Author: Balaguru Mamundi

Title: ​ Competitive federalism: On the NITI Aayog

With 10 State and Union Territory representatives skipping the ninth Governing Council meeting of the NITI Aayog chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi — seven of them boycotted it — the think tank’s role has been called into question. The Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand did so because of concerns with the perceived lack of allocations and projects to their States in the Union Budget. But the boycott and, later, the walkout by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, suggest that the role of the think tank, limiting itself to an advisory body to the Union Government, has led to disenchantment among States, even if the protests were limited to leaders belonging to the political opposition. Constituted by the NDA government in its first term, the NITI Aayog was to replace the Planning Commission, doing away with the “top-down” approach of the earlier body, and to focus on “cooperative federalism”. But by limiting itself to an advisory body without any powers of resource distribution or allocation to States and other bodies and focusing on creating indices to evaluate States, it has led to the unintended consequence of “competitive federalism”; while the Finance Ministry has unfettered powers to decide on grants to States. In contrast, the Planning Commission, which too had its detractors, at least allowed for consultations with States in such matters.

It has not helped matters that the Bharatiya Janata Party has sought to seek votes in State elections on the basis of providing “double engine” governments, leading to complaints by Opposition-ruled States that the Centre has favoured those ruled by the BJP for investment projects. The fact that the NDA government now is crucially dependent upon the support of parties that rule Bihar and Andhra Pradesh — States that suffer varying developmental deficits — and the express intention of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to address their demands specifically in the Budget have not been lost on the government’s detractors. Irrespective of the merit in this contention, the fact is that consultations with States on grants and projects have become limited after the end of the Planning Commission. While the 16th Finance Commission is tasked with the removal of a horizontal imbalance among States and the Finance Ministry’s focus is on macro-economic stability and the financial system, the need to address growth through infrastructure and capital investments in States is something that requires institutional backing at the Centre as well. The NITI Aayog must be re-envisioned to bring back some of the responsibilities that the Planning Commission had for States for a truer “cooperative federalism”.

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The broad national consensus on Israel in the U.S. is slowly breaking up

On the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) issued a new evacuation order, asking Palestinians to leave several neighbourhoods of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, including areas that had earlier been designated as a humanitarian zone. When Mr. Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress in Washington on Wednesday, more than 39,000 Palestinians, a vast majority of them women and children, had already been killed in Gaza by the IDF in less than 10 months. At least 90,000 Palestinians have been wounded and nearly the entire population of the enclave has been displaced, some of them several times. Dozens of journalists have been killed. Private charities, UN aid workers, hospitals, ambulances, and even tent camps of the displaced have been bombed. Gaza, besieged by the IDF, does not have enough food, water, or medicines. The UN, which has repeatedly tried to draw the world’s attention to the suffering of Palestinians, now warns of epidemics. Two UN Security Council resolutions called for a ceasefire in Gaza. There have been two rulings from the International Court of Justice, which is hearing a case of genocide, against Israel’s conduct of the war. None of this seems to bother the U.S. lawmakers, who applauded Mr. Netanyahu throughout his speech.

Without the U.S.’s political and military support, Mr. Netanyahu’s government would not have been able to fight such a disastrous war, which was triggered by Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, in Israel, killing 1,200 people. More than 100 people taken hostage on October 7 are still in Hamas’s captivity, which Israel cites as the reason for the continuation of the war. But in the name of fighting Hamas, Israel has been punishing the entire Palestinian population in Gaza. Officials of the Biden administration have voiced concerns over civilian casualties. But besides the verbal protestations, Washington has done little to force Israel to act. Worse, the U.S. continues to provide military assistance to Israel. Yet, there are underlying tensions in the relationship. The protests in Washington while Mr. Netanyahu was speaking at Congress point to the growing public criticism of his war and America’s support for it. The welcome Mr. Netanyahu received at Congress shows that he has the support of the elites. But the protest on the streets and the dissenting voices even among lawmakers suggest that the national consensus on Israel is eroding in the U.S.

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Title: Sporting extravaganza: On the Olympic Games Paris 2024

The quadrennial confluence of the world’s finest athletes, the Olympics, is beginning in Paris from Friday. The latest edition does not have the constricting environment that preceded ‘Tokyo 2020’, held in 2021 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, this arrives at a time of global churn. While Russia remains banned from the Games due to its war moves, Israel will be present despite some dissenting voices over the manner in which it has dealt with the Palestinian issue. Some individual Russians will compete under a neutral banner but the nation will miss team events. The Olympics, with its competitive spirit, will offer a level playing field featuring countries like the United States and China at one end and an island-country like Fiji at the other. Being part of the event bequeaths the title Olympian to athletes fortunate to qualify for this big bash, and winning a medal only further enhances that halo. Paris, and France at large, will be tested over the next fortnight as the Olympics, even if it vests the host with soft power, often affects the economy; indeed, there was some resistance emanating from the banks of the Seine.

