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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Title: Wrongheaded policy: On the Karnataka jobs-for-locals bill

Despite the fact that attempts to provide reservation in jobs for local workers have been proven unconstitutional and have been rejected by courts, the temptation to pander to nativist sentiments remains among State governments. A case in point is the draft Karnataka State Employment of Local Candidates in the Industries, Factories and Other Establishments Bill, 2024, cleared by the Congress government’s cabinet but later “temporarily withheld” following an uproar from industry heads and trade bodies in Karnataka. The Bill envisaged that industries and other establishments would appoint local candidates in 50% of management positions and 70% of non-management positions, and set stringent criteria for defining local candidates. Similar Bills were passed in Andhra Pradesh in 2019, Haryana in 2020, and Jharkhand in 2023. While the Karnataka Bill added proficiency in Kannada as one of the criteria to define eligibility of a local candidate, the Haryana and Andhra Pradesh laws were largely based on residency criterion. The Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed the Haryana Act in 2023 holding it violative of equality guaranteed under Article 14 and freedom under Article 19 of the Constitution. It added that the Act went against the rights of citizens from the rest of the country and that States enacting such laws could set up “artificial walls” throughout India. The Andhra Pradesh Act is still being heard in court, while the Jharkhand Bill has not been implemented. Apart from the aforementioned reasons, the Karnataka Bill is also violative of Article 16(3) that allows for reservation based on residence, but limits it to public employment and to be enforced only by a law made in Parliament and not by a State Legislature.

The temptation for the Karnataka government to come up with Bills that provide for reservation for locals and labour protectionism despite their proven unconstitutionality is perhaps motivated by the fact that there is resentment among resident workers in better-off States that their jobs are being taken over by migrant workers. This is especially so among those aspiring for jobs in the private sector, where some employers have sought to exploit migrant workers to work for longer hours and at lower pay without benefits or social protections and without political support that is otherwise available to local workers. If Karnataka is concerned about this segmentation of the labour market that pits the migrant worker against the locals, it should enforce labour rights for the former as well; and by curbing exploitative practices, it could create a level playing field for all workers. Protectionism for the local worker and parochialism is not the answer.

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Title: Questionable intent: On the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill, 2024

The Bill tabled by the Maharashtra government to tackle unlawful activities by organisations linked to left-wing extremism is unnecessary, and perhaps even unconstitutional. When existing laws seem adequate to tackle extremism, and the area affected by left-wing extremism is limited in the State, the only reason such a proposal has been made could be an oblique intent to crack down on lawyers, dissenters and human rights activists involved in taking up the cause of the marginalised. The Bill may fall foul of constitutional provisions, as it contains overbroad terms that may cover individuals and organisations that may pose no threat to public order. The core of the proposed law appears to be the questionable term ‘urban Naxal’, even though the phrase itself does not find a place in the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill, 2024. The Statement of Objects and Reasons talks about ‘safe-houses’ and ‘urban dens’ of the Maoist network in cities. It claims that existing laws are inadequate and that Naxal frontal organisations are active in the absence of a special law. Given that several provisions in the State’s Bill are already found in the central law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, it is indeed a strange claim.

The most serious provisions that allow for declaring organisations unlawful and make it an offence to be a member of or in any manner assisting or participating in meetings of such organisations are too widely worded. An organisation, for instance, can be any group or body of persons whether or not known by any name or registration. ‘Unlawful activity’ includes not only words or actions that threaten public order but also anything that interferes with the administration of law or with its institutions and personnel. In effect, this may cover any organised protest. It not only includes promoting violence and the use of firearms or explosives but also “encouraging or preaching disobedience to established law and its institutions”. This may be interpreted to include protests against or even condemnation of police excess, custodial violence or any miscarriage of justice. While committing an unlawful activity may entail a jail term of up to seven years, even one who is not a member of an unlawful organisation can be jailed for two years on the charge of soliciting aid for it or three years for promoting a meeting of the organisation. The most draconian provisions are the ones empowering the government to seize any house or building where unlawful activities take place, evict its occupants and take over its money and assets. The Bill is expected to lapse as the current Assembly may have already held its last session before elections later this year, but the questionable intent may survive into future regimes too.

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Title: Arrest and liberty: On the ED’s actions

Two observations made in different contexts by the Supreme Court of India have raised relevant issues concerning personal liberty. The cases related to actions under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), and the significance of these observations lies in the extent to which courts are inclined to protect personal liberty in the face of a determined government that wants its agencies to have their way. One concerned the question whether an officer arresting a person on money-laundering charges should demonstrate the necessity for arrest for the action to be deemed valid; and the other voiced shock and revulsion at the ease and quickness with which courts were staying reasoned orders granting bail. A Bench headed by Justice Sanjiv Khanna granted interim bail, for the second time since his arrest in March, to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, in the course of a discussion on the legality of his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The 64-page verdict ended with a reference to a larger Bench the question whether the ED would have to prove the need or “necessity to arrest” a person, before effecting an arrest. Section 19 of PMLA speaks of the arresting officer being required to have “reason to believe” that the person is guilty of money-laundering before effecting arrest.

