A case of not knowing one’s onions
Ashok Gulati | Infosys Chair Professor for Agriculture
Harsh Wardhan | Consultant, ICRIE
Financial Express
Gulati and Wardhan discuss how the Modi government can address rising onion prices and “future fiascos”. They begin by mentioning how PM Modi has been silent on the issue but earlier, as Gujarat’s chief minister, was quick to criticise the UPA government when they were in a similar situation.
A spike in onion prices happens every alternate year “but we have refused to learn”, they write. Last year’s “Operation Green”, recommended by former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, was meant to stabilise the prices of tomatoes, onions, and potatoes but was shelved, they explain. This year’s spike could have been anticipated earlier since the horticulture statistics division had reported 7 per cent lower kharif acreage from last year in major onion growing states, they add.
The authors recommend that the government keep imports open, avoid “abrupt export bans”, set up storage facilities on a “massive scale” and promote dehydrated onions. To protect farmer interests, “small and marginal farmers should be organised into FPOs and direct buying by organised retailers should be encouraged through contract farming, bypassing the mandi system”, they write.
Where have all the women bankers gone?
Tamal Bandyopadhyay | Consulting editor, author & senior adviser, Jana Small Finance Bank Ltd.
Business Standard
Bandyopadhyay depicts the grim reality of female representation in the “executive cadre” of the banking industry. Currently, women make up 10 per cent of that tier in state-run banks, he writes. Some, like ICICI Bank’s former CEO Chanda Kochhar, “are in the news for the wrong reasons and there aren’t any takers for the space vacated by them”, he adds.
In India, it took about 30 years after bank nationalisation for a woman to become a bank’s CEO, he writes. Women make up 10 per cent of the top tier in state-run banks and in the private sector there are just a few exceptions like Yes Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Federal Bank, he explains.
However, this pattern occurs globally, he notes. A 2017 study of 71 banks in 20 countries found that despite women making up 52 per cent of the banking workforce, their upward mobility had declined. Companies “offering fully paid, adequate maternity leave, flexible working hours, and running crèches for the children of employees can help the cause but at the moment they don’t have too many role models to look up to”, he writes.
A Hindu critique of Hindutva
Avijit Pathak | Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
The Hindu
Pathak asks whether it is possible “to have yet another reading” of his religion or the “experience of religiosity and take part in a collective movement for creating a society filled with love, empathy and pluralism.” He notes that with the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), “there is danger of the movement against the discriminatory nature of the CAA degenerating into violent communal politics”.
A “careful look at India’s culture and society would indicate that religion is all-pervasive”, writes Pathak and therefore, the “mere act of bunking religion will not help”. He argues that “we need to rescue religion from zealots and rediscover the spirit of religiosity” to our surplus. He states that the “kind of Hindutva we see today is against some of the finest aspects of religiosity”, he learnt as a Hindu.
Moreover, Pathak argues that “majoritarian Hindutva is not merely against Muslims, it is no less hostile to those Hindus who think and live differently”. He maintains that “true religiosity is the art of using the ‘form’ in order to be formless”. This is “precisely the most important sadhana, or the meaning of being a ‘Hindu’ – a seeker who seeks to break the iron cage of Hindutva or, for that matter, any other fundamentalist doctrine”.
A rare reprimand
Tilak Devasher | Member, National Security Advisory Board
The Indian Express
Devasher writes that there are at least “four firsts in the December 17 judgment” of the “special court in Pakistan that held Pervez Musharraf guilty of high treason and sentenced him to death”. First, “this is the first case in Pakistan being tried under Article 6 of the constitution that deals with treason and abrogation of the constitution”. Second, this was the first time that an army chief was tried for treason. Third, “it is the first time that an army chief has actually been convicted” and the “fourth element is the nature of the punishment”.
In light of the various measures taken by the Imran Khan government, Devasher poses the question — “how could a government that lost no opportunity to portray itself as a champion of insaf or justice, and was determined to punish the privileged few, try and delay if not subvert the decision in Musharraf’s case?”. Moreover, the “real import of the judgment is the strong message it sends to the army chiefs”. The chiefs “will thus have to rest content with pulling the strings from behind the scene,” he writes.
Finally, Devasher argues that Musharraf’s case “has definitely sullied the institutional image and charisma of the army in Pakistan” and yet, “the army is bound to find a way to rescue its image and clout in the system”.
The CAA is a humane law. Do not get misled
Gajendra Singh Shekhawat | Union Cabinet Minister, Jal Shakti
Hindustan Times
Shekhawat writes that Saadat Hasan Manto would have seen the Citizenship (Amendment) Act “as a way of correcting a historical mistake”. It is imperative to “understand that the Act only extends citizenship, but doesn’t snatch anyone’s citizenship”, he adds and notes that the opposition to the Act is due to two factors, “apprehensions in the Northeastern states that this Act will alter their demography and linguistic uniqueness, and the other its exclusion of Muslims from the list”.
India “has not signed the United Nations 1951 convention on the status of refugees and the 1967 protocol” so we don’t have a national policy to deal with refugees., writes Shekhawat. He argues that “the fact that they lacked access to essential services and were stateless, yet refused to go back to their country of origin shows just how much they feared persecution”. Moreover, he writes, “illegal migrants have been treated as vote banks by the Congress, which explains its opposition to the Act”.
Shekhawat states that the “people from the Northeast don’t have to worry about this Act” since it doesn’t apply to tribal areas or those areas under the Bengal Eastern Frontier Regulation, 1873. Also, “Muslims in India don’t have to worry as this Act concerns only migrants”, he writes. Shekhawat maintains that “citizens must not fall for the machinations of political vested interests who are desperate to rekindle their shrinking vote banks”.
Disinformation and lies are fuelling the anti-CAA protests
Sandipan Deb | Former editor of Financial Express, founder-editor of Open & Swarajya magazines
Mint
In his piece, Deb calls the anti-citizenship law protesters uninformed, including the students from Jamia Millia Islamia. He criticises “influencers”, such as actor Farhan Akhtar for creating “fears that all Muslims are now second-class citizens of India”.
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act was broached in 2003 by Manmohan Singh, he writes. Singh asked then Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani to amend the law to grant citizenship to Bangladeshis who had taken refuge in India due to religious persecution, he explains. However, later Singh’s government refused Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen’s application under this law fearing political backlash from Muslim voters, observes Deb. He adds that the claims being spread that people will have to prove that their parents and grandparents were born in India are “untrue”.
Deb further questions the Modi government on the lack of a “communication strategy” before passing the law and how it allowed the discourse around CAA “to get so easily hijacked”.