Look, act & embrace India
Amit Shah | Home Minister, Government of India
Economic Times
It’s unusual for a Home Minister to write on economic matters but Amit Shah has done just that.
In this piece, he writes that 4 November 2019 will “go down as a historic milestone for India’s bold decision to stay away from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)”. The move will cement “India’s growing stature as a country” and will “boldly ward off any attempts to being arm twisted,” he adds. Shah notes that this decision shows that the PM “can go to any extent to safeguard the interests of farmers”.
According to him, the Congress-led UPA government had “failed” to safeguard India’s interests as it had “already begun thinking of engaging in a regional trade agreement with China”. He terms Congress’ “desperate” attempts to “take credit for the PM’s decision to stay away from RCEP as “ironic”.
Shah writes that the Indian government has “begun to evaluate ASEAN and Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with South Korea”. However, “considering India’s growing stature” RCEP members “can’t afford to ignore it for long, and will come around to agree to GoI’s terms”. In conclusion, he writes, “for us, India remains first, and foremost”.
Majority, minority & temple
Ashutosh Varshney | Director, Center for Contemporary South Asia, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and Social Sciences
The Indian Express
Varshney notes that it is the “first time since Independence, [that] an entirely new electoral prospect has been consolidating itself” and this phenomenon “can be conceptualised as the political irrelevance of Muslims”.
In light of the Ayodhya verdict, he argues that owing to the Supreme Court’s “lack of resolve to confront electorally enabled power, one cannot be too sanguine about whether it would punish those who violated the law but are currently in power”. He writes that Muslims are being made to feel “electorally irrelevant” because of the verdict and that the “judiciary has not sufficiently protected them”.
He notes two points about the verdict — first, Jinnah’s argument for Partition was that “a Hindu-majority India would serve the interests of Hindus” and it is “ironic” that the argument “is starting to acquire credibility now”. Second, democratic theory “envisions the judiciary as a counter-majoritarian institution”. However, “A Hindu temple on the contested site after a mosque’s destruction departs from the principle of judicial counter-majoritarianism.”
In conclusion, Varshney argues that Muslims “can play an important electoral role only if the Hindu vote is sufficiently caste-cleaved” and if that doesn’t happen Muslims need the “judiciary’s counter-majoritarianism to safeguard their interests”.
The core of the Ayodhya judgment
Gopalkrishna Gandhi | Distinguished professor of history and politics, Ashoka University
Hindustan Times
After the Ayodhya verdict, Gandhi suggests that the “right thing” to do is to “look far ahead” and not be shortsighted. He notes that Article 142 is “the backbone of the judgment” which empowers the Supreme Court “to pass any order necessary ‘for doing complete justice in any cause’”.
Gandhi highlights “a few vital consequential orders” that the SC gave “unambiguously” — one, handing over the site to “the temple trust” and the “alternative site to the Sunni Waqf Board should be done simultaneously”. Two, the verdict has “left an option open” for the central government or state government when it comes to the agency in charge of the Trust. Three, the Trust is “empowered by the government in a way that enables it to proceed with” the construction of the temple.
He, further, unpacks three crucial words “emerging from these stipulation”. First, ‘simultaneously’ — the government will have to hand over the disputed site to the trust and five acres to the Waqf board together. Second, ‘effectuation’ — the court asserted that there is a need for “tangible, palpable” action on the ground and third, ‘supplemental’ — this raises the question of how the two sites will be funded.
India’s emergence as leading power
Shyam Saran | Former Foreign Secretary and is a senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research
Business Standard
Saran begins his piece with a quote from renowned historian William McNeil on how power “ingests weaker centres of power” and “stimulates rival centres of power to strengthen themselves”. According to Saran, this shows how countries are placing their bets on “sinews of power” to become dominant players in the international arena.
To achieve this, countries go through three phases — borrowing knowledge systems and advanced technologies from “apex centres”; mastering and internalising what has been borrowed and finally, generating new knowledge and technology in an “autonomous manner”, he explains. China is somewhere between the second and third step while India finds itself between the first and second, he writes.
Thus, India emerges as a “rival centre of power” against China which is why established but declining “centres of wealth and power …in the US, Europe, and Japan” have a stake in India. Saran suggests that India leverage this position to attract “critical mass of capital and technology… and help it sustain an accelerated rate of growth”.
Is the Sensex obsession justified?
Madan Sabnavis | Chief Economist, CARE Ratings
Hindu Business Line
Sabnavis investigates the accuracy of the stock market in representing the economy and writes that policymakers often have a keen eye on markets especially after certain announcements, be it credit policy or the budget. However, the economic “realities of today” are not reflected in “stock indices [that] spew optimism”.
Sabnavis assesses different economic variables and Sensex indices to see if they correlate with GDP growth, investment activity or other facets of the economy. He finds that in the last two years, “GDP growth slowed down considerably” but the Sensex moved from 29,620 (2016-17) to 38,672 (2018-19). However, in terms of direction of change, Sensex movements and the GDP growth seem to be in sync. “There is definitely no set method to this madness,” he remarks.
He also finds that “high swings in Sensex have limited association with high changes in net profit”, and the stock market and investment activity are far from linked. Sabnavis writes that while there are small, “feeble” signs of a relationship between the Sensex and other economic variables on a “long-term basis” it can be seen that there are “extraneous forces” driving these indices.
Industrial activity will remain weak for some time
Saugata Bhattacharya | Senior Vice President Business and Economic Research, Axis Bank
Financial Express
Bhattacharya identifies the ailing manufacturing sector as the “main driver” of the current economic slowdown and fears that there may be a “spillover into the ancillary service ecosystem.” This calls for an “optimal mix of policies to reverse this deceleration”, he writes.
September’s “sharp” and “rare” Industrial Production (IIP) slowdown was mainly “due to a persistent negative growth in capital goods”, especially in the case of commercial vehicles, writes Bhattacharya. Gross value added (GVA) manufacturing growth may be “significantly lower than the 0.6% growth” in the first quarter of next year, he adds. September IIP would have been worse had it not been for sectors like basic metals and MS Slabs (used in machinery industry) that saw “high, concentrated growth”.
If October’s jump in consumer price inflation continues into the next month, November may see “an even higher print”. This will present “a quandary for the monetary policy committee meeting to review the repo rate and other measures in early December”, he explains.