The PMLA casts a statutory obligation on an officer to both record reasons for arrest and convey grounds for arrest to the accused. Whether these obligations include a duty to demonstrate the necessity to arrest the person will have to be decided. It is established that the existence of a power is not sufficient justification for exercising it. The heartening feature of the Court’s order is that it lays down the view that the authorised officer’s decision on arrest ought to be rooted in compliance with statutory requirements, and one that a magistrate or judge can examine. The Court has also done well to reiterate that arrests under the PMLA cannot be on a mere whim; and that decisions during investigation should consider exculpatory material too, and not merely material against the accused. The other issue, regarding another Bench’s shock over courts staying bail orders, touches upon a key aspect of contemporary judicial functioning. The vehemence with which the prosecution argues its case, be it against bail or challenging a court’s order granting it, seems to be a major factor in the approach of higher courts. As the Bench noted, a stay on reasoned orders ought to be rare exceptions based on grounds such as perversity by the lower court, and not done as a matter of routine.

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Title: ​ ​Surprise acceleration: On price gains

Retail price gains registered a surprise acceleration last month with June’s provisional Consumer Price Index (CPI) reading showing inflation snapping a five-month downtrend and quickening to 5.08%, 28 basis points faster than the 4.80% logged in May. Food prices were, as expected, the main culprit. Year-on-year food price inflation based on the Consumer Food Price Index (CFPI) quickened by 67 basis points in June to a worrying 9.36%. Even more disconcertingly, the CFPI logged the fastest sequential acceleration in 11 months, as food prices rose by 3.17% from May’s levels and dragged the broader CPI too higher by 1.33% from the preceding month. It is precisely this kind of unpredictability in food price gains that monetary policymakers have been concerned about in opting to leave interest rates unchanged. RBI Deputy Governor Michael Debabrata Patra had been emphatic in observing at the Monetary Policy Committee’s meeting last month that “the Indian economy remains hostage to intersecting food price shocks. Their repetitive occurrence calls for intensifying monetary policy vigil to ward off spillovers to other components of inflation and to expectations”. Food price data show that the CFPI’s nine sub-categories posted month-on-month gains, with eight of them, except the sugar and condiments group, registering sequential accelerations. Vegetables continued to experience the most intense price gains, rising 29.3% year-on-year and by a worrying 11-month-high sequential pace of 14.2%. The most widely consumed potato, onion and tomato continued to log some of the fastest gains, with their prices rising year-on-year by 57.6%, 58.5% and 26.4%, respectively.

Nor does the outlook for food prices offer much comfort. Data on the Department of Consumer Affairs Price Monitoring Division’s website shows that the all-India average retail price of potato and onion continued to remain on a tear as on July 15, being almost 56% and 67% higher, respectively, than a year earlier. And tomato prices, though almost 43% softer than 12 months ago, were 76% higher than in mid-June, likely signalling a shift in its price momentum. Prices of cereals, the largest constituent of the food basket, too offered little respite with the average retail price of rice and wheat running almost 10% and 6% higher than a year earlier, respectively. Also, IMD data as on July 14 reveal that countrywide precipitation since June 1 was still not only at a 2% deficit, but also spatially skewed. Eleven of India’s 36 meteorological sub-divisions were still classified ‘deficient’, meaning these regions had received 20%-59% lower rainfall than the long-period average. With some key food growing areas including Punjab seeing deficient rains, policymakers face an unenviable task in trying to slow the pace of inflation.

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Title: ​Back to the future: On Wimbledon 2024 and tennis

Ever since Roger Federer retired and Rafael Nadal started fading away, tennis fans have had their eyes set on the future. On Sunday, at the Centre Court in Wimbledon, came the clearest evidence that there was a fresh dynasty taking shape with a new king in place. Carlos Alcaraz’s straight sets demolition of Novak Djokovic will likely be the watershed that heralded the change. Djokovic, a 24-time Major winner, may have entered the tournament just weeks after a knee surgery and without a final appearance since the ATP Finals last November. But the 37-year-old was a seven-time Wimbledon champion who had lost just nine completed matches at SW19 since his debut in 2005, and no two to the same opponent. That Alcaraz, 21, managed to beat the legendary Serb twice in a row might be his greatest achievement. If the 2023 triumph established the Spaniard as a serious contender, the latest victory is sure to upend the hierarchy. For the first time since Federer won his first in 2003 on these hallowed lawns, three consecutive Majors have gone by without a winner from the Big Three. Alcaraz, with four Grand Slam titles in a short span of two years, has already zoomed past Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka, who toiled long and hard for three Slams each.

