Out of my mind: India at 68

India has lasted as a republic longer than many others. China’s first republic did not last even 40 years. Pakistan broke up.

MEGHNAD DESAI | JANUARY 29 2017

India became a sovereign democratic republic on January 26, 1950, and stayed within the Commonwealth with the British Crown at its head. / FROM INDIAN EXPRESS

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India did not become fully independent in 1947. It was not yet sovereign. It had only dominion status acknowledging the British Crown as its head with a Governor General appointed by London, Lord Mountbatten first and then C Rajagopalachari, the first and last Indian to be Governor General of India. (Jinnah became the first Governor General of Pakistan as he refused to accept Mountbatten as joint head of both dominions and thus the first non-White head of a British-ruled dominion.) There was a lot of anxiety among the British about whether a sovereign India would stay in the Commonwealth, which has the British Crown at its head. If India…THE INDIAN EXPRESS

SEAN SPICER’S ABNORMAL PRESS CONFERENCE

RYAN LIZZA | JANUARY 24 2017

One of the dangers in covering an abnormal Presidency is that journalists will constantly be on the lookout for signs of normalcy, and exaggerate and even celebrate them as

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Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, on Monday.PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEX WONG / GETTY / FROM THE NEW YORKER

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proof that things aren’t so unusual, after all. In Masha Gessen’s alarming and widely read essay “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,” she warns, “Do not be taken in by small signs of normality.” It’s natural, she notes, to be lulled into complacency by “falsely reassuring words about how the world as we know it has not ended.” That the Trump White House followed a weekend of lies from the President and his spokesman with a relatively normal press briefing is nothing to be celebrated.

And even Spicer’s briefing on Monday continued a worrying pattern from his remarks on Saturday, when he made false claims about the size of the crowd at Friday’s Inauguration ceremony. He began the briefing with a couple of jokes, which fell flat in the room, about his tirade on Saturday…THE NEW YORKER

The President Who Buried Humility

Donald Trump’s inauguration heralds a new age
of arrogance and says something sad and scary

FRANK BRUNI | JANUARY 21 2017

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“Humbled,” each man said of himself, and while it was pure cliché, it was also what we wanted and needed: a sign, no matter how rote, that even someone self-assured enough to pursue the presidency was taking the measure of that responsibility and asking if he was worthy of it.

Does that question cross Donald Trump’s mind?

I don’t think so. I certainly didn’t get that sense from his inaugural remarks, and not just because “humbled” went missing. As he stood just feet from four of the last six presidents, he trashed them, talking about a Washington establishment blind and deaf to the struggles of less fortunate Americans.

He characterized his election as part of “a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen.” Forget about his loss of the popular vote. Or his 40 percent favorability rating. Or the puny crowd at his inauguration in comparison with the throngs at Obama’s eight years…THE NEW YORK TIMES

Across the aisle: It is a balloon, it is a kite!

The Chief Economic Adviser has promised a detailed analysis of the subject in the Economic Survey that will be presented to Parliament on the eve of the Budget. However, there is no word yet from the government.

P.CHIDAMBARAM | JANUARY 22 2017

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It is the Budget season. The good, bad and ugly (ideas) will be on display. One idea that is in the realm of speculation is Universal Basic Income (UBI). The Chief Economic Adviser has promised a detailed analysis of the subject in the Economic Survey that will be presented to Parliament on the eve of the Budget. However, there is no word yet from the government. Usually voluble ministers have been careful not to utter a word on the subject.

UBI is not a novel idea. Countries that have a comprehensive social security scheme provide a cash payment as well as food coupons to persons entitled to receive social security benefits (too poor, unemployed, disabled, aged). In India, there is no comprehensive social security scheme. We have the MGNREGA scheme that bears a similarity to UBI. MGNREGA guarantees work on demand and pays a wage per day that is equivalent to the prevailing wage of a farm labourer.

If MGNREGA is implemented in letter and spirit, it will provide work and wages…THE INDIAN EXPRESS

Fifth column: India’s eternal time warp

There were as many Indian participants at this year’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum as there were Chinese, but nobody noticed India at all

TAVLEEN SINGH | JANUARY 22 2017

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Is India going to miss the bus yet again? I asked myself this question many times last week in Davos as the mightiest of our business leaders wandered about with doleful expressions because of the almost total absence of India in the conversations the world is currently having.

There were as many Indian participants at this year’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum as there were Chinese, but nobody noticed India at all. More depressing still was that Xi Jinping was greeted by this gathering of the rich and powerful as if he were the emperor of the world.

