Supporters of President Xi stand under a large Chinese flag before the President passes by on a horse-drawn carriage with Britain's Queen Elizabeth II on the Mall en route to Buckingham Palace in London, Oct. 20, 2015.
Turns out, emerging economies aren't all they're cracked up to be
The BRICS–those once hot emerging markets including Brazil, Russia, India, and China–have been beleaguered for some time. Brazil and Russia are in full blown recessions, China is trying to stave off a big slow down, and India, while still of interest to global investors, is struggling to put through the economic reforms that would help it reach its full potential. No wonder then, that Goldman Sachs, whose former chief economist Jim O’Neill coined the term BRIC to encompass the world’s emerging market darlings, has quietly closed down its BRIC fund, which had lost 88% of its asset value since 2010, and folded the BRIC investments into its larger emerging market funds.
The BRICs, it seems, are finally broken.
So what does this tell us about the emerging market story as a whole? For starters, the end of the BRIC era really isn’t a surprise. Ruchir Sharma, the head of emerging markets for Morgan Stanley Investment Management, really called it in his 2012 book, Breakout Nations. As he put it then, the slowdown of the BRICS shouldn’t be a surprise…
“…because it is hard to sustain rapid growth for more than a decade. The unusual circumstances of the last decade made it look easy: coming off the crisis-ridden 1990s and fueled by a global flood of easy money, the emerging markets took off in a mass upward swing that made virtually every economy a winner. By 2007, when only three countries in the world suffered negative growth, recessions had all but disappeared from the international scene. But now, there is a lot less foreign money flowing into emerging markets. The global economy is returning to its normal state of churn, with many laggards and just a few winners rising in unexpected places. The implications of this shift are striking, because economic momentum is power, and thus the flow of money to rising stars will reshape the global balance of power.”
In short, the story of emerging markets is no longer just one story with a straight line trajectory, but a collection of varied investment narratives—Brazil down, Mexico up; Turkey falling, the Philippines rising, and so on. While emerging markets used to rise and fall as a group, countries have diverged from each other, as have asset classes. Part of this is due to the slowdown in China, which has in turn been a big factor in lower commodity prices, which benefit energy importing nations (rich and poor) but hurt big commodity exporters like Russia and Brazil, as well as parts of West Africa and the Middle East.
None of this is to say that the BRIC nations—China especially—don’t still have tremendous power within the global economy. China has been the biggest contributor to global growth since the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, and what happens there matters more than ever within the global context. As Sharma told me recently, “the next global recession will likely be made in China.” While the Chinese stock market has made up pretty much all its losses since its crash this summer, that doesn’t mean the Chinese economy as a whole has rebounded. Indeed, Sharma and others believe that the jury is still out about whether the Middle Kingdom can shift its economic model in such a way that it can make the leap to becoming a middle class nation. (It’s the toughest economic leap to make—one that only three other nations in Asia, Singapore, South Korea and Japan, have managed).
Is India a healthy nation? It is an uncomfortable question, particularly so when it is directed at a nation known for its back-breaking burden of diseases. The question might even be dismissed as an irrelevant one, but that would be a mistake. The issue it raises is very real, but the search to answer that question leads us to the revelation that India is ready to develop an acceptable answer regarding population health.
So perhaps we should rephrase the question: Is India making a determined bid to tear down restrictive, conventional barriers and emerge as a healthier nation? The answer to that question is an unequivocal “yes”.
What should be the focal point of India’s future health strategy? As a starting point, it is absolutely imperative to address a health issue that has been escalating for some time and cannot be ignored any longer. India, along with most other nations on the planet, has fallen victim to a modern-day health threat – non-communicable diseases (NCDs). These are an array of debilitating and deadly afflictions – cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes, to name a few – that could cost the world $47 trillion in lost economic output from 2010 to 2030 if urgent action is not taken to prevent and treat them, say experts.
And India’s condition is particularly serious. NCDs are estimated to account for a disturbing 60 percent of all deaths in India, making them the leading cause of mortality ahead of injuries and communicable diseases as well as maternal, prenatal, and nutritional conditions. Furthermore, NCDs account for about 40 percent of all hospital stays and roughly 35 percent of all recorded outpatient visits.