It is not that Alcaraz is the only prodigiously talented player to emerge in recent years. Jannik Sinner, the reigning World No.1 and the 2024 Australian Open champion, has shown sufficient mettle to prove that he will be the generational rival to Alcaraz. On his day, Daniil Medvedev, especially on hard courts, can be an equal. But no player has looked as complete as Alcaraz, who has all the shots in the book and a mental make-up to match. Of his 15 titles, eight have come on clay, four on hard and three on grass. And he has won his debut finals at both Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, a feat even Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have not managed. Among women, it was the turn of Barbora Krejcikova to master the sport’s natural surfaces as she added the grass-court Major to the French Open singles trophy that she won in 2021. The Czech may have been the seventh first-time winner at the All England Club in as many editions, but her success is more a sign of the depth in the ladies’ game than of perpetual flux. And Wimbledon is where this is likely to be most pronounced until the women’s Tour’s leading players, Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka, crack the code on the lush green lawns.

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Title: ​​ Unprincipled alliances: On politics in Nepal

The adage that there are no permanent enemies and no permanent friends, only permanent interests in politics could explain many a twist in shifting political alliances across the democratic world. But it would only be an understatement in Nepali politics, where the art of coalition making has for long been a farce. On Saturday, incumbent Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) predictably lost a trust vote, after only 63 of the 275-member House of Representatives backed him, while 194 lawmakers voted against the motion of confidence. The loss was a foregone conclusion after the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) led by Khadka Prasad Oli — he has been made the Prime Minister again — withdrew support from the CPN(MC)-led government and joined hands with the opposition Nepali Congress, led by Sher Bahadur Deuba. Mr. Dahal had managed to hold his post for close to two years, and after surviving three trust votes — all necessitated by his decision to change partners. The CPN(MC) had formed the government after the November 2022 elections, despite finishing a distant third and Mr. Dahal had managed to do so by exploiting the differences between the Deuba-led NC and the Oli-led CPN(UML). These two parties won 89 and 78 seats, respectively, in 2022, and have now formed a coalition government with the arrangement that Mr. Oli and Mr. Deuba will share the post of Prime Minister, each for half of the remaining term.

Ever since Nepal transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one in 1990, and then to a full-fledged republic in 2008, its democratic polity has been marked by instability and constant changes in power, leading to poor governance. Despite the institution of constitutional reforms related to federalism and guaranteed representation for marginalised forces following a civil war and the overthrow of the monarchy, the outcomes have been a perpetuation of the country’s status as a “least developed country”. It is quite evident that the leadership of the three major parties have shown more interest in sticking to power by any means irrespective of whether they are driven by pre-poll coalitions or not. Besides, the inherent instability in a parliamentary system that reflects social fissures in the country has led to a form of coalition politics that is driven less by ideological or principled considerations and more by a hankering towards power. Such instability and an unprincipled pursuit of power will only result in more disillusionment among the Nepali people with the democratic process. Nepal can perhaps be better off with a presidential system that allows for a directly elected head of state.

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Title: ​​ Crash course: On the health of transport vehicles in India

On July 10, in Uttar Pradesh, a private double-decker bus collided with a milk tanker, killing 18 people. Local reports claimed the bus’s insurance had not been renewed and that it lacked an alarm system to alert the driver if the bus drifted from its lane, among other issues. Should the State government’s inquiry bear these details out, they will highlight the importance of the multidimensional nature of road safety, which banks on road and highway design, presence of roadside businesses, speed and access control, and visibility, among other factors, to protect lives. The details should also highlight the reluctance of municipal authorities and local bodies to scrutinise public and licensed private infrastructure until lives are lost. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, 1.71 lakh people died and 4.23 lakh were injured in 4.46 lakh road accidents in 2022. A 2023 IIT Delhi report estimated there were 11.3 road-accident deaths per lakh population in 2021, which, after accounting for official data inconsistencies and underreporting, is constitutive of a public health crisis. Speed control is particularly important: it is implicated in most deadly road accidents in the country. Following the bus accident, police also told news agencies the collision had flung passengers out of the bus. Public officials know how to control speed in urban and rural areas — with strategically placed speed-breakers and roundabouts and increased police monitoring, for example. Similarly, it should be clear which portions of the Automotive Industry Standards that the bus’s condition at the time of the accident violated.

There are three ways forward. First, local authorities must enforce existing standards and have skilled personnel and proper equipment for this purpose. They must also be allowed to impose harsher penalties on transport service operators who fail to meet safety requirements. Municipal bodies must also be prevented from diluting standards painstakingly specified by engineers in order to, say, facilitate local businesses. Second, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways needs to collect and publish better, ideally complete, data on vehicle registrations, safety certificates, testing centres, criteria, and reports and audits. It also needs to improve the quality of data about injuries and deaths, both of which remain undercounted. Finally, there is a need for greater public awareness of how the health of transport vehicles is ascertained and for access to each vehicle’s latest test report. This may be a bridge too far given both the generally complacent attitude towards quality control and unscrupulous operators’ ability to escape sanction — but it remains the bridge that will have to be crossed.

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