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 

Why India must vaccinate 80% of population by December 2021 — no matter what the cost

Planning for a national Covid-19 vaccination programme has begun to move forward in right earnest in India. Last week Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote to state governments outlining the administrative structures to be put in place to oversee the implementation in their respective jurisdictions. As of now, the Narendra Modi government expects the vaccination programme to take over a year, with healthcare and essential services workers getting the shots before the rest of the population. The Modi government has done well to reject the narrative of low expectations by setting a one-year timeline. As I have argued earlier, this is both necessary and eminently doable if we do not limit ourselves to departmental thinking and processes.Read More

A coalition to counter China will take some time to operationalise

This story was first published in The Mint. Views are personal.This week, another important cog in the machinery of strategic cooperation between India and the United States fell into place when the two countries signed the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (Beca) for Geospatial Intelligence. The agreement opens the doors for India to get access to military-grade global positioning system signals, digital imagery and mapping that can upgrade the capabilities of our defence forces and intelligence agencies. For the United States, the agreement not only helps lock India in as a defence equipment buyer, but more importantly, is one more step towards drawing New Delhi onto its side, geopolitically.Read More  

Future-Reliance saga has a scary message: If Amazon can't enforce a contract, who can?

This story was first published in The Economic Times. Views are personal.

In case you have not been paying attention, the pandemic has had a transformative impact on the future of Indian retail and e-commerce. Earlier in October, Kishore Biyani admitted that the pandemic had led to his company, ‘Future Group’, losing ₹7000 crores in 3-4 months. Rent and interest on properties like Big Bazaar had not stopped, while sales had taken a direct hit.

While Future Group was struggling with the impact of the pandemic, Reliance was looking to grow. This year, Jio Platforms attracted high-profile investments from amongst others, Facebook and Google. Similarly, Reliance Retail was looking to expand. Between September to October, Reliance Retail raised ₹37,000 crores from over eight investments. Also, there were reports that Amazon had been planning to acquire a significant stake in Reliance Retail for about $20 billion. In late August, Reliance announced the acquisition of Future Group for ₹24,713 crores.

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

Centre raises hopes of free COVID-19 vaccine, but benevolence can't be at the cost of the economy

This article first appeared in the Firstpost. COVID-19 has assaulted the health of people and economies. The impact on the economy has led to further stress on people’s livelihoods. This unprecedented threat to public health has not been constrained by measures taken by national and state governments. All humankind is waiting with bated breath for a COVID-19 vaccine that can set us on a course to normalcy. The human and economic cost of COVID-19 has been immense and governments are stepping up to expedite vaccine availability.Given the vaccine’s huge impact on public health, it is reasonable to expect that the government makes it available free for all. The cost of undertaking this exercise would depend on a variety of factors – the cost of manufacturing, the cost of supply chain, and the cost of administration of the vaccine. For example, nucleic acid-based vaccines have to be stored at sub-zero temperatures and are costly to make and transport. (Read more) 

Politicisation of Covid vaccine is a good thing — it means India will get it free

It is surprising that political parties were surprised that one of them — the Bharatiya Janata Party, as it happens — announced in its manifesto for the Bihar assembly election that it would provide free Covid-19 vaccines to everyone in the state if elected to power. By now they must know that the BJP under Narendra Modi and Amit Shah is an exponent of totalpolitik that stops at nothing to win the next election, big or small. Indeed, the promise of a free vaccine is perhaps among the milder instruments in its political armoury. Moreover, in a country where political parties have promised colour televisions, cable TV connections, bicycles, electric scooters, durable slippers, lunch boxes, sarees, kitchen utensils, cooking oil, rice, electricity, fertilisers, wedding cash gifts, laptops, WiFi, and smartphones with six months of free internet to voters, a free vaccine for everyone against a raging pandemic seems even reasonable.Read MoreYou can read the story in Hindi, here.

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 

India’s Australia Signal| Delhi’s horizontal escalation

For India, the announcement of Australia’s participation in the annual Malabar naval exercises of 2020 is a deliberate horizontal escalation of the continental border crisis whose present centre of gravity is Ladakh. The Malabar exercises began as an Indo-US bilateral exercise in 1992. In 2015, Japan joined in and India has now overcome its reticence about annoying China and opened the door for Australia. The connection with China’s rise and its strategic misbehaviour is obvious and is part of a larger global countervailing move for stability and balance. For India, the burning question is, what difference can this make to China’s threats on its continental borders.Read more

Bring back the family doctor. India has too many specialists

If you live in a medium-sized or larger town in India, chances are that you have a private medical clinic or hospital not too far from your home. Chances are that it will describe itself as a “multi-specialty clinic” and the reception area will have a long list of specialists who you could consult. Even the smallest clinics in my neighbourhood in Bengaluru have around a dozen specialists on their roster. Every conceivable specialisation — from neurosurgery to psychiatry, interventional cardiology to maxillofacial surgery — is available within a 5-kilometre radius from my home.Read More You can also read this article in Hindi

Serosurveys point to inadequacies in India’s COVID-19 testing strategy

Over the past few months, a series of serosurveys for detecting the spread of COVID-19 have been carried out in India. The surveys are meant to identify the percentage of the Indian population with antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, as an indicator of how widespread COVID-19 is in the population. The Indian Council of Medical Research led a national survey starting May 2020, the findings of which suggest that the seroprevalence in a selection of districts across India was 0.73 percent. A follow-up survey done in August showed that seroprevalence in the same districts increased to 7.1 percent. Between May and August, city/state-level surveys have shown varying seroprevalence, ranging from 0.25 to 51 percent.Read more

Tech-Tonic: Who Scrubs Your Feeds?