NCDs not only affect health, but also productivity and economic growth. The probability of dying during the most productive years (ages 30-70) of one’s life from one of the four main NCDs is a staggering 26 percent. Moreover, an ageing India whose population is growing more susceptible to NCDs is likely to find the burden even heavier and more destructive than is the case with other nations.
The situation, however, doesn’t have to be as bleak as it looks right now. NCDs are preventable.
Overconsumption of salt, sugar and trans fats combined with lack of physical activity are contributing factors to many NCDs. Increased production of processed food, rapid urbanization and changing lifestyles have led to a shift in dietary patterns. People are consuming foods high in energy, saturated fats, trans fats, free sugars or salt/sodium, while not eating enough fruit, vegetables and dietary fibre such as whole grains. There is sufficient global evidence suggesting reducing salt, sugar and trans fat in the diet can prevent major NCDs and lower disability and mortality rates.
Options exist for actions that policy makers can take today. Businesses may contribute as well through workplace health programmes aimed at prevention, early detection, treatment, and care. Are we prepared to take up this challenge? This is an important question, given India’s healthcare track record.
The clear warnings regarding population health that are resonating across the country have not been able to shake off the indifference of the policymakers vis-a-vis NCDs. They remain heavily focused on communicable diseases and classic “diseases of poverty”, paying scant attention to these emerging health threats, even the most virulent ones. So while NCDs now constitute the bulk of the country’s disease burden, national health programmes to tackle and treat these are very limited in coverage and scope.
India needs a smartly planned, adequately financed and efficiently administered public healthcare system, one that earmarks a major portion of the annual healthcare budget towards addressing NCDs. This will mobilise adequate funds for the delivery of public health interventions, medical services, and counseling of patients.
This system should also explore public and private collaboration to develop innovative financing models, including both public and private insurance that can reduce individuals’ out-of-pocket expenses.
It is imperative to increase spending on preventive care and encourage individual interventions including regular health check-ups, curbing tobacco and harmful alcohol use, reduction of salt/sugar intake and promoting physical activity. All this will limit disease progression and the need to spend significant resources on expensive treatments. Efficient health teams, including nurses and paramedical professionals, also play a critical role here and would respond to the needs of patients with chronic diseases. Investment should, therefore, be made in training of paramedical staff and physicians to detect early signs of illnesses.
Based on latest reports, we are seeing promise for positive change on this subject. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, as of this writing, plans to increase public investment in health from 1 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) to 2.5 percent by 2020, with 70 percent of this being dedicated to primary healthcare.
In other words, under this new national health policy document that is being drafted, the government will ensure that it spends an average 3,800 rupees per capita annually on health as compared to less than 1,000 rupees being spent at the moment at current prices.
This latest draft health policy may not be fully what the doctors and the medical community ordered, or hoped for. Not by far. But it has managed to reach closer to the target than ever before and demonstrates considerable progress. One can hope that these decisions are an indicator that the government is listening to our concerns about India’s greatest health challenge.
In all, he wrote around 36,000 postcards to patients, acquaintances and strangers—explaining basic habits like boiling water and washing hands, and how to prevent commonplace ailments like diarrhea.
“Eighty percent of diseases in India are waterborne and airborne, and can be easily prevented,” Ramayogaiah told Rahul M, a freelance journalist, earlier this year. “All that one needs to do is have clean surroundings and drink boiled water.”
Ramayogaiah emphasised on “preventive aspects rather than curative,” said Rama Devi, who works at Jana Vignana Vedika, an organisation working for the popularisation of science, in Andhra Pradesh, and is a doctor at Gandhi Medical College and Hospital in Hyderabad.
The activist doctor.(Rahul M)
“He often joked that if doctors in India were to go on a strike for 10 to 15 days, the mortality rate during that period would decrease because doctors wouldn’t be writing prescriptions,” she told Quartz. “He would say doctors are creating iatrogenic (caused by treatment) diseases. First they give medicines, that causes side-effects, so more medicines…and that’s a vicious cycle.”
