New Delhi: Will the ongoing war in West Asia delay India’s ascent to the world’s fourth-largest economy? And have torture and custodial deaths become entrenched in India’s policing system? These are the latest India questions drawing global media attention.
Nikhil Inamdar reports for the BBC that the ongoing war in West Asia and its consequences on oil supply have put a question mark on India’s “Goldilocks moment”—a phase of steady growth with low inflation and balanced conditions.
The report notes that the Indian currency has been hit the hardest, with the rupee falling by 10 percent. “There’s been some relief in the rupee’s slide after the central bank intervened to curb speculation, but that is likely to be temporary.”
“Persistent weakness in the currency can negatively impact everything, feeding into higher prices for consumers, lower corporate margins, bigger government deficits and thinner capital flows into the stock market,” the report writes.
According to various brokerages, the BBC reports that India’s GDP, too, was previously forecast to grow by 6-7 percent, but “the crisis in the Gulf could shave off growth by as much as 1 percent.”
“Given that this comes in the backdrop of recent downgrades to India’s GDP (following changes to the statistical base year), India’s ambitions to cross Japan to become the world’s fourth largest economy will most certainly be further pushed back,” Inamdar writes.
George Wright and Anbarasan Ethirajan report for the BBC on nine police personnel being sentenced to death in a police brutality case of 2020 that killed a father-son duo in custody.
“P Jeyaraj, 58, and his son Benicks, 38, both died in jail in the southern state of Tamil Nadu – days after they were detained for allegedly keeping their mobile phone shop open in breach of lockdown rules during the Covid-19 pandemic.”
The sentencing judge said Monday that the two men were stripped and brutally assaulted in front of each other, calling it a clear abuse of authority, the report notes.
The officers, convicted of murder last month, will be able to appeal their sentences.
While delivering the sentence, the judge also noted that “They (officers) attacked unarmed people. They should not be forgiven. They should not be given lesser sentences based on their age or family background. They are all educated.”
Rights groups say, Wright and Ethirajan report, hundreds of people die in custody in India each year, adding that torture and abuse to extract confessions have become part of policing.
Meanwhile, Pragati K.B. and John Yoon report for The New York Times on the momentous task of conducting a census of 1.4 billion people.
“India began counting its population this week, setting off a yearlong process of tallying some 1.4 billion people. The results will shape how India is governed and who benefits from its welfare system over the next decade,” the report says.
This will be India’s first census since 2011, after being delayed by five years due to the covid pandemic. The results, to be published next year, will impact “policymaking, affirmative action policies, the number of lawmakers representing each region and the redistribution of wealth.”
The NYT reports that the census will cost $1.2 billion and involve more than 30 lakh workers going door-to-door to collect relevant data across 640,000 villages and 9,700 towns and cities.
The data collection will happen in two phases. “The first phase, happening between April and September, aims to make a comprehensive list of houses and the people in them. This phase will focus on household sizes, housing conditions and amenities like water, electricity, sanitation and internet access.”
The second phase, which will take place in February 2027, will involve counting individuals, collecting their names, ages, sexes, dates of birth, marital statuses, educations, occupations, religions, castes, disabilities, and migration histories.
The report also highlights why this census would be different. “The current effort is India’s first fully digital census. Workers will use mobile devices to collect data with an app, eliminating the need for paper forms.”
This will also be the first census that will allow citizens to log their own information online, with an online portal accessible in 16 different languages.
This census would include the collection of data based on the caste category.
“Including caste in this year’s census has reignited one of India’s most contentious debates. Supporters say it will provide an updated picture of inequality in the country. Critics say that it will entrench rigid identities and intensify the political competition over payments and quotas dictated by caste.”
The data collected from this will influence the affirmative action policy in the decade to come.
It is also expected to count, for the first time, the nomadic and seminomadic tribal communities which make up about one-tenth of India’s population.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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