Mander on Bhagwat’s explanation of lynchings & Rajadhyaksha on limitations of carbon tax

The best of the day’s opinion, chosen and curated by ThePrint’s top editors.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat | PTI

Lynching, the scourge of new India

Harsh Mander | Human rights worker and teacher

The Hindu

Mander notes how the BJP and RSS have responded to lynchings across the country through denial or counter-claims that violence took place because Muslims “continue to traffic and slaughter cows”. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat recently offered more points in defence of how his organisation’s responses. Mander lists down five of these.

First, “lynching is a foreign Biblical practice” alien to India. Second, Indians are “culturally non-violent”. Third, the RSS has no role in these attacks and actually tries to prevent them. Fourth, ordinary crimes are often framed as lynching. Fifth, the law should be strengthened in order to punish the guilty, he writes.

Countering these claims, Mander writes that while the word ‘lynching’ did originate in the US, it does not imply that mob killings don’t exist in India — he mentions cases of single women and Dalits to make his point.

Mander visited over 31 lynching sites along with his organisation Karwan e Mohabbat and discovered the alleged involvement of Hindu vigilantes with informal links to the RSS. He writes that 86 per cent of the people killed in cow-related attacks were Muslims, often forced to recite “Jai Shri Ram” — indicating they weren’t ordinary crimes. Most attacks took place in BJP-ruled states where police and administrators worked to protect the killers and criminalise the victims, he adds.

When China and Nepal became strategic partners

Amish Raj Mulmi | Nepali writer

Hindustan Times

Mulmi writes that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Kathmandu was short but impactful, with a joint statement over a “strategic partnership” and significant developments on the connectivity front.

China and Nepal have agreed to accelerate the Belt and Road Initiative projects that will now be developed under the Trans-Himalayan Multidimensional Connectivity Network umbrella.

The funding for a railway project is yet to be worked out, but China will begin work and the network will extend to Pokhara and Lumbini. China will also build a “critical” road between Kathmandu and Rasuwagadhi to reduce the distance to the northern border. Xi also announced Nepalese rupee (NRs) 56 billion in assistance to Nepal, adding that it would assist the Himalayan nation graduate from being a “land-locked” to “land-linked” country.

About two dozen agreements were signed, showing that “China prioritises Nepal”, as a Kantipur editorial said, and that if projects go as per plan, it would “free Nepal from its dependence on India for imports”. China may have issues with Nepal’s slow movement on previous commitments, but the mood in Kathmandu is “upbeat”, writes Mulmi.

A need to democratise science

Milind Sohoni | Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas, IIT Bombay

The Indian Express

The Department of Science and Technology (DST)’s decision to review its State Science and Technology Councils (SSTC) Programme is a welcome step, writes Sohoni.

India faces many challenges as a developing country, from managing floods and droughts to efficient time tables for city buses. Systematic studies of these problems will lead to better solutions as well as new enterprises and jobs.

Currently, state agencies call upon international consultants to solve issues of irrigation; companies to fill up pot-holes; and foreign universities to draw up smart-city plans. But developmental problems, like water and public health, can be solved by the SSTCs, he writes.

However, there are three main hurdles. The first is “scarce” state funding. Second, much of the SSTC’s budget is sourced from a “patronising project proposal and approval” method. Third, there is a preoccupation with the idea of “world-class” research. But “science is about empowering people” and not just new trends.

“A decentralisation of the agenda of science and democratisation of access to science” is urgently needed to bring schools, colleges and communities to participate in their own development, adds Sohoni.

What a carbon tax can and can’t achieve against climate change

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha| Academic board member, Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics

Mint

As the climate crisis heightens, Rajadhyaksha discusses a global carbon tax, as suggested by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and its possible drawbacks.

Estimates of the social cost of carbon, “a current monetary value of the costs of climate change that will pile up in the future”, range from $8 per tonne to $85 per tonne of carbon due to “profound uncertainty” regarding the impact of climate change.

Global carbon tax has received worldwide backing — the Modi government’s fuel tax hike and quadrupling of coal cess follow in its vein, he writes.

However, it could become a “political hot potato”. It will impose costs on developing countries rather than those responsible for the “existing stock of pollution”. Further, taxes are “national social contracts” which cannot always be translated on a global scale, explains Rajadhyaksha.

For the former, India should reiterate that “the developed world needs to help finance its transition to cleaner energy”. But it must, at the same time, remain a part of the global fight against climate change.

Economic growth in critical stage

Renu Kohli | New Delhi-based macroeconomist

The Financial Express

Kohli discusses how misdiagnosing the economic slowdown and treating it with countercyclical measures and “textbook reforms like inflation targeting, IBC, RERA, and GST” will not yield a turnaround in the second half of 2019-20.

Policy errors, higher government spending, credit by NBFCs and an “overly tight” monetary policy pushed the slowdown, she writes. The widening output gap has created space for countercyclical responses, prompting the Centre to seek economic stimulus opportunities, “largely off-budget”. This approach could be a repetition of “historical mistakes” in the post-2008 period, she writes.

“Monetary policy has lost its mojo” and playing by letter instead of the spirit of Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act has added to the problem, adds Kohli. Scaling up divestment is not a great solution either as “the macroeconomic gains would be marginal”.

Unless “private investment is back in the game”, the economy is unlikely to improve, she writes.

Defence funding isn’t a finance panel’s mandate

Gautam Sen | Former Indian Defence Accounts Service officer

The Hindu Business Line

Sen criticises the move to ask 15th Finance Commission (FC) to recommend a separate funding mechanism for defence and internal security expenditure.

It has the potential to “depress the relative [fund] allocation to the States”. The proposed mechanism, which involves “built-in earmarking funds for defence”, has limited support from many states, he writes, as it could empower the Centre with “relatively higher ceiling amount for its overall requirement”.

There is a virtual subversion of the commission’s “Constitution-mandated functions” in making it act “as a surrogate in Budget allocation” and assume roles other than “originally” envisaged, explains Sen.

The FC must focus on coming up with a “transparent framework” of the distribution of “shareable funds from the Central pool”, while also taking into account the state of the economy and the needs of different levels of governance. This scenario will not necessarily imply overlooking external and internal security, adds Sen.