We, doctors, know for sure from our long years of gruelling studies that most of the symptoms are self-limiting, most others are trivial and very few are serious. In the name of evidence-based medicine and defensive medicine, we order a battery of investigations even for trivial symptoms… Unnecessary tests are a loathsome burden on patients and, at times, result in false positive results leading to unscientific treatment.
“Health is to do with water, nutrition, environment and good sanitation,” Devi said. “Doctors come into picture when a disease takes place. So why do people say that doctors give health, he would say.”
Educating mothers
From 1990 till 1998, Ramayogaiah worked in the paediatric ward of Chittoor’s Government Headquarters Hospital, from where he wrote his first postcard.
At the hospital, he was also connected to the Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India, an initiative to encourage women to breastfeed infants. Roughly 2,500 women used to deliver babies every month, and typically, they would return to their homes in the nearby villages after the delivery.
A postcard on breastfeeding.
“He started thinking how do we know whether the child was getting vaccinated properly, and according to the date,” A. Naga Sujana, Ramayogaiah’s daughter, told Quartz.
Eventually, he decided to collect the addresses of these new mothers from the hospital’s gynaecology department and write to them directly.
“So in a postcard, he would list all the vaccinations, the dates when they were due, and at what age of the child,” Sujana recalled. “He would then sign it with a ‘wishing you good health’ and post it.”
The doctor also ensured the postcards were sent from the hospital he worked at. “That way when women receive these postcards they would take them seriously as they look official,” Ramayogaiah said in an interviewearlier this year.
His idea worked. Women would often return to the hospital for the vaccinations and profusely thank him.
“These were mostly uneducated women. So the postmaster who would be delivering the letter would read them aloud for them,” Sujana said. “At that time, he sent some 1,500 postcards.”
During his next posting, in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, he sent out another 2,500 postcards on polio vaccination. “He had fallen very sick, and he could not participate in the Pulse Polio campaign, so he wrote postcards and sent them to villages,” his daughter recalled. Pulse Polio is an immunisation programme by the Indian government to eliminate polio. In 1995, the campaign was scaled to cover all of India’s population.
A villager for villagers
Ramayogaiah was born in Mundlapadu, a tiny village in Andhra Pradesh’s Prakasam district, in 1950. He studied medicine at Kurnool Medical College, before graduating in 1968 and then reading for a diploma in child health.
At 27, Ramayogaiah became a government doctor, eventually spending many years at major primary health centres and several posts in the state government.
Araveeti Ramayogaiah.
In 2005, during the twilight years of his practice, he moved to Hyderabad, where he held various posts, including the state malaria officer and medical consultant at the Indian Institute of Health and Family Welfare. He was also the state coordinator for the Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India, and additional director of health, Andhra Pradesh.
“He had no possessions like a house or a car,” Devi said. “He was way too simple.”
Ramayogaiah retired in 2008, but his postcard campaign didn’t. He actually took writing postcards full time.
Soon after, he started a non-profit body, called the Organisation for Promotion of Social Dimensions of Health, and used his pension to collect addresses, write postcards and dispatch them.
Ramayogaiah also launched a blackboard campaign, in which he created 170 health boards containing health tips and information about diseases in easy-to-understand pointers.
These health boards were then sent to schools, colleges and village panchayats.
“Volunteers or school headmasters were supposed to write the health tips on the blackboard in their own handwriting. That would make children curious, and they would read them and learn. That would stay for, say, two or three days. After which, he would send another set of health tips,” Sujana explained.
Last few months
A couple of months ago, Ramayogaiah was found to be suffering from a deadly brain tumour. He was admitted in a private hospital in Hyderabad, but he wouldn’t take any of it.
“When I went inside the ICU (intensive care unit), he told me, ‘We fought all our lives against these corporate hospitals, so this is not right. It’s not necessary, so let me go’,” Devi recalled.
After much deliberation, he was brought to his daughter’s home from the hospital. “I have lived my 65 years happily, I am satisfied with that,” he said during Rahul M’s visitto his daughter’s home in Hyderabad.
