This is the original English version of an op-ed published in Hindi, in Nai Dunia, Indore, today.

If California were an independent country, it would be one of India’s important trading partners: last year we imported more than $5.3 billion worth of goods from that state. While IT services exports catch most of the limelight, India also exports items like cashew nuts, coffee, tea, engine parts, metal screws, rice and vegetable extracts. California hosts more than 4,75,000 Indian-Americans and is deeply connected to our technology industry. Silicon Valley companies have invested heavily in India over the last twenty years, and their presence contributes to the livelihoods of several lakhs of people in India — from IT & BPO employees to the taxi drivers who drive them to work. So much is Bangalore’s technology sector connected to America’s that we like to joke that the traffic in the city is lighter during public holidays in the United States.

So there are very good reasons for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit California, instead of limiting himself to the usual New York-Washington circuit that India’s political leaders usually do. Reaching out personally to top investors and business leaders helps promote India as a destination for investments, where we are in competition with China, East Asia and Eastern Europe. Whatever may be the domestic criticisms of the “Digital India” initiative, it is a good calling card for the Indian prime minister as he engages the some of the world’s most influential technology leaders. His personal charisma and public speaking skills make him a fantastic salesman and marketer of the India story.

Also, unlike our own businesspeople, it is likely that foreign business leaders will be more straightforward in telling him why they find it hard to do business in India. The country will benefit from such candid feedback, especially if Mr Modi diligently follows up on it once he is back in New Delhi.

That, essentially, is the real problem. Even without Mr Modi visiting Silicon Valley, it is a well-known fact that India has the talent, the resources and the market to make it a potentially exciting destination for investment. Yet, much of this potential cannot be realised because of the government gets in the way. Complicated tax laws, for instance, raise costs of doing business, increase corruption and invite political rent-seeking. Poor contract enforcement is merely the tip of the iceberg of a pervasive lack of trust in society, which deters investors. Lack of attention to basic public services, like water, electricity, education, health and transportation shifts the costs onto the private sector. This not only raises costs for investors (and makes India more expensive a place to operate from than it should be) but also creates social divisions, because others do not have them. We all know the problems with land acquisition and labour reform.

Mr Modi can’t be unaware of these issues. In his interactions with investors, he would probably have reassured them that his government will address these challenges. While he might get away with these responses as this is his first visit, he might not receive a patient hearing the next time. In other words, he has staked his personal credibility on addressing the challenges faced by investors and he will now have to deliver on them. This is not easy because it is unclear if his government realises that the entire Delhi Straitjacket has to be removed from our economic lives, not mere tweaking at the margins. We have not seen any sign of that since the Modi government came to power. Worse, even as Mr Modi promotes Digital India, his government scores such shocking self-goals like the recent one concerning a very poorly drafted National Encryption Policy that it was forced to withdraw after strong public criticism. The Modi government has done nothing to repeal the horrible IT Rules (including the infamous Section 66A) that were introduced by the UPA government.

After the success of the visit, Mr Modi will have to pay attention to the essential task of economic reform. Whether to satisfy the aspirations of the domestic population or demands of foreign investors, the answer is the same: economic liberalisation on a much bigger scale than Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s in 1991.

While no one might have told him this, but Mr Modi would do well to reflect on why Silicon Valley creates companies like Google, Tesla or Facebook that have a global mindset. Most startups there begin with a plan to capture the global market. Their dreams are big. Of course, the ecosystem enables them to fulfil those dreams, but the big dream is the starting point. Most of our entrepreneurs in contrast, limit their dreams to the borders of our own country. The Delhi Straitjacket is partially responsible for this, but there is also a mindset problem, in that we are content to think within our “narrow domestic walls”. Elon Musk wants to transform the way the whole world travels. He wants to even transform the way humans travel to space. If there is something Mr Modi should learn from Silicon Valley is the need to unshackle our richest, most capable and most talented people to open their minds and push the envelope of human achievement.

Those who criticise Mr Modi for going on too many foreign trips miss the point, for his trips help raise India’s profile abroad. What we should discuss is whether his government delivers on the reforms necessary to meet the additional expectations he has created at home and abroad.

A growing India cannot afford to lose out to proactive Chinese maritime policies.

With 70 percent of the world’s petroleum shipment, 50 percent of world’s container traffic and dependence on energy routes of world’s two most populous nations, the Indian Ocean Region has emerged to be the centre of geopolitical fluxes. In this important Sea Lane of Communication (SLOC) China has been pursuing strategic manoeuvres encircling India and building its ambitious Maritime Silk Route or more fancifully called “String of Pearls”. India with a geographical advantage in the region needs a foreign policy that would thwart China’s perilous designs, a “reverse string of pearls“, signs of which the current dispensation has shown. India’s security relationships in Indian Ocean Region will play a crucial role in stability of the region.

Bolstering economic and political ties with countries on shared objectives even with countries that otherwise receive huge Chinese aid should be in India’s immediate foreign policy focus. The key players in this foreign policy dynamics with stake in IOR are:

Africa: Africa, on a path of colonisation by China, is crucial in India’s policy in the Indian Ocean Region. Set in the western end of IOR, Africa’s allegiance to China, riding on about 222 billlion dollar investment in 2014 by latter (which is three times that of China-US trade) should be a matter of concern for India. Setting up the India Africa Forum Summit (IAFS) in 2008, ushering summit level relationship, has enhanced relation between both regions. However in terms of trade, economic and energy cooperation India needs to catch up with China. The forthcoming India-Africa Summit in October which has seen invitation to all 54 heads of state of Africa, is an apt opportunity for strengthening ties banking on the presence of a huge Indian diaspora and a mutual worldview.

Pakistan: In May of 2015, China docked a Yuan 335 class submarine, having capability of staying under water for a longer time, in Karachi. China is incidentally also selling eight such submarines to Pakistan, while talks for four frigates, six missile boats are on. This development, particularly the docking, which caught India unaware should prompt Indian Navy to bolster its capacity in the western seafront. The strategic location of Gwadar port should also prompt succesful seeing through the Chabahar Port development in Iran which would open India to Central Asia bypassing Pakistan and act as a deterrent to Chinese presence in the neighborhood.

United States of America: India is poised to play a key role in US designs of rebalancing of Asia Pacific. In lieu of Indian Ocean strategy pursuing aircraft carrier technology under India-US Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) is a welcome step. India has carried anti-piracy operations in Indian Ocean under Combined Task Force–151 led by the US and has proved its mettle in thwarting pirate attacks. US sees India as a ‘lynchpin’ in the ‘pivot’ strategy of strenghening its position in the Asia-Pacific.

The 19^th edition of Indo-US joint naval exercise off India’s eastern seaboard is to be held in October this year which involved Japan in the previous edition. Such exercises in the Indian Ocean, where the 6^th fleet of US is stationed, which involves other like-minded nations like Australia and Japan should be carried out regularly to send appropriate signals to the People’s Liberation Army – Navy.

Sri Lanka: Recently being touted as a country that has the potential to become Cuba of India, Sri Lanka is being seen being closer to China than its immediate neighbour India. There has suddenly been a spurt of interest shown by the West in Sri Lanka too given the fact that the post Cold-war lull is getting over and in the small power-big power equations, it is poised to play a strategic role.

The docking of nuclear powered attack submarine in Colombo ruffled feathers of the Indian establishment. This however has not been an isolated incident. The Chinese have been building infrastructure, considered to be of “dual use”, both military and civilian. A change in the overtly pro-Chinese Rajapaksa regime, which had ensured loans of 2.1 billion USD in 2012-14, in the recently concluded elections, should be leveraged by India to gain stronger foothold in this island nation.

Indian Ocean countries: India and Mauritius inked a deal during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to develop Agalega Island north-east of Madagascar for use by Indian military. India’s agreement with Seychelles to build capacity on Assumption Island at northern end of Mozambique Channel will also give Indian Navy much needed strategic advantage. The couple of summits of Forum for India-Pacific Island Countries (FIPIC), with its members India and 14 Pacific island countries held in Fiji in November last year and in Jaipur in August this are welcome especially in the backdrop of huge Chinese aid and presence in these countries.

Geopolitics of the Seas
Other countries that are major players in the game of energy, security and seas are Myanmar, Nepal, Vietnam and Bangladesh. India’s growing dependence on import of energy will require India to play game with various regimes, of different hues, in these countries. A buzz of activities like diplomatic visits and courtesy calls have occurred under the Modi regime and these should be carried forward to meaningful conclusion. Incidences like cancellation of Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline and instead China replacing India in that axis must be avoided.

To counter China’s uneasy experiments in South China Sea India should create a buzz in international forums for China to adhere to UNCLOS, as Indian minister V K Singh did at East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Kuala Lumpur. India should also take leadership position in drawing up a CoC (Code of Conduct) which would include risk reduction and conflict resolution in Indian Ocean Region.

Economic growth shall address many of the security relationships issues and it should be relentlessly pursued. Ties with countries having a stake in Indian Ocean Region need to be bolstered keeping Indian national interest paramount. A growing India cannot afford to lose out to proactive Chinese maritime policies.

