#162 The Closing Of The Indian Mind

India Policy Watch #1: What UP Tells Us

Insights on burning policy issues in India

— RSJ

If there was more proof needed that Indian politics has changed forever, it came this week with the results of five state assembly elections. BJP won the big prize, UP, with a comfortable margin while AAP swept Punjab marking its presence beyond Delhi in a spectacular fashion. The question is what is this thing that has changed? Is this the usual hyperbolic overreading of events that we have come to associate with the media these days? Or have things changed in a more fundamental manner in Indian democracy? I read through much of the analysis that appeared in the print media to understand this. 

Something Has Ended

Three themes emerged. 

One that focused on some kind of an end of the ‘old republic’. Shekhar Gupta writes of this in the Business Standard:

“For 60 years since we became a republic in 1950, our politics was all structured around the Congress and its conception of a socialist, secular state. That epoch has faded fully. Now we are wading neck deep through a new, BJP/RSS/Hindu nationalism epoch. The preference of Hindu nationalism over Hindutva is consciously made. Religion has its oomph, but the pull of religiously defined new nationalism is enormously greater.

Today, if all of BJP’s rivals in Uttar Pradesh made a spectacle of walking to the Kashi Vishwanath temple across the new corridor—which I quite like—the secular republic has been redefined. Everybody has fallen in line. Today, we have a new nationalism, a new secularism and increasingly a new socialism redefined as efficient, non-leaky welfarism.”

The other theme was about some kind of an end to politics of identity, based on caste and other social formulations. As Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes in the Indian Express:

“The BJP has transformed the nature of politics in ways to which the Opposition has no answer. The first is a commitment to a generative conception of politics. The sense that the BJP has a deep social base, especially amongst women and lower castes, and a spectacular geographic reach as Manipur has demonstrated, completely belies the identity determinism that has for so long characterised Indian politics. The project of now opposing any national party on the basis of a coalition of fragmented identities is dead.”

Finally, there was the question of does economic performance matter in the face of ideology? Quoting Pratap Bhanu Mehta again:

“There will be another time to discuss how much of Yogi’s triumph in UP has to do with governance and delivery. This is empirically a complicated matter. This is in no small part because what a regime gets credit for is as much a matter of prior trust as it is of facts. Certainly Yogi’s new welfarism, or crackdown on certain kinds of corrupt intermediaries may contribute to the BJP’s popularity. But the idea that all of that was enough to wipe out the effects of the Covid-19 devastation, unprecedented inflation, a dip in consumer spending and a real jobs crisis requires more explanation. Perhaps the angriest and the most devastated no longer feel politics is the conduit for solving their problems. Your protest will be expressed more as social pathology, not as political revolt.”

At a macro level, these seem to be the conclusions to be drawn from BJP’s big win in UP - an epoch has ended with the dominance of a new nationalism as defined by the BJP; identity politics that emerged from the Mandal movement is dead; and, people care more for ideology plus welfarism than economic performance.

Are these valid conclusions or is this the usual overanalysis of a single election outcome? Is there a simpler explanation for the win in UP? Let me take you back to one of the predictions I made at the start of the year about UP elections:

“The BJP election machine will continue its winning run barring the odd defeats in Punjab and Goa. The big prize, UP, will be fought hard but BJP will win a safe majority. The bahujan vote of the depleted BSP will shift to it more than to SP and that will make all the difference.”

The vote share numbers that are emerging seem to suggest that’s what has happened. We didn’t have the usual triangular contests this time around. That worked for the BJP because the bahujan viewed it with less suspicion than in the past and the alternative of going to the Yadav-dominated SP wasn’t too alluring for them. Maybe, it is mere electoral arithmetic at play than some grand narrative. It is difficult to conclude. 

However, I won’t deny there are fundamental issues about our republic we must contend with as we look at the politics around us now. Electoral arithmetic doesn’t come out of a social or political vacuum. So, I will pick up three faultlines that deserve attention for where our polity stands today.