A postcard by Ramayogaiah to Rahul M before they met for the first time. Rahul M had found about him through his father, who was Ramayogaiah’s junior in medical college. When Ramayogaiah heard Rahul M was interested in his campaign, he sent one of his trademark postcards to his Delhi office.(Rahul M)
Ramayogaiah passed away on Sept. 06. Now, the volunteers will be using the health boards to write letters and post them on his behalf.
“Nothing will change. Only his signature will be missing,” his daughter said.
Is India a healthy nation? It is an uncomfortable question, particularly so when it is directed at a nation known for its back-breaking burden of diseases. The question might even be dismissed as an irrelevant one, but that would be a mistake. The issue it raises is very real, but the search to answer that question leads us to the revelation that India is ready to develop an acceptable answer regarding population health.
So perhaps we should rephrase the question: Is India making a determined bid to tear down restrictive, conventional barriers and emerge as a healthier nation? The answer to that question is an unequivocal “yes”.
What should be the focal point of India’s future health strategy? As a starting point, it is absolutely imperative to address a health issue that has been escalating for some time and cannot be ignored any longer. India, along with most other nations on the planet, has fallen victim to a modern-day health threat – non-communicable diseases (NCDs). These are an array of debilitating and deadly afflictions – cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes, to name a few – that could cost the world $47 trillion in lost economic output from 2010 to 2030 if urgent action is not taken to prevent and treat them, say experts.
And India’s condition is particularly serious. NCDs are estimated to account for a disturbing 60 percent of all deaths in India, making them the leading cause of mortality ahead of injuries and communicable diseases as well as maternal, prenatal, and nutritional conditions. Furthermore, NCDs account for about 40 percent of all hospital stays and roughly 35 percent of all recorded outpatient visits.
NCDs not only affect health, but also productivity and economic growth. The probability of dying during the most productive years (ages 30-70) of one’s life from one of the four main NCDs is a staggering 26 percent. Moreover, an ageing India whose population is growing more susceptible to NCDs is likely to find the burden even heavier and more destructive than is the case with other nations.
The situation, however, doesn’t have to be as bleak as it looks right now. NCDs are preventable.
Overconsumption of salt, sugar and trans fats combined with lack of physical activity are contributing factors to many NCDs. Increased production of processed food, rapid urbanization and changing lifestyles have led to a shift in dietary patterns. People are consuming foods high in energy, saturated fats, trans fats, free sugars or salt/sodium, while not eating enough fruit, vegetables and dietary fibre such as whole grains. There is sufficient global evidence suggesting reducing salt, sugar and trans fat in the diet can prevent major NCDs and lower disability and mortality rates.
Options exist for actions that policy makers can take today. Businesses may contribute as well through workplace health programmes aimed at prevention, early detection, treatment, and care. Are we prepared to take up this challenge? This is an important question, given India’s healthcare track record.
The clear warnings regarding population health that are resonating across the country have not been able to shake off the indifference of the policymakers vis-a-vis NCDs. They remain heavily focused on communicable diseases and classic “diseases of poverty”, paying scant attention to these emerging health threats, even the most virulent ones. So while NCDs now constitute the bulk of the country’s disease burden, national health programmes to tackle and treat these are very limited in coverage and scope.
India needs a smartly planned, adequately financed and efficiently administered public healthcare system, one that earmarks a major portion of the annual healthcare budget towards addressing NCDs. This will mobilise adequate funds for the delivery of public health interventions, medical services, and counseling of patients.
This system should also explore public and private collaboration to develop innovative financing models, including both public and private insurance that can reduce individuals’ out-of-pocket expenses.
It is imperative to increase spending on preventive care and encourage individual interventions including regular health check-ups, curbing tobacco and harmful alcohol use, reduction of salt/sugar intake and promoting physical activity. All this will limit disease progression and the need to spend significant resources on expensive treatments. Efficient health teams, including nurses and paramedical professionals, also play a critical role here and would respond to the needs of patients with chronic diseases. Investment should, therefore, be made in training of paramedical staff and physicians to detect early signs of illnesses.