Sambit Dash is a faculty member in Melaka Manipal Medical College at Manipal University, is an alumnus of Takshashila’s public policy course, the Graduate Certificate in Public Policy and writes on public policy, social issues and geopolitics.

On the 28th of April 1947, just before the start of the third session of the constituent assembly of India, the president of the assembly, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, brought to the attention of its members that Burma had elected its own constituent assembly, quite similar to India’s with the objective of a free, independent Burmese Republic. General Aung San would be the prime mover behind Burma’s transition to Independence. Two months later on the 21st of July 1947, the Indian constituent assembly began its session with condolences on the assassination of General Aung San and his colleagues.

The constituent assembly would go on to meet for another 2 years, its numbers fluctuating with partition, deaths, and elections. In August 1947, it would meet to debate its own status as a constituent assembly and a legislative body. It would meet in November 1948, to offer silent tributes for Gandhi, 10 months after his assassination, and a silent tribute to Jinnah 20 days after his death. The assembly would meet through the most tumultuous times in the Indian subcontinent, fully aware that the institutions that were being created, the republic that was being constructed by the 299 representatives, will have to weather the saints and the scalawags of an Independent India.

68 years after Independence, the union still stands; free, democratic, secular and a republic. It stands in the midst of a subcontinent beset by wars, dictators, military rules, constitutional crises and unstable governments. The neighbourhood is evidence enough to realize the enormity of sustaining an independent republic, and the extraordinary nature of our political system that has shown to be capable of navigating the excesses of meaningless diatribes, alongside the dearth of consequential deliberations. The cracks are however starting to show.

The combined power of an passionless populace, petty politicians, and pestilential politicking have considerable weakened the republic. Murmurs of authoritarianism being preferred over democracy or an oligarchy being favored over popular politics have begun. What drives these movements forward, more than the dream of an utopian state, is an ignorance fed by decades of closing education inside ‘narrow domestic walls’ and ‘dreary desert sand of dead habit’.

Part of the reason for our indifference lies in the way we are taught about our history and in the failure to encourage critical reasoning, rational thinking and learning through questioning. Our education like Gradgrinds school in Dickens’ Hard Times teaches us about facts and nothing but cold hard facts. We do not learn completely about the many ideas that shaped our Independence and our republic. We do not learn about why the men and women who travelled the world to muster support for an Independent India settled on this idea for our country. The insufficiency in our education also means we dampen creativity, ignore argumentative analysis , and refuse to engage in exercises that would help us gain a better understanding of our history and our republic.

Every democracy goes through periods of introspection and fine tuning. It requires the citizenry to look at what has gone right and what can be set right. To lazily entrust the responsibility completely to one individual and willingly forego freedoms in exchange for imagined security & prosperity is not the answer. What we need instead is a Lutheran approach to understanding our democracy and our republic. We need to get back to the basics, learn and understand for ourselves what our freedoms are, and demand that state see us as individuals capable of deciding our own lives. We need to introspect, understand and argue for better rights. We need to teach the next generation to seek refuge in reason and not drown in dogma. We need to overhaul our systems and our institutions, part by part, and push them to create a new generation of citizenry, who can judge for themselves and raise questions that can take them to places where the ‘mind is without fear’

For 2014, I elaborated on Ambedkar’s idea that Social Conscience is the only safeguard for all rights, fundamental and non-fundamental

For 2013 I wrote how Independant thinking, Informed criticism and introspective analysis should be the way forward

For quiet contemplation on Independence Day

— A good time to read and reflect on Tagore’s verse

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

— On freedom of religion

the emergence of contentious issues relating to the place of religion is also an opportunity for another generation to re-examine the balance the Indian Republic has struck on those very issues, and hopefully, allow us to get past them and onto the more important items on the public agenda. [More]

— On protecting liberty from democracy

we are used to thinking in terms of the majority and minorities in ethnic-religious terms. This is bad enough. But a majority is merely a number, and it is possible for majorities and minorities to form over political issues. Even in polities divided along religious lines, have we not seen conservative elements of religious communities come together to proscribe individual liberty? That is the danger. The biggest casualty of direct democracy will be the liberty of the individual. [More]

The Three Thoughts Archive:
It is a tradition on this blog to use Independence and Republic Days as opportunities for contemplation, reflection and introspection.

Three thoughts on Independence Day 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

and on Republic Day 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005;

One of the numerous controversies surrounding the Modi government’s appointments in the education sector revolves around a minor television actor being appointed the chairman of a government-run institute on the basis of his party, and perhaps ideological, affiliation. Students, alumni and many public commentators have opposed the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan on account of his weak acting credentials and lack of stature in the industry.

Mr Chauhan’s critics might be right. His defence — that he is being judged ahead of his performance — can also be taken at face value, not least in a country where “officially certified” graduates are unemployable, and great actors and film-makers need not necessarily be good administrators.It is not as if having great personalities running the film institute has prevented the Indian film industry from distinguishing itself through sheer mediocrity. Mr Chauhan does deserve a chance.

The Film and Television Institute of India is a government run institution. The elected government has the prerogative to appoint whoever it likes. If students and faculty do not like it, they can voice their protests, which the government ought to listen to. But if the government does not, or does not accept the criticism, then that should be the end of the matter. Students and faculty who cannot accept Mr Chauhan’s leadership can decide to quit. Whatever your politics, this is the right conduct in a republic. With apologies to John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, it is not the purpose of democracy to protect the people from the consequences of their electoral decisions.

However, the bigger issue is why is the Union government running a film institute and training actors and filmmakers with public funds? The economic argument is that the government can subsidise education that has large externalities, if there is an undersupply of such education. In other words, the reason to subsidise medical education (whether or not through government medical colleges) is that a doctor benefits society even when making money for herself. If there are too few doctors, there is a case for subsidising medical education. If there are too many of them, it doesn’t.

So do actors and filmmakers have large positive externalities? To the extent that entertainment is necessary for the well being of individuals and society, then it is possible to make a case that filmmaking ought to be supported with public funds. But are there too few actors? Are there insufficient incentives for the private sector to invest in filmmaking institutes? You could argue that a few decades ago, there was a need for government to subsidise Indian actors and filmmaking. It is difficult to argue that is the case today: the film industry was worth over $2 billion last year and almost produces more films than the United States, China and Japan (the next three biggest producers) combined. There are too many films. There are too many television channels. There is an oversupply of films, television programmes, actors and filmmakers. It makes no sense to subsidise film-making in this situation. Privatising the Film and Television Institute of India is a good idea, especially if it can use the autonomy to improve industry standards.

In a twitter conversation, a fimmaker retorted saying if government can run IITs and IIMs, then why not FTII? The answer really is that just like FTII, the government should get out of running IITs and IIMs too. Where there is need for government is in the running of 665 universities where around 30 million students are enrolled. All the IITs and IIMs together account for a mere 15000 students. The poorest student who secures admission to IITs or IIMs is likely to secure grants, scholarships or loans to pay her fees. On the other hand, the pure sciences, social sciences and arts need greater public funding because of the dismal state these disciplines are in. Universities represent education in its broadest sense, and has the broadest externalities — an educated population is in the public interest.

The debate on a few elite institutions is misplaced. The government ought to get out of running film, engineering, management and law institutes. There is no case for pouring scarce public funds in areas where there is a glut and where there are enough incentives for private provision.

On November 8th, Myanmar will hold its first open, multi-party elections since 1990. The election comes on the heels of a protracted reform movement that was put into place by the military backed USDP party that has been running the country since 2010. Western governments who have encouraged Myanmar’s reforms and praised the paltry civil liberties that have been granted, see this election as a crucial step in Myanmar’s sluggish path to democracy. The November election will also be the first general election for Suu Kyi’s NLD party in 25 years. Their last victory in 1990 ended with her house arrest, crackdown on student protests, a ruthless military dictatorship headed by the SLORC and the introduction of a contentious constitution. There is a small hope, that this election will push the country forward, on a path to a sustainable democratic union. 

The five years since the Thein Sein government came into power, has seen a dramatic shift in the world’s perception of Myanmar. The US and the UK have been trying to balance critical engagement and investment in the country with rightful indignation about its abysmal human rights record. Investments in Myanmar from countries including Thailand, Hong Kong have increased manifold. China and India, meanwhile have pushed ahead fully realizing the strategic importance of a country that sits at the crossroads. Myanmar’s reaction to this increased attention has been one of quite deliberation, and astute pragmatism.

The new crop of Burmese leaders realize that while China has the economic clout to enable it realize its streams of development, overly depending on China would at some point in time create a situation where Myanmar would be subsumed by China. The increased border tensions between the two countries and signs of Chinese interference in funding and training ethnic rebels has been a serious point of contention. The suspension, by  Myanmar of various Chinese projects, including the gas line, the copper mine project and Myistone Dam project were meant to send a strong signal to China. China, meanwhile is going all out in an effort to increase its presence in the region. It has in the last few years invited various ethnic Burmese parties for talks. It also invited Aung San Suu Kyi, a political activist whose arrest and silencing it fully supported till a few years back. Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit to China in early June this year is a sign of the triumph of realism on both sides, and an indication of how the election can potentially change Myanmar’s relationship with its neighbors.