The U.S., China, Japan, Great Britain, Australia, Germany and France are the behemoths chasing glory. However, the Games is also about the lone athlete dishing out magic and garnering attention, as Usain Bolt did in the past. Veteran Rafael Nadal and the latest tennis prince, Carlos Alcaraz, getting excited to represent Spain in tennis is another glimpse of the eternal allure of the Olympics. That the Games has even incorporated breakdancing is a pointer to the entertainment industry finding a larger imprint while lines between sport and art constantly blur. With 204 countries, including India, besides neutral athletes and a refugee team, jostling for a place on the victor’s podium, the Olympics provides a space for smaller units to carve a niche and stun bigger opponents. Morocco defeating Argentina in a tempestuous football game has already added zest to the Games. Above all, the Olympics grants hope and redemption, and for a strife-ridden country like Afghanistan, the event also serves as a diversion. The 1972 Munich edition marred by a terror strike on the Israeli contingent remains a harrowing memory and in a world on the boil, security will be a concern for the organising committee. That some members of the Australian women’s water polo squad tested positive for COVID-19 is also a reality check while all eyes are on Paris.

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Title: ​ Not in order: On the Kanwar Yatra and directive on display of names

The Supreme Court of India on Monday stopped the enforcement of directivesissued by the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments that required food stalls on the route of the Kanwar Yatra — an increasingly popular pilgrimage that Shiva devotees undertake — to prominently exhibit the names and other identity details of their owners and employees. Petitioners argued that the directives would result in discriminatory outcomes, besides negating the secular character of the country. The Court accepted the need for urgent judicial intervention in the matter and issued notices to the States that fall in the route — Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh. The case will come up for hearing again on Friday. The yatra takes place during the Hindu month of Shravan when those who worship Shiva — popularly known as Kanwariyas or Bhole — walk hundreds of kilometres carrying pots of Ganga jal, known as kanwar (a structure made of bamboo that has containers suspended on both sides of a pole), to the temples in their home town. The yatra is increasingly popular, particularly among the Dalit and Other Backward Classes in the Hindi heartland. The police in Muzaffarnagar, western U.P., were the first to issue the controversial directive last week, which they said was done to ‘prevent any untoward incident’.

The discriminatory nature of this move became clear soon, and was criticised by the Opposition and National Democratic Alliance allies. Amid the criticism, U.P. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath extended the requirement across the entire route of the pilgrimage in the State. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in neighbouring Uttarakhand followed suit. Reports emerged of Hindu hotel owners being asked by the administration to remove their Muslim workers; there were also accounts of harassment of meat shop owners. BJP allies, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and the Janata Dal (United), joined the Opposition Congress and the Samajwadi Party in calling out the brazenly communal move of the BJP governments. Many pilgrimages in India are undertaken and organised jointly by people of different faiths, and as it turns out, there are Muslims too who trek with Hindus to take part in this unique form of Shiva worship. All along the route, they have, for years, been served by Muslim shop owners and even volunteers. Muslim artisans make a living by making the kanwar in some parts. The economic, cultural and social aspects of the Kanwar Yatra — as with any other pilgrimage — are shared by people of various sects and religions. The government directive was unreasonable and achieved nothing other than promoting communal enmity. U.P. and Uttarakhand should withdraw their directives without waiting for the decision of the Court.

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Title: ​ Shuffling the deck: On the Union Budget 2024-25

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s first Budget of the BJP-led NDA government’s third consecutive term in power is a distinct attempt to tell India’s voters that it has heard the angst-ridden message from the country’s unemployed youth loud and clear. With the BJP having suffered reverses in the general election in the face of a concerted Opposition campaign that spotlighted issues agitating young voters such as a palpable lack of jobs, the Minister was keen to redress matters ahead of the slew of State elections later this year. Asserting that the women, youth and farmers were the four ‘castes’ that this government was focused on serving, Ms. Sitharaman stressed that this year’s Budget laid particular emphasis on “employment, skilling, MSMEs, and the middle class”. As a part of this effort, a package of five schemes and initiatives have been proposed with a view to facilitating employment, skilling and other opportunities for 4.1 crore youth over a five-year period with a central outlay of ₹2 lakh crore. The centrepiece is a scheme to provide a month’s wage as subsidy to all persons newly entering the workforce in a formal sector job, which would entail the employer registering the employee at the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO). The direct benefit transfer of one-month salary, subject to a cap of ₹15,000, would be made in three instalments to first-time employees. The key caveat is that the employer would have to refund the subsidy if the first-timer’s employment ended within 12 months of hiring. Other schemes are an incentive support for job creation in the manufacturing sector, one offering direct support to employers who boost the number of jobs registered with the EPFO, and another, a skilling programme in concert with States, and the private sector that leverages the existing network of ITIs to boost the employability of the youth. The fifth in this quiver of schemes, predictably credited as being under the aegis of the Prime Minister, is an interesting move to facilitate internship opportunities to the youth in 500 top companies. The scheme, which appears to mirror a similar proposal contained in the Congress manifesto, entails the interns being paid a monthly allowance of ₹5,000 and a one-time assistance of ₹6,000, with the participating corporates expected to bear the training cost for the 12-month period as well as 10% of the internship allowance from CSR funds. Targeted at unemployed persons aged between 21 and 24 who are not engaged in full-time education at the time of applying, the Minister said this scheme would, over a five-year period, potentially provide one crore youth with a chance to gain exposure to a real-life business environment and varied professions. All these schemes will, however, need to be weighed against the backdrop of the fact that India needs to, on average, generate 78.5 lakh non-farm jobs annually until 2030, as the Chief Economic Adviser highlighted in his Economic Survey, largely to absorb the workforce exiting agriculture.