Based on latest reports, we are seeing promise for positive change on this subject. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, as of this writing, plans to increase public investment in health from 1 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) to 2.5 percent by 2020, with 70 percent of this being dedicated to primary healthcare.
In other words, under this new national health policy document that is being drafted, the government will ensure that it spends an average 3,800 rupees per capita annually on health as compared to less than 1,000 rupees being spent at the moment at current prices.
This latest draft health policy may not be fully what the doctors and the medical community ordered, or hoped for. Not by far. But it has managed to reach closer to the target than ever before and demonstrates considerable progress. One can hope that these decisions are an indicator that the government is listening to our concerns about India’s greatest health challenge.
Political disturbances and violence often shroud Kashmir’s big valley and the surrounding mountains, but beneath the clouds, India’s northernmost state also brims with stories about the crafts that have been practiced there for hundreds of years.
One of those is Sozni weaving, a form of embroidery that uses thin needles on cashmere wool to create intricate, elaborate clothing embroidered with floral or paisley patterns. I learned about this art while visiting Srinagar, the capital city of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, where I met Ali Muhammad Beigh and his family.
Beigh, 70, is one of the oldest and most revered craftsmen in Srinagar. Many people admire him for his weaving skills. When I visited his house, I saw a wall adorned with certificates, medals and awards of excellence.
The Beighs live in the old city of Srinagar, at the heart of Alamgiri bazar. It is a modest looking two-storied house with six rooms. The top floor has two huge rooms that serve as the workshop. One of the rooms holds the finished products. There is no furniture in the work room except for wooden cupboards that store the silk threads and shawls. The Beighs sit on the floor and work.
Ali Beigh inherited his skill from his elder brother Gulam Hassan Beigh, who sits silently in one corner, weaving colorful silk into shawls. His left hand is full of pockmarks from countless needle pricks. His two sons, both Sozni weavers, also are there. Ali has trained his two daughters and daughter-in-law in the art as well.
The Beighs welcomed me with an aromatic tea called “Kawa,” a speciality of Kashmir, and told me about Sozni weaving.
“Despite being illiterate, Sozni craft gave me and my family members the opportunity to travel abroad and showcase our talent in foreign countries, which I consider as no small deed,” Ali said. “It is not only a source of earning bread, but only means of preserving my heritage that will continue to live on through my work long after I am gone.”
Ali Muhammad Beigh (R) and his son Mehboob. Photo by Anjali Rao Koppala.
“We have received so many state awards that we have stopped participating in the competitions and instead are made to judge participants now,” said Mehboob, Ali’s eldest son.
For a family that won numerous accolades over the years, they feel that the applause is not good enough to prevent this art from dying. Ali Beigh has trained about 1,000 people to master it. Most of them are girls who do not seek outside work, but support their families by making a living out of it.
Beigh said that the number of people who show up to learn this craft is dwindling with not a single person enrolled so far this year. His grandson, who is in his mid-twenties, is not keen on carrying forward the legacy.
Sozni weaving requires hard work and patience as each shawl takes two to three years to complete. The master craftsman must sit with the shawl for six hours every day to create the colorful motifs that adorn the shawl. The floral patterns are so closely embroidered with silk threads that the pashmina base is barely visible. A shawl like this is sold in the market at a price ranging from 50,000 rupees ($763) up to hundreds of thousands of rupees.
“Since it takes up a really long time to finish one piece of work, the younger generation is not interested in pursuing it further. A daily wage of 300 rupees ($4.58) isn’t sufficient to keep them glued to this art form. Unlike us, my grandson is educated, so he wants to take up a white-collar job,” Ali said.
Ali’s youngest son, Shabir, said machine-made shawls is one reason why the art could die out. With the advent of machine and power looms, manufacturers can sell their shawls as real pashmina at more affordable prices.
“The truth is an original pashmina, on which sozni weaving is done, is way more delicate and its quality cannot be matched up by the machine made shawls,” Ali said. “Pashmina has now become a brand to sell the machine-made shawls which is akin to discrediting the hard work done by weavers.”
