Varma writes that Indian language books do not sell as much today due to lack of “aggressive” marketing by publishers. Such books are “shoddily produced, badly edited and poorly marketed”, he writes. A handful of famous Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Marathi and Bengali authors do well, but even though it is the language for almost 44 per cent of the population, Hindi authors remain unsuccessful.
“Royalty is not the right of the author” but the discretion of the publisher. In contrast, English authors have professional publishers with international ties, high publication and royalty standards, who produce, edit and market books with rigour. Even mediocre English authors are able to gain national markets while exceptional Indian language authors are stuck with smaller audiences of those who read their language.
This disparity can be overcome by creating a “cadre” of skilled translators who can take English to Indian language readers and good Indian language books to English and international readers. Promoting multilingual translators should be a government priority, but even the Sahitya Akademi has ignored its duty of promoting writing in Indian languages. It is not surprising then that more authors “aspire to be published in English”, concludes Varma.
Why India’s growth figures are off the mark
Arun Kumar | Malcolm Adiseshiah Chair Professor, Institute of Social Sciences
The Hindu
Kumar writes that India’s growth figures are “off the mark” as they have been derived solely from organised sector data. India’s economic growth rate has slipped in the past five quarters from 8 per cent to the present 5 per cent. But the Economic Survey, the Reserve Bank of India and the Asian Development Bank’s forecasts for India’s growth ranged from 6.9 to 7.2 per cent. They all depend on official data and if official data is wrong so are their estimates. The government is trying to “project a good image”, writes Kumar.
Although the government denies the slump in growth, the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, NITI Aayog and the RBI have now begun to admit to the slowdown in the economy. The finance ministry’s announcements and policies won’t have much impact as they don’t address the source of the problem – the decline of the unorganised sector since demonetisation and GST.
“Alternative sources” are needed to derive data from the unorganised sector. The unorganised sector has possibly declined by 10 per cent, if the “decline in the workforce [and] the rise in the demand for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act” is taken into account. It is possible that the “the current rate of growth is much less than 5 per cent”, concludes Kumar.
The Afghan deal: A tale of colliding motivations, expectations and aims
Ashok Malik | Distinguished fellow, Observer Research Foundation
Hindustan Times
US President Donald Trump’s failure to meet his 1 September deadline to reach a peace agreement with the Taliban could be due to the latter’s assumed early victory and behaviour of a “government-in-waiting”. The deal also ran the risk of isolating the elected government in Kabul, which has enabled various reforms in the past 18 years.
Malik writes that Taliban was playing “hardball” because it sensed Trump’s desperation to withdraw his troops before the 2020 election. But Trump’s “last decision is only as final as his last tweet”. American critics have already made him soften his position of bringing back “every single soldier”. But Trump is worried about the potential collapse of politics in Kabul and the military families who may feel that their contributions were in vain. A terror attack from Afghanistan after US withdrawal would further ruin his campaign.
The US military and the defence are trying their hardest to oppose and delay Trump’s efforts to withdraw, feeling it will be a sign of “surrendering”. Pentagon’s argument is that billions of dollars worth of equipment will have to be left behind in Afghanistan. Pakistan, China and Russia also have stakes in “American humiliation”, but right now “all eyes are on Trump’s Twitter timeline”, concludes Malik.
GST rate cut for economic growth is a myth
Rahul Renavikar | Managing Director, Acuris Advisors
The Financial Express
In his piece, Renavikar explains how lowering GST rates is not the answer to the current economic slowdown. “Increasing clamour” to reduce GST rates on products like cars and cement in a bid to boost GDP is based on the misconception that lower GST rates will result in larger sales, he explains. In fact, GST exemptions and “zero rating” on certain commodities and services are part of a “tax-cascading effect” that ultimately leads to a less costly product for the end-consumer. Also, any further reduction in GST rates would “push the economy towards a larger fiscal deficit”, warns Renavikar.
He lists five ways to address the real problem, i.e., a slump in demand. These include growing the quantum of export of goods, increasing domestic and foreign investments, taking advantage of the India-China trade war, improving the tax and regulatory environment, and addressing the liquidity crisis in Indian markets.