Myanmar’s look west policy, on the other hand gives it an opportunity in investing in a good relationship with India which also has a meeting point in its look east policy. There are, however, several hurdles in this balance and counterbalance tightrope walk.

The first and primary issue is the inability of the Indian government to project a coherent, and sustainable policy towards Myanmar. The relationship goes in short bursts of optimism followed by benign neglect of interest. Every opportunity to increase India’s investment in building a long term relationship with Myanmar has been hampered by bureaucratic incompetence, inefficiency and more importantly an inability to voice a proper policy with regard to its engagement. While there is something to be said about quiet strategic engagements without bringing too much attention to a well defined policy, India’s engagement often looks like something it stumbled into, without clarity or deliberations.

The second factor affecting India-Myanmar relationship is the hangover from the past, when Indians dominated the Burmese landscape. It carries with it a history of exploitation of the Burmese people by Indian employers under the active encouragement and prodding of the British overlords. Burmese nationalism is a direct result of that, and incorporates a kind of xenophobia against every ethnic group that came in settled in Myanmar and exploited the resources and people of Myanmar over the last 300 years.  Our inability to understand that and work around that issue has resulted in some very awkward, and inelegant handling of the relationship. Myanmar’s assertion of its strong position in the Indian Ocean region and its awareness of what it can bring to a relationship should be seen as a sign of the country coming into its own. India needs to work out what it can do in terms of investing in that relationship.

There are various ways in which this relationship can move ahead. Critical of this would be to extend invitations to not just the assumed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, but also to various ethnic parties which will have a stake in the future of the Burmese Union. The Thein Sein government has been under negotiations with various ethnic parties over a ceasefire agreement which is likely to have long term impact not just within Myanmar, but also along the border with Nagaland, and Manipur. It would be in India’s interest to indicate a willingness to work with recognized ethnic parties to settle border disputes. India also needs to formulate a strategic policy of including Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to create a maritime and land route on the lines that China is proposing of the belt highway. India also needs to seriously plug the gaps in the many proposed and incomplete projects that it has with Myanmar. Cross-border trade, energy investments, river-networks, infrastructure developments have all been left unfinished and neglected by various governments. The projects needs to be completed and the last mile problems solved.

The NDA’s focus on diaspora engagement and using Indians settled abroad to build relationships should extend eastward too. Myanmar has a large group of politically neglected Indians who have struggled to establish themselves in the country and are at the receiving end of various policies that have enfeebled them. India needs to work on a policy that will ensure that these Indians settled in Myanmar can lead a life without their rights being violated in any form or measure.

The Thein Sein government has been astute in managing the transition from a military backed government to one that proclaims to be democratic. The opening up of the country to visiting journalists and diplomats, granting small slivers of civil liberties, allowing protests and opposition have been chalked up as achievements. On the other hand, there have also been commentators who have expressed doubts about the pace and nature of reforms taking place in the country. Suu Kyi herself, has encouraged US, UK and the rest to have a healthy skepticism about the transition.

Burmese news agencies have reported that a total of 83 parties have signed up to compete in the elections. These include ethnic parties like the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party, the Arakan National Party, the Mon democracy party and smaller ethnic coalition parties. The lack of a ceasefire deal means ethnic parties will be able to build on it to secure votes in return for greater control in deciding their fates. The waning popularity of Aung San Suu Kyi also means that the NLD cannot rest assured of a majority in the houses. The military remains an overarching figure, controlling veto power, and the ability to legally stage an overthrow of a government in case of instability. The voting system also ensures that even non elected members, including military personnel can be voted by a council of ministers to the presidency. Barring Aung San Suu Kyi who cannot become president under the current constitution, the three most likely candidates all come from military backgrounds. Both Thein Sein and Shwe Mann, who is the current speaker of the house have shown themselves to be open to a regimented democracy and have exhibited a degree of flexibility to accommodate reform movements. The current commander-in-chief of the armed forces Min Aung Hlaing will be retiring soon and is widely expected to be the third candidate.

India has a real opportunity here to invest in a stronger, more strategically informed relationship with a neighbor with whom we share more than just a border. Any relationship requires adaptability, trust and an appreciation of what the other side requires from the relationship. How we use this moment to our advantage needs to be seen.

It’s happened again to yet another Indian prime minister. He’s decided to resume talks with the Pakistani government after the process had been halted due to Pakistani transgressions and bad faith. 

Now, there is sense in talking to the Pakistani government because that’s exactly what that country’s military-jihadi complex — and India’s irreconcilable adversary — does not want. In normal course of events denying the adversary the response he desires is good strategy. However, the problem in the case of Pakistan is that there are two ‘Pakistans': the putative state (represented now by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif) and the military-jihadi complex that dominates the former.

Denying the military-jihadi complex what it desires means India sends a signal that it cannot punish transgressions, and allows Pakistan’s civilian government to raise its bottom lines. This risks India making incremental concessions each time without gaining anything in return. In other words, Pakistan has the ability to take by salami-slicing what it cannot achieve through war or negotiations.

What about not talking? This plays into the military-jihadi complex’s hands, which derives its own legitimacy and power by rallying all anti-India forces. In Pakistan’s domestic context, the army and the jihadi groups become more popular vis-a-vis the civilian government. Since the military-jihadi complex is irreconcilable and there is a chance that the civilian state is not, this is bad news from the Indian perspective. No surprises then, that the army and the Islamists will do whatever is possible to scuttle diplomacy.

In other words, India risks losing out on substantive issues by pursuing talks with Pakistan despite the latter’s hostility. If it does not do this, India risks strengthening its worst adversary on the other side. Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. 

So how should New Delhi deal with this situation? Ignore it. Focus on economic growth.

What Pakistan does or doesn’t do is a minor variable in India’s growth story. Growth, on the other hand, is a major factor in India’s foreign and security policies. Putting Pakistan on the back burner (actually, keeping it in the refrigerator) is not only possible, but is necessary at this time. Just half-a-decade of high economic growth will transform the geopolitical context around Pakistan, enough to swing the negotiating environment in India’s favour. The more we wait, the better it will be for us.

Let Pakistan undergo its internal transformation. New Delhi can deal with the outcomes rather than engaging in a game where it loses out, no matter what it does.

Caught in a political tussle with the Union government that has administrative and “superuser rights”, Delhi’s Aam Aadmi Party government has thrown up the idea of a referendum to decide whether the union territory should become fully a state. Since there is no scope for a referendum within India’s constitutional structure, everything about the proposal—from who are the voters, to who will conduct it to what does any result mean—is an open question.

Regardless, the proposal for a referendum is dangerous, poorly conceived and might destabilise India’s politics more than anyone has imagined. Not for the textual reason that the Constitution does not permit it, but for the deeper, conceptual reason as to why the Constitution does not permit it.

There are two broad arguments for representative democracy: first, the practical transaction costs of taking every issue to all the voters are massive for anything larger than a community of a few thousand people. It would be prohibitively expensive even for a small Indian state to decide every issue by asking voters directly. Technology reduces costs: it is possible that in the coming decades, the availability and adoption of technology will make referenda rather inexpensive to conduct.

So should human civilisation move ahead to direct democracy when transaction costs of referenda are lower than the transaction costs of representative democracy (all that money spent on parliament, legislators and so on)? Not quite. That is because the second argument for representative democracy–even with the quality of legislators that we often detest–is that direct democracy can lead to highly illiberal outcomes. It would be dangerous enough in a homogenous, egalitarian society. It would be extremely risky in a highly diverse society like India’s. Politics is often a contest for relative power among different communities, quite often expressed through imposition or prohibition of their mores. In India we are used to thinking in terms of the majority and minorities in ethnic-religious terms. This is bad enough. But a majority is merely a number, and it is possible for majorities and minorities to form over political issues. Even in polities divided along religious lines, have we not seen conservative elements of religious communities come together to proscribe individual liberty?

That is the danger. The biggest casualty of direct democracy will be the liberty of the individual. The Indian Constitution is a balance between a democracy that expresses the will of the majority, and the fundamental rights of the individual. Weaken this edifice and individual liberty will be the first against the wall.

Referenda are dangerous not merely because people in some states might choose to secede from the Indian Union, but really because rule-by-referenda will be the death knell for the rights of the individual. There is no safeguard for liberty in a referendum.

The AAP government in Delhi would do well not to stoke fires it cannot control. If it does want to assess public preferences–for administrative or political purposes–it can conduct large scale public consultations that ask thousands or hundreds of thousands of people for their opinion. Results of such a consultation will have no constitutional basis, but can go some way in bringing in popular sentiment into public policy.

Related Posts: Dogma, Reason & Democracy; and how to escape the tyranny of the ignorant.

One reason there has been a fall (okay, precipitous fall) in the frequency of posts on this blog is that the day-to-day challenges of building an upstart think tank drain one’s time and energy. Another is laziness, lethargy and procrastination. Yet another is twitter, which is still the path of least resistance for the current of thought to reach the ground of public discourse. Laziness and twitter are easy to understand reasons, but what is this business of building a think tank? Almost five years since the first stamp paper was stamped at a registrar’s office in Chennai, it might be a good time to share some thoughts and experiences to deter other thoughtful, unsuspecting souls from attempting something similar.