He said government funding for these looms hurts artisans. “When a cheap replica of sozni work made by machines on rayon material is available in the market for few thousand rupees, people mistake it to be original sozni shawl. The least our government can do is label the machine made shawls to differentiate it with the one that is purely hand-woven and embroidered, Ali said.
They have been asked whether “gender discrimination” suffered by Muslim women should not be considered a violation of the fundamental rights.
A two-judge Bench has ordered registration of a PIL and asked the Chief Justice to set up a Special Bench to consider gender discrimination suffered by Muslim women.
Thirty years after the Supreme Court urged the government to frame a uniform civil code to “help in the cause of national integration” in the Shah Bano case, a two-judge Bench of the court has suo motuordered registration of a public interest litigation petition and asked the Chief Justice to set up a Special Bench to consider gender discrimination suffered by Muslim women owing to “arbitrary divorce and second marriage of their husbands during the currency of their first marriage”.
Justices Anil R. Dave and Adarsh Kumar Goel issued notice to the Attorney-General and the National Legal Services Authority of India to reply, on November 23, whether “gender discrimination” suffered by Muslim women should not be considered a violation of the fundamental rights under Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution and international covenants. The October 16 verdict refers to dozens of its judgments since the 1990s to record the court’s growing realisation that gender discrimination violated the constitutional rights of women.
They have been asked whether “gender discrimination” suffered by Muslim women should not be considered a violation of the fundamental rights under Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution and international covenants.
The verdict, dated October 16, refers to dozens of its own judgments since the 1990s in order to record the Supreme Court’s growing realisation that gender discrimination is a violation of the constitutional rights of women.
Considering the strong pitch made by the Supreme Court recently for a common civil code, this judgment is significant as this is the first time that the court itself has shed its self-imposed restraint by suo motu ordering the registration of a PIL petition.
Even in the 1985 Shah Bano case, the court had only reminded the government of the lack of “evidence of any official activity for framing a common civil code for the country.” It had said a “common civil code will help in the cause of national integration by removing disparate loyalties to laws which have conflicting ideologies.”
Justice Goel wrote that the decision to “consider” the rights of Muslim women came up during discussions with lawyers on gender discrimination at the hearing of a batch of civil appeals on the issue of a daughter’s right to equal shares in ancestral property under the Hindu succession law.
“An important issue of gender discrimination which, though not directly involved in this appeal, has been raised by some of the learned counsel for the parties which concerns rights to Muslim women. Discussions on gender discrimination led to this issue also. It was pointed out that in spite of guarantee of the Constitution, Muslim women are subjected to discrimination. There is no safeguard against arbitrary divorce and second marriage by her husband during the currency of the first marriage, resulting in denial of dignity and security to her,” the judgment recorded.
“It is pointed out that the matter needs consideration by this court as the issue relates not merely to a policy matter but to fundamental rights of women under Articles 14, 15 and 21 [of the Constitution] and international conventions and covenants,” Justice Goel wrote of the discussions the Bench had during the court hearings.
Justice Goel wrote how even in the Danial Latifi judgment of 2001, the Supreme Court’s Constitution Bench had not addressed the issue of gender discrimination, though it held that “Article 21 included right to live with dignity which supports the plea that a Muslim woman could invoke fundamental rights in such matters.”
In the Latifi case, the court attempted to uphold the constitutional validity of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, by extending the right of a Muslim woman to get maintenance till she re-marries. This Act had diluted the Shah Bano judgment and reduced the period of maintenance to the completion of iddat.
Justice Goel refers to several judgments of the past to show how the court stopped short of a judicial debate on the uniform civil code, fearing it would then take on an “activist role.”
Changing stance
But Justice Goel points to recent SC judgments, like Javed vs. State of Haryana in 2003 in which a three-judge Bench intervened in personal law to uphold the dignity of women, to show the change in attitude.
In the Javed case, the court held that “polygamy is injurious to public morals and can be superseded by the State just as practice of ‘Sati’.”