While listening to his excellent speech, I marvelled at the irony of a Communist dictator being kowtowed to by people who believe in democracy and free markets. These do not exist in China. They do in India, but no Indian leader has ever attracted the kind of attention the Chinese President did. Why? When I asked myself this question, images of China’s modern highways, superfast trains and orderly cities rose in my head and the answer became evident.

China realised in the Seventies that central planning and Marxist economics would not bring prosperity. So it changed course. India did not change course till 15 years…THE INDIAN EXPRESS

 

War minus shooting

PICTURE FROM INDIAN EXPRESS

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The Jan Lokpal Bill was accepted by the Congress government in 2013 with amendments and was renamed and passed as the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill.

GAURAV GOGOI | JANUARY 16 2017

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With less than a week remaining before the retirement of the former director, the senior most officer in contention for the director’s post was shunted to the Ministry of Home Affairs as a special secretary. The seniormost officer had the requisite experience and was supervising high-profile cases. A Gujarat cadre IPS officer was appointed as interim director. The appointment was questionable because the selection committee was bypassed: The concerned officer’s history indicated that he was chosen by an earlier Gujarat government to probe the Godhra train burning incident. Many allege the appointment of the interim CBI director was deliberate. The alleged aim was to postpone the meeting of the selection committee to a date after January 4, 2017; after January 4, 2017, a new CJI took over.

Similar rumours cropped up when the appointment of the director to the Enforcement Directorate came up. The post had become vacant in 2015 and for an…THE INDIAN EXPRESS

What we need to guard

Fundamental rights are no gifts of the state, the Constitution only confirms their existence.

SOLI J. SORABJEE | JANUARY 12 2017

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Our freedom fighters and members of the Constituent Assembly who drafted free India’s Constitution attached great importance to fundamental rights. They did not subscribe to the fallacy that fundamental rights are a gift from the state to its citizens. They rightly believed that individuals possess basic human rights independently of any Constitution by reason of the fact that they are members of the human family. A Constitution does not “confer” fundamental rights. It confirms their existence and accords them protection. That is the rationale of fundamental rights.

A controversial issue is whether a court can deduce additional fundamental rights which are not expressly set out in the Constitution. The US Supreme Court has deduced rights of privacy and parenthood on the reasoning that the specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights “have penumbras formed by emanations from those…THE INDIAN EXPRESS

Why have India’s Reds now lost their wit?

CARTOON FROM OUTLOOKINDIA via Google

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Many of them spoke of the times they spent in jail and life when they went into hiding and were underground for months.

JAVED NAQVI | JANUARY 11 2017

It is their unalloyed universality that attracted us. Be they Buddha or Marx, Ghalib or Neruda, the Beatles or Frantz Fanon, in my younger days, there were people who could connect the absurdly diverse checkpoints of life, in which hope and justice were arterial. And these magical people were none other than the old-fashioned, wise and unassuming Communists.

They smoked cigarettes, or cigars after Che and Castro. And they read the newspapers scrupulously. Not unusually, they visited the libraries and scoured the archives to endorse or challenge their knowledge. They went to the villages and joined gate meetings at factories to test their ideas about change. They enjoyed theatre and mushairas. They easily toggled between good music and deafening coffee house debates, which could occasionally send a sworn right-winger home with a thought to mull over.

They knew how to drink but never allowed a cosy moment to interrupt their carefully curated quest for a just world. Many of them spoke of the times they spent in jail and life when they went into hiding and were underground for months. It was a delight to hear them speak to each other. It was a learning –THE DECCAN CHRONICLE

Central To The Market

Long-term investments in social sector are essential for growth, political stability.

Pranjul Bhandari | JANUARY 11 2017

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CARTOON FROM INDIAN EXPRESS via Google

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The so-called social sector is not just for soft hearts; it’s a hard fact that it can create much-needed jobs and boost economic growth.

Financial markets and macro economists often look upon health, education and the wider social sector as a side show. They believe these services are a desirable “public good” but not central to markets, growth or even a stable economy. We believe this is wrong. Look carefully. Health and education play a vital role in the economy in more ways than you can imagine. Let’s start with what’s going to hit us as 2017 begins — the central government budget. India made great strides in 2015 when it channeled the extra fiscal resources made available by falling oil prices towards higher capital spending (roads, rails and bank recapitalisation). These kinds of things do much more for growth than so-called current spending, such as subsidies, because the benefits last for years. And indeed, through the year…THE INDIAN EXPRESS