We are into the closing week of a year that must go down as the worst since Independence, mostly but not only because of Covid-19. The other single year that comes close is 1975, which saw two years of political unrest culminate in the imposition of dictatorial rule and the virtual suspension of the Constitution. The country emerged from that trauma in 21 months. Among economic nightmares, the worst was not 1991 but the mid-1960s, when the combined impact of the 1965 war with Pakistan and twin droughts brought the country to its knees, devalued its currency, and made it a supplicant for American grain to feed itself even as famine raged in Bihar. Per capita income was virtually stagnant in the decade of the 1970s that followed.
The food crisis of the 1960s gave birth to the Green Revolution, and out of the stagnation of the 1970s were born the first, weak impulses for economic reform. Even if the immediate travails of 2020 prove relatively transient, one wonders what good will come out of it in the end.
India is better placed now than it was half a century ago to deal with multiple simultaneous crises. So while the issues confronting the country go beyond the extreme privations caused by the lockdown, and beyond also the vaccination challenge to tame a deadly virus that has taken a massive toll, the economic damage can be substantially repaired in the next couple of years — the sharp shrinking of the economy for the first time in four decades, the large-scale loss of jobs, the impact on government finances, and the ballooning of public debt.
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But, to repeat, the blight on the year wasn’t just on account of Covid. In fact Covid brought to a halt the sustained agitation against a new citizenship law by people who feared the horrors of potential statelessness. As the year draws to a close, farmers in north India have laid siege to Delhi in protest against three new laws to do with agriculture (produce marketing, contract farming, and application of the Essential Commodities Act). In between, there were the first large-scale riots in Delhi after the post-Partition mayhem (1984 was a pogrom, not a riot).
To this list must be added an equally disturbing but more silent crisis, sticking out of the findings of the latest National Family Health Survey. They pose a question that seeks an urgent answer: Who benefits from economic growth? On the Ladakh border, meanwhile, there is the loss of large tracts of territory to Chinese control, resulting now in tens of thousands of soldiers having to stand guard in freezing temperatures at heights of 15,000 feet in the dead of winter.
The Test cricket team’s performance does not lift the mood, but there is more than cricket on the mind of anyone who values the liberal heart of the Constitution and its guarantees of individual freedoms. The continuing erosion of civil liberty bulwarks comes along with partisan state laws for largely imagined social problems, high-handed executive action at state and central level, and prosecutorial targeting. One could add the messages implicit in the Supreme Court judgment last year in the Ramjanmabhoomi case, followed this year by the “not guilty” verdict for everyone accused of conspiring to pull down the Babri masjid.
As the country enters the third decade of the century, one thing is clear: Its institutions and instincts, resources and reserves will face tough stress tests. The government can argue with reason that it has dealt proactively with issues and pushed economic reform in the midst of crisis. But the violence in a Karnataka factory by unpaid workers reminds everyone that capitalism functions best with effective regulation and oversight. Meanwhile, the uncompromising stance of agitating farmers who fear the loss of a safety net is reminiscent of the anti-corruption agitation of 2011. The underlying problem was and is lack of trust between the rulers and the ruled. So, it is time the most powerful government of the past three decades reminded itself of the promises it made: Good days, good governance, and progress for everyone.
By Special Arrangement with Business Standard.
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First you write sensetional trash..funded by well understood which bunch of crooks….and you wish any sane INDIAN ll support what you call jounalism.
Alas bro..come out of gutter muck and then you ll b able to understand THE BEAUTY AND POWER of our MATRUBHUMI.
We are generous enough to let creatures like you and alikes.
Well, the section rightly says “opinion”.
Anyway your opinion is absolutely negative and hence totally garbage.
Writer is actually blindfolded.
While other things are fine, the farmer’s issue is a complete political blackmail by a dominant group. Their demands are extremely unfair and will wreck the country’s finances. Their anger is highly misplaced and being directed at private companies like jio. It is one thing to boycott their sims but to attack their towers? Do we really need to tell what the long term effects will be? Punjab is in dire need for industrialisation and these loonies led by loony leftist leaders are turing this into a full blown revolution against free markets. I am losing whatever sympathy i had for them. The farmers must understand that msp for all crops is impossible and will not be done. Instead they should ask for an increase in pm kisan nidhi and access to better healthcare and education for their kids. One group’s demands should not be allowed to take precedence over nation’s finances and eco stability.
A terrible, biased, polarised and blatantly anti bjp article in a leftist rag. Neither in CAA, nor in Anti Agriculture bill agitation, is anyone from the ‘protestors’ able to tell the nation one thing – what they are protesting against? The argument is precisely that – nor argument. Do as we tell you, or else we will do violence, block the roads. And our communist anti bjp anti democracy friends like this author & many other wolves in sheep clothing hiding in such ‘media’ institutions, will spare no effort to demonise a popular PM, and if need be, a whole country & culture. Well I have some news for all of you, do what you will, this country is now rid of tyranny of leftist communist communal appeasement based thinking. You are finished. Your space is shrinking faster than you can imagine & each week, month, year that Modi rules India is a nail in your ideological coffin.
This little piece was actually better than the load garbage the author served
Prasahant Sharma, the piece is marked as an opinion and in a democracy and in free media it is OK to write an opinion piece in keeping with the authors views. If you don’t want to accept it or like the views, you certainly can ignore it. There is no need for personal attacks. Also, I would like you to please suggest media outlets which you see as upholding the right views, so that ThePrint can perhaps learn a few things from them.
First of all dont be ashamed to tell the world who you are. Why hiding? Secondly why should I ‘ignore’ his leftist liberal trashy opinion? I have an equal and unassailable right just like to him to air MY opinion. This is not 1990’s that people like me are held hostage by the cabal of communist zombie editors. We can now contradict their world view with aplomb. Thirdly, I have NOT launched any personal attack on the author. I have launched an attack on his ideology & partisan reporting. There is a difference. No where did I use abuses, unparliamentary language. Lastly, due to completely biased, one sided reporting done by leftist, communist, pseudo secular congress sympathetic media houses for almost 50 years (example NDTV, TOI, The Hindu, HT, Outlook etc), now finally there is an equal push back from the other side and Republic, Zee, India Tv, News Nation have come forward to air the alternate narrative. At least the other side has a voice. To answer you question, there is no middle ground in this war of narratives. AND THERE NEVER WAS. If you dont believe me just watch ANY NDTV DEBATE of last 2-3 decades. And i do mean ANY!