Again, Justice Goel referred to the John Vallamattom case judgment of 2003, which said “laws dealing with marriage and succession are not part of religion.” Finally, Justice Goel refers to the 2015 judgment in the Charu Khurana case, in which the court struck against gender discrimination shown to women make-up artists in the film industry.
RJD chief Lalu Prasad welcomes a woman during an election rally at Jeevdhara, East Champaran, Bihar on Friday. Credit: PTI
Patna: It appears that a critical mass of the Bihar electorate wants to reward Nitish Kumar for the good work he has done over the past several years. Everyone this writer spoke to in the parts of Bihar going to the polls in the third and fourth phase had only good word to say about the chief minister. This, indeed, is what makes it difficult for the BJP to attack Nitish on the development agenda. Even Narendra Modi characterises Nitish’s regime as marked by 10 years of arrogance, but cannot publicly attack him on the plank of development. In a big public meeting outside Muzaffarpur, when Modi asked the crowd whether Nitish Kumar’s 10 years were marked by arrogance and lack of accountability, there wasn’t much response. This won’t be lost on the BJP strategists.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that there is an authentic Nitish wave in the central-northern parts of Bihar. No wonder, the BJP is very worried about the general sentiment generated during the first three phases of polling. The party’s anxiety is reflected in the manner in which it is bringing issues like India’s “adversarial relations” with Pakistan and China into the campaign for the last few phases of the election. In a public meeting outside Muzaffarpur, the BJP’s undeclared CM candidate, Sushil Modi, fumes before a biggish crowd: “The one man both Pakistan and China fear is Narendra Modi”. Why bring India’s neighbours into the campaign at this stage, you might rightly ask. It is an unmistakable sign of the BJP’s insecurity that it should do this in an election debate which is otherwise dominated by bijli, sadak, paani, caste equations and , in the current context, dal(pulses). Dal at Rs. 200 a kilo is on everyone’s lips. At the end of it all, the BJP just might get defeated by two sources of protein – dal and beef. Beef, of course, is linked to caste.
Polarisation strategy
Elsewhere, near Raxaul, BJP president Amit Shah is doing what he does best – playing the polarisation game. When he said Pakistan will celebrate if the BJP is defeated in Bihar, he again betrayed the fact that the party’s desperation has reached newer highs. The Seemanchal region, which votes in the fifth phase, has a high concentration of Muslims. By invoking Pakistan, the BJP thinks it can consolidate Hindu votes across castes. The party’s attempts don’t seem to be bearing fruit as the electorate knows what is going on. Large sections of the backward castes seem to be in a mood to give Nitish Kumar another chance. That, in short, is what is happening in Bihar.
Lalu Prasad is complementing the broader sentiment in favour of Nitish by holding on to his Yadav vote base – which the BJP tried to break by raising the issue of beef but failed. The Muslims, emotionally impacted by the Dadri episode, seem to have put their fullest weight behind the grand alliance. Lalu’s meetings are attracting unusually large crowds with hundreds of youths enthusiastically clicking away with their smart phones. I had seen a similar spectacle only during Narendra Modi’s public meetings in Bihar during the Lok Sabha polls in 2014.
Bihar is not turning out the way BJP had anticipated. A conversation with Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar suggests that both are looking at creating a new politics against the “Delhi establishment”. In his rally in Muzaffarpur district’s Meenapur assembly constituency, Lalu tells his audience that the real aim is to change politics in Delhi.
In many ways Bihar looks so much like a forerunner of events in national politics. Both Lalu and Nitish are talking the same language and the political grammar is converging around a larger strategy of creating a national front to fight the BJP’s. Hindutva agenda.
Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar shows his inked finger after casting his vote during the third phase of the Bihar assembly elections in Bhakhtiyarpur on Wednesday. Credit: PTI
Nitish Kumar articulates this strategy cogently as he says, “We are all students of Ram Manohar Lohia, who advocated a constant campaign against the establishment. When Lohiaji said this many decades ago, the Congress was the establishment. Today, the BJP, and the forces its represents, have become the establishment. So we will forge a front against the BJP and its divisive politics.”
