One silver lining to the 24 per cent fall in quarterly GDP between April and June was that growth in the agriculture sector was positive at 3.4 per cent. This is the first time in India’s history that we are experiencing a steep recession without any adverse shock of drought or a failed monsoon affecting agriculture. Another notable positive was the robust procurement of the spring harvest (Rabi crop), especially of wheat. Not just the frontrunners like Punjab andHaryana, but also states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh had a good Rabi procurement via the Food Corporation of India. When FCI does procurement, usually through its designated agencies, based in various states, it means that the farmer gets the assured price called the Minimum Support Price (MSP). That was over Rs 1,900 per quintal this time.The MSP is determined as a political decision, based on inputs given by the Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP). This commission was set up nearly 60 years ago, and provides a logical and scienti¦c basis to costs, and hence what is a reasonable price to be paid for the crops. Due to input cost escalation for seeds, pesticides, diesel, credit, fertilisers etc, the MSP too needs to go up, so that the farmer receives an adequate return. Otherwise, it is a loss-making proposition. In the past 50 years, the average escalation in MSP has been about 6 per cent per yearfor wheat and similarly for paddy. But the actual procurement by the government agency has gone up nearly 70 to 80 times during this period.Read More
Don’t ask the SC for loan waiver
If you have borrowed money as a home or business loan, you are bound by contract to repay that loan. Repayment is over a period of time, so you also pay the time value of money, i.e. interest. Due to the lockdown, the GDP for three months of April to June was down 24 per cent. For many people there was no income. As per CMIE data, 12 crore people lost jobs in the month of April. Imagine if you were running a restaurant.Suddenly there were zero customers. You still have to pay rent, electricity and salaries. And of course you have to pay interest and EMI on your loan, which is needed to run the business.Imagine if you were making unbranded shirts to supply to a large retail chain. You bought the cloth, buttons, collars, thread and made 10,000 shirts for delivery.Read More
GST compensation delay put onus on states to mobilise funds from their own sources better. Here’s what they can do
At the end of a recently held Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council meeting, the finance minister signalled the Union government’s inability to pay compensation to the states, describing the revenue shortfall as an ‘Act of God’ caused by the pandemic. The Union abdicating its responsibility and leaving the states on its own is problematic on many grounds. In the last few weeks many commentators have succinctly explained this. But one question still remains unanswered: Can states do anything on their own to hedge against similar risks in the future?The Union has provided two options to the states – either borrow from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) or from the open market. But both these measures create liabilities. A question worth considering is whether states can mobilise their own resources without creating liabilities.Read More
Why farmers are upset about reforms
Three months ago when Parliament was not in session, the Government of India issued three ordinances. Normally ordinances are issued only as an emergency law, and they have to be converted into proper legislation as soon as Parliament reconvenes. These three ordinances were about agriculture and farming. All three were in the spirit of ‘reforms’, i.e. removing shackles from the farmer. Now one of the ordinances has been passed in the Lok Sabha. The other two are in the pipeline. You would imagine that farmers would welcome any reform that gives them more freedom.But this ‘granting of freedom’ has met with a big backlash. Farmers in Punjab and Haryana have come to the streets. The agitation may spread to Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh too. It has spilled on to highways. Opposition parties too are criticising the ordinance, but that is expected. The ruling party in Punjab is opposing the new law, but asking farmers to not blockade traffic. The most awkward thing for the ruling party in Delhi was that the Union food processing industries minister resigned from the cabinet. She resigned in protest because she claimed that the new law is anti-farmer. But in the four-page resignation letter written to the prime minister she did not spell out how, exactly, the new reformist law was anti-farmer. She belongs to Alkali Dal, a coalition partner to BJP.Read More