This post is written with the intent of being the first in a series. But just like how N is initially unknown in a 1/N series of tweets, it is by no means certain that this series will be any longer than this first post. With that disclaimer, let us look at two of our core values: funding, and independence & non-partisanship.

From the outset, Takshashila’s founders decided that the organisation, a non-profit public charitable trust, will operate solely on Indian money. After all, it would be ironic for an ambition that reads “building the intellectual foundations of an India with global interests” to be financed with foreign donations. Also, foreign funding would hand detractors and opponents of our ideas a convenient handle to deliberately mischaracterise our public policy arguments as playing to a foreign agenda. Since many of the arguments that we make ruthlessly in the national interest are counter-intuitive, they are vulnerable to smear campaigns. Imagine arguing (as we have done) for 100% FDI in defence production with an unconditional, unrelated grant from a respected foreign foundation. The elimination of foreign funding has made life a lot more tougher than it could have been, but since we are set for the long haul, it is a price we have happily paid.

Maintaining independence and non-partisanship the other hard challenge, and one we’ve managed to address quite well. First, while it is relatively easy to manage an organisation (a private corporation, an association or a political party) that has an official view that everyone must fall in line with (or leave), it is much more difficult to manage one that doesn’t. A think tank and a public policy school cannot function effectively unless its members have full intellectual freedom. Yet when this freedom causes a diversity of opinions to be expressed, there is often a internal tension among those supporting different positions, and an external confusion as to whether the institution supports one or the other view. The one on whose shoulders falls the job of managing the institution, yours truly’s in this case, has to act as a mediator, negotiating platform and conciliator internally, and an official disclaimer-issuer and ‘brand manager’ externally. This is not easy. Worse, in a small start-up institution like ours, there is always the possibility that my own views–and those of the other co-founders–are conflated with that of the organisation’s, which sometimes leads to pulled punches, less trenchant blog posts and blander language in newspaper columns.

Since 2010, public discourse in India has become edgy, sharply divisive and polarised. Everyone is quick to paint an unfamiliar or unsavoury opinion as an attack on one’s favoured politician or party. The political campaigns of the 2014 general election had massive online components, and online political entrepreneurs seeking to gain political prominence and spoils of power by attacking ‘the other side’. So Takshashila was on Congress payroll for the BJP’s vociferous online partisans (who we endearingly call “the wrong wing”), an RSS front for the Congress’s beleaguered but spirited online brigade and pro-corruption for Anna Hazare & Arvind Kejriwal supporters. The Communists somehow forgot to attack us, which is perhaps an indication of their irrelevance, or ours. Kabira had gone to the bazaar to ask for everyone’s well-being, but ended up being attacked by them all. There is a lesson in this which we took and we teach.

Another interesting phenomenon was that those who donated to us—including Rohini Nilekani, our first donor—did not once even hint what positions Takshashila should or shouldn’t take. But those who didn’t give us any money often vociferously insisted what political positions we should take for our own good. It is now not too hard to detect political partisans pretending to be broad-minded philanthropists. It is also heartening that there are enough of the latter to lend their support to us, in big or small ways.

I have always found the allegation “you are saying this because XYZ is your donor” an indication of the person making the allegation projecting his own values on his target. As acts of honour and integrity even in today’s famously compromised media industry show, not everyone who draws a pay cheque necessarily dances to the tunes of the owners or donors. For small startups like ours, with low stakes, it is relatively inexpensive to be independent and non-partisan and call things as we see them. Judgement calls on the safety of our members and their families apart, there is little to make us toe anyone’s line. So we merrily advocate what we see as the national interest, and we try to persuade others to see things our way.

This does not mean that we are “neutral”. Our ideological leanings are openly advertised: freedom, a culture of tolerance, an open society and strengthening India’s national power. These set of ideas can be called “liberal nationalism”, but it is the values that matter, not the label.

It’s not enough to be and act independently and in a non-partisan manner. It is important to be perceived as such by the people we are trying to persuade. That was a problem I had no good solution for until the good Jay Panda, BJD MP from Odisha, gave me an idea from his own experience: set up a Ombudsman with a mandate to deal with complaints regarding these values. The Ombudsman can also solicit informal and formal feedback if he deems necessary. So we instituted a powerful Ombudsman—a trustee with no role in management—who anyone can directly write to. It’s early days yet, but this does appear a good process to manage the tensions that arise from an organisation whose members are making forceful arguments in a politicised public discourse. In our view, “non-partisanship does not mean non-engagement. On the contrary, Takshashila’s policy remains to engage with all political parties while remaining firmly independent of them. We believe that engagement with the political process is an important aspect in achieving public outcomes in a democracy.”

The biggest asset Takshashila has today is the goodwill of its supporters and the credibility among a small section of India’s elite. Our success will continue to come from this, hopefully growing constituency.

In a move completely devoid of irony, but fully befitting the ineffective stage on which it was passed, Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) proposed a resolution condemning the systemic mass atrocities on Rohingya muslims in Burma. The draft resolution titled “Situation of human rights of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar” was adopted without a vote on July 3rd, 2015.

The draft resolution points out that states have primary responsibility for promotion and protection of human rights, condemns violation of human rights and among other things, acknowledges the denial of citizenship status and other related rights to Rohingya Muslims as a concern. It then proceeds to call the government of Myanmar to protect the rights and freedom of the minorities, ensure accountability, to protect places of worship and to end the violence, exploitation and discrimination of minorities, specifically Rohingya Muslims.

The resolutions, by themselves are completely legitimate and within the powers of the countries advancing it. The OIC as an organization has kept itself busy in trying to establish itself as a mediator between acceptable true muslims and the rest of the world. The resolution was a part of their mission to ensure Muslim rights remain unviolated. The absurdity of the exercise, however is in the way the UNHRC meekly adopted the resolution without a single country calling out the OIC or Pakistan for their own human rights violations. 

The OIC is a 57 state organization established in the 1960’s. Members of the organization include almost every muslim majority country in the Middle East, Northern Africa, Pakistan, and South East Asia. The organization’s website calls itself “the second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations”, and “the collective voice of the Muslim world, ensuring to safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world” With permanent delegations to both the United Nations and the European Union, the organization has managed to push its agenda on various issues that remain vital to the greater Islamic Ummah. These have included condemnation of Israel, highlighting discrimination of muslim minorities in non-Islamic countries and more importantly pushed for an annual resolution condemning religious defamation. The push for what essentially would be an international blasphemy law was one of the landmark resolutions proposed by Pakistan to the UNHRC in 2006.  It ensured that censuring freedom of expression in countries with blasphemy laws would not be seen as a crime. Instead, condemning a religion, would be considered a violation of human rights. The resolution was passed multiple times, before being reworded in 2011.

The OIC as an organization has the strength and the clout on the international stage to redefine various freedoms, rights and human life in an extremely narrow ways. Barring one or two countries, the entire OIC is made of countries that have very little respect for internationally defined human right laws, are belligerent towards suggestions of violations of these laws in their countries and have some of the worst oppressive, regimented rulers in the world. And they sit and push the United Nations to pass resolutions on a state’s responsibility to protect human rights.

The biggest perpetrator of crimes against humanity here is Pakistan. Marginalization of minorities through laws such as ordinance XX which defines who is a muslim and effectively sidelining Ahmadi’s, Christians and Hindus is norm. Pakistan has mastered the art of using blasphemy laws to imprison and push the death penalty on minorities repeatedly. The use of Sharia laws and adoption of Sunni Islam directives to conduct affairs of the state has also sidelined other Islamic sects and have made them foreigners in their own lands. The state is also a full participant in the perpetuation of a genocide against Shia muslims. As Christine Fair points out

 “In 2013 nearly 700 Shia were killed and more than 1,000 were injured in more than 200 sectarian terrorist attacks. Over 90 percent of those attacks occurred in Quetta, Karachi, Kangu, Parachinar, Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Since the beginning of 2000, nearly 4,000 persons have been killed and 6,800 injured”

Various human rights violations including abductions, kill and dump policies and extreme torture have been recorded against Balochs in the country. With more than 20,000 missing and or found dead and mass graves discovered, Balochistan continues to be severely oppressed by the Military Jihadi complex that runs the country and by state sponsored terrorist outfits.

There is however nothing that the United Nations’ human rights body or the OIC or the western powers can or will do to bring Pakistan to task.

The issue of gross human rights violations against the Rohingyas needs to be addressed and steps have to be taken to stop the mass detention and issue of statelessness for these people. Resolutions from international organizations however, have little impact at the ground level. The issue can only be dealt with effectively by Burma itself, in conjunction with the states bordering it, including Thailand and Malaysia. These are the countries directly affected by Burma’s inhumane treatment of the Rohingya Muslims and their migration. The UNHRC has been useful in ensuring that the Rohingya muslim migrants procure safe passage to other countries and in ensuring they have some level of basic necessities to sustain themselves. It has however failed spectacularly in enforcing countries to adopt international human rights standards. To quietly pass resolutions on human rights violations, proposed by a country and an organization where none of the proposals hold any value, is not just a mockery of the institution but also the values that the UN purports to uphold.