But doesn’t Narendra Modi also invoke Lohia? Nitish says there is no basis for Modi to lay claim to the Socialist leader. “Lohiaji would have been shocked at the nature of intolerance being spread by the Hindutva forces. Lohiaji wanted decentralised exercise of power but look at the way the BJP, after getting a majority in Parliament, started threatening various regional leaders who are elected chief ministers.” Nitish suggested that the sangh parivar’s DNA is to have a unitary political system of governance which is why Modi is so anxious to seize power in all the states.
National alternative?
Nitish Kumar’s thinking finds an echo in the manner in which chief ministers like Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal have endorsed the grand alliance in Bihar. After talking to Nitish, one gets the sense that a national alternative to the BJP constituted by regional leaders is fast evolving.
Lalu Prasad also endorses the Nitish line by suggesting the real fight will be Delhi. The fact that Nitish and Lalu want to focus on countering the Hindutva agenda at the national level is emphasised by a book lying on Lalu’s table. It is the former RSS chief, M.S. Golwalkar’s infamous book, A Bunch of Thoughts, which outlines the sangh parivar world view of Hindutva nationalism wherein non-Hindus must live as second class citizens in India.
Lalu holds Golwalkar’s book in his hands and says, “This is the issue I want to take to the people of Bihar and at the national level. So whatever the results of the Bihar elections, there are signs of a new kind of politics evolving which will be driven by regional leaders. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a big contribution to this development.”
The Supreme Court’s decision to invite public opinion on improving the collegium system is a remarkable departure for an institution that has insulated judicial appointments from public scrutiny. Among the primary criticisms of the collegium was that it was functioning like a clique, without accountability or transparency — and in that process — fostering mediocrity. In this context, the move to invite suggestions for collegium reform raises hopes that the criticisms levelled against the collegium system will now be addressed. However, it appears that the consultation was an afterthought. Lawyers reportedly objected to limiting the discussion to a select group of senior advocates and stakeholders whose views were collated into a report for the collegium to consider. Now that the collegium is bound to receive hundreds of suggestions and a diversity of opinion, the moot question is how effectively the five-judge bench hearing the matter, would be able to revamp the collegium.
The report, already with the collegiums, has made 60 suggestions like caste-based reservation, appointing more women judges, throwing open the minutes of collegium meetings toRTI Actrequests, disclosing the relationship of candidates with sitting judges, and whether candidates have held membership of political parties. The central government, in its suggestions, demanded that judicial appointments should be a “consultative participatory exercise” . It also wants publication of an annual report on the appointments made by the collegium. It has also suggested that the collegium proceedings be transferred to the National Archives of India after a 30-year cooling period for use by scholars. For the Centre, which until a month ago, had aggressively batted for the National Judicial Appointments Commission and disputed the judiciary’s power to select judges, the decision to cooperate reflects its own confusion over how to proceed.
The Constitution clearly does not delegate to judges the authority to decide the appointments process for judges. Perhaps, the Centre could even have offered to enact a fresh legislation giving constitutional status to the collegium and the appointments process that this Bench will finalise. The Justice JS Khehar-led bench has already said that four specific issues — transparency, the eligibility criteria for appointments, creating a secretariat to assist the Collegium, and a complaint redressal mechanism — would be addressed in the course of its hearings. The Bench has also clarified that it will “not be laying down new parameters” on collegium functioning, which indicates that the “judges appointing judges” scheme will remain largely unaffected. So the decision to invite opinions may not hold any more significance other than symbolic value.
What the Bench is considering is a purely administrative reform of the collegium system. In essence, the collegium may have to state their reasons for appointing judges. But unless the new system can help rectify complaints of under-representation of women and backward sections, or the rejection of meritorious candidates, little good will come of it. The issue of conflict of interest also arises. There are practical difficulties in opening the collegium to public scrutiny leading judges to prefer secrecy to openness. Consequently, Parliament cannot remain a mute spectator. Once the collegium takes final shape, the central government must initiate a discussion in Parliament on its pros and cons. The collegium is far too important a body to function as an ad hoc body, guided through conventions arrived at by a group of five men.
The Supreme Court File Photo