Representation And Nationalism

I will pick up the idea of representation in a democracy first. The democratic idea of sovereignty of people means there has to be a definition of what constitutes the ‘people’. And once you have defined the people, you then have to contend with the numerical advantage of various groups or identities within the people because democracy is a game of numbers. In India, the idea of a representational democracy took formal roots with the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 that introduced elections to legislative councils and allowed Indians to be elected to them. Muslims were granted separate electorates with seats reserved for them where only Muslims would be polled. This was to ensure a ‘fair share’ of representation of Muslims who would otherwise be underrepresented in elections where the Hindus would always be in a majority.

This is a central conundrum in any democracy that has a permanent group that’s seen to be a majority by a permanent minority. If you follow the principles of equality and one person - one vote, it is likely the majority will always win the elections. How do you then safeguard the interests of minorities? One answer was a separate electorate that was suggested by the Morley-Minto Act. The other could be by giving a veto on key issues to the minorities that would make them more secure. But both these formulations go against the fundamental nature of democracy and, more importantly, risk majoritarian backlash. The greater the backlash, the harder the minority demand for security in the form of special power or concessions in a democracy. You get into a vicious cycle then. This problem of representation played out fully in the two decades leading up to 1947. This was the unsolvable question that was the basis for partition.

However, partition might have solved this issue for Pakistan but the question remained open for India which still had about 20 per cent of the minority population. So our response was in the form of a Constitution that didn’t look back into the past for inspiration and stayed focused on the values of liberty, equality and fraternity. The hope was for a form of civic nationalism to emerge and for people to focus on their individual freedoms and mutual interdependence to power the nation into a new future. This was easier said than done. Because the minority can take solace in a liberal Constitution but then the question arises who will wield the power of administering it. If the majority administer it with the wrong intent, no amount of lofty ideals of the Constitution can assure the minority of their freedoms.

This is what led to a finely balanced model of administration by the Congress after independence that, in some sense, gave the minority a veto on various issues. That this veto was abused by the leaders of the minorities and by the Congress is a separate issue. It led to the minorities being seen as a vote bank and continued to fester a sense of anger among the majority at this pampered treatment. A dominant Congress with strong leaders could manage these contradictions without precipitating things. This balance was shattered in the mid-80s with the Rajiv Gandhi government, that instead of containing these issues as was the political custom, tried to take advantage of them by riding the twin horses of Hindu and Muslim appeasement. The Ayodhya movement, the bogey of Muslim appeasement using Shah Bano case as an example, the vocal assertion of Hindu victimhood of the past and its desire for revival emerged from there. The Mandal movement that encouraged fragmented identities among the majority delayed the inevitable for some time. That project is now dead largely because its leadership has no credibility anymore, it has no focal point to rally people and the BJP has melded those fragmented identities into a larger Hindu identity.

Muslim appeasement or the alleged veto of the past has been replaced by a complete shunting out from representative politics in most states where the BJP is in power. The UP win where the election was fought on the 80-20 plank and where less than 5 percent of minorities voted for the winning party bookends the cycle that began three decades back. This might appear to many like a defeat of appeasement politics and a win for equality as defined in the Constitution. It is decidedly not. A permanent minority stripped of representation will agitate and fight for it. History has shown this doesn’t go well for a nation. The horrors of our partition are but just one example of it.

Cultural Nationalism And Appropriating History

The other area of interest is culture and history that have always provided the fuel needed to drive nationalism. History is always contentious in a land as ancient and continuously inhabited as India. History isn’t only what’s written in the books by scholars. There is also a living memory of the past that gets passed down to generations. In the decades leading up to our independence, the question of how to integrate our history into the national movement was a tricky one. Our present as Indians under colonial rule then gave us a single identity but our past fragmented us on caste and religious lines in ways that were fundamental to our conception of self. This is what prompted the likes of Gandhi and Ambedkar to imagine the project of founding a modern India as an act of forgetting our past. To them, our past might have had glorious achievements but it was also violent, unequal and amoral. We could study to draw lessons from it but it had nothing to contribute to the imagination of a modern Indian state. So, let the past be. Let people figure out which past they want to read or imagine. Let there be competing narratives about it. But the state should be forward-looking and progressive. It should draw none of its legitimacy from the past.