Sudhirendar Sharma | Independent writer, researcher and academic
The Hindu Business Line
Sharma debates the social acceptability of machine intelligence in the context of the man-machine debate. Given that Google and smart phones help run every aspect of our lives, even down to the most basic, mundane decisions, it is important to address the “potential risks of being blind to the ramifications of algorithmic decision-making”.
Apart from privacy and data security concerns, machine intelligence has been found to go rogue in “behaviour-centric domains” like recruitments and therapies, explains Sharma — Microsoft’s chatbot ‘Tay’ turning sexist and racist on social media is one such example.
Therefore, transparency can help foster trust in algorithms given that they are often viewed as “robotic and emotionless”. As machine intelligence heads towards reaching human-level intelligence, Sharma advocates “a set of rights, responsibilities, and regulations” or an ‘Algorithmic Bill of Rights’ as proposed by Kartik Hosanagar, Technology and Digital Business professor, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
External benchmark: Right step, wrong tool
Debashis Basu | Editor of www.moneylife.in
Business Standard
RBI’s recent circular, directing banks to link their interest rates to an external benchmark, might be long-overdue but the reasons for this move are wrong, argues Basu. Banks have increasingly taken advantage of their own “opaque, internal benchmarks” and this move will make loans cheaper for consumers.
However, Basu writes, RBI did not enact this external benchmark to facilitate bank transparency but rather “acted to ‘improve (the) transmission’ of rates, an important political objective of any government”. In doing so, it may “end up creating a different mess”.
Basu identifies three reasons why this move will become a messy one – one, banks argue that they cannot be forced to link long-term loans to a short-term external benchmark like the repo rate—rather, a long-term benchmark should have been developed. Two, banks also claim that since the “liability-side is not floating” there is no “flexibility of transmission”. Three, external benchmarks are only applicable to banks and not other financial companies which any way “charge higher than banks”.
From Plate to Plough: The right to choose
Ashok Gulati | Chair professor for agriculture at ICRIER
The Indian Express
Gulati writes about the Modi government’s push for zero budget natural farming (ZBNF) and how the choice to switch to this mode of agriculture should be left to the farmers. ZBNF was developed by Subhash Palekar and “uses dung from desi black cows, their urine, adds jaggery and pulses’ flour in certain proportions and deploys that, as jeevamrit, to augment microbial activity in soil”.
It is a known fact “that chemical fertilisers are not used rationally by our farmers” and thus Gulati is in favour of adding farm yard manure (FYM) to the agricultural process. However, FYM is “conceived as a supplement, not a substitute of chemical fertilisers”.
If the government’s intention is to completely “jettison chemical fertilisers,” ZYBM raises some serious questions First is whether adequate research has been done regarding output of ZYBM. “The limited information that is available suggests a 30 to 50 per cent drop in yields” and this could “puncture a big hole in India’s food security basket,” writes Gulati. Second, if the intention is fertiliser eradication, then why are several new urea plants being set up.
Gulati suggests that the best way forward is to directly give the farmers fertiliser subsidy and let them decide the type of farming they wish to practice.
Soumya Kanti Ghosh | Group Chief Economic Advisor, State Bank of India
The Indian Express
Ghosh argues that since the economic slowdown plaguing the country is consumption-led, rate cuts may not be sufficient to tackle it. Household leverage, in the past five years, has jumped “two times” while disposable income has jumped only 1.5 times and this has put “pressure on savings”. Thus, a “counter cyclical fiscal response is needed to address the core of the current problem”.
He identifies three primary reasons for the decline of household savings – a decline in gross savings, change in definition of household savings and high real interest rates.
In order to counter this decline, Ghosh suggests various policy decisions that can be taken. He pushes for a higher ceiling for section 80C since according to estimates “savings incentivisation multiplier is at least five times higher than the revenue foregone by the government through such tax incentives”. He also calls for the government to address the “demand weakness by frontloading expenditure through PM-KISAN and MGNREGA”. Cutting back expenditure to balance fiscal deficit is “detrimental to consumption growth,” he writes.
He further suggests aggressive asset sales, a large rate cut by the RBI while keeping liquidity in surplus, issuing sovereign bonds and also a performance-linked compensation scheme for banking sector employees.