The UNHRC has long ceased to be useful in enforcing universal human right norms. Individual countries who hold veto powers have taken it upon themselves to redefine human rights to suit their purpose, and the smaller countries who have traditionally looked to the UNHRC for various protections are learning to align with the powers that would benefit them the most. The role of human rights organization then needs to be redefined. An organization that has dropped so low in relevance needs to realign itself or risk obliteration.

On June 25th, 2015 the Burmese parliament struck down five of six proposed amendments in the 2008 constitution. The amendments were struck down after three days of debates, during which the military argued passionately and with power point presentations, on why it needed to a central role in governance. The overturning of the amendments eliminated the remote possibility of full-fledged democracy in the country as it prepares for the November 2015 election.

One of the amendments targeted Article 436(a) and (b) of the constitution. It would have reduced the majority required in the parliament to pass amendments from 75 percent to 70 percent. The reduction was crucial, since the military currently occupies 25% of the seats and could effectively block any measure that would undermine their hold on power. In spite of two-thirds of the MP’s voting for the amendment, the veto held by the military managed to strike it down.

The second of the five failed amendments was to strike down one portion of the article Article 59(f). The amendment proposed lifting one section of a ban on presidential candidates whose relatives are foreign citizens. The proposed amendment was misunderstood by many to mean that it would directly impact Aung San Suu Kyi’s chances in the upcoming election. The amendment wouldn’t have made any difference to her status. As a wife of a foreign citizen and having sons with foreign citizenship, she has very little chance of becoming president under the current constitution.

The third amendment that was passed over was Article 60 that would have enabled a President and Vice President to be chosen from people-elected parliamentary representatives and not from non-elected members or directly elected military personnel.

The blocking of all vital amendments were made under the premise of protecting the stability of the country. Representatives from the military argued that the presence of the “Myanmar military in the legislative and administrative sectors, was necessary to protect and stand for the country in its time of need,” They also concluded that stability and reconciliation was needed more than democratic processes.

Suu Kyi, since her release in 2010, and since the announcement of the elections has maintained that the west was being overly optimistic about the speed and nature of reforms. She has also maintained a healthy skepticism about the promise of an election under a more inclusive constitution. Given her degree of mistrust in the system and her incredulity at the possibility of holding an executive position in the government, it is very surprising that she has done very little on the ground to prepare the party to move quickly without being bogged down by the constitutional amendment game.

The party has yet to announce decisively on whether it will compete in the November elections. There is also the glaring absence of any kind of policy debate both within the party and outside. The NLD has raised issues of voter list problems and has conducted registration drives, but little else seems to have happened. It can be argued that in a country where politics and political process remain extremely unreliable and where military leaders are used to conducting whimsical governance, there is little point in direct engagement. The other side of the argument is that Suu Kyi has very little to lose in pushing for democratic processes at the ground level. Her pragmatism, while necessary needs to also be tempered by the fact that there has been a history of people movements supporting strong military leaders who promise stability in exchange for rights. Breaking that chain in the next few months, then becomes critical.

The NLD urgently needs to mentor a second tier of leaders who can bring a degree of stability to the party and ensure smoother transition towards democracy. Suu Kyi has written extensively about the necessity of civil servants who understand the system and can ensure continuity in a democracy. She has the opportunity to do that now regardless of the elections in November. They need to be trained to address critical gaps in policy based issues and prepare the party for a devolvement from the 88 generation leaders and Suu Kyi. This aspect of party politics is critical for a sustained battle against an unrelenting military government in the country.

The NLD should also prepare itself to face a parliament where it will not be in the majority. The change from first past the post voting system to proportional representation will mean more diversity within the parliament. The diversity is also assured by the fact that a record number of political parties, mostly ethnic parties will be taking part in this election. Collective decision making will push the party towards taking stance on critical issues including human rights, economic growth, and foreign investments. The NLD can assert itself only if it knows its own mind.

The next three months will be critical for both the party and the country. The challenge of changing the constitution was monumental from the beginning, and Suu Kyi’s chance of becoming the president was close to nil. Given the impracticable circumstances, and the mercurial nature of the Burmese politics, Suu Kyi cannot afford to step back now.

The Rohingya who had fled economic and physical persecution in Burma have been returning to Rakhine after a 2 month ordeal on the seas. The inability to reach land, the crackdown on smugglers, middlemen and traffickers and the intensity of international scrutiny have forced them to return to Burma. The coming monsoon will prevent any more departures for at least 3 months. The conditions on ground hasn’t shown any signs of improvement either. Despite international condemnation and appeals to ensure that the Rohingya don’t remain persecuted, the current government has not shown any inclination towards making their lives easier. In fact none of the leading parties in Burma have shown a desire to ensure that the Rohingya get formally and politically inducted into the Burmese society.

One of the cornerstones that plague the full assimilation of the Rohingya Muslims into Burmese society is the calculated refusal by governments to grant them full citizenship. The extent to which the community is abhorred and sidelined can be seen in the final report of the census that was conducted last year. In the first census since 1983, in parts of Rakhine state “members of some communities were not counted because they were not allowed to self-identify using a name that is not recognized by the Government.”  The issue of political recognition of the “stateless” people is not just a function of the virulent kind of religious nationalism that has taken over the state. It is also an extension of the refusal, by the government, and the constitution, to acknowledge the validity of Rohingya claim to Burmese history.

Under the original constitution of 1948, written when Burma gained Independence from the British, Rohingya’s were considered as one of the indigenous communities and were given citizenship rights including voting and standing for elections. Citizens under the 1948 act were any person born within one of the indigenous races of Burma or had settled in Burma for two generations earlier. Naturalization was also allowed after 5 years of residency. The 1948 constitution was soon replaced after the ousting of the democratic government by a coup orchestrated by General Ne Win in 1962. The 1974 constitution declared Burma to be a socialist republic with a unicameral body.

Following the coup, and the ascendency of the military in the center, attempts were made to purge the country of immigrants, both legal and illegal. These migrants who had come post the British occupation, were not considered to belong to Burma, and military led operations were launched at many points in the country to systematically remove them from the country. Part of the ‘Burmanization’ of the country included violent operations in northern Rakhine state which led to mass displacement of Rohingya in 1978. Following international condemnation, most the 250,000 estimated refugees were taken back into the country. Three years later, the 1982 citizenship law was put into place as a way to ensure that the Rohingya would never be able to claim complete rights in a land that didn’t want them.

The iniquitous nature of the citizenship law was evident in the fact that it sought to highlight those who did not belong, rather than prove who were citizens of the country. The high cost of proving citizenship and the prohibitive climate that discouraged foreigners, meant that most of the Rohingya’s never went ahead with the program. The citizenship issue was also greatly complicated by the nature of citizenships that were permitted in the new military dictatorship. Persons claiming to be citizens of Burma were divided into three categories – The full citizens (pink card) who were descendants of residents living in Burma prior to 1823, the associate citizens (blue card) who had acquired citizenship through the 1948 citizenship law and the naturalized citizens (green card) who had lived in Burma prior to ’48, but had applied for citizenship only after 1982.

The Rohingya were considered both non-national and foreign residents. The law recognized about 135 distinct ethnic groups, grouped into eight major ethnic nationalities in Burma. The Rohingya as a people, and their language were excluded from national recognition, forcing on them the burden to provide proof of their belonging to Burma. The complexity of having to prove their validity as citizenship meant recognizing themselves as foreigners or ‘Bengalis’, and providing proof of their residence in Rakhine prior to the first Anglo-Burman war.  The few thousands who did have a citizenship under the 1948 law held a National Registration Card which was replaced with a Temporary Registration Card or White card, that would enable them to vote but not enjoy the full privileges of citizenship until the state had fully scrutinized their claims.

Controversy erupted over the white cards after many of the Rohingya voted in the 2008 constitutional referendum and the 2010 elections. The pandering of the Rohingya votes for the 2008 constitutional referendum that assured the military a quarter of the votes in the assembly and rejected presidential bid by anyone married to a non burmese and the 2010 parliamentary elections, resulted in wide spread violence in the state. Buddhist majority parties, including the Rakhine National Party called for nationwide protests, challenging legally, the constitutionality of the decision to allow ‘foreigners’ to vote. Several members of the National League for Democracy too supported the legal challenge against the referendum. The 2012 riots that made more than 140,000 or so Rohingya homeless and confined them to squalid camps was a result of this suffrage.

President Thein Sein in early February 2015 sought to pass a law that would allow the almost 700,000 Rohingya white card holders to vote in a constitutional referendum before the 2015 elections. While the move was politically inspired, it also gave a degree of support for the Rohingya muslims. The law, when passed was met with severe protests and complains by Buddhist monks, and other national parties. The rattled president quickly withdrew the bill and declared that on 31st March, 2015 all white cards would become defunct. The move in a single day disenfranchised thousands of Muslims removing hope of immediate change.

The 2012 riots and the 2015 refugee crisis have brought the status of the Rohingya to international attention. Citizenship for all its political baggage, brings to the table one critical element that becomes vital, it provides an identity and a connection to a person, to a place and to a country. Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the NLD is perhaps being pragmatic in refusing to talk about the issue now. There are a few more, who swear that her faith and need for stability over secularism will prevail. There is still a small hope that a victory for her party in November will push the issue of citizenship in Burma to the forefront.

