Paradise Lost or Regained?
Nirupama Rao | Former foreign secretary and ambassador
The Times of India
Rao writes how the government’s action in Kashmir signifies a bold step – ensuring that the Constitution of India will from now on be fully applicable to Jammu and Kashmir. Rao recalls a young Kashmiri telling how her birthplace was in the “stone age”, with Kashmir being “two hundred years behind the rest of India”. Kashmir does not need “azadi” as claimed by some, but “investment, modernisation, livelihoods, gender empowerment and development”.
The Constitution’s founding father Babasaheb Ambedkar saw the country as an integrated and united whole with a single people living “under a single imperium derived from a single source”. The Narendra Modi government too holds a similar view.
Innocent lives have been lost in Kashmir but countless lives of Indian men in uniform have been fighting for national unity. The Valley has for decades chosen “anger and alienation versus a pragmatic choice in favour of economic development and closer identification with India”. But the government is trying to curb threats to security from cross-border forces along with internal dissent, and will do this by building trust and building a “bright future of development”. Kashmir must be brought into the larger Indian fold with “human and judicious calibration”, concludes Rao.
Silence of the successful
Ramachandra Guha | Bengaluru-based historian
The Indian Express
Guha on the other hand, express anguish at the manner of the government’s actions. He writes that while Babri Masjid was demolished by a violent mob in “broad daylight” in 1992, Article 370 has been abrogated “at night by a secret government” in 2019. These events that occurred 27 years apart are very similar in some ways as they were justified as “righting historical wrongs”. When the Babri Masjid was demolished, Guha was staying with his aunt, Dharma Kumar, professor of history, Delhi School of Economics. Disturbed by the events, she drafted a statement and paid for it to be used as advertisements on the front pages of all the big newspapers in the country. It questioned if the demolition was truly in keeping with what Hindu culture stood for. Many important figures signed that, including the biggest industrialists of the time like Bharat Ram, R.P. Goenka, Lalit Thapar etc. Today in 2019, Guha wished to do something similar after the events in Kashmir but realised that this current government is far more powerful and vindictive than the one in 1992. Industrialists today would be too scared to sign on a statement critiquing the government for fear of consequences such as “unannounced rais, cooked up cases, arrests” and so on. Today’s industrialists have been silenced like the people in Kashmir. The fact that the richest, most powerful Indians cannot honestly express their thoughts in public, tells us volumes about the state of our democracy in 2019.
J&K move: The real test begins now
Brahma Chellaney | A geostrategist
Hindustan Times
Chellaney writes that India will have to be politically tactful in tackling Pakistan since the neighbouring country is backed by the US. Pakistan will negotiate with Taliban and help the US withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. The implications of this deal was a trigger for India to change J&K’s constitutional status and its decision to bifurcate the state into two. Even if India had not done this, Pakistan would have still proceeded with its “low-intensity asymmetric warfare”. Pakistan wants to redraw borders even though it treats parts of J&K that it occupies (Gilgit Baltistan and ‘Azad Kashmir’) as its ‘colonies’, sapping them of their mineral and water wealth.
The moves on Kashmir were a way to safeguard Indian security before America “hands Afghanistan back to the same terrorist militia it removed from power in 2001”. However, Chellaney says, India has had a history of losing its advantage after it makes a big move, as was seen when Pakistan “neutralised India’s advantage” after Balakot. India’s biggest challenge starts now, and the government needs to face a potential “proxy-war” with its diplomatically weak neighbour who is now stronger after Trump’s deal.
A leaf out of the Chinese playbook
Pallavi Aiyar | Author of the China memoir, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’
The Hindu
Aiyar writes that India’s handling of the Kashmir issue shows an “authoritarian muscularity” akin to China’s. India and China have always been different, but the way India resorted to “secrecy, troops, arrests, curfew and a communications shutdown” in Kashmir is comparable to China’s authoritarian regime. New Delhi and Beijing have dealt with the agitated regions of their peripheries, namely Kashmir and the Northeast in India and Tibet and Xinjiang in China in similar ways. Inhabited by peoples from different religions than their country’s majority religion, China and India have deemed these areas “integral” to their territories, labelling the people who resist their control as “splitists” and “separatists”.
