New Delhi: Voting is underway in the second phase of elections in West Bengal, as global media continues to closely track developments in India’s ongoing electoral process over the past two weeks.
“For 15 years, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has led one of India’s biggest states, West Bengal, where she has defied the Hindu nationalist policies of (Prime Minister) Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party,” Andres Schipani and Jyotsna Singh of the Financial Times report.
Mamata has framed the fight against the BJP as a contest between native Bengalis and “Modi’s largely Hindi-speaking party”.
In an interaction with FT, Mamata said the BJP is “obsessed with Mamata”.
“They are trying to capture Bengal,” she added, according to the report.
The report notes that the “Bengal tigress” has ruled the states for 15 years with a “mix of identity politics and welfare schemes” that has lifted “17 million’ people out of poverty.
“A student activist for the Indian National Congress in the 1970s, she was elected one of the youngest parliamentarians in the 1980s before breaking off in 1998 to found the Trinamool Congress (TMC). In 2011, the party won power, ending the 34-year rule of the communist-led Left Front.”
The report notes that the state’s sluggish economic growth, as compared to other more prosperous regions of the country, has helped the BJP to make inroads in the state.
While the state’s “nominal” GDP has grown sixfold during Mamata’s tenure, and per capita income has increased threefold, it has continued to lag behind other states.
“Modi’s party has been steadily gaining ground, rising from zero seats in the West Bengal assembly in 2011 to 77 seats in 2021, when it won 38 per cent of the vote.”
Apoorva Jadhav tackles the question of India’s demographic dividend in her essay at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She posits that while India’s population is young now, the country will soon lose this advantage as the population ages, and how India makes use of its young population will determine its economic growth in the years to come.
“The demographic dividend is the potential economic growth a country can enjoy as a result of shifts in its population’s age structure,” she writes.
“Much of the contemporary discourse around India’s rise as a major global economic power rests on the assumption that a youthful population will translate into sustained economic growth.”
But that assumption is now “under strain”. Research suggests that reaping a demographic dividend also needs corresponding policy measures that prioritise “good healthcare, quality education, decent employment opportunities, and gender empowerment”.
“The question is no longer whether India will age before it grows wealthy but, whether the country’s institutions can successfully manage its demographic transformation.”
Jadhav warns that without policy backing, India risks “mirroring parts of Latin America” in the late 1900s.
“For India, the key to fully leveraging its demographic transition lies in improving governance. Managing a vast and regionally diverse population will require that policies be tailored to both the current status and future demographic trends.”
Peace talks between the US and Iran have been futile, sustaining domestic troubles for India that were earlier deemed short-term. Arunoday Mukharji of BBC reports.
Tensions of the West Asia war “are now being felt in India’s glass city Firozabad, where thousands of jobs are at risk”.
In Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh, “glass is at the centre of life”. The city produces 70 percent of the country’s glass in its small and medium-sized factories.
“Now, those factories are under strain – and the biggest reason is gas.”
“Glassmaking depends on a steady supply of natural gas to keep furnaces running at extremely high temperatures”, but supplies have become uncertain, and costs have risen since the beginning of the war.
“Much of the disruption is linked to the Strait of Hormuz – a narrow shipping route in the Gulf through which nearly half of India’s gas imports pass. While some shipments have resumed in recent weeks, factory owners say the benefits are yet to reach them.”
Small factory owners are reporting losses of 25-30 percent while being apprehensive of how long they could continue if gas supplies remain unstable.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)