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Title: ​ Democratic departure: On Joe Biden bowing out of the presidential race

With less than four months to go before the 2024 U.S. election and less than one month ahead of the Democratic Party’s Convention, incumbent and expected nominee of his party, President Joe Biden (81), has quit the race and in doing so has endorsed his running mate, Vice-President Kamala Harris, for the presidential ticket. Mr. Biden’s exit comes after months of Democrats calling for him to step down after public gaffes and fumbles, thought to be linked to his age. His withdrawal caught many, including some within the Democratic Party, off-guard, given that his campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, had said, “He’s not going anywhere.” This resolute stance is said to have baffled senior party lawmakers, who, especially after Mr. Biden’s disastrous performance when he went toe-to-toe with Republican rival and former President Donald Trump, are said to have privately conveyed to the President that he ought to make way for a stronger candidate if the Democrats were to have a reasonable chance in the polls.

While the final tally of delegates at the Democratic Convention will determine which candidate ultimately wins the party’s nomination for the election, the odds look increasingly strong for Ms. Harris to make history as the U.S.’s first ever Indian-origin and person(woman)-of-colour nominee for President, and the second woman, following Hillary Clinton’s run against Mr. Trump in 2016. In terms of the factors favouring Ms. Harris, she is anyway next in line under the U.S. Constitution in terms of official succession; and she would likely gain access to close to $100 million in campaign funds. On the flip side, she is a relatively less known figure nationally, and Republicans have been quick to label her the custodian of left-wing political values, such as her espousal of reproductive freedom in the face of the Supreme Court ruling against the constitutional right to abortion. Further, surveys suggest that public opinion places her approval at roughly the same level as Mr. Biden’s and that would put her a few rungs below Mr. Trump. Nevertheless, the expected response from the Democratic quarter — if they wish to avoid the risky scenario of factional infighting at the Convention — would be for them to unite around Ms. Harris and her running mate — frontrunners include Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Even in this best-case scenario for Democrats, the Republicans under Mr. Trump appear to be on a far firmer footing to win over independent voters in swing States, the key to overall victory in any U.S. presidential election.

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Title: ​Shock-proof state: On an outage and a democratic digital infrastructure

A bright light fell on the extent of the world’s dependence on information technologies when on July 19, supermarkets, banks, hospitals, airports, and many other services in between suffered a simultaneous blackout after a common software solution they used glitched. Between then and the time at which the solution’s developers rolled out a fix, news of the problem and the resulting downtime spread around the world through the same networks that have been erected to facilitate communications between these systems. Technological advancements are inevitable and desirable, but the concurrent responsibility to set up failsafes and emergency protocols is often less glamorous. These gaps are exacerbated in societies where the adoption of new technologies is concentrated in sectors competing in the global market and in piecemeal fashion vis-à-vis services provided in local markets. Thus, for example, the glitch may have caused an airline operator to suffer greater monetary losses but it would have been more debilitating for cardiac facilities at a tertiary care centre, or a computer trying to access a thermal power facility during peak demand.

Such glitches are more common than people realise thanks to otherwise trivial process- or business-level failures. The focus must instead be on the network interconnections that allow these technologies to be useful and the implementation of life-saving redundancies. Unfortunately, unlike most other technological enterprises, information technologies are yet to develop a mature self-awareness of their pansocial character and the impetus to adjust for this rudiment lies with the state. This requires a ‘Digital India’ push that is cognisant of software solutions’ relationship with digital privacy and data sovereignty, layered over the challenges that income inequality and political marginalisation impose on communities navigating more socially interconnected settings. For example, public distrust in electronic voting machines, stoked by an incomplete understanding of software security among the political class, the judiciary, and civil society, could have been restored with open-source software and modes of integrity testing that violate neither physical nor digital property rights. The July 19 outage offers a similar opportunity: to rejig the software that public sector institutions need to provide their essential services and to incorporate redundancies, including moving away from single-vendor policies, that preserve the links between these institutions and people engaged in informal economies in the event of a network-level outage. The state was previously duty-bound to develop democratic digital infrastructure. Now, cognisant of more powerful interlinks among social, economic, and cultural realities, it is also duty-bound to ensure that this infrastructure is shock-proof.

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