This was a good model to adopt; possibly, the only moral one given our history. But it had two problems. One, it ignored the living memory of people about their past completely. This memory that was repressed then found its expression in a more radical and uninformed view of our past that was kept alive and propagated by the likes of Sangh parivaar. Two, the Marxist historians used state sponsorship to purvey a version of history that served the values of the modern Indian state but in the process whitewashed all truths of our past that were inconvenient to this narrative. In fact, many other voices that questioned these versions were shut out. This was an ethical academic folly.

But today that mistake seems worse. Instead of having a well researched and rigorous counter to the Marxist versions, we have competing views now that’s mere propaganda. That’s the price to pay for not letting legitimate contrarian views take roots. The versions of our history and culture that are spreading now through WhatsApp universities and other social media platforms not only counter the Marxian view, they also delegitimise the founding principles on which the modern Indian state was built. This is now an irreversible process. The UP election victory was preceded by elaborate ceremonies of laying the foundation of the Ram temple in Ayodhya and opening up of the new Kashi Vishwanath corridor. Alternative histories and versions now emerge every day with more dubious claims about our past that support the narrative of the current regime. The radical act of amnesia that marked our founding moment has been replaced by a vivid, technicolour Bollywood-ised version starring the likes of Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn. We have swung from one extreme to the other. Nothing good comes from reopening old wounds. As Ghalib once wrote:

“jalā hai jism jahāñ dil bhī jal gayā hogā 

kuredte ho jo ab raakh justujū kyā hai” 

(We persist in digging up the past. No idea why.)

Trading Off

Lastly, I agree with Pratap Bhanu Mehta that people no longer see politics as a conduit for solving their problems. I don’t know why he thinks this has happened. My view is this is the usual course of things in India. In the 75 years since our independence, we have always had a grand narrative that calls upon our people to make sacrifices for the greater good of our nation. In the Nehruvian years, it was about building a modern India unfettered by its past by letting the state become large and all-powerful. The people were supposed to kowtow to a prescriptive, omniscient state because we were building a new India. This was followed by the Indira era where the pretence of a new India was forgotten because there weren’t any resources left to build one. What was left was a hell where every citizen was asked to pay for the ineptitude of the state in the name of socialism.

The two decades post 1991 were a kind of an exception where economic freedom and growth were being promised and the sacrifice being asked from people was to look beyond their historical baggage of identity. It is no surprise that this period saw maximum social mobility and internal migration. We are now on to a different kind of compact. The proposition of this regime today is this - we are doing the difficult job of reclaiming the soul of India that was crushed for over a thousand years by invaders of various hues. This awakening might need sacrifices in the short-term on economic performance. You have lived through this for 75 years. What’s another 25? The UP victory is a confirmation of this. Economic outperformance is hard work with no clear linkage to electoral benefits. Reviving a glorious past that’s largely mythical and promoting welfarism is much easier with better payoffs.

Maybe I’m being overly pessimistic. It is possible that the broader Hindu identity project that’s on will meld all other castes and communities into a composite that’s more equal and less discriminating. Maybe the nationalism project will not be forever in need of an ‘other’ to fight and keep itself relevant. Instead of being a source of vicarious joy to the mediocre which it usually is, this brand of nationalism might inspire a generation to put itself in the service of the nation. Possible? Who knows? Maybe we will reconcile with our past once we have rewritten all our history in the way we think it happened. The permanent majority will then forever be rid of its sense of victimhood. It could happen. These are all in the realms of possibility. Maybe I should be hopeful.  

But then I look at history. And it tells me not to bet against it.

India Policy Watch #2: Irrational Fears and Homemade Potions

Insights on burning policy issues in India

— Pranay Kotasthane

Confirmation bias is a powerful cognitive bias. The tendency to search for information that confirms one’s own preconceptions is on full display in the technology and trade domains after the Russia-Ukraine war. For those who seek economic and technological self-sufficiency for India, this war has come at a right time to bolster their case for everything from data localisation, domestic social media platforms to SWIFT alternatives and de-dollarisation. The common refrain is: “see, this is what happens when you have trade and tech interdependence with the West. Imagine if the West were to use the same instruments against India in the future. Shouldn’t we decouple before they do this to us?”

Without doubt, this narrative will find resonance amongst many policymakers and Indian citizens. But before they convert aatmanirbharta into a full-on quest for autarky, I have three counter-points to offer.

