India must counter the UK’s negative approach
Vivek Katju, a former Indian diplomat
Hindustan Times
Katju writes that the British took several “anti-India positions” during the informal consultation at the UNSC on Indo-Pak concerns that took place in New York earlier this month. They didn’t make any official statement on record to possibly retain support from influential Indians.
On the Kashmir issue, they said that India should act according to “international obligations” and expressed concern about the human rights of Kashmiri people. These comments, which came after Pakistan complained about India’s action in Jammu and Kashmir, display a negative attitude towards India.
The British initially supported China’s request to issue an official statement after the meeting, but realised they were the only country that wanted it and, hence, kept quiet.
The British have always taken the “Pakistani side” on J&K, right from 1947 when Mountbatten ill-advised former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru on Kashmir. It continues its colonial attitude towards India as was made evident by former British PM Theresa May’s comments on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. India should stop tolerating Britain’s “disregard” for its issues and positions, writes Katju.
Everyone must have an ID
Bachi Karkaria, senior journalist
The Times of India
Karkaria writes about watching Gurinder Chadha’s latest film, Blinded by the Light, and her first big feature, Bhaji on the Beach. They both tell stories of how “we all want our identity” and the tension that arises from this fact conflicts with larger collective demands.
She relates this to Kashmir and writes that while the ‘One Nation, One Law’ idea may have some validity, the Kashmiris are not happy to being subjected to this “one size fits all” idea of India.
This “fractured identity notion” is universal as can be seen in the case of Britain’s impending Brexit deal. If one thought that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah had acted “despotically” in abrogating Article 370, democracy will suffer an even bigger setback when Britain finally goes through with its plans of leaving the European Union on 31 October. “Everywhere, we are united in divisiveness,” says Karkaria.
BJP’s caste play
Christophe Jaffrelot, senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences, and Haider Abbas Rizvi, Information Commissioner, Uttar Pradesh
The Indian Express
Jaffrelot and Rizvi write that the sangh parivar is addressing the question of reservations once again, with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat calling for a deliberation between those in favour of it and those who are not.
Traditionally, the sangh has been against caste politics and even the Mandal Commission. In the last general elections, the BJP used caste as a strategy to select candidates. In a bid to federate “smaller castes against larger more affluent ones”, it appointed a non-Maratha chief minister in Maharashtra, a non-Patel CM in Gujarat, a non-Jat CM in Haryana, and a non-Yadav CM in UP.
In Maharashtra, CM Devendra Fadnavis’s government was criticised for granting 16 per cent quota to Marathas in government jobs. After a long legal battle, the courts had to uphold the government’s move despite the fact that “Marathas had suddenly not become more backward”.
Caste-based politics have thus been revived by two sets of players, who have traditionally opposed it. First, the BJP in their selection of candidates and “expanding caste-based reservations”, and secondly, the judiciary in making it “easier by relaxing past jurisprudence”.
My Khayyam
Muzaffar Ali, film director
The Indian Express
Ali pays tribute to legendary music composer Mohammed Zahur Khayyam Hashmi, more popularly known as Khayyam, and writes that the only way to process losing him is cherishing the legacy he left behind.
Khayyam was more than just his work in Umrao Jaan — he should also be remembered for Anjuman, Gaman and Zooni. Ali recalls his initial apprehension on working with Khayyam and how in reality he was very open to working with. Each song created for Umrao Jaan was made as though it “was coming from the soul of a poetess”. It was as though “each time a new world was born in Khayyam’s room”.
Khayyam also worked on Ali’s lesser-known films, Anjuman and Zooni, and composed unforgettable songs for them. The “unreleased melodies still haunt” Ali, who hopes for Zooni’s release as a tribute to Khayyam.
A politically inconvenient data nugget
Puja Mehra, Delhi-based journalist
The Hindu
Mehra discusses a task force report “that recommended a new law to replace the more than 50-year-old Income Tax Act, 1961” and alleges that it has been suppressed by the government because it provides evidence of the negative impact of demonetisation on the formal corporate sector.
Two versions of this report exist.
According to Mehra, the report has a table that shows “aggregates of investments corporate firms disclosed in their annual tax return filings”. She cites these figures and argues that they constitute “undeniable evidence of demonetisation’s contribution to the deepening economic slowdown”.
According to the report, the investments made by corporate firms “that filed annual returns in each of the years from 2010-11 to 2016-17 as a percentage of GDP were 15%, 10.5%, 10.2%, 9.8%, 9%, 7.5% and 2.7%”.
The corresponding numbers in the same period were “Rs 11,72,550 crore, Rs 9,25,010 crore, Rs 10,22,376 crore, Rs 11,03,969 crore, Rs 9,98,056 crore, Rs 10,33,847 crore and Rs 4,25,051 crore”.
She writes that a drop of nearly 60 per cent can be observed in the demonetisation year.
Did business leaders misjudge the current slowdown?
Sundeep Khanna | Executive editor at Mint
Mint
Khanna writes that even though an economic slowdown was looming large, Indian corporate leaders were behaving as if everything was great. He cites various surveys by groups like PwC and KPMG in which more than 70 per cent of India’s CEOs were confident of their company’s growth prospects.
He writes that many of these CEOs are now “decrying the lack of demand in the economy and asking the government for a stimulus”. He argues that such behaviour of CEOs is truly “bizarre” as “this slowdown has been in the works [for] a long, long time”.
He mentions that the real estate sector has been facing problems for over a decade now — credit growth has been declining since 2010-11 and gross fixed capital formation as a percentage of GDP has fallen steadily after 2007. The banking problem has also been there for years, he notes.
He concludes by saying that “the current grief is here to afflict us for some time, and its causes can be traced to the past”.
A bottoms-up approach to inclusive growth
Soumya Kanti Ghosh & S Adikesavan | Ghosh is group chief economic adviser, State Bank of India; Adikesavan is a senior bank executive
Business Standard
The authors write on Narendra Modi government’s budget announcement to provide “micro loans at an effective rate of 4 per cent per annum for women in self-help groups (SHG) towards income-generating activities in all 727 districts of the country”.
Calling it a potentially transformative step, they note that at present such ultra-low interest loans are available only in 250 districts.
These small loans ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000 have transformed the lives of lakhs of women across the country. They also suggest that routing credit through women leads to better household outcomes in terms of consumption and investment on goods.
They also note that defaults in SHG loans are lower and are generally not willful defaults.
The authors argue that if India has to realise its goal of becoming a 5-trillion USD economy by 2025, then it is important to provide formal credit linkages to all previously excluded groups.
Now, Kiss and Make Up
Ajay Chhibber | The writer is visiting scholar, Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington DC, US
Economic Times
Chhibber discusses some contentious issues in the India-US relationship and why it is important to overcome these differences. He writes that trade issues currently threaten the relationship, particularly after the US removed the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) for India and India also imposed tariffs on US.
Another issue of contention is patents and India’s imposition of price controls on medical products such as stents. Differences over certification of meat and dairy products are also a problem, notes Chhibber.
India’s e-commerce restrictions have also hurt the relationship. Chibber writes that even though “Trump wants to position India as a strategic ally against China”, he puts both of them in the same bracket.
He writes that India’s GDP per capita is five times lower than China’s and its “trade surplus of $20 billion with the US is no comparison to China’s trade surplus of over $400 billion”.
Chibber notes that Trump’s approach to trade makes it difficult for India to take his strategic security partnership seriously.