This article was first published in Deccan Herald.Given how 2020 has been so far, if I were to ask you your favourite month of the year, you would rightfully hang up on me and then call me names, not in that order. However, since football was back last month, I would say September was when I was happiest. It’s great to look forward to football matches after a drought. I love the feeling when I get a notification on my phone that says line-ups are available. It is when my tinfoil hat is at its largest.For me, the only way to make sense of who is playing is to look at who is not playing. Let me explain. If I look at the starting eleven, all of it makes sense to me. For example, if in a game, Messi, Coutinho, Fati, and Griezmann are starting, I would not question it. But, when I look at the bench and see Dembele, I come to know of the trade-off the coach had to make to come to this preferred line-up.

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 

Breathe new life into public health. Far too many Indians rely on Baba Ramdev, Akshay Kumar

Media headlines and public discourse might not reflect it, but one of the most important policy priorities for India now and over the next decade is health. The immediate task, of course, is ensuring that we bring the pandemic under control within the next year. The longer-term challenge is to create a health care and public health system that will form the basis of our future growth and development.

Public policies designed to bring about better health outcomes are desirable in and of themselves. But in the post-pandemic world, investment in health is important for an instrumental reason as well — to revive the Indian economy in the short-term and create a new engine of growth that the country desperately needs. Despite the beating the system has received due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Indian healthcare sector has the potential and the opportunity to become a globally competitive hub for quality, affordable healthcare. The crisis is an opportunity for a comprehensive review of how India has approached its health policy and lay the foundations for something that is a whole lot better. Over the next few weeks, this column will focus on new dimensions and angles in developing health policy for the future.

Read MoreThis oped can also be read in Hindi, here

China’s new data security initiative has implications for India

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.Recently, the Chinese government announced the launch of a new Data Security Initiative. Outlining its components, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said he hoped that China can provide a “blueprint” for the formulation of international rules for digital security.The Chinese initiative entails eight broad principles, which include a call for supply chain stability, pledges against data theft and surveillance, norms for data storage and access, and a requirement for technology companies to not abuse their market dominance.

 Wang’s announcement came a month after the United States launched its new Clean Network program in early August.The US initiative explicitly seeks to exclude Chinese telecommunications firms, apps, cloud service providers, and undersea cables from internet infrastructure used by the US and partner countries. The initiative draws upon a range of different standards, such as the Prague Proposals and the European Union’s 5G Toolbox.

India’s local governments must do far better in raising revenues

Driving into Bengaluru’s city centre a couple of weeks ago after several months of working from home, I was pleasantly surprised to see well-demarcated parking spaces, electronic signs, and payment kiosks along MG Road. Brihat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), our municipal corporation, had finally implemented a modern paid parking system, albeit only along a few major roads in the central business district. This being Bengaluru (the original home of the “we have an app for that" meme), the system allows you to discover available parking lots on your smartphone and pay the fees online.

The BBMP expects this system, implemented as a public-private partnership, to earn an annual income of ₹31.56 crores for the next ten years. That’s not a lot, but not bad either, considering that it was earning nothing from the public asset in the past. A few years ago, my colleagues at Takshashila estimated that the city could earn over ₹500 crores a year, or around 5% of BBMP’s approximate annual budget if it were to implement paid parking on just one side of a mere 3% of Bengaluru’s roads. Clearly, parking fees alone have the potential to be a significant part of the corporation’s budget. Indeed, there is a moral case for the government to implement paid parking—free parking is effectively an unthinking transfer of public wealth to an undeserving rich person. A car owner gets ₹30 per hour in implicit subsidy for every hour he parks on the public road, for no good reason. That’s not counting the economic costs of congestion and pollution arising from the overuse of an underpriced good. Contrary to popular belief, India’s municipal corporations are doing a public disservice by permitting free parking.Read More

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

India’s Covid data like counting potholes under streetlights. There are far more in the dark

There are two ways to deal with the uncertainties arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. The first is to take them as they come, and as I wrote in an earlier column, deal with the daily developments with a Stoic mind. To play the stroke according to the ball that comes your way. The second way is to try to get a sense of how things are likely to pan out, and prepare for them in advance to the extent possible. To have a game plan, but still be Stoic about it because things might not go the way you want. Most people can choose either way. But those who have to make personal, business or policy decisions that involve a longer horizon need some way to look beyond the here and the now. In other words, we need information that helps us estimate what might happen in the future. And this is where the problem lies.Read More