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HomeThoughtShotPratap B Mehta says govt invents enemies to govern, Mahesh Vyas on...

Pratap B Mehta says govt invents enemies to govern, Mahesh Vyas on lack of growth in jobs

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Innocents No More

Pratap Bhanu Mehta | Contributing Editor

Indian Express 

The violence in JNU reveals that India is governed by a regime that always needs an “adversarial rallying point to crush by brute force,” writes Mehta. He states that one can understand what is at stake by listening to the speeches of “He Who Must not be Named Home Minister, ” which reveal that the current political regime cannot exist unless it finds a new enemy. He adds that the government is “legitimising itself” not by its “positive accomplishments, but by using the enemy as a rallying point”.

Thus, “When you legitimise yourself entirely by inventing enemies, the truth ceases to matter, normal restraints of civilisation and decency cease to matter, the checks and balances of normal politics cease to matter. All that matters is the crushing of real and imaginary enemies,” argues Mehta.

He writes that the state will, directly or through its proxies, encourage violence against anyone who is not in tune with it. If violence doesn’t work they resort to two strategies, writes Mehta. One is ideologically discrediting the Opposition and the second is using the violence “as a pretext for more control and violence”.

Why university students have finally found a voice 

Moyukh Chatterjee | Visiting scholar at Middlebury College

Hindustan Times

In light of the violence in JNU Sunday, Chatterjee writes that the students have been fighting a bigger war for the past four years as universities such as JNU and AMU have been constantly under attack. He cites the arrest of Kanhaiya Kumar in 2016 as well as the subsequent protests by the ABVP in Lucknow University after a professor shared a sympathetic article on Kumar and many other such incidents. Chatterjee writes, “Most students outside AMU and JNU may not have paid attention to an emerging political context which was making India’s best public universities symbols of anti-nationalism.” 

He argues that perhaps the ongoing protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens are that missing piece in the puzzle which helped students find their consolidated voice. “Universities have always been political in India, it is only now that students are being politicised,” writes Chatterjee. Maybe it is now that students have found a strategy of resistance that professors and other members of civil society could not find, he concludes.

Aadhaar at 10: Taking Stock 

Nandan Nilekani | Co-founder of Infosys and founding chairman of UIDAI

Roopa Kudva | Managing Director of Omidyar Network India

Times of India 

As Aadhaar enters its tenth year of existence, the authors look back on the “ambitious mission to provide a unique digital identity to every resident.” Aadhaar only collects four pieces of personal information — name, age, gender and address, along with biometric data, they write. 

According to Nilekani and Kudva, a study by Dalberg reveals that it is the first identity document for “an estimated 65-70 million individuals.” It is through this identity document that people have been able to open bank accounts, access mobile services and food rations, they add. 

“Inclusion can therefore happen without unchecked data collection,” write the authors and add that the fear digitisation and privacy concerns bring, can be checked by evaluating the technology systems. They highlight the role of civil society and media and state that “healthy debates in a democracy” led to the fundamental right to privacy. They conclude by stating that Aadhar needs to keep evolving as the people it serves and their needs keep changing, “Simply giving an ID was never the end, only a means. The real benefits accrue now.” 

Inadequate and inappropriate jobs growth

Mahesh Vyas| Managing director & CEO, CMIE

Business Standard

Vyas discusses the bleak state of employment in India given that the employment to population ratio was down to 39.5 per cent, the lowest India has ever seen.

He first explains that “in absolute terms”, employment was on the rise during 2019 either as a recovery from the fall of 2018 or “a sign of desperation to get some jobs, no matter how poor, in difficult times”. However, the recovery from losses incurred in 2018 was “inadequate”, he writes. “Employment needs to grow to match a growing young population and not to just fill in losses of the recent past”, he adds.

The employment ratio indicates that “lesser and lesser proportion of the working-age people in India are at work”, writes Vyas. Another trend he finds is that the employment rate has “continued to fall in urban India in 2019 while it has stabilised in rural India”.  Vyas observes that “this is not very reassuring about the quality of jobs that have increased in absolute terms in 2019”. 

Make, Break Reputations

Anjana Menon | CEO, Content Pixies

Economic Times

Menon discusses the “botched system” of GST now run by “middlemen and canny businessmen”. She recommends that the government shift to a single rate “and introduce a credit score for taxpayers, linked to ease of business, in order to encourage compliance”.

In a cash economy, tax evasion is very likely, she writes. Therefore, the government requires “a carrot-and-stick policy to coax more businesses to pay tax and incentivise those who do” such as, an “annual scorecard for all registered GST businesses”, she explains. These scores can then be used for “preferential lending rate with a bank, priority to avail public schemes, singlewindow clearances and all the stuff that makes it easier to do business,” writes Menon. She also suggests that “individuals and businesses gaming the system should be black-marked and ring-fenced”.

The exercise would require investment in “world-class data processing, machine learning (ML) and sophisticated algorithms that will weed out inaccuracy and spot fraud,” she writes. Those determined to “game the system will find ways around this too. But it might discourage mass evasion”, adds Menon. 

Raises more questions than it answers

Deepak Verma | Former Judge, Supreme Court of India

Financial Express

The removal of Cyrus Mistry as CEO of Tata Sons, 4 years after his appointment in 2012, “was followed by one of the biggest showdowns in the corporate world in recent times”, writes Verma. Verma criticises the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal’s (NCLAT) recent order favouring Mistry’s reinstatement. It “failed to strike a ‘just and proper’ balance between the rights of the minority and the majority shareholders”, he writes.

The NCLAT’s interpretation of Article 121 of the Tata Sons bye-laws, as “prejudicial” and” oppressive” to the interest of minority shareholders “undermines the sanctity of the fundamental principles of corporate law”, he writes. It could “discourage corporate houses from making any public statements unless compelled by law, which in turn may lead to speculation”, predicts Verma. The NCLAT’s interpretation of Article 75 “goes against the fundamental principles of contract law”, he adds.

Verma also finds the “NCLAT has not applied any existing jurisprudence” when it deemed Tata Sons’ conversion from a public to private company as “prejudicial”. Had it been prejudicial, it “would not have been permitted by the RoC, or challenged at the time of conversion by any of the directors”, he adds.

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