Gender wise politics: To what extent did women’s vote contribute to the BJP’s spectacular victory?
Rajeshwari Deshpande | The writer teaches political science at Savitribai Phule Pune University
The Times of India
In this piece, Rajeshwari Deshpande attempts to analyse the voting pattern of women in India. She uses the National Election Studies conducted by Lokniti since 1996 for her analysis.
Some of the observations she makes are as follows: First, she notes that the Congress has enjoyed a slightly higher support level among women than men at the all-India level in most elections since 1996. It simply means that women’s voteshare, minus men’s voteshare, has mostly been positive for the Congress. This macro-level advantage to the Congress, however, varies from region to region.
For the BJP, she notes, this trend reverses. More men vote for the party than women. Even in 2019, this was true as men’s voteshare, minus women’s voteshare, for the BJP was 3 percentage points.
She also writes that schemes like Ujjwala seemed to have helped the BJP, but only to a limited extent.
Testing the waters
Vishwapati Trivedi | Former secretary, Ministry of Shipping and Ministry of Mines, former chairman of the National Shipping Board, and former chairman of Inland Waterways Authority of India
The Indian Express
Vishwapati Trivedi hails the inclusion of ‘Blue Economy’ as an agenda in the Budget. He argues that this can enhance India’s GDP through better utilisation of under-water resources and also through expansion of infrastructure in the ocean, given that there is a shortage of space on land. For instance, port activities can be expanded in the sea instead of land.
To develop India’s blue manufacturing and services, he argues, the government will have to focus on several sub-sectors. These will include blue trade, which will involve development of port services, ship repairs, maritime finance and marine digitisation. It will also require blue investments for coast-to-hinterland connectivity and for development of industrial parks under projects like Sagarmala.
It will require training and skilling of manpower, he writes.
At the UNSC, a three-point agenda
Jayant Prasad | The writer has served as ambassador in several stations and is a former director general of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
The Hindu
Jayant Prasad argues that India’s objective as a non-permanent member of the UNSC in 2021-22 “should be to help build a stable and secure external environment”. He also writes that India should not let go of its diplomatic goodwill by seeking a permanent seat at the UNSC. “It will come India’s way more by invitation and less by self-canvassing,” he writes.
As of now, with its non-permanent membership, India should do the following: First, he says, India should guide the council away from the invocation of humanitarian intervention or “Responsibility to Protect”. This approach has only created problems in the world, he argues.
Second, India should push the UNSC Sanctions Committee to target all individuals and entities that warrant sanctions. Third, India should also lead the way in promoting “the rule of law, constitutionalism, and rational internationalism”.
He concludes by saying that, regardless of what India does at the UN, it must try to improve relations with its neighbours.
A common Hindu identity has always appealed to OBC and Dalit castes
Abhinav Prakash Singh | Assistant Professor at SRCC, Delhi University
Hindustan Times
Abhinav Prakash Singh argues that Hindutva appeals to Dalits and OBCs as it liberates them from a weak caste identity and inducts them into a powerful Hindu fold. He writes that the strains of movements like the Arya Samaj in Hindutva have always appealed to subaltern castes. He suggests that the Hindutva appeal is particularly strong among “non-dominant Dalits and OBCs” as it “is far easier for them to appeal to Hindu unity to push back against caste discrimination, and exclusion, than to form an independent outfit like the dominant subaltern castes”.
He writes that the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was a critical point for many of these groups as they entered mainstream political imagination for the first time. According to him, “Ram was a main deity in the Bhakti movement in both sagun and nirgun strains”, which had widespread popularity among the subaltern.
The massive social engineering of the BJP has further consolidated Hindutva among the subaltern, he says.
Sovereign bonds: The big picture
Y.V. Reddy | Former RBI governor
Business Standard
Weighing in on the debate about sovereign foreign currency-denominated bonds, Reddy points to a big picture “consisting of bits and pieces that may help in finding a wise way forward”.
There is no legally-binding debt restructuring mechanism in respect of sovereign debt and while the International Monetary Fund has made efforts in addressing this, nothing has fructified yet.
Global finance needs safe assets in its portfolio, and financial conglomerates have typically been willing to subscribe to sovereign bonds. According to him, the government’s decision on sovereign bonds, in many ways, leads to a basic change in policy towards a more open capital account.
There is a need to chalk out a roadmap towards capital account openness in which sovereign bond is backloaded instead of being front-loaded, he writes.
How we could improve tax compliance behaviourally
Biju Dominic | Chief executive officer, Final Mile Consulting
Mint
Dominic quotes supply-side economist Arthur Laffer as saying that increased tax does not necessarily lead to higher tax revenue because above a certain threshold tax rate, the incentive to produce more diminishes, reducing the overall tax revenue, and those in the higher bracket have the resources to find ways to protect their capital from taxation.
So, the willingness of individuals to pay tax is important and mechanisms need to be built in to incentivise them. The narrative that the super-rich are selfish and doing a disservice to the nation by usurping national resources for their personal wealth is wrong, he argues. It is important to keep taxpayers engaged and informed about how the money is being spent. “All that is required is to have the right stimuli to trigger the inherent honesty that resides in most humans,” he argues.
Unleashing Air Traffic Control
Anand Stanley | President-managing director, Airbus India & South Asia
The Economic Times
Investigations into InterGlobe Aviation — parent company of IndiGo — are not good news for the aviation sector, which has the power to galvanise other crucial segments of the economy.
The sector, despite problems, has witnessed exponential growth, though the maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) sector remains subdued due to high taxes. Tax adjustments can incentivise ‘Make in India’ in the civil aviation sector by allowing it to invest in capability- and capacity-building, writes Stanley.
High fuel prices, apart from other costs, have burdened Indian commercial aviation. The government currently charges 11 per cent excise duty on aviation turbine fuel (ATF) and state taxes can go as high as 30 per cent. ATF needs to be brought under the ambit of the goods and services tax (GST). The government must seek transformation, not incremental change, he writes.