First, the biggest lesson to draw from the Russia-Ukraine war is not that we need to become self-sufficient, but just that invading other countries comes at a humungous human cost to one’s own citizens. Nuclear-armed invaders might have immunity from conventional warfare by other nuclear-armed powers, but they will face a response in other domains—economic, technological, and sub-conventional.

I also suspect there’s the availability heuristic at play here. Many Indians recall the economic sanctions against India after the Pokhran tests. They fear that the information age variant of those sanctions could be similar to what Russia is facing. That conclusion completely ignores the history of the last twenty years. The days of India-Pakistan hyphenation are long behind us. The West too needs a powerful India to counter China. We forget that for this reason, the same post-Pokhran sanctions were replaced by a civil nuclear deal within a short period of seven years.

There’s also a category error in this comparison. Government-to-government sanctions against nuclear tests conducted on one’s soil are entirely different from the combined might of multi-State, market, and social sanctions that Russia’s invasions have invited. And so, since India has no designs to invade any other country (I sure hope so), we need not spend sleepless nights over similar sanctions.

Second, the pursuit of tech self-sufficiency is itself a near impossible goal. Whatever the level of domestic alternatives we build, there will still be some levers left in the hands of other technologically advanced countries to throttle India’s progress. I had earlier written that the idea of high-tech national industries is anachronistic.

That's because high-tech industries today rely on extensive cross-border movements of intermediate products, talent, and intellectual property. As R&D costs required to produce technological improvements have risen across sectors, erstwhile 'national' industries have been transformed into global supply chains. Instead of national champions making complete products independently, companies only specialise in specific parts of global supply chains.. Dependencies for intermediate goods and specialised equipment on other countries is inescapeable.

The impact of global ecosystems is exactly what China is discovering now as the West begins to cut its access to leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing and devotes resources to prevent industrial espionage by China in high-tech collaborations.

India shouldn’t be spending money, time, and resources on a delusionary goal.

Third, India needs strong collaborations with the West precisely for increasing its aatmashakti. Indians are deeply embedded in the West’s technology sector and that’s a source of immense national strength. These connections offer tremendous opportunities for India’s growth. Sure, one can crib about brain drain but reversing that requires better living conditions and opportunities back home, and not severing ties with the West. The trajectory that China followed has a few lessons for us. The sustained movement of ideas, capital, goods and services between China the West over forty years helped China build its own strengths.

Even on the strategic technologies front, there never has been a congruence of interests, values, and complementary strengths between the West and India, as it is now. The potential for joint development of key military technology has never been higher before.

These three reasons highlight, once again, the minefield that is the aatmanirbharta narrative.

PolicyWTF: I Failed my Unit Test

This section looks at egregious public policies. Policies that make you go: WTF, Did that really happen?

 - Pranay Kotasthane

Thankfully, the misfired unarmed missile that landed in Pakistan only led to escalations of the Twitter-kind. How a missile (possibly one that’s capable of carrying nukes) could land in the territory of a nuclear-armed adversary despite all the checks and safety procedures in place, boggles the mind.

But the policyWTF I want to focus on is the press release by Ministry of Defence that was put out a full two days after the incident:

“On 9 March 2022, in the course of a routine maintenance, a technical malfunction led to the accidental firing of a missile.

The Government of India has taken a serious view and ordered a high-level Court of Enquiry.

It is learnt that the missile landed in an area of Pakistan. While the incident is deeply regrettable, it is also a matter of relief that there has been no loss of life due to the accident.”

That’s it. Not only did the message come after Pakistan had gone to town, it also has a “I failed my exam but It’s okay as it was just a unit test” feel to it. Unsurprisingly, Pakistan is now trying to internationalise the issue.

This grave error deserved an unreserved apology to the people and government of Pakistan. It should have mentioned the steps the government has initiated to reassure not just Pakistan, but all important international stakeholders. Hopefully, this happens soon; it’s not too late.

Advertisement: At Takshashila Institution, there are quite a few positions open across policy research, education, programme management, and outreach functions. If you are interested, or know someone who might be interested, all requirements are posted here.