The National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi along with a few members from her party are in the middle of a 5 day trip to China. She met with the Chinese President Xi Jinping a day after she landed in China, and is scheduled to meet with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. While details of her discussions will not be made public, there has been considerable interest in what is a historic visit. China has hosted leaders from opposition parties of other countries in an effort to expand its reach internationally. This however is the first time the country will play host to a person whose incarceration it backed, for a military regime that held Burma’s development back by several decades.

China is keen to appeal to a broader base within Burma. This is to ensure the safety and continuity of its investments in the region and to maintain its dominance in an area that has suddenly become attractive for other investors. The 2010 elections that brought the reformist government of Thein Sein into power, pushed China to the back-burner as a potential investor and ally. The Myistone Dam and Letpadaung copper mine, along with the Kyaukphyu gas line that runs from the northwestern state of Rakhine in Burma to Yunan province in southern China, were meant to be part of a bigger strategy to ensure China’s dominance in the region. The former two have since run into trouble with ethnic groups protesting against the Chinese for unfair practices and environmental degradation. Meanwhile, Burma, as a part of its economic reform, has shown a keen interest in encouraging western firms and governments to invest more in the country. This move has effectively pushed China to engage at a deeper level with other political parties in Burma to ensure its relevance in the region.

The Burmese government late last year announced an election tentatively scheduled for early November 2015. The election, the first one that will be open to external monitors, will see Suu Kyi’s NLD party possibly coming into power. The invitation to Suu Kyi, is an attempt by China to set right its relationship with an eye to the future. The statement released by the official press agency Xinhua took efforts to point out that the Chinese Communist Party was

“ready to engage with any political parties as long as they are willing to promote the sound development of relations with China.”

It was also hopeful that Suu Kyi would China welcomes anyone with friendly intentions and it bears no grudge for past unpleasantness.

Aung San Suu Kyi has bigger fish to fry in Burma. The country’s constitution, drafted and strong-armed into approval by the army in 2008, bars Suu Kyi from becoming president. It also gives one-fourth representation to the army, and critical powers that would enable it to block any amendments. There has been a lot of speculation about striking down these laws, but very little by way of actual action. Her party, which still has not put forth a strong second in command, will be going head to head against 70 other parties that have registered for the election. Her tremendous appeal will ensure a strong show for the party, but how much and how strong remains an unknown. Her support for the Letpadaung mine and her staunch refusal to engage into any conversation about the abject treatment of the Rohingya’s have chipped away at her support at some level. Her support for the China backed projects, along with her visit to the country will be questioned by many and could possibly affect her standing with the ethnic minorities.

Her willingness to compromise, and work with Thein Sein, in bringing Burma into the 21st century has shown her to be a pragmatic politician and an astute leader of her party. Her acceptance of the invitation to China is perhaps a signal that she recognizes the importance of Chinese investments for her country and a hope that she might be able to assure China of her support if they were willing to engage in responsible investments in Burma. Co-operation with China would also mean an ability to bargain for peace on the borders, without any uncomfortable questions about her silence on human rights issues within Burma. The recent escalation of conflict on the borders between Kokang rebels and the Burmese military was a sign of the growing tensions between the two neighbours. A ceasefire agreement has since been signed, but it remains contingent upon the 2015 elections.

There is very little that is guaranteed about the near future of Burma. The election dates have not yet been finalized. The Nationwide Ceasefire Accords that was to be signed between the government and the ethnic groups have been teetering, and the extremely porous borders make law and order a nightmare. Aung San Suu Kyi however, is guaranteed a place in the future of modern Burmese politics. Her visit to China, along with members from her NLD party needs to be seen as a chance to cement her place in the power corridors of Burma. The world, more specifically Burma’s neighbours, needs to remove its grimy rose-tinted, nobel peace prize aviators and see, and engage, with her as the pragmatic, tactical politician she has grown into. And that might not be a bad thing for Burma.

The last thing we need in this country is for politics to become a ‘dirty’ word and people pleading to keep elite institutions away from it.

The recent controversy sparked by the suspension of a little known student group called the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle at IIT-Madras has again brought to fore the question of allowing politics in universities. The worst fears of the detractors seem to be in revisiting the horrors of the 80s when student politics often led to violence between factions, even leading to murders. Many a times students were used as muscle men by mainstream parties and the local university politics became a proxy for a larger game play.

The concerns are not unfounded but the solution that got employed has been most stifling – complete ban on all political activities on campus. In many cases, the student unions have been dissolved too. My alma mater BHU is a good example where University politics had simply overwhelmed the campus culture. Student politicians would decide not to pass their courses so that they could continue to stand for elections or continue to enroll in masters and then PhD courses in departments where faculty members were also more inclined towards politics than academics. Things went to a boil in the 90s and two students died, post which the student union was dissolved and politics banished from the campus. In the following years, the university got back its academic mojo with multiple faculties climbing various nationwide rankings. In parallel, we created a sterile atmosphere in the university when it came to political engagement and the number of politician alumni from the university is on a fast decline.

This is typical of the blunt knife approach often seen in India. To prevent crimes at night, the recommended approach is to close all shops and advise people to stay indoors. Taken to its logical conclusion: if there were no people then we would have no problems in life. The challenges of university politics need to be solved rather than throwing the baby with the bath water. Violence was an issue in the past and the solution is to impose the rule of law. If academic excellence is the goal of a particular institution then there are many ways to impose that too – mandatory attendance, minimum marks to be a candidate and so on. There is no one size fits all and each university should evolve rules and norms that fit with its culture. Mostly, politics should be like an extra-curricular activity in college that should compete with cultural, sports, literary and other activities in capturing a student’s attention. A bold faculty could even craft its instructional design around political activities.

University politics also provides an easy ramp for new talent to come into the system. For a country so young, it is tragic that the average age of the political class is more than twice the average age of the country. The young politicians are mainly family members of older politicians since genuine challengers from below are in short supply.

The last few years have seen a huge engagement from the student community in the India Against Corruption campaign and then as volunteers for various political parties in the general elections. Both of these events demonstrated the potential that youngsters have in India to contribute to the national political agenda. However, in the absence of politics in the iniversities, we will only see this community in support roles and being utilised by the larger parties or activist groups as ‘man-power’. Genuine leadership will emerge only through the competition and tussle of student politics leading to fresh ideas that provide relief from the same-old of current Indian politics.

The last thing we need in this country is for politics to become a ‘dirty’ word and people pleading to keep elite institutions away from it. If anything, elite institutions should be role models on how politics should be done.

Saurabh Chandra is a tech entrepreneur with an interest in policy.

The next time you meet someone you care about, engage them on this question.

A question I frequently ask students is to share a view which they believe is controversial. The puzzled look on their face is a sight to behold. Many openly admit that nobody has asked them this question. Despite being from the best institutions, many have not even thought of anything remotely interesting and controversial.

One of the primary roles of a university (beyond supplying manpower to industry) is to teach students to think for themselves. This involves another important aspect – that of questioning authority. Universities provide an ideal playground (in the sense of an isolated environment) to learn these skills without fear of
repraisals.

A key necessity for this is diversity. In the absence of conflicting thoughts, there is really nothing to mould. In fact, I would go as far as to say the greatest gift a university can impart to a student is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas without short circuiting their brain.

Political parties (whether in power or not) want followers but not people who question. Discipline and conformity is what parties seek. We are told the Janata experiment failed as there were too many ‘thinkers.’ Even a new entrant with claims of being different, the AAP, cannot support multiple points of view. The Congress enjoys discipline and conformity as a direct consequence of dynastic rule. Add to this a poor country where a degree is a way to get a better salaried life. In this scenerio, conformity is so much more easy on everyone.

The real world is messy. Universities cannot and should not isolate themselves from what is happening around them. However, the cost to being a contrarain voice is high. We may want to pretend the universities are playground but you never know when a bottle is thrown at a player. In a more heated moment, even a pitch invasion cannot be ruled out.

Let us take the recent IIT Madras episode. An anoymous letter is sent. The undersecretary could have ignored it, but didn’t. Instead she decided to ask for comments. The IIT could have ignored the letter or said something along the lines of “we will look into it.” Instead, they decided to act. They could have initiated a conversation with the forum under scrutiny. Instead they unilaterally suspended them. The reaction was immediate: a pitch invasion was imminient. One voice spoke of “touching a nerve” and another of “a civil war”. The ministry smartly washed its hands. Media and political parties jump in to complete the polarisation.

But really, where are the players in the playground? Empty playgrounds is an apt metaphor to much of our elite institutions. They just don’t seem to be engaged enough. Outside, we have a different problem. How can we have an informed debate when all sides give us ready made conclusions? And who is to participate in this debate when we are compartmentalised into one dimension as left or right.

What we need are political conversations in our society and in our elite institutions. Currently this environment does not exist (without grave costs). It needs to be created. As a first step, the directors of elite institues have to isolate the rest of the institute from their political masters. Second, they need to encourage students to open up and state their views, have an opinion, take a stand, construct arguments around it. One possilbe way to do this is to offer a credit and have students discuss current events in the class. (If you already dismissed off the idea, you now know where the problem lies!)