The Indian government claims it will improve equality, the status of women, and development in the “backward” state of J&K. Similarly, China says it has “liberated” the people of Tibet and Xinjiang. This narrative ignores the reality of how these countries have grossly violated human rights as a nation-building tactic in these regions using tortures, rape, illegal detentions, extra-judicial killings and intensified military action. What used to set India apart was Article 370 and 35A, and the way it upheld diversity and dialogue. India has a “civilisational rather than territorial identity”, held together by the idea of multiplicity. By losing its biggest strength – pluralism and debate — it risks becoming like its “muscular, nationalist neighbour” in the north.
Government bonds in foreign currencies: bad idea, bad debt
Deepak Nayyar | Emeritus professor of economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Mint
Nayyar argues against government’s plans to issue foreign currency-denominated bonds announced in the budget. He writes that government borrowing abroad will not be cheaper as even though interest rates are low, there is always a currency risk. Hedging against this risk carries costs which will make the total cost of borrowing the same, if not higher, as borrowing in domestic capital markets.
He adds that only countries which cannot sell home-currency denominated bonds in domestic capital markets issue dollar denominated bonds abroad, but India faces no such problem. He also argues that governments don’t exercise restraint and might resort to foreign currency bonds more and more until a crisis hits. He argues that foreign currency bonds will also have to be rated, and a downgrade in tough times might create problems. He concludes by saying that in a world of capital account liberalisation, large foreign exchange reserves provide only “illusory” comfort.
Structural slowdown and home market demand
Rathin Roy | The writer is director, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy
Business Standard
Rathin Roy writes that the present economic slowdown is structural. He writes that a structural slowdown is typically seen as a supply-side problem at the macro level. And demand deficiency is seen as a cyclical phenomenon. He, however, explains the structural demand problem in the Indian context. He writes that “the Indian economy, since 1991, has grown largely by meeting the consumption demands of the top 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the Indian population”. It is evident from the leading indicators of Indian economic growth which are “automobiles, FMCG, consumer durables and financial services etc.”
He argues that the limits of this model now seem to have hit the Indian economy. He recommends that the growth approach now should be “to harness the demand at affordable prices of those earning at least the minimum wage. Focus should be on rural income growth and affordable housing provided by the private sector for those earning the minimum wage. Also, attempts should be made to address affordable health and education demand for those earning the minimum wage.
Sectors Show the Day
R Jagannathan | The writer is editorial director, Swarajya
The Economic Times
Jagannathan writes that India’s present growth problems are both structural and sectoral. And while economists will suggest factor market reforms to address structural issues, which undoubtedly are required, focus should also be given to sectoral problems, he writes.
He discusses the problems confronting some of the major sectors of the Indian economy. He writes that shared mobility, investments in public transport and a policy shift towards electric vehicles have hit the sector hard whose market was already saturated. The banking sector, he writes, is facing the digital challenge which has made a lot of its manpower, branches and ATM investments unproductive. Similarly, NBFCs and real estate sector are also facing problems.
He concludes by saying, “the real question to ask is not where the economy is heading, but where various important sectors that will drive growth are heading. The devil is not in the macro, but in the micro”.
Ramachandra Guha never ceases to amaze me with his rank, unthinking criticism of anything that the present government does. If he bothers to read the relevant parts of the constitution, he would have to agree that the status of J and K was to be purely temporary as was the idea of reservations for scheduled and backward castes. How long should these temporary measures last? He may owe a debt of gratitude and blind loyalty to the dynasty, but that should not excuse his obsessions for the Congress and against the BJP.
You are explaining to some one like Guha, who is another Romila Thaper of Aryan Theory. These libtards keep writing for their paid masters.
Guha is worse than Arundhati Roy.
Arundhati Roy is a passionate India hater, but at least she is open.
Guha hates India to his guts, but poses to be otherwise. Hindus have always produced traitors like Guha, and N Ram in large numbers.
How else do you think we were defeated and enslaved for 1000 years.