India Policy Watch #3: Mastering Diaspora Evacuation

Insights on burning policy issues in India

— Pranay Kotasthane

Indian officials and diplomats are doing a commendable job in extricating Indians from conflict areas inside Ukraine. An Indian Express report gives an indication of what it takes for evacuation from conflict areas such as Sumy:

* The PM's one-to-one calls to the presidents of Ukraine and Russia apparently gave a green signal for the evacuation, after both of them told the PM that they did not have a problem with safe passage.

* This led to instructions to Indian officials in Kyiv and Moscow for creating a humanitarian corridor.

* External Affairs Minister, the Defence Ministry, and the two Indian ambassadors were also involved in activating local contacts. Apparently, the Red Cross in Geneva also helped in making arrangements.

* In Sumy, Indian officials and local embassy staff were stationed. Their local contacts were critical in getting the buses to Sumy. Since drivers couldn’t be found, the vehicles were driven by Ukrainian army personnel. Apparently, some private cars were also used.

* Local contacts also helped in arranging fuel and other logistics.

* Finally, 12 buses reached a point in Sumy, picked up Indians from a nearby hostel. The buses took the students to central Ukraine. They took the train to reach the western border of Ukraine, from where they entered Poland. Thereafter, aircraft of IndiGo, Indian Air Force, and Air India were used to bring them home.

The Lesson

The events described above give an indication of the kinds of challenges and capacity required for evacuations. While the efforts of Indian officers is commendable, the above narration also indicates the absence of a well laid out protocol for evacuating Indian citizens. Given India's large and increasing diaspora, and the world disorder we find ourselves in, the need for an evacuation from conflict zones is likely to increase. India needs to be better prepared.

Recommendations

A Takshashila Institution 2016 Policy Brief Capacity Analysis for Evacuation of Indian Diaspora (written by my former colleague Guru Aiyar) had studied the capacity required for quick evacuation in detail. The study proposed a 'whole of government' approach to diaspora evacuation, which includes on-ground execution mechanisms such as:

* Creation of an Overseas Crisis Management Group(OCMG) under the NSA which will be responsible for synchronisation and control of evacuation operations at the apex level. It will coordinate with the military, bureaucracy, civil aviation, railways, and diplomatic missions.

* The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the OCMG must have databases of logistics and transportation companies at foreign locations for ready use by Indian Missions abroad.

* Diplomatic push to set up overseas Overseas Coordination Points (OCPs) - airfields, ports, bus assembly areas, advanced landing grounds (ALGs) identified in advance.

* Maintain good diplomatic relations with countries where Overseas Coordination Points (OCPs) have been set up. For example, Djibouti becomes very important in West Asia for diaspora security.

* Wet lease of commercial ships & aircraft from friendly countries.

* For return to India, it is much cheaper to utilise civil carriers compared to Air Force or Air India.

* Include emergency clause in carrier licensing with commercial airlines and shipping companies to ensure: availability of aircraft with crew during emergencies, a compensation structure, and an Emergency Coordinator from all transport companies, airlines, shipping and railways with a lateral reporting channel to the OCMG.

Going Ahead

With Air India no longer a government company, it would be good for the government to include an emergency clause in carrier licensing now for all the private players. More importantly, India's diaspora evacuation must be better planned and executed instead of relying on the brilliance of individual officers in conflict situations where a lot of variables are not in control.

Read More

* Capacity Analysis for Evacuation of Indian Diaspora, Takshashila Policy Brief by Guru Aiyar, August 2016

* Challenges for Indian Diaspora Evacuation, Takshashila Discussion SlideDoc, Guru Aiyar and Nitin Pai

HomeWork

Reading and listening recommendations on public policy matters

* [Article] If there’s one article you want to read on the pension tension that prompted Rajasthan and Chattisgarh governments to announce a roll back of the pension reform, read Rajiv Mehrishi and Renuka Sane.

* [Note] A compilation of analyses on India-Russia relations.

* [Note] A compilation of studies and articles in search of answers to one question: Why have Feminist Political Parties not been electorally successful?

* [Podcast] In the next Puliyabaazi, Avani Kapur discusses public finance and fiscal decentralisation in India. Do listen.

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