When dissent is no longer a novelty, you are unlikely to have anonymous letters being sent to the ministry.

But what I do not want in elite institutions are political parties creating camps that cannot and will not talk to each other. This may seem like political activity but is really conformity without logic or reason playing a role. It at best makes a dysfunctional campus. This may be how the real world is, but it is not for an institution to mirror reality, but seek to change it.

Let us get back to the need to hold some controversial views. You don’t have to defend 3 times 4 as 12. (Maybe Russell has to, but hopefully not you.) For anything else, you have to articulate a cogent argument to defend your views. Unfortunately most students have no idea how to because they have never been challenged. Let us make a small beginning. The next time you meet someone you care about, engage them on this question.

Indeed I should be asking you: what is the most controversial view you hold which you believe to be true?

V Vinay is a curious academic entrepreneur.

“Each time a defendant comes to court and contests his or her guilt, a process unfolds that reiterates precepts that are central to the self-image of modern democracy.”

The law is reason, free from passion. Or so said Aristotle. The crux of Sadakat Kadri’s The Trial attempts to prove the opposite. Kadri’s ambitious book looks at the western criminal trial from the days of Socrates to the more recent trial of OJ Simpson. It traces the contours of law, and finds the interdependence of reason with passion, juxtaposing one with the other. Each chapter navigates a particular era, rummages through its social fabric and seeks to explain the evolution of the law. The book is divided into eight thematic and chronological chapters. Kadri explicates notions of fairness and justice, emotions and passions and correlates each to the society and its norms.

While modern criminal trials in western societies are considered secular, founded on reason, their existence has been shaped by religion and superstitions. Kadri tries to poke into these aspects in the first chapter, which looks at the conflict between the need to ‘punish’ and the fear of mistakes. The idea of the law “descending directly from the gods”, and hence the onus of its adjudication on them, is tacitly explored. Kadri uses the story of Oresteia, by Aeschylus – “The oldest courtroom drama” to reflect on the tension between the two ideas of justice that were at odds with one another. The first, assumptions that people were at fault only if they had done evil deliberately. The second, that some deeds demanded punishment, regardless of the perpetrators intention, if the rage of the gods was to be forestalled. Kadri then goes through the trials of the Greek and Roman eras, describing their rationale in detail. He mentions practices such as ordeal (drowning, freezing), combat, compurgation (proving innocence by making gathered crowds swear it) to carve out the idea of justice.

The chapters on The Inquisition (or orthodoxy revisited), The Witch Trial, and the Trials of Animals, Corpses and Things (even against weevils that threatened vineyards, and the “defunct decedents” who died before they could be called for their cases, but were tried after their death) are downright fascinating. They challenge every modern notion of rationality, and portray the banalities that societies across the world considered fair and legal at some point in their history.

The subsequent chapters delve into modern times, starting with the Moscow Show Trials. The chapter on the “War Crimes Trial” – rips the visage of idealism and justice with respect to international law, from the Nuremberg Trials onward. What Kadri calls a “shameful little secret of international criminal law” is the fact that “Nuremberg was conceived in Moscow and came into being despite the wishes of the western allies rather than because of them.” Kadri explains how the western Allied leaders “resolved to reiterate Churchill’s earlier proposals for extrajudicial killings. Stalin would be asked to approve a loss of “50–100… world outlaws” who were to be “executed summarily on capture and without recourse to the method of trial, conviction and judicial sentence”.

The last chapter dedicated to the Jury Trial looks at the modern Jury system and the role and significance of evidence. Kadri details how the Jury system has become a part of every country that saw the shadow of the British Empire, barring a few. He talks about it being a venerated system of justice in the US and UK. Kadri argues that jury trials outline perpetrators as ‘bad’, so as to define what is good. That in exposing criminals to a community denunciation, it reestablishes to the citizens that they are law abiding, morally sound characters in contrast to the immoral defendants being persecuted. Through multiple cases and their absurd resolutions, Kadri then goes on to note how juries are fallible. The most disputed questions at a criminal trial are the credibility of the witnesses, the reasoning behind the beliefs and doubts, and whether such issues demand “social legitimacy” rather than “fiendish cleverness”. He concludes that jurors may not be oracles, but their diversity allows their potential failings to cancel each other out. The “prejudices and stupidities of like-minded professionals are less likely to – and those of one judge never can.”

The Trial is not an easy read. It is encyclopedic and at times hard to digest, given the magnitude of information that has been condensed within its pages. While Kadri notes that the book is specifically on the jury system of criminal trials, it does not adequately address why countries such as India, Singapore and Malaysia do not follow this system. Nor does he assess the deficiencies of other systems in comparison to the Jury system. Though it is thematic, it often digresses from case to case, making too many points at once. However, Kadri’s writing, his analysis peppered with fascinating examples, and passionate interjections absolve most of its flaws and keep the pace. Like his other book Heaven on Earth – a legal history of the Sharia laws across the Muslim world – The Trial attempts to analyse multiple themes and ideas, and then contextualise their relevance through time.

Kadri’s views of the criminal trial often make the reader introspect on the nature of justice. How is justice defined and what does it mean to each stakeholder – the society, the defendant and the victim? Assessing this is not simple. It means understanding the norm, beliefs, identity and geographies of the lands where it was served. It also means understanding that law and order that seek to be evidential and rational, are products of evolving sentiments and emotions, and it is these which eventually frame notions of justice and fairness. Kadri is often pessimistic and cynical of the criminal trial. He reveals its rot and decay, its fallacies, inconsistencies and the blatant misconstruction of the ideas of justice. He looks at the problems with evidence, and the manipulation of arguments that distort the empiricism of the jury.

However, his conclusion is not pessimistic. Like its namesake by Kafka, the book delves into the surreal aspects of a judicial system. Each chapter is punctuated with quotes from Kafka’s novel that reaffirm the absurdity of a system perceived to be an ideal. But the case Kadri does make in his cynical view of the trial is that it is the best of all the alternatives, and that the current form of the judicial system in Western nations has evolved into this state of imperfect perfection, after centuries of trials, errors and realisations. He says that the crucial question remains whether there exists an alternative that can command equal respect and more confidence.

He concludes that each time a defendant comes to court and contests his or her guilt, a process unfolds that reiterates precepts that are central to the self-image of modern democracy. The criminal trial portrays “a state that is sufficiently self controlled to precent public officials from unilaterally deciding anyone’s fate, and humble enough to trust its citizens to watch the law in action – even, sometimes, to do justice themselves”. Kadri affirms that the criminal trial literally enacts the meaning of human dignity –“showing a civilization that treats its most despicable enemies with respect – presuming them innocent, confronting them as equals, and giving them a champion to argue their cause”.

Trials then are more than just idealised or flawed spectacles. They stand as testimonies to the idea that despite human inconsistency and irrationality, the best form of reasoned and well-argued deliberations should always triumph over any instinctive and savage desire for punishment or retribution.

SV Raju. Photo Credit: Ritesh Uttamachandani / Open Magazine.

It was with great shock that I read Niranjan Rajadhyaksha’s piece in Mint on the day of SV Raju’s passing. What made it worse in a way is the fact that I am currently overseas and have no means of talking to other people who knew Raju. Here are a few of my recollections of him: my humble tribute to SV Raju.

I knew Raju for more than 15 years since I first became a member of the Indian Liberal Group (ILG) in the late 1990s. I continued interacting with him on and off with him over that period first as a member of ILG and then later as an advisory board member on Freedom First (FF). When I moved back to India from Singapore in 2004 Raju persuaded me to join the advisory board of FF with the stated intention to get me more closely involved with the activities of ILG and Freedom first, along with some other younger members.

However, for a mix of reasons primarily related to career which kept me outside Mumbai for a large part of the last ten years my involvement with FF remained more peripheral. In particular over the last 2-3 years when I have been based in Delhi my interactions with Raju has been primarily only during the meetings of the FF advisory board which was held every 3-4 months.

In fact my last conversation with him was in one such meeting with him a few months back at the Ripon club in Mumbai when while discussing the ‘strategy’ for Freedom First going forward I tried to make the point that Freedom First should remain a “specialist” publication focusing on areas related to the liberal cause & history rather than evolving into a general new magazine line publication. After the meeting as we were dispersing Raju patted me, appreciating my intervention and urged me to be more involved. Unfortunately work and family commitments kept me from meeting Raju more regularly and this shall now always remain a regret.

Raju was quite a character with strong views and a bit of an autocrat, though well meaning, as far as running ILG and FF was concerned. Raju was a great story teller and to hear him talk about the history of Rajaji, Masani and the Swatantra party was always a great pleasure.

What I found fascinating about Raju was how dedicated he remained till the very end about making sure that the various activities that he was managing regarding the Indian Liberal Group and the Freedom First magazine were done in a regular and timely manner. The fact that the ILG and FF remained a “niche” group and publication after so many years of hard work must have been a sore point for him but what seemed more important to him was to make sure that that the liberal torch was carried on – through the regular publication of the FF & activities of the ILG.

His dedication and persistence should remain an inspiration for all of us looking to build a better India. Pray that his soul rests in peace.

Sameer Wagle is on the advisory board of Freedom First and an advisor to the Takshashila Institution.

A few Takshashila alumni and friends Kunal Singh, Varun Goel & Aravind Ilamaran have started a new opinion-analysis portal called Policy Wonks.

I write about how there’s an oversupply of PhDs and research talent in the US and elsewhere, but not enough of them have come knocking on India’s doors just yet:

American academia has been in trouble for the better part of the past decade. Till the advent of MOOCs, productivity has not changed much in higher education for about a century. As a result, university education has seen a high amount of inflation. To keep costs low, universities started supplying ever higher number of PhD students – who can be cheap research and teaching labour as RAs and TAs respectively. Thanks to this oversupply, you have hundreds of talented people applying for each tenure-track position in the sciences, for example. As Ajit Balakrishnan points out in Business Standard, this has led to the creation of a lot of “adjunct” temporary faculty positions in a space considered to be dominated by tenure.

…

Unfortunately, India has been poorly positioned to take advantage in this acute oversupply of talented PhDs and post doctoral researchers. This is especially surprising given that a significant number of them are Indian or of Indian origin. With the salient exception of a few people and a few Indian institutions, most researchers prefer to eke out a modest living on uncertain terms rather than come back and work in Indian academia.

We witnessed a smaller version of something similar happening when NASA started getting budget cuts in the last two decades, thereby being forced to lay off good aerospace talent – again with a lot of them being of Indian origin. India’s space agency ISRO benefited little by maintaining an insular hiring policy. Quite unfortunate for an organisation whose second director – Dr UR Rao – was wooed back to India by a visionary Vikram Sarabhai well before India had a dedicated space agency.

[Read the full piece over at Policy Wonks]

Response to the Amendment to the Child Labour Act, passed by the Cabinet, allowing children below 14 years to work in non-hazardous industry has been passionate. The original Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2012 banned employment of children below 14 in “only 18 hazardous industries“. The Amendment passed today completely bans children (below 18) from working in any hazardous industry. It allows children below 14 to work in non-hazardous, and family owned enterprises, but only after school and on vacations.

The Amendment also stipulates stricter punishment for employers for violation. While a parent will not be penalised for the first violation (but for subsequent ones), an employer would be liable for punishment from the first time. The penalty for employers has been increased form the existing 20,000 to 50,000. A subsequent offence for employing any child or adolescent in an illegal industry will result in a minimum imprisonment of a year, extendable upto 3. By defining, allowing and forbidding the employment of children in certain types of industries, the Government believes that this provision would act as a deterrent against the offence of employing a child or adolescent in contravention of the law.

Children below 14 in India are heavily exploited. Be it the chai-wala’s at railway stations, shoe polishers on pavements, waiters, domestic workers, young girls digging on agricultural lands – working children are a common sight. The appalling reality is that for many such children, this is the only way to earn a livelihood, support their family, attain rudiments of an education, and survive – especially children who are abandoned, runaways, on the streets, and not identified by the State to belong to one of the two categories – in Need of Care & Protection or in Conflict with the Law.

The problem with this Amendment is not that it allows children to work. It is more than that. First, In India, it is extremely hard to empirically define what is ‘hazardous’ and what is “non-hazardous”. This Amendment also allows children to work in “family business” which is equally ambiguous and open to misinterpretation. It is easy to use child labour in hazardous settings and argue that it is non-hazardous. Industries work on the basis of procurement, production and supply. If a child works in the supply side of hazardous industry (selling), or on the production side, (with heavy machinery), in a non-hazardous industry – how would it be tackled, unless the industry is explicitly defined as one of the two? Earlier, only 18 industries were defined as hazardous. Now, the definitions will need to be expanded to all, with details and precision for each.

Second, This Amendment in principle goes against the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which mandates the state to ensure free and compulsory education to all children in the age group of 6 to 14 years. If a child is allowed to legally work in a non-hazardous industry, would she go to school? And what is the intervention if she does not? To what limit can a child (below 14) be stretched, physically and mentally, between education and employment? A condition set forth in this Amendment is that children should work only after school hours or during vacations. But ensuring this condition is easier in theory than in practice.

Third, while the Government believes that such an Amendment can deter children working in industries in contravention to the law, it also does send out a very negative message. And that simply being, it is now legally OK for children below 14 to be employed. In the last decade, India has seen a plummet in the number of child labourers (from 12.6 million down to 4.3 million). This is believed to be because of enrollment in schools. With this Amendment, education, while mandated can easily become an option and not a compulsion, especially for girls, who because of social norms already demonstrate a high dropout rate in schools.

Child Labour is by no means a desired situation. No child should voluntarily or forcefully be pushed into employment at the cost of his education or even childhood. However, the problem in India is complex. When it comes to children – child labour, protection, welfare, and rights – it would be silly to paint it in black or white. One simply cannot have a monochromatic view of this population group. The stakeholders and situations at play are subjective, and numerous. State machinery and institutions, family – parents and dependent siblings, family circumstances and structure, societal and class norms (where gender and caste play a central role), education and accessibility, the child’s mental and physical condition, specific situations – each has a say and role in the life of a child, before the child. No two cases are the same with respect to child labour and protection.

Child labour takes place in the private confines of homes, and in the public eyes, across the city scapes. When such an Amendment is in the news, instead of assuming the state to impose a reality that we don’t already encounter, there is a need to demand for bigger, more tangible structures with respect to children, which are indeed missing and rectifiable. Robust child protection and welfare setup, terse implementation of child policies, augmented budgets for schemes for children (which was reduced in 2o15), an impartial juvenile justice system, better reformation homes, trained and permanent staff, and so on. Simultaneously, the number of schools, the enrollment, dropout and graduation rates, the quality of teachers, the infrastructure in schools – each needs to me monitored and analysed. While we want to wish away child labour, we also need to wish for things that can be changed with simple policy planning and amendments, and that go a long way in favour of a child.

This Amendment is not an ideal, by any stretch of the imagination. What it advocates for, is not desired. There are multiple loopholes, and flaws in it. But its provisions are better than the previous Law. Opposing such an Amendment is right in principle and in signal. But does it really do anything, when everything that exists before and after the law is often dysfunctional and neglected?

The embattled MQM founder Altaf Hussain implied in a fiery speech that he would seek the help of R&AW.  Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of listening to (or worse, watching) Mr. Hussain’s speeches would know that there’s very little if any merit or credibility to anything he says.  But his comments drew the ire of the Pakistani military establishment, following which Mr. Hussain was forced to backtrack and underscore his credentials as a bona fide hub ul-watni.

Since then, R&AW’s “involvement” in Pakistan was explicitly called out at the Corps Commanders Conference, while Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khuwaja Asif claimed that R&AW had been formed to “wipe Pakistan off the map of the world.”

We now hear of a list being in circulation, purportedly compiled by Pakistan’s security agencies, of individuals and organizations collaborating with R&AW against whom operations are imminent (h/t @smitaprakash).  The following is an excerpt from the piece published in Ummat:

Pakistan’s military establishment has formally accused India’s intelligence agency RAW of being involved in acts of terrorism in Pakistan only after accumulating sufficient evidence to support its claim.  According to a credible source, a list of important individuals and NGOs with links to RAW has been compiled and operations against these individuals and NGOs are expected to commence soon.  ISI has painstakingly pieced together evidence from within the country, as well as from Afghanistan and neighboring countries.  It was only after this information was then shared with the Corps Commanders that a decision to conduct operations against RAW and its agents was taken.

According to sources, Gen. Sharif was not in favor of operations that could result in Pakistan having to redirect forces currently battling terrorists in one part of the country to the Indian border.  However, through the ISI and other agencies, he has compiled considerable evidence of several organizations and individuals cooperating with the enemy.  After sharing this information with army leadership, a decision for a major operation against such forces has been taken.

Army leadership has taken the civilian government into confidence and has the concurrence of the provincial governments of Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa.  According to available information, RAW is involved in terrorism in Balochistan and in Karachi and has been using various agencies, NGOs and charitable organizations to further its goals.  These organizations are involved in spreading hatred and instability within Pakistan.

In one instance, intelligence agencies gave the impression that they were not aware of the activities of a key RAW agent who had arrived via London to Karachi ostensibly to conduct religious activities.  However, intelligence agencies had in fact known of his intended arrival in Karachi as soon as he left Delhi.   Intelligence agencies then allowed this individual to operate freely within Pakistan so that evidence of his activities and contacts could be collected.

Intelligence agencies will soon launch a “grand operation” against such individuals and organizations.  According to our source, 43 such NGOs and 25 individuals have been identified in Balochistan.  The ongoing operations in Karachi against the MQM have provided law enforcement agencies with indisputable evidence of MQM’s collaboration with RAW.  Additionally, ostensibly trustworthy individuals and organizations have also been identified as having received funds from RAW.  According to the source, these planned operations have nothing to do with India approaching the UN on the issue of Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

Security agencies intend to target RAW’s assets in Pakistan by themselves and if necessary, may present available evidence to international courts.  Available evidence shows India to be a significant sponsor of violence; however, evidence also suggests that some other countries are involved in terrorism inside Pakistan, including those that claim to be friends